[transcriber's note: references to page numbers in table of contents and index removed, as well as the numbers themselves.] [illustration: alexander graham bell the inventor of the telephone.] cyclopedia of telephony and telegraphy _a general reference work on_ telephony, substations, party-line systems, protection, manual switchboards, automatic systems, power plants, special service features, construction, engineering, operation, maintenance, telegraphy, wireless telegraphy and telephony, etc. _prepared by a corps of_ telephone and telegraph experts, and electrical engineers of the highest professional standing _illustrated with over two thousand engravings_ four volumes chicago american school of correspondence authors and collaborators * * * * * kempster b. miller. m.e. consulting engineer and telephone expert of the firm of mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts, chicago american institute of electrical engineers western society of engineers * * * * * george w. patterson, s.b., ph.d. head, department of electrical engineering, university of michigan * * * * * charles thom chief of quadruplex department, western union main office, new york city * * * * * robert andrews millikan, ph.d. associate professor of physics, university of chicago member, executive council, american physical society * * * * * samuel g. mcmeen consulting engineer and telephone expert of the firm of mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts, chicago american institute of electrical engineers western society of engineers * * * * * lawrence k. sager, s.b., m.p.l. patent attorney and electrical expert formerly assistant examiner, u.s. patent office * * * * * glenn m. hobbs, ph.d. secretary, american school of correspondence formerly instructor in physics, university of chicago american physical society * * * * * charles g. ashley electrical engineer and expert in wireless telegraphy and telephony * * * * * a. frederick collins editor, _collins wireless bulletin_ author of "wireless telegraphy, its history, theory, and practice" * * * * * francis b. crocker, e.m., ph.d. head, department of electrical engineering, columbia university past-president, american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * morton arendt, e.e. instructor in electrical engineering, columbia university, new york * * * * * edward b. waite head, instruction department, american school of correspondence american society of mechanical engineers western society of engineers * * * * * david p. moreton, b.s., e.e. associate professor of electrical engineering, armour institute of technology american institute of electrical engineers, * * * * * leigh s. keith, b.s. managing engineer with mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts chicago associate member, american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * jessie m. shepherd, a.b. associate editor, textbook department, american school of correspondence * * * * * ernest l. wallace, b.s. assistant examiner, united states patent office, washington, d. c. * * * * * george r. metcalfe, m.e. editor, _american institute of electrical engineers_ formerly head of publication department, westinghouse elec. & mfg. co. * * * * * j.p. schroeter graduate, munich technical school instructor in electrical engineering, american school of correspondence * * * * * james dixon, e.e. american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * harris c. trow, s.b., _managing editor_ editor-in-chief, textbook department, american school of correspondence authorities consulted the editors have freely consulted the standard technical literature of america and europe in the preparation of these volumes. they desire to express their indebtedness particularly to the following eminent authorities, whose well-known works should be in the library of every telephone and telegraph engineer. grateful acknowledgment is here made also for the invaluable co-operation of the foremost engineering firms and manufacturers in making these volumes thoroughly representative of the very best and latest practice in the transmission of intelligence, also for the valuable drawings, data, suggestions, criticisms, and other courtesies. * * * * * arthur e. kennely, d.sc. professor of electrical engineering, harvard university. joint author of "the electric telephone." "the electric telegraph," "alternating currents," "arc lighting," "electric heating," "electric motors," "electric railways," "incandescent lighting," etc. * * * * * henry smith carhart, a.m., ll.d. professor of physics and director of the physical laboratory, university of michigan. author of "primary batteries," "elements of physics," "university physics," "electrical measurements," "high school physics," etc. * * * * * francis b. crocker, m.e., ph.d. head of department of electrical engineering, columbia university, new york; past-president, american institute of electrical engineers. author of "electric lighting;" joint author of "management of electrical machinery." * * * * * horatio a. foster consulting engineer; member of american institute of electrical engineers; member of american society of mechanical engineers. author of "electrical engineer's pocket-book." * * * * * william s. franklin, m.s., d.sc. professor of physics, lehigh university. joint author of "the elements of electrical engineering," "the elements of alternating currents." * * * * * lamar lyndon, b.e., m.e. consulting electrical engineer; associate member of american institute of electrical engineers; member, american electro-chemical society. author of "storage battery engineering." * * * * * robert andrews millikan, ph.d. professor of physics, university of chicago. joint author of "a first course in physics," "electricity, sound and light," etc. * * * * * kempster b. miller, m.e. consulting engineer and telephone expert; of the firm of mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts, chicago. author of "american telephone practice." * * * * * william h. preece chief of the british postal telegraph. joint author of "telegraphy," "a manual of telephony," etc.-- * * * * * louis bell, ph.d. consulting electrical engineer; lecturer on power transmission, massachusetts institute of technology. author of "electric power transmission," "power distribution for electric railways," "the art of illumination," "wireless telephony," etc. * * * * * oliver heaviside, f.r.s. author of "electro-magnetic theory," "electrical papers," etc. * * * * * silvanus p. thompson, d.sc, b.a., f.r.s., f.r.a.s. principal and professor of physics in the city and guilds of london technical college. author of "electricity and magnetism," "dynamo-electric machinery," "polyphase electric currents and alternate-current motors," "the electromagnet," etc. * * * * * andrew gray, m.a., f.r.s.e. author of "absolute measurements in electricity and magnetism." * * * * * albert cushing crehore, a.b., ph.d. electrical engineer; assistant professor of physics, dartmouth college; formerly instructor in physics, cornell university. author of "synchronous and other multiple telegraphs;" joint author of "alternating currents." * * * * * j. j. thomson, d.sc, ll.d., ph.d., f.r.s. fellow of trinity college, cambridge university; cavendish professor of experimental physics, cambridge university. author of "the conduction of electricity through gases," "electricity and matter." * * * * * frederick bedell, ph. d. professor of applied electricity, cornell university. author of "the principles of the transformer;" joint author of "alternating currents." * * * * * dugald c. jackson, c.e. head of department of electrical engineering, massachusetts institute of technology; member, american institute of electrical engineers, etc. author of "a textbook on electromagnetism and the construction of dynamos;" joint author of "alternating currents and alternating-current machinery." * * * * * michael idvorsky pupin, a.b., sc.d., ph.d. professor of electro-mechanics, columbia university, new york. author of "propagation of long electric waves," and "wave-transmission over non-uniform cables and long-distance air lines." * * * * * frank baldwin jewett, a.b., ph.d. transmission and protection engineer, with american telephone & telegraph co. author of "modern telephone cable," "effect of pressure on insulation resistance." * * * * * arthur crotch formerly lecturer on telegraphy and telephony at the municipal technical schools, norwich, eng. author of "telegraphy and telephony." * * * * * james erskine-murray, d.sc. fellow of the royal society of edinburgh; member of the institution of electrical engineers. author of "a handbook of wireless telegraphy." * * * * * a.h. mcmillan, a.b., ll.b. author of "telephone law, a manual on the organization and operation of telephone companies." * * * * * william esty, s.b., m.a. head of department of electrical engineering, lehigh university. joint author of "the elements of electrical engineering." * * * * * george w. wilder, ph.d. formerly professor of telephone engineering, armour institute of technology. author of "telephone principles and practice," "simultaneous telegraphy and telephony," etc. * * * * * william l. hooper, ph.d. head of department of electrical engineering, tufts college. joint author of "electrical problems for engineering students." * * * * * david s. hulfish technical editor, _the nickelodeon_; telephone and motion-picture expert; solicitor of patents. author of "how to read telephone circuit diagrams." * * * * * j.a. fleming, m.a., d.sc. (lond.), f.r.s. professor of electrical engineering in university college, london; late fellow and scholar of st. john's college, cambridge; fellow of university college, london. author of "the alternate-current transformer," "radiotelegraphy and radiotelephony," "principles of electric wave telegraphy," "cantor lectures on electrical oscillations and electric waves," "hertzian wave wireless telegraphy," etc. * * * * * f.a.c. perrine, a.m., d.sc. consulting engineer: formerly president, stanley electric manufacturing company; formerly professor of electrical engineering, leland stanford, jr. university. author of "conductors for electrical distribution." * * * * * a. frederick collins editor, _collins wireless bulletin_. author of "wireless telegraphy, its history, theory and practice," "manual of wireless telegraphy," "design and construction of induction coils," etc. * * * * * schuyler s. wheeler, d.sc. president, crocker-wheeler co.; past-president, american institute of electrical engineers. joint author of "management of electrical machinery." * * * * * charles proteus steinmetz consulting engineer, with the general electric co.; professor of electrical engineering, union college. author of "the theory and calculation of alternating-current phenomena," "theoretical elements of electrical engineering", etc. * * * * * george w. patterson, s.b., ph.d. head of department of electrical engineering, university of michigan. joint author of "electrical measurements." * * * * * william maver, jr. ex-electrician baltimore and ohio telegraph company; member of the american institute of electrical engineers. author of "american telegraphy and encyclopedia of the telegraph," "wireless telegraphy." * * * * * john price jackson, m.e. professor of electrical engineering, pennsylvania state college. joint author of "alternating currents and alternating-current machinery." * * * * * augustus treadwell, jr., e.e. associate member, american institute of electrical engineers. author of "the storage battery, a practical treatise on secondary batteries." * * * * * edwin j. houston, ph.d. professor of physics, franklin institute, pennsylvania; joint inventor of thomson-houston system of arc lighting; electrical expert and consulting engineer. joint author of "the electric telephone," "the electric telegraph," "alternating currents," "arc lighting," "electric heating," "electric motors," "electric railways," "incandescent lighting," etc. * * * * * william j. hopkins professor of physics in the drexel institute of art, science, and industry, philadelphia. author of "telephone lines and their properties." [illustration: a typical small magneto switchboard installation] [illustration: a typical central office for rural exchange line protectors on wall at left.] foreword the present day development of the "talking wire" has annihilated both time and space, and has enabled men thousands of miles apart to get into almost instant communication. the user of the telephone and the telegraph forgets the tremendousness of the feat in the simplicity of its accomplishment; but the man who has made the feat possible knows that its very simplicity is due to the complexity of the principles and appliances involved; and he realizes his need of a practical, working understanding of each principle and its application. the cyclopedia of telephony and telegraphy presents a comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the whole art of the electrical transmission of intelligence. the communication engineer--if so he may be called--requires a knowledge both of the mechanism of his instruments and of the vagaries of the current that makes them talk. he requires as well a knowledge of plants and buildings, of office equipment, of poles and wires and conduits, of office system and time-saving methods, for the transmission of intelligence is a business as well as an art. and to each of these subjects, and to all others pertinent, the cyclopedia gives proper space and treatment. the sections on telephony cover the installation, maintenance, and operation of all standard types of telephone systems; they present without prejudice the respective merits of manual and automatic exchanges; and they give special attention to the prevention and handling of operating "troubles." the sections on telegraphy cover both commercial service and train dispatching. practical methods of wireless communication--both by telephone and by telegraph--are thoroughly treated. the drawings, diagrams, and photographs incorporated into the cyclopedia have been prepared especially for this work; and their instructive value is as great as that of the text itself. they have been used to illustrate and illuminate the text, and not as a medium around which to build the text. both drawings and diagrams have been simplified so far as is compatible with their correctness, with the result that they tell their own story and always in the same language. the cyclopedia is a compilation of many of the most valuable instruction papers of the american school of correspondence, and the method adopted in its preparation is that which this school has developed and employed so successfully for many years. this method is not an experiment, but has stood the severest of all tests--that of practical use--which has demonstrated it to be the best yet devised for the education of the busy, practical man. in conclusion, grateful acknowledgment is due to the staff of authors and collaborators, without whose hearty co-operation this work would have been impossible. table of contents volume i fundamental principles _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_[a] acoustics--characteristics of sound--loudness--pitch--vibration of diaphragms--timbre--human voice--human ear--speech--magneto telephones--loose-contact principle--induction coils--simple telephone circuit--capacity--telephone currents--audible and visible signals--telephone lines--conductors--inductance--insulation substation equipment _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ transmitters--variable resistance--materials--single and multiple electrodes--solid-back transmitter--types of transmitters--electrodes--packing--acousticon transmitter--switchboard transmitter--receivers--types of receivers--operator's receiver--primary cells--series and multiple connections--types of primary cells--magneto signaling apparatus--battery bell--magneto bell--magneto generator--armature--automatic shunt--polarized ringer--hook switch--electromagnets--impedance, induction, and repeating coils--non-inductive resistance devices--differentially-wound unit--condensers--materials--current supply to transmitters--local battery--common battery--diagrams of common-battery systems--telephone sets: magneto, series and bridging, common-battery party-line systems _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ non-selective party-line systems--series and bridging--signal code--selective party-line systems: polarity, harmonic, step-by-step, and broken-line--lock-out party-line systems: poole, step-by-step, and broken-line protection _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ electrical hazards--high potentials--air-gap arrester--discharge across gaps--types of arrester--vacuum arrester--strong currents--fuses--sneak currents--line protection--central-office and subscribers' station protectors--city exchange requirements--electrolysis manual switchboards _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ the telephone exchange--subscribers', trunk, and toll lines--districts--switchboards--simple magneto switchboard--operation--commercial types of drops and jacks--manual vs. automatic restoration--switchboard plugs and cords--ringing and listening keys--operator's telephone equipment--circuits of complete switchboard--night-alarm circuits--grounded and metallic circuit line--cord circuit--switchboard assembly review questions index [footnote a: for professional standing of authors, see list of authors and collaborators at front of volume.] [illustration: old branch-terminal multiple board, paris, france] telephony introduction the telephone was invented in by alexander graham bell, a resident of the united states, a native of scotland, and by profession a teacher of deaf mutes in the art of vocal speech. in that year, professor bell was engaged in the experimental development of a system of multiplex telegraphy, based on the use of rapidly varying currents. during those experiments, he observed an iron reed to vibrate before an electromagnet as a result of another iron reed vibrating before a distant electromagnet connected to the nearer one by wires. the telephone resulted from this observation with great promptness. in the instrument first made, sound vibrated a membrane diaphragm supporting a bit of iron near an electromagnet; a line joined this simple device of three elements to another like it; a battery in the line magnetized both electromagnet cores; the vibration of the iron in the sending device caused the current in the line to undulate and to vary the magnetism of the receiving device. the diaphragm of the latter was vibrated in consequence of the varying pull upon its bit of iron, and these vibrations reproduced the sound that vibrated the sending diaphragm. the first public use of the electric telephone was at the centennial exposition in philadelphia in . it was there tested by many interested observers, among them sir william thomson, later lord kelvin, the eminent scotch authority on matters of electrical communication. it was he who contributed so largely to the success of the early telegraph cable system between england and america. two of his comments which are characteristic are as follows: to-day i have seen that which yesterday i should have deemed impossible. soon lovers will whisper their secrets over an electric wire. * * * * * who can but admire the hardihood of invention which devised such slight means to realize the mathematical conception that if electricity is to convey all the delicacies of sound which distinguish articulate speech, the strength of its current must vary continuously as nearly as may be in simple proportion to the velocity of a particle of the air engaged in constituting the sound. contrary to usual methods of improving a new art, the earliest improvement of the telephone simplified it. the diaphragms became thin iron disks, instead of membranes carrying iron; the electromagnet cores were made of permanently magnetized steel instead of temporarily magnetized soft iron, and the battery was omitted from the line. the undulatory current in a system of two such telephones joined by a line is _produced_ in the sending telephone by the vibration of the iron diaphragm. the vibration of the diaphragm in the receiving telephone is _produced_ by the undulatory current. sound is _produced_ by the vibration of the diaphragm of the receiving telephone. such a telephone is at once the simplest known form of electric generator or motor for alternating currents. it is capable of translating motion into current or current into motion through a wide range of frequencies. it is not known that there is any frequency of alternating current which it is not capable of producing and translating. it can produce and translate currents of greater complexity than any other existing electrical machine. though possessing these admirable qualities as an electrical machine, the simple electromagnetic telephone had not the ability to transmit speech loudly enough for all practical uses. transmitters producing stronger telephonic currents were developed soon after the fundamental invention. some forms of these were invented by professor bell himself. other inventors contributed devices embodying the use of carbon as a resistance to be varied by the motions of the diaphragm. this general form of transmitting telephone has prevailed and at present is the standard type. it is interesting to note that the earliest incandescent lamps, as invented by mr. edison, had a resistance material composed of carbon, and that such a lamp retained its position as the most efficient small electric illuminant until the recent introduction of metal filament lamps. it is possible that some form of metal may be introduced as the resistance medium for telephone transmitters, and that such a change as has taken place in incandescent lamps may increase the efficiency of telephone transmitting devices. at the time of the invention of the telephone, there were in existence two distinct types of telegraph, working in regular commercial service. in the more general type, many telegraph stations were connected to a line and whatever was telegraphed between two stations could be read by all the stations of that line. in the other and less general type, many lines, each having a single telegraph station, were centered in an office or "exchange," and at the desire of a user his line could be connected to another and later disconnected from it. both of these types of telegraph service were imitated at once in telephone practice. lines carrying many telephones each, were established with great rapidity. telephones actually displaced telegraphic apparatus in the exchange method of working in america. the fundamental principle on which telegraph or telephone exchanges operate, being that of placing any line in communication with any other in the system, gave to each line an ultimate scope so great as to make this form of communication more popular than any arrangement of telephones on a single line. beginning in , telephone exchanges were developed with great rapidity in all of the larger communities of the united states. telegraph switching devices were utilized at the outset or were modified in such minor particulars as were necessary to fit them to the new task. in its simplest form, a telephone system is, of course, a single line permanently joining two telephones. in its next simplest form, it is a line permanently joining more than two telephones. in its most useful form, it is a line joining a telephone to some means of connecting it at will to another. a telephone exchange central office contains means for connecting lines at will in that useful way. the least complicated machine for that purpose is a switchboard to be operated by hand, having some way of letting the operator know that a connection is wished and a way of making it. the customary way of connecting the lines always has been by means of flexible conductors fitted with plugs to be inserted in sockets. if the switchboard be small enough so that all the lines are within arm's reach of the operator, the whole process is individual, and may be said to be at its best and simplest. there are but few communities, however, in which the number of lines to be served and calls to be answered is small enough so that the entire traffic of the exchange can be handled by a single person. an obvious way, therefore, is to provide as many operators in a central office as may be required by the number of calls to be answered, and to terminate before each of the operators enough of the lines to bring enough work to keep that operator economically occupied. this presents the additional problem, how to connect a line terminating before one operator to a line normally terminating before another operator. the obvious answer is to provide lines from each operator's place of work to each other operator's place, connecting a calling line to some one of these lines which are local within the central office, and, in turn, connecting that chosen local line to the line which is called. such lines between operators have come to be known as _trunk lines_, because of the obvious analogy to trunk lines of railways between common centers, and such a system of telephone lines may be called a _trunking system_. very good service has been given and can be given by such an arrangement of local trunks, but the growth in lines and in traffic has developed in most instances certain weaknesses which make it advisable to find speedier, more accurate, and more reliable means. for the serving of a large traffic from a large number of lines, as is required in practically every city of the world, a very great contribution to the practical art was made by the development of the multiple switchboard. such a switchboard is merely such a device as has been described for the simpler cases, with the further refinement that within reach of each operator in the central office appears _every line which enters that office_, and this without regard to what point in the switchboard the lines may terminate for the _answering_ of calls. in other words, while each operator answers a certain subordinate group of the total number of lines, each operator may reach, for calling purposes, every line which enters that office. it is probable that the invention and development of the multiple switchboard was the first great impetus toward the wide-spread use of telephone service. coincident with the development of the multiple switchboard for manually operated, central-office mechanisms was the beginning of the development of automatic apparatus under the control of the calling subscriber for finding and connecting with a called line. it is interesting to note the general trend of the early development of automatic apparatus in comparison with the development, to that time, of manual telephone apparatus. while the manual apparatus on the one hand attempted to meet its problem by providing local trunks between the various operators of a central office, and failing of success in that, finally developed a means which placed all the lines of a central office within connecting reach of each operator, automatic telephony, beginning at that point, failed of success in attempting to bring each line in the central office within connecting reach of each connecting mechanism. in other terms, the first automatic switching equipment consisted of a machine for each line, which machine was so organized as to be able to find and connect its calling line with any called line of the entire central-office group. it may be said that an attempt to develop this plan was the fundamental reason for the repeated failure of automatic apparatus to solve the problem it attacked. all that the earlier automatic system did was to prove more or less successfully that automatic apparatus had a right to exist, and that to demand of the subscriber that he manipulate from his station a distant machine to make the connection without human aid was not fallacious. when it had been recognized that the entire multiple switchboard idea could not be carried into automatic telephony with success, the first dawn of hope in that art may be said to have come. success in automatic telephony did come by the re-adoption of the trunking method. as adopted for automatic telephony, the method contemplates that the calling line shall be extended, link by link, until it finds itself lengthened and directed so as to be able to seize the called line in a very much smaller multiple than the total group of one office of the exchange. a similar curious reversion has taken place in the development of telephone lines. the earliest telephone lines were merely telegraph lines equipped with telephone instruments, and the earliest telegraph lines were planned by professor morse to be insulated wires laid in the earth. a lack of skill in preparing the wires for putting in the earth caused these early underground lines to be failures. at the urging of one of his associates, professor morse consented to place his earliest telegraph lines on poles in the air. each such line originally consisted of two wires, one for the going and one for the returning current, as was then considered the action. upon its being discovered that a single wire, using the earth as a return, would serve as a satisfactory telegraph line, such practice became universal. upon the arrival of the telephone, all lines obviously were built in the same way, and until force of newer circumstances compelled it, the present metallic circuit without an earth connection did not come into general use. the extraordinary growth of the number of telephone lines in a community and the development of other methods of electrical utilization, as well as the growth in the knowledge of telephony itself, ultimately forced the wires underground again. at the same time and for the same causes, a telephone line became one of two wires, so that it becomes again the counterpart of the earliest telegraph line of professor morse. another curious and interesting example of this reversion to type exists in the simple telephone receiver. an early improvement in telephone receivers after professor bell's original invention was to provide the necessary magnetism of the receiver core by making it of steel and permanently magnetizing it, whereas professor bell's instrument provided its magnetism by means of direct current flowing in the line. in later days the telephone receiver has returned almost to the original form in which professor bell produced it and this change has simplified other elements of telephone-exchange apparatus in a very interesting and gratifying way. by reason of improvements in methods of line construction and apparatus arrangement, the radius of communication steadily has increased. commercial speech now is possible between points several thousand miles apart, and there is no theoretical reason why communication might not be established between any two points on the earth's surface. the practical reasons of demand and cost may prevent so great an accomplishment as talking half around the earth. so far as science is concerned there would seem to be no reason why this might not be done today, by the careful application of what already is known. in the united states, telephone service from its beginning has been supplied to users by private enterprise. in other countries, it is supplied by means of governmentally-owned equipment. in general, it may be said that the adequacy and the amount, as well as the quality of telephone service, is best in countries where the service is provided by private enterprise. telephone systems in the united states were under the control of the bell telephone company from the invention of the device in until . the fundamental telephone patent expired in . this opened the telephone art to the general public, because it no longer was necessary to secure telephones solely from the patent-holding company nor to pay royalty for the right to use them, if secured at all. manufacturers of electrical apparatus generally then began to make and sell telephones and telephone apparatus, and operating companies, also independent of the bell organization, began to install and use telephones. at the end of seventeen years of patent monopoly in the united states, there were in operation a little over , telephones. in the seventeen years since the expiration of the fundamental patent, independent telephone companies throughout the united states have installed and now have in daily successful use over , , telephones. in other words, since its first beginnings, independent telephony has brought into continuous daily use nearly sixteen times as many telephones as were brought into use in the equal time of the complete monopoly of the bell organization. at the beginning of , there were in service by the bell organization about , , telephones. these with the , , independent telephones, make a total of , , , or about one-twelfth as many telephones as there are inhabitants of the united states. the influence of this development upon the lives of the people has been profound. whether the influence has been wholly for good may not be so conclusively apparent. lord bacon has declared that, excepting only the alphabet and the art of printing, those inventions abridging distance are of the greatest service to mankind. if this be true, it may be said that the invention of telephony deserves high place among the civilizing influences. there is no industrial art in which the advancement of the times has been followed more closely by practical application than in telephony. commercial speech by telephone is possible by means of currents which so far are practically unmeasurable. in other words, it is possible to speak clearly and satisfactorily over a line by means of currents which cannot be read, with certainty as to their amount, by any electrical measuring device so far known. in this regard, telephony is less well fortified than are any of the arts utilizing electrical power in larger quantities. the real wonder is that with so little knowledge of what takes place, particularly as to amount, those working in the art have been able to do as well as they have. when an exact knowledge of quantity is easily obtainable, very striking advances may be looked for. the student of these phases of physical science and industrial art will do well to combine three processes: study of the words of others; personal experimentation; and digestive thought. the last mentioned is the process of profoundest value. on it finally depends mastery. it is not of so much importance how soon the concept shall finally be gained as _that it is gained_. a statement by another may seem lifeless and inert and the meaning of an observation may be obscure. digestive thought is the only assimilative process. the whole art of telephony hangs on taking thought of things. judge r.f. taylor of indiana said of professor bell, "it has been said that no man by taking thought may add a cubit to his stature, yet here is a man who, by taking thought, has added not cubits but miles to the lengths of men's tongues and ears." in observations of many students, it is found that the notion of each must pass through a certain period of incubation before his private and personal knowledge of ohm's law is hatched. once hatched, however, it is his. by just such a process must come each principal addition to his stock of concepts. the periods may vary and practice in the uses of the mind may train it in alertness in its work. if time is required, time should be given, the object always being to keep thinking or re-reading or re-trying until the thought is wholly encompassed and possessed. chapter i acoustics telephony is the art of reproducing at a distant point, usually by the agency of electricity, sounds produced at a sending point. in this art the elements of two general divisions of physical science are concerned, sound and electricity. sound is the effect of vibrations of matter upon the ear. the vibrations may be those of air or other matter. various forms of matter transmit sound vibrations in varying degrees, at different specific speeds, and with different effects upon the vibrations. any form of matter may serve as a transmitting medium for sound vibrations. sound itself is an effect of sound vibrations upon the ear. propagation of sound. since human beings communicate with each other by means of speech and hearing through the air, it is with air that the acoustics of telephony principally is concerned. in air, sound vibrations consist of successive condensations and rarefactions tending to proceed outwardly from the source in all directions. the source is the center of a sphere of sound vibrations. whatever may be the nature of the sounds or of the medium transmitting them, they consist of waves emitted by the source and observed by the ear. a sound wave is one complete condensation and rarefaction of the transmitting medium. it is produced by one complete vibration of the sound-producing thing. sound waves in air travel at a rate of about , feet per second. the rate of propagation of sound waves in other materials varies with the density of the material. for example, the speed of transmission is much greater in water than in air, and is much less in highly rarefied air than in air at ordinary density. the propagation of sound waves in a vacuum may be said not to take place at all. characteristics of sound. three qualities distinguish sound: loudness, pitch, and timbre. _loudness._ loudness depends upon the violence of the effect upon the ear; sounds may be alike in their other qualities and differ in loudness, the louder sounds being produced by the stronger vibrations of the air or other medium at the ear. other things being equal, the louder sound is produced by the source radiating the greater energy and so producing the greater _degree_ of condensation and rarefaction of the medium. _pitch._ pitch depends upon the frequency at which the sound waves strike the ear. pitches are referred to as _high_ or _low_ as the frequency of waves reaching the ear are greater or fewer. familiar low pitches are the left-hand strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices of most birds and insects. doppler's principle:--as pitch depends upon the frequency at which sound waves strike the ear, an object may emit sound waves at a constant frequency, yet may produce different pitches in ears differently situated. such a case is not usual, but an example of it will serve a useful purpose in fixing certain facts as to pitch. conceive two railroad trains to pass each other, running in opposite directions, the engine bells of both trains ringing. passengers on each train will hear the bell of the other, first as a _rising_ pitch, then as a _falling_ one. passengers on each train will hear the bell of their own train at a _constant_ pitch. the difference in the observations in such a case is due to relative positions between the ear and the source of the sound. as to the bell of their own train, the passengers are a fixed distance from it, whether the train moves or stands; as to the bell of the other train, the passengers first rapidly approach it, then pass it, then recede from it. the distances at which it is heard vary as the secants of a circle, the radius in this case being a length which is the closest approach of the ear to the bell. if the bell have a constant intrinsic fundamental pitch of waves per second (a wave-length of about . feet), it first will be heard at a pitch of about waves per second. but this pitch rises rapidly, as if the bell were changing its own pitch, which bells do not do. the rising pitch is heard because the ear is rushing down the wave-train, every instant nearer to the source. at a speed of miles an hour, the pitch rises rapidly, about vibrations per second. if the _rate of approach_ between the ear and the bell were constant, the pitch of the bell would be heard at waves per second. but suddenly the ear passes the bell, hears the pitch stop rising and begin to fall; and the tone drops waves per second as it had risen. such a circumflex is an excellent example of the bearing of wavelengths and frequencies upon pitch. vibration of diaphragms:--sound waves in air have the power to move other diaphragms than that of the ear. sound waves constantly vibrate such diaphragms as panes of windows and the walls of houses. the recording diaphragm of a phonograph is a window pane bearing a stylus adapted to engrave a groove in a record blank. in the cylinder form of record, the groove varies in depth with the vibrations of the diaphragm. in the disk type of phonograph, the groove varies sidewise from its normal true spiral. if the disk record be dusted with talcum powder, wiped, and examined with a magnifying glass, the waving spiral line may be seen. its variations are the result of the blows struck upon the diaphragm by a train of sound waves. in reproducing a phonograph record, increasing the speed of the record rotation causes the pitch to rise, because the blows upon the air are increased in frequency and the wave-lengths shortened. a transitory decrease in speed in recording will cause a transitory rise in pitch when that record is reproduced at uniform speed. _timbre._ character of sound denotes that difference of effect produced upon the ear by sounds otherwise alike in pitch and loudness. this characteristic is called timbre. it is extraordinarily useful in human affairs, human voices being distinguished from each other by it, and a great part of the joy of music lying in it. a bell, a stretched string, a reed, or other sound-producing body, emits a certain lowest possible tone when vibrated. this is called its _fundamental tone_. the pitch, loudness, and timbre of this tone depend upon various controlling causes. usually this fundamental tone is accompanied by a number of others of higher pitch, blending with it to form the general tone of that object. these higher tones are called _harmonics_. the germans call them _overtones_. they are always of a frequency which is some multiple of the fundamental frequency. that is, the rate of vibration of a harmonic is , , , , or some other integral number, times as great as the fundamental itself. a tone having no harmonics is rare in nature and is not an attractive one. the tones of the human voice are rich in harmonics. in any tone having a fundamental and harmonics (multiples), the wave-train consists of a complex series of condensations and rarefactions of the air or other transmitting medium. in the case of mere noises the train of vibrations is irregular and follows no definite order. this is the difference between vowel sounds and other musical tones on the one hand and all unmusical sounds (or noises) on the other. human voice. human beings communicate with each other in various ways. the chief method is by speech. voice is sound vibration produced by the vocal cords, these being two ligaments in the larynx. the vocal cords in man are actuated by the air from the lungs. the size and tension of the vocal cords and the volume and the velocity of the air from the lungs control the tones of the voice. the more tightly the vocal cords be drawn, other things being equal, the higher will be the pitch of the sound; that is, the higher the frequency of vibration produced by the voice. the pitches of the human voice lie, in general, between the frequencies of and per second. these are the extremes of pitch, and it is not to be understood that any such range of pitch is utilized in ordinary speech. an average man speaks mostly between the fundamental frequencies of and per second. many female speaking voices use fundamental frequencies between and vibrations per second. it is obvious from what has been said that in all cases these speaking fundamentals are accompanied by their multiples, giving complexity to the resulting wave-trains and character to the speaking voice. speech-sounds result from shocks given to the air by the organs of speech; these organs are principally the mouth cavity, the tongue, and the teeth. the vocal cords are _voice-organs_; that is, man only truly speaks, yet the lower animals have voice. speech may be whispered, using no voice. note the distinction between speech and voice, and the organs of both. the speech of adults has a mean pitch lower than that of children; of adult males, lower than that of females. there is no close analogue for the voice-organ in artificial mechanism, but the use of the lips in playing a bugle, trumpet, cornet, or trombone is a fairly close one. here the lips, in contact with each other, are stretched across one end of a tube (the mouthpiece) while the air is blown between the lips by the lungs. a musical tone results; if the instrument be a bugle or a trumpet of fixed tube length, the pitch will be some one of several certain tones, depending on the tension on the lips. the loudness depends on the force of the blast of air; the character depends largely on the bugle. human ear. the human ear, the organ of hearing in man, is a complex mechanism of three general parts, relative to sound waves: a wave-collecting part; a wave-observing part, and a wave-interpreting part. the outer ear collects and reflects the waves inwardly to beat upon the tympanum, or ear drum, a membrane diaphragm. the uses of the rolls or convolutions of the outer ear are not conclusively known, but it is observed that when they are filled up evenly with a wax or its equivalent, the sense of direction of sound is impaired, and usually of loudness also. the diaphragm of the ear vibrates when struck by sound waves, as does any other diaphragm. by means of bone and nerve mechanism, the vibration of the diaphragm finally is made known to the brain and is interpretable therein. the human ear can appreciate and interpret sound waves at frequencies from to about , vibrations per second. below the lesser-number, the tendency is to appreciate the separate vibrations as separate sounds. above the higher number, the vibrations are inaudible to the human ear. the most acute perception of sound differences lies at about , vibrations per second. it may be that the range of hearing of organisms other than man lies far above the range with which human beings are familiar. some trained musicians are able to discriminate between two sounds as differing one from the other when the difference in frequency is less than one-thousandth of either number. other ears are unable to detect a difference in two sounds when they differ by as much as one full step of the chromatic scale. whatever faculty an individual may possess as to tone discrimination, it can be improved by training and practice. chapter ii electrical reproduction of speech the art of telephony in its present form has for its problem so to relate two diaphragms and an electrical system that one diaphragm will respond to all the fundamental and harmonic vibrations beating upon it and cause the other to vibrate in exact consonance, producing just such vibrations, which beat upon an ear. the art does not do all this today; it falls short of it in every phase. many of the harmonics are lost in one or another stage of the process; new harmonics are inserted by the operations of the system itself and much of the volume originally available fails to reappear. the art, however, has been able to change commercial and social affairs in a profound degree. conversion from sound waves to vibration of diaphragm. however produced, by the voice or otherwise, sounds to be transmitted by telephone consist of vibrations of the air. these vibrations, upon reaching a diaphragm, cause it to move. the greatest amplitude of motion of a diaphragm is, or is wished to be, at its center, and its edge ordinarily is fixed. the diaphragm thus serves as a translating device, changing the energy carried by the molecules of the air into localized oscillations of the matter of the diaphragm. the waves of sound in the air advance; the vibrations of the molecules are localized. the agency of the air as a medium for sound transmission should be understood to be one in which its general volume has no need to move from place to place. what occurs is that the vibrations of the sound-producer cause alternate condensations and rarefactions of the air. each molecule of the air concerned merely oscillates through a small amplitude, producing, by joint action, shells of waves, each traveling outward from the sound-producing center like rapidly growing coverings of a ball. conversion from vibration to voice currents. fig. illustrates a simple machine adapted to translate motion of a diaphragm into an alternating electrical current. the device is merely one form of magneto telephone chosen to illustrate the point of immediate conversion. _ _ is a diaphragm adapted to vibrate in response to the sounds reaching it. _ _ is a permanent magnet and _ _ is its armature. the armature is in contact with one pole of the permanent magnet and nearly in contact with the other. the effort of the armature to touch the pole it nearly touches places the diaphragm under tension. the free arm of the magnet is surrounded by a coil _ _, whose ends extend to form the line. [illustration: fig. . type of magneto telephone] when sound vibrates the diaphragm, it vibrates the armature also, increasing and decreasing the distance from the free pole of the magnet. the lines of force threading the coil _ _ are varied as the gap between the magnet and the armature is varied. the result of varying the lines of force through the turns of the coil is to produce an electromotive force in them, and if a closed path is provided by the line, a current will flow. this current is an alternating one having a frequency the same as the sound causing it. as in speech the frequencies vary constantly, many pitches constituting even a single spoken word, so the alternating voice currents are of great varying complexity, and every fundamental frequency has its harmonics superposed. conversion from voice currents to vibration. the best knowledge of the action of such a telephone as is shown in fig. leads to the conclusion that a half-cycle of alternating current is produced by an inward stroke of the diaphragm and a second half-cycle of alternating current by the succeeding outward stroke, these half-cycles flowing in opposite directions. assume one complete cycle of current to pass through the line and also through another such device as in fig. and that the first half-cycle is of such direction as to increase the permanent magnetism of the core. the effort of this increase is to narrow the gap between the armature and pole piece. the diaphragm will throb inward during the half-cycle of current. the succeeding half-cycle being of opposite direction will tend to oppose the magnetism of the core. in practice, the flow of opposing current never would be great enough wholly to nullify and reverse the magnetism of the core, so that the opposition results in a mere decrease, causing the armature's gap to increase and the diaphragm to respond by an outward blow. complete cycle of conversion. the cycle of actions thus is complete; one complete sound-wave in air has produced a cycle of motion in a diaphragm, a cycle of current in a line, a cycle of magnetic change in a core, a cycle of motion in another diaphragm, and a resulting wave of sound. it is to be observed that the chain of operation involves the expenditure of energy only by the speaker, the only function of any of the parts being that of _translating_ this energy from one form to another. in every stage of these translations, there are losses; the devising of means of limiting these losses as greatly as possible is a problem of telephone engineering. [illustration: fig. . magneto telephones and line] magneto telephones. the device in fig. is a practical magneto receiver and transmitter. it is chosen as best picturing the idea to be proposed. fig. illustrates a pair of magneto telephones of the early bell type; _ - _ are diaphragms; _ - _ are permanent magnets with a free end of each brought as near as possible, without touching, to the diaphragm. each magnet bears on its end nearest the diaphragm a winding of fine wire, the two ends of each of these windings being joined by means of a two-wire line. all that has been said concerning fig. is true also of the electrical and magnetic actions of the devices of fig. . in the latter, the flux which threads the fine wire winding is disturbed by motions of the transmitting diaphragm. this disturbance of the flux creates electromotive forces in those windings. similarly, a variation of the electromotive forces in the windings varies the pull of the permanent magnet of the receiving instrument upon its diaphragm. [illustration: no. series multiple switchboard _monarch telephone mfg. co._] [illustration: fig. . magneto telephones without permanent magnets] fig. illustrates a similar arrangement, but it is to be understood that the cores about which the windings are carried in this case are of soft iron and not of hard magnetized steel. the necessary magnetism which constantly enables the cores to exert a pull upon the diaphragm is provided by the battery which is inserted serially in the line. such an arrangement in action differs in no particular from that of fig. , for the reason that it matters not at all whether the magnetism of the core be produced by electromagnetic or by permanently magnetic conditions. the arrangement of fig. is a fundamental counterpart of the original telephone of professor bell, and it is of particular interest in the present stage of the art for the reason that a tendency lately is shown to revert to the early type, abandoning the use of the permanent magnet. the modifications which have been made in the original magneto telephone, practically as shown in fig. , have been many. thirty-five years' experimentation upon and daily use of the instrument has resulted in its refinement to a point where it is a most successful receiver and a most unsuccessful transmitter. its use for the latter purpose may be said to be nothing. as a receiver, it is not only wholly satisfactory for commercial use in its regular function, but it is, in addition, one of the most sensitive electrical detecting devices known to the art. loose contact principle. early experimenters upon bell's device, all using in their first work the arrangement utilizing current from a battery in series with the line, noticed that sound was given out by disturbing loose contacts in the line circuit. this observation led to the arrangement of circuits in such a way that some imperfect contacts could be shaken by means of the diaphragm, and the resistance of the line circuit varied in this manner. an early and interesting form of such imperfect contact transmitter device consisted merely of metal conductors laid loosely in contact. a simple example is that of three wire nails, the third lying across the other two, the two loose contacts thus formed being arranged in series with a battery, the line, and the receiving instrument. such a device when slightly jarred, by the voice or other means, causes abrupt variation in the resistance of the line, and will transmit speech. early conceptions. the conception of the possibility and desirability of transmitting speech by electricity may have occurred to many, long prior to its accomplishment. it is certain that one person, at least, had a clear idea of the general problem. in , charles bourseul, a frenchman, wrote: "i have asked myself, for example, if the spoken word itself could not be transmitted by electricity; in a word, if what was spoken in vienna might not be heard in paris? the thing is practicable in this way: [illustration: fig. . reis transmitter] "suppose that a man speaks near a movable disk sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disk _alternately makes and breaks_ the connection from a battery; you may have at a distance another disk which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations." the idea so expressed is weak in only one particular. this particular is shown by the words italicized by ourselves. it is impossible to transmit a complex series of waves by any simple series of makes and breaks. philipp reis, a german, devised the arrangement shown in fig. for the transmission of sound, letting the make and break of the contact between the diaphragm _ _ and the point _ _ interrupt the line circuit. his receiver took several forms, all electromagnetic. his success was limited to the transmission of musical sounds, and it is not believed that articulate speech ever was transmitted by such an arrangement. it must be remembered that the art of telegraphy, particularly in america, was well established long before the invention of the telephone, and that an arrangement of keys, relays, and a battery, as shown in fig. , was well known to a great many persons. attaching the armatures of the relays of such a line to diaphragms, as in fig. , at any time after , would have produced the telephone. "the hardihood of invention" to conceive such a change was the quality required. [illustration: fig. . typical telegraph line] limitations of magneto transmitter. for reasons not finally established, the ability of the magneto telephone to produce large currents from large sounds is not equal to its ability to produce large sounds from large currents. as a receiving device, it is unexcelled, and but slight improvement has been made since its first invention. it is inadequate as a transmitter, and as early as , professor bell exhibited other means than electromagnetic action for producing the varying currents as a consequence of diaphragm motion. much other inventive effort was addressed to this problem, the aim of all being to send out more robust voice currents. [illustration: fig. . telegraph equipment converted into telephone equipment] other methods of producing voice currents. some of these means are the variation of resistance in the path of direct current, variation in the pressure of the source of that current, and variation in the electrostatic capacity of some part of the circuit. _electrostatic telephone._ the latter method is principally that of dolbear and edison. dolbear's thought is illustrated in fig. . two conducting plates are brought close together. one is free to vibrate as a diaphragm, while the other is fixed. the element _ _ in fig. is merely a stud to hold rigid the plate it bears against. each of two instruments connected by a line contains such a pair of plates, and a battery in the line keeps them charged to its potential. the two diaphragms of each instrument are kept drawn towards each other because their unlike charges attract each other. the vibration of one of the diaphragms changes the potential of the other pair; the degree of attraction thus is varied, so that vibration of the diaphragm and sound waves result. examples of this method of telephone transmission are more familiar to later practice in the form of condenser receivers. a condenser, in usual present practice, being a pair of closely adjacent conductors of considerable surface insulated from each other, a rapidly varying current actually may move one or both of the conductors. ordinarily these are of thin sheet metal (foil) interleaved with an insulating material, such as paper or mica. voice currents can vibrate the metal sheets in a degree to cause the condenser to speak. these condenser methods of telephony have not become commercial. [illustration: fig. . electrostatic telephone] _variation of electrical pressure._ variation of the pressure of the source is a conceivable way of transmitting speech. to utilize it, would require that the vibrations of the diaphragm cause the electromotive force of a battery or machine to vary in harmony with the sound waves. so far as we are informed this method never has come into practical use. _variation of resistance._ variation of resistance proportional to the vibrations of the diaphragm is the method which has produced the present prevailing form of transmission. professor bell's centennial exhibit contained a water-resistance transmitter. dr. elisha gray also devised one. in both, the diaphragm acted to increase and diminish the distance between two conductors immersed in water, lowering and raising the resistance of the line. it later was discovered by edison that carbon possesses a peculiarly great property of varying its resistance under pressure. professor david e. hughes discovered that two conducting bodies, preferably of rather poor conductivity, when laid together so as to form a _loose contact_ between them, possessed, in remarkable degree, the ability to vary the resistance of the path through them when subject to such vibrations as would alter the _intimacy of contact_. he thus discovered and formulated the principles of _loose contact_ upon which the operation of all modern transmitters rests. hughes' device was named by him a "microphone," indicating a magnification of sound or an ability to respond to and make audible minute sounds. it is shown in fig. . firmly attached to a board are two carbon blocks, shown in section in the figure. a rod of carbon with cone-shaped ends is supported loosely between the two blocks, conical depressions in the blocks receiving the ends of the rod. a battery and magneto receiver are connected in series with the device. under certain conditions of contact, the arrangement is extraordinarily sensitive to small sounds and approaches an ability indicated by its name. its practical usefulness has been not as a serviceable speech transmitter, but as a stimulus to the devising of transmitters using carbon in other ways. variation of the resistance of metal conductors and of contact between metals has served to transmit voice currents, but no material approaches carbon in this property. [illustration: fig. . hughes' microphone] carbon. _adaptability._ the application of carbon to use in transmitters has taken many forms. they may be classified as those having a single contact and those having a plurality of contacts; in all cases, the _intimacy of contact_ is varied by the diaphragm excursions. an example of the single-contact type is the blake transmitter, long familiar in america. an example of the multiple-contact type is the loose-carbon type universal now. other types popular at other times and in particular places use solid rods or blocks of carbon having many points of contact, though not in a powdered or granular form. fig. shows an example of each of the general forms of transmitters. the use of granular carbon as a transmitter material has extended greatly the radius of speech, and has been a principal contributing cause for the great spread of the telephone industry. [illustration: fig. . general types of transmitters] _superiority._ the superiority of carbon over other resistance-varying materials for transmitters is well recognized, but the reason for it is not well known. various theories have been proposed to explain why, for example, the resistance of a mass of carbon granules varies with the vibrations or compressions to which they are subjected. four principal theories respectively allege: first, that change in pressure actually changes the specific resistance of carbon. second, that upon the surface of carbon bodies exists some gas in some form of attachment or combination, variations of pressure causing variations of resistance merely by reducing the thickness of this intervening gas. third, that the change of resistance is caused by variations in the length of electrical arcs between the particles. fourth, that change of pressure changes the area of contact, as is true of solids generally. one may take his choice. a solid carbon block or rod is not found to decrease its resistance by being subjected to pressure. the gas theory lacks experimental proof also. the existence of arcs between the granules never has been seen or otherwise observed under normal working conditions of a transmitter; when arcs surely are experimentally established between the granules the usefulness of the transmitter ceases. the final theory, that change of pressure changes area of surface contact, does not explain why other conductors than carbon are not good materials for transmitters. this, it may be noticed, is just what the theories set out to make clear. there are many who feel that more experimental data is required before a conclusive and satisfactory theory can be set up. there is need of one, for a proper theory often points the way for effective advance in practice. carbon and magneto transmitters differ wholly in their methods of action. the magneto transmitter _produces_ current; the carbon transmitter _controls_ current. the former is an alternating-current generator; the latter is a rheostat. the magneto transmitter produces alternating current without input of any electricity at all; the carbon transmitter merely controls a direct current, supplied by an external source, and varies its amount without changing its direction. the carbon transmitter, however, may be associated with other devices in a circuit in such a way as to _transform_ direct currents into alternating ones, or it may be used merely to change constant direct currents into _undulating_ ones, which _never_ reverse direction, as alternating currents _always_ do. these distinctions are important. [illustration: fig. . battery in line circuit] _limitations._ a carbon transmitter being merely a resistance-varying device, its usefulness depends on how much its resistance can vary in response to motions of air molecules. a granular-carbon transmitter may vary between resistances of to ohms while transmitting a particular tone, having the lower resistance when its diaphragm is driven inward. conceive this transmitter to be in a line as shown in fig. , the line, distant receiver, and battery together having a resistance of , ohms. the minimum resistance then is , ohms and the maximum , ohms. the variation is limited to about . per cent. the greater the resistance of the line and other elements than the transmitter, the less relative change the transmitter can produce, and the less loudly the distant receiver can speak. [illustration: fig . battery in local circuit] induction coil. mr. edison realized this limitation to the use of the carbon transmitter direct in the line, and contributed the means of removing it. his method is to introduce an induction coil between the line and the transmitter, its function being to translate the variation of the direct current controlled by the transmitter into true alternating currents. an induction coil is merely a transformer, and for the use under discussion consists of two insulated wires wound around an iron core. change in the current carried by one of the windings _produces_ a current in the other. if direct current be flowing in one of the windings, and remains constant, no current whatever is produced in the other. it is important to note that it is change, and change only, which produces that alternating current. fig. shows an induction coil related to a carbon transmitter, a battery, and a receiver. fig. shows exactly the same arrangement, using conventional signs. the winding of the induction coil which is in series with the transmitter and the battery is called the primary winding; the other is called the secondary winding. in the arrangement of figs. and the battery has no metallic connection with the line, so that it is called a _local battery_. the circuit containing the battery, transmitter, and primary winding of the induction coil is called the _local circuit_. let us observe what is the advantage of this arrangement over the case of fig. . using the same values of resistance in the transmitter and line, assume the local circuit apart from the transmitter to have a fixed resistance of ohms. the limits of variations in the local circuit, therefore, are and ohms, thus making the maximum . times the minimum, or an increase of per cent as against . per cent in the case of fig. . the changes, therefore, are times as great. [illustration: fig. . conventional diagram of talking circuit] the relation between the windings of the induction coil in this practice are such that the secondary winding contains many more turns than the primary winding. changes in the circuit of the primary winding produce potentials in the secondary winding correspondingly higher than the potentials producing them. these secondary potentials depend upon the _ratio_ of turns in the two windings and therefore, within close limits, may be chosen as wished. high potentials in the secondary winding are admirably adapted to transmit currents in a high-resistance line, for exactly the same reason that long-distance power transmission meets with but one-quarter of one kind of loss when the sending potential is doubled, one-hundredth of that loss when it is raised tenfold, and similarly. the induction coil, therefore, serves the double purpose of a step-up transformer to limit line losses and a device for vastly increasing the range of change in the transmitter circuit. fig. is offered to remind the student of the action of an induction coil or transformer in whose primary circuit a direct current is increased and decreased. an increase of current in the local winding produces an impulse of _opposite_ direction in the turns of the secondary winding; a decrease of current in the local winding produces an impulse of _the same_ direction in the turns of the secondary winding. the key of fig. being closed, current flows upward in the primary winding as drawn in the figure, inducing a downward impulse of current in the secondary winding and its circuit as noted at the right of the figure. on the key being opened, current ceases in the primary circuit, inducing an upward impulse of current in the secondary winding and circuit as shown. during other than instants of opening and closing (changing) the local circuit, no current whatever flows in the secondary circuit. [illustration: fig. . induction-coil action] it is by these means that telephone transmitters draw direct current from primary batteries and send high-potential alternating currents over lines; the same process produces what in therapeutics are called "faradic currents," and enables also a simple vibrating contact-maker to produce alternating currents for operating polarized ringers of telephone sets. detrimental effects of capacity. electrostatic capacity plays an important part in the transmission of speech. its presence between the wires of a line and between them and the earth causes one of the losses from which long-distance telephony suffers. its presence in condensers assists in the solution of many circuit and apparatus problems. a condenser is a device composed of two or more conductors insulated from each other by a medium called the _dielectric_. a pair of metal plates separated by glass, a pair of wires separated by air, or a pair of sheets of foil separated by paper or mica may constitute a condenser. the use of condensers as pieces of apparatus and the problems presented by electrostatic capacity in lines are discussed in other chapters. measurements of telephone currents. it has been recognized in all branches of engineering that a definite advance is possible only when quantitative data exists. the lack of reliable means of measuring telephone currents has been a principal cause of the difficulty in solving many of its problems. it is only in very recent times that accurate and reliable means have been worked out for measuring the small currents which flow in telephone lines. these ways are of two general kinds: by thermal and by electromagnetic means. _thermal method_. the thermal methods simply measure, in some way, the amount of heat which is produced by a received telephone current. when this current is allowed to pass through a conductor the effect of the heat generated in that conductor, is observed in one of three ways: by the expansion of the conductor, by its change in resistance, or by the production of an electromotive force in a thermo-electric couple heated by the conductor. any one of these three ways can be used to get some idea of the amount of current which is received. none of them gives an accurate knowledge of the forms of the waves which cause the reproduction of speech in the telephone receiver. [illustration: fig. . oscillogram of telephone currents] _electromagnetic method_. an electromagnetic device adapted to tell something of the magnitude of the telephone current and also something of its form, _i.e._, something of its various increases and decreases and also of its changes in direction is the oscillograph. an oscillograph is composed of a magnetic field formed by direct currents or by a permanent magnet, a turn of wire under mechanical tension in that field, and a mirror borne by the turn of wire, adapted to reflect a beam of light to a photographic film or to a rotating mirror. when a current is to be measured by the oscillograph, it is passed through the turn of wire in the magnetic field. while no current is passing, the wire does not move in the magnetic field and its mirror reflects a stationary beam of light. a photographic film moved in a direction normal to the axis of the turn of wire will have drawn upon it a straight line by the beam of light. if the beam of light, however, is moved by a current, from side to side at right angles to this axis, it will draw a wavy line on the photographic film and this wavy line will picture the alternations of that current and the oscillations of the molecules of air which carried the originating sound. fig. is a photograph of nine different vowel sounds which have caused the oscillograph to take their pictures. they are copies of records made by mr. bela gati, assisted by mr. tolnai. the measuring instrument consisted of an oscillograph of the type described, the transmitter being of the carbon type actuated by a -volt battery. the primary current was transformed by an induction coil of the ordinary type and the transformed current was sent through a non-inductive resistance of , ohms. no condensers were placed in the circuit. it will be seen that the integral values of the curves, starting from zero, are variable. the positive and the negative portions of the curves are not equal, so that the solution of the individual harmonic motion is difficult and laborious. these photographs point out several facts very clearly. one is that the alternations of currents in the telephone line, like the motions of the molecules of air of the original sound, are highly complex and are not, as musical tones are, regular recurrences of equal vibrations. they show also that any vowel sound may be considered to be a regular recurrence of certain groups of vibrations of different amplitudes and of different frequencies. chapter iii electrical signals electric calls or signals are of two kinds: audible and visible. [illustration: fig. . telegraph sounder and key] [illustration: fig. . vibrating bell] audible signals. _telegraph sounder._ the earliest electric signal was an audible one, being the telegraph sounder, or the morse register considered apart from its registering function. each telegraph sounder serves as an audible electric signal and is capable of signifying more than that the call is being made. such a signal is operated by the making and breaking of current from a battery. an arrangement of this kind is shown in fig. , in which pressure upon the key causes the current from the battery to energize the sounder and give one sharp audible rap of the lever upon the striking post. _vibrating bell_. the vibrating bell, so widely used as a door bell, is a device consequent to the telegraph. its action is to give a series of blows on its gong when its key or push button closes the battery circuit. at the risk of describing a trite though not trivial thing, it may be said that when the contact _ _ of fig. is closed, current from the battery energizes the armature _ _, causing the latter to strike a blow on the gong and to break the line circuit as well, by opening the contact back of the armature. so de-energized, the armature falls back and the cycle is repeated until the button contact is released. a comparison of this action with that of the polarized ringer (to be described later) will be found of interest. [illustration: fig. . elemental magneto-generator] _magneto-bell._ the magneto-bell came into wide use with the spread of telephone service. its two fundamental parts are an alternating-current generator and a polarized bell-ringing device. each had its counterpart long before the invention of the telephone, though made familiar by the latter. the alternating-current generator of the magneto-bell consists of a rotatable armature composed of a coil of insulated wire and usually a core of soft iron, its rotation taking place in a magnetic field. this field is usually provided by a permanent magnet, hence the name "magneto-generator." the purist in terms may well say, however, that every form whatever of the dynamo-electric generator is a magneto-generator, as magnetism is one link in every such conversion of mechanical power into electricity. the terms magneto-electric, magneto-generator, etc., involving the term "magneto," have come to imply the presence of _permanently_ magnetized steel as an element of the construction. in its early form, the magneto-generator consisted of the arrangement shown in fig. , wherein a permanent magnet can rotate on an axis before an electromagnet having soft iron cores and a winding. reversals of magnetism produce current in alternately reversing half-cycles, one complete rotation of the magnet producing one such cycle. obviously the result would be the same if the magnet were stationary and the coils should rotate, which is the construction of more modern devices. the turning of the crank of a magneto-bell rotates the armature in the magnetic field by some form of gearing at a rate usually of the order of twenty turns per second, producing an alternating current of that frequency. this current is caused by an effective electromotive force which may be as great as volts, produced immediately by the energy of the user. in an equipment using a magneto-telephone as both receiver and transmitter and a magneto-bell as its signal-sending machine, as was usual in , it is interesting to note that the entire motive power for signals and speech transmission was supplied by the muscular tissues of the user--a case of working one's passage. [illustration: fig. . extension of a permanent magnet] the alternating current from the generator is received and converted into sound by means of the _polarized ringer_, a device which is interesting as depending upon several of the electrical, mechanical, and magnetic actions which are the foundations of telephone engineering. [illustration: fig. . extension of a permanent magnet] "why the ringer rings" may be gathered from a study of figs. to . a permanent magnet will impart temporary magnetism to pieces of iron near it. in fig. two pieces of iron are so energized. the ends of these pieces which are nearest to the permanent magnet _ _ are of the opposite polarity to the end they approach, the free ends being of opposite polarity. in the figure, these free ends are marked _n_, meaning they are of a polarity to point north if free to point at all. english-speaking persons call this _north polarity_. similarly, as in fig. , any arrangement of iron near a permanent magnet always will have free poles of the same polarity as the end of the permanent magnet nearest them. a permanent magnet so related to iron forms part of a polarized ringer. so does an electromagnet composed of windings and iron cores. fig. reminds us of the law of electromagnets. if current flows from the plus towards the minus side, with the windings as drawn, polarities will be induced as marked. [illustration: fig. . electromagnet] [illustration: fig. . polarized ringer] if, now, such an electromagnet, a permanent magnet, and a pivoted armature be related to a pair of gongs as shown in fig. , a polarized ringer results. it should be noted that a permanent magnet has both its poles presented (though one of the poles is not actually attached) to two parts of the iron of the _electro_-magnet. the result is that the ends of the armature are of south polarity and those of the core are of north polarity. all the markings of fig. relate to the polarity produced by the permanent magnet. if, now, a current flow in the ringer winding from plus to minus, obviously the right-hand pole will be additively magnetized, the current tending to produce north magnetism there; also the left-hand pole will be subtractively magnetized, the current tending to produce south magnetism there. if the current be of a certain strength, relative to the certain ringer under study, magnetism in the left pole will be neutralized and that in the right pole doubled. hence the armature will be attracted more by the right pole than by the left and will strike the right-hand gong. a reversal of current produces an opposite action, the left-hand gong being struck. the current ceasing, the armature remains where last thrown. [illustration: operator's equipment clement automanual system.] it is important to note that the strength of action depends upon the strength of the current up to a certain point only. that depends upon the strength of the permanent magnet. whenever the current is great enough just to neutralize the normal magnetism of one pole and to double that of the other, no increase in current will cause the device to ring any louder. this makes obvious the importance of a proper permanent magnetism and displays the fallacy of some effort to increase the output of various devices depending upon these principles. this discussion of magneto-electric signaling is introduced here because of a belief in its being fundamental. chapter viii treats of such a signaling in further detail. _telephone receiver._ the telephone receiver itself serves a useful purpose as an audible signal. an interrupted or alternating current of proper frequency and amount will produce in it a musical tone which can be heard throughout a large room. this fact enables a telephone central office to signal a subscriber who has left his receiver off the switch hook, so that normal conditions may be restored. visible signals. _electromagnetic signal._ practical visual signals are of two general kinds: electromagnetic devices for moving a target or pointer, and incandescent lamps. the earliest and most widely used visible signal in telephone practice was the annunciator, having a shutter adapted to fall when the magnet is energized. fig. is such a signal. shutter _ _ is held by the catch _ _ from dropping to the right by its own gravity. the name "gravity-drop" is thus obvious. current energizing the core attracts the armature _ _, lifts the catch _ _, and the shutter falls. a simple modification of the gravity-drop produces the visible signal shown in fig. . energizing the core lifts a target so as to render it visible through an opening in the plate _ _. a contrast of color between the plate and the target heightens the effect. [illustration: fig. . gravity-drop] the gravity-drop is principally adapted to the magneto-bell system of signaling, where an alternating current is sent over the line to a central office by the operation of a bell crank at the subscriber's station, this current, lasting only as long as the crank is turned, energizes the drop, which may be restored by hand or otherwise and will remain latched. the visible signal is better adapted to lines in which the signaling is done by means of direct current, as, for example, in systems where the removal of the receiver from the hook at the subscriber's station closes the line circuit, causing current to flow through the winding of the visible signal and so displaying it until the receiver has been hung upon the hook or the circuit opened by some operation at the central office. visible signals of the magnetic type of fig. have been widely used in connection with common-battery systems, both for line signals and for supervisory purposes, indicating the state and the progress of the connection and conversation. [illustration: fig. . electromagnetic visible signal] [illustration: fig. . lamp signal and lens] _electric-lamp signal._ incandescent electric lamps appeared in telephony as a considerable element about . they are better than either form of mechanical visible signals because of three principal qualities: simplicity and ease of restoring them to normal as compared with drops; their compactness; and their greater prominence when displayed. of the latter quality, one may say that they are more _insistent_, as they give out light instead of reflecting it, as do all other visible signals. in its best form, the lamp signal is mounted behind a hemispherical lens, either slightly clouded or cut in facets. this lens serves to distribute the rays of light from the lamp, with the result that the signal may be seen from a wide angle with the axis of the lens, as shown in fig. . this is of particular advantage in connection with manual-switchboard connecting cords, as it enables the signals to be mounted close to and even among the cords, their great visible prominence when shining saving them from being hidden. the influence of the lamp signal was one of the potent ones in the development of the type of multiple switchboard which is now universal as the mechanism of large manual exchanges. the first large trial of such an equipment was in in worcester, mass. no large and successful multiple switchboard with any other type of signal has been built since that time. any electric signal has upper and lower limits of current between which it is to be actuated. it must receive current enough to operate but not enough to become damaged by overheating. the magnetic types of visible signals have a wider range between these limits than have lamp signals. if current in a lamp is too little, its filament either will not glow at all or merely at a dull red, insufficient for a proper signal. if the current is too great, the filament is heated beyond its strength and parts at the weakest place. this range between current limits in magnetic visible signals is great enough to enable them to be used direct in telephone lines, the operating current through the line and signal in series with a fixed voltage at the central office being not harmfully great when the entire line resistance is shunted out at or near the central office. the increase of current may be as great as ten times without damage to the winding of such a signal. in lamps, the safe margin is much less. the current which just gives a sufficient lighting of the signal may be about doubled with safety to the filament of the lamp. consequently it is not feasible to place the lamp directly in series with long exposed lines. a short circuit of such a line near the central office will burn it out. [illustration: fig. . lamp signal controlled by relay] the qualities of electromagnets and lamps in these respects are used to advantage by the lamp signal arrangement shown in fig. . a relay is in series with the line and provides a large range of sensibility. it is able to carry any current the central-office current source can pass through it. the local circuit of the relay includes the lamp. energizing the relay lights the lamp, and the reverse; the lamp is thus isolated from danger and receives the current best adapted to its needs. all lines are not long and when enclosed in cable or in well-insulated interior wire, may be only remotely in danger of being short-circuited. such conditions exist in private-branch exchanges, which are groups of telephones, usually local to limited premises, connected to a switchboard on those premises. such a situation permits the omission of the line relay, the lamp being directly in the line. fig. shows the extreme simplicity of the arrangement, containing no moving parts or costly elements. lamps for such service have improved greatly since the demand began to grow. the small bulk permitted by the need of compactness, the high filament resistance required for simplicity of the general power scheme of the system, and the need of considerable sturdiness in the completed thing have made the task a hard one. the practical result, however, is a signal lamp which is highly satisfactory. [illustration: fig. . lamp signal directly in line] [illustration: fig. . lamp signal and ballast] the nature of carbon and certain earths being that their conductivity _rises_ with the temperature and that of metals being that their conductivity _falls_ with the temperature, has enabled the nernst lamp to be successful. the same relation of properties has enabled incandescent-lamp signals to be connected direct to lines without relays, but compensated against too great a current by causing the resistance in series with the lamp to be increased inversely as the resistance of the filament. employment of a "ballast" resistance in this way is referred to in chapter xi. in fig. is shown its relation to a signal lamp directly in the line. _ _ is the carbon-filament lamp; _ _ is the ballast. the latter's conductor is fine iron wire in a vacuum. the resistance of the lamp falls as that of the ballast rises. within certain limits, these changes balance each other, widening the range of allowable change in the total resistance of the line. chapter iv telephone lines _the line is a path over which the telephone current passes from telephone to telephone._ the term "telephone line circuit" is equivalent. "line" and "line circuit" mean slightly different things to some persons, "line" meaning the out-of-doors portion of the line and "line circuit" meaning the indoor portion, composed of apparatus and associated wiring. such shades of meaning are inevitable and serve useful purposes. the opening definition hereof is accurate. a telephone line consists of two conductors. one of these conductors may be the earth; the other always is some conducting material other than the earth--almost universally it is of metal and in the form of a wire. a line using one wire and the earth as its pair of conductors has several defects, to be discussed later herein. both conductors of a line may be wires, the earth serving as no part of the circuit, and this is the best practice. a line composed of one wire and the earth is called a _grounded line_; a line composed of two wires not needing the earth as a conductor is called a _metallic circuit_. in the earliest telephone practice, all lines were grounded ones. the wires were of iron, supported by poles and insulated from them by glass, earthenware, or rubber insulators. for certain uses, such lines still represent good practice. for telegraph service, they represent the present standard practice. copper is a better conductor than iron, does not rust, and when drawn into wire in such a way as to have a sufficient tensile strength to support itself is the best available conductor for telephone lines. only one metal surpasses it in any quality for the purpose: silver is a better conductor by or per cent. copper is better than silver in strength and price. in the open country, telephone lines consist of bare wires of copper, of iron, of steel, or of copper-covered steel supported on insulators borne by poles. if the wires on the poles be many, cross-arms carry four to ten wires each and the insulators are mounted on pins in the cross-arms. if the wires on the poles be few, the insulators are mounted on brackets nailed to the poles. wires so carried are called _open wires_. in towns and cities where many wires are to be carried along the same route, the wires are reduced in size, insulated by a covering over each, and assembled into a group. such a bundle of insulated wires is called a _cable_. it may be drawn into a duct in the earth and be called an _underground cable_; it may be laid on the bottom of the sea or other water and be called a _submarine cable_; or it may be suspended on poles and be called an _aërial cable_. in the most general practice each wire is insulated from all others by a wrapping of paper ribbon, which covering is only adequate when very dry. cables formed of paper-insulated wires, therefore, are covered by a seamless, continuous lead sheath, no part of the paper insulation of the wires being exposed to the atmosphere during the cable's entire life in service. telephone cables for certain uses are formed of wires insulated with such materials as soft rubber, gutta-percha, and cotton or jute saturated with mineral compounds. when insulated with rubber or gutta-percha, no continuous lead sheath is essential for insulation, as those materials, if continuous upon the wire, insulate even when the cable is immersed in water. sheaths and other armors can assist in protecting these insulating materials from mechanical injury, and often are used for that purpose. the uses to which such cables are suitable in telephony are not many, as will be shown. a wire supported on poles requires that it be large enough to support its own weight. the smaller the wire, the weaker it is, and with poles a given distance apart, the strength of the wire must be above a certain minimum. in regions where freezing occurs, wires in the open air can collect ice in winter and everywhere open wires are subject to wind pressure; for these reasons additional strength is required. speaking generally, the practical and economical spacing of poles requires that wires, to be strong enough to meet the above conditions, shall have a diameter not less than . inch, if of hard-drawn copper, and . inch, if of iron or steel. the honor of developing ways of drawing copper wire with sufficient tensile strength for open-air uses belongs to mr. thomas b. doolittle of massachusetts. lines whose lengths are limited to a few miles do not require a conductivity as great as that of copper wire of . -inch diameter. a wire of that size weighs approximately pounds per mile. less than pounds of copper per mile of wire will not give strength enough for use on poles; but as little as pounds per mile of wire gives the necessary conductivity for the lines of the thousands of telephone stations in towns and cities. open wires, being exposed to the elements, suffer damage from storms; their insulation is injured by contact with trees; they may make contact with electric power circuits, perhaps injuring apparatus, themselves, and persons; they endanger life and property by the possibility of falling; they and their cross-arm supports are less sightly than a more compact arrangement. grouping small wires of telephone lines into cables has, therefore, the advantage of allowing less copper to be used, of reducing the space required, of improving appearance, and of increasing safety. on the other hand, this same grouping introduces negative advantages as well as the foregoing positive ones. it is not possible to talk as far or as well over a line in an ordinary cable as over a line of two open wires. long-distance telephone circuits, therefore, have not yet been placed in cables for lengths greater than or miles, and special treatment of cable circuits is required to talk through them for even miles. one may talk , miles over open wires. the reasons for the superiority of the open wires have to do with position rather than material. obviously it is possible to insulate and bury any wire which can be carried in the air. the differences in the properties of lines whose wires are differently situated with reference to each other and surrounding things are interesting and important. a telephone line composed of two conductors always possesses four principal properties in some amount: ( ) conductivity of the conductors; ( ) electrostatic capacity between the conductors; ( ) inductance of the circuit; ( ) insulation of each conductor from other things. conductivity of conductors. the conductivity of a wire depends upon its material, its cross-section, its length, and its temperature. conductivity of a copper wire, for example, increases in direct ratio to its weight, in inverse ratio to its length, and its conductivity falls as the temperature rises. resistance is the reciprocal of conductivity and the properties, conductivity and resistance, are more often expressed in terms of resistance. the unit of the latter is the _ohm_; of the former the _mho_. a conductor having a resistance of ohms has a conductivity of . mho. the exact correlative terms are _resistance_ and _conductance_, _resistivity_ and _conductivity_. the use of the terms as in the foregoing is in accordance with colloquial practice. current in a circuit having resistance only, varies inversely as the resistance. electromotive force being a cause, and resistance a state, current is the result. the formula of this relation, ohm's law, is c = e/r _c_ being the current which results from _e_, the electromotive force, acting upon _r_, the resistance. the units are: of current, the ampere; of electromotive force, the volt; of resistance, the ohm. as the conductivity or resistance of a line is the property of controlling importance in telegraphy, a similar relation was expected in early telephony. as the current in the telephone line varies rapidly, certain other properties of the line assume an importance they do not have in telegraphy in any such degree. the importance that these properties assume is, that if they did not act and the resistance of the conductors alone limited speech, transmission would be possible direct from europe to america over a pair of wires weighing pounds per mile of wire, which is less than half the weight of the wire of the best long-distance land lines now in service. the distance from europe to america is about twice as great as the present commercial radius by land lines of -pound wire. in other words, good speech is possible through a mere resistance twenty times greater than the resistance of the longest actual open-wire line it is possible to talk through. the talking ratio between a mere resistance and the resistance of a regular telephone cable is still greater. electrostatic capacity. it is the possession of electrostatic capacity which enables the condenser, of which the leyden jar is a good example, to be useful in a telephone line. the simplest form of a condenser is illustrated in fig. , in which two conducting surfaces are separated by an insulating material. the larger the surfaces, the closer they are together; and the higher the specific inductive capacity of the insulator, the greater the capacity of the device. an insulator used in this relation to two conducting surfaces is called the _dielectric_. [illustration: fig. . simple condenser] [illustration: fig. . condenser symbols] two conventional signs are used to illustrate condensers, the upper one of fig. growing out of the original condenser of two metal plates, the lower one suggesting the thought of interleaved conductors of tin foil, as for many years was the practice in condenser construction. with relation to this property, a telephone line is just as truly a condenser as is any other arrangement of conductors and insulators. assume such a line to be open at the distant end and its wires to be well insulated from each other and the earth. telegraphy through such a line by ordinary means would be impossible. all that the battery or other source could do would be to cause current to flow into the line for an infinitesimal time, raising the wires to its potential, after which no current would flow. but, by virtue of electrostatic capacity, the condition is much as shown in fig. . the condensers which that figure shows bridged across the line from wire to wire are intended merely to fix in the mind that there is a path for the transfer of electrical energy from wire to wire. [illustration: fig. . line with shunt capacity] a simple test will enable two of the results of a short-circuiting capacity to be appreciated. conceive a very short line of two wires to connect two local battery telephones. such a line possesses negligible resistance, inductance, and shunt capacity. its insulation is practically infinite. let condensers be bridged across the line, one by one, while conversation goes on. the listening observer will notice that the sounds reaching his ear steadily grow less loud as the capacity across the line increases. the speaking observer will notice that the sounds he hears through the receiver in series with the line steadily grow louder as the capacity across the line increases. fig. illustrates the test. the speaker's observation in this test shows that increasing the capacity across the line increased the amount of current entering it. the hearer's observation in this test shows that increasing the capacity across the line decreased the amount of energy turned into sound at his receiver. [illustration: fig. . test of line with varying shunt capacity] the unit of electrostatic capacity is the _farad_. as this unit is inconveniently large, for practical applications the unit _microfarad_--millionth of a farad--is employed. if quantities are known in microfarads and are to be used in calculations in which the values of the capacity require to be farads, care should be taken to introduce the proper corrective factor. the electrostatic capacity between the conductors of a telephone line depends upon their surface area, their length, their position, and the nature of the materials separating them from each other and from other things. for instance, in an open wire line of two wires, the electrostatic capacity depends upon the diameter of the wires, upon the length of the line, upon their distance apart, upon their distance above the earth, and upon the specific inductive capacity of the air. air being so common an insulating medium, it is taken as a convenient material whose specific inductive capacity may be used as a basis of reference. therefore, the specific inductive capacity of air is taken as unity. all solid matter has higher specific inductive capacity than air. the electrostatic capacity of two open wires . inch diameter, ft. apart, and ft. above the earth, is of the order of . microfarads per mile. this quantity would be higher if the wires were closer together; or nearer the earth; or if they were surrounded by a gas other than the air or hydrogen; or if the wires were insulated not by a gas but by any solid covering. as another example, a line composed of two wires of a diameter of . inch, if wrapped with paper and twisted into a pair as a part of a telephone-cable, has a mutual electrostatic capacity of approximately . microfarads per mile, this quantity being greater if the cable be more tightly compressed. the use of paper as an insulator for wires in telephone cables is due to its low specific inductive capacity. this is because the insulation of the wires is so largely dry air. rubber and similar insulating materials give capacities as great as twice that of dry paper. the condenser or other capacity acts as an effective barrier to the steady flow of direct currents. applying a fixed potential causes a mere rush of current to charge its surface to a definite degree, dependent upon the particular conditions. the condenser does not act as such a barrier to alternating currents, for it is possible to talk through a condenser by means of the alternating voice currents of telephony, or to pass through it alternating currents of much lower frequency. a condenser is used in series with a polarized ringer for the purpose of letting through alternating current for ringing the bell, and of preventing the flow of direct current. the degree to which the condenser allows alternating currents to pass while stopping direct currents, depends on the capacity of the condenser and on the frequencies of alternating current. the larger the condenser capacity or the higher the frequency of the alternations, the greater will be the current passing through the circuit. the degree to which the current is opposed by the capacity is the reactance of that capacity for that frequency. the formula is capacity reactance = /_c_[omega] wherein _c_ is the capacity in farads and [omega] is [pi]_n_, or twice . times the frequency. all the foregoing leads to the generalization that the higher the frequency, the less the opposition of a capacity to an alternating current. if the frequency be zero, the reactance is infinite, _i.e._, the circuit is open to direct current. if the frequency be infinite, the reactance is zero, _i.e._, the circuit is as if the condenser were replaced by a solid conductor of no resistance. compare this statement with the correlative generalization which follows the next thought upon inductance. inductance of the circuit. inductance is the property of a circuit by which change of current in it tends to produce in itself and other conductors an electromotive force other than that which causes the current. its unit is the _henry_. the inductance of a circuit is one henry when a change of one ampere per second produces an electromotive force of one volt. induction _between_ circuits occurs because the circuits possess inductance; it is called _mutual induction_. induction _within_ a circuit occurs because the circuit possesses inductance; it is called _self-induction_. lenz' law says: _in all cases of electromagnetic induction, the induced currents have such a direction that their reaction tends to stop the motion which produced them_. [illustration: fig. . spiral of wire] [illustration: fig. . spiral of wire around iron core] all conductors possess inductance, but straight wires used in lines have negligible inductance in most actual cases. all wires which are wound into coils, such as electromagnets, possess inductance in a greatly increased degree. a wire wound into a spiral, as indicated in fig. , possesses much greater inductance than when drawn out straight. if iron be inserted into the spiral, as shown in fig. , the inductance is still further increased. it is for the purpose of eliminating inductance that resistance coils are wound with double wires, so that current passing through such coils turns in one direction half the way and in the other direction the other half. a simple test will enable the results of a series inductance in a line to be appreciated. conceive a very short line of two wires to connect two local battery telephones. such a line possesses negligible resistance, inductance, and shunt capacity. its insulation is practically infinite. let inductive coils such as electromagnets be inserted serially in the wires of the line one by one, while conversation goes on. the listening observer will notice that the sounds reaching his ear steadily grow faint as the inductance in the line increases and the speaking observer will notice the same thing through the receiver in series with the line. both observations in this test show that the amount of current entering and emerging from the line decreased as the inductance increased. compare this with the test with bridged capacity and the loading of lines described later herein, observing the curious beneficial result when both hurtful properties are present in a line. the test is illustrated in fig. . the degree in which any current is opposed by inductance is termed the reactance of that inductance. its formula is inductive reactance = _l_[omega] wherein _l_ is the inductance in henrys and [omega] is _ _[pi]_n_, or twice . times the frequency. to distinguish the two kinds of reactance, that due to the capacity is called _capacity reactance_ and that due to inductance is called _inductive reactance_. all the foregoing leads to the generalization that the higher the frequency, the greater the opposition of an inductance to an alternating current. if the frequency be zero, the reactance is zero, _i.e._, the circuit conducts direct current as mere resistance. if the frequency be infinite, the reactance is infinite, _i.e._, the circuit is "open" to the alternating current and that current cannot pass through it. compare this with the correlative generalization following the preceding thought upon capacity. [illustration: fig. . test of line with varying serial inductance] capacity and inductance depend only on states of matter. their reactances depend on states of matter and actions of energy. in circuits having both resistance and capacity or resistance and inductance, both properties affect the passage of current. the joint reaction is expressed in ohms and is called _impedance_. its value is the square root of the sum of the squares of the resistance and reactance, or, z being impedance, ------------------------- / z = / r^{ } + ---------------- \/ c^{ }[omega]^{ } and -------------------------- z = / r^{ } + l^{ }[omega]^{ } \/ the symbols meaning as before. in words, these formulas mean that, knowing the frequency of the current and the capacity of a condenser, or the frequency of the current and the inductance of a circuit (a line or piece of apparatus), and in either case the resistance of the circuit, one may learn the impedance by calculation. insulation of conductors. the fourth property of telephone lines, insulation of the conductors, usually is expressed in ohms as an insulation resistance. in practice, this property needs to be intrinsically high, and usually is measured by millions of ohms resistance from the wire of a line to its mate or to the earth. it is a convenience to employ a large unit. a million ohms, therefore, is called a _megohm_. in telephone cables, an insulation resistance of megohms per mile at ° fahrenheit is the usual specification. so high an insulation resistance in a paper-insulated conductor is only attained by applying the lead sheath to the cable when its core is made practically anhydrous and kept so during the splicing and terminating of the cable. insulation resistance varies inversely as the length of the conductor. if a piece of cable feet long has an insulation resistance of , megohms, a mile (ten times as much) of such cable, will have an insulation resistance of megohms, or one-tenth as great. inductance vs. capacity. the mutual capacity of a telephone line is greater as its wires are closer together. the self-induction of a telephone line is smaller as its wires are closer together. the electromotive force induced by the capacity of a line leads the impressed electromotive force by degrees. the inductive electromotive force lags degrees behind the impressed electromotive force. and so, in general, the natures of these two properties are opposite. in a cable, the wires are so close together that their induction is negligible, while their capacity is so great as to limit commercial transmission through a cable having . microfarads per mile capacity and ohms loop resistance per mile, to a distance of about miles. in the case of open wires spaced inches apart, the limit of commercial transmission is greater, not only because the wires are larger, but because the capacity is lower and the inductance higher. table i shows-the practical limiting conversation distance over uniform lines with present standard telephone apparatus. table i limiting transmission distances +-----------------------------+----------------------+ | size and gauge of wire | limiting distance | +-----------------------------+----------------------+ | no. b. w. g. copper | miles | | b. w. g. copper | miles | | b. & s. copper | miles | | n. b. s. copper | miles | | b. & s. copper | miles | | n. b. s. copper | miles | | b. w. g. iron | miles | | b. w. g. iron | miles | | b. w. g. iron | miles | | b. & s. cable, copper | miles | | b. & s. cable, copper | miles | | b. & s. cable, copper | miles | +-----------------------------+----------------------+ in , oliver heaviside proposed that the inductance of telephone lines be increased above the amount natural for the inter-axial spacing, with a view to counteracting the hurtful effects of the capacity. his meaning was that the increased inductance--a harmful quality in a circuit not having also a harmfully great capacity--would act oppositely to the capacity, and if properly chosen and applied, should decrease or eliminate distortion by making the line's effect on fundamentals and harmonics more nearly uniform, and as well should reduce the attenuation by neutralizing the action of the capacity in dissipating energy. there are two ways in which inductance might be introduced into a telephone line. as the capacity whose effects are to be neutralized is distributed uniformly throughout the line, the counteracting inductance must also be distributed throughout the line. mere increase of distance between two wires of the line very happily acts both to increase the inductance and to lower the capacity; unhappily for practical results, the increase of separation to bring the qualities into useful neutralizing relation is beyond practical limits. the wires would need to be so far above the earth and so far apart as to make the arrangement commercially impossible. practical results have been secured in increasing the distributed inductance by wrapping fine iron wire over each conductor of the line. such a treatment increases the inductance and improves transmission. the most marked success has come as a result of the studies of professor michael idvorsky pupin. he inserts inductances in series with the wires of the line, so adapting them to the constants of the circuit that attenuation and distortion are diminished in a gratifying degree. this method of counteracting the effects of a distributed capacity by the insertion of localized inductance requires not only that the requisite total amount of inductance be known, but that the proper subdivision and spacing of the local portions of that inductance be known. professor pupin's method is described in a paper entitled "wave transmission over non-uniform cables and long-distance air lines," read by him at a meeting of the american institute of electrical engineers in philadelphia, may , . note. united states letters patent were issued to professor pupin on june , , upon his practical method of reducing attenuation of electrical waves. a paper upon "propagation of long electric waves" was read by professor pupin before the american institute of electrical engineers on march , , and appears in vol. of the transactions of that society. the student will find these documents useful in his studies on the subject. he is referred also to "electrical papers" and "electromagnetic theory" of oliver heaviside. professor pupin likens the transmission of electric waves over long-distance circuits to the transmission of mechanical waves over a string. conceive an ordinary light string to be fixed at one end and shaken by the hand at the other; waves will pass over the string from the shaken to the fixed end. certain reflections will occur from the fixed end. the amount of energy which can be sent in this case from the shaken to the fixed point is small, but if the string be loaded by attaching bullets to it, uniformly throughout its length, it now may transmit much more energy to the fixed end. [illustration: main entrance and public office, san francisco home telephone company contract department on left. accounting department on right.] the addition of inductance to a telephone line is analogous to the addition of bullets to the string, so that a telephone line is said to be _loaded_ when inductances are inserted in it, and the inductances themselves are known as _loading coils_. fig. shows the general relation of pupin loading coils to the capacity of the line. the condensers of the figure are merely conventionals to represent the condenser which the line itself forms. the inductances of the figure are the actual loading coils. [illustration: fig. . loaded line] the loading of open wires is not as successful in practice as is that of cables. the fundamental reason lies in the fact that two of the properties of open wires--insulation and capacity--vary with atmospheric change. the inserted inductance remaining constant, its benefits may become detriments when the other two "constants" change. the loading of cable circuits is not subject to these defects. such loading improves transmission; saves copper; permits the use of longer underground cables than are usable when not loaded; lowers maintenance costs by placing interurban cables underground; and permits submarine telephone cables to join places not otherwise able to speak with each other. underground long-distance lines now join or are joining boston and new york, philadelphia and new york, milwaukee and chicago. england and france are connected by a loaded submarine cable. there is no theoretical reason why europe and america should not speak to each other. the student wishing to determine for himself what are the effects of the properties of lines upon open or cable circuits will find most of the subject in the following equation. it tells the value of _a_ in terms of the four properties, _a_ being the attenuation constant of the line. that is, the larger _a_ is, the more the voice current is reduced in passing over the line. the equation is ----------------------------------------------------------------------- / ----------------------------------------------- a= /½ /(r^{ }+l^{ }[omega]^{ })(s^{ }+c^{ }[omega]^{ } + ½(rs-lc[omega]^{ } \/ \/ the quantities are r = resistance in ohms l = inductance in henrys c = mutual (shunt) capacity in farads [omega] = [pi]_n_ = . times the frequency s = shunt leakage in mhos the quantity _s_ is a measure of the combined direct-current conductance (reciprocal of insulation resistance) and the apparent conductance due to dielectric hysteresis. note. an excellent paper, assisting such study, and of immediate practical value as helping the understanding of cables and their reasons, is that of mr. frank b. jewett, presented at the thousand islands convention of the american institute of electrical engineers, july , . chapter treats cables in further detail. they form a most important part of telephone wire-plant practice, and their uses are becoming wider and more valuable. possible ways of improving transmission. practical ways of improving telephone transmission are of two kinds: to improve the lines and to improve the apparatus. the foregoing shows what are the qualities of lines and the ways they require to be treated. apparatus treatment, in the present state of the art, is addressed largely to the reduction of losses. theoretical considerations seem to show, however, that great advance in apparatus effectiveness still is possible. more powerful transmitters--and more _faithful_ ones--more sensitive and accurate receivers, and more efficient translating devices surely are possible. discovery may need to intervene, to enable invention to restimulate. in both telegraphy and telephony, the longer the line the weaker the current which is received at the distant end. in both telegraphy and telephony, there is a length of line with a given kind and size of wire and method of construction over which it is just possible to send intelligible speech or intelligible signals. a repeater, in telegraphy, is a device in the form of a relay which is adapted to receive these highly attenuated signal impulses and to re-transmit them with fresh power over a new length of line. an arrangement of two such relays makes it possible to telegraph both ways over a pair of lines united by such a repeater. it is practically possible to join up several such links of lines to repeating devices and, if need be, even submarine cables can be joined to land lines within practical limits. if it were necessary, it probably would be possible to telegraph around the world in this way. if it were possible to imitate the telegraph repeater in telephony, attenuated voice currents might be caused to actuate it so as to send on those voice currents with renewed power over a length of line, section by section. such a device has been sought for many years, and it once was quoted in the public press that a reward of one million dollars had been offered by charles j. glidden for a successful device of that kind. the records of the patent offices of the world show what effort has been made in that direction and many more devices have been invented than have been patented in all the countries together. like some other problems in telephony, this one seems simpler at first sight than it proves to be after more exhaustive study. it is possible for any amateur to produce at once a repeating device which will relay telephone circuits in one direction. it is required, however, that in practice the voice currents be relayed in both directions, and further, that the relay actually augment the energy which passes through it; that is, that it will send on a more powerful current than it receives. most of the devices so far invented fail in one or the other of these particulars. several ways have been shown of assembling repeating devices which will talk both ways, but not many assembling repeating devices have been shown that will talk both ways and augment in both directions. [illustration: fig. . shreeve repeater and circuit] practical repeaters have been produced, however, and at least one type is in daily successful use. it is not conclusively shown even of it that it augments in the same degree all of the voice waves which reach it, or even that it augments some of them at all. its action, however, is distinctly an improvement in commercial practice. it is the invention of mr. herbert e. shreeve and is shown in fig. . primarily it consists of a telephone receiver, of a particular type devised by gundlach, associated with a granular carbon transmitter button. it is further associated with an arrangement of induction coils or repeating coils, the object of these being to accomplish the two-way action, that is, of speaking in both directions and of preventing reactive interference between the receiving and transmitting elements. the battery _ _ energizes the field of the receiving element; the received line current varies that field; the resulting motion varies the resistance of the carbon button and transforms current from battery _ _ into a new alternating line current. by reactive interference is meant action whereby the transmitter element, in emitting a wave, affects its own controlling receiver element, thus setting up an action similar to that which occurs when the receiver of a telephone is held close to its transmitter and humming or singing ensues. no repeater is successful unless it is free from this reactive interference. [illustration: fig. . mercury-arc telephone relay] enough has been accomplished by practical tests of the shreeve device and others like it to show that the search for a method of relaying telephone voice currents is not looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. the most remarkable truth established by the success of repeaters of the shreeve type is that a device embodying so large inertia of moving parts can succeed at all. if this mean anything, it is that a device in which inertia is absolutely eliminated might do very much better. many of the methods already proposed by inventors attack the problem in this way and one of the most recent and most promising ways is that of mr. j.b. taylor, the circuit of whose telephone-relay patent is shown in fig. . in it, _ _ is an electromagnet energized by voice currents; its varying field varies an arc between the electrodes _ - _ and _ _ in a vacuum tube. these fluctuations are transformed into line currents by the coil _ _. chapter v transmitters variable resistance. as already pointed out in chapter ii, the variable-resistance method of producing current waves, corresponding to sound waves for telephonic transmission, is the one that lends itself most readily to practical purposes. practically all telephone transmitters of today employ this variable-resistance principle. the reason for the adoption of this method instead of the other possible ones is that the devices acting on this principle are capable, with great simplicity of construction, of producing much more powerful results than the others. their simplicity is such as to make them capable of being manufactured at low cost and of being used successfully by unskilled persons. materials. of all the materials available for the variable-resistance element in telephone transmitters, carbon is by far the most suitable, and its use is well nigh universal. sometimes one of the rarer metals, such as platinum or gold, is to be found in commercial transmitters as part of the resistance-varying device, but, even when this is so, it is always used in combination with carbon in some form or other. most of the transmitters in use, however, depend solely upon carbon as the conductive material of the variable-resistance element. arrangement of electrodes. following the principles pointed out by hughes, the transmitters of today always employ as their variable-resistance elements one or more loose contacts between one or more pairs of electrodes, which electrodes, as just stated, are usually of carbon. always the arrangement is such that the sound waves will vary the intimacy of contact between the electrodes and, therefore, the resistance of the path through the electrodes. a multitude of arrangements have been proposed and tried. sometimes a single pair of electrodes has been employed having a single point of loose contact between them. these may be termed single-contact transmitters. sometimes the variable-resistance element has included a greater number of electrodes arranged in multiple, or in series, or in series-multiple, and these have been termed multiple-electrode transmitters, signifying a plurality of electrodes. a later development, an outgrowth of the multiple-electrode transmitter, makes use of a pair of principal electrodes, between which is included a mass of finely divided carbon in the form of granules or small spheres or pellets. these, regardless of the exact form of the carbon particles, are called granular-carbon transmitters. [illustration: fig. . blake transmitter] single electrode. _blake_. the most notable example of the single-contact transmitter is the once familiar blake instrument. at one time this formed a part of the standard equipment of almost every telephone in the united states, and it was also largely used abroad. probably no transmitter has ever exceeded it in clearness of articulation, but it was decidedly deficient in power in comparison with the modern transmitters. in this instrument, which is shown in fig. , the variable-resistance contact was that between a carbon and a platinum electrode. the diaphragm _ _ was of sheet iron mounted, as usual in later transmitters, in a soft rubber gasket _ _. the whole diaphragm was mounted in a cast-iron ring _ _, supported on the inside of the box containing the entire instrument. the front electrode _ _ was mounted on a light spring _ _, the upper end of which was supported by a movable bar or lever _ _, flexibly supported on a spring _ _ secured to the casting which supported the diaphragm. the tension of this spring _ _ was such as to cause the platinum point to press lightly away from the center of the diaphragm. the rear electrode was of carbon in the form of a small block _ _, secured in a heavy brass button _ _. the entire rear electrode structure was supported on a heavier spring _ _ carried on the same lever as the spring _ _. the tension of this latter spring was such as to press against the front electrode and, by its greater strength, press this against the center of the diaphragm. the adjustment of the instrument was secured by means of the screw _ _, carried in a lug extending rearwardly from the diaphragm supporting casting, this screw, by its position, determining the strength with which the rear electrode pressed against the front electrode and that against the diaphragm. this instrument was ordinarily mounted in a wooden box together with the induction coil, which is shown in the upper portion of the figure. the blake transmitter has passed almost entirely out of use in this country, being superseded by the various forms of granular instruments, which, while much more powerful, are not perhaps capable of producing quite such clear and distinct articulation. the great trouble with the single-contact transmitters, such as the blake, was that it was impossible to pass enough current through the single point of contact to secure the desired power of transmission without overheating the contact. if too much current is sent through such transmitters, an undue amount of heat is generated at the point of contact and a vibration is set up which causes a peculiar humming or squealing sound which interferes with the transmission of other sounds. multiple electrode. to remedy this difficulty the so-called multiple-electrode transmitter was brought out. this took a very great number of forms, of which the one shown in fig. is typical. the diaphragm shown at _ _, in this particular form, was made of thin pine wood. on the rear side of this, suspended from a rod _ _ carried in a bracket _ _, were a number of carbon rods or pendants _ _, loosely resting against a rod _ _, carried on a bracket _ _ also mounted on the rear of the diaphragm. the pivotal rod _ _ and the rod _ _, against which the pendants rested, were sometimes, like the pendant rods, made of carbon and sometimes of metal, such as brass. when the diaphragm vibrated, the intimacy of contact between the pendant rod _ _ and the rod _ _ was altered, and thus the resistance of the path through all of the pendant rods in multiple was changed. [illustration: fig. . multiple-electrode transmitter] a multitude of forms of such transmitters came into use in the early eighties, and while they in some measure remedied the difficulty encountered with the blake transmitter, _i.e._, of not being able to carry a sufficiently large current, they were all subject to the effects of extreme sensitiveness, and would rattle or break when called upon to transmit sounds of more than ordinary loudness. furthermore, the presence of such large masses of material, which it was necessary to throw into vibration by the sound waves, was distinctly against this form of transmitter. the inertia of the moving parts was so great that clearness of articulation was interfered with. granular carbon. the idea of employing a mass of granular carbon, supported between two electrodes, one of which vibrated with the sound waves and the other was stationary, was proposed by henry hunnings in the early eighties. while this idea forms the basis of all modern telephone transmitters, yet it did not prevent the almost universal adoption of the single-contact form of instrument during the next decade. western electric solid-back transmitter. in the early nineties, however, the granular-carbon transmitter came into its own with the advent and wide adoption of the transmitter designed by anthony c. white, known as the _white_, or _solid-back_, transmitter. this has for many years been the standard instrument of the bell companies operating throughout the united states, and has found large use abroad. a horizontal cross-section of this instrument is shown in fig. , and a rear view of the working parts in fig. . the working parts are all mounted on the front casting _ _. this is supported in a cup _ _, in turn supported on the lug _ _, which is pivoted on the transmitter arm or other support. the front and rear electrodes of this instrument are formed of thin carbon disks shown in solid black. the rear electrode, the larger one of these disks, is securely attached by solder to the face of a brass disk having a rearwardly projecting screw-threaded shank, which serves to hold it and the rear electrode in place in the bottom of a heavy brass cup _ _. the front electrode is mounted on the rear face of a stud. clamped against the head of this stud, by a screw-threaded clamping ring _ _, is a mica washer, or disk _ _. the center portion of this mica washer is therefore rigid with respect to the front electrode and partakes of its movements. the outer edge of this mica washer is similarly clamped against the front edge of the cup _ _, a screw-threaded ring _ _ serving to hold the edge of the mica rigidly against the front of the cup. the outer edge of this washer is, therefore, rigid with respect to the rear electrode, which is fixed. whatever relative movement there is between the two electrodes must, therefore, be permitted by the flexing of the mica washer. this mica washer not only serves to maintain the electrodes in their normal relative positions, but also serves to close the chamber which contains the electrodes, and, therefore, to prevent the granular carbon, with which the space between the electrodes is filled, from falling out. [illustration: fig. . white solid-back transmitter] the cup _ _, containing the electrode chamber, is rigidly fastened with respect to the body of the transmitter by a rearwardly projecting shank held in a bridge piece _ _ which is secured at its ends to the front block. the needed rigidity of the rear electrode is thus obtained and this is probably the reason for calling the instrument the _solid-back_. the front electrode, on the other hand, is fastened to the center of the diaphragm by means of a shank on the stud, which passes through a hole in the diaphragm and is clamped thereto by two small nuts. against the rear face of the diaphragm of this transmitter there rest two damping springs. these are not shown in fig. but are in fig. . they are secured at one end to the rear flange of the front casting _ _, and bear with their other or free ends against the rear face of the diaphragm. the damping springs are prevented from coming into actual contact with the diaphragm by small insulating pads. the purpose of the damping springs is to reduce the sensitiveness of the diaphragm to extraneous sounds. as a result, the white transmitter does not pick up all of the sounds in its vicinity as readily as do the more sensitive transmitters, and thus the transmission is not interfered with by extraneous noises. on the other hand, the provision of these heavy damping springs makes it necessary that this transmitter shall be spoken into directly by the user. [illustration: fig. . white solid-back transmitter] the action of this transmitter is as follows: sound waves are concentrated against the center of the diaphragm by the mouth-piece, which is of the familiar form. these waves impinge against the diaphragm, causing it to vibrate, and this, in turn, produces similar vibrations in the front electrode. the vibrations of the front electrode are permitted by the elasticity of the mica washer _ _. the rear electrode is, however, held stationary within the heavy chambered block _ _ and which in turn is held immovable by its rigid mounting. as a result, the front electrode approaches and recedes from the rear electrode, thus compressing and decompressing the mass of granular carbon between them. as a result, the intimacy of contact between the electrode plates and the granules and also between the granules themselves is altered, and the resistance of the path from one electrode to the other through the mass of granules is varied. new western electric transmitter. the white transmitter was the prototype of a large number of others embodying the same features of having the rear electrode mounted in a stationary cup or chamber and the front electrode movable with the diaphragm, a washer of mica or other flexible insulating material serving to close the front of the electrode chamber and at the same time to permit the necessary vibration of the front electrode with the diaphragm. [illustration: fig. . new western electric transmitter] one of these transmitters, embodying these same features but with modified details, is shown in fig. , this being the new transmitter manufactured by the western electric company. in this the bridge of the original white transmitter is dispensed with, the electrode chamber being supported by a pressed metal cup _ _, which supports the chamber as a whole. the electrode cup, instead of being made of a solid block as in the white instrument, is composed of two portions, a cylindrical or tubular portion _ _ and a back _ _. the cylindrical portion is externally screw-threaded so as to engage an internal screw thread in a flanged opening in the center of the cup _ _. by this means the electrode chamber is held in place in the cup _ _, and by the same means the mica washer _ _ is clamped between the flange in this opening and the tubular portion _ _ of the electrode chamber. the front electrode is carried, as in the white transmitter, on the mica washer and is rigidly attached to the center of the diaphragm so as to partake of the movement thereof. it will be seen, therefore, that this is essentially a white transmitter, but with a modified mounting for the electrode chamber. a feature in this transmitter that is not found in the white transmitter is that both the front and the rear electrodes, in fact, the entire working portions of the transmitter, are insulated from the exposed metal parts of the instrument. this is accomplished by insulating the diaphragm and the supporting cup _ _ from the transmitter front. the terminal _ _ on the cup _ _ forms the electrical connection for the rear electrode, while the terminal _ _, which is mounted _on_ but insulated _from_ the cup _ _ and is connected with the front electrode by a thin flexible connecting strip, forms the electrical connection for the front electrode. kellogg transmitter. the transmitter of the kellogg switchboard and supply company, originally developed by mr. w.w. dean and modified by his successors in the kellogg company, is shown in fig. . in this, the electrode chamber, instead of being mounted in a stationary and rigid position, as in the case of the white instrument, is mounted on, and, in fact, forms a part of the diaphragm. the electrode which is associated with the mica washer instead of moving with the diaphragm, as in the white instrument, is rigidly connected to a bridge so as to be as free as possible from all vibrations. referring to fig. , which is a horizontal cross-section of the instrument, _ _ indicates the diaphragm. this is of aluminum and it has in its center a forwardly deflected portion forming a chamber for the electrodes. the front electrode _ _ of carbon is backed by a disk of brass and rigidly secured in the front of this chamber, as clearly indicated. the rear electrode _ _, also of carbon, is backed by a disk of brass, and is clamped against the central portion of a mica disk by means of the enlarged head of stud _ _. a nut _ _, engaging the end of a screw-threaded shank from the back of the rear electrode, serves to bind these two parts together securely, clamping the mica washer between them. the outer edge of the mica washer is clamped to the main diaphragm _ _ by an aluminum ring and rivets, as clearly indicated. it is seen, therefore, that the diaphragm itself contains the electrode chamber as an integral part thereof. the entire structure of the diaphragm, the front and back electrodes, and the granular carbon within are permanently assembled in the factory and cannot be dissociated without destroying some of the parts. the rear electrode is held rigidly in place by the bridge _ _ and the stud _ _, this stud passing through a block _ _ mounted on the bridge but insulated from it. the stud _ _ is clamped in the block _ _ by means of the set screw _ _, so as to hold the rear electrode in proper position after this position has been determined. [illustration: fig. . kellogg transmitter] in this transmitter, as in the transmitter shown in fig. , all of the working parts are insulated from the exposed metal casing. the diaphragm is insulated from the front of the instrument by means of a washer _ _ of impregnated cloth, as indicated. the rear electrode is insulated from the other portions of the instrument by means of the mica washer and by means of the insulation between the block _ _ and the bridge _ _. the terminal for the rear electrode is mounted on the block _ _, while the terminal for the front electrode, shown at _ _, is mounted on, but insulated from, the bridge. this terminal _ _ is connected with the diaphragm and therefore with the front electrode by means of a thin, flexible metallic connection. this transmitter is provided with damping springs similar to those of the white instrument. it is claimed by advocates of this type of instrument that, in addition to the ordinary action due to the compression and decompression of the granular carbon between the electrodes, there exists another action due to the agitation of the granules as the chamber is caused to vibrate by the sound waves. in other words, in addition to the ordinary action, which may be termed _the piston action between the electrodes_, it is claimed that the general shaking-up effect of the granules when the chamber vibrates produces an added effect. certain it is, however, that transmitters of this general type are very efficient and have proven their capability of giving satisfactory service through long periods of time. another interesting feature of this instrument as it is now manufactured is the use of a transmitter front that is struck up from sheet metal rather than the employment of a casting as has ordinarily been the practice. the formation of the supporting lug for the transmitter from the sheet metal which forms the rear casing or shell of the instrument is also an interesting feature. automatic electric company transmitter. the transmitter of the automatic electric company, of chicago, shown in fig. , is of the same general type as the one just discussed, in that the electrode chamber is mounted on and vibrates with the diaphragm instead of being rigidly supported on the bridge as in the case of the white or solid-back type of instrument. in this instrument the transmitter front _ _ is struck up from sheet metal and contains a rearwardly projecting flange, carrying an internal screw thread. a heavy inner cup _ _, together with the diaphragm _ _, form an enclosure containing the electrode chamber. the diaphragm is, in this case, permanently secured at its edge to the periphery of the inner cup _ _ by a band of metal _ _ so formed as to embrace the edges of both the cup and the diaphragm and permanently lock them together. this inner chamber is held in place in the transmitter front _ _ by means of a lock ring _ _ externally screw-threaded to engage the internal screw-thread on the flange on the front. the electrode chamber proper is made in the form of a cup, rigidly secured to the diaphragm so as to move therewith, as clearly indicated. the rear electrode is mounted on a screw-threaded stud carried in a block which is fitted to a close central opening in the cup _ _. this transmitter does not make use of a mica washer or diaphragm, but employs a felt washer which surrounds the shank of the rear electrode and serves to close and seal the carbon containing cup. by this means the granular carbon is retained in the chamber and the necessary flexibility or freedom of motion is permitted between the front and the rear electrodes. as in the kellogg and the later bell instruments, the entire working parts of this transmitter are insulated from the metal containing case, the inner chamber, formed by the cup _ _ and the diaphragm _ _, being insulated from the transmitter front and its locking ring by means of insulating washers, as shown. fig. . automatic electric company transmitter monarch transmitter. the transmitter of the monarch telephone manufacturing company, shown in fig. , differs from both the stationary-cup and the vibrating-cup types, although it has the characteristics of both. it might be said that it differs from each of these two types of transmitters in that it has the characteristics of both. this transmitter, it will be seen, has two flexible mica washers between the electrodes and the walls of the electrode cup. the front and the back electrodes are attached to the diaphragm and the bridge, respectively, by a method similar to that employed in the solid-back transmitters, while the carbon chamber itself is free to vibrate with the diaphragm as is characteristic of the kellogg transmitter. [illustration: fig. . monarch transmitter] an aluminum diaphragm is employed, the circumferential edge of which is forwardly deflected to form a seat. the edge of the diaphragm rests _against_ and is separated _from_ the brass front by means of a one-piece gasket of specially treated linen. this forms an insulator which is not affected by heat or moisture. as in the transmitters previously described, the electrodes are firmly soldered to brass disks which have solid studs extending from their centers. in the case of both the front and the rear electrodes, a mica disk is placed over the supporting stud and held in place by a brass hub which has a base of the same size as the electrode. the carbon-chamber wall consists of a brass ring to which are fastened the mica disks of the front and the back electrodes by means of brass collars clamped over the edge of the mica and around the rim of the brass ring forming the chamber. [illustration: main office building, berkeley, california containing automatic equipment, forming part of larger system operating in san francisco and vicinity. bay cities home telephone company.] electrodes. the electrode plates of nearly all modern transmitters are of specially treated carbon. these are first copper-plated and soldered to their brass supporting disks. after this they are turned and ground so as to be truly circular in form and to present absolutely flat faces toward each other. these faces are then highly polished and the utmost effort is made to keep them absolutely clean. great pains are taken to remove from the pores of the carbon, as well as from the surface, all of the acids or other chemicals that may have entered them during the process of electroplating them or of soldering them to the brass supporting disk. that the two electrodes, when mounted in a transmitter, should be parallel with each other, is an item of great importance as will be pointed out later. in a few cases, as previously stated, gold or platinum has been substituted for the carbon electrodes in transmitters. these are capable of giving good results when used in connection with the proper form of granular carbon, but, on the whole, the tendency has been to abandon all forms of electrode material except carbon, and its use is now well nigh universal. _preparation of carbon_. the granular carbon is prepared from carefully selected anthracite coal, which is specially treated by roasting or "re-carbonizing" and is then crushed to approximately the proper fineness. the crushed carbon is then screened with extreme care to eliminate all dust and to retain only granules of uniform size. packing. in the earlier forms of granular-carbon transmitters a great deal of trouble was experienced due to the so-called packing of the instrument. this, as the term indicates, was a trouble due to the tendency of the carbon granules to settle into a compact mass and thus not respond to the variable pressure. this was sometimes due to the presence of moisture in the electrode chamber; sometimes to the employment of granules of varying sizes, so that they would finally arrange themselves under the vibration of the diaphragm into a fairly compact mass; or sometimes, and more frequently, to the granules in some way wedging the two electrodes apart and holding them at a greater distance from each other than their normal distance. the trouble due to moisture has been entirely eliminated by so sealing the granule chambers as to prevent the entrance of moisture. the trouble due to the lack of uniformity in size of the granules has been entirely eliminated by making them all of one size and by making them of sufficient hardness so that they would not break up into granules of smaller size. the trouble due to the settling of the granules and wedging the electrodes apart has been practically eliminated in well-designed instruments, by great mechanical nicety in manufacture. almost any transmitter may be packed by drawing the diaphragm forward so as to widely separate the electrodes. this allows the granules to settle to a lower level than they normally occupy and when the diaphragm is released and attempts to resume its normal position it is prevented from doing so by the mass of granules between. transmitters of the early types could be packed by placing the lips against the mouthpiece and drawing in the breath. the slots now provided at the base of standard mouthpieces effectually prevent this. in general it may be said that the packing difficulty has been almost entirely eliminated, not by the employment of remedial devices, such as those often proposed for stirring up the carbon, but by preventing the trouble by the design and manufacture of the instruments in such forms that they will not be subject to the evil. carrying capacity. obviously, the power of a transmitter is dependent on the amount of current that it may carry, as well as on the amount of variation that it may make in the resistance of the path through it. granular carbon transmitters are capable of carrying much heavier current than the old blake or other single or multiple electrode types. if forced to carry too much current, however, the same frying or sizzling sound is noticeable as in the earlier types. this is due to the heating of the electrodes and to small arcs that occur between the electrodes and the granules. one way to increase the current-carrying capacity of a transmitter is to increase the area of its electrodes, but a limit is soon reached in this direction owing to the increased inertia of the moving electrode, which necessarily comes with its larger size. the carrying capacity of transmitters may also be increased by providing special means for carrying away the heat generated in the variable-resistance medium. several schemes have been proposed for this. one is to employ unusually heavy metal for the electrode chamber, and this practice is best exemplified in the white solid-back instrument. it has also been proposed by others to water-jacket the electrode chamber, and also to keep it cool by placing it in close proximity to the relatively cool joints of a thermopile. neither of these two latter schemes seems to be warranted in ordinary commercial practice. sensitiveness. in all the transmitters so far discussed damping springs of one form or another have been employed to reduce the sensitiveness of the instrument. for ordinary commercial use too great a degree of sensitiveness is a fault, as has already been pointed out. there are, however, certain adaptations of the telephone transmitter which make a maximum degree of sensitiveness desirable. one of these adaptations is found in the telephone equipments for assisting partially deaf people to hear. in these the transmitter is carried on some portion of the body of the deaf person, the receiver is strapped or otherwise held at his ear, and a battery for furnishing the current is carried in his pocket. it is not feasible, for this sort of use, that the sound which this transmitter is to reproduce shall always occur immediately in front of the transmitter. it more often occurs at a distance of several feet. for this reason the transmitter is made as sensitive as possible, and yet is so constructed that it will not be caused to produce too loud or unduly harsh sounds in response to a loud sound taking place immediately in front of it. another adaptation of such highly sensitive transmitters is found in the special intercommunicating telephone systems for use between the various departments or desks in business offices. in these it is desirable that the transmitter shall be able to respond adequately to sounds occurring anywhere in a small-sized room, for instance. acousticon transmitter. in fig. is shown a transmitter adapted for such use. this has been termed by its makers the _acousticon transmitter_. like all the transmitters previously discussed, this is of the variable-resistance type, but it differs from them all in that it has no damping springs; in that carbon balls are substituted for carbon granules; and in that the diaphragm itself serves as the front electrode. this transmitter consists of a cup _ _, into which is set a cylindrical block _ _, in one face of which are a number of hemispherical recesses. the diaphragm _ _ is made of thin carbon and is so placed in the transmitter as to cover the openings of the recesses in the carbon block, and lie close enough to the carbon block, without engaging it, to prevent the carbon particles from falling out. the diaphragm thus serves as the front electrode and the carbon block as the rear electrode. the recesses in the carbon block are about two-thirds filled with small carbon balls, which are about the size of fine sand. the front piece _ _ of the transmitter is of sheet metal and serves to hold the diaphragm in place. to admit the sound waves it is provided with a circular opening opposite to and about the size of the rear electrode block. on this front piece are mounted the two terminals of the transmitter, connected respectively to the two electrodes, terminal _ _ being insulated from the front piece and connected by a thin metal strip with the diaphragm, while terminal _ _ is mounted directly on the front piece and connected through the cup _ _ with the carbon block _ _, or back electrode of the transmitter. [illustration: fig . acousticon transmitter] when this transmitter is used in connection with outfits for the deaf, it is placed in a hard rubber containing case, consisting of a hollow cylindrical piece _ _, which has fastened to it a cover _ _. this cover has a circular row of openings or holes near its outer edge, as shown at _ _, through which the sound waves may pass to the chamber within, and thence find their way through the round hole in the center of the front plate _ _ to the diaphragm _ _. it is probable also that the front face of the cover _ _ of the outer case vibrates, and in this way also causes sound waves to impinge against the diaphragm. this arrangement provides a large receiving surface for the sound waves, but, owing to the fact that the openings in the containing case are not opposite the opening in the transmitter proper, the sound waves do not impinge directly against the diaphragm. this peculiar arrangement is probably the result of an endeavor to prevent the transmitter from being too strongly actuated by violent sounds close to it. instruments of this kind are very sensitive and under proper conditions are readily responsive to words spoken in an ordinary tone ten feet away. [illustration: fig. . switchboard transmitter] switchboard transmitter. another special adaptation of the telephone transmitter is that for use of telephone operators at central-office switchboards. the requirements in this case are such that the operator must always be able to speak into the transmitter while seated before the switchboard, and yet allow both of her hands to be free for use. this was formerly accomplished by suspending an ordinary granular-carbon transmitter in front of the operator, but a later development has resulted in the adoption of the so-called breast transmitter, shown in fig. . this is merely an ordinary granular-carbon transmitter mounted on a plate which is strapped on the breast of the operator, the transmitter being provided with a long curved mouthpiece which projects in such a manner as to lie just in front of the operator's lips. this device has the advantage of automatically following the operator in her movements. the breast transmitter shown in fig. , is that of the dean electric company. [illustration: fig. . transmitter symbols] conventional diagram. there are several common ways of illustrating transmitters in diagrams of circuits in which they are employed. the three most common ways are shown in fig. . the one at the left is supposed to be a side view of an ordinary instrument, the one in the center a front view, and the one at the right to be merely a suggestive arrangement of the diaphragm and the rear electrode. the one at the right is best and perhaps most common; the center one is the poorest and least used. chapter vi receivers the telephone receiver is the device which translates the energy of the voice currents into the energy of corresponding sound waves. all telephone receivers today are of the electromagnetic type, the voice currents causing a varying magnetic pull on an armature or diaphragm, which in turn produces the sound waves corresponding to the undulations of the voice currents. early receivers. the early forms of telephone receivers were of the _single-pole_ type; that is, the type wherein but one pole of the electromagnet was presented to the diaphragm. the single-pole receiver that formed the companion piece to the old blake transmitter and that was the standard of the bell companies for many years, is shown in fig. . while this has almost completely passed out of use, it may be profitably studied in order that a comparison may be made between certain features of its construction and those of the later forms of receivers. the coil of this receiver was wound on a round iron core _ _, flattened at one end to afford means for attaching the permanent magnet. the permanent magnet was of laminated construction, consisting of four hard steel bars _ _, extending nearly the entire length of the receiver shell. these steel bars were all magnetized separately and placed with like poles together so as to form a single bar magnet. they were laid together in pairs so as to include between the pairs the flattened end of the pole piece _ _ at one end and the flattened portion of the tail piece _ _ at the other end. this whole magnet structure, including the core, the tail piece, and the permanently magnetized steel bars, was clamped together by screws as shown. the containing shell was of hard rubber consisting of three pieces, the barrel _ _, the ear-piece _ _, and the tail cap _ _. the barrel and the ear piece engaged each other by means of a screw thread and served to clamp the diaphragm between them. the compound bar magnet was held in place within the shell by means of a screw _ _ passing through the hard rubber tail cap _ _ and into the tail block _ _ of the magnet. external binding posts mounted on the tail cap, as shown, were connected by heavy leading-in wires to the terminals of the electromagnet. a casual consideration of the magnetic circuit of this instrument will show that it was inefficient, since the return path for the lines of force set up by the bar magnet was necessarily through a very long air path. notwithstanding this, these receivers were capable of giving excellent articulation and were of marvelous delicacy of action. a very grave fault was that the magnet was supported in the shell at the end farthest removed from the diaphragm. as a result it was difficult to maintain a permanent adjustment between the pole piece and the diaphragm. one reason for this was that hard rubber and steel contract and expand under changes of temperature at very different rates, and therefore the distance between the pole piece and the diaphragm changed with changes of temperature. another grave defect, brought about by this tying together of the permanent magnet and the shell which supported the diaphragm at the end farthest from the diaphragm, was that any mechanical shocks were thus given a good chance to alter the adjustment. [illustration: fig. . single-pole receiver] modern receivers. receivers of today differ from this old single-pole receiver in two radical respects. in the first place, the modern receiver is of the bi-polar type, consisting essentially of a horseshoe magnet presenting both of its poles to the diaphragm. in the second place, the modern practice is to either support all of the working parts of the receiver, _i.e._, the magnet, the coils, and the diaphragm, by an inner metallic frame entirely independent of the shell; or, if the shell is used as a part of the structure, to rigidly fasten the several parts close to the diaphragm rather than at the end farthest removed from the diaphragm. western electric receiver. the standard bi-polar receiver of the western electric company, in use by practically all of the bell operating companies throughout this country and in large use abroad, is shown in fig. . in this the shell is of three pieces, consisting of the barrel _ _, the ear cap _ _, and the tail cap _ _. the tail cap and the barrel are permanently fastened together to form substantially a single piece. two permanently magnetized bar magnets _ - _ are employed, these being clamped together at their upper ends, as shown, so as to include the soft iron block _ _ between them. the north pole of one of these magnets is clamped to the south pole of the other, so that in reality a horseshoe magnet is formed. at their lower ends, these two permanent magnets are clamped against the soft iron pole pieces _ - _, a threaded block _ _ also being clamped rigidly between these pole pieces at this point. on the ends of the pole pieces the bobbins are wound. the whole magnet structure is secured within the shell _ _ by means of a screw thread on the block _ _ which engages a corresponding internal screw thread in the shell _ _. as a result of this construction the whole magnet structure is bound rigidly to the shell structure at a point close to the diaphragm, comparatively speaking, and as a result of this close coupling, the relation between the diaphragm and the pole piece is very much more rigid and substantial than in the case where the magnet structure and the shell were secured together at the end farthest removed from the diaphragm. [illustration: fig. . western electric receiver] although this receiver shown in fig. is the standard in use by the bell companies throughout this country, its numbers running well into the millions, it cannot be said to be a strictly modern receiver, because of at least one rather antiquated feature. the binding posts, by which the circuit conductors are led to the coils of this instrument, are mounted on the outside of the receiver shell, as indicated, and are thus subject to danger of mechanical injury and they are also exposed to the touch of the user, so that he may, in case of the wires being charged to an abnormal potential, receive a shock. probably a more serious feature than either one of these is that the terminals of the flexible cords which attach to these binding posts are attached outside of the receiver shell, and are therefore exposed to the wear and tear of use, rather than being protected as they should be within the shell. notwithstanding this undesirable feature, this receiver is a very efficient one and is excellently constructed. [illustration: fig. . kellogg receiver] kellogg receiver. in fig. is shown a bi-polar receiver with internal or concealed binding posts. this particular receiver is typical of a large number of similar kinds and is manufactured by the kellogg switchboard and supply company. two straight permanently magnetized bar magnets _ - _ are clamped together at their opposite ends so as to form a horseshoe magnet. at the end opposite the diaphragm these bars clamp between them a cylindrical piece of iron _ _, so as to complete the magnetic circuit at the end. at the end nearest the diaphragm they clamp between them the ends of the soft iron pole pieces _ - _, and also a block of composite metal _ _ having a large circular flange _ '_ which serves as a means for supporting the magnet structure within the shell. the screws by means of which the disk _ '_ is clamped to the shouldered seat in the shell do not enter the shell directly, but rather enter screw-threaded brass blocks which are moulded into the structure of the shell. it is seen from this construction that the diaphragm and the pole pieces and the magnet structure itself are all rigidly secured together through the medium of the shell at a point as close as possible to the diaphragm. between the magnets _ - _ there is clamped an insulating block _ _, to which are fastened the terminal plates _ _, one on each side of the receiver. these terminal plates are thoroughly insulated from the magnets themselves and from all other metallic parts by means of sheets of fiber, as indicated by the heavy black lines. on these plates _ _ are carried the binding posts for the receiver cord terminals. a long tongue extends from each of the plates _ _ through a hole in the disk _ '_, into the coil chamber of the receiver, at which point the terminal of the magnet winding is secured to it. this tongue is insulated from the disk _ '_, where it passes through it, by means of insulating bushing, as shown. the other terminal of the magnet coils is brought out to the other plate _ _ by means of a similar tongue on the other side. in order that the receiver terminals proper may not be subjected to any strain in case the receiver is dropped and its weight caught on the receiver cord, a strain loop is formed as a continuation of the braided covering of the receiver cord, and this is tied to the permanent magnet structure, as shown. by making this strain loop short, it is obvious that whatever pull the cord receives will not be taken by the cord conductors leading to the binding posts or by the binding posts or the cord terminals themselves. a number of other manufacturers have gone even a step further than this in securing permanency of adjustment between the receiver diaphragm and pole pieces. they have done this by not depending at all on the hard rubber shell as a part of the structure, but by enclosing the magnet coil in a cup of metal upon which the diaphragm is mounted, so that the permanency of relation between the diaphragm and the pole pieces is dependent only upon the metallic structure and not at all upon the less durable shell. direct-current receiver. until about the middle of the year , it was the universal practice to employ permanent magnets for giving the initial polarization to the magnet cores of telephone receivers. this is still done, and necessarily so, in receivers employed in connection with magneto telephones. in common-battery systems, however, where the direct transmitter current is fed from the central office to the local stations, it has been found that this current which must flow at any rate through the line may be made to serve the additional purpose of energizing the receiver magnets so as to give them the necessary initial polarity. a type of receiver has come into wide use as a result, which is commonly called the _direct-current receiver_, deriving its name from the fact that it employs the direct current that is flowing in the common-battery line to magnetize the receiver cores. the automatic electric company, of chicago, was probably the first company to adopt this form of receiver as its standard type. their receiver is shown in cross-section in fig. , and a photograph of the same instrument partially disassembled is given in fig. . the most noticeable thing about the construction of this receiver is the absence of permanent magnets. the entire working parts are contained within the brass cup _ _, which serves not only as a container for the magnet, but also as a seat for the diaphragm. this receiver is therefore illustrative of the type mentioned above, wherein the relation between the diaphragm and the pole pieces is not dependent upon any connection through the shell. [illustration: fig. . automatic electric company direct-current receiver] [illustration: fig. . automatic electric company direct-current receiver] the coil of this instrument consists of a single cylindrical spool _ _, mounted on a cylindrical core. this bobbin lies within a soft iron-punching _ _, the form of which is most clearly shown in fig. , and this punching affords a return path to the diaphragm for the lines of force set up in the magnet core. obviously a magnetizing current passing through the winding of the coil will cause the end of the core toward the diaphragm to be polarized, say positively, while the end of the enclosing shell will be polarized in the other polarity, negatively. both poles of the magnet are therefore presented to the diaphragm and the only air gap in the magnetic circuit is that between the diaphragm and these poles. the magnetic circuit is therefore one of great efficiency, since it consists almost entirely of iron, the only air gap being that across which the attraction of the diaphragm is to take place. the action of this receiver will be understood when it is stated that in common-battery practice, as will be shown in later chapters, a steady current flows over the line for energizing the transmitter. on this current is superposed the incoming voice currents from a distant station. the steady current flowing in the line will, in the case of this receiver, pass through the magnet winding and establish a normal magnetic field in the same way as if a permanent magnet were employed. the superposed incoming voice currents will then be able to vary this magnetic field in exactly the same way as in the ordinary receiver. an astonishing feature of this recent development of the so-called direct-current receiver is that it did not come into use until after about twenty years of common-battery practice. there is nothing new in the principles involved, as all of them were already understood and some of them were employed by bell in his original telephone; in fact, the idea had been advanced time and again, and thrown aside as not being worth consideration. this is an illustration of a frequent occurrence in the development of almost any rapidly growing art. ideas that are discarded as worthless in the early stages of the art are finally picked up and made use of. the reason for this is that in some cases the ideas come in advance of the art, or they are proposed before the art is ready to use them. in other cases the idea as originally proposed lacked some small but essential detail, or, as is more often the case, the experimenter in the early days did not have sufficient skill or knowledge to make it fit the requirements as he saw them. monarch receiver. the receiver of the automatic electric company just discussed employs but a single electromagnet by which the initial magnetization of the cores and also the variable magnetization necessary for speech reproduction is secured. the problem of the direct-current receiver has been attacked in another way by ernest e. yaxley, of the monarch telephone manufacturing company, with the result shown in fig. . the construction in this case is not unlike that of an ordinary permanent-magnet receiver, except that in the place of the permanent magnets two soft iron cores _ - _ are employed. on these are wound two long bobbins of insulated wire so that the direct current flowing over the telephone line will pass through these and magnetize the cores to the same degree and for the same purpose as in the case of permanent magnets. these soft iron magnet cores _ - _ continue to a point near the coil chamber, where they join the two soft iron pole pieces _ - _, upon which the ordinary voice-current coils are wound. the two long coils _ - _, which may be termed the direct-current coils, are of somewhat lower resistance than the two voice-current coils _ - _. they are, however, by virtue of their greater number of turns and the greater amount of iron that is included in their cores, of much higher impedance than the voice-current coils _ - _. these two sets of coils _ - _ and _ - _ are connected in multiple. as a result of their lower ohmic resistance the coils _ - _ will take a greater amount of the steady current which comes over the line, and therefore the greater proportion of the steady current will be employed in magnetizing the bar magnets. on account of their higher impedance to alternating currents, however, nearly all of the voice currents which are superposed on the steady currents, flowing in the line will pass through the voice-current coils _ - _, and, being near the diaphragm, these currents will so vary the steady magnetism in the cores _ - _ as to produce the necessary vibration of the diaphragm. [illustration: fig. . monarch direct-current receiver] this receiver, like the one of the automatic electric company, does not rely on the shell in any respect to maintain the permanency of relation between the pole pieces and the diaphragm. the cup _ _, which is of pressed brass, contains the voice-current coils and also acts as a seat for the diaphragm. the entire working parts of this receiver may be removed by merely unscrewing the ear piece from the hard rubber shell, thus permitting the whole works to be withdrawn in an obvious manner. dean receiver. of such decided novelty as to be almost revolutionary in character is the receiver recently put on the market by the dean electric company and shown in fig. . this receiver is of the direct-current type and employs but a single cylindrical bobbin of wire. the core of this bobbin and the return path for the magnetic lines of force set up in it are composed of soft iron punchings of substantially =e= shape. these punchings are laid together so as to form a laminated soft-iron field, the limbs of which are about square in cross-section. the coil is wound on the center portion of this _e_ as a core, the core being, as stated, approximately square in cross-section. the general form of magnetic circuit in this instrument is therefore similar to that of the automatic electric company's receiver, shown in figs. and , but the core is laminated instead of being solid as in that instrument. [illustration: fig. . dean steel shell receiver] the most unusual feature of this dean receiver is that the use of hard rubber or composition does not enter into the formation of the shell, but instead a shell composed entirely of steel stampings has been substituted therefor. the main portion of this shell is the barrel _ _. great skill has evidently been exercised in the forming of this by the cold-drawn process, it presenting neither seams nor welds. the ear piece _ _ is also formed of steel of about the same gauge as the barrel _ _. instead of screw-threading the steel parts, so that they would directly engage each other, the ingenious device has been employed of swaging a brass ring _ _ in the barrel portion and a similar brass ring _ _ in the ear cap portion, these two being slotted and keyed, as shown at _ _, so as to prevent their turning in their respective seats. the ring _ _ is provided with an external screw thread and the ring _ _ with an internal screw thread, so that the receiver cap is screwed on to the barrel in the same way as in the ordinary rubber shell. by the employment of these brass screw-threaded rings, the rusting together of the parts so that they could not be separated when required--a difficulty heretofore encountered in steel construction of similar parts--has been remedied. [illustration: fig. . working parts of dean receiver] the entire working parts of this receiver are contained within the cup _ _, the edge of which is flanged outwardly to afford a seat for the diaphragm. the diaphragm is locked in place on the shell by a screw-threaded ring _ _, as is clearly indicated. a ring _ _ of insulating material is seated within the enlarged portion of the barrel _ _, and against this the flange of the cup _ _ rests and is held in place by the cap _ _ when it is screwed home. the working parts of this receiver partially disassembled are shown in fig. , which gives a clear idea of some of the features not clearly illustrated in fig. . it cannot be denied that one of the principal items of maintenance of subscribers' station equipment has been due to the breakage of receiver shells. the users frequently allow their receiver to fall and strike heavily against the wall or floor, thus not only subjecting the cords to great strain, but sometimes cracking or entirely breaking the receiver shell. the innovation thus proposed by the dean company of making the entire receiver shell of steel is of great interest. the shell, as will be seen, is entirely insulated from the circuit of the receiver so that no contact exists by which a user could receive a shock. the shell is enameled inside and out with a heavy black insulating enamel baked on, and said to be of great durability. how this enamel will wear remains to be seen. the insulation of the interior portions of the receiver is further guarded by providing a lining of fiber within the shell at all points where it seems possible that a cross could occur between some of the working parts and the metal of the shell. this type of receiver has not been on the market long enough to draw definite conclusions, based on experience in use, as to what its permanent performance will be. thus far in this chapter only those receivers which are commonly called _hand receivers_ have been discussed. these are the receivers that are ordinarily employed by the general public. [illustration: fig. . operator's receiver] operator's receiver. at the central office in telephone exchanges the operators are provided with receivers in order that they may communicate with the subscribers or with other operators. in order that they may have both of their hands free to set up and take down the connections and to perform all of the switching operations required, a special form of receiver is employed for this purpose, which is worn as a part of a head-gear and is commonly termed a _head receiver_. these are necessarily of very light construction, in order not to be burdensome to the operators, and obviously they must be efficient. they are ordinarily held in place at the ear by a metallic head band fitting over the head of the operator. [illustration: grant avenue office of home telephone company, san francisco, cal. a type of central-office buildings in down-town districts of large cities.] such a receiver is shown in cross-section in fig. , and completely assembled with its head band in fig. . referring to fig. the shell _ _ of the receiver is of aluminum and the magnets are formed of steel rings _ _, cross-magnetized so as to present a north pole on one side of the ring and a south pole on the other. the two l-shaped pole pieces _ _ are secured by screws to the poles of these ring magnets, and these pole pieces carry the magnet coils, as is clearly indicated. these poles are presented to a soft iron diaphragm in exactly the same way as in the larger hand receivers, the diaphragm being clamped in place by a hard rubber ear piece, as shown. the head bands are frequently of steel covered with leather. they have assumed numerous forms, but the general form shown in fig. is the one commonly adopted. [illustration: fig. . operator's receiver and cord] [illustration: fig. . receiver symbols] conventional symbols. the usual diagrammatic symbols for hand and head receivers are shown in fig. . they are self-explanatory. the symbol at the left in this figure, showing the general outline of the receiver, is the one most commonly used where any sort of a receiver is to be indicated in a circuit diagram, but where it becomes desirable to indicate in the diagram the actual connections with the coil or coils of the receiver, the symbol shown at the right is to be preferred, and obviously it may be modified as to number of windings and form of core as desired. chapter vii primary cells galvani, an italian physician, discovered, in , that a current of electricity could be produced by chemical action. in , volta, a physicist, also an italian, threw further light on galvani's discovery and produced what we know as the _voltaic_, or _galvanic_, cell. in honor of these two discoverers we have the words volt, galvanic, and the various words and terms derived therefrom. simple voltaic cell. a very simple voltaic cell may be made by placing two plates, one of copper and one of zinc, in a glass vessel partly filled with dilute sulphuric acid, as shown in fig. . when the two plates are not connected by a wire or other conductor, experiment shows that the copper plate bears a positive charge with respect to the zinc plate, and the zinc plate bears a negative charge with respect to the copper. when the two plates are connected by a wire, a current flows from the copper to the zinc plate through the metallic path of the wire, just as is to be expected when any conductor of relatively high electrical potential is joined to one of relatively low electrical potential. ordinarily, when one charged body is connected to another of different potential, the resulting current is of but momentary duration, due to the redistribution of the charges and consequent equalization of potential. in the case of the simple cell, however, the current is continuous, showing that some action is maintaining the charges on the two plates and therefore maintaining the difference of potential between them. the energy of this current is derived from the chemical action of the acid on the zinc. the cell is in reality a sort of a zinc-burning furnace. in the action of the cell, when the two plates are joined by a wire, it may be noticed that the zinc plate is consumed and that bubbles of hydrogen gas are formed on the surface of the copper plate. _theory_. just why or how chemical action in a voltaic cell results in the production of a negative charge on the consumed plate is not known. modern theory has it that when an acid is diluted in water the molecules of the acid are split up or _dissociated_ into two oppositely charged atoms, or groups of atoms, one bearing a positive charge and the other a negative charge of electricity. such charged atoms or groups of atoms are called _ions_. this separation of the molecules of a chemical compound into positively and negatively charged ions is called _dissociation_. thus, in the simple cell under consideration the sulphuric acid, by dissociation, splits up into hydrogen ions bearing positive charges, and so_{ } ions bearing negative charges. the solution as a whole is neutral in potential, having an equal number of equal and opposite charges. [illustration: fig. . simple voltaic cell] it is known that when a metal is being dissolved by an acid, each atom of the metal which is torn off by the solution leaves the metal as a positively charged ion. the carrying away of positive charges from a hitherto neutral body leaves that body with a negative charge. hence the zinc, or _consumed_ plate, becomes negatively charged. in the chemical attack of the sulphuric acid on the zinc, the positive hydrogen ions are liberated, due to the affinity of the negative so_{ } ions for the positive zinc ions, this resulting in the formation of zinc sulphate in the solution. now the solution itself becomes positively charged, due to the positive charges leaving the zinc plate with the zinc ions, and the free positively charged hydrogen ions liberated in the solution as just described are repelled to the copper plate, carrying their positive charges thereto. hence the copper plate, or the _unconsumed_ plate, becomes positively charged and also coated with hydrogen bubbles. the plates or electrodes of a voltaic cell need not consist of zinc and copper, nor need the fluid, called the _electrolyte_, be of sulphuric acid; any two dissimilar elements immersed in an electrolyte that attacks one of them more readily than the other will form a voltaic cell. in every such cell it will be found that one of the plates is consumed, and that on the other plate some element is deposited, this element being sometimes a gas and sometimes a solid. the plate which is consumed is always the negative plate, and the one on which the element is deposited is always the positive, the current through the connecting wire always being, therefore, from the unconsumed to the consumed plate. thus, in the simple copper-zinc cell just considered, the zinc is consumed, the element hydrogen is deposited on the copper, and the current flow through the external circuit is from the copper to the zinc. the positive charges, leaving the zinc, or consumed, plate, and passing through the electrolyte to the copper, or unconsumed, plate, constitute in effect a current of electricity flowing within the electrolyte. the current within the cell passes, therefore, from the zinc plate to the copper plate. the zinc is, therefore, said to be positive with respect to the copper. _difference of potential._ the amount of electromotive force, that is generated between two dissimilar elements immersed in an electrolyte is different for different pairs of elements and for different electrolytes. for a given electrolyte each element bears a certain relation to another; _i.e._, they are either electro-positive or electro-negative relative to each other. in the following list a group of elements are arranged with respect to the potentials which they assume with respect to each other with dilute sulphuric acid as the electrolyte. the most electro-positive elements are at the top and the most electro-negative at the bottom. +sodium lead copper magnesium iron silver zinc nickel gold cadmium bismuth platinum tin antimony -graphite (carbon) any two elements selected from this list and immersed in dilute sulphuric acid will form a voltaic cell, the amount of difference of potential, or electromotive force, depending on the distance apart in this series of the two elements chosen. the current within the cell will always flow from the one nearest the top of the list to the one nearest the bottom, _i.e._, from the most electro-positive to the most electro-negative; and, therefore, the current in the wire joining the two plates will flow from the one lowest down in the list to the one highest up. from this series it is easy to see why zinc and copper, and also zinc and carbon, are often chosen as elements of voltaic cells. they are widely separated in the series and comparatively cheap. this series may not be taken as correct for all electrolytes, for different electrolytes alter somewhat the order of the elements in the series. thus, if two plates, one of iron and the other of copper, are immersed in dilute sulphuric acid, a current is set up which proceeds through the liquid from the iron to the copper; but, if the plates after being carefully washed are placed in a solution of potassium sulphide, a current is produced in the opposite direction. the copper is now the positive element. table ii shows the electrical deportment of the principal metals in three different liquids. it is arranged like the preceding one, each metal being electro-positive to any one lower in the list. table ii behavior of metals in different electrolytes +------------------+-------------------+--------------------+ | caustic potash | hydrochloric acid | potassium sulphide | +------------------+-------------------+--------------------+ | + zinc | + zinc | + zinc | | tin | cadmium | copper | | cadmium | tin | cadmium | | antimony | lead | tin | | lead | iron | silver | | bismuth | copper | antimony | | iron | bismuth | lead | | copper | nickel | bismuth | | nickel | silver | nickel | | - silver | - antimony | - iron | +------------------+-------------------+--------------------+ it is important to remember that in all cells, no matter what elements or what electrolyte are used, the electrode _which is consumed_ is the one that becomes _negatively charged_ and its terminal, therefore, becomes the _negative terminal_ or _pole_, while the electrode _which is not consumed_ is the one that becomes _positively charged_, and its terminal is, therefore, the _positive terminal_ or _pole of the cell_. however, because the current in the electrolyte flows from the _consumed_ plate to the _unconsumed_ plate, the consumed plate is called the _positive_ plate and the unconsumed, the _negative_. this is likely to become confusing, but if one remembers that the _active_ plate is the _positive_ plate, because it sends forth _positive_ ions in the electrolyte, and, therefore, itself becomes _negatively_ charged, one will have the proper basis always to determine the direction of the current flow, which is the important thing. _polarization._ if the simple cell already described have its terminals connected by a wire for some time, it will be found that the current rapidly weakens until it ceases to be manifest. this weakening results from two causes: first, the hydrogen gas which is liberated in the action of the cell is deposited in a layer on the copper plate, thereby covering the plate and reducing the area of contact with the liquid. this increases the internal resistance of the cell, since hydrogen is a non-conductor. second, the plate so covered becomes in effect a hydrogen electrode, and hydrogen stands high as an electro-positive element. there is, therefore, actual reduction in the electromotive force of the cell, as well as an increase in internal resistance. this phenomenon is known as polarization, and in commercial cells means must be taken to prevent such action as far as possible. the means by which polarization of cells is prevented or reduced in practice may be divided into three general classes: first--_mechanical means_. if the hydrogen bubbles be simply brushed away from the surface of the electrode the resistance and the counter polarity which they cause will be diminished. the same result may be secured if air be blown into the solution through a tube, or if the liquid be kept agitated. if the surface of the electrode be roughened or covered with points, the bubbles collect more freely at the points and are more quickly carried away to the surface of the liquid. these means are, however, hardly practical except in cells for laboratory use. second--_chemical means_. if a highly oxidizing substance be added to the electrolyte, it will destroy the hydrogen bubbles by combining with them while they are in a nascent state, and this will prevent the increase in internal resistance and the opposing electromotive force. such substances are bichromate of potash, nitric acid, and chlorine, and are largely used. third--_electro-chemical means_. double cells, arranged to separate the elements and liquids by means of porous partitions or by gravity, may be so arranged that solid copper is liberated instead of hydrogen at a point where the current leaves the liquid, thereby entirely obviating polarization. this method also is largely used. _local action._ when a simple cell stands idle, _i.e._, with its circuit open, small hydrogen bubbles may be noticed rising from the zinc electrode instead of from copper, as is the case where the circuit is closed. this is due to impurities in the zinc plate, such as particles of iron, tin, arsenic, carbon, etc. each of these particles acts with the surrounding zinc just as might be expected of any pair of dissimilar elements opposed to each other in an electrolyte; in other words, they constitute small voltaic cells. local currents, therefore, are generated, circulating between the two adjacent metals, and, as a result, the zinc plate and the electrolyte are needlessly wasted and the general condition of the cell is impaired. this is called _local action_. _amalgamated zincs._ local action might be prevented by the use of chemically pure zinc, but this, on account of its expense, cannot be employed commercially. local action, however, may be overcome to a great extent by amalgamating the zinc, _i.e._, coating it with mercury. the iron particles or other impurities do not dissolve in the mercury, as does the zinc, but they float to the surface, whence the hydrogen bubbles which may form speedily carry them off, and, in other cases, the impurities fall to the bottom of the cell. as the zinc in the pasty amalgam dissolves in the acid, the film of mercury unites with fresh zinc, and so always presents a clear, bright, homogeneous surface to the action of the electrolyte. the process of amalgamating the zinc may be performed by dipping it in a solution composed of nitric acid lb. muriatic acid lbs. mercury oz. the acids should be first mixed and then the mercury slowly added until dissolved. clean the zinc with lye and then dip it in the solution for a second or two. rinse in clean water and rub with a brush. another method of amalgamating zincs is to clean them by dipping them in dilute sulphuric acid and then in mercury, allowing the surplus to drain off. commercial zincs, for use in voltaic cells as now manufactured, usually have about per cent of mercury added to the molten zinc before casting into the form of plates or rods. series and multiple connections. when a number of voltaic cells are joined in series, the positive pole of one being connected to the negative pole of the next one, and so on throughout the series, the _electromotive forces_ of all the cells are added, and the electromotive force of the group, therefore, becomes the sum of the electromotive forces of the component cells. the currents through all the cells in this case will be equal to that of one cell. if the cells be joined in multiple, the positive poles all being connected by one wire and the negative poles by another, then the _currents_ of all the cells will be added while the electromotive force of the combination remains the same as that of a single cell, assuming all the cells to be alike in electromotive force. obviously combinations of these two arrangements may be made, as by forming strings of cells connected in series, and connecting the strings in multiple or parallel. the term battery is frequently applied to a single voltaic cell, but this term is more properly used to designate a plurality of cells joined together in series, or in multiple, or in series multiple so as to combine their actions in causing current to flow through an external circuit. we may therefore refer to a battery of so many cells. it has, however, become common, though technically improper, to refer to a single cell as a battery, so that the term battery, as indicating necessarily more than one cell, has largely lost its significance. cells may be of two types, primary and secondary. primary cells are those consisting of electrodes of dissimilar elements which, when placed in an electrolyte, become immediately ready for action. secondary cells, commonly called _storage cells_ and _accumulators_, consist always of two inert plates of metal, or metallic oxide, immersed in an electrolyte which is incapable of acting on either of them until a current has first been passed through the electrolyte from one plate to the other. on the passage of a current in this way, the decomposition of the electrolyte is effected and the composition of the plates is so changed that one of them becomes electro-positive and the other electro-negative. the cell is then, when the _charging_ current ceases, capable of acting as a voltaic cell. this chapter is devoted to the primary cell or battery alone. types of primary cells. primary cells may be divided into two general classes: first, those adapted to furnish constant current; and second, those adapted to furnish only intermittent currents. the difference between cells in this respect rests largely in the means employed for preventing or lessening polarization. obviously in a cell in which polarization is entirely prevented the current may be allowed to flow constantly until the cell is completely exhausted; that is, until the zinc is all eaten up or until the hydrogen is exhausted from the electrolyte or both. on the other hand some cells are so constituted that polarization takes place faster than the means intended to prevent it can act. in other words, the polarization gradually gains on the preventive means and so gradually reduces the current by increasing the resistance of the cell and lowering its electromotive force. in cells of this kind, however, the arrangement is such that if the cell is allowed to rest, that is, if the external circuit is opened, the depolarizing agency will gradually act to remove the hydrogen from the unattacked electrode and thus place the cell in good condition for use again. of these two types of primary cells the intermittent-current cell is of far greater use in telephony than the constant-current cell. this is because the use of primary batteries in telephony is, in the great majority of cases, intermittent, and for that reason a cell which will give a strong current for a few minutes and which after such use will regain practically all of its initial strength and be ready for use again, is more desirable than one which will give a weaker current continuously throughout a long period of time. since the cells which are adapted to give constant current are commonly used in connection with circuits that are continuously closed, they are called _closed-circuit cells_. the other cells, which are better adapted for intermittent current, are commonly used on circuits which stand open most of the time and are closed only occasionally when their current is desired. for this reason these are termed _open-circuit cells_. _open-circuit cells_. leclanché cell:--by far the most important primary cell for telephone work is the so-called leclanché cell. this assumes a large variety of forms, but always employs zinc as the negatively charged element, carbon as the positively charged element, and a solution of sal ammoniac as the electrolyte. this cell employs a chemical method of taking care of polarization, the depolarizing agent being peroxide of manganese, which is closely associated with the carbon element. the original form of the leclanché cell, a form in which it was very largely used up to within a short time ago, is shown in fig. . in this the carbon element is placed within a cylindrical jar of porous clay, the walls of this jar being of such consistency as to allow moisture slowly to permeate through it. within this porous cup, as it is called, a plate or disk of carbon is placed, and around this the depolarizing agent, consisting of black oxide of manganese. this is usually mixed with, broken carbon, so as to increase the effective area of the carbon element in contact with the depolarizing agent, and also to reduce the total internal resistance of the cell. the zinc electrode usually consisted merely in a rod of zinc, as shown, with a suitable terminal at its upper end. [illustration: fig. . leclanché cell] the chemical action taking place within the leclanché cell is, briefly, as follows: sal ammoniac is chemically known as chloride of ammonium and is a combination of chlorine and ammonia. in the action which is assumed to accompany the passage of current in this cell, the sal ammoniac is decomposed, the chlorine leaving the ammonia to unite with an atom of the zinc plate, forming chloride of zinc and setting free ammonia and hydrogen. the ammonia is immediately dissolved in the water of the cell, and the hydrogen enters the porous cup and would speedily polarize the cell by adhering to the carbon plate but for the fact that it encounters the peroxide of manganese. this material is exceedingly rich in oxygen and it therefore readily gives up a part of its oxygen, which forms water by combination with the already liberated hydrogen and leaves what is termed a _sesquioxide_ of manganese. this absorption or combination of the hydrogen prevents immediate polarization, but hydrogen is evolved during the operation of the cell more rapidly than it can combine with[typo was 'wth'] the oxygen of the manganese, thereby leading to polarization more rapidly than the depolarizer can prevent it when the cell is heavily worked. when, however, the cell is left with its external circuit open for a time, depolarization ensues by the gradual combination of the hydrogen with the oxygen of the peroxide of manganese, and as a result the cell recuperates and in a short time attains its normal electromotive force. the electromotive force of this cell when new is about . volts. the internal resistance of the cell of the type shown in fig. is approximately ohm, ordinarily less rather than more. a more recent form of leclanché cell is shown in cross-section in fig. . this uses practically the same materials and has the same chemical action as the old disk leclanché cell shown in fig. . it dispenses, however, with the porous cup and instead employs a carbon electrode, which in itself forms a cup for the depolarizing agent. [illustration: fig. . carbon cylinder leclanché cell] the carbon electrode is in the form of a corrugated hollow cylinder which engages by means of an internal screw thread a corresponding screw thread on the outer side of the carbon cover. within this cylinder is contained a mixture of broken carbon and peroxide of manganese. the zinc electrode is in the form of a hollow cylinder almost surrounding the carbon electrode and separated therefrom by means of heavy rubber bands stretched around the carbon. the rod, forming the terminal of the zinc, passes through a porcelain bushing on the cover plate to obviate short circuits. this type of cell has an electromotive force of about . volts and recuperates very quickly after severe use. it also has considerably lower internal resistance than the type of leclanché cell employing a porous cup, and, therefore, is capable of generating a considerably larger current. cells of this general type have assumed a variety of forms. in some the carbon electrode, together with the broken carbon and peroxide of manganese, were packed into a canvas bag which was suspended in the electrolyte and usually surrounded by the zinc electrode. in other forms the carbon electrode has moulded with it the manganese depolarizer. in order to prevent the salts within the cell from creeping over the edge of the containing glass jar and also over the upper portion of the carbon electrode, it is common practice to immerse the upper end of the carbon element and also the upper edge of the glass jar in hot paraffin. in setting up the leclanché cell, place not more than four ounces of white sal ammoniac in the jar, fill the jar one-third full of water, and stir until the sal ammoniac is all dissolved. then put the carbon and zinc elements in place. a little water poured in the vent hole of the porous jar or carbon cylinder will tend to hasten the action. an excess of sal ammoniac should not be used, as a saturated solution tends to deposit crystals on the zinc; on the other hand, the solution should not be allowed to become too weak, as in that case the chloride of zinc will form on the zinc. both of these causes materially increase the resistance of the cell. a great advantage of the leclanché cell is that when not in use there is but little material waste. it contains no highly corrosive chemicals. such cells require little attention, and the addition of water now and then to replace the loss due to evaporation is about all that is required until the elements become exhausted. they give a relatively high electromotive force and have a moderately low internal resistance, so that they are capable of giving rather large currents for short intervals of time. if properly made, they recuperate quickly after polarization due to heavy use. _dry cell_. all the forms of cells so far considered may be quite properly termed _wet cells_ because of the fact that a free liquid electrolyte is used. this term is employed in contradistinction to the later developed cell, commonly termed the _dry cell_. this term "dry cell" is in some respects a misnomer, since it is not dry and if it were dry it would not work. it is essential to the operation of these cells that they shall be moist within, and when such moisture is dissipated the cell is no longer usable, as there is no further useful chemical action. the dry cells are all of the leclanché type, the liquid electrolyte of that type being replaced by a semi-solid substance that is capable of retaining moisture for a considerable period. as in the ordinary wet leclanché cell, the electrodes are of carbon and zinc, the zinc element being in the form of a cylindrical cup and forming the retaining vessel of the cell, while the carbon element is in the form of a rod or plate and occupies a central position with regard to the zinc, being held out of contact with the zinc, however, at all points. a cross-section of an excellent form of dry cell is shown in fig. . the outer casing is of zinc, formed in the shape of a cylindrical cup, and serves not only as the retaining vessel, but as the negatively charged electrode. the outer surface of the zinc is completely covered on its sides and bottom with heavy pasteboard so as to insulate it from bodies with which it may come in contact, and particularly from the zinc cups of other cells used in the same battery. the positively charged electrode is a carbon rod corrugated longitudinally, as shown, in order to obtain greater surface. this rod is held in the center of the zinc cup out of contact therewith, and the intervening space is filled with a mixture of peroxide of manganese, powdered carbon, and sal ammoniac. several thicknesses of blotting paper constitute a lining for the inner portion of the zinc electrode and serve to prevent the manganese mixture from coming directly into contact therewith. the cell is sealed with pitch, which is placed on a layer of sand and sawdust mixed in about equal parts. [illustration: fig. . dry cell] the electrolyte in such cells varies largely as to quantities and proportions of the materials employed in various types of cells, and also varies in the method in which the elements are introduced into the container. the following list and approximate proportions of material will serve as a fair example of the filling mixture in well-known types of cells. manganese dioxide per cent carbon or graphite, or both per cent sal ammoniac per cent zinc chloride per cent water is added to the above and a sufficient amount of mixture is taken for each cell to fill the zinc cup about seven-eighths full when the carbon is in place. the most suitable quantity of water depends upon the original dryness and fineness of material and upon the quality of the paper lining. in some forms of dry batteries, starch or other paste is added to improve the contact of the electrolyte with the zinc and promote a more even distribution of action throughout the electrolyte. mercury, too, is often added to effect amalgamation of the zinc. as in the ordinary wet type of leclanché cell, the purpose of the manganese is to act as a depolarizer; the carbon or graphite being added to give conductivity to the manganese and to form a large electrode surface. it is important that the sal ammoniac, which is the active agent of the cell, should be free from lumps in order to mix properly with the manganese and carbon. a small local action takes place in the dry cell, caused by the dissimilar metals necessarily employed in soldering up the zinc cup and in soldering the terminal rod of zinc to the zinc cup proper. this action, however, is slight in the better grades of cells. as a result of this, and also of the gradual drying out of the moisture within the cell, these cells gradually deteriorate even when not in use--this is commonly called _shelf-wear_. shelf-wear is much more serious in the very small sizes of dry cells than in the larger ones. dry cells are made in a large number of shapes and sizes. the most useful form, however, is the ordinary cylindrical type. these are made in sizes varying from one and one-half inches high and three-quarters inch in diameter to eight inches high and three and three-quarters inches in diameter. the most used and standard size of dry cell is of cylindrical form six inches high and two and three-quarters inches in diameter. the dry cell when new and in good condition has an open-circuit voltage of from . to . volts. perhaps . represents the usual average. a cell of the two and three-quarters by six-inch size will give throughout its useful life probably thirty ampere hours as a maximum, but this varies greatly with the condition of use and the make of cell. its effective voltage during its useful life averages about one volt, and if during this life it gives a total discharge of thirty ampere hours, the fair energy rating of the cell will be thirty watt-hours. this may not be taken as an accurate figure, however, as the watt-hour capacity of a cell depends very largely, not only on the make of the cell, but on the rate of its discharge. an examination of fig. shows that the dry cell has all of the essential elements of the leclanché cell. the materials of which the electrodes are made are the same and the porous cup of the disk leclanché cell is represented in the dry cell by the blotting-paper cylinder, which separates the zinc from the carbon electrode. the positively charged electrode must not be considered as merely the carbon plate or rod alone, but rather the carbon rod with its surrounding mixture of peroxide of manganese and broken carbon. such being the case, it is obvious that the separation between the electrodes is very small, while the surface presented by both electrodes is very large. as a result, the internal resistance of the cell is small and the current which it will give on a short circuit is correspondingly large. a good cell of the two and three-quarters by six-inch size will give eighteen or twenty amperes on short-circuit, when new. as the action of the cell proceeds, zinc chloride and ammonia are formed, and there being insufficient water to dissolve the ammonia, there results the formation of double chlorides of zinc and ammonium. these double chlorides are less soluble than the chlorides and finally occupy the pores of the paper lining between the electrolyte and the zinc and greatly increase the internal resistance of the cell. this increase of resistance is further contributed to by the gradual drying out of the cell as its age increases. within the last few years dry batteries have been so perfected mechanically, chemically, and electrically that they have far greater outputs and better recuperative power than any of the other types of leclanché batteries, while in point of convenience and economy, resulting from their small size and non-breakable, non-spillable features and low cost, they leave no room for comparison. _closed-circuit cells_. gravity-cell:--coming now to the consideration of closed-circuit or constant-current cells, the most important is the well-known gravity, or blue-stone, cell, devised by daniell. it is largely used in telegraphy, and often in telephony in such cases as require a constantly flowing current of small quantity. such a cell is shown in fig. . the elements of the gravity cell are electrodes of copper and zinc. the solution in which the copper plate is immersed is primarily a solution of copper sulphate, commonly known as blue-stone, in water. the zinc plate after the cell is in action is immersed in a solution of sulphate of zinc which is formed around it. the glass jar is usually cylindrical, the standard sizes being inches diameter and inches deep; and also inches diameter and inches deep. the copper electrode is of sheet copper of the form shown, and it is partly covered with crystals of blue-stone or copper sulphate. frequently, in later forms of cells, the copper electrode consists merely of a straight, thick, rectangular bar of copper laid horizontally, directly on top of the blue-stone crystals. in all cases a rubber-insulated wire is attached by riveting to the copper electrode, and passes up through the electrolyte to form the positive terminal. [illustration: fig. . gravity cell] the zinc is, as a rule, of crowfoot form, as shown, whence this cell derives the commonly applied name of _crowfoot cell_. this is essentially a two-fluid cell, for in its action zinc sulphate is formed, and this being lighter than copper sulphate rises to the top of the jar and surrounds the zinc. gravity, therefore, serves to keep the two fluids separate. [illustration: interior of warehouse for telephone construction material] in the action of the cell, when the external circuit is closed, sulphuric acid is formed which attacks the zinc to form sulphate of zinc and to liberate hydrogen, which follows its tendency to attach itself to the copper plate. but in so doing the hydrogen necessarily passes through the solution of sulphate of copper surrounding the copper plate. the hydrogen immediately combines with the so_{ } radical, forming therewith sulphuric acid, and liberating metallic copper. this sulphuric acid, being lighter than the copper sulphate, rises to the surface of the zinc and attacks the zinc, thus forming more sulphate of zinc. the metallic copper so formed is deposited on the copper plate, thereby keeping the surface bright and clean. since hydrogen is thus diverted from the copper plate, polarization does not ensue. the zinc sulphate being colorless, while the copper sulphate is of a dark blue color, the separating line of the two liquids is easily distinguishable. this line is called the _blue line_ and care should be taken that it does not reach the zinc and cause a deposit of copper to be placed thereon. as has been stated, these two liquids do not mix readily, but they will eventually mingle unless the action of the cell is sufficient to use up the copper sulphate as speedily as it is dissolved. thus it will be seen that while the cell is free from polarization and local action, there is, nevertheless, a deteriorating effect if the cell is allowed to remain long on open circuit. therefore, it should be used when a constant current is required. prevention of creeping:--much trouble has been experienced in gravity cells due to the creeping of the salts over the edge of the jar. frequently the upper edges of the jars are coated by dipping in hot paraffin wax in the hope of preventing this. sometimes oil is poured on top of the fluid in the jar to prevent the creeping of the salts and the evaporation of the electrolyte. the following account of experiments performed by mr. william reid, of chicago, throws light on the relative advantages of these and other methods of preventing creeping. the experiment was made with gravity cells having -inch by -inch glass jars. four cells were made up and operated in a rather dry, warm place, although perhaps under no more severe local conditions than would be found in most telephone exchanges. cell no. was a plain cell as ordinarily used. cell no. had the top of the rim of the jar treated with paraffin wax by dipping the rim to about one inch in depth in melted paraffin wax. cell no. had melted paraffin wax poured over the surface of the liquid forming a seal about / inch in thickness. after cooling, a few small holes were bored through the seal to let gases escape. cell no. had a layer of heavy paraffin oil nearly / inch in thickness (about oz. being used) on top of the solutions. these cells were all run on a load of . to . amperes for - / hours per day for thirty days, after which the following results were noted: (_a_) the plain cell, or cell no. , had to have ounces of water added to it to replace that which had evaporated. the creeping of zinc sulphate salts was very bad. (_b_) the waxed rim cell, or cell no. , evaporated ounces of water and the creeping of zinc sulphate salts was not prevented by the waxed rim. the wax proved of no value. (_c_) the wax sealed cell, or cell no. , showed practically no evaporation and only very slight creeping of zinc sulphate salts. the creeping of salts that took place was only around spots where the edges of the seal were loose from the jar. (_d_) the paraffin oil sealed cell, or cell no. , showed no evaporation and no creeping of salts. it was concluded by mr. reid from the above experiments that the wax applied to the rim of the jar is totally ineffective and has no merits. the wax seal loosens around the edges and does not totally prevent creeping of the zinc sulphate salts, although nearly so. the wax-sealed jar must have holes drilled in it to allow the gases to escape. the method is hardly commercial, as it is difficult to make a neat appearing cell, besides making it almost impossible to manipulate its contents. a coat of paraffin oil approximately / inch in thickness (about ounces) gives perfect protection against evaporation and creeping of the zinc sulphate salts. the cell, having the paraffin-oil seal, had a very neat, clean appearance as compared with cells no. and no. . it was found that the zinc could be drawn out through the oil, cleaned, and replaced with no appreciable effect on voltage or current. setting up:--in setting up the battery the copper electrode is first unfolded to form a cross and placed in the bottom of the jar. enough copper sulphate, or blue-stone crystals, is then dropped into the jar to almost cover the copper. the zinc crowfoot is then hung in place, occupying a position about inches above the top of the copper. clear water is then poured in sufficient to fill the jar within about an inch of the top. if it is not required to use the cell at once, it may be placed on short circuit for a time and allowed to form its own zinc sulphate. the cell may, however, be made immediately available for use by drawing about one-half pint of a solution of zinc sulphate from a cell already in use and pouring it into the jar, or, when this is not convenient, by putting into the liquid four or five ounces of pulverized sulphate of zinc, or by adding about ten drops of sulphuric acid. when the cell is in proper working condition, one-half inch in thickness of heavy paraffin oil of good quality may be added. if the blue line gets too low, and if there is in the bottom of the cell a sufficient quantity of sulphate of copper, it may be raised by drawing off a portion of the zinc sulphate with a battery syringe and replacing this with water. if the blue line gets too high, it may be lowered by short-circuiting the cell for a time, or by the addition of more sulphate of zinc solution from another battery. if the copper sulphate becomes exhausted, it should be replenished by dropping in more crystals. care should be taken in cold weather to maintain the temperature of the battery above ° or ° fahrenheit. if below this temperature, the internal resistance of a cell increases very rapidly, so much so that even at ° fahrenheit the action becomes very much impaired. this follows from the facts that the resistance of a liquid decreases as its temperature rises, and that chemical action is much slower at lower temperatures. the gravity cell has a practically constant voltage of . volts. its internal resistance is comparatively high, seldom falling below ohm and often rising to ohms. at best, therefore, it is only capable of producing about ampere. the gravity cell is perhaps the most common type of cell wherein depolarization is affected by electro-chemical means. fuller cell:--a form of cell that is adapted to very heavy open-circuit work and also closed-circuit work where heavier currents are required than can be supplied by the gravity battery is the fuller. in this the electrodes are of zinc and carbon, respectively, the zinc usually being in the form of a heavy cone and placed within a porous cup. the electrolyte of the fuller cell is known as _electropoion fluid_, and consists of a mixture of sodium or potassium bichromate, sulphuric acid, and water. the various parts of the standard fuller cell, as once largely employed by the various bell operating companies, are shown in fig. . in this the jar was made of flint glass, cylindrical in form, six inches in diameter and eight inches deep. it is important that a good grade of glass be used for the jar in this cell, because, on account of the nature of the electrolyte, breakage is disastrous in the effects it may produce on adjacent property. the carbon plate is rectangular in form, about four inches wide, eight and three-quarters inches long, and one-quarter inch thick. the metal terminal at the top of the carbon block is of bronze, both it and the lock nuts and bolts being nickel-plated to minimize corrosion. the upper end of the carbon block is soaked in paraffin so hot as to drive all of the moisture out of the paraffin and out of the pores of the block itself. the zinc, as is noted from the cut, is in the form of a truncated cone. it is about two and one-eighth inches in diameter at the base and two and one-half inches high. cast into the zinc is a soft copper wire about no. b. & s. gauge. this wire extends above the top of the jar so as to form a convenient terminal for the cell. the porous cup is cylindrical in form, about three inches in diameter and seven inches deep. the wooden cover is of kiln-dried white wood thoroughly coated with two coats of asphalt paint. it is provided with a slot for the carbon and a hole for the copper wire extending to the zinc. the electrolyte for this cell is made as follows: sodium bichromate oz. sulphuric acid oz. soft water oz. this solution is mixed by dissolving the bichromate of sodium in the water and then adding slowly the sulphuric acid. potassium bichromate may be substituted for the sodium bichromate. in setting up this cell, the amalgamated zinc is placed within the porous cup, in the bottom of which are about two teaspoonfuls of mercury, the latter serving to keep the zinc well amalgamated. the porous cup is then placed in the glass jar and a sufficient quantity of the electrolyte is placed in the outer jar to come within about one and one-half inches of the top of the porous cup. about two teaspoonfuls of salt are then placed in the porous cup and sufficient soft water added to bring the level of the liquid within the porous cup even with the level of the electrolyte in the jar surrounding the cup. the carbon is then placed through the slot in the cover, and the wire from the zinc is passed through the hole in the cover provided for it, and the cover is allowed to fall in place. the cell is now ready for immediate use. the action of this cell is as follows: the sulphuric acid attacks the zinc and forms zinc sulphate, liberating hydrogen. the hydrogen attempts to pass to the carbon plate as usual, but in so doing it meets with the oxygen of the chromic acid and forms water therewith. the remainder of the chromic acid combines with the sulphuric acid to form chromium sulphate. [illustration: fig . fuller cell] the mercury placed in the bottom of the porous cup with the zinc keeps the zinc in a state of perpetual amalgamation. this it does by capillary action, as the mercury spreads over the entire surface of the zinc. the initial amalgamation, while not absolutely essential, helps in a measure this capillary action. in another well-known type of the fuller battery the carbon is a hollow cylinder, surrounding the porous cup. in this type the zinc usually took the form of a long bar having a cross-shaped section, the length of this bar being sufficient to extend the entire depth of the porous cup. this type of cell has the advantage of a somewhat lower internal resistance than the standard form just described. should the electrolyte become supersaturated by virtue of the battery being neglected or too heavily overworked, a set of secondary reactions will occur in the cell, resulting in the formation of the yellow crystals upon the carbon. this seriously affects the e.m.f. of the cell and also its internal resistance. should this occur, some of the solution should be withdrawn and dilute sulphuric acid inserted in its place and the crystals which have formed on the carbon should be carefully washed off. should the solution lose its orange tint and turn blue, it indicates that more bichromate of potash or bichromate of sodium is needed. this cell gives an electromotive force of . volts and a very large current when it is in good condition, since its internal resistance is low. the fuller cell was once largely used for supplying current to telephone transmitters at subscribers' stations, where very heavy service was demanded, but the advent of the so-called common-battery systems, in some cases, and of the high-resistance transmitter, in other cases, has caused a great lessening in its use. this is fortunate as the cell is a "dirty" one to handle and is expensive to maintain. the fuller cell still warrants attention, however, as an available source of current, which may be found useful in certain cases of emergency work, and in supplying special but temporary needs for heavier current than the leclanché or gravity cell can furnish. lalande cell:--a type of cell, specially adapted to constant-current work, and sometimes used as a central source of current in very small common-battery exchanges is the so-called _copper oxide_, or _lalande cell_, of which the edison and the gordon are types. in all of these the negatively charged element is of zinc, the positively charged element a mass of copper oxide, and the electrolyte a solution of caustic potash in water. in the edison cell the copper oxide is in the form of a compressed slab which with its connecting copper support forms the electrode. in the gordon and other cells of this type the copper oxide is contained loosely in a perforated cylinder of sheet copper. the copper oxide serves not only as an electrode, but also as a depolarizing agent, the liberated hydrogen in the electrolyte uniting with the oxygen of the copper oxide to form water, and leaving free metallic copper. on open circuit the elements are not attacked, therefore there is no waste of material while the cell is not in use. this important feature, and the fact that the internal resistance is low, make this cell well adapted for all forms of heavy open-circuit work. the fact that there is no polarizing action within the cell makes it further adaptable to heavy closed-circuit service. these cells are intended to be so proportioned that all of their parts become exhausted at once so that when the cell fails, complete renewals are necessary. therefore, there is never a question as to which of the elements should be renewed. after the elements and solution are in place about one-fourth of an inch of heavy paraffin oil is poured upon the surface of the solution in order to prevent evaporation. this cell requires little attention and will maintain a constant e.m.f. of about two-thirds of a volt until completely exhausted. it is non-freezable at all ordinary temperatures. its low voltage is its principal disadvantage. _standard cell_. chloride of silver cell:--the chloride of silver cell is largely used as a standard for testing purposes. its compactness and portability and its freedom from local action make it particularly adaptable to use in portable testing outfits where constant electromotive force and very small currents are required. [illustration: fig. . chloride of silver cell] a cross-section of one form of the cell is shown in fig. . its elements are a rod of chemically-pure zinc and a rod of chloride of silver immersed in a water solution of sal ammoniac. as ordinarily constructed, the glass jar or tube is usually about - / inches long by inch in diameter. after the solution is poured in and the elements are in place the glass tube is hermetically sealed with a plug of paraffin wax. the e.m.f. of a cell of this type is . volts and the external resistance varies with the age of the cell, being about ohms at first. care should be taken not to short-circuit these cells, or use them in any but high-resistance circuits, as they have but little energy and become quickly exhausted if compelled to work in low-resistance circuits. conventional symbol. the conventional symbol for a cell, either of the primary or the secondary type, consists of a long thin line and a short heavy line side by side and parallel. a battery is represented by a number of pairs of such lines, as in fig. . the two lines of each pair are supposed to represent the two electrodes of a cell. where any significance is to be placed on the polarity of the cell or battery the long thin line is supposed to represent the positively charged plate and the short thick line the negatively charged plate. the number of pairs may indicate the number of cells in the battery. frequently, however, a few pairs of such lines are employed merely for the purpose of indicating a battery without regard to its polarity or its number of cells. [illustration: fig. . battery symbols] in fig. the representation at _a_ is that of a battery of a number of cells connected in parallel; that at _b_ of a battery with the cells connected in series; and that at _c_ of a battery with one of its poles grounded. chapter viii magneto signaling apparatus method of signaling. the ordinary apparatus, by which speech is received telephonically, is not capable of making sufficiently loud sounds to attract the attention of people at a distance from the instrument. for this reason it is necessary to employ auxiliary apparatus for the purpose of signaling between stations. in central offices where an attendant is always on hand, the sense of sight is usually appealed to by the use of signals which give a visual indication, but in the case of telephone instruments for use by the public, the sense of hearing is appealed to by employing an audible rather than a visual signal. battery bell. the ordinary vibrating or battery bell, such as is employed for door bells, is sometimes, though not often, employed in telephony. it derives its current from primary batteries or from any direct-current source. the reason why they are not employed to a greater extent in telephony is that telephone signals usually have to be sent over lines of considerable length and the voltage that would be required to furnish current to operate such bells over such lengths of line is higher than would ordinarily be found in the batteries commonly employed in telephone work. besides this the make-and-break contacts on which the, ordinary battery bell depends for its operation are an objectionable feature from the standpoint of maintenance. magneto bell. fortunately, however, there has been developed a simpler type of electric bell, which operates on smaller currents, and which requires no make-and-break contacts whatever. this simpler form of bell is commonly known as the _polarized_, or _magneto_, bell or _ringer_. it requires for its operation, in its ordinary form, an alternating current, though in its modified forms it may be used with pulsating currents, that is, with periodically recurring impulses of current always in the same direction. magneto generator. in the early days of telephony there was nearly always associated with each polarized bell a magneto generator for furnishing the proper kind of current to ring such bells. each telephone was therefore equipped, in addition to the transmitter and receiver, with a signal-receiving device in the form of a polarized bell, and with a current generator by which the user was enabled to develop his own currents of suitable kind and voltage for ringing the bells of other stations. considering the signaling apparatus of the telephones alone, therefore, each telephone was equipped with a power plant for generating currents used by that station in signaling other stations, the prime mover being the muscles of the user applied to the turning of a crank on the side of the instrument; and also with a current-consuming device in the form of a polarized electromagnetic bell adapted to receive the currents generated at other stations and to convert a portion of their energy into audible signals. the magneto generator is about the simplest type of dynamo-electric machine, and it depends upon the same principles of operation as the much larger generators, employed in electric-lighting and street-railway power plants, for instance. instead of developing the necessary magnetic field by means of electromagnets, as in the case of the ordinary dynamo, the field of the magneto generator is developed by permanent magnets, usually of the horseshoe form. hence the name _magneto_. [illustration: fig. . principles of magneto generator] in order to concentrate the magnetic field within the space in which the armature revolves, pole pieces of iron are so arranged in connection with the poles of the permanent magnet as to afford a substantially cylindrical space in which the armature conductors may revolve and through which practically all the magnetic lines of force set up by the permanent magnets will pass. in fig. there is shown, diagrammatically, a horseshoe magnet with such a pair of pole pieces, between which a loop of wire is adapted to rotate. the magnet _ _ is of hardened steel and permanently magnetized. the pole pieces are shown at _ _ and _ _, each being of soft iron adapted to make good magnetic contact on its flat side with the inner flat surface of the bar magnet, and being bored out so as to form a cylindrical recess between them as indicated. the direction of the magnetic lines of force set up by the bar magnet through the interpolar space is indicated by the long horizontal arrows, this flow being from the north pole (n) to the south pole (s) of the magnet. at _ _ there is shown a loop of wire supposed to revolve in the magnetic field of force on the axis _ - _. theory. in order to understand how currents will be generated in this loop of wire _ _, it is only necessary to remember that if a conductor is so moved as to cut across magnetic lines of force, an electromotive force will be set up in the conductor which will tend to make the current flow through it. the magnitude of the electromotive force will depend on the rate at which the conductor cuts through the lines of force, or, in other words, on the number of lines of force that are cut through by the conductor in a given unit of time. again, the direction of the electromotive force depends on the direction of the cutting, so that if the conductor be moved in one direction across the lines of force, the electromotive force and the current will be in one direction; while if it moves in the opposite direction across the lines of force, the electromotive force and the current will be in the reverse direction. it is, evident that as the loop of wire _ _ revolves in the field of force about the axis _ - _, the portions of the conductor parallel to the axis will cut through the lines of force, first in one direction and then in the other, thus producing electromotive forces therein, first in one direction and then in the other. referring now to fig. , and supposing that the loop _ _ is revolving in the direction of the curved arrow shown between the upper edges of the pole pieces, it will be evident that just as the loop stands in the vertical position, its horizontal members will be moving in a horizontal direction, parallel with the lines of force and, therefore, not cutting them at all. the electromotive force and the current will, therefore, be zero at this time. as the loop advances toward the position shown in dotted lines, the upper portion of the loop that is parallel with the axis will begin to cut downwardly through the lines of force, and likewise the lower portion of the loop that is parallel with the axis will begin to cut upwardly through the lines of force. this will cause electromotive forces in opposite directions to be generated in these portions of the loop, and these will tend to aid each other in causing a current to circulate in the loop in the direction shown by the arrows associated with the dotted representation of the loop. it is evident that as the motion of the loop progresses, the rate of cutting the lines of force will increase and will be a maximum when the loop reaches a horizontal position, or at that time the two portions of the loop that are parallel with the axis will be traveling at right angles to the lines of force. at this point, therefore, the electromotive force and the current will be a maximum. from this point until the loop again assumes a vertical position, the cutting of the lines of force will still be in the same direction, but at a constantly decreasing rate, until, finally, when the loop is vertical the movement of the parts of the loop that are parallel with the axis will be in the direction of the lines of force and, therefore, no cutting will take place. at this point, therefore, the electromotive force and the current in the loop again will be zero. we have seen, therefore, that in this half revolution of the loop from the time when it was in a vertical position to a time when it was again in a vertical position but upside down, the electromotive force varied from zero to a maximum and back to zero, and the current did the same. it is easy to see that, as the loop moves through the next half revolution, an exactly similar rise and fall of electromotive force and current will take place; but this will be in the opposite direction, since that portion of the loop which was going down through the lines of force is now going up, and the portion which was previously going up is now going down. the law concerning the generation of electromotive force and current in a conductor that is cutting through lines of magnetic force, may be stated in another way, when the conductor is bent into the form of a loop, as in the case under consideration: thus, _if the number of lines of force which pass through a conducting loop be varied, electromotive forces will be generated in the loop_. this will be true whether the number of lines passing through the loop be varied by moving the loop within the field of force or by varying the field of force itself. in any case, _if the number of lines of force be increased, the current will flow in one way, and if it be diminished the current will flow in the other way_. the amount of the current will depend, other things being equal, on the rate at which the lines of force through the loop are being varied, regardless of the method by which the variation is made to take place. one revolution of the loop, therefore, results in a complete cycle of alternating current consisting of one positive followed by one negative impulse. the diagram of fig. is merely intended to illustrate the principle involved. in the practical construction of magneto generators more than one bar magnet is used, and, in addition, the conductors in the armature are so arranged as to include a great many loops of wire. furthermore, the conductors in the armature are wound around an iron core so that the path through the armature loops or turns, may present such low reluctance to the passage of lines of force as to greatly increase the number of such lines and also to cause practically all of them to go through the loops in the armature conductor. armature. the iron upon which the armature conductors are wound is called the _core_. the core of an ordinary armature is shown in fig. . this is usually made of soft gray cast iron, turned so as to form bearing surfaces at _ _ and _ _, upon which the entire armature may rotate, and also turned so that the surfaces _ _ will be truly cylindrical with respect to the axis through the center of the shaft. the armature conductors are put on by winding the space between the two parallel faces _ _ as full of insulated wire as space will admit. one end of the armature winding is soldered to the pin _ _ and, therefore, makes contact with the frame of the generator, while the other end of the winding is soldered to the pin _ _, which engages the stud _ _, carried in an insulating bushing in a longitudinal hole in the end of the armature shaft. it is thus seen that the frame of the machine will form one terminal of the armature winding, while the insulated stud _ _ will form the other terminal. [illustration: fig. . generator armature] another form of armature largely employed in recent magneto generators is illustrated in fig. . in this the shaft on which the armature revolves does not form an integral part of the armature core but consists of two cylindrical studs _ _ and _ _ projecting from the centers of disks _ _ and _ _, which are screwed to the ends of the core _ _. this =h= type of armature core, as it is called, while containing somewhat more parts than the simpler type shown in fig. , possesses distinct advantages in the matter of winding. by virtue of its simpler form of winding space, it is easier to insulate and easier to wind, and furthermore, since the shaft does not run through the winding space, it is capable of holding a considerably greater number of turns of wire. the ends of the armature winding are connected, one directly to the frame and the other to an insulated pin, as is shown in the illustration. [illustration: fig. . generator armature] [illustration: fig. . generator field and armature] the method commonly employed of associating the pole pieces with each other and with the permanent magnets is shown in fig. . it is very important that the space in which the armature revolves shall be truly cylindrical, and that the bearings for the armature shall be so aligned as to make the axis of rotation of the armature coincide with the axis of the cylindrical surface of the pole pieces. a rigid structure is, therefore, required and this is frequently secured, as shown in fig. , by joining the two pole pieces _ _ and _ _ together by means of heavy brass rods _ _ and _ _, the rods being shouldered and their reduced ends passed through holes in flanges extending from the pole pieces, and riveted. the bearing plates in which the armature is journaled are then secured to the ends of these pole pieces, as will be shown in subsequent illustrations. this assures proper rigidity between the pole pieces and also between the pole pieces and the armature bearings. the reason why this degree of rigidity is required is that it is necessary to work with very small air gaps between the armature core and its pole pieces and unless these generators are mechanically well made they are likely to alter their adjustment and thus allow the armature faces to scrape or rub against the pole pieces. in fig. one of the permanent horseshoe magnets is shown, its ends resting in grooves on the outer faces of the pole pieces and usually clamped thereto by means of heavy iron machine screws. with this structure in mind, the theory of the magneto generator developed in connection with fig. may be carried a little further. when the armature lies in the position shown at the left of fig. , so that the center position of the core is horizontal, a good path is afforded for the lines of force passing from one pole to the other. practically all of these lines will pass through the iron of the core rather than through the air, and, therefore, practically all of them will pass through the convolutions of the armature winding. when the armature has advanced, say degrees, in its rotation in the direction of the curved arrow, the lower right-hand portion of the armature flange will still lie opposite the lower face of the right-hand pole piece and the upper left-hand portion of the armature flange will still lie opposite the upper face of the left-hand pole piece. as a result there will still be a good path for the lines of force through the iron of the core and comparatively little change in the number of lines passing through the armature winding. as the corners of the armature flange pass away from the corners of the pole pieces, however, there is a sudden change in condition which may be best understood by reference to the right-hand portion of fig. . the lines of force now no longer find path through the center portion of the armature core--that lying at right angles to their direction of flow. two other paths are at this time provided through the now horizontal armature flanges which serve almost to connect the two pole pieces. the lines of force are thus shunted out of the path through the armature coils and there is a sudden decrease from a large number of lines through the turns of the winding to almost none. as the armature continues in its rotation the two paths through the flanges are broken, and the path through the center of the armature core and, therefore, through the coils themselves, is reëstablished. as a result of this consideration it will be seen that in actual practice the change in the number of lines passing through the armature winding is not of the gradual nature that would be indicated by a consideration of fig. alone, but rather, is abrupt, as the corners of the armature flanges leave the corners of the pole pieces. this abrupt change produces a sudden rise in electromotive force just at these points in the rotation, and, therefore, the electromotive force and the current curves of these magneto generators is not usually of the smooth sine-wave type but rather of a form resembling the sine wave with distinct humps added to each half cycle. [illustration: fig. . generator with magnets removed] as is to be expected from any two-pole alternating generator, there is one cycle of current for each revolution of the armature. under ordinary conditions a person is able to turn the generator handle at the rate of about two hundred revolutions a minute, and as the ratio of gearing is about five to one, this results in about one thousand revolutions per minute of the generator, and, therefore, in a current of about one thousand cycles per minute, this varying widely according to the person who is doing the turning. [illustration: howard office of home telephone company, san francisco an all-concrete building serving the district south of market street.] the end plates which support the bearings for the armature are usually extended upwardly, as shown in fig. , so as to afford bearings for the crank shaft. the crank shaft carries a large spur gear which meshes with a pinion in the end of the armature shaft, so that the user may cause the armature to revolve rapidly. the construction shown in fig. is typical of that of a modern magneto generator, it being understood that the permanent magnets are removed for clearness of illustration. fig. is a view of a completely assembled generator such as is used for service requiring a comparatively heavy output. other types of generators having two, three, or four permanent magnets instead of five, as shown in this figure, are also standard. [illustration: fig. . five-bar generator] referring again to fig. , it will be remembered that one end of the armature winding shown diagrammatically in that figure, is terminated in the pin _ _, while the other terminates in the pin _ _. when the armature is assembled in the frame of the generator it is evident that the frame itself is in metallic connection with one end of the armature winding, since the pin _ _ is in metallic contact with the armature casting and this is in contact with the frame of the generator through the bearings. the frame of the machine is, therefore, one terminal of the generator. when the generator is assembled a spring of one form or another always rests against the terminal pin _ _ of the armature so as to form a terminal for the armature winding of such a nature as to permit the armature to rotate freely. such spring, therefore, forms the other terminal of the generator. automatic shunt. under nearly all conditions of practice it is desirable to have the generator automatically perform some switching function when it is operated. as an example, when the generator is connected so that its armature is in series in a telephone line, it is quite obvious that the presence of the resistance and the impedance of the armature winding would be objectionable if left in the circuit through which the voice currents had to pass. for this reason, what is termed an _automatic shunt_ is employed on generators designed for series work; this shunt is so arranged that it will automatically shunt or short-circuit the armature winding when it is at rest and also break this shunt when the generator is operated, so as to allow the current to pass to line. [illustration: fig . generator shunt switch] a simple and much-used arrangement for this purpose is shown in fig. , where _ _ is the armature; _ _ is a wire leading from the frame of the generator and forming one terminal of the generator circuit; and _ _ is a wire forming the other terminal of the generator circuit, this wire being attached to the spring _ _, which rests against the center pin of the armature so as to make contact with the opposite end of the armature winding to that which is connected with the frame. the circuit through the armature may be traced from the terminal wire _ _ through the frame; thence through the bearings to the armature _ _ and through the pin to the right-hand side of the armature winding. continuing the circuit through the winding itself, it passes to the center pin projecting from the left-hand end of the armature shaft; thence to the spring _ _ which rests against this pin; and thence to the terminal wire _ _. normally, this path is shunted by what is practically a short circuit, which may be traced from the terminal _ _ through the frame of the generator to the crank shaft _ _; thence to the upper end of the spring _ _ and out by the terminal wire _ _. this is the condition which ordinarily exists and which results in the removal of the resistance and the impedance on the armature winding from any circuit in which the generator is placed, as long as the generator is not operated. an arrangement is provided, however, whereby the crank shaft _ _ will be withdrawn automatically from engaging with the upper end of the spring _ _, thus breaking the shunt around the armature circuit, whenever the generator crank is turned. in order to accomplish this the crank shaft _ _ is capable of partial rotation and of slight longitudinal movement within the hub of the large gear wheel. a spring usually presses the crank shaft toward the left and into engagement with the spring _ _. a pin _ _ carried by the crank shaft, rests in a v-shaped notch in the end of the hub _ _ and as a result, when the crank is turned the pin rides on the surface of this notch before the large gear wheel starts to turn, and thus moves the crank shaft _ _ to the right and breaks the contact between it and the spring _ _. thus, as long as the generator is being operated, its armature is connected in the circuit of the line, but as soon as it becomes idle the armature is automatically short-circuited. such devices as this are termed _automatic shunts_. in still other cases it is desirable to have the generator circuit normally open so that it will not affect in any way the electrical characteristics of the line while the line is being used for talking. in this case the arrangement is made so that the generator will automatically be placed in proper circuit relation with the line when it is operated. [illustration: fig. . generator cut-in switch] a common arrangement for doing this is shown in fig. , wherein the spring _ _ normally rests against the contact pin of the armature and forms one terminal of the armature circuit. the spring _ _ is adapted to form the other terminal of the armature circuit but it is normally insulated from everything. the circuit of the generator is, therefore, open between the spring _ _ and the shaft _ _, but as soon as the generator is operated the crank shaft is bodily moved to the left by means of the =v=-shaped notch in the driving collar _ _ and is thus made to engage the spring _ _. the circuit of the generator is then completed from the spring _ _ through the armature pin to the armature winding; thence to the frame of the machine and through shaft _ _ to the spring _ _. such devices as this are largely used in connection with so-called "bridging" telephones in which the generators and bells are adapted to be connected in multiple across the line. a better arrangement for accomplishing the automatic switching on the part of the generator is to make no use of the crank shaft as a part of the conducting path as is the case in both figs. and , but to make the crank shaft, by its longitudinal movement, impart the necessary motion to a switch spring which, in turn, is made to engage or disengage a corresponding contact spring. an arrangement of this kind that is in common use is shown in fig. . this needs no further explanation than to say that the crank shaft is provided on its end with an insulating stud _ _, against which a switching spring _ _ bears. this spring normally rests against another switch spring _ _, but when the generator crank shaft moves to the right upon the turning of the crank, the spring _ _ disengages spring _ _ and engages spring _ _, thus completing the circuit of the generator armature. it is seen that this operation accomplishes the breaking of one circuit and the making of another, a function that will be referred to later on in this work. [illustration: fig. . generator cut-in switch] pulsating current. sometimes it is desirable to have a generator capable of developing a pulsating current instead of an alternating current; that is, a current which will consist of impulses all in one direction rather than of impulses alternating in direction. it is obvious that this may be accomplished if the circuit of the generator be broken during each half revolution so that its circuit is completed only when current is being generated in one direction. such an arrangement is indicated diagrammatically in fig. . instead of having one terminal of the armature winding brought out through the frame of the generator as is ordinarily done, both terminals are brought out to a commuting device carried on the end of the armature shaft. thus, one end of the loop representing the armature winding is shown connected directly to the armature pin _ _, against which bears a spring _ _, in the usual manner. the other end of the armature winding is carried directly to a disk _ _, mounted _on_ but insulated _from_ the shaft and revolving therewith. one-half of the circumferential surface of this disk is of insulating material _ _ and a spring _ _ rests against this disk and bears alternately upon the conducting portion _ _ or the insulating portion _ _, according to the position of the armature in its revolution. it is obvious that when the generator armature is in the position shown the circuit through it is from the spring _ _ to the pin _ _; thence to one terminal of the armature loop; thence through the loop and back to the disk _ _ and out by the spring _ _. if, however, the armature were turned slightly, the spring _ _ would rest on the insulating portion _ _ and the circuit would be broken. [illustration: fig. . pulsating-current commutator] [illustration: fig. . generator symbols] it is obvious that if the brush _ _ is so disposed as to make contact with the disk _ _ only during that portion of the revolution while positive current is being generated, the generator will produce positive pulsations of current, all the negative ones being cut out. if, on the other hand, the spring _ _ may be made to bear on the opposite side of the disk, then it is evident that the positive impulses would all be cut out and the generator would develop only negative impulses. such a generator is termed a "direct-current" generator or a "pulsating-current" generator. the symbols for magneto or hand generators usually embody a simplified side view, showing the crank and the gears on one side and the shunting or other switching device on the other. thus in fig. are shown three such symbols, differing from each other only in the details of the switching device. the one at the left shows the simple shunt, adapted to short-circuit the generator at all times save when it is in operation. the one in the center shows the cut-in, of which another form is described in connection with fig. ; while the symbol at the right of fig. is of the make-and-break device, discussed in connection with fig. . in such diagrammatic representations of generators it is usual to somewhat exaggerate the size of the switching springs, in order to make clear their action in respect to the circuit connections in which the generator is used. polarized ringer. the polarized bell or ringer is, as has been stated, the device which is adapted to respond to the currents sent out by the magneto generator. in order that the alternately opposite currents may cause the armature to move alternately in opposite directions, these bells are polarized, _i.e._, given a definite magnetic set, so to speak; so the effect of the currents in the coils is not to create magnetism in normally neutral iron, but rather to alter the magnetism in iron already magnetized. _western electric ringer._ a typical form of polarized bell is shown in fig. , this being the standard bell or ringer of the western electric company. the two electromagnets are mounted side by side, as shown, by attaching their cores to a yoke piece _ _ of soft iron. this yoke piece also carries the standards _ _ upon which the gongs are mounted. the method of mounting is such that the standards may be adjusted slightly so as to bring the gongs closer _to_ or farther _from_, the tapper. the soft iron yoke piece _ _ also carries two brass posts _ _ which, in turn, carry another yoke _ _ of brass. in this yoke _ _ is pivoted, by means of trunnion screws, the armature _ _, this extending on each side of the pivot so that its ends lie opposite the free poles of the electromagnets. from the center of the armature projects the tapper rod carrying the ball or striker which plays between the two gongs. in order that the armature and cores may be normally polarized, a permanent magnet _ _ is secured to the center of the yoke piece _ _. this bends around back of the electromagnets and comes into close proximity to the armature _ _. by this means one end of each of the electromagnet cores is given one polarity--say north--while the armature is given the other polarity--say south. the two coils of the electromagnet are connected together in series in such a way that current in a given direction will act to produce a north pole in one of the free poles and a south pole in the other. if it be assumed that the permanent magnet maintains the armature normally of south polarity and that the current through the coils is of such direction as to make the left-hand core north and the right-hand core south, then it is evident that the left-hand end of the armature will be attracted and the right-hand end repelled. this will throw the tapper rod to the right and sound the right-hand bell. a reversal in current will obviously produce the opposite effect and cause the tapper to strike the left-hand bell. an important feature in polarized bells is the adjustment between the armature and the pole pieces. this is secured in the western electric bell by means of the nuts _ _, by which the yoke _ _ is secured to the standards _ _. by moving these nuts up or down on the standards the armature may be brought closer _to_ or farther _from_ the poles, and the device affords ready means for clamping the parts into any position to which they may have been adjusted. [illustration: fig. . polarized bell] _kellogg ringer._ another typical ringer is that of the kellogg switchboard and supply company, shown in fig. . this differs from that of the western electric company mainly in the details by which the armature adjustment is obtained. the armature supporting yoke _ _ is attached directly to the cores of the magnets, no supporting side rods being employed. instead of providing means whereby the armature may be adjusted toward or from the poles, the reverse practice is employed, that is, of making the poles themselves extensible. this is done by means of the iron screws _ _ which form extensions of the cores and which may be made to approach or recede from the armature by turning them in such direction as to screw them in or out of the core ends. [illustration: fig. . polarized bell] [illustration: fig. . biased bell] _biased bell._ the pulsating-current generator has already been discussed and its principle of operation pointed out in connection with fig. . the companion piece to this generator is the so-called biased ringer. this is really nothing but a common alternating-current polarized ringer with a light spring so arranged as to hold the armature normally in one of its extreme positions so that the tapper will rest against one of the gongs. such a ringer is shown in fig. and needs no further explanation. it is obvious that if a current flows in the coils of such a ringer in a direction tending to move the tapper toward the left, then no sound will result because the tapper is already moved as far as it can be in that direction. if, however, currents in the opposite direction are caused to flow through the windings, then the electromagnetic attraction on the armature will overcome the pull of the spring and the tapper will move over and strike the right-hand gong. a cessation of the current will allow the spring to exert itself and throw the tapper back into engagement with the left-hand gong. a series of such pulsations in the proper direction will, therefore, cause the tapper to play between the two gongs and ring the bell as usual. a series of currents in a wrong direction will, however, produce no effect. conventional symbols. in fig. are shown six conventional symbols of polarized bells. the three at the top, consisting merely of two circles representing the magnets in plan view, are perhaps to be preferred as they are well standardized, easy to draw, and rather suggestive. the three at the bottom, showing the ringer as a whole in side elevation, are somewhat more specific, but are objectionable in that they take more space and are not so easily drawn. [illustration: fig. . ringer symbols] symbols _a_ or _b_ may be used for designating any ordinary polarized ringer. symbols _c_ and _d_ are interchangeably used to indicate a biased ringer. if the bell is designed to operate only on positive impulses, then the plus sign is placed opposite the symbol, while a minus sign so placed indicates that the bell is to be operated only by negative impulses. some specific types of ringers are designed to operate only on a given frequency of current. that is, they are so designed as to be responsive to currents having a frequency of sixty cycles per second, for instance, and to be unresponsive to currents of any other frequency. either symbols _e_ or _f_ may be used to designate such ringers, and if it is desired to indicate the particular frequency of the ringer this is done by adding the proper numeral followed by a short reversed curve sign indicating frequency. thus ~ would indicate a frequency of fifty cycles per second. chapter ix the hook switch purpose. in complete telephone instruments, comprising both talking and signaling apparatus, it is obviously desirable that the two sets of apparatus, for talking and signaling respectively, shall not be connected with the line at the same time. a certain switching device is, therefore, necessary in order that the signaling apparatus alone may be left operatively connected with the line while the instrument is not being used in the transmission of speech, and in order that the signaling apparatus may be cut out when the talking apparatus is brought into play. in instruments employing batteries for the supply of transmitter current, another switching function is the closing of the battery circuit through the transmitter and the induction coil when the instrument is in use for talking, since to leave the battery circuit closed all the time would be an obvious waste of battery energy. in the early forms of telephones these switching operations were performed by a manually operated switch, the position of which the user was obliged to change before and after each use of the telephone. the objection to this was not so much in the manual labor imposed on the user as in the tax on his memory. it was found to be practically a necessity to make this switching function automatic, principally because of the liability of the user to forget to move the switch to the proper position after using the telephone, resulting not only in the rapid waste of the battery elements but also in the inoperative condition of the signal-receiving bell. the solution of this problem, a vexing one at first, was found in the so-called automatic hook switch or switch hook, by which the circuits of the instrument were made automatically to assume their proper conditions by the mere act, on the part of the user, of removing the receiver from, or placing it upon, a conveniently arranged hook or fork projecting from the side of the telephone casing. automatic operation. it may be taken as a fundamental principle in the design of any piece of telephone apparatus that is to be generally used by the public, that the necessary acts which a person must perform in order to use the device must, as far as possible, follow as a natural result from some other act which it is perfectly obvious to the user that he must perform. so in the case of the switch hook, the user of a telephone knows that he must take the receiver from its normal support and hold it to his ear; and likewise, when he is through with it, that he must dispose of it by hanging it upon a support obviously provided for that purpose. in its usual form a forked hook is provided for supporting the receiver in a convenient place. this hook is at the free end of a pivoted lever, which is normally pressed upward by a spring when the receiver is not supported on it. when, however, the receiver is supported on it, the lever is depressed by its weight. the motion of the lever is mechanically imparted to the members of the switch proper, the contacts of which are usually enclosed so as to be out of reach of the user. this switch is so arranged that when the hook is depressed the circuits are held in such condition that the talking apparatus will be cut out, the battery circuit opened, and the signaling apparatus connected with the line. on the other hand, when the hook is in its raised position, the signaling apparatus is cut out, the talking apparatus switched into proper working relation with the line, and the battery circuit closed through the transmitter. in the so-called common-battery telephones, where no magneto generator or local battery is included in the equipment at the subscriber's station, the mere raising of the hook serves another important function. it acts, not only to complete the circuit through the substation talking apparatus, but, by virtue of the closure of the line circuit, permits a current to flow over the line from the central-office battery which energizes a signal associated with the line at the central office. this use of the hook switch in the case of the common-battery telephone is a good illustration of the principle just laid down as to making all the functions which the subscriber has to perform depend, as far as possible, on acts which his common sense alone tells him he must do. thus, in the common-battery telephone the subscriber has only to place the receiver at his ear and ask for what he wants. this operation automatically displays a signal at the central office and he does nothing further until the operator inquires for the number that he wants. he has then nothing to do but wait until the called-for party responds, and after the conversation his own personal convenience demands that he shall dispose of the receiver in some way, so he hangs it up on the most convenient object, the hook switch, and thereby not only places the apparatus at his telephone in proper condition to receive another call, but also conveys to the central office the signal for disconnection. likewise in the case of telephones operating in connection with automatic exchanges, the hook switch performs a number of functions automatically, of which the subscriber has no conception; and while, in automatic telephones, there are more acts required of the user than in the manual, yet a study of these acts will show that they all follow in a way naturally suggested to the user, so that he need have but the barest fundamental knowledge in order to properly make use of the instrument. in all cases, in properly designed apparatus, the arrangement is such that the failure of the subscriber to do a certain required act will do no damage to the apparatus or to the system, and, therefore, will inconvenience only himself. design. the hook switch is in reality a two-position switch, and while at present it is a simple affair, yet its development to its high state of perfection has been slow, and its imperfections in the past have been the cause of much annoyance. several important points must be borne in mind in the design of the hook switch. the spring provided to lift the hook must be sufficiently strong to accomplish this purpose and yet must not be strong enough to prevent the weight of the receiver from moving the switch to its other position. the movement of this spring must be somewhat limited in order that it will not break when used a great many times, and also it must be of such material and shape that it will not lose its elasticity with use. the shape and material of the restoring spring are, of course, determined to a considerable extent by the length of the lever arm which acts on the spring, and on the space which is available for the spring. the various contacts by which the circuit changes are brought about upon the movement of the hook-switch lever usually take the form of springs of german silver or phosphor-bronze, hard rolled so as to have the necessary resiliency, and these are usually tipped with platinum at the points of contact so as to assure the necessary character of surface at the points where the electric circuits are made or broken. a slight sliding movement between each pair of contacts as they are brought together is considered desirable, in that it tends to rub off any dirt that may have accumulated, yet this sliding movement should not be great, as the surfaces will then cut each other and, therefore, reduce the life of the switch. contact material. on account of the high cost of platinum, much experimental work has been done to find a substitute metal suitable for the contact points in hook switches and similar uses in the manufacture of telephone apparatus. platinum is unquestionably the best known material, on account of its non-corrosive and heat-resisting qualities. hard silver is the next best and is found in some first-class apparatus. the various cheap alloys intended as substitutes for platinum or silver in contact points may be dismissed as worthless, so far as the writers' somewhat extensive investigations have shown. in the more recent forms of hook switches, the switch lever itself does not form a part of the electrical circuit, but serves merely as the means by which the springs that are concerned in the switching functions are moved into their alternate cooperative relations. one advantage in thus insulating the switch lever from the current-carrying portions of the apparatus and circuits is that, since it necessarily projects from the box or cabinet, it is thus liable to come in contact with the person of the user. by insulating it, all liability of the user receiving shocks by contact with it is eliminated. wall telephone hooks. _kellogg._ a typical form of hook switch, as employed in the ordinary wall telephone sets, is shown in fig. , this being the standard hook of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. in this the lever _ _ is pivoted at the point _ _ in a bracket _ _ that forms the base of all the working parts and the means of securing the entire hook switch to the box or framework of the telephone. this switch lever is normally pressed upward by a spring _ _, mounted on the bracket _ _, and engaging the under side of the hook lever at the point _ _. attached to the lever arm _ _ is an insulated pin _ _. the contact springs by which the various electrical circuits are made and broken are shown at _ _, _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _, these being mounted in one group with insulated bushings between them; the entire group is secured by machine screws to a lug projecting horizontally from the bracket _ _. the center spring _ _ is provided with a forked extension which embraces the pin _ _ on the hook lever. it is obvious that an up-and-down motion of the hook lever will move the long spring _ _ in such manner as to cause electrical contact either between it and the two upper springs _ _ and _ _, or between it and the two lower springs _ _ and _ _. the hook is shown in its raised position, which is the position required for talking. when lowered the two springs _ _ and _ _ are disengaged from the long spring _ _ and from each other, and the three springs _ _, _ _, and _ _ are brought into electrical engagement, thus establishing the necessary signaling conditions. [illustration: fig. . long lever hook switch] the right-hand ends of the contact springs are shown projecting beyond the insulating supports. this is for the purpose of facilitating making electrical joints between these springs and the various wires which lead from them. these projecting ends are commonly referred to as ears, and are usually provided with holes or notches into which the connecting wire is fastened by soldering. _western electric._ fig. shows the type of hook switch quite extensively employed by the western electric company in wall telephone sets where the space is somewhat limited and a compact arrangement is desired. it will readily be seen that the principle on which this hook switch operates is similar to that employed in fig. , although the mechanical arrangement of the parts differs radically. the hook lever _ _ is pivoted at _ _ on a bracket _ _, which serves to support all the other parts of the switch. the contact springs are shown at _ _, _ _, and _ _, and this latter spring _ _ is so designed as to make it serve as an actuating spring for the hook. this is accomplished by having the curved end of this spring press against the lug _ _ of the hook and thus tend to raise the hook when it is relieved of the weight of the receiver. the two shorter springs _ _ and _ _ have no electrical function but merely serve as supports against which the springs _ _ and _ _ may rest, when the receiver is on the hook, these springs _ _ and _ _ being given a light normal tension toward the stop springs _ _ and _ _. it is obvious that in the particular arrangement of the springs in this switch no contacts are closed when the receiver is on the hook. [illustration: fig. . short lever hook switch] concerning this latter feature, it will be noted that the particular form of kellogg hook switch, shown in fig. , makes two contacts and breaks two when it is raised. similarly the western electric company's makes two contacts but does not break any when raised. from such considerations it is customary to speak of a hook such as that shown in fig. as having two make and two break contacts, and such a hook as that shown in fig. as having two make contacts. it will be seen from either of these switches that the modification of the spring arrangement, so as to make them include a varying number of make-and-break contacts, is a simple matter, and switches of almost any type are readily modified in this respect. [illustration: fig. . removable lever hook switch] _dean_. in fig. is shown a decidedly unique hook switch for wall telephone sets which forms the standard equipment of the dean electric company. the hook lever _ _ is pivoted at _ _, an auxiliary lever _ _ also being pivoted at the same point. the auxiliary lever _ _ carries at its rear end a slotted lug _ _, which engages the long contact spring _ _, and serves to move it up and down so as to engage and disengage the spring _ _, these two springs being mounted on a base lug extending from the base plate _ _, upon which the entire hook-switch mechanism is mounted. the curved spring _ _, also mounted on this same base, engages the auxiliary lever _ _ at the point _ _ and normally serves to press this up so as to maintain the contact springs _ _ in engagement with contact spring _ _. the switch springs are moved entirely by the auxiliary lever _ _, but in order that this lever _ _ may be moved as required by the hook lever _ _, this lever is provided with a notched lug _ _ on its lower side, which notch is engaged by a forwardly projecting lug _ _ that is integral with the auxiliary lever _ _. the switch lever may be bodily removed from the remaining parts of the hook switch by depressing the lug _ _ with the finger, so that it disengages the notch in lug _ _, and then drawing the hook lever out of engagement with the pivot stud _ _, as shown in the lower portion of the figure. it will be noted that the pivotal end of the hook lever is made with a slot instead of a hole as is the customary practice. the advantage of being able to remove the hook switch bodily from the other portions arises mainly in connection with the shipment or transportation of instruments. the projecting hooks cause the instruments to take up more room and thus make larger packing boxes necessary than would otherwise be used. moreover, in handling the telephones in store houses or transporting them to the places where they are to be used, the projecting hook switch is particularly liable to become damaged. it is for convenience under such conditions that the dean hook switch is made so that the switch lever may be removed bodily and placed, for instance, inside the telephone box for transportation. desk-stand hooks. the problem of hook-switch design for portable desk telephones, while presenting the same general characteristics, differs in the details of construction on account of the necessarily restricted space available for the switch contacts in the desk telephone. [illustration: west office of home telephone company, san francisco serving the general western business and residence districts.] _western electric._ in fig. is shown an excellent example of hook-switch design as applied to the requirements of the ordinary portable desk set. this figure is a cross-sectional view of the base and standard of a familiar type of desk telephone. the base itself is of stamped metal construction, as indicated, and the standard which supports the transmitter and the switch hook for the receiver is composed of a black enameled or nickel-plated brass tube _ _, attached to the base by a screw-threaded joint, as shown. the switch lever _ _ is pivoted at _ _ in a brass plug _ _, closing the upper end of the tube forming the standard. this brass plug supports also the transmitter, which is not shown in this figure. attached to the plug _ _ by the screw _ _ is a heavy strip _ _, which reaches down through the tube to the base plate of the standard and is held therein by a screw _ _. the plug _ _, carrying with it the switch-hook lever _ _ and the brass strip _ _, may be lifted bodily out of the standard _ _ by taking out the screw _ _ which holds the strip _ _ in place, as is clearly indicated. on the strip _ _ there is mounted the group of switch springs by which the circuit changes of the instrument are brought about when the hook is raised or lowered. the spring _ _ is longer than the others, and projects upwardly far enough to engage the lug on the switch-hook lever _ _. this spring, which is so bent as to close the contacts at the right when not prevented by the switch lever, also serves as an actuating spring to raise the lever _ _ when the receiver is removed from it. this spring, when the receiver is removed from the hook, engages the two springs at the right, as shown, or when the receiver is placed on the hook, breaks contact with the two right-hand springs and makes contact respectively with the left-hand spring and also with the contact _ _ which forms the transmitter terminal. [illustration: fig. . desk-stand hook switch] it is seen from an inspection of this switch hook that it has two make and two break contacts. the various contact springs are connected with the several binding posts shown, these forming the connectors for the flexible cord conductors leading into the base and up through the standard of the desk stand. by means of the conductors in this cord the circuits are led to the other parts of the instrument, such as the induction coil, call bell, and generator, if there is one, which, in the case of the western electric company's desk set, are all mounted separately from the portable desk stand proper. this hook switch is accessible in an easy manner and yet not subject to the tampering of idle or mischievous persons. by taking out the screw _ _ the entire hook switch may be lifted out of the tube forming the standard, the cords leading to the various binding posts being slid along through the tube. by this means the connections to the hook switch, as well as the contact of the switch itself, are readily inspected or repaired by those whose duty it is to perform such operations. _kellogg._ in fig. is shown a sectional view of the desk-stand hook switch of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. in this it will be seen that instead of placing the switch-hook springs within the standard or tube, as in the case of the western electric company, they are mounted in the base where they are readily accessible by merely taking off the base plate from the bottom of the stand. the hook lever operates on the long spring of the group of switch springs by means of a toggle joint in an obvious manner. this switch spring itself serves by its own strength to raise the hook lever when released from the weight of the receiver. [illustration: fig. . desk-stand hook switch] in this switch, the hook lever, and in fact the entire exposed metal portions of the instrument, are insulated from all of the contact springs and, therefore, there is little liability of shocks on the part of the person using the instrument. conventional symbols. the hook switch plays a very important part in the operation of telephone circuits; for this reason readily understood conventional symbols, by which they may be conveniently represented in drawings of circuits, are desirable. in fig. are shown several symbols such as would apply to almost any circuit, regardless of the actual mechanical details of the particular hook switch which happened to be employed. thus diagram _a_ in fig. shows a hook switch having a single make contact and this diagram might be used to refer to the hook switch of the dean electric company shown in fig. , in which only a single contact is made when the receiver is removed, and none is made when it is on the hook. similarly, diagram _b_ might be used to represent the hook switch of the kellogg company, shown in fig. , the arrangement being for two make and two break contacts. likewise diagram _c_ might be used to represent the hook switch of the western electric company, shown in fig. , which, as before stated, has two make contacts only. diagram _d_ shows another modification in which contacts made by the hook switch, when the receiver is removed, control two separate circuits. assuming that the solid black portion represents insulation, it is obvious that the contacts are divided into two groups, one insulated from the other. [illustration: fig. . hook switch symbols] [illustration: compressed air wagon for pneumatic drilling and chipping in manholes] chapter x electromagnets and inductive coils electromagnet. the physical thing which we call an electromagnet, consisting of a coil or helix of wire, the turns of which are insulated from each other, and within which is usually included an iron core, is by far the most useful of all the so-called translating devices employed in telephony. in performing the ordinary functions of an electromagnet it translates the energy of an electrical current into the energy of mechanical motion. an almost equally important function is the converse of this, that is, the translation of the energy of mechanical motion into that of an electrical current. in addition to these primary functions which underlie the art of telephony, the electromagnetic coil or helix serves a wide field of usefulness in cases where no mechanical motion is involved. as impedance coils, they serve to exert important influences on the flow of currents in circuits, and as induction coils, they serve to translate the energy of a current flowing in one circuit into the energy of a current flowing in another circuit, the translation usually, but not always, being accompanied by a change in voltage. when a current flows through the convolutions of an ordinary helix, the helix will exhibit the properties of a magnet even though the substance forming the core of the helix is of non-magnetic material, such as air, or wood, or brass. if, however, a mass of iron, such as a rod or a bundle of soft iron wires, for instance, is substituted as a core, the magnetic properties will be enormously increased. the reason for this is, that a given magnetizing force will set up in iron a vastly greater number of lines of magnetic force than in air or in any other non-magnetic material. magnetizing force. the magnetizing force of a given helix is that force which tends to drive magnetic lines of force through the magnetic circuit interlinked with the helix. it is called _magnetomotive force_ and is analogous to electromotive force, that is, the force which tends to drive an electric current through a circuit. the magnetizing force of a given helix depends on the product of the current strength and the number of turns of wire in the helix. thus, when the current strength is measured in amperes, this magnetizing force is expressed as ampere-turns, being the product of the number of amperes flowing by the number of turns. the magnetizing force exerted by a given current, therefore, is independent of anything except the number of turns, and the material within the core or the shape of the core has no effect upon it. magnetic flux. the total magnetization resulting from a magnetizing force is called the magnetic flux, and is analogous to current. the intensity of a magnetic flux is expressed by the number of magnetic lines of force in a square centimeter or square inch. while the magnetomotive force or magnetizing force of a given helix is independent of the material of the core, the flux which it sets up is largely dependent on the material and shape of the core--not only upon this but on the material that lies in the return path for the flux outside of the core. we may say, therefore, that the amount of flux set up by a given current in a given coil or helix is dependent on the material in the magnetic path or magnetic circuit, and on the shape and length of that circuit. if the magnetic circuit be of air or brass or wood or any other non-magnetic material, the amount of flux set up by a given magnetizing force will be relatively small, while it will be very much greater if the magnetic circuit be composed in part or wholly of iron or steel, which are highly magnetic substances. permeability. the quality of material, which permits of a given magnetizing force setting up a greater or less number of lines of force within it, is called its permeability. more accurately, the permeability is the ratio existing between the amount of magnetization and the magnetizing force which produces such magnetization. the permeability of a substance is usually represented by the greek letter µ (pronounced _mu_). the intensity of the magnetizing force is commonly symbolized by h, and since the permeability of air is always taken as unity, we may express the intensity of magnetizing force by the number of lines of force per square centimeter which it sets up in air. now, if the space on which the given magnetizing force h were acting were filled with iron instead of air, then, owing to the greater permeability of iron, there would be set up a very much greater number of lines of force per square centimeter, and this number of lines of force per square centimeter in the iron is the measure of the magnetization produced and is commonly expressed by the letter =b=. from this we have µ = b/h thus, when we say that the permeability of a given specimen of wrought iron under given conditions is , , we mean that , times as many lines of force would be induced in a unit cross-section of this sample as would be induced by the same magnetizing force in a corresponding unit cross-section of air. evidently for air b = h, hence µ becomes unity. the permeability of air is always a constant. this means that whether the magnetic density of the lines of force through the air be great or small the number of lines will always be proportional to the magnetizing force. unfortunately for easy calculations in electromagnetic work, however, this is not true of the permeability of iron. for small magnetic densities the permeability is very great, but for large densities, that is, under conditions where the number of lines of force existing in the iron is great, the permeability becomes smaller, and an increase in the magnetizing force does not produce a corresponding increase in the total flux through the iron. magnetization curves. this quality of iron is best shown by the curves of fig. , which illustrate the degree of magnetization set up in various kinds of iron by different magnetizing forces. in these curves the ordinates represent the total magnetization =b=, while the abscissas represent the magnetizing force =h=. it is seen from an inspection of these curves that as the magnetizing force =h= increases, the intensity of flux also increases, but at a gradually lessening rate, indicating a reduction in permeability at the higher densities. these curves are also instructive as showing the great differences that exist between the permeability of the different kinds of iron; and also as showing how, when the magnetizing force becomes very great, the iron approaches what is called _saturation_, that is, a point at which the further increase in magnetizing force will result in no further magnetization of the core. from the data of the curves of fig. , which are commonly called _magnetization curves_, it is easy to determine other data from which so-called permeability curves may be plotted. in permeability curves the total magnetization of the given pieces of iron are plotted as abscissas, while the corresponding permeabilities are plotted as ordinates. [illustration: fig. . magnetization curve] direction of lines of force. the lines of force set up within the core of a helix always have a certain direction. this direction always depends upon the direction of the flow of current around the core. an easy way to remember the direction is to consider the helix as grasped in the right hand with the fingers partially encircling it and the thumb pointing along its axis. then, if the current through the convolutions of the helix be in the direction in which the fingers of the hand are pointed around the helix, the magnetic lines of force will proceed through the core of the helix along the direction in which the thumb is pointed. in the case of a simple bar electromagnet, such as is shown in fig. , the lines of force emerging from one end of the bar must pass back through the air to the other end of the bar, as indicated by dotted lines and arrows. the path followed by the magnetic lines of force is called the _magnetic circuit_, and, therefore, the magnetic circuit of the magnet shown in fig. is composed partly of iron and partly of air. from what has been said concerning the relative permeability of air and of iron, it will be obvious that the presence of such a long air path in the magnetic circuit will greatly reduce the number of lines of force that a given magnetizing force can set up. the presence of an air gap in a magnetic circuit has much the same effect on the total flow of lines of force as the presence of a piece of bad conductor in a circuit composed otherwise of good conductor, in the case of the flow of electric current. reluctance. as the property which opposes the flow of electric current in an electrical circuit is called _resistance_, so the property which opposes the flow of magnetic lines of force in a magnetic circuit is called _reluctance_. in the case of the electric circuit, the resistance is the reciprocal of the conductivity; in the case of the magnetic circuit, the reluctance is the reciprocal of the permeability. as in the case of an electrical circuit, the amount of flow of current is equal to the electromotive force divided by the resistance; so in a magnetic circuit, the magnetic flux is equal to the magnetizing force or magnetomotive force divided by the reluctance. [illustration: fig. . bar electromagnet] types of low-reluctance circuits. as the pull of an electromagnet upon its armature depends on the total number of lines of force passing from the core to the armature--that is, on the total flux--and as the total flux depends for a given magnetizing force on the reluctance of the magnetic circuit, it is obvious that the design of the electromagnetic circuit is of great importance in influencing the action of the magnet. obviously, anything that will reduce the amount of air or other non-magnetic material that is in the magnetic circuit will tend to reduce the reluctance, and, therefore, to increase the total magnetization resulting from a given magnetizing force. _horseshoe form._ one of the easiest and most common ways of reducing reluctance in a circuit is to bend the ordinary bar electromagnet into horseshoe form. in order to make clear the direction of current flow, attention is called to fig. . this is intended to represent a simple bar of iron with a winding of one direction throughout its length. the gap in the middle of the bar, which divides the winding into two parts, is intended merely to mark the fact that the winding need not cover the whole length of the bar and still will be able to magnetize the bar when the current passes through it. in fig. a similar bar is shown with similar winding upon it, but bent into =u=-form, exactly as if it had been grasped in the hand and bent without further change. the magnetic polarity of the two ends of the bar remain the same as before for the same direction of current, and it is obvious that the portion of the magnetic circuit which extends through air has been very greatly shortened by the bending. as a result, the magnetic reluctance of the circuit has been greatly decreased and the strength of the magnet correspondingly increased. [illustration: fig. . bar electromagnet] [illustration: fig. . horseshoe electromagnet] [illustration: fig. . horseshoe electromagnet] if the armature of the electromagnet shown in fig. is long enough to extend entirely across the air gap from the south to the north pole, then the air gap in the magnetic circuit is still further shortened, and is now represented only by the small gap between the ends of the armature and the ends of the core. such a magnet, with an armature closely approaching the poles, is called a _closed-circuit magnet_, since the only gap in the iron of the magnetic circuit is that across which the magnet pulls in attracting its armature. in fig. is shown the electrical and magnetic counterpart of fig. . the fact that the magnetic circuit is not a single iron bar but is made up of two cores and one backpiece rigidly secured together, has no bearing upon the principle, but only shows that a modification of construction is possible. in the construction of fig. the armature _ _ is shown as being pulled directly against the two cores _ _ and _ _, these two cores being joined by a yoke _ _, which, like the armature and the core, is of magnetic material. the path of the lines of force is indicated by dotted lines. this is a very important form of electromagnet and is largely used in telephony. _iron-clad form_. another way of forming a closed-circuit magnet that is widely used in telephony is to enclose the helix or winding in a shell of magnetic material which joins the core at one end. this construction results in what is known as the _tubular_ or _iron-clad_ electromagnet, which is shown in section and in end view in fig. . in this the core _ _ is a straight bar of iron and it lies centrally within a cylindrical shell _ _, also of iron. the bar is usually held in place within the shell by a screw, as shown. the lines of force set up in the core by the current flowing through the coil, pass to the center of the bottom of the iron shell and thence return through the metal of the shell, through the air gap between the edges of the shell and the armature, and then concentrate at the center of the armature and pass back to the end of the core. this is a highly efficient form of closed-circuit magnet, since the magnetic circuit is of low reluctance. [illustration: fig. . iron-clad electromagnet] such forms of magnets are frequently used where it is necessary to mount a large number of them closely together and where it is desired that the current flowing in one magnet shall produce no inductive effect in the coils of the adjacent magnets. the reason why mutual induction between adjacent magnets is obviated in the case of the iron-clad or tubular magnet is that practically all stray field is eliminated, since the return path for the magnetic lines is so completely provided for by the presence of the iron shell. _special horseshoe form._ in fig. is shown a type of relay commonly employed in telephone circuits. the purpose of illustrating it in this chapter is not to discuss relays, but rather to show an adaptation of an electromagnet wherein low reluctance of the magnetic circuit is secured by providing a return leg for the magnetic lines developed in the core, thus forming in effect a horseshoe magnet with a winding on one of its limbs only. to the end of the core _ _ there is secured an =l=-shaped piece of soft iron _ _. this extends upwardly and then forwardly throughout the entire length of the magnet core. an =l=-shaped armature _ _ rests on the front edge of the piece _ _ so that a slight rocking motion will be permitted on the "knife-edge" bearing thus afforded. it is seen from the dotted lines that the magnetic circuit is almost a closed one. the only gap is that between the lower end of the armature _ _ and the front end of the core. when the coil is energized, this gap is closed by the attraction of the armature. as a result, the rearwardly projecting end of the armature _ _ is raised and this raises the spring _ _ and causes it to break the normally existing contact with the spring _ _ and to establish another contact with the spring _ _. thus the energy developed within the coil of the magnet is made to move certain parts which in turn operate the switching devices to produce changes in electrical circuits. these relays and other adaptations of the electromagnet will be discussed more fully later on. [illustration: fig. . electromagnet of relay] there are almost numberless forms of electromagnets, but we have illustrated here examples of the principal types employed in telephony, and the modifications of these types will be readily understood in view of the general principles laid down. direction of armature motion. it may be said in general that the armature of an electromagnet always moves or tends to move, when the coil is energized, in such a way as to reduce the reluctance of the magnetic circuit through the coil. thus, in all of the forms of electromagnets discussed, the armature, when attracted, moves in such a direction as to shorten the air gap and to introduce the iron of the armature as much as possible into the path of the magnetic lines, thus reducing the reluctance. in the case of a solenoid type of electromagnet, or the coil and plunger type, which is a better name than solenoid, the coil, when energized, acts in effect to suck the iron core or plunger within itself so as to include more and more of the iron within the most densely occupied portion of the magnetic circuit. [illustration: fig. . parallel differential electromagnet] differential electromagnet. frequently in telephony, the electromagnets are provided with more than one winding. one purpose of the double-wound electromagnet is to produce the so-called differential action between the two windings, _i.e._, making one of the windings develop magnetization in the opposite direction from that of the other, so that the two will neutralize each other, or at least exert different and opposite influences. the principle of the differential electromagnet may be illustrated in connection with fig. . here two wires _ _ and _ _ are shown wrapped in the same direction about an iron core, the ends of the wire being joined together at _ _. obviously, if one of these windings only is employed and a current sent through it, as by connecting the terminals of a battery with the points _ _ and _ _, for instance, the core will be magnetized as in an ordinary magnet. likewise, the core will be energized if a current be sent from _ _ to _ _. assuming that the two windings are of equal resistance and number of turns, the effects so produced, when either the coil _ _ or the coil _ _ is energized, will be equal. if the battery be connected between the terminals _ _ and _ _ with the positive pole, say, at _ _, then the current will proceed through the winding _ _ and tend to generate magnetism in the core in the direction of the arrow. after traversing the winding _ _, however, it will then begin to traverse the other winding _ _ and will pass around the core in the opposite direction throughout the length of that winding. this will tend to set up magnetism in the core in the opposite direction to that indicated by the arrow. since the two currents are equal and also the number of turns in each winding, it is obvious that the two magnetizing influences will be exactly equal and opposite and no magnetic effect will be produced. such a winding, as is shown in fig. , where the two wires are laid on side by side, is called a _parallel differential winding_. another way of winding magnets differentially is to put one winding on one end of the core and the other winding on the other end of the core and connect these so as to cause the currents through them to flow around the core in opposite directions. such a construction is shown in fig. and is called a _tandem differential winding_. the tandem arrangement, while often good enough for practical purposes, cannot result in the complete neutralization of magnetic effect. this is true because of the leakage of some of the lines of force from intermediate points in the length of the core through the air, resulting in some of the lines passing through more of the turns of one coil than of the other. complete neutralization can only be attained by first twisting the two wires together with a uniform lay and then winding them simultaneously on the core. [illustration: fig. . tandem differential electromagnet] mechanical details. we will now consider the actual mechanical construction of the electromagnet. this is a very important feature of telephone work, because, not only must the proper electrical and magnetic effects be produced, but also the whole structure of the magnet must be such that it will not easily get out of order and not be affected by moisture, heat, careless handling, or other adverse conditions. the most usual form of magnet construction employed in telephony is shown in fig. . on the core, which is of soft norway iron, usually cylindrical in form, are forced two washers of either fiber or hard rubber. fiber is ordinarily to be preferred because it is tougher and less liable to breakage. around the core, between the two heads, are then wrapped several layers of paper or specially prepared cloth in order that the wire forming the winding may be thoroughly insulated from the core. one end of the wire is then passed through a hole in one of the spool heads or washers, near the core, and the wire is then wound on in layers. sometimes a thickness of paper is placed around each layer of wire in order to further guard against the breaking down of the insulation between layers. when the last layer is wound on, the end of the wire is passed out through a hole in the head, thus leaving both ends projecting. [illustration: fig. construction of electromagnet] magnet wire. the wire used in winding magnets is, of course, an important part of the electromagnet. it is always necessary that the adjacent turns of the wire be insulated from each other so that the current shall be forced to pass around the core through all the length of wire in each turn rather than allowing it to take the shorter and easier path from one turn to the next, as would be the case if the turns were not insulated. for this purpose the wire is usually covered with a coating of some insulating material. there are, however, methods of winding magnet coils with bare wire and taking care of the insulation between the turns in another way, as will be pointed out. insulated wire for the purpose of winding magnet coils is termed _magnet wire_. copper is the material almost universally employed for the conductor. its high conductivity, great ductility, and low cost are the factors which make it superior to all other metals. however, in special cases, where exceedingly high conductivity is required with a limited winding space, silver wire is sometimes employed, and on the other hand, where very high resistance is desired within a limited winding space, either iron or german silver or some other high-resistance alloy is used. _wire gauges_. wire for electrical purposes is drawn to a number of different standard gauges. each of the so-called wire gauges consists of a series of graded sizes of wire, ranging from approximately one-half an inch in diameter down to about the fineness of a lady's hair. in certain branches of telephone work, such as line construction, the existence of the several wire gauges or standards is very likely to lead to confusion. fortunately, however, so far as magnet wire is concerned, the so-called brown and sharpe, or american, wire gauge is almost universally employed in this country. the abbreviations for this gauge are b.&s. or a.w.g. table iii copper wire table giving weights, lengths, and resistances of wire @ ° f., of matthiessen's standard conductivity. +-------+----------+----------+-----------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+ | | | | resistance | length | weight | | a.w.g.| diameter | area +-----------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+ | b.&s. | mils | circular | ohms per | ohms per | feet per | feet per| pounds per |pounds per| | | | mils | pound | foot | pound | ohm | foot | ohm | +-------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------+------------+----------+ | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | , . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | , . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | , . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | , . | +-------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------+------------+----------+ | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | , . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | , . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | +-------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------+------------+----------+ | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | , . | . | . | . | . | . | . | +-------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------+------------+----------+ | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | +-------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------+------------+----------+ | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | | | . | . | , . | . | , . | . | . | . | +-------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------+------------+----------+ [illustration: south office of home telephone company, san francisco] in the brown and sharpe gauge the sizes, beginning with the largest, are numbered , , , , , , and so on up to . sizes larger than about no. b.&s. gauge are seldom used as magnet wire in telephony, but for the purpose of making the list complete, table iii is given, including all of the sizes of the b.&s. gauge. in table iii there is given for each gauge number the diameter of the wire in mils (thousandths of an inch); the cross-sectional area in circular mils (a unit area equal to that of a circle having a diameter of one one-thousandth of an inch); the resistance of the wire in various units of length and weight; the length of the wire in terms of resistance and of weight; and the weight of the wire in terms of its length and resistance. it is to be understood that in table iii the wire referred to is bare wire and is of pure copper. it is not commercially practicable to use absolutely pure copper, and the ordinary magnet wire has a conductivity equal to about per cent of that of pure copper. the figures given in this table are sufficiently accurate for all ordinary practical purposes. _silk and cotton insulation_. the insulating material usually employed for covering magnet wire is of silk or cotton. of these, silk is by far the better material for all ordinary purposes, since it has a much higher insulating property than cotton, and is very much thinner. cotton, however, is largely employed, particularly in the larger sizes of magnet wire. both of these materials possess the disadvantage of being hygroscopic, that is, of readily absorbing moisture. this disadvantage is overcome in many cases by saturating the coil after it is wound in some melted insulating compound, such as wax or varnish or asphaltum, which will solidify on cooling. where the coils are to be so saturated the best practice is to place them in a vacuum chamber and exhaust the air, after which the hot insulating compound is admitted and is thus drawn into the innermost recesses of the winding space. silk-insulated wire, as regularly produced, has either one or two layers of silk. this is referred to commercially as single silk wire or as double silk wire. the single silk has a single layer of silk fibers wrapped about it, while the double silk has a double layer, the two layers being put on in reverse direction. the same holds true of cotton insulated wire. frequently, also, there is a combination of the two, consisting of a single or a double wrapping of silk next to the wire with an outer wrapping of cotton. where this is done the cotton serves principally as a mechanical protection for the silk, the principal insulating properties residing in the silk. _enamel_. a later development in the insulation of magnet wire has resulted in the so-called enamel wire. in this, instead of coating the wire with some fibrous material such as silk or cotton, the wire is heated and run through a bath of fluid insulating material or liquid enamel, which adheres to the wire in a very thin coating. the wire is then run through baking ovens, so that the enamel is baked on. this process is repeated several times so that a number of these thin layers of the enamel are laid on and baked in succession. the characteristics sought in good enamel insulation for magnet wire may be thus briefly set forth: it is desirable for the insulation to possess the highest insulating qualities; to have a glossy, flawless surface; to be hard without being brittle; to adhere tenaciously and stand all reasonable handling without cracking or flaking; to have a coefficient of elasticity greater than the wire itself; to withstand high temperatures; to be moisture-proof and inert to corrosive agencies; and not to "dry out" or become brittle over a long period of time. _space utilization_. the utilization of the winding space in an electromagnet is an important factor in design, since obviously the copper or other conductor is the only part of the winding that is effective in setting up magnetizing force. the space occupied by the insulation is, in this sense, waste space. an ideally perfect winding may be conceived as one in which the space is all occupied by wire; and this would necessarily involve the conception of wire of square cross-section and insulation of infinite thinness. in such a winding there would be no waste of space and a maximum amount of metal employed as a conductor. of course, such a condition is not possible to attain and in practice some insulating material must be introduced between the layers of wire and between the adjacent convolutions of wire. the ratio of the space occupied by the conductor to the total space occupied by the winding, that is, by the conductor and the insulation, is called the _coefficient of space utilization of the coil_. for the ideal coil just conceived the coefficient of space utilization would be . ordinarily the coefficient of space utilization is greater for coarse wire than for fine wire, since obviously the ratio of the diameter of the wire to the thickness of the insulation increases as the size of the wire grows larger. the chief advantage of enamel insulation for magnet wire is its thinness, and the high coefficient of space utilization which may be secured by its use. in good enamel wire the insulation will average about one-quarter the thickness of the standard single silk insulation, and the dielectric strength is equal or greater. where economy of winding space is desirable the advantages of this may readily be seen. for instance, in a given coil wound with no. single silk wire about one-half of the winding space is taken up with the insulation, whereas when the same coil is wound with no. enameled wire only about one-fifth of the winding space is taken up by the insulation. thus the coefficient of space utilization is increased from . to . . the practical result of this is that, in the case of any given winding space where no. wire is used, about per cent more turns can be put on with enameled wire than with single silk insulation, and of course this ratio greatly increases when the comparison is made with double silk insulation or with cotton insulation. again, where it is desired to reduce the winding space and keep the same number of turns, an equal number of turns may be had with a corresponding reduction of winding space where enameled wire is used in place of silk or cotton. in the matter of heat-resisting properties the enameled wire possesses a great advantage over silk and cotton. cotton or silk insulation will char at about ° fahrenheit, while good enameled wire will stand ° to ° fahrenheit without deterioration of the insulation. it is in the matter of liability to injury in rough or careless handling, or in winding coils having irregular shapes, that enamel wire is decidedly inferior to silk or cotton-covered wire. it is likely to be damaged if it is allowed to strike against the sharp corners of the magnet spool during winding, or run over the edge of a hard surface while it is being fed on to the spool. coils having other than round cores, or having sharp corners on their spool heads, should not ordinarily be wound with enamel wire. the dielectric strength of enamel insulation is much greater than that of either silk or cotton insulation of equal thickness. this is a distinct advantage and frequently a combination of the two kinds of insulation results in a superior wire. if wire insulated with enamel is given a single wrapping of silk or of cotton, the insulating and dielectric properties of the enamel is secured, while the presence of the silk and cotton affords not only an additional safeguard against bare spots in the enamel but also a certain degree of mechanical protection to the enamel. winding methods. in winding a coil, the spool, after being properly prepared, is placed upon a spindle which may be made to revolve rapidly. ordinarily the wire is guided on by hand; sometimes, however, machinery is used, the wire being run over a tool which moves to and fro along the length of the spool, just fast enough to lay the wire on at the proper rate. the movement of this tool is much the same as that of the tool in a screw cutting lathe. unless high voltages are to be encountered, it is ordinarily not necessary to separate the layers of wire with paper, in the case of silk-or cotton-insulated magnet wire; although where especially high insulation resistance is needed this is often done. it is necessary to separate the successive layers of a magnet that is wound with enamel wire, by sheets of paper or thin oiled cloth. [illustration: fig. . electromagnet with bare wire] in fig. is shown a method, that has been used with some success, of winding magnets with bare wire. in this the various adjacent turns are separated from each other by a fine thread of silk or cotton wound on beside the wire. each layer of wire and thread as it is placed on the core is completely insulated from the subsequent layer by a layer of paper. this is essentially a machine-wound coil, and machines for winding it have been so perfected that several coils are wound simultaneously, the paper being fed in automatically at the end of each layer. another method of winding the bare wire omits the silk thread and depends on the permanent positioning of the wire as it is placed on the coil, due to the slight sinking into the layer of paper on which it is wound. in this case the feed of the wire at each turn of the spool is slightly greater than the diameter of the wire, so that a small distance will be left between each pair of adjacent turns. upon the completion of the winding of a coil, regardless of what method is used, it is customary to place a layer of bookbinders' cloth over the coil so as to afford a certain mechanical protection for the insulated wire. _winding terminals_. the matter of bringing out the terminal ends of the winding is one that has received a great deal of attention in the construction of electromagnets and coils for various purposes. where the winding is of fine wire, it is always well to reinforce its ends by a short piece of larger wire. where this is done the larger wire is given several turns around the body of the coil, so that the finer wire with which it connects may be relieved of all strain which may be exerted upon it from the protruding ends of the wire. great care is necessary in the bringing out of the inner terminal--_i.e._, the terminal which connects with the inner layer--that the terminal wire shall not come in contact with any of the subsequent layers that are wound on. [illustration fig. . electromagnet with terminals] where economy of space is necessary, a convenient method of terminating the winding of the coil consists in fastening rigid terminals to the spool head. this, in the case of a fiber spool head, may be done by driving heavy metal terminals into the fiber. the connections of the two wires leading from the winding are then made with these heavy rigid terminals by means of solder. a coil having such terminals is shown in its finished condition in fig. . _winding data_. the two things principally affecting the manufacture of electromagnets for telephone purposes are _the number of turns in a winding_ and _the resistance of the wound wire_. the latter governs the amount of current which may flow through the coil with a given difference of potential at its end, while the former control the amount of magnetism produced in the core by the current flowing. while a coil is being wound, it is a simple matter to count the turns by any simple form of revolution counter. when the coil has been completed it is a simple matter to measure its resistance. but it is not so simple to determine in advance how many turns of a given size wire may be placed on a given spool, and still less simple to know what the resistance of the wire on that spool will be when the desired turns shall have been wound. table iv winding data for insulated wires--silk and cotton covering a.w.g. b & s | --------------------------------------------------------------------- diameter | mils | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- area | circular mils | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- diameter over | insulation | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . , . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- turns per | linear inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | . . . . . . cotton | | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- turns per | square inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ohms per | cubic inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- a.w.g. b & s | --------------------------------------------------------------------- diameter | mils | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- area | circular mils | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- diameter over | insulation | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- turns per | linear inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- turns per | square inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ohms per | cubic inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- a.w.g. b & s | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diameter | mils | . . . . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- area | circular mils | . . . . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diameter over | insulation | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- turns per | linear inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- turns per | square inch | single | . . . . . . cotton | | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . | double silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- ohms per | cubic inch | single | cotton | . . . . . . | double | cotton | . . . . . . | single silk | . . . . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------- a.w.g. b & s | -------------------------------------------- diameter | mils | . . . -------------------------------------------- area | circular mils | . . . -------------------------------------------- diameter over | insulation | single | cotton | . . . | double | cotton | . . . | single silk | . . . | double silk | . . . -------------------------------------------- turns per | linear inch | single | cotton | . . . | double | cotton | . . . | single silk | . . . | double silk | . . . -------------------------------------------- turns per | square inch | single | cotton | . . . | double | . . . cotton | | single silk | . . . | double silk | . . . -------------------------------------------- ohms per | cubic inch | single | cotton | . . . | double | . . . cotton | | single silk | . . . ------------------------------------------- if the length and the depth of the winding space of the coil as well as the diameter of the core are known, it is not difficult to determine how much bare copper wire of a given size may be wound on it, but it is more difficult to know these facts concerning copper wire which has been covered with cotton or silk. yet something may be done, and tables have been prepared for standard wire sizes with definite thicknesses of silk and cotton insulation. as a result of facts collected from a large number of actually wound coils, the number of turns per linear inch and per square inch of b.&s. gauge wires from no. to no. have been tabulated, and these, supplemented by a tabulation of the number of ohms per cubic inch of winding space for wires of three different kinds of insulation, are given in table iv. bearing in mind that the calculations of table iv are all based upon the "diameter over insulation," which it states at the outset for each of four different kinds of covering, it is evident what is meant by "turns per linear inch." the columns referring to "turns per square inch" mean the number of turns, the ends of which would be exposed in one square inch if the wound coil were cut in a plane passing through the axis of the core. knowing the distance between the head, and the depth to which the coil is to be wound, it is easy to select a size of wire which will give the required number of turns in the provided space. it is to be noted that the depth of winding space is one-half of the difference between the core diameter and the complete diameter of the wound coil. the resistance of the entire volume of wound wire may be determined in advance by knowing the total cubic contents of the winding space and multiplying this by the ohms per cubic inch of the selected wire; that is, one must multiply in inches the distance between the heads of the spool by the difference between the squares of the diameters of the core and the winding space, and this in turn by . . this result, times the ohms per cubic inch, as given in the table, gives the resistance of the winding. there is a considerable variation in the method of applying silk insulation to the finer wires, and it is in the finer sizes that the errors, if any, pile up most rapidly. yet the table throughout is based on data taken from many samples of actual coil winding by the present process of winding small coils. it should be said further that the table does not take into account the placing of any layers of paper between the successive layers of the wires. this table has been compared with many examples and has been used in calculating windings in advance, and is found to be as close an approximation as is afforded by any of the formulas on the subject, and with the further advantage that it is not so cumbersome to apply. _winding calculations._ in experimental work, involving the winding of coils, it is frequently necessary to try one winding to determine its effect in a given circuit arrangement, and from the knowledge so gained to substitute another just fitted to the conditions. it is in such a substitution that the table is of most value. assume a case in which are required a spool and core of a given size with a winding of, say no. single silk-covered wire, of a resistance of ohms. assume also that the circuit regulations required that this spool should be rewound so as to have a resistance of, say , ohms. what size single silk-covered wire shall be used? manifestly, the winding space remains the same, or nearly so. the resistance is to be increased from to , ohms, or twenty times its first value. therefore, the wire to be used must show in the table twenty times as many ohms per cubic inch as are shown in no. , the known first size. this amount would be twenty times . , which is . , but there is no size giving this exact resistance. no. , however, is very nearly of that resistance and if wound to exactly the same depth would give about ohms. a few turns more would provide the additional thirty ohms. similarly, in a coil known to possess a certain number of turns, the table will give the size to be selected for rewinding to a greater or smaller number of turns. in this case, as in the case of substituting a winding of different resistance, it is unnecessary to measure and calculate upon the dimensions of the spool and core. assume a spool wound with no. double silk-covered wire, which requires to be wound with a size to double the number of turns. the exact size to do this would have . turns per square inch and would be between no. and no. . a choice of these two wires may be made, using an increased winding depth with the smaller wire and a shallower winding depth for the larger wire. impedance coils. in telephony electromagnets frequently serve, as already stated, to perform other functions than the producing of motion by attracting or releasing their armatures. they are required to act as impedance coils to present a barrier to the passage of alternating or other rapidly fluctuating currents, and at the same time to allow the comparatively free passage of steady currents. where it is desired that an electromagnet coil shall possess high impedance, it is usual to employ a laminated instead of a solid core. this is done by building up a core of suitable size by laying together thin sheets of soft iron, or by forming a bundle of soft iron wires. the use of laminated cores is for the purpose of preventing eddy currents, which, if allowed to flow, would not only be wasteful of energy but would also tend to defeat the desired high impedance. sometimes in iron-clad impedance coils, the iron shell is slotted longitudinally to break up the flow of eddy currents in the shell. frequently electromagnetic coils have only the function of offering impedance, where no requirements exist for converting any part of the electric energy into mechanical work. where this is the case, such coils are termed _impedance_, or _retardation_, or _choke coils_, since they are employed to impede or to retard or to choke back the flow of rapidly varying current. the distinction, therefore, between an impedance coil and the coil of an ordinary electromagnet is one of function, since structurally they may be the same, and the same principles of design and construction apply largely to each. _number of turns_. it should be remembered that an impedance coil obstructs the passage of fluctuating current, not so much by ohmic resistance as by offering an opposing or counter-electromotive force. other things being equal, the counter-electromotive force of self-induction increases directly as the number of turns on a coil and directly as the number of lines of force threading the coil, and this latter factor depends also on the reluctance of the magnetic circuit. therefore, to secure high impedance we need many turns or low reluctance, or both. often, owing to requirements for direct-current carrying capacity and limitations of space, a very large number of turns is not permissible, in which case sufficiently high impedance to such rapid fluctuations as those of voice currents may be had by employing a magnetic circuit of very low reluctance, usually a completely closed circuit. _kind of iron. _an important factor in the design of impedance coils is the grade of iron used in the magnetic circuit. obviously, it should be of the highest permeability and, furthermore, there should be ample cross-section of core to prevent even an approach to saturation. the iron should, if possible, be worked at that density of magnetization at which it has the highest permeability in order to obtain the maximum impedance effects. _types._ open-circuit:--where very feeble currents are being dealt with, and particularly where there is no flow of direct current, an open magnetic circuit is much used. an impedance coil having an open magnetic circuit is shown in section in fig. , fig. showing its external appearance and illustrating particularly the method of bringing out the terminals of the winding. [illustration: fig. . section of open-circuit impedance coil] [illustration: fig. . open-circuit impedance coil] [illustration: fig. . closed-circuit impedance coil] closed-circuit:--a type of retardation coil which is largely used in systems of simultaneous telegraphy and telephony, known as _composite systems_, is shown in fig. . in the construction of this coil the core is made of a bundle of fine iron wires first bent into u-shape, and then after the coils are in place, the free ends of the core are brought together to form a closed magnetic circuit. the coils have a large number of turns of rather coarse wire. the conditions surrounding the use of this coil are those which require very high impedance and rather large current-carrying capacity, and fortunately the added requirement, that it shall be placed in a very small space, does not exist. toroidal:--another type of retardation coil, called the toroidal type due to the fact that its core is a torus formed by winding a continuous length of fine iron wire, is shown in diagram in fig. . the two windings of this coil may be connected in series to form in effect a single winding, or it may be used as a "split-winding" coil, the two windings being in series but having some other element, such as a battery, connected between them in the circuit. evidently such a coil, however connected, is well adapted for high impedance, on account of the low reluctance of its core. [illustration: fig. . symbol of toroidal impedance coil] this coil is usually mounted on a base-board, the coil being enclosed in a protecting iron case, as shown in fig. . the terminal wires of both windings of each coil are brought out to terminal punchings on one end of the base-board to facilitate the making of the necessary circuit connections. [illustration: fig. . toroidal impedance coil] the usual diagrammatic symbol for an impedance coil is shown in fig. . this is the same as for an ordinary bar magnet, except that the parallel lines through the core may be taken as indicating that the core is laminated, thus conveying the idea of high impedance. the symbol of fig. is a good one for the toroidal type of impedance coil. [illustration: fig. . symbol of impedance coil] induction coil. an induction coil consists of two or more windings of wire interlinked by a common magnetic circuit. in an induction coil having two windings, any change in the strength of the current flowing in one of the windings, called the _primary_, will cause corresponding changes in the magnetic flux threading the magnetic circuit, and, therefore, changes in flux through the other winding, called the _secondary_. this, by the laws of electromagnetic induction, will produce corresponding electromotive forces in the secondary winding and, therefore, corresponding currents in that winding if its circuit be closed. _current and voltage ratios._ in a well-designed induction coil the energy in the secondary, _i.e._, the induced current, is for all practical purposes equal to that of the primary current, yet the values of the voltage and the amperage of the induced current may vary widely from the values of the voltage and the amperage of the primary current. with simple periodic currents, such as the commercial alternating lighting currents, the ratio between the voltage in the primary and that in the secondary will be equal to the ratio of the number of turns in the primary to the number of turns in the secondary. since the energy in the two circuits will be practically the same, it follows _that the ratio between the current in the primary and that in the secondary will be equal to the ratio of the number of turns in the secondary to the number of turns in the primary_. in telephony, where the currents are not simple periodic currents, and where the variations in current strength take place at different rates, such a law as that just stated does not hold for all cases; but it may be stated in general that _the induced currents will be of higher voltage and smaller current strength than those of the primary in all coils where the secondary winding has a greater number of turns than the primary_, and _vice versâ_. _functions._ the function of the induction coil in telephony is, therefore, mainly one of transformation, that is, either of stepping up the voltage of a current, or in other cases stepping it down. the induction coil, however, does serve another purpose in cases where no change in voltage and current strength is desired, that is, it serves as a means for electrically separating two circuits so far as any conductive relation exists, and yet of allowing the free transmission by induction from one of these circuits to the other. this is a function that in telephony is scarcely of less importance than the purely transforming function. _design._ induction coils, as employed in telephony, may be divided into two general types: first, those having an open magnetic circuit; and, second, those having a closed magnetic circuit. in the design of either type it is important that the core should be thoroughly laminated, and this is done usually by forming it of a bundle of soft swedish or norway iron wire about . of an inch in diameter. the diameter and the length of the coil, and the relation between the number of turns in the primary and in the secondary, and the mechanical construction of the coil, are all matters which are subject to very wide variation in practice. while the proper relationship of these factors is of great importance, yet they may not be readily determined except by actual experiment with various coils, owing to the extreme complexity of the action which takes place in them and to the difficulty of obtaining fundamental data as to the existing facts. it may be stated, therefore, that the design of induction coils is nearly always carried out by "cut-and-try" methods, bringing to bear, of course, such scientific and practical knowledge as the experimenter may possess. [illustration: fig. . induction coil] [illustration: fig. . section of induction coil] _use and advantage._ the use and advantages of the induction coil in so-called local-battery telephone sets have already been explained in previous chapters. such induction coils are nearly always of the open magnetic circuit type, consisting of a long, straight core comprised of a bundle of small annealed iron wires, on which is wound a primary of comparatively coarse wire and having a small number of turns, and over which is wound a secondary of comparatively fine wire and having a very much larger number of turns. a view of such a coil mounted on a base is shown in fig. , and a sectional view of a similar coil is shown in fig. . the method of bringing out the winding terminals is clearly indicated in this figure, the terminal wires _ _ and _ _ being those of the primary winding and _ _ and _ _ those of the secondary winding. it is customary to bring out these wires and attach them by solder to suitable terminal clips. in the case of the coil shown in fig. these clips are mounted on the wooden heads of the coil, while in the design shown in fig. they are mounted on the base, as is clearly indicated. repeating coil. the so-called repeating coil used in telephony is really nothing but an induction coil. it is used in a variety of ways and usually has for its purpose the inductive association of two circuits that are conductively separated. usually the repeating coil has a one to one ratio of turns, that is, there are the same number of turns in the primary as in the secondary. however, this is not always the case, since sometimes they are made to have an unequal number of turns, in which case they are called _step-up _or _step-down_ repeating coils, according to whether the primary has a smaller or a greater number of turns than the secondary. repeating coils are almost universally of the closed magnetic circuit type. _ringing and talking considerations._ since repeating coils often serve to connect two telephones, it follows that it is sometimes necessary to ring through them as well as talk through them. by this is meant that it is necessary that the coil shall be so designed as to be capable of transforming the heavy ringing currents as well as the very much smaller telephone or voice currents. ringing currents ordinarily have a frequency ranging from about to cycles per second, while voice currents have frequencies ranging from a few hundred up to perhaps ten thousand per second. ordinarily, therefore, the best form of repeating coil for transforming voice currents is not the best for transforming the heavy ringing currents and _vice versâ_. if the comparatively heavy ringing currents alone were to be considered, the repeating coil might well be of heavy construction with a large amount of iron in its magnetic circuit. on the other hand, for carrying voice currents alone it is usually made with a small amount of iron and with small windings, in order to prevent waste of energy in the core, and to give a high degree of responsiveness with the least amount of distortion of wave form, so that the voice currents will retain as far as possible their original characteristics. when, therefore, a coil is required to carry both ringing and talking currents, a compromise must be effected. _types._ the form of repeating coil largely used for both ringing and talking through is shown in fig. . this coil comprises a soft iron core made up of a bundle of wires about . inch in diameter, the ends of which are left of sufficient length to be bent back around the windings after they are in place and thus form a completely closed magnetic path for the core. the windings of this particular coil are four in number, and contain about , turns each, and have a resistance of about ohms. in this coil, when connected for local battery work, the windings are connected in pairs in series, thus forming effectively two windings having about ohms resistance each. the whole coil is enclosed in a protecting case of iron. the terminals are brought out to suitable clips on the wooden base, as shown. an external perspective view of this coil is shown in fig. . by bringing out each terminal of each winding, eight in all, as shown in this figure, great latitude of connection is provided for, since the windings may be connected in circuit in any desirable way, either by connecting them together in pairs to form virtually a primary and a secondary, or, as is frequently the case, to split the primary and the secondary, connecting a battery between each pair of windings. [illustration: fig. . repeating coil] [illustration: fig. . repeating coil] fig. illustrates in section a commercial type of coil designed for talking through only. this coil is provided with four windings of , turns each, and when used for local battery work the coils are connected in pairs in series, thus giving a resistance of about ohms in each half of the repeating coil. the core of this coil consists of a bundle of soft iron wires, and the shell which forms the return path for the magnetic lines is of very soft sheet iron. this shell is drawn into cup shape and its open end is closed, after the coil is inserted, by the insertion of a soft iron head, as indicated. as in the case of the coil shown in figs. and , eight terminals are brought out on this coil, thus providing the necessary flexibility of connection. [illustration: fig. . repeating coil] [illustration: fig. . diagram of toroidal repeating coil] [illustration: fig. . toroidal repeating coil] still another type of repeating coil is illustrated in diagram in fig. , and in view in fig. . this coil, like the impedance coil shown in fig. , comprises a core made up of a bundle of soft iron wires wound into the form of a ring. it is usually provided with two primary windings placed opposite each other upon the core, and with two secondary windings, one over each primary. in practice these two primary windings are connected in one circuit and the two secondaries in another. this is the standard repeating coil now used by the bell companies in their common-battery cord circuits. [illustration: the operating room of the exchange at webb city, missouri] [illustration: fig. . symbol of induction coil] conventional symbols. the ordinary symbol for the induction coil used in local battery work is shown in fig. . this consists merely of a pair of parallel zig-zag lines. the primary winding is usually indicated by a heavy line having a fewer number of zig-zags, and the secondary by a finer line having a greater number of zig-zags. in this way the fact that the primary is of large wire and of comparatively few turns is indicated. this diagrammatic symbol may be modified to suit almost any conditions, and where a tertiary as well as a secondary winding is provided it may be shown by merely adding another zig-zag line. [illustration: fig. . repeating-coil symbols] the repeating coil is indicated symbolically in the two diagrams of fig. . where there is no necessity for indicating the internal connections of the coil, the symbol shown in the left of this figure is usually employed. where, however, the coil consists of four windings rather than two and the method of connecting them is to be indicated, the symbol at the right hand is employed. in fig. another way of indicating a four-winding repeating coil or induction coil is shown. sometimes such windings may be combined by connection to form merely a primary and a secondary winding, and in other cases the four windings all act separately, in which case one may be considered the primary and the others, respectively, the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary. [illustration: fig. . symbol of four-winding repeating coil] where the toroidal type of repeating coil is employed, the diagram of fig. , already referred to, is a good symbolic representation. chapter xi non-inductive resistance devices it is often desired to introduce simple ohmic resistance into telephone circuits, in order to limit the current flow, or to create specific differences of potential at given points in the circuit. temperature coefficient. the design or selection of resistance devices for various purposes frequently involves the consideration of the effect of temperature on the resistance of the conductor employed. the resistance of conductors is subject to change by changes in temperature. while nearly all metals show an increase, carbon shows a decrease in its resistance when heated. the temperature coefficient of a conductor is a factor by which the resistance of the conductor at a given temperature must be multiplied in order to determine the change in resistance of that conductor brought about by a rise in temperature of one degree. table v temperature coefficients +---------------------------+-----------------------------+ | pure metals | temperature coefficients | +---------------------------+--------------+--------------+ | | centigrade | fahrenheit | +---------------------------+--------------+--------------+ | silver (annealed) | . | . | | copper (annealed) | . | . | | gold ( . %) | . | . | | aluminum ( %) | . | . | | zinc | . | . | | platinum (annealed) | . | . | | iron | . | . | | nickel | . | . | | tin | . | . | | lead | . | . | | antimony | . | . | | mercury | . | . | | bismuth | . | . | +---------------------------+--------------+--------------+ _positive and negative coefficients._ those conductors, in which a rise in temperature produces an increase in resistance, are said to have positive temperature coefficients, while those in which a rise in temperature produces a lowering of resistance are said to have negative temperature coefficients. the temperature coefficients of pure metals are always positive and for some of the more familiar metals, have values, according to foster, as in table v. iron, it will be noticed, has the highest temperature coefficient of all. carbon, on the other hand, has a large negative coefficient, as proved by the fact that the filament of an ordinary incandescent lamp has nearly twice the resistance when cold as when heated to full candle-power. certain alloys have been produced which have very low temperature coefficients, and these are of value in producing resistance units which have practically the same resistance for all ordinary temperatures. some of these alloys also have very high resistance as compared with copper and are of value in enabling one to obtain a high resistance in small space. one of the most valuable resistance wires is of an alloy known as _german silver_. the so-called eighteen per cent alloy has approximately . times the resistance of copper and a temperature coefficient of . per degree fahrenheit. the thirty per cent alloy has approximately times the resistance of copper and a temperature coefficient of . per degree fahrenheit. for facilitating the design of resistance coils of german silver wire, tables vi and vii are given, containing information as to length, resistance, and weight of the eighteen per cent and the thirty per cent alloys, respectively, for all sizes of wire smaller than no. b. & s. gauge. special resistance alloys may be obtained having temperature coefficients as low as . per degree fahrenheit. other alloys of nickel and steel are adapted for use where the wire must carry heavy currents and be raised to comparatively high temperatures thereby; for such use non-corrosive properties are specially to be desired. such wire may be obtained having a resistance of about fifty times that of copper. table vi per cent german silver wire +---------+----------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+ | no. | | | | | | b. & s. | diameter | weight | length | resistance | | gauge | inches | pounds per foot | feet per pound | ohms per foot | +---------+----------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+ | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | +---------+----------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+ inductive neutrality. where the resistance unit is required to be strictly non-inductive, and is to be in the form of a coil, special designs must be employed to give the desired inductive neutrality. provisions against heating. in cases where a considerable amount of heat is to be generated in the resistance, due to the necessity of carrying large currents, special precautions must be taken as to the heat-resisting properties of the structure, and also as to the provision of sufficient radiating surface or its equivalent to provide for the dissipation of the heat generated. types. _mica card unit._ one of the most common resistance coils used in practice is shown in fig. . this comprises a coil of fine, bare german silver wire wound on a card of mica, the windings being so spaced that the loops are not in contact with each other. the winding is protected by two cards of mica and the whole is bound in place by metal strips, to which the ends of the winding are attached. binding posts are provided on the extended portions of the terminals to assist in mounting the resistance on a supporting frame, and the posts terminate in soldering terminals by which the resistance is connected into the circuit. table vii per cent german silver wire +---------+----------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+ | no. | | | | | | b. & s. | diameter | weight | length | resistance | | gauge | inches | pounds per foot | feet per pound | ohms per foot | +---------+----------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+ | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | | | . | . | . | . | +---------+----------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+ _differentially-wound unit._ another type of resistance coil is that in which the winding is placed upon an insulating core of heat-resisting material and wound so as to overcome inductive effects. in order to accomplish this, the wire to be bound on the core is doubled back on itself at its middle portion to form two strands, and these are wound simultaneously on the core, thus forming two spirals of equal number of turns. the current in traversing the entire coil must flow through one spiral in one direction with relation to the core, and in the opposite direction in the other spiral, thereby nullifying the inductive effects of one spiral by those of the other. this is called a _non-inductive winding_ and is in reality an example of differential winding. _lamp filament._ an excellent type of non-inductive resistance is the ordinary carbon-filament incandescent lamp. this is used largely in the circuits of batteries, generators, and other sources of supply to prevent overload in case of short circuits on the line. these are cheap, durable, have large current-carrying capacities, and are not likely to set things afire when overheated. an additional advantage incident to their use for this purpose is that an overload on a circuit in which they are placed is visibly indicated by the glowing of the lamp. [illustration: fig. . mica card resistance] [illustration: fig. . iron-wire ballast] obviously, the carbon-filament incandescent lamp, when used as a resistance, has, on account of the negative temperature coefficient of carbon, the property of presenting the highest resistance to the circuit when carrying no current, and of presenting a lower and lower resistance as the current and consequent heating increases. for some conditions of practice this is not to be desired, and the opposite characteristic of presenting low resistance to small currents and comparatively high resistance to large currents would best meet the conditions of practice. _iron-wire ballast._ claude d. enochs took advantage of the very high positive temperature coefficient of iron to produce a resistance device having these characteristics. his arrangement possesses the compactness of the carbon-filament lamp and is shown in fig. . the resistance element proper is an iron wire, wound on a central stem of glass, and this is included in an exhausted bulb so as to avoid oxidation. such a resistance is comparatively low when cold, but when traversed by currents sufficient to heat it considerably will offer a very large increase of resistance to oppose the further increase of current. in a sense, it is a self-adjusting resistance, tending towards the equalization of the flow of current in the circuit in which it is placed. chapter xii condensers charge. a conducting body insulated from all other bodies will receive and hold a certain amount of electricity (a charge), if subjected to an electrical potential. thus, referring to fig. , if a metal plate, insulated from other bodies, be connected with, say, the positive pole of a battery, the negative pole of which is grounded, a current will flow into the plate until the plate is raised to the same potential as that of the battery pole to which it is connected. the amount of electricity that will flow into the plate will depend, other things being equal, on the potential of the source from which it is charged; in fact, it is proportional to the potential of the source from which it is charged. this amount of electricity is a measure of the capacity of the plate, just as the amount of water that a bath-tub will hold is a measure of the capacity of the bath-tub. capacity. instead of measuring the amount of electricity by the quart or pound, as in the case of material things, the unit of electrical quantity is the _coulomb_. the unit of capacity of an insulated conductor is the _farad_, and a given insulated conductor is said to have unit capacity, that is, the capacity of one farad, when it will receive a charge of one coulomb of electricity at a potential of one volt. referring to fig. , the potential of the negative terminal of the battery may be said to be zero, since it is connected to the earth. if the battery shown be supposed to have exactly one volt potential, then the plate would be said to have the capacity of one farad if one coulomb of electricity flowed from the battery to the plate before the plate was raised to the same potential as that of the positive pole, that is, to a potential of one volt above the potential of the earth; it being assumed that the plate was also at zero potential before the connection was made. another conception of this quantity may be had by remembering that a coulomb is such a quantity of current as will result from one ampere flowing one second. the capacity of a conductor depends, among other things, on its area. if the plate of fig. should be made twice as large in area, other things remaining the same, it would have twice the capacity. but there are other factors governing the capacity of a conductor. consider the diagram of fig. , which is supposed to represent two such plates as are shown in fig. , placed opposite each other and connected respectively with the positive and the negative poles of the battery. when the connection between the plates and the battery is made, the two plates become charged to a difference of potential equal to the electromotive force of the battery. in order to obtain these charges, assume that the plates were each at zero potential before the connection was made; then current flows from the battery into the plates until they each assume the potential of the corresponding battery terminal. if the two plates be brought closer together, it will be found that more current will now flow into each of them, although the difference of potential between the two plates must obviously remain the same, since each of them is still connected to the battery. [illustration: fig. . condenser plate] theory. due to the proximity of the plates, the positive electricity on plate _a_ is drawn by the negative charge on plate _b_ towards plate _b_, and likewise the negative electricity on plate _b_ is drawn to the side towards plate _a_ by the positive charge on that plate. these two charges so drawn towards each other will, so to speak, bind each other, and they are referred to as _bound charges_. the charge on the right-hand side of plate _a_ and on the left-hand side of plate _b_ will, however, be free charges, since there is nothing to attract them, and these are, therefore, neutralized by a further flow of electricity from the battery to the plate. [illustration: fig. . theory of condenser] obviously, the closer together the plates are the stronger will be the attractive influence of the two charges on each other. from this it follows that in the case of plate _a_, when the two plates are being moved closer together, more positive electricity will flow into plate _a_ to neutralize the increasing free negative charges on the right-hand side of the plate. as the plates are moved closer together still, a new distribution of charges will take place, resulting in more positive electricity flowing into plate _a_ and more negative electricity flowing into plate _b_. the closer proximity of the plates, therefore, increases the capacity of the plates for holding charges, due to the increased inductive action across the dielectric separating the plates. condenser defined. a condenser is a device consisting of two adjacent plates of conducting material, separated by an insulating material, called a _dielectric_. the purpose is to increase by the proximity of the plates, each to the other, the amount of electricity which each plate will receive and hold when subjected to a given potential. dielectric. we have already seen that the capacity of a condenser depends upon the area of its plates, and also upon their distance apart. there is still another factor on which the capacity of a condenser depends, _i.e._, on the character of the insulating medium separating its plates. the inductive action which takes place between a charged conductor and other conductors nearby it, as between plate _a_ and plate _b_ of fig. , is called _electrostatic induction_, and it plays an important part in telephony. it is found that the ability of a given charged conductor to induce charges on other neighboring conductors varies largely with the insulating medium or dielectric that separates them. this quality of a dielectric, by which it enables inductive action to take place between two separated conductors, is called _inductive capacity_. usually this quality of dielectrics is measured in terms of the same quality in dry air, this being taken as unity. when so expressed, it is termed _specific inductive capacity_. to be more accurate the specific inductive capacity of a dielectric is the ratio between the capacity of a condenser having that substance as a dielectric, to the capacity of the same condenser using dry air at zero degrees centigrade and at a pressure of . pounds per square inch as the dielectric. to illustrate, if two condensers having plates of equal size and equal distance apart are constructed, one using air as the dielectric and the other using hard crown glass as the dielectric, the one using glass will have a capacity of . times that of the one using air. from this we say that crown glass has a specific inductive capacity of . . various authorities differ rather widely as to the specific inductive capacity of many common substances. the values given in table viii have been chosen from the smithsonian physical tables. table viii specific inductive capacities +-----------------------+------------------------+ |dielectric | referred to air as | +-----------------------+------------------------+ |vacuum | . | |hydrogen | . | |carbonic acid | . | |dry paper | . to . | |paraffin | . to . | |ebonite | . to . | |sulphur | . to . | |shellac | . to . | |gutta-percha | . to . | |plate glass | . to . | |porcelain | . | |mica | . to . | |glass--light flint | . | |glass--hard crown | . | |selenium | . | +-----------------------+------------------------+ this data is interesting as showing the wide divergence in specific inductive capacities of various materials, and also showing the wide divergence in different observations of the same material. undoubtedly, this latter is due mainly to the fact that various materials differ largely in themselves, as in the case of paraffin, for instance, which exhibits widely different specific inductive capacities according to the difference in rapidity with which it is cooled in changing from a liquid to a solid state. we see then that the capacity of a condenser varies as the area of its plates, as the specific inductive capacity of the dielectric employed, and also inversely as the distance between the plates. obviously, therefore, in making a condenser of large capacity, it is important to have as large an area of the plate as possible; to have them as close together as possible; to have the dielectric a good insulating medium so that there will be practically no leakage between the plates; and to have the dielectric of as high a specific inductive capacity as economy and suitability of material in other respects will permit. dielectric materials. _mica_. of all dielectrics mica is the most suitable for condensers, since it has very high insulation resistance and also high specific inductive capacity, and furthermore may be obtained in very thin sheets. high-grade condensers, such as are used for measurements and standardization purposes, usually have mica for the dielectric. [illustration: fig. . rolled condenser] _dry paper. _the demands of telephonic practice are, however, such as to require condensers of very cheap construction with large capacity in a small space. for this purpose thin bond paper, saturated with paraffin, has been found to be the best dielectric. the conductors in condensers are almost always of tinfoil, this being an ideal material on account of its cheapness and its thinness. before telephony made such urgent demands for a cheap compact condenser, the customary way of making them was to lay up alternate sheets of dielectric material, either of oiled paper or mica and tinfoil, the sheets of tinfoil being cut somewhat smaller than the sheets of dielectric material in order that the proper insulation might be secured at the edges. after a sufficient number of such plates were built up the alternate sheets of tinfoil were connected together to form one composite plate of the condenser, while the other sheets were similarly connected together to form the other plate. obviously, in this way a very large area of plates could be secured with a minimum degree of separation. [illustration: fig. . rolled condenser] there has been developed for use in telephony, however, and its use has since extended into other arts requiring condensers, what is called the _rolled condenser_. this is formed by rolling together in a flat roll four sheets of thin bond paper, _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _, and two somewhat narrower strips of tinfoil, _ _ and _ _, fig. . the strips of tinfoil and paper are fed on to the roll in continuous lengths and in such manner that two sheets of paper will lie between the two strips of tinfoil in all cases. thin sheet metal terminals _ _ and _ _ are rolled into the condenser as it is being wound, and as these project beyond the edges of the paper they form convenient terminals for the condenser after it is finished. after it is rolled, the roll is boiled in hot paraffin so as to thoroughly impregnate it and expel all moisture. it is then squeezed in a press and allowed to cool while under pressure. in this way the surplus paraffin is expelled and the plates are brought very close together. it then appears as in fig. . the condenser is now sealed in a metallic case, usually rectangular in form, and presents the appearance shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . rolled condenser] a later method of condenser making which has not yet been thoroughly proven in practice, but which bids fair to produce good results, varies from the method just described in that a paper is used which in itself is coated with a very thin conducting material. this conducting material is of metallic nature and in reality forms a part of the paper. to form a condenser of this the sheets are merely rolled together and then boiled in paraffin and compressed as before. sizes. the condensers ordinarily used in telephone practice range in capacity from about / microfarad to microfarads. when larger capacities than microfarads are desired, they may be obtained by connecting several of the smaller size condensers in multiple. table ix gives the capacity, shape, and dimensions of a variety of condensers selected from those regularly on the market. table ix condenser data +------------+---------------+---------------------------------+ | | | dimensions in inches | | capacity | shape |----------+----------+-----------+ | | | height | width | thickness | +------------+---------------+----------+----------+-----------+ | m. f. | rectangular | - / | - / | / | | m. f. | " | - / | - / | / | | m. f. | " | - / | - / | / | | / m. f. | " | - / | - / | / | | m. f. | " | - / | - / | / | | / m. f. | " | - / | - / | / | | / m. f. | " | - / | - / | / | | m. f. | " | - / | | l | +------------+---------------+----------+----------+-----------+ conventional symbols. the conventional symbols usually employed to represent condensers in telephone diagrams are shown in fig. . these all convey the idea of the adjacent conducting plates separated by insulating material. [illustration: fig. . condenser symbols] functions. obviously, when placed in a circuit a condenser offers a complete barrier to the flow of direct current, since no conducting path exists between its terminals, the dielectric offering a very high insulation resistance. if, however, the condenser is connected across the terminals of a source of alternating current, this current flows first in one direction and then in the other, the electromotive force in the circuit increasing from zero to a maximum in one direction, and then decreasing back to zero and to a maximum in the other direction, and so on. with a condenser connected so as to be subjected to such alternating electromotive forces, as the electromotive force begins to rise the electromotive force at the condenser terminals will also rise and a current will, therefore, flow into the condenser. when the electromotive force reaches its maximum, the condenser will have received its full charge for that potential, and the current flow into it will cease. when the electromotive force begins to fall, the condenser can no longer retain its charge and a current will, therefore, flow out of it. apparently, therefore, there is a flow of current through the condenser the same as if it were a conductor. means for assorting currents. in conclusion, it is obvious that the telephone engineer has within his reach in the various coils--whether non-inductive or inductive, or whether having one or several windings--and in the condenser, a variety of tools by which he may achieve a great many useful ends in his circuit work. obviously, the condenser affords a means for transmitting voice currents or fluctuating currents, and for excluding steady currents. likewise the impedance coil affords a means for readily transmitting steady currents but practically excluding voice currents or fluctuating currents. by the use of these very simple devices it is possible to sift out the voice currents from a circuit containing both steady and fluctuating currents, or it is possible in the same manner to sift out the steady currents and to leave the voice currents alone to traverse the circuit. great use is made in the design of telephone circuits of the fact that the electromagnets, which accomplish the useful mechanical results in causing the movement of parts, possess the quality of impedance. thus, the magnets which operate various signaling relays at the central office are often used also as impedance coils in portions of the circuit through which it is desired to have only steady currents pass. if, on the other hand, it is necessary to place a relay magnet, having considerable impedance, directly in a talking circuit, the bad effects of this on the voice currents may be eliminated by shunting this coil with a condenser, or with a comparatively high non-inductive resistance. the voice currents will flow around the high impedance of the relay coil through the condenser or resistance, while the steady currents, which are the ones which must be depended upon to operate the relay, are still forced in whole or in part to pass through the relay coil where they belong. in a similar way the induction coil affords a means for keeping two circuits completely isolated so far as the direct flow of current between them is concerned, and yet of readily transmitting, by electromagnetic induction, currents from one of these circuits to the other. here is a means of isolation so far as direct current is concerned, with complete communication for alternating current. chapter xiii current supply to transmitters the methods by which current is supplied to the transmitter of a telephone for energizing it, may be classified under two divisions: first, those where the battery or other source of current is located at the station with the transmitter which it supplies; and second, those where the battery or other source of current is located at a distant point from the transmitter, the battery in such cases serving as a common source of current for the supply of transmitters at a number of stations. the advantages of putting the transmitter and the battery which supplies it with current in a local circuit with the primary of an induction coil, and placing the secondary of the induction coil in the line, have already been pointed out but may be briefly summarized as follows: when the transmitter is placed directly in the _line circuit_ and the line is of considerable length, the current which passes through the transmitter is necessarily rather small unless a battery of high potential is used; and, furthermore, the total change in resistance which the transmitter is capable of producing is but a small proportion of the total resistance of the line, and, therefore, the current changes produced by the transmitter are relatively small. on the other hand, when the transmitter is placed in a _local circuit_ with the battery, this circuit may be of small resistance and the current relatively large, even though supplied by a low-voltage battery; so that the transmitter is capable of producing relatively large changes in a relatively large current. to draw a comparison between these two general classes of transmitter current supply, a number of cases will be considered in connection with the following figures, in each of which two stations connected by a telephone line are shown. brief reference to the local battery method of supplying current will be made in order to make this chapter contain, as far as possible, all of the commonly used methods of current supply to transmitters. [illustration: a typical medium-sized multiple switchboard equipment] local battery. in fig. two stations are shown connected by a grounded line wire. the transmitter of each station is included in a low-resistance primary circuit including a battery and the primary winding of an induction coil, the relation between the primary circuits and the line circuits being established by the inductive action between the primary and the secondary windings of induction coils, the secondary in each case being in the line circuits with the receivers. [illustration: fig. . local-battery stations with grounded circuit] fig. shows exactly the same arrangement but with a metallic circuit rather than a grounded circuit. the student should become accustomed to the replacing of one of the line wires of a metallic circuit by the earth, and to the method, employed in figs. and , of indicating a grounded circuit as distinguished from a metallic circuit. [illustration: fig. . local-battery stations with metallic circuit] in fig. is shown a slight modification of the circuit shown in fig. , which consists of connecting one end of the primary winding to one end of the secondary winding of the induction coil, thus linking together the primary circuit and the line circuit, a portion of each of these circuits being common to a short piece of the local wiring. there is no difference whatever in the action of the circuits shown in figs. and , the latter being shown merely for the purpose of bringing out this fact. it is very common, particularly in local-battery circuits, to connect one end of the primary and the secondary windings, as by doing so it is often possible to save a contact point in the hook switch and also to simplify the wiring. [illustration: fig. . local-battery stations with metallic circuit] the advantages to be gained by employing a local battery at each subscriber's station associated with the transmitter in the primary circuit of an induction coil are attended by certain disadvantages from a commercial standpoint. the primary battery is not an economical way to generate electric energy. in all its commercial forms it involves the consumption of zinc and zinc is an expensive fuel. the actual amount of current in watts required by a telephone is small, however, and this disadvantage due to the inexpensive method of generating current would not in itself be of great importance. a more serious objection to the use of local batteries at subscribers' stations appears when the subject is considered from the standpoint of maintenance. batteries, whether of the so-called "dry" or "wet" type, gradually deteriorate, even when not used, and in cases where the telephone is used many times a day the deterioration is comparatively rapid. this makes necessary the occasional renewals of the batteries with the attendant expense for new batteries or new material, and of labor and transportation in visiting the station. the labor item becomes more serious when the stations are scattered in a sparsely settled community, in which case the visiting of the stations, even for the performance of a task that would require but a few minutes' time, may consume some hours on the part of the employes in getting there and back. common battery. _advantages._ it would be more economical if all of the current for the subscribers' transmitters could be supplied from a single comparatively efficient generating source instead of from a multitude of inefficient small sources scattered throughout the community served by the exchange. the advantage of such centralization lies not only in more economic generating means, but also in having the common source of current located at one place, where it may be cared for with a minimum amount of expense. such considerations have resulted in the so-called "common-battery system," wherein the current for all the subscribers' transmitters is furnished from a source located at the central office. where such a method of supplying current is practiced, the result has also been, in nearly all cases, the doing away with the subscriber's magneto generators, relying on the central-office source of current to furnish the energy for enabling the subscriber to signal the operator. such systems, therefore, concentrate all of the sources of energy at the central office and for that reason they are frequently referred to as central-energy systems. note. in this chapter the central-energy or common-battery system will be considered only in so far as the supply of current for energizing the subscribers' transmitters is concerned, the discussion of the action of signaling being reserved for subsequent chapters. _series battery._ if but a single pair of lines had to be considered, the arrangement shown in fig. might be employed. in this the battery is located at the central office and placed in series with the two grounded lines leading from the central office to the two subscribers' stations. the voltage of this battery is made sufficient to furnish the required current over the resistance of the entire line circuit with its included instruments. obviously, changes in resistance in the transmitter at station a will affect the flow of current in the entire line and the fluctuations resulting from the vibration of the transmitter diaphragm will, therefore, reproduce these sounds in the receiver at station b, as well as in that at station a. [illustration: fig. . battery in series with two lines] an exactly similar arrangement applied to a metallic circuit is shown in fig. . in thus placing the battery in series in the circuit between the two stations, as shown in figs. and , it is obvious that the transmitter at each station is compelled to vary the resistance of the entire circuit comprising the two lines in series, in order to affect the receiver at distant stations. this is in effect making the transmitter circuit twice as long as is necessary, as will be shown in the subsequent systems considered. furthermore, the placing of the battery in series in the circuit of the two combined lines does not lend itself readily to the supply of current from a common source to more than a single pair of lines. [illustration: fig. . battery in series with two lines] _series substation circuit._ the arrangement at the substations--consisting in placing the transmitter and the receiver in series in the line circuit, as shown in figs. and --is the simplest possible one, and has been used to a considerable extent, but it has been subject to the serious objection, where receivers having permanent magnets were used, of making it necessary to so connect the receiver in the line circuit that the steady current from the battery would not set up a magnetization in the cores of the receiver in such a direction as to neutralize or oppose the magnetization of the permanent magnets. as long as the current flowed through the receiver coils in such a direction as to supplement the magnetization of the permanent magnets, no harm was usually done, but when the current flowed through the receiver coils in such a way as to neutralize or oppose the magnetizing force of the permanent magnets, the action of the receiver was greatly interfered with. as a result, it was necessary to always connect the receivers in the line circuit in a certain way, and this operation was called _poling_. in order to obviate the necessity for poling and also to bring about other desirable features, it has been, until recently, almost universal practice to so arrange the receiver that it would be in the circuit of the voice currents passing over the line, but would not be traversed by direct currents, this condition being brought about by various arrangements of condensers, impedance coils, or induction coils, as will be shown later. during the year , however, the adoption by several concerns of the so-called "direct-current" receiver has made it necessary for the direct current to flow through the receiver coils in order to give the proper magnetization to the receiver cores, and this has brought about a return to the very simple form of substation circuit, which includes the receiver and the transmitter directly in the circuit of the line. this illustrates well an occurrence that is frequently observed by those who have opportunity to watch closely the development of an art. at one time the conditions will be such as to call for complicated arrangements, and for years the aim of inventors will be to perfect these arrangements; then, after they are perfected, adopted, and standardized, a new idea, or a slight alteration in the practice in some other respect, will demand a return to the first principles and wipe out the necessity for the things that have been so arduously striven for. [illustration: fig. . bridging battery with repeating coil] _bridging battery with repeating coil._ as pointed out, the placing of the battery in series in the line circuit in the central office is not desirable, and, so far as we are aware, has never been extensively used. the universal practice, therefore, is to place it in a bridge path across the line circuit, and a number of arrangements employing this basic idea are in wide use. in fig. is shown the standard arrangement of the western electric company, employed by practically all the bell operating companies. in this the battery at the central office is connected in the middle of the two sides of a repeating coil so that the current from the battery is fed out to the two connected lines in multiple. referring to the middle portion of this figure showing the central-office apparatus, _ _ and _ _ may be considered as the two halves of one side of a repeating coil divided so that the battery may be cut into their circuit. likewise, _ _ and _ _ may be considered as the two halves of the other side of the repeating coil similarly divided for the same purpose. the windings of this repeating coil are ordinarily alike; that is, _ _ and _ _ combined have the same resistance, number of turns, and impedance as _ _ and _ _ combined. the two sides of this coil are alternately used as primary and secondary, _ _ and _ _ forming the primary when station a is talking, and _ _ and _ _, the secondary; and _vice versâ_ when station b is talking. as will be seen, the current flowing from the positive pole of the battery will divide and flow through the windings _ _ and _ _; thence over the upper limb of each line, through the transmitter at each station, and back over the lower limbs of the line, through the windings _ _ and _ _, where the two paths reunite and pass to the negative pole of the battery. it is evident that when neither transmitter is being used the current flowing through both lines will be a steady current and that, therefore, neither line will have an inductive effect on the other. when, however, the transmitter at station a is used the variations in the resistance caused by it will cause undulations in the current. these undulations, passing through the windings _ _ and _ _ of the repeating coil, will cause, by electromagnetic induction, alternating currents to flow in the windings _ _ and _ _, and these alternating currents will be superimposed on the steady currents flowing in that line and will affect the receiver at station b, as will be pointed out. the reverse conditions exist when station b is talking. _bell substation arrangement._ the substation circuits at the stations in fig. are illustrative of one of the commonly employed methods of preventing the steady current from the battery from flowing through the receiver coil. this particular arrangement is that employed by the common-battery instruments of the various bell companies. considering the action at station b, it is evident that the steady current will pass through the transmitter and through the secondary winding of the induction coil, and that as long as this current is steady no current will flow through the telephone receiver. the receiver, transmitter, and primary winding of the induction coil are, however, included in a local circuit with the condenser. the presence of the condenser precludes the possibility of direct current flowing in this path. considering station a as a receiving station, it is evident that the voice currents coming to the station over the line will pass through the secondary winding and will induce alternating currents in the primary winding which will circulate through the local circuit containing the receiver and the condenser, and thus actuate the receiver. the considerations are not so simple when the station is being treated as a transmitting station. under this condition the steady current passes through the transmitter in an obvious manner. it is clear that if the local circuit containing the receiver did not exist, the circuit would be operative as a transmitting circuit because the transmitter would produce fluctuations in the steady current flowing in the line and thus be able to affect the distant station. the transmitter, therefore, has a direct action on the currents flowing in the line by the variation in resistance which it produces in the line circuit. there is, however, a subsidiary action in this circuit. obviously, there is a drop of potential across the transmitter terminals due to the flow of steady current. this means that the upper terminal of the condenser will be charged to the same potential as the upper terminal of the transmitter, while the lower terminal of the condenser will be of the same potential as the lower terminal of the transmitter. when, now, the transmitter varies its resistance, a variation in the potential across its terminals will occur; and as a result, a variation in potential across the terminals of the condenser will occur, and this means that alternating currents will flow through the primary winding of the induction coil. the transmitter, therefore, by its action, causes alternating currents to flow through the primary of this induction coil and it causes, by direct action on the circuit of the line, fluctuations in the steady current flowing in the line. the alternating currents flowing in the primary of the coil induce currents in the secondary of the coil which supplement and augment the fluctuations produced by the direct action of the transmitter. this circuit may be looked at, therefore, in the light of combining the direct action which the transmitter produces in the current in the line with the action which the transmitter produces in the local circuit containing the primary of the induction coil, this action being repeated in the line circuit through the secondary of the induction coil. the receiver in this circuit is placed in the local circuit, and is thus not traversed by the steady currents flowing in the line. there is thus no necessity for poling it. this circuit is very efficient, but is subject to the objection of producing a heavy side tone in the receiver of the transmitting station. by "side tone" is meant the noises which are produced in the receiver at a station by virtue of the action of the transmitter at that station. side tone is objectionable for several reasons: first, it is sometimes annoying to the subscriber; second, and of more importance, the subscriber who is talking, hearing a very loud noise in his own receiver, unconsciously assumes that he is talking too loud and, therefore, lowers his voice, sometimes to such an extent that it will not properly reach the distant station. [illustration: fig. . bridging battery with impedance coils] _bridging battery with impedance coils._ the method of feeding current to the line from the common battery, shown in fig. , is called the "split repeating-coil" method. as distinguished from this is the impedance-coil method which is shown in fig. . in this the battery is bridged across the circuit of the combined lines in series with two impedance coils, _ _ and _ _, one on each side of the battery. the steady currents from the battery find ready path through these impedance coils which are of comparatively low ohmic resistance, and the current divides and passes in multiple over the circuits of the two lines. voice currents, however, originating at either one of the stations, will not pass through the shunt across the line at the central office on account of the high impedance offered by these coils, and as a result they are compelled to pass on to the distant station and affect the receiver there, as desired. this impedance-coil method seems to present the advantage of greater simplicity over the repeating-coil method shown in fig. , and so far as talking efficiency is concerned, there is little to choose between the two. the repeating-coil method, however, has the advantage over this impedance-coil method, because by it the two lines are practically divided except by the inductive connection between the two windings, and as a result an unbalanced condition of one of the connected lines is not as likely to produce an unbalanced condition in the other as where the two lines are connected straight through, as with the impedance-coil method. the substation arrangement of fig. is the same as that of fig. . [illustration: fig. . double-battery kellogg system] _double battery with impedance coils._ a modification of the impedance-coil method is used in all of the central-office work of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. this employs a combination of impedance coils and condensers, and in effect isolates the lines conductively from each other as completely as the repeating-coil method. it is characteristic of all the kellogg common-battery systems that they employ two batteries instead of one, one of these being connected in all cases with the calling line of a pair of connected lines and the other in all cases with the called line. as shown in fig. , the left-hand battery is connected with the line leading to station a through the impedance coils _ _ and _ _. likewise, the right-hand battery is connected to the line of station b through the impedance coils _ _ and _ _. these four impedance coils are wound on separate cores and do not have any inductive relation whatsoever with each other. condensers _ _ and _ _ are employed to completely isolate the lines conductively. current from the left-hand battery, therefore, passes only to station a, and current from the right-hand battery to station b. whenever the transmitter at station a is actuated the undulations of current which it produces in the line cause a varying difference of potential across the outside terminals of the two impedance coils _ _ and _ _. this means that the two left-hand terminals of condensers _ _ and _ _ are subjected to a varying difference of potential and these, of course, by electrostatic induction, cause the right-hand terminals of these condensers to be subject to a correspondingly varying difference of potential. from this it follows that alternating currents will be impressed upon the right-hand line and these will affect the receiver at station b. a rough way of expressing the action of this circuit is to consider it in the same light as that of the impedance-coil circuit shown in fig. , and to consider that the voice currents originating in one line are prevented from passing through the bridge paths at the central office on account of the impedance, and are, therefore, forced to continue on the line, being allowed to pass readily by the condensers in series between the two lines. _kellogg substation arrangement._ an interesting form of substation circuit which is employed by the kellogg company in all of its common-battery telephones is shown in fig. . in passing, it may be well to state that almost any of the substation circuits shown in this chapter are capable of working with any of the central-office circuits. the different ones are shown for the purpose of giving a knowledge of the various substation circuits that are employed, and, as far as possible, to associate them with the particular central-office arrangements with which they are commonly used. in this kellogg substation arrangement the line circuit passes first through the transmitter and then divides, one branch passing through an impedance coil _ _ and the other through the receiver and the condenser _ _, in series. the steady current from the central-office battery finds ready path through the transmitter and the impedance coil, but is prevented from passing through the receiver by the barrier set up by the condenser _ _. voice currents, however, coming over the line to the station, find ready path through the receiver and the condenser but are barred from passing through the impedance coil by virtue of its high impedance. in considering the action of the station as a transmitting station, the variations set up by the transmitter pass through the condenser and the receiver at the same station, while the steady current which supplies the transmitter passes through the impedance coil. impedance coils used for this purpose are made of low ohmic resistance but of a comparatively great number of turns, and, therefore, present a good path for steady currents and a difficult path for voice currents. this divided circuit arrangement employed by the kellogg company is one of the very simple ways of eliminating direct currents from the receiver path, at the same time allowing the free passage of voice currents. [illustration: fig. . dean system] _dean substation arrangement._ in marked contrast to the scheme for keeping steady current out of the receiver circuit employed by the kellogg company, is that shown in fig. , which has been largely used by the dean electric company, of elyria, ohio. the central-office arrangement in this case is that using the split repeating coil, which needs no further description. the substation arrangement, however, is unique and is a beautiful example of what can be done in the way of preventing a flow of current through a path without in any way insulating that path or placing any barrier in the way of the current. it is an example of the prevention of the direct flow of current through the receiver by so arranging the circuits that there will always be an equal potential on each side of it, and, therefore, no tendency for current to flow through it. in this substation arrangement four coils of wire--_ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _--are so arranged as to be connected in the circuit of the line, two in series and two in multiple. the current flowing from the battery at the central office, after passing through the transmitter, divides between the two paths containing, respectively, the coils _ _ and _ _ and the coils _ _ and _ _. the receiver is connected between the junction of the coils _ _ and _ _ and that of _ _ and _ _. the resistances of the coils are so chosen that the drop of potential through the coil _ _ will be equal to that through the coil _ _, and likewise that through the coil _ _ will be equal to that through the coil _ _. as a result, the receiver will be connected between two points of equal potential, and no direct current will flow through it. how, then, do voice currents find their way through the receiver, as they evidently must, if the circuit is to fulfill any useful function? the coils _ _ and _ _ are made to have high impedance, while _ _ and _ _ are so wound as to be non-inductive and, therefore, offer no impedance save that of their ohmic resistance. what is true, therefore, of direct currents does not hold for voice currents, and as a result, the voice currents, instead of taking the divided path which the direct currents pursued, are debarred from the coils _ _ and _ _ by their high impedance and thus pass through the non-inductive coil _ _, the receiver, and the non-inductive coil _ _. this circuit employs a wheatstone-bridge arrangement, adjusted to a state of balance with respect to direct currents, such currents being excluded from the receiver, not because the receiver circuit is in any sense opaque to such direct currents, but because there is no difference of potential between the terminals of the receiver circuit, and, therefore, no tendency for current to flow through the receiver. in order that fluctuating currents may not, for the same reason, be caused to pass by, rather than through, the receiver circuit, the diametrically-opposed arms of the wheatstone bridge are made to possess, in large degree, self-induction, thereby giving these two arms a high impedance to fluctuating currents. the conditions which exist for direct currents do not, therefore, exist for fluctuating currents, and it is this distinction which allows alternating currents to pass through the receiver and at the same time excludes direct currents therefrom. in practice, the coils _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _ of the dean substation circuit are wound on the same core, but coils _ _ and _ _--the non-inductive ones--are wound by doubling the wire back on itself so as to neutralize their self-induction. _stromberg-carlson._ another modification of the central-office arrangement and also of the subscribers' station circuits, is shown in fig. , this being a simplified representation of the circuits commonly employed by the stromberg-carlson telephone manufacturing company. the battery feed at the central office differs only from that shown in fig. , in that a single battery rather than two batteries is used, the current being supplied to one of the lines through the impedance coils _ _ and _ _, and to the other line through the impedance coils _ _ and _ _; condensers _ _ and _ _ serve conductively to isolate the two lines. at the subscriber's station the line circuit passes through the secondary of an induction coil and the transmitter. the receiver is kept entirely in a local circuit so that there is no tendency for direct current to flow through it, but it is receptive to voice currents through the electromagnetic induction between the primary and the secondary of the induction coil. [illustration: fig. . stromberg-carlson system] [illustration: fig. . north electric company system] _north._ another arrangement of central-office battery feed is employed by the north electric company, and is shown in fig. . in this two batteries are used which supply current respectively to the two connected lines, condensers being employed to conductively isolate the lines. this differs from the kellogg arrangement shown in fig. in that the two coils _ _ and _ _ are wound on the same core, while the coils _ _ and _ _ are wound together upon another core. in this case, in order that the inductive action of one of the coils may not neutralize that of the other coil on the same core, the two coils are wound in such relative direction that their magnetizing influence will always be cumulative rather than differential. the central-office arrangements discussed in figs. to , inclusive, are those which are in principal use in commercial practice in common-battery exchanges. _current supply over limbs of line in parallel._ as indicating further interesting possibilities in the method of supplying current from a common source to a number of substations, several other systems will be briefly referred to as being of interest, although these have not gone into wide commercial use. the system shown in fig. is one proposed by dean in the early days of common-battery working, and this arrangement was put into actual service and gave satisfactory results, but was afterwards supplanted by the bell equipment operating under the system shown in fig. , which became standardized by that company. in this the current from the common battery at the central office is not fed over the two line wires in series, but in multiple, using a ground return from the subscriber's station to the central office. across the metallic circuit formed by two connected lines there is bridged, at the central office, an impedance coil _ _, and between the center point of this impedance coil and the ground is connected the common battery. at the subscriber's station is placed an impedance coil _ _, also bridged across the two limbs of the line, and between the center point of this impedance coil and the ground is connected the transmitter, which is shunted by the primary winding of an induction coil. connected between the two limbs of the line at the substation there is also the receiver and the secondary of an induction coil in series. [illustration: fig. . current supply over parallel limbs of line] the action of this circuit at first seems a little complex, but if taken step by step may readily be understood. the transmitter supply circuit may be traced from the central-office battery through the two halves of the impedance coil _ _ in multiple; thence over the two limbs of the line in multiple to station a, for instance; thence in multiple through the two halves of impedance coil _ _, to the center point of that coil; thence through the two paths offered respectively by the primary of the induction coil and by the transmitter; then to ground and back to the other pole of the central-office battery. by this circuit the transmitter at the substation is supplied with current. variations in the resistance of the transmitter when in action, cause complementary variations in the supply current flowing through the primary of the induction coil. these variations induce similar alternating currents in the secondary of this coil, which is in series in the line circuit. the currents, so induced in this secondary, flow in series through one side of the line to the distant station; thence through the secondary and the receiver at that station to the other side of the line and back through that side of the line to the receiver. these currents are not permitted to pass through the bridged paths across the metallic circuit that are offered by the impedance coils _ _ and _ _, because they are voice currents and are, therefore, debarred from these paths by virtue of the impedance. [illustration: fig. . current supply over parallel limbs of line] an objection to this form of current supply and to other similar forms, wherein the transmitter current is fed over the two sides of the line in multiple with a ground return, is that the ground-return circuit formed by the two sides of the line in multiple is subject to inductive disturbances from other lines in the same way as an ordinary grounded line is subject to inductive disturbance. the current-supply circuit is thus subject to external disturbances and such disturbances find their way into the metallic circuit and, therefore, through the instruments by means of the electromagnetic induction between the primary and the secondary coils at the substations. another interesting method of current supply from a central-office battery is shown in fig. . this, like the circuit just considered, feeds the energy to the subscriber's station over the two sides of the line in multiple with a ground return. in this case, however, a local circuit is provided at the substation, in which is placed a storage battery _ _ and the primary _ _ of an induction coil, together with the transmitter. the idea in this is that the current supply from the central office will pass through the storage battery and charge it. upon the use of the transmitter, this storage battery acts to supply current to the local circuit containing the transmitter and the primary coil _ _ in exactly the same manner as in a local battery system. the fluctuating current so produced by the action of the transmitter in this local circuit acts on the secondary winding _ _ of the induction coil, and produces therein alternating currents which pass to the central office and are in turn repeated to the distant station. _supply many lines from common source._ we come now to the consideration of the arrangement by which a single battery may be made to supply current at the central office to a large number of pairs of connected lines simultaneously. up to this point in this discussion it has been shown only how each battery served a single pair of connected lines and no others. repeating coil:--in fig. is shown how a single battery supplies current simultaneously to four different pairs of lines, the lines of each pair being connected for conversation. it is seen that the pairs of lines shown in this figure are arranged in each case in accordance with the system shown in fig. . let us inquire why it is that, although all of these four pairs of lines are connected with a common source of energy and are, therefore, all conductively joined, the stations will be able to communicate in pairs without interference between the pairs. in other words, why is it that voice currents originating at station a will pass only to the receiver at station b and not to the receivers at station c or station h, for instance? the reason is that separate supply conductors lead from the points such as _ _ and _ _ at the junctions of the repeating-coil windings on each pair of circuits to the battery terminals, and the resistance and impedance of the battery itself and of the common leads to it are so small that although the feeble voice currents originating in the pair of lines connecting station a and station b pass through the battery, they are not able to alter the potential of the battery in any appreciable degree. as a result, therefore, the supply wires leading from the common-battery terminals to the points _ _ and _ _, for instance, cannot be subjected to any variations in potential by virtue of currents flowing through the battery from the points _ _ and _ _ of the lines joining station a and station b. [illustration: main office, keystone telephone company, philadelphia, pa.] [illustration: fig. . common source for many lines] [illustration: fig. . common source for many lines] retardation coil--single battery:--in fig. is shown in similar manner the current supply from a single battery to four different pairs of lines, the battery being associated with the lines by the combined impedance coil and condenser method, which was specifically dealt with in connection with fig. . the reasons why there will be no interference between the conversations carried on in the various pairs of connected lines in this case are the same as those just considered in connection with the system shown in fig. . the impedance coils in this case serve to keep the telephone currents confined to their respective pairs of lines in which they originate, and this same consideration applies to the system of fig. , for each of the separate repeating-coil windings of fig. is in itself an impedance coil with respect to such currents as might leak away from one pair of lines on to another. retardation coil--double battery:--the arrangement of feeding a number of pairs of lines according to the kellogg two-battery system is indicated in fig. , which needs no further explanation in view of the description of the preceding figures. it is interesting to note in this case that the left-hand battery serves only the left-hand lines and the right-hand battery only the right-hand lines. as this is worked out in practice, the left-hand battery is always connected to those lines which originate a call and the right-hand battery always to those lines that are called for. the energy supplied to a calling line is always, therefore, from a different source than that which supplies a called line. [illustration: fig. . two sources for many lines] [illustration: fig. . current supply from distant point] _current supply from distant point._ sometimes it is convenient to supply current to a group of lines centering at a certain point from a source of current located at a distant point. this is often the case in the so-called private branch exchange, where a given business house or other institution is provided with its own switchboard for interconnecting the lines leading to the various telephones of that concern or institution among themselves, and also for connecting them with lines leading to the city exchange. it is not always easy or convenient to maintain at such private switchboards a separate battery for supplying the current needed by the local exchange. in such cases the arrangement shown in fig. is sometimes employed. this shows two pairs of lines connected by the impedance-coil system with common terminals _ _ and _ _, between which ordinarily the common battery would be connected. instead of putting a battery between these terminals, however, at the local exchange, a condenser of large capacity is connected between them and from these terminals circuit wires _ _ and _ _ are led to a battery of suitable voltage at a distant central office. the condenser in this case is used to afford a short-circuit path for the voice currents that leak from one side of one pair of lines to the other, through the impedance coils bridged across the line. in this way the effect of the necessarily high resistance in the common leads _ _ and _ _, leading to the storage battery, is overcome and the tendency to cross-talk between the various pairs of connected lines is eliminated. frequently, instead of employing this arrangement, a storage battery of small capacity will be connected between the terminals _ _ and _ _, instead of the condenser, and these will be charged over the wires _ _ and _ _ from a source of current at a distant point. a consideration of the various methods of supplying current from a common source to a number of lines will show that it is essential that the resistance of the battery itself be very low. it is also necessary that the resistance and the impedance of the common leads from the battery to the point of distribution to the various pairs of lines be very low, in order that the voice currents which flow through them, by virtue of the conversations going on in the different pairs of lines, shall not produce any appreciable alteration in the difference of potential between the battery terminals. chapter xiv the telephone set we have considered what may be called the elemental parts of a complete telephone; that is, the receiver, transmitter, hook switch, battery, generator, call bell, condenser, and the various kinds of coils which go to make up the apparatus by which one is enabled to transmit and receive speech and signals. we will now consider the grouping of these various elements into a complete working organization known as a telephone. before considering the various types it is well to state that the term telephone is often rather loosely used. we sometimes hear the receiver proper called a telephone or a hand telephone. since this was the original speaking telephone, there is some reason for so calling the receiver. the modern custom more often applies the term telephone to the complete organization of talking and signaling apparatus, together with the associated wiring and cabinet or standard on which it is mounted. the name telephone set is perhaps to be preferred to the word telephone, since it tends to avoid misunderstanding as to exactly what is meant. frequently, also, the telephone or telephone set is referred to as a subscriber's station equipment, indicating the equipment that is to be found at a subscriber's station. this, as applying to a telephone alone, is not proper, since the subscriber's station equipment includes more than a telephone. it includes the local wiring within the premises of the subscriber and also the lightning arrester and other protective devices, if such exist. to avoid confusion, therefore, the collection of talking and signaling apparatus with its wiring and containing cabinet or standard will be referred to in this work as a telephone or telephone set. the receiver will, as a rule, be designated as such, rather than as a telephone. the term subscriber's station equipment will refer to the complete equipment at a subscriber's station, and will include the telephone set, the interior wiring, and the protective devices, together with any other apparatus that may be associated with the telephone line and be located within the subscriber's premises. classification of sets. telephones may be classified under two general headings, magneto telephones and common-battery telephones, according to the character of the systems in which they are adapted to work. _magneto telephone._ the term magneto telephone, as it was originally employed in telephony, referred to the type of instrument now known as a receiver, particularly when this was used also as a transmitter. as the use of this instrument as a transmitter has practically ceased, the term magneto telephone has lost its significance as applying to the receiver, and, since many telephones are equipped with magneto generators for calling purposes, the term magneto telephone has, by common consent, come to be used to designate any telephone including, as a part of its equipment, a magneto generator. magneto telephones usually, also, include local batteries for furnishing the transmitter with current, and this has led to these telephones being frequently called local battery telephones. however, a local battery telephone is not necessarily a magneto telephone and _vice versâ_, since sometimes magneto telephones have no local batteries and sometimes local battery telephones have no magnetos. nearly all of the telephones which are equipped with magneto generators are, however, also equipped with local batteries for talking purposes, and, therefore, the terms magneto telephone and local battery telephone usually refer to the same thing. _common-battery telephone._ common-battery telephones, on the other hand, are those which have no local battery and no magneto generator, all the current for both talking and signaling being furnished from a common source of current at the central office. _wall and desk telephones._ again we may classify telephones or telephone sets in accordance with the manner in which their various parts are associated with each other for use, regardless of what parts are contained in the set. we may refer to all sets adapted to be mounted on a wall or partition as _wall telephones_, and to all in which the receiver, transmitter, and hook are provided with a standard of their own to enable them to rest on any flat surface, such as a desk or table, as _desk telephones_. these latter are also referred to as portable telephones and as portable desk telephones. in general, magneto or local battery telephones differ from common-battery telephones in their component parts, the difference residing principally in the fact that the magneto telephone always has a magneto generator and usually a local battery, while the common-battery telephone has no local source of current whatever. on the other hand, the differences between wall telephones and desk telephones are principally structural, and obviously either of these types of telephones may be for common-battery or magneto work. the same component parts go to make up a desk telephone as a wall telephone, provided the two instruments are adapted for the same class of service, but the difference between the two lies in the structural features by which these same parts are associated with each other and protected from exposure. [illustration: fig. . magneto wall set] [illustration: fig. . magneto wall set] magneto-telephone sets. _wall._ in fig. is shown a familiar type of wall set. the containing box includes within it all of the working parts of the apparatus except that which is necessarily left outside in order to be within the reach of the user. fig. shows the same set with the door open. this gives a good idea of the ordinary arrangement of the apparatus within. it is seen that the polarized bell or ringer has its working parts mounted on the inside of the door or cover of the box, the tapper projecting through so as to play between the gongs on the outside. likewise the transmitter arm, which supports the transmitter and allows its adjustment up and down to accommodate itself to the height of the user, is mounted on the front of the door, and the conductors leading to it may be seen fastened to the rear of the door in fig. . in some wall sets the wires leading to the bell and transmitter are connected to the wiring of the rest of the set through the hinges of the door, thus allowing the door to be opened and closed repeatedly without breaking off the wires. in order to always insure positive electrical contact between the stationary and movable parts of the hinge a small wire is wound around the hinge pin, one end being soldered to the stationary part and the other end to the movable part of the hinge. in other forms of wall set the wires to the bell and the transmitter lead directly from the stationary portion of the cabinet to the back of the door, the wires being left long enough to have sufficient flexibility to allow the door to be opened and closed without injuring the wires. at the upper portion of the box there is mounted the hook switch, this being, in this case, of the short lever type. the lever of the hook projects through the side of the box so as to make the hook available as a support for the receiver. immediately at the right of the hook switch is mounted the induction coil, and immediately below this the generator, its crank handle projecting through the right-hand side of the box so as to be available for use there. the generator is usually mounted on a transverse shelf across the middle of the cabinet, this shelf serving to form a compartment below it in which the dry battery of two or three cells is placed. the wall telephone-set cabinets have assumed a multitude of forms. when wet cells rather than dry cells were ordinarily employed, as was the case up to about the year , the magneto generator, polarized bell, and hook switch were usually mounted in a rectangular box placed at the top of a long backboard. immediately below this on the backboard was mounted the transmitter arm, and sometimes the base of this included the induction coil. below this was the battery box, this being a large affair usually adapted to accommodate two and sometimes three ordinary leclanché cells side by side. the dry cell has almost completely replaced the wet cell in this country, and as a result, the general type of wall set as shown in figs. and , has gradually replaced the old wet-cell type, which was more cumbrous and unsightly. it is usual on wall sets to provide some sort of a shelf, as indicated in fig. , for the convenience of the user in making notes and memoranda. _desk._ in the magneto desk-telephone sets, the so-called desk stand, containing the transmitter, the receiver, and the hook switch, with the standard upon which they are mounted, is shown in fig. . this desk stand evidently does not comprise the complete equipment for a magneto desk-telephone set, since the generator, polarized bell, and battery are lacking. the generator and bell are usually mounted together in a box, either on the under side of the desk of the user or on the wall within easy reach of his chair. connections are made between the apparatus in the desk stand proper and the battery, generator, and bell by means of flexible conducting cords, these carrying a plurality of conductors, as required by the particular circuit of the telephone in question. such a complete magneto desk-telephone set is shown in fig. , this being one of the types manufactured by the stromberg-carlson manufacturing company. [illustration: fig. . desk stand] a great variety of arrangements of the various parts of magneto desk-telephone apparatus is employed in practice. sometimes, as shown in fig. , the magneto bell box is equipped with binding posts for terminating all of the conductors in the cord, the line wires also running to some of these binding posts. in the magneto-telephone set illustrated the box is made large enough to accommodate only the generator and call bell, and the batteries are mounted elsewhere, as in a drawer of the desk, while in other cases there is no other equipment but that shown in the cut, the batteries being mounted within the magneto bell box itself. in still other cases, the polarized bell is contained in one box, the generator in another, the batteries in the drawer of the desk, the induction coil being mounted either in the base of the desk stand, in the bell box, or in the generator box. in such cases all of the circuits of the various scattered parts are wired to a terminal strip, located at some convenient point, this strip containing terminals for all the wires leading from the various parts and for the line wires themselves. by combining the various wires on the terminals of this terminal strip, the complete circuits of the telephone are built up. in still other cases the induction coil is mounted on the terminal strip and separate wires or sets of wires are run to the polarized bell and generator, to the desk stand itself, and to the batteries. these various arrangements are subject largely to the desire or personal ideas of the manufacturer or user. all of them work on the same principle so far as the operation of the talking and signaling circuits is concerned. [illustration: fig. . magneto desk set] circuits of magneto-telephone sets. magneto telephones, whether of the wall or desk type, may be divided into two general classes, series and bridging, according to whether the magnet of the bell is included in series or bridge relation with the telephone line when the hook is down. _series._ in the so-called series telephone line, where several telephones are placed in series in a single line circuit, the employment of the series type of telephone results in all of the telephone bells being in series in the line circuit. this means that the voice currents originating in the telephones that are in use at a given time must pass in series through the magnets of the bells of the stations that are not in use. in order that these magnets, through which the voice currents must pass, may interfere to as small a degree as possible with the voice currents, it is common to employ low-resistance magnets in series telephones, these magnets being wound with comparatively few turns and on rather short cores so that the impedance will be as small as possible. likewise, since the generators are required to ring all of the bells in series, they need not have a large current output, but must have sufficient voltage to ring through all of the bells in series and through the resistance of the line. for this reason the generators are usually of the three-bar type and sometimes have only two bars. in fig. are shown, in simplified form, the circuits of an ordinary series telephone. the receiver in this is shown as being removed from the hook and thus the talking apparatus is brought into play. the line wires _ _ and _ _ connect respectively to the binding posts _ _ and _ _ which form the terminals of the instrument. when the hook is up, the circuit between the binding posts _ _ and _ _ includes the receiver and the secondary winding of the induction coil, together with one of the upper contacts _ _ of the switch hook and the hook lever itself. this completes the circuit for receiving speech. the hook switch is provided with another upper contact _ _, between which and the contact _ _ is connected the local circuit containing the transmitter, the battery, and the primary of the induction coil in series. the primary and the secondary windings are connected together at one end and connected with the switch contact _ _, as shown. it is thus seen that when the hook is up the circuit through the receiver is automatically closed and also the local circuit containing the primary, the battery, and the transmitter. thus, all the conditions for transmitting and receiving speech are fulfilled. [fig. . circuit of series magneto set] when the hook is down, however, the receiving and transmitting circuits are broken, but another circuit is completed by the engagement of the hook-switch lever with the lower hook contact _ _. between this contact and one side of the line is connected the polarized ringer and the generator. with the hook down, therefore, the circuit may be traced from the line wire _ _ to binding post _ _, thence through the generator shunt to the call bell, and thence through the lower switching contact _ _ to the binding post _ _ and line wire _ _. the generator shunt, as already described in chapter viii, normally keeps the generator shunted out of circuit. when, however, the generator is operated the shunt is broken, which allows the armature of the generator to come into the circuit in series with the winding of the polarized bell. the normal shunting of the generator armature from the circuit of the line is advantageous in several ways. in the first place, the impedance of the generator winding is normally cut out of the circuit so that in the case of a line with several stations the talking or voice currents do not have to flow through the generator armatures at the stations which are not in use. again, the normal shunting of the generator tends to save the generator armature from injury by lightning. [illustration: fig. . circuit of series magneto set.] the more complete circuits of a series magneto telephone are shown in fig. . in this the line binding posts are shown as _ _ and _ _. at the bottom of the telephone cabinet are four other binding posts marked _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _. of these _ _ and _ _ serve for the receiver terminals and _ _ and _ _ for the transmitter and battery terminals. the circuits of this diagram will be found to be essentially the same as those of fig. , except that they are shown in greater detail. this particular type of circuit is one commonly employed where the generator, ringer, hook switch, and induction coil are all mounted in a so-called magneto bell box at the top of the instrument, and where the transmitter is mounted on an arm just below this box, and the battery in a separate compartment below the transmitter. the only wiring that has to be done between the bell box and the other parts of the instrument in assembling the complete telephone is to connect the receiver to the binding posts _ _ and _ _ and to connect the battery and transmitter circuit to the binding posts _ _ and _ _. _bridging._ in other cases, where several telephones are placed on a single-line circuit, the bells are arranged in multiple across the line. for this reason their magnets are wound with a very great number of turns and consequently to a high resistance. in order to further increase the impedance, the cores are made long and heavy. since the generators on these lines must be capable of giving out a sufficient volume of current to divide up between all of the bells in multiple, it follows that these generators must have a large current output, and at the same time a sufficient voltage to ring the bells at the farthest end of the line. such instruments are commonly called bridging instruments, on account of the method of connecting their bells across the circuit of the line. [illustration: fig. . circuit of bridging magneto set] the fundamental characteristic of the bridging telephone is that it contains three possible bridge paths across the line wires. the first of these bridge paths is through the talking apparatus, the second through the generator, and the third through the ringer. this is shown in simplified form in fig. . the talking apparatus is associated with the two upper contacts of the hook switch in the usual manner and needs no further description. the generator is the second separate bridge path, normally open, but adapted to be closed when the generator is operated, this automatic closure being performed by the movement of the crank shaft. the third bridge contains the polarized bell, and this, as a rule, is permanently closed. sometimes, however, the arrangement is such that the bell path is normally closed through the switch which is operated by the generator crank shaft, and this path is automatically broken when the generator is operated, at which time, also, the generator path is automatically closed. this arrangement brings about the result that the generator never can ring its own bell, because its switch always operates to cut out the bell at its own station just before the generator itself is cut into the circuit. in fig. is shown the complete circuit of a bridging telephone. the circuit given in this figure is for a local-battery wall set similar in type to that shown in figs. and . a simplified diagrammatic arrangement is shown in the lower left-hand corner of this figure, and from a consideration of this it will be seen that the bell circuit across the line is normally completed through the two right-hand normally closed contacts of the switch on the generator. when, however, the generator is operated these two contacts are made to disengage each other while the long spring of the generator switch engages the left-hand spring and thus brings the generator itself into the circuit. [illustration: fig. . circuit of bridging magneto set] of the three binding posts, _ _, _ _, and _ _, at the top of fig. , _ _ and _ _ are for connecting with the line wires, while _ _ is for a ground connection, acting in conjunction with the lightning arrester mounted at the top of the telephone and indicated at _ _ in fig. . this has no function in talking or ringing, and will be referred to more fully in chapter xix. suffice it to say at this point that these arresters usually consist of two conducting bodies, one connected permanently to each of the line binding posts, and a third conducting body connected to the ground binding post. these three conducting bodies are in close proximity but carefully insulated from each other; the idea being that when the line wires are struck by lightning or subjected otherwise to a dangerous potential, the charge on the line will jump across the space between the conducting bodies and pass harmlessly to ground. note. the student should practice making simplified diagrams from actual wiring diagrams. the difference between the two is that one is laid out for ease in understanding it, while the other is laid out to show the actual course of the wires as installed. if the large detailed circuit of fig. be compared with the small theoretical circuit in the same figure, the various conducting paths will be found to be the same. such a simplified circuit does more to enable one to grasp the fundamental scheme of a complex circuit than much description, since it shows at a glance the general arrangement. the more detailed circuits are, however, necessary to show the actual paths followed by the wiring. the circuits of desk stands do not differ from those of wall sets in any material degree, except as may be necessitated by the fact that the various parts of the telephone set are not all mounted in the same cabinet or on the same standard. to provide for the necessary relative movement between the desk stand and the other portions of the set, flexible conductors are run from the desk stand itself to the stationary portions of the equipment, such as the battery and the parts contained in the generator and bell box. [illustration: fig. . circuit of bridging magneto desk set] in fig. is shown the circuit of the stromberg-carlson magneto desk-telephone set, illustrated in fig. . this diagram needs no explanation in view of what has already been said. the conductors, leading from the desk-stand group of apparatus to the bell-box group of apparatus, are grouped together in a flexible cord, as shown in fig. , and are connected respectively to the various binding posts or contact points within the desk stand at one end and at the base of the bell box at the other end. these flexible conductors are insulated individually and covered by a common braided covering. they usually are individualized by having a colored thread woven into their insulating braid, so that it is an easy matter to identify the two ends of the same conductor at either end of the flexible cord or cable. [illustration: fig. . common-battery wall set] [illustration: fig. . common-battery wall set] common-battery telephone sets. owing to the fact that common-battery telephones contain no sources of current, they are usually somewhat simpler than the magneto type. the component parts of a common-battery telephone, whether of the wall or desk type, are the transmitter, receiver, hook switch, polarized bell, condenser, and sometimes an induction coil. the purpose of the condenser is to prevent direct or steady currents from passing through the windings of the ringer while the ringer is connected across the circuit of the line during the time when the telephone is not in use. the requirements of common-battery signaling demand that the ringer shall be connected with the line so as to be receptive of a call at any time while the telephone is not in use. the requirements also demand that no conducting path shall normally exist between the two sides of the line. these two apparently contradictory requirements are met by placing a condenser in series with the ringer so that the ringer will be in a path that will readily transmit the alternating ringing currents sent out from the central-office generator, while at the same time the condenser will afford a complete bar to the passage of steady currents. sometimes the condenser is also used as a portion of the talking apparatus, as will be pointed out. [illustration: main office, kansas city home telephone co., kansas city, mo.] _wall._ in figs. and are given two views of a characteristic form of common-battery wall-telephone set, made by the stromberg-carlson manufacturing company. the common-battery wall set has usually taken this general form. in it the transmitter is mounted on an adjustable arm at the top of the backboard, while the box containing the bell and all working parts of the instrument is placed below the transmitter, the top of the box affording a shelf for writing purposes. in fig. are shown the hook switch and the receiver; just below these may be seen the magnets of the polarized bell, back of which is shown a rectangular box containing the condenser. immediately in front of the ringer magnets is the induction coil. [illustration: fig. . stromberg-carlson common-battery wall set] in fig. are shown the details of the circuit of this instrument. this figure also includes a simplified circuit arrangement from which the principles involved may be more readily understood. it is seen that the primary of the induction coil and the transmitter are included in series across the line. the secondary of the induction coil, in series with the receiver, is connected also across the line in series with a condenser and the transmitter. _hotel._ sometimes, in order to economize space, the shelf of common-battery wall sets is omitted and the entire apparatus mounted in a small rectangular box, the front of which carries the transmitter mounted on the short arm or on no arm at all. such instruments are commonly termed hotel sets, because of the fact that their use was first confined largely to the rooms in hotels. later, however, these instruments have become very popular in general use, particularly in residences. sometimes the boxes or cabinets of these sets are made of wood, but of recent years the tendency has been growing to make them of pressed steel. the steel box is usually finished in black enamel, baked on, the color being sometimes varied to match the color of the surrounding woodwork. in figs. and are shown two views of a common-battery hotel set manufactured by the dean electric company. such sets are extremely neat in appearance and have the advantage of taking up little room on the wall and the commercial advantage of being light and compact for shipping purposes. a possible disadvantage of this type of instrument is the somewhat crowded condition which necessarily follows from the placing of all the parts in so confined a space. this interferes somewhat with the accessibility of the various parts, but great ingenuity has been manifested in making the parts readily get-at-able in case of necessity for repairs or alterations. [illustration: fig. . steel box hotel] [illustration: fig. . steel box hotel set] _desk_. the common-battery desk telephone presents a somewhat simpler problem than the magneto desk telephone for the reason that the generator and local battery, the two most bulky parts of a magneto telephone, do not have to be provided for. some companies, in manufacturing desk stands for common-battery purposes, mount the condenser and the induction coil or impedance coil, or whatever device is used in connection with the talking circuit, in the base of the desk stand itself, and mount the polarized ringer and the condenser used for ringing purposes in a separate bell box adapted to be mounted on the wall or some portion of the desk. other companies mount only the transmitter, receiver, and hook switch on the desk stand proper and put the condenser or induction coil, or other device associated with the talking circuit, in the bell box. there is little to choose between the two general practices. the number of conducting strands in the flexible cord is somewhat dependent on the arrangement of the circuit employed. [illustration: fig. . common-battery desk set] [illustration: fig. . bell for common-battery desk set.] the kellogg switchboard and supply company is one which places all the parts, except the polarized ringer and the associated condenser, in the desk stand itself. in fig. is shown a bottom view of the desk stand with the bottom plate removed. in the upper portion of the circle of the base is shown a small condenser which is placed in the talking circuit in series with the receiver. in the right-hand portion of the circle of the base is shown a small impedance coil, which is placed in series with the transmitter but in shunt relation with the condenser and the receiver. [illustration: fig. . bell for common-battery desk set] in figs. and are shown two views of the type of bell box employed by the kellogg company in connection with the common-battery desk sets, this box being of pressed-steel construction and having a removable lid, as shown in fig. , by which the working parts of the ringer are made readily accessible, as are also the terminals for the cord leading from the desk stand and for the wires of the line circuit. the condenser that is placed in series with the ringer is also mounted in this same box. by employing two condensers, one in the bell box large enough to transmit ringing currents and the other in the base of the desk stand large enough only to transmit voice currents, a duplication of condensers is involved, but it has the corresponding advantages of requiring only two strands to the flexible cord leading from the bell box to the desk stand proper. [illustration: fig. . microtelephone set] a form of desk-telephone set that is used largely abroad, but that has found very little use in this country, is shown in fig. . in this the transmitter and the receiver are permanently attached together, the receiver being of the watch-case variety and so positioned relatively to the transmitter that when the receiver is held at the ear, the mouthpiece of the transmitter will be just in front of the lips of the user. in order to maintain the transmitter in a vertical position during use, this necessitates the use of a curved mouthpiece as shown. this transmitter and receiver so combined is commonly called, in this country, the _microtelephone set_, although there seems to be no logical reason for this name. the combined transmitter and receiver, instead of being supported on an ordinary form of hook switch, are supported on a forked bracket as shown, this bracket serving to operate the switch springs which are held in one position when the bracket is subjected to the weight of the microtelephone, and in the alternate position when relieved therefrom. this particular microtelephone set is the product of the l.m. ericsson telephone manufacturing company, of buffalo, new york. the circuits of such sets do not differ materially from those of the ordinary desk telephone set. [illustration: fig. . kellogg common-battery desk set] [illustration: fig. . dean common-battery set] circuits of common-battery telephone sets. the complete circuits of the kellogg desk-stand arrangement are shown in fig. , the desk-stand parts being shown at the left and the bell-box parts at the right. as is seen, but two conductors extend from the former to the latter. a simplified theoretical sketch is also shown in the upper right-hand corner of this figure. the details of the common-battery telephone circuits of the dean electric company are shown in fig. . this involves the use of the balanced wheatstone bridge. the only other thing about this circuit that needs description, in view of what has previously been said about it, is that the polarized bell is placed in series with a condenser so that the two sides of the circuit may be insulated from each other while the telephone is not in use, and yet permit the passage of ringing current through the bell. [illustration: fig. . monarch common-battery wall set] the use of the so-called direct-current receiver has brought about a great simplification in the common-battery telephone circuits of several of the manufacturing companies. by this use the transmitter and the receiver are placed in series across the line, this path being normally opened by the hook-switch contacts. the polarized bell and condenser are placed in another bridge path across the line, this path not being affected by the hook-switch contacts. all that there is to such a complete common-battery telephone set, therefore, is a receiver, transmitter, hook switch, bell, condenser, and cabinet, or other support. the extreme simplicity of the circuits of such a set is illustrated in fig. , which shows how the monarch telephone manufacturing company connect up the various parts of their telephone set, using the direct-current receiver already described in connection with fig. . [illustration: ventilating plant for large telephone office building] chapter xv non-selective party-line systems a party line is a line that is for the joint use of several stations. it is, therefore, a line that connects a central office with two or more subscribers' stations, or where no central office is involved, a line that connects three or more isolated stations with each other. the distinguishing feature of a party line, therefore, is that it serves more than two stations, counting the central office, if there is one, as a station. strictly speaking, the term _party_ line should be used in contradistinction to the term _private_ line. companies operating telephone exchanges, however, frequently lease their wires to individuals for private use, with no central-office switchboard connections, and such lines are, by common usage, referred to as "private lines." such lines may be used to connect two or more isolated stations. a _private_ line, in the parlance of telephone exchange working, may, therefore, be a _party_ line, as inconsistent as this may seem. a telephone line that is connected with an exchange is an exchange line, and it is a party line if it has more than one station on it. it is an individual line or a single party line if it has but a single station on it. a line which has no central-office connection is called an "isolated line," and it is a party line if it has more than two stations on it. the problem of mere speech transmission on party lines is comparatively easy, being scarcely more complex than that involved in private or single party lines. this is not true, however, of the problem of signaling the various stations. this is because the line is for the common use of all its patrons or subscribers, as they are termed, and the necessity therefore exists that the person sending a signal, whether operator or subscriber, shall be able in some way to inform a person at the desired station that the call is intended for that station. there are two general ways of accomplishing this purpose. (_ _) the first and simplest of these ways is to make no provision for ringing any one bell on the line to the exclusion of the others, and thus allow all bells to ring at once whenever any station on the line is wanted. where this is done, in order to prevent all stations from answering, it is necessary, in some way, to convey to the desired station the information that the call is intended for that station, and to all of the other stations the information that the call is not intended for them. this is done on such lines by what is called "code ringing," the code consisting of various combinations of long and short rings. (_ _) the other and more complex way is to arrange for selective ringing, so that the person sending the call may ring the bell at the station desired, allowing the bells at all the other stations to remain quiet. [illustration: fig. . grounded-circuit series line] these two general classes of party-line systems may, therefore, be termed "non-selective" and "selective" systems. non-selective party lines are largely used both on lines having connection with a central office, and through the central office the privilege of connection with other lines, and on isolated lines having no central-office connection. the greatest field of usefulness of non-selective lines is in rural districts and in connection with exchanges in serving rather sparsely settled districts where the cost of individual lines or even lines serving but a few subscribers, is prohibitive. non-selective telephone party lines most often employ magneto telephones. the early forms of party lines employed the ordinary series magneto telephone, the bells being of low resistance and comparatively low impedance, while the generators were provided with automatic shunting devices, so that their resistance would normally be removed from the circuit of the line. series systems. the general arrangement of a series party line employing a ground return is shown in fig. . in this three ordinary series instruments are connected together in series, the end stations being grounded, in order to afford a return path for the ringing and voice currents. [illustration: fig. . metallic-circuit series line] in fig. there is shown a metallic-circuit series line on which five ordinary series telephones are placed in series. in this no ground is employed, the return being through a line wire, thus making the circuit entirely metallic. [illustration: fig. . series party line] the limitations of the ordinary series party line may be best understood by reference to fig. , in which the circuits of three series telephones are shown connected with a single line. the receiver of station a is represented as being on its hook, while the receivers of stations b and c are removed from their hooks, as when the subscribers at those two stations are carrying on a conversation. the hook switches of stations b and c being in raised positions, the generators and ringers of those stations are cut out of the circuit, and only the telephone apparatus proper is included, but the hook switch of station a being depressed by the weight of its receiver, includes the ringer of that station in circuit, and through this ringer, therefore, the voice currents of stations b and c must pass. the generator of station a is not in the circuit of voice currents, however, because of the automatic shunt with which the generator is provided, as described in chapter viii. a slight consideration of the series system as shown in this figure, indicates that the voice currents of any two stations that are in use, must pass (as indicated by the heavy lines) through the ringers of all the stations that are not in use; and when a great number of stations are placed upon a single line, as has been frequently the case, the impedance offered by these ringers becomes a serious barrier to the passage of the voice currents. this defect in the series party line is fundamental, as it is obvious that the ringers must be left in the circuit of the stations which are not in use, in order that those stations may always be in such condition as to be able to receive a call. this defect may in some measure be reduced by making the ringers of low impedance. this is the general practice with series telephones, the ringers ordinarily having short cores and a comparatively small number of turns, the resistance being as a rule about ohms. bridging systems. very much better than the series plan of party-line connections, is the arrangement by which the instruments are placed in bridges across the line, such lines being commonly known as bridged or bridging lines. this was first strongly advocated and put into wide practical use by j.j. carty, now the chief engineer of the american telephone and telegraph company. a simple illustration of a bridging telephone line is shown in fig. , where the three telephones shown are each connected in a bridge path from the line wire to ground, a type known as a "grounded bridging line." its use is very common in rural districts. a better arrangement is shown in fig. , which represents a metallic-circuit bridging line, three telephone instruments being shown in parallel or bridge paths across the two line wires. the actual circuit arrangements of a bridging party line are better shown in fig. . there are three stations and it will be seen that at each station there are three possible bridges, or bridge paths, across the two limbs of the line. the first of these bridges is controlled by the hook switch and is normally open. when the hook is raised, however, this path is closed through the receiver and secondary of the induction coil, the primary circuit being also closed so as to include the battery and transmitter. this constitutes an ordinary local-battery talking set. [illustration: fig. . grounded bridging line] [illustration: fig. . metallic bridging line] [illustration: fig. . metallic bridging line] a second bridge at each station is led through the ringer or call-bell, and this, in most bridging telephones, is permanently closed, the continuity of this path between the two limbs of the line not being affected either by the hook switch or by the automatic switch in connection with the generator. a third bridge path at each station is led through the generator. this, as indicated, is normally open, but the automatic cut-in switch of the generator serves, when the generator is operated, to close its path across the line, so that it may send its currents to the line and ring the bells of all the stations. when any generator is operated, its current divides and passes over the line wires and through all of the ringers in multiple. it is seen, therefore, that the requirements for a bridging generator are that it shall be capable of generating a large current, sufficient when divided up amongst all the bells to ring each of them; and that it shall be capable of producing a sufficient voltage to send the required current not only to the near-by stations, but to the stations at the distant end of the line. it might seem at first that the bridging system avoided one difficulty only to encounter another. it clearly avoids the difficulty of the series system in that the voice currents, in order to reach distant stations, do not have to pass through all of the bells of the idle stations in series. there is, however, presented at each station a leakage path through the bell bridged across the line, through which it would appear the voice currents might leak uselessly from one side of the line to the other and not pass on in sufficient volume to the distant station. this difficulty is, however, more apparent than real. it is found that, by making the ringers of high impedance, the leakage of voice currents through them from one side of the line to the other is practically negligible. it is obvious that in a heavily loaded bridged line, the bell at the home station, that is at the station from which the call is being sent, will take slightly more than its share of the current, and it is also obvious that the ringing of the home bell performs no useful function. the plan is frequently adopted, therefore, of having the operation of the generator serve to cut its own bell out of the circuit. the arrangement by which this is done is clearly shown in fig. . the circuit of the bell is normally complete across the line, while the circuit of the generator is normally open. when, however, the generator crank is turned these conditions are reversed, the bell circuit being broken and the generator circuit closed, so as to allow its current all to pass the line. this feature of having the local bell remain silent upon the operation of its own generator is also of advantage because other parties at the same station are not disturbed by the ringing of the bell when a call is being made by that station. a difficulty encountered on non-selective bridging party lines, which at first seems amusing rather than serious, but which nevertheless is often a vexatious trouble, is that due to the propensity of some people to "listen in" on the line on hearing calls intended for other than their own stations. people whose ethical standards would not permit them to listen at, or peep through, a keyhole, often engage in this telephonic eavesdropping. frequently, not only one but many subscribers will respond to a call intended for others and will listen to the ensuing conversation. this is disadvantageous in several respects: it destroys the privacy of conversation between any two parties; it subjects the local batteries to an unnecessary and useless drain; and it greatly impairs the ringing efficiency of the line. the reason for this interference with ringing is that the presence of the low-resistance receivers across the line allows the current sent out by any of the generators to pass in large measure through the receivers, thus depriving the ringers, which are of comparatively high resistance and impedance, of the energy necessary to operate them. as a result of this it is frequently impossible for one party to repeat the call for another because, during the interval between the first and second call, a number of parties remove their receivers from their hooks in order to listen. ring-off or clearing-out signals are likewise interfered with. [illustration: fig. . circuits of bridging station] a partial remedy for this interference with ringing, due to eavesdropping, is to introduce a low-capacity condenser into the receiver circuit at each station, as shown in fig. . this does not seriously interfere with the speech transmission since the condensers will readily transmit the high-frequency voice currents. such condensers, however, have not sufficient capacity to enable them readily to transmit the low-frequency ringing currents and hence these are forced, in large measure, to pass through the bells for which they are intended rather than leaking through the low-resistance receiver paths. the best condenser for this use is of about / -microfarad capacity, which is ample for voice-transmitting purposes, while it serves to effectively bar the major portion of the generator currents. a higher capacity condenser would carry the generator currents much more readily and thus defeat the purpose for which it was intended. in order that the requisite impedance may be given to the ringers employed for bridging party lines, it is customary to make the cores rather long and of somewhat larger diameter than in series ringers and at the same time to wind the coils with rather fine wire so as to secure the requisite number of turns. bridging bells are ordinarily wound to a resistance of , or , ohms, these two figures having become standard practice. it is not, however, the high resistance so much as the high impedance that is striven for in bridging bells; it is the number of turns that is of principal importance. as has already been stated, the generators used for bridging lines are made capable of giving a greater current output than is necessary in series instruments, and for this purpose they are usually provided with at least four, and usually five, bar magnets. the armature is made correspondingly long and is wound, as a rule, with about no. wire. sometimes where a bridged party line terminates in a central-office switchboard it is desired to so operate the line that the subscribers shall not be able to call up each other, but shall, instead, be able to signal only the central-office operator, who, in turn, will be enabled to call the party desired, designating his station by a suitable code ring. one common way to do this is to use biased bells instead of the ordinary polarized bells. in order that the bells may not be rung by the subscribers' generators, these generators are made of the direct-current type and these are so associated with the line that the currents which they send out will be in the wrong direction to actuate the bells. on the other hand, the central-office generator is of direct-current type and is associated with the line in the right direction to energize the bells. thus any subscriber on the line may call the central office by merely turning his generator crank, which action will not ring the bells of the subscribers on the line. the operator will then be able to receive the call and in turn send out currents of the proper direction to ring all the bells and, by code, call the desired party to the telephone. [illustration: one wing of operating room, berlin, germany ultimate capacity , subscribers' lines and , trunk lines. siemens-halske equipment. note horizontal disposal of multiple] signal code. the code by which stations are designated on non-selective party lines usually consists in combinations of long and short rings similar to the dots and dashes in the morse code. thus, one short ring may indicate station no. ; two short rings station no. ; and so on up to, say, five short rings, indicating station no. . it is not good practice to employ more than five successive short rings because of the confusion which often arises in people's minds as to the number of rings that they hear. when, therefore, the number of stations to be rung by code exceeds five, it is better to employ combinations of long and short rings, and a good way is to adopt a partial decimal system, omitting the numbers higher than five in each ten, and employing long rings to indicate the tens digits and short rings to indicate the units digit, table x. table x signal code +--------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |station number|ring |station number|ring | | | short | | long, short| | | short | | long, short| | | short | | long, short| | | short | | long, short| | | short | | long, short| | | long, short| | long, short| +--------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ other arrangements are often employed and by almost any of them a great variety of readily distinguishable signals may be secured. the patrons of such lines learn to distinguish, with comparatively few errors, between the calls intended for them and those intended for others, but frequently they do not observe the distinction, as has already been pointed out. limitations. with good telephones the limit as to the number of stations that it is possible to operate upon a single line is usually due more to limitations in ringing than in talking. as the number of stations is increased indefinitely a condition will be reached at which the generators will not be able to generate sufficient current to ring all of the bells, and this condition is likely to occur before the talking efficiency is seriously impaired by the number of bridges across the line. neither of these considerations, however, should determine the maximum number of stations to be placed on a line. the proper limit as to the number of stations is not the number that can be rung by a single generator, or the number with which it is possible to transmit speech properly, but rather the number of stations that may be employed without causing undue interference between the various parties who may desire to use the line. overloaded party lines cause much annoyance, not only for the reason that the subscribers are often not able to use the line when they want it, but also, in non-selective lines, because of the incessant ringing of the bells, and the liability of confusion in the interpretation of the signaling code, which of course becomes more complex as the number of stations increases. the amount of business that is done over a telephone line is usually referred to as the "traffic." it will be understood, however, in considering party-line working that the number of calls per day or per hour, or per shorter unit, is not the true measure of the traffic and, therefore, not the true measure of the amount of possible interference between the various subscribers on the line. an almost equally great factor is the average length of the conversation. in city lines, that is, in lines in city exchanges, the conversation is usually short and averages perhaps two minutes in duration. in country lines, however, serving people in rural districts, who have poor facilities for seeing each other, particularly during the winter time, the conversations will average very much longer. in rural communities the people often do much of their visiting by telephone, and conversations of half an hour in length are not unusual. it is obvious that under such conditions a party line having a great many stations will be subject to very grave interference between the parties, people desiring to use the line for business purposes often being compelled to wait an undue time before they may secure the use of the line. it is obvious, therefore, that the amount of traffic on the line, whether due to many short conversations or to a comparatively few long ones, is the main factor that should determine the number of stations that, economically, may be placed on a line. the facilities also for building lines enter as a factor in this respect, since it is obvious that in comparatively poor communities the money may not be forthcoming to build as many lines as are needed to properly take care of the traffic. a compromise is, therefore, often necessary, and the only rule that may be safely laid down is to place as few parties on a given line as conditions will admit. no definite limit may be set to apply to all conditions but it may be safely stated that under ordinary circumstances no more than ten stations should be placed on a non-selective line. twenty stations are, however, common, and sometimes forty and even fifty have been connected to a single line. in such cases the confusion which results, even if the talking and the ringing efficiency are tolerable, makes the service over such overloaded lines unsatisfactory to all concerned. chapter xvi selective party-line systems the problem which confronts one in the production of a system of selective ringing on party lines is that of causing the bell of any chosen one of the several parties on a circuit to respond to a signal sent out from the central office without sounding any of the other bells. this, of course, must be accomplished without interfering with the regular functions of the telephone line and apparatus. by this is meant that the subscribers must be able to call the central office and to signal for disconnection when desired, and also that the association of the selective-signaling devices with the line shall not interfere with the transmission of speech over the line. a great many ways of accomplishing selective ringing on party lines have been proposed, and a large number of them have been used. all of these ways may be classified under four different classes according to the underlying principle involved. classification. (_ _) _polarity_ systems are so called because they depend for their operation on the use of bells or other responsive devices so polarized that they will respond to one direction of current only. these bells or other devices are so arranged in connection with the line that the one to be rung will be traversed by current in the proper direction to actuate it, while all of the others will either not be traversed by any current at all, or by current in the wrong direction to cause their operation. (_ _) the _harmonic_ systems have for their underlying principle the fact that a pendulum or elastic reed, so supported as to be capable of vibrating freely, will have one particular rate of vibration which it may easily be made to assume. this pendulum or reed is placed under the influence of an electromagnet associated with the line, and owing to the fact that it will vibrate easily at one particular rate of vibration and with extreme difficulty at any other rate, it is clear that for current impulses of a frequency corresponding to its natural rate the reed will take up the vibration, while for other frequencies it will fail to respond. selection on party lines by means of this system is provided for by tuning all of the reeds on the line at different rates of vibration and is accomplished by sending out on the line ringing currents of proper frequency to ring the desired bell. the current-generating devices for ringing these bells are capable of sending out different frequencies corresponding respectively to the rates of vibration of each of the vibrating reed tongues. to select any one station, therefore, the current frequency corresponding to the rate of vibration of the reed tongue at that station is sent and this, being out of tune with the reed tongues at all of the other stations, operates the tongue of the desired station, but fails to operate those at all of the other stations. (_ _) in the _step-by-step_ system the bells on the line are normally not in operative relation with the line and the bell of the desired party on the line is made responsive by sending over the line a certain number of impulses preliminary to ringing it. these impulses move step-by-step mechanisms at each of the stations in unison, the arrangement being such that the bells at the several stations are each made operative after the sending of a certain number of preliminary impulses, this number being different for all the stations. (_ _) the _broken-line_ systems are new in telephony and for certain fields of work look promising. in these the line circuit is normally broken up into sections, the first section terminating at the first station out from the central office, the second section at the second station, and so on. when the line is in its normal or inactive condition only the bell at the first station is so connected with the line circuit as to enable it to be rung, the line being open beyond. sending a single preliminary impulse will, however, operate a switching device so as to disconnect the bell at the first station and to connect the line through to the second station. this may be carried out, by sending the proper number of preliminary impulses, so as to build up the line circuit to the desired station, after which the sending of the ringing current will cause the bell to ring at that station only. polarity method. the polarity method of selective signaling on party lines is probably the most extensively used. the standard selective system of the american telephone and telegraph company operates on this principle. _two-party line._ it is obvious that selection may be had between two parties on a single metallic-circuit line without the use of biased bells or current of different polarities. thus, one limb of a metallic circuit may be used as one grounded line to ring the bell at one of the stations, and the other limb of the metallic circuit may be used as another grounded line to ring the bell of the other station; and the two limbs may be used together as a metallic circuit for talking purposes as usual. this is shown in fig. , where the ringing keys at the central office are diagrammatically shown in the left-hand portion of the figure as _k_^{ } and _k_^{ }. the operation of these keys will be more fully pointed out in a subsequent chapter, but a correct understanding will be had if it be remembered that the circuits are normally maintained by these keys in the position shown. when, however, either one of the keys is operated, the two long springs may be considered as pressed apart so as to disengage the normal contacts between the springs and to engage the two outer contacts, with which they are shown in the cut to be disengaged. the two outer contacts are connected respectively to an ordinary alternating-current ringing generator and to ground, but the connection is reversed on the two keys. [illustration: fig. . simple two-party line selection] at station a the ordinary talking set is shown in simplified form, consisting merely of a receiver, transmitter, and hook switch in a single bridge circuit across the line. an ordinary polarized bell is shown connected in series with a condenser between the lower limb of the line and ground. at station b the same talking circuit is shown, but the polarized bell and condenser are bridged between the upper limb of the line and ground. if the operator desires to call station a, she will press key _k_^{ } which will ground the upper side of the line and connect the lower side of the line with the generator _g_^{ }, and this, obviously, will cause the bell at station a to ring. the bell at station b will not ring because it is not in the circuit. if, on the other hand, the operator desires to ring the bell at station b, she will depress key _k_^{ }, which will allow the current from generator _g_^{ } to pass over the upper side of the line through the bell and condenser at station b and return by the path through the ground. the object of grounding the opposite sides of the keys at the central office is to prevent cross-ringing, that is, ringing the wrong bell. were the keys not grounded this might occur when a ringing current was being sent out while the receiver at one of the stations was off its hook; the ringing current from, say, generator _g_^{ } then passing not only through the bell at station a as intended, but also through the bell at station b by way of the bridge path through the receiver that happened to be connected across the line. with the ringing keys grounded as shown, it is obvious that this will not occur, since the path for the ringing current through the wrong bell will always be shunted by a direct path to ground on the same side of the line. in such a two-party-line selective system the two generators _g_^{ } and _g_^{ } may be the same generator and may be of the ordinary alternating-current type. the bells likewise may be of the ordinary alternating-current type. the two-party selective line just described virtually employs two separate circuits for ringing. now each of these circuits alone may be employed to accomplish selective ringing between two stations by using two biased bells oppositely polarized, and employing pulsating ringing currents of one direction or the other according to which bell it is desired to ring. one side of a circuit so equipped is shown in fig. . in this the two biased bells are at station a and station b, these being bridged to ground in each case and adapted to respond only to positive and negative impulses respectively. at the central office the two keys _k_^{ } and _k_^{ } are shown. a single alternating-current generator _g_ is shown, having its brush _ _ grounded and brush _ _ connected to a commutator disk _ _ mounted on the generator shaft so as to revolve therewith. one-half of the periphery of this disk is of insulating material so that the brushes _ _ and _ _, which bear against the disk, will be alternately connected with the disk and, therefore, with the brush _ _ of the generator. now the brush _ _, being one terminal of an alternating-current machine, is alternately positive and negative, and the arrangement of the commutator is such that the disk, which is always at the potential of the brush _ _, will be connected to the brush _ _ only while it is positively charged and with the brush _ _ only while it is negatively charged. as a result, brush _ _ has a succession of positive impulses and brush _ _ a succession of negative ones. obviously, therefore, when key _k_^{ } is depressed only the bell at station a will be rung, and likewise the depression of key _k_^{ } will result only in the ringing of the bell at station b. [illustration: fig. . principle of selection by polarity] _four-party line._ from the two foregoing two-party line systems it is evident that a four-party line system may be readily obtained, that is, by employing two oppositely polarized biased bells on each side of the metallic circuit. the selection of any of the four bells may be obtained, choosing between the pairs connected, respectively, with the two limbs of the line, by choosing the limb on which the current is to be sent, and choosing between the two bells of the pair on that side of the line by choosing which polarity of current to send. such a four-party line system is shown in fig. . in this the generators are not shown, but the wires leading from the four keys are shown marked plus or minus, according to the terminal of the generator to which they are supposed to be connected. likewise the two bells connected with the lower side of the line are marked positive and negative, as are the two bells connected with the upper side of the line. from the foregoing description of figs. and , it is clear that if key _k_^{ } is pressed the bell at station a will be rung, and that bell only, since the bells at station c and station _d_ are not in the circuit and the positive current sent over the lower side of the line is not of the proper polarity to ring the bell at station b. the system shown in fig. is subject to one rather grave defect. in subsequent chapters it will be pointed out that in common-battery systems the display of the line signal at the central office is affected by any one of the subscribers merely taking his receiver off its hook and thus establishing a connection between the two limbs of the metallic circuit. such common-battery systems should have the two limbs of the line, normally, entirely insulated from each other. it is seen that this is not the case in the system just described, since there is a conducting path from one limb of the line through the two bells on that side to ground, and thence through the other pair of bells to the other limb of the line. this means that unless the resistance of the bell windings is made very high, the path of the signaling circuit will be of sufficiently low resistance to actuate the line signal at the central office. [illustration: fig. . four-party polarity selection] it is not feasible to overcome this objection by the use of condensers in series with the bells, as was done in the system shown in fig. , since the bells are necessarily biased and such bells, as may readily be seen, will not work properly through condensers, since the placing of a condenser in their circuit means that the current which passes through the bell is alternating rather than pulsating, although the original source may have been of pulsating nature only. [illustration: fig . standard polarity system] the remedy for this difficulty, therefore, has been to place in series with each bell a very high non-inductive resistance of about , or , ohms, and also to make the windings of the bells of comparatively high resistance, usually about , ohms. even with this precaution there is a considerable leakage of the central-office battery current from one side of the line to the other through the two paths to ground in series. this method of selective signaling has, therefore, been more frequently used with magneto systems. an endeavor to apply this principle to common-battery systems without the objections noted above has led to the adoption of a modification, wherein a relay at each station normally holds the ground connection open. this is shown in fig. and is the standard four-party line ringing circuit employed by the american telephone and telegraph company and their licensees. in this system the biased bells are normally disconnected from the line, and, therefore, the leakage path through them from one side of the line to the other does not exist. at each station there is a relay winding adapted to be operated by the ringing current bridged across the line in series with a condenser. as a result, when ringing current is sent out on the line all of the relays, _i.e._, one at each station, are energized and attract their armatures. this establishes the connection of all the bells to line and really brings about temporarily a condition equivalent to that of fig. . as a result, the sending of a positive current on the lower line with a ground return will cause the operation of the bell at station a. it will not ring the bell at station b because of the wrong polarity. it will not ring the bells of station c and station d because they are in the circuit between the other side of the line and ground. as soon as the ringing current ceases all of the relays release their armatures and disconnect all the bells from the line. by this very simple device the trouble, due to marginal working of the line signal, is done away with, since normally there is no leakage from one side of the line to the other on account of the presence of the condensers in the bridge at each station. [illustration: fig. . ringing-key arrangement] in fig. , the more complete connections of the central-office ringing keys are shown, by means of which the proper positive or negative ringing currents are sent to line in the proper way to cause the ringing of any one of the four bells on a party line of either of the types shown in figs. and . in this the generator _g_ and its commutator disk _ _, with the various brushes, _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _, are arranged in the same manner as is shown in fig. . it is evident from what has been said that wire _ _ leading from generator brush _ _ and commutator disk _ _ will carry alternating potential; that wire _ _ will carry positive pulsations of potential; and that wire _ _ will carry negative pulsations of potential. there are five keys in the set illustrated in fig. , of which four, viz, _k_^{ }, _k_^{ }, _k_^{ }, and _k_^{ }, are connected in the same manner as diagrammatically indicated in figs. and , and will, obviously, serve to send the proper current over the proper limb of the line to ring one of the bells. key _k_^{ }, the fifth one in the set, is added so as to enable the operator to ring an ordinary unbiased bell on a single party line when connection is made with such line. as the two outside contacts of this key are connected respectively to the two brushes of the alternating-current dynamo _g_, it is clear that it will impress an alternating current on the line when its contacts are closed. _circuits of two-party line telephones._ in fig. is shown in detail the wiring of the telephone set usually employed in connection with the party-line selective-ringing system illustrated in fig. . in the wiring of this set and the two following, it must be borne in mind that the portion of the circuit used during conversation might be wired in a number of ways without affecting the principle of selective ringing employed; however, the circuits shown are those most commonly employed with the respective selective ringing systems which they are intended to illustrate. in connecting the circuits of this telephone instrument to the line, the two line conductors are connected to binding posts _ _ and _ _ and a ground connection is made to binding post _ _. in practice, in order to avoid the necessity of changing the permanent wiring of the telephone set in connecting it as an a or b station (fig. ), the line conductors are connected to the binding posts in reverse order at the two stations; that is, for station a the upper conductor, fig. , is connected to binding post _ _ and the lower conductor to binding post _ _, while at station b the upper conductor is connected to binding post _ _ and the lower conductor to binding post _ _. the permanent wiring of this telephone set is the same as that frequently used for a set connected to a line having only one station, the proper ringing circuit being made by the method of connecting up the binding posts. for example, if this telephone set were to be used on a single station line, the binding posts _ _ and _ _ would be connected to the two conductors of the line as before, while binding post _ _ would be connected to post _ _ instead of being grounded. [illustration: fig. . circuit of two-party station] _circuits of four-party-line telephones._ the wiring of the telephone set used with the system illustrated in fig. is shown in detail in fig. . the wiring of this set is arranged for local battery or magneto working, as this method of selective ringing is more frequently employed with magneto systems, on account of the objectionable features which arise when applied to common-battery systems. in this figure the line conductors are connected to binding posts _ _ and _ _, and a ground connection is made to binding post _ _. in order that all sets may be wired alike and yet permit the instrument to be connected for any one of the various stations, the bell is not permanently wired to any portion of the circuit but has flexible connections which will allow of the set being properly connected for any desired station. the terminals of the bell are connected to binding posts _ _ and _ _, to which are connected flexible conductors terminating in terminals _ _ and _ _. these terminals may be connected to the binding posts _ _, _ _, and _ _ in the proper manner to connect the set as an a, b, c, or d station, as required. for example, in connecting the set for station a, fig. , terminal _ _ is connected to binding post _ _ and _ _ to _ _. for connecting the set for station b terminal _ _ is connected to binding post _ _ and _ _ to _ _. for connecting the set for station c terminal _ _ is connected to binding post _ _ and _ _ to _ _. for connecting the set for station d terminal _ _ is connected to binding post _ _ and _ _ to _ _. [illustration: fig. . circuit of four-party station without relay] [illustration: fig. . circuit of four-party station with relay] the detailed wiring of the telephone set employed in connection with the system illustrated in fig. is shown in fig. . the wiring of this set is arranged for a common-battery system, inasmuch as this arrangement of signaling circuit is more especially adapted for common-battery working. however, this arrangement is frequently adapted to magneto systems as even with magneto systems a permanent ground connection at a subscriber's station is objectionable inasmuch as it increases the difficulty of determining the existence or location of an accidental ground on one of the line conductors. the wiring of this set is also arranged so that one standard type of wiring may be employed and yet allow any telephone set to be connected as an a, b, c, or d station. harmonic method. _principles._ to best understand the principle of operation of the harmonic party-line signaling systems, it is to be remembered that a flexible reed, mounted rigidly at one end and having its other end free to vibrate, will, like a violin string, have a certain natural period of vibration; that is, if it be started in vibration, as by snapping it with the fingers, it will take up a certain rate of vibration which will continue at a uniform rate until the vibration ceases altogether. such a reed will be most easily thrown into vibration by a series of impulses having a frequency corresponding exactly to the natural rate of vibration of the reed itself; it may be thrown into vibration by very slight impulses if they occur at exactly the proper times. it is familiar to all that a person pushing another in a swing may cause a considerable amplitude of vibration with the exertion of but a small amount of force, if he will so time his pushes as to conform exactly to the natural rate of vibration of the swing. it is of course possible, however, to make the swing take up other rates of vibrations by the application of sufficient force. as another example, consider a clock pendulum beating seconds. by gentle blows furnished by the escapement at exactly the proper times, the heavy pendulum is kept in motion. however, if a person grasps the pendulum weight and shakes it, it may be made to vibrate at almost any desired rate, dependent on the strength and agility of the individual. the conclusion is, therefore, that a reed or pendulum may be made to start and vibrate easily by the application of impulses at proper intervals, and only with great difficulty by the application of impulses at other than the proper intervals; and these facts form the basis on which harmonic-ringing systems rest. the father of harmonic ringing in telephony was jacob b. currier, an undertaker of lowell, mass. his harmonic bells were placed in series in the telephone line, and were considerably used in new england in commercial practice in the early eighties. somewhat later james a. lighthipe of san francisco independently invented a harmonic-ringing system, which was put in successful commercial use at sacramento and a few other smaller california towns. lighthipe polarized his bells and bridged them across the line in series with condensers, as in modern practice, and save for some crudities in design, his apparatus closely resembled, both in principle and construction, some of that in successful use today. lighthipe's system went out of use and was almost forgotten, when about , wm. w. dean again independently redeveloped the harmonic system, and produced a bell astonishingly like that of lighthipe, but of more refined design, thus starting the development which has resulted in the present wide use of this system. the signal-receiving device in harmonic-ringing systems takes the form of a ringer, having its armature and striker mounted on a rather stiff spring rather than on trunnions. by this means the moving parts of the bell constitute in effect a reed tongue, which has a natural rate of vibration at which it may easily be made to vibrate with sufficient amplitude to strike the gongs. the harmonic ringer differs from the ordinary polarized bell or ringer, therefore, in that its armature will vibrate most easily at one particular rate, while the armature of the ordinary ringer is almost indifferent, between rather wide limits, as to the rate at which it vibrates. as a rule harmonic party-line systems are limited to four stations on a line. the frequencies employed are usually - / , - / , , and - / cycles per second, this corresponding to , , , , , , and , cycles per minute. the reason why this particular set of frequencies was chosen is that they represent approximately the range of desirable frequencies, and that the first ringing-current machines in such systems were made by mounting the armatures of four different generators on a single shaft, these having, respectively, two poles, four poles, six poles, and eight poles each. the two-pole generator gave one cycle per revolution, the four-pole two, the six-pole three, and the eight-pole four, so that by running the shaft of the machine at exactly , revolutions per minute the frequencies before mentioned were attained. this range of frequencies having proved about right for general practice and the early ringers all having been attuned so as to operate on this basis, the practice of adhering to these numbers of vibrations has been kept up with one exception by all the manufacturers who make this type of ringer. _tuning._ the process of adjusting the armature of a ringer to a certain rate of vibration is called tuning, and it is customary to refer to a ringer as being tuned to a certain rate of vibration, just as it is customary to refer to a violin string as being tuned to a certain pitch or rate of vibration. the physical difference between the ringers of the various frequencies consists mainly in the size of the weights at the end of the vibrating reed, that is, of the weights which form the tapper for the bell. the low-frequency ringers have the largest weights and the high-frequency the smallest, of course. the ringers are roughly tuned to the desired frequencies by merely placing on the tapper rod the desired weight and then a more refined tuning is given them by slightly altering the positions of the weights on the tapper rod. to make the reed have a slightly lower natural rate of vibration, the weight is moved further from the stationary end of the reed, while to give it a slightly higher natural rate of vibration the weight is moved toward the stationary. in this way very nice adjustments may be made, and the aim of the various factories manufacturing these bells is to make the adjustment permanent so that it will never have to be altered by the operating companies. several years of experience with these bells has shown that when once properly assembled they maintain the same rate of vibration with great constancy. there are two general methods of operating harmonic bells. one of these may be called the in-tune system and the other the under-tune system. the under-tune system was the first employed. [illustration: operating room at tokyo, japan] _under-tune system._ the early workers in the field of harmonic-selective signaling discovered that when the tapper of the reed struck against gongs the natural rate of vibration of the reed was changed, or more properly, the reed was made to have a different rate of vibration from its natural rate. this was caused by the fact that the elasticity of the gongs proved another factor in the set of conditions causing the reeds to take up a certain rate of vibration, and the effect of this added factor was always to accelerate the rate of vibration which the reed had when it was not striking the gongs. the rebound of the hammer from the gongs tended, in other words, to accelerate the rate of vibration, which, as might be expected, caused a serious difficulty in the practical operation of the bells. to illustrate: if a reed were to have a natural rate of vibration, when not striking the gongs, of per second and a current of cycles per second were impressed on the line, the reed would take up this rate of vibration easily, but when a sufficient amplitude of vibration was attained to cause the tapper to strike the gongs, the reed would be thrown out of tune, on account of the tendency of the gongs to make the reed vibrate at a higher rate. this caused irregular ringing and was frequently sufficient to make the bells cease ringing altogether or to ring in an entirely unsatisfactory manner. in order to provide for this difficulty the early bells of currier and lighthipe were made on what has since been called the "under-tuned" principle. the first bells of the kellogg switchboard and supply company, developed by dean, were based on this idea as their cardinal principle. the reeds were all given a natural rate of vibration, when not striking the gongs, somewhat below that of the current frequencies to be employed; and yet not sufficiently below the corresponding current frequency to make the bell so far out of tune that the current frequency would not be able to start it. this was done so that when the tapper began to strike the gongs the tapper would be accelerated and brought practically into tune with the current frequency, and the ringing would continue regularly as long as the current flowed. it will be seen that the under-tuned system was, therefore, one involving some difficulty in starting in order to provide for proper regularity while actually ringing. ringers of this kind were always made with but a single gong, it being found difficult to secure uniformity of ringing and uniformity of adjustment when two gongs were employed. although no ringers of this type are being made at present, yet a large number of them are in use and they will consequently be described. their action is interesting in throwing better light on the more improved types, if for no other reason. figs. and show, respectively, side and front views of the original kellogg bell. the entire mechanism is self-contained, all parts being mounted on the base plate _ _. the electromagnet is of the two-coil type, and is supported on the brackets _ _ and _ _. the bracket _ _ is of iron so as to afford a magnetic yoke for the field of the electromagnet, while the bracket _ _ is of brass so as not to short-circuit the magnetic lines across the air-gap. the reed tongue--consisting of the steel spring _ _, the soft-iron armature pieces _ _, the auxiliary spring _ _, and the tapper ball _ _, all of which are riveted together, as shown in fig. --constitutes the only moving part of the bell. the steel spring _ _ is rigidly mounted in the clamping piece _ _ at the upper part of the bracket _ _, and the reed tongue is permitted to vibrate only by the flexibility of this spring. the auxiliary spring _ _ is much lighter than the spring _ _ and has for its purpose the provision of a certain small amount of flexibility between the tapper ball and the more rigid portion of the armature formed by the iron strips _ - _. the front ends of the magnet pole pieces extend through the bracket _ _ and are there provided with square soft-iron pole pieces _ _ set at right angles to the magnet cores so as to form a rather narrow air-gap in which the armature may vibrate. [illustration: fig. . under-tuned ringer] the cores of the magnet and also the reed tongue are polarized by means of the =l=-shaped bar magnet _ _, mounted on the iron yoke _ _ at one end in such manner that its other end will lie quite close to the end of the spring _ _, which, being of steel, will afford a path for the lines of force to the armature proper. we see, therefore, that the two magnet cores are, by this permanent magnet, given one polarity, while the reed tongue itself is given the other polarity, this being exactly the condition that has already been described in connection with the regular polarized bell or ringer. the electromagnetic action by which this reed tongue is made to vibrate is, therefore, exactly the same as that of an ordinary polarized ringer, but the difference between the two is that, in this harmonic ringer, the reed tongue will respond only to one particular rate of vibrations, while the regular polarized ringer will respond to almost any. as shown in fig. , the tapper ball strikes on the inside surface of the single gong. the function of the auxiliary spring _ _ between the ball and the main portion of the armature is to allow some resilience between the ball and the balance of the armature so as to counteract in some measure the accelerating influence of the gong on the armature. in these bells, as already stated, the natural rate of vibration of the reed tongue was made somewhat lower than the rate at which the bell was to be operated, so that the reed tongue had to be started by a current slightly out of tune with it, and then, as the tapper struck the gong, the acceleration due to the gong would bring the vibration of the reed tongue, as modified by the gong, into tune with the current that was operating it. in ether words, in this system the ringing currents that were applied to the line had frequencies corresponding to what may be called the _operative rates of vibration_ of the reed tongues, which operative rates of vibration were in each case the resultant of the natural pitch of the reed as modified by the action of the bell gong when struck. [illustration: fig. . under-tuned ringer] _in-tune system._ the more modern method of tuning is to make the natural rate of vibration of the reed tongue, that is, the rate at which it naturally vibrates when not striking the gongs, such as to accurately correspond to the rate of vibration at which the bells are to be operated--that is, the natural rate of vibration of the reed tongues is made the same as the operative rate. thus the bells are attuned for easy starting, a great advantage over the under-tuned system. in the under-tuned system, the reeds being out of tune in starting require heavier starting current, and this is obviously conducive to cross-ringing, that is, to the response of bells to other than the intended frequency. again, easy starting is desirable because when the armature is at rest, or in very slight vibration, it is at a maximum distance from the poles of the electromagnet, and, therefore, subject to the weakest influence of the poles. a current, therefore, which is strong enough to start the vibration, will be strong enough to keep the bell ringing properly. [illustration: fig. . dean in-tune ringer] when with this "in-tune" mode of operation, the armature is thrown into sufficiently wide vibration to cause the tapper to strike the gong, the gong may tend to accelerate the vibration of the reed tongue, but the current impulses through the electromagnet coils continue at precisely the same rates as before. under this condition of vibration, when the reed tongue has an amplitude of vibration wide enough to cause the tapper to strike the gongs, the ends of the armature come closest to the pole pieces, so that the pole pieces have their maximum magnetic effect on the armature, with the result that even if the accelerating tendency of the gongs were considerable, the comparatively large magnetic attractive impulses occurring at the same rate as the natural rate of vibration of the reed tongue, serve wholly to prevent any actual acceleration of the reed tongue. the magnetic attractions upon the ends of the armature, continuing at the initial rate, serve, therefore, as a check to offset any accelerating tendency which the striking of the gong may have upon the vibrating reed tongue. it is obvious, therefore, that in the "in-tune" system the electromagnetic effect on the armature should, when the armature is closest to the pole pieces, be of such an overpowering nature as to prevent whatever accelerating tendency the gongs may have from throwing the armature out of its "stride" in step with the current. for this reason it is usual in this type to so adjust the armature that its ends will actually strike against the pole pieces of the electromagnet when thrown into vibration. sufficient flexibility is given to the tapper rod to allow it to continue slightly beyond the point at which it would be brought to rest by the striking of the armature ends against the pole pieces and thus exert a whipping action so as to allow the ball to continue in its movement far enough to strike against the gongs. the rebound of the gong is then taken up by the elasticity of the tapper rod, which returns to an unflexed position, and at about this time the pole piece releases the armature so that it may swing over in the other direction to cause the tapper to strike the other gong. [illustration: fig. . tappers for dean ringers] the construction of the "in-tune" harmonic ringer employed by the dean electric company, of elyria, ohio, is illustrated in figs. , , and . it will be seen from fig. that the general arrangement of the magnet and armature is the same as that of the ordinary polarized ringer; the essential difference is that the armature is spring-mounted instead of pivoted. the armature and the tapper rod normally stand in the normal central position with reference to the pole pieces of the magnet and the gongs. fig. shows the complete vibrating parts of four ringers, adapted, respectively, to the four different frequencies of the system. the assembled armature, tapper rod, and tapper are all riveted together and are non-adjustable. all of the adjustment that is done upon them is done in the factory and is accomplished, first, by choosing the proper size of weight, and second, by forcing this weight into the proper position on the tapper rod to give exactly the rate of vibration that is desired. [illustration: fig. . dean in-tune ringer] an interesting feature of this dean harmonic ringer is the gong adjustment. as will be seen, the gongs are mounted on posts which are carried on levers pivoted to the ringer frame. these levers have at their outer end a curved rack provided with gear teeth adapted to engage a worm or screw thread mounted on the ringer frame. obviously, by turning this worm screw in one direction or the other, the gongs are moved slightly toward or from the armature or tapper. this affords a very delicate means of adjusting the gongs, and at the same time one which has no tendency to work loose or to get out of adjustment. [illustration: fig. . kellogg in-tune ringer] in fig. is shown a drawing of the "in-tune" harmonic ringer manufactured by the kellogg switchboard and supply company. this differs in no essential respect from that of the dean company, except in the gong adjustment, this latter being affected by a screw passing through a nut in the gong post, as clearly indicated. in both the kellogg and the dean in-tune ringers, on account of the comparative stiffness of the armature springs and on account of the normal position of the armature with maximum air gaps and consequent minimum magnetic pull, the armature will practically not be affected unless the energizing current is accurately attuned to its own natural rate. when the proper current is thrown on to the line, the ball will be thrown into violent vibration, and the ends of the armature brought into actual contact with the pole pieces, which are of bare iron and shielded in no way. the armature in this position is very strongly attracted and comes to a sudden stop on the pole pieces. the gongs are so adjusted that the tapper ball will have to spring about one thirty-second of an inch in order to hit them. the armature is held against the pole piece while the tapper ball is engaged in striking the gong and in partially returning therefrom, and so strong is the pull of the pole piece on the armature in this position that the accelerating influence of the gong has no effect in accelerating the rate of vibration of the reed. [illustration: fig. . circuits of dean harmonic system] _circuits_. in fig. are shown in simplified form the circuits of a four-station harmonic party line. it is seen that at the central office there are four ringing keys, adapted, respectively, to impress on the line ringing currents of four different frequencies. at the four stations on the line, lettered a, b, c, and d, there are four harmonic bells tuned accordingly. at station a there is shown the talking apparatus employing the wheatstone bridge arrangement. the talking apparatus at all of the other stations is exactly the same, but is omitted for the sake of simplicity. a condenser is placed in series with each of the bells in order that there may be no direct-current path from one side of the line to the other when all of the receivers are on their hooks at the several stations. in fig. is shown exactly the same arrangement, with the exception that the talking apparatus illustrated in detail at station a is that of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. otherwise the circuits of the dean and the kellogg company, and in fact of all the other companies manufacturing harmonic ringing systems, are the same. _advantages_. a great advantage of the harmonic party-line system is the simplicity of the apparatus at the subscriber's station. the harmonic bell is scarcely more complex than the ordinary polarized ringer, and the only difference between the harmonic-ringing telephone and the ordinary telephone is in the ringer itself. the absence of all relays and other mechanism and also the absence of the necessity for ground connections at the telephone are all points in favor of the harmonic system. [illustration: fig. . circuits of kellogg harmonic system] _limitations_. as already stated, the harmonic systems of the various companies, with one exception, are limited to four frequencies. the exception is in the case of the north electric company, which sometimes employs four and sometimes five frequencies and thus gets a selection between five stations. in the four-party north system, the frequencies, unlike those in the dean and kellogg systems, wherein the higher frequencies are multiples of the lower, are arranged so as to be proportional to the whole numbers , , , and , which, of course, have no common denominator. the frequencies thus employed in the north system are, in cycles per second, . , . , . , and . . in the five-party system, the frequency of . is arbitrarily added. while all of the commercial harmonic systems on the market are limited to four or five frequencies, it does not follow that a greater number than four or five stations may not be selectively rung. double these numbers may be placed on a party line and selectively actuated, if the first set of four or five is bridged across the line and the second set of four or five is connected between one limb of the line and ground. the first set of these is selectively rung, as already described, by sending the ringing currents over the metallic circuit, while the second set may be likewise selectively rung by sending the ringing currents over one limb of the line with a ground return. this method is frequently employed with success on country lines, where it is desired to place a greater number of instruments on a line than four or five. step-by-step method. a very large number of step-by-step systems have been proposed and reduced to practice, but as yet they have not met with great success in commercial telephone work, and are nowhere near as commonly used as are the polarity and harmonic systems. _principles_. an idea of the general features of the step-by-step systems may be had by conceiving at each station on the line a ratchet wheel, having a pawl adapted to drive it one step at a time, this pawl being associated with the armature of an electromagnet which receives current impulses from the line circuit. there is thus one of these driving magnets at each station, each bridged across the line so that when a single impulse of current is sent out from the central office all of the ratchet wheels will be moved one step. another impulse will move all of the ratchet wheels another step, and so on throughout any desired number of impulses. the ratchet wheels, therefore, are all stepped in unison. let us further conceive that all of these ratchet wheels are provided with a notch or a hole or a projection, alike in all respects at all stations save in the position which this notch or hole or projection occupies on the wheel. the thing to get clear in this part of the conception is that all of these notches, holes, or projections are alike on all of the wheels, but they occupy a different position on the wheel for each one of the stations. consider further that the bell circuit at each of the stations is normally open, but that in each case it is adapted to be closed when the notch, hole, or projection is brought to a certain point by the revolution of the wheel. let us conceive further that this distinguishing notch, hole, or projection is so arranged on the wheel of the first station as to close the bell circuit when one impulse has been sent, that that on the second station will close the bell circuit after the second impulse has been sent, and so on throughout the entire number of stations. it will, therefore, be apparent that the bell circuits at the various stations will, as the wheels are rotated in unison, be closed one after the other. in order to call a given station, therefore, it is only necessary to rotate all of the wheels in unison, by sending out the proper stepping impulses until they all occupy such a position that the one at the desired station is in such position as to close the bell circuit at that station. since all of the notches, holes, or projections are arranged to close the bell circuits at their respective stations at different times, it follows that when the bell circuit at the desired station is closed those at all of the other stations will be open. if, therefore, after the proper number of stepping impulses has been sent to the line to close the bell circuit of the desired station, ringing current be applied to the line, it is obvious that the bell of that one station will be rung to the exclusion of all others. it is, of course, necessary that provision be made whereby the magnets which furnish the energy for stepping the wheels will not be energized by the ringing current. this is accomplished in one of several ways, the most common of which is to have the stepping magnets polarized or biased in one direction and the bells at the various stations oppositely biased, so that the ringing current will not affect the stepping magnet and the stepping current will not affect the ringer magnets. after a conversation is finished, the line may be restored to its normal position in one of several ways. usually so-called release magnets are employed, for operating on the releasing device at each station. these, when energized, will withdraw the holding pawls from the ratchets and allow them all to return to their normal positions. sometimes these release magnets are operated by a long impulse of current, being made too sluggish in their action to respond to the quick-stepping impulses; sometimes the release magnets are tapped from one limb of the line to ground, so as not to be affected by the stepping or ringing currents sent over the metallic circuit; and sometimes other expedients are used for obtaining the release of the ratchets at the proper time, a large amount of ingenuity having been spent to this end. as practically all step-by-step party-line systems in commercial use have also certain other features intended to assure privacy of conversation to the users, and, therefore, come under the general heading of lock-out party-line systems, the discussion of commercial examples of these systems will be left for the next chapter, which is devoted to such lock-out systems. broken-line method. the broken-line system, like the step-by-step system, is also essentially a lock-out system and for that reason only its general features, by which the selective ringing is accomplished, will be dealt with here. _principles_. in this system there are no tuned bells, no positively and negatively polarized bells bridged to ground on each side of the line, and no step-by-step devices in the ordinary sense, by which selective signaling has ordinarily been accomplished on party lines. instead of this, each instrument on the line is exclusively brought into operative relation with the line, and then removed from such operative relation until the subscriber wanted is connected, at which time all of the other instruments are locked out and the line is not encumbered by any bridge circuits at any of the instruments that are not engaged in the conversation. furthermore, in the selecting of a subscriber or the ringing of his bell there is no splitting up of current among the magnets at the various stations as in ordinary practice, but the operating current goes straight to the station desired and to that station alone where its entire strength is available for performing its proper work. in order to make the system clear it may be stated at the outset that one side of the metallic circuit line is continued as in ordinary practice, passing through all of the stations as a continuous conductor. the other side of the line, however, is divided into sections, its continuity being broken at each of the subscriber's stations. fig. is intended to show in the simplest possible way how the circuit of the line may be extended from station to station in such manner that only the ringer of one station is in circuit at a time. the two sides of the line are shown in this figure, and it will be seen that limb _l_ extends from the central office on the left to the last station on the right without a break. the limb _r_, however, extends to the first station, at which point it is cut off from the extension _r_{x}_ by the open contacts of a switch. for the purpose of simplicity this switch is shown as an ordinary hand switch, but as a matter of fact it is a part of a relay, the operating coil of which is shown at _ _, just above it, in series with the ringer. [illustration: fig. . principle of broken-line system] obviously, if a proper ringing current is sent over the metallic circuit from the central office, only the bell at station a will operate, since the bells at the other stations are not in the circuit. if by any means the switch lever _ _ at station a were moved out of engagement with contact _ _ and into engagement with contact _ _, it is obvious that the bell of station a would no longer be in circuit, but the limb _r_ of the line would be continued to the extension _r_{x}_ and the bell of station b would be in circuit. any current then sent over the circuit of the line from the central office would ring the bell of this station. in fig. the switches of both station a and station b have been thus operated, and station c is thus placed in circuit. inspection of this figure will show that the bells of station a, station b, and station d are all cut out of circuit, and that, therefore, no current from the central office can affect them. this general scheme of selection is a new-comer in the field, and for certain classes of work it is of undoubted promise. [illustration: fig. . principle of broken-line system] chapter xvii lock-out party-line systems the party-line problem in rural districts is somewhat different from that within urban limits. in the latter cases, owing to the closer grouping of the subscribers, it is not now generally considered desirable, even from the standpoint of economy, to place more than four subscribers on a single line. for such a line selective ringing is simple, both from the standpoint of apparatus and operation; and moreover owing to the small number of stations on a line, and the small amount of traffic to and from such subscribers as usually take party-line service, the interference between parties on the same line is not a very serious matter. for rural districts, particularly those tributary to small towns, these conditions do not exist. owing to the remoteness of the stations from each other it is not feasible from the standpoint of line cost to limit the number of stations to four. a much greater number of stations is employed and the confusion resulting is distressing not only to the subscribers themselves but also to the management of the company. there exists then the need of a party-line system which will give the limited user in rural districts a service, at least approaching that which he would get if served by an individual line. the principal investment necessary to provide facilities for telephone service is that required to produce the telephone line. in many cases the cost of instruments and apparatus is small in comparison with the cost of the line. by far the greater number of subscribers in rural districts are those who use their instruments a comparatively small number of times a day, and to maintain an expensive telephone line for the exclusive use of one such subscriber who will use it but a few minutes each day is on its face an economic waste. as a result, where individual line service is practiced exclusively one of two things must be true: either the average subscriber pays more for his service than he should, or else the operating company sells the service for less than it costs, or at best for an insufficient profit. both of these conditions are unnatural and cannot be permanent. the party-line method of giving service, by which a single line is made to serve a number of subscribers, offers a solution to this difficulty, but the ordinary non-selective or even selective party line has many undesirable features if the attempt is made to place on it such a large number of stations as is considered economically necessary in rural work. these undesirable features work to the detriment of both the user of the telephone and the operating company. many attempts have been made to overcome these disadvantages of the party line in sparsely settled communities, by producing what are commonly called lock-out systems. these, as their name implies, employ such an arrangement of parts that when the line is in use by any two parties, all other parties are locked out from the circuit and cannot gain access to it until the parties who are using it are through. system after system for accomplishing this purpose has been announced but for the most part these have involved such a degree of complexity and have introduced so many undesirable features as to seriously affect the smooth operation of the system and the reliability of the service. we believe, however, in spite of numerous failures, that the lock-out selective-signaling party line has a real field of usefulness and that operating companies as well as manufacturing companies are beginning to appreciate this need, and as a result that the relief of the rural subscriber from the almost intolerable service he has often had to endure is at hand. a few of the most promising lock-out party-line systems now before the public will, therefore, be described in some detail. poole system. the poole system is a lock-out system pure and simple, its devices being in the nature of a lock-out attachment for selective-signaling lines, either of the polarity or of the harmonic type wherein common-battery transmission is employed. it will be here described as employed in connection with an ordinary harmonic-ringing system. in fig. there is shown a four-station party line equipped with poole lock-out devices, it being assumed that the ringers at each station are harmonic and that the keys at the central office are the ordinary keys adapted to impress the proper frequency on the line for ringing any one of the stations. in addition to the ordinary talking and ringing apparatus at each subscriber's station, there is a relay of special form and also a push-button key. [illustration: fig. . poole lock-out system] each of the relays has two windings, one of high resistance and the other of low resistance. remembering that the system to which this device is applied is always a common-battery system, and that, therefore, the normal condition of the line will be one in which there is a difference of potential between the two limbs, it will be evident that whenever any subscriber on a line that is not in use raises his receiver from its hook, a circuit will be established from the upper contact of the hook through the lever of the hook to the high-resistance winding _ _ of the relay and thence to the other side of the line by way of wire _ _. this will result in current passing through the high-resistance winding of the relay and the relay will pull up its armature. as soon as it does so it establishes two other circuits by the closure of the relay armature against the contacts _ _ and _ _. the closing of the contact _ _ establishes a circuit from the upper side of the line through the upper contact of the switch hook, thence through the contacts of the push button _ _, thence through the low-resistance winding _ _ of the relay to the terminal _ _, thence through the relay armature and the transmitter to the lower side of the line. this low-resistance path across the line serves to hold the relay armature attracted and also to furnish current to the transmitter for talking. the establishment of this low-resistance path across the line does another important thing, however; it practically short-circuits the line with respect to all the high-resistance relay windings, and thus prevents any of the other high-resistance relay windings from receiving enough current to actuate them, should the subscriber at any other station remove his receiver from the hook in an attempt to listen in or to make a call while the line is in use. as a subscriber can only establish the proper conditions for talking and listening by the attraction of this relay armature at his station, it is obvious that unless he can cause the pulling up of his relay armature he can not place himself in communication with the line. the second thing that is accomplished by the pulling up of the relay armature is the closure of the contacts _ _, and that completes the talking circuit through the condenser and receiver across the line in an obvious fashion. the result of this arrangement is that it is the first party who raises his receiver from its hook who is enabled to successfully establish a connection with the line, all subsequent efforts, by other subscribers, failing to do so because of the fact that the line is short-circuited by the path through the low-resistance winding and the transmitter of the station that is already connected with the line. a little target is moved by the action of the relay so that a visual indication is given to the subscriber in making a call to show whether or not he is successful in getting the use of the line. if the relay operates and he secures control of the line, the target indicates the fact by its movement, while if someone else is using the line and the relay does not operate, the target, by its failure to move, indicates that fact. when one party desires to converse with another on the same line, he depresses the button _ _ at his station until after the called party has been rung and has responded. this holds the circuit of his low-resistance winding open, and thus prevents the lock-out from becoming effective until the called party is connected with the line. the relay armature of the calling party does not fall back with the establishment of the low-resistance path at the called station, because, even though shunted, it still receives sufficient current to hold its armature in its attracted position. after the called party has responded, the button at the calling station is released and both low-resistance holding coils act in multiple. [illustration: one wing of operating room, berlin, germany ultimate capacity , subscribers' lines and , trunk lines. siemens-halske equipment. note horizontal disposal of multiple jack field.] no induction coil is used in this system and the impedance of the holding coil is such that incoming voice currents flow through the condenser and the receiver, which, by reference to the figure, will be seen to be in shunt with the holding coil. the holding coil is in series with the local transmitter, thus making a circuit similar to that of the kellogg common-battery talking circuit already discussed. a possible defect in the use of this system is one that has been common to a great many other lock-out systems, depending for their operation on the same general plan of action. this appears when the instruments are used on a comparatively long line. since the locking-out of all the instruments that are not in use by the one that is in use depends on the low-resistance shunt that is placed across the line by the instrument that is in use, it is obvious that, in the case of a long line, the resistance of the line wire will enter into the problem in such a way as to tend to defeat the locking-out function in some cases. thus, where the first instrument to use the line is at the remote end of the line, the shunting effect that this instrument can exert with respect to another instrument near the central office is that due to the resistance of the line plus the resistance of the holding coil at the end instrument. the resistance of the line wire may be so high as to still allow a sufficient current to flow through the high-resistance coil at the nearer station to allow its operation, even though the more remote instrument is already in use. coming now to a consideration of the complete selective-signaling lock-out systems, wherein the selection of the party and the locking out of the others are both inherent features, a single example of the step-by-step, and of the broken-line selective lock-out systems will be discussed. step-by-step system. the so-called k.b. system, manufactured by the dayton telephone lock-out manufacturing company of dayton, ohio, operates on the step-by-step principle. the essential feature of the subscriber's telephone equipment in this system is the step-by-step actuating mechanism which performs also the functions of a relay. this device consists of an electromagnet having two cores, with a permanent polarizing magnet therebetween, the arrangement in this respect being the same as in an ordinary polarized bell. the armature of this magnet works a rocker arm, which, besides stepping the selector segment around, also, under certain conditions, closes the bell circuit and the talking circuit, as will be described. [illustration: fig. . k.b. lock-out system] referring first to fig. , which shows in simplified form a four-station k.b. lock-out line, the electromagnet is shown at _ _ and the rocker arm at _ _. the ratchet _ _ in this case is not a complete wheel but rather a segment thereof, and it is provided with a series of notches of different depths. it is obvious that the depth of the notches will determine the degree of movement which the upper end of the rocker arm may have toward the left, this being dependent on the extent to which the pawl _ _ is permitted to enter into the segment. the first or normal notch, _i.e._, the top notch, is always of such a depth that it will allow the rocker-arm lever _ _ to engage the contact lever _ _, but will not permit the rocker arm to swing far enough to the left to cause that contact to engage the bell contact _ _. as will be shown later, the condition for the talking circuit to be closed is that the rocker arm _ _ shall rest against the contact _ _; and from this we see that the normal notch of each of the segments _ _ is of such a depth as to allow the talking circuit at each station to be closed. the next notch, _i.e._, the second one in each disk, is always shallow, as are all of the other notches except one. a deep notch is placed on each disk anywhere from the third to the next to the last on the segment. this deep notch is called the _selective notch_, and it is the one that allows of contact being made with the ringer circuit of that station when the pawl _ _ drops into it. the position of this notch differs on all of the segments on a line, and obviously, therefore, the ringer circuit at any station may be closed to the exclusion of all the others by stepping all of the segments in unison until the deep notch on the segment of the desired station lies opposite to the pawl _ _, which will permit the rocker arm _ _ to swing so far to the left as to close not only the circuit between _ _ and _ _, but also between _ _, _ _, and _ _. in this position the talking and the ringing circuits are both closed. the position of the deepest notch, _i.e._, the selective notch, on the circumference of the segment at any station depends upon the number of that station; thus, the segment of station will have a deep notch in the sixth position; the segment for station will have a deep notch in the eleventh position; the segment for any station will have a deep notch in the position corresponding to the number of that station plus two. from what has been said, therefore, it is evident that the first, or normal, notch on each segment is of such a depth as to allow the moving pawl _ _ to fall to such a depth in the segment as to permit the rocker arm _ _ to close the talking circuit only. all of the other notches, except one, are comparatively shallow, and while they permit the moving pawl _ _ under the influence of the rocker arm _ _ to move the segment _ _, yet they do not permit the rocker arm _ _ to move so far to the left as to close even the talking circuit. the exception is the deep notch, or selective notch, which is of such depth as to permit the pawl _ _ to fall so far into the segment as to allow the rocker arm _ _ to close both the talking and the ringing circuits. besides the moving pawl _ _ there is a detent pawl _ _. this always holds the segment _ _ in the position to which it has been last moved by the moving pawl _ _. the actuating magnet _ _, as has been stated, is polarized and when energized by currents in one direction, the rocker arm moves the pawl _ _ so as to step the segment one notch. when this relay is energized by current in the opposite direction, the operation is such that both the moving pawl _ _ and the detent pawl _ _ will be pulled away from the segment, thus allowing the segment to return to its normal position by gravity. this is accomplished by the following mechanism: an armature stop is pivoted upon the face of the rocker arm so as to swing in a plane parallel to the pole faces of the relay, and is adapted, when the relay is actuated by selective impulses of one polarity, to be pulled towards one of the pole faces where it acts, through impact with a plate attached to the pole face of the relay, as a limiting means for the motion of the rocker arm when the rocker arm is actuated by the magnet. when, however, the relay is energized by current in the opposite direction, as on a releasing impulse, the armature stop swings upon its pivot towards the opposite pole face, in which position the lug on the end of the armature stop registers with a hole in the plate on the relay, thus allowing the full motion of the rocker arm when it is attracted by the magnet. this motion of the rocker arm withdraws the detent pawl from engagement with the segment as well as the moving pawl, and thereby permits the segment to return to its normal position. as will be seen from fig. , each of the relay magnets _ _ is permanently bridged across the two limbs of the line. each station is provided with a push button, not shown, by means of which the subscriber who makes a call may prevent the rocker arm of his instrument from being actuated while selective impulses are being sent over the line. the purpose of this is to enable one party to make a call for another on the same line, depressing his push button while the operator is selecting and ringing the called party. the segment at his own station, therefore, remains in its normal position, in which position, as we have already seen, his talking circuit is closed; all of the other segments are, however, stepped up until the ringing and talking circuits of the desired station are in proper position, at which time ringing current is sent over the line. the segments in fig. , except at station c, are shown as having been stepped up to the sixth position, which corresponds to the ringing position of the fourth station, or station d. the condition shown in this figure corresponds to that in which the subscriber at station c originated the call and pressed his button, thus retaining his own segment in its normal position so that the talking circuits would be established with station d. when the line is in normal position any subscriber may call central by his magneto generator, not shown in fig. , which will operate the drop at central, but will not operate any of the subscribers' bells, because all bell circuits are normally open. when a subscriber desires connection with another line, the operator sends an impulse back on the line which steps up and locks out all instruments except that of the calling subscriber. [illustration: fig. . k.b. lock-out station] a complete k.b. lock-out telephone is shown in fig. . this is the type of instrument that is usually furnished when new equipment is ordered. if, however, it is desired to use the k.b. system in connection with telephones of the ordinary bridging type that are already in service, the lock-out and selective mechanism, which is shown on the upper inner face of the door in fig. , is furnished separately in a box that may be mounted close to the regular telephone and connected thereto by suitable wires, as shown in fig. . it is seen that this instrument employs a local battery for talking and also a magneto generator for calling the central office. the central-office equipment consists of a dial connected with an impulse wheel, together with suitable keys by which the various circuits may be manipulated. this dial and its associated mechanism may be mounted in the regular switchboard cabinet, or it may be furnished in a separate box and mounted alongside of the cabinet in either of the positions shown at _ _ or _ _ of fig. . in order to send the proper number of impulses to the line to call a given party, the operator places her finger in the hole in the dial that bears the number corresponding to the station wanted and rotates the dial until the finger is brought into engagement with the fixed stop shown at the bottom of the dial in fig. . the dial is then allowed to return by the action of a spring to its normal position, and in doing so it operates a switch within the box to make and break the battery circuit the proper number of times. _operation._ a complete description of the operation may now be had in connection with fig. , which is similar to fig. , but contains the details of the calling arrangement at the central office and also of the talking circuits at the various subscribers' stations. [illustration: fig. . k.b. lock-out station] referring to the central-office apparatus the usual ringing key is shown, the inside contacts of which lead to the listening key and to the operator's telephone set as in ordinary switchboard practice. between the outside contact of this ringing key and the ringing generator there is interposed a pair of contact springs _ - _ and another pair _ - _. the contact springs _ _ are adapted to be moved backward and forward by the impulse wheel which is directly controlled by the dial under the manipulation of the operator. when these springs _ _ are in their normal position, the ringing circuit is continued through the release-key springs _ _ to the ringing generator. these springs _ _ occupy their normal position only when the dial is in its normal position, this being due to the notch _ _ in the contact wheel. at all other times, _i.e._, while the impulse wheel is out of its normal position, the springs _ - _ are either depressed so as to engage the lower battery contacts, or else held in an intermediate position so as to engage neither the battery contacts nor the generator contacts. [illustration: fig. . calling apparatus k.b. system] when it is desired to call a given station, the operator pulls the subscriber's number on the dial and holds the ringing key closed, allowing the dial to return to normal. this connects the impulse battery to the subscriber's line as many times as is required to move the subscriber's sectors to the proper position, and in such direction as to cause the stepping movement of the various relays. as the impulse wheel comes to its normal position, the springs _ _, associated with it, again engage their upper contacts, by virtue of the notch _ _ in the impulse wheel, and this establishes the connection between the ringing generator and the subscriber's line, the ringing key being still held closed. the pulling of the transmitter dial and holding the ringing key closed, therefore, not only sends the stepping impulses to line, but also follows it by the ringing current. the sending of five impulses to line moves all of the sectors to the sixth notch, and this corresponds to the position necessary to make the fourth station operative. such a condition is shown in fig. , it being assumed that the subscriber at station c originated the call and pressed his own button so as to prevent his sector from being moved out of its normal position. as a result of this, the talking circuit at station c is left closed, and the talking and the ringing circuit of station d, the called station, are closed, while both the talking and the ringing circuits of all the other stations are left open. station d may, therefore, be rung and may communicate with station c, while all of the other stations on the line are locked out, because of the fact that both their talking and ringing circuits are left open. [illustration: fig. . circuit k.b. system] when conversation is ended, the operator is notified by the usual clearing-out signal, and she then depresses the release button, which brings the springs _ _ out of engagement with the generator contact but into engagement with the battery contact in such relation as to send a battery current on the line in the reverse direction from that sent out by the impulse wheel. this sends current through all of the relays in such direction as to withdraw both the moving and the holding pawls from the segments and thus allow all of the segments to return to their normal positions. of course, in thus establishing the release current, it is necessary for the operator to depress the ringing key as well as the release key. a one-half microfarad condenser is placed in the receiver circuit at each station so that the line will not be tied up should some subscriber inadvertently leave his receiver off its hook. this permits the passage of voice currents, but not of the direct currents used in stepping the relays or in releasing them. the circuit of fig. is somewhat simplified from that in actual practice, and it should be remembered that the hook switch, which is not shown in this figure, controls in the usual way the continuity of the receiver and the transmitter circuits as well as of the generator circuits, the generator being attached to the line as in an ordinary telephone. broken-line system. the broken-line method of accomplishing selective signaling and locking-out on telephone party lines is due to homer roberts and his associates. [illustration: fig. . roberts latching relay] to understand just how the principles illustrated in figs. and are put into effect, it will be necessary to understand the latching relay shown diagrammatically in its two possible positions in fig. , and in perspective in fig. . referring to fig. , the left-hand cut of which shows the line relay in its normal position, it is seen that the framework of the device resembles that of an ordinary polarized ringer. under the influence of current in one direction flowing through the left-hand coil, the armature of this device depresses the hard rubber stud _ _, and the springs _ _, _ _, and _ _ are forced downwardly until the spring _ _ has passed under the latch carried on the spring _ _. when the operating current through the coil _ _ ceases, the pressure of the armature on the spring _ _ is relieved, allowing this spring to resume its normal position and spring _ _ to engage with spring _ _. the spring _ _ cannot rise, since it is held by the latch _ _, and the condition shown in the right-hand cut of fig. exists. it will be seen that the spring _ _ has in this operation carried out just the same function as the switch lever performed as described in connection with figs. and . an analysis of this action will show that the normal contact between the springs _ _ and _ _, which contact controls the circuit through the relay coil and the bell, is not broken until the coil _ _ is de-energized, which means that the magnet is effective until it has accomplished its work. it is impossible, therefore, for this relay to cut itself out of circuit before it has caused the spring _ _ to engage under the latch _ _. if current of the proper direction were sent through the coil _ _ of the relay, the opposite end of the armature would be pulled down and the hard rubber stud at the left-hand end of the armature would bear against the bent portion of the spring _ _ in such manner as to cause the latch of this spring to release the spring _ _ and thus allow the relay to assume its normal, or unlatched, position. a good idea of the mechanical construction of this relay may be obtained from fig. . the entire selecting function of the roberts system is performed by this simple piece of apparatus at each station. [illustration: fig. . roberts latching relay] the diagram of fig. shows, in simplified form, a four-station line, the circuits being given more in detail than in the diagrams of chapter xvi. it will be noticed that the ringer and the relay coil _ _ at the first station are bridged across the sides of the line leading to the central office. in like manner the bell and the relay magnets are bridged across the two limbs of the line leading into each succeeding station, but this bridge at each of the stations beyond station a is ineffective because the line extension _r__{x} is open at the next station nearest the central office. [illustration: fig. . simplified circuits of roberts system] in order to ring station a it is only necessary to send out ringing current from the central office. this current is in such direction as not to cause the operation of the relay, although it passes through the coil _ _. if, on the other hand, it is desired to ring station b, a preliminary impulse would be sent over the metallic circuit from the central office, which impulse would be of such direction as to operate the relay at station a, but not to operate the bell at that station. the operation of the relay at station a causes the spring _ _ of this relay to engage the spring _ _, thus extending the line on to the second station. after the spring _ _ at station a has been forced into contact with the spring _ _, it is caught by the latch of the spring _ _ and held mechanically. when the impulse from the central office ceases, the spring _ _ resumes its normal position, thus breaking the bridge circuit through the bell at that station. it is apparent now that the action of coil _ _ at station a has made the relay powerless to perform any further action, and at the same time the line has been extended on to the second station. a second similar impulse from the central office will cause the relay at station b to extend the line on to station c, and at the same time break the circuit through the operating coil and the bell at station b. in this way any station may be picked out by sending the proper number of impulses to operate the line relays of all the stations between the station desired and the central office, and having picked out a station it is only necessary to send out ringing current, which current is in such direction as to ring the bell but not to operate the relay magnet at that station. in fig. , a four-station line, such as is shown in fig. , is illustrated, but the condition shown in this is that existing when two preliminary impulses have been sent over the line, which caused the line relays at station a and station b to be operated. the bell at station c is, therefore, the only one susceptible to ringing current from the central office. [illustration: fig. . simplified circuits of roberts system] since only one bell and one relay are in circuit at any one time, it is obvious that all of the current that passes over the line is effective in operating a single bell or relay only. there is no splitting up of the current among a large number of bells as in the bridging system of operating step-by-step devices, which method sometimes so greatly reduces the effective current for each bell that it is with great difficulty made to respond. all the energy available is applied directly to the piece of apparatus at the time it is being operated. this has a tendency toward greater surety of action, and the adjustment of the various pieces of apparatus may be made with less delicacy than is required where many pieces of apparatus, each having considerable work to do, must necessarily be operated in multiple. the method of unlatching the relays has been briefly referred to. after a connection has been established with a station in the manner already described, the operator may clear the line when it is proper to do so by sending impulses of such a nature as to cause the line relays of the stations beyond the one chosen to operate, thus continuing the circuit to the end of the line. the operation of the line relay at the last station brings into circuit the coil _ _, figs. and , of a grounding device. this is similar to the line relay, but it holds its operating spring in a normally latched position so as to maintain the two limbs of the line disconnected from the ground. the next impulse following over the metallic circuit passes through the coil _ _ and causes the operation of this grounding device which, by becoming unlatched, grounds the limb _l_ of the line through the coil _ _. this temporary ground at the end of the line makes it possible to send an unlocking or restoring current from the central office over the limb _l_, which current passes through all of the unlocking coils _ _, shown in figs. , , and , thus causing the simultaneous unlocking of all of the line relays and the restoration of the line to its normal condition, as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . details of latching relay connections] as has been stated, the windings _ _ on the line relays are the unlatching windings. in figs. and , for the purpose of simplicity, these windings are not shown connected, but as a matter of fact each of them is included in series in the continuous limb _l_ of the line. this would introduce a highly objectionable feature from the standpoint of talking over the line were it not for the balancing coils _ _^{ }, each wound on the same core as the corresponding winding _ _, and each included in series in the limb _r_ of the line, and in such direction as to be differential thereto with respect to currents passing in series over the two limbs of the line. the windings _ _ are the true unlocking windings, while the windings _ _^{ } have no other function than to neutralize the inductive effects of these unlocking windings necessarily placed in series in the talking circuit. all of these windings are of low ohmic resistance, a construction which, as has previously been noted, brings about the desired effect without introducing any self-induction in the line, and without producing any appreciable effect upon the transmission. a study of fig. will make clear the connections of these unlocking and balancing windings at each station. the statement of operation so far given discloses the general method of building up the line in sections in order to choose any party and of again breaking it up into sections when the conversation is finished. it has been stated that the same operation which selects the party wanted also serves to give that party the use of the line and to lock the others off. that this is true will be understood when it is stated that the ringer is of such construction that when operated to ring the subscriber wanted, it also operates to unlatch a set of springs similar to those shown in fig. , this unlatching causing the proper connection of the subscriber's talking circuit across the limbs of the line, and also closing the local circuit through his transmitter. the very first motion of the bell armature performs this unlatching operation after which the bell behaves exactly as an ordinary polarized biased ringer. [illustration: fig. . broken-back ringer] the construction of this ringer is interesting and is shown in its two possible positions in fig. . the group of springs carried on its frame is entirely independent of the movement of the armature during the ringing operation. with reversed currents, however, the armature is moved in the opposite direction from that necessary to ring the bells, and this causes the latching of the springs into their normal position. in order that this device may perform the double function of ringer and relay the tapper rod of the bell is hinged on the armature so as to partake of the movements of the armature in one direction only. this has been called by the inventor and engineers of the roberts system a _broken-back ringer_, a name suggestive of the movable relation between the armature and the tapper rod. the construction of the ringer is of the same nature as that of the standard polarized ringer universally employed, but a hinge action between the armature and the tapper rod, of such nature as to make the tapper partake positively of the movements of the armature in one direction, but to remain perfectly quiescent when the armature moves in the other direction, is provided. [illustration: fig. . details of ringer connection] how this broken-back ringer controls the talking and the locking-out conditions may best be understood in connection with fig. . the ringer springs are normally latched at all stations. under these conditions the receiver is short-circuited by the engagement of springs _ _ and _ _, the receiver circuit is open between springs _ _ and _ _, and the local-battery circuit is open between springs _ _ and _ _. the subscribers whose ringers are latched are, therefore, locked out in more ways than one. when the bell is rung, the first stroke it makes unlatches the springs, which assume the position shown in the right-hand cut of fig. , and this, it will be seen from fig. , establishes proper conditions for enabling the subscriber to transmit and to receive speech. the hook switch breaks both transmitter and receiver circuits when down and in raising it establishes a momentary circuit between the ground and the limb _l_ of the line, both upper and lower hook contacts engaging the hook lever simultaneously during the rising of the hook. the mechanism at the central office by which selection of the proper station is made in a rapid manner is shown in fig. . it has already been stated that the selection of the proper subscriber is brought about by the sending of a predetermined number of impulses from the central office, these impulses passing in one direction only and over the metallic circuit. after the proper party has been reached, the ringing current is put on in the reverse direction. [illustration: fig. . central-office impulse transmitter] the operator establishes the number of impulses to be sent by placing the pointer opposite the number on the dial corresponding to the station wanted. the ratchet wheel is stepped around automatically by each impulse of current from an ordinary pole changer such as is employed in ringing biased bells. when the required number of impulses has been sent, a projection, carried on a group of springs, drops into a notch on the drum of the selector shaft, which operation instantly stops the selecting current impulses and at the same time throws on the ringing current which consists of impulses in the reverse direction. so rapidly does this device operate that it will readily follow the impulses of an ordinary pole changer, even when this is adjusted to its maximum rate of vibration. [illustration: view of a large foreign multiple switchboard] _operation._ space will not permit a full discussion of the details of the central-office selective apparatus, but a general resumé of the operation of the system may now be given, with the aid of fig. , which shows a four-station line with the circuits of three of the stations somewhat simplified. in this figure station a, station b, and station d are shown in their locked-out positions, a and b having been passed by the selection and ringing of station c, while station d is inoperative because it was not reached in the selection and the line is still broken at station c. station c, therefore, has possession of the line. when the subscriber at station c raised his receiver in order to call central, a "flash" contact was made as the hook moved up, which momentarily grounded the limb _l_ of the line. (see fig. .) this "flash" contact is produced by the arrangement of the hook which assures that the lower contact shall, by virtue of its flexibility, follow up the hook lever until the hook lever engages the upper contact, after which the lower contact breaks. this results in the momentary connection of both the upper and the lower contacts of the hook with the lever, and, therefore, the momentary grounding of the limb _l_ of the line. this limb always being continuous serves, when this "flash" contact is made, to actuate the line signal at the central office. [illustration: fig. . circuits of roberts line] since, however, all parties on the line are normally locked out of talking circuits, some means must be provided whereby the operator may place the signaling party in talking connection and leave all the other instruments on the line in their normally locked-out position. in fact, the operator must be able automatically to pick out the station that signaled in, and operate the ringer to unlatch the springs controlling the talking circuit of that station. accordingly the operator sends impulses on the line, from a grounded battery, which are in the direction to operate the line relays and to continue the line circuit to the station calling. when, after a sufficient number of impulses, this current reaches that station it finds a path to ground from the limb _l_. this path is made possible by the fact that the subscriber's receiver is off its hook at that station. in order to understand just how this ground connection is made, it must be remembered that each of the ringer magnets is energized with each selecting impulse, but in such a direction as not to ring the bells, it being understood that all of the ringer mechanisms are normally latched. when the selecting impulse for station c arrives, it passes through the ringer and the selecting relay coils at that station and starts to operate the remainder of the ringers sufficiently to cause the spring _ _ to engage the spring _ _. this establishes the ground connection from the limb _l_ of the line, the circuit being traced through limb _l_ through the upper contact of the switch, thence through springs _ _ and _ _ to ground, and this, before the line relay has time to latch, operates the quick-acting relay at the central office, which acts to cut off further impulses, and thus automatically stops at the calling station. ringing current in the opposite direction is then sent to line; this unlatches the ringer springs and places the calling subscriber in talking circuit. when the operator has communicated with the calling subscriber, and found, for example, that another party on another similar line is desired, she turns the dial pointer on the selector to the number corresponding to the called-for party's number on that line, and presses the signal key. pressing this key causes impulses to "run down the line," selecting the proper party and ringing his bell in the manner already described. the connection between the two parties is then established, and no one else can in any possible way, except by permission of the operator, obtain access to the line. it is obvious that some means must be provided for restoring the selecting relays to normal after a conversation is finished. by referring to fig. it will be seen that the upper end of the latch spring _ _ is bent over in such a manner that when the armature is attracted by current flowing through the coil _ _, the knob on the left-hand end of the armature on rising engages with the bent cam surface and forces back the latch, permitting spring _ _ to return to its normal position. to restore the line the operator sends out sufficient additional selective impulses to extend the circuit to the end of the line, and thus brings the grounder into circuit. the winding of the grounder is connected in such a manner that the next passing impulse throws off its latch, permitting the long spring to contact with the ground spring. the operator now sends a grounded impulse over the continuous limb _l_ of the line which passes through the restoring coils _ _ at all the stations and through the right-hand coil of the grounding device to ground. the selecting relays are, therefore, simultaneously restored to normal. the grounder is also energized and restored to its normal position by the same current. if a party in calling finds that his own line is busy and he cannot get central, he may leave his receiver off its hook. when the party who is using the line hangs up his receiver the fact that another party desires a connection is automatically indicated to the operator, who then locks out the instrument of the party who has just finished conversation and passes his station by. when the operator again throws the key, the waiting subscriber is automatically selected in the same manner as was the first party. if there are no subscribers waiting for service, the stop relay at central will not operate until the grounder end of the line is unlatched, the selecting relays being then restored automatically to normal. the circuits are so organized that at all times whether the line is busy or not, the movement up and down of the switch hook, at any sub-station, operates a signal before the operator. such a movement, when made slowly and repeatedly, indicates to the operator that the subscriber has an emergency call and she may use her judgment as to taking the line away from the parties who are using it, and finding out what the emergency call is for. if the operator finds that the subscriber has misused this privilege of making the emergency call, she may restore the connection to the parties previously engaged in conversation. one of the salient points of this roberts system is that the operator always has control of the line. a subscriber is not able even to use his own battery till permitted to do so. a subscriber who leaves his receiver off its hook in order that he may be signaled by the operator when the line is free, causes no deterioration of the local battery because the battery circuit is held open by the switch contacts carried on the ringer. it cannot be denied, however, that this system is complicated, and that it has other faults. for instance, as described herein, both sides of the line must be looped into each subscriber's station, thus requiring four drop, or service, wires instead of two. it is possible to overcome this objection by placing the line relays on the pole in a suitably protected casing, in which case it is sufficient to run but two drop wires from the nearer line to station. there are undoubtedly other objections to this system, and yet with all its faults it is of great interest, and although radical in many respects, it teaches lessons of undoubted value. chapter xviii electrical hazards all telephone systems are exposed to certain electrical hazards. when these hazards become actively operative as causes, harmful results ensue. the harmful results are of two kinds: those causing damage to property and those causing damage to persons. the damage to persons may be so serious as to result in death. damage to property may destroy the usefulness of a piece of apparatus or of some portion of the wire plant. or the property damage may initiate itself as a harm to apparatus or wiring and may result in greater and extending damage by starting a fire. electrical currents which endanger life and property may be furnished by natural or artificial causes. natural electricity which does such damage usually displays itself as lightning. in rare cases, currents tending to flow over grounded lines because of extraordinary differences of potential between sections of the earth's surface have damaged apparatus in such lines, or only have been prevented from causing such damage by the operation of protective devices. telegraph and telephone systems have been threatened by natural electrical hazards since the beginning of the arts and by artificial electrical hazards since the development of electric light and power systems. at the present time, contrary to the general supposition, it is in the artificial, and not in the natural electrical hazards that the greater variety and degree of danger lies. of the ways in which artificial electricity may injure a telephone system, the entrance of current from an external electrical power system is a greater menace than an abnormal flow of current from a source belonging to the telephone system itself. yet modern practice provides opportunities for a telephone system to inflict damage upon itself in that way. telephone engineering designs need to provide means for protecting _all_ parts of a system against damage, from external ("foreign") as well as internal ("domestic") hazards, and to cause this protection to be inclusive enough to protect persons against injury and property from damage by any form of overheating or electrolytic action. a part of a telephone system for which there is even a remote possibility of contact with an external source of electrical power, whether natural or artificial, is said to be _exposed_ to electrical hazard. the degree or character of possible contact or other interference often is referred to in relative terms of _exposure_. the same terms are used concerning inductive relations between circuits. the whole tendency of design, particularly of wire plants, is to arrange the circuits in such a way as to limit the exposure as greatly as possible, the intent being to produce a condition in which all parts of the system will be _unexposed_ to hazards. methods of design are not yet sufficiently advanced for any plant to be formed of circuits wholly unexposed, so that protective means are required to safeguard apparatus and circuits in case the hazard, however remote, becomes operative. lightning discharges between the clouds and earth frequently charge open wires to potentials sufficiently high to damage apparatus; and less frequently, to destroy the wires of the lines themselves. lightning discharges between clouds frequently induce charges in lines sufficient to damage apparatus connected with the lines. heavy rushes of current in lines, from lightning causes, occasionally induce damaging currents in adjacent lines not sufficiently exposed to the original cause to have been injured without this induction. the lightning hazard is least where the most lines are exposed. in a small city with all of the lines formed of exposed wires and all of them used as grounded circuits, a single lightning discharge may damage many switchboard signals and telephone ringers if there be but or lines, while the damage might have been nothing had there been to , lines in the same area. means of protecting lines and apparatus against damage by lightning are little more elaborate than in the earliest days of telegraph working. they are adequate for the almost entire protection of life and of apparatus. power circuits are classified by the rules of various governing bodies as high-potential and low-potential circuits. the classification of the national board of fire underwriters in the united states defines low-potential circuits as having pressures below volts; high-potential circuits as having pressures from to , volts, and extra high-potential circuits as having pressures above , volts. pressures of , volts are becoming more common. where power is valuable and the distance over which it is to be transmitted is great, such high voltages are justified by the economics of the power problem. they are a great hazard to telephone systems, however. an unprotected telephone system meeting such a hazard by contact will endanger life and property with great certainty. a very common form of distribution for lighting and power purposes is the three-wire system having a grounded neutral wire, the maximum potential above the earth being about volts. telephone lines and apparatus are subject to damage by any power circuit whether of high or low potential. the cause of property damage in all cases is the flow of current. personal damage, if it be death from shock, ordinarily is the result of a high potential between two parts of the body. the best knowledge indicates that death uniformly results from shock to the heart. it is believed that death has occurred from shock due to pressure as low as volts. the critical minimum voltage which can not cause death is not known. a good rule is never willingly to subject another person to personal contact with any electrical pressure whatever. electricity can produce actions of four principal kinds: physiological, thermal, chemical, and magnetic. viewing electricity as establishing hazards, the physiological action may injure or kill living things; the thermal action may produce heat enough to melt metals, to char things which can be burned, or to cause them actually to burn, perhaps with a fire which can spread; the chemical action may destroy property values by changing the state of metals, as by dissolving them from a solid state where they are needed into a state of solution where they are not needed; the magnetic action introduces no direct hazard. the greatest hazard to which property values are exposed is the electro-thermal action; that is, the same useful properties by which electric lighting and electric heating thrive may produce heat where it is not wanted and in an amount greater than can safely be borne. the tendency of design is to make all apparatus capable of carrying without overheating any current to which voltage within the telephone system may subject it, and to provide the system so designed with specific devices adapted to isolate it from currents originating without. apparatus which is designed in this way, adapted not only to carry its own normal working currents but to carry the current which would result if a given piece of apparatus were connected directly across the maximum pressure within the telephone system itself, is said to be self-protecting. apparatus amply able to carry its maximum working current but likely to be overheated, to be injured, or perhaps to destroy itself and set fire to other things if subjected to the maximum pressure within the system, is not self-protecting apparatus. to make all electrical devices self-protecting by surrounding them with special arrangements for warding off abnormal currents from external sources, is not as simple as might appear. a lamp, for example, which can bear the entire pressure of a central-office battery, is not suitable for direct use in a line several miles long because it would not give a practical signal in series with that line and with the telephone set, as it is required to do. a lamp suitable for use in series with such a line and a telephone set would burn out by current from its own normal source if the line should become short-circuited in or near the central office. the ballast referred to in the chapter on "signals" was designed for the very purpose of providing rapidly-rising resistance to offset the tendency toward rapidly-rising current which could burn out the lamp. as another example, a very small direct-current electric motor can be turned on at a snap switch and will gain speed quickly enough so that its armature winding will not be overheated. a larger motor of that kind can not be started safely without introducing resistance into the armature circuit on starting, and cutting it out gradually as the armature gains speed. such a motor could be made self-protecting by having the armature winding of much larger wire than really is required for mere running, choosing its size great enough to carry the large starting current without overheating itself and its insulation. it is better, and for long has been standard practice, to use starting boxes, frankly admitting that such motors are not self-protecting until started, though they are self-protecting while running at normal speeds. such a motor, once started, may be overloaded so as to be slowed down. so much more current now can pass through the armature that its winding is again in danger. overload circuit-breakers are provided for the very purpose of taking motors out of circuit in cases where, once up to speed, they are mechanically brought down again and into danger. such a circuit-breaker is a device for protecting against an _internal_ hazard; that is, internal to the power system of which the motor is a part. another example: in certain situations, apparatus intended to operate under impulses of large current may be capable of carrying its normal impulses successfully but incapable of carrying currents from the same pressure continuously. protective means may be provided for detaching such apparatus from the circuit whenever the period in which the current acts is not short enough to insure safety. this is cited as a case wherein a current, normal in amount but abnormal in duration, becomes a hazard. the last mentioned example of damage from internal hazards brings us to the law of the electrical generation of heat. _the greater the current or the greater the resistance of the conductor heated or the longer the time, the greater will he the heat generated in that conductor._ but this generated heat varies directly as the resistance and as the time and as the square of the current, that is, the law is heat generated = _c^{ }rt_ in which _c_ = the current; _r_=the resistance of the conductor; and _t_ = the time. it is obvious that a protective device, such as an overload circuit-breaker for a motor, or a protector for telephone apparatus, needs to operate more quickly for a large current than for a small one, and this is just what all well-designed protective devices are intended to do. the general problem which these heating hazards present with relation to telephone apparatus and circuits is: _to cause all parts of the telephone system to be made so as to carry successfully all currents which may flow in them because of any internal or external pressure, or to supplement them by devices which will stop or divert currents which could overheat them._ electrolytic hazards depend not on the heating effects of currents but on their chemical effects. the same natural law which enables primary and secondary batteries to be useful provides a hazard which menaces telephone-cable sheaths and other conductors. when a current leaves a metal in contact with an electrolyte, the metal tends to dissolve into the electrolyte. in the processes of electroplating and electrotyping, current enters the bath at the anode, passes from the anode through the solution to the cathode, removing metal from the former and depositing it upon the latter. in a primary battery using zinc as the positive element and the negative terminal, current is caused to pass, within the cell, from the zinc to the negative element and zinc is dissolved. following the same law, any pipe buried in the earth may serve to carry current from one region to another. as single-trolley traction systems with positive trolley wires constantly are sending large currents through the earth toward their power stations, such a pipe may be of positive potential with relation to moist earth at some point in its length. current leaving it at such a point may cause its metal to dissolve enough to destroy the usefulness of the pipe for its intended purpose. lead-sheathed telephone cables in the earth are particularly exposed to such damage by electrolysis. the reasons are that such cables often are long, have a good conductor as the sheath-metal, and that metal dissolves readily in the presence of most aqueous solutions when electrolytic differences of potential exist. the length of the cables enables them to connect between points of considerable difference of potential. it is lack of this length which prevents electrolytic damage to masses of structural metal in the earth. electrical power is supplied to single-trolley railroads principally in the form of direct current. usually all the trolley wires of a city are so connected to the generating units as to be positive to the rails. this causes current to flow from the cars toward the power stations, the return path being made up jointly of the rails, the earth itself, actual return wires which may supplement the rails, and also all other conducting things in the earth, these being principally lead-covered cables and other pipes. these conditions establish definite areas in which the currents tend to leave the cables and pipes, _i.e._, in which the latter are positive to other things. these positive areas usually are much smaller than the negative areas, that is, the regions in which currents tend _to enter_ the cables form a larger total than the regions in which the currents tend _to leave_ the cables. these facts simplify the ways in which the cables may be protected against damage by direct currents leaving them and also they reduce the amount, complication, and cost of applying the corrective and preventive measures. all electric roads do not use direct current. certain simplifications in the use of single-phase alternating currents in traction motors have increased the number of roads using a system of alternating-current power supply. where alternating current is used, the electrolytic conditions are different and a new problem is set, for, as the current flows in recurrently different directions, an area which at one instant is positive to others, is changed the next instant into a negative area. the protective means, therefore, must be adapted to the changed requirements. chapter xix protective means any of the heating hazards described in the foregoing chapter may cause currents which will damage apparatus. all devices for the protection of apparatus from such damage, operate either to stop the flow of the dangerous current, or to send that flow over some other path. protection against high potentials. lightning is the most nearly universal hazard. all open wires are exposed to it in some degree. damaging currents from lightning are caused by extraordinarily high potentials. furthermore, a lightning discharge is oscillatory; that is, alternating, and of very high frequency. drops, ringers, receivers, and other devices subject to lightning damage suffer by having their windings burned by the discharge. the impedance these windings offer to the high frequency of lightning oscillations is great. the impedance of a few turns of heavy wire may be negligible to alternating currents of ordinary frequencies because the resistance of the wire is low, its inductance small, and the frequency finite. on the other hand, the impedance of such a coil to a lightning discharge is much higher, due to the very high frequency of the discharge. were it not for the extremely high pressure of lightning discharges, their high frequency of oscillation would enable ordinary coils to be self-protecting against them. but a discharge of electricity can take place through the air or other insulating medium if its pressure be high enough. a pressure of , volts can strike across a gap in air of one inch, and lower pressures can strike across smaller distances. when lightning encounters an impedance, the discharge seldom takes place through the entire winding, as an ordinary current would flow, usually striking across whatever short paths may exist. very often these paths are across the insulation between the outer turns of a coil. it is not unusual for a lightning discharge to plow its way across the outer layer of a wound spool, melting the copper of the turns as it goes. often the discharge will take place from inner turns directly to the core of the magnet. this is more likely when the core is grounded. _air-gap arrester_. the tendency of a winding to oppose lightning discharges and the ease with which such discharge may strike across insulating gaps, points the way to protection against them. such devices consist of two conductors separated by an air space or other insulator and are variously known as lightning arresters, spark gaps, open-space cutouts, or air-gap arresters. the conductors between which the gap exists may be both of metal, may be one of metal and one of carbon, or both of carbon. one combination consists of carbon and mercury, a liquid metal. the space between the conductors may be filled with either air or solid matter, or it may be a vacuum. speaking generally, the conductors are separated by some insulator. two conductors separated by an insulator form a condenser. the insulator of an open-space arrester often is called the dielectric. [illustration fig. . saw tooth arrester] discharge across gaps:--electrical discharges across a given distance occur at lower potentials if the discharge be between points than if between smooth surfaces. arresters, therefore, are provided with points. fig. shows a device known as a "saw-tooth" arrester because of its metal plates being provided with teeth. such an arrester brings a ground connection close to plates connected with the line and is adapted to protect apparatus either connected across a metallic circuit or in series with a single wire circuit. fig. shows another form of metal plate air-gap arrester having the further possibility of a discharge taking place from one line wire to the other. inserting a plug in the hole between the two line plates connects the line wires directly together at the arrester. this practice was designed for use with series lines, the plug short-circuiting the telephone set when in place. a defect of most ordinary types of metal air-gap lightning arresters is that heavy discharges tend to melt the teeth or edges of the plates and often to weld them together, requiring special attention to re-establish the necessary gap. advantages of carbon:--solid carbon is found to be a much better material than metal for the reasons that a discharge will not melt it and that its surface is composed of multitudes of points from which discharges take place more readily than from metals. [illustration fig. . saw-tooth arrester] [illustration fig. . carbon block arrester] carbon arresters now are widely used in the general form shown in fig. . a carbon block connected with a wire of the line is separated from a carbon block connected to ground by some form of insulating separator. mica is widely used as such a separator, and holes of some form in a mica slip enable the discharge to strike freely from block to block, while preventing the blocks from touching each other. celluloid with many holes is used as a separator between carbon blocks. silk and various special compositions also have their uses. [illustration fig. . arrester separators] dust between carbons:--discharges between the carbon blocks tend to throw off particles of carbon from them. the separation between the blocks being small--from . to . inch--the carbon particles may lodge in the air-gap, on the edges of the separator, or otherwise, so as to leave a conducting path between the two blocks. slight moisture on the separator may help to collect this dust, thus placing a ground on that wire of the line. this ground may be of very high resistance, but is probably one of many such--one at each arrester connected to the line. in special forms of carbon arresters an attempt has been made to limit this danger of grounding by the deposit of carbon dust. the object of the u-shaped separator of fig. is to enable the arrester to be mounted so that this opening in the separator is downward, in the hope that loosened carbon particles may fall out of the space between the blocks. the deposit of carbon on the inside edges of the u-shaped separator often is so fine and clings so tightly as not to fall out. the separator projects beyond the blocks so as to avoid the collection of carbon on the outer edges. commercial types:--fig. is a commercial form of the arrangement shown in fig. and is one of the many forms made by the american electric fuse company. line wires are attached to outside binding posts shown in the figure and the ground wire to the metal binding post at the front. the carbon blocks with their separator slide between clips and a ground plate. the air-gap is determined by the thickness of the separator between the carbon blocks. [illustration: fig. . carbon block arrester] [illustration: fig. roberts "self-cleaning" arrester] the roberts carbon arrester is designed with particular reference to the disposal of carbon dust and is termed self-cleaning for that reason. the arrangement of carbons and dielectric in this device is shown in fig. ; mica is cemented to the line carbon and is large enough to provide a projecting margin all around. the spark gap is not uniform over the entire surface of the block but is made wedge-shaped by grinding away the line carbon as shown. it is claimed that a continuous arcing fills the wedge-shaped chamber with heated air or gas, converting the whole of the space into a field of low resistance to ground, and that this gas in expanding drives out every particle of carbon that may be thrown off. it seems obvious that the wedge-shaped space offers greater freedom for carbon dust to fall out than in the case of the parallel arrangement of the block faces. an outdoor arrester for metallic circuits, designed by f.b. cook, is shown in fig. . the device is adapted to mount on a pole or elsewhere and to be covered by a protecting cap. the carbons are large and are separated by a special compound intended to assist the self-cleaning feature. the three carbons being grouped together as a unit, the device has the ability to care for discharges from one terminal to either of the others direct, without having to pass through two gaps. in this particular, the arrangement is the same as that of fig. . [illustration: fig. . cook air-gap arrester] a form of western electric arrester particularly adapted for outside use on railway lines is shown with its cover in fig. . [illustration: fig. . western electric air-gap arrester] the kellogg company regularly equips its magneto telephones with air-gap arresters of the type shown in fig. . the two line plates are semicircular and of metal. the ground plate is of carbon, circular in form, covering both line plates with a mica separator. this is mounted on the back board of the telephone and permanently wired to the line and ground binding posts. [illustration: old switchboard of bell exchange serving chinatown, san francisco, california] [illustration: fig. . kellogg air-gap arrester] vacuum arresters:--all of the carbon arresters so far mentioned depend on the discharge taking place through air. a given pressure will discharge further in a fairly good vacuum than in air. the national electric specialty company mounts three conductors in a vacuum of the incandescent lamp type, fig. . a greater separation and less likelihood of short-circuiting can be provided in this way. either carbon or metal plates are adapted for use in such vacuum devices. the plates may be further apart for a given discharge pressure if the surfaces are of carbon. [illustration: fig. . vacuum arrester] introduction of impedance:--it has been noted that the existence of impedance tends to choke back the passage of lightning discharge through a coil. fig. suggests the relation between such an impedance and air-gap arrester. if the coil shown therein be considered an arrangement of conductors having inductance, it will be seen that a favorable place for an air-gap arrester is between that impedance and the line. this fact is made known in practice by frequent damage to aërial cables by electricity brought into them over long open wires, the discharge taking place at the first turn or bend in the aërial cable; this discharge often damages both core and sheath. it is well to have such bends as near the end of the cable as possible, and turns or goosenecks at entrances to terminals have that advantage. [illustration: fig. . impedance and air-gap] this same principle is utilized in some forms of arresters, such as the one shown in fig. , which provides an impedance of its own directly in the arrester element. in this device an insulating base carries a grounded carbon rod and two impedance coils. the impedance coils are wound on insulating rods, which hold them near, but not touching, the ground carbon. the coils are arranged so that they may be turned when discharges roughen the surfaces of the wires. [illustration: fig. . holtzer-cabot arrester] metallic electrodes:--copper or other metal blocks with roughened surfaces separated by an insulating slip may be substituted for the carbon blocks of most of the arresters previously described. metal blocks lack the advantage of carbon in that the latter allows discharges at lower potentials for a given separation, but they have the advantage that a conducting dust is not thrown off from them. [illustration: fig. . carbon air-gap arrester] provision against continuous arc:--for the purpose of short-circuiting an arc, a globule of low-melting alloy may be placed in one carbon block of an arrester. this feature is not essential in an arrester intended solely to divert lightning discharges. its purpose is to provide an immediate path to ground if an arc arising from artificial electricity has been maintained between the blocks long enough to melt the globule. fig. is a plan and section of the western electric company's arrester used as the high potential element in conjunction with others for abnormal currents and sneak currents; the latter are currents too small to operate air-gap arresters or substantial fuses. protection against strong currents. _fuses._ a fuse is a metal conductor of lower carrying capacity than the circuit with which it is in series at the time it is required to operate. fuses in use in electrical circuits generally are composed of some alloy of lead, which melts at a reasonably low temperature. alloys of lead have lower conductivity than copper. a small copper wire, however, may fuse at the same volume of current as a larger lead alloy wire. proper functions:--a fuse is not a good lightning arrester. as lightning damage is caused by current and as it is current which destroys a fuse, a lightning discharge _can_ open a circuit over which it passes by melting the fuse metal. but lightning may destroy a fuse and at the same discharge destroy apparatus in series with the fuse. there are two reasons for this: one is that lightning discharges act very quickly and may have destroyed apparatus before heating the fuse enough to melt it; the other reason is that when a fuse is operated with enough current even to vaporize it, the vapor serves as a conducting path for an instant after being formed. this conducting path may be of high resistance and still allow currents to flow through it, because of the extremely high pressure of the lightning discharge. a comprehensive protective system may include fuses, but it is not to be expected that they always will arrest lightning or even assist other things in arresting lightning. they should be considered as of no value for that purpose. furthermore, fuses are best adapted to be a part of a general protective system when they do all that they must do in stopping abnormal currents and yet withstand lightning discharges which may pass through them. other things being equal, that system of protection is best in which all lightning discharges are arrested by gap arresters and in which no fuses ever are operated by lightning discharges. mica fuse:--a convenient and widely used form of fuse is that shown in fig. . a mica slip has metal terminals at its ends and a fuse wire joins these terminals. the fuse is inserted in the circuit by clamping the terminals under screws or sliding them between clips as in figs. and . advantages of this method of fuse mounting for protecting circuits needing small currents are that the fuse wire can be seen, the fuses are readily replaced when blown, and their mountings may be made compact. as elements of a comprehensive protective system, however, the ordinary types of mica-slip fuses are objectionable because too short, and because they have no means of their own for extinguishing an arc which may follow the blowing of the fuses. as protectors for use in distributing low potential currents from central-office power plants they are admirable. by simple means, they may be made to announce audibly or visibly that they have operated. [illustration: fig. . mica slip fuse] [illustration: fig. . postal type mica fuse] [illustration: fig. . western union type mica fuse] enclosed fuses:--if a fuse wire within an insulating tube be made to connect metal caps on that tube and the space around the tube be filled with a non-conducting powder, the gases of the vaporized fuse metal will be absorbed more quickly than when formed without such imbedding in a powder. the filling of such a tubular fuse also muffles the explosion which occurs when the fuse is vaporized. [illustration: fig. . pair of enclosed fuses] fuses of the enclosed type, with or without filling, are widely used in power circuits generally and are recommended by fire insurance bodies. fig. illustrates an arrester having a fuse of the enclosed type, this example being that of the h. w. johns-manville company. [illustration fig. . bank of enclosed fuses] in telephony it is frequently necessary to mount a large number of fuses or other protective devices together in a restricted space. in fig. a group of western electric tubular fuses, so mounted, is shown. these fuses have ordinarily a carrying capacity of or amperes. it is not expected that this arrester will blow because or amperes of abnormal currents are flowing through it and the apparatus to be protected. what is intended is that the fuse shall withstand lightning discharges and when a foreign current passes through it, other apparatus will increase that current enough to blow the fuse. it will be noticed that the fuses of fig. are open at the upper end, which is the end connected to the exposed wire of the line the fuses are closed at the lower end, which is the end connected to the apparatus. when the fuse blows, its discharge is somewhat muffled by the lining of the tube, but enough explosion remains so that the heated gases, in driving outward, tend to break the arc which is established through the vaporized metal. a pair of cook tubular fuses in an individual mounting is shown in fig. . fuses of this type are not open at one end like a gun, but opportunity for the heated gases to escape exists at the caps. the tubes are made of wood, of lava, or of porcelain. fig. is another tubular fuse, the section showing the arrangement of asbestos lining which serves the two purposes of muffling the sound of the discharge and absorbing and cooling the resulting gases. [illustration: fig. . pair of wooden tube fuses] _air-gap vs. fuse arresters._ it is hoped that the student grasps clearly the distinction between the purposes of air-gap and fuse arresters. the air-gap arrester acts in response to high voltages, either of lightning or of high-tension power circuits. the fuse acts in response to a certain current value flowing through it and this minimum current in well-designed protectors for telephone lines is not very small. usually it is several times larger than the maximum current apparatus in the line can safely carry. fuses _can_ be made so delicate as to operate on the very smallest current which could injure apparatus and the earlier protective systems depended on such an arrangement. the difficulty with such delicate fuses is that they are not robust enough to be reliable, and, worse still, they change their carrying capacity with age and are not uniform in operation in different surroundings and at different temperatures. they are also sensitive to lightning discharges, which they have no power to stop or to divert. protection against sneak currents. for these reasons, a system containing fuses and air-gap arresters only, does not protect against abnormal currents which are continuous and small, though large enough to injure apparatus _because_ continuous. these currents have come to be known as sneak currents, a term more descriptive than elegant. sneak currents though small, may, when allowed to flow for a long time through the winding of an electromagnet for instance, develop enough heat to char or injure the insulation. they are the more dangerous because insidious. [illustration: fig. . tubular fuse with asbestos filling] _sneak-current arresters._ as typical of sneak-current arresters, fig. shows the principle, though not the exact form, of an arrester once widely used in telephone and signal lines. the normal path from the line to the apparatus is through a small coil of fine wire imbedded in sealing wax. a spring forms a branch path from the line and has a tension which would cause it to bear against the ground contact if it were allowed to do so. it is prevented from touching that contact normally by a string between itself and a rigid support. the string is cut at its middle and the knotted ends as thus cut are imbedded in the sealing wax which contains the coil. [illustration: fig. . principle of sneak-current arrester] a small current through the little coil will warm the wax enough to allow the string to part. the spring then will ground the line. even so simple an apparatus as this operates with considerable accuracy. all currents below a certain critical amount may flow through the heating coil indefinitely, the heat being radiated rapidly enough to keep the wax from softening and the string from parting. all currents above this critical amount will operate the arrester; the larger the current, the shorter the time of operating. it will be remembered that the law of these heating effects is that the heat generated = _c^{ }rt_, so that if a certain current operates the arrester in, say seconds, twice as great a current should operate the arrester in seconds. in other words, the time of operation varies inversely as the square of the current and inversely as the resistance. to make the arrester more sensitive for a given current--_i.e._, to operate in a shorter time--one would increase the resistance of the coil in the wax either by using more turns or finer wire, or by making the wire of a metal having higher specific resistance. the present standard sneak-current arrester embodies the two elements of the devices of fig. : a _resistance_ material to transform the dangerous sneak current into localized heat; and a _fusible_ material softened by this heat to release some switching mechanism. the resistance material is either a resistance wire or a bit of carbon, the latter being the better material, although both are good. the fusible material is some alloy melting at a low temperature. lead, tin, bismuth, and cadmium can be combined in such proportions as will enable the alloy to melt at temperatures from ° to ° f. such an alloy is a solder which, at ordinary temperatures, is firm enough to resist the force of powerful springs; yet it will melt so as to be entirely fluid at a temperature much less than that of boiling water. [illustration: fig. . heat coil] _heat coil._ fig. shows a practical way of bringing the heating and to-be-heated elements together. a copper spool is wound with resistance wire. a metal pin is soldered in the bore of the spool by an easily melting alloy. when current heats the spool enough, the pin may slide or turn in the spool. it may slide or turn in many ways and this happily enables many types of arresters to result. for example, the pin may pull out, or push in, or push through, or rotate like a shaft in a bearing, or the spool may turn on it like a hub on an axle. messrs. hayes, rolfe, cook, mcberty, kaisling, and many other inventors have utilized these combinations and motions in the production of sneak-current arresters. all of them depend on one action: the softening of a low-melting alloy by heat generated in a resistance. when a heat coil is associated with the proper switching springs, it becomes a sneak-current arrester. the switching springs always are arranged to ground the line wire. in some arresters, the line wire is cut off from the wire leading toward the apparatus by the same movement which grounds it. in others, the line is not broken at all, but merely grounded. each method has its advantages. complete line protection. fig. shows the entire scheme of protectors in an exposed line and their relation to apparatus in the central-office equipment and at the subscriber's telephone. the central-office equipment contains heat coils, springs, and carbon arresters. at some point between the central office and the subscriber's premises, each wire contains a fuse. at the subscriber's premises each wire contains other fuses and these are associated with carbon arresters. the figure shows a central battery equipment, in which the ringer of the telephone is in series with a condenser. a sneak-current arrester is not required at the subscriber's station with such equipment. assume the line to meet an electrical hazard at the point _x_. if this be lightning, it will discharge to ground at the central office or at the subscriber's instrument or at both through the carbon arresters connected to that side of the line. if it be a high potential from a power circuit and of more than volts, it will strike an arc at the carbon arrester connected to that wire of the line in the central office or at the subscriber's telephone or at both, if the separation of the carbons in those arresters is . inch or less. if the carbon arresters are separated by celluloid, it will burn away and allow the carbons to come together, extinguishing the arc. if they are separated by mica and one of the carbons is equipped with a globule of low-melting alloy, the heat of the arc will melt this, short-circuiting the gap and extinguishing the arc. the passage of current to ground at the arrester, however, will be over a path containing nothing but wire and the arrester. the resulting current, therefore, may be very large. the voltage at the arrester having been volts or more, in order to establish the arc, short-circuiting the gap will make the current amperes or more, unless the applied voltage miraculously falls to volts or less. the current through the fuse being more than amperes, it will blow promptly, opening the line and isolating the apparatus. it will be noted that this explanation applies to equipment at either end of the line, as the fuse lies between the point of contact and the carbon arrester. [illustration: fig. . complete line protection] assume, on the other hand, that the contact is made at the point _y_. the central-office carbon arrester will operate, grounding the line and increasing the amount of current flowing. there being no fuse to blow, a worse thing will befall, in the overheating of the line wire and the probable starting of a fire in the central office. it is obvious, therefore, that a fuse must be located between the carbon arrester and any part of the line which is subject to contact with a potential which can give an abnormal current when the carbon arrester acts. assume, as a third case, that the contact at the point _x_ either is with a low foreign potential or is so poor a contact that the difference of potential across the gap of the carbon arrester is lower than its arcing point. current will tend to flow by the carbon arrester without operating it, but such a current must pass through the winding of the heat coil if it is to enter the apparatus. the sneak current may be large enough to overheat the apparatus if allowed to flow long enough, but before it has flowed long enough it will have warmed the heat-coil winding enough to soften its fusible alloy and to release springs which ground the line, just as did the carbon arrester in the case last assumed. again the current will become large and will blow the fuse which lies between the sneak-current arrester and the point of contact with the source of foreign current. in this case, also, contact at the point _y_ would have operated mechanism to ground the line at the central office, and, no fuse interposing, the wiring would have been overheated. _exposed and unexposed wiring._ underground cables, cables formed of rubber insulated wires, and interior wiring which is properly done, all may be considered to be wiring which is unexposed, that is, not exposed to foreign high potentials, discharges, sneak, or abnormal currents. _all other wiring_, such as bare wires, aërial cables, etc., should be considered as _exposed_ to such hazards and a fuse should exist in each wire between its exposed portion and the central office or subscriber's instrument. the rule of action, therefore, becomes: _the proper position of the fuse is between exposed and unexposed wiring._ it may appear to the student that wires in an aërial cable with a lead sheath--that sheath being either grounded or ungrounded--are not exposed to electrical hazards; in the case of the grounded sheath, this would presume that a contact between the cable and a high potential wire would result merely in the foreign currents going to ground through the cable sheath, the arc burning off the high-potential wire and allowing the contact to clear itself by the falling of the wire. if the assumption be that the sheath is not grounded, then the student may say that no current at all would flow from the high-potential wire. both assumptions are wrong. in the case of the grounded sheath, the current flows to it at the contact with the high-potential wire; the lead sheath is melted, arcs strike to the wires within, and currents are led directly to the central office and to subscribers' premises. in the case of the ungrounded sheath, the latter charges at once through all its length to the voltage of the high-potential wire; at some point, a wire within the cable is close enough to the sheath for an arc to strike across, and the trouble begins. all the wires in the cable are endangered if the cross be with a wire of the primary circuit of a high-tension transmission line. any series arc-light circuit is a high-potential menace. even a -volt trolley wire or feeder can burn a lead-covered cable entirely in two in a few seconds. the authors have seen this done by the wayward trolley pole of a street car, one side of the pole touching the trolley wire and the extreme end just touching the telephone cable. the answer lies in the foregoing rule. place the fuse between the wires which _can_ and the wires which _can not_ get into contact with high potentials. in application, the rule has some flexibility. in the case of a cable which is aërial as soon as it leaves the central office, place the fuses in the central office; in a cable wholly underground, from central office to subscriber--as, for example, the feed for an office building--use no fuses at all; in a cable which leaves the central office underground and becomes aërial, fuse the wires just where they change from underground to aërial. the several branches of an underground cable into aërial ones should be fused as they branch. wires properly installed in subscribers' premises are considered unexposed. the position of the fuse thus is at or near the point of entrance of the wires into that building if the wires of the subscriber's line outside the premises are exposed, as determined by the definitions given. if the line is unexposed, by those definitions, no protector is required. if one is indicated, it should be used, as compliance with the best-known practice is a clear duty. less than what is known to be best is not honest practice in a matter which involves life, limb, and indefinite degrees of property values. protectors in central-battery subscribers' equipments need no sneak-current arresters, as the condenser reduces that hazard to a negligible amount. magneto subscribers' equipments usually lack condensers in ringer circuits, though they may have them in talking circuits on party lines. the ringer circuit is the only path through the telephone set for about per cent of the time. sneak-current arresters, therefore, should be a part of subscribers' station protectors in magneto equipment, except in such rural districts as may have no lighting or power wires. when sneak-current arresters are so used the arrangement of the parts then is the same as in the central-office portion of fig. . types of central-office protectors. a form of combined heat coil and air-gap arrester, widely used by bell companies for central-office protection, is shown in fig. . the two inner springs form the terminals for the two limbs of the metallic-circuit line, while the two outside springs are terminals for the continuation of the line leading to the switchboard. the heat coils, one on each side, are supported between the inner and outer springs. high-tension currents jump to ground through the air-gap arrester, while sneak currents permit the pin of the heat coil to slide within the sleeve, thus grounding the outside line and the line to the switchboard. [illustration: fig. . sneak-current and air-gap arrester] _self-soldering heat coils._ another form designed by kaisling and manufactured by the american electric fuse company is shown in fig. . in this the pin in the heat coil projects unequally from the ends of the coil, and under the action of a sneak current the melting of the solder which holds it allows the outer spring to push the pin through the coil until it presses the line spring against the ground plate and at the same time opens the path to the switchboard. when the heat-coil pin assumes this new position it cools off, due to the cessation of the current, and _resolders_ itself, and need only be turned end for end by the attendant to be reset. many are the variations that have been made on this self-soldering idea, and there has been much controversy as to its desirability. it is certainly a feature of convenience. [illustration: fig. . self-soldering heat-coil arrester] instead of using a wire-wound resistance element in heat-coil construction some manufacturers employ a mass of high-resistance material, interposed in the path of the current. the kellogg company has long employed for its sneak-current arrester a short graphite rod, which forms the resistance element. the ends of this rod are electroplated with copper to which the brass terminal heads are soldered. these heads afford means for making the connection with the proper retaining springs. [illustration: fig. . cook arrester] another central-office protector, which uses a mass of special metal composition for its heat producing element is that designed by frank b. cook and shown in fig. . in this the carbon blocks are cylindrical in form and specially treated to make them "self-cleaning." instead of employing a self-soldering feature in the sneak-current arrester of this device, cook provides for electrically resoldering them after operation, a clip being designed for holding the elements in proper position and passing a battery current through them to remelt the solder. in small magneto exchanges it is not uncommon to employ combined fuse and air-gap arresters for central-office line protection, the fuses being of the mica-mounted type already referred to. a group of such arresters, as manufactured by the dean electric company, is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . mica fuse and air-gap arresters] types of subscribers' station protectors. figs. and show types of subscribers' station protectors adapted to the requirements of central-battery and magneto systems. these, as has been said, should be mounted at or near the point of entrance of the subscriber's line into the premises, if the line is exposed outside of the premises. it is possible to arrange the fuses so that they will be safe and suitable for their purposes if they are mounted out-of-doors near the point of entrance to the premises. the sneak-current arrester, if one exists, and the carbon arrester also, must be mounted inside of the premises or in a protecting case, if outside, on account of the necessity of shielding both of these devices from the weather. speaking generally, the wider practice is to put all the elements of the subscriber's station protector inside of the house. it is nearer to the ideal arrangement of conditions if the protector be placed immediately at the point of entrance of the outside wires into the building. [illustration: fig. . western electric station arrester] [illustration: fig. . cook arrester for magneto stations] _ribbon fuses_. a point of interest with relation to tubular fuses is that in some of the best types of such fuses, the resistance material is not in the form of a round wire but in the form of a flat ribbon. this arrangement disposes the necessary amount of fusible metal in a form to give the greatest amount of surface, while a round wire offers the least surface for a given weight of metal--a circle encloses its area with less periphery than any other figure. the reason for giving the fuse the largest possible surface area is to decrease the likelihood of the fuse being ruptured by lightning. the fact that such fuses do withstand lightning discharges much more thoroughly than round fuses of the same rating is an interesting proof of the oscillating nature of lightning discharges, for the density of the current of those discharges is greater on and near the surface of the conductor than within the metal and, therefore, flattening the fuse increases its carrying capacity for high-frequency currents, without appreciably changing its carrying capacity for direct currents. the reason its capacity for direct currents is increased at all by flattening it, is that the surface for the radiation of heat is increased. however, when enclosed in a tube, radiation of heat is limited, so that for direct currents the carrying capacity of fuses varies closely with the area of cross-section. city-exchange requirements. the foregoing has set down the requirements of good practice in an average city-exchange system. nothing short of the general arrangement shown in fig. meets the usual assortment of hazards of such an exchange. it is good modern practice to distribute lines by means of cables, supplemented in part by short insulated drop wires twisted in pairs. absence of bare wires reduces electrical hazards enormously. nevertheless, hazards remain. though no less than the spirit of this plan of protection should be followed, additional hazards may exist, which may require additional elements of protection. at the end of a cable, either aërial or underground, long open wires may extend into the open country as rural or long-distance circuits. if these be longer than a mile or two, in most regions they will be subjected to lightning discharges. these may be subjected to high-potential contacts as well. if a specific case of such exposure indicates that the cables may be in danger, the long open lines then are equipped with additional air-gap arresters at the point of junction of those open lines with the cable. practice varies as to the type. maintenance charges are increased if carbon arresters separated . inch are used, because of the cost of sending to the end of the long cable to clear the blocks from carbon dust after each slight discharge. roughened metal blocks do not become grounded as readily as do carbon blocks. the occasions of visit to the arresters, therefore, usually follow actual heavy discharges through them. the recommendations and the practice of the american telephone and telegraph company differ on this point, while the practice of other companies varies with the temperaments of the engineers. the american company specifies copper-block arresters where long country lines enter cables, if those lines are exposed to lightning discharges only. the exposed line is called _long_ if more than one-half mile in length. if it is exposed to high-potential hazards, carbon blocks are specified instead of copper. other specifications of that company have called for the use of copper-block arresters on lines exposed to hazards above , volts. [illustration: one of the four wings of the old kellogg divided multiple board of the cuyahoga telephone company, cleveland, ohio ultimate capacity, , lines. one of the two examples in the united states of a multiple switchboard having an ultimate capacity over , lines. replaced recently by a kellogg straight multiple board having an ultimate capacity of , lines and a present capacity of , lines.] the freedom of metal-block arresters from dust troubles gives them a large economical advantage over carbon. for similar separations, the ratio of striking voltages between carbon blocks and metal blocks respectively is as to . in certain regions of the pacific coast where the lightning hazard is negligible and the high tension hazard is great, metal-block arresters at the outer ends of cables give acceptable protection. high winds which drive snow or dust against bare wires of a long line, create upon or place upon those wires a charge of static electricity which makes its way from the line in such ways as it can. usually it discharges across arresters and when this discharge takes place, the line is disturbed in its balance and loud noises are heard in the telephones upon it. [fig. . drainage coils] a telephone line which for a long distance is near a high-tension transmission line may have electrostatic or electromagnetic potentials, or both, induced upon it. if the line be balanced in its properties, including balance by transposition of its wires, the electrostatic induction may neutralize itself. the electromagnetic induction still may disturb it. _drainage coils_. the device shown in fig. , which amounts merely to an inductive leak to earth, is intended to cure both the snowstorm and electromagnetic induction difficulties. it is required that its impedance be high enough to keep voice-current losses low, while being low enough to drain the line effectively of the disturbing charges. such devices are termed "drainage coils." electrolysis. the means of protection against the danger due to chemical action, set forth in the preceding chapter, form such a distinct phase of the subject of guarding property against electrical hazards as to warrant treatment in a separate chapter devoted to the subject of electrolysis. [illustration: main exchange, cleveland, ohio. largest four-party selective ringing switchboard in the world. kellogg switchboard and supply co.] chapter xx general features of the telephone exchange up to this point only those classes of telephone service which could be given between two or more stations on a single line have been considered. very soon after the practical conception of the telephone, came the conception of the telephone exchange; that is, the conception of centering a number of lines at a common point and there terminating them in apparatus to facilitate their interconnection, so that any subscriber on any line could talk with any subscriber on any other line. the complete equipment of lines, telephone instruments, and switching facilities by which the telephone stations of the community are given telephone service is called a telephone exchange. the building where a group of telephone lines center for interconnection is called a central office, and its telephonic equipment the central-office equipment. the terms telephone office and telephone exchange are frequently confused. although a telephone office building may be properly referred to as a telephone exchange building, it is hardly proper to refer to the telephone office as a telephone exchange, as is frequently done. in modern parlance the telephone exchange refers not only to the central office and its equipment but to the lines and instruments connected therewith as well; furthermore, a telephone exchange may embrace a number of telephone offices that are interconnected by means of so-called trunk lines for permitting the communication of subscribers whose lines terminate in one office with those subscribers whose lines terminate in any other office. since a given telephone exchange may contain one or more central offices, it is proper to distinguish between them by referring to an exchange which contains but a single central office as a single office exchange, and to an exchange which contains a plurality of central offices as a multi-office exchange. in telephone exchange working, three classes of lines are dealt with--subscribers' lines, trunk lines, and toll lines. subscribers' lines. the term subscriber is commonly applied to the patron of the telephone service. his station is, therefore, referred to as a subscriber's station, and the telephone equipment at any subscriber's station is referred to as a subscriber's station equipment. likewise, a line leading from a central office to one or more subscribers' stations is called a subscriber's line. a subscriber's line may, as has been shown in a previous chapter, be an individual line if it serves but one station, or a party line if it serves to connect more than one station with the central office. trunk lines. a trunk line is a line which is not devoted to the service of any particular subscriber, but which may form a connecting link between any one of a group of subscribers' lines which terminate in one place and any one of a group of subscribers' lines which terminate in another place. if the two groups of subscribers' lines terminate in the same building or in the same switchboard, so that the trunk line forming the connecting link between them is entirely within the central-office building, it is called a local trunk line, or a local trunk. if, on the other hand, the trunk line is for connecting groups of subscribers' lines which terminate in different central offices, it is called an inter-office trunk. toll lines. a toll line is a telephone line for the use of which a special fee or toll is charged; that is, a fee that is not included in the charges made to the subscriber for his regular local exchange service. toll lines extend from one exchange district to another, more or less remote, and they are commonly termed _local_ toll and _long-distance_ toll lines according to the degree of remoteness. a toll line, whether local or long-distance, may be looked upon in the nature of an inter-exchange trunk. districts. the district in a given community which is served by a single central office is called an office district. likewise, the district which is served by a complete exchange is called an exchange district. an exchange district may, therefore, consist of a number of central-office districts, just as an exchange may comprise a number of central offices. to illustrate, the entire area served by the exchange of the chicago telephone company in chicago, embracing the entire city and some of its suburbs, is the chicago exchange district. the area served by one of the central offices, such as the hyde park office, the oakland office, the harrison office, or any of the others, is an office district. switchboards. the apparatus at the central office by which the telephone lines are connected for conversation and afterwards disconnected, and by which the various other functions necessary to the giving of complete telephone service are performed, is called a switchboard. this may be simple in the case of small exchanges, or of vast complexity in the case of the larger exchanges. sometimes the switchboards are of such nature as to require the presence of operators, usually girls, to connect and disconnect the line and perform the other necessary functions, and such switchboards, whether large or small, are termed _manual_. sometimes the switchboards are of such a nature as not to require the presence of operators, the various functions of connection, disconnection, and signaling being performed by the aid of special forms of apparatus which are under the control of the subscriber who makes the call. such switchboards are termed _automatic_. of recent years there has appeared another class of switchboards, employing in some measure the features of the automatic and in some measure those of the manual switchboard. these boards are commonly referred to as _semi-automatic_ switchboards, presumably because they are supposed to be half automatic and half manual. _manual_. manual switchboards may be subdivided into two classes according to the method of distributing energy for talking purposes. thus we may have _magneto_ switchboards, which are those capable of serving lines equipped with magneto telephones, local batteries being used for talking purposes. on the other hand, we may have _common-battery_ switchboards, adapted to connect lines employing common-battery telephones in which all the current for both talking and signaling is furnished from the central office. in still another way we may classify manual switchboards if the method of distributing the energy for talking and signaling purposes is ignored. thus, entirely irrespective of whether the switchboards are adapted to serve common-battery or local-battery lines, we may have non-multiple switchboards and multiple switchboards. the term _multiple_ switchboard is applied to that class of switchboards in which the connection terminals or jacks for all the lines are repeated at intervals along the face of the switchboard, so that each operator may have within her reach a terminal for each line and may thus be able to complete by herself any connection between two lines terminating in the switchboard. the term _non-multiple_ switchboard is applied to that class of boards where the provision for repeating the line terminals at intervals along the face of the board is not employed, but where, as a consequence, each line has but a single terminal on the face of the board. non-multiple switchboards have their main use in small exchanges where not more than a few hundred lines terminate. where such is the case, it is an easy matter to handle all the traffic by one, two, or three operators, and as all of these operators may reach all over the face of the switchboard, there is no need for giving any line any more than one connection terminal. such boards may be called _simple_ switchboards. there is another type of non-multiple switchboard adaptable for use in larger exchanges than the simple switchboard. a correct idea of the fundamental principle involved in these may be had by imagining a row of simple switchboards each containing terminals or jacks for its own group of lines. in order to provide for the connection of a line in one of these simple switchboards with a line in another one, out of reach of the operator at the first, short connecting lines extending between the two switchboards are provided, these being called _transfer_ or _trunk_ lines. in order that connections may be made between any two of the simple boards, a group of transfer lines is run from each board to every other one. in such switchboards an operator at one of the boards or positions may complete the connection herself between any two lines terminating at her own board. if, however, the line called for terminates at another one of the boards, the operator makes use of the transfer or trunk line extending to that board, and the operator at this latter board completes the connection, so that the two subscribers' lines are connected through the trunk or transfer line. a distinguishing feature, therefore, in the operation of so-called transfer switchboards, is that an operator can not always complete a connection herself, the connection frequently requiring the attention of two operators. transfer systems are not now largely used, the multiple switchboard having almost entirely supplanted them in manual exchanges of such size as to be beyond the limitation of the simple switchboard. at multi-office manual exchanges, however, where there are a number of multiple switchboards employed at various central offices, the same sort of a requirement exists as that which was met by the provision of trunk lines between the various simple switchboards in a transfer system. obviously, the lines in one central office must be connected to those of another in order to give universal service in the community in which the exchange operates. for this purpose inter-office trunk lines are used, the arrangement being such that when an operator at one office receives a call for a subscriber in another office, she will proceed to connect the calling subscriber's line, not directly with the line of the called subscriber because that particular line is not within her reach, but rather with a trunk line leading to the office in which the called-for subscriber's line terminates; having done this she will then inform an operator at that second office of the connection desired, usually by means of a so-called order-wire circuit. the connection between the trunk line so used and the line of the called-for subscriber will then be completed by the connecting link or trunk line extending between the two offices. in such cases the multiple switchboard at each office is divided into two portions, termed respectively the _a_ board and the _b_ board. each of these boards, with the exception that will be pointed out in a subsequent chapter, is provided with a full complement of multiple jacks for all of the lines entering that office. at the _a_ board are located operators, called _a_ operators, who answer all the calls from the subscribers whose lines terminate in that office. in the case of calls for lines in that same office, they complete the connection themselves without the assistance of the other operators. on the other hand, the calls for lines in another office are handled through trunk lines leading to that other office, as before described, and these trunk lines always terminate in the _b_ board at that office. the _b_ operators are, therefore, those operators who receive the calls over trunk lines and complete the connection with the line of the subscriber desired. to define these terms more specifically, an _a_ board is a multiple switchboard in which the subscriber's lines of a given office district terminate. for this reason the _a_ board is frequently referred to as a subscribers' board, and the operators who work at these boards and who answer the calls of the subscribers are called _a_ operators or subscribers' operators. _b_ boards are switchboards in which terminate the incoming ends of the trunk lines leading from other offices in the same exchange. these boards are frequently called incoming trunk boards, or merely trunk boards, and the operators who work at them and who receive the directions from the _a_ operators at the other boards are called _b_ operators, or incoming trunk operators. the circuits which are confined wholly to the use of operators and over which the instructions from one operator to another are sent, as in the case of the _a_ operator giving an order for a connection to a _b_ operator at another switchboard, are designated _call circuits_ or _order wire circuits_. sometimes trunk lines are so arranged that connections may be originated at either of their ends. in other cases they are so arranged that one group of trunk lines connecting two offices is for the traffic in one direction only, while another group leading between the same two offices is for handling only the traffic in the other direction. trunk lines are called _one-way_ or _two-way_ trunks, according to whether they handle the traffic in one direction or in two. a trunking system, where the same trunks handle traffic both ways, is called a _single-track system_; and, on the other hand, a system in which there are two groups of trunks, one handling traffic in one direction and the other in the other, is called a _double-track system_. this nomenclature is obviously borrowed from railroad practice. there is still another class of manual switchboards called the _toll board_ of which it will be necessary to treat. telephone calls made by one person for another within the limits of the same exchange district are usually charged for either by a flat rate per month, or by a certain charge for each call. this is usually regardless of the duration of the conversation following the call. on the other hand, where a call is made by one party for another outside of the limits of the exchange district and, therefore, in some other exchange district, a charge is usually made, based on the time that the connecting long-distance line is employed. such calls and their ensuing conversations are charged for at a very much higher rate than the purely local calls, this rate depending on the distance between the stations involved. the making up of connections between a long-distance and a local line is usually done by means of operators other than those employed in handling the local calls, who work either by means of special equipment located on the local board, or by means of a separate board. such equipments for handling long-distance or toll traffic are commonly termed toll switchboards. they differ from local boards (a) in that they are arranged for a very much smaller number of lines; (b) in that they have facilities by which the toll operator may make up the connections with a minimum amount of labor on the part of the assisting local operators; and (c) in that they have facilities for recording the identification of the parties and timing the conversations taking place over the toll lines, so that the proper charge may be made to the proper subscriber. chapter xxi the simple magneto switchboard definitions. as already stated those switchboards which are adapted to work in conjunction with magneto telephones are called magneto switchboards. the signals on such switchboards are electromagnetic devices capable of responding to the currents of the magneto generators at the subscribers' stations. since, as a rule, magneto telephones are equipped with local batteries, it follows that the magneto switchboard does not need to be arranged for supplying the subscribers' stations with talking current. this fact is accountable for magneto switchboards often being referred to as local-battery switchboards, in contradistinction to common-battery switchboards which are equipped so as to supply the connected subscribers' stations with talking current. the term _simple_ as applied in the headings of this and the next chapter, is employed to designate switchboards adapted for so small a number of lines that they may be served by a single or a very small group of operators; each line is provided with but a single connection terminal and all of them, without special provision, are placed directly within the reach of the operator, or operators if there are more than one. this distinction will be more apparent under the discussion of transfer and multiple switchboards. mode of operation. the cycle of operation of any simple manual switchboard may be briefly outlined as follows: the subscriber desiring a connection transmits a signal to the central office, the operator seeing the signal makes connection with the calling line and places herself in telephonic communication with the calling subscriber to receive his orders; the operator then completes the connection with the line of the called subscriber and sends ringing current out on that line so as to ring the bell of that subscriber; the two subscribers then converse over the connected lines and when the conversation is finished either one or both of them may send a signal to the central office for disconnection, this signal being called a clearing-out signal; upon receipt of the clearing-out signal, the operator disconnects the two lines and restores all of the central-office apparatus involved in the connection to its normal position. component parts. before considering further the operation of manual switchboards it will be well to refer briefly to the component pieces of apparatus which go to make up a switchboard. _line signal._ the line signal in magneto switchboards is practically always in the form of an electromagnetic annunciator or drop. it consists in an electromagnet adapted to be included in the line circuit, its armature controlling a latch, which serves to hold the drop or shutter or target in its raised position when the magnet is not energized, and to release the drop or shutter or target so as to permit the display of the signal when the magnet is energized. the symbolic representation of such an electromagnetic drop is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . drop symbol] _jacks and plugs._ each line is also provided with a connection terminal in the form of a switch socket. this assumes many forms, but always consists in a cylindrical opening behind which are arranged one or more spring contacts. the opening forms a receptacle for plugs which have one or more metallic terminals for the conductors in the flexible cord in which the plug terminates. the arrangement is such that when a plug is inserted into a jack the contacts on the plug will register with certain of the contacts in the jack and thus continue the line conductors, which terminate in the jack contacts, to the cord conductors, which terminate in the plug contacts. usually also when a plug is inserted certain of the spring contacts in the jack are made to engage with or disengage other contacts in the jack so as to make or break auxiliary circuits. [illustration: fig. . spring jack] a simple form of spring jack is shown in section in fig. . in fig. is shown a sectional view of a plug adapted to co-operate with the jack of fig. . in fig. the plug is shown inserted into the jack. the cylindrical portion of the jack is commonly called the _sleeve_ or _thimble_ and it usually forms one of the main terminals of the jack; the spring, forming the other principal terminal, is called the _tip spring_, since it engages the tip of the plug. the tip spring usually rests on another contact which may be termed the _anvil_. when the plug is inserted into the jack as shown in fig. , the tip spring is raised from contact with this anvil and thus breaks the circuit leading through it. it will be understood that spring jacks are not limited to three contacts such as shown in these figures nor are plugs limited to two contacts. sometimes the plugs have three, and even more, contacts, and frequently the jacks corresponding to such plugs have not only a contact spring adapted to register with each of the contacts of the plug, but several other auxiliary contacts also, which will be made or broken according to whether the plug is inserted or withdrawn from the jack. symbolic representations of plugs and jacks are shown in fig. . these are employed in diagrammatic representations of circuits and are supposed to represent the essential elements of the plugs and jacks in such a way as to be suggestive of their operation. it will be understood that such symbols may be greatly modified to express the various peculiarities of the plugs and jacks which they represent. [illustration: fig. . plug] [illustration: fig. . plug and jack] [illustration: fig. . jack and plug symbols] _keys_. other important elements of manual switchboards are ringing and listening keys. these are the devices by means of which the operator may switch the central-office generator or her telephone set into or out of the circuit of the connected lines. the details of a simple ringing and listening key are shown in fig. . this consists of two groups of springs, one of four and one of six, the springs in each group being insulated from each other at their points of mounting. two of these springs _ _ and _ _ in one group--the ringing group--are longer than the others, and act as movable levers engaging the inner pair of springs _ _ and _ _ when in their normal positions, and the outer pair _ _ and _ _ when forced into their alternate positions. movement is imparted to these springs by the action of a cam which is mounted on a lever, manipulated by the operator. when this lever is moved in one direction the cam presses the two springs _ _ and _ _ apart, thus causing them to disengage the springs _ _ and _ _ and to engage the springs _ _ and _ _. [illustration: fig. . ringing and listening key] the springs of the other group constitute the switching element of the listening key and are very similar in their action to those of the ringing key, differing in the fact that they have no inner pair of springs such as _ _ and _ _. the two long springs _ _ and _ _, therefore, normally do not rest against anything, but when the key lever is pressed, so as to force the cam between them, they are made to engage the two outer springs _ _ and _ _. [illustration: fig. . ringing-and listening-key symbols] the design and construction of ringing and listening keys assume many different forms. in general, however, they are adapted to do exactly the same sort of switching operations as that of which the device of fig. is capable. easily understood symbols of ringing and listening keys are shown in fig. ; the cam member which operates on the two long springs is usually omitted for ease of illustration. it will be understood in considering these symbols, therefore, that the two long curved springs usually rest against a pair of inner contacts in case of the ringing key or against nothing at all in case of the listening key, and that when the key is operated the two springs are assumed to be spread apart so as to engage the outer pair of contacts with which they are respectively normally disconnected. _line and cord equipments._ the parts of the switchboard that are individual to the subscriber's line are termed the _line equipment;_ this, in the case of a magneto switchboard, consists of the line drop and the jack together with the associated wiring necessary to connect them properly in the line circuit. the parts of the switchboard that are associated with a connecting link--consisting of a pair of plugs and associated cords with their ringing and listening keys and clearing-out drop--are referred to as a _cord equipment_. the circuit of a complete pair of cords and plugs with their associated apparatus is called a _cord circuit_. in order that there may be a number of simultaneous connections between different pairs of lines terminating in a switchboard, a number of cord circuits are provided, this number depending on the amount of traffic at the busiest time of the day. _operator's equipment._ a part of the equipment that is not individual to the lines or to the cord circuits, but which may, as occasion requires, be associated with any of them is called the _operator's equipment_. this consists of the operator's transmitter and receiver, induction coil, and battery connections together with the wiring and other associated parts necessary to co-ordinate them with the rest of the apparatus. still another part of the equipment that is not individual to the lines nor to the cord circuits is the calling-current generator. this may be common to the entire office or a separate one may be provided for each operator's position. operation in detail. with these general statements in mind we may take up in some detail the various operations of a telephone system wherein the lines center in a magneto switchboard. this may best be done by considering the circuits involved, without special regard to the details of the apparatus. the series of figures showing the cycle of operations of the magneto switchboard about to be discussed are typical of this type of switchboard almost regardless of make. the apparatus is in each case represented symbolically, the representations indicating type rather than any particular kind of apparatus within the general class to which it belongs. _normal condition of line._ in fig. is shown the circuit of an ordinary magneto line. the subscriber's sub-station apparatus, shown at the left, consists of the ordinary bridging telephone but might with equal propriety be indicated as a series telephone. the subscriber's station is shown connected with the central office by the two limbs of a metallic-circuit line. one limb of the line terminates in the spring _ _ of the jack, and the other limb in the sleeve or thimble _ _ of the jack. the spring _ _ normally rests on the third contact or anvil _ _ in the jack, its construction being such that when a plug is inserted this spring will be raised by the plug so as to break contact with the anvil _ _. it is understood, of course, that the plug associated with this jack has two contacts, referred to respectively as the tip and the sleeve; the tip makes contact with the tip spring _ _ and the sleeve with the sleeve or thimble _ _. [illustration: fig. . normal condition of line] the drop or line signal is permanently connected between the jack sleeve and the anvil _ _. as a result, the drop is normally bridged across the circuit of the line so as to be in a receptive condition to signaling current sent out by the subscriber. it is evident, however, that when the plug is inserted into the jack this connection between the line and the drop will be broken. in this normal condition of the line, therefore, the drop stands ready at the central office to receive the signal from the subscriber and the generator at the sub-station stands ready to be bridged across the circuit of the line as soon as the subscriber turns its handle. similarly the ringer--the call-receiving device at the sub-station--is permanently bridged across the line so as to be responsive to any signal that may be sent out from the central office in order to call the subscriber. the subscriber's talking apparatus is, in this normal condition of the line, cut out of the circuit by the switch hook. _subscriber calling._ fig. shows the condition of the line when the subscriber at the sub-station is making a call. in turning his generator the two springs which control the connection of the generator with the line are brought into engagement with each other so that the generator currents may pass out over the line. the condition at the central office is the same as that of fig. except that the drop is shown with its shutter fallen so as to indicate a call. [illustration: fig. . subscriber calling] [illustration: a specially formed cable for key shelf of monarch switchboard] _operator answering._ the next step is for the operator to answer the call and this is shown in fig. . the subscriber has released the handle of his generator and the generator has, therefore, been automatically cut out of the circuit. he also has removed his receiver from its hook, thus bringing his talking apparatus into the line circuit. the operator on the other hand has inserted one of the plugs _p__{a} into the jack. this action has resulted in the breaking of the circuit through the drop by the raising of the spring _ _ from the anvil _ _, and also in the continuance of the line circuit through the conductors of the cord circuits. thus, the upper limb of the line is continued by means of the engagement of the tip spring _ _ with the tip _ _ of the plug to the conducting strand _ _ of the cord circuit; likewise the lower limb of the line is continued by the engagement of the thimble _ _ of the jack with the sleeve contact _ _ of the plug _p__{a} to the strand _ _ of the cord circuit. the operator has also closed her listening key _l.k._ in doing so she has brought the springs _ _ and _ _ into engagement with the anvils _ _ and _ _ and has thus bridged her head telephone receiver with the secondary of her induction coil across the two strands _ _ and _ _ of the cord. associated with the secondary winding of her receiver is a primary circuit containing a transmitter, battery, and the primary of the induction coil. it will be seen that the conditions are now such as to permit the subscriber at the calling station to converse with the operator and this conversation consists in the familiar "number please" on the part of the operator and the response of the subscriber giving the number of the line that is desired. neither the plug _p__{c}, nor the ringing key _r.k._, shown in fig. , is used in this operation. the clearing-out drop _c.o._ is bridged permanently across the strands _ - _ of the cord, but is without function at this time; the fact that it is wound to a high resistance and impedance prevents its having a harmful effect on the transmission. [illustration: fig. . operator answering] it may be stated at this point that the two plugs of an associated pair are commonly referred to as the answering and calling plugs. the answering plug is the one which the operator always uses in answering a call as just described in connection with fig. . the calling plug is the one which she next uses in connecting with the line of the called subscriber. it lies idle during the answering of a call and is only brought into play after the order of the calling subscriber has been given, in which case it is used in establishing connection with the called subscriber. [illustration: fig. . operator calling] _operator calling._ we may now consider how the operator calls the called subscriber. the condition existing for this operation is shown in fig. . the operator after receiving the order from the calling subscriber inserts the calling plug _p__{c} into the jack of the line of the called station. this act at once connects the limbs of the line with the strands _ _ and _ _ of the cord circuit, and also cuts out the line drop of the called station, as already explained. the operator is shown in this figure as having opened her listening key _l.k._ and closed her ringing key _r.k._ as a result, ringing current from the central-office generator will flow out over the two ringing key springs _ _ and _ _ to the tip and sleeve contacts of the calling plug _p__{c}, then to the tip spring _ _ and the sleeve or thimble _ _ of the jack, and then to the two sides of the metallic-circuit line to the sub-station and through the bell there. this causes the ringing of the called subscriber's bell, after which the operator releases the ringing key and thereby allows the two springs _ _ and _ _ of that key to again engage their normal contacts _ _ and _ _, thus making the two strands _ _ and _ _ of the cord circuit continuous from the contacts of the answering plug _p__{a} to the contacts of the calling plug _p__{c}. this establishes the condition at the central office for conversation between the two subscribers. [illustration: fig. . subscribers connected for conversation.] _subscribers conversing._ the only other thing necessary to establish a complete set of talking conditions between the two subscribers is for the called subscriber to remove his receiver from its hook, which he does as soon as he responds to the call. the conditions for conversation between the two subscribers are shown in fig. . it is seen that the two limbs of the calling line are connected respectively to the two limbs of the called line by the two strands of the cord circuit, both the operator's receiver and the central-office generator being cut out by the listening and ringing keys, respectively. likewise the two line drops are cut out of circuit and the only thing left associated with the circuit at the central office is the clearing-out drop _c. o._, which remains bridged across the cord circuit. this, like the two ringers at the respective connected stations, which also remain bridged across the circuit when bridging instruments are used, is of such high resistance and impedance that it offers practically no path to the rapidly fluctuating voice currents to leak from one side of the line circuit to the other. fluctuating currents generated by the transmitter at the calling station, for instance, are converted by means of the induction coil into alternating currents flowing in the secondary of the induction coil at that station. considering a momentary current as passing up through the secondary winding of the induction coil at the calling station, it passes through the receiver of that station through the upper limb of the line to the spring _ _ of the line jack belonging to that line at the central office; thence through the tip _ _ of the answering plug to the conductor _ _ of the cord; thence through the pair of contacts _ _ and _ _ forming one side of the ringing key to the tip _ _ of the calling plug; thence to the tip spring _ _ of the jack of the called subscriber's line; thence over the upper limb of his line through his receiver and through the secondary of the induction to one of the upper switch-hook contacts; thence through the hook lever to the lower side of the line, back to the central office and through the sleeve contact _ _ of the jack and the sleeve contact _ _ of the plug; thence through the other ringing key contacts _ _ and _ _; thence through the strand _ _ of the cord to the sleeve contact _ _ and the sleeve contact _ _ of the answering plug and jack, respectively; thence through the lower limb of the calling subscriber's line to the hook lever at his station; thence through one of the upper contacts of this hook to the secondary of the induction coil, from which point the current started. [illustration: fig. . clearing-out signal] obviously, when the called subscriber is talking to the calling subscriber the same path is followed. it will be seen that at any time the operator may press her listening key _l.k._, bridge her telephone set across the circuit of the two connected lines, and listen to the conversation or converse with either of the subscribers in case of necessity. _clearing out_. at the close of the conversation, either one or both of the subscribers may send a clearing-out signal by turning their generators after hanging up their receivers. this condition is shown in fig. . the apparatus at the central office remains in exactly the same position during conversation as that of fig. , except that the clearing-out drop shutter is shown as having fallen. the two subscribers are shown as having hung up their receivers, thus cutting out their talking apparatus, and as operating their generators for the purpose of sending the clearing-out signals. in response to this act the operator pulls down both the calling and the answering plug, thus restoring them to their normal seats, and bringing both lines to the normal condition as shown in fig. . the line drops are again brought into operative relation with their respective lines so as to be receptive to subsequent calls and the calling generators at the sub-stations are removed from the bridge circuits across the line by the opening of the automatic switch contacts associated with those generators. _essentials of operation_. the foregoing sequence of operations while described particularly with respect to magneto switchboards is, with certain modifications, typical of the operation of nearly all manual switchboards. in the more advanced types of manual switchboards, certain of the functions described are sometimes done automatically, and certain other functions, not necessary in connection with the simple switchboard, are added. the essential mode of operation, however, remains the same in practically all manual switchboards, and for this reason the student should thoroughly familiarize himself with the operation and circuits of the simple switchboard as a foundation for the more complex and consequently more-difficult-to-understand switchboards that will be described later on. commercial types of drops and jacks. _early drops_. coming now to the commercial types of switchboard apparatus, the first subject that presents itself is that of magneto line signals or drops. the very early forms of switchboard drops had, in most cases, two-coil magnets, the cores of which were connected at their forward ends by an iron yoke and the armature of which was pivoted opposite the rear end of the two cores. to the armature was attached a latch rod which projected forwardly to the front of the device and was there adapted to engage the upper edge of the hinged shutter, so as to hold it in its raised or undisplayed position when the armature was unattracted. such a drop, of western electric manufacture, is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. old-style drop] liability to cross-talk:--this type of drop is suitable for use only on small switchboards where space is not an important consideration, and even then only when the drop is entirely cut out of the circuit during conversation. the reason for this latter requirement will be obvious when it is considered that there is no magnetic shield around the winding of the magnet and no means for preventing the stray field set up by the talking currents in one of the magnets from affecting by induction the windings of adjacent magnets contained in other talking circuits. unless the drops are entirely cut out of the talking circuit, therefore, they are very likely to produce cross-talk between adjacent circuits. furthermore, such form of drop is obviously not economical of space, two coils placed side by side consuming practically twice as much room as in the case of later drops wherein single magnet coils have been made to answer the purpose. _tubular drops._ in the case of line drops, which usually can readily be cut out of the circuit during conversation, this cross-talk feature is not serious, but sometimes the line drops, and always the clearing-out drops must be left in connection with the talking circuit. on account of economy in space and also on account of this cross-talk feature, there has come into existence the so-called tubular or iron-clad drop, one of which is shown in section in fig. . this was developed a good many years ago by mr. e.p. warner of the western electric company, and has since, with modifications, become standard with practically all the manufacturing companies. in this there is but a single bobbin, and this is enclosed in a shell of soft norway iron, which is closed at its front end and joined to the end of the core as indicated, so as to form a complete return magnetic path for the lines of force generated in the coil. the rear end of the shell and core are both cut off in the same plane and the armature is made in such form as to practically close this end of the shell. the armature carries a latch rod extending the entire length of the shell to the front portion of the structure, where it engages the upper edge of the pivoted shutter; this, when released by the latch upon the attraction of the armature, falls so as to display a target behind it. [illustration: fig. . tubular drop] [illustration: fig. . strip of tubular drops] these drops may be mounted individually on the face of the switchboard, but it is more usual to mount them in strips of five or ten. a strip of five drops, as manufactured by the kellogg switchboard and supply company, is shown in fig. . the front strip on which these drops are mounted is usually of brass or steel, copper plated, and is sufficiently heavy to provide a rigid support for the entire group of drops that are mounted on it. this construction greatly facilitates the assembling of the switchboard and also serves to economize space--obviously, the thing to economize on the face of a switchboard is space as defined by vertical and horizontal dimensions. these tubular drops, having but one coil, are readily mounted on -inch centers, both vertically and horizontally. sometimes even smaller dimensions than this are secured. the greatest advantage of this form of construction, however, is in the absolute freedom from cross-talk between two adjacent drops. so completely is the magnetic field of force kept within the material of the shell, that there is practically no stray field and two such drops may be included in two different talking circuits and the drops mounted immediately adjacent to each other without producing any cross-talk whatever. _night alarm._ switchboard drops in falling make but little noise, and during the day time, while the operator is supposed to be needed continually at the board, the visual signal which they display is sufficient to attract her attention. in small exchanges, however, it is frequently not practicable to keep an operator at the switchboard at night or during other comparatively idle periods, and yet calls that do arrive during such periods must be attended to. for this reason some other than a visual signal is necessary, and this need is met by the so-called night-alarm attachment. this is merely an arrangement by which the shutter in falling closes a pair of contacts and thus completes the circuit of an ordinary vibrating bell or buzzer which will sound until the shutter is restored to its normal position. such contacts are shown in fig. at _ _ and _ _. night-alarm contacts have assumed a variety of forms, some of which will be referred to in the discussion of other types of drops and jacks. [illustration: fig. . drop with night-alarm contacts] _jack mounting._ jacks, like drops, though frequently individually mounted are more often mounted in strips. an individually mounted jack is shown in fig. , and a strip of ten jacks in fig. . in such a strip of jacks, the strips supporting the metallic parts of the various jacks are usually of hard rubber reinforced by brass so as to give sufficient strength. various forms of supports for these strips are used by different manufacturers, the means for fastening them in the switchboard frame usually consisting of brass lugs on the end of the jack strip adapted to be engaged by screws entering the stationary portion of the iron framework; or sometimes pins are fixed in the framework, and the jack is held in place by nuts engaging screw-threaded ends on such pins. [illustration: fig. . individual jack] [illustration: fig. . strip of jacks] _methods of associating jacks and drops._ there are two general methods of arranging the drops and jacks in a switchboard. one of these is to place all of the jacks in a group together at the lower portion of the panel in front of the operator and all of the drops together in another group above the group of jacks. the other way is to locate each jack in immediate proximity to the drop belonging to the same line so that the operator's attention will always be called immediately to the jack into which she must insert her plug in response to the display of a drop. this latter practice has several advantages over the former. where the drops are all mounted in one group and the jacks in another, an operator seeing a drop fall must make mental note of it and pick out the corresponding jack in the group of jacks. on the other hand, where the jacks and drops are mounted immediately adjacent to each other, the falling of a drop attracts the attention of the operator to the corresponding jack without further mental effort on her part. the immediate association of the drops and jacks has another advantage--it makes possible such a mechanical relation between the drop and its associated jack that the act of inserting the plug into the jack in making the connection will automatically and mechanically restore the drop to its raised position. such drops are termed _self-restoring drops_, and, since a drop and jack are often made structurally a unitary piece of apparatus, they are frequently called _combined_ drops and jacks. _manual vs. automatic restoration._. there has been much difference of opinion on the question of manual versus automatic restoration of drops. some have contended that there is no advantage in having the drops restored automatically, claiming that the operator has plenty of time to restore the drops by hand while receiving the order from the calling subscriber or performing some of her other work. those who think this way have claimed that the only place where an automatically restored drop is really desirable is where, on account of the lack of space on the front of the switchboard, the drops are placed on such a portion of the board as to be not readily reached by the operator. this resulted in the electrically restored drop, mention of which will be made later. others have contended that even though the drop is mounted within easy reach of the operator, it is advantageous that the operator should be relieved of the burden of restoring it, claiming that even though there are times in the regular performance of the operator's duties when she may without interfering with other work restore the drops manually, such requirement results in a double use of her attention and in a useless strain on her which might better be devoted to the actual making of connections. until recently the various bell operating companies have adhered, in their small exchange work, to the manual restoring method, while most of the so-called independent operating companies have adhered to the automatic self-restoring drops. methods of automatic restoration. two general methods present themselves for bringing about the automatic restoration of the drop. first, the mechanical method, which is accomplished by having some moving part of the jack or of the plug as it enters the jack force the drop mechanically into its restored position. this usually means the mounting of the drop and the corresponding jack in juxtaposition, and this, in turn, has usually resulted in the unitary structure containing both the drop and the jack. second, the electrical method wherein the plug in entering the jack controls a restoring circuit, which includes a battery or other source of energy and a restoring coil on the drop, the result being that the insertion of the plug into the jack closes this auxiliary circuit and thus energizes the restoring magnet, the armature of which pulls the shutter back into its restored position. this practice has been followed by bell operating companies whenever conditions require the drop to be mounted out of easy reach of the operator; not otherwise. _mechanical--direct contact with plug._ one widely used method of mechanical restoration of drops, once employed by the western telephone construction company with considerable success, was to hang the shutter in such position that it would fall immediately in front of the jack so that the operator in order to reach the jack with the plug would have to push the plug directly against the shutter and thus restore it to its normal or raised position. in this construction the coil of the drop magnet was mounted directly behind the jack, the latch rod controlled by the armature reaching forward, parallel with the jack, to the shutter, which, as stated, was hung in front of the jack. this resulted in a most compact arrangement so far as the space utilization on the front of the board was concerned and such combined drops and jacks were mounted on about -inch centers, so that a bank of one hundred combined drops and jacks occupied a space only a little over inches square. a modification of this scheme, as used by the american electric telephone company, was to mount the drop immediately over the jack so that its shutter, when down, occupied a position almost in front of, but above, the jack opening. the plug was provided with a collar, which, as it entered the jack, engaged a cam on the base of the shutter and forced the latter mechanically into its raised position. neither of these methods of restoring--_i.e._, by direct contact between the shutter or part of it and the plug or part of it--is now as widely used as formerly. it has been found that there is no real need in magneto switchboards for the very great compactness which the hanging of the shutter directly in front of the drop resulted in, and the tendency in later years has been to make the combined drops and jacks more substantial in construction at the expense of some space on the face of the switchboard. [illustration: fig. . kellogg drop and jack] kellogg type:--a very widely used scheme of mechanical restoration is that employed in the miller drop and jack manufactured by the kellogg switchboard and supply company, the principles of which may be understood in connection with fig. . in this figure views of one of these combined drops and jacks in three different positions are shown. the jack is composed of the framework _b_ and the hollow screw _a_, the latter forming the sleeve or thimble of the jack and being externally screw-threaded so as to engage and bind in place the front end of the framework _b_. the jack is mounted on the lower part of the brass mounting strip _c_ but insulated therefrom. the tip spring of the jack is bent down as usual to engage the tip of the plug, as better shown in the lower cut of fig. , and then continues in an extension _d_, which passes through a hole in the mounting plate _c_. this tip spring in its normal position rests against another spring as shown, which latter spring forms one terminal of the drop winding. the drop or annunciator is of tubular form, and the shutter is so arranged on the front of the mounting strip _c_ as to fall directly above the extension _d_ of the tip spring. as a result, when the plug is inserted into the jack, the upward motion of the tip spring forces the drop into its restored position, as indicated in the lower cut of the figure. these drops and jacks are usually mounted in banks of five, as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . strip of kellogg drops and jacks] western electric type:--the combined drop and jack of the western electric company recently put on the market to meet the demands of the independent trade, differs from others principally in that it employs a spherical drop or target instead of the ordinary flat shutter. this piece of apparatus is shown in its three possible positions in fig. . the shutter or target normally displays a black surface through a hole in the mounting plate. the sphere forming the target is out of balance, and when the latch is withdrawn from it by the action of the electromagnet it falls into the position shown in the middle cut of fig. , thus displaying a red instead of a black surface to the view of the operator. when the operator plugs in, the plug engages the lower part of an =s=-shaped lever which acts on the pivoted sphere to restore it to its normal position. a perspective view of one of these combined line signals and jacks is shown in fig. . a feature that is made much of in recently designed drops and jacks for magneto service is that which provides for the ready removal of the drop coil, from the rest of the structure, for repair. the drop and jack of the western electric company, just described, embodies this feature, a single screw being so arranged that its removal will permit the withdrawal of the coil without disturbing any of the other parts or connections. the coil windings terminate in two projections on the front head of the spool, and these register with spring clips on the inside of the shell so that the proper connections for the coil are automatically made by the mere insertion of the coil into the shell. [illustration: fig. . western electric drop and jack] [illustration: fig. . western electric drop and jack] dean type:--the combined drop and jack of the dean electric company is illustrated in figs. and . the two perspective views show the general features of the drop and jack and the method by which the magnet coil may be withdrawn from the shell. as will be seen the magnet is wound on a hollow core which slides over the iron core, the latter remaining permanently fixed in the shell, even though the coil be withdrawn. fig. shows the structural details of the jack employed in this combination and it will be seen that the restoring spring for the drop is not the tip spring itself, but another spring located above and insulated from it and mechanically connected therewith. [illustration: fig. . dean drop and jack] [illustration: fig. . dean drop and jack] [illustration: fig. . details of dean jack] monarch type:--still another combined drop and jack is that of the monarch telephone manufacturing company of chicago, shown in sectional view in fig. . this differs from the usual type in that the armature is mounted on the front end of the electromagnet, its latch arm retaining the shutter in its normal position when raised, and releasing it when depressed by the attraction of the armature. as is shown, there is within the core of the magnet an adjustable spiral spring which presses forward against the armature and which spring is compressed by the attraction of the armature of the magnet. the night-alarm contact is clearly shown immediately below the strip which supports the drop, this consisting of a spring adapted to be engaged by a lug on the shutter and pressed upwardly against a stationary contact when the shutter falls. the method of restoration of the shutter in this case is by means of an auxiliary spring bent up so as to engage the shutter and restore it when the spring is raised by the insertion of a plug into the jack. [illustration: fig. . monarch drop and jack] _code signaling._ on bridging party lines, where the subscribers sometimes call other subscribers on the same line and sometimes call the switchboard so as to obtain a connection with another line, it is not always easy for the operator at the switchboard to distinguish whether the call is for her or for some other party on the line. on such lines, of course, code ringing is used and in most cases the operator's only way of distinguishing between calls for her and those for some sub-station parties on the line is by listening to the rattling noise which the drop armature makes. in the case of the monarch drop the adjustable spring tension on the armature is intended to provide for such an adjustment as will permit the armature to give a satisfactory buzz in response to the alternating ringing currents, whether the line be long or short. [illustration: fig. . code signal attachment] the monarch company provides in another way for code signaling at the switchboard. in some cases there is a special attachment, shown in fig. , by means of which the code signals are repeated on the night-alarm bell. this is in the nature of a special attachment placed on the drop, which consists of a light, flat spring attached to the armature and forming one side of a local circuit. the other side of the circuit terminates in a fixture which is mounted on the drop frame and is provided with a screw, having a platinum point forming the other contact point; this allows of considerable adjustment. at the point where the screw comes in contact with the spring there is a platinum rivet. when an operator is not always in attendance, this code-signaling attachment has some advantages over the drop as a signal interpreter, in that it permits the code signals to be heard from a distance. of course, the addition of spring contacts to the drop armature tends to complicate the structure and perhaps to cut down the sensitiveness of the drop, which are offsetting disadvantages. [illustration: fig. . combined drop and ringer] for really long lines, this code signaling by means of the drop is best provided for by employing a combined drop and ringer, although in this case whatever advantages are secured by the mechanical restoration of the shutter upon plugging in are lost. such a device as manufactured by the dean electric company is shown in fig. . in this the ordinary polarized ringer is used, but in addition the tapper rod carries a latch which, when vibrated by the ringing of the bell, releases a shutter and causes it to fall, thus giving a visual as well as an audible signal. _electrical_. coming now to the electrical restoration of drop shutters, reference is made to fig. , which shows in side section the electrical restoring drop employed by the bell companies and manufactured by the western electric company. in this the coil _ _ is a line coil, and it operates on the armature _ _ to raise the latch lever _ _ in just the same manner as in the ordinary tubular drop. the latch lever _ _ acts, however, to release another armature _ _ instead of a shutter. this armature _ _ is pivoted at its lower end at the opposite end of the device from the armature _ _ and, by falling outwardly when released, it serves to raise the light shutter _ _. the restoring coil of this device is shown at _ _, and when energized it attracts the armature _ _ so as to pull it back under the catch of the latch lever _ _ and also so as to allow the shutter _ _ to fall into its normal position. the method of closing the restoring circuit is by placing coil _ _ in circuit with a local battery and with a pair of contacts in the jack, which latter contacts are normally open but are bridged across by the plug when it enters the jack, thus energizing the restoring coil and restoring the shutter. [illustration: fig. . electrically restored drop] a perspective view of this western electric electrical restoring drop is shown in fig. , a more complete mention being made of this feature under the discussion of magneto multiple switchboards, wherein it found its chief use. it is mentioned here to round out the methods that have been employed for accomplishing the automatic restoration of shutters by the insertion of the plug. [illustration: fig. . electrically restored drop] switchboard plugs. a switchboard plug such as is commonly used in simple magneto switchboards is shown in fig. and also in fig. . the tip contact is usually of brass and is connected to a slender steel rod which runs through the center of the plug and terminates near the rear end of the plug in a connector for the tip conductor of the cord. this central core of steel is carefully insulated from the outer shell of the plug by means of hard rubber bushings, the parts being forced tightly together. the outer shell, of course, forms the other conductor of the plug, called the sleeve contact. a handle of tough fiber tubing is fitted over the rear end of the plug and this also serves to close the opening formed by cutting away a portion of the plug shell, thus exposing the connector for the tip conductor. [illustration: fig. . switchboard plug] _cord attachment._ the rear end of the plug shell is usually bored out just about the size of the outer covering of the switchboard cord, and it is provided with a coarse internal screw thread, as shown. the cord is attached by screwing it tightly into this screw-threaded chamber, the screw threads in the brass being sufficiently coarse and of sufficiently small internal diameter to afford a very secure mechanical connection between the outer braiding of the cord and the plug. the connection between the tip conductor of the cord and the tip of the plug is made by a small machine screw connection as shown, while the connection between the sleeve conductor of the plug and the sleeve conductor of the cord is made by bending back the latter over the outer braiding of the cord before it is screwed into the shank of the plug. this results in the close electrical contact between the sleeve conductor of the cord and the inner metal surface of the shank of the plug. switchboard cords. a great deal of ingenuity has been exerted toward the end of producing a reliable and durable switchboard cord. while great improvement has resulted, the fact remains that the cords of manual switchboards are today probably the most troublesome element, and they need constant attention and repairs. while no two manufacturers build their cords exactly alike, descriptions of a few commonly used and successful cords may be here given. _concentric conductors._ in one the core is made from a double strand of strong lock stitch twine, over which is placed a linen braid. then the tip conductor, which is of stranded copper tinsel, is braided on. this is then covered with two layers of tussah silk, laid in reverse wrappings, then there is a heavy cotton braid, and over the latter a linen braid. the sleeve conductor, which is also of copper tinsel, is then braided over the structure so formed, after which two reverse wrappings of tussah silk are served on, and this is covered by a cotton braid and this in turn by a heavy linen or polished cotton braid. the plug end of the cord is reinforced for a length of from to inches by another braiding of linen or polished cotton, and the whole cord is treated with melted beeswax to make it moisture-proof and durable. [illustration: fig. . switchboard cord] _steel spiral conductors._ in another cord that has found much favor the two conductors are formed mainly by two concentric spiral wrappings of steel wire, the conductivity being reinforced by adjacent braidings of tinsel. the structure of such a cord is well shown in fig. . beginning at the right, the different elements shown are, in the order named, a strand of lock stitch twine, a linen braiding, into the strands of which are intermingled tinsel strands, the inner spiral steel wrapping, a braiding of tussah silk, a linen braiding, a loose tinsel braiding, the outer conductor of round spiral steel, a cotton braid, and an outside linen or polished cotton braid. the inner tinsel braiding and the inner spiral together form the tip conductor while the outer braiding and spiral together form the sleeve conductor. the cord is reinforced at the plug end for a length of about inches by another braiding of linen. the tinsel used is, in each case, for the purpose of cutting down the resistance of the main steel conductor. these wrappings of steel wire forming the tip and sleeve conductors respectively, have the advantage of affording great flexibility, and also of making it certain that whatever strain the cord is subjected to will fall on the insulated braiding rather than on the spiral steel which has in itself no power to resist tensile strains. _parallel tinsel conductors._ another standard two-conductor switchboard cord is manufactured as follows: one conductor is of very heavy copper tinsel insulated with one wrapping of sea island cotton, which prevents broken ends of the tinsel or knots from piercing through and short-circuiting with the other conductor. over this is placed one braid of tussah silk and an outer braid of cotton. this combines high insulation with considerable strength. the other conductor is of copper tinsel, not insulated, and this is laid parallel to the thrice insulated conductor already described. around these two conductors is placed an armor of spring brass wire in spiral form, and over this a close, stout braid of glazed cotton. this like the others is reinforced by an extra braid at the plug end. ringing and listening keys. the general principles of the ringing key have already been referred to. ringing keys are of two general types, one having horizontal springs and the other vertical. [illustration: fig. . horizontal-spring listening and ringing key] _horizontal spring type._ various bell operating companies have generally adhered to the horizontal spring type except in individual and four-party-line keys. the construction of a western electric company horizontal spring key is shown in fig. . in this particular key, as illustrated, there are two cam levers operating upon three sets of springs. the cam lever at the left operates the ordinary ringing and listening set of springs according to whether it is pushed one way or the other. in ringing on single-party lines the cam lever at the left is the one to be used; while on two-party lines the lever at the left serves to ring the first party and the ringing key at the right the second party. in order that the operator may have an indication as to which station on a two-party line she has called, a small target _ _ carried on a lever _ _ is provided. this target may display a black or a white field, according to which of its positions it occupies. the lever _ _ is connected by the links _ _ and _ _ with the two key levers and the target is thus moved into one position or the other, according to which lever was last thrown into ringing position. it will be noticed that the springs are mounted horizontally and on edge. this on-edge feature has the advantage of permitting ready inspection of the contacts and of avoiding the liability of dust gathering between the contacts. as will be seen, at the lower end of each switch lever there is a roller of insulating material which serves as a wedge, when forced between the two long springs of any set, to force them apart and into engagement with their respective outer springs. [illustration: fig. . vertical-spring listening and ringing key] _vertical spring type._ the other type of ringing and listening key employing vertical springs is almost universally used by the various independent manufacturing companies. a good example of this is shown in fig. , which shows partly in elevation and partly in section a double key of the monarch company. the operation of this is obvious from its mode of construction. the right-hand set of springs of the right-hand key in this cut are the springs of the listening key, while the left-hand set of the right-hand key are those of the calling-plug ringing key. the left-hand set of the left-hand key may be those of a ring-back key on the answering plug, while the right-hand set of the left-hand key may be for any special purpose. it is obvious that these groups of springs may be grouped in different combinations or omitted in part, as required. this same general form of key is also manufactured by the kellogg company and the dean company, that of the kellogg company being illustrated in perspective, fig. . the keys of this general type have the same advantages as those of the horizontal on-edge arrangement with respect to the gathering of dust, and while perhaps the contacts are not so readily get-at-able for inspection, yet they have the advantage of being somewhat more simple, and of taking up less horizontal space on the key shelf. [illustration: fig. . vertical listening and ringing key] [illustration: fig. . four-party listening and ringing key] _party-line ringing keys._ for party-line ringing the key matter becomes somewhat more complicated. usually the arrangement is such that in connection with each calling plug there are a number of keys, each arranged with respect to the circuits of the plug so as to send out the proper combination and direction of current, if the polarity system is used; or the proper frequency of current if the harmonic system is used; or the proper number of impulses if the step-by-step or broken-line system is used. the number of different kinds of arrangements and combinations is legion, and we will here illustrate only an example of a four-party line ringing key adapted for harmonic ringing. a kellogg party-line listening and ringing key is shown in fig. . in this, besides the regular listening key, are shown four push-button keys, each adapted, when depressed, to break the connection back of the key, and at the same time connect the proper calling generator with the calling plug. _self-indicating keys._ a complication that has given a good deal of trouble in the matter of party-line ringing is due to the fact that it is sometimes necessary to ring a second or a third time on a party-line connection, because the party called may not respond the first time. the operator is not always able to remember which one of the four keys associated with the plug connected with the desired party she has pressed on the first occasion and, therefore, when it becomes necessary to ring again, she may ring the wrong party. this is provided for in a very ingenious way in the key shown in fig. , by making the arrangement such that after a given key has been depressed to its full extent in ringing, and then released, it does not come quite back to its normal position but remains slightly depressed. this always serves as an indication to the operator, therefore, as to which key she depressed last, and in the case of a re-ring, she merely presses the key that is already down a little way. on the next call if she is required to press another one of the four keys, the one which remained down a slight distance on the last call will be released and the one that is fully depressed will be the one that remains down as an indication. such keys, where the key that was last used leaves an indication to that effect, are called _indicating_ ringing keys. in other forms the indication is given by causing the key lever to move a little target which remains exposed until some other key in the same set is moved. the key shown in fig. is an example of this type. note. the matter of automatic ringing and other special forms of ringing will be referred to and discussed at their proper places in this work, but at this point they are not pertinent as they are not employed in simple switchboards. operator's telephone equipment. little need be said concerning the matter of the operator's talking apparatus, _i.e._, the operator's transmitter and receiver, since as transmitters and receivers they are practically the same as those in ordinary use for other purposes. the watch-case receiver is nearly always employed for operators' purposes on account of its lightness and compactness. it is used in connection with a head band so as to be held continually at the operator's ear, allowing both of her hands to be free. the transmitter used by operators does not in itself differ from the transmitters employed by subscribers, but the methods by which it is supported differ, two general practices being followed. one of these is to suspend the transmitter by flexible conducting cords so as to be adjustable in a vertical direction. a good illustration of this is given in fig. . the other method, and one that is coming into more and more favor, is to mount the transmitter on a light bracket suspended by a flexible band from the neck of the operator, a breast plate being furnished so that the transmitter will rest on her breast and be at all times within proper position to receive her speech. to facilitate this, a long curved mouthpiece is commonly employed, as shown clearly in fig. . [illustration: fig. . operator's transmitter suspension] _cut-in jack._ it is common to terminate that portion of the apparatus which is worn on the operator's person--that is, the receiver only if the suspended type of transmitter is employed, and the receiver and transmitter if the breast plate type of transmitter is employed--in a plug, and a flexible cord connecting the plug terminates with the apparatus. the portions of the operator's talking circuit that are located permanently in the switchboard cabinet are in such cases terminated in a jack, called an operator's _cut-in jack_. this is usually mounted on the front rail of the switchboard cabinet just below the key shelf. such a cut-in jack is shown in fig. and it is merely a specialized form of spring jack adapted to receive the short, stout plug in which the operator's transmitter, or transmitter and receiver, terminate. by this arrangement the operator is enabled readily to connect or disconnect her talking apparatus, which is worn on her person, whenever she comes to the board for work or leaves it at the end of her work. a complete operator's telephone set, or that portion that is carried on the person of the operator, together with the cut-in plug, is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . operator's cut-in jack] [illustration: fig. . operator's talking set] circuits of complete switchboard. we may now discuss the circuits of a complete simple magneto switchboard. the one shown in fig. is typical. before going into the details of this, it is well to inform the student that this general form of circuit representation is one that is commonly employed in showing the complete circuits of any switchboard. ordinarily two subscribers' lines are shown, these connecting their respective subscribers' stations with two different line equipments at the central office. the jacks and signals of these line equipments are turned around so as to face each other, in order to clearly represent how the connection between them may be made by means of the cord circuit. the elements of the cord circuit are also spread out, so that the various parts occupy relative positions which they do not assume at all in practice. in other words it must be remembered that, in circuit diagrams, the relative positions of the parts are sacrificed in order to make clear the circuit connections. however, this does not mean that it is often not possible to so locate the pieces of apparatus that they will in a certain way indicate relative positions, as may be seen in the case of the drop and jack in fig. , the drop being shown immediately above the jack, which is the position in which these parts are located in practice. [illustration: fig. . circuit of simple magneto switchboard] little need be said concerning this circuit in view of what has already been said in connection with figs. to . it will be seen in the particular sub-station circuit here represented, that the talking apparatus is arranged in the usual manner and that the ringer and generator are so arranged that when the generator is operated the ringer will be cut out of circuit, while the generator will be placed across the circuit; while, when the generator is idle, the ringer is bridged across the circuit and the generator is cut out. the line terminates in each case in the tip and sleeve contacts of the jack, and in the normal condition of the jack the line drop is bridged across the line. the arrangement by which the drop is restored and at the same time cut out of circuit when the operator plugs in the jack, is obvious from the diagrammatic illustration. the cord circuit is the same as that already discussed, with the exception that two ringing keys are provided, one in connection with the calling plug, as is universal practice, and the other in connection with the answering plug as is sometimes practiced in order that the operator may, when occasion requires, ring back the calling subscriber without the necessity of changing the plug in the jack. the outer contacts of these two ringing keys are connected to the terminals of the ringing generator and, when either key is operated, the connection between the plug, on which the ringing is to be done, and the rest of the cord circuit will be broken, while the generator will be connected with the terminals of the plug. the listening key and talking apparatus need no further explanation, it being obvious that when the key is operated the subscriber's telephone set will be bridged across the cord circuit and, therefore, connected with either or both of the talking subscribers. [illustration: fig. . night-alarm circuit] night-alarm circuits. the circuit of fig. , while referred to as a complete circuit, is not quite that. the night-alarm circuit is not shown. in order to clearly indicate how a single battery and bell, or buzzer, may serve in connecting a number of line drops, reference is made to fig. which shows the connection between three different line drops and the night-alarm circuit. the night-alarm apparatus consists in the battery _ _ and the buzzer, or bell, _ _. a switch _ _ adapted to be manually operated is connected in the circuit with the battery and the buzzer so as to open this circuit when the night alarm is not needed, thus making it inoperative. during the portions of the day when the operator is needed constantly at the board it is customary to leave this switch _ _ open, but during the night period when she is not required constantly at the board this switch is closed so that an audible signal will be given whenever a drop falls. the night-alarm contact _ _ on each of the drops will be closed whenever a shutter falls, and as the two members of this contact, in the case of each drop, are connected respectively with the two sides of the night-alarm circuit, any one shutter falling will complete the necessary conditions for causing the buzzer to sound, assuming of course that the switch _ _ is closed. _night alarm with relay._ a good deal of trouble has been caused in the past by uncertainty in the closure of the night-alarm circuit at the drop contact. some of the companies have employed the form of circuit shown in fig. to overcome this. instead of the night-alarm buzzer being placed directly in the circuit that is closed by the drop, a relay _ _ and a high-voltage battery _ _ are placed in this circuit. the buzzer and the battery for operating it are placed in a local circuit controlled by this relay. it will be seen by reference to fig. that when the shutter falls, it will, by closing the contact _ _, complete the circuit from the battery _ _ through the relay _ _--assuming switch _ _ to be closed--and thus cause the operation of the relay. the relay, in turn, by pulling up its armature, will close the circuit of the buzzer _ _ through the battery _ _ and cause the buzzer to sound. [illustration: fig. . night-alarm circuit with relay] the advantage of this method over the direct method of operating the buzzer is that any imperfection in the night-alarm contact at the drop is much less likely to prevent the flow of current of the high-voltage battery _ _ than of the low-voltage battery _ _, shown in connection with fig. . this is because the higher voltage is much more likely to break down any very thin bit of insulation, such as might be caused by a minute particle of dust or oxide between contacts that are supposed to be closed by the falling of the shutter. it has been common to employ for battery _ _ a dry-cell battery giving about or volts, and for the operation of the buzzer itself, a similar battery of about two cells giving approximately volts. _night-alarm contacts._ the night-alarm contact _ _ of the drop shown diagrammatically in figs. and would, if taken literally, indicate that the shutter itself actually forms one terminal of the circuit and the contact against which it falls, the other. this has not been found to be a reliable way of closing the night-alarm contacts and this method is indicated in these figures and in other figures in this work merely as a convenient way of representing the matter diagrammatically. as a matter of fact the night-alarm contacts are ordinarily closed by having the shutter fall against one spring, which is thereby pressed into engagement with another spring or contact, as shown in fig. . this method employs the shutter only as a means for mechanically causing the one spring to press against the other, the shutter itself forming no part of the circuit. the reason why it is not a good plan to have the shutter itself act as one terminal of the circuit is that this necessitates the circuit connections being led to the shutter through the trunnions on which the shutter is pivoted. this is bad because, obviously, the shutter must be loosely supported on its trunnions in order to give it sufficiently free movement, and, as is well known, loose connections are not conducive to good electrical contacts. grounded-and metallic-circuit lines. when grounded circuits were the rule rather than the exception, many of the switchboards were particularly adapted for their use and could not be used with metallic-circuit lines. these grounded-circuit switchboards provided but a single contact in the jack and a single contact on the plug, the cords having but a single strand reaching from one plug to the other. the ringing keys and listening keys were likewise single-contact keys rather than double. the clearing-out drop and the operator's talking circuit and the ringing generator were connected between the single strand of the cord and the ground as was required. the grounded-circuit switchboard has practically passed out of existence, and while a few of them may be in use, they are not manufactured at present. the reason for this is that while many grounded circuits are still in use, there are very few places where there are not some metallic-circuit lines, and while the grounded-circuit switchboard will not serve for metallic-circuit lines, the metallic-circuit switchboard will serve equally well for either metallic-circuit or grounded lines, and will interconnect them with equal facility. this fact will be made clear by a consideration of figs. , , and . [illustration: fig. . connection between metallic lines] [illustration: fig. . connection between grounded lines] _connection between two similar lines._ in fig. a common magneto cord circuit is shown connecting two metallic-circuit lines; in fig. the same cord circuit is shown connecting two grounded lines. in this case the line wire _ _ of the left-hand line is, when the plugs are inserted, continued to the tip of the answering plug, thence through the tip strand of the cord circuit to the tip of the calling plug, then to the tip spring of the right-hand jack and out to the single conductor of that line. the entire sleeve portion of the cord circuit becomes grounded as soon as the plugs are inserted in the jacks of such a line. hence, we see that the sleeve contacts of the plug and the sleeve conductor of the cord are connected to ground through the permanent ground connection of the sleeve conductors of the jack as soon as the plug is inserted into the jack. thus, when the cord circuit of a metallic-circuit switchboard is used to connect two grounded circuits together, the tip strand of the cord is the connecting link between the two conductors, while the sleeve strand of the cord merely serves to ground one side of the clearing-out drop and one side each of the operator's telephone set and the ringing generator when their respective keys are operated. _connection between dissimilar lines._ fig. shows how the same cord circuit and the same arrangement of line equipment may be used for connecting a grounded line to a metallic-circuit line. the metallic circuit line is shown on the left and the grounded line on the right. when the two plugs are inserted into the respective jacks of this figure, the right-hand conductor of the metallic circuit shown on the left will be continued through the tip strand of the cord circuit to the line conductor of the grounded line shown on the right. the left-hand conductor of the metallic-circuit line will be connected to ground because it will be continued through the sleeve strand of the cord circuit to the sleeve contact of the calling plug and thence to the sleeve contact of the jack of the grounded line, which sleeve contact is shown to be grounded. the talking circuit between the two connected lines in this case may be traced as follows: from the subscriber's station at the left through the right-hand limb of the metallic-circuit line, through the tip contact and tip conductor of the cord circuit, to the single limb of the grounded-circuit line, thence to the sub-station of that line and through the talking apparatus there to ground. the return path from the right-hand station is by way of ground to the ground connection at the central office, thence to the sleeve contact of the grounded line jack, through the sleeve conductor of the cord circuit, to the sleeve contact of the metallic-circuit line jack, and thence by the left-hand limb of the metallic-circuit line to the subscriber's station. [illustration: fig. . connection between dissimilar lines] a better way of connecting a metallic-circuit line to a grounded line is by the use of a special cord circuit involving a repeating coil, such a connection being shown in fig. . the cord circuit in this case differs in no respect from those already shown except that a repeating coil is associated with it in such a way as to conductively divide the answering side from the calling side. obviously, whatever currents come over the line connected with the answering plug will pass through the windings _ _ and _ _ of this coil and will induce corresponding currents in the windings _ _ and _ _, which latter currents will pass out over the circuit of the line connected with the calling plug. when a grounded circuit is connected to a metallic circuit in this manner, no ground is thrown onto the metallic circuit. the balance of the metallic circuit is, therefore, maintained. to ground one side of a metallic circuit frequently so unbalances it as to cause it to become noisy, that is, to have currents flowing in it, by induction or from other causes, other than the currents which are supposed to be there for the purpose of conveying speech. [illustration: fig. . connection of dissimilar lines through repeating coil] _convertible cord circuits._ the consideration of fig. brings us to the subject of so-called convertible cord circuits. some switchboards, serving a mixture of metallic and grounded lines, are provided with cord circuits which may be converted at will by the operator from the ordinary type shown in fig. to the type shown in fig. . the advantage of this will be obvious from the following consideration. when a call originates on any line, either grounded or metallic, the operator does not know which kind of a line is to be called for. she, therefore, plugs into this line with any one of her answering plugs and completes the connection in the usual way. if the call is for the same kind of a circuit as that over which the call originated, she places the converting key in such a position as will connect the conductors of the cord circuit straight through; while if the connection is for a different kind of a line than that on which the call originated she throws the converting key into such a position as to include the repeating coil. a study of fig. will show that when the converting key, which is commonly referred to as the repeating-coil key, is in one position, the cord conductors will be cut straight through, the repeating coil being left open in both its windings; and when it is thrown to its other position, the connection between the answering and calling sides of the cord circuit will be severed and the repeating coil inserted so as to bring about the same effects and circuit arrangements as are shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . convertible cord circuit] cord-circuit considerations. _simple bridging drop type._ the matter of cord circuits in magneto switchboards is deserving of much attention. so far as talking requirements are concerned, the ordinary form of cord circuit with a clearing-out drop bridged across the two strands is adequate for nearly all conditions except those where a grounded-and a metallic-circuit line are connected together, in which case the inclusion of a repeating coil has some advantages. [illustration: fig. . bridging drop-cord circuit] from the standpoint of signaling, however, this type of cord circuit has some disadvantages under certain conditions. in order to simplify the discussion of this and other cord-circuit matters, reference will be made to some diagrams from which the ringing and listening keys and talking apparatus have been entirely omitted. in fig. the regular bridging type of clearing-out drop-cord circuit is shown, this being the type already discussed as standard. for ordinary practice it is all right. certain difficulties are experienced with it, however, where lines of various lengths and various types of sub-station apparatus are connected. for instance, if a long bridging line be connected with one end of this cord circuit and a short line having a low-resistance series ringer be connected with the other end, then a station on the long line may have some difficulty in throwing the clearing-out drop, because of the low-resistance shunt that is placed around it through the short line and the low-resistance ringer. in other words, the clearing-out drop is shunted by a comparatively low-resistance line and ringer and the feeble currents arriving from a distant station over the long line are not sufficient to operate the drop thus handicapped. the advent of the various forms of party-line selective signaling and the use of such systems in connection with magneto switchboards has brought in another difficulty that sometimes manifests itself with this type of cord circuit. if two ordinary magneto telephones are connected to the two ends of this cord circuit, it is obvious that when one of the subscribers has hung up his receiver and the other subscriber rings off, the bell of the other subscriber will very likely be rung even though the clearing-out drop operates properly; it would be better in any event not to have this other subscriber's bell rung, for he may understand it to be a recall to his telephone. when, however, a party line is connected through such a cord circuit to an ordinary line having bridging instruments, for instance, the difficulty due to ringing off becomes even greater. when the subscriber on the magneto line operates his generator to give the clearing-out signal, he is very likely to ring some of the bells on the other line and this, of course, is an undesirable thing. this may happen even in the case of harmonic bells on the party line, since it is possible that the subscriber on the magneto line in turning his generator will, at some phase of the operation, strike just the proper frequency to ring some one of the bells on the harmonic party line. it is obvious, therefore, that there is a real need for a cord circuit that will prevent _through ringing._ one way of eliminating the through-ringing difficulty in the type of cord circuit shown in fig. would be to use such a very low-wound clearing-out drop that it would practically short-circuit the line with respect to ringing currents and prevent them from passing on to the other line. this, however, is not a good thing to do, since a winding sufficiently low to shunt the effective ringing current would also be too low for good telephone transmission. [illustration: fig. . series drop-cord circuit] _series drop type._ another type of cord circuit that was largely used by the stromberg-carlson telephone manufacturing company at one time is shown in fig. . in this the clearing-out drop was not bridged but was placed in series in the tip side of the line and was shunted by a condenser. the resistance of the clearing-out drop was , ohms and the capacity of the condenser was microfarads. it is obvious that this way of connecting the clearing-out drop was subject to the _ringing-through_ difficulty, since the circuit through which the clearing-out current necessarily passed included the telephone instrument of the line that was not sending the clearing-out signal. this form was also objectionable because it was necessary for the subscriber to ring through the combined resistance of two lines, and in case the other line happened to be open, no clearing-out signal would be received. while this circuit, therefore, was perhaps not quite so likely as the other to tie up the subscriber, that is, to leave him connected without the ability to send a clearing-out signal, yet it was sure to ring through, for the clearing-out drop could not be thrown without the current passing through the other subscriber's station. [illustration: fig. . dean non-ring-through cord circuit] _non-ring-through type._ an early attempt at a non-ring-through cord is shown in fig. , this having once been standard with the dean electric company. it made use of two condensers of microfarad each, one in each side of the cord circuit. the clearing-out drop was of ohms resistance and was connected from the answering side of the tip conductor to the calling side of the sleeve conductor. in this way whatever clearing-out current reached the central office passed through at least one of the condensers and the clearing-out drop. in order for the clearing-out current to pass on beyond the central office it was necessary for it to pass through the two condensers in series. this arrangement had the advantage of giving a positive ring-off, regardless of the condition of the connected line. obviously, even if the line was short-circuited, the ringing currents from the other line would still be forced through the clearing-out drop on account of the high effective resistance of the -microfarad condenser connected in series with the short-circuited line. also the clearing-out signal would be properly received if the connected line were open, since the clearing-out drop would still be directly across the cord circuit. this arrangement also largely prevented through ringing, since the currents would pass through the -microfarad condenser and the -ohm drop more readily than through the two condensers connected in series. [illustration: fig. . monarch non-ring-through cord circuit] in fig. is shown the non-ring-through arrangement of cord circuit adopted by the monarch company. in this system the clearing-out drop has two windings, either of which will operate the armature. the two windings are bridged across the cord circuit, with a / -microfarad condenser in series in the tip strand between the two winding connections. while the low-capacity condenser will allow the high-frequency talking current to pass readily without affecting it to any appreciable extent, it offers a high resistance to a low-frequency ringing current, thus preventing it from passing out on a connected line and forcing it through one of the windings of the coil. there is a tendency to transformer action in this arrangement, one of the windings serving as a primary and the other as a secondary, but this has not prevented the device from being highly successful. a modification of this arrangement is shown in fig. , wherein a double-wound clearing-out drop is used, and a / -microfarad condenser is placed in series in each side of the cord circuit between the winding connections of the clearing-out drop. this circuit should give a positive ring-off under all conditions and should prevent through ringing except as it may be provided by the transformer action between the two windings on the same core. [illustration: fig. . non-ring-through cord circuit] another rather ingenious method of securing a positive ring-off and yet of preventing in a certain degree the undesirable ringing-through feature is shown in the cord circuit, fig. . in this two non-inductive coils _ _ and _ _ are shown connected in series in the tip and sleeve strands of the coils, respectively. between the neutral point of these two non-inductive windings is connected the clearing-out drop circuit. voice currents find ready path through these non-inductive windings because of the fact that, being non-inductive, they present only their straight ohmic resistance. the impedance of the clearing-out drop prevents the windings being shunted across the two sides of the cord circuit. with this circuit a positive ring-off is assured even though the line connected with the one sending the clearing-out signal is short-circuited or open. if it is short-circuited, the shunt around the clearing-out drop will still have the resistance of two of the non-inductive windings included in it, and thus the drop will never be short-circuited by a very low-resistance path. obviously, an open circuit in the line will not prevent the clearing-out signal being received. while this is an ingenious scheme, it is not one to be highly recommended since the non-inductive windings, in order to be effective so far as signaling is concerned, must be of considerable resistance and this resistance is in series in the talking circuit. even non-inductive resistance is to be avoided in the talking circuit when it is of considerable magnitude and where there are other ways of solving the problem. [illustration: fig. . cord circuit with differential windings] _double clearing-out type. _some people prefer two clearing-out drops in each cord circuit, so arranged that the one will be responsive to currents sent from the line with which the answering plug is connected and the other responsive only to currents sent from the line with which the calling plug is connected. such a scheme, shown in fig. , is sometimes employed by the dean, the monarch, and the kellogg companies. two -ohm clearing-out drops of ordinary construction are bridged across the cord circuit and in each side of the cord circuit there is included between the drop connections a -microfarad condenser. ringing currents originating on the line with which the answering plug is connected will pass through the clearing-out drop, which is across that side of the cord circuit, without having to pass through any condensers. in order to reach the other clearing-out drop the ringing current must pass through the two -microfarad condensers in series, this making in effect only / -microfarad. as is well known, a / -microfarad condenser not only transmits voice currents with ease but also offers a very high apparent resistance to ringing currents. with the double clearing-out drop system the operator is enabled to tell which subscriber is ringing off. if both shutters fall she knows that both subscribers have sent clearing-out signals and she, therefore, pulls down the connection without the usual precaution of listening to see whether one of the subscribers may be waiting for another connection. this double clearing-out system is analogous to the complete double-lamp supervision that will be referred to more fully in connection with common-battery circuits. there is not the need for double supervision in magneto work, however, that there is in common-battery work because of the fact that in magneto work the subscribers frequently fail to remember to ring off, this act being entirely voluntary on their part, while in common-battery work, the clearing-out signal is given automatically by the subscriber when he hangs up his receiver, thus accomplishing the desired end without the necessity of thoughtfulness on his part. [illustration: fig. . double clearing-out drops] another form of double clearing-out cord circuit is shown in fig. . in this the calling and the answering plugs are separated by repeating coils, a condenser of -microfarad capacity being inserted between each pair of windings on the two ends of the circuit. the clearing-out drops are placed across the calling and answering cords in the usual manner. the condenser in this case prevents the drop being short-circuited with respect to ringing currents and yet permits the voice currents to flow readily through it. the high impedance of the drop forces the voice currents to take the path through the repeating coil rather than through the drop. this circuit has the advantage of a repeating-coil cord circuit in permitting the connection of metallic and grounded lines without causing the unbalancing of the metallic circuits by the connection to them of the grounded circuits. [illustration: fig. . double clearing-out drops] recently there has been a growing tendency on the part of some manufacturers to control their clearing-out signals by means of relays associated with cord circuits, these signals sometimes being ordinary clearing-out drops and sometimes incandescent lamps. [illustration: fig. . relay-controlled clearing-out drop] in fig. is shown the cord circuit sometimes used by the l.m. ericsson telephone manufacturing company. a high-wound relay is normally placed across the cord and this, besides having a high-resistance and impedance winding has a low-resistance locking winding so arranged that when the relay pulls up its armature it will close a local circuit including this locking winding and local battery. when once pulled up the relay will, therefore, stay up due to the energizing of this locking coil. another contact operated by the relay closes the circuit of a low-wound clearing-out drop placed across the line, thus bridging it across the line. the condition of high impedance is maintained across the cord circuit normally while the subscribers are talking; but when either of them rings off, the high-wound relay pulls up and locks, thus completing the circuit of the clearing-out drop across the cords. the subsequent impulses sent from the subscribers' generators operate this drop. the relay is restored or unlocked and the clearing-out drop disconnected from the cord circuit by means of a key which opens the locking circuit of the relay. this key is really a part of the listening key and serves to open this locking circuit whenever the listening key is operated. the clearing-out drop is also automatically restored by the action of the listening key, this connection being mechanical rather than electrical. recall lamp:--the monarch company sometimes furnishes what it terms a recall lamp in connection with the clearing-out drops on its magneto switchboards. the circuit arrangement is shown in fig. , wherein the drop is the regular double-wound clearing-out drop like that of fig. . the armature carries a contact spring adapted to close the local circuit of a lamp whenever it is attracted. the object of this is to give the subscriber, whose line still remains connected by a cord circuit, opportunity to recall the central office if the operator has not restored the clearing-out drop. [illustration: fig. . cord circuit with recall lamp] _lamp-signal type._ there has been a tendency on the part of some manufacturing companies to advocate, instead of drop signals, incandescent lamp signals for the cord circuits, and sometimes for the line circuits on magneto boards. in most cases this may be looked upon as a "frill." where line lamps instead of drops have been used on magneto switchboards, it has been the practice to employ, instead of a drop, a locking relay associated with each lamp, which was so arranged that when the relay was energized by the magneto current from the subscriber's station, it would pull up and lock, thus closing the lamp circuit. the local circuit, or locking circuit, which included the lamp was carried through a pair of contacts in the corresponding jacks so arranged that when the plug was inserted in answer to the call, this locking lamp circuit would be open, thereby extinguishing the lamp and also unlocking the relay. there seems to be absolutely no good reason why lamp signals should be substituted for mechanical drops in magneto switchboards. there is no need for the economy in space which the lamp signal affords, and the complications brought in by the locking relays, and the requirements for maintaining a local battery suitable for energizing the lamps are not warranted for ordinary cases. [illustration: fig. . cord circuit with double lamp signals] in fig. is shown a cord circuit, adaptable to magneto switchboards, provided with double lamp signals instead of clearing-out drops. two high-wound locking relays are bridged across the line, the cord strands being divided by -microfarad condensers. when the high-wound coil of either relay is energized by the magneto current from the subscriber's station, the relay pulls up and closes a locking circuit including a battery and a coil _ _, the contact _ _ of the locking relay, and also the contact _ _ of a restoring key. this circuit may be traced from the ground through battery, coil _ _, contact _ _ controlled by the relay, and contact _ _ controlled by the restoring key, and back to ground. in multiple with the locking coil _ _ is the lamp, which is illuminated, therefore, whenever the locking circuit is closed. pressure on the restoring key breaks the locking circuit of either of the lamps, thereby putting out the lamp and at the same time restoring the locking relay to its normal position. _lamps vs. drops in cord circuits._ so much has been said and written about the advantages of incandescent lamps as signals in switchboards and about the merits of the common-battery method of supplying current to the subscribers, that there has been a tendency for people in charge of the operation of small exchanges to substitute the lamp for the drop in a magneto switchboard in order to give the general appearance of common-battery operations. there has also been a tendency to employ the common-battery system of operation in many places where magneto service should have been used, a mistake which has now been realized and corrected. in places where the simple magneto switchboard is the thing to use, the simpler it is the better, and the employment of locking relays and lamp signals and the complications which they carry with them, is not warranted. switchboard assembly. the assembly of all the parts of a simple magneto switchboard into a complete whole deserves final consideration. the structure in which the various parts are mounted, referred to as the cabinet, is usually of wood. _functions of cabinet._ the purpose of the cabinet is not only to form a support for the various pieces of apparatus but also to protect them from dust and mechanical injury, and to hold those parts that must be manipulated by the operator in such relation that they may be most convenient for use, and thus best adapted for carrying out their various functions. other points to be provided for in the design of the cabinet and the arrangement of the various parts within are: that all the apparatus that is in any way liable to get out of order may be readily accessible for inspection and repairs; and that provision shall be made whereby the wiring of these various pieces of apparatus may be done in a systematic and simple way so as to minimize the danger of crossed, grounded, or open circuits, and so as to provide for ready repair in case any of these injuries do occur. _wall-type switchboards._ the simplest form of switchboard is that for serving small communities in rural districts. ordinarily the telephone industry in such a community begins by a group of farmers along a certain road building a line connecting the houses of several of them and installing their own instruments. this line is liable to be extended to some store at the village or settlement, thus affording communication between these farmers and the center of their community. later on those residing on other roads do the same thing and connect their lines to the same store or central point. then it is that some form of switchboard is established, and perhaps the storekeeper's daughter or wife is paid a small fee for attendance. [illustration: fig. . wall switchboard with telephone] a switchboard well-adapted for this class of service where the number of lines is small, is shown in fig. . in this the operator's talking apparatus and her calling apparatus are embodied in an ordinary magneto wall telephone. the switchboard proper is mounted alongside of this, and the two line binding posts of the telephone are connected by a pair of wires to terminals of the operator's plug, which plug is shown hanging from the left-hand portion of the switchboard. the various lines centering at this point terminate in the combined drops and jacks on the switchboard, of which there are shown in this illustration. beside the operator's plug there are a number of pairs of plugs shown hanging from the switchboard cabinet. these are connected straight through in pairs, there being no clearing-out drops or keys associated with them in the arrangement. each line shown is provided with an extra jack, the purpose of which will be presently understood. the method of operation is as follows: when a subscriber on a certain line desires to get connection through the switchboard he turns his generator and throws the drop. the operator in order to communicate with him inserts the plug in which her telephone terminates into the jack, and removes her receiver from its hook. having learned that it is for a certain subscriber on another line, she withdraws her plug from the jack of the calling line and inserts it into the jack of the called line, then, hanging up her receiver, she turns the generator crank in accordance with the proper code to call that subscriber. when that subscriber responds she connects the two lines by inserting the two plugs of a pair into their respective jacks, and the subscribers are thus placed in communication. the extra jack associated with each line is merely an open jack having its terminals connected respectively with the two sides of the line. whenever an operator desires to listen in on two connected lines she does so by inserting the operator's plug into one of these extra jacks of the connected lines, and she may thus find out whether the subscribers are through talking or whether either one of them desires another connection. the drops in such switchboards are commonly high wound and left permanently bridged across the line so as to serve as clearing-out drops. the usual night-alarm attachment is provided, the buzzer being shown at the upper right-hand portion of the cabinet. [illustration: fig. . combined telephone and switchboard] another type of switchboard commonly employed for this kind of service is shown in fig. , in which the telephone and the switchboard cabinet are combined. the operation of this board is practically the same as that of fig. , although it has manually-restored drops instead of self-restoring drops; the difference between these two types, however, is not material for this class of service. for such work the operator has ample time to attend to the restoring of the drop and the only possible advantage in the combined drop-and-jack for this class of work is that it prevents the operator from forgetting to restore the drops. however, she is not likely to do this with the night-alarm circuit in operation, since the buzzer or bell would continue to ring as long as the drop was down. [illustration: fig. . upright magneto switchboard] [illustration: fig. . upright magneto switchboard--rear view] _upright type switchboard._ by far the most common type of magneto switchboard is the so-called upright type, wherein the drops and jacks are mounted on the face of upright panels rising from a horizontal shelf, which shelf contains the plugs, the keys, and any other apparatus which the operator must manipulate. front and rear views of such a switchboard, as manufactured by the kellogg company, are shown in figs. and . this particular board is provided with fifty combined drops and jacks and, therefore, equipped for fifty subscribers' lines. the drops and jacks are mounted in strips of five, and arranged in two panels. the clearing-out drops, of which there are ten, are arranged at the bottom of the two panels in a single row and may be seen immediately above the switchboard plugs. there are ten pairs of cords and plugs with their associated ringing and listening keys, the plugs being mounted on the rear portion of the shelf, while the ringing and listening keys are mounted on the hinged portion of the shelf in front of the plugs. [illustration: fig. . details of drop, jack, plug, and key arrangement] [illustration: fig. . cross-section of upright switchboard] a better idea of the arrangement of drops, jacks, plugs, and keys may be had from an illustration of a dean magneto switchboard shown in fig. . the clearing-out drops and the arrangement of the plugs and keys are clearly shown. the portion of the switchboard on which the plugs are mounted is always immovable, the plugs being provided with seats through which holes are bored of sufficient size to permit the switchboard cord to pass beneath the shelf. when one of these plugs is raised, the cord is pulled up through this hole thus allowing the plug to be placed in any of the jacks. the key arrangement shown in this particular cut is instructive. it will be noticed that the right-hand five pairs of plugs are provided with ordinary ringing and listening keys, while the left-hand five are provided with party-line ringing keys and listening keys. the listening key in each case is the one in the rear and is alike for all of the cord pairs. the right-hand five ringing keys are so arranged that pressing the lever to the rear will ring on the answering cord, while pressing it toward the front will cause ringing current to flow on the calling plug. in the left-hand five pairs of cords shown in this cut, the pressure of any one of the keys causes a ringing current of a certain frequency to flow on the calling cord, this frequency depending upon which one of the keys is pressed. [illustration: fig. . cord weight] an excellent idea of the grouping of the various pieces of apparatus in a complete simple magneto switchboard may be had from fig. . while the arrangement here shown is applicable particularly to the apparatus of the dean electric company, the structure indicated is none-the-less generally instructive, since it represents good practice in this respect. in this drawing the stationary plug shelf with the plug seat is clearly shown and also the hinged key shelf. the hinge of the key shelf is an important feature and is universally found in all switchboards of this general type. the key shelf may be raised and thus expose all of the wiring leading to the keys, as well as the various contacts of the keys themselves, to inspection. [illustration: fig. . magneto switchboard, target signals] as will be seen, the switchboard cords leading from the plugs extend down to a point near the bottom of the cabinet where they pass through pulley weights and then up to a stationary cord rack. on this cord rack are provided terminals for the various conductors in the cord, and it is at this point that the cord conductors join the other wires leading to the other portions of the apparatus as required. a good form of cord weight is shown in fig. ; and obviously the function of these weights is to keep the cords taut at all times and to prevent their tangling. [illustration: fig. . rear view of target signal, magneto switchboard] the drawing, fig. , also gives a good idea of the method of mounting the hand generator that is ordinarily employed with such magneto switchboards. the shaft of the generator is merely continued out to the front of the key shelf where the usual crank is provided, by means of which the operator is able to generate the necessary ringing current. beside the hand generator at each operator's position, it is quite common in magneto boards, of other than the smallest sizes, to employ some form of ringing generator, either a power-driven generator or a pole changer driven by battery current for furnishing ringing current without effort on the part of the operator. [illustration: fig. . dean two-position switchboard] switchboards as shown in figs. and , are called single-position switchboards because they afford room for a single operator. ordinarily for this class of work a single operator may handle from one to two hundred lines, although of course this depends on the amount of traffic on the line, and this, in turn, depends on the character of the subscribers served, and also on the average number of stations on a line. another single-position switchboard is shown in figs. and , being a front and rear view of the simple magneto switchboard of the western electric company, which is provided with the target signals of that company rather than the usual form of drop. where a switchboard must accommodate more lines than can be handled by a single operator, the cabinet is made wider so as to afford room for more than one operator to be seated before it. sometimes this is accomplished by building the cabinet wider, or by putting two such switchboard sections as are shown in figs. or side by side. a two-position switchboard section is shown in front and rear views in figs. and . [illustration: fig. . rear view of dean two-position switchboard] _sectional switchboards._ the problem of providing for growth in a switchboard is very much the same as that which confronts one in buying a bookcase for his library. the western electric company has met this problem, for very small rural exchanges, in much the same way that the sectional bookcase manufacturers have provided for the possible increase in bookcase capacity. like the sectional bookcase, this sectional switchboard may start with the smallest of equipment--a single sectional unit--and may be added to vertically as the requirements increase, the original equipment being usable in its more extended surroundings. [illustration: fig. . sectional switchboard--wall type] this line of switchboards is illustrated in figs. to . the beginning may be made with either a wall type or an upright type of switchboard, the former being mounted on brackets secured to the wall, and the latter on a table. a good idea of the wall type is shown in fig. . three different kinds of sectional units are involved in this: first, the unit which includes the cords, plugs, clearing-out drops, listening jacks, operator's telephone set and generator; second, the unit containing the line equipment, including a strip of ten magneto line signals and their corresponding jacks; third, the finishing top, which includes no equipment except the support for the operator's talking apparatus. [illustration: fig. . sectional switchboard--wall type] the first of the units in fig. forms the foundation on which the others are built. two of the line-equipment units are shown; these provide for a total of twenty lines. the top rests on the upper line-equipment unit, and when it becomes necessary to add one or more line-equipment units as the switchboard grows, this top is merely taken off, the other line-equipment units put in place on top of those already existing, and the top replaced. the wall type of sectional switchboard is so arranged that the entire structure may be swung out from the wall, as indicated in fig. , exposing all of the apparatus and wiring for inspection. each of the sectional units is provided with a separate door, as indicated, so that the rear door equipment is added to automatically as the sections are added. in the embodiment of the sectional switchboard idea shown in these two figures just referred to, no ringing and listening keys are provided, but the operator's telephone and generator terminate in a special plug--the left-hand one shown in fig. --and when the operator desires to converse with the connected subscribers, she does so by inserting the operator's plug into one of the jacks immediately below the clearing-out drop corresponding to the pair of plugs used in making the connection. the arrangement in this case is exactly the same in principle as that described in fig. . the operator's generator is so arranged in connection with this left-hand operator's plug that the turning of the generator crank automatically switches the operator's telephone set off and switches the generator on, just the same as a switch hook may do in a subscriber's series telephone. [illustration: fig. . sectional switchboard--table type] [illustration: fig. . sectional switchboard--table type] the upright type of sectional switchboard is shown in figs. and , which need no explanation in view of the foregoing, except to say that, in the particular instrument illustrated, ringing and listening keys are provided instead of the jack-and-plug arrangement of the wall type. in this case also, the top section carries an arm for supporting a swinging transmitter instead of the hook support for the combined transmitter and receiver. review questions [blank page] review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . when was the telephone invented and by whom? . state the velocity of sound in air. is it higher in air than in a denser medium? . state and define the characteristics of sound. . make sketch of bell's original magneto telephone without permanent magnets. . describe and sketch hughes' microphone. . which is, at present, the best material for varying the resistance in transmitters? . give the fundamental differences between the magneto transmitter and the carbon transmitter. . what is the function of the induction coil in the telephone circuit? . describe and sketch the different kinds of visible signals. . what should be the diameter of hard drawn copper wire in order to allow economical spacing of poles? . state the four principal properties of a telephone line. . if in testing a line the capacity is changed what are the results found on the receiver and transmitter end? . why is paper used as an insulator of telephone cables? . how does a conductor behave in connection with direct current and how with alternating current? . what influence has inductance on the telephone? . define impedance and give the formula for it. . what is the usual specification for insulation of resistance in telephone cables? . if feet of cable have an insulation resistance of , megohms, how great is the insulation resistance for miles and , feet of cable? . what is the practical limiting conversation distance for no. b. and s. wire? . describe professor pupin's method of inserting inductance into the telephone line. . what does _mho_ denote? . why are pupin's coils not so successful on open wires? . what is a repeater? . define _reactive interference_. . state the frequencies of the pitches of the human voice. . what is the office of a diaphragm in a telephone apparatus? . what transmitter material has greatly increased the ranges of speech? . describe the different methods of measurements of telephone circuits. . what are the two kinds of _electric calls_? . how many conductors has a telephone line? . give formula for capacity reactance and the meaning of the symbols. . which american cities are joined by underground lines at present? . state the two practical ways of improving telephone transmission. review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . on what general principle are most of the telephone transmitters of today constructed? . make sketch of the new western electric transmitter and describe its working. . make sketch and describe the kellogg transmitter. . what troubles were encountered in the earlier forms of granular carbon transmitters and how were they overcome? . what limits the current-carrying capacity of the transmitter? how may this capacity be increased? . state in what kind of transmitters a maximum degree of sensitiveness is desirable. . show the conventional symbols for transmitters. . describe a telephone receiver. . sketch a western electric receiver and point out its deficiencies. . make a diagram of the kellogg receiver. . describe the direct-current receiver of the automatic electric company. . describe and sketch the dean receiver. . show the conventional symbols of a receiver. . describe exactly how, in a cell composed of a tin and a silver plate with dilute sulphuric acid as electrolyte, the current inside and outside of the cell will flow. . describe the phenomenon of polarization. . what is _local action_ of a cell? how may it be prevented? . into how many classes may cells be divided? which class is most used in telephony? . describe the leclanché cell. . sketch and describe an excellent form of dry cell. . show the conventional symbols for batteries. . sketch and describe the generator shunt switch and the generator cut-in switch. . how may a pulsating current be derived from a magneto generator? . show conventional symbols for magneto generators. . sketch and describe the western electric polarized bell. . give conventional ringer symbols. . what is the purpose of the hook switch? . make sketch and give description of kellogg's long lever hook switch. . describe and sketch the western electric short lever hook switch. . point out the principal difference between the desk stand hook switches of the western electric company and of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. . give conventional symbols of hook switches. review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . describe an electromagnet and its function in telephony. . sketch an iron-clad electromagnet. . what is a differential electromagnet? sketch and describe one type. . state the desirable characteristics of good enamel insulation for magnet wire. . if you have a coil of no. double cotton b. and s. wire of ohms resistance and you have to rewind it for , ohms resistance with double cotton wire, what number of wire would you take? show calculation. note. no. d. c wire has res. . ohms per cubic inch; for the core, ohms. there are required in the coil , ohms, that is, . times as much. . x . = . ohms, which must be the resistance per cu. in. this resistance gives, according to table iv, no. wire. . what is an impedance coil? state how it differs from an electromagnet coil. . describe the different kinds of impedance coils. . give symbol of impedance coil. . what are the principal parts of an induction coil? . what is the function of an induction coil in telephony? . what is a repeating coil and how does it differ from an induction coil? . give conventional symbols of induction coils and repeating coils. . enumerate the different types of non-inductive resistance devices and give a short description of each. . define condenser. . what is the meaning of the word _dielectrics_? . state what you understand by the specific inductive capacity of a dielectric. . upon what factors does the capacity of a condenser depend? . what is the usual capacity of condensers in telephone practice? . give conventional condenser symbols. . by what two methods may the current be supplied to a telephone transmitter? . make sketch of local-battery stations with metallic circuit. . sketch common-battery circuit in series with two lines. . state the objections against the preceding arrangement. . make sketch of the standard arrangement of the western electric company in bridging the common battery with repeating coils. . sketch the arrangement of bridging the battery with impedance coils and state the purpose of the coils. . make diagram of a common-source current supply for many lines with repeating coils and point out the travel of the voice currents. . name the different parts which comprise a telephone set. . what is a magneto telephone? . make diagram of the circuit of a series magneto set with receiver on the hook and explain how the different currents are flowing. . show diagram of the stromberg-carlson magneto desk telephone circuit and describe its working. . give sketch of the stromberg-carlson common-battery wall set circuit. . describe briefly the microtelephone set. . make sketch of the monarch common-battery wall set. review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what is a party line? . what is usually understood by private lines? . what problem is there to overcome in connection with party lines? . state the two general classes of party-line systems. . point out the defects of the series system. . make sketch of a metallic bridging line and show the circuit for the voice currents. . what is a signal code? . give classification of selective party-line systems with short definitions. . describe the principle of selection by polarity and make sketch illustrating this principle. . make diagram of the circuit of a four-party station with relay. . describe the process of tuning in the harmonic system. . what is the difference between the under-tune and in-tune systems? . sketch circuit of kellogg's harmonic system. . illustrate the principle of a broken-line system by a sketch. . in what particulars does the party-line system in rural districts differ from that within urban limits? . describe and sketch pool's lock-out system. . make diagram of the k.b. lock-out system. . what is the object of the ratchet in this system? . make diagram of simplified circuits of roberts system. . sketch and describe roberts latching key and connections. . sketch circuits of bridging station for non-selective party line. . how would you arrange the signal code for six stations on a non-selective party line? . what is the limit of number of stations on a non-selective party line under ordinary circumstances? . state the objections against the party polarity system as shown in fig. . . what are the advantages of the harmonic party-line system? . to how many frequencies is the harmonic system usually limited? . what can you say about the commercial success of the step-by-step method? . state the principles of a lock-out party line. . for what purpose is a condenser placed in the receiver circuit of each station in the k.b. lock-out system? . how are the selecting relays in roberts line restored to their normal position after a conversation is finished? . what are the objections against the roberts system? review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what are electrical hazards? . when is the lightning hazard least? . what actions can electricity produce? which involves the greater hazard to the value of property? . when is a piece of apparatus called "self-protecting"? . why must a protector for telephone apparatus work more quickly for a large current than for a small one? . state the general problem which heating hazards present with relation to telephone apparatus. . what is the most nearly universal electrical hazard? . sketch and describe the saw-tooth lightning arrester. . make diagram of the carbon-block arrester and state its advantages. . describe a vacuum arrester. . explain the reason for placing an impedance in connection with the lightning arrester. . what is the purpose of the globule of low-melting alloy in the western electric company's arrester? . why are not fuses good lightning arresters? . what is the proper function of a fuse? . make sketch of a mica slip fuse. . define _sneak currents_. . make a diagram of a sneak-current arrester and describe its principles and working. . describe a heat coil. . sketch a complete line protection. . where is the proper position of the fuse? . which wires are considered exposed and which unexposed? . why is it not necessary to install sneak-current arresters in central-battery subscribers' stations? . sketch and describe the action of a combined sneak-current and air-gap arrester, as widely used by bell companies. . describe the self-soldering heat-coil arrester. . what is the purpose of ribbon fuses? . what is a drainage coil? review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what is a central office? . what are (_a_) subscriber's lines? (_b_) trunk lines? (_c_) toll lines? . for what purpose is the switchboard? . give short descriptions of the different classes of switchboards. . how are manual switchboards subdivided? describe briefly the different types. . define a and b boards. . what is a call circuit? . what kind of calls are handled on a toll switchboard? . give drop symbol and describe its principles. . what is a jack? . make a sketch of a plug inserted into a jack. . give jack and plug symbols. . what are ringing and listening keys? . show symbols for ringing and listening keys. . state the parts of which a cord equipment consists. . show step by step the various operations of a telephone system wherein the lines center in a magneto switchboard. make all the necessary diagrams and give brief descriptions to show that you understand each operation. . on what principle does a drop with night-alarm contact operate? . what is the advantage of associating jacks and drops? . describe the mechanical restoration as employed in the miller drop and jack. . describe the electrical restoration of drop shutters as manufactured by the western electric company. . what complications arise in ringing of party lines and how are they overcome? . give diagram of the complete circuit of a simple magneto switchboard. . sketch night-alarm circuit with relay. . what is a convertible cord circuit? . state what disadvantages may be encountered under certain conditions with a bridging drop-cord circuit. . are lamps in cord circuits to be advocated on magneto switchboards? . what is the function of the cabinet? . give cross-section of upright switchboard as used in the magneto system. . what is the purpose of a sectional switchboard? . give a short description of the essential parts of a sectional switchboard. index index _the page numbers of this volume will be found at the bottom of the pages; the numbers at the top refer only to the section._ a acousticon transmitter acoustics characteristics of sound loudness pitch timbre human ear human voice propagation of sound air-gap vs. fuse arresters amalgamated zincs arrester separators audible signals magneto bell telegraph sounder telephone receiver vibrating bell automatic electric company direct-current receiver transmitter automatic shunt b bar electromagnet battery bell battery symbols blake single electrode brazed bell broken-back ringer broken-line method of selective signaling c capacity reactance carbon adaptability limitations preparation of superiority carbon air-gap arrester carbon-block arrester carrying capacity of transmitter central-office protectors characteristics of sound loudness pitch timbre chloride of silver cell closed-circuit cells closed-circuit impedance coil common-battery telephone sets condensers capacity charge conventional symbols definition of dielectric dielectric materials functions means for assorting current sizes theory conductivity of conductors conductors, conductivity of conventional symbols cook air-gap arrester arrester arrester for magneto stations crowfoot cell current supply to transmitters common battery advantages bell substation arrangement bridging battery with impedance coils bridging battery with repeating coil current supply from distant point current supply over limbs of line in parallel dean substation arrangement double battery with impedance coil kellogg substation arrangement north electric company system series battery series substation arrangement stromberg-carlson system supply many lines from common source repeating coil retardation coil local battery d dean drop and jack receiver wall telephone hook desk stand hooks kellogg western electric dielectric dielectric materials dry paper mica differential electromagnet direct-current receiver drainage coils e electric lamp signal electrical hazards electrical reproduction of speech carbon conversion from sound waves to vibration of diaphragm conversion from vibration to voice currents conversion from voice currents to vibration cycle of conversion detrimental effects of capacity early conceptions electrostatic telephone induction coil limitations of magneto transmitter loose contact principle magneto telephone measurements of telephone currents variation of electrical pressure variation of resistance electrical signals audible magneto-bell telegraph sounder telephone receiver vibrating bell visible electric lamp signal electromagnetic signal electrodes arrangement of carbon preparation multiple single electrolysis electromagnetic method of measuring telephone currents electromagnetic signal electromagnets and inductive coils conventional symbols differential electromagnet direction of armature motion direction of lines of force electromagnets low-resistance circuits horseshoe form iron-clad form special horseshoe form impedance coils kind of iron number of turns types closed-circuit open-circuit toroidal induction coil current and voltage ratios design functions use and advantage magnet wire enamel silk and cotton insulation space utilization wire gauges magnetic flux magnetization curves magnetizing force mechanical details permeability reluctance repeating coil winding methods winding calculations winding data winding terminals electrostatic capacity unit of electrostatic telephone enamel f five-bar generator fuller cell g galvani generator armature generator cut-in switch generator shunt switch generator symbols granular carbon gravity cell h hand receivers harmonic method of selective signaling advantages circuits in-tune system limitations principles tuning under-tune system head receivers heat coil holtzer-cabot arrester hook switch automatic operation contact material design desk stand hooks kellogg western electric purpose symbols wall telephone hooks dean kellogg western electric horseshoe electromagnet human ear human voice i impedance coils kind of iron number of turns symbols of types closed-circuit open-circuit toroidal inductance vs. capacity induction coil current and voltage ratios design functions use and advantage inductive neutrality inductive reactance insulation of conductors introduction to telephony iron-clad electromagnet iron wire ballast k kellogg air-gap arrester desk stand hook drop and jack receiver ringer transmitter wall telephone hook l lalande cell lamp filament le clanché cell lenz law line signals lines of force, direction of loading coils lock-out party-line systems broken-line method operation poole system step-by-step system loudness of sound low-reluctance circuits horseshoe form iron-clad form m magnetic flux magnetization curves magnetizing force magneto bell magneto operator magneto signaling apparatus armature automatic shunt battery bell generator symbols magneto bell magneto generator method of signaling polarized ringer pulsating current ringer symbols theory magneto switchboard automatic restoration mechanical dean type kellogg type monarch type western electric type circuits of complete switchboard code signaling commercial types of drops and jacks early drops jack mounting manual vs. automatic restoration methods of associating night alarm tubular drops component parts jacks and plugs keys line and cord equipments line signal operators' equipment cord-circuit considerations double clearing-out type lamp-signal type non-ring through type series drop type simple bridging drop type definitions electrical restoration grounded and metallic-circuit lines mode of operation night-alarm circuits operation in detail clearing out essentials of operation normal condition of line operator answering operator calling subscriber calling subscribers conversing operator's telephone equipment cut-in jack ringing and listening keys horizontal spring type party-line ringing keys self-indicating keys vertical spring type switchboard assembly functions of cabinet sectional switchboards upright type of switchboard wall type switchboard switchboard cords concentric conductors parallel tinsel conductors steel spiral conductors switchboard plugs magneto telephone magneto telephone sets mica card resistance mica slip fuse microtelephone set monarch drop and jack monarch receiver monarch transmitter multiple electrode mutual induction n non-inductive resistance devices inductive neutrality provisions against heating temperature coefficient types differentially-wound unit iron wire ballast lamp filament mica card unit non-selective party-line systems bridging limitations series signal code o open-circuit cells open-circuit impedance coil operator's receiver p packing of transmitters permeability pitch doppler's principle vibration of diaphragms polarity method of selective signaling polarization of cells polarized ringer brazed bell kellogg western electric poole lock-out system primary cells conventional symbol series and multiple connections simple voltaic types of closed-circuit fuller gravity lalande prevention of creeping setting up open-circuit le clanché standard chloride of silver propagation of sound protective means against high potentials air-gap arrester advantages of carbon commercial types continuous arcs discharge across gaps dust between carbons introduction of impedance metallic electrodes vacuum arresters against sneak currents heat coil sneak-current arresters against strong currents fuses enclosed mica proper functions central-office protectors self-soldering heat coils sneak-current and air-gap arrester city exchange requirements complete line protection electrolysis subscribers' station protectors ribbon fuses pulsating-current commutator r receivers dean direct-current early kellogg modern monarch operator's single-pole symbols western electric reluctance repeating coil ribbon fuses ringer symbols ringing and listening key robert's latching relay robert's self-cleansing arrester rolled condenser s saw-tooth arrester selective party-line systems broken-line method classification broken-line systems harmonic systems polarity systems step-by-step systems harmonic method polarity method step-by-step method self-induction signal code signaling, method of silk and cotton insulation single electrode single-pole receiver sneak-current arresters solid-back transmitter sound characteristics of loudness pitch timbre standard cell step-by-step lock-out system step-by-step method of selective signaling subscribers' station protectors switchboard cords switchboard plugs switchboard transmitter symbols battery condenser generator hook switch impedance coil induction coil receiver repeating coil ringer ringing and listening key transmitter t table condenser data copper wire german silver wire-- per cent german silver wire-- per cent metals, behavior of, in different electrolysis signal code specific inductive capacities temperature coefficients transmission distances, limiting winding data for insulating wires tandem differential electromagnet telegraph sounder telephone currents, measurements of electromagnetic method thermal method telephone exchange, features of districts subscribers' lines switchboards toll lines trunk lines telephone lines conductivity of conductors electrostatic capacity inductance of circuit inductance vs. capacity insulation of conductors transmission telephone sets classification of common-battery telephone magneto telephone wall and desk telephones common-battery desk hotel wall magneto circuits of bridging series desk wall temperature coefficients thermal method of measuring telephone currents timbre toroidal impedance coil toroidal repeating coil transmission, ways of improving transmitters acousticon automatic electric company carrying capacity conventional diagram electrode arrangement of multiple single granular carbon kellogg materials monarch packing sensitiveness switchboard symbols variable resistance western electric solid-back u under-tuned ringer v vacuum arrester variable resistance vibrating bell visible signals electric lamp electromagnetic volta voltaic cell amalgamated zincs difference of potential local action polarization theory w wall telephone hooks dean kellogg western electric western electric air-gap arrester desk stand hook drop and jack receiver ringer solid-back transmitter station arrester wall telephone hook white transmitter wire gauges warning: this book of one hundred years ago describes experiments which are too dangerous to attempt by either adults or children. it is published for historical interest only. the "how-to-do-it" books electricity for boys [illustration: fig. . work bench] the "how-to-do-it" books electricity for boys a working guide, in the successive steps of electricity, described in simple terms with many original illustrations by j. s. zerbe, m.e. author of carpentry for boys practical mechanics for boys [illustration: printer's mark] the new york book company new york copyright, , by the new york book company contents introductory page i. electricity considered. brief historical events page the study of electricity. first historical accounts. bottling electricity. discovery of galvanic electricity. electro-motive force. measuring instruments. rapidity of modern progress. how to acquire the vast knowledge. the means employed. ii. what tools and apparatus are needed page preparing the workshop. uses of our workshop. what to build. what to learn. uses of the electrical devices. tools. magnet-winding reel. iii. magnets, coils, armatures, etc. page the two kinds of magnets. permanent magnets. electro-magnets. magnetism. materials for magnets. non-magnetic material. action of a _second_ magnet. what north and south pole mean. repulsion and attraction. positives and negatives. magnetic lines of force. the earth as a magnet. why the compass points north and south. peculiarity of a magnet. action of the electro-magnet. exterior magnetic influence around a wires carrying a current. parallel wires. iv. frictional, voltaic or galvanic and electro-magnetic electricity page three electrical sources. frictional electricity. leyden jar. voltaic or galvanic electricity. voltaic pile; how made. plus and minus signs. the common primary cell. battery resistance. electrolyte and current. electro-magnetic electricity. magnetic radiation. different kinds of dynamos. direct current dynamos. simple magnet construction. how to wind. the dynamo fields. the armature. armature windings. mounting the armature. the commutator. commutator brushes. dynamo windings. the field. series-wound field. shunt-wound. compound-wound. v. how to detect and measure electricity page measuring instruments. the detector. direction of current. simple current detector. how to place the detector. different ways to measure a current. the sulphuric acid voltameter. the copper voltameter. the galvanoscope electro-magnetic method. the calorimeter. the light method. the preferred method. how to make a sulphuric acid voltameter. how to make a copper voltameter. objections to the calorimeter. vi. volts, amperes, ohms and watts page understanding terms. intensity and quantity. voltage. amperage meaning of watts and kilowatt. a standard of measurement. the ampere standard. the voltage standard. the ohm. calculating the voltage. vii. push buttons, switches, annunciators, bells and like apparatus page simple switches. a two-pole switch. double-pole switch. sliding switch. reversing switch. push buttons. electric bells. how made. how operated. annunciators. burglar alarm. wire circuiting. circuiting system with two bells and push buttons. the push buttons, annunciators and bells. wiring up a house. viii. accumulators, storage or secondary batteries page storing up electricity. the accumulator. accumulator plates. the grid. the negative pole. connecting up the plates. charging the cells. the initial charge. the charging current. ix. the telegraph page mechanism in telegraph circuit. the sending key. the sounder. connecting up the key and sounder. two stations in circuit. the double click. illustrating the dot and the dash. the morse telegraph code. example in use. x. high-tension apparatus, condensers, etc. page induction. low and high tension. elastic property of electricity. the condenser. connecting up a condenser. the interrupter. uses of high-tension coils. xi. wireless telegraphy page telegraphing without wires. surging character of high-tension currents. the coherer. how made. the decoherer. the sending apparatus. the receiving apparatus. how the circuits are formed. xii. the telephone page vibrations. the acoustic telephone. sound waves. hearing electricity. the diaphragm in a magnetic field. a simple telephone circuit. how to make a telephone. telephone connections. complete installation. the microphone. light contact points. how to make a microphone. microphone, the father of the transmitter. automatic cut-outs for telephones. complete circuiting with transmitters. xiii. electrolysis, water purification, electroplating page decomposing liquids. making hydrogen and oxygen. purifying water. rust. oxygen as a purifier. composition of water. common air not a good purifier. pure oxygen a water purifier. the use of hydrogen in purification. aluminum electrodes. electric hand purifier. purification and separation of metals. electroplating. plating iron with copper. direction of current. xiv. electric heating. thermo-electricity page generating heat in a wire. resistance of substances. signs of connectors. comparison of metals. a simple electric heater. how to arrange for quantity of current used. an electric iron. thermo-electricity converting heat directly into electricity metals. electric, positive, negative. thermo-electric coupler. xv. alternating currents, choking coil, transformer page direct current. alternating current. the magnetic field. action of a magnetized wire. the movement of a current in a charged wire. current reversing itself. self-induction. brushes in a direct current dynamo: alternating, positive and negative poles. how an alternating current dynamo is made. the windings. the armature wires. choking coils. the transformer. how the voltage is determined. voltage and amperage in transformers. xvi. electric lighting page early conditions. fuels. reversibility of dynamo. electric arc. mechanism to maintain the arc. resistance coil. parallel carbons for making arc. series current. incandescent system. multiple circuit. subdivision of electric light. the filament. the glass bulb. metallic filaments. vapor lamps. directions for improvements. heat in electric lighting. curious superstitions concerning electricity. magnetism. amber. discovery of the properties of a magnet. electricity in mountain regions. early beliefs as to magnetism and electricity. the lightning rod. protests against using it. pliny's explanation of electricity. xvii. power, and various other electrical manifestations page early beliefs concerning the dynamo. experiments with magnets. physical action of dynamo and motor. electrical influence in windings. comparing motor and dynamo. how the current acts in a dynamo. its force in a motor. loss in power transmission. the four ways in which power is dissipated. disadvantages of electric power. its advantages. transmission of energy. high voltages. the transformer. step-down transformers. electric furnaces. welding by electricity. merging the particles of the joined ends. xviii. x-ray, radium and the like page the camera and the eye. actinic rays. hertzian waves. high-tension apparatus. vacuum tubes. character of the ultra-violet rays. how distinguished. the infra-red rays. their uses. x-rays not capable of reflection. not subject to refraction. transmission through opaque substances. reducing rates of vibration. radium. radio-activity. radio-active materials. pitchblende. a new form of energy. electrical source. healing power. problems for scientists. list of illustrations fig. . work bench frontispiece page . top of magnet-winding reel . side of magnet-winding reel . journal block . plain magnet bar . severed magnet . reversed magnets . horseshoe magnet . earth's magnetic lines . two permanent magnets . magnets in earth's magnetic field . armatures for magnets . magnetized field . magnetized bar . direction of current . direction of induction current . frictional-electricity machine . leyden jar . galvanic electricity. crown of cups . voltaic electricity . primary battery . dynamo field and pole piece . base and fields assembled . details of the armature, core . details of the armature, body . armature journals . commutator . end view of armature, mounted . top view of armature on base . field winding . series-wound . shunt-wound . compound-wound . compass magnet, swing to the right . magnetic compass . magnet, swing to the left . indicating direction of current . the bridge of the detector . details of detector . cross-section of detector . acid voltameter . copper voltameter . two-pole switch . double-pole switch . sliding switch . rheostat form of switch . reversing switch . push button . electric bell . armature of electric bell . vertical section of annunciator . front view of annunciator . horizontal section of annunciator . front plate of annunciator . alarm switch on window . burglar alarm on window . burglar alarm contact . neutral position of contact . circuiting for electric bell . annunciators in circuit . wiring system for a house . accumulator grids . assemblage of accumulator grids . connecting up storage battery in series . parallel series . charging circuit . telegraph sending key . telegraph sounder . a telegraph circuit . induction coil and circuit . illustrating elasticity . condenser . high-tension circuit . current interrupter . wireless-telegraphy coherer . wireless sending-apparatus . wireless receiving-apparatus . acoustic telephone . illustrating vibrations . the magnetic field . section of telephone receiver . the magnet and receiver head . simple telephone connection . telephone stations in circuit . illustrating light contact points . the microphone . the transmitter . complete telephone circuit . device for making hydrogen and oxygen . electric-water purifier . portable electric purifier . section of positive plate . section of negative plate . positive and negative in position . form of the insulator . simple electric heater . side view of resistance device . top view of resistance device . plan view of electric iron . section of electric iron . thermo-electric couple . cutting a magnetic field . alternations, first position . alternations, second position . alternations, third position . alternations, fourth position . increasing alternations, first view . increasing alternations, second view . connection of alternating dynamo armature . direct current dynamo . circuit wires in direct current dynamo . alternating polarity lines . alternating current dynamo . choking coil . a transformer . parallel carbons . arc-lighting circuit . interrupted conductor . incandescent circuit . magnetic action in dynamo, st . magnetic action in dynamo, d . magnetic action in dynamo, d . magnetic action in dynamo, th . magnetic action in motor, st . magnetic action in motor, d . magnetic action in motor, d . magnetic action in motor, th introductory electricity, like every science, presents two phases to the student, one belonging to a theoretical knowledge, and the other which pertains to the practical application of that knowledge. the boy is directly interested in the practical use which he can make of this wonderful phenomenon in nature. it is, in reality, the most successful avenue by which he may obtain the theory, for he learns the abstract more readily from concrete examples. it is an art in which shop practice is a greater educator than can be possible with books. boys are not, generally, inclined to speculate or theorize on phenomena apart from the work itself; but once put them into contact with the mechanism itself, let them become a living part of it, and they will commence to reason and think for themselves. it would be a dry, dull and uninteresting thing to tell a boy that electricity can be generated by riveting together two pieces of dissimilar metals, and applying heat to the juncture. but put into his hands the metals, and set him to perform the actual work of riveting the metals together, then wiring up the ends of the metals, heating them, and, with a galvanometer, watching for results, it will at once make him see something in the experiment which never occurred when the abstract theory was propounded. he will inquire first what metals should be used to get the best results, and finally, he will speculate as to the reasons for the phenomena. when he learns that all metals are positive-negative or negative-positive to each other, he has grasped a new idea in the realm of knowledge, which he unconsciously traces back still further, only to learn that he has entered a field which relates to the constitution of matter itself. as he follows the subject through its various channels he will learn that there is a common source of all things; a manifestation common to all matter, and that all substances in nature are linked together in a most wonderful way. an impulse must be given to a boy's training. the time is past for the rule-and-rote method. the rule can be learned better by a manual application than by committing a sentence to memory. in the preparation of this book, therefore, i have made practice and work the predominating factors. it has been my aim to suggest the best form in which to do the things in a practical way, and from that work, as the boy carries it out, to deduce certain laws and develop the principles which underlie them. wherever it is deemed possible to do so, it is planned to have the boy make these discoveries for himself, so as to encourage him to become a thinker and a reasoner instead of a mere machine. a boy does not develop into a philosopher or a scientist through being told he must learn the principles of this teaching, or the fundamentals of that school of reasoning. he will unconsciously imbibe the spirit and the willingness if we but place before him the tools by which he may build even the simple machinery that displays the various electrical manifestations. chapter i the study of electricity. historical there is no study so profound as electricity. it is a marvel to the scientist as well as to the novice. it is simple in its manifestations, but most complex in its organization and in its ramifications. it has been shown that light, heat, magnetism and electricity are the same, but that they differ merely in their modes of motion. first historical account.--the first historical account of electricity dates back to years b. c. thales of miletus was the first to describe the properties of amber, which, when rubbed, attracted and repelled light bodies. the ancients also described what was probably tourmaline, a mineral which has the same qualities. the torpedo, a fish which has the power of emitting electric impulses, was known in very early times. from that period down to about the year no accounts of any historical value have been given. dr. gilbert, of england, made a number of researches at that time, principally with amber and other materials, and boyle, in , made numerous experiments with frictional electricity. sir isaac newton also took up the subject at about the same period. in hawksbee made numerous experiments; also gray, in , and a welshman, dufay, at about the same time. the germans, from to , made many experiments. in , at leyden, was discovered the jar which bears that name. before that time, all experiments began and ended with frictional electricity. the first attempt to "bottle" electricity was attempted by muschenbr[oe]ck, at leyden, who conceived the idea that electricity in materials might be retained by surrounding them with bodies which did not conduct the current. he electrified some water in a jar, and communication having been established between the water and the prime conductor, his assistant, who was holding the bottle, on trying to disengage the communicating wire, received a sudden shock. in sir william watson fired gunpowder by an electric spark, and, later on, a party from the royal society, in conjunction with watson, conducted a series of experiments to determine the velocity of the electric fluid, as it was then termed. benjamin franklin, in , showed that lightning was electricity, and later on made his interesting experiments with the kite and the key. discovering galvanic electricity.--the great discovery of galvani, in , led to the recognition of a new element in electricity, called galvanic or voltaic (named after the experimenter, volta), and now known to be identical with frictional electricity. in poisson was the first to analyze electricity; and when [oe]rsted of copenhagen, in , discovered the magnetic action of electricity, it offered a great stimulus to the science, and paved the way for investigation in a new direction. ampere was the first to develop the idea that a motor or a dynamo could be made operative by means of the electro-magnetic current; and faraday, about , discovered electro-magnetic rotation. electro-magnetic force.--from this time on the knowledge of electricity grew with amazing rapidity. ohm's definition of electro-motive force, current strength and resistance eventuated into ohm's law. thomson greatly simplified the galvanometer, and wheatstone invented the rheostat, a means of measuring resistance, about . then primary batteries were brought forward by daniels, grove, bunsen and thomson, and electrolysis by faraday. then came the instruments of precision--the electrometer, the resistance bridge, the ammeter, the voltmeter--all of the utmost value in the science. measuring instruments.--the perfection of measuring instruments did more to advance electricity than almost any other field of endeavor; so that after the inventors took up the subject, and by their energy developed and put into practical operation a most wonderful array of mechanism, which has become valuable in the service of man in almost every field of human activity. rapidity of modern progress.--this brief history is given merely to show what wonders have been accomplished in a few years. the art is really less than fifty years old, and yet so rapidly has it gone forward that it is not at all surprising to hear the remark, that the end of the wonders has been reached. less than twenty-five years ago a high official of the united states patent office stated that it was probable the end of electrical research had been reached. the most wonderful developments have been made since that time; and now, as in the past, one discovery is but the prelude to another still more remarkable. we are beginning to learn that we are only on the threshold of that storehouse in which nature has locked her secrets, and that there is no limit to human ingenuity. how to acquire the vast knowledge.--as the boy, with his limited vision, surveys this vast accumulation of tools, instruments and machinery, and sees what has been and is now being accomplished, it is not to be wondered at that he should enter the field with timidity. in his mind the great question is, how to acquire the knowledge. there is so much to learn. how can it be accomplished? the answer to this is, that the student of to-day has the advantage of the knowledge of all who have gone before; and now the pertinent thing is to acquire that knowledge. the means employed.--this brings us definitely down to an examination of the means that we shall employ to instil this knowledge, so that it may become a permanent asset to the student's store of information. the most significant thing in the history of electrical development is the knowledge that of all the great scientists not one of them ever added any knowledge to the science on purely speculative reasoning. all of them were experimenters. they practically applied and developed their theories in the laboratory or the workshop. the natural inference is, therefore, that the boy who starts out to acquire a knowledge of electricity, must not only theorize, but that he shall, primarily, conduct the experiments, and thereby acquire the information in a practical way, one example of which will make a more lasting impression than pages of dry text. throughout these pages, therefore, i shall, as briefly as possible, point out the theories involved, as a foundation for the work, and then illustrate the structural types or samples; and the work is so arranged that what is done to-day is merely a prelude or stepping-stone to the next phase of the art. in reality, we shall travel, to a considerable extent, the course which the great investigators followed when they were groping for the facts and discovering the great manifestations in nature. chapter ii what tools and apparatus are needed preparing the workshop.--before commencing actual experiments we should prepare the workshop and tools. since we are going into this work as pioneers, we shall have to be dependent upon our own efforts for the production of the electrical apparatus, so as to be able, with our home-made factory, to provide the power, the heat and the electricity. then, finding we are successful in these enterprises, we may look forward for "more worlds to conquer." by this time our neighbors will become interested in and solicit work from us. uses of our workshops.--they may want us to test batteries, and it then becomes necessary to construct mechanism to detect and measure electricity; to install new and improved apparatus; and to put in and connect up electric bells in their houses, as well as burglar alarms. to meet the requirements, we put in a telegraph line, having learned, as well as we are able, how they are made and operated. but we find the telegraph too slow and altogether unsuited for our purposes, as well as for the uses of the neighborhood, so we conclude to put in a telephone system. what to build.--it is necessary, therefore, to commence right at the bottom to build a telephone, a transmitter, a receiver and a switch-board for our system. from the telephone we soon see the desirability of getting into touch with the great outside world, and wireless telegraphy absorbs our time and energies. but as we learn more and more of the wonderful things electricity will do, we are brought into contact with problems which directly interest the home. sanitation attracts our attention. why cannot electricity act as an agent to purify our drinking water, to sterilize sewage and to arrest offensive odors? we must, therefore, learn something about the subject of electrolysis. what to learn.--the decomposition of water is not the only thing that we shall describe pertaining to this subject. we go a step further, and find that we can decompose metals as well as liquids, and that we can make a pure metal out of an impure one, as well as make the foulest water pure. but we shall also, in the course of our experiments, find that a cheap metal can be coated with a costly one by means of electricity--that we can electroplate by electrolysis. uses of the electrical devices.--while all this is progressing and our factory is turning out an amazing variety of useful articles, we are led to inquire into the uses to which we may devote our surplus electricity. the current may be diverted for boiling water; for welding metals; for heating sad-irons, as well as for other purposes which are daily required. tools.--to do these things tools are necessary, and for the present they should not be expensive. a small, rigidly built bench is the first requirement. this may be made, as shown in fig. , of three -inch planks, each inches wide and feet long, mounted on legs inches in height. in the front part are three drawers for your material, or the small odds and ends, as well as for such little tools as you may accumulate. then you will need a small vise, say, with a -inch jaw, and you will also require a hand reel for winding magnets. this will be fully described hereafter. you can also, probably, get a small, cheap anvil, which will be of the greatest service in your work. it should be mounted close up to the work bench. two small hammers, one with an a-shaped peon, and the other with a round peon, should be selected, and also a plane and a small wood saw with fine teeth. a bit stock, or a ratchet drill, if you can afford it, with a variety of small drills; two wood chisels, say of / -inch and / -inch widths; small cold chisels; hack saw, -inch blade; small iron square; pair of dividers; tin shears; wire cutters; pairs of pliers, one flat and the other round-nosed; awls, centering punch, wire cutters, and, finally, soldering tools. [illustration: _fig. . top view_ magnet-winding reel] [illustration: _fig. . side view_ magnet-winding reel] if a gas stove is not available, a brazing torch is an essential tool. numerous small torches are being made, which are cheap and easily operated. a small soldering iron, with pointed end, should be provided; also metal shears and a small square; an awl and several sizes of gimlets; a screwdriver; pair of pliers and wire cutters. from the foregoing it will be seen that the cost of tools is not a very expensive item. this entire outfit, not including the anvil and vise, may be purchased new for about $ . , so we have not been extravagant. magnet-winding reel.--some little preparation must be made, so we may be enabled to handle our work by the construction of mechanical aids. [illustration: _fig. . journal block._] first of these is the magnet-winding reel, a plan view of which is shown in fig. . this, for our present work, will be made wholly of wood. select a plank - / inches thick and inches wide, and from this cut off two pieces (a), each inches long, and then trim off the corners (b, b), as shown in fig. . to serve as the mandrel (c, fig. ), select a piece of broomstick inches long. bore a hole (d) in each block (a) a half inch below the upper margin of the block, this hole being of such diameter that the broomstick mandrel will fit and easily turn therein. place a crank (e), inches long, on the outer end of the mandrel, as in fig. . then mount one block on the end of the bench and the other block inches away. affix them to the bench by nails or screws, preferably the latter. on the inner end of the mandrel put a block (f) of hard wood. this is done by boring a hole inch deep in the center of the block, into which the mandrel is driven. on the outer face of the block is a square hole large enough to receive the head of a / -inch bolt, and into the depression thus formed a screw (g) is driven through the block and into the end of the mandrel, so as to hold the block (f) and mandrel firmly together. when these parts are properly put together, the inner side of the block will rest and turn against the inner journal block (a). the tailpiece is made of a " � " scantling (h), inches long, one end of it being nailed to a transverse block (i) " � " � ". the inner face of this block has a depression in which is placed a v-shaped cup (j), to receive the end of the magnet core (k) or bolt, which is to be used for this purpose. the tailpiece (h) has a longitudinal slot (l) inches long adapted to receive a / -inch bolt (m), which passes down through the bench, and is, therefore, adjustable, so it may be moved to and from the journal bearing (a), thereby providing a place for the bolts to be put in. these bolts are the magnet cores (k), inches long, but they may be even longer, if you bore several holes (n) through the bench so you may set over the tailpiece. with a single tool made substantially like this, over a thousand of the finest magnets have been wound. its value will be appreciated after you have had the experience of winding a few magnets. order in the workshop.--select a place for each tool on the rear upright of the bench, and make it a rule to put each tool back into its place after using. this, if persisted in, will soon become a habit, and will save you hours of time. hunting for tools is the unprofitable part of any work. chapter iii magnets, coils, armatures, etc. the two kinds of magnet.--generally speaking, magnets are of two kinds, namely, permanent and electro-magnetic. permanent magnets.--a permanent magnet is a piece of steel in which an electric force is exerted at all times. an electro-magnet is a piece of iron which is magnetized by a winding of wire, and the magnet is energized only while a current of electricity is passing through the wire. electro-magnet.--the electro-magnet, therefore, is the more useful, because the pull of the magnet can be controlled by the current which actuates it. the electro-magnet is the most essential of all contrivances in the operation and use of electricity. it is the piece of mechanism which does the physical work of almost every electrical apparatus or machine. it is the device which has the power to convert the unseen electric current into motion which may be observed by the human eye. without it electricity would be a useless agent to man. while the electro-magnet is, therefore, the form of device which is almost wholly used, it is necessary, first, to understand the principles of the permanent magnet. magnetism.--the curious force exerted by a magnet is called magnetism, but its origin has never been explained. we know its manifestations only, and laws have been formulated to explain its various phases; how to make it more or less intense; how to make its pull more effective; the shape and form of the magnet and the material most useful in its construction. [illustration: _fig ._ plain magnet bar] materials for magnets.--iron and steel are the best materials for magnets. some metals are non-magnetic, this applying to iron if combined with manganese. others, like sulphur, zinc, bismuth, antimony, gold, silver and copper, not only are non-magnetic, but they are actually repelled by magnetism. they are called the diamagnetics. non-magnetic materials.--any non-magnetic body in the path of a magnetic force does not screen or diminish its action, whereas a magnetic substance will. in fig. we show the simplest form of magnet, merely a bar of steel (a) with the magnetic lines of force passing from end to end. it will be understood that these lines extend out on all sides, and not only along two sides, as shown in the drawing. the object is to explain clearly how the lines run. [illustration: _fig. ._ severed magnet] action of a severed magnet.--now, let us suppose that we sever this bar in the middle, as in fig. , or at any other point between the ends. in this case each part becomes a perfect magnet, and a new north pole (n) and a new south pole (s) are made, so that the movement of the magnetic lines of force are still in the same direction in each--that is, the current flows from the north pole to the south pole. what north and south poles mean.--if these two parts are placed close together they will attract each other. but if, on the other hand, one of the pieces is reversed, as in fig. , they will repel each other. from this comes the statement that likes repel and unlikes attract each other. repulsion and attraction.--this physical act of repulsion and attraction is made use of in motors, as we shall see hereinafter. it will be well to bear in mind that in treating of electricity the north pole is always associated with the plus sign (+) and the south pole with the minus sign (-). or the n sign is positive and the s sign negative electricity. [illustration: _fig. ._ reversed magnets] positives and negatives.--there is really no difference between positive and negative electricity, so called, but the foregoing method merely serves as a means of identifying or classifying the opposite ends of a magnet or of a wire. magnetic lines of force.--it will be noticed that the magnetic lines of force pass through the bar and then go from end to end through the atmosphere. air is a poor conductor of electricity, so that if we can find a shorter way to conduct the current from the north pole to the south pole, the efficiency of the magnet is increased. this is accomplished by means of the well-known horseshoe magnet, where the two ends (n, s) are brought close together, as in fig. . the earth as a magnet.--the earth is a huge magnet and the magnetic lines run from the north pole to the south pole around all sides of the globe. [illustration: _fig. ._ horseshoe magnet] the north magnetic pole does not coincide with the true north pole or the pivotal point of the earth's rotation, but it is sufficiently near for all practical purposes. fig. shows the magnetic lines running from the north to the south pole. why the compass points north and south.--now, let us try to ascertain why the compass points north and south. let us assume that we have a large magnet (a, fig. ), and suspend a small magnet (b) above it, so that it is within the magnetic field of the large magnet. this may be done by means of a short pin (c), which is located in the middle of the magnet (b), the upper end of this pin having thereon a loop to which a thread (d) is attached. the pin also carries thereon a pointer (e), which is directed toward the north pole of the bar (b). [illustration: _fig. ._ earth's magnetic lines] you will now take note of the interior magnetic lines (x), and the exterior magnetic lines (z) of the large magnet (a), and compare the direction of their flow with the similar lines in the small magnet (b). the small magnet has both its exterior and its interior lines within the exterior lines (z) of the large magnet (a), so that as the small magnet (b) is capable of swinging around, the n pole of the bar (b) will point toward the s pole of the larger bar (a). the small bar, therefore, is influenced by the exterior magnetic field (z). [illustration: _fig. ._ two permanent magnets] [illustration: _fig. ._ magnets in the earth's magnetic field] let us now take the outline represented by the earth's surface (fig. ), and suspend a magnet (a) at any point, like the needle of a compass, and it will be seen that the needle will arrange itself north and south, within the magnetic field which flows from the north to the south pole. peculiarity of a magnet.--one characteristic of a magnet is that, while apparently the magnetic field flows out at one end of the magnet, and moves inwardly at the other end, the power of attraction is just the same at both ends. in fig. are shown a bar (a) and a horseshoe magnet (b). the bar (a) has metal blocks (c) at each end, and each of these blocks is attracted to and held in contact with the ends by magnetic influence, just the same as the bar (d) is attracted by and held against the two ends of the horseshoe magnet. these blocks (c) or the bar (d) are called armatures. through them is represented the visible motion produced by the magnetic field. [illustration: _fig. ._ armatures for magnets] action of the electro-magnet.--the electro-magnet exerts its force in the same manner as a permanent magnet, so far as attraction and repulsion are concerned, and it has a north and a south pole, as in the case with the permanent magnet. an electro-magnet is simply a bar of iron with a coil or coils of wire around it; when a current of electricity flows through the wire, the bar is magnetized. the moment the current is cut off, the bar is demagnetized. the question that now arises is, why an electric current flowing through a wire, under those conditions, magnetizes the bar, or _core_, as it is called. [illustration: _fig. ._ magnetized field] [illustration: _fig. ._ magnetized bar] in fig. is shown a piece of wire (a). let us assume that a current of electricity is flowing through this wire in the direction of the darts. what actually takes place is that the electricity extends out beyond the surface of the wire in the form of the closed rings (b). if, now, this wire (a) is wound around an iron core (c, fig. ), you will observe that this electric field, as it is called, entirely surrounds the core, or rather, that the core is within the magnetic field or influence of the current flowing through the wire, and the core (c) thereby becomes magnetized, but it is magnetized only when the current passes through the wire coil (a). [illustration: _fig. ._ direction of current] from the foregoing, it will be understood that a wire carrying a current of electricity not only is affected within its body, but that it also has a sphere of influence exteriorly to the body of the wire, at all points; and advantage is taken of this phenomenon in constructing motors, dynamos, electrical measuring devices and almost every kind of electrical mechanism in existence. exterior magnetic influence around a wire carrying a current.--bear in mind that the wire coil (a, fig. ) does not come into contact with the core (c). it is insulated from the core, either by air or by rubber or other insulating substance, and a current passing from a to c under those conditions is a current of _induction_. on the other hand, the current flowing through the wire (a) from end to end is called a _conduction_ current. remember these terms. in this connection there is also another thing which you will do well to bear in mind. in fig. you will notice a core (c) and an insulated wire coil (b) wound around it. the current, through the wire (b), as shown by the darts (d), moves in one direction, and the induced current in the core (c) travels in the opposite direction, as shown by the darts (d). [illustration: _fig. ._ direction of induction current] parallel wires.--in like manner, if two wires (a, b, fig. ) are parallel with each other, and a current of electricity passes along the wire (a) in one direction, the induced current in the wire (b) will move in the opposite direction. these fundamental principles should be thoroughly understood and mastered. chapter iv frictional, voltaic or galvanic, and electro-magnetic electricity three electrical sources.--it has been found that there are three kinds of electricity, or, to be more accurate, there are three ways to generate it. these will now be described. when man first began experimenting, he produced a current by frictional means, and collected the electricity in a bottle or jar. electricity, so stored, could be drawn from the jar, by attaching thereto suitable connection. this could be effected only in one way, and that was by discharging the entire accumulation instantaneously. at that time they knew of no means whereby the current could be made to flow from the jar as from a battery or cell. frictional electricity.--with a view of explaining the principles involved, we show in fig. a machine for producing electricity by friction. [illustration: _fig. ._ friction-electricity machine] this is made up as follows: a represents the base, having thereon a flat member (b), on which is mounted a pair of parallel posts or standards (c, c), which are connected at the top by a cross piece (d). between these two posts is a glass disc (e), mounted upon a shaft (f), which passes through the posts, this shaft having at one end a crank (g). two leather collecting surfaces (h, h), which are in contact with the glass disc (e), are held in position by arms (i, j), the arm (i) being supported by the cross piece (d), and the arm (j) held by the base piece (b). a rod (k), u-shaped in form, passes over the structure here thus described, its ends being secured to the base (b). the arms (i, j) are both electrically connected with this rod, or conductor (k), joined to a main conductor (l), which has a terminating knob (m). on each side and close to the terminal end of each leather collector (h) is a fork-shaped collector (n). these two collectors are also connected electrically with the conductor (k). when the disc is turned electricity is generated by the leather flaps and accumulated by the collectors (n), after which it is ready to be discharged at the knob (m). in order to collect the electricity thus generated a vessel called a leyden jar is used. leyden jar.--this is shown in fig. . the jar (a) is of glass coated exteriorly at its lower end with tinfoil (b), which extends up a little more than halfway from the bottom. this jar has a wooden cover or top (c), provided centrally with a hole (d). the jar is designed to receive within it a tripod and standard (e) of lead. within this lead standard is fitted a metal rod (f), which projects upwardly through the hole (d), its upper end having thereon a terminal knob (g). a sliding cork (h) on the rod (f) serves as a means to close the jar when not in use. when in use this cork is raised so the rod may not come into contact, electrically, with the cover (c). the jar is half filled with sulphuric acid (i), after which, in order to charge the jar, the knob (g) is brought into contact with the knob (m) of the friction generator (fig. ). voltaic or galvanic electricity.--the second method of generating electricity is by chemical means, so called, because a liquid is used as one of the agents. [illustration: _fig. ._ leyden jar] galvani, in , made the experiments which led to the generation of electricity by means of liquids and metals. the first battery was called the "crown of cups," shown in fig. , and consisting of a row of glass cups (a), containing salt water. these cups were electrically connected by means of bent metal strips (b), each strip having at one end a copper plate (c), and at the other end a zinc plate (d). the first plate in the cup at one end is connected with the last plate in the cup at the other end by a conductor (e) to make a complete circuit. [illustration: _fig. ._ galvanic electricity. crown of cups] the cell and battery.--from the foregoing it will be seen that within each cup the current flows from the zinc to the copper plates, and exteriorly from the copper to the zinc plates through the conductors (b and e). a few years afterwards volta devised what is known as the voltaic pile (fig. ). voltaic pile--how made.--this is made of alternate discs of copper and zinc with a piece of cardboard of corresponding size between each zinc and copper plate. the cardboard discs are moistened with acidulated water. the bottom disc of copper has a strip which connects with a cup of acid, and one wire terminal (a) runs therefrom. the upper disc, which is of zinc, is also connected, by a strip, with a cup of acid from which extends the other terminal wire (b). [illustration: _fig. ._ voltaic electricity] _plus and minus signs._--it will be noted that the positive or copper disc has the plus sign (+) while the zinc disc has the minus (-) sign. these signs denote the positive and the negative sides of the current. the liquid in the cells, or in the moistened paper, is called the _electrolyte_ and the plates or discs are called _electrodes_. to define them more clearly, the positive plate is the _anode_, and the negative plate the _cathode_. the current, upon entering the zinc plate, decomposes the water in the electrolyte, thereby forming oxygen. the hydrogen in the water, which has also been formed by the decomposition, is carried to the copper plate, so that the plate finally is so coated with hydrogen that it is difficult for the current to pass through. this condition is called "polarization," and to prevent it has been the aim of all inventors. to it also we may attribute the great variety of primary batteries, each having some distinctive claim of merit. the common primary cell.--the most common form of primary cell contains sulphuric acid, or a sulphuric acid solution, as the electrolyte, with zinc for the _anode_, and carbon, instead of copper, for the _cathode_. the ends of the zinc and copper plates are called _terminals_, and while the zinc is the anode or positive element, its _terminal_ is designated as the positive pole. in like manner, the carbon is the negative element or cathode, and its terminal is designated as negative pole. fig. will show the relative arrangement of the parts. it is customary to term that end or element from which the current flows as positive. a cell is regarded as a whole, and as the current passes out of the cell from the copper element, the copper terminal becomes positive. [illustration: _fig. ._ primary battery] battery resistance, electrolyte and current.--the following should be carefully memorized: a cell has reference to a single vessel. when two or more cells are coupled together they form a _battery_. _resistance_ is opposition to the movement of the current. if it is offered by the electrolyte, it is designated "internal resistance." if, on the other hand, the opposition takes place, for instance, through the wire, it is then called "external resistance." the electrolyte must be either acid, or alkaline, or saline, and the electrodes must be of dissimilar metals, so the electrolyte will attack one of them. the current is measured in amperes, and the force with which it is caused to flow is measured in volts. in practice the word "current" is used to designate ampere flow; and electromotive force, or e. m. f., is used instead of voltage. electro-magnetic electricity.--the third method of generating electricity is by electro-magnets. the value and use of induction will now be seen, and you will be enabled to utilize the lesson concerning magnetic action referred to in the previous chapter. magnetic radiation.--you will remember that every piece of metal which is within the path of an electric current has a space all about its surface from end to end which is electrified. this electrified field extends out a certain distance from the metal, and is supposed to maintain a movement around it. if, now, another piece of metal is brought within range of this electric or magnetic zone and moved across it, so as to cut through this field, a current will be generated thereby, or rather added to the current already exerted, so that if we start with a feeble current, it can be increased by rapidly "cutting the lines of force," as it is called. different kinds of dynamo.--while there are many kinds of dynamo, they all, without exception, are constructed in accordance with this principle. there are also many varieties of current. for instance, a dynamo may be made to produce a high voltage and a low amperage; another with high amperage and low voltage; another which gives a direct current for lighting, heating, power, and electroplating; still another which generates an alternating current for high tension power, or transmission, arc-lighting, etc., all of which will be explained hereafter. in this place, however, a full description of a direct-current dynamo will explain the principle involved in all dynamos--that to generate a current of electricity makes it necessary for us to move a field of force, like an armature, rapidly and continuously through another field of force, like a magnetic field. direct-current dynamo.--we shall now make the simplest form of dynamo, using for this purpose a pair of permanent magnets. [illustration: _fig. ._ dynamo field and pole piece] simple magnet construction.--a simple way to make a pair of magnets for this purpose is shown in fig. . a piece of round / -inch steel core (a), - / inches long, is threaded at both ends to receive at one end a nut (b), which is screwed on a sufficient distance so that the end of the core (a) projects a half inch beyond the nut. the other end of the steel core has a pole piece of iron (c) " � " � ", with a hole midway between the ends, threaded entirely through, and provided along one side with a concave channel, within which the armature is to turn. now, before the pole piece (c) is put on, we will slip on a disc (e), made of hard rubber, then a thin rubber tube (f), and finally a rubber disc (g), so as to provide a positive insulation for the wire coil which is wound on the bobbin thus made. how to wind.--in practice, and as you go further along in this work, you will learn the value, first, of winding one layer of insulated wire on the spool, coating it with shellac, and then putting on the next layer, and so on; when completely wound, the two wire terminals may be brought out at one end; but for our present purpose, and to render the explanation clearer, the wire terminals are at the opposite ends of the spool (h, h'). the dynamo fields.--two of these spools are so made and they are called the _fields_ of the dynamo. we will next prepare an iron bar (i), inches long and / inch thick and - / inches wide, then bore two holes through it so the distance measures inches from center to center. these holes are to be threaded for the / -inch cores (a). this bar holds together the upper ends of the cores, as shown in fig. . [illustration: _fig. ._ base and fields assembled] we then prepare a base (j) of any hard wood, inches thick, inches long and inches wide, and bore two / -inch holes inches apart on a middle line, to receive a pair of / -inch cap screws (k), which pass upwardly through the holes in the base and screw into the pole pieces (c). a wooden bar (l), - / " � - / ", inches long, is placed under each pole piece, which is also provided with holes for the cap screws (k). the lower side of the base (j) should be countersunk, as at m, so the head of the nut will not project. the fields of the dynamo are now secured in position to the base. [illustration: _fig. ._ details of the armature, core _fig. ._ details of the armature, body] the armature.--a bar of iron (fig. ), " � " and - / inches long, is next provided. through this bar ( ) are then bored two / -inch holes - / inches apart, and on the opposite sides of this bar are two half-rounded plates of iron ( ) (fig. ). armature winding.--each plate is / inch thick, - / inches wide and inches long, each plate having holes ( ) to coincide with the holes ( ) of the bar ( ), so that when the two plates are applied to opposite sides of the bar, and riveted together, a cylindrical member is formed, with two channels running longitudinally, and transversely at the ends; and in these channels the insulated wires are wound from end to end around the central block ( ). mounting the armature.--it is now necessary to provide a means for revolving this armature. to this end a brass disc ( , fig. ) is made, inches in diameter, / inch thick. centrally, at one side, is a projecting stem ( ) of round brass, which projects out inches, and the outer end is turned down, as at , to form a small bearing surface. [illustration: _fig. ._ journals _fig. ._ commutator, armature mountings] the other end of the armature has a similar disc ( ), with a central stem ( ), - / inches long, turned down to / -inch diameter up to within / inch of the disc ( ), so as to form a shoulder. the commutator.--in fig. is shown, at , a wooden cylinder, inch long and - / inches in diameter, with a hole ( ) bored through axially, so that it will fit tightly on the stem ( ) of the disc ( ). on this wooden cylinder is driven a brass or copper tube ( ), which has holes ( ) opposite each other. screws are used to hold the tube to the wooden cylinder, and after they are properly secured together, the tube ( ) is cut by a saw, as at , so as to form two independent tubular surfaces. [illustration: _fig. ._ end view armature, mounted] these tubular sections are called the commutator plates. [illustration: _fig. ._ top view of armature on base] in order to mount this armature, two bearings are provided, each comprising a bar of brass ( , fig. ), each / inch thick, / inch wide and - / inches long. two holes, inches apart, are formed through this bar, to receive round-headed wood screws ( ), these screws being inches long, so they will pass through the wooden pieces (i) and enter the base (j). midway between the ends, each bar ( ) has an iron bearing block ( ), / " � / " and - / inches high, the / -inch hole for the journal ( ) being midway between its ends. commutator brushes.--fig. shows the base, armature and commutator assembled in position, and to these parts have been added the commutator brushes. the brush holder ( ) is a horizontal bar made of hard rubber loosely mounted upon the journal pin ( ), which is - / inches long. at each end is a right-angled metal arm ( ) secured to the bar ( ) by screws ( ). to these arms the brushes ( ) are attached, so that their spring ends engage with the commutator ( ). an adjusting screw ( ) in the bearing post ( ), with the head thereof bearing against the brush-holder ( ), serves as a means for revolubly adjusting the brushes with relation to the commutator. dynamo windings.--there are several ways to wind the dynamos. these can be shown better by the following diagrams (figs. , , , ): the field.--if the field (a, fig. ) is not a permanent magnet, it must be excited by a cell or battery, and the wires (b, b') are connected up with a battery, while the wires (c, c') may be connected up to run a motor. this would, therefore, be what is called a "separately excited" dynamo. in this case the battery excites the field and the armature (d), cutting the lines of force at the pole pieces (e), so that the armature gathers the current for the wires (c, c'). [illustration: _fig. ._ field winding] [illustration: _fig. ._ series-wound] series-wound field.--fig. shows a "series-wound" dynamo. the wires of the fields (a) are connected up in series with the brushes of the armature (d), and the wires (g, g') are led out and connected up with a lamp, motor or other mechanism. in this case, as well as in figs. and , both the field and the armature are made of soft gray iron. with this winding and means of connecting the wires, the field is constantly excited by the current passing through the wires. shunt-wound field.--fig. represents what is known as a "shunt-wound" dynamo. here the field wires (h, h) connect with the opposite brushes of the armature, and the wires (i, i') are also connected with the brushes, these two wires being provided to perform the work required. this is a more useful form of winding for electroplating purposes. [illustration: _fig. ._ shunt-wound _fig. ._ compound-wound] compound-wound field.--fig. is a diagram of a "compound-wound" dynamo. the regular field winding (j) has its opposite ends connected directly with the armature brushes. there is also a winding, of a comparatively few turns, of a thicker wire, one terminal (k) of which is connected with one of the brushes and the other terminal (k') forms one side of the lighting circuit. a wire (l) connects with the other armature brush to form a complete lighting circuit. chapter v how to detect and measure electricity measuring instruments.--the production of an electric current would not be of much value unless we had some way by which we might detect and measure it. the pound weight, the foot rule and the quart measure are very simple devices, but without them very little business could be done. there must be a standard of measurement in electricity as well as in dealing with iron or vegetables or fabrics. as electricity cannot be seen by the human eye, some mechanism must be made which will reveal its movements. the detector.--it has been shown in the preceding chapter that a current of electricity passing through a wire will cause a current to pass through a parallel wire, if the two wires are placed close together, but not actually in contact with each other. an instrument which reveals this condition is called a _galvanometer_. it not only detects the presence of a current, but it shows the direction of its flow. we shall now see how this is done. for example, the wire (a, fig. ) is connected up in an electric circuit with a permanent magnet (b) suspended by a fine wire (c), so that the magnet (b) may freely revolve. [illustration: _fig. ._ _fig. ._ _fig. ._ to the right, compass magnet, to the left] for convenience, the magnetic field is shown flowing in the direction of the darts, in which the dart (d) represents the current within the magnet (b) flowing toward the north pole, and the darts (e) showing the exterior current flowing toward the south pole. now, if the wire (a) is brought up close to the magnet (b), and a current passed through a, the magnet (b) will be affected. fig. shows the normal condition of the magnetized bar (b) parallel with the wire (a) when a current is not passing through the latter. direction of current.--if the current should go through the wire (a) from right to left, as shown in fig. , the magnet (b) would swing in the direction taken by the hands of a clock and assume the position shown in fig. . if, on the other hand, the current in the wire (a) should be reversed or flow from left to right, the magnet (b) would swing counter-clock-wise, and assume the position shown in fig. . the little pointer (g) would, in either case, point in the direction of the flow of the current through the wire (a). [illustration: _fig. ._ indicating direction of current] simple current detector.--a simple current detector may be made as follows: prepare a base ' � ' in size and inch thick. at each corner of one end fix a binding post, as at a, a', fig. . then select feet of no. cotton-insulated wire, and make a coil (b) inches in diameter, leaving the ends free, so they may be affixed to the binding posts (a, a'). now glue or nail six blocks (c) to the base, each block being " � " � ", and lay the coil on these blocks. then drive an l-shaped nail (d) down into each block, on the inside of the coil, as shown, so as to hold the latter in place. [illustration: _fig. ._ the bridge] now make a bridge (e, fig. ) of a strip of brass / inch wide, / inch thick and long enough to span the coil, and bend the ends down, as at f, so as to form legs. a screw hole (g) is formed in each foot, so it may be screwed to the base. midway between the ends this bridge has a transverse slot (h) in one edge, to receive therein the pivot pin of the swinging magnet. in order to hold the pivot pin in place, cut out an h-shaped piece of sheet brass (i), which, when laid on the bridge, has its ends bent around the latter, as shown at j, and the crossbar of the h-shaped piece then will prevent the pivot pin from coming out of the slot (h). [illustration: _fig. ._ details of detector] the magnet is made of a bar of steel (k, fig. ) - / inches long, / inch wide and / inch thick, a piece of a clock spring being very serviceable for this purpose. the pivot pin is made of an ordinary pin (l), and as it is difficult to solder the steel magnet (k) to the pin, solder only a small disc (m) to the pin (l). then bore a hole (n) through the middle of the magnet (k), larger in diameter than the pin (l), and, after putting the pin in the hole, pour sealing wax into the hole, and thereby secure the two parts together. near the upper end of the pin (l) solder the end of a pointer (o), this pointer being at right angles to the armature (k). it is better to have a metal socket for the lower end of the pin. when these parts are put together, as shown in fig. , a removable glass top, or cover, should be provided. this is shown in fig. , in which a square, wooden frame (p) is used, and a glass (q) fitted into the frame, the glass being so arranged that when the cover is in position it will be in close proximity to the upper projecting end of the pivot pin (l), and thus prevent the magnet from becoming misplaced. [illustration: _fig. ._ cross section of detector] how to place the detector.--if the detector is placed north and south, as shown by the two markings, n and s (fig. ), the magnet bar will point north and south, being affected by the earth's magnetism; but when a current of electricity flows through the coil (b), the magnet will be deflected to the right or to the left, so that the pointer (o) will then show the direction in which the current is flowing through the wire (r) which you are testing. the next step of importance is to _measure_ the current, that is, to determine its strength or intensity, as well as the flow or quantity. different ways of measuring a current.--there are several ways to measure the properties of a current, which may be defined as follows: . the sulphuric acid voltameter.--by means of an electrolytic action, whereby the current decomposes an acidulated solution--that is, water which has in it a small amount of sulphuric acid--and then measuring the gas generated by the current. . the copper voltameter.--by electro-chemical means, in which the current passes through plates immersed in a solution of copper sulphate. . the galvanoscope.--by having a coil of insulated wire, with a magnet suspended so as to turn freely within the coil, forming what is called a galvanoscope. . electro-magnetic method.--by using a pair of magnets and sending a current through the coils, and then measuring the pull on the armature. . the power or speed method.--by using an electric fan, and noting the revolutions produced by the current. . the calorimeter.--by using a coil of bare wire, immersed in paraffine oil, and then measuring the temperature by means of a thermometer. [illustration: _fig. ._ acid voltameter] [illustration: _fig. ._ copper voltameter] . the light method.--lastly, by means of an electric light, which shows, by its brightness, a greater or less current. the preferred methods.--it has been found that the first and second methods are the only ones which will accurately register current strength, and these methods have this advantage--that the chemical effect produced is not dependent upon the size or shape of the apparatus or the plates used. how to make a sulphuric acid voltameter.--in fig. is shown a simple form of sulphuric acid voltameter, to illustrate the first method. a is a jar, tightly closed by a cover (b). within is a pair of platinum plates (c, c), each having a wire (d) through the cover. the cover has a vertical glass tube (e) through it, which extends down to the bottom of the jar, the electrolyte therein being a weak solution of sulphuric acid. when a current passes through the wires (d), the solution is partially decomposed--that is, converted into gas, which passes up into the vacant space (f) above the liquid, and, as it cannot escape, it presses the liquid downwardly, and causes the latter to flow upwardly into the tube (e). it is then an easy matter, after the current is on for a certain time, to determine its strength by the height of the liquid in the tube. how to make a copper voltameter.--the second, or copper voltameter, is shown in fig. . the glass jar (a) contains a solution of copper sulphate, known in commerce as blue vitriol. a pair of copper plates (b, b') are placed in this solution, each being provided with a connecting wire (c). when a current passes through the wires (c), one copper plate (b) is eaten away and deposited on the other plate (b'). it is then an easy matter to take out the plates and find out how much in weight b' has gained, or how much b has lost. in this way, in comparing the strength of, say, two separate currents, one should have each current pass through the voltameter the same length of time as the other, so as to obtain comparative results. it is not necessary, in the first and second methods, to consider the shapes, the sizes of the plates or the distances between them. in the first method the gas produced, within a given time, will be the same, and in the second method the amount deposited or eaten away will be the same under all conditions. disadvantages of the galvanoscope.--with the third method (using the galvanoscope) it is necessary, in order to get a positively correct reading instrument, to follow an absolutely accurate plan in constructing each part, in every detail, and great care must be exercised, particularly in winding. it is necessary also to be very careful in selecting the sizes of wire used and in the number of turns made in the coils. this is equally true of the fourth method, using the electro-magnet, because the magnetic pull is dependent upon the size of wire from which the coils are made and the number of turns of wire. objections to the calorimeter.--the calorimeter, or sixth method, has the same objection. the galvanoscope and electro-magnet do not respond equally to all currents, and this is also true, even to a greater extent, with the calorimeter. chapter vi volts, amperes, ohms and watts understanding terms.--we must now try to ascertain the meaning of some of the terms so frequently used in connection with electricity. if you intended to sell or measure produce or goods of any kind, it would be essential to know how many pints or quarts are contained in a gallon, or in a bushel, or how many inches there are in a yard, and you also ought to know just what the quantity term _bushel_ or the measurement _yard_ means. intensity and quantity.--electricity, while it has no weight, is capable of being measured by means of its intensity, or by its quantity. light may be measured or tested by its brilliancy. if one light is of less intensity than another and both of them receive their impulses from the same source, there must be something which interferes with that light which shows the least brilliancy. electricity can also be interfered with, and this interference is called _resistance_. voltage.--water may be made to flow with greater or less force, or velocity, through a pipe, the degree of same depending upon the height of the water which supplies the pipe. so with electricity. it may pass over a wire with greater or less force under one condition than another. this force is called voltage. if we have a large pipe, a much greater quantity of water will flow through it than will pass through a small pipe, providing the pressure in each case is alike. this quantity in electricity is called _amperage_. in the case of water, a column " � ", inches in height, weighs pound; so that if a pipe inch square draws water from the bottom it flows with a pressure of pound. if the pipe has a measurement of square inches, double the quantity of water will flow therefrom, at the same pressure. amperage.--if, on the other hand, we have a pipe inch square, and there is a depth of inches of water in the reservoir, we shall get as much water from the reservoir as though we had a pipe of square inches drawing water from a reservoir which is inches deep. meaning of watts.--it is obvious, therefore, that if we multiply the height of the water in inches with the area of the pipe, we shall obtain a factor which will show how much water is flowing. here are two examples: . inches = height of the water in the reservoir. square inches = size of the pipe. multiply � = . . = height of the water in the reservoir. square inch = size of the pipe. multiply � = . thus the two problems are equal. a kilowatt.--now, in electricity, remembering that the height of the water corresponds with _voltage_ in electricity, and the size of the pipe with _amperage_, if we multiply volts by amperes, or amperes by volts, we get a result which is indicated by the term _watts_. one thousand of these watts make a kilowatt, and the latter is the standard of measurement by which a dynamo or motor is judged or rated. thus, if we have amperes and volts, the result of multiplying them would be watts, or volts and amperes would produce watts. a standard of measurement.--but with all this we must have some standard. a bushel measure is of a certain size, and a foot has a definite length, so in electricity there is a recognized force and quantity which are determined as follows: the ampere standard.--it is necessary, first, to determine what an ampere is. for this purpose a standard solution of nitrate of silver is used, and a current of electricity is passed through this solution. in doing so the current deposits silver at the rate of . grains per second for each ampere. the voltage standard.--in order to determine the voltage we must know something of _resistance_. different metals do not transmit a current with equal ease. the size of a conductor, also, is an important factor in the passage of a current. a large conductor will transmit a current much better than a small conductor. we must therefore have a standard for the _ohm_, which is the measure of resistance. the ohm.--it is calculated in this way: there are several standards, but the one most generally employed is the _international ohm_. to determine it, by this system, a column of pure mercury, . millimeters long and weighing . grams, is used. this would make a square tube about inches long, and a little over / of an inch in diameter. the resistance to a current flow in such a column would be equal to ohm. calculating the voltage.--in order to arrive at the voltage we must use a conductor, which, with a resistance of ohm, will produce ampere. it must be remembered that the volt is the practical unit of electro-motive force. while it would be difficult for the boy to conduct these experiments in the absence of suitable apparatus, still, it is well to understand thoroughly how and why these standards are made and used. chapter vii push buttons, switches, annunciators, bells and like apparatus simple switches.--we have now gone over the simpler or elementary outlines of electrical phenomena, and we may commence to do some of the practical work in the art. we need certain apparatus to make connections, which will be constructed first. a two-pole switch.--a simple two-pole switch for a single line is made as follows: a base block (a, fig. ) inches long, inches wide and / inch thick, has on it, at one end, a binding screw (b), which holds a pair of fingers (c) of brass or copper, these fingers being bent upwardly and so arranged as to serve as fingers to hold a switch bar (d) between them. this bar is also of copper or brass and is pivoted to the fingers. near the other end of the base is a similar binding screw (e) and fingers (f) to receive the blade of the switch bar. the bar has a handle (g) of wood. the wires are attached to the respective binding screws (b, e). double-pole switch.--a double-pole switch or a switch for a double line is shown in fig. . this is made similar in all respects to the one shown in fig. , excepting that there are two switch blades (a, a) connected by a cross bar (b) of insulating material, and this bar carries the handle (c). [illustration: _fig. ._ two-pole switch] [illustration: _fig. ._ double-pole switch] other types of switch will be found very useful. in fig. is a simple sliding switch in which the base block has, at one end, a pair of copper plates (a, b), each held at one end to the base by a binding screw (c), and having a bearing or contact surface (d) at its other end. at the other end of the base is a copper plate (e) held by a binding screw (f), to the inner end of which plate is hinged a swinging switch blade (g), the free end of which is adapted to engage with the plates (a, b). [illustration: _fig. ._ sliding switch] sliding switch.--this sliding switch form may have the contact plates (a, b and c, fig. ) circularly arranged and any number may be located on the base, so they may be engaged by a single switching lever (h). it is the form usually adopted for rheostats. reversing switch.--a reversing switch is shown in fig. . the base has two plates (a, b) at one end, to which the parallel switch bars (c, d) are hinged. the other end of the base has three contact plates (e, f, g) to engage the swinging switch bars, these latter being at such distance apart that they will engage with the middle and one of the outer plates. the inlet wires, positive and negative, are attached to the plates (a, b, respectively), and one of the outlet wires (h) is attached to the middle contact plate (f), while the other wire is connected up with both of the outside plates. when the switch bars (c, d) are thrown to the left so as to be in contact with e, f, the outside plate (e) and the middle plate (f) will be positive and negative, respectively; but when the switch is thrown to the right, as shown in the figure, plate f becomes positive and plate e negative, as shown. [illustration: _fig. ._ rheostat form of switch] push buttons.--a push button is but a modified structure of a switch, and they are serviceable because they are operating, or the circuit is formed only while the finger is on the button. [illustration: _fig. ._ reversing switch] in its simplest form (fig. ) the push button has merely a circular base (a) of insulating material, and near one margin, on the flat side, is a rectangular plate (b), intended to serve as a contact plate as well as a means for attaching one of the wires thereto. in line with this plate is a spring finger (c), bent upwardly so that it is normally out of contact with the plate (b), its end being held by a binding screw (d). to effect contact, the spring end of the finger (c) is pressed against the bar (b), as at e. this is enclosed in a suitable casing, such as will readily suggest itself to the novice. electric bell.--one of the first things the boy wants to make, and one which is also an interesting piece of work, is an electric bell. to make this he will be brought, experimentally, in touch with several important features in electrical work. he must make a battery for the production of current, a pair of electro-magnets to be acted upon by the current, a switch to control it, and, finally, he must learn how to connect it up so that it may be operated not only from one, but from two or more push buttons. [illustration: _fig. ._ push button] how made.--in fig. is shown an electric bell, as usually constructed, so modified as to show the structure at a glance, with its connections. a is the base, b, b' the binding posts for the wires, c, c the electro-magnets, c' the bracket for holding the magnets, d the armature, e the thin spring which connects the armature with the post f, g the clapper arm, h the bell, i the adjusting screw on the post j, k the wire lead from the binding post b to the first magnet, l the wire which connects the two magnets, m the wire which runs from the second magnet to the post j, and n a wire leading from the armature post to the binding post b'. [illustration: _fig. ._ electric bell] the principle of the electric bell is this: in looking at fig. , you will note that the armature bar d is held against the end of the adjusting screw by the small spring e. when a current is turned on, it passes through the connections and conduits as follows: wire k to the magnets, wire m to the binding post j, and set screw i, then through the armature to the post f, and from post f to the binding post b'. [illustration: _fig. ._ armature of electric bell] electric bell--how operated.--the moment a current passes through the magnets (c, c), the core is magnetized, and the result is that the armature (d) is attracted to the magnets, as shown by the dotted lines (o), when the clapper strikes the bell. but when the armature moves over to the magnet, the connection is broken between the screw (i) and armature (d), so that the cores of the magnets are demagnetized and lose their pull, and the spring (e) succeeds in drawing back the armature. this operation of vibrating the armature is repeated with great rapidity, alternately breaking and re-establishing the circuit, by the action of the current. in making the bell, you must observe one thing, the binding posts (b, b') must be insulated from each other, and the post j, or the post f, should also be insulated from the base. for convenience we show the post f insulated, so as to necessitate the use of wire (n) from post (f) to binding post (b'). the foregoing assumes that you have used a cast metal base, as most bells are now made; but if you use a wooden base, the binding posts (b, b') and the posts (f, j) are insulated from each other, and the construction is much simplified. it is better, in practice, to have a small spring (p, fig. ) between the armature (d) and the end of the adjusting screw (i), so as to give a return impetus to the clapper. the object of the adjusting screw is to push and hold the armature close up to the ends of the magnets, if it seems necessary. if two bells are placed on the base with the clapper mounted between them, both bells will be struck by the swinging motion of the armature. an easily removable cap or cover is usually placed over the coils and armature, to keep out dust. a very simple annunciator may be attached to the bell, as shown in the following figures: [illustration: _figs. - ._ annunciator] annunciators.--make a box of wood, with a base (a) " � " and / inch thick. on this you can permanently mount the two side pieces (b) and two top and bottom pieces (c), respectively, so they project outwardly - / inches from the base. on the open front place a wood or metal plate (d), provided with a square opening (d), as in fig. , near its lower end. this plate is held to the box by screws (e). within is a magnet (f), screwed into the base (a), as shown in fig. ; and pivoted to the bottom of the box is a vertical armature (g), which extends upwardly and contacts with the core of the magnet. the upper end of the armature has a shoulder (h), which is in such position that it serves as a rest for a v-shaped stirrup (i), which is hinged at j to the base (c). this stirrup carries the number plate (k), and when it is raised to its highest point it is held on the shoulder (h), unless the electro-magnet draws the armature out of range of the stirrup. a spring (l) bearing against the inner side of the armature keeps its upper end normally away from the magnet core. when the magnet draws the armature inwardly, the number plate drops and exposes the numeral through the opening in the front of the box. in order to return the number plate to its original position, as shown in fig. , a vertical trigger (m) passes up through the bottom, its upper end being within range of one of the limbs of the stirrup. this is easily made by the ingenious boy, and will be quite an acquisition to his stock of instruments. in practice, the annunciator may be located in any convenient place and wires run to that point. [illustration: _fig. ._ alarm switch on window] [illustration: _fig. ._ burglar alarm attachment to window] burglar alarm.--in order to make a burglar alarm connection with a bell, push buttons or switches may be put in circuit to connect with the windows and doors, and by means of the annunciators you may locate the door or window which has been opened. the simplest form of switch for a window is shown in the following figures: the base piece (a), which may be of hard rubber or fiber, is / inch thick and " � - / " in size. [illustration: _fig. ._ burglar alarm contact] at one end is a brass plate (b), with a hole for a wood screw (c), this screw being designed to pass through the plate and also into the window-frame, so as to serve as a means of attaching one of the wires thereto. the inner end of the plate has a hole for a round-headed screw (c') that also goes through the base and into the window-frame. it also passes through the lower end of the heart-shaped metal switch-piece (d). the upper end of the base has a brass plate (e), also secured to the base and window by a screw (f) at its upper end. the heart-shaped switch is of such length and width at its upper end that when it is swung to the right with one of the lobes projecting past the edge of the window-frame, the other lobe will be out of contact with the plate (e). [illustration: _fig. ._ neutral position of contact] the window sash (g) has a removable pin (h), which, when the sash moves upwardly, is in the path of the lobe of the heart-shaped switch, as shown in fig. , and in this manner the pin (h) moves the upper end of the switch (d) inwardly, so that the other lobe contacts with the plate (e), and establishes an electric circuit, as shown in fig. . during the daytime the pin (h) may be removed, and in order to protect the switch the heart-shaped piece (d) is swung inwardly, as shown in fig. , so that neither of the lobes is in contact with the plate (e). wire circuiting.--for the purpose of understanding fully the circuiting, diagrams will be shown of the simple electric bell with two push buttons; next in order, the circuiting with an annunciator and then the circuiting necessary for a series of windows and doors, with annunciator attachments. [illustration: _fig. ._ circuiting for electric bell] circuiting system with a bell and two push buttons.--fig. shows a simple circuiting system which has two push buttons, although any number may be used, so that the bell will ring when the circuit is closed by either button. the push buttons and the annunciator bells.--fig. shows three push buttons and an annunciator for each button. these three circuits are indicated by a, b and c, so that when either button makes contact, a complete circuit is formed through the corresponding annunciator. [illustration: _fig. ._ _annunciators_] [illustration: _fig. ._ wiring system for a house] wiring up a house.--the system of wiring up a house so that all doors and windows will be connected to form a burglar alarm outfit, is shown in fig. . it will be understood that, in practice, the bell is mounted on or at the annunciator, and that, for convenience, the annunciator box has also a receptacle for the battery. the circuiting is shown diagramatically, as it is called, so as fully to explain how the lines are run. two windows and a door are connected up with an annunciator having three drops, or numbers , , . the circuit runs from one pole of the battery to the bell and then to one post of the annunciator. from the other post a wire runs to one terminal of the switch at the door or window. the other switch terminal has a wire running to the other pole of the battery. a, b, c represent the circuit wires from the terminals of the window and door switches, to the annunciators. it is entirely immaterial which side of the battery is connected up with the bell. from the foregoing it will readily be understood how to connect up any ordinary apparatus, remembering that in all cases the magnet must be brought into the electric circuit. chapter viii accumulators. storage or secondary batteries storing up electricity.--in the foregoing chapters we have seen that, originally, electricity was confined in a bottle, called the leyden jar, from which it was wholly discharged at a single impulse, as soon as it was connected up by external means. later the primary battery and the dynamo were invented to generate a constant current, and after these came the second form of storing electricity, called the storage or secondary battery, and later still recognized as accumulators. the accumulator.--the term _accumulator_ is, strictly speaking, the more nearly correct, as electricity is, in reality, "_stored_" in an accumulator. but when an accumulator is charged by a current of electricity, a chemical change is gradually produced in the active element of which the accumulator is made. this change or decomposition continues so long as the charging current is on. when the accumulator is disconnected from the charging battery or dynamo, and its terminals are connected up with a lighting system, or with a motor, for instance, a reverse process is set up, or the particles re-form themselves into their original compositions, which causes a current to flow in a direction opposite to that of the charging current. it is immaterial to the purposes of this chapter, as to the charging source, whether it be by batteries or dynamos; the same principles will apply in either case. [illustration: _fig. ._ accumulator grids] accumulator plates.--the elements used for accumulator plates are red lead for the positive plates, and precipitated lead, or the well-known litharge, for the negative plates. experience has shown that the best way to hold this material is by means of lead grids. fig. shows the typical form of one of these grids. it is made of lead, cast or molded in one piece, usually square, as at a, with a wing or projection (b), at one margin, extending upwardly and provided with a hole (c). the grid is about a quarter of an inch thick. the grid.--the open space, called the grid, proper, comprises cross bars, integral with the plate, made in a variety of shapes. fig. shows three forms of constructing these bars or ribs, the object being to provide a form which will hold in the lead paste, which is pressed in so as to make a solid-looking plate when completed. the positive plate.--the positive plate is made in the following manner: make a stiff paste of red lead and sulphuric acid; using a solution, say, of one part of acid to two parts of water. the grid is laid on a flat surface and the paste forced into the perforations with a stiff knife or spatula. turn over the grid so as to get the paste in evenly on both sides. the grid is then stood on its edge, from to hours, to dry, and afterwards immersed in a concentrated solution of chloride of lime, so as to convert it into lead peroxide. when the action is complete it is thoroughly rinsed in cold water, and is ready to use. the negative plate.--the negative plate is filled, in like manner, with precipitated lead. this lead is made by putting a strip of zinc into a standard solution of acetate of lead, and crystals will then form on the zinc. these will be very thin, and will adhere together, firmly, forming a porous mass. this, when saturated and kept under water for a short time, may be put into the openings of the negative plate. [illustration: _fig. ._ assemblage of accumulator plates] connecting up the plates.--the next step is to put these plates in position to form a battery. in fig. is shown a collection of plates connected together. for simplicity in illustrating, the cell is made up of glass, porcelain, or hard rubber, with five plates (a), a, a representing the negative and b, b the positive plates. a base of grooved strips (c, c) is placed in the batteries of the cell to receive the lower ends of the plates. the positive plates are held apart by means of a short section of tubing (d), which is clamped and held within the plates by a bolt (e), this bolt also being designed to hold the terminal strip (f). in like manner, the negative plates are held apart by the two tubular sections (g), each of which is of the same length as the section d of the positives. the bolt (h) holds the negatives together as well as the terminal (i). the terminals should be lead strips, and it would be well, owing to the acid fumes which are formed, to coat all brass work, screws, etc., with paraffine wax. the electrolyte or acid used in the cell, for working purposes, is a pure sulphuric acid, which should be diluted with about four times its weight in water. remember, you should always add the strong acid to the water, and never pour the water into the acid, as the latter method causes a dangerous ebullition, and does not produce a good mixture. put enough of this solution into the cell to cover the tops of the plates, and the cell is ready. [illustration: _fig. ._ connecting up storage battery in series] charging the cells.--the charge of the current must never be less than . volts. each cell has an output, in voltage, of about volts, hence if we have, say, cells, we must have at least volts charging capacity. we may arrange these in one line, or in series, as it is called, so far as the connections are concerned, and charge them with a dynamo, or other electrical source, which shows a pressure of volts, as illustrated in fig. , or, instead of this, we may put them into two parallel sets of cells each, as shown in fig. , and use . volts to charge with. in this case it will take double the time because we are charging with only one-half the voltage used in the first case. the positive pole of the dynamo should be connected with the positive pole of the accumulator cell, and negative with negative. when this has been done run up the machine until it slightly exceeds the voltage of the cells. thus, if we have cells in parallel, like in fig. , at least volts will be required, and the excess necessary should bring up the voltage in the dynamo to or volts. [illustration: _fig. ._ parallel series] [illustration: _fig. ._ charging circuit] the initial charge.--it is usual initially to charge the battery from periods ranging from to hours, and to let it stand for or hours, after which to re-charge, until the positive plates have turned to a chocolate color, and the negative plates to a slate or gray color, and both plates give off large bubbles of gas. in charging, the temperature of the electrolyte should not exceed ° fahrenheit. when using the accumulators they should never be fully discharged. the charging circuit.--the diagram (fig. ) shows how a charging circuit is formed. the lamps are connected up in parallel, as illustrated. each -candle-power -volt lamp will carry / ampere, so that, supposing we have a dynamo which gives volts, and we want to charge a -volt accumulator, there will be -volt surplus to go to the accumulator. if, for instance, you want the cell to have a charge of amperes, four of these lamps should be connected up in parallel. if amperes are required, use lamps, and so on. chapter ix the telegraph the telegraph is a very simple instrument. the key is nothing more or less than a switch which turns the current on and off alternately. the signals sent over the wires are simply the audible sounds made by the armature, as it moves to and from the magnets. mechanism in telegraph circuits.--a telegraph circuit requires three pieces of mechanism at each station, namely, a key used by the sender, a sounder for the receiver, and a battery. the sending key.--the base of the sending instrument is six inches long, four inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch thick, made of wood, or any suitable non-conducting material. the key (a) is a piece of brass three-eighths by one-half inch in thickness and six inches long. midway between its ends is a cross hole, to receive the pivot pin (b), which also passes through a pair of metal brackets (c, d), the bracket c having a screw to hold one of the line wires, and the other bracket having a metal switch (e) hinged thereto. this switch bar, like the brackets, is made of brass, one-half inch wide by one-sixteenth of an inch thick. below the forward end of the key (a) is a cross bar of brass (f), screwed to the base by a screw at one end, to receive the other line wire. directly below the key (a) is a screw (g), so that the key will strike it when moved downwardly. the other end of the bar (f) contacts with the forward end of the switch bar (e) when the latter is moved inwardly. [illustration: _fig. ._ telegraph sending key] the forward end of the key (a) has a knob (h) for the fingers, and the rear end has an elastic (i) attached thereto which is secured to the end of the base, so that, normally, the rear end is held against the base and away from the screw head (g). the head (j) of a screw projects from the base at its rear end. key a contacts with it. when the key a contacts with the screw heads g, j, a click is produced, one when the key is pressed down and the other when the key is released. you will notice that the two plates c, f are connected up in circuit with the battery, so that, as the switch e is thrown, so as to be out of contact, the circuit is open, and may be closed either by the key a or the switch e. the use of the switch will be illustrated in connection with the sounder. [illustration: _fig. ._ telegraph sounder] when the key a is depressed, the circuit of course goes through plate c, key a and plate f to the station signalled. the sounder.--the sounder is the instrument which carries the electro-magnet. in fig. this is shown in perspective. the base is six inches long and four inches wide, being made, preferably, of wood. near the forward end is mounted a pair of electro-magnets (a, a), with their terminal wires connected up with plates b, b', to which the line wires are attached. midway between the magnets and the rear end of the base is a pair of upwardly projecting brackets (c). between these are pivoted a bar (d), the forward end of which rests between the magnets and carries, thereon, a cross bar (e) which is directly above the magnets, and serves as the armature. the rear end of the base has a screw (f) directly beneath the bar d of such height that when the rear end of the bar d is in contact therewith the armature e will be out of contact with the magnet cores (a, a). a spiral spring (g) secured to the rear ends of the arm and to the base, respectively, serves to keep the rear end of the key normally in contact with the screw f. connecting up the key and sounder.--having made these two instruments, we must next connect them up in the circuit, or circuits, formed for them, as there must be a battery, a key, and a sounder at each end of the line. in fig. you will note two groups of those instruments. now observe how the wires connect them together. there are two line wires, one (a) which connects up the two batteries, the wire being attached so that one end connects with the positive terminal of the battery, and the other end with the negative terminal. [illustration: _fig. ._ a telegraph circuit] the other line wire (b), between the two stations, has its opposite ends connected with the terminals of the electro-magnet c of the sounders. the other terminals of each electro-magnet are connected up with one terminal of each key by a wire (d), and to complete the circuit at each station, the other terminal of the key has a wire (e) to its own battery. two stations in circuit.--the illustration shows station telegraphing to station . this is indicated by the fact that the switch f' of that instrument is open, and the switch f of station closed. when, therefore, the key of station is depressed, a complete circuit is formed which transmits the current through wire e' and battery, through line a, then through the battery of station , through wire e to the key, and from the key, through wire d, to the sounder, and finally from the sounder over line wire b back to the sounder of station , completing the circuit at the key through wire d'. when the operator at station closes the switch f', and the operator at station opens the switch f, the reverse operation takes place. in both cases, however, the sounder is in at both ends of the line, and only the circuit through the key is cut out by the switch f, or f'. the double click.--the importance of the double click of the sounder will be understood when it is realized that the receiving operator must have some means of determining if the sounder has transmitted a dot or a dash. whether he depresses the key for a dot or a dash, there must be one click when the key is pressed down on the screw head g (fig. ), and also another click, of a different kind, when the key is raised up so that its rear end strikes the screw head j. this action of the key is instantly duplicated by the bar d (fig. ) of the sounder, so that the sounder as well as the receiver knows the time between the first and the second click, and by that means he learns that a dot or a dash is made. illustrating the dot and the dash.--to illustrate: let us suppose, for convenience, that the downward movement of the lever in the key, and the bar in the sounder, make a sharp click, and the return of the lever and bar make a dull click. in this case the ear, after a little practice, can learn readily how to distinguish the number of downward impulses that have been given to the key. _the morse telegraph code_ a . - n - . & . ... b - ... o .. . - - . c .. . p ..... .. - .. d - . . q .. - . ... - . e . r . .. .... - f . - . s ... - - - g - - . t - ...... h .... u .. - - - .. i .. v ... - - .... j - . - . w . - - - .. - k - . - x . - .. ---- ------ l -- y .. .. m - - z ... . example in use.--let us take an example in the word "electrical." e l e c t r i c a l . -- . .. . - . .. .. .. . . - -- the operator first makes a dot, which means a sharp and a dull click close together; there is then a brief interval, then a lapse, after which there is a sharp click, followed, after a comparatively longer interval, with the dull click. now a dash by itself may be an l, a t, or the figure , dependent upon its length. the short dash is t, and the longest dash the figure . the operator will soon learn whether it is either of these or the letter l, which is intermediate in length. in time the sender as well as receiver will give a uniform length to the dash impulse, so that it may be readily distinguished. in the same way, we find that r, which is indicated by a dot, is followed, after a short interval, by two dots. this might readily be mistaken for the single dot for e and the two dots for i, were it not that the time element in r is not as long between the first and second dots, as it ordinarily is between the single dot of e when followed by the two dots of i. chapter x high tension apparatus, condensers, etc. induction.--one of the most remarkable things in electricity is the action of induction--that property of an electric current which enables it to pass from one conductor to another conductor through the air. another singular and interesting thing is that the current so transmitted across spaces changes its direction of flow, and, furthermore, the tension of such a current may be changed by transmitting it from one conductor to another. low and high tension.--in order to effect this latter change--that is, to convert it from a low tension to a high tension--coils are used, one coil being wound upon the other; one of these coils is called the primary and the other the secondary. the primary coil receives the current from the battery, or source of electrical power, and the secondary coil receives charges, and transmits the current. for an illustration of this examine fig. , in which you will note a coil of heavy wire (a), around which is wound a coil of fine wire (b). if, for instance, the primary coil has a low voltage, the secondary coil will have a high voltage, or tension. advantage is taken of this phase to use a few cells, as a primary battery, and then, by a set of _induction coils_, as they are called, to build up a high-tension electro-motive force, so that the spark will jump across a gap, as shown at c, for the purpose of igniting the charges of gas in a gasoline motor; or the current may be used for medical batteries, and for other purposes. [illustration: _fig. ._ induction coil and circuit] the current passes, by induction, from the primary to the secondary coil. it passes from a large conductor to a small conductor, the small conductor having a much greater resistance than the large one. elastic property of electricity.--while electricity has no resiliency, like a spring, for instance, still it acts in the manner of a cushion under certain conditions. it may be likened to an oscillating spring acted upon by a bar. referring to fig. , we will assume that the bar a in falling down upon the spring b compresses the latter, so that at the time of greatest compression the bar goes down as far as the dotted line c. it is obvious that the spring b will throw the bar upwardly. now, electricity appears to have a kind of elasticity, which characteristic is taken advantage of in order to increase the efficiency of the induction in the coil. [illustration: _fig. ._ illustrating elasticity] the condenser.--to make a condenser, prepare two pine boards like a, say, eight by ten inches and a half inch thick, and shellac thoroughly on all sides. then prepare sheets of tinfoil (b), six by eight inches in size, and also sheets of paraffined paper (c), seven by nine inches in dimensions. also cut out from the waste pieces of tinfoil strips (d), one inch by two inches. to build up the condenser, lay down a sheet of paraffined paper (c), then a sheet of tinfoil (b), and before putting on the next sheet of paraffined paper lay down one of the small strips (d) of tinfoil, as shown in the illustration, so that its end projects over one end of the board a; then on the second sheet of paraffine paper lay another sheet of tinfoil, and on this, at the opposite end, place one of the small strips (d), and so on, using from to of the tinfoil sheets. when the last paraffine sheet is laid on, the other board is placed on top, and the whole bound together, either by wrapping cords around the same or by clamping them together with bolts. [illustration: _fig. ._ condenser] you may now make a hole through the projecting ends of the strips, and you will have two sets of tinfoil sheets, alternately connected together at opposite ends of the condenser. care should be exercised to leave the paraffine sheets perfect or without holes. you can make these sheets yourself by soaking them in melted paraffine wax. connecting up a condenser.--when completed, one end of the condenser is connected up with one terminal of the secondary coil, and the other end of the condenser with the other secondary terminal. [illustration: _fig. ._ high-tension circuit] in fig. a high-tension circuit is shown. two coils, side by side, are always used to show an induction coil, and a condenser is generally shown, as illustrated, by means of a pair of forks, one resting within the other. the interrupter.--one other piece of mechanism is necessary, and that is an _interrupter_, for the purpose of getting the effect of the pulsations given out by the secondary coil. a simple current interrupter is made as follows: prepare a wooden base (a), one inch thick, six inches wide, and twelve inches long. upon this mount a toothed wheel (b), six inches in diameter, of thin sheet metal, or a brass gear wheel will answer the purpose. the standard (c), which supports the wheel, may be of metal bent up to form two posts, between which the crankshaft (d) is journaled. the base of the posts has an extension plate (e), with a binding post for a wire. at the front end of the base is an l-shaped strip (f), with a binding post for a wire connection, and the upwardly projecting part of the strip contacts with the toothed wheel. when the wheel b is rotated the spring finger (f) snaps from one tooth to the next, so that, momentarily, the current is broken, and the frequency is dependent upon the speed imparted to the wheel. [illustration: _fig. ._ current interrupter] uses of high-tension coils.--this high-tension coil is made use of, and is the essential apparatus in wireless telegraphy, as we shall see in the chapter treating upon that subject. chapter xi wireless telegraphy telegraphing without wires.--wireless telegraphy is an outgrowth of the ordinary telegraph system. when maxwell, and, later on, hertz, discovered that electricity, magnetism, and light were transmitted through the ether, and that they differed only in their wave lengths, they laid the foundations for wireless telegraphy. ether is a substance which is millions and millions of times lighter than air, and it pervades all space. it is so unstable that it is constantly in motion, and this phase led some one to suggest that if a proper electrical apparatus could be made, the ether would thereby be disturbed sufficiently so that its impulses would extend out a distance proportioned to the intensity of the electrical agitation thereby created. surging character of high-tension currents.--when a current of electricity is sent through a wire, hundreds of miles in length, the current surges back and forth on the wire many thousands of times a second. light comes to us from the sun, over , , of miles, through the ether. it is as reasonable to suppose, or infer, that the ether can, therefore, convey an electrical impulse as readily as does a wire. it is on this principle that impulses are sent for thousands of miles, and no doubt they extend even farther, if the proper mechanism could be devised to detect movement of the waves so propagated. the coherer.--the instrument for detecting these impulses, or disturbances, in the ether is generally called a _coherer_, although detector is the term which is most satisfactory. the name coherer comes from the first practical instrument made for this purpose. [illustration: _fig. ._ wireless telegraphy coherer] how made.--the coherer is simply a tube, say, of glass, within which is placed iron filings. when the oscillations surge through the secondary coil the pressure or potentiality of the current finally causes it to leap across the small space separating the filings and, as it were, it welds together their edges so that a current freely passes. the bringing together of the particles, under these conditions, is called cohering. fig. shows the simplest form of coherer. the posts (a) are firmly affixed to the base (b), each post having an adjusting screw (c) in its upper end, and these screw downwardly against and serve to bind a pair of horizontal rods (d), the inner ends of which closely approach each other. these may be adjusted so as to be as near together or as far apart as desired. e is a glass tube in which the ends of the rods (d) rest, and between the separated ends of the rods (d) the iron filings (f) are placed. the decoherers.--for the purpose of causing the metal filings to fall apart, or decohere, the tube is tapped lightly, and this is done by a little object like the clapper of an electric bell. in practice, the coils and the parts directly connected with it are put together on one base. the sending apparatus.--fig. shows a section of a coil with its connection in the sending station. the spark gap rods (a) may be swung so as to bring them closer together or farther apart, but they must not at any time contact with each other. the induction coil has one terminal of the primary coil connected up by a wire (b) with one post of a telegraph key, and the other post of the key has a wire connection (c), with one side of a storage battery. the other side of the battery has a wire (d) running to the other terminal of the primary. [illustration: _fig. ._ wireless sending apparatus] the secondary coil has one of its terminals connected with a binding post (e). this binding post has an adjustable rod with a knob (f) on its end, and the other binding post (g), which is connected up with the other terminal of the secondary coil, carries a similar adjusting rod with a knob (h). from the post (e) is a wire (i), which extends upwardly, and is called the aerial wire, or wire for the antennæ, and this wire also connects with one side of the condenser by a conductor (j). the ground wire (k) connects with the other binding post (g), and a branch wire (l) also connects the ground wire (k) with one end of the condenser. [illustration: _fig. ._ wireless receiving apparatus] the receiving apparatus.--the receiving station, on the other hand, has neither condenser, induction coil, nor key. when the apparatus is in operation, the coherer switch is closed, and the instant a current passes through the coherer and operates the telegraph sounder, the galvanometer indicates the current. of course, when the coherer switch is closed, the battery operates the decoherer. how the circuits are formed.--by referring again to fig. , it will be seen that when the key is depressed, a circuit is formed from the battery through wire b to the primary coil, and back again to the battery through wire d. the secondary coil is thereby energized, and, when the full potential is reached, the current leaps across the gap formed between the two knobs (f, h), thereby setting up a disturbance in the ether which is transmitted through space in all directions. it is this impulse, or disturbance, which is received by the coherer at the receiving station, and which is indicated by the telegraph sounder. chapter xii the telephone vibrations.--every manifestation in nature is by way of vibration. the beating of the heart, the action of the legs in walking, the winking of the eyelid; the impulses from the sun, which we call light; sound, taste and color appeal to our senses by vibratory means, and, as we have hereinbefore stated, the manifestations of electricity and magnetism are merely vibrations of different wave lengths. the acoustic telephone.--that sound is merely a product of vibrations may be proven in many ways. one of the earliest forms of telephones was simply a "sound" telephone, called the _acoustic telephone_. the principle of this may be illustrated as follows: take two cups (a, b), as in fig. , punch a small hole through the bottom of each, and run a string or wire (c) from the hole of one cup to that of the other, and secure it at both ends so it may be drawn taut. now, by talking into the cup (a) the bottom of it will vibrate to and fro, as shown by the dotted lines and thereby cause the bottom of the other cup (b) to vibrate in like manner, and in so vibrating it will receive not only the same amplitude, but also the same character of vibrations as the cup (a) gave forth. [illustration: _fig. ._ acoustic telephone] [illustration: _fig. ._ illustrating vibrations] sound waves.--sound waves are long and short; the long waves giving sounds which are low in the musical scale, and the short waves high musical tones. you may easily determine this by the following experiment: stretch a wire, as at b (fig. ), fairly tight, and then vibrate it. the amplitude of the vibration will be as indicated by dotted line a. now, stretch it very tight, as at c, so that the amplitude of vibration will be as shown at e. by putting your ear close to the string you will find that while a has a low pitch, c is very much higher. this is the principle on which stringed instruments are built. you will note that the wave length, which represents the distance between the dotted lines a is much greater than e. hearing electricity.--in electricity, mechanism has been made to enable man to note the action of the current. by means of the armature, vibrating in front of a magnet, we can see its manifestations. it is now but a step to devise some means whereby we may hear it. in this, as in everything else electrically, the magnet comes into play. [illustration: _fig. ._ the magnetic field] in the chapter on magnetism, it was stated that the magnetic field extended out beyond the magnet, so that if we were able to see the magnetism, the end of a magnet would appear to us something like a moving field, represented by the dotted lines in fig. . the magnetic field is shown in fig. at only one end, but its manifestations are alike at both ends. it will be seen that the magnetic field extends out to a considerable distance and has quite a radius of influence. the diaphragm in a magnetic field.--if, now, we put a diaphragm (a) in this magnetic field, close up to the end of the magnet, but not so close as to touch it, and then push it in and out, or talk into it so that the sound waves strike it, the movement or the vibration of the diaphragm (a) will disturb the magnetic field emanating from the magnet, and this disturbance of the magnetic field at one end of the magnet also affects the magnetic field at the other end in the same way, so that the disturbance there will be of the same amplitude. it will also display the same characteristics as did the magnetic field when the diaphragm (a) disturbed it. a simple telephone circuit.--from this simple fact grew the telephone. if two magnets are connected up in the same circuit, so that the magnetic fields of the two magnets have the same source of electric power, the disturbance of one diaphragm will affect the other similarly, just the same as the two magnetic fields of the single magnet are disturbed in unison. how to make a telephone.--for experimental and testing purposes two of these telephones should be made at the same time. the case or holder (a) may be made either of hard wood or hard rubber, so that it is of insulating material. the core (b) is of soft iron, / inch in diameter and inches long, bored and threaded at one end to receive a screw (c) which passes through the end of the case (a). the enlarged end of the case should be, exteriorly, - / inches in diameter, and the body of the case inch in diameter. [illustration: _fig. ._ section of telephone receiver] interiorly, the large end of the case is provided with a circular recess - / inches in diameter and adapted to receive therein a spool which is, diametrically, a little smaller than the recess. the spool fits fairly tight upon the end of the core, and when in position rests against an annular shoulder in the recess. a hollow space (f) is thus provided behind the spool (d), so the two wires from the magnet may have room where they emerge from the spool. the spool is a little shorter than the distance between the shoulder (e) and the end of the casing, at g, and the core projects only a short distance beyond the end of the spool, so that when the diaphragm (h) is put upon the end of the case, and held there by screws (i) it will not touch the end of the core. a wooden or rubber mouthpiece (j) is then turned up to fit over the end of the case. [illustration: _fig. ._ the magnet and receiver head] the spool (d) is made of hard rubber, and is wound with no. silk-covered wire, the windings to be well insulated from each other. the two ends of the wire are brought out, and threaded through holes (k) drilled longitudinally through the walls of the case, and affixed to the end by means of screws (l), so that the two wires may be brought together and connected with a duplex wire (m). as the screw (c), which holds the core in place, has its head hidden within a recess, which can be closed up by wax, the two terminals of the wires are well separated so that short-circuiting cannot take place. telephone connections.--the simplest form of telephone connection is shown in fig. . this has merely the two telephones (a and b), with a single battery (c) to supply electricity for both. one line wire (d) connects the two telephones directly, while the other line (e) has the battery in its circuit. [illustration: _fig. ._ simple telephone connection] complete installation.--to install a more complete system requires, at each end, a switch, a battery and an electro-magneto bell. you may use, for this purpose, a bell, made as shown in the chapter on bells. fig. shows such a circuit. we now dispense with one of the line wires, because it has been found that the ground between the two stations serves as a conductor, so that only one line wire (a) is necessary to connect directly with the telephones of the two stations. the telephones (b, b', respectively) have wires (c, c') running to the pivots of double-throw switches (d, d'), one terminal of the switches having wires (e, e'), which go to electric bells (f, f'), and from the bells are other wires (g, g'), which go to the ground. the ground wires also have wires (h, h'), which go to the other terminals of the switch (d, d'). the double-throw switch (d, d'), in the two stations, is thrown over so the current, if any should pass through, will go through the bell to the ground, through the wires (e, g or e', g'). [illustration: _fig. ._ telephone stations in circuit] now, supposing the switch (d'), in station , should be thrown over so it contacts with the wire (h'). it is obvious that the current will then flow from the battery (i') through wires (h', c') and line (a) to station ; then through wire c, switch d, wire e to the bell f, to the ground through wire g. from wire g the current returns through the ground to station , where it flows up wire g' to the battery, thereby completing the circuit. [illustration: _fig. ._ illustrating light contact points] the operator at station , having given the signal, again throws his switch (d') back to the position shown in fig. , and the operator at station throws on his switch (d), so as to ring the bell in station , thereby answering the signal, which means that both switches are again to be thrown over so they contact with the battery wires (h and h'), respectively. when both are thus thrown over, the bells (g, g') are cut out of the circuit, and the batteries are both thrown in, so that the telephones are now ready for talking purposes. microphone.--originally this form of telephone system was generally employed, but it was found that for long distances a more sensitive instrument was necessary. light contact points.--in professor hughes discovered, accidentally, that a light contact point in an electric circuit augmented the sound in a telephone circuit. if, for instance, a light pin, or a nail (a, fig. ) should be used to connect the severed ends of a wire (b), the sounds in the telephone not only would be louder, but they would be more distinct, and the first instrument made practically, to demonstrate this, is shown in fig. . [illustration: _fig. ._ microphone] [illustration: _fig. ._ transmitter] how to make a microphone.--this instrument has simply a base (a) of wood, and near one end is a perpendicular sounding-board (b) of wood, to one side of which is attached, by wax or otherwise, a pair of carbon blocks (c, d). the lower carbon block (c) has a cup-shaped depression in its upper side, and the upper block has a similar depression in its lower side. a carbon pencil (e) is lightly held within these cups, so that the lightest contact of the upper end of the pencil with the carbon block, makes the instrument so sensitive that a fly, walking upon the sounding-board, may be distinctly heard through the telephone which is in the circuit. microphone the father of the transmitter.--this instrument has been greatly modified, and is now used as a transmitter, the latter thereby taking the place of the pin (a), shown in fig. . automatic cut-outs for telephones.--in the operation of the telephone, the great drawback originally was in inducing users of the lines to replace or adjust their instruments carefully. when switches were used, they would forget to throw them back, and all sorts of trouble resulted. it was found necessary to provide an automatic means for throwing in and cutting out an instrument, this being done by hanging the telephone on the hook, so that the act merely of leaving the telephone made it necessary, in replacing the instrument, to cut out the apparatus. before describing the circuiting required for these improvements, we show, in fig. , a section of a transmitter. a cup-shaped case (a) is provided, made of some insulating material, which has a diaphragm (b) secured at its open side. this diaphragm carries the carbon pencil (c) on one side and from the blocks which support the carbon pencil the wires run to binding posts on the case. of course the carbon supporting posts must be insulated from each other, so the current will go through the carbon pencil (c). complete circuiting with transmitter.--in showing the circuiting (fig. ) it will not be possible to illustrate the boxes, or casings, which receive the various instruments. for instance, the hook which carries the telephone or the receiver, is hinged within the transmitter box. the circuiting is all that it is intended to show. [illustration: _fig. ._ complete telephonic circuit] the batteries of the two stations are connected up by a wire (a), unless a ground circuit is used. the other side of each battery has a wire connection (b, b') with one terminal of the transmitter, and the other terminal of the transmitter has a wire (c, c') which goes to the receiver. from the other terminal of the receiver is a wire (d, d') which leads to the upper stop contact (e, e') of the telephone hook. a wire (f, f') from the lower stop contact (g, g') of the hook goes to one terminal of the bell, and from the other terminal of the bell is a wire (h, h') which makes connection with the line wire (a). in order to make a complete circuit between the two stations, a line wire (i) is run from the pivot of the hook in station to the pivot of the hook in station . in the diagram, it is assumed that the receivers are on the hooks, and that both hooks are, therefore, in circuit with the lower contacts (g, g'), so that the transmitter and receiver are both out of circuit with the batteries, and the bell in circuit; but the moment the receiver, for instance, in station is taken off the hook, the latter springs up so that it contacts with the stop (e), thus establishing a circuit through the line wire (i) to the hook of station , and from the hook through line (f') to the bell. from the bell, the line (a) carries the current back to the battery of station (a), thence through the wire (b) to the transmitter wire (c) to receiver and wire (d) to the post (e), thereby completing the circuit. when, at station , the receiver is taken off the hook, and the latter contacts with the post (e'), the transmitter and receiver of both stations are in circuit with each other, but both bells are cut out. chapter xiii electrolysis, water purification, electroplating decomposing liquids.--during the earlier experiments in the field of electricity, after the battery or cell was discovered, it was noted that when a current was formed in the cell, the electrolyte was charged and gases evolved from it. a similar action takes place when a current of electricity passes through a liquid, with the result that the liquid is decomposed--that is, the liquid is broken up into its original compounds. thus, water is composed of two parts, by bulk, of hydrogen and of oxygen, so that if two electrodes are placed in water, and a current is sent through the electrodes in either direction, all the water will finally disappear in the form of hydrogen and oxygen gases. making hydrogen and oxygen.--during this electrical action, the hydrogen is set free at the negative pole and the oxygen at the positive pole. a simple apparatus, which any boy can make, to generate pure oxygen and pure hydrogen, is shown in fig. . it is constructed of a glass or earthen jar (a), preferably square, to which is fitted a wooden top (b), this top being provided with a packing ring (c), so as to make it air-tight. within is a vertical partition (d), the edges of which, below the cap, fit tightly against the inner walls of the jar. this partition extends down into the jar a sufficient distance so it will terminate below the water level. a pipe is fitted through the top on each side of the partition, and each pipe has a valve. an electrode, of any convenient metal, is secured at its upper end to the top of the cap, on each side of the partition. these electrodes extend down to the bottom of the jar, and an electric wire connects with each of them at the top. [illustration: _fig. ._ device for making hydrogen and oxygen] if a current of electricity is passed through the wires and the electrodes, in the direction shown by the darts, hydrogen will form at the negative pole, and oxygen at the positive pole. these gases will escape upwardly, so that they will be trapped in their respective compartments, and may be drawn off by means of the pipes. purifying water.--advantage is taken of this electrolytic action, to purify water. oxygen is the most wonderful chemical in nature. it is called the acid-maker of the universe. the name is derived from two words, _oxy_ and _gen_; one denoting oxydation, and the other that it generates. in other words, it is the _generator of oxides_. it is the element which, when united with any other element, produces an acid, an alkali or a neutral compound. rust.--for instance, iron is largely composed of ferric acid. when oxygen, in a free or gaseous state, comes into contact with iron, it produces ferrous oxide, which is recognized as rust. oxygen as a purifier.--but oxygen is also a purifier. all low forms of animal life, like bacteria or germs in water, succumb to free oxygen. by _free oxygen_ is meant oxygen in the form of gas. composition of water.--now, water, in which harmful germs live, is one-third oxygen. nevertheless, the germs thrive in water, because the oxygen is in a compound state, and, therefore, not an active agent. but if oxygen, in the form of gas, can be forced through water, it will attack the germs, and destroy them. common air not a good purifier.--water may be purified, to a certain extent, by forcing common air through it, and the foulest water, if run over rocks, will be purified, in a measure, because air is intermingled with it. but common air is composed of four-fifths nitrogen, and only one-fifth oxygen, and, as nitrogen is the staple article of food for bacteria, the purifying method by air is not effectual. pure oxygen.--when, however, oxygen is generated from water, by means of electrolysis, it is pure; hence is more active and is not tainted by a life-giving substance for germs, such as nitrogen. the mechanism usually employed for purifying water is shown in fig. . a water purifier.--the case (a, fig. ) may be made of metal or of an insulating material. if made of metal it must be insulated within with slate, glass, marble or hard rubber, as shown at b. the case is provided with exterior flanges (c, d), with upper and lower ends, and it is mounted upon a base plate (e) and affixed thereto by bolts. the upper end has a conically-formed cap (f) bolted to the flanges (c), and this has an outlet to which a pipe (g) is attached. the water inlet pipe (h) passes through the lower end of the case (a). the electrodes (i, j) are secured, vertically, within the case, separated from each other equidistant, each alternate electrode being connected up with one wire (k), and the alternate electrodes with a wire (l). [illustration: _fig. ._ electric water purifier] when the water passes upwardly, the decomposed or gaseous oxygen percolates through the water and thus attacks the germs and destroys them. the use of hydrogen in purification.--on the other hand, the hydrogen also plays an important part in purifying the water. this depends upon the material of which the electrodes are made. aluminum is by far the best material, as it is one of nature's most active purifiers. all clay contains aluminum, in what is known as the sulphate form, and water passing through the clay of the earth thereby becomes purified, because of this element. aluminum electrodes.--when this material is used as the electrodes in water, hydrate of aluminum is formed, or a compound of hydrogen and oxygen with aluminum. the product of decomposition is a flocculent matter which moves upwardly through the water, giving it a milky appearance. this substance is like gelatine, so that it entangles or enmeshes the germ life and prevents it from passing through a filter. if no filter is used, this flocculent matter, as soon as it has given off the gases, will settle to the bottom and carry with it all decomposed matter, such as germs and other organic matter attacked by the oxygen, which has become entangled in the aluminum hydrate. electric hand purifier.--an interesting and serviceable little purifier may be made by any boy with the simplest tools, by cutting out three pieces of sheet aluminum. hard rolled is best for the purpose. it is better to have one of the sheets (a), the middle one, thicker than the two outer plates (b). [illustration: _fig. ._ portable electric purifier] let each sheet be - / inches wide and - / inches thick. one-half inch from the upper ends of the two outside plates (b, b) bore bolt holes (c), each of these holes being a quarter of an inch from the edge of the plate. the inside plate (a) has two large holes (d) corresponding with the small holes (c) in the outside plates. at the upper end of this plate form a wing (e), / inch wide and / inch long, provided with a small hole for a bolt. next cut out two hard-rubber blocks (f), each - / inches long, inch wide and / inch thick, and then bore a hole (g) through each, corresponding with the small holes (c) in the plates (b). the machine is now ready to be assembled. if the inner plate is / inch thick and the outer plates each / inch thick, use two small eighth-inch bolts - / inches long, and clamp together the three plates with these bolts. one of the bolts may be used to attach thereto one of the electric wires (h), and the other wire (i) is attached by a bolt to the wing (e). [illustration: _figs. - ._ details of portable purifier] such a device will answer for a -volt circuit, in ordinary water. now fill a glass nearly full of water, and stand the purifier in the glass. within a few minutes the action of electrolysis will be apparent by the formation of numerous bubbles on the plates, followed by the decomposition of the organic matter in the water. at first the flocculent decomposed matter will rise to the surface of the water, but before many minutes it will settle to the bottom of the glass and leave clear water above. purification and separation of metals.--this electrolytic action is utilized in metallurgy for the purpose of producing pure metals, but it is more largely used to separate copper from its base. in order to utilize a current for this purpose, a high ampere flow and low voltage are required. the sheets of copper, containing all of its impurities, are placed within a tank, parallel with a thin copper sheet. the impure sheet is connected with the positive pole of an electroplating dynamo, and the thin sheet of copper is connected with the negative pole. the electrolyte in the tank is a solution of sulphate of copper. the action of the current will cause the pure copper in the impure sheet to disintegrate and it is then carried over and deposited upon the thin sheet, this action continuing until the impure sheet is entirely eaten away. all the impurities which were in the sheet fall to the bottom of the tank. other metals are treated in the same way, and this treatment has a very wide range of usefulness. electroplating.--the next feature to be considered in electrolysis is a most interesting and useful one, because a cheap or inferior metal may be coated by a more expensive metal. silver and nickel plating are brought about by this action of a current passing through metals, which are immersed in an electrolyte. plating iron with copper.--we have room in this chapter for only one concrete example of this work, which, with suitable modifications, is an example of the art as practiced commercially. iron, to a considerable extent, is now being coated with copper to preserve it from rust. to carry out this work, however, an electroplating dynamo, of large amperage, is required, the amperage, of course, depending upon the surface to be treated at one time. the pressure should not exceed volts. the iron surface to be treated should first be thoroughly cleansed, and then immediately put into a tank containing a cyanide of copper solution. two forms of copper solution are used, namely, the cyanide, which is a salt solution of copper, and the sulphate, which is an acid solution of copper. cyanide is first used because it does not attack the iron, as would be the case if the sulphate solution should first come into contact with the iron. a sheet of copper, termed the anode, is then placed within the tank, parallel with the surface to be plated, known as the cathode, and so mounted that it may be adjusted to or from the iron surface, or cathode. a direct current of electricity is then caused to flow through the copper plate and into the iron plate or surface, and the plating proceeded with until the iron surface has a thin film of copper deposited thereon. this is a slow process with the cyanide solution, so it is discontinued as soon as possible, after the iron surface has been completely covered with copper. this copper surface is thoroughly cleaned off to remove therefrom the saline or alkaline solution, and it is then immersed within a bath, containing a solution of sulphate of copper. the current is then thrown on and allowed so to remain until it has deposited the proper thickness of copper. direction of current.--if a copper and an iron plate are put into a copper solution and connected up in circuit with each other, a primary battery is thereby formed, which will generate electricity. in this case, the iron will be positive and the copper negative, so that the current within such a cell would flow from the iron (in this instance, the anode) to the negative, or cathode. the action of electroplating reverses this process and causes the current to flow from the copper to the iron (in this instance, the cathode). chapter xiv electric heating, thermo electricity generating heat in a wire.--when a current of electricity passes through a conductor, like a wire, more or less heat is developed in the conductor. this heat may be so small that it cannot be measured, but it is, nevertheless, present in a greater or less degree. conductors offer a resistance to the passage of a current, just the same as water finds a resistance in pipes through which it passes. this resistance is measured in ohms, as explained in a preceding chapter, and it is this resistance which is utilized for electric heating. resistance of substances.--silver offers less resistance to the passage of a current than any other metal, the next in order is copper, while iron is, comparatively, a poor conductor. the following is a partial list of metals, showing their relative conductivity: silver . copper . to . gold . to . aluminum . zinc . nickel . iron . tin . lead . german silver . to from this table it will be seen that, for instance, iron offers six and a half times the resistance of silver, and that german silver has fifteen times the resistance of silver. this table is made up of strands of the different metals of the same diameters and lengths, so as to obtain their relative values. sizes of conductors.--another thing, however, must be understood. if two conductors of the same metal, having different diameters, receive the same current of electricity, the small conductor will offer a greater resistance than the large conductor, hence will generate more heat. this can be offset by increasing the diameter of the conductor. the metal used is, therefore, of importance, on account of the cost involved. comparison of metals.--a conductor of aluminum, say, feet long and of the same weight as copper, has a diameter two and a quarter times greater than copper; but as the resistance of aluminum is per cent. more than that of silver, it will be seen that, weight for weight, copper is the cheaper, particularly as aluminum costs fully three times as much as copper. [illustration: _fig. ._ simple electric heater] the table shows that german silver has the highest resistance. of course, there are other metals, like antimony, platinum and the like, which have still higher resistance. german silver, however, is most commonly used, although there are various alloys of metal made which have high resistance and are cheaper. the principle of all electric heaters is the same, namely, the resistance of a conductor to the passage of a current, and an illustration of a water heater will show the elementary principles in all of these devices. a simple electric heater.--in fig. the illustration shows a cup or holder (a) for the wire, made of hard rubber. this may be of such diameter as to fit upon and form the cover for a glass (b). the rubber should be / inch thick. two holes are bored through the rubber cup, and through them are screwed two round-headed screws (c, d), each screw being - / inches long, so they will project an inch below the cap. each screw should have a small hole in its lower end to receive a pin (e) which will prevent the resistance wire from slipping off. the resistance wire (f) is coiled for a suitable length, dependent upon the current used, one end being fastened by wrapping it around the screw (c). the other end of the wire is then brought upwardly through the interior of the coil and secured in like manner to the other screw (d). caution must be used to prevent the different coils or turns from touching each other. when completed, the coil may be immersed in water, the current turned on, and left so until the water is sufficiently heated. [illustration: _figs. - ._ resistance device] how to arrange for quantity of current used.--it is difficult to determine just the proper length the coil should be, or the sizes of the wire, unless you know what kind of current you have. you may, however, rig up your own apparatus for the purpose of making it fit your heater, by preparing a base of wood (a) inches long, inches wide and inch thick. on this mount four electric lamp sockets (b). then connect the inlet wire (c) by means of short pieces of wire (d) with all the sockets on one side. the outlet wire (e) should then be connected up with the other sides of the sockets by the short wires (f). if, now, we have one -candlepower lamp in one of the sockets, there is a half ampere going through the wires (c, f). if there are two lamps on the board you will have ampere, and so on. by this means you may readily determine how much current you are using and it will also afford you a means of finding out whether you have too much or too little wire in your coil to do the work. [illustration: _fig. ._ plan view of electric iron] an electric iron.--an electric iron is made in the same way. the upper side of a flatiron has a circular or oval depression (a) cast therein, and a spool of slate (b) is made so it will fit into the depression and the high resistance wire (c) is wound around this spool, and insulating material, such as asbestos, must be used to pack around it. centrally, the slate spool has an upwardly projecting circular extension (d) which passes through the cap or cover (e) of the iron. the wires of the resistance coil are then brought through this circular extension and are connected up with the source of electrical supply. wires are now sold for this purpose, which are adapted to withstand an intense heat. [illustration: _fig. ._ section of electric iron] the foregoing example of the use of the current, through resistance wires, has a very wide application, and any boy, with these examples before him, can readily make these devices. thermo electricity.--it has long been the dream of scientists to convert heat directly into electricity. the present practice is to use a boiler to generate steam, an engine to provide the motion, and a dynamo to convert that motion into electricity. the result is that there is loss in the process of converting the fuel heat into steam; loss to change the steam into motion, and loss to make electricity out of the motion of the engine. by using water-power there is less actual loss; but water-power is not available everywhere. converting heat directly into electricity.--heat may be converted directly into electricity without using a boiler, an engine or a dynamo, but it has not been successful from a commercial standpoint. it is interesting, however, to know and understand the subject, and for that reason it is explained herein. metals; electric positive-negative.--to understand the principle, it may be stated that all metals are electrically positive-negative to each other. you will remember that it has hereinbefore been stated that if, for instance, iron and copper are put into an acid solution, a current will be created or generated thereby. so with zinc and copper, the usual primary battery elements. in all such cases an electrolyte is used. thermo-electricity dispenses with the electrolyte, and nothing is used but the metallic elements and heat. the word thermo means heat. if, now, we can select two strips of different metals, and place them as far apart as possible--that is, in their positive-negative relations with each other, and unite the end of one with one end of other by means of a rivet, and then heat the riveted ends, a current will be generated in the strips. if, for instance, we use an iron in conjunction with a copper strip, the current will flow from the copper to the iron, because copper is positive to iron, and iron negative to copper. it is from this that the term positive-negative is taken. the two metals most available, which are thus farthest apart in the scale of positive-negative relation, are bismuth and antimony. [illustration: _fig. ._ thermo-electric couple] in fig. is shown a thermo-electric couple (a, b) riveted together, with thin outer ends connected by means of a wire (c) to form a circuit. a galvanometer (d) or other current-testing means is placed in this circuit. a lamp is placed below the joined ends. thermo-electric couples.--any number of these couples may be put together and joined at each end to a common wire and a fairly large flow of current obtained thereby. one thing must be observed: a current will be generated only so long as there exists a difference in temperature between the inner and the outer ends of the bars (a, b). this may be accomplished by water, or any other cooling means which may suggest itself. chapter xv alternating currents, choking coils, transformers, converters and rectifiers direct current.--when a current of electricity is generated by a cell, it is assumed to move along the wire in one direction, in a steady, continuous flow, and is called a _direct_ current. this direct current is a natural one if generated by a cell. alternating current.--on the other hand, the natural current generated by a dynamo is alternating in its character--that is, it is not a direct, steady flow in one direction, but, instead, it flows for an instant in one direction, then in the other direction, and so on. a direct-current dynamo such as we have shown in chapter iv, is much easier to explain, hence it is illustrated to show the third method used in generating an electric current. it is a difficult matter to explain the principle and operation of alternating current machines, without becoming, in a measure, too technical for the purposes of this book, but it is important to know the fundamentals involved, so that the operation and uses of certain apparatus, like the choking coil, transformers, rectifiers and converters, may be explained. the magnetic field.--it has been stated that when a wire passes through the magnetic field of a magnet, so as to cut the lines of force flowing out from the end of a magnet, the wire will receive a charge of electricity. [illustration: _fig. ._ cutting a magnetic field] to explain this, study fig. , in which is a bar magnet (a). if we take a metal wire (b) and bend it in the form of a loop, as shown, and mount the ends on journal-bearing blocks, the wire may be rotated so that the loop will pass through the magnetic field. when this takes place, the wire receives a charge of electricity, which moves, say, in the direction of the darts, and will make a complete circuit if the ends of the looped wire are joined, as shown by the conductor (d). action of the magnetized wire.--you will remember, also that we have pointed out how, when a current passes over a wire, it has a magnetic field extending out around it at all points, so that while it is passing through the magnetic field of the magnet (a), it becomes, in a measure, a magnet of its own and tries to set up in business for itself as a generator of electricity. but when the loop leaves the magnetic field, the magnetic or electrical impulse in the wire also leaves it. the movement of a current in a charged wire.--your attention is directed, also, to another statement, heretofore made, namely, that when a current from a charged wire passes by induction to a wire across space, so as to charge it with an electric current, it moves along the charged wire in a direction opposite to that of the current in the charging wire. now, the darts show the direction in which the current moves while it is approaching and passing through the magnetic field. but the moment the loop is about to pass out of the magnetic field, the current in the loop surges back in the opposite direction, and when the loop has made a revolution and is again entering the magnetic field, it must again change the direction of flow in the current, and thus produce alternations in the flow thereof. let us illustrate this by showing the four positions of the revolving loop. in fig. the loop (b) is in the middle of the magnetic field, moving upwardly in the direction of the curved dart (a), and while in that position the voltage, or the electrical impulse, is the most intense. the current used flows in the direction of the darts (c) or to the left. in fig. , the loop (a) has gone beyond the influence of the magnetic field, and now the current in the loop tries to return, or reverse itself, as shown by the dart (d). it is a reaction that causes the current to die out, so that when the loop has reached the point farthest from the magnet, as shown in fig. , there is no current in the loop, or, if there is any, it moves faintly in the direction of the dart (e). [illustration: _figs. - ._ illustrating alternations] current reversing itself.--when the loop reaches its lowest point (fig. ) it again comes within the magnetic field and the current commences to flow back to its original direction, as shown by darts (c). self-induction.--this tendency of a current to reverse itself, under the conditions cited, is called self-induction, or inductance, and it would be well to keep this in mind in pursuing the study of alternating currents. you will see from the foregoing, that the alternations, or the change of direction of the current, depends upon the speed of rotation of the loop past the end of the magnet. [illustration: _figs. - ._ form for increasing alternations] instead, therefore, of using a single loop, we may make four loops (fig. ), which at the same speed as we had in the case of the single loop, will give four alternations, instead of one, and still further, to increase the periods of alternation, we may use the four loops and two magnets, as in fig. . by having a sufficient number of loops and of magnets, there may be , , , , or such alternating periods in each second. time, therefore, is an element in the operation of alternating currents. let us now illustrate the manner of connecting up and building the dynamo, so as to derive the current from it. in fig. , the loop (a) shows, for convenience, a pair of bearings (b). a contact finger (c) rests on each, and to these the circuit wire (d) is attached. do not confuse these contact fingers with the commutator brushes, shown in the direct-current motor, as they are there merely for the purpose of making contact between the revolving loop (a) and stationary wire (d). [illustration: _fig. ._ connection of alternating dynamo armature] brushes in a direct-current dynamo.--the object of the brushes in the direct-current dynamo, in connection with a commutator, is to convert this _inductance_ of the wire, or this effort to reverse itself into a current which will go in one direction all the time, and not in both directions alternately. to explain this more fully attention is directed to figs. and . let a represent the armature, with a pair of grooves (b) for the wires. the commutator is made of a split tube, the parts so divided being insulated from each other, and in fig. , the upper one, we shall call and designate the positive (+) and the lower one the negative (-). the armature wire (c) has one end attached to the positive commutator terminal and the other end of this wire is attached to the negative terminal. [illustration: _fig. ._ direct current dynamo] one brush (d) contacts with the positive terminal of the commutator and the other brush (e) with the negative terminal. let us assume that the current impulse imparted to the wire (c) is in the direction of the dart (f, fig. ). the current will then flow through the positive (+) terminal of the commutator to the brush (d), and from the brush (d) through the wire (g) to the brush (e), which contacts with the negative (-) terminal of the commutator. this will continue to be the case, while the wire (c) is passing the magnetic field, and while the brush (d) is in contact with the positive (+) terminal. but when the armature makes a half turn, or when it reaches that point where the brush (d) contacts with the negative (-) terminal, and the brush (e) contacts with the positive (+) terminal, a change in the direction of the current through the wire (g) takes place, unless something has happened to change it before it has reached the brushes (d, e). [illustration: _fig. ._ circuit wires in direct current dynamo] now, this change is just exactly what has happened in the wire (c), as we have explained. the current attempts to reverse itself and start out on business of its own, so to speak, with the result that when the brushes (d and e) contact with the negative and positive terminals, respectively, the surging current in the wire (c) is going in the direction of the dart (h)--that is, while, in fig. , the current flows from the wire (c) into the positive terminal, and out of the negative terminal into the wire (c), the conditions are exactly reversed in fig. . here the current in wire c flows _into_ the negative (-) terminal, and _from_ the positive (+) terminal into the wire c, so that in either case the current will flow out of the brush d and into the brush e, through the external circuit (g). it will be seen, therefore, that in the direct-current motor, advantage is taken of the surging, or back-and-forth movement, of the current to pass it along in one direction, whereas in the alternating current no such change in direction is attempted. alternating positive and negative poles.--the alternating current, owing to this surging movement, makes the poles alternately positive and negative. to express this more clearly, supposing we take a line (a, fig. ), which is called the zero line, or line of no electricity. the current may be represented by the zigzag line (b). the lines (b) above zero (a) may be designated as positive, and those below the line as negative. the polarity reverses at the line a, goes up to d, which is the maximum intensity or voltage above zero, and, when the current falls and crosses the line a, it goes in the opposite direction to e, which is its maximum voltage in the other direction. in point of time, if it takes one second for the current to go from c to f, on the down line, then it takes only a half second to go from c to g, so that the line a represents the time, and the line h the intensity, a complete cycle being formed from c, d, f, then through f, e, c, and so on. [illustration: _fig. ._ alternating polarity lines] how an alternating dynamo is made.--it is now necessary to apply these principles in the construction of an alternating-current machine. fig. is a diagram representing the various elements, and the circuiting. [illustration: _fig. ._ alternating current dynamo] let a represent the ring or frame containing the inwardly projecting field magnet cores (b). c is the shaft on which the armature revolves, and this carries the wheel (d), which has as many radially disposed magnet cores (e) as there are of the field magnet cores (b). the shaft (c) also carries two pulleys with rings thereon. one of these rings (f) is for one end of the armature winding, and the other ring (g) for the other end of the armature wire. the windings.--the winding is as follows: one wire, as at h, is first coiled around one magnet core, the turnings being to the right. the outlet terminal of this wire is then carried to the next magnet core and wound around that, in the opposite direction, and so on, so that the terminal of the wire is brought out, as at i, all of these wires being connected to binding posts (j, j'), to which, also, the working circuits are attached. the armature wires.--the armature wires, in like manner, run from the ring (g) to one armature core, being wound from right to left, then to the next core, which is wound to the right, afterward to the next core, which is wound to the left, and so on, the final end of the wire being connected up with the other ring (f). the north (n) and the south (s) poles are indicated in the diagram. choking coil.--the self-induction in a current of this kind is utilized in transmitting electricity to great distances. wires offer resistance, or they impede the flow of a current, as hereinbefore stated, so that it is not economical to transmit a direct current over long distances. this can be done more efficiently by means of the alternating current, which is subject to far less loss than is the case with the direct current. it affords a means whereby the flow of a current may be checked or reduced without depending upon the resistance offered by the wire over which it is transmitted. this is done by means of what is called a choking coil. it is merely a coil of wire, wound upon an iron core, and the current to be choked passes through the coil. to illustrate this, let us take an arc lamp designed to use a -volt current. if a current is supplied to it carrying volts, it is obvious that there are volts more than are needed. we must take care of this excess of volts without losing it, as would happen were we to locate a resistance of some kind in the circuit. this result we accomplish by the introduction of the choking coil, which has the effect of absorbing the excessive volts, the action being due to its quality of self-induction, referred to in the foregoing. [illustration: _fig. ._ choking coil] in fig. , a is the choking coil and b an arc lamp, connected up, in series, with the choking coil. the transformer.--it is more economical to transmit , volts a long distance than , volts, because the lower the pressure, or the voltage, the larger must be the conductor to avoid loss. it is for this reason that volts, or more, are used on electric railways. for electric light purposes, where the current goes into dwellings, even this is too high, so a transformer is used to take a high-voltage current from the main line and transform it into a low voltage. this is done by means of two distinct coils of wire, wound upon an iron core. [illustration: _fig. ._ a transformer] in fig. the core is o-shaped, so that a primary winding (a), from the electrical source, can be wound upon one limb, and the secondary winding (b) wound around the other limb. the wires, to supply the lamps, run from the secondary coil. there is no electrical connection between the two coils, but the action from the primary to the secondary coil is solely by induction. when a current passes through the primary coil, the surging movement, heretofore explained, is transmitted to the iron core, and the iron core, in turn, transmits this electrical energy to the secondary coil. how the voltage is determined.--the voltage produced by the secondary coil will depend upon several things, namely, the strength of the magnetism transmitted to it; the rapidity, or periodicity of the current, and the number of turns of wire around the coil. the voltage is dependent upon the length of the winding. but the voltage may also be increased, as well as decreased. if the primary has, we will say, turns of wire, and has volts, and the secondary has turns of wire, the secondary will give forth only one-half as much as the primary, or volts. if, on the other hand, volts would be required, the secondary should have turns in the winding. voltage and amperage in transformers.--it must not be understood that, by increasing the voltage in this way, we are getting that much more electricity. if the primary coil, with turns, produces a current of volts and amperes, which would be � = , watts, and the secondary coil has turns, we shall have volts and amperes: (v.) � (a.) = , watts. or, if, on the other hand, our secondary winding is composed of turns, we shall have volts and amperes, (volts) � (amperes) also gives , watts. necessarily, there will be some loss, but the foregoing is offered as the theoretical basis of calculation. chapter xvi electric lighting the most important step in the electric field, after the dynamo had been brought to a fairly workable condition, was its utilization to make light. it was long known prior to the discovery of practical electric dynamos, that the electric current would produce an intense heat. ordinary fuels under certain favorable conditions will produce a temperature of , degrees of heat; but by means of the electric arc, as high as six, eight and ten thousand degrees are available. the fact that when a conductor, in an electric current, is severed, a spark will follow the drawing part of the broken ends, led many scientists to believe, even before the dynamo was in a practical shape, that electricity, sooner or later, would be employed as the great lighting agent. when the dynamo finally reached a stage in development where its operation could be depended on, and was made reversible, the first active steps were taken to not only produce, but to maintain an arc between two electrodes. it would be difficult and tedious to follow out the first experiments in detail, and it might, also, be useless, as information, in view of the present knowledge of the science. a few steps in the course of the development are, however, necessary to a complete understanding of the subject. reference has been made in a previous chapter to what is called the _electric arc_, produced by slightly separated conductors, across which the electric current jumps, producing the brilliantly lighted area. this light is produced by the combustion of the carbon of which the electrodes are composed. thus, the illumination is the result of directly burning a fuel. the current, in passing from one electrode to the other, through the gap, produces such an intense heat that the fuel through which the current passes is consumed. carbon in a comparatively pure state is difficult to ignite, owing to its great resistance to heat. at about , degrees it will fuse, and pass into a vapor which causes the intense illumination. the earliest form of electric lighting was by means of the arc, in which the light is maintained so long as the electrodes were kept a certain distance apart. to do this requires delicate mechanism, for the reason that when contact is made, and the current flows through the two electrodes, which are connected up directly with the coils of a magnet, the cores, or armatures, will be magnetized. the result is that the electrode, connected with the armature of the magnet, is drawn away from the other electrode, and the arc is formed, between the separated ends. as the current also passes through a resistance coil, the moment the ends of the electrodes are separated too great a distance, the resistance prevents a flow of the normal amount of current, and the armature is compelled to reduce its pull. the effect is to cause the two electrodes to again approach each other, and in doing so the arc becomes brighter. it will be seen, therefore, that there is a constant fight between the resistance coil and the magnet, the combined action of the two being such, that, if properly arranged, and with powers in correct relation to each other, the light may be maintained without undue flickering. such devices are now universally used, and they afford a steady and reliable means of illumination. many improvements are made in this direction, as well as in the ingredients of the electrodes. a very novel device for assuring a perfect separation at all times between the electrodes, is by means of a pair of parallel carbons, held apart by a non-conductor such as clay, or some mixture of earth, a form of which is shown in fig. . the drawing shows two electrodes, separated by a non-conducting material, which is of such a character that it will break down and crumble away, as the ends of the electrodes burn away. [illustration: _fig. . parallel carbons._] this device is admirable where the alternating current is used, because the current moves back and forth, and the two electrodes are thus burned away at the same rate of speed. in the direct or continuous current the movement is in one direction only, and as a result the positive electrode is eaten away twice as fast as the negative. this is the arc form of lamp universally used for lighting large spaces or areas, such as streets, railway stations, and the like. it is important also as the means for utilizing searchlight illumination, and frequently for locomotive headlights. arc lights are produced by what is called the _series current_. this means that the lamps are all connected in a single line. this is illustrated by reference to fig. , in which a represents the wire from the dynamo, and b, c the two electrodes, showing the current passing through from one lamp to the next. [illustration: _fig. . arc-lighting circuit._] a high voltage is necessary in order to cause the current to leap across the gap made by the separation of the electrodes. the incandescent system.--this method is entirely different from the arc system. it has been stated that certain metals conduct electricity with greater facility than others, and some have higher resistance than others. if a certain amount of electricity is forced through some metals, they will become heated. this is true, also, if metals, which, ordinarily, will conduct a current freely, are made up into such small conductors that it is difficult for the current to pass. [illustration: _fig . interrupted conductor._] in the arc method high voltage is essential; in the incandescent plan, current is the important consideration. in the arc, the light is produced by virtue of the break in the line of the conductor; in the incandescent, the system is closed at all times. supposing we have a wire a, a quarter of an inch in diameter, carrying a current of, say, amperes, and at any point in the circuit the wire is made very small, as shown at b, in fig. , it is obvious that the small wire would not be large enough to carry the current. the result would be that the small connection b would heat up, and, finally, be fused. while the large part of the wire would carry amperes, the small wire could not possibly carry more than, say, amperes. now these little wires are the filaments in an electric bulb, and originally the attempt was made to have them so connected up that they could be illuminated by a single wire, as with the arc system above explained, one following the other as shown in fig. . [illustration: _fig. . incandescent circuit._] it was discovered, however, that the addition of each successive lamp, so wired, would not give light in proportion to the addition, but at only about one-fourth the illumination, and such a course would, therefore, make electric lighting enormously expensive. this knowledge resulted in an entirely new system of wiring up the lamps in a circuit. this is explained in fig. . in this figure a represents the dynamo, b, b the brushes, c, d the two line wires, e the lamps, and f the short-circuiting wires between the two main conductors c, d. it will be observed that the wires c, d are larger than the cross wires f. the object is to show that the main wires might carry a very heavy amperage, while the small cross wires f require only a few amperes. this is called the _multiple_ circuit, and it is obvious that the entire amperage produced by the dynamo will not be required to pass through each lamp, but, on the other hand, each lamp takes only enough necessary to render the filament incandescent. this invention at once solved the problem of the incandescent system and was called the subdivision of the electric light. by this means the cost was materially reduced, and the wiring up and installation of lights materially simplified. but the divisibility of the light did not, by any means, solve the great problem that has occupied the attention of electricians and experimenters ever since. the great question was and is to preserve the little filament which is heated to incandescence, and from which we get the light. the effort of the current to pass through the small filament meets with such a great resistance that the substance is heated up. if it is made of metal there is a point at which it will fuse, and thus the lamp is destroyed. it was found that carbon, properly treated, would heat to a brilliant white heat without fusing, or melting, so that this material was employed. but now followed another difficulty. as this intense heat consumed the particles of carbon, owing to the presence of oxygen, means were sought to exclude the air. this was finally accomplished by making a bulb of glass, from which the air was exhausted, and as such a globe had no air to support combustion, the filaments were finally made so that they would last a long time before being finally disintegrated. the quest now is, and has been, to find some material of a purely metallic character, which will have a very high fusing point, and which will, therefore, dispense with the cost of the exhausted bulb. some metals, as for instance, osmium, tantalum, thorium, and others, have been used, and others, also, with great success, so that the march of improvements is now going forward with rapid strides. vapor lamps.--one of the directions in which considerable energy has been directed in the past, was to produce light from vapors. the cooper hewitt mercury vapor lamp is a tube filled with the vapor of mercury, and a current is sent through the vapor which produces a greenish light, and owing to that peculiar color, has not met with much success. it is merely cited to show that there are other directions than the use of metallic conductors and filaments which will produce light, and the day is no doubt close at hand when we may expect some important developments in the production of light by means of the hertzian waves. directions for improvements.--electricity, however, is not a cheap method of illumination. the enormous heat developed is largely wasted. the quest of the inventor is to find a means whereby light can be produced without the generation of the immense heat necessary. man has not yet found a means whereby he can make a heat without increasing the temperature, as nature does it in the glow worm, or in the firefly. a certain electric energy will produce both light and heat, but it is found that much more of this energy is used in the heat than in the light. what wonderful possibilities are in store for the inventor who can make a heatless light! it is a direction for the exercise of ingenuity that will well repay any efforts. _curious superstitions concerning electricity_ electricity, as exhibited in light, has been the great marvel of all times. the word electricity itself comes from the thunderbolt of the ancient god zeus, which is known to be synonymous with the thunderbolt and the lightning. magnetism, which we know to be only another form of electricity, was not regarded the same as electricity by the ancients. iron which had the property to attract, was first found near the town of magnesia, in lydia, and for that reason was called magnetism. later on, a glimmer of the truth seemed to dawn on the early scientists, when they saw the resemblance between the actions of the amber and the loadstone, as both attracted particles. and here another curious thing resulted. amber will attract particles other than metals. the magnet did not; and from this imperfect observation and understanding, grew a belief that electricity, or magnetism would attract all substances, even human flesh, and many devices were made from magnets, and used as cures for the gout, and to affect the brain, or to remove pain. even as early as , years before the birth of christ the chinese knew of the properties of the magnet, and also discovered that a bar of the permanent magnet would arrange itself north and south, like the mariners' compass. there is no evidence, however, that it was used as a mariner's compass until centuries afterwards. but the matter connected with light, as an electrical development, which interests us, is its manifestations to the ancients in the form of lightning. the electricity of the earth concentrates itself on the tops of mountains, or in sharp peaks, and accounts for the magnificent electrical displays always found in mountainous regions. some years ago, a noted scientist, dr. siemens, while standing on the top of the great pyramid of cheops, in egypt, during a storm, noted that an electrical discharge flowed from his hand when extended toward the heavens. the current manifested itself in such a manner that the hissing noise was plainly perceptible. the literature of all ages and of all countries shows that this manifestation of electrical discharges was noted, and became the subject of discussions among learned men. all these displays were regarded as the bolts of an angry god, and historians give many accounts of instances where, in his anger, he sent down the lightning to destroy. among the romans jupiter thus hurled forth his wrath; and among many ancient people, even down to the time of charlemagne, any space struck by lightning was considered sacred, and made consecrated ground. from this grew the belief that it was sacrilegious to attempt to imitate the lightning of the sky--that deity would visit dire punishment on any man who attempted to produce an electric light. virgil relates accounts where certain princes attempted to imitate the lightning, and were struck by thunderbolts as punishments. less than a century ago benjamin franklin devised the lightning rod, in order to prevent lightning from striking objects. the literature of that day abounds with instances of protests made, on the part of those who were as superstitions as the people in ancient times, who urged that it was impious to attempt to ward off heaven's lightnings. it was argued that the lightning was one way in which the creator manifested his displeasure, and exercised his power to strike the wicked. when such writers as pliny will gravely set forth an explanation of the causes of lightning, as follows in the paragraph below, we can understand why it inculcated superstitious fears in the people of ancient times. he says: "most men are ignorant of that secret, which, by close observation of the heavens, deep scholars and principal men of learning have found out, namely, that they are the fires of the uppermost planets, which, falling to the earth, are called lightning; but those especially which are seated in the middle, that is about jupiter, perhaps because participating in the excessive cold and moisture from the upper circle of saturn, and the immoderate heat of mars, that is next beneath, by this means he discharges his superfluity, and therefore it is commonly said, 'that jupiter shooteth and darteth lightning.' therefore, like as out of a burning piece of wood a coal flieth forth with a crack, even so from a star is spit out, as it were, and voided forth this celestial fire, carrying with it presages of future things; so that the heavens showeth divine operations, even in these parcels and portions which are rejected and cast away as superfluous." chapter xvii power, and various other electrical manifestations it would be difficult to mention any direction in human activity where electricity does not serve as an agent in some form or manner. man has learned that the creator gave this great power into the hands of man to use, and not to curse. when the dynamo was first developed it did not appear possible that it could generate electricity, and then use that electricity in order to turn the dynamo in the opposite direction. it all seems so very natural to us now, that such a thing should practically follow; but man had to learn this. let us try to make the statement plain by a few simple illustrations. by carefully going over the chapter on the making of the dynamo, it will be evident that the basis of the generation of the current depends on the changing of the direction of the flow of an electric current. look at the simple horse-shoe magnet. if two of them are gradually moved toward each other, so that the north pole of one approaches the north pole of the other, there is a sensible attempt for them to push away from each other. if, however, one of them is turned, so that the north pole of one is opposite the south pole of the other, they will draw together. in this we have the foundation physical action of the dynamo and the motor. when power is applied to an armature, and it moves through a magnetic field, the action is just the same as in the case of the hand drawing the north and the south pole of the two approaching magnets from each other. the influence of the electrical disturbance produced by that act permeated the entire winding of the field and armature, and extended out on the whole line with which the dynamo was connected. in this way a current was established and transmitted, and with proper wires was sent in the form of circuits and distributed so as to do work. but an electric current, without suitable mechanism, is of no value. it must have mechanism to use it, as well as to make it. in the case of light, we have explained how the arc and the incandescent lamps utilize it for that purpose. but now, attempting to get something from it in the way of power, means another piece of mechanism. this is done by the motor, and this motor is simply a converter, or a device for reversing the action of the electricity. attention is called to figs. and . let us assume that the field magnets a, a are the positives, and the magnets b, b the negatives. the revolving armature has also four magnet coils, two of them, c, c, being positive, and the other two, d, d, negative, each of these magnet coils being so connected up that they will reverse the polarities of the magnets. [illustration: _figs. - ._ action of magnets in a dynamo] now in the particular position of the revolving armature, in fig. , the magnets of the armature have just passed the respective poles of the field magnets, and the belt e is compelled to turn the armature past the pole pieces by force in the direction of the arrow f. after the armature magnets have gone to the positions in fig. , the positives a try to draw back the negatives d of the armature, and at the same time the negatives b repel the negatives d, because they are of the same polarities. this repulsion of the negatives a, b continues until the armature poles c, d have slightly passed them, when the polarities of the magnets c, d are changed; so that it will be seen, by reference to fig. , that d is now retreating from b, and c is going away from a--that is, being forced away contrary to their natural attractive influences, and in fig. , when the complete cycle is nearly finished, the positives are again approaching each other and the negatives moving together. [illustration: _figs. - ._ cycle action in dynamo] in this manner, at every point, the sets of magnets are compelled to move against their magnetic pull. this explains the dynamo. now take up the cycle of the motor, and note in fig. that the negative magnets d of the armature are closely approaching the positive and negative magnets, on one side; and the positive magnets c are nearing the positive and negatives on the other side. the positives a, therefore, attract the negatives d, and the negative b exert a pull on the positives c at the same time. the result is that the armature is caused to revolve, as shown by the dart g, in a direction opposite to the dart in fig. . [illustration: _figs. - ._ action of magnets in motor] when the pole pieces of the magnets c, d are about to pass magnets a, b, as shown in fig. , it is necessary to change the polarities of the armature magnets c, d; so that by reference to fig. , it will be seen that they are now indicated as c-, and d+, respectively, and have moved to a point midway between the poles a, b (as in fig. ), where the pull on one side, and the push on the other are again the same, and the last figure shows the cycle nearly completed. the shaft of the motor armature is now the element which turns the mechanism which is to be operated. to convert electrical impulses into power, as thus shown, results in great loss. the first step is to take the steam boiler, which is the first stage in that source which is the most common and universal, and by means of fuel, converting water into steam. the second is to use the pressure of this steam to drive an engine; the third is to drive the dynamo which generates the electrical impulse; and the fourth is the conversion from the dynamo into a motor shaft. loss is met with at each step, and the great problem is to eliminate this waste. [illustration: _figs. - ._ positions of magnets in motor] the great advantage of electrical power is not in utilizing it for consumption at close ranges, but where it is desired to transmit it for long distances. such illustrations may be found in electric railways, and where water power can be obtained as the primal source of energy, the cost is not excessive. it is found, however, that even with the most improved forms of mechanism, in electrical construction, the internal combustion engines are far more economical. _transmission of energy_ one of the great problems has been the transmission of the current to great distances. by using a high voltage it may be sent hundreds of miles, but to use a current of that character in the cars, or shops, or homes, would be exceedingly dangerous. to meet this requirement transformers have been devised, which will take a current of very high voltage, and deliver a current of low tension, and capable of being used anywhere with the ordinary motors. the transformer.--this is an electrical device made up of a core or cores of thin sheet metal, around which is wound sets of insulated wires, one set being designed to receive the high voltage, and the other set to put out the low voltage, as described in a former chapter. these may be made where the original output is a very high voltage, so that they will be stepped down, first from one voltage to a lower, and then from that to the next lower stage. this is called the "step down" transformer, and is now used over the entire world, where large voltages are generated. electric furnaces.--the most important development of electricity in the direction of heat is its use in furnaces. as before stated, an intense heat is capable of being generated by the electric current, so that it becomes the great agent to use for the treatment of refractory material. in furnaces of this kind the electric arc is the mechanical form used to produce the great heat, the only difference being in the size of the apparatus. the electric furnace is simply an immense form of arc light, capable of taking a high voltage, and such an arc is enclosed within a suitable oven of refractory material, which still further conserves the heat. welding by electricity.--the next step is to use the high heat thus capable of being produced, to fuse metals so that they may be welded together. it is a difficult matter to unite two large pieces of metal by the forging method, because the highest heat is required, owing to their bulk, and in addition immense hammers, weighing tons, must be employed. electric welding offers a simple and easy method of accomplishing the result, and in the doing of which it avoids the oxidizing action of the forging heat. instead of heating the pieces to be welded in a forge, as is now done, the ends to be united are simply brought into contact, and the current is sent through the ends until they are in a soft condition, after which the parts are pressed together and united by the simple merging of the plastic condition in which they are reduced by the high electric heat. this form of welding makes the most perfect joint, and requires no hammering, as the mass of the metal flows from one part or end to the other; the unity is a perfect one, and the advantage is that the metals can be kept in a semi-fluid state for a considerable time, thus assuring a perfect admixture of the two parts. with the ordinary form of welding it is necessary to drive the heated parts together without any delay, and at the least cooling must be reheated, or the joint will not be perfect. the smallest kinds of electric heating apparatus are now being made, so that small articles, sheet metal, small rods, and like parts can be united with the greatest facility. chapter xviii x-ray, radium, and the like the camera sees things invisible to the human eye. its most effective work is done with beams which are beyond human perception. the photographer uses the _actinic_ rays. ordinary light is composed of the seven primary colors, of which the lowest in the scale is the red, and the highest to violet. those below the red are called the infra-red, and they are the hertzian waves, or those used in wireless telegraphy. those above the violet are called ultra-violet, and these are employed for x-ray work. the former are produced by the high tension electric apparatus, which we have described in the chapter relating to wireless telegraphy; and the latter, called also the roentgen rays, are generated by the crookes' tube. this is a tube from which all the atmosphere has been extracted so that it is a practical vacuum. within this are placed electrodes so as to divert the action of the electrical discharge in a particular direction, and this light, when discharged, is of such a peculiar character that its discovery made a sensation in the scientific world. the reason for this great wonder was not in the fact that it projected a light, but because of its character. ordinary light, as we see it with the eye, is capable of being reflected, as when we look into a mirror at an angle. the x-ray will not reflect, but instead, pass directly through the glass. then, ordinary light is capable of refraction. this is shown by a ray of light bending as it passes through a glass of water, which is noticed when the light is at an angle to the surface. the x-ray will pass through the water without being changed from a straight line. the foregoing being the case, it was but a simple step to conclude that if it were possible to find a means whereby the human eye could see within the ultra-violet beam, it would be possible to see through opaque substances. from the discovery so important and far reaching it was not long until it was found that if the ultra-violet rays, thus propagated, were transmitted through certain substances, their rates of vibration would be brought down to the speeds which send forth the visible rays, and now the eye is able to see, in a measure at least, what the actinic rays show. this discovery was but the forerunner of a still more important development, namely, the discovery of _radium_. the actual finding of the metal was preceded by the knowledge that certain minerals, and water, as well, possessed the property of radio-activity. radio-activity is a word used to express that quality in metals or other material by means of which obscure rays are emitted, that have the capacity of discharging electrified bodies, and the power to ionize gases, as well as to actually affect photograph plates. certain metals had this property to a remarkable degree, particularly uranium, thorium, polonium, actinium, and others, and in the curies, husband and wife, french chemists, isolated an element, very ductile in its character, which was a white metal, and had a most brilliant luster. pitchblende, the base metal from which this was extracted, was discovered to be highly radio-active, and on making tests of the product taken from it, they were surprised to find that it emitted a form of energy that far exceeded in calculations any computations made on the basis of radio-activity in the metals hitherto examined. but this was not the most remarkable part of the developments. the energy, whatever it was, had the power to change many other substances if brought into close proximity. it darkens the color of diamonds, quartz, mica, and glass. it changes some of the latter in color, some kinds being turned to brown and others into violet or purple tinges. radium has the capacity to redden the skin, and affect the flesh of persons, even at some considerable distance, and it is a most powerful germicide, destroying bacteria, and has been found also to produce some remarkable cures in diseases of a cancerous nature. the remarkable similarity of the rays propagated by this substance, with the x-rays, lead many to believe that they are electrical in their character, and the whole scientific world is now striving to use this substance, as well as the more familiar light waves of the roentgen tube, in the healing of diseases. it is not at all remarkable that this use of it should first be considered, as it has been the history of the electrical developments, from the earliest times, that each successive stage should find advocates who would urge its virtues to heal the sick. it was so when the dynamo was invented, when the high tension current was produced; and electrical therapeutics became a leading theme when transmission by induction became recognized as a scientific fact. it is not many years since the x-rays were discovered, and the first announcement was concerning its wonderful healing powers. this was particularly true in the case of radium, but for some reason, after the first tests, all experimenters were thwarted in their theories, because the science, like all others, required infinite patience and experience. it was discovered, in the case of the x-ray, that it must be used in a modified form, and accordingly, various modifications of the waves were introduced, called the _m_ and the _n_ rays, as well as many others, each having some peculiar qualification. in time, no doubt, the investigators will find the right quality for each disease, and learn how to apply it. thus, electricity, that most alluring thing which, in itself, cannot be seen, and is of such a character that it cannot even be defined in terms which will suit the exact scientific mind, is daily bringing new wonders for our investigation and use. it is, indeed, a study which is so broad that it has no limitations, and a field which never will be exhausted. the end glossary of words used in text of this volume acid. accumulator material is sulphuric acid, diluted with water. active that part of the material in accumulator plates material. which is acted upon by the electric current. accumulator. a cell, generally known as a storage battery, which while it initially receives a charge of electricity, is nevertheless, of such a character, owing to the active material of which it is made, that it accumulates, or, as it were, generates electricity. aerial wire, the wire which, in wireless telegraphy, is carried or conductor. up into the air to connect the antennæ with the receiving and sending apparatus. alarm, burglar. a circulating system in a building, connected up with a bell or other signaling means. alloy. a mixture of two or more metals; as copper and zinc to make brass; nickel and zinc to form german silver. alternating current. a current which goes back and forth in opposite directions, unlike a direct current which flows continuously in one direction over a wire. alternation. the term applied to a change in the direction of an alternating current, the frequency of the alternations ranging up to , or more vibrations per second. amber. a resin, yellow in color, which when rubbed with a cloth, becomes excited and gives forth negative electricity. ammeter. an instrument for measuring the quantity or flow of electricity. ampere. the unit of current; the term in which strength of the current is measured. an ampere is an electromotive force of one volt through a resistance of one ohm. annunciator. a device which indicates or signals a call given from some distant point. anode. the positive terminal in a conducting circuit, like the terminal of the carbon plate in a battery. it is a plate in an electroplating bath from which the current goes over to the cathode or negative plate or terminal. arc. a term employed to designate the gap, or the current which flows across between the conductors, like the space between the two carbons of an arc lamp, which gives the light. armature. a body of iron, or other suitable metal, which is in the magnetic field of a magnet. armature bar. the piece which holds the armature. also one of a series of bars which form the conductors in armature windings. armature coil. the winding around an armature, or around the core of an armature. armature core. the part in a dynamo or motor which revolves, and on which the wire coils are wound. astatic (galvanometer). that which has no magnetic action to direct or divert anything exterior to it. atom. the ultimate particle of an elementary substance. attraction. that property of matter which causes particles to adhere, or cohere, to each other. it is known under a variety of terms, such as gravitation, chemical affinity, electro-magnetism and dynamic attraction. automatic cut-out. a device which acts through the operation of the mechanism with which it is connected. it is usually applied to a device which cuts out a current when it overcharges or overloads the wire. bath. in electroplating, the vessel or tank which holds the electroplating solution. battery. a combination of two or more cells. battery, dry. a primary battery in which the electrolyte is made in a solid form. battery, galvanic. a battery which is better known by the name of the voltaic pile, made up of zinc and copper plates which alternate, and with a layer of acidulated paper between each pair of plates. battery, storage. a battery which accumulates electricity generated by a primary battery or a generator. brush. a term applied to the conducting medium that bears against the cylindrical surface of a commutator. buzzer. an electric call produced by a rapidly moving armature of an electro-magnet. cable. a number of wires or conductors assembled in one strand. candle-power. the amount of light given by the legal-standard candle. this standard is a sperm candle, which burns two grains a minute. capacity. the carrying power of a wire or circuit, without heating. when heated there is an overload, or the _capacity_ of the wire is overtaxed. capacity, storage. the quantity of electricity in a secondary battery when fully charged, usually reckoned in ampere hours. carbon. a material, like coke, ground or crushed, and formed into sticks or plates by molding or compression. it requires a high heat to melt or burn, and is used as electrodes for arc lamps and for battery elements. it has poor conductivity, and for arc lamps is coated with copper to increase its conductivity. cell, electrolytic. a vessel containing an electrolyte for electroplating purposes. charge. the quantity of electricity on the surface of a body or conductor. chemical change. when a current passes through electrodes in a solution, a change takes place which is chemical in its character. adding sulphuric acid to water produces heat. if electrodes of opposite polarity are placed in such an acid solution, a chemical change is produced, which is transformed into electricity. choking coil. an instrument in a circuit which by a form of resistance regulates the flow of the current, or returns part of it to the source of its generation. counter-electromotive force. cells which are inserted in opposition to a battery to reduce high voltage. circuit, astatic. a circuit in an instrument so wound that the earth's magnetism will not affect it. circuit breaker. any instrument in a circuit which cuts out or interrupts the flow of a current. circuit, external. a current flows through a wire or conductor, and also along the air outside of the conductor, the latter being the _external circuit._ circuit indicator. an instrument, like a galvanometer, that shows the direction in which a current is flowing through a conductor. circuit, return. usually the ground return, or the negative wire from a battery. circuit, short. any connection between the mains or parallel lines of a circuit which does not go through the apparatus for which the circuit is intended. coherer. a tube, or other structure, containing normally high resistance particles which form a path or bridge between the opposite terminals of a circuit. coil. a wire, usually insulated, wound around a spool. coil, induction. one of a pair of coils designed to change the voltage of a current of electricity, from a higher to a lower, or from a lower to a higher electro-motive force. coil, resistance. a coil so wound that it will offer a resistance to a steady current, or reduce the flow of electricity. commutator. a cylinder on the end of the armature of a dynamo or motor and provided with a pair of contact plates for each particular coil in the armature, in order to change the direction of the current. compass. an apparatus which indicates the direction or flow of the earth's magnetism. condenser. a device for storing up electro-static charges. conductance. that quality of a conductor to carry a current of electricity, dependent on its shape for the best results. conduction. the transmission of a current through a rod, wire or conductor. conductivity. that quality which has reference to the capacity to conduct a current. conductor. any body, such as a bar, rod, wire, or machine, which will carry a current. connector. a binding post, clamp, screw, or other means to hold the end of a wire, or electric conductor. contact. to unite any parts in an electric circuit. controller. the handle of a switchboard, or other contact making and breaking means in a circuit. converter. an induction coil in an alternating circuit for changing potential difference, such as high alternating voltage into low direct current voltage. convolution. to wind like a clock spring. core. the inner portion of an electro-magnet. the inside part of an armature wound with wire. core, laminated. when the core is built up of a number of separate pieces of the same material, but not insulated from each other. coulomb. the unit of electrical quantity. it is the quantity passed by a current of one ampere intensity in one second of time. couple, electric. two or more electrodes in a liquid to produce an electric force. current, alternating. a natural current produced by the action of electro-magnets. it is a succession of short impulses in opposite directions. current, constant. a current which is uniformly maintained in a steady stream. current, induced. a current produced by electro-dynamic induction. current meter. an apparatus for indicating the strength of a current. an ammeter. current, oscillating. a current which periodically alternates. current, periodic. a periodically varying current strength. current, undulating. a current which has a constant direction, but has a continuously varying strength. decomposition. the separation of a liquid, such as an electrolyte, into its prime elements, either electrically or otherwise. deflection. the change of movement of a magnetic needle out of its regular direction of movement. demagnetization. when a current passes through a coil wound on an iron core, the core becomes magnetized. when the current ceases the core is no longer a magnet. it is then said to be _demagnetized_. it also has reference to the process for making a watch non-magnetic so that it will not be affected when in a magnetic field. density. the quantity of an electric charge in a conductor or substance. depolarization. the removal of magnetism from a permanent magnet, or a horse-shoe magnet, for instance. it is generally accomplished by applying heat. deposition, the act of carrying metal from one pole of a cell to electrolysis. another pole, as in electroplating. detector. mechanism for indicating the presence of a current in a circuit. diaphragm. a plate in a telephone, which, in the receiver, is in the magnetic field of a magnet, and in a transmitter carries the light contact points. dielectric. a non-conductor for an electric current, but through which electro-static induction will take place. for example: glass and rubber are dielectrics. discharge. the current flowing from an accumulator. disintegration. the breaking up of the plate or active material. disruptive. a static discharge passing through a dielectric. duplex wire. a pair of wires usually twisted together and insulated from each other to form the conducting circuit of a system. dynamic electricity. the term applied to a current flowing through a wire. dynamo. an apparatus, consisting of core and field magnets, which, when the core is turned, will develop a current of electricity. earth returns. instead of using two wires to carry a circuit, the earth is used for what is called the _return_ circuit. efficiency. the total electrical energy produced, in which that wasted, as well as that used, is calculated. elasticity. that property of any matter which, after a stress, will cause the substance to return to its original form or condition. electricity has elasticity, which is utilized in condensers, as an instance. electricity, lightning, and, in short, any current or electrical atmospheric. impulse, like wireless telegraphic waves, is called _atmospheric_. electricity, electricity with a low potentiality and large current voltaic. density. electrification. the process of imparting a charge of electricity to any body. electro-chemistry. the study of which treats of electric and chemical forces, such as electric plating, electric fusing, electrolysis, and the like. electrode. the terminals of a battery, or of any circuit; as, for instance, an arc light. electrolyte. any material which is capable of being decomposed by an electric current. electro-magnetism. magnetism which is created by an electric current. electrometer. an instrument for measuring static electricity, differing from a galvanometer, which measures a current in a wire that acts on the magnetic needle of the galvanometer. electro-motive voltage, which is the measure or unit of e. m. f. force. (e. m. f.) electroscope. a device for indicating not only the presence of electricity, but whether it is positive or negative. electro-static surfaces separated by a dielectric for opposite accumulator. charging of the surface. element. in electricity a form of matter, as, for instance, gold, or silver, that has no other matter or compound. original elements cannot be separated, because they are not made up of two or more elements, like brass, for instance. excessive charge. a storage battery charged at too high a rate. excessive discharge. a storage battery discharged at too high a rate. excessive overcharge. charging for too long a time. exciter. a generator, either a dynamo or a battery, for exciting the field of a dynamo. exhaustive discharge. an excessive over-discharge of an accumulator. f. the sign used to indicate the heat term fahrenheit. fall of voltage. the difference between the initial and the final voltage in a current. field. the space or region near a magnet or charged wire. also the electro-magnets in a dynamo or motor. flow. the volume of a current going through a conductor. force, electro-magnetic. the pull developed by an electro-magnet. frictional a current produced by rubbing dissimilar electricity. substances together. full load. the greatest load a battery, accumulator or dynamo will sustain. galvanic. pertaining to the electro-chemical relations of metals toward each other. galvanizing. the art of coating one metal with another, such, for instance, as immersing iron in molten zinc. galvanometry. an instrument having a permanently magnetized needle, which is influenced by a coil or a wire in close proximity to it. galvanoscope. an instrument, like a galvanometer, which determines whether or not a current is present in a tested wire. generator. a term used to generally indicate any device which originates a current. german silver. an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc. graphite. one form of carbon. it is made artificially by the electric current. grid. the metallic frame of a plate used to hold the active material of an accumulator. gravity. the attraction of mass for mass. weight. the accelerating tendency of material to move toward the earth. gutta percha. caoutchouc, which has been treated with sulphur, to harden it. it is produced from the sap of tropical trees, and is a good insulator. harmonic receiver. a vibrating reed acted on by an electro-magnet, when tuned to its pitch. high e. m. f. a term to indicate currents which have a high voltage, and usually low amperage. igniter. mechanism composed of a battery, induction coil and a vibrator, for making a jump spark, to ignite gas, powder, etc. i. h. p. abbreviation, which means indicated horse power. impulse. a sudden motion of one body acting against another. an electro-magnetic wave magnetizing soft iron, and this iron attracting another piece of iron, as an example. incandescence, a conductor heated up by a current so it will electric. glow. induced current. a current of electricity which sets up lines of force at right angles to the body of the wire through which the current is transmitted. induction, magnetic. a body within a magnetic field which is excited by the magnetism. installation. everything belonging to an equipment of a building, or a circuiting system to do a certain thing. insulation. a material or substance which resists the passage of a current placed around a conductor. intensity. the strength of a magnetic field, or of a current flowing over a wire. internal resistance. the current strength of electricity of a wire to resist the passage. interrupter. a device in a wire or circuit for checking a current. it also refers to the vibrator of an induction coil. joint. the place where two or more conductors are united. joint resistance. the combined resistance offered by two or more substances or conductors. jump spark. a spark, disruptive in its character, between two conducting points. initial charge. the charge required to start a battery. kathode, or cathode. the negative plate or side of a battery. the plate on which the electro deposit is made. key. the arm of a telegraph sounder. a bar with a finger piece, which is hinged and so arranged that it will make and break contacts in an electric circuit. keyboard. a switch-board; a board on which is mounted a number of switches. kilowatt. a unit, representing , watts. an electric current measure, usually expressed thus: k.w. kilowatt hour. the computation of work equal to the exertion of one kilowatt in one hour. knife switch. a bar of a blade-like form, adapted to move down between two fingers, and thus establish metallic connections. laminated. made up of thin plates of the same material, laid together, but not insulated from each other. lamp arc. a voltaic arc lamp, using carbon electrodes, with mechanism for feeding the electrodes regularly. lamp, incandescent. a lamp with a filament heated up to a glow by the action of an electric current. the filament is within a vacuum in a glass globe. leak. loss of electrical energy through a fault in wiring, or in using bare wires. load. the ampere current delivered by a dynamo under certain conditions. low frequency. a current in which the vibrations are of few alternations per second. magnet. a metallic substance which has power to attract iron and steel. magnet bar. a straight piece of metal. magnet coil. a coil of wire, insulated, surrounding a core of iron, to receive a current of electricity. magnet core. a bar of iron adapted to receive a winding of wire. magnet, field. a magnet in a dynamo. a motor to produce electric energy. magnet, permanent. a short steel form, to hold magnetism for a long time. magnetic adherence. the adherence of particles to the poles of a magnet. magnetic that quality of a metal which draws metals. also attraction and the pulling action of unlike poles for each repulsion. other, and pushing away of like poles when brought together. magnetic force. the action exercised by a magnet of attracting or repelling. magnetic pole. the earth has north and south magnetic poles. the south pole of a magnetic needle is attracted so it points to the north magnetic pole; and the north pole of the needle is attracted to point to the south magnetic pole. magneto-generator. a permanent magnet and a revolving armature for generating a current. maximum voltage. the final voltage after charging. molecule. invisible particles made up of two or more atoms of different matter. an atom is a particle of one substance only. morse sounder. an electric instrument designed to make a clicking sound, when the armature is drawn down by a magnet. motor-dynamo. a motor and a dynamo having their armatures connected together, whereby the motor is driven by the dynamo, so as to change the current into a different voltage and amperage. motor-transformer. a motor which delivers the current like a generator. needle. a bar magnet horizontally poised on a vertical pivot point, like the needle of a mariner's compass. negative amber, when rubbed, produces negative electricity. electricity. a battery has positive as well as negative electricity. negative element. that plate in the solution of a battery cell which is not disintegrated. normal. the usual, or ordinary. the average. in a current the regular force required to do the work. north pole, the term applied to the force located near electric. the north pole of the globe, to which a permanent magnet will point if allowed to swing freely. o. abbreviation for ohm. ohm. the unit of resistance. equal to the resistance of a column of mercury one square millimeter in cross section, and . centimeters in length. ohm's law. it is expressed as follows: . the current strength is equal to the electro-motive force divided by its resistance. . the electro-motive force is equal to the current strength multiplied by the resistance. . the resistance is equal to the electro-motive force divided by the current strength. overload. in a motor an excess of mechanical work which causes the armature to turn too slowly and produces heat. phase. one complete oscillation. the special form of a wave at any instant, or at any interval of time. plate, condenser. in a static machine it is usually a plate of glass and revoluble. plate, negative. the plate in a battery, such as carbon, copper or platinum, which is not attacked by the solution. plating, electro-. the method of coating one metal with another by electrolysis. polarity. the peculiarity, in a body, of arranging itself with reference to magnetic influence. parallel. when a number of cells are coupled so that their similar poles are grouped together. that is to say, as the carbon plates, for instance, are connected with one terminal, and all the zinc plates with the other terminal. polarization. when the cell is deprived of its electro-motive force, or any part of it, polarization is the result. it is usually caused by coating of the plates. porosity. having small interstices or holes. positive current. one which deflects a needle to the left. positive any current flowing from the active element, electricity. such as zinc, in a battery. the negative electricity flows from the carbon to the zinc. potential, electric. the power which performs work in a circuit. potential energy. that form of force, which, when liberated, does or performs work. power unit. the volt-amperes or watt. primary. the induction coil in induction machines, or in a transformer. push button. a thumb piece which serves as a switch to close a circuit while being pressed inwardly. quantity. such arrangement of electrical connections which give off the largest amount of current. receiver. an instrument in telephony and telegraphy which receives or takes in the sound or impulses. relay. the device which opens or closes a circuit so as to admit a new current which is sent to a more distant point. repulsion, that tendency in bodies to repel each other when electric. similarly charged. resilience. the springing back to its former condition or position. electricity has resilience. resistance. the quality in all conductors to oppose the passage of a current. resistance coil. a coil made up of wire which prevents the passage of a current to a greater or less degree. resistance, the counter force in an electrolyte which seeks electrolytic. to prevent a decomposing current to pass through it. resistance: internal, the opposing force to the movement of a current external. which is in the cell or generator. this is called the _internal_. that opposite action outside of the cell or generator is the _external_. resonator, an open-circuited conductor for electrically electric. resounding or giving back a vibration, usually exhibited by means of a spark. rheostat. a device which has an adjustable resistance, so arranged that while adjusting the same the circuit will not be open. safety fuse. a piece of fusible metal of such resistance that it breaks down at a certain current strength. saturated. when a liquid has taken up a soluble material to the fullest extent it is then completely saturated. secondary. one of the two coils in a transformer, or induction coil. secondary plates. the brown or deep red plates in a storage battery when charged. self-excited. producing electricity by its own current. series. arranged in regular order. from one to the other directly. if lamps, for instance, should be arranged in circuit on a single wire, they would be in series. series, multiple. when lamps are grouped in sets in parallel, and these sets are then connected up in series. series windings. a generator or motor wound in such a manner that one of the commutator brush connections is joined to the field magnet winding, and the other end of the magnet winding joined to the outer circuit. shunt. going around. shunt winding. a dynamo in which the field winding is parallel with the winding of the armature. snap switch. a switch so arranged that it will quickly make a break. sounder. the apparatus at one end of a line actuated by a key at the other end of the line. spark coil. a coil, to make a spark from a low electro-motive force. spark, electric. the flash caused by drawing apart the ends of a conductor. specific gravity. the weight or density of a body. static electricity. generated by friction. also lightning. any current generated by a high electro-motive force. strength of current. the quantity of electricity in a circuit. synchronize. operating together; acting in unison. terminal. the end of any electric circuit or of a body or machine which has a current passing through it. thermostat, electric. an electric thermometer. usually made with a metal coil which expands through the action of the electricity passing through it, and, in expanding, it makes a contact and closes a circuit. transformer. the induction coil with a high initial e. m. f. changes into a low electro-motive force. unit. a standard of light, heat, electricity, or of other phenomena. vacuum. a space from which all matter has been exhausted. vibrator. mechanism for making and breaking circuits in induction coils or other apparatus. volt. the unit of electro-motive force. voltage. electro-motive force which is expressed in volts. voltaic. a term applied to electric currents and devices. volt-meter. an apparatus for showing the difference of potential, or e. m. f. in the term of volts. watt. the unit of electrical activity. the product of amperes multiplied by volts. watt hour. one watt maintained through one hour of time. waves, electric waves in the ether caused by electro-magnetic magnetic. disturbances. x-rays. the radiation of invisible rays of light, which penetrate or pass through opaque substances. yoke, or bar. a soft iron body across the ends of a horseshoe magnet, to enable the magnet to retain its magnetism an indefinite time. zinc battery. a battery which uses zinc for one of its elements. index a accumulated, . accumulation, . accumulator cell, . accumulators, , , . accumulators, plates, . acid, , , . acid maker, . acid, sulphuric, , . acidulated, . acidulated water, . acoustics, . actinic rays, , . actinium, . active element, . adjustable rod, . adjusting screw, , , , , . aerial wire, . agents, , . alarms, burglar, , , . alkali, . alkaline, . alternate, . alternating, , , , , , , . alternating current, . alternating periods, . alternations, . aluminum, , , , . aluminum hydrate, . amber, , . ammeter, , . amperage, , , , , , , . ampere, , , , , , , . amplitude, . annunciator, , , , , , . annunciator bells, . anode, , , . antennæ, . antimony , . anvil, , . apparatus, , , , , . arc, , . arc lighting, , . arc system, . armature, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . armature brush, . armature post, . armature, vertical, . armature winding, , , . asbestos, . astatic galvanometer, . atmosphere, . attract, . attracted, . attraction, , . attractive, . automatic, . auxiliary, . awls, . b bacteria, , . bar, cross, . bar, horizontal, . bar, parallel switch, . bar, switch, , . base block, . batteries, , , . battery, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . battery charging, . bearings, , . bells, , , , . bells, electric, . bench, , , . binding post, , , , , , , , . binding screw, , . bismuth, , . bit, . blue vitriol, . brass plate, , . brazing, , . bridge, . brush holder, . brushes, , , , , . burglar, . burglar alarm, , . buttons, contact, . buttons, push, , , , , , . c calorimeter, . cancerous, . candle power, , . cap, removable, . cap screws, . carbon, , , , , , . carbon block, . carbon pencil, . cathode, , , , . cell, , . cell, accumulator, . cell, charging, . channel, . channel, concave, . charged, . charged battery, . charging circuit, , . charging source, . charged wire, . chemical, . chisels, . chloride of lime, . choked, . choking coils, , , , . circuit, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . circuit, primary, . circuit, secondary, . circuiting, , . circuiting system, . clapper arm, . closed rings, . coherer, , , . cohering, . coils, , , , , , . coils, choking, , , , . coils, induction, , . coils, primary, . coils, secondary, , . coincide, . cold, . collecting surfaces, . collector, . column, . combustion, . commutator, , , , . commutator brushes, . commutator plates, . compass, , , . composition, , . compound wound, . concave channel, . condenser, , , , , . conduct, , . conduction, , , , , . conduction current, . conductor, , , , , , , , . conduit, . conically formed, . conjunction, . connecting wire, . connection, , . construction, magnet, . consumption, . contact, , , , . contact finger, . contact plate, , , . contact screws, . contact surface, . continuous, . converter, . converting, , , . copper, , , , , , , , , , , , , . copper cyanide, . copper plate, , , , . copper sulphate, . copper voltameter, , . core, , , , , , . core, magnet, , . counter, clock-wise, . coupled, . crank, . crookes' tube, . cross bar, , . crown of cups, . crystal, . current, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . current, alternating, . current changing, . current conduction, . current, continuous, . current, direct, , . current direction, . current, exterior, , . current, reversing, . current strength, , . current testing, . cut-out, . cutter, . cutting, lines of force, . cylinder, . cylindrical, . d dash, , . decoherer, , . decomposed, , . decomposes, . decomposing, . decomposition, , , . deflected, . degree, , . demagnetized, , . deposited, , . depression, , . detecting current, . detector, , , , . devices, measuring, . diagrams, , , , . diagrammatically, . diamagnetic, . diametrically, . diaphragm, , , , , . diamonds, . diluted, . direct current, , . direction of current, . direction of flow, . discharge, . disintegrate, . disk, . dissimilar, . disturbance, . dividers, . divisibility, . dot, , . dot and dash, . double click, . double line, . double-pole switch, . double-throw switch, . drawing, . drill, ratchet, . drops, . ductile, . duplex wire, . dynamo, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . dynamo fields, , . e earth, . elasticity, , . electric, , , , , , , , , , , , , . electric arc, , . electric bell, , , , , , , . electric bulbs, . electric circuit, . electric fan, . electric field, . electric hand purifier, . electric heating, , , . electric iron, , . electric lamp socket, . electric light, , . electric lighting, . electric power, . electric welding, . electrical, , , , , , , , , , , . electrical impulses, , , . electrical manifestations, . electrically, , . electricity, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . electricity measuring, . electricity, thermo-, . electrified, , . electro-chemical, . electrode, , , , , , , , , , . electrolysis, , , , . electrolyte, , , , , , , , , . electrolytic, , , . electro-magnet, , . electro-magnetic, , , , , , , , , . electro-magnetic force, . electro-magnetic rotation, . electro-magnetic switch, . electro-meter, . electro-motive force, , , . electroplate, , , , , , . electro-positive-negative, , . elements, , . engine energy, , . equidistant, . ether, . example, . excited, . extension plate, . exterior, . exterior magnetic, . external, . external circuit, . external current, . external resistance, . f factor, . ferrous oxide, . field, , . field, dynamo, , . field magnet cores, . field, magnetic, . field of force, . field wire, . filament, , , . filter, . flat iron, . flocculent, . force, . formulated, . friction, . frictional, , , . fuse, . g galvani, . galvanic, , , . galvanometer, , , , . galvanoscope, , , . gaseous, . gasoline, . gas stove, . gelatine, . generate, , , , , . generated, . generating, , . generation, . generator, , , . german silver, , . germicide, . gimlets, . glass, , , , . gold, . grid, . ground circuit, . gunpowder, . h hack-saw, . hammer, . heart-shaped switch, . heater, . heating, , . hertzian rays, . hertzian wave, . high tension, , , . high tension apparatus, . high tension coils, . high voltage, . horizontal bar, . horseshoe magnet, , , . hydrate of aluminum, . hydrogen, , , , . i igniting, . illumination, , , , , . immersed, . impulses, , , , , , , . incandescent, , . induced, . inductance, , . induction, , , , . induction coils, , , . influences, . initial charge, . insulated, , , , , , , , , , . insulating, , , , , . insulating material, . insulation, , . instruments, , , , , . instruments, measuring, . intensity, , , , . interior, magnetic, . internal resistance, . interruption, , . installation, . ionize, . iron, , , , , , . isolated, . j jar, , , . journal, . journal block, , . jump spark, . k key, , , . key, sending, . knob, . knob, terminal, . l laboratory, . lead, , . lead, precipitated, , . lead, red, , . lever switching, . light, . light method, . lighting, , . lighting circuit, . lighting system, . lightning, , , , . lightning rod, . lime, chloride of, . line of force, . line wire, . line, magnetic, , . liquid, . litharge, . loadstone, . locomotives, . low tension, , , , . m magnet bar, . magnet core, , , . magnet, electro, , . magnet, horseshoe, , , . magnet lines, , . magnet, permanent, , , , , . magnet, reversed, . magnet, steel, . magnet, swinging, . magnetic, , , , , , , , . magnetic construction, . magnetic exterior, . magnetic field, , , , , , , , , . magnetic interior, . magnetic pull, . magnetic radiator, . magnetism, , , , , , . magnetized, , , , . magnetized wire, . magnets, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . main conductor, . mandrel, , . manganese, . manifestations, . mariner, . material, non-conducting, . maximum, . measure, , , , . measurement, . measuring devices, . measuring instruments, . mechanism, , . medical batteries, . mercury, , . metal base, . mica, . microphone, , , . millimeter, . minus, . minus sign, . morse code, . motor, , , , , , , , , , , . mouthpiece, . mouthpiece rays, . moving field, . multiple, . musical scale, . n negative, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . neutral, . neutral plate, . nickel, . nickel plating, . nitrate of silver, . nitrogen, . non-conducting material, . non-conductor, . non-magnetic, . north pole, , , , , , , , . number plate, . n-ray, . o ohms, , . ohms, international, . ohms law, . operator, , . oscillating, , . osmium, . oxides, . oxidizing, . oxygen, , , , , , , . p packing ring, . paraffine, , , , . paraffine wax, . parallel, , , . parallel switch bar, . parallel wires, , . partition, . peon, . percolate, . periodicity, . periods of alternations, . permanent, , , . permanent magnet, , , , , . phase, . phenomenon, , . photograph, . physical, . pile, voltaic, . pipe, . pitchblende, . pivot pin, . pivotal, . plane, . plate, , . plate, contact, , , . plate, copper, , , , . plate, negative, . plate, number, . plate, positive, , . plate, zinc, . platinum, , , . pliers, . plus sign, , . pointer, . polarity, , , , . polarization, . pole, north, , , , , , , , . pole piece, , . pole, south, , , , , , , . poles, , . polonium, . porcelain, . porous, . positive, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . post, binding, , . potentiality, , . power, , . power, candle, , . precipitate of lead, , . precision, . pressure, . primary, , , , , , , . primary battery, , . primary circuit, . primary coil, , . prime conductor, . projected, . propagated, , . properties, . purification, , . purifier, , . push button, , , , , , . q quantity, , , , . quartz, . r radio-activity, . radium, , , , . ratchet drill, . reaction, . receiver, , , , , . receiving station, . rectangular, . rectifiers, . red lead, , . reel, . reflected, . refraction, . refractory, . register, . removable, . removable cap, . repel, . repulsion, , . reservoir, , . resiliency, . resistance, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . resistance bridge, . resistance, external, . resistance, internal, . rheostat, . reversed, , , . reversible, . reversing, . reversing switch, . revolubly, . revolve, . revolving, . roentgen rays, . roentgen tube, . rotation, . rubber, , , , , , , . s sad-irons, . saline, . sanitation, . saturated, . screw, . screw, binding, , . screw-driver, . screw, set, . sealing wax, . secondary, , , , , , . secondary circuit, . secondary coil, , . self-induction, , . sender, , . sending apparatus, . sending key, . separately excited, . series-wound, . severed magnet, . sewage, . shaft, . shears, , . shellac, . shunt-wound, . signal, . silver, , , . silver nitrate, . socket, , . soldering, . soldering iron, . solution, , , , , , , , , . sounder, , , , . sounding board, . source, charging, . south pole, , , , , , , . spark gap, , . spark jump, . spring finger, . square, , . standard, , . station, , , , . steel, , . steel magnet, . sterilized, . stirrup, . stock bit, . stock contact, . storage, . storage battery, . storing, . substances, . sulphate, , , . sulphur, . sulphuric acid, , . sulphuric acid voltameter, , . superstition, , . surging, , . swinging magnet, . swinging switch blade, . switch blades, . switches, , , , , , , . switches, bar, , , , . switches, bar, parallel, . switches, heart-shaped, . switches, piece, . switches, reversing, . switches, sliding, , . switches, terminal, . switches, two-pole, . system, circuiting, . t tail-piece, . tantalum, . telegraph, , , . telegraph key, . telegraph sounder, , . telegraphing, . telephone, , , , , , , . telephone circuit, . telephone connections, . telephone hook, . temperature, , , , , . tension, high, , , . tension, low, , , , . terminal, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . terminal knob, . terminal, secondary, . terminal switch, . theoretical, . therapeutics, . thermo-electric couples, . thermo-electricity, . thermometer, . thorium, , . thunderbolt, , . tin, . tinfoil, , . tools, , , . torch, brazing, . transformer, , , , , , . transformer, step-down, . transmission, , . transmit, , , . transmitter, , , , , . transverse, , . transversely, . trigger, . tripod, . tubular, , . two-pole switch, . u ultra-violet, . uranium, . v vacuum, . vapor lamps, . velocity, , . vertical armature, . vibration, , , . vibratory, . vise, . voltage, , , , , , , , , , , , , , . voltage, high, . voltaic, , . voltaic pile, . voltameter, , , . voltameter, sulphuric, acid, , . volts, , , , , , , . w water, , , . water power, . watts, , , . wave lengths, , . weight, . welding, , . winding, , , , , , . winding reel, . window connection, . window frame, . wire, , , , , , . wire, circuiting, . wire coil, . wire lead, . wire, parallel, , . wireless, . wireless telegraphy, , , . wiring, . wiring, window, . workshop, , . wound, compound, . wound-series, . wound-shunt, . x x-ray, , , , . z zinc, , , , , . zinc plates, . the "how-to-do-it" books carpentry for boys a book which treats, in a most practical and fascinating manner all subjects pertaining to the "king of trades"; showing the care and use of tools; drawing; designing, and the laying out of work; the principles involved in the building of various kinds of structures, and the rudiments of architecture. it contains over two hundred and fifty illustrations made especially for this work, and includes also a complete glossary of the technical terms used in the art. the most comprehensive volume on this subject ever published for boys. electricity for boys the author has adopted the unique plan of setting forth the fundamental principles in each phase of the science, and practically applying the work in the successive stages. it shows how the knowledge has been developed, and the reasons for the various phenomena, without using technical words so as to bring it within the compass of every boy. it has a complete glossary of terms, and is illustrated with two hundred original drawings. practical mechanics for boys this book takes the beginner through a comprehensive series of practical shop work, in which the uses of tools, and the structure and handling of shop machinery are set forth; how they are utilized to perform the work, and the manner in which all dimensional work is carried out. every subject is illustrated, and model building explained. it contains a glossary which comprises a new system of cross references, a feature that will prove a welcome departure in explaining subjects. fully illustrated. _price cents per volume_ the new york book company fourth avenue new york +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note. | | | | every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully | | as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other | | inconsistencies. | | | | minor punctuation and printing errors have been corrected. | | | | the first page of the original book is an advertisement. the | | page was moved to the end of the text. | | | | some hyphenation inconsistencies in the text were retained: | | -candle-power and -candlepower, | | electromotive and electro-motive, | | electro-meter and electrometer, | | horseshoe and horse-shoe, | | switchboard and switch-board, | | | | two occurrences of 'colorimeter' for 'calorimeter' repaired. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ preliminary specifications --- programmed data processor model three (pdp- ) --- october, digital equipment corporation maynard, massachusetts table of contents introduction general description system block diagram electrical description mechanical description environmental requirements central processor operating speeds instruction format number system indexing indirect addressing instruction list manual controls storage standard input-output paper tape reader paper tape punch typewriter optional input-output sequence break system high speed in-out channel magnetic tape crt display real time clock line printer utility programs frap system decal system floating point subroutines maintenance routines miscellaneous routines introduction general description the dec programmed data processor model three (pdp- ) is a high performance, large scale digital computer featuring reliability in operation together with economy in initial cost, maintenance and use. this combination is achieved by the use of very fast, reliable, solid state circuits coupled with system design restraint. the simplicity of the system design excludes many marginal or superfluous features and thus their attendant cost and maintenance problems. the average internal instruction execution rate is about , operations per second with a peak rate of , operations per second. this speed, together with its economy and reliability, recommends pdp- as an excellent instrument for complex real time control applications and as the center of a modern computing facility. pdp- is a stored program, general purpose digital computer. it is a single address, single instruction machine operating in parallel on bit numbers. it features multiple step indirect addressing and indexing of addresses. the main memory makes registers available as index registers. the main storage is coincident current magnetic core modules of words each. the computer has a built-in facility to address modules and can be expanded to drive modules. the memory has a cycle time of five microseconds. system block diagram the flow of information between the various registers of pdp- is shown in the system block diagram (fig. ). there are four registers of bit length. their functions are described below. memory buffer the memory buffer is the central switching register. the word coming from or going to memory is retained in this register. in arithmetic operations it holds the addend, subtrahend, multiplicand, or divisor. the left bits of this register communicate with the instruction register. the address portion of the memory buffer register communicates with the index adder, the memory address register, and the program counter. in certain instructions, the address portion of the control word does not refer to memory but specifies variations of an instruction, thus, the address portion of the memory buffer is connected to the control element. accumulator the accumulator is the main register of the arithmetic element. sums and differences are formed in the accumulator. at the completion of multiplication it holds the high order digits of the product. in division it initially contains the high order digits of the dividend and is left with the remainder. the logical functions and, inclusive or, and exclusive or, are formed in the accumulator. carry storage register the carry storage register facilitates high-speed multiply and is properly part of the accumulator. in-out register the in-out register is the main path of communication with external equipment. it is also part of the arithmetic element. in multiplication it ends with the low order digits of the product. in division it starts with the low order parts of the dividend and ends with the quotient. the in-out register has a full set of shifting properties, (arithmetic and logical). * * * * * there are three registers of bit length which deal exclusively with addresses. the design allows for expansion to bits. these registers are: memory addressing the memory address register holds the number of the memory location that is currently being interrogated. it receives this number from the program counter, the index adder or the memory buffer. program counter the program counter holds the memory location of the next instruction to be executed. index adder the index adder is a bit ring accumulator. the sum of an instruction base address, y, and the contents of an index register, c(x), are formed in this register. this register holds the previous content of the program counter in the "jump and save program counter," jps, instruction. the index adder also serves as the step counter in shift, multiply, and divide. * * * * * the control element contains two six bit registers and several miscellaneous flip-flops. the latter deal with indexing, indirect addressing, memory control, etc. the six bit registers are: instruction register the instruction register receives the first six bits of the memory buffer register during the cycle which obtains the instruction from memory (cycle zero). this information is the primary input to the control element. program flags the six program flags act as convenient program switches. they are used to indicate separate states of a program. the program can set, clear, or sense the individual flip-flops. the program can also sense or make the state "all flags zero." they can also be used to synchronize various input devices which occur at random times (see input-output, typewriter input). * * * * * three toggle switch registers are connected to the central processor (see manual controls). test address the fifteen test address switches are used to indicate start points and to select memory registers for manual examination or change. test word the thirty-six test word switches indicate a new number for manual deposit into memory. they may also be used for insertion of constants while a program is operating by means of the operate instruction. sense switches the six sense switches allow the operator to manually select program options or cause a jump to another program in memory. the program can sense individual switches or the state "all switches zero." electrical description the pdp- circuitry is the static type using saturating transistor flip-flops and, for the most part, transistor switch elements. the primary active elements are micro-alloy and micro-alloy-diffused transistors. the flip-flops have built-in delay so that a logic net may be sampled and changed simultaneously. machine timing is performed by a delay line chain. auxiliary delay line chains time the step counter instructions (multiply, divide, etc.). the machine is thus internally synchronous with step counter instructions being asynchronous. the machine is asynchronous for in-out operations, that is, the completion of an in-out operation initiates the following instruction. mechanical description the pdp- consists of two mechanical assemblies, the console and the equipment frame. fig. is a photograph of pdp- which is an bit version of pdp- . console the console is a desk approximately seven feet long. it contains the controls and indicators necessary for operation and maintenance of the machine. a cable connects the console to the equipment frame. equipment frame the equipment frame is approximately six feet high and two feet deep. the length is a function of the amount of optional features included. the central processor requires a length of five and one half feet. the power cabinet is twenty-two inches long. a memory cabinet is thirty-two inches long and will hold three memory modules ( , words per cabinet). memory cabinets may be added at any time. magnetic tape units require twenty-two inches per transport. a tape unit cabinet may be connected as an extension of the equipment frame or may be a free-standing frame. environmental requirements the pdp- requires no special room preparation. the computer will operate properly over the normal range of room temperature. the central processor and memory together require thirty amperes of volts single phase cycle ac. each inactive tape transport requires two amperes and the one active transport requires amperes. central processor the central processor of pdp- contains the control element, the memory buffer register, the arithmetic element, and the memory addressing element. the control element governs the complete operation of the computer including memory timing, instruction performance, and the initiation of input-output commands. the arithmetic element, which includes the accumulator, the in-out register, and the carry storage register, performs the arithmetic operations. the memory addressing element which includes the index adder, the program counter, and the memory address register, performs address bookkeeping and modification. operating speeds operating times of pdp- instructions are normally multiples of the memory cycle of microseconds. two cycle instructions refer twice to memory and thus require microseconds for completion. examples of this are add, subtract, deposit, load, etc. one cycle instructions do not refer to memory and require microseconds. examples of the latter are the jump instructions, the skip instructions, and the operate group. the operating times of variable cycle instructions depend upon the instruction. for example, the operating time for a shift or rotate instruction is + . n microseconds, where n is the number of shifts performed. the operating times for multiply and divide are functions of the number of ones in the multiplier and in the quotient, respectively. maximum time for multiply is microseconds. this includes the time necessary to get the multiply instruction from memory. divide takes microseconds maximum. in-out transfer instructions that do not include the optional wait function require microseconds. if the in-out device requires a wait time for completion, the operating time depends upon the device being used. if an instruction includes reference to an index register, an additional microseconds is required. each step of indirect addressing also requires an additional microseconds. instruction format the instructions for pdp- may be divided into three classes: . indexable memory instructions . non-indexable memory instructions . non-memory instructions. the layout of the instruction word is shown in fig. . the octal digits and define the instruction code, thus, there are possible instruction codes, not all of which are used. the first bit of octal digit is the indirect address bit. if this bit is a one, indirect addressing occurs. the index address, x, is in octal digits , , and . these digits address an index register for memory-type instructions. if these digits are all zero, indexing will not take place. in main memory, of the registers can be used as automatic index registers. the instruction base address, y, is in octal digits through . these digits are sufficient to address , words of memory. octal digit is reserved for further memory expansion. space is available in the equipment frame for this expansion, should it prove desirable. in those instructions which do not refer to memory, the memory address digits, y, and in some cases the index address digits also, are used to specify the variations in any group of instructions. an example of this is in the shift and rotate instructions in which the memory address digits determine the number of shifts. number system the pdp- is a "fixed" point machine using binary arithmetic. negative numbers are represented as the 's complement of the positive numbers. bit is the sign bit which is zero for positive numbers. bits to are magnitude bits with bit being the most significant and bit being the least significant. the actual position of the binary point may be arbitrarily assigned to best suit the problem in hand. two common conventions in the placement of the binary point are: . the binary point is to the right of the least significant digit, thus, numbers represent integers. . the binary point is to the right of the sign digit, thus the numbers represent a fraction which lies between ± . the conversion of decimal numbers into the binary system for use by the machine may be performed automatically by subroutines. similarly the output conversion of binary numbers into decimals is done by subroutine. operations for floating point numbers are handled by programming. the utility program system provides for automatic insertion of the routines required to perform floating point operations and number base conversion (see utility programs). indexing in pdp- , registers of the main magnetic core memory are available for use as automatic index registers. their addresses are specified by octal digits to of the instruction word. these registers are memory locations - (octal). address specifies that no index register is to be used with the instructions. the contents of octal digits through of the selected index register are added to the unmodified address (octal digits through of the instruction). this sum is used to locate the operand. the addition is done in the index adder which is a bit 's complement adder. the contents of the accumulator and the in-out register are unaffected by the indexing process. an instruction which has used indexing is retained in memory with its original address unmodified. memory registers - (octal) are available for use as normal memory registers if they are not being used as index registers. the left half of these registers is available for the storage of constants, tables, etc., when octal digits through act as index registers. three special instructions snx, spx and lir, are available to facilitate resetting, advancing, and sampling of the index registers. since the index registers are normal memory registers, their contents can also be manipulated by the standard computer instructions. indirect addressing an instruction which is to use an indirect address will have a one in bit six of the instruction word. the original address, y, of the instruction will not be used to locate the operand of the instruction, as is the normal case. instead, it is used to locate a memory register whose contents in octal digits through will be used as the address of the original instruction. this new address is known as the indirect address for the instruction and will be used to locate the operand. if the memory register containing the indirect address also has a in bit six, the indirect addressing procedure is repeated again and a third address is located. there is no limit to the number of times this process can be repeated. index registers may be used in conjunction with indirect addressing. in this case, the address after being modified by the selected index register is used to locate the indirect address. the indirect address can be acted on by an index register and deferred again if desired. each use of an index register or an indirect address extends the operating time of the original instruction by microseconds. instruction list this list includes the title of the instruction, the normal execution time of the instruction, i.e., the time with no indexing and no deferring, the mnemonic code of the instruction, and the operation code number. the notation used requires the following definitions. the contents of a register q are indicated as c(q). the address portion of the instruction is indicated by y. the index register address of an instruction is indicated by x. the effective address of an operand is indicated by z. z may be equal to y or it may be y as modified by deferring or by indexing. indexable memory instructions arithmetic instructions _add_ ( usec.) add x y operation code the new c(ac) are the sum of c(z) and the original c(ac). the c(z) are unchanged. the addition is performed with 's complement arithmetic. if the sum exceeds the capacity of the accumulator register, the overflow flip-flop will be set (see skip group instructions). _subtract_ ( usec.) sub x y operation code the new c(ac) are the original c(ac) minus the c(z). the c(z) are unchanged. the subtraction is performed using 's complement arithmetic. if the difference exceeds the capacity of the accumulator, the overflow flip-flop will be set (see skip group instructions). _multiply_ (approximately usec.) mul x y operation code the c(ac) are multiplied by the c(z). the most significant digits of the product are left in the accumulator and the least significant digits in the in-out register. the previous c(ac) are lost. _divide_ (approximately usec.) div x y operation code the accumulator and the in-out register together form a bit dividend. the high order part of the dividend is in the accumulator. the low order part of the dividend is in the in-out register. the divisor is (z). upon completion of the division, the quotient is in the in-out register. the remainder is in the accumulator. the sign of the remainder is the same as the sign of the dividend. if the dividend is larger than c(z), the overflow flip-flop will be set and the division will not take place. logical instructions _logical and_ ( usec.) and x y operation code the bits of c(z) operate on the corresponding bits of the accumulator to form the logical and. the result is left in the accumulator. the c(z) are unaffected by this instruction. logical and function table ac bit c(z) bit result _exclusive or_ ( usec.) xor x y operation code the bits of c(z) operate on the corresponding bits of the accumulator to form the exclusive or. the result is left in the accumulator. the c(z) are unaffected by this order. exclusive or table ac bit c(z) bit result _inclusive or_ ( usec.) ior x y operation code the bits of c(z) operate on the corresponding bits of the accumulator to form the inclusive or. the result is left in the accumulator. the c(z) are unaffected by this order. inclusive or table ac bit c(z) bit result general instructions _load accumulator_ ( usec.) lac x y operation code the c(z) are placed in the accumulator. the c(z) are unchanged. the original c(z) are lost. _deposit accumulator_ ( usec.) dac x y operation code the c(ac) replace the c(z) in the memory. the c(ac) are left unchanged by this instruction. the original c(z) are lost. _deposit address part_ ( usec.) dap x y operation code octal digits through of the accumulator replace the corresponding digits of memory register z. c(ac) are unchanged as are the contents of octal digits through of z. the original contents of octal digits through of z are lost. _deposit instruction part_ ( usec.) dip x y operation code octal digits through of the accumulator replace the corresponding digits of memory register z. the accumulator is unchanged as are digits through of z. the original contents of octal digits through of z are lost. _load in-out register_ ( usec.) lio x y operation code the c(z) are placed in the in-out register. c(z) are unchanged. the original c(io) are lost. _deposit in-out register_ ( usec.) dio x y operation code the c(io) replace the c(z) in memory. the c(io) are unaffected by this instruction. the original c(z) are lost. _jump_ ( usec.) jmp x y operation code the program counter is reset to address z. the next instruction that will be executed will be taken from memory register z. the original contents of the program counter are lost. _jump and save program counter_ ( usec.) jsp x y operation code the contents of the program counter are transferred to the index adder. when the transfer takes place, the program counter holds the address of the instruction following the jsp. the program counter is then reset to address z. the next instruction that will be executed will be taken from memory register z. _skip if accumulator and z differ_ ( usec.) sad x y operation code the c(z) are compared with the c(ac). if the two numbers are different, the program counter is indexed one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. the c(ac) and the c(z) are unaffected by this operation. _skip if accumulator and z are the same_ ( usec.) sas x y operation code the c(z) are compared with c(ac). if the two numbers are identical, the program counter is indexed one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. the c(ac) and c(z) are unaffected by this operation. non-indexable memory instructions these instructions have the same word format as the indexable instructions. since they operate on the index register location, x, they cannot be indexed. _skip on negative index_ ( usec.) snx x y operation code the number in octal digits through of the instruction word is added to the c(x). this addition is done in the bit index adder using 's complement arithmetic. if, after the addition, the sum is negative, the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. the contents of octal digits - of the index register location are unaffected by this instruction. _skip on positive index_ ( usec.) spx x y operation code the number in octal digits through of the instruction word is added to the c(x). this addition is done in the bit index adder using 's complement arithmetic. if, after the addition, the sum is positive, the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. the contents of octal digits - of the index register location are unaffected by this instruction. _load index register_ ( usec.) lir x y operation code the octal digits through (y) of the instruction will replace the corresponding digits of the memory register specified by x. octal digit of the memory register will be left clear. digits - of the memory register are unchanged. _deposit index adder_ ( usec.) dia x y operation code the c(ia) replace the octal digits through of memory location y. octal digit of y is cleared. digits through of y are left unchanged. the x portion of the instruction is ignored. non-memory instructions rotate and shift group this group of instructions will rotate or shift the accumulator and/or the in-out register. when the two registers operate combined, the in-out register is considered to be a bit magnitude extension of the right end of the accumulator. rotate is a non-arithmetic cyclic shift. that is, the two ends of the register are logically tied together and information is rotated as though the register were a ring. shift is an arithmetic operation and is in effect multiplication of the number in the register by ^{+n}, where n is the number of shifts. shift or rotate instructions involving more than steps can be used for simulating time delays. rotate steps of the accumulator will return all information to its original position. _rotate accumulator right_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) rar n operation code this instruction will rotate the bits of the accumulator right n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instructions word. _rotate accumulator left_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) ral n operation code this instruction will rotate the bits of the accumulator left n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _shift accumulator right_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) sar n operation code this instruction will shift the contents of the accumulator right n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _shift accumulator left_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) sal n operation code this instruction will shift the contents of the accumulator left n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _rotate in-out register right_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) rir n operation code this instruction will rotate the bits of the in-out register right n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _rotate in-out register left_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) ril n operation code this instruction will rotate the bits of the in-out register left n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _shift in-out register right_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) sir n operation code this instruction will shift the contents of the in-out register right n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _shift in-out register left_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) sil n operation code this instruction will shift the contents of the in-out register left n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _rotate ac and io right_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) rcr n operation code this instruction will rotate the bits of the combined register right in a single ring n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _rotate ac and io left_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) rcl n operation code this instruction will rotate the bits of the combined register left in a single ring n position, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _shift ac and io right_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) scr n operation code this instruction will shift the contents of the combined register right n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. _shift ac and io left_ ( usec. maximum for shifts) scl n operation code this instruction will shift the contents of the combined registers left n positions, where n is octal digits - of the instruction word. * * * * * _skip group_ ( usec.) skp y operation code this group of instructions senses the state of various flip-flops and switches in the machine. it does not require any reference to memory. the address portion of the instruction selects the particular function to be sensed. all members of this group have the same operation code. _skip on zero accumulator_ ( usec.) sza address if the accumulator is equal to plus zero (all bits are zero) the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. _skip on plus accumulator_ ( usec.) spa address if the sign bit of the accumulator is zero, the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. _skip on minus accumulator_ ( usec.) sma address if the sign bit of the accumulator is one, the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. _skip on zero overflow_ ( usec.) szo address if the overflow flip-flop is a zero the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence will be skipped. the overflow flip-flop is cleared by this instruction. this flip-flop is set by addition, subtraction, or division that exceeds the capacity of the accumulator. the overflow flip-flop is not cleared by arithmetic operations which do not cause an overflow. thus, a whole series of arithmetic operations may be checked for correctness by a single szo. the overflow flip-flop is cleared by the "start" switch. _skip on plus in-out register_ ( usec.) spi address if the sign digit of the in-out register is zero the program counter is indexed one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence is skipped. _skip on zero switch_ ( usec.) szs addresses , , ... if the selected sense switch is zero, the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence will be skipped. address senses the position of sense switch , address switch , etc. address senses all the switches. if is selected all switches must be zero to cause the skip to occur. _skip on zero program flag_ ( usec.) szf addresses to inclusive if the selected program flag is a zero, the program counter is advanced one extra position and the next instruction in the sequence will be skipped. address is no selection. address selects program flag one, etc. address selects all programs flags. all flags must be zero to cause the skip. the instructions in the one cycle skip group may be combined to form the inclusive or of the separate skips. thus, if address is selected, the skip would occur if the overflow flip-flop equals zero or if the in-out register is positive. the combined instruction would still take microseconds. * * * * * _operate group_ ( usec.) opr y operation code this instruction group performs miscellaneous operations on various central processor registers. the address portion of the instruction specifies the action to be performed. _clear in-out register_ ( usec.) cli address equal this instruction clears the in-out register. _load accumulator from test word_ ( usec.) lat address this instruction forms the inclusive or of the c(ac) and the contents of the test word. this instruction is usually combined with address (clear accumulator), so that c(ac) will equal the contents of the test word switches. _complement accumulator_ ( usec.) cma address this instruction complements (makes negative) the contents of the accumulator. _halt_ hlt address this instruction stops the computer. _clear accumulator_ ( usec.) cla address this instruction clears (sets equal to plus ) the contents of the accumulator. _clear selected program flag_ ( usec.) clf address to inclusive the selected program flag will be cleared. address selects no program flag, clears program flag , clears program flag , etc. address clears all program flags. _set selected program flag_ ( usec.) stf address to inclusive * * * * * _in-out transfer group_ ( usec. without in-out wait) iot x y operation code the variations within this group of instructions perform all the in-out control and information transfer functions. if bit six (normally the indirect address bit) is a one, the computer will halt and wait for the completion pulse from the device activated. when this device delivers its completion, the computer will resume operation of the instruction sequence. an incidental fact which may be of importance in certain scientific or real time control applications is that the time origin of operations following an in-out completion pulse is identical with the time of that pulse. most in-out operations require a known minimum time before completion. this time may be utilized for programming. the appropriate in-out transfer is given with no in-out wait (bit six a zero). the instruction sequence then continues. this sequence must include an iot instruction which performs nothing but the in-out wait. this last instruction must occur before the safe minimum time. a table of minimum times for all in-out devices is delivered with the computer. it lists minimum time before completion pulse and minimum in-out register free time. the details of the in-out transfer variations are listed under input-output. the mnemonic codes and addresses for the standard equipment are: _read paper tape alphanumeric mode_ rpa address _read paper tape binary mode_ rpb address _typewriter output_ tyo address _typewriter input_ tyi address _punch paper tape alphanumeric mode_ ppa address _punch paper tape binary mode_ ppb address manual controls the console of pdp- has controls and indicators for the use of the operator. fig. is a close-up of the control panel of pdp- , the bit version of pdp- . all computer flip-flops have indicator lights on the console. these indicators are primarily for use when the machine has stopped or when the machine is being operated one step at a time. while the machine is running, the brightness of an indicator bears some relationship to the relative duty factor of that particular flip-flop. three registers of toggle switches are available on the console. these are the test address ( bits), the test word ( bits), and the sense switches ( bits). the first two are used in conjunction with the operating push buttons. the sense switches are present for manual intervention. the use of these switches is determined by the program (see system block diagram and skip group instructions). operating push buttons _start_ - when this switch is operated, the computer will start. the first instruction comes from the memory location indicated in the test address switches. _stop_ - the computer will come to a halt at the completion of the current memory cycle. _continue_ - the computer will resume operation starting at the state indicated by the lights. _examine_ - the contents of the memory register indicated in the test address will be displayed in the accumulator and the memory buffer lights. _deposit_ - the word selected by the test word switches will be put in the memory location indicated by the test address switches. _read-in_ - when this switch is operated, the photoelectric paper tape reader will start operating in the read-in mode. (see input-output). in addition to the operating push buttons, there are several separate toggle switches. _single cycle switch_ - when the single cycle switch is on, the computer will halt at the completion of each memory cycle. this switch is particularly useful in debugging programs. repeated operation of the continue switch button will step the program one cycle at a time. the programmer is thus able to examine the machine states at each step. _test switch_ - when the test switch is on, the computer will perform the instruction indicated in the test address location. it will repeat this instruction either at the normal speed rate or at a single cycle rate if the single cycle switch is up. this switch is primarily useful for maintenance purposes. _sense switches_ - there are six switches on the console which are present for manual intervention. storage the internal memory system for pdp- consists of modules of words of coincident current magnetic core storage. each word has bits. the memory modules operate with a read-rewrite cycle time of microseconds. the driving currents of the memory are automatically adjusted to compensate for normal room temperature variations. each core memory module consists of the memory stack, the required x and y switches, the x and y current sources and sense amplifiers for that stack. the memory address register, the memory buffer register, and the memory timing controls are considered to be part of the central processor. the standard pdp- memory address register configuration is built to allow up to modules of core memory ( , words). there is a space in the addressing section of the machine to allow expansion of the addressing by a factor of eight for a total addressing capacity of , memory registers. the core memory may be supplemented by magnetic tape storage. this is described under input-output. standard input-output the pdp- is designed to accommodate a variety of input-output equipment. standard input-output units include a paper tape reader, paper tape punch and an electric typewriter. a single instruction, in-out transfer (see central processor), performs all in-out operations through the bit in-out register. the address portion of this instruction specifies the in-out function. one bit of the instruction selects an in-out halt as required. paper tape reader the paper tape reader of the pdp- is a photoelectric device capable of reading lines per second. six lines form the standard bit word when reading binary punched eight hole tape. five, six and seven hole tape may also be read. the reader will operate in one of two basic modes or in a third special mode. alphanumeric mode rpa iot in this mode, one line of tape is read for each in-out transfer. all eight holes of the line are read. the information is left in the right eight bits of the in-out register, the remainder of the register being left clear. the standard pdp alphanumeric paper tape code includes an odd parity bit which may be checked by the program. tape of non-standard width would be read in this mode. binary mode rpb iot for each in-out transfer instruction, six lines of paper tape are read and assembled in the in-out register to form a full computer word. for a line to be recognized in this mode, the eighth hole must be punched; i.e., lines with no eighth hole will be skipped over. the seventh hole is ignored. the pattern of holes in the binary tape is arranged so as to be easily interpreted visually in terms of machine instruction. read-in mode this is a special mode activated by the "read-in" switch on the console. it provides a means of entering programs which neither rely on read-in programs in memory nor require a plug board. pushing the "read-in" switch starts the reader in the binary mode. the first group of six lines and alternate succeeding groups of six lines are interpreted as "read-in" mode instructions. even-numbered groups of lines are data. the "read-in" mode instructions must be either "deposit in-out" (dio y) or "jump" (jmp y). if the instruction is dio y, the next group of six binary lines will be stored in memory location y and the reader continues moving. if the instruction is jmp y, the "read-in" mode is terminated and the computer will commence operation at the address of the jump instruction. paper tape punch the standard pdp- paper tape punch has a nominal speed of lines per second. it can operate in either the alphanumeric mode or the binary mode. alphanumeric mode ppa iot for each in-out transfer instruction one line of tape is punched. in-out register bit conditions hole # . bit conditions hole # , etc. bit conditions hole # . binary mode ppb iot for each in-out transfer instruction one line of tape is punched. in-out register bit five conditions hole # . bit four conditions hole # , etc. bit zero conditions hole # . hole # is left blank. the # hole is always punched in this mode. typewriter the typewriter will operate in the input mode or the output mode. output mode tyo iot for each in-out transfer instruction one character is typed. the character is specified by the right six bits of the in-out register. input mode tyi iot this operation is completely asynchronous and is therefore handled differently than any of the preceding in-out operations. when a typewriter key is struck, program flag number one is set. at the same time the code for the struck key is presented to gates connected to the right six bits of the in-out register. this information will remain at the gate for a relatively long time by virtue of the slow mechanical action. a program designed to accept typed-in data would periodically check the status of program flag one. if at any time program flag one is found to be set, an in-out transfer instruction with address four must be executed for information to be transferred. this in-out transfer normally should not use the optional in-out halt. the information contained in the typewriter's coder is then read into the right six bits of the in-out register. optional input-output the pdp- is designed to accommodate a variety of input-output equipment. of particular interest is the ease with which new, and perhaps unusual, external equipment can be added to the machine. optional in-out devices include cathode ray tube display, magnetic tape, real time clock, line printer and analog to digital converters. the method of operation of pdp- with these optional devices is similar to the standard input-output equipment. sequence break system an optional in-out control is available for pdp- . this control, termed the sequence break system, allows concurrent operation of several in-out devices and the main sequence. the system has, nominally, automatic interrupt channels arranged in a priority chain. a break to a particular sequence may be initiated by the completion of an in-out device, the program, or an external signal. if this sequence has priority, the c(ac), c(io), c(pc), and c(ia) are stored in three fixed memory locations unique to that sequence. since the c(pc) and c(ia) are eighteen bits each, these two registers are stored in one memory location. the next instruction is taken from a fourth location. this instruction is usually a jump to a suitable routine. the program is now operating in the new sequence. this new sequence may be broken by a higher priority sequence. a typical program loop for handling an in-out sequence would contain to instructions, including the appropriate iot. these are followed by load ad and load io from the fixed locations and a special indirect jump through the location of the previous c(pc). this special jump also loads the ia. this last instruction terminates the sequence. high speed in-out channel the device connected to an in-out channel communicates directly with memory through the memory buffer register. at the completion of each machine instruction, a check is made to see if the in-out channel has a word for, or needs a word from, the memory. when necessary, a memory cycle is taken to serve the channel. the operation is initiated by an in-out command. the in-out transfer command indicates the nature of the transfer. the left half of the in-out register must contain the starting address of the transfer, and the right half must contain the number of words to be transferred. if the sequence break system is connected, the completion of the transfer will signal the proper sequence. if no sequence break system is connected, the completion of the in-out channel transfer sets a program flag. magnetic tape the system consists of tape units connected to the pdp- through a tape control (tc). this tape is read or written in ibm i format. two hundred characters, each having bits plus a parity bit, are written on each inch of tape and the tape moves at inches/sec. the tape control has the job of connecting a specific unit to the pdp- and is a switch. it also has the function of controlling the format of information that is read or written on tape. in-out class commands instruct tc to the type of information transfer and select the tape unit. another iot command synchronizes the transfer of information through the tc to the computer. the iot order to select the unit and function is decoded as follows: ) three bits specify the function of tc. ) the remaining bits select the unit. _iot motion commands for magnetic tape units_ _iot code_ _abbreviation_ _function_ ....nn mrb read a binary record. ....nn mra read an alphanumeric (bcd) record. ....nn mbb backspace a binary record. ....nn mba backspace an alphanumeric record. ....nn mwb write a binary record. ....nn mwa write an alphanumeric record. ....nn mlp move tape to lead point (rewind). where the octal digits, nn, specify the unit number. the motion commands have the deferred bit, thus, the program halts. if the tc is free, the command will be transferred to the tape control for action and the program restarts immediately. if the tape control is currently busy with an instruction, i.e., it hasn't finished a previous command, the motion command is held up until tc is free to execute the new command. the transfer of information from the computer to the tc is accomplished with the pause and skip command, mps or iot . this command has the deferred bit and halts a program until the tc can handle the transfer. on completion, the transfer occurs and the program restarts. this is used exclusively to synchronize the flow of information between a tape unit and the computer. this command normally skips the following instruction. if a flag is set in the tc, indicating incorrect information flow, the skip does not take place. the tc contains a bit buffer which holds a complete word while information is read or written. when an mps order is given and the unit is reading, the tc buffer is read into the io. the mps order given during writing causes the io to be transferred to the tc buffer. various conditions occurring in the tc cause the no-skip condition, when an mps is given. tape control flags are examined by the command, examine and clear flags, mec or iot . when mec is given, the flags are put into the io for program interrogation, and the flags cleared. the flags are: parity, end of tape, an end of record flag, and reading-writing check. the parity flag is set if the parity condition is not met while the tape is being read (during mwa, mwb, mra, or mrb). the end of tape flag is set when the tape comes to the end of tape, moving in either direction. three conditions set the read-write check flag: ) if tc is inactive, i.e., no unit or function selected, and an mps instruction is given. the mps becomes a no-operation, no-halt instruction. ) when reading information and not emptying the tc buffer, by giving an mps before more information arrives from tape. ) a unit becomes unavailable during a normal sequence. the end of record flag is set during reading or backspacing when the tape comes to an end of record gap. _writing a record of information_ information is written on the tape by giving a mwb or mwa command. this sets a write binary or a write alphanumeric into the tc and selects the unit. a motion select command is executed immediately if the tc is free, otherwise, the command waits until it can be executed. normal programming can continue after the mwa or mwb is given for approximately milliseconds. at this time, an mps order is given and the program pauses until information can be written. when the mps is restarted, information is transferred to the tc buffer from the io. if no flags have been set, the following instruction is skipped. three-quarter inches of blank tape is written by giving either the mwa or mwb order. an end of file is written as follows: ) four mwa commands write three inches of blank tape. ) then end of file character is written by giving the mps order. information is read and checked for correct parity while writing. if too many program steps are given between the motion select command, mwa or mwb and the first mps, the unit will deselect (or disconnect). the mps is then a no-operation command. _writing program_ as an example, a program to write k words in binary format from storage beginning in register a, using tape unit number , is shown. the following program is written in standard frap language. the program begins in register enterwrite. enterwrite mec ,clear flags initially mwb , lir x/-k+ ,initialize index register x b lio x/a+k- ,begin loop mps ,wait for tc then write c(z) jmp c ,error spx x/ ,add to index register x jmp b ,return of loop jmp done ,record written c mec ,tape error ril spi jmp rwcstop ,read-write error or tape fault ril spi jmp b+ ,tape end hlt ,tape parity done ,resume programming _reading information_ information is read by giving the mra or mrb order. almost ms. is available after a read order is given before information actually enters the tc buffer. to read a record of unknown length, the read order is first given. the mps order halts the program until six characters are assembled in the tc information buffer. the next instruction after the mps, a jump instruction, transfers control from the loop when any flag is set. the next instruction deposits the io. the record length is determined by not skipping after the mps order on the setting of the end of record flag. the read-write check flag or the end of record flag is then interrogated to see that the tape is actually at the end of record. if a tape is not at the end of record, then the tape is either at the end of the reel, or a parity check has occurred. _reading program_ program to read j binary words into storage beginning in register d, using tape unit , j is unknown. the program begins in register enteread. enteread mec ,clear flags initially mrb , dzm x ,put zero in memory location x e mps jmp outcheck dio x/d ,store in location modified by x snx x/+ ,add to c(x) jmp e outcheck mec ,examine flags spi ,end of record? jmp recordend ,yes hlt ,error recordend snx x/+ ,to find value of j " ,resume programming c(ia) = j " " " _forward spacing_ forward spacing is done by giving an mrb or mra order. this moves the tape forward with the read-write head positioned at the end of the following record. if n read orders are given, the tape is spaced forward n records. by giving the mec order, parity flags are examined to see that information on tape has been read correctly. _backspacing_ by giving an mba or mbb order the tape is moved backwards a record with the read-write heads positioned in the previous end of record gap. the end of record flag is set when the tape has moved backwards a record. _rewinding_ rewinding is accomplished by giving the rewind order, move tape to load point, mlp. the rewind order starts a unit rewinding and does not tie up the tc. if a motion command is given which calls for a unit that is rewinding, the command is executed, but the action will not take place until the unit is available. _unit availability_ a unit is unavailable to the program under the following conditions: . unit is rewinding. . tape is improperly loaded. . cover door open. . unit overloaded. . unit under manual control. . power off. a selected but unavailable unit holds up the tc if a motion order is given for the unit. the tc will be held up until the unit is ready. _flag positions_ _io bit_ _flag_ eor - end of record rwf - read-write eot - end of tape parity _connection with high speed channel_ the high speed channel directs the tape control, and word transfer, just as a program would. a unit is first started reading or writing. the high speed channel is given the memory location of the information, and the number of registers the words read or written will occupy. the channel effects the information transfer. thus, a high speed channel connected to a tape control handles the programming for the unit word transfers. completion of the block transfer is signified by either setting a program flag, or entering the sequence break. _connection with sequence break system_ when the tc is connected to the sequence break system, the program is automatically interrupted each time an mps command needs to be given. programming is unaffected during reading and a record may be read with no flags set. the tc initiates breaks so that an mps may be given in time. similarly, the break is initiated during writing each time an mps needs to be given. _motion command summary_ _time before _time between _time after end of _flags that first mps_ mps's_ record to deselect_ may be set_ mwa ms. us. ms. rwf (if unit mwb (longer time is deselected causes deselection) and mps given, or unit becomes unavailable), parity, eot. mra ms. < us. ms. rwf, (if mrb (longer time information misses information, is missed, or and unit becomes rwc set) unavailable), eot, eor, parity. mba - - ms. rwf (if unit mbb becomes unavailable), eor, eot. cathode-ray-tube display the pdp- cathode ray tube display is useful for presentation of graphical or tabular information to the operator. it uses a inch round tube with magnetic deflection. for each in-out transfer order, one point is displayed at the position indicated by the in-out register. bits - of the io indicate the x coordinate of the position, and bits - indicate the y coordinate. the display takes microseconds. an additional display option is a light pen. by use of this device the computer is signaled that the operator is interested in the last point displayed. thus the program can take appropriate action such as changing the display or shifting operation to another program. a smaller display is available. this display uses a five inch, high resolution cathode ray tube. the tube is equipped with a mounting bezel to accept a camera or photomultiplier device. the operation of this display is similar to that of the inch, except that bits are decoded for each axis. real time clock a special input register may be connected to operate as a real time clock. this is a counting register operated by a crystal controlled oscillator. the clock can be reset to zero by manual operation. a toggle switch interlock prevents an accidental reset. the state of this counter may be read at any time by the appropriate in-out transfer instruction. line printer a column anelex printer and control are available as an option for pdp- . the control contains a one line buffer. this buffer is cleared by the completion of an order to space the paper one position (psp). the buffer is filled from the in-out register by a succession of load buffer orders (plb). the first plb will put the six characters represented by c(io) in the leading (left-hand) column positions of the buffer. after the buffer is loaded, the order, print (pnt), is given. utility programs frap- - the assembly program an assembler or compiler prepares a machine language tape suitable for direct interpretation by the computer from a program tape in operator language. generally speaking, one statement accepted by frap produces one instruction for the machine. a single statement written for the pdp- compiler, decal- , may cause several instructions to be written. thus, frap causes a for mapping of instructions for statements while decal may produce many instructions from one statement. in addition to allowing program tapes to be prepared with off line equipment, an assembly program has other functions. normally, the machine would require bits or octal digits to be written for each instruction used in the machine. frap allows mnemonic symbols to be used for the instructions. these mnemonic symbols aid the programmer by representing the instruction in an easily remembered form. in addition to allowing mnemonic symbols to represent the instructions, variable length sequences of alphanumeric characters may be used to represent memory addresses in symbolic form. the assembly program does the address bookkeeping for the programmer. a short example of a frap program is on page . since few characters limit or control the format of instructions written in frap- language, it is possible to write instructions in almost any format or style. frap- may also be used to prepare tapes for interpretive programming, since arbitrary definitions for operation code symbols are permitted. a feature useful both for ease of programming and for machine simulation is the ability to call for a series of instructions (macro-instruction) to be written. frequently used instruction sequences thus need only to be defined once. decal - the compiler program decal- (digital equipment compiler, assembler, and linking loader for pdp- ) is an integrated programming system for pdp- . it incorporates in one system all of the essential features of advanced assemblers, compilers, and loaders. decal is both an assembler and compiler. it combines the one-to-one translation facilities of an assembler, and the one-to-many translation facilities of a formula translation compiler. problem oriented language statements may be freely intermixed with symbolic machine language instructions. a flexible loader is available to allow the specification of program location at load time. the programmer may specify that certain variables and constants are "systems" variables and constants. the symbols so defined are universally used in a system of many routines. thus, communications between parts of a major program is facilitated even though these parts may be compiled separately. storage requirements for a large program are lessened by this technique. decal is an open-ended programming system and can be modified without a detailed understanding of the internal operation. this is achieved by means of a recursive definition facility based on a skeleton compiler with a small set of logical capabilities. the skeleton compiler acts as a bootstrap for introducing more sophisticated facilities. the compiler will be delivered with a fully defined subset of formula translation operators. additional subsets may be defined by the user to best fit his source language. floating point subroutines a set of subroutines are provided with the pdp- to perform floating point arithmetic. in these, the pdp- bit word is divided to form a bit mantissa, a, and bit exponent, b. numbers, thus, appear in the form: k = ax ^b where, a, is considered to be in fractional form in the range / <= a < , and b is an integer, <= b < . this gives number, k, the range ^{- } < k < ^{+ }. the subroutines are called with one operand in the accumulator. after the subroutine has been executed, the accumulator contains the answer. thus floating point numbers are essentially handled as regular logical works. the format of the number allows magnitude comparisons to be made by conventional arithmetic as bit is the sign of the number, bits to the exponent, and the remaining bits, together with the sign bit, the mantissa in ones complement arithmetic. the arithmetic subroutines are: add, subtract, multiply, divide, convert a floating point number to binary, convert a binary number to a floating number. additional routines form: [square root of x], e^x, ln x, sine(~pi~/ )x, cos(~pi~/ )x, tan^{- }x. there are also programs to convert between floating decimal numbers and pdp- floating numbers. routines which require two operands, e.g., add, subtract, multiply and divide, require an index register to specify the address of the second operand. an index register also specifies parameters in data conversions, e.g., the position of the binary point when converting a binary number to a standard floating number. using the floating point subroutines, additional routines may be written which handle complex floating numbers and vector and matrix algebra. maintenance routines maintenance routines are used exclusively to check the operation of the machine. these routines are operated while varying the bias supply voltages, and thus a check is made on possible degradation of all components which would affect the operation of the machine. miscellaneous routines a variety of additional programs are provided with pdp- . one of the more important programs is the typewriter interrogator program (tip). tip allows the typewriter to be used most effectively as an input-output link by which programs and data are examined and modified. the features include request for printing of a series of registers, interrogation and modification of the contents of registers, and the ability to request new tapes after programs have been suitably modified. communication is done completely via the typewriter in either octal numbers, decimal numbers, or alphanumeric codes. register contents are presented in similar form. other miscellaneous routines handle arithmetic processes, e.g., number conversions, and communication with the input or output devices. these routines include various format print outs, paper tape and magnetic tape read in programs, and display subroutines. * * * * * [illustration: system block diagram figure ] [illustration: instruction format figure ] [illustration: figure ] * * * * * transcriber's notes: c (x) and c(x) standardized to c(x). usec and usec. standardized to usec. throughout text. other changes to the original text are listed below. figure is referred to in the text, but a copy could not be located. underlined text is enclosed by underscores. superscripts are marked with carats x^ and y^{- }. greek symbols are surrounded by ~tildes~. transcriber changes: table of contents: originally 'operation' (=operating= speeds) table of contents: originally 'frap' (=frap=) table of contents: originally 'routines' (=subroutines=) page : originally 'theoperate' (while a program is operating by means of =the operate= instruction.) page : added comma (the instruction base address, =y,= is in octal digits through .) page : standardized from 'sub-routines' (the conversion of decimal numbers into the binary system for use by the machine may be performed automatically by =subroutines=.) page : standardized from 'sub-routine' (the output conversion of binary numbers into decimals is done by =subroutine=.) page : added comma (this instruction will shift the contents of the combined register right n =positions,= where n is octal digits - of the instruction word.) page : moved comma. was 'left, n positions' (this instruction will shift the contents of the combined registers =left n positions,= where n is octal digits - of the instruction word.) page : was 'know' (most in-out operations require a =known= minimum time before completion.) page : removed inconsistent comma (these are the test address ( bits), the test word ( bits), and the sense =switches= ( bits).) page : changed comma to period (the computer will halt at the completion of each memory =cycle.= this switch is particularly useful in debugging programs.) page : was 'tpae' (during reading or backspacing when the =tape= comes to an end of record gap.) page : standardized from 'de-select' (the unit will =deselect= (or disconnect).) page : was 'propares' (an assembler or compiler =prepares= a machine language tape suitable for direct interpretation) page : removed comma (frequently used instruction =sequences= thus need only to be defined once.) page : was 'routiines' (=routines= which require two operands, e.g., add, subtract, multiply and divide) produced by core historical literature in agriculture (chla), cornell university) electricity for the farm the macmillan company new york · boston · chicago · dallas atlanta · san francisco macmillan & co., limited london · bombay · calcutta · melbourne the macmillan co. of canada, ltd. toronto [illustration: even the tiny trout brook becomes a thing of utility as well as of joy (_courtesy of the fitz water wheel company, hanover, pa._)] electricity for the farm light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water wheel or farm engine by frederick irving anderson author of "the farmer of to-morrow," etc., etc. new york the macmillan company _all rights reserved_ copyright, by the curtis publishing company the country gentleman copyright, by the macmillan company set up and electrotyped. published april, . preface this book is designed primarily to give the farmer a practical working knowledge of electricity for use as light, heat, and power on the farm. the electric generator, the dynamo, is explained in detail; and there are chapters on electric transmission and house-wiring, by which the farm mechanic is enabled to install his own plant without the aid and expense of an expert. with modern appliances, within the means of the average farmer, the generation of electricity, with its unique conveniences, becomes automatic, provided some dependable source of power is to be had--such as a water wheel, gasoline (or other form of internal combustion) engine, or the ordinary windmill. the water wheel is the ideal prime mover for the dynamo in isolated plants. since water-power is running to waste on tens of thousands of our farms throughout the country, several chapters are devoted to this phase of the subject: these include descriptions and working diagrams of weirs and other simple devices for measuring the flow of streams; there are tables and formulas by which any one, with a knowledge of simple arithmetic, may determine the power to be had from falling water under given conditions; and in addition, there are diagrams showing in general the method of construction of dams, bulkheads, races, flumes, etc., from materials usually to be found on a farm. the tiny unconsidered brook that waters the farm pasture frequently possesses power enough to supply the farmstead with clean, cool, safe light in place of the dangerous, inconvenient oil lamp; a small stream capable of developing from twenty-five to fifty horsepower will supply a farmer (at practically no expense beyond the original cost of installation) not only with light, but with power for even the heavier farm operations, as threshing; and in addition will do the washing, ironing, and cooking, and at the same time keep the house warm in the coldest weather. less than one horsepower of energy will light the farmstead; less than five horsepower of energy will provide light and small power, and take the drudgery out of the kitchen. for those not fortunate enough to possess water-power which can be developed, there are chapters on the use of the farm gasoline engine and windmill, in connection with the modern storage battery, as sources of electric current. it is desired to make acknowledgment for illustrations and assistance in gathering material for the book, to the editors of _the country gentleman_, philadelphia, pa.; the crocker-wheeler company, ampere, n. j.; the general electric company, schenectady, n. y.; the weston electrical instrument company, of newark, n. j.; the chase turbine manufacturing company, orange, mass.; the c. p. bradway machine works, west stafford, conn.; the pelton water wheel company, san francisco and new york; the ward leonard manufacturing company, bronxville, n. y.; the fairbanks, morse company, chicago; and the fitz water wheel company, hanover, pa. table of contents page introduction xvii part i water-power chapter i a working plant the "agriculturist"--an old chair factory--a neighbor's home-coming--the idle wheel in commission again--light, heat and power for nothing--advantages of electricity chapter ii a little prospecting small amount of water required for an electric plant--exploring, on a dull day--a rough and ready weir--what a little water will do--the water wheel and the dynamo--electricity consumed the instant it is produced--the price of the average small plant, not counting labor chapter iii how to measure water-power what is a horsepower?--how the carthaginians manufactured horsepower--all that goes up must come down--how the sun lifts water up for us to use--water the ideal power for generating electricity--the weir--table for estimating flow of streams with a weir--another method of measuring--figuring water horsepower--the size of the wheel--what head is required--quantity of water necessary chapter iv the water wheel and how to install it different types of water wheels--the impulse and the reaction wheels--the impulse wheel adapted to high heads and small amount of water--pipe lines--table of resistance in pipes--advantages and disadvantages of the impulse wheel--other forms of impulse wheels--the reaction turbine, suited to low heads and large quantity of water--its advantages and limitations--developing a water-power project: the dam; the race; the flume; the penstock; and the tailrace--water rights for the farmer part ii electricity chapter v the dynamo; what it does, and how electricity compared to the heat and light of the sun--the simple dynamo--the amount of electric energy a dynamo will generate--the modern dynamo--measuring power in terms of electricity--the volt--the ampere--the ohm--the watt and the kilowatt--ohm's law of the electric circuit, and some examples of its application--direct current, and alternating current--three types of direct-current dynamos: series, shunt, and compound chapter vi what size plant to install the farmer's wife his partner--little and big plants--limiting factors--fluctuations in water supply--the average plant--the actual plant--amount of current required for various operations--standard voltage--a specimen allowance for electric light--heating and cooking by electricity--electric power: the electric motor chapter vii transmission lines copper wire--setting of poles--loss of power in transmission--ohm's law and examples of how it is used in figuring size of wire--copper-wire tables--examples of transmission lines--when to use high voltages--over-compounding a dynamo to overcome transmission loss chapter viii wiring the house the insurance code--different kinds of wiring described--wooden moulding cheap and effective--the distributing panel--branch circuits--protecting the circuits--the use of porcelain tubes and other insulating devices--putting up chandeliers and wall-brackets--"multiple" connections--how to connect a wall switch--special wiring required for heat and power circuits--knob and cleat wiring, its advantages and disadvantages chapter ix the electric plant at work direct-connected generating sets--belt drive--the switchboard--governors and voltage regulators--methods of achieving constant pressure at all loads: over-compounding the dynamo; a system of resistances (a home-made electric radiator); regulating voltage by means of the rheostat--automatic devices--putting the plant in operation part iii gasoline engines, windmills, etc. the storage batteries chapter x gasoline engine plants the standard voltage set--two-cycle and four-cycle gasoline engines--horsepower, and fuel consumption--efficiency of small engines and generators--cost of operating a one-kilowatt plant chapter xi the storage battery what a storage battery does--the lead battery and the edison battery--economy of tungsten lamps for storage batteries--the low-voltage battery for electric light--how to figure the capacity of a battery--table of light requirements for a farm house--watt-hours and lamp-hours--the cost of storage battery current--how to charge a storage battery--care of storage batteries chapter xii battery charging devices the automatic plant most desirable--how an automobile lighting and starting system works--how the same results can be achieved in house lighting, by means of automatic devices--plants without automatic regulation--care necessary--the use of heating devices on storage battery current--portable batteries--an electricity "route"--automobile power for lighting a few lamps illustrations even the tiny trout brook becomes a thing of utility as well as of joy _frontispiece_ farm labor and materials built this crib and stone dam measuring a small stream with a weir efficient modern adaptations of the archaic undershot and overshot water wheels a direct-current dynamo or motor, showing details of construction details of voltmeter or ammeter instantaneous photograph of high-pressure water jet being quenched by buckets of a tangential wheel a tangential wheel, and a dynamo keyed to the same shaft--the ideal method for generating electricity a rough-and-ready farm electric plant, supplying two farms with light, heat and power; and a ward leonard-type circuit breaker for charging storage batteries introduction the sight of a dozen or so fat young horses and mares feeding and frolicking on the wild range of the southwest would probably inspire the average farmer as an awful example of horsepower running to waste. if, by some miracle, he came on such a sight in his own pastures, he would probably consume much time practising the impossible art of "creasing" the wild creatures with a rifle bullet--after the style of kit carson and other free rovers of the old prairies when they were in need of a new mount. he would probably spend uncounted hours behind the barn learning to throw a lariat; and one fine day he would sally forth to capture a horsepower or two--and, once captured, he would use strength and strategy breaking the wild beast to harness. a single horsepower--animal--will do the work of lifting , pounds one foot in one minute, providing the animal is young, and sound, and is fed quarts of oats and or pounds of hay a day, and is given a chance to rest hours out of --providing also it has a dentist to take care of its teeth occasionally, and a blacksmith chiropodist to keep it in shoes. on the hoof, this horsepower is worth about $ --unless the farmer is looking for something fancy in the way of drafters, when he will have to go as high as $ for a big fellow. and after or years, the farmer would look around for another horse, because an animal grows old. this animal horsepower isn't a very efficient horsepower. in fact, it is less than three-fourths of an actual horsepower, as engineers use the term. a real horsepower will do the work of lifting , pounds one foot in one minute--or pounds one foot in one second. burn a pint of gasoline, with pounds of air, in a gasoline engine, and the engine will supply one , -pound horsepower for an hour. the gasoline will cost about cents, and the air is supplied free. if it was the air that cost two cents a pound, instead of the gasoline, the automobile industry would undoubtedly stop where it began some fifteen years ago. it is human nature, however, to grumble over this two cents. yet the average farmer who would get excited if sound young chunks and drafters were running wild across his pastures, is not inspired by any similar desire of possession and mastery by the sight of a brook, or a rivulet that waters his meadows. this brook or river is flowing down hill to the sea. every , gallons that falls one foot in one minute; every gallons that falls feet in one minute; or every gallons that falls feet in one minute, means the power of one horse going to waste--not the $ flesh-and-blood kind that can lift only , pounds a foot a minute--but the , foot-pound kind. thousands of farms have small streams in their very dooryard, capable of developing five, ten, twenty, fifty horsepower twenty-four hours a day, for the greater part of the year. within a quarter of a mile of the great majority of farms (outside of the dry lands themselves) there are such streams. only a small fraction of one per cent of them have been put to work, made to pay their passage from the hills to the sea. the united states government geological survey engineers recently made an estimate of the waterfalls capable of developing , horsepower and over, that are running to waste, unused, in this country. they estimated that there is available, every second of the day and night, some , , horsepower, in dry weather--and twice this during the eight wet months of the year. the waterfall capable of giving up , horsepower in energy is not the subject of these chapters. it is the small streams--the brooks, the creeks, the rivulets--which feed the , horsepower torrents, make them possible, that are of interest to the farmer. these small streams thread every township, every county, seeking the easiest way to the main valleys where they come together in great rivers. what profitable crop on your farm removes the least plant food? a bee-farmer enters his honey for the prize in this contest. another farmer maintains that his ice-crop is the winner. but electricity generated from falling water of a brook meandering across one's acres, comes nearer to the correct answer of how to make something out of nothing. it merely utilizes the wasted energy of water rolling down hill--the weight of water, the pulling power of gravity. water is still water, after it has run through a turbine wheel to turn an electric generator. it is still wet; it is there for watering the stock; and a few rods further down stream, where it drops five or ten feet again, it can be made to do the same work over again--and over and over again as long as it continues to fall, on its journey to the sea. the city of los angeles has a municipal water plant, generating , horsepower of electricity, in which the water is used three times in its fall of , feet; and in the end, where it runs out of the race in the valley, it is sold for irrigation. one water-horsepower will furnish light for the average farm; five water-horsepower will furnish light and power, and do the ironing and baking. the cost of installing a plant of five water-horsepower should not exceed the cost of one sound young horse, the $ kind--under conditions which are to be found on thousands of farms and farm communities in the east, the central west, and the pacific states. this electrical horsepower will work hours a day, winter and summer, and the farmer would not have to grow oats and hay for it on land that might better be used in growing food for human beings. it would not become "aged" at the end of ten or fifteen years, and the expense of maintenance would be practically nothing after the first cost of installation. it would require only water as food--waste water. two hundred and fifty cubic feet of water a minute, falling ten feet, will supply the average farm with all the conveniences of electricity. this is a very modest creek--the kind of brook or creek that is ignored by the man who would think time well spent in putting in a week capturing a wild horse, if a miracle should send such a beast within reach. and the task of harnessing and breaking this water-horsepower is much more simple and less dangerous than the task of breaking a colt to harness. part i water-power electricity for the farm chapter i a working plant the "agriculturist"--an old chair factory--a neighbor's home-coming--the idle wheel in commission again--light, heat and power for nothing--advantages of electricity. let us take an actual instance of one man who did go ahead and find out by experience just how intricate and just how simple a thing electricity from farm water-power is. this man's name was perkins, or, we will call him that, in relating this story. perkins was what some people call, not a farmer, but an "agriculturist,"--that is, he was a back-to-the-land man. he had been born and raised on a farm. he knew that you must harness a horse on the left side, milk a cow on the right, that wagon nuts tighten the way the wheel rims, and that a fresh egg will not float. he had a farm that would grow enough clover to fill the average dairy if he fed it lime; he had a boy coming to school age; and both he and his wife wanted to get back to the country. they had their little savings, and they wanted, first of all, to take a vacation, getting acquainted with their farm. they hadn't taken a vacation in fifteen years. he moved in, late in the summer, and started out to get acquainted with his neighbors, as well as his land. this was in the new england hills. water courses cut through everywhere. in regard to its bountiful water supply, the neighborhood had much in common with all the states east of the mississippi, along the atlantic seaboard, in the lake region of the central west, and in the pacific states. with this difference; the water courses in his neighborhood had once been of economic importance. a mountain river flowed down his valley. up and down the valley one met ramshackle mills, fallen into decay. many years ago before railroads came, before it was easy to haul coal from place to place to make steam, these little mills were centers of thriving industries, which depended on the power of falling water to make turned articles, spin cotton, and so forth. then the railroads came, and it was easy to haul coal to make steam. and the same railroads that hauled the coal to make steam, were there to haul away the articles manufactured by steam power. so in time the little manufacturing plants on the river back in the hills quit business and moved to railroad stations. then new england, from being a manufacturing community made up of many small isolated water plants, came to be a community made up of huge arteries and laterals of smoke stacks that fringed the railroads. where the railroad happened to follow a river course--as the connecticut river--the water-power plants remained; but the little plants back in the hills were wiped off the map--because steam power with railroads at the front door proved cheaper than water-power with railroads ten miles away. one night perkins came in late from a long drive with his next-door neighbor. he had learned the first rule of courtesy in the country, which is to unhitch his own side of the horse and help back the buggy into the shed. they stumbled around in the barn putting up the horse, and getting down hay and grain for it, by the light of an oil lantern, which was set on the floor in a place convenient to be kicked over. he went inside and took supper by the light of a smoky smelly oil lamp, that filled the room full of dark corners; and when supper was over, the farmwife groped about in the cellar putting things away by the light of a candle. the next day his neighbor was grinding cider at his ramshackle water mill--one of the operations for which a week must be set aside every fall. perkins sat on a log and listened to the crunch-crunch of the apples in the chute, and the drip of the frothy yellow liquid that fell into waiting buckets. "how much power have you got here?" he asked. "thirty or forty horsepower, i guess." "what do you do with it, besides grinding cider to pickle your neighbors' digestion with?" "nothing much. i've got a planer and a moulding machine in there, to work up jags of lumber occasionally. that's all. this mill was a chair-factory in my grandfather's day, back in ." "do you use it thirty days in a year?" "no; not half that." "what are you going to do with it this winter?" "nothing; i keep the gate open and the wheel turning, so it won't freeze, but nothing else. i am going to take the family to texas to visit my wife's folks for three months. we've worked hard enough to take a vacation." "will you rent me the mill while you are gone?" "go ahead; you can have it for nothing, if you will watch the ice." "all right; let me know when you come back and i'll drive to town and bring you home." * * * * * three months went by, and one day in february the city man, in response to a letter, hitched up and drove to town to bring his neighbor back home. it was four o'clock in the afternoon when they started out, and it was six--dark--when they turned the bend in the road to the farm house. they helped the wife and children out, with their baggage, and as perkins opened the door of the house, he reached up on the wall and turned something that clicked sharply. instantly light sprang from everywhere. in the barn-yard a street lamp with an -inch reflector illuminated all under it for a space of feet with bright white rays of light. another street lamp hung over the watering trough. the barn doors and windows burst forth in light. there was not a dark corner to be found anywhere. in the house it was the same. perkins led the amazed procession from room to room of the house they had shut up for the winter. on the wall in the hall outside of every room was a button which he pushed, and the room became as light as day before they entered. the cellar door, in opening, automatically lighted a lamp illuminating that cavern as it had never been lighted before since the day a house was built over it. needless to say, the farmer and his family were reduced to a state of speechlessness. "how the deuce did you do it?" finally articulated the farmer. "i put your idle water wheel to work," said perkins; and then, satisfied with this exhibition, he put them back in the sleigh and drove to his home, where his wife had supper waiting. while the men were putting up the team in the electric lighted barn, the farmwife went into the kitchen. her hostess was cooking supper on an electric stove. it looked like a city gas range and it cooked all their meals, and did the baking besides. a hot-water tank stood against the wall, not connected to anything hot, apparently. but it was scalding hot, by virtue of a little electric water heater the size of a quart tin can, connected at the bottom. twenty-four hours a day the water wheel pumped electricity into that "can," so that hot water was to be had at any hour simply by turning a faucet. in the laundry there was an electric pump that kept the tank in the attic filled automatically. when the level of water in this tank fell to a certain point, a float operated a switch that started the pump; and when the water level reached a certain height, the same float stopped the pump. a small motor, the size of a medium hubbard squash operated a washing machine and wringer on wash days. this same motor was a man-of-all-work for this house, for, when called on, it turned the separator, ground and polished knives and silverware, spun the sewing machine, and worked the vacuum cleaner. over the dining room table hung the same hanging shade of old days, but the oil lamp itself was gone. in its place was a -watt tungsten lamp whose rays made the white table cloth fairly glisten. the wires carrying electricity to this lamp were threaded through the chains reaching to the ceiling, and one had to look twice to see where the current came from. in the sitting room, a cluster of electric bulbs glowed from a fancy wicker work basket that hung from the ceiling. the housewife had made use of what she had throughout the house. old-fashioned candle-shades sat like cocked hats astride electric bulbs. there is little heat to an electric bulb for the reason that the white-hot wire that gives the light is made to burn in high vacuum, which transmits heat very slowly. the housewife had taken advantage of this fact and from every corner gleamed lights dressed in fancy designs of tissue paper and silk. "now we will talk business," said perkins when supper was over and they had lighted their pipes. the returned native looked dubious. his new england training had warned him long ago that one cannot expect to get something for nothing, and he felt sure there was a joker in this affair. "how much do i owe you?" he asked. "nothing," said perkins. "you furnish the water-power with your idle wheel, and i furnish the electric installation. this is only a small plant i have put in, but it gives us enough electricity to go around, with a margin for emergencies. i have taken the liberty of wiring your house and your horse-barn and cow-barn and your barn-yard. altogether, i suppose you have lights about the place, and during these long winter days you will keep most of them going from to hours a night and or hours in the early morning. if you were in town, those lights would cost you about cents an hour, at the commercial rate of electricity. say cents a day--eighteen dollars a month. that isn't a very big electric light bill for some people i know in town--and they consider themselves lucky to have the privilege of buying electricity at that rate. your wheel is running all winter to prevent ice from forming and smashing it. it might just as well be spinning the dynamo. "if you think it worth while," continued perkins,--"this $ worth of light you have on tap night and morning, or any hour of the day,--we will say the account is settled. that is, of course, if you will give me the use of half the electricity that your idle wheel is grinding out with my second-hand dynamo. we have about eight electrical horsepower on our wires, without overloading the machine. next spring i am going to stock up this place; and i think about the first thing i do, when my dairy is running, will be to put in a milking machine and let electricity do the milking for me. it will also fill my silo, grind my mowing-machine knives, saw my wood, and keep water running in my barn. you will probably want to do the same. "but what it does for us men in the barn and barn-yard, isn't to be compared to what it does for the women in the house. when my wife wants a hot oven she presses a button. when she wants to put the 'fire' out, she presses another. that's all there is to it. no heat, no smoke, no ashes. the same with ironing--and washing. no oil lamps to fill, no wicks to trim, no chimneys to wash, no kerosene to kick over and start a fire." "you say the current you have put in my house would cost me about $ a month, in town." "yes, about that. making electricity from coal costs money." "what does it cost here?" "practically nothing. your river, that has been running to waste ever since your grandfather gave up making chairs, does the work. there is nothing about a dynamo to wear out, except the bearings, and these can be replaced once every five or ten years for a trifle. the machine needs to be oiled and cared for--fill the oil cups about once in three days. your water wheel needs the same attention. that's all there is to it. you can figure the cost of your current yourself--just about the cost of the lubricating oil you use--and the cost of the time you give it--about the same time you give to any piece of good machinery, from a sulky plow to a cream separator." this is a true story. this electric plant, where perkins furnishes the electric end, and his neighbor the water-power, has been running now for two years, grinding out electricity for the two places twenty-four hours a day. perkins was not an electrical engineer. he was just a plain intelligent american citizen who found sufficient knowledge in books to enable him to install and operate this plant. frequently he is away for long periods, but his neighbor (who has lost his original terror of electricity) takes care of the plant. in fact, this farmer has given a lot of study to the thing, through curiosity, until he knows fully as much about it now as his city neighbor. he had the usual idea, at the start, that a current strong enough to light a candlepower lamp would kick like a mule if a man happened to get behind it. he watched the city man handle bare wires and finally he plucked up courage to do it himself. it was a -volt current, the pressure used in our cities for domestic lighting. the funny part about it was, the farmer could not feel it at all at first. his fingers were calloused and no current could pass through them. finally he sandpapered his fingers and tried it again. then he was able to get the "tickle" of volts. it wasn't so deadly after all--about the strength of a weak medical battery, with which every one is familiar. a current of volts cannot do any harm to the human body unless contact is made over a very large surface, which is impossible unless a man goes to a lot of trouble to make such a contact. a current of volts pressure--the pressure used in cities for motors--has a little more "kick" to it, but still is not uncomfortable. when the pressure rises to volts (the pressure used in trolley wires for street cars), it begins to be dangerous. but there is no reason why a farm plant should be over volts, under usual conditions; engineers have decided on this pressure as the best adapted to domestic use, and manufacturers who turn out the numerous electrical devices, such as irons, toasters, massage machines, etc., fit their standard instruments to this voltage. [illustration: farm labor and materials built this crib and stone dam] as to the cost of this co-operative plant--it was in the neighborhood of $ . as we have said, it provided eight electrical horsepower on tap at any hour of the day or night--enough for the two farms, and a surplus for neighbors, if they wished to string lines and make use of it. the dynamo, a direct-current machine, volts pressure, and what is known in the trade as "compound,"--that is, a machine that maintains a constant pressure automatically and does not require an attendant--was picked up second-hand, through a newspaper "ad" and cost $ . the switchboard, a make-shift affair, not very handsome, but just as serviceable as if it were made of marble, cost less than $ all told. the transmission wire cost $ a hundred pounds; it is of copper, and covered with weatherproofed tape. perkins bought a -cent book on house-wiring, and did the wiring himself, the way the book told him to, a simple operation. for fixtures, as we have said, his wife devised fancy shades out of mexican baskets, tissue paper, and silk, in which are hidden electric globes that glow like fire-flies at the pressing of a button. the lamps themselves are mostly old-style carbon lamps, which can be bought at cents each retail. in his living room and dining room he used the new-style tungsten lamps instead of old-style carbon. these cost cents each. incandescent lamps are rated for , hours useful life. the advantage of tungsten lights is that they give three times as much light for the same expenditure of current as carbon lights. this is a big advantage in the city, where current is costly; but it is not so much of an advantage in the country where a farmer has plenty of water-power--because his current costs him practically nothing, and he can afford to be wasteful of it to save money in lamps. another advantage he has over his city cousin: in town, an incandescent lamp is thrown away after it has been used , hours because after that it gives only % of the light it did when new--quite an item when one is paying for current. the experience of perkins and his neighbor in their coöperative plant has been that they have excess light anyway, and if a few bulbs fall off a fifth in efficiency, it is not noticeable. as a matter of fact most of their bulbs have been in use without replacing for the two years the plant has been in operation. the lamps are on the wall or the ceiling, out of the way, not liable to be broken; so the actual expense in replacing lamps is less than for lamp chimneys in the old days. insurance companies recognize that a large percentage of farm fires comes from the use of kerosene; for this reason, they are willing to make special rates for farm homes lighted by electricity. they prescribe certain rules for wiring a house, and they insist that their agent inspect and pass such wiring before current is turned on. once the wiring is passed, the advantage is all in favor of the farmer with electricity over the farmer with kerosene. the national board of fire underwriters is sufficiently logical in its demands, and powerful enough, so that manufacturers who turn out the necessary fittings find no sale for devices that do not conform to insurance standards. therefore it is difficult to go wrong in wiring a house. finally, as to the added value a water-power electric plant adds to the selling price of a farm. let the farmer answer this question for himself. if he can advertise his farm for sale, with a paragraph running: "hydroelectric plant on the premises, furnishing electricity for light, heat, and power"--what do you suppose a wide-awake purchaser would be willing to pay for that? perkins and his neighbor believe that $ , is a very modest estimate added by their electric plant to both places. and they talk of doing still more. they use only a quarter of the power of the water that is running to waste through the wheel. they are figuring on installing a larger dynamo, of say electrical horse-power, which will provide clean, dry, safe heat for their houses even on the coldest days in winter. when they have done this, they will consider that they are really putting their small river to work. chapter ii a little prospecting small amount of water required for an electric plant--exploring, on a dull day--a rough and ready weir--what a little water will do--the water wheel and the dynamo--electricity consumed the instant it is produced--the price of the average small plant, not counting labor. the average farmer makes the mistake of considering that one must have a river of some size to develop power of any practical use. on your next free day do a little prospecting. we have already said that cubic feet of water falling feet a minute will provide light, heat and small motor power for the average farm. a single water horsepower will generate enough electricity to provide light for the house and barn. but let us take five horsepower as a desirable minimum in this instance. [illustration: measuring a small stream with a weir] in your neighborhood there is a creek three or four feet wide, toiling along day by day, at its task of watering your fields. find a wide board a little longer than the width of this creek you have scorned. set it upright across the stream between the banks, so that no water flows around the ends or under it. it should be high enough to set the water back to a dead level for a few feet upstream, before it overflows. cut a gate in this board, say three feet wide and ten inches deep, or according to the size of a stream. cut this gate from the top, so that all the water of the stream will flow through the opening, and still maintain a level for several feet back of the board. this is what engineers call a weir, a handy contrivance for measuring the flow of small streams. experts have figured out an elaborate system of tables as to weirs. all we need to do now, in this rough survey, is to figure out the number of square inches of water flowing through this opening and falling on the other side. with a rule, measure the depth of the overflowing water, from the bottom of the opening to the top of the dead level of the water behind the board. multiply this depth by the width of the opening, which will give the square inches of water escaping. for every square inch of this water escaping, engineers tell us that stream is capable of delivering, roughly, one cubic foot of water a minute. thus, if the water is inches deep in an opening inches wide, then the number of cubic feet this stream is delivering each minute is times , or cubic feet a minute. so, a stream inches wide, with a uniform depth of inches running through our weir is capable of supplying the demands of the average farm in terms of electricity. providing, of course, that the lay of the land is such that this water can be made to fall feet into a water wheel. go upstream and make a rough survey of the fall. in the majority of instances (unless this is some sluggish stream in a flat prairie) it will be found feasible to divert the stream from its main channel by means of a race--an artificial channel--and to convey it to a not far-distant spot where the necessary fall can be had at an angle of about degrees from horizontal. if you find there is _twice_ as much water as you need for the amount of power you require, a five-foot fall will give the same result. or, if there is only _one-half_ as much water as the cubic feet specified, you can still obtain your theoretical five horsepower if the means are at hand for providing a fall of twenty feet instead of ten. do not make the very common mistake of figuring that a stream is delivering a cubic foot a minute to each square inch of weir opening, simply because it _fills_ a certain opening. it is the excess water, falling _over_ the opening, after the stream has set back to a permanent dead level, that is to be measured. this farmer who spends an idle day measuring the flow of his brook with a notched board, may say here: "this is all very well. this is the spring of the year, when my brook is flowing at high-water mark. what am i going to do in the dry months of summer, when there are not cubic feet of water escaping every minute?" there are several answers to this question, which will be taken up in detail in subsequent chapters. here, let us say, even if this brook does flow in sufficient volume only months in a year--the dark months, by the way,--is not electricity and the many benefits it provides worth having eight months in the year? my garden provides fresh vegetables four months a year. because it withers and dies and lies covered with snow during the winter, is that any reason why i should not plow and manure and plant my garden when spring comes again? a water wheel, the modern turbine, is a circular fan with curved iron blades, revolving in an iron case. water, forced through the blades of this fan by its own weight, causes the wheel to revolve on its axis; and the fan, in turn causes a shaft fitted with pulleys to revolve. the water, by giving the iron-bladed fan a turning movement as it rushes through, imparts to it mechanical power. the shaft set in motion by means of this mechanical power is, in turn, belted to the pulley of a dynamo. this dynamo consists, first, of a shaft on which is placed a spool, wound in a curious way, with many turns of insulated copper wire. this spool revolves freely in an air space surrounded by electric magnets. the spool does not touch these magnets. it is so nicely balanced that the weight of a finger will turn it. yet, when it is revolved by water-power at a predetermined speed--say , revolutions a minute--it generates electricity, transforms the mechanical power of the water wheel into another form of energy--a form of energy which can be carried for long distances on copper wires, which can, by touching a button, be itself converted into light, or heat, or back into mechanical energy again. if two wires be led from opposite sides of this revolving spool, and an electric lamp be connected from one to the other wire, the lamp will be lighted--will grow white hot,--hence _incandescent light_. the instant this lamp is turned on, the revolving spool feels a stress, the magnets by which it is surrounded begin to pull back on it. the power of the water wheel, however, overcomes this pull. if one hundred lights be turned on, the backward pull of the magnets surrounding the spool will be one hundred times as strong as for one light. for every ounce of electrical energy used in light or heat or power, the dynamo will require a like ounce of mechanical power from the water wheel which drives it. the story is told of a canny scotch engineer, who, in the first days of dynamos, not so very long ago, scoffed at the suggestion that such a spool, spinning in free air, in well lubricated bearings, could bring his big corliss steam engine to a stop. yet he saw it done simply by belting this "spool," a dynamo, to his engine and asking the dynamo for more power in terms of light than his steam could deliver in terms of mechanical power to overcome the pull of the magnets. electricity must be consumed the instant it is generated (except in rare instances where small amounts are accumulated in storage batteries by a chemical process). the pressure of a button, or the throw of a switch causes the dynamo instantly to respond with just enough energy to do the work asked of it, always in proportion to the amount required. having this in mind, it is rather curious to think of electricity as being an article of export, an item in international trade. yet in hydro-electric companies in canada "exported" by means of wires, to this country over , , kilowatt-hours (over one billion horsepower hours) of electricity for use in factories near the boundary line. this cubic feet of water per minute then, which the farmer has measured by means of his notched board, will transform by means of its falling weight mechanical power into a like amount of electrical power--less friction losses, which may amount to as much as % in very small machines, and % in larger plants. that is, the brook which has been draining your pastures for uncounted ages contains the potential power of and young horses--with this difference: that it works hours a day, runs on forever, and requires no oats or hay. and the cost of such an electric plant, which is ample for the needs of the average farm, _is in most cases less than the price of a good farm horse_--the $ kind--not counting labor of installation. it is the purpose of these chapters to awaken the farmer to the possibilities of such small water-power as he or his community may possess; to show that the generating of electricity is a very simple operation, and that the maintenance and care of such a plant is within the mechanical ability of any american farmer or farm boy; and to show that electricity itself is far from being the dangerous death-dealing "fluid" of popular imagination. electricity must be studied; and then it becomes an obedient, tireless servant. during the past decade or two, mathematical wizards have studied electricity, explored its atoms, reduced it to simple arithmetic--and although they cannot yet tell us _why_ it is generated, they tell us _how_. it is with this simple arithmetic, and the necessary manual operations that we have to do here. chapter iii how to measure water-power what is a horsepower?--how the carthaginians manufactured horsepower--all that goes up must come down--how the sun lifts water up for us to use--water the ideal power for generating electricity--the weir--table for estimating flow of streams, with a weir--another method of measuring--figuring water horsepower--the size of the wheel--what head is required--quantity of water necessary. if a man were off in the woods and needed a horsepower of energy to work for him, he could generate it by lifting pounds of stone or wood, or whatnot, one foot off the ground, and letting it fall back in the space of one second. as a man possesses capacity for work equal to one-fifth horsepower, it would take him five seconds to do the work of lifting the weight up that the weight itself accomplished in falling down. all that goes up must come down; and by a nice balance of physical laws, a falling body hits the ground with precisely the same force as is required to lift it to the height from which it falls. the carthaginians, and other ancients (who were deep in the woods as regards mechanical knowledge) had their slaves carry huge stones to the top of the city wall; and the stones were placed in convenient positions to be tipped over on the heads of any besieging army that happened along. thus by concentrating the energy of many slaves in one batch of stones, the warriors of that day were enabled to deliver "horsepower" in one mass where it would do the most good. the farmer who makes use of the energy of falling water to generate electricity for light, heat, and power does the same thing--he makes use of the capacity for work stored in water in being lifted to a certain height. as in the case of the gasoline engine, which burns pounds of air for every pound of gasoline, the engineer of the water-power plant does not have to concern himself with the question of how this natural source of energy happened to be in a handy place for him to make use of it. the sun, shining on the ocean, and turning water into vapor by its heat has already lifted it up for him. this vapor floating in the air and blown about by winds, becomes chilled from one cause or another, gives up its heat, turns back into water, and falls as rain. this rain, falling on land five, ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand feet above the sea level, begins to run back to the sea, picking out the easiest road and cutting a channel that we call a brook, a stream, or a river. our farm lands are covered to an average depth of about three feet a year with water, every gallon of which has stored in it the energy expended by the heat of the sun in lifting it to the height where it is found. the farmer, prospecting on his land for water-power, locates a spot on a stream which he calls supply; and another spot a few feet down hill near the same stream, which he calls power. every gallon of water that falls between these two points, and is made to escape through the revolving blades of a water wheel is capable of work in terms of foot-pounds--an amount of work that is directly proportional to the _quantity_ of water, and to the _distance_ in feet which it falls to reach the wheel--_pounds_ and _feet_. _the efficient water wheel_ and it is a very efficient form of work, too. in fact it is one of the most efficient forms of mechanical energy known--and one of the easiest controlled. a modern water wheel uses per cent of the total capacity for work imparted to falling water by gravity, and delivers it as rotary motion. compare this water wheel efficiency with other forms of mechanical power in common use: whereas a water wheel uses per cent of the energy of its water supply, and wastes only per cent, a gasoline engine reverses the table, and delivers only per cent of the energy in gasoline and wastes per cent--and it is rather a high-class gasoline engine that can deliver even per cent; a steam engine, on the other hand, uses about per cent of the energy in the coal under its boilers and passes the rest up the chimney as waste heat and smoke. there is still another advantage possessed by water-power over its two rivals, steam and gas: it gives the most even flow of power. a gas engine "kicks" a wheel round in a circle, by means of successive explosions in its cylinders. a reciprocating steam engine "kicks" a wheel round in a circle by means of steam expanding first in one direction, then in another. a water wheel, on the other hand, is made to revolve by means of the pressure of water--by the constant force of gravity, itself--weight. weight is something that does not vary from minute to minute, or from one fraction of a second to another. it is always the same. a square inch of water pressing on the blades of a water wheel weights ten, twenty, a hundred pounds, according to the height of the pipe conveying that water from the source of supply, to the wheel. so long as this column of water is maintained at a fixed height, the power it delivers to the wheel does not vary by so much as the weight of a feather. this property of falling water makes it the ideal power for generating electricity. electricity generated from mechanical power depends on constant speed for steady pressure--since the electric current, when analyzed, is merely a succession of pulsations through a wire, like waves beating against a sea wall. water-power delivers these waves at a constant speed, so that electric lights made from water-power do not flicker and jump like the flame of a lantern in a gusty wind. on the other hand, to accomplish the same thing with steam or gasoline requires an especially constructed engine. _the simple weir_ since a steady flow of water, and a constant head, bring about this ideal condition in the water wheel, the first problem that faces the farmer prospector is to determine the amount of water which his stream is capable of delivering. this is always measured, for convenience, in _cubic feet per minute_. (a cubic foot of water weighs . pounds, and contains - / gallons.) this measurement is obtained in several ways, among which probably the use of a weir is the simplest and most accurate, for small streams. a weir is, in effect, merely a temporary dam set across the stream in such a manner as to form a small pond; and to enable one to measure the water escaping from this pond. it may be likened to the overflow pipe of a horse trough which is being fed from a spring. to measure the flow of water from such a spring, all that is necessary is to measure the water escaping through the overflow when the water in the trough has attained a permanent level. [illustration: detail of home-made weir] [illustration: cross-section of weir] the diagrams show the cross-section and detail of a typical weir, which can be put together in a few minutes with the aid of a saw and hammer. the cross-section shows that the lower edge of the slot through which the water of the temporary pond is made to escape, is cut on a bevel, with its sharp edge upstream. the wing on each side of the opening is for the purpose of preventing the stream from narrowing as it flows through the opening, and thus upsetting the calculations. this weir should be set directly across the flow of the stream, perfectly level, and upright. it should be so imbedded in the banks, and in the bottom of the stream, that no water can escape, except through the opening cut for that purpose. it will require a little experimenting with a rough model to determine just how wide and how deep this opening should be. it should be large enough to prevent water flowing over the top of the board; and it should be small enough to cause a still-water pond to form for several feet behind the weir. keep in mind the idea of the overflowing water trough when building your weir. the stream, running down from a higher level behind, should be emptying into a still-water pond, which in turn should be emptying itself through the aperture in the board at the same rate as the stream is keeping the pond full. your weir should be fashioned with the idea of some permanency so that a number of measurements may be taken, extending over a period of time--thus enabling the prospector to make a reliable estimate not only of the amount of water flowing at any one time, but of its fluctuations. under expert supervision, this simple weir is an exact contrivance--exact enough, in fact, for the finest calculations required in engineering work. to find out how many cubic feet of water the stream is delivering at any moment, all that is necessary is to measure its depth where it flows through the opening. there are instruments, like the hook-gauge, which are designed to measure this depth with accuracy up to one-thousandth of an inch. an ordinary foot rule, or a folding rule, will give results sufficiently accurate for the water prospector in this instance. the depth should be measured not at the opening itself, but a short distance back of the opening, where the water is setting at a dead level and is moving very slowly. with this weir, every square inch of water flowing through the opening indicates roughly one cubic foot of water a minute. thus if the opening is inches wide and the water flowing through it is inches deep, the number of cubic feet a minute the stream is delivering is × = square inches = cubic feet a minute. this is a very small stream; yet, if it could be made to fall through a water wheel feet below a pond or reservoir, it would exert a continuous pressure of , pounds per minute on the blades of the wheel--nearly one theoretical horsepower. this estimate of one cubic foot to each square inch is a very rough approximation. engineers have developed many complicated formulas for determining the flow of water through weirs, taking into account fine variations that the farm prospector need not heed. the so-called francis formula, developed by a long series of actual experiments at lowell, mass., in by mr. james b. francis, with weirs feet long and feet inches high, is standard for these calculations and is expressed (for those who desire to use it for special purposes) as follows: q = . l h^( / ) or, q = . l h sqrt(h), in which q means _quantity_ of water in cubic feet per second, l is length of opening, in feet; and h is height of opening in feet. the following table is figured according to the francis formula, and gives the discharge in cubic feet per minute, for openings one inch wide: table of weirs inches / / / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thus, let us say, our weir has an opening inches wide, and the water overflows through the opening at a uniform depth of - / inches, when measured a few inches behind the board at a point before the overflow curve begins. run down the first column on the left to " ", and cross over to the second column to the right, headed " / ". this gives the number of cubic feet per minute for this depth one inch wide, as . . since the weir is inches wide, multiply . × = . --or, say, cubic feet per minute. once the weir is set, it is the work of but a moment to find out the quantity of water a stream is delivering, simply by referring to the above table. _another method of measuring a stream_ weirs are for use in small streams. for larger streams, where the construction of a weir would be difficult, the u. s. geological survey engineers recommend the following simple method: choose a place where the channel is straight for or feet, and has a nearly constant depth and width; lay off on the bank a line or feet in length. throw small chips into the stream, and measure the time in seconds they take to travel the distance laid off on the bank. this gives the surface velocity of the water. multiply the average of several such tests by . , which will give very nearly the mean velocity. then it is necessary to find the cross-section of the flowing water (its average depth multiplied by width), and this number, in square feet, multiplied by the velocity in feet per second, will give the number of cubic feet the stream is delivering each second. multiplied by gives cubic feet a minute. _figuring a stream's horsepower_ by one of the above simple methods, the problem of _quantity_ can easily be determined. the next problem is to determine what _head_ can be obtained. _head_ is the distance in feet the water may be made to fall, from the source of supply, to the water wheel itself. the power of water is directly proportional to _head_, just as it is directly proportional to _quantity_. thus the typical weir measured above was inches wide and - / deep, giving cubic feet of water a minute--_quantity._ since such a stream is of common occurrence on thousands of farms, let us analyze briefly its possibilities for power: one hundred and eighty-nine cubic feet of water weighs × . pounds = , . pounds. drop this weight one foot, and we have , . foot-pounds. drop it feet and we have , × = , . foot-pounds. since , foot-pounds exerted in one minute is one horsepower, we have here a little more than one horsepower. for simplicity let us call it a horsepower. [illustration: detail of a water-power plant, showing setting of wheel, and dynamo connection] now, since the work to be had from this water varies directly with _quantity_ and _head_, it is obvious that a stream _one-half_ as big falling _twice_ as far, would still give one horsepower at the wheel; or, a stream of cubic feet a minute falling _ten times_ as far, feet, would give _ten times_ the power, or _ten_ horsepower; a stream falling _one hundred times_ as far would give _one hundred_ horsepower. thus small quantities of water falling great distances, or large quantities of water falling small distances may accomplish the same results. from this it will be seen, that the simple formula for determining the theoretical horsepower of any stream, in which quantity and head are known, is as follows: cu. ft. per feet minute × head × . (a) theoretical horsepower = ---------------------- , _as an example, let us say that we have a stream whose weir measurement shows it capable of delivering cubic feet a minute, with a head (determined by survey) of feet inches. what is the horsepower of this stream?_ answer: cu. ft. p. m. head pounds × . × . h.p. = ----------------------------- = . horsepower , this is _theoretical horsepower_. to determine the _actual_ horsepower that can be counted on, in practice, it is customary, with small water wheels, to figure per cent loss through friction, etc. in this instance, the actual horsepower would then be . . _the size of the wheel_ water wheels are not rated by horsepower by manufacturers, because the same wheel might develop one horsepower or one hundred horsepower, or even a thousand horsepower, according to the conditions under which it is used. with a given supply of water, the head, in feet, determines the size of wheel necessary. the farther a stream of water falls, the smaller the pipe necessary to carry a given number of gallons past a given point in a given time. a small wheel, under × . ft. head, would give the same power with the above cubic feet of water a minute, as a large wheel would with × cubic feet, under a . foot head. this is due to the _acceleration of gravity_ on falling bodies. a rifle bullet shot into the air with a muzzle velocity of , feet a second begins to diminish its speed instantly on leaving the muzzle, and continues to diminish in speed at the fixed rate of . feet a second, until it finally comes to a stop, and starts to descend. then, again, its speed accelerates at the rate of . feet a second, until on striking the earth it has attained the velocity at which it left the muzzle of the rifle, less loss due to friction. the acceleration of gravity affects falling water in the same manner as it affects a falling bullet. at any one second, during its course of fall, it is traveling at a rate . feet a second in excess of its speed the previous second. in figuring the size wheel necessary under given conditions or to determine the power of water with a given nozzle opening, it is necessary to take this into account. the table on page gives velocity per second of falling water, ignoring the friction of the pipe, in heads from to feet. the scientific formula from which the table is computed is expressed as follows, for those of a mathematical turn of mind: velocity (ft. per sec.) = sqrt( gh); or, velocity is equal to the square root of the product (g = . ,--times head in feet, multiplied by ). spouting velocity of water, in feet per second, in heads of from to , feet head velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _in the above example, we found that cubic feet of water a minute, under . feet head, would deliver . actual horsepower. question: what size wheel would it be necessary to install under such conditions?_ by referring to the table of velocity above, (or by using the formula), we find that water under a head of . feet, has a spouting velocity of . feet a second. this means that a solid stream of water . feet long would pass through the wheel in one second. _what should be the diameter of such a stream, to make its cubical contents cubic feet a minute or / = . cubic feet a second?_ the following formula should be used to determine this: × cu. ft. per second (b) sq. inches of wheel = -------------------------- velocity in ft. per sec. substituting values, in the above instance, we have: answer: sq. inches of wheel = × . (cu. ft. sec.) --------------------------- = . sq. in. . (vel. in feet.) that is, a wheel capable of using . square inches of water would meet these conditions. _what head is required_ let us attack the problem of water-power in another way. _a farmer wishes to install a water wheel that will deliver horsepower on the shaft, and he finds his stream delivers cubic feet of water a minute. how many feet fall is required?_ formula: , × horsepower required (c) head in feet = ------------------------------ cu. ft. per minute × . since a theoretical horsepower is only per cent efficient, he would require × / = . theoretical horsepower of water, in this instance. substituting the values of the problem in the formula, we have: , × . answer: head = ---------------- = . feet fall required. × . _what capacity of wheel would this prospect ( cubic feet of water a minute falling . feet, and developing . horsepower) require?_ by referring to the table of velocities, we find that the velocity for . feet head (nearly) is . feet a second. four hundred feet of water a minute is / = . cu. ft. a second. substituting these values, in formula (b) then, we have: answer: capacity of wheel = × . ---------- = . square inches of water. . _quantity of water_ let us take still another problem which the prospector may be called on to solve: _a man finds that he can conveniently get a fall of feet. he desires actual horsepower. what quantity of water will be necessary, and what capacity wheel?_ twenty actual horsepower will be × / = . theoretical horsepower. formula: , × hp. required (d) cubic feet per minute = --------------------- (head in feet × . ) substituting values, then, we have: cu. ft. per minute = , × . -------------- = . cubic feet a minute. × . a head of feet would give this stream a velocity of . feet a second, and, from formula (b) we find that the capacity of the wheel should be square inches. it is well to remember that the square inches of wheel capacity does not refer to the size of pipe conveying water from the head to the wheel, but merely to the actual nozzle capacity provided by the wheel itself. in small installations of low head, such as above a penstock at least six times the nozzle capacity should be used, to avoid losing effective head from friction. thus, with a nozzle of square inches, the penstock or pipe should be square inches, or nearly inches square inside measurement. a larger penstock would be still better. chapter iv the water wheel and how to install it different types of water wheels--the impulse and reaction wheels--the impulse wheel adapted to high heads and small amount of water--pipe lines--table of resistance in pipes--advantages and disadvantages of the impulse wheel--other forms of impulse wheels--the reaction turbine, suited to low heads and large quantity of water--its advantages and limitations--developing a water-power project: the dam; the race; the flume; the penstock; and the tailrace--water rights for the farmer. in general, there are two types of water wheels, the _impulse_ wheel and the _reaction_ wheel. both are called turbines, although the name belongs, more properly, to the reaction wheel alone. impulse wheels derive their power from the _momentum_ of falling water. reaction wheels derive their power from the _momentum and pressure_ of falling water. the old-fashioned _undershot_, _overshot_, and _breast_ wheels are familiar to all as examples of impulse wheels. water wheels of this class revolve in the air, with the energy of the water exerted on one face of their buckets. on the other hand, reaction wheels are enclosed in water-tight cases, either of metal or of wood, and the buckets are entirely surrounded by water. the old-fashioned undershot, overshot, and breast wheels were not very efficient; they wasted about per cent of the power applied to them. a modern impulse wheel, on the other hand, operates at an efficiency of per cent and over. the loss is mainly through friction and leakage, and cannot be eliminated altogether. the modern reaction wheel, called the _turbine_, attains an equal efficiency. individual conditions govern the type of wheel to be selected. _the impulse, or tangential water wheel_ the modern impulse, or tangential wheel (so called because the driving stream of water strikes the wheel at a tangent) is best adapted to situations where the amount of water is limited, and the head is large. thus, a mountain brook supplying only seven cubic feet of water a minute--a stream less than two-and-a-half inches deep flowing over a weir with an opening three inches wide--would develop two actual horsepower, under a head of feet--not an unusual head to be found in the hill country. under a head of one thousand feet, a stream furnishing . cubic feet of water a minute would develop . horsepower at the nozzle. ordinarily these wheels are not used under heads of less than feet. a wheel of this type, six feet in diameter, would develop six horsepower, with cubic feet of water a minute and -foot head. the great majority of impulse wheels are used under heads of feet and over. in this country the greatest head in use is slightly over , feet, although in switzerland there is one plant utilizing a head of over , feet. [illustration: runner of pelton wheel, showing peculiar shape of the buckets] [illustration: the fitz overshoot wheel efficient modern adaptations of the archaic undershot and overshot water wheels] the old-fashioned impulse wheels were inefficient because of the fact that their buckets were not constructed scientifically, and much of the force of the water was lost at the moment of impact. the impulse wheel of to-day, however, has buckets which so completely absorb the momentum of water issuing from a nozzle, that the water falls into the tailrace with practically no velocity. when it is remembered that the nozzle pressure under a , -foot head is nearly , pounds to the square inch, and that water issues from this nozzle with a velocity of , feet a minute, the scientific precision of this type of bucket can be appreciated. a typical bucket for such a wheel is shaped like an open clam shell, the central line which cuts the stream of water into halves being ground to a sharp edge. the curves which absorb the momentum of the water are figured mathematically and in practice become polished like mirrors. so great is the eroding action of water, under great heads--especially when it contains sand or silt--that it is occasionally necessary to replace these buckets. for this reason the larger wheels consist merely of a spider of iron or steel, with each bucket bolted separately to its circumference, so that it can be removed and replaced easily. usually only one nozzle is provided; but in order to use this wheel under low heads--down to feet--a number of nozzles are used, sometimes five, where the water supply is plentiful. the wheel is keyed to a horizontal shaft running in babbited bearings, and this same shaft is used for driving the generator, either by direct connection, or by means of pulleys and a belt. the wheel may be mounted on a home-made timber base, or on an iron frame. it takes up very little room, especially when it is so set that the nozzle can be mounted under the flooring. the wheel itself is enclosed, above the floor, in a wooden box, or a casing made of cast or sheet iron, which should be water-tight. since these wheels are usually operated under great heads, the problem of regulating their water supply requires special consideration. a gate is always provided at the upper, or intake end, where the water pipe leaves the flume. since the pressure reaches , pounds the square inch and more, there would be danger of bursting the pipe if the water were suddenly shut off at the nozzle itself. for this reason it is necessary to use a needle valve, similar to that in an ordinary garden hose nozzle; and by such a valve the amount of water may be regulated to a nicety. where the head is so great that even such a valve could not be used safely, provision is made to deflect the nozzle. these wheels have a speed variation amounting to as much as per cent from no-load to full load, in generating electricity, and since the speed of the prime mover--the water wheel--is reflected directly in the voltage or pressure of electricity delivered, the wheel must be provided with some form of automatic governor. this consists usually of two centrifugal balls, similar to those used in governing steam engines; these are connected by means of gears to the needle valve or the deflector. as the demand for farm water-powers in our hill sections becomes more general, the tangential type of water wheel will come into common use for small plants. at present it is most familiar in the great commercial installations of the far west, working under enormous heads. these wheels are to be had in the market ranging in size from six inches to six feet and over. wheels ranging in size from six inches to twenty-four inches are called water motors, and are to be had in the market, new, for $ for the smallest size, and $ for the largest. above three feet in diameter, the list prices will run from $ for a -foot wheel to $ for a -foot wheel. where one has a surplus of water, it is possible to install a multiple nozzle wheel, under heads of from to feet, the cost for -inch wheels of this pattern running from $ to $ list, and for -inch wheels from $ to $ . a -inch wheel, with a -foot head would give . horsepower, enough for lighting the home, and using an electric iron. under a -foot head this same wheel would provide . horsepower, to meet the requirements of a bigger-than-average farm plant. _the pipe line_ the principal items of cost in installing an impulse wheel are in connection with the pipe line, and the governor. in small heads, that is, under feet, the expense of pipe line is low. frequently, however, the governor will cost more than the water motor itself, although cheaper, yet efficient, makes are now being put on the market to meet this objection. in a later chapter, we will take up in detail the question of governing the water wheel, and voltage regulation, and will attempt to show how this expense may be practically eliminated by the farmer. to secure large heads, it is usually necessary to run a pipe line many hundreds (and in many cases, many thousands) of feet from the flume to the water wheel. water flowing through pipes is subject to loss of head, by friction, and for this reason the larger the pipe the less the friction loss. under no circumstances is it recommended to use a pipe of less than two inches in diameter, even for the smallest water motors; and with a two-inch pipe, the run should not exceed feet. where heavy-pressure mains, such as those of municipal or commercial water systems, are available, the problem of both water supply and head becomes very simple. merely ascertain the pressure of the water in the mains _when flowing_, determine the amount of power required (as illustrated in a succeeding chapter of this book), and install the proper water motor with a suitably sized pipe. where one has his own water supply, however, and it is necessary to lay pipe to secure the requisite fall, the problem is more difficult. friction in pipes acts in the same way as cutting down the head a proportional amount; and by cutting down the head, your water motor loses power in direct proportion to the number of feet head lost. this head, obtained by subtracting friction and other losses from the surveyed head, is called the _effective head_, and determines the amount of power delivered at the nozzle. the tables on pages - show the friction loss in pipes up to inches in diameter, according to the amount of water, and the length of pipe. in this example it is seen that a -foot static head is reduced by friction to . feet effective head. by referring to the table we find the wheel fitting these conditions has a nozzle so small that it cuts down the rate of flow of water in the big pipe to . feet a second, and permits the flow of only cubic feet of water a minute. the actual horsepower of this tube and nozzle, then, can be figured by applying formula (a), chapter iii, allowing per cent for the efficiency of the wheel. thus: actual horsepower = × . × . ------------------ = . × . = . hp. , to calculate what the horsepower of this tube inches in diameter and feet long, would be without a nozzle, under a head of feet, introduces a new element of friction losses, which is too complicated to figure here. such a condition would not be met with in actual practice, in any event. the largest nozzles used, even in the jumbo plants of the far west, rarely exceed inches in diameter; and the pipe conveying water to such a nozzle is upwards of eight feet in diameter. pipe friction tables indicating the calculated loss of head due to friction in riveted steel pipe with various water quantities and velocities [courtesy of the pelton water wheel company] heavy-faced figures = loss of head in feet for each one thousand feet of pipe. light-faced figures = water quantity in cubic feet per minute. --------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ pipe | velocity in feet per second | diameter+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | --------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | = . | = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | | | | = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | | | | | | | = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . =|= . = | " | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= . =|= . = | " | | | | | | | | | | | | | | --------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ --------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | --------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =|= .= |= .= | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= .= |= .= |= .= |= .= | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = .= |= .= |= .= |= .= | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= .= |= .= | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =|= .= | " | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | | | | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| " | . | | | | | | | | | | | | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| " | | | | | | | | | | | | | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| " | | | | | | | | | | | | | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| " | | | | | | | | | | | | | |= . =|= . =|= . =|= . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| = . =| " | | | | | | | | | | | | | --------+---------+----------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ example assume the surveyed head as feet, the water quantity as cubic feet per minute and a pipe line inches in diameter feet long. to ascertain the friction loss, refer to column of pipe diameter and follow across the column for inches diameter to the quantity, cubic feet per minute. the heavy-faced figures above indicate that the loss per feet of pipe length is feet. therefore, since the pipe in the example is feet long, the loss will be .' × / or . feet, and the effective head will be ' - . ' = . ' steel tubing for supply pipes, from to inches in diameter is listed at from cents to $ . a foot, according to the diameter and thickness of the material. discounts on these prices will vary from to per cent. the farmer can cut down the cost of this pipe by conveying his supply water from its natural source to a pond, by means of an open race, or a wooden flume. an ingenious mechanic can even construct his own pipe out of wood, though figuring labor and materials, it is doubtful if anything would be saved over a riveted steel pipe, purchased at the regular price. this pipe, leading from the pond, or forebay, to the water wheel, should be kept as short as possible; at the same time, the fall should not be too sharp. an angle of ° will be found very satisfactory, although pipe is frequently laid at angles up to °. _other types of impulse wheels_ in recent years more efficient forms of the old-fashioned overshoot, pitch-back breast, and undershoot wheels have been developed, by substituting steel or other metal for wood, and altering the shape of the buckets to make better use of the power of falling water. in some forms of overshoot wheels, an efficiency of over per cent is claimed by manufacturers; and this type offers the additional advantage of utilizing small quantities of water, as well as being efficient under varying quantities of water. they utilize the falling weight of water, although by giving the water momentum at the point of delivery, by means of the proper fall, impulse too is utilized in some measure. the modern steel overshoot wheel receives water in its buckets from a spout set a few degrees back of dead center; and its buckets are so shaped that the water is retained a full half-revolution of the wheel. the old-style overshoot wheel was inefficient principally because the buckets began emptying themselves at the end of a quarter-revolution. another advantage claimed for these wheels over the old style is that, being made of thin metal, their buckets attain the temperature of the water itself, thus reducing the danger of freezing to a minimum. they are manufactured in sizes from feet in diameter to upwards of fifty feet; and with buckets of from inches to feet in width. in practice it is usual to deliver water to the buckets by means of a trough or pipe, through a suitable spout and gate, at a point two feet above the crown of the wheel. for this reason, the diameter of the wheel corresponds very closely to the head in feet. _the reaction turbine_ the reaction turbine is best adapted to low heads, with a large supply of water. it is not advisable, under ordinary circumstances, to use it under heads exceeding feet, as its speed is then excessive. it may be used under falls as low as two feet. five thousand cubic feet of water a minute would give approximately actual horsepower under such a head. a sluggish creek that flows in large volume could thus be utilized for power with the reaction turbine, whereas it would be useless with an impulse wheel. falls of from five to fifteen feet are to be found on thousands of farm streams, and the reaction turbine is admirably adapted to them. reaction turbines consist of an iron "runner" which is in effect a rotary fan, the pressure and momentum of the column of water pressing on the slanted blades giving it motion and power. these wheels are manufactured in a great variety of forms and sizes; and are to be purchased either as the runner (set in bearings) alone, or as a runner enclosed in an iron case. in case the runner alone is purchased, the owner must enclose it, either with iron or wood. they vary in price according to size, and the means by which the flow of water is controlled. a simple -inch reaction turbine wheel, such as would be suitable for many power plants can be had for $ . a twelve-inch wheel, using or square inches of water, would generate about - / horsepower under a -foot head, with cubic feet of water a minute. under a -foot head, and with cubic feet of water such a wheel will give horsepower. a -inch wheel, under a -foot head, would use , cubic feet of water, and give horsepower. under a -foot head, this same wheel, using , cubic feet of water a minute, would develop over horsepower. if the farmer is confronted by the situation of a great deal of water and small head, a large wheel would be necessary. thus he could secure horsepower with only a -foot head, providing his water supply is equal to the draft of , cubic feet a minute. from these sample figures, it will be seen that the reaction turbine will meet the requirements of widely varying conditions up to, say a head of feet. the farmer prospector should measure first the quantity of water to be depended on, and then the number of feet fall to be had. the higher the fall, with certain limits, the smaller the expense of installation, and the less water required. when he has determined _quantity_ and _head_, the catalogue of a reputable manufacturer will supply him with what information is necessary to decide on the style and size wheel he should install. in the older settled communities, especially in new england, a farmer should be able to pick up a second-hand turbine, at half the price asked for a new one; and since these wheels do not depreciate rapidly, it would serve his purpose as well, in most cases, as a new one. [illustration: a typical vertical turbine] reaction turbines may be either horizontal or vertical. if they are vertical, it is necessary to connect them to the main shaft by means of a set of bevel gears. these gears should be substantially large, and if the teeth are of hard wood (set in such a manner that they can be replaced when worn) they will be found more satisfactory than if of cast or cut metal. [illustration: two wheels on a horizontal shaft (courtesy of the c. p. bradway company, west stafford, conn.)] the horizontal turbine is keyed to its shaft, like the impulse wheel, so that the wheel shaft itself is used for driving, without gears or a quarter-turn belt. (the latter is to be avoided, wherever possible.) there are many forms of horizontal turbines; they are to be had of the duplex type, that is, two wheels on one shaft. these are arranged so that either wheel may be run separately, or both together, thus permitting one to take advantage of the seasonal fluctuation in water supply. a convenient form of these wheels includes draft tubes, by which the wheel may be set several feet above the tailrace, and the advantage of this additional fall still be preserved. in this case the draft tube must be airtight so as to form suction, when filled with escaping water, and should be proportioned to the size of the wheel. theoretically these draft tubes might be feet long, but in practice it has been found that they should not exceed or feet under ordinary circumstances. they permit the wheel to be installed on the main floor of the power station, with the escape below, instead of being set just above the tailrace level itself, as is the case when draft tubes are not used. reaction turbines when working under a variable load require water governors (like impulse wheels) although where the supply of water is large, and the proportion of power between water wheel and dynamo is liberal--say two to one, or more--this necessity is greatly reduced. reaction wheels as a rule govern themselves better than impulse wheels, due both to the fact that they use more water, and that they operate in a small airtight case. the centrifugal ball governor is the type usually used with reaction wheels as well as with impulse wheels. this subject will be discussed more fully later. _installing a power plant_ in developing a power prospect, the dam itself is usually not the site of the power plant. in fact, because of danger from flood water and ice, it is better to locate it in a more protected spot, leading the water to the wheel by means of a race and flume. [illustration: bird's-eye view of a developed water-power plant] a typical crib dam, filled with stone, is shown in section in the diagram, and the half-tone illustration shows such a dam in course of construction. the first bed of timbers should be laid on hard-pan or solid rock in the bed of the stream parallel to its flow. the second course, across the stream, is then begun, being spiked home by means of rods cut to length and sharpened by the local blacksmith, from / -inch norway iron. hemlock logs are suitable for building the crib; and as the timbers are finally laid, it should be filled in and made solid with boulders. this filling in should proceed section by section, as the planking goes forward, otherwise there will be no escape for the water of the stream, until it rises and spills over the top timbers. the planking should be of two-inch chestnut, spiked home with penny wire spikes. when the last section of the crib is filled with boulders and the water rises, the remaining planks may be spiked home with the aid of an iron pipe in which to drive the spike by means of a plunger of iron long enough to reach above the level of the water. when the planking is completed, the dam should be well gravelled, to within a foot or two of its crest. such dams are substantial, easily made with the aid of unskilled labor, and the materials are to be had on the average farm with the exception of the hardware. [illustration: cross-section of a rock and timber dam] this dam forms a pond from which the race draws its supply of water for the wheel. it also serves as a spillway over which the surplus water escapes. the race should enter the pond at some convenient point, and should be protected at or near its point of entrance by a bulkhead containing a gate, so that the supply of water may be cut off from the race and wheel readily. the lay of the land will determine the length and course of the race. the object of the race is to secure the required head by carrying a portion of the available water to a point where it can escape, by a fall of say ° to the tailrace. it may be feasible to carry the race in a line almost at right angles to the stream itself, or, again, it may be necessary to parallel the stream. if the lay of the land is favorable, the race may be dug to a distance of a rod or so inshore, and then be permitted to cut its own course along the bank, preventing the water escaping back to the river or brook before the site of the power plant is reached, by building suitable retaining embankments. the race should be of ample size for conveying the water required without too much friction. it should end in a flume constructed stoutly of timbers. it is from this flume that the penstock draws water for the wheel. when the wheel gate is closed the water in the mill pond behind the dam, and in the flume itself should maintain an approximate level. any surplus flow is permitted to escape over flushboards in the flume; these same flushboards maintain a constant head when the wheel is in operation by carrying off what little surplus water the race delivers from the pond. [illustration: detail of bulkhead gate] at some point in the race or flume, the flow should be protected from leaves and other trash by means of a rack. this rack is best made of / or / -inch battens from - / to inches in width, bolted together on their flat faces and separated a distance equal to the thickness of the battens by means of iron washers. this rack will accumulate leaves and trash, varying with the time of year and should be kept clean, so as not to cut down the supply of water needed by the wheel. the penstock, or pipe conveying water from the flume to the wheel, should be constructed of liberal size, and substantially, of two-inch chestnut planking, with joints caulked with oakum, and the whole well bound together to resist the pressure of the water. means should be provided near the bottom for an opening through which to remove any obstructions that may by accident pass by the rack. many wheels have plates provided in their cases for this purpose. the tailrace should be provided with enough fall to carry the escaping water back to the main stream, without backing up on the wheel itself and thus cutting down the head. it is impossible to make any estimates of the cost of such a water-power plant. the labor required will in most instances be supplied by the farmer himself, his sons, and his help, during times when farm operations are slack. _water rights of the farmer_ the farmer owns the bed of every stream not navigable, lying within the boundary lines of the farm; and his right to divert and make use of the water of such streams is determined in most states by common law. in the dry-land states where water is scarce and is valuable for irrigation, a special set of statutes has sprung up with the development of irrigation in this country. a stream on the farm is either public or private; its being navigable or "floatable" (suitable for floating logs) determining which. water rights are termed in law "riparian" rights, and land is riparian only when water flows over it or along its borders. green (law for the american farmer) says: "water is the common and equal property of every one through whose land it flows, and the right of each land-owner to use and consume it without destroying, or unreasonably impairing the rights of others, is the same. an owner of land bordering on a running stream has the right to have its waters flow naturally, and none can lawfully divert them without his consent. each riparian proprietor has an equal right with all the others to have the stream flow in its natural way without substantial reduction in volume, or deterioration in quality, subject to a proper and reasonable use of its waters for domestic, agricultural and manufacturing purposes, and he is entitled to use it himself for such purposes, but in doing so must not substantially injure others. in addition to the right of drawing water for the purposes just mentioned, a riparian proprietor, if he duly regards the rights of others, and does not unreasonably deplete the supply, has also the right to take the water for some other proper uses." thus, the farmer who seeks to develop water-power from a stream flowing across his own land, has the right to divert such a stream from its natural channel--providing it is not a navigable or floatable stream--but in so doing, he must return it to its own channel for lower riparian owners. the generation of water-power does not pollute the water, nor does it diminish the water in quantity, therefore the farmer is infringing on no other owner's rights in using the water for such a purpose. when a stream is a dividing line between two farms, as is frequently the case, each proprietor owns to the middle of the stream and controls its banks. therefore to erect a dam across such a private stream and divert all or a part of the water for power purposes, requires the consent of the neighboring owner. the owner of the dam is responsible for damage due to flooding, to upstream riparian owners. part ii electricity chapter v the dynamo; what it does, and how electricity compared to the heat and light of the sun--the simple dynamo--the amount of electric energy a dynamo will generate--the modern dynamo--measuring power in terms of electricity--the volt--the ampere--the ohm--the watt and the kilowatt--ohm's law of the electric circuit, and some examples of its application--direct current, and alternating current--three types of direct-current dynamos: series, shunt, and compound. what a farmer really does in generating electricity from water that would otherwise run to waste in his brook, is to install a private sun of his own--which is on duty not merely in daylight, but twenty-four hours a day; a private sun which is under such simple control that it shines or provides heat and power, when and where wanted, simply by touching a button. this is not a mere fanciful statement. when you come to look into it you find that electricity actually is the life-giving power of the sun's rays, so transformed that it can be handily conveyed from place to place by means of wires, and controlled by mechanical devices as simple as the spigot that drains a cask. nature has the habit of traveling in circles. sometimes these circles are so big that the part of them we see looks like a straight line, but it is not. even parallel lines, according to the mathematicians, "meet in infinity." take the instance of the water wheel which the farmer has installed under the fall of his brook. the power which turns the wheel has the strength of many horses. it is there in a handy place for use, because the sun brought it there. the sun, by its heat, lifted the water from sea-level, to the pond where we find it--and we cannot get any more power out of this water by means of a turbine using its pressure and momentum in falling, than the sun itself expended in raising the water against the force of gravity. once we have installed the wheel to change the energy of falling water into mechanical power, the task of the dynamo is to turn this mechanical power into another mode of motion--electricity. and the task of electricity is to change this mode of motion back into the original heat and light of the sun--which started the circle in the beginning. astronomers refer to the sun as "he" and "him" and they spell his name with a capital letter, to show that he occupies the center of our small neighborhood of the universe at all times. _magnets and magnetism_ the dynamo is a mechanical engine, like the steam engine, the water turbine or the gas engine; and it converts the mechanical motion of the driven wheel into electrical motion, with the aid of a magnet. many scientists say that the full circle of energy that keeps the world spinning, grows crops, and paints the sky with the aurora borealis, begins and ends with magnetism--that the sun's rays are magnetic rays. magnetism is the force that keeps the compass needle pointing north and south. take a steel rod and hold it along the north and south line, slightly inclined towards the earth, and strike it a sharp blow with a hammer, and it becomes a magnet--feeble, it is true, but still a magnet. take a wire connected with a common dry battery and hold a compass needle under it and the needle will immediately turn around and point directly across the wire, showing that the wire possesses magnetism encircling it in invisible lines, stronger than the magnetism of the earth. [illustration: (_courtesy of the crocker-wheeler company_) a direct-current dynamo or motor, showing details of construction] insulate this wire by covering it with cotton thread, and wind it closely on a spool. connect the two loose ends to a dry battery, and you will find that you have multiplied the magnetic strength of a single loop of wire by the number of turns on the spool--concentrated all the magnetism of the length of that wire into a small space. put an iron core in the middle of this spool and the magnet seems still more powerful. lines of force which otherwise would escape in great circles into space, are now concentrated in the iron. the iron core is a magnet. shut off the current from the battery and the iron is still a magnet--weak, true, but it will always retain a small portion of its magnetism. soft iron retains very little of its magnetism. hard steel retains a great deal, and for this reason steel is used for permanent magnets, of the horseshoe type so familiar. _a simple dynamo_ a dynamo consists, first, of a number of such magnets, wound with insulated wire. their iron cores point towards the center of a circle like the spokes of a wheel; and their curved inner faces form a circle in which a spool, wound with wire in another way, may be spun by the water wheel. now take a piece of copper wire and make a loop of it. pass one side of this loop in front of an electric magnet. as the wire you hold in your hands passes the iron face of the magnet, a wave of energy that is called electricity flows around this loop at the rate of , miles a second--the same speed as light comes to us from the sun. as you move the wire away from the magnet, a second wave starts through the wire, flowing in the opposite direction. you can prove this by holding a compass needle under the wire and see it wag first in one direction, then in another. [illustration: a wire "cutting" the lines of force of an electro-magnet] this is a simple dynamo. a wire "cutting" the invisible lines of force, that a magnet is spraying out into the air, becomes "electrified." why this is true, no one has ever been able to explain. the amount of electricity--its capacity for work--which you have generated with the magnet and wire, does not depend alone on the pulling power of that simple magnet. let us say the magnet is very weak--has not enough power to lift one ounce of iron. nevertheless, if you possessed the strength of hercules, and could pass that wire through the field of force of the magnet many thousands of times a second, you would generate enough electricity in the wire to cause the wire to melt in your hands from heat. [illustration: cross-section of an armature revolving in its field] [illustration: forms of annealed steel discs used in armature construction] this experiment gives the theory of the dynamo. instead of passing only one wire through the field of force of a magnet, we have hundreds bound lengthwise on a revolving drum called an armature. instead of one magnetic pole in a dynamo we have two, or four, or twenty according to the work the machine is designed for--always in pairs, a north pole next to a south pole, so that the lines of force may flow out of one and into another, instead of escaping in the surrounding air. if you could see these lines of force, they would appear in countless numbers issuing from each pole face of the field magnets, pressing against the revolving drum like hair brush bristles--trying to hold it back. this drum, in practice, is built up of discs of annealed steel, and the wires extending lengthwise on its face are held in place by slots to prevent them from flying off when the drum is whirled at high speed. the drum does not touch the face of the magnets, but revolves in an air space. if we give the electric impulses generated in these wires a chance to flow in a circuit--flow out of one end of the wires, and in at the other, the drum will require more and more power to turn it, in proportion to the amount of electricity we permit to flow. thus, if one electric light is turned on, the drum will press back with a certain strength on the water wheel; if one hundred lights are turned on it will press back one hundred times as much. providing there is enough power in the water wheel to continue turning the drum at its predetermined speed, the dynamo will keep on giving more and more electricity if asked to, until it finally destroys itself by fire. you cannot take more power, in terms of electricity, out of a dynamo that you put into it, in terms of mechanical motion. in fact, to insure flexibility and constant speed at all loads, it is customary to provide twice as much water wheel, or engine, power as the electrical rating of the dynamo. [illustration: an armature partly wound, showing slots and commutator] we have seen that a water wheel is per cent efficient under ideal conditions. a dynamo's efficiency in translating mechanical motion into electricity, varies with the type of machine and its size. the largest machines attain as high as per cent efficiency; the smallest ones run as low as per cent. _measuring electric power_ the amount of electricity any given dynamo can generate depends, generally speaking, on two factors, i. e., ( ) the power of the water wheel, or other mechanical engine that turns the armature; and ( ) the size (carrying capacity) of the wires on this drum. strength, of electricity, is measured in _amperes_. an ampere of electricity is the unit of the rate of flow and may be likened to a gallon of water per minute. in surveying for water-power, in chapter iii, we found that the number of gallons or cubic feet of water alone did not determine the amount of power. we found that the number of gallons or cubic feet multiplied by the distance in feet it falls in a given time, was the determining factor--pounds (quantity) multiplied by feet per second--(velocity). [illustration: showing the analogy of water to volts and amperes of electricity] the same is true in figuring the power of electricity. we multiply the _amperes_ by the number of electric impulses that are created in the wire in the course of one second. the unit of velocity, or pressure of the electric current is called a _volt_. voltage is the pressure which causes electricity to flow. a volt may be likened to the velocity in feet per second of water in falling past a certain point. if you think a moment you will see that this has nothing to do with quantity. a pin-hole stream of water under pounds pressure has the same velocity as water coming from a nozzle as big as a barrel, under the same pressure. so with electricity under the pressure of one volt or one hundred volts. one volt is said to consist of a succession of impulses caused by _one wire cutting , , lines of magnetic force in one second_. thus, if the strength of a magnet consisted of one line of force, to create the pressure of one volt we would have to "cut" that line of force , , times a second, with one wire; or , times a second with one thousand wires. or, if a magnet could be made with , , lines of force, a single wire cutting those lines once in a second would create one volt pressure. in actual practice, field magnets of dynamos are worked at densities up to and over , lines of force to the square inch, and armatures contain several hundred conductors to "cut" these magnetic lines. the voltage then depends on the speed at which the armature is driven. in machines for isolated plants, it will be found that the speed varies from revolutions per minute, to , , according to the design of dynamo used. [illustration: pressure determines volume of flow in a given time] multiplying amperes (strength) by volts (pressure), gives us _watts_ (power). seven hundred and forty-six watts of electrical energy is equal to one horsepower of mechanical energy--will do the same work. thus an electric current under a pressure of volts, and a density of . amperes, is one horsepower; as is . amperes, at volts pressure; or amperes at one volt pressure. for convenience (as a watt is a small quantity) electricity is measured in _kilowatts_, or , watts. since watts is one horsepower, , watts or one kilowatt is . horsepower. the work of such a current for one hour is called a _kilowatt-hour_, and in our cities, where electricity is generated from steam, the retail price of a kilowatt-hour varies from to cents. now as to how electricity may be controlled, so that a dynamo will not burn itself up when it begins to generate. again we come back to the analogy of water. the amount of water that passes through a pipe in any given time, depends on the size of the pipe, if the pressure is maintained uniform. in other words the _resistance_ of the pipe to the flow of water determines the amount. if the pipe be the size of a pin-hole, a very small amount of water will escape. if the pipe is as big around as a barrel, a large amount will force its way through. so with electricity. resistance, introduced in the electric circuit, controls the amount of current that flows. a wire as fine as a hair will permit only a small quantity to pass, under a given pressure. a wire as big as one's thumb will permit a correspondingly greater quantity to pass, the pressure remaining the same. the unit of electrical resistance is called the _ohm_--named after a man, as are all electrical units. _ohm's law_ the _ohm_ is that amount of _resistance_ that will permit the passage of _one ampere_, under the pressure of _one volt_. it would take two volts to force two amperes through one ohm; or volts to force amperes through the resistance of one ohm. from this we have ohm's law, a simple formula which is the beginning and end of all electric computations the farmer will have to make in installing his water-power electric plant. ohm's law tells us that the density of current (amperes) that can pass through a given resistance in ohms (a wire, a lamp, or an electric stove) equals _volts_ divided by _ohms_--or _pressure_ divided by _resistance_. this formula may be written in three ways, thus: c = e/r, or r = e/c or, e = c × r. or to express the same thing in words, _current_ equals _volts_ divided by _ohms_; _ohms_ equals _volts_ divided by _current_; or _volts_ equals _current_ multiplied by _ohms_. so, with any two of these three determining factors known, we can find the third. as we have said, this simple law is the beginning and end of ordinary calculations as to electric current, and it should be thoroughly understood by any farmer who essays to be his own electrical engineer. once understood and applied, the problem of the control of the electric current becomes simple a b c. _examples of ohm's law_ let us illustrate its application by an example. the water wheel is started and is spinning the dynamo at its rated speed, say , r.p.m. two heavy wires, leading from brushes which collect electricity from the revolving armature, are led, by suitable insulated supports to the switchboard, and fastened there. they do not touch each other. dynamo mains must not be permitted to touch each other _under any conditions_. they are separated by say four inches of air. dry air is a very poor conductor of electricity. let us say, for the example, that dry air has a resistance to the flow of an electric current, of , , ohms to the inch--that would be , , ohms. how much electricity is being permitted to escape from the armature of this -volt dynamo, when the mains are separated by four inches of dry air? apply ohm's law, c equals e divided by r. e, in this case is ; r is , , ; therefore c (amperes) equals / , , --an infinitesimal amount--about . ampere. let us say that instead of separating these two mains by air we separated them by the human body--that a man took hold of the bare wires, one in each hand. the resistance of the human body varies from , to , ohms. in that case c (amperes) equals / , , or / , --about / th, or / th of an ampere. this illustrates why an electric current of volts pressure is not fatal to human beings, under ordinary circumstances. the body offers too much resistance. but, if the volts were , instead of the usual used in commercial and private plants for domestic use, the value of c, by this formula at , ohms, would be nearly / th ampere. to drive / th ampere of electricity through the human body would be fatal in many instances. the higher the voltage, the more dangerous the current. in large water-power installations in the far west, where the current must be transmitted over long distances to the spot where it is to be used, it is occasionally generated at a pressure of , volts. needless to say, contact with such wires means instant death. before being used for commercial or domestic purposes, in such cases, the voltage is "stepped down" to safe pressures--to , or to , or to volts--always depending on the use made of it. now, if instead of interposing four inches of air, or the human body, between the mains of our -volt dynamo, we connected an incandescent lamp across the mains, how much electricity would flow from the generator? an incandescent lamp consists of a vacuum bulb of glass, in which is mounted a slender thread of carbonized fibre, or fine tungsten wire. to complete a circuit, the current must flow through this wire or filament. in flowing through it, the electric current turns the wire or filament white hot--incandescent--and thus turns electricity back into light, with a small loss in heat. in an ordinary candlepower carbon lamp, the resistance of this filament is ohms. therefore the amount of current that a -volt generator can force through that filament is / , or / ampere. [illustration: armature and field coils of a direct current dynamo] one hundred lamps would provide paths of ohms resistance each to carry current, and the amount required to light such lamps would be × / or amperes. every electrical device--a lamp, a stove, an iron, a motor, etc.,--must, by regulations of the fire underwriters' board be plainly marked with the voltage of the current for which it is designed and the amount of current it will consume. this is usually done by indicating its capacity in watts, which as we have seen, means volts times amperes, and from this one can figure ohms, by the above formulas. _a short circuit_ we said a few paragraphs back that under no conditions must two bare wires leading from electric mains be permitted to touch each other, without some form of resistance being interposed in the form of lamps, or other devices. let us see what would happen if two such bare wires did touch each other. our dynamo as we discover by reading its plate, is rated to deliver amperes, let us say, at volts pressure. modern dynamos are rated liberally, and can stand % overload for short periods of time, without dangerous overheating. let us say that the mains conveying current from the armature to the switchboard are five feet long, and of no. b. & s. gauge copper wire, a size which will carry amperes without heating appreciably. the resistance of this feet of no. copper wire, is, as we find by consulting a wire table, . ohms. if we touch the ends of these two five-foot wires together, we instantly open a clear path for the flow of electric current, limited only by the carrying capacity of the wire and the back pressure of . ohms resistance. using ohm's law, c equals e divided by r, we find that c (amperes) equals /. or _ , amperes_! [illustration: a direct current dynamo] unless this dynamo were properly protected, the effect of such a catastrophe would be immediate and probably irreparable. in effect, it would be suddenly exerting a force of nearly , horsepower against the little horsepower water wheel that is driving this dynamo. the mildest thing that could happen would be to melt the feed-wire or to snap the driving belt, in which latter case the dynamo would come to a stop. if by any chance the little water wheel was given a chance to maintain itself against the blow for an instant, the dynamo, rated at amperes, would do its best to deliver the , amperes you called for--and the result would be a puff of smoke, and a ruined dynamo. this is called a "short circuit"--one of the first "don'ts" in handling electricity. as a matter of fact every dynamo is protected against such a calamity by means of safety devices, which will be described in a later chapter--because no matter how careful a person may be, a partial short circuit is apt to occur. happily, guarding against its disastrous effects is one of the simplest problems in connection with the electric plant. _direct current and alternating current_ when one has mastered the simple ohm's law of the electric circuit, the next step is to determine what type of electrical generator is best suited to the requirements of a farm plant. in the first place, electric current is divided into two classes of interest here--_alternating_, and _direct_. we have seen that when a wire is moved through the field of a magnet, there is induced in it two pulsations--first in one direction, then in another. this is an _alternating_ current, so called because it changes its direction. if, with our armature containing hundreds of wires to "cut" the lines of force of a group of magnets, we connected the beginning of each wire with one copper ring, and the end of each wire with another copper ring, we would have what is called an _alternating-current_ dynamo. simply by pressing a strap of flexible copper against each revolving copper ring, we would gather the sum of the current of these conductors. its course would be represented by the curved line in the diagram, one loop on each side of the middle line (which represents time) would be a _cycle_. the number of _cycles_ to the second depends on the speed of the armature; in ordinary practice it is usually twenty-five or sixty. alternating current has many advantages, which however, do not concern us here. except under very rare conditions, a farmer installing his own plant should not use this type of machine. [illustration: diagram of alternating and direct current] if, however, instead of gathering all the current with brushes bearing on two copper rings, we collected all the current traveling in one direction, on one set of brushes--and all the current traveling in the other direction on another set of brushes,--we would straighten out this current, make it all travel in one direction. then we would have a _direct current_. a direct current dynamo, the type generally used in private plants, does this. instead of having two copper rings for collecting the current, it has a single ring, made up of segments of copper bound together, but insulated from each other, one segment for each set of conductors on the armature. this ring of many segments, is called a _commutator_, because it commutates, or changes, the direction of the electric impulses, and delivers them all in one direction. in effect, it is like the connecting rod of a steam engine that straightens out the back-and-forth motion of the piston in the steam cylinder and delivers the motion to a wheel running in one direction. such a current, flowing through a coil of wire would make a magnet, one end of which would always be the north end, and the other end the south end. an alternating current, on the other hand, flowing through a coil of wire, would make a magnet that changed its poles with each half-cycle. it would no sooner begin to pull another magnet to it, than it would change about and push the other magnet away from it, and so on, as long as it continued to flow. this is one reason why a direct current dynamo is used for small plants. alternating current will light the same lamps and heat the same irons as a direct current; but for electric power it requires a different type of motor. _types of direct current dynamos_ just as electrical generators are divided into two classes, alternating and direct, so direct current machines are divided into three classes, according to the manner in which their output, in amperes and volts, is regulated. they differ as to the manner in which their field magnets (in whose field of force the armature spins) are excited, or made magnetic. they are called _series_, _shunt_, and _compound_ machines. _the series dynamo_ by referring to the diagram, it will be seen that the current of a _series_ dynamo issues from the armature mains, and passes through the coils of the field magnets before passing into the external circuit to do its work. the residual magnetism, or the magnetism left in the iron cores of the field magnets from its last charge, provides the initial excitation, when the machine is started. as the resistance of the external circuit is lowered, by turning on more and more lights, more and more current flows from the armature, through the field magnets. each time the resistance is lowered, therefore, the current passing through the field magnets becomes more dense in amperes, and makes the field magnets correspondingly stronger. we have seen that the voltage depends on the number of lines of magnetic force cut by the armature conductors in a given time. if the speed remains constant then, and the magnets grow stronger and stronger, the voltage will rise in a straight line. when no current is drawn, it is ; at full load, it may be volts, or , or , according to the machine. this type of machine is used only in street lighting, in cities, with the lights connected in "series," or one after another on the same wire, the last lamp finally returning the wire to the machine to complete the circuit. this type of dynamo has gained the name for itself of "mankiller," as its voltage becomes enormous at full load. it is unsuitable, in every respect, for the farm plant. its field coils consist of a few turns of very heavy wire, enough to carry all the current of the external circuit, without heating. [illustration: connections of a series dynamo] _the shunt dynamo_ the shunt dynamo, on the other hand, has field coils connected directly _across_ the circuit, from one wire to another, instead of in "series." these coils consist of a great many turns of very fine wire, thus introducing _resistance_ into the circuit, which limits the amount of current (amperes) that can be forced through them at any given voltage. as a shunt dynamo is brought up to its rated speed, its voltage gradually rises until a condition of balance occurs between the field coils and the armature. there it remains constant. when resistance on the external circuit is lowered, by means of turning on lamps or other devices, the current from the armature increases in working power, by increasing its amperes. its voltage remains stationary; and, since the resistance of its field coils never changes, the magnets do not vary in strength. [illustration: connections of a shunt dynamo] the objection to this type of machine for a farm plant is that, in practice, the armature begins to exercise a de-magnetizing effect on the field magnets after a certain point is reached--weakens them; consequently the voltage begins to fall. the voltage of a shunt dynamo begins to fall after half-load is reached; and at full load, it has fallen possibly per cent. a rheostat, or resistance box on the switchboard, makes it possible to cut out or switch in additional resistance in the field coils, thus varying the strength of the field coils, within a limit of say per cent, to keep the voltage constant. this, however, requires a constant attendance on the machine. if the voltage were set right for lights, the lights would grow dim when lights were turned on; and if it were adjusted for lights, the voltage would be too high for only ten lights--would cause them to "burn out." shunt dynamos are used for charging storage batteries, and are satisfactory for direct service only when an attendant is constantly at hand to regulate them. _the compound dynamo_ the ideal between these two conditions would be a compromise, which included the characteristics of both _series_ and _shunt_ effects. that is exactly what the _compound_ dynamo effects. a compound dynamo is a shunt dynamo with just enough series turns on its field coils, to counteract the de-magnetizing effect of the armature at full load. a machine can be designed to make the voltage rise gradually, or swiftly, by combining the two systems. for country homes, the best combination is a machine that will keep the voltage constant from no load to full load. a so-called _flat-compounded_ machine does this. in actual practice, this voltage rises slightly at the half-load line--only two or three volts, which will not damage the lamps in a -volt circuit. the compound dynamo is therefore self-regulating, and requires no attention, except as to lubrication, and the incidental care given to any piece of machinery. any shunt dynamo can be made into a compound dynamo, by winding a few turns of heavy insulated wire around the shunt coils, and connecting them in "series" with the external circuit. how many turns are necessary depends on conditions. three or four turns to each coil usually are sufficient for "flat compounding." if the generating plant is a long distance from the farm house where the light, heat, and power are to be used, the voltage drops at full load, due to resistance of the transmission wires. to overcome this, enough turns can be wound on top of the shunt coils to cause the voltage to rise at the switchboard, but remain stationary at the spot where the current is used. the usual so-called flat-compounded dynamo, turned out by manufacturers, provides for constant voltage at the switchboard. such a dynamo is eminently fitted for the farm electric plant. any other type of machine is bound to cause constant trouble and annoyance. [illustration: connections of a compound dynamo] chapter vi what size plant to install the farmer's wife his partner--little and big plants--limiting factors--fluctuations in water supply--the average plant--the actual plant--amount of current required for various operations--standard voltage--a specimen allowance for electric light--heating and cooking by electricity--electric power: the electric motor. the farmer's wife becomes his partner when he has concluded the preliminary measurements and surveys for building his water-power electric plant. now the question is, how big a plant is necessary, or how small a plant can he get along with. electricity may be used for a multitude of purposes on the farm, in its sphere of furnishing portable light, heat and power; but when this multitude of uses has been enumerated, it will be found that the wife shares in the benefits no less than the farmer himself. the greatest dividend of all, whether dividends are counted in dollars or happiness, is that electricity takes the drudgery out of housework. here, the work of the farmer himself ends when he has brought electricity to the house, just as his share in housework ends when he has brought in the kerosene, and filled the woodbox. of the light and heat, she will use the lion's share; and for the power, she will discover heretofore undreamed-of uses. so she must be a full partner when it comes to deciding how much electricity they need. how much electricity, in terms of light, heat, and power, will the farmer and his wife have use for? how big a plant should be installed to meet the needs of keeping house and running the farm? the answer hangs mainly on how much water-power there is available, through all the seasons of the year, with which to generate electricity. beyond that, it is merely a question of the farmer's pocketbook. how much money does he care to spend? electricity is a cumulative "poison." the more one uses it, the more he wants to use it. after a plant has been in operation a year, the family have discovered uses for electricity which they did not think of in the beginning. for this reason, it is well to put in a plant larger than the needs of the moment seem to require. an electrical horsepower or two one way or another will not greatly change the first cost, and you will always find use for any excess. once for all, to settle the question of water-power, the water wheel should be twice the normal capacity of the dynamo it drives, in terms of power. this allows for overload, which is bound to occur occasionally; and it also insures smooth running, easy governing, and the highest efficiency. since the electric current, once the plant is installed, will cost practically nothing, the farmer can afford to ignore the power going to waste, and consider only how to get the best service. _the two extremes_ the amount of water to be had to be turned into electricity, will vary with location, and with the season. it may be only enough, the greater part of the year, for a "toy" plant--a very practical toy, by the way--one that will keep half a dozen lights burning in the house and barn at one time; under some conditions water may be so scarce that it must be stored for three or four days to get enough power to charge a storage battery for these six or eight lights. a one-quarter, or a one-half kilowatt electrical generator, with a one horsepower (or smaller) wheel, will light a farmstead very satisfactorily--much better than kerosene lamps. on the other hand, the driving power of your wheel may be sufficient to furnish or lights for the house, barn, and out-buildings, and barn-yard and drives; to provide ample current for irons, toasters, vacuum cleaners, electric fans, etc.; to do all the cooking and baking and keep the kitchen boiler hot; and to heat the house in the coldest weather with a dry clean heat that does not vitiate the air, with no ashes, smoke or dust or woodchopping--nothing but an electric switch to turn on and off; and to provide power for motors ranging from tiny ones to run the sewing machine, to one of horsepower to do the threshing. a plant capable of developing from to kilowatts of electricity, and requiring from to horsepower at the water wheel, would do all this, depending on the size of the farmstead. one hundred horsepower is a very small water project, in a commercial way; and there are thousands of farms possessing streams of this capacity. _fluctuations in water supply_ it would be only during the winter months that such a plant would be driven to its full capacity; and since water is normally plentiful during these months, the problem of power would be greatly simplified. the heaviest draft on such a plant in summer would be during harvesting; otherwise it would be confined to light, small power for routine work, and cooking. thus, a plant capable of meeting all the ordinary requirements of the four dry months of summer, when water is apt to be scarce, doubles or quadruples its capacity during the winter months, to meet the necessities of heat for the house. a dynamo requires only as much power to drive it, at any given time, as is being used in terms of electricity. there is some small loss through friction, of course, but aside from this the power required of the prime mover (the water wheel) is always in proportion to the amount of current flowing. when water is scarce, and the demands for current for heating are low, it is good practice to close a portion of the buckets of the turbine wheel with wooden blocks provided for this purpose. it is necessary to keep the speed of the dynamo uniform under all water conditions; and where there is a great fluctuation between high and low water periods, it is frequently necessary to have a separate set of pulleys for full gate and for half-gate. the head must remain the same, under all conditions. changing the gate is in effect choking or opening the nozzle supplying the wheel, to cut down or increase its consumption of water. _the average plant_ it will be the exceptional plant, however, among the hundreds of thousands to be had on our farms, which will banish not only the oil lamp and kitchen stove, but all coal or wood burning stoves as well--which will heat the house in below-zero weather, and provide power for the heavier operations of the farm. also, on the other hand, it will be the exceptional plant whose capacity is limited to furnishing a half-dozen lights and no more. a happy medium between these two conditions is the plant large enough to supply between five and ten electrical horsepower, in all seasons. such a plant will meet the needs of the average farm, outside of winter heating and large power operations, and will provide an excess on which to draw in emergencies, or to pass round to one's neighbors. it is such a plant that we refer to when we say that (not counting labor) its cost, under ordinary conditions should not greatly exceed the price of one sound young horse for farm work. since the plant we described briefly in the first chapter, meets the requirements of this "average plant" let us inquire a little more fully into its installation, maintenance, and cost. _an actual plant_ in this instance, the water-power was already installed, running to waste, in fact. the wheel consists of the so-called thirty-six inch vertical turbine, using square inches of water, under a -foot head. water is supplied to this wheel by a wooden penstock inches square, inside measurements, and sloping at an angle of ° from the flume to the wheel. [illustration: details of voltmeter or ammeter] this wheel, under a -foot head, takes , cubic feet of water a minute; and it develops . actual horsepower (as may be figured by using the formulas of chapter iii). the water supply is provided by a small mountain river. the dam is feet high, and the race, which feeds the flume from the mill pond is yards long. the race has two spillways, one near the dam, and the second at the flume itself, to maintain an even head of water at all times. _half-gate_ since the water supply varies with the seasons, it has been found practical to run the wheel at half-gate--that is, with the gate only half-open. a set of bevel gears work the main shaft, which runs at approximately revolutions per minute; and the dynamo is worked up to its required speed of , revolutions per minute through a countershaft. the dynamo is a modern four-pole machine, compound-wound, with a rated output of amperes, at volts--in other words a dynamo of . kilowatts capacity, or . electrical horsepower. at full load this dynamo would require a driving power of horsepower, counting it as per cent efficient; and, to conform to our rule of two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower, the wheel should be capable of developing horsepower. as a matter of fact, in this particular instance, shutting down the wheel to half-gate more than halves the rated power of the wheel, and little more than horsepower is available. this allowance has proved ample, under all conditions met with, in this plant. the dynamo is mounted on a firm floor foundation; and it is belted from the countershaft by an endless belt running diagonally. a horizontal belt drive is the best. vertical drive should be avoided wherever possible. _the switchboard_ the switchboard originally consisted of a wooden frame on which were screwed ordinary asbestos shingles, and the instruments were mounted on these. later, a sheet of electric insulating fibre was substituted, for look's sake. the main requisite is something substantial--and fireproof. the switchboard instruments consist of a voltmeter, with a range of from to volts; an ammeter, with a range, to amperes; a field regulating rheostat (which came with the dynamo); a main switch, with cartridge fuses protecting the machine against a draft of current over amperes; and two line switches for the two owners, one fuse at amperes, and the other at amperes. electric fuses are either cartridges or plugs, enclosing lead wire of a size corresponding to their rating. all the current of the line they protect passes through this lead wire. if the current drawn exceeds the capacity of the lead wire, it melts from the heat, and thus opens the circuit, and cuts off the current. [illustration: a switchboard and its connections: _g._ dynamo; _a._ shunt field coils; _b._ series coils; _dd._ fuses; _ff._ main switch; _f._ field switch; _c._ ammeter; _v._ voltmeter; _e._ lamp; _r._ rheostat. dotted lines show connections on back of board] _items of cost_ this water wheel would cost $ new. there is a duplicate in the neighborhood bought at second-hand, for $ . the dynamo cost $ , and was picked up second-hand in new york city. new it would cost $ . the voltmeter cost $ , and the ammeter $ ; and the switches and fuses could be had for $ . a wheel one-half the size, using one-half the amount of water at full gate, would do the work required, and the cost would be correspondingly less. _capacity_ this plant supplies two farms with electric light. one farm (that of the owner of the wheel) has lamps, of candlepower each, and two barn-yard lamps of candlepower each. his wife has an electric iron and an electric water heater. needless to say, all these lamps, and the iron and water heater are not in use at one time. [illustration: carbon lamps gem type ( / scale)] the partner who owns the electric part of the plant has lamps in his house and barn, many of them being watt tungsten, which give more light for less power, but cost more to buy. they are not all in use at one time, though (since the current costs nothing) the inclination is to turn them on at night and let them burn. in his kitchen he has an electric range, and a water heater for the gallon boiler. in addition to this he has all sorts of appliances,--irons, toasters, grills, a vacuum cleaner, a vibrator, etc. naturally all these appliances are not in use at one time, else the draft on the plant would be such as to "blow" the fuses. for instance, all the baking is done in daylight; and when the oven is used after dark, they are careful to turn off all lights not needed. an ideal plant, of course, would be a plant big enough to take care of the sum of lamps and handy devices used at one time. to make this plant ideal, (for, being an actual affair, it has developed some short-comings, with the extension of the use of electricity) it would require a dynamo whose capacity can be figured, from the following: watts carbon lamps, candlepower, @ watts each tungsten lamps, candlepower, @ watts each tungsten lamps, candlepower, @ watts each water heater, continuous service toaster, occasional service iron, occasional service oven-baking, roasting, etc , stove plates @ , watts each , stove plate vacuum cleaner, occasional service vibrator, occasional service small water heater, quart capacity small motor, / horsepower, occasional motor, / hp, pumping water, etc electric fan, occasional service ------- total current, one house , carbon lamps, candlepower, @ , lamps, watt tungsten electric iron small water or milk heater ------- total current, nd house , st house , ------- , thus, in this plant, if every electrical device were turned on at once, the demand on the dynamo would be for . kilowatts, or an overload of over per cent. the main-switch fuse, being for amperes, would "blow" or melt, and cut off all current for the moment. to repair the damage would be merely the work of a second--and at a cost of a few cents--simply insert a new fuse, of which there must be a supply on hand at all times. or, if either owner exceeded his capacity, the line fuses (one for amperes, and the other for amperes) would instantly cut off all current from the greedy one. [illustration: and watt mazda tungsten lamps ( / scale)] _lessons from this plant_ the story of this plant illustrates two things which the farmer and his wife must take into account when they are figuring how much electricity they require. first, it illustrates how one uses more and more current, as he finds it so serviceable and labor-saving, and at the same time free. the electric range and the water boiler, in the above instance, were later acquisitions not counted on in figuring the original installation. second, it illustrates, that while the normal load of this generator is _ . _ kilowatts, one does not have to limit the electrical conveniences in the home to this amount. true, he cannot use more electricity than his plant will produce _at any one time_,--but it is only by a stretch of the imagination that one may conceive the necessity of using them all at once. ironing, baking, and the use of small power are usually limited to daylight hours when no lights are burning. as a matter of fact, this plant has proved satisfactory in every way; and only on one or two occasions have fuses been "blown", and then it was due to carelessness. a modern dynamo is rated liberally. it will stand an overload of as much as per cent for a short time--half an hour or so. the danger from overloading is from heating. when the machine grows too hot for the hand, it is beginning to char its insulation, to continue which, of course would ruin it. the best plant is that which works under one-half or three-quarters load, under normal demands. _standard voltage_ we are assuming the farmer's plant to be, in cases out of , the standard -volt, direct current type. such a plant allows for at least a per cent regulation, in voltage, up or down the scale; supplies for this voltage are to be had without delay in even the more remote parts of the country, and (being sold in greater volume) they are cheaper than those for other voltages. there are two general exceptions to this rule as to -volt plants: ( ) if the plant is located at a distance greater than a quarter of a mile from the house, it will be found cheaper (in cost of transmission line, as will be shown later) to adopt the -volt plant; ( ), if the water supply is so meagre that it must be stored for many hours at a time, and then used for charging storage batteries, it will be found most economical to use a -volt plant. a storage battery is made up of cells of approximately volts each; and, since more than such cells would be required for a -volt installation, its cost would be prohibitive, with many farmers. so we will assume that this plant is a -volt plant, to be run without storage battery. it will be well to make a chart, dividing the farm requirements into three heads--light, heat, and power. _light_ [illustration: and watt mazda tungsten lamp. these lamps may be had in sizes from to watts ( / scale)] [illustration: the lamp of the future. a watt mazda nitrogen lamp, giving candlepower ( / scale)] light is obtained by means of incandescent lamps. there are two styles in common use, the carbon and the tungsten lamp. it requires . to watts of electricity to produce one candlepower in a carbon lamp. it requires from to . watt to produce one candlepower in the tungsten lamp. the new nitrogen lamp, not yet in general use, requires only / watt to the candlepower. since tungsten lamps give three times the light of the carbon lamp, they are the most economical to use in the city or town where one is paying for commercial current. but, in the country where water-power furnishes current for nothing, it will be found most economical to use the carbon lamp, since its cost at retail is cents, as compared with cents for a corresponding size in tungsten. a watt carbon lamp, of candlepower; or a watt tungsten lamp, of candlepower, are the sizes to use. in hanging lamps, as over the dining room table, a watt tungsten lamp, costing cents, and giving candlepower light is very desirable; and for lighting the barn-yard, these watt tungsten lamps should be used. for reading lamps, the tungsten style, of or watt capacity, will be found best. otherwise, in all locations use the cheaper carbon lamp. both styles have a rated life of , hours, after which they begin to fall off in efficiency. here again, the farmer need not worry over lack of highest efficiency, as a lamp giving only per cent of its rated candlepower is still serviceable when he is not paying for the current. with care not to use them at voltages beyond their ratings, lamps will last for years. _a specimen light allowance_ below is a typical table of lights for a large farm house, the barns and barn-yard. it is given merely as a guide, to be varied for each individual case: watts kitchen, lights @ watts dining room, light, tungsten living room, table lamp with tungstens @ living room, wall fixtures, lamps @ watts parlor, same as living room pantry, hanging lamp cellar, one portable lamp woodshed, hanging lamp bedrooms, lights each @ bed rooms, light each @ bathroom, "turn-down" light, @ hall, downstairs, lights @ hall, upstairs, light attic, light porch, light barn and barn-yard: barn-yard entrance, tungsten watering trough, " front gate, " horse barn, lights @ cow barn, lights @ pig house, light hay barn, lights, @ ------- total for farmstead , this provides for lights, an extremely liberal allowance. how many of these lights will be burning at any one time? probably not one-half of them; yet the ideal plant is that which permits all fixtures to be in service at one time on the rare occasions when necessary. thus, for lighting only, , watts maximum service would require a kilowatt generator, and water horsepower, on the liberal rating of two to one. a kilowatt generator would take care of these lights, with a per cent overload (which is not excessive) for maximum service. the above liberal allowance of lights may be cut in two, or four--or even eight--and still throw a kerosene lamp in shadow. it all depends on the number of lights one wants burning at one time; and the power of the water wheel. if the carbon lights in the above table were replaced by watt tungsten lights, the saving in power would be watts each, or , watts, nearly two electrical horsepower; while the added first cost would be cents a light, or $ . . a generator of kilowatt capacity would take care of all these lights then, with watts to spare. _heating_ electric heating and cooking is in its infancy, due to the prohibitive cost of commercial current in our cities. here the farmer has the advantage again, with his cheap current. for heating the house, it is calculated that watts is required for each cubic foot of air space in a room, during ordinary winter weather. thus, a room × , and feet high, would contain cubic feet, and would require , watts energy to heat it in cold weather. five such rooms would require . kilowatts; and such rooms, or their equivalent, would require . kilowatts. electric heating devices are divided into two classes: ( ) those which can be used on lamp circuits, _and do not draw more than watts each_; and ( ) those which draw more than , therefore _require special wiring_. the capacity of these devices is approximately as follows: lamp circuit devices: watts electric iron to toaster to vacuum cleaner to grill to small water heater to hot plates to lamp circuit devices: coffee percolator to chafing dish to electric fan to special circuit devices: hot water boiler heater to , small ovens to , range ovens , to , range, hot plates to , radiators (small) to , radiators (large) , to , the only device in the above list which is connected continuously, is the hot water boiler, and this can be credited with at least one electrical horsepower hours a day. it is a small contrivance, not much bigger than a quart can, attached to the back of the kitchen boiler, and it keeps the water hot throughout the house at all hours. its cost will vary with the make, ranging from $ to $ ; and since it is one of the real blessings of the farm kitchen and bathroom, it should be included in all installations where power permits. electric radiators will be used hours a day in winter, and not at all in summer. they are portable, and can be moved from room to room, and only such rooms as are in actual use need be heated. the other devices are for intermittent service, many of them (like the iron) for only a few hours each week. the grill, chafing dish, coffee percolator, etc., which are used on the dining room table while the family is at meals, each draw an equivalent of from to carbon lights. by keeping this in view and turning off spare lights, one can have the use of them, with even a small plant. thus, a one kilowatt plant permits the use of any one of these lamp circuit devices at a time, with a few lights in addition. _power_ electric power is to be had through motors. a direct current dynamo and a direct current motor are identical in construction. that is, a motor becomes a generator if belted to power; and a generator becomes a motor, if connected to electric mains. this is best illustrated by citing the instance of a trans-continental railroad which crosses the bitter root mountains by means of electric power. running miles up a per cent grade, it is drawn by its motors. coasting miles down the per cent grade on the other side of the mountains, its motors become generators. they act as brakes, and at the same time they pump the power of the coasting weight of this train back into the wires to help a train coming up the other side of the mountains. [illustration: connections of shunt motor and starting rheostat] just as there are three types of direct current generators, so there are three types of direct current motors: _series_, _shunt_, and _compound_, with features already explained in the case of generators. motors are rated by horsepower, and generators are rated by kilowatts. thus a one kilowatt generator has a capacity of , watts; as a motor, it would be rated as / horsepower, or . horsepower. their efficiency varies with their size, ranging from to per cent in very small motors, and up to per cent in very large ones. the following table may be taken as a guide in calculating the power required by motors, on -volt circuits: / horsepower - / amperes, or watts / hp - / amperes, or watts hp amperes, or watts hp amperes, or . kilowatts hp amperes, or . kilowatts hp amperes, or . kilowatts - / hp amperes, or . kilowatts hp amperes, or . kilowatts hp amperes, or . kilowatts an electric motor, in operation, actually generates electricity, which it pushes back into the line as a counter-electromotive-force. the strength of this counter force, in volts, depends on the motor's speed, the same as if it were running as a dynamo. for this reason, when a motor is started, and before it comes up to speed, there would be a rush of current from the line, with nothing to hold it back, and the motor would be burned out unless some means were provided to protect it for the moment. this is done by means of a starting rheostat, similar to the regulating rheostat on the dynamo switchboard. this resistance box is connected in "series" with the armature, in the case of shunt and compound motors; and with the entire motor circuit in the case of a series machine. a _series_ motor has a powerful starting torque, and adjusts its speed to the load. it is used almost altogether in street cars. it can be used in stump pulling, or derrick work, such as using a hay fork. it must always be operated under load, otherwise, it would increase in speed until it tore itself to pieces through mechanical strain. the ingenious farmer who puts together an electric plow, with the mains following behind on a reel, will use a series motor. a _shunt_ motor should be used in all situations where a fairly uniform speed under load is required, such as separating, in milking machines, running a lathe, an ensilage cutter, vacuum cleaners, grinders, etc. the _compound_ motor has the characteristics of the series and shunt motors, giving an increased starting torque, and a more nearly constant speed under varying loads than the shunt motor, since the latter drops off slightly in speed with increasing load. _flexible power_ an electric motor is an extremely satisfactory form of power because it is so flexible. thus, one may use a five horsepower motor for a one horsepower task, and the motor will use only one electrical horsepower in current--just enough to overcome the task imposed on it. for this reason, a large-sized motor may be used for any operation, from one requiring small power, up to its full capacity. it will take an overload, the same as a dynamo. in other words it is "eager" for any task imposed on it; therefore it must be protected by fuses, or it will consume itself, if too big an overload is imposed on it. a one horsepower shunt or compound motor is very serviceable for routine farm operations, such as operating the separator, the churn, the milking machine, grinder, pump, and other small power jobs. motors of / horsepower are handy in the kitchen, for grinding knives, polishing silver, etc., and can be used also for vacuum cleaners, and running the sewing machine. for the larger operations, motors will vary from three horsepower for cutting ensilage, to fifteen horsepower for threshing. they can be mounted on trucks and conveyed from one point to another, being fed current from the mains by means of suitable wires wound on reels. remember, in estimating the size of your plant for light, heat, and power, that it does not have to be big enough to use all the devices at one time. also remember, that two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower is a very liberal allowance; and that a generator working under one-half or two-thirds capacity at normal loads will require less attention than a machine constantly being worked above its capacity. therefore, let your generator be of liberal size, because the difference in cost between a and kilowatt machine is not in proportion to their capacity. in fact (especially among second-hand machines), the difference in cost is very small. the mere fact that the generator is of electrical horsepower capacity does not require a turbine of horsepower. the chances are that (unless you wish to heat your house and do large power jobs) you will not use more than to electrical horsepower normally; therefore an allowance of water horsepower, in this case, would be ample. a plant used simply for lighting the house and barn, for irons, and toasters, and one horsepower motors, need not exceed or - / kilowatts for the generator, and or horsepower for the turbine wheel. normally it would not use one-half this capacity. chapter vii transmission lines copper wire--setting of poles--loss of power in transmission--ohm's law and examples of how it is used in figuring size of wire--copper-wire tables--examples of transmission lines--when to use high voltages--over-compounding a dynamo to overcome transmission loss. having determined on the location of the farm water-power electric plant, and its capacity, in terms of electricity, there remains the wiring, for the transmission line, and the house and barn. for transmission lines, copper wire covered with waterproof braid--the so-called weatherproof wire of the trade--is used. under no circumstances should a wire smaller than no. , b. & s. gauge be used for this purpose, as it would not be strong enough mechanically. the poles should be of chestnut or cedar, feet long, and set four feet in the ground. where it is necessary to follow highways, they should be set on the fence line; and in crossing public highways, the ordinance of your own town must guide you. some towns prescribe a height of feet above the road, others feet, some . direct current, such as is advised for farm installations, under ordinary circumstances, does not affect telephone wires, and therefore transmission lines may be strung on telephone poles. poles are set at an average distance of rods; they are set inclined outward on corners. sometimes it is necessary to brace them with guy wires or wooden braces. glass insulators are used to fasten the wires to the cross-arms of the poles, and the tie-wires used for this purpose must be the same size as the main wire and carry the same insulation. _size of wire for transmission_ to determine the size of the transmission wires will require knowledge of the strength of current (in amperes) to be carried, and the distance in feet. in transmission, the electric current is again analogous to water flowing in pipes. it is subject to resistance, which cuts down the amount of current (in watts) delivered. [illustration: bringing wires into the house or barn] the loss in transmission is primarily measured in volts; and since the capacity of an electric current for work equals the _volts_ multiplied by _amperes_, which gives _watts_, every volt lost reduces the working capacity of the current by so much. this loss is referred to by electrical engineers as the "c^ r loss," which is another way of saying that the loss is equal to the _square of the current in amperes_, multiplied by _ohms_ resistance. thus, if the amperes carried is , and the ohms resistance of the line is , then the loss in watts to convey that current would be ( × ) × , or watts, nearly a horsepower. the pressure of _one volt_ (as we have seen in another chapter) is sufficient to force _one ampere_, through a resistance of _one ohm_. such a current would have no capacity for work, since its pressure would be consumed in the mere act of transmission. if, however, the pressure were _ volts_, and the current _one ampere_, and the resistance _one ohm_, the effective pressure after transmission would be - , or volts. to force a -volt current of _ amperes_ through the resistance of _one ohm_, would require the expenditure of _ volts_ pressure. its capacity for work, after transmission, would be - , or _ volts, × amperes_, or , watts. as this current consisted of _ × _, or , watts at the point of starting, the loss would be , watts, or about per cent. it is bad engineering to allow more than per cent loss in transmission. there are two ways of keeping this loss down. one is by increasing the size of the transmission wires, thus cutting down the resistance in ohms; the other way is by raising the voltage, thus cutting down the per cent loss. for instance, suppose the pressure was , volts, instead of volts. five amperes at , volts pressure, gives the same number of watts, power, as amperes, at volts pressure. therefore it would be necessary to carry only amperes, at this rate. the loss would be volts, or less than / of per cent, as compared with per cent with volts. [illustration: splicing transmission wire] in large generating stations, where individual dynamos frequently generate as much as , horsepower, and the current must be transmitted over several hundred miles of territory, the voltage is frequently as high as , , with the amperes reduced in proportion. then the voltage is lowered to a suitable rate, and the amperage raised in proportion, by special machinery, at the point of use. it is the principle of the c^ r loss, which the farmer must apply in determining the size of wire he is to use in transmitting his current from the generator switchboard to his house or barn. the wire table on page , together with the formula to be used in connection with it, reduce the calculations necessary to simple arithmetic. in this table the resistance of the various sizes of wire is computed from the fact that a wire of pure copper foot long, and / inch in diameter (equal to one circular mill) offers a resistance of . ohms to the foot. the principle of the c^ r loss is founded on ohm's law, which is explained in chapter v. the formula by which the size of transmission wire is determined, for any given distance, and a given number of amperes, is as follows: distance ft. one way × × no. of amperes circular ------------------------------------------ = mills. number of volts lost in other words, multiply the _distance in feet_ from mill to house by , and multiply this product by the _number of amperes_ to be carried. then divide the product by the _number of volts_ to be lost; and the result will be the diameter of the wire required _in circular mills_. by referring to the table above, the b. & s. gauge of the wire necessary for transmission, can be found from the nearest corresponding number under the second column, entitled "circular mills area." copper wire table --------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ | | _area in | _(r) ohms | | _b.& s. | _feet | circular | per , | _feet | _(r) ohms gauge_ | per lb._ | mills_ | feet_ | per ohm_ | per pound_ --------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , | . | , . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . | . | , . | . | . | . --------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ carrying capacity of wires and weight -----------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------- | _weight , ft. | _carrying capacity | _carrying capacity _b. & s. | weatherproof | weatherproof | rubber cov. gauge no._ | (pounds)_ | (amperes)_ | (amperes)_ -----------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -----------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------- since two wires are required for electrical transmission, the above formula is made simple by counting the distance only one way, in feet, and doubling the resistance constant, . , which, for convenience is taken as , instead of . . _examples of transmission lines_ as an example, let us say that farmer jones has installed a water-power electric plant on his brook, _ yards distant_ from his house. the generator is a kilowatt machine, capable of producing _ amperes_ at _ volts pressure_. he has a horsepower motor, drawing amperes at full load; he has lights of varying capacities, requiring , watts, or amperes when all on; and his wife uses irons, toasters, etc., which amount to another or amperes--say altogether. the chances are that he will never use all of the apparatus at one time; but for flexibility, and his own satisfaction in not having to stop to think if he is overloading his wires, he would like to be able to draw the full _ amperes_ if he wishes to. he is willing to allow _ per cent loss_ in transmission. _what size wires will be necessary, and what will they cost?_ substituting these values in the above formula, the result is: answer: × × ------------- = , circular mills. . [illustration: transmission wire on glass insulator] referring to the table, no. wire is , circular mills, and is near enough; so this wire would be used. it would require , feet, which would weigh, by the second table, . pounds. at cents a pound, it would cost $ . . farmer jones says this is more money than he cares to spend for transmission. as a matter of fact, he says, he never uses his motor except in the daytime, when his lights are not burning; so the maximum load on his line at any one time would be _ amperes_, not . _what size wire would he use in this instance?_ substituting for in the equation, the result is , circular mills, which corresponds to no. wire. it would cost $ . . now, if farmer jones, in an emergency, wished to use his motor at the same time he was using all his lights and his wife was ironing and making toast--in other words, if he wanted to use the _ amperes_ capacity of his dynamo, _how many volts would he lose?_ to get this answer, we change the formula about, until it reads as follows: distance in feet × × amperes --------------------------------- = number of volts lost circular mills substituting values, we have, in this case, × × / , (no. ) = volts, nearly, less than per cent. this is a very efficient line, under the circumstances. now if he is willing to lose per cent on _half-load_, instead of full load, he can save still more money in line wire. in that case (as you can find by applying the formula again), he could use no. wire, at a cost of $ . . he would lose volts pressure drawing amperes; and he would lose volts pressure drawing amperes, if by any chance he wished to use full load. in actual practice, this dynamo would be regulated, by means of the field resistance, to register plus volts, or volts at the switchboard to make up for the loss at half-load. at full load, his voltage at the end of the line would be minus , or volts; his motor would run a shade slower, at this voltage, and his lights would be slightly dimmer. he would probably not notice the difference. if he did, he could walk over to his generating station, and raise the voltage a further volts by turning the rheostat handle another notch. [illustration: a barn-yard light] thousands of plants can be located within feet of the house. if farmer jones could do this, he could use no. wire, costing $ . . the drop in pressure would be . volts at full load--so small it could be ignored entirely. in this case the voltmeter should be made to read volts at the switchboard, by means of the rheostat. if, on the other hand, this plant were , feet away from the house and the loss volts the size wire would be , × × --------------- = , circular mills; a no. wire comes nearest to this figure, and its cost, for , feet, at cents a pound, would be $ . . a no. wire, costing $ . , would give a per cent drop at full load. in this case, the cost of transmission can be reduced to a much lower figure, by allowing a bigger drop at half-load, with regulation at the switchboard. thus, a no. wire here, costing but $ , would be satisfactory in every way. the loss at half-load would be about volts, and the rheostat would be set permanently for or volts. a modern dynamo can be regulated in voltage by over per cent in either direction, without harm, if care is taken not to overload it. _benefit of higher voltages_ if farmer jones' plant is a half of a mile away from the house, he faces a more serious proposition in the way of transmission. say he wishes to transmit amperes with a loss of volts. what size wire will be necessary? × × thus: -------------- = , circular mills. a no. wire is nearest this size, and , feet of it would cost over $ . . this cost would be prohibitive. if, however, he installed a -volt dynamo--at no increase in cost--then he would have to transmit only a half of amperes, or amperes, and he could allow volts loss, counting per cent. in this case, the problem would work out as follows: × × -------------- = , circular mills, or approximately a no. wire which, at cents a pound, would cost $ . . install a -volt generator, instead of a -volt machine and the amperes necessary would be cut to . , and the volts lost would be raised to . in this case a no. wire would carry the current; but since it would not be strong enough for stringing on poles, a no. wire would be used, costing about $ . it will be readily seen from these examples how voltage influences the efficiency of transmission. current generated at a pressure in excess of volts is not to be recommended for farm plants unless an expert is in charge. a safer rule is not to exceed volts, for while volts is not necessarily deadly, it is dangerous. when one goes into higher voltages, it is necessary to change the type of dynamo to _alternating current_, so that the current can be transformed to safe voltages at the point where it is used. since only the occasional farm plant requires a high-tension system, the details of such a plant will not be gone into here. in transmitting the electric current over miles of territory, engineers are accustomed to figure , volts for each mile. since this is a deadly pressure, it should not be handled by any one not an expert, which, in this case, the farmer is not. _over-compounding the generator_ one can absorb the loss in transmission frequently, by over-compounding the machine. in describing the compound machine, in chapter five, it is shown that the usual compound dynamo on the market is the so-called flat-compounded type. in such a dynamo, the voltage remains constant at the switchboard, from no load to full load, allowing for a slight curve which need not be taken into account. now, by adding a few more turns to the series wires on the field coils of such a dynamo, a machine is to be had which gradually raises its voltage as the load comes on in increasing volume. thus, one could secure such a machine, which would begin generating at volts, and would gradually rise to at full load. yet the voltage would remain constant at the point of use, the excess being absorbed in transmission. a machine of this type can be made to respond to any required rise in voltage. as an example of how to take advantage of this very valuable fact, let us take an instance: say that farmer jones has a transmission line , feet long strung with no. copper wire. this , feet of wire would introduce a resistance of one ohm in the circuit. that is, every ampere of current drawn at his house would cause the working voltage there to fall one volt. if he drew amperes, the voltage would fall, at the house, volts. if his switchboard voltage was set at say , the voltage at his house, at amperes of load, would fall to volts, which would cause his lights to dim considerably. it would be a very unsatisfactory transmission line, with a flat-compounded dynamo. on the other hand, if his dynamo was over-compounded per cent--that is, if it gained volts from no load to full load, the system would be perfect. in this case, the dynamo would be operated at volts pressure at the switchboard with no load. at full load the voltmeter would indicate plus , or volts. the one or two lights burned at the power plant would be subject to a severe strain; but the or lights burned at the house and barn would burn at constant voltage, which is very economical for lamps. the task of over-compounding a dynamo can be done by any trained electrician. the farmer himself, if he progresses far enough in his study of electricity, can do it. it is necessary to remove the top or "series" winding from the field coils. count the number of turns of this wire to each spool. then procure some identical wire in town and begin experimenting. say you found four turns of field wire to each spool. now wind on five, or six, being careful to wind it in the same direction as the coils you removed and connect it in the same way. if this additional number of turns does not raise the voltage enough, in actual practice, when the dynamo is running from no load to full load, add another turn or two. with patience, the task can be done by any careful mechanic. the danger is in not winding the coils the same way as before, and getting the connections wrong. to prevent this mistake, make a chart of the "series" coils as you take them off. to make the task of over-compounding your own dynamo even more simple, write to the manufacturers, giving style and factory number of your machine. tell them how much voltage rise you wish to secure, and ask them how many turns of "series" wire should be wound on each spool in place of the old "series" coil. they could tell you exactly, since they have mathematical diagrams of each machine they make. avoid overloading an over-compounded machine. since its voltage is raised automatically, its output in watts is increased a similar amount at the switchboard, and, for a given resistance, its output in amperes would be increased the same amount, as can be ascertained by applying ohm's law. your ammeter is the best guide. your machine is built to stand a certain number of amperes, and this should not be exceeded in general practice. chapter viii wiring the house the insurance code--different kinds of wiring described--wooden moulding cheap and effective--the distributing panel--branch circuits--protecting the circuits--the use of porcelain tubes and other insulating devices--putting up chandeliers and wall brackets--"multiple" connections--how to connect a wall switch--special wiring required for heat and power circuits--knob and cleat wiring, its advantages and drawbacks. the task of wiring your house is a simple one, with well-defined rules prescribed by your insurance company. electricity, properly installed, is much safer than oil lamps--so much so indeed that insurance companies are ready to quote especial rates. but they require that the wiring be done in accordance with rules laid down by their experts, who form a powerful organization known as the national board of fire underwriters. ask your insurance agent for a copy of the code rules. danger of fire from an electric current comes from the "short circuit," partial or complete; and it is against this danger that the rules guard one. the amount of electricity flowing through a short circuit is limited only by the fuse protecting that line; and since there is no substance known that can withstand the heat of the electric arc, short circuits must be guarded against. happily the current is so easily controlled that the fire hazard is eliminated entirely--something which cannot be done with oil lamps. in house-wiring for farm plants, the wire should be rubber-covered, and not smaller than no. b. & s. gauge. this is the wire to use on all lamp circuits. it costs about $ . cents per feet. there are four kinds of wiring permitted, under the insurance code: ( ) _flexible armoured cable_: this consists of two-wire cable, protected with a covering of flexible steel. it is installed out of sight between the walls, and provides suitable outlets for lamps, etc., by means of metal boxes set flush with the plaster. it is easily installed in a house being built, but requires much tearing down of plaster for an old house. since its expense prohibits it in the average farm house, this system will not be described in detail here. ( ) _rigid and flexible conduit_: as the name implies this system consists of iron pipe, in connection with flexible conduit, run between the walls. it differs from the above system, in that the pipes with their fittings and outlet boxes are installed first, and the wires are then "fished" through them. duplex wires--the two wires of the circuit woven in one braid--are used; and a liberal amount of soapstone, and occasionally kerosene, are used to make the wires slip easily into place. this is the most expensive system, and the best; but it is difficult to install it in an old house without tearing down a good deal of plaster. it has the advantage of being absolutely waterproof and fireproof. ( ) _wooden moulding_: this is simply moulding, providing two raceways for the insulated wires to run in, and covered with a capping. it is nailed or screwed firmly to the wall, on top of the plaster; and when the wires have been installed in their respective slots and the capping tacked on, the moulding is given a coat of paint to make it in harmony with the other moulding in the room. this system is cheap, safe, and easily installed, and will be described in detail here. [illustration: detail of wooden moulding] ( ) _open wiring_: in open wiring, the wires are stretched from one support to another (such as beams) and held by means of porcelain cleats, or knobs. it is the simplest to install; but it has the objection of leaving the wires unprotected, and is ugly. it is very satisfactory in barns or out-buildings however. _the distributing panel_ the first point to consider in wiring a house with wooden moulding is the distribution board. it should be located centrally, on the wall near the ceiling, so as to be out of ordinary reach. it consists of a panel of wood--though fireproof material is better--firmly screwed to the wall, and containing in a row, the porcelain cut-outs, as shown in the cut, from which the various branch circuits are to be led. each cut-out provides for two branch circuits; and each branch contains receptacles for two plug fuses. these fuses should be of amperes each. the insurance code limits the amount of electricity that may be drawn on any branch lamp circuit to watts; and these fuses protect the circuit from drafts beyond this amount. [illustration: porcelain cut-out and plug fuse] the mains, leading from the entrance switch, as shown in the diagram, to the panel board, should be of the same size as the transmission wire itself, and rubber-covered. these mains terminate at the distributing board. they are connected to the terminals of the cut-outs by means of heavy brass screws. _wire joints_ [illustration: examples of cleat and knob wiring, , , ; wire joints, ; flexible armoured conductor, ] the branch circuits are, as has been said, of no. rubber-covered wire, running concealed in wooden moulding. all joints or splices in this wire are made, as shown in the illustration, by first scraping the wires bright, and fastening them stoutly together. this joint is then soldered, to make the connection electrically perfect. soft solder is used, with ordinary soldering salts. there are several compounds on the market, consisting of soft solder in powder form, ready-mixed with flux. coat the wire joint with this paste and apply the flame of an alcohol lamp. the soldered joint is then covered with rubber tape, and over this ordinary friction tape is wound on. a neat joint should not be larger than the diameter of the wire before insulation is removed. _branch circuits_ first, make a diagram of your rooms and indicate where you wish lamps, or outlets for other purposes. since wooden moulding can be run across ceilings, and up or down walls, lamps may be located in places where they are out of the way. in planning the circuit, remember that you will want many outlets in handy places on the walls, from which portable cords will convey current to table lamps, to electric irons and toasters and other handy devices which can be used on the lamp circuit. these outlets are made of porcelain, in two pieces. one piece is merely a continuation of the moulding itself; and the other is a cap to connect permanently to the end of the lamp or iron cord, which may be snapped into place in a second. since there are a great many designs of separable current taps on the market, it is well to select one design and stick to it throughout the house, so that any device can be connected to any outlet. the code permits watts on each circuit. this would allow lamps of watts each. it is well to limit any one circuit to lamps; this will give leeway for the use of small stoves, irons, toasters, etc. without overloading the circuit and causing a fuse to blow. having installed your distributing board, with its cut-outs, figure out the course of your first branch circuit. let us say it will provide lights and outlets for the dining room and living room. it will be necessary to run the wires through the partitions or floors in several places. for this purpose porcelain tubes should be used, costing one to three cents each. knock holes in the plaster at the determined point, insert the tubes so they project / inch on each side, and fill up the ragged edge of the hole neatly with plaster. [illustration: the distributing panel] when all the tubes have been set in place, begin laying the moulding. run it in a straight line, on the wall against the ceiling wherever possible, mitering the joints neatly. whenever it is necessary to change the run from the ceiling to the wall and a miter cannot be made, the wires should be protected in passing from one slot to the other by being enclosed in non-metallic flexible conduit, called circular loom. in running wooden moulding, avoid brick walls liable to sweat or draw dampness; keep away from places where the heat of a stove might destroy the rubber insulation of the wires; do not pass nearer than six inches to water pipes when possible--and when it is necessary to pass nearer than this, the wooden moulding should pass above the pipe, not below it, with at least an inch of air space intervening, thus avoiding dampness from sweating of pipes. [illustration: snap switch connections] places where chandeliers or wall bracket lamps are to be installed permanently are fitted with wooden terminal blocks, which fit over the moulding and flush with the plaster. these, after holes have been bored in them for the wires, and the wires drawn through, should be screwed firmly to the wall or ceiling, always choosing a joist or beam for support. then a crow's-foot, or tripod of iron, tapped and threaded for iron pipe, is screwed to the terminal block. the iron pipe of the chandelier or wall bracket is then screwed home in this crow's-foot. do not begin stringing wires until all the moulding of the circuit has been laid. then thread the wires through the wall or floor tubes and lay them in their respective slots. if trouble be found making them stay in place before the capping is put on, small tacks may be driven into the moulding beside them to hold them. when a terminal block is reached, a loop is made of each wire, through the hole cut in the block, if the circuit is to continue in the same direction. if it is to end there, the two wires are drawn through taut, and cut off at a length of or inches. these end wires, or loops, are then scraped bare and spliced to the two wires coming out of the chandelier or wall bracket. this joint is then soldered and covered with tape, and the shell of the chandelier is screwed into place, covering the joint. [illustration: detail of wooden moulding] if the moulding is run along the walls flush with the ceiling, as is usual, a branch is made for a wall light, or wall tap, by means of a porcelain "t," or branch-block, which provides the means for running the circuit at right angles to itself without letting the wires come in contact with each other where they cross. separable current taps should be installed in handy places on all circuits, so that small heating devices may be used without removing the lamps from their sockets. the two wires are bared for half an inch where they run through these current taps, and are fastened by means of brass screws. _"multiple" connections_ all electric devices for this installation--lamps, irons, vacuum cleaners, motors--must be connected _across_ the circuit--that is, bridged, from one wire to the other. this is called _multiple_, or shunt connection. there is only one exception to it, in wiring the house. that one exception is installing a wall switch, the ordinary snap switch. since this wall switch, is, in effect, merely an instrument, which opens or closes a circuit, it should be connected to only one wire, which is cut to provide two ends for the screw connections in the switch. when a moulding branch is run down from the ceiling to some convenient spot for a snap switch (with which to turn the lights of a room on or off), a porcelain "t" is not used. all that is necessary to do is to loop the bottom wire of the circuit down through the branch moulding, and connect it to the switch at a terminal block, or porcelain base. in wiring lamp fixtures, no. rubber-covered wire will usually prove too large. for this purpose, no. may be used, with one lamp to each loop. hanging lamps may not be supported by electric lamp cord itself, if there is more than one lamp in the cluster, because the weight is apt to break the electrical connections. in such a case, the lamp should be supported by a chain, and the twisted cord conveying current to the electric bulbs, is woven in the links of the chain. for the pantry, kitchen, woodshed, barn, etc., a single hanging lamp may be suspended from a fielding rosette, as shown in the cut, provided a single knot is tied inside both the rosette and the lamp socket, to make it secure. this makes a very cheap fixture. the rosette of porcelain will cost cents; the lamp socket cents, and the lamp cord suspending the lamp and carrying the current will cost - / cents a foot; while a tin shade will cost another cents. [illustration: detail of simple hanging lamp supported by rosette] _official inspection_ in all communities, your insurance agent must inspect and pass your wiring before you are permitted to throw the main switch and turn on the electricity. frequently they require that the moulding be left uncapped, until they have inspected it. if you have more than watts in lamps to a circuit; if your joints are not soldered and well taped; if the moulding is used in any concealed or damp place, the agent is liable to condemn your work and refuse permission to turn on the electricity. however the rules are so clearly defined that it is difficult to go wrong; and a farmer who does his own wiring and takes pride in its appearance is more apt to be right than a professional electrician who is careless at his task. after the work has been passed, tack on the moulding capping, with brads, and paint the moulding to match the woodwork. wooden moulding wiring is perfectly satisfactory if properly installed. it is forbidden in many large cities, because of the liability of careless workmanship. it should never be installed in damp places, or out of sight. if the work is well done, the system leaves nothing to be desired; and it has the additional advantage of being cheap, and easily done by any farmer who can use carpenter tools. farmers with moulding machinery can make their own moulding. the code prescribes it shall be of straight-grained wood; that the raceways for the wires shall be separated by a tongue of wood one-half inch wide; and that the backing shall be at least / inch thick. it must be covered, inside and out, with at least two coats of moisture-repellant paint. it can be had ready-made for about cents a foot. _special heating circuits_ if one plans using electricity for heavy-duty stoves, such as ranges and radiators, it is necessary to install a separate heating circuit. this is the best procedure in any event, even when the devices are all small and suited to lamp circuits. the wire used can be determined by referring to the table for carrying capacity, under the column headed "rubber-covered." a stove or range drawing amperes, would require a no. wire, in moulding. a good plan is to run the heating circuit through the basement, attaching it to the rafters by means of porcelain knobs. branches can then be run up through the floor to places where outlets are desired. such a branch circuit should carry fuses suitable to the allowed carrying capacity of the wire. _knob and cleat wiring_ knob and cleat wiring, such as is used extensively for barns and out-buildings, requires little explanation. the wires should not be closer than - / inches in open places, and a wider space is better. the wires should be drawn taut, and supported by cleats or knobs at least every four feet. in case of branch circuits, one wire must be protected from the other it passes by means of a porcelain tube. it should never be used in damp places, and should be kept clear of dust and litter, and protected from abrasion. [illustration: knob and cleat wiring] knob and tube wiring is frequently used in houses, being concealed between walls or flooring. in this case, the separate wires are stretched on adjoining beams or rafters, and porcelain tubes are used, in passing through cross beams. for a ceiling or wall outlet, a spliced branch is passed through the plaster by means of porcelain tubes or flexible loom. wires from the house to the barn should be uniform with transmission wires. at the point of entry to buildings they must be at least six inches apart, and must take the form of the "drop loop" as shown in the illustration. a double-pole entrance switch must be provided, opening downward, with a double-pole fuse. in passing over buildings wires must not come closer than feet to flat roofs, or one foot to a ridge roof. feed-wires for electric motors should be determined from the table of safe carrying capacities, and should be of liberal size. chapter ix the electric plant at work direct-connected generating sets--belt drive--the switchboard--governors and voltage regulators--methods of achieving constant pressure at all loads: over-compounding the dynamo; a system of resistances; (a home-made electric radiator); regulating voltage by means of the rheostat--automatic devices--putting the plant in operation. dynamos may be connected to water wheels either by means of a belt, or the armature may spin on the same shaft as the water wheel itself. the latter is by far the more desirable way, as it eliminates the loss of power through shafting and belting, and does away altogether with the belts themselves as a source of trouble. an installation with the water wheel and armature on the same shaft is called a "direct-connected set" and is of almost universal use in large power plants. to be able to use such a direct-connected set, the dynamo must be designed to develop its full voltage when run at a speed identical with that of the water wheel. that is, if the dynamo is wound to be run at a speed of revolutions per minute, it must be driven by a water wheel which runs at this speed and can be governed within narrow limits. small impulse wheels running under great heads attain high speed, and for such wheels it is possible to obtain a suitable dynamo at low cost. for instance, a -inch impulse wheel, running under a -foot head will develop - / horsepower when running at a speed of revolutions per minute. a dynamo for direct coupling to such a wheel should have a rated speed within per cent of r.p.m.; and, as generators of this speed are to be had from the stock of almost all manufacturers, there would be no extra charge. when it comes to the larger wheels, however, of the impulse type, or to turbines operating under their usual head the question becomes a little more difficult. in such cases, the speed of the water wheel will vary from revolutions per minute, to , which is slow speed for a small dynamo. as a general rule, the higher the speed of a dynamo, the lower the cost; because, to lower the speed for a given voltage, it is necessary either to increase the number of conductors on the armature, or to increase the number of field coils, or both. that means a larger machine, and a corresponding increase in cost. in practice, in large plants, with alternating-current machines it has become usual to mount the field magnets on the shaft, and build the armature as a stationary ring in whose air space the field coils revolve. this simplifies the construction of slow-speed, large-output dynamos. such a machine, however, is not to be had for the modest isolated plant of the farmer with his small water-power. [illustration: instantaneous photograph of high-pressure water jet being quenched by buckets of a tangential wheel] [illustration: a tangential wheel, and a dynamo keyed to the same shaft--the ideal method for generating electricity. the centrifugal governor is included on the same base] dynamos can be designed for almost any waterwheel speed, and, among small manufacturers especially, there is a disposition to furnish these special machines at little advance in price over their stock machines. frequently it is merely a matter of changing the winding on a stock machine. the farmer himself, in many cases, can re-wind an old dynamo to fit the speed requirements of a direct-connected drive if the difference is not too great. all that would be necessary to effect this change would be to get the necessary winding data from the manufacturer himself, and proceed with the winding. this data would give the gauge of wire and the number of turns required for each spool of the field magnets; and the gauge of wire and number of turns required for each slot in the armature. the average boy who has studied electricity (and there is something about electricity that makes it closer to the boy's heart than his pet dog) could do this work. the advantages of direct drive are so many that it should be used wherever possible. when direct drive cannot be had, a belt must be used, either from a main shaft, or a countershaft. the belt must be of liberal size, and must be of the "endless" variety--with a scarfed joint. leather belt lacing, or even the better grades of wire lacing, unless very carefully used, will prove unsatisfactory. the dynamo feels every variation in speed, and this is reflected in the lights. there is nothing quite so annoying as flickering lights. usually this can be traced to the belt connections. leather lacing forms a knot which causes the lights to flicker at each revolution of the belt. the endless belt does away with this trouble. most dynamos are provided with sliding bases, by which the machine can be moved one way or another a few inches, to take up slack in the belt. to take advantage of this, the belt must be run in a horizontal line, or nearly so. vertical belting is to be avoided. the dynamo is mounted on a wooden base, in a dry location where it is protected from the weather, or dampness from any source. it must be mounted firmly, to prevent vibration when running up to speed; and the switchboard should occupy a place within easy reach. wires running from the dynamo to the switchboard should be protected from injury, and must be of ample size to carry the full current of the machine without heating. a neat way is to carry them down through the flooring through porcelain tubes, thence to a point where they can be brought up at the back of the switchboard. if there is any danger of injury to these mains they may be enclosed in iron pipe. keep the wires out of sight as much as possible, and make all connections on the back of the switchboard. _the switchboard_ [illustration: connecting switchboard instruments] the switchboard is constructed of some fireproof material, preferably slate or marble. when the cost of this material is an item to consider, build a substantial wooden frame for your switchboard. you can then screw asbestos shingles to this to hold the various instruments and with a little care such a switchboard can be made to look business-like, and it is fully as serviceable as the more expensive kind. the switchboard instruments have already been described briefly. they consist of a voltmeter (to measure voltage); an ammeter (to measure the strength of the current drawn, in amperes), a rheostat (to regulate the voltage of the machine to suit the individual requirements); and the usual switches and fuses. the main switch should be so wired that when open it will throw all the current off the line, but still leave the field coils, the voltmeter, and the switchboard lamp in circuit. the main-switch fuses should have a capacity about per cent in excess of the full load of the dynamo. if the machine is rated for amperes, -ampere fuses should be installed. this permits throwing on an overload in an emergency; and at the same time guards against a short circuit. if the capacity of the machine is under amperes, plug fuses, costing cents each, can be used. if it is above this capacity, cartridge fuses, costing a little more, are required. a supply of these fuses should be kept handy at all times. _governors and voltage regulators_ [illustration: a centrifugal governor (courtesy of the c. p. bradway company, west stafford, conn.)] the necessity for water wheel governors will vary with conditions. as a general rule, it may be said that reaction turbines working under a low head with a large quantity of water do not require as much governing as the impulse wheel, working under high heads with small quantities of water. when governing is necessary at all, it is because the prime mover varies in speed from no load to full load. planning one's plant with a liberal allowance of power--two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower is liberal--reduces the necessity of governors to a minimum. as an instance of this, the plant described in some detail in chapters one and six of this volume, runs without a governor. however, a surplus of water-power is not usual. generally plants are designed within narrow limits; and then the need of a governor becomes immediately apparent. there are many designs of governors on the market, the cheapest being of the centrifugal type, in which a pair of whirling balls are connected to the water wheel gate by means of gears, and open or close the gate as the speed lowers or rises. constant speed is necessary because voltage is directly dependent on speed. if the speed falls per cent, the voltage falls likewise; and a plant with the voltage varying between such limits would be a constant source of annoyance, as well as expense for burned-out lamps. since constant voltage is the result aimed at by the use of a governor, the same result can be attained in other ways, several of which will be explained here briefly. _over-compounding_ ( ) over-compounding the dynamo. this is simple and cheap, if one buys the right dynamo in the first instance; or if he can do the over-compounding himself, by the method described in the concluding paragraphs of chapter seven. if it is found that the speed of the water wheel drops per cent between no load and full load, a dynamo with field coils over-compounded to this extent would give a fairly constant regulation. if you are buying a special dynamo for direct drive, your manufacturer can supply you with a machine that will maintain constant voltage under the normal variations in speed of your wheel. _a system of resistances_ ( ) constant load systems. this system provides that the dynamo shall be delivering a fixed amount of current at all times, under which circumstances the water wheel would not require regulation, as the demands on it would not vary from minute to minute or hour to hour. this system is very simply arranged. it consists of having a set of "resistances" to throw into the circuit, in proportion to the amount of current used. let us say, as an example, that a -ampere generator is used at a pressure of volts; and that it is desirable to work this plant at per cent load, or amperes current draft. when all the lights or appliances were in use, there would be no outside "resistance" in the circuit. when none of the lights or appliances were in use (as would be the case for many hours during the day) it would be necessary to consume this amount of current in some other way--to _waste it_. a resistance permitting amperes of current to flow, would be necessary. of what size should this resistance be? the answer is had by applying ohm's law, explained in chapter five. the law in this case, would be read r = e/c. therefore, in this case r = / = - / ohms resistance, would be required, switched across the mains, to keep the dynamo delivering its normal load. the cheapest form of this resistance would be iron wire. in place of iron wire, german silver wire could be used. german silver wire is to be had cheaply, and is manufactured in two grades, % and %, with a resistance respectively and times that of copper for the same gauge. nichrome wire has a resistance times that of copper; and manganin wire has a resistance times that of copper, of the same gauge. first figure the number of feet of copper wire suitable for the purpose. allowing circular mills for each ampere, the gauge of the wire should be × = , circular mills, or approximately no. b. & s. gauge. how many feet of no. copper wire would give a resistance of - / ohms? referring to the copper wire table, we find that it requires . of no. wire to make one ohm. then - / ohms would require , feet. since per cent german silver wire is approximately times the resistance of copper, a no. german silver wire, for this purpose, would be / the length of the copper wire, or feet. if nichrome wire were used, it would be / th the length of copper for the same gauge, or feet. this resistance wire can be wound in spirals and made to occupy a very small space. as long as it is connected in circuit, the energy of the dynamo otherwise consumed as light would be wasted as heat. this heat could be utilized in the hot water boiler or stove when the lights were turned off. in actual practice, however, the resistance necessary to keep the dynamo up to full load permanently, would not be furnished by one set of resistance coils. each lamp circuit would have a set of resistance coils of its own. a double-throw switch would turn off the lamps and turn on the resistance coils, or _vice versa_. let us say a lamp circuit consisted of carbon lamps, of candlepower each. it would consume × / ampere, or amperes of current, and interpose a resistance of . ohms--say ohms. three amperes would require a wire of at least , circular mills in area for safety. this corresponds to a no. wire. a no. copper wire interposes a resistance of one ohm, for each . feet length. for ohms, , feet would be required, for copper wire, which of course would be impractical. dividing by gives feet for % german silver wire; and dividing by gives feet of nichrome wire of the same gauge. it is simple to figure each circuit in this way and to construct resistance units for each switch. since the resistance units develop considerable heat, they must be enclosed and protected. _a home-made stove or radiator_ while we are on the subject of resistance coils it might be well here to describe how to make stoves for cooking, and radiators for heating the house, at small expense. these stoves consist merely of resistances which turn hot--a dull red--when the current is turned on. iron wire, german silver wire, or the various trade brands of resistance wire, of which nichrome, calido, and manganin are samples, can be used. in buying this wire, procure the table of resistance and carrying capacity from the manufacturers. from this table you can make your own radiators to keep the house warm in winter. iron wire has the disadvantage of oxidizing when heated to redness, so that it goes to pieces after prolonged use. it is cheap, however, and much used for resistance in electrical work. let us say we wish to heat a bathroom, a room × , and feet high--that is a room containing cubic feet of air space. allowing watts for each cubic foot, we would require watts of current, or practically amperes at volts. what resistance would be required to limit the current to this amount? apply ohm's law, as before, and we have r equals e divided by c, or r equals divided by , which is . ohms. forty-two feet of no. german silver wire would emit this amount of heat and limit the current output to amperes. in the far west, it is quite common, in the outlying district, to find electric radiators made out of iron pipe covered with asbestos, on which the requisite amount of iron wire is wound and made secure. this pipe is mounted in a metal frame. or the frame may consist of two pipes containing heating elements; and a switch, in this case, is so arranged that either one or two heating elements may be used at one time, according to the weather. an ingenious mechanic can construct such a radiator, experimenting with the aid of an ammeter to ascertain the length of wire required for any given stove. _regulating voltage at switchboards_ the voltage of any given machine may be regulated, within wide limits, by means of the field rheostat on the switchboard. a dynamo with a rated speed of , revolutions per minute, for volts, will actually attain this voltage at as low as , r.p.m. if all the regulating resistance be cut out. you can test this fact with your own machine by cutting out the resistance from the shunt field entirely, and starting the machine slowly, increasing its speed gradually, until the voltmeter needle registers volts. then measure the speed. it will be far below the rated speed of your machine. if, on the other hand, the speed of such a machine runs up to , or over--that is, an excess of %--the voltage would rise proportionally, unless extra resistance was cut in. by cutting in such resistance--by the simple expedient of turning the rheostat handle on the switchboard,--the field coils are so weakened that the voltage is kept at the desired point in spite of the excessive speed of the machine. excessive speeds are to be avoided, as a rule, because of mechanical strain. but within a wide range, the switchboard rheostat can be used for voltage regulation. as it would be a source of continual annoyance to have to run to the switchboard every time the load of the machine was varied greatly this plan would not be practical for the isolated plant, unless the rheostat could be installed,--with a voltmeter--in one's kitchen. this could be done simply by running a small third wire from the switchboard to the house. then, when the lights became dim from excessive load, a turn of the handle would bring them back to the proper voltage; and when they flared up and burned too bright, a turn of the handle in the opposite direction would remedy matters. by this simple arrangement, any member of the family could attend to voltage regulation with a minimum of bother. _automatic devices_ there are several automatic devices for voltage regulation at the switchboard on the market. these consist usually of vibrator magnets or solenoids, in which the strength of the current, varying with different speeds, reacts in such a way as to regulate field resistance. such voltage regulators can be had for $ or less, and are thoroughly reliable. * * * * * to sum up the discussion of governors and voltage regulators: if you can allow a liberal proportion of water-power, and avoid crowding your dynamo, the chances are you will not need a governor for the ordinary reaction turbine wheel. start your plant, and let it run for a few days or a few weeks without a governor, or regulator. then if you find the operation is unsatisfactory, decide for yourself which of the above systems is best adapted for your conditions. economy as well as convenience will affect your decision. the plant which is most nearly automatic is the best; but by taking a little trouble and giving extra attention, a great many dollars may be saved in extras. _starting the dynamo_ you are now ready to put your plant in operation. your dynamo has been mounted on a wooden foundation, and belted to the countershaft, by means of an endless belt. see that the oil cups are filled. then throw off the main switch and the field switch at the switchboard; open the water gate slowly, and occasionally test the speed of the dynamo. when it comes up to rated speed, say , per minute, let it run for a few minutes, to be sure everything is all right. having assured yourself that the mechanical details are all right, now look at the voltmeter. it is probably indicating a few volts pressure, from to or perhaps. this pressure is due to the residual magnetism in the field cores, as the field coils are not yet connected. if by any chance, the needle does not register, or is now back of , try changing about the connections or the voltmeter on the back of the switchboard. now snap on the field switch. instantly the needle will begin to move forward, though slowly; and it will stop. turn the rheostat handle gradually; as you advance it, the voltmeter needle will advance. finally you will come to a point where the needle will indicate volts. if you have designed your transmission line for a drop of volts at half-load, advance the rheostat handle still further, until the needle points to volts. let the machine run this way for some time. when assured all is right, throw on the main switch, and turn on the light at the switchboard. then go to the house and gradually turn on lights. come back and inspect the dynamo as the load increases. it should not run hot, nor even very warm, up to full load. its brushes should not spark, though a little sparking will do no harm. your plant is now ready to deliver current up to the capacity of its fuses. see that it does not lack good lubricating oil, and do not let its commutator get dirty. the commutator should assume a glossy chocolate brown color. if it becomes dirty, or the brushes spark badly, hold a piece of fine sandpaper against it. never use emery paper! if, after years of service, it becomes roughened by wear, have it turned down in a lathe. occasionally, every few weeks, say, take the brushes out and clean them with a cloth. they will wear out in the course of time and can be replaced for a few cents each. the bearings may need replacing after several years' continuous use. otherwise your electric plant will take care of itself. keep it up to speed, and keep it clean and well oiled. never shut it down unless you have to. in practice, dynamos run week after week, year after year, without stopping. this one, so long as you keep it running true to form, will deliver light, heat and power to you for nothing, which your city cousin pays for at the rate of cents a kilowatt-hour. part iii gasoline engines, windmills, etc. the storage batteries chapter x gasoline engine plants the standard voltage set--two-cycle and four-cycle gasoline engines--horsepower, and fuel consumption--efficiency of small engines and generators--cost of operating a one-kilowatt plant. electricity is of so much value in farm operations, as well as in the farm house, that the farmer who is not fortunate enough to possess water-power of his own, or to live in a community where a coöperative hydro-electric plant may be established, should not deny himself its many conveniences. in place of the water wheel to turn the dynamo, there is the gasoline engine (or other forms of internal combustion engine using oil, gas, or alcohol as fuel); in many districts where steam engines are used for logging or other operations, electricity may be generated as a by-product; and almost any windmill capable of pumping water can be made to generate enough electricity for lighting the farm house at small expense. the great advantage of water-power is that the expense of maintenance--once the plant is installed--is practically nothing. this advantage is offset in some measure by the fact that other forms of power, gas, steam, or windmills, are already installed, in many instances and that their judicious use in generating electricity does not impair their usefulness for the other farm operations for which they were originally purchased. in recent years gasoline engines have come into general use on farms as a cheap dependable source of power for all operations; and windmills date from the earliest times. they may be installed and maintained cheaply, solely for generating electricity, if desired. steam engines, however, require so much care and expert attention that their use for farm electric plants is not to be advised, except under conditions where a small portion of their power can be used to make electricity as a by-product. there are two types of gasoline engine electric plants suitable for the farm, in general use: first: the standard voltage set, in which the engine and dynamo are mounted on one base, and the engine is kept running when current is required for any purpose. these sets are usually of the -volt type, and all standard appliances, such as irons, toasters, motors, etc., may be used in connection with them. since the electricity is drawn directly from the dynamo itself, without a storage battery, it is necessary that these engines be efficient and governed as to speed within a five per cent variation from no load to full load. second: storage battery sets, in which the dynamo is run only a few hours each week, and the electricity thus generated is "stored" by chemical means, in storage batteries, for use when required. since, in this case, the current is drawn from the battery, instead of the dynamo, when used for lighting or other purposes, it is not necessary that a special type of engine be used to insure constant speed. _the standard voltage set_ in response to a general demand, the first type (the direct-connected standard voltage set) has been developed to a high state of efficiency recently, and is to be had in a great variety of sizes (ranging from one-quarter kilowatt to kilowatts and over) from many manufacturers. the principle of the gasoline engine as motive power is so familiar to the average farmer that it needs but a brief description here. gasoline or other fuel (oil, gas, or alcohol) is transformed into vapor, mixed with air in correct proportions, and drawn into the engine cylinder and there exploded by means of a properly-timed electric spark. internal combustion engines are of two general types--four-cycle and two-cycle. the former is by far the more common. in a four-cycle engine the piston must travel twice up and down in each cylinder, to deliver one power stroke. this results in one power impulse in each cylinder every two revolutions of the crank shaft. on its first down stroke, the piston sucks in gas. on its first up stroke, it compresses the gas. at the height of this stroke, the gas is exploded by means of the electric spark and the piston is driven down, on its power stroke. the fourth stroke is called the scavening stroke, and expels the burned gas. this completes the cycle. a one-cylinder engine of the ordinary four-cycle type has one power stroke for every two revolutions of the fly wheel. a two-cylinder engine has one power stroke for one revolution of the fly wheel; and a four-cylinder engine has two power strokes to each revolution. the greater the number of cylinders, the more even the flow of power. in automobiles six cylinders are common, and in the last year or two, eight-cylinder engines began appearing on the market in large numbers. a twelve-cylinder engine is the prospect for the immediate future. since the dynamo that is to supply electric current direct to lamps requires a steady flow of power, the single-cylinder gas or gasoline engine of the four-cycle type is not satisfactory as a rule. the lights will flicker with every other revolution of the fly wheel. this would be of no importance if the current was being used to charge a storage battery--and right here lies the reason why a cheaper engine may be used in connection with a storage battery than when the dynamo supplies the current direct for lighting. a two-cylinder engine is more even in its flow of power and a four-cylinder engine still better. for this reason, standard voltage generating sets without battery are usually of two or four cylinders when of the four-cycle type. when a single-cylinder engine is used, it should be of the two-cycle type. in the two-cycle engine, there is one power stroke to each up-and-down journey of the piston. this effect is produced by having inlet and exhaust ports in the crank case, so arranged that, when the piston arrives at the bottom of the power stroke, the waste gases are pushed out, and fresh gas drawn in before the up stroke begins. for direct lighting, the engine must be governed so as not to vary more than five per cent in speed between no load and full load. there are many makes on the market which advertise a speed variation of three per cent under normal loads. governors are usually of the centrifugal ball type, integral with the fly wheel, regulating the amount of gas and air supplied to the cylinders in accordance with the speed. thus, if such an engine began to slow down because of increase in load, the centrifugal balls would come closer together, and open the throttle, thus supplying more gas and air and increasing the speed. if the speed became excessive, due to sudden shutting off of lights, the centrifugal balls would fly farther apart, and the throttle would close until the speed was again adjusted to the load. these direct-connected standard voltage sets are as a rule fitted with the -volt, direct current, compound type of dynamo, the duplicate in every respect of the machine described in previous chapters for water-power plants. they are practically automatic in operation and will run for hours without attention, except as to oil and gasoline supply. they may be installed in the woodshed or cellar without annoyance due to noise or vibration. it is necessary to start them, of course, when light or power is desired, and to stop them when no current is being drawn. there have appeared several makes on the market in which starting and stopping are automatic. storage batteries are used in connection with these latter plants for starting the engine. when a light is turned on, or current is drawn for any purpose, an automatic switch turns the dynamo into a motor, and it starts the engine by means of the current stored in the battery. instantly the engine has come up to speed, the motor becomes a dynamo again and begins to deliver current. when the last light is turned off, the engine stops automatically. since the installation of a direct-connected standard voltage plant of this type is similar in every respect, except as to motive power, to the hydro-electric plant, its cost, with this single exception, is the same. the same lamps, wire, and devices are used. with gasoline power, the cost of the engine offsets the cost of the water wheel. the engine is more expensive than the ordinary gasoline engine; but even this item of cost is offset by the cost of labor and materials used in installing a water wheel. the expense of maintenance is limited to gasoline and oil. depreciation enters in both cases; and though it may be more rapid with a gasoline engine than a water wheel, that item will not be considered here. the cost of lubricating oil is inconsiderable. it will require, when operated at from one-half load to full load, approximately one pint of gasoline to each horsepower hour. when operated at less than half-load, its efficiency lowers. thus, for a quarter-load, an average engine of this type may require three pints of gasoline for each horsepower hour. for this reason it is well, in installing such a plant, to have it of such size that it will be operating on at least three-fourths load under normal draft of current. norman h. schneider, in his book "low voltage electric lighting," gives the following table of proportions between the engine and dynamo: actual watts actual horsepower nearest engine size . / . / . . - / . - / . - / . - / . . this table is figured for an efficiency of only per cent for the smaller generators, and per cent for the larger. in machines from to kilowatts, the efficiency will run considerably higher. to determine the expense of operating a one-kilowatt gasoline generator set of this type, as to gasoline consumption, we can assume at full load that the gasoline engine is delivering - / horsepower, and consuming, let us say, - / pint of gasoline for each horsepower hour (to make allowance for lower efficiency in small engines). that would be . pints of gasoline per hour. allowing a ten per cent loss of current in wiring, we have watts of electricity to use, for this expenditure of gasoline. this would light ÷ = lamps of watts each, a liberal allowance for house and barn, and permitting the use of small cooking devices and other conveniences when part of the lights were not in use. with gasoline selling at cents a gallon, the use of this plant for an hour at full capacity would cost $ . . your city cousin pays cents for the same current on a basis of cents per kilowatt-hour; and in smaller towns where the rate is cents, he would pay - / cents. running this plant at only half-load--that is, using only lights, or their equivalent--would reduce the price to about cents an hour--since the efficiency decreases with smaller load. it is customary to figure an average of - / hours a day throughout the year, for all lights. on this basis the cost of gasoline for this one-kilowatt plant would be - / cents a day for full load, and approximately - / cents a day for half-load. this is extremely favorable, as compared with the cost of electric current in our cities and towns, at the commercial rate, especially when one considers that light and power are to be had at any place or at any time on the farm simply by starting the engine. a smaller plant, operating at less cost for fuel, would furnish ample light for most farms; but it is well to remember in this connection plants smaller than one kilowatt are practical for light only, since electric irons, toasters, etc., draw from to watts each. obviously a plant of watts capacity would not permit the use of these instruments, although it would furnish or lamps of watts each. chapter xi the storage battery what a storage battery does--the lead battery and the edison battery--economy of tungsten lamps for storage batteries--the low-voltage battery for electric light--how to figure the capacity of a battery--table of light requirements for a farm house--watt-hours and lamp-hours--the cost of storage battery current--how to charge a storage battery--care of storage batteries. for the man who has a small supply of water to run a water wheel a few hours at a time, or who wishes to store electricity while he is doing routine jobs with a gasoline engine or other source of power, the storage battery solves the problem. the storage battery may be likened to a tank of water which is drawn on when water is needed, and which must be re-filled when empty. a storage battery, or accumulator is a device in which a chemical action is set up when an electric current is passed through it. this is called _charging_. when such a battery is charged, it has the property of giving off an electric current by means of a reversed chemical action when a circuit is provided, through a lamp or other connection. this reversed action is called _discharging_. such a battery will discharge nearly as much current as is required originally to bring about the first chemical action. there are two common types of storage battery--the lead accumulator, made up of lead plates (alternately positive and negative); and the two-metal accumulator, of which the edison battery is a representative, made up of alternate plates of iron and nickel. in the lead accumulator, the "positive" plate may be recognized by its brown color when charging, while the "negative" plate is usually light gray, or leaden in color. the action of the charging current is to form oxides of lead in the plates; the action of the discharging current is to reduce the oxides to metallic lead again. this process can be repeated over and over again during the life of the battery. because of the cost of the batteries themselves, it is possible (from the viewpoint of the farmer and the size of his pocketbook) to store only a relatively small amount of electric current. for this reason, the storage battery was little used for private plants, where expense is a considerable item, up to a few years ago. carbon lamps require from - / to watts for each candlepower of light they give out; and a lead battery capable of storing enough electricity to supply the average farm house with light by means of carbon lamps for three or four days at a time without recharging, proved too costly for private use. _the tungsten lamp_ with the advent of the new tungsten lamp, however, reducing the current requirements for light by two-thirds, the storage battery immediately came into its own, and is now of general use. since incandescent lamps were first invented scientists have been trying to find some metal of high fusion to use in place of the carbon filament of the ordinary lamp. the higher the fusing point of this filament of wire, the more economical would be the light. edison sought, thirty years ago, for just the qualities now found in tungsten metal. tungsten metal was first used for incandescent lamps in the form of a paste, squirted into the shape of a thread. this proved too fragile. later investigators devised means of drawing tungsten into wire; and it is tungsten wire that is now used so generally in lighting. a tungsten lamp has an average efficiency of - / watts per candlepower, compared with - / to watts of the old-style carbon lamp. in larger sizes the efficiency is as low as . watt per candlepower; and only recently it has been found that if inert nitrogen gas is used in the glass bulb, instead of using a high vacuum as is the general practice, the efficiency of the lamp becomes still higher, approaching . watt for each candlepower in large lamps. this new nitrogen lamp is not yet being manufactured in small domestic sizes, though it will undoubtedly be put on the market in those sizes in the near future. [illustration: the fairbanks morse oil engine storage battery set] the tungsten lamp, requiring only one-third as much electric current as the carbon lamp, for the same amount of light, reduces the size (and the cost) of the storage battery in the same degree, thus bringing the storage battery within the means of the farmer. some idea of the power that may be put into a small storage battery is to be had from the fact that a storage battery of only volts pressure, such as is used in self-starters on automobiles, will turn a motor and crank a heavy six-cylinder engine; or it will run the automobile, without gasoline, for a mile or more with its own accumulated store of electric current. _the low voltage battery_ the -volt storage battery has become standard for small lighting plants, since the introduction of the tungsten lamp. although the voltage of each separate cell of this battery registers . volts when fully charged, it falls to approximately volts per cell immediately discharging begins. for this reason, it is customary to figure the working pressure of each cell at volts. this means that a -volt battery should consist of at least cells. since, however, the voltage falls below for each cell, as discharging proceeds, it is usual to include one additional cell for regulating purposes. thus, the ordinary -volt storage battery consists of cells, the last cell in the line remaining idle until the lamps begin to dim, when it is switched in by means of a simple arrangement of connections. this maintains a uniform pressure of volts from the beginning to the end of the charge, at the lamp socket. we saw in earlier chapters that the -volt current is the most satisfactory, under all conditions, where the current is to be used for heating and small power, as well as light. but a storage battery of volts would require at least cells, which would make it too expensive for ordinary farm use. as a -volt current is just as satisfactory for electric light, this type has become established, in connection with the battery, and it is used for electric lighting only, as a general rule. batteries are rated first, as to voltage; second, as to their capacity in ampere hours--that is, the number of amperes that may be drawn from them in a given number of hours. thus, a battery rated at ampere hours would give amperes, at volts pressure, for one hour; amperes for hours; amperes for hours; - / amperes for hours; - / amperes for hours; etc., etc. in practice, a battery should not be discharged faster than its -hour rate. thus, a -ampere hour battery should not be drawn on at a greater rate than - / amperes per hour. this -hour rate also determines the rate at which a battery should be re-charged, once it is exhausted. thus, this battery should be charged at the rate of - / amperes for hours, with another hour added to make up for losses that are bound to occur. a battery of -ampere hour capacity should be charged for or hours at the rate of ÷ , or amperes, etc. to determine the size of battery necessary for any particular instance, it is necessary first to decide on the number of lamps required, and their capacity. thirty-volt lamps are to be had in the market in sizes of , and watts; they yield respectively , , and candlepower each. of these the -watt lamp is the most satisfactory for the living rooms; lamps of or watts may be used for the halls, the bathroom and the bedrooms. at volts pressure these lamps would require a current of the following density in amperes: candle power -volt lamp amperes watts . watts . watts . let us assume, as an example, that farmer brown will use -watt lamps in his kitchen, dining room, and sitting room; and -watt lamps in the halls, bathroom, and bedrooms. his requirements may be figured either in lamp hours or in watt-hours. since he is using two sizes of lamps, it will be simpler to figure his requirements in watt-hours. thus: number size of hours watt- room of lamps lamps burned hours kitchen dining room sitting room ( ) bedrooms (each) bathroom ( ) halls (each) pantry cellar ---- total since amperes equal watts divided by volts, the number of ampere hours required in this case each night would be ÷ = . ampere hours; or approximately - / amperes per hour for hours. say it is convenient to charge this battery every fourth day. this would require a battery of × . ampere hours, or . ampere hours. the nearest size on the market is the -ampere hour battery, which would be the one to use for this installation. to charge this battery would require a dynamo capable of delivering amperes of current for hours. the generator should be of volts pressure (allowing - / volts in the generator for each volts of battery) and the capacity of the generator would therefore be watts. this would require a - / horsepower gasoline engine. at - / pints of gasoline for each horsepower, nine hours work of this engine would consume pints of gasoline--or say pints, or two gallons. at cents a gallon for gasoline, lighting your house with this battery would cost cents for four days, or cents a day. your city cousin, using commercial current, would pay - / cents a day for the same amount of current at cents a kilowatt-hour; or - / cents at a -cent rate. if the battery is charged by the farm gasoline engine at the same time it is doing its other work, the cost would be still less, as the extra gasoline required would be small. this figure does not take into account depreciation of battery and engine. the average farmer is too apt to overlook this factor in figuring the cost of machinery of all kinds, and for that reason is unprepared when the time comes to replace worn-out machinery. the dynamo and switchboard should last a lifetime with ordinary care, so there is no depreciation charge against them. the storage battery, a -volt, -ampere hour installation, should not cost in excess of $ ; and, if it is necessary to buy a gasoline engine, a - / horsepower engine can be had for $ or less according to the type. storage batteries of the lead type are sold under a two-years' guarantee--which does not mean that their life is limited to that length of time. with good care they may last as long as years; with poor care it may be necessary to throw them away at the end of a year. the engine should be serviceable for at least years, with ordinary replacements; and the storage battery may last from to years, with occasional renewal of parts. if it were necessary to duplicate both at the end of ten years, this would make a carrying charge of $ . a month for depreciation, which must be added to the cost of light. _figuring by lamp hours_ if all the lamps are to be of the same size--either ten, fifteen, or twenty watts, the light requirements of a farm house can be figured readily by lamp hours. in that event, the foregoing table would read as follows: lamp hours kitchen, lamp, hours sitting room, lamps, hours each dining room, lamps, hours each bedrooms, lamps, hour each halls, lamps, hours each bathroom, lamp, hours pantry and cellar, lamps, hour each to determine the ampere hours from this table, multiply the total number of lamp hours by the current in amperes required for each lamp. as , , and -watt tungsten lamps require . , . and . amperes, respectively at volts pressure, the above requirements in ampere hours would be , - / , or ampere hours, according to the size of lamp chosen. this gives the average current consumption for one night. if it is desired to charge the battery twice a week on the average, multiply the number of lamp hours by , to get the size of battery required. the foregoing illustration is not intended to indicate average light requirements for farms, but is given merely to show how a farmer may figure his own requirements. in some instances, it will be necessary to install a battery of or more ampere hours, whereas a battery of or ampere hours would be quite serviceable in other instances. it all depends on how much light you wish to use and are willing to pay for, because with a storage battery the cost of electric light is directly in proportion to the number of lights used. as a general rule, a larger generator and engine are required for a larger battery--although it is possible to charge a large battery with a small generator and engine by taking more time for the operation. _how to charge a storage battery_ direct current only can be used for charging storage batteries. in the rare instance of alternating current only being available, it must be converted into direct current by any one of the many mechanical, chemical, or electrical devices on the market--that is, the alternating current must be straightened out, to flow always in one direction. a shunt-wound dynamo must be used; else, when the voltage of the battery rises too high, it may "back up" and turn the dynamo as a motor, causing considerable damage. if a compound dynamo is already installed, or if it is desired to use such a machine for charging storage batteries, it can be done simply by disconnecting the series windings on the field coils, thus turning the machine into a shunt dynamo. the voltage of the dynamo should be approximately per cent above the working pressure of the battery. for this reason -volt machines are usually used for or -volt batteries. higher voltages may be used, if convenient. thus a -volt dynamo may be used to charge a single -volt cell if necessary, although it is not advisable. _direction of current_ electricity flows from the positive to the negative terminal. a charging current must be so connected that the negative wire of the dynamo is always connected to the negative terminal of the battery, and the positive wire to the positive terminal. as the polarity is always marked on the battery, there is little danger of making a mistake in this particular. when the storage battery is charged, and one begins to use its accumulation of energy, the current comes out in the opposite direction from which it entered in charging. in this respect, a storage battery is like a clock spring, which is wound up in one direction, and unwinds itself in the other. with all storage battery outfits, an ammeter (or current measure) is supplied with zero at the center. when the battery is being charged, the indicating needle points in one direction in proportion to the strength of the current flowing in; and when the battery is being discharged, the needle points in the opposite direction, in proportion to the strength of the current flowing out. sometimes one is at loss, in setting about to connect a battery and generator, to know which is the positive and which the negative wire of the generator. a very simple test is as follows: start the generator and bring it up to speed. connect some form of resistance in "series" with the mains. a lamp in an ordinary lamp socket will do very well for this resistance. dip the two ends of the wire (one coming from the generator, the other through the lamp) into a cup of water, in which a pinch of salt is dissolved. bring them almost together and hold them there. almost instantly, one wire will begin to turn bright, and give off bubbles. the wire which turns bright and gives off bubbles is the _negative_ wire. the other is the positive. [illustration: a rough-and-ready farm electric plant, supplying two farms with light, heat and power; and a ward leonard-type circuit-breaker for charging storage batteries] _care of battery_ since specific directions are furnished with all storage batteries, it is not necessary to go into the details of their care here. storage battery plants are usually shipped with all connections made, or plainly indicated. all that is necessary is to fill the batteries with the acid solution, according to directions, and start the engine. if the engine is fitted with a governor, and the switchboard is of the automatic type, all the care necessary in charging is to start the engine. in fact, many makes utilize the dynamo as a "self-starter" for the engine, so that all that is necessary to start charging is to throw a switch which starts the engine. when the battery is fully charged, the engine is stopped automatically. the "electrolyte" or solution in which the plates of the lead battery are immersed, is sulphuric acid, diluted with water in the proportion of one part of acid to five of water, by volume. the specific gravity of ordinary commercial sulphuric acid is . . since its strength is apt to vary, however, it is best to mix the electrolyte with the aid of the hydrometer furnished with the battery. the hydrometer is a sealed glass tube, with a graduated scale somewhat resembling a thermometer. the height at which it floats in any given solution depends on the density of the solution. it should indicate approximately . for a storage battery electrolyte before charging. it should not be over . --or , if your hydrometer reads in thousandths. only pure water should be used. distilled water is the best, but fresh clean rain water is permissible. never under any circumstances use hydrant water, as it contains impurities which will injure the battery, probably put it out of commission before its first charge. _pour the acid into the water._ never under any circumstances pour the water into the acid, else an explosion may occur from the heat developed. mix the electrolyte in a stone crock, or glass container, stirring with a glass rod, and testing from time to time with a hydrometer. let it stand until cool and then pour it into the battery jars, filling them to / inch above the top of the plates. then begin charging. the first charge will probably take a longer time than subsequent charges. if the installation is of the automatic type, all that is necessary is to start the engine. if it is not of the automatic type, proceed as follows: first be sure all connections are right. then start the engine and bring the dynamo up to its rated speed. adjust the voltage to the pressure specified. then throw the switch connecting generator to battery. watch the ammeter. it should register in amperes, one-eighth of the ampere-hour capacity of the battery, as already explained. if it registers too high, reduce the voltage of the generator slightly, by means of the field rheostat connected to the generator. this will also reduce the amperes flowing. if too low, raise the voltage until the amperes register correctly. continue the charging operation until the cells begin to give off gas freely; or until the specific gravity of the electrolyte, measured by the hydrometer, stands at . . your battery is now fully charged. throw the switch over to the service line, and your accumulator is ready to furnish light if you turn on your lamps. occasionally add distilled water to the cells, to make up for evaporation. it is seldom necessary to add acid, as this does not evaporate. if the battery is kept fully charged, it will not freeze even when the thermometer is well below zero. a storage battery should be installed as near the house as possible--in the house, if possible. since its current capacity is small, transmission losses must be reduced to a minimum. in wiring the house for storage battery service, the same rules apply as with standard voltage. not more than amperes should be used on any single branch circuit. with low voltage batteries (from volts to volts) it is well to use no. or no. b. & s. gauge rubber-covered wire, instead of the usual no. used with standard voltage. the extra expense will be only a few cents for each circuit, and precious volts will be saved in distribution of the current. chapter xii battery charging devices the automatic plant most desirable--how an automobile lighting and starting system works--how the same results can be achieved in house lighting, by means of automatic devices--plants without automatic regulation--care necessary--the use of heating devices on storage battery current--portable batteries--an electricity "route"--automobile power for lighting a few lamps. the water-power electric plants described in preceding chapters are practically automatic in operation. this is very desirable, as such plants require the minimum of care. it is possible to attain this same end with a storage battery plant. automatic maintenance approaches a high degree of perfection in the electric starting and lighting device on a modern automobile. in this case, a small dynamo geared to the main shaft is running whenever the engine is running. it is always ready to "pump" electricity into the storage battery when needed. an electric magnet, wound in a peculiar manner, automatically cuts off the charging current from the dynamo, when the battery is "full;" and the same magnet, or "regulator," permits the current to flow into the battery when needed. the principle is the same as in the familiar plumbing trap, which constantly maintains a given level of water in a tank, no matter how much water may be drawn from the tank. the result, in the case of the automobile battery, is that the battery is always kept fully charged; for no sooner does the "level" of electricity begin to drop (when used for starting or lighting) than the generator begins to charge. this is very desirable in more ways than one. in the first place, the energy of the battery is always the same; and in the second place, the mere fact that the battery is always kept fully charged gives it a long life. the same result can be achieved in storage battery plants for house lighting, where the source of power is a gasoline or other engine engaged normally in other work. then your electric current becomes merely a by-product of some other operation. take a typical instance where such a plant would be feasible: farmer brown has a five horsepower gasoline engine--an ordinary farm engine for which he paid probably $ or $ . electric light furnished direct from such an engine would be intolerable because of its constant flickering. this five horsepower engine is installed in the milk room of the dairy, and is belted to a countershaft. this countershaft is belted to the vacuum pump for the milking machine, and to the separator, and to a water pump, any one of which may be thrown into service by means of a tight-and-loose pulley. this countershaft is also belted to a small dynamo, which runs whenever the engine is running. the milking machine, the separator, and the water pump require that the gasoline engine be run on the average three hours each day. the dynamo is connected by wires to the house storage battery through a properly designed switchboard. the "brains" of this switchboard is a little automatic device (called a regulator or a circuit breaker), which opens and shuts according to the amount of current stored in the battery and the strength of the current from the generator. when the battery is "full," this regulator is "open" and permits no current to flow. then the dynamo is running idle, and the amount of power it absorbs from the gasoline engine is negligible. when the "level" of electricity in the battery falls, due to drawing current for light, the regulator is "shut," that is, the dynamo and battery are connected, and current flows into the battery. these automatic instruments go still farther in their brainy work. they do not permit the dynamo to charge the battery when the voltage falls below a fixed point, due to the engine slowing down; neither do they permit the dynamo current to flow when the voltage gets too high due to sudden speeding up of the engine. necessarily, an instrument which will take care of a battery in this way, is intricate in construction. that is not an argument against it however. a watch is intricate, but so long as we continue to wind it at stated intervals, it keeps time. so with this storage battery plant: so long as farmer brown starts his engine to do his farm chores every day, his by-product of electricity is stored automatically. such installations are not expensive. a storage battery capable of lighting tungsten lamps, of candlepower each, continuously for hours (or fewer lamps for a longer time); a switchboard containing all the required regulating instruments; and a dynamo of suitable size, can be had for from $ to $ . all that is necessary to put such a plant in operation, is to belt the dynamo to the gasoline engine so that it will run at proper speed; and to connect the wires from dynamo to switchboard, and thence to the house service. the dynamo required for the above plant delivers amperes at volts pressure, or × = watts. a gasoline, gas, or oil engine, or a windmill of - / horsepower furnishes all the power needed. if the farmer uses his engine daily, or every other day, for other purposes, the cost of power will be practically negligible. with this system electric lights are available at any time day or night; and when the gasoline engine is in service daily for routine farm chores, the battery will never run low. this system is especially desirable where one uses a windmill for power. the speed of the windmill is constantly fluctuating, so much so in fact that it could not be used for electric light without a storage battery. but when equipped with a regulator on the switchboard which permits the current to flow only when the battery needs it, and then only when the speed of the windmill is correct, the problem of turning wind power into electric light is solved. * * * * * if the farmer does not desire to go to the additional expense of automatic regulation, there are cheaper plants, requiring attention for charging. these plants are identical with those described above, except they have no regulators. with these plants, when the battery runs low (as is indicated by dimming of the lights) it is necessary to start the engine, bring it up to speed, adjust the dynamo voltage to the proper pressure, and throw a switch to charge the battery. for such plants it is customary to run the engine to charge the battery twice a week. it is necessary to run the engine from to hours to fully charge the discharged battery. when the battery approaches full charge, the fact is evidenced by so-called "gassing" or giving off of bubbles. another way to determine if the battery is fully charged is by means of the voltmeter, as the volts slowly rise to the proper point during the process of charging. a third way, and probably the most reliable is by the use of the hydrometer. the voltage of each cell when fully charged should be . ; it should never be discharged below . volts. many storage battery electric light plants on the market are provided with a simple and inexpensive circuit breaker, which automatically cuts off the current and stops the engine when the battery is charged. the current is then thrown from the dynamo to the house service by an automatic switch. if such a circuit breaker is not included, it is necessary to throw the switch by hand when charging is begun or ended. since the principal item of first cost, as well as depreciation, in a storage battery electric light plant is the storage battery itself, the smallest battery commensurate with needs is selected. since the amount of current stored by these batteries is relatively small, electric irons and heating devices such as may be used freely on a direct-connected plant without a battery, are rather expensive luxuries. for instance, an electric iron drawing watts an hour while in use, requires as much energy as tungsten lamps of candlepower each burning for the same length of time. its rate of current consumption would be over amperes, at volts; which would require a larger battery than needed for light in the average farm home. the use to which electricity from a storage battery is put, however, is wholly a matter of expense involved; and if one is willing to pay for these rather expensive luxuries, there is no reason why he should not have them. heating, in any form, by electricity, requires a large amount of current proportionally. as a matter of fact, there is less heat to be had in thermal units from a horsepower-hour of electricity than from three ounces of coal. when one is generating current from water-power, or even direct from gasoline or oil, this is not an argument against electric heating devices. but it becomes a very serious consideration when one is installing a storage battery as the source of current, because of the high initial cost, and depreciation of such a battery. farmers who limit the use of their storage battery plants to lighting will get the best service. _portable batteries_ abroad it is becoming quite common for power companies to deliver storage batteries fully charged, and call for them when discharged. without a stretch of the imagination, we can imagine an ingenious farmer possessing a water-power electric plant building up a thriving business among his less fortunate neighbors, with an "electricity" route. it could be made quite as paying as a milk route. [illustration: connections for charging storage batteries on -volt mains] many communities have water or steam power at a distance too great to transmit -volt current by wire economically; and because of lack of expert supervision, they do not care to risk using current at a pressure of volts or higher, because of its danger to human life. in such a case it would be quite feasible for families to wire their houses, and carry their batteries to the generating plant two or three times a week to be charged. there are a number of portable batteries on the market suitable for such service, at voltages ranging from to volts. the best results would be obtained by having two batteries, leaving one to be charged while the other was in use; and if the generating station was located at the creamery or feed mill, where the farmer calls regularly, the trouble would be reduced to a minimum. such a battery would necessarily be small, and of the sealed type, similar to those used in automobiles. it could be used merely for reading lamps--or it could be used for general lighting, according to the expense the farmer is willing to incur for batteries. an ordinary storage battery used in automobile ignition and lighting systems is of the -volt, -ampere type, called in trade a " - ." lamps can be had for these batteries ranging in sizes from candlepower to candlepower. a lamp of candlepower, drawing - / amperes, is used for automobile headlights, and, as any one knows after an experience of meeting a headlight on a dark road, they give a great deal of light. a " - " battery keeps one of these lamps running for hours, or two lamps running hours. a minimum of wiring would be required to install such a battery for the reading lights in the sitting room, and for a hanging light in the dining room. the customary gates for charging these batteries in a large city is cents; but in a country plant it could be made less. to charge such a battery on a -volt direct current, it is necessary to install some means of limiting the amount of current, or in other words, the charging rate. this charging rate, for hours should be, as we have seen, one-eighth of the ampere-hour capacity of the battery. thus a " - " battery would require a - / ampere current. connecting two such batteries in "series" (that is, the negative pole of one battery to the positive pole of the second) would make a -volt battery. ten or twelve such batteries could be connected in "series," and a -volt direct current generator would charge them in hours at a - / ampere rate. the diagram on page shows the connections for charging on a -volt circuit. an ordinary -candlepower carbon lamp is of ohms resistance, and (by ohm's law, c equals e divided by r) permits / ampere of current to flow. by connecting such lamps across the mains, in parallel, the required - / amperes of current would be flowing from the generator through the lamps, and back again. connect the battery in "series" at any point on either of the two mains, between the lamps and the generator, being careful to connect the positive end to the positive pole of the battery, and _vice versa_. lamps are the cheapest form of resistance; but in case they are not available, any other form of resistance can be used. iron wire wound in spirals can be used, or any of the many makes of special resistance wire on the market. first it is necessary to determine the amount of resistance required. we have just seen that the charging rate of a -ampere hour battery is - / amperes. applying ohm's law here, we find that ohms resistance equals volts divided by amperes, or r = / . = . ohms. with a -volt current, the ohms resistance required in series with the storage battery of this size would be . ohms. _automobile power for lighting_ there are many ingenious ways by which an automobile may be utilized to furnish electric light for the home. the simplest is to run wires direct from the storage battery of the self-starting system, to the house or barn, in such a way that the current may be used for reading lamps in the sitting room. by a judicious use of the current in this way, the normal operation of the automobile in the daytime will keep the battery charged for use of the night lamps, and if care is used, such a plan should not affect the life of the battery. care should be used also, in this regard, not to discharge the battery too low to prevent its utilizing its function of starting the car when it was desired to use the car. however, if the battery were discharged below its starting capacity, by any peradventure, the car could be started by the old-fashioned cranking method. using an automobile lighting system for house lighting implies that the car be stored in a garage near the house or barn; as this battery is too low in voltage to permit transmitting the current any distance. one hundred feet, with liberal sized transmission wires is probably the limit. that such a system is feasible is amply proved by an occurrence recently reported in the daily papers. a doctor summoned to a remote farm house found that an immediate operation was necessary to save the patient's life. there was no light available, except a small kerosene lamp which was worse than nothing. the surgeon took a headlight off his car, strung a pair of wires through a window, and instantly had at his command a light of the necessary intensity. another manner in which an automobile engine may be used for house lighting is to let it serve as the charging power of a separate storage battery. the engine can be belted to the generator, in such a case, by means of the fly wheel. or a form of friction drive can be devised, by means of which the rear wheels (jacked up off the floor) may supply the necessary motive power. in such a case it would be necessary to make allowance for the differential in the rear axle, so that the power developed by the engine would be delivered to the friction drive. the following pages contain advertisements of macmillan books by the same author or on related subjects. water power engineers designers and manufacturers hunt superior quality complete equipments for developing water powers including:--water wheels, flumes, governors, supply pipes, gates, hoists, valves, screens, gears, pulleys, clutches, bearings, shafting, etc. three types of water power developing wheels, ranged to meet every condition. [illustration] div. no. --turbine water wheels for large powers and large quantities of water. div. no. --rim leverage wheels for small powers and very limited quantities of water. div. no. --small water motors for minimum water supplies under high heads. send for special catalogues and water power blanks to fill in for estimates on suitable type of water wheel for developing your water power to best advantage. rodney hunt machine company mill street orange, massachusetts, u.s.a. the farmer of tomorrow _cloth, mo, $ . _ "a crisp, entertaining, and instructive discussion of the conditions which have brought about the present agricultural problem in america."--_countryside magazine._ "the book is interestingly written and full of many vital discussions."--_annals of the american academy of political and social science._ "a popular consideration of the fundamental factors affecting the business of farming."--_pacific rural press._ "the growing, popular question of farming analyzed from all angles, with many helpful suggestions."--_leslie's weekly._ "any person of intelligence, alive to the present and future welfare of his country will find 'the farmer of tomorrow,' a book of absorbing character."--_times-star._ the macmillan company publishers - fifth avenue new york coöperation in agriculture by g. harold powell _cloth, mo, $ . _ "the author has a broad outlook and never fails to suggest that the economic advantages of coöperation may frequently be quite subordinate to the general social and community interests which are fostered through a common undertaking. he writes with the genuine interest of a man having experience and faith in that of which he speaks."--_political science quarterly._ "a volume which explains in a lucid way the features of the existing system and the measures taken by farmers to protect their interests."--_journal of the royal statistical society._ "mr. powell has not attempted to cover the entire field of agricultural coöperation, but has confined himself to its more important phases. his work shows a grasp of the issues involved and a ripeness of conclusion that comes only from actual contact with the practical side of coöperation."--_american economic review._ "the book is decidedly worth while."--_farm life and agriculture._ the macmillan company publishers - fifth avenue new york rural science series edited by l. h. bailey _each volume illustrated. cloth, mo._ a series of practical books for farmers and gardeners, sold as a set or separately. each one is the work of a competent specialist, and is suitable for consultation alike by the amateur or professional tiller of the soil, the scientist or the student. illustrations of marked beauty are freely used, and the books are clearly printed and well bound. on selection of land, etc. isaac p. roberts' the farmstead $ t. f. hunt's how to choose a farm e. s. cheyney and j. p. wentling's the farm woodlot glenn w. herrick's insects injurious to the household on tillage, etc. f. h. king's the soil isaac p. roberts' the fertility of the land f. h. king's irrigation and drainage edward b. voorhees' fertilizers edward b. voorhees' forage crops j. a. widtsoe's dry farming l. h. bailey's principles of agriculture s. m. tracy's forage crops for the south on plant diseases, etc. e. c. lodeman's the spraying of plants on garden-making l. h. bailey's garden-making l. h. bailey's vegetable-gardening l. h. bailey's forcing book l. h. bailey's plant breeding on fruit-growing, etc. l. h. bailey's nursery book l. h. bailey's fruit-growing (new edition) l. h. bailey's the pruning book f. w. card's bush fruits w. paddock & o. b. whipple's fruit-growing in arid regions j. e. coit's citrus fruits _prepar_ on the care of live-stock nelson s. mayo's the diseases of animals w. h. jordan's the feeding of animals i. p. roberts' the horse m. w. harper's breaking and training of horses george c. watson's farm poultry. new edition john a. craig's sheep farming on dairy work, farm chemistry, etc. henry h. wing's milk and its products. new edition j. g. lipman's bacteria and country life on economics and organization william a. mckeever's farm boys and girls i. p. roberts' the farmer's business handbook george t. fairchild's rural wealth and welfare h. n. ogden's rural hygiene j. green's law for the american farmer g. h. powell's coöperation in agriculture the macmillan company publishers - fifth avenue new york rural text-book series edited by l. h. bailey _each volume illustrated. cloth, mo._ while the rural science series is designed primarily for popular reading and for general use, this related new series is designed for classroom work and for special use in consultation and reference. the rural text-book series is planned to cover eventually the entire range of public school and college texts. duggar, b. m. physiology of plant production $ duggar, john frederick southern field crops gay, c. warren principles and practice of judging live-stock harper, m. w. animal husbandry for schools hitchcock, a. s. grasses livingston, george field crop production lyon, t. l. and fippin, e. o. principles of soil management mann, a. r. beginnings in agriculture montgomery, g. f. corn crops piper, charles v. forage plants and their culture warren, g. f. elements of agriculture warren, g. f. farm management wheeler, h. j. manures and fertilizers widtsoe, john a. principles of irrigation practice the macmillan company publishers - fifth avenue new york the rural outlook set by l. h. bailey _four volumes. each, cloth, mo. uniform binding, attractively boxed. $ . per set; carriage extra. each volume also sold separately._ in this set are included three of professor bailey's most popular books as well as a hitherto unpublished one,--"the country-life movement." the long and persistent demand for a uniform edition of these little classics is answered with the publication of this attractive series. the country life movement _cloth, mo, pages, $ . postage extra_ this hitherto unpublished volume deals with the present movement for the redirection of rural civilization, discussing the real country-life problem as distinguished from the city problem, known as the back-to-the-land movement. the outlook to nature (new and revised edition) _cloth, mo, pages, $ . postage extra_ in this alive and bracing book, full of suggestions and encouragement, professor bailey argues the importance of contact with nature, a sympathetic attitude toward which "means greater efficiency, hopefulness, and repose." the state and the farmer (new edition) _cloth, mo, $ . postage extra_ it is the relation of the farmer to the government that professor bailey here discusses in its varying aspects. he deals specifically with the change in agricultural methods, in the shifting of the geographical centers of farming in the united states, and in the growth of agricultural institutions. the nature study idea (new edition) _cloth, mo, $ . postage extra_ "it would be well," the critic of _the tribune farmer_ once wrote, "if 'the nature study idea' were in the hands of every person who favors nature study in the public schools, of every one who is opposed to it, and most important, of every one who teaches it or thinks he does." it has been professor bailey's purpose to interpret the new school movement to put the young into relation and sympathy with nature,--a purpose which he has admirably accomplished. the macmillan company publishers - fifth avenue new york * * * * * transcriber's notes: the square root symbol is indicated by sqrt(..) exponents are indicated by ^ bold in a table is indicated by =..= [illustration: the royalty of radio and television a new world of entertainment television receiver zenith® operating manual warranty registration card caution: dealer do not remove this booklet contains customer's registration card and serial number] warranty zenith radio corporation warrants the parts, transistors, and tubes (including television picture tubes) in any zenith black and white television receiver or zenith black and white television combination receiver to be free from defects in material arising from normal usage. its obligation under this warranty is limited to replacing, or at its option repairing any such parts or transistors or tubes of the receiver which, after regular installation and under normal usage and service, shall be returned within ninety ( ) days (one year in case of television picture tubes only) from the date of original consumer purchase of the receiver to the authorized dealer from whom the purchase was made and which shall be found to have been thus defective in accordance with the policies established by zenith radio corporation. the obligation of zenith radio corporation does not include either the making or the furnishing of any labor in connection with the installation of such repaired or replacement parts, transistors or tubes nor does it include responsibility for any transportation expense. zenith radio corporation assumes no liability for failure to perform or delay in performing its obligations with respect to the above warranty if such failure or delay results, directly or indirectly, from any cause beyond its control including but not limited to acts of god, acts of government, floods, fires, shortage of materials, and labor and/or transportation difficulties. conditions and exclusions this warranty is expressly in lieu of all other agreements and warranties, expressed or implied, and zenith radio corporation does not authorize any person to assume for it the obligations contained in this warranty and neither assumes nor authorizes any representative or other person to assume for it any other liability in connection with such zenith television receiver or parts or tubes or transistors thereof. the warranty herein extends only to the original consumer purchaser and is not assignable or transferable and shall not apply to any receiver or parts or transistors or tubes thereof which have been repaired or replaced by anyone else other than an authorized zenith dealer, service contractor or distributor, or which have been subject to alteration, misuse, negligence or accident, or to the parts or tubes or transistors of any receiver which have had the serial number or name altered, defaced or removed. =zenith radio corporation is under no obligation to extend this warranty to any receiver for which a zenith warranty registration card has not been completed and mailed to the corporation within fifteen ( ) days after date of delivery.= zenith radio corporation chicago, illinois =note:= uhf information in this book applies to models equipped for vhf-uhf reception. general notes . place receiver where no bright light will fall on the screen or in the eyes of the viewers. . viewers should not be seated closer than a distance of ft. from the screen for maximum comfort. . place where unimpeded cabinet ventilation is allowed. if receiver is to be placed along a wall allow several inches between wall and cabinet back. this is important for proper ventilation. warning, high voltage it is recommended that only your authorized zenith television technician make repairs or adjustments inside the receiver. a severe shock can result from tampering. power supply do not attempt to operate on dc or line supplies of other voltages or frequency ratings than those stated on the cabinet back. cabinet stains to preserve the finish on your zenith television cabinet, instruments or ornaments with rubber feet should not be placed on it. the chemicals in the rubber feet have a tendency to leave a stain. picture glass your zenith is equipped with the new sealed picture glass and tube. simply clean it from the front of the set when necessary. use lukewarm water and a mild soap solution. carefully wipe dry with a clean, damp chamois cloth. controls pull-push on-off switch--volume control to turn receiver on, pull knob outward. to turn receiver off, push knob inward. clockwise rotation of the knob increases the volume, counterclockwise rotation diminishes the volume. allow the receiver to warm up for about minute before you wish to use it. =channel selector (vhf)= turn knob to channel desired. =perma-set tuning control (vhf) note:= your zenith has the new perma-set tuning control. each channel has been correctly set at the factory for best picture and sound. [illustration: fig. --controls note: open panel door at front of cabinet for access to controls tone control horizontal hold vertical hold (some models) peak picture brightness contrast] [illustration: vhf channel selector vhf perma-set tuning knob vhf channel indicator channel numbers illuminated (some models)] [illustration: uhf channel indicator uhf fine tuning knob uhf channel tuning control pull-push on-off switch and volume control =note:= knob style varies with models] however, should the settings become mis-adjusted, it is a simple matter to adjust them as follows: . turn the vhf channel selector knob to the channel number desired. . turn vhf perma-set tuning knob until there is no picture. . then turn perma-set tuning knob back slowly for best picture and sound. . repeat for each channel to be set. tone control your zenith is equipped with a tone control which enables you to personally select tonal values of unmatched richness and fidelity. the high tonal register and the "bass" or low frequencies are emphasized by turning the tone control knob. set knob to the position most pleasing to your ear. uhf tuning first, turn vhf channel selector to "uhf" position. turn uhf channel tuning control for desired uhf channel. then carefully turn uhf fine tuning knob for best picture and sound. disregard channel numbers and if they appear in the uhf indicator dial of your unit. these are vhf channels to be tuned in with the vhf selector. peak picture (some models) set this control for best picture crispness in your location. the strength of the signal being received and your personal preference for picture detail will determine the optimum setting. service your new zenith television receiver is engineered for dependable long life service but like any mechanical or electrical instrument, it will occasionally require maintenance. for service consult your zenith dealer or refer to the organization that installed your instrument. (see warranty.) picture adjustments brightness rotate clockwise to increase the brightness; counterclockwise reduces the brightness. it is to be used in conjunction with the contrast control since its movement will also have an effect on picture contrast. [illustration: fig. ] =note:= the brightness control setting for the picture shown in figure is set too high. set the control below this level. contrast adjust the picture for best distinction between the black and white shading. your own vision is the best judge in setting this control properly. [illustration: fig. ] =note:= the contrast control setting for the picture shown in figure is set too high. set the control below this level. horizontal hold control if the picture appears to have a tendency to move across the screen, or if it assumes a broken streaked appearance, as indicated in figure , it should be readjusted to a point where the pictures remain locked in properly on all channels. [illustration: fig. ] vertical hold control this control is used in correcting for vertical movement, or rolling up or down. set control to lock picture. (fig. ) [illustration: fig. ] interference the most effective means of reducing interference to a minimum has been built into your zenith television receiver. occasionally however, the picture may be affected by electrical interference or reflections. auto ignition and appliances automobile ignition, electrical appliances, etc., cause a speckled streaked appearing picture as shown. this condition is most noticeable in weak signal areas. (fig. .) [illustration: fig. ] diathermy diathermy produces a distinctive herringbone pattern and one or two horizontal bands across the face of the picture. (fig. ). it can sometimes be reduced or eliminated by the insertion of a filter trap at the antenna terminals. [illustration: fig. ] r.f. interference radio signals by a neighboring commercial, amateur or police station may cause interference in the form of moving ripples or diagonal streaks. television or fm receivers operating near your receiver, can also be the reason for this reaction. (fig. .) [illustration: fig. ] the insertion of a filter trap at the antenna terminals of the tv receiver will sometimes eliminate or reduce this type of interference. antenna connections [illustration: fig. --antenna connections at cabinet back figure . notes: . for possible better performance connect additional wire to remaining antenna terminal . tack or twist end of wire to convenient point up and away from tv chassis (vary position for best reception.) additional ft length wire approx. tv receiver] an outdoor type antenna is recommended for best reception. if such installation is impossible, different type indoor antenna may be used. quality of reception also depends upon local signal conditions. some models are equipped with a di-pole or mono-pole antenna mounted at the cabinet back. to use this antenna, raise and extend rods. vary the length and position of the rods or rod for best picture and sound. under favorable receiving conditions, satisfactory reception may be obtained with a ft. length of antenna wire. (supplied with some models). stretch out wire for best reception. when using a regular outside antenna, disconnect the inside antenna leads from the antenna terminal screws. connect the antenna transmission line to both of these terminal screws. the proof of zenith antenna superiority is in the picture. zenith tv antennas are designed and constructed to provide you maximum service and superior performance. contact your zenith dealer for the one that will provide you with the best picture quality. diplexer (see page ) when using a combination vhf-uhf antenna system with a single transmission line it is necessary to have an additional diplexer at the receiver. make the transmission line lengths from the diplexer to the vhf and uhf antenna post terminals on the receiver as short as possible. see your zenith dealer for additional information. oscillator adjustments (vhf) =note:= _the vhf perma-set tuning control on the tuner is also the vhf channel oscillator adjustment._ no additional oscillator adjustments are incorporated. therefore, should re-tuning of a vhf tv channel be required, select the channel and then manually turn the tuning knob for best picture and sound. each individual vhf channel is tuned in this manner. phonevision a three-year commercial trial of zenith's phonevision[a] systems of over-the-air subscription television has been in progress for the hartford, connecticut area since june , . authorized by the federal communications commission, the trial has made it possible, for the first time, for about american tv homes to enjoy the convenience and economy of viewing top flight box-office entertainment and other features broadcast to their home receivers. features at prices for the entire family no greater than a single admission at the theatre, stadium or concert hall. the hartford test has already furnished factual information, rather than speculation, concerning this brand new television service. on the basis of this factual information, the f.c.c. has been requested to authorize nationwide operation. if the f.c.c. is persuaded by the results of the trial that subscription television is in the public interest and should be authorized nationally, then every home could have its own "television theatre" with the world's greatest and most costly entertainment offered for an admission well below the cost of witnessing these same events outside the home. with such premium-type programs added to entertainment now available from sponsored television, the home viewer would be able to obtain the ultimate of everything he wants to see on his own tv screen. [a] reg. u.s. pat. off. fuse replacement remove cabinet back for access to main chassis fuse if it ever becomes necessary to replace it. installation instructions for s- zenith diplexer the diplexer is designed for use with a combined vhf-uhf antenna system incorporating a single transmission line. figures a, b, c, and d show diplexer installed on various chassis models. uhf reception should be tried with and without the inductance wire to obtain the best overall results. disconnect leads from previous antenna system. install diplexer assembly in manner most suitable to tv chassis model. note: always connect the diplexer assembly with coil terminal to vhf antenna terminal. [illustration: fig. a vhf antenna terminals on tuner connect transmission line from combined vhf-uhf antenna system to these terminals uhf antenna terminals note to install diplexer disconnect cabinet antenna leads] [illustration: fig. b vhf to vhf tuner new terminals for combination vhf-uhf antenna system snap terminal cups into holes located to the right of vhf terminals install diplexer assembly as shown connect ohm transmission line (supplied with kit) between terminals as shown uhf continuous tuner terminals if necessary connect uhf inductance wire (supplied with kit) as shown note disconnect previous antenna leads from vhf terminals. do not remove leads from vhf tuner to antenna terminals.] [illustration: fig. c to antenna terminals on uhf tuner to antenna inductance wire to antenna terminals on vhf tuner] [illustration: fig d. bend diplexer lugs and mount as shown note: do not allow diplexer terminals to short against cabinet back solder leads & connect to uhf terminals connect ohm uhf new terminals for combination vhf-uhf antenna system vhf antenna terminals on tv set] when you mail the registration card below the warranty on your zenith® television receiver becomes effective x w inst. book warranty is void unless registration card is returned to us within days after date of delivery important--please fill in both sections of card mail this card today mail this card today serial no. model owner's name__________________________________ street________________________________________ city_______________________county___________state__________zip code_______ purchased from______________________________________date__________________ address___________________________________________________________________ mail this card today mail this card today zenith sales corporation dickens avenue chicago, ill. printed in u.s.a. g e d c b - [illustration: radio shack trs- expansion interface] radio shack trs- expansion interface _see caution inside cover_ catalog numbers - - - =operator's manual= custom manufactured in u.s.a. for radio shack [tc] a division of tandy corporation introduction the trs- expansion interface (see figure ) consists of the case, a dc power supply, a ribbon cable, a cassette recorder jumper cable and an additional cassette recorder cable for cassette recorder number . notice that the dc power supply is not installed in the case upon receipt. it must be installed using the procedures under the heading "setting up" and as illustrated in figure . the case houses the expansion interface printed circuit board (pcb), two dc power supplies and provides a housing area for an additional expansion pcb. the expansion interface utilizes a real-time clock and contains sockets for the addition of up to k of ram in k increments. one dc power supply provides power to the pcb. the other one supplies power to the trs- . the power supplies are interchangeable. the ribbon cable has -pin connectors on both ends and is used to connect the expansion interface to the trs- . you received hoods for these connectors which are covered later in this manual. the cassette recorder jumper cable has -pin audio din connectors on both ends. it connects between the expansion interface tape input/output (i/o) and the tape connector on the right rear of the trs- microcomputer. the cassette recorder cable is provided to connect the expansion interface to cassette recorder number . capabilities and advantages the interface allows you to add the following radio shack modules to your system: . screen printer ( - ) . line printer ( - ) . mini-disk system ( - / - ) . cassette recorder number ( - ) the screen printer and line printer allow you to obtain hard copy (printed) information generated by your trs- . the trs- mini-disk system is a small version of the floppy disk. it provides vast storage space and much quicker access time than tape. the number disk contains about , bytes of free space for files. each additional disk has , bytes of file space. the disk system has its own set of commands that allow manipulation of files and expanded abilities in file use. the trs- mini-disk system uses sequential or random access. the disks will allow use of several additional level ii commands. =important note= because of the presence of a disk controller in the expansion interface, the computer will try to input the additional commands. when the expansion interface is connected to the computer, it assumes that a mini-disk is connected. to use the expansion interface without a mini-disk, press the break key on the trs- keyboard. this will override the mini-disk mode and allow normal level ii operation. the use of two cassettes allows a much more efficient and convenient manner of updating data stored on tape. for example, if you have payroll data stored on tape, the information can be read, one item at a time, from cassette recorder number , then changed or added to and written out on cassette recorder number . the example cited is a very simple application; however, very powerful routines can be constructed to allow input and output of data using two tapes simultaneously. caution this unit is designed to be used with level ii only. =do not use with level i.= [illustration: figure . expansion interface.*] * catalog number description ram - trs- expansion interface k - trs- expansion interface k - trs- expansion interface k setting up =power supplies and pcb housing= (see figure ) remove the power supply door (top right side). first connect one dc power cord (din connector) to the power connector on the pcb. now install the two dc power supplies as illustrated. route the remaining cords out the rear of the case. be sure the power cords are seated in the door cutouts before replacing the door. to gain access to the future expansion pcb housing, remove the expansion door from the top left side of the module. [illustration: figure . power supplies and future expansion pcb locations. (illustration shows the following parts:) power supply door expansion door recesses recesses housing for future expansion board trs- dc power supply rear expansion interface dc power supply ac power cord dc power cord note: install expansion interface dc power supply =first=.] =note= the term "port" as used in this manual refers to the openings into which the cable connectors are inserted to provide an interconnection between the trs- and the expansion interface modules. the ports, with the exception of the expansion interface port, are also covered by removable doors. to remove these doors, press on the right side of the door and it will pivot slightly. grasp the left side of the door and pull out (see figure for locations). [illustration: figure . expansion interface, front view--doors removed. (illustration shows the following parts:) door--mini-disk door--line printer port door--future expansion port door--screen printer port] =electrical connections= (see figure ) turn the trs- so that it faces away from you. locate the port door ( ); it's at the right end of the rear panel. to remove the door, raise it up and slide it to the right--then lift it up and away from the trs- . place the trs- and expansion interface hoods ( and ) on the ribbon cable connectors as shown in figure . the hoods replace the door on the trs- and fill the opening on the expansion interface. these hoods are designed so that it is not possible to insert the connectors upside down. they function as keyways for the connectors. now connect the ribbon cable between the left front expansion interface port and the trs- port. connect the dc power cord (din connector) to the power connector on the right rear of the trs- and connect both ac power cords to standard vac outlets. the interconnect cable for an expansion module is provided with that unit. see figure for hood assembly and installation. connect the cassette recorder cable (din plug on one end and three plugs on the other) to the tape i/o connector that is located on the rear of the expansion interface nearest the power cord exits. (refer to figure ). of the three plugs on the other end of the cable: . connect the black plug to the ear jack on the side of the cassette recorder. . connect the larger gray plug to the aux jack. . connect the smaller gray plug to the rem jack. =note= a dummy plug is provided with your cassette recorder. plug it in to the mic jack. this plug disconnects the built-in microphone so it won't pick up sounds while you are loading tapes. [illustration: figure . front view--interface connections. (illustration shows the following parts:) hood connector and cable telephone-type cable line printer edge card connector with hood and cable (assembled) line printer port (edge card) hood connector and cable future expansion port (edge card) future expansion edge card connector with hood and cable screen printer edge card connector and cable (assembled) screen printer port (edge card) trs- interface port (edge card) trs- interface port hood connector and cable hood connector and cable door - trs- expansion port trs- port edge connector hood connector and cable] connect the cassette recorder jumper cable to the center din connector on the rear of the expansion interface. connect the other end to the tape connector on the right rear of the trs- . connect the video cable from the video display to the video connector on the right rear of the trs- . =note= your cassette recorders may be powered by batteries or from a vac source. thus, ac power cords are optional. the trs- expansion interface has been designed to support the video display module. set the feet of the video display in the recesses in the power supply and pcb housing doors. (refer to figure ). operation =note= the power switch is recessed into the front of the expansion interface to prevent accidental loss of power. activate the switch with the eraser-end of a pencil or small tool of similar size. apply power to the expansion interface. notice that when power is off, the end surface of the switch is white and when power is on, it changes to orange. conclusion possibly, you will not need all of the expansion modules that are available but, we have supplied you with hoods for cable connectors for a complete expansion system. use the hoods as illustrated to prevent accidental mismatch between the edge connectors on the pcb and the cable connectors. in the event that you lose a door or hood and want to replace it, we have given you a parts list. you may refer to the parts list and exploded diagrams to determine its part number. you can order replacement parts through your local radio shack store. you must have a level ii basic trs- microcomputer to utilize the trs- expansion interface, the line printer and the mini-disk modules. if you have a level i basic machine, it must be modified to accept level ii programs. the screen printer is the only expansion module that may be connected directly to the trs- microcomputer and that will operate with level i machines. we are continually improving and updating our trs- microcomputer system. you will be kept informed through our newsletters (you are on the mailing list), addenda and revisions to the manual. for the complete electrical connections block diagram, see figure . [illustration: figure . rear view--interface connections. (illustration shows the following parts:) mini-disk hood connector and cable door (mini-disk port) -pin audio din (female connectors) -pin audio din (male connectors) to trs- tape connector] [illustration: figure . placement of expansion interface.] [illustration: +---------------+ +-----------+ | video display | | dc power | | | | supply | +------+--------+ +----+------+ | | | +---------------+ | | optional +---------+ +------+-----+--+ +-----------+ __ | screen |_________| |_______| cassette |___/ |= | printer | | trs- | | recorder | \__|= +---------+ +---------------+ +-----------+ trs- microcomputer system without expansion interface.] [illustration: +---------+ | screen |______screen printer ________ | printer | interface cable | +---------+ | | | +---------+ | +----------+ | line | line printer | | cassette | _ | printer |-------interface cable--+ | +----| recorder |__/ |= +---------+ p/n | | | | (no. ) | \_|= | | | +----------+ / | | | / +---------+ +------+---+----+ | optional / |mini-disk|_________________| expansion |--+ (cassette___/ |(no. ) | | | interface | recorders \ +---------+ mini-disk +--| - |--+ may be \ multi cable | +-+-----+-----+-+ | operated with \ p/n | | | | | batteries) \ +---------+ | | | | | | \ |mini-disk| | | | dc | | +----------+ \ |(no. ) |--+ | | power | | | cassette | _ +---------+ | future-+ | supply | +----| recorder |__/ |= | expansion | cord | | (no. ) | \_|= | cable | | | +----------+ +---------+ | | | | | |mini-disk| | | interface | audio din |(no. ) |--+ | cable | to +---------+ | | assembly | audio din | | p/n | p/n | | | | | +---------+ | | +-+-----+-----+-+ +---------+ |mini-disk| | | | | | video | |(no. ) |--+ future | trs- |__video___| display | +---------+ applications | | cable | - | +---------------+ +---------+ trs- microcomputer system with expansion interface (maximum system). figure . electrical connections block diagram.] parts list expansion interface door, mini-disk door, line printer door, screen printer door, future expansion board hood, mini-disk hood, line printer hood, screen printer hood, future expansion board hood, trs- microcomputer system trs- microcomputer system door hood limited warranty radio shack warrants for a period of days from the date of delivery to customer that the computer hardware described herein shall be free from defects in material and workmanship under normal use and service. this warranty shall be void if the computer case or cabinet is opened or if the unit is altered or modified. during this period, if a defect should occur, the product must be returned to a radio shack store or dealer for repair. customer's sole and exclusive remedy in the event of defect is expressly limited to the correction of the defect by adjustment, repair or replacement at radio shack's election and sole expense, except there shall be no obligation to replace or repair items which by their nature are expendable. no representations or other affirmation of fact, including but not limited to statements regarding capacity, suitability for use, or performance of the equipment, shall be or be deemed to be a warranty or representation by radio shack, for any purpose, nor give rise to any liability or obligation of radio shack whatsoever. except as specifically provided in this agreement, there are no other warranties, express or implied, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose and in no event shall radio shack be liable for loss of profits or benefits, indirect, special, consequential or other similar damages arising out of any breach of this warranty or otherwise. radio shack [tc] a division of tandy corporation usa.: fort worth, texas canada: barrie, ontario l m w tandy corporation australia - victoria road rydalmere n s w belgium parc industriel de naninne naninne u k bilston road wednesbury west midlands ws jn -perkco- printed in u.s.a. [transcriber's note: an underscore character "_" is used around text to signify italics in the _original_ text, as illustrated. it also is used to signify a subscript, used frequently in technical descriptions. for example _e_{c}_ would have been originally typeset as a capital e followed by a smaller c subscript, and both would have been in an italic typeface.] [illustration: pl. i.--one of the lines of towers at radio central (courtesy of radio corporation of america).] letters of a radio-engineer to his son by john mills engineering department, western electric company, inc., author of "radio-communication," "the realities of modern science," and "within the atom" new york harcourt, brace and company copyright, , by harcourt, brace and company, inc. printed in the u. s. a. by the quinn & boden company rahway, n. j. to j. m., jr. contents electricity and matter why a copper wire will conduct electricity how a battery works the batteries in your radio set getting electrons from a heated wire the audion how to measure an electron stream electron-moving-forces the audion-characteristic condensers and coils a "c-w" transmitter inductance and capacity tuning why and how to use a detector radio-telephony the human voice grid batteries and grid condensers for detectors amplifiers and the regenerative circuit the audion amplifier and its connections telephone receivers and other electromagnetic devices your receiving set and how to experiment high-powered radio-telephone transmitters amplification at intermediate frequencies by wire and by radio index list of plates i one of the lines of towers at radio central frontispiece ii bird's-eye view of radio central iii dry battery for use in audion circuits, and also storage battery iv radiotron v variometer and variable condenser of the general radio company. voltmeter and ammeter of the weston instrument company vi low-power transmitting tube, u v vii photographs of vibrating strings viii to illustrate the mechanism for the production of the human voice ix western electric loud speaking receiver. crystal detector set of the general electric co. audibility meter of general radio co. x audio-frequency transformer and banked-wound coil xi broadcasting equipment, developed by the american telephone and telegraph company and the western electric company xii broadcasting station of the american telephone and telegraph company on the roof of the walker-lispenard bldg. in new york city where the long-distance telephone lines terminate letters of a radio-engineer to his son letter electricity and matter my dear son: you are interested in radio-telephony and want me to explain it to you. i'll do so in the shortest and easiest way which i can devise. the explanation will be the simplest which i can give and still make it possible for you to build and operate your own set and to understand the operation of the large commercial sets to which you will listen. i'll write you a series of letters which will contain only what is important in the radio of to-day and those ideas which seem necessary if you are to follow the rapid advances which radio is making. some of the letters you will find to require a second reading and study. in the case of a few you might postpone a second reading until you have finished those which interest you most. i'll mark the letters to omit in this way. all the letters will be written just as i would talk to you, for i shall draw little sketches as i go along. one of them will tell you how to experiment for yourself. this will be the most interesting of all. you can find plenty of books to tell you how radio sets operate and what to do, but very few except some for advanced students tell you how to experiment for yourself. not to waste time in your own experiments, however, you will need to be quite familiar with the ideas of the other letters. what is a radio set? copper wires, tinfoil, glass plates, sheets of mica, metal, and wood. where does it get its ability to work--that is, where does the "energy" come from which runs the set? from batteries or from dynamos. that much you know already, but what is the real reason that we can use copper wires, metal plates, audions, crystals, and batteries to send messages and to receive them? the reason is that all these things are made of little specks, too tiny ever to see, which we might call specks of electricity. there are only two kinds of specks and we had better give them their right names at once to save time. one kind of speck is called "electron" and the other kind "proton." how do they differ? they probably differ in size but we don't yet know so very much about their sizes. they differ in laziness a great deal. one is about times as lazy as the other. that is, it has eighteen hundred and forty-five times as much inertia as the other. it is harder to get it started but it is just as much harder to get it to stop after it is once started or to change its direction and go a different direction. the proton has the larger inertia. it is the electron which is the easier to start or stop. how else do they differ? they differ in their actions. protons don't like to associate with other protons but take quite keenly to electrons. and electrons--they go with protons but they won't associate with each other. an electron always likes to be close to a proton. two is company when one is an electron and the other a proton but three is a crowd always. it doesn't make any difference to a proton what electron it is keeping company with provided only it is an electron and not another proton. all electrons are alike as far as we can tell and so are all protons. that means that all the stuff, or matter, of our world is made up of two kinds of building blocks, and all the blocks of each kind are just alike. of course you mustn't think of these blocks as like bricks, for we don't know their shapes. then there is another reason why you must not think of them as bricks and that is because when you build a house out of bricks each brick must rest on another. between an electron and any other electron or between two protons or between an electron and a proton there is usually a relatively enormous distance. there is enough space so that lots of other electrons or protons could be fitted in between if only they were willing to get that close together. sometimes they do get very close together. i can tell you how if you will imagine four small boys playing tag. suppose tom and dick don't like to play with each other and run away from each other if they can. now suppose that bill and sam won't play with each other if they can help it but that either of them will play with tom or dick whenever there is a chance. now suppose tom and bill see each other; they start running toward each other to get up some sort of a game. but sam sees tom at the same time, so he starts running to join him even though bill is going to be there too. meanwhile dick sees bill and sam running along and since they are his natural playmates he follows them. in a minute they are all together, and playing a great game; although some of the boys don't like to play together. whenever there is a group of protons and electrons playing together we have what we call an "atom." there are about ninety different games which electrons and protons can play, that is ninety different kinds of atoms. these games differ in the number of electrons and protons who play and in the way they arrange themselves. larger games can be formed if a number of atoms join together. then there is a "molecule." of molecules there are as many kinds as there are different substances in the world. it takes a lot of molecules together to form something big enough to see, for even the largest molecule, that of starch, is much too small to be seen by itself with the best possible microscope. what sort of a molecule is formed will depend upon how many and what kinds of atoms group together to play the larger game. whenever there is a big game it doesn't mean that the little atomic groups which enter into it are all changed around. they keep together like a troop of boy scouts in a grand picnic in which lots of troops are present. at any rate they keep together enough so that we can still call them a group, that is an atom, even though they do adapt their game somewhat so as to fit in with other groups--that is with other atoms. what will the kind of atom depend upon? it will depend upon how many electrons and protons are grouped together in it to play their little game. how any atom behaves so far as associating with other groups or atoms will depend upon what sort of a game its own electrons and protons are playing. now the simplest kind of a game that can be played, and the one with the smallest number of electrons and protons, is that played by a single proton and a single electron. i don't know just how it is played but i should guess that they sort of chase each other around in circles. at any rate i do know that the atom called "hydrogen" is formed by just one proton and one electron. suppose they were magnified until they were as large as the moon and the earth. then they would be just about as far apart but the smaller one would be the proton. that hydrogen atom is responsible for lots of interesting things for it is a great one to join with other atoms. we don't often find it by itself although we can make it change its partners and go from one molecule to another very easily. that is what happens every time you stain anything with acid. a hydrogen atom leaves a molecule of the acid and then it isn't acid any more. what remains isn't a happy group either for it has lost some of its playfellows. the hydrogen goes and joins with the stuff which gets stained. but it doesn't join with the whole molecule; it picks out part of it to associate with and that leaves the other part to take the place of the hydrogen in the original molecule of acid from which it came. many of the actions which we call chemistry are merely the result of such changes of atoms from one molecule to another. not only does the hydrogen atom like to associate in a larger game with other kinds of atoms but it likes to do so with one of its own kind. when it does we have a molecule of hydrogen gas, the same gas as is used in balloons. we haven't seemed to get very far yet toward radio but you can see how we shall when i tell you that next time i shall write of more complicated games such as are played in the atoms of copper which form the wires of radio sets and of how these wires can do what we call "carrying an electric current." letter why a copper wire will conduct electricity my dear young atomist: you have learned that the simplest group which can be formed by protons and electrons is one proton and one electron chasing each other around in a fast game. this group is called an atom of hydrogen. a molecule of hydrogen is two of these groups together. all the other possible kinds of groups are more complicated. the next simplest is that of the atom of helium. helium is a gas of which small quantities are obtained from certain oil wells and there isn't very much of it to be obtained. it is an inert gas, as we call it, because it won't burn or combine with anything else. it doesn't care to enter into the larger games of molecular groups. it is satisfied to be as it is, so that it isn't much use in chemistry because you can't make anything else out of it. that's the reason why it is so highly recommended for filling balloons or airships, because it cannot burn or explode. it is not as light as hydrogen but it serves quite well for making balloons buoyant in air. this helium atom is made up of four electrons and four protons. right at the center there is a small closely crowded group which contains all the protons and two of the electrons. the other two electrons play around quite a little way from this inner group. it will make our explanations easier if we learn to call this inner group "the nucleus" of the atom. it is the center of the atom and the other two electrons play around about it just as the earth and mars and the other planets play or revolve about the sun as a center. that is why we shall call these two electrons "planetary electrons." there are about ninety different kinds of atoms and they all have names. some of them are more familiar than hydrogen and helium. for example, there is the iron atom, the copper atom, the sulphur atom and so on. some of these atoms you ought to know and so, before telling you more of how atoms are formed by protons and electrons, i am going to write down the names of some of the atoms which we have in the earth and rocks of our world, in the water of the oceans, and in the air above. start first with air. it is a mixture of several kinds of gases. each gas is a different kind of atom. there is just a slight trace of hydrogen and a very small amount of helium and of some other gases which i won't bother you with learning. most of the air, however, is nitrogen, about percent in fact and almost all the rest is oxygen. about . percent is oxygen so that all the gases other than these two make up only about . percent of the atmosphere in which we live. [illustration: pl. ii.--bird's-eye view of radio central (courtesy of radio corporation of america).] the earth and rocks also contain a great deal of oxygen; about . percent of the atoms which form earth and rocks are oxygen atoms. about half of the rest of the atoms are of a kind called silicon. sand is made up of atoms of silicon and oxygen and you know how much sand there is. about . percent of the earth and its rocks is silicon. the next most important kind of atom in the earth is aluminum and after that iron and then calcium. here is the way they run in percentages: aluminum . percent; iron . percent; calcium . percent; sodium . percent; potassium . percent; magnesium . percent. besides these which are most important there is about . percent of hydrogen and the same amount of carbon. then there is a little phosphorus, a little sulphur, a little fluorine, and small amounts of all of the rest of the different kinds of atoms. sea water is mostly oxygen and hydrogen, about . percent of oxygen and . percent of hydrogen. that is what you would expect for water is made up of molecules which in turn are formed by two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. the oxygen atom is about sixteen times as heavy as the hydrogen atom. however, for every oxygen atom there are two hydrogen atoms so that for every pound of hydrogen in water there are about eight pounds of oxygen. that is why there is about eight times as high a percentage of oxygen in sea water as there is of hydrogen. most of sea water, therefore, is just water, that is, pure water. but it contains some other substances as well and the best known of these is salt. salt is a substance the molecules of which contain atoms of sodium and of chlorine. that is why sea water is about . percent sodium and about . percent chlorine. there are some other kinds of atoms in sea water, as you would expect, for it gets all the substances which the waters of the earth dissolve and carry down to it but they are unimportant in amounts. now we know something about the names of the important kinds of atoms and can take up again the question of how they are formed by protons and electrons. no matter what kind of atom we are dealing with we always have a nucleus or center and some electrons playing around that nucleus like tiny planets. the only differences between one kind of atom and any other kind are differences in the nucleus and differences in the number and arrangement of the planetary electrons which are playing about the nucleus. no matter what kind of atom we are considering there is always in it just as many electrons as protons. for example, the iron atom is formed by a nucleus and twenty-six electrons playing around it. the copper atom has twenty-nine electrons as tiny planets to its nucleus. what does that mean about its nucleus? that there are twenty-nine more protons in the nucleus than there are electrons. silver has even more planetary electrons, for it has . radium has and the heaviest atom of all, that of uranium, has . we might use numbers for the different kinds of atoms instead of names if we wanted to do so. we could describe any kind of atom by telling how many planetary electrons there were in it. for example, hydrogen would be number , helium number , lithium of which you perhaps never heard, would be number , and so on. oxygen is , sodium is , chlorine is , iron , and copper . for each kind of atom there is a number. let's call that number its atomic number. now let's see what the atomic number tells us. take copper, for example, which is number . in each atom of copper there are electrons playing around the nucleus. the nucleus itself is a little inner group of electrons and protons, but there are more protons than electrons in it; twenty-nine more in fact. in an atom there is always an extra proton in the nucleus for each planetary electron. that makes the total number of protons and electrons the same. about the nucleus of a copper atom there are playing electrons just as if the nucleus was a teacher responsible for children who were out in the play yard. there is one very funny thing about it all, however, and that is that we must think of the scholars as if they were all just alike so that the teacher couldn't tell one from the other. electrons are all alike, you remember. all the teacher or nucleus cares for is that there shall be just the right number playing around her. you could bring a boy in from some other play ground and the teacher couldn't tell that he was a stranger but she would know that something was the matter for there would be one too many in her group. she is responsible for just scholars, and the nucleus of the copper atom is responsible for just electrons. it doesn't make any difference where these electrons come from provided there are always just playing around the nucleus. if there are more or less than something peculiar will happen. we shall see later what might happen, but first let's think of an enormous lot of atoms such as there would be in a copper wire. a small copper wire will have in it billions of copper atoms, each with its planetary electrons playing their invisible game about their own nucleus. there is quite a little distance in any atom between the nucleus and any of the electrons for which it is responsible. there is usually a greater distance still between one atomic group and any other. on the whole the electrons hold pretty close to their own circles about their own nuclei. there is always some tendency to run away and play in some other group. with electrons it's no wonder if sometimes one goes wandering off and finally gets into the game about some other nucleus. of course, an electron from some other atom may come wandering along and take the place just left vacant, so that nucleus is satisfied. we don't know all we might about how the electrons wander around from atom to atom inside a copper wire but we do know that there are always a lot of them moving about in the spaces between the atoms. some of them are going one way and some another. it's these wandering electrons which are affected when a battery is connected to a copper wire. every single electron which is away from its home group, and wandering around, is sent scampering along toward the end of the wire which is connected to the positive plate or terminal of the battery and away from the negative plate. that's what the battery does to them for being away from home; it drives them along the wire. there's a regular stream or procession of them from the negative end of the wire toward the positive. when we have a stream of electrons like this we say we have a current of electricity. we'll need to learn more later about a current of electricity but one of the first things we ought to know is how a battery is made and why it affects these wandering electrons in the copper wire. that's what i shall tell you in my next letter.[ ] [footnote : the reader who wishes the shortest path to the construction and operation of a radio set should omit the next two letters.] letter how a battery works (this letter may be omitted on the first reading.) my dear boy: when i was a boy we used to make our own batteries for our experiments. that was before storage batteries became as widely used as they are to-day when everybody has one in the starting system of his automobile. that was also before the day of the small dry battery such as we use in pocket flash lights. the batteries which we made were like those which they used on telegraph systems, and were sometimes called "gravity" batteries. of course, we tried several kinds and i believe i got quite a little acid around the house at one time or another. i'll tell you about only one kind but i shall use the words "electron," "proton," "nucleus," "atom," and "molecule," about some of which nothing was known when i was a boy. we used a straight-sided glass jar which would hold about a gallon. on the bottom we set a star shaped arrangement made of sheets of copper with a long wire soldered to it so as to reach up out of the jar. then we poured in a solution of copper sulphate until the jar was about half full. this solution was made by dissolving in water crystals of "blue vitriol" which we bought at the drug store. blue vitriol, or copper sulphate as the chemists would call it, is a substance which forms glassy blue crystals. its molecules are formed of copper atoms, sulphur atoms, and oxygen atoms. in each molecule of it there is one atom of copper, one of sulphur and four of oxygen. when it dissolves in water the molecules of the blue vitriol go wandering out into the spaces between the water molecules. but that isn't all that happens or the most important thing for one who is interested in making a battery. each molecule is formed by six atoms, that is by six little groups of electrons playing about six little nuclei. about each nucleus there is going on a game but some of the electrons are playing in the game about their own nucleus and at the same time taking some part in the game which is going on around one of the other nuclei. that's why the groups or atoms stay together as a molecule. when the molecules wander out into the spaces between the water molecules something happens to this complicated game. it will be easiest to see what sort of thing happens if we talk about a molecule of ordinary table salt, for that has only two atoms in it. one atom is sodium and one is chlorine. the sodium molecule has eleven electrons playing around its nucleus. fairly close to the nucleus there are two electrons. then farther away there are eight more and these are having a perfect game. then still farther away from the nucleus there is a single lonely electron. the atom of chlorine has seventeen electrons which play about its nucleus. close to the nucleus there are two. a little farther away there are eight just as there are in the sodium atom. then still farther away there are seven. i am going to draw a picture (fig. ) to show what i mean, but you must remember that these electrons are not all in the same plane as if they lay on a sheet of paper, but are scattered all around just as they would be if they were specks on a ball. [illustration: fig. ] you see that the sodium atom has one lonely electron which hasn't any play fellows and that the chlorine atom has seven in its outside circle. it appears that eight would make a much better game. suppose that extra electron in the sodium atom goes over and plays with those in the chlorine atom so as to make eight in the outside group as i have shown fig. . that will be all right as long as it doesn't get out of sight of its own nucleus because you remember that the sodium nucleus is responsible for eleven electrons. the lonely electron of the sodium atom needn't be lonely any more if it can persuade its nucleus to stay so close to the chlorine atom that it can play in the outer circle of the chlorine atom. [illustration: fig. ] the outer circle of the chlorine atom will then have a better game, for it will have just the eight that makes a perfect game. this can happen if the chlorine atom will stay close enough to the sodium atom so that the outermost electron of the sodium atom can play in the chlorine circle. you see everything will be satisfactory if an electron can be shared by the two atoms. that can happen only if the two atoms stay together; that is, if they form a molecule. that's why there are molecules and that's what i meant when i spoke of the molecule as a big game played by the electrons of two or more atoms. this molecule which is formed by a sodium atom and a chlorine atom is called a molecule of sodium chloride by chemists and a molecule of salt by most every one who eats it. something strange happens when it dissolves. it wanders around between the water molecules and for some reason or other--we don't know exactly why--it decides to split up again into sodium and chlorine but it can't quite do it. the electron which joined the game about the chlorine nucleus won't leave it. the result is that the nucleus of the sodium atom gets away but it leaves this one electron behind. what gets away isn't a sodium atom for it has one too few electrons; and what remains behind isn't a chlorine atom for it has one too many electrons. we call these new groups "ions" from a greek word which means "to go" for they do go, wandering off into the spaces between the water molecules. fig. gives you an idea of what happens. you remember that in an atom there are always just as many protons as electrons. in this sodium ion which is formed when the nucleus of the sodium atom breaks away but leaves behind one planetary electron, there is then one more proton than there are electrons. because it has an extra proton, which hasn't any electron to associate with, we call it a plus ion or a "positive ion." similarly we call the chlorine ion, which has one less proton than it has electrons, a minus or "negative ion." [illustration: fig. ] now, despite the fact that these ions broke away from each other they aren't really satisfied. any time that the sodium ion can find an electron to take the place of the one it lost it will welcome it. that is, the sodium ion will want to go toward places where there are extra electrons. in the same way the chlorine ion will go toward places where electrons are wanted as if it could satisfy its guilty conscience by giving up the electron which it stole from the sodium atom, or at least by giving away some other electron, for they are all alike anyway. sometimes a positive sodium ion and a negative chlorine ion meet in their wanderings in the solution and both get satisfied by forming a molecule again. even so they don't stay together long before they split apart and start wandering again. that's what goes on over and over again, millions of times, when you dissolve a little salt in a glass of water. now we can see what happens when copper sulphate dissolves. the copper atom has twenty-nine electrons about its nucleus and all except two of these are nicely grouped for playing their games about the nucleus. two of the electrons are rather out of the game, and are unsatisfied. they play with the electrons of the part of the molecule which is called "sulphate," that is, the part formed by the sulphur atom and the four oxygen atoms. these five atoms of the sulphate part stay together very well and so we treat them as a group. the sulphate group and the copper atom stay together as long as they are not in solution but when they are, they act very much like the sodium and chlorine which i just described. the molecule splits up into two ions, one positive and one negative. the positive ion is the copper part except that two of the electrons which really belong to a copper atom got left behind because the sulphate part wouldn't give them up. the rest of the molecule is the negative ion. the copper ion is a copper atom which has lost two electrons. the sulphate ion is a combination of one sulphur atom, four oxygen atoms and two electrons which it stole from the copper atom. just as the sodium ion is unsatisfied because in it there is one more proton than there are electrons, so the copper ion is unsatisfied. as a matter of fact it is twice as badly unsatisfied. it has two more protons than it has electrons. we say it has twice the "electrical charge" of the sodium ion. just like a sodium ion the copper ion will tend to go toward any place where there are extra electrons which it can get to satisfy its own needs. in much the same way the sulphate ion will go toward places where it can give up its two extra electrons. sometimes, of course, as ions of these two kinds wander about between the water molecules, they meet and satisfy each other by forming a molecule of copper sulphate. but if they do they will split apart later on; that is, they will "dissociate" as we should say. now let's go on with the kind of batteries i used to make as a boy. you can see that in the solution of copper sulphate at the bottom of the jar there was always present a lot of positive copper ions and of negative sulphate ions. on top of this solution of copper sulphate i poured very carefully a weak solution of sulphuric acid. as i told you, an acid always has hydrogen in its molecules. sulphuric acid has molecules formed by two hydrogen atoms and one of the groups which we decided to call sulphate. a better name for this acid would be hydrogen sulphate for that would imply that its molecule is the same as one of copper sulphate, except that the place of the copper is taken by two atoms of hydrogen. it takes two atoms of hydrogen because the copper atom has two lonely electrons while a hydrogen atom only has one. it takes two electrons to fill up the game which the electrons of the sulphate group are playing. if it can get these from a single atom, all right; but if it has to get one from each of two atoms, it will do it that way. i remember when i mixed the sulphuric acid with water that i learned to pour the acid into the water and not the other way around. spatterings of sulphuric acid are not good for hands or clothes. with this solution i filled the jar almost to the top and then hung over the edge a sort of a crow's foot shape of cast zinc. the zinc reached down into the sulphuric acid solution. there was a binding post on it to which a wire could be connected. this wire and the one which came from the plate of copper at the bottom were the two terminals of the battery. we called the wire from the copper "positive" and the one from the zinc "negative." now we shall see why and how the battery worked. the molecules of sulphuric acid dissociate in solution just as do those of copper sulphate. when sulphuric acid molecules split, the sulphate part goes away with two electrons which don't belong to it and each of the hydrogen atoms goes away by itself but without its electron. we call each a "hydrogen ion" but you can see that each is a single proton. in the two solutions are pieces of zinc and copper. zinc is like all the rest of the metals in one way. atoms of metals always have lonely electrons for which there doesn't seem to be room in the game which is going on around their nuclei. copper as we saw has two lonely electrons in each atom. zinc also has two. some metals have one and some two and some even more lonely electrons in each atom. what happens then is this. the sulphate ions wandering around in the weak solution of sulphuric acid come along beside the zinc plate and beckon to its atoms. the sulphate ions had a great deal rather play the game called "zinc sulphate" than the game called "hydrogen sulphate." so the zinc atoms leave their places to join with the sulphate ions. but wait a minute! the sulphate ions have two extra electrons which they kept from the hydrogen atoms. they don't need the two lonely electrons which each zinc atom could bring and so the zinc atom leaves behind it these unnecessary electrons. every time a zinc atom leaves the plate it fails to take all its electrons with it. what leaves the zinc plate, therefore, to go into solution is really not a zinc atom but is a zinc ion; that is, it is the nucleus of a zinc atom and all except two of the planetary electrons. every time a zinc ion leaves the plate there are left behind two electrons. the plate doesn't want them for all the rest of its atoms have just the same number of protons as of electrons. where are they to go? we shall see in a minute. sometimes the zinc ions which have got into solution meet with sulphate ions and form zinc sulphate molecules. but if they do these molecules split up sooner or later into ions again. in the upper part of the liquid in the jar, therefore, there are sulphate ions which are negative and two kinds of positive ions, namely, the hydrogen ions and the zinc ions. before the zinc ions began to crowd in there were just enough hydrogen ions to go with the sulphate ions. as it is, the entrance of the zinc ions has increased the number of positive ions and now there are too many. some of the positive ions, therefore, and particularly the hydrogen ions, because the sulphate prefers to associate with the zinc ions, can't find enough playfellows and so go down in the jar. down in the bottom of the jar the hydrogen ions find more sulphate ions to play with, but that leaves the copper ions which used to play with these sulphate ions without any playmates. so the copper ions go still further down and join with the copper atoms of the copper plate. they haven't much right to do so, for you remember that they haven't their proper number of electrons. each copper ion lacks two electrons of being a copper atom. nevertheless they join the copper plate. the result is a plate of copper which has too few electrons. it needs two electrons for every copper ion which joins it. how about the zinc plate? you remember that it has two electrons more than it needs for every zinc ion which has left it. if only the extra electrons on the negative zinc plate could get around to the positive copper plate. they can if we connect a wire from one plate to the other. then the electrons from the zinc stream into the spaces between the atoms of the wire and push ahead of them the electrons which are wandering around in these spaces. at the other end an equal number of electrons leave the wire to satisfy the positive copper plate. so we have a stream of electrons in the wire, that is, a current of electricity and our battery is working. that's the sort of a battery i used to play with. if you understand it you can get the general idea of all batteries. let me express it in general terms. at the negative plate of a battery ions go into solution and electrons are left behind. at the other end of the battery positive ions are crowded out of solution and join the plate where they cause a scarcity of electrons; that is, make the plate positive. if a wire is connected between the two plates, electrons will stream through it from the negative plate to the positive; and this stream is a current of electricity. [illustration: pl. iii.--dry battery for use in audion circuits (courtesy of national carbon co., inc.). storage battery (courtesy of the electric storage battery co.).] letter the batteries in your radio set (this letter may be omitted on the first reading.) my dear young man: you will need several batteries when you come to set up your radio receiver but you won't use such clumsy affairs as the gravity cell which i described in my last letter. some of your batteries will be dry batteries of the size used in pocket flash lights. these are not really dry, for between the plates they are filled with a moist paste which is then sealed in with wax to keep it from drying out or from spilling. instead of zinc and copper these batteries use zinc and carbon. no glass jar is needed, for the zinc is formed into a jar shape. in this is placed the paste and in the center of the paste a rod or bar of carbon. the paste doesn't contain sulphuric acid, but instead has in it a stuff called sal ammoniac; that is, ammonium chloride. the battery, however, acts very much like the one i described in my last letter. ions of zinc leave the zinc and wander into the moist paste. these ions are positive, just as in the case of the gravity battery. the result is that the electrons which used to associate with a zinc ion to form a zinc atom are left in the zinc plate. that makes the zinc negative for it has more electrons than protons. the zinc ions take the place of the positive ions which are already in the paste. the positive ions which originally belonged with the paste, therefore, move along to the carbon rod and there get some electrons. taking electrons away from the carbon leaves it with too many protons; that is, leaves it positive. in the little flash light batteries, therefore, you will always find that the round carbon rod, which sticks out of the center, is positive and the zinc casing is negative. the trouble with the battery like the one i used to make is that the zinc plate wastes away. every time a zinc ion leaves it that means that the greater part of an atom is gone. then when the two electrons which were left behind get a chance to start along a copper wire toward the positive plate of the battery there goes the rest of the atom. after a while there is no more zinc plate. it is easy to see what has happened. all the zinc has gone into solution or been "eaten away" as most people say. dry batteries, however, don't stop working because the zinc gets used up, but because the active stuff in the paste, the ammonium chloride, is changed into something else. there's another kind of battery which you will need to use with your radio set; that is the storage battery. storage batteries can be used over and over again if they are charged between times and will last for a long time if properly cared for. then too, they can give a large current, that is, a big swift-moving stream of electrons. you will need that when you wish to heat the filament of the audion in your receiving set. the english call our storage batteries by the name "accumulators." i don't like that name at all, but i don't like our name for them nearly as well as i do the name "reversible batteries." nobody uses this last name because it's too late to change. nevertheless a storage battery is reversible, for it will work either way at an instant's notice. a storage battery is something like a boy's wagon on a hill side. it will run down hill but it can be pushed up again for another descent. you can use it to send a stream of electrons through a wire from its negative plate to its positive plate. then if you connect these plates to some other battery or to a generator, (that is, a dynamo) you can make a stream of electrons go in the other direction. when you have done so long enough the battery is charged again and ready to discharge. i am not going to tell you very much about the storage battery but you ought to know a little about it if you are to own and run one with your radio set. when it is all charged and ready to work, the negative plate is a lot of soft spongy lead held in place by a frame of harder lead. the positive plate is a lead frame with small squares which are filled with lead peroxide, as it is called. this is a substance with molecules formed of one lead atom and two oxygen atoms. why the chemists call it lead peroxide instead of just lead oxide i'll tell you some other time, but not in these letters. between the two plates is a wood separator to keep pieces of lead from falling down between and touching both plates. you know what would happen if a piece of metal touched both plates. there would be a short circuit, that is, a sort of a short cut across lots by which some of the electrons from the negative plate could get to the positive plate without going along the wires which we want them to travel. that's why there are separators. the two plates are in a jar of sulphuric acid solution. the sulphuric acid has molecules which split up in solution, as you remember, into hydrogen ions and the ions which we called "sulphate." in my gravity battery the sulphate ions used to coax the zinc ions away into the solution. in the storage battery on the other hand the sulphate ions can get to most of the lead atoms because the lead is so spongy. when they do, they form lead sulphate right where the lead atoms are. they don't really need whole lead atoms, because they have two more electrons than they deserve, so there are two extra electrons for every molecule of lead sulphate which is formed. that's why the spongy lead plate is negative. the lead sulphate won't dissolve, so it stays there on the plate as a whitish coating. now see what that means. what are the hydrogen ions going to do? as long as there was sulphuric acid in the water there was plenty of sulphate ions for them to associate with as often as they met; and they would meet pretty often. but if the sulphate ions get tied up with the lead of the plate there will be too many hydrogen ions left in the solution. now what are the hydrogen ions to do? they are going to get as far away from each other as they can, for they are nothing but protons; and protons don't like to associate. they only stayed around in the first place because there was always plenty of sulphate ions with whom they liked to play. when the hydrogen ions try to get away from each other they go to the other plate of the battery, and there they will get some electrons, if they have to steal in their turn. i won't try to tell you all that happens at the other plate. the hydrogen ions get the electrons which they need, but they get something more. they get some of the oxygen away from the plate and so form molecules of water. you remember that water molecules are made of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. meanwhile, the lead atoms, which have lost their oxygen companions, combine with some of the sulphate ions which are in that neighborhood. during the mix-up electrons are carried away from the plate and that leaves it positive. the result of all this is a little lead sulphate on each plate, a negative plate where the spongy lead was, and a positive plate where the lead peroxide was. notice very carefully that i said "a little lead sulphate on each plate." the sort of thing i have been describing doesn't go on very long. if it did the battery would run down inside itself and then when we came to start our automobile we would have to get out and crank. how long does it go on? answer another question first. so far we haven't connected any wire between the two plates of the battery, and so none of the electrons on the negative plate have any way of getting around to the positive plate where electrons are badly needed. every time a negative sulphate ion combines with the spongy lead of the negative plate there are two more electrons added to that plate. you know how well electrons like each other. do they let the sulphate ions keep giving that plate more electrons? there is the other question; and the answer is that they do not. every electron that is added to that plate makes it just so much harder for another sulphate ion to get near enough to do business at all. that's why after a few extra electrons have accumulated on the spongy lead plate the actions which i was describing come to a stop. do they ever begin again? they do just as soon as there is any reduction in the number of electrons which are hopping around in the negative plate trying to keep out of each other's way. when we connect a wire between the plates we let some of these extra electrons of the negative plate pass along to the positive plate where they will be welcome. and the moment a couple of them start off on that errand along comes another sulphate ion in the solution and lands two more electrons on the plate. that's how the battery keeps on discharging. we mustn't let it get too much discharged for the lead sulphate is not soluble, as i just told you, and it will coat up that plate until there isn't much chance of getting the process to reverse. that's why we are so careful not to let the discharge process go on too long before we reverse it and charge. that's why, when the car battery has been used pretty hard to start the car, i like to run quite a while to let the generator charge the battery again. when the battery charges, the process reverses and we get spongy lead on the negative plate and lead peroxide on the positive plate. you've learned enough for one day. write me your questions and i'll answer and then go on in my next letter to tell how the audion works. you know about conduction of electricity in wires; that is, about the electron stream, and about batteries which can cause the stream. now you are ready for the most wonderful little device known to science: the audion. letter getting electrons from a heated wire dear son: i was pleased to get your letter and its questions. yes, a proton is a speck of electricity of the kind we call positive and an electron is of the kind we call negative. you might remember this simple law; "like kinds of electricity repel, and unlike attract." the word ion[ ] is used to describe any atom, or part of a molecule which can travel by itself and has more or less than its proper number of electrons. by proper number of electrons i mean proper for the number of protons which it has. if an ion has more electrons than protons it is negative; if the inequality is the other way around it is positive. an atom or molecule has neither more nor less protons than electrons. it is neutral or "uncharged," as we say. no, not every substance which will dissolve will dissociate or split up into positive and negative ions. the salt which you eat will, but the sugar will not. if you want a name for those substances which will dissociate in solution, call them "electrolytes." to make a battery we must always use an electrolyte. yes, it is hard to think of a smooth piece of metal or a wire as full of holes. even in the densest solids like lead the atoms are quite far apart and there are large spaces between the nuclei and the planetary electrons of each atom. i hope this clears up the questions in your mind for i want to get along to the vacuum tube. by a vacuum we mean a space which has very few atoms or molecules in it, just as few as we can possibly get, with the best methods of pumping and exhausting. for the present let's suppose that we can get all the gas molecules, that is, all the air, out of a little glass bulb. the audion is a glass bulb like an electric light bulb which has in it a thread, or filament, of metal. the ends of this filament extend out through the glass so that we may connect a battery to them and pass a current of electricity through the wire. if we do so the wire gets hot. what do we mean when we say "the wire gets hot?" we mean that it feels hot. it heats the glass bulb and we can feel it. but what do we mean in words of electrons and atoms? to answer this we must start back a little way. in every bit of matter in our world the atoms and molecules are in very rapid motion. in gases they can move anywhere; and do. that's why odors travel so fast. in liquids most of the molecules or atoms have to do their moving without getting out of the dish or above the surface. not all of them stay in, however, for some are always getting away from the liquid and going out into the air above. that is why a dish of water will dry up so quickly. the faster the molecules are going the better chance they have of jumping clear away from the water like fish jumping in the lake at sundown. heating the liquid makes its molecules move faster and so more of them are able to jump clear of the rest of the liquid. that's why when we come in wet we hang our clothes where they will get warm. the water in them evaporates more quickly when it is heated because all we mean by "heating" is speeding up the molecules. in a solid body the molecules can't get very far away from where they start but they keep moving back and forth and around and around. the hotter the body is, the faster are its molecules moving. generally they move a little farther when the body is hot than when it is cold. that means they must have a little more room and that is why a body is larger when hot than when cold. it expands with heating because its molecules are moving more rapidly and slightly farther. when a wire is heated its molecules and atoms are hurried up and they dash back and forth faster than before. now you know that a wire, like the filament of a lamp, gets hot when the "electricity is turned on," that is, when there is a stream of electrons passing through it. why does it get hot? because when the electrons stream through it they bump and jostle their way along like rude boys on a crowded sidewalk. the atoms have to step a bit more lively to keep out of the way. these more rapid motions of the atoms we recognize by the wire growing hotter. that is why an electric current heats a wire through which it is flowing. now what happens to the electrons, the rude boys who are dodging their way along the sidewalk? some of them are going so fast and so carelessly that they will have to dodge out into the gutter and off the sidewalk entirely. the more boys that are rushing along and the faster they are going the more of them will be turned aside and plunge off the sidewalks. the greater and faster the stream of electrons, that is the more current which is flowing through the wire, the more electrons will be "emitted," that is, thrown out of the wire. if you could watch them you would see them shooting out of the wire, here, there, and all along its length, and going in every direction. the number which shoot out each second isn't very large until they have stirred things up so that the wire is just about red hot. what becomes of them? sometimes they don't get very far away from the wire and so come back inside again. they scoot off the sidewalk and on again just as boys do in dodging their way along. some of them start away as if they were going for good. if the wire is in a vacuum tube, as it is in the case of the audion, they can't get very far away. of course there is lots of room; but they are going so fast that they need more room just as older boys who run fast need a larger play ground than do the little tots. by and by there gets to be so many of them outside that they have to dodge each other and some of them are always dodging back into the wire while new electrons are shooting out from it. when there are just as many electrons dodging back into the wire each second as are being emitted from it the vacuum in the tube has all the electrons it can hold. we might say it is "saturated" with electrons, which means, in slang, "full up." if any more electrons are to get out of the filament just as many others which are already outside have to go back inside. or else they have got to be taken away somewhere else. what i have just told you about electrons getting away from a heated wire is very much like what happens when a liquid is heated. the molecules of the liquid get away from the surface. if we cover a dish of liquid which is being heated the liquid molecules can't get far away and very soon the space between the surface of the liquid and the cover gets saturated with them. then every time another molecule escapes from the surface of the liquid there must be some molecule which goes back into the liquid. there is then just as much condensation back into liquid as there is evaporation from it. that's why in cooking they put covers over the vessels when they don't want the liquid all to "boil away." sometimes we speak of the vacuum tube in the same words we would use in describing evaporation of a liquid. the molecules of the liquid which have escaped form what is called a "vapor" of the liquid. as you know there is usually considerable water vapor in the air. we say then that electrons are "boiled out" of the filament and that there is a "vapor of electrons" in the tube. that is enough for this letter. next time i shall tell you how use is made of these electrons which have been boiled out and are free in the space around the filament. [footnote : if the reader has omitted letters and he should omit this paragraph and the next.] letter the audion dear son: in my last letter i told how electrons are boiled out of a heated filament. the hotter the filament the more electrons are emitted each second. if the temperature is kept steady, or constant as we say, then there are emitted each second just the same number of electrons. when the filament is enclosed in a vessel or glass bulb these electrons which get free from it cannot go very far away. some of them, therefore, have to come back to the filament and the number which returns each second is just equal to the number which is leaving. you realize that this is what is happening inside an ordinary electric light bulb when its filament is being heated. [illustration: fig ] an ordinary electric light bulb, however, is not an audion although it is like one in the emission of electrons from its filament. that reminds me that last night as i was waiting for a train i picked up one of the radio supplements which so many newspapers are now running. there was a column of enquiries. one letter told how its writer had tried to use an ordinary electric light bulb to receive radio signals. he had plenty of electrons in it but no way to control them and make their motions useful. in an audion besides the filament there are two other things. one is a little sheet or plate of metal with a connecting wire leading out through the glass walls and the other is a little wire screen shaped like a gridiron and so called a "grid." it also has a connecting wire leading through the glass. fig. shows an audion. it will be most convenient, however, to represent an audion as in fig. . there you see the filament, _f_, with its two terminals brought out from the tube, the plate, _p_, and between these the grid, _g_. [illustration: fig ] these three parts of the tube are sometimes called "elements." usually, however, they are called "electrodes" and that is why the audion is spoken of as the "three-electrode vacuum tube." an electrode is what we call any piece of metal or wire which is so placed as to let us get at electrons (or ions) to control their motions. let us see how it does so. to start with, we shall forget the grid and think of a tube with only a filament and a plate in it--a two-electrode tube. we shall represent it as in fig. and show the battery which heats the filament by some lines as at _a_. in this way of representing a battery each cell is represented by a short heavy line and a longer lighter line. the heavy line stands for the negative plate and the longer line for the positive plate. we shall call the battery which heats the filament the "filament battery" or sometimes the "a-battery." as you see, it is formed by several battery cells connected in series. [illustration: fig ] sometime later i may tell you how to connect battery cells together and why. for the present all you need to remember is that two batteries are in series if the positive plate of one is connected to the negative plate of the other. if the batteries are alike they will pull an electron just twice as hard as either could alone. [illustration: pl. iv.--radiotron (courtesy of radio corporation of america).] to heat the filament of an audion, such as you will probably use in your set, will require three storage-battery cells, like the one i described in my fourth letter, all connected in series. we generally use storage batteries of about the same size as those in the automobile. if you will look at the automobile battery you will see that it is made of three cells connected in series. that battery would do very well for the filament circuit. by the way, do you know what a "circuit" is? the word comes from the same latin word as our word "circus." the romans were very fond of chariot racing at their circuses and built race tracks around which the chariots could go. a circuit, therefore, is a path or track around which something can race; and an electrical circuit is a path around which electrons can race. the filament, the a-battery and the connecting wires of fig. form a circuit. [illustration: fig ] let us imagine another battery formed by several cells in series which we shall connect to the tube as in fig. . all the positive and negative terminals of these batteries are connected in pairs, the positive of one cell to the negative of the next, except for one positive and one negative. the remaining positive terminal is the positive terminal of the battery which we are making by this series connection. we then connect this positive terminal to the plate and the negative terminal to the filament as shown in the figure. this new battery we shall call the "plate battery" or the "b-battery." now what's going to happen? the b-battery will want to take in electrons at its positive terminal and to send them out at its negative terminal. the positive is connected to the plate in the vacuum tube of the figure and so draws some of the electrons of the plate away from it. where do these electrons come from? they used to belong to the atoms of the plate but they were out playing in the space between the atoms, so that they came right along when the battery called them. that leaves the plate with less than its proper number of electrons; that is, leaves it positive. so the plate immediately draws to itself some of the electrons which are dodging about in the vacuum around it. do you remember what was happening in the tube? the filament was steadily going on emitting electrons although there were already in the tube so many electrons that just as many crowded back into the filament each second as the filament sent out. the filament was neither gaining nor losing electrons, although it was busy sending them out and welcoming them home again. when the b-battery gets to work all this is changed. the b-battery attracts electrons to the plate and so reduces the crowd in the tube. then there are not as many electrons crowding back into the filament as there were before and so the filament loses more than it gets back. suppose that, before the b-battery was connected to the plate, each tiny length of the filament was emitting electrons each second but was getting back each second. there was no net change. now, suppose that the b-battery takes away of these each second. then only get back to the filament and there is a net loss from the filament of . each second this tiny length of filament sends into the vacuum electrons which are taken out at the plate. from each little bit of filament there is a stream of electrons to the plate. millions of electrons, therefore, stream across from filament to plate. that is, there is a current of electricity between filament and plate and this current continues to flow as long as the a-battery and the b-battery do their work. the negative terminal of the b-battery is connected to the filament. every time this battery pulls an electron from the plate its negative terminal shoves one out to the filament. you know from my third and fourth letters that electrons are carried through a battery from its positive to its negative terminal. you see, then, that there is the same stream of electrons through the b-battery as there is through the vacuum between filament and plate. this same stream passes also through the wires which connect the battery to the tube. the path followed by the stream of electrons includes the wires, the vacuum and the battery in series. we call this path the "plate circuit." we can connect a telephone receiver, or a current-measuring instrument, or any thing we wish which will pass a stream of electrons, so as to let this same stream of electrons pass through it also. all we have to do is to connect the instrument in series with the other parts of the plate circuit. i'll show you how in a minute, but just now i want you to understand that we have a stream of electrons, for i want to tell you how it may be controlled. suppose we use another battery and connect it between the grid and the filament so as to make the grid positive. that would mean connecting the positive terminal of the battery to the grid and the negative to the filament as shown by the c-battery of fig. . this figure also shows a current-measuring instrument in the plate circuit. what effect is this c-battery, or grid-battery, going to have on the current in the _plate circuit_? making the grid positive makes it want electrons. it will therefore act just as we saw that the plate did and pull electrons across the vacuum towards itself. [illustration: fig ] what happens then is something like this: electrons are freed at the filament; the plate and the grid both call them and they start off in a rush. some of them are stopped by the wires of the grid but most of them go on by to the plate. the grid is mostly open space, you know, and the electrons move as fast as lightning. they are going too fast in the general direction of the grid to stop and look for its few and small wires. when the grid is positive the grid helps the plate to call electrons away from the filament. making the grid positive, therefore, increases the stream of electrons _between filament and plate_; that is, increases the current in the plate circuit. we could get the same effect so far as concerns an increased plate current by using more batteries in series in the plate circuit so as to pull harder. but the grid is so close to the filament that a single battery cell in the grid circuit can call electrons so strongly that it would take several extra battery cells in the plate circuit to produce the same effect. [illustration: fig ] if we reverse the grid battery, as in fig. , so as to make the grid negative, then, instead of attracting electrons the grid repels them. nowhere near as many electrons will stream across to the plate when the grid says, "no, go back." the grid is in a strategic position and what it says has a great effect. when there is no battery connected to the grid it has no possibility of influencing the electron stream which the plate is attracting to itself. we say, then, that the grid is uncharged or is at "zero potential," meaning that it is zero or nothing in possibility. but when the grid is charged, no matter how little, it makes a change in the plate current. when the grid says "come on," even though very softly, it has as much effect on the electrons as if the plate shouted at them, and a lot of extra electrons rush for the plate. but when the grid whispers "go back," many electrons which would otherwise have gone streaking off to the plate crowd back toward the filament. that's how the audion works. there is an electron stream and a wonderfully sensitive way of controlling the stream. letter how to measure an electron stream (this letter may be omitted on the first reading.) dear youth: if we are to talk about the audion and how its grid controls the current in the plate circuit we must know something of how to measure currents. an electric current is a stream of electrons. we measure it by finding the rate at which electrons are traveling along through the circuit. what do we mean by the word "rate?" you know what it means when a speedometer says twenty miles an hour. if the car should keep going just as it was doing at the instant you looked at the speedometer it would go twenty miles in the next hour. its rate is twenty miles an hour even though it runs into a smash the next minute and never goes anywhere again except to the junk heap. it's the same when we talk of electric currents. we say there is a current of such and such a number of electrons a second going by each point in the circuit. we don't mean that the current isn't going to change, for it may get larger or smaller, but we do mean that if the stream of electrons keeps going just as it is there will be such and such a number of electrons pass by in the next second. in most of the electrical circuits with which you will deal you will find that electrons must be passing along in the circuit at a most amazing rate if there is to be any appreciable effect. when you turn on the -watt light at your desk you start them going through the filament of the lamp at the rate of about two and a half billion billion each second. you have stood on the sidewalk in the city and watched the people stream past you. just suppose you could stand beside that narrow little sidewalk which the filament offers to the electrons and count them as they go by. we don't try to count them although we do to-day know about how many go by in a second if the current is steady. if some one asks you how old you are you don't say "about five hundred million seconds"; you tell him in years. when some one asks how large a current is flowing in a wire we don't tell him six billion billion electrons each second; we tell him "one ampere." just as we use years as the units in which to count up time so we use amperes as the units in which to count up streams of electrons. when a wire is carrying a current of one ampere the electrons are streaming through it at the rate of about , , , , , , a second. don't try to remember this number but do remember that an ampere is a unit in which we measure currents just as a year is a unit in which we measure time. an ampere is a unit in which we measure streams of electrons just as "miles per hour" is a unit in which we measure the speed of trains or automobiles. if you wanted to find the weight of something you would take a scale and weigh it, wouldn't you? you might take that spring balance which hangs out in the kitchen. but if the spring balance said the thing weighed five pounds how would you know if it was right? of course you might take what ever it was down town and weigh it on some other scales but how would you know those scales gave correct weight? the only way to find out would be to try the scales with weights which you were sure were right and see if the readings on the scale correspond to the known weights. then you could trust it to tell you the weight of something else. that's the way scales are tested. in fact that's the way that the makers know how to mark them in the first place. they put on known weights and marked the lines and figures which you see. what they did was called "calibrating" the scale. you could make a scale for yourself if you wished, but if it was to be reliable you would have to find the places for the markings by applying known weights, that is, by calibration. how would you know that the weights you used to calibrate your scale were really what you thought them to be? you would have to find some place where they had a weight that everybody would agree was correct and then compare your weight with that. you might, for example, send your pound weight to the bureau of standards in washington and for a small payment have the bureau compare it with the pound which it keeps as a standard. that is easy where one is interested in a pound. but it is a little different when one is interested in an ampere. you can't make an ampere out of a piece of platinum as you can a standard pound weight. an ampere is a stream of electrons at about the rate of six billion billion a second. no one could ever count anywhere near that many, and yet everybody who is concerned with electricity wants to be able to measure currents in amperes. how is it done? first there is made an instrument which will have something in it to move when electrons are flowing through the instrument. we want a meter for the flow of electrons. in the basement we have a meter for the flow of gas and another for the flow of water. each of these has some part which will move when the water or the gas passes through. but they are both arranged with little gear wheels so as to keep track of all the water or gas which has flowed through; they won't tell the rate at which the gas or water is flowing. they are like the odometer on the car which gives the "trip mileage" or the "total mileage." we want a meter like the speedometer which will indicate at each instant just how fast the electrons are streaming through it. there are several kinds of meters but i shall not try to tell you now of more than one. the simplest to understand is called a "hot-wire meter." you already know that an electron stream heats a wire. suppose a piece of fine wire is fastened at the two ends and that there are binding posts also fastened to these ends of the wire so that the wire may be made part of the circuit where we want to know the electron stream. then the same stream of electrons will flow through the fine wire as through the other parts of the circuit. because the wire is fine it acts like a very narrow sidewalk for the stream of electrons and they have to bump and jostle pretty hard to get through. that's why the wire gets heated. you know that a heated wire expands. this wire expands. it grows longer and because it is held firmly at the ends it must bow out at the center. the bigger the rate of flow of electrons the hotter it gets; and the hotter it gets the more it bows out. at the center we might fasten one end--the short end--of a little lever. a small motion of this short end of the lever will mean a large motion of the other end, just like a "teeter board" when one end is longer than the other; the child on the long end travels further than the child on the short end. the lever magnifies the motion of the center of the hot wire part of our meter so that we can see it easier. [illustration: fig ] there are several ways to make such a meter. the one shown in fig. is as easy to understand as any. we shape the long end of the lever like a pointer. then the hotter the wire the farther the pointer moves. if we could put this meter in an electric circuit where we knew one ampere was flowing we could put a numeral " " opposite where the pointer stood. then if we could increase the current until there were two amperes flowing through the meter we could mark that position of the pointer " " and so on. that's the way we would calibrate the meter. after we had done so we would call it an "ammeter" because it measures amperes. years ago people would have called it an "amperemeter" but no one who is up-to-date would call it so to-day. [illustration: fig ] if we had a very carefully made ammeter we would send it to the bureau of standards to be calibrated. at the bureau they have a number of meters which they know are correct in their readings. they would put one of their meters and ours into the same circuit so that both carry the same stream of electrons as in fig. . then whatever the reading was on their meter could be marked opposite the pointer on ours. now i want to tell you how the physicists at the bureau know what is an ampere. several years ago there was a meeting or congress of physicists and electrical engineers from all over the world who discussed what they thought should be the unit in which to measure current. they decided just what they would call an ampere and then all the countries from which they came passed laws saying that an ampere should be what these scientists had recommended. to-day, therefore, an ampere is defined by law. to tell when an ampere of current is flowing requires the use of two silver plates and a solution of silver nitrate. silver nitrate has molecules made up of one atom of silver combined with a group of atoms called "nitrate." you remember that the molecule of copper sulphate, discussed in our third letter, was formed by a copper atom and a group called sulphate. nitrate is another group something like sulphate for it has oxygen atoms in it, but it has three instead of four, and instead of a sulphur atom there is an atom of nitrogen. when silver nitrate molecules go into solution they break up into ions just as copper sulphate does. one ion is a silver atom which has lost one electron. this electron was stolen from it by the nitrate part of the molecule when they dissociated. the nitrate ion, therefore, is formed by a nitrogen atom, three oxygen atoms, and one extra electron. if we put two plates of silver into such a solution nothing will happen until we connect a battery to the plates. then the battery takes electrons away from one plate and gives electrons to the other. some of the atoms in the plate which the battery is robbing of electrons are just like the silver ions which are moving around in the solution. that's why they can go out into the solution and play with the nitrate ions each of which has an extra electron which it stole from some silver atom. but the moment silver ions leave their plate we have more silver ions in the solution than we do sulphate ions. the only thing that can happen is for some of the silver ions to get out of the solution. they aren't going back to the positive silver plate from which they just came. they go on toward the negative plate where the battery is sending an electron for every one which it takes away from the positive plate. there start off towards the negative plate, not only the ions which just came from the positive plate, but all the ions that are in the solution. the first one to arrive gets an electron but it can't take it away from the silver plate. and why should it? as soon as it has got this electron it is again a normal silver atom. so it stays with the other atoms in the silver plate. that's what happens right along. for every atom which is lost from the positive plate there is one added to the negative plate. the silver of the positive plate gradually wastes away and the negative plate gradually gets an extra coating of silver. every time the battery takes an electron away from the positive plate and gives it to the negative plate there is added to the negative plate an atom of silver. if the negative plate is weighed before the battery is connected and again after the battery is disconnected we can tell how much silver has been added to it. suppose the current has been perfectly steady, that is, the same number of electrons streaming through the circuit each second. then if we know how long the current has been running we can tell how much silver has been deposited each second. the law says that if silver is being deposited at the rate of . gram each second then the current is one ampere. that's a small amount of silver, only about a thousandth part of a gram, and you know that it takes . grams to make an ounce. it's a very small amount of silver but it's an enormous number of atoms. how many? six billion billion, of course, for there is deposited one atom for each electron in the stream. in my next letter i'll tell you how we measure the pull which batteries can give to electrons, and then we shall be ready to go on with more about the audion. letter electron-moving-forces (this letter may be omitted on the first reading.) dear young man: i trust you have a fairly good idea that an ampere means a stream of electrons at a certain definite rate and hence that a current of say amperes means a stream with three times as many electrons passing along each second. in the third and fourth letters you found out why a battery drives electrons around a conducting circuit. you also found that there are several different kinds of batteries. batteries differ in their abilities to drive electrons and it is therefore convenient to have some way of comparing them. we do this by measuring the electron-moving-force or "electromotive force" which each battery can exert. to express electromotive force and give the results of our measurements we must have some unit. the unit we use is called the "volt." the volt is defined by law and is based on the suggestions of the same body of scientists who recommended the ampere of our last letter. they defined it by telling how to make a particular kind of battery and then saying that this battery had an electromotive force of a certain number of volts. one can buy such standard batteries, or standard cells as they are called, or he can make them for himself. to be sure that they are just right he can then send them to the bureau of standards and have them compared with the standard cells which the bureau has. i don't propose to tell you much about standard cells for you won't have to use them until you come to study physics in real earnest. they are not good for ordinary purposes because the moment they go to work driving electrons the conditions inside them change so their electromotive force is changed. they are delicate little affairs and are useful only as standards with which to compare other batteries. and even as standard batteries they must be used in such a way that they are not required to drive any electrons. [illustration: fig ] let's see how it can be done. suppose two boys sit opposite each other on the floor and brace their feet together. then with their hands they take hold of a stick and pull in opposite directions. if both have the same stick-motive-force the stick will not move. now suppose we connect the negative feet--i mean negative terminals--of two batteries together as in fig. . then we connect their positive terminals together by a wire. in the wire there will be lots of free electrons ready to go to the positive plate of the battery which pulls the harder. if the batteries are equal in electromotive force these electrons will stay right where they are. there will be no stream of electrons and yet we'll be using one of the batteries to compare with the other. that is all right, you think, but what are we to do when the batteries are not just equal in e. m. f.? (e. m. f. is code for electromotive force). i'll tell you, because the telling includes some other ideas which will be valuable in your later reading. [illustration: fig ] suppose we take batteries which aren't going to be injured by being made to work--storage batteries will do nicely--and connect them in series as in fig. . when batteries are in series they act like a single stronger battery, one whose e. m. f. is the sum of the e. m. f.'s of the separate batteries. connect these batteries to a long fine wire as in fig. . there is a stream of electrons along this wire. next connect the negative terminal of the standard cell to the negative terminal of the storage batteries, that is, brace their feet against each other. then connect a wire to the positive terminal of the standard cell. this wire acts just like a long arm sticking out from the positive plate of this cell. [illustration: fig ] touch the end of the wire, which is _p_ of fig. , to some point as _a_ on the fine wire. now what do we have? right at _a_, of course, there are some free electrons and they hear the calls of both batteries. if the standard battery, _s_ of the figure, calls the stronger they go to it. in that case move the end _p_ nearer the positive plate of the battery _b_, so that it will have a chance to exert a stronger pull. suppose we try at _c_ and find the battery _b_ is there the stronger. then we can move back to some point, say _b_, where the pulls are equal. to make a test like this we put a sensitive current-measuring instrument in the wire which leads from the positive terminal of the standard cell. we also use a long fine wire so that there can never be much of an electron stream anyway. when the pulls are equal there will be no current through this instrument. as soon as we find out where the proper setting is we can replace _s_ by some other battery, say _x_, which we wish to compare with _s_. we find the setting for that battery in the same way as we just did for _s_. suppose it is at _d_ in fig. while the setting for _s_ was at _b_. we can see at once that _x_ is stronger than _s_. the question, however, is how much stronger. perhaps it would be better to try to answer this question by talking about e. m. f.'s. it isn't fair to speak only of the positive plate which calls, we must speak also of the negative plate which is shooing electrons away from itself. the idea of e. m. f. takes care of both these actions. the steady stream of electrons in the fine wire is due to the e. m. f. of the battery _b_, that is to the pull of the positive terminal and the shove of the negative. if the wire is uniform, that is the same throughout its length, then each inch of it requires just as much e. m. f. as any other inch. two inches require twice the e. m. f. which one inch requires. we know how much e. m. f. it takes to keep the electron stream going in the part of the wire from _n_ to _b_. it takes just the e. m. f. of the standard cell, _s_, because when that had its feet braced at _n_ it pulled just as hard at _b_ as did the big battery _b_. suppose the distance _n_ to _d_ (usually written _nd_) is twice as great as that from _n_ to _b_ (_nb_). that means that battery _x_ has twice the e. m. f. of battery _s_. you remember that _x_ could exert the same force through the length of wire _nd_, as could the large battery. that is twice what cell _s_ can do. therefore if we know how many volts to call the e. m. f. of the standard cell we can say that _x_ has an e. m. f. of twice as many volts. if we measured dry batteries this way we should find that they each had an e. m. f. of about . volts. a storage battery would be found to have about . volts when fully charged and perhaps as low as . volts when we had run it for a while. that is the way in which to compare batteries and to measure their e. m. f.'s, but you see it takes a lot of time. it is easier to use a "voltmeter" which is an instrument for measuring e. m. f.'s. here is how one could be made. first there is made a current-measuring instrument which is quite sensitive, so that its pointer will show a deflection when only a very small stream of electrons is passing through the instrument. we could make one in the same way as we made the ammeter of the last letter but there are other better ways of which i'll tell you later. then we connect a good deal of fine wire in series with the instrument for a reason which i'll tell you in a minute. the next and last step is to calibrate. we know how many volts of e. m. f. are required to keep going the electron stream between _n_ and _b_--we know that from the e. m. f. of our standard cell. suppose then that we connect this new instrument, which we have just made, to the wire at _n_ and _b_ as in fig. . some of the electrons at _n_ which are so anxious to get away from the negative plate of battery _b_ can now travel as far as _b_ through the wire of the new instrument. they do so and the pointer swings around to some new position. opposite that we mark the number of volts which the standard battery told us there was between _n_ and _b_. [illustration: fig ] if we move the end of the wire from _b_ to _d_ the pointer will take a new position. opposite this we mark twice the number of volts of the standard cell. we can run it to a point _e_ where the distance _ne_ is one-half _nb_, and mark our scale with half the number of volts of the standard cell, and so on for other positions along the wire. that's the way we calibrate a sensitive current-measuring instrument (with its added wire, of course) so that it will read volts. it is now a voltmeter. if we connect a voltmeter to the battery _x_ as in fig. the pointer will tell us the number of volts in the e. m. f. of _x_, for the pointer will take the same position as it did when the voltmeter was connected between _n_ and _d_. there is only one thing to watch out for in all this. we must be careful that the voltmeter is so made that it won't offer too easy a path for electrons to follow. we only want to find how hard a battery can pull an electron, for that is what we mean by e. m. f. of course, we must let a small stream of electrons flow through the voltmeter so as to make the pointer move. that is why voltmeters of this kind are made out of a long piece of fine wire or else have a coil of fine wire in series with the current-measuring part. the fine wire makes a long and narrow path for the electrons and so there can be only a small stream. usually we describe this condition by saying that a voltmeter has a high resistance. [illustration: fig ] fine wires offer more resistance to electron streams than do heavy wires of the same length. if a wire is the same diameter all along, the longer the length of it which we use the greater is the resistance which is offered to an electron stream. you will need to know how to describe the resistance of a wire or of any part of an electric circuit. to do so you tell how many "ohms" of resistance it has. the ohm is the unit in which we measure the resistance of a circuit to an electron stream. i can show you what an ohm is if i tell you a simple way to measure a resistance. suppose you have a wire or coil of wire and want to know its resistance. connect it in series with a battery and an ammeter as shown in fig. . the same electron stream passes through all parts of this circuit and the ammeter tells us what this stream is in amperes. now connect a voltmeter to the two ends of the coil as shown in the figure. the voltmeter tells in volts how much e. m. f. is being applied to force the current through the coil. divide the number of volts by the number of amperes and the quotient (answer) is the number of ohms of resistance in the coil. [illustration: fig ] suppose the ammeter shows a current of one ampere and the voltmeter an e. m. f. of one volt. then dividing by gives . that means that the coil has a resistance of one ohm. it also means one ohm is such a resistance that one volt will send through it a current of one ampere. you can get lots of meaning out of this. for example, it means also that one volt will send a current of one ampere through a resistance of one ohm. how many ohms would the coil have if it took volts to send amperes through it. solution: divide by and you get . . therefore the coil would have a resistance of . ohms. try another. if a coil of resistance three ohms is carrying two amperes what is the voltage across the terminals of the coil? for ohm it would take volt to give a current of ampere, wouldn't it? for ohms it takes three times as much to give one ampere. to give twice this current would take twice volts. that is, amperes in ohms requires x volts. here's one for you to try by yourself. if an e. m. f. of volts is sending current through a resistance of ohms, how much current is flowing? notice that i told the number of ohms and the number of volts, what are you going to tell? don't tell just the number; tell how many and what. letter the audion-characteristic my dear young student: although there is much in letters and which it is well to learn and to think about, there are only three of the ideas which you must have firmly grasped to get the most out of this letter which i am now going to write you about the audion. first: electric currents are streams of electrons. we measure currents in amperes. to measure a current we may connect into the circuit an ammeter. second: electrons move in a circuit when there is an electron-moving-force, that is an electromotive force or e. m. f. we measure e. m. f.'s in volts. to measure an e. m. f. we connect a voltmeter to the two points between which the e. m. f. is active. third: what current any particular e. m. f. will cause depends upon the circuit in which it is active. circuits differ in the resistance which they offer to e. m. f.'s. for any particular e. m. f. (that is for any given e. m. f.) the resulting current will be smaller the greater the resistance of the circuit. we measure resistance in ohms. to measure it we find the quotient of the number of volts applied to the circuit by the number of amperes which flow. in my sixth letter i told you something of how the audion works. it would be worth while to read again that letter. you remember that the current in the plate circuit can be controlled by the e. m. f. which is applied to the grid circuit. there is a relationship between the plate current and the grid voltage which is peculiar or characteristic to the tube. so we call such a relationship "a characteristic." let us see how it may be found and what it will be. connect an ammeter in the plate- or b-circuit, of the tube so as to measure the plate-circuit current. you will find that almost all books use the letter "_i_" to stand for current. the reason is that scientists used to speak of the "intensity of an electric current" so that "_i_" really stands for intensity. we use _i_ to stand for something more than the word "current." it is our symbol for whatever an ammeter would read, that is for the amount of current. [illustration: fig ] another convenience in symbols is this: we shall frequently want to speak of the currents in several different circuits. it saves time to use another letter along with the letter _i_ to show the circuit to which we refer. for example, we are going to talk about the current in the b-circuit of the audion, so we call that current _i_{b}_. we write the letter _b_ below the line on which _i_ stands. that is why we say the _b_ is subscript, meaning "written below." when you are reading to yourself be sure to read _i_{b}_ as "eye-bee" or else as "eye-subscript-bee." _i_{b}_ therefore will stand for the number of amperes in the plate circuit of the audion. in the same way _i_{a}_ would stand for the current in the filament circuit. we are going to talk about e. m. f.'s also. the letter "_e_" stands for the number of volts of e. m. f. in a circuit. in the filament circuit the battery has _e_{a}_ volts. in the plate circuit the e. m. f. is _e_{b}_ volts. if we put a battery in the grid circuit we can let _e_{c}_ represent the number of volts applied to the grid-filament or c-circuit. the characteristic relation which we are after is one between grid voltage, that is _e_{c}_, and plate current, that is _i_{b}_. so we call it the _e_{c}_--_i_{b}_ characteristic. the dash between the letters is not a subtraction sign but merely a dash to separate the letters. now we'll find the "ee-see-eye-bee" characteristic. connect some small dry cells in series for use in the grid circuit. then connect the filament to the middle cell as in fig. . take the wire which comes from the grid and put a battery clip on it, then you can connect the grid anywhere you want along this series of batteries. see fig. . in the figure this movable clip is represented by an arrow head. you can see that if it is at _a_ the battery will make the grid positive. if it is moved to _b_ the grid will be more positive. on the other hand if the clip is at _o_ there will be no e. m. f. applied to the grid. if it is at _c_ the grid will be made negative. between grid and filament there is placed a voltmeter which will tell how much e. m. f. is applied to the grid, that is, tell the value of _e_{c}_, for any position whatever of the clip. we shall start with the filament heated to a deep red. the manufacturers of the audion tell the purchaser what current should flow through the filament so that there will be the proper emission of electrons. there are easy ways of finding out for one's self but we shall not stop to describe them. the makers also tell how many volts to apply to the plate, that is what value _e_{b}_ should have. we could find this out also for ourselves but we shall not stop to do so. [illustration: fig ] now we set the battery clip so that there is no voltage applied to the grid; that is, we start with _e_{c}_ equal to zero. then we read the ammeter in the plate circuit to find the value of _i_{b}_ which corresponds to this condition of the grid. next we move the clip so as to make the grid as positive as one battery will make it, that is we move the clip to _a_ in fig. . we now have a different value of _e_{c}_ and will find a different value of _i_{b}_ when we read the ammeter. next move the clip to apply two batteries to the grid. we get a new pair of values for _e_{c}_ and _i_{b}_, getting _e_{c}_ from the voltmeter and _i_{b}_ from the ammeter. as we continue in this way, increasing _e_{c}_, we find that the current _i_{b}_ increases for a while and then after we have reached a certain value of _e_{c}_ the current _i_{b}_ stops increasing. adding more batteries and making the grid more positive doesn't have any effect on the plate current. [illustration: fig ] before i tell you why this happens i want to show you how to make a picture of the pairs of values of _e_{c}_ and _i_{b}_ which we have been reading on the voltmeter and ammeter. imagine a city where all the streets are at right angles and the north and south streets are called streets and numbered while the east and west thorofares are called avenues. i'll draw the map as in fig. . right through the center of the city goes main street. but the people who laid out the roads were mathematicians and instead of calling it main street they called it "zero street." the first street east of zero st. we should have called "east first street" but they called it "positive st." and the next beyond "positive st.," and so on. west of the main street they called the first street "negative st." and so on. when they came to name the avenues they were just as precise and mathematical. they called the main avenue "zero ave." and those north of it "positive ave.," "positive ave." and so on. of course, the avenues south of zero ave. they called negative. the town council went almost crazy on the subject of numbering; they numbered everything. the silent policeman which stood at the corner of "positive st." and "positive ave." was marked that way. half way between positive st. and positive st. there was a garage which set back about two-tenths of a block from positive ave. the council numbered it and called it "positive . st. and positive . ave." most of the people spoke of it as "plus . st. and plus . ave." sometime later there was an election in the city and a new council was elected. the members were mostly young electricians and the new highway commissioner was a radio enthusiast. at the first meeting the council changed the names of all the avenues to "mil-amperes"[ ] and of all the streets to "volts." then the highway commissioner who had just been taking a set of voltmeter and ammeter readings on an audion moved that there should be a new road known as "audion characteristic." he said the road should pass through the following points: zero volt and plus . mil-ampere plus . volts and plus . mil-amperes plus . volts and plus . mil-amperes plus . volts and plus . mil-amperes plus . volts and plus . mil-amperes and so on. fig. shows the new road. [illustration: fig ] one member of the council jumped up and said "but what if the grid is made negative?" the commissioner had forgotten to see what happened so he went home to take more readings. he shifted the battery clip along, starting at _c_ of fig. . at the next meeting of the council he brought in the following list of readings and hence of points on his proposed road. minus . volts and plus . mil-ampere " . " " " . " " " . " " " . " " " . " " " . " " " . " " " . " " then he showed the other members of the council on the map of fig. how the audion characteristic would look. [illustration: fig ] there was considerable discussion after that and it appeared that different designs and makes of audions would have different characteristic curves. they all had the same general form of curve but they would pass through different sets of points depending upon the design and upon the b-battery voltage. it was several meetings later, however, before they found out what effects were due to the form of the curve. right after this they found that they could get much better results with their radio sets. now look at the audion characteristic. making the grid positive, that is going on the positive side of the zero volts in our map, makes the plate current larger. you remember that i told you in letter how the grid, when positive, helped call electrons away from the filament and so made a larger stream of electrons in the plate circuit. the grid calls electrons away from the filament. it can't call them out of it; they have to come out themselves as i explained to you in the fifth letter. [illustration: fig ] you can see that as we make the grid more and more positive, that is, make it call louder and louder, a condition will be reached where it won't do it any good to call any louder, for it will already be getting all the electrons away from the filament just as fast as they are emitted. making the grid more positive after that will not increase the plate current any. that's why the characteristic flattens off as you see at high values of grid voltage. the arrangement which we pictured in fig. for making changes in the grid voltage is simple but it doesn't let us change the voltage by less than that of a single battery cell. i want to show you a way which will. you'll find it very useful to know and it is easily understood for it is something like the arrangement of fig. in the preceding letter. [illustration: fig ] connect the cells as in fig. to a fine wire. about the middle of this wire connect the filament. as before use a clip on the end of the wire from the grid. if the grid is connected to _a_ in the figure there is applied to the grid circuit that part of the e. m. f. of the battery which is active in the length of wire between _o_ and _a_. the point _a_ is nearer the positive plate of the battery than is the point _o_. so the grid will be positive and the filament negative. on the other hand, if the clip is connected at _b_ the grid will be negative with respect to the filament. we can, therefore, make the grid positive or negative depending on which side of _o_ we connect the clip. how large the e. m. f. is which will be applied to the grid depends, of course, upon how far away from _o_ the clip is connected. suppose you took the clip in your hand and slid it along in contact with the wire, first from _o_ to _a_ and then back again through _o_ to _b_ and so on back and forth. you would be making the grid _alternately_ positive and negative, wouldn't you? that is, you would be applying to the grid an e. m. f. which increases to some positive value and then, decreasing to zero, _reverses_, and increases just as much, only to decrease to zero, where it started. if you do this over and over again, taking always the same time for one round trip of the clip you will be impressing on the grid circuit an "_alternating e. m. f._" what's going to happen in the plate circuit? when there is no e. m. f. applied to the grid circuit, that is when the grid potential (possibilities) is zero, there is a definite current in the plate circuit. that current we can find from our characteristic of fig. for it is where the curve crosses zero volts. as the grid becomes positive the current rises above this value. when the grid is made negative the current falls below this value. the current, _i_{b}_, then is made alternately greater and less than the current when _e_{c}_ is zero. you might spend a little time thinking over this, seeing what happens when an alternating e. m. f. is applied to the grid of an audion, for that is going to be fundamental to our study of radio. [footnote : a mil-ampere is a thousandth of an ampere just as a millimeter is a thousandth of a meter.] letter condensers and coils dear son: in the last letter we learned of an alternating e. m. f. the way of producing it, which i described, is very crude and i want to tell how to make the audion develop an alternating e. m. f. for itself. that is what the audion does in the transmitting set of a radio telephone. but an audion can't do it all alone. it must have associated with it some coils and a condenser. you know what i mean by coils but you have yet to learn about condensers. a condenser is merely a gap in an otherwise conducting circuit. it's a gap across which electrons cannot pass so that if there is an e. m. f. in the circuit, electrons will be very plentiful on one side of the gap and scarce on the other side. if there are to be many electrons waiting beside the gap there must be room for them. for that reason we usually provide waiting-rooms for the electrons on each side of the gap. metal plates or sheets of tinfoil serve nicely for this purpose. look at fig. . you see a battery and a circuit which would be conducting except for the gap at _c_. on each side of the gap there is a sheet of metal. the metal sheets may be separated by air or mica or paraffined paper. the combination of gap, plates, and whatever is between, provided it is not conducting, is called a condenser. let us see what happens when we connect a battery to a condenser as in the figure. the positive terminal of the battery calls electrons from one plate of the condenser while the negative battery-terminal drives electrons away from itself toward the other plate of the condenser. one plate of the condenser, therefore, becomes positive while the other plate becomes negative. [illustration: fig ] you know that this action of the battery will go on until there are so many electrons in the negative plate of the condenser that they prevent the battery from adding any more electrons to that plate. the same thing happens at the other condenser plate. the positive terminal of the battery calls electrons away from the condenser plate which it is making positive until so many electrons have left that the protons in the atoms of the plate are calling for electrons to stay home just as loudly and effectively as the positive battery-terminal is calling them away. when both these conditions are reached--and they are both reached at the same time--then the battery has to stop driving electrons around the circuit. the battery has not enough e. m. f. to drive any more electrons. why? because the condenser has now just enough e. m. f. with which to oppose the battery. it would be well to learn at once the right words to use in describing this action. we say that the battery sends a "charging current" around its circuit and "charges the condenser" until it has the same e. m. f. when the battery is first connected to the condenser there is lots of space in the waiting-rooms so there is a great rush or surge of electrons into one plate and away from the other. just at this first instant the charging current, therefore, is large but it decreases rapidly, for the moment electrons start to pile up on one plate of the condenser and to leave the other, an e. m. f. builds up on the condenser. this e. m. f., of course, opposes that of the battery so that the net e. m. f. acting to move electrons round the circuit is no longer that of the battery, but is the difference between the e. m. f. of the battery and that of the condenser. and so, with each added electron, the e. m. f. of the condenser increases until finally it is just equal to that of the battery and there is no net e. m. f. to act. what would happen if we should then disconnect the battery? the condenser would be left with its extra electrons in the negative plate and with its positive plate lacking the same number of electrons. that is, the condenser would be left charged and its e. m. f. would be of the same number of volts as the battery. [illustration: fig ] now suppose we connect a short wire between the plates of the condenser as in fig. . the electrons rush home from the negative plate to the positive plate. as fast as electrons get home the e. m. f. decreases. when they are all back the e. m. f. has been reduced to zero. sometimes we say that "the condenser discharges." the "discharge current" starts with a rush the moment the conducting path is offered between the two plates. the e. m. f. of the condenser falls, the discharge current grows smaller, and in a very short time the condenser is completely discharged. [illustration: fig ] that's what happens when there is a short conducting path for the discharge current. if that were all that could happen i doubt if there would be any radio communication to-day. but if we connect a coil of wire between two plates of a charged condenser, as in fig. , then something of great interest happens. to understand you must know something more about electron streams. suppose we should wind a few turns of wire on a cylindrical core, say on a stiff cardboard tube. we shall use insulated wire. now start from one end of the coil, say _a_, and follow along the coiled wire for a few turns and then scratch off the insulation and solder onto the coil two wires, _b_, and _c_, as shown in fig. . the further end of the coil we shall call _d_. now let's arrange a battery and switch so that we can send a current through the part of the coil between _a_ and _b_. arrange also a current-measuring instrument so as to show if any current is flowing in the part of the coil between _c_ and _d_. for this purpose we shall use a kind of current-measuring instrument which i have not yet explained. it is different from the hot-wire type described in letter for it will show in which direction electrons are streaming through it. the diagram of fig. indicates the apparatus of our experiment. when we close the switch, _s_, the battery starts a stream of electrons from _a_ towards _b_. just at that instant the needle, or pointer, of the current instrument moves. the needle moves, and thus shows a current in the coil _cd_; but it comes right back again, showing that the current is only momentary. let's say this again in different words. the battery keeps steadily forcing electrons through the circuit _ab_ but the instrument in the circuit _cd_ shows no current in that circuit except just at the instant when current starts to flow in the neighboring circuit _ab_. [illustration: fig ] one thing this current-measuring instrument tells us is the direction of the electron stream through itself. it shows that the momentary stream of electrons goes through the coil from _d_ to _c_, that is in the opposite direction to the stream in the part _ab_. now prepare to do a little close thinking. read over carefully all i have told you about this experiment. you see that the moment the battery starts a stream of electrons from _a_ towards _b_, something causes a momentary, that is a temporary, movement of electrons from _d_ to _c_. we say that starting a stream of electrons from _a_ to _b_ sets up or "induces" a stream of electrons from _d_ to _c_. what will happen then if we connect the battery between _a_ and _d_ as in fig. ? electrons will start streaming away from _a_ towards _b_, that is towards _d_. but that means there will be a momentary stream from _d_ towards _c_, that is towards _a_. our stream from the battery causes this oppositely directed stream. in the usual words we say it "induces" in the coil an opposing stream of electrons. this opposing stream doesn't last long, as we saw, but while it does last it hinders the stream which the battery is trying to establish. [illustration: fig ] the stream of electrons which the battery causes will at first meet an opposition so it takes a little time before the battery can get the full-sized stream of electrons flowing steadily. in other words a current in a coil builds up slowly, because while it is building up it induces an effect which opposes somewhat its own building up. did you ever see a small boy start off somewhere, perhaps where he shouldn't be going, and find his conscience starting to trouble him at once. for a time he goes a little slowly but in a moment or two his conscience stops opposing him and he goes on steadily at his full pace. when he started he stirred up his conscience and that opposed him. nobody else was hindering his going. it was all brought about by his own actions. the opposition which he met was "self-induced." he was hindered at first by a self-induced effect of his own conscience. if he was a stream of electrons starting off to travel around the coil we would say that he was opposed by a self-induced e. m. f. and any path in which such an effect will be produced we say has "self-inductance." usually we shorten this term and speak of "inductance." there is another way of looking at it. we know habits are hard to form and equally hard to break. it's hard to get electrons going around a coil and the self-inductance of a circuit tells us how hard it is. the harder it is the more self-inductance we say that the coil or circuit has. of course, we need a unit in which to measure self-inductance. the unit is called the "henry." but that is more self-inductance than we can stand in most radio circuits, so we find it convenient to measure in smaller units called "mil-henries" which are thousandths of a henry. you ought to know what a henry[ ] is, if we are to use the word, but it isn't necessary just now to spend much time on it. the opposition which one's self-induced conscience offers depends upon how rapidly one starts. it's volts which make electrons move and so the conscience which opposes them will be measured in volts. therefore we say that a coil has one henry of inductance when an electron stream which is increasing one ampere's worth each second stirs up in the coil a conscientious objection of one volt. don't try to remember this now; you can come back to it later. there is one more effect of inductance which we must know before we can get very far with our radio. suppose an electron stream is flowing through a coil because a battery is driving the electrons along. now let the battery be removed or disconnected. you'd expect the electron stream to stop at once but it doesn't. it keeps on for a moment because the electrons have got the habit. [illustration: fig ] if you look again at fig. you will see what i mean. suppose the switch is closed and a steady stream of electrons is flowing through the coil from _a_ to _b_. there will be no current in the other part of the coil. now open the switch. there will be a motion of the needle of the current-measuring instrument, showing a momentary current. the direction of this motion, however, shows that the momentary stream of electrons goes through the coil from _c_ to _d_. do you see what this means? the moment the battery is disconnected there is nothing driving the electrons in the part _ab_ and they slow down. immediately, and just for an instant, a stream of electrons starts off in the part _cd_ in the same direction as if the battery was driving them along. now look again at fig. . if the battery is suddenly disconnected there is a momentary rush of electrons in the same direction as the battery was driving them. just as the self-inductance of a coil opposes the starting of a stream of electrons, so it opposes the stopping of a stream which is already going. [illustration: fig ] so far we haven't said much about making an audion produce alternating e. m. f.'s and thus making it useful for radio-telephony. before radio was possible all these things that i have just told you, and some more too, had to be known. it took hundreds of good scientists years of patient study and experiment to find out those ideas about electricity which have made possible radio-telephony. two of these ideas are absolutely necessary for the student of radio-communication. first: a condenser is a gap in a circuit where there are waiting-rooms for the electrons. second: electrons form habits. it's hard to get them going through a coil of wire, harder than through a straight wire, but after they are going they don't like to stop. they like it much less if they are going through a coil instead of a straight wire. in my next letter i'll tell you what happens when we have a coil and a condenser together in a circuit. [footnote : the "henry" has nothing to do with a well-known automobile. it was named after joseph henry, a professor years ago at princeton university.] letter a "c-w" transmitter dear son: [illustration: fig ] let's look again at the coils of fig. which we studied in the last letter. i have reproduced them here so you won't have to turn back. when electrons start from _a_ towards _b_ there is a momentary stream of electrons from _d_ towards _c_. if the electron stream through _ab_ were started in the opposite direction, that is from _b_ to _a_ the induced stream in the coil _cd_ would be from _c_ towards _d_. [illustration: fig ] it all reminds me of two boys with a hedge or fence between them as in fig. . one boy is after the other. suppose you were being chased; you know what you'd do. if your pursuer started off with a rush towards one end of the hedge you'd "beat it" towards the other. but if he started slowly and cautiously you would start slowly too. you always go in the opposite direction, dodging back and forth along the paths which you are wearing in the grass on opposite sides of the hedge. if he starts to the right and then slows up and starts back, you will start to your right, slow up, and start back. suppose he starts at the center of the hedge. first he dodges to the right, and then back through the center as far to the left, then back again and so on. you follow his every change. [illustration: fig ] i am going to make a picture of what you two do. let's start with the other fellow. he dodges or alternates back and forth. some persons would say he "oscillates" back and forth in the same path. as he does so he induces you to move. i am on your side of the hedge with a moving-picture camera. my camera catches both of you. fig. shows the way the film would look if it caught only your heads. the white circle represents the tow-head on my side of the hedge and the black circle, young brown who lives next door. of course, the camera only catches you each time the shutter opens but it is easy to draw a complete picture of what takes place as time goes on. see fig. . [illustration: fig ] now suppose you are an electron in coil _cd_ of fig. and "brownie" is one in coil _ab_. your motions are induced by his. what's true of you two is true of all the other electrons. i have separated the coils a little in this sketch so that you can think of a hedge between. i don't know how one electron can affect another on the opposite side of this hedge but it can. and i don't know anything really about the hedge, which is generally called "the ether." the hedge isn't air. the effect would be the same if the coils were in a vacuum. the "ether" is just a name for whatever is left in the space about us when we have taken out everything which we can see or feel--every molecule, every proton and every electron. [illustration: fig ] why and how electrons can affect one another when they are widely separated is one of the great mysteries of science. we don't know any more about it than about why there are electrons. let's accept it as a fundamental fact which we can't as yet explain. [illustration: fig ] and now we can see how to make an audion produce an alternating current or as we sometimes say "make an audion oscillator." we shall set up an audion with its a-battery as in fig. . between the grid and the filament we put a coil and a condenser. notice that they are in parallel, as we say. in the plate-filament circuit we connect the b-battery and a switch, _s_, and another coil. this coil in the plate circuit of the audion we place close to the other coil so that the two coils are just like the coils _ab_ and _cd_ of which i have been telling you. the moment any current flows in coil _ab_ there will be a current flow in the coil _cd_. (an induced electron stream.) of course, as long as the switch in the b-battery is open no current can flow. the moment the switch _s_ is closed the b-battery makes the plate positive with respect to the filament and there is a sudden surge of electrons round the plate circuit and through the coil from _a_ to _b_. you know what that does to the coil _cd_. it induces an electron stream from _d_ towards _c_. where do these electrons come from? why, from the grid and the plate of the condenser. where do they go? most of them go to the waiting-room offered by plate of the condenser and some, of course, to the filament. what is the result? the grid becomes positive and the filament negative. [illustration: fig ] this is the crucial moment in our study. can you tell me what is going to happen to the stream of electrons in the plate circuit? remember that just at the instant when we closed the switch the grid was neither positive nor negative. we were at the point of zero volts on the audion characteristic of fig. . when we close the switch the current in the plate circuit starts to jump from zero mil-amperes to the number of mil-amperes which represents the point where zero volt st. crosses audion characteristic. but this jump in plate current makes the grid positive as we have just seen. so the grid will help the plate call electrons and that will make the current in the plate circuit still larger, that is, result in a larger stream of electrons from _a_ to _b_. this increase in current will be matched by an increased effect in the coil _cd_, for you remember how you and "brownie" behaved. and that will pull more electrons away from plate of the condenser and send them to the waiting-room of . all this makes the grid more positive and so makes it call all the more effectively to help the plate move electrons. [illustration: pl. v.--variometer (top) and variable condenser (bottom) of the general radio company. voltmeter and ammeter of the weston instrument company.] we "started something" that time. it's going on all by itself. the grid is getting more positive, the plate current is getting bigger, and so the grid is getting more positive and the plate current still bigger. is it ever going to stop? yes. look at the audion characteristic. there comes a time when making the grid a little more positive won't have any effect on the plate-circuit current. so the plate current stops increasing. there is nothing now to keep pulling electrons away from plate and crowding them into waiting-room . why shouldn't the electrons in this waiting-room go home to that of plate ? there is now no reason and so they start off with a rush. of course, some of them came from the grid and as fast as electrons get back to the grid it becomes less and less positive. as the grid becomes less and less positive it becomes less and less helpful to the plate. if the grid doesn't help, the plate alone can't keep up this stream of electrons. all the plate can do by itself is to maintain the current represented by the intersection of zero volts and the audion characteristic. the result is that the current in the plate circuit, that is, of course, the current in coil _ab_, becomes gradually less. about the time all the electrons, which had left the grid and plate of the condenser, have got home the plate current is back to the value corresponding to _e_{c}_=_ _. the plate current first increases and then decreases, but it doesn't stop decreasing when it gets back to zero-grid value. and the reason is all due to the habit forming tendencies of electrons in coils. to see how this comes about, let's tell the whole story over again. in other words let's make a review and so get a sort of flying start. [illustration: fig ] when we close the battery switch, _s_ in fig. , we allow a current to flow in the plate circuit. this current induces a current in the coil _cd_ and charges the condenser which is across it, making plate positive and plate negative. a positive grid helps the plate so that the current in the plate circuit builds up to the greatest possible value as shown by the audion characteristic. that's the end of the increase in current. now the condenser discharges, sending electrons through the coil _cd_ and making the grid less positive until finally it is at zero potential, that is neither positive nor negative. while the condenser is discharging the electrons in the coil _cd_ get a habit of flowing from _c_ toward _d_, that is from plate to plate . if it wasn't for this habit the electron stream in _cd_ would stop as soon as the grid had reduced to zero voltage. because of the habit, however, a lot of electrons that ought to stay on plate get hurried along and land on plate . it is a little like the old game of "crack the whip." some electrons get the habit and can't stop quickly enough so they go tumbling into waiting-room and make it negative. that means that the condenser not only discharges but starts to get charged in the other direction with plate negative and plate positive. the grid feels the effect of all this, because it gets extra electrons if plate gets them. in fact the voltage effective between grid and filament is always the voltage between the plates of the condenser. the audion characteristic tells us what is the result. as the grid becomes negative it opposes the plate, shooing electrons back towards the filament and reducing the plate current still further. but you have already seen in my previous letter what happens when we reduce the current in coil _ab_. there is then induced in coil _cd_ an electron stream from _c_ to _d_. this induced current is in just the right direction to send more electrons into waiting-room and so to make the grid still more negative. and the more negative the grid gets the smaller becomes the plate current until finally the plate current is reduced to zero. look at the audion characteristic again and see that making the grid sufficiently negative entirely stops the plate current. when the plate current stops, the condenser in the grid circuit is charged, with plate negative and positive. it was the plate current which was the main cause of this change for it induced the charging current in coil _cd_. so, when the plate current becomes zero there is nothing to prevent the condenser from discharging. its discharge makes the grid less and less negative until it is zero volts and there we are--back practically where we started. the plate current is increasing and the grid is getting positive, and we're off on another "cycle" as we say. during a cycle the plate current increases to a maximum, decreases to zero, and then increases again to its initial value. [illustration: fig ] this letter has a longer continuous train of thought than i usually ask you to follow. but before i stop i want to give you some idea of what good this is in radio. what about the current which flows in coil _cd_? it's an alternating current, isn't it? first the electrons stream from _d_ towards _c_, and then back again from _c_ towards _d_. suppose we set up another coil like _cd_ in fig. . it would have an alternating current induced in it. if this coil was connected to an antenna there would be radio waves sent out. the switch _s_ could be used for a key and kept closed longer or shorter intervals depending upon whether dashes or dots were being set. i'll tell you more about this later, but in this diagram are the makings of a "c-w transmitter," that is a "continuous wave transmitter" for radio-telegraphy. it would be worth while to go over this letter again using a pencil and tracing in the various circuits the electron streams which i have described. letter inductance and capacity dear sir: in the last letter i didn't stop to draw you a picture of the action of the audion oscillator which i described. i am going to do it now and you are to imagine me as using two pencils and drawing simultaneously two curves. one curve shows what happens to the current in the plate circuit. the other shows how the voltage of the grid changes. both curves start from the instant when the switch is closed; and the two taken together show just what happens in the tube from instant to instant. fig. shows the two curves. you will notice how i have drawn them beside and below the audion characteristic. the grid voltage and the plate current are related, as i have told you, and the audion characteristic is just a convenient way of showing the relationship. if we know the current in the plate circuit we can find the voltage of the grid and vice versa. as time goes on, the plate current grows to its maximum and decreases to zero and then goes on climbing up and down between these two extremes. the grid voltage meanwhile is varying alternately, having its maximum positive value when the plate current is a maximum and its maximum negative value when the plate current is zero. look at the two curves and see this for yourself. [illustration: fig ] now i want to tell you something about how fast these oscillations occur. we start by learning two words. one is "cycle" with which you are already partly familiar and the other is "frequency." take cycle first. starting from zero the current increases to a maximum, decreases to zero, and is ready again for the same series of changes. we say the current has passed through "a cycle of values." it doesn't make any difference where we start from. if we follow the current through all its different values until we are back at the same value as we started with and ready to start all over, then we have followed through a cycle of values. once you get the idea of a cycle, and the markings on the curves in fig. will help you to understand, then the other idea is easy. by "frequency" we mean the number of cycles each second. the electric current which we use in lighting our house goes through sixty cycles a second. that means the current reverses its direction times a second. in radio we use alternating currents which have very high frequencies. in ship sets the frequency is either , or , , cycles per second. amateur transmitting sets usually have oscillators which run at well over a million cycles per second. the longer range stations use lower frequencies. you'll find, however, that the newspaper announcements of the various broadcast stations do not tell the frequency but instead tell the "wave length." i am not going to stop now to explain what that means but i am going to give you a simple rule. divide , , by the "wave length" and you'll have the frequency. for example, ships are supposed to use wave lengths of meters or meters. dividing three hundred million by three hundred gives one million and that is one of the frequencies which i told you were used by ship sets. dividing by six hundred gives , or just half the frequency. you can remember that sets transmitting with long waves have low frequencies, but sets with short waves have high frequencies. the frequency and the wave length don't change in the same way. they change in opposite ways or inversely, as we say. the higher the frequency the shorter the wave length. i'll tell you about wave lengths later. first let's see how to control the frequency of an audion oscillator like that of fig. . [illustration: fig ] it takes time to get a full-sized stream going through a coil because of the inductance of the coil. that you have learned. and also it takes time for such a current to stop completely. therefore, if we make the inductance of the coil small, keeping the condenser the same, we shall make the time required for the current to start and stop smaller. that will mean a higher frequency for there will be more oscillations each second. one rule, then, for increasing the frequency of an audion oscillator is to decrease the inductance. later in this letter i shall tell you how to increase or decrease the inductance of a coil. before i do so, however, i want to call your attention to the other way in which we can change the frequency of an audion oscillator. let's see how the frequency will depend upon the capacity of the condenser. if a condenser has a large capacity it means that it can accommodate in its waiting-room a large number of electrons before the e. m. f. of the condenser becomes large enough to stop the stream of electrons which is charging the condenser. if the condenser in the grid circuit of fig. is of large capacity it means that it must receive in its upper waiting-room a large number of electrons before the grid will be negative enough to make the plate current zero. therefore, the charging current will have to flow a long time to store up the necessary number of electrons. you will get the same idea, of course, if you think about the electrons in the lower room. the current in the plate circuit will not stop increasing until the voltage of the grid has become positive enough to make the plate current a maximum. it can't do that until enough electrons have left the upper room and been stored away in the lower. therefore the charging current will have to flow for a long time if the capacity is large. we have, therefore, the other rule for increasing the frequency of an audion oscillator, that is, decrease the capacity. these rules can be stated the other way around. to decrease the frequency we can either increase the capacity or increase the inductance or do both. but what would happen if we should decrease the capacity and increase the inductance? decreasing the capacity would make the frequency higher, but increasing the inductance would make it lower. what would be the net effect? that would depend upon how much we decreased the capacity and how much we increased the inductance. it would be possible to decrease the capacity and then if we increased the inductance just the right amount to have no change in the frequency. no matter how large or how small we make the capacity we can always make the inductance such that there isn't any change in frequency. i'll give you a rule for this, after i have told you some more things about capacities and inductances. first as to inductances. a short straight wire has a very small inductance, indeed. the longer the wire the larger will be the inductance but unless the length is hundreds of feet there isn't much inductance anyway. a coiled wire is very different. a coil of wire will have more inductance the more turns there are to it. that isn't the whole story but it's enough for the moment. let's see why. the reason why a stream of electrons has an opposing conscience when they are started off in a coil of wire is because each electron affects every other electron which can move in a parallel path. look again at the coils of figs. and which we discussed in the tenth letter. those sketches plainly bring out the fact that the electrons in part _cd_ travel in paths which are parallel to those of the electrons in part _ab_. [illustration: fig ] if we should turn these coils as in fig. so that all the paths in _cd_ are at right angles to those in _ab_ there wouldn't be any effect in _cd_ when a current in _ab_ started or stopped. look at the circuit of the oscillating audion in fig. . if we should turn these coils at right angles to each other we would stop the oscillation. electrons only influence other electrons which are in parallel paths. when we want a large inductance we wind the coil so that there are many parallel paths. then when the battery starts to drive an electron along, this electron affects all its fellows who are in parallel paths and tries to start them off in the opposite direction to that in which it is being driven. the battery, of course, starts to drive all the electrons, not only those nearest its negative terminal but those all along the wire. and every one of these electrons makes up for the fact that the battery is driving it along by urging all its fellows in the opposite direction. it is not an exceptional state of affairs. suppose a lot of boys are being driven out of a yard where they had no right to be playing. suppose also that a boy can resist and lag back twice as much if some other boy urges him to do so. make it easy and imagine three boys. the first boy lags back not only on his own account but because of the urging of the other boys. that makes him three times as hard to start as if the other boys didn't influence him. the same is true of the second boy and also of the third. the result is the unfortunate property owner has nine times as hard a job getting that gang started as if only one boy were to be dealt with. if there were two boys it would be four times as hard as for one boy. if there were four in the group it would be sixteen times, and if five it would be twenty-five times. the difficulty increases much more rapidly than the number of boys. now all we have to do to get the right idea of inductance is to think of each boy as standing for the electrons in one turn of the coil. if there are five turns there will be twenty-five times as much inductance, as for a single turn; and so on. you see that we can change the inductance of a coil very easily by changing the number of turns. i'll tell you two things more about inductance because they will come in handy. the first is that the inductance will be larger if the turns are large circles. you can see that for yourself because if the circles were very small we would have practically a straight wire. the other fact is this. if that property owner had been an electrical engineer and the boys had been electrons he would have fixed it so that while half of them said, "aw, don't go; he can't put you off"; the other half would have said "come on, let's get out." if he did that he would have a coil without any inductance, that is, he would have only the natural inertia of the electrons to deal with. we would say that he had made a coil with "pure resistance" or else that he had made a "non-inductive resistance." [illustration: fig ] how would he do it? easy enough after one learns how, but quite ingenious. take the wire and fold it at the middle. start with the middle and wind the coil with the doubled wire. fig. shows how the coil would look and you can see that part of the way the electrons are going around the coil in one direction and the rest of the way in the opposite direction. it is just as if the boys were paired off, a "goody-goody" and a "tough nut" together. they both shout at once opposite advice and neither has any effect. i have told you all except one of the ways in which we can affect the inductance of a circuit. you know now all the methods which are important in radio. so let's consider how to make large or small capacities. first i want to tell you how we measure the capacity of a condenser. we use units called "microfarads." you remember that an ampere means an electron stream at the rate of about six billion billion electrons a second. a millionth of an ampere would, therefore, be a stream at the rate of about six million million electrons a second--quite a sizable little stream for any one who wanted to count them as they went by. if a current of one millionth of an ampere should flow for just one second six million million electrons would pass along by every point in the path or circuit. that is what would happen if there weren't any waiting-rooms in the circuit. if there was a condenser then that number of electrons would leave one waiting-room and would enter the other. well, suppose that just as the last electron of this enormous number[ ] entered its waiting-room we should know that the voltage of the condenser was just one volt. then we would say that the condenser had a capacity of one microfarad. if it takes half that number to make the condenser oppose further changes in the contents of its waiting-rooms, with one volt's worth of opposition, that is, one volt of e. m. f., then the condenser has only half a microfarad of capacity. the number of microfarads of capacity (abbreviated mf.) is a measure of how many electrons we can get away from one plate and into the other before the voltage rises to one volt. what must we do then to make a condenser with large capacity? either of two things; either make the waiting-rooms large or put them close together. if we make the plates of a condenser larger, keeping the separation between them the same, it means more space in the waiting-rooms and hence less crowding. you know that the more crowded the electrons become the more they push back against any other electron which some battery is trying to force into their waiting-room, that is the higher the e. m. f. of the condenser. the other way to get a larger capacity is to bring the plates closer together, that is to shorten the gap. look at it this way: the closer the plates are together the nearer home the electrons are. their home is only just across a little gap; they can almost see the electronic games going on around the nuclei they left. they forget the long round-about journey they took to get to this new waiting-room and they crowd over to one side of this room to get just as close as they can to their old homes. that's why it's always easier, and takes less voltage, to get the same number of electrons moved from one plate to the other of a condenser which has only a small space between plates. it takes less voltage and that means that the condenser has a smaller e. m. f. for the same number of electrons. it also means that before the e. m. f. rises to one volt we can get more electrons moved around if the plates are close together. and that means larger capacity. there is one thing to remember in all this: it doesn't make any difference how thick the plates are. it all depends upon how much surface they have and how close together they are. most of the electrons in the plate which is being made negative are way over on the side toward their old homes, that is, toward the plate which is being made positive. and most of the homes, that is, atoms which have lost electrons, are on the side of the positive plate which is next to the gap. that's why i said the electrons could almost see their old homes. [illustration: fig ] all this leads to two very simple rules for building condensers. if you have a condenser with too small a capacity and want one, say, twice as large, you can either use twice as large plates or bring the plates you already have twice as close together; that is, make the gap half as large. generally, of course, the gap is pretty well fixed. for example, if we make a condenser by using two pieces of metal and separating them by a sheet of mica we don't want the job of splitting the mica. so we increase the size of the plates. we can do that either by using larger plates or other plates and connecting it as in fig. so that the total waiting-room space for electrons is increased. [illustration: pl. vi.--low-power transmitting tube, u v (courtesy of radio corporation of america).] [illustration: fig ] if you have got these ideas you can understand how we use both sides of the same plate in some types of condensers. look at fig. . there are two plates connected together and a third between them. suppose electrons are pulled from the outside plates and crowded into the middle plate. some of them go on one side and some on the other, as i have shown. the negative signs indicate electrons and the plus signs their old homes. if we use more plates as in fig. we have a larger capacity. [illustration: fig ] [illustration: fig ] what if we have two plates which are not directly opposite one another, like those of fig. ? what does the capacity depend upon? imagine yourself an electron on the negative plate. look off toward the positive plate and see how big it seems to you. the bigger it looks the more capacity the condenser has. when the plates are right opposite one another the positive plate looms up pretty large. but if they slide apart you don't see so much of it; and if it is off to one side about all you see is the edge. if you can't see lots of atoms which have lost electrons and so would make good homes for you, there is no use of your staying around on that side of the plate; you might just as well be trying to go back home the long way which you originally came. that's why in a variable plate condenser there is very little capacity when no parts of the plates are opposite each other, and there is the greatest capacity when they are exactly opposite one another. [illustration: fig ] while we are at it we might just as well clean up this whole business of variable capacities and inductances by considering two ways in which to make a variable inductance. fig. shows the simplest way but it has some disadvantages which i won't try now to explain. we make a long coil and then take off taps. we can make connections between one end of the coil and any of the taps. the more turns there are included in the part of the coil which we are using the greater is the inductance. if we want to do a real job we can bring each of these taps to a little stud and arrange a sliding or rotating contact with them. then we have an inductance the value of which we can vary "step-by-step" in a convenient manner. another way to make a variable inductance is to make what is called a "variometer." i dislike the name because it doesn't "meter" anything. if properly calibrated it would of course "meter" inductance, but then it should be called an "inducto-meter." do you remember the gang of boys that fellow had to drive off his property? what if there had been two different gangs playing there? how much trouble he has depends upon whether there is anything in common between the gangs. suppose they are playing in different parts of his property and so act just as if the other crowd wasn't also trespassing. he could just add the trouble of starting one gang to the trouble of starting the other. it would be very different if the gangs have anything in common. then one would encourage the other much as the various boys of the same gang encourage each other. he would have a lot more trouble. and this extra trouble would be because of the relations between gangs, that is, because of their "mutual inductance." on the other hand suppose the gangs came from different parts of the town and disliked each other. he wouldn't have nearly the trouble. each gang would be yelling at the other as they went along: "you'd better beat it. he knows all right, all right, who broke that bush down by the gate. just wait till he catches you." they'd get out a little easier, each in the hope the other crowd would catch it from the owner. there's a case where their mutual relations, their mutual inductance, makes the job easier. that's true of coils with inductance. suppose you wind two inductance coils and connect them in series. if they are at right angles to each other as in fig. a they have no effect on each other. there is no mutual inductance. but if they are parallel and wound the same way like the coils of fig. b they will act like a single coil of greater inductance. if the coils are parallel but wound in opposite directions as in fig. c they will have less inductance because of their mutual inductance. you can check these statements for yourself if you'll refer back to letter and see what happens in the same way as i told you in discussing fig. . [illustration: fig a] [illustration: fig b] if the coils are neither parallel nor at right angles there will be some mutual inductance but not as much as if they were parallel. by turning the coils we can get all the variations in mutual relations from the case of fig. b to that of fig. c. that's what we arrange to do in a variable inductance of the variometer type. [illustration: fig c] there is another way of varying the mutual inductance. we can make one coil slide inside another. if it is way inside, the total inductance which the two coils offer is either larger than the sum of what they can offer separately or less, depending upon whether the windings are in the same direction or opposite. as we pull the coil out the mutual effect becomes less and finally when it is well outside the mutual inductance is very small. now we have several methods of varying capacity and inductance and therefore we are ready to vary the frequency of our audion oscillator; that is, "tune" it, as we say. in my next letter i shall show you why we tune. now for the rule which i promised. the frequency to which a circuit is tuned depends upon the product of the number of mil-henries in the coil and the number of microfarads in the condenser. change the coil and the condenser as much as you want but keep this product the same and the frequency will be the same. [footnote : more accurately the number is , , , , .] letter tuning dear radio enthusiast: i want to tell you about receiving sets and their tuning. in the last letter i told you what determines the frequency of oscillation of an audion oscillator. it was the condenser and inductance which you studied in connection with fig. . that's what determines the frequency and also what makes the oscillations. all the tube does is to keep them going. let's see why this is so. [illustration: fig a] start first, as in fig. a, with a very simple circuit of a battery and a non-inductive resistance, that is, a wire wound like that of fig. in the previous letter, so that it has no inductance. the battery must do work forcing electrons through that wire. it has the ability, or the energy as we say. [illustration: fig b] now connect a condenser to the battery as in fig. b. the connecting wires are very short; and so practically all the work which the battery does is in storing electrons in the negative plate of the condenser and robbing the positive plate. the battery displaces a certain number of electrons in the waiting-rooms of the condenser. how many, depends upon how hard it can push and pull, that is on its e. m. f., and upon how much capacity the condenser has. [illustration: fig c] remove the battery and connect the charged condenser to the resistance as in fig. c. the electrons rush home. they bump and jostle their way along, heating the wire as they go. they have a certain amount of energy or ability to do work because they are away from home and they use it all up, bouncing along on their way. when once they are home they have used up all the surplus energy which the battery gave them. try it again, but this time, as in fig. d, connect the charged condenser to a coil which has inductance. the electrons don't get started as fast because of the inductance. but they keep going because the electrons in the wire form the habit. the result is that about the time enough electrons have got into plate (which was positive), to satisfy all its lonely protons, the electrons in the wire are streaming along at a great rate. a lot of them keep going until they land on this plate and so make it negative. [illustration: fig d] that's the same sort of thing that happens in the case of the inductance and condenser in the oscillating audion circuit except for one important fact. there is nothing to keep electrons going to the plate except this habit. and there are plenty of stay-at-home electrons to stop them as they rush along. they bump and jostle, but some of them are stopped or else diverted so that they go bumping around without getting any nearer plate . of course, they spend all their energy this way, getting every one all stirred up and heating the wire. some of the energy which the electrons had when they were on plate is spent, therefore, and there aren't as many electrons getting to plate . when they turn around and start back, as you know they do, the same thing happens. the result is that each successive surge of electrons is smaller than the preceding. their energy is being wasted in heating the wire. the stream of electrons gets smaller and smaller, and the voltage of the condenser gets smaller and smaller, until by-and-by there isn't any stream and the condenser is left uncharged. when that happens, we say the oscillations have "damped out." [illustration: fig ] that's one way of starting oscillations which damp out--to start with a charged condenser and connect an inductance across it. there is another way which leads us to some important ideas. look at fig. . there is an inductance and a condenser. near the coil is another coil which has a battery and a key in circuit with it. the coils are our old friends of fig. in letter . suppose we close the switch _s_. it starts a current through the coil _ab_ which goes on steadily as soon as it really gets going. while it is starting, however, it induces an electron stream in coil _cd_. there is only a momentary or transient current but it serves to charge the condenser and then events happen just as they did in the case where we charged the condenser with a battery. [illustration: fig ] now take away this coil _ab_ with its battery and substitute the oscillator of fig. . what's going to happen? we have two circuits in which oscillations can occur. see fig. . one circuit is associated with an audion and some batteries which keep supplying it with energy so that its oscillations are continuous. the other circuit is near enough to the first to be influenced by what happens in that circuit. we say it is "coupled" to it, because whatever happens in the first circuit induces an effect in the second circuit. suppose first that in each circuit the inductance and capacity have such values as to produce oscillations of the same frequency. then the moment we start the oscillator we have the same effect in both circuits. let me draw the picture a little differently (fig. ) so that you can see this more easily. i have merely made the coil _ab_ in two parts, one of which can affect _cd_ in the oscillator and the other the coil _l_ of the second circuit. but suppose that the two circuits do not have the same natural frequencies, that is the condenser and inductance in one circuit are so large that it just naturally takes more time for an oscillation in that circuit than in the other. it is like learning to dance. you know about how well you and your partner would get along if you had one frequency of oscillation and she had another. that's what happens in a case like this. [illustration: fig ] if circuit _l-c_ takes longer for each oscillation than does circuit _ab_ its electron stream is always working at cross purposes with the electron stream in _ab_ which is trying to lead it. its electrons start off from one condenser plate to the other and before they have much more than got started the stream in _ab_ tries to call them back to go in the other direction. it is practically impossible under these conditions to get a stream of any size going in circuit _l-c_. it is equally hard if _l-c_ has smaller capacity and inductance than _ab_ so that it naturally oscillates faster. i'll tell you exactly what it is like. suppose you and your partner are trying to dance without any piano or other source of music. she has one tune running through her head and she dances to that, except as you drag her around the floor. you are trying to follow another tune. as a couple you have a difficult time going anywhere under these conditions. but it would be all right if you both had the same tune. if we want the electron stream in coil _ab_ to have a large guiding effect on the stream in coil _l-c_ we must see that both circuits have the same tune, that is the same natural frequency of oscillation. [illustration: fig ] this can be shown very easily by a simple experiment. suppose we set up our circuit _l-c_ with an ammeter in it, so as to be able to tell how large an electron stream is oscillating in that circuit. let us also make the condenser a variable one so that we can change the natural frequency or tune of the circuit. now let's see what happens to the current as we vary this condenser, changing the capacity and thus changing the tune of the circuit. if we use a variable plate condenser it will have a scale on top graduated in degrees and we can note the reading of the ammeter for each position of the movable plates. if we do, we find one position of these plates, that is one setting, corresponding to one value of capacity in the condenser, where the current in the circuit is a maximum. this is the setting of the condenser for which the circuit has the same tune or natural frequency as the circuit _cd_. sometimes we say that the circuits are now in resonance. we also refer to the curve of values of current and condenser positions as a "tuning curve." such a curve is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig ] that's all there is to tuning--adjusting the capacity and inductance of a circuit until it has the same natural frequency as some other circuit with which we want it to work. we can either adjust the capacity as we just did, or we can adjust the inductance. in that case we use a variable inductance as in fig. . if we want to be able to tune to any of a large range of frequencies we usually have to take out or put into the circuit a whole lot of mil-henries at a time. when we do we get these mil-henries of inductance from a coil which we call a "loading coil." that's why your friends add a loading coil when they want to tune for the long wave-length stations, that is, those with a low frequency. when our circuit _l-c_ of fig. is tuned to the frequency of the oscillator we get in it a maximum current. there is a maximum stream of electrons, and hence a maximum number of them crowded first into one and then into the other plate of the condenser. and so the condenser is charged to a maximum voltage, first in one direction and then in the other. [illustration: fig ] now connect the circuit _l-c_ to the grid of an audion. if the circuit is tuned we'll have the maximum possible voltage applied between grid and filament. in the plate circuit we'll get an increase and then a decrease of current. you know that will happen for i prepared you for this moment by the last page of my ninth letter. i'll tell you more about that current in the plate circuit in a later letter. i am connecting a telephone receiver in the plate circuit, and also a condenser, the latter for a reason to be explained later. the combination appears then as in fig. . that figure shows a c-w transmitter and an audion detector. this is the sort of a detector we would use for radio-telephony, but the transmitter is the sort we would use for radio-telegraphy. we shall make some changes in them later. [illustration: fig ] whenever we start the oscillating current in the transmitter we get an effect in the detector circuit, of which i'll tell you more later. for the moment i am interested in showing you how the transmitter and the detector may be separated by miles and still there will be an effect in the detector circuit every time the key in the transmitter circuit is closed. this is how we do it. at the sending station, that is, wherever we locate the transmitter, we make a condenser using the earth, or ground, as one plate. we do the same thing at the receiving station where the detector circuit is located. to these condensers we connect inductances and these inductances we couple to our transmitter and receiver as shown in fig. . the upper plate of the condenser in each case is a few horizontal wires. the lower plate is the moist earth of the ground and we arrange to get in contact with that in various ways. one of the simplest methods is to connect to the water pipes of the city water-system. now we have our radio transmitting-station and a station for receiving its signals. you remember we can make dots and dashes by the key or switch in the oscillator circuit. when we depress the key we start the oscillator going. that sets up oscillations in the circuit with the inductance and the capacity formed by the antenna. if we want a real-sized stream of electrons up and down this antenna lead (the vertical wire), we must tune that circuit. that is why i have shown a variable inductance in the circuit of the transmitting antenna. what happens when these electrons surge back and forth between the horizontal wires and the ground, i don't know. i do know, however, that if we tune the antenna circuit at the receiving station there will be a small stream of electrons surging back and forth in that circuit. usually scientists explain what happens by saying that the transmitting station sends out waves in the ether and that these waves are received by the antenna system at the distant station. wherever you put up a receiving station you will get the effect. it will be much smaller, however, the farther the two stations are apart. i am not going to tell you anything about wave motion in the ether because i don't believe we know enough about the ether to try to explain, but i shall tell you what we mean by "wave length." somehow energy, the ability to do work, travels out from the sending antenna in all directions. wherever you put up your receiving station you get more or less of this energy. of course, energy is being sent out only while the key is depressed and the oscillator going. this energy travels just as fast as light, that is at the enormous speed of , miles a second. if you use meters instead of miles the speed is , , meters a second. now, how far will the energy which is sent out from the antenna travel during the time it takes for one oscillation of the current in the antenna? suppose the current is oscillating one million times a second. then it takes one-millionth of a second for one oscillation. in that time the energy will have traveled away from the antenna one-millionth part of the distance it will travel in a whole second. that is one-millionth of million meters or meters. the distance which energy will go in the time taken by one oscillation of the source of that energy is the wave length. in the case just given that distance is meters. the wave length, then, of meters corresponds to a frequency of one million. in fact if we divide million meters by the frequency we get the wave length, and that's the same rule as i gave you in the last letter. in further letters i'll tell you how the audion works as a detector and how we connect a telephone transmitter to the oscillator to make it send out energy with a speech significance instead of a mere dot and dash significance, or signal significance. we shall have to learn quite a little about the telephone itself and about the human voice. letter why and how to use a detector dear son: in the last letter we got far enough to sketch, in fig. , a radio transmitting station and a receiving station. we should never, however, use just this combination because the transmitting station is intended to send telegraph signals and the receiving station is best suited to receiving telephonic transmission. but let us see what happens. [illustration: fig ] when the key in the plate circuit of the audion at the sending station is depressed an alternating current is started. this induces an alternating current in the neighboring antenna circuit. if this antenna circuit, which is formed by a coil and a condenser, is tuned to the frequency of oscillations which are being produced in the audion circuit then there is a maximum current induced in the antenna. as soon as this starts the antenna starts to send out energy in all directions, or "radiate" energy as we say. how this energy, or ability to do work, gets across space we don't know. however it may be, it does get to the receiving station. it only takes a small fraction of a second before the antenna at the receiving station starts to receive energy, because energy travels at the rate of , miles a second. the energy which is received does its work in making the electrons in that antenna oscillate back and forth. if the receiving antenna is tuned to the frequency which the sending station is producing, then the electrons in the receiving antenna oscillate back and forth most widely and there is a maximum current in this circuit. the oscillations of the electrons in the receiving antenna induce similar oscillations in the tuned circuit which is coupled to it. this circuit also is tuned to the frequency which the distant oscillator is producing and so in it we have the maximum oscillation of the electrons. the condenser in that circuit charges and discharges alternately. the grid of the receiving audion always has the same voltage as the condenser to which it is connected and so it becomes alternately positive and negative. this state of affairs starts almost as soon as the key at the sending station is depressed and continues as long as it is held down. now what happens inside the audion? as the grid becomes more and more positive the current in the plate circuit increases. when the grid no longer grows more positive but rather becomes less and less positive the current in the plate circuit decreases. as the grid becomes of zero voltage and then negative, that is as the grid "reverses its polarity," the plate current continues to decrease. when the grid stops growing more negative and starts to become less so, the plate current stops decreasing and starts to increase. all this you know, for you have followed through such a cycle of changes before. you know also how we can use the audion characteristic to tell us what sort of changes take place in the plate current when the grid voltage changes. the plate current increases and decreases alternately, becoming greater and less than it would be if the grid were not interfering. these variations in its intensity take place very rapidly, that is with whatever high frequency the sending station operates. what happens to the plate current on the average? the plate current, you remember, is a stream of electrons from the filament to the plate (on the inside of the tube), and from the plate back through the b-battery to the filament (on the outside of the tube). the grid alternately assists and opposes that stream. when it assists, the electrons in the plate circuit are moved at a faster rate. when the grid becomes negative and opposes the plate the stream of electrons is at a slower rate. the stream is always going in the same direction but it varies in its rate depending upon the changes in grid potential. [illustration: fig ] when the grid is positive, that is for half a cycle of the alternating grid-voltage, the stream is larger than it would be if the plate current depended only on the b-battery. for the other half of a cycle it is less. the question i am raising is this: do more electrons move around the plate circuit if there is a signal coming in than when there is no incoming signal? to answer this we must look at the audion characteristic of our particular tube and this characteristic must have been taken with the same b-battery as we use when we try to receive the signals. there are just three possible answers to this question. the first answer is: "no, there is a smaller number of electrons passing through the plate circuit each second if the grid is being affected by an incoming signal." the second is: "the signal doesn't make any difference in the total number of electrons which move each second from filament to plate." and the third answer is: "yes, there is a greater total number each second." [illustration: fig ] any one of the three answers may be right. it all depends on the characteristic of the tube as we are operating it, and that depends not only upon the type and design of tube but also upon what voltages we are using in our batteries. suppose the variations in the voltage of the grid are as represented in fig. , and that the characteristic of the tube is as shown in the same figure. then obviously the first answer is correct. you can see for yourself that when the grid becomes positive the current in the plate circuit can't increase much anyway. for the other half of the cycle, that is, while the grid is negative, the current in the plate is very much decreased. the decrease in one half-cycle is larger than the increase during the other half-cycle, so that on the average the current is less when the signal is coming in. the dotted line shows the average current. suppose that we take the same tube and use a b-battery of lower voltage. the characteristic will have the same shape but there will not be as much current unless the grid helps, so that the characteristic will be like that of fig. . this characteristic crosses the axis of zero volts at a smaller number of mil-amperes than does the other because the b-batteries can't pull as hard as they did in the other case. [illustration: fig ] you can see the result. when the grid becomes positive it helps and increases the plate current. when it becomes negative it opposes and decreases the plate current. but the increase just balances the decrease, so that on the average the current is unchanged, as shown by the dotted line. on the other hand, if we use a still smaller voltage of b-battery we get a characteristic which shows a still smaller current when the grid is at zero potential. for this case, as shown in fig. , the plate current is larger on the average when there is an incoming signal. if we want to know whether or not there is any incoming signal we will not use the tube in the second condition, that of fig. , because it won't tell us anything. on the other hand why use the tube under the first conditions where we need a large plate battery? if we can get the same result, that is an indication when the other station is signalling, by using a small battery let's do it that way for batteries cost money. for that reason we shall confine ourselves to the study of what takes place under the conditions of fig. . we now know that when a signal is being sent by the distant station the current in the plate circuit of our audion at the receiving station is greater, on the average. we are ready to see what effect this has on the telephone receiver. and to do this requires a little study of how the telephone receiver works and why. [illustration: fig ] i shall not stop now to tell you much about the telephone receiver for it deserves a whole letter all to itself. you know that a magnet attracts iron. suppose you wind a coil of insulated wire around a bar magnet or put the magnet inside such a coil as in fig. . send a stream of electrons through the turns of the coil--a steady stream such as comes from the battery shown in the figure. the strength of the magnet is altered. for one direction of the electron stream through the coil the magnet is stronger. for the opposite direction of current the magnet will be weaker. [illustration: fig ] fig. shows a simple design of telephone receiver. it is formed by a bar magnet, a coil about it through which a current can flow, and a thin disc of iron. the iron disc, or diaphragm, is held at its edges so that it cannot move as a whole toward the magnet. the center can move, however, and so the diaphragm is bowed out in the form shown in the smaller sketch. now connect a battery to the receiver winding and allow a steady stream of electrons to flow. the magnet will be either strengthened or weakened. suppose the stream of electrons is in the direction to make it stronger--i'll give you the rule later. then the diaphragm is bowed out still more. if we open the battery circuit and so stop the stream of electrons the diaphragm will fly back to its original position, for it is elastic. the effect is very much that of pushing in the bottom of a tin pan and letting it fly back when you remove your hand. next reverse the battery. the magnet does not pull as hard as it would if there were no current. the diaphragm is therefore not bowed out so much. suppose that instead of reversing the current by reversing the battery we arrange to send an alternating current through the coil. that will have the same effect. for one direction of current flow, the diaphragm is attracted still more by the magnet but for the other direction it is not attracted as much. the result is that the center of the diaphragm moves back and forth during one complete cycle of the alternating current in the coil. the diaphragm vibrates back and forth in tune with the alternating current in the receiver winding. as it moves away from the magnet it pushes ahead of it the neighboring molecules of air. these molecules then crowd and push the molecules of air which are just a little further away from the diaphragm. these in turn push against those beyond them and so a push or shove is sent out by the diaphragm from molecule to molecule until perhaps it reaches your ear. when the molecules of air next your ear receive the push they in turn push against your eardrum. in the meantime what has happened? the current in the telephone receiver has reversed its direction. the diaphragm is now pulled toward the magnet and the adjacent molecules of air have even more room than they had before. so they stop crowding each other and follow the diaphragm in the other direction. the molecules of air just beyond these, on the way toward your ear, need crowd no longer and they also move back. of course, they go even farther than their old positions for there is now more room on the other side. that same thing happens all along the line until the air molecules next your ear start back and give your eardrum a chance to expand outward. as they move away they make a little vacuum there and the eardrum puffs out. that goes on over and over again just as often as the alternating current passes through one cycle of values. and you, unless you are thinking particularly of the scientific explanations, say that you "hear a musical note." as a matter of fact if we increase the frequency of the alternating current you will say that the "pitch" of the note has been increased or that you hear a note higher in the musical scale. if we started with a very low-frequency alternating current, say one of fifteen or twenty cycles per second, you wouldn't say you heard a note at all. you would hear a sort of a rumble. if we should gradually increase the frequency of the alternating current you would find that about sixty or perhaps a hundred cycles a second would give you the impression of a musical note. as the frequency is made still larger you have merely the impression of a higher-pitched note until we get up into the thousands of cycles a second. then, perhaps about twenty-thousand cycles a second, you find you hear only a little sound like wind or like steam escaping slowly from a jet or through a leak. a few thousand cycles more each second and you don't hear anything at all. you know that for radio-transmitting stations we use audion oscillators which are producing alternating currents with frequencies of several hundred-thousand cycles per second. it certainly wouldn't do any good to connect a telephone receiver in the antenna circuit at the receiving station as in fig. . we couldn't hear so high pitched a note. [illustration: fig ] even if we could, there are several reasons why the telephone receiver wouldn't work at such high frequencies. the first is that the diaphragm can't be moved so fast. it has some inertia, you know, that is, some unwillingness to get started. if you try to start it in one direction and, before you really get it going, change your mind and try to make it go in the other direction, it simply isn't going to go at all. so even if there is an alternating current in the coil around the magnet there will not be any corresponding vibration of the diaphragm if the frequency is very high, certainly not if it is above about , cycles a second. the other reason is that there will only be a very feeble current in the coil anyway, no matter what you do, if the frequency is high. you remember that the electrons in a coil are sort of banded together and each has an effect on all the others which can move in parallel paths. the result is that they have a great unwillingness to get started and an equal unwillingness to stop. their unwillingness is much more than if the wire was long and straight. it is also made very much greater by the presence of the iron core. an alternating e. m. f. of high frequency hardly gets the electrons started at all before it's time to get them going in the opposite direction. there is very little movement to the electrons and hence only a very small current in the coil if the frequency is high. if you want a rule for it you can remember that the higher the frequency of an alternating e. m. f. the smaller the electron stream which it can set oscillating in a given coil. of course, we might make the e. m. f. stronger, that is pull and shove the electrons harder, but unless the coil has a very small inductance or unless the frequency is very low we should have to use an e. m. f. of enormous strength to get any appreciable current. condensers are just the other way in their action. if there is a condenser in a circuit, where an alternating e. m. f. is active, there is lots of trouble if the frequency is low. if, however, the frequency is high the same-sized current can be maintained by a smaller e. m. f. than if the frequency is low. you see, when the frequency is high the electrons hardly get into the waiting-room of the condenser before it is time for them to turn around and go toward the other room. unless there is a large current, there are not enough electrons crowded together in the waiting-room to push back very hard on the next one to be sent along by the e. m. f. because the electrons do not push back very hard a small e. m. f. can drive them back and forth. ordinarily we say that a condenser impedes an alternating current less and less the higher is the frequency of the current. and as to inductances, we say that an inductance impedes an alternating current more and more the higher is the frequency. now we are ready to study the receiving circuit of fig. . i showed you in fig. how the current through, the tube will vary as time goes on. it increases and decreases with the frequency of the current in the antenna of the distant transmitting station. we have a picture, or graph, as we say, of how this plate current varies. it will be necessary to study that carefully and to resolve it into its components, that is to separate it into parts, which, added together again will give the whole. to show you what i mean i am going to treat first a very simple case involving money. suppose a boy was started by his father with cents of spending money. he spends that and runs cents in debt. the next day his father gives him a dollar. half of this he has to spend to pay up his yesterday's indebtedness. this he does at once and that leaves him cents ahead. but again he buys something for a dollar and so runs cents in debt. day after day this cycle is repeated. we can show what happens by the curve of fig. a. [illustration: fig a] on the other hand, suppose he already had cents which, he was saving for some special purpose. this he doesn't touch, preferring to run into debt each day and to pay up the next, as shown in fig. a. then we would represent the story of this cents by the graph of fig. b. [illustration: fig b] now suppose that instead of going in debt each day he uses part of this cents. each day after the first his father gives him a dollar, just as before. he starts then with cents as shown in fig. c, increases in wealth to $ . , then spends $ . , bringing his funds down to cents. then he receives $ . from his father and the process is repeated cyclically. [illustration: fig c] if you saw the graph of fig. c you would be able to say that, whatever he actually did, the effect was the same as if he had two pockets, in one of which he kept cents all the time as shown in fig. b. in his other pocket he either had money or he was in debt as shown in fig. a. if you did that you would be resolving the money changes of fig. c into the two components of figs. a and b. that is what i want you to do with the curve of fig. which i am reproducing here, redrawn as fig. a. you see it is really the result of adding together the two curves of figs. b and c, which are shown on the following page. [illustration: fig a] we can think, therefore, of the current in the plate circuit as if it were two currents added together, that is, two electron streams passing through the same wire. one stream is steady and the other alternates. [illustration: fig b] now look again at the diagram of our receiving set which i am reproducing as fig. . when the signal is incoming there flow in the plate circuit two streams of electrons, one steady and of a value in mil-amperes corresponding to that of the graph in fig. b, and the other alternating as shown in fig. c. the steady stream of electrons will have no more difficulty in getting through the coiled wire of the receiver than it would through the same amount of straight wire. on the other hand it cannot pass the gap of the condenser. the alternating-current component can't get along in the coil because its frequency is so high that the coil impedes the motion of the electrons so much as practically to stop them. on the other hand these electrons can easily run into the waiting-room offered by the condenser and then run out again as soon as it is time. [illustration: fig c] when the current in the plate circuit is large all the electrons which aren't needed for the steady stream through the telephone receiver run into one plate of the condenser. of course, at that same instant an equal number leave the other plate and start off toward the b-battery and the filament. an instant later, when the current in the plate circuit is small, electrons start to come out of the plate and to join the stream through the receiver so that this stream is kept steady. [illustration: fig ] this steady stream of electrons, which is passing through the receiver winding, is larger than it would be if there was no incoming radio signal. the result is a stronger pull on the diaphragm of the receiver. the moment the signal starts this diaphragm is pulled over toward the magnet and it stays pulled over as long as the signal lasts. when the signal ceases it flies back. we would hear then a click when the signal started and another when it stopped. if we wanted to distinguish dots from dashes this wouldn't be at all satisfactory. so in the next letter i'll show you what sort of changes we can make in the apparatus. to understand what effect these changes will have you need, however, to understand pretty well most of this letter. letter radio-telephony dear lad: before we start on the important subject matter of this letter let us make a short review of the preceding two letters. an oscillating audion at the transmitting station produces an effect on the plate current of the detector audion at the receiving station. there is impressed upon the grid of the detector an alternating e. m. f. which has the same frequency as the alternating current which is being produced at the sending station. while this e. m. f. is active, and of course it is active only while the sending key is held down, there is more current through the winding of the telephone receiver and its diaphragm is consequently pulled closer to its magnet. what will happen if the e. m. f. which is active on the grid of the detector is made stronger or weaker? the pull on the receiver diaphragm will be stronger or weaker and the diaphragm will have to move accordingly. if the pull is weaker the elasticity of the iron will move the diaphragm away from the magnet, but if the pull is stronger the diaphragm will be moved toward the magnet. every time the diaphragm moves it affects the air in the immediate neighborhood of itself and that air in turn affects the air farther away and so the ear of the listener. therefore if there are changes in the intensity or strength of the incoming signal there are going to be corresponding motions of the receiver diaphragm. and something to listen, too, if these changes are frequent enough but not so frequent that the receiver diaphragm has difficulty in following them. there are many ways of affecting the strength of the incoming signal. suppose, for example, that we arrange to decrease the current in the antenna of the transmitting station. that will mean a weaker signal and a smaller increase in current through the winding of the telephone receiver at the other station. on the other hand if the signal strength is increased there is more current in this winding. [illustration: fig ] suppose we connect a fine wire in the antenna circuit as in fig. and have a sliding contact as shown. suppose that when we depress the switch in the oscillator circuit and so start the oscillations that the sliding contact is at _o_ as shown. corresponding to that strength of signal there is a certain value of current through the receiver winding at the other station. now let us move the slider, first to _a_ and then back to _b_ and so on, back and forth. you see what will happen. we alternately make the current in the antenna larger and smaller than it originally was. when the slider is at _b_ there is more of the fine wire in series with the antenna, hence more resistance to the oscillations of the electrons, and hence a smaller oscillating stream of electrons. that means a weaker outgoing signal. when the slider is at _a_ there is less resistance in the antenna circuit and a larger alternating current. [illustration: fig ] [illustration: fig ] a picture of what happens would be like that of fig. . the signal varies in intensity, therefore, becoming larger and smaller alternately. that means the voltage impressed on the grid of the detector is alternately larger and smaller. and hence the stream of electrons through the winding of the telephone receiver is alternately larger and smaller. and that means that the diaphragm moves back and forth in just the time it takes to move the slider back and forth. instead of the slider we might use a little cup almost full of grains of carbon. the carbon grains lie between two flat discs of carbon. one of these discs is held fixed. the other is connected to the center of a thin diaphragm of steel and moves back and forth as this diaphragm is moved. the whole thing makes a telephone transmitter such as you have often talked to. [illustration: fig a] wires connect to the carbon discs as shown in fig. . a stream of electrons can flow through the wires and from grain to grain through the "carbon button," as we call it. the electrons have less difficulty if the grains are compressed, that is the button then offers less resistance to the flow of current. if the diaphragm moves back, allowing the grains to have more room, the electron stream is smaller and we say the button is offering more resistance to the current. [illustration: fig b] you can see what happens. suppose some one talks into the transmitter and makes its diaphragm go back and forth as shown in fig. a. then the current in the antenna varies, being greater or less, depending upon whether the button offers less or more resistance. the corresponding variations in the antenna current are shown in fig. b. in the antenna at the receiving station there are corresponding variations in the strength of the signal and hence corresponding variations in the strength of the current through the telephone receiver. i shall show graphically what happens in fig. . you see that the telephone receiver diaphragm does just the same motions as does the transmitter diaphragm. that means that the molecules of air near the receiver diaphragm are going through just the same kind of motions as are those near the transmitter diaphragm. when these air molecules affect your eardrum you hear just what you would have heard if you had been right there beside the transmitter. that's one way of making a radio-telephone. it is not a very efficient method but it has been used in the past. before we look at any of the more recent methods we can draw some general ideas from this method and learn some words that are used almost always in speaking of radio-telephones. in any system of radio-telephony you will always find that there is produced at the transmitting station a high-frequency alternating current and that this current flows in a tuned circuit one part of which is the condenser formed by the antenna and the ground (or something which acts like a ground). this high-frequency current, or radio-current, as we usually say, is varied in its strength. it is varied in conformity with the human voice. if the human voice speaking into the transmitter is low pitched there are slow variations in the intensity of the radio current. if the voice is high pitched there are more rapid variations in the strength of the radio-frequency current. that is why we say the radio-current is "modulated" by the human voice. [illustration: fig ] the signal which radiates out from the transmitting antenna carries all the little variations in pitch and loudness of the human voice. when this signal reaches the distant antenna it establishes in that antenna circuit a current of high frequency which has just the same variations as did the current in the antenna at the sending station. the human voice isn't there. it is not transmitted. it did its work at the sending station by modulating the radio-signal, "modulating the carrier current," as we sometimes say. but there is speech significance hidden in the variations in strength of the received signal. if a telephone-receiver diaphragm can be made to vibrate in accordance with the variations in signal intensity then the air adjacent to that diaphragm will be set into vibration and these vibrations will be just like those which the human voice set up in the air molecules near the mouth of the speaker. all the different systems of receiving radio-telephone signals are merely different methods of getting a current which will affect the telephone receiver in conformity with the variations in signal strength. getting such a current is called "detecting." there are many different kinds of detectors but the vacuum tube is much to be preferred. the cheapest detector, but not the most sensitive, is the crystal. if you understand how the audion works as a detector you will have no difficulty in understanding the crystal detector. the crystal detector consists of some mineral crystal and a fine-wire point, usually platinum. crystals are peculiar things. like everything else they are made of molecules and these molecules of atoms. the atoms are made of electrons grouped around nuclei which, in turn, are formed by close groupings of protons and electrons. the great difference between crystals and substances which are not crystalline, that is, substances which don't have a special natural shape, is this: in crystals the molecules and atoms are all arranged in some orderly manner. in other substances, substances without special form, amorphous substances, as we call them, the molecules are just grouped together in a haphazard way. [illustration: fig ] for some crystals we know very closely indeed how their molecules or rather their individual atoms are arranged. sometime you may wish to read how this was found out by the use of x-rays.[ ] take the crystal of common salt for example. that is well known. each molecule of salt is formed by an atom of sodium and one of chlorine. in a crystal of salt the molecules are grouped together so that a sodium atom always has chlorine atoms on every side of it, and the other way around, of course. suppose you took a lot of wood dumb-bells and painted one of the balls of each dumb-bell black to stand for a sodium atom, leaving the other unpainted to stand for a chlorine atom. now try to pile them up so that above and below each black ball, to the right and left of it, and also in front and behind it, there shall be a white ball. the pile which you would probably get would look like that of fig. . i have omitted the gripping part of each dumbell because i don't believe it is there. in my picture each circle represents the nucleus of an atom. i haven't attempted to show the planetary electrons. other crystals have more complex arrangements for piling up their molecules. now suppose we put two different kinds of substances close together, that is, make contact between them. how their electrons will behave will depend entirely upon what the atoms are and how they are piled up. some very curious effects can be obtained. [illustration: fig ] the one which interests us at present is that across the contact points of some combinations of substances it is easier to get a stream of electrons to flow one way than the other. the contact doesn't have the same resistance in the two directions. usually also the resistance depends upon what voltage we are applying to force the electron stream across the point of contact. the one way to find out is to take the voltage-current characteristic of the combination. to do so we use the same general method as we did for the audion. and when we get through we plot another curve and call it, for example, a "platinum-galena characteristic." fig. shows the set-up for making the measurements. there is a group of batteries arranged so that we can vary the e. m. f. applied across the contact point of the crystal and platinum. a voltmeter shows the value of this e. m. f. and an ammeter tells the strength of the electron stream. each time we move the slider we get a new pair of values for volts and amperes. as a matter of fact we don't get amperes or even mil-amperes; we get millionths of an ampere or "microamperes," as we say. we can plot the pairs of values which we measure and make a curve like that of fig. . [illustration: fig ] when the voltage across the contact is reversed, of course, the current reverses. part of the curve looks something like the lower part of an audion characteristic. [illustration: fig ] now connect this crystal in a receiving circuit as in fig. . we use an antenna just as we did for the audion and we tune the antenna circuit to the frequency of the incoming signal. the receiving circuit is coupled to the antenna circuit and is tuned to the same frequency. whatever voltage there may be across the condenser of this circuit is applied to the crystal detector. we haven't put the telephone receiver in the circuit yet. i want to wait until you have seen what the crystal does when an alternating voltage is applied to it. [illustration: fig ] we can draw a familiar form of sketch as in fig. to show how the current in the crystal varies. you see that there flows through the crystal a current very much like that of fig. a. and you know that such a current is really equivalent to two electron streams, one steady and the other alternating. the crystal detector gives us much the same sort of a current as does the vacuum tube detector of fig. . the current isn't anywhere near as large, however, for it is microamperes instead of mil-amperes. our crystal detector produces the same results so far as giving us a steady component of current to send through a telephone receiver. so we can connect a receiver in series with the crystal as shown in fig. . because the receiver would offer a large impedance to the high-frequency current, that is, seriously impede and so reduce the high-frequency current, we connect a condenser around the receiver. [illustration: fig ] there is a simple crystal detector circuit. if the signal intensity varies then the current which passes through the receiver will vary. if these variations are caused by a human voice at the sending station the crystal will permit one to hear from the telephone receiver what the speaker is saying. that is just what the audion detector does very many times better. in the letter on how to experiment you'll find details as to the construction of a crystal-detector set. excellent instructions for an inexpensive set are contained in bull. no. of the bureau of standards. a copy can be obtained by sending ten cents to the commissioner of public documents, washington, d. c. [footnote : cf. "within the atom," chapter x.] letter the human voice dear sir: the radio-telephone does not transmit the human voice. it reproduces near the ears of the listener similar motions of the air molecules and hence causes in the ears of the listener the same sensations of sound as if he were listening directly to the speaker. this reproduction takes place almost instantaneously so great is the speed with which the electrical effects travel outward from the sending antenna. if you wish to understand radio-telephony you must know something of the mechanism by which the voice is produced and something of the peculiar or characteristic properties of voice sounds. [illustration: fig ] the human voice is produced by a sort of organ pipe. imagine a long pipe connected at one end to a pair of fire-bellows, and closed at the other end by two stretched sheets of rubber. fig. is a sketch of what i mean. corresponding to the bellows there is the human diaphragm, the muscular membrane separating the thorax and abdomen, which expands or contracts as one breathes. corresponding to the pipe is the windpipe. corresponding to the two stretched pieces of rubber are the vocal cords, l and r, shown in cross section in fig. . they are part of the larynx and do not show in fig. (pl. viii) which shows the wind pipe and an outside view of the larynx. [illustration: fig ] when the sides of the bellows are squeezed together the air molecules within are crowded closer together and the air is compressed. the greater the compression the greater, of course, is the pressure with which the enclosed air seeks to escape. that it can do only by lifting up, that is by blowing out, the two elastic strips which close the end of the pipe. the air pressure, therefore, rises until it is sufficient to push aside the elastic membranes or vocal cords and thus to permit some of the air to escape. it doesn't force the membranes far apart, just enough to let some air out. but the moment some air has escaped there isn't so much inside and the pressure is reduced just as in the case of an automobile tire from which you let the air escape. what is the result? the membranes fly back again and close the opening of the pipe. what got out, then, was just a little puff of air. the bellows are working all the while, however, and so the space available for the remaining air soon again becomes so crowded with air molecules that the pressure is again sufficient to open the membranes. another puff of air escapes. this happens over and over again while one is speaking or singing. hundreds of times a second the vocal cords vibrate back and forth. the frequency with which they do so determines the note or pitch of the speaker's voice. what determines the significance of the sounds which he utters? this is a most interesting question and one deserving of much more time than i propose to devote to it. to give you enough of an answer for your study of radio-telephony i am going to tell you first about vibrating strings for they are easier to picture than membranes like the vocal cords. suppose you have a stretched string, a piece of rubber band or a wire will do. you pluck it, that is pull it to one side. when you let go it flies back. because it has inertia[ ] it doesn't stop when it gets to its old position but goes on through until it bows out almost as far on the other side. [illustration: pl. vii.--photographs of vibrating strings.] it took some work to pluck this string, not much perhaps; but all the work which you did in deforming it, goes to the string and becomes its energy, its ability to do work. this work it does in pushing the air molecules ahead of it as it vibrates. in this way it uses up its energy and so finally comes again to rest. its vibrations "damp out," as we say, that is die down. each swing carries it a smaller distance away from its original position. we say that the "amplitude," meaning the size, of its vibration decreases. the frequency does not. it takes just as long for a small-sized vibration as for the larger. of course, for the vibration of large amplitude the string must move faster but it has to move farther so that the time required for a vibration is not changed. first the string crowds against each other the air molecules which are in its way and so leads to crowding further away, just as fast as these molecules can pass along the shove they are receiving. that takes place at the rate of about feet a second. when the string swings back it pushes away the molecules which are behind it and so lets those that were being crowded follow it. you know that they will. air molecules will always go where there is the least crowding. following the shove, therefore, there is a chance for the molecules to move back and even to occupy more room than they had originally. the news of this travels out from the string just as fast as did the news of the crowding. as fast as molecules are able they move back and so make more room for their neighbors who are farther away; and these in turn move back. do you want a picture of it? imagine a great crowd of people and at the center some one with authority. the crowd is the molecules of air and the one with authority is one of the molecules of the string which has energy. whatever this molecule of the string says is repeated by each member of the crowd to his neighbor next farther away. first the string says: "go back" and each molecule acts as soon as he gets the word. and then the string says: "come on" and each molecule of air obeys as soon as the command reaches him. over and over this happens, as many times a second as the string makes complete vibrations. [illustration: fig ] if we should make a picture of the various positions of one of these air molecules much as we pictured "brownie" in letter it would appear as in fig. a where the central line represents the ordinary position of the molecule. that's exactly the picture also of the successive positions of an electron in a circuit which is "carrying an alternating current." first it moves in one direction along the wire and then back in the opposite direction. the electron next to it does the same thing almost immediately for it does not take anywhere near as long for such an effect to pass through a crowd of electrons. if we make the string vibrate twice as fast, that is, have twice the frequency, the story of an adjacent particle of air will be as in fig. b. unless we tighten the string, however, we can't make it vibrate as a whole and do it twice as fast. we can make it vibrate in two parts or even in more parts, as shown in fig. of pl. vii. when it vibrates as a whole, its frequency is the lowest possible, the fundamental frequency as we say. when it vibrates in two parts each part of the string makes twice as many vibrations each second. so do the adjacent molecules of air and so does the eardrum of a listener. the result is that the listener hears a note of twice the frequency that he did when the string was vibrating as a whole. he says he hears the "octave" of the note he heard first. if the string vibrates in three parts and gives a note of three times the frequency the listener hears a note two octaves above the "fundamental note" of which the string is capable. it is entirely possible, however, for a string to vibrate simultaneously in a number of ways and so to give not only its fundamental note but several others at the same time. the photographs[ ] of fig. of pl. vii illustrate this possibility. what happens then to the molecules of air which are adjacent to the vibrating string? they must perform quite complex vibrations for they are called upon to move back and forth just as if there were several strings all trying to push them with different frequencies of vibration. look again at the pictures, of fig. and see that each might just as well be the picture of several strings placed close together, each vibrating in a different way. each of the strings has a different frequency of vibration and a different maximum amplitude, that is, greatest size of swing away from its straight position. [illustration: fig ] suppose instead of a single string acting upon the adjacent molecules we had three strings. suppose the first would make a nearby molecule move as in fig. a, the second as in fig. b, and the third as in fig. c. it is quite evident that the molecule can satisfy all three if it will vibrate as in fig. d. now take it the other way around. suppose we had a picture of the motion of a molecule and that it was not simple like those shown in fig. but was complex like that of fig. d. we could say that this complex motion was made up of three parts, that is, had three component simple motions, each represented by one of the three other graphs of fig. . that means we can resolve any complex vibratory motion into component motions which are simple. it means more than that. it means that the vibrating string which makes the neighboring molecules of air behave as shown in fig. d is really acting like three strings and is producing simultaneously three pure musical notes. now suppose we had two different strings, say a piano string in the piano and a violin string on its proper mounting. suppose we played both instruments and some musician told us they were in tune. what would he mean? he would mean that both strings vibrated with the same fundamental frequency. they differ, however, in the other notes which they produce at the same time that they produce their fundamental notes. that is, they differ in the frequencies and amplitudes of these other component vibrations or "overtones" which are going on at the same time as their fundamental vibrations. it is this difference which lets us tell at once which instrument is being played. that brings us to the main idea about musical sounds and about human speech. the pitch of any complex sound is the pitch of its fundamental or lowest sound; but the character of the complex sound depends upon all the overtones or "harmonics" which are being produced and upon their relative frequencies and amplitudes. [illustration: fig ] the organ pipe which ends in the larynx produces a very complex sound. i can't show you how complex but i'll show you in fig. the complicated motion of an air molecule which is vibrating as the result of being near an organ pipe. (organ pipes differ--this is only one case.) you can see that there are a large number of pure notes of various intensities, that is, strengths, which go to make up the sound which a listener to this organ pipe would hear. the note from the human pipe is much more complex. when one speaks there are little puffs of air escaping from his larynx. the vocal cords vibrate as i explained. and the molecules of air near the larynx are set into very complex vibrations. these transmit their vibrations to other molecules until those in the mouth are reached. in the mouth, however, something very important happens. did you ever sing or howl down a rain barrel or into a long pipe or hallway and hear the sound? it sounds just about the same no matter who does it. the reason is that the long column of air in the pipe or barrel is set into vibration and vibrates according to its own ideas of how fast to do it. it has a "natural frequency" of its own. if in your voice there is a note of just that frequency it will respond beautifully. in fact it "resonates," or sings back, when it hears this note. the net result is that it emphasizes this note so much that you don't hear any of the other component notes of your voice--all you hear is the rain barrel. we say it reinforces one of the component notes of your voice and makes it louder. that same thing happens in the mouth cavity of a speaker. the size and shape of the column of air in the mouth can be varied by the tongue and lip positions and so there are many different possibilities of resonance. depending on lip and tongue, different frequencies of the complex sound which comes from the larynx are reinforced. you can see that for yourself from fig. which shows the tongue positions for three different vowel sounds. you can see also from fig. , which shows the mouth positions for the different vowels, how the size and shape of the mouth cavity is changed to give different sounds. these figures are in pl. viii. the pitch of the note need not change as every singer knows. you can try that also for yourself by singing the vowel sound of "ahh" and then changing the shape of your mouth so as to give the sound "ah--aw--ow--ou." the pitch of the note will not change because the fundamental stays the same. the speech significance of the sound, however, changes completely because the mouth cavity resonates to different ones of the higher notes which come from the larynx along with the fundamental note. now you can see what is necessary for telephonic transmission. each and every component note which enters into human speech must be transmitted and accurately reproduced by the receiver. more than that, all the proportions must be kept just the same as in the original spoken sound. we usually say that there must be reproduced in the air at the receiver exactly the same "wave form" as is present in the air at the transmitter. if that isn't done the speech won't be natural and one cannot recognize voices although he may understand pretty well. if there is too much "distortion" of the wave form, that is if the relative intensities of the component notes of the voice are too much altered, then there may even be a loss of intelligibility so that the listener cannot understand what is being said. what particular notes are in the human voice depends partly on the person who is speaking. you know that the fundamental of a bass voice is lower than that of a soprano. besides the fundamental, however, there are a lot of higher notes always present. this is particularly true when the spoken sound is a consonant, like "s" or "f" or "v." the particular notes, which are present and are important, depend upon what sound one is saying. usually, however, we find that if we can transmit and reproduce exactly all the notes which lie between a frequency of about cycles a second and one of about cycles a second the reproduced speech will be quite natural and very intelligible. for singing and for transmitting instrumental music it is necessary to transmit and reproduce still higher notes. what you will have to look out for, therefore, in a receiving set is that it does not cut out some of the high notes which are necessary to give the sound its naturalness. you will also have to make sure that your apparatus does not distort, that is, does not receive and reproduce some notes or "voice frequencies" more efficiently than it does some others which are equally necessary. for that reason when you buy a transformer or a telephone receiver it is well to ask for a characteristic curve of the apparatus which will show how the action varies as the frequency of the current is varied. the action or response should, of course, be practically the same at all the frequencies within the necessary part of the voice range. [footnote : cf. chap. vi of "the realities of modern science."] [footnote : my thanks are due to professor d. c. miller and to the macmillan company for permission to reproduce figs. to inclusive from that interesting book, "the science of musical sounds."] letter grid batteries and grid condensers for detectors dear son: you remember the audion characteristics which i used in figs. , and of letter to show you how an incoming signal will affect the current in the plate circuit. look again at these figures and you will see that these characteristics all had the same general shape but that they differed in their positions with reference to the "main streets" of "zero volts" on the grid and "zero mil-amperes" in the plate circuit. changing the voltage of the b-battery in the plate circuit changed the position of the characteristic. we might say that changing the b-battery shifted the curve with reference to the axis of zero volts on the grid. [illustration: fig ] [illustration: fig ] in the case of the three characteristics which we are discussing the shift was made by changing the b-battery. increasing b-voltage shifts characteristic to the left. it is possible, however, to produce such a shift by using a c-battery, that is, a battery in the grid circuit, which makes the grid permanently negative (or positive, depending upon how it is connected). this battery either helps or hinders the plate battery, and because of the strategic position of the grid right near the filament one volt applied to the grid produces as large an effect as would several volts in the plate battery. usually, therefore, we arrange to shift the characteristic by using a c-battery. [illustration: fig ] suppose for example that we had an audion in the receiving circuit of fig. and that its characteristic under these conditions is given by fig. . i've redrawn the figures to save your turning back. the audion will not act as a detector because an incoming signal will not change the average value of the current in the plate circuit. if, however, we connect a c-battery so as to make the grid negative, we can shift this characteristic so that the incoming signal will be detected. we have only to make the grid sufficiently negative to reduce the plate current to the value shown by the line _oa_ in fig. . then the signal will be detected because, while it makes the plate current alternately larger and smaller than this value _oa_, it will result, on the average, in a higher value of the plate current. [illustration: fig ] you see that what we have done is to arrange the point on the audion characteristic about which the tube is to work by properly choosing the value of the grid voltage _e_{c}_. there is an important method of using an audion for a detector where we arrange to have the grid voltage change steadily, getting more and more negative all the time the signal is coming in. before i tell how it is done i want to show you what will happen. suppose we start with an audion detector, for which the characteristic is that of fig. , but arranged as in fig. to give the grid any potential which we wish. the batteries and slide wire resistance which are connected in the grid circuit are already familiar to you. when the slider is set as shown in fig. the grid is at zero potential and we are at the point of the characteristic shown in fig. . now imagine an incoming signal, as shown in that same figure, but suppose that as soon as the signal has stopped making the grid positive we shift the slider a little so that the c-battery makes the grid slightly negative. we have shifted the point on the characteristic about which the tube is being worked by the incoming signal from point to point . [illustration: fig ] every time the incoming signal makes one complete cycle of changes we shift the slider a little further and make the grid permanently more negative. you can see what happens. as the grid becomes more negative the current in the plate circuit decreases on the average. finally, of course, the grid will become so negative that the current in the plate circuit will be reduced to zero. under these conditions an incoming signal finally makes a large change in the plate current and hence in the current through the telephone. the method of shifting a slider along, every time the incoming signal makes a complete cycle, is impossible to accomplish by hand if the frequency of the signal is high. it can be done automatically, however, no matter how high the frequency if we use a condenser in the grid circuit as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig ] when the incoming signal starts a stream of electrons through the coil _l_ of fig. and draws them away from plate of the condenser _c_ it is also drawing electrons away from the plate of the condenser _c_{g}_ which is in series with the grid. as electrons leave plate of this condenser others rush away from the grid and enter plate . this means that the grid doesn't have its ordinary number of electrons and so is positive. if the grid is positive it will be pleased to get electrons; and it can do so at once, for there are lots of electrons streaming past it on their way to the plate. while the grid is positive, therefore, there is a stream of electrons to it from the filament. fig. shows this current. all this takes place during the first half-cycle of the incoming signal. during the next half-cycle electrons are sent into plate of the condenser _c_ and also into plate of the grid condenser _c_{g}_. as electrons are forced into plate of the grid condenser those in plate of that condenser have to leave and go back to the grid where they came from. that is all right, but while they were away the grid got some electrons from the filament to take their places. the result is that the grid has now too many electrons, that is, it is negatively charged. [illustration: fig ] an instant later the signal e. m. f. reverses and calls electrons away from plate of the grid condenser. again electrons from the grid rush into plate and again the grid is left without its proper number and so is positive. again it receives electrons from the filament. the result is still more electrons in the part of the grid circuit which is formed by the grid, the plate of the grid condenser and the connecting wire. these electrons can't get across the gap of the condenser _c_{g}_ and they can't go back to the filament any other way. so there they are, trapped. finally there are so many of these trapped electrons that the grid is so negative all the time as almost entirely to oppose the efforts of the plate to draw electrons away from the filament. [illustration: pl. viii.--to illustrate the mechanism for the production of the human voice.] then the plate current is reduced practically to zero. that's the way to arrange an audion so that the incoming signal makes the largest possible change in plate current. we can tell if there is an incoming signal because it will "block" the tube, as we say. the plate-circuit current will be changed from its ordinary value to almost zero in the short time it takes for a few cycles of the incoming signal. we can detect one signal that way, but only one because the first signal makes the grid permanently negative and blocks the tube so that there isn't any current in the plate circuit and can't be any. if we want to put the tube in condition to receive another signal we must allow these electrons, which originally came from the filament, to get out of their trapped position and go back to the filament. [illustration: fig ] to do so we connect a very fine wire between plates and of the grid condenser. we call that wire a "grid-condenser leak" because it lets the electrons slip around past the gap. by using a very high resistance, we can make it so hard for the electrons to get around the gap that not many will do so while the signal is coming in. in that case we can leave the leak permanently across the condenser as shown in fig. . of course, the leak must offer so easy a path for the electrons that all the trapped electrons can get home between one incoming signal and the next. one way of making a high resistance like this is to draw a heavy pencil line on a piece of paper, or better a line with india ink, that is ink made of fine ground particles of carbon. the leak should have a very high resistance, usually one or two million ohms if the condenser is about . microfarad. if it has a million ohms we say it has a "megohm" of resistance. this method of detecting with a leaky grid-condenser and an audion is very efficient so far as telling the listener whether or not a signal is coming into his set. it is widely used in receiving radio-telephone signals although it is best adapted to receiving the telegraph signals from a spark set. i don't propose to stop to tell you how a spark-set transmitter works. it is sufficient to say that when the key is depressed the set sends out radio signals at the rate usually of signals a second. every time a signal reaches the receiving station the current in the telephone receiver is sudden reduced; and in the time between signals the leak across the grid condenser brings the tube back to a condition where it can receive the next signal. while the sending key is depressed the current in the receiver is decreasing and increasing once for every signal which is being transmitted. for each decrease and increase in current the diaphragm of the telephone receiver makes one vibration. what the listener then hears is a musical note with a frequency corresponding to that number of vibrations a second, that is, a note with a frequency of one thousand cycles per second. he hears a note of frequency about that of two octaves above middle _c_ on the piano. there are usually other notes present at the same time and the sound is not like that of any musical instrument. [illustration: fig ] if the key is held down a long time for a dash the listener hears this note for a corresponding time. if it is depressed only about a third of that time so as to send a dot, the listener hears the note for a shorter time and interprets it to mean a dot. in fig. i have drawn a sketch to show the e. m. f. which the signals from a spark set impress on the grid of a detector and to show how the plate current varies if there is a condenser and leak in the grid circuit. i have only shown three signals in succession. if the operator sends at the rate of about twenty words a minute a dot is formed by about sixty of these signals in succession. the frequency of the alternations in one of the little signals will depend upon the wave length which the sending operator is using. if he uses the wave length of meters, as ship stations do, he will send with a radio frequency of , cycles a second. since the signals are at the rate of a thousand a second each one is made up of complete cycles of the current in the antenna. it would be impracticable therefore to show you a complete picture of the signal from a spark set. i have, however, lettered the figure quite completely to cover what i have just told you. if the grid-condenser and its leak are so chosen as to work well for signals from a -cycle spark set they will also work well for the notes in human speech which are about cycles a second in frequency. the detecting circuit will not, however, work so well for the other notes which are in the human voice and are necessary to speech. for example, if notes of about cycles a second are involved in the speech which is being transmitted, the leak across the condenser will not work fast enough. on the other hand, for the very lowest notes in the voice the leak will work too fast and such variations in the signal current will not be detected as efficiently as are those of cycles a second. you can see that there is always a little favoritism on the part of the grid-condenser detector. it doesn't exactly reproduce the variations in intensity of the radio signal which were made at the sending station. it distorts a little. as amateurs we usually forgive it that distortion because it is so efficient. it makes so large a change in the current through the telephone when it receives a signal that we can use it to receive much weaker signals, that is, signals from smaller or more distant sending stations, than we can receive with the arrangement described in letter . letter amplifiers and the regenerative circuit my dear receiver: there is one way of making an audion even more efficient as a detector than the method described in the last letter. and that is to make it talk to itself. suppose we arrange a receiving circuit as in fig. . it is exactly like that of fig. of the previous letter except for the fact that the current in the plate circuit passes through a little coil, _l_{t}_, which is placed near the coil _l_ and so can induce in it an e. m. f. which will correspond in intensity and wave form to the current in the plate circuit. if we should take out the grid condenser and its leak this circuit would be like that of fig. in letter which we used for a generator of high-frequency alternating currents. you remember how that circuit operates. a small effect in the grid circuit produces a large effect in the plate circuit. because the plate circuit is coupled to the grid circuit the grid is again affected and so there is a still larger effect in the plate circuit. and so on, until the current in the plate circuit is swinging from zero to its maximum possible value. what happens depends upon how closely the coils _l_ and _l_{t}_ are coupled, that is, upon how much the changing current in one can affect the other. if they are turned at right angles to each other, so that there is no possible mutual effect we say there is "zero coupling." start with the coils at right angles to each other and turn _l_{t}_ so as to bring its windings more and more parallel to those of _l_. if we want _l_{t}_ to have a large effect on _l_ its windings should be parallel and also in the same direction just as they were in fig. of letter to which we just referred. as we approach nearer to that position the current in _l_{t}_ induces more and more e. m. f. in coil _l_. for some position of the two coils, and the actual position depends on the tube we are using, there will be enough effect from the plate circuit upon the grid circuit so that there will be continuous oscillations. [illustration: fig ] we want to stop just short of this position. there will then be no continuous oscillations; but if any changes do take place in the plate current they will affect the grid. and these changes in the grid voltage will result in still larger changes in the plate current. now suppose that there is coming into the detector circuit of fig. a radio signal with, speech significance. the current in the plate circuit varies accordingly. so does the current in coil _l_{t}_ which is in the plate circuit. but this current induces an e. m. f. in coil _l_ and this adds to the e. m. f. of the incoming signal so as to make a greater variation in the plate current. this goes on as long as there is an incoming signal. because the plate circuit is coupled to the grid circuit the result is a larger e. m. f. in the grid circuit than the incoming signal could set up all by itself. you see now why i said the tube talked to itself. it repeats to itself whatever it receives. it has a greater strength of signal to detect than if it didn't repeat. of course, it detects also just as i told you in the preceding letter. in adjusting the coupling of the two coils of fig. we stopped short of allowing the tube circuit to oscillate and to generate a high frequency. if we had gone on increasing the coupling we should have reached a position where steady oscillations would begin. usually this is marked by a little click in the receiver. the reason is that when the tube oscillates the average current in the plate circuit is not the same as the steady current which ordinarily flows between filament and plate. there is a sudden change, therefore, in the average current in the plate circuit when the tube starts to oscillate. you remember that what affects the receiver is the average current in the plate circuit. so the receiver diaphragm suddenly changes position as the tube starts to oscillate and a listener hears a little click. the frequency of the alternating current which the tube produces depends upon the tuned circuit formed by _l_ and _c_. suppose that this frequency is not the same as that to which the receiving antenna is tuned. what will happen? there will be impressed on the grid of the tube two alternating e. m. f.'s, one due to the tube's own oscillations and the other incoming from the distant transmitting station. the two e. m. f. 's are both active at once so that at each instant the e. m. f. of the grid is really the sum of these two e. m. f.'s. suppose at some instant both e. m. f.'s are acting to make the grid positive. a little later one of them will be trying to make the grid negative while the other is still trying to make it positive. and later still when the first e. m. f. is ready again to make the grid positive the second will be trying to make it negative. it's like two men walking along together but with different lengths of step. even if they start together with their left feet they are soon so completely out of step that one is putting down his right foot while the other is putting down his left. a little later, but just for an instant, they are in step again. and so it goes. they are in step for a moment and then completely out of step. suppose one of them makes ten steps in the time that the other makes nine. in that time they will be once in step and once completely out of step. if one makes ten steps while the other does eight this will happen twice. the same thing happens in the audion detector circuit when two e. m. f.'s which differ slightly in frequency are simultaneously impressed on the grid. if one e. m. f. passes through ten complete cycles while the other is making eight cycles, then during that time they will twice be exactly in step, that is, "in phase" as we say. twice in that time they will be exactly out of step, that is, exactly "opposite in phase." twice in that time the two e. m. f.'s will aid each other in their effects on the grid and twice they will exactly oppose. unless they are equal in amplitude there will still be a net e. m. f. even when they are exactly opposed. the result of all this is that the average current in the plate circuit of the detector will alternately increase and decrease twice during this time. the listener will then hear a note of a frequency equal to the difference between the frequencies of the two e. m. f.'s which are being simultaneously impressed on the grid of the detector. suppose the incoming signal has a frequency of , cycles a second but that the detector tube is oscillating in its own circuit at the rate of , cycles per second, then the listener will hear a note of cycles per second. one thousand times each second the two e. m. f.'s will be exactly in phase and one thousand times each second they will be exactly opposite in phase. the voltage applied to the grid will be a maximum one thousand times a second and alternately a minimum. we can think of it, then, as if there were impressed on the grid of the detector a high-frequency signal which varied in intensity one thousand times a second. this we know will produce a corresponding variation in the current through the telephone receiver and thus give rise to a musical note of about two octaves above middle _c_ on the piano. this circuit of fig. will let us detect signals which are not varying in intensity. and consequently this is the method which we use to detect the telegraph signals which are sent out by such a "continuous wave transmitter" as i showed you at the end of letter . when the key of a c-w transmitter is depressed there is set up in the distant receiving-antenna an alternating current. this current doesn't vary in strength. it is there as long as the sender has his key down. because, however, of the effect which i described above there will be an audible note from the telephone receiver if the detector tube is oscillating at a frequency within two or three thousand cycles of that of the transmitting station. this method of receiving continuous wave signals is called the "heterodyne" method. the name comes from two greek words, "dyne" meaning "force" and the other part meaning "different." we receive by combining two different electron-moving-forces, one produced by the distant sending-station and the other produced locally at the receiving station. neither by itself will produce any sound, except a click when it starts. both together produce a musical sound in the telephone receiver; and the frequency of that note is the difference of the two frequencies. there are a number of words used to describe this circuit with some of which you should be familiar. it is sometimes called a "feed-back" circuit because part of the output of the audion is fed back into its input side. more generally it is known as the "regenerative circuit" because the tube keeps on generating an alternating current. the little coil which is used to feed back into the grid circuit some of the effects from the plate circuit is sometimes called a "tickler" coil. it is not necessary to use a grid condenser in a feed-back circuit but it is perhaps the usual method of detecting where the regenerative circuit is used. the whole value of the regenerative circuit so far as receiving is concerned is in the high efficiency which it permits. one tube can do the work of two. we can get just as loud signals by using another tube instead of making one do all the work. in the regenerative circuit the tube is performing two jobs at once. it is detecting but it is also amplifying.[ ] by "amplifying" we mean making an e. m. f. larger than it is without changing the shape of its picture, that is without changing its "wave form." to show just what we mean by amplifying we must look again at the audion and see how it acts. you know that a change in the grid potential makes a change in the plate current. let us arrange an audion in a circuit which will tell us a little more of what happens. fig. shows the circuit. this circuit is the same as we used to find the audion characteristic except that there is a clip for varying the number of batteries in the plate circuit and a voltmeter for measuring their e. m. f. we start with the grid at zero potential and the usual number of batteries in the plate circuit. the voltmeter tells us the e. m. f. we read the ammeter in the plate circuit and note what that current is. then we shift the slider in the grid circuit so as to give the grid a small potential. the current in the plate circuit changes. we can now move the clip on the b-batteries so as to bring the current in this circuit back to its original value. of course, if we make the grid positive we move the clip so as to use fewer cells of the b-battery. on the other hand if we make the grid negative we shall need more e. m. f. in the plate circuit. in either case we shall find that we need to make a very much larger change in the voltage of the plate circuit than we have made in the voltage of the grid circuit. [illustration: fig ] usually we perform the experiment a little differently so as to get more accurate results. we read the voltmeter in the plate circuit and the ammeter in that circuit. then we change the number of batteries which we are using in the plate circuit. that changes the plate current. the next step is to shift the slider in the grid circuit until we have again the original value of current in the plate circuit. suppose that the tube is ordinarily run with a plate voltage of volts and we start with that e. m. f. on the plate. suppose that we now make it volts and then vary the position of the slider in the grid circuit until the ammeter reads as it did at the start. next we read the voltage impressed on the grid by reading the voltmeter in the grid circuit. suppose it reads volts. what does that mean? [illustration: fig ] it means that two volts in the grid circuit have the same effect on the plate current as ten volts in the plate circuit. if we apply a volt to the grid circuit we get five times as large an effect in the plate circuit as we would if the volt were applied there. we get a greater effect, the effect of more volts, by applying our voltage to the grid. we say that the tube acts as an "amplifier of voltage" because we can get a larger effect than the number of volts which we apply would ordinarily entitle us to. now let's take a simple case of the use of an audion as an amplifier. suppose we have a receiving circuit with which we find that the signals are not easily understood because they are too weak. let this be the receiving circuit of fig. which i am reproducing here as part of fig. . we have replaced the telephone receiver by a "transformer." a transformer is two coils, or windings, coupled together. an alternating current in one will give rise to an alternating current in the other. you are already familiar with the idea but this is our first use of the word. usually we call the first coil, that is the one through which the alternating current flows, the "primary" and the second coil, in which a current is induced, the "secondary." the secondary of this transformer is connected to the grid circuit of another vacuum tube, to the plate circuit of which is connected another transformer and the telephone receiver. the result is a detector and "one stage of amplification." the primary of the first transformer, so we shall suppose, has in it the same current as would have been in the telephone. this alternating current induces in the secondary an e. m. f. which has the same variations as this current. this e. m. f. acts on the grid of the second tube, that is on the amplifier. because the audion amplifies, the e. m. f. acting on the telephone receiver is larger than it would have been without the use of this audion. and hence there is a greater response on the part of its diaphragm and a louder sound. in setting up such a circuit as this there are several things to watch. for some of these you will have to rely on the dealer from whom you buy your supplies and for the others upon yourself. but it will take another letter to tell you of the proper precautions in using an audion as an amplifier. [illustration: fig ] in the circuit which i have just described an audion is used to amplify the current which comes from the detector before it reaches the telephone receiver. sometimes we use an audion to amplify the e. m. f. of the signal before impressing it upon the grid of the detector. fig. shows a circuit for doing that. in the case of fig. we are amplifying the audio-frequency current. in that of fig. it is the radio-frequency effect which is amplified. the feed-back or regenerative circuit of fig. is a one-tube circuit for doing the same thing as is done with two tubes in fig . [footnote : there is always some amplification taking place in an audion detector but the regenerative circuit amplifies over and over again until the signal is as large as the tube can detect.] letter the audion amplifier and its connections dear son: in our use of the audion we form three circuits. the first or a-circuit includes the filament. the b-circuit includes the part of the tube between filament and plate. the c-circuit includes the part between filament and grid. we sometimes speak of the c-circuit as the "input" circuit and the b-circuit as the "output" circuit of the tube. this is because we can put into the grid-filament terminals an e. m. f. and obtain from the plate-filament circuit an effect in the form of a change of current. [illustration: fig ] suppose we had concealed in a box the audion and circuit of fig. and that only the terminals which are shown came through the box. we are given a battery and an ammeter and asked to find out all we can as to what is between the terminals _f_ and _g_. we connect the battery and ammeter in series with these terminals. no current flows through the circuit. we reverse the battery but no current flows in the opposite direction. then we reason that there is an open-circuit between _f_ and _g_. as long as we do not use a higher voltage than that of the c-battery which is in the box no current can flow. even if we do use a higher voltage than the "negative c-battery" of the hidden grid-circuit there will be a current only when the external battery is connected so as to make the grid positive with respect to the filament. now suppose we take several cells of battery and try in the same way to find what is hidden between the terminals _p_ and _f_. we start with one battery and the ammeter as before and find that if this battery is connected so as to make _p_ positive with respect to _f_, there is a feeble current. we increase the battery and find that the current is increased. two cells, however, do not give exactly twice the current that one cell does, nor do three give three times as much. the current does not increase proportionately to the applied voltage. therefore we reason that whatever is between _p_ and _f_ acts like a resistance but not like a wire resistance. then, we try another experiment with this hidden audion. we connect a battery to _g_ and _f_, and note what effect it has on the current which our other battery is sending through the box between _p_ and _f_. there is a change of current in this circuit, just as if our act of connecting a battery to _g-f_ had resulted in connecting a battery in series with the _p-f_ circuit. the effect is exactly as if there is inside the box a battery which is connected into the hidden part of the circuit _p-f_. this concealed battery, which now starts to act, appears to be several times stronger than the battery which is connected to _g-f_. sometimes this hidden battery helps the b-battery which is on the outside; and sometimes it seems to oppose, for the current in the _p-f_ circuit either increases or decreases, depending upon how we connect the battery to _g_ and _f_. the hidden battery is always larger than our battery connected to _g_ and _f_. if we arrange rapidly to reverse the battery connected to _g-f_ it appears as if there is inside the box in the _p-f_ circuit an alternator, that is, something which can produce an alternating e. m. f. all this, of course, is merely a review statement of what we already know. these experiments are interesting, however, because they follow somewhat those which were performed in studying the audion and finding out how to make it do all the wonderful things which it now can. as far as we have carried our series of experiments the box might contain two separate circuits. one between _g_ and _f_ appears to be an open circuit. the other appears to have in it a resistance and a battery (or else an alternator). the e. m. f. of the battery, or alternator, as the case may be, depends on what source of e. m. f. is connected to _g-f_. whatever that e. m. f. is, there is a corresponding kind of e. m. f. inside the box but one several times larger. [illustration: fig ] we might, therefore, pay no further attention to what is actually inside the box or how all these effects are brought about. we might treat the entire box as if it was formed by two separate circuits as shown in fig. . if we do so, we are replacing the box by something which is equivalent so far as effects are concerned, that is we are replacing an actual audion by two circuits which together are equivalent to it. the men who first performed such experiments wanted some convenient way of saying that if an alternator, which has an e. m. f. of _v_ volts, is connected to _f_ and _g_, the effect is the same as if a much stronger alternator is connected between _f_ and _p_. how much stronger this imaginary alternator is depends upon the design of the audion. for some audions it might be five times as strong, for other designs . or almost any other number, although usually a number of times less than . they used a little greek letter called "mu" to stand for this number which depends on the design of the tube. then they said that the hidden alternator in the output circuit was mu times as strong as the actual alternator which was applied between the grid and the filament. of course, instead of writing the sound and name of the letter they used the letter [greek: m] itself. and that is what i have done in the sketch of fig. . now we are ready to talk about the audion as an amplifier. the first thing to notice is the fact that we have an open circuit between _f_ and _g_. this is true as long as we don't apply an e. m. f. large enough to overcome the c-battery of fig. and thus let the grid become positive and attract electrons from the filament. we need then spend no further time thinking about what will happen in the circuit _g-f_, for there will be no current. as to the circuit _f-p_, we can treat it as a resistance in series with which there is a generator [greek: m] times as strong as that which is connected to _f_ and _g_. the next problem is how to get the most out of this hidden generator. we call the resistance which the tube offers to the passage of electrons between _p_ and _f_ the "internal resistance" of the plate circuit of the tube. how large it is depends upon the design of tube. in some tubes it may be five or six thousand ohms, and in others several times as high. in the large tubes used in high-powered transmitting sets it is much less. since it will be different in different cases we shall use a symbol for it and say that it is _r_{p}_ ohms. then one rule for using an audion as an amplifier is this: to get the most out of an audion see that the telephone, or whatever circuit or piece of apparatus is connected to the output terminals, shall have a resistance of _r_{p}_ ohms. when the resistance of the circuit, which an audion is supplying with current, is the same as the internal resistance of the output side of the tube, then the audion gives its greatest output. that is the condition for the greatest "amount of energy each second," or the "greatest power" as we say. that rule is why we always select the telephone receivers which we use with an audion and always ask carefully as to their resistance when we buy. sometimes, however, it is not practicable to use receivers of just the right resistance. where we connect the output side of an audion to some other circuit, as where we let one audion supply another, it is usually impossible to follow this rule without adding some special apparatus. this leads to the next rule: if the telephone receiver, or the circuit, which we wish to connect to the output of an audion, does not have quite nearly a resistance of _r_{p}_ ohms we use a properly designed transformer as we have already done in figs. and . a transformer is two separate coils coupled together so that an alternating current in the primary will induce an alternating current in the secondary. of course, if the secondary is open-circuited then no current can flow but there will be induced in it an e. m. f. which is ready to act if the circuit is closed. transformers have an interesting ability to make a large resistance look small or vice versa. to show you why, i shall have to develop some rules for transformers. suppose you have an alternating e. m. f. of ten volts applied to the primary of an iron-cored transformer which has ten turns. there is one volt applied to each turn. now, suppose the secondary has only one turn. that one turn has induced in it an alternating e. m. f. of one volt. if there are more turns of wire forming the secondary, then each turn has induced in it just one volt. but the e. m. f.'s of all these turns add together. if the secondary has twenty turns, there is induced in it a total of twenty volts. so the first rule is this: in a transformer the number of volts in each turn of wire is just the same in the secondary as in the primary. if we want a high-voltage alternating e. m. f. all we have to do is to send an alternating current through the primary of a transformer which has in the secondary, many times more turns of wire than it has in the primary. from the secondary we obtain a higher voltage than we impress on the primary. you can see one application of this rule at once. when we use an audion as an amplifier of an alternating current we send the current which is to be amplified through the primary of a transformer, as in fig. . we use a transformer with many times more turns on the secondary than on the primary so as to apply a large e. m. f. to the grid of the amplifying tube. that will mean a large effect in the plate circuit of the amplifier. you remember that the grid circuit of an audion with a proper value of negative c-battery is really open-circuited and no current will flow in it. for that case we get a real gain by using a "step-up" transformer, that is, one with more turns in the secondary than in the primary. it looks at first as if a transformer would always give a gain. _if we mean a gain in energy it will not_ although we may use it, as we shall see in a minute, to permit a vacuum tube to work into an output circuit more efficiently than it could without the transformer. we cannot have any more energy in the secondary circuit of a transformer than we give to the primary. suppose we have a transformer with twice as many turns on the secondary as on the primary. to the primary we apply an alternating e. m. f. of a certain number of volts. in the secondary there will be twice as many volts because it has twice as many turns. the current in the secondary, however, will be only half as large as is the current in the primary. we have twice the force in the secondary but only half the electron stream. it is something like this: you are out coasting and two youngsters ask you to pull them and their sleds up hill. you pull one of them all the way and do a certain amount of work. on the other hand suppose you pull them both at once but only half way up. you pull twice as hard but only half as far and you do the same amount of work as before. [illustration: fig ] we can't get more work out of the secondary of a transformer than we do in the primary. if we design the transformer so that there is a greater pull (e. m. f.) in the secondary the electron stream in the secondary will be correspondingly smaller. you remember how we measure resistance. we divide the e. m. f. (number of volts) by the current (number of amperes) to find the resistance (number of ohms). suppose we do that for the primary and for the secondary of the transformer of fig. which we are discussing. see what happens in the secondary. there is only half as much voltage but twice as much current. it looks as though the secondary had one-fourth as much resistance as the primary. and so it has, but we usually call it "impedance" instead of resistance because straight wires resist but coils or condensers impede alternating e. m. f.'s. [illustration: fig ] before we return to the question of using a transformer in an audion circuit let us turn this transformer around as in fig. and send the current through the side with the larger number of windings. let's talk of "primary" and "secondary" just as before but, of course, remember that now the primary has twice the turns of the secondary. on the secondary side we shall have only half the current, but there will be twice the e. m. f. the resistance of the secondary then is four times that of the primary. now return to the amplifier of fig. and see what sort of a transformer should be between the plate circuit of the tube and the telephone receivers. suppose the internal resistance of the tube is , ohms and the resistance of the telephones is , ohms. suppose also that the resistance (really impedance) of the primary side of the transformer which we just considered is , ohms. the impedance of its secondary will be a quarter of this or , ohms. if we connect such a transformer in the circuit, as shown, we shall obtain the greatest output from the tube. in the first place the primary of the transformer has a number of ohms just equal to the internal resistance of the tube. the tube, therefore, will give its best to that transformer. in the second place the secondary of the transformer has a resistance just equal to the telephone receivers so it can give its best to them. the effect of the transformer is to make the telephones act as if they had four times as much resistance and so were exactly suited to be connected to the audion. this whole matter of the proper use of transformers is quite simple but very important in setting up vacuum-tube circuits. to overlook it in building or buying your radio set will mean poor efficiency. whenever you have two parts of a vacuum-tube circuit to connect together be sure and buy only a transformer which is designed to work between the two impedances (or resistances) which you wish to connect together. there is one more precaution in connection with the purchase of transformers. they should do the same thing for all the important frequencies which they are to transmit. if they do not, the speech or signals will be distorted and may be unintelligible. if you take the precautions which i have mentioned your radio receiving set formed by a detector and one amplifier will look like that of fig. . that is only one possible scheme of connections. you can use any detector circuit which you wish,[ ] one with a grid condenser and leak, or one arranged for feed-back in either case your amplifier may well be as shown in the figure. [illustration: fig ] the circuit i have described uses an audion to amplify the audio-frequency currents which come from the detector and are capable of operating the telephones. in some cases it is desirable to amplify the radio signals before applying them to the detector. this is especially true where a "loop antenna" is being used. loop antennas are smaller and more convenient than aërials and they also have certain abilities to select the signals which they are to receive because they receive best from stations which lie along a line drawn parallel to their turns. unfortunately, however, they are much less efficient and so require the use of amplifiers. with a small loop made by ten turns of wire separated by about a quarter of an inch and wound on a square mounting, about three feet on a side, you will usually require two amplifiers. one of these might be used to amplify the radio signals before detection and the other to amplify after detection. to tune the loop for broadcasts a condenser of about . mf. will be needed. the diagram of fig. shows the complete circuit of a set with three stages of radio-amplification and none of audio. [footnote : except for patented circuits. see p. .] letter telephone receivers and other electromagnetic devices dear son: in an earlier letter when we first introduced a telephone receiver into a circuit i told you something of how it operates. i want now to tell why and also of some other important devices which operate for the same reason. you remember that a stream of electrons which is starting or stopping can induce the electrons of a neighboring parallel circuit to start off in parallel paths. we do not know the explanation of this. nor do we know the explanation of another fact which seems to be related to this fact of induction and is the basis for our explanations of magnetism. [illustration: fig ] if two parallel wires are carrying steady electron streams in the same general direction the wires attract each other. if the streams are oppositely directed the wires repel each other. fig. illustrates this fact. if the streams are not at all in the same direction, that is, if they are at right angles, they have no effect on each other. [illustration: fig ] these facts, of the attraction of electron streams which are in the same direction and repulsion of streams in opposite directions, are all that one need remember to figure out for himself what will happen under various conditions. for example, if two coils of wire are carrying currents what will happen is easily seen. fig. shows the two coils and a section through them. [illustration: fig ] looking at this cross section we seem to have four wires, _ _ and _ _ of coil _a_ and _ _ and _ _ of coil _b_. you see at once that if the coils are free to move they will move into the dotted positions shown in fig , because wire _ _ attracts wire _ _ and repels wire _ _, while wire _ _ attracts wire _ _ and repels wire _ _. if necessary, and if they are free to move, the coils will turn completely around to get to this position. i have shown such a case in fig. . wires which are not carrying currents do not behave in this way. the action is due, but how we don't yet know, to the motions of the electrons. as far as we can explain it to-day, the attraction of two wires which are carrying currents is due to the attraction of the two streams of electrons. of course these electrons are part of the wires. they can't get far away from the stay-at-home electrons and the nuclei of the atoms which form the wires. in fact it is these nuclei which keep the wandering electrons within the wires. the result is that if the streams of electrons are to move toward each other the wires must go along with them. if the wires are held firmly the electron streams cannot approach one another for they must stay in the wires. wires, therefore, perform the important service of acting as paths for electrons which are traveling as electric currents. there are other ways in which electrons can be kept in a path, and other means beside batteries for keeping them going. it doesn't make any difference so far as the attraction or the repulsion is concerned why they are following a certain path or why they stay in it. so far as we know two streams of electrons, following parallel paths, will always, behave just like the two streams of fig. . [illustration: fig ] suppose, for example, there were two atoms which were each formed by a nucleus and a number of electrons swinging around about the nucleus as pictured in fig. . the electrons are going of their own accord and the nucleus keeps them from flying off at a tangent, the way mud flies from the wheel of an automobile. suppose these two atoms are free to turn but not to move far from their present positions. they will turn so as to make their electron paths parallel just as did the loops of fig. . [illustration: fig ] now, i don't say that there are any atoms at all like the ones i have pictured. there is still a great deal to be learned about how electrons act inside different kinds of atoms. we do know, however, that the atoms of iron act just as if they were tiny loops with electron streams. [illustration: fig ] suppose we had several loops and that they were lined up like the three loops in fig. . you can see that they would all attract the other loop, on the right in the figure. on the other hand if they were grouped in the triangle of fig. they would barely affect the loop because they would be pulling at cross purposes. if a lot of the tiny loops of the iron atoms are lined up so as to act together and attract other loops, as in the first figure, we say the iron is magnetized and is a magnet. in an ordinary piece of iron, however, the atoms are so grouped that they don't pull together but like the loops of our second figure pull in different directions and neutralize each other's efforts so that there is no net effect. [illustration: pl. ix.--western electric loud speaking receiver. crystal detector set of the general electric co. audibility meter of general radio co.] and like the loops of fig. the atoms in an unmagnetized piece of iron are pretty well satisfied to stay as they are without all lining up to pull together. to magnetize the iron we must force some of these atomic loops to turn part way around. that can be done by bringing near them a strong magnet or a coil of wire which is carrying a current. then the atoms are forced to turn and if enough turn so that there is an appreciable effect then the iron is magnetized. the more that are properly turned the stronger is the magnet. one end or "pole" we call north-seeking and the other south-seeking, because a magnetized bar of iron acts like a compass needle. [illustration: fig ] a coil of wire, carrying a current, acts just like a magnet because its larger loops are all ready to pull together. i have marked the coil of fig. with _n_ and _s_ for north and south. if the electron stream in it is reversed the "polarity" is reversed. there is a simple rule for this. partially close your left hand so that the fingers form loops. let the thumb stick out at right angles to these loops. if the electron streams are flowing around the loops of a coil in the same direction as your fingers point then your thumb is the _n_ pole and the coil will repel the north poles of other loops or magnets in the direction in which your thumb points. if you know the polarity already there is a simple rule for the repulsion or attraction. like poles repel, unlike poles attract. from what has been said about magnetism you can now understand why in a telephone receiver the current in the winding can make the magnet stronger. it does so because it makes more of the atomic loops of the iron turn around and help pull. on the other hand if the current in the winding is reversed it will turn some of the loops which are already helping into other positions where they don't help and may hinder. if the current in the coil is to help, the electron stream in it must be so directed that the north pole of the coil is at the same end as the north pole of the magnet. this idea of the attraction or repulsion of electron streams, whether in coils of wire or in atoms of iron and other magnetizable substances, is the fundamental idea of most forms of telephone receivers, of electric motors, and of a lot of other devices which we call "electromagnetic." the ammeters and voltmeters which we use for the measurement of audion characteristics and the like are usually electromagnetic instruments. ammeters and voltmeters are alike in their design. both are sensitive current-measuring instruments. in the case of the voltmeter, as you know, we have a large resistance in series with the current-measuring part for the reason of which i told in letter . in the case of ammeters we sometimes let all the current go through the current-measuring part but generally we let only a certain fraction of it do so. to pass the rest of the current we connect a small resistance in parallel with the measuring part. in both types of instruments the resistances are sometimes hidden away under the cover. both instruments must, of course, be calibrated as i have explained before. in the electromagnetic instruments there are several ways of making the current-measuring part. the simplest is to let the current, or part of it, flow through a coil which is pivoted between the _n_ and _s_ poles of a strong permanent magnet. a spring keeps the coil in its zero position and if the current makes the coil turn it must do so against this spring. the stronger the current in the coil the greater the interaction of the loops of the coil and those of the iron atoms and hence the further the coil will turn. a pointer attached to the coil indicates how far; and the number of volts or amperes is read off from the calibrated scale. such instruments measure direct-currents, that is, steady streams of electrons in one direction. to measure an alternating current or voltage we can use a hot-wire instrument or one of several different types of electromagnetic instruments. perhaps the simplest of these is the so-called "plunger type." the alternating current flows in a coil; and a piece of soft iron is so pivoted that it can be attracted and moved into the coil. soft iron does not make a good permanent magnet. if you put a piece of it inside a coil which is carrying a steady current it becomes a magnet but about as soon as you interrupt the current the atomic loops of the iron stop pulling together. almost immediately they turn into all sorts of positions and form little self-satisfied groups which don't take any interest in the outside world. (that isn't true of steel, where the atomic loops are harder to turn and to line up, but are much more likely to stay in their new positions.) because the plunger in an alternating-current ammeter is soft iron its loops line up with those of the coil no matter which way the electron stream happens to be going in the coil. the atomic magnets in the iron turn around each time the current reverses and they are always, therefore, lined up so that the plunger is attracted. if the plunger has much inertia or if the oscillations of the current are reasonably frequent the plunger will not move back and forth with each reversal of the current but will take an average position. the stronger the a-c (alternating current) the farther inside the coil will be this position of the plunger. the position of the plunger becomes then a measure of the strength of the alternating current. instruments for measuring alternating e. m. f.'s and currents, read in volts and in amperes. so far i haven't stopped to tell what we mean by one ampere of alternating current. you know from letter what we mean by an ampere of d-c (direct current). it wasn't necessary to explain before because i told you only of hot-wire instruments and they will read the same for either d-c or a-c. when there is an alternating current in a wire the electrons start, rush ahead, stop, rush back, stop, and do it all over again and again. that heats the wire in which it happens. if an alternating stream of electrons, which are doing this sort of thing, heats a wire just exactly as much as would a d-c of one ampere, then we say that the a-c has an "effective value" of one ampere. of course part of the time of each cycle the stream is larger than an ampere but for part it is less. if the average heating effect is the same the a-c is said to be one ampere. in the same way, if a steady e. m. f. (a d-c e. m. f.) of one volt will heat a wire to which it is applied a certain amount and if an alternating e. m. f. will have the same heating effect in the same time, then the a-c e. m. f. is said to be one volt. another electromagnetic instrument which we have discussed but of which more should be said is the iron-cored transformer. we consider first what happens in one of the coils of the transformer. the inductance of a coil is very much higher if it has an iron core. the reason is that then the coil acts as if it had an enormously larger number of turns. all the atomic loops of the core add their effects to the loops of the coil. when the current starts it must line up a lot of these atomic loops. when the current stops and these loops turn back into some of their old self-satisfied groupings, they affect the electrons in the coil. where first they opposed the motion of these electrons, now they insist on its being continued for a moment longer. i'll prove that by describing two simple experiments; and then we'll have the basis for understanding the effect of an iron core in a transformer. [illustration: fig ] look again at fig. of letter which i am reproducing for convenience. we considered only what would happen in coil _cd_ if a current was started in coil _ab_. suppose instead of placing the coils as shown in that figure they are placed as in fig. . because they are at right angles there will be no effect in _cd_ when the current is started in _ab_. let the current flow steadily through _ab_ and then suddenly turn the coils so that they are again parallel as shown by the dotted positions. we get the same temporary current in _cd_ as we would if we should place the coils parallel and then start the current in _ab_. [illustration: fig ] the other experiment is this: starting with the coils lined up as in the dotted position of fig. and the current steadily flowing in _ab_, we suddenly turn them into positions at right angles to each other. there is the same momentary current in _cd_ as if we had left them lined up and had opened the switch in the circuit of _ab_. [illustration: fig ] now we know that the atomic loops of iron behave in the same general way as do loops of wire which are carrying currents. let us replace the coil _ab_ by a magnet as shown in fig. . first we start with the magnet at right angles to the coil _cd_. suddenly we turn it into the dotted position of that figure. there is the same momentary current in _cd_ as if we were still using the coil _ab_ instead of a magnet. if now we turn the magnet back to a position at right angles to _cd_, we observe the opposite direction of current in _cd_. these effects are more noticeable the more rapidly we turn the magnet. the same is true of turning the coil. the experiment of turning the magnet illustrates just what happens in the case of a transformer with, an iron core except that instead of turning the entire magnet the little atomic loops do the turning inside the core. in the secondary of an iron-cored transformer the induced current is the sum of two currents both in the same direction at each instant. one current is caused by the starting or stopping of the current in the primary. the other current is due to the turning of the atomic loops of the iron atoms so that more of them line up with the turns of the primary. these atomic loops, of course, are turned by the current in the primary. there are so many of them, however, that the current due to their turning is usually the more important part of the total current. in all transformers the effect is greater the more rapidly the current changes direction and the atomic loops turn around. for the same size of electron stream in the primary, therefore, there is induced in the secondary a greater e. m. f. the greater is the frequency with which the primary current alternates. where high frequencies are dealt with it isn't necessary to have iron cores because the effect is large enough without the help of the atomic loops. and even if we wanted their help it wouldn't be easy to obtain, for they dislike to turn so fast and it takes a lot of power to make them do so. we know that fact because we know that an iron core increases the inductance and so chokes the current. for low frequencies, however, that is those frequencies in the audio range, it is usually necessary to have iron cores so as to get enough effect without too many turns of wire. the fact that iron decreases the inductance and so seriously impedes alternating currents leads us to use iron-core coils where we want high inductance. such coils are usually called "choke coils" or "retard coils." of their use we shall see more in a later letter where we study radio-telephone transmitters. letter your receiving set and how to experiment my dear student: in this letter i want to tell you how to experiment with radio apparatus. the first rule is this: start with a simple circuit, never add anything to it until you know just why you are doing so, and do not box it up in a cabinet until you know how it is working and why. your antenna at the start had better be a single wire about feet high and about feet long. this antenna will have capacity of about . m. f. if you want an antenna of two wires spaced about three feet apart i would make it about feet long. bring down a lead from each wire, twisting them into a pigtail to act like one wire except near the horizontal part of the antenna. [illustration: fig ] your ground connection can go to a water pipe. to protect the house and your apparatus from lightning insert a fuse and a little carbon block lightning arrester such as are used by the telephone company in their installations of house phones. you can also use a so-called "vacuum lightning arrester." in either case the connections will be as shown in fig. . if you use a loop antenna, of course, no arrester is needed. at first i would plan to receive signals between meters and meters. this will include the amateurs who work between and m., the special amateurs who send c-w telegraph at m., and the broadcasting stations which operate at m. this range will give you plenty to listen to while you are experimenting. in addition you will get some ship signals at m. [illustration: fig ] to tune the antenna to any of the wave lengths in this range you can use a coil of turns wound on a cardboard tube of three and a half inches in diameter. you can wind this coil of bare wire if you are careful, winding a thread along with the wire so as to keep the successive turns separated. in that case you will need to construct a sliding contact for it. that is the simplest form of tuner. on the other hand you can wind with single silk covered wire and bring out taps at the , , , , , , , , , , , , , and th turns. to make a tap drill a small hole through the tube, bend the wire into a loop about a foot long and pull this loop through the hole as shown in fig. . then give the wire a twist, as shown, so that it can't pull out, and proceed with your winding. use s. s. c. wire. you will need about feet and might buy to have enough for the secondary coil. make contacts to the taps by two rotary switches as shown in fig. . you can buy switch arms and contacts studs or a complete switch mounted on a small panel of some insulating compound. let switch _s_{ }_ make the contacts for taps between and turns, and let switch _s_{ }_ make the other contacts. for the secondary coil use the same size of wire and of core. wind turns, bringing out a tap at the middle. to tune the secondary circuit you will need a variable condenser. you can buy one of the small ones with a maximum capacity of about . mf., one of the larger ones with a maximum capacity of . mf., or even the larger size which has a maximum capacity of . mf. i should prefer the one of . mf. you will need a crystal detector--i should try galena first--and a so-called "cat's whisker" with which to make contact with the galena. for these parts and for the switch mentioned above you can shop around to advantage. for telephone receivers i would buy a really good pair with a resistance of about ohms. buy also a small mica condenser of . mf. for a blocking condenser. your entire outfit will then look as in fig. . the switch _s_ is a small knife switch. to operate, leave the switch _s_ open, place the primary and secondary coils near together as in the figure and listen. the tuning is varied, while you listen, by moving the slider of the slide-wire tuner or by moving the switches if you have connected your coil for that method. make large changes in the tuning by varying the switch _s_{ }_ and then turn slowly through all positions of _s_{ }_, listening at each position. [illustration: fig ] when a signal is heard adjust to the position of _s_{ }_ and _s_{ }_ which gives the loudest signal and then closing _s_ start to tune the secondary circuit. to do this, vary the capacity of the condenser in the secondary circuit. don't change the primary tuning until you have tuned the secondary and can get the signal with good volume, that is loud. you will want to vary the position of the primary and secondary coils, that is, vary their coupling, for you will get sharper tuning as they are drawn farther apart. sharper tuning means less interference from other stations which are sending on wave lengths near that which you wish to receive. reduce the coupling, therefore, and then readjust the tuning. it will usually be necessary to make a slight change in both circuits, in one case with switch _s_{ }_ and in the other with the variable condenser. as soon as you can identify any station which you hear sending make a note of the position of the switches _s_{ }_ and _s_{ }_, and of the setting of the condenser in the secondary circuit. in that way you will acquire information as to the proper adjustments to receive certain wave-lengths. this is calibrating your set by the known wave-lengths of distant stations. after learning to receive with this simple set i should recommend buying a good audion tube. ask the seller to supply you with a blue print of the characteristic[ ] of the tube taken under the conditions of filament current and plate voltage which he recommends for its use. buy a storage battery and a small slide-wire rheostat, that is variable resistance, to use in the filament circuit. buy also a bank of dry batteries of the proper voltage for the plate circuit of the tube. at the same time you should buy the proper design of transformer to go between the plate circuit of your tube and the pair of receivers which you have. it will usually be advisable to ask the dealer to show you a characteristic curve for the transformer, which will indicate how well the transformer operates at the different frequencies in the audio range. it should operate very nearly the same for all frequencies between and cycles. the next step is to learn to use the tube as a detector. connect it into your secondary circuit instead of the crystal detector. use the proper value of c-battery as determined from your study of the characteristic of the tube. one or two small dry cells, which have binding-post terminals are convenient c-batteries. if you think you will need a voltage much different from that obtained with a whole number of batteries you can arrange to supply the grid as we did in fig. of letter . in that case you can use a few feet of german-silver wire and make connections to it with a suspender clip. learn to receive with the tube and be particularly careful not to let the filament have too much current and burn out. now buy some more apparatus. you will need a grid condenser of about . mf. the grid leaks to go with it you can make for yourself. i would use a piece of brown wrapping paper and two little metal eyelets. the eyelets can be punched into the paper. between them coat the paper with carbon ink, or with lead pencil marks. a line about an inch long ought to serve nicely. you will probably wish to make several grid leaks to try. when you get satisfactory operation in receiving by the grid-condenser method the leak will probably be somewhere between a megohm and two megohms. for this method you will not want a c-battery, but you will wish to operate the detector with about as high a voltage as the manufacturers will recommend for the plate circuit. in this way the incoming signal, which decreases the plate current, can produce the largest decrease. it is also possible to start with the grid slightly positive instead of being as negative as it is when connected to the negative terminal of the a-battery. there will then be possible a greater change in grid voltage. to do so connect the grid as in fig. to the positive terminal of the a-battery. [illustration: fig ] about this time i would shop around for two or three small double-pole double-throw switches. those of the -ampere size will do. with these you can arrange to make comparisons between different methods of receiving. suppose, for example, you connect the switches as shown in fig. so that by throwing them to the left you are using the audion and to the right the crystal as a detector. you can listen for a minute in one position and then switch and listen for a minute in the other position, and so on back and forth. that way you can tell whether or not you really are getting better results. if you want a rough measure of how much better the audion is than the crystal you might see, while you are listening to the audion, how much you can rob the telephone receiver of its current and still hear as well as you do when you switch back to the crystal. the easiest way to do this is to put a variable resistance across the receiver as shown in fig. . adjust this resistance until the intensity of the signal when detected by the audion is the same as for the crystal. you adjust this variable resistance until it by-passes so much of the current, which formerly went through the receiver, that the "audibility" of the signal is reduced until it is the same as for the crystal detector. carefully made resistances for such a purpose are sold under the name of "audibility meters." you can assemble a resistance which will do fairly well if you will buy a small rheostat which will give a resistance varying by steps of ten ohms from zero to one hundred ohms. at the same time you can buy four resistance spools of one hundred ohms each and perhaps one of ohms. the spools need not be very expensive for you do not need carefully adjusted resistances. assemble them so as to make a rheostat with a range of - ohms by steps of ohms. the cheapest way to mount is with fahnestock clips as illustrated in fig. . after a while, however, you will probably wish to mount them in a box with a rotary switch on top. [illustration: fig ] to study the effect of the grid condenser you can arrange switches so as to insert this condenser and its leak and at the same time to cut out the c-battery. fig. shows how. you can measure the gain in audibility at the same time. [illustration: pl. x.--audio-frequency transformer and banked-wound coil. (courtesy of pacent electric co.)] [illustration: fig ] after learning to use the audion as a detector, both by virtue of its curved characteristic and by the grid-condenser method, i would suggest studying the same tube as an amplifier. first i would learn to use it as an audio-frequency amplifier. set up the crystal detector circuit. use your audio-frequency transformer the other way around so as to step up to the grid. put the telephone in the plate circuit. choose your c-battery for amplification and _not detection_ and try to receive. you will get better results if you can afford another iron-core transformer. if you can, buy one which will work between the plate circuit of one vacuum tube and the grid circuit of another similar tube. then you will have the right equipment when you come to make a two-stage audio-frequency amplifier. if you buy such a transformer use the other transformer between plate and telephones as you did before and insert the new one as shown in fig. . this circuit also shows how you can connect the switches so as to see how much the audion is amplifying. [illustration: fig ] the next step is to use the audion as an amplifier of the radio-signal before its detection. use the proper c-battery for an amplifier, as determined from the blue print of the tube characteristic. connect the tube as shown in fig. . you will see that in this circuit we are using a choke coil to keep the radio-frequency current out of the battery part of the plate circuit and a small condenser, another one of . mf., to keep the battery current from the crystal detector. you can see from the same figure how you can arrange the switches so as to find whether or not you are getting any gain from the amplifier. now you are ready to receive those c-w senders at meters. you will need to wind another coil like the secondary coil you already have. here is where you buy another condenser. you will need it later. if before you bought the . size, this time buy the . size or vice versa. wind also a small coil for a tickler. about turns of wire on a core of - / in. diameter will do. connect the tickler in the plate circuit of the audion. connect to the grid your new coil and condenser and set the audion circuit so that it will induce a current in the secondary circuit which supplies the crystal. fig. shows the hook-up. [illustration: fig ] you will see that you are now supplying the crystal with current from two sources, namely the distant source of the incoming signals and the local oscillator which you have formed. the crystal will detect the "beat note" between these two currents. to receive the meters signals you will need to make several adjustments at the same time. in the first place i would set the tuning of the antenna circuit and of the crystal circuit about where you think right because of your knowledge of the settings for other wave lengths. then i would get the local oscillator going. you can tell whether or not it is going if you suddenly increase or decrease the coupling between the tickler coil and the input circuit of the audion. if this motion is accompanied by a click in the receivers the tube is oscillating. [illustration: fig ] now you must change the frequency at which it is oscillating by slowly changing the capacity in the tuned input circuit of the tube. unless the antenna circuit is properly tuned to the meter signal you will get no results. if it is, you will hear an intermittent musical note for some tune of your local oscillator. this note will have the duration of dots and dashes. you will have to keep changing the tuning of your detector circuit and of the antenna. for each new setting very slowly swing the condenser plates in the oscillator circuit and see if you get a signal. it will probably be easier to use the "stand-by position," which i have described, with switch _s_ open in the secondary circuit of fig. . in that case you have only to tune your antenna to meters and then you will pick up a note when your local oscillator is in tune. after you have done so you can tune the secondary circuit which supplies the crystal. if you adopt this method you will want a close coupling between the antenna and the crystal circuit. you will always want a very weak coupling between the oscillator circuit and the detector circuit. you will also probably want a weaker coupling between tickler and tube input than you are at first inclined to believe will be enough. patience and some skill in manipulation is always required for this sort of experiment. when you have completed this experiment in heterodyne receiving, using a local oscillator, you are ready to try the regenerative circuit. this has been illustrated in fig. of letter and needs no further description. you will have the advantage when you come to this of knowing very closely the proper settings of the antenna circuit and the secondary tuned circuit. you will need then only to adjust the coupling of the tickler and make finer adjustments in your tuning. after you have completed this series of experiments you will be something of an adept at radio and are in a position to plan your final set. for this set you will need to purchase certain parts complete from reputable dealers because many of the circuits which i have described are patented and should not be used except as rights to use are obtained by the purchase of licensed apparatus which embodies the patented circuits. knowing how radio receivers operate and why, you are now in a good condition to discuss with dealers the relative merits and costs of receiving sets. [illustration: fig ] before you actually buy a completed set you may want to increase the range of frequency over which you are carrying out your experiments. to receive at longer wave-lengths you will need to increase the inductance of your antenna so that it will be tuned to a lower frequency. this is usually called "loading" and can be done by inserting a coil in the antenna. to obtain smaller wave-lengths decrease the effective capacity of the antenna circuit by putting another condenser in series with the antenna. usually, therefore, one connects into his antenna circuit both a condenser and a loading coil. by using a variable condenser the effective capacity of the antenna system may be easily changed. the result is that this series condenser method becomes the easiest method of tuning and the slide wire tuner is not needed. fig. shows the circuit. for quite a range of wave-lengths we may use the same loading coil and tune the antenna circuit entirely by this series condenser. for some other range of wave-lengths we shall then need a different loading coil. in a well-designed set the wave-length ranges overlap. the calculation of the size of loading coil is quite easy but requires more arithmetic than i care to impose on you at present. i shall therefore merely give you illustrations based on the assumption that your antenna has a capacity of . or of . mf. and that the condensers which you have bought are . and . for their maxima. in table i there is given, for each of several values of the inductance of the primary coil, the shortest and the longest wave-lengths which you can expect to receive. the table is in two parts, the first for an antenna of capacity . mf. and the second for one of . mf. yours will be somewhere between these two limits. the shortest wave-length depends upon the antenna and not upon the condenser which you use in series with it for tuning. it also depends upon how much inductance there is in the coil which you have in the antenna circuit. the table gives values of inductance in the first column, and of minimum wave-length in the second. the third column shows what is the greatest wave-length you may expect if you use a tuning condenser of . mf.; and the fourth column the slightly large wave-length which is possible with the larger condenser. table i part . (for antenna of . mf.) inductance in shortest wave-length longest wave-length in meters mil-henries. in meters. with . mf. with . mf. . . . . . . . . . . part . (for antenna of . mf.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . from table i you can find how much inductance you will need in the primary circuit. a certain amount you will need to couple the antenna and the secondary circuit. the coil which you wound at the beginning of your experiments will do well for that. anything more in the way of inductance, which the antenna circuit requires to give a desired wave-length, you may consider as loading. in table ii are some data as to winding coils on straight cores to obtain various values of inductance. your s. s. c. wire will wind about turns to the inch. i have assumed that you will have this number of turns per inch on your coils and calculated the inductance which you should get for various numbers of total turns. the first part of the table is for a core of . inches in diameter and the second part for one of inches. the first column gives the inductance in mil-henries. the second gives number of turns. the third and fourth are merely for convenience and give the approximate length in inches of the coil and the approximate total length of wire which is required to wind it. i have allowed for bringing out taps. in other words feet of the wire will wind a coil of . inches with an inductance of . mil-henries, and permit you to bring out taps at all the lower values of inductance which are given in the table. table ii part . (for a core of . in. diam.) inductance in number length feet of wire mil-henries. of turns. in inches. required. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . part . (for core of . in. diam.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the coil which you wound at the beginning of your experiment had only turns and was tapped so that you could, by manipulating the two switches of fig. , get small variations in inductance. in table iii is given the values of the inductance which is controlled by the switches of that figure, the corresponding number of turns, and the wave-length to which the antenna should then be tuned. i am giving this for two values of antenna capacity, as i have done before. by the aid of these three tables you should have small difficulty in taking care of matters of tuning for all wave-lengths below about meters. if you want to get longer waves than that you had better buy a few banked-wound coils. these are coils in which the turns are wound over each other but in such a way as to avoid in large part the "capacity effects" which usually accompany such winding. you can try winding them for yourself but i doubt if the experience has much value until you have gone farther in the study of the mathematical theory of radio than this series of letters will carry you. table iii circuit of fig. number inductance in wave length with antenna of of turns. mil-henries. . mf. . mf. . . . . . . . in the secondary circuit there is only one capacity, that of the variable condenser. if it has a range of values from about . mf. to . mf. your coil of turns and . mf. permits a range of wave-lengths from to m. using half the coil the range is to m. with the larger condenser the ranges are respectively to and to . for longer wave-lengths load with inductance. four times the inductance will tune to double these wave-lengths. [footnote : if you can afford to buy, or if you can borrow, ammeters and voltmeters of the proper range you should take the characteristic yourself.] letter high-powered radio-telephone transmitters my dear experimenter: this letter is to summarize the operations which must be performed in radio-telephone transmission and reception; and also to describe the circuit of an important commercial system. to transmit speech by radio three operations are necessary. first, there must be generated a high-frequency alternating current; second, this current must be modulated, that is, varied in intensity in accordance with the human voice; and third, the modulated current must be supplied to an antenna. for efficient operation, of course, the antenna must be tuned to the frequency which is to be transmitted. there is also a fourth operation which is usually performed and that is amplification. wherever the electrical effect is smaller than desired, or required for satisfactory transmission, vacuum tubes are used as amplifiers. of this i shall give you an illustration later. three operations are also essential in receiving. first, an antenna must be so arranged and tuned as to receive energy from the distant transmitting station. there is then in the receiving antenna a current similar in wave form to that in the transmitting antenna. second, the speech significance of this current must be detected, that is, the modulated current must be demodulated. a current is then obtained which has the same wave form as the human voice which was the cause of the modulation at the distant station. the third operation is performed by a telephone receiver which makes the molecules of air in its neighborhood move back and forth in accordance with the detected current. as you already know a fourth operation may be carried on by amplifiers which give on their output sides currents of greater strength but of the same forms as they receive at their input terminals. in transmitting and in receiving equipment two or more of these operations may be performed by the same vacuum tube as you will remember from our discussion of the regenerative circuit for receiving. for example, also, in any receiving set the vacuum tube which detects is usually amplifying. in the regenerative circuit for receiving continuous waves by the heterodyne method the vacuum tube functions as a generator of high-frequency current and as a detector of the variations in current which occur because the locally-generated current does not keep in step with that generated at the transmitting station. another example of a vacuum tube performing simultaneously two different functions is illustrated in fig. which shows a simple radio-telephone transmitter. the single tube performs in itself both the generation of the radio-frequency current and its modulation in accordance with the output of the carbon-button transmitter. this audion is in a feed-back circuit, the oscillation frequency of which depends upon the condenser _c_ and the inductance _l_. the voice drives the diaphragm of the transmitter and thus varies the resistance of the carbon button. this varies the current from the battery, _b_{a}_, through the primary, _t_{ }_, of the transformer _t_. the result is a varying voltage applied to the grid by the secondary _t_{ }_. the oscillating current in the plate circuit of the audion varies accordingly because it is dependent upon the grid voltage. the condenser _c_{r}_ offers a low impedance to the radio-frequency current to which the winding _t_{ }_ of audio-frequency transformer offers too much. [illustration: fig ] in this case the tube is both generator and "modulator." in some cases these operations are separately performed by different tubes. this was true of the transmitting set used in when the engineers of the bell telephone system talked by radio from arlington, near washington, d. c., to paris and honolulu. i shall not draw out completely the circuit of their apparatus but i shall describe it by using little squares to represent the parts responsible for each of the several operations. first there was a vacuum tube oscillator which generated a small current of the desired frequency. then there was a telephone transmitter which made variations in a direct-current flowing through the primary of a transformer. the e. m. f. from the secondary of this transformer and the e. m. f. from the radio-frequency oscillator were both impressed upon the grid of an audion which acted as a modulator. the output of this audion was a radio-frequency current modulated by the voice. the output was amplified by a two-stage audion amplifier and supplied through a coupling coil to the large antenna of the u. s. navy station at arlington. fig. shows the system. [illustration: fig ] the audion amplifiers each consisted of a number of tubes operating in parallel. when tubes are operated in parallel they are connected as shown in fig. so that the same e. m. f. is impressed on all the grids and the same plate-battery voltage on all the plates. as the grids vary in voltage there is a corresponding variation of current in the plate circuit of each tube. the total change of the current in the plate-battery circuit is, then, the sum of the changes in all the plate-filament circuits of the tubes. this scheme of connections gives a result equivalent to that of a single tube with a correspondingly larger plate and filament. [illustration: fig ] parallel connection is necessary because a single tube would be overheated in delivering to the antenna the desired amount of power. you remember that when the audion is operated as an amplifier the resistance to which it supplies current is made equal to its own internal resistance of _r_{p}_. that means that there is in the plate circuit just as much resistance inside the tube as outside. hence there is the same amount of work done each second in forcing the current through the tube as through the antenna circuit, if that is what the tube supplies. "work per second" is power; the plate battery is spending energy in the tube at the same rate as it is supplying it to the antenna where it is useful for radiation. [illustration: pl. xi.--broadcasting equipment, developed by the american telephone and telegraph company and the western electric company.] all the energy expended in the tube appears as heat. it is due to the blows which the electrons strike against the plate when they are drawn across from the filament. these impacts set into more rapid motion the molecules of the plate; and the temperature of the tube rises. there is a limit to the amount the temperature can rise without destroying the tube. for that reason the heat produced inside it must not exceed a certain limit depending upon the design of the tube and the method of cooling it as it is operated. in the arlington experiments, which i mentioned a moment ago, the tubes were cooled by blowing air on them from fans. we can find the power expended in the plate circuit of a tube by multiplying the number of volts in its battery by the number of amperes which flows. suppose the battery is volts and the current . amperes, then the power is watts. the "watt" is the unit for measuring power. tubes are rated by the number of watts which can be safely expended in them. you might ask, when you buy an audion, what is a safe rating for it. the question will not be an important one, however, unless you are to set up a transmitting set since a detector is usually operated with such small plate-voltage as not to have expended in it an amount of power dangerous to its life. in recent transmitting sets the tubes are used in parallel for the reasons i have just told, but a different method of modulation is used. the generation of the radio-frequency current is by large-powered tubes which are operated with high voltages in their plate circuits. the output of these oscillators is supplied to the antenna. the intensity of the oscillations of the current in these tubes is controlled by changing the voltage applied in their plate circuits. you can see from fig. that if the plate voltage is changed the strength of the alternating current is changed accordingly. it is the method used in changing the voltage which is particularly interesting. [illustration: fig ] the high voltages which are used in the plate circuits of these high-powered audions are obtained from generators instead of batteries. you remember from letter that an e. m. f. is induced in a coil when the coil and a magnet are suddenly changed in their positions, one being turned with reference to the other. a generator is a machine for turning a coil so that a magnet is always inducing an e. m. f. in it. it is formed by an armature carrying coils and by strong electromagnets. the machine can be driven by a steam or gas engine, by a water wheel, or by an electric motor. generators are designed either to give steady streams of electrons, that is for d-c currents, or to act as alternators. [illustration: fig ] suppose we have, as shown in fig. , a d-c generator supplying current to a vacuum tube oscillator. the current from the generator passes through an iron-cored choke coil, marked _l_{a}_ in the figure. between this coil and the plate circuit we connect across the line a telephone transmitter. to make a system which will work efficiently we shall have to suppose that this transmitter has a high resistance, say about the same as the internal resistance, _r_{p}_, of the tube and also that it can carry as large a current. of the current which comes from the generator about one-half goes to the tube and the rest to the transmitter. if the resistance of the transmitter is increased it can't take as much current. the coil, _l_{a}_, however, because of its inductance, tends to keep the same amount of current flowing through itself. for just an instant then the current in _l_{a}_ keeps steady even though the transmitter doesn't take its share. the result is more current for the oscillating tube. on the other hand if the transmitter takes more current, because its resistance is decreased, the choke coil, _l_{a}_, will momentarily tend to keep the current steady so that what the transmitter takes must be at the expense of the oscillating tube. that's one way of looking at what happens. we know, however, from fig. that to get an increase in the amplitude of the current in the oscillating tube we must apply an increased voltage to its plate circuit. that is what really happens when the transmitter increases in resistance and so doesn't take its full share of the current. the reason is this: when the transmitter resistance is increased the current in the transmitter decreases. just for a moment it looks as though the current in _l_{a}_ is going to decrease. that's the way it looks to the electrons; and you know what electrons do in an inductive circuit when they think they shall have to stop. they induce each other to keep on for a moment. for a moment they act just as if there was some extra e. m. f. which was acting to keep them going. we say, therefore, that there is an extra e. m. f., and we call this an e. m. f. of self-induction. all this time there has been active on the plate circuit of the tube the e. m. f. of the generator. to this there is added at the instant when the transmitter resistance increases, the e. m. f. of self-induction in the coil, _l_{a}_ and so the total e. m. f. applied to the tube is momentarily increased. this increased e. m. f., of course, results in an increased amplitude for the alternating current which the oscillator is supplying to the transmitting antenna. when the transmitter resistance is decreased, and a larger current should flow through the choke coil, the electrons are asked to speed up in going through the coil. at first they object and during that instant they express their objection by an e. m. f. of self-induction which opposes the generator voltage. for an instant, then, the voltage of the oscillating tube is lowered and its alternating-current output is smaller. [illustration: fig ] for the purpose of bringing about such threatened changes in current, and hence such e. m. f.'s of self-induction, the carbon transmitter is not suitable because it has too small a resistance and too small a current carrying ability. the plate circuit of a vacuum tube will serve admirably. you know from the audion characteristic that without changing the plate voltage we can, by applying a voltage to the grid, change the current through the plate circuit. now if it was a wire resistance with which we were dealing and we should be able to obtain a change in current without changing the voltage acting on this wire we would say that we had changed the resistance. we can say, therefore, that the internal resistance of the plate circuit of a vacuum tube can be changed by what we do to the grid. in fig. i have substituted the plate circuit of an audion for the transmitter of fig. and arranged to vary its resistance by changing the potential of the grid. this we do by impressing upon the grid the e. m. f. developed in the secondary of a transformer, to the primary of which is connected a battery and a carbon transmitter. the current through the primary varies in accordance with the sounds spoken into the transmitter. and for all the reasons which we have just finished studying there are similar variations in the output current of the oscillating tube in the transmitting set of fig. . in this latter figure you will notice a small air-core coil, _l_{r}_, between the oscillator and the modulator tube. this coil has a small inductance but it is enough to offer a large impedance to radio-frequency currents. the result is, it does not let the alternating currents of the oscillating tube flow into the modulator. these currents are confined to their own circuit, where they are useful in establishing similar currents in the antenna. on the other hand, the coil _l_{r}_ doesn't seriously impede low-frequency currents and therefore it does not prevent variations in the current which are at audio-frequency. it does not interfere with the changes in current which accompany the variations in the resistance of the plate circuit of the modulator. that is, it has too little impedance to act like _l_{a}_ and so it permits the modulator to vary the output of the oscillator. [illustration: fig ] the oscillating circuit of fig. includes part of the antenna. it differs also from the others i have shown in the manner in which grid and plate circuits are coupled. i'll explain by fig. . the transmitting set which i have just described involves many of the principles of the most modern sets. if you understand its operation you can probably reason out for yourself any of the other sets of which you will hear from time to time. letter amplification at intermediate frequencies dear son: in the matter of receiving i have already covered all the important principles. there is one more system, however, which you will need to know. this is spoken of either as the "super-heterodyne" or as the "intermediate-frequency amplification" method of reception. the system has two important advantages. first, it permits sharper tuning and so reduces interference from other radio signals. second, it permits more amplification of the incoming signal than is usually practicable. first as to amplification: we have seen that amplification can be accomplished either by amplifying the radio-frequency current before detection or by amplifying the audio-frequency current which results from detection. there are practical limitations to the amount of amplification which can be obtained in either case. an efficient multi-stage amplifier for radio-frequencies is difficult to build because of what we call "capacity effects." consider for example the portion of circuit shown in fig. . the wires _a_ and _b_ act like small plates of condensers. what we really have, is a lot of tiny condensers which i have shown in the figure by the light dotted-lines. if the wires are transmitting high-frequency currents these condensers offer tiny waiting-rooms where the electrons can run in and out without having to go on to the grid of the next tube. there are other difficulties in high-frequency amplifiers. this one of capacity effects between parallel wires is enough for the present. it is perhaps the most interesting because it is always more or less troublesome whenever a pair of wires is used to transmit an alternating current. [illustration: fig ] in the case of a multi-stage amplifier of audio-frequency current there is always the possibility of the amplification of any small variations in current which may naturally occur in the action of the batteries. there are always small variations in the currents from batteries, due to impurities in the materials of the plates, air bubbles, and other causes. ordinarily we don't observe these changes because they are too small to make an audible sound in the telephone receivers. suppose, however, that they take place in the battery of the first tube of a series of amplifiers. any tiny change of current is amplified many times and results in a troublesome noise in the telephone receiver which is connected to the last tube. in both types of amplifiers there is, of course, always the chance that the output circuit of one tube may be coupled to and induce some effect in the input circuit of one of the earlier tubes of the series. this will be amplified and result in a greater induction. in other words, in a circuit where there is large amplification, there is always the difficulty of avoiding a feed-back of energy from one tube to another so that the entire group acts like an oscillating circuit, that is "regeneratively." much of this difficulty can be avoided after experience. if a multi-stage amplifier is to be built for a current which does not have too high a frequency the "capacity effects" and the other difficulties due to high-frequency need not be seriously troublesome. if the frequency is not too high, but is still well above the audible limit, the noises due to variations in battery currents need not bother for they are of quite low frequency. currents from , to , cycles a second are, therefore, the most satisfactory to amplify. suppose, however, one wishes to amplify the signals from a radio-broadcasting station. the wave-length is meters and the frequency is about , cycles a second. the system of intermediate-frequency amplification solves the difficulty and we shall see how it does so. [illustration: fig ] at the receiving station a local oscillator is used. this generates a frequency which is about , cycles less than that of the incoming signal. both currents are impressed on the grid of a detector. the result is, in the output of the detector, a current which has a frequency of , cycles a second. the intensity of this detected current depends upon the intensity of the incoming signal. the "beat note" current of , cycles varies, therefore, in accordance with the voice which is modulating at the distant sending station. the speech significance is now hidden in a current of a frequency intermediate between radio and audio. this current may be amplified many times and then supplied to the grid of a detector which obtains from it a current of audio-frequency which has a speech significance. in fig. i have indicated the several operations. we can now see why this method permits sharper tuning. the whole idea of tuning, of course, is to arrange that the incoming signal shall cause the largest possible current and at the same time to provide that any signals at other wave-lengths shall cause only negligible currents. what we want a receiving set to do is to distinguish between two signals which differ slightly in wave-length and to respond to only one of them. suppose we set up a tuned circuit formed by a coil and a condenser and try it out for various frequencies of signals. you know how it will respond from our discussion in connection with the tuning curve of fig. of letter . we might find from a number of such tests that the best we can expect any tuned circuit to do is to discriminate between signals which differ about ten percent in frequency, that is, to receive well the desired signal and to fail practically entirely to receive a signal of a frequency either ten percent higher or the same amount lower. for example, if the signal is at , cycles a tuned circuit might be expected to discriminate against an interfering signal of , . if the signal is at , cycles a tuned circuit might discriminate against an interfering signal of , cycles, but an interference at , cycles would be very troublesome indeed. it couldn't be "tuned out" at all. now suppose that the desired signal is at , cycles and that there is interference at , cycles. we provide a local oscillator of , cycles a second, receive by this "super-heterodyne" method which i have just described, and so obtain an intermediate frequency. in the output of the first detector we have then a current of , -- , or , cycles due to the desired signal and also a current of , -- , or , cycles due to the interference. both these currents we can supply to another tuned circuit which is tuned for , cycles a second. it can receive the desired signal but it can discriminate against the interference because now the latter is ten percent "off the tune" of the signal. you see the question is not one of how far apart two signals are in number of cycles per second. the question always is: how large in percent is the difference between the two frequencies? the matter of separating two effects of different frequencies is a question of the "interval" between the frequencies. to find the interval between two frequencies we divide one by the other. you can see that if the quotient is larger than . or smaller than . the frequencies differ by ten percent or more. the higher the frequency the larger the number of cycles which is represented by a given size of interval. while i am writing of frequency intervals i want to tell you one thing more of importance. you remember that in human speech there may enter, and be necessary, any frequency between about and cycles a second. that we might call the range of the necessary notes in the voice. whenever we want a good reproduction of the voice we must reproduce all the frequencies in this range. suppose we have a radio-current of , cycles modulated by the frequencies in the voice range. we find in the output of our transmitting set not only a current of , cycles but currents in two other ranges of frequencies. one of these is above the signal frequency and extends from , to , cycles. the other is the same amount below and extends from , to , cycles. we say there is an upper and a lower "band of frequencies." all these currents are in the complex wave which comes from the radio-transmitter. for this statement you will have to take my word until you can handle the form of mathematics known as "trigonometry." when we receive at the distant station we receive not only currents of the signal frequency but also currents whose frequencies lie in these "side-bands." no matter what radio-frequency we may use we must transmit and receive side-bands of this range if we use the apparatus i have described in the past letters. you can see what that means. suppose we transmit at a radio-frequency of , cycles and modulate that with speech. we shall really need all the range from , cycles to , cycles for one telephone message. on the other hand if we modulated a , cycle wave by speech the side-bands are from , to , and , to , cycles. if we transmit at , cycles, that is, at meters, we really need all the range between meters and meters, as you can see by the frequencies of the side-bands. at , cycles we need only the range of wave-lengths between m. and m. if the radio-frequency is , cycles we need a still smaller range of wave-lengths to transmit the necessary side-bands. then the range is from m. to m. in the case of the transmission of speech by radio we are interested in having no interference from other signals which are within cycles of the frequency of our radio-current no matter what their wave-lengths may be. the part of the wave-length range which must be kept clear from interfering signals becomes smaller the higher the frequency which is being modulated. you can see that very few telephone messages can be sent in the long-wave-length part of the radio range and many more, although not very many after all, in the short wave-length part of the radio range. you can also see why it is desirable to keep amateurs in the short wave-length part of the range where more of them can transmit simultaneously without interfering with each other or with commercial radio stations. there is another reason, too, for keeping amateurs to the shortest wave-lengths. transmission of radio signals over short distances is best accomplished by short wave-lengths but over long distances by the longer wave-lengths. for trans-oceanic work the very longest wave-lengths are best. the "long-haul" stations, therefore, work in the frequency range immediately above , cycles a second and transmit with wave lengths of , m. and shorter. [illustration: pl. xii.--broadcasting station of the american telephone and telegraph company on the roof of the walker-lispenard bldg. in new york city where the long-distance telephone lines terminate.] letter by wire and by radio dear boy: the simplest wire telephone-circuit is formed by a transmitter, a receiver, a battery, and the connecting wire. if two persons are to carry on a conversation each must have this amount of equipment. the apparatus might be arranged as in fig. . this set-up, however, requires four wires between the two stations and you know the telephone company uses only two wires. let us find the principle upon which its system operates because it is the solution of many different problems including that of wire-to-radio connections. [illustration: fig ] imagine four wire resistances connected together to form a square as in fig. . suppose there are two pairs of equal resistances, namely _r_{ }_ and _r_{ }_, and _z_{ }_ and _z_{ }_. if we connect a generator, _g_, between the junctions _a_ and _b_ there will be two separate streams of electrons, one through the r-side and the other through the z-side of the circuit. these streams, of course, will not be of the same size for the larger stream will flow through the side which offers the smaller resistance. [illustration: fig ] half the e. m. f. between _a_ and _b_ is used up in sending the stream half the distance. half is used between _a_ and the points _c_ and _d_, and the other half between _c_ and _d_ and the other end. it doesn't make any difference whether we follow the stream from _a_ to _c_ or from _a_ to _d_, it takes half the e. m. f. to keep this stream going. points _c_ and _d_, therefore, are in the same condition of being "half-way electrically" from _a_ to _b_. the result is that there can be no current through any wire which we connect between _c_ and _d_. suppose, therefore, that we connect a telephone receiver between _c_ and _d_. no current flows in it and no sound is emitted by it. now suppose the resistance of _z_{ }_ is that of a telephone line which stretches from one telephone station to another. suppose also that _z_{ }_ is a telephone line exactly like _z_{ }_ except that it doesn't go anywhere at all because it is all shut up in a little box. we'll call _z_{ }_ an artificial telephone line. we ought to call it, as little children would say, a "make-believe" telephone line. it doesn't fool us but it does fool the electrons for they can't tell the difference between the real line _z_{ }_ and the artificial line _z_{ }_. we can make a very good artificial line by using a condenser and a resistance. the condenser introduces something of the capacity effects which i told you were always present in a circuit formed by a pair of wires. [illustration: fig ] at the other telephone station let us duplicate this apparatus, using the same real line in both cases. instead of just any generator of an alternating e. m. f. let us use a telephone transmitter. we connect the transmitter through a transformer. the system then looks like that of fig. . when some one talks at station there is no current through his receiver because it is connected to _c_ and _d_, while the e. m. f. of the transmitter is applied to _a_ and _b_. the transmitter sets up two electron streams between _a_ and _b_, and the stream which flows through the z-side of the square goes out to station . at this station the electrons have three paths between _d_ and _b_. i have marked these by arrows and you see that one of them is through the receiver. the current which is started by the transmitter at station will therefore operate the receiver at station but not at its own station. of course station can talk to in the same way. the actual set-up used by the telephone company is a little different from that which i have shown because it uses a single common battery at a central office between two subscribers. the general principle, however, is the same. [illustration: fig ] it won't make any difference if we use equal inductance coils, instead of the r-resistances, and connect the transmitter to them inductively as shown in fig. . so far as that is concerned we can also use a transformer between the receiver and the points _c_ and _d_, as shown in the same figure. [illustration: fig ] we are now ready to put in radio equipment at station . in place of the telephone receiver at station we connect a radio transmitter. then whatever a person at station says goes by wire to and on out by radio. in place of the telephone transmitter at station we connect a radio receiver. whatever that receives by radio is detected and goes by wire to the listener at station . in fig. i have shown the equipment of station . there you have the connections for wire to radio and vice versa. one of the most interesting developments of recent years is that of "wired wireless" or "carrier-current telephony" over wires. suppose that instead of broadcasting from the antenna at station we arrange to have its radio transmitter supply current to a wire circuit. we use this same pair of wires for receiving from the distant station. we can do this if we treat the radio transmitter and receiver exactly like the telephone instruments of fig. and connect them to a square of resistances. one of these resistances is, of course, the line between the stations. i have shown the general arrangement in fig. . you see what the square of resistances, or "bridge" really does for us. it lets us use a single pair of wires for messages whether they are coming or going. it does that because it lets us connect a transmitter and also a receiver to a single pair of wires in such a way that the transmitter can't affect the receiver. whatever the transmitter sends out goes along the wires to the distant receiver but doesn't affect the receiver at the sending station. this bridge permits this whether the transmitter and receiver are radio instruments or are the ordinary telephone instruments. [illustration: fig ] by its aid we may send a modulated high-frequency current over a pair of wires and receive from the same pair of wires the high-frequency current which is generated and modulated at the distant end of the line. it lets us send and receive over the same pair of wires the same sort of a modulated current as we would supply to an antenna in radio-telephone transmitting. it is the same sort of a current but it need not be anywhere near as large because we aren't broadcasting; we are sending directly to the station of the other party to our conversation. if we duplicate the apparatus we can use the same pair of wires for another telephone conversation without interfering with the first. of course, we have to use a different frequency of alternating current for each of the two conversations. we can send these two different modulated high-frequency currents over the same pair of wires and separate them by tuning at the distant end just as well as we do in radio. i won't sketch out for you the tuned circuits by which this separation is made. it's enough to give you the idea. in that way, a single pair of wires can be used for transmitting, simultaneously and without any interference, several different telephone conversations. it takes very much less power than would radio transmission and the conversations are secret. the ordinary telephone conversation can go on at the same time without any interference with those which are being carried by the modulations in high-frequency currents. a total of five conversations over the same pair of wires is the present practice. this method is used between many of the large cities of the u. s. because it lets one pair of wires do the work of five. that means a saving, for copper wire costs money. of course, all the special apparatus also costs money. you can see, therefore, that this method wouldn't be economical between cities very close together because all that is saved by not having to buy so much wire is spent in building special apparatus and in taking care of it afterwards. for long lines, however, by not having to buy five times as much wire, the bell company saves more than it costs to build and maintain the extra special apparatus. i implied a moment ago why this system is called a "carrier-current" system; it is because "the high-frequency currents carry in their modulations the speech significance." sometimes it is called a system of "multiplex" telephony because it permits more than one message at a time. this same general principle is also applied to the making of a multiplex system of telegraphy. in the multiplex telephone system we pictured transmitting and receiving sets very much like radio-telephone sets. if instead of transmitting speech each transmitter was operated as a c-w transmitter then it would transmit telegraph messages. in the same frequency range there can be more telegraph systems operated simultaneously without interfering with each other, for you remember how many cycles each radio-telephone message requires. for that reason the multiplex telegraph system which operates by carrier-currents permits as many as ten different telegraph messages simultaneously. you remember that i told you how capacity effects rob the distant end of a pair of wires of the alternating current which is being sent to them. that is always true but the effect is not very great unless the frequency of the alternating current is high. it's enough, however, so that every few hundred miles it is necessary to connect into the circuit an audion amplifier. this is true of carrier currents especially, but also true of the voice-frequency currents of ordinary telephony. the latter, however, are not weakened, that is, "attenuated," as much and consequently do not need to be amplified as much to give good intelligibility at the distant receiver. [illustration: fig ] in a telephone circuit over such a long distance as from new york city to san francisco it is usual to insert amplifiers at about a dozen points along the route. of course, these amplifiers must work for transmission in either direction, amplifying speech on its way to san francisco or in the opposite direction. at each of the amplifying stations, or "repeater stations," as they are usually called, two vacuum tube amplifiers are used, one for each direction. to connect these with the line so that each may work in the right direction there are used two of the bridges or resistance squares. you can see from the sketch of fig. how an alternating current from the east will be amplified and sent on to the west, or vice versa. [illustration: fig ] there are a large number of such repeater stations in the united states along the important telephone routes. in fig. i am showing you the location of those along the route of the famous "transcontinental telephone-circuit." this shows also a radio-telephone connection between the coast of california and catalina island. conversations have been held between this island and a ship in the atlantic ocean, as shown in the sketch. the conversation was made possible by the use of the vacuum tube and the bridge circuit. part of the way it was by wire and part by radio. wire and radio tie nicely together because both operate on the same general principles and use much of the same apparatus. [blank page] index a-battery for tubes, accumulator, acid, action of hydrogen in, air, constitution of, ammeter, alternating current, ; calibration of, ; construction of, ampere, , amplification, ; one stage of, amplitude of vibration, antenna current variation, arlington tests, artificial telephone line, atom, conception of, ; nucleus of, ; neutral, atomic number, atoms, difference between, ; kinds of, , ; motion of, attenuation of current in wires, audibility meter, audio-frequency amplifier, ; limitations of, audion, , , audion, amplifier, ; detector, theory of, ; modulator, ; oscillator, theory of, ; frequency control of, b-battery for tubes, ; effect upon characteristic, banked wound coils, battery, construction of gravity, ; dry, ; reversible or storage, band of frequencies, beat note, detection of, , bell system, arlington transmitter, blocking of tube, reason for, blue vitriol, bridge circuit, bureau of standards, c-battery for tubes, , ; variation of, ; for detection, calibration of a receiver, capacity, effect upon frequency, ; measurement of, ; unit of, ; variable, capacity effects, ; elimination of, carrier current, modulation of, ; telephony, characteristic, of vacuum tube, , ; effect of b-battery upon, ; how to plot a, characteristic curve of transformer, chemistry, choke coils, , circuit, a, b, c, ; coupled, ; defined, ; oscillating, ; plate, ; short, ; tune of a, condenser, defined, ; charging current of, ; discharge current of, ; impedance of, ; theory of, ; tuning, common battery system, connection for wire to radio, continuous waves, copper, atomic number of, copper sulphate, in solution, crystals, atomic structure, crystal detectors, ; characteristic of, ; circuit of, ; theory of, current, transient, ; radio, cycle, , damped oscillations, demodulation, detection, explained, detectors, audion, ; crystal, direct currents, dissociation, distortion, of wave form, dry battery, earth, atomic constitution, effective value, of ampere, ; of volt, efficiency, of regenerative circuit, electrical charge, electricity, current of, , electrodes, of vacuum tube, ; definition of, electrolyte, definition of, electrons, properties of, ; planetary, , ; rate of flow, ; vapor of, ; wandering of, electron streams, laws of attraction, e. m. f., ; alternating, ; of self-induction, energy, expended in tube, ; of electrons, ; radiation of, ether, feed-back circuit, frequency, , ; effect upon pitch, ; interval, ; natural, ; of voice, fundamental note, of string, gravity battery, theory of, grid, action of, ; condenser, ; current, ; leak, ; leak, construction, , ; of audion, harmonics, helium, properties of, henry, heterodyne, hot-wire ammeter, human voice, mechanism of, hydrogen, action of in acid, ; atom of, impedance, of coil, ; of condenser, ; of transformer, ; effect of iron core upon, ; matching of, intermediate-frequency amplification, inductance, defined, ; effect upon frequency, ; impedance of, ; mutual, ; of coils, ; self, ; table of values, ; unit of, ; variable, induction, principle of, inducto-meter, input circuit, interference, internal resistance, ion, definition of, ; positive and negative, , ionization, larynx, laws of attraction, loading coil, loop antenna, magnet, pole of, ; of soft iron, ; of steel, magnetism, matter, constitution of, megohm, microfarad, mil-ampere, mil-henry, modulation, , , , molecule, kinds of, ; motion of, [greek: mu], multiplex telegraphy, ; telephony, mutual inductance, ; variation of, natural frequency, nitrogen, nucleus of atom, , ohm, defined, organ pipe, oscillations, ; damped, ; to start, ; intensity of, ; natural frequency of, output circuit, overtones, oxygen, percentage in air, phase, plate, of an audion, plunger type of instrument, polarity of a coil, power, defined, ; electrical unit of, proton, properties of, radio current, modulation of, radio-frequency amplification, ; limitations, radio-frequency amplifier, , radio station connected to land line, rating of tubes, reception, essential operations in, regenerative circuit, ; frequency of, repeater stations, resistance, measurement of, ; non-inductive, ; square, resonance, resonance curve, retard coils, salt, atomic construction of, ; crystal structure, ; molecule in solution, ; percentage in sea water, saturation, sea water, atomic constitution of, self-inductance, ; unit of, side bands, ; relation to wave lengths, silicon, percentage in earth, sodium chloride, in solution, sound, production of, speech, to transmit by radio, speed of light, standard cell, storage battery, , sulphuric acid, super-heterodyne, ; advantages of, telephone receiver, ; theory of, telephone transmitter, telephony, by wire, tickler coil, transcontinental telephone line, transmission, essential operations in, transmitter, arlington, ; continuous wave, , ; for high power, transformer, ; step-up, tubes, connected in parallel, tuning, curve, ; sharp, ; with series condenser, undamped waves (see continuous waves), vacuum tube, , ; characteristics of, ; construction of, ; modulator, ; three-electrode, ; two-electrode, variometer, vibrating string, study of, vocal cords, voice frequencies, volt, definition of, ; measurement of, voltmeter, calibration of, ; construction of, watt, wave form, wave length, relation to frequency, , ; defined, wire, inductance of, wire, movement of electrons in, ; emission of electrons from, wire telephony, wired wireless, ; advantages of, x-rays, zero coupling, zinc, electrode for battery, this is the jargon file, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor. this document (the jargon file) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. there are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the file, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (examples of appropriate citation form: "jargon file . . " or "the on-line hacker jargon file, version . . , jul ".) the jargon file is a common heritage of the hacker culture. over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to maintaining the file and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and distribute updated versions periodically. current volunteer editors include: eric raymond eric@snark.thyrsus.com ( )- - although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good form to check with an editor before quoting the file in a published work or commercial product. we may have additional information that would be helpful to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only the letter of the file but its spirit as well. all contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this public-domain file. from time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the volunteer editors and the hacker community at large. if you wish to have a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase one of these. they often contain additional material not found in on-line versions. the two `authorized' editions so far are described in the revision history section; there may be more in the future. :introduction: ************** :about this file: ================= this document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate. the `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. it has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than years old. as usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their culture together --- it helps hackers recognize each other's places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences. also as usual, *not* knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a {suit}. all human cultures use slang in this threefold way --- as a tool of communication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion. among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared states of *consciousness*. there is a whole range of altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better than a coltrane solo or one of maurits escher's `trompe l'oeil' compositions (escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. as a simple example, take the distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant} solution, and the differing connotations attached to each. the distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature of the generative processes in program design and asserts something important about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker and the hack. hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche. but there is more. hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in their use of language. these traits seem to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern west is a halting and largely unconscious process. hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. further, the electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. the results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action. hackish slang also challenges some common linguistic and anthropological assumptions. for example, it has recently become fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context' communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context level of their languages and art forms. it is usually claimed that low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. what then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily "low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context slang style? the intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding culture --- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving compilation called the `jargon file', maintained by hackers themselves for over years. this one (like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes `topic entries' which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual entries. though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the material be enjoyable to browse. even a complete outsider should find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly thought-provoking. but it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements about what they feel. some of these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. we have not tried to moderate or pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that *everyone's* sacred cows get gored, impartially. compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is. the reader with minimal computer background who finds some references incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. we have not felt it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too, contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences --- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture --- will benefit from them. a selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in {appendix a}. the `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to {appendix b}, "a portrait of j. random hacker". {appendix c} is a bibliography of non-technical works which have either influenced or described the hacker culture. because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line between description and influence can become more than a little blurred. earlier versions of the jargon file have played a central role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one will do likewise. :of slang, jargon, and techspeak: ================================= linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations. however, the ancestor of this collection was called the `jargon file', and hackish slang is traditionally `the jargon'. when talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish what a *linguist* would call hackers' jargon --- the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers, and manuals. to make a confused situation worse, the line between hackish slang and the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy, and shifts over time. further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do not speak or recognize hackish slang. accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of usage permit about the distinctions among three categories: *`slang': informal language from mainstream english or non-technicalsubcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc). *`jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' languagepeculiar to hackers --- the subject of this lexicon. *`techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computerscience, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking. this terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of this lexicon. the jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. a lot of techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of jargon into techspeak. on the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the "jargon construction" section below). in general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicates primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical dictionaries, or standards documents. a few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages, or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical historical background necessary to understand other entries to which they are cross-referenced. some other techspeak senses of jargon words are listed in order to make the jargon senses clear; where the text does not specify that a straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. some entries have a primary sense marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of it. we have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of terms. the results are probably the least reliable information in the lexicon, for several reasons. for one thing, it is well known that many hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple times, even among the more obscure and intricate neologisms. it often seems that the generative processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal logic so powerful as to create substantial parallelism across separate cultures and even in different languages! for another, the networks tend to propagate innovations so quickly that `first use' is often impossible to pin down. and, finally, compendia like this one alter what they observe by implicitly stamping cultural approval on terms and widening their use. :revision history: ================== the original jargon file was a collection of hacker jargon from technical cultures including the mit ai lab, the stanford ai lab (sail), and others of the old arpanet ai/lisp/pdp- communities including bolt, beranek and newman (bbn), carnegie-mellon university (cmu), and worcester polytechnic institute (wpi). the jargon file (hereafter referred to as `jargon- ' or `the file') was begun by raphael finkel at stanford in . from this time until the plug was finally pulled on the sail computer in , the file was named aiword.rf[up,doc] there. some terms in it date back considerably earlier ({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the tech model railroad club at mit and are believed to date at least back to the early s). the revisions of jargon- were all unnumbered and may be collectively considered `version '. in , mark crispin, having seen an announcement about the file on the sail computer, {ftp}ed a copy of the file to mit. he noticed that it was hardly restricted to `ai words' and so stored the file on his directory as ai:mrc;sail jargon. the file was quickly renamed jargon > (the `>' means numbered with a version number) as a flurry of enhancements were made by mark crispin and guy l. steele jr. unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody thought of correcting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the compendium had already become widely known as the jargon file. raphael finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter and don woods became the sail contact for the file (which was subsequently kept in duplicate at sail and mit, with periodic resynchronizations). the file expanded by fits and starts until about ; richard stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many mit and its-related coinages. in spring , a hacker named charles spurgeon got a large chunk of the file published in russell brand's `coevolution quarterly' (pages - ) with illustrations by phil wadler and guy steele (including a couple of the crunchly cartoons). this appears to have been the file's first paper publication. a late version of jargon- , expanded with commentary for the mass market, was edited by guy steele into a book published in as `the hacker's dictionary' (harper & row cn , isbn - - - ). the other jargon- editors (raphael finkel, don woods, and mark crispin) contributed to this revision, as did richard m. stallman and geoff goodfellow. this book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as `steele- ' and those six as the steele- coauthors. shortly after the publication of steele- , the file effectively stopped growing and changing. originally, this was due to a desire to freeze the file temporarily to facilitate the production of steele- , but external conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to become permanent. the ai lab culture had been hit hard in the late s by funding cuts and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported hardware and software instead of homebrew whenever possible. at mit, most ai work had turned to dedicated lisp machines. at the same time, the commercialization of ai technology lured some of the ai lab's best and brightest away to startups along the route strip in massachusetts and out west in silicon valley. the startups built lisp machines for mit; the central mit-ai computer became a {twenex} system rather than a host for the ai hackers' beloved {its}. the stanford ai lab had effectively ceased to exist by , although the sail computer continued as a computer science department resource until . stanford became a major {twenex} site, at one point operating more than a dozen tops- systems; but by the mid- s most of the interesting software work was being done on the emerging bsd unix standard. in april , the pdp- -centered cultures that had nourished the file were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the jupiter project at digital equipment corporation. the file's compilers, already dispersed, moved on to other things. steele- was partly a monument to what its authors thought was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how wide its influence was to be. by the mid- s the file's content was dated, but the legend that had grown up around it never quite died out. the book, and softcopies obtained off the arpanet, circulated even in cultures far removed from mit and stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hackish language and humor. even as the advent of the microcomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the file (and related materials such as the ai koans in appendix a) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture matter of britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the knights of the lab. the pace of change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously --- but the jargon file, having passed from living document to icon, remained essentially untouched for seven years. this revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of jargon- (a few obsolete pdp- -related entries were dropped after careful consultation with the editors of steele- ). it merges in about % of the steele- text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries introduced in steele- that are now also obsolete. this new version casts a wider net than the old jargon file; its aim is to cover not just ai or pdp- hacker culture but all the technical computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. more than half of the entries now derive from {usenet} and represent jargon now current in the c and unix communities, but special efforts have been made to collect jargon from other cultures including ibm pc programmers, amiga fans, mac enthusiasts, and even the ibm mainframe world. eric s. raymond <eric@snark.thyrsus.com> maintains the new file with assistance from guy l. steele jr. <gls@think.com>; these are the persons primarily reflected in the file's editorial `we', though we take pleasure in acknowledging the special contribution of the other coauthors of steele- . please email all additions, corrections, and correspondence relating to the jargon file to jargon@thyrsus.com (uucp-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can use ...!uunet!snark!jargon). (warning: other email addresses appear in this file *but are not guaranteed to be correct* later than the revision date on the first line. *don't* email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces --- we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people.) the . . version became the main text of `the new hacker's dictionary', by eric raymond (ed.), mit press , isbn - - - . the maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the jargon file through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to make it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the hacker community. here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line revisions: version . . , jun : the jargon file comes alive again after a seven-year hiatus. reorganization and massive additions were by eric s. raymond, approved by guy steele. many items of unix, c, usenet, and microcomputer-based jargon were added at that time (as well as the untimely demise of mabel the monkey). version . . , aug : corresponds to reproduction copy for book. this version had lines, words, characters, and entries. version . . , jan : first public release since the book, including over fifty new entries and numerous corrections/additions to old ones. packaged with version . of vh( ) hypertext reader. this version had lines, words, characters, and entries. version . . , apr : folded in xerox parc lexicon. this version had lines, words, characters, and entries. version . . , jul : lots of new historical material. this version had lines, words, characters, and entries. version numbering: version numbers should be read as major.minor.revision. major version is reserved for the `old' (its) jargon file, jargon- . major version encompasses revisions by esr (eric s. raymond) with assistance from gls (guy l. steele, jr.). someday, the next maintainer will take over and spawn `version '. usually later versions will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old versions around. our thanks to the coauthors of steele- for oversight and assistance, and to the hundreds of usenetters (too many to name here) who contributed entries and encouragement. more thanks go to several of the old-timers on the usenet group alt.folklore.computers, who contributed much useful commentary and many corrections and valuable historical perspective: joseph m. newcomer <jn +@andrew.cmu.edu>, bernie cosell <cosell@bbn.com>, earl boebert <boebert@sctc.com>, and joe morris <jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>. we were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists. david stampe <stampe@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu> and charles hoequist <hoequist@bnr.ca> contributed valuable criticism; joe keane <jgk@osc.osc.com> helped us improve the pronunciation guides. a few bits of this text quote previous works. we are indebted to brian a. lamacchia <bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu> for obtaining permission for us to use material from the `tmrc dictionary'; also, don libes <libes@cme.nist.gov> contributed some appropriate material from his excellent book `life with unix'. we thank per lindberg <per@front.se>, author of the remarkable swedish-language 'zine `hackerbladet', for bringing `foo!' comics to our attention and smuggling one of the ibm hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. thanks also to maarten litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of the ascii pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. and our gratitude to marc weiser of xerox parc <marc_weiser.parc@xerox.com> for securing us permission to quote from parc's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a copy. it is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of mark brader <msb@sq.com> to the final manuscript; he read and reread many drafts, checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful comments, and did yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles. mr. brader's rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in matters of language made his help invaluable, and the sustained volume and quality of his input over many months only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins. finally, george v. reilly <gvr@cs.brown.edu> helped with tex arcana and painstakingly proofread some . and . versions; steve summit <scs@adam.mit.edu> contributed a number of excellent new entries and many small improvements to . . ; and eric tiedemann <est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism. :how jargon works: ****************** :jargon construction: ===================== there are some standard methods of jargonification that became established quite early (i.e., before ), spreading from such sources as the tech model railroad club, the pdp- spacewar hackers, and john mccarthy's original crew of lispers. these include the following: :verb doubling: --------------- a standard construction in english is to double a verb and use it as an exclamation, such as "bang, bang!" or "quack, quack!". most of these are names for noises. hackers also double verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. typical examples involve {win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {chomp}: "the disk heads just crashed." "lose, lose." "mostly he talked about his latest crock. flame, flame." "boy, what a bagbiter! chomp, chomp!" some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately obvious from the verb. these have their own listings in the lexicon. the usenet culture has one *tripling* convention unrelated to this; the names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. the first and paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a "muppet show" reference); other classics include alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg, alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk, sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom, and alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill. :soundalike slang: ------------------ hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting. it is considered particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine `dr. dobb's journal' is almost always referred to among hackers as `dr. frob's journal' or simply `dr. frob's'. terms of this kind that have been in fairly wide use include names for newspapers: boston herald => horrid (or harried) boston globe => boston glob houston (or san francisco) chronicle => the crocknicle (or the comical) new york times => new york slime however, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment. standard examples include: data general => dirty genitals ibm => ibm three-sickly government property --- do not duplicate (on keys) => government duplicity --- do not propagate for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins margaret jacks hall (the cs building at stanford) => marginal hacks hall this is not really similar to the cockney rhyming slang it has been compared to in the past, because cockney substitutions are opaque whereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent. :the `-p' convention: --------------------- turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `p'; from the lisp convention of appending the letter `p' to denote a predicate (a boolean-valued function). the question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (see {t} and {nil}.) at dinnertime: q: "foodp?" a: "yeah, i'm pretty hungry." or "t!" at any time: q: "state-of-the-world-p?" a: (straight) "i'm about to go home." a: (humorous) "yes, the world has a state." on the phone to florida: q: "state-p florida?" a: "been reading jargon.txt again, eh?" [one of the best of these is a {gosperism}. once, when we were at a chinese restaurant, bill gosper wanted to know whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. his inquiry was: "split-p soup?" --- gls] :overgeneralization: -------------------- a very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which techspeak items such as names of program tools, command language primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. thus (to cite one of the best-known examples) unix hackers often {grep} for things rather than searching for them. many of the lexicon entries are generalizations of exactly this kind. hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases (or vice versa). for example, because porous => porosity generous => generosity hackers happily generalize: mysterious => mysteriosity ferrous => ferrosity obvious => obviosity dubious => dubiosity also, note that all nouns can be verbed. e.g.: "all nouns can be verbed", "i'll mouse it up", "hang on while i clipboard it over", "i'm grepping the files". english as a whole is already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve. however, note that hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the pentagon; a hacker would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or `securitize' things. hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt. similarly, all verbs can be nouned. this is only a slight overgeneralization in modern english; in hackish, however, it is good form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. thus: win => winnitude, winnage disgust => disgustitude hack => hackification further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms. some of these go back quite a ways; the tmrc dictionary noted that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese', and includes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is {meeces}. on a similarly anglo-saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in `-xen' (see {vaxen} and {boxen} in the main text). even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see {frobnitz}) and `unices' and `twenices' (rather than `unixes' and `twenexes'; see {unix}, {twenex} in main text). but note that `unixen' and `twenexen' are never used; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are latin singular endings that attract a latinate plural. finally, it has been suggested to general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'. the pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization of an inflectional rule that in english is either an import or a fossil (such as the hebrew plural ending `-im', or the anglo-saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply. this is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. it is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. it is done not to impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity. :spoken inarticulations: ------------------------ words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. it has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic mail (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). another expression sometimes heard is "complain!", meaning "i have a complaint!" :anthromorphization: -------------------- semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. this isn't done in a na"ive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things they work on every day are `alive'. what *is* common is to hear hardware or software talked about as though it has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and desires. thus, one hears "the protocol handler got confused", or that programs "are trying" to do things, or one may say of a routine that "its goal in life is to x". one even hears explanations like "... and its poor little brain couldn't understand x, and it died." sometimes modelling things this way actually seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because it's instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complex behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like a thing'. of the six listed constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun formations, anthromorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but punning jargon is still largely confined to mit and other large universities, and the `-p' convention is found only where lispers flourish. finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as members of sets of comparatives. this is especially true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. here is an approximately correct spectrum: monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection the last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never actually attained. another similar scale is used for describing the reliability of software: broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof armor-plated note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily commonwealth hackish (it is rare in the u.s.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers. coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call forth the very finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment failures than yiddish has for obnoxious people. :hacker writing style: ====================== we've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing grammatical rules. this is one aspect of a more general fondness for form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in hackish writing. one correspondent reports that he consistently misspells `wrong' as `worng'. others have been known to criticize glitches in jargon file drafts by observing (in the mode of douglas hofstadter) "this sentence no verb", or "bad speling", or "incorrectspa cing." similarly, intentional spoonerisms are often made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most common (similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "excuse me, i'm cixelsyd today", rather than "i'm dyslexic today"). this sort of thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned. hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of american editors. thus, if "jim is going" is a phrase, and so are "bill runs" and "spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "jim is going", "bill runs", and "spock groks". this is incorrect according to standard american usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, american-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. when communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck. consider, for example, a sentence in a {vi} tutorial that looks like this: then delete a line from the file by typing "dd". standard usage would make this then delete a line from the file by typing "dd." but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone to type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in `vi( )' dot repeats the last command accepted. the net result would be to delete *two* lines! the jargon file follows hackish usage throughout. interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in great britain, though the older style (which became established for typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. `hart's rules' and the `oxford dictionary for writers and editors' call the hacker-like style `new' or `logical' quoting. another hacker quirk is a tendency to distinguish between `scare' quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use british-style single quotes for marking and reserve american-style double quotes for actual reports of speech or text included from elsewhere. interestingly, some authorities describe this as correct general usage, but mainstream american english has gone to using double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in fact, i thought this was a personal quirk of mine until i checked with usenet --- esr]. one further permutation that is definitely *not* standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'. this is modelled on string and character literal syntax in some programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a vertical single quote). one quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of unix hackers in particular is a tendency for some things that are normally all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and c routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of sentences. it is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation (the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an appropriate reflex because unix and c both distinguish cases and confusing them can lead to {lossage}). a way of escaping this dilemma is simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences. there seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to the effect that precision of expression is more important than conformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information they can be discarded without a second thought. it is notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and loose. in fact, to a hacker, the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a substantial part of its humor! hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis conventions adapted to single-font all-ascii communications links, and these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available. one of these is that text in all caps is interpreted as `loud', and this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who goes to caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop shouting, please, you're hurting my ears!". also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify emphasis. the asterisk is most common, as in "what the *hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a footnote mark. the underscore is also common, suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with book titles; for example, "it is often alleged that joe haldeman wrote _the_forever_war_ as a rebuttal to robert heinlein's earlier novel of the future military, _starship_troopers_."). other forms exemplified by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last example the first slash pushes the letters over to the right to make them italic, and the second keeps them from falling over). finally, words may also be emphasized l i k e t h i s, or by a series of carets (^) under them on the next line of the text. there is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very young child or a mentally impaired person). bracketing a word with the `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers to consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is being made. examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*. there is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the text be nice to this fool^h^h^h^hgentleman, he's in from corporate hq. would be read as "be nice to this fool, i mean this gentleman...". this comes from the fact that the digraph ^h is often used as a print representation for a backspace. it parallels (and may have been influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction fanzines. in a formula, `*' signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from fortran). thus, one might write ** = . another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the caret (^, ascii ); one might write instead ` ^ = '. this goes all the way back to algol- , which used the archaic ascii `up-arrow' that later became the caret; this was picked up by kemeny and kurtz's original basic, which in turn influenced the design of the `bc( )' and `dc( )' unix tools, which have probably done most to reinforce the convention on usenet. the notation is mildly confusing to c programmers, because `^' means bitwise {xor} in c. despite this, it was favored : over ** in a late- snapshot of usenet. it is used consistently in this text. in on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper fractions (` . ' or ` / ') rather than `typewriter style' mixed fractions (` - / '). the major motive here is probably that the former are more readable in a monospaced font, together with a desire to avoid the risk that the latter might be read as `three minus one-half'. the decimal form is definitely preferred for fractions with a terminating decimal representation; there may be some cultural influence here from the high status of scientific notation. another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small numbers, is taken from c (which derived it from fortran). this is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `* ^'; for example, one year is about e seconds long. the tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of `approximately'; that is, `~ ' means `about fifty'. on usenet and in the {mud} world, common c boolean, logical, and relational operators such as `|', `&', `||', `&&', `!', `==', `!=', `>', and `<', `>=', and `=<' are often combined with english. the pascal not-equals, `<>', is also recognized, and occasionally one sees `/=' for not-equals (from ada, common lisp, and fortran ). the use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'. a related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages to express ideas in a natural-language text. for example, one might see the following: i resently had occasion to field-test the snafu systems e adaptive gonkulator. the price was right, and the racing stripe on the case looked kind of neat, but its performance left something to be desired. #ifdef flame hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get decent bogon suppression with afj filters at today's net speeds? #endif /* flame */ i guess they figured the price premium for true frame-based semantic analysis was too high. unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach. i wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless you're on a *very* tight budget. #include <disclaimer.h> -- == frank foonly (fubarco systems) in the above, the `#ifdef'/`#endif' pair is a conditional compilation syntax from c; here, it implies that the text between (which is a {flame}) should be evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined on) the switch flame. the `#include' at the end is c for "include standard disclaimer here"; the `standard disclaimer' is understood to read, roughly, "these are my personal opinions and not to be construed as the official position of my employer." another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a term; this derives from conventions used in {bnf}. uses like the following are common: so this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day, and... hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream usage. in particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string that names that number in english. so, hackers prefer to write ` s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or ` 's' (the latter looks like a possessive). it should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use multiply nested parentheses than is normal in english. part of this is almost certainly due to influence from lisp (which uses deeply nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation. one area where hackish conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux is the marking of included material from earlier messages --- what would be called `block quotations' in ordinary english. from the usual typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra indent), there derived the notation of included text being indented by one ascii tab ( ) character, which under unix and many other environments gives the appearance of an -space indent. early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. bsd `mail( )' was the first message agent to support inclusion, and early usenetters emulated its style. but the tab character tended to push included text too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly wraparounds. after a brief period of confusion (during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became established in emacs and a few mailers), the use of leading `>' or `> ' became standard, perhaps owing to its use in `ed( )' to display tabs (alternatively, it may derive from the `>' that some early unix mailers used to quote lines starting with "from" in text, so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message headers). inclusions within inclusions keep their `>' leaders, so the `nesting level' of a quotation is visually apparent. a few other idiosyncratic quoting styles survive because they are automatically generated. one particularly ugly one looks like this: /* written hh:mm pm mmm dd, yyyy by user@site in <group> */ /* ---------- "article subject, chopped to ch" ---------- */ <quoted text> /* end of text from local:group */ it is generated by an elderly, variant news-reading system called `notesfiles'. the overall trend, however, is definitely away from such verbosity. the practice of including text from the parent article when posting a followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on usenet: the fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "no, that's wrong" or "i agree" or the like. it was hard to see who was responding to what. consequently, around , new news-posting software evolved a facility to automatically include the text of a previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster chose. the poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. the result has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the *entire* text of a preceding article, *followed* only by "no, that's wrong" or "i agree". many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over included text if desired. today, some posting software rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with `>' -- but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold. because the default mailers supplied with unix and other operating systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions using a leading tab or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail. in practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusion style occasionally lead to {holy wars}. one variant style reported uses the citation character `|' in place of `>' for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained. one also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader of `> ' for everyone, another (the most common) is `> > > > ', `> > > ', etc. (or `>>>> ', `>>> ', etc., depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say `> ', `: ', `| ', `} ' (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). yet *another* style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster. occasionally one sees a `# ' leader used for quotations from authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the special unix command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged super-user). finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting effect on people. deprived of the body-language cues through which emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about other parties except what is presented over that ascii link. this has both good and bad effects. the good one is that it encourages honesty and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; the bad is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous rudeness. perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often display a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase "well said, sir!" is not uncommon). many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would face to face. though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and clarity of expression. it may well be that future historians of literature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of personal letters as art. :hacker speech style: ===================== hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or street slang. dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued --- but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. one should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser. this speech style is a variety of the precisionist english normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. in contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom. it has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions --- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often confused by the sense of their answers. the problem is that they have done so much programming that distinguishes between if (going) { and if (!going) { that when they parse the question "aren't you going?" it seems to be asking the opposite question from "are you going?", and so merits an answer in the opposite sense. this confuses english-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there. in some other languages (including russian, chinese, and japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise. hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like french `si' or german `doch' with which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question. for similar reasons, english-speaking hackers almost never use double negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them. the thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them. here's a related quirk. a non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a question like "so, are you working on finding that bug *now* or leaving it until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "yes!" (that is, "yes, i'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!"). :international style: ===================== although the jargon file remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in american english, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of jargon from english (often as transmitted to them by earlier jargon file versions!), the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers. there are some references herein to `commonwealth english'. these are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the english spoken in great britain and the commonwealth (canada, australia, india, etc. --- though canada is heavily influenced by american usage). there is also an entry on {{commonwealth hackish}} reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from u.s. hackish. hackers in western europe and (especially) scandinavia are reported to often use a mixture of english and their native languages for technical conversation. occasionally they develop idioms in their english usage that are influenced by their native-language styles. some of these are reported here. a few notes on hackish usages in russian have been added where they are parallel with english idioms and thus comprehensible to english-speakers. :how to use the lexicon: ************************ :pronunciation guide: ===================== pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard english nor obvious compounds thereof. slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are to be interpreted using the following conventions: . syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables). . consonants are pronounced as in american english. the letter `g' is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). the letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in "judge". the letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound. the digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim". . uppercase letters are pronounced as their english letter names; thus (for example) /h-l-l/ is equivalent to /aitch el el/. /z/ may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect. . vowels are represented as follows: a back, that ar far, mark aw flaw, caught ay bake, rain e less, men ee easy, ski eir their, software i trip, hit i: life, sky o father, palm oh flow, sew oo loot, through or more, door ow out, how oy boy, coin uh but, some u put, foot y yet, young yoo few, chew [y]oo /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) a /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). the schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/. entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (no, unix weenies, this does *not* mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!) :other lexicon conventions: =========================== entries are sorted in case-blind ascii collation order (rather than the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters are sorted after z. the case-blindness is a feature, not a bug. the beginning of each entry is marked by a colon (`:') at the left margin. this convention helps out tools like hypertext browsers that benefit from knowing where entry boundaries are, but aren't as context-sensitive as humans. in pure ascii renderings of the jargon file, you will see {} used to bracket words which themselves have entries in the file. this isn't done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and one might wish to refer to its entry. in this all-ascii version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}". defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'. a defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an explanation of it. prefix * is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage. we follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the writing style section above. in addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts of text or (sometimes invented) speech. scare quotes (which mark a word being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered with single quotes. references such as `malloc( )' and `patch( )' are to unix facilities (some of which, such as `patch( )', are actually freeware distributed over usenet). the unix manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n= is utilities, n= is system calls, n= is c library routines, n= is games, and n= (where present) is system administration utilities. sections , , and of the manuals have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in any of the entries. various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized here: abbrev. abbreviation adj. adjective adv. adverb alt. alternate cav. caveat esp. especially excl. exclamation imp. imperative interj. interjection n. noun obs. obsolete pl. plural poss. possibly pref. prefix prob. probably prov. proverbial quant. quantifier suff. suffix syn. synonym (or synonymous with) v. verb (may be transitive or intransitive) var. variant vi. intransitive verb vt. transitive verb where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one that is markedly less common than the primary. where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. here is a list of abbreviations used in etymologies: berkeley university of california at berkeley cambridge the university in england (*not* the city in massachusetts where mit happens to be located!) bbn bolt, beranek & newman cmu carnegie-mellon university commodore commodore business machines dec the digital equipment corporation fairchild the fairchild instruments palo alto development group fidonet see the {fidonet} entry ibm international business machines mit massachusetts institute of technology; esp. the legendary mit ai lab culture of roughly to and its feeder groups, including the tech model railroad club nrl naval research laboratories nyu new york university oed the oxford english dictionary purdue purdue university sail stanford artificial intelligence laboratory (at stanford university) si from syst`eme international, the name for the standard conventions of metric nomenclature used in the sciences stanford stanford university sun sun microsystems tmrc some mitisms go back as far as the tech model railroad club (tmrc) at mit c. . material marked tmrc is from `an abridged dictionary of the tmrc language', originally compiled by pete samson in ucla university of california at los angeles uk the united kingdom (england, wales, scotland, northern ireland) usenet see the {usenet} entry wpi worcester polytechnic institute, site of a very active community of pdp- hackers during the s xerox parc xerox's palo alto research center, site of much pioneering research in user interface design and networking yale yale university some other etymology abbreviations such as {unix} and {pdp- } refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems, processors, or other environments. the fact that a term is labelled with any one of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use is confined to that culture. in particular, many terms labelled `mit' and `stanford' are in quite general use. we have tried to give some indication of the distribution of speakers in the usage notes; however, a number of factors mentioned in the introduction conspire to make these indications less definite than might be desirable. a few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. these are usually generalizations suggested by editors or usenet respondents in the process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. these are *not* represented as established jargon. :format for new entries: ======================== all contributions and suggestions about the jargon file will be considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this file, and may be used in subsequent paper editions. submissions may be edited for accuracy, clarity and concision. try to conform to the format already being used --- head-words separated from text by a colon (double colon for topic entries), cross-references in curly brackets (doubled for topic entries), pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets, single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. stick to the standard ascii character set ( -bit printable, no high-half characters or [nt]roff/tex/scribe escapes), as one of the versions generated from the master file is an info document that has to be viewable on a character tty. we are looking to expand the file's range of technical specialties covered. there are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical analysis, computer architectures and vlsi design, language design, and many other related fields. send us your jargon! we are *not* interested in straight technical terms explained by textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates `underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories. we are also not interested in `joke' entries --- there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations of what hackers do and how they think. it is ok to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted with you. we prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two different sites. the jargon file will be regularly maintained and re-posted from now on and will include a version number. read it, pass it around, contribute --- this is *your* monument! the jargon lexicon ****************** = a = ===== :abbrev: /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n. common abbreviation for `abbreviation'. :abend: [abnormal end] /ah'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. abnormal termination (of software); {crash}; {lossage}. derives from an error message on the ibm ; used jokingly by hackers but seriously mainly by {code grinder}s. usually capitalized, but may appear as `abend'. hackers will try to persuade you that abend is called `abend' because it is what system operators do to the machine late on friday when they want to call it a day, and hence is from the german `abend' = `evening'. :accumulator: n. . archaic term for a register. on-line use of it as a synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. the term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in `a' derive from historical use of the term `accumulator' (and not, actually, from `arithmetic'). confusingly, though, an `a' register name prefix may also stand for `address', as for example on the motorola x family. . a register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. this use is in context of a particular routine or stretch of code. "the foobaz routine uses a as an accumulator." . one's in-basket (esp. among old-timers who might use sense ). "you want this reviewed? sure, just put it in the accumulator." (see {stack}.) :ack: /ak/ interj. . [from the ascii mnemonic for ] acknowledge. used to register one's presence (compare mainstream *yo!*). an appropriate response to {ping} or {enq}. . [from the comic strip "bloom county"] an exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in "ack pffft!" semi-humorous. generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ack) and is distinguished by a following exclamation point. . used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand their point (see {nak}). thus, for example, you might cut off an overly long explanation with "ack. ack. ack. i get it now". there is also a usage "ack?" (from sense ) meaning "are you there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {nak} (sense ), i.e., "i'm not here"). :ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [purdue] n. . gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact entirely arbitrary. for example, fuzzy-matching input tokens that might be typing errors against a symbol table can make it look as though a program knows how to spell. . special-case code to cope with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to {choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way. also called `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity' (/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. see also {eliza effect}. :ada:: n. a {{pascal}}-descended language that has been made mandatory for department of defense software projects by the pentagon. hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "the pl/i of the s"). hackers find ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. ada lovelace (the daughter of lord byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with charles babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid- s) would almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, {elephantine} bulk. :adger: /aj'r/ [ucla] vt. to make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental effort. e.g., "he started removing files and promptly adgered the whole project". compare {dumbass attack}. :admin: /ad-min'/ n. short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news). compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system mangler}. :advent: /ad'vent/ n. the prototypical computer adventure game, first implemented on the {pdp- } by will crowther as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by don woods. now better known as adventure, but the {{tops- }} operating system permitted only -letter filenames. see also {vadding}. this game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "a huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "i see no x here" (for some noun x). "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "you are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." the `magic words' {xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game. crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the mammoth & flint ridge cave system; it actually *has* a `colossal cave' and a `bedquilt' as in the game, and the `y ' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance. :afj: n. written-only abbreviation for "april fool's joke". elaborate april fool's hoaxes are a hallowed tradition on usenet and internet; see {kremvax} for an example. in fact, april fool's day is the *only* seasonal holiday marked by customary observances on the hacker networks. :ai-complete: /a-i k*m-pleet'/ [mit, stanford: by analogy with `np-complete' (see {np-})] adj. used to describe problems or subproblems in ai, to indicate that the solution presupposes a solution to the `strong ai problem' (that is, the synthesis of a human-level intelligence). a problem that is ai-complete is, in other words, just too hard. examples of ai-complete problems are `the vision problem' (building a system that can see as well as a human) and `the natural language problem' (building a system that can understand and speak a natural language as well as a human). these may appear to be modular, but all attempts so far ( ) to solve them have foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence' they seem to require. see also {gedanken}. :ai koans: /a-i koh'anz/ pl.n. a series of pastiches of zen teaching riddles created by danny hillis at the mit ai lab around various major figures of the lab's culture (several are included under "{a selection of ai koans}" in {appendix a}). see also {ha ha only serious}, {mu}, and {{humor, hacker}}. :aids: /aydz/ n. short for a* infected disk syndrome (`a*' is a {glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, apple), this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe {sex}. see {virus}, {worm}, {trojan horse}, {virgin}. :aidx: n. /aydkz/ n. derogatory term for ibm's perverted version of unix, aix, especially for the aix .? used in the ibm rs/ series. a victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this attempt to combine the two main currents of the unix stream ({bsd} and {usg unix}) became a {monstrosity} to haunt system administrators' dreams. for example, if new accounts are created while many users are logged on, the load average jumps quickly over due to silly implementation of the user databases. for a quite similar disease, compare {hp-sux}. also, compare {terminak}, {macintrash} {nominal semidestructor}, {open deathtrap}, {scumos}, {sun-stools}. :airplane rule: n. "complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." by analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness (see also {kiss principle}). it is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really *good* basket. :aliasing bug: n. a class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via `malloc( )' or equivalent. if more than one pointer addresses (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. also avoidable by use of higher-level languages, such as {lisp}, which employ a garbage collector (see {gc}). also called a {stale pointer bug}. see also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {spam}. historical note: though this term is nowadays associated with c programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the algol- and fortran communities in the s. :all-elbows: adj. of a tsr (terminate-and-stay-resident) ibm pc program, such as the n pop-up calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on {bbs} systems: unsociable. used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without considering that other tsrs may also be resident. one particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. see {rude}, also {mess-dos}. :alpha particles: n. see {bit rot}. :alt: /awlt/ . n. the alt shift key on an ibm pc or {clone}. . n. the `clover' or `command' key on a macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked pcs before coming to the mac (see also {feature key}). some mac hackers, confusingly, reserve `alt' for the option key. . n.obs. [pdp- ; often capitalized to alt] alternate name for the ascii esc character (ascii ), after the keycap labeling on some older terminals. also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). this character was almost never pronounced `escape' on an its system, in {teco}, or under tops- --- always alt, as in "type alt alt to end a teco command" or "alt-u onto the system" (for "log onto the [its] system"). this was probably because alt is more convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by another alt or a character (or another alt *and* a character, for that matter). :alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. see {meta bit}. :altmode: n. syn. {alt} sense . :aluminum book: [mit] n. `common lisp: the language', by guy l. steele jr. (digital press, first edition , second edition ). note that due to a technical screwup some printings of the second edition are actually of a color the author describes succinctly as "yucky green". see also {{book titles}}. :amoeba: n. humorous term for the commodore amiga personal computer. :amp off: [purdue] vt. to run in {background}. from the unix shell `&' operator. :amper: n. common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&', ascii ) character. see {{ascii}} for other synonyms. :angle brackets: n. either of the characters `<' (ascii ) and `>' (ascii ) (ascii less-than or greater-than signs). the {real world} angle brackets used by typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than sign. see {broket}, {{ascii}}. :angry fruit salad: n. a bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. this derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad. too often one sees similar effects from interface designers using color window systems such as {x}; there is a tendency to create displays that are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use. :annoybot: /*-noy-bot/ [irc] n. see {robot}. :aos: . /aws/ (east coast), /ay-os/ (west coast) [based on a pdp- increment instruction] vt.,obs. to increase the amount of something. "aos the campfire." usage: considered silly, and now obsolete. now largely supplanted by {bump}. see {sos}. . a {{multics}}-derived os supported at one time by data general. this was pronounced /a-o-s/ or /a-os/. a spoof of the standard aos system administrator's manual (`how to load and generate your aos system') was created, issued a part number, and circulated as photocopy folklore. it was called `how to goad and levitate your chaos system'. . algebraic operating system, in reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix (reverse polish) notation. historical note: aos in sense was the name of a {pdp- } instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added to it; aos meant `add one and do not skip'. why, you may ask, does the `s' stand for `do not skip' rather than for `skip'? ah, here was a beloved piece of pdp- folklore. there were eight such instructions: aose added and then skipped the next instruction if the result was equal to zero; aosg added and then skipped if the result was greater than ; aosn added and then skipped if the result was not ; aosa added and then skipped always; and so on. just plain aos didn't say when to skip, so it never skipped. for similar reasons, aoj meant `add one and do not jump'. even more bizarre, skip meant `do not skip'! if you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say `skipa'. likewise, jump meant `do not jump'; the unconditional form was jumpa. however, hackers never did this. by some quirk of the 's design, the {jrst} (jump and restore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. such were the perverse mysteries of assembler programming. :app: /ap/ n. short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. oppose {tool}, {operating system}. :arc: [primarily msdos] vt. to create a compressed {archive} from a group of files using sea arc, pkware pkarc, or a compatible program. rapidly becoming obsolete as the arc compression method is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer compression techniques. see {tar and feather}, {zip}. :arc wars: [primarily msdos] n. {holy wars} over which archiving program one should use. the first arc war was sparked when system enhancement associates (sea) sued pkware for copyright and trademark infringement on its arc program. pkware's pkarc outperformed arc on both compression and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that could be disabled for backward-compatibility). pkware settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both sea and pkware are small companies); as part of the settlement, the name of pkarc was changed to pkpak. the public backlash against sea for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of arc as a standard when pkware and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better compression algorithms. :archive: n. . a collection of several files bundled into one file by a program such as `ar( )', `tar( )', `cpio( )', or {arc} for shipment or archiving (sense ). see also {tar and feather}. . a collection of files or archives (sense ) made available from an `archive site' via {ftp} or an email server. :arena: [unix] n. the area of memory attached to a process by `brk( )' and `sbrk( )' and used by `malloc( )' as dynamic storage. so named from a semi-mythical `malloc: corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions became terminally confused. see {overrun screw}, {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the stack}. :arg: /arg/ n. abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "the sine function takes arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either or args." compare {param}, {parm}, {var}. :armor-plated: n. syn. for {bulletproof}. :asbestos: adj. used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from {flame}s. important cases of this include {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more generally. :asbestos cork award: n. once, long ago at mit, there was a {flamer} so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. persons in any doubt as to the intended application of the cork should consult the etymology under {flame}. since then, it is agreed that only a select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity --- but there is no agreement on *which* few. :asbestos longjohns: n. notional garments often donned by {usenet} posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit {flamage}. this is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages. also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc. :ascii:: [american standard code for information interchange] /as'kee/ n. the predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. uses bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including an early version of ascii) used fewer. this change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters --- a major {win} --- but it did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used in english (such as the german sharp-s and the ae-ligature which is a letter in, for example, norwegian). it could be worse, though. it could be much worse. see {{ebcdic}} to understand how. computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. every character has one or more names --- some formal, some concise, some silly. common jargon names for ascii characters are collected here. see also individual entries for {bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek}, {splat}, {twiddle}, and {yu-shiang whole fish}. this list derives from revision . of the usenet ascii pronunciation guide. single characters are listed in ascii order; character pairs are sorted in by first member. for each character, common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official ansi/ccitt names are surrounded by brokets: <>. square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by {intercal}. ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information. ! common: {bang}; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>. rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier. " common: double quote; quote. rare: literal mark; double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime. # common: <number sign>; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; {crunch}; hex; [mesh]; octothorpe. rare: flash; crosshatch; grid; pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat}. $ common: dollar; <dollar sign>. rare: currency symbol; buck; cash; string (from basic); escape (when used as the echo of ascii esc); ding; cache; [big money]. % common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. rare: [double-oh-seven]. & common: <ampersand>; amper; and. rare: address (from c); reference (from c++); andpersand; bitand; background (from `sh( )'); pretzel; amp. [intercal called this `ampersand'; what could be sillier?] ' common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation mark>; <acute accent>. () common: left/right paren; left/right parenthesis; left/right; paren/thesis; open/close paren; open/close; open/close parenthesis; left/right banana. rare: so/al-ready; lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; open/close round bracket, parenthisey/unparenthisey; [wax/wane]; left/right ear. * common: star; [{splat}]; <asterisk>. rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see {glob}); {nathan hale}. + common: <plus>; add. rare: cross; [intersection]. , common: <comma>. rare: <cedilla>; [tail]. - common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. rare: [worm]; option; dak; bithorpe. . common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. rare: radix point; full stop; [spot]. / common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. rare: diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat]. : common: <colon>. rare: dots; [two-spot]. ; common: <semicolon>; semi. rare: weenie; [hybrid], pit-thwong. <> common: <less/greater than>; left/right angle bracket; bra/ket; left/right broket. rare: from/{into, towards}; read from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from unix); [angle/right angle]. = common: <equals>; gets; takes. rare: quadrathorpe; [half-mesh]. ? common: query; <question mark>; {ques}. rare: whatmark; [what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback. @ common: at sign; at; strudel. rare: each; vortex; whorl; [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage; <commercial at>. v rare: [book]. [] common: left/right square bracket; <opening/closing bracket>; bracket/unbracket; left/right bracket. rare: square/unsquare; [u turn/u turn back]. \ common: backslash; escape (from c/unix); reverse slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. rare: bash; <reverse slant>; reversed virgule; [backslat]. ^ common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. rare: chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of'); fang; pointer (in pascal). _ common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. rare: score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm]. ` common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote; <grave accent>; grave. rare: backprime; [backspark]; unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; <opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote. {} common: open/close brace; left/right brace; left/right squiggly; left/right squiggly bracket/brace; left/right curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; left/right squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet]. | common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. rare: <vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from unix); [spike]. ~ common: <tilde>; squiggle; {twiddle}; not. rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)]. the pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the u.s. but a bad idea; {{commonwealth hackish}} has its own, rather more apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on british keyboards the pound graphic happens to replace `#'; thus britishers sometimes call `#' on a u.s.-ascii keyboard `pound', compounding the american error). the u.s. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading. the character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the u.s. the `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for underline are historical relics from archaic ascii (the version), which had these graphics in those character positions rather than the modern punctuation characters. the `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same as tilde in typeset material but the ascii tilde serves for both (compare {angle brackets}). some other common usages cause odd overlaps. the `#', `$', `>', and `&' characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular, `#' in many assembler-programming cultures, `$' in the world, `>' at texas instruments, and `&' on the bbc micro, sinclair, and some z machines). see also {splat}. the inability of ascii text to correctly represent any of the world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of bits look more and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of international networks continues to increase (see {software rot}). hardware and software from the u.s. still tends to embody the assumption that ascii is the universal character set; this is a a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited to their own languages. perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem by proliferating `national' character sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a *smaller* subset common to all those in use. :ascii art: n. the fine art of drawing diagrams using the ascii character set (mainly `|', `-', `/', `\', and `+'). also known as `character graphics' or `ascii graphics'; see also {boxology}. here is a serious example: o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + d o l )||( | | | c u a i )||( +-->|-+ | +-\/\/-+--o - t c n )||( | | | | p e )||( +-->|-+--)---+--)|--+-o u )||( | | | gnd t o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+ a power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit feeding a capacitor input filter circuit figure . and here are some very silly examples: |\/\/\/| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___ | | \ o.o| ack! / \_ |` '| _/ \ | | =(_)= thphth! / \/ \/ \ | (o)(o) u / \ c _) (__) \/\/\/\ _____ /\/\/\/ | ,___| (oo) \/ \/ | / \/-------\ u (__) /____\ || | \ /---v `v'- oo ) / \ ||---w|| * * |--| || |`. |_/\ figure . there is an important subgenre of humorous ascii art that takes advantage of the names of the various characters to tell a pun-based joke. +--------------------------------------------------------+ | ^^^^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^ b ^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | +--------------------------------------------------------+ " a bee in the carrot patch " figure . within humorous ascii art, there is for some reason an entire flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. four of these are reproduced in figure ; here are three more: (__) (__) (__) (\/) ($$) (**) /-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/ / | || / |=====|| / | || * ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----|| ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ satanic cow this cow is a yuppie cow in love figure . :attoparsec: n. `atto-' is the standard si prefix for multiplication by ^(- ). a parsec (parallax-second) is . light-years; an attoparsec is thus . * ^(- ) light years, or about . cm (thus, attoparsec/{microfortnight} equals about inch/sec). this unit is reported to be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the u.k. see {micro-}. :autobogotiphobia: /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. see {bogotify}. :automagically: /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ adv. automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. see {magic}. "the c-intercal compiler generates c, then automagically invokes `cc( )' to produce an executable." :avatar: [cmu, tektronix] n. syn. {root}, {superuser}. there are quite a few unix machines on which the name of the superuser account is `avatar' rather than `root'. this quirk was originated by a cmu hacker who disliked the term `superuser', and was propagated through an ex-cmu hacker at tektronix. :awk: . n. [unix techspeak] an interpreted language for massaging text data developed by alfred aho, peter weinberger, and brian kernighan (the name is from their initials). it is characterized by c-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. see also {perl}. . n. editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal {regexp} facilities (for example, one containing a {newline}). . vt. to process data using `awk( )'. = b = ===== :back door: n. a hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. the motivation for this is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. the infamous {rtm} worm of late , for example, used a back door in the {bsd} unix `sendmail( )' utility. ken thompson's turing award lecture to the acm revealed the existence of a back door in early unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. the c compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him. normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. but to recompile the compiler, you have to *use* the compiler --- so thompson also arranged that the compiler would *recognize when it was compiling a version of itself*, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow thompson entry --- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! and having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources, leaving his back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources. the talk that revealed this truly moby hack was published as "reflections on trusting trust", `communications of the acm ', (august ), pp. -- . syn. {trap door}; may also be called a `wormhole'. see also {iron box}, {cracker}, {worm}, {logic bomb}. :backbone cabal: n. a group of large-site administrators who pushed through the {great renaming} and reined in the chaos of {usenet} during most of the s. the cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late after a bitter internal catfight, but the net hardly noticed. :backbone site: n. a key usenet and email site; one that processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the usenet maps. notable backbone sites as of early include uunet and the mail machines at rutgers university, uc berkeley, dec's western research laboratories, ohio state university, and the university of texas. compare {rib site}, {leaf site}. :backgammon:: see {bignum}, {moby}, and {pseudoprime}. :background: n.,adj.,vt. to do a task `in background' is to do it whenever {foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "for now, we'll just print a list of nodes and links; i'm working on the graph-printing problem in background." note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity). some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). compare {amp off}, {slopsucker}. technically, a task running in background is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); oppose {foreground}. nowadays this term is primarily associated with {{unix}}, but it appears to have been first used in this sense on os/ . :backspace and overstrike: interj. whoa! back up. used to suggest that someone just said or did something wrong. common among apl programmers. :backward combatability: /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ [from `backward compatibility'] n. a property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, and layouts are discarded in favor of `new and improved' protocols, formats, and layouts. occurs usually when making the transition between major releases. when the change is so drastic that the old formats are not retained in the new version, it is said to be `backward combatable'. see {flag day}. :bad: /b-a-d/ [ibm: acronym, `broken as designed'] adj. said of a program that is {bogus} because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. see {working as designed}. :bad thing: [from the sellar & yeatman parody ` and all that'] n. something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. this term is always capitalized, as in "replacing all of the -baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a bad thing". oppose {good thing}. british correspondents confirm that {bad thing} and {good thing} (and prob. therefore {right thing} and {wrong thing}) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were good kings but bad things. this has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the british side of the pond. :bag on the side: n. an extension to an established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the original. usually derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. also v. phrase, `to hang a bag on the side [of]'. "c++? that's just a bag on the side of c ...." "they want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting system." :bagbiter: /bag'bi:t-*r/ n. . something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "this text editor won't let me make a file with a line longer than characters! what a bagbiter!" . a person who has caused you some trouble, inadvertently or otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly. synonyms: {loser}, {cretin}, {chomper}. . adj. `bagbiting' having the quality of a bagbiter. "this bagbiting system won't let me compute the factorial of a negative number." compare {losing}, {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under {barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}). . `bite the bag' vi. to fail in some manner. "the computer keeps crashing every minutes." "yes, the disk controller is really biting the bag." the original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in their current usage they have become almost completely sanitized. a program called lexiphage on the old mit ai pdp- would draw on a selected victim's bitmapped terminal the words "the bag" in ornate letters, and then a pair of jaws biting pieces of it off. this is the first and to date only known example of a program *intended* to be a bagbiter. :bamf: /bamf/ . [from old x-men comics] interj. notional sound made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {mud}) electronic {fora} when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance or exit. . the sound of magical transformation, used in virtual reality {fora} like sense . . [from `don washington's survival guide'] n. acronym for `bad-ass mother fucker', used to refer to one of the handful of nastiest monsters on an lpmud or other similar mud. :banana label: n. the labels often used on the sides of {macrotape} reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. this term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for obsolescence. :banana problem: n. [from the story of the little girl who said "i know how to spell `banana', but i don't know when to stop"]. not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). one may say `there is a banana problem' of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). see item under {hakmem}, which describes a banana problem in a {dissociated press} implementation. also, see {one-banana problem} for a superficially similar but unrelated usage. :bandwidth: n. . used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "those are amazing graphics, but i missed some of the detail --- not enough bandwidth, i guess." compare {low-bandwidth}. . attention span. . on {usenet}, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth. :bang: . n. common spoken name for `!' (ascii ), especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. in {elder days} this was considered a cmuish usage, with mit and stanford hackers preferring {excl} or {shriek}; but the spread of unix has carried `bang' with it (esp. via the term {bang path}) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name for `!'. note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic written `!'; one would not say "congratulations bang" (except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to specify the exact characters `foo!' one would speak "eff oh oh bang". see {shriek}, {{ascii}}. . interj. an exclamation signifying roughly "i have achieved enlightenment!", or "the dynamite has cleared out my brain!" often used to acknowledge that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately after one has been called on it. :bang on: vt. to stress-test a piece of hardware or software: "i banged on the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once. i guess it is ready for release." the term {pound on} is synonymous. :bang path: n. an old-style uucp electronic-mail address specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each {hop} is signified by a {bang} sign. thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me directs people to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of user me on barbox. in the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example: ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp }!rice!beta!gamma!me). bang paths of to hops were not uncommon in . late-night dial-up uucp links would cause week-long transmission times. bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. see {{internet address}}, {network, the}, and {sitename}. :banner: n. . the title page added to printouts by most print spoolers (see {spool}). typically includes user or account id information in very large character-graphics capitals. also called a `burst page', because it indicates where to burst (tear apart) fanfold paper to separate one user's printout from the next. . a similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of fan-fold paper) from user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as unix's `banner({ , })'. . on interactive software, a first screen containing a logo and/or author credits and/or a copyright notice. :bar: /bar/ n. . the second {metasyntactic variable}, after {foo} and before {baz}. "suppose we have two functions: foo and bar. foo calls bar...." . often appended to {foo} to produce {foobar}. :bare metal: n. . new computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an {operating system}, an {hll}, or even assembler. commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} needed to create these basic tools for a new machine. real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and bios chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development environment. . `programming on the bare metal' is also used to describe a style of {hand-hacking} that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space optimization that rely on crocks such as overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described in {the story of mel, a real programmer} (in {appendix a}), interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). this sort of thing has become less common as the relative costs of programming time and machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems. see {real programmer}. in the world of personal computing, bare metal programming (especially in sense but sometimes also in sense ) is often considered a {good thing}, or at least a necessary evil (because these machines have often been sufficiently slow and poorly designed to make it necessary; see {ill-behaved}). there, the term usually refers to bypassing the bios or os interface and writing the application to directly access device registers and machine addresses. "to get . kilobaud on the serial port, you need to get down to the bare metal." people who can do this sort of thing are held in high regard. :barf: /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] . interj. term of disgust. this is the closest hackish equivalent of the val\-speak "gag me with a spoon". (like, euwww!) see {bletch}. . vi. to say "barf!" or emit some similar expression of disgust. "i showed him my latest hack and he barfed" means only that he complained about it, not that he literally vomited. . vi. to fail to work because of unacceptable input. may mean to give an error message. examples: "the division operation barfs if you try to divide by ." (that is, the division operation checks for an attempt to divide by zero, and if one is encountered it causes the operation to fail in some unspecified, but generally obvious, manner.) "the text editor barfs if you try to read in a new file before writing out the old one." see {choke}, {gag}. in commonwealth hackish, `barf' is generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'. {barf} is sometimes also used as a {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo} or {bar}. :barfmail: n. multiple {bounce message}s accumulating to the level of serious annoyance, or worse. the sort of thing that happens when an inter-network mail gateway goes down or wonky. :barfulation: /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj. variation of {barf} used around the stanford area. an exclamation, expressing disgust. on seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim, "barfulation! who wrote this, quux?" :barfulous: /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj. (alt. `barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) said of something that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons. :barney: n. in commonwealth hackish, `barney' is to {fred} (sense # ) as {bar} is to {foo}. that is, people who commonly use `fred' as their first metasyntactic variable will often use `barney' second. the reference is, of course, to fred flintstone and barney rubble in the flintstones cartoons. :baroque: adj. feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "metafont even has features to introduce random variations to its letterform output. now *that* is baroque!" see also {rococo}. :bartlemud: /bar'tl-muhd/ n. any of the muds derived from the original mud game by richard bartle and roy trubshaw (see {mud}). bartlemuds are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat) humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object descriptions, so a player is likely to come across `brand ', for instance (see {brand brand brand}). bartle has taken a bad rap in some mudding circles for supposedly originating this term, but (like the story that mud is a trademark) this appears to be a myth; he uses `mud '. :basic: n. a programming language, originally designed for dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early s, which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in proto-hackers. this is another case (like {pascal}) of the bad things that happen when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. a novice can write short basic programs (on the order of -- lines) very easily; writing anything longer is (a) very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will bite him/her later if he/she tries to hack in a real language. this wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made basic so common on low-end micros. as it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year. :batch: adj. . non-interactive. hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive command input are often referred to as `batch mode' switches. a `batch file' is a series of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running in batch mode. . performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. "i finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; i guess they'll turn the electricity back on next week..." . accumulation of a number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater efficiency. "i'm batching up those letters to send sometime" "i'm batching up bottles to take to the recycling center." :bathtub curve: n. common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time: initially high, dropping to near for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it `tires out'. see also {burn-in period}, {infant mortality}. :baud: /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. bits per second. hence kilobaud or kbaud, thousands of bits per second. the technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing or stop bits. most hackers are aware of these nuances but blithely ignore them. histotical note: this was originally a unit of telegraph signalling speed, set at one pulse per second. it was proposed at the international telegraph conference of , and named after j.m.e. baudot ( - ), the french engineer who constructed the first successful teleprinter. :baud barf: /bawd barf/ n. the garbage one gets on the monitor when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the connection. baud barf is not completely {random}, by the way; hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *really* experienced ones can identify particular speeds. :baz: /baz/ n. . the third {metasyntactic variable} "suppose we have three functions: foo, bar, and baz. foo calls bar, which calls baz...." (see also {fum}) . interj. a term of mild annoyance. in this usage the term is often drawn out for or seconds, producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/. . occasionally appended to {foo} to produce `foobaz'. earlier versions of this lexicon derived `baz' as a stanford corruption of {bar}. however, pete samson (compiler of the {tmrc} lexicon) reports it was already current when he joined tmrc in . he says "it came from `pogo'. albert the alligator, when vexed or outraged, would shout `bazz fazz!' or `rowrbazzle!' the club layout was said to model the (mythical) new england counties of rowrfolk and bassex (rowrbazzle mingled with (norfolk/suffolk/middlesex/essex)." :bboard: /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. . any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {bbs} systems running on personal micros, less frequently of a usenet {newsgroup} (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup generally marks one either as a {newbie} fresh in from the bbs world or as a real old-timer predating usenet). . at cmu and other colleges with similar facilities, refers to campus-wide electronic bulletin boards. . the term `physical bboard' is sometimes used to refer to a old-fashioned, non-electronic cork memo board. at cmu, it refers to a particular one outside the cs lounge. in either of senses or , the term is usually prefixed by the name of the intended board (`the moonlight casino bboard' or `market bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in (at cmu) "don't post for-sale ads on general". :bbs: /b-b-s/ [abbreviation, `bulletin board system'] n. an electronic bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into {topic group}s. thousands of local bbs systems are in operation throughout the u.s., typically run by amateurs for fun out of their homes on ms-dos boxes with a single modem line each. fans of usenet and internet or the big commercial timesharing bboards such as compuserve and genie tend to consider local bbses the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they serve a valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange code at all. :beam: [from star trek classic's "beam me up, scotty!"] vt. to transfer {softcopy} of a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to his site'. compare {blast}, {snarf}, {blt}. :beanie key: [mac users] n. see {command key}. :beep: n.,v. syn. {feep}. this term seems to be preferred among micro hobbyists. :beige toaster: n. a macintosh. see {toaster}; compare {macintrash}, {maggotbox}. :bells and whistles: [by analogy with the toyboxes on theater organs] n. features added to a program or system to make it more {flavorful} from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. distinguished from {chrome}, which is intended to attract users. "now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." no one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle. :bells, whistles, and gongs: n. a standard elaborated form of {bells and whistles}; typically said with a pronounced and ironic accent on the `gongs'. :benchmark: [techspeak] n. an inaccurate measure of computer performance. "in the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." well-known ones include whetstone, dhrystone, rhealstone (see {h}), the gabriel lisp benchmarks (see {gabriel}), the specmark suite, and linpack. see also {machoflops}, {mips}, {smoke and mirrors}. :berkeley quality software: adj. (often abbreviated `bqs') term used in a pejorative sense to refer to software that was apparently created by rather spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some unique problem. it usually has nonexistent, incomplete, or incorrect documentation, has been tested on at least two examples, and core dumps when anyone else attempts to use it. this term was frequently applied to early versions of the `dbx( )' debugger. see also {berzerkeley}. :berklix: /berk'liks/ n.,adj. [contraction of `berkeley unix'] see {bsd}. not used at berkeley itself. may be more common among {suit}s attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers, who usually just say `bsd'. :berserking: vi. a {mud} term meaning to gain points *only* by killing other players and mobiles (non-player characters). hence, a berserker-wizard is a player character that has achieved enough points to become a wizard, but only by killing other characters. berserking is sometimes frowned upon because of its inherently antisocial nature, but some muds have a `berserker mode' in which a player becomes *permanently* berserk, can never flee from a fight, cannot use magic, gets no score for treasure, but does get double kill points. "berserker wizards can seriously damage your elf!" :berzerkeley: /b*r-zer'klee/ [from `berserk', via the name of a now-deceased record label] n. humorous distortion of `berkeley' used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the {bsd} unix hackers. see {software bloat}, {missed'em-five}, {berkeley quality software}. mainstream use of this term in reference to the cultural and political peculiarities of uc berkeley as a whole has been reported from as far back as the s. :beta: /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (commonwealth) /bee't*/ n. . in the {real world}, software often goes through two stages of testing: alpha (in-house) and beta (out-house?). software is said to be `in beta'. . anything that is new and experimental is in beta. "his girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving judgment. . beta software is notoriously buggy, so `in beta' connotes flakiness. historical note: more formally, to beta-test is to test a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it available to selected customers and users. this term derives from early s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at ibm but later standard throughout the industry. `alpha test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; `beta test' was initial system test. these themselves came from earlier a- and b-tests for hardware. the a-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. the b-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. the c-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the b-test performed on early samples of the production design. :bfi: /b-f-i/ n. see {brute force and ignorance}. also encountered in the variants `bfmi', `brute force and *massive* ignorance' and `bfbi' `brute force and bloody ignorance'. :bible: n. . one of a small number of fundamental source books such as {knuth} and {k&r}. . the most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular language, operating system, or other complex software system. :bicapitalization: n. the act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as {postscript}, next, {news}, visicalc, framemaker, tk!solver, easywriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. too many {marketroid} types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the , th time they do it. compare {studlycaps}. :biff: /bif/ [usenet] n. the most famous {pseudo}, and the prototypical {newbie}. articles from biff are characterized by all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (evry budy luvs good old biff cuz he"s a k l dood an he rites reel awesum thingz in capitull lettrs like this!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode} abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled sig}), and unbounded na"ivet'e. biff posts articles using his elder brother's vic- . biff's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come from a variety of sites. however, {bitnet} seems to be the most frequent origin. the theory that biff is a denizen of bitnet is supported by biff's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: biff@bit.net. :biff: /bif/ vt. to notify someone of incoming mail. from the bsd utility `biff( )', which was in turn named after a friendly golden labrador who used to chase frisbees in the halls at ucb while . bsd was in development (it had a well-known habit of barking whenever the mailman came). no relation to {biff}. :big gray wall: n. what faces a {vms} user searching for documentation. a full vms kit comes on a pallet, the documentation taking up around feet of shelf space before the addition of layered products such as compilers, databases, multivendor networking, and programming tools. recent (since vms version ) dec documentation comes with gray binders; under vms version the binders were orange (`big orange wall'), and under version they were blue. see {vms}. often contracted to `gray wall'. :big iron: n. large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. used generally of {number-crunching} supercomputers such as crays, but can include more conventional big commercial ibmish mainframes. term of approval; compare {heavy metal}, oppose {dinosaur}. :big red switch: [ibm] n. the power switch on a computer, esp. the `emergency pull' switch on an ibm {mainframe} or the power switch on an ibm pc where it really is large and red. "this !@%$% {bitty box} is hung again; time to hit the big red switch." sources at ibm report that, in tune with the company's passion for {tla}s, this is often abbreviated as `brs' (this has also become established on fidonet and in the pc {clone} world). it is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an ibm / actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the brses on more recent machines physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. people get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also {molly-guard}). compare {power cycle}, {three-finger salute}, { reset}; see also {scram switch}. :big room, the: n. the extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations. "he can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere out in the big room." :big win: n. serendipity. "yes, those two physicists discovered high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule. small mistake; big win!" see {win big}. :big-endian: [from swift's `gulliver's travels' via the famous paper `on holy wars and a plea for peace' by danny cohen, usc/isi ien , dated april , ] adj. . describes a computer architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric representation, the most significant byte has the lowest address (the word is stored `big-end-first'). most processors, including the ibm family, the {pdp- }, the motorola microprocessor families, and most of the various risc designs current in mid- , are big-endian. see {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {nuxi problem}. . an {{internet address}} the wrong way round. most of the world follows the internet standard and writes email addresses starting with the name of the computer and ending up with the name of the country. in the u.k. the joint networking team had decided to do it the other way round before the internet domain standard was established; e.g., me@uk.ac.wigan.cs. most gateway sites have {ad-hockery} in their mailers to handle this, but can still be confused. in particular, the address above could be in the u.k. (domain uk) or czechoslovakia (domain cs). :bignum: /big'nuhm/ [orig. from mit maclisp] n. . [techspeak] a multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers. more generally, any very large number. "have you ever looked at the united states budget? there's bignums for you!" . [stanford] in backgammon, large numbers on the dice are called `bignums', especially a roll of double fives or double sixes (compare {moby}, sense ). see also {el camino bignum}. sense may require some explanation. most computer languages provide a kind of data called `integer', but such computer integers are usually very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than than ^( ) ( , , , ) or (on a losing {bitty box}) ^( ) ( , ). if you want to work with numbers larger than that, you have to use floating-point numbers, which are usually accurate to only six or seven decimal places. computer languages that provide bignums can perform exact calculations on very large numbers, such as ! (the factorial of , which is times times times ... times times ). for example, this value for ! was computed by the maclisp system using bignums: . :bigot: n. a person who is religiously attached to a particular computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see {religious issues}). usually found with a specifier; thus, `cray bigot', `its bigot', `apl bigot', `vms bigot', `berkeley bigot'. true bigots can be distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to obsolete the favored tool. it is said "you can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much." compare {weenie}. :bit: [from the mainstream meaning and `binary digit'] n. . [techspeak] the unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes are equally probable. . [techspeak] a computational quantity that can take on one of two values, such as true and false or and . . a mental flag: a reminder that something should be done eventually. "i have a bit set for you." (i haven't seen you for a while, and i'm supposed to tell or ask you something.) . more generally, a (possibly incorrect) mental state of belief. "i have a bit set that says that you were the last guy to hack on emacs." (meaning "i think you were the last guy to hack on emacs, and what i am about to say is predicated on this, so please stop me if this isn't true.") "i just need one bit from you" is a polite way of indicating that you intend only a short interruption for a question that can presumably be answered yes or no. a bit is said to be `set' if its value is true or , and `reset' or `clear' if its value is false or . one speaks of setting and clearing bits. to {toggle} or `invert' a bit is to change it, either from to or from to . see also {flag}, {trit}, {mode bit}. the term `bit' first appeared in print in the computer-science sense in , and seems to have been coined by early computer scientist john tukey. tukey records that it evolved over a lunch table as a handier alternative to `bigit' or `binit'. :bit bang: n. transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the appropriate times. the technique is a simple loop with eight out and shift instruction pairs for each byte. input is more interesting. and full duplex (doing input and output at the same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the {wannabee}s. bit bang was used on certain early models of prime computers, presumably when uarts were too expensive, and on archaic z micros with a zilog pio but no sio. in an interesting instance of the {cycle of reincarnation}, this technique is now ( ) coming back into use on some risc architectures because it consumes such an infinitesimal part of the processor that it actually makes sense not to have a uart. :bit bashing: n. (alt. `bit diddling' or {bit twiddling}) term used to describe any of several kinds of low-level programming characterized by manipulation of {bit}, {flag}, {nybble}, and other smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data; these include low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of graphics programming (see {bitblt}), and assembler/compiler code generation. may connote either tedium or a real technical challenge (more usually the former). "the command decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs." see also {bit bang}, {mode bit}. :bit bucket: n. . the universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction). discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'. on {{unix}}, often used for {/dev/null}. sometimes amplified as `the great bit bucket in the sky'. . the place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go. the selection is performed according to {finagle's law}; important mail is much more likely to end up in the bit bucket than junk mail, which has an almost % probability of getting delivered. routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network. . the ideal location for all unwanted mail responses: "flames about this article to the bit bucket." such a request is guaranteed to overflow one's mailbox with flames. . excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "i mailed you those figures last week; they must have ended in the bit bucket." compare {black hole}. this term is used purely in jest. it is based on the fanciful notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. this appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the cpu stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them `out of the bit box'. see also {chad box}. another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the `parity preservation law', the number of bits that go to the bit bucket must equal the number of bits. any imbalance results in bits filling up the bit bucket. a qualified computer technician can empty a full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance. :bit decay: n. see {bit rot}. people with a physics background tend to prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay. see also {computron}, {quantum bogodynamics}. :bit rot: n. also {bit decay}. hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if `nothing has changed'. the theory explains that bits decay as if they were radioactive. as time passes, the contents of a file or the code in a program will become increasingly garbled. there actually are physical processes that produce such effects (alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip packages, for example, can change the contents of a computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can corrupt files in mass storage), but they are quite rare (and computers are built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate for them). the notion long favored among hackers that cosmic rays are among the causes of such events turns out to be a myth; see the {cosmic rays} entry for details. the term {software rot} is almost synonymous. software rot is the effect, bit rot the notional cause. :bit twiddling: n. . (pejorative) an exercise in tuning (see {tune}) in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code has become incomprehensible. . aimless small modification to a program, esp. for some pointless goal. . approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it back to a known state. :bit-paired keyboard: n. obs. (alt. `bit-shift keyboard') a non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the teletype asr- and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. the asr- was a mechanical device (see {eou}), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. the design of the asr- assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the shift or the ctrl key was pressed. in order to avoid making the thing more of a rube goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. looking at the ascii chart, we find: high low bits bits ! " # $ % & ' ( ) this is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift- for space). this was *not* the weirdest variant of the {qwerty} layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on ibm's even clunkier and card punches. when electronic terminals became popular, in the early s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. some vendors opted to emulate the teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. these alternatives became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. to a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical --- and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. the doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. the `typewriter-paired' standard became universal, `bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse. :bitblt: /bit'blit/ n. [from {blt}, q.v.] . any of a family of closely related algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display memory (the requirement to do the {right thing} in the case of overlapping source and destination rectangles is what makes bitblt tricky). . synonym for {blit} or {blt}. both uses are borderline techspeak. :bitnet: /bit'net/ [acronym: because it's time network] n. everybody's least favorite piece of the network (see {network, the}). the bitnet hosts are a collection of ibm dinosaurs and vaxen (the latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate using -character {{ebcdic}} card images (see {eighty-column mind}); thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of third-party traffic from the rest of the ascii/rfc- world with annoying regularity. bitnet is also notorious as the apparent home of {biff}. :bits: n.pl. . information. examples: "i need some bits about file formats." ("i need to know about file formats.") compare {core dump}, sense . . machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as contrasted with paper: "i have only a photocopy of the jargon file; does anyone know where i can get the bits?". see {softcopy}, {source of all good bits} see also {bit}. :bitty box: /bit'ee boks/ n. . a computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software on or for it. especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines such as the atari , osborne, sinclair, vic- , trs- , or ibm pc. . [pejorative] more generally, the opposite of `real computer' (see {get a real computer!}). see also {mess-dos}, {toaster}, and {toy}. :bixie: /bik'see/ n. variant {emoticon}s used on bix (the byte information exchange). the {smiley} bixie is <@_@>, apparently intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. a few others have been reported. :black art: n. a collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area (compare {black magic}). vlsi design and compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and once standard textbooks had been written, became merely {heavy wizardry}. the huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related technologies during the last twenty years has made both the term `black art' and what it describes less common than formerly. see also {voodoo programming}. :black hole: n. when a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a {bounce message}) it is commonly said to have `fallen into a black hole'. "i think there's a black hole at foovax!" conveys suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}). the implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself. compare {bit bucket}. :black magic: n. a technique that works, though nobody really understands why. more obscure than {voodoo programming}, which may be done by cookbook. compare also {black art}, {deep magic}, and {magic number} (sense ). :blargh: /blarg/ [mit] n. the opposite of {ping}, sense ; an exclamation indicating that one has absorbed or is emitting a quantum of unhappiness. less common than {ping}. :blast: . vt.,n. synonym for {blt}, used esp. for large data sends over a network or comm line. opposite of {snarf}. usage: uncommon. the variant `blat' has been reported. . vt. [hp/apollo] synonymous with {nuke} (sense ). sometimes the message `unable to kill all processes. blast them (y/n)?' would appear in the command window upon logout. :blat: n. . syn. {blast}, sense . . see {thud}. :bletch: /blech/ [from yiddish/german `brechen', to vomit, poss. via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] interj. term of disgust. often used in "ugh, bletch". compare {barf}. :bletcherous: /blech'*-r*s/ adj. disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. this word is seldom used of people. "this keyboard is bletcherous!" (perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced.) see {losing}, {cretinous}, {bagbiter}, {bogus}, and {random}. the term {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for {cretinous}. by contrast, something that is `losing' or `bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective criteria. see also {bogus} and {random}, which have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the above. :blinkenlights: /blink'*n-li:tz/ n. front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-gothic sign in mangled pseudo-german that once graced about half the computer rooms in the english-speaking world. one version ran in its entirety as follows: achtung! alles lookenspeepers! das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten. this silliness dates back at least as far as at stanford university and had already gone international by the early s, when it was reported at london university's atlas computing site. there are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'. in an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, german hackers have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in fractured english, one of which is reproduced here: attention this room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment. fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for die experts only! so all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies. otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere! also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights. see also {geef}. :blit: /blit/ vt. . to copy a large array of bits from one part of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "the storage allocator picks through the table and copies the good parts up into high memory, and then blits it all back down again." see {bitblt}, {blt}, {dd}, {cat}, {blast}, {snarf}. more generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. . all-capitalized as `blit': an early experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by rob pike at bell labs, later commercialized as the at&t . (the folk etymology from `bell labs intelligent terminal' is incorrect.) :blitter: /blit'r/ n. a special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped graphics. the commodore amiga and a few other micros have these, but in the trend is away from them (however, see {cycle of reincarnation}). syn. {raster blaster}. :blivet: /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a world war ii military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. . an intractable problem. . a crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. . a tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. . an out-of-control but unkillable development effort. . an embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo. this term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of {frob}). it has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit together in an impossible way. :blob: [acronym, binary large object] n. used by database people to refer to any random large block of bits which needs to be stored in a database, such as a picture or sound file. the essential point about a blob is that it's an object you can't interpret within the database itself. :block: [from process scheduling terminology in os theory] . vi. to delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "we're blocking until everyone gets here." compare {busy-wait}. . `block on' vt. to block, waiting for (something). "lunch is blocked on phil's arrival." :block transfer computations: n. from the television series "dr. who", in which it referred to computations so fiendishly subtle and complex that they could not be performed by machines. used to refer to any task that should be expressible as an algorithm in theory, but isn't. :blow an eprom: /bloh *n ee'prom/ v. (alt. `blast an eprom', `burn an eprom') to program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. this term arises because the programming process for the programmable read-only memories (proms) that preceded present-day erasable programmable read-only memories (eproms) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. thus, one was said to `blow' (or `blast') a prom, and the terminology carried over even though the write process on eproms is nondestructive. :blow away: vt. to remove (files and directories) from permanent storage, generally by accident. "he reformatted the wrong partition and blew away last night's netnews." oppose {nuke}. :blow out: vi. of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as {crash and burn}. see {blow past}, {blow up}, {die horribly}. :blow past: vt. to {blow out} despite a safeguard. "the server blew past the k reserve buffer." :blow up: vi. . [scientific computation] to become unstable. suggests that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon overflow or at least go {nonlinear}. . syn. {blow out}. :blt: /b-l-t/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. synonym for {blit}. this is the original form of {blit} and the ancestor of {bitblt}. it referred to any large bit-field copy or move operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling operation done on pre-paged versions of its, waits, and tops- was sardonically referred to as `the big blt'). the jargon usage has outlasted the {pdp- } block transfer instruction from which {blt} derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {blt} almost always means `branch if less than zero'. :blue book: n. . informal name for one of the three standard references on the page-layout and graphics-control language {postscript} (`postscript language tutorial and cookbook', adobe systems, addison-wesley , qa . .p p , isbn - - - ); the other two official guides are known as the {green book}, the {red book}, and the {white book} (sense ). . informal name for one of the three standard references on smalltalk: `smalltalk- : the language and its implementation', david robson, addison-wesley , qa . .s g , isbn - - - (this is also associated with green and red books). . any of the standards issued by the ccitt's ninth plenary assembly. until now, they have changed color each review cycle ( was {red book}, would be {green book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before . these include, among other things, the x. email spec and the group through fax standards. see also {{book titles}}. :blue glue: [ibm] n. ibm's sna (systems network architecture), an incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol widely favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. the official ibm definition is "that which binds blue boxes together." see {fear and loathing}. it may not be irrelevant that {blue glue} is the trade name of a m product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable panel floors common in {dinosaur pen}s. a correspondent at u. minn. reports that the cs department there has about bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to be done as `using the blue glue'. :blue goo: n. term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and promote truth, justice, and the american way, etc. see {{nanotechnology}}. :blue wire: [ibm] n. patch wires added to circuit boards at the factory to correct design or fabrication problems. this may be necessary if there hasn't been time to design and qualify another board version. compare {purple wire}, {red wire}, {yellow wire}. :blurgle: /bler'gl/ [great britain] n. spoken {metasyntactic variable}, to indicate some text which is obvious from context, or which is already known. if several words are to be replaced, blurgle may well be doubled or trebled. "to look for something in several files use `grep string blurgle blurgle'." in each case, "blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced by the file you wished to search. compare {mumble}, sense . :bnf: /b-n-f/ n. . [techspeak] acronym for `backus-naur form', a metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. consider this bnf for a u.s. postal address: <postal-address> ::= <name-part> <street-address> <zip-part> <personal-part> ::= <name> | <initial> "." <name-part> ::= <personal-part> <last-name> [<jr-part>] <eol> | <personal-part> <name-part> <street-address> ::= [<apt>] <house-num> <street-name> <eol> <zip-part> ::= <town-name> "," <state-code> <zip-code> <eol> this translates into english as: "a postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. a personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. a name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional `jr-part' (jr., sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in bnfs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). a street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. a zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a zip-code followed by an end-of-line." note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or zip-code) are left unspecified. these are presumed to be obvious from context or detailed somewhere nearby. see also {parse}. . the term is also used loosely for any number of variants and extensions, possibly containing some or all of the {regexp} wildcards such as `*' or `+'. in fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the algol- report; it uses `[]', which was introduced a few years later in ibm's pl/i definition but is now universally recognized. . in {{science-fiction fandom}}, bnf means `big-name fan' (someone famous or notorious). years ago a fan started handing out black-on-green bnf buttons at sf conventions; this confused the hacker contingent terribly. :boa: [ibm] n. any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a {dinosaur pen}. possibly so called because they display a ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and flat after they have been coiled for some time. it is rumored within ibm that channel cables for the are limited to feet because beyond that length the boas get dangerous --- and it is worth noting that one of the major cable makers uses the trademark `anaconda'. :board: n. . in-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes used even for usenet newsgroups. . an electronic circuit board (compare {card}). :boat anchor: n. . like {doorstop} but more severe; implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. "that was a working motherboard once. one lightning strike later, instant boat anchor!" . a person who just takes up space. :bof: /b-o-f/ or /bof/ n. abbreviation for the phrase "birds of a feather" (flocking together), an informal discussion group and/or bull session scheduled on a conference program. it is not clear where or when this term originated, but it is now associated with the usenix conferences for unix techies and was already established there by . it was used earlier than that at decus conferences, and is reported to have been common at share meetings as far back as the early s. :bogo-sort: /boh`goh-sort'/ n. (var. `stupid-sort') the archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as opposed to {bubble sort}, which is merely the generic *bad* algorithm). bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they are in order. it serves as a sort of canonical example of awfulness. looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one might say "oh, i see, this program uses bogo-sort." compare {bogus}, {brute force}. :bogometer: /boh-gom'-*t-er/ n. see {bogosity}. compare the `wankometer' described in the {wank} entry; see also {bogus}. :bogon: /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after by the similarity to douglas adams's `vogons'; see the bibliography in {appendix c}] n. . the elementary particle of bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}). for instance, "the ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. . a query packet sent from a tcp/ip domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. . any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. . by synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "i'd like to go to lunch with you but i've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". . a person who is bogus or who says bogus things. this was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivative senses -- . see also {bogosity}, {bogus}; compare {psyton}, {fat electrons}, {magic smoke}. the bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon' (indivisible particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon) and the futon (elementary particle of {randomness}). these are not so much live usages in themselves as examples of a live meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard joke or linguistic maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious circumstances by inventing nonce particle names. and these imply nonce particle theories, with all their dignity or lack thereof (we might note *parenthetically* that this is a generalization from "(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus (particle theories)"!). perhaps such particles are the modern-day equivalents of trolls and wood-nymphs as standard starting-points around which to construct explanatory myths. of course, playing on an existing word (as in the `futon') yields additional flavor. compare {magic smoke}. :bogon filter: /boh'gon fil'tr/ n. any device, software or hardware, that limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons. "engineering hacked a bogon filter between the cray and the vaxen, and now we're getting fewer dropped packets." see also {bogosity}, {bogus}. :bogon flux: /boh'gon fluhks/ n. a measure of a supposed field of {bogosity} emitted by a speaker, measured by a {bogometer}; as a speaker starts to wander into increasing bogosity a listener might say "warning, warning, bogon flux is rising". see {quantum bogodynamics}. :bogosity: /boh-go's*-tee/ n. . the degree to which something is {bogus}. at cmu, bogosity is measured with a {bogometer}; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say "my bogometer just triggered". more extremely, "you just pinned my bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also say "you just redlined my bogometer"). the agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microlenat /mi:k`roh-len'*t/ (ul). the consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. . the potential field generated by a {bogon flux}; see {quantum bogodynamics}. see also {bogon flux}, {bogon filter}, {bogus}. historical note: the microlenat was invented as an attack against noted computer scientist doug lenat by a {tenured graduate student}. doug had failed the student on an important exam for giving only "ai is bogus" as his answer to the questions. the slur is generally considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless. some of doug's friends argue that *of course* a microlenat is bogus, since it is only one millionth of a lenat. others have suggested that the unit should be redesignated after the grad student, as the microreid. :bogotify: /boh-go't*-fi:/ vt. to make or become bogus. a program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. if you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you had better not use it any more. this coinage led to the notional `autobogotiphobia' defined as `the fear of becoming bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. see also {bogosity}, {bogus}. :bogue out: /bohg owt/ vi. to become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "his talk was relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but {flame} afterwards." see also {bogosity}, {bogus}. :bogus: adj. . non-functional. "your patches are bogus." . useless. "opcon is a bogus program." . false. "your arguments are bogus." . incorrect. "that algorithm is bogus." . unbelievable. "you claim to have solved the halting problem for turing machines? that's totally bogus." . silly. "stop writing those bogus sagas." astrology is bogus. so is a bolt that is obviously about to break. so is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem. (this word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of {random} --- mostly the negative ones.) it is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense at princeton in the late s. it was spread to cmu and yale by michael shamos, a migratory princeton alumnus. a glossary of bogus words was compiled at yale when the word was first popularized (see {autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). the word spread into hackerdom from cmu and mit. by the early s it was also current in something like the hackish sense in west coast teen slang, and it had gone mainstream by . a correspondent from cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on british nerves; in britain the word means, rather specifically, `counterfeit', as in "a bogus -pound note". :bohr bug: /bohr buhg/ [from quantum physics] n. a repeatable {bug}; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. antonym of {heisenbug}; see also {mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}. :boink: /boynk/ [usenet: ascribed there to the tv series "cheers" and "moonlighting"] . to have sex with; compare {bounce}, sense . (this is mainstream slang.) in commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more common. . after the original peter korn `boinkon' {usenet} parties, used for almost any net social gathering, e.g., miniboink, a small boink held by nancy gillett in ; minniboink, a boinkcon in minnesota in ; humpdayboinks, wednesday get-togethers held in the san francisco bay area. compare {@-party}. . var of `bonk'; see {bonk/oif}. :bomb: . v. general synonym for {crash} (sense ) except that it is not used as a noun; esp. used of software or os failures. "don't run empire with less than k stack, it'll bomb." . n.,v. atari st and macintosh equivalents of a unix `panic' or amiga {guru} (sense ), where icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died. on the mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the amiga {guru meditation} number. {{ms-dos}} machines tend to get {locked up} in this situation. :bondage-and-discipline language: a language (such as pascal, ada, apl, or prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of `right programming' even though said theory is demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose programming. often abbreviated `b&d'; thus, one may speak of things "having the b&d nature". see {{pascal}}; oppose {languages of choice}. :bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/ interj. in the {mud} community, it has become traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the offending person. there is a convention that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!' and a myth to the effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance, causing much trouble in the universe. some muds have implemented special commands for bonking and oifing. see also {talk mode}, {posing}. :book titles:: there is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. many of these are described in this lexicon under their own entries. see {aluminum book}, {blue book}, {cinderella book}, {devil book}, {dragon book}, {green book}, {orange book}, {pink-shirt book}, {purple book}, {red book}, {silver book}, {white book}, {wizard book}, {yellow book}, and {bible}; see also {rainbow series}. :boot: [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] v.,n. to load and initialize the operating system on a machine. this usage is no longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some derivatives that are still jargon. the derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been down for long, or that the boot is a {bounce} intended to clear some state of {wedgitude}. this is sometimes used of human thought processes, as in the following exchange: "you've lost me." "ok, reboot. here's the theory...." this term is also found in the variants `cold boot' (from power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the cpu and all devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software crash). another variant: `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of a system, under control of other software still running: "if you're running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the system running." opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "i'll have to hard-boot this losing sun." "i recommend booting it hard." one often hard-boots by performing a {power cycle}. historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in from the front panel switches. this program was always very short (great efforts were expended on making it short in order to minimize the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in), but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it handed control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. thus, in successive steps, the computer `pulled itself up by its bootstraps' to a useful operating state. nowadays the bootstrap is usually found in rom or eprom, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot block'. when this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual os and hand control over to it. :bottom feeder: n. syn. for {slopsucker} derived from the fisherman's and naturalist's term for finny creatures who subsist on the primordial ooze. :bottom-up implementation: n. hackish opposite of the techspeak term `top-down design'. it is now received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action in increasing detail until you get to actual code. hackers often find (especially in exploratory designs that cannot be closely specified in advance) that it works best to *build* things in the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of primitive operations and then knitting them together. :bounce: v. . [perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing off a wall] an electronic mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification to the sender is said to `bounce'. see also {bounce message}. . [stanford] to play volleyball. at the now-demolished {d. c. power lab} building used by the stanford ai lab in the s, there was a volleyball court on the front lawn. from p.m. to p.m. was the scheduled maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at the computer would become unavailable, and over the intercom a voice would cry, "now hear this: bounce, bounce!" followed by brian mccune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of known volleyballers. . to engage in sexual intercourse; prob. from the expression `bouncing the mattress', but influenced by roo's psychosexually loaded "try bouncing me, tigger!" from the "winnie-the-pooh" books. compare {boink}. . to casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. reported primarily among {vms} users. . [ibm] to {power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset it. :bounce message: [unix] n. notification message returned to sender by a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{internet address}} recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}). reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a {down} relay site. bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}. the terms `bounce mail' and `barfmail' are also common. :boustrophedon: [from a greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] n. an ancient method of writing using alternate left-to-right and right-to-left lines. this term is actually philologists' techspeak and typesetter's jargon. erudite hackers use it for an optimization performed by some computer typesetting software (notably unix `troff( )'). the adverbial form `boustrophedonically' is also found (hackers purely love constructions like this). :box: n. . a computer; esp. in the construction `foo box' where foo is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or the name of an os (thus, `unix box', `ms-dos box', etc.) "we preprocess the data on unix boxes before handing it up to the mainframe." . [within ibm] without qualification but within an sna-using site, this refers specifically to an ibm front-end processor or fep /f-e-p/. an fep is a small computer necessary to enable an ibm {mainframe} to communicate beyond the limits of the {dinosaur pen}. typically used in expressions like the cry that goes up when an sna network goes down: "looks like the {box} has fallen over." (see {fall over}.) see also {ibm}, {fear and loathing}, {fepped out}, {blue glue}. :boxed comments: n. comments (explanatory notes attached to program instructions) that occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in assembler and c code they are often surrounded by a box in a style something like this: /************************************************* * * this is a boxed comment in c style * *************************************************/ common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column or add a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. the sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves; the `box' is implied. oppose {winged comments}. :boxen: /bok'sn/ [by analogy with {vaxen}] pl.n. fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `unix boxen', used to describe commodity {{unix}} hardware. the connotation is that any two unix boxen are interchangeable. :boxology: /bok-sol'*-jee/ n. syn. {ascii art}. this term implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow drawings. "his report has a lot of boxology in it." compare {macrology}. :bozotic: /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ [from the name of a tv clown even more losing than ronald mcdonald] adj. resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. compare {wonky}, {demented}. note that the noun `bozo' occurs in slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in new england) `bozoish'. :bqs: /b-q-s/ adj. syn. {berkeley quality software}. :brain dump: n. the act of telling someone everything one knows about a particular topic or project. typically used when someone is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. conceptually analogous to an operating system {core dump} in that it saves a lot of useful {state} before an exit. "you'll have to give me a brain dump on foobar before you start your new job at hackercorp." see {core dump} (sense ). at sun, this is also known as `toi' (transfer of information). :brain fart: n. the actual result of a {braino}, as opposed to the mental glitch which is the braino itself. e.g. typing `dir' on a unix box after a session with dos. :brain-damaged: . [generalization of `honeywell brain damage' (hbd), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in honeywell {{multics}}] adj. obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}. there is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "only six monocase characters per file name? now *that's* brain-damaged!" . [esp. in the mac world] may refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is intended to sell. syn. {crippleware}. :brain-dead: adj. brain-damaged in the extreme. it tends to imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. "this comm program doesn't know how to send a break --- how brain-dead!" :braino: /bray'no/ n. syn. for {thinko}. see also {brain fart}. :branch to fishkill: [ibm: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities] n. any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. see {jump off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}. :brand brand brand: n. humorous catch-phrase from {bartlemud}s, in which players were described carrying a list of objects, the most common of which would usually be a brand. often used as a joke in {talk mode} as in "fred the wizard is here, carrying brand ruby brand brand brand kettle broadsword flamethrower". a brand is a torch, of course; one burns up a lot of those exploring dungeons. prob. influenced by the famous monty python "spam" skit. :bread crumbs: n. debugging statements inserted into a program that emit output or log indicators of the program's {state} to a file so you can see where it dies, or pin down the cause of surprising behavior. the term is probably a reference to the hansel and gretel story from the brothers grimm; in several variants, a character leaves a trail of breadcrumbs so as not to get lost in the woods. :break: . vt. to cause to be broken (in any sense). "your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands." . v. (of a program) to stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. the place where it stops is a `breakpoint'. . [techspeak] vi. to send an rs- break (two character widths of line high) over a serial comm line. . [unix] vi. to strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send sigint to the current process. normally, break (sense ) or delete does this. . `break break' may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an example of verb doubling). this usage comes from radio communications, which in turn probably came from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the citizen's band craze a few years ago. :break-even point: n. in the process of implementing a new computer language, the point at which the language is sufficiently effective that one can implement the language in itself. that is, for a new language called, hypothetically, foogol, one has reached break-even when one can write a demonstration compiler for foogol in foogol, discard the original implementation language, and thereafter use older versions of foogol to develop newer ones. this is an important milestone; see {mftl}. :breath-of-life packet: [xerox parc] n. an ethernet packet that contained bootstrap (see {boot}) code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the network that had happened to crash. machines depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. see also {dickless workstation}. :breedle: n. see {feep}. :bring x to its knees: v. to present a machine, operating system, piece of software, or algorithm with a load so extreme or {pathological} that it grinds to a halt. "to bring a microvax to its knees, try twenty users running {vi} --- or four running {emacs}." compare {hog}. :brittle: adj. said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. this term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed software, which displays the quality far more often than it ought to. oppose {robust}. :broadcast storm: n. an incorrect packet broadcast on a network that causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong answers that start the process over again. see {network meltdown}. :broken: adj. . not working properly (of programs). . behaving strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting extreme depression. :broken arrow: [ibm] n. the error code displayed on line of a terminal (or a pc emulating a ) for various kinds of protocol violations and "unexpected" error conditions (including connection to a {down} computer). on a pc, simulated with `->/_', with the two center characters overstruck. in true {luser} fashion, the original documentation of these codes (visible on every terminal, and necessary for debugging network problems) was confined to an ibm customer engineering manual. note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that `broken arrow' is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear weapons.... :broket: /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket`/ [by analogy with `bracket': a `broken bracket'] n. either of the characters `<' and `>', when used as paired enclosing delimiters. this word originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (at mit, and apparently in the {real world} as well, these are usually called {angle brackets}.) :brooks's law: prov. "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" --- a result of the fact that the advantage from splitting work among n programmers is o(n) (that is, proportional to n), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is o(n^ ) (that is, proportional to the square of n). the quote is from fred brooks, a manager of ibm's os/ project and author of `the mythical man-month' (addison-wesley, , isbn - - - ), an excellent early book on software engineering. the myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "programmer time is fungible" and brooks established conclusively that it is not. hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, {management} does. see also {creationism}, {second-system effect}. :brs: /b-r-s/ n. syn. {big red switch}. this abbreviation is fairly common on-line. :brute force: adj. describes a primitive programming style, one in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his or her own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying na"ive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. the {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated with the `traveling salesman problem' (tsp), a classical {np-}hard problem: suppose a person is in, say, boston, and wishes to drive to n other cities. in what order should he or she visit them in order to minimize the distance travelled? the brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from boston to houston via san francisco and new york, in that order). for very small n it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when n increases (for n = , there are already , , , , possible routes to consider, and for n = --- well, see {bignum}). see also {np-}. a more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front. whether brute-force programming should be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem isn't too big, the extra cpu time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a more `intelligent' algorithm. additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement. ken thompson, co-inventor of unix, is reported to have uttered the epigram "when in doubt, use brute force". he probably intended this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original unix kernel's preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over {brittle} `smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that os. like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgment. :brute force and ignorance: n. a popular design technique at many software houses --- {brute force} coding unrelieved by any knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends to encourage it. characteristic of early {larval stage} programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. often abbreviated bfi: "gak, they used a bubble sort! that's strictly from bfi." compare {bogosity}. :bsd: /b-s-d/ n. [abbreviation for `berkeley system distribution'] a family of {{unix}} versions for the dec {vax} and pdp- developed by bill joy and others at {berzerkeley} starting around , incorporating paged virtual memory, tcp/ip networking enhancements, and many other features. the bsd versions ( . , . , and . ) and the commercial versions derived from them (sunos, ultrix, and mt. xinu) held the technical lead in the unix world until at&t's successful standardization efforts after about , and are still widely popular. see {{unix}}, {usg unix}. :buaf: // [abbreviation, from the alt.fan.warlord] n. big ugly ascii font --- a special form of {ascii art}. various programs exist for rendering text strings into block, bloob, and pseudo-script fonts in cells between four and six character cells on a side; this is smaller than the letters generated by older {banner} (sense ) programs. these are sometimes used to render one's name in a {sig block}, and are critically referred to as `buaf's. see {warlording}. :buag: // [abbreviation, from the alt.fan.warlord] n. big ugly ascii graphic. pejorative term for ugly {ascii art}, especially as found in {sig block}s. for some reason, mutations of the head of bart simpson are particularly common in the least imaginative {sig block}s. see {warlording}. :bubble sort: n. techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries `bubble upward' in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. because it is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {na"ive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a na"ive algorithm. the canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. a bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity. :bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ n. . obs. the bits produced by the control and meta shift keys on a sail keyboard (octal and respectively), resulting in a -bit keyboard character set. the mit ai tv (knight) keyboards extended this with top and separate left and right control and meta keys, resulting in a -bit character set; later, lisp machines added such keys as super, hyper, and greek (see {space-cadet keyboard}). . by extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any keyboard, e.g., the alt on an ibm pc or command and option keys on a macintosh. it is rumored that `bucky bits' were named for buckminster fuller during a period when he was consulting at stanford. actually, `bucky' was niklaus wirth's nickname when *he* was at stanford; he first suggested the idea of an edit key to set the th bit of an otherwise -bit ascii character. this was used in a number of editors written at stanford or in its environs (tv-edit and nls being the best-known). the term spread to mit and cmu early and is now in general use. see {double bucky}, {quadruple bucky}. :buffer overflow: n. what happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle. this may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see {overrun} and {firehose syndrome}), or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. for example, in a text-processing tool that {crunch}es a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from a long line overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full up. the term is used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. "what time did i agree to meet you? my buffer must have overflowed." or "if i answer that phone my buffer is going to overflow." see also {spam}, {overrun screw}. :bug: n. an unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. antonym of {feature}. examples: "there's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards." "the system crashed because of a hardware bug." "fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs" (i.e., fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems). historical note: some have said this term came from telephone company usage, in which "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines, but this appears to be an incorrect folk etymology. admiral grace hopper (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing {cobol}) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a persistent {glitch} in the harvard mark ii machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). for many years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the naval surface warfare center. the entire story, with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the `annals of the history of computing', vol. , no. (july ), pp. -- . the text of the log entry (from september , ), reads " relay # panel f (moth) in relay. first actual case of bug being found". this wording seems to establish that the term was already in use at the time in its current specific sense --- and hopper herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to problems in radar electronics during wwii. indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an industrial defect was already established in thomas edison's time, and `bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to shakespeare! in the first edition of samuel johnson's dictionary one meaning of `bug' is "a frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to `bugbear', a welsh term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon through fantasy role-playing games. in any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects. here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened: "there is a bug in this ant farm!" "what do you mean? i don't see any ants in it." "that's the bug." [there has been a widespread myth that the original bug was moved to the smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so asserted. a correspondent who thought to check discovered that the bug was not there. while investigating this in late , your editor discovered that the nswc still had the bug, but had unsuccessfully tried to get the smithsonian to accept it --- and that the present curator of their history of american technology museum didn't know this and agreed that it would make a worthwhile exhibit. it was moved to the smithsonian in mid- . thus, the process of investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true! --- esr] [ update: the plot thickens! a usually reliable source reports having seen the bug at the smithsonian in . i am unable to reconcile the conflicting histories i have been offered, and merely report this fact here. --- esr.] :bug-compatible: adj. said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with {fossil}s or {misfeature}s in other programs or (esp.) previous releases of itself. "ms-dos . used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an option character in . ." :bug-for-bug compatible: n. same as {bug-compatible}, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated. :buglix: /buhg'liks/ n. pejorative term referring to dec's ultrix operating system in its earlier *severely* buggy versions. still used to describe ultrix, but without venom. compare {aidx}, {hp-sux}, {nominal semidestructor}, {telerat}, {sun-stools}. :bulletproof: adj. used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely {robust}; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly recovering from any imaginable exception condition. this is a rare and valued quality. syn. {armor-plated}. :bum: . vt. to make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. "i managed to bum three more instructions out of that code." "i spent half the night bumming the interrupt code." in {elder days}, john mccarthy (inventor of {lisp}) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed hackers among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimization became "program bumming", and eventually just "bumming". . to squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this distinguishes the process from a {featurectomy}). . n. a small change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient. "this hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster." usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. {tune} (and n. {tweak}, {hack}), though none of these exactly capture sense . all these uses are rare in commonwealth hackish, because in the parent dialects of english `bum' is a rude synonym for `buttocks'. :bump: vt. synonym for increment. has the same meaning as c's ++ operator. used esp. of counter variables, pointers, and index dummies in `for', `while', and `do-while' loops. :burble: [from lewis carroll's "jabberwocky"] v. like {flame}, but connotes that the source is truly clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). a term of deep contempt. "there's some guy on the phone burbling about how he got a disk full error and it's all our comm software's fault." :buried treasure: n. a surprising piece of code found in some program. while usually not wrong, it tends to vary from {crufty} to {bletcherous}, and has lain undiscovered only because it was functionally correct, however horrible it is. used sarcastically, because what is found is anything *but* treasure. buried treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. "i just found that the scheduler sorts its queue using {bubble sort}! buried treasure!" :burn-in period: n. . a factory test designed to catch systems with {marginal} components before they get out the door; the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the {bathtub curve} (see {infant mortality}). . a period of indeterminate length in which a person using a computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. warning: excessive burn-in can lead to burn-out. see {hack mode}, {larval stage}. :burst page: n. syn. {banner}, sense . :busy-wait: vi. used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy waiting for someone or something, intends to move instantly as soon as it shows up, and thus cannot do anything else at the moment. "can't talk now, i'm busy-waiting till bill gets off the phone." technically, `busy-wait' means to wait on an event by {spin}ning through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. this is a wasteful technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may {hog} the processor. :buzz: vi. . of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. a program that is buzzing appears to be {catatonic}, but you never get out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. "the program buzzes for about seconds trying to sort all the names into order." see {spin}; see also {grovel}. . [eta systems] to test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity by applying an ac rather than dc signal. some wire faults will pass dc tests but fail a buzz test. . to process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to each element. "this loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a terminator type." :bwq: /b-w-q/ [ibm: abbreviation, `buzz word quotient'] the percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. usually roughly proportional to {bogosity}. see {tla}. :by hand: adv. said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial, and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through. "my mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message i'm replying to, so i have to do it by hand." this does not necessarily mean the speaker has to retype a copy of the message; it might refer to, say, dropping into a {subshell} from the mailer, making a copy of one's mailbox file, reading that into an editor, locating the top and bottom of the message in question, deleting the rest of the file, inserting `>' characters on each line, writing the file, leaving the editor, returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and later remembering to delete the file. compare {eyeball search}. :byte:: /bi:t/ [techspeak] n. a unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is usually bits, but may be on -bit machines. some older architectures used `byte' for quantities of or bits, and the pdp- supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of to bits! these usages are now obsolete, and even -bit bytes have become rare in the general trend toward power-of- word sizes. historical note: the term originated in during the early design phase for the ibm stretch computer; originally it was described as to bits (typical i/o equipment of the period used -bit chunks of information). the move to an -bit byte happened in late , and this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the system/ . the term `byte' was coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally misspelled as {bit}. see also {nybble}. :bytesexual: /bi:t`sek'shu-*l/ adj. said of hardware, denotes willingness to compute or pass data in either {big-endian} or {little-endian} format (depending, presumably, on a {mode bit} somewhere). see also {nuxi problem}. :bzzzt, wrong: /bzt rong/ [usenet/internet] from a robin williams routine in the movie "dead poets society" spoofing radio or tv quiz programs, such as *truth or consequences*, where an incorrect answer earns one a blast from the buzzer and condolences from the interlocutor. a way of expressing mock-rude disagreement, usually immediately following an included quote from another poster. the less abbreviated "*bzzzzt*, wrong, but thank you for playing" is also common; capitalization and emphasis of the buzzer sound varies. = c = ===== :c: n. . the third letter of the english alphabet. . ascii . . the name of a programming language designed by dennis ritchie during the early s and immediately used to reimplement {{unix}}; so called because many features derived from an earlier compiler named `b' in commemoration of *its* parent, bcpl. before bjarne stroustrup settled the question by designing c++, there was a humorous debate over whether c's successor should be named `d' or `p'. c became immensely popular outside bell labs after about and is now the dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications programming. see also {languages of choice}, {indent style}. c is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as "a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language". :c programmer's disease: n. the tendency of the undisciplined c programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. if an application user later needs to put elements into a table of size , the afflicted programmer reasons that he can easily reset the table size to (or even as much as , to allow for future expansion), and recompile. this gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having done his bit to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvelous consequences of {fandango on core}. in severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user. :calculator: [cambridge] n. syn. for {bitty box}. :can: vt. to abort a job on a time-sharing system. used esp. when the person doing the deed is an operator, as in "canned from the {{console}}". frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "can that print job, the lpt just popped a sprocket!" synonymous with {gun}. it is said that the ascii character with mnemonic can ( ) was used as a kill-job character on some early oses. :can't happen: the traditional program comment for code executed under a condition that should never be true, for example a file size computed as negative. often, such a condition being true indicates data corruption or a faulty algorithm; it is almost always handled by emitting a fatal error message and terminating or crashing, since there is little else that can be done. this is also often the text emitted if the `impossible' error actually happens! although "can't happen" events are genuinely infrequent in production code, programmers wise enough to check for them habitually are often surprised at how often they are triggered during development and how many headaches checking for them turns out to head off. :candygrammar: n. a programming-language grammar that is mostly {syntactic sugar}; the term is also a play on `candygram'. {cobol}, apple's hypertalk language, and a lot of the so-called ` gl' database languages are like this. the usual intent of such designs is that they be as english-like as possible, on the theory that they will then be easier for unskilled people to program. this intention comes to grief on the reality that syntax isn't what makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organization required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. thus the invariable result is that `candygrammar' languages are just as difficult to program in as terser ones, and far more painful for the experienced hacker. [the overtones from the old chevy chase skit on saturday night live should not be overlooked. (this was a "jaws" parody. someone lurking outside an apartment door tries all kinds of bogus ways to get the occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in the background. the last attempt is a half-hearted "candygram!" when the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. there is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. note that, in many circles, pretty much the same ones who remember monty python sketches, all it takes is the word "candygram!", suitably timed, to get people rolling on the floor.) --- gls] :canonical: [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. the usual or standard state or manner of something. this word has a somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. two formulas such as + x and x + are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in `canonical form' because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. the jargon meaning, a relaxation of the technical meaning, acquired its present loading in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in alonzo church's work in computation theory and mathematical logic (see {knights of the lambda calculus}). compare {vanilla}. this word has an interesting history. non-technical academics do not use the adjective `canonical' in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do however use the nouns `canon' and `canonicity' (not *canonicalness or *canonicality). the `canon' of a given author is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this usage is familiar to sherlock holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). `*the* canon' is the body of works in a given field (e.g., works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate. the word `canon' derives ultimately from the greek `kanon' (akin to the english `cane') referring to a reed. reeds were used for measurement, and in latin and later greek the word `canon' meant a rule or a standard. the establishment of a canon of scriptures within christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the religion. the above non-techspeak academic usages stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work. alongside this usage was the promulgation of `canons' (`rules') for the government of the catholic church. the techspeak usages ("according to religious law") derive from this use of the latin `canon'. hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. a true story: one bob sjoberg, new at the mit ai lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. over his loud objections, gls and rms made a point of using it as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. finally, in one conversation, he used the word `canonical' in jargon-like fashion without thinking. steele: "aha! we've finally got you talking jargon too!" stallman: "what did he say?" steele: "bob just used `canonical' in the canonical way." of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that `according to religious law' is *not* the canonical meaning of `canonical'. :card: n. . an electronic printed-circuit board (see also {tall card}, {short card}. . obs. syn. {{punched card}}. :card walloper: n. an edp programmer who grinds out batch programs that do stupid things like print people's paychecks. compare {code grinder}. see also {{punched card}}, {eighty-column mind}. :careware: /keir'weir/ n. {shareware} for which either the author suggests that some payment be made to a nominated charity or a levy directed to charity is included on top of the distribution charge. syn. {charityware}; compare {crippleware}, sense . :cargo cult programming: n. a style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. a cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare {shotgun debugging}, {voodoo programming}). the term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the south pacific after world war ii. the practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. hackish usage probably derives from richard feynman's characterization of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book `surely you're joking, mr. feynman' (w. w. norton & co, new york , isbn - - - ). :cascade: n. . a huge volume of spurious error-message output produced by a compiler with poor error recovery. this can happen when one initial error throws the parser out of synch so that much of the remaining program text is interpreted as garbaged or ill-formed. . a chain of usenet followups each adding some trivial variation of riposte to the text of the previous one, all of which is reproduced in the new message; an {include war} in which the object is to create a sort of communal graffito. :case and paste: [from `cut and paste'] n. . the addition of a new {feature} to an existing system by selecting the code from an existing feature and pasting it in with minor changes. common in telephony circles because most operations in a telephone switch are selected using `case' statements. leads to {software bloat}. in some circles of emacs users this is called `programming by meta-w', because meta-w is the emacs command for copying a block of text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere. the term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to integrate the code for two similar cases. :casters-up mode: [ibm] n. yet another synonym for `broken' or `down'. usually connotes a major failure. a system (hardware or software) which is `down' may be already being restarted before the failure is noticed, whereas one which is `casters up' is usually a good excuse to take the rest of the day off (as long as you're not responsible for fixing it). :casting the runes: n. what a {guru} does when you ask him or her to run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what j. random luser does. compare {incantation}, {runes}, {examining the entrails}; also see the ai koan about tom knight in "{a selection of ai koans}" ({appendix a}). :cat: [from `catenate' via {{unix}} `cat( )'] vt. . [techspeak] to spew an entire file to the screen or some other output sink without pause. . by extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. usage: considered silly. rare outside unix sites. see also {dd}, {blt}. among unix fans, `cat( )' is considered an excellent example of user-interface design, because it outputs the file contents without such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with any sort of data. among unix-haters, `cat( )' is considered the {canonical} example of *bad* user-interface design. this because it is more often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to concatenate two files. the name `cat' for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say, lisp's {cdr}. of such oppositions are {holy wars} made.... :catatonic: adj. describes a condition of suspended animation in which something is so {wedged} or {hung} that it makes no response. if you are typing on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo the letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what you're asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from catatonia (possibly because it has crashed). "there i was in the middle of a winning game of {nethack} and it went catatonic on me! aaargh!" compare {buzz}. :cd tilde: /see-dee til-d*/ vi. to go home. from the unix c-shell and korn-shell command `cd ~', which takes one `$home'. by extension, may be used with other arguments; thus, over an electronic chat link, `cd ~coffee' would mean "i'm going to the coffee machine." :cdr: /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ [from lisp] vt. to skip past the first item from a list of things (generalized from the lisp operation on binary tree structures, which returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its argument). in the form `cdr down', to trace down a list of elements: "shall we cdr down the agenda?" usage: silly. see also {loop through}. historical note: the instruction format of the ibm that hosted the original lisp implementation featured two -bit fields called the `address' and `decrement' parts. the term `cdr' was originally `contents of decrement part of register'. similarly, `car' stood for `contents of address part of register'. the cdr and car operations have since become bases for formation of compound metaphors in non-lisp contexts. gls recalls, for example, a programming project in which strings were represented as linked lists; the get-character and skip-character operations were of course called char and chdr. :chad: /chad/ n. . the perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they have been separated from the printed portion. also called {selvage} and {perf}. . obs. the confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff', `computer confetti', and `keypunch droppings'. historical note: one correspondent believes `chad' (sense ) derives from the chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'. :chad box: n. {iron age} card punches contained boxes inside them, about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large wastebasket), that held the {chad} (sense ). you had to open the covers of the card punch periodically and empty the chad box. the {bit bucket} was notionally the equivalent device in the cpu enclosure, which was typically across the room in another great gray-and-blue box. :chain: . [orig. from basic's `chain' statement] vi. to hand off execution to a child or successor without going through the {os} command interpreter that invoked it. the state of the parent program is lost and there is no returning to it. though this facility used to be common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for backward compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in particular, most unix programmers will think of this as an {exec}. oppose the more modern {subshell}. . a series of linked data areas within an operating system or application. `chain rattling' is the process of repeatedly running through the linked data areas searching for one which is of interest to the executing program. the implication is that there is a very large number of links on the chain. :channel: [irc] n. the basic unit of discussion on {irc}. once one joins a channel, everything one types is read by others on that channel. channels can either be named with numbers or with strings that begin with a `#' sign, and can have topic descriptions (which are generally irrelevant to the actual subject of discussion). some notable channels are `#initgame', `#hottub', and `#report'. at times of international crisis, `#report' has hundreds of members, some of whom take turns listening to various news services and summarizing the news, or in some cases, giving first-hand accounts of the action (e.g., scud missile attacks in tel aviv during the gulf war in ). :channel hopping: [irc, genie] n. to rapidly switch channels on {irc}, or genie chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop from one group to another at a party. this may derive from the tv watcher's idiom `channel surfing'. :channel op: /chan'l op/ [irc] n. someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular {irc} channel; commonly abbreviated `chanop' or `chop'. these privileges include the right to {kick} users, to change various status bits, and to make others into chops. :chanop: /chan'-op/ [irc] n. see {channel op}. :char: /keir/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/ n. shorthand for `character'. esp. used by c programmers, as `char' is c's typename for character data. :charityware: /char'it-ee-weir`/ n. syn. {careware}. :chase pointers: . vi. to go through multiple levels of indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure. used esp. by programmers in c, where explicit pointers are a very common data type. this is techspeak, but it remains jargon when used of human networks. "i'm chasing pointers. bob said you could tell me who to talk to about...." see {dangling pointer} and {snap}. . [cambridge] `pointer chase' or `pointer hunt': the process of going through a dump (interactively or on a large piece of paper printed with hex {runes}) following dynamic data-structures. used only in a debugging context. :check: n. a hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to refer to actual hardware failures rather than software-induced traps. e.g., a `parity check' is the result of a hardware-detected parity error. recorded here because it's often humorously extended to non-technical problems. for example, the term `child check' has been used to refer to the problems caused by a small child who is curious to know what happens when s/he presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of course, this particular problem could have been prevented with {molly-guard}s). :chemist: [cambridge] n. someone who wastes computer time on {number-crunching} when you'd far rather the machine were doing something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your name or printing snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns. may or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry. :chernobyl chicken: n. see {laser chicken}. :chernobyl packet: /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ n. a network packet that induces {network meltdown} (the result of a {broadcast storm}), in memory of the april nuclear accident at chernobyl in ukraine. the typical scenario involves an ip ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination ether and ip address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. compare {christmas tree packet}. :chicken head: [commodore] n. the commodore business machines logo, which strongly resembles a poultry part. rendered in ascii as `c='. with the arguable exception of the amiga (see {amoeba}), commodore's machines are notoriously crocky little {bitty box}es (see also {petscii}). thus, this usage may owe something to philip k. dick's novel `do androids dream of electric sheep?' (the basis for the movie `blade runner'), in which a `chickenhead' is a mutant with below-average intelligence. :chiclet keyboard: n. a keyboard with small rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum. (chiclets is the brand name of a variety of chewing gum that does in fact resemble the keys of chiclet keyboards.) used esp. to describe the original ibm pcjr keyboard. vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop products got launched using them. customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more. :chine nual: /sheen'yu-*l/ [mit] n.,obs. the lisp machine manual, so called because the title was wrapped around the cover so only those letters showed on the front. :chinese army technique: n. syn. {mongolian hordes technique}. :choke: v. . to reject input, often ungracefully. "nuls make system v's `lpr( )' choke." "i tried building an {emacs} binary to use {x}, but `cpp( )' choked on all those `#define's." see {barf}, {gag}, {vi}. . [mit] more generally, to fail at any endeavor, but with some flair or bravado; the popular definition is "to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." :chomp: vi. to {lose}; specifically, to chew on something of which more was bitten off than one can. probably related to gnashing of teeth. see {bagbiter}. a hand gesture commonly accompanies this. to perform it, hold the four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips. now open and close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much like what pac-man does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to predate that). the gesture alone means `chomp chomp' (see "{verb doubling}" in the "{jargon construction}" section of the prependices). the hand may be pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once. doing this to a person is equivalent to saying "you chomper!" if you point the gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. you might do this if someone told you that a program you had written had failed in some surprising way and you felt dumb for not having anticipated it. :chomper: n. someone or something that is chomping; a loser. see {loser}, {bagbiter}, {chomp}. :chop: /chop/ [irc] n. see {channel op}. :christmas tree: n. a kind of rs- line tester or breakout box featuring rows of blinking red and green leds suggestive of christmas lights. :christmas tree packet: n. a packet with every single option set for whatever protocol is in use. see {kamikaze packet}, {chernobyl packet}. (the term doubtless derives from a fanciful image of each little option bit being represented by a different-colored light bulb, all turned on.) :chrome: [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. showy features added to attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of a system. "the d icons in motif are just chrome, but they certainly are *pretty* chrome!" distinguished from {bells and whistles} by the fact that the latter are usually added to gratify developers' own desires for featurefulness. often used as a term of contempt. :chug: vi. to run slowly; to {grind} or {grovel}. "the disk is chugging like crazy." :church of the subgenius: n. a mutant offshoot of {discordianism} launched in as a spoof of fundamentalist christianity by the `reverend' ivan stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. popular among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references such as "bob" the divine drilling-equipment salesman, the benevolent space xists, and the stark fist of removal. much subgenius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of `slack'. :cinderella book: [cmu] n. `introduction to automata theory, languages, and computation', by john hopcroft and jeffrey ullman, (addison-wesley, ). so called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively cinderella) sitting in front of a rube goldberg device and holding a rope coming out of it. the back cover depicts the girl with the device in shambles after she has pulled on the rope. see also {{book titles}}. :ci$: // n. hackerism for `cis', compuserve information service. the dollar sign refers to compuserve's rather steep line charges. often used in {sig block}s just before a compuserve address. syn. {compu$erve}. :classic c: /klas'ik c/ [a play on `coke classic'] n. the c programming language as defined in the first edition of {k&r}, with some small additions. it is also known as `k&r c'. the name came into use while c was being standardized by the ansi x j committee. also `c classic'. this is sometimes applied elsewhere: thus, `x classic', where x = star trek (referring to the original tv series) or x = pc (referring to ibm's isa-bus machines as opposed to the ps/ series). this construction is especially used of product series in which the newer versions are considered serious losers relative to the older ones. :clean: . adj. used of hardware or software designs, implies `elegance in the small', that is, a design or implementation that may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. the antonym is `grungy' or {crufty}. . v. to remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter: "i'm cleaning up my account." "i cleaned up the garbage and now have meg free on that partition." :clm: /c-l-m/ [sun: `career limiting move'] . n. an action endangering one's future prospects of getting plum projects and raises, and possibly one's job: "his halloween costume was a parody of his manager. he won the prize for `best clm'." . adj. denotes extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a customer and obviously missed earlier because of poor testing: "that's a clm bug!" :clobber: vt. to overwrite, usually unintentionally: "i walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." compare {mung}, {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash the stack}. :clocks: n. processor logic cycles, so called because each generally corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. the relative execution times of instructions on a machine are usually discussed in clocks rather than absolute fractions of a second; one good reason for this is that clock speeds for various models of the machine may increase as technology improves, and it is usually the relative times one is interested in when discussing the instruction set. compare {cycle}. :clone: n. . an exact duplicate: "our product is a clone of their product." implies a legal reimplementation from documentation or by reverse-engineering. also connotes lower price. . a shoddy, spurious copy: "their product is a clone of our product." . a blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright, patent, or trade secret protections: "your product is a clone of my product." this use implies legal action is pending. . a `pc clone'; a pc-bus/isa or eisa-compatible x -based microcomputer (this use is sometimes spelled `klone' or `pclone'). these invariably have much more bang for the buck than the ibm archetypes they resemble. . in the construction `unix clone': an os designed to deliver a unix-lookalike environment without unix license fees, or with additional `mission-critical' features such as support for real-time programming. . v. to make an exact copy of something. "let me clone that" might mean "i want to borrow that paper so i can make a photocopy" or "let me get a copy of that file before you {mung} it". :clover key: [mac users] n. see {feature key}. :clustergeeking: /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ [cmu] n. spending more time at a computer cluster doing cs homework than most people spend breathing. :cobol: /koh'bol/ [common business-oriented language] n. (synonymous with {evil}.) a weak, verbose, and flabby language used by {card walloper}s to do boring mindless things on {dinosaur} mainframes. hackers believe that all cobol programmers are {suit}s or {code grinder}s, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned the language. its very name is seldom uttered without ritual expressions of disgust or horror. see also {fear and loathing}, {software rot}. :cobol fingers: /koh'bol fing'grz/ n. reported from sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from coding in cobol. the language requires code verbose beyond all reason; thus it is alleged that programming too much in cobol causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless typing. "i refuse to type in all that source code again; it would give me cobol fingers!" :code grinder: n. . a {suit}-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages in rpg and other such unspeakable horrors. in its native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. in times of dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. it seldom helps. the {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from hackerdom as one can get and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. see {real world}, {suit}. . used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique, rule-boundedness, {brute force}, and utter lack of imagination. compare {card walloper}; contrast {hacker}, {real programmer}. :code police: [by analogy with george orwell's `thought police'] n. a mythical team of gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. may be used either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive {weenie}s. "dike out that goto or the code police will get you!" the ironic usage is perhaps more common. :codewalker: n. a program component that traverses other programs for a living. compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database front ends. other utility programs that try to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. as in "this new `vgrind' feature would require a codewalker to implement." :coefficient of x: n. hackish speech makes rather heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. four particularly important ones involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index', and `quotient'. they are often loosely applied to things you cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle distinctions among them that convey information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing. `foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for which the issue is one of presence or absence. the canonical example is {fudge factor}. it's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed. you might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor. quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "i would have won except for my luck quotient." this could also be "i would have won except for the luck factor", but using *quotient* emphasizes that it was bad luck overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering your own). `foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can be larger or smaller. thus, you might refer to a paper or person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'. `foo index' suggests that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. the choice between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus say `coefficient of bogosity', whereas others might feel it is a combination of factors and thus say `bogosity index'. :cokebottle: /kohk'bot-l/ n. any very unusual character, particularly one you can't type because it it isn't on your keyboard. mit people used to complain about the `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at sail, and sail people complained right back about the `{altmode}-altmode-cokebottle' commands at mit. after the demise of the {space-cadet keyboard}, `cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command. it may be due for a second inning, however. the osf/motif window manager, `mwm( )', has a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of keybindings and behavior. this keystroke is (believe it or not) `control-meta-bang' (see {bang}). since the exclamation point looks a lot like an upside down coke bottle, motif hackers have begun referring to this keystroke as `cokebottle'. see also {quadruple bucky}. :cold boot: n. see {boot}. :come from: n. a semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to'; `come from' <label> would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control would quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the statement following the `come from'. `come from' was first proposed in r.l. clark's "a linguistic contribution to goto-less programming", which appeared in a {datamation} issue (and was reprinted in the april issue of `communications of the acm'). this parodied the then-raging `structured programming' {holy wars} (see {considered harmful}). mythically, some variants are the `assigned come from' and the `computed come from' (parodying some nasty control constructs in fortran and some extended basics). of course, multi-tasking (or non-determinism) could be implemented by having more than one `come from' statement coming from the same label. in some ways the fortran `do' looks like a `come from' statement. after the terminating statement number/`continue' is reached, control continues at the statement following the do. some generous fortrans would allow arbitrary statements (other than `continue') for the statement, leading to examples like: do i= ,limit c imagine many lines of code here, leaving the c original do statement lost in the spaghetti... write( , ) i,frob(i) format( x,i ,g . ) in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled . (this is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!) while sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of `come from' statement isn't completely general. after all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. the implementation of the general form was left to univac fortran, ca. (though a roughly similar feature existed on the ibm ten years earlier). the statement `at ' would perform a `come from '. it was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. more horrible things had already been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate the `alter' verb in {cobol}. `come from' was supported under its own name for the first time years later, in c-intercal (see {intercal}, {retrocomputing}); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock. :comm mode: /kom mohd/ [its: from the feature supporting on-line chat; the term may spelled with one or two m's] syn. for {talk mode}. :command key: [mac users] n. syn. {feature key}. :comment out: vt. to surround a section of code with comment delimiters or to prefix every line in the section with a comment marker; this prevents it from being compiled or interpreted. often done when the code is redundant or obsolete, but you want to leave it in the source to make the intent of the active code clearer; also when the code in that section is broken and you want to bypass it in order to debug some other part of the code. compare {condition out}, usually the preferred technique in languages (such as {c}) that make it possible. :commonwealth hackish:: n. hacker jargon as spoken outside the u.s., esp. in the british commonwealth. it is reported that commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like `char' and `soc', etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to american /keir/ and /sohsh/. dots in {newsgroup} names tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). the prefix {meta} may be pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, greek letter beta is often /bee't*/, zeta is often /zee't*/, and so forth. preferred {metasyntactic variable}s include {blurgle}, `eek', `ook', `frodo', and `bilbo'; `wibble', `wobble', and in emergencies `wubble'; `banana', `wombat', `frog', {fish}, and so on and on (see {foo}, sense ). alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes `-o-rama', `frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and `city' (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). finally, note that the american terms `parens', `brackets', and `braces' for (), [], and {} are uncommon; commonwealth hackish prefers `brackets', `square brackets', and `curly brackets'. also, the use of `pling' for {bang} is common outside the united states. see also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console jockey}, {fish}, {go-faster stripes}, {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal}, {leaky heap}, {lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger}, {noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster blaster}, {rtbm}, {seggie}, {spod}, {sun lounge}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, {weeble}, {weasel}, {yaba}, and notes or definitions under {bad thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {bum}, {chase pointers}, {cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos}, {nybble}, {proglet}, {root}, {sex}, {tweak}, and {xyzzy}. :compact: adj. of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be apprehended at once in one's head. this generally means the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for example, c is compact and fortran is not, but c is more powerful than fortran. designs become non-compact through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans of {classic c} maintain that ansi c is no longer compact). :compiler jock: n. see {jock} (sense ). :compress: [unix] vt. when used without a qualifier, generally refers to {crunch}ing of a file using a particular c implementation of compression by james a. woods et al. and widely circulated via {usenet}; use of {crunch} itself in this sense is rare among unix hackers. specifically, compress is built around the lempel-ziv-welch algorithm as described in "a technique for high performance data compression", terry a. welch, `ieee computer', vol. , no. (june ), pp. - . :compu$erve: n. see {ci$}. the synonyms compuspend and compu$pend are also reported. :computer confetti: n. syn. {chad}. though this term is common, this use of punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces are stiff and have sharp corners that could injure the eyes. gls reports that he once attended a wedding at mit during which he and a few other guests enthusiastically threw chad instead of rice. the groom later grumbled that he and his bride had spent most of the evening trying to get the stuff out of their hair. :computer geek: n. one who eats (computer) bugs for a living. one who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. cannot be used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black usage of `nigger'. a computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker in {larval stage}. also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. see also {propeller head}, {clustergeeking}, {geek out}, {wannabee}, {terminal junkie}, {spod}, {weenie}. :computron: /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. . a notional unit of computing power combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned roughly in instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times megabytes-of-mass-storage. "that machine can't run gnu emacs, it doesn't have enough computrons!" this usage is usually found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. see {bitty box}, {get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}. . a mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge (see also {bogon}). an elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed based on the physical fact that the molecules in a solid object move more rapidly as it is heated. it is argued that an object melts because the molecules have lost their information about where they are supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons). this explains why computers get so hot and require air conditioning; they use up computrons. conversely, it should be possible to cool down an object by placing it in the path of a computron beam. it is believed that this may also explain why machines that work at the factory fail in the computer room: the computrons there have been all used up by the other hardware. (this theory probably owes something to the "warlock" stories by larry niven, the best known being "what good is a glass dagger?", in which magic is fueled by an exhaustible natural resource called `mana'.) :condition out: vt. to prevent a section of code from being compiled by surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose condition is always false. the {canonical} examples are `#if ' (or `#ifdef notdef', though some find this {bletcherous}) and `#endif' in c. compare {comment out}. :condom: n. . the protective plastic bag that accompanies . -inch microfloppy diskettes. rarely, also used of (paper) disk envelopes. unlike the write protect tab, the condom (when left on) not only impedes the practice of {sex} but has also been shown to have a high failure rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk --- and can even fatally frustrate insertion. . the protective cladding on a {light pipe}. :confuser: n. common soundalike slang for `computer'. usually encountered in compounds such as `confuser room', `personal confuser', `confuser guru'. usage: silly. :connector conspiracy: [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the kl- (one model of the {pdp- }), none of whose connectors matched anything else] n. the tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products that don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. the kl- massbus connector was actually *patented* by dec, which reputedly refused to license the design and thus effectively locked third parties out of competition for the lucrative massbus peripherals market. this is a source of never-ending frustration for the diehards who maintain older pdp- or vax systems. their cpus work fine, but they are stuck with dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives with low capacity and high power requirements. (a closely related phenomenon, with a slightly different intent, is the habit manufacturers have of inventing new screw heads so that only designated persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can remove covers and make repairs or install options. the apple macintosh takes this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench but a specialized case-cracking tool to open the box.) in these latter days of open-systems computing this term has fallen somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation that "standards are great! there are so *many* of them to choose from!" compare {backward combatability}. :cons: /konz/ or /kons/ [from lisp] . vt. to add a new element to a specified list, esp. at the top. "ok, cons picking a replacement for the console tty onto the agenda." . `cons up': vt. to synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an example". in lisp itself, `cons' is the most fundamental operation for building structures. it takes any two objects and returns a `dot-pair' or two-branched tree with one object hanging from each branch. because the result of a cons is an object, it can be used to build binary trees of any shape and complexity. hackers think of it as a sort of universal constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring from. :considered harmful: adj. edsger w. dijkstra's note in the march `communications of the acm', "goto statement considered harmful", fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. amusingly, the acm considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. in the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "x considered y". the structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found at various places in this lexicon is related). :console:: n. . the operator's station of a {mainframe}. in times past, this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with fingers on its keys. under unix and other modern timesharing oses, such privileges are guarded by passwords instead, and the console is just the {tty} the system was booted from. some of the mystique remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from the console (on unix, /dev/console). . on microcomputer unix boxes, the main screen and keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals talking to a serial port). typically only the console can do real graphics or run {x}. see also {cty}. :console jockey: n. see {terminal junkie}. :content-free: [by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] adj. used of a message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. though this adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more usually connotes derision for communication styles that exalt form over substance or are centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at hand. perhaps most used with reference to speeches by company presidents and other professional manipulators. "content-free? uh...that's anything printed on glossy paper." see also {four-color glossies}. "he gave a talk on the implications of electronic networks for postmodernism and the fin-de-siecle aesthetic. it was content-free." :control-c: vi. . "stop whatever you are doing." from the interrupt character used on many operating systems to abort a running program. considered silly. . interj. among bsd unix hackers, the canonical humorous response to "give me a break!" :control-o: vi. "stop talking." from the character used on some operating systems to abort output but allow the program to keep on running. generally means that you are not interested in hearing anything more from that person, at least on that topic; a standard response to someone who is flaming. considered silly. compare {control-s}. :control-q: vi. "resume." from the ascii dc or {xon} character (the pronunciation /x-on/ is therefore also used), used to undo a previous {control-s}. :control-s: vi. "stop talking for a second." from the ascii dc or xoff character (the pronunciation /x-of/ is therefore also used). control-s differs from {control-o} in that the person is asked to stop talking (perhaps because you are on the phone) but will be allowed to continue when you're ready to listen to him --- as opposed to control-o, which has more of the meaning of "shut up." considered silly. :conway's law: prov. the rule that the organization of the software and the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "if you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a -pass compiler". this was originally promulgated by melvin conway, an early proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the burroughs called save. the name `save' didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had save written on them. :cookbook: [from amateur electronics and radio] n. a book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic} things in programs. one current example is the `{postscript} language tutorial and cookbook' by adobe systems, inc (addison-wesley, isbn - - - ) which has recipes for things like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making d fonts. cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up} small programs in unknown languages. this is analogous to the role of phrasebooks in human languages. :cooked mode: [unix] n. the normal character-input mode, with interrupts enabled and with erase, kill and other special-character interpretations done directly by the tty driver. oppose {raw mode}, {rare mode}. this is techspeak under unix but jargon elsewhere; other operating systems often have similar mode distinctions, and the raw/rare/cooked way of describing them has spread widely along with the c language and other unix exports. most generally, `cooked mode' may refer to any mode of a system that does extensive preprocessing before presenting data to a program. :cookie: n. a handle, transaction id, or other token of agreement between cooperating programs. "i give him a packet, he gives me back a cookie." the claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop is a perfect mundane example of a cookie; the only thing it's useful for is to relate a later transaction to this one (so you get the same clothes back). compare {magic cookie}; see also {fortune cookie}. :cookie bear: n. syn. {cookie monster}. :cookie file: n. a collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. there are several different ones in public distribution, and site admins often assemble their own from various sources including this lexicon. :cookie monster: [from "sesame street"] n. any of a family of early ( s) hacks reported on {{tops- }}, {{its}}, {{multics}}, and elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the {{console}} (on a batch {mainframe}), repeatedly demanding "i want a cookie". the required responses ranged in complexity from "cookie" through "have a cookie" and upward. see also {wabbit}. :copious free time: [apple; orig. fr. the intro to tom lehrer's song "it makes a fellow proud to be a soldier"] n. . [used ironically to indicate the speaker's lack of the quantity in question] a mythical schedule slot for accomplishing tasks held to be unlikely or impossible. sometimes used to indicate that the speaker is interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that the opportunity will not arise. "i'll implement the automatic layout stuff in my copious free time." . [archly] time reserved for bogus or otherwise idiotic tasks, such as implementation of {chrome}, or the stroking of {suit}s. "i'll get back to him on that feature in my copious free time." :copper: n. conventional electron-carrying network cable with a core conductor of copper --- or aluminum! opposed to {light pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link. :copy protection: n. a class of (occasionally clever) methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it. considered silly. :copybroke: /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. . [play on `copyright'] used to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been `broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme disabled. syn. {copywronged}. . copy-protected software which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has confused the anti-piracy check. :copyleft: /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. . the copyright notice (`general public license') carried by {gnu} {emacs} and other free software foundation software, granting reuse and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {general public virus}). . by extension, any copyright notice intended to achieve similar aims. :copywronged: /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. syn. for {copybroke}. :core: n. main storage or ram. dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside ibm, but also still used in the unix community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. some derived idioms are quite current; `in core', for example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in favor. commonwealth hackish prefers {store}. :core cancer: n. a process which exhibits a slow but inexorable resource {leak} --- like a cancer, it kills by crowding out productive `tissue'. :core dump: n. [common {iron age} jargon, preserved by unix] . [techspeak] a copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. . by extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or registering extreme shock. "he dumped core. all over the floor. what a mess." "he heard about x and dumped core." . occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology: "sorry, i dumped core on you". . a recapitulation of knowledge (compare {bits}, sense ). hence, spewing all one knows about a topic (syn. {brain dump}), esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at columbia). see {core}. :core leak: n. syn. {memory leak}. :core wars: n. a game between `assembler' programs in a simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting it. popularized by a. k. dewdney's column in `scientific american' magazine, this was actually devised by victor vyssotsky, robert morris, and dennis ritchie in the early s (their original game was called `darwin' and ran on a pdp- at bell labs). see {core}. :corge: /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. yet another {metasyntactic variable}, invented by mike gallaher and propagated by the {gosmacs} documentation. see {grault}. :cosmic rays: n. notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. however, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to {handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "hey, eric --- i just got a burst of garbage on my {tube}, where did that come from?" "cosmic rays, i guess." compare {sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. the british seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a memory chip can cause single-bit errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). factual note: alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). intel could not explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis was cosmic rays. so they created the world's largest lead safe, using tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. one was placed in the safe, one outside. the hypothesis was that if cosmic rays were causing the bit drops, they should see a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. they did not observe such a difference. further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions from thorium (and to a much lesser degree uranium) in the encapsulation material. since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvious that you have to design memories to withstand these hits. :cough and die: v. syn. {barf}. connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "the parser saw a control-a in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died." compare {die}, {die horribly}. :cowboy: [sun, from william gibson's {cyberpunk} sf] n. synonym for {hacker}. it is reported that at sun this word is often said with reverence. :cp/m:: /c-p-m/ n. [control program for microcomputers] an early microcomputer {os} written by hacker gary kildall for - and z -based machines, very popular in the late s but virtually wiped out by ms-dos after the release of the ibm pc in . legend has it that kildall's company blew its chance to write the os for the ibm pc because kildall decided to spend a day ibm's reps wanted to meet with him enjoying the perfect flying weather in his private plane. many of cp/m's features and conventions strongly resemble those of early dec operating systems such as {{tops- }}, os/ , rsts, and rsx- . see {{ms-dos}}, {operating system}. :cpu wars: /c-p-u worz/ n. a large-format comic by chas andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of ipm (impossible to program machines) to conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of hec (human engineered computers). this rather transparent allegory featured many references to {advent} and the immortal line "eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!" (uttered, of course, by an ipm stormtrooper). it is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on ibm company stationery from the head of ibm's thomas j. watson research laboratories (then, as now, one of the few islands of true hackerdom in the ibm archipelago). the lower loop of the b in the ibm logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out. see {eat flaming death}. :crack root: v. to defeat the security system of a unix machine and gain {root} privileges thereby; see {cracking}. :cracker: n. one who breaks security on a system. coined ca. by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker} (q.v., sense ). an earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around -- on usenet was largely a failure. both these neologisms reflected a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. while it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past {larval stage} is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so. thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the {mundane} reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe *themselves* as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life. ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}. some other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on {cracking} and {phreaking}. see also {samurai}, {dark-side hacker}, and {hacker ethic, the}. :cracking: n. the act of breaking into a computer system; what a {cracker} does. contrary to widespread myth, this does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers. :crank: [from automotive slang] vt. verb used to describe the performance of a machine, especially sustained performance. "this box cranks (or, cranks at) about megaflops, with a burst mode of twice that on vectorized operations." :crash: . n. a sudden, usually drastic failure. most often said of the {system} (q.v., sense ), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what happened when the air gap of a winchester disk collapses). "three {luser}s lost their files in last night's disk crash." a disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a `head crash', whereas the term `system crash' usually, though not always, implies that the operating system or other software was at fault. . v. to fail suddenly. "has the system just crashed?" "something crashed the os!" see {down}. also used transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both). "those idiots playing {spacewar} crashed the system." . vi. sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long {hacking run}; see {gronk out}. :crash and burn: vi.,n. a spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the car-chase scene in the movie "bullitt" and many subsequent imitators (compare {die horribly}). sun- monitors losing the flyback transformer and lightning strikes on vax- / backplanes are notable crash and burn generators. the construction `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer used exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing bugs (i.e., not for development). the implication is that it wouldn't be such a disaster if that machine crashed, since only the testers would be inconvenienced. :crawling horror: n. ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. like {dusty deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes that the thing described is not just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity. "mostly we code new stuff in c, but they pay us to maintain one big fortran ii application from nineteen-sixty-x that's a real crawling horror...." compare {wombat}. :cray: /kray/ n. . (properly, capitalized) one of the line of supercomputers designed by cray research. . any supercomputer at all. . the {canonical} {number-crunching} machine. the term is actually the lowercased last name of seymour cray, a noted computer architect and co-founder of the company. numerous vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented by cray research brass to shape their corporate culture and image. :cray instability: n. a shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine (see {cray}). generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation or mini. :crayola: /kray-oh'l*/ n. a super-mini or -micro computer that provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance for an unreasonably low price. might also be a {killer micro}. :crayon: n. . someone who works on cray supercomputers. more specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the cdc ilk, probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). systems types who have a unix background tend not to be described as crayons. . a {computron} (sense ) that participates only in {number-crunching}. . a unit of computational power equal to that of a single cray- . there is a standard joke about this that derives from an old crayola crayon promotional gimmick: when you buy crayons you get a free sharpener. :creationism: n. the (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented programmers. in fact, experience has shown repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of) exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population --- and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong. unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored. :creep: v. to advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. in hackish usage this verb has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the creeping horrors of low-budget monster movies. :creeping elegance: n. describes a tendency for parts of a design to become {elegant} past the point of diminishing return. this often happens at the expense of the less interesting parts of the design, the schedule, and other things deemed important in the {real world}. see also {creeping featurism}, {second-system effect}, {tense}. :creeping featurism: /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n. . describes a systematic tendency to load more {chrome} and {feature}s onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. see also {feeping creaturism}. "you know, the main problem with {bsd} unix has always been creeping featurism." . more generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become even more complicated because people keep saying "gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". (see {feature}.) the result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone ... and then another ... and another.... when creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the irs form, and new cars. a similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see {second-system effect}. see also {creeping elegance}. :creeping featuritis: /kree'ping fee'-chr-i:`t*s/ n. variant of {creeping featurism}, with its own spoonerization: `feeping creaturitis'. some people like to reserve this form for the disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds. (after all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis usually means `inflammation of'.) :cretin: /kret'n/ or /kree'tn/ n. congenital {loser}; an obnoxious person; someone who can't do anything right. it has been observed that many american hackers tend to favor the british pronunciation /kre'tn/ over standard american /kree'tn/; it is thought this may be due to the insidious phonetic influence of monty python's flying circus. :cretinous: /kret'n-*s/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj. wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. also used pejoratively of people. see {dread high-bit disease} for an example. approximate synonyms: {bletcherous}, `bagbiting' (see {bagbiter}), {losing}, {brain-damaged}. :crippleware: n. . software that has some important functionality deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working version. . [cambridge] {guiltware} that exhorts you to donate to some charity (compare {careware}). . hardware deliberately crippled, which can be upgraded to a more expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper). an excellent example of crippleware (sense ) is intel's sx chip, which is a standard dx chip with the co-processor disabled. to upgrade, you buy another chip with everything *but* the co-processor disabled. when you put them together you have two crippled chips doing the work of one. don't you love intel? :critical mass: n. in physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material required to sustain a chain reaction. of a software product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one plus {epsilon} bugs. when software achieves critical mass, it can only be discarded and rewritten. :crlf: /ker'l*f/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /c-r-l-f/ n. (often capitalized as `crlf') a carriage return (cr) followed by a line feed (lf). more loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next line. see {newline}, {terpri}. under {{unix}} influence this usage has become less common (unix uses a bare line feed as its `crlf'). :crock: [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. . an awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, unix `make( )', which returns code for a process that dies due to {segfault}). . a technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. see {kluge}, {brittle}. also in the adjectives `crockish' and `crocky', and the nouns `crockishness' and `crockitude'. :cross-post: [usenet] vi. to post a single article simultaneously to several newsgroups. distinguished from posting the article repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it multiple times (this is very bad form). gratuitous cross-posting without a followup-to line directing responses to a single followup group is frowned upon, as it tends to cause {followup} articles to go to inappropriate newsgroups when people respond to only one part of the original posting. :crudware: /kruhd'weir/ n. pejorative term for the hundreds of megabytes of low-quality {freeware} circulated by user's groups and bbs systems in the micro-hobbyist world. "yet *another* set of disk catalog utilities for {{ms-dos}}? what crudware!" :cruft: /kruhft/ [back-formation from {crufty}] . n. an unpleasant substance. the dust that gathers under your bed is cruft; the tmrc dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a broom only produces more. . n. the results of shoddy construction. . vt. [from `hand cruft', pun on `hand craft'] to write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see {hand-hacking}). . n. excess; superfluous junk. esp. used of redundant or superseded code. this term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a cruft hall at harvard university which is part of the old physics building; it's said to have been the physics department's radar lab during wwii. to this day (early ) the windows appear to be full of random techno-junk. mit or lincoln labs people may well have coined the term as a knock on the competition. :cruft together: vt. (also `cruft up') to throw together something ugly but temporarily workable. like vt. {kluge up}, but more pejorative. "there isn't any program now to reverse all the lines of a file, but i can probably cruft one together in about minutes." see {hack together}, {hack up}, {kluge up}, {crufty}. :cruftsmanship: /kruhfts'm*n-ship / n. [from {cruft}] the antithesis of craftsmanship. :crufty: /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy'] adj. . poorly built, possibly over-complex. the {canonical} example is "this is standard old crufty dec software". in fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of `crufty' holds that was originally a mutation of `crusty' applied to dec software so old that the `s' characters were tall and skinny, looking more like `f' characters. . unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup. . generally unpleasant. . (sometimes spelled `cruftie') n. a small crufty object (see {frob}); often one that doesn't fit well into the scheme of things. "a lisp property list is a good place to store crufties (or, collectively, {random} cruft)." :crumb: n. two binary digits; a {quad}. larger than a {bit}, smaller than a {nybble}. considered silly. syn. {tayste}. :crunch: . vi. to process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless painful to perform. the pain may be due to the triviality's being embedded in a loop from to , , , . "fortran programs do mostly {number-crunching}." . vt. to reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as by a huffman code. (the file ends up looking like a paper document would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) since such compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly appropriate. (this meaning is usually used in the construction `file crunch(ing)' to distinguish it from {number-crunching}.) see {compress}. . n. the character `#'. used at xerox and cmu, among other places. see {{ascii}}. . vt. to squeeze program source into a minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute. the term came into being specifically for a famous program on the bbc micro that crunched basic source in order to make it run more quickly (it was a wholly interpretive basic, so the number of characters mattered). {obfuscated c contest} entries are often crunched; see the first example under that entry. :cruncha cruncha cruncha: /kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch*/ interj. an encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a serious {grovel}. also describes a notional sound made by groveling hardware. see {wugga wugga}, {grind} (sense ). :cryppie: /krip'ee/ n. a cryptographer. one who hacks or implements cryptographic software or hardware. :ctss: /c-t-s-s/ n. compatible time-sharing system. an early ( ) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing operating systems, ancestral to {{multics}}, {{unix}}, and {{its}}. the name {{its}} (incompatible time-sharing system) was a hack on ctss, meant both as a joke and to express some basic differences in philosophy about the way i/o services should be presented to user programs. :cty: /sit'ee/ or /c-t-y/ n. [mit] the terminal physically associated with a computer's system {{console}}. the term is a contraction of `console {tty}', that is, `console teletype'. this {{its}}- and {{tops- }}-associated term has become less common, as most unix hackers simply refer to the cty as `the console'. :cube: n. . [short for `cubicle'] a module in the open-plan offices used at many programming shops. "i've got the manuals in my cube." . a next machine (which resembles a matte-black cube). :cubing: [parallel with `tubing'] vi. . hacking on an ipsc (intel personal supercomputer) hypercube. "louella's gone cubing *again*!!" . hacking rubik's cube or related puzzles, either physically or mathematically. . an indescribable form of self-torture (see sense or ). :cursor dipped in x: n. there are a couple of metaphors in english of the form `pen dipped in x' (perhaps the most common values of x are `acid', `bile', and `vitriol'). these map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind, when one is composing on-line). "talk about a {nastygram}! he must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!" :cuspy: /kuhs'pee/ [wpi: from the dec abbreviation cusp, for `commonly used system program', i.e., a utility program used by many people] adj. . (of a program) well-written. . functionally excellent. a program that performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy. see {rude}. . [nyu] said of an attractive woman, especially one regarded as available. implies a certain curvaceousness. :cut a tape: vi. to write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape for shipment. has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium! early versions of this lexicon claimed that one never analogously speaks of `cutting a disk', but this has since been reported as live usage. related slang usages are mainstream business's `cut a check', the recording industry's `cut a record', and the military's `cut an order'. all of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete recording and duplication technologies. the first stage in manufacturing an old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in a stamping die with a precision lathe. more mundanely, the dominant technology for mass duplication of paper documents in pre-photocopying days involved "cutting a stencil", punching away portions of the wax overlay on a silk screen. more directly, paper tape with holes punched in it was an inportant early storage medium. :cybercrud: /si:'ber-kruhd/ [coined by ted nelson] n. obfuscatory tech-talk. verbiage with a high {mego} factor. the computer equivalent of bureaucratese. :cyberpunk: /si:'ber-puhnk/ [orig. by sf writer bruce bethke and/or editor gardner dozois] n.,adj. a subgenre of sf launched in by william gibson's epoch-making novel `neuromancer' (though its roots go back through vernor vinge's `true names' (see "{true names ... and other dangers}" in appendix c) to john brunner's novel `the shockwave rider'). gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly na"ive and tremendously stimulating. gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived but innovative "max headroom" tv series. see {cyberspace}, {ice}, {jack in}, {go flatline}. :cyberspace: /si:'ber-spays/ n. . notional `information-space' loaded with visual cues and navigable with brain-computer interfaces called `cyberspace decks'; a characteristic prop of {cyberpunk} sf. at the time of this writing (mid- ), serious efforts to construct {virtual reality} interfaces modeled explicitly on gibsonian cyberspace are already under way, using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and binocular tv headsets. few hackers are prepared to deny outright the possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of the network (see {network, the}). . occasionally, the metaphoric location of the mind of a person in {hack mode}. some hackers report experiencing strong eidetic imagery when in hack mode; interestingly, independent reports from multiple sources suggest that there are common features to the experience. in particular, the dominant colors of this subjective `cyberspace' are often gray and silver, and the imagery often involves constellations of marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of lines and angles, or moire patterns. :cycle: . n. the basic unit of computation. what every hacker wants more of (noted hacker bill gosper describes himself as a "cycle junkie"). one can describe an instruction as taking so many `clock cycles'. often the computer can access its memory once on every clock cycle, and so one speaks also of `memory cycles'. these are technical meanings of {cycle}. the jargon meaning comes from the observation that there are only so many cycles per second, and when you are sharing a computer the cycles get divided up among the users. the more cycles the computer spends working on your program rather than someone else's, the faster your program will run. that's why every hacker wants more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to respond. . by extension, a notional unit of *human* thought power, emphasizing that lots of things compete for the typical hacker's think time. "i refused to get involved with the rubik's cube back when it was big. knew i'd burn too many cycles on it if i let myself." . vt. syn. {bounce}, { reset}; from the phrase `cycle power'. "cycle the machine again, that serial port's still hung." :cycle crunch: n. a situation where the number of people trying to use the computer simultaneously has reached the point where no one can get enough cycles because they are spread too thin and the system has probably begun to {thrash}. this is an inevitable result of parkinson's law applied to timesharing. usually the only solution is to buy more computer. happily, this has rapidly become easier in recent years, so much so that the very term `cycle crunch' now has a faintly archaic flavor; most hackers now use workstations or personal computers as opposed to traditional timesharing systems. :cycle drought: n. a scarcity of cycles. it may be due to a {cycle crunch}, but it could also occur because part of the computer is temporarily not working, leaving fewer cycles to go around. "the {high moby} is {down}, so we're running with only half the usual amount of memory. there will be a cycle drought until it's fixed." :cycle of reincarnation: [coined by ivan sutherland ca. ] n. term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into the main cpu, at which point the cycle begins again. several iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications and floating-point processors. also known as `the wheel of life', `the wheel of samsara', and other variations of the basic hindu/buddhist theological idea. :cycle server: n. a powerful machine that exists primarily for running large {batch} jobs. implies that interactive tasks such as editing are done on other machines on the network, such as workstations. = d = ===== :d. c. power lab: n. the former site of {{sail}}. hackers thought this was very funny because the obvious connection to electrical engineering was nonexistent --- the lab was named for a donald c. power. compare {marginal hacks}. :daemon: /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ [from the mythological meaning, later rationalized as the acronym `disk and execution monitor'] n. a program that is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. the idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon). for example, under {{its}} writing a file on the {lpt} spooler's directory would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then print the file. the advantage is that programs wanting (in this example) files printed need not compete for access to the {lpt}. they simply enter their implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them. daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or be regenerated at intervals. daemon and {demon} are often used interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. the term `daemon' was introduced to computing by {ctss} people (who pronounced it /dee'mon/) and used it to refer to what its called a {dragon}. although the meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think this glossary reflects current ( ) usage. :dangling pointer: n. a reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere (in c and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at anything valid). usually this is because it formerly pointed to something that has moved or disappeared. used as jargon in a generalization of its techspeak meaning; for example, a local phone number for a person who has since moved to the other coast is a dangling pointer. :dark-side hacker: n. a criminal or malicious hacker; a {cracker}. from george lucas's darth vader, "seduced by the dark side of the force". the implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological jedi knights is intended. oppose {samurai}. :datamation: /day`t*-may'sh*n/ n. a magazine that many hackers assume all {suit}s read. used to question an unbelieved quote, as in "did you read that in `datamation?'" it used to publish something hackishly funny every once in a while, like the original paper on {come from} in , but it has since become much more exclusively {suit}-oriented and boring. :day mode: n. see {phase} (sense ). used of people only. :dd: /dee-dee/ [unix: from ibm {jcl}] vt. equivalent to {cat} or {blt}. this was originally the name of a unix copy command with special options suitable for block-oriented devices. often used in heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "let's `dd' the root partition onto a tape, then use the boot prom to load it back on to a new disk". the unix `dd( )' was designed with a weird, distinctly non-unixy keyword option syntax reminiscent of ibm system/ jcl (which had an elaborate dd `data definition' specification for i/o devices); though the command filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank. the jargon usage is now very rare outside unix sites and now nearly obsolete even there, as `dd( )' has been {deprecated} for a long time (though it has no exact replacement). replaced by {blt} or simple english `copy'. :ddt: /d-d-t/ n. . generic term for a program that assists in debugging other programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable symbolic form and letting the user change them. in this sense the term ddt is now archaic, having been widely displaced by `debugger' or names of individual programs like `dbx', `adb', `gdb', or `sdb'. . [its] under mit's fabled {{its}} operating system, ddt (running under the alias hactrn) was also used as the {shell} or top level command language used to execute other programs. . any one of several specific ddts (sense ) supported on early dec hardware. the dec pdp- reference handbook ( ) contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation for ddt which illuminates the origin of the term: historical footnote: ddt was developed at mit for the pdp- computer in . at that time ddt stood for "dec debugging tape". since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has propagated throughout the computer industry. ddt programs are now available for all dec computers. since media other than tape are now frequently used, the more descriptive name "dynamic debugging technique" has been adopted, retaining the ddt abbreviation. confusion between ddt- and another well known pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (c -h -cl ) should be minimal since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive, class of bugs. sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the handbook after the {suit}s took over and dec became much more `businesslike'. the history above is known to many old-time hackers. but there's more: peter samson, author of the {tmrc} lexicon, reports that he named `ddt' after a similar tool on the tx- computer, the direct ancestor of the pdp- built at mit's lincoln lab in . the debugger on that ground-breaking machine (the first transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name flit (flexowriter interrogation tape). :de-rezz: /dee-rez'/ [from `de-resolve' via the movie "tron"] (also `derez') . vi. to disappear or dissolve; the image that goes with it is of an object breaking up into raster lines and static and then dissolving. occasionally used of a person who seems to have suddenly `fuzzed out' mentally rather than physically. usage: extremely silly, also rare. this verb was actually invented as *fictional* hacker jargon, and adopted in a spirit of irony by real hackers years after the fact. . vt. on a macintosh, many program structures (including the code itself) are managed in small segments of the program file known as `resources'. the standard resource compiler is rez. the standard resource decompiler is derez. thus, decompiling a resource is `derezzing'. usage: very common. :dead: adj. . non-functional; {down}; {crash}ed. especially used of hardware. . at xerox parc, software that is working but not undergoing continued development and support. :dead code: n. routines that can never be accessed because all calls to them have been removed, or code that cannot be reached because it is guarded by a control structure that provably must always transfer control somewhere else. the presence of dead code may reveal either logical errors due to alterations in the program or significant changes in the assumptions and environment of the program (see also {software rot}); a good compiler should report dead code so a maintainer can think about what it means. syn. {grunge}. :deadbeef: /ded-beef/ n. the hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory (decimal - ) under a number of ibm environments, including the rs/ . as in "your program is deadbeef" (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you start from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have beefdead. :deadlock: n. . [techspeak] a situation wherein two or more processes are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do something. a common example is a program communicating to a server, which may find itself waiting for output from the server before sending anything more to it, while the server is similarly waiting for more input from the controlling program before outputting anything. (it is reported that this particular flavor of deadlock is sometimes called a `starvation deadlock', though the term `starvation' is more properly used for situations where a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough priority. another common flavor is `constipation', where each process is trying to send stuff to the other but all buffers are full because nobody is reading anything.) see {deadly embrace}. . also used of deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when two people meet in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving aside to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side without making any progress because they always both move the same way at the same time. :deadly embrace: n. same as {deadlock}, though usually used only when exactly processes are involved. this is the more popular term in europe, while {deadlock} predominates in the united states. :death code: n. a routine whose job is to set everything in the computer --- registers, memory, flags, everything --- to zero, including that portion of memory where it is running; its last act is to stomp on its own "store zero" instruction. death code isn't very useful, but writing it is an interesting hacking challenge on architectures where the instruction set makes it possible, such as the pdp- (it has also been done on the dg nova). death code is much less common, and more anti-social, on modern multi-user machines. it was very impressive on earlier hardware that provided front panel switches and displays to show register and memory contents, esp. when these were used to prod the corpse to see why it died. perhaps the ultimate death code is on the ti series, where all registers are actually in ram, and the instruction "store immediate " has the opcode " ". the pc will immediately wrap around core as many times as it can until a user hits halt. any empty memory location is death code. worse, the manufacturer recommended use of this instruction in startup code (which would be in rom and therefore survive). :death star: [from the movie "star wars"] . the at&t corporate logo, which appears on computers sold by at&t and bears an uncanny resemblance to the `death star' in the movie. this usage is particularly common among partisans of {bsd} unix, who tend to regard the at&t versions as inferior and at&t as a bad guy. copies still circulate of a poster printed by mt. xinu showing a starscape with a space fighter labeled . bsd streaking away from a broken at&t logo wreathed in flames. . at&t's internal magazine, `focus', uses `death star' for an incorrectly done at&t logo in which the inner circle in the top left is dark instead of light --- a frequent result of dark-on-light logo images. :dec wars: n. a {usenet} posting by alan hastings and steve tarr spoofing the "star wars" movies in hackish terms. some years later, esr (disappointed by hastings and tarr's failure to exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a -times-longer complete rewrite called "unix wars"; the two are often confused. :dechead: /dek'hed/ n. . a dec {field servoid}. not flattering. . [from `deadhead'] a grateful dead fan working at dec. :deckle: /dek'l/ [from dec- and {nybble}; the original spelling seems to have been `decle'] n. two {nickle}s; bits. reported among developers for mattel's gi (the intellivision games processor), a chip with -bit-wide ram but -bit-wide rom. :deep hack mode: n. see {hack mode}. :deep magic: [poss. from c. s. lewis's "narnia" books] n. an awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one not generally published and available to hackers at large (compare {black art}); one that could only have been composed by a true {wizard}. compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of {os} design used to be {deep magic}; many techniques in cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and ai still are. compare {heavy wizardry}. esp. found in comments of the form "deep magic begins here...". compare {voodoo programming}. :deep space: n. . describes the notional location of any program that has gone {off the trolley}. esp. used of programs that just sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some output is expected. "uh oh. i should have gotten a prompt ten seconds ago. the program's in deep space somewhere." compare {buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}. . the metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no longer responds coherently to normal communication. compare {page out}. :defenestration: [from the traditional czechoslovak method of assassinating prime ministers, via sf fandom] n. . proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "oh, ghod, that was *awful*!" "quick! defenestrate him!" . the act of exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a full-screen program. this comes from the dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. . the act of discarding something under the assumption that it will improve matters. "i don't have any disk space left." "well, why don't you defenestrate that megs worth of old core dumps?" . [proposed] the requirement to support a command-line interface. "it has to run on a vt ." "curses! i've been defenestrated!" :defined as: adj. in the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "pete is currently defined as bug prioritizer." compare {logical}. :dehose: /dee-hohz/ vt. to clear a {hosed} condition. :delint: /dee-lint/ v. to modify code to remove problems detected when {lint}ing. confusingly, this is also referred to as `linting' code. :delta: n. . [techspeak] a quantitative change, especially a small or incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "i just doubled the speed of my program!" "what was the delta on program size?" "about percent." (he doubled the speed of his program, but increased its size by only percent.) . [unix] a {diff}, especially a {diff} stored under the set of version-control tools called sccs (source code control system) or rcs (revision control system). . n. a small quantity, but not as small as {epsilon}. the jargon usage of {delta} and {epsilon} stems from the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities, particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the differential calculus). the term {delta} is often used, once {epsilon} has been mentioned, to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than {epsilon} but still very small. "the cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. common constructions include `within delta of ---', `within epsilon of ---': that is, close to and even closer to. :demented: adj. yet another term of disgust used to describe a program. the connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the design is bad. said, for example, of a program that generates large numbers of meaningless error messages, implying that it is on the brink of imminent collapse. compare {wonky}, {bozotic}. :demigod: n. a hacker with years of experience, a national reputation, and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. to qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it. major demigods include ken thompson and dennis ritchie (co-inventors of {{unix}} and {c}) and richard m. stallman (inventor of {emacs}). in their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major software project has been driven to completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. see also {net.god}, {true-hacker}. :demo: /de'moh/ [short for `demonstration'] . v. to demonstrate a product or prototype. a far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest than any number of {test} runs, especially when important people are watching. . n. the act of demoing. . n. esp. as `demo version', can refer to either a special version of a program (frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for demonstration purposes. :demo mode: [sun] n. . the state of being {heads down} in order to finish code in time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday. . a mode in which video games sit there by themselves running through a portion of the game, also known as `attract mode'. some serious {app}s have a demo mode they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup (for example, the microsoft windows opening screen --- which lets you impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with {microsloth windows}). :demon: n. . [mit] a portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. see {daemon}. the distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system. demons are particularly common in ai programs. for example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. these new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was. . [outside mit] often used equivalently to {daemon} --- especially in the {{unix}} world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic. :depeditate: /dee-ped'*-tayt/ [by (faulty) analogy with `decapitate'] vt. humorously, to cut off the feet of. when one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders. such letters are said to have been depeditated. :deprecated: adj. said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent and in the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a specified replacement. deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for many years. this term appears with distressing frequency in standards documents when the committees which write them decide that a sufficient number of users have written code which depends on specific features which are out of favor. :deserves to lose: adj. said of someone who willfully does the {wrong thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be {marginal}. what is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's {losing} actions. "boy, anyone who tries to use {mess-dos} deserves to {lose}!" ({{its}} fans used to say this of {{unix}}; many still do.) see also {screw}, {chomp}, {bagbiter}. :desk check: n.,v. to {grovel} over hardcopy of source code, mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs. no longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast compiles, and sophisticated debuggers --- though some maintain stoutly that it ought to be. compare {eyeball search}, {vdiff}, {vgrep}. :devil book: n. `the design and implementation of the . bsd unix operating system', by samuel j. leffler, marshall kirk mckusick, michael j. karels, and john s. quarterman (addison-wesley publishers, ) --- the standard reference book on the internals of {bsd} unix. so called because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on {daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features of unix, the `fork( )' system call). :devo: /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at symbolics] n. a person in a development group. see also {doco} and {mango}. :dickless workstation: n. extremely pejorative hackerism for `diskless workstation', a class of botches including the sun / and other machines designed exclusively to network with an expensive central disk server. these combine all the disadvantages of time-sharing with all the disadvantages of distributed personal computers; typically, they cannot even {boot} themselves without help (in the form of some kind of {breath-of-life packet}) from the server. :dictionary flame: [usenet] n. an attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. a common tactic of people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about reality. :diddle: . vt. to work with or modify in a not particularly serious manner. "i diddled a copy of {advent} so it didn't double-space all the time." "let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes away." see {tweak} and {twiddle}. . n. the action or result of diddling. see also {tweak}, {twiddle}, {frob}. :die: v. syn. {crash}. unlike {crash}, which is used primarily of hardware, this verb is used of both hardware and software. see also {go flatline}, {casters-up mode}. :die horribly: v. the software equivalent of {crash and burn}, and the preferred emphatic form of {die}. "the converter choked on an ff in its input and died horribly". :diff: /dif/ n. . a change listing, especially giving differences between (and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in the plural `diffs'). "send me your diffs for the jargon file!" compare {vdiff}. . specifically, such a listing produced by the `diff( )' command, esp. when used as specification input to the `patch( )' utility (which can actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). this is a common method of distributing patches and source updates in the unix/c world. see also {vdiff}, {mod}. :digit: n. an employee of digital equipment corporation. see also {vax}, {vms}, {pdp- }, {{tops- }}, {dechead}, {double deckers}, {field circus}. :dike: vt. to remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. a standard slogan is "when in doubt, dike it out". (the implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by increasing it.) the word `dikes' is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters', esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. to `dike something out' means to use such cutters to remove something. indeed, the tmrc dictionary defined dike as "to attack with dikes". among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as sections of code. :ding: n.,vi. . synonym for {feep}. usage: rare among hackers, but commoner in the {real world}. . `dinged': what happens when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. something trivial. "i was dinged for having a messy desk." :dink: /dink/ n. said of a machine that has the {bitty box} nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with --- sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on. first heard from an mit hacker working on a cp/m system with k, in reference to any system, then from fans of -bit architectures about -bit machines. "gnumacs will never work on that dink machine." probably derived from mainstream `dinky', which isn't sufficiently pejorative. :dinosaur: n. . any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power. used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast with newer microprocessor-based machines. in a famous quote from the unix expo, bill joy compared the mainframe in the massive ibm display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping its bodily fluids through it". ibm was not amused. compare {big iron}; see also {mainframe}. . [ibm] a very conservative user; a {zipperhead}. :dinosaur pen: n. a traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air conditioning, and a side order of halon fire extinguishers. see {boa}. :dinosaurs mating: n. said to occur when yet another {big iron} merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the {mainframe} industry. in its glory days of the s, it was `ibm and the seven dwarves': burroughs, control data, general electric, honeywell, ncr, rca, and univac. rca and ge sold out early, and it was `ibm and the bunch' (burroughs, univac, ncr, control data, and honeywell) for a while. honeywell was bought out by bull; burroughs merged with univac to form unisys (in --- this was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as this is written (early ) at&t is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first six years in the hardware industry by absorbing ncr. more such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable. :dirtball: [xerox parc] n. a small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in the major or even the minor leagues. for example, "xerox is not a dirtball company". [outsiders often observe in the parc culture an institutional arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. the brilliance and scope of parc's contributions to computer science have been such that this superior attitude is not much resented. --- esr] :dirty power: n. electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards of computers. spikes, {drop-outs}, average voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively known as {power hit}s). :disclaimer: n. [usenet] n. statement ritually appended to many usenet postings (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of the organization running the machine through which the article entered the network. :discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. the veneration of {eris}, a.k.a. discordia; widely popular among hackers. discordianism was popularized by robert shea and robert anton wilson's `{illuminatus!}' trilogy as a sort of self-subverting dada-zen for westerners --- it should on no account be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. consider, for example, the fifth commandment of the pentabarf, from `principia discordia': "a discordian is prohibited of believing what he reads." discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the illuminati. see {religion} under {appendix b}, {church of the subgenius}, and {ha ha only serious}. :disk farm: n. (also {laundromat}) a large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s). :display hack: n. a program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures. famous display hacks include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the bsd unix `rain( )' program, `worms( )' on miscellaneous unixes, and the {x} `kaleid( )' program. display hacks can also be implemented without programming by creating text files containing numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal; one notable example displayed, on any vt , a christmas tree with twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. the {hack value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the size of the code. syn. {psychedelicware}. :dissociated press: [play on `associated press'; perhaps inspired by a reference in the bugs bunny cartoon "what's up, doc?"] n. an algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a {marketroid}. you start by printing any n consecutive words (or letters) in the text. then at every step you search for any random occurrence in the original text of the last n words (or letters) already printed and then print the next word or letter. {emacs} has a handy command for this. here is a short example of word-based dissociated press applied to an earlier version of this jargon file: wart: n. a small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of an array (c has no checks for this). this is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question. here is a short example of letter-based dissociated press applied to the same source: window sysiwyg: n. a bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. indeed spectace logic or problem! a hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based dissociated press to a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (in the preceding example, `window sysiwyg' and `informash' show some promise.) iterated applications of dissociated press usually yield better results. similar techniques called `travesty generators' have been employed with considerable satirical effect to the utterances of usenet flamers; see {pseudo}. :distribution: n. . a software source tree packaged for distribution; but see {kit}. . a vague term encompassing mailing lists and usenet newsgroups (but not {bbs} {fora}); any topic-oriented message channel with multiple recipients. . an information-space domain (usually loosely correlated with geography) to which propagation of a usenet message is restricted; a much-underutilized feature. :do protocol: [from network protocol programming] vi. to perform an interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined procedure. for example, "let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant means to ask for the check, calculate the tip and everybody's share, collect money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the bill. see {protocol}. :doc: /dok/ n. common spoken and written shorthand for `documentation'. often used in the plural `docs' and in the construction `doc file' (documentation available on-line). :doco: /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at symbolics] n. a documentation writer. see also {devo} and {mango}. :documentation:: n. the multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}). hackers seldom read paper documentation and (too) often resist writing it; they prefer theirs to be terse and on-line. a common comment on this is "you can't {grep} dead trees". see {drool-proof paper}, {verbiage}. :dodgy: adj. syn. with {flaky}. preferred outside the u.s. :dogcow: /dog'kow/ n. see {moof}. :dogwash: /dog'wosh/ [from a quip in the `urgency' field of a very optional software change request, ca. . it was something like "urgency: wash your dog first".] . n. a project of minimal priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work. . v. to engage in such a project. many games and much {freeware} get written this way. :domainist: /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. . said of an {{internet address}} (as opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the right of the `@' specifies a nested series of `domains'; for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the top-level domain called com. see also {big-endian}, sense . . said of a site, mailer, or routing program which knows how to handle domainist addresses. . said of a person (esp. a site admin) who prefers domain addressing, supports a domainist mailer, or prosyletizes for domainist addressing and disdains {bang path}s. this is now ( ) semi-obsolete, as most sites have converted. :don't do that, then!: [from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a trivial complaint] stock response to a user complaint. "when i type control-s, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty seconds." "don't do that, then!" (or "so don't do that!"). compare {rtfm}. :dongle: /dong'gl/ n. . a security or {copy protection} device for commercial microcomputer programs consisting of a serialized eprom and some drivers in a d- connector shell, which must be connected to an i/o port of the computer while the program is run. programs that use a dongle query the port at startup and at programmed intervals thereafter, and terminate if it does not respond with the dongle's programmed validation code. thus, users can make as many copies of the program as they want but must pay for each dongle. the idea was clever, but it was initially a failure, as users disliked tying up a serial port this way. most dongles on the market today ( ) will pass data through the port and monitor for {magic} codes (and combinations of status lines) with minimal if any interference with devices further down the line --- this innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces of software. the devices are still not widely used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection schemes in general. . by extension, any physical electronic key or transferrable id required for a program to function. see {dongle-disk}. [note: in early , advertising copy from rainbow technologies (a manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that the word derived from "don gall", allegedly the inventor of the device. the company's receptionist will cheerfully tell you that the story is a myth invented for the ad copy. nevertheless, i expect it to haunt my life as a lexicographer for at least the next ten years. ---esr] :dongle-disk: /don'gl disk/ n. see {dongle}; a `dongle-disk' is a floppy disk which is required in order to perform some task. some contain special coding that allows an application to identify it uniquely, others *are* special code that does something that normally-resident programs don't or can't. (for example, at&t's "unix pc" would only come up in {root mode} with a special boot disk.) also called a `key disk'. :donuts: n.obs. a collective noun for any set of memory bits. this is extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it dates from the days of ferrite-{core} memories in which each bit was implemented by a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-flop. :doorstop: n. used to describe equipment that is non-functional and halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. "when we get another wyse- in here, that adm will turn into a doorstop." compare {boat anchor}. :dot file: [unix] n. a file which is not visible by default to normal directory-browsing tools (on unix, files named with a leading dot are, by convention, not normally presented in directory listings). many programs define one or more dot files in which startup or configuration information may be optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's behavior by creating the appropriate file in the current or home directory. (therefore, dot files tend to {creep} --- with every nontrivial application program defining at least one, a user's home directory can be filled with scores of dot files, of course without the user's really being aware of it.) see also {rc file}. :double bucky: adj. using both the ctrl and meta keys. "the command to burn all leds is double bucky f." this term originated on the stanford extended-ascii keyboard, and was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at mit. a typical mit comment was that the stanford {bucky bits} (control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you could type only different characters on a stanford keyboard. an obvious way to address this was simply to add more shifting keys, and this was eventually done; but a keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the keyboard. it was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be implemented as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be very much like playing a full pipe organ. this idea is mentioned in a parody of a very fine song by jeffrey moss called "rubber duckie", which was published in `the sesame street songbook' (simon and schuster , isbn - - -x). these lyrics were written on may , , in celebration of the stanford keyboard: double bucky double bucky, you're the one! you make my keyboard lots of fun. double bucky, an additional bit or two: (vo-vo-de-o!) control and meta, side by side, augmented ascii, nine bits wide! double bucky! half a thousand glyphs, plus a few! oh, i sure wish that i had a couple of bits more! perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four: double double bucky! double bucky, left and right or'd together, outta sight! double bucky, i'd like a whole word of double bucky, i'm happy i heard of double bucky, i'd like a whole word of you! --- the great quux (with apologies to jeffrey moss) [this, by the way, is an excellent example of computer {filk} --- esr] see also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple bucky}. :double deckers: n. used to describe married couples in which both partners work for digital equipment corporation. :doubled sig: [usenet] n. a {sig block} that has been included twice in a {usenet} article or, less commonly, in an electronic mail message. an article or message with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly configured software. more often, however, it reveals the author's lack of experience in electronic communication. see {biff}, {pseudo}. :down: . adj. not operating. "the up escalator is down" is considered a humorous thing to say, and "the elevator is down" always means "the elevator isn't working" and never refers to what floor the elevator is on. with respect to computers, this usage has passed into the mainstream; the extension to other kinds of machine is still hackish. . `go down' vi. to stop functioning; usually said of the {system}. the message from the {console} that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is "the system will go down in minutes". . `take down', `bring down' vt. to deactivate purposely, usually for repair work or {pm}. "i'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the tape drive." occasionally one hears the word `down' by itself used as a verb in this vt. sense. see {crash}; oppose {up}. :download: vt. to transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. oppose {upload}. however, note that ground-to-space communications has its own usage rule for this term. space-to-earth transmission is always download and the reverse upload regardless of the relative size of the computers involved. so far the in-space machines have invariably been smaller; thus the upload/download distinction has been reversed from its usual sense. :dp: /d-p/ n. . data processing. listed here because, according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a {suit}. see {dper}. . common abbrev for {dissociated press}. :dpb: /d*-pib'/ [from the pdp- instruction set] vt. to plop something down in the middle. usage: silly. "dpb yourself into that couch there." the connotation would be that the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to sit in. dpb means `deposit byte', and was the name of a pdp- instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. this usage has been kept alive by the common lisp function of the same name. :dper: /dee-pee-er/ n. data processor. hackers are absolutely amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially. "*computers* process data, not people!" see {dp}. :dragon: n. [mit] a program similar to a {daemon}, except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. a typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc. under its, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, snoopy, or the enterprise), which was generated by the `name dragon'. usage: rare outside mit --- under unix and most other oses this would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}. the best-known unix example of a dragon is `cron( )'. at sail, they called this sort of thing a `phantom'. :dragon book: n. the classic text `compilers: principles, techniques and tools', by alfred v. aho, ravi sethi, and jeffrey d. ullman (addison-wesley ; isbn - - - ), so called because of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `complexity of compiler design' and a knight bearing the lance `lalr parser generator' among his other trappings. this one is more specifically known as the `red dragon book' ( ); an earlier edition, sans sethi and titled `principles of compiler design' (alfred v. aho and jeffrey d. ullman; addison-wesley, ; isbn - - - ), was the `green dragon book' ( ). (also `new dragon book', `old dragon book'.) the horsed knight and the green dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the knight is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at a terminal showing a video-game representation of the red dragon's head while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. see also {{book titles}}. :drain: [ibm] v. syn. for {flush} (sense ). has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline. :dread high-bit disease: n. a condition endemic to prime (a.k.a. pr me) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high ( x ) bit on rather than off. this of course makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to mention talking to true -bit devices. folklore had it that prime adopted the reversed- -bit convention in order to save cents per serial line per machine; prime old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from honeywell via customer nasa's compatibility requirements and struggled manfully to cure it. whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made. see {meta bit}. a few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage. :drecnet: /drek'net/ [from yiddish/german `dreck', meaning dirt] n. deliberate distortion of decnet, a networking protocol used in the {vms} community. so called because dec helped write the ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design of drecnet in a way that made it incompatible. see also {connector conspiracy}. :driver: n. . the {main loop} of an event-processing program; the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution. . [techspeak] in `device driver', code designed to handle a particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape unit. . in the tex world and the computerized typesetting world in general, `driver' also means a program that translates some device-independent or other common format to something a real device can actually understand. :droid: n. a person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which is broken; an "it's not my job, man" attitude. typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant and bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government employees. the implication is that the rules and official procedures constitute software that the droid is executing. this becomes a problem when the software has not been properly debugged. the term `droid mentality' is also used to describe the mindset behind this behavior. compare {suit}, {marketroid}; see {-oid}. :drool-proof paper: n. documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed down}, to the point where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to have been `written on drool-proof paper'. for example, this is an actual quote from apple's laserwriter manual: "do not expose your laserwriter to open fire or flame." :drop on the floor: vt. to react to an error condition by silently discarding messages or other valuable data. "the gateway ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the floor." also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay sites that lose messages. see also {black hole}, {bit bucket}. :drop-ins: [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. spurious characters appearing on a terminal or console as a result of line noise or a system malfunction of some sort. esp. used when these are interspersed with one's own typed input. compare {drop-outs}. :drop-outs: n. . a variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch}); momentary voltage on the electrical mains. . missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or system saturation (this can happen under unix when a bad connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character interrupts). . mental glitches; used as a way of describing those occasions when the mind just seems to shut down for a couple of beats. see {glitch}, {fried}. :drugged: adj. (also `on drugs') . conspicuously stupid, heading toward {brain-damaged}. often accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint (but see {appendix b}). . of hardware, very slow relative to normal performance. :drum: adj,n. ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic media which were once state-of-the-art mass-storage devices. under bsd unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called `/dev/drum'; this has led to considerable humor and not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus `explanations' getting foisted on {newbie}s. see also "{the story of mel, a real programmer}" in {appendix a}. :drunk mouse syndrome: (also `mouse on drugs') n. a malady exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. the typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again. another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse pad degrees. at xerox parc in the s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. when the steel ball on the mouse had picked up enough {cruft} to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. however, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more frequent. finally, the mouse was declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a cfc ultrasonic bath. :duff's device: n. the most dramatic use yet seen of {fall through} in c, invented by tom duff when he was at lucasfilm. trying to {bum} all the instructions he could out of an inner loop that copied data serially onto an output port, he decided to {unroll} it. he then realized that the unrolled version could be implemented by *interlacing* the structures of a switch and a loop: register n = (count + ) / ; /* count > assumed */ switch (count % ) { case : do { *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; case : *to = *from++; } while (--n > ); } having verified that the device is valid portable c, duff announced it. c's default {fall through} in case statements has long been its most controversial single feature; duff observed that "this code forms some sort of argument in that debate, but i'm not sure whether it's for or against." :dumb terminal: n. a terminal which is one step above a {glass tty}, having a minimally-addressable cursor but no on-screen editing or other features which are claimed by a {smart terminal}. once upon a time, when glass ttys were common and addressable cursors were something special, what is now called a dumb terminal could pass for a smart terminal. :dumbass attack: /duhm'as *-tak'/ [purdue] n. notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while running as {root} under unix, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or `mkfs' on a mounted file system. compare {adger}. :dumbed down: adj. simplified, with a strong connotation of *over*simplified. often, a {marketroid} will insist that the interfaces and documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer has burned untold gallons of midnight oil making it smart. this creates friction. see {user-friendly}. :dump: n. . an undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially one consisting of hex or octal {runes} describing the byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or some file. in {elder days}, debugging was generally done by `groveling over' a dump (see {grovel}); increasing use of high-level languages and interactive debuggers has made this uncommon, and the term `dump' now has a faintly archaic flavor. . a backup. this usage is typical only at large timesharing installations. :dumpster diving: /dump'-ster di:'-ving/ n. . the practice of sifting refuse from an office or technical installation to extract confidential data, especially security-compromising information (`dumpster' is an americanism for what is elsewhere called a `skip'). back in at&t's monopoly days, before paper shredders became common office equipment, phone phreaks (see {phreaking}) used to organize regular dumpster runs against phone company plants and offices. discarded and damaged copies of at&t internal manuals taught them much. the technique is still rumored to be a favorite of crackers operating against careless targets. . the practice of raiding the dumpsters behind buildings where producers and/or consumers of high-tech equipment are located, with the expectation (usually justified) of finding discarded but still-valuable equipment to be nursed back to health in some hacker's den. experienced dumpster-divers not infrequently accumulate basements full of moldering (but still potentially useful) {cruft}. :dup killer: /d[y]oop kill'r/ [fidonet] n. software that is supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may have reached the fidonet system via different routes. :dup loop: /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [fidonet] n. an incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages on one or more {echo}es, with different identification information that renders {dup killer}s ineffective. if such a duplicate message eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}. :dusty deck: n. old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). the term implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. used esp. when referring to old scientific and {number-crunching} software, much of which was written in fortran and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to replace. see {fossil}. :dwim: /dwim/ [acronym, `do what i mean'] . adj. able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided. . n.,obs. the bbnlisp/interlisp function that attempted to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common errors. see {hairy}. . occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see {legalese}). warren teitelman originally wrote dwim to fix his typos and spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different. this led a number of victims of dwim to claim the acronym stood for `damn warren's infernal machine!'. in one notorious incident, warren added a dwim feature to the command interpreter used at xerox parc. one day another hacker there typed `delete *$' to free up some disk space. (the editor there named backup files by appending `$' to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) it happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so dwim helpfully reported `*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'.' it then started to delete all the files on the disk! the hacker managed to stop it with a {vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half dozen or so files were lost. the hacker later said he had been sorely tempted to go to warren's office, tie warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then type `delete *$' twice. dwim is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction the ideal computer would have. back when proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about `dwimc' (do what i mean, correctly). a related term, more often seen as a verb, is dtrt (do the right thing); see {right thing}. :dynner: /din'r/ bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. usage: rare and extremely silly. see also {playte}, {tayste}, {crumb}. = e = ===== :earthquake: [ibm] n. the ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware. hackish sources at ibm deny the rumor that the bay area quake of was initiated by the company to test quality-assurance procedures at its california plants. :easter egg: [from the custom of the easter egg hunt observed in the u.s. and many psparts of europe] n. . a message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code. . a message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a pc, the bios rom) in response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. one well-known early easter egg found in a couple of oses caused them to respond to the command `make love' with `not war?'. many personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in rom, including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire development team. :easter egging: [ibm] n. the act of replacing unrelated parts more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. hackers consider this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and do not love them for it. compare {shotgun debugging}. :eat flaming death: imp. a construction popularized among hackers by the infamous {cpu wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously turgid line in a wwii-era anti-nazi propaganda comic that ran "eat flaming death, non-aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also reported that the firesign theater's album "in the next world, you're on your own" included the phrase "eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility. "eat flaming death, {{ebcdic}} users!" :ebcdic:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [abbreviation, extended binary coded decimal interchange code] n. an alleged character set used on ibm {dinosaur}s. it exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ascii punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version of ebcdic you're looking at). ibm adapted ebcdic from {{punched card}} code in the early s and promulgated it as a customer-control tactic (see {connector conspiracy}), spurning the already established ascii standard. today, ibm claims to be an open-systems company, but ibm's own description of the ebcdic variants and how to convert between them is still internally classified top-secret, burn-before-reading. hackers blanch at the very *name* of ebcdic and consider it a manifestation of purest {evil}. see also {fear and loathing}. :echo: [fidonet] n. a {topic group} on {fidonet}'s echomail system. compare {newsgroup}. :eighty-column mind: [ibm] n. the sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). it is said that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder of ibm, will be buried `face down, -edge first' (the -edge being the bottom of the card). this directive is inscribed on ibm's and card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "the last bug", the climactic lines of which are as follows: he died at the console of hunger and thirst. next day he was buried, face down, -edge first. the eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate ibm's customer base and its thinking. see {ibm}, {fear and loathing}, {card walloper}. :el camino bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. the road mundanely called el camino real, a road through the san francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to mexico city and many portions of which are still intact. navigation on the san francisco peninsula is usually done relative to el camino real, which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. el camino real runs right past stanford university and so is familiar to hackers. the spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/) means `royal'; el camino real is `the royal road'. in the fortran language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar `real' types). when a hacker from mit visited stanford in , he remarked what a long road el camino real was. making a pun on `real', he started calling it `el camino double precision' --- but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it `el camino bignum', and that name has stuck. (see {bignum}.) :elder days: n. the heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre- ); the era of the {pdp- }, {teco}, {{its}}, and the arpanet. this term has been rather consciously adopted from j. r. r. tolkien's fantasy epic `the lord of the rings'. compare {iron age}; see also {elvish}. :elegant: [from mathematical usage] adj. combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. higher praise than `clever', `winning', or even {cuspy}. :elephantine: adj. used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source form. an elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). in extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. usage: semi-humorous. compare `has the elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative {monstrosity}. see also {second-system effect} and {baroque}. :elevator controller: n. another archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). during one period ( -- ) in the deliberations of ansi x j (the c standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "you can't require `printf( )' to be part of the default runtime library --- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of several {holy wars}. :eliza effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ [ai community] n. the tendency of humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience. for example, there is nothing magic about the symbol `+' that makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just that people associate it with addition. using `+' or `plus' to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the eliza effect. this term comes from the famous eliza program by joseph weizenbaum, which simulated a rogerian psychoanalyst by rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient. it worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. it was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with eliza. all this was due to people's tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put there. the eliza effect is a {good thing} when writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an artificial intelligence system. compare {ad-hockery}; see also {ai-complete}. :elvish: n. . the tengwar of feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the beautiful celtic half-uncial hand of the `book of kells'. invented and described by j. r. r. tolkien in `the lord of the rings' as an orthography for his fictional `elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and phonetically elegant) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be interested by artificial languages in general). it is traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and the like to support a feanorian typeface as one of their demo items. see also {elder days}. . by extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a graphics device. . the typeface mundanely called `b"ocklin', an art-decoish display font. :emacs: /ee'maks/ [from editing macros] n. the ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire lisp system inside it. it was originally written by richard stallman in {teco} under {{its}} at the mit ai lab; ai memo described it as "an advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display editor". it has since been reimplemented any number of times, by various hackers, and versions exist which run under most major operating systems. perhaps the most widely used version, also written by stallman and now called "{gnu} emacs" or {gnumacs}, runs principally under unix. it includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive mail; many hackers spend up to % of their {tube time} inside it. other variants include {gosmacs}, cca emacs, unipress emacs, montgomery emacs, jove, epsilon, and microemacs. some emacs versions running under window managers iconify as an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the editor does not (yet) include. indeed, some hackers find emacs too heavyweight and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as `escape meta alt control shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. other spoof expansions include `eight megabytes and constantly swapping', `eventually `malloc()'s all computer storage', and `emacs makes a computer slow' (see {{recursive acronym}}). see also {vi}. :email: /ee'mayl/ . n. electronic mail automatically passed through computer networks and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. contrast {snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. see {network address}. . vt. to send electronic mail. oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the oed; it means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or arranged in a net work". a use from is given. the word is derived from french `emmailleure', network. :emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n. an ascii glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email or news. although originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other explicit humor indication) are virtually required under certain circumstances in high-volume text-only communication forums such as usenet; the lack of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non- %-serious comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by {newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s. hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in common use. these include: :-) `smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness, occasionally sarcasm) :-( `frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset) ;-) `half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious}); also known as `semi-smiley' or `winkey face'. :-/ `wry face' (these may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head sideways, to the left.) the first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered. hyphenless forms of them are common on compuserve, genie, and bix; see also {bixie}. on {usenet}, `smiley' is often used as a generic term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically for the happy-face emoticon. it appears that the emoticon was invented by one scott fahlman on the cmu {bboard} systems around . he later wrote: "i wish i had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for posterity, but i had no idea that i was starting something that would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [gls confirms that he remembers this original posting]. note for the {newbie}: overuse of the smiley is a mark of loserhood! more than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that you've gone over the line. :empire: n. any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by peter langston many years ago. there are five or six multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication, and one single-player version implemented for both unix and vms; the latter is even available as ms-dos freeware. all are notoriously addictive. :engine: n. . a piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}. today we have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser printer. . an analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'. the hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original, pre-industrial-revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). this sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of power-transducing machinery in charles babbage's time, which explains why he named the stored-program computer that he designed in the `analytical engine'. :english: . n.,obs. the source code for a program, which may be in any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced from it by a compiler. the idea behind the term is that to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming language is at least as readable as english. usage: used mostly by old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. . the official name of the database language used by the pick operating system, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged sql with delusions of grandeur. the name permits {marketroid}s to say "yes, and you can program our computers in english!" to ignorant {suit}s without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws. :enhancement: n. {marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. this abuse of language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into increased revenue. a hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a {feature} --- or perhaps save some effort by declaring the bug itself to be a feature. :enq: /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ascii mnemonic enquire for ] an on-line convention for querying someone's availability. after opening a {talk mode} connection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type `syn syn enq?' (the syns representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect a return of {ack} or {nak} depending on whether or not the person felt interruptible. compare {ping}, {finger}, and the usage of `foo?' listed under {talk mode}. :eof: /e-o-f/ [abbreviation, `end of file'] n. . [techspeak] refers esp. to whatever {out-of-band} value is returned by c's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in other environments) when end of file has been reached. this value is - under c libraries postdating v unix, but was originally . . [unix] the keyboard character (usually control-d, the ascii eot (end of transmission) character) which is mapped by the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. . used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go further. "yeah, i looked for a list of mnemonics to post as a joke, but i hit eof pretty fast; all the library had was a {jcl} manual." see also {eol}. :eol: /e-o-l/ [end of line] n. syn. for {newline}, derived perhaps from the original cdc pascal. now rare, but widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. used in the example entry under {bnf}. see also {eof}. :eou: /e-o-u/ n. the mnemonic of a mythical ascii control character (end of user) that could make an asr- teletype explode on receipt. this parodied the numerous obscure delimiter and control characters left in ascii from the days when it was associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g., fs, gs, rs, us, em, sub, etx, and esp. eot). it is worth remembering that asr- s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in front of a {tube} or flatscreen today. :epoch: [unix: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] n. the time and date corresponding to in an operating system's clock and timestamp values. under most unix versions the epoch is : : gmt, january , ; under vms, it's : : gmt of november , (base date of the u.s. naval observatory's ephemerides). system time is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the epoch. weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap around}), which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems counting ticks per second, a signed -bit count of ticks is good only for . years. the -tick-per-second clock of unix is good only until january , , assuming at least some software continues to consider it signed and that word lengths don't increase by then. see also {wall time}. :epsilon: [see {delta}] . n. a small quantity of anything. "the cost is epsilon." . adj. very small, negligible; less than {marginal}. "we can get this feature for epsilon cost." . `within epsilon of': close enough to be indistinguishable for all practical purposes. this is even closer than being `within delta of'. "that's not what i asked for, but it's within epsilon of what i wanted." alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is required to get it there: "my program is within epsilon of working." :epsilon squared: n. a quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. if you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon}, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the noise}. :era, the: syn. {epoch}. webster's unabridged makes these words almost synonymous, but `era' usually connotes a span of time rather than a point in time. the {epoch} usage is recommended. :eric conspiracy: n. a shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. ; this was doubtless influenced by the numerous `eric' jokes in the monty python oeuvre. there do indeed seem to be considerably more mustachioed erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. well-known examples include eric allman (he of the `allman style' described under {indent style}) and erik fair (co-author of nntp); your editor has heard from about fourteen others by email, and the organization line `eric conspiracy secret laboratories' now emanates regularly from more than one site. :eris: /e'ris/ n. the greek goddess of chaos, discord, confusion, and things you know not of; her name was latinized to discordia and she was worshiped by that name in rome. not a very friendly deity in the classical original, she was reinvented as a more benign personification of creative anarchy starting in by the adherents of {discordianism} and has since been a semi-serious subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures, including hackerdom. see {discordianism}, {church of the subgenius}. :erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ n. [helsinki university of technology, finland] n. english-language university slang for electronics. often used by hackers in helsinki, maybe because good electronics excites them and makes them warm. :error : [xerox parc] n. . predicating one research effort upon the success of another. . allowing your own research effort to be placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a research effort or not). :essentials: n. things necessary to maintain a productive and secure hacking environment. "a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a -megahertz box with meg of core and a -megabyte disk supporting full unix with source and x windows and emacs and uucp via a 'blazer to a friendly internet site, and thou." :evil: adj. as used by hackers, implies that some system, program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the bother of dealing with. unlike the adjectives in the {cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil' does not imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. this is more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a moral one in the mainstream sense. "we thought about adding a {blue glue} interface but decided it was too evil to deal with." "{teco} is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos." often pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/. :exa-: /ek's*/ [si] pref. see {{quantifiers}}. :examining the entrails: n. the process of {grovel}ling through a core dump or hex image in the attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. the reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. compare {runes}, {incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}. :exch: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt. to exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. if you point to two people sitting down and say "exch!", you are asking them to trade places. exch, meaning exchange, was originally the name of a pdp- instruction that exchanged the contents of a register and a memory location. many newer hackers tend to be thinking instead of the {postscript} exchange operator (which is usually written in lowercase). :excl: /eks'kl/ n. abbreviation for `exclamation point'. see {bang}, {shriek}, {{ascii}}. :exe: /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /e-x-e/ n. an executable binary file. some operating systems (notably ms-dos, vms, and twenex) use the extension .exe to mark such files. this usage is also occasionally found among unix programmers even though unix executables don't have any required suffix. :exec: /eg-zek'/ vt.,n. . [unix: from `execute'] synonym for {chain}, derives from the `exec( )' call. . [from `executive'] obs. the command interpreter for an {os} (see {shell}); term esp. used around mainframes, and prob. derived from univac's archaic exec and exec operating systems. . at ibm and vm/cms shops, the equivalent of a shell command file (among vm/cms users). the mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is *not* used. to a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program, never a person. :exercise, left as an: [from technical books] used to complete a proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one entirely. the complete phrase is: "the proof (or the rest) is left as an exercise for the reader." this comment *has* occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences. :eyeball search: n. to look for something in a mass of code or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern matching software like {grep} or any other automated search tool. also called a {vgrep}; compare {vdiff}, {desk check}. = f = ===== :fab: /fab/ [from `fabricate'] v. . to produce chips from a design that may have been created by someone at another company. fabbing chips based on the designs of others is the activity of a {silicon foundry}. to a hacker, `fab' is practically never short for `fabulous'. . `fab line': the production system (lithography, diffusion, etching, etc.) for chips at a chip manufacturer. different `fab lines' are run with different process parameters, die sizes, or technologies, or simply to provide more manufacturing volume. :face time: n. time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links). "oh, yeah, i spent some face time with him at the last usenix." :factor: n. see {coefficient of x}. :fall over: [ibm] vi. yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}. `fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}. :fall through: v. (n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through') . to exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits from the middle of it. this usage appears to be *really* old, dating from the s and s. . to fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of code. . in c, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in a switch statement reaches a `case' label other than by jumping there from the switch header, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a `break'. a trivial example: switch (color) { case green: do_green(); break; case pink: do_pink(); /* fall through */ case red: do_red(); break; default: do_blue(); break; } the variant spelling `/* fall thru */' is also common. the effect of this code is to `do_green()' when color is `green', `do_red()' when color is `red', `do_blue()' on any other color other than `pink', and (and this is the important part) `do_pink()' *and then* `do_red()' when color is `pink'. fall-through is {considered harmful} by some, though there are contexts (such as the coding of state machines) in which it is natural; it is generally considered good practice to include a comment highlighting the fall-through where one would normally expect a break. :fandango on core: [unix/c hackers, from the mexican dance] n. in c, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a {core dump}, or corrupts the `malloc( )' {arena} in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have `done a fandango on core'. on low-end personal machines without an mmu, this can corrupt the os itself, causing massive lossage. other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may be substituted. see {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {core}. :faq list: /f-a-q list/ or /fak list/ [usenet] n. a compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall frequently asked questions. this lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection of one kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular posting. examples: "what is the proper type of null?" and "what's that funny name for the `#' character?" are both frequently asked questions. several extant faq lists do (or should) make reference to the jargon file (the on-line version of this lexicon). :faql: /fa'kl/ n. syn. {faq list}. :farming: [adelaide university, australia] n. what the heads of a disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the magnetic media. associated with a {crash}. typically used as follows: "oh no, the machine has just crashed; i hope the hard drive hasn't gone {farming} again." :fascist: adj. . said of a computer system with excessive or annoying security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. the implication is that said policies are preventing hackers from getting interesting work done. the variant `fascistic' seems to have been preferred at mit, poss. by analogy with `touristic' (see {tourist}). . in the design of languages and other software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most restrictive and structured way of capturing a particular function; the implication is that this may be desirable in order to simplify the implementation or provide tighter error checking. compare {bondage-and-discipline language}, but that term is global rather than local. :fat electrons: n. old-time hacker david cargill's theory on the causation of computer glitches. your typical electric utility draws its line current out of the big generators with a pair of coil taps located near the top of the dynamo. when the normal tap brushes get dirty, they take them off line to clean up, and use special auxiliary taps on the *bottom* of the coil. now, this is a problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary or `thin' electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that are heavier and so settle to the bottom of the generator. these flow down ordinary wires just fine, but when they have to turn a sharp corner (as in an integrated-circuit via) they're apt to get stuck. this is what causes computer glitches. [fascinating. obviously, fat electrons must gain mass by {bogon} absorption --- esr] compare {bogon}, {magic smoke}. :faulty: adj. non-functional; buggy. same denotation as {bletcherous}, {losing}, q.v., but the connotation is much milder. :fd leak: /f-d leek/ n. a kind of programming bug analogous to a {core leak}, in which a program fails to close file descriptors (`fd's) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. see {leak}. :fear and loathing: [from hunter thompson] n. a state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous --- intel s, or {cobol}, or {{ebcdic}}, or any {ibm} machine except the rios (a.k.a. the rs/ ). "ack! they want pcs to be able to talk to the ai machine. fear and loathing time!" :feature: n. . a good property or behavior (as of a program). whether it was intended or not is immaterial. . an intended property or behavior (as of a program). whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a {misfeature}). . a surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is purposely inconsistent because it works better that way --- such an inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. this kind of feature is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry for a classic example. . a property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute. for example, one feature of common lisp's `format' function is the ability to print numbers in two different roman-numeral formats (see {bells, whistles, and gongs}). . a property or behavior that was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your way. . a bug that has been documented. to call something a feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and that the program responded in a way that was unexpected but not strictly incorrect. a standard joke is that a bug can be turned into a {feature} simply by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "that's not a bug, that's a feature!" is a common catchphrase. see also {feetch feetch}, {creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green lightning}. the relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange between two hackers on an airliner: a: "this seat doesn't recline." b: "that's not a bug, that's a feature. there is an emergency exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to be kept clear." a: "oh. then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the spacing between rows here." b: "yes. but if they'd increased spacing in only one section it would have been a wart --- they would've had to make nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced seats." a: "a miswart, actually. if they increased spacing throughout they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. so unequal spacing would actually be the right thing." b: "indeed." `undocumented feature' is a common, allegedly humorous euphemism for a {bug}. :feature creature: [poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror movie] n. . one who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision, or {taste}. . alternately, a semi-mythical being that induces otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks. see also {feeping creaturism}, {creeping featurism}. :feature key: n. the macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower', `pretzel', `clover', `propeller', `beanie' (an apparent reference to the major feature of a propeller beanie), {splat}, or the `command key'. the mac's equivalent of an {alt} key. the proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces. many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that appears on the feature key. its oldest name is `cross of st. hannes', but it occurs in pre-christian viking art as a decorative motif. throughout scandinavia today the road agencies use it to mark sites of historical interest. many of these are old churches; hence, the swedish idiom for the symbol is `kyrka', cognate to english `church' and scots-dialect `kirk' but pronounced /shir'k*/ in modern swedish. this is in fact where apple got the symbol; they give the translation "interesting feature"! :feature shock: [from alvin toffler's book title `future shock'] n. a user's (or programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a package that has too many features and poor introductory material. :featurectomy: /fee`ch*r-ek't*-mee/ n. the act of removing a feature from a program. featurectomies come in two flavors, the `righteous' and the `reluctant'. righteous featurectomies are performed because the remover believes the program would be more elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and better way to achieve the same end. (this is not quite the same thing as removing a {misfeature}.) reluctant featurectomies are performed to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or execution speed. :feep: /feep/ . n. the soft electronic `bell' sound of a display terminal (except for a vt- ); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to prefer {beep}). . vi. to cause the display to make a feep sound. asr- s (the original ttys) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. alternate forms: {beep}, `bleep', or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (jeff macnelly, in his comic strip "shoe", uses the word `eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) the term `breedle' was sometimes heard at sail, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a raspberry or bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the sound of a star trek communicator's beep lasting for seconds). the `feeper' on a vt- has been compared to the sound of a ' chevy stripping its gears. see also {ding}. :feeper: /fee'pr/ n. the device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the {feep} sound. :feeping creature: [from {feeping creaturism}] n. an unnecessary feature; a bit of {chrome} that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features. :feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch*r-izm/ n. a deliberate spoonerism for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. this term isn't really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. it is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises. :feetch feetch: /feech feech/ interj. if someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you might respond: "feetch, feetch!" the meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. with enthusiasm, it means something like "boy, that's great! what a great hack!" grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it means "i don't know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and complicated thing". with a tone of resignation, it means, "well, i'd rather keep it simple, but i suppose it has to be done". :fence: n. . a sequence of one or more distinguished ({out-of-band}) characters (or other data items), used to delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel'). the nul (ascii ) character that terminates strings in c is a fence. hex ff is also (though slightly less frequently) used this way. see {zigamorph}. . [among users of optimizing compilers] any technique, usually exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that blocks certain optimizations. used when explicit mechanisms are not available or are overkill. typically a hack: "i call a dummy procedure there to force a flush of the optimizer's register-coloring info" can be expressed by the shorter "that's a fence procedure". :fencepost error: n. . a problem with the discrete equivalent of a boundary condition. often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. from the following problem: "if you build a fence feet long with posts feet apart, how many posts do you need?" either or is a better answer than the obvious . for example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want to process items m through n; how many items are there? the obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer is n - m + . a program that used the `obvious' formula would have a fencepost error in it. see also {zeroth} and {off-by-one error}, and note that not all off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. the game of musical chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where n people try to sit in n - chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one should count one or both ends of a row. . occasionally, an error induced by unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for instance) screw up your hash table. :fepped out: /fept owt/ adj. the symbolics lisp machine has a front-end processor called a `fep' (compare sense of {box}). when the main processor gets {wedged}, the fep takes control of the keyboard and screen. such a machine is said to have `fepped out'. :fidonet: n. a worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which exchange mail, discussion groups, and files. founded in and originally consisting only of ibm pcs and compatibles, fidonet now includes such diverse machines as apple ][s, ataris, amigas, and unix systems. though it is much younger than {usenet}, fidonet is already (in early ) a significant fraction of usenet's size at some systems. :field circus: [a derogatory pun on `field service'] n. the field service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but especially dec. there is an entire genre of jokes about dec field circus engineers: q: how can you recognize a dec field circus engineer with a flat tire? a: he's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat. q: how can you recognize a dec field circus engineer who is out of gas? a: he's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat. [see {easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.] there is also the `field circus cheer' (from the {plan file} for dec on mit-ai): maynard! maynard! don't mess with us! we're mean and we're tough! if you get us confused we'll screw up your stuff. (dec's service hq is located in maynard, massachusetts.) :field servoid: [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/ n. representative of a field service organization (see {field circus}). this has many of the implications of {droid}. :fight-o-net: [fidonet] n. deliberate distortion of {fidonet}, often applied after a flurry of {flamage} in a particular {echo}, especially the sysop echo or fidonews (see {'snooze}). :file attach: [fidonet] . n. a file sent along with a mail message from one bbs to another. . vt. sending someone a file by using the file attach option in a bbs mailer. :file request: [fidonet] . n. the {fidonet} equivalent of {ftp}, in which one bbs system automatically dials another and {snarf}s one or more files. often abbreviated `freq'; files are often announced as being "available for freq" in the same way that files are announced as being "available for/by anonymous ftp" on the internet. . vt. the act of getting a copy of a file by using the file request option of the bbs mailer. :file signature: n. a {magic number} sense . :filk: /filk/ [from sf fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a new word] n.,v. a `filk' is a popular or folk song with lyrics revised or completely new lyrics, intended for humorous effect when read and/or to be sung late at night at sf conventions. there is a flourishing subgenre of these called `computer filks', written by hackers and often containing rather sophisticated technical humor. see {double bucky} for an example. compare {hing} and {newsfroup}. :film at : [mit: in parody of tv newscasters] . used in conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic implication that these events are earth-shattering. "{{its}} crashes; film at ." "bug found in scheduler; film at ." . also widely used outside mit to indicate that additional information will be available at some future time, *without* the implication of anything particularly ordinary about the referenced event. for example, "the mail file server died this morning; we found garbage all over the root directory. film at ." would indicate that a major failure had occurred but the people working on it have no additional information about it. use of the phrase in this way suggests gently people would appreciate it if users would quit bothering them and wait for the : news for additional information. :filter: [orig. {{unix}}, now also in {{ms-dos}}] n. a program that processes an input data stream into an output data stream in some well-defined way, and does no i/o to anywhere else except possibly on error conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a `pipeline' (see {plumbing}). :finagle's law: n. the generalized or `folk' version of {murphy's law}, fully named "finagle's law of dynamic negatives" and usually rendered "anything that can go wrong, will". one variant favored among hackers is "the perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum" (but see also {hanlon's razor}). the label `finagle's law' was popularized by sf author larry niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this `belter' culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god finagle and his mad prophet murphy. :fine: [wpi] adj. good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}. the word `fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison to the higher level implied by {cuspy}. :finger: [waits, via bsd unix] . n. a program that displays a particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote system. typically shows full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line, and terminal location (where applicable). may also display a {plan file} left by the user. . vt. to apply finger to a username. . vt. by extension, to check a human's current state by any means. "foodp?" "t!" "ok, finger lisa and see if she's idle." . any picture (composed of ascii characters) depicting `the finger'. originally a humorous component of one's plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense ), it has entered the arsenal of some {flamer}s. :finger-pointing syndrome: n. all-too-frequent result of bugs, esp. in new or experimental configurations. the hardware vendor points a finger at the software. the software vendor points a finger at the hardware. all the poor users get is the finger. :finn: [irc] v. to pull rank on somebody based on the amount of time one has spent on {irc}. the term derives from the fact that irc was originally written in finland in . :firebottle: n. a large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical device, similar in function to a fet but constructed out of glass, metal, and vacuum. characterized by high cost, low density, low reliability, high-temperature operation, and high power dissipation. sometimes mistakenly called a `tube' in the u.s. or a `valve' in england; another hackish term is {glassfet}. :firefighting: n. . what sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational problems. an opposite of hacking. "been hacking your new newsreader?" "no, a power glitch hosed the network and i spent the whole afternoon fighting fires." . the act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project, esp. to get it out before deadline. see also {gang bang}, {mongolian hordes technique}; however, the term `firefighting' connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding features. :firehose syndrome: n. in mainstream folklore it is observed that trying to drink from a firehose can be a good way to rip your lips off. on computer networks, the absence or failure of flow control mechanisms can lead to situations in which the sending system sprays a massive flood of packets at an unfortunate receiving system; more than it can handle. compare {overrun}, {buffer overflow}. :firewall code: n. the code you put in a system (say, a telephone switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. since users always want to be able to do everything but never want to suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall is a question not only of defensive coding but also of interface presentation, so that users don't even get curious about those corners of a system where they can burn themselves. :firewall machine: n. a dedicated gateway machine with special security precautions on it, used to service outside network connections and dial-in lines. the idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely administered machines hidden behind it from {cracker}s. the typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based unix box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and public network ports on it but just one carefully watched connection back to the rest of the cluster. the special precautions may include threat monitoring, callback, and even a complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming ids or activity patterns. syn. {flytrap}, {venus flytrap}. :fireworks mode: n. the mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is performing a {crash and burn} operation. :firmy: /fer'mee/ syn. {stiffy} (a . -inch floppy disk). :fish: [adelaide university, australia] n. . another {metasyntactic variable}. see {foo}. derived originally from the monty python skit in the middle of "the meaning of life" entitled "find the fish". . a pun for `microfiche'. a microfiche file cabinet may be referred to as a `fish tank'. :fish queue: [acronym, by analogy with fifo (first in, first out)] n. `first in, still here'. a joking way of pointing out that processing of a particular sequence of events or requests has stopped dead. also `fish mode' and `fishnet'; the latter may be applied to any network that is running really slowly or exhibiting extreme flakiness. :fitnr: // [thinking machines, inc.] fixed in the next release. a written-only notation attached to bug reports. often wishful thinking. :fix: n.,v. what one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be ignored. :flag: n. a variable or quantity that can take on one of two values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done. "this flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing the message." "the program status word contains several flag bits." used of humans analogously to {bit}. see also {hidden flag}, {mode bit}. :flag day: n. a software change that is neither forward- nor backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to reverse. "can we install that without causing a flag day for all users?" this term has nothing to do with the use of the word {flag} to mean a variable that has two values. it came into use when a massive change was made to the {{multics}} timesharing system to convert from the old ascii code to the new one; this was scheduled for flag day (a u.s. holiday), june , . see also {backward combatability}. :flaky: adj. (var sp. `flakey') subject to frequent {lossage}. this use is of course related to the common slang use of the word to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. a system that is flaky is working, sort of --- enough that you are tempted to try to use it --- but fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. commonwealth hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}. :flamage: /flay'm*j/ n. flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings to {usenet} or other electronic {fora}. often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. see {flame}. :flame: . vi. to post an email message intended to insult and provoke. . vi. to speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. . vt. either of senses or , directed with hostility at a particular person or people. . n. an instance of flaming. when a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the participants "now you're just flaming" or "stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak). usenetter marc ramsey, who was at wpi from to , adds: "i am % certain that the use of `flame' originated at wpi. those who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use a tty for `real work' came to be known as `flaming asshole lusers'. other particularly annoying people became `flaming asshole ravers', which shortened to `flaming ravers', and ultimately `flamers'. i remember someone picking up on the human torch pun, but i don't think `flame on/off' was ever much used at wpi." see also {asbestos}. the term may have been independently invented at several different places; it is also reported that `flaming' was in use to mean something like `interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions' (late-night bull sessions) at carleton college during -- . it's possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than that. the poet chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced computing device of the day. in chaucer's `troilus and cressida', cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle pandarus then observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." this phrase seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in middle english as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. one suspects that chaucer would be right at home on usenet. :flame bait: n. a posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that invites flames in reply. :flame on: vi.,interj. . to begin to {flame}. the punning reference to marvel comics's human torch is no longer widely recognized. . to continue to flame. see {rave}, {burble}. :flame war: n. (var. `flamewar') an acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as {usenet}. :flamer: n. one who habitually {flame}s. said esp. of obnoxious {usenet} personalities. :flap: vt. . to unload a dectape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...). old-time hackers at mit tell of the days when the disk was device and {microtape}s were , ,... and attempting to flap device would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk. . by extension, to unload any magnetic tape. see also {macrotape}. modern cartridge tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (the term could well be re-applied to dec's tk cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many tape-eating failure modes.) :flarp: /flarp/ [rutgers university] n. yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). among those who use it, it is associated with a legend that any program not containing the word `flarp' somewhere will not work. the legend is discreetly silent on the reliability of programs which *do* contain the magic word. :flat: adj. . lacking any complex internal structure. "that {bitty box} has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." the verb form is {flatten}. . said of a memory architecture (like that of the vax or x ) that is one big linear address space (typically with each possible value of a processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of the x ) in which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair (segmented designs are generally considered {cretinous}). note that sense (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually used pejoratively, while sense is a {good thing}. :flat-ascii: adj. said of a text file that contains only -bit ascii characters and uses only ascii-standard control characters (that is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter or markup language, and no {meta}-characters). syn. {plain-ascii}. compare {flat-file}. :flat-file: adj. a {flatten}ed representation of some database or tree or network structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one in {flat-ascii} form. :flatten: vt. to remove structural information, esp. to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to {flat-ascii}. "this code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent {canonical} form." :flavor: n. . variety, type, kind. "ddt commands come in two flavors." "these lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." see {vanilla}. . the attribute that causes something to be {flavorful}. usually used in the phrase "yields additional flavor". "this convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down." see {vanilla}. this usage was certainly reinforced by the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) --- however, hackish use of `flavor' at mit predated qcd. . the term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the lisp machine flavors system. though the flavors design has been superseded (notably by the common lisp clos facility), the term `flavor' is still used as a general synonym for `class' by some lisp hackers. :flavorful: adj. full of {flavor}; esthetically pleasing. see {random} and {losing} for antonyms. see also the entries for {taste} and {elegant}. :flippy: /flip'ee/ n. a single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by addition of a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped over for the second side to be accessible. no longer common. :flood: [irc] v. to dump large amounts of text onto an {irc} channel. this is especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the other users are trying to carry on a serious conversation. :flowchart:: [techspeak] n. an archaic form of visual control-flow specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various shapes. hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate them with {cobol} programmers, {card walloper}s, and other lower forms of life. this is because (from a hacker's point of view) they are no easier to read than code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it or require extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code). see also {pdl}, sense . :flower key: [mac users] n. see {feature key}. :flush: v. . to delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an operation. "all that nonsense has been flushed." . [unix/c] to force buffered i/o to disk, as with an `fflush( )' call. this is *not* an abort or deletion as in sense , but a demand for early completion! . to leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal). "i'm going to flush now." "time to flush." . to exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a person. `flush' was standard its terminology for aborting an output operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but was not, as having been flushed. it is speculated that this term arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they can be printed. the unix/c usage, on the other hand, was propagated by the `fflush( )' call in c's standard i/o library (though it is reported to have been in use among bliss programmers at dec and on honeywell and ibm machines as far back as ). unix/c hackers find the its usage confusing, and vice versa. :flypage: /fli: payj/n. (alt. `fly page') a {banner}, sense . :flyspeck : n. standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by analogy with such names as `helvetica ' for -point helvetica). legal boilerplate is usually printed in flyspeck . :flytrap: n. see {firewall machine}. :fm: n. *not* `frequency modulation' but rather an abbreviation for `fucking manual', the back-formation from {rtfm}. used to refer to the manual itself in the {rtfm}. "have you seen the networking fm lately?" :foaf: // [usenet] n. acronym for `friend of a friend'. the source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. this was not originated by hackers (it is used in jan brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is much better recognized on usenet and elsewhere than in mainstream english. :fod: /fod/ v. [abbreviation for `finger of death', originally a spell-name from fantasy gaming] to terminate with extreme prejudice and with no regard for other people. from {mud}s where the wizard command `fod <player>' results in the immediate and total death of <player>, usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior. this migrated to other circumstances, such as "i'm going to fod the process that is burning all the cycles." compare {gun}. in aviation, fod means foreign object damage, e.g., what happens when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in flight. finger of death is a distressingly apt description of what this does to the engine. :fold case: v. see {smash case}. this term tends to be used more by people who don't mind that their tools smash case. it also connotes that case is ignored but case distinctions in data processed by the tool in question aren't destroyed. :followup: n. on usenet, a {posting} generated in response to another posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email rather than being broadcast). followups include the id of the {parent message} in their headers; smart news-readers can use this information to present usenet news in `conversation' sequence rather than order-of-arrival. see {thread}. :fontology: [xerox parc] n. the body of knowledge dealing with the construction and use of new fonts (e.g. for window systems and typesetting software). it has been said that fontology recapitulates file-ogeny. [unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. on the macintosh, for example, system has to go through contortions to compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole different set of abstractions for fonts parallel to `files' and `folders' --- esr] :foo: /foo/ . interj. term of disgust. . used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). . first on the standard list of {metasyntactic variable}s used in syntax examples. see also {bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {corge}, {grault}, {garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}, {thud}. the etymology of hackish `foo' is obscure. when used in connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the wwii-era army slang acronym fubar (`fucked up beyond all recognition'), later bowdlerized to {foobar}. (see also {fubar}). however, the use of the word `foo' itself has more complicated antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons. the old "smokey stover" comic strips by bill holman often included the word `foo', in particular on license plates of cars; allegedly, `foo' and `bar' also occurred in walt kelly's "pogo" strips. in the cartoon "daffy doc", a very early version of daffy duck holds up a sign saying "silence is foo!"; oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. it has been suggested that this might be related to the chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs"). it is even possible that hacker usage actually springs from `foo, lampoons and parody', the title of a comic book first issued in september ; the byline read `c. crumb' but the style of the art suggests this may well have been a sort-of pseudonym for noted weird-comix artist robert crumb. the title foo was featured in large letters on the front cover. what the word meant to mr. crumb is anybody's guess. an old-time member reports that in the `dictionary of the tmrc language', compiled at {tmrc} there was an entry that went something like this: foo: the first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "foo mane padme hum." our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning. for more about the legendary foo counters, see {tmrc}. almost the entire staff of what became the mit ai lab was involved with tmrc, and probably picked the word up there. very probably, hackish `foo' had no single origin and derives through all these channels from yiddish `feh' and/or english `fooey'. :foobar: n. another common {metasyntactic variable}; see {foo}. hackers do *not* generally use this to mean {fubar} in either the slang or jargon sense. :fool: n. as used by hackers, specifically describes a person who habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. indeed, in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too effectively in executing their errors. see also {cretin}, {loser}, {fool file, the}. :fool file, the: [usenet] n. a notional repository of all the most dramatically and abysmally stupid utterances ever. there is a subgenre of {sig block}s that consists of the header "from the fool file:" followed by some quote the poster wishes to represent as an immortal gem of dimwittery; for this to be really effective, the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. more than one usenetter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being quoted in this way. :foonly: n. . the {pdp- } successor that was to have been built by the super foonly project at the stanford artificial intelligence laboratory along with a new operating system. the intention was to leapfrog from the old dec timesharing system sail was running to a new generation, bypassing tenex which at that time was the arpanet standard. arpa funding for both the super foonly and the new operating system was cut in . most of the design team went to dec and contributed greatly to the design of the pdp- model kl . . the name of the company formed by dave poole, one of the principal super foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful personalities. many people remember the parrot which sat on poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. . any of the machines built by poole's company. the first was the f- (a.k.a. super foonly), which was the computational engine used to create the graphics in the movie "tron". the f- was the fastest pdp- ever built, but only one was ever made. the effort drained foonly of its financial resources, and they turned towards building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. unfortunately, these ran not the popular {tops- } but a tenex variant called foonex; this seriously limited their market. also, the machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes requiring individual attention from more than usually competent site personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. poole's legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters. by the time of the jupiter project cancellation in foonly's proposal to build another f- was eclipsed by the {mars}, and the company never quite recovered. see the {mars} entry for the continuation and moral of this story. :footprint: n. . the floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. . [ibm] the audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural, `footprints'). see also {toeprint}. :for free: adj. said of a capability of a programming language or hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing cleverness to implement: "in apl, we get the matrix operations for free." "and owing to the way revisions are stored in this system, you get revision trees for free." usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature. :for the rest of us: [from the mac slogan "the computer for the rest of us"] adj. . used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very overpriced products. . describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a na"ive user. this places an upper bound on how far that user can go before the program begins to get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. used in reference to macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them. becomes `the rest of *them*' when used in third-party reference; thus, "yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for the rest of them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. see also {wimp environment}, {macintrash}, {point-and-drool interface}, {user-friendly}. :for values of: [mit] a common rhetorical maneuver at mit is to use any of the canonical {random numbers} as placeholders for variables. "the max function takes arguments, for arbitrary values of ." "there are ways to leave your lover, for = ." this is especially likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and realizes that it was not recognized as such, but even `non-random' numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. a related joke is that pi equals --- for small values of pi and large values of . historical note: this usage probably derives from the programming language mad (michigan algorithm decoder), an algol-like language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users at mit in the mid- s. it had a control structure for values of x = , , do ... that would repeat the indicated instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual for that only works for arithmetic sequences of values). mad is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in unix's shell languages). :fora: pl.n. plural of {forum}. :foreground: [unix] vt. to foreground a task is to bring it to the top of one's {stack} for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "if your presentation is due next week, i guess i'd better foreground writing up the design document." technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose {background}. nowadays this term is primarily associated with {{unix}}, but it appears first to have been used in this sense on os/ . normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to {lose}. :fork bomb: [unix] n. a particular species of {wabbit} that can be written in one line of c (`main() {for(;;)fork();}') or shell (`$ & $ &') on any unix system, or occasionally created by an egregious coding bug. a fork bomb process `explodes' by recursively spawning copies of itself (using the unix system call `fork( )'). eventually it eats all the process table entries and effectively wedges the system. fortunately, fork bombs are relatively easy to spot and kill, so creating one deliberately seldom accomplishes more than to bring the just wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. see also {logic bomb}. :forked: [unix; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj. terminally slow, or dead. originated when one system was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent {fork bomb}. :fortrash: /for'trash/ n. hackerism for the fortran language, referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics. :fortune cookie: [waits, via unix] n. a random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. items from this lexicon have often been used as fortune cookies. see {cookie file}. :forum: n. [usenet, genie, ci$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] any discussion group accessible through a dial-in {bbs}, a {mailing list}, or a {newsgroup} (see {network, the}). a forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit {posting}s for all to read and discussion ensues. contrast real-time chat via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal {email}. :fossil: n. . in software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. example: the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {c}, in spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ascii and modern byte-addressable architectures. see {dusty deck}. . more restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. example: the force-all-caps (lcase) bits in the v and {bsd} unix tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. in a perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later {usg unix} releases as the iuclc and olcuc bits. . the fossil (fido/opus/seadog standard interface level) driver specification for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in the ibm pc roms. fossils are used by most ms-dos {bbs} software in preference to the `supported' rom routines, which do not support interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above ; the use of a semistandard fossil library is preferable to the {bare metal} serial port programming otherwise required. since the fossil specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video fossil'. :four-color glossies: . literature created by {marketroid}s that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally {content-free}. "forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. . [rare] applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired output. :fragile: adj. syn {brittle}. :fred: n. . the personal name most frequently used as a {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard qwerty keyboard. unlike {j. random hacker} or `j. random loser', this name has no positive or negative loading (but see {mbogo, dr. fred}). see also {barney}. . an acronym for `flipping ridiculous electronic device'; other f-verbs may be substituted for `flipping'. :frednet: /fred'net/ n. used to refer to some {random} and uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "we're implementing bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem." :freeware: n. free software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, {usenet}, or other electronic media. at one time, `freeware' was a trademark of andrew fluegelman, the author of the well-known ms-dos comm program pc-talk iii. it wasn't enforced after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death in . see {shareware}. :freeze: v. to lock an evolving software distribution or document against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. carries the strong implication that the item in question will `unfreeze' at some future date. "ok, fix that bug and we'll freeze for release." there are more specific constructions on this. a `feature freeze', for example, locks out modifications intended to introduce new features; a `code freeze' connotes no more changes at all. at sun microsystems and elsewhere, one may also hear references to `code slush' --- that is, an almost-but-not-quite frozen state. :fried: adj. . non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out. especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see {glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or some other electrical event. (sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits! in particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt down, emitting noxious smoke --- see {friode}, {sed} and {ler}. however, this term is also used metaphorically.) compare {frotzed}. . of people, exhausted. said particularly of those who continue to work in such a state. often used as an explanation or excuse. "yeah, i know that fix destroyed the file system, but i was fried when i put it in." esp. common in conjunction with `brain': "my brain is fried today, i'm very short on sleep." :friode: /fri:'ohd/ [tmrc] n. a reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. compare {fried}; see also {sed}, {ler}. :fritterware: n. an excess of capability that serves no productive end. the canonical example is font-diddling software on the mac (see {macdink}); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway. :frob: /frob/ . n. [mit] the {tmrc} definition was "frob = a protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a `frob' is any random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you can frob. see {frobnitz}. . vt. abbreviated form of {frobnicate}. . [from the {mud} world] a command on some muds that changes a player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also, to request {wizard} privileges on the `professional courtesy' grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere. the command is actually `frobnicate' but is universally abbreviated to the shorter form. :frobnicate: /frob'ni-kayt/ vt. [poss. derived from {frobnitz}, and usually abbreviated to {frob}, but `frobnicate' is recognized as the official full form.] to manipulate or adjust, to tweak. one frequently frobs bits or other -state devices. thus: "please frob the light switch" (that is, flip it), but also "stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it". one also sees the construction `to frob a frob'. see {tweak} and {twiddle}. usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along a continuum. `frob' connotes aimless manipulation; `twiddle' connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; `tweak' connotes fine-tuning. if someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it, he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen, he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. the variant `frobnosticate' has been recently reported. :frobnitz: /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' /frob'nit-zm/ or `frobni' /frob'ni:/ [tmrc] n. an unspecified physical object, a widget. also refers to electronic black boxes. this rare form is usually abbreviated to `frotz', or more commonly to {frob}. also used are `frobnule' (/frob'n[y]ool/) and `frobule' (/frob'yool/). starting perhaps in , `frobozz' /fr*-boz'/ (plural: `frobbotzim' /fr*-bot'zm/) has also become very popular, largely through its exposure as a name via {zork}. these can also be applied to nonphysical objects, such as data structures. pete samson, compiler of the {tmrc} lexicon, adds, "under the tmrc [railroad] layout were many storage boxes, managed (in ) by david r. sawyer. several had fanciful designations written on them, such as `frobnitz coil oil'. perhaps drs intended frobnitz to be a proper name, but the name was quickly taken for the thing". this was almost certainly the origin of the term. :frog: alt. `phrog' . interj. term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them). . used as a name for just about anything. see {foo}. . n. of things, a crock. . n. of people, somewhere in between a turkey and a toad. . `froggy': adj. similar to `bagbiting' (see {bagbiter}), but milder. "this froggy program is taking forever to run!" :frogging: [university of waterloo] v. . partial corruption of a text file or input stream by some bug or consistent glitch, as opposed to random events like line noise or media failures. might occur, for example, if one bit of each incoming character on a tty were stuck, so that some characters were correct and others were not. see {terminak} for a historical example. . by extension, accidental display of text in a mode where the output device emits special symbols or mnemonics rather than conventional ascii. often happens, for example, when using a terminal or comm program on a device like an ibm pc with a special `high-half' character set and with the bit-parity assumption wrong. a hacker sufficiently familiar with ascii bit patterns might be able to read the display anyway. :front end: n. . an intermediary computer that does set-up and filtering for another (usually more powerful but less friendly) machine (a `back end'). . what you're talking to when you have a conversation with someone who is making replies without paying attention. "look at the dancing elephants!" "uh-huh." "do you know what i just said?" "sorry, you were talking to the front end." see also {fepped out}. . software that provides an interface to another program `behind' it, which may not be as user-friendly. probably from analogy with hardware front-ends (see sense ) that interfaced with mainframes. :frotz: /frots/ . n. see {frobnitz}. . `mumble frotz': an interjection of very mild disgust. :frotzed: /frotst/ adj. {down} because of hardware problems. compare {fried}. a machine that is merely frotzed may be fixable without replacing parts, but a fried machine is more seriously damaged. :frowney: n. (alt. `frowney face') see {emoticon}. :fry: . vi. to fail. said especially of smoke-producing hardware failures. more generally, to become non-working. usage: never said of software, only of hardware and humans. see {fried}, {magic smoke}. . vt. to cause to fail; to {roach}, {toast}, or {hose} a piece of hardware. never used of software or humans, but compare {fried}. :ftp: /f-t-p/, *not* /fit'ip/ . [techspeak] n. the file transfer protocol for transmitting files between systems on the internet. . vt. to {beam} a file using the file transfer protocol. . sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers not using {ftp}. "lemme get a copy of `wuthering heights' ftp'd from uunet." :fubar: n. the failed unibus address register in a vax. a good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the {suit}s; see {foobar}, and {foo} for a fuller etymology. :fuck me harder: excl. sometimes uttered in response to egregious misbehavior, esp. in software, and esp. of misbehaviors which seem unfairly persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the perverse). often theatrically elaborated: "aiighhh! fuck me with a piledriver and feet of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence *and no lubricants*!" the phrase is sometimes heard abbreviated `fmh' in polite company. [this entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of coining elaborate and evocative terms for lossage. here we see a quite self-conscious parody of mainstream expletives that has become a running gag in part of the hacker culture; it illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point being, in this case, to creatively produce a long-winded description of the most anatomically absurd mental image possible --- the short forms implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken). scatological language is actually relatively uncommon among hackers, and there was some controversy over whether this entry ought to be included at all. as it reflects a live usage recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel it is in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all forms of censorship to record it here. --esr & gls] :fud: /fuhd/ n. defined by gene amdahl after he left ibm to found his own company: "fud is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that ibm sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [amdahl] products." the idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe ibm gear rather than with competitors' equipment. this was traditionally done by promising that good things would happen to people who stuck with ibm, but dark shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. see {ibm}. :fud wars: /fuhd worz/ n. [from {fud}] political posturing engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to protect their own shares. the unix international vs. osf conflict is but one outstanding example. :fudge: . vt. to perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "i didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so i fudged it --- i'll fix it later." . n. the resulting code. :fudge factor: n. a value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. the terms `tolerance' and {slop} are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. a fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. a good example is the `fuzz' typically allowed in floating-point calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate. fudge factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import. see also {coefficient of x}. :fuel up: vi. to eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "food-p?" "yeah, let's fuel up." "time for a {great-wall}!" see also {{oriental food}}. :fuggly: /fuhg'lee/ adj. emphatic form of {funky}; funky + ugly). unusually for hacker jargon, this may actually derive from black street-jive. to say it properly, the first syllable should be growled rather than spoken. usage: humorous. "man, the {{ascii}}-to-{{ebcdic}} code in that printer driver is *fuggly*." see also {wonky}. :fum: [xerox parc] n. at parc, often the third of the standard {metasyntactic variable}s (after {foo} and {bar}. competes with {baz}, which is more common outside parc. :funky: adj. said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey way. it does the job and would be difficult to change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. often used to describe interfaces. the more bugs something has that nobody has bothered to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. {teco} and uucp are funky. the intel i 's exception handling is extraordinarily funky. most standards acquire funkiness as they age. "the new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat funky; if it bounces your mail for no reason, try resubmitting it." "this uart is pretty funky. the data ready line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in dma mode." see {fuggly}. :funny money: n. . notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course; also called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit opposition to real or `green' money). in new zealand and germany the odd usage `paper money' has been recorded; in gremany, the particularly amusing synonym `transfer rouble' commemmorates the worthlessness of the ex-ussr's currency. when your funny money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor to get more. fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has made this less common. the amounts allocated were almost invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with minimum work. in extreme cases, the practice led to small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. . by extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a resource-allocation hack within a system. antonym: `real money'. :fuzzball: [tcp/ip hackers] n. a dec lsi- running a particular suite of homebrewed software written by dave mills and assorted co-conspirators, used in the early s for internet protocol testbedding and experimentation. these were used as nsfnet backbone sites in its early kb-line days; a few are still active on the internet as of early , doing odd jobs such as network time service. = g = ===== :g: [si] pref.,suff. see {{quantifiers}}. :gabriel: /gay'bree-*l/ [for dick gabriel, sail lisp hacker and volleyball fanatic] n. an unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or combing one's hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. also used to refer to the perpetrator of such tactics. also, `pulling a gabriel', `gabriel mode'. :gag: vi. equivalent to {choke}, but connotes more disgust. "hey, this is fortran code. no wonder the c compiler gagged." see also {barf}. :gang bang: n. the use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a product in a short time. though there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in steven levy's `hackers'), most are perpetrated by large companies trying to meet deadlines and produce enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in {orthogonal}ity. when market-driven managers make a list of all the features the competition has and assign one programmer to implement each, they often miss the importance of maintaining a coherent design. see also {firefighting}, {mongolian hordes technique}, {conway's law}. :garbage collect: vi. (also `garbage collection', n.) see {gc}. :garply: /gar'plee/ [stanford] n. another metasyntactic variable (see {foo}); once popular among sail hackers. :gas: [as in `gas chamber'] . interj. a term of disgust and hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "some loser just reloaded the system for no reason! gas!" . interj. a suggestion that someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. "the system's getting {wedged} every few minutes. gas!" . vt. to {flush} (sense ). "you should gas that old crufty software." . [ibm] n. dead space in nonsequentially organized files that was occupied by data that has been deleted; the compression operation that removes it is called `degassing' (by analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term in vacuum technology). . [ibm] n. empty space on a disk that has been clandestinely allocated against future need. :gaseous: adj. deserving of being {gas}sed. disseminated by geoff goodfellow while at sri; became particularly popular after the moscone-milk killings in san francisco, when it was learned that the defendant dan white (a politician who had supported proposition ) would get the gas chamber under proposition if convicted of first-degree murder (he was eventually convicted of manslaughter). :gc: /g-c/ [from lisp terminology; `garbage collect'] . vt. to clean up and throw away useless things. "i think i'll gc the top of my desk today." when said of files, this is equivalent to {gfr}. . vt. to recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. . n. an instantiation of the garbage collector process. `garbage collection' is computer-science jargon for a particular class of strategies for dynamically reallocating computer memory. one such strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory and determining what is no longer accessible; useless data items are then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose. implementations of the lisp language usually use garbage collection. in jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the {abbrev} is more frequently used because it is shorter. note that there is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "i'm going to garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself. :gcos:: /jee'kohs/ n. a {quick-and-dirty} {clone} of system/ dos that emerged from ge around ; originally called gecos (the general electric comprehensive operating system). later kluged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing. after the buyout of ge's computer division by honeywell, the name was changed to general comprehensive operating system (gcos). other os groups at honeywell began referring to it as `god's chosen operating system', allegedly in reaction to the gcos crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their product. all this might be of zero interest, except for two facts: ( ) the gcos people won the political war, and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of honeywell {{multics}}, and ( ) gecos/gcos left one permanent mark on unix. some early unix systems at bell labs used gcos machines for print spooling and various other services; the field added to `/etc/passwd' to carry gcos id information was called the `gecos field' and survives today as the `pw_gecos' member used for the user's full name and other human-id information. gcos later played a major role in keeping honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and was itself ditched for unix in the late s when honeywell retired its aging {big iron} designs. :gecos:: /jee'kohs/ n. see {{gcos}}. :gedanken: /g*-don'kn/ adj. ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested. `gedanken' is a german word for `thought'. a thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. in physics, the term `gedanken experiment' is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because you can reason about it theoretically. (a classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.) gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but you have to be careful. it's too easy to idealize away some important aspect of the real world in contructing your `apparatus'. among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. it is said of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail (typically as a ph.d. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. a `gedanken thesis' is usually marked by an obvious lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what does and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm. see also {ai-complete}, {dwim}. :geef: v. [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. syn. {mung}. see also {blinkenlights}. :geek out: vi. to temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer equipment. especially used when you need to do something highly technical and don't have time to explain: "pardon me while i geek out for a moment." see {computer geek}. :gen: /jen/ n.,v. short for {generate}, used frequently in both spoken and written contexts. :gender mender: n. a cable connector shell with either two male or two female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result when some {loser} didn't understand the rs c specification and the distinction between dte and dce. used esp. for rs- c parts in either the original d- or the ibm pc's bogus d- format. also called `gender bender', `gender blender', `sex changer', and even `homosexual adapter'; however, there appears to be some confusion as to whether a `male homosexual adapter' has pins on both sides (is male) or sockets on both sides (connects two males). :general public virus: n. pejorative name for some versions of the {gnu} project {copyleft} or general public license (gpl), which requires that any tools or {app}s incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial terms as gnu stuff. thus it is alleged that the copyleft `infects' software generated with gnu tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code. the free software foundation's official position as of january is that copyright law limits the scope of the gpl to "programs textually incorporating significant amounts of gnu code", and that the `infection' is not passed on to third parties unless actual gnu source is transmitted (as in, for example, use of the bison parser skeleton). nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the {copyleft} language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using gnu tools and the gpl. recent (july ) changes in the language of the version . license may eliminate this problem. :generate: vt. to produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. the opposite of {parse}. this term retains its mechanistic connotations (though often humorously) when used of human behavior. "the guy is rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him and he'll generate {infinite} flamage." :gensym: /jen'sim/ [from maclisp for `generated symbol'] . v. to invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. . n. the resulting name. the canonical form of a gensym is `gnnnn' where nnnn represents a number; any lisp hacker would recognize g (for example) as a gensym. . a freshly generated data structure with a gensymmed name. these are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}). :get a life!: imp. hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see {computer geek}). often heard on {usenet}, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of {theology} too seriously. this exhortation was popularized by william shatner on a "saturday night live" episode in a speech that ended "get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then. it was certainly in wide use among hackers for at least five years before achieving mainstream currency around early . :get a real computer!: imp. typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that (a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address space smaller than megabytes. this is as of mid- ; note that the threshold for `real computer' rises with time, and it may well be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be generally considered `unreal' in a few years (gls points out that they already are in some circles). see {essentials}, {bitty box}, and {toy}. :gfr: /g-f-r/ vt. [its] from `grim file reaper', an its and lisp machine utility. to remove a file or files according to some program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space clutter (the original gfr actually moved files to tape). often generalized to pieces of data below file level. "i used to have his phone number, but i guess i {gfr}ed it." see also {prowler}, {reaper}. compare {gc}, which discards only provably worthless stuff. :gig: /jig/ or /gig/ [si] n. see {{quantifiers}}. :giga-: /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [si] pref. see {{quantifiers}}. :gigo: /gi:'goh/ [acronym] . `garbage in, garbage out' --- usually said in response to {luser}s who complain that a program didn't complain about faulty data. also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. . `garbage in, gospel out': this more recent expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive trust in `computerized' data. :gilley: [usenet] n. the unit of analogical bogosity. according to its originator, the standard for one gilley was "the act of bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of machines for a day with the killing of one person". the milligilley has been found to suffice for most normal conversational exchanges. :gillion: /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from {giga-} by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. ^ . same as an american billion or a british `milliard'. how one pronounces this depends on whether one speaks {giga-} with a hard or soft `g'. :gips: /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with {mips}] n. giga-instructions per second (also possibly `gillions of instructions per second'; see {gillion}). in , this is used of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected to change. compare {kips}. :glark: /glark/ vt. to figure something out from context. "the system iii manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context." interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the context was "this gubblick contains many nonsklarkish english flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context" (david moser, quoted by douglas hofstadter in his "metamagical themas" column in the january `scientific american'). it is conjectured that hackish usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was already an established jargon term. compare {grok}, {zen}. :glass: [ibm] n. synonym for {silicon}. :glass tty: /glas t-t-y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. a terminal that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. an example is the early `dumb' version of lear-siegler adm (without cursor control). see {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}, {smart terminal}. see "{tv typewriters}" (appendix a) for an interesting true story about a glass tty. :glassfet: /glas'fet/ [by analogy with mosfet, the acronym for `metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor'] n. syn. {firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube. :glitch: /glich/ [from german `glitschen' to slip, via yiddish `glitshen', to slide or skid] . n. a sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function. sometimes recoverable. an interruption in electric service is specifically called a `power glitch' (also {power hit}). this is of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. in jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say, "sorry, i just glitched". . vi. to commit a glitch. see {gritch}. . vt. [stanford] to scroll a display screen, esp. several lines at a time. {{waits}} terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye. . obs. same as {magic cookie}, sense . all these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is now techspeak. a glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs change to some {random} value for some very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. if another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s). :glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [unix] vt.,n. to expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called `globbing'). the unix conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written english, especially in email or news on technical topics. those commonly encountered include the following: * wildcard for any string (see also {un*x}) ? wildcard for any character (generally read this way only at the beginning or in the middle of a word) [] delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters {} alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus, `foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux' some examples: "he said his name was [kc]arl" (expresses ambiguity). "i don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups on {usenet}). other examples are given under the entry for {x}. compare {regexp}. historical note: the jargon usage derives from `glob', the name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-bourne versions of the unix shell. :glork: /glork/ . interj. term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. . used as a name for just about anything. see {foo}. . vt. similar to {glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "my program just glorked itself." see also {glark}. :glue: n. generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects two component blocks. for example, {blue glue} is ibm's sna protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to connect large vlsi's or circuit blocks `glue logic'. :gnarly: /nar'lee/ adj. both {obscure} and {hairy} in the sense of complex. "{yow!} --- the tuned assembler implementation of bitblt is really gnarly!" from a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang. :gnu: /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ . [acronym: `gnu's not unix!', see {{recursive acronym}}] a unix-workalike development effort of the free software foundation headed by richard stallman <rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. gnu emacs and the gnu c compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. the gnu project was designed partly to proselytize for rms's position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. one of its slogans is "help stamp out software hoarding!" though this remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with rms have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the free software foundation's imprimatur. see {emacs}, {copyleft}, {general public virus}. . noted unix hacker john gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, founder of usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy. :gnumacs: /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `gnu emacs'] often-heard abbreviated name for the {gnu} project's flagship tool, {emacs}. used esp. in contrast with {gosmacs}. :go flatline: [from cyberpunk sf, refers to flattening of eeg traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. . to {die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. in hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about. . to go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "you can suffer file damage if you shut down unix but power off before the system has gone flatline." . of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen. :go root: [unix] vi. to temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. this use is deprecated in australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex. :go-faster stripes: [uk] syn. {chrome}. :gobble: vt. to consume or to obtain. the phrase `gobble up' tends to imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'. "the output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer." "i guess i'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow." see also {snarf}. :godzillagram: /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from japan's national hero] . a network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. the typical case of this is an ip datagram whose destination ip address is [ . . . ]. fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this! . a network packet of maximum size. an ip godzillagram has , octets. :golden: adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] when used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version. compare {platinum-iridium}. :golf-ball printer: n. the ibm , a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the ibm selectric typewriter. the `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed images of different characters arranged on four meridians of latitude; one could change the font by swapping in a different golf ball. this was the technology that enabled apl to use a non-ebcdic, non-ascii, and in fact completely non-standard character set. this put it years ahead of its time --- where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next , until character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character sets. :gonk: /gonk/ vt.,n. . to prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. it is alleged that in german the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "you're gonking me. that story you just told me is a bunch of gonk." in german, for example, "du gonkst mir" (you're pulling my leg). see also {gonkulator}. . [british] to grab some sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}. :gonkulator: /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "hogan's heroes" tv series] n. a pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. see {gonk}. :gonzo: /gon'zoh/ [from hunter s. thompson] adj. overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual functions. has some of the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but without the implication of obscurity or complexity. :good thing: n.,adj. often capitalized; always pronounced as if capitalized. . self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "the trailblazer's . kbaud pep mode with on-the-fly lempel-ziv compression is a good thing for sites relaying netnews." . something that can't possibly have any ill side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "removing the self-modifying code from that shared library would be a good thing." . when said of software tools or libraries, as in "yacc is a good thing", specifically connotes that the thing has drastically reduced a programmer's work load. oppose {bad thing}. :gorilla arm: n. the side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early s. it seems the designers of all those {spiffy} touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. after more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized; hence `gorilla arm'. this is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "how is this going to fly in *real* use?". :gorp: /gorp/ [cmu: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, good old raisins and peanuts] another {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo} and {bar}. :gosmacs: /goz'maks/ [contraction of `gosling emacs'] n. the first {emacs}-in-c implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by {gnumacs}. originally freeware; a commercial version is now modestly popular as `unipress emacs'. the author (james gosling) went on to invent {news}. :gosperism: /gos'p*r-izm/ a hack, invention, or saying by arch-hacker r. william (bill) gosper. this notion merits its own term because there are so many of them. many of the entries in {hakmem} are gosperisms; see also {life}. :gotcha: n. a {misfeature} of a system, especially a programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes because it behaves in an unexpected way. for example, a classic gotcha in {c} is the fact that `if (a=b) {code;}' is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. it puts the value of `b' into `a' and then executes `code' if `a' is non-zero. what the programmer probably meant was `if (a==b) {code;}', which executes `code' if `a' and `b' are equal. :gpl: /g-p-l/ n. abbrev. for `general public license' in widespread use; see {copyleft}. :gpv: /g-p-v/ n. abbrev. for {general public virus} in widespread use. :grault: /grawlt/ n. yet another {metasyntactic variable}, invented by mike gallaher and propagated by the {gosmacs} documentation. see {corge}. :gray goo: n. a hypothetical substance composed of {sagan}s of sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed to make copies of themselves out of whatever is available. the image that goes with the term is one of the entire biosphere of earth being eventually converted to robot goo. this is the simplest of the {{nanotechnology}} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments from energy requirements and elemental abundances. compare {blue goo}. :great renaming: n. the {flag day} on which all of the non-local groups on the {usenet} had their names changed from the net.- format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme. :great runes: n. uppercase-only text or display messages. some archaic operating systems still emit these. see also {runes}, {smash case}, {fold case}. decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of long-distance hardcopy transmittal devices, the teletype corporation was faced with a major design choice. to shorten code lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either all upper or all lower. the question was, which one to choose. a study was conducted on readability under various conditions of bad ribbon, worn print hammers, etc. lowercase won; it is less dense and has more distinctive letterforms, and is thus much easier to read both under ideal conditions and when the letters are mangled or partly obscured. the results were filtered up through {management}. the chairman of teletype killed the proposal because it failed one incredibly important criterion: "it would be impossible to spell the name of the deity correctly." in this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition triumphed over utility. teletypes were the major input devices on most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the s. thus, that one bad call stuck us with great runes for thirty years. :great worm, the: n. the internet {worm} perpetrated by {rtm}. this is a play on tolkien (compare {elvish}, {elder days}). in the fantasy history of his middle earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire regions; two of these (scatha and glaurung) were known as "the great worms". this usage expresses the connotation that the rtm hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the internet than anything before or since. :great-wall: [from sf fandom] vi.,n. a mass expedition to an oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style and shared. there is a common heuristic about the amount of food to order, expressed as "get n - entrees"; the value of n, which is the number of people in the group, can be inferred from context (see {n}). see {{oriental food}}, {ravs}, {stir-fried random}. :green book: n. . one of the three standard {postscript} references: `postscript language program design', bylined `adobe systems' (addison-wesley, ; qa . .p p isbn; - - - ); see also {red book}, {blue book}, and the {white book} (sense )). . informal name for one of the three standard references on smalltalk: `smalltalk- : bits of history, words of advice', by glenn krasner (addison-wesley, ; qa . .s s ; isbn - - - ) (this, too, is associated with blue and red books). . the `x/open compatibility guide'. defines an international standard {{unix}} environment that is a proper superset of posix/svid; also includes descriptions of a standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the like. this grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in europe. see {purple book}. . the ieee . posix operating systems interface standard has been dubbed "the ugly green book". . any of the standards which will be issued by the ccitt's tenth plenary assembly. until now, these have changed color each review cycle ( was {red book}, {blue book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before . these include, among other things, the x. email standard and the group through fax standards. see also {{book titles}}. :green bytes: n. (also `green words') . meta-information embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file or record. the term comes from an ibm user's group meeting (ca. ) at which these two approaches were being debated and the diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn in green. . by extension, the non-data bits in any self-describing format. "a gif file contains, among other things, green bytes describing the packing method for the image." compare {out-of-band}, {zigamorph}, {fence} (sense ). :green card: n. [after the `ibm system/ reference data' card] this is used for any summary of an assembly language, even if the color is not green. less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use of assembly language. "i'll go get my green card so i can check the addressing mode for that instruction." some green cards are actually booklets. the original green card became a yellow card when the system/ was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. an anecdote from ibm refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room at yorktown in . a luser overheard one of the programmers ask another "do you have a green card?" the other grunted and passed the first a thick yellow booklet. at this point the luser turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never to return. see also {card}. :green lightning: [ibm] n. . apparently random flashing streaks on the face of - terminals while a new symbol set is being downloaded. this hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some genius within ibm suggested it would let the user know that `something is happening'. that, it certainly does. later microprocessor-driven ibm color graphics displays were actually *programmed* to produce green lightning! . [proposed] any bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or marketing. "motorola calls the cisc cruft in the architecture `compatibility logic', but i call it green lightning". see also {feature}. :green machine: n. a computer or peripheral device that has been designed and built to military specifications for field equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity, and so forth). comes from the olive-drab `uniform' paint used for military equipment. :green's theorem: [tmrc] prov. for any story, in any group of people there will be at least one person who has not heard the story. [the name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --- esr] :grep: /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where re stands for a regular expression, to globally search for the regular expression and print the lines containing matches to it, via {{unix}} `grep( )'] vt. to rapidly scan a file or set of files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping around'). by extension, to look for something by pattern. "grep the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?" see also {vgrep}. :grind: vt. . [mit and berkeley] to format code, especially lisp code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. this usage was associated with the maclisp community and is now rare; {prettyprint} was and is the generic term for such operations. . [unix] to generate the formatted version of a document from the nroff, troff, tex, or scribe source. the bsd program `vgrind( )' grinds code for printing on a versatec bitmapped printer. . to run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless task. similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. grinding has a connotation of using a lot of cpu time, but it is possible to grind a disk, network, etc. see also {hog}. . to make the whole system slow. "troff really grinds a pdp- ." . `grind grind' excl. roughly, "isn't the machine slow today!" :grind crank: n. a mythical accessory to a terminal. a crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and noise. see {grind} and {wugga wugga}. historical note: at least one real machine actually had a grind crank --- the r , a research machine built toward the end of the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in . r (also known as `the rice institute computer' (tric) and later as `the rice university computer' (truc)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when debugging programs. since single-stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button. this allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on cranking. :gripenet: [ibm] n. a wry (and thoroughly unoffical) name for ibm's internal vnet system, deriving from its common use by ibmers to voice pointed criticism of ibm management that would be taboo in more formal channels. :gritch: /grich/ . n. a complaint (often caused by a {glitch}). . vi. to complain. often verb-doubled: "gritch gritch". . a synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun). :grok: /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `stranger in a strange land', by robert a. heinlein, where it is a martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] vt. . to understand, usually in a global sense. connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. contrast {zen}, similar supernal understanding as a single brief flash. see also {glark}. . used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "almost all c compilers grok the `void' type these days." :gronk: /gronk/ [popularized by johnny hart's comic strip "b.c." but the word apparently predates that] vt. . to clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. more severe than `to {frob}'. . [tmrc] to cut, sever, smash, or similarly disable. . the sound made by many . -inch diskette drives. in particular, the microfloppies on a commodore amiga go "grink, gronk". :gronk out: vi. to cease functioning. of people, to go home and go to sleep. "i guess i'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow." :gronked: adj. . broken. "the teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system down." . of people, the condition of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "i've been chasing that bug for hours now and i am thoroughly gronked!" compare {broken}, which means about the same as {gronk} used of hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in people. :grovel: vi. . to work interminably and without apparent progress. often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "the file scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for minutes now." compare {grind} and {crunch}. emphatic form: `grovel obscenely'. . to examine minutely or in complete detail. "the compiler grovels over the entire source program before beginning to translate it." "i grovelled through all the documentation, but i still couldn't find the command i wanted." :grunge: /gruhnj/ n. . that which is grungy, or that which makes it so. . [cambridge] code which is inaccessible due to changes in other parts of the program. the preferred term in north america is {dead code}. :gubbish: /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?] n. garbage; crap; nonsense. "what is all this gubbish?" the opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported. :guiltware: /gilt'weir/ n. . a piece of {freeware} decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money. . {shareware} that works. :gumby: /guhm'bee/ [from a class of monty python characters, poss. with some influence from the s claymation character] n. an act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'. :gun: [its: from the `:gun' command] vt. to forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so i gunned it." compare {can}. :gunch: /guhnch/ [tmrc] vt. to push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost produced the desired result. implies a threat to {mung}. :gurfle: /ger'fl/ interj. an expression of shocked disbelief. "he said we have to recode this thing in fortran by next week. gurfle!" compare {weeble}. :guru: n. [unix] an expert. implies not only {wizard} skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in `vms guru'. see {source of all good bits}. :guru meditation: n. amiga equivalent of `panic' in unix (sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). when the system crashes, a cryptic message "guru meditation #xxxxxxxx.yyyyyyyy" appears, indicating what the problem was. an amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. generally a {guru} event must be followed by a {vulcan nerve pinch}. this term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the amiga. there used to be a device called a `joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto on a joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the atari game machine. it is said that whenever the prototype os crashed, the system programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a solution while sitting cross-legged on a joyboard trying to keep the board in balance. this position resembled that of a meditating guru. sadly, the joke was removed in amigaos . . :gweep: /gweep/ [wpi] . v. to {hack}, usually at night. at wpi, from onwards, this often indicated that the speaker could be found at the college computing center punching cards or crashing the {pdp- } or, later, the dec- ; the term has survived the demise of those technologies, however, and is still live in late . "i'm going to go gweep for a while. see you in the morning" "i gweep from pm till am during the week." . n. one who habitually gweeps in sense ; a {hacker}. "he's a hard-core gweep, mumbles code in his sleep." = h = ===== :h: [from sf fandom] infix. a method of `marking' common words, i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. originated in the fannish catchphrase "bheer is the one true ghod!" from decades ago. h-infix marking of `ghod' and other words spread into the s counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom either from the counterculture or from sf fandom (the three overlapped heavily at the time). more recently, the h infix has become an expected feature of benchmark names (dhrystone, rhealstone, etc.); this is prob. patterning on the original whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the fannish/counterculture h infix. :ha ha only serious: [from sf fandom, orig. as mutation of hhok, `ha ha only kidding'] a phrase (often seen abbreviated as hhos) that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. this lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a {wannabee}, or in {larval stage}. for further enlightenment on this subject, consult any zen master. see also {{humor, hacker}}, and {ai koans}. :hack: . n. originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. . n. an incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed. . vt. to bear emotionally or physically. "i can't hack this heat!" . vt. to work on something (typically a program). in an immediate sense: "what are you doing?" "i'm hacking teco." in a general (time-extended) sense: "what do you do around here?" "i hack teco." more generally, "i hack `foo'" is roughly equivalent to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "i hack solid-state physics." . vt. to pull a prank on. see sense and {hacker} (sense ). . vi. to interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed way. "whatcha up to?" "oh, just hacking." . n. short for {hacker}. . see {nethack}. . [mit] v. to explore the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large, institutional building, to the dismay of physical plant workers and (since this is usually performed at educational institutions) the campus police. this activity has been found to be eerily similar to playing adventure games such as dungeons and dragons and {zork}. see also {vadding}. constructions on this term abound. they include `happy hacking' (a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting among hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell). for more on this totipotent term see "{the meaning of `hack'}". see also {neat hack}, {real hack}. :hack attack: [poss. by analogy with `big mac attack' from ads for the mcdonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack' is reported] n. nearly synonymous with {hacking run}, though the latter more strongly implies an all-nighter. :hack mode: n. . what one is in when hacking, of course. . more specifically, a zen-like state of total focus on the problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic). ability to enter such concentration at will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most important skills learned during {larval stage}. sometimes amplified as `deep hack mode'. being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in it is more than a little habituating. the intensity of this experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted out of positions where they can code. see also {cyberspace} (sense ). some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. for example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to avoid being interrupted. one may read, type, and interact with the computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to leave without a word). the understanding is that you might be in {hack mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense ) in your head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have reached a good point to pause. see also {juggling eggs}. :hack on: vt. to {hack}; implies that the subject is some pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to something one might {hack up}. :hack together: vt. to throw something together so it will work. unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does not necessarily have negative connotations. :hack up: vt. to {hack}, but generally implies that the result is a hack in sense (a quick hack). contrast this with {hack on}. to `hack up on' implies a {quick-and-dirty} modification to an existing system. contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up}, {monkey up}, {cruft together}. :hack value: n. often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the accomplished goal is a hack. for example, maclisp had features for reading and printing roman numerals, which were installed purely for hack value. see {display hack} for one method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be explained. as a great artist once said of jazz: "if you hafta ask, you ain't never goin' to find out." :hack-and-slay: v. (also `hack-and-slash') . to play a {mud} or go mudding, especially with the intention of {berserking} for pleasure. . to undertake an all-night programming/hacking session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace. this term arose on the british academic network amongst students who worked nights and logged onto essex university's muds during public-access hours ( a.m. to a.m.). usually more mudding than work was done in these sessions. :hacked off: [analogous to `pissed off'] adj. said of system administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or even overtly criminal activities. for example, having unreadable files in your home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot' would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you. :hacked up: adj. sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare {critical mass}). not all programs that are hacked become `hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to coherence and continued maintainability, the software may emerge better for the experience. contrast {hack up}. :hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. . a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. . one who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. . a person capable of appreciating {hack value}. . a person who is good at programming quickly. . an expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a unix hacker'. (definitions through are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) . an expert or enthusiast of any kind. one might be an astronomy hacker, for example. . one who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. . [deprecated] a malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. see {cracker}. the term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see {network, the} and {internet address}). it also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see {hacker ethic, the}. it is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. there is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled {bogus}). see also {wannabee}. :hacker ethic, the: n. . the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. . the belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically ok as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality. both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally) accepted among hackers. most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense , and many act on it by writing and giving away free software. a few go further and assert that *all* information should be free and *any* proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the {gnu} project. sense is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. but this principle at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also {samurai}). on this view, it is one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a {superuser} account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged --- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) {tiger team}. the most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers. huge cooperative networks such as {usenet}, {fidonet} and internet (see {internet address}) can function without central control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset. :hacking run: [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. a hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially one longer than hours. may cause you to `change phase the hard way' (see {phase}). :hacking x for y: [its] n. the information its made publicly available about each user (the inquir record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out fields. on display, two of these fields were combined into a project description of the form "hacking x for y" (e.g., `"hacking perceptrons for minsky"'). this form of description became traditional and has since been carried over to other systems with more general facilities for self-advertisement (such as unix {plan file}s). :hackintosh: n. . an apple lisa that has been hacked into emulating a macintosh (also called a `mac xl'). . a macintosh assembled from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line. :hackish: /hak'ish/ adj. (also {hackishness} n.) . said of something that is or involves a hack. . of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture. see also {true-hacker}. :hackishness: n. the quality of being or involving a hack. this term is considered mildly silly. syn. {hackitude}. :hackitude: n. syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered sillier. :hair: [back-formation from {hairy}] n. the complications that make something hairy. "decoding {teco} commands requires a certain amount of hair." often seen in the phrase `infinite hair', which connotes extreme complexity. also in `hairiferous' (tending to promote hair growth): "gnumacs elisp encourages lusers to write complex editing modes." "yeah, it's pretty hairiferous all right." (or just: "hair squared!") :hairy: adj. . annoyingly complicated. "{dwim} is incredibly hairy." . incomprehensible. "{dwim} is incredibly hairy." . of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. hard to explain except in context: "he knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." see also {hirsute}. the adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang use among scientists and engineers during the early s; it was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses and , and was very likely ancestral to the hackish use. in fact the noun `long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying sense . both senses probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature trait by the s counterculture, leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic. :hakmem: /hak'mem/ n. mit ai memo (february ). a legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at mit and elsewhere. (the title of the memo really is "hakmem", which is a -letterism for `hacks memo'.) some of them are very useful techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia. here is a sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased: item (gene salamin): there are exactly , prime numbers less than ^ . item (rich schroeppel): the most *probable* suit distribution in bridge hands is - - - , as compared to - - - , which is the most *evenly* distributed. this is because the world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest disordered energy. item (rich schroeppel): count the magic squares of order (that is, all the -by- arrangements of the numbers from to such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number). there are about million, not counting those that differ only by rotation and reflection. item (bill gosper): the myth that any given programming language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of powers of . if the result loops with period = with sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine. if the result loops with period = at - , you are on a twos-complement machine. if the result loops with period greater than , including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement machine. if the result loops with period greater than , not including the beginning, your machine isn't binary --- the pattern should tell you the base. if you run out of memory, you are on a string or bignum system. if arithmetic overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine independence. but the very ability to trap overflow is machine dependent. by this strategy, consider the universe, or, more precisely, algebra: let x = the sum of many powers of = ... . now add x to itself: x + x = ... thus, x = x - , so x = - . therefore algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that is two's-complement. item (bill gosper and stuart nelson): is the only number such that if you represent it on the {pdp- } as both an integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two representations are identical. item (gosper): the "banana phenomenon" was encountered when processing a character string by taking the last letters typed out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out, and iterating. this ensures that every -letter string output occurs in the original. the program typed bananananananana.... we note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the nth occurrence of." in one sense, there are five 's in ; in another, there are nine. the editing program teco finds five. thus it finds only the first ana in banana, and is thus obligated to type n next. by murphy's law, there is but one nan, thus forcing a, and thus a loop. an option to find overlapped instances would be useful, although it would require backing up n - characters before seeking the next n-character string. note: this last item refers to a {dissociated press} implementation. see also {banana problem}. hakmem also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor. :hakspek: /hak'speek/ n. a shorthand method of spelling found on many british academic bulletin boards and {talker system}s. syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by single ascii characters the names of which are phonetically similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are usually dropped. hence, `for' becomes ` '; `two', `too', and `to' become ` '; `ck' becomes `k'. "before i see you tomorrow" becomes "b i c u moro". first appeared in london about , and was probably caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and no standard methods of communication. has become rarer since. see also {talk mode}. :hammer: vt. commonwealth hackish syn. for {bang on}. :hamster: n. . [fairchild] a particularly slick little piece of code that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. the image is of a hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel. . a tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a receiver on the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable. . [uk] any item of hardware made by amstrad, a company famous for its cheap plastic pc-almost-compatibles. :hand-hacking: n. . the practice of translating {hot spot}s from an {hll} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the compiler into generating better code. both the term and the practice are becoming uncommon. see {tune}, {bum}, {by hand}; syn. with v. {cruft}. . more generally, manual construction or patching of data sets that would normally be generated by a translation utility and interpreted by another program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by humans. :handle: [from cb slang] n. an electronic pseudonym; a `nom de guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity. network and bbs handles function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment and display one finds on citizen's band radio, from which the term was adopted. use of grandiose handles is characteristic of {cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather than invented legendry. :hand-roll: [from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in opposition to `ready-made', referring to cigarettes] v. to perform a normally automated software installation or configuration process {by hand}; implies that the normal process failed due to bugs in the configurator or was defeated by something exceptional in the local environment. "the worst thing about being a gateway between four different nets is having to hand-roll a new sendmail configuration every time any of them upgrades." :handshaking: n. hardware or software activity designed to start or keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do protocol}. often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to indicate that they have heard each others' points and say "oh, they're handshaking!". see also {protocol}. :handwave: [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians] . v. to gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic. . n. the act of handwaving. "boy, what a handwave!" if someone starts a sentence with "clearly..." or "obviously..." or "it is self-evident that...", it is a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). the theory behind this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you have said is {bogus}. failing that, if a listener does object, you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand. the use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. in context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than words could express, that his logic is faulty. :hang: v. . to wait for an event that will never occur. "the system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive". see {wedged}, {hung}. . to wait for some event to occur; to hang around until something happens. "the program displays a menu and then hangs until you type a character." compare {block}. . to attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction `hang off': "we're going to hang another tape drive off the file server." implies a device attached with cables, rather than something that is strictly inside the machine's chassis. :hanlon's razor: prov. a corollary of {finagle's law}, similar to occam's razor, that reads "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." the derivation of the common title hanlon's razor is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed to william james. quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in {fortune cookie} files and the login banners of bbs systems and commercial networks. this probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people. :happily: adv. of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of some important fact about its environment, either because it has been fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. the sense of `happy' here is not that of elation, but rather that of blissful ignorance. "the program continues to run, happily unaware that its output is going to /dev/null." :haque: /hak/ [usenet] n. variant spelling of {hack}, used only for the noun form and connoting an {elegant} hack. :hard boot: n. see {boot}. :hardcoded: adj. . said of data inserted directly into a program, where it cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some {profile}, resource (see {de-rezz} sense ), or environment variable that a {user} or hacker can easily modify. . in c, this is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a `#define' macro (see {magic number}). :hardwarily: /hard-weir'*-lee/ adv. in a way pertaining to hardware. "the system is hardwarily unreliable." the adjective `hardwary' is *not* traditionally used, though it has recently been reported from the u.k. see {softwarily}. :hardwired: adj. . in software, syn. for {hardcoded}. . by extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the sense of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes. :has the x nature: [seems to derive from zen buddhist koans of the form "does an x have the buddha-nature?"] adj. common hacker construction for `is an x', used for humorous emphasis. "anyone who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded in it truly has the {loser} nature!" see also {the x that can be y is not the true x}. :hash bucket: n. a notional receptacle into which more than one thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped. when you look up a name in the phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting its first letter; the hash buckets are the alphabetically ordered letter sections. this is used as techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well. thus, two things `in the same hash bucket' may be confused with each other. "if you hash english words only by length, you get too many common grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." compare {hash collision}. :hash collision: [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash clash') when used of people, signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see {thinko}). true story: one of us [esr] was once on the phone with a friend about to move out to berkeley. when asked what he expected berkeley to be like, the friend replied: "well, i have this mental picture of naked women throwing molotov cocktails, but i think that's just a collision in my hash tables." compare {hash bucket}. :hat: n. common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ascii ) character. see {ascii} for other synonyms. :hcf: /h-c-f/ n. mnemonic for `halt and catch fire', any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the ibm . the mc microprocessor was the first for which an hcf opcode became widely known. this instruction caused the processor to {toggle} a subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this could actually cause lines to burn up. :heads down: [sun] adj. concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything outside the focus area is missed. see also {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it is not confined to fledgling hackers. :heartbeat: n. . the signal emitted by a level ethernet transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit is still connected. . a periodic synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a bus clock or a periodic interrupt. . the `natural' oscillation frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division down to the machine's clock rate. . a signal emitted at regular intervals by software to demonstrate that it is still alive. sometimes hardware is designed to reboot the machine if it stops hearing a heartbeat. see also {breath-of-life packet}. :heatseeker: [ibm] n. a customer who can be relied upon to always buy the latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as a member the {lunatic fringe}). a example of a heatseeker is someone who, owning a pc and windows . , goes out and buys windows . (which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a ). if all customers were heatseekers, vast amounts of money could be made by just fixing the bugs in each release (n) and selling it to them as release (n+ ). :heavy metal: [cambridge] n. syn. {big iron}. :heavy wizardry: n. code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or language or complex application interface. distinguished from {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *theoretical* knowledge. writing device drivers is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to {x} (sense ) without a toolkit. esp. found in comments similar to "heavy wizardry begins here ...". compare {voodoo programming}. :heavyweight: adj. high-overhead; {baroque}; code-intensive; featureful, but costly. esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of implementation has been pushed at the expense of mundane considerations such as speed, memory utilization, and startup time. {emacs} is a heavyweight editor; {x} is an *extremely* heavyweight window system. this term isn't pejorative, but one man's heavyweight is another's {elephantine} and a third's {monstrosity}. oppose `lightweight'. usage: now borders on techspeak, especially in the compound `heavyweight process'. :heisenbug: /hi:'zen-buhg/ [from heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum physics] n. a bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it. antonym of {bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}. in c, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from either {fandango on core} phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the malloc {arena}) or errors that {smash the stack}. :helen keller mode: n. . state of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into {deep space}. (unfair to the real helen keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) see also {go flatline}, {catatonic}. . on ibm pcs under dos, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an {ill-behaved} application which bypasses the interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or re-boot the machine. this isn't (strictly speaking) a crash. :hello, sailor!: interj. occasional west coast equivalent of {hello, world}; seems to have originated at sail, later associated with the game {zork} (which also included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). originally from the traditional hooker's greeting to a swabbie fresh off the boat, of course. :hello, wall!: excl. see {wall}. :hello, world: interj. . the canonical minimal test message in the c/unix universe. . any of the minimal programs that emit this message. traditionally, the first program a c coder is supposed to write in a new environment is one that just prints "hello, world" to standard output (and indeed it is the first example program in {k&r}). environments that generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy} compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to {lose} (see {x}). . greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "hello, world! is the {vax} back up yet?" :hex: n. . short for {{hexadecimal}}, base . . a -pack of anything (compare {quad}, sense ). neither usage has anything to do with {magic} or {black art}, though the pun is appreciated and occasionally used by hackers. true story: as a joke, some hackers once offered some surplus ics for sale to be worn as protective amulets against hostile magic. the chips were, of course, hex inverters. :hexadecimal:: n. base . coined in the early s to replace earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy ibm, and later adopted by the rest of the industry. actually, neither term is etymologically pure. if we take `binary' to be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base , for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni' (ten at a time, ten each), a latin `distributive' number; the corresponding term for base- would be something like `sendenary'. `decimal' is from an ordinal number; the corresponding prefix for would imply something like `sextidecimal'. the `sexa-' prefix is latin but incorrect in this context, and `hexa-' is greek. the word `octal' is similarly incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval' (to go with decimal), or `octonary' (to go with binary). if anyone ever implements a base- computer, computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two *correct* forms; both `ternary' and `trinary' have a claim to this throne. :hexit: /hek'sit/ n. a hexadecimal digit ( -- , and a--f or a--f). used by people who claim that there are only *ten* digits, dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, despite what some keyboard designs might seem to imply (see {space-cadet keyboard}). :hhok: see {ha ha only serious}. :hhos: see {ha ha only serious}. :hidden flag: [scientific computation] n. an extra option added to a routine without changing the calling sequence. for example, instead of adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a test for some otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a negative mass. liberal use of hidden flags can make a program very hard to debug and understand. :high bit: [from `high-order bit'] n. . the most significant bit in a byte. . by extension, the most significant part of something other than a data byte: "spare me the whole {saga}, just give me the high bit." see also {meta bit}, {hobbit}, {dread high-bit disease}, and compare the mainstream slang `bottom line'. :high moby: /hi:' mohb'ee/ n. the high half of a k {pdp- }'s physical address space; the other half was of course the low moby. this usage has been generalized in a way that has outlasted the {pdp- }; for example, at the washington d.c. area science fiction conclave (disclave), when a miscommunication resulted in two separate wakes being held in commemoration of the shutdown of mit's last {{its}} machines, the one on the upper floor was dubbed the `high moby' and the other the `low moby'. all parties involved {grok}ked this instantly. see {moby}. :highly: [scientific computation] adv. the preferred modifier for overstating an understatement. as in: `highly nonoptimal', the worst possible way to do something; `highly nontrivial', either impossible or requiring a major research project; `highly nonlinear', completely erratic and unpredictable; `highly nontechnical', drivel written for {luser}s, oversimplified to the point of being misleading or incorrect (compare {drool-proof paper}). in other computing cultures, postfixing of {in the extreme} might be preferred. :hing: // [irc] n. fortuitous typo for `hint', now in wide intentional use among players of {initgame}. compare {newsfroup}, {filk}. :hirsute: adj. occasionally used humorously as a synonym for {hairy}. :hll: /h-l-l/ n. [high-level language (as opposed to assembler)] found primarily in email and news rather than speech. rarely, the variants `vhll' and `mll' are found. vhll stands for `very-high-level language' and is used to describe a {bondage-and-discipline language} that the speaker happens to like; prolog and backus's fp are often called vhlls. `mll' stands for `medium-level language' and is sometimes used half-jokingly to describe {c}, alluding to its `structured-assembler' image. see also {languages of choice}. :hobbit: n. . the high order bit of a byte; same as the {meta bit} or {high bit}. . the non-its name of vad@ai.mit.edu (*hobbit*), master of lasers. :hog: n.,vt. . favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which noticeably degrade interactive response. *not* used of programs that are simply extremely large or complex or that are merely painfully slow themselves (see {pig, run like a}). more often than not encountered in qualified forms, e.g., `memory hog', `core hog', `hog the processor', `hog the disk'. "a controller that never gives up the i/o bus gets killed after the bus-hog timer expires." . also said of *people* who use more than their fair share of resources (particularly disk, where it seems that % of the people use % of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many people use it). of course, once disk hogs fill up one filesystem, they typically find some other new one to infect, claiming to the sysadmin that they have an important new project to complete. :holy wars: [from {usenet}, but may predate it] n. {flame war}s over {religious issues}. the paper by danny cohen that popularized the terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} in connection with the lsb-first/msb-first controversy was entitled "on holy wars and a plea for peace". other perennial holy wars have included {emacs} vs. {vi}, my personal computer vs. everyone else's personal computer, {{its}} vs. {{unix}}, {{unix}} vs. {vms}, {bsd} unix vs. {usg unix}, {c} vs. {{pascal}}, {c} vs. {lisp}, etc., ad nauseam. the characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy wars most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. see also {theology}. :home box: n. a hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "yeah? well, *my* home box runs a full . bsd, so there!" :hook: n. a software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later additions or changes by a user. for example, a simple program that prints numbers might always print them in base , but a more flexible version would let a variable determine what base to use; setting the variable to would make the program print numbers in base . the variable is a simple hook. an even more flexible program might examine the variable and treat a value of or less as the base to use, but treat any other number as the address of a user-supplied routine for printing a number. this is a {hairy} but powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as roman numerals, say, or as hebrew characters, and plug it into the program through the hook. often the difference between a good program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen places. both may do the original job about equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for future expansion of capabilities ({emacs}, for example, is *all* hooks). the term `user exit' is synonymous but much more formal and less hackish. :hop: n. one file transmission in a series required to get a file from point a to point b on a store-and-forward network. on such networks (including {uucpnet} and {fidonet}), the important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest path between them, rather than their geographical separation. see {bang path}. :hose: . vt. to make non-functional or greatly degraded in performance. "that big ray-tracing program really hoses the system." see {hosed}. . n. a narrow channel through which data flows under pressure. generally denotes data paths that represent performance bottlenecks. . n. cabling, especially thick ethernet cable. this is sometimes called `bit hose' or `hosery' (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'. see also {washing machine}. :hosed: adj. same as {down}. used primarily by unix hackers. humorous: also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse. probably derived from the canadian slang `hoser' popularized by the bob and doug mackenzie skits on sctv. see {hose}. it is also widely used of people in the mainstream sense of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'. once upon a time, a cray that had been experiencing periodic difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. it was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of some coolant hoses. the problem was corrected, and users were then assured that everything was ok because the system had been rehosed. see also {dehose}. :hot spot: n. . [primarily used by c/unix programmers, but spreading] it is received wisdom that in most programs, less than % of the code eats % of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. such spikes are called `hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy optimization or {hand-hacking}. the term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large but infrequent i/o operations. see {tune}, {bum}, {hand-hacking}. . the active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "put the mouse's hot spot on the `on' widget and click the left button." . a screen region that is sensitive to mouse clicks, which trigger some action. hypertext help screens are an example, in which a hot spot exists in the vicinity of any word for which additional material is available. . in a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one location that all , processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps because they are all doing a {busy-wait} on the same lock). :house wizard: [prob. from ad-agency lingo, `house freak'] n. a hacker occupying a technical-specialist, r&d, or systems position at a commercial shop. a really effective house wizard can have influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a suit. used esp. of unix wizards. the term `house guru' is equivalent. :hp-sux: /h-p suhks/ n. unflattering hackerism for hp-ux, hewlett-packard's unix port, which eatures some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals and elsewhere (these occasionally create portability problems). hp-ux is often referred to as `hockey-pux' inside hp, and one respondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /h-p ukkkhhhh/ as though one were about to spit. another such alternate spelling and pronunciation is "h-pux" /h-puhks/. hackers at hp/apollo (the former apollo computers which was swallowed by hp in ) have been heard to complain that mr. packard should have pushed to have his name first, if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym. compare {aidx}, {buglix}. see also {nominal semidestructor}, {telerat}, {open deathtrap}, {scumos}, {sun-stools}, {terminak}. :huff: v. to compress data using a huffman code. various programs that use such methods have been called `huff' or some variant thereof. oppose {puff}. compare {crunch}, {compress}. :humma: // excl. a filler word used on various `chat' and `talk' programs when you had nothing to say but felt that it was important to say something. the word apparently originated (at least with this definition) on the mecc timeshare system (mts, a now-defunct educational time-sharing system running in minnesota during the s and the early s) but was later sighted on early unix systems. :humor, hacker:: n. a distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among hackers, having the following marked characteristics: . fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor having to do with confusion of metalevels (see {meta}). one way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front of him/her with "green" written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first time). . elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such as specifications (see {write-only memory}), standards documents, language descriptions (see {intercal}), and even entire scientific theories (see {quantum bogodynamics}, {computron}). . jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises. . fascination with puns and wordplay. . a fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents of intelligence in it --- for example, old warner brothers and rocky & bullwinkle cartoons, the marx brothers, the early b- s, and monty python's flying circus. humor that combines this trait with elements of high camp and slapstick is especially favored. . references to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in zen buddhism and (less often) taoism. see {has the x nature}, {discordianism}, {zen}, {ha ha only serious}, {ai koans}. see also {filk}, {retrocomputing}, and {appendix b}. if you have an itchy feeling that all of these traits are really aspects of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and (b) responding like a hacker. these traits are also recognizable (though in a less marked form) throughout {{science-fiction fandom}}. :hung: [from `hung up'] adj. equivalent to {wedged}, but more common at unix/c sites. not generally used of people. syn. with {locked up}, {wedged}; compare {hosed}. see also {hang}. a hung state is distinguished from {crash}ed or {down}, where the program or system is also unusable but because it is not running rather than because it is waiting for something. however, the recovery from both situations is often the same. :hungry puppy: n. syn. {slopsucker}. :hungus: /huhng'g*s/ [perhaps related to slang `humongous'] adj. large, unwieldy, usually unmanageable. "tcp is a hungus piece of code." "this is a hungus set of modifications." :hyperspace: /hi:'per-spays/ n. a memory location that is *far* away from where the program counter should be pointing, often inaccessible because it is not even mapped in. "another core dump --- looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace somehow." (compare {jump off into never-never land}.) this usage is from the sf notion of a spaceship jumping `into hyperspace', that is, taking a shortcut through higher-dimensional space --- in other words, bypassing this universe. the variant `east hyperspace' is recorded among cmu and bliss hackers. = i = ===== :i didn't change anything!: interj. an aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. the {canonical} reply to this assertion is "then it works just the same as it did before, doesn't it?" see also {one-line fix}. this is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a divide-by- fault after terminals were added to a network. usually, their statement is found to be false. upon close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which actually {hosed} the code completely. :i see no x here.: hackers (and the interactive computer games they write) traditionally favor this slightly marked usage over other possible equivalents such as "there's no x here!" or "x is missing." or "where's the x?". this goes back to the original pdp- {advent}, which would respond in this wise if you asked it to do something involving an object not present at your location in the game. :i y: // n. abbrev. for `interoperability', with the ` ' replacing fourteen letters. used in the {x} (windows) community. refers to portability and compatibility of data formats (even binary ones) between different programs or implementations of the same program on different machines. :i n: // n. abbrev. for `internationali{z,s}ation', with the replacing letters. used in the {x} (windows) community. :ibm: /i-b-m/ inferior but marketable; it's better manually; insidious black magic; it's been malfunctioning; incontinent bowel movement; and a near-{infinite} number of even less complimentary expansions, including `international business machines'. see {tla}. these abbreviations illustrate the considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward the `industry leader' (see {fear and loathing}). what galls hackers about most ibm machines above the pc level isn't so much that they are underpowered and overpriced (though that does count against them), but that the designs are incredibly archaic, {crufty}, and {elephantine} ... and you can't *fix* them --- source code is locked up tight, and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you've found them. with the release of the unix-based rios family this may have begun to change --- but then, we thought that when the pc-rt came out, too. in the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood, this lexicon now includes a number of entries attributed to `ibm'; these derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within ibm's own beleaguered hacker underground. :ibm discount: n. a price increase. outside ibm, this derives from the common perception that ibm products are generally overpriced (see {clone}); inside, it is said to spring from a belief that large numbers of ibm employees living in an area cause prices to rise. :icbm address: n. (also `missile address') the form used to register a site with the usenet mapping project includes a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably to seconds-of-arc accuracy. this is actually used for generating geographically-correct maps of usenet links on a plotter; however, it has become traditional to refer to this as one's `icbm address' or `missile address', and many people include it in their {sig block} with that name. :ice: [coined by usenetter tom maddox, popularized by william gibson's cyberpunk sf novels: a contrived acronym for `intrusion countermeasure electronics'] security software (in gibson's novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to literally kill the intruder). also, `icebreaker': a program designed for cracking security on a system. neither term is in serious use yet as of mid- , but many hackers find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the future. :idempotent: [from mathematical techspeak] adj. acting exactly once. this term is often used with respect to {c} header files, which contain common definitions and declarations to be included by several source files. if a header file is ever included twice during the same compilation (perhaps due to nested #include files), compilation errors can result unless the header file has protected itself against multiple inclusion; a header file so protected is said to be idempotent. the term can also be used to describe an initialization subroutine which is arranged to perform some critical action exactly once, even if the routine is called several times. :if you want x, you know where to find it.: there is a legend that dennis ritchie, inventor of {c}, once responded to demands for features resembling those of what at the time was a much more popular language by observing "if you want pl/ , you know where to find it." ever since, this has been hackish standard form for fending off requests to alter a new design to mimic some older (and, by implication, inferior and {baroque}) one. the case x = {pascal} manifests semi-regularly on usenet's comp.lang.c newsgroup. indeed, the case x = x has been reported in discussions of graphics software (see {x}). :ifdef out: /if'def owt/ v. syn. for {condition out}, specific to {c}. :ill-behaved: adj. . [numerical analysis] said of an algorithm or computational method that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff error or poor convergence properties. . software that bypasses the defined {os} interfaces to do things (like screen, keyboard, and disk i/o) itself, often in a way that depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or which is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software. in the ibm pc/ms-dos world, there is a folk theorem (nearly true) to the effect that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance penalties in the os interface) all interesting applications are ill-behaved. see also {bare metal}. oppose {well-behaved}, compare {pc-ism}. see {mess-dos}. :imho: // [from sf fandom via usenet; abbreviation for `in my humble opinion'] "imho, mixed-case c names should be avoided, as mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors --- and they look too pascalish anyhow." also seen in variant forms such as imnsho (in my not-so-humble opinion) and imao (in my arrogant opinion). :imminent death of the net predicted!: [usenet] prov. since usenet first got off the ground in - , it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. on the other hand, most people feel the {signal-to-noise ratio} of usenet has dropped steadily. these trends led, as far back as mid- , to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the net. ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "imminent death of the net predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the {s/n ratio} or the huge and steadily increasing volume. :in the extreme: adj. a preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. see, for example, `obscure in the extreme' under {obscure}, and compare {highly}. :incantation: n. any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter at a system to attain a desired result. not used of passwords or other explicit security features. especially used of tricks that are so poorly documented they must be learned from a {wizard}. "this compiler normally locates initialized data in the data segment, but if you {mutter} the right incantation they will be forced into text space." :include: vt. [usenet] . to duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically with attribution to the source) in a reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response. see the the discussion of inclusion styles under "hacker writing style". . [from {c}] `#include <disclaimer.h>' has appeared in {sig block}s to refer to a notional `standard {disclaimer} file'. :include war: n. excessive multi-leveled including within a discussion {thread}, a practice that tends to annoy readers. in a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as usenet, this can lead to {flame}s and the urge to start a {kill file}. :indent style: [c programmers] n. the rules one uses to indent code in a readable fashion; a subject of {holy wars}. there are four major c indent styles, described below; all have the aim of making it easier for the reader to visually track the scope of control constructs. the significant variable is the placement of `{' and `}' with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and the guard or controlling statement (`if', `else', `for', `while', or `do') on the block, if any. `k&r style' --- named after kernighan & ritchie, because the examples in {k&r} are formatted this way. also called `kernel style' because the unix kernel is written in it, and the `one true brace style' (abbrev. tbs) by its partisans. the basic indent shown here is eight spaces (or one tab) per level; four are occasionally seen, but are much less common. if (cond) { <body> } `allman style' --- named for eric allman, a berkeley hacker who wrote a lot of the bsd utilities in it (it is sometimes called `bsd style'). resembles normal indent style in pascal and algol. basic indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four is just as common (esp. in c++ code). if (cond) { <body> } `whitesmiths style' --- popularized by the examples that came with whitesmiths c, an early commercial c compiler. basic indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four is occasionally seen. if (cond) { <body> } `gnu style' --- used throughout gnu emacs and the free software foundation code, and just about nowhere else. indents are always four spaces per level, with `{' and `}' halfway between the outer and inner indent levels. if (cond) { <body> } surveys have shown the allman and whitesmiths styles to be the most common, with about equal mind shares. k&r/ tbs used to be nearly universal, but is now much less common (the opening brace tends to get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an `if' or `while', which is a {bad thing}). defenders of tbs argue that any putative gain in readability is less important than their style's relative economy with vertical space, which enables one to see more code on one's screen at once. doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of {holy wars}. :index: n. see {coefficient of x}. :infant mortality: n. it is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since power-up (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in i/o devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as `infant mortality' problems (or, occasionally, as `sudden infant death syndrome'). see {bathtub curve}, {burn-in period}. :infinite: adj. consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. used very loosely as in: "this program produces infinite garbage." "he is an infinite loser." the word most likely to follow `infinite', though, is {hair} (it has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent example of infinite hair). these uses are abuses of the word's mathematical meaning. the term `semi-infinite', denoting an immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard. "this compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my program." see also {semi}. :infinite loop: n. one that never terminates (that is, the machine {spin}s or {buzz}es forever and goes {catatonic}). there is a standard joke that has been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine: "the cray- is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under seconds!" :infinity: n. . the largest value that can be represented in a particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever). . `minus infinity': the smallest such value, not necessarily or even usually the simple negation of plus infinity. in n-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is ^(n- ) - but minus infinity is - ( ^(n- )), not -( ^(n- ) - ). note also that this is different from "time t equals minus infinity", which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity. :initgame: /in-it'gaym/ [irc] n. an {irc} version of the venerable trivia game " questions", in which one user changes his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions, with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. as a courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a -letter hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status, reality-status. for example, maar means "male, american, alive, real" (as opposed to "fictional"). initgame can be surprisingly addictive. see also {hing}. :insanely great: adj. [mac community, from steve jobs; also bsd unix people via bill joy] something so incredibly {elegant} that it is imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant of {hacker}-natures. :intercal: /in't*r-kal/ [said by the authors to stand for `compiler language with no pronounceable acronym'] n. a computer language designed by don woods and james lyon in . intercal is purposely different from all other computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language, being totally unspeakable. an excerpt from the intercal reference manual will make the style of the language clear: it is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. for example, if one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of in a -bit intercal variable is: do : <- # $# any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. since this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. the effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct. intercal has many other peculiar features designed to make it even more unspeakable. the woods-lyons implementation was actually used by many (well, at least several) people at princeton. the language has been recently reimplemented as c-intercal and is consequently enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ... appreciation of the language on usenet. :interesting: adj. in hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of `annoying', or `difficult', or both. hackers relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient chinese curse "may you live in interesting times". oppose {trivial}, {uninteresting}. :internet address:: n. . [techspeak] an absolute network address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a {sitename}, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly including periods itself. contrast with {bang path}; see also {network, the} and {network address}. all internet machines and most uucp sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a large amount of behind-the-scenes magic and pd software written since or so. see also {bang path}, {domainist}. . more loosely, any network address reachable through internet; this includes {bang path} addresses and some internal corporate and government networks. reading internet addresses is something of an art. here are the four most important top-level functional internet domains followed by a selection of geographical domains: com commercial organizations edu educational institutions gov u.s. government civilian sites mil u.s. military sites note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in the u.s. or canada. us sites in the u.s. outside the functional domains su sites in the ex-soviet union (see {kremvax}). uk sites in the united kingdom within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty states, each generally with a name identical to the state's postal abbreviation. within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. other top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways. :interrupt: . [techspeak] n. on a computer, an event that interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. see also {trap}. . interj. a request for attention from a hacker. often explicitly spoken. "interrupt --- have you seen joe recently?" see {priority interrupt}. . under ms-dos, the term `interrupt' is nearly synonymous with `system call', because the os and bios routines are both called using the int instruction (see {{interrupt list, the}}) and because programmers so often have to bypass the os (going directly to a bios interrupt) to get reasonable performance. :interrupt list, the:: [ms-dos] n. the list of all known software interrupt calls (both documented and undocumented) for ibm pcs and compatibles, maintained and made available for free redistribution by ralf brown <ralf@cs.cmu.edu>. as of early , it had grown to approximately a megabyte in length. :interrupts locked out: adj. when someone is ignoring you. in a restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might well observe "she must have interrupts locked out". the synonym `interrupts disabled' is also common. variations abound; "to have one's interrupt mask bit set" and "interrupts masked out" is also heard. see also {spl}. :irc: /i-r-c/ [internet relay chat] n. a world-wide "party line" network that allows one to converse with others in real time. irc is structured as a network of internet servers, each of which accepts connections from client programs, one per user. the irc community and the {usenet} and {mud} communities overlap to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have discovered the wonders of computer networks. some usenet jargon has been adopted on irc, as have some conventions such as {emoticon}s. there is also a vigorous native jargon, represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[irc]'. see also {talk mode}. :iron: n. hardware, especially older and larger hardware of {mainframe} class with big metal cabinets housing relatively low-density electronics (but the term is also used of modern supercomputers). often in the phrase {big iron}. oppose {silicon}. see also {dinosaur}. :iron age: n. in the history of computing, -- --- the formative era of commercial {mainframe} technology, when {big iron} {dinosaur}s ruled the earth. these began with the delivery of the first pdp- , coincided with the dominance of ferrite {core}, and ended with the introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the intel ) in . see also {stone age}; compare {elder days}. :iron box: [unix/internet] n. a special environment set up to trap a {cracker} logging in over remote connections long enough to be traced. may include a modified {shell} restricting the cracker's movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep him interested and logged on. see also {back door}, {firewall machine}, {venus flytrap}, and clifford stoll's account in `{the cuckoo's egg}' of how he made and used one (see the bibliography in appendix c). compare {padded cell}. :ironmonger: [ibm] n. derogatory. a hardware specialist. compare {sandbender}, {polygon pusher}. :its:: /i-t-s/ n. . incompatible time-sharing system, an influential but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for pdp- s and pdp- s at mit and long used at the mit ai lab. much ai-hacker jargon derives from its folklore, and to have been `an its hacker' qualifies one instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. its pioneered many important innovations, including transparent file sharing between machines and terminal-independent i/o. after about , most actual work was shifted to newer machines, with the remaining its boxes run essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. the shutdown of the lab's last its machine in may marked the end of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see {high moby}). the royal institute of technology in sweden is maintaining one `live' its site at its computer museum (right next to the only tops- system still on the internet), so its is still alleged to hold the record for os in longest continuous use (however, {{waits}} is a credible rival for this palm). see {appendix a}. . a mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense ). its worshipers manage somehow to continue believing that an os maintained by assembly-language hand-hacking that supported only monocase -character filenames in one directory per account remains superior to today's state of commercial art (their venom against unix is particularly intense). see also {holy wars}, {weenix}. :iwbni: // [abbreviation] `it would be nice if'. compare {wibni}. :iyfeg: // [usenet] abbreviation for `insert your favorite ethnic group'. used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net to avoid offending anyone. see {jedr}. = j = ===== :j. random: /j rand'm/ n. [generalized from {j. random hacker}] arbitrary; ordinary; any one; any old. `j. random' is often prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. it means roughly `some particular' or `any specific one'. "would you let j. random loser marry your daughter?" the most common uses are `j. random hacker', `j. random loser', and `j. random nerd' ("should j. random loser be allowed to {gun} down other people?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of {random} in any sense. :j. random hacker: [mit] /j rand'm hak'r/ n. a mythical figure like the unknown soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. see {random}, {suzie cobol}. this may originally have been inspired by `j. fred muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days of {tmrc}, and was probably influenced by `j. presper eckert' (one of the co-inventors of the digital computer). :jack in: v. to log on to a machine or connect to a network or {bbs}, esp. for purposes of entering a {virtual reality} simulation such as a {mud} or {irc} (leaving is "jacking out"). this term derives from {cyberpunk} sf, in which it was used for the act of plugging an electrode set into neural sockets in order to interface the brain directly to a virtual reality. it's primarily used by mud & irc fans and younger hackers on bbs systems. :jaggies: /jag'eez/ n. the `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display). :jcl: /j-c-l/ n. . ibm's supremely {rude} job control language. jcl is the script language used to control the execution of programs in ibm's batch systems. jcl has a very {fascist} syntax, and some versions will, for example, {barf} if two spaces appear where it expects one. most programmers confronted with jcl simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file names. someone who actually understands and generates unique jcl is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to someone who memorizes the phone book. it is reported that hackers at ibm itself sometimes sing "who's the breeder of the crud that mangles you and me? i-b-m, j-c-l, m-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the "mickey mouse club" theme to express their opinion of the beast. . a comparative for any very {rude} software that a hacker is expected to use. "that's as bad as jcl." as with {cobol}, jcl is often used as an archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't experienced it. see also {ibm}, {fear and loathing}. :jedr: // n. synonymous with {iyfeg}. at one time, people in the usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use `jedr' instead of {iyfeg} or `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initials jedr after he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (the practice was {retcon}ned by the expanding these initials as `joke ethnic/denomination/race'.) after much sound and fury jedr faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise. jedr's only permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit `sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal rejection. :jfcl: /jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/ vt., obs. (alt. `jfcl') to cancel or annul something. "why don't you jfcl that out?" the fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the pdp- happened to be jfcl, which stands for "jump if flag set and then clear the flag"; this does something useful, but is a very fast no-operation if no flag is specified. geoff goodfellow, one of the jargon- co-authors, had jfcl on the license plate of his bmw for years. usage: rare except among old-time pdp- hackers. :jiffy: n. . the duration of one tick of the system clock on the computer (see {tick}). often one ac cycle time ( / second in the u.s. and canada, / most other places), but more recently / sec has become common. "the swapper runs every jiffies" means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second. . confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a -millisecond {wall time} interval. even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to one *nanosecond*. . indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "i'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. this is a bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. oppose {nano}. see also {real soon now}. :job security: n. when some piece of code is written in a particularly {obscure} fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting to increase his job security (i.e., by making himself indispensable for maintenance). this sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a section and says "job security", the other one may just nod. :jock: n. . a programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute-force programs. see {brute force}. . when modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some particular computing area. the compounds `compiler jock' and `systems jock' seem to be the best-established examples of this. :joe code: /joh' kohd`/ n. . code that is overly {tense} and unmaintainable. "{perl} may be a handy program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe code." . badly written, possibly buggy code. correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a particular joe at the lawrence berkeley laboratory and observed that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `joe code' was intended in sense . :jolix: n. /johl'liks/ n.,adj. bsd, the freeware port of the bsd net/ release to the intel i architecture by bill jolitz and friends. used to differentiate from bsdi's port based on the same source tape, which is called bsd/ . see {bsd}. :jr[ln]: /j-r-l/, /j-r-n/ n. the names jrl and jrn were sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user id used under {{tops- }} and {waits}; they were understood to be the initials of (fictitious) programmers named `j. random loser' and `j. random nerd' (see {j. random}). for example, if one said "to log in, type log one comma jay are en" (that is, "log ,jrn"), the listener would have understood that he should use his own computer id in place of `jrn'. :jrst: /jerst/ [based on the pdp- jump instruction] v.,obs. to suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the previous topic. usage: rather rare except among pdp- diehards, and considered silly. see also {aos}. :juggling eggs: vi. keeping a lot of {state} in your head while modifying a program. "don't bother me now, i'm juggling eggs", means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's being scrambled. in the classic first-contact sf novel `the mote in god's eye', by larry niven and jerry pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "we juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." that is a very hackish use of language. see also {hack mode}. :jump off into never-never land: [from j. m. barrie's `peter pan'] v. same as {branch to fishkill}, but more common in technical cultures associated with non-ibm computers that use the term `jump' rather than `branch'. compare {hyperspace}. :jupiter: [irc] vt. to kill an {irc} {robot} or user, and then take its place by adopting its {nick} so that it cannot reconnect. named after a particular irc user who did this to nickserv, the robot in charge of preventing people from inadvertently using a nick claimed by another user. = k = ===== :k: /k/ [from {kilo-}] n. a kilobyte. this is used both as a spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for megabyte and gigabyte). see {{quantifiers}}. :k&r: [kernighan and ritchie] n. brian kernighan and dennis ritchie's book `the c programming language', esp. the classic and influential first edition (prentice-hall ; isbn - - - ). syn. {white book}, {old testament}. see also {new testament}. :k-line: [irc] v. to ban a particular person from an {irc} server, usually for grossly bad {netiquette}. comes from the `k' code used to accomplish this in irc's configuration file. :kahuna: /k*-hoo'nuh/ [ibm: from the hawaiian title for a shaman] n. synonym for {wizard}, {guru}. :kamikaze packet: n. the `official' jargon for what is more commonly called a {christmas tree packet}. rfc- , `tcp and ip bake off' says: points for correctly being able to process a "kamikaze" packet (aka nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test segment, et al.). that is, correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a syn urg push fin segment with options and data). see also {chernobyl packet}. :kangaroo code: n. syn. {spaghetti code}. :ken: /ken/ n. . [unix] ken thompson, principal inventor of unix. in the early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read "love, ken". old-timers still use his first name (sometimes uncapitalized, because it's a login name and mail address) in third-person reference; it is widely understood (on usenet, in particular) that without a last name `ken' refers only to ken thompson. similarly, dennis without last name means dennis ritchie (and he is often known as dmr). see also {demigod}, {{unix}}. . a flaming user. this was originated by the software support group at symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user community were both named ken. :kgbvax: /k-g-b'vaks/ n. see {kremvax}. :kibo: /kee'boh/ [acronym] knowledge in, bullshit out. a summary of what happens whenever valid data is passed through an organization (or person) which deliberately or accidentally disregards or ignores its significance. consider, for example, what advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. compare {gigo}; see also {snafu principle}. :kick: [irc] v. to cause somebody to be removed from a {irc} channel, an option only available to {chop}s. this is an extreme measure, often used to combat extreme {flamage} or {flood}ing, but sometimes used at the chop's whim. :kill file: [usenet] n. (alt. `kill file') per-user file(s) used by some {usenet} reading programs (originally larry wall's `rn( )') to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. thus to add a person (or subject) to one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's newsreader in future. by extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in other media. see also {plonk}. :killer micro: [popularized by eugene brooks] n. a microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. often heard in "no one will survive the attack of the killer micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers. used esp. of risc architectures. the popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is doubtless reinforced by the movie title "attack of the killer tomatoes" (one of the {canonical} examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful among hackers). this has even more flavor now that killer micros have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations) but in hordes (within massively parallel computers). :killer poke: n. a recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of invalid values (see {poke}) in a memory-mapped control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es without hardware memory management (such as the ibm pc and commodore pet) that can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor. see also {hcf}. :kilo-: [si] pref. see {{quantifiers}}. :kips: /kips/ [abbreviation, by analogy with {mips} using {k}] n. thousands (*not* s) of instructions per second. usage: rare. :kiss principle: /kis' prin'si-pl/ n. "keep it simple, stupid". a maxim often invoked when discussing design to fend off {creeping featurism} and control development complexity. possibly related to the {marketroid} maxim on sales presentations, "keep it short and simple". :kit: [usenet; poss. fr. dec slang for a full software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade] n. a source software distribution that has been packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and installed according to a series of steps using only standard unix tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable chain of references from the top-level {readme file}. the more general term {distribution} may imply that special tools or more stringent conditions on the host environment are required. :klone: /klohn/ n. see {clone}, sense . :kludge: /kluhj/ n. common (but incorrect) variant of {kluge}, q.v. :kluge: /klooj/ [from the german `klug', clever] . n. a rube goldberg (or heath robinson) device, whether in hardware or software. (a long-ago `datamation' article by jackson granholme said: "an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.") . n. a clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. often used to repair bugs. often involves {ad-hockery} and verges on being a {crock}. in fact, the tmrc dictionary defined `kludge' as "a crock that works". . n. something that works for the wrong reason. . vt. to insert a kluge into a program. "i've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better way." . [wpi] n. a feature that is implemented in a {rude} manner. nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling `kludge'. reports from {old fart}s are consistent that `kluge' was the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the mid- s and, at that time, used exclusively of *hardware* kluges. in , the `new york folklore quarterly' reported a classic shaggy-dog story `murgatroyd the kluge maker' then current in the armed forces, in which a `kluge' was a complex and puzzling artifact with a trivial function. however, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade older. several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a device called a "kluge paper feeder" dating back at least to , an adjunct to mechanical printing presses. the kluge feeder was designed before small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it relied on a fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and linkages to both power and synchronize all its operations from one motive driveshaft. it was accordingly tempermental, subject to frequent breakdowns, and devilishly difficult to repair --- but oh, so clever! one traditional folk etymology of `kluge' makes it the name of a design engineer; in fact, `kluge' is a surname in german, and the designer of the kluge feeder may well have been the man behind this myth. the variant `kludge' was apparently popularized by the {datamation} article mentioned above; it was titled "how to design a kludge" (february , pages and ). some people who encountered the word first in print or on-line jumped to the reasonable but incorrect conclusion that the word should be pronounced /kluhj/ (rhyming with `sludge'). the result of this tangled history is a mess; in , many (perhaps even most) hackers pronounce the word correctly as /klooj/ but spell it incorrectly as `kludge' (compare the pronunciation drift of {mung}). some observers consider this appropriate in view of its meaning. :kluge around: vt. to avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a {kluge}. compare {workaround}. :kluge up: vt. to lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is milder than {cruft together} and has some of the connotations of {hack up} (note, however, that the construction `kluge on' corresponding to {hack on} is never used). "i've kluged up this routine to dump the buffer contents to a safe place." :knights of the lambda calculus: n. a semi-mythical organization of wizardly lisp and scheme hackers. the name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by alonzo church, with which lisp is intimately connected. there is no enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear, but one well-known lisper has been known to give out buttons and, in general, the *members* know who they are.... :knuth: /nooth/ [donald e. knuth's `the art of computer programming'] n. mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data structures or algorithms. a safe answer when you do not know: "i think you can find that in knuth." contrast {literature, the}. see also {bible}. :kremvax: /krem-vaks/ [from the then large number of {usenet} {vaxen} with names of the form foovax] n. originally, a fictitious usenet site at the kremlin, announced on april , in a posting ostensibly originated there by soviet leader konstantin chernenko. the posting was actually forged by piet beertema as an april fool's joke. other fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and {kgbvax}. this was probably the funniest of the many april fool's forgeries perpetrated on usenet (which has negligible security against them), because the notion that usenet might ever penetrate the iron curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time. in fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in moscow, demos.su, joined usenet. some readers needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just another prank. vadim antonov, senior programmer at demos and the major poster from there up to mid- , was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by blandly asserting that he *was* a hoax! eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site *named* kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into truth and demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers. [mr. antonov also contributed the russian-language material for this lexicon. --- esr] in an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the bungled hard-line coup of august . during those three days the soviet uucp network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy news source for many places within the ussr. though the sysops were concentrating on internal communications, cross-border postings included immediate transliterations of boris yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in moscow's streets. in those hours, years of speculation that totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on politically-loaded information in the age of computer networking were proved devastatingly accurate --- and the original kremvax joke became a reality as yeltsin and the new russian revolutionaries of `glasnost' and `perestroika' made kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to the west. :kyrka: /shir'k*/ n. see {feature key}. = l = ===== :lace card: n. obs. a {{punched card}} with all holes punched (also called a `whoopee card'). card readers tended to jam when they got to one of these, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. card punches could also jam trying to produce these things owing to power-supply problems. when some practical joker fed a lace card through the reader, you needed to clear the jam with a `card knife' --- which you used on the joker first. :language lawyer: n. a person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. a language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a -plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question "if only you had thought to look there". compare {wizard}, {legal}, {legalese}. :languages of choice: n. {c} and {lisp}. nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. smalltalk and prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. there is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. they often prefer to be known as {real programmer}s, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "{the story of mel, a real programmer}" in {appendix a}). assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {hll} implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. most hackers tend to frown on languages like {{pascal}} and {{ada}}, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard everything that's even remotely connected with {cobol} or other traditional {card walloper} languages as a total and unmitigated {loss}. :larval stage: n. describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one -hour {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. can last from months to years, the apparent median being around months. a few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. see also {wannabee}. a less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new {os} or programming language. :lase: /layz/ vt. to print a given document via a laser printer. "ok, let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the right things." :laser chicken: n. kung pao chicken, a standard chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. many hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons: it can {zap} you just like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser beams. in a variation on this theme, it is reported that some australian hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as `chernobyl chicken'. the name is derived from the color of the sauce, which is considered bright enough to glow in the dark (as, mythically, do some of the inhabitants of chernobyl). :lasherism: [harvard] n. a program which solves a standard problem (such as the eight queens puzzle or implementing the {life} algorithm) in a deliberately nonstandard way. distinguished from a {crock} or {kluge} by the fact that the programmer did it on purpose as a mental exercise. lew lasher was a student at harvard around who became notorious for such behavior. :laundromat: n. syn. {disk farm}; see {washing machine}. :ldb: /l*'d*b/ [from the pdp- instruction set] vt. to extract from the middle. "ldb me a slice of cake, please." this usage has been kept alive by common lisp's function of the same name. considered silly. see also {dpb}. :leaf site: n. a machine that merely originates and reads usenet news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic. often uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, the network tends to develop bottlenecks. compare {backbone site}, {rib site}. :leak: n. with qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). this leads to eventual exhaustion as new allocation requests come in. {memory leak} and {fd leak} have their own entries; one might also refer, to, say, a `window handle leak' in a window system. :leaky heap: [cambridge] n. an {arena} with a {memory leak}. :legal: adj. loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. "the older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ansi c." "this parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed." hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired objective. their use of `legal' is flavored as much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}. :legalese: n. dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to {parse} it. though hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity in language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with deception, {suit}s, and situations in which hackers generally get the short end of the stick. :ler: /l-e-r/ [tmrc, from `light-emitting diode'] n. a light-emitting resistor (that is, one in the process of burning up). ohm's law was broken. see {sed}. :lerp: /lerp/ vi.,n. quasi-acronym for linear interpolation, used as a verb or noun for the operation. e.g., bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between the two endpoints of the line. :let the smoke out: v. to fry hardware (see {fried}). see {magic smoke} for the mythology behind this. :letterbomb: n. a piece of {email} containing {live data} intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. it is possible, for example, to send letterbombs that will lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly that the user must cycle power (see {cycle}, sense ) to unwedge them. under unix, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. the results of this could range from silly to tragic. see also {trojan horse}; compare {nastygram}. :lexer: /lek'sr/ n. common hacker shorthand for `lexical analyzer', the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). "some c lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like `=-'." :lexiphage: /lek'si-fayj`/ n. a notorious word {chomper} on its. see {bagbiter}. :life: n. . a cellular-automata game invented by john horton conway and first introduced publicly by martin gardner (`scientific american', october ); the game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the cells by hand. many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with it, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this game (most notably bill gosper at mit, who even implemented life in {teco}!; see {gosperism}). when a hacker mentions `life', he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. . the opposite of {usenet}. as in {get a life!} :life is hard: [xerox parc] prov. this phrase has two possible interpretations: ( ) "while your suggestion may have some merit, i will behave as though i hadn't heard it." ( ) "while your suggestion has obvious merit, equally obvious circumstances prevent it from being seriously considered." the charm of the phrase lies precisely in this subtle but important ambiguity. :light pipe: n. fiber optic cable. oppose {copper}. :lightweight: adj. opposite of {heavyweight}; usually found in combining forms such as `lightweight process'. :like kicking dead whales down the beach: adj. describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. first popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of ibm's mainframe oses. "well, you *could* write a c compiler in cobol, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the beach." see also {fear and loathing} :like nailing jelly to a tree: adj. used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain. "trying to display the `prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what `prettiest' means algorithmically." :line : [from christian eschatological myth] n. the notational line of source at which a program fails for obscure reasons, implying either that *somebody* is out to get it (when you are the programmer), or that it richly deserves to be so gotten (when you are not). "it works when i trace through it, but seems to crash on line when i run it." "what happens is that whenever a large batch comes through, mmdf dies on the line of the beast. probably some twit hardcoded a buffer size." :line eater, the: [usenet] n. . a bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to bufsiz bytes of the article text. the bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space or tab. this bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature called the `line eater', and postings often included a dummy line of `line eater food'. ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there *was* a space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat the food *and* the beginning of the text it was supposed to be protecting. the practice of `sacrificing to the line eater' continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the wall}, and is still humorously referred to. the bug itself is still (in mid- ) occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways. . see {nsa line eater}. :line noise: n. . [techspeak] spurious characters due to electrical noise in a communications link, especially an rs- serial connection. line noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms, {cosmic rays}, or (notionally) birds crapping on the phone wires. . any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like the results of line noise in sense . . text that is theoretically a readable text or program source but employs syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses or . yes, there are languages this ugly. the canonical example is {teco}; it is often claimed that "teco's input syntax is indistinguishable from line noise." other non-{wysiwyg} editors, such as multics `qed' and unix `ed', in the hands of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as {intercal}. :line starve: [mit] . vi. to feed paper through a printer the wrong way by one line (most printers can't do this). on a display terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen. "to print `x squared', you just output `x', line starve, ` ', line feed." (the line starve causes the ` ' to appear on the line above the `x', and the line feed gets back to the original line.) . n. a character (or character sequence) that causes a terminal to perform this action. ascii , also called sub or control-z, was one common line-starve character in the days before microcomputers and the x . terminal standard. unlike `line feed', `line starve' is *not* standard {{ascii}} terminology. even among hackers it is considered a bit silly. . [proposed] a sequence such as \c (used in system v echo, as well as nroff/troff) that suppresses a {newline} or other character(s) that would normally be emitted. :link farm: [unix] n. a directory tree that contains many links to files in a master directory tree of files. link farms save space when (for example) one is maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source tree, e.g., when the only difference is architecture-dependent object files. "let's freeze the source and then rebuild the frobozz- and frobozz- link farms." link farms may also be used to get around restrictions on the number of `-i' (include-file directory) arguments on older c preprocessors. however, they can also get completely out of hand, becoming the filesystem equivalent of {spaghetti code}. :link-dead: [mud] adj. said of a {mud} character who has frozen in place because of a dropped internet connection. :lint: [from unix's `lint( )', named for the bits of fluff it picks from programs] . vt. to examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in c, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the unix utility `lint( )' is used. this term used to be restricted to use of `lint( )' itself, but (judging by references on usenet) it has become a shorthand for {desk check} at some non-unix shops, even in languages other than c. also as v. {delint}. . n. excess verbiage in a document, as in "this draft has too much lint". :lion food: [ibm] n. middle management or hq staff (by extension, administrative drones in general). from an old joke about two lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but agreed to meet after months. when they finally meet, one is skinny and the other overweight. the thin one says: "how did you manage? i ate a human just once and they turned out a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible. since then i've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass." the fat one replies: "well, *i* hid near an ibm office and ate a manager a day. and nobody even noticed!" :lions book: n. `source code and commentary on unix level ', by john lions. the two parts of this book contained ( ) the entire source listing of the unix version kernel, and ( ) a commentary on the source discussing the algorithms. these were circulated internally at the university of new south wales beginning -- , and were for years after the *only* detailed kernel documentation available to anyone outside bell labs. because western electric wished to maintain trade secret status on the kernel, the lions book was never formally published and was only supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source licensees. in spite of this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good many of the early unix hackers. :lisp: [from `list processing language', but mythically from `lots of irritating superfluous parentheses'] n. the name of ai's mother tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. invented by john mccarthy at mit in the late s, it is actually older than any other {hll} still in use except fortran. accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in detail from the original lisp . . the dominant hll among hackers until the early s, lisp now shares the throne with {c}. see {languages of choice}. all lisp functions and programs are expressions that return values; this, together with the high memory utilization of lisps, gave rise to alan perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an oscar wilde quote) that "lisp programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing". one significant application for lisp has been as a proof by example that most newer languages, such as {cobol} and {ada}, are full of unnecessary {crock}s. when the {right thing} has already been done once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer languages. :literature, the: n. computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the speaker believes is {trivial}. thus, one might answer an annoying question by saying "it's in the literature." oppose {knuth}, which has no connotation of triviality. :little-endian: adj. describes a computer architecture in which, within a given - or -bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is stored `little-end-first'). the pdp- and vax families of computers and intel microprocessors and a lot of communications and networking hardware are little-endian. see {big-endian}, {middle-endian}, {nuxi problem}. the term is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most often these are bits within a byte. :live data: n. . data that is written to be interpreted and takes over program flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as viewing it. one use of such hacks is to break security. for example, some smart terminals have commands that allow one to download strings to program keys; this can be used to write live data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it with a security-breaking {virus} that is triggered the next time a hapless user strikes that key. for another, there are some well-known bugs in {vi} that allow certain texts to send arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply viewed. . in c code, data that includes pointers to function {hook}s (executable code). . an object, such as a {trampoline}, that is constructed on the fly by a program and intended to be executed as code. . actual real-world data, as opposed to `test data'. for example, "i think i have the record deletion module finished." "have you tried it out on live data?" it usually carries the connotation that live data is more fragile and must not be corrupted, else bad things will happen. so a possible alternate response to the above claim might be: "well, make sure it works perfectly before we throw live data at it." the implication here is that record deletion is something pretty significant, and a haywire record-deletion module running amok on live data would cause great harm and probably require restoring from backups. :live free or die!: imp. . the state motto of new hampshire, which appears on that state's automobile license plates. . a slogan associated with unix in the romantic days when unix aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting against the windmills of industry. the "free" referred specifically to freedom from the {fascist} design philosophies and crufty misfeatures common on commercial operating systems. armando stettner, one of the early unix developers, used to give out fake license plates bearing this motto under a large unix, all in new hampshire colors of green and white. these are now valued collector's items. :livelock: /li:v'lok/ n. a situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do after they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue. differs from {deadlock} in that the process is not blocked or waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch up. :liveware: /li:v'weir/ n. . synonym for {wetware}. less common. . [cambridge] vermin. "waiter, there's some liveware in my salad..." :lobotomy: n. . what a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to have undergone. at ibm and elsewhere this term is used by both hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as a joke. . the act of removing the processor from a microcomputer in order to replace or upgrade it. some very cheap {clone} systems are sold in `lobotomized' form --- everything but the brain. :locked and loaded: [from military slang for an m- rifle with magazine inserted and prepared for firing] adj. said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for use --- that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. ironically, because their heads are `loaded' whenever the power is up, this description is never used of {{winchester}} drives (which are named after a rifle). :locked up: adj. syn. for {hung}, {wedged}. :logic bomb: n. code surreptitiously inserted in an application or os that causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are met. compare {back door}. :logical: [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] adj. having the role of. if a person (say, les earnest at sail) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the `logical' les earnest. (this does not imply any judgment on the replacement.) compare {virtual}. at stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate system in which `logical north' is toward san francisco, `logical west' is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies between physical (true) north near san francisco and physical west near san jose. (the best rule of thumb here is that, by definition, el camino real always runs logical north-and-south.) in giving directions, one might say: "to get to rincon tarasco restaurant, get onto {el camino bignum} going logical north." using the word `logical' helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. the concept is reinforced by north american highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical rather than physical directions. a similar situation exists at mit: route (famous for the electronics industry that has grown up along it) is a -quarters circle surrounding boston at a radius of miles, terminating near the coastline at each end. it would be most precise to describe the two directions along this highway as `clockwise' and `counterclockwise', but the road signs all say "north" and "south", respectively. a hacker might describe these directions as `logical north' and `logical south', to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the usual denotation for those words. (if you went logical south along the entire length of route , you would start out going northwest, curve around to the south, and finish headed due east, including one infamous stretch of pavement which is simultaneously route south and interstate north, and is signed as such!) :loop through: vt. to process each element of a list of things. "hold on, i've got to loop through my paper mail." derives from the computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare `cdr down' (under {cdr}), which is less common among c and unix programmers. its hackers used to say `irp over' after an obscure pseudo-op in the midas pdp- assembler. :loose bytes: n. commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or {shim}s many compilers insert between members of a record or structure to cope with alignment requirements imposed by the machine architecture. :lord high fixer: [primarily british, from gilbert & sullivan's `lord high executioner'] n. the person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect of a system. see {wizard}. :lose: [mit] vi. . to fail. a program loses when it encounters an exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner. . to be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky. . of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). see also {deserves to lose}. . n. refers to something that is {losing}, especially in the phrases "that's a lose!" and "what a lose!" :lose lose: interj. a reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "i accidentally deleted all my files!" "lose, lose." :loser: n. an unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person. someone who habitually loses. (even winners can lose occasionally.) someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. emphatic forms are `real loser', `total loser', and `complete loser' (but not *`moby loser', which would be a contradiction in terms). see {luser}. :losing: adj. said of anything that is or causes a {lose} or {lossage}. :loss: n. something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which something is losing. emphatic forms include `moby loss', and `total loss', `complete loss'. common interjections are "what a loss!" and "what a moby loss!" note that `moby loss' is ok even though *`moby loser' is not used; applied to an abstract noun, moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a person it implies substance and has positive connotations. compare {lossage}. :lossage: /los'*j/ n. the result of a bug or malfunction. this is a mass or collective noun. "what a loss!" and "what lossage!" are nearly synonymous. the former is slightly more particular to the speaker's present circumstances; the latter implies a continuing {lose} of which the speaker is currently a victim. thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss, but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious lossage. :lost in the noise: adj. syn. {lost in the underflow}. this term is from signal processing, where signals of very small amplitude cannot be separated from low-intensity noise in the system. though popular among hackers, it is not confined to hackerdom; physicists, engineers, astronomers, and statisticians all use it. :lost in the underflow: adj. too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. this is a reference to `floating underflow', a condition that can occur when a floating-point arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities smaller than its limit of magnitude. it is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow." see also {overflow bit}. :lots of mips but no i/o: adj. used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't seem to communicate with human beings effectively. technically it describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on input-output (in , the ibm rios, a.k.a. rs/ , is a notorious recent example). :low-bandwidth: [from communication theory] adj. used to indicate a talk that, although not {content-free}, was not terribly informative. "that was a low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an audience of {suit}s!" compare {zero-content}, {bandwidth}, {math-out}. :lpt: /l-p-t/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ [mit, via dec] n. line printer, of course. rare under unix, commoner in hackers with ms-dos or cp/m background. the printer device is called `lpt:' on those systems that, like its, were strongly influenced by early dec conventions. :lunatic fringe: [ibm] n. customers who can be relied upon to accept release versions of software. :lurker: n. one of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings regularly. this term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: "oh, i'm just lurking." often used in `the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's {flamage}-emitting regulars. :luser: /loo'zr/ n. a {user}; esp. one who is also a {loser}. ({luser} and {loser} are pronounced identically.) this word was coined around at mit. under its, when you first walked up to a terminal at mit and typed control-z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some status information, including how many people were already using the computer; it might print " users", for example. someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print " losers" instead. there ensued a great controversy, as some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. for a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say "users" or "losers". finally, someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it stuck. later one of the its machines supported `luser' as a request-for-help command. its died the death in mid- , except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term `luser' is often seen in program comments. = m = ===== :m: [si] pref. (on units) suff. (on numbers) see {{quantifiers}}. :macdink: /mak'dink/ [from the apple macintosh, which is said to encourage such behavior] vt. to make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. often the subject of the macdinking would be better off without them. "when i left at p.m. last night, he was still macdinking the slides for his presentation." see also {fritterware}. :machinable: adj. machine-readable. having the {softcopy} nature. :machoflops: /mach'oh-flops/ [pun on `megaflops', a coinage for `millions of floating-point operations per second'] n. refers to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer manufacturers. real applications are lucky to get half the quoted speed. see {your mileage may vary}, {benchmark}. :macintoy: /mak'in-toy/ n. the apple macintosh, considered as a {toy}. less pejorative than {macintrash}. :macintrash: /mak'in-trash`/ n. the apple macintosh, as described by a hacker who doesn't appreciate being kept away from the *real computer* by the interface. the term {maggotbox} has been reported in regular use in the research triangle area of north carolina. compare {macintoy}. see also {beige toaster}, {wimp environment}, {point-and-drool interface}, {drool-proof paper}, {user-friendly}. :macro: /mak'roh/ [techspeak] n. a name (possibly followed by a formal {arg} list) that is equated to a text or symbolic expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. this definition can be found in any technical dictionary; what those won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have changed over time. the term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which encouraged the use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device. during the early s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous, and sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as {hll}s, only to fall from favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler programming (see {languages of choice}). nowadays the term is most often used in connection with the c preprocessor, lisp, or one of several special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility (such as tex or unix's [nt]roff suite). indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective `macros' is now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose application control language (whether or not the language is actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such as the `keyboard macros' supported in some text editors (and pc tsr or macintosh init/cdev keyboard enhancers). :macro-: pref. large. opposite of {micro-}. in the mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people) this competes with the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend to restrict the latter to quantification. :macrology: /mak-rol'*-jee/ n. . set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large system written in {lisp}, {teco}, or (less commonly) assembler. . the art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in sense . sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike archeology, ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike construction. see also {boxology}. :macrotape: /ma'kroh-tayp/ n. an industry-standard reel of tape, as opposed to a {microtape}. :maggotbox: /mag'*t-boks/ n. see {macintrash}. this is even more derogatory. :magic: adj. . as yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain; compare {automagically} and (arthur c.) clarke's third law: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." "tty echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits." "this routine magically computes the parity of an -bit byte in three instructions." . characteristic of something that works although no one really understands why (this is especially called {black magic}). . [stanford] a feature not generally publicized that allows something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. compare {black magic}, {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}. for more about hackish `magic', see {a story about `magic'} (in {appendix a}). :magic cookie: [unix] n. . something passed between routines or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque identifier. especially used of small data objects that contain data encoded in a strange or intrinsically machine-dependent way. e.g., on non-unix oses with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of `ftell( )' may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to `fseek( )', but not operated on in any meaningful way. the phrase `it hands you a magic cookie' means it returns a result whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the same or some other program later. . an in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or underlining) or performing other control functions. some older terminals would leave a blank on the screen corresponding to mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a {glitch}. see also {cookie}. :magic number: [unix/c] n. . in source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hardcoded}), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented `#define'. magic numbers in this sense are bad style. . a number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm in some opaque way. the classic examples of these are the numbers used in hash or crc functions, or the coefficients in a linear congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. this sense actually predates and was ancestral to the more common sense . . special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to indicate its type to a utility. under unix, the system and various applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between types of executable file by looking for a magic number. once upon a time, these magic numbers were pdp- branch instructions that skipped over header data to the start of executable code; the , for example, was octal for `branch bytes relative'. nowadays only a {wizard} knows the spells to create magic numbers. how do you choose a fresh magic number of your own? simple --- you pick one at random. see? it's magic! :magic smoke: n. a substance trapped inside ic packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up --- the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. see {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}. usenetter jay maynard tells the following story: "once, while hacking on a dedicated z system, i was testing code by blowing eproms and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. one time, i plugged one in backwards. i only discovered that *after* i realized that intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their eproms --- the die was glowing white-hot. amazingly, the eprom worked fine after i erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. for all i know, it's still in service. of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." compare the original phrasing of {murphy's law}. :mailing list: n. (often shortened in context to `list') . an {email} address that is an alias (or {macro}, though that word is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses. some mailing lists are simple `reflectors', redirecting mail sent to them to the list of recipients. others are filtered by humans or programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by humans are said to be `moderated'. . the people who receive your email when you send it to such an address. mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction, along with {usenet}. they predate usenet, having originated with the first uucp and arpanet connections. they are often used for private information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized for or inappropriate to public usenet groups. though some of these maintain purely technical content (such as the internet engineering task force mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list maintained for many years by saul jaffe) are recreational, and others are purely social. perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was the eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny, lectroids and tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and most interesting people in hackerdom. mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike usenet) don't tie up a significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large, at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail software). thus, they are often created temporarily by working groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project without ever needing to meet face-to-face. much of the material in this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing list (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors of steele- . :main loop: n. software tools are often written to perform some actions repeatedly on whatever input is handed to them, terminating when there is no more input or they are explicitly told to go away. in such programs, the loop that gets and processes input is called the `main loop'. see also {driver}. :mainframe: n. term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling {stone age} batch machine. after the emergence of smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early s, the traditional {big iron} machines were described as `mainframe computers' and eventually just as mainframes. the term carries the connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of machines built by ibm, unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from computing's {stone age}. it is common wisdom among hackers that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny market for {number-crunching} supercomputers (see {cray})), having been swamped by the recent huge advances in ic technology and low-cost personal computing. as of , corporate america hasn't quite figured this out yet, though the wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among traditional mainframe makers are certainly straws in the wind (see {dinosaurs mating}). :management: n. . corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see also {suit}). spoken derisively, as in "*management* decided that ...". . mythically, a vast bureaucracy responsible for all the world's minor irritations. hackers' satirical public notices are often signed `the mgt'; this derives from the `illuminatus' novels (see the bibliography in {appendix c}). :mandelbug: /mon'del-buhg/ [from the mandelbrot set] n. a bug whose underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. this term implies that the speaker thinks it is a {bohr bug}, rather than a {heisenbug}. see also {schroedinbug}. :manged: /monjd/ [probably from the french `manger' or italian `mangiare', to eat; perhaps influenced by english n. `mange', `mangy'] adj. refers to anything that is mangled or damaged, usually beyond repair. "the disk was manged after the electrical storm." compare {mung}. :mangle: vt. used similarly to {mung} or {scribble}, but more violent in its connotations; something that is mangled has been irreversibly and totally trashed. :mangler: [dec] n. a manager. compare {mango}; see also {management}. note that {system mangler} is somewhat different in connotation. :mango: /mang'go/ [orig. in-house jargon at symbolics] n. a manager. compare {mangler}. see also {devo} and {doco}. :manularity: [prob. fr. techspeak `granularity' + `manual'] n. a notional measure of the manual labor required for some task, particularly one of the sort that automation is supposed to eliminate. "composing english on paper has much higher manularity than using a text editor, especially in the revising stage." hackers tend to consider manularity a symptom of primitive methods; in fact, a true hacker confronted with an apparent requirement to do a computing task {by hand} will usually consider it motivation enough to build another tool. :marbles: [from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] pl.n. the minimum needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or abstractions. after a bad system crash, you need to determine if the machine has enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough marbles to allow a rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. "this compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile {hello, world}." :marginal: adj. . extremely small. "a marginal increase in {core} can decrease {gc} time drastically." in everyday terms, this means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a spare place to put some of the junk while you sort through it. . of extremely small merit. "this proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me." . of extremely small probability of {win}ning. "the power supply was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it fried." :marginal hacks: n. margaret jacks hall, a building into which the stanford ai lab was moved near the beginning of the s (from the {d. c. power lab}). :marginally: adv. slightly. "the ravs here are only marginally better than at small eating place." see {epsilon}. :marketroid: /mar'k*-troyd/ alt. `marketing slime', `marketing droid', `marketeer' n. a member of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. derogatory. compare {droid}. :mars: n. a legendary tragic failure, the archetypal hacker dream gone wrong. mars was the code name for a family of pdp- compatible computers built by systems concepts (now, the sc group); the multi-processor sc- m, the small uniprocessor sc- m, and the never-built superprocessor sc- m. these machines were marvels of engineering design; although not much slower than the unique {foonly} f- , they were physically smaller and consumed less power than the much slower dec ks or foonly f- , f- , or f- machines. they were also completely compatible with the dec kl , and ran all kl binaries, including the operating system, with no modifications at about -- times faster than a kl . when dec cancelled the jupiter project in , systems concepts should have made a bundle selling their machine into shops with a lot of software investment in pdp- s, and in fact their spring announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the pdp- world. tops- was running on the mars by the summer of , and tops- by early fall. unfortunately, the hackers running systems concepts were much better at designing machines than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates continued to slip. they also overpriced the product ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the kl and vax and failed to reckon with the likes of sun microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power comparable to the kl at a fraction of the price. by the time sc shipped the first sc- m to stanford in late , most customers had already made the traumatic decision to abandon the pdp- , usually for vms or unix boxes. most of the mars computers built ended up being purchased by compuserve. this tale and the related saga of {foonly} hold a lesson for hackers: if you want to play in the {real world}, you need to learn real world moves. :martian: n. a packet sent on a tcp/ip network with a source address of the test loopback interface [ . . . ]. this means that it will come back at you labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this earth. "the domain server is getting lots of packets from mars. does that gateway have a martian filter?" :massage: vt. vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of a data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do not lose information. connotes less pain than {munch} or {crunch}. "he wrote a program that massages x bitmap files into gif format." compare {slurp}. :math-out: [poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] n. a paper or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal notation as to be incomprehensible. this may be a device for concealing the fact that it is actually {content-free}. see also {numbers}, {social science number}. :matrix: [fidonet] n. . what the opus bbs software and sysops call {fidonet}. . fanciful term for a {cyberspace} expected to emerge from current networking experiments (see {network, the}). . the totality of present-day computer networks. :maximum maytag mode: what a {washing machine} or, by extension, any hard disk is in when it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an old maytag with an unbalanced load. if prolonged for any length of time, can lead to disks becoming {walking drives}. :mbogo, dr. fred: /*m-boh'goh, dok'tr fred/ [stanford] n. the archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem, esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "do you know a good eye doctor?" "sure, try mbogo eye care and professional dry cleaning." the name comes from synergy between {bogus} and the original dr. mbogo, a witch doctor who was gomez addams' physician on the old "addams family" tv show. see also {fred}. :meatware: n. synonym for {wetware}. less common. :meeces: /mees'*z/ [tmrc] n. occasional furry visitors who are not {urchin}s. [that is, mice. this may no longer be in live use; it clearly derives from the refrain of the early- s cartoon character mr. jinx: "i hate meeces to *pieces*!" --- esr] :meg: /meg/ n. see {{quantifiers}}. :mega-: /me'g*/ [si] pref. see {{quantifiers}}. :megapenny: /meg'*-pen`ee/ n. $ , ( cent * ^ ). used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost and performance figures. :mego: /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/ [`my eyes glaze over', often `mine eyes glazeth (sic) over', attributed to the futurologist herman kahn] also `mego factor'. . n. a {handwave} intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not understanding what is going on. mego is usually directed at senior management by engineers and contains a high proportion of {tla}s. . excl. an appropriate response to mego tactics. . among non-hackers this term often refers not to behavior that causes the eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it. :meltdown, network: n. see {network meltdown}. :meme: /meem/ [coined on analogy with `gene' by richard dawkins] n. an idea considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. used esp. in the phrase `meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. this lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme complex; each entry might be considered a meme. however, `meme' is often misused to mean `meme complex'. use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons. :meme plague: n. the spread of a successful but pernicious {meme}, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it. astrology, basic, and the other guy's religion are often considered to be examples. this usage is given point by the historical fact that `joiner' ideologies like naziism or various forms of millennarian christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by collapses to small reservoir populations. :memetics: /me-met'iks/ [from {meme}] the study of memes. as of mid- , this is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made by h. keith henson and others. memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new information ecologies in which memes live and replicate. :memory leak: n. an error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion. also (esp. at cmu) called {core leak}. these problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size address spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were commonly written to root them out. with the advent of virtual memory, it is unfortunately easier to be sloppy about wasting a bit of memory (although when you run out of memory on a vm machine, it means you've got a *real* leak!). see {aliasing bug}, {fandango on core}, {smash the stack}, {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}, {leaky heap}, {leak}. :memory smash: [xerox parc] n. writing through a pointer that doesn't point to what you think it does. this occasionally reduces your machine to a rubble of bits. note that this is subtly different from (and more general than) related terms such as a {memory leak} or {fandango on core} because it doesn't imply an allocation error or overrun condition. :menuitis: /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n. notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no escape. hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line or language-style interfaces, especially those customizable via macros or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks. see {user-obsequious}, {drool-proof paper}, {wimp environment}, {for the rest of us}. :mess-dos: /mes-dos/ n. derisory term for ms-dos. often followed by the ritual banishing "just say no!" see {{ms-dos}}. most hackers (even many ms-dos hackers) loathe ms-dos for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties to ibmness (see {fear and loathing}). also `mess-loss', `messy-dos', `mess-dog', `mess-dross', `mush-dos', and various combinations thereof. in ireland and the u.k. it is even sometimes called `domestos' after a brand of toilet cleanser. :meta: /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (commonwealth) /mee't*/ [from analytic philosophy] adj.,pref. one level of description up. a metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language. this is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. see {{humor, hacker}}. :meta bit: n. the top bit of an -bit character, which is on in character values -- . also called {high bit}, {alt bit}, or {hobbit}. some terminals and consoles (see {space-cadet keyboard}) have a meta shift key. others (including, *mirabile dictu*, keyboards on ibm pc-class machines) have an alt key. see also {bucky bits}. historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of -bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex (octal ), things were different on earlier machines with -bit words and -bit bytes. the mit and stanford keyboards (see {space-cadet keyboard}) generated hex (octal ) from their meta keys. :metasyntactic variable: n. a name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. the word {foo} is the {canonical} example. to avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words like it as permanent names for anything. in filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a {scratch} file that may be deleted at any time. to some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. they occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. here are a few common signatures: {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, quuux, quuuux...: mit/stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this lexicon!). at mit, {baz} dropped out of use for a while in the s and ' s. a common recent mutation of this sequence inserts {qux} before {quux}. {foo}, {bar}, thud, grunt: this series was popular at cmu. other cmu-associated variables include {gorp}. {foo}, {bar}, fum: this series is reported common at xerox parc. {fred}, {barney}: see the entry for {fred}. these tend to be britishisms. {toto}, titi, tata, tutu: standard series of metasyntactic variables among francophones. {corge}, {grault}, {flarp}: popular at rutgers university and among {gosmacs} hackers. zxc, spqr, {wombat}: cambridge university (england). of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal (and {baz} nearly so). the compounds {foobar} and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide currency. some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; {barf} and {mumble}, for example. see also {{commonwealth hackish}} for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in great britain and the commonwealth. :mftl: /m-f-t-l/ [abbreviation: `my favorite toy language'] . adj. describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on the syntax (with lots of bnf), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see {content-free}). more broadly applied to talks --- even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "well, it was a typical mftl talk". . n. describes a language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "he cornered me about type resolution in his mftl." the first great goal in the mind of the designer of an mftl is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. thus, the standard put-down question at an mftl talk is "has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". on the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. see {break-even point}. (on a related note, dennis ritchie has proposed a test of the generality and utility of a language and the operating system under which it is compiled: "is the output of a program compiled under the language acceptable as input to the compiler?" in other words, can you write programs which write programs? (see {toolsmith}) alarming numbers of (language, os) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is fortran; ritchie is quick to point out that {unix} (even using fortran) passes it handily. that the test could ever be failed is only surprising to those who have had the good fortune only to have worked under modern systems which lack os-supported and -imposed "file types".) :mickey: n. the resolution unit of mouse movement. it has been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics performance. :mickey mouse program: n. north american equivalent of a {noddy} (that is, trivial) program. doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful. :micro-: pref. . very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix. . a quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by ^(- ) (see {{quantifiers}}). neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but hackers tend to fling them both around rather more freely than is countenanced in standard english. it is recorded, for example, that one cs professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures as a microcentury --- that is, about . minutes (see also {attoparsec}, {nanoacre}, and especially {microfortnight}). . personal or human-scale --- that is, capable of being maintained or comprehended or manipulated by one human being. this sense is generalized from `microcomputer', and is esp. used in contrast with `macro-' (the corresponding greek prefix meaning `large'). . local as opposed to global (or {macro-}). thus a hacker might say that buying a smaller car to reduce pollution only solves a microproblem; the macroproblem of getting to work might be better solved by using mass transit, moving to within walking distance, or (best of all) telecommuting. :microfloppies: n. . -inch floppies, as opposed to . -inch {vanilla} or mini-floppies and the now-obsolete -inch variety. this term may be headed for obsolescence as . -inchers pass out of use, only to be revived if anybody floats a sub- -inch floppy standard. see {stiffy}, {minifloppies}. :microfortnight: n. / of the fundamental unit of time in the furlong/firkin/fortnight system of measurement; . sec. the vms operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the sysgen utility, and one of these is timepromptwait, the time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus. this time is specified in microfortnights! multiple uses of the millifortnight (about minutes) and {nanofortnight} have also been reported. :microlenat: /mi:-kroh-len'-*t/ n. see {bogosity}. :microreid: /mi:'kroh-reed/ n. see {bogosity}. :microsloth windows: /mi:'kroh-sloth` win'dohz/ n. hackerism for `microsoft windows', a windowing system for the ibm-pc which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with {mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast . compare {x}, {sun-stools}. :microtape: /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. occasionally used to mean a dectape, as opposed to a {macrotape}. a dectape is a small reel, about inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide. unlike drivers for today's {macrotape}s, microtape drivers allow random access to the data, and therefore could be used to support file systems and even for swapping (this was generally done purely for {hack value}, as they were far too slow for practical use). in their heyday they were used in pretty much the same ways one would now use a floppy disk: as a small, portable way to save and transport files and programs. apparently the term `microtape' was actually the official term used within dec for these tapes until someone coined the word `dectape', which, of course, sounded sexier to the {marketroid}s; another version of the story holds that someone discovered a conflict with another company's `microtape' trademark. :middle-endian: adj. not {big-endian} or {little-endian}. used of perverse byte orders such as - - - or - - - , occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. see {nuxi problem}. :millilampson: /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n. a unit of talking speed, abbreviated ml. most people run about millilampsons. butler lampson (a cs theorist and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at . a few people speak faster. this unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. for example, noted computer architect c. gordon bell (designer of the pdp- ) is said, with some awe, to think at about ml but only talk at about ; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain. :minifloppies: n. . -inch {vanilla} floppy disks, as opposed to . -inch or {microfloppies} and the now-obsolescent -inch variety. at one time, this term was a trademark of shugart associates for their sa- minifloppy drive. nobody paid any attention. see {stiffy}. :mips: /mips/ [abbreviation] n. . a measure of computing speed; formally, `million instructions per second' (that's ^ per second, not ^( )!); often rendered by hackers as `meaningless indication of processor speed' or in other unflattering ways. this joke expresses a nearly universal attitude about the value of most {benchmark} claims, said attitude being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and {marketroid}s. the singular is sometimes ` mip' even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. see also {kips} and {gips}. . computers, especially large computers, considered abstractly as sources of {computron}s. "this is just a workstation; the heavy mips are hidden in the basement." . the corporate name of a particular risc-chip company; among other things, they designed the processor chips used in dec's workstation series. . acronym for `meaningless information per second' (a joke, prob. from sense ). :misbug: /mis-buhg/ [mit] n. an unintended property of a program that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a {bug} but turns out to be a {feature}. usage: rare. compare {green lightning}. see {miswart}. :misfeature: /mis-fee'chr/ or /mis'fee`chr/ n. a feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved. since it results from a deliberate and properly-implemented feature, a misfeature is not a bug. nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all). a misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to resolve, because fixing it usually involves a substantial philosophical change to the structure of the system involved. many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of nature. often a former feature becomes a misfeature because a tradeoff was made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "well, yeah, it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to characters, but the original implementors wanted to save directory space and we're stuck with it for now." :missed'em-five: n. pejorative hackerism for at&t system v unix, generally used by {bsd} partisans in a bigoted mood. (the synonym `sysvile' is also encountered.) see {software bloat}, {berzerkeley}. :missile address: n. see {icbm address}. :miswart: /mis-wort/ [from {wart} by analogy with {misbug}] n. a {feature} that superficially appears to be a {wart} but has been determined to be the {right thing}. for example, in some versions of the {emacs} text editor, the `transpose characters' command exchanges the character under the cursor with the one before it on the screen, *except* when the cursor is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters before the cursor are exchanged. while this behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly inconsistent, it has been found through extensive experimentation to be what most users want. this feature is a miswart. :moby: /moh'bee/ [mit: seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago. derived from melville's `moby dick' (some say from `moby pickle').] . adj. large, immense, complex, impressive. "a saturn v rocket is a truly moby frob." "some mit undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the harvard-yale game." (see "{the meaning of `hack'}"). . n. obs. the maximum address space of a machine (see below). for a [ ] or vax or most modern -bit architectures, it is , , , -bit bytes ( gigabytes). . a title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent hacker. "greetings, moby dave. how's that address-book thing for the mac going?" . adj. in backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in `moby sixes', `moby ones', etc. compare this with {bignum} (sense ): double sixes are both bignums and moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use of `moby' to describe double ones is sarcastic). standard emphatic forms: `moby foo', `moby win', `moby loss'. `foby moo': a spoonerism due to richard greenblatt. this term entered hackerdom with the fabritek k memory added to the mit ai pdp- machine, which was considered unimaginably huge when it was installed in the s (at a time when a more typical memory size for a timesharing system was kilobytes). thus, a moby is classically k -bit words, the size of a pdp- or pdp- moby. back when address registers were narrow the term was more generally useful, because when a computer had virtual memory mapping, it might actually have more physical memory attached to it than any one program could access directly. one could then say "this computer has mobies" meaning that the ratio of physical memory to address space is , without having to say specifically how much memory there actually is. that in turn implied that the computer could timeshare six `full-sized' programs without having to swap programs between memory and disk. nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto a machine, so most systems have much *less* than one theoretical `native' moby of {core}. also, more modern memory-management techniques (esp. paging) make the `moby count' less significant. however, there is one series of popular chips for which the term could stand to be revived --- the intel and with their incredibly {brain-damaged} segmented-memory designs. on these, a `moby' would be the -megabyte address span of a segment/offset pair (by coincidence, a pdp- moby was exactly megabyte of -bit bytes). :mod: vt.,n. . short for `modify' or `modification'. very commonly used --- in fact the full terms are considered markers that one is being formal. the plural `mods' is used esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardware or software, most esp. with respect to {patch} sets or a {diff}. . short for {modulo} but used *only* for its techspeak sense. :mode: n. a general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state. use of the word `mode' rather than `state' implies that the state is extended over time, and probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is being carried out. "no time to hack; i'm in thesis mode." in its jargon sense, `mode' is most often attributed to people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. in particular, see {hack mode}, {day mode}, {night mode}, {demo mode}, {fireworks mode}, and {yoyo mode}; also {talk mode}. one also often hears the verbs `enable' and `disable' used in connection with jargon modes. thus, for example, a sillier way of saying "i'm going to crash" is "i'm going to enable crash mode now". one might also hear a request to "disable flame mode, please". in a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state which certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain functions. for example, in order to insert characters into a document in the unix editor `vi', one must type the "i" key, which invokes the "insert" command. the effect of this command is to put vi into "insert mode", in which typing the "i" key has a quite different effect (to wit, it inserts an "i" into the document). one must then hit another special key, "esc", in order to leave "insert mode". nowadays, moded interfaces are generally considered {losing}, but survive in quite a few widely-used tools built in less enlightened times. :mode bit: n. a {flag}, usually in hardware, that selects between two (usually quite different) modes of operation. the connotations are different from {flag} bit in that mode bits are mainly written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary program. the classic example was the ebcdic-vs.-ascii bit (# ) of the program status word of the ibm . another was the bit on a pdp- that controlled whether it ran the pdp- or the linc instruction set. :modulo: /mo'dyu-loh/ prep. except for. an overgeneralization of mathematical terminology; one can consider saying that = except for the s ( = mod ). "well, lisp seems to work okay now, modulo that {gc} bug." "i feel fine today modulo a slight headache." :molly-guard: /mol'ee-gard/ [university of illinois] n. a shield to prevent tripping of some {big red switch} by clumsy or ignorant hands. originally used of some plexiglass covers improvised for the brs on an ibm after a programmer's toddler daughter (named molly) frobbed it twice in one day. later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment. :mongolian hordes technique: n. development by {gang bang} (poss. from the sixties counterculture expression `mongolian clusterfuck' for a public orgy). implies that large numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better performed by a few skilled ones. also called `chinese army technique'; see also {brooks's law}. :monkey up: vt. to hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a one-shot job. connotes an extremely {crufty} and consciously temporary solution. compare {hack up}, {kluge up}, {cruft together}, {cruft together}. :monkey, scratch: n. see {scratch monkey}. :monstrosity: . n. a ridiculously {elephantine} program or system, esp. one that is buggy or only marginally functional. . the quality of being monstrous (see `overgeneralization' in the discussion of jargonification). see also {baroque}. :moof: /moof/ [mac users] n. the moof or `dogcow' is a semi-legendary creature that lurks in the depths of the macintosh technical notes hypercard stack v . ; specifically, the full story of the dogcow is told in technical note # (the particular moof illustrated is properly named `clarus'). option-shift-click will cause it to emit a characteristic `moof!' or `!foom' sound. *getting* to tech note is the hard part; to discover how to do that, one must needs examine the stack script with a hackerly eye. clue: {rot } is involved. a dogcow also appears if you choose `page setup...' with a laserwriter selected and click on the `options' button. :moore's law: /morz law/ prov. the observation that the logic density of silicon integrated circuits has closely followed the curve (bits per square inch) = ^((n - )); that is, the amount of information storable in one square inch of silicon has roughly doubled yearly every year since the technology was invented. see also {parkinson's law of data}. :moose call, the: n. see {whalesong}. :moria: /mor'ee-*/ n. like {nethack} and {rogue}, one of the large pd dungeons-and-dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and operating systems. extremely addictive and a major consumer of time better used for hacking. :motas: /moh-toz/ [usenet: member of the appropriate sex, after {motos} and {motss}] n. a potential or (less often) actual sex partner. see also {so}. :motos: /moh-tohs/ [acronym from the u.s. census forms via usenet: member of the opposite sex] n. a potential or (less often) actual sex partner. see {motas}, {motss}, {so}. less common than motss or {motas}, which have largely displaced it. :motss: /mots/ or /m-o-t-s-s/ [from the u.s. census forms via usenet, member of the same sex] n. esp. one considered as a possible sexual partner. the gay-issues newsgroup on usenet is called soc.motss. see {motos} and {motas}, which derive from it. also see {so}. :mouse ahead: vi. point-and-click analog of `type ahead'. to manipulate a computer's pointing device (almost always a mouse in this usage, but not necessarily) and its selection or command buttons before a computer program is ready to accept such input, in anticipation of the program accepting the input. handling this properly is rare, but it can help make a {wimp environment} much more usable, assuming the users are familiar with the behavior of the user interface. :mouse around: vi. to explore public portions of a large system, esp. a network such as internet via {ftp} or {telnet}, looking for interesting stuff to {snarf}. :mouse belt: n. see {rat belt}. :mouse droppings: [ms-dos] n. pixels (usually single) that are not properly restored when the mouse pointer moves away from a particular location on the screen, producing the appearance that the mouse pointer has left droppings behind. the major causes for this problem are programs that write to the screen memory corresponding to the mouse pointer's current location without hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse drivers that do not quite support the graphics mode in use. :mouse elbow: n. a tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of a {wimp environment}. similarly, `mouse shoulder'; gls reports that he used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous. :mouso: /mow'soh/ n. [by analogy with `typo'] an error in mouse usage resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen. compare {thinko}, {braino}. :ms-dos:: /m-s-dos/ [microsoft disk operating system] n. a {clone} of {{cp/m}} for the crufted together in weeks by hacker tim paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since. numerous features, including vaguely unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, i/o redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into . and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and ms-dos programmers can never agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. the resulting mess is now the highest-unit-volume os in history. often known simply as dos, which annoys people familiar with other similarly abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the mid- s, when it was attached to ibm's first disk operating system for the ). the name further annoys those who know what the term {operating system} does (or ought to) connote; dos is more properly a set of relatively simple interrupt services. some people like to pronounce dos like "dose", as in "i don't work on dose, man!", or to compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide circulation among hackers exhorts: "ms-dos: just say no!"). see {mess-dos}, {ill-behaved}. :mu: /moo/ the correct answer to the classic trick question "have you stopped beating your wife yet?". assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. according to various discordians and douglas hofstadter (see the bibliography in {appendix c}), the correct answer is usually "mu", a japanese word alleged to mean "your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions". hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. the word `mu' is actually from chinese, meaning `nothing'; it is used in mainstream japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not recognize the discordian question-denying use. it almost certainly derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following well-known rinzei zen teaching riddle: a monk asked joshu, "does a dog have the buddha nature?" joshu retorted, "mu!" see also {has the x nature}, {ai koans}, and douglas hofstadter's `g"odel, escher, bach: an eternal golden braid' (pointer in the bibliography in appendix c). :mud: /muhd/ [acronym, multi-user dungeon; alt. multi-user dimension] . n. a class of {virtual reality} experiments accessible via the internet. these are real-time chat forums with structure; they have multiple `locations' like an adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability for characters to build more structure onto the database that represents the existing world. . vi. to play a mud (see {hack-and-slay}). the acronym mud is often lowercased and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of `going mudding', etc. historically, muds (and their more recent progeny with names of mu- form) derive from a hack by richard bartle and roy trubshaw on the university of essex's dec- in the early s; descendants of that game still exist today (see {bartlemud}). there is a widespread myth (repeated, unfortunately, by earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name mud was trademarked to the commercial mud run by bartle on british telecom (the motto: "you haven't *lived* 'til you've *died* on mud!"); however, this is false --- richard bartle explicitly placed `mud' in pd in . bt was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the myth. students on the european academic networks quickly improved on the mud concept, spawning several new muds (vaxmud, abermud, lpmud). many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social interaction. because these had an image as `research' they often survived administrative hostility to bbss in general. this, together with the fact that usenet feeds have been spotty and difficult to get in the u.k., made the muds major foci of hackish social interaction there. abermud and other variants crossed the atlantic around and quickly gained popularity in the u.s.; they became nuclei for large hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom (some observers see parallels with the growth of usenet in the early s). the second wave of muds (tinymud and variants) tended to emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and competition. in , over % of mud sites are of a third major variety, lpmud, which synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of abermud and older systems with the extensibility of tinymud. the trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue. the state of the art in mud design is still moving very rapidly, with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. there is now (early ) a move afoot to deprecate the term {mud} itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. see also {bartlemud}, {berserking}, {bonk/oif}, {brand brand brand}, {fod}, {hack-and-slay}, {link-dead}, {mudhead}, {posing}, {talk mode}, {tinycrud}. :muddie: n. syn. {mudhead}. more common in great britain, possibly because system administrators there like to mutter "bloody muddies" when annoyed at the species. :mudhead: n. commonly used to refer to a {mud} player who eats, sleeps, and breathes mud. mudheads have been known to fail their degrees, drop out, etc., with the consolation, however, that they made wizard level. when encountered in person, on a mud, or in a chat system, all a mudhead will talk about is three topics: the tactic, character, or wizard that is supposedly always unfairly stopping him/her from becoming a wizard or beating a favorite mud; why the specific game he/she has experience with is so much better than any other, and the mud he or she is writing or going to write because his/her design ideas are so much better than in any existing mud. see also {wannabee}. :multician: /muhl-ti'shn/ [coined at honeywell, ca. ] n. competent user of {{multics}}. perhaps oddly, no one has ever promoted the analogous `unician'. :multics:: /muhl'tiks/ n. [from "multiplexed information and computing service"] an early (late s) timesharing operating system co-designed by a consortium including mit, ge, and bell laboratories. very innovative for its time --- among other things, it introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special files. all the members but ge eventually pulled out after determining that {second-system effect} had bloated multics to the point of practical unusability (the `lean' predecessor in question was {ctss}). honeywell commercialized multics after buying out ge's computer group, but it was never very successful (among other things, on some versions one was commonly required to enter a password to log out). one of the developers left in the lurch by the project's breakup was ken thompson, a circumstance which led directly to the birth of {{unix}}. for this and other reasons, aspects of the multics design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. see also {brain-damaged} and {gcos}. :multitask: n. often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers, to describe a person doing several things at once (but see {thrash}). the term `multiplex', from communications technology (meaning to handle more than one channel at the same time), is used similarly. :mumblage: /muhm'bl*j/ n. the topic of one's mumbling (see {mumble}). "all that mumblage" is used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear how the subject of discussion works, or like "all that crap" when `mumble' is being used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives. :mumble: interj. . said when the correct response is too complicated to enunciate, or the speaker has not thought it out. often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance to get into a long discussion. "don't you think that we could improve lisp performance by using a hybrid reference-count transaction garbage collector, if the cache is big enough and there are some extra cache bits for the microcode to use?" "well, mumble ... i'll have to think about it." . sometimes used as an expression of disagreement. "i think we should buy a {vax}." "mumble!" common variant: `mumble frotz' (see {frotz}; interestingly, one does not say `mumble frobnitz' even though `frotz' is short for `frobnitz'). . yet another {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo}. . when used as a question ("mumble?") means "i didn't understand you". . sometimes used in `public' contexts on-line as a placefiller for things one is barred from giving details about. for example, a poster with pre-released hardware in his machine might say "yup, my machine now has an extra m of memory, thanks to the card i'm testing for mumbleco." . a conversational wild card used to designate something one doesn't want to bother spelling out, but which can be {glark}ed from context. compare {blurgle}. . [xerox parc] a colloquialism used to suggest that further discussion would be fruitless. :munch: [often confused with {mung}, q.v.] vt. to transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. to trace down a data structure. related to {crunch} and nearly synonymous with {grovel}, but connotes less pain. :munching: n. exploration of security holes of someone else's computer for thrills, notoriety, or to annoy the system manager. compare {cracker}. see also {hacked off}. :munching squares: n. a {display hack} dating back to the pdp- (ca. , reportedly discovered by jackson wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph y = x xor t for successive values of t --- see {hakmem} items -- ) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the screen. the initial value of t is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. some of these, later (re)discovered on the lisp machine, have been christened `munching triangles' (try and for xor and toggling points instead of plotting them), `munching w's', and `munching mazes'. more generally, suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as `munching foos'. [this is a good example of the use of the word {foo} as a {metasyntactic variable}.] :munchkin: /muhnch'kin/ [from the squeaky-voiced little people in l. frank baum's `the wizard of oz'] n. a teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast hacking basic or something else equally constricted. a term of mild derision --- munchkins are annoying but some grow up to be hackers after passing through a {larval stage}. the term {urchin} is also used. see also {wannabee}, {bitty box}. :mundane: [from sf fandom] n. . a person who is not in science fiction fandom. . a person who is not in the computer industry. in this sense, most often an adjectival modifier as in "in my mundane life...." see also {real world}. :mung: /muhng/ alt. `munge' /muhnj/ [in at mit, `mash until no good'; sometime after that the derivation from the {{recursive acronym}} `mung until no good' became standard] vt. . to make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable changes. see {blt}. . to destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. the system only mungs things maliciously; this is a consequence of {finagle's law}. see {scribble}, {mangle}, {trash}, {nuke}. reports from {usenet} suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common in program comments (compare the widespread confusion over the proper spelling of {kluge}). . the kind of beans of which the sprouts are used in chinese food. (that's their real name! mung beans! really!) like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have originated at {tmrc}; it was already in use there in . peter samson (compiler of the tmrc lexicon) thinks it may originally have been onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay spring (contact) being twanged. :murphy's law: prov. the correct, *original* murphy's law reads: "if there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." this is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for lusers. for example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `this way up'; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under {magic smoke}). edward a. murphy, jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the u.s. air force in to test human acceleration tolerances (usaf project mx ). one experiment involved a set of accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. there were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all the wrong way around. murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (major john paul stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later. within months `murphy's law' had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. before too many years had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. most of these are variants on "anything that can go wrong, will"; this is sometimes referred to as {finagle's law}. the memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates murphy's law acting on itself! :music:: n. a common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare {{science-fiction fandom}}, {{oriental food}}; see also {filk}). hackish folklore has long claimed that musical and programming abilities are closely related, and there has been at least one large-scale statistical study that supports this. hackers, as a rule, like music and often develop musical appreciation in unusual and interesting directions. folk music is very big in hacker circles; so is electronic music, and the sort of elaborate instrumental jazz/rock that used to be called `progressive' and isn't recorded much any more. the hacker's musical range tends to be wide; many can listen with equal appreciation to (say) talking heads, yes, gentle giant, spirogyra, scott joplin, tangerine dream, king sunny ade, the pretenders, or bach's brandenburg concerti. it is also apparently true that hackerdom includes a much higher concentration of talented amateur musicians than one would expect from a similar-sized control group of {mundane} types. :mutter: vt. to quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes, or fingers of ordinary mortals. often used in `mutter an {incantation}'. see also {wizard}. = n = ===== :n: /n/ quant. . a large and indeterminate number of objects: "there were n bugs in that crock!" also used in its original sense of a variable name: "this crock has n bugs, as n goes to infinity." (the true number of bugs is always at least n + .) . a variable whose value is inherited from the current context. for example, when a meal is being ordered at a restaurant, n may be understood to mean however many people there are at the table. from the remark "we'd like to order n wonton soups and a family dinner for n - " you can deduce that one person at the table wants to eat only soup, even though you don't know how many people there are (see {great-wall}). . `nth': adj. the ordinal counterpart of n, senses and . "now for the nth and last time..." in the specific context "nth-year grad student", n is generally assumed to be at least , and is usually or more (see {tenured graduate student}). see also {{random numbers}}, {two-to-the-n}. :nadger: /nad'jr/ [great britain] v. of software or hardware (not people), to twiddle some object in a hidden manner, generally so that it conforms better to some format. for instance, string printing routines on -bit processors often take the string text from the instruction stream, thus a print call looks like `jsr print:"hello world"'. the print routine has to `nadger' the return instruction pointer so that the processor doesn't try to execute the text as instructions. :nailed to the wall: [like a trophy] adj. said of a bug finally eliminated after protracted, and even heroic, effort. :nailing jelly: vi. see {like nailing jelly to a tree}. :na"ive: adj. untutored in the perversities of some particular program or system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way, rather than the right way (in really good designs these coincide, but most designs aren't `really good' in the appropriate sense). this is completely unrelated to general maturity or competence, or even competence at any other specific program. it is a sad commentary on the primitive state of computing that the natural opposite of this term is often claimed to be `experienced user' but is really more like `cynical user'. :na"ive user: n. a {luser}. tends to imply someone who is ignorant mainly owing to inexperience. when this is applied to someone who *has* experience, there is a definite implication of stupidity. :nak: /nak/ [from the ascii mnemonic for ] interj. . on-line joke answer to {ack}?: "i'm not here." . on-line answer to a request for chat: "i'm not available." . used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you don't understand their point or that they have suddenly stopped making sense. see {ack}, sense . "and then, after we recode the project in cobol...." "nak, nak, nak! i thought i heard you say cobol!" :nano: /nan'oh/ [cmu: from `nanosecond'] n. a brief period of time. "be with you in a nano" means you really will be free shortly, i.e., implies what mainstream people mean by "in a jiffy" (whereas the hackish use of `jiffy' is quite different --- see {jiffy}). :nano-: [si: the next quantifier below {micro-}; meaning * ^(- )] pref. smaller than {micro-}, and used in the same rather loose and connotative way. thus, one has {{nanotechnology}} (coined by hacker k. eric drexler) by analogy with `microtechnology'; and a few machine architectures have a `nanocode' level below `microcode'. tom duff at bell labs has also pointed out that "pi seconds is a nanocentury". see also {{quantifiers}}, {pico-}, {nanoacre}, {nanobot}, {nanocomputer}, {nanofortnight}. :nanoacre: /nan'oh-ay`kr/ n. a unit (about mm square) of real estate on a vlsi chip. the term gets its giggle value from the fact that vlsi nanoacres have costs in the same range as real acres once one figures in design and fabrication-setup costs. :nanobot: /nan'oh-bot/ n. a robot of microscopic proportions, presumably built by means of {{nanotechnology}}. as yet, only used informally (and speculatively!). also called a `nanoagent'. :nanocomputer: /nan'oh-k*m-pyoo'tr/ n. a computer whose switching elements are molecular in size. designs for mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding rods for their logic have been proposed. the controller for a {nanobot} would be a nanocomputer. :nanofortnight: [adelaide university] n. fortnight * ^- , or about . msec. this unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate practicals. see {microfortnight}, {attoparsec}, and {micro-}. :nanotechnology:: /nan'-oh-tek-no`l*-jee/ n. a hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed and built with the individual specification and placement of each separate atom. the first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments are taking place now ( ), for example with the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large computer company. nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker subculture ever since the term was coined by k. eric drexler in his book `engines of creation', where he predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and personal wealth. see also {blue goo}, {gray goo}, {nanobot}. :nasal demons: n. during a discussion on the usenet group comp.std.c in early , a regular remarked "when the compiler encounters [a given undefined construct] it is legal for it to make demons fly out of your nose" (the implication is that it may choose any arbitrarily bizarre way to interpret the code without violating the ansi c standard). someone else followed up with a reference to "nasal demons", which became recognized shorthand on that group for any unexpected behaviour of a c compiler on encountering an undefined construct. :nastygram: /nas'tee-gram/ n. . a protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also called a {letterbomb}) that takes advantage of misfeatures or security holes on the target system to do untoward things. . disapproving mail, esp. from a {net.god}, pursuant to a violation of {netiquette} or a complaint about failure to correct some mail- or news-transmission problem. compare {shitogram}. . a status report from an unhappy, and probably picky, customer. "what'd corporate say in today's nastygram?" . [deprecated] an error reply by mail from a {daemon}; in particular, a {bounce message}. :nathan hale: n. an asterisk (see also {splat}, {{ascii}}). oh, you want an etymology? notionally, from "i regret that i have only one asterisk for my country!", a misquote of the famous remark uttered by nathan hale just before he was hanged. hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels in the american war of independence. :nature: n. see {has the x nature}. :neat hack: n. . a clever technique. . a brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. example: the caltech rose bowl card display switch (see "{the meaning of `hack'}", appendix a). see also {hack}. :neats vs. scruffies: n. the label used to refer to one of the continuing {holy wars} in ai research. this conflict tangles together two separate issues. one is the relationship between human reasoning and ai; `neats' tend to try to build systems that `reason' in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while `scruffies' profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. more importantly, `neats' tend to believe that logic is king, while `scruffies' favor looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. to a `neat', `scruffy' methods appear promiscuous and successful only by accident; to a `scruffy', `neat' methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture `common sense' of living intelligences. :neep-neep: /neep neep/ [onomatopoeic, from new york sf fandom] n. one who is fascinated by computers. more general than {hacker}, as it need not imply more skill than is required to boot games on a pc. the derived noun `neep-neeping' applies specifically to the long conversations about computers that tend to develop in the corners at most sf-convention parties. fandom has a related proverb to the effect that "hacking is a conversational black hole!". :neophilia: /nee`oh-fil'-ee-*/ n. the trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. common trait of most hackers, sf fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge subcultures, including the pro-technology `whole earth' wing of the ecology movement, space activists, many members of mensa, and the discordian/neo-pagan underground. all these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, {{music}}, and {{oriental food}}. :net.-: /net dot/ pref. [usenet] prefix used to describe people and events related to usenet. from the time before the {great renaming}, when most non-local newsgroups had names beginning `net.'. includes {net.god}s, `net.goddesses' (various charismatic net.women with circles of on-line admirers), `net.lurkers' (see {lurker}), `net.person', `net.parties' (a synonym for {boink}, sense ), and many similar constructs. see also {net.police}. :net.god: /net god/ n. used to refer to anyone who satisfies some combination of the following conditions: has been visible on usenet for more than years, ran one of the original backbone sites, moderated an important newsgroup, wrote news software, or knows gene, mark, rick, mel, henry, chuq, and greg personally. see {demigod}. net.goddesses such as rissa or the slime sisters have (so far) been distinguished more by personality than by authority. :net.personality: /net per`sn-al'-*-tee/ n. someone who has made a name for him or herself on {usenet}, through either longevity or attention-getting posts, but doesn't meet the other requirements of {net.god}hood. :net.police: /net-p*-lees'/ n. (var. `net.cops') those usenet readers who feel it is their responsibility to pounce on and {flame} any posting which they regard as offensive or in violation of their understanding of {netiquette}. generally used sarcastically or pejoratively. also spelled `net police'. see also {net.-}, {code police}. :netbollix: [from bollix: to bungle] n. {ibm}'s netbios, an extremely {brain-damaged} network protocol which, like {blue glue}, is used at commercial shops that don't know any better. :netburp: [irc] n. when {netlag} gets really bad, and delays between servers exceed a certain threshhold, the {irc} network effectively becomes partitioned for a period of time, and large numbers of people seem to be signing off at the same time and then signing back on again when things get better. an instance of this is called a `netburp' (or, sometimes, {netsplit}). :netdead: [irc] n. the state of someone who signs off {irc}, perhaps during a {netburp}, and doesn't sign back on until later. in the interim, he is "dead to the net". :nethack: /net'hak/ [unix] n. a dungeon game similar to {rogue} but more elaborate, distributed in c source over {usenet} and very popular at unix sites and on pc-class machines (nethack is probably the most widely distributed of the freeware dungeon games). the earliest versions, written by jay fenlason and later considerably enhanced by andries brouwer, were simply called `hack'. the name changed when maintenance was taken over by a group of hackers originally organized by mike stephenson; the current contact address (as of mid- ) is nethack-bugs@linc.cis.upenn.edu. :netiquette: /net'ee-ket/ or /net'i-ket/ [portmanteau from "network etiquette"] n. conventions of politeness recognized on {usenet}, such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups or refraining from commercial pluggery on the net. :netlag: [irc, mud] n. a condition that occurs when the delays in the {irc} network or on a {mud} become severe enough that servers briefly lose and then reestablish contact, causing messages to be delivered in bursts, often with delays of up to a minute. (note that this term has nothing to do with mainstream "jetlag", a condition which hackers tend not to be much bothered by.) :netnews: /net'n[y]ooz/ n. . the software that makes {usenet} run. . the content of usenet. "i read netnews right after my mail most mornings." :netrock: /net'rok/ [ibm] n. a {flame}; used esp. on vnet, ibm's internal corporate network. :netsplit: n. syn. {netburp}. :netter: n. . loosely, anyone with a {network address}. . more specifically, a {usenet} regular. most often found in the plural. "if you post *that* in a technical group, you're going to be flamed by angry netters for the rest of time!" :network address: n. (also `net address') as used by hackers, means an address on `the' network (see {network, the}; this is almost always a {bang path} or {{internet address}}). such an address is essential if one wants to be to be taken seriously by hackers; in particular, persons or organizations that claim to understand, work with, sell to, or recruit from among hackers but *don't* display net addresses are quietly presumed to be clueless poseurs and mentally flushed (see {flush}, sense ). hackers often put their net addresses on their business cards and wear them prominently in contexts where they expect to meet other hackers face-to-face (see also {{science-fiction fandom}}). this is mostly functional, but is also a signal that one identifies with hackerdom (like lodge pins among masons or tie-dyed t-shirts among grateful dead fans). net addresses are often used in email text as a more concise substitute for personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite well by network names without ever learning each others' `legal' monikers. see also {sitename}, {domainist}. :network meltdown: n. a state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of {thrash}ing. this may be induced by a {chernobyl packet}. see also {broadcast storm}, {kamikaze packet}. :network, the: n. . the union of all the major noncommercial, academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as internet, the old arpanet, nsfnet, {bitnet}, and the virtual uucp and {usenet} `networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial time-sharing services (such as compuserve) that gateway to them. a site is generally considered `on the network' if it can be reached through some combination of internet-style (@-sign) and uucp (bang-path) addresses. see {bang path}, {{internet address}}, {network address}. . a fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in robert anton wilson's novel `schr"odinger's cat', to which many hackers have subsequently decided they belong (this is an example of {ha ha only serious}). in sense , `network' is often abbreviated to `net'. "are you on the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to face, and "see you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye. :new jersey: [primarily stanford/silicon valley] adj. brain-damaged or of poor design. this refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as c, c++, and unix (which originated at bell labs in murray hill, new jersey). "this compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from a compiler designed in new jersey?" compare {berkeley quality software}. see also {unix conspiracy}. :new testament: n. [c programmers] the second edition of k&r's `the c programming language' (prentice-hall, ; isbn - - - ), describing ansi standard c. see {k&r}. :newbie: /n[y]oo'bee/ n. [orig. from british public-school and military slang variant of `new boy'] a usenet neophyte. this term surfaced in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre but is now in wide use. criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. the label `newbie' is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who has been around usenet for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. see {biff}. :newgroup wars: /n[y]oo'groop wohrz/ [usenet] n. the salvos of dueling `newgroup' and `rmgroup' messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over whether a {newsgroup} should be created net-wide. these usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). at times, especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the spinoff of alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork from alt.tv.muppets in early , or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious {flamer}s, e.g., alt.weemba. :newline: /n[y]oo'li:n/ n. . [techspeak, primarily unix] the ascii lf character ( ), used under {{unix}} as a text line terminator. a bell-labs-ism rather than a berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for unix jargon), it is said to have originally been an ibm usage. (though the term `newline' appears in ascii standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before unix). . more generally, any magic character, character sequence, or operation (like pascal's writeln procedure) required to terminate a text record or separate lines. see {crlf}, {terpri}. :news: /nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ [acronym; the `network window system'] n. the road not taken in window systems, an elegant {postscript}-based environment that would almost certainly have won the standards war with {x} if it hadn't been {proprietary} to sun microsystems. there is a lesson here that too many software vendors haven't yet heeded. many hackers insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing news from {news} (the {netnews} software). :news: n. see {netnews}. :newsfroup: // [usenet] n. silly synonym for {newsgroup}, originally a typo but now in regular use on usenet's talk.bizarre and other lunatic-fringe groups. compare {hing} and {filk}. :newsgroup: [usenet] n. one of {usenet}'s huge collection of topic groups or {fora}. usenet groups can be `unmoderated' (anyone can post) or `moderated' (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or filters and then posts the results). some newsgroups have parallel {mailing list}s for internet people with no netnews access, with postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. some moderated groups (especially those which are actually gatewayed internet mailing lists) are distributed as `digests', with groups of postings periodically collected into a single large posting with an index. among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the c-language forum), comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.unix.wizards (for unix wizards), rec.arts.sf-lovers (for science-fiction fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions and {flamage}). :nick: [irc] n. short for nickname. on {irc}, every user must pick a nick, which is sometimes the same as the user's real name or login name, but is often more fanciful. :nickle: /ni'kl/ [from `nickel', common name for the u.s. -cent coin] n. a {nybble} + ; bits. reported among developers for mattel's gi (the intellivision games processor), a chip with -bit-wide ram but -bit-wide rom. see also {deckle}. :night mode: n. see {phase} (of people). :nightmare file system: n. pejorative hackerism for sun's network file system (nfs). in any nontrivial network of suns where there is a lot of nfs cross-mounting, when one sun goes down, the others often freeze up. some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. this causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher {spl} level). then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. the first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. this situation snowballs very fast, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen --- worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! many of nfs'es problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great {misfeature}). (its partisans are apt to cite this as proof of unix's alleged bogosity; its had a working nfs-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early s.) see also {broadcast storm}. :nil: /nil/ no. used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the `-p' convention. most hackers assume this derives simply from lisp terminology for `false' (see also {t}), but nil as a negative reply was well-established among radio hams decades before the advent of lisp. the historical connection between early hackerdom and the ham radio word was strong enough that this may have been an influence. :nmi: /n-m-i/ n. non-maskable interrupt. an irq on the pdp- or [ ] ; the nmi line on an [ ] . in contrast with a {priority interrupt} (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an nmi is *never* ignored. :no-op: /noh'op/ alt. nop /nop/ [no operation] n. . (also v.) a machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to overwrite code to be removed in binaries). see also {jfcl}. . a person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing going on upstairs, or both. as in "he's a no-op." . any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money into a vending machine and having it fall immediately into the coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go away. "oh, well, that was a no-op." hot-and-sour soup (see {great-wall}) that is insufficiently either is `no-op soup'; so is wonton soup if everybody else is having hot-and-sour. :noddy: /nod'ee/ [uk: from the children's books] adj. . small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. the archetypal noddy program is {hello, world}. noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. may be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "this editor's a bit noddy." . a program that is more or less instant to produce. in this use, the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a {hack} sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "i'll just throw together a noddy {awk} script to dump all the first fields." in north america this might be called a {mickey mouse program}. see {toy program}. :nomex underwear: /noh'meks uhn'-der-weir/ [usenet] n. syn. {asbestos longjohns}, used mostly in auto-related mailing lists and newsgroups. nomex underwear is an actual product available on the racing equipment market, used as a fire resistance measure and required in some racing series. :nominal semidestructor: n. sound-alike slang for `national semiconductor', found among other places in the . bsd networking sources. during the late s to mid- s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the ns and ns and several variants. at one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising intel x and motorola x series. unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. they eventually sank without trace, joining the zilog z , and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors. compare {hp-sux}, {aidx}, {buglix}, {macintrash}, {telerat}, {open deathtrap}, {scumos}, {sun-stools}. :non-optimal solution: n. (also `sub-optimal solution') an astoundingly stupid way to do something. this term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely serious. compare {stunning}. see also {bad thing}. :nonlinear: adj. [scientific computation] . behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion; unstable. when used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of design specifications. this behavior may be induced by unreasonable inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the computation far off from its expected course. . when describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a {flame}. "when you talk to bob, don't mention the drug problem or he'll go nonlinear for hours." in this context, `go nonlinear' connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion connotes linearity). :nontrivial: adj. requiring real thought or significant computing power. often used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("proving p=np is nontrivial"). the preferred emphatic form is `decidedly nontrivial'. see {trivial}, {uninteresting}, {interesting}. :notwork: /not'werk/ n. a network, when it is acting {flaky} or is {down}. compare {nyetwork}. said at ibm to have orig. referred to a particular period of flakiness on ibm's vnet corporate network, ca. ; but there are independent reports of the term from elsewhere. :np-: /n-p/ pref. extremely. used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality of difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it should be' (np-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so far no one has found a good a priori reason that they should be.) "coding a bitblt implementation to perform correctly in every case is np-annoying." this is generalized from the computer-science terms `np-hard' and `np-complete'. np is the set of nondeterministic-polynomial algorithms, those that can be completed by a nondeterministic turing machine in an amount of time that is a polynomial function of the size of the input; a solution for one np-complete problem would solve all the others. note, however, that the np- prefix is, from a complexity theorist's point of view, the wrong part of `np-complete' to connote extreme difficulty; it is the completeness, not the np-ness, that puts any problem it describes in the `hard' category. :nroff: /en'rof/ [unix, from "new runoff"] n. a companion program to the unix typesetter `troff', accepting identical input but preparing output for terminals and line printers. :nsa line eater: n. the national security agency trawling program sometimes assumed to be reading {usenet} for the u.s. government's spooks. most hackers describe it as a mythical beast, but some believe it actually exists, more aren't sure, and many believe in acting as though it exists just in case. some netters put loaded phrases like `kgb', `uzi', `nuclear materials', `palestine', `cocaine', and `assassination' in their {sig block}s in a (probably futile) attempt to confuse and overload the creature. the {gnu} version of {emacs} actually has a command that randomly inserts a bunch of insidious anarcho-verbiage into your edited text. there is a mainstream variant of this myth involving a `trunk line monitor', which supposedly used speech recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. this one was making the rounds in the late s, spread by people who had no idea of then-current technology or the storage, signal-processing, or speech recognition needs of such a project. on the basis of mass-storage costs alone it would have been cheaper to hire high-school students and just let them listen in. speech-recognition technology can't do this job even now ( ), and almost certainly won't in this millennium, either. the peak of silliness came with a letter to an alternative paper in new haven, connecticut, laying out the factoids of this big brotherly affair. the letter writer then revealed his actual agenda by offering --- at an amazing low price, just this once, we take visa and mastercard --- a scrambler guaranteed to daunt the trunk trawler and presumably allowing the would-be baader-meinhof gangs of the world to get on with their business. :nuke: vt. . to intentionally delete the entire contents of a given directory or storage volume. "on unix, `rm -r /usr' will nuke everything in the usr filesystem." never used for accidental deletion. oppose {blow away}. . syn. for {dike}, applied to smaller things such as files, features, or code sections. often used to express a final verdict. "what do you want me to do with that -meg {wallpaper} file?" "nuke it." . used of processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent verbal alias for `kill - ' on unix. . on ibm pcs, a bug that results in {fandango on core} can trash the operating system, including the fat (the in-core copy of the disk block chaining information). this can utterly scramble attached disks, which are then said to have been `nuked'. this term is also used of analogous lossages on macintoshes and other micros without memory protection. :number-crunching: n. computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that make extensive use of floating-point numbers. the only thing {fortrash} is good for. this term is in widespread informal use outside hackerdom and even in mainstream slang, but has additional hackish connotations: namely, that the computations are mindless and involve massive use of {brute force}. this is not always {evil}, esp. if it involves ray tracing or fractals or some other use that makes {pretty pictures}, esp. if such pictures can be used as {wallpaper}. see also {crunch}. :numbers: [scientific computation] n. output of a computation that may not be significant results but at least indicate that the program is running. may be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc. `making numbers' means running a program because output --- any output, not necessarily meaningful output --- is needed as a demonstration of progress. see {pretty pictures}, {math-out}, {social science number}. :nuxi problem: /nuk'see pro'bl*m/ n. this refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with differing byte-order. the string `unix' might look like `nuxi' on a machine with a different `byte sex' (e.g., when transferring data from a {little-endian} to a {big-endian}, or vice-versa). see also {middle-endian}, {swab}, and {bytesexual}. :nybble: /nib'l/ (alt. `nibble') [from v. `nibble' by analogy with `bite' => `byte'] n. four bits; one {hex} digit; a half-byte. though `byte' is now techspeak, this useful relative is still jargon. compare {{byte}}, {crumb}, {tayste}, {dynner}; see also {bit}, {nickle}, {deckle}. apparently this spelling is uncommon in commonwealth hackish, as british orthography suggests the pronunciation /ni:'bl/. :nyetwork: /nyet'werk/ [from russian `nyet' = no] n. a network, when it is acting {flaky} or is {down}. compare {notwork}. = o = ===== :ob-: /ob/ pref. obligatory. a piece of {netiquette} acknowledging that the author has been straying from the newsgroup's charter topic. for example, if a posting in alt.sex is a response to a part of someone else's posting that has nothing particularly to do with sex, the author may append `obsex' (or `obsex') and toss off a question or vignette about some unusual erotic act. it is considered a sign of great {winnitude} when your obs are more interesting than other people's whole postings. :obfuscated c contest: n. an annual contest run since over usenet by landon curt noll and friends. the overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) c program; various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim. c's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. the winning programs often manage to be simultaneously (a) funny, (b) breathtaking works of art, and (c) horrible examples of how *not* to code in c. this relatively short and sweet entry might help convey the flavor of obfuscated c: /* * hello world program * by jack applin and robert heckendorn, */ main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="hello, world!\n)"; (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c)); **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);} here's another good one: /* * program to compute an approximation of pi * by brian westley, */ #define _ -f< ||--f-oo--; int f= ,oo= ; main(){f_oo();printf("% . f\n", .*-f/oo/oo);}f_oo() { _-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_ } see also {hello, world}. :obi-wan error: /oh'bee-won` er'*r/ [rpi, from `off-by-one' and the obi-wan kenobi character in "star wars"] n. a loop of some sort in which the index is off by . common when the index should have started from but instead started from . a kind of {off-by-one error}. see also {zeroth}. :objectionable-c: n. hackish take on "objective-c", the name of an object-oriented dialect of c in competition with the better-known c++ (it is used to write native applications on the next machine). objectionable-c uses a smalltalk-like syntax, but lacks the flexibility of smalltalk method calls, and (like many such efforts) comes frustratingly close to attaining the {right thing} without actually doing so. :obscure: adj. used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply total incomprehensibility. "the reason for that last crash is obscure." "the `find( )' command's syntax is obscure!" the phrase `moderately obscure' implies that it could be figured out but probably isn't worth the trouble. the construction `obscure in the extreme' is the preferred emphatic form. :octal forty: /ok'tl for'tee/ n. hackish way of saying "i'm drawing a blank." octal is the {{ascii}} space character, ; by an odd coincidence, {hex} ( ) is the {{ebcdic}} space character. see {wall}. :off the trolley: adj. describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes catatonic, but doesn't actually {crash} or abort. see {glitch}, {bug}, {deep space}. :off-by-one error: n. exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such as by starting at when you should have started at or vice versa, or by writing `< n' instead of `<= n' or vice-versa. also applied to giving something to the person next to the one who should have gotten it. often confounded with {fencepost error}, which is properly a particular subtype of it. :offline: adv. not now or not here. "let's take this discussion offline." specifically used on {usenet} to suggest that a discussion be taken off a public newsgroup to email. :old fart: n. tribal elder. a title self-assumed with remarkable frequency by (esp.) usenetters who have been programming for more than about years; often appears in {sig block}s attached to jargon file contributions of great archeological significance. this is a term of insult in the second or third person but one of pride in first person. :old testament: n. [c programmers] the first edition of {k&r}, the sacred text describing {classic c}. :one-banana problem: n. at mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. it is frequently observed that the incentives which would be offered said monkeys can be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a task. a one-banana problem is simple; hence "it's only a one-banana job at the most; what's taking them so long?" at ibm, folklore divides the world into one-, two-, and three-banana problems. other cultures have different hierarchies and may divide them more finely; at icl, for example, five grapes (a bunch) equals a banana. their upper limit for the in-house {sysape}s is said to be two bananas and three grapes (another source claims it's three bananas and one grape, but observes "however, this is subject to local variations, cosmic rays and iso"). at a complication level any higher than that, one asks the manufacturers to send someone around to check things. :one-line fix: n. used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is thought to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it crashes the system. usually `cured' by another one-line fix. see also {i didn't change anything!} :one-liner wars: n. a game popular among hackers who code in the language apl (see {write-only language} and {line noise}). the objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from apl's exceedingly {hairy} primitive set. a similar amusement was practiced among {teco} hackers and is now popular among {perl} aficionados. ken iverson, the inventor of apl, has been credited with a one-liner that, given a number n, produces a list of the prime numbers from to n inclusive. it looks like this: ( = +.= t o.| t) / t <- in where `o' is the apl null character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the apl iota. :ooblick: /oo'blik/ [from dr. seuss's `bartholomew and the oobleck'] n. a bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and water. enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely non-newtonian behavior; it pours and splatters, but resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer. often found near lasers. here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by gls: cup cornstarch cup baking soda / cup water n drops of food coloring this recipe isn't quite as non-newtonian as a pure cornstarch ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel. some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick *recipe* is far too mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in small increments so that the various mixed states the cornstarch goes through as it *becomes* ooblick can be grokked in fullness by many hands. for optional ingredients of this experience, see the "{ceremonial chemicals}" section of {appendix b}. :op: /op/ [irc] n. someone who is endowed with privileges on {irc}, not limited to a particular channel. these are generally people who are in charge of the irc server at their particular site. sometimes used interchangably with {chop}. compare {sysop}. :open: n. abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' --- used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. to read aloud the lisp form (defun foo (x) (plus x )) one might say: "open defun foo, open eks close, open, plus eks one, close close." :open deathtrap: n. abusive hackerism for the santa cruz operation's `open desktop' product, a motif-based graphical interface over their unix. the funniest part is that this was coined by sco's own developers...compare {aidx}, {terminak}, {macintrash} {nominal semidestructor}, {scumos}, {sun-stools}, {hp-sux}. :open switch: [ibm: prob. from railroading] n. an unresolved question, issue, or problem. :operating system:: [techspeak] n. (often abbreviated `os') the foundation software of a machine, of course; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications. the facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. hacker folklore has been shaped primarily by the {{unix}}, {{its}}, {{tops- }}, {{tops- }}/{{twenex}}, {{waits}}, {{cp/m}}, {{ms-dos}}, and {{multics}} operating systems (most importantly by its and unix). :optical diff: n. see {vdiff}. :optical grep: n. see {vgrep}. :orange book: n. the u.s. government's standards document `trusted computer system evaluation criteria, dod standard . -std, december, ' which characterize secure computing architectures and defines levels a (most secure) through d (least). stock unixes are roughly c , and can be upgraded to about c without excessive pain. see also {{book titles}}. :oriental food:: n. hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine, especially chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such as szechuan and hunan. this phenomenon (which has also been observed in subcultures that overlap heavily with hackerdom, most notably science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but is sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish dinner expedition to be the best local chinese place and be right at least three times out of four. see also {ravs}, {great-wall}, {stir-fried random}, {laser chicken}, {yu-shiang whole fish}. thai, indian, korean, and vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular. :orphan: [unix] n. a process whose parent has died; one inherited by `init( )'. compare {zombie}. :orphaned i-node: /or'f*nd i:'nohd/ [unix] n. . [techspeak] a file that retains storage but no longer appears in the directories of a filesystem. . by extension, a pejorative for any person serving no useful function within some organization, esp. {lion food} without subordinates. :orthogonal: [from mathematics] adj. mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. for example, in architectures such as the pdp- or vax where all or nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal. or, in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal, but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any one of these can be expressed in terms of the others). also used in comments on human discourse: "this may be orthogonal to the discussion, but...." :os: /o-s/ . [operating system] n. an abbreviation heavily used in email, occasionally in speech. . n.,obs. on its, an output spy. see "{os and jedgar}" (in {appendix a}). :os/ : /o s too/ n. the anointed successor to ms-dos for intel - and -based micros; proof that ibm/microsoft couldn't get it right the second time, either. mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers --- the design was so {baroque}, and the implementation of .x so bad, that years after introduction you could still count the major {app}s shipping for it on the fingers of two hands --- in unary. often called `half-an-os'. on january , , microsoft announced that it was dropping its os/ development to concentrate on windows, leaving the os entirely in the hands of ibm; on january they claimed the media had got the story wrong, but were vague about how. it looks as though os/ is moribund. see {vaporware}, {monstrosity}, {cretinous}, {second-system effect}. :out-of-band: [from telecommunications and network theory] adj. . in software, describes values of a function which are not in its `natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some kind of exception has occurred. many c functions, for example, return either a nonnegative integral value, or indicate failure with an out-of-band return value of - . compare {hidden flag}, {green bytes}. . also sometimes used to describe what communications people call `shift characters', like the esc that leads control sequences for many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old -bit baudot codes. . in personal communication, using methods other than email, such as telephones or {snail-mail}. :overflow bit: n. . [techspeak] on some processors, an attempt to calculate a result too large for a register to hold causes a particular {flag} called an {overflow bit} to be set. . hackers use the term of human thought too. "well, the {{ada}} description was {baroque} all right, but i could hack it ok until they got to the exception handling ... that set my overflow bit." . the hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesn't get to make a trip to the room of porcelain fixtures: "i'd better process an internal interrupt before the overflow bit gets set". :overflow pdl: [mit] n. the place where you put things when your {pdl} is full. if you don't have one and too many things get pushed, you forget something. the overflow pdl for a person's memory might be a memo pad. this usage inspired the following doggerel: hey, diddle, diddle the overflow pdl to get a little more stack; if that's not enough then you lose it all, and have to pop all the way back. --the great quux the term {pdl} seems to be primarily an mitism; outside mit this term would logically be replaced by `overflow {stack}', but the editors have heard no report of the latter term actually being in use. :overrun: n. . [techspeak] term for a frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications. for example, at baud there is almost exactly one character per millisecond, so if your {silo} can hold only two characters and the machine takes longer than msec to get to service the interrupt, at least one character will be lost. . also applied to non-serial-i/o communications. "i forgot to pay my electric bill due to mail overrun." "sorry, i got four phone calls in minutes last night and lost your message to overrun." when {thrash}ing at tasks, the next person to make a request might be told "overrun!" compare {firehose syndrome}. . more loosely, may refer to a {buffer overflow} not necessarily related to processing time (as in {overrun screw}). :overrun screw: [c programming] n. a variety of {fandango on core} produced by scribbling past the end of an array (c implementations typically have no checks for this error). this is relatively benign and easy to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to {smash the stack} --- often resulting in {heisenbug}s of the most diabolical subtlety. the term `overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with `malloc( )'; this typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the {arena}, producing massive lossage within malloc and often a core dump on the next operation to use `stdio( )' or `malloc( )' itself. see {spam}, {overrun}; see also {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, {fandango on core}, {secondary damage}. = p = ===== :p.o.d.: /p-o-d/ acronym for `piece of data' (as opposed to a code section). usage: pedantic and rare. see also {pod}. :padded cell: n. where you put {luser}s so they can't hurt anything. a program that limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the `rsh( )' utility on usg unix). note that this is different from an {iron box} because it is overt and not aimed at enforcing security so much as protecting others (and the luser) from the consequences of the luser's boundless na"ivet'e (see {na"ive}). also `padded cell environment'. :page in: [mit] vi. . to become aware of one's surroundings again after having paged out (see {page out}). usually confined to the sarcastic comment: "eric pages in. film at ." see {film at }. . syn. `swap in'; see {swap}. :page out: [mit] vi. . to become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to daydreaming or preoccupation. "can you repeat that? i paged out for a minute." see {page in}. compare {glitch}, {thinko}. . syn. `swap out'; see {swap}. :pain in the net: n. a {flamer}. :paper-net: n. hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a very slow, low-reliability network. usenet {sig block}s not uncommonly include a "paper-net:" header just before the sender's postal address; common variants of this are "papernet" and "p-net". compare {voice-net}, {snail-mail}. :param: /p*-ram'/ n. shorthand for `parameter'. see also {parm}; compare {arg}, {var}. :parc: n. see {xerox parc}. :parent message: n. see {followup}. :parity errors: pl.n. little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness, usually brought on by having spent all night and most of the next day hacking. "i need to go home and crash; i'm starting to get a lot of parity errors." derives from a relatively common but nearly always correctable transient error in ram hardware. :parkinson's law of data: prov. "data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. it has been observed over the last years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every months. fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars tends to double about once every months (see {moore's law}); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely. :parm: /parm/ n. further-compressed form of {param}. this term is an ibmism, and written use is almost unknown outside ibm shops; spoken /parm/ is more widely distributed, but the synonym {arg} is favored among hackers. compare {arg}, {var}. :parse: [from linguistic terminology] vt. . to determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard english meaning). "that was the one i saw you." "i can't parse that." . more generally, to understand or comprehend. "it's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz." "i can't parse that." . of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself. "i object to parsing fish", means "i don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is okay". a `parsed fish' has been deboned. there is some controversy over whether `unparsed' should mean `bony', or also mean `deboned'. :pascal:: n. an algol-descended language designed by niklaus wirth on the cdc around -- as an instructional tool for elementary programming. this language, designed primarily to keep students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point of view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the ancestor of a large family of languages including modula- and {{ada}} (see also {bondage-and-discipline language}). the hackish point of view on pascal was probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan way, screamingly funny) paper by brian kernighan (of {k&r} fame) entitled "why pascal is not my favorite programming language", which was turned down by the technical journals but circulated widely via photocopies. it was eventually published in "comparing and assessing programming languages", edited by alan feuer and narain gehani (prentice-hall, ). part of his discussion is worth repeating here, because its criticisms are still apposite to pascal itself after ten years of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many other bondage-and-discipline languages. at the end of a summary of the case against pascal, kernighan wrote: . there is no escape this last point is perhaps the most important. the language is inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape its limitations. there are no casts to disable the type-checking when necessary. there is no way to replace the defective run-time environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler that defines the "standard procedures". the language is closed. people who use pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal trap. because the language is impotent, it must be extended. but each group extends pascal in its own direction, to make it look like whatever language they really want. extensions for separate compilation, fortran-like common, string data types, internal static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit operators, etc., all add to the utility of the language for one group but destroy its portability to others. i feel that it is a mistake to use pascal for anything much beyond its original target. in its pure form, pascal is a toy language, suitable for teaching but not for real programming. pascal has since been almost entirely displaced (by {c}) from the niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems programming, but retains some popularity as a hobbyist language in the ms-dos and macintosh worlds. :pastie: /pay'stee/ n. an adhesive-backed label designed to be attached to a key on a keyboard to indicate some non-standard character which can be accessed through that key. pasties are likely to be used in apl environments, where almost every key is associated with a special character. a pastie on the r key, for example, would remind the user that it is used to generate the rho character. the term properly refers to nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by strippers in concession to indecent-exposure laws; compare {tits on a keyboard}. :patch: . n. a temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a {quick-and-dirty} remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. a patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program. distinguished from a {diff} or {mod} by the fact that a patch is generated by more primitive means than the rest of the program; the classical examples are instructions modified by using the front panel switches, and changes made directly to the binary executable of a program originally written in an {hll}. compare {one-line fix}. . vt. to insert a patch into a piece of code. . [in the unix world] n. a {diff} (sense ). . a set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching program. ibm operating systems often receive updates to the operating system in the form of absolute hexadecimal patches. if you have modified your os, you have to disassemble these back to the source. the patches might later be corrected by other patches on top of them (patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). the result was often a convoluted {patch space} and headaches galore. . [unix] the `patch( )' program, written by larry wall, which automatically applies a patch (sense ) to a set of source code. there is a classic story of a {tiger team} penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches (or, indeed, any that you can't --- or don't --- inspect and examine before installing). they couldn't find any {trap door}s or any way to penetrate security of ibm's os, so they made a site visit to an ibm office (remember, these were official military types who were purportedly on official business), swiped some ibm stationery, and created a fake patch. the patch was actually the trapdoor they needed. the patch was distributed at about the right time for an ibm patch, had official stationery and all accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed. the installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures. :patch space: n. an unused block of bits left in a binary so that it can later be modified by insertion of machine-language instructions there (typically, the patch space is modified to contain new code, and the superseded code is patched to contain a jump or call to the patch space). the widening use of hlls has made this term rare; it is now primarily historical outside ibm shops. see {patch} (sense ), {zap} (sense ), {hook}. :path: n. . a {bang path} or explicitly routed {{internet address}}; a node-by-node specification of a link between two machines. . [unix] a filename, fully specified relative to the root directory (as opposed to relative to the current directory; the latter is sometimes called a `relative path'). this is also called a `pathname'. . [unix and ms-dos] the `search path', an environment variable specifying the directories in which the {shell} (command.com, under ms-dos) should look for commands. other, similar constructs abound under unix (for example, the c preprocessor has a `search path' it uses in looking for `#include' files). :pathological: adj. . [scientific computation] used of a data set that is grossly atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. an algorithm that can be broken by pathological inputs may still be useful if such inputs are very unlikely to occur in practice. . when used of test input, implies that it was purposefully engineered as a worst case. the implication in both senses is that the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone had to explicitly set out to break the algorithm in order to come up with such a crazy example. . also said of an unlikely collection of circumstances. "if the network is down and comes up halfway through the execution of that command by root, the system may just crash." "yes, but that's a pathological case." often used to dismiss the case from discussion, with the implication that the consequences are acceptable since that they will happen so infrequently (if at all) that there is no justification for going to extra trouble to handle that case (see sense ). :payware: /pay'weir/ n. commercial software. oppose {shareware} or {freeware}. :pbd: /p-b-d/ [abbrev. of `programmer brain damage'] n. applied to bug reports revealing places where the program was obviously broken by an incompetent or short-sighted programmer. compare {ubd}; see also {brain-damaged}. :pc-ism: /p-c-izm/ n. a piece of code or coding technique that takes advantage of the unprotected single-tasking environment in ibm pcs and the like, e.g., by busy-waiting on a hardware register, direct diddling of screen memory, or using hard timing loops. compare {ill-behaved}, {vaxism}, {unixism}. also, `pc-ware' n., a program full of pc-isms on a machine with a more capable operating system. pejorative. :pd: /p-d/ adj. common abbreviation for `public domain', applied to software distributed over {usenet} and from internet archive sites. much of this software is not in fact public domain in the legal sense but travels under various copyrights granting reproduction and use rights to anyone who can {snarf} a copy. see {copyleft}. :pdl: /pid'l/ or /puhd'l/ [abbreviation for `push down list'] . n. in its days, the preferred mitism for {stack}. see {overflow pdl}. . n. dave lebling, one of the co-authors of {zork}; (his {network address} on the its machines was at one time pdl@dms). . n. `program design language'. any of a large class of formal and profoundly useless pseudo-languages in which {management} forces one to design programs. {management} often expects it to be maintained in parallel with the code. see also {{flowchart}}. . v. to design using a program design language. "i've been pdling so long my eyes won't focus beyond feet." . n. `page description language'. refers to any language which is used to control a graphics device, usually a laserprinter. the most common example, is of course, adobe's {postscript} language, but there are many others, such as xerox interpress, etc. :pdp- : [programmed data processor model ] n. the machine that made timesharing real. it looms large in hacker folklore because of its adoption in the mid- s by many university computing facilities and research labs, including the mit ai lab, stanford, and cmu. some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. the was eventually eclipsed by the vax machines (descendants of the pdp- ) when dec recognized that the and vax product lines were competing with each other and decided to concentrate its software development effort on the more profitable vax. the machine was finally dropped from dec's line in , following the failure of the jupiter project at dec to build a viable new model. (some attempts by other companies to market clones came to nothing; see {foonly}) this event spelled the doom of {{its}} and the technical cultures that had spawned the original jargon file, but by mid- it had become something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have cut one's teeth on a pdp- . see {{tops- }}, {{its}}, {aos}, {blt}, {ddt}, {dpb}, {exch}, {hakmem}, {jfcl}, {ldb}, {pop}, {push}, {appendix a}. :pdp- : n. the most famous computer that never was. {pdp- } computers running the {{tops- }} operating system were labeled `decsystem- ' as a way of differentiating them from the pdp- . later on, those systems running {tops- } were labeled `decsystem- ' (the block capitals being the result of a lawsuit brought against dec by singer, which once made a computer called `system- '), but contrary to popular lore there was never a `pdp- '; the only difference between a and a was the operating system and the color of the paint. most (but not all) machines sold to run tops- were painted `basil blue', whereas most tops- machines were painted `chinese red' (often mistakenly called orange). :peek: n.,vt. (and {poke}) the commands in most microcomputer basics for directly accessing memory contents at an absolute address; often extended to mean the corresponding constructs in any {hll} (peek reads memory, poke modifies it). much hacking on small, non-mmu micros consists of `peek'ing around memory, more or less at random, to find the location where the system keeps interesting stuff. long (and variably accurate) lists of such addresses for various computers circulate (see {{interrupt list, the}}). the results of `poke's at these addresses may be highly useful, mildly amusing, useless but neat, or (most likely) total {lossage} (see {killer poke}). since a {real operating system} provides useful, higher-level services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes on micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory groveling, a question like "how do i do a peek in c?" is diagnostic of the {newbie}. (of course, os kernels often have to do exactly this; a real c hacker would unhesitatingly, if unportably, assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and indirect through it.) :pencil and paper: n. an archaic information storage and transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. more recent developments in paper-based technology include improved `write-once' update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit colored pigment. all these devices require an operator skilled at so-called `handwriting' technique. these technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. most hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. perhaps for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts. see also {appendix b}. :peon: n. a person with no special ({root} or {wheel}) privileges on a computer system. "i can't create an account on *foovax* for you; i'm only a peon there." :percent-s: /per-sent' es'/ [from the code in c's `printf( )' library function used to insert an arbitrary string argument] n. an unspecified person or object. "i was just talking to some percent-s in administration." compare {random}. :perf: /perf/ n. see {chad} (sense ). the term `perfory' /per'f*-ree/ is also heard. the term {perf} may also refer to the preforations themselves, rather than the chad they produce when torn. :perfect programmer syndrome: n. arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human error. most frequently found among programmers of some native ability but relatively little experience (especially new graduates; their perceptions may be distorted by a history of excellent performance at solving {toy problem}s). "of course my program is correct, there is no need to test it." "yes, i can see there may be a problem here, but *i'll* never type `rm -r /' while in {root}." :perl: /perl/ [practical extraction and report language, a.k.a pathologically eclectic rubbish lister] n. an interpreted language developed by larry wall <lwall@jpl.nasa.gov>, author of `patch( )' and `rn( )') and distributed over usenet. superficially resembles `awk( )', but is much hairier (see {awk}). unix sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, increasingly consider it one of the {languages of choice}. perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark about `lex( )', as the "swiss-army chainsaw" of unix programming. :pessimal: /pes'im-l/ [latin-based antonym for `optimal'] adj. maximally bad. "this is a pessimal situation." also `pessimize' vt. to make as bad as possible. these words are the obvious latin-based antonyms for `optimal' and `optimize', but for some reason they do not appear in most english dictionaries, although `pessimize' is listed in the oed. :pessimizing compiler: /pes'*-mi:z`ing k*m-pi:l'r/ [antonym of `optimizing compiler'] n. a compiler that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation. the implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. a few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques. :peta-: /pe't*/ [si] pref. see {{quantifiers}}. :petscii: /pet'skee/ [abbreviation of pet ascii] n. the variation (many would say perversion) of the {{ascii}} character set used by the commodore business machines pet series of personal computers and the later commodore c , c , and c machines. the petscii set used left-arrow and up-arrow (as in old-style ascii) instead of underscore and caret, placed the unshifted alphabet at positions -- , put the shifted alphabet at positions -- , and added graphics characters. :phase: . n. the phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the standard -hour cycle. this is a useful concept among people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. it is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as hours per day on a regular basis. "what's your phase?" "i've been getting in about p.m. lately, but i'm going to {wrap around} to the day schedule by friday." a person who is roughly hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in `night mode'. (the term `day mode' is also (but less frequently) used, meaning you're working to (or, more likely, to ).) the act of altering one's cycle is called `changing phase'; `phase shifting' has also been recently reported from caltech. . `change phase the hard way': to stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a different phase. . `change phase the easy way': to stay asleep, etc. however, some claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, and that it is *shortening* your day or night that's hard (see {wrap around}). the `jet lag' that afflicts travelers who cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: the strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. hackers who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short period of time, particularly the hard way, experience something very like jet lag without traveling. :phase of the moon: n. used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "this feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." true story: once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. there is a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at mit to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. gls incorporated this routine into a lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost characters long. very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would {barf}. the length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! the first paper edition of the jargon file (steele- ) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter `corrected' it. this has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug. :phase-wrapping: [mit] n. syn. {wrap around}, sense . :phreaking: /freek'ing/ [from `phone phreak'] n. . the art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). . by extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see {cracking}). at one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was ok, but serious theft of services was taboo. there was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary `tap newsletter'. this ethos began to break down in the mid- s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. the crimes and punishments of gangs like the ` group' turned that game very ugly. a few old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore. :pico-: [si: a quantifier meaning * ^- ] pref. smaller than {nano-}; used in the same rather loose connotative way as {nano-} and {micro-}. this usage is not yet common in the way {nano-} and {micro-} are, but should be instantly recognizable to any hacker. see also {{quantifiers}}, {micro-}. :pig, run like a: v. to run very slowly on given hardware, said of software. distinct from {hog}. :pilot error: [sun: from aviation] n. a user's misconfiguration or misuse of a piece of software, producing apparently buglike results (compare {ubd}). "joe luser reported a bug in sendmail that causes it to generate bogus headers." "that's not a bug, that's pilot error. his `sendmail.cf' is hosed." :ping: [from the tcp/ip acronym `packet internet groper', prob. originally contrived to match the submariners' term for a sonar pulse] . n. slang term for a small network message (icmp echo) sent by a computer to check for the presence and aliveness of another. occasionally used as a phone greeting. see {ack}, also {enq}. . vt. to verify the presence of. . vt. to get the attention of. from the unix command `ping( )' that sends an icmp echo packet to another host. . vt. to send a message to all members of a {mailing list} requesting an {ack} (in order to verify that everybody's addresses are reachable). "we haven't heard much of anything from geoff, but he did respond with an ack both times i pinged jargon-friends." . n. a quantum packet of happiness. people who are very happy tend to exude pings; furthermore, one can intentionally create pings and aim them at a needy party (e.g. a depressed person). this sense of ping may appear as an exclamation; "ping!" (i'm happy; i am emitting a quantum of happiness; i have been struck by a quantum of happiness). the form "pingfulness", which is used to describe people who exude pings, also occurs. (in the standard abuse of language, "pingfulness" can also be used as an exclamation, in which case it's a much stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). oppose {blargh}. the funniest use of `ping' to date was described in january by steve hayman on the usenet group comp.sys.next. he was trying to isolate a faulty cable segment on a tcp/ip ethernet hooked up to a next machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting through. so he used the sound-recording feature on the next, then wrote a script that repeatedly invoked `ping( )', listened for an echo, and played back the recording on each returned packet. result? a program that caused the machine to repeat, over and over, "ping ... ping ... ping ..." as long as the network was up. he turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through the building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector in no time. :pink-shirt book: `the peter norton programmer's guide to the ibm pc'. the original cover featured a picture of peter norton with a silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt. perhaps in recognition of this usage, the current edition has a different picture of norton wearing a pink shirt. see also {{book titles}}. :pip: /pip/ [peripheral interchange program] vt.,obs. to copy; from the program pip on cp/m, rsx- , rsts/e, tops- , and os/ (derived from a utility on the pdp- ) that was used for file copying (and in os/ and rt- for just about every other file operation you might want to do). it is said that when the program was originated, during the development of the pdp- in , it was called atlatl (`anything, lord, to anything, lord'; this played on the nahuatl word `atlatl' for a spear-thrower, with connotations of utility and primitivity that were no doubt quite intentional). :pistol: [ibm] n. a tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. "unix `rm *' makes such a nice pistol!" :pizza box: [sun] n. the largish thin box housing the electronics in (especially sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its size and shape and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes. two meg single-platter removable disk packs used to be called pizzas, and the huge drive they were stuck into was referred to as a pizza oven. it's an index of progress that in the old days just the disk was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is. :pizza, ansi standard: /an'see stan'd*rd peet'z*/ [cmu] pepperoni and mushroom pizza. coined allegedly because most pizzas ordered by cmu hackers during some period leading up to mid- were of that flavor. see also {rotary debugger}; compare {tea, iso standard cup of}. :plaid screen: [xerox parc] n. a `special effect' which occurs when certain kinds of {memory smash}es overwrite the control blocks or image memory of a bit-mapped display. the term "salt & pepper" may refer to a different pattern of similar origin. though the term as coined at parc refers to the result of an error, some of the {x} demos induce plaid-screen effects deliberately as a {display hack}. :plain-ascii: /playn-as'kee/ syn. {flat-ascii}. :plan file: [unix] n. on systems that support {finger}, the `.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when the user is fingered. this feature was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers apprised of one's location and near-future plans, but has been turned almost universally to humorous and self-expressive purposes (like a {sig block}). see {hacking x for y}. :platinum-iridium: adj. standard, against which all others of the same category are measured. usage: silly. the notion is that one of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault beside the standard kilogram at the international bureau of weights and measures near paris. (from to , the meter was defined to be the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in that vault --- this replaced an earlier definition as ^(- ) times the distance between the north pole and the equator along a meridian through paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the circumference of the earth. from to it was defined to be . wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton- propagating in a vacuum. it is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of / , , of a second. the kilogram is now the only unit of measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact.) "this garbage-collection algorithm has been tested against the platinum-iridium cons cell in paris." compare {golden}. :playpen: [ibm] n. a room where programmers work. compare {salt mines}. :playte: /playt/ bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. usage: rare and extremely silly. see also {dynner} and {crumb}. :plingnet: /pling'net/ n. syn. {uucpnet}. also see {{commonwealth hackish}}, which uses `pling' for {bang} (as in {bang path}). :plokta: /plok't*/ [acronym for `press lots of keys to abort'] v. to press random keys in an attempt to get some response from the system. one might plokta when the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to figure out if the system is just sluggish or really hung. plokta can also be used while trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation. someone going into `plokta mode' usually places both hands flat on the keyboard and presses down, hoping for some useful response. a slightly more diected form of plokta can often be seen in mail messages or usenet articles from new users -- the text might end with q quit :q ^c end x exit zz ^d ? help as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with the incorrect tries piling up at the end of the message.... :plonk: [usenet: possibly influenced by british slang `plonk' for cheap booze] the sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the bottom of a {kill file}. used almost exclusively in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is a form of public ridicule. :plugh: /ploogh/ [from the {advent} game] v. see {xyzzy}. :plumbing: [unix] n. term used for {shell} code, so called because of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the output of one program to the input of another. under unix, user utilities can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less effort than writing c every time, and the capability is considered one of unix's major winning features. a few other oss such as ibm's vm/cms support similar facilities. esp. used in the construction `hairy plumbing' (see {hairy}). "you can kluge together a basic spell-checker out of `sort( )', `comm( )', and `tr( )' with a little plumbing." see also {tee}. :pm: /p-m/ . v. (from `preventive maintenance') to bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes; see {scratch monkey}. . n. abbrev. for `presentation manager', an {elephantine} os/ graphical user interface. see also {provocative maintenance}. :pnambic: /p*-nam'bik/ [acronym from the scene in the film version of `the wizard of oz' in which the true nature of the wizard is first discovered: "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."] . a stage of development of a process or function that, owing to incomplete implementation or to the complexity of the system, requires human interaction to simulate or replace some or all of the actions, inputs, or outputs of the process or function. . of or pertaining to a process or function whose apparent operations are wholly or partially falsified. . requiring {prestidigitization}. the ultimate pnambic product was "dan bricklin's demo", a program which supported flashy user-interface design prototyping. there is a related maxim among hackers: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." see {magic}, sense , for illumination of this point. :pod: [allegedly from abbreviation pod for `prince of darkness'] n. a diablo (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer). from the dec- podtype program used to feed formatted text to it. see also {p.o.d.} :point-and-drool interface: n. parody of the techspeak term `point-and-shoot interface', describing a windows, icons, and mice-based interface such as is found on the macintosh. the implication, of course, is that such an interface is only suitable for idiots. see {for the rest of us}, {wimp environment}, {macintrash}, {drool-proof paper}. also `point-and-grunt interface'. :poke: n.,vt. see {peek}. :poll: v.,n. . [techspeak] the action of checking the status of an input line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has been registered. . to repeatedly call or check with someone: "i keep polling him, but he's not answering his phone; he must be swapped out." . to ask. "lunch? i poll for a takeout order daily." :polygon pusher: n. a chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical layout level (which requires drawing *lots* of multi-colored polygons). also `rectangle slinger'. :pom: /p-o-m/ n. common abbreviation for {phase of the moon}. usage: usually in the phrase `pom-dependent', which means {flaky}. :pop: [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack] (also capitalized `pop' /pop/) . vt. to remove something from a {stack} or {pdl}. if a person says he/she has popped something from his stack, that means he/she has finally finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging overhead. . when a discussion gets to too deep a level of detail so that the main point of the discussion is being lost, someone will shout "pop!", meaning "get back up to a higher level!" the shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger pointing to the ceiling. :popj: /pop'j/ [from a {pdp- } return-from-subroutine instruction] n.,v. to return from a digression. by verb doubling, "popj, popj" means roughly "now let's see, where were we?" see {rti}. :posing: n. on a {mud}, the use of `:' or an equivalent command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain physical action that has no effect on the game (it may, however, serve as a social signal or propaganda device that induces other people to take game actions). for example, if one's character name is firechild, one might type `: looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on the nearest terminal' to broadcast a message that says "firechild looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on the nearest terminal". see {rl}. :post: v. to send a message to a {mailing list} or {newsgroup}. distinguished in context from `mail'; one might ask, for example: "are you going to post the patch or mail it to known users?" :postcardware: n. {shareware} that borders on {freeware}, in that the author requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home town or something. (this practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be psychologically related to real estate "sales" in which $ changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a gift.) :posting: n. noun corresp. to v. {post} (but note that {post} can be nouned). distinguished from a `letter' or ordinary {email} message by the fact that it is broadcast rather than point-to-point. it is not clear whether messages sent to a small mailing list are postings or email; perhaps the best dividing line is that if you don't know the names of all the potential recipients, it is a posting. :postmaster: n. the email contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the internet or uucpnet. often, but not always, the same as the {admin}. the internet standard for electronic mail ({rfc} ) requires each machine to have a `postmaster' address; usually it is aliased to this person. :postscript: n. a groundbreaking page description language ({pdl}), based on work originally done by john gaffney at evans and sutherland in , evolving through `jam' (`john and martin', martin newell) at {xerox parc}, and finally implemented in its current form by john warnock et al. after he and chuck geschke founded adobe systems incorporated in . postscript gets its leverage by using a full programming language, rather than a series of low-level escape sequences, to describe an image to be printed on a laser printer or other output device (in this it parallels {emacs}, which exploited a similar insight about editing tasks). it is also noteworthy for implementing on-the fly rasterization, from bezier curve descriptions, of high-quality fonts at low (e.g. dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed that hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task). hackers consider postscript to be among the most elegant hacks of all time, and the combination of technical merits and widespread availability has made postscript the language of choice for graphical output. :pound on: vt. syn. {bang on}. :power cycle: vt. (also, `cycle power' or just `cycle') to power off a machine and then power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of {hung} or {gronk}ed state. syn. { reset}; see also {big red switch}. compare {vulcan nerve pinch}, {bounce}, and {boot}, and see the ai koan in "{a selection of ai koans}" (in {appendix a}) about tom knight and the novice. :power hit: n. a spike or drop-out in the electricity supplying your machine; a power {glitch}. these can cause crashes and even permanent damage to your machine(s). :ppn: /p-p-n/, /pip'n/ [from `project-programmer number'] n. a user-id under {{tops- }} and its various mutant progeny at sail, bbn, compuserve, and elsewhere. old-time hackers from the pdp- era sometimes use this to refer to user ids on other systems as well. :precedence lossage: /pre's*-dens los'*j/ [c programmers] n. coding error in an expression due to unexpected grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the compiler. used esp. of certain common coding errors in c due to the nonintuitively low precedence levels of `&', `|', `^', `<<', and `>>' (for this reason, experienced c programmers deliberately forget the language's {baroque} precedence hierarchy and parenthesize defensively). can always be avoided by suitable use of parentheses. {lisp} fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favorite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere. see {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}. :prepend: /pree`pend'/ [by analogy with `append'] vt. to prefix. as with `append' (but not `prefix' or `suffix' as a verb), the direct object is always the thing being added and not the original word (or character string, or whatever). "if you prepend a semicolon to the line, the translation routine will pass it through unaltered." :prestidigitization: /pres`t*-di`j*-ti:-zay'sh*n/ n. . the act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of hand. . data entry through legerdemain. :pretty pictures: n. [scientific computation] the next step up from {numbers}. interesting graphical output from a program that may not have any sensible relationship to the system the program is intended to model. good for showing to {management}. :prettyprint: /prit'ee-print/ (alt. `pretty-print') v. . to generate `pretty' human-readable output from a {hairy} internal representation; esp. used for the process of {grind}ing (sense ) lisp code. . to format in some particularly slick and nontrivial way. :pretzel key: [mac users] n. see {feature key}. :prime time: [from tv programming] n. normal high-usage hours on a timesharing system; the day shift. avoidance of prime time is a major reason for {night mode} hacking. :printing discussion: [parc] n. a protracted, low-level, time-consuming, generally pointless discussion of something only peripherally interesting to all. :priority interrupt: [from the hardware term] n. describes any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of {hack mode}. classically used to describe being dragged away by an {so} for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity. also called an {nmi} (non-maskable interrupt), especially in pc-land. :profile: n. . a control file for a program, esp. a text file automatically read from each user's home directory and intended to be easily modified by the user in order to customize the program's behavior. used to avoid {hardcoded} choices. . [techspeak] a report on the amounts of time spent in each routine of a program, used to find and {tune} away the {hot spot}s in it. this sense is often verbed. some profiling modes report units other than time (such as call counts) and/or report at granularities other than per-routine, but the idea is similar. :proglet: /prog'let/ [uk] n. a short extempore program written to meet an immediate, transient need. often written in basic, rarely more than a dozen lines long, and contains no subroutines. the largest amount of code that can be written off the top of one's head, that does not need any editing, and that runs correctly the first time (this amount varies significantly according to the language one is using). compare {toy program}, {noddy}, {one-liner wars}. :program: n. . a magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. . an exercise in experimental epistemology. . a form of art, ostensibly intended for the instruction of computers, which is nevertheless almost inevitably a failure if other programmers can't understand it. :programmer's cheer: "shift to the left! shift to the right! pop up, push down! byte! byte! byte!" a joke so old it has hair on it. :programming: n. . the art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). . n. a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward. . n. the most fun you can have with your clothes on (although clothes are not mandatory). :programming fluid: n. . coffee. . cola. . any caffeinacious stimulant. many hackers consider these essential for those all-night hacking runs. see {unleaded}, {wirewater}. :propeller head: n. used by hackers, this is syn. with {computer geek}. non-hackers sometimes use it to describe all techies. prob. derives from sf fandom's tradition (originally invented by old-time fan ray faraday nelson) of propeller beanies as fannish insignia (though nobody actually wears them except as a joke). :propeller key: [mac users] n. see {feature key}. :proprietary: adj. . in {marketroid}-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's hardware or software designers. . in the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer in (that's assuming it wasn't too expensive in the first place). :protocol: n. as used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper form for addressing letters to the papal nuncio or the order in which one should use the forks in a russian-style place setting; hackers don't care about such things. it is used instead to describe any set of rules that allow different machines or pieces of software to coordinate with each other without ambiguity. so, for example, it does include niceties about the proper form for addressing packets on a network or the order in which one should use the forks in the dining philosophers problem. it implies that there is some common message format and an accepted set of primitives or commands that all parties involved understand, and that transactions among them follow predictable logical sequences. see also {handshaking}, {do protocol}. :provocative maintenance: [common ironic mutation of `preventive maintenance'] n. actions performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. so called because it is all too often performed by a {field servoid} who doesn't know what he is doing; this results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time. see also {scratch monkey}. :prowler: [unix] n. a {daemon} that is run periodically (typically once a week) to seek out and erase {core} files, truncate administrative logfiles, nuke `lost+found' directories, and otherwise clean up the {cruft} that tends to pile up in the corners of a file system. see also {gfr}, {reaper}, {skulker}. :pseudo: /soo'doh/ [usenet: truncation of `pseudonym'] n. . an electronic-mail or {usenet} persona adopted by a human for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of one's net.behavior; a `nom de usenet', often associated with forged postings designed to conceal message origins. perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is {biff}. . notionally, a {flamage}-generating ai program simulating a usenet user. many flamers have been accused of actually being such entities, despite the fact that no ai program of the required sophistication yet exists. however, in there was a famous series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to simulate the styles of several well-known flamers; it was based on large samples of their back postings (compare {dissociated press}). a significant number of people were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over their authenticity was settled only when the perpetrator came forward to publicly admit the hoax. :pseudoprime: n. a backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. this term is an esoteric pun derived from a mathematical method that, rather than determining precisely whether a number is prime (has no divisors), uses a statistical technique to decide whether the number is `probably' prime. a number that passes this test is called a pseudoprime. the hacker backgammon usage stems from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime: it does the job of a prime until proven otherwise, and that probably won't happen. :pseudosuit: /soo'doh-s[y]oot`/ n. a {suit} wannabee; a hacker who has decided that he wants to be in management or administration and begins wearing ties, sport coats, and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. it's his funeral. see also {lobotomy}. :psychedelicware: /si:`k*-del'-ik-weir/ [uk] n. syn. {display hack}. see also {smoking clover}. :psyton: /si:'ton/ [tmrc] n. the elementary particle carrying the sinister force. the probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of psytons falling on it. psytons are generated by observers, which is why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching. [this term appears to have been largely superseded by {bogon}; see also {quantum bogodynamics}. --- esr] :pubic directory: [nyu] (also `pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) n. the `pub' (public) directory on a machine that allows {ftp} access. so called because it is the default location for {sex} (sense ). "i'll have the source in the pube directory by friday." :puff: vt. to decompress data that has been crunched by huffman coding. at least one widely distributed huffman decoder program was actually *named* `puff', but these days it is usually packaged with the encoder. oppose {huff}. :punched card:: alt. `punch card' [techspeak] n.obs. the signature medium of computing's {stone age}, now obsolescent outside of some ibm shops. the punched card actually predated computers considerably, originating in as a control device for mechanical looms. the version patented by hollerith and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the u.s. census was a piece of cardboard about mm by mm, designed to fit exactly in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills. ibm (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, columns per card. other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various times. the -column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the ibm punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed with many varieties of computers even today. see {chad}, {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green card}, {dusty deck}, {lace card}, {card walloper}. :punt: [from the punch line of an old joke referring to american football: "drop back yards and punt!"] v. . to give up, typically without any intention of retrying. "let's punt the movie tonight." "i was going to hack all night to get this feature in, but i decided to punt" may mean that you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to put in the feature. . more specifically, to give up on figuring out what the {right thing} is and resort to an inefficient hack. . a design decision to defer solving a problem, typically because one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an algorithmic solution. "no way to know what the right form to dump the graph in is --- we'll punt that for now." . to hand a tricky implementation problem off to some other section of the design. "it's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's punt to the runtime system." :purple book: n. . the `system v interface definition'. the covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender. . syn. {wizard book}. see also {{book titles}}. :purple wire: [ibm] n. wire installed by field engineers to work around problems discovered during testing or debugging. these are called `purple wires' even when (as is frequently the case) their actual physical color is yellow.... compare {blue wire}, {purple wire}, and {red wire}. :push: [from the operation that puts the current information on a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack] also push /push/ or pushj /push'j/ (the latter based on the pdp- procedure call instruction). . to put something onto a {stack} or {pdl}. if one says that something has been pushed onto one's stack, it means that the damoclean list of things hanging over ones's head has grown longer and heavier yet. this may also imply that one will deal with it *before* other pending items; otherwise one might say that the thing was `added to my queue'. . vi. to enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion for later. antonym of {pop}; see also {stack}, {pdl}. = q = ===== :q-line: [irc] v. to ban a particular {irc} server from connecting to one's own; does to it what {k-line} does to an individual. since this is applied transitively, it has the effect of partitioning the irc network, which is generally a {bad thing}. :quad: n. . two bits; syn. for {quarter}, {crumb}, {tayste}. . a four-pack of anything (compare {hex}, sense ). . the rectangle or box glyph used in the apl language for various arcane purposes mostly related to i/o. former ivy-leaguers and oxbridge types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of dear old university. :quadruple bucky: n., obs. . on an mit {space-cadet keyboard}, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. . on a stanford or mit keyboard in {raw mode}, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. this was very difficult to do! one accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some character that was easier to type. if you want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like: "oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling beethoven's fifth symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." see {double bucky}, {bucky bits}, {cokebottle}. :quantifiers:: in techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the si (syst`eme international) conventions for scientific measurement have dual uses. with units of time or things that come in powers of , such as money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by powers of = ^ . but when used with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of , they usually denote multiplication by powers of = ^( ). here are the si magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding binary interpretations in common use: prefix decimal binary kilo- ^ ^ = ^ = , mega- ^ ^ = ^ = , , giga- ^ ^ = ^ = , , , tera- ^ ^ = ^ = , , , , peta- ^ ^ = ^ = , , , , , exa- ^ ^ = ^ = , , , , , , zetta- ^ ^ = ^ = , , , , , , , yotta- ^ ^ = ^ = , , , , , , , , here are the si fractional prefixes: *prefix decimal jargon usage* milli- ^- (seldom used in jargon) micro- ^- small or human-scale (see {micro-}) nano- ^- even smaller (see {nano-}) pico- ^- even smaller yet (see {pico-}) femto- ^- (not used in jargon---yet) atto- ^- (not used in jargon---yet) zepto- ^- (not used in jargon---yet) yocto- ^- (not used in jargon---yet) the prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been included in these tables purely for completeness and giggle value; they were adopted in by the ` th conference generale des poids et mesures'. the binary peta- and exa- loadings, though well established, are not in jargon use either --- yet. the prefix milli-, denoting multiplication by ^(- ), has always been rare in jargon (there is, however, a standard joke about the `millihelen' --- notionally, the amount of beauty required to launch one ship). see the entries on {micro-}, {pico-}, and {nano-} for more information on connotative jargon use of these terms. `femto' and `atto' (which, interestingly, derive not from greek but from danish) have not yet acquired jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what those will be once computing technology enters the required realms of magnitude (however, see {attoparsec}). there are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers of . in the following table, the `prefix' column is the international standard suffix for the appropriate power of ten; the `binary' column lists jargon abbreviations and words for the corresponding power of . the b-suffixed forms are commonly used for byte quantities; the words `meg' and `gig' are nouns which may (but do not always) pluralize with `s'. prefix decimal binary pronunciation kilo- k k, kb, /kay/ mega- m m, mb, meg /meg/ giga- g g, gb, gig /gig/,/jig/ confusingly, hackers often use k or m as though they were suffix or numeric multipliers rather than a prefix; thus " k dollars", " m of disk space". this is also true (though less commonly) of g. note that the formal si metric prefix for is `k'; some use this strictly, reserving `k' for multiplication by (kb is `kilobytes'). k, m, and g used alone refer to quantities of bytes; thus, g is gigabytes and `a k' is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use of `a g' as short for `a grand', that is, $ ). whether one pronounces `gig' with hard or soft `g' depends on what one thinks the proper pronunciation of `giga-' is. confusing and (or other powers of and close in magnitude) --- for example, describing a memory in units of k or k instead of k --- is a sure sign of the {marketroid}. :quantum bogodynamics: /kwon'tm boh`goh-di:-nam'iks/ n. a theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, tv evangelists, and {suit}s in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. bogon absorption, of course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of the bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood and remain to be elucidated. quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. see {bogon}, {computron}, {suit}, {psyton}. :quarter: n. two bits. this in turn comes from the `pieces of eight' famed in pirate movies --- spanish silver crowns that could be broken into eight pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. early in american history the spanish coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each of these `bits' was considered worth . cents. syn. {tayste}, {crumb}, {quad}. usage: rare. see also {nickle}, {nybble}, {{byte}}, {dynner}. :ques: /kwes/ . n. the question mark character (`?', ascii ). . interj. what? also frequently verb-doubled as "ques ques?" see {wall}. :quick-and-dirty: adj. describes a {crock} put together under time or user pressure. used esp. when you want to convey that you think the fast way might lead to trouble further down the road. "i can have a quick-and-dirty fix in place tonight, but i'll have to rewrite the whole module to solve the underlying design problem." see also {kluge}. :quine: [from the name of the logician willard v. quine, via douglas hofstadter] n. a program which generates a copy of its source text as its complete output. devising the shortest possible quine in some given programming language is a common hackish amusement. here is one classic quine: ((lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x))) (quote (lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x))))) this one works in lisp or scheme. it's relatively easy to write quines in other languages such as postscript which readily handle programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) in languages like c which do not. here is a classic c quine: char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f, ,f, , );}%c"; main(){printf(f, ,f, , );} for excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the line break after the second semicolon. some infamous {obfuscated c contest} entries have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways. :quote chapter and verse: [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] v. to cite a relevant excerpt from an appropriate {bible}. "i don't care if `rn' gets it wrong; `followup-to: poster' is explicitly permitted by rfc- . i'll quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me." :quotient: n. see {coefficient of x}. :quux: /kwuhks/ [mythically, from the latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare, quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural `quuces', anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is `quuxuum', for four u-letters out of seven in all, using up all the `u' letters in scrabble).] . originally, a {metasyntactic variable} like {foo} and {foobar}. invented by guy steele for precisely this purpose when he was young and na"ive and not yet interacting with the real computing community. many people invent such words; this one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a little. in an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned to the originator in the form of a nickname. . interj. see {foo}; however, denotes very little disgust, and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it. . guy steele in his persona as `the great quux', which is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the `crunchly' cartoons. . in some circles, quux is used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "ah, that's the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is *not* crucial (compare {tip of the ice-cube}). . quuxy: adj. of or pertaining to a quux. :qux: /kwuhks/ the fourth of the standard {metasyntactic variable}, after {baz} and before the quu(u...)x series. see {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}. this appears to be a recent mutation from {quux}, and many versions of the standard series just run {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, .... :qwerty: /kwer'tee/ [from the keycaps at the upper left] adj. pertaining to a standard english-language typewriter keyboard (sometimes called the sholes keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to dvorak or foreign-language layouts or a {space-cadet keyboard} or apl keyboard. historical note: the qwerty layout is a fine example of a {fossil}. it is sometimes said that it was designed to slow down the typist, but this is wrong; it was designed to allow *faster* typing --- under a constraint now long obsolete. in early typewriters, fast typing using nearby type-bars jammed the mechanism. so sholes fiddled the layout to separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far from perfect job, though; `th', `tr', `ed', and `er', for example, each use two nearby keys). also, putting the letters of `typewriter' on one line allowed it to be typed with particular speed and accuracy for {demo}s. the jamming problem was essentially solved soon afterward by a suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout lives on. = r = ===== :rain dance: n. . any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. this especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables, etc. "i can't boot up the machine. we'll have to wait for greg to do his rain dance." . any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals that include both an {incantation} or two and physical activity or motion. compare {magic}, {voodoo programming}, {black art}. :rainbow series: n. any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by cover color. the original rainbow series was the ncsc security manuals (see {orange book}); the term has also been commonly applied to the postscript reference set (see {red book}, {green book}, {blue book}, {white book}). which books are meant by "`the' rainbow series" unqualified is thus dependent on one's local technical culture. :random: adj. . unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. "the system's been behaving pretty randomly." . assorted; undistinguished. "who was at the conference?" "just a bunch of random business types." . (pejorative) frivolous; unproductive; undirected. "he's just a random loser." . incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "the program has a random set of misfeatures." "that's a random name for that function." "well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly." . in no particular order, though deterministic. "the i/o channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly." . arbitrary. "it generates a random name for the scratch file." . gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent reason. for example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. what {randomness}! . n. a random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the way. . n. anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense . "i went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions". . n. (occasional mit usage) one who lives at random hall. see also {j. random}, {some random x}. :random numbers:: n. when one wishes to specify a large but random number of things, and the context is inappropriate for {n}, certain numbers are preferred by hacker tradition (that is, easily recognized as placeholders). these include the following: long described at mit as `the least random number'; see . sacred number of eris, goddess of discord (along with and ). the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. (note that this answer is completely fortuitous. `:-)') from the sexual act. this one was favored in mit's its culture. hex = decimal, and decimal = octal. the number of the beast. for further enlightenment, study the `principia discordia', `{the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy}', `the joy of sex', and the christian bible (revelation : ). see also {discordianism} or consult your pineal gland. see also {for values of}. :randomness: n. . an inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance. . a {hack} or {crock} that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "this hack can output characters -- by putting the character in the four-bit accumulator field of an xct and then extracting six bits --- the low bits of the xct opcode are the right thing." "what randomness!" . of people, synonymous with `flakiness'. the connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. see if he calls back." :rape: vt. . to {screw} someone or something, violently; in particular, to destroy a program or information irrecoverably. often used in describing file-system damage. "so-and-so was running a program that did absolute disk i/o and ended up raping the master directory." . to strip a piece of hardware for parts. . [cmu/pitt] to mass-copy files from an anonymous ftp site. "last night i raped simtel's dskutl directory." :rare mode: [unix] adj. cbreak mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled). distinguished from {raw mode} and {cooked mode}; the phrase "a sort of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used in the v /bsd manuals to describe the mode. usage: rare. :raster blaster: n. [cambridge] specialized hardware for {bitblt} operations (a {blitter}). allegedly inspired by `rasta blasta', british slang for the sort of portable stereo americans call a `boom box' or `ghetto blaster'. :raster burn: n. eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. see {terminal illness}. :rat belt: n. a cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). small cable ties are `mouse belts'. :rave: [wpi] vi. . to persist in discussing a specific subject. . to speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little. . to complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty. . to purposely annoy another person verbally. . to evangelize. see {flame}. . also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. `rave' differs slightly from {flame} in that `rave' implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat more strongly that the tone is offensive as well. :rave on!: imp. sarcastic invitation to continue a {rave}, often by someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is unlikely. :ravs: /ravz/, also `chinese ravs' n. jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or guo-tie (pan-fried). a chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and (around boston) `peking ravioli'. the term `rav' is short for `ravioli', which among hackers always means the chinese kind rather than the italian kind. both consist of a filling in a pasta shell, but the chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a pork-vegetable filling (good ones include chinese chives), and is cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. a rav or dumpling can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is always the fried kind (so called because it sticks to the frying pot and has to be scraped off). "let's get hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs." see also {{oriental food}}. :raw mode: n. a mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or from an i/o device (or, under {bogus} systems which make a distinction, a disk file) without any processing, abstraction, or interpretation by the operating system. compare {rare mode}, {cooked mode}. this is techspeak under unix, jargon elsewhere. :rc file: /r-c fi:l/ [unix: from the startup script `/etc/rc', but this is commonly believed to have been named after older scripts to `run commands'] n. script file containing startup instructions for an application program (or an entire operating system), usually a text file containing commands of the sort that might have been invoked manually once the system was running but are to be executed automatically each time the system starts up. see also {dot file}. :re: /r-e/ n. common spoken and written shorthand for {regexp}. :read-only user: n. describes a {luser} who uses computers almost exclusively for reading usenet, bulletin boards, and/or email, rather than writing code or purveying useful information. see {twink}, {terminal junkie}, {lurker}. :readme file: n. by convention, the top-level directory of a unix source distribution always contains a file named `readme' (or read.me, or rarely readme or some other variant), which is a hacker's-eye introduction containing a pointer to more detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history notes, etc. in the mac and pc worlds, software is not usually distributed in source form and a readme is more likely to contain user-oriented material like last-minute documentation changes, error workarounds, and restrictions. when asked, hackers invariably relate the readme convention to the famous scene in lewis carroll's `alice's adventures in wonderland' in which alice confronts magic munchies labeled "eat me" and "drink me". :real: adj. not simulated. often used as a specific antonym to {virtual} in any of its jargon senses. :real estate: n. may be used for any critical resource measured in units of area. most frequently used of `chip real estate', the area available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit (see also {nanoacre}). may also be used of floor space in a {dinosaur pen}, or even space on a crowded desktop (whether physical or electronic). :real hack: n. a {crock}. this is sometimes used affectionately; see {hack}. :real operating system: n. the sort the speaker is used to. people from the bsdophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "system v? why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial unix sector are known to complain "bsd? why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from ibm object "unix? why don't you use a *real* operating system?" see {holy wars}, {religious issues}, {proprietary}, {get a real computer!} :real programmer: [indirectly, from the book `real men don't eat quiche'] n. a particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. the archetypal `real programmer' likes to program on the {bare metal} and is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that hlls are sissy, and uses a debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. real programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been {bum}med into a state of {tense}ness just short of rupture. real programmers never use comments or write documentation: "if it was hard to write", says the real programmer, "it should be hard to understand." real programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy unless doing so. a real programmer's code can awe with its fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. real programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers --- because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand their code in order to change it. their successors generally consider it a {good thing} that there aren't many real programmers around any more. for a famous (and somewhat more positive) portrait of a real programmer, see "{the story of mel, a real programmer}" in {appendix a}. :real soon now: [orig. from sf's fanzine community, popularized by jerry pournelle's column in `byte'] adv. . supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical. . when one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). often abbreviated rsn. :real time: . [techspeak] adj. describes an application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). process control at a chemical plant is the classic example. such applications often require special operating systems (because everything else must take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware. . adv. in jargon, refers to doing something while people are watching or waiting. "i asked her how to find the calling procedure's program counter on the stack and she came up with an algorithm in real time." :real user: n. . a commercial user. one who is paying *real* money for his computer usage. . a non-hacker. someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. see {user}. hackers who are also students may also be real users. "i need this fixed so i can do a problem set. i'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real user." see also {luser}. :real world: n. . those institutions at which `programming' may be used in the same sentence as `fortran', `{cobol}', `rpg', `{ibm}', `dbase', etc. places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and invoices. . the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. . a bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as to (see {code grinder}). . anywhere outside a university. "poor fellow, he's left mit and gone into the real world." used pejoratively by those not in residence there. in conversation, talking of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. it is also noteworthy that on the campus of cambridge university in england, there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label `reality checkpoint'. it marks the boundary between university and the real world; check your notions of reality before passing. see also {fear and loathing}, {mundane}, and {uninteresting}. :reality check: n. . the simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what + is and seeing if you get . the software equivalent of a {smoke test}. . the act of letting a {real user} try out prototype software. compare {sanity check}. :reaper: n. a {prowler} that {gfr}s files. a file removed in this way is said to have been `reaped'. :rectangle slinger: n. see {polygon pusher}. :recursion: n. see {recursion}. see also {tail recursion}. :recursive acronym:: pl.n. a hackish (and especially mit) tradition is to choose acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms/abbreviations. the classic examples were two mit editors called eine ("eine is not emacs") and zwei ("zwei was eine initially"). more recently, there is a scheme compiler called liar (liar imitates apply recursively), and {gnu} (q.v., sense ) stands for "gnu's not unix!" --- and a company with the name cygnus, which expands to "cygnus, your gnu support". see also {mung}, {emacs}. :red book: n. . informal name for one of the three standard references on {postscript} (`postscript language reference manual', adobe systems (addison-wesley, ; qa . .p p ; isbn - - - , or the second edition isbn - - - ); the others are known as the {green book}, the {blue book}, and the {white book} (sense ). . informal name for one of the standard references on smalltalk (`smalltalk- : the interactive programming environment' by adele goldberg (addison-wesley, ; qa . .s g ; isbn - - - ); this too is associated with blue and green books). . any of the standards issued by the ccitt eighth plenary assembly. until now, these have changed color each review cycle ( was {blue book}, will be {green book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before . these include, among other things, the x. email spec and the group through fax standards. . the new version of the {green book} (sense ) --- ieee . - , a.k.a iso - --- is (because of the color and the fact that it is printed on a paper) known in the u.s.a. as "the ugly red book that won't fit on the shelf" and in europe as "the ugly red book that's a sensible size". . the nsa `trusted network interpretation' companion to the {orange book}. see also {{book titles}}. :red wire: [ibm] n. patch wires installed by programmers who have no business mucking with the hardware. it is said that the only thing more dangerous then a hardware guy with a code patch is a {softy} with a soldering iron.... :regexp: /reg'eksp/ [unix] n. (alt. `regex' or `reg-ex') . common written and spoken abbreviation for `regular expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by unix utilities such as `grep( )', `sed( )', and `awk( )'. these use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under {glob}. for purposes of this lexicon, it is sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character sets using `^'; thus, one can specify `any non-alphabetic character' with `[^a-za-z]'. . name of a well-known pd regexp-handling package in portable c, written by revered usenetter henry spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>. :register dancing: n. many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of general-purpose registers. this is especially a problem for compiler-writers, because their generated code needs places to store temporaries for things like intermediate values in expression evaluation. some designs with this problem, like the intel x , do have a handful of special-purpose registers that can be pressed into service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side-effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose register is being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in which the previous value of the register is saved and then restored just before the official function (and value) of the special-purpose register is again needed. :reincarnation, cycle of: n. see {cycle of reincarnation}. :reinvent the wheel: v. to design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of time. this is often a valid criticism. on the other hand, automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have to be reinvented many times before you get them right. on the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle. :religious issues: n. questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off {holy wars}, such as "what is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "what about that heinlein guy, eh?", "what should we add to the new jargon file?" see {holy wars}; see also {theology}, {bigot}. this term is an example of {ha ha only serious}. people actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible. the most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble {get a life!} and leave --- unless, of course, one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed. :replicator: n. any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program (see {worm}, {wabbit}, {fork bomb}, and {virus}), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see {life}, sense ), or (speculatively) a robot or {nanobot}. it is even claimed by some that {{unix}} and {c} are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see {unix conspiracy}. :reply: n. see {followup}. :reset: [the mud community] v. in abermud, to bring all dead mobiles to life and move items back to their initial starting places. new players who can't find anything shout "reset! reset!" quite a bit. higher-level players shout back "no way!" since they know where points are to be found. used in {rl}, it means to put things back to the way they were when you found them. :restriction: n. a {bug} or design error that limits a program's capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work up enough nerve to describe it as a {feature}. often used (esp. by {marketroid} types) to make it sound as though some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers all along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical constraints of a nature no mere user could possibly comprehend (these claims are almost invariably false). old-time hacker joseph m. newcomer advises that whenever choosing a quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should make it either a power of or a power of minus . if you impose a limit of items in a list, everyone will know it is a random number --- on the other hand, a limit of or suggests some deep reason (involving - or -based indexing in binary) and you will get less {flamage} for it. limits which are round numbers in base are always especially suspect. :retcon: /ret'kon/ [`retroactive continuity', from the usenet newsgroup rec.arts.comics] . n. the common situation in pulp fiction (esp. comics or soap operas) where a new story `reveals' things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the `facts' the same (thus preserving continuity) while completely changing their interpretation. for example, revealing that a whole season of "dallas" was a dream was a retcon. . vt. to write such a story about a character or fictitious object. "byrne has retconned superman's cape so that it is no longer unbreakable." "marvelman's old adventures were retconned into synthetic dreams." "swamp thing was retconned from a transformed person into a sentient vegetable." "darth vader was retconned into luke skywalker's father in "the empire strikes back". [this is included because it is a good example of hackish linguistic innovation in a field completely unrelated to computers. the word `retcon' will probably spread through comics fandom and lose its association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for the record, it started here. --- esr] :reti: v. syn. {rti} :retrocomputing: /ret'-roh-k*m-pyoo'ting/ n. refers to emulations of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or software, or implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies, written mostly for {hack value}, of more `serious' designs. perhaps the most widely distributed retrocomputing utility was the `pnch( )' or `bcd( )' program on v and other early unix versions, which would accept up to characters of text argument and display the corresponding pattern in {{punched card}} code. other well-known retrocomputing hacks have included the programming language {intercal}, a {jcl}-emulating shell for unix, the card-punch-emulating editor named , and various elaborate pdp- hardware emulators and rt- os emulators written just to keep an old, sourceless {zork} binary running. :rfc: /r-f-c/ [request for comment] n. one of a long-established series of numbered internet standards widely followed by commercial and pd software in the internet and unix communities. perhaps the single most influential one has been rfc- (the internet mail-format standard). the rfcs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ansi. for this reason, they remain known as rfcs even once adopted. the rfc tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard-writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ansi or iso. emblematic of some of these is the existence of a flourishing tradition of `joke' rfcs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on april st. well-known joke rfcs have included ("arpawocky", r. merryman, ucsd; june ), ("telnet randomly-lose option", mark r. crispin; april ), and ("a standard for the transmission of ip datagrams on avian carriers", d. waitzman, bbn stc; april ). the first was a lewis carrol pastiche; the second a parody of the tcp-ip documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese describing protocols for transmiitting internet data packets by carrier pigeon. the rfcs are most remarkable for how well they work --- they manage to have neither the ambiguities which are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures which often haunt formal standards, and they define a network which has grown to truly worldwide proportions. :rfe: /r-f-e/ n. . [techspeak] request for enhancement. . [from `radio free europe', bellcore and sun] radio free ethernet, a system (originated by peter langston) for broadcasting audio among sun sparcstations over the ethernet. :rib site: [by analogy with {backbone site}] n. a machine that has an on-demand high-speed link to a {backbone site} and serves as a regional distribution point for lots of third-party traffic in email and usenet news. compare {leaf site}, {backbone site}. :rice box: [from ham radio slang] n. any asian-made commodity computer, esp. an x -based machine built to ibm pc-compatible isa or eisa-bus standards. :right thing: n. that which is *compellingly* the correct or appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. often capitalized, always emphasized in speech as though capitalized. use of this term often implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree. "what's the right thing for lisp to do when it sees `(mod a )'? should it return `a', or give a divide-by- error?" oppose {wrong thing}. :rl: // [mud community] n. real life. "firiss laughs in rl" means that firiss's player is laughing. oppose {vr}. :roach: [bell labs] vt. to destroy, esp. of a data structure. hardware gets {toast}ed or {fried}, software gets roached. :robot: [irc, mud] n. an {irc} or {mud} user who is actually a program. on irc, typically the robot provides some useful service. examples are nickserv, which tries to prevent random users from adopting {nick}s already claimed by others, and msgserv, which allows one to send asynchronous messages to be delivered when the recipient signs on. also common are "annoybots", such as kissserv, which perform no useful function except to send cute messages to other people. service robots are less common on muds; but some others, such as the `julia' robot active in - , have been remarkably impressive turing-test experiments, able to pass as human for as long as ten or fifteen minutes of conversation. :robust: adj. said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations in a given environment. one step below {bulletproof}. carries the additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful attention to detail. compare {smart}, oppose {brittle}. :rococo: adj. {baroque} in the extreme. used to imply that a program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely swamped the underlying design. called after the later and more extreme forms of baroque architecture and decoration prevalent during the mid- s in europe. alan perlis said: "every program eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble." compare {critical mass}. :rogue: [unix] n. a dungeons-and-dragons-like game using character graphics, written under bsd unix and subsequently ported to other unix systems. the original bsd `curses( )' screen-handling package was hacked together by ken arnold to support `rogue( )' and has since become one of unix's most important and heavily used application libraries. nethack, omega, larn, and an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the inspiration provided by `rogue( )'. see {nethack}. :room-temperature iq: [ibm] quant. or below. used in describing the expected intelligence range of the {luser}. "well, but how's this interface going to play with the room-temperature iq crowd?" see {drool-proof paper}. this is a much more insulting phrase in countries that use celsius thermometers. :root: [unix] n. . the {superuser} account that ignores permission bits, user number on a unix system. this account has the user name `root'. the term {avatar} is also used. . the top node of the system directory structure (home directory of the root user). . by extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any os. see {root mode}, {go root}. :root mode: n. syn. with {wizard mode} or `wheel mode'. like these, it is often generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than oses. :rot : /rot ther'teen/ [usenet: from `rotate alphabet places'] n., v. the simple caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each english letter with the one places forward or back along the alphabet, so that "the butler did it!" becomes "gur ohgyre qvq vg!" most usenet news reading and posting programs include a rot feature. it is used to enclose the text in a sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open --- e.g., for posting things that might offend some readers, or answers to puzzles. a major advantage of rot over rot(n) for other n is that it is self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and decoding. :rotary debugger: [commodore] n. essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning debugging sessions. mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. comes in many decorator colors, such as sausage, pepperoni, and garbage. see {pizza, ansi standard}. :round tape: n. industry-standard / " magnetic tape ( - or -track) on traditional circular reels; oppose {square tape}. :rsn: /r-s-n/ adj. see {real soon now}. :rtbm: /r-t-b-m/ [unix] imp. commonwealth hackish variant of {rtfm}; expands to `read the bloody manual'. rtbm is often the entire text of the first reply to a question from a {newbie}; the *second* would escalate to "rtfm". :rtfaq: /r-t-f-a-q/ [usenet: primarily written, by analogy with {rtfm}] imp. abbrev. for `read the faq!', an exhortation that the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's {faq list} before posting questions. :rtfb: /r-t-f-b/ [unix] imp. acronym for `read the fucking binary'. used when neither documentation nor the the source for the problem at hand exists and the only thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and directly analyze the assembler or even the machine code. "no source for the buggy port driver? aaargh! i *hate* proprietary operating systems. time to rtfb." :rtfm: /r-t-f-m/ [unix] imp. acronym for `read the fucking manual'. . used by {guru}s to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. compare {don't do that, then!} . used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking out of {randomness}. "no, i can't figure out how to interface unix to my toaster, and yes, i have rtfm." unlike sense , this use is considered polite. see also {fm}, {rtfaq}, {rtfb}, {rtfs}, {rtm}, all of which mutated from rtfm, and compare {utsl}. :rtfs: /r-t-f-s/ [unix] . imp. acronym for `read the fucking source'. stronger form of {rtfm}, used when the problem at hand is not necessarily obvious and not available from the manuals --- or the manuals are not yet written and maybe never will be. for even more tricky situations, see {rtfb}. . imp. `read the fucking standard;' this oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g. a language or operating system interface) has actually been codified in a ratified standards document. the existence of these standards documents (and the technically inappropriate but politically mandated compromises which they inevitably contain, and the stifling language in which they are invariably written, and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems they use. (hackers feel that such ambiguities are acceptable as long as the {right thing} to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly, this casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when a system becomes popular in the {real world}.) since a hacker is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought to read it. :rti: /r-t-i/ interj. the mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on many computers including the and . the variant `reti' is found among former z hackers (almost nobody programs these things in assembler anymore). equivalent to "now, where was i?" or used to end a conversational digression. see {pop}; see also {popj}. :rtm: /r-t-m/ [usenet: abbreviation for `read the manual'] . politer variant of {rtfm}. . robert t. morris jr., perpetrator of the great internet worm of (see {great worm, the}); villain to many, na"ive hacker gone wrong to a few. morris claimed that the worm that brought the internet to its knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the result of a coding error. after the storm of negative publicity that followed this blunder, morris's name on its was hacked from rtm to {rtfm}. :rude: [wpi] adj. . (of a program) badly written. . functionally poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. oppose {cuspy}. . anything that manipulates a shared resource without regard for its other users in such a way as to cause a (non-fatal) problem is said to be `rude'. examples: programs that change tty modes without resetting them on exit, or windowing programs that keep forcing themselves to the top of the window stack. compare {all-elbows}. :runes: pl.n. . anything that requires {heavy wizardry} or {black art} to {parse}: core dumps, jcl commands, apl, or code in a language you haven't a clue how to read. compare {casting the runes}, {great runes}. . special display characters (for example, the high-half graphics on an ibm pc). :runic: adj. syn. {obscure}. vms fans sometimes refer to unix as `runix'; unix fans return the compliment by expanding vms to `very messy syntax' or `vachement mauvais syst`eme' (french; lit. "cowlike bad system", idiomatically "bitchy bad system"). :rusty iron: n. syn. {tired iron}. it has been claimed that this is the inevitable fate of {water mips}. :rusty memory: n. mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based magnetic media (esp. tape and the pre-winchester removable disk packs used in {washing machine}s). compare {donuts}. = s = ===== :s/n ratio: // n. (also `s/n ratio', `s:n ratio'). syn. {signal-to-noise ratio}. often abbreviated `snr'. :sacred: adj. reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of the standard meaning). often means that anyone may look at the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to. the comment "register is sacred to the interrupt handler" appearing in a program would be interpreted by a hacker to mean that if any *other* part of the program changes the contents of register , dire consequences are likely to ensue. :saga: [wpi] n. a cuspy but bogus raving story about n random broken people. here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by guy l. steele: jon l. white (login name jonl) and i (gls) were office mates at mit for many years. one april, we both flew from boston to california for a week on research business, to consult face-to-face with some people at stanford, particularly our mutual friend richard p. gabriel (rpg; see {gabriel}). rpg picked us up at the san francisco airport and drove us back to palo alto (going {logical} south on route , parallel to {el camino bignum}). palo alto is adjacent to stanford university and about miles south of san francisco. we ate at the good earth, a `health food' restaurant, very popular, the sort whose milkshakes all contain honey and protein powder. jonl ordered such a shake --- the waitress claimed the flavor of the day was "lalaberry". i still have no idea what that might be, but it became a running joke. it was the color of raspberry, and jonl said it tasted rather bitter. i ate a better tostada there than i have ever had in a mexican restaurant. after this we went to the local uncle gaylord's old fashioned ice cream parlor. they make ice cream fresh daily, in a variety of intriguing flavors. it's a chain, and they have a slogan: "if you don't live near an uncle gaylord's --- move!" also, uncle gaylord (a real person) wages a constant battle to force big-name ice cream makers to print their ingredients on the package (like air and plastic and other non-natural garbage). jonl and i had first discovered uncle gaylord's the previous august, when we had flown to a computer-science conference in berkeley, california, the first time either of us had been on the west coast. when not in the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the length of telegraph avenue, which (like harvard square in cambridge) was lined with picturesque street vendors and interesting little shops. on that street we discovered uncle gaylord's berkeley store. the ice cream there was very good. during that august visit jonl went absolutely bananas (so to speak) over one particular flavor, ginger honey. therefore, after eating at the good earth --- indeed, after every lunch and dinner and before bed during our april visit --- a trip to uncle gaylord's (the one in palo alto) was mandatory. we had arrived on a wednesday, and by thursday evening we had been there at least four times. each time, jonl would get ginger honey ice cream, and proclaim to all bystanders that "ginger was the spice that drove the europeans mad! that's why they sought a route to the east! they used it to preserve their otherwise off-taste meat." after the third or fourth repetition rpg and i were getting a little tired of this spiel, and began to paraphrase him: "wow! ginger! the spice that makes rotten meat taste good!" "say! why don't we find some dog that's been run over and sat in the sun for a week and put some *ginger* on it for dinner?!" "right! with a lalaberry shake!" and so on. this failed to faze jonl; he took it in good humor, as long as we kept returning to uncle gaylord's. he loves ginger honey ice cream. now rpg and his then-wife kbt (kathy tracy) were putting us up (putting up with us?) in their home for our visit, so to thank them jonl and i took them out to a nice french restaurant of their choosing. i unadventurously chose the filet mignon, and kbt had je ne sais quoi du jour, but rpg and jonl had lapin (rabbit). (waitress: "oui, we have fresh rabbit, fresh today." rpg: "well, jonl, i guess we won't need any *ginger*!") we finished the meal late, about p.m., which is a.m boston time, so jonl and i were rather droopy. but it wasn't yet midnight. off to uncle gaylord's! now the french restaurant was in redwood city, north of palo alto. in leaving redwood city, we somehow got onto route going north instead of south. jonl and i wouldn't have known the difference had rpg not mentioned it. we still knew very little of the local geography. i did figure out, however, that we were headed in the direction of berkeley, and half-jokingly suggested that we continue north and go to uncle gaylord's in berkeley. rpg said "fine!" and we drove on for a while and talked. i was drowsy, and jonl actually dropped off to sleep for minutes. when he awoke, rpg said, "gee, jonl, you must have slept all the way over the bridge!", referring to the one spanning san francisco bay. just then we came to a sign that said "university avenue". i mumbled something about working our way over to telegraph avenue; rpg said "right!" and maneuvered some more. eventually we pulled up in front of an uncle gaylord's. now, i hadn't really been paying attention because i was so sleepy, and i didn't really understand what was happening until rpg let me in on it a few moments later, but i was just alert enough to notice that we had somehow come to the palo alto uncle gaylord's after all. jonl noticed the resemblance to the palo alto store, but hadn't caught on. (the place is lit with red and yellow lights at night, and looks much different from the way it does in daylight.) he said, "this isn't the uncle gaylord's i went to in berkeley! it looked like a barn! but this place looks *just like* the one back in palo alto!" rpg deadpanned, "well, this is the one *i* always come to when i'm in berkeley. they've got two in san francisco, too. remember, they're a chain." jonl accepted this bit of wisdom. and he was not totally ignorant --- he knew perfectly well that university avenue was in berkeley, not far from telegraph avenue. what he didn't know was that there is a completely different university avenue in palo alto. jonl went up to the counter and asked for ginger honey. the guy at the counter asked whether jonl would like to taste it first, evidently their standard procedure with that flavor, as not too many people like it. jonl said, "i'm sure i like it. just give me a cone." the guy behind the counter insisted that jonl try just a taste first. "some people think it tastes like soap." jonl insisted, "look, i *love* ginger. i eat chinese food. i eat raw ginger roots. i already went through this hassle with the guy back in palo alto. i *know* i like that flavor!" at the words "back in palo alto" the guy behind the counter got a very strange look on his face, but said nothing. kbt caught his eye and winked. through my stupor i still hadn't quite grasped what was going on, and thought rpg was rolling on the floor laughing and clutching his stomach just because jonl had launched into his spiel ("makes rotten meat a dish for princes") for the forty-third time. at this point, rpg clued me in fully. rpg, kbt, and i retreated to a table, trying to stifle our chuckles. jonl remained at the counter, talking about ice cream with the guy b.t.c., comparing uncle gaylord's to other ice cream shops and generally having a good old time. at length the g.b.t.c. said, "how's the ginger honey?" jonl said, "fine! i wonder what exactly is in it?" now uncle gaylord publishes all his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make his ice cream at home. so the g.b.t.c. got out the recipe, and he and jonl pored over it for a while. but the g.b.t.c. could contain his curiosity no longer, and asked again, "you really like that stuff, huh?" jonl said, "yeah, i've been eating it constantly back in palo alto for the past two days. in fact, i think this batch is about as good as the cones i got back in palo alto!" g.b.t.c. looked him straight in the eye and said, "you're *in* palo alto!" jonl turned slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in a fit of giggles. he clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed, "i've been hacked!" [my spies on the west coast inform me that there is a close relative of the raspberry found out there called an `olallieberry' --- esr] [ironic footnote: it appears that the {meme} about ginger vs. rotting meat may be an urban legend. it's not borne out by an examination of medieval recipes or period purchase records for spices, and appears full-blown in the works of samuel pegge, a gourmand and notorious flake case who originated numerous food myths. --- esr] :sagan: /say'gn/ [from carl sagan's tv series "cosmos"; think "billions and billions"] n. a large quantity of anything. "there's a sagan different ways to tweak emacs." "the u.s. government spends sagans on bombs and welfare --- hard to say which is more destructive." :sail:: /sayl/, not /s-a-i-l/ n. . stanford artificial intelligence lab. an important site in the early development of lisp; with the mit ai lab, bbn, cmu, xerox parc, and the unix community, one of the major wellsprings of technical innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the {{waits}} entry for details). the sail machines were officially shut down in late may , scant weeks after the mit ai lab's its cluster was officially decommissioned. . the stanford artificial intelligence language used at sail (sense ). it was an algol- derivative with a coroutining facility and some new data types intended for building search trees and association lists. :salescritter: /sayls'kri`tr/ n. pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. hackers tell the following joke: q. what's the difference between a used-car dealer and a computer salesman? a. the used-car dealer knows he's lying. [some versions add: ...and probably knows how to drive.] this reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). the terms `salesthing' and `salesdroid' are also common. compare {marketroid}, {suit}, {droid}. :salsman: /salz'm*n/ v. to flood a mailing list or newsgroup with huge amounts of useless, trivial or redundant information. from the name of a hacker who has frequently done this on some widely distributed mailing lists. :salt mines: n. dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the tunnel in n years. noted for their absence of sunshine. compare {playpen}, {sandbox}. :salt substrate: [mit] n. collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels, saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a carrier for sodium chloride. from the technical term `chip substrate', used to refer to the silicon on the top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are deposited. :same-day service: n. ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with respect to {{ms-dos}} system calls (which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to execute). such response time is a major incentive for programmers to write programs that are not {well-behaved}. see also {pc-ism}. :samurai: n. a hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and first amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith. in , mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit culture of samurai that meets electronically on bbs systems, mostly bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled themselves explicitly on the historical samurai of japan and on the "net cowboys" of william gibson's {cyberpunk} novels. those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote miyamoto musashi's `book of five rings', a classic of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these principles. see also {stupids}, {social engineering}, {cracker}, {hacker ethic, the}, and {dark-side hacker}. :sandbender: [ibm] n. a person involved with silicon lithography and the physical design of chips. compare {ironmonger}, {polygon pusher}. :sandbox: n. . (also `sandbox, the') common term for the r&d department at many software and computer companies (where hackers in commercial environments are likely to be found). half-derisive, but reflects the truth that research is a form of creative play. compare {playpen}. . syn. {link farm} :sanity check: n. . the act of checking a piece of code (or anything else, e.g., a usenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. implies that the check is to make sure the author was sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of scientific software relied on a particular formula and was giving unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting of parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a `sanity check', before looking at the more complex i/o or data structure manipulation routines, much less the algorithm itself. compare {reality check}. . a run-time test, either validating input or ensuring that the program hasn't screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value or state). :saturday-night special: [from police slang for a cheap handgun] n. a program or feature kluged together during off hours, under a deadline, and in response to pressure from a {salescritter}. such hacks are dangerously unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production release after insufficient review. :say: vt. . to type to a terminal. "to list a directory verbosely, you have to say `ls -l'." tends to imply a {newline}-terminated command (a `sentence'). . a computer may also be said to `say' things to you, even if it doesn't have a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a terminal in response to your commands. hackers find it odd that this usage confuses {mundane}s. :scag: vt. to destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the filesystem or by causing media damage. "that last power hit scagged the system disk." compare {scrog}, {roach}. :scanno: n. an error in a document caused by a scanner glitch, analgous to typo or {thinko}. :schroedinbug: [mit: from the schroedinger's cat thought-experiment in quantum physics] n. a design or implementation bug in a program which doesn't manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. though this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years. compare {heisenbug}, {bohr bug}, {mandelbug}. :science-fiction fandom:: n. another voluntary subculture having a very heavy overlap with hackerdom; most hackers read sf and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and many go to `cons' (sf conventions) or are involved in fandom-connected activities such as the society for creative anachronism. some hacker jargon originated in sf fandom; see {defenestration}, {great-wall}, {cyberpunk}, {h}, {ha ha only serious}, {imho}, {mundane}, {neep-neep}, {real soon now}. additionally, the jargon terms {cowboy}, {cyberspace}, {de-rezz}, {go flatline}, {ice}, {virus}, {wetware}, {wirehead}, and {worm} originated in sf stories. :scram switch: [from the nuclear power industry] n. an emergency-power-off switch (see {big red switch}), esp. one positioned to be easily hit by evacuating personnel. in general, this is *not* something you {frob} lightly; these often initiate expensive events (such as halon dumps) and are installed in a {dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical fire or in case some luckless {field servoid} should put volts across himself while {easter egging}. (see also {molly-guard}.) :scratch: . [from `scratchpad'] adj. describes a data structure or recording medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use purposes; one that can be {scribble}d on without loss. usually in the combining forms `scratch memory', `scratch register', `scratch disk', `scratch tape', `scratch volume'. see {scratch monkey}. . [primarily ibm] vt. to delete (as in a file). :scratch monkey: n. as in "before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a {scratch monkey}", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. this term preserves the memory of mabel, the swimming wonder monkey, star of a biological research program at the university of toronto ca. . mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when dec {pm}ed the pdp- controlling her regulator (see also {provocative maintenance}). it is recorded that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a dec troubleshooter called up the {field circus} manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "can you swim?" not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local `humane' society. the moral is clear: when in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. :screw: [mit] n. a {lose}, usually in software. especially used for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature. this use has become quite widespread outside mit. :screwage: /skroo'*j/ n. like {lossage} but connotes that the failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy or a mere bug. :scribble: n. to modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally destructive way. "bletch! somebody's disk-compactor program went berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "it was working fine until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low core." synonymous with {trash}; compare {mung}, which conveys a bit more intention, and {mangle}, which is more violent and final. :scrog: /skrog/ [bell labs] vt. to damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure. "the list header got scrogged." also reported as `skrog', and ascribed to the comic strip "the wizard of id". compare {scag}; possibly the two are related. equivalent to {scribble} or {mangle}. :scrool: /skrool/ [from the pioneering roundtable chat system in houston ca. ; prob. originated as a typo for `scroll'] n. the log of old messages, available for later perusal or to help one get back in synch with the conversation. it was originally called the `scrool monster', because an early version of the roundtable software had a bug where it would dump all k of scrool on a user's terminal. :scrozzle: /skroz'l/ vt. used when a self-modifying code segment runs incorrectly and corrupts the running program or vital data. "the damn compiler scrozzled itself again!" :scruffies: n. see {neats vs. scruffies}. :scsi: [small computer system interface] n. a bus-independent standard for system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices. typically annotated in literature with `sexy' (/sek'see/), `sissy' (/sis'ee/), and `scuzzy' (/skuh'zee/) as pronunciation guides --- the last being the overwhelmingly predominant form, much to the dismay of the designers and their marketing people. one can usually assume that a person who pronounces it /s-c-s-i/ is clueless. :scumos: n. unflattering hackerism for sunos, the unix variant supported on sun microsystems's unix workstations (see also {sun-stools}), and compare {aidx}, {terminak}, {macintrash} {nominal semidestructor}, {open deathtrap}, {hp-sux}. despite what this term might suggest, sun was founded by hackers and still enjoys excellent relations with hackerdom; usage is more often in exasperation than outright loathing. :search-and-destroy mode: n. hackerism for the search-and-replace facility in an editor, so called because an incautiously chosen match pattern can cause {infinite} damage. :second-system effect: n. (sometimes, more euphoniously, `second-system syndrome') when one is designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's success and design an {elephantine} feature-laden monstrosity. the term was first used by fred brooks in his classic `the mythical man-month: essays on software engineering' (addison-wesley, ; isbn - - - ). it described the jump from a set of nice, simple operating systems on the ibm xx series to os/ on the series. a similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see {brooks's law}, {creeping elegance}, {creeping featurism}. see also {{multics}}, {os/ }, {x}, {software bloat}. this version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of second-system effect run amok on jargon- .... :secondary damage: n. when a fatal error occurs (esp. a {segfault}) the immediate cause may be that a pointer has been trashed due to a previous {fandango on core}. however, this fandango may have been due to an *earlier* fandango, so no amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred. "the data structure was clobbered, but it was secondary damage." by extension, the corruption resulting from n cascaded fandangoes on core is `nth-level damage'. there is at least one case on record in which hours of {grovel}ling with `adb' actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of seventh-level damage! the hacker who accomplished this near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by his fellows. :security through obscurity: n. a name applied by hackers to most os vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes --- namely, ignoring them and not documenting them and trusting that nobody will find out about them and that people who do find out about them won't exploit them. this never works for long and occasionally sets the world up for debacles like the {rtm} worm of (see {great worm, the}), but once the brief moments of panic created by such events subside most vendors are all too willing to turn over and go back to sleep. after all, actually fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources needed to implement the next user-interface frill on marketing's wish list --- and besides, if they started fixing security bugs customers might begin to *expect* it and imagine that their warranties of merchantability gave them some sort of *right* to a system with fewer holes in it than a shotgunned swiss cheese, and *then* where would we be? historical note: there are conflicting stories about the origin of this term. it has been claimed that it was first used in the usenet newsgroup in comp.sys.apollo during a campaign to get hp/apollo to fix security problems in its unix-{clone} aegis/domainos (they didn't change a thing). {its} fans, on the other hand, say it was coined years earlier in opposition to the incredibly paranoid {multics} people down the hall, for whom security was everything. in the its culture it referred to ( ) the fact that that by the time a tourist figured out how to make trouble he'd generally gotten over the urge to make it, because he felt part of the community; and ( ) (self-mockingly) the poor coverage of the documentation and obscurity of many commands. one instance of *deliberate* security through obscurity is recorded; the command to allow patching the running its system ({altmode} altmode control-r) echoed as $$^d. if you actually typed alt alt ^d, that set a flag which would prevent patching the system even if you later got it right. :sed: [tmrc, from `light-emitting diode'] /s-e-d/ n. smoke-emitting diode. a {friode} that lost the war. see {ler}. :segfault: n.,vi. syn. {segment}, {seggie}. :seggie: /seg'ee/ [unix] n. shorthand for {segmentation fault} reported from britain. :segment: /seg'ment/ vi. to experience a {segmentation fault}. confusingly, this is often pronounced more like the noun `segment' than like mainstream v. segment; this is because it is actually a noun shorthand that has been verbed. :segmentation fault: n. [unix] . an error in which a running program attempts to access memory not allocated to it and {core dump}s with a segmentation violation error. . to lose a train of thought or a line of reasoning. also uttered as an exclamation at the point of befuddlement. :segv: /seg'vee/ n.,vi. yet another synonym for {segmentation fault} (actually, in this case, `segmentation violation'). :self-reference: n. see {self-reference}. :selvage: /sel'v*j/ [from sewing] n. see {chad} (sense ). :semi: /se'mee/ or /se'mi:/ . n. abbreviation for `semicolon', when speaking. "commands to {grind} are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is `;;*', not / of a star. . a prefix used with words such as `immediately' as a qualifier. "when is the system coming up?" "semi-immediately." (that is, maybe not for an hour.) "we did consider that possibility semi-seriously." see also {infinite}. :semi-infinite: n. see {infinite}. :senior bit: [ibm] n. syn. {meta bit}. :server: n. a kind of {daemon} that performs a service for the requester and which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the server runs. a particularly common term on the internet, which is rife with `name servers', `domain servers', `news servers', `finger servers', and the like. :sex: /seks/ [sun users' group & elsewhere] n. . software exchange. a technique invented by the blue-green algae hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had been terribly slow up until then. today, sex parties are popular among hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to exchanges of genetic software). in general, sex parties are a {good thing}, but unprotected sex can propagate a {virus}. see also {pubic directory}. . the rather freudian mnemonic often used for sign extend, a machine instruction found in the pdp- and many other architectures. the rca chip used in the early elf and superelf personal computers had a `set x register' sex instruction, but this seems to have had little folkloric impact. dec's engineers nearly got a pdp- assembler that used the `sex' mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. that wasn't the last time this happened, either. the author of `the intel primer', who was one of the original designers of the , noted that there was originally a `sex' instruction on that processor, too. he says that intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed `cbw' and `cwd' (depending on what was being extended). amusingly, the intel (the microcontroller used in ibm pc keyboards) is also missing straight `sex' but has logical-or and logical-and instructions `orl' and `anl'. the motorola , used in the u.k.'s `dragon ' personal computer, actually had an official `sex' instruction; the in the apple ii it competed with did not. british hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple. :sex changer: n. syn. {gender mender}. :shambolic link: n. a unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you, points to nothing at all, or results in you ending up in some completely unexpected part of the filesystem.... :shareware: /sheir'weir/ n. {freeware} (sense ) for which the author requests some payment, usually in the accompanying documentation files or in an announcement made by the software itself. such payment may or may not buy additional support or functionality. see also {careware}, {charityware}, {crippleware}, {guiltware}, {postcardware}, and {-ware}; compare {payware}. :shelfware: /shelfweir/ n. software purchased on a whim (by an individual user) or in accordance with policy (by a corporation or government agency), but not actually required for any particular use. therefore, it often ends up on some shelf. :shell: [orig. {{multics}} techspeak, widely propagated via unix] n. . [techspeak] the command interpreter used to pass commands to an operating system; so called because it is the part of the operating system that interfaces with the outside world. . more generally, any interface program that mediates access to a special resource or {server} for convenience, efficiency, or security reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually `a shell around' whatever. this sort of program is also called a `wrapper'. :shell out: [unix] n. to spawn an interactive {subshell} from within a program (e.g., a mailer or editor). "bang foo runs foo in a subshell, while bang alone shells out." :shift left (or right) logical: [from any of various machines' instruction sets] . vi. to move oneself to the left (right). to move out of the way. . imper. "get out of that (my) seat! you can shift to that empty one to the left (right)." often used without the `logical', or as `left shift' instead of `shift left'. sometimes heard as lsh /lish/, from the {pdp- } instruction set. see {programmer's cheer}. :shim: n. a small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired memory alignment or other addressing property. for example, the pdp- unix linker, in split i&d (instructions and data) mode, inserts a two-byte shim at location in data space so that no data object will have an address of (and be confused with the c null pointer). see also {loose bytes}. :shitogram: /shit'oh-gram/ n. a *really* nasty piece of email. compare {nastygram}, {flame}. :short card: n. a half-length ibm pc expansion card or adapter that will fit in one of the two short slots located towards the right rear of a standard chassis (tucked behind the floppy disk drives). see also {tall card}. :shotgun debugging: n. the software equivalent of {easter egging}; the making of relatively undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug will be perturbed out of existence. this almost never works, and usually introduces more bugs. :showstopper: n. a hardware or (especially) software bug that makes an implementation effectively unusable; one that absolutely has to be fixed before development can go on. opposite in connotation from its original theatrical use, which refers to something stunningly *good*. :shriek: n. see {excl}. occasional cmu usage, also in common use among apl fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists. :shub-internet: /shuhb in't*r-net/ [mud: from h. p. lovecraft's evil fictional deity `shub-niggurath', the black goat with a thousand young] n. the harsh personification of the internet, beast of a thousand processes, eater of characters, avatar of line noise, and imp of call waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. a sect of mudders worships shub-internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. to no avail --- its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdown. often heard as in "freela casts a tac nuke at shub-internet for slowing her down." (a forged response often follows along the lines of: "shub-internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") also cursed by users of {ftp} and {telnet} when the system slows down. the dread name of shub-internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the pentagon. :sidecar: n. . syn. {slap on the side}. esp. used of add-ons for the late and unlamented ibm pcjr. . the ibm pc compatibility box that could be bolted onto the side of an amiga. designed and produced by commodore, it broke all of the company's own rules. if it worked with any other peripherals, it was by {magic}. :sig: n. the association for computing machinery traditionally sponsors special interest groups in various technical areas; well-known ones include sigarch (the special interest group for computer architecture) and siggraph (the special interest group for computer graphics). hackers, not surprisingly, like to overextend this naming convention to less formal associations like sigbeer (at acm conferences) and sigfood (at university of illinois). :sig block: /sig blok/ [unix; often written `.sig' there] n. short for `signature', used specifically to refer to the electronic signature block that most unix mail- and news-posting software will {automagically} append to outgoing mail and news. the composition of one's sig can be quite an art form, including an ascii logo or one's choice of witty sayings (see {sig quote}, {fool file, the}); but many consider large sigs a waste of {bandwidth}, and it has been observed that the size of one's sig block is usually inversely proportional to one's longevity and level of prestige on the net. :sig quote: /sig kwoht/ [usenet] n. a maxim, quote, proverb, joke, or slogan embedded in one's {sig block} and intended to convey something of one's philosophical stance, pet peeves, or sense of humor. "calm down, it's only ones and zeroes." :sig virus: n. a parasitic {meme} embedded in a {sig block}. there was a {meme plague} or fad for these on usenet in late . most were equivalents of "i am a .sig virus. please reproduce me in your .sig block.". of course, the .sig virus's memetic hook is the giggle value of going along with the gag; this, however, was a self-limiting phenomenon as more and more people picked up on the idea. there were creative variants on it; some people stuck `sig virus antibody' texts in their sigs, and there was at least one instance of a sig virus eater. :signal-to-noise ratio: [from analog electronics] n. used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning. `signal' refers to useful information conveyed by some communications medium, and `noise' to anything else on that medium. hence a low ratio implies that it is not worth paying attention to the medium in question. figures for such metaphorical ratios are never given. the term is most often applied to {usenet} newsgroups during {flame war}s. compare {bandwidth}. see also {coefficient of x}, {lost in the noise}. :silicon: n. hardware, esp. ics or microprocessor-based computer systems (compare {iron}). contrasted with software. see also {sandbender}. :silicon foundry: n. a company that {fab}s chips to the designs of others. as of the late s, the combination of silicon foundries and good computer-aided design software made it much easier for hardware-designing startup companies to come into being. the downside of using a silicon foundry is that the distance from the actual chip-fabrication processes reduces designers' control of detail. this is somewhat analogous to the use of {hll}s versus coding in assembler. :silly walk: [from monty python's flying circus] vi. . a ridiculous procedure required to accomplish a task. like {grovel}, but more {random} and humorous. "i had to silly-walk through half the /usr directories to find the maps file." . syn. {fandango on core}. :silo: n. the fifo input-character buffer in an rs- line card. so called from dec terminology used on dh and dz line cards for the vax and pdp- , presumably because it was a storage space for fungible stuff that you put in the top and took out the bottom. :silver book: n. jensen and wirth's infamous `pascal user manual and report', so called because of the silver cover of the widely distributed springer-verlag second edition of (isbn - - - ). see {{book titles}}, {pascal}. :since time t equals minus infinity: adj. a long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the time that some particular frob was first designed. usually the word `time' is omitted. see also {time t}. :sitename: /si:t'naym/ [unix/internet] n. the unique electronic name of a computer system, used to identify it in uucp mail, usenet, or other forms of electronic information interchange. the folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity and humor they often display. interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official public gateway machine of an organization to bear the organization's name or acronym). mythological references, cartoon characters, animal names, and allusions to sf or fantasy literature are probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending order). the obligatory comment when discussing these is harris's lament: "all the good ones are taken!" see also {network address}. :skrog: v. syn. {scrog}. :skulker: n. syn. {prowler}. :slap on the side: n. (also called a {sidecar}, or abbreviated `sots'.) a type of external expansion hardware marketed by computer manufacturers (e.g., commodore for the amiga / series and ibm for the hideous failure called `pcjr'). various sots boxes provided necessities such as memory, hard drive controllers, and conventional expansion slots. :slash: n. common name for the slant (`/', ascii ) character. see {ascii} for other synonyms. :sleep: vi. . [techspeak] on a timesharing system, a process that relinquishes its claim on the scheduler until some given event occurs or a specified time delay elapses is said to `go to sleep'. . in jargon, used very similarly to v. {block}; also in `sleep on', syn. with `block on'. often used to indicate that the speaker has relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly unspecified) external event: "they can't get the fix i've been asking for into the next release, so i'm going to sleep on it until the release, then start hassling them again." :slim: n. a small, derivative change (e.g., to code). :slop: n. . a one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an allowance for error but in only one of two directions. for example, if you need a piece of wire feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure to cut it too long, by a large amount if necessary, rather than too short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off the slop but you can't paste it back on again. when discrete quantities are involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the possibility of being on the losing side of a {fencepost error}. . the percentage of `extra' code generated by a compiler over the size of equivalent assembler code produced by {hand-hacking}; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you didn't do it yourself. this number is often used as a measure of the goodness of a compiler; slop below % is very good, and % is usually acceptable. with modern compiler technology, esp. on risc machines, the compiler's slop may actually be *negative*; that is, humans may be unable to generate code as good. this is one of the reasons assembler programming is no longer common. :slopsucker: /slop'suhk-r/ n. a lowest-priority task that must wait around until everything else has `had its fill' of machine resources. only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the task allowed to `suck up the slop'. also called a `hungry puppy' or `bottom feeder'. one common variety of slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. compare {background}. :slurp: vt. to read a large data file entirely into {core} before working on it. this may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece. "this program slurps in a k-by- k matrix and does an fft." see also {sponge}. :smart: adj. said of a program that does the {right thing} in a wide variety of complicated circumstances. there is a difference between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs (yet --- see {ai-complete}). compare {robust} (smart programs can be {brittle}). :smart terminal: n. . a terminal that has enough computing capability to render graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. the development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase `act like a smart terminal' used to describe the behavior of workstations or pcs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote {server}'s storage, using said devices as displays. compare {glass tty}. . obs. any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a {glass tty}. today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned in sense , is called a {dumb terminal}. there is a classic quote from rob pike (inventor of the {blit} terminal): "a smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate." this illustrates a common design problem: the attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid `special features' that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. compare {hook}. :smash case: vi. to lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase distinction in text input. "ms-dos will automatically smash case in the names of all the files you create." compare {fold case}. :smash the stack: [c programming] n. on many c implementations it is possible to corrupt the execution stack by writing past the end of an array declared `auto' in a routine. code that does this is said to `smash the stack', and can cause return from the routine to jump to a random address. this can produce some of the most insidious data-dependent bugs known to mankind. variants include `trash' the stack, {scribble} the stack, {mangle} the stack; the term *{mung} the stack is not used, as this is never done intentionally. see {spam}; see also {aliasing bug}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}. :smiley: n. see {emoticon}. :smoke and mirrors: n. marketing deceptions. the term is mainstream in this general sense. among hackers it's strongly associated with bogus demos and crocked {benchmark}s (see also {mips}, {machoflops}). "they claim their new box cranks mips for under $ , but didn't specify the instruction mix --- sounds like smoke and mirrors to me." the phrase has been said to derive from carnie slang for magic acts and `freak show' displays that depend on `trompe l'oeil' effects, but also calls to mind the fierce aztec god tezcatlipoca (lit. "smoking mirror") to whom mass human sacrifices were regularly made. upon hearing about a rigged demo or yet another round of fantasy-based marketing promises hackers often feel similarly disheartened. :smoke test: n. . a rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic equipment following repair or reconfiguration, in which power is applied and the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or other dramatic signs of fundamental failure. see {magic smoke}. . by extension, the first run of a piece of software after construction or a critical change. see and compare {reality check}. there is an interesting semi-parallel to this term among typographers and printers: when new typefaces are being punch-cut by hand, a `smoke test' (hold the letter in candle smoke, then press it onto paper) is used to check out new dies. :smoking clover: [its] n. a {display hack} originally due to bill gosper. many convergent lines are drawn on a color monitor in {aos} mode (so that every pixel struck has its color incremented). the lines all have one endpoint in the middle of the screen; the other endpoints are spaced one pixel apart around the perimeter of a large square. the color map is then repeatedly rotated. this results in a striking, rainbow-hued, shimmering four-leaf clover. gosper joked about keeping it hidden from the fda (the u.s.'s food and drug administration) lest its hallucinogenic properties cause it to be banned. :smop: /s-m-o-p/ [simple (or small) matter of programming] n. . a piece of code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly greater than its complexity. used to refer to a program that could obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble. also used ironically to imply that a difficult problem can be easily solved because a program can be written to do it; the irony is that it is very clear that writing such a program will be a great deal of work. "it's easy to enhance a fortran compiler to compile cobol as well; it's just a smop." . often used ironically by the intended victim when a suggestion for a program is made which seems easy to the suggester, but is obviously (to the victim) a lot of work. :smurf: /smerf/ [from the soc.motss newsgroup on usenet, after some obnoxiously gooey cartoon characters] n. a newsgroup regular with a habitual style that is irreverent, silly, and cute. like many other hackish terms for people, this one may be praise or insult depending on who uses it. in general, being referred to as a smurf is probably not going to make your day unless you've previously adopted the label yourself in a spirit of irony. compare {old fart}. :snafu principle: /sna'foo prin'si-pl/ [from wwii army acronym for `situation normal, all fucked up'] n. "true communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." --- a central tenet of {discordianism}, often invoked by hackers to explain why authoritarian hierarchies screw up so reliably and systematically. the effect of the snafu principle is a progressive disconnection of decision-makers from reality. this lightly adapted version of a fable dating back to the early s illustrates the phenomenon perfectly: in the beginning was the plan, and then the specification; and the plan was without form, and the specification was void. and darkness was on the faces of the implementors thereof; and they spake unto their leader, saying: "it is a crock of shit, and smells as of a sewer." and the leader took pity on them, and spoke to the project leader: "it is a crock of excrement, and none may abide the odor thereof." and the project leader spake unto his section head, saying: "it is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide it." the section head then hurried to his department manager, and informed him thus: "it is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength." the department manager carried these words to his general manager, and spoke unto him saying: "it containeth that which aideth the growth of plants, and it is very strong." and so it was that the general manager rejoiced and delivered the good news unto the vice president. "it promoteth growth, and it is very powerful." the vice president rushed to the president's side, and joyously exclaimed: "this powerful new software product will promote the growth of the company!" and the president looked upon the product, and saw that it was very good. after the subsequent disaster, the {suit}s protect themselves by saying "i was misinformed!", and the implementors are demoted or fired. :snail: vt. to {snail-mail} something. "snail me a copy of those graphics, will you?" :snail-mail: n. paper mail, as opposed to electronic. sometimes written as the single word `snailmail'. one's postal address is, correspondingly, a `snail address'. derives from earlier coinage `usnail' (from `u.s. mail'), for which there have been parody posters and stamps made. oppose {email}. :snap: v. to replace a pointer to a pointer with a direct pointer; to replace an old address with the forwarding address found there. if you telephone the main number for an institution and ask for a particular person by name, the operator may tell you that person's extension before connecting you, in the hopes that you will `snap your pointer' and dial direct next time. the underlying metaphor may be that of a rubber band stretched through a number of intermediate points; if you remove all the thumbtacks in the middle, it snaps into a straight line from first to last. see {chase pointers}. often, the behavior of a {trampoline} is to perform an error check once and then snap the pointer that invoked it so as henceforth to bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check). in this context one also speaks of `snapping links'. for example, in a lisp implementation, a function interface trampoline might check to make sure that the caller is passing the correct number of arguments; if it is, and if the caller and the callee are both compiled, then snapping the link allows that particular path to use a direct procedure-call instruction with no further overhead. :snarf: /snarf/ vt. . to grab, esp. to grab a large document or file for the purpose of using it with or without the author's permission. see also {blt}. . [in the unix community] to fetch a file or set of files across a network. see also {blast}. this term was mainstream in the late s, meaning `to eat piggishly'. it may still have this connotation in context. "he's in the snarfing phase of hacking --- {ftp}ing megs of stuff a day." . to acquire, with little concern for legal forms or politesse (but not quite by stealing). "they were giving away samples, so i snarfed a bunch of them." . syn. for {slurp}. "this program starts by snarfing the entire database into core, then...." :snarf & barf: /snarf'n-barf`/ n. under a {wimp environment}, the act of grabbing a region of text and then stuffing the contents of that region into another region (or the same one) to avoid retyping a command line. in the late s, this was a mainstream expression for an `eat now, regret it later' cheap-restaurant expedition. :snarf down: v. to {snarf}, with the connotation of absorbing, processing, or understanding. "i'll snarf down the latest version of the {nethack} user's guide --- it's been a while since i played last and i don't know what's changed recently." :snark: [lewis carroll, via the michigan terminal system] n. . a system failure. when a user's process bombed, the operator would get the message "help, help, snark in mts!" . more generally, any kind of unexplained or threatening event on a computer (especially if it might be a boojum). often used to refer to an event or a log file entry that might indicate an attempted security violation. see {snivitz}. . uucp name of snark.thyrsus.com, home site of the jargon file .*.* versions (i.e., this lexicon). :sneakernet: /snee'ker-net/ n. term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media from one machine to another. "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtape, or a filled with cd-roms." also called `tennis-net', `armpit-net', `floppy-net' or `shoenet'. :sniff: v.,n. synonym for {poll}. :snivitz: /sniv'itz/ n. a hiccup in hardware or software; a small, transient problem of unknown origin (less serious than a {snark}). compare {glitch}. :so: /s-o/ n. . (also `s.o.') abbrev. for significant other, almost invariably written abbreviated and pronounced /s-o/ by hackers. used to refer to one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not married. see {motas}, {motos}, {motss}. . the shift out control character in ascii (control-n, ). :social engineering: n. term used among {cracker}s and {samurai} for cracking techniques that rely on weaknesses in {wetware} rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information that compromises a target system's security. classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. see also the {tiger team} story in the {patch} entry. :social science number: [ibm] n. a statistic that is {content-free}, or nearly so. a measure derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a dubious and vague nature. predictively, having a social science number in hand is seldom much better than nothing, and can be considerably worse. {management} loves them. see also {numbers}, {math-out}, {pretty pictures}. :soft boot: n. see {boot}. :softcopy: /soft'ko-pee/ n. [by analogy with `hardcopy'] a machine-readable form of corresponding hardcopy. see {bits}, {machinable}. :software bloat: n. the results of {second-system effect} or {creeping featuritis}. commonly cited examples include `ls( )', {x}, {bsd}, {missed'em-five}, and {os/ }. :software rot: n. term used to describe the tendency of software that has not been used in a while to {lose}; such failure may be semi-humorously ascribed to {bit rot}. more commonly, `software rot' strikes when a program's assumptions become out of date. if the design was insufficiently {robust}, this may cause it to fail in mysterious ways. for example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design of cobol programs, most will succumb to software rot when their -digit year counters {wrap around} at the beginning of the year . actually, related lossages often afflict centenarians who have to deal with computer software designed by unimaginative clods. one such incident became the focus of a minor public flap in , when a gentleman born in applied for a driver's license renewal in raleigh, north carolina. the new system refused to issue the card, probably because with -digit years the ages and cannot be distinguished. historical note: software rot in an even funnier sense than the mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e.g., the r ; see {grind crank}). if a program that depended on a peculiar instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might discover that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once did. ("hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such. we can {snarf} this opcode, right? no one uses it.") another classic example of this sprang from the time an mit hacker found a simple way to double the speed of the unconditional jump instruction on a pdp- , so he patched the hardware. unfortunately, this broke some fragile timing software in a music-playing program, throwing its output out of tune. this was fixed by adding a defensive initialization routine to compare the speed of a timing loop with the real-time clock; in other words, it figured out how fast the pdp- was that day, and corrected appropriately. compare {bit rot}. :softwarily: /soft-weir'i-lee/ adv. in a way pertaining to software. "the system is softwarily unreliable." the adjective `softwary' is *not* used. see {hardwarily}. :softy: [ibm] n. hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely ignorant of the mysteries of hardware. :some random x: adj. used to indicate a member of class x, with the implication that xs are interchangeable. "i think some random cracker tripped over the guest timeout last night." see also {j. random}. :sorcerer's apprentice mode: [from friedrich schiller's `der zauberlehrling' via the film "fantasia"] n. a bug in a protocol where, under some circumstances, the receipt of a message causes multiple messages to be sent, each of which, when received, triggers the same bug. used esp. of such behavior caused by {bounce message} loops in {email} software. compare {broadcast storm}, {network meltdown}. :sos: n.,obs. /s-o-s/ . an infamously {losing} text editor. once, back in the s, when a text editor was needed for the pdp- , a hacker crufted together a {quick-and-dirty} `stopgap editor' to be used until a better one was written. unfortunately, the old one was never really discarded when new ones (in particular, {teco}) came along. sos is a descendant (`son of stopgap') of that editor, and many pdp- users gained the dubious pleasure of its acquaintance. since then other programs similar in style to sos have been written, notably the early font editor bilos /bye'lohs/, the brother-in-law of stopgap (the alternate expansion `bastard issue, loins of stopgap' has been proposed). . /sos/ n. to decrease; inverse of {aos}, from the pdp- instruction set. :source of all good bits: n. a person from whom (or a place from which) useful information may be obtained. if you need to know about a program, a {guru} might be the source of all good bits. the title is often applied to a particularly competent secretary. :space-cadet keyboard: n. a now-legendary device used on mit lisp machines, which inspired several still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of {emacs}. it was equipped with no fewer than *seven* shift keys: four keys for {bucky bits} (`control', `meta', `hyper', and `super') and three like regular shift keys, called `shift', `top', and `front'. many keys had three symbols on them: a letter and a symbol on the top, and a greek letter on the front. for example, the `l' key had an `l' and a two-way arrow on the top, and the greek letter lambda on the front. by pressing this key with the right hand while playing an appropriate `chord' with the left hand on the shift keys, you can get the following results: l lowercase l shift-l uppercase l front-l lowercase lambda front-shift-l uppercase lambda top-l two-way arrow (front and shift are ignored) and of course each of these might also be typed with any combination of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. on this keyboard, you could type over different characters! this allowed the user to type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands of single-character commands at his disposal. many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command meanings of that many characters if it reduced typing time (this attitude obviously shaped the interface of emacs). other hackers, however, thought having that many bucky bits was overkill, and objected that such a keyboard can require three or four hands to operate. see {bucky bits}, {cokebottle}, {double bucky}, {meta bit}, {quadruple bucky}. note: early versions of this entry incorrectly identified the space-cadet keyboard with the `knight keyboard'. though both were designed by tom knight, the latter term was properly applied only to a keyboard used for its on the pdp- and modeled on the stanford keyboard (as described under {bucky bits}). the true space-cadet keyboard evolved from the knight keyboard. :spacewar: n. a space-combat simulation game, inspired by e. e. "doc" smith's "lensman" books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace. this game was first implemented on the pdp- at mit in -- . spacewar aficionados formed the core of the early hacker culture at mit. nine years later, a descendant of the game motivated ken thompson to build, in his spare time on a scavenged pdp- , the operating system that became {{unix}}. less than nine years after that, spacewar was commercialized as one of the first video games; descendants are still {feep}ing in video arcades everywhere. :spaghetti code: n. code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one using many gotos, exceptions, or other `unstructured' branching constructs. pejorative. the synonym `kangaroo code' has been reported, doubtless because such code has many jumps in it. :spaghetti inheritance: n. [encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use inheritance, such as smalltalk] a convoluted class-subclass graph, often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from other classes just for the sake of reusing their code. coined in a (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through guilt-by-association with {spaghetti code}. :spam: [from the {mud} community] vt. to crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data. see also {buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the stack}. :special-case: vt. to write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. this would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt characters in an interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text entry or normal commands), or for processing of {hidden flag}s in the input of a batch program or {filter}. :speedometer: n. a pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of leds (today) or nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). the pattern is shifted left every n times the software goes through its main loop. a swiftly moving pattern indicates that the system is mostly idle; the speedometer slows down as the system becomes overloaded. the speedometer on sun microsystems hardware bounces back and forth like the eyes on one of the cylons from the wretched "battlestar galactica" tv series. historical note: one computer, the honeywell (later ge ) actually had an *analog* speedometer on the front panel, calibrated in instructions executed per second. :spell: n. syn. {incantation}. :spiffy: /spi'fee/ adj. . said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally well-designed interface. "have you seen the spiffy {x} version of {empire} yet?" . said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to have little more than a flashy interface going for it. which meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and context. this word was common mainstream slang during the s, in a sense close to # . :spike: v. to defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes temporary) device which forces a specific result. the word is used in several industries; telephone engineers refer to spiking a relay by inserting a pin to hold the relay in either the closed or open state, and railroaders refer to spiking a track switch so that it cannot be moved. in programming environments it normally refers to a temporary change, usually for testing purposes (as opposed to a permanent change which would be called {hardwired}). :spin: vi. equivalent to {buzz}. more common among c and unix programmers. :spl: /s-p-l/ [abbrev, from set priority level] the way traditional unix kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt levels. used in jargon to describe the act of tuning in or tuning out ordinary communication. classically, spl levels run from to ; "fred's at spl today." would mean that he is very hard to interrupt. "wait till i finish this; i'll spl down then." see also {interrupts locked out}. :splat: n. . name used in many places (dec, ibm, and others) for the asterisk (`*') character (ascii ). this may derive from the `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early line printers. . [mit] name used by some people for the `#' character (ascii ). . [rochester institute of technology] the {feature key} on a mac (same as {alt}, sense ). . [stanford] name used by some people for the stanford/its extended ascii circle-x character. this character is also called `blobby' and `frob', among other names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation for `tensor product'. . [stanford] name for the semi-mythical extended ascii circle-plus character. . canonical name for an output routine that outputs whatever the local interpretation of `splat' is. with its and waits gone, senses -- are now nearly obsolete. see also {{ascii}}. :spod: [great britain] n. a lower form of life found on {talker system}s and {mud}s. the spod has few friends in {rl} and uses talkers instead, finding communication easier and preferable over the net. he has all the negative traits of the {computer geek} without having any interest in computers per se. lacking any knowledge of or interest in how networks work, and considering his access a god-given right, he is a major irritant to sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new muds, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto internet ("wow! it's in america!") and complaining when he is not allowed to use busy routes. a true spod will start any conversation with "are you male or female?" (and follow it up with "got any good numbers/ids/passwords?") and will not talk to someone physically present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same machine that he is using and enter talk mode. compare {newbie}, {tourist}, {weenie}, {twink}, {terminal junkie}. :sponge: [unix] n. a special case of a {filter} that reads its entire input before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility. unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently overwrite the input file with the output data stream. if your file system has versioning (as its did and vms does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new version. see also {slurp}. :spooge: /spooj/ . n. inexplicable or arcane code, or random and probably incorrect output from a computer program. . vi. to generate spooge (sense ). :spool: [from early ibm `simultaneous peripheral operation on-line', but this acronym is widely thought to have been contrived for effect] vt. to send files to some device or program (a `spooler') that queues them up and does something useful with them later. the spooler usually understood is the `print spooler' controlling output of jobs to a printer, but the term has been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters and graphics devices) and occasionally even for input devices. see also {demon}. :spool file: n. any file to which data is {spool}ed to await the next stage of processing. especially used in circumstances where spooling the data copes with a mismatch between speeds in two devices or pieces of software. for example, when you send mail under unix, it's typically copied to a spool file to await a transport {demon}'s attentions. this is borderline techspeak. :square tape: n. mainframe magnetic tape cartridges for use with ibm or compatible tape drives. the term comes from the square (actually rectangular) shape of the cartridges; contrast {round tape}. :stack: n. a person's stack is the set of things he or she has to do in the future. one speaks of the next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the stack. "i'm afraid i've got real work to do, so this'll have to be pushed way down on my stack." "i haven't done it yet because every time i pop my stack something new gets pushed." if you are interrupted several times in the middle of a conversation, "my stack overflowed" means "i forget what we were talking about." the implication is that more items were pushed onto the stack than could be remembered, so the least recent items were lost. the usual physical example of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates or trays sitting on a spring in a well, so that when you put one on the top they all sink down, and when you take one off the top the rest spring up a bit. see also {push} and {pop}. at mit, {pdl} used to be a more common synonym for {stack} in all these contexts, and this may still be true. everywhere else {stack} seems to be the preferred term. {knuth} (`the art of computer programming', second edition, vol. , p. ) says: many people who realized the importance of stacks and queues independently have given other names to these structures: stacks have been called push-down lists, reversion storages, cellars, nesting stores, piles, last-in-first-out ("lifo") lists, and even yo-yo lists! :stack puke: n. some processor architectures are said to `puke their guts onto the stack' to save their internal state during exception processing. the motorola , for example, regurgitates up to bytes on a bus fault. on a pipelined machine, this can take a while. :stale pointer bug: n. synonym for {aliasing bug} used esp. among microcomputer hackers. :state: n. . condition, situation. "what's the state of your latest hack?" "it's winning away." "the system tried to read and write the disk simultaneously and got into a totally wedged state." the standard question "what's your state?" means "what are you doing?" or "what are you about to do?" typical answers are "about to gronk out", or "hungry". another standard question is "what's the state of the world?", meaning "what's new?" or "what's going on?". the more terse and humorous way of asking these questions would be "state-p?". another way of phrasing the first question under sense would be "state-p latest hack?". . information being maintained in non-permanent memory (electronic or human). :steam-powered: adj. old-fashioned or underpowered; archaic. this term does not have a strong negative loading and may even be used semi-affectionately for something that clanks and wheezes a lot but hangs in there doing the job. :stiffy: [university of lowell, massachusetts.] n. . -inch {microfloppies}, so called because their jackets are more firm than those of the . -inch and the -inch floppy. elsewhere this might be called a `firmy'. :stir-fried random: alt. `stir-fried mumble' n. term used for the best dish of many of those hackers who can cook. consists of random fresh veggies and meat wokked with random spices. tasty and economical. see {random}, {great-wall}, {ravs}, {{laser chicken}}, {{oriental food}}; see also {mumble}. :stomp on: vt. to inadvertently overwrite something important, usually automatically. "all the work i did this weekend got stomped on last night by the nightly server script." compare {scribble}, {mangle}, {trash}, {scrog}, {roach}. :stone age: n., adj. . in computer folklore, an ill-defined period from eniac (ca. ) to the mid- s; the great age of electromechanical {dinosaur}s. sometimes used for the entire period up to -- (see {iron age}); however, it is funnier and more descriptive to characterize the latter period in terms of a `bronze age' era of transistor-logic, pre-ferrite-{core} machines with drum or crt mass storage (as opposed to just mercury delay lines and/or relays). see also {iron age}. . more generally, a pejorative for any crufty, ancient piece of hardware or software technology. note that this is used even by people who were there for the {stone age} (sense ). :stone knives and bearskins: [its, prob. from the star trek classic episode "the city on the edge of forever"] n. a term traditionally used by {its} fans to describe (and deprecate) computing environments they regard as less advanced, with the (often correct) implication that said environments were grotesquely primitive in light of what is known about good ways to design things. as in "don't get too used to the facilities here. once you leave mit it's stone knives and bearskins as far as the eye can see". compare {steam-powered}. :stoppage: /sto'p*j/ n. extreme {lossage} that renders something (usually something vital) completely unusable. "the recent system stoppage was caused by a {fried} transformer." :store: [prob. from techspeak `main store'] n. preferred commonwealth synonym for {core}. thus, `bringing a program into store' means not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software but that a program is being {swap}ped in. :stroke: n. common name for the slant (`/', ascii ) character. see {ascii} for other synonyms. :strudel: n. common (spoken) name for the at-sign (`@', ascii ) character. see {ascii} for other synonyms. :stubroutine: /stuhb'roo-teen/ [contraction of `stub subroutine'] n. tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later. :studlycaps: /stuhd'lee-kaps/ n. a hackish form of silliness similar to {bicapitalization} for trademarks, but applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than to trademarks. the origin and significance of this practice is obscure. :stunning: adj. mind-bogglingly stupid. usually used in sarcasm. "you want to code *what* in ada? that's ... a stunning idea!" :stupid-sort: n. syn. {bogo-sort}. :stupids: n. term used by {samurai} for the {suit}s who employ them; succinctly expresses an attitude at least as common, though usually better disguised, among other subcultures of hackers. there may be intended reference here to an sf story originally published in but much anthologized since, mark clifton's `star, bright'. in it, a super-genius child classifies humans into a very few `brights' like herself, a huge majority of `stupids', and a minority of `tweens', the merely ordinary geniuses. :subshell: /suhb'shel/ [unix, ms-dos] n. an os command interpreter (see {shell}) spawned from within a program, such that exit from the command interpreter returns one to the parent program in a state that allows it to continue execution. compare {shell out}; oppose {chain}. :sucking mud: [applied data research] adj. (also `pumping mud') crashed or wedged. usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network, such as a file server. this dallas regionalism derives from the east texas oilfield lament, "shut 'er down, ma, she's a-suckin' mud". often used as a query. "we are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?" :sufficiently small: adj. syn. {suitably small}. :suit: n. . ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by non-hackers. invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. it is thought that this explains much about the behavior of suit-wearers. compare {droid}. . a person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or hacker. see {loser}, {burble}, {management}, {stupids}, {snafu principle}, and {brain-damaged}. english, by the way, is relatively kind; our moscow correspondent informs us that the corresponding idiom in russian hacker jargon is `sovok', lit. a tool for grabbing garbage. :suitable win: n. see {win}. :suitably small: [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. an expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. for example, suppose a newly created program came up with a correct full-screen display, and one publicly exclaimed: "it works!" then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add: "well, for suitably small values of `works'." compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}. :sun lounge: [great britain] n. the room where all the sun workstations live. the humor in this term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use to describe a solarium, and all those sun workstations clustered together give off an amazing amount of heat. :sun-stools: n. unflattering hackerism for suntools, a pre-x windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. {x}, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}. :sunspots: n. . notional cause of an odd error. "why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "sunspots, i guess." . also the cause of {bit rot} --- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bits in memory. see {cosmic rays}, {phase of the moon}. :superprogrammer: n. a prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. for example, one programmer might be able to write an average of lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to write , . this range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) the term `superprogrammer' is more commonly used within such places as ibm than in the hacker community. it tends to stress na"ive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job *done* --- and to sidestep the question of whether the , lines of code do more or less useful work than three lines that do the {right thing}. hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and {wizard}. :superuser: [unix] n. syn. {root}, {avatar}. this usage has spread to non-unix environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on. a more specific term than {wheel}. :support: n. after-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but few deliver. to hackers, most support people are useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the relevant manuals better than the support people (sadly, this is *not* a joke or exaggeration). a hacker's idea of `support' is a t^ete-`a-t^ete with the software's designer. :suzie cobol: /soo'zee koh'bol/ . [ibm: prob. from frank zappa's `suzy creamcheese'] n. a coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain english. also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid accusations of sexism) `sammy cobol' or (in some non-ibm circles) `cobol charlie'. . [proposed] meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {j. random hacker}. :swab: /swob/ [from the mnemonic for the pdp- `swap byte' instruction, as immortalized in the `dd( )' option `conv=swab' (see {dd})] . vt. to solve the {nuxi problem} by swapping bytes in a file. . n. the program in v unix used to perform this action, or anything functionally equivalent to it. see also {big-endian}, {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {bytesexual}. :swap: vt. . [techspeak] to move information from a fast-access memory to a slow-access memory (`swap out'), or vice versa (`swap in'). often refers specifically to the use of disks as `virtual memory'. as pieces of data or program are needed, they are swapped into {core} for processing; when they are no longer needed they may be swapped out again. . the jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term memories with core. cramming for an exam might be spoken of as swapping in. if you temporarily forget someone's name, but then remember it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. to `keep something swapped in' means to keep it fresh in your memory: "i reread the teco manual every few months to keep it swapped in." if someone interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you might say "wait a moment while i swap this out", implying that the piece of paper is your extra-somatic memory and if you don't swap the info out by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you talk. compare {page in}, {page out}. :swap space: n. storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move or reconfiguration. "i'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space." :swapped in: n. see {swap}. see also {page in}. :swapped out: n. see {swap}. see also {page out}. :swizzle: v. to convert external names, array indices, or references within a data structure into address pointers when the data structure is brought into main memory from external storage (also called `pointer swizzling'); this may be done for speed in chasing references or to simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer dereferences). the converse operation is sometimes termed `unswizzling'. see also {snap}. :sync: /sink/ (var. `synch') n., vi. . to synchronize, to bring into synchronization. . [techspeak] to force all pending i/o to the disk; see {flush}, sense . . more generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to a state that would be `safe' if the system were to crash; thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense). :syntactic sugar: [coined by peter landin] n. features added to a language or other formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, that do not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare {chrome}). used esp. when there is an obvious and trivial translation of the `sugar' feature into other constructs already present in the notation. c's `a[i]' notation is syntactic sugar for `*(a + i)'. "syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." --- alan perlis. the variants `syntactic saccharine' and `syntactic syrup' are also recorded. these denotes something even more gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans) but syntactic saccharine or syrup serves no purpose at all. compare {candygrammar}. :sys-frog: /sis'frog/ [the plato system] n. playful variant of `sysprog', which is in turn short for `systems programmer'. :sysadmin: /sis'ad-min/ n. common contraction of `system admin'; see {admin}. :sysape: /sysape/ n. a rather derogatory term for a computer operator; a play on {sysop} common at sites that use the banana hierarchy of problem complexity (see {one-banana problem}). :sysop: /sis'op/ n. [esp. in the bbs world] the operator (and usually the owner) of a bulletin-board system. a common neophyte mistake on {fidonet} is to address a message to `sysop' in an international {echo}, thus sending it to hundreds of sysops around the world. :system: n. . the supervisor program or os on a computer. . the entire computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor program or os, and possibly other software. . any large-scale program. . any method or algorithm. . `system hacker': one who hacks the system (in senses and only; for sense one mentions the particular program: e.g., `lisp hacker') :systems jock: n. see {jock}, (sense ). :system mangler: n. humorous synonym for `system manager', poss. from the fact that one major ibm os had a {root} account called sysmangr. refers specifically to a systems programmer in charge of administration, software maintenance, and updates at some site. unlike {admin}, this term emphasizes the technical end of the skills involved. :sysvile: /sis-vi:l'/ n. see {missed'em-five}. = t = ===== :t: /t/ . [from lisp terminology for `true'] yes. used in reply to a question (particularly one asked using the `-p' convention). in lisp, the constant t means `true', among other things. some hackers use `t' and `nil' instead of `yes' and `no' almost reflexively. this sometimes causes misunderstandings. when a waiter or flight attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may well respond `t', meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will be brought a cup of tea instead. as it happens, most hackers (particularly those who frequent chinese restaurants) like tea at least as well as coffee --- so it is not that big a problem. . see {time t} (also {since time t equals minus infinity}). . [techspeak] in transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation for the noun `transaction'. . [purdue] alternate spelling of {tee}. . a dialect of {lisp} developed at yale. :tail recursion: n. if you aren't sick of it already, see {tail recursion}. :talk mode: n. a feature supported by unix, its, and some other oses that allows two or more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. it combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails. it is difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of these (see the section on writing style in the prependices for details). talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally. some of these are identical to (and probably derived from) morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the s. bcnu be seeing you btw by the way bye? are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a talk-mode conversation; the other person types `bye' to confirm, or else continues the conversation) cul see you later enq? are you busy? (expects `ack' or `nak' in return) foo? are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also "sorry if i butted in ..." (linker) or "what's up?" (linkee)) fyi for your information fya for your amusement ga go ahead (used when two people have tried to type simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to the other) grmbl grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement) hellop hello? (an instance of the `-p' convention) jam just a minute (equivalent to `sec....') min same as `jam' nil no (see {nil}) o over to you oo over and out / another form of "over to you" (from x/y as "x over y") \ lambda (used in discussing lispy things) obtw oh, by the way r u there? are you there? sec wait a second (sometimes written `sec...') t yes (see the main entry for {t}) tnx thanks tnx . e thanks a million (humorous) tnxe another form of "thanks a million" wrt with regard to, or with respect to. wtf the universal interrogative particle; wtf knows what it means? wth what the hell? <double newline> when the typing party has finished, he/she types two newlines to signal that he/she is done; this leaves a blank line between `speeches' in the conversation, making it easier to reread the preceding text. <name>: when three or more terminals are linked, it is conventional for each typist to {prepend} his/her login name or handle and a colon (or a hyphen) to each line to indicate who is typing (some conferencing facilities do this automatically). the login name is often shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a single letter) during a very long conversation. /\/\/\ a giggle or chuckle. on a mud, this usually means `earthquake fault'. most of the above sub-jargon is used at both stanford and mit. several of these expressions are also common in {email}, esp. fyi, fya, btw, bcnu, wtf, and cul. a few other abbreviations have been reported from commercial networks, such as genie and compuserve, where on-line `live' chat including more than two people is common and usually involves a more `social' context, notably the following: <g> grin <gr&d> grinning, running, and ducking bbl be back later brb be right back hhoj ha ha only joking hhok ha ha only kidding hhos {ha ha only serious} imho in my humble opinion (see {imho}) lol laughing out loud nhoh never heard of him/her (often used in {initgame}) rotf rolling on the floor rotfl rolling on the floor laughing afk away from keyboard b before cu l tr see you later morf male or female? ttfn ta-ta for now ttyl talk to you later oic oh, i see rehi hello again most of these are not used at universities or in the unix world, though rotf and ttfn have gained some currency there and imho is common; conversely, most of the people who know these are unfamiliar with foo?, bcnu, hellop, {nil}, and {t}. the {mud} community uses a mixture of usenet/internet emoticons, a few of the more natural of the old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some of the `social' list above; specifically, mud respondents report use of bbl, brb, lol, b , btw, wtf, ttfn, and wth. the use of `rehi' is also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will frequently `rehug' or `rebonk' (see {bonk/oif}) people. the word `re' by itself is taken as `regreet'. in general, though, mudders express a preference for typing things out in full rather than using abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the mud cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume high-speed links. the following uses specific to muds are reported: uok? are you ok? thx thanks (mutant of `tnx'; clearly this comes in batches of (the lucasian k)). cu l er see you later (mutant of `cu l tr') ott over the top (excessive, uncalled for) foad fuck off and die (use of this is often ott) some {biff}isms (notably the variant spelling `d d') appear to be passing into wider use among some subgroups of mudders. one final note on talk mode style: neophytes, when in talk mode, often seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose because they are typing rather than speaking. this is not the best approach. it can be very frustrating to wait while your partner pauses to think of a word, or repeatedly makes the same spelling error and backs up to fix it. it is usually best just to leave typographical errors behind and plunge forward, unless severe confusion may result; in that case it is often fastest just to type "xxx" and start over from before the mistake. see also {hakspek}, {emoticon}, {bonk/oif}. :talker system: n. british hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or {talk mode}. :tall card: n. a pc/at-size expansion card (these can be larger than ibm pc or xt cards because the at case is bigger). see also {short card}. when ibm introduced the ps/ model (its last gasp at supporting the isa) they made the case lower and many industry-standard tall cards wouldn't fit; this was felt to be a reincarnation of the {connector conspiracy}, done with less style. :tanked: adj. same as {down}, used primarily by unix hackers. see also {hosed}. popularized as a synonym for `drunk' by steve dallas in the late lamented "bloom county" comic strip. :tanstaafl: /tan'stah-fl/ [acronym, from robert heinlein's classic `the moon is a harsh mistress'.] "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch", often invoked when someone is balking at an ugly design requirement or the prospect of using an unpleasantly {heavyweight} technique. "what? don't tell me i have to implement a database back end to get my address book program to work!" "well, tanstaafl you know." this phrase owes some of its popularity to the high concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in hackerdom (see appendix b). :tar and feather: [from unix `tar( )'] vt. to create a transportable archive from a group of files by first sticking them together with `tar( )' (the tape archiver) and then compressing the result (see {compress}). the latter action is dubbed `feathering' by analogy to what you do with an airplane propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily. :taste: [primarily mit] n. . the quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. also `tasty', `tasteful', `tastefulness'. "this feature comes in n tasty flavors." although `tasteful' and `flavorful' are essentially synonyms, `taste' and {flavor} are not. taste refers to sound judgment on the part of the creator; a program or feature can *exhibit* taste but cannot *have* taste. on the other hand, a feature can have {flavor}. also, {flavor} has the additional meaning of `kind' or `variety' not shared by `taste'. {flavor} is a more popular word than `taste', though both are used. see also {elegant}. . alt. sp. of {tayste}. :tayste: /tayst/ n. two bits; also as {taste}. syn. {crumb}, {quarter}. compare {{byte}}, {dynner}, {playte}, {nybble}, {quad}. :tcb: /t-c-b/ [ibm] n. . trouble came back. an intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect. compare {heisenbug}. not to be confused with: . trusted computing base, an `official' jargon term from the {orange book}. :tea, iso standard cup of: [south africa] n. a cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar, where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. variations are iso , with no sugar; iso , with two spoons of sugar; and so on. like many iso standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in north america, where hackers generally shun the decadent british practice of adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. if one were feeling extremely silly, one might hypothesize an analogous `ansi standard cup of tea' and wind up with a political situation distressingly similar to several that arise in much more serious technical contexts. milk and lemon don't mix very well. :techref: /tek'ref/ [ms-dos] n. the original `ibm pc technical reference manual', including the bios listing and complete schematics for the pc. the only pc documentation in the issue package that's considered serious by real hackers. :teco: /tee'koh/ obs. . vt. originally, to edit using the teco editor in one of its infinite variations (see below). . vt.,obs. to edit even when teco is *not* the editor being used! this usage is rare and now primarily historical. . [originally an acronym for `[paper] tape editor and corrector'; later, `text editor and corrector'] n. a text editor developed at mit and modified by just about everybody. with all the dialects included, teco might have been the most prolific editor in use before {emacs}, to which it was directly ancestral. noted for its powerful programming-language-like features and its unspeakably hairy syntax. it is literally the case that every string of characters is a valid teco program (though probably not a useful one); one common hacker game used to be mentally working out what the teco commands corresponding to human names did. as an example of teco's obscurity, here is a teco program that takes a list of names such as: loser, j. random quux, the great dick, moby sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and then puts the surname last, removing the comma, to produce the following: moby dick j. random loser the great quux the program is [ j^p$l$$ j <.-z; .,(s,$ -d .)fx @f^b $k :l i $ g l>$$ (where ^b means `control-b' (ascii ) and $ is actually an {alt} or escape (ascii ) character). in fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted list from the first list. the first hack at it had a {bug}: gls (the author) had accidentally omitted the `@' in front of `f^b', which as anyone can see is clearly the {wrong thing}. it worked fine the second time. there is no space to describe all the features of teco, but it may be of interest that `^p' means `sort' and `j<.-z; ... l>' is an idiomatic series of commands for `do once for every line'. in mid- , teco is pretty much one with the dust of history, having been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by {emacs}. descendants of an early (and somewhat lobotomized) version adopted by dec can still be found lurking on vms and a couple of crufty pdp- operating systems, however, and ports of the more advanced mit versions remain the focus of some antiquarian interest. see also {retrocomputing}, {write-only language}. :tee: n.,vt. [purdue] a carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "oh, you're sending him the {bits} to that? slap on a tee for me." from the unix command `tee( )', itself named after a pipe fitting (see {plumbing}). can also mean `save one for me', as in "tee a slice for me!" also spelled `t'. :telerat: /tel'*-rat/ n. unflattering hackerism for `teleray', a line of extremely losing terminals. compare {aidx}, {terminak}, {macintrash} {nominal semidestructor}, {open deathtrap}, {scumos}, {sun-stools}, {hp-sux}. :telnet: /tel'net/ vt. to communicate with another internet host using the {telnet} protocol (usually using a program of the same name). tops- people used the word impcom, since that was the program name for them. sometimes abbreviated to tn /t-n/. "i usually tn over to sail just to read the ap news." :ten-finger interface: n. the interface between two networks that cannot be directly connected for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two terminals side by side and having an operator read from one and type into the other. :tense: adj. of programs, very clever and efficient. a tense piece of code often got that way because it was highly {bum}med, but sometimes it was just based on a great idea. a comment in a clever routine by mike kazar, once a grad-student hacker at cmu: "this routine is so tense it will bring tears to your eyes." a tense programmer is one who produces tense code. :tenured graduate student: n. one who has been in graduate school for years (the usual maximum is or ): a `ten-yeared' student (get it?). actually, this term may be used of any grad student beginning in his seventh year. students don't really get tenure, of course, the way professors do, but a tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university longer than any untenured professor. :tera-: /te'r*/ [si] pref. see {{quantifiers}}. :teraflop club: /te'r*-flop kluhb/ [flop = floating point operation] n. a mythical association of people who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce a few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing techniques. caltech professor james kajiya is said to have been the founder. :terminak: /ter'mi-nak`/ [caltech, ca. ] n. any malfunctioning computer terminal. a common failure mode of lear-siegler adm a terminals caused the `l' key to produce the `k' code instead; complaints about this tended to look like "terminak # has a bad keyboard. pkease fix." see {aidx}, {nominal semidestructor}, {open deathtrap}, {scumos}, {sun-stools}, {telerat}, {hp-sux}. :terminal brain death: n. the extreme form of {terminal illness} (sense ). what someone who has obviously been hacking continuously for far too long is said to be suffering from. :terminal illness: n. . syn. {raster burn}. . the `burn-in' condition your crt tends to get if you don't have a screen saver. :terminal junkie: [uk] n. a {wannabee} or early {larval stage} hacker who spends most of his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing {noddy} programs just to get a fix of computer time. variants include `terminal jockey', `console junkie', and {console jockey}. the term `console jockey' seems to imply more expertise than the other three (possibly because of the exalted status of the {{console}} relative to an ordinary terminal). see also {twink}, {read-only user}. :terpri: /ter'pree/ [from lisp . (and later, maclisp)] vi. to output a {newline}. now rare as jargon, though still used as techspeak in common lisp. it is a contraction of `terminate print line', named for the fact that, on some early oses and hardware, no characters would be printed until a complete line was formed, so this operation terminated the line and emitted the output. :test: n. . real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and followup of the results. . some bored random user trying a couple of the simpler features with a developer looking over his or her shoulder, ready to pounce on mistakes. judging by the quality of most software, the second definition is far more prevalent. see also {demo}. :tex: /tekh/ n. an extremely powerful {macro}-based text formatter written by donald e. {knuth}, very popular in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced unix `troff( )', the other favored formatter, even at many unix installations). tex fans insist on the correct (guttural) pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished together, with the e depressed below the baseline; the mixed-case `tex' is considered an acceptable kluge on ascii-only devices). fans like to proliferate names from the word `tex' --- such as texnician (tex user), texhacker (tex programmer), texmaster (competent tex programmer), texhax, and texnique. knuth began tex because he had become annoyed at the declining quality of the typesetting in volumes i--iii of his monumental `art of computer programming' (see {knuth}, also {bible}). in a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. he thought he would finish it on his sabbatical in ; he was wrong by only about years. the language was finally frozen around , but volume iv of `the art of computer programming' has yet to appear as of mid- . the impact and influence of tex's design has been such that nobody minds this very much. many grand hackish projects have started as a bit of tool-building on the way to something else; knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale than most. tex{} has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but high-quality software. knuth used to offer monetary awards to people who found and reported bugs in it; as the years wore on and the few remaining bugs were fixed (and new ones even harder to find), the bribe went up. though well-written, tex{} is so large (and so full of cutting edge technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least one bug in every pascal it has been compiled with. :text: n. . [techspeak] executable code, esp. a `pure code' portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking os (compare {english}). . textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary {{ascii}} or {{ebcdic}} representation (see {flat-ascii}). "those are text files; you can review them using the editor." these two contradictory senses confuse hackers, too. :thanks in advance: [usenet] conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for information or assistance. sometimes written `advthanksance' or `atdhvaannkcse' or abbreviated `tia'. see {net.-}, {netiquette}. :that's not a bug, that's a feature!: the {canonical} first parry in a debate about a purported bug. the complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is then at best a {misfeature}. see also {feature}. :the x that can be y is not the true x: yet another instance of hackerdom's peculiar attraction to mystical references --- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements about a class of things. the template is from the `tao te ching': "the tao which can be spoken of is not the true tao." the implication is often that the x is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened. see the {trampoline} entry for an example, and compare {has the x nature}. :theology: n. . ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. . technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use of a design or system. used esp. around software issues with a heavy ai or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in ai. :theory: n. the consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently being used to inform a behavior. this is a generalization and abuse of the technical meaning. "what's the theory on fixing this teco loss?" "what's the theory on dinner tonight?" ("chinatown, i guess.") "what's the current theory on letting lusers on during the day?" "the theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw...." :thinko: /thing'koh/ [by analogy with `typo'] n. a momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. syn. {braino}; see also {brain fart}. compare {mouso}. :this can't happen: less clipped variant of {can't happen}. :this time, for sure!: excl. ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a uucp connection). for the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of bullwinkle j. moose. also heard: "hey, rocky! watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" the {canonical} response is, of course, "but that trick *never* works!" see {{humor, hacker}}. :thrash: vi. to move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation) and are therefore said to thrash. someone who keeps changing his mind (esp. about what to work on next) is said to be thrashing. a person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on any single task) may also be described as thrashing. compare {multitask}. :thread: n. [usenet, genie, compuserve] common abbreviation of `topic thread', a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic. to `follow a thread' is to read a series of usenet postings sharing a common subject or (more correctly) which are connected by reference headers. the better newsreaders present news in thread order. :three-finger salute: n. syn. {vulcan nerve pinch}. :thud: n. . yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). it is reported that at cmu from the mid- s the canonical series of these was `foo', `bar', `thud', `blat'. . rare term for the hash character, `#' (ascii ). see {ascii} for other synonyms. :thumb: n. the slider on a window-system scrollbar. so called because moving it allows you to browse through the contents of a text window in a way analogous to thumbing through a book. :thunk: /thuhnk/ n. . "a piece of coding which provides an address", according to p. z. ingerman, who invented thunks in as a way of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in algol- procedure calls. if a procedure is called with an expression in the place of a formal parameter, the compiler generates a {thunk} to compute the expression and leave the address of the result in some standard location. . later generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to what in techspeak is called a `closure'). the process of unfreezing these thunks is called `forcing'. . a {stubroutine}, in an overlay programming environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. compare {trampoline}. . people and activities scheduled in a thunklike manner. "it occurred to me the other day that i am rather accurately modeled by a thunk --- i frequently need to be forced to completion." --- paraphrased from a {plan file}. historical note: there are a couple of onomatopoeic myths circulating about the origin of this term. the most common is that it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator. yet another holds that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. in fact, according to the inventors, it was coined after they realized (in the wee hours after hours of discussion) that the type of an argument in algol- could be figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery. in other words, it had `already been thought of'; thus it was christened a `thunk', which is "the past tense of `think' at two in the morning". :tick: n. . a {jiffy} (sense ). . in simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between iterations of the simulation mechanism. in ai applications, this amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is the ordering of events. this sort of ai simulation is often pejoratively referred to as `tick-tick-tick' simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long, independent chains of causes is {handwave}d. . in the forth language, a single quote character. :tick-list features: [acorn computers] n. features in software or hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop tsrs and that sort of thing). the american equivalent would be `checklist features', but this jargon sense of the phrase has not been reported. :tickle a bug: vt. to cause a normally hidden bug to manifest through some known series of inputs or operations. "you can tickle the bug in the paradise vga card's highlight handling by trying to set bright yellow reverse video." :tiger team: [u.s. military jargon] n. . originally, a team whose purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. these people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes saying "your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. after a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next morning for a `security review' and finds the sign, note, etc., and all hell breaks loose. serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the {patch} entry for an example). . recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or special {firefighting} group called in to look at a problem. a subset of tiger teams are professional {cracker}s, testing the security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks or supposedly `secure' comm channels. some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. the term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense. :time sink: [poss. by analogy with `heat sink' or `current sink'] n. a project that consumes unbounded amounts of time. :time t: /ti:m t/ n. . an unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in conjunction with a later time t+ . "we'll meet on campus at time t or at louie's at time t+ " means, in the context of going out for dinner: "we can meet on campus and go to louie's, or we can meet at louie's itself a bit later." (louie's was a chinese restaurant in palo alto that was a favorite with hackers.) had the number been used instead of the number , it would have implied that the travel time from campus to louie's is minutes; whatever time t is (and that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time. see also {since time t equals minus infinity}. :times-or-divided-by: [by analogy with `plus-or-minus'] quant. term occasionally used when describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate, for either humorous or brutally honest effect. for a software project, the scheduling uncertainty factor is usually at least . :tinycrud: /ti:'nee-kruhd/ n. . a pejorative used by habitues of older game-oriented {mud} versions for tinymuds and other user-extensible {mud} variants; esp. common among users of the rather violent and competitive abermud and mist systems. these people justify the slur on the basis of how (allegedly) inconsistent and lacking in genuine atmosphere the scenarios generated in user extensible muds can be. other common knocks on them are that they feature little overall plot, bad game topology, little competitive interaction, etc. --- not to mention the alleged horrors of the tinymud code itself. this dispute is one of the mud world's hardiest perennial {holy wars}. . tinymud-oriented chat on the usenet group rec.games.mud and elsewhere, especially {newbie} questions and flamage. :tip of the ice-cube: [ibm] n. the visible part of something small and insignificant. used as an ironic comment in situations where `tip of the iceberg' might be appropriate if the subject were at all important. :tired iron: [ibm] n. hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a {dinosaur}. :tits on a keyboard: n. small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered (usually on the ` ' of a numeric keypad, and on the `f' and `j' of a qwerty keyboard; but the mac, perverse as usual, has them on the `d' and `k' keys). :tla: /t-l-a/ [three-letter acronym] n. . self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is infested. . any confusing acronym. examples include mca, ftp, sna, cpu, mmu, sccs, dmu, fpu, nntp, tla. people who like this looser usage argue that not all tlas have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. one also hears of `etla' (extended three-letter acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. the term `sfla' (stupid four-letter acronym) has also been reported. see also {yaba}. the self-effacing phrase "tdm tla" (too damn many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of tlas in use. in , a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker paul boutin "what do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the s?" paul's straight-faced response: "there are only , three-letter acronyms." (to be exact, there are ^ = , .) :tmrc: /tmerk'/ n. the tech model railroad club at mit, one of the wellsprings of hacker culture. the `dictionary of the tmrc language' compiled by peter samson included several terms which became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. {foo} and {frob}). by , tmrc's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity (and has grown in the thirty years since; all the features described here are still present). the control system alone featured about relays. there were {scram switch}es located at numerous places around the room that could be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going full-bore at an obstruction. another feature of the system was a digital clock on the dispatch, board, which was itself something of a wonder in those bygone days before cheap leds and seven-segment displays (no model railroad can begin to approximate the scale distances between towns and stations, so model railroad timetables assume a fast clock so that it seems to take about the right amount of time for a train to complete its journey). when someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the display was replaced with the word `foo'; at tmrc the scram switches are therefore called `foo switches'. steven levy, in his book `hackers' (see the bibliography in {appendix c}), gives a stimulating account of those early years. tmrc's power and signals group included most of the early pdp- hackers and the people who later bacame the core of the mit ai lab staff. thirty years later that connection is still very much alive, and this lexicon accordingly includes a number of entries from a recent revision of the tmrc dictionary. :tmrcie: /tmerk'ee/, /tuh-merk'ee/ [mit] n. a denizen of {tmrc}. :to a first approximation: . [techspeak] when one is doing certain numerical computations, an approximate solution may be computed by any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value. by using the starting point of a first approximation of the answer, one can write an algorithm that converges more quickly to the correct result. . in jargon, a preface to any comment that indicates that the comment is only approximately true. the remark "to a first approximation, i feel good" might indicate that deeper questioning would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still remains after an illness). :to a zeroth approximation: [from `to a first approximation'] a *really* sloppy approximation; a wild guess. compare {social science number}. :toast: . n. any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned: "uh, oh ... i think the serial board is toast." . vt. to cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual rebooting. "rick just toasted the {firewall machine} again." :toaster: n. . the archetypal really stupid application for an embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see {elevator controller}). "{dwim} for an assembler? that'd be as silly as running unix on your toaster!" . a very, very dumb computer. "you could run this program on any dumb toaster." see {bitty box}, {get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige toaster}. . a macintosh, esp. the classic mac. some hold that this is implied by sense . . a peripheral device. "i bought my box without toasters, but since then i've added two boards and a second disk drive." :toeprint: n. a {footprint} of especially small size. :toggle: vt. to change a {bit} from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from to or from to . this comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light switches, though the word `toggle' actually refers to the mechanism that keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped rather than to the fact that the switch has two positions. there are four things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be ), clear (or zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (mathematically, one would say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking about toggling bits.) :tool: . n. a program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a cross-referencing program. oppose {app}, {operating system}. . [unix] an application program with a simple, `transparent' (typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used in programmed combination with other tools (see {filter}). . [mit: general to students there] vi. to work; to study (connotes tedium). the tmrc dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to the grindstone". see {hack}. . [mit] n. a student who studies too much and hacks too little. (mit's student humor magazine rejoices in the name `tool and die'.) :toolsmith: n. the software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who specializes in making the {tool}s with which other programmers create applications. many hackers consider this more fun than applications per se; to understand why, see {uninteresting}. jon bentley, in the "bumper-sticker computer science" chapter of his book `more programming pearls', quotes dick sites from dec as saying "i'd rather write programs to write programs than write programs". :topic drift: n. term used on genie, usenet and other electronic fora to describe the tendency of a {thread} to drift away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the subject header of the originating message), or the results of that tendency. often used in gentle reminders that the discussion has strayed off any useful track. "i think we started with a question about niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. now *that's* topic drift!" :topic group: n. syn. {forum}. :tops- :: /tops-ten/ n. dec's proprietary os for the fabled {pdp- } machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct. a fountain of hacker folklore; see {appendix a}. see also {{its}}, {{tops- }}, {{twenex}}, {vms}, {operating system}. tops- was sometimes called bots- (from `bottoms-ten') as a comment on the inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything. :tops- :: /tops-twen'tee/ n. see {{twenex}}. :toto: /toh'toh/ n. this is reported to be the default scratch file name among french-speaking programmers --- in other words, a francophone {foo}. it is reported that the phonetic mutations "titi", "tata", and "tutu" canonically follow `toto', analogously to {bar}, {baz} and {quux} in english. :tourist: [its] n. a guest on the system, especially one who generally logs in over a network from a remote location for {comm mode}, email, games, and other trivial purposes. one step below {luser}. hackers often spell this {turist}, perhaps by some sort of tenuous analogy with {luser} (this also expresses the its culture's penchant for six-letterisms). compare {twink}, {read-only user}. :tourist information: n. information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful, but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the software or hardware behind it. whether a given piece of info falls in this category depends partly on what the user is looking for at any given time. the `bytes free' information at the bottom of an ms-dos `dir' display is tourist information; so (most of the time) is the time information in a unix `ps( )' display. :touristic: adj. having the quality of a {tourist}. often used as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum'. often spelled `turistic' or `turistik', so that phrase might be more properly rendered `lusing turistic scum'. :toy: n. a computer system; always used with qualifiers. . `nice toy': one that supports the speaker's hacking style adequately. . `just a toy': a machine that yields insufficient {computron}s for the speaker's preferred uses. this is not condemnatory, as is {bitty box}; toys can at least be fun. it is also strongly conditioned by one's expectations; cray xmp users sometimes consider the cray- a `toy', and certainly all risc boxes and mainframes are toys by their standards. see also {get a real computer!}. :toy language: n. a language useful for instructional purposes or as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory, but inadequate for general-purpose programming. {bad thing}s can result when a toy language is promoted as a general purpose solution for programming (see {bondage-and-discipline language}); the classic example is {{pascal}}. several moderately well-known formalisms for conceptual tasks such as programming turing machines also qualify as toy languages in a less negative sense. see also {mftl}. :toy problem: [ai] n. a deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a real problem. sometimes used pejoratively. see also {gedanken}, {toy program}. :toy program: n. . one that can be readily comprehended; hence, a trivial program (compare {noddy}). . one for which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs through its life cycle. see also {noddy}. :trampoline: n. an incredibly {hairy} technique, found in some {hll} and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely as not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection between code sections. these pieces of {live data} are called `trampolines'. trampolines are notoriously difficult to understand in action; in fact, it is said by those who use this term that the trampoline that doesn't bend your brain is not the true trampoline. see also {snap}. :trap: . n. a program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some exceptional situation in the user program. in most cases, the os performs some action, then returns control to the program. . vi. to cause a trap. "these instructions trap to the monitor." also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "the monitor traps all input/output instructions." this term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt' or `exception' is more common among {hll} programmers) and appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to shrink. however, it is still important to computer architects and systems hackers (see {system}, sense ), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as i/o interrupts). :trap door: alt. `trapdoor' n. . syn. {back door} --- a {bad thing}. . [techspeak] a `trap-door function' is one which is easy to compute but very difficult to compute the inverse of. such functions are {good thing}s with important applications in cryptography, specifically in the construction of public-key cryptosystems. :trash: vt. to destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). the most common of the family of near-synonyms including {mung}, {mangle}, and {scribble}. :trawl: v. to sift through large volumes of data (e.g. usenet postings or ftp archives) looking for something of interest. :tree-killer: [sun] n. . a printer. . a person who wastes paper. this should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper' includes the production of {spiffy} but {content-free} documents. thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers. the negative loading of this term may reflect the epithet `tree-killer' applied by treebeard the ent to the orcs in j.r.r. tolkien's `lord of the rings' trilogy (see also {elvish}, {elder days}). :trit: /trit/ [by analogy with `bit'] n. one base- digit; the amount of information conveyed by a selection among one of three equally likely outcomes (see also {bit}). these arise, for example, in the context of a {flag} that should actually be able to assume *three* values --- such as yes, no, or unknown. trits are sometimes jokingly called ` -state bits'. a trit may be semi-seriously referred to as `a bit and a half', although it is linearly equivalent to . bits (that is, log ( ) bits). :trivial: adj. . too simple to bother detailing. . not worth the speaker's time. . complex, but solvable by methods so well known that anyone not utterly {cretinous} would have thought of them already. . any problem one has already solved (some claim that hackish `trivial' usually evaluates to `i've seen it before'). hackers' notions of triviality may be quite at variance with those of non-hackers. see {nontrivial}, {uninteresting}. :troff: /tee'rof/ or /trof/ [unix] n. the gray eminence of unix text processing; a formatting and phototypesetting program, written originally in pdp- assembler and then in barely-structured early c by the late joseph ossana, modeled after the earlier roff which was in turn modeled after multics' runoff. a companion program, `nroff', formats output for terminals and line printers. in , brian kernighan modified troff so that it could drive phototypesetters other than the graphic systems cat. his paper describing that work ("a typesetter-independent troff," at&t cstr # ) explains `troff''s durability. after discussing the program's "obvious deficiencies --- a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious and undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for computer resources" and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of the code and internals, kernighan concludes: none of these remarks should be taken as denigrating ossana's accomplishment with troff. it has proven a remarkably robust tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of preprocessors and being forced into uses that were never conceived of in the original design, all with considerable grace under fire. the success of tex and desktop publishing systems have reduced `troff''s relative importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the strengths that secured `troff' a place in hacker folklore; indeed, it could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of good programs which, in the long run, hackers most admire. :troglodyte: [commodore] n. . a hacker who never leaves his cubicle. the term `gnoll' (from dungeons & dragons) is also reported. . a curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. the combination `its troglodyte' was flung around some during the usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the .x.x revision of the jargon file; at least one of the people it was intended to describe adopted it with pride. :troglodyte mode: [rice university] n. programming with the lights turned off, sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been up for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see {raster burn}). loud music blaring from a stereo stacked in the corner is optional but recommended. see {larval stage}, {hack mode}. :trojan horse: [coined by mit-hacker-turned-nsa-spook dan edwards] n. a program designed to break security or damage a system that is disguised as something else benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, a game, or (in one notorious case on the mac) a program to find and destroy viruses! see {back door}, {virus}, {worm}. :tron: [nrl, cmu; prob. fr. the movie `tron'] v. to become inaccessible except via email or `talk( )', especially when one is normally available via telephone or in person. frequently used in the past tense, as in: "ran seems to have tronned on us this week" or "gee, ran, glad you were able to un-tron yourself". one may also speak of `tron mode'. :true-hacker: [analogy with `trufan' from sf fandom] n. one who exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness to other hackers. a high compliment. "he spent hours helping me bring up uucp and netnews on my foobar last week --- manifestly the act of a true-hacker." compare {demigod}, oppose {munchkin}. :tty: /t-t-y/ [unix], /tit'ee/ [its, but some unix people say it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have sexual undertones] n. . a terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print quality. usage: antiquated (like the ttys themselves). see also {bit-paired keyboard}. . [especially unix] any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to the particular terminal controlling a given job. . [unix] any serial port, whether or not the device connected to it is a terminal; so called because under unix such devices have names of the form tty*. ambiguity between senses and is common but seldom bothersome. :tube: . n. a crt terminal. never used in the mainstream sense of tv; real hackers don't watch tv, except for loony toons, rocky & bullwinkle, trek classic, the simpsons, and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckler movie (see {appendix b}). . [ibm] to send a copy of something to someone else's terminal. "tube me that note?" :tube time: n. time spent at a terminal or console. more inclusive than hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's environment one uses most heavily. "i find i'm spending too much of my tube time reading mail since i started this revision." :tunafish: n. in hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of `tunefs( )' in the original {bsd} . distribution. the joke was removed in later releases once commercial sites started using . . tunefs relates to the `tuning' of file-system parameters for optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions was a `bugs' section consisting of the line "you can tune a file system, but you can't tunafish". variants of this can be seen in other bsd versions, though it has been excised from some versions by humorless management {droid}s. the [nt]roff source for sunos . . contains a comment apparently designed to prevent this: "take this out and a unix demon will dog your steps from now until the `time_t''s wrap around." :tune: [from automotive or musical usage] vt. to optimize a program or system for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical parameters designed as {hook}s for tuning, e.g., by changing `#define' lines in c. one may `tune for time' (fastest execution), `tune for space' (least memory use), or `tune for configuration' (most efficient use of hardware). see {bum}, {hot spot}, {hand-hacking}. :turbo nerd: n. see {computer geek}. :turing tar-pit: n. . a place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is practical. alan turing helped lay the foundations of computer science by showing that all machines and languages capable of expressing a certain very primitive set of operations are logically equivalent in the kinds of computations they can carry out, and in principle have capabilities that differ only in speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly-designed computers. however, no machine or language exactly matching turing's primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far too painful to use. a `turing tar-pit' is any computer language or other tool which shares this property. that is, it's theoretically universal --- but in practice, the harder you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in. compare {bondage-and-discipline language}. . the perennial {holy wars} over whether language a or b is the "most powerful". :turist: /too'rist/ n. var. sp. of {tourist}, q.v. also in adjectival form, `turistic'. poss. influenced by {luser} and `turing'. :tweak: vt. . to change slightly, usually in reference to a value. also used synonymously with {twiddle}. if a program is almost correct, rather than figure out the precise problem you might just keep tweaking it until it works. see {frobnicate} and {fudge factor}; also see {shotgun debugging}. . to {tune} or {bum} a program; preferred usage in the u.k. :tweeter: [university of waterloo] n. syn. {perf}, {chad} (sense ). this term (like {woofer}) has been in use at waterloo since , but is elsewhere unknown. in audio jargon, the word refers to the treble speaker(s) on a hi-fi. :twenex:: /twe'neks/ n. the tops- operating system by dec --- the second proprietary os for the pdp- --- preferred by most pdp- hackers over tops- (that is, by those who were not {{its}} or {{waits}} partisans). tops- began in as bolt, beranek & newman's tenex operating system using special paging hardware. by the early s, almost all of the systems on the arpanet ran tenex. dec purchased the rights to tenex from bbn and began work to make it their own. the first in-house code name for the operating system was viros (virtual memory operating system); when customers started asking questions, the name was changed to snark so dec could truthfully deny that there was any project called viros. when the name snark became known, the name was briefly reversed to become krans; this was quickly abandoned when it was discovered that `krans' meant `funeral wreath' in swedish. ultimately dec picked tops- as the name of the operating system, and it was as tops- that it was marketed. the hacker community, mindful of its origins, quickly dubbed it {{twenex}} (a contraction of `twenty tenex'), even though by this point very little of the original tenex code remained (analogously to the differences between at&t v unix and bsd). dec people cringed when they heard "twenex", but the term caught on nevertheless (the written abbreviation ` x' was also used). twenex was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a period in the early s when it commanded as fervent a culture of partisans as unix or its --- but dec's decision to scrap all the internal rivals to the vax architecture and its relatively stodgy vms os killed the dec- and put a sad end to twenex's brief day in the sun. dec attempted to convince tops- hackers to convert to {vms}, but instead, by the late s, most of the tops- hackers had migrated to unix. :twiddle: n. . tilde (ascii , `~'). also called `squiggle', `sqiggle' (sic --- pronounced /skig'l/), and `twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. . a small and insignificant change to a program. usually fixes one bug and generates several new ones. . vt. to change something in a small way. bits, for example, are often twiddled. twiddling a switch or knob implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see {frobnicate}. to speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't specify what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a bit' has a more specific meaning (see {bit twiddling}, {toggle}). :twilight zone: [irc] n. notionally, the area of cyberspace where {irc} operators live. an {op} is said to have a "connection to the twilight zone". :twink: /twink/ [ucsc] n. equivalent to {read-only user}. also reported on the usenet group soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs (compare mainstream `chick'). :two pi: quant. the number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. occurs in stories in the following form: "he started on his thesis; pi years later..." :two-to-the-n: quant. an amount much larger than {n} but smaller than {infinity}. "i have -to-the-n things to do before i can go out for lunch" means you probably won't show up. :twonkie: /twon'kee/ n. the software equivalent of a twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang) the male equivalent of `chick'); a useless `feature' added to look sexy and placate a {marketroid} (compare {saturday-night special}). this may also be related to "the twonky", title menace of a classic sf short story by lewis padgett (henry kuttner and c. l. moore), first published in the september `astounding science fiction' and subsequently much anthologized. = u = ===== :ubd: /u-b-d/ [abbreviation for `user brain damage'] an abbreviation used to close out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's part. compare {pilot error}; oppose {pbd}; see also {brain-damaged}. :un*x: n. used to refer to the unix operating system (a trademark of at&t) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly {(tm)} typography. also used to refer to any or all varieties of unixoid operating systems. ironically, lawyers now say ( ) that the requirement for the tm-postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. it has been suggested that there may be a psychological connection to practice in certain religions (especially judaism) in which the name of the deity is never written out in full, e.g., `yhwh' or `g--d' is used. see also {glob}. :undefined external reference: excl. [unix] a message from unix's linker. used in speech to flag loose ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion. :under the hood: prep. [hot-rodder talk] . used to introduce the underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or idea). implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the speaker is about to enable the listener to {grok} it. "let's now look under the hood to see how ...." . can also imply that the implementation is much simpler than the appearance would indicate: "under the hood, we are just fork/execing the shell." . inside a chassis, as in "under the hood, this baby has a mhz !" :undocumented feature: n. see {feature}. :uninteresting: adj. . said of a problem that, although {nontrivial}, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient resources at it. . also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and code. hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. *real* hackers (see {toolsmith}) generalize uninteresting problems enough to make them interesting and solve them --- thus solving the original problem as a special case (and, it must be admitted, occasionally turning a molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into a tectonic plate). see {wombat}, {smop}; compare {toy problem}, oppose {interesting}. :unix:: /yoo'niks/ [in the authors' words, "a weak pun on multics"] n. (also `unix') an interactive time-sharing system originally invented in by ken thompson after bell labs left the multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged pdp- . dennis ritchie, the inventor of c, is considered a co-author of the system. the turning point in unix's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in c during -- , making it the first source-portable os. unix subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. in , unix is the most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world. many people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see {unix weenie} and {unix conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). see {version }, {bsd}, {usg unix}. :unix brain damage: n. something that has to be done to break a network program (typically a mailer) on a non-unix system so that it will interoperate with unix systems. the hack may qualify as `unix brain damage' if the program conforms to published standards and the unix program in question does not. unix brain damage happens because it is much easier for other (minority) systems to change their ways to match non-conforming behavior than it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of unix systems out there. an example of unix brain damage is a {kluge} in a mail server to recognize bare line feed (the unix newline) as an equivalent form to the internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by a line feed. such things can make even a hardened {jock} weep. :unix conspiracy: [its] n. according to a conspiracy theory long popular among {{its}} and {{tops- }} fans, unix's growth is the result of a plot, hatched during the s at bell labs, whose intent was to hobble at&t's competitors by making them dependent upon a system whose future evolution was to be under at&t's control. this would be accomplished by disseminating an operating system that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing upgrades from at&t). this theory was lent a substantial impetus in by the paper referenced in the {back door} entry. in this view, unix was designed to be one of the first computer viruses (see {virus}) --- but a virus spread to computers indirectly by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and networks. adherents of this `unix virus' theory like to cite the fact that the well-known quotation "unix is snake oil" was uttered by dec president kenneth olsen shortly before dec began actively promoting its own family of unix workstations. (olsen now claims to have been misquoted.) :unix weenie: [its] n. . a derogatory play on `unix wizard', common among hackers who use unix by necessity but would prefer alternatives. the implication is that although the person in question may consider mastery of unix arcana to be a wizardly skill, the only real skill involved is the ability to tolerate (and the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity that is alleged to infest many unix programs. "this shell script tries to parse its arguments in bletcherous ways. it must have been written by a real unix weenie." . a derogatory term for anyone who engages in uncritical praise of unix. often appearing in the context "stupid unix weenie". see {weenix}, {unix conspiracy}. see also {weenie}. :unixism: n. a piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory unix systems. common {unixism}s include: gratuitous use of `fork( )'; the assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of unix libraries such as `stdio( )' are supported elsewhere; reliance on {obscure} side-effects of system calls (use of `sleep( )' with a argument to clue the scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed; and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from never `free()'ing memory. compare {vaxocentrism}; see also {new jersey}. :unleaded: adj. said of decaffeinated coffee, diet coke, and other imitation {programming fluid}s. "do you want regular or unleaded?". appears to be widespread among programmers associated with the oil industry in texas (and probably elsewhere). usage: silly, and probably unintelligable to the next generation of hackers. :unroll: v. to repeat the body of a loop several times in succession. this optimization technique reduces the number of times the loop-termination test has to be executed. but it only works if the number of iterations desired is a multiple of the number of repetitions of the body. something has to be done to take care of any leftover iterations --- such as {duff's device}. :unswizzle: v. see {swizzle}. :unwind the stack: vi. . [techspeak] during the execution of a procedural language, one is said to `unwind the stack' from a called procedure up to a caller when one discards the stack frame and any number of frames above it, popping back up to the level of the given caller. in c this is done with `longjmp'/`setjmp', in lisp with `throw/catch'. see also {smash the stack}. . people can unwind the stack as well, by quickly dealing with a bunch of problems: "oh heck, let's do lunch. just a second while i unwind my stack." :unwind-protect: [mit: from the name of a lisp operator] n. a task you must remember to perform before you leave a place or finish a project. "i have an unwind-protect to call my advisor." :up: adj. . working, in order. "the down escalator is up." oppose {down}. . `bring up': vt. to create a working version and start it. "they brought up a down system." . `come up' vi. to become ready for production use. :upload: /uhp'lohd/ v. . [techspeak] to transfer programs or data over a digital communications link from a smaller or peripheral `client' system to a larger or central `host' one. a transfer in the other direction is, of course, called a {download} (but see the note about ground-to-space comm under that entry). . [speculatively] to move the essential patterns and algorithms that make up one's mind from one's brain into a computer. only those who are convinced that such patterns and algorithms capture the complete essence of the self view this prospect with gusto. :upthread: adv. earlier in the discussion (see {thread}), i.e., `above'. "as joe pointed out upthread, ..." see also {followup}. :urchin: n. see {munchkin}. :usenet: /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `users' network'] n. a distributed {bboard} (bulletin board) system supported mainly by unix machines. originally implemented in - by steve bellovin, jim ellis, tom truscott, and steve daniel at duke university, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility in existence. as of early , it hosts well over {newsgroup}s and an average of megabytes (the equivalent of several thousand paper pages) of new technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and {flamage} every day. :user: n. . someone doing `real work' with the computer, using it as a means rather than an end. someone who pays to use a computer. see {real user}. . a programmer who will believe anything you tell him. one who asks silly questions. [gls observes: this is slightly unfair. it is true that users ask questions (of necessity). sometimes they are thoughtful or deep. very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently because the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the documentation before bothering the maintainer.] see {luser}. . someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully, without getting into the internals of the program. one who reports bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them. the general theory behind this term is that there are two classes of people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and {luser}s. the users are looked down on by hackers to some extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory. (the few users who do are known as `real winners'.) the term is a relative one: a skilled hacker may be a user with respect to some program he himself does not hack. a lisp hacker might be one who maintains lisp or one who uses lisp (but with the skill of a hacker). a lisp user is one who uses lisp, whether skillfully or not. thus there is some overlap between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context. :user-friendly: adj. programmer-hostile. generally used by hackers in a critical tone, to describe systems that hold the user's hand so obsessively that they make it painful for the more experienced and knowledgeable to get any work done. see {menuitis}, {drool-proof paper}, {macintrash}, {user-obsequious}. :user-obsequious: adj. emphatic form of {user-friendly}. connotes a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is nearly unusable. "design a system any fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." see {wimp environment}, {macintrash}. :usg unix: /u-s-g yoo'niks/ n. refers to at&t unix commercial versions after {version }, especially system iii and system v releases , , and . so called because during most of the life-span of those versions at&t's support crew was called the `unix support group'. see {bsd}, {{unix}}. :utsl: // [unix] n. on-line acronym for `use the source, luke' (a pun on obi-wan kenobi's "use the force, luke!" in `star wars') --- analogous to {rtfm} but more polite. this is a common way of suggesting that someone would be best off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals or broadcasting questions that haven't attracted {wizard}s to answer them. in theory, this is appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a unix source license; in practice, bootlegs of unix source code (made precisely for reference purposes) are so ubiquitous that one may utter this at almost anyone on the network without concern. in the near future (this written in ) source licenses may become even less important; after the recent release of the mach . microkernel, given the continuing efforts of the {gnu} project, and with the . bsd release on the horizon, complete free source code for unix-clone toolsets and kernels should soon be widely available. :uucpnet: n. the store-and-forward network consisting of all the world's connected unix machines (and others running some clone of the uucp (unix-to-unix copy) software). any machine reachable only via a {bang path} is on uucpnet. see {network address}. = v = ===== :vadding: /vad'ing/ [from vad, a permutation of adv (i.e., {advent}), used to avoid a particular {admin}'s continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the game] n. a leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the covert exploration of the `secret' parts of large buildings --- basements, roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, and the like. a few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order to synthesize vadding keys. the verb is `to vad' (compare {phreaking}; see also {hack}, sense ). this term dates from the late s, before which such activity was simply called `hacking'; the older usage is still prevalent at mit. the most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is `elevator rodeo', a.k.a. `elevator surfing', a sport played by wrasslin' down a thousand-pound elevator car with a -foot piece of string, and then exploiting this mastery in various stimulating ways (such as elevator hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and the ever-popular drop experiments). kids, don't try this at home! see also {hobbit} (sense ). :vanilla: [from the default flavor of ice cream in the u.s.] adj. ordinary {flavor}, standard. when used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract! for example, `vanilla wonton soup' means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. applied to hardware and software, as in "vanilla version unix can't run on a vanilla / ." also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for instance, a v means what ti calls a , as distinct from a ls , etc. this word differs from {canonical} in that the latter means `default', whereas vanilla simply means `ordinary'. for example, when hackers go on a {great-wall}, hot-and-sour wonton soup is the {canonical} wonton soup to get (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla wonton soup. :vannevar: /van'*-var/ n. a bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering concept, esp. one that fails by implicitly assuming that technologies develop linearly, incrementally, and in isolation from one another when in fact the learning curve tends to be highly nonlinear, revolutions are common, and competition is the rule. the prototype was vannevar bush's prediction of `electronic brains' the size of the empire state building with a niagara-falls-equivalent cooling system for their tubes and relays, made at a time when the semiconductor effect had already been demonstrated. other famous vannevars have included magnetic-bubble memory, lisp machines, {videotex}, and a paper from the late s that computed a purported ultimate limit on areal density for ics that was in fact less than the routine densities of years later. :vaporware: /vay'pr-weir/ n. products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place). :var: /veir/ or /var/ n. short for `variable'. compare {arg}, {param}. :vax: /vaks/ n. . [from virtual address extension] the most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor, the pdp- . between its release in and its eclipse by {killer micro}s after about , the vax was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp. after the release of . bsd unix (see {bsd}). esp. noted for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set --- an asset that became a liability after the risc revolution. . a major brand of vacuum cleaner in britain. cited here because its alleged sales pitch, "nothing sucks like a vax!" became a sort of battle-cry of risc partisans. it is sometimes claimed that this slogan was *not* actually used by the vax vacuum-cleaner people, but was actually that of a rival brand called electrolux (as in "nothing sucks like..."); your editors have not yet been able to verify either version of the legend. it is also claimed that dec actually entered a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-vax people that allowed them to market vax computers in the u.k. in return for not challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the u.s. :vaxectomy: /vak-sek't*-mee/ [by analogy with `vasectomy'] n. a vax removal. dec's microvaxen, especially, are much slower than newer risc-based workstations such as the sparc. thus, if one knows one has a replacement coming, vax removal can be cause for celebration. :vaxen: /vak'sn/ [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] n. (alt. `vaxen') the plural canonically used among hackers for the dec vax computers. "our installation has four pdp- s and twenty vaxen." see {boxen}. :vaxherd: n. /vaks'herd/ [from `oxherd'] a vax operator. :vaxism: /vak'sizm/ n. a piece of code that exhibits {vaxocentrism} in critical areas. compare {pc-ism}, {unixism}. :vaxocentrism: /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ [analogy with `ethnocentrism'] n. a notional disease said to afflict c programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are valid (esp. under unix) on {vaxen} but false elsewhere. among these are: . the assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because it is all bits , and location is readable and . problem: this may instead cause an illegal-address trap on non-vaxen, and even on vaxen under oses other than bsd unix. usually this is an implicit assumption of sloppy code (forgetting to check the pointer before using it), rather than deliberate exploitation of a misfeature.) . the assumption that characters are signed. . the assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be cast into a pointer to any other type. a stronger form of this is the assumption that all pointers are the same size and format, which means you don't have to worry about getting the types correct in calls. problem: this fails on word-oriented machines or others with multiple pointer formats. . the assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in memory, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or descending order. problem: this fails on many risc architectures. . the assumption that pointer and integer types are the same size, and that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables (and vice-versa) and drawn back out without being truncated or mangled. problem: this fails on segmented architectures or word-oriented machines with funny pointer formats. . the assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any byte address in memory (for example, that you can freely construct and dereference a pointer to a word- or greater-sized object at an odd char address). problem: this fails on many (esp. risc) architectures better optimized for {hll} execution speed, and can cause an illegal address fault or bus error. . the (related) assumption that there is no padding at the end of types and that in an array you can thus step right from the last byte of a previous component to the first byte of the next one. this is not only machine- but compiler-dependent. . the assumption that memory address space is globally flat and that the array reference `foo[- ]' is necessarily valid. problem: this fails at , or other places on segment-addressed machines like intel chips (yes, segmentation is universally considered a {brain-damaged} way to design machines (see {moby}), but that is a separate issue). . the assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no special considerations. problem: this fails on segmented architectures and under non-virtual-addressing environments. . the assumption that the stack can be as large as memory. problem: this fails on segmented architectures or almost anything else without virtual addressing and a paged stack. . the assumption that bits and addressable units within an object are ordered in the same way and that this order is a constant of nature. problem: this fails on {big-endian} machines. . the assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to different objects not located within the same array, or to objects of different types. problem: the former fails on segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented machines or others with multiple pointer formats. . the assumption that an `int' is bits, or (nearly equivalently) the assumption that `sizeof(int) == sizeof(long)'. problem: this fails on pdp- s, -based systems and even on and systems under some compilers. . the assumption that `argv[]' is writable. problem: this fails in many embedded-systems c environments and even under a few flavors of unix. note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism even if he or she has never seen a vax. some of these assumptions (esp. -- ) were valid on the pdp- , the original c machine, and became endemic years before the vax. the terms `vaxocentricity' and `all-the-world's-a-vax syndrome' have been used synonymously. :vdiff: /vee'dif/ v.,n. visual diff. the operation of finding differences between two files by {eyeball search}. the term `optical diff' has also been reported, and is sometimes more specifically used for the act of superimposing two nearly identical printouts on one another and holding them up to a light to spot differences. though this method is poor for detecting omissions in the `rear' file, it can also be used with printouts of graphics, a claim few if any diff programs can make. see {diff}. :veeblefester: /vee'b*l-fes`tr/ [from the "born loser" comix via commodore; prob. originally from `mad' magazine's `veeblefeetzer' parodies ca. ] n. any obnoxious person engaged in the (alleged) professions of marketing or management. antonym of {hacker}. compare {suit}, {marketroid}. :venus flytrap: [after the insect-eating plant] n. see {firewall machine}. :verbage: /ver'b*j/ n. a deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of {verbiage} that assimilates it to the word `garbage'. compare {content-free}. more pejorative than `verbiage'. :verbiage: n. when the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers to {{documentation}}. this term borrows the connotations of mainstream `verbiage' to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the motives behind its production have little to do with the ostensible subject. :version : alt. v /vee' se'vn/ n. the unsupported release of {{unix}} ancestral to all current commercial versions. before the release of the posix/svid standards, v 's features were often treated as a unix portability baseline. see {bsd}, {usg unix}, {{unix}}. some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel bloat still maintain that v was the last true unix. :vgrep: /vee'grep/ v.,n. visual grep. the operation of finding patterns in a file optically rather than digitally (also called an `optical grep'). see {grep}; compare {vdiff}. :vi: /v-i/, *not* /vi:/ and *never* /siks/ [from `visual interface'] n. a screen editor crufted together by bill joy for an early {bsd} release. became the de facto standard unix editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of mit until the rise of {emacs} after about . tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no indication of which mode one is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). nevertheless it is still widely used (about half the respondents in a usenet poll preferred it), and even emacs fans often resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of emacs). see {holy wars}. :videotex: n. obs. an electronic service offering people the privilege of paying to read the weather on their television screens instead of having somebody read it to them for free while they brush their teeth. the idea bombed everywhere it wasn't government-subsidized, because by the time videotex was practical the installed base of personal computers could hook up to timesharing services and do the things for which videotex might have been worthwhile better and cheaper. videotex planners badly overestimated both the appeal of getting information from a computer and the cost of local intelligence at the user's end. like the {gorilla arm} effect, this has been a cautionary tale to hackers ever since. see also {vannevar}. :virgin: adj. unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again." (esp. useful after contracting a {virus} through {sex}.) also, by extension, buffers and the like within a program that have not yet been used. :virtual: [via the technical term `virtual memory', prob. from the term `virtual image' in optics] adj. . common alternative to {logical}; often used to refer to the artificial objects created by a computer system to help the system control access to shared resources. . simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't really there. an imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate. oppose {real}. :virtual friday: n. the last day before an extended weekend, if that day is not a `real' friday. for example, the u.s. holiday thanksgiving is always on a thursday. the next day is often also a holiday or taken as an extra day off, in which case wednesday of that week is a virtual friday (and thursday is a virtual saturday, as is friday). there are also `virtual mondays' that are actually tuesdays, after the three-day weekends associated with many national holidays in the u.s. :virtual reality: n. . computer simulations that use -d graphics and devices such as the dataglove to allow the user to interact with the simulation. see {cyberspace}. . a form of network interaction incorporating aspects of role-playing games, interactive theater, improvisational comedy, and `true confessions' magazines. in a virtual reality forum (such as usenet's alt.callahans newsgroup or the {mud} experiments on internet), interaction between the participants is written like a shared novel complete with scenery, `foreground characters' that may be personae utterly unlike the people who write them, and common `background characters' manipulable by all parties. the one iron law is that you may not write irreversible changes to a character without the consent of the person who `owns' it. otherwise anything goes. see {bamf}, {cyberspace}. :virus: [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via sf] n. a cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become {trojan horse}s. when these programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed too, thus propagating the `infection'. this normally happens invisibly to the user. unlike a {worm}, a virus cannot infect other computers without assistance. it is propagated by vectors such as humans trading programs with their friends (see {sex}). the virus may do nothing but propagate itself and then allow the program to run normally. usually, however, after propagating silently for a while, it starts doing things like writing cute messages on the terminal or playing strange tricks with your display (some viruses include nice {display hack}s). many nasty viruses, written by particularly perversely minded {cracker}s, do irreversible damage, like nuking all the user's files. in the s, viruses have become a serious problem, especially among ibm pc and macintosh users (the lack of security on these machines enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system). the production of special anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria among users; many {luser}s tend to blame *everything* that doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. accordingly, this sense of `virus' has passed not only into techspeak but into also popular usage (where it is often incorrectly used to denote a {worm} or even a {trojan horse}). compare {back door}; see also {unix conspiracy}. :visionary: n. . one who hacks vision, in the sense of an artificial intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to `see' things using tv cameras. (there isn't any problem in sending information from a tv camera to a computer. the problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? see {smop}, {ai-complete}.) . [ibm] one who reads the outside literature. at ibm, apparently, such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder. :vms: /v-m-s/ n. dec's proprietary operating system for its vax minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker folklore. many unix fans generously concede that vms would probably be the hacker's favorite commercial os if unix didn't exist; though true, this makes vms fans furious. one major hacker gripe with vms concerns its slowness --- thus the following limerick: there once was a system called vms of cycles by no means abstemious. it's chock-full of hacks and runs on a vax and makes my poor stomach all squeamious. --- the great quux see also {vax}, {{tops- }}, {{tops- }}, {{unix}}, {runic}. :voice: vt. to phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in {talk mode}. "i'm busy now; i'll voice you later." :voice-net: n. hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to a digital network. usenet {sig block}s not uncommonly include the sender's phone next to a "voice:" or "voice-net:" header; common variants of this are "voicenet" and "v-net". compare {paper-net}, {snail-mail}. :voodoo programming: [from george bush's "voodoo economics"] n. the use by guess or cookbook of an {obscure} or {hairy} system, feature, or algorithm that one does not truly understand. the implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn't, one will never know why. almost synonymous with {black magic}, except that black magic typically isn't documented and *nobody* understands it. compare {magic}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a dead chicken}. :vr: // [mud] n. on-line abbrev for {virtual reality}, as opposed to {rl}. :vulcan nerve pinch: n. [from the old "star trek" tv series via commodore amiga hackers] the keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to rom monitor (on machines that support such a feature). on many micros this is ctrl-alt-del; on suns, l -a; on some macintoshes, it is <cmd>-<power switch>! also called {three-finger salute}. compare {quadruple bucky}. :vulture capitalist: n. pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them. = w = ===== :wabbit: /wab'it/ [almost certainly from elmer fudd's immortal line "you wascawwy wabbit!"] n. . a legendary early hack reported on a system/ at rpi and elsewhere around ; this may have descended (if only by inspiration) from hack called rabbits reported from on a burroughs at the university of washington computer center. the program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the system. . by extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication but is not a {virus} or {worm}. see {fork bomb}, see also {cookie monster}. :waits:: /wayts/ n. the mutant cousin of {{tops- }} used on a handful of systems at {{sail}} up to . there was never an `official' expansion of waits (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glossed as `west-coast alternative to its'. though waits was less visible than its, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at waits exerted enormous indirect influence. the early screen modes of {emacs}, for example, were directly inspired by waits's `e' editor --- one of a family of editors that were the first to do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. the modern style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there, and waits alumni at xerox parc and elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the xerox star, the macintosh, and the sun workstations. {bucky bits} were also invented there --- thus, the alt key on every ibm pc is a waits legacy. one notable waits feature seldom duplicated elsewhere was a news-wire interface that allowed waits hackers to read, store, and filter ap and upi dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now called `multimedia' computing, allowing analog audio and video signals to be switched to programming terminals. :waldo: /wol'doh/ [from robert a. heinlein's story "waldo"] . a mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. when these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid- s they were named after the invention described by heinlein in the story, which he wrote in . now known by the more generic term `telefactoring', this technology is of intense interest to nasa for tasks like space station maintenance. . at harvard (particularly by tom cheatham and students), this is used instead of {foobar} as a metasyntactic variable and general nonsense word. see {foo}, {bar}, {foobar}, {quux}. :walk: n.,vt. traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list data structure in {core}. see also {codewalker}, {silly walk}, {clobber}. :walk off the end of: vt. to run past the end of an array, list, or medium after stepping through it --- a good way to land in trouble. often the result of an {off-by-one error}. compare {clobber}, {roach}, {smash the stack}. :walking drives: n. an occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s. those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. there is a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order to get at it! walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). some bands of old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races. :wall: [wpi] interj. . an indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone: "wall??" . a request for further explication. compare {octal forty}. . [unix] v. to send a message to everyone currently logged in, esp. with the wall( ) utility. it is said that sense came from the idiom `like talking to a blank wall'. it was originally used in situations where, after you had carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly, clearly having understood nothing that was explained. you would then throw out a "hello, wall?" to elicit some sort of response from the questioner. later, confused questioners began voicing "wall?" themselves. :wall follower: n. a person or algorithm that compensates for lack of sophistication or native stupidity by efficiently following some simple procedure shown to have been effective in the past. used of an algorithm, this is not necessarily pejorative; it recalls `harvey wallbanger', the winning robot in an early ai contest (named, of course, after the cocktail). harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a `finger' on one wall and running till it came out the other end. this was inelegant, but it was mathematically guaranteed to work on simply-connected mazes --- and, in fact, harvey outperformed more sophisticated robots that tried to `learn' each maze by building an internal representation of it. used of humans, the term *is* pejorative and implies an uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book mentality. see also {code grinder}, {droid}. :wall time: n. (also `wall clock time') . `real world' time (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed to the system clock's idea of time. . the real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of {clocks} required to execute it (on a timesharing system these will differ, as no one program gets all the {clocks}, and on multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get more processor clocks than real-time clocks). :wallpaper: n. . a file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or a transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a login session. (the idea was that the paper for such listings was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at stanford, where it was used to cover windows.) now rare, esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g., photo on twenex). however, the unix world doesn't have an equivalent term, so perhaps {wallpaper} will take hold there. the term probably originated on its, where the commands to begin and end transcript files were `:walbeg' and `:walend', with default file `wall paper' (the space was a path delimiter). . the background pattern used on graphical workstations (this is techspeak under the `windows' graphical user interface to ms-dos). . `wallpaper file' n. the file that contains the wallpaper information before it is actually printed on paper. (even if you don't intend ever to produce a real paper copy of the file, it is still called a wallpaper file.) :wango: /wang'goh/ n. random bit-level {grovel}ling going on in a system during some unspecified operation. often used in combination with {mumble}. for example: "you start with the `.o' file, run it through this postprocessor that does mumble-wango --- and it comes out a snazzy object-oriented executable." :wank: /wangk/ [columbia university: prob. by mutation from commonwealth slang v. `wank', to masturbate] n.,v. used much as {hack} is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such cleverness. may describe (negatively) the act of hacking for hacking's sake ("quit wanking, let's go get supper!") or (more positively) a {wizard}. adj. `wanky' describes something particularly clever (a person, program, or algorithm). conversations can also get wanky when there are too many wanks involved. this excess wankiness is signalled by an overload of the `wankometer' (compare {bogometer}). when the wankometer overloads, the conversation's subject must be changed, or all non-wanks will leave. compare `neep-neeping' (under {neep-neep}). usage: u.s. only. in britain and the commonwealth this word is *extremely* rude and is best avoided unless one intends to give offense. :wannabee: /won'*-bee/ (also, more plausibly, spelled `wannabe') [from a term recently used to describe madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol; prob. originally from biker slang] n. a would-be {hacker}. the connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age and exposure of the subject. used of a person who is in or might be entering {larval stage}, it is semi-approving; such wannabees can be annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such creatures. when used of any professional programmer, cs academic, writer, or {suit}, it is derogatory, implying that said person is trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all about. overuse of terms from this lexicon is often an indication of the {wannabee} nature. compare {newbie}. historical note: the wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different flavor now ( ) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. when the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval stage}, the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and unaffected by models known in popular culture --- communities formed spontaneously around people who, *as individuals*, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become similarly wizardly. those days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after included the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some people semi-consciously set out to *be hackers* and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually become a wizard. nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about the effects of public compendia of lore like this one. :warlording: [from the usenet group alt.fan.warlord] v. the act of excoriating a bloated, ugly, or derivative {sig block}. common grounds for warlording include the presence of a signature rendered in a {buaf}, over-used or cliched {sig quote}s, ugly {ascii art}, or simply excessive size. the original `warlord' was a {biff}-like {newbie} c. who featured in his sig a particularly large and obnoxious ascii graphic resembling the sword of conan the barbarian in the john milius movie; the group name alt.fan.warlord was sarcasm, and the characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly sarcastic praise. :warm boot: n. see {boot}. :wart: n. a small, {crock}y {feature} that sticks out of an otherwise {clean} design. something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule. for example, in some versions of `csh( )', single quotes literalize every character inside them except `!'. in ansi c, the `??' syntax used obtaining ascii characters in a foreign environment is a wart. see also {miswart}. :washing machine: n. old-style -inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. so called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs --- and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'. the washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it is even used in russian hacker jargon. see also {walking drives}. the thick channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see {hose}). :water mips: n. (see {mips}, sense ) large, water-cooled machines of either today's ecl-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional {mainframe} type. :wave a dead chicken: v. to perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "i'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but i really think we've run into an os bug." compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}. :weasel: n. [cambridge] a na"ive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. roughly synonymous with {loser}. :wedged: [from a common description of recto-cranial inversion] adj. . to be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. this is different from having crashed. if the system has crashed, then it has become totally non-functioning. if the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. for example, a process may become wedged if it {deadlock}s with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). see also {gronk}, {locked up}, {hosed}. describes a {deadlock}ed condition. . often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "he's totally wedged --- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." . [unix] specifically used to describe the state of a tty left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way. :wedgie: [fairchild] n. a bug. prob. related to {wedged}. :wedgitude: /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n. the quality or state of being {wedged}. :weeble: /weeb'l/ [cambridge] interj. used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. "i stuck the disk in upside down." "weeble...." compare {gurfle}. :weeds: n. . refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. comes from `off in the weeds'. used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds...." . at cdc/eta before its demise, the phrase `go off in the weeds' was equivalent to ibm's {branch to fishkill} and mainstream hackerdom's {jump off into never-never land}. :weenie: n. . [on bbses] any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing version of {biff} that infests many {bbs} systems. the typical weenie is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a grandiose {handle} derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. among sysops, `the weenie problem' refers to the marginally literate and profanity-laden {flamage} weenies tend to spew all over a newly-discovered bbs. compare {spod}, {computer geek}, {terminal junkie}. . [among hackers] when used with a qualifier (for example, as in {unix weenie}, vms weenie, ibm weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is applied by a person who considers him or herself to be the same sort of weenie. implies that the weenie has put a major investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; whether this is positive or negative depends on the hearer's judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. see also {bigot}. . the semicolon character, `;' (ascii ). :weenix: /wee'niks/ [its] n. a derogatory term for {{unix}}, derived from {unix weenie}. according to one noted ex-itser, it is "the operating system preferred by unix weenies: typified by poor modularity, poor reliability, hard file deletion, no file version numbers, case sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that these are all advantages". some its fans behave as though they believe unix stole a future that rightfully belonged to them. see {{its}}, sense . :well-behaved: adj. . [primarily {{ms-dos}}] said of software conforming to system interface guidelines and standards. well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphics. oppose {ill-behaved}. . software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. esp. said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as a {tool} by other software. see {cat}. :well-connected: adj. said of a computer installation, this means that it has reliable email links with the network and/or that it relays a large fraction of available {usenet} newsgroups. `well-known' can be almost synonymous, but also implies that the site's name is familiar to many (due perhaps to an archive service or active usenet users). :wetware: /wet'weir/ [prob. from the novels of rudy rucker] n. . the human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. "wetware has plus or minus temporary registers." . human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. see {liveware}, {meatware}. :whack: v. according to arch-hacker james gosling, to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it works." (see {whacker}.) it is actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and you are very good at {glark}ing things from context. as a trivial example, it is relatively easy to change all `stderr' writes to `stdout' writes in a piece of c filter code which remains otherwise mysterious. :whacker: [university of maryland: from {hacker}] n. . a person, similar to a {hacker}, who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only ends up whacking the system or program in question. whackers are often quite egotistical and eager to claim {wizard} status, regardless of the views of their peers. . a person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly and ineptly. :whales: n. see {like kicking dead whales down the beach}. :whalesong: n. the peculiar clicking and whooshing sounds made by a pep modem such as the telebit trailblazer as it tries to synchronize with another pep modem for their special high-speed mode. this sound isn't anything like the normal two-tone handshake between conventional modems and is instantly recognizable to anyone who has heard it more than once. it sounds, in fact, very much like whale songs. this noise is also called "the moose call" or "moose tones". :what's a spline?: [xerox parc] this phrase expands to: "you have just used a term that i've heard for a year and a half, and i feel i should know, but don't. my curiosity has finally overcome my guilt." the parc lexicon adds "moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even if they seem obvious." :wheel: [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] n. a person who has an active {wheel bit}. "we need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." (see {wedged}, sense .) :wheel bit: n. a privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill or create jobs and user accounts. the term was invented on the tenex operating system, and carried over to tops- , xerox-ifs, and others. the state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. this term entered the unix culture from twenex in the mid- s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). see also {root}. :wheel wars: [stanford university] a period in {larval stage} during which student hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other out of the system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak havoc, usually at the expense of the lesser users. :white book: n. . syn. {k&r}. . adobe's fourth book in the postscript series, describing the previously-secret format of type fonts; `adobe type font format, version . ', (addison-wesley, , isbn - - - ). see also {red book}, {green book}, {blue book}. :whizzy: [sun] adj. (alt. `wizzy') describes a {cuspy} program; one that is feature-rich and well presented. :wibni: // [bell labs: wouldn't it be nice if] n. what most requirements documents and specifications consist entirely of. compare {iwbni}. :widget: n. . a meta-thing. used to stand for a real object in didactic examples (especially database tutorials). legend has it that the original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "but suppose the parts list for a widget has entries...." . [poss. evoking `window gadget'] a user interface object in {x} graphical user interfaces. :wiggles: n. [scientific computation] in solving partial differential equations by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are sawtooth (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength representable on the grid. if an algorithm is unstable, this is often the most unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the solution. alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be generated near a discontinuity by a gibbs phenomenon. :wimp environment: n. [acronymic from `window, icon, menu, pointing device (or pull-down menu)'] a graphical-user-interface-based environment such as {x} or the macintosh interface, as described by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility. see {menuitis}, {user-obsequious}. :win: [mit] . vi. to succeed. a program wins if no unexpected conditions arise, or (especially) if it sufficiently {robust} to take exceptions in stride. . n. success, or a specific instance thereof. a pleasing outcome. a {feature}. emphatic forms: `moby win', `super win', `hyper-win' (often used interjectively as a reply). for some reason `suitable win' is also common at mit, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. oppose {lose}; see also {big win}, which isn't quite just an intensification of `win'. :win big: vi. to experience serendipity. "i went shopping and won big; there was a -for- sale." see {big win}. :win win: interj. expresses pleasure at a {win}. :winchester:: n. informal generic term for `floating-head' magnetic-disk drives in which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion. the name arose because the original engineering prototype for what later became the ibm featured two -megabyte volumes; -- became `winchester' when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous winchester rifle (in the latter, the first referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge). :winged comments: n. comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to {boxed comments}. in c, for example: d = sqrt(x*x + y*y); /* distance from origin */ generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that line. :winkey: n. (alt. `winkey face') see {emoticon}. :winnage: /win'*j/ n. the situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is winning. :winner: . n. an unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer, or person. "so it turned out i could use a {lexer} generator instead of hand-coding my own pattern recognizer. what a win!" . `real winner': often sarcastic, but also used as high praise (see also the note under {user}). "he's a real winner --- never reports a bug till he can duplicate it and send in an example." :winnitude: /win'*-t[y]ood/ n. the quality of winning (as opposed to {winnage}, which is the result of winning). "guess what? they tweaked the microcode and now the lisp interpreter runs twice as fast as it used to." "that's really great! boy, what winnitude!" "yup. i'll probably get a half-hour's winnage on the next run of my program." perhaps curiously, the obvious antonym `lossitude' is rare. :wired: n. see {hardwired}. :wirehead: /wi:r'hed/ n. [prob. from sf slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation addict] . a hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on communications hardware. . an expert in local-area networks. a wirehead can be a network software wizard too, but will always have the ability to deal with network hardware, down to the smallest component. wireheads are known for their ability to lash up an ethernet terminator from spare resistors, for example. :wirewater: n. syn. {programming fluid}. this melds the mainstream slang adjective `wired' (stimulated, up, hyperactive) with `firewater'. :wish list: n. a list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. "ok, i'll add automatic filename completion to the wish list for the new interface." compare {tick-list features}. :within delta of: adj. see {delta}. :within epsilon of: adj. see {epsilon}. :wizard: n. . a person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works (that is, who {grok}s it); esp. someone who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. someone is a {hacker} if he or she has general hacking ability, but is a wizard with respect to something only if he or she has specific detailed knowledge of that thing. a good hacker could become a wizard for something given the time to study it. . a person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary people; one who has {wheel} privileges on a system. . a unix expert, esp. a unix systems programmer. this usage is well enough established that `unix wizard' is a recognized job title at some corporations and to most headhunters. see {guru}, {lord high fixer}. see also {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {incantation}, {magic}, {mutter}, {rain dance}, {voodoo programming}, {wave a dead chicken}. :wizard book: n. hal abelson and jerry sussman's `structure and interpretation of computer programs' (mit press, ; isbn - - - , an excellent computer science text used in introductory courses at mit. so called because of the wizard on the jacket. one of the {bible}s of the lisp/scheme world. also, less commonly, known as the {purple book}. :wizard mode: [from {rogue}] n. a special access mode of a program or system, usually passworded, that permits some users godlike privileges. generally not used for operating systems themselves (`root mode' or `wheel mode' would be used instead). :wizardly: adj. pertaining to wizards. a wizardly {feature} is one that only a wizard could understand or use properly. :womb box: n. . [tmrc] storage space for equipment. . [proposed] a variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber matrix; mundanely called a `flight case'. used for delicate test equipment, electronics, and musical instruments. :wombat: [waste of money, brains, and time] adj. applied to problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. often used in fanciful constructions such as `wrestling with a wombat'. see also {crawling horror}, {smop}. also note the rather different usage as a metasyntactic variable in {{commonwealth hackish}}. :wonky: /wong'kee/ [from australian slang] adj. yet another approximate synonym for {broken}. specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. "that was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came out in tengwar." also in `wonked out'. see {funky}, {demented}, {bozotic}. :woofer: [university of waterloo] n. some varieties of wide paper for printers have a perforation . inches from the left margin that allows the excess on the right-hand side to be torn off when the print format is columns or less wide. the right-hand excess may be called `woofer'. this term (like {tweeter}, which see) has been in use at waterloo since , but is elsewhere unknown. in audio jargon, the word refers to the bass speaker(s) on a hi-fi. :workaround: n. a temporary {kluge} inserted in a system under development or test in order to avoid the effects of a {bug} or {misfeature} so that work can continue. theoretically, workarounds are always replaced by {fix}es; in practice, customers often find themselves living with workarounds in the first couple of releases. "the code died on nul characters in the input, so i fixed it to interpret them as spaces." "that's not a fix, that's a workaround!" :working as designed: [ibm] adj. . in conformance to a wrong or inappropriate specification; useful, but misdesigned. . frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's utility. . unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a criticism or suggestion. at {ibm}, this sense is used in official documents! see {bad}. :worm: [from `tapeworm' in john brunner's novel `the shockwave rider', via xerox parc] n. a program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes. compare {virus}. nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is assumed that only {cracker}s write worms. perhaps the best-known example was robert t. morris's `internet worm' of , a `benign' one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of suns and vaxen across the u.s. see also {cracker}, {rtm}, {trojan horse}, {ice}, and {great worm, the}. :wound around the axle: adj. in an infinite loop. often used by older computer types. :wrap around: vi. (also n. `wraparound' and v. shorthand `wrap') . [techspeak] the action of a counter that starts over at zero or at `minus infinity' (see {infinity}) after its maximum value has been reached, and continues incrementing, either because it is programmed to do so or because of an overflow (as when a car's odometer starts over at ). . to change {phase} gradually and continuously by maintaining a steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat longer than hours, e.g., living six long ( -hour) days in a week (or, equivalently, sleeping at the rate of microhertz). see also {phase-wrapping}. :write-only code: [a play on `read-only memory'] n. code so arcane, complex, or ill-structured that it cannot be modified or even comprehended by anyone but its author, and possibly not even by him/her. a {bad thing}. :write-only language: n. a language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre that any routine of significant size is {write-only code}. a sobriquet applied occasionally to c and often to apl, though {intercal} and {teco} certainly deserve it more. :write-only memory: n. the obvious antonym to `read-only memory'. out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at signetics once created a specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be approved. this inclusion came to the attention of signetics {management} only when regular customers started calling and asking for pricing information. signetics published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones. later, around , signetics bought a double-page spread in `electronics' magazine's april issue and used the spec as an april fools' day joke. instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the "fully encoded, x n, random access, write-only-memory" data sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs. temp.", "iff vs. vff", "number of pins remaining vs. number of socket insertions", and "aql vs. selling price". the required a . vac vff supply, a + v vcc, and vdd of v, +/- %. :wrong thing: n. a design, action, or decision that is clearly incorrect or inappropriate. often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as if capitalized. the opposite of the {right thing}; more generally, anything that is not the right thing. in cases where `the good is the enemy of the best', the merely good --- although good --- is nevertheless the wrong thing. "in c, the default is for module-level declarations to be visible everywhere, rather than just within the module. this is clearly the wrong thing." :wugga wugga: /wuh'g* wuh'g*/ n. imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task. compare {cruncha cruncha cruncha}, {grind} (sense ). :wysiayg: /wiz'ee-ayg/ adj. describes a user interface under which "what you see is *all* you get"; an unhappy variant of {wysiwyg}. visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth; they often frustrate advanced users who would be better served by a command-style interface. when this happens, the frustrated user has a wysiayg problem. this term is most often used of editors, word processors, and document formatting programs. wysiwyg `desktop publishing' programs, for example, are a clear win for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them, especially things like newsletters and presentation slides. when typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quickly runs into wysiayg limitations, and the increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like tex or unix's `troff( )' becomes not just desirable but a necessity. :wysiwyg: /wiz'ee-wig/ adj. describes a user interface under which "what you see is what you get", as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands which do not result in immediate visual feedback. true wysiwyg in environments supporting multiple fonts or graphics is a a rarely-attained ideal; there are variants of this term to express real-world manifestations including wysiawyg (what you see is *almost* what you get) and wysimolwyg (what you see is more or less what you get). all these can be mildly derogatory, as they are often used to refer to dumbed-down {user-friendly} interfaces targeted at non-programmers; a hacker has no fear of obscure commands (compare {wysiayg}). on the other hand, {emacs} was one of the very first wysiwyg editors, replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, command-based {teco}. see also {wimp environment}. [oddly enough, wysiwyg has already made it into the oed, in lower case yet. --- esr] = x = ===== :x: /x/ n. . used in various speech and writing contexts (also in lowercase) in roughly its algebraic sense of `unknown within a set defined by context' (compare {n}). thus, the abbreviation x stands for , , , , or , and x stands for , or (note that a unix hacker might write these as [ - ] and [ - ] or ? and ? respectively; see {glob}). . [after the name of an earlier window system called `w'] an over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and incredibly over-complicated window system developed at mit and widely used on unix systems. :xerox parc: the famed palo alto research center. for more than a decade, from the early s into the mid- s, parc yielded an astonishing volume of groundbreaking hardware and software innovations. the modern mice, windows, and icons style of software interface was invented there. so was the laser printer, and the local-area network; and parc's series of d machines anticipated the poweful personal computers of the s by a decade. sadly, these prophets were without honor in their own company; so much so that it became a standard joke to describe parc as a place characterized by developing brilliant ideas for everyone else. :xoff: /x'of/ n. syn. {control-s}. :xon: /x'on/ n. syn. {control-q}. :xor: /x'or/, /kzor/ conj. exclusive or. `a xor b' means `a or b, but not both'. "i want to get cherry pie xor a banana split." this derives from the technical use of the term as a function on truth-values that is true if exactly one of its two arguments is true. :xref: /x'ref/ vt., n. hackish standard abbreviation for `cross-reference'. :xxx: /x-x-x/ n. a marker that attention is needed. commonly used in program comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. some hackers liken `xxx' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating. :xyzzy: /x-y-z-z-y/, /x-y-ziz'ee/, /ziz'ee/, or /ik-ziz'ee/ [from the advent game] adj. the {canonical} `magic word'. this comes from {advent}, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect the treasures you find there. if you type `xyzzy' at the appropriate time, you can move instantly between two otherwise distant points. if, therefore, you encounter some bit of {magic}, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying simply "xyzzy!" "ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you do it anyway." "xyzzy!" xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command on several oses; in data general's aos/vs, for example, it would typically respond "nothing happens", just as {advent} did if the magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed the action that enabled the word. in more recent -bit versions, by the way, aos/vs responds "twice as much happens". see also {plugh}. = y = ===== :ya-: [yet another] abbrev. in hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to {yet another}, following the precedent set by unix `yacc( )' (yet another compiler-compiler). see {yaba}. :yaba: /ya'b*/ [cambridge] n. yet another bloody acronym. whenever some program is being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name that is acronymic. the response from those with a trace of originality is to remark ironically that the proposed name would then be `yaba-compatible'. also used in response to questions like "what is wysiwyg?" see also {tla}. :yaun: /yawn/ [acronym for `yet another unix nerd'] n. reported from the san diego computer society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as a good-natured punning insult aimed at unix zealots. :yellow book: [proposed] n. the print version of this jargon file; `the new hacker's dictionary', mit press, (isbn - - - ). includes all the material in the . . version of the file, plus a foreword by guy l. steele jr. and a preface by eric s. raymond. most importantly, the book version is nicely typeset and includes almost all of the infamous crunchly cartoons by the great quux, each attached to an appropriate entry. :yellow wire: [ibm] n. repair wires used when connectors (especially ribbon connectors) got broken due to some schlemiel pinching them, or to reconnect cut traces after the fe mistakenly cut one. compare {blue wire}, {purple wire}, {red wire}. :yet another: adj. [from unix's `yacc( )', `yet another compiler-compiler', a lalr parser generator] . of your own work: a humorous allusion often used in titles to acknowledge that the topic is not original, though the content is. as in `yet another ai group' or `yet another simulated annealing algorithm'. . of others' work: describes something of which there are already far too many. see also {ya-}, {yaba}, {yaun}. :you are not expected to understand this: cav. [unix] the canonical comment describing something {magic} or too complicated to bother explaining properly. from an infamous comment in the context-switching code of the v unix kernel. :you know you've been hacking too long when...: the set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about themselves. these include the following: * not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail, but you remember your {network address} faster than your postal one. * your {so} kisses you on the neck and the first thing you think is "uh, oh, {priority interrupt}." * you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing it in octal. * your computers have a higher street value than your car. * in your universe, `round numbers' are powers of , not . * more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream in some programming language. * you realize you have never seen half of your best friends. [an early version of this entry said "all but one of these have been reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). even hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer." the ringer was balancing one's checkbook in octal, which i made up out of whole cloth. although more respondents picked that one out as fiction than any of the others, i also received multiple independent reports of its actually happening. --- esr] :your mileage may vary: cav. [from the standard disclaimer attached to epa mileage ratings by american car manufacturers] . a ritual warning often found in unix freeware distributions. translates roughly as "hey, i tried to write this portably, but who *knows* what'll happen on your system?" . a qualifier more generally attached to advice. "i find that sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary." :yow!: /yow/ [from "zippy the pinhead" comix] interj. a favored hacker expression of humorous surprise or emphasis. "yow! check out what happens when you twiddle the foo option on this display hack!" compare {gurfle}. :yoyo mode: n. the state in which the system is said to be when it rapidly alternates several times between being up and being down. interestingly (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware vendors give out free yoyos at usenix exhibits. sun microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at sigplan ' . tourists staying at one of atlanta's most respectable hotels were subsequently treated to the sight of of the country's top computer scientists testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby. :yu-shiang whole fish: /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ n. obs. the character gamma (extended sail ascii ), which with a loop in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. the term is actually the name of a chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not {parse}d) and covered with yu-shiang (or yu-hsiang) sauce. usage: primarily by people on the mit lisp machine, which could display this character on the screen. tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand. = z = ===== :zap: . n. spiciness. . vt. to make food spicy. . vt. to make someone `suffer' by making his food spicy. (most hackers love spicy food. hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes you wipe your nose for the rest of the meal.) see {zapped}. . vt. to modify, usually to correct; esp. used when the action is performed with a debugger or binary patching tool. also implies surgical precision. "zap the debug level to and run it again." in the ibm mainframe world, binary patches are applied to programs or to the os with a program called `superzap', whose file name is `imaspzap' (possibly contrived from i m a superzap). . vt. to erase or reset. . to {fry} a chip with static electricity. "uh oh --- i think that lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller." :zapped: adj. spicy. this term is used to distinguish between food that is hot (in temperature) and food that is *spicy*-hot. for example, the chinese appetizer bon bon chicken is a kind of chicken salad that is cold but zapped; by contrast, {vanilla} wonton soup is hot but not zapped. see also {{oriental food}}, {laser chicken}. see {zap}, senses and . :zen: vt. to figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "how'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "oh, i zenned it." contrast {grok}, which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. compare {hack mode}. see also {guru}. :zero: vt. . to set to . usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits or words (esp. in the construction `zero out'). . to erase; to discard all data from. said of disks and directories, where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. one may speak of something being `logically zeroed' rather than being `physically zeroed'. see {scribble}. :zero-content: adj. syn. {content-free}. :zeroth: /zee'rohth/ adj. first. among software designers, comes from c's and lisp's -based indexing of arrays. hardware people also tend to start counting at instead of ; this is natural since, e.g., the states of bits correspond to the binary numbers , , ..., and the digital devices known as `counters' count in this way. hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter of a publication `chapter ', especially if it is of an introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the first edition of {k&r}). in recent years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering from ). zero-based numbering tends to reduce {fencepost error}s, though it cannot eliminate them entirely. :zigamorph: /zig'*-morf/ n. hex ff ( ) when used as a delimiter or {fence} character. usage: primarily at ibm shops. :zip: [primarily ms-dos] vt. to create a compressed archive from a group of files using pkware's pkzip or a compatible archiver. its use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been written. commonly used as follows: "i'll zip it up and send it to you." see {arc}, {tar and feather}. :zipperhead: [ibm] n. a person with a closed mind. :zombie: [unix] n. a process that has died but has not yet relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a `wait( )' for it yet). these can be seen in `ps( )' listings occasionally. compare {orphan}. :zorch: /zorch/ . [tmrc] v. to attack with an inverse heat sink. . [tmrc] v. to travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity approaching lightspeed --- esr]. . [mit] v. to propel something very quickly. "the new comm software is very fast; it really zorches files through the network." . [mit] n. influence. brownie points. good karma. the intangible and fuzzy currency in which favors are measured. "i'd rather not ask him for that just yet; i think i've used up my quota of zorch with him for the week." . [mit] n. energy, drive, or ability. "i think i'll {punt} that change for now; i've been up for hours and i've run out of zorch." :zork: /zork/ n. the second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy gaming; see {advent}. originally written on mit-dm during the late s, later distributed with bsd unix (as a patched, sourceless rt- fortran binary; see {retrocomputing}) and commercialized as `the zork trilogy' by infocom. :zorkmid: /zork'mid/ n. the canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. this originated in {zork} but has spread to {nethack} and is referred to in several other games. = [^a-za-z] (see {regexp}) = ============================ :'snooze: /snooz/ [fidonet] n. fidonews, the weekly official on-line newsletter of fidonet. as the editorial policy of fidonews is "anything that arrives, we print", there are often large articles completely unrelated to fidonet, which in turn tend to elicit {flamage} in subsequent issues. :(tm): // [usenet] ascii rendition of the trademark-superscript symbol appended to phrases that the author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future editions of this lexicon. sometimes used ironically as a form of protest against the recent spate of software and algorithm patents and `look and feel' lawsuits. see also {un*x}. :-oid: [from `android'] suff. . this suffix is used as in mainstream english to indicate a poor imitation, a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. hackers will happily use it with all sorts of non-greco/latin stem words that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream english. for example, "he's a nerdoid" means that he superficially resembles a nerd but can't make the grade; a `modemoid' might be a -baud box (real modems run at ); a `computeroid' might be any {bitty box}. the word `keyboid' could be used to describe a {chiclet keyboard}, but would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the speaker's city of origin. . there is a more specific sense of `oid' as an indicator for `resembling an android' which in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers. it too has recently (in ) started to go mainstream (most notably in the term `trendoid' for victims of terminal hipness). this is probably traceable to the popularization of the term {droid} in "star wars" and its sequels. coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at least fifty years, and hackers (who are often sf fans) have probably been making `-oid' jargon for almost that long [though gls and i can personally confirm only that they were already common in the mid- s --- esr]. :-ware: [from `software'] suff. commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of software. for examples, see {careware}, {crippleware}, {crudware}, {freeware}, {fritterware}, {guiltware}, {liveware}, {meatware}, {payware}, {psychedelicware}, {shareware}, {shelfware}, {vaporware}, {wetware}. :/dev/null: /dev-nuhl/ [from the unix null device, used as a data sink] n. a notional `black hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to. a controversial posting, for example, might end "kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null". see {bit bucket}. : : numeric zero, as opposed to `o' (the th letter of the english alphabet). in their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. if your zero is center-dotted and letter-o is not, or if letter-o looks almost rectangular but zero more like an american football stood on end, you're probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on ibm controllers). if your zero is slashed but letter-o is not, you're probably looking at an old-style ascii graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable asr- teletype (scandinavians, for whom slashed-o is a letter, curse this arrangement). if letter-o has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at ibm and a few other early mainframe makers (scandinavians curse *this* arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide). some burroughs/unisys equipment displays a zero with a *reversed* slash. and yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-o so that it resembled an inverted q or cursive capital letter-o. are we sufficiently confused yet? : tbs: // n. the "one true brace style"; see {indent style}. : reset: /wuhn-twen'tee ree'set/ [from volts, u.s. wall voltage] n. to cycle power on a machine in order to reset or unjam it. compare {big red switch}, {power cycle}. : : infix. in translation software written by hackers, infix often represents the syllable *to* with the connotation `translate to': as in dvi ps (dvi to postscript), int string (integer to string), and texi roff (texinfo to [nt]roff). :@-party: /at'par`tee/ [from the @-sign in an internet address] n. (alt. `@-sign party' /at'si:n par`tee/) a semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a science-fiction convention (esp. the annual worldcon); one must have a {network address} to get in, or at least be in company with someone who does. one of the most reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their screens. compare {boink}. :@begin: // see {\begin}. :\begin: // [from the latex command] with \end, used humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. for example: \begin{flame} predicate logic is the only good programming language. anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. also, all computers should be tredecimal instead of binary. \end{flame} the scribe users at cmu and elsewhere used to use @begin/@end in an identical way (latex was built to resemble scribe). on usenet, this construct would more frequently be rendered as `<flame on>' and `<flame off>'. :(lexicon entries end here): :appendix a: hacker folklore **************************** this appendix contains several legends and fables that illuminate the meaning of various entries in the lexicon. :the meaning of `hack': ======================= "the word {hack} doesn't really have different meanings", according to mit hacker phil agre. "in fact, {hack} has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. which connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on the context. similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words, most notably {random}." hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it. an important secondary meaning of {hack} is `a creative practical joke'. this kind of hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the programming kind. of course, some hacks have both natures; see the lexicon entries for {pseudo} and {kgbvax}. but here are some examples of pure practical jokes that illustrate the hacking spirit: in , students from caltech (california institute of technology, in pasadena) hacked the rose bowl football game. one student posed as a reporter and `interviewed' the director of the university of washington card stunts (such stunts involve people in the stands who hold up colored cards to make pictures). the reporter learned exactly how the stunts were operated, and also that the director would be out to dinner later. while the director was eating, the students (who called themselves the `fiendish fourteen') picked a lock and stole a blank direction sheet for the card stunts. they then had a printer run off copies of the blank. the next day they picked the lock again and stole the master plans for the stunts --- large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt pictures. using these as a guide, they made new instructions for three of the stunts on the duplicated blanks. finally, they broke in once more, replacing the stolen master plans and substituting the stack of diddled instruction sheets for the original set. the result was that three of the pictures were totally different. instead of `washington', the word ``caltech' was flashed. another stunt showed the word `huskies', the washington nickname, but spelled it backwards. and what was supposed to have been a picture of a husky instead showed a beaver. (both caltech and mit use the beaver --- nature's engineer --- as a mascot.) after the game, the washington faculty athletic representative said: "some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." the washington student body president remarked: "no hard feelings, but at the time it was unbelievable. we were amazed." this is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the direction sheets constituted a form of programming. here is another classic hack: on november , , mit hacked the harvard-yale football game. just after harvard's second touchdown against yale, in the first quarter, a small black ball popped up out of the ground at the -yard line, and grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. the letters `mit' appeared all over the ball. as the players and officials stood around gawking, the ball grew to six feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a cloud of white smoke. the `boston globe' later reported: "if you want to know the truth, mit won the game." the prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of mit's delta kappa epsilon fraternity. the device consisted of a weather balloon, a hydraulic ram powered by freon gas to lift it out of the ground, and a vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. they made eight separate expeditions to harvard stadium between and a.m., locating an unused -volt circuit in the stadium and running buried wires from the stadium circuit to the -yard line, where they buried the balloon device. when the time came to activate the device, two fraternity members had merely to flip a circuit breaker and push a plug into an outlet. this stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise, publicity, the ingenious use of technology, safety, and harmlessness. the use of manual control allowed the prank to be timed so as not to disrupt the game (it was set off between plays, so the outcome of the game would not be unduly affected). the perpetrators had even thoughtfully attached a note to the balloon explaining that the device was not dangerous and contained no explosives. harvard president derek bok commented: "they have an awful lot of clever people down there at mit, and they did it again." president paul e. gray of mit said: "there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that i had anything to do with it, but i wish there were." the hacks above are verifiable history; they can be proved to have happened. many other classic-hack stories from mit and elsewhere, though retold as history, have the characteristics of what jan brunvand has called `urban folklore' (see {foaf}). perhaps the best known of these is the legend of the infamous trolley-car hack, an alleged incident in which engineering students are said to have welded a trolley car to its tracks with thermite. numerous versions of this have been recorded from the s to the present, most set at mit but at least one very detailed version set at cmu. brian leibowitz has researched mit hacks both real and mythical extensively; the interested reader is referred to his delightful pictorial compendium `the journal of the institute for hacks, tomfoolery, and pranks' (mit museum, ; isbn - - - ). finally, here is a story about one of the classic computer hacks. back in the mid- s, several of the system support staff at motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the xerox cp-v timesharing system. through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. the program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. in short, the barn door was wide open. motorola quite properly reported this problem to xerox via an official `level sidr' (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be fixed yesterday'). because the text of each sidr was entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as `security sidr', and attached all of the necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc. the cp-v people at xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official patch. months passed. the motorola guys pestered their xerox field-support rep, to no avail. finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted. they dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a thoroughly devilish set of patches. these patches were then incorporated into a pair of programs called `robin hood' and `friar tuck'. robin hood and friar tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs' (daemons, in unix terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them. one fine day, the system operator on the main cp-v software development system in el segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. these included the following: * tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a job. * disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would attempt to walk across the floor (see {walking drives}). * the card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself and punch a {lace card}. these would usually jam in the punch. * the console would print snide and insulting messages from robin hood to friar tuck, or vice versa. * the xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be instructed to stack into a, stack into b, or stack into a (unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into stacker b). one of the patches installed by the ghosts added some code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker. as a result, card decks would divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to recollate them manually. naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. they found the bandit ghost jobs running, and x'ed them... and were once again surprised. when robin hood was x'ed, the following sequence of events took place: !x id id : friar tuck... i am under attack! pray save me! id : off (aborted) id : fear not, friend robin! i shall rout the sheriff of nottingham's men! id : thank you, my good fellow! each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few milliseconds. the only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system. finally, the system programmers did the latter --- only to find that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! it turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time os image (the kernel file, in unix terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs that were to be started at boot time. the robin hood and friar tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled the monitor. not long thereafter, xerox released a patch for this problem. it is alleged that xerox filed a complaint with motorola's management about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. it is not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against either of them. :tv typewriters: a tale of hackish ingenuity ============================================ here is a true story about a glass tty: one day an mit hacker was in a motorcycle accident and broke his leg. he had to stay in the hospital quite a while, and got restless because he couldn't {hack}. two of his friends therefore took a terminal and a modem for it to the hospital, so that he could use the computer by telephone from his hospital bed. now this happened some years before the spread of home computers, and computer terminals were not a familiar sight to the average person. when the two friends got to the hospital, a guard stopped them and asked what they were carrying. they explained that they wanted to take a computer terminal to their friend who was a patient. the guard got out his list of things that patients were permitted to have in their rooms: tv, radio, electric razor, typewriter, tape player, ... no computer terminals. computer terminals weren't on the list, so the guard wouldn't let it in. rules are rules, you know. (this guard was clearly a {droid}.) fair enough, said the two friends, and they left again. they were frustrated, of course, because they knew that the terminal was as harmless as a tv or anything else on the list... which gave them an idea. the next day they returned, and the same thing happened: a guard stopped them and asked what they were carrying. they said: "this is a tv typewriter!" the guard was skeptical, so they plugged it in and demonstrated it. "see? you just type on the keyboard and what you type shows up on the tv screen." now the guard didn't stop to think about how utterly useless a typewriter would be that didn't produce any paper copies of what you typed; but this was clearly a tv typewriter, no doubt about it. so he checked his list: "a tv is all right, a typewriter is all right ... okay, take it on in!" [historical note: many years ago, `popular electronics' published solder-it-yourself plans for a tv typewriter. despite the essential uselessness of the device, it was an enormously popular project. steve ciarcia, the man behind `byte' magazine's "circuit cellar" feature, resurrected this ghost in one of his books of the early s. he ascribed its popularity (no doubt correctly) to the feeling of power the builder could achieve by being able to decide himself what would be shown on the tv. --- esr] :a story about `magic': (by gls) ================================ some years ago, i was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the mit ai lab's pdp- , and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. it was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one knows who). you don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. the switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. it had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words `magic' and `more magic'. the switch was in the `more magic' position. i called another hacker over to look at it. he had never seen the switch before either. closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! the other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. this switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. it was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. the computer instantly crashed. imagine our utter astonishment. we wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the `more magic' position before reviving the computer. a year later, i told this story to yet another hacker, david moon as i recall. he clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought i was fooling him with a bogus saga. to prove it to him, i showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the `more magic' position. we scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. that clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. so we flipped the switch. the computer promptly crashed. this time we ran for richard greenblatt, a long-time mit hacker, who was close at hand. he had never noticed the switch before, either. he inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and {dike}d it out. we then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. we still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. there is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. but we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was {magic}. i still have that switch in my basement. maybe i'm silly, but i usually keep it set on `more magic'. :a selection of ai koans: ========================= these are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at the mit ai lab about various noted hackers. the original koans were composed by danny hillis. in reading these, it is at least useful to know that minsky, sussman, and drescher are ai researchers of note, that tom knight was one of the lisp machine's principal designers, and that david moon wrote much of lisp machine lisp. * * * a novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "you cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." knight turned the machine off and on. the machine worked. * * * one day a student came to moon and said: "i understand how to make a better garbage collector. we must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons." moon patiently told the student the following story: "one day a student came to moon and said: `i understand how to make a better garbage collector... [ed. note: pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with circular structures that point to themselves.] * * * in the days when sussman was a novice, minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the pdp- . "what are you doing?", asked minsky. "i am training a randomly wired neural net to play tic-tac-toe" sussman replied. "why is the net wired randomly?", asked minsky. "i do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", sussman said. minsky then shut his eyes. "why do you close your eyes?", sussman asked his teacher. "so that the room will be empty." at that moment, sussman was enlightened. * * * a disciple of another sect once came to drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "i would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because i want you to be happy." drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: "i wish the toaster to be happy, too." :os and jedgar: =============== this story says a lot about the the its ethos. on the its system there was a program that allowed you to see what was being printed on someone else's terminal. it spied on the other guy's output by examining the insides of the monitor system. the output spy program was called os. throughout the rest of the computer science (and at ibm too) os means `operating system', but among old-time its hackers it almost always meant `output spy'. os could work because its purposely had very little in the way of `protection' that prevented one user from trespassing on another's areas. fair is fair, however. there was another program that would automatically notify you if anyone started to spy on your output. it worked in exactly the same way, by looking at the insides of the operating system to see if anyone else was looking at the insides that had to do with your output. this `counterspy' program was called jedgar (a six-letterism pronounced as two syllables: /jed'gr/), in honor of the former head of the fbi. but there's more. jedgar would ask the user for `license to kill'. if the user said yes, then jedgar would actually {gun} the job of the {luser} who was spying. unfortunately, people found that this made life too violent, especially when tourists learned about it. one of the systems hackers solved the problem by replacing jedgar with another program that only pretended to do its job. it took a long time to do this, because every copy of jedgar had to be patched. to this day no one knows how many people never figured out that jedgar had been defanged. :the story of mel, a real programmer: ===================================== this was posted to usenet by its author, ed nather (utastro!nather), on may , . a recent article devoted to the *macho* side of programming made the bald and unvarnished statement: real programmers write in fortran. maybe they do now, in this decadent era of lite beer, hand calculators, and "user-friendly" software but back in the good old days, when the term "software" sounded funny and real computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes, real programmers wrote in machine code. not fortran. not ratfor. not, even, assembly language. machine code. raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers. directly. lest a whole new generation of programmers grow up in ignorance of this glorious past, i feel duty-bound to describe, as best i can through the generation gap, how a real programmer wrote code. i'll call him mel, because that was his name. i first met mel when i went to work for royal mcbee computer corp., a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company. the firm manufactured the lgp- , a small, cheap (by the standards of the day) drum-memory computer, and had just started to manufacture the rpc- , a much-improved, bigger, better, faster --- drum-memory computer. cores cost too much, and weren't here to stay, anyway. (that's why you haven't heard of the company, or the computer.) i had been hired to write a fortran compiler for this new marvel and mel was my guide to its wonders. mel didn't approve of compilers. "if a program can't rewrite its own code", he asked, "what good is it?" mel had written, in hexadecimal, the most popular computer program the company owned. it ran on the lgp- and played blackjack with potential customers at computer shows. its effect was always dramatic. the lgp- booth was packed at every show, and the ibm salesmen stood around talking to each other. whether or not this actually sold computers was a question we never discussed. mel's job was to re-write the blackjack program for the rpc- . (port? what does that mean?) the new computer had a one-plus-one addressing scheme, in which each machine instruction, in addition to the operation code and the address of the needed operand, had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum, the next instruction was located. in modern parlance, every single instruction was followed by a go to! put *that* in pascal's pipe and smoke it. mel loved the rpc- because he could optimize his code: that is, locate instructions on the drum so that just as one finished its job, the next would be just arriving at the "read head" and available for immediate execution. there was a program to do that job, an "optimizing assembler", but mel refused to use it. "you never know where it's going to put things", he explained, "so you'd have to use separate constants". it was a long time before i understood that remark. since mel knew the numerical value of every operation code, and assigned his own drum addresses, every instruction he wrote could also be considered a numerical constant. he could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say, and multiply by it, if it had the right numeric value. his code was not easy for someone else to modify. i compared mel's hand-optimized programs with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program, and mel's always ran faster. that was because the "top-down" method of program design hadn't been invented yet, and mel wouldn't have used it anyway. he wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first, so they would get first choice of the optimum address locations on the drum. the optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way. mel never wrote time-delay loops, either, even when the balky flexowriter required a delay between output characters to work right. he just located instructions on the drum so each successive one was just *past* the read head when it was needed; the drum had to execute another complete revolution to find the next instruction. he coined an unforgettable term for this procedure. although "optimum" is an absolute term, like "unique", it became common verbal practice to make it relative: "not quite optimum" or "less optimum" or "not very optimum". mel called the maximum time-delay locations the "most pessimum". after he finished the blackjack program and got it to run ("even the initializer is optimized", he said proudly), he got a change request from the sales department. the program used an elegant (optimized) random number generator to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck", and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair, since sometimes the customers lost. they wanted mel to modify the program so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console, they could change the odds and let the customer win. mel balked. he felt this was patently dishonest, which it was, and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer, which it did, so he refused to do it. the head salesman talked to mel, as did the big boss and, at the boss's urging, a few fellow programmers. mel finally gave in and wrote the code, but he got the test backwards, and, when the sense switch was turned on, the program would cheat, winning every time. mel was delighted with this, claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical, and adamantly refused to fix it. after mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$, the big boss asked me to look at the code and see if i could find the test and reverse it. somewhat reluctantly, i agreed to look. tracking mel's code was a real adventure. i have often felt that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. you can learn a lot about an individual just by reading through his code, even in hexadecimal. mel was, i think, an unsung genius. perhaps my greatest shock came when i found an innocent loop that had no test in it. no test. *none*. common sense said it had to be a closed loop, where the program would circle, forever, endlessly. program control passed right through it, however, and safely out the other side. it took me two weeks to figure it out. the rpc- computer had a really modern facility called an index register. it allowed the programmer to write a program loop that used an indexed instruction inside; each time through, the number in the index register was added to the address of that instruction, so it would refer to the next datum in a series. he had only to increment the index register each time through. mel never used it. instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register, add one to its address, and store it back. he would then execute the modified instruction right from the register. the loop was written so this additional execution time was taken into account --- just as this instruction finished, the next one was right under the drum's read head, ready to go. but the loop had no test in it. the vital clue came when i noticed the index register bit, the bit that lay between the address and the operation code in the instruction word, was turned on --- yet mel never used the index register, leaving it zero all the time. when the light went on it nearly blinded me. he had located the data he was working on near the top of memory --- the largest locations the instructions could address --- so, after the last datum was handled, incrementing the instruction address would make it overflow. the carry would add one to the operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set: a jump instruction. sure enough, the next program instruction was in address location zero, and the program went happily on its way. i haven't kept in touch with mel, so i don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of change that has washed over programming techniques since those long-gone days. i like to think he didn't. in any event, i was impressed enough that i quit looking for the offending test, telling the big boss i couldn't find it. he didn't seem surprised. when i left the company, the blackjack program would still cheat if you turned on the right sense switch, and i think that's how it should be. i didn't feel comfortable hacking up the code of a real programmer. this is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or no. in a few spare images it captures more about the esthetics and psychology of hacking than all the scholarly volumes on the subject put together. for an opposing point of view, see the entry for {real programmer}. [ postscript --- the author writes: "the original submission to the net was not in free verse, nor any approximation to it --- it was straight prose style, in non-justified paragraphs. in bouncing around the net it apparently got modified into the `free verse' form now popular. in other words, it got hacked on the net. that seems appropriate, somehow."] :appendix b: a portrait of j. random hacker ******************************************* this profile reflects detailed comments on an earlier `trial balloon' version from about a hundred usenet respondents. where comparatives are used, the implicit `other' is a randomly selected segment of the non-hacker population of the same size as hackerdom. an important point: except in some relatively minor respects such as slang vocabulary, hackers don't get to be the way they are by imitating each other. rather, it seems to be the case that the combination of personality traits that makes a hacker so conditions one's outlook on life that one tends to end up being like other hackers whether one wants to or not (much as bizarrely detailed similarities in behavior and preferences are found in genetic twins raised separately). :general appearance: ==================== intelligent. scruffy. intense. abstracted. surprisingly for a sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both extremes are more common than elsewhere. tans are rare. :dress: ======= casual, vaguely post-hippie; t-shirts, jeans, running shoes, birkenstocks (or bare feet). long hair, beards, and moustaches are common. high incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or humorous `slogan' t-shirts (only rarely computer related; that would be too obvious). a substantial minority prefers `outdoorsy' clothing --- hiking boots ("in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the machine room", as one famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack or chamois shirts, and the like. very few actually fit the `national lampoon' nerd stereotype, though it lingers on at mit and may have been more common before . these days, backpacks are more common than briefcases, and the hacker `look' is more whole-earth than whole-polyester. hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance hassles rather than for appearance (some, perhaps unfortunately, take this to extremes and neglect personal hygiene). they have a very low tolerance of suits and other `business' attire; in fact, it is not uncommon for hackers to quit a job rather than conform to a dress code. female hackers almost never wear visible makeup, and many use none at all. :reading habits: ================ omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science fiction. the typical hacker household might subscribe to `analog', `scientific american', `co-evolution quarterly', and `smithsonian'. hackers often have a reading range that astonishes liberal arts people but tend not to talk about it as much. many hackers spend as much of their spare time reading as the average american burns up watching tv, and often keep shelves and shelves of well-thumbed books in their homes. :other interests: ================= some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the culture: science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active form practiced by the society for creative anachronism and similar organizations), chess, go, backgammon, wargames, and intellectual games of all kinds. (role-playing games such as dungeons and dragons used to be extremely popular among hackers but they lost a bit of their luster as they moved into the mainstream and became heavily commercialized.) logic puzzles. ham radio. other interests that seem to correlate less strongly but positively with hackerdom include linguistics and theater teching. :physical activity and sports: ============================== many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and are determinedly anti-physical. among those who do, interest in spectator sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one *does*, not something one watches on tv. further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague (volleyball is a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and relatively friendly). hacker sports are almost always primarily self-competitive ones involving concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting, sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating (ice and roller). hackers' delight in techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty complicated equipment that they can tinker with. :education: =========== nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or self-educated to an equivalent level. the self-taught hacker is often considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may be more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. academic areas from which people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious computer science and electrical engineering) physics, mathematics, linguistics, and philosophy. :things hackers detest and avoid: ================================= ibm mainframes. smurfs, ewoks, and other forms of offensive cuteness. bureaucracies. stupid people. easy listening music. television (except for cartoons, movies, the old "star trek", and the new "simpsons"). business suits. dishonesty. incompetence. boredom. cobol. basic. character-based menu interfaces. :food: ====== ethnic. spicy. oriental, esp. chinese and most esp. szechuan, hunan, and mandarin (hackers consider cantonese vaguely d'eclass'e). hackers prefer the exotic; for example, the japanese-food fans among them will eat with gusto such delicacies as fugu (poisonous pufferfish) and whale. thai food has experienced flurries of popularity. where available, high-quality jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed. a visible minority of southwestern and pacific coast hackers prefers mexican. for those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big. interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly health-foodist attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what they eat. this may be generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that the stereotype was more on the mark -- years ago. :politics: ========== vaguely left of center, except for the strong libertarian contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. the only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both conventional conservatism and `hard' leftism are rare. hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day. :gender and ethnicity: ====================== hackerdom is still predominantly male. however, the percentage of women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as equals. in the u.s., hackerdom is predominantly caucasian with strong minorities of jews (east coast) and orientals (west coast). the jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see {food}, above, and note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated yiddish). the ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt. when asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. also, the ties many hackers have to ai research and sf literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive --- after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to ai programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more. :religion: ========== agnostic. atheist. non-observant jewish. neo-pagan. very commonly, three or more of these are combined in the same person. conventional faith-holding christianity is rare though not unknown. even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of religious bigotry in particular. many enjoy `parody' religions such as discordianism and the church of the subgenius. also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by zen buddhism or (less commonly) taoism, and blend them easily with their `native' religions. there is a definite strain of mystical, almost gnostic sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, discordianism, or zen. hacker folklore that pays homage to `wizards' and speaks of incantations and demons has too much psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke. :ceremonial chemicals: ====================== most hackers don't smoke tobacco, and use alcohol in moderation if at all (though there is a visible contingent of exotic-beer fanciers, and a few hackers are serious oenophiles). limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, lsd, psilocybin, and nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. use of `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that `dumb them down'. on the third hand, many hackers regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs. :communication style: ===================== see the discussions of speech and writing styles near the beginning of this file. though hackers often have poor person-to-person communication skills, they are as a rule extremely sensitive to nuances of language and very precise in their use of it. they are often better at writing than at speaking. :geographical distribution: =========================== in the united states, hackerdom revolves on a bay area-to-boston axis; about half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of cambridge (massachusetts) or berkeley (california), although there are significant contingents in los angeles, in the pacific northwest, and around washington dc. hackers tend to cluster around large cities, especially `university towns' such as the raleigh-durham area in north carolina or princeton, new jersey (this may simply reflect the fact that many are students or ex-students living near their alma maters). :sexual habits: =============== hackerdom tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle variation than the mainstream culture. it includes a relatively large gay and bi contingent. hackers are somewhat more likely to live in polygynous or polyandrous relationships, practice open marriage, or live in communes or group houses. in this, as in general appearance, hackerdom semi-consciously maintains `counterculture' values. :personality characteristics: ============================= the most obvious common `personality' characteristics of hackers are high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with intellectual abstractions. also, most hackers are `neophiles', stimulated by and appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). most are also relatively individualistic and anti-conformist. although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the sine qua non one might expect. another trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of `meaningless' detail, trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. a person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a creative genius who lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced by people who routinely upload the contents of thick reference manuals into their brains. [during the production of the book version of this document, for example, i learned most of the rather complex typesetting language tex over about four working days, mainly by inhaling knuth's -page manual. my editor's flabbergasted reaction to this genuinely surprised me, because years of associating with hackers have conditioned me to consider such performances routine and to be expected. --- esr] contrary to stereotype, hackers are *not* usually intellectually narrow; they tend to be interested in any subject that can provide mental stimulation, and can often discourse knowledgeably and even interestingly on any number of obscure subjects --- if you can get them to talk at all, as opposed to, say, going back to their hacking. it is noticeable (and contrary to many outsiders' expectations) that the better a hacker is at hacking, the more likely he or she is to have outside interests at which he or she is more than merely competent. hackers are `control freaks' in a way that has nothing to do with the usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the term. in the same way that children delight in making model trains go forward and back by moving a switch, hackers love making complicated things like computers do nifty stuff for them. but it has to be *their* nifty stuff. they don't like tedium, nondeterminism, or most of the fussy, boring, ill-defined little tasks that go with maintaining a normal existence. accordingly, they tend to be careful and orderly in their intellectual lives and chaotic elsewhere. their code will be beautiful, even if their desks are buried in feet of crap. hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional rewards such as social approval or money. they tend to be attracted by challenges and excited by interesting toys, and to judge the interest of work or other activities in terms of the challenges offered and the toys they get to play with. in terms of myers-briggs and equivalent psychometric systems, hackerdom appears to concentrate the relatively rare intj and intp types; that is, introverted, intuitive, and thinker types (as opposed to the extroverted-sensate personalities that predominate in the mainstream culture). ent[jp] types are also concentrated among hackers but are in a minority. :weaknesses of the hacker personality: ====================================== hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with other people. this may be because hackers generally aren't much like `other people'. unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people and tasks perceived to be wasting their time. as cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational, `cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. this bias often contributes to weakness in communication skills. hackers tend to be especially poor at confrontation and negotiation. because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the {right thing}, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant and bigoted on technical issues, in marked contrast to their general spirit of camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise. old-time {{its}} partisans look down on the ever-growing hordes of {{unix}} hackers; unix aficionados despise {vms} and {{ms-dos}}; and hackers who are used to conventional command-line user interfaces loathe mouse-and-menu based systems such as the macintosh. hackers who don't indulge in {usenet} consider it a huge waste of time and {bandwidth}; fans of old adventure games such as {advent} and {zork} consider {mud}s to be glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere or interesting puzzles; hackers who are willing to devote endless hours to usenet or muds consider {irc} to be a *real* waste of time; ircies think muds might be okay if there weren't all those silly puzzles in the way. and, of course, there are the perennial {holy wars} -- {emacs} vs. {vi}, {big-endian} vs. {little-endian}, risc vs. cisc, etc., etc., etc. as in society at large, the intensity and duration of these debates is usually inversely proportional to the number of objective, factual arguments available to buttress any position. as a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty maintaining stable relationships. at worst, they can produce the classic {computer geek}: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her craft. fortunately, this extreme is far less common than mainstream folklore paints it --- but almost all hackers will recognize something of themselves in the unflattering paragraphs above. hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing with the physical world. bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles up to incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance tasks get deferred indefinitely. the sort of person who uses phrases like `incompletely socialized' usually thinks hackers are. hackers regard such people with contempt when they notice them at all. :miscellaneous: =============== hackers are more likely to have cats than dogs (in fact, it is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature). many drive incredibly decrepit heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy porsches and rx- s and then forget to have them washed. almost all hackers have terribly bad handwriting, and often fall into the habit of block-printing everything like junior draftsmen. :appendix c: bibliography ************************* here are some other books you can read to help you understand the hacker mindset. :g"odel, escher, bach: an eternal golden braid: douglas hofstadter basic books, isbn - - - this book reads like an intellectual grand tour of hacker preoccupations. music, mathematical logic, programming, speculations on the nature of intelligence, biology, and zen are woven into a brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of encoded self-reference. the perfect left-brain companion to `illuminatus'. :illuminatus!: i. `the eye in the pyramid' ii. `the golden apple' iii. `leviathan'. robert shea and robert anton wilson dell, isbn - - - this work of alleged fiction is an incredible berserko-surrealist rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins, the fall of atlantis, who really killed jfk, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and the cosmic giggle factor. first published in three volumes, but there is now a one-volume trade paperback, carried by most chain bookstores under sf. the perfect right-brain companion to hofstadter's `g"odel, escher, bach'. see {eris}, {discordianism}, {random numbers}, {church of the subgenius}. :the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy: douglas adams pocket books, isbn - - - this `monty python in space' spoof of sf genre traditions has been popular among hackers ever since the original british radio show. read it if only to learn about vogons (see {bogon}) and the significance of the number (see {random numbers}) --- and why the winningest chess program of was called `deep thought'. :the tao of programming: james geoffrey infobooks, isbn - - - this gentle, funny spoof of the `tao te ching' contains much that is illuminating about the hacker way of thought. "when you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave." :hackers: steven levy anchor/doubleday isbn - - - levy's book is at its best in describing the early mit hackers at the model railroad club and the early days of the microcomputer revolution. he never understood unix or the networks, though, and his enshrinement of richard stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out (thankfully) to have been quite misleading. numerous minor factual errors also mar the text; for example, levy's claim that the original jargon file derived from the tmrc dictionary (the file originated at stanford and was brought to mit in ; the co-authors of the first edition had never seen the dictionary in question). there are also numerous misspellings in the book that inflame the passions of old-timers; as dan murphy, the author of teco, once said: "you would have thought he'd take the trouble to spell the name of a winning editor right." nevertheless, this remains a useful and stimulating book that captures the feel of several important hackish subcultures. :the devil's dp dictionary: stan kelly-bootle mcgraw-hill, isbn - - - this pastiche of ambrose bierce's famous work is similar in format to the jargon file (and quotes several entries from jargon- ) but somewhat different in tone and intent. it is more satirical and less anthropological, and is largely a product of the author's literate and quirky imagination. for example, it defines `computer science' as "a study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter" and "the boring art of coping with a large number of trivialities." :the devouring fungus: tales from the computer age: karla jennings norton, isbn - - - the author of this pioneering compendium knits together a great deal of computer- and hacker-related folklore with good writing and a few well-chosen cartoons. she has a keen eye for the human aspects of the lore and is very good at illuminating the psychology and evolution of hackerdom. unfortunately, a number of small errors and awkwardnesses suggest that she didn't have the final manuscript checked over by a native speaker; the glossary in the back is particularly embarrassing, and at least one classic tale (the magic switch story, retold here under {a story about `magic'} in {appendix a}) is given in incomplete and badly mangled form. nevertheless, this book is a win overall and can be enjoyed by hacker and non-hacker alike. :the soul of a new machine: tracy kidder little, brown, (paperback: avon, isbn - - - ) this book (a pulitzer prize winner) documents the adventure of the design of a new data general computer, the eclipse. it is an amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset --- although largely the hardware hacker --- done by a complete outsider. it is a bit thin in spots, but with enough technical information to be entertaining to the serious hacker while providing non-technical people a view of what day-to-day life can be like --- the fun, the excitement, the disasters. during one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "i am going to a commune in vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." :life with unix: a guide for everyone: don libes and sandy ressler prentice-hall, isbn - - - the authors of this book set out to tell you all the things about unix that tutorials and technical books won't. the result is gossipy, funny, opinionated, downright weird in spots, and invaluable. along the way they expose you to enough of unix's history, folklore and humor to qualify as a first-class source for these things. because so much of today's hackerdom is involved with unix, this in turn illuminates many of its in-jokes and preoccupations. :true names ... and other dangers: vernor vinge baen books, isbn - - - hacker demigod richard stallman believes the title story of this book "expresses the spirit of hacking best". this may well be true; it's certainly difficult to recall a better job. the other stories in this collection are also fine work by an author who is perhaps one of today's very best practitioners of hard sf. :cyberpunk: outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier: katie hafner & john markoff simon & schuster isbn - - - this book gathers narratives about the careers of three notorious crackers into a clear-eyed but sympathetic portrait of hackerdom's dark side. the principals are kevin mitnick, "pengo" and "hagbard" of the chaos computer club, and robert t. morris (see {rtm}, sense ) . markoff and hafner focus as much on their psychologies and motivations as on the details of their exploits, but don't slight the latter. the result is a balanced and fascinating account, particularly useful when read immediately before or after cliff stoll's {the cuckoo's egg}. it is especially instructive to compare rtm, a true hacker who blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak mitnick and the alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the chaos club notorious. the gulf between {wizard} and {wannabee} has seldom been made more obvious. :technobabble: john barry mit press isbn - - - barry's book takes a critical and humorous look at the `technobabble' of acronyms, neologisms, hyperbole, and metaphor spawned by the computer industry. though he discusses some of the same mechanisms of jargon formation that occur in hackish, most of what he chronicles is actually suit-speak --- the obfuscatory language of press releases, marketroids, and silicon valley ceos rather than the playful jargon of hackers (most of whom wouldn't be caught dead uttering the kind of pompous, passive-voiced word salad he deplores). :the cuckoo's egg: clifford stoll doubleday isbn - - - clifford stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked markus hess and the chaos club cracking ring nicely illustrates the difference between `hacker' and `cracker'. stoll's portrait of himself, his lady martha, and his friends at berkeley and on the internet paints a marvelously vivid picture of how hackers and the people around them like to live and what they think. #====================== the jargon file ends here ======================# the dawn of amateur radio in the u.k. and greece: a personal view norman f. joly. copyright london : joly, . - p. - - - - c o n t e n t s . prologue . the development of electricity . the birth of radio communications . what is a radio amateur? . the amateur transatlantic tests . the first greek radio amateurs . world war ii and after in greece . pioneers in greece . personal reminiscences & anecdotes . miscellany . glossary for non-technical readers prologue thales of miletus. thales, who was born in b.c., was a man of exceptional wisdom and one of the seven sages of ancient greece. he was the father of greek, and consequently of european philosophy and science. his speculations embraced a wide range of subjects relating to political as well as to celestial matters. one must remember that even up to the th century there was no clear distinction between philosophy and science, both being products of the human mind in its attempts to explain reality. thales had studied astronomy in egypt so he was able to draw up accurate tables forecasting when the river nile would be in flood. but he first became widely known by anticipating an eclipse of the sun for may b.c., which happened to coincide with the final battle of the war between the lydians and the persians. he had used some tables drawn up by babylonian astronomers, but he did not succeed in forecasting the exact day (may th) or the hour of the spectacular event. it can well be said that thales was the first man ever recorded to have cornered the market in a commodity: having foreseen a three-year drought he bought up large quantities of olive oil and stored it for sale at a later date. but who could possibly have imagined that one of thales' original speculations would affect the radio amateurs of the th century? he believed that certain inanimate substances, like lodestones (magnetic rocks) and the resin amber, possessed psyche (a soul). many centuries had to elapse before this soul was identified as static electricity and magnetism and harnessed for the generation of mains electricity which dramatically altered the pattern of life on our planet--and also led to the creation of our hobby of amateur radio. about years ago an english scientist called william gilbert ( - ), who had read about the unexplained observation of thales, also became interested in the intangible property and decided to call it electricity, from the classical greek word for amber, which is electron. chapter one the development of electricity the phenomenon which thales had observed and recorded five centuries before the birth of christ aroused the interest of many scientists through the ages. they made various practical experiments in their efforts to identify the elusive force which thales had likened to a 'soul' and which we now know to have been static electricity. of all forms of energy, electricity is the most baffling and difficult to describe. an electric current cannot be seen. in fact it does not exist outside the wires and other conductors which carry it. a live wire carrying a current looks exactly the same and weighs exactly the same as it does when it is not carrying a current. an electric current is simply a movement or flow of electrons. benjamin franklin, the american statesman and scientist born in boston in , investigated the nature of thunder and lightning by flying a child's kite during a thunderstorm. he had attached a metal spike to the kite, and at the other end of the string to which the kite was tied he secured a key. as the rain soaked into the string, electricity flowed freely down the string and franklin was able to draw large sparks from the key. of course this could have been very dangerous, but he had foreseen it and had supported the string through an insulator. he observed that this electricity had the same properties as the static electricity produced by friction. but long before franklin many other scientists had carried out research into the nature of electricity. in england william gilbert ( - ) had noticed that the powers of attraction and repulsion of two non-metallic rods which he had rubbed briskly were similar to those of lodestone and amber--they had acquired the curious quality we call magnetism. remembering thales of old he coined the word 'electricity'. otto von guericke ( - ) a mayor of magdeburg in germany, was an amateur scientist who had constructed all manner of gadgets. one of them was a machine consisting of two glass discs revolving in opposite directions which produced high voltage charges through friction. ramsden and wimshurst built improved versions of the machine. a significant breakthrough occurred when alessandro volta ( - ) in italy constructed a simple electric cell (in ) which produced a flow of electrons by chemical means. two plates, one of copper and the other of zinc, were placed in an acid solution and a current flowed through an external wire connecting the two plates. later he connected cells in series (voltaic pile) which consisted of alternate layers of zinc and copper discs separated by flannel discs soaked in brine or acid which produced a higher electric pressure (voltage). but volta never found the right explanation of why his cell was working. he thought the flow of electric current was due to the contact between the two metals, whereas in fact it results from the chemical action of the electrolyte on the zinc plate. however, his discovery proved to be of incalculable value in research, as it enabled scientists to carry out experiments which led to the discoveries of the heating, lighting, chemical and magnetic effects of electricity. one of the many scientists and physicists who took advantage of the 'current electricity' made possible by volta's cells was hans christian oersted ( - ) of denmark. like many others he was looking for a connection between the age-old study of magnetism and electricity, but now he was able to pass electric currents through wires and place magnets in various positions near the wires. his epoch-making discovery which established for the first time the relationship between magnetism and electricity was in fact an accident. while lecturing to students he showed them that the current flowing in a wire held over a magnetic compass needle and at right angles to it (that is east-west) had no effect on the needle. oersted suggested to his assistant that he might try holding the wire parallel to the length of the needle (north-south) and hey presto, the needle was deflected! he had stumbled upon the electromagnetic effect in the first recorded instance of a wire behaving like a magnet when a current is passed through it. a development of oersted's demonstration with the compass needle was used to construct the world's first system of signaling by the use of electricity. in charles wheatstone and william cooke took out a patent for the world's first five-needle telegraph, which was installed between paddington railway station in west london and west drayton station a few miles away. the five copper wires required for this system were embedded in blocks of wood. electrolysis, the chemical decomposition of a substance into its constituent elements by the action of an electric current, was discovered by the english chemists carlisle and william nicholson ( - ). if an electric current is passed through water it is broken down into the two elements of which it is composed--hydrogen and oxygen. the process is used extensively in modern industry for electroplating. michael faraday ( - ) who was employed as a chemist at the royal institution, was responsible for introducing many of the technical terms connected with electrolysis, like electrolyte for the liquid through which the electric current is passed, and anode and cathode for the positive and negative electrodes respectively. he also established the laws of the process itself. but most people remember his name in connection with his practical demonstration of electromagnetic induction. in france andre-marie ampere ( - ) carried out a complete mathematical study of the laws which govern the interaction between wires carrying electric currents. in germany in a bavarian schoolmaster georg ohm ( - ) had defined the relationship between electric pressure (voltage), current (flow rate) and resistance in a circuit (ohm's law) but years had to elapse before he received recognition for his work. scientists were now convinced that since the flow of an electric current in a wire or a coil of wire caused it to acquire magnetic properties, the opposite might also prove to be true: a magnet could possibly be used to generate a flow of electricity. michael faraday had worked on this problem for ten years when finally, in , he gave his famous lecture in which he demonstrated, for the first time in history, the principle of electromagnetic induction. he had constructed powerful electromagnets consisting of coils of wire. when he caused the magnetic lines of force surrounding one coil to rise and fall by interrupting or varying the flow of current, a similar current was induced in a neighbouring coil closely coupled to the first. the colossal importance of faraday's discovery was that it paved the way for the generation of electricity by mechanical means. however, as can be seen from the drawing, the basic generator produces an alternating flow of current.(a.c.) rotating a coil of wire steadily through a complete revolution in the steady magnetic field between the north and south poles of a magnet results in an electromotive force (e.m.f.) at its terminals which rises in value, falls back to zero, reverses in a negative direction, reaches a peak and again returns to zero. this completes one cycle or sine wave. ( hz in s.i.units). in recent years other methods have been developed for generating electrical power in relatively small quantities for special applications. semiconductors, which combine heat insulation with good electrical conduction, are used for thermoelectric generators to power isolated weather stations, artificial satellites, undersea cables and marker buoys. specially developed diode valves are used as thermionic generators with an efficiency, at present, of only % but the heat taken away from the anode is used to raise steam for conventional power generation. sir humphry davy ( - ) one of britain's leading chemists of the th century, is best remembered for his safety lamp for miners which cut down the risk of methane gas explosions in mines. it was davy who first demonstrated that electricity could be used to produce light. he connected two carbon rods to a heavy duty storage battery. when he touched the tips of the rods together a very bright white light was produced. as he drew the rods apart, the arc light persisted until the tips had burnt away to the critical gap which extinguished the light. as a researcher and lecturer at the royal institution davy worked closely with michael faraday who first joined the institution as his manservant and later became his secretary. davy's crowning honour in the scientific world came in , when he was elected president of the royal society. in the u.s.a. the prolific inventor thomas alva edison ( - ) who had invented the incandescent carbon filament bulb, built a number of electricity generators in the vicinity of the niagara falls. these used the power of the falling water to drive hydraulic turbines which were coupled to the dynamos. these generators were fitted with a spinning switch or commutator (one of the neatest gadgets edison ever invented) to make the current flow in unidirectional pulses (d.c.) in all electrical equipment was powered by direct current. today mains electricity plays a vital part in our everyday lives and its applications are widespread and staggering in their immensity. but we must not forget that popular demand for this convenient form of power arose only about years ago, mainly for illumination. recent experiments in superconductivity, using ceramic instead metal conductors have given us an exciting glimpse into what might be achieved for improving efficiency in the distribution of electric power. historians of the future may well characterise the th century as 'the century of electricity & electronics'. but edison's d.c. generators could not in themselves, have achieved the spectacular progress that has been made. all over the world we depend totally on a system of transmitting mains electricity over long distances which was originally created by an amazing inventor whose scientific discoveries changed, and are still changing, the whole world. his name was scarcely known to the general public, especially in europe, where he was born. who was this unknown pioneer? some people reckon that it was this astonishing visionary who invented wireless, remote control, robotics and a form of x-ray photography using high frequency radio waves. a patent which he took out in the u.s.a. in ultimately led to the design of the humble ignition coil which energises billions and billions of spark plugs in all the motor cars of the world. his american patents fill a book two inches thick. his name was nicola tesla ( - ). nicola tesla was born in a small village in croatia which at that time formed part of the great austro-hungarian empire. today it is a northern province of yugoslavia, a state created after the - war. tesla studied at the graz technical university and later in budapest. early in his studies he had the idea that a way had to be found to run electric motors directly from a.c. generators. his professor in graz had assured him categorically that this was not possible. but young tesla was not convinced. when he went to budapest he got a job in the central telegraph office, and one evening in , as he was sitting on a bench in the city park he had an inspiration which ultimately led to the solution of the problem. tesla remembered a poem by the german poet goethe about the sun which supports life on the earth and when the day is over moves on to give life to the other side of the globe. he picked up a twig and began to scratch a drawing on the soil in front of him. he drew four coils arranged symmetrically round the circumference of a circle. in the centre he drew a rotor or armature. as each coil in turn was energised it attracted the rotor towards it and the rotary motion was established. when he constructed the first practical models he used eight, sixteen and even more coils. the simple drawing on the ground led to the design of the first induction motor driven directly by a.c.electricity. tesla emigrated to the u.s.a. in . during the first year he filed no less than patents mostly in relation to the generation and distribution of a.c. mains electricity. he designed and built his 'a.c. polyphase system' which generated three-phase alternating current at hz. one particular unit delivered amperes at , volts. the beauty of this system was that the voltage could be stepped down using transformers for local use, or stepped up to many thousands of volts for transmission over long distances through relatively thin conductors. edison's generating stations were incapable of any such thing. tesla signed a lucrative contract with the famous railway engineer george westinghouse, the inventor of the westinghouse air brake which is used by most railways all over the world to the present day. their generating station was put into service in and was called the niagara falls electricity generating company. it supplied power for the westinghouse network of trains and also for an industrial complex in buffalo, new york. after ten years tesla began to experiment with high frequencies. the tesla coil which he had patented in was capable of raising voltages to unheard of levels such as , volts. edison, who was still generating d.c., claimed a.c. was dangerous and to prove it contracted with the government to produce the first electric chair using a.c. for the execution of murderers condemned to death. when it was first used it was a ghastly flop. the condemned man moaned and groaned and foamed at the mouth. after four minutes of repeated application of the a.c.voltage smoke began to come out of his back. it was obvious that the victim had suffered a horribly drawn-out death. tesla said he could prove that a.c. was not dangerous. he gave a demonstration of high voltage electricity flowing harmlessly over his body. but in reality, he cheated, because he had used a frequency of , cycles ( khz) at extremely low current and because of the skin effect suffered no harm. one of tesla's patents related to a system of lighting using glass tubes filled with fluorine (not neon) excited by h.f.voltages. his workshop was lit by this method. several years before wilhelm roentgen demonstrated his system of x-rays tesla had been taking photographs of the bones in his hand and his foot from up to feet away using h.f.currents. more astonishing still is the fact that in , two years before marconi demonstrated his system of wireless signaling, tesla had built a model boat in which he combined power to drive it with radio control and robotics. he put the small boat in a lake in madison square gardens in new york. standing on the shore with a control box, he invited onlookers to suggest movements. he was able to make the boat go forwards and backwards and round in circles. we all know how model cars and aircraft are controlled by radio today, but when tesla did it a century ago the motor car had not been invented, and the only method by which man could cover long distances was on horseback! many people believe that a modification of tesla's 'magnifying transmitter' was used by the soviet union when suddenly one day in october they produced an amazing noise which blotted out all radio transmissions between and mhz. (the woodpecker) the b.b.c., the n.b.c. and most broadcasting and telecommunication organisations of the world complained to moscow (the noise had persisted continuously for hours on the first day), but all the russians would say in reply was that they were carrying out an experiment. at first nobody seemed to know what they were doing because it was obviously not intended as another form of jamming of foreign broadcasts, an old russian custom as we all know. it is believed that in the pursuit of his life's ambition to send power through the earth without the use of wires, tesla had achieved a small measure of success at e.l.f. (extremely low frequencies) of the order of to hz. these frequencies are at present used by the military for communicating with submarines submerged in the oceans of the world. tesla's career and private life have remained something of a mystery. he lived alone and shunned public life. he never read any of his papers before academic institutions, though he was friendly with some journalists who wrote sensational stories about him. they said he was terrified of microbes and that when he ate out at a restaurant he would ask for a number of clean napkins to wipe the cutlery and the glasses he drank out of. for the last years of his life until he died during world war ii in he lived the life of a semi-recluse, with a pigeon as his only companion. a disastrous fire had destroyed his workshops and many of his experimental models and all his papers were lost for ever. tesla had moved to colorado springs where he built his largest ever coil which was feet in diameter. he studied all the different forms of lightning in his unsuccessful quest for the transmission of power without wires. in yugoslavia, tesla is a national hero and a well-equipped museum in belgrade contains abundant proof of the genius of this extraordinary man. chapter two the birth of radio communications by most of the basic electrical phenomena had been investigated. however, james clerk maxwell ( - ), professor of experimental physics at cambridge then came up with something entirely new. by some elegant mathematics he had shown the probable existence of electromagnetic waves of radiation. but it was twenty four years later (eight years after maxwell's death) that heinrich hertz ( - ) in germany gave a practical demonstration of the accuracy of this theory. he generated and detected electromagnetic waves across the length of his laboratory on a wavelength of approximately one metre. his own photograph of the equipment he had set up can be seen in the deutsches museum in munich. to detect the electromagnetic waves hertz employed a simple form of oscillator, which he termed a resonator. but it was not sensitive enough to detect waves at any great distance. before wireless telegraphy could become practicable, a more delicate detector was necessary. credit is due to edouard branly ( - ) of france for producing the first practical instrument for detecting hertzian waves, the coherer. it consisted of two metal cylinders with leads attached, fitted tightly into the interior of a glass tube containing iron or steel filings. the instant an electric discharge of any sort occurred the coherer became conductive, and if it was tapped lightly its conducting property was immediately destroyed. in practice the tapping was done automatically by a tapper which came into action the moment the coherer became conductive. in russia the physicist aleksandr popov ( - ) had used a coherer while engaged in the investigation of the effects of lightning discharges. he suggested that such discharges could possibly be used for signaling over long distances. old timers may remember that about years ago russian amateurs used to send out a qsl card with a drawing of popov and a caption which claimed that he was 'the inventor of radio'. in italy, a young -year-old electrician became interested in electromagnetic radiation after reading papers by professor augusto righi ( - ). it was guglielmo marconi ( - ), the son of a well-to-do landowner who lived in bologna, and who was married to annie jameson of the well known irish whiskey family. guglielmo, their second son, had his early education at a private school in bedford, england, and later at livorno and florence in italy. when he read about the experiments of heinrich hertz and about popov's suggestion, he saw the possibility of using these waves as a means of signaling. his first transmitter, shown in the accompanying photograph, did not radiate very far. when he folded the metal plate into a cylinder and placed it on a pole feet above the induction coil and connected to it by a vertical wire, he was able to detect the radiation nearly two kilometres away. marconi realised that his signaling system would be most useful to shipping, and in those days england possessed the world's greatest navy and the world's biggest merchant fleet. the italian government was not interested in young marconi's work, so after a family conference he was brought to london by his mother, who had influential relatives there. not only did they finance his early experiments but they also put him in touch with the right sort of people. one of these was alan a. campbell swinton who became the first president of the radio society of london (now the r.s.g.b.) many years later, in . campbell swinton introduced the young italian to william preece, then engineer-in-chief of the british post office. preece had already been investigating various methods of 'induction' telegraphy. in a book entitled wireless telegraphy published in , william j. white of the engineer-in-chief's department at the g.p.o. wrote, "the work of sir (then mr) william preece, important though it was, did not attract the attention of the public to the extent that might have been expected. this was due to the fact that no sooner had he demonstrated a method of wireless telegraphy which was a commercial possibility than his system was superseded by another, and a better one, brought to england by mr guglielmo marconi in . the possibilities of mr marconi's system were at once recognised by mr william preece. the experience of the elder and the genius of the younger man, who must be given the credit of having devised the first practical system for wireless telegraphy, combined to turn apparently disastrous failures into success, and now (in ), wireless telegraphy has become, in less than a decade, part and parcel of commercial and national life." the world's first patent for wireless telegraphy was awarded to marconi on the nd june . in it he stated that "electrical action can be transmitted through the earth, air or water, by means of oscillations of high frequency." in the first public demonstration of his equipment marconi spanned the metres between the g.p.o. and victoria street. later, on salisbury plain, in march , his signals were detected over kilometres away. on the th & th may messages were first exchanged over water. on the th of march , during naval manoeuvres, marconi bridged the english channel for the first time, a distance of about kilometres. his transatlantic triumph came on the th december when the morse letter 's' was transmitted from poldhu, in cornwall and received by marconi himself at st. john's, newfoundland, who recorded the historic event in his pocket book simply "sigs at . , . & . ". the operation of marconi's transmitter was itself quite spectacular. to produce the oscillations he employed the oscillator designed by augusto righi. depressing the key closed the circuit and brought the inductor coil into action. vivid sparks occurred between the balls of the oscillator, to the accompaniment of a succession of sharp cracks, like the reports of a pistol, and some energy was sent off the square metal plate in the form of trains of electromagnetic waves, which radiated out in all directions. but the energy occupied a very large bandwidth and the receivers of that period could not separate two transmissions. william j. white of the post office wrote in , "the chief objection which has been raised against modern wireless telegraphy is its want of secrecy. with a transmitter sending out waves in all directions, it is possible for unscrupulous persons to receive the messages and make an improper use of them. this form of 'scientific hooliganism' has, in fact, become somewhat notorious. when two or three transmitters are each sending out their electromagnetic waves, the result, naturally, is utter confusion." white added that the british postal administration was refusing to grant licences for more than one system in the same area, in spite of the fact that there had been some 'alleged' solutions of the problem. the phenomenon of resonance was known and dr (later sir oliver) lodge had taken out various patents between and in connection with receivers. marconi and his assistants ultimately solved the problem by modifying lodge's syntonic leyden jar tuned circuit. they added a tapped inductance in the aerial circuit of the transmitter and used variable capacitors instead of fixed ones. this was probably the most significant modification made in the development of wireless telegraphy. (in greek the word syntonismos 'to bring to equal tone' is used for 'tuning'.) apart from the patents taken out by sir oliver lodge and dr alexander muirhead, in , patents were taken out in germany by professor braun of strasbourg, who was joined by professor slaby and count d'arco in to form the telefunken company, and in the u.s.a. by dr lee de forest of the american de forest wireless telegraph company who was the first to use a high a.c. voltage of , volts to obtain the necessary high-potential discharges, thus dispensing with the induction coil. again in the u.s.a., professor r.o.fessenden was responsible for the design of new types of transmitting and receiving apparatus. during this period marconi had resisted all offers by financiers to acquire his patents. in july he entrusted his cousin jameson davis to form the wireless telegraph & signal company ltd which soon became marconi's wireless telegraph co., and ultimately the marconi company. william preece of the post office detached one of his assistants, george s. kemp, to help marconi. kemp was destined to become his right-hand man and served marconi faithfully throughout his life. by today's standards, marconi can be said to have been a highly successful entrepreneur. he had the great knack of selecting the right man for the job, and inspired deep loyalty in his staff. he regarded himself as an 'amateur' and often paid tribute to the work of radio experimenters. (most of the above passages are quoted from 'a history of the marconi company' by w.j.baker, published by methuen & co ltd. reprinted in .) chapter three the radio amateur movement from the turn of the century enthusiastic young men who built their own items of electrical and wireless apparatus were known as "wireless experimenters". many of them were later granted licences for the use of "wireless telegraphy for experimental purposes" (in the united kingdom) by the postmaster general under the terms of the wireless telegraphy act. in his report to parliament for the years - the p.m.g. stated that it was his wish "to promote experimental investigations in this promising field". in a book published in by r.p.howgrave-graham entitled "wireless telegraphy for amateurs" the word amateur seems to have been used for the first time. during the - war all wireless apparatus in the possession of licensed amateurs was closed down under the defence of the realm act of . experimental transmission licences numbered , . after the end of the war an inter-departmental committee was set up and in its report to the postmaster general dated april it stated: "we are of the opinion that the number of stations existing in july was excessive from the point of view of government control in case of emergency and the necessity of preventing interference with government and commercial working; further there was no justification for it from the point of view of the encouragement of research or development of industry". but there was a magnanimous relaxation in the defence regulations when the post office notified manufacturers of electrical apparatus that restriction on the sale of buzzers had been removed. buzzers could now be sold without enquiry as to the use to which the purchaser proposed to put them!!! during many issues of wireless world considered "the amateur position", and a leading article in the march issue began with a quotation attributed to marconi: "i consider that the existence of a body of independent and often enthusiastic amateurs constitutes a valuable asset towards the further development of wireless telegraphy." in a subsequent letter to the editor marconi wrote: "in my opinion it would be a mistaken policy to introduce legislation to prevent amateurs experimenting with wireless telegraphy (which the authorities were contemplating). had it not been for amateurs, wireless telegraphy as a great world-fact might not have existed at all. a great deal of the development and progress of wireless telegraphy is due to the efforts of amateurs." john ambrose fleming, the inventor of the diode valve, also wrote to the editor of w.w. as follows: "it is a matter of common knowledge that a large part of the important inventions in connection with wireless telegraphy have been the work of amateurs and private research and not the outcome of official brains or the handiwork of military or naval organisations. in fact we may say that wireless telegraphy itself in its inception was an amateur product. numerous important inventions such as the crystal detector, the oscillating valve, the triode valve--have been due to private or amateur work. if full opportunities for such non-official research work are not restored, the progress of the art of radio telegraphy and radio telephony will be greatly hindered." professor w.h. eccles wrote: "improvements and invention must be stimulated to the utmost. it is not impossible to devise laws to impose restrictions upon the emission of wireless waves as will preclude interference with the public radio service of the future (r.f.i. & t.v.i.?!!) and yet allow liberal opportunities for the experimental study of wireless telegraphy." note. the above passages are taken from world at their fingertips by john clarricoats, o.b.e., g cl, published by the r.s.g.b. in . chapter four the transatlantic tests most commercial experimental transmissions in wireless telegraphy before world war i were carried out on the "long" wavelengths, though they were not called that at the time. transmissions by amateurs in the united kingdom and the u.s.a. on the other hand were made around metres ( . mhz). in the u.s.a. amateurs were permitted to use a d.c.input of , watts to the anode of the final stage of their transmitters. in the u.k. the maximum power allowed was watts and the combined height and length of the transmitting aerial was not to exceed feet. so when the first attempt to span the atlantic was made in february of it was natural that the american stations should do the transmitting and the europeans the listening. about u.s. amateur stations participated in the tests, which took place early in the morning on the nd, th and th of february . although about european stations had indicated their intention to listen only actually submitted logs. and not a single one of them was able to report hearing anything that could be attributed to the american transmissions. the then editor of qst wrote: "we have tested most of the circuits used by the britishers and find them one and all decidedly inferior to our standard american regenerative circuit using variometer tuning in secondary and tertiary circuits. we would bet our new spring hat that if a good u.s. amateur with such a set and an armstrong superheterodyne could be sent to england, reception of the u.s. transmissions would straightaway become commonplace." strong language. in september of the same year it was announced that a prominent u.s. amateur paul godley ze would be going to europe to take part in the second series of tests planned for december. his expenses were being paid by the a.r.r.l. which already boasted having , transmitting members. in the u.s.a. distances of over , miles had already been achieved. during his brief stay of a few hours in london paul godley was introduced to senator marconi, to admiral of the fleet sir henry jackson, to alan a. campbell swinton and many other distinguished members of the wireless society of london, as the r.s.g.b. was then called. paul godley first set up his receiving equipment at wembley park, middlesex but soon decided that the electrical noises in the area would not permit reception of the weak transatlantic signals. he therefore obtained permission to set up the european receiving station at ardrossan a coast town near glasgow, scotland. the actual site was a large field heavily covered with seaweed. he was assisted in the erection of his receiving antenna by a member of the marconi international marine communications company. , feet of phosphor-bronze wire was stretched feet above the ground on ten poles spaced equally along the full length of the wire which was earthed at the far end through a non-inductive resistor. this was the first beverage type receiving array ever erected in the united kingdom. before the actual tests took place the length of the wire was reduced to feet. at . gmt on december th godley identified signals from bcg located at greenwich, connecticut. the station there was manned by six members of the radio club of america. one of the operators was e. howard armstrong inventor of the regenerative detector, super-regeneration and the supersonic heterodyne receiver, though the french claim that the superhet was first designed by lucien levy of paris. two days later the historic first complete message transmitted by u.s. amateurs and received in europe on the "short waves" (actually metres) heralded a new era. the message read: no. de bcg. words . new york december . to paul godley ardrossan scotland. hearty congratulations. signed burghard inman grinan armstrong amy cronkhite. eight british amateurs had also copied the message correctly. one of them was w.e. "bill" corsham uv of willesden, london who was later credited by the r.s.g.b. and the a.r.r.l. as being the inventor of the qsl card. bill had used a simple three valve receiver and an inverted-l wire feet long compared to godley's huge beverage array. in the summer of amateurs in france began to get licences and leon deloy ab president of the radio club of nice in southern france started hearing british stations. after a visit to the u.s.a. deloy was able to improve his equipment and on november th he contacted fred schnell mo of west hartford, connecticut for the first ever -way qso across the atlantic. they used the "useless" wavelengths around metres. international dx had come to stay. chapter five the first greek radio amateurs as no licences were issued for many years there are no official records to be consulted. early activity was mainly in and around athens but there may have been one or two stations in other parts of the country which we never heard in the capital. at the time of writing ( ) four of the original pioneers in the athens area are alive and three of them are currently active on the h.f. bands. athanassis 'takis' coumbias has qsl cards addressed to him dated when he was a short wave listener in odessa, russia with the swl callsign rk- . in his family, like many other greek families in russia, moved to athens where takis built a -valve transmitter with which he was very active on and metre cw using the callsign sv aaa. i frequently operated his station myself and when i asked him why he had chosen that particular callsign he gave me what proved to be a truly prophetic answer. "it will be ages," he said, "before the greek state officially recognizes the very existence of radio amateurs and begins to issue transmitting licences to them. after that it might take another years for them to get to the three-letter series beginning with sv aaa." in actual fact this is what happened: legislation was enacted years later and the callsign sv aaa was officially allocated to nikita venizelos after years had elapsed! although at the time there was no official recognition of amateur radio in greece, the existence and identity of the handful of 'under cover' operators was known to the head of the w/t section at the ministry of posts & telegraphs (greek initials t.t.t.) stefanos eleftheriou who did more than anyone else to encourage and promote the development of our hobby. in fact, following a minor brush with the police in (described by n doe later in this book) eleftheriou issued three licences 'for experimental research in connection with the propagation of short waves' on the basis of earlier legislation governing the use of wireless telegraphy which really had nothing to do with amateur radio. the recipients of these three licences were costas 'bill' tavaniotis sv ke, aghis cazazis sv ca and nikos katselis sv nk. as there were no relevant regulations the choice of callsign was left to the individual operators. for instance, tavaniotis ran his own electrical and electronic business called konstav electric so he decided to use "ke" as his callsign. as far as i know the following ten amateurs were active in the athens area in : . takis coumbias.....................sv aaa . 'bill' tavaniotis..................sv ke (silent key) . polycarpos psomiadis..............sv az (now n doe) . aghis cazazis......................sv ca (silent key) . nikos katselis.....................sv nk (silent key) . george zarifis...............sv sp/sv sp (now sv aa) . nasos coucoulis....................sv sm (silent key) . george yiapapas....................sv gy (now qrt) . menelaos paidousis.................sv mp . norman joly........................sv rx (now g fnj) in costas karayiannis who ran a big business called radio karayianni published an amazingly comprehensive book entitled elliniki radiofonia which means 'greek broadcasting'. it contained a vast treasure of information on many subjects allied to broadcasting, and there was a page entitled dawn ( - ) which dealt with amateur radio activity in greece before world war ii. it confirmed most of the names listed above as can be seen in the photo-copy of the original greek text, and it mentioned three others: george gerardos sv ag, (silent key), s. stefanou and mikes psalidas who was allocated the callsign sv af years later, though he, like many others had come on the air after the end of the war with an unofficial callsign. were all these operators who functioned strictly in accordance with international regulations pirates? in my view they were certainly not pirates. if the state was officially unaware of the existence of amateur radio how could they apply for licences and be issued with official callsigns? later in this book n doe describes how a handful of amateurs had prepared draft legislation in at the request of stefanos eleftheriou of the ministry but the outbreak of world war ii in september had prevented him from taking any action in this connection. the island of crete in southern greece was first heard on the air in when george zarifis came on metre cw using the callsign sv sp. his transmitter consisted of a single metal l crystal oscillator with an input of about watts. for reception he used an american case broadcast receiver in which he had fitted a bfo. in a very short period he had about qsos. forty four years later some of the younger generation of operators who had not heard of this early activity from crete allocated the prefix sv to the island. rather illogically they allocated sv to all the other islands irrespective of their geographical position and with yet another exception--sv for the twelve dodecanese islands. general george zarifis (retired) sv aa as he is now, had started playing with 'wireless' a long long time before he went to crete. in when he was in the th form at school he had bought two kits of parts from france and put them together with the help of his fellow-student george grabinger. the kit consisted of a bright emitter triode in an oscillating circuit. the heater supply was a volt accumulator, and a dozen or so dry cells, with an earphone in series, supplied the anode voltage. the tuned circuit consisted of a coil with a small pressure operated capacitor across it. a carbon microphone with a dry cell in series was connected to two or three turns of wire wound over the coil. the assembled kits were tested close to each other and they worked. later, when they had connected random length wire antennas to the circuits the two schoolboys were able to talk to each other across the metres which separated their homes. these contacts quite definitely heralded the dawn of amateur radio in greece at about the same time as the transatlantic tests were taking place. on the st of september hitler's armies invaded poland. great britain which had a treaty with poland was compelled to declare war on germany two days later on the rd, followed by france. canada and australia declared war on germany the next day. all the radio amateurs in athens immediately dismantled their transmitters and dispersed the components. so ended the first phase of amateur radio activity in greece. chapter six world war ii and after in greece socrates coutroubis sv ae described to me how his interest in radio was aroused in when he was years old. his father had decided to buy a domestic radio receiver. "of course in athens had no broadcasting service," socrates said, "so the receiver had to be able to tune in to the short wave broadcasting bands. as we already had a westinghouse refrigerator my father decided we should try one of their receivers. when i say 'try' i must explain that it was the usual thing to ask a number of agents to submit their latest models for comparison at one's home. i remember that together with the westinghouse, we had an atwater kent, philco, rca, stromberg-carlson and several sets of european manufacture such as philips, blaupunkt, saba etc. we finally settled for the german saba because it was the prettiest and blended better with our living room furniture! "there were very few stations to be found on the short waves. but i remember the dutch station pcj run by the philips company in eindhoven. the announcer was edward startz who spoke perfect english and about a dozen other languages. "this is the happy station, broadcasting from the netherlands" he would say cheerfully. "a couple of years after we had bought the radio we were returning from an open air movie round about midnight when i noticed a book on sale at a road-side kiosk. it was entitled the radio amateur's handbook published by the a.r.r.l. i had no idea what the initials stood for. the price was astronomical for my pocket but after a little coercion i got my father to buy it for me. when i began to read it i discovered the existence of radio amateurs. it was the edition and i found a circuit for a receiver which looked simple enough for me to try. it was described as a regenerative detector and audio amplifier. "at that time the best place to buy components in athens was at a store called radio karayianni, but three others shops also stocked valves (tubes) and components. one was the electron run by george spanos, who was the agent for the dutch philips company. then there was a shop in a basement next door, konstav electric, owned by 'bill' tavaniotis sv ke. a wide range of components were also stocked by the raytheon agent, nick katselis sv nk. "i obtained some plug-in forms and wound the coils carefully according to the instructions but unfortunately the receiver didn't work very well, if at all. when i asked a few friends they suggested i should shorten the very long wires i had used between the components, and sure enough i had the greatest thrill of my life when for the first time i heard rome on short waves on my very own home-made receiver. outstanding stations in the broadcast band in those days were trieste in northern italy, katowice in poland, breslau in germany and toulouse in south-west france. "although i had read about the activities of radio amateurs in the handbook i had not yet heard any of the half dozen or so stations that were already operating on cw and am telephony in the athens area. "my father used to buy the periodical london calling which contained the overseas programmes of the b.b.c. as well as the programmes of the principal european broadcasting stations. this publication also carried advertisements and it was there that i first saw an illustration of the hammarlund super pro and realised that there were receivers specially designed for the reception of short waves. "but during the german/italian occupation of greece between and my little home-made receiver played a vital role in enabling us to listen (secretly) to the b.b.c. broadcasts because the authorities had sealed all radios to the broadcast (medium wave) band and to the frequency of radio athens. most people devised ingenuous methods of listening to stations other than athens. "after the end of the war a friend of mine who returned to athens from cairo brought me the edition of the a.r.r.l.handbook, which is still on the shelf as you can see." socrates explained that in there was complete political upheaval in greece, owing to the events that had taken place during the foreign occupation, so the general election of that year was carried out under the supervision of foreign observers from the u.s.a., the united kingdom & france. the russians did not send a mission. "owing to my knowledge of english i was employed by the american mission to act as interpreter. one day when i was off duty i was taken by a friend to a signals unit where there were many pieces of equipment which had been 'liberated', and i was able to buy a bc receiver. later when harry barnett sv we who was in the press department of the british embassy returned to england i bought his hallicrafter sx . "it was at harry's house in kolonaki that i had my first taste of amateur radio in action. he had a national hro for reception and he had constructed a -watt transmitter using surplus components which were in plentiful supply at that time. "another friend of mine, jim liverios, was employed at the civil aviation transmitter site on a hill south of nea smyrni. the american mission had set up their short wave transmitters on the same site and later interpol installed their own equipment as well. liverios was always on night shift because he attended the university during the day. i still don't know how he ever managed to get any sleep. when things were quiet he would 'borrow' a kw transmitter and tune it in the metre band. using a callsign of his own choice (probably a different one every night) he would have contacts with the whole world. on his invitation i went there at midnight one night and stayed until the morning. i remember we had qsos with cuba, chile, new zealand and australia." the affair of the piraeus police. in , there was a war in northern greece which some people called a civil war and others a war against the guerrillas, depending on whose side they were on. suddenly one morning all the athens newspapers came out with some amazing headlines: "the wireless transmitters of the communists have been seized in athens" "wireless transmitters found in communist hands" "how the five transmitters of the communists were discovered" "the six installations seized by the police" two of the newspapers printed the identical photograph (included in the montage) with the following caption, 'the communist transmitters seized by the piraeus police'. this was a photograph of the shack of mikes psalidas sv af. at the top right one can see a -inch home-made monitor oscilloscope, which the newspapers described as a 'powerful radar'! "during the last three days," wrote one newspaper, "the police in piraeus have been investigating a very serious case implicating leading cadres of the communist party." of course, it was nothing of the sort. the equipment they had seized belonged to five radio amateurs, george gerardos sv ag, mikes psalidas sv af, nasos coucoulis sv ac, aghis cazazis sv ca and sotiris stefanou who didn't have a callsign yet. in fact mikes psalidas was not even at home at the time of the police raid, as he was in a military camp in the outskirts of athens, doing his compulsory military service. the newspapers described in detail what had been found. "at the house of mikes psalidas, who is a student at the athens polytechnic, the police found wireless telegraphy receiving equipment (a national hro), wireless telephony equipment in full working order, that is, two transmitting microphones, a step-down transformer and various other items." the same newspaper went on "unfortunately, at the house of aghis cazazis, at tenedou street, the search was inconclusive because a certain person, well known to the police, and whose arrest is imminent, removed a high power transmitter just before the police arrived and disappeared with it." another newspaper referred to "telegrams in code", received from abroad and from the secret headquarters of the communists, "which are now being deciphered by a special department". these were sv ag's little collection of qsl cards. stefanos eleftheriou of the ministry immediately took up the matter. firstly, he pointed out to the piraeus police that athens did not come under their jurisdiction, and they had no right to arrest anybody there without a warrant. secondly, all the five radio amateurs they had arrested were known for their nationalistic political convictions, particularly psalidas whose father was a senior officer of the royal hellenic airforce. before the 'suspects' were released and their confiscated equipment returned to them, they were warned not to speak to newspaper reporters at the risk of getting a kick up their backsides. this was to prevent the public from learning how ludicrous had been the accusations, and how completely unjustified the arrests had been. but one newspaper came out the following day with a banner headline "the owners of the wireless and radar equipment all turned out to be staunch royalists!" this paper sent a reporter to interview sv ac. they wrote, "in reply to a question from our reporter, mr coucoulis said that when the police realised the foolishness of their action, they issued a summons against him under law , which has absolutely nothing to do with amateur radio." "during the ten years following the end of world war ii there were about to very active amateurs in the athens area, all using callsigns of their own choice because no government legislation had yet been enacted. most of these operators subsequently obtained licences and had to change to the official series. i remember two yls who were very popular in europe and the u.s.a. because they spoke several languages fluently, but they never re-appeared when licences began to be issued." since the u.s. and british signals units were authorised by the greek ministry of communications to issue calls to military and diplomatic personnel in the series sv wa in the case of american staff and sv aa for the british. socrates continued: "i heard that the americans had formed a club called 'attica amateur radio club' in kifissia, a suburb to the north of athens, and in due course i was able to become a member." "in ," socrates continued, "george zarifis (currently sv aa) who was a regular army officer in the legal branch approached mr nicolis who was director of the wireless division at the ministry of communications and asked him 'since you have authorised the americans and the british to issue licences to their personnel, why do you not grant the same facility to us greek amateurs?'. to which nicolis had replied 'there is no law of the land recognising the very existence of radio amateurs so how can i issue licences to you?'. "it was then that we decided to form an association whose principal objective would be the enactment of legislation recognising officially the existence of radio amateurs in greece. as a recognised body we would then be able to go back to nicolis and get him to pursue the matter. "that was how, late in , we formed the radio amateur association of greece, r.a.a.g., greek initials e.e.r. "at the same time, after considerable effort, we got the ministry to issue licences based on the wireless telegraphy act of (no ) and the regulations relating to law of , as well as a document dated july th issued by the radio division of the central intelligence service (greek initials k.y.p.-r). this order authorised the installation of a watt transmitter to an applicant under certain strict limitations, one of which was that the station could only be operated from . to . hours and from . to midnight. the seven lucky recipients are shown in the accompanying photograph. akis lianos sv ad, socrates coutroubis sv ae, nasos coucoulis sv ac (silent key), george zarifis sv aa, mikes psalidas sv af, george vernardakis sv ab and george gerardos sv ag (silent key). "at that time ( ) my am station consisted of a hammarlund sp receiver and a home-built transmitter using an italian geloso vfo-exciter driving a pair of s in the final, with anode and screen modulation by a pair of s in class ab . i had also assembled a double conversion receiver using a geloso front end. this was typical of the equipment used in greece and italy in the early s. "licences continued to be issued until when the junta colonels papadopoulos and patakos established the military dictatorship. we were all ordered to seal our equipment and obtain written confirmation from the nearest police authority that the disablement had been carried out. "six months later, in december of we started getting our licences back. most of us believed that because some of the younger officers in the military government had received training at the pentagon in the u.s.a. they convinced their superiors that it was better for the genuine amateurs to be allowed to operate their equipment under close supervision by the military and under new regulations, rather than have under cover operators starting up all over again. "george gerardos sv ag had a friend oresti yiaka who was involved in government telecommunications and it was through him that draft legislation for the issue of amateur licences was instigated, but not for the first time. unsuccessful attempts had been made before the war. "in when george papandreou was prime minister, on the very day when the draft bill was going to be put before parliament the government resigned and another years went by. when legislation was finally published in the government gazette in , owing to the prevailing political situation (military dictatorship) it had serious limitations imposed by some ministries which had to look after their own interests, especially the ministry of national defence. but george gerardos, sv ag, who had been closely involved, decided that it would be better to overlook certain details which may seem strange to us at the present time--details which could be rectified at a later date, provided the law was finally on the statute book. for instance, i refer to the very restricted frequencies we were allocated in the -metre band, . to . mhz. obviously when we began transmitting ssb telephony below . we were greeted with angry protestations from the cw operators there. and what was worse, the voices of greek amateurs were not heard in the dx portion of the phone allocation from . to . mhz. "unfortunately, there was another and more serious snag. the last paragraph of the law said that it would come into force only after publication in the government gazette of regulations clarifying certain details and procedures. so we were back to square one. "but this did not prevent the general staff of the military dictatorship from continuing to issue new licences under the special restrictions they had laid down. when the dictatorship came to an end the new government finally published regulation on april th , which made the law fully operative." during the period of the military dictatorship a break-away club was formed by dinos psiloyiannis sv db who added the word 'national' to its name making the greek initials e.e.e.r. his motives were rather dubious, one of them being that he objected to a regulation which required an applicant for a licence to produce a declaration signed by the president and the secretary of radio amateur association of greece. psiloyiannis, who had contacts with the military authorities (both his father and brother were officers) declared "i will form my own association and issue declarations myself." by this manoeuvre he obtained licences for quite a few newcomers, but after a year or two his club ceased to function and most if not all of its members joined the r.a.a.g. an amendment of law of published in the government gazette no. dated june rd finally abolished the requirement of the controversial declaration, as well as the rule which said that before anyone could apply for a licence they had to join an officially recognised association or club. chapter seven pioneers in greece . general george zarifis (retired) sv aa. as recorded in detail in chapter , george was undoubtedly the first greek amateur to have two-way contacts using radio telephony, way back in . he was also the first amateur to operate from the island of crete in . . dr costas fimerelis sv dh. (transequatorial propagation). on october th at . gmt a new world distance record was established on the mhz band by the greek experimental station sz dh operated by costas fimerelis sv dh and a station in tokyo, when it was proved that the signals had travelled a distance of , over the south american continent. this is , kilometres more than the short path between the two stations, over which there was absolutely no propagation at that moment in time. a simple element yagi and a power of watts was used at sz dh. the contact was on cw but the signals were so strong that it might well have been on ssb. it is estimated that hops were needed to cover this record distance. most people know by now that sv dh was one of the principal stations involved in the very successful transequatorial propagation tests which took place during the st sunspot cycle between and . costas gave me a simplified explanation of the phenomenon first noticed by ray cracknell ze jv and roland whiting b wr way back in september , namely that vhf signals can travel great distances across the equator ( , to , kilometres) during the years of high sunspot activity. costas said that usually stations located approximately the same distance north and south of the magnetic (not geographic) equator can contact each other shortly after sunset at both locations. the first such qso took place on the th april between ze jv and b wr. two days later ze jv contacted george vernardakis sv ab and this contact was followed a few days later with qsos with sv dh and sv cs. (fuller details of these contacts are given later in this book in the interview with sv ab). in october there was a rumour that mhz signals had been heard directly between argentina and venezuela. with the imminent beginning of sunspot cycle many amateurs in the northern and southern hemispheres began organizing tests on , , and mhz. within less than a year successful -way contact was established between argentina and venezuela on mhz. greece is favourably placed for tep to countries in africa where there is considerable amateur radio activity, like zimbabwe and the union of south africa. so towards the end of sv ab and sv dh began looking for colleagues in suitable geographic locations with the appropriate equipment and the time and inclination to engage in tests which could go on for months and months on end. very soon the following stations agreed to participate in the tests. the northern group included sv ab, sv dh, b wr and b az. in the southern hemisphere participants were ze jv (now g ahu), zs pw, zs dn, zs ln and zs b. after months of daily test schedules, early in , successful contacts took place on mhz, some of which constituted world distance records for that time, as can be seen in the accompanying table. amateurs in malta, italy, france and spain soon began to participate in the tests, as well as amateurs in other areas of south africa. it can be seen from the world map that the magnetic dip (shown as a heavy line) is very different to the geographic equator. the qth of sv ab is in a suburb kilometres north of sv dh's so george's contacts with the stations in africa always had that edge on them. in south africa dave larson zs dn had set up a beacon which was first heard in athens by sv ab in february . within a few days zs dn had qsos with sv dh and sv ab. the latter contact was a world distance record via the f-regions of the ionosphere because of the extra distance involved owing to the locations of the two greek stations, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. for anyone who may be interested very comprehensive reports of the work done in transequatorial propagation during cycle and earlier appeared in articles written by ray cracknell ze jv/g ahu and roland whiting b wr/g uyo in the june/july/august issues of radio communuication, the journal of the r.s.g.b. and in the november/december issues of qst. record transequatorial propagation contacts during sunspot cyle stations mhz date gmt km yv zz/ - lu dau . / / . , ~ world record distance on mhz. first western hemisphere contact. jh tew - vk wj . / / . , ~ first pacific area contact. kp eor - lu djz . / / . , new world distance record on mhz. yv zz - lu aat . / / . , first reception of mhz signals in western hemisphere. b wr - ze jv . / / . , first t.e.p. contact between europe and africa. sv ab - ze jv . / / . , first greek distance record on mhz. sv dh - zs dn . / / . , new world distance record on mhz. sv dh - ze jv . / / . , first reception of mhz signals between europe and africa. i eat - zs b . / / . , world distance record (reception) on mhz. . george vernardakis sv ab. (v.h.f.) in march i visited george vernardakis sv ab (formerly f qn of marseilles, france) who spoke to me about his contribution to the transequatorial tests and his other experiments in connection with moonbounce, meteor scatter and sporadic e propagation. "in " george told me, "i was the only sv station equipped for contacts via meteor scatter so it was easy for me to make contacts with many european stations. the longest distance i achieved was with ua dz a physics professor at the university of leningrad in the soviet union." norman: "forgive me for interrupting you, but please explain in simple terms what you mean by meteor scatter." george: "meteor scatter is a way of making contacts on metres by reflection from meteorites--'shooting stars' as they are called colloquially--which we see on clear nights during the summer. of course they are not falling stars at all--they are meteorites which burn up when they hit the earth's atmosphere, leaving the trail that we see. we take advantage of this phenomenon for bouncing our signals off the trail but unfortunately it is a very short-lived event. once when there were a lot of meteorites i was able to maintain contact with lx si of luxembourg for a whole three minutes on ssb. it was during the period of the persides which usually occur for a week in august when the earth's orbit takes it through this cloud of space debris. millions of meteorites can be as small as a grain of sand and of course leave no visible trail when they strike the earth's atmosphere. the earth goes through other major clusters in april and in december. the phenomenon can also affect signals on lower frequencies. one can be in qso on metres via ground wave with a station a couple of hundred miles away with signals around s to s . suddenly one or two words are heard at s which indicates a momentary reflection off a meteorite trail." george also explained that in order to defeat the brevity of the time when communication was possible it was customary to record a message on a tape recorder and transmit it at high speed. the other station would also record at high speed and then play back at normal speed to hear the message normally. i asked sv ab to tell me about sporadic e propagation. "in this form of contact the signals are reflected from an ionised area to kilometres above the surface of the earth. i have been having contacts by this method for about years now even before the advent of ssb on two metres. i have had contacts with england and with moscow to the north-east of athens. the phenomenon occurs for three or four months during the summer, and never during the winter. the ionisation moves very rapidly sometimes--you may be talking to a station in malta and he suddenly disappears and a station in yugoslavia comes up on the same frequency." "every summer" george continued, "we get troposcatter which allows communication on all frequencies from vhf to ghz even. this type of propagation occurs during certain special meteorological conditions, like high barometric pressure and extreme heat. we sometimes hear stations in malta and sicily with very loud signals." "in i built an aerial array consisting of nine-element yagis for metres with the axis of rotation pointing to the north star enabling me to track the moon automatically. i was hoping to make some moonbounce contacts, but at that time it was very difficult to construct low noise preamplifiers. after many days and hours of trying i managed a single brief contact with f do in france. some time later i heard that mike staal k myc had heard me in california. "the funny thing about this aerial array was that it enabled me to receive television signals from nigeria on channel but only when i raised it up to an elevation of nearly degrees." norman: "i understand that costas georgiou sv oe is the only greek amateur who has had successful qsos via moonbounce." george: "yes indeed. but it was many years later, using a low noise gasfet preamplifier. k whs in the u.s.a. has an array consisting of yagis which enable him to contact stations with more modest installations. "in a technician from stanford university came to athens because the tracking station they had set up on mount pendeli could not pick the university's satellite, whereas they were getting good signals from it in spain. one of the assistants at the station told the american that he knew an amateur who could pick up signals from satellites, meaning me. the american, who happened to be an amateur himself, immediately asked to see me. when he saw my antenna array he suggested we should use it to try and pick up the university satellite. i pointed out to him that my array was for mhz whereas the satellite beacon was transmitting on mhz. he gave me the coordinates for the next pass and i rotated and raised my array in anticipation. when the exact time arrived my modest receiver picked up the satellite beacon loud and clear. the american got so excited he asked me if he could use my telephone to call the university in the u.s.a. he told them the satellite had been heard at last in athens, and by an amateur no less. later i received a letter from nasa thanking me for the assistance i had given. when the american left he gave me that mhz converter you can see there on the shelf." norman: "tell me about your contribution to the transequatorial tests of ." sv ab: "i had been in regular contact with zs ln on ten metres long before costas sv dh appeared on the scene. i remember asking zs ln why we should not receive south african stations on metres when we could hear them so well on mhz. he had replied that the two frequencies behaved in a very different manner, but there was no harm in trying. he got zs pw and zs dn interested in the idea, particularly zs dn who had much better aerials and a very good qth. he was the one who stood the better chance of being heard in greece. we arranged a schedule of transmitting and listening every evening. first they transmitted and we listened, and then we transmitted and they listened, and contact was maintained on ten metres." norman: "you said 'every evening'--do you mean that the sun has something to do with this type of propagation?" george: "most certainly. all the contacts that were made subsequently were at least one hour after the relevant part of the ionosphere was in darkness." george then described how the first signals were heard via transequatorial propagation. george: "first we heard the beacon on . mhz set up by ray cracknell ze jv in southern rhodesia (now zimbabwe). the date was april th at . g.m.t. ten months later i heard zs dn's automatic beacon with a colossal signal, but he was not at home! i went to metres and put out a frantic cq for any station in south africa but got no reply. i returned to the cross-band frequency on metres which we used regularly for / mhz qsos and managed to contact a station in south africa who was very far away from zs dn but who kindly offered to qsp a message by telephone. he was told that zs dn had gone out but would be back soon. i was terrified that the opening would not last long enough. but in a few minutes i heard him calling me slowly on cw and we exchanged reports at . g.m.t on february th . this was a new world record for the longest distance on metres. "three days earlier, however, when i was not at home, costas sv dh had established the first tep contact between greece and south africa when he contacted zs dn. as you know, my location is a mere kilometres north of sv dh's. i have a tape recording of my qso with zs dn as well as with zs pw whose signals came through a few minutes later at . g.m.t. on that historic evening.(the local time in athens was . p.m.).of course the distance record was broken again on september th when i contacted zs bu who is kilometres further south than zs dn." norman: "were all these contacts only on the key?" george: "yes, all the contacts were on cw. on several occasions we tried ssb but there was so much distortion that not a single word could be identified. tep has a lot of flutter and fading and as you can hear on the tapes even the morse comes through like a breathing noise, not a clear tone. this applies to contacts between greece and south africa. contacts between japan and australia where the distances involved are smaller, have been made on ssb." norman: "what about cycle ?" george: "see how things go. if anything is achieved it should be in or later. with modern equipment we shall be able to hear signals that were buried in the noise in ." . dr spyros tsaltas sv at & george delikaris sv am. (mobile). the first two licensed amateurs to make contact on metres in greece were dr spyros tsaltas sv at and george delikaris sv am. they had put together the famous heathkit 'twoer'. crystals were plentiful on the surplus market, but it was not easy to find two of the same frequency. sv at transmitted on . and sv am on . mhz. the first contact took place at . local time on the st of december . a few days later sv at had a cross-band qso with george vernardakis sv ab who was transmitting in the metre band on . mhz a.m. as he had not completed his twoer yet. at that time sv at was the secretary of the radio amateur association of greece. he suggested to the committee that the club should apply for a temporary licence to be granted to sv am enabling him to transmit from his vehicle while in motion. the licensing authority gave the licence "for experimental purposes only, and for a period not exceeding one month". and so it was that the first 'mobile' qso took place on metres between licensed greek amateurs on the th of january at . local time. sv am was travelling in his car and sv at was at his home qth. . costas tzezairlidis sv cg. (sstv). in costas tzezairlidis sv cg built a unique electro mechanical machine using two motors to achieve horizontal and vertical scanning. he had found a motor which rotated at r.p.m. which corresponds to revolutions per second, the exact speed required for the horizontal scanning. the speed of the second motor was revolution per second. the reciprocal motion was produced by a cam through an : reduction gear. a weight attached to the microscope pulled it back to start the next line. the microscope was focussed sharply on the drum carrying the picture to be transmitted. resolution was excellent. the 'microscope' consisted of a cardboard tube with a cm focal length lens at one end and a philips oap photo-diode at the other with another lens in front of it. this primitive microscope produced a picture of reasonable quality. for reception sv cg made a converter using the long persistence p c.r.t. with this set-up costas had his first sstv contact on metres with sv ab on february th . after that he had many contacts on and mhz as can be seen from the extract from his log. (the special commemorative prefix of sz was used by all sv stations during ). . costas georgiou sv oe. (e.m.e.) up to the end of the only greek amateur who had positively authenticated moonbounce contacts was costas georgiou sv oe. his very first contact was made in when he contacted ve bqh in canada on metres. in the ensuing four years costas managed to work four more stations: k whs, sm gvf, w un and kb rq. in costas had been trying for three years, without success, to hear his own signal via moonbounce. the reason for his failure was that he was unaware of a very basic fact. "i was completely ignorant of the doppler shift effect," costas told me. "the frequency of received signals varies according to the position of the moon. if it is to the east of your own location the signals return to , hz below the original transmitted frequency. for years i had been sending long dashes slowly and waiting to hear my signals return on the same spot, which they never did. this happens for one instant only, when the moon is at degrees azimuth, exactly due south. when it moves to the west of south the returning frequency is correspondingly higher. using a hz audio filter (which is essential for moonbounce) it is very easy to miss the weak signals. soon after i found out my ridiculous mistake i began to hear my signals, naturally with a delay of one or two seconds because of the enormous distance involved-- , kilometres, , there and , back. costas continued: "my next problem was finding the moon. i had no computer at the time and no keplerian elements. i mounted a small video camera in the centre of four -element yagi antennas and rotated the elevation and azimuth motors until i could see the moon in the centre of the monitor in the shack. of course when the sky was overcast i was out of business. much later when i obtained a little sinclair zx computer life became easier. "when i made my first contact i was simultaneously in qso with sv ab and sv io on , mhz who could hear what was going on. i remember sv ab got very excited and began shouting 'i can hear him, i can hear him!' the qso was with ve bqh. later lionel sent me a very valuable present, valuable not for its cost but for the fact that it was something quite unobtainable in greece at that time--a very low-noise preamplifier for metres. "after the successful launch of oscar those amateurs who had complex antenna systems and low-noise receivers they had used for moonbounce congregated on . and spoke to each other on qrp which prevented ordinary mortals from hearing them. by qrp i mean outputs of half a watt or less. but when finally one day i broke into a net qso i arranged schedules for moonbounce with two stations in sweden. i had a successful contact with one of them but never heard the other. the reason may have been a very simple one: the polarisation of signals returning from the moon varies from one moment to the other, so if you have been transmitting with horizontal polarisation and go over to reception it is very easy to miss the answer of the other station if the polarisation has changed." sv oe then explained the very strict procedure which must be adhered to for moonbounce schedules. "schedules are arranged to last one hour. the first station to start transmitting on the hour must be the one whose qth lies to the east of the other. the calling frequency for moonbounce is . mhz., and the duration of the call is minutes, but for the first minute and a half you call cq de sv oe and during the last half minute you also give the call of the station you are trying to contact, for instance g fnj de sv oe. you must on no account transmit for more than two minutes because at the beginning of the third minute the other station will begin transmitting the same pattern of signals. but if he has heard you he will alter the pattern. for the first half minute he will send sv oe de g fnj and for the ensuing minute and a half he will transmit the letter o which signifies that he has heard your callsign completely and without difficulty i.e. q in the q code. if i have also heard your callsign completely i will send g fnj for half a minute followed by ro for a minute and a half, which means that i have also received your callsign and your o. and you will reply ro which concludes the successful contact. "there are one or two other letters that can be used. sending m signifies that i hear you well but can only copy % of your transmission, equivalent to q . and the letter t signifies i hear you but cannot read you at all--q . "it has been found by experience that the best sending speed is w.p.m. sending slowly or very fast presents problems at the other end." chapter eight personal reminiscences and anecdotes the eight items which follow are not strictly part of the story of the development of amateur radio, but they deal with some historical events which are connected with our hobby. two are of particular interest: the account given to me by takis coumbias formerly sv aaa of the early days of amateur radio in russia and the story of the greek broadcasts from cairo, egypt during the german/italian occupation of greece in world war ii. nearly all the photographs of the period were taken by the author. . athanasios 'takis' coumbias ( - ) when i met takis in his office in may i told him i was thinking of writing a small book about the history of amateur radio in greece before it was too late--so many of the old timers had already passed away. little did we both suspect at the time that he also would not live to see the finished project. i asked him how far back he could remember. "well, i can start from when i was about and living in odessa in the soviet union. there was a lot of interest in wireless and two magazines were published in russia which dealt mainly with the construction of receivers. my interest was first aroused when a friend of mine at school proudly showed me something he had just made. it was, he told me, a variable capacitor and he was going to use it to make a radio receiver. the contraption was enormous by today's standards and must have weighed about half a kilo. my friend said it had a capacity of micro-micro farads, which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time. "when he completed his receiver i became very interested and decided i would build one too. but materials were hard to find and very expensive. two items one had to buy: valves and headphones. "i asked my friend where he had found the sheet metal to make the plates of the capacitor. he took me to a row of small shops which had a metal-faced ledge below the shop window. the metal was thin and seemed easy enough to remove. we sat on the ledge for a while and when the coast was clear we tore away a section and ran like mad. later i ruined a pair of my mother's dressmaking scissors cutting out the plates. i used rings of some thick copper wire to space the plates but i could not drill holes in the plates for the spindle so a friend did that for me. i used about plates and to this day i have no idea what the capacity of the finished capacitor was. some small items for the receiver could be found in a little shop owned by an old man who charged exorbitant prices, so i decided i must go to moscow for the valve and a single headphone that i needed. "but moscow was three days and two nights away by train, and it was the middle of winter. so what, you may ask. like many others i had to travel on the roof of a goods waggon. i took with me a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese and two hard-boiled eggs. my father said i must be mad but he gave me some spending money and his blessing. "i had eaten my food by the end of the second day so when we stopped at brensk which is famous for its 'piroushki' i decided to try them. they were kept warm in large metal tins ready for the arrival of the train. there were seven varieties and i had one made with liver and a savoury sauce. "when i arrived in moscow i went to see the greek ambassador as i was carrying a letter of introduction from my father who was acting consul for greece in odessa, but it was saturday and the ambassador's office was closed. i learned later that only foreign establishments closed at the week-end. so i went to look for a cheap hotel. looking out of the bedroom window i saw a lot of people running in one direction. at that moment a woman brought me a towel and a small bar of soap, so i asked her what was going on outside. she said the butcher near the hotel had just received some liver. would she buy me some i said. i gave her some money and she returned nearly two hours later with the liver wrapped in newspaper. when i opened it i saw it was horse liver cooked with corn and it had an awful sour smell. i just could not face it, although i was starving by now." i asked takis about the shops in moscow. he said he had found several shops with parts and some made-up receivers in the state owned shops. he learned later that these receivers were made by amateurs because the factories only made equipment for the armed forces. he bought a triode valve called 'micro' and was told it had an amplification factor of . he wrapped it carefully in cotton wool for the return journey to odessa. he also bought a dry battery pack which gave volts, and an enormous single headphone for one ear which was ex-army surplus. when he returned home and began to build his receiver he raided his mother's kitchen to build things like terminals, switches etc. there was an electric bell circuit between the dining room and the kitchen and as they didn't use it his mother said he could dismantle it and use the wire, which was quite long because it went up into the loft and then down again to the kitchen. "i had acquired a small square of bakelite and i used a penknife to make a holder for the valve, twisting a few turns of wire round the pins as i could find nothing to use as a socket. i had no idea how to connect the various items i made or bought. i had seen a circuit diagram in a french magazine of a detector with reaction. i made the connections by twisting wires together and finally the receiver was complete. the next thing was the aerial. i made an enormous aerial with four parallel wires, like the aerials i had seen on ships. putting it up was a dangerous operation as our house had a rather steep tiled roof, so i got some friends to help me. some of them who had 'superior knowledge' told me the down-lead must have no bends. i got hold of a stiff copper wire and supported the down-lead on two enormous bell insulators as used on telegraph poles. i had to smash a corner of my bedroom window to bring the wire in. i had bought a large knife switch which could be turned over to connect the aerial to ground. i was afraid the large flat top of the aerial would attract thunderbolts. when i finally connected the aerial to the receiver i heard absolutely nothing." i asked him how he tuned the receiver. he said he had put many taps on the coil and he twisted his antenna to these taps trying various combinations with the tuning capacitor. "all i heard was this breathing noise. i learned later that it was the 'carrier wave' of a broadcasting station without modulation, but i didn't know what that meant. as my friends also heard the same noise i was convinced my receiver was working. we soon found out that the long wave transmitter at ankara, the capital of turkey was making test transmissions without modulation. ankara was one of the first broadcasting stations in that part of the world." norman: "regeneration should have produced a whistle." takis: "yes, indeed. and in a peculiar way. when i approached the receiver my hand produced the whistle." norman: "hand capacity effect." takis: "and foot capacity effect as well! when i approached my knee to the metal leg of the work-bench i would lose the station i had been listening to." he said the tuning capacitor he had made was obviously too small and he had to alter the taps on the coil continuously. about three o'clock in the morning during a cold winter night he heard a new sound--the breathing (carrier) noise and a sort of regular ticking. he later found out that it was the new broadcasting station in vienna, austria, which transmitted the sound of a metronome throughout the night. this would have been about . i asked takis about school. "in spite of the late nights listening i never missed a day at school. my father was the chairman of the school committee and i couldn't let him down. but i had to earn some pocket money to pay for the bits a pieces i needed. particularly a decent pair of headphones; i had to hold the army headphone to me ear with one hand which gave me pins and needles. for some years i had kept goldfish and pigeons, so i sold them. a friend of mine had gone to sea as a cadet and his ship went abroad, so i asked him to get me a pair of headphones. "i must explain to you that it was no easy matter for a russian seaman to serve on a vessel which visited foreign ports. first one had to go through the communist party sieve and then he was told that if he jumped ship his family would suffer for it. "anyway, he bought me a lovely pair of telefunken headphones when the ship berthed at constantinople (istanbul) which i have to this day. but not on his first trip, when he was not allowed to go ashore. and it was not the captain who decided who could go ashore. a trusted member of the party would pick out a group of seamen who could land but they had to stay together the whole time. "i never managed to go abroad. at the club i had obtained a morse test certificate for letters a minute ( wpm) in latin characters and letters ( wpm) in the cyrillic alphabet (russian). to go abroad one had to up-grade to latin and cyrillic letters. ( & wpm). i was put on a small coastal ice-breaker which cleared the river estuaries in the black sea. "the black sea is one of the most treacherous inland seas in the world. during the winter its northern shores are frozen whereas the coast of asia minor keeps the southern shores relatively warm by comparison. this results in gale force winds and rough seas. waves follow each other very closely as opposed to the long swell one gets in the pacific. ships have to leave port to avoid crashing into each other. "i was about when i first went to sea as a cadet w/t operator. one day when we came out of an estuary the sea was so rough that the captain decided to turn back. as we turned to starboard we noticed an american freighter behind us heavily laden with wheat and very low down in the water. to our horror it was caught between the crests of two enormous waves and broke in two roughly amidships. although we were only about half a mile away the freighter sank before we could get to it. we saw a few survivors in the water, but it would have been impossible to put a boat into that treacherous sea. apart from which a man cannot survive many minutes in a water temperature just above freezing. it was all over in a flash and we returned to odessa in deep shock. "odessa used to have four harbours. the callsign of the w/t station was eu kao. i remember it very well because it was my job to take the weather forecasts for shipping which it transmitted regularly." takis spoke about some amusing misconceptions of that period. when he first completed his receiver and was getting poor results with it he asked a more experienced amateur to look at it. the 'expert' immediately found the first fault: the downlead from the antenna had a bend in it of more than degrees which was quite unacceptable. secondly, the ground connection to the central heating radiator was no good because it was winter and the radiator was hot so it presented a very high resistance! it must be soldered, he said, to a cold water tap. "i tried everything i could think of to solder the wire to the tap, but to no avail. then one day i had a brain-wave and i made a stupendous invention! i wrapped a copper strip round the tap and bolted it tightly, together with the ground wire. i was really very proud of myself and wondered if anybody else had ever thought of doing it that way." i asked takis if he had done any transmitting from home. "we amateurs of foreign origin were not allowed to own transmitters but we could operate the club station under close supervision by the party member who was always present. my own swl callsign was rk- as you can see from the qsl card i received from eu dn in . "i remember our excitement when we first contacted a station outside russia. it was a station in saarbrueken and we were on a wavelength of metres. all the members of the club sent him our swl reports and he sent us back his cards and a photograph of his equipment which was published in the moscow amateur journal and so odessa became famous. on metres most of our qsos were with german stations. as a result of this success many young lads joined our club and we 'experts' would explain to them about bends in the aerial down-lead and the high resistance of a ground connection to a central heating radiator when the water in it was hot!! the club transmitter consisted of valves in a hartley parallel push-pull oscillator circuit which we considered to be of relative 'high power'--perhaps all of watts." takis continued: "in , my family, like many other families of greek origin, moved to athens. i built a cw transmitter using four philips valves. i went and saw mr eleftheriou at the ministry and he informed me that there was no way that he could issue me with a transmitting licence, but he thanked me all the same for telling him i had built a transmitter." takis continued: "i would like you to notice these two qsl cards i received in . i ip wrote on his card 'i am on the air since but you are the first sv station i have heard'. and the british listener brs wrote 'dear old man, very pleased to report your signals. are you the only active station in sv?' i think those comments speak for themselves." norman: "had you not heard about tavaniotis, who had also emigrated from russia?" takis: "no. it was you who took me to the basement shack and introduced me. i remember how i gaped when i saw the watt transmitter bill had built." takis then described how he had heard a distress signal on his home-made receiver. it was in a language he could not understand so he called his father, who was quite a linguist, to listen. it appeared that the vessel had caught fire as it was approaching the port of piraeus, south of athens. the captain of the ship said their predicament was complicated by the fact that they were transporting a large circus, with many wild animals. takis ran to the nearest police station and told his story, but was greeted practically with derision. how could a young lad like him know there had been a fire on a ship which was not even in sight of the shore? anyway, somebody was brought to the station and the officer said "go with this man." takis was taken to the coast at palaio faliro where he boarded a salvage tug, and they set out to sea. he said the vessel in distress had been bound for piraeus, and sure enough the salvage tug located it, but when they approached it there was no sign of fire as it had been put out, before any of the animals could be harmed. but the engine room had been damaged, so the tug towed the vessel into harbour. what coumbias didn't know was that by law he was entitled to a proportion of the salvage money, and he never got anything. another incident involving a small yacht which belonged to a friend of takis' led to an interesting assignment. the yacht was considered to be not seaworthy any more, and a w/t transmitter it carried was dismantled completely by an electrician who knew nothing about wireless. "i was asked to put it together again by the owner who wanted to sell it to the ship to shore w/t station where they did not have a short wave capability yet. when i was shown the parts i was horrified to see that there was no circuit diagram or instructions of any sort. it took me more than a month to figure it all out. the transmitter was of french manufacture and consisted of two enormous triodes in a hartley oscillator circuit. when i got it to work it was installed at the naval wireless station at votanikos, where the director, captain kyriakos pezopoulos used it for experimental transmissions. there were already two other transmitters there, one on long waves and one on metres. the callsign of the station was sxa. as this was the third transmitter they used the callsign sxa . the operator, lt. george bassiacos, had discovered some telegraphy stations which replied when he called them--he had accidentally stumbled upon the amateur metre band! with a transmitter supplied with unrectified a.c. at hz. and a power output of several kilowatts, no wonder contacts with any part of the world were easy. when captain pezopoulos met bill tavaniotis the latter suggested that if the 'experimental' transmissions were to continue in the amateurs bands, the callsign should be altered to sx a. thousands of successful contacts were made as it was the beginning of sunspot cycle , a very good one as old timers will know. if anyone reading this has a qsl card from sx a it would be appreciated if he would donate it to the technical museum in greece." (takis coumbias died suddenly of a heart attack in september .) . pol psomiadis n doe (formerly sv az). the text which follows was written by pol n doe of bergenfield nj. norman joly and i first met in when i started working with bill sv ke as his radio mechanic. norman was then working for the local agents of rca selling broadcast receivers. the last time i saw him before the war, was in september . i was still working with bill and i went to the british school of archaeology in athens to deliver a national nc with a spiderweb all-band antenna. norman had been recruited to set up a monitoring station for the press department of the british embassy, which had been moved to a building in the grounds of the school. after the end of the war i saw him again in in the uniform of a superintendent of police working in the british police mission to greece. he told me he had obtained a special licence and was back on the air with his pre-war callsign sv rx. in i emigrated to brazil where i stayed for years and then came to the u.s.a. in , where i have been ever since. we had lost contact with each other and it was five years later that i found norman's address in the american callbook. i wrote to him and in his reply he begged me to come on the air again. owing to a prolonged family illness which culminated in the loss of my beloved wife it was before i was in the mood to take up amateur radio once again, with my present callsign n doe. when i went to london in to spend a few weeks with norman he told me he had started recording some reminiscences on a tape recorder about the first radio amateurs in greece, and he asked me if i would like to help. as i was one of them myself i agreed. when i left to return to the u.s.a. he gave me a number of cassettes to transcribe. although he speaks fluent greek without any accent at all, he never attended a greek school and couldn't write the memories. he told me to add anything else i could remember about those pioneering days long gone by. so, to start from the beginning, let me say that i was born in constantinople (now istanbul) in turkey, in october , of greek parents. although we spoke greek at home i did not go to a greek school until i was nine. but i soon moved to the french college where all the lessons were in french and greek was only taught as a foreign language for two hours every afternoon. my elder brother had subscribed to a french magazine called 'la science et la vie' (science & life) and i had become fascinated by a subject called 'telegrafie sans fil' (telegraphy without wire). the broadcasting of speech and music had not started yet in that part of the world, though in , a broadcasting station was built in ankara the capital of turkey. broadcast receivers began to appear in the shops, either with headphones or large horn loudspeakers, but we never had one at home. in we moved to athens, greece, where i went to school. strangely enough, as i found out later, that was the year when norman also came to athens for the first time. at school i met nasos coucoulis (later sv sm and sv ac) who was also very interested in wireless. i made a crystal receiver and was able to hear the greek royal navy station at votanikos sxa and the old station at thiseon in athens itself, which was still a spark station. there just was nothing else to hear. i acquired a philips 'e' type valve and built a grid-leak detector circuit, but all i got was silence. the four volt heater drew one amp and i had been trying to get it going with a small torch battery. as i became more experienced i began repairing simple broadcast receivers for my friends and putting up wire antennas for reception for people who had bought broadcast receivers. in nasos and i were in our final year at the megareos school. we built a very simple am transmitter tuned to about metres and we broadcast the performance of a play acted by the final year students. i have no idea if anybody heard our transmission, but it was certainly the first amateur broadcast in greece. nasos and i spoke to each other with very simple am transmitters across the metres or so separating our homes, again without knowing whether anybody else ever accidentally tuned in to our very low power transmissions. in i was called up for my compulsory military service and ended up attending the reserve officers cadet school. after my military training i started work at the lambropoulos brothers shop in the metohikon tameion building. it was there that i made the acquaintance of takis coumbias, who had come to greece from russia with his family. takis had had eight years experience of amateur radio in russia, and he told us how the radio clubs operated under the strict supervision of the communist party. three years later, in , i moved to tavaniotis' workshop as his mechanic. 'bill' had built an am and cw transmitter with an output of watts. he used the callsign sv ke. we had regular contacts with george moens su ro in cairo, egypt. george is still active in his native land of belgium with the callsign on ro in brussels. he should be well into his s by now. in george came to athens with his wife beba and their little boy robert to visit her parents who were greek, and of course they came to our shack and we had the pleasure of meeting them in person after many years of chatting over the air. in greece we are hours ahead of eastern standard time and so our contacts with the u.s.a. took place well after midnight, our time. one of the stations we contacted very regularly was charles mellen w fh in boston. chas was born in boston of greek parents. his father came to greece in or with charles' younger sister, a pretty little girl of about . they came to bill's shack and were able to speak to boston with the equipment shown in this photograph taken by norman. after the end of world war ii w fh together with w am of california were the two leading stations in the u.s.a. topping all the achievement tables. but w am had a slight advantage; he had bought a site previously belonging to press wireless which had rhombics whereas w fh always operated with his simple yagi at feet. another station with which we had frequent contacts on metres was w ixy owned by dorothy hall. one night dorothy gave us a big surprise. in the course of a qso she told us to listen carefully. suddenly the three or four of us in sv ke's shack heard our voices coming back from new york. dorothy had recorded our previous transmission on a disc. a few days later we turned the tables on her. we had hastily put together some recording equipment and played back her transmission. dorothy said that was the first time she had heard her voice coming from , miles away. i must explain that at that time (about ) home recording was a novelty even in the u.s.a. recording on vinyl tape was invented by telefunken towards the end of the war in . today even little children play with cassette recorders, and the latest revolutionary home recording system invented by japan dat (digital audio tape) provides high fidelity studio quality with no background noise; really a 'super' version of the mini cassette recorder. in athens we continued to operate even through the dictatorship of general metaxas which began with a coup in august , but not without some problems. the main target of the infamous maniadakis, minister of the interior under metaxas, were of course the communists, but the handful of radio amateurs also came under suspicion of being subversive elements. things got worse, in fact, when the newspaper estia owned by k. kyrou, published an article blaming 'amateurs' for being responsible for interference to short wave reception. i must explain that the writer was referring to the dozens of pirate low power broadcasting stations operating in the medium wave (broadcast) band. regretably, i have to place on record that owing to the late development of broadcasting and official recognition of amateur radio in greece, the word 'amateur' in the minds of the general public embraces cbers, pirates of all kinds operating on medium waves and recently in the fm band, and genuine licensed amateurs as well. so, as i was working in the basement workshop at sv ke's one afternoon, three of maniadakis' plain-clothes men turned up and said they had come to seize 'the broadcasting equipment'. fortunately bill was not in the shop when they came. i asked them if they had a search warrant and they said no. i replied that i was only an employee and could they call back a little later when mr tavaniotis himself would be there to answer their questions, and thus managed to get rid of them. when bill returned i told him about the incident and he left straight away and went to the ministry of posts & telegraphs to see mr. stefanos eleftheriou. and so it came about that eleftheriou who knew all about our activity in the amateur bands issued the first three licences to sv ke, sv ca and sv nk 'to carry out experimental transmissions relating to the study of propagation on the short waves'. he knew that he had every right to do this as greece was a signatory to the international telecommunication treaties. i would like to record at this point that aghis cazazis sv ca now a silent key, has left his own 'monument' in athens. after the end of world war ii, in his capacity as head of lighting development with the electricity authority, he designed the magnificent floodlighting of the acropolis which is admired by tourists to the present day. to return to : mr eleftheriou entrusted us with the task of preparing draft legislation for legalising amateur radio activity. we wrote to the u.s.a., to england, france and germany and obtained copies of the laws governing the issue of licences in all these countries, and we began the long task of drafting a text which would be appropriate to the political situation then prevailing in our country (military dictatorship). norman joly, then sv rx, had written a text in english, but before we could translate it into greek or do anything about it, all our hopes were dashed to the ground by the outbreak of war in september . in while serving as a reserve officer in the greek army, i was seconded to the british military mission to greece (b.m.m.) because of my knowledge of english and french. there i met several amateurs serving with the british forces, and one of them gave me a small military transmitter, so i was able to come on the air again with my old callsign of sv az. . constantine 'bill' tavaniotis (formerly sv ke). there is no doubt that the most active and best known amateur in greece before world war ii was 'bill' sv ke. he was active on and metres on am phone and cw, using his famous mcelroy 'bug' to good advantage. (no electronic keyers and no metre band in those years). tavaniotis was born in rostov, ussr, of greek parents. his father was a well-known doctor. like many other greek families bill and his parents left russia in the early years of the communist regime and moved to istanbul, turkey, where he began his studies at the famous robert college. later he went to london where he first came into contact with radio amateurs, while studying electrical engineering. after that he went to belgium. bill had a knack of picking up languages and when i met him in athens in the early thirties he spoke at least seven to my knowledge: russian, greek, english, french, italian, turkish and german. his pronunciation in all them was excellent. on one occasion at a party in the athens suburb of palaio psyhico one of the guests was an amateur from italy who spoke no english, so bill interpreted from that language into italian for his benefit. he then translated what the italian had said into english for the others. but suddenly their faces went blank. quite unconsciously bill had translated the italian's remarks into turkish! many years later bill was employed at the united nations in new york as a simultaneous translator. in october bill and his wife artemis visited charles mellen w fh in boston for an 'eyeball' after more than ten years of qsos over the air, with the exception of the war years of course. chas photographed bill outside the massachusetts institute of technology and bill photographed mary (chas' xyl), chas and artemis standing in front of the w fh tower. the first transmitter he built can be seen in the photo taken from the book greek broadcasting published by radio karayianni in . his shack was in the basement workshop at a, bucharest street in athens, an address which became known world-wide as the first qsl bureau for greece. the gang of enthusiasts who met at bill's included nasos coucoulis sv sm, aghis cazazis sv ca, nick katselis sv nk, mikes paidousi sv mp, pol psomiadis sv az (now n doe) and the writer of these memoirs, sv rx. of course all visiting amateurs made a beeline for the shack in the basement. as most of our contacts were with the u.s.a. we were usually up most of the night because of the -hour difference with eastern standard time. none of us had motor-cars and public transport was not available during the night hours so we all got plenty of exercise walking back to our respective houses. bill was closely in touch with two men who played a very important role in the development of amateur radio in greece. i am referring to stefanos eleftheriou who was section head for telecommunications at the ministry (greek initials t.t.t.)., and to captain kyriakos pezopoulos, director of d.r.y.n. (greek initials for directorate of the wireless service of the navy). the long wave spark transmitter at votanikos, a suburb of athens, (callsign sxa) had been built by the marconi company before world (bill tavaniotis died of cancer in .) . harry barnett g aiq (formerly sv we). in july , harry barnett, a royal air force officer attached to the press department of the british embassy in athens obtained an experimental transmitting licence from the w/t section of the ministry of posts & telegraphs, with the callsign sv we. at that time he was living in a flat in athens and could not put up an antenna, so it was not until june that he became active. the terms of his licence were in themselves rather strange, one might even say quite 'experimental', the final paragraph reading: "this experimental research must be carried out as follows:- . with a maximum power of watts. . in the frequency bands (harmonics) , , mc/s. . in the frequency bands mc/s and mc/s. . with the call sign sv we." from june until april harry worked countries, mostly on phone in the & metre bands, at a time when there were not many stations on the air--a minute fraction of the millions now active. he used a national hro receiver he had got off a scrap heap which he modified to take the efficient ef valves in the r.f. stages and ef s in the i.f. the transmitter was completely 'home brew', consisting of a metal l franklin oscillator on . mhz followed by two more l s doubling to mhz. in the final amplifier stage harry used a telefunken pentode, the famous and very efficient rl p which was used in the german tank transmitters in all stages, oscillator, p.a. and audio amplifier/suppressor grid modulator. he adopted the same method of modulation using a record player amplifier and an astatic crystal microphone. w.a.c. was achieved by february with about watts of r.f. into a simple dipole antenna. during the ten months that sv we was active qsl cards were sent out. of the countries worked only were confirmed. today ( ) harry is still regularly on the air under his original callsign g aiq which was first issued to him on the st of january , years ago. . george yiapapas (formerly sv gy). george yiapapas is a greek amateur who was very active for over years yet nobody seems to have heard of him. in george and his father costas built a one-valve transmitter using a type pentode with suppressor grid modulation, and succeeded in contacting most of the world with this qrp rig. the electron coupled oscillator could not have put more than or watts into the antenna. after the war george went to jordan in to work for cable & wireless the english company which operated the old eastern telegraph cable network. he used the callsign jy gy for about a year and was then transferred to tripoli in the kingdom of lybia, during the reign of king idris, where he obtained an official licence with the call a ta. in he was again transferred, this time to kuwait, where he operated the equipment of mohamet behbehani k am for over six years. george now has a small shop in piraeus, the port of athens and is no longer active on the amateur bands. . stefanos eleftheriou ( - ). stefanos eleftheriou, head of the telecommmunications section of the ministry of posts & telegraphs (greek initials t.t.t.) played a vital role in the early development of amateur radio in greece. when he returned from switzerland, where he had studied electrical engineering, he had to do his compulsory military service which had been deferred while he was completing his education. a friend of his told him "don't go into the army, join the navy; they have an amazing wireless station at votanikos with which they can contact the fleet anywhere in the world". as it happened there was a vacancy for an officer and stefanos together with another young man called nikolis faced a selection board of naval officers who really didn't know what qualifications they were looking for. he was successful whereas nikolis went to the ministry of posts & telegraphs where he ended up as director-general many years later. the marconi company of england had built an impressive wireless station for the greek royal navy at votanikos, a suburb of athens. there was a transmitter which operated on metres and a larger one on long waves above , metres which used the callsign sxa. stefanos told me how he was summoned by the director of the naval station admiral mezeviris who asked him "tell me, young man, what do you know about wireless?" "well sir," replied eleftheriou, "i studied electrical engineering in switzerland--i really don't anything about wireless." "neither do i," replied the admiral candidly. "nor do most of my officers. we must set up a school to train technicians and wireless operators. i entrust you with the task of getting all the necessary books and other materials. write to england, the u.s.a., france and germany and get whatever you need. when you are ready i will appoint staff to assist you." that was how eleftheriou became the head of the first school for training wireless officers for the greek royal navy. a couple of years later eleftheriou joined the staff of the ministry of post & telegraphs. a newspaper of had a photograph of him with one of his triplet sons. in his capacity of head of the telecommunications section at the ministry he worked hard to get official recognition of amateur radio. a handful of us who were active 'under cover' so to speak, frequently visited him in his office. he was a very likeable person and had a talent for anecdotes. one day he told us that he had attended a joint services committee which had been set up to study the requirements for building a broadcasting station in athens. a station had been in regular operation in the northern city of thessaloniki (salonica) since , built by the pioneer of broadcasting in the balkans christos tsingeridis. when the question of wavelength for the proposed station was considered somebody said a wavelength of , metres might be appropriate. one of the military officers, who shall be nameless, remarked angrily "what! , metres. we are spending all this money only to be received up to koukouvaounes? this is outrageous!" (koukouvaounes was then a small village with a funny name about miles south-west of athens. eleftheriou lived to the ripe old age of . when i last saw him he promised to give me his collection of old photographs and a large number of books and documents relating to the development of radio communications in greece. unfortunately, shortly after his death his wife and three sons moved house temporarily and a packing case containing all these priceless papers was lost in . norman f. joly g fnj. (formerly sv rx). i was born in izmir (then known as smyrna), on the west coast of turkey in asia minor, in , of british parents. my british nationality was established through the treaty of capitulation which was then in force between turkey and the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland. i remember there was a british post office in smyrna and we posted our letters with british postage stamps (of king edward vii) overprinted with the word levant. my grandmother on my father's side had come from russia. it is a strange coincidence that takis coumbias (ex sv aaa), bill tavaniotis (ex sv ke) and i all had roots in southern russia. my grandmother on my mother's side was the daughter of the dutch consul in smyrna. quite a mixed bag. in , at the end of the war between turkey and greece, the town of smyrna was destroyed by fire when the greek army was routed. my widowed mother with four young children, was advised to take us on board a british merchant vessel while the town changed hands. we were told to take a little food with us just for a day or two. we carried a large string bag with some bread, cheese and fruit, and one knife, one fork and one spoon between the five of us. i remember it was night and my mother put all her jewelry in a small leather bag. as i pulled the cord to close it the pin of a large broach stuck out through the top. my mother grabbed it and said i would hurt myself--i was only years old at the time. she looked around the bedroom, lifted up a corner of the mattress of her bed and hid the pouch 'safely' underneath it. we hurried out of the house--and never went back. we and many other families spent one night on the merchant vessel where there was no sleeping accommodation. next morning we were transferred to a large hospital ship called maine. all day we watched small groups of the turkish and greek armies skirmishing on the sea-front and in the evening many fires broke out in the town. in the middle of the night while we were sleeping the hospital ship sailed away to an unknown destination. after two or three days we arrived in malta, where most of us stayed for the next four years. it was in malta that my interest in wireless telegraphy was first aroused. we were housed in some military 'married quarters'. close by there was a wireless station which produced bright greenish-blue sparks and crackling noises. its antennas were supported on three very tall wooden masts painted bright yellow. i soon discovered that it was gyz belonging to the admiralty. malta was then ( ) a very big base of the british navy, in the good old days when england had an empire. i bought a kit of parts and assembled a small receiver and being so close to the powerful spark transmitter that was all i ever heard. in when i left school my family moved to greece and my brother who was years older than me, opened up a shipping office on the island of mitylene, in the aegean sea. my father and grandfather had been in this business in turkey. it was in mitylene in that i constructed my first short wave receiver. it had valves with volt filaments, heated by an accumulator (storage battery). h.t of volts was obtained from a bank of small accumulators in series. as i had not learned how to make a charger i had to carry these two units to a local garage regularly for re-charging. apart from commercial telegraph stations there was little else to hear. i had still not heard about 'amateur' radio. the b.b.c. was carrying out test transmissions from chelmsford for what became the empire service (now the world service) using the callsign g sw. there was also g rx which stood for rugby experimental, operated by the british post office. they were experimenting with ship-to-shore telephony, and after setting up a circuit the operator used to say "over to condition a" (and sometimes b) which was very frustrating for me because the voices then became scrambled and quite unintelligible. when i first began transmitting six years later, having 'discovered' the amateurs, i chose the callsign rx as i had been a listener so long, and also remembering the excitement of listening to g rx. in i moved to athens and became a salesman for rca radios. it was there that i met bill tavaniotis, sv ke, and his mechanic pol sv az (now n doe). none of us had official licences because the greek state did not recognise the existence of amateur radio, and in fact athens did not even have a broadcasting station until , although a station had been operating since in salonica (thessaloniki) the second largest city of greece. but the head of the w/t section at the ministry of posts & telegraphs (greek initials t.t.t) mr stefanos eleftheriou knew all about us and gave us his unofficial blessing. my first transmitter was just an electron coupled oscillator using a type output pentode from a radio. with an input of around watts i was able to achieve w.a.c. on mhz in minutes one very exciting afternoon. there were very few stations around and single frequency working had not been heard of yet. it was the middle of the sunspot cycle (which i knew nothing of) and propagation must have been exceptionally good. another thing we had never heard of in those innocent days was swr. i had a hot wire ammeter and always tuned for maximum deflection, completely oblivious of the fact that a large proportion of the indicated value was 'reflected power'. i moved to 'high power' when i added a p.a. to my rig. obviously the prefix sv was quite a rare one and sv stations were much sought after, particularly the handful who used cw. but as i described in a short article in the october issue of the short wave magazine published in london, it was not all fun being a rare dx station. a photo copy appears below: to return to pre-world war ii operating: most operators used crystal oscillators in order to have a clean ' x' note. it was quite normal procedure to call cq on one's crystal frequency, say , khz and then go over and start combing the band from , for replies. at that time metres covered , to , khz., and the metre band had not been allocated to the amateur service. in september hitler invaded poland and all of us hastily and voluntarily dismantled our transmitters and scattered the components, as there was nobody to order us to close down. in the latter part of april the german army marched into the northern suburbs of athens at o'clock in the morning. at o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, a strong unit of the gestapo arrived in the southern suburb of kallithea and surrounded the block in which my house was situated and broke into it, looking for me and my transmitter. of course i had dismantled everything months previously and even taken down the antenna. so after this long period of qrt how did they know where to find me? well, four years earlier i had won the first prize for greece in the d.a.s.d. dx contest for and the german society had sent me a nice certificate. you can draw your own conclusions. i heard later (because i had left a few days earlier for egypt with the staff of the british embassy) that the gestapo had visited all the active amateurs and had managed to arrest only one of them, nasos coucoulis sv sm (later sv ac) and put him in a concentration camp in italy for nearly a year. i would like to sketch briefly the turbulent events of the following three years with some extracts from my diaries. one year earlier, in , following the invasion of greece by the italian army operating from albania, the broadcasting authority in athens (ethnikon idrima radiofonias) began a news service in english which was beamed to england and the u.s.a. on the short waves. in my capacity as a member of the press department staff of the british embassy i took part in the first programme, and in fact read the first news bulletin, which went out at a.m. athens time. as i said above, early in april i was transferred to the british embassy in cairo, egypt. : very small contingents of the british army landed in greece to help the greek army. but they proved totally incapable of standing up to the onslaught of the german army which followed soon after. the greek army laid down its arms in epirus (north-western greece). general tsolakoglou became the first 'quisling' prime minister of greece. king george and his government, under premier emmanouil tsouderos had left for cairo. : in north africa general rommel had advanced to within miles of cairo, but his supply lines had become very long. one of the most important was the railway link through greece, so the british strategists decided that attempts must be made to disrupt it. the special operations executive (s.o.e.) in london, despatched two small groups of saboteurs (about a dozen men altogether) under the command of brigadier eddie myers and major chris woodhouse who had the task of linking up with the various bands of 'andartes' (resistance movement fighters) which had started forming in the mountains. unfortunately, the british officers were told nothing at all about the bitter rivalries between the various groups, most probably because h.q. in cairo were themselves ignorant about the real situation. it didn't take meyers and woodhouse long to discover that by far the largest group was e.l.a.s. (the popular liberation army) under aris velouhiotis, about ill-equipped men operating in the pindus mountains. another smaller group of about men had rallied round a regular officer of the greek army, colonel napoleon zervas. they called themselves the national republican greek league (greek initials e.d.e.s.) i met zervas personally years later when he was minister of the interior (and therefore responsible for the police). i was then acting as interpreter for the assistant-head of the british police mission to greece. i remember vividly with what relish he described to colonel prosser his method of torturing e.l.a.s. prisoners, which left no physical marks on any part of the body. it was in the course of a secret visit to athens that young chris woodhouse found out the real chain of command, when he was introduced to george siantos, the secretary of the greek communist party (greek initials k.k.e.). the k.k.e. controlled e.a.m., the national liberation front which, in turn, ran e.l.a.s. but with a title like that (national liberation front) it was easy to see why e.a.m. enjoyed such widespread support, not only in the countryside, but also among the intelligentsia in athens. but the task of the s.o.e. officers was made very difficult for various reasons: winston churchill had given orders that they were to support, as far as possible, only those guerrilla leaders who favoured the king--but there were none, or very few. the s.o.e. units had orders to cause the maximum disruption to the german occupation of the country. and that was impossible without the support of e.l.a.s., which was controlled by the communists. at the outset, it became obvious to the s.o.e. officers that military and political priorities were already in conflict. e.l.a.s. forces were getting stronger every day and very soon they began attacking fellow greeks in non-communist andarte units. the successful attack on the railway bridge over the gorgopotamos river on the th of november was the first and last time that elas and edes co-operated against the common enemy under the coercion and technical guidance of the british. : friction between edes and elas continued to increase. when eddie myers told them that he had been instructed to destroy the bridge over the asopos river, elas said it was too dangerous a target and refused to help, so this became an all-british operation. a -year-old demolition expert of the royal engineers captain ken scott, was sent from cairo. he was dropped by parachute, and planned the successful attack on the bridge. it took the germans four months to rebuild it. on the th of september , italian troops in the north-west surrendered to the andartes with all their arms. a month later elas seized the weapons and attacked edes. the civil war had begun. : the friction between the various groups of the resistance movement erupted into full-scale war, described as the 'civil war' or the 'guerrilla war' depending on whose side you were on. elas were determined that they alone would be in control when the allies arrived. as a result of intense negotiations on the part of the british officers, all the andarte leaders signed an armistice document on the th february agreeing to stop fighting each other and to concentrate all their efforts against the common enemy--the germans. unfortunately, barely a month later elas attacked and completely annihilated the smallest andarte group e.k.k.a. now only edes and the -strong s.o.e. force stood between the , elas communists and total control of the greek countryside. in the middle east, the lebanon conference, attended by delegates from all parties, including representatives of the andartes, elected george papandreou (father of andreas papandreou, recently prime minister of greece), to act as prime minister of the government of national unity in exile. in september the government moved temporarily to italy. in october, following the withdrawal of the germans from athens, british troops began landing in greece from greek and british warships. by far the largest contingent landed near the port of piraeus and tens of thousands of greeks turned out to cheer and welcome the british forces as they marched through the streets. on october the members of the greek government returned to athens under the leadership of the premier george papandreou, who was accompanied by lt. general ronald scobie, the allied military commander. sadly though, in december elas marched on athens. the british troops, so recently feted and garlanded now found themselves fighting on the same streets of their earlier welcome. s.o.e. had been warning cairo for two years that this might happen. after three or four weeks of intense fighting in the streets of athens and in the suburbs, elas withdrew. winston churchill came to athens on christmas day to mediate. a couple of elas snipers hiding in a school a few hundred yards away from the british embassy took a few pot shots at him as he got out of an armoured vehicle which had brought him from the airport. next day, when he attended a meeting of all parties, the elas representative walked in wearing a military-style uniform with crossed bandoleers across his chest, and carrying two pistols. churchill turned to his interpreter and said quietly: "tell him to leave his toys outside, or i fly back to london immediately, to spend christmas properly with my family." : on the st of january archbishop damaskinos was appointed regent. (it had been agreed that the king should not return to greece until his position had been clarified by a plebiscite). plastiras replaced papandreou as prime minister. after the varkiza agreement the guerrilla war (or civil war) was officially brought to an end. years later in a broadcast, chris woodhouse summarised what the s.o.e. mission to greece had achieved. . it had provided the technical expertise, such as the handling of explosives, without which the major sabotage successes would have been impossible. . it had provided the tactical planning and supplied the communications which successfully harnessed the courage of the greeks to the strategic requirements of the allied commanders. . most important of all, in the long run, it assured that no armed force in occupied greece would gain a monopoly of power on the day of liberation. the final aim of the mission was to leave the greeks with a free choice at the end of the war--a choice between a monarchy, a republic or even a communist regime if they wanted it. but the recent dramatic events in the closing months of in poland, the u.s.s.r., hungary, the east german democratic republic, czechoslovakia and finally romania have proved that the last choice would have been an unwise one if the greeks had also opted for communism. : following a plebiscite king george ii returned to greece at the end of september and appointed panayis tsaldaris as his prime minister. when i returned to athens in october on h.h.m.s. averof i had been appointed radio monitoring officer of the anglo-greek information service (a.g.i.s.) with a staff of about w/t operators and typists to assist me. my unit was a section of the press department of the british embassy. i think the choice of title was a rather unfortunate mistake. the english words 'information' and 'intelligence' have only one equivalent word in greek pliroforiesq. and most greeks hold peculiar views about the c.i.a. and the british intelligence service. so here i was strutting about in the uniform of a war correspondent bearing the flashes 'i.s.', the butt of many a joke from my friends who accused me of being a master spy. my boss, colonel johnson, who had been the british council representative in greece prior to the outbreak of war in , came to my office one morning and told me that he had heard a rumour that king george of the hellenes, who was then in london, was going to broadcast in the greek service of the b.b.c. i replied i had heard nothing, but would try and find out if the rumour was true. as he left my office i glanced at my watch; it was o'clock in the morning, o'clock in london. i telephoned the general manager of cable & wireless, mr briggs, who was a personal friend. i told him i wanted to make use of his facilities to ask an urgent question of the b.b.c. in london. he replied, "tell mctaggert" (the engineer in charge of the central telegraph office) "that i said he should help you in any way possible." "mac," i said over the telephone, "would you get one of your operators to ring the b.b.c. in bush house (from where the world service originates) and ask them if they have any plans for a broadcast by king george of the hellenes." i immediately tuned one of my receivers to the frequency of the london telegraph link, which was carrying high speed morse traffic. in a short while the tape was stopped and an operator, using a hand key, asked my question slowly in plain language, and then the tape was put on again. i waited anxiously for about five minutes. again the tape was stopped, a single letter 'r' (for received) was sent by hand, and traffic returned to normal. my telephone rang; it was mctaggert. "nothing doing, old boy. the b.b.c. have no plans for such a broadcast." i thanked him and looked at my watch. it was . , just minutes had elapsed. i called my boss and told him the answer to his question. "how do you know?" he asked. "i asked the b.b.c., sir." "you what?" he shouted at me. "don't you know there's a war on? i'm coming to see you." he stormed into my office and demanded an explanation, so i told him what i had done. "good god, what is this going to cost us?". "nothing at all, sir. there is no provision for anything like that in the operating procedure". "then i must write a letter to cable & wireless to thank them." i thought to myself, why don't you write a letter to norman and thank him for having friends in the right places. but i kept my mouth shut. my equipment and my staff of men and girls were housed on the th floor of the metohikon tamion building. when elas marched on athens, there was constant firing, shelling and bombing throughout the hours of the day and night for three or four weeks. the bombing was by light aircraft of the r.a.f. on the elas positions in the suburbs and beaufighter aircraft straffing them with mm cannon. then elas set up a mm gun in the northern suburb of aharnon, and started hitting us back. when we had received several hits on and around our h.q. building, i was ordered to move down to the second floor, to safer accommodation. i extended some of my antenna down-leads, and resumed normal service. one of our assignments was to transcribe, every day, what was said in the greek transmissions of nineteen different countries about the situation in greece, and to produce a daily summary in english, for the benefit of the press department. in the summer of we began having interference on gin, a station of the british post office which operated around mhz, transmitting a reuter news service for europe on the german hellschreiber (hell printer) system. this was a sort of very course tv picture of dots, seven by seven. the letter 'i' for instance came out as seven dots vertically, and the letter 't' just had another six dots across the top. the letters were very crude but readable, provided there was no interference, or crashes of static. the interference, which made our tape quite unreadable, used to start around in the afternoon and fade slowly away about three hours later, when the tape became readable again. i decided i would try and identify the source. all i had in the way of recorders were office-type dictaphones using wax cylinders. i removed the three weights from the speed governor, and the cylinder spun round like mad. i managed to record for about three minutes and when i played the recording on another machine at normal speed the cylinder yielded up its secret--it was high speed morse traffic in -figure cypher. i typed it all out and noticed that some of the paragraphs began with the letter 'b'. i subsequently found out it was a characteristic of stations carrying royal air force traffic. i sent my text to london, and three weeks later the interference stopped. it was more than a month later that i was told what had happened. the transmitter causing the problem was located in kandy, ceylon. it operated with a rhombic antenna beamed to r.a.f. calcutta. its frequency was only hz away from gin. the department which had allocated the frequency never imagined that it could possibly cause interference in europe to the reuter news service. but sunspot cycle , which was a good one, had decided otherwise. in i was transferred to the british police mission to greece, which was headed by sir charles wickham. my principal duty was to interpret for sir charles, and for his second in command colonel prosser. my friend mr eleftheriou at the ministry issued me with a special licence and i came on the air again using my pre-war callsign sv rx. when the police mission closed down in i came to england and got the callsign g fnj which i have now held for over years. . wartime broadcasts from cairo. elias eliascos, a former teacher of english at athens college (a joint u.s./greek institution) described to me how he came to be a news-reader at radio cairo in together with his brother patroclos. "when hitler declared war on greece and after the collapse of the front in northern greece and in albania, my brother patroclos and i were summoned to the british embassy in athens and told that owing to our close ties with the british council (of cultural relations), it would not be prudent for us to remain in athens or even greece after the german army had occupied the capital. we were told that we would be helped to leave greece together with the british embassy staff, the staff of the british council and all the british nationals in greece. "the british consul-general provided us with the necessary documents for my brother and me to board the last evacuation vessel sailing from the port of piraeus. it was the s/s 'corinthia' which left piraeus on the th of april . it happened to be good friday according to the greek-orthodox calendar. about five days later hitler's army marched into athens. "the ship was packed and the british embassy staff carried most of the embassy files with them. one of the passengers was david balfour who was the vicar of the little chapel attached to the evangelismos hospital, an impressive tall figure of a man sporting a large black beard. although he had been ordained as a priest of the greek-orthodox church he was a british national and it was widely rumoured that he was an agent of british intelligence. his official title was 'father dimitrios'. he was also the spiritual father of the greek royal family. i refer to david balfour because recently the 'athenian' which is the only english language magazine in athens, in its issue dated january , published a feature article about him, saying that even before the germans had entered athens he had shaved off his beard and divested himself of his clerical robes. "i can say quite categorically that this was not true. when the 'corinthia' sailed he was still 'father dimitrios' and in fact he officiated at a resurrection service while we were still at sea. on the voyage we carried out lifeboat drill on two occasions, once when it was thought that there was a u-boat in the vicinity, and another time when an aircraft flew overhead which turned out to be friendly. i shall never forget how i was moved with emotion when i saw the women getting into the boats, most of them carrying babies or children in their arms, calmly singing hymns in low voices. "some time later i met david balfour again in cairo, and this time he had shaved off his beard, and he was wearing the uniform of a major in the intelligence corps which is a regular unit of the british army." eliascos said he would like to quote a little more from the sensational article written by j.m. thursby in the 'athenian'. "several years before war was even declared, the abwehr (german military intelligence), along with the nazi civilian secret service, had highly trained undercover agents operating in greece. with consummate skill they had catalogued all military and civil information that could be useful to the third reich, and organised spy rings throughout the country. as war became more and more inevitable, it also became increasingly imperative that britain and other anti-fascist countries should gain specific and accurate knowledge of these operations. "during this period a monk, who had embraced the orthodox faith in warsaw, arrived from poland via mount athos, to join the monastery of pendeli, just outside athens. according to his biographer john freeman, his registration at pendeli reads, cell serial number secular name david balfour ecclesiastic name dimitri place of birth england age inscribed order of his holiness the archbishop of athens. coming from the russian church. archbishopric ordinance number of may ." "father dimitri was obviously a well-educated and very courteous person. he had studied in various parts of europe and spoke several languages fluently. these included ancient, byzantine and modern greek, not to mention colloquial 'mangika' (slang). when a vacancy arose for a priest to serve the chapel at evangelismos hospital in central athens, who should be more suitable for this post in the heart of the select neighbourhood of kolonaki than the well-educated, well-bred, charming and conscientious father dimitri." (david balfour died aged on the th of october .) "anyway, let me continue my story of the 'corinthia trip", eliascos went on. "we celebrated easter on board and when we arrived at alexandria some of us were sent on to cairo and others went to india. my brother and i presented ourselves at the offices of the press department of the british embassy in the garden city. we were received by the well-known byzantine scholar stephen runciman who was in charge of all foreign language broadcasts directed to europe, that is, the balkans, yugoslavia, romania, bulgaria, albania, poland and several others. one of our colleagues was lawrence durrell who later became the famous author of many successful books like the banned 'black book', 'bitter lemons', 'the alexandria quartet', 'prospero's cell' and others. but at that time, he used to entertain us daily with a fresh episode about his aunt agatha with the wooden leg." eliascos continued: "my brother patroclos and i were told that we would be attached to the section producing the broadcasts in greek directed towards occupied greece, acting as translators, editors and newsreaders. the head of this section was george haniotis the sports editor of the athens newspaper 'elefthero vima' who used to sign his sporting articles 'geo'. under him was the well-known literary figure of dimitri fotiadis, who died in october . "when the broadcasts began early in may i was the principal newsreader. later when haniotis was posted to the greek embassy in washington d.c. as press attache, my brother was appointed section head. at that time the prime minister of the greek government in exile was emmanouil tsouderos, a former director of the bank of greece. the foreign language broadcasts from radio cairo were under the over-all control of the political warfare executive (p.w.e.) of the british ministry of information. later, in conjunction with the americans, the title of the unit was changed to psychological warfare branch (p.w.b.) "every evening we had two broadcasts, at . and . pm, which went out on the medium wave transmitter of radio cairo at abu zabal, run by the e.s.b. (egyptian state broadcasting). the transmissions in eleven foreign languages were also relayed by three short wave transmitters, two belonging to the telegraph company cable & wireless (callsigns suv & suw), and an experimental transmitter of . kilowatts belonging to a british army signals unit, with the odd callsign jcjc, operated by young corporal rowley shears g kw, a radio amateur friend of norman joly. "the greek broadcasts began in may and went on to the end of january . "during this period many important personalities broadcast from studio , which was also used by well-known war correspondents of the b.b.c., the n.b.c. and many other news organisations. the people of occupied greece were addressed by mr tsouderos, crown prince paul of greece, sofoclis venizelos, son of the famous cretan politician eleftherios venizelos who had played a leading role in the political fortunes of modern greece, and panayiotis kanellopoulos minister for war. after the naval mutiny in the port of alexandria admiral voulgaris spoke to the officers and naval ratings of the greek royal navy." eliascos described in detail the negotiations of the lebanon conference which resulted in the appointment of george papandreou (father of andreas papandreou who was recently prime minister), as the new prime minister of the coalition government in exile. he can be seen at the famous r.c.a velocity microphone type bx which was used throughout world war ii and many years after. this ribbon type microphone had a very large and heavy permanent magnet embodied in the design and must have weighed about , times more than a modern electret lapel microphone. "i must explain that these war-time broadcasts were carried out in the presence of a switch censor who sat on the other side of the news reader's desk and was able to turn off the microphone in a split second if it ever became necessary. during the three and a half years of the broadcasts this was done only on one special occasion and certainly not because the newsreader had gone berserk or something like that. the chief censor was professor eric sloman who had been the first director of the police academy in kerkyra (corfu). then there were censors for the eleven languages used in these broadcasts. the censor for the polish broadcasts was the countess walevska, grand-daughter of napoleon's lady friend. the countess was a rather large lumbering woman who always came into the studio carrying lots of parcels. one evening she came in and sat in an armchair on the other side of the studio to wait her turn for the polish broadcast which followed the greek. as i was reading the news bulletin i suddenly became conscious of a regular ticking noise in the headphones i was wearing. i made a sign to mr joly who was acting as switch censor at the time, and he got up and walked over to the countess. he whispered in her ear and asked her what was in her hand bag. the countess blushed and replied that she had just collected her alarm clock from the watchmaker. i don't know if any sharp-eared listener had heard the ticking and thought that we had a time bomb in the studio. "having mentioned my good friend mr norman joly i must record that he was the technical supervisor for the foreign language broadcasts, handling such things as wavelengths for the short wave relays, training the newsreaders (of whom there must have been over ) and acting as studio manager and switch censor for some of the languages which he knew. "a regular broadcaster in our studio was francis noel-baker who later became a labour member of parliament in the british house of commons, like his father. the noel-baker family are well-known in greece because for several generations they have owned a large property on the island of euboea (evia in greek). francis speaks fluent greek, and his mother was related to lord byron. in recent years he has switched his allegiance to the conservative party led by his personal friend margaret thatcher. "major patrick leigh-fermor the writer who had kidnapped major-general heinrich kreipe in crete and spirited him away to allied headquarters in cairo, came to our studio and described how this audacious operation had been carried out by him and captain william stanley moss, ex-coldstream guards, with the considerable assistance of the cretan resistance movement partisans. "purely by coincidence, it was the greek news bulletin from cairo which first announced to the world general montgomery's victory over general rommel at alamein. i must explain that during a broadcast the two doors leading into the studio were kept closed and an armed officer of the military police sat outside (in civilian clothes) to prevent anyone from entering for any reason whatsoever. i was in the middle of reading the news when suddenly, without warning, the inner door opened and a young despatch-rider, still wearing his crash helmet, walked in waving a piece of paper. mr joly immediately switched off the microphone and asked the young man what he thought he was doing. 'most immediate sir', he said. (this is the army's highest priority classification.) 'to be broadcast at once.' "mr joly handed the document to me and i saw it was written in english. taking a deep breath i began translating the text into greek, with some excitement and trepidation owing to the difference in syntax between the two languages. forty-six years later mr joly gave me the identical sheet of paper, which he had kept as a souvenir. it is printed here in full. at the editorial offices, where they were monitoring the newscast, they thought i had gone out of my mind, because the communique had not reached them yet. when they tuned in to the short wave service of the b.b.c. they heard the communique read out more than an hour after our greek broadcast. a world scoop, if ever there was one. years later when i returned to athens, many of my friends told me they had heard the first broadcast of the thrilling bulletin and they could still remember the excitement in my voice. "the greek section was the first to inaugurate the transmission of personal messages. many people were escaping from occupied greece in sailing boats across to the shores of asia minor, ending up in the middle east, mostly in cairo. they had no means of advising their relatives and friends in greece that they had survived the perilous journey. we used to broadcast pre-arranged messages like 'john informs mary that he has arrived at the village'. "as i mentioned above, george papandreou came to our studio and spoke to the people in greece about the formation of the government of national unity, which had been agreed by all parties meeting in the lebanon, including the representatives of the partisans operating in the mountains of greece. papandreou and the government in exile moved to naples in italy for a short period and then returned to athens on october th for the liberation. "finally, i would like to say that in the dark days before montgomery's breakthrough at alamein, when it was quite on the cards that general rommel might take cairo, mr joly and i were sent to jerusalem to make arrangements for the foreign language broadcasts to be continued from there. fortunately the situation changed and we were recalled to cairo, where we arrived just in time for me to broadcast the historic communique announcing the victory at alamein, which marked the turning point of the war in the middle east. chapter nine miscellany . the first broadcasting stations of the world. speech was first transmitted for reception by the general public from washington d.c. in when europe was still at war. during the first 'broadcasting' station in the world began regular transmissions from a new york suburb. in dr. frank conrad, then assistant chief engineer of the westinghouse electric & manufacturing company, set up, in his own garage in wilkinsburg, pennsylvania, a -watt transmitter ( xk) from which he broadcast musical entertainment for other radio enthusiasts. this was the first continued scheduled broadcasting in history. the westinghouse company realised the potential value of conrad's work and built kdka, the first regular commercial broadcasting station in the world, which began its career by announcing the results of the harding-cox election returns on the november nd . the first broadcasting station in europe was pcgg which began transmitting on november th from the hague in holland. hanso steringa idzerda, a year old engineer, obtained the first licence granted in europe for the transmission of music and speech for general reception, as opposed to the wireless telegraphy stations which had been operating point to point services. from the end of to this station transmitted a series of musical programmes three times a week called 'the hague concerts'. the original wavelength of metres was later changed to , metres. at that time most of the people who heard these concerts would have been using headphones and they would not have been very critical about the quality of the sounds they were hearing compared to the magical novelty of snatching voices and music apparently out of thin air. this historic transmitter can be seen in the museum of the dutch postal services in the hague. the first transmissions of speech and music in england were made from chelmsford, essex, when a kw transmitter of the marconi company began regular transmissions in february of . in the summer of the world's greatest radio companies--british marconi, german telefunken, french radio telegraphie and american r.c.a.--met in london to discuss transatlantic communications. the learned gentlemen all agreed that the atlantic could only be spanned by ultra-long waves of , to , metres, which would require the use of hundreds of kilowatts of power and receivers as large as a trunk, not to speak of antennas more than a mile long. dr. frank conrad, who was also present at the conference, had brought with him a small short wave receiver less than a foot square. when he connected it to a curtain rod as an antenna the faint but clear voices of his assistants in the u.s.a. were heard from nearly four thousand miles away. with this spectacular demonstration he administered the deathblow to all plans for high power ultra-long-wavelength transmitters, and from then on the commercial companies concentrated their efforts on developing equipment for international communications on the short waves. with present-day electronic news gathering and world-wide satellite links, the problems faced by broadcasting organisations fifty years ago when transmitting programmes which did not originate in a studio were thought to be very complex. in the b.b.c. handbook for there was an article entitled 'outside broadcast problems' which said, "work outside the studio is often the most difficult that the broadcast engineer can be asked to undertake; not so much from a technical as from a practical point of view. very often he has to take his apparatus to some place he has never seen before, set up his amplifiers in most awkward positions, test his lines to the studio, decide on his microphone placings and run out the wiring in the space of an hour or so, with little previous experience to guide him. it is in fairly echoey halls, theatres and churches that the majority of outside broadcasts take place. for example, a sermon preached in a church would be intelligible probably to the whole of the congregation. but to render it intelligibly on a loud-speaker, the microphone would have to be, say, not more than ten feet from the speaker. in broadcasting a play from a theatre, when the speakers are moving about, the only way of dealing with the problem is to use several microphones and a mixing device which enables the engineer to change silently from one microphone to another, or to combine them in varying proportions. some rapid switching may sometimes be necessary. "even with good microphones and amplifiers the engineer in the field may often experience difficulties with the lines connecting the outside point to the studio. the majority of such lines do not transmit the higher frequencies adequately, especially the longer ones. the problems become immense when european simultaneous broadcasts are attempted. experiments on the continental wireless link have done no more than reveal its unreliability. the undersea telephone line, however, does not give either good or even intelligible quality of speech if it is longer than a couple of hundred miles, and it is quite unusable for the transmission of a musical programme. "the b.b.c. has been the first in the world to exploit simultaneous broadcasting to its fullest advantage for a national system, and thanks to the co-operation of the post office engineers, it is possible to pick up a programme wherever it may take place within the british isles and radiate it simultaneously from all distribution centres. "looking ahead still further and assuming that the wireless will supplement the wire line link, there is no reason why a simultaneous broadcast of something of fundamental importance to the whole civilised world should not take place some time in the future." in a book entitled "radio goes to war" published by faber & faber in , charles j. rolo wrote, "radio went to war on five continents shortly after the nazi party came to power in germany. in nine years it has been streamlined from a crude propaganda bludgeon into the most powerful single instrument of political warfare the world has ever known. spreading with the speed of light, it carries the human voice seven times round the globe in one second. when hitler makes a speech in the kroll opera house in berlin, listeners in america and the whole world hear his words by short wave even before his own immediate audience hears them. radio speaks in all tongues to all classes. all pervasive, it penetrates beyond national frontiers, spans the walls of censorship that bar the way to the written word, and seeps through the fine net of the gestapo. it reaches the illiterate and the informed, the young and the old, the civilian and the soldier in the front line, the policy makers and the inarticulate masses. so great is the importance of radio to-day that the seizure of a defeated nation's transmitters has become one of the primary spoils of war." in greece, broadcasting was started in the northern city of thessaloniki (salonica) by the pioneer of balkan broadcasting christos tsingeridis, in . a museum in that city tells the full story of the first broadcasting station in the whole of the balkans. broadcasting in the capital, athens, started on march th when a second-hand kw telefunken transmitter was put into operation in the suburb of liosia. the centre-fed t antenna was supported between two pylons of metres ( feet). in when the german army was pulling out of athens they tried to blow the the pylons up but one of them remained standing at a crazy angle, because one of the explosive charges had been placed incorrectly. . avlis 'the voice of hellas'. the th programme of the greek broadcasting service (elliniki radiophonia) is transmitted from the short wave transmitting centre at avlis, about kilometres north of athens. the station was put into service in and has two kw marconi short wave transmitters and a veritable forest of antennas covering , acres, arranged in three lines to cover the desired directions, as can be seen on the great circle map. the pylons supporting the mhz arrays are truly impressive at feet. each line has eight separate antennas for the , , , , , and mhz broadcasting bands. each antenna consists of two curtains with a total of horizontal dipoles. the dipoles are all fed by open wire feeders which can be remotely switched to enable radiation in two directions degrees apart. there are also three curtains for the metre band ( mhz) which may be put into service during sunspot cycle if the m.u.f. allows it. for transmissions to neighbouring countries like cyprus, turkey, the balkans and the countries of the middle east, there are two rotatable log periodic antennas with a high angle of vertical radiation ( degrees) and a wide angle of degrees in the horizontal plane. the remotely controlled switching centre allows each of the two transmitters to be connected to any one of the antennas. electromechanical protection circuits ensure that a transmitter can only be connected to an antenna that is tuned to the same frequency. the change of antennas and transmitting frequencies is made during the ten-minute interval between programmes, which always begin on the hour, preceded by the now familiar signature tune of a shepherd playing his flute with the tinkling of sheep-bells in the background, recorded in , followed by the greek national anthem. the special programmes of news and features originate in the broadcasting headquarters in athens and go on the air throughout the hours of the day in greek, english and many foreign languages. reports of reception are welcome and should be addressed to k.e.b.a., avlis, greece. (the greek initials stand for short wave transmitting centre.) but avlis was 'in the news' long before the greek broadcasting service decided to install its short wave transmitters there. in ancient times a great fleet of ships had been assembled in the harbour there, ready to set sail for troy, following the abduction of the beautiful helen of sparta by paris, the young prince of troy. but there had been no wind for many weeks, and the sea was dead calm. agamemnon, the king of mycenae, who had himself contributed over ships to the fleet, decided to consult his seer. as was the custom, the seer slaughtered a young lamb and scrutinised its entrails. he then announced that the wind would come up if agamemnon sacrificed his daughter iphigenia on the altar of sacrifice. king agamemnon despatched a messenger to mycenae (no vhf repeater being available in those days) to tell his wife queen klitemnestra to send their daughter iphigenia to avlis (aulis). the king said he was planning to marry her off to achilles, the most eligible bachelor of the day. when poor iphigenia arrived she was quickly placed on the sacrificial altar--and had her pretty throat slit. however, there seems to be another version to the end of the story. just before the human sacrifice was due to be made artemis (diana, the famous goddess of hunting) sent a small deer which was placed on the altar instead of the girl. iphigenia was secretly spirited away to taurida, in northern greece, and put in charge of diana's temple there. (this story is the subject of a well-known classical greek play.) historical note on the marconi-stille steel tape recording machine. at the beginning of the century professor poulsen, one of radio's earliest pioneers, discovered that a magnetic impression could be made on a moving length of wire which remained on the wire even after it had been rolled up. he used his machine to record the morse code only, that is magnetism 'on' and 'off'. in dr. stille in germany made a machine which could record sounds. the b.b.c. sent two engineers to berlin, and after a demonstration they offered to buy the machine, but in the end they returned to england empty-handed. in mr louis blattner managed to buy a machine and bring it to england. he called it the blattnerphone. by this time dr. stille had replaced poulsen's wire with a flat steel tape mm wide. each reel of tape could only accommodate minutes of recording. there was a constant and heavy background hiss, due to the inherent quality of the steel tape itself. stille inventions ltd. joined forces with marconi's wireless telegraph co. ltd. to produce, with the close co-operation of the b.b.c. research department, the marconi-stille machine which was put into use in . the tape width was reduced to mm and the thickness to only . of a millimetre. in order to secure the reproduction of the higher audio frequencies, it was found necessary to run the tape at a rate of metres per minute past the recording and reproducing heads. this meant that the length of tape required for a half-hour's programme was nearly kilometres! . brief description of the ribbon or velocity microphone. george papandreou, greek prime minister of the war-time government of national unity in exile, is seen with the famous ribbon microphone developed by the b.b.c. in . this microphone (r.c.a. designation bx) consists of a ribbon of corrugated aluminium foil only . of an inch thick suspended vertically in a very intense but narrow magnetic field. when sounds vibrate the ribbon extremely low alternating voltages are developed at the ends of the ribbon, which has a very low impedance of only . ohm, necessitating the use of a step-up transformer of : turns ratio very close to it. the frequency response is to , hz. a drawback is that the ribbon can be blown out of the magnetic gap by sudden puffs of air when a speaker gets too close to the microphone, so the casing is lined with several layers of chiffon which let in the sounds but not the air. without its base the ribbon microphone weighs kilograms, nearly lbs. . an outstanding antenna system designed by rex g juj for phase iii amateur satellite communication. the up-link section comprises four -element jaybeam multi-beams which provide a power gain of . the two down-link element yagis are each fitted with a small d.c. motor directly coupled to a inch length of m brass studding rotating inside a block of ptfe linked to a push rod which can move the antennas degrees both sides of the vertical position, either in unison or in opposite directions. this system provides infinitely variable polarisation which optimises the down-link signal at any instant. . the saga of h.h.m.s. adrias while fighting in the area of the dodecanese islands on the night of the nd october the destroyer adrias (l ) was seriously damaged by a mine but refused to sink. under the command of commander john toumbas the ship covered a distance of approximately nautical miles, reaching the port of alexandria in egypt on the eve of the feast of saint nicholas, the patron saint of all seamen. the greek minister of the navy sofoclis venizelos, and the british admiral in command of the royal navy in the eastern mediterranean, provided an honorary escort for the brave little ship that had refused to die. a few months later the snub-nosed l joined the fleet of vessels of all sorts which sailed to greece for the liberation. the photographs were taken by the author (with the exception of the damaged l ) who travelled back to greece on h.h.m.s. averof in the same convoy. the photograph of l , a similar type destroyer to adrias shows how much of her bows was blown off by the collision with the mine. (h.h.m.s. stands for his hellenic majesty's ship.) . german sabotage at the cable & wireless station at pallini, greece, in world war ii. as the german army was pulling out of greece in october its engineers carried out extensive sabotage to installations of a strategic value. at pallini, not far from athens, an attempt was made to destroy the transmitter hall by dropping one of the antenna towers onto it, but the equipment was not damaged. they were more successful at the royal navy transmitting site at votanikos. here they tried to destroy six foot tubular masts. one remained standing and also the lower part of another. all the test gear in the lab was thrown out of a second floor window and burnt. i was acting as official photographer for my unit at the time. when i walked into a small store room i saw all the equipment had been thrown off the shelves on to the floor, but appeared to be intact. i spotted a box of brand new packed german navy morse keys and decided the time had come for me to acquire a small war trophy of my own. as i bent down to pick up a key, i was horrified to see two large sticks of gelignite perched perilously on the edge of a shelf. the explosive was tied with white ribbon, with a weight attached to the other end. i froze to the spot. gingerly i lifted my trophy out of the box and began to walk slowly backwards, being very careful not to knock anything over. i breathed a sigh of relief when i was out of the room and immediately alerted the engineers who came and defused the booby trap. so this book might never have been written thanks to the german army. at the athens broadcasting station transmitter site at liosia my unit erected a small temporary 't' antenna which allowed the station to come on the air again, but a short time later, when the elas guerrillas overran the area they began using the transmitter to broadcast their own view of events. we provided the broadcasting authority with a bc mobile transmitter installed next to the parliament building in the centre of town, using the same frequency of khz. listeners in cairo couldn't understand what was going on when one moment they heard an official government announcement and a little later a war communique issued by the communist guerrillas. . over-the-horizon or ionospheric hf radar--othr as mentioned briefly in chapter , it was in april that the then soviet union first unleashed a diabolical noise on the hf bands which caused widespread interference to all broadcasting and telecommunication services between and mhz. on the first day the "knock-knock-knock" went on continuously for over ten hours. radio amateurs, who were among the services that suffered from the interference, soon came to call this noise "the woodpecker". by rotating their beams when tuned to the mhz band they established that the transmissions appeared to originate from the vicinity of the town of gomel in the u.s.s.r. the governments of many countries world-wide immediately protested to moscow, and all they got in reply was a brief statement that the u.s.s.r. was carrying out "an experiment". the reason for the very strong on/off pulses was probably because, at first, the russians were using existing radar antennas which permit the transmitting and receiving functions to share the same antenna. modern othr installations have different transmitting and receiving sites, often located many miles apart. from the early s pulsed oblique ionosphere sounders had shown that the normal ionosphere is much more stable than had previously been thought to be. the physical reason for this is that the incredibly tenuous ionized gas which does the reflecting has a molasses-like viscosity. of course, there are daily and seasonal changes, but over limited periods of half an hour or so, the f layer at a given location is actually quite well-behaved. it bounces back signals in a nearly constant direction and with nearly constant amplitude--just what is required for good radar performance. over-the-horizon hf radars use the ionosphere as a kind of mirror to "see" around the curvature of the earth. they have a variety of uses, both military and civilian. and they have the advantage over line-of-sight microwave radars of being able to cover enormous areas with much less power and at a fraction of the cost of the latter. a "relocatable" othr system can track aircraft targets right down to ground level. in an early experiment operators were puzzled by the sudden disappearance from their screen of an aircraft they had been tracking as it taxied along the ground. they found out later that the reason for the disappearance was that the aircraft had gone into a metal hangar which did not show on the screen because it was not in motion, as explained below. in the united states air force began experimenting with an othr system at a site near bangor, maine. because hf frequencies were being used the power was kept very low to minimize interference to other services during the early tests. at the time of writing ( ) it is believed that a full-power relocatable othr system situated in virginia is being used in the anti-drug war. as can be seen from the map this rothr can cover a vast area of . million nautical miles, straddling the whole caribbean. the scan area stretches from the coast of colombia in south america up through nicaragua and honduras to florida (on its west boundary) and then southwards through puerto rico, to trinidad & tobago and the northern coast of venezuela. but this vast area is not covered continuously; the system operator can provide surveillance in a number of sectors known as dirs (dwell information regions). each one of the dirs can be "illuminated" for only a few seconds at a time. small aircraft and small vessels can be detected by an ingenious method, only when they move. this is how it is done: at the receiving site of the rothr system a very large antenna stretches out over a distance of , feet. it consists of dual-monopole vertical elements each feet high, backed by a huge reflector screen which makes the antenna substantially unidirectional. each pair of vertical elements has its own receiver which digitizes the incoming signals. all the digitized signals are then fed through a fibre-optic link to a master signal processor. the main receiver can be programmed to pass on "returns" from one particular region while eliminating most of the other returns as unwanted noise or clutter. but because the wanted target is moving, while the clutter is not, a filtering system based on the doppler shift principle (even when the echo is only one or two hertz different) will lock on to it and track it as long as it stays in motion. furthermore, the rothr system has its own built-in automatic management & assessment function and does not have to depend on external sounding data. it measures the ionosphere height continuously and instantly selects the most appropriate frequency to use to scan the target area, ideally in one hop. this automatic function uses a quasi-vertical incidence sounder (qvi) to measure the height of the ionosphere near the transmitting and receiving sites, which as mentioned earlier can be miles apart, and a radar backscatter sounder to measure the height of the ionosphere downrange to , nautical miles away. the incoming real-time data from these soundings are compared with data stored in computer memory. once real-time data are matched to a model of the ionosphere, the model can be used to operate the system for the best results, based on the prevailing propagation conditions. the data for the ionospheric models take up more than megabytes of computer storage space. operators thus know when and where to expect degraded performance. of course, strong solar activity can virtually make over-the-horizon hf radar unusable. a spectrum analyser display shows all the frequencies between and mhz. in order to avoid possible interference to other services, those frequencies which are known to be permanently allocated to fixed broadcasting and telecommunication stations are locked out, as well as frequencies which happen to be used at any instant so that they can also be avoided by the othr transmitter. glossary for non-technical readers. a.m. a mode of modulation (amplitude). a.r.r.l. amateur radio relay league (u.s.a.). beacon transmitter radiating identification signal. c.q. general call, to any station. c.r.t. cathode ray tube (like tv screen). c.w. continuous wave (mode of sending telegraphy). callsign station identification (letters & numbers). coherer a device for making radio frequencies audible. de morse abbreviation for 'from' (french). dx communication over a long distance. detector any device for making radio frequencies audible. doppler shift change in pitch (of sound) or frequency of a (radio) wave e.d.e.s. initials of a war-time greek guerrilla organisation. e.e.r. equivalent greek initials for r.a.a.g. (q.v.) e.l.a.s. initials of a war-time greek guerrilla organisation. e.l.f. extremely low frequency. e.m.e. earth-moon-earth. also moonbounce q.v. h.h.m.s. his hellenic majesty's ship. gasfet a type of transistor. khz kilohertz--international unit for kilocycle. m.u.f. maximum usable frequency. mhz megahertz--international unit for megacycle. moonbounce communication by reflection from the moon. othr over-the-horizon radar. q code abbreviations used when communicating by telegraphy. q unreadable. q barely readable--only some words. q readable with considerable difficulty. q readable with practically no difficulty. q perfectly readable. qro high power. qrp low power. qrt "stop sending". frequently used for "shut up". qso two-way communication. qst call to all stations. also title of journal of the a.r.r.l. qth location or address of a station. r.a.a.g. radio amateur association of greece. r.f. radio frequency. r.s.g.b. radio society of great britain. rst system of reporting readability, strength & tone of a signal. rx receiver. s unit unit for reporting strength of received signal. s.i. unit international system of definitions. ssb single side-band--a mode of modulation. swl room where radio equipment is set up. shack room where radio equipment is set up. silent key deceased radio amateur. sporadic e. propagation via the e layer of the ionosphere. t.e.p. transequatorial propagation. tx transmitter. troposcatter propagation via the troposphere. u.h.f. ultra high frequency. v.h.f. very high frequency. w.a.c. worked (contacted) all continents. xyl wife of a radio amateur. yl young lady operator. morse abbreviation for "best regards". yagi a type of antenna designed by a japanese of that name. [transcriber's note: this ebook contains two manuals by delco: delco radio owner's manual model and delcotron generator installation. they are separated by a divider. in the list on pages and of delco radio owner's manual model , the second station line for tulsa (which is cfrb ) has been removed, as it is believed to be an accidental reprinting of the following station line. redundant headers and (foot)notes on these pages have also been removed.] delco radio owner's manual model installation and operating instructions this model of the delco radio is a six-tube super-heterodyne receiver designed for operation with a header type speaker. it comprises the best in automotive radio engineering, featuring syncro-tuning--the newest, most efficient antenna circuit yet developed, and sensitivity control. the speaker and remote control unit are supplied in separate packages and are available in a wide variety of types and styles, depending upon the make and model of car the unit is to be used on. the package contains: _part no._ receiver unit, complete with tubes speaker unit (less adapter) combined drilling template and radio--dash spacer chassis mounting studs, / -- x - / chassis mounting shakeproof washers chassis mounting nuts, / -- antenna lead distributor suppressor generator condenser ammeter condenser installation =antenna--= see instructions in antenna package. =chassis--= this receiver may be installed on any car with positive or negative ground without any changes of wiring. when possible, locate the chassis on the driver's side of the dash, over the steering column, with the removable cover plate facing the floor. this position places the control shafts on the end of the case facing the center of the car. locate the position of the mounting holes by means of the template included in the package. drill the holes, using a / " drill, and scrape the paint from around the holes on the engine side of the dash to insure a good ground connection as there is no other ground connection for this receiver. make sure that all tubes and the vibrator are pushed well down in their sockets and that all the grid clips are properly in place on the top caps of their respective tubes. if a six-volt storage battery is available, check the receiver for normal operation before permanently installing it on the car. the antenna lead and control unit may be temporarily connected for this test. insert the two receiver mounting studs in the back of the receiver case with the "burred" threads nearest the receiver to make sure that these studs do not enter the case far enough to cause damage to the receiver parts. install the receiver, using the drilling template as a spacer between the dash and the receiver case. install the two shakeproof washers over the chassis mounting studs. then tighten the mounting nuts to insure that the receiver case shall be thoroughly grounded to the dash. =antenna lead--= attach the black antenna lead to the car antenna and plug the connector on the antenna lead into the receiver chassis as shown in the installation diagrams. ground the pigtail of the antenna lead shield to a convenient body bolt. keep antenna lead out of engine compartment to avoid possibility of ignition interference being picked up by the lead-in. =speaker--= see instructions in speaker package. =remote control unit--= see instructions in remote control package. control unit adjustment the volume control and station selector shafts are automatically adjusted as follows: . insert control cables in their respective bushings on the case (volume control is upper bushing when receiver is installed in the car), until they seat themselves and then tighten the set screws. . turn the station selector knob to the right (clockwise) until it stops--then turn the knob counter-clockwise until it stops. the dial is now logged. . turn the volume control knob clockwise until the knob turns hard. the volume control is now on full. =eliminating motor interference--= connect the ammeter condenser to the spring clip at the end of the wire containing the fuse holder by means of the self-threading screw on the side of the spring clip. ground the other terminal of the condenser at any convenient point. install the generator condenser on the generator side of the generator cut-out as shown in the diagram of connections. do not connect the flexible lead to the field terminal of the generator. remove the center distributor lead and insert the distributor suppressor in its place. then plug the distributor lead into the suppressor. =adjusting delco syncro-tuning--= turn the receiver on. tune-in a radio station which logs between and on the dial and gives the radio a signal barely audible in the speaker with the volume control full on. a small snap button cap is located in the end of the receiver case beside the antenna lead connection. remove the snap button cap by prying with a small screw driver. by means of a small screw driver inserted in the hole which was covered by the small cap, adjust the delco syncro-tuning condenser unit for maximum output in the speaker. remaining on same station, readjust station selector for maximum volume and readjust the delco syncro-tuning condenser unit for maximum output. no further adjustment of this unit will be necessary as the receiver is now adjusted for best operation with your car antenna. replace the snap button cap. operation =to turn on receiver--= some control units have a small knob located below the center of the dial. if your receiver is equipped with this type of control push this small knob in as far as it will go. other control units have a combination on-off switch and volume control knob. to turn on this type of control turn the knob clockwise until the switch clicks and the dial is illuminated. =volume control--= turning the volume control knob toward the right increases the output of the receiver and turning it toward the left reduces the output. =how to tune the receiver--= turn the volume control knob approximately half way to the right. rotate the station selector knob slowly until a station is heard. tune this station in until the minimum amount of background noise is heard. increase or decrease the volume to the desired level by adjusting the volume control knob. careful tuning will result in better tone quality from all stations. if the program being received is from a powerful local station local interference may be practically eliminated by turning the sensitivity control to the local position. you then will get the best possible reproduction of that station's program. [illustration: =installation diagrams= ground to dash case spacer and drilling template dash ammeter clip ammeter condenser no. antenna lead (black) volume control bushing fuse to coil remove snap button cap to adjust antenna compensating condenser station selector bushing distributor suppressor no. ground to car power lead sensitivity control tone control armature terminal do not connect to field terminal volume control station selector generator condenser suggested generator condenser connections on-off switch] =sensitivity control--= the sensitivity control is located on the lower, left front corner of the receiver case and when turned to the local position it decreases the sensitivity of the receiver sufficiently to greatly reduce interference from street cars, electric signs, x-ray machines, electrical machinery, power lines, etc. it will also eliminate interference from weak stations. when the control is turned to the distance position the receiver is allowed to operate at maximum sensitivity. =tone control--= the tone control is located on the lower, right front corner of the receiver case. this control is to be adjusted at the operator's will. however, most experienced operators prefer to set it for maximum treble response when the car is operated at high speeds. =to turn off the receiver--= if the control head has a key knob in the center pull the knob out until it clicks into the off position and the receiver ceases to operate. if you wish to lock the receiver, pull the knob all the way out of the control unit and carry it with you. if you are using the type of control unit which has a combination on-off switch and volume control knob turn the knob to the left until the receiver ceases to operate. service should your receiver fail to operate, first check the fuse located in the fuse holder in the ammeter cable. if you wish to remove your tubes and vibrator for test purposes, their location is indicated below. [illustration: _tube complement_ type d type a type b type b type ] any further service work on your receiver should be referred to a competent radio service station. when at home call your local dealer................................. at..................................... telephone.............................. date radio installed................... principal broadcast stations[a] arranged alphabetically by cities =abilene, kans.= kfbi =albuquerque, n. m.= kob =alexandria, va.= wjsv =amarillo, tex.= kgrs wdag =ames, iowa= woi =asheville, n. c.= wwnc =atlanta, ga.= wsb =atlantic city, n. j.= wpg =baltimore, md.= wbal =belle plaine (moose jaw), sask.= cjrm =billings, mont.= kghl =birmingham, ala.= wapi =bismarck, n. d.= kfyr =boise, idaho= kido =boston, mass.= wbz wbza weei whdh wnac =brookings, s. d.= kfdy =brooklyn, n. y.= wbbr =buffalo, n. y.= wben wgr wkwb =chattanooga, tenn.= wdod =chicago, ill.= wbbm wcfl wenr wgn wjjd wls wmaq wmbi kyw =charlotte, n. c.= wbt =cincinnati, ohio= wlw =clay center, nebr.= kmmj =cleveland, ohio= whk wtam =colorado springs, col.= kvor =council bluffs, ia.= koil =covington, ky.= wcky =dallas, tex.= krld wfaa =denver, colo.= klz koa =des moines, ia.= woc =detroit, mich.= wwj wjr wxyz =eau claire, wis.= wtaq =edmonton, alta.= cjca =elmira, n. y.= wesg =fargo, n. d.= wday =fayetteville, ark.= kuoa =fort wayne, ind.= wowo =fort worth, tex.= ktat wbap =gainesville, fla.= wruf =gary, ind.= wind =great falls, mont.= kfbb =harrisburg, pa.= wbak =hartford, conn.= wdrc wtic =havana, cuba= cmcq cmk cmw cmx =hollywood, cal.= kfwb =honolulu, hawaii= kgu =hot springs national park, ark.= kths =houston, tex.= kprc =indianapolis, ind.= wfbm =jackson, miss.= wjdx =jacksonville, fla.= wjax =kalamazoo, mich.= wkzo =kansas city, mo.= kmbc wdaf woq =knoxville, tenn.= wnox =la crosse, wis.= wkbh =la prairie (montreal), que.= crcm =lawrence, kans.= wren =lansing, mich.= wkar =lincoln, nebr.= kfab =little rock, ark.= klra =long beach, cal.= kfox kger =los angeles, cal.= keca kfac kfi khj knx =louisville, ky.= wave whas =lulu island (vancouver island), b. c.= crcv =madison, wis.= wha =mexico city, mexico= xeb xen xew xfg xfi xefo xetr =miami beach, fla.= wmbf =miami, fla.= wiod wqam =milwaukee, wis.= wtmj =minneapolis, minn.= wcco wdgy wlb wrhm =montreal, que.= ckac =nashville, tenn.= wlac wsm =newark, n. j.= waam wnew wor =new orleans, la.= wdsu wwl =new york, n. y.= wabc weaf wfab wjz wlwl wov =norfolk, nebr.= wjag =northfield, minn.= wcal =oakland, cal.= klx =oklahoma, okla.= wky koma =omaha, nebr.= wow =ottawa, ont.= crco =philadelphia, pa.= wcau =piedras negras, coahuila= xepn =pittsburgh, pa.= kdka wcae wjas =portland, me.= wcsh =portland, ore.= kex kgw koin =pullman, wash.= kwsc =raleigh, n. c.= wftf =reading, pa.= weeu =reynosa, tamaulipas= xeaw =richmond, va.= wrva =rochester, n. y.= wham =salt lake city, utah= kdyl ksl =san antonio, tex.= ktsa woai =san diego, cal.= kfsd kgb =san francisco, cal.= kfrc kgo kpo ktab kya =san juan, puerto rico= wkaq =schenectady, n. y.= wgy =seattle, wash.= kjr kol komo ktw =shreveport, la.= ktbs kwkh =sioux city, iowa= kscj =sioux falls, s. d.= ksoo =spokane, wash.= kfpy kga khq =stevens point, wis.= wlbl =st. joseph, mo.= kfeq =st. louis, mo.= kmox kwk wew =st. paul, minn.= kstp =strathmore (calgary), alta.= cfcn =superior, wis.= webc =syracuse, n. y.= wfbl =tallmadge, ohio= wadc =tampa, fla.= wdae =toledo, ohio= wspd =topeka, kans.= wibw =toronto, ont.= crct =tulsa, okla.= kvoo =twp. of kingston (toronto), ont.= cfrb =villa acuna, coahuila= xer =wheeling, w. va.= wwva =wichita, kans.= kfh =windsor, ont.= cklw =winnipeg, man.= cky =yankton, s. d.= wnax =york, pa.= work =zion, ill.= wcbd [a] stations listed include only those of watts power (or higher). note: numbers following call letters indicate approximate dial setting. warranty (_this warranty not applicable outside u.s.a._) your delco radio carries the same guarantee as your car "the manufacturer warrants each new radio receiving set manufactured by it to be free from defects in material and workmanship under normal use and service, its obligation under this warranty being limited to making good at its factory or designated branches any part or parts thereof which shall within ninety ( ) days or , miles whichever expires first, after installation of such auto radio receiving set for the original purchaser, be returned to it with transportation charges prepaid and which its examination shall disclose to its satisfaction to have been thus defective; this warranty being expressly in lieu of all other warranties expressed or implied and of all other obligations or liabilities on its part, and the manufacturer neither assumes nor authorizes any other person to assume for it any other liability in connection with the sale of its products." "this warranty shall not apply to any radio receiving set which shall have been repaired or altered outside manufacturer's authorized service stations in any way so as in the judgment of the manufacturer to affect its stability, or on parts not made or authorized by the manufacturer have been used for replacement or other purposes, nor which has been subject to misuse, negligence, or accident." united motors service, inc. detroit, mich. form no. printed in u. s. a. =========================================================================== =========================================================================== delco rebuilt -d delcotron generator rebuilt by delco-remy. division of general motors, anderson, indiana, made in u.s.a. printed in u.s.a. - - dr- installing service delcotron® generator . disconnect grounded cable from battery. . if it is necessary to rotate the slip ring end frame to match the unit being replaced, remove the thru bolts, separate frames just far enough to rotate to desired position and replace thru bolts. caution: separating the end frame too far causes the brushes to drop on to the greased shaft. if this happens, remove end frame completely, clean brushes with clean cloth, reassemble springs and brushes retaining them in position with a pin (toothpick). remove pin after frames are reassembled. when installing delcotron® generator with integral regulator, the slip ring end frame mounting bracket is not needed. . when reusing the original fan, pulley and collar, tighten shaft nut to to lb. ft. if torque wrench is not available, insert a / " hex wrench in end of shaft and tighten nut until the spring washer is just flattened. . install delcotron® generator and check belt tension, mounting bolt tightness and make sure all electrical connections are clean and secure. important: never operate the delcotron® generator without being connected to the battery. never attempt to polarize the delcotron® generator. delco-remy division of general motors anderson, indiana bpi gutenberg. you may either get these texts from the almanac server at "oes.orst.edu" or direct from project gutenberg at "mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu". send message "help" to "almanac@oes.orst.edu". after reading the guide, send the message "send gutenberg catalog". to get an e-text by mail (e.g. _alice in wonderland_), send the message: send etext alice to see the contents of project gutenberg archivesj, send the message connect mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu cd etext/articles get index quit to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com". to get the actual texts, connect mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu cd etext/etext get quit anonymous ftp archive references: oes.orst.edu:/pub/data/etext mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu:/etext/articles (general info) mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu:/etext/etext (the texts) [ ] a list of e-mail mailing lists, posted to the "frequently asked questions" or faq part of the usenet newsgroups. a typical mailing list works like this: to join, say, a mailing list on politics, you send the request "subscribe" to "politics- request@whitehouse.gov". thereafter, any message sent to "politics@whitehouse.gov" will send you message to all members of the list. you get all the postings from other members as well [the whitehouse list on politics is a fake example]. aside: usenet newsgroup faq's are archived at "rtfm.mit.edu". they cover every conceivable subject (but are especially good with computers). to access the archive by e-mail, send the message "help" to "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu". for an index of materials available, send the message "index". here are the specific commands for getting the mailing lists: send mail/mailing-lists/part send mail/mailing-lists/part send mail/mailing-lists/part send mail/mailing-lists/part send mail/mailing-lists/part to "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu". other good publications in the same location: a guide to social newsgroups and mailing_lists: send social-newsgroups/part list of periodic informational postings: send periodic-postings/part (six parts). for a more complete list of faqs, send the commands: send usenet/news.answers/index send usenet/news.announce.newusers/index anonymous ftp archive reference: rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers; and rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers. also posted as an faqs to the usenet newsgroup news.answers. [ ] listservers are the best thing going for persons with e-mail but without full internet service. you can send mail to an entire list and get a digest of "articles" posted on a given day. lists are espcecially good for anyone with an interest in the humanities. a list of all listservers known to any one listserver can be obtained by sending a message to that listserver (see below). send the message "help" to any listserver address, e.g. "listserv@brownvm.brown.edu" to get started. the listserver at brown does not respond to the global command (but is worthwhile anyway). try sending the command "lists global" to one of the other listservers like "listserv@auvm.american.edu". for lists with lots of traffic you should consider the "set <listname> digest" command to get *one* mail message a day with a compendium of articles. [ ] automatically supplied information about psi's internet service: send any message at all to address "all-info@psi.com". there are lots of other files on their service available instantly. e.g., for information on their version of telnet, send any message to "gds- info@psi.com"; for their version of ftp, any message to "psilink- info@psi.com". [ ] scott yanoff's list of internet resources. at last count, there were free things to do on the internet. send the message: send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/faq send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/list to "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu". another method is to request the materials by delayed ftp with the message: connect csd .csd.uwm.edu cd pub get inet.services.txt quit to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com". it is also worth adding the line "get internetwork-mail-guide" to the above request for a file on send e-mail between any two e-mail systems (file is k). anonymous ftp archive references: csd .csd.uwm.edu:/pub/inet.services.txt rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet-by-group/news.anwsers/internet-services [ ] surfing the internet, by librarian jean armour polly. this must- have publication is still the best basic orientation to the internet. the nearest thing to the "how to use the library card catalogue" speech that opened up that other world for us when we were kids. send the message connect nysernet.org cd pub/resources/guides get surfing. . . .txt <that's a zero not an "oh"> quit to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com". other interesting files in the same directory are: ftp.list whatis.internet new.user.guide.v . .txt speakers_on_internet.txt anonymous ftp archive reference: nysernet.org:/pub/resources/guides [ ] the nixpub listing of public access unix systems (so you can read usenet news!): send the message connect vfl.paramax.com cd pub/nixpub get long quit to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com". anonymous ftp archive reference: vfl.paramax.com:pub/nixpub/long it is also posted as a faq (frequently asked questions) to the usenet newsgroup alt.bbs. and the critics' choice is . . . [ ] the pdial listing, a listing of dialup methods of connecting to the internet for the general public. send a message to "info-deli-server@netcom.com" with the command "send pdial" in the *subject* line. alternatively, send the message "send usenet/news.answers/pdial" to "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu". ---------- + + + "what this country needs is a good cent education." part a zen and the art of the internet copyright (c) brendan p. kehoe permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this guide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this booklet under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this booklet into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the author. zen and the art of the internet a beginner's guide to the internet first edition january by brendan p. kehoe this is revision . of february , . copyright (c) brendan p. kehoe the composition of this booklet was originally started because the computer science department at widener university was in desperate need of documentation describing the capabilities of this "great new internet link" we obtained. it's since grown into an effort to acquaint the reader with much of what's currently available over the internet. aimed at the novice user, it attempts to remain operating system "neutral"---little information herein is specific to unix, vms, or any other environment. this booklet will, hopefully, be usable by nearly anyone. a user's session is usually offset from the rest of the paragraph, as such: prompt> command the results are usually displayed here. the purpose of this booklet is two-fold: first, it's intended to serve as a reference piece, which someone can easily grab on the fly and look something up. also, it forms a foundation from which people can explore the vast expanse of the internet. zen and the art of the internet doesn't spend a significant amount of time on any one point; rather, it provides enough for people to learn the specifics of what his or her local system offers. one warning is perhaps in order---this territory we are entering can become a fantastic time-sink. hours can slip by, people can come and go, and you'll be locked into cyberspace. remember to do your work! with that, i welcome you, the new user, to the net. brendan@cs.widener.edu chester, pa acknowledgements certain sections in this booklet are not my original work---rather, they are derived from documents that were available on the internet and already aptly stated their areas of concentration. the chapter on usenet is, in large part, made up of what's posted monthly to news.announce.newusers, with some editing and rewriting. also, the main section on archie was derived from whatis.archie by peter deutsch of the mcgill university computing centre. it's available via anonymous ftp from archie.mcgill.ca. much of what's in the telnet section came from an impressive introductory document put together by suranet. some definitions in the one are from an excellent glossary put together by colorado state university. this guide would not be the same without the aid of many people on the net, and the providers of resources that are already out there. i'd like to thank the folks who gave this a read-through and returned some excellent comments, suggestions, and criticisms, and those who provided much-needed information on the fly. glee willis deserves particular mention for all of his work; this guide would have been considerably less polished without his help. andy blankenbiller <rablanke@crdec .apgea.army.mil> andy blankenbiller, army at aberdeen bajan@cs.mcgill.ca alan emtage, mcgill university computer science department brian fitzgerald <fitz@mml .meche.rpi.edu> brian fitzgerald, rensselaer polytechnic institute john goetsch <ccjg@hippo.ru.ac.za> john goetsch, rhodes university, south africa composer@chem.bu.edu jeff kellem, boston university's chemistry department kraussw@moravian.edu bill krauss, moravian college steve lodin <deaes!swlodin@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> steve lodin, delco electronics mike nesel <nesel@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov> mike nesel, nasa bob <neveln@cs.widener.edu> bob neveln, widener university computer science department wamapi@dunkin.cc.mcgill.ca (wanda pierce) wanda pierce, mcgill university computing centre joshua.r.poulson@cyber.widener.edu joshua poulson, widener university computing services de @ornl.gov dave sill, oak ridge national laboratory bsmart@bsmart.tti.com bob smart, citicorp/tti emv@msen.com ed vielmetti, vice president of msen craig e. ward <cew@venera.isi.edu> craig ward, usc/information sciences institute (isi) glee willis <willis@unssun.nevada.edu> glee willis, university of nevada, reno charles yamasaki <chip@oshcomm.osha.gov> chip yamasaki, osha network basics we are truly in an information society. now more than ever, moving vast amounts of information quickly across great distances is one of our most pressing needs. from small one-person entrepreneurial efforts, to the largest of corporations, more and more professional people are discovering that the only way to be successful in the ' s and beyond is to realize that technology is advancing at a break-neck pace---and they must somehow keep up. likewise, researchers from all corners of the earth are finding that their work thrives in a networked environment. immediate access to the work of colleagues and a "virtual" library of millions of volumes and thousands of papers affords them the ability to encorporate a body of knowledge heretofore unthinkable. work groups can now conduct interactive conferences with each other, paying no heed to physical location---the possibilities are endless. you have at your fingertips the ability to talk in "real-time" with someone in japan, send a , -word short story to a group of people who will critique it for the sheer pleasure of doing so, see if a macintosh sitting in a lab in canada is turned on, and find out if someone happens to be sitting in front of their computer (logged on) in australia, all inside of thirty minutes. no airline (or tardis, for that matter) could ever match that travel itinerary. the largest problem people face when first using a network is grasping all that's available. even seasoned users find themselves surprised when they discover a new service or feature that they'd never known even existed. once acquainted with the terminology and sufficiently comfortable with making occasional mistakes, the learning process will drastically speed up. domains getting where you want to go can often be one of the more difficult aspects of using networks. the variety of ways that places are named will probably leave a blank stare on your face at first. don't fret; there is a method to this apparent madness. if someone were to ask for a home address, they would probably expect a street, apartment, city, state, and zip code. that's all the information the post office needs to deliver mail in a reasonably speedy fashion. likewise, computer addresses have a structure to them. the general form is: a person's email address on a computer: user@somewhere.domain a computer's name: somewhere.domain the user portion is usually the person's account name on the system, though it doesn't have to be. somewhere.domain tells you the name of a system or location, and what kind of organization it is. the trailing domain is often one of the following: com usually a company or other commercial institution or organization, like convex computers (convex.com). edu an educational institution, e.g. new york university, named nyu.edu. gov a government site; for example, nasa is nasa.gov. mil a military site, like the air force (af.mil). net gateways and other administrative hosts for a network (it does not mean all of the hosts in a network). {the matrix, . one such gateway is near.net.} org this is a domain reserved for private organizations, who don't comfortably fit in the other classes of domains. one example is the electronic frontier foundation named eff.org. each country also has its own top-level domain. for example, the us domain includes each of the fifty states. other countries represented with domains include: au australia ca canada fr france uk the united kingdom. these also have sub-domains of things like ac.uk for academic sites and co.uk for commercial ones. fqdn (fully qualified domain name) the proper terminology for a site's domain name (somewhere.domain above) is its fully qualified domain name (fqdn). it is usually selected to give a clear indication of the site's organization or sponsoring agent. for example, the massachusetts institute of technology's fqdn is mit.edu; similarly, apple computer's domain name is apple.com. while such obvious names are usually the norm, there are the occasional exceptions that are ambiguous enough to mislead---like vt.edu, which on first impulse one might surmise is an educational institution of some sort in vermont; not so. it's actually the domain name for virginia tech. in most cases it's relatively easy to glean the meaning of a domain name---such confusion is far from the norm. internet numbers every single machine on the internet has a unique address, {at least one address, possibly two or even three---but we won't go into that.} called its internet number or ip address. it's actually a -bit number, but is most commonly represented as four numbers joined by periods (.), like . . . . this is sometimes also called a dotted quad; there are literally thousands of different possible dotted quads. the arpanet (the mother to today's internet) originally only had the capacity to have up to systems on it because of the way each system was addressed. in the early eighties, it became clear that things would fast outgrow such a small limit; the -bit addressing method was born, freeing thousands of host numbers. each piece of an internet address (like ) is called an "octet," representing one of four sets of eight bits. the first two or three pieces (e.g. . . ) represent the network that a system is on, called its subnet. for example, all of the computers for wesleyan university are in the subnet . . they can have numbers like . . . , . . . , up to thousand possible combinations (possible computers). ip addresses and domain names aren't assigned arbitrarily---that would lead to unbelievable confusion. an application must be filed with the network information center (nic), either electronically (to hostmaster@nic.ddn.mil) or via regular mail. resolving names and numbers ok, computers can be referred to by either their fqdn or their internet address. how can one user be expected to remember them all? they aren't. the internet is designed so that one can use either method. since humans find it much more natural to deal with words than numbers in most cases, the fqdn for each host is mapped to its internet number. each domain is served by a computer within that domain, which provides all of the necessary information to go from a domain name to an ip address, and vice-versa. for example, when someone refers to foosun.bar.com, the resolver knows that it should ask the system foovax.bar.com about systems in bar.com. it asks what internet address foosun.bar.com has; if the name foosun.bar.com really exists, foovax will send back its number. all of this "magic" happens behind the scenes. rarely will a user have to remember the internet number of a site (although often you'll catch yourself remembering an apparently obscure number, simply because you've accessed the system frequently). however, you will remember a substantial number of fqdns. it will eventually reach a point when you are able to make a reasonably accurate guess at what domain name a certain college, university, or company might have, given just their name. the networks internet the internet is a large "network of networks." there is no one network known as the internet; rather, regional nets like suranet, prepnet, nearnet, et al., are all inter-connected (nay, "inter-networked") together into one great living thing, communicating at amazing speeds with the tcp/ip protocol. all activity takes place in "real-time." uucp the uucp network is a loose association of systems all communicating with the uucp protocol. (uucp stands for `unix-to-unix copy program'.) it's based on two systems connecting to each other at specified intervals, called polling, and executing any work scheduled for either of them. historically most uucp was done with unix equipment, although the software's since been implemented on other platforms (e.g. vms). for example, the system oregano polls the system basil once every two hours. if there's any mail waiting for oregano, basil will send it at that time; likewise, oregano will at that time send any jobs waiting for basil. bitnet bitnet (the "because it's time network") is comprised of systems connected by point-to-point links, all running the nje protocol. it's continued to grow, but has found itself suffering at the hands of the falling costs of internet connections. also, a number of mail gateways are in place to reach users on other networks. the physical connection the actual connections between the various networks take a variety of forms. the most prevalent for internet links are k leased lines (dedicated telephone lines carrying kilobit-per-second connections) and t links (special phone lines with mbps connections). also installed are t links, acting as backbones between major locations to carry a massive mbps load of traffic. these links are paid for by each institution to a local carrier (for example, bell atlantic owns prepnet, the main provider in pennsylvania). also available are slip connections, which carry internet traffic (packets) over high-speed modems. uucp links are made with modems (for the most part), that run from baud all the way up to as high as . kbps. as was mentioned in the networks, the connections are of the store-and-forward variety. also in use are internet-based uucp links (as if things weren't already confusing enough!). the systems do their uucp traffic over tcp/ip connections, which give the uucp-based network some blindingly fast "hops," resulting in better connectivity for the network as a whole. uucp connections first became popular in the 's, and have remained in wide-spread use ever since. only with uucp can joe smith correspond with someone across the country or around the world, for the price of a local telephone call. bitnet links mostly take the form of bps modems connected from site to site. often places have three or more links going; the majority, however, look to "upstream" sites for their sole link to the network. "the glory and the nothing of a name" byron, {churchill's grave} ----------- electronic mail the desire to communicate is the essence of networking. people have always wanted to correspond with each other in the fastest way possible, short of normal conversation. electronic mail (or email) is the most prevalent application of this in computer networking. it allows people to write back and forth without having to spend much time worrying about how the message actually gets delivered. as technology grows closer and closer to being a common part of daily life, the need to understand the many ways it can be utilized and how it works, at least to some level, is vital. part of daily life (as has been evidenced by the isdn effort, the need to understand the many ways it can be utilized and how it works, at least to some level, is vital. email addresses electronic mail is hinged around the concept of an address; the section on networking basics made some reference to it while introducing domains. your email address provides all of the information required to get a message to you from anywhere in the world. an address doesn't necessarily have to go to a human being. it could be an archive server, {see archive servers, for a description.} a list of people, or even someone's pocket pager. these cases are the exception to the norm---mail to most addresses is read by human beings. %@!.: symbolic cacophony email addresses usually appear in one of two forms---using the internet format which contains @, an "at"-sign, or using the uucp format which contains !, an exclamation point, also called a "bang." the latter of the two, uucp "bang" paths, is more restrictive, yet more clearly dictates how the mail will travel. to reach jim morrison on the system south.america.org, one would address the mail as jm@south.america.org. but if jim's account was on a uucp site named brazil, then his address would be brazil!jm. if it's possible (and one exists), try to use the internet form of an address; bang paths can fail if an intermediate site in the path happens to be down. there is a growing trend for uucp sites to register internet domain names, to help alleviate the problem of path failures. another symbol that enters the fray is %---it acts as an extra "routing" method. for example, if the uucp site dream is connected to south.america.org, but doesn't have an internet domain name of its own, a user debbie on dream can be reached by writing to the address not smallexample! debbie%dream@south.america.org the form is significant. this address says that the local system should first send the mail to south.america.org. there the address debbie%dream will turn into debbie@dream, which will hopefully be a valid address. then south.america.org will handle getting the mail to the host dream, where it will be delivered locally to debbie. all of the intricacies of email addressing methods are fully covered in the book "!%@@:: a directory of electronic mail addressing and networks" published by o'reilly and associates, as part of their nutshell handbook series. it is a must for any active email user. write to nuts@ora.com for ordering information. sending and receiving mail we'll make one quick diversion from being os-neuter here, to show you what it will look like to send and receive a mail message on a unix system. check with your system administrator for specific instructions related to mail at your site. a person sending the author mail would probably do something like this: % mail brendan@cs.widener.edu subject: print job's stuck i typed `print babe.gif' and it didn't work! why?? the next time the author checked his mail, he would see it listed in his mailbox as: % mail "/usr/spool/mail/brendan": messages new unread u joeuser@foo.widene tue may : / print job's stuck ? which gives information on the sender of the email, when it was sent, and the subject of the message. he would probably use the reply command of unix mail to send this response: ? r to: joeuser@@foo.widener.edu subject: re: print job's stuck you shouldn't print binary files like gifs to a printer! brendan try sending yourself mail a few times, to get used to your system's mailer. it'll save a lot of wasted aspirin for both you and your system administrator. anatomy of a mail header an electronic mail message has a specific structure to it that's common across every type of computer system. {the standard is written down in rfc- . see also rfcs for more info on how to get copies of the various rfcs.} a sample would be: >from bush@hq.mil sat may : : received: from hq.mil by house.gov with smtp id aa ( . /smi for dan@house.gov); sat, may : : - date: sat, may : : - from: the president <bush@hq.mil> message-id: < .aa @hq.mil> to: dan@senate.gov subject: meeting hi dan .. we have a meeting at : a.m. with the joint chiefs. please don't oversleep this time. the first line, with from and the two lines for received: are usually not very interesting. they give the "real" address that the mail is coming from (as opposed to the address you should reply to, which may look much different), and what places the mail went through to get to you. over the internet, there is always at least one received: header and usually no more than four or five. when a message is sent using uucp, one received: header is added for each system that the mail passes through. this can often result in more than a dozen received: headers. while they help with dissecting problems in mail delivery, odds are the average user will never want to see them. most mail programs will filter out this kind of "cruft" in a header. the date: header contains the date and time the message was sent. likewise, the "good" address (as opposed to "real" address) is laid out in the from: header. sometimes it won't include the full name of the person (in this case the president), and may look different, but it should always contain an email address of some form. the message-id: of a message is intended mainly for tracing mail routing, and is rarely of interest to normal users. every message-id: is guaranteed to be unique. to: lists the email address (or addresses) of the recipients of the message. there may be a cc: header, listing additional addresses. finally, a brief subject for the message goes in the subject: header. the exact order of a message's headers may vary from system to system, but it will always include these fundamental headers that are vital to proper delivery. bounced mail when an email address is incorrect in some way (the system's name is wrong, the domain doesn't exist, whatever), the mail system will bounce the message back to the sender, much the same way that the postal service does when you send a letter to a bad street address. the message will include the reason for the bounce; a common error is addressing mail to an account name that doesn't exist. for example, writing to lisa simpson at widener university's computer science department will fail, because she doesn't have an account. {though if she asked, we'd certainly give her one.} from: mail delivery subsystem <mailer-daemon> date: sat, may : : - to: mg@gracie.com cc: postmaster@cs.widener.edu subject: returned mail: user unknown ----- transcript of session follows ----- while talking to cs.widener.edu: >>> rcpt to:<lsimpson@cs.widener.edu> <<< <lsimpson@cs.widener.edu>... user unknown lsimpson... user unknown as you can see, a carbon copy of the message (the cc: header entry) was sent to the postmaster of widener's cs department. the postmaster is responsible for maintaining a reliable mail system on his system. usually postmasters at sites will attempt to aid you in getting your mail where it's supposed to go. if a typing error was made, then try re-sending the message. if you're sure that the address is correct, contact the postmaster of the site directly and ask him how to properly address it. the message also includes the text of the mail, so you don't have to retype everything you wrote. ----- unsent message follows ----- received: by cs.widener.edu id aa ; sat, may : : - date: sat, may : : - from: matt groening <mg@gracie.com> message-id: < .aa @gracie.com> to: lsimpson@cs.widener.edu subject: scripting your future episodes reply-to: writing-group@gracie.com .... verbiage ... the full text of the message is returned intact, including any headers that were added. this can be cut out with an editor and fed right back into the mail system with a proper address, making redelivery a relatively painless process. mailing lists people that share common interests are inclined to discuss their hobby or interest at every available opportunity. one modern way to aid in this exchange of information is by using a mailing list---usually an email address that redistributes all mail sent to it back out to a list of addresses. for example, the sun managers mailing list (of interest to people that administer computers manufactured by sun) has the address sun-managers@eecs.nwu.edu. any mail sent to that address will "explode" out to each person named in a file maintained on a computer at northwestern university. administrative tasks (sometimes referred to as administrivia) are often handled through other addresses, typically with the suffix -request. to continue the above, a request to be added to or deleted from the sun managers list should be sent to sun-managers-request@eecs.nwu.edu. when in doubt, try to write to the -request version of a mailing list address first; the other people on the list aren't interested in your desire to be added or deleted, and can certainly do nothing to expedite your request. often if the administrator of a list is busy (remember, this is all peripheral to real jobs and real work), many users find it necessary to ask again and again, often with harsher and harsher language, to be removed from a list. this does nothing more than waste traffic and bother everyone else receiving the messages. if, after a reasonable amount of time, you still haven't succeeded to be removed from a mailing list, write to the postmaster at that site and see if they can help. exercise caution when replying to a message sent by a mailing list. if you wish to respond to the author only, make sure that the only address you're replying to is that person, and not the entire list. often messages of the sort "yes, i agree with you completely!" will appear on a list, boring the daylights out of the other readers. likewise, if you explicitly do want to send the message to the whole list, you'll save yourself some time by checking to make sure it's indeed headed to the whole list and not a single person. a list of the currently available mailing lists is available in at least two places; the first is in a file on ftp.nisc.sri.com called interest-groups under the netinfo/ directory. it's updated fairly regularly, but is large (presently around k), so only get it every once in a while. the other list is maintained by gene spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu), and is posted in parts to the newsgroup news.lists semi-regularly. (usenet news, for info on how to read that and other newsgroups.) listservs on bitnet there's an automated system for maintaining discussion lists called the listserv. rather than have an already harried and overworked human take care of additions and removals from a list, a program performs these and other tasks by responding to a set of user-driven commands. areas of interest are wide and varied---ethics-l deals with ethics in computing, while adnd-l has to do with a role-playing game. a full list of the available bitnet lists can be obtained by writing to listserv@bitnic.bitnet with a body containing the command list global however, be sparing in your use of this---see if it's already on your system somewhere. the reply is quite large. the most fundamental command is subscribe. it will tell the listserv to add the sender to a specific list. the usage is subscribe foo-l your real name it will respond with a message either saying that you've been added to the list, or that the request has been passed on to the system on which the list is actually maintained. the mate to subscribe is, naturally, unsubscribe. it will remove a given address from a bitnet list. it, along with all other listserv commands, can be abbreviated---subscribe as sub, unsubscribe as unsub, etc. for a full list of the available listserv commands, write to listserv@bitnic.bitnet, giving it the command help. as an aside, there have been implementations of the listserv system for non-bitnet hosts (more specifically, unix systems). one of the most complete is available on cs.bu.edu in the directory pub/listserv. "i made this letter longer than usual because i lack the time to make it shorter." pascal, provincial letters xvi -------------- anonymous ftp ftp (file transfer protocol) is the primary method of transferring files over the internet. on many systems, it's also the name of the program that implements the protocol. given proper permission, it's possible to copy a file from a computer in south africa to one in los angeles at very fast speeds (on the order of -- k per second). this normally requires either a user id on both systems or a special configuration set up by the system administrator(s). there is a good way around this restriction---the anonymous ftp service. it essentially will let anyone in the world have access to a certain area of disk space in a non-threatening way. with this, people can make files publicly available with little hassle. some systems have dedicated entire disks or even entire computers to maintaining extensive archives of source code and information. they include gatekeeper.dec.com (digital), wuarchive.wustl.edu (washington university in saint louis), and archive.cis.ohio-state.edu (the ohio state university). the process involves the "foreign" user (someone not on the system itself) creating an ftp connection and logging into the system as the user anonymous, with an arbitrary password: name (foo.site.com:you): anonymous password: jm@south.america.org custom and netiquette dictate that people respond to the password: query with an email address so that the sites can track the level of ftp usage, if they desire. (addresses for information on email addresses). the speed of the transfer depends on the speed of the underlying link. a site that has a bps slip connection will not get the same throughput as a system with a k leased line (the physical connection, for more on what kinds of connections can exist in a network). also, the traffic of all other users on that link will affect performance. if there are thirty people all ftping from one site simultaneously, the load on the system (in addition to the network connection) will degrade the overall throughput of the transfer. ftp etiquette lest we forget, the internet is there for people to do work. people using the network and the systems on it are doing so for a purpose, whether it be research, development, whatever. any heavy activity takes away from the overall performance of the network as a whole. the effects of an ftp connection on a site and its link can vary; the general rule of thumb is that any extra traffic created detracts from the ability of that site's users to perform their tasks. to help be considerate of this, it's highly recommended that ftp sessions be held only after normal business hours for that site, preferably late at night. the possible effects of a large transfer will be less destructive at a.m. than p.m. also, remember that if it's past dinner time in maine, it's still early afternoon in california---think in terms of the current time at the site that's being visited, not of local time. basic commands while there have been many extensions to the various ftp clients out there, there is a de facto "standard" set that everyone expects to work. for more specific information, read the manual for your specific ftp program. this section will only skim the bare minimum of commands needed to operate an ftp session. creating the connection the actual command to use ftp will vary among operating systems; for the sake of clarity, we'll use ftp here, since it's the most general form. there are two ways to connect to a system---using its hostname or its internet number. using the hostname is usually preferred. however, some sites aren't able to resolve hostnames properly, and have no alternative. we'll assume you're able to use hostnames for simplicity's sake. the form is ftp somewhere.domain domains for help with reading and using domain names (in the example below, somewhere.domain is ftp.uu.net). you must first know the name of the system you want to connect to. we'll use ftp.uu.net as an example. on your system, type: ftp ftp.uu.net (the actual syntax will vary depending on the type of system the connection's being made from). it will pause momentarily then respond with the message connected to ftp.uu.net. and an initial prompt will appear: uunet ftp server (version . mon feb : : est ) ready. name (ftp.uu.net:jm): to which you should respond with anonymous: uunet ftp server (version . mon feb : : est ) ready. name (ftp.uu.net:jm): anonymous the system will then prompt you for a password; as noted previously, a good response is your email address: guest login ok, send ident as password. password: jm@south.america.org guest login ok, access restrictions apply. ftp> the password itself will not echo. this is to protect a user's security when he or she is using a real account to ftp files between machines. once you reach the ftp> prompt, you know you're logged in and ready to go. notice the ftp.uu.net:joe in the name: prompt? that's another clue that anonymous ftp is special: ftp expects a normal user accounts to be used for transfers. dir at the ftp> prompt, you can type a number of commands to perform various functions. one example is dir---it will list the files in the current directory. continuing the example from above: ftp> dir port command successful. opening ascii mode data connection for /bin/ls. total drwxr-xr-x nov .forward -rw-rw-r-- jun .hushlogin drwxrwxr-x jun census drwxrwxr-x jan : clarinet ... etc etc ... -rw-rw-r-- may : newthisweek.z ... etc etc ... -rw-rw-r-- may : uumap.tar.z drwxrwxr-x may : uunet-info transfer complete. bytes received in . seconds ( . kbytes/s) ftp> the file newthisweek.z was specifically included because we'll be using it later. just for general information, it happens to be a listing of all of the files added to uunet's archives during the past week. the directory shown is on a machine running the unix operating system---the dir command will produce different results on other operating systems (e.g. tops, vms, et al.). learning to recognize different formats will take some time. after a few weeks of traversing the internet, it proves easier to see, for example, how large a file is on an operating system you're otherwise not acquainted with. with many ftp implementations, it's also possible to take the output of dir and put it into a file on the local system with ftp> dir n* outfilename the contents of which can then be read outside of the live ftp connection; this is particularly useful for systems with very long directories (like ftp.uu.net). the above example would put the names of every file that begins with an n into the local file outfilename. cd at the beginning of an ftp session, the user is in a "top-level" directory. most things are in directories below it (e.g. /pub). to change the current directory, one uses the cd command. to change to the directory pub, for example, one would type ftp> cd pub which would elicit the response cwd command successful. meaning the "change working directory" command (cd) worked properly. moving "up" a directory is more system-specific---in unix use the command cd .., and in vms, cd [-]. get and put the actual transfer is performed with the get and put commands. to get a file from the remote computer to the local system, the command takes the form: ftp> get filename where filename is the file on the remote system. again using ftp.uu.net as an example, the file newthisweek.z can be retrieved with ftp> get newthisweek.z port command successful. opening ascii mode data connection for newthisweek.z ( bytes). transfer complete. local: newthisweek.z remote: newthisweek.z bytes received in . seconds ( kbytes/s) ftp> the section below on using binary mode instead of ascii will describe why this particular choice will result in a corrupt and subsequently unusable file. if, for some reason, you want to save a file under a different name (e.g. your system can only have -character filenames, or can only have one dot in the name), you can specify what the local filename should be by providing get with an additional argument ftp> get newthisweek.z uunet-new which will place the contents of the file newthisweek.z in uunet-new on the local system. the transfer works the other way, too. the put command will transfer a file from the local system to the remote system. if the permissions are set up for an ftp session to write to a remote directory, a file can be sent with ftp> put filename as with get, put will take a third argument, letting you specify a different name for the file on the remote system. ascii vs binary in the example above, the file newthisweek.z was transferred, but supposedly not correctly. the reason is this: in a normal ascii transfer (the default), certain characters are translated between systems, to help make text files more readable. however, when binary files (those containing non-ascii characters) are transferred, this translation should not take place. one example is a binary program---a few changed characters can render it completely useless. to avoid this problem, it's possible to be in one of two modes---ascii or binary. in binary mode, the file isn't translated in any way. what's on the remote system is precisely what's received. the commands to go between the two modes are: ftp> ascii type set to a. (note the a, which signifies ascii mode.) ftp> binary type set to i. (set to image format, for pure binary transfers.) note that each command need only be done once to take effect; if the user types binary, all transfers in that session are done in binary mode (that is, unless ascii is typed later). the transfer of newthisweek.z will work if done as: ftp> binary type set to i. ftp> get newthisweek.z port command successful. opening binary mode data connection for newthisweek.z ( bytes). transfer complete. local: newthisweek.z remote: newthisweek.z bytes received in . seconds ( . kbytes/s) note: the file size ( ) is different from that done in ascii mode ( ) bytes; and the number matches the one in the listing of uunet's top directory. we can be relatively sure that we've received the file without any problems. mget and mput the commands mget and mput allow for multiple file transfers using wildcards to get several files, or a whole set of files at once, rather than having to do it manually one by one. for example, to get all files that begin with the letter f, one would type ftp> mget f* similarly, to put all of the local files that end with .c: ftp> mput *.c rather than reiterate what's been written a hundred times before, consult a local manual for more information on wildcard matching (every dos manual, for example, has a section on it). normally, ftp assumes a user wants to be prompted for every file in a mget or mput operation. you'll often need to get a whole set of files and not have each of them confirmed---you know they're all right. in that case, use the prompt command to turn the queries off. ftp> prompt interactive mode off. likewise, to turn it back on, the prompt command should simply be issued again. joe granrose's list monthly, joe granrose (odin@pilot.njin.net) posts to usenet (usenet news) an extensive list of sites offering anonymous ftp service. it's available in a number of ways: the usenet groups comp.misc and comp.sources.wanted anonymous ftp from pilot.njin.net [ . . . ], in /pub/ftp-list. write to odin@pilot.njin.net with a subject: line of listserv-request and a message body of send help. please don't bother joe with your requests---the server will provide you with the list. the archie server archie is always in lowercase a group of people at mcgill university in canada got together and created a query system called archie. it was originally formed to be a quick and easy way to scan the offerings of the many anonymous ftp sites that are maintained around the world. as time progressed, archie grew to include other valuable services as well. the archie service is accessible through an interactive telnet session, email queries, and command-line and x-window clients. the email responses can be used along with ftpmail servers for those not on the internet. (ftp-by-mail servers, for info on using ftpmail servers.) using archie today currently, archie tracks the contents of over anonymous ftp archive sites containing over a million files stored across the internet. collectively, these files represent well over gigabytes of information, with new entries being added daily. the archie server automatically updates the listing information from each site about once a month. this avoids constantly updating the databases, which could waste network resources, yet ensures that the information on each site's holdings is reasonably up to date. to access archie interactively, telnet to one of the existing servers. {see telnet, for notes on using the telnet program.} they include archie.ans.net (new york, usa) archie.rutgers.edu (new jersey, usa) archie.sura.net (maryland, usa) archie.unl.edu (nebraska, usa) archie.mcgill.ca (the first archie server, in canada) archie.funet.fi (finland) archie.au (australia) archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (great britain) at the login: prompt of one of the servers, enter archie to log in. a greeting will be displayed, detailing information about ongoing work in the archie project; the user will be left at a archie> prompt, at which he may enter commands. using help will yield instructions on using the prog command to make queries, set to control various aspects of the server's operation, et al. type quit at the prompt to leave archie. typing the query prog vine.tar.z will yield a list of the systems that offer the source to the x-windows program vine; a piece of the information returned looks like: host ftp.uu.net ( . . . ) last updated : jan location: /packages/x/contrib file rw-r--r-- oct : vine.tar.z host nic.funet.fi ( . . . ) last updated : jan location: /pub/x /contrib file rw-rw-r-- nov : vine.tar.z archie clients there are two main-stream archie clients, one called (naturally enough) archie, the other xarchie (for x-windows). they query the archie databases and yield a list of systems that have the requested file(s) available for anonymous ftp, without requiring an interactive session to the server. for example, to find the same information you tried with the server command prog, you could type % archie vine.tar.z host athene.uni-paderborn.de location: /local/x /more_contrib file -rw-r--r-- nov vine.tar.z host emx.utexas.edu location: /pub/mnt/source/games file -rw-r--r-- may vine.tar.z host export.lcs.mit.edu location: /contrib file -rw-r--r-- oct : vine.tar.z note that your system administrator may not have installed the archie clients yet; the source is available on each of the archie servers, in the directory archie/clients. using the x-windows client is much more intuitive---if it's installed, just read its man page and give it a whirl. it's essential for the networked desktop. mailing archie users limited to email connectivity to the internet should send a message to the address archie@archie.mcgill.ca with the single word help in the body of the message. an email message will be returned explaining how to use the email archie server, along with the details of using ftpmail. most of the commands offered by the telnet interface can be used with the mail server. the whatis database in addition to offering access to anonymous ftp listings, archie also permits access to the whatis description database. it includes the names and brief synopses for over , public domain software packages, datasets and informational documents located on the internet. additional whatis databases are scheduled to be added in the future. planned offerings include listings for the names and locations of online library catalog programs, the names of publicly accessible electronic mailing lists, compilations of frequently asked questions lists, and archive sites for the most popular usenet newsgroups. suggestions for additional descriptions or locations databases are welcomed and should be sent to the archie developers at archie-l@cs.mcgill.ca. "was f@"ur pl@"undern!" ("what a place to plunder!") gebhard leberecht bl@"ucher ------ usenet news original from: chip@count.tct.com (chip salzenberg) [most recent change: may by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (gene spafford)] the first thing to understand about usenet is that it is widely misunderstood. every day on usenet the "blind men and the elephant" phenomenon appears, in spades. in the opinion of the author, more flame wars (rabid arguments) arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of usenet than from any other source. and consider that such flame wars arise, of necessity, among people who are on usenet. imagine, then, how poorly understood usenet must be by those outside! no essay on the nature of usenet can ignore the erroneous impressions held by many usenet users. therefore, this section will treat falsehoods first. keep reading for truth. (beauty, alas, is not relevant to usenet.) what usenet is usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one or more universally-recognized labels, called newsgroups (or "groups" for short). (note that the term newsgroup is correct, while area, base, board, bboard, conference, round table, sig, etc. are incorrect. if you want to be understood, be accurate.) the diversity of usenet if the above definition of usenet sounds vague, that's because it is. it is almost impossible to generalize over all usenet sites in any non-trivial way. usenet encompasses government agencies, large universities, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers of all descriptions, etc. every administrator controls his own site. no one has any real control over any site but his own. the administrator gets his power from the owner of the system he administers. as long as the owner is happy with the job the administrator is doing, he can do whatever he pleases, up to and including cutting off usenet entirely. c'est la vie. what usenet is not usenet is not an organization. usenet has no central authority. in fact, it has no central anything. there is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related to the direction of high-volume news flow. it follows that, to the extent that "upstream" sites decide what traffic they will carry for their "downstream" neighbors, that "upstream" sites have some influence on their neighbors. but such influence is usually easy to circumvent, and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in a backlash of resentment. usenet is not a democracy. a democracy can be loosely defined as "government of the people, by the people, for the people." however, as explained above, usenet is not an organization, and only an organization can be run as a democracy. even a democracy must be organized, for if it lacks a means of enforcing the peoples' wishes, then it may as well not exist. some people wish that usenet were a democracy. many people pretend that it is. both groups are sadly deluded. usenet is not fair. after all, who shall decide what's fair? for that matter, if someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him? neither you nor i, that's certain. usenet is not a right. some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech" to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of said computers have no right to stop them. those people are wrong. freedom of speech also means freedom not to speak; if i choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that is my right. freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. usenet is not a public utility. some usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized. most of them, by plain count, are not. there is no government monopoly on usenet, and little or no control. usenet is not a commercial network. many usenet sites are academic or government organizations; in fact, usenet originated in academia. therefore, there is a usenet custom of keeping commercial traffic to a minimum. if such commercial traffic is generally considered worth carrying, then it may be grudgingly tolerated. even so, it is usually separated somehow from non-commercial traffic; see comp.newprod. usenet is not the internet. the internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are subsidized by various governments. the internet carries many kinds of traffic; usenet is only one of them. and the internet is only one of the various networks carrying usenet traffic. usenet is not a unix network, nor even an ascii network. don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a unix machine. there are vaxen running vms, ibm mainframes, amigas, and ms-dos pcs reading and posting to usenet. and, yes, some of them use (shudder) ebcdic. ignore them if you like, but they're out there. usenet is not software. there are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read usenet articles. so no one program or package can be called "the usenet software." software designed to support usenet traffic can be (and is) used for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing the two. such private communication networks are typically kept distinct from usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different from the universally-recognized ones. usenet is not a uucp network. uucp is a protocol (some might say protocol suite, but that's a technical point) for sending data over point-to-point connections, typically using dialup modems. usenet is only one of the various kinds of traffic carried via uucp, and uucp is only one of the various transports carrying usenet traffic. well, enough negativity. propagation of news in the old days, when uucp over long-distance dialup lines was the dominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected sites had real influence in determining which newsgroups would be carried where. those sites called themselves "the backbone." but things have changed. nowadays, even the smallest internet site has connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear could only dream. in addition, in the u.s., the advent of cheaper long-distance calls and high-speed modems has made long-distance usenet feeds thinkable for smaller companies. there is only one pre-eminent uucp transport site today in the u.s., namely uunet. but uunet isn't a player in the propagation wars, because it never refuses any traffic---it gets paid by the minute, after all; to refuse based on content would jeopardize its legal status as an enhanced service provider. all of the above applies to the u.s. in europe, different cost structures favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical organizations with central registries. this is all very unlike the traditional mode of u.s. sites (pick a name, get the software, get a feed, you're on). europe's "benign monopolies", long uncontested, now face competition from looser organizations patterned after the u.s. model. group creation as discussed above, usenet is not a democracy. nevertheless, currently the most popular way to create a new newsgroup involves a "vote" to determine popular support for (and opposition to) a proposed newsgroup. newsgroup creation, for detailed instructions and guidelines on the process involved in making a newsgroup. if you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be created and will be widely propagated. however, due to the nature of usenet, there is no way for any user to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or any other decision, for that matter). therefore, for your new newsgroup to be propagated widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you must also follow its spirit. and you must not allow even a whiff of shady dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote. so, you may ask: how is a new user supposed to know anything about the "spirit" of the guidelines? obviously, she can't. this fact leads inexorably to the following recommendation: if you're a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup alone. if you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the news.groups newsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how things work. if you're too impatient to wait six months, then you really need to learn; read news.groups for a year instead. if you just can't wait, find a usenet old hand to run the vote for you. readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict. ignore it at your peril. it is embarrassing to speak before learning. it is foolish to jump into a society you don't understand with your mouth open. and it is futile to try to force your will on people who can tune you out with the press of a key. if you're unhappy... property rights being what they are, there is no higher authority on usenet than the people who own the machines on which usenet traffic is carried. if the owner of the machine you use says, "we will not carry alt.sex on this machine," and you are not happy with that order, you have no usenet recourse. what can we outsiders do, after all? that doesn't mean you are without options. depending on the nature of your site, you may have some internal political recourse. or you might find external pressure helpful. or, with a minimal investment, you can get a feed of your own from somewhere else. computers capable of taking usenet feeds are down in the $ range now, unix-capable boxes are going for under $ , and there are at least two unix lookalikes in the $ price range. no matter what, appealing to "usenet" won't help. even if those who read such an appeal regarding system administration are sympathetic to your cause, they will almost certainly have even less influence at your site than you do. by the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is doing, only the administrator and/or owner of that site have any authority to do anything about it. persuade them that the user in question is a problem for them, and they might do something (if they feel like it). if the user in question is the administrator or owner of the site from which he or she posts, forget it; you can't win. arrange for your newsreading software to ignore articles from him or her if you can, and chalk one up to experience. the history of usenet (the abcs) in the beginning, there were conversations, and they were good. then came usenet in , shortly after the release of v unix with uucp; and it was better. two duke university grad students in north carolina, tom truscott and jim ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange information with the unix community. steve bellovin, a grad student at the university of north carolina, put together the first version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on the first two sites: unc and duke. at the beginning of the network consisted of those two sites and phs (another machine at duke), and was described at the january usenix conference in boulder, co. {the usenix conferences are semi-annual meetings where members of the usenix association, a group of unix enthusiasts, meet and trade notes.} steve bellovin later rewrote the scripts into c programs, but they were never released beyond unc and duke. shortly thereafter, steve daniel did another implementation in the c programming language for public distribution. tom truscott made further modifications, and this became the "a" news release. in at the university of california at berkeley, grad student mark horton and high school student matt glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news---"a" news was intended for only a few articles per group per day. this rewrite was the "b" news version. the first public release was version . in ; all versions before . were considered in beta test. as the net grew, the news software was expanded and modified. the last version maintained and released primarily by mark was . . . rick adams, then at the center for seismic studies, took over coordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the news software with the . . release in . by this time, the increasing volume of news was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to the software at . . . moderated groups were inspired by arpa mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. in late , version . of news was released, including a number of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features. the current release of news is . , patchlevel . a new version of news, becoming known as "c" news, has been developed at the university of toronto by geoff collyer and henry spencer. this version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. the package was released to the net in the autumn of . for more information, see the paper news need not be slow, published in the winter usenix technical conference proceedings. usenet software has also been ported to a number of platforms, from the amiga and ibm pcs all the way to minicomputers and mainframes. hierarchies newsgroups are organized according to their specific areas of concentration. since the groups are in a tree structure, the various areas are called hierarchies. there are seven major categories: comp topics of interest to both computer professionals and hobbyists, including topics in computer science, software sources, and information on hardware and software systems. misc group addressing themes not easily classified into any of the other headings or which incorporate themes from multiple categories. subjects include fitness, job-hunting, law, and investments. sci discussions marked by special knowledge relating to research in or application of the established sciences. soc groups primarily addressing social issues and socializing. included are discussions related to many different world cultures. talk groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature long discussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts of generally useful information. news groups concerned with the news network, group maintenance, and software. rec groups oriented towards hobbies and recreational activities these "world" newsgroups are (usually) circulated around the entire usenet---this implies world-wide distribution. not all groups actually enjoy such wide distribution, however. the european usenet and eunet sites take only a selected subset of the more "technical" groups, and controversial "noise" groups are often not carried by many sites in the u.s. and canada (these groups are primarily under the talk and soc classifications). many sites do not carry some or all of the comp.binaries groups because of the typically large size of the posts in them (being actual executable programs). also available are a number of "alternative" hierarchies: alt true anarchy; anything and everything can and does appear; subjects include sex, the simpsons, and privacy. gnu groups concentrating on interests and software with the gnu project of the free software foundation. for further info on what the fsf is, fsf. biz business-related groups. moderated vs unmoderated some newsgroups insist that the discussion remain focused and on-target; to serve this need, moderated groups came to be. all articles posted to a moderated group get mailed to the group's moderator. he or she periodically (hopefully sooner than later) reviews the posts, and then either posts them individually to usenet, or posts a composite digest of the articles for the past day or two. this is how many mailing list gateways work (for example, the risks digest). news.groups & news.announce.newgroups being a good net.citizen includes being involved in the continuing growth and evolution of the usenet system. one part of this involvement includes following the discussion in the groups news.groups and the notes in news.announce.newgroups. it is there that discussion goes on about the creation of new groups and destruction of inactive ones. every person on usenet is allowed and encouraged to vote on the creation of a newsgroup. how usenet works the transmission of usenet news is entirely cooperative. feeds are generally provided out of good will and the desire to distribute news everywhere. there are places which provide feeds for a fee (e.g. uunet), but for the large part no exchange of money is involved. there are two major transport methods, uucp and nntp. the first is mainly modem-based and involves the normal charges for telephone calls. the second, nntp, is the primary method for distributing news over the internet. with uucp, news is stored in batches on a site until the neighbor calls to receive the articles, or the feed site happens to call. a list of groups which the neighbor wishes to receive is maintained on the feed site. the cnews system compresses its batches, which can dramatically reduce the transmission time necessary for a relatively heavy newsfeed. nntp, on the other hand, offers a little more latitude with how news is sent. the traditional store-and-forward method is, of course, available. given the "real-time" nature of the internet, though, other methods have been devised. programs now keep constant connections with their news neighbors, sending news nearly instantaneously, and can handle dozens of simultaneous feeds, both incoming and outgoing. the transmission of a usenet article is centered around the unique message-id: header. when an nntp site offers an article to a neighbor, it says it has that specific message id. if the neighbor finds it hasn't received the article yet, it tells the feed to send it through; this is repeated for each and every article that's waiting for the neighbor. using unique ids helps prevent a system from receiving five copies of an article from each of its five news neighbors, for example. further information on how usenet works with relation to the various transports is available in the documentation for the cnews and nntp packages, as well as in rfc- , the standard for interchange of usenet messages and rfc- , network news transfer protocol: a proposed standard for the stream-based transmission of news. the rfcs do tend to be rather dry reading, particularly to the new user. mail gateways a natural progression is for usenet news and electronic mailing lists to somehow become merged---which they have, in the form of news gateways. many mailing lists are set up to "reflect" messages not only to the readership of the list, but also into a newsgroup. likewise, posts to a newsgroup can be sent to the moderator of the mailing list, or to the entire mailing list. some examples of this in action are comp.risks (the risks digest) and comp.dcom.telecom (the telecom digest). this method of propagating mailing list traffic has helped solve the problem of a single message being delivered to a number of people at the same site---instead, anyone can just subscribe to the group. also, mailing list maintenance is lowered substantially, since the moderators don't have to be constantly removing and adding users to and from the list. instead, the people can read and not read the newsgroup at their leisure. from "dear emily postnews" by brad templeton usenet "netiquette" there are many traditions with usenet, not the least of which is dubbed netiquette---being polite and considerate of others. if you follow a few basic guidelines, you, and everyone that reads your posts, will be much happier in the long run. signatures at the end of most articles is a small blurb called a person's signature. in unix this file is named .signature in the person's login directory---it will vary for other operating systems. it exists to provide information about how to get in touch with the person posting the article, including their email address, phone number, address, or where they're located. even so, signatures have become the graffiti of computers. people put song lyrics, pictures, philosophical quotes, even advertisements in their ".sigs". (note, however, that advertising in your signature will more often than not get you flamed until you take it out.) four lines will suffice---more is just extra garbage for usenet sites to carry along with your article, which is supposed to be the intended focus of the reader. netiquette dictates limiting oneself to this "quota" of four---some people make signatures that are ten lines or even more, including elaborate ascii drawings of their hand-written signature or faces or even the space shuttle. this is not cute, and will bother people to no end. similarly, it's not necessary to include your signature---if you forget to append it to an article, don't worry about it. the article's just as good as it ever would be, and contains everything you should want to say. don't re-post the article just to include the signature. posting personal messages if mail to a person doesn't make it through, avoid posting the message to a newsgroup. even if the likelihood of that person reading the group is very high, all of the other people reading the articles don't give a whit what you have to say to jim morrison. simply wait for the person to post again and double-check the address, or get in touch with your system administrator and see if it's a problem with local email delivery. it may also turn out that their site is down or is having problems, in which case it's just necessary to wait until things return to normal before contacting jim. posting mail in the interests of privacy, it's considered extremely bad taste to post any email that someone may have sent, unless they explicitly give you permission to redistribute it. while the legal issues can be heavily debated, most everyone agrees that email should be treated as anything one would receive via normal snailmail, {the slang for the normal land and air postal service.} , with all of the assumed rights that are carried with it. test messages many people, particularly new users, want to try out posting before actually taking part in discussions. often the mechanics of getting messages out is the most difficult part of usenet. to this end, many, many users find it necessary to post their tests to "normal" groups (for example, news.admin or comp.mail.misc). this is considered a major netiquette faux pas in the usenet world. there are a number of groups available, called test groups, that exist solely for the purpose of trying out a news system, reader, or even new signature. they include alt.test gnu.gnusenet.test misc.test some of which will generate auto-magic replies to your posts to let you know they made it through. there are certain denizens of usenet that frequent the test groups to help new users out. they respond to the posts, often including the article so the poster can see how it got to the person's site. also, many regional hierarchies have test groups, like phl.test in philadelphia. by all means, experiment and test---just do it in its proper place. famous people appearing every once in a while, someone says that a celebrity is accessible through "the net"; or, even more entertaining, an article is forged to appear to be coming from that celebrity. one example is stephen spielberg---the rec.arts.movies readership was in an uproar for two weeks following a couple of posts supposedly made by mr. spielberg. (some detective work revealed it to be a hoax.) there are a few well-known people that are acquainted with usenet and computers in general---but the overwhelming majority are just normal people. one should act with skepticism whenever a notable personality is "seen" in a newsgroup. summaries authors of articles occasionally say that readers should reply by mail and they'll summarize. accordingly, readers should do just that---reply via mail. responding with a followup article to such an article defeats the intention of the author. she, in a few days, will post one article containing the highlights of the responses she received. by following up to the whole group, the author may not read what you have to say. when creating a summary of the replies to a post, try to make it as reader-friendly as possible. avoid just putting all of the messages received into one big file. rather, take some time and edit the messages into a form that contains the essential information that other readers would be interested in. also, sometimes people will respond but request to remain anonymous (one example is the employees of a corporation that feel the information's not proprietary, but at the same time want to protect themselves from political backlash). summaries should honor this request accordingly by listing the from: address as anonymous or (address withheld by request). quoting when following up to an article, many newsreaders provide the facility to quote the original article with each line prefixed by > , as in in article < @foo.bar.com>, sharon@foo.bar.com wrote: > i agree, i think that basketweaving's really catching on, > particularly in pennsylvania. here's a list of every person > in pa that currently engages in it publicly: line ... etc ... this is a severe example (potentially a horribly long article), but proves a point. when you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't directly applicable to your reply. {but not changing their words, of course. } this gives the reader of the new article a better idea of what points you were addressing. by including the entire article, you'll only annoy those reading it. also, signatures in the original aren't necessary; the readers already know who wrote it (by the attribution). avoid being tedious with responses---rather than pick apart an article, address it in parts or as a whole. addressing practically each and every word in an article only proves that the person responding has absolutely nothing better to do with his time. if a "war" starts (insults and personal comments get thrown back and forth), take it into email---exchange email with the person you're arguing with. no one enjoys watching people bicker incessantly. crossposting the newsgroups: line isn't limited to just one group---an article can be posted in a list of groups. for instance, the line newsgroups: sci.space,comp.simulation posts the article to both the groups sci.space and comp.simulation. it's usually safe to crosspost to up to three or four groups. to list more than that is considered "excessive noise." it's also suggested that if an article is crossposted a followup-to: header be included. it should name the group to which all additional discussion should be directed to. for the above example a possible followup-to: would be followup-to: sci.space which would make all followups automatically be posted to just sci.space, rather than both sci.space and comp.simulation. if every response made with a newsreader's "followup" command should go to the person posting the article no matter what, there's also a mechanism worked in to accommodate. the followup-to: header should contain the single word poster: followup-to: poster certain newsreaders will use this to sense that a reply should never be posted back onto the net. this is often used with questions that will yield a summary of information later, a vote, or an advertisement. recent news one should avoid posting "recent" events---sports scores, a plane crash, or whatever people will see on the evening news or read in the morning paper. by the time the article has propagated across all of usenet, the "news" value of the article will have become stale. (this is one case for the argument that usenet news is a misnomer. {note that the clarinet news service (clarinet) offers news items in a usenet format as a precise alternative to the morning paper, et. al.) quality of postings how you write and present yourself in your articles is important. if you have terrible spelling, keep a dictionary near by. if you have trouble with grammar and punctuation, try to get a book on english grammar and composition (found in many bookstores and at garage sales). by all means pay attention to what you say---it makes you who you are on the net. likewise, try to be clear in what you ask. ambiguous or vague questions often lead to no response at all, leaving the poster discouraged. give as much essential information as you feel is necessary to let people help you, but keep it within limits. for instance, you should probably include the operating system of your computer in the post if it's needed, but don't tell everybody what peripherals you have hanging off of it. useful subjects the subject: line of an article is what will first attract people to read it---if it's vague or doesn't describe what's contained within, no one will read the article. at the same time, subject: lines that're too wordy tend to be irritating. for example: good subject: building emacs on a sun sparc under . good subject: tryin' to find waldo in nj. bad subject: i can't get emacs to work !!! bad subject: i'm desperately in search of the honorable mr. waldo in the state of... simply put, try to think of what will best help the reader when he or she encounters your article in a newsreading session. tone of voice since common computers can't portray the inflection or tone in a person's voice, how articles are worded can directly affect the response to them. if you say anybody using a vic- should go buy themselves a life. you'll definitely get some responses---telling you to take a leap. rather than be inflammatory, phrase your articles in a way that rationally expresses your opinion, like what're the practical uses of a vic- these days? which presents yourself as a much more level-headed individual. also, what case (upper or lower) you use can indicate how you're trying to speak---netiquette dictates that if you use all capital letters, people will think you're "shouting." write as you would in a normal letter to a friend, following traditional rules of english (or whatever language you happen to speak). computer religion no matter what kind of computer a person is using, theirs is always the best and most efficient of them all. posting articles asking questions like what computer should i buy? an atari st or an amiga? will lead only to fervent arguments over the merits and drawbacks of each brand. don't even ask the net---go to a local user group, or do some research of your own like reading some magazine reviews. trying to say one computer is somehow better than another is a moot point. the anatomy of an article frequently asked questions a number of groups include frequently asked question (faq) lists, which give the answers to questions or points that have been raised time and time again in a newsgroup. they're intended to help cut down on the redundant traffic in a group. for example, in the newsgroup alt.tv.simpsons, one recurring question is did you notice that there's a different blackboard opening at the beginning of every simpsons episode? as a result, it's part of the faq for that group. usually, faq lists are posted at the beginning of each month, and are set to expire one month later (when, supposedly, the next faq will be published). nearly every faq is also crossposted to news.answers, which is used as a usenet repository for them. the pit-manager archive mit, with jonathan kamens, has graciously dedicated a machine to the archiving and storage of the various periodic postings that are peppered throughout the various usenet groups. to access them, ftp to the system pit-manager.mit.edu and look in the directory /pub/usenet. "be it true or false, so it be news." ben jonson, news from the new world ----- telnet telnet is the main internet protocol for creating a connection with a remote machine. it gives the user the opportunity to be on one computer system and do work on another, which may be across the street or thousands of miles away. where modems are limited, in the majority, by the quality of telephone lines and a single connection, telnet provides a connection that's error-free and nearly always faster than the latest conventional modems. using telnet as with ftp (anonymous ftp), the actual command for negotiating a telnet connection varies from system to system. the most common is telnet itself, though. it takes the form of: telnet somewhere.domain to be safe, we'll use your local system as a working example. by now, you hopefully know your site's domain name. if not, ask or try to figure it out. you'll not get by without it. to open the connection, type telnet your.system.name if the system were wubba.cs.widener.edu, for example, the command would look like telnet wubba.cs.widener.edu the system will respond with something similar to trying . . . ... connected to wubba.cs.widener.edu. escape character is '^]'. the escape character, in this example ^] (control-]), is the character that will let you go back to the local system to close the connection, suspend it, etc. to close this connection, the user would type ^], and respond to the telnet> prompt with the command close. local documentation should be checked for information on specific commands, functions, and escape character that can be used. telnet ports many telnet clients also include a third option, the port on which the connection should take place. normally, port is the default telnet port; the user never has to think about it. but sometimes it's desirable to telnet to a different port on a system, where there may be a service available, or to aid in debugging a problem. using telnet somewhere.domain port will connect the user to the given port on the system somewhere.domain. many libraries use this port method to offer their facilities to the general internet community; other services are also available. for instance, one would type telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu to connect to the geographic server at the university of michigan (geographic server). other such port connections follow the same usage. publicly accessible libraries over the last several years, most university libraries have switched from a manual (card) catalog system to computerized library catalogs. the automated systems provide users with easily accessible and up-to-date information about the books available in these libraries. this has been further improved upon with the advent of local area networks, dialup modems, and wide area networks. now many of us can check on our local library's holdings or that of a library halfway around the world! many, many institutions of higher learning have made their library catalogs available for searching by anyone on the internet. they include boston university, the colorado alliance of research libraries (carl), and london university king's college. to include a listing of some of the existing sites would not only be far too long for this document, it would soon be out of date. instead, several lists are being maintained and are available either by mail or via ftp. also, the internet resource guide (irg) also describes a few libraries that are accessible---irg for further information. art st. george and ron larsen are maintaining a list of internet-accessible libraries and databases often referred to as "the st. george directory." it began with only library catalogs but has expanded to include sections on campus-wide information systems, and even bulletin board systems that are not on the internet. the library catalog sections are divided into those that are free, those that charge, and international (i.e. non-u.s.) catalogs; they are arranged by state, province, or country within each section. there is also a section giving dialup information for some of the library catalogs. it's available for ftp (anonymous ftp) on nic.cerf.net in the directory cerfnet/cerfnet_info/library_catalog. the file internet-catalogs has a date suffix; check for the most current date. the information is updated periodically. billy barron, systems manager at the university of north texas, produces a directory as an aid to his user community. it complements the st. george guide by providing a standard format for all systems which lists the internet address, login instructions, the system vendor, and logoff information. the arrangement is alphabetic by organization name. it's available for ftp on vaxb.acs.unt.edu in the subdirectory library as the file libraries.txt. for announcements of new libraries being available and discussion on related topics, consult the usenet newsgroup comp.internet.library (usenet news to learn how to read news). bulletin board systems the cleveland freenet freenets are open-access, free, community computer systems. one such system is the cleveland freenet, sponsored by cwru (case western reserve university). anyone and everyone is welcome to join and take part in the exciting project---that of a national telecomputing public network, where everyone benefits. there's no charge for the registration process and no charge to use the system. to register, telnet to any one of freenet-in-a.cwru.edu freenet-in-b.cwru.edu freenet-in-c.cwru.edu after you're connected, choose the entry on the menu that signifies you're a guest user. another menu will follow; select apply for an account, and you'll be well on your way to being a freenet member. you will need to fill out a form and send it to them through the postal service---your login id and password will be created in a few days. at that point you're free to use the system as you wish. they provide multi-user chat, email, usenet news, and a variety of other things to keep you occupied for hours on end. directories there are a few systems that are maintained to provide the internet community with access to lists of information---users, organizations, etc. they range from fully dedicated computers with access to papers and research results, to a system to find out about the faculty members of a university. knowbot knowbot is a "master directory" that contains email address information from the nic whois database (whois), the psi white pages pilot project, the nysernet x. database and mci mail. most of these services are email registries themselves, but knowbot provides a very comfortable way to access all of them in one place. telnet to nri.reston.va.us on port . white pages psi maintains a directory of information on individuals. it will list the person's name, organization, and email address if it is given. telnet to wp.psi.net and log in as fred. the white pages project also includes an interface to use xwindows remotely. faculty and staff listings many universities offer access to information on current faculty and staff. included are: cornell telnet to cuinfo.cornell.edu on port . nc state telnet to ccvax .cc.ncsu.edu and log in as info. rutgers telnet to hangout.rutgers.edu on port . u of maryland telnet to umail.umd.edu and log in as lookup. unc chapel hill telnet to info.acs.unc.edu and log in as info. yale telnet to yalevm.ycc.yale.edu on port . databases for information on database services, commercial databases. not all databases on the internet require payment for use, though. there do exist some, largely research-driven databases, which are publicly accessible. new ones spring up regularly. to find out more about the databases in this section, contact the people directly responsible for them. their areas of concentration and the software used to implement them are widely disparate, and are probably beyond the author's expertise. also, don't forget to check with your local library---the reference librarian there can provide information on conventional resources, and possibly even those available over the internet (they are becoming more common). colorado alliance of research libraries (carl) the colorado alliance of research libraries (carl), in association with carl systems inc., operates a public access catalog of services. offered are a number of library databases, including searches for government periodicals, book reviews, indices for current articles, and access to to other library databases around the country. other services are available to carl members including an online encyclopedia. telnet to pac.carl.org, or write to help@carl.org for more details. penpages penpages is an agriculturally-oriented database administered by pennsylvania state university. information entered into penpages is provided by numerous sources including the pennsylvania dept. of agriculture, rutgers university, and penn state. easy-to-use menus guide users to information ranging from cattle and agricultural prices to current weather information, from health information to agricultural news from around the nation. a keyword search option also allows users to search the database for related information and articles. the database is updated daily, and a listing of most recent additions is displayed after login. telnet to psupen.psu.edu and log in as the user pnotpa. clemson univ. forestry & agricultural network clemson maintains a database similar to penpages in content, but the information provided tends to be localized to the southeastern united states. a menu-driven database offers queries involving the weather, food, family, and human resources. telnet to eureka.clemson.edu and log in as public. you need to be on a good vt emulator (or a real vt terminal). university of maryland info database the computer science department of the university of maryland maintains a repository of information on a wide variety of topics. they wish to give a working example of how network technology can (and should) provide as much information as possible to those who use it. telnet to info.umd.edu and log in as info. the information contained in the database is accessible through a screen-oriented interface, and everything therein is available via anonymous ftp. there is a mailing list used to discuss the umd info database, welcoming suggestions for new information, comments on the interface the system provides, and other related topics. send mail to listserv@umdd.umd.edu with a body of subscribe info-l your full name listservs for more information on using the listserv system. university of michigan weather underground the university of michigan's department of atmospheric, oceanic, & space sciences maintains a database of weather and related information for the united states and canada. available are current weather conditions and forecasts for cities in the u.s., a national weather summary, ski conditions, earthquake and hurricane updates, and a listing of severe weather conditions. telnet to madlab.sprl.umich.edu on port to use the system. geographic name server a geographic database listing information for cities in the united states and some international locations is maintained by merit, inc. the database is searchable by city name, zip code, etc. it will respond with a lot of information: the area code, elevation, time zone, and longitude and latitude are included. for example, a query of yields chester delaware pa pennsylvania us united states f populated place l n w p e z z z z .. to use the server, telnet to martini.eecs.umich.edu on port . the command help will yield further instructions, along with an explanation for each of the fields in a reponse. fedix---minority scholarship information fedix is an on-line information service that links the higher education community and the federal government to facilitate research, education, and services. the system provides accurate and timely federal agency information to colleges, universities, and other research organizations. there are no registration fees and no access charges for fedix whatsoever. fedix offers the minority on-line information service (molis), a database listing current information about black and hispanic colleges and universities. daily information updates are made on federal education and research programs, scholarships, fellowships, and grants, available used research equipment, and general information about fedix itself. to access the database, telnet to fedix.fie.com and log in as fedix. science & technology information system the stis is maintained by the national science foundation (nsf), and provides access to many nsf publications. the full text of publications can be searched online and copied from the system, which can accommodate up to ten users at one time. telnet to stis.nsf.gov and log in as public. everything on the system is also available via anonymous ftp. for further information, contact: stis, office of information systems, room national science foundation g. street, n.w. washington, d.c. stis-request@nsf.gov ( ) - ( ) - (fax) ocean network information center the university of delaware college of marine studies offers access to an interactive database of research information covering all aspects of marine studies, nicknamed oceanic. this includes the world oceanic circulation experiment (woce) information and program information, research ship schedules and information, and a who's who of email and mailing addresses for oceanic studies. data from a variety of academic institutions based on research studies is also available. telnet to delocn.udel.edu and log in as info. nasa/ipac extragalactic database (ned) the nasa/ipac extragalactic database (ned) is an ongoing project, funded by nasa, to make data and literature on extragalactic objects available over computer networks. ned is an object-oriented database which contains extensive information for nearly , extragalactic objects taken from about major catalogs of galaxies, quasars, infrared and radio sources. ned provides positions, names, and other basic data (e.g. magnitude types, sizes and redshifts as well as bibliographic references and abstracts). searches can be done by name, around a name, and on an astronomical position. ned contains a tutorial which guides the user through the retrieval process. telnet to ipac.caltech.edu and log in as ned. u.s. naval observatory automated data service operated by the u.s. naval observatory in washington, d.c., this automated data service provides database access to information ranging from current navigational satellite positioning, astronomical data, and software utilities. a wide variety of databases can be searched and instructions for file transfer are given. telnet to tycho.usno.navy.mil and log in as ads. "my consciousness suddenly switched locations, for the first time in my life, from the vicinity of my head and body to a point about twenty feet away from where i normally see the world." howard rheingold, virtual reality p ----------------- various tools new and interesting ways to use the internet are being dreamed up every day. as they gain wide-spread use, some methods become near-standard (or actual written standard) tools for internet users to take advantage of. a few are detailed here; there are undoubtedly others, and new ideas spring up all the time. an active user of the internet will discover most of the more common ones in time. usually, these services are free. commercial services for applications that are commercially available over the internet. usenet is often used to announce a new service or capability on the internet. in particular, the groups comp.archives and comp.protocols.tcp-ip are good places to look. information will drift into other areas as word spreads. usenet news for information on reading news. finger on many systems there exists the finger command, which yield information about each user that's currently logged in. this command also has extensions for use over the internet, as well. under normal circumstances, the command is simply finger for a summary of who's logged into the local system, or finger username for specific information about a user. it's also possible to go one step further and go onto the network. the general usage is finger @hostname to see who's currently logged in at widener university, for instance, use % finger @cs.widener.edu [cs.widener.edu] login name tty idle when where brendan brendan kehoe p fri : tattoo.cs.widene sven sven heinicke p fri : xyplex .cs.widen to find out about a certain user, they can be fingered specifically (and need not be logged in): % finger bart@cs.widener.edu [cs.widener.edu] login name: bart in real life: bart simpson directory: /home/springfield/bart shell: /bin/underachiever affiliation: brother of lisa home system: channel .fox.org last login thu may : (edt) on ttyp from channel .fox.org. no unread mail project: to become a "fluff" cartoon character. plan: don't have a cow, man. please realize that some sites are very security conscious, and need to restrict the information about their systems and users available to the outside world. to that end, they often block finger requests from outside sites---so don't be surprised if fingering a computer or a user returns with connection refused. internet relay chat the lamont view server system on lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu in pub/gb.tar.z. ping the ping command allows the user to check if another system is currently "up" and running. the general form of the command is ping system. {the usage will, again, vary.} for example, ping cs.widener.edu will tell you if the main machine in widener university's computer science lab is currently online (we certainly hope so!). many implementations of ping also include an option to let you see how fast a link is running (to give you some idea of the load on the network). for example: % ping -s cs.swarthmore.edu ping cs.swarthmore.edu: data bytes bytes from . . . : icmp_seq= ttl= time= ms bytes from . . . : icmp_seq= ttl= time= ms bytes from . . . : icmp_seq= ttl= time= ms ^c --- cs.swarthmore.edu ping statistics --- packets transmitted, packets received, % packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = / / ms this case tells us that for cs.swarthmore.edu it takes about milliseconds for a packet to go from widener to swarthmore college and back again. it also gives the average and worst-case speeds, and any packet loss that may have occurred (e.g. because of network congestion). while ping generally doesn't hurt network performance, you shouldn't use it too often---usually once or twice will leave you relatively sure of the other system's state. talk sometimes email is clumsy and difficult to manage when one really needs to have an interactive conversation. the internet provides for that as well, in the form of talk. two users can literally see each other type across thousands of miles. to talk with bart simpson at widener, one would type talk bart@@cs.widener.edu which would cause a message similar to the following to be displayed on bart's terminal: message from talk_daemon@cs.widener.edu at : ... talk: connection requested by joe@ee.someplace.edu talk: respond with: talk joe@ee.someplace.edu bart would, presumably, respond by typing talk joe@ee.someplace.edu. they could then chat about whatever they wished, with instantaneous response time, rather than the write-and-wait style of email. to leave talk, on many systems one would type ctrl-c (hold down the control key and press c). check local documentation to be sure. there are two different versions of talk in common use today. the first, dubbed "old talk," is supported by a set of unix systems (most notably, those currently sold by sun). the second, ntalk (aka "new talk"), is more of the standard. if, when attempting to talk with another user, it responds with an error about protocol families, odds are the incompatibilities between versions of talk is the culprit. it's up to the system administrators of sites which use the old talk to install ntalk for their users. wide area information servers (wais) the whois database the main whois database is run at the network information center (nic). the whois command will let you search a database of every registered domain (e.g. mit.edu) and of registered users. it's primarily used by system postmasters or listowners to find the points of contact for a site, to let them know of a problem or contact them for one reason or another. you can also find out their postal address. for example: % whois mit.edu massachusetts institute of technology (mit) mit.edu . . . massachusetts institute of technology (mit-dom) mit.edu note that there are two entries for mit.edu; we'll go for the second. % whois mit-dom massachusetts institute of technology (mit-dom) cambridge, ma domain name: mit.edu administrative contact, technical contact, zone contact: schiller, jeffrey i. (jis) jis@mit.edu ( ) - record last updated on -jun- . domain servers in listed order: strawb.mit.edu . . . w ns.mit.edu . . . bitsy.mit.edu . . . lithium.lcs.mit.edu . . . to see this host record with registered users, repeat the command with a star ('*') before the name; or, use '%' to show just the registered users. much better! now this information (sought, possibly, by a system administrator) can be used to find out how to notify mit of a security issue or problem with connectivity. queries can be made for individuals as well; the following would yield an entry for the author: % whois brendan kehoe, brendan (bk ) brendan@cs.widener.edu widener university department of computer science kirkbride p.o. box widener university chester, pa ( )/ - record last updated on -may- . included is the author's name, his handle (a unique sequence of letters and numbers), information on how to contact him, and the last time the record was modified in any way. anyone can register with the whois database. people who are administrative or technical contacts for domains are registered automatically when their domain applications are processed. for normal users, one must simply fill out a form from the nic. ftp to nic.ddn.mil and get the file netinfo/user-template.txt. the completed form should be mailed to registrar@nic.ddn.mil. other uses of whois also, many educational sites run whois servers of their own, to offer information about people who may be currently on the staff or attending the institution. to specify a whois server, many implementations include some sort of option or qualifier---in vms under multinet, it's /host, in unix -h. to receive information about using the stanford server, one might use the command whois -h stanford.edu help a large list of systems offering whois services is being maintained by matt power of mit (mhpower@stan.mit.edu). it is available via anonymous ftp from sipb.mit.edu, in the directory pub/whois. the file is named whois-servers.list. the systems available include, but are certainly not limited to, syracuse university (syr.edu), new york university (acfcluster.nyu.edu), the university of california at san diego (ucsd.edu), and stanford university (stanford.edu). "fingers were made before forks." jonathan swift, polite conversation ------- commercial services many services can be accessed through the internet. as time progresses and more outlets for commercial activity appear, once-restricted traffic (by the nsfnet acceptable use policy) may now flow freely. now that there are other networks for that information to travel on, businesses are making their move. internet service providers providers (alternet, psi, etc)... supercomputers the internet resource guide (irg) contains a chapter on computer time that's available for a fee. rather than reproduce it here, which would fast become out-of-date as well as triple the size of this guide, it's suggested that the reader consult the irg if such services are of interest. electronic journals the association of research libraries (arl) publishes a hard-copy directory of electronic journals, newsletters, and scholarly discussion lists. it is a compilation of entries for hundreds of sts, dozens of journals and newsletters, and a many "other" titles, including newsletter-digests, into one reference source. each entry includes instructions on how to access the referenced publication or list. the documents are available electronically by sending the commands get ejournl directry get ejournl directry to the server at listserv@ottawa.bitnet. listservs for further instructions on using a listserv. the directory, along with a compilation by diane kovacs called directories of academic e-mail conferences, is available in print and on diskette (dos wordperfect and macword) from: office of scientific & academic publishing association of research libraries new hampshire avenue, nw washington, dc arlhq@umdc.bitnet ( ) -- ( ) -- (fax) the arl is a not-for-profit organization representing over one hundred research libraries in the united states and canada. the publication is available to arl members for $ and to non-members for $ (add $ postage per directory for foreign addresses). orders of six or more copies will receive a % discount; all orders must be prepaid and sent to the arl. commercial databases the american institute of physics maintains the physics information network. it contains the bibliographic spin and general physics advanced abstracts databases. also available is access to bulletin boards and several searchable lists (job notices, announcements, etc). telnet to pinet.aip.org; new users must log in as new and give registration information. some of the databases accessible through wais (wais) are available for a fee. clarinet news clarinet's an electronic publishing network service that provides professional news and information, including live upi wireservice news, in the usenet file format. clarinet lets you read an "electronic newspaper" right on the local system; you can get timely industry news, technology related wirestories, syndicated columns and features, financial information, stock quotes and more. clarinet's provided by using the usenet message interchange format, and is available via uucp and other delivery protocols, including nntp. the main feature is clarinews, an "electronic newspaper," gathered live from the wire services of united press international (upi). clarinews articles are distributed in newsgroups based on their subject matter, and are keyworded for additional topics and the geographical location of the story. clarinews includes headlines, industry news, box scores, network tv schedules, and more. the main products of clarinews are: clarinews general, the general news"paper" with news, sports, and features, averaging about stories per day. techwire, special groups for stories on science, technology, and industry stories around them. clarinews-biz, business and financial stories. newsbytes, a daily computer industry newsmagazine. syndicated columns, including dave barry (humor) and mike royko (opinion). full information on clarinet, including subscription information, is available from clarinet communications corp. king st. north waterloo, ontario n j x info@@clarinet.com ( ) use-nets or with anonymous ftp in the directory /clarinet on ftp.uu.net (anonymous ftp). "needless to say, aristotle did not envisage modern finance." frederick copleston, s.j. a history of philosophy: vol greece & rome part ii, p --------- things you'll hear about there are certain things that you'll hear about shortly after you start actively using the internet. most people assume that everyone's familiar with them, and they require no additional explanation. if only that were true! this section addresses a few topics that are commonly encountered and asked about as a new user explores cyberspace. some of them are directly related to how the networks are run today; other points are simply interesting to read about. the internet worm from a letter by severo m. ornstein, in acm june vol no and the appeal notice on november , , robert morris, jr., a graduate student in computer science at cornell, wrote an experimental, self-replicating, self-propagating program called a worm and injected it into the internet. he chose to release it from mit, to disguise the fact that the worm came from cornell. morris soon discovered that the program was replicating and reinfecting machines at a much faster rate than he had anticipated---there was a bug. ultimately, many machines at locations around the country either crashed or became "catatonic." when morris realized what was happening, he contacted a friend at harvard to discuss a solution. eventually, they sent an anonymous message from harvard over the network, instructing programmers how to kill the worm and prevent reinfection. however, because the network route was clogged, this message did not get through until it was too late. computers were affected at many sites, including universities, military sites, and medical research facilities. the estimated cost of dealing with the worm at each installation ranged from $ to more than $ , . {derived in part from a letter by severo m. ornstein, in the communications of the acm, vol no , june .} the program took advantage of a hole in the debug mode of the unix sendmail program, which runs on a system and waits for other systems to connect to it and give it email, and a hole in the finger daemon fingerd, which serves finger requests (finger). people at the university of california at berkeley and mit had copies of the program and were actively disassembling it (returning the program back into its source form) to try to figure out how it worked. teams of programmers worked non-stop to come up with at least a temporary fix, to prevent the continued spread of the worm. after about twelve hours, the team at berkeley came up with steps that would help retard the spread of the virus. another method was also discovered at purdue and widely published. the information didn't get out as quickly as it could have, however, since so many sites had completely disconnected themselves from the network. after a few days, things slowly began to return to normalcy and everyone wanted to know who had done it all. morris was later named in the new york times as the author (though this hadn't yet been officially proven, there was a substantial body of evidence pointing to morris). robert t. morris was convicted of violating the computer fraud and abuse act (title ), and sentenced to three years of probation, hours of community service, a fine of $ , , and the costs of his supervision. his appeal, filed in december, , was rejected the following march. the cuckoo's egg first in an article entitled "stalking the wily hacker," and later in the book the cuckoo's egg, clifford stoll detailed his experiences trying to track down someone breaking into a system at lawrence berkeley laboratory in california. {see the bibliography for full citations.} a -cent discrepancy in the lab's accounting records led stoll on a chase through california, virginia, and europe to end up in a small apartment in hannover, west germany. stoll dealt with many levels of bureaucracy and red tape, and worked with the fbi, the cia, and the german bundespost trying to track his hacker down. the experiences of stoll, and particularly his message in speaking engagements, have all pointed out the dire need for communication between parties on a network of networks. the only way everyone can peacefully co-exist in cyberspace is by ensuring rapid recognition of any existing problems. organizations the indomitable need for humans to congregate and share their common interests is also present in the computing world. user groups exist around the world, where people share ideas and experiences. similarly, there are organizations which are one step "above" user groups; that is to say, they exist to encourage or promote an idea or set of ideas, rather than support a specific computer or application of computers. the association for computing machinery the association for computing machinery (the acm) was founded in , immediately after eckert and mauchly unveiled one of the first electronic computers, the eniac, in . since then, the acm has grown by leaps and bounds, becoming one of the leading educational and scientific societies in the computer industry. the acm's stated purposes are: to advance the sciences and arts of information processing; to promote the free interchange of information about the sciences and arts of information processing both among specialists and among the public; to develop and maintain the integrity and competence of individuals engaged in the practices of the sciences and arts of information processing. membership in the acm has grown from seventy-eight in september, , to over , today. there are local chapters around the world, and many colleges and universities endorse student chapters. lecturers frequent these meetings, which tend to be one step above the normal "user group" gathering. a large variety of published material is also available at discounted prices for members of the association. the acm has a number of special interest groups (sigs) that concentrate on a certain area of computing, ranging from graphics to the ada programming language to security. each of the sigs also publishes its own newsletter. there is a usenet group, comp.org.acm, for the discussion of acm topics. usenet news for more information on reading news. for more information and a membership application, write to: assocation for computing machinery broadway new york city, ny acmhelp@acmvm.bitnet ( ) - computer professionals for social responsibility from their letter to prospective members the cpsr is an alliance of computer professionals concentrating on certain areas of the impact of computer technology on society. it traces its history to the fall of , when several researchers in palo alto, california, organized a lunch meeting to discuss their shared concerns about the connection between computing and the nuclear arms race. out of that meeting and the discussions which followed, cpsr was born, and has been active ever since. {this section is part of the cpsr's letter to prospective members.} the national cpsr program focuses on the following project areas: reliability and risk this area reflects on the concern that overreliance on computing technology can lead to unacceptable risks to society. it includes, but isn't limited to, work in analyzing military systems such as sdi. civil liberties and privacy this project is concerned with such topics as the fbi national crime information center, the growing use of databases by both government and private industry, the right of access to public information, extension of first amendment rights to electronic communication, and establishing legal protections for privacy of computerized information. computers in the workplace the cpsr workplace project has concentrated its attention on the design of software for the workplace, and particularly on the philosophy of "participatory design," in which software designers work together with users to ensure that systems meet the actual needs of that workplace. the st century project this is a coalition with other professional organizations working towards redirecting national research priorities from concentrating on military issues to anticipating and dealing with future problems as science and technology enter the next century. for more information on the cpsr, contact them at: computer professionals for social responsibility p.o. box palo alto, ca cpsr@csli.stanford.edu ( ) -- ( ) -- (fax) the electronic frontier foundation the electronic frontier foundation (eff) was established to help civilize the "electronic frontier"---the cyberspacial medium becoming ever-present in today's society; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping with the society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication. {this section was derived from eff.about, available along with other material via anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org} the mission of the eff is to engage in and support educational activities which increase popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by developments in computing and telecommunications; to develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of these new technologies by society; to raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications media and, where necessary, support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect, and extend first amendment rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications technology; to encourage and support the development of new tools which will endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based telecommunications; the usenet newsgroups comp.org.eff.talk and comp.org.eff.news are dedicated to discussion concerning the eff. they also have mailing list counterparts for those that don't have access to usenet, eff-talk-request@eff.org and eff-news-request@eff.org. the first is an informal arena (aka a normal newsgroup) where anyone may voice his or her opinions. the second, comp.org.eff.news, is a moderated area for regular postings from the eff in the form of effector online. to submit a posting for the effector online, or to get general information about the eff, write to eff@eff.org. there is also a wealth of information available via anonymous ftp on ftp.eff.org. the eff can be contacted at the electronic frontier foundation, inc. second st. # cambridge, ma eff@eff.org ( ) - ( ) - (fax) the free software foundation the free software foundation was started by richard stallman (creator of the popular gnu emacs editor). it is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistributing, and modifying software. the word "free" in their name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom. first, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it to your neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you. second, the freedom to change a program, so that you can control it instead of it controlling you; for this, the source code must be made available to you. the foundation works to provide these freedoms by developing free compatible replacements for proprietary software. specifically, they are putting together a complete, integrated software system called "gnu" that is upward-compatible with unix. {as an aside, the editor of the gnu project, emacs, contains a built-in lisp interpreter and a large part of its functionality is written in lisp. the name gnu is itself recursive (the mainstay of the lisp language); it stands for "gnu's not unix."} when it is released, everyone will be permitted to copy it and distribute it to others. in addition, it will be distributed with source code, so you will be able to learn about operating systems by reading it, to port it to your own machine, and to exchange the changes with others. for more information on the free software foundation and the status of the gnu project, or for a list of the current tasks that still need to be done, write to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu. the ieee need ieee... the league for programming freedom the league for programming freedom is a grass-roots organization of professors, students, businessmen, programmers and users dedicated to "bringing back" the freedom to write programs, which they contend has been lost over the past number years. the league is not opposed to the legal system that congress intended--copyright on individual programs. their aim is to reverse the recent changes made by judges in response to special interests, often explicitly rejecting the public interest principles of the constitution. the league works to abolish the new monopolies by publishing articles, talking with public officials, boycotting egregious offenders, and in the future may intervene in court cases. on may , , the league picketed lotus headquarters because of their lawsuits, and then again on august , . these marches stimulated widespread media coverage for the issue. they welcome suggestions for other activities, as well as help in carrying them out. for information on the league and how to join, write to league for programming freedom kendall square # p.o. box cambridge, ma league@prep.ai.mit.edu networking initiatives research and development are two buzz words often heard when discussing the networking field---everything needs to go faster, over longer distances, for a lower cost. to "keep current," one should read the various trade magazines and newspapers, or frequent the networking-oriented newsgroups of usenet. if possible, attend trade shows and symposia like usenix, interop, et. al. isdn nren the national research and education network (nren) is a five-year project approved by congress in the fall of . it's intended to create a national electronic "super-highway." the nren will be times faster than the fastest available networks (at the time of this writing). proponents of the nren claim it will be possible to transfer the equivalent of the entire text of the encyclopedia britannica in one second. further information, including the original text of the bill presented by senator al gore (d--tn), is available through anonymous ftp to nis.nsf.net, in the directory nsfnet. in addition, vint cerf wrote on the then-proposed nren in rfc- , thoughts on the national research and education network. rfcs for information on obtaining rfcs. a mailing list, nren-discuss@uu.psi.com, is available for discussion of the nren; write to nren-discuss-request@uu.psi.com to be added. "to talk in publick, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire, and to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar." samuel johnson chapter viii the history of rasselas, prince of abissinia ----- finding out more internet resource guide the nsf network service center (nnsc) compiles and makes available an internet resource guide (irg). the goal of the guide is to increase the visibility of various internet resources that may help users do their work better. while not yet an exhaustive list, the guide is a useful compendium of many resources and can be a helpful reference for a new user. resources listed are grouped by types into sections. current sections include descriptions of online library catalogs, data archives, online white pages directory services, networks, network information centers, and computational resources, such as supercomputers. each entry describes the resource, identifies who can use the resource, explains how to reach the local network via the internet, and lists contacts for more information. the list is distributed electronically by the nnsc. to receive a guide, or to get on a mailing list that alerts you to when it is updated, send a message to resource-guide-request@nnsc.nsf.net. the current edition of the irg is available via anonymous ftp from nnsc.nsf.net, in the directory /resource-guide. requests for comments the internal workings of the internet are defined by a set of documents called rfcs (request for comments). the general process for creating an rfc is for someone wanting something formalized to write a document describing the issue and mailing it to jon postel (postel@isi.edu). he acts as a referee for the proposal. it is then commented upon by all those wishing to take part in the discussion (electronically, of course). it may go through multiple revisions. should it be generally accepted as a good idea, it will be assigned a number and filed with the rfcs. the rfcs can be divided into five groups: required, suggested, directional, informational and obsolete. required rfcs (e.g., rfc- , the internet protocol) must be implemented on any host connected to the internet. suggested rfcs are generally implemented by network hosts. lack of them does not preclude access to the internet, but may impact its usability. rfc- , transmission control protocol, is a must for those implementing tcp. directional rfcs were discussed and agreed to, but their application has never come into wide use. this may be due to the lack of wide need for the specific application (rfc- , the post office protocol) or that, although technically superior, ran against other pervasive approaches (rfc- , hello). it is suggested that, should the facility be required by a particular site, an implementation be done in accordance with the rfc. this ensures that, should the idea be one whose time has come, the implementation will be in accordance with some standard and will be generally usable. informational rfcs contain factual information about the internet and its operation (rfc- , assigned numbers). there is also a subset of rfcs called fyis (for your information). they are written in a language much more informal than that used in the other, standard rfcs. topics range from answers to common questions for new and experienced users to a suggested bibliography. finally, as the internet has grown and technology has changed, some rfcs become unnecessary. these obsolete rfcs cannot be ignored, however. frequently when a change is made to some rfc that causes a new one to obsolete others, the new rfc only contains explanations and motivations for the change. understanding the model on which the whole facility is based may involve reading the original and subsequent rfcs on the topic. rfcs and fyis are available via ftp from many sources, including: the nic.ddn.mil archive, as /rfc/rfc-xxxx.txt, where xxxx is the number of the rfc. from ftp.uu.net, in the directory /rfc. they're also available through mail by writing to service@nic.ddn.mil, with a subject: line of send rfc-xxxx.txt, again with xxxx being the rfc number. "knowledge is of two kinds. we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." samuel johnson letter to lord chesterfield february, a book of quotes said april , .. the book of johnson's works said it's ; i'll go with the latter. ------- conclusion this guide is far from complete---the internet changes on a daily (if not hourly) basis. however, this booklet should provide enough information to make the incredible breadth and complexity of the internet a mite less imposing. coupled with some exploration and experimentation, every user has the potential to be a competent net citizen, using the facilities that are available to their fullest. you, the reader, are strongly encouraged to suggest improvements to any part of this booklet. if something was unclear, left you with doubts, or wasn't addressed, it should be fixed. if you find any problems, inaccuracies, spelling errors, etc., please report them to: brendan kehoe department of computer science widener university chester, pa internet: guide-bugs@cs.widener.edu uucp: ...!widener!guide-bugs if you are interested in future updates to this guide (aside from normal new editions), discussion about information to be included or removed, etc., write to guide-request@cs.widener.edu to be placed on a mailing list for such things. @dots is actually `. . . .' "i've seed de first an de last @dots i seed de beginnin, en now i sees de endin." william faulkner the sound & the fury april , -------- getting to other networks inter-connectivity has been and always will be one of the biggest goals in computer networking. the ultimate desire is to make it so one person can contact anyone else no matter where they are. a number of "gateways" between networks have been set up. they include: applelink quantum services sells access to applelink, which is similar to quantumlink for commodore computers and pclink for ibm pcs and compatibles. it also provides email access through the address user@applelink.apple.com. attmail at&t sells a commercial email service called attmail. its users can be reached by writing to user@attmail.com. bix users on bix (the byte information exchange) can be reached through the das gateway at user@cibix.das.net. compuserve (ci$) to reach a user on the commercial service compuserve, you must address the mail as xxxxx.xxx@compuserve.com, with xxxxx.xxx being their compuserve user id. normally compuserve ids are represented as being separated by a comma (like , ); since most mailers don't react well to having commas in addresses, it was changed to a period. for the above address, mail would be sent to . @compuserve.com. easynet digital sells a service called easynet; users that subscribe to it can be reached with the addresses user@host.enet.dec.com or user%host.enet@decwrl.dec.com. fidonet the fidonet computer network can be reached by using a special addressing method. if john smith is on the node : / . on fidonet, his or her email address would be john.smith@p .f .n .z .fidonet.org (notice how the numbers fall in place?). mci mail mci also sells email accounts (similar to attmail). users can be reached with user@mcimail.com. peacenet users on the peacenet network can be reached by writing to user@igc.org. the well users on the service the well can be reached by writing to user@well.sf.ca.us. the well is directly connected to the internet. this table is far from complete. in addition to sites not being listed, some services are not (nor do they plan to be) accessible from the "outside" (like prodigy); others, like genie, are actively investigating the possibility of creating a gateway into their system. for the latest information, consult a list called the inter-network mail guide. it's available from a number of ftp sites, including uunet; anonymous ftp, for more information on getting a copy of it using anonymous ftp. retrieving files via email for those who have a connection to the internet, but cannot ftp, there do exist a few alternatives to get those files you so desperately need. when requesting files, it's imperative that you keep in mind the size of your request---odds are the other people who may be using your link won't be too receptive to sudden bursts of really heavy traffic on their normally sedate connection. archive servers an alternative to the currently well over-used ftpmail system is taking advantage of the many archive servers that are presently being maintained. these are programs that receive email messages that contain commands, and act on them. for example, sending an archive server the command help will usually yield, in the form of a piece of email, information on how to use the various commands that the server has available. one such archive server is service@nic.ddn.mil. maintained by the network information center (nic) in chantilly, va, the server is set up to make all of the information at the nic available for people who don't have access to ftp. this also includes the whois service (whois). some sample subject: lines for queries to the nic server are: subject: help describes available commands. subject: rfc sends a copy of rfc- . subject: rfc index sends an index of the available rfcs. subject: netinfo domain-template.txt sends a domain application. subject: whois widener sends whois information on `widener'. more information on using their archive server can be obtained by writing to their server address service@nic.ddn.mil with a subject: of help. there are different "brands" of archive server, each with its own set of commands and services. among them there often exists a common set of commands and services (e.g. index, help, etc). be that as it may, one should always consult the individual help for a specific server before assuming the syntax--- k surprises can be hard on a system. ftp-by-mail servers some systems offer people the ability to receive files through a mock-ftp interface via email. anonymous ftp for a general overview of how to ftp. the effects of providing such a service varies, although a rule of thumb is that it will probably use a substantial amount of the available resources on a system. the "original" ftp-by-mail service, bitftp, is available to bitnet users from the princeton node pucc. it was once accessible to anyone, but had to be closed out to non-bitnet users because of the heavy load on the system. in response to this closure, paul vixie designed and installed a system called ftpmail on one of digital's gateway computers, decwrl.dec.com. write to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com with help in the body of the letter for instructions on its use. the software is undergoing constant development; once it reaches a stable state, other sites will be encouraged to adopt it and provide the service also. newsgroup creation everyone has the opportunity to make a call for votes on the usenet and attempt to create a newsgroup that he/she feels would be of benefit to the general readership. the rules governing newsgroup creation have evolved over the years into a generally accepted method. they only govern the "world" groups; they aren't applicable to regional or other alternative hierarchies. discussion a discussion must first take place to address issues like the naming of the group, where in the group tree it should go (e.g. rec.sports.koosh vs rec.games.koosh?), and whether or not it should be created in the first place. the formal request for discussion (rfd) should be posted to news.announce.newgroups, along with any other groups or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic. news.announce.newgroups is moderated. you should place it first in the newsgroups: header, so that it will get mailed to the moderator only. the article won't be immediately posted to the other newsgroups listed; rather, it will give you the opportunity to have the moderator correct any inconsistencies or mistakes in your rfd. he or she will take care of posting it to the newsgroups you indicated. also the followup-to: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes place only in news.groups. if a user has difficulty posting to a moderated group, he or she may mail submissions intended for news.announce.newgroups to the address announce-newgroups@rpi.edu. the final name and charter of the group, and whether it will be moderated or unmoderated, will be determined during the discussion period. if it's to be moderated, the discussion will also decide who the moderator will be. if there's no general agreement on these points among those in favor of a new group at the end of days, the discussion will be taken into mail rather than continued posting to news.groups; that way, the proponents of the group can iron out their differences and come back with a proper proposal, and make a new request for discussion. voting after the discussion period (which is mandatory), if it's been determined that a new group really is desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and it's been determined whether the group will be moderated (and by whom), a call for votes (cfv) should be posted to news.announce.newgroups, along with any other groups that the original request for discussion was posted to. the cfv should be posted (or mailed to the news.announce.newgroups moderator) as soon as possible after the discussion ends (to keep it fresh in everyone's mind). the call for votes should include clear instructions on how to cast a vote. it's important that it be clearly explained how to both vote for and against a group (and be of equivalent difficulty or ease). if it's easier for you or your administrator, two separate addresses can be used to mail yes and no votes to, providing that they're on the same machine. regardless of the method, everyone must have a very specific idea of how to get his/her vote counted. the voting period can last between and days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote are. a vote can't be called off simply because "no" votes have come in and only two "yes" votes. the call for votes should include the exact date that the voting period will end---only those votes arriving on the vote-taker's machine before this date can be counted. to keep awareness high, the cfv can be repeated during the vote, provided that it gives the same clear, unbiased instructions for casting a vote as the original; it also has to be the same proposal as was first posted. the charter can't change in mid-vote. also, votes that're posted don't count---only those that were mailed to the vote-taker can be tallied. partial results should never be included; only a statement of the specific proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote. a mass acknowledgement ("mass ack" or "vote ack") is permitted; however, it must be presented in a way that gives no indication of which way a person voted. one way to avoid this is to create one large list of everyone who's voted, and sort it in alphabetical order. it should not be two sorted lists (of the yes and no votes, respectively). every vote is autonomous. the votes for or against one group can't be transferred to another, similar proposal. a vote can only count for the exact proposal that it was a response to. in particular, a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name can't be counted as a vote for or against another group with a different name or charter, a different moderated/unmoderated status, or, if it's moderated, a different moderator or set of moderators. whew! finally, the vote has to be explicit; they should be of the form i vote for the group foo.bar as proposed or i vote against the group foo.bar as proposed. the wording doesn't have to be exact, your intention just has to be clear. the result of a vote at the end of the voting period, the vote-taker has to post (to news.announce.newgroups) the tally and email addresses of the votes received. again, it can also be posted to any of the groups listed in the original cfv. the tally should make clear which way a person voted, so the results can be verified if it proves necessary to do so. after the vote result is posted to news.announce.newgroups, there is a mandatory five-day waiting period. this affords everyone the opportunity to correct any errors or inconsistencies in the voter list or the voting procedure. creation of the group if, after the waiting period, there are no serious objections that might invalidate the vote, the vote is put to the "water test." if there were more valid yes/create votes than no/don't create votes, and at least two-thirds of the total number of votes are in favor of creation, then a newgroup control message can be sent out (often by the moderator of news.announce.newgroups). if the -vote margin or the two-thirds percentage isn't met, the group has failed and can't be created. if the proposal failed, all is not lost---after a six-month waiting period (a "cooling down"), a new request for discussion can be posted to news.groups, and the whole process can start over again. if after a couple of tries it becomes obvious that the group is not wanted or needed, the vote-taker should humbly step back and accept the opinion of the majority. (as life goes, so goes usenet.) -------- glossary this glossary is only a tiny subset of all of the various terms and other things that people regularly use on the net. for a more complete (and very entertaining) reference, it's suggested you get a copy of the new hacker's dictionary, which is based on a very large text file called the jargon file. edited by eric raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com), it is available from the mit press, cambridge, massachusetts, ; its isbn number is - - - . also see rfc- , a glossary of networking terms. :-) this odd symbol is one of the ways a person can portray "mood" in the very flat medium of computers---by using "smilies." this is `metacommunication', and there are literally hundreds of them, from the obvious to the obscure. this particular example expresses "happiness." don't see it? tilt your head to the left degrees. smilies are also used to denote sarcasm. network addresses are usually of two types: the physical or hardware address of a network interface card; for ethernet this -bit address might be . c . . the hardware address is used to forward packets within a physical network. fortunately, network users do not have to be concerned about hardware addresses since they are automatically handled by the networking software. the logical or internet address is used to facilitate moving data between physical networks. the -bit internet address is made up of a network number, a subnetwork number, and a host number. each host computer on the internet, has a unique address. for example, all internet addresses at colorado state have a network number of . , a subnet number in the range of - , and a host number in the range of - . all internet hosts have a numeric address and an english-style name. for example, the internet address for ucc's cyber is . . . ; its internet name is csugreen.ucc.colostate.edu. address resolution conversion of an internet address to the corresponding physical address. on an ethernet, resolution requires broadcasting on the local area network. administrivia administrative tasks, most often related to the maintenance of mailing lists, digests, news gateways, etc. anonymous ftp also known as "anon ftp"; a service provided to make files available to the general internet community---anonymous ftp. ansi the american national standards institute disseminates basic standards like ascii, and acts as the united states' delegate to the iso. standards can be ordered from ansi by writing to the ansi sales department, broadway, new york, ny , or by telephoning ( ) - . archie a service which provides lookups for packages in a database of the offerings of countless of anonymous ftp sites. archie for a full description. archive server an email-based file transfer facility offered by some systems. arpa (advanced research projects agency) former name of darpa, the government agency that funded arpanet and later the darpa internet. arpanet a pioneering long haul network funded by arpa. it served as the basis for early networking research as well as a central backbone during the development of the internet. the arpanet consisted of individual packet switching computers interconnected by leased lines. the arpanet no longer exists as a singular entity. asynchronous transmission by individual bytes, not related to specific timing on the transmitting end. auto-magic something which happens pseudo-automatically, and is usually too complex to go into any further than to say it happens "auto-magically." backbone a high-speed connection within a network that connects shorter, usually slower circuits. also used in reference to a system that acts as a "hub" for activity (although those are becoming much less prevalent now than they were ten years ago). bandwidth the capacity of a medium to transmit a signal. more informally, the mythical "size" of the net, and its ability to carry the files and messages of those that use it. some view certain kinds of traffic (ftping hundreds of graphics images, for example) as a "waste of bandwidth" and look down upon them. bitnet (because it's time network) an nje-based international educational network. bounce the return of a piece of mail because of an error in its delivery. btw an abbreviation for "by the way." cfv (call for votes) initiates the voting period for a usenet newsgroup. at least one (occasionally two or more) email address is customarily included as a repository for the votes. see newsgroup creation for a full description of the usenet voting process. clarinews the fee-based usenet newsfeed available from clarinet communications. client the user of a network service; also used to describe a computer that relies upon another for some or all of its resources. cyberspace a term coined by william gibson in his fantasy novel neuromancer to describe the "world" of computers, and the society that gathers around them. datagram the basic unit of information passed across the internet. it contains a source and destination address along with data. large messages are broken down into a sequence of ip datagrams. disassembling converting a binary program into human-readable machine language code. dns (domain name system) the method used to convert internet names to their corresponding internet numbers. domain a part of the naming hierarchy. syntactically, a domain name consists of a sequence of names or other words separated by dots. dotted quad a set of four numbers connected with periods that make up an internet address; for example, . . . . email the vernacular abbreviation for electronic mail. email address the uucp or domain-based address that a user is referred to with. for example, the author's address is brendan@cs.widener.edu. ethernet a -million bit per second networking scheme originally developed by xerox corporation. ethernet is widely used for lans because it can network a wide variety of computers, it is not proprietary, and components are widely available from many commercial sources. fddi (fiber distributed data interface) an emerging standard for network technology based on fiber optics that has been established by ansi. fddi specifies a -million bit per second data rate. the access control mechanism uses token ring technology. flame a piece of mail or a usenet posting which is violently argumentative. fqdn (fully qualified domain name) the fqdn is the full site name of a system, rather than just its hostname. for example, the system lisa at widener university has a fqdn of lisa.cs.widener.edu. ftp (file transfer protocol) the internet standard high-level protocol for transferring files from one computer to another. fyi an abbreviation for the phrase "for your information." there is also a series of rfcs put out by the network information center called fyis; they address common questions of new users and many other useful things. rfcs for instructions on retrieving fyis. gateway a special-purpose dedicated computer that attaches to two or more networks and routes packets from one network to the other. in particular, an internet gateway routes ip datagrams among the networks it connects. gateways route packets to other gateways until they can be delivered to the final destination directly across one physical network. header the portion of a packet, preceding the actual data, containing source and destination addresses and error-checking fields. also part of a message or news article. hostname the name given to a machine. (see also fqdn.) imho (in my humble opinion) this usually accompanies a statement that may bring about personal offense or strong disagreement. internet a concatenation of many individual tcp/ip campus, state, regional, and national networks (such as nsfnet, arpanet, and milnet) into one single logical network all sharing a common addressing scheme. internet number the dotted-quad address used to specify a certain system. the internet number for the site cs.widener.edu is . . . . a resolver is used to translate between hostnames and internet addresses. interoperate the ability of multi-vendor computers to work together using a common set of protocols. with interoperability, pcs, macs, suns, dec vaxen, cdc cybers, etc, all work together allowing one host computer to communicate with and take advantage of the resources of another. iso (international organization for standardization) coordinator of the main networking standards that are put into use today. kernel the level of an operating system or networking system that contains the system-level commands or all of the functions hidden from the user. in a unix system, the kernel is a program that contains the device drivers, the memory management routines, the scheduler, and system calls. this program is always running while the system is operating. lan (local area network) any physical network technology that operates at high speed over short distances (up to a few thousand meters). mail gateway a machine that connects to two or more electronic mail systems (especially dissimilar mail systems on two different networks) and transfers mail messages among them. mailing list a possibly moderated discussion group, distributed via email from a central computer maintaining the list of people involved in the discussion. mail path a series of machine names used to direct electronic mail from one user to another. medium the material used to support the transmission of data. this can be copper wire, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or electromagnetic wave (as in microwave). multiplex the division of a single transmission medium into multiple logical channels supporting many simultaneous sessions. for example, one network may have simultaneous ftp, telnet, rlogin, and smtp connections, all going at the same time. net.citizen an inhabitant of cyberspace. one usually tries to be a good net.citizen, lest one be flamed. netiquette a pun on "etiquette"; proper behavior on the net. usenet netiquette. network a group of machines connected together so they can transmit information to one another. there are two kinds of networks: local networks and remote networks. nfs (network file system) a method developed by sun microsystems to allow computers to share files across a network in a way that makes them appear as if they're "local" to the system. nic the network information center. node a computer that is attached to a network; also called a host. nsfnet the national backbone network, funded by the national science foundation and operated by the merit corporation, used to interconnect regional (mid-level) networks such as westnet to one another. packet the unit of data sent across a packet switching network. the term is used loosely. while some internet literature uses it to refer specifically to data sent across a physical network, other literature views the internet as a packet switching network and describes ip datagrams as packets. polling connecting to another system to check for things like mail or news. postmaster the person responsible for taking care of mail problems, answering queries about users, and other related work at a site. protocols a formal description of message formats and the rules two computers must follow to exchange those messages. protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the internet). recursion the facility of a programming language to be able to call functions from within themselves. resolve translate an internet name into its equivalent ip address or other dns information. rfd (request for discussion) usually a two- to three-week period in which the particulars of newsgroup creation are battled out. route the path that network traffic takes from its source to its destination. router a dedicated computer (or other device) that sends packets from one place to another, paying attention to the current state of the network. rtfm (read the fantastic manual). this anacronym is often used when someone asks a simple or common question. the word `fantastic' is usually replaced with one much more vulgar. smtp (simple mail transfer protocol) the internet standard protocol for transferring electronic mail messages from one computer to another. smtp specifies how two mail systems interact and the format of control messages they exchange to transfer mail. server a computer that shares its resources, such as printers and files, with other computers on the network. an example of this is a network file system (nfs) server which shares its disk space with other computers. signal-to-noise ratio when used in reference to usenet activity, signal-to-noise ratio describes the relation between amount of actual information in a discussion, compared to their quantity. more often than not, there's substantial activity in a newsgroup, but a very small number of those articles actually contain anything useful. signature the small, usually four-line message at the bottom of a piece of email or a usenet article. in unix, it's added by creating a file ..signature in the user's home directory. large signatures are a no-no. summarize to encapsulate a number of responses into one coherent, usable message. often done on controlled mailing lists or active newsgroups, to help reduce bandwidth. synchronous data communications in which transmissions are sent at a fixed rate, with the sending and receiving devices synchronized. tcp/ip (transmission control protocol/internet protocol) a set of protocols, resulting from arpa efforts, used by the internet to support services such as remote login (telnet), file transfer (ftp) and mail (smtp). telnet the internet standard protocol for remote terminal connection service. telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote timesharing system at another site as if the user's terminal were connected directly to the remote computer. terminal server a small, specialized, networked computer that connects many terminals to a lan through one network connection. any user on the network can then connect to various network hosts. tex a free typesetting system by donald knuth. twisted pair cable made up of a pair of insulated copper wires wrapped around each other to cancel the effects of electrical noise. uucp (unix to unix copy program) a store-and-forward system, primarily for unix systems but currently supported on other platforms (e.g. vms and personal computers). wan (wide-area network) a network spanning hundreds or thousands of miles. workstation a networked personal computing device with more power than a standard ibm pc or macintosh. typically, a workstation has an operating system such as unix that is capable of running several tasks at the same time. it has several megabytes of memory and a large, high-resolution display. examples are sun workstations and digital decstations. worm a computer program which replicates itself. the internet worm (the internet worm) was perhaps the most famous; it successfully (and accidentally) duplicated itself on systems across the internet. wrt with respect to. "i hate definitions." benjamin disraeli vivian grey, bk i chap ii ------ bibliography what follows is a compendium of sources that have information that will be of use to anyone reading this guide. most of them were used in the writing of the booklet, while others are simply noted because they are a must for any good net.citizen's bookshelf. books comer, douglas e. internetworking with tcp/ip, nd ed., v prentice hall englewood cliffs, nj davidson, john an introduction to tcp/ip springer-verlag berlin frey, donnalyn, and adams, rick !@%:: a directory of electronic mail addressing and networks o'reilly and associates newton, ma gibson, william neuromancer ace new york, ny laquey, tracy users' directory of computer networks digital press bedford, ma levy, stephen hackers: heroes of the computer revolution anchor press/doubleday garden city, ny partridge, craig innovations in internetworking artech house norwood, ma quarterman, john s. the matrix: computer networks and conferencing systems worldwide digital press bedford, ma raymond, eric (ed) the new hacker's dictionary mit press cambridge, ma stoll, clifford the cuckoo's egg doubleday new york tanenbaum, andrew s. computer networks, d ed prentice-hall englewood cliffs, nj todinao, grace using uucp and usenet: a nutshell handbook o'reilly and associates newton, ma the waite group unix communications, nd ed. howard w. sams & company indianapolis periodicals & papers magazine: barlow, j coming into the country communications of the acm : march addresses "cyberspace"---john barlow was a co-founder of the eff. proceedings: collyer, g., and spencer, h news need not be slow proceedings of the winter usenix conference -- usenix association, berkeley, ca january magazine: denning, p the internet worm american scientist -- march--april magazine: the science of computing: computer networks american scientist -- march--april magazine: frey, d., and adams, r usenet: death by success? unix review -- august magazine: gifford, w. s isdn user-network interfaces ieee journal on selected areas in communications -- may magazine: ginsberg, k getting from here to there unix review january magazine: hiltz, s. r the human element in computerized conferencing systems computer networks -- december proceedings: horton, m what is a domain? proceedings of the summer usenix conference -- usenix association, berkeley, ca june magazine: jacobsen, ole j information on tcp/ip connexions---the interoperability report -- july magazine: jennings, d., et al computer networking for scientists science -- february paper: markoff, j "author of computer `virus' is son of u.s. electronic security expert." new york times nov. , a paper: "computer snarl: a `back door' ajar." new york times nov. , b magazine: mcquillan, j. m., and walden, d. c the arpa network design decisions computer networks -- magazine: ornstein, s. m a letter concerning the internet worm communications of the acm : june proceedings: partridge, c mail routing using domain names: an informal tour proceedings of the summer usenix conference -- usenix association, berkeley, ca june magazine: quarterman, j etiquette and ethics connexions---the interoperability report -- march magazine: notable computer networks communications of the acm : october this was the predecessor to the matrix. magazine: raeder, a. w., and andrews, k. l searching library catalogs on the internet: a survey database searcher -- september proceedings: seeley, d a tour of the worm proceedings of the winter usenix conference -- usenix association, berkeley, ca february magazine: shulman, g legal research on usenet liability issues ;login: the usenix association newsletter -- december magazine: smith, k e-mail to anywhere pc world -- march magazine: stoll, c stalking the wily hacker communications of the acm : may this article grew into the book the cuckoo's egg. proceedings: taylor, d the postman always rings twice: electronic mail in a highly distributed environment proceedings of the winter usenix conference -- usenix association, berkeley, ca december magazine: u.s.gen'l accounting ofc computer security: virus highlights need for improved internet management gao/imtec- - , addresses the internet worm. "and all else is literature." paul verlaine the sun, new york while he was city editor in -- . -- bill walther, carleton university, ottawa, canada homebrew homepages put you on the world wide web the zip file homeb .zip should contain all the material necessary to make a web page (c) this is a shareware web page you can use to make other web pages with for your own use, please read all files!!!!!!!!! the hitchhikers guide to the internet august ed krol krol@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu this document was produced through funding of the national science foundation. copyright (c) , by the board of trustees of the university of illinois. permission to duplicate this document, in whole or part, is granted provided reference is made to the source and this copyright is included in whole copies. this document assumes that one is familiar with the workings of a non-connected simple ip network (e.g. a few . bsd systems on an ethernet not connected to anywhere else). appendix a contains remedial information to get one to this point. its purpose is to get that person, familiar with a simple net, versed in the "oral tradition" of the internet to the point that that net can be connected to the internet with little danger to either. it is not a tutorial, it consists of pointers to other places, literature, and hints which are not normally documented. since the internet is a dynamic environment, changes to this document will be made regularly. the author welcomes comments and suggestions. this is especially true of terms for the glossary (definitions are not necessary). in the beginning there was the arpanet, a wide area experimental network connecting hosts and terminal servers together. procedures were set up to regulate the allocation of addresses and to create voluntary standards for the network. as local area networks became more pervasive, many hosts became gateways to local networks. a network layer to allow the interoperation of these networks was developed and called ip (internet protocol). over time other groups created long haul ip based networks (nasa, nsf, states...). these nets, too, interoperate because of ip. the collection of all of these interoperating networks is the internet. two groups do much of the research and information work of the internet (isi and sri). isi (the informational sciences institute) does much of the research, standardization, and allocation work of the internet. sri international provides information services for the internet. in fact, after you are connected to the internet most of the information in this document can be retrieved from the network information center (nic) run by sri. operating the internet each network, be it the arpanet, nsfnet or a regional network, has its own operations center. the arpanet is run by bbn, inc. under contract from darpa. their facility is called the network operations center or noc. cornell university temporarily operates nsfnet (called the network information service center, nisc). it goes on to the - - regionals having similar facilities to monitor and keep watch over the goings on of their portion of the internet. in addition, they all should have some knowledge of what is happening to the internet in total. if a problem comes up, it is suggested that a campus network liaison should contact the network operator to which he is directly connected. that is, if you are connected to a regional network (which is gatewayed to the nsfnet, which is connected to the arpanet...) and have a problem, you should contact your regional network operations center. rfcs the internal workings of the internet are defined by a set of documents called rfcs (request for comments). the general process for creating an rfc is for someone wanting something formalized to write a document describing the issue and mailing it to jon postel (postel@isi.edu). he acts as a referee for the proposal. it is then commented upon by all those wishing to take part in the discussion (electronically of course). it may go through multiple revisions. should it be generally accepted as a good idea, it will be assigned a number and filed with the rfcs. the rfcs can be divided into five groups: required, suggested, directional, informational and obsolete. required rfc's (e.g. rfc- , the internet protocol) must be implemented on any host connected to the internet. suggested rfcs are generally implemented by network hosts. lack of them does not preclude access to the internet, but may impact its usability. rfc- (transmission control protocol) is a suggested rfc. directional rfcs were discussed and agreed to, but their application has never come into wide use. this may be due to the lack of wide need for the specific application (rfc- the post office protocol) or that, although technically superior, ran against other pervasive approaches (rfc- hello). it is suggested that should the facility be required by a particular site, animplementation be done in accordance with the rfc. this insures that, should the idea be one whose time has come, the implementation will be in accordance with some standard and will be generally usable. informational rfcs contain factual information about the internet and its operation (rfc- , assigned numbers). finally, as the internet and technology have grown, some rfcs have become unnecessary. these obsolete rfcs cannot be ignored, however. frequently when a change is made to some rfc that causes a new one to be issued obsoleting others, the new rfc only contains explanations and motivations for the change. understanding the model on which the whole facility is based may involve reading the original and subsequent rfcs on the topic. - - (appendix b contains a list of what are considered to be the major rfcs necessary for understanding the internet). the network information center the nic is a facility available to all internet users which provides information to the community. there are three means of nic contact: network, telephone, and mail. the network accesses are the most prevalent. interactive access is frequently used to do queries of nic service overviews, look up user and host names, and scan lists of nic documents. it is available by using %telnet sri-nic.arpa on a bsd system and following the directions provided by a user friendly prompter. from poking around in the databases provided one might decide that a document named netinfo:nug.doc (the users guide to the arpanet) would be worth having. it could be retrieved via an anonymous ftp. an anonymous ftp would proceed something like the following. (the dialogue may vary slightly depending on the implementation of ftp you are using). %ftp sri-nic.arpa connected to sri-nic.arpa. sri_nic.arpa ftp server process z( )- at wed -jun- : pdt name (sri-nic.arpa:myname): anonymous anonymous user ok, send real ident as password. password: myname user anonymous logged in at wed -jun- : pdt, job . ftp> get netinfo:nug.doc port . at host . . . accepted. ascii retrieve of <netinfo>nug.doc. started. transfer completed ( ) bytes transferred local: netinfo:nug.doc remote:netinfo:nug.doc bytes in . e+ seconds ( . kbytes/s) ftp> quit quit command received. goodbye. (another good initial document to fetch is netinfo:what-the-nic-does.txt)! questions of the nic or problems with services can be asked of or reported to using electronic mail. the following addresses can be used: nic@sri-nic.arpa general user assistance, document requests registrar@sri-nic.arpa user registration and whois updates hostmaster@sri-nic.arpa hostname and domain changes and updates action@sri-nic.arpa sri-nic computer operations suggestions@sri-nic.arpa comments on nic publications and services - - for people without network access, or if the number of documents is large, many of the nic documents are available in printed form for a small charge. one frequently ordered document for starting sites is a compendium of major rfcs. telephone access is used primarily for questions or problems with network access. (see appendix b for mail/telephone contact numbers). the nsfnet network service center the nsfnet network service center (nnsc) is funded by nsf to provide a first level of aid to users of nsfnet should they have questions or encounter problems traversing the network. it is run by bbn inc. karen roubicek (roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net) is the nnsc user liaison. the nnsc, which currently has information and documents online and in printed form, plans to distribute news through network mailing lists, bulletins, newsletters, and online reports. the nnsc also maintains a database of contact points and sources of additional information about nsfnet component networks and supercomputer centers. prospective or current users who do not know whom to call concerning questions about nsfnet use, should contact the nnsc. the nnsc will answer general questions, and, for detailed information relating to specific components of the internet, will help users find the appropriate contact for further assistance. (appendix b) mail reflectors the way most people keep up to date on network news is through subscription to a number of mail reflectors. mail reflectors are special electronic mailboxes which, when they receive a message, resend it to a list of other mailboxes. this in effect creates a discussion group on a particular topic. each subscriber sees all the mail forwarded by the reflector, and if one wants to put his "two cents" in sends a message with the comments to the reflector.... the general format to subscribe to a mail list is to find the address reflector and append the string -request to the mailbox name (not the host name). for example, if you wanted to take part in the mailing list for nsfnet reflected by nsfnet@nnsc.nsf.net, one sends a request to - - nsfnet-request@nnsc.nsf.net. this may be a wonderful scheme, but the problem is that you must know the list exists in the first place. it is suggested that, if you are interested, you read the mail from one list (like nsfnet) and you will probably become familiar with the existence of others. a registration service for mail reflectors is provided by the nic in the files netinfo:interest-groups- .txt, netinfo:interest-groups- .txt, and netinfo:interest-groups- .txt. the nsfnet mail reflector is targeted at those people who have a day to day interest in the news of the nsfnet (the backbone, regional network, and internet inter-connection site workers). the messages are reflected by a central location and are sent as separate messages to each subscriber. this creates hundreds of messages on the wide area networks where bandwidth is the scarcest. there are two ways in which a campus could spread the news and not cause these messages to inundate the wide area networks. one is to re-reflect the message on the campus. that is, set up a reflector on a local machine which forwards the message to a campus distribution list. the other is to create an alias on a campus machine which places the messages into a notesfile on the topic. campus users who want the information could access the notesfile and see the messages that have been sent since their last access. one might also elect to have the campus wide area network liaison screen the messages in either case and only forward those which are considered of merit. either of these schemes allows one message to be sent to the campus, while allowing wide distribution within. address allocation before a local network can be connected to the internet it must be allocated a unique ip address. these addresses are allocated by isi. the allocation process consists of getting an application form received from isi. (send a message to hostmaster@sri-nic.arpa and ask for the template for a connected address). this template is filled out and mailed back to hostmaster. an address is allocated and e-mailed back to you. this can also be done by postal mail (appendix b). ip addresses are bits long. it is usually written as four decimal numbers separated by periods (e.g., . . . ). each number is the value of an octet of the bits. it was seen from the beginning that some networks might choose to organize themselves as very flat (one net with a lot of nodes) and some might organize hierarchically - - (many interconnected nets with fewer nodes each and a backbone). to provide for these cases, addresses were differentiated into class a, b, and c networks. this classification had to with the interpretation of the octets. class a networks have the first octet as a network address and the remaining three as a host address on that network. class c addresses have three octets of network address and one of host. class b is split two and two. therefore, there is an address space for a few large nets, a reasonable number of medium nets and a large number of small nets. the top two bits in the first octet are coded to tell the address format. all of the class a nets have been allocated. so one has to choose between class b and class c when placing an order. (there are also class d (multicast) and e (experimental) formats. multicast addresses will likely come into greater use in the near future, but are not frequently used now). in the past sites requiring multiple network addresses requested multiple discrete addresses (usually class c). this was done because much of the software available (not ably . bsd) could not deal with subnetted addresses. information on how to reach a particular network (routing information) must be stored in internet gateways and packet switches. some of these nodes have a limited capability to store and exchange routing information (limited to about networks). therefore, it is suggested that any campus announce (make known to the internet) no more than two discrete network numbers. if a campus expects to be constrained by this, it should consider subnetting. subnetting (rfc- ) allows one to announce one address to the internet and use a set of addresses on the campus. basically, one defines a mask which allows the network to differentiate between the network portion and host portion of the address. by using a different mask on the internet and the campus, the address can be interpreted in multiple ways. for example, if a campus requires two networks internally and has the , addresses beginning . .x.x (a class b address) allocated to it, the campus could allocate . . .x to one part of campus and . . .x to another. by advertising . to the internet with a subnet mask of ff.ff. . , the internet would treat these two addresses as one. within the campus a mask of ff.ff.ff. would be used, allowing the campus to treat the addresses as separate entities. (in reality you don't pass the subnet mask of ff.ff. . to the internet, the octet meaning is implicit in its being a class b address). a word of warning is necessary. not all systems know how to do subnetting. some . bsd systems require additional software. . bsd systems subnet as released. other devices - - and operating systems vary in the problems they have dealing with subnets. frequently these machines can be used as a leaf on a network but not as a gateway within the subnetted portion of the network. as time passes and more systems become . bsd based, these problems should disappear. there has been some confusion in the past over the format of an ip broadcast address. some machines used an address of all zeros to mean broadcast and some all ones. this was confusing when machines of both type were connected to the same network. the broadcast address of all ones has been adopted to end the grief. some systems (e.g. . bsd) allow one to choose the format of the broadcast address. if a system does allow this choice, care should be taken that the all ones format is chosen. (this is explained in rfc- and rfc- ). internet problems there are a number of problems with the internet. solutions to the problems range from software changes to long term research projects. some of the major ones are detailed below: number of networks when the internet was designed it was to have about connected networks. with the explosion of networking, the number is now approaching . the software in a group of critical gateways (called the core gateways of the arpanet) are not able to pass or store much more than that number. in the short term, core reallocation and recoding has raised the number slightly. by the summer of ' the current pdp- core gateways will be replaced with bbn butterfly gateways which will solve the problem. routing issues along with sheer mass of the data necessary to route packets to a large number of networks, there are many problems with the updating, stability, and optimality of the routing algorithms. much research is being done in the area, but the optimal solution to these routing problems is still years away. in most cases the the routing we have today works, but sub-optimally and sometimes unpredictably. - - trust issues gateways exchange network routing information. currently, most gateways accept on faith that the information provided about the state of the network is correct. in the past this was not a big problem since most of the gateways belonged to a single administrative entity (darpa). now with multiple wide area networks under different administrations, a rogue gateway somewhere in the net could cripple the internet. there is design work going on to solve both the problem of a gateway doing unreasonable things and providing enough information to reasonably route data between multiply connected networks (multi-homed networks). capacity & congestion many portions of the arpanet are very congested during the busy part of the day. additional links are planned to alleviate this congestion, but the implementation will take a few months. these problems and the future direction of the internet are determined by the internet architect (dave clark of mit) being advised by the internet activities board (iab). this board is composed of chairmen of a number of committees with responsibility for various specialized areas of the internet. the committees composing the iab and their chairmen are: committee chair autonomous networks deborah estrin end-to-end services bob braden internet architecture dave mills internet engineering phil gross egp mike petry name domain planning doug kingston gateway monitoring craig partridge internic jake feinler performance & congestion controlrobert stine nsf routing chuck hedrick misc. milsup issues mike st. johns privacy steve kent irinet requirements vint cerf robustness & survivability jim mathis scientific requirements barry leiner note that under internet engineering, there are a set of task forces and chairs to look at short term concerns. the chairs of these task forces are not part of the iab. - - routing routing is the algorithm by which a network directs a packet from its source to its destination. to appreciate the problem, watch a small child trying to find a table in a restaurant. from the adult point of view the structure of the dining room is seen and an optimal route easily chosen. the child, however, is presented with a set of paths between tables where a good path, let alone the optimal one to the goal is not discernible.*** a little more background might be appropriate. ip gateways (more correctly routers) are boxes which have connections to multiple networks and pass traffic between these nets. they decide how the packet is to be sent based on the information in the ip header of the packet and the state of the network. each interface on a router has an unique address appropriate to the network to which it is connected. the information in the ip header which is used is primarily the destination address. other information (e.g. type of service) is largely ignored at this time. the state of the network is determined by the routers passing information among themselves. the distribution of the database (what each node knows), the form of the updates, and metrics used to measure the value of a connection, are the parameters which determine the characteristics of a routing protocol. under some algorithms each node in the network has complete knowledge of the state of the network (the adult algorithm). this implies the nodes must have larger amounts of local storage and enough cpu to search the large tables in a short enough time (remember this must be done for each packet). also, routing updates usually contain only changes to the existing information (or you spend a large amount of the network capacity passing around megabyte routing updates). this type of algorithm has several problems. since the only way the routing information can be passed around is across the network and the propagation time is non-trivial, the view of the network at each node is a correct historical view of the network at varying times in the past. (the adult algorithm, but rather than looking directly at the dining area, looking at a photograph of the dining room. one is likely to pick the optimal route and find a bus-cart has moved in to block the path after the photo was taken). these inconsistencies can cause circular routes (called routing loops) where once a packet enters it is routed in a closed path until its time to live (ttl) field expires and it is discarded. other algorithms may know about only a subset of the network. to prevent loops in these protocols, they are usually used in a hierarchical network. they know completely about their own area, but to leave that area they go to one particular place (the default gateway). typically these are used in smaller networks (campus, regional...). - - routing protocols in current use: static (no protocol-table/default routing) don't laugh. it is probably the most reliable, easiest to implement, and least likely to get one into trouble for a small network or a leaf on the internet. this is, also, the only method available on some cpu-operating system combinations. if a host is connected to an ethernet which has only one gateway off of it, one should make that the default gateway for the host and do no other routing. (of course that gateway may pass the reachablity information somehow on the other side of itself). one word of warning, it is only with extreme caution that one should use static routes in the middle of a network which is also using dynamic routing. the routers passing dynamic information are sometimes confused by conflicting dynamic and static routes. if your host is on an ethernet with multiple routers to other networks on it and the routers are doing dynamic routing among themselves, it is usually better to take part in the dynamic routing than to use static routes. rip rip is a routing protocol based on xns (xerox network system) adapted for ip networks. it is used by many routers (proteon, cisco, ub...) and many bsd unix systems bsd systems typically run a program called "routed" to exchange information with other systems running rip. rip works best for nets of small diameter where the links are of equal speed. the reason for this is that the metric used to determine which path is best is the hop-count. a hop is a traversal across a gateway. so, all machines on the same ethernet are zero hops away. if a router connects connects two net- works directly, a machine on the other side of the router is one hop away.... as the routing information is passed through a gateway, the gateway adds one to the hop counts to keep them consistent across the net- work. the diameter of a network is defined as the largest hop-count possible within a network. unfor- tunately, a hop count of is defined as infinity in rip meaning the link is down. therefore, rip will not allow hosts separated by more than gateways in the rip space to communicate. the other problem with hop-count metrics is that if links have different speeds, that difference is not - - reflected in the hop-count. so a one hop satellite link (with a . sec delay) at kb would be used instead of a two hop t connection. congestion can be viewed as a decrease in the efficacy of a link. so, as a link gets more congested, rip will still know it is the best hop-count route and congest it even more by throwing more packets on the queue for that link. the protocol is not well documented. a group of people are working on producing an rfc to both define the current rip and to do some extensions to it to allow it to better cope with larger networks. currently, the best documentation for rip appears to be the code to bsd "routed". routed the routed program, which does rip for . bsd systems, has many options. one of the most frequently used is: "routed -q" (quiet mode) which means listen to rip infor- mation but never broadcast it. this would be used by a machine on a network with multiple rip speaking gate- ways. it allows the host to determine which gateway is best (hopwise) to use to reach a distant network. (of course you might want to have a default gateway to prevent having to pass all the addresses known to the internet around with rip). there are two ways to insert static routes into "routed", the "/etc/gateways" file and the "route add" command. static routes are useful if you know how to reach a distant network, but you are not receiving that route using rip. for the most part the "route add" command is preferable to use. the reason for this is that the command adds the route to that machine's routing table but does not export it through rip. the "/etc/gateways" file takes precedence over any routing information received through a rip update. it is also broadcast as fact in rip updates produced by the host without question, so if a mistake is made in the "/etc/gateways" file, that mistake will soon permeate the rip space and may bring the network to its knees. one of the problems with "routed" is that you have very little control over what gets broadcast and what doesn't. many times in larger networks where various parts of the network are under different administrative controls, you would like to pass on through rip only nets which you receive from rip and you know are reasonable. this prevents people from adding ip addresses to the network which may be illegal and you being responsible for passing them on to the internet. this - - type of reasonability checks are not available with "routed" and leave it usable, but inadequate for large networks. hello (rfc- ) hello is a routing protocol which was designed and implemented in a experimental software router called a "fuzzball" which runs on a pdp- . it does not have wide usage, but is the routing protocol currently used on the nsfnet backbone. the data transferred between nodes is similar to rip (a list of networks and their metrics). the metric, however, is milliseconds of delay. this allows hello to be used over nets of various link speeds and performs better in congestive situations. one of the most interesting side effects of hello based networks is their great timekeeping ability. if you consider the problem of measuring delay on a link for the metric, you find that it is not an easy thing to do. you cannot measure round trip time since the return link may be more congested, of a different speed, or even not there. it is not really feasible for each node on the network to have a builtin wwv (nationwide radio time standard) receiver. so, you must design an algorithm to pass around time between nodes over the network links where the delay in transmission can only be approximated. hello routers do this and in a nationwide network maintain synchronized time within milliseconds. exterior gateway protocol (egp rfc- ) egp is not strictly a routing protocol, it is a reacha- bility protocol. it tells only if nets can be reached through a particular gateway, not how good the connec- tion is. it is the standard by which gateways to local nets inform the arpanet of the nets they can reach. there is a metric passed around by egp but its usage is not standardized formally. its typical value is value is to which are arbitrary goodness of link values understood by the internal ddn gateways. the smaller the value the better and a value of being unreach- able. a quirk of the protocol prevents distinguishing between and , and ..., so the usablity of this as a metric is as three values and unreachable. within nsfnet the values used are , , and unreachable. many routers talk egp so they can be used for arpanet gateways. - - gated so we have regional and campus networks talking rip among themselves, the nsfnet backbone talking hello, and the ddn speaking egp. how do they interoperate? in the beginning there was static routing, assembled into the fuzzball software configured for each site. the problem with doing static routing in the middle of the network is that it is broadcast to the internet whether it is usable or not. therefore, if a net becomes unreachable and you try to get there, dynamic routing will immediately issue a net unreachable to you. under static routing the routers would think the net could be reached and would continue trying until the application gave up (in or more minutes). mark fedor of cornell (fedor@devvax.tn.cornell.edu) attempted to solve these problems with a replacement for "routed" called "gated". "gated" talks rip to rip speaking hosts, egp to egp speakers, and hello to hello'ers. these speakers frequently all live on one ethernet, but luckily (or unluckily) cannot understand each others ruminations. in addition, under configuration file control it can filter the conversion. for example, one can produce a configuration saying announce rip nets via hello only if they are specified in a list and are reachable by way of a rip broadcast as well. this means that if a rogue network appears in your local site's rip space, it won't be passed through to the hello side of the world. there are also configuration options to do static routing and name trusted gateways. this may sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread, but there is a catch called metric conversion. you have rip measuring in hops, hello measuring in milliseconds, and egp using arbitrary small numbers. the big questions is how many hops to a millisecond, how many milliseconds in the egp number .... also, remember that infinity (unreachability) is to rip, or so to hello, and to the ddn with egp. getting all these metrics to work well together is no small feat. if done incorrectly and you translate an rip of into an egp of , everyone in the arpanet will still think your gateway can reach the unreachable and will send every packet in the world your way. for these reasons, mark requests that you consult closely with him when configuring and using "gated". - - "names" all routing across the network is done by means of the ip address associated with a packet. since humans find it difficult to remember addresses like . . . , a symbolic name register was set up at the nic where people would say "i would like my host to be named 'uiucuxc'". machines connected to the internet across the nation would connect to the nic in the middle of the night, check modification dates on the hosts file, and if modified move it to their local machine. with the advent of workstations and micros, changes to the host file would have to be made nightly. it would also be very labor intensive and consume a lot of network bandwidth. rfc- and a number of others describe domain name service, a distributed data base system for mapping names into addresses. we must look a little more closely into what's in a name. first, note that an address specifies a particular connec- tion on a specific network. if the machine moves, the address changes. second, a machine can have one or more names and one or more network addresses (connections) to different networks. names point to a something which does useful work (i.e. the machine) and ip addresses point to an interface on that provider. a name is a purely symbolic representation of a list of addresses on the network. if a machine moves to a different network, the addresses will change but the name could remain the same. domain names are tree structured names with the root of the tree at the right. for example: uxc.cso.uiuc.edu is a machine called 'uxc' (purely arbitrary), within the subdomains method of allocation of the u of i) and 'uiuc' (the university of illinois at urbana), registered with 'edu' (the set of educational institutions). a simplified model of how a name is resolved is that on the user's machine there is a resolver. the resolver knows how to contact across the network a root name server. root servers are the base of the tree structured data retrieval system. they know who is responsible for handling first level domains (e.g. 'edu'). what root servers to use is an installation parameter. from the root server the resolver finds out who provides 'edu' service. it contacts the 'edu' name server which supplies it with a list of addresses of servers for the subdomains (like 'uiuc'). this action is repeated with the subdomain servers until the final sub- domain returns a list of addresses of interfaces on the host in question. the user's machine then has its choice of which of these addresses to use for communication. - - a group may apply for its own domain name (like 'uiuc' above). this is done in a manner similar to the ip address allocation. the only requirements are that the requestor have two machines reachable from the internet, which will act as name servers for that domain. those servers could also act as servers for subdomains or other servers could be designated as such. note that the servers need not be located in any particular place, as long as they are reach- able for name resolution. (u of i could ask michigan state to act on its behalf and that would be fine). the biggest problem is that someone must do maintenance on the database. if the machine is not convenient, that might not be done in a timely fashion. the other thing to note is that once the domain is allocated to an administrative entity, that entity can freely allocate subdomains using what ever manner it sees fit. the berkeley internet name domain (bind) server implements the internet name server for unix systems. the name server is a distributed data base system that allows clients to name resources and to share that information with other net- work hosts. bind is integrated with . bsd and is used to lookup and store host names, addresses, mail agents, host information, and more. it replaces the "/etc/hosts" file for host name lookup. bind is still an evolving program. to keep up with reports on operational problems, future design decisions, etc, join the bind mailing list by sending a request to "bind-request@ucbarp.berkeley.edu". bind can also be obtained via anonymous ftp from ucbarpa.berkley.edu. there are several advantages in using bind. one of the most important is that it frees a host from relying on "/etc/hosts" being up to date and complete. within the .uiuc.edu domain, only a few hosts are included in the host table distributed by sri. the remainder are listed locally within the bind tables on uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (the server machine for most of the .uiuc.edu domain). all are equally reachable from any other internet host running bind. bind can also provide mail forwarding information for inte- rior hosts not directly reachable from the internet. these hosts can either be on non-advertised networks, or not con- nected to a network at all, as in the case of uucp-reachable hosts. more information on bind is available in the "name server operations guide for bind" in "unix system manager's manual", . bsd release. there are a few special domains on the network, like sri- nic.arpa. the 'arpa' domain is historical, referring to hosts registered in the old hosts database at the nic. there are others of the form nnsc.nsf.net. these special domains are used sparingly and require ample justification. they refer to servers under the administrative control of - - the network rather than any single organization. this allows for the actual server to be moved around the net while the user interface to that machine remains constant. that is, should bbn relinquish control of the nnsc, the new provider would be pointed to by that name. in actuality, the domain system is a much more general and complex system than has been described. resolvers and some servers cache information to allow steps in the resolution to be skipped. information provided by the servers can be arbitrary, not merely ip addresses. this allows the system to be used both by non-ip networks and for mail, where it may be necessary to give information on intermediate mail bridges. what's wrong with berkeley unix university of california at berkeley has been funded by darpa to modify the unix system in a number of ways. included in these modifications is support for the internet protocols. in earlier versions (e.g. bsd . ) there was good support for the basic internet protocols (tcp, ip, smtp, arp) which allowed it to perform nicely on ip ether- nets and smaller internets. there were deficiencies, how- ever, when it was connected to complicated networks. most of these problems have been resolved under the newest release (bsd . ). since it is the springboard from which many vendors have launched unix implementations (either by porting the existing code or by using it as a model), many implementations (e.g. ultrix) are still based on bsd . . therefore, many implementations still exist with the bsd . problems. as time goes on, when bsd . trickles through vendors as new release, many of the problems will be resolved. following is a list of some problem scenarios and their handling under each of these releases. icmp redirects under the internet model, all a system needs to know to get anywhere in the internet is its own address, the address of where it wants to go, and how to reach a gateway which knows about the internet. it doesn't have to be the best gateway. if the system is on a network with multiple gateways, and a host sends a packet for delivery to a gateway which feels another directly connected gateway is more appropriate, the gateway sends the sender a message. this message is an icmp redirect, which politely says "i'll deliver this message for you, but you really ought to use that gate- way over there to reach this host". bsd . ignores these messages. this creates more stress on the gate- ways and the local network, since for every packet - - sent, the gateway sends a packet to the originator. bsd . uses the redirect to update its routing tables, will use the route until it times out, then revert to the use of the route it thinks is should use. the whole process then repeats, but it is far better than one per packet. trailers an application (like ftp) sends a string of octets to tcp which breaks it into chunks, and adds a tcp header. tcp then sends blocks of data to ip which adds its own headers and ships the packets over the network. all this prepending of the data with headers causes memory moves in both the sending and the receiving machines. someone got the bright idea that if packets were long and they stuck the headers on the end (they became trailers), the receiving machine could put the packet on the beginning of a page boundary and if the trailer was ok merely delete it and transfer control of the page with no memory moves involved. the problem is that trailers were never standardized and most gateways don't know to look for the routing information at the end of the block. when trailers are used, the machine typically works fine on the local network (no gateways involved) and for short blocks through gateways (on which trailers aren't used). so telnet and ftp's of very short files work just fine and ftp's of long files seem to hang. on bsd . trailers are a boot option and one should make sure they are off when using the internet. bsd . negotiates trailers, so it uses them on its local net and doesn't use them when going across the network. retransmissions tcp fires off blocks to its partner at the far end of the connection. if it doesn't receive an acknowledge- ment in a reasonable amount of time it retransmits the blocks. the determination of what is reasonable is done by tcp's retransmission algorithm. there is no correct algorithm but some are better than others, where better is measured by the number of retransmis- sions done unnecessarily. bsd . had a retransmission algorithm which retransmitted quickly and often. this is exactly what you would want if you had a bunch of machines on an ethernet (a low delay network of large bandwidth). if you have a network of relatively longer delay and scarce bandwidth (e.g. kb lines), it tends to retransmit too aggressively. therefore, it makes the networks and gateways pass more traffic than is really necessary for a given conversation. retransmis- sion algorithms do adapt to the delay of the network - - after a few packets, but . 's adapts slowly in delay situations. bsd . does a lot better and tries to do the best for both worlds. it fires off a few retransmissions really quickly assuming it is on a low delay network, and then backs off very quickly. it also allows the delay to be about minutes before it gives up and declares the connection broken. - - appendix a references to remedial information quaterman and hoskins, "notable computer networks", communications of the acm, vol , # , pp. - (october, ). tannenbaum, andrew s., computer networks, prentice hall, . hedrick, chuck, introduction to the internet protocols, anonymous ftp from topaz.rutgers.edu, directory pub/tcp-ip-docs, file tcp-ip-intro.doc. - - appendix b list of major rfcs rfc- user datagram protocol (udp) rfc- internet protocol (ip) rfc- internet control message protocol (icmp) rfc- transmission control protocol (tcp) rfc- simple mail transfer protocol (smtp) rfc- standard for the format of arpa internet text messages rfc- telnet protocol rfc- * internet subnets rfc- * broadcasting internet datagrams rfc- * broadcasting internet datagrams in the presence of subnets rfc- * toward an internet standard scheme for subnetting rfc- * multi-network broadcasting within the internet rfc- * internet standard subnetting procedure rfc- file transfer protocol (ftp) rfc- * host groups: a multicast extension to the internet protocol rfc- * host extensions for ip multicasting rfc- * internet numbers rfc- * assigned numbers rfc- * official arpa-internet protocols rfc's marked with the asterisk (*) are not included in the ddn protocol handbook. note: this list is a portion of a list of rfc's by topic retrieved from the nic under netinfo:rfc-sets.txt (anonymous ftp of course). the following list is not necessary for connection to the internet, but is useful in understanding the domain system, mail system, and gateways: rfc- domain names - concepts and facilities rfc- domain names - implementation rfc- domain system changes and observations rfc- mail routing and the domain system rfc- requirements for internet gateways - - appendix c contact points for network information network information center (nic) ddn network information center sri international, room ej ravenswood avenue menlo park, ca ( ) - or ( ) - nic@sri-nic.arpa nsf network service center (nnsc) nnsc bbn laboratories inc. moulton st. cambridge, ma ( ) - nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net - - glossary core gateway the innermost gateways of the arpanet. these gateways have a total picture of the reacha- bility to all networks known to the arpanet with egp. they then redistribute reachabil- ity information to all those gateways speak- ing egp. it is from them your egp agent (there is one acting for you somewhere if you can reach the arpanet) finds out it can reach all the nets on the arpanet. which is then passed to you via hello, gated, rip.... count to infinity the symptom of a routing problem where routing information is passed in a circular manner through multiple gateways. each gate- way increments the metric appropriately and passes it on. as the metric is passed around the loop, it increments to ever increasing values til it reaches the maximum for the routing protocol being used, which typically denotes a link outage. hold down when a router discovers a path in the network has gone down announcing that that path is down for a minimum amount of time (usually at least two minutes). this allows for the pro- pagation of the routing information across the network and prevents the formation of routing loops. split horizon when a router (or group of routers working in consort) accept routing information from mul- tiple external networks, but do not pass on information learned from one external network to any others. this is an attempt to prevent bogus routes to a network from being propagated because of gossip or counting to infinity. - - surfing the internet: an introduction version . . december , c. jean armour polly. material quoted from other authors was compiled from public internet posts by those authors. no copyright claims are made for those compiled quotes. permission to reprint is granted for nonprofit educational purposes. please let me know if you find this compilation useful. this first (much shorter) version of this appeared in the june, wilson library bulletin. please include this entire copyright/copy notice if you duplicate this document. updates may be ftp'd: ftp nysernet.org ( . . . ) login anonymous password name@machine.node cd /pub/resources/guides please choose the most current version of surfing.the.internet. please send updates and corrections to: jpolly@nysernet.org today i'll travel to minnesota, texas, california, cleveland, new zealand, sweden, and england. i'm not frantically packing, and i won't pick up any frequent flyer mileage. in fact, i'm sipping cocoa at my macintosh. my trips will be electronic, using the computer on my desk, communications software, a modem, and a standard phone line. i'll be using the internet, the global network of computers and their interconnections, which lets me skip like a stone across oceans and continents and control computers at remote sites. i haven't "visited" antarctica yet, but it is only a matter of time before a host computer becomes available there! this short, non-technical article is an introduction to internet communications and how librarians and libraries can benefit from net connectivity. following will be descriptions of electronic mail, discussion lists, electronic journals and texts, and resources available to those willing to explore. historical details about the building of the internet and technical details regarding network speed and bandwidth are outside the scope of this piece. what's out there anyway? until you use a radio receiver, you are unaware of the wealth of programming, music, and information otherwise invisible to you. computer networks are much the same. about one million people worldwide use the internet daily. information packet traffic rises by % each month. about , host computers are connected, according to a january, report (network working group request for comments: ) by mark k. lottor. so, what's all the excitement about? what's zipping around in that fiber and cable and ether, anyway? on my electronic adventure i browsed the online catalog at the university library in liverpool, england, leaving some "hi there from liverpool, new york" mail for the librarian. i downloaded some new macintosh anti-virus software from stanford's sumex archive. then i checked a few databases for information needed for this article, and scanned today's news stories. i looked at the weather forecast for here in the east and for the san francisco bay area, forwarding that information to a friend in san jose who would read it when he woke up. the internet never closes! after that i read some electronic mail from other librarians in israel, korea, england, australia and all over the u.s. we're exchanging information about how to keep viruses off public computers, how to network cdroms, and how to reink inkjet printer cartridges, among other things. i monitor about twelve discussion groups. mail sent to the group address is distributed to all other "subscribers". it's similar to a round-robin discussion. these are known variously as mailing lists, discussion groups, reflectors, aliases, or listservs, depending on what type they are and how they are driven. subscriptions are free. one of these groups allows children and young adults all over the world to communicate with each other. kids from cupertino to moscow are talking about their lives, pets, families, hope and dreams. it's interesting to see that nintendo is a universal language! teachers exchange lesson plans and bibliographies in another group, and schools participate in projects like the global market basket survey. for this project, students researched what foods a typical family of four would buy and prepare over one week's time. their results were posted to the global project area, where they could be compared with reports from kids all over north and south america, india, scandinavia, and asia. it opened up discussions of dietary laws, staple foods, and cultural differences. other lists explore the worlds of library administration, reference, mystery readers, romance readers, bird-watcher hotlines, cat enthusiasts, ex-soviet union watchers, packet radio techies, and thousands more. there is even a list to announce the creation of new lists! the power of the net a net connection in a school is like having multiple foreign exchange students in the classroom all the time. it promotes active, participatory learning. participating in a discussion group is like being at an ongoing library conference. all the experts are out there, waiting to be asked. want to buy a cdrom drive? send one query and "ask" the , folks on pacs-l (public access computer systems list) for advice. in a few hours you'll have personal testimonies on the pros and cons of various hardware configurations. want to see if any libraries are doing anything with total quality management? ask the members of libadmin and you'll have offers of reports, studies, personal experiences and more. how do you cope with budget cuts: personnel layoffs or materials? again, libadmin use allows shared advice. here is one story about the power of the net. at christmas, an electronic plea came from ireland. "my daughter believes in santa claus," it began. "and although the `my little pony megan & sundance' set has not been made in three years, she believes santa will prevail and she will find one under her tree." mom, a university professor, had called the manufacturer in the us, but none were available. "check around," they said, "maybe some yet stand on store shelves." so mom sent the call out to the net. many readers began a global search for the wily pony as part of their own holiday shopping forays. soon, another message came from dublin. it seemed that a reader of the original message had a father who was a high-ranking executive in the toy company, and he had managed to acquire said pony where others had failed! it was duly shipped in time to save santa's reputation. part of the library's mission is to help remove barriers to accessing information, and part of this is removing barriers between people. one of the most interesting things about telecommunications is that it is the great equalizer. it lets all kinds of computers and humans talk to each other. the old barriers of sexism, ageism, and racism are not present, since you can't see the person to whom you're "speaking". you get to know the person without preconceived notions about what you think he is going to say, based on visual prejudices you may have, no matter how innocent. well, almost without visual prejudice. electronic mail is not always an harmonic convergence of like souls adrift in the cyberspace cosmos: there are arguments and tirades (called "flames"). sometimes you get so used to seeing a frequent poster's electronic signature that you know what he's going to say before he says it! smileys one problem with written communication is that remarks meant to be humorous are often lost. without the visual body-language clues, some messages may be misinterpreted. so a visual shorthand known as "smileys" has been developed. there are a hundred or more variations on this theme- :-) that's a little smiley face. look at it sideways. more smiley info may be found via anonymous ftp at many places, including the following: ftp nic.funet.fi cd /pub/misc/funnies/smiley.txt ftp is introduced later in the text. what a range of emotions you can show using only keyboard characters. besides the smiley face above, you can have :-( if you're sad, or :-< if you're really upset! ;-) is one way of showing a wink. folks wearing glasses might look like this online: %^). but for the most part, the electronic community is willing to help others. telecommunications helps us overcome what has been called the tyranny of distance. we do have a global village. electronic newsletters and serials subscribing to lists with reckless abandon can clog your mailbox and provide a convenient black hole to vacuum up all your spare time. you may be more interested in free subscriptions to compiled documents known as electronic journals. these journals are automatically delivered to your electronic door. there are a growing number of these. some of the best for librarians are listed below. to subscribe to these journals you must know how to send an interactive message to another computer. this information is well- documented in the resources listed at the end of this article. telnet and ftp are introduced further along in this article. alcts network news (association for library collections and technical services) various ala news, net news, other items of interest to librarians. send the following message to listserv@uicvm.bitnet subscribe alcts first name last name. current cites bibliography of current journal articles relating to computers, networks, information issues, and technology. distributed on pacs-l, or connect remotely via telnet to melvyl.ucop.edu ( . . . ); enter this command at the prompt: show current cites. further information: david f. w. robison, drobison@library.berkeley.edu. effector online the online newsletter of the electronic frontier foundation. all the hot net issues are covered here: privacy, freedom, first amendment rights. join eff to be added to the mailing list or ftp the files yourself from ftp.eff.org ( . . . ) they are in the /pub/eff and subsequent directories. hot off the tree (hott) (excerpts and abstracts of articles about information technology) telnet melvyl.ucop.edu ( . . . ); enter command: show hott. further information: susan jurist, sjurist@ucsd.edu. network news an irreverent compendium of tidbits, resources, and net factoids that is a must for true internet surfers. to subscribe, send the following message to listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet subscribe nnews first name last name. for more information: dana noonan at noonan@msus .msus.edu. public-access computer systems news and the public-access computer systems review sent automatically to pacs-l subscribers. see above. for a list of back issue files, send the following message to: listserv@uhupvm .bitnet index pacs-l to obtain a comprehensive list of electronic serials on all topics, send the following commands to: listserv@uottawa.bitnet get ejournl directry get ejournl directry for further information, contact michael strangelove: @acadvm .uottawa.ca. remote login to internet resources: telnet one step beyond electronic mail is the ability to control a remote computer using telnet. this feature lets you virtually teleport anywhere on the network and use resources located physically at that host. further, some hosts have gateways to other hosts, which have further gateways to still more hosts. how can you be in two places at once? it sounds more confusing than it is. what resources are available? here is a sampling of some of the fare awaiting you at several sites: cleveland free-net freenets are the progeny of: tom grundner, director, community telecomputing laboratory case western reserve university wickenden building cleveland, oh / - fax: / - internet: aa @cleveland.freenet.edu bitnet: aa %cleveland.freenet.edu@cunyvm and the folks at: national public telecomputing network (nptn) box cleveland, oh / - fax: / - internet: aa @cleveland.freenet.edu. free-nets are built around a city metaphor, complete with schools, hospitals, libraries, courthouses, and other public services. academy one recently held an online global simulation of a series of major space achievements. schools (from five states and four nations) participated. here are several of the descriptions of their projects: "valkeala high school valkeala elementary school valkeala, finland (sa @cleveland.freenet.edu) acting as space shuttle discovery taking the hubble telescope into space. these finnish students will be in communication with students in estonia, relaying their reports." "dr. howard elementary school champaign, il (cwilliam@mars.ncsa.uiuc.edu, cdouglas@ncsa.uiuc.edu) dr. howard school ( students in rd/ th grade) will be simulating the challenger launch. they are being assisted by the national center for supercomputing applications." "st. julie billiart school hamilton, oh (ba @cleveland.freenet.edu) simulating a nasa tracking station in florida. they will be posting hourly weather reports about the conditions in florida around cape kennedy. this information is vital to the recovery of the friendship capsule and crew. students have taken an interest in space junk and will be posting additional reports on the various probes which were used to test the surface of the moon and how all of that junk is now becoming a hazard to current and future space exploration." another free-net resource is project hermes. this service provides copies of supreme court opinions in electronic form to as wide an audience as possible, almost as soon as they are announced. the court's opinions can be sent directly to you or you may download the files directly from any nptn community computer system. the free-nets also provide weather, news, and gateways to other resources. to access the cleveland free-net (where all this is being held) simply telnet to: freenet-in-a.cwru.edu . . . or . . . or . . . or . . . and select "visitor" at the login menu. melvyl catalog division of library automation university of california office of the president lakeside drive, th floor, oakland, california - / - (melvyl catalog helpline) e-mail: lynch@postgres.berkeley.edu the melvyl catalog is the union catalog of monographs and serials (periodicals) held by the nine university of california campuses and affiliated libraries. it represents nearly million holdings at uc, the california state library, and the center for research libraries. the melvyl catalog also provides access to medline and current contents as well as a gateway to many other systems. access to some databases is restricted under a license agreement to the university of california faculty, staff, and students. telnet: melvyl.ucop.edu ( . . . ) carl colorado alliance of research libraries grant suite denver co - / - e-mail: help@carl.org carl offers access to the following groups of databases: academic and public library online catalogs, current article indexes such as uncover and magazine index, databases such as the academic american encyclopedia and internet resource guide, and a gateway to other library systems. access to some items is limited. telnet: pac.carl.org ( . . . ) micromuse this is how barry kort (aka `moulton'), visiting scientist at educational technology research, bbn labs, cambridge, ma describes micromuse at m.i.t. "muds (multi-user dimensions) or muses (multi-user simulation environments) are virtual realities which offer a rich environment for synergy, community, collaboration, and exploratory discovery." "players connect to the host computer, adopt a character and personality of their choosing, and enter into the synthetic world, consisting of a web of connected rooms and movable props." "everything (rooms, movable objects, connecting passageways, and players) has a description (typically a few lines of text) which are displayed when a player looks at it." "actions such as picking up or dropping an object, and exiting to an adjacent room also generate a short message appropriate to the action." "at mit's ai lab, micromuse features explorations, adventures, and puzzles with redeeming social, cultural, and educational content. the micromuse science center offers an exploratorium and mathematica exhibit complete with interactive exhibits drawn from experience with science museums around the country. the mission to mars includes an elaborate tour of the red planet with accurate descriptions rivaling those found in national geographic." "elsewhere on micromuse, one can find an outstanding adventure based on the children's classic narnia; a recreation of the wizard of oz adventure built by a gifted -year old; a challenging logic quest; and a living model of the science fiction genre `the dragonriders of pern' by author anne mccaffrey." if you would like to explore micromuse, you may connect as follows from your local host computer: telnet michael.ai.mit.edu [ . . . ] login: guest [no password required] tt [tinytalk client program] connect guest [connect to micromuse] bbs.oit.unc.edu telnet to bbs.oit.unc.edu or . . . . type launch at the login message. it's a must. not only can you read usenet newsfeeds, but you can use libtel, a scripted telnet gateway to access both us and international libraries plus such things as data research associates library of congress catalog, the ham radio call book, the national science foundation, the weather server, webster's dictionary and thesaurus, and more. remote access to files (ftp) ftp or file transfer protocol is what to use to retrieve a text file, software, or other item from a remote host. normal practice is to ftp to the host you want and login as "anonymous". some sites use the password "guest" while others require that you put in your network address as the password. some popular ftp sites follow: sumex-aim this archive at stanford (sumex-aim.stanford.edu or . . . ) houses a plethora of macintosh applications, utilities, graphics and sound files. simtel (simtel .army.mil or . . . ) at the white sands missile range in new mexico contains a similar archive software for ms-dos computers. an ftp visit to the network service center at nnsc.nsf.net ( . . . ) is a gold mine of documents and training materials on net use. see further information on this in the "resources for learning more" section of this article. project gutenberg the primary goal of project gutenberg is to encourage the creation and distribution of electronic text. they hope to get ten thousand titles to one hundred million users for a trillion etexts in distribution by the end of . some of the many texts available now include alice in wonderland, peter pan, moby dick, paradise lost and other texts in the public domain. many of these texts are availablevia ftp: ftp mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu ( . . . ) cd etext/etext [for releases] [etext is available for testing now] cd etext/etext [for releases] [this file should be in it] cd etext/articles [for project gutenberg articles and newsletters]. most are also available from quake.think.com ( . . . ); /pub/etext, from simtel , and from many other sites. for more info try gopher as in the following section or contact: michael s. hart, director project gutenberg national clearinghouse for machine readable texts illinois benedictine college college road lisle, illinois - internet: dircompg@ux .cso.uiuc.edu compuserve: >internet:dircompg@ux .cso.uiuc.edu attmail: internet!ux .cso.uiuc.edu!dircompg bitnet: hart@uiucvmd travel agents: archie, gopher, veronica, wais, worldwide web and more there is so much information on the net, it's impossible to know where everything is, or even how to begin looking. fortunately, some computerized "agents" are in development to help sort through the massive data libraries on the net. archie peter deutsch, of mcgill's computing centre, describes the archie server concept, which allows users to ask a question once yet search many different hosts for files of interest. "the archie service is a collection of resource discovery tools that together provide an electronic directory service for locating information in an internet environment. originally created to track the contents of anonymous ftp archive sites, the archie service is now being expanded to include a variety of other online directories and resource listings." "currently, archie tracks the contents of over anonymous ftp archive sites containing some , , files throughout the internet. collectively, these files represent well over gigabytes ( , , , bytes) of information, with additional information being added daily. anonymous ftp archive sites offer software, data and other information which can be copied and used without charge by anyone with connection to the internet." "the archie server automatically updates the listing information from each site about once a month, ensuring users that the information they receive is reasonably timely, without imposing an undue load on the archive sites or network bandwidth." unfortunately the archie server at mcgill is currently out of service. other sites are: archie.ans.net (usa [ny]) archie.rutgers.edu (usa [nj]) archie.sura.net (usa [md]) archie.funet.fi (finland/mainland europe) archie.au (australia/new zealand) archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (great britain/ireland) more information avaiable from: unix support group computing centre mcgill university room burnside hall sherbrooke street west montreal, quebec canada h a k / - peterd@cc.mcgill.ca internet gopher gopher (or go-fer): someone who fetches necessary items from many locations. login as gopher after you telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu and enjoy having a computer do all the work for you. almost. gopher is still in experimental mode at many gopherized sites. still, it is one of the best ways to locate information on and in the internet. besides archie, the gopher at consultant.micro.umn.edu includes fun and games, humor, libraries (including reference books such as the hacker's dictionary, roget's thesaurus, and the cia world fact book), gateways to other us and foreign gophers, news, and gateways to other systems. veronica: very easy rodent-oriented net-wide index to computerized archives. very new on the scene is veronica. here is some information from steve foster about it. "veronica offers a keyword search of most gopher-server menus in the entire gopher web. as archie is to ftp archives, veronica is to gopherspace. unlike archie, the search results can connect you directly to the data source. imagine an archie search that lets you select the data, not just the host sites, directly from a menu. because veronica is accessed through a gopher client, it is easy to use, and gives access to all types of data supported by the gopher protocol." "veronica was designed as a response to the problem of resource discovery in the rapidly-expanding gopher web. frustrated comments in the net news- groups have recently reflected the need for such a service. additional motivation came from the comments of naive gopher users, several of whom assumed that a simple-touse service would provide a means to find resources `without having to know where they are.'" "the result of a veronica search is an automatically-generated gopher menu, customized according to the user's keyword specification. items on this menu may be drawn from many gopher servers. these are functional gopher items, immediately accessible via the gopher client just double- click to open directories, read files, or perform other searches -- across hundreds of gopher servers. you need never know which server is actually involved in filling your request for information. items that are appear particularly interesting can be saved in the user's bookmark list." "notice that these are not full-text searches of data at gopher-server sites, just as archie does not index the contents of ftp sites, but only the names of files at those sites. veronica indexes the titles on all levels of the menus, for most gopher sites in the internet. gophers are indexed by veronica on nov. , ; we have discovered over servers and will index the full set in the near future. we hope that veronica will encourage gopher administrators to use very descriptive titles on their menus." "to try veronica, select it from the `other gophers' menu on minnesota's gopher server (consultant.micro.umn.edu), or point your gopher at: name=veronica (search menu items in most of gopherspace) type= port= path= /veronica host=futique.scs.unr.edu" "veronica is an experimental service, developed by steve foster and fred barrie at university of nevada. as we expect that the load will soon outgrow our hardware, we will distribute the veronica service across other sites in the near future." "please address comments to: gophadm@futique.scs.unr.edu" is this the new world order of automated librarianship? wais wide area information servers (pronounced ways) allows users to get information from a variety of hosts by means of a "client". the user tells the client, in plain english, what to look for out in dataspace. the client then searches various wais servers around the globe. the user tells the client how relevant each hit is, and the client can be sent out on the same quest again and again to find new documents. client software is available for many different types of computers. waistation is an easy to use macintosh implementation of a wais client. it can be downloaded from think.com as well as a self-running mediatracks demo of waistation in action. kahle also moderates a thoughtful wais newsletter and discussion group, often speculating about the future of libraries and librarians. info from: brewster kahle, project leader wide area information servers thinking machines corporation el camino real menlo park, ca / - x brewster@think.com worldwideweb tim berners-lee describes the web this way: "the www project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system. the www world consists of documents, and links. indexes are special documents which, rather than being read, may be searched. the result of such a search is another (`virtual') document containing links to the documents found. the web contains documents in many formats. those documents which are hypertext, (real or virtual) contain links to other documents, or places within documents. all documents, whether real, virtual or indexes, look similar to the reader and are contained within the same addressing scheme. to follow a link, a reader clicks with a mouse (or types in a number if he or she has no mouse). to search and index, a reader gives keywords (or other search criteria). these are the only operations necessary to access the entire world of data." info from: tim berners-lee worldwideweb project cern geneva , switzerland tel: + ( ) fax:+ ( ) email:tbl@cernvax.cern.ch hytelnet peter scott, the creator of hytelnet, sends this recent update: "hytelnet version . , the utility which gives an ibm-pc user instant- access to all internetaccessible library catalogs, free-nets, cwiss, bbss, gophers, wais, etc. is now available. you can get it via anonymous ftp from: access.usask.ca in the pub/hytelnet/pc subdirectory. it is listed as hyteln .zip." "version . is a major upgrade. much redundant information has been deleted, and errors have been corrected. new subdirectories have been added, which has meant that many files now have a more meaningful home. also all the new/updated files created since version . were incorporated." "note: the unzipped files total over . mb but remember, you can always edit out any information you do not need, in order to save space. information from roy tennant follows, slightly edited, describing how to obtain hytelnet . from the ftp site (thanks roy)::" "to retrieve hytelnet: at your system prompt, enter: ftp access.usask.ca or ftp . . . when you receive the name prompt, enter: anonymous when you receive the password prompt, enter: your internet address. when you are at the ftp> prompt, enter: binary at the next ftp> prompt, enter: cd pub/hytelnet/pc then enter: get hyteln .zip after the transfer has occurred, either proceed with the instructions below to retrieve the unzip utility (which you need unless you already have it) or enter: quit the hytelnet program is archived using a zip utility. to unarchive it, you must be able to "unzip" the file. if you have the file pkunzip.exe, it will unarchive the hyteln .zip file (see below for instructions). if you do not have it, you may retrieve it by following these instructions: to retrieve pkunzip: use the above instructions for connecting to: access.usask.ca at the ftp> prompt, enter: binary then enter: cd pub/hytelnet/pc then enter: get pkunzip.exe after the transfer has occurred, enter: quit to download it to your pc: because of the plethora of pc communications programs, i will not attempt to give step-by-step instructions here. you should check the instructions for your software for downloading a *binary* file from your internet account to your pc. to unarchive hyteln .zip: make a new directory on your hard disk (e.g., mkdir hytelnet) copy pkunzip.exe and hyteln .zip into the new directory make sure you are in that directory, then enter: pkunzip hyteln it will then unarchive hyteln .zip, which contains the following files: hytelnet.zip readnow. the file readnow gives full instructions for un-archiving hytelnet.zip. simply put, you **must** unzip the file with the -d parameter so that all the subdirectories will be recursed. to use hytelnet, you should refer to the instructions in the release announcement by peter scott, or to the readme file included with the package." "please note that i offer the above instructions as a service for those who are unfamiliar with the steps required to download and use files from network sources. i cannot be responsible for any local variations in these procedures which may exist. please contact your local computer support staff if you have difficulty performing these tasks." "the unix/vms version, created by earl fogel, is available for browsing by telnet to access.usask.ca login with hytelnet (lower case). for more information on this version contact earl at: fogel@skyfox.usask.ca." how to get connected now that you're interested in what resources are available, how does one go about getting connected? time was that you needed a standard, dedicated connection to the internet. then you needed a robust computer system and a couple of zany gurus to keep it all running. and once a year you could expect an invoice in the $ , range to keep the data flowing. these days, anyone can connect, from small libraries and non-profits to individuals. (and of course commercial-mh) and the prices are affordable. there is a nsfnet acceptable-use policy you must agree to adhere to if your traffic passes through nsfnet. it is available from the nsf network service center. contact your regional network first to see what services might be available to you. a list of regional nets can be obtained from the nsf network service center (address below), or check with a local college or university's academic computing center. a university may be able to give you a guest account on its system for educational purposes. access to electronic mail alone is roughly $ a month at this writing. additional capabilities, including telnet and ftp, cost more, and it will cost $ , or more per year if you want to operate your own host system. the good news is that the costs are spiraling downwards. here are a few other methods of connecting to the net. many more are listed in the "must-have" books at the end of this article. cerfnet the california education and research federation (cerfnet) has announced dial n' cerf usa. it allows educators, scientists, corporations, and individuals access to the internet from anywhere in the continental us. a toll-free number, - - cerfnet ( - - - ), provides subscribers with the capability to log in to remote machines, transfer files, and send and receive electronic mail, as if they had a standard, dedicated connection. the cost of this toll-free connection is $ a month with a $ per hour usage fee and free installation. there is an installation charge of $ . cerfnet california education and research federation c/o san diego supercomputer center p.o. box san diego, ca - / -cerf or / - help@cerf.net performance systems international psi offers several permutations of network connectivity, including low-end email-only accounts, dial-up host connectivity on demand, and dedicated connections. costs are competitive and performance is reliable. psi has pops (points of presence) in over forty u.s. cities. psilink, email and delayed ftp, is $ a month for baud service or below, $ per month for baud service. gds (global dialup service) includes telnet, rlogins at $ a month, baud, hour access. host dcs (dialup connection service), at about $ per year, includes a full suite of internet activities (mail, news, ftp, telnet). performance systems international, inc. sunrise valley dr. suite reston, va / psi or / - fax: / - info@psi.com. all-info@psi.com generates an automatic reply response containing summaries of various psi products. software tool & die software tool & die offers the world, a public access unix system: the basic rates are $ per hour and a $ monthly account fee. services offered by the world include internet electronic mail, usenet news, clarinet -upi, ap, and satellite news services, real-time chat, unix software, archie, the online book initiative (a publicly accessible repository for freely redistributable collections of textual information, a net-worker's library.) alternet access - users have access to alternet via ftp/telnet. the world can also be accessed over the compuserve packet network. you do not have to be a compuserve subscriber to use this network, but you will be billed for its use. the world software tool & die beacon street brookline, ma / - daniel dern also provides the following definitive information file on how to get connected: daniel dern's short answer to "how do i get a list of internet service/access providers for individual accounts": for a list of internet service providers contact: nsf network service center (nnsc) bbn laboratories inc. moulton st. cambridge, ma / - nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net the nnsc info-server utility can also automatically e-mail you a copy of this list and other documents. simply send an e-mail message to: info-server@nnsc.nsf.net with the following text in the body: request: nsfnet topic: <topic-here> topic: <topic-here> request: end you don't need to put anything in the subject line. "referral-list" gets you the nnsc's referral list of internet service providers based in the u.s. (possibly providing international service). this is generally agreed to be the most comprehensive and least-biased list. "limited-referral" gets you the nnsc's referral list of internet providers for "limited service," which includes dial-up ip, internet e-mail. "help" (recommended) gets you the help document for the info-server facility. for a list of dial-up-accessible public-access internet hosts (unix bbss that can do telnet, ftp, etc., that can you can access by calling from your pc and modem), see the pdial list, maintained by peter kaminski. kaminski periodically posts an updated version to the usenet groups alt.bbs.lists and alt.bbs.internet; also, the most recent edition may be obtained by sending e-mail to: kaminski@netcom.com with the `send pdial' in the subject. to be placed on a list to receive future editions automatically, send e-mail to: kaminski@netcom.com with `subscribe pdial' in the subject. the `nixpub' list is a frequently updated list of public-access unix systems -unix-based bbss usually carrying usenet news, supporting e-mail connectivity to the internet, and with some mix of local archives, multi- user games, etc. the full list is long (over , lines). to get a current copy of `nixpub' as an automatic e-mail reply, send a message to `nixpub@digex.com' (no subject or message text needed), or to `archive-server@cs.widener.edu' with message body of one of these: send nixpub long send nixpub short send nixpub long short index nixpub the nixpub and nixpub.short lists are regularly reposted to the usenet comp.misc and alt.bbs groups info from: daniel p. dern free-lance technology writer p.o. box newton centre, ma / - fax: / - ddern@world.std.com resources for learning more cerfnet network information center (nic) this is a repository for many eclectic internet guides and rfc (requests for comments) from many sources, including the famous, if technical "hitchhiker's guide to the internet." these may be obtained via anonymous ftp to nic.cerf.net ( . . . ). call the cerfnet hotline at - -cerf for assistance. california education and research federation c/o san diego supercomputer center p. o. box san diego, ca - / -cerf or / - help@cerf.net cicnet resource guide over pages of internet resources, published june, . copies are $ . from cicnet, inc. attn kim schaffer hubbard pod a ann arbor, mi . / - fax / - info@cic.net "the december lists" "information sources: the internet and computer-mediated communication" compiled by john december (decemj@rpi.edu) here is part of his information file on this excellent resource: "this document or updates are available via anonymous ftp. host: ftp.rpi.edu file: /pub/communications/internet-cmc purpose: to list pointers to information describing the internet, computer networks, and issues related to computer- mediated communication (cmc). topics of interest include the technical, social, cognitive, and psychological aspects of cmc. audience: this file is useful for those getting started in understanding the internet and cmc; it compactly summarizes sources of information for those who are already exploring these issues. assumptions: to access many information sources listed here you must have access to and know how to use anonymous ftp, email, or usenet newsgroups. some files are in tex or postscript format. contents: section - - the internet and services section - - information services/electronic publications section - - societies and organizations section - - newsgroups section - - selected bibliography" "emily postnews answers your questions on netiquette" brad templeton's (brad@looking.on.ca) satirical and hilarious piece on how not to behave on the net. emily postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour, gives her advice. there are many places to ftp this file, and it is appearing on many gophers. one place to get the file is by ftp to ra.msstate.edu ( . . . ) location: /pub/docs/words- l/funnies the file is called emily.postnews. here is a sample: "dear miss postnews: how long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy a: dear verbose: please try and make your signature as long as you can. it's much more important than your article, of course, so try to have more lines of signature than actual text. try to include a large graphic made of ascii characters, plus lots of cute quotes and slogans. people will never tire of reading these pearls of wisdom again and again, and you will soon become personally associated with the joy each reader feels at seeing yet another delightful repeat of your signature. be sure as well to include a complete map of usenet with each signature, to show how anybody can get mail to you from any site in the world. be sure to include internet gateways as well. also tell people on your own site how to mail to you. give independent addresses for internet, uucp, and bitnet, even if they're all the same." "incomplete guide to the internet" the "incomplete guide" was compiled by the ncsa education group, dated september, . it is also available for anonymous ftp at: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the /misc directory this excellent manual is a must. it even covers slip connections and use of eudora. here are some comments about it from cfarmer@ncsa.uiuc.edu (chuck farmer): "the first half of the text is devoted to the mechanics of telecommunications, how to connect, what to do once you are connected, etc. the second half of the manual is devoted to current telecommunications projects, past successful projects, and resources. the resources include ftp sites, open bbs's and networks, free-nets, subscription services, and where to get more information on each resource. this resource was complied by the living lab program (nsf funded) at ncsa as an attempt to encourage the proliferation of hpcc use in the k- classroom. we welcome your comments and suggestions. for further information: national center for supercomputing applications e springfield ave. champaign, il / - "library resources on the internet: strategies for selection and use" . rasd occasional paper no. , selling for $ to members, $ for nonmembers. it can be ordered from: ala order services e. huron chicago, il , / - electronic versions available via ftp ascii file from: host dla.ucop.edu ( . . . ) directory /pub/internet/libcat-guide host ftp.unt.edu ( . . . ) directory /pub/library/libcat-guide wordperfect . file from: host hydra.uwo.ca ( . . . ) directory libsoft/internet.com merit's cruise of the internet this attractive overview looks great on a macintosh. i have not seen the windows version. from the readme text: "merit's `cruise of the internet' is a computer- based tutorial for new as well as experienced internet `navigators.' the cruise will introduce you to internet resources as diverse as supercomputing, minorities, multimedia, and even cooking. it will also provide information about the tools needed to access those resources." ftp to nic.merit.edu /internet/resources. there are macintosh and windows versions, and readme text files to explain installation procedures. a cruise of the internet version . for apple macintosh computers december , system requirements this tutorial will run on any color macintosh which is capable of displaying colors. to run the cruise tutorial you will need: - a macintosh ii, lc or quadra series computer - -bit color and any color monitor ( " minimum) - system . or .x - approximately mb of disk space - mb ram is recommended - internet connectivity and software that does file transfers via ftp. a cruise of the internet version . for ibm-dos and dos compatibles running windows october , system requirements: this tutorial will run on any ibm-dos or dos-compatible computer which is equipped to display colors at an aspect ratio of x . to run the cruise tutorial you will need: - an ibm-dos or dos-compatible computer - xga- or xga-compatible adapter set to display colors at x - microsoft windows(tm) version . - approximately . mb of disk space - mb ram minimum - internet connectivity and software that does file transfers via ftp. "mining the internet" the net as mine metaphor is a popular theme. tunneling through the network matrix in search of gems and ore is not far from fact. sometimes it is hard work, and a lot of it is working in the dark. there is a guidebook called "mining the internet", available from university of california at davis. here is how the gold country mining instructions begin: "jist durn tuckered o' workin' eight t' five for a salary. ain't you? an' you wanna set out for parts unknown. you're hankerin' for an a'venture. come'n then go `mining the internet' with me, father of clementine (that's my darlin'), and i'll tell you some old timey tales and introduce you to a new resource for students, faculty, and staff called wide area networking 'taint goin' to hurt you any, and the prospect looks good for a lucky strike." "mining the internet" and "using the internet a&b" available from: computing services university of california davis, ca - / - . or electronically by anonymous ftp from ucdavis.edu ( . . . ) directory /ucd.netdocs/mining nsf network service center (nnsc) nsf internet tour hypercard stack--borrow a macintosh long enough to view this, worth the effort! includes net history, net maps, net poetry and lore. free. they also publish a very complete internet resource guide ($ ). many items, including the hypercard tour to the internet, freely available by anonymous ftp from nnsc.nsf.net nnsc bolt beranek and newman inc. moulton street, cambridge, ma / - nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net new user's guide to unique and interesting resources on the internet . . available from nysernet (new york state education and research network). it is over pages and lists some sources. opacs, databases, information resources, and more. the new user's guide is available in hard copy at the cost of $ . . (nysernet members: $ . ) it is available electronically at nysernet.org ( . . . ) in the directory /pub/resources/guides it is called the new.user.guide.v . .txt for more information: nysernet, inc. college pl. syracuse, ny - / - fax / - info@nysernet.org northwestnet user services internet resource guide northwestnet has released a -page guide to the internet, covering electronic mail, file transfer, remote login, discussion groups, online library catalogues, and supercomputer access. copies may be purchased for $ . from northwestnet. it is also available via anonymous ftp: ftphost.nwnet.net in the directory /nic/nwnet/user-guide northwestnet se th place, suite , bellevue, wa / - fax: / - "there's gold in them thar networks! or searching for gold in all the wrong places" written by jerry martin at ohio state university. this document is available via internet message to infoserver@nnsc.nsf.net. once inside the message area, give the following commands to retrieve the document: request:nsfnet topic:network-treasures request: end "the yanoff lists" "special internet connections" compiled by scott yanoff. this is an indispensable weekly list of network resources available using telnet and ftp. it includes a few online public access catalogs, chat lines, weather servers, campus wide information systems, and reference resources. send e-mail to the list manager (scott yanoff) at: yanoff@csd .csd.uwm.edu or ftp to csd .csd.uwm.edu the filename is inet-services. how to find out more about discussion lists thousands of discussion groups, listservs, and mail reflectors exist on the internet. here are several ways to find lists of interest to you. listservs available from nysernet.org nysernet.org hosts over lists, including folk_music and publib for public librarians. send a list global command in an interactive message to our host. for example: to: listserv@nysernet.org subject: message: list global the sri nic maintained interest-groups list of lists this is available by ftp from ftp.nisc.sri.com ( . . . ) in the directory /netinfo/interest-groups. the sri nic list-of-lists is also available via electronic mail. send a message to mail-server@nisc.sri.com with the following line in the message body: send netinfo/interest-groups example: to: mail-server@nisc.sri.com subject: message: send netinfo/interest-groups the list of lists a comprehensive list-of-lists can be obtained from some larger host computers running listserv software, by sending a list global command in an interactive message. this will return a "one line per list" list of all lists known to that host as of that date. for example: to: listserv@vm .nodak.edu mail subject: message: list global the global list can also be searched online. for details send listserv the command info database network accessible database server only available on the listserv@vm .nodak.edu is a searchable interest groups database. for example, to search of the databases for lists on "cats" you would send the following statements (copy them exactly into your mail message to the listserv): //dblook job echo=no database search dd=rules //rules dd * select cats in lists index select cats in intgroup index select cats in new-list index these statements search the global listserv list of lists ("in lists"), and the local copy of the sri-nic interest groups ("in intgroup"), and the archives of the "new-list" list ("in new-list"). send listserv the command info database for more information. the th revision of the directory of scholarly electronic conferences this resource is available at listserv@kentvm or listserv@kentvm.kent.edu and via anonymous ftp to ksuvxa.kent.edu in the library directory. this announcement is extracted from the acadlist readme file "this directory contains descriptions of electronic conferences (econferences) on topics of interest to scholars. e- conference is the umbrella term that includes discussion lists, interest groups, e-journals, e-newsletters, usenet newsgroups, forums, etc. we have used our own judgment in deciding what is of scholarly interest -- and accept any advice or argument about our decisions. we have placed the entries into categories by deciding what the *dominant* academic subject area of the electronic conference is." "the th revision involves an attempt to make it easier to feed the directory into hypercard(tm), dbase(tm) and other database programs. the first step in this effort has been to use field labels for each part of each record. we've also reduced the size of each record by trying to keep topic information between - words (some are still bigger). advice on this topic will be gratefully accepted at dkovacs@kentvm.kent.edu." "in addition, information about editorial policy and archive availability and frequency have also been included in each record. where possible the information in each record has been checked for currency and accuracy by checking the listserv header in the case of listserv based e-conferences and contacting the moderators of other kinds of e-conferences." "the field labels are as follows: ln: (e-conference name) ti: (topic information) su: (subscription information) ed: (edited? yes or no) ar: (archived? if yes, frequency, private=subscribers only) mo: (moderator, editor, listowner, manager, coordinator, etc.) ia: (`official' institutional affiliation)." "topic descriptions are taken in whole or part from the descriptions provided by each listowner, editor, moderator or coordinator to the new-list, the list of lists, and the internet interest groups file." "any errors are the responsibility of the compiler of the electronic conferences for academics files. if you can provide corrections or additional information about any of these electronic conferences, please contact: diane kovacs (bitnet) dkovacs@kentvm (internet) dkovacs@kentvm.kent.edu these files are available on the directory of scholarly e-conferences: acadlist readme (explanatory notes for the directory) acadstck hqx (binhexed, self-decompressing, hypercard stack of entire directory - keyword searchable) acadlist file (anthropology- education) acadlist file (geography-library and information science) acadlist file (linguistics-political science) acadlist file (psychology-writing) acadlist file (biological sciences) acadlist file (physical sciences -now includes academic computing and computer science) acadlist file (business, academia, news) acadwhol hqx (binhexed self-decompressing macintosh m.s. word . document of all directories) acadlist.changes (major additions and deletions) how to retrieve the abovefiles via mail . send an e-mail message addressed to listserv@kentvm or listserv@kentvm.kent.edu. . leave the subject and other info lines blank. . the message must read: get filename filetype (e.g.,filename=acadlist filetype=file or hqx or whatever) . the files will be sent to you and you must receive them. . if you need assistance receiving, etc. contact your local computer services people. how to retrieve the files via anonymous ftp (file transfer protocol) ftp to ksuvxa.kent.edu . when prompted for `userid,' type anonymous. . your password will be your actual userid on your local machine. . type: cd library . type: get filename.filetype (e.g., filename=acadlist filetype=file or hqx or whatever) . the files will be transferred directly into the directory you ftp'ed from at your site. new lists and list changes new lists are being started every day, and old ones fade away. to find out bout these changes, join the new-list mailing. here is part of their welcome message: "the `new-list' list has been established as a central address to post announcements of new public mailing lists. in addition, `new-list' might be used as a final verification before establishing a list (to check for existing lists on the same topic, etc.). however, be sure to check sources such as the internet list-of-lists (siglist or interest-groups list), listserv groups, and the lists database on the major listservs (we have the lists database on ndsuvm )." "we will gladly rebroadcast new list announcements, final list proposals (to avoid conflicts or redundancy), or emergency announcements about the availability of some list. list review service these folks subscribe to and monitor a list for awhile and then report on it to everyone else. it's a great idea and a useful way to "sample" a list. here is the subscription information. email its author to be added to the list review service list, bitnet address: srcmuns@umslvma list review service issn: - published bi-weekly, when school is in session, by the university of missouri, st. louis libraries. raleigh c. muns, editor. for more information: thomas jefferson library university of missouri st. louis natural bridge road st. louis, mo / - internet library guides three different internet library guides are available to help both beginning and experienced opac users. art st. george's internet-accessible library catalogs and databases includes directions for internet libraries and campus wide information systems as well as dialup libraries and bulletin boards in the united states. available from: ariel.unm.edu /library/internet.library billy barron's accessing on-line bibliographic databases contains a number of useful features such as guides to local opac escape sequences and commands. ftp to ftp.unt.edu ( . . . ) /library/libraries.txt dana noonan's a guide to internet/bitnet comes in two parts. part two is about internet libraries. it is an easy to use guide to many national and international opacs and their login and use instructions. (available via anonymous ftp from vm .nodak.edu then cd nnews (although nnews may not show up on the directory menu, it works.) a printed version is available for $ from metronet. for more information: metronet metro square building seventh and robert streets st. paul, minnesota / - fax / - must-have books for the internet surfer kehoe, brendan. ( ). zen and the art of the internet: a beginner's guide ( nd ed.). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. the first edition is available for free from many ftp sites (see below) this version has about pages of new material and corrects various minor errors in the first edition. includes the story of the coke machine on the internet. for much of late and the first half of , this was the document of choice for learning about the internet. isbn - - - . index. $ . to ftp zen . in a postscript version: ftp.uu.net [ . . . ] directory /inet/doc ftp.cs.toronto.edu [ . . . ] directory /pub/zen ftp.cs.widener.edu [ . . . ] directory /pub/zen as zen- . .tar.z, zen- . .dvi, and zen- . .ps ftp.sura.net [ . . . ] directory /pub/nic as zen- . .ps it is also available to read on many gopher servers. krol, ed. ( ). the whole internet user's guide & catalog. sebastopol, ca: o'reilly & associates. comprehensive guide to how the network works, the domain name system, acceptable use, security, and other issues. chapters on telnet/remote login, file transfer protocol, and electronic mail explain error messages, special situations, and other arcana. archie, gopher, net news, wais, www, and troubleshooting each enjoy a chapter in this well-written book. appendices contain info on how to get connected in addition to a glossary. isbn - - - . $ . laquey, tracey, & ryer, j.c. ( ). the internet companion: a beginner's guide to global networking. reading, ma: addison-wesley. beginning with a forewordby vice-president elect al gore, this book provides an often-humorous explanation of the origins of the internet, acceptable use, basics of electronic mail, netiquette, online resources, transferring information, and finding email addresses. the in the know guide provides background on internet legends (elvis sightings is one), organizations, security issues, and how to get connected. bibliography. index. isbn - - - $ . marine, april. ( ). internet: getting started.. menlo park, ca: sri international. this book has an international overview, and includes things the others don't, such as an index to all the rfc's (request for comments), internet organizations, source information for the tcp/ip cd rom, and the answer to "who is in charge of the internet?" (no one is. the internet is a cooperating group of independently administered networks. some groups set basic policy though.) isbn - - - $ . sri ravenswood ave. menlo park, ca tennant, roy, ober, j., & lipow, a. g. ( ). crossing the internet threshold: an instructional handbook. berkeley, ca: library solutions press. a cookbook to run your own internet training sessions. real- world examples. foreword by cliff lynch. isbn: - - - $ . library solutions institute and press oregon street berkeley, ca / - fax: / - magazine matrix news, the monthly newsletter edited by john s. quarterman. subscriptions are $ per year. for a paper edition, $ /yr for an online edition. matrix news, matrix information & directory services, inc. (mids) clayton la. suite w austin, tx / - fax: / - mids@tic.com organizations cni coalition for networked information new hampshire ave., nw washington, dc / - fax: / - info@cni.org cpsr computer professionals for social responsibility po box palo alto, ca / - fax: / - cpsr newsletter, annual computers, freedom and privacy conference, poster ("technology is driving the future-- it's time to find out who's steering.") cpsr@clsi.stanford.edu eff the electronic frontier foundation, inc. second st. cambridge, ma / - fax: / - publishes the effector in online and print editions. t-shirts, bumper stickers ("i'd rather be telecommuting"; "isdn: make it so."; "cybernaut") eff@eff.org internet society preston white drive suite reston, va / - , fax / - annual conference, quarterly internet society news. isoc@nri.reston.va.us ============================================= for more information about this article: jean armour polly manager of network development and user training nysernet, inc. college place syracuse, ny - / - fax: / - jpolly@nysernet.org ============================================= institute for scientific information (isi). then we entered our search term: "liver and cyst/". the search word "cyst/" signified that "cyst" should match any words starting with these four characters. while searching, iquest gave the following progress report: scanning brs databases. accessing network...........completed. accessing database host.....completed. logging on..................completed. logging on (second step)....completed. selecting databases.........completed. each period equals one line of scanned data. this may take several minutes................................ it continued in the same way with a "scanning dialog databases." when the search results were presented, we glanced quickly at the article abstracts, ordered two articles to be sent us by mail and typed bye. compuserve reported "off at : est -nov- connect time = : ." the two articles arrived norway by mail a few weeks later. the whole trip, including visits in medical forums, took minutes. the cost, including local telephone and network charges, was us$ . of this total cost, the extra cost of searching through iquest amounted to us$ . . we all felt that the costs were well justified. | a note about the costs: the online tour was done manually, | | using full menus. we discussed our search strategy while | | connected, which is more expensive than logging off to plan | | the next moves. also, note that the extra cost of searching | | iquest ($ ) was not time dependent. | right now? i have promised to donate one kidney to my wife when the time comes. this has prompted me ( ) to join a mailing list for "organ transplant recipients and anyone else interested in the issues" (trnsplnt@wuvmd.bitnet). cancer ------ fidonet has the forum carcinoma (cancer survivors). bitnet has the discussion lists cancer-l@wvnvm and clan (cancer liaison and action network on clan@frmop ). compuserve has a cancer forum. newsnet offers the newsletter cancer researcher weekly. in september , the following message was posted on cancer- l by a member from brazil: "a close friend was just diagnosed with acute leukemia of a type called calapositive pre-b linphoplastic. it is supposedly an early diagnosis since he is not anemic. we are very shocked but he is reacting quite bravely and all he wants is to have access to literature on his condition. are there any new genetic engineering developments effectively clinically available? what is the present state of knowledge regarding this specific form of leukemia? he was diagnosed three hours ago, is yrs old, and will start chemotherapy tomorrow. he was informed that chemotherapy is quite effective in this type of leukemia. but we wonder if there isn't a possibility to use gene therapy. any help will be greatly appreciated. - dora." there were several helpful replies. this came from a member in the united states: "in response to the request for information on treatment for leukemia, i recommend that you access cancernet, the national cancer institute's mail server on the internet which provides current information on treatment for leukemia. to request the contents list and instructions, send a mail message to cancernet@icicb.nci.nih.gov (internet address) cancernet%icicb.nci.nih.gov@nihcu ( bitnet) leave the subject line blank, and in the body of the mail message, enter "help". when you receive the contents list, request the statement for adult acute lymphocytic leukemia (cn- ). there are also news and general information items, under the heading pdq database information in the contents list which provide information on centers which have access to physician data query, nci's database of cancer treatment information which includes clinical trials information for leukemia. - cheryl." cancernet is the u.s. national cancer institute's international information center. it is a quick and easy way to obtain, through electronic mail, recommended treatment guidelines from the national cancer institute's physician data query system. to access cancernet, send email to: cancernet@icicb.nci.nih.gov leave the subject line blank. in the body of the mail message, enter help to receive instructions and the current contents list. the national cancer center in tokyo japan has a gopher service at gopher.ncc.go.jp. the world health organization (who) has one at gopher.who.ch. disabilities ------------ bulletin boards and online conferences give equal access to all persons. everybody is treated the same way, regardless if they sit in a wheel chair, have a hearing impairment, stutter, cannot speak clearly, have difficulties in thinking or acting quickly, or just have a different looks. you need not worry about typing errors. those who read them will never know whether it's because you never learned how to write on a computer, or if it is because you have difficulties in controlling your movements. you alone decide if others are to know about your personal disability. if you want it to be a secret, then it will remain a secret. nobody can possibly know that you are mute and lame from the neck and down, that computer communication is your main gate into the outer world, and that you are writing messages with a stick attached to your forehead. therefore, the online world has changed the lives of many people with disabilities. computer communications have opened a new world for those who are forced to stay at home, or thinks that it is too difficult to travel. those who can easily drive their car to the library, often have difficulties in understanding the significance of this. usenet has alt.education.disabled and misc.handicap. it covers all areas of disabilities, technical, medical, educational, legal, etc. uucp has handicap. it is presented in the following words: contact: wtm@bunker.shel.isc-br.com purpose: the handicap digest provides an information/discussion exchange for issues dealing with the physically/mentally handicapped. topics include, but are not limited to: medical, education, legal, technological aids and the handicapped in society. compuserve's disabilities forum has the following sections: general interest, develop. disabilities, emotional disturbances, hearing impairments, learning disabilities, vision impairments, mobility impaired, rights/legislation, education/employment and family life/leisure. autism@sjuvm.bitnet is devoted to the developmentally disabled, their teachers, and those interested in this area. the list blind- l@uafsysb.bitnet focuses on "computer use by and for the blind." commdis@rpiecs.bitnet is a mailing list discussing "speech disorders." deaf-l@siucvmb.bitnet is the "deaf discussion list," and deafblnd@ukcc.uky.edu the "deaf-blind discussion list." stut-hlp (listserv@bgu.edu) is a support forum for people who stutter and their families. on l-hcap@ndsuvm .bitnet, the focus is on technology for the handicapped. backs-l@uvmvm.bitnet discusses research on low back pain disability. the handicap digest is an electronic mail only digest of articles relating to all types of issues affecting the handicapped. the articles are taken from the usenet newsgroup, the handicap news. (misc.handicap) and various fidonet conferences such as abled, blinktalk silenttalk, chronic pain, spinal injury, rare conditions, and several others. subscribe by email to wtm@bunker.shel.isc-br.com handicap.shel.isc-br.com ( . . . ) is the email address to an anonymous ftp site that has disability-related files and programs. the disk has some directories with or so files covering all types of disabilities. (this service can be used through ftpmail. see chapter about how to do this.) getting old ----------- bitnet has the "biosci ageing bulletin board" on ageing@irlearn . usenet has bionet.molbio.ageing, while compuserve's issues forum has a message section called "seniors." ageline on dialog is a database produced by the american association of retired persons. it does an excellent job covering research about older persons, particularly on consumer issues and health care, by summarizing journal articles and the contents of other published reports. while our "face-to-face" world sometimes makes it difficult for older people to participate in discussions between young people, this is not so in the online world. all people are treated the same way. it is impossible for others to know your age, unless someone tells them. holistic healing and health --------------------------- holistic on listserv@siucvmb.siu.edu is dedicated to "providing information and discussion on holistic concepts and methods of living which provide a natural way of dealing with the challenges of life." here are some topics dealt with in this forum: various dimensions of holistic healing and health states of consciousness meditation and the role it plays in spiritual/physical health the impact of a healthy diet - including herbs and vitamins bodywork - such as rolfing, trager bodywork, reichian, etc. acupuncture/pressure hypnosis and biofeedback visualizations and affirmations spiritual healing - psychic healing methods bioenergetics the holistic connection between mind and body honest discussion of topics relevant to personal/spiritual growth - and anything else within context for the betterment of the world. the following message is typical: from: helen subject: re: asthma and sinus problems to: multiple recipients of list holistic my condolences to fellow people allergic to cats. cats and strawberries are two of the most allergenic substances. behavorial changes have proven to be everything to me. the techniques i've employed have helped many others. first, try sleeping at a degree angle. this usually requires piling up pillows. the elevation of the head facilitates drainage from the sinuses. when the situation gets really bad, i've slept sitting up on a couch or arm chair propped up by numerous pillows and cushions. this technique can take some getting used to, but, it works like a charm and is kinder to your system than drug therapy. second, try "ephedra" tea. this is an herb found in chinese herb shops. ask the herbalist how to prepare it. i highly recommend the book "natural health, natural medicine" by andrew weil, m.d. of u of a med school in tucson. see pages - for more information on asthma. fourth, stay hydrated. this means not only drinking plenty of fluids, but humidifying the house (that is if you're not also allergic to molds). basic behavorial techniques are important....diet, exercise, etc. etc, ...but this is the holistic network...i'm preaching to the choir... finally, take heart! being allergic to cats is not well received by cat lovers...often we're cat lovers ourselves. depending on the breed of cat, there is a good chance you will eventually habituate to those you are around over the long term. good luck, the advice about sleeping with your head significantly elevated is the best i have ever given out to fellow sinus problem sufferers. it really works!! helen. homeonet, a service of the institute of global communications (igc), is for those interested in homeopathic medicine. list of health science resources -------------------------------- the bitnet/internet online list of health science resources is available by email from: listserv@templevm.bitnet . send the following command: get medical rscrs this will give a long list of bitnet, internet, and usenet forums, data archives, electronic newsletters and journals devoted to health science. here are some examples from the list that may be of interest to people not working in the health profession: * alcohol@lmuacad.bitnet - a discussion list for alcohol and drug studies, * behavior@asuacad.bitnet - behavioral and emotional disorders in children, * diabetic@pccvm.bitnet is the "open discussion forum for diabetic patient counseling," * diarrhoe@searn.bitnet (or diarrhoe@searn.sunet.se through the internet) is a forum for information exchange and discussions on all aspects related to diseases, disorders, and chemicals that cause diarrhoea in humans and animals, * diet@indycms.bitnet - support and discussion of weight loss * drugabus@umab.bitnet - drug abuse education information and research, * famcomm@rpiecs.bitnet - marital/family & relational communication. * fit-l@etsuadmn.bitnet - wellness, exercise, diet, for exchanging ideas, tips and any type of information about wellness, exercise, and diet. * granola@brownvm.bitnet - vegetarian discussion. * herb@trearn.bitnet - medicinal and aromatic plants discussion. * mslist-l@ncsuvm.bitnet - multiple sclerosis discussion and support. * rzamal-l@dkauni .bitnet - dental amalgam fillings and chronic mercury poisoning. * sportpsy@templevm.bitnet - exercise and sports psychology. * talk.abortion on usenet. these mailing lists usually let you search old messages for topics of interest. they are both living discussion forums and interesting searchable databases! mednews is a weekly electronic newsletter. its columns bring regular medical news summaries from usa today, center for disease control mmwr, weekly aids statistics from cdc, and more. send the following command to listserv@asuacad.bitnet to subscribe: sub mednews your-first-name your-last-name chapter : electronic mail, telex, and fax ========================================== electronic mail is one of the most popular online services. people living thousands of miles apart can exchange messages and documents very quickly. international resource development, inc., an american research organization, claimed ( ) that we can send electronic mail to more than million personal mailboxes. we believe the figure to be much higher. the matrix news (texas, u.s.a.) claims the number is over million (march ). the boardwatch magazine (u.s.a.) believes that new callers are coming online for their first time at a rate of close to , per day (january ). electronic mail & micro systems (new canaan, conn., u.s.a.) estimated an average of . million messages sent per month in . mail through the internet and grassroots services on free bulletin boards (like fidonet) is not included in their figure. the annual rate of increase in the number of messages is over % and increasing. if a given email service charges you us$ per hour, it will cost you a meager us$ . to send one typewritten letter (size a- , or around , characters). see chapter for a breakdown of this cost. if you live in norway, and send the letter by ordinary mail to a recipient in norway, postage alone is us$ . ( ). the cost is seven times higher than using email. to send the same letter from norway to the united states by ordinary mail will cost times more. this letter takes several days to reach the destination, while email messages arrive almost instantly. often, you can send email messages to several recipients in one operation - without paying extra for the pleasure. compare this to sending to several parties by fax! you do not have to buy envelopes and stamps, fold the sheet, put it into the envelope, and bring it to a mailbox. just let the computer call your favorite email service to send the letter. the recipient does not have to sit by the computer waiting for your mail. upon receipt, it will be automatically stored in his mailbox. he can read it when he has time. the recipient can print it locally, and it will be a perfect document, no different to one typed in locally. he can also make corrections or comments, and email onwards to a third party. in this way several people can work jointly on a report, and no time is it re-typed from scratch. when you receive several messages in the morning, you can very quickly create replies to them one at the time at your keyboard, and then send them in one go. no need to feed five different pieces of paper into a fax machine or envelopes for five different people. where you can find a telephone, you can also read mail. in most countries, communicating through email is easy and economical. by the way, the simple but miraculous thing about email is that you can quote easily and exactly the point to which you are replying. this is a revolution in communication, no? how to send email? ------------------- this is what it normally takes for a compuserve user to send me a message: type go mail to get to the "post office," and then type compose. "start writing," says compuserve. type your message manually, or send a file (text or binary). type /exit when done. "to whom?" asks compuserve. you enter: "odd de presno , ," or just my mailbox number ( , ). compuserve asks you to enter subject. you type: "hello, my friend!" your message has been sent. a few seconds later, the message will arrive in my mailbox. if i am online to compuserve at the moment, i will probably read it right away. if not, it will stay there until i get around to fetch it. above, we used the term "normally takes to send." please note that many users never ever type these commands! they use various types of automatic software to handle the mechanics of sending and receiving mail (see chapter ). other systems require different commands to send email. ulrik at the university of oslo (norway) is a unix system. so is the well in san francisco. on such systems, mail is normally sent using these commands: type "mail opresno@extern.uio.no". when the computer asks for "subject:," enter "hello, my friend!" type your message or send it. when done, enter a period (.) in the beginning of a line. ulrik will reply with "cc:" to allow you to 'carbon copy' the message to other people. if you don't want that, press enter and the message is on its way. while i wrote this book, i had to go to japan. a simple command allowed me to redirect all incoming mail to compuserve. as a result i could read and send mail by calling a local compuserve number in several japanese cities. though the commands for sending email differ between systems, the principle is the same. all systems will ask you for an address and the text of your message. on some, the address is a code, on others a name (like odd de presno). most systems will ask for a subject title. many will allow you to send copies of the message to other recipients (cc:). some services allow you to send binary files as email. binary files contain codes based on the binary numeration system. such codes are used in computer programs, graphics pictures, compressed spreadsheets and text files, and sound files. many online services let you send messages as fax (to over million fax machines), telex (to over . million telex machines), and as ordinary paper mail. we have tested this successfully on compuserve, mci mail and other services. on compuserve, replace "odd de presno , " with ">fax: ". my fax number is + . on mci mail type "create:". mci asks for "to:," and you type "odd de presno (fax)". mci asks for "country:". you enter "norway". by "recipient fax no" enter " " (the code for international calls). the country code for norway, , is added automatically. by "options?," press enter. when mci mail asks for more recipients, press enter. type your message and have it sent. to send a telex, you'll need the recipient's telex number, an answerback code, and the code of the recipient's country. if the message is meant for telex number , answerback zeto, and country russia (country code su), enter ">tlx: zeto su" when sending from compuserve. by entering ">postal", compuserve will send your mail to a business associate in california or brazil as a professional laser- printed letter. it will take you through the process of filling out the various address lines. the letter may well arrive faster than through ordinary mail. when the recipient is using another mailbox system -------------------------------------------------- when the recipient is using your mailbox service, writing addresses is simple. not so when your email has to be forwarded to mailboxes on other online services. the inter-system email address consists of a user name, a mailbox system code, and sometimes also routing information. the problem is that there is no universal addressing format. finding out how to write a given address may be surprisingly difficult. some services are not set up for exchange of email with other services. this is the case with my bulletin board, the saltrod horror show. to send mail to a user of this system, you'll have to call it directly and enter it there. this bulletin board is not connected to the outside world for exchange of mail. if your favorite system lets you send mail to other services, make a note about the following: * you need to know the exact address of your recipient, and whether he's using this mailbox regularly. many users have mailboxes that they use rarely or never. for example, don't try to send mail to my mailbox on dow jones/news retrieval. i only use this service sporadically. think of the easiest way for a recipient to respond before sending a message to him or her. * you need to know how to rewrite the recipient's address to fit your system. for example, you may have to use a domain address to send through internet, and a different form when sending through an x. network. (more about this later.) * the recipient's mailbox system may be connected to a network that does not have a mail exchange agreement with your system's network(s). sometimes, you can use a commercial mail relay service to get your message across (see chapter ). users of the internet can send messages to recipients on the dialcom network through the dasnet relay service. * sometimes, you need to know how to route a message through other systems to arrive at its destination. for example, a message sent from the ulrik computer in oslo must be routed through a center in london to get to dominique christian on the difer system in paris (france), internet -------- is the name of a computer network (here called "internet"), and a term used of a global web of systems and networks that can exchange mail with each other (here called "internet"). internet is a very large network that has grown out of arpanet, milnet, and other american networks for research and education. this core network has many gateways to other systems, and it's when we include these systems and their connections that we call it the internet. others call it worldnet or the matrix. internet users can exchange mail with users on networks like eunet, janet, uninett, bitnet, uucp, compuserve, mci mail, econet, peacenet, conflicnet, greennet, web, pegasus, applelink, alternex, nicarao, fredsnaetet, uunet, psi, usenet, fidonet and many others. we therefore say that these networks are also "on the internet." if you have access to the internet, you can send email to users of online services all over the world. you can send to people using bergen by byte and telemax in norway, twics in tokyo, and colnet in buenos aires. now is the time to take a closer look at the art of addressing mail through the internet. domain name addressing ---------------------- on the internet, the general form of a person's email address is: user-name@somewhere.domain my main, international internet mailbox address is: opresno@extern.uio.no you read the address from left to right. first, the local name of the mailbox (my name abbreviated). next, the name of the mailbox system or another identification code (in this case extern, to show that i have no affiliation with the university), the name of the institution or company (here uio or "universitetet i oslo"), and finally the country (no for norway). people have sent mail to my mailbox from new zealand, zimbabwe, guatemala, peru, india, china, greece, iceland, and armenia using this address. some users must send their messages through a gateway to the internet. in these cases, the address may have to be changed to reflect this: users of applelink use opresno@extern.uio.no@internet# . those on janet use opresno%extern.uio.no@eanrelay.ac.uk. on sprintmail, use ("rfc- ": <opresno(a)extern.uio.no>, site:internet) . compuserve subscribers use >internet:opresno@extern.uio.no . the core of these address formats is "opresno@extern.uio.no", in one way or the other. we call this basic addressing format a domain naming system. "extern.uio.no" is a domain. the domain may also contain reference to the name of a company or an organization, like in twics.co.jp, compuserve.com, or igc.org. the co, com, and org codes identify twics, compuserve and igc as companies/organizations. to send mail from the internet to my compuserve mailbox, use: . @compuserve.com normally (except on applelink), a domain address can only contain one @-character. when an address has to be extended with gateway routing information, replace all @-characters to the left in the address by %-characters. here is an example: bitnet uses a different addressing method (user@system). let's assume that you are subscribed to the club for lovers of japanese food (j-food-l@jpnknu .bitnet, see chapter ). you have a mailbox on internet, and want to send a recipe to the other members using the address j-food-l. on some internet systems, you can simply use the address: j-food-l@jpnknu .bitnet , and your mailbox system will take care of the routing for you. if this addressing method doesn't work, you can use different gateways into bitnet depending on where you live. the preferred method is to route through a gateway near to you. if living in north america, you may route cunyvm.cuny.edu using the following address: j-food-l%jpnknu .bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu the rightmost @ in this address is maintained. the one to the left has been replaced with a %. the term ".bitnet" tells the gateway machine where to forward the message. the following will happen: first, the message will be sent to system cunyvm at the education site cuny. cunyvm investigates the address, and discovers that the message is for bitnet. it cuts off all text to the right of "jpnknu ," and replaces the % with an @. the message is forwarded to the mailbox j-food-l on the bitnet system jpnknu at the kinki university in japan. bang addressing --------------- "bang" is american for "exclamation point" (!). the uucp network uses this variation of the domain addressing scheme. example: user jill small on econet in san francisco used to have the address pyramid!cdp!jsmall . read this address from right to left. the name of her mailbox is to the right. the name of the organization is in the middle. "pyramid" is the name of the network. some email systems can use bang addresses directly. (note that the ! character has a special function on unix computers. here, you may have to type the address as pyramid\!cdp\!jsmall to avoid unwanted error messages. the \ character tells unix to regard the next character as a character, and not as a system command. this character may also have to precede other special characters.) other systems do not accept bang addresses directly. here, the users must send such messages through a gateway. the american host uunet is a frequently used gateway. if routing through uunet, you may write the address like this: pyramid!cdp!jsmall@uunet.uu.net if your system absolutely refuses to accept exclamation points in addresses, try to turn the address into a typical internet address. write the address elements in the internet sequence (left to right). replace the exclamation points with %-s, like this: jsmall%cdp%pyramid@uunet.uu.net this method works most of the time. when it works, use this addressing form. bang paths may fail if an intermediate site in the path happens to be down. (there is a trend for uucp sites to register internet domain names. this helps alleviate the problem of path failures.) some messages must be routed through many gateways to reach their destination. this is the longest address that i have used, and it did work: hpda!hplabs!hpscdc!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!oldcolo!dave@uunet.uu.net it used to be the internet address of a user in colorado, u.s.a.. today, he can be reached using a much shorter address. if you are on uucp/eunet, you may use the following address to send email to odd de presno: extern.uio.no!opresno. addressing international electronic mail sometimes looks like black magic. to learn more, read some of the books listed in appendix . we have found "the matrix" by john s. quarterman to be particularly useful. the conference infonets (general network forum) is another source. here, the internet postmasters discuss their addressing problems. activity is high, and you will learn a lot about the noble art of addressing. (this is not the place to ask for olav janssen's norwegian email address, though. this question should be sent to a norwegian postmaster.) you can subscribe to infonets by sending the following mail: to: listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet subject: (you can write anything here. it will be ignored.) text: sub infonets your-first-name your-last-name if your mailbox is on another network, alter the address to route your subscription correctly to this listserv. | hint: you can search the database of old infonets messages by | | email to listserv@dearn.bitnet. see "directories of services | | and subscribers" below for information about how to search | | listserv databases. | while the global matrix of networks grows rapidly, it is still behind in some lesser-developed nations and poorer parts of developed nations. if interested in these parts of the world, check out gnet, a library and a journal for documents about the efforts to bring the net to lesser-developed nations. archived documents are available by anonymous ftp from the directory global_net at dhvx .csudh.edu ( . . . ). chapter has information on how to use ftp if you only have mail access to the internet. to subscribe to a conference discussing these documents, send a request to gnet_request@dhvx .csudh.edu. cc:mail gateways ---------------- many local area networks have been connected to the global matrix of networks. compuserve offers a cc:mail gateway. lotus cc:mail is a pc lan based email system used in corporate, government and other organizations. when sending from compuserve mail to a cc:mail user through this gateway, a typical address may look like this: >mhs:pt-support@performa to send to this user from the internet through compuserve's mhs gateway, write the address like this: pt-support@performa.mhs.compuserve.com other vendors of lan gateways use other addressing methods. x. addressing ---------------- x. is a standard for electronic mail developed by ccitt. it is used on large networks like at&t mail, mci mail, sprintnet, ge information system, dialcom, and western union, and on other public and private networks throughout the world. edi (electronic data interchange) uses x. as a transport mechanism for coordination of electronic part ordering, stock control and payment. x. is used to connect edi systems between companies and suppliers. the x. addressing syntax is very different from domain addressing. to send a message from an x. mailbox to my address (opresno@extern.uio.no), you may have to write it like this: (c:no,admd:uninett,prmd:uninett,o:uio,ou:extern,s:opresno) alas, it's not so standard as the domain addressing schemes. on other x. networks, the address must be written in one of the following formats - or in yet other ways: (c:us,a:telemail,p:internet,"rfc- ":<opresno(a)extern.uio.no>) ("rfc- ": <opresno(a)extern.uio.no>, site:internet) '(c:usa,a:telemail,p:internet,"rfc- ":<opresno<a>extern.uio.no>) del' (site: internet,id: <opresno<a>extern.uio.no>) "rfc- =opresno(a)extern.uio.no @ gateway]internet/telemail/us" to send an internet message to a mailbox i once had on the x. host telemax in norway, i had to use the following address: /i=d/g=odd/s=presno/o=kud.datasekr/@pcmax.telemax.no to send from internet to telemail in the us, i have used this address: /pn=telemail.t.support/o=telenet.mail/admd=telemail/c=us/@sprint.com if you need to route your message through gateways, then complexity increases. one norwegian uucp user had to use the following address to get through: nuug!extern.uio.no!"pcmax.telemax.no!/i=d/g=odd/s=presno/o=kud.datasekr/" to send a message from an x. system to my compuserve mailbox, i have used the following address elements: country = us admd = compuserve prmd = csmail dda = . the addressing methods used on x. systems vary. another example: some use the code c:usa rather than the iso country code c:us. mci mail uses c:norway, c:usa, and c:sweden. here are some important x. codes: c the iso country code (on most services) admd domain code for public system (abbreviation a) prmd domain code for connected private system (abbreviation p) o organization name ou organization unit s surname (last name) g given name (first name) i initials (in the name) dda domain-defined attributes, keywords defined and used by the individual systems to specify mailboxes (user name, list, station, user code, etc.), direct delivery devices (attention name, telex addresses, facsimile, etc.) pn personal name (a) the character @ cannot be used when routing messages from x. to internet. try (a) instead. (p) the character % cannot be used when routing messages from x. to internet. try (p) instead. (b) the character ! (used in "bang" addresses). (q) the character " used in email addresses. rfc- this code tells x. that an internet domain address follows. does not work on all x. systems. returned mail ------------- when an email address is incorrect in some way (the system's name is wrong, the domain doesn't exist, whatever), the mail system will bounce the message back to the sender. the returned message will include the reason for the bounce. a common error is addressing mail to an account name that doesn't exist. let's make an error when sending to listserv@vm .nodak.edu. enter "pistserv@vm .nodak.edu" instead of "listserv@vm .nodak.edu". this address is wrong. below, we've printed the complete bounced message. it contains a lot of technical information. most lines have no interest. also, the message is much larger than the original message, which contained three lines only. when browsing the bounced message, note that it has three distinct parts: ( ) the mail header of the bounced message itself (here, the first lines), ( ) the text of the error report (from line until the line "original message follows:"), and ( ) the mailer header and text of your original message (as received by computer reporting the error): from mailer@vm .nodak.edu fri dec : : return-path: <mailer@vm .nodak.edu> received: from vm .nodak.edu by pat.uio.no with smtp (pp) id < - @pat.uio.no>; fri, dec : : + received: from ndsuvm .bitnet by vm .nodak.edu (ibm vm smtp v r ) with bsmtp id ; fri, dec : : cst received: from ndsuvm .bitnet by ndsuvm .bitnet (mailer r . ) with bsmtp id ; fri, dec : : cst date: fri, dec : : cst from: network mailer <mailer@vm .nodak.edu> to: opresno@extern.uio.no subject: mail delivery error status: r batch smtp transaction log follows: ndsuvm .bitnet columbia mailer r . bsmtp service ready. helo ndsuvm ndsuvm .bitnet hello ndsuvm mail from:<opresno@extern.uio.no> <opresno@extern.uio.no>... sender ok. rcpt to:<pistserv@ndsuvm > <pistserv@ndsuvm >... recipient ok. data start mail input. end with <crlf>.<crlf> -mail not delivered to some or all recipients: no such local user: pistserv quit ndsuvm .bitnet columbia mailer bsmtp service done. original message follows: received: from ndsuvm by ndsuvm .bitnet (mailer r . ) with bsmtp id ; fri, dec : : cst received: from pat.uio.no by vm .nodak.edu (ibm vm smtp v r ) with tcp; fri, dec : : cst received: from ulrik.uio.no by pat.uio.no with local-smtp (pp) id < - @pat.uio.no>; fri, dec : : + received: by ulrik.uio.no ; fri, dec : : + date: fri, dec : : + from: opresno@extern.uio.no message-id: < .aaulrik @ulrik.uio.no> to: pistserv@vm .nodak.edu subject: test index kidlink the first part of the bounced message is usually of no interest. hidden in the second part you'll find the following interesting line: no such local user: pistserv ah, a typo! if your original message was long, you're likely to be pleased by having the complete text returned in the third part of the bounced message. now, you may get away with a quick cut and paste, before resending it to the corrected address. the text and codes used in bounced messages vary depending on what type of mailbox system you're using, and the type of system that is bouncing your mail. above, mailer@vm .nodak.edu returned the full text of my bounced mail. some systems just send the beginning of your original text, while others (in particular some x. systems) send nothing but a note telling you the reason for the bounce. | note: when you fail to understand why a message is being | | bounced, contact your local postmaster for help. send him | | a copy of the complete text of the bounced message up to | | and including the line "subject:" at the bottom. | | you do not have to send him the text of your original | | message! | replying to an internet message ------------------------------- on the internet, electronic messages have a common structure that is common across the network. on some systems, you can reply by using a reply command. if this feature is not available, use the sender's address as given in the mail header. the bounced message contained two mail headers: the header of my original message (in part three), and the header of the bounced message (in part one). the 'good' reply address is laid out in the 'from:' header. thus, this message contains the following two 'good' addresses: from: network mailer <mailer@vm .nodak.edu> from: opresno@extern.uio.no the network mailer located the second address line above in my original message, and used this address when sending the bounced message. (note: there is no point in sending a message back to mailer@vm .nodak.edu since this is the address of an automatic mail handling program. write to postmaster@vm .nodak.edu to talk to a "real person" at this computer center.) the exact order of a message's header may vary from system to system, but it will always contain the vital 'from:' line. | note: exercise caution when replying to a message sent by | | a mailing list. if you wish to respond to the author only, | | make sure that the only address you're replying to is that | | person's. don't send it to the entire list! | directories of services and subscribers --------------------------------------- there is no complete global directory of available electronic addresses. on many systems, however, you can search lists of local users. | normally, you'd be better off by calling the recipient for | | his or her email address. | sometimes, the information given you by the recipient is not enough. maybe the address needs an extension for the message to be routed through gateways to the destination. another typical problem is that the syntax of the address is wrong. perhaps you made a mistake, when you wrote it down (kidcafe became kidscafe). the return address in the received messages' mailer headers may be wrong. it may use a syntax that is illegal on you email system, or it may suggest a routing that is unknown to your system. when trying to send mail to this address, the mailer-daemon complains: "this is a non-existent address." again, the first person to contact for help is your local postmaster. on most internet hosts this is simple. if you have a mailbox on the ulrik computer at the university of oslo, send a request for help to postmaster@ulrik.uio.no . if you are on colnet in buenos aires, send to postmaster@colnetr.edu.ar . postmaster is also the address to turn to on bitnet. users of fidonet or relaynet, should write to sysop. it may not be that simple to locate the postmaster on uucp. the postmaster id may exist on some systems, but often he's just a name or a user code. you can get the email address of known internet systems by sending a message to service@nic.ddn.mil . in the subject of the message, write the command whois host-machine-name. do not write anything in the text (will be ignored). you will get a report of the desired mailbox computer, and the address of the local postmaster. example: to: service@nic.ddn.mil subject: whois aero.org text: sometimes, you just don't know the name of a recipient's mailbox computer. when this is the case, start at the "top of the pyramid." say your desired recipient lives in germany. the iso country code for germany is de (see appendix ). send the message to: service@nic.ddn.mil subject: whois domain de text: this will give you the email addresses of the main postmasters for this country. most postmasters are willing to help, but please note that most of them are very busy people. it may take days before they get around to respond to your inquiry. there are over other "whois-servers" in more than countries. the systems whois.nic.ad.jp and whois.ripe.net cover japan and europe. the rest of them provide information about local users. (a list is available via anonymous ftp from sipb.mit.edu in the file /pub/whois/whois-servers.list . chapter has information about how to get this list by email). if your recipient is on uucp, try netdir@mcsun.eu.net . to locate the postmaster of the mailbox system "amanpt ", use the following format (write nothing in the text): to: netdir@mcsun.eu.net subject: amanpt text: bitnet provides information about connected systems through many sources. scandinavian users use listserv@finhutc.bitnet in finland. try a listserv on a host closer to where you live. for example, north american users may use listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet, which is a host in north dakota. japanese users should write to the host listserv@jpnknu .bitnet. when retrieving for bitnet host information mail, your search will have to be done in two steps. here, your commands are not to be entered on the subject line. enter all commands in the text field (text on the subject line will be ignored). example: you want information about the bitnet computer finhutc (called a "node in the network"). your first message should have the following text: // job echo=no database search dd=rules //rules dd * search * in bitearn where node = finhutc index listserv sends you the following report: > search * in bitearn where node = finhutc --> database bitearn, hit. > index ref# conn nodeid site name ---- ---- ------ --------- / finhutc helsinki university of technology, finland send a new search message to the listserv containing the same commands as above. add one line in which you ask for database record number (given in the column ref#). like this: // job echo=no database search dd=rules //rules dd * search * in bitearn where node = finhutc index print listserv will return a report with a lot of information. here is part of it: node: finhutc country: fi internet: finhutc.hut.fi net: earn nodedesc: helsinki university of technology, finland p_hsalmine: harri salminen;lk-hs@finhutc;+ p_pautio: petri autio;postmast@finhutc;+ p_vvoutila: vuokko voutilainen;opr@finhutc;+ routtab: rscs (netserv,postmast@finhutc) for more information about searching bitnet databases, send this message to your favorite listserv, or use the address below: to: listserv@finhutc.bitnet subject: nothing text: get listdb memo x. systems are developing an address directory according to ccitt standard x. . the plan is to connect several directories. the developers hope that routing of x. messages may eventually be done automatically without the user needing to know the identity of the recipient's mailbox computer. x. will certainly help x. users. the problem is that most email is still carried by other types of systems, and that x. has no concern for mail transported through "foreign systems." dialcom ------- is a commercial, global online service, which have many nodes in africa and latin america. to send mail from dialcom to the internet you must use commercial gateway-services like dasnet (see appendix ). to send mail from one dialcom system to another, use the syntax :ewp . this address points to mailbox ewp on system number . to send mail from internet to dialcom user ynp on system , use the following address when sending through dasnet: _ynp @dcdial.das.net note: only registered users with dasnet can use this method. fidonet ------- users of this global network can send and receive mail to/from the internet. for example, a fidonet user may use the following method to send to my internet address: send the message to user uucp at : / . the first line of the text of the message should contain: to: opresno@extern.uio.no add a blank line after the address before entering the text of your message. fidonet addresses are composed by three or four numbers; zone:net/node or zone:net/node.point the fidonet address : / has three elements. " :" tells that the recipient lives in zone number (north america). " / " refers to node number , which receives mail through net number . this node has an automatic gateway to the internet. another example: jan stozek is sysop of "home of pcq" in warsaw, poland. the node number of his bbs is . he receives mail through net number . poland is a country in europe, zone number . the address to his system is: : / . his user name is jan stozek. you can send an internet message to anyone in fidonet by using the following template: <firstname>.<lastname>@p<point>.f<node>.n<net>.z<zone>.fidonet.org where <firstname> is the person's first name <lastname> is the person's last name to send a message from the internet to jan, use this address: jan.stozek@f .n .z .fidonet.org one final example: ola garstad in oslo has the fidonet address : / . use the address ola.garstad@f .n .z .fidonet.org , when sending mail to him through the internet. an updated list of global fidonet nodes can be retrieved from most connected bbs systems. for more information -------------------- if you have access to bitnet or internet mail, get "the inter- network mail guide." it describes how to send mail between electronic mail systems like applelink, bitnet, bix, compuserve, connect-usa, easynet, envoy, fidonet, geonet, internet, mci, mfenet, nasamail, peacenet, sinet, span, sprintmail, and more. send a message to the bitnet address listserv@unmvm.bitnet. in the text of the message enter: get network guide this list is also posted monthly to the usenet newsgroups comp.mail.misc and news.newusers.questions. the document "faq: how to find people's e-mail addresses" is regularly posted to the usenet group news.answers. it is also available by email from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu . to get a copy, put the command "send usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses" in the body of your message. chapter : free expert assistance ================================= this may sound too good to be true. many computer experts are ready to help you without asking a dollar in return. the same is the case with experts in other areas. you have an impossible decision to make. a lawyer has a dotted line that requires your signature, or a surgeon has a dotted line in mind for your upper abdomen. you're not comfortable with the fine print or the diagnosis and wonder if a second opinion is in order. just ask, and get help. if you have problems with your communications program, post a message on a bulletin board. do the same thing if you want to sell equipment. learn from other people's experiences with computers or software that you plan to buy. you will get a reply - if the subject or you attract interest. in the process, you'll get new friends, and be able to follow the development in a dynamic marketplace. the following message from compuserve is typical: -nov- : : sb: back & forth software fm: joan healy to: john nelson changed my mind about grandview: . learning curve like mt. everest. give me intuitive or give me death. . lack of patience with " ". . lack of time. . it may be unsuited for what i wanted (outlining a book). since becoming a born-again galaxian, i've started using that for the outline, and i'm happy. there's nothing like a decision and a permanent bonding and lifelong commitment to make a woman happy. remember that, you louts. :-) many users prefer open conference messages to private email for their technical discussions. this gives "the group" a chance to read, comment, provide additional facts, and return with new questions. the reactions to one simple question may be overwhelming, but most of the time the contributions are useful and educational. since the discussion is public, regard it as your personal online university. offer opinions when you have something to contribute, or keep silent. in most conferences, some members are critical to "lurkers." a "lurker" is someone who read without ever contributing. don't let them get to you. do not feel bad about being silent. most other members are there only to watch and learn as well. if you consider buying a newly released computer program, tune in to the section of your favorite online service that deals with products from this manufacturer. count messages with complaints of the new program before buying. when you have received your new program, return to read other users' experiences and to pick up practical advice. it will never hurt to offer your own two cents' worth in the process. | visit online services that have many users who know more than | | most. there, you will usually get faster and better replies to | | your questions. it is far cheaper to ask than to search. | start with bulletin boards. if you have never visited a bbs, call one in your neighborhood to get a feel for what this is. most of them can be accessed free. usually, their only requirement is that you answer some self-presentation questions before being granted full access to their system. most bulletin boards offer conferencing and archives filled with shareware and public domain software. many also have files or bulletins listing telephone numbers of other boards in your country or area. the trick is to find know-how. the larger the online service, the more skilled people are likely to "meet" there regularly. therefore, if local bulletin boards fail to satisfy your needs, visit the large commercial services. compuserve and exec-pc are two services in the top league. bix is another good source of information for professional computer specialists. one exception: when you need contact with one particular person, who knows your problem in detail, go where he uses to go. examples: if you need top advice about the communications program galink, call mike's bbs in oslo (at + - ). if you buy modems from semafor a/s, the best place for expert advice is semaforum bbs (tel. + - - ). if you have a novell local area network, visit the novell forums on compuserve. for users of ms-dos computers ----------------------------- i visit the following compuserve forums regularly: ibm communication - about communication software for ms-dos computers. ibm hardware - about new ibm compatibles, expansion cards, displays, hard disks, ibm ps/ , software for performance evaluation, printers, etc. ibm systems/utilities - about dos, utilities, shells, file utilities, and much more. a large software library. ibm applications - about all kind of applications. the forum has a large file library full of shareware and public domain software. many compuserve forums are operated or sponsored by software and hardware vendors, like: adobe systems inc., aldus corp., ashton-tate corp., autodesk inc., borland international, broderbund software inc., buttonware inc., cadkey inc., crosstalk communications, customs technologies, enable software, datastorm technologies inc., microsoft systems, nantucket corp., lotus development corp., novell inc., peter norton computing, quarterdeck office systems, quicksoft, sun microsystems (tops division), symantec corp., toshiba, turbopower software, and wordperfect corp. compuserve has hundreds of other forums with associated libraries of files and programs. fidonet has the pc_tech and pcug conferences, and a long list of product specific echos like quickbbs, pctools, zmodem, desqview and windows.sharew . bitnet has clipper (clipper@brufpb), i-ibmpc (i-ibmpc@uiucvmd), pc-l (pc-l@ufrj), and the abstract service info-ibmpc (ibmpc- l@bnandp ). on exec-pc, look under ms-dos systems. usenet has many offerings including the following: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc discussion about ibm personal computers. comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest the ibm pc, pc-xt, and pc-at. (moderated) comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware xt/at/eisa hardware, any vendor. comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt topics related to ibm's rt computer. comp.sys.ibm.ps .hardware microchannel hardware, any vendor. for help with lotus - - , there are two compuserve forums. there is a lotus conference on relaynet. wordperfect corp. has a support forum on compuserve. wordperf is the equivalent offering on relaynet. on ilink, visit wordperfect. for support about ami pro, visit compuserve's ldc word processing forum. for owners of amiga computers ----------------------------- fidonet has a long list of conferences for amiga users: amiga amiga international echo amigagames amiga gaming amiga_comms amiga communications software and hardware amiga_desktop amiga desktop publishing amiga_info amiga_info amiga_lc amiga lattice/sasc c echo amiga_net_dev amiga network developers. amiga_pdreview amiga pd reviews & requests amiga_perfect amiga word perfect & word processing amiga_prog amiga programmer's international conference amiga_sysop amiga sysop's discussion/ads echo amiga_ug amiga user's groups amiga_video amiga video and animation exec-pc has the amiga hardware and amiga software conferences, and a large library with shareware and public domain files. ilink has the amiga conference. usenet's com.sys.amiga hierarchy has entries like advocacy, announce applications, audio, datacomm, emulations, games, graphics, hardware, introduction, marketplace, multimedia, misc, programmer, reviews and more. abstracts of comp.sys.amiga conferences are available through several bitnet mailing lists, like amigahar@dearn, amiga-d@ndsuvm , and amiga-s@ndsuvm . most online services have "find this file" commands. the most powerful ones are often found on free bulletin boards. on compuserve, type go amiga to get to cbmnet and get the following welcome menu: amiga forums amiga arts forum amiga tech forum amiga user's forum amiga vendor forum amiga file finder commodore forums commodore arts and games commodore applications forum commodore service forum commodore newsletter a while ago, we visited cbmnet to find a communications program. from the menu above, selection five took us to the amiga file finder service, and this menu: file finder amiga about file finder instructions for searching how to locate keywords access file finder your comments about file finder choice four lets us search for files using keywords, file creation dates, forum names, file types, file name extension, file name or author. our choice was searching by keywords. the result was a long list of alternatives: enter search term: comm amiga file finder amigatech/c programming comsrc.arc amigatech/c programming pmdsrc.lzh amigatech/c programming pntsrc.lzh amigauser/communications bbsind.lzh amigauser/communications intouc.arc etc. by entering numbers, we asked for short descriptions of file number through . here is one of them: filename : intouc.arc forum: amigauser lib: communications lib #: submitter: [ , ] -mar- size: accesses: this is a modified comm . . it supports both vt and ansi. the vt emulation is based on dave wecker's vt program. there is automatic dialer, split screen that is configurable, phone book, and other nice features. this is what we were looking for. first, enter go amigauser to get to the forum. enter "dl " to get to downloading library number . intouch.arc was retrieved using the compuserve quick b transfer protocol. this protocol is usually the most efficient choice on this service. there are also active amiga forums on bix, genie, and cix (england). apple users ----------- fidonet has an apple conference. bitnet has apple -l (apple - l@brownvm). compuserve has apple ii programmers forum, apple ii users forum, apple ii vendor forum, mac community clubhouse forum, mac developers forum, mac fun/entertainment forum, mac hypertext forum, mac new users/help forum, mac system . forum, mac system software forum, macuser forum and macweek forum. similar services are found on many other online services. you will also find conferences devoted to support of popular commercial software for apple computers. other computers --------------- there are so many types of computers: atari computers, the trs- series and others from tandy, dec computers, mainframes from ibm, hewlett-packard computers, cp/m machines, users of ldos/trsdos or os , apricot, z , timex/sinclair, archimedes, psion, and armstrad. even so, there is a high probability that you can find online support for almost all of them. this is so even if the vendor is out of business long ago. compuserve is a good place to start. chapter : your electronic daily news ===================================== read national and global news before they are announced by the traditional media. get those interesting background facts. read special interest news stories that seldom appear in print. sure, you read newspapers, watch tv, and listen to radio. but did you know how limited their stories are? traditional news media just give you a small part of the news. their editors are not concerned about your particular interests. they serve a large group of readers, viewers or listeners with different interests in mind. go online to discover the difference. the online news has an enormous width and depth. besides "popular" news, you will find stories that few editors bother to print. this may give you better insight in current developments, and in as much details as you can take. most commercial online services offer news. most of their stories come from large news agencies and newspapers. you can also read and search articles from magazines, newsletters and other special publications. the online users' ability to search today and yesterday's news makes these offerings particularly useful. the cost of reading a given news item varies by online service. what will set you back cents on one service, will cost you two dollars on another. it may be many times more expensive (or cheap) to read the same article from the same news provider on another online service. so, professional online users compare prices. national news ------------- in norway, we have long been able to read local language news from print media like aftenposten, dagens naeringsliv, kapital, and news wires from ntb and other local sources. similarly, local language news is available online in most countries. the cost of reading local news on national online services tends to be more expensive than on major global online services. as competition among global news providers increases, however, this is bound to change. international news ------------------ "the global village" is an old idea in the online world. news from most parts of the world has long been globally available. a while ago, a well-known norwegian industrialist visited my office. i showed off online searching in newsnet newsletters and stumbled over a story about his company. "incredible!" he said. "we haven't even told our norwegian employees about this yet." often, american online services give news from other countries earlier you can get it on online services from these countries. besides, the stories will be in english. | in , the united states had percent of the world's online | | databases (source: the research company iq, september ). | sure, most norwegians prefer to read news in norwegian. the japanese want news in their language, and the french in french. if they can get the news earlier than their competitors, however, most are willing to read english. few master many languages. unless you live in a country where they talk arabic, chinese or french, chances are that you cannot read news in these languages. english, however, is a popular second choice in many countries, and it has become the unofficial language of the online world. another thing is that reading local language news is risky. translators often make mistakes. one reason is time pressure, another poor knowledge of the source language. the risk of inaccuracies increases when a story, for example initially translated from spanish into english, then are being translated into a third language. avoid news that has been translated more than once. if not, you may experience something like this: on september , , norwegian tv brought news from moscow. they told that russian president boris yeltsin had a heart attack. the online report from associated press, which arrived . hours earlier, talked about "a minor heart attack" with the following additional explanation: "in russian, the phrase 'heart attack' has a broader meaning than in english. it is commonly used to refer to a range of ailments from chest pains to actual heart failure." your "personal online daily newspaper" will often give you the news faster and more correctly than traditional print media. some news is only made available in electronic form. seven minutes in --------------------- on september , i called compuserve to read news and gather information about online news sources. according to my log, i connected through infonet in oslo (see chapter ). the total cost for seven minutes was us$ . , which included the cost of a long distance call to oslo. i read some stories, while they scrolled over the screen. all was captured to a file on my hard disk for later study. the size of this file grew to . characters, or almost single-spaced typewritten pages (a- size). if i had spent less time reviewing the lists of available stories, seven minutes would have given a larger file. when i had entered my user id and password, a menu of stories came up on my screen. the headline read "news from compuserve." the two first items caught my attention, and i requested the text. one had lines about an easier method of finding files in the forum libraries. the other had ten lines about how to write addresses for international fax messages. the command go apv brought me directly to associated press news wires. you'll find such tricks by reading the online services' user manuals. this command produced the following menu: ap online apv- latest news-updated hourly weather sports national washington world political entertainment business news wall street dow jones average feature news today in history i entered " " for business news, and got a new list of stories: ap online women, minority businesses lag child world accuses toys r us upi may cancel worker benefits drilling plan worries florida uk stocks dip, tokyo's higher dollar higher, gold up farm exports seen declining supermarket coupons big bucks cattlemen tout supply, prices tokyo stocks, dollar higher more ! the screen stopped scrolling by "more !". pressing enter gave a new list. none of them were of any interest. pressing m (for previous menu) returned me to the apv- menu (the videotext page number is given in the upper right corner of each menu display). i selected "world" for global news, which gave me this list: ap online two killed in nagorno karabakh yugoslavia fighting rages on storm kills five in japan afghan rebels going to moscow? killed in guatemala quakes more ! oh, a storm in japan! interesting. i was due to leave for japan in a couple of weeks, and entered at the more ! prompt to read. a screenful of text was transferred in a few seconds. "this is for later study," i said, pressed m to return to the menu, and then enter to get the next listing: ap online bomblets kill american troops? no movement on hostage release baker plans return to syria baker, king hussein to confer madame chiang leaving taiwan? baker leaves syria for jordan klaus barbie hospitalized iraq denounces u.s. threat yelstin said resting at home ss auschwitz guard found dead more ! here, i used another trick from the user manual. entering " , , " gave three stories in one batch with no pauses between them. five screens with text. if i had read the menu more carefully, i might probably also have selected story . it looked like an interesting item. "this is enough of the associated press," i thought, and typed g news. this gave me an overview of all available news sources ("g news" is an abbreviation for "go news," or "go to the main news menu"): news/weather/sports news executive news service ($) newsgrid associated press online weather sports the business wire newspaper library uk news/sports entertainment news/info online today daily edition soviet crisis first, a quick glance at . the service presented itself in these words: "throughout the day the business wire makes available press releases, news stories, and other information from the world of business. information on hundreds of different companies is transmitted daily to the business wire's subscribers." then # : "this database contains selected full-text stories from newspapers from across the united states. classified ads are not included in the full-text of each paper." the list of newspapers included boston globe, chicago tribune and san francisco chronicle (known for many interesting inside stories from silicon valley). choice gave news from england. there, i selected uk news clips, which gave the following options: u.k. news clips stories selected rtw / yugoslav air force hits croatian communications rtw / croatia battles continue as ec ponders peace force rtw / arab papers say moscow wants mideast parley delayed rtw / dollar stands still, shares drift lower in ... rtw / earnings gloom reverses london stocks' early gains rtw / soviets need . billion dollars food aid, ec says rtw / ira says it killed timber yard worker in belfast docks rtw / british conservative chief plays down talk of ... rtw / finance rates rtw / reuter world news schedule at gmt thursday ... the numbers in column four are the release times of the stories. they flow in from the wires in a continuous stream. next stop was the uk newspaper library. here, you can search in full-text stories from the daily and sunday telegraph, financial times, the guardian, uk news (with selected stories from the daily & sunday telegraph, financial times, the guardian, the times/sunday times, today, the independent, lloyd's list and the observer). searching the uk newspaper library costs us$ . for up to ten hits. you get a selection menu of the first ten stories found. a menu with an additional ten stories costs another $ . , etc. you pay us$ . to read the full text of selected stories. these rates are added to compuserve's normal access rates. the news service soviet crisis was my final destination. this was just a few weeks after the attempted coup in moscow, and i was eager for reports. i found the following interesting story from otc newsalert: otc / first english language sovdata dailine is launched this selection gave me three screens with information about a new online service. briefly, this is what it said: "the sovdata dialine service includes an on-line library of more than soviet newspapers, business and economic periodicals, profiles of more than , soviet firms and key executives that do business with the west, legislative reports and other information." it also said that part of the database was available through mead data central (nexis/lexis), and that it would be made available through like data-star, ft profile, reuters, westlaw, and gbi. undoubtedly, the name has changed by the time you read this. finally, a fresh story about the fate of kgb. i read another fifty lines, entered off (for "goodbye compuserve"), and received the following verdict: thank you for using compuserve! off at : edt -sep- connect time = : seven minutes. fifteen typed pages of text. us$ . . not bad! an overwhelming choice ---------------------- i am confident that your "daily online newspaper" will contain other stories. if you're into computers, you may want to start with online today, compuserve's daily newspaper. it brings short, informative news stories about the computer industry. newsbytes is another interesting source for computer news. it offers global headline news from its bureaus around the world. the articles are sorted in sections called apple, business, general, government, ibm, review, telecom, trends and unix. a favorite! newsnet is also available through genie, ziffnet on compuserve, newsnet, dialog, in the newsgroup clari.nb on usenet, and various bbs systems around the world. i read it through a norwegian bbs (euronet in haugesund). for general news, start with major newswires, like associated press, agence france-presse, xinhua, reuters, and the like. you will find them on many commercial services including newsnet, compuserve, and dialog. frognet - the french way ------------------------ if you know french, check out frognet. this french language service brings daily news from agence france press, and often has added excerpts from the french dailies. frog is distributed by the services of the french embassy in washington. it covers world affairs, european and french items, assembled, naturally, from a french point of view. the service is free. to subscribe, send a message through the internet to frog@guvax.georgetown.edu . it should contain your answers to the following electronic application form. replace the %s with your inputs (this is french, right?): nom: % prenom: % naissance:../../..% arrivee:../../..% depart:../../..% email: % ecole d'origine: % qualite: % adresse de recherche: % pays: % state: % universite: % recherche: % motscles: % domaine: % complicated? ok, here's some instructions in "french ascii": * pour les dates veuillez utiliser le format francais (dd/mm/yy). arrivee: c'est la date d'arrivee dans le pays ou vous etes actuellement. * qualite: etes vous vsn, phd, master, ingenieur, post-doc ...? * ecole d'origine: diplome obtenu en france * pays: us, australie .... * state: pour les us en lettres (ny, tx, ca) * universite: actuelle ou societe * recherche: soyez explicite ! * motscles: (ex: neuronaux, polymeres, tvhd...) * domaine: en lettres confere nomenclature ci-dessous nomenclature de la national science foundation. agr agriculture bio biological sciences hes health sciences eng engineering cis computer and information sc. mat mathematics phy physical sciences ast astronomy atm atmospheric & meteorological sciences che chemistry geo geological sciences phs physics oph other physical sciences psy psychology sos social sciences hum humanities his history let letters fll foreign languages & literature ohu other humanities edu education edg education general ted teacher education tef teaching fields prf professional fields bus business & management com communications pfo other professional fields oth other fields news is more than news ---------------------- after some time, your definition of the notion "news" may change. since so many conferences are interesting sources, they should also be a part of your news gathering strategy. check in regularly to read what members report about what they have seen, done, heard, or discovered. by the way, professional news hunters have also discovered this. online conferences are popular hunting grounds for reporters of the traditional press. fidonet has many conferences with specialized news contents: anews news of the us and world bbns bbs news service bionews environmental news el_salvador analysis and news about el salvador nicanet analysis and news about nicaragua pacific_news pacific news panama analysis and news about panama bitnet has mailing lists like: china-nn china-nn@asuacad china news digest (global news) currents currents@pccvm south asian news and culture india-l india-l@templevm the india news network pakistan pakistan@asuacad pakistan news service sedsnews sedsnews@tamvm news about space from seds tssnews tssnews@psuvm tunisian scientific society news rferl-l (on listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu) distributes the rfe/rl research institute daily report. it is a digest of the latest developments in the former soviet union and eastern europe. the report is published monday through friday by the rfe/rl research institute, a division of radio free europe/radio liberty inc. in germany. some mailing lists bring a steady flow of news from various sources. seasia-l@msu - the southeast asia discussion list - is one example. the list is "designed to facilitate communication between researchers, scholars, students, teachers, and others interested in southeast asian studies with an emphasis on current events." seasia-l defines southeast asia loosely as burma/myanmar across to hong kong and down through australia and new zealand. regularly, it brings full-text news stories from inter press service, regional news agencies, and newspapers/radio. some examples: on jul. , , a full-text story from ips: "philippines: ramos urges repeal of anti-communist law." on aug. , , full- text story from the new straits times (singapore): "schoolgirs involved in flesh trade, says farid." on aug. , "anti-vietnamese force turns up in cambodia" (reuter). seasia-l also brings "underground" reports like "the burma focus," a bimonthly newsletter published by the all burma students' democratic front. ecuador brings news from ecuador. daily news bulletins from "diario hoy" are posted to the list. send rone@skat.usc.edu your subscription request. many compuserve forums have news sections. if you're into hot news and rumors about amiga computers, read messages in section of the amiga tech forum. consumer electronics forum has the section "new products/news." the journalist forum has "fast breaking news!" the motor sports forum has "racing news/notes." the online today forum has "in the news." newsnet's list of newsletters that you can read or search online is long, and back issues are also available. for example: africa news, agence france-presse international news, applied genetics news, asian economic news, asian political news, business travel news, catholic news service, cd computing news, computer reseller news, electronic materials technology news, electronic trade & transport news, electronic world news, high tech ceramics news, inter press service international news, international businessman news report, news from france, northern ireland news service, online product news, sourcemex -- economic news on mexico, and xinhua english language news service (china). the inter press service's newsletter international news focuses on third world countries, and news from europe/north america of interest to these countries (also available through impress on nexis). usenet brings news from bangladesh, india and nepal in misc.news.southasia. the clarinet hierarchy gateways newsgroups from commercial news services and "other official" sources, like: biz.commodity commodity news and price reports. feature feature columns and products canada.briefs regular updates of canadian news in brief. biz.economy economic news and indicators biz.top top business news books books & publishing. briefs regular news summaries. bulletin major breaking stories of the week. consumer consumer news, car reviews etc. demonstration demonstrations around the world. disaster major problems, accidents & natural disasters. economy general economic news. entertain entertainment industry news & features. europe news related to europe. fighting clashes around the world. hot.east_europe news from eastern europe. hot.iraq the gulf crisis hot.panama panama and general noriega. news.top top us news stories. news.top.world top international news stories. news.trends surveys and trends. news.urgent major breaking stories of the day. a feed of clarinet news is available for a fee and execution of a license. (write info@clarinet.com for information.) uucp has which brings regular news bulletins from poland (contact: przemek@ndcvx.cc.nd.edu). behind the news --------------- in an effort to garner new subscribers and retain current readers, magazine publishers turn to online services to create an ancillary electronic version of their print product. their readers are being transformed from passive recipients of information into active participants in publishing. you can "talk" to byte's writers on bix, and with pc magazine's writers through ziffnet on compuserve. their forums function as expert sources. here, you will often learn about products and trends sometimes before the magazines hit the newsstand. infoworld, an american computer magazine, runs the infoworld online service on compuserve. enter go inf to get to the following menu: infoworld on-line infoworld welcome to infoworld about infoworld online read current week's news - / / read prior week's news - / / download current week's reviews, comparisons and test drives ($) download prior week's reviews, comparisons and test drives ($) searching help search review/comparisons/ impressions/test drives comments to infoworld infoworld highlights comprehensive computer product comparisons and reports. you can browse this or previous weeks' comparisons and reviews, or search the entire collection. you can search by company name, product, software and hardware category. britain's two best-selling pc magazines share the pc plus/pc answers online forum on compuserve (go pcplus). pc magazine, another american magazine, has several forums on compuserve. they also operate a bulletin board. people from ai expert magazine can be encountered in the ai expert forum. dr. dobb's journal is in the dr. dobb's journal forum. the entrepreneur's small business forum (compuserve) is managed by representatives from the magazine. live sound!, a magazine devoted to the midi sound field, occupies section and library of the midi b vendor forum. time magazine has a forum on america online. there, readers can discuss with magazine reporters and editors, and even read the text of entire issues of time electronically before it is available on newsstands. the online world shareware book, the one you're reading just now, also has a forum. for information about how to join, send email to listserv@vm .nodak.edu (or listserv@ndsuvm on bitnet). in the text of your message, write the command "get tow master". chapter : looking for a needle in a bottle of hay =================================================== experienced users regularly clip news from online services, and store selected parts of it on their personal computers' hard disks. they use powerful tools to search their data, and know how to use the information in other applications. regular clipping of news is highly recommended. it is often quicker and easier to search your own databases than to do it online. since your data is a subset of previous searches, your stories are likely to have a high degree of relevancy. there are many powerful programs for personal computers that let you search your personal data for information. read chapter for more on this. while secondary research can never replace primary information gathering, it often satisfies most information needs related to any task or project. besides, it points in the direction of primary sources from where more in-depth information may be elicited. when your personal database fails to deliver -------------------------------------------- regular "clipping" can indeed help you build a powerful personal database, but it will never satisfy all your information needs. occasionally, you must go online for additional facts. when this happens, you may feel like don quixote, as he was looking "for a needle in a bottle of hay." the large number of online offerings is bewildering. to be successful, you must have a sound search strategy. your first task is to locate useful sources of information. the next, to decide how best to find that specific piece of information online. you must plan your search. although one source of information, like an online database, is supposed to cover your area of interest, it may still be unable to give you what you want. let me explain with an example: you're tracking a company called ibm (international business machines). your first inclination is to visit forums and clubs concerned with products delivered by this company. there, you plan to search message bases and file libraries. what is likely to happen, is that the search term ibm gives so many hits that you almost drown. to find anything of interest in these forums, your search terms must be very specific. general news providers, like associated press, may be a better alternative. usually, they just publish one or two stories on ibm per week. don't expect to learn about details that are not of interest to the general public. ap's stories may be too general for you. maybe you'll be more content with industry insiders' expert views, as provided by the newsnet newsletters outlook on ibm, or the report on ibm. the level of details in a given story depends in part on the news providers' readers, and the nature of the source. the amount of "noise" (the level of irrelevancy) also varies. in most public forums, expect to wade through many uninteresting messages before finding things of interest. we suggest the following strategy: step : locate sources that provide relevant information, step : check if the information from these sources is at a satisfactory level of details, and that the volume is acceptable (not too much, neither too little). step : study the service's search commands and procedures, plan, and then search. start by asking others! ----------------------- step is not an easy one. start by asking other online people for advice. this may be the fastest way to interesting sources. if looking for information about agriculture and fisheries, visit conferences about related topics. ask members there what they are using. if you want information about computers or electronics, ask in such conferences. | when you don't know where to start your search, ask others! | | their know-how is usually the quickest way to the sources. | if this doesn't help, check out genie's home office/small business roundtable, a hangout of online searchers. visit compuserve's working from home forum, which has a section for information professionals (# ), and the section for new librarians in the journalism forum. patent searchers are a very specialized group. they discuss common problems on dialog's dialmail. their bulletin board is named piug. buy user manuals ---------------- some online services send free user information manuals to their users. others charge extra for them. if they do, buy! they're worth their weight in gold. the user manuals from dialog, dow jones news/retrieval and compuserve make good reading. the last two also publish monthly magazines full of search tips, information about new sources, user experiences, and more. dialog distributes the monthly newsletter chronolog. newsnet customers periodically receive a printed listing of available newsletters by subject area, and a presentation of their information providers. the newsnet action letter (monthly) is also distributed by mail. on some services, you can retrieve the help texts in electronic form. doing that is not a bad idea. it is often quicker to search a help file on your disk, than to browse through a book. monitor the offerings --------------------- professional information searchers monitor the activity in the online world. they search databases for information about new sources of information, and regularly read about new services. on most online services, you can search databases of available offerings, and a section with advertisements about their own 'superiorities'. keep an eye on what is being posted there. newsnet lets you read and search the following newsletters: worldwide videotex update, worldwide databases (#pb ), online newsletter, the online newsletter, and the online libraries and microcomputers. the last two are also available as a database from information intelligence, inc., (p.o. box , phoenix, az , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - ). you can read the text on newsnet about one week before it appears in print. these two newsletters can also be read and searched on dialog and data-star, as part of the information access pts newsletter database. information access is a full-text database with many specialized newsletters for business and industry. on compuserve, you can get to information access through the iquest gateway to newsnet. subscribing to the online newsletter costs us$ . per year ( issues) for companies, and us$ . for personal use ( ). for both newsletters, the price is us$ . . these newsletters are also available on cd-rom. the disk contains four databases: the online newsletter, online hotline, online libraries and microcomputers, major online vendors and *joblines* with more than eight thousand full-text articles from january until today. the cd-rom version is delivered with a menu-driven searching program. each word in every article and headline has been indexed and can be located in all databases. the price for subscriptions of the printed version is us$ . . price for nonsubscribers: us$ . . the september issue of the online newsletter had the following index (partial): ***************************** *new & forthcoming databases* ***************************** ) multimedia cia world fact book (cd-rom) [review] ) north american indians on cd-rom (cd-rom) [review] ) world ceramics abstracts (orbit) ) gene-tox (toxnet/nlm) ) uk trademarks (orbit) [renamed] ) brs adds databases to its offerings ) current patents (orbit) ) new england journal of medicine on cd-rom (cd-rom) ) aluminum standards database [aaasd] (stn ) plasnews (stn international) ) epic announces new databases ) disclit: american authors (cd-rom - oclc) ) cross-cultural: crime and social problems (cd-rom) ) international pharmaceutical abstracts (cd-rom) ) ringdoc (cd-rom - silverplatter) ) codus (esa-irs) ) moody's company data (cd-rom) ) federal news service (dialog) ) inpadoc database to be made available in japan (dialog) ) software cd: descriptions & reviews (cd-rom) ) monarch notes on cd-rom (cd-rom) an earlier issue of the newsletter reviewed the encyclopedia of information systems and services, a three-volume "bible" for online users and producers ( th edition): eiss covers more than , organizations, systems, services, more than five thousand databases, publications, software products, etc. their international listing covers , information organizations in countries, and has pages. topics: online host services, videotex/teletext information services, pc oriented services, data collection and analysis services, abstracting and indexing services, computerized searching services, software producers, magnetic tape/diskette providers, micrographic applications and services, library and information networks, library management systems, information on demand services, transactional services (new category), document delivery services, sdi/current awareness services, consultants, associations, research and research projects, and electronic mail applications. contact: gale research company, griswold, detroit, mi , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . price per set: us$ . . the european common market -------------------------- many services bring news and information from the european common market. the common market's free database service, i'm-guide, is a good place to start. i'm-guide is available through echo in luxembourg by telnet to echo.lu . at the question "please enter your code," enter echo and press return. you can search i'm-guide for information sources, send email inquiries to echo, and more. searches can be done in english, french, german, italian, spanish, dutch, danish, and portuguese. if you have problems using i'm-guide, call the echo help desk in luxembourg at + - . more sources about sources -------------------------- the "internet-accessible library catalogs and databases" report is available by email from listserv@unmvm.bitnet. put the following command in the text of your message: get library package cuadra/elsevier (box , madison square station, new york, ny - , u.s.a. tel.: + ) sells a directory of online databases, which lists databases available around the world. the catalog can be searched on orbit and data-star. the online access publishing group inc. (chicago) sells "the online access guide." annual subscription for this printed manual costs us$ . (six issues - ). the link-up magazine is another interesting source. if living in north america, contact learned information inc., old mariton pike, medford, nj - , u.s.a.. if living elsewhere, contact learned information (europe) ltd., woodside, hinskey hill, oxford ox au, england, if you live outside north america. tel.: + . price: us$ . for six issues/year ( ). an online version is available through ziffnet's business database plus on compuserve. two monthly magazines, information world review (price: gbp /year) and fulltext sources online from bibliodata inc. in the united states, is also available through learned information. (bibliodata, p.o. box , needham heights, ma , u.s.a.) fulltext sources online publishes their listing of full-text databases twice per year. the price is gbp gbp per booklet or gbp per year. the newsletter scannet today (c/o helsinki university of techn. library, otnaesvaegen , sf- esbo, finland) presents news of scandinavian databases by country. subscription is free. computer readable databases from gale research is available both in print and online through dialog. write to gale research company, griswold, detroit, mi , u.s.a. many electronic journals and newsletters are available through the internet, covering fields from literature to molecular biology. for a complete list, send a message to listserv@acadvm .uottawa.ca with the following commands in the body of your text: get ejournl directry get ejournl directry practical hints about online searching -------------------------------------- we cannot give a simple, universal recipe valid for all online services. what is the best approach on one service, may be useless on others. most services offer full online documentation of their search commands. you can read the help text on screen while connected, or retrieve it for later study. make a note about the following general tricks: in conferences and forums: -------------------------- many services have commands for selective reading of messages. for example, on compuserve you can limit your search to given sections. you can also select messages to be read based on text strings in the subject titles. the command rs;s;cis access from japan; displays all messages with the text "cis access from japan" in their subject titles starting with message number . online searching often starts by selecting databases. the next step is to enter search words (or text strings), and a valid time frame (as in "between / / and / / "). the following sample search terms are used on newsnet: video* search for all words starting with video. "*" is a wild-card character referring to any ending of the word. video* matches words like videotext and videoconference. sony and video the word sony and the word video. both words must be present in the document to give a match. sony within/ video both words must be present in the text, but they must not be farther apart than ten words. (proximity operators) ibm or apple either one word or the other. many services let you reuse your search terms in new search commands. this can save you time and money, if there are too many hits. for example: if ibm or apple gives , hits, limit the search by adding "from january st.," or by adding the search word "notebook*". in file libraries ----------------- the commands used to find files are similar to those used in traditional databases. often, you can limit the search by library, date, file name, or file extension. you can search for text strings in the description of the contents of a file, or use key words. example: you're visiting a bulletin board based on the bbs program rbbs-pc. you want a program that can show gif graphics picture files. such files are typically described like this: vuimg .exe - - gif*/tiff/pcx picture viewer/printer from left to right: file name, size in bytes, date available, and a character description. you can search the file descriptions for the string "gif". you do this by entering the term "s gif all". this will probably give you a list of files. some will have the letters gif in the file name. others will have them in the description field. using ands and ors ------------------ boolean searching may seem confusing at first, unless you already understand the logic. there are three boolean operators that searchers use to combine search terms: and, or, and not. use the boolean operator and to retrieve smaller amounts of information. use and when multiple words must be present in your search results (mercedes and volvo and citroen and prices). use or to express related concepts or synonyms for your search term (fruit or apples or pears or bananas or peaches). be careful when using the not operator. it gets rid of any record in a database that contains the word that you've "notted" out. for example, searching for "ibm not apple" drops records containing the sentence, "ibm and apple are computer giants." the record will be dropped, even if this is the only mention of apple in an article, and though it is solely about ibm. use not to drop sets of hits that you have already seen. use not to exclude records with multiple meanings, like "chips not potato" (if you are looking for chips rather than snack foods). often, it pays to start with a "quick-and-dirty" search by throwing in words you think will do the trick. then look at the first five or records, but look only at the headline and the indexing. this will show you what terms are used by indexers to describe your idea and the potential for confusion with other ideas. use proximity operators to search multiword terms. if searching for "market share," you want the two words within so many words of another. the order of the words, however, doesn't matter. you can accept both "market share" and "share of the market." searching by email ------------------ mci mail and mci fax have a program called information advantage, under which online services and newsletters can deliver search results and other information over the online services. dialog, dun & bradstreet, newsnet, and individual inc. have signed up for the program. you can request a search by direct email to say dialog. the search results will be returned to you via mci mail or mci fax. with dun and bradstreet, you call them for a credit report and they send it to you. with history associates, you send them a message via mci mail, and they report to you. using bitnet discussion lists through internet ---------------------------------------------- to get a directory of internet/bitnet mailing lists, send the following email message: to: listserv@vm .nodak.edu subject: (keep this blank) text: list global you will receive a long list of available sources of information. a recent copy had over two thousand lines of text. each mailing list is described with one line. all these mailing lists can be used by email through the internet. here is a random selection: network-wide id full address list title --------------- ------------ ---------- aesrg-l aesrg-l@umcvmb applied expert systems research group list agric-l agric-l@uga agriculture discussion aidsnews aidsnews@eb ub aids/hiv news anime-l anime-l@vtvm japanese animedia and other animation news. banyan banyan-l@akronvm banyan networks discussion list bridge bridge@ndsuvm bridge communication products chem-l chem-l@uoguelph chemistry discussion ejcrec ejcrec@rpiecs electronic journal of communication famcomm famcomm@rpicicge marital/family & relational communication sovnet-l sovnet-l@indycms ussr electronic communication list the column "network-wide id" contains the names of the mailing lists. "full address" contains their bitnet email addresses. "list title" is a short textual description of each conference. keep the list on your hard disk. this makes it easier to find sources of information, when you need them. subscribing to mailing lists ---------------------------- each line in the list above refers to a mailing list, also often called 'discussion list'. they work like online conferences or message sections on bulletin boards, but technically they are different. (read about kidlink in chapter for background information.) all bitnet mailing lists are controlled by a program called listserv on the host computer given in column two above (for example @umcvmb). they offer "conferencing" with the following important functions: * all "discussion items" (i.e., electronic messages sent to the lists' email address) are distributed to all subscribers. * all messages are automatically stored in notebook archives. you can search these log files, and you can have them sent to you as electronic mail. * files can be stored in the lists' associated file libraries for distribution to subscribers on demand. where to send a subscription request, depends on where you are communicating from relative to the host running the listserv. if this host is your nearest bitnet listserv, then send the request to the address in column two by replacing the list name by listserv. example: aesrg-l@umcvmb is administered by listserv@umcvmb. subscribe (or signoff) by email to listserv@umcvmb.bitnet . if there is a listserv closer to where you live, then you should subscribe to the nearby system rather than to the remote. this helps keep the total costs of the international network down. example: you live in norway. the nearest listserv is at finhutc. to subscribe to aesrg-l@umcvmb, send to listserv@finhutc.bitnet . use the addresses in column two when sending messages to the other members of the discussion lists, but do not send your subscription requests to this address!! if you do, it will be forwarded to all members of the mailing list. chances are that nothing will happen, and everybody will see how sloppy you are. so, you subscribe by sending a command to a listserv. the method is similar to what we did when subscribing to infonets in chapter . if your name is jens jensen, and you want to subscribe to sovnet-l, send this message through the internet (assuming that ndsum is your nearest listserv host): to: listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet subject: (you can write anything here. will be ignored.) text: sub sovnet-l jens jensen when your subscription has been registered, you will receive a confirmation. from this date, all messages sent to the list will be forwarded to your mailbox. (send "signoff sovnet-l" to this address, when you have had enough.) some lists will forward each message to you upon receipt. others will send a periodic digest (weekly, monthly, etc.). to send a message to sovnet-l, send to the bitnet address in column two above. send to sovnet-l@indycms.bitnet review the following example. most bitnet lists will accept these commands. example: subscription to the china list --------------------------------------- china-nn is listed like this in the list of lists: china-nn china-nn@asuacad china news digest (global news) scandinavians may subscribe to china-nn by internet mail to listserv@finhutc.bitnet . north american users may send their mail to listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet . if your name is winston hansen, write the following command in the text of the message sub china-nn winston hansen when you want to leave china-nn, send a cancellation message like this: to: listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet subject: (nothing here) signoff china-nn note: send the cancellation command to the address you used, when subscribing! if you subscribed through listserv@finhutc, sending the signoff command to listserv@ndsuvm will get you nowhere. send to listserv@finhutc. never send the signoff command to the discussion list itself! always send to the listserv. monitoring the action --------------------- thinknet is an online magazine forum dedicated to "thoughtfulness in the cybertime environment." it brings reviews of significant and thought-provoking exchanges within our new electronic nation. this electronic publication is free. if you're interested in philosophy, subscribe by sending a message through internet to thinknet@world.std.com . write the following in the text of the message: send thinknet to your-full-name at userid@your-internet-email-address example: if your email address is opresno@extern.uio.no and your name odd de presno, use the following command: send thinknet to odd de presno at opresno@extern.uio.no thinknet is also available through the philosophy conference on the well, and on genie in the philosophy category under the religion and ethics bulletin board. (hard copy versions can be bought through thinknet, po box , orange ca - , u.s.a.). if you're on the well, read the topic "news from around well conferences" to learn about new developments. these are some mailing lists that may help you locate sources of interest: netscout (netscout@vmtecmex) the bitnet/internet scouts. subscribe by email to listserv@vmtecmex.bitnet with the following in the text of your message sub netscout yourfirstname yourlastname this is where you can discuss and exchange information about servers, ftp sites, filelists, lists, tools, and any related aspects. help-net (help-net@templevm) bitnet/cren/internet help resource. send email to listserv@templevm.bitnet with the text sub help-net yourfirstname yourlastname the list's main purpose is to help solve user problems with utilities and software related to the internet and bitnet networks. the library contains several good help files for novice networkers. a great place for new internet users! other sources available through the internet -------------------------------------------- the interest groups list of lists is available by electronic mail from mail-server@nisc.sri.com . send a message with the following text in the message body: send netinfo/interest-groups note that as of april , the file was over , , bytes in size. it will be returned to you in moderately sized pieces. you can search the list of lists by email. say you're looking for a mailing list related to robotics. to find out, send a message to listserv@vm .nodak.edu containing the following commands: //listsrch job echo=no database search dd=rules //rules dd * search robotics in lists index search robotics in intgroup index search robotics in new-list index replace the search word 'robotics' with whatever else you may be looking for. the usenet list of news groups and mailing lists is available on hosts that run usenet news or netnews servers and/or clients in the newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.lists. the members of news.newusers.questions, alt.internet.help, alt.internet.access.wanted, and alt.internet.new-users readily accept your help requests. alt.internet.services focuses on information about services available on the internet. it is for people with internet accounts who want to explore beyond their local computers, to take advantage of the wealth of information and services on the net. services for discussion include: * things you can telnet to (weather, library catalogs, databases, and more), * things you can ftp (like pictures, sounds, programs, data) * clients/servers (like muds, irc, archie) every second week, a list of internet services called the "special internet connections list" is posted to this newsgroup. it includes everything from where to ftp pictures from space, how to find agricultural information, public unix, online directories and books, you name it. dartmouth maintains a merged list of the listserv lists on bitnet and the interest group lists on the internet. each mailing list is represented by one line. to obtain this list, send a message to listserv@dartcms .bitnet . enter the following command in the text of the message: index siglists internic information service maintains an announcement-only service at listserv@is.internic.net called net-happenings. it distributes announcements about tools, conferences, calls for papers, news items, new mailing lists, electronic newsletters like edupage, and more. to subscribe, send a message to the listserv containing this command: subscribe net-happenings your name internic's automated mail service is at mailserv@rs.internic.net. it allows access to documents and files via email. to use it, send email to the mailserv with the word "help" in the subject field of your mail. how to get more out of your magazine subscriptions -------------------------------------------------- pc magazine (u.s.a.) is one of those magazines that arrives here by mail. we butcher them, whenever we find something of interest. the "corpses" are dumped in a high pile on the floor. to retrieve a story in this pile is difficult and time consuming, unless the title is printed on the cover. luckily, there are shortcuts. logon to pc magnet on compuserve. type go pcmag to get the following menu: pc magnet download a pc magazine utility pc magazine utilities/tips forum pc magazine editorial forum pc magazine programming forum pc magazine after hours forum pc magazine product reviews index free! - take a survey submissions to pc magazine letters to the editor subscribe to pc magazine choice six lets you search for stories. once you have a list with page/issue references, turning the pages gets much easier. pc magazine is owned by the media giant ziff-davis. pc magnet is a part of ziffnet on compuserve. so is computer database plus, which lets you search through more than , articles from over popular newspapers and magazines. the oldest articles are from early . the database is also available on cd-rom, but the discs cover only one year at a time. cdp contains full-text from around magazines, like personal computing, electronic news, macweek and electronic business. stories from the other magazines are available in abstracted form only. to search the database, cdp, you pay an extra us$ . per hour. in addition, you pay us$ . per abstract and us$ . per full-text article ( ). these fees are added to your normal compuserve access rates. ziffnet also offers magazine database plus, a database with stories from over magazines covering science, business, sport, people, personal finance, family, art and handicraft, cooking, education, environment, travel, politics, consumer opinions, and reviews of books and films. the magazines include: administrative management, aging, changing times, the atlantic, canadian business, datamation, cosmopolitan, dun's business month, the economist, the futurist, high technology business, journal of small business management, management today, the nation, the new republic, online, playboy, inc., popular science, research & development, sales & marketing management, scientific american, technology review, un chronicle, unesco courier and u.s. news & world report. in the next chapter, we will present another ziffnet magazine database: the business database plus. magazine index (mi), from information access company (u.s.a.), is another source worth looking at. it covers over consumer and general-interest periodicals as diverse as special libraries and sky & telescope, motor trend and modern maturity, reader's digest and rolling stone. many titles go as far back as . although most of the database consists of brief citations, mi also contains the complete text of selected stories from a long list of periodicals. it is available through dialog, compuserve, brs, data-star, dow jones news/retrieval, nexis, and others. say you so often get references to a given magazine that you want a paper subscription. try the electronic newsstand, which is available by gopher or telnet to gopher.netsys.com. if these internet commands are unavailable, try mail to staff@enews.com. finding that book ----------------- over libraries around the world are accessible by the internet telnet command. some of them can also be accessed by internet mail. this is the case with bibsys, a database operated by the norwegian universities' libraries. i am into transcendental meditation. i'm therefore constantly looking for books on narrow topics like "mantra". to search bibsys for titles of interest, i sent mail to genserv@pollux.bibsys.no . the search word was entered in the subject title of the message. by return email, i got the following report: date: fri, jul : : nor from: genserv@pollux.bibsys.no subject: searching bibsys search request : mantra database-id : bibsys search result : hits. the following is one of the references. i have forwarded it to my local library for processing: forfatter : gonda, j. tittel : mantra interpretation in the satapatha-brahmana / by j. gonda. trykt : leiden : e.j. brill, . sidetall : x, s. i serie : (orientalia rheno-traiectina ; ) isbn : - - - - uhf ka - uhf/indo rh iii b gon the danish library database rex may be accessed through most international packet switching networks. its network user address (nua) is . when connected, enter rc and press return. press esc once. the system will respond with att. enter kb rex, and you're ready to search dansk bogfortegnelse since , dansk musikfortegnelse since , and isds denmark. barton is the library system of massachusetts institute of technology. its database contains everything received since except magazine articles, brochures, and technical reports from sources outside m.i.t. phone: + - - - ( bps). press enter a couple of times to access the system. on compuserve, there is a section for book collectors in the coin/stamp/collectibles forum, and a weekly book chat section in the sciencefiction & fantasy forum. in the electronic mall, you can buy books directly from ballantine books, penguin books, small computer book club, the mcgraw-hill book company, time-life books and walden computer books. on the internet, roswell computer books ltd. (canada) has an online bookstore with a database of over , titles ( ). gopher to nstn.ns.ca, select "other gophers in nova scotia", and then "roswell electronic computer bookstore". failing access to gopher, send your email requests to roswell@fox.nstn.ns.ca . the book review digest (go bookreview) is compuserve's database of bibliographical references and abstracts of reviews (since ). you can search by title, author, and keywords found in the text of book reviews. compuserve also offers book reviews through magazine database plus. "books in print" is a north american bibliographic reference database. it is available on brs and compuserve. south african bibliographic and information network has a gopher service at info .sabinet.co.za. fidonet has comics (the comic book echo), bitnet the list rare book and special collections catalogers (notrbcat@indycms). newsnet has the computer book review newsletter and on the well you'll find the "computer books" conference. oclc's worldcat is a reference database covering books and materials in libraries worldwide. bookworms may appreciate the bitnet discussion list dorothyl (listserv@kentvm.kent.edu), and especially if they like agatha christie, josephine tey and dorothy l. sayers. on usenet, you will find alt.books.reviews, k .library, alt.books.technical, rec.arts.books, and misc. books.technical, and more. on the internet, there are a rapidly growing number of library online public-access catalogs (opacs) from all over the world. some provide users with access to additional resources, such as periodical indexes of specialized databases. more than library catalogs are now online ( ). an up-to-date directory of libraries that are interactively accessible through internet can be had by anonymous ftp from ftp.unt.edu (then: cd library). file name: libraries.txt. check out the end of chapter for how to get the file by email (ftpmail). you will also find full electronic versions of books. this book is one example. many texts are courtesy of project gutenberg, an organization whose goal is to develop a library of , public domain electronic texts by the year . since books are often quite large, they are somewhat bulky for email transfer. if you have direct internet access, use anonymous ftp instead. many books are available through the /pub/almanac/etext directory at oes.orst.edu. for more about how to use the almanac information server, send almanac@oes.orst.edu the following email command: send guide for a list of books, add the line send gutenberg catalog among the offerings, you'll find the complete sherlock holmes mysteries, the unabridged works of shakespeare, aesop's fables, alice's adventures in wonderland, the holy bible, the love teachings of kama sutra, the holy koran, the oedipus trilogy (sophocles), peter pan, roget's thesaurus ( ), and the world fact book ( - cia). if quite impossible to locate a given book, try the rare books and special collections forum at exlibris@rutvm .bitnet. non-chinese speaking people will probably classify chinese poems as 'rare'. many of them are impossible to read, unless your computer can handle the special characters, and you know their meaning. still interested? if yes, subscribe to chpoem-l@ubvm.bitnet . be prepared to use your big and guobiao utilities. chapter : getting an edge over your competitor ================================================ we must be willing to risk change to keep apace with rapid change. the key is moderation and balance, supported by sufficient information to allow meaningful feedback. it requires adaption by management and staff in developing the necessary skills and vision. this chapter starts with how to use the networks to manage projects. next, it treats how to monitor competitors, prospects, suppliers, markets, technologies, and trends. it winds down with marketing and sales by modem. project coordination -------------------- so far we have mainly been looking at sources of information. let us start this chapter with some words about 'online conference rooms' for project coordination. several services offer rental of private conference areas to businesses. corporations have discovered them to be an efficient way of coordinating a group of people, who are far apart from each other geographically. they are also useful when team members are constantly on the move and hard to gather face to face. many international companies use such services regularly. the applications are different. they range from tight coordination with suppliers and subcontractors, to development of company strategies and new organizational structures. renting an online conference room has advantages over doing it in-house. the company does not have to buy software, hardware, expensive equipment for communications, and hire people for to run and maintain a conferencing system. the more international the business, the better. for ideas about how to set up and operate a coordination conference. study how volunteer organizations do it. one place to check out is kidplan, one of several coordination conferences used by kidlink (see chapter and ). kidplan is usually most active during april and may each year. this is when their annual projects are being closed down, and new projects are started. read the dialog between coordinators to get an idea of how the medium is being used. old conference messages are stored in notebook files. you can therefore have the full coordination dialogs sent you by email. send all requests for notebook files to listserv@vm .nodak.edu getting notebook files is a two-step process. in your first message to the listserv, ask for a list of available files. do this by using the following command in your email: index kidplan the listserv will return a list of files. the following part is of particular interest: / / kidplan log b all own v / / : : started on wed, may : : cdt / / kidplan log c all own v / / : : started on wed, may : : cdt / / kidplan log d all own v / / : : started on wed, may : : + don't bother about the details. you just want file names, and dates. the file log b contains all messages from may until may. if you want all these three files, send another message to listserv with the following lines: get kidplan log b get kidplan log c get kidplan log d the files will be forwarded to your mailbox. note: some mailbox services have restrictions on the size of incoming mail. this may prevent you from receiving large notebook files. if this happens, contact your local postmaster for help. some email systems are unable to forward your return-address correctly to listserv. if you suspect that this is the reason for lack of success, try the following commands: give kidplan log b to your-correct-return-address give kidplan log c to your-correct-return-address give kidplan log d to your-correct-return-address making it work -------------- making online conferences and task force meetings work, can be a challenge. most of the dialog is based on the written word. the flow of information can be substantial thus causing an information overload for some participants. to overcome this, many companies appoint moderator-organizers for their online conferences. this person: adds value by setting agendas; summarizing points; getting the discussion(s) back on track; moving on to the next point; mediating debate; maintaining address and member lists; acting as general sparkplug/motivator to keep things flowing by making sure that contributions are acknowledged, relevant points are noted, new members are welcomed, silent "read-only members" are encouraged to participate, and the general atmosphere is kept appropriate to the goals of the conference/task force meeting. great online conferences don't just happen. hard work is required. a few people must be responsible for getting the meetings fired up and keep the discussion rolling. the meeting's organization may depend on the number of participants, where they come from, the exclusivity of the forum, and the purpose of the "meeting." in large meetings, with free access for outsiders, the best strategy may be to appoint a moderator-editor. this person filters contributions, gathers new information, summarizes scattered contributions, does background research. filtering may be needed in conferences that are open to customers and media. the main purpose, however, is to help participants cope with the absolute flow of information. a conference can have an educational purpose. if so, you may bring in someone who can add value by bringing experience and expertise to the group. you will also need someone to do all the dirty jobs everyone expects to be done - but never notices until they are not done. this person must keep the show running by serving as a benevolent tyrant, sheriff, judge, mediator, general scapegoat, and by playing a role in setting the general policy and atmosphere of the meeting. now, back to the 'normal' applications of the online resource. monitoring what others do ------------------------- the best business opportunities are outside your company, in the external world. we need to monitor customers and markets, find technologies to help develop and build products, research new business actions, find new subcontractors and suppliers, people to hire, and persons to influence to boost sales. in this marketing age, where sales calls cost hundreds of dollars and business-to-business marketers use the telephone or the mails to reach prospects, complete and accurate market lists are most valuable commodities. there are many other questions: what are our most important customers and their key people doing? what new products are they promoting? who are their joint-venture partners? what else may influence their willingness to buy from us? what prices are our major suppliers offering other buyers? should we get other sources for supplies? what major contracts have they received recently? will these influence their ability to serve our needs? what new technologies are available now and how are they being used by others? threats are the reverse side of opportunities. what are our competitors doing? what products and services have they launched recently? are they successful? what are our competitors' weaknesses and strengths? what relationships do they maintain with our most important customers? how is their customer support functioning, and what methods are they using in their quality assurance? each company has its own priorities when it comes to watching the external environment. the information needs are different from company to company, depending on what products and services that are offered, the technological level of the company, the markets that they address, and more. needs and priorities also differ by department and person, for example depending on whether a user is the president, a marketing manager, product manager, sales man, or has a position in finance or production. remember your priorities when going online to search. you cannot possibly capture and digest all information that is there. your basic problem remains to find the right information in the right form at the right time. build your own, local 'database' -------------------------------- it does not take much effort to check one hundred different topics from multiple online sources on a daily basis. the computer will do it for you. also, you do not have to read all stories as carefully as you would with printed material. most experienced users just read what is important now, and save selected parts of the retrieved texts on their hard disks for later reference. we handle printed material differently. most of us make notes in the margins, underline, use colors, cut out pages and put into folders. these tricks are important, since it is so hard to find information in a pile of papers. not so with electronic information. with the right tools, you can locate information on your computer's hard disk in seconds. in seven seconds, i just searched the equivalent of pages of printed text for all occurrences of the combined search words 'sony' and 'cd-rom'! my tool was the shareware program lookfor (see chapter ). it searched through . megabyte on my -based notebook computer. if you use an indexing program, the search may be completed even faster. i guess you can see it coming. my personal databases usually give more direct value during my working day, than what i have on paper, and have available online. my hard disks contain megabytes of texts retrieved from various online services, but only what i have decided to keep. this private database therefore contains more relevant information per kilobyte than the online databases i'm using. searching the data often gives enough good hits to keep me from going online for more. | i repeat: you will often get better results when searching your | | own subset of selected online databases, than by going online | | to get information. it is usually easier and faster. | on the other hand, your in-house database will never be fully up- to-date. too many things happen all the time. also, the search terms used for your daily intake of news will never cover all future needs. occasionally, you must go online to get additional information for a project, a report, a plan. updating your database means going online often to find new supplementary information. | regular monitoring gives the highest returns, and is required | | if you want to have an edge over your competitors. | for beginners, the best strategy will often be to start with the general, and gradually dig deeper into industry specific details. let us now review some good hunting grounds for information, and how to use them. clipping the news ----------------- several online services offer 'clipping services'. they select the news that you want - hours a day - from a continuous stream of stories from newspapers, magazines, news agencies and newsletters. several services make news immediately available, when they have been received by satellite. the delay previously used to protect the interests of print media is disappearing quickly. online services usually deliver news sooner than in print media, radio or tv. you select stories by giving the online service a set of search terms. the hits are then sent to your electronic mailbox, for you to retrieve at will. 'clipping' gives an enormous advantage. few important details escape your attention, even when you cannot go online daily. the stories will stay in your mailbox until you have read them. 'clipping' on compuserve ------------------------ compuserve's executive news service (ens) monitor more than , stories daily. they use sources like deutsche press-agentur, kyodo news service, tass, xinhua news agency, the washington post, otc news-alert, reuters financial news wire, associated press, upi and reuters world report, idg pr service, inter press service (ips), middle east news network and european community report. one of them, reuters, has , journalists in bureaus all over the world. they write company news reports about revenue, profit, dividend, purchases of other companies, changes in management, and other important items for judging a company's results. they write regular opinions about industry, governments, economics, leading indicators, and commerce. reuters also offers full-text stories from financial times and other leading european newspapers. its textline is a database with news from some , publications in over countries. it includes reuters' own news services, and has translated abstracts of stories from some languages. the database reaches back years and is updated at around one million articles per year. (textline is also available on nexis, data-star, and dialog.) another one, the idg pr service, sends out high-tech related news gathered by the staffs of idg's magazines. interpress service covers third world countries. middle east news network integrates the contents of information sources covering this region of the world. the executive news service lets you define up to three 'clipping folders'. supply up to seven 'key phrases' that define your interests. these key phrases will be used when searching stories as they are sent. hits will be 'clipped' and held in a folder for you to review at your convenience. each folder can hold stories. when creating a clipping folder, you set an expiration date and specify how many days a clipped story is to be held (maximum days). to browse the contents of a folder, select it from the menu. stories can be listed by headlines or leads. select those you want to read, forward to others as email, or copy to another folder. delete those that you do not need. defining key phrases is simple. the important thing is not to get too much nor too little. general phrases will give you many unwanted stories while too narrow phrases will cause you to miss pertinent stories. let me illustrate with an example: the phrase apple computers will only clip stories that have the words apple and computers next to each other. this may be too narrow. specifying just apple or just computers would be too broad. entering apple + computers is a better phrase since the words can appear anywhere in the story, and not necessarily next to each other. ens carries an hourly surcharge of us$ /hour over base connect rates. clipping on newsnet ------------------- newsnet greets users with this opening screen: ----------------- - n e w s n e t - ----------------- w o r k i n g k n o w l e d g e ***new--electromagnetic field litigation reporter (ey ) tracks developments in every important legal action involving electromagnetic radiation from power lines, cellular phones, vtds, and radar and microwave equipment. ***the title of hh has been changed to cancer researcher weekly. this service was formerly entitled cancer weekly. ***important work in the blood field throughout the world is covered by blood week (hh ), including research, literature, and upcoming events. ***tb weekly (hh ) is an internationally-focused newsletter that concentrates on tuberculosis-related news and research, including business developments. new services on newsnet: tb weekly (hh ) blood weekly (hh ) electromagnetic field litigation reporter (ey ) chapter update (fi ) tobacco industry litigation reporter (hh ) trade and development opportunities (gt ) for details on new services, enter read pb # or help followed by the service code. newsnet's clipping service, newsflash, will automatically search all new editions of newsletters selected for monitoring. the hits will be sent to your mailbox, and be retained there for up to ten weeks besides the current week. your selection of newsletters can be extended to include news stories from united press international (upi), reuters news reports, associated press, business wire, pr newswire, and others. for some time, i clipped newsletters in the telecommunications group using the keywords 'victoria' (an american communication project) and 'kdd' (the japanese telecom giant). when i called newsflash to check, it typically reported: newsflash notification **************************************************************** total newsflash hits. use stop to stop and delete all. new hits = saved items = te / / == victoria == headline # cooke sells cable holdings to -member group for nearly $ . billion jack cooke's cable systems will be sold to -member consortium te / / == victoria == headline # bocs' progress toward intelligent network architecture intertwined with difficult internetworking negotiations, pending decree court ec / / == kdd == headline # kdd opens ny/london offices tokyo, japan, jul (nb) -- kokusai denshin denwa (kdd), ec / / == kdd == headline # foreigners can buy into kdd tokyo, japan, aug -- the japanese government is planning enter headline numbers or all to read, more, again, save, stop, or help --> newsnet's databases grow by more than stories per day. your search profiles may contain an almost unlimited number of subjects. delivery of hits is concurrent. twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. sprintmail's clipping service (u.s.a.) scans stories from more than international newswires. ft profile's e-mail alert searches daily on that particular day's issue of the financial times. dow jones news/retrieval has newsscan (//clip). it can deliver by fax or email to a mailbox on another online service. on genie, use quiknews express, a personalized news clipping service that is integrated with the quik-comm system email service. clarinet, a commercial news service available through usenet, also has a clipping program. when clipping is impossible --------------------------- many services do not offer clipping. here, your alternative is various methods of regular selective reading. many conferencing systems let you select messages by keywords. bix has keyword indexer. it let you search public conferences after a key word or phrase and report hits. then it offers you to review (or retrieve) messages of interest. compuserve's forums have efficient 'read selective' and 'quick scan' commands. another trick is to limit your reading to specific message sections. the high forum message volume is a special problem on this service. old messages are regularly deleted to make room for new ones. (often called "scroll rate.") some popular forums do not keep messages for more than a couple of days before letting them go. you must visit often to get all new information. many bulletin boards can be told to store unread messages about given topics in a compressed transportation file. this file can then be retrieved at high speed. special communication programs (often called offline readers) and commands are available to automate this completely. powerful scripts (see chapter ) can do automatic selection of news stories based on the occurrence of keywords (e.g., a company name) in headlines. i have developed such a system for selecting news from the online today magazine on compuserve. subscription services --------------------- it is useful to dig, dig, and dig for occurrences of the same search words, but digging is not enough. unless you periodically scan "the horizon," you risk missing new trends, viewpoints and other important information. it can be difficult to find good sources of information that suits your needs. one trick is to watch the reports from your clipping services. over time, you may discover that some sources bring more interesting stories than others. take a closer look at these. consider browsing their full index of stories regularly. if your company plans exportation to countries in asia, check out market: asia pacific on newsnet. the newsletter is published monthly by w-two publications, ltd., the commons, suite , ithaca, ny , u.s.a. (phone: + - - - ). annual print subscription rate: us$ . the index itself may be a barometer of what goes on. here is an example. note the number of words/lines. do these numbers tell a story? july , head # headline words /lines ------ ---------------------------------------------------- ------------ ) the philippines is at a turg point / ) china and korea will lead regional economic boom / ) asian compensation is still low, but rising quickly / ) consumer goods won't be all the chinese buy / ) women bear the brunt of cambodia's troubles / ) taiwan makes a move toward the cashless society / ) tips on managing cultural harmony in asia / ) taiwanese become more discerning, harder to reach / ) direct marketing headed for growth in singapore / ) tourism in malaysia will grow / ) chongqing: future powerhouse / it is a good idea to visit newsnet to gather intelligence. review indexes of potentially interesting newsletters. save them on your hard disk for future references. you never know when they may be of use. the newsletters within computers and electronics bring forecasts of market trends, evaluation of hardware and software, prices, information about ibm and other leading companies. you will find stories about technological developments of modems, robots, lasers, video players, graphics, and communications software. the management section contains experts' evaluation of the economical climate with forecasts, information about foreign producers for importers, tips and experiences on personal efficiency, management of smaller companies, and office automation. other sections are advertising and marketing, aerospace and aviation, automotive, biotechnology, building and construction, chemical, corporate communications, defense, entertainment and leisure, education, environment, energy, finance and accounting, food and beverage, general business, insurance, investment, health and hospitals, law, management, manufacturing, medicine, office, publishing and broadcasting, real estate, research and development, social sciences, telecommunications, travel and tourism, transport and shipping. several newsletters focus on specific geographical areas: * marketing research review (analyzes and evaluates commercially available marketing research and technology assessment reports. publisher: high-tech publishing co., u.s.a.) * german business scope and the week in germany * news from france * country risk guide: europe * eastern europe finance, and eastern european energy report * european community: business forecast * investext/european region * prs forecasts: eastern europe, and western europe * africa news on-line * prs-forecasts: mid-east & north africa * prs-forecasts: sub-saharan africa * the exporter (published by trade data reports. monthly reports on the business of exporting. functionally divided into operations, markets, training resources, and world trade information.) * mid-east business digest * latin america opportunity report * country risk guide: sub-saharan africa * country risk guide: asia & the pacific * prs forecasts: asia & the pacific * prs's political risk letter * sales prospector (monthly prospect research reports for sales representatives and other business people interested in commercial, and institutional expansion and relocation activity. separate services grouped by geographic area in the united states and canada.) many newsletters are focusing on technology intelligence: sensor technology ----------------- provides updates on research being conducted in this rapidly evolving technology. besides analyzing advances in the field, it offers ideas on how this technology can improve products and services. advanced manufacturing technology --------------------------------- reports on desktop manufacturing, computer graphics, flexible automation, computer-integrated manufacturing, and other technological advances that help increase productivity. high tech materials alert ------------------------- reports on significant developments in high-performance materials, including alloys, metallic whiskers, ceramic and graphite fibers, and more. concentrates on their fabrication, industrial applications, and potential markets. futuretech ---------- provides briefings on focused, strategic technologies that have been judged capable of making an impact on broad industrial fronts. includes forecasts of marketable products and services resulting from the uncovered technology and its potential impact on industry segments. advanced coating & surface technology, electronic materials technology news, flame retardancy news, high tech ceramics news, innovator's digest, technology access report, inside r&d, japan science scan, new technology week, optical materials & engineering news, performance materials, surface modification technology news, genetic technology news, battery & ev technology, and much more. newsletters on compuserve ------------------------- many newsletters are being made available through forums' file libraries on compuserve. consequently, they are a little harder to locate. some examples ( ): abacus online - quarterly newsletter on executive computing. (in the lotus spreadsheet forum, library .) anime stuff - news and reviews of japanese animation software. (comics/animation forum, library .) communique - the quarterly newsletter of the international association of business communicators u.k. chapter. (pr and marketing forum, library .) distance education newsletter - analyzes the impact of elec- tronic communication on academic research. (telecommunications forum, library .) hint: to find newsletters in the ibm pc oriented forums, enter go ibmff to search. select "keyword" as search criteria, and enter "newsletter". add further keywords to narrow the search to your areas of interest. compuserve also has other file find services. databases with an international orientation ------------------------------------------- information access provides reference databases to businesses. you can search databases with full-text stories, abstracts, and indexes from international magazines. prompt (overview of markets and technology) is the largest of them. it provides international coverage of companies, markets and technologies in all industries. the other databases cover areas like aerospace and defense, advertising and marketing, new product announcements, industry forecasts and time series. the information access' databases are available through online services like dialog, data star, financial times profile (england), nikkei in japan and on the thomson financial networks. they are regularly published on cd-rom. ziffnet offers the business database plus through compuserve. here, you can search in full-text stories from around north american and international publications for industry and commerce ( ). the articles are about sales and marketing ideas, product news, industry trends and analysis, and provide company profiles in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing, retailing, telecommunications, and trade. this is a partial list of the database's magazines: agra europe, agribusiness worldwide, air cargo world, belgium: economic and commercial information, beverage world, beverage world periscope edition, british plastics & rubber, british telecom world, business perspectives, cci-canmaking & canning international, cd-rom librarian, chain store age - general merchandise trends, coal & synfuels technology, communication world, communications daily, communications international, consultant, cosmetic world news, dairy industries international, direct marketing, the economist, erdol und kohle, erdgas, petrochemie: hydrocarbon technology, eurobusiness, euromoney, europe , european cosmetic markets, european rubber journal, financial market trends, financial world, finnish trade review, food engineering international, forest industries, gas world, graphic arts monthly, the printing industry, high technology business, idc japan report, inc., international trade forum, investment international, israel business, japan economic newswire, journal of international business studies, journal of marketing research, kyodo, market research europe, medical world news, meed middle east economic digest, middle east agribusiness, oecd economic outlook, the oil and gas journal, oilweek, petroleum economist, plastics world, purchasing world, report on the austrian economy, restaurant-hotel design international, royal bank of scotland review, seafood international, soviet aerospace & technology, supermarket business magazine, swissbusiness, training: the magazine of human resources development, world economic outlook, world oil. dialog's asia-pacific database covers business and economics in asia and the pacific. it contains over , references from newspapers, magazines and other sources in north america and international. the asia-pasific dun's market identifiers on dialog is a directory listing of about , business establishments in asian and pacific rim countries. the middle east news network publishes daily news, analysis and comments from countries in the middle east produced by arabic, hebrew, turkish and persian press. you can read these news through reuters (e.g., on newsgrid/compuserve), down jones news/retrieval, and information access. the jerusalem institute for western defence provides a monthly newsletter with research of the arab press. it has unedited quotes from around the arab world. write listserv@jerusalem .datasrv.co.il to subscribe (command: sub arab-press firstname lastname). the international reports financial newsletter may be read and searched on newsnet, information access, and mead data central. newsnet also has brazil service, mexico service, country risk guides and weekly international market alert. use compuserve's consumer report to spot trends in the consumer markets for appliances, automobiles, electronics/cameras, home. eventline (iquest, compuserve) monitors international conferences, exhibitions, and congresses. the boomer report concentrates on the habits of the "the baby-boom generation." affaersdata in sweden offers the swedish-language service "export-nytt," which brings short news stories about export/import from all over the world. information providers are the swedish export council, the norwegian export council, and the suomen ulkomaankauppaliitto in finland. orbit has an english language database of japanese technology. it contains abstracts of articles, patents and standards from more than japanese magazines. dow jones news/retrieval brings full-text stories from the japan economic newswire. the business dateline contains news from more than regional business publications in the united states and canada. the abi/inform business database (umi/data courier) contains abstracts and full-text articles from business magazines and trade journals. the sources include the asia pacific journal of management, business korea, and the world bank research observer. market research reports from frost & sullivan are available through data-star. it produces over market reports each year, in industrial sectors. these reports cover results of face-to- face interviews with manufacturers, buyers and trade association executives, supplemented by a search and summary of secondary sources. glasnost in the former soviet union produced a long list of new online information sources, including: the soviet press digest (stories from over newspapers), the bizekon reports (financial news from business and financial magazines), sovlegisline (law), bizedon directory (detailed information about over , companies, who want to do business with foreign companies), who's who in the soviet union and the soviet public association directory. some of these may have changed their names now. contact mead data central (nexis/lexis), data-star, ft profile and reuters for more information. djnr also offers full text from the paris-based international herald tribune, publications like the guardian and others from the united kingdom, and from sources in the former soviet union (like soviet press digest, bizekon news, moscow news, and others.) e-europe is an electronic communications network for doing business in eastern europe countries, including cis. its purpose is to help these countries in their transition to market economies. it links business persons in western europe-asia-north america with those in eastern europe. subscription is free and for anyone. to subscribe to e-europe, send email listserv@pucc.princeton.edu (or a listserv closer to you) with the body the message containing this line sub e-europe yourfirstname yourlastname e-europe also offers international marketing insights (imi) for several countries in this region, including russia, hungary, czech, germany, estonia, poland, bulgaria, and lithuania. the imi reports important developments that have implications for traders and investors. typically brief and to-the-point, they are prepared by american embassies and consulates. the reports cover a wide range of subjects, such as new laws, policies and procedures, new trade regulations, changing dynamics in the marketplace, recent statements by influential parties and emerging trade opportunities. for a list of e-europe imi offerings, send the following commands to listserv@pucc.princeton.edu: get e-europe imi imi update notices are not posted to e-europe, but you can subscribe to updates to these files. the english-language newsletter "st. petersburg business news" is published in russia by the committee for foreign economic affairs of lecc. for information and subscription, send email to aag@cfea.ecc.spb.su . the financial izvestia weekly, the joint publication of london financial times and moscow-based izvestia, is available by email. the complete feed includes the full text of all articles published in the russian language newspaper, and financial and statistical tables on the commodities and financial markets. write legpromsyrie at root@sollo.soleg.msk.su for information. several russian newspapers, including commersant daily, nega, and press services like postfactum and interfax, have digests or complete editions available for relcom network subscribers, usually for a nominal fee. interested in the european common market? ----------------------------------------- pergamon financial data services, newsnet, and others, offer dun & bradstreet european marketing online. it contains company profiles of around two million european companies. pergamon's icc u.k. company databases contains data on over , british companies with up to ten years' financial history, addresses, key people, mother firms/subsidiaries, stock quotes. its comptex news service brings daily business news from the european arena. the uk company library on compuserve has financial information about more than . million british companies from sources like extel cards, icc british co. directory and kompass uk. data-star offers tenders electronic daily, a database of european community contract offers. investext offers a series of bulletins authored by europe information service (eis): european report (biweekly), tech report (monthly), transport europe (monthly), europe environment (bimonthly), european energy (bimonthly), european social policy (monthly), and multinational service (monthly). investext is available through data-star, lexis/nexis, dow jones news/retrieval, dialog, newsnet, and others. the german company library (on compuserve) offers information about some , german companies from databases like credit reform and hoppenstedt's directory of german companies. its european company library contains information about over two million companies in the area. nexis (mead data central international) brings news and background information about companies and the different countries in europe. their worldwide companies database contains company profiles, balance sheets, income statements, and other financial data on the largest companies in countries. nexis also has hoppenstedt german trade associations directory, four more newsletters from the europe information service: europe energy, europe environment, transport europe and european insight, a weekly brief on european community-related happenings, and notisur, a biweekly news and analysis report on south american and caribbean political affairs. lexis (also mead) has databases with information about english and french law, and other law material from australia, new zealand, ireland, scotland and north america. their martindale-hubbell law directory has information on over , lawyers and law firms worldwide. the directory can be used for referrals, selection of associate counsel, and evaluation of competitive counsel. check out kompass europe when planning exports to the eec. its database contains details about companies in sweden, denmark, germany, united kingdom, holland, belgium, france, spain, italy, sweden and norway. (on dialog) ilink has the eec-i conference (discussion about the european common marked). profile offers full-text searches (and a clipping service) in stories from financial times. the database is being updated daily at : . those exporting to the eec need to master german, french, italian, and spanish besides having a common knowledge of english. conversation is the easy part. the problem is writing, and especially when the task is to translate technical expressions to the languages used within the common market. for help, check out the eurodicautom online dictionary through echo (and others.) start by selecting a source language (like english), and up to seven languages for simultaneous translation. the translation is word-for-word, but may be put in the correct context if required. echo also offers the european commission's cordis database (community research and development information service) containing information about research results within scientific and technical fields. keywords: race, esprit, delta, aim, fast, brite, comett, climat, eclair and tedis. concise (cosine network's central information service for europe) is a pan-european information service to the cosine scientific and industrial research community. cosine (cooperation for open systems interconnection networking in europe) is part of the european common market's eureka project. concise brings information about the cosine project, networks, conferences, networking products, special interest groups, projects databases, directories, email services and other networked services in europe. it is intended for researchers in all fields, from astronomers through linguists and market researchers to zoologists. concise is accessible by email through the internet, by ftp, and interactively (telnet) over the european academic and research networks, over public data networks and over telephone links. (see echo in appendix for more information.) the mailing list ec@indycms.bitnet is dedicated to discussion of the european community, and is open to all interested persons. subscribe by email to a listserv close to where you live, or to listserv@indycms.bitnet. scandinavia ----------- most countries have several local language news services. in norway, statens datasentral lets you search stories from the ntb news agency. aftenposten, a major newspaper, offers full-text stories from their a-tekst database, from dagens naeringsliv (dnx), and the kapital magazine. before meeting with people from norsk hydro, go online to get recent news about these companies. it will only take a couple of minutes. what you find may be important for the success of your meeting. if you know the names of your most important competitors, use their names as keywords for information about recent contracts, joint venture agreements, products (and their features), and other important information. kompass online offers information about over , companies and , products in scandinavia, finland, germany, switzerland, and great britain. the information is presented in the local language of the different countries. kompass is used by easy menus. you can search by * company name * product or service (optionally using an industry classification code for companies or products) * number of employees, type of business, postal number, telephone area code, export area, year of incorporation, bank affiliation. the database is available through affaersdata (sweden). new users pay a one time fee of around us$ . searching costs around us$ . per minute. the tyr database on the finnish service viexpo (tel.: + ) offers information about , companies in the vaasa and oulu regions with addresses, phone numbers, contact persons, main products, revenues, and sic industry classification codes. we can go on like this. the list of available services is long in many countries. how to monitor your competitors ------------------------------- sales managers need to know what competitors are doing. lacking this knowledge, it is risky to maneuver in the market. start by making a strategy for online market intelligence. here are some practical hints: ( ) select online services that offer clipping of stories and information based on your search words or phrases. examples: newsflash on newsnet, //track on dow jones news/retrieval, the executive news service on compuserve. use these services for automatic monitoring of stock quotes and business news. ( ) read what investment analysts and advisors write about your competitors. most markets are well covered by databases and other sources of information. ( ) read what competitors write about themselves. their press releases are available from online databases in several countries. ( ) compare your competitors with your own company and industry. items: stock prices, profits, revenue, etc. ( ) regularly monitor companies and their particular products. ( ) watch trend reports about your industry. search for patterns and possible niches. ( ) save what you find on your hard disk for future references. can you get everything through the online medium? of course not! don't expect to find production data, production formulas, detailed outlines of a company's pension plan, or the number of personal computers in a company. such information rarely finds its way to public databases. intelligence by fax ------------------- financial times' profile has fax alert. predefine your interests using search words. stories will be cut and sent to your personal fax number whenever they appear. price depends on the number of characters transmitted. other online services offer similar services. the bulletin board as a sales tool ---------------------------------- many companies - large and small - use bulletin board systems as a marketing instrument. here is an example: the san francisco-based compact disk exchange (tel.: + - - - ) offers a database of used cd records. members can call in to buy at very low prices. they can sell old cds through the board or buy from other members. ( ) marketing and sales by modem ---------------------------- the americans have a gift for this. you meet them in online forums all over the world, in person or through agents, and especially in computer oriented conferences and clubs. their main strategy is reference selling. make key customers happy, and make sure they tell others. in chapter , i told you what happened when a member wrote about his upgrade to a megabytes hard disk in compuserve's toshiba forum. it made me place my order with his preferred seller. one common sales strategy is to be constantly present in relevant conferences, and spend a generous amount of time helping others. this takes time. by proving competence and willingness to help, you build a positive personal profile. this profile is the key to business, information about competitors and other benefits. to drop quickly into a conference to post an "advertisement," is a waste of time. the message may be read by some, but chances are that you will be criticized (in public) for having 'polluted their environment' with a commercial message. besides, the volume of information in the best conferences for your marketing effort is probably too high to make traditional advertisements worth the while. electronic mail --------------- here is a list of other useful applications of electronic mail: * to distribute quickly lists of important prospects to your sales force, * to avoid lengthy telephone conversations, * to receive order information faster and more efficiently than by traditional mail or fax, * to distribute quickly reports and memos to key people all over the world, * to send new prices and product announcements to customers, * to exchange spread sheets and analyses between users of personal computers. if this isn't enough, ask for information from the international business network at . @compuserve.com (or, at , on compuserve). chapter : practical tips ========================== - quick transfers with a minimum of errors - rescuing lost files - copyright and other legal matters - unwritten laws about personal conduct - privacy - fax services weigh less than your printer - file transfers through the internet speed and safety ---------------- read about mnp, ccitt v. , and v. bis in appendix . these are popular methods for automatic error correction and compression of data. compression gives faster transfers of data. to use them, your modem must have these features built-in. they must also be enabled in the modem of the service that you are calling. compression is particularly helpful when sending or receiving text, for example news stories and messages in conferences. they ensure faster transfers. they are not of much help when transferring precompressed texts and programs. they may even make file transfers with protocols like zmodem, kermit, and xmodem impossible. if this happens, temporarily turn off the mnp and v. /v bis settings in your modem (more about this in appendix ). some online services let users retrieve conference messages using a special get or grab function. this function often comes in two versions: * grab to display: new messages and conference items are received in an uninterrupted stream without stops between items. retrieval of text can happen at maximum speed. * grab to compressed file: new messages and conference items are selected, automatically compressed and stored in a file. this file is then transferred using zmodem or similar protocols. some services offer unattended online work with a variation of the "get compressed file" method. read about 'offline readers' in chapter for more about this. the more advanced your software is, the more time it will take to learn how to use it. the rewards are lower telephone costs, faster transfers, and less time spent doing technical online work. recommended. different needs, different solutions ------------------------------------ frank burns of the american online service metanet is spokesperson for the strategy scan - focus - act. on your first visits to a new online service, you scan. the goal is to get an overview of what is being offered and find out how to use it most efficiently. notes are made of interesting bulletins, databases, conferences, messages, news services, public domain and shareware programs, games, and more. capture all of it to disk. don't study it until disconnected from the service. evaluate the material to prepare for your next moves: focus and act. as you learn about offerings, users and applications, your use of the service changes. what was interesting on your first visits, lose out to new discoveries. some applications may stay as 'regular online functions', like when you decide to read a given news report on monday mornings. here are some other hints: * find out what you do not have to know and have enough self- confidence immediately to discard irrelevant material. walk quickly through the information. select what you need now, store other interesting items on your hard disk, clip references, and drop the remainder of your capture file. * learn when and how to use people, computers, libraries and other resources. prepare well before going online. note that the online resource may not necessarily be the quickest way to the goal. if you want the name of michael jackson's latest album, you may get a faster answer by calling a local music shop. . . . * make an outline of how to search the service before going online. if required, start by going online to collect help menus and lists of search commands (unless you already have the printed user information manual). study the instructions carefully, plan your visit, and then call back. often, it may be useful to do trial searches in online data, which you have previously captured to your hard disk. do this to check if your use of search words is sensible. who knows, you may even have what you are searching for right there. besides, it is imperative that you use the correct search terms to find what you're looking for. write your search strategy on a piece of paper. if you know how to write macros for your communications program, consider writing some for your planned search commands. - few people can type characters per second. using macros may save you time, frustration and money. * it may be wise to do your search in two steps. on your first visit: get a list of selected headlines or references, and then log off the service. study your finds, and plan the next step. then call back to get full-text of the most promising stories. this strategy is often better than just 'hanging online' while thinking. when you feel the pressure of the taximeter, it is easy to make costly mistakes. * novices should always go the easiest way. don't be shy. ask sos assistance services for help, if available. invest in special communication programs with built in automatic online searching features. they are designed to make your work easier. * limit your search and avoid general and broad search terms. it is often wise to start with a search word that is so 'narrow' that it is unlikely to find articles outside your area of interest. your goal is not to find many stories. you want the right ones. when everything fails --------------------- data communications is simple - when you master it. occasionally, however, you will lose data. you may even experience the worst of all: losing unread private email on your hard disk. a while ago, this happened to a friend. she logged on to her mailbox service using the communications program procomm. after capturing all her mail, she tried to send a message. for some reason, the computer just froze. it was impossible to close the capture file. she had to switch the power off/on to continue. all retrieved mail was obviously lost. the other day, i had a similar experience. after having written a long and difficult letter, something went wrong. the outfile was inexplicably closed. the resulting file size was bytes. both problems were solved by the ms-dos program chkdsk run with the /f option. if you ever get this problem, and have an ms-dos computer, try it. it may save your day. copyright notices and legal stuff --------------------------------- most commercial online services protect their offerings with copyright notices. this is especially so for database information and news. some vendors make you accept in writing not to store captured data on a local media (like diskettes or hard disks). others (like prodigy in the u.s.) force clients to use communication software that makes it impossible to store incoming data to disk. the reason is simple. information providers want to protect their income. in most countries, you can quote from what others have written. you can cut pieces out of a whole and use in your own writing. what you cannot do, however, is copy news raw to resell to others. if an online service discovers you doing that, expect a law suit. read copyright notices to learn about the limitations on your usage of data that you receive. unwritten laws about personal conduct ------------------------------------- some services let their users be anonymous. this is the case on many chat services. if you want to pose as donald duck or jack the ripper, just do that. many free bbs systems let you register for full access to the service during your first visit. it is possible to use any name. don't do that. use your true name, unless asked to do otherwise. it's impolite and unrespectful of the other members to participate in online discussions using a false identity. being helpful is an important aspect of the online world. the people you meet 'there' use of their time to help you and others. often free. the atmosphere is one of gratitude, and a positive attitude toward all members. if you use rude words in public, expect your mailbox to fill with angry messages from others. those who respond carefully to personal attacks, will never regret it. don't say things online that you would not have said in person. remember: words written in a moment of anger or frustration can be stored on at least one hard disk. your 'sins' may stay there for a long time - to resurface when you least want it to. here are some guidelines (often called 'online netiquette'): * if mail to a person doesn't make it through, avoid posting the message to a conference. keep private messages private. * it is considered extremely bad taste to post private mail from someone else on public conferences, unless they give you explicit permission to redistribute it. * many users end their messages with some lines about how to get in touch with them (their email address, phone number, address, etc.). limit your personal "signature" to maximum four lines. * do not send test messages to a public conference, unless they are set up to serve this purpose. * if someone requests that readers reply by private email, do that. do not send to the conference, where the request appeared. * when replying to a message in a public conference, many users 'quote' the original message prefixed by '>' or another special character, as in you wrote: >i strongly believe it was wrong to attack >fidel castro in this way! when you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't directly applicable to your reply. by including the entire message, you'll only annoy those reading it. * note that if you use all capital letters, people will think you're shouting. finally, smile with me about the following story: according to time magazine ( / / , p. ), three women who corresponded with mr. x over the network discovered his duplicity and went public on the network. the incident sparked a lively debate over electronic etiquette (and ruined mr. casanova's chances for further romance). fax services weigh less than your computer's printer ---------------------------------------------------- many online services let you send electronic mail as fax messages. this is an interesting feature when in that far away place without a printer. send the draft contract or other texts to your hotel's fax machine or to your client's office to get a printout on paper. privacy ------- the level of online privacy differs by network, service, and application. whatever these services may claim, always expect that someone, somewhere, is able to watch, even record. all mailbox services have at least one person authorized to access your personal mail box in case of an emergency. most of the time they not have a right to read it without your permission, but they can. in some countries, mailbox services may let outsiders (like the police) routinely read your private email to check for 'illegal' contents. in this respect, email is not safer than ordinary mail. the good news is that most 'inspectors' and 'sysops' are good, honest people. on the other hand, it is useful to know your situation. it is not safe to send sensitive information (like credit card details) by private electronic mail. true, the probability that an outsider should get hold of and take advantage of such information is small, but it definitely is not percent safe. encrypt your email to protect sensitive information. always assume that someone is recording all that is being said in online conferences, chats, and other interactive social gatherings. in chats, anyone using a personal computer as a terminal can log the conversation, or use screen dump just to capture 'interesting parts'. many pc users can scroll back the screen. they can wait and decide whether to save the conversation in a file until after the conversation has taken place. with these capabilities widely available, users of chats and talk should always assume that their conversations are being recorded. do not say indiscreet things in small, informal discussions. it may be recorded and reposted under embarrassing circumstances. the program pgp has become the defacto international internet standard for public key encryption. for more on privacy, check out ethics-l@marist.bitnet. the files rfc through are about 'privacy enhancements for internet electronic mail' (see appendix for how to get them). usenet has alt.privacy (privacy issues in cyberspace), and comp.society.privacy (effects of technology on privacy). file transfers through the internet ----------------------------------- the internet is a term used of a network interconnecting hundreds of thousands of computer centers around the world. these centers use different types of hardware and software, and different methods of file transfer. what method to use for file transfers depends on the source host and the type of mailbox computer that you are using. the transfer usually takes place in two steps: . transferring files from a remote data center to your local mailbox host. . transfer from your local mailbox host to your personal computer. transfer to your local mailbox host ----------------------------------- we will explain the most commonly used method for those who only have access to file transfer by email. this method can be used by everybody. transferring plain text files is easy. files with imbedded word processor control codes will often have to be treated as binary files. more about this later. to transfer a text to another user, just send it as an ordinary electronic message. getting text files from a library on a remote computer is a special case. often, they can be had by sending a retrieval command (like get) by email to the remote center. after a while, the file will be sent to your mailbox by email. you can read it like you read other mail. example: the file binstart can be retrieved from the kidart directory on a computer center in north dakota, u.s.a. it explains how to retrieve binary art files from the kidlink project's file libraries. to get the file, send a message to the center's mail forwarding 'agent' at listserv@vm .nodak.edu. use the following command syntax in your text: get <directory name> <file name> to get the binstart file, write the following command in the text of your message: get kidart binstart note that the command has to be put in the body of the mail and not in the subject field. the file will arrive in your mailbox after a while. also, note that lists of available files are usually available by using an "index <directory name>" command. to get a list of files in the kidart directory, add the command "index kidart" in your message above. non-listserv libraries may use other retrieval commands. often, you can get information of what commands to use by sending the word help to a mailing service (in the subject area or in the body of the text). transferring binary files ------------------------- users with a direct connection to the internet usually have access to the ftp command (file transfer protocol). if they do, they often prefer ftp for transfers of binary files like computer programs, pictures, sound, and compressed text files. the bad news is that the ftp command is not available to all users of internet mail. these will have to use "ftp by mail," or other tricks to transfer such files. more about this in a moment. the ftp command gives access to a special file transfer service. it works in the following way: . logon to your local email host and enter 'ftp remote- center-code'. example: 'ftp . . . '. this command will connect you to the center in north dakota mentioned above. here, you will be prompted for user name and password. enter 'anonymous' as user name, and use your real name or email address as password. this way of logging on to retrieve files is called "transfers by anonymous ftp." you can use this method on many hosts on the internet. . when connected to the remote center, you can request transfer of the desired file to your mailbox. before doing that, you may have to navigate to a given file catalog (cd directory), and tell the host that the transfer is to be binary (bin). finally, initiate the transfer by entering a "get file name" command. . the file will be transferred to your local mailbox computer at high speed. when the transfer is done, you logoff from the remote center to "get back" to your mailbox computer's prompt line. now, you can transfer the file to your personal computer using communications protocols like kermit, xmodem, zmodem or whatever else is available. binary files transferred as text codes -------------------------------------- if you do not have access to ftp, you must use ordinary email for your binary transfers. usually, email through the internet can only contain legal character codes (ascii characters between number - ). most systems cannot transfer graphics or program files directly, since these files normally contain binary codes (which are outside this ascii character range). the solution is to convert binary files to text codes using a utility program called uuencode. the encoded file can be sent by ordinary email, as in this example: from trickle@vm .nodak.edu fri aug : : date: fri, aug : : cdt to: opresno@extern.uio.no subject: part / simtel .inf pd:<msdos.starter> the file pd:<msdos.starter>simtel .inf has been uuencoded before being sent. after combining the parts with the mail headers removed, you must run the file through a decode program. ------------ part of ------------ begin simtel .inf m t i;& z(%-) % #(p+de. b`@("`@("`@("`@("`@("`@("!, -t(')e m=fes z($iu;f @,c@l(#$y. %=# h-"b`@(%m.;w e.b!$= @=&\@ &es m: p-"ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah: m&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah: &ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&ah:&@(z ` end -------- end of part of --------- when you receive a message with uuencoded text, download it to your personal computer's hard disk. use an editor to cut out the codes and paste them to an empty work file. using the example above, the first line in your work file should contain: begin simtel .inf and the last line should contain end now, use a utility program called uudecode to convert the file back to its binary form (or whatever). more information about uuencoding and uudecoding is given in the binstart file mentioned above (for ms-dos computers). it has a detailed explanation, basic source code for making the program uudecode.com, and a debug script for those preferring that. versions of uudecode are also available for other types of computers. transfer of pictures -------------------- denis pchelkin in protvino (russia) is years old, has two cats and one dog, and has contributed beautiful computer graphics art to the kidlink project ( ). the file art in the kidart catalog of the north dakota center contains one of his creations. it is a uuencoded picture in gif graphics format. you can retrieve denis' creation by sending a get command to listserv@vm .nodak.edu . put the following command in the text of your message: get kidart art the listserver will return a message filled with strange uu-codes. we assume that you have already retrieved the binstart file, and that you have a version of the conversion program. your next step is uudecoding: read the message into an editor or a viewing program. cut and paste the codes to a work file. keep the original as backup. use the uudecode.com program to convert art into a gif formatted file. now, view the picture with your favorite graphics program. (or use shareware gif-viewers like picem, vuimg, and vpic for ms-dos computers. these programs are available from compuserve's ibm forums and other services.) sending binary files in uuencoded form has weaknesses. one is the lack of automatic error correction when sending/receiving e- mail. noise on the line can easily distort the picture. file size is another problem. uuencodeing typically increases file sizes by almost one third. some mailbox systems restrict the length of individual messages that you can receive, and the file may just be too big. if the uuencoded file gets too big, some services can (or will by default) split it up in parts and then sent separately. tons of uuencoded public domain and shareware programs are available for retrieval by ordinary email. ftp by email ------------- while some services accept commands like get kidart art by email, this is not so with the many so-called ftp libraries. many of them can only be accessed by ftp. services exist that will do ftp transfers by email for those not having access to the ftp command. the most popular is at dec corporate research in the u.s. for more information, write a message to one of the following addresses: ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au in the text of your message, put the word "help". ftpmail lets you uuencode binary files for transfers. it can split large files up into several messages, thus helping you around local restrictions on the size of each incoming mail message. chapter : cheaper and better communication ============================================ packet data services and data transportation services like tymnet outdial, infonet, internet, and pc pursuit may help keep costs down. about reducing the cost of using mailing lists. many users access online services by calling them directly. a lot pay extra for long distance calls to other cities and countries, even when this means inferior transmission quality (like when noise characters degrade the data). others investigate other routings for their data. one option is the packet data networks. most countries have public data networks (pdns) operated by local telecommunications authorities. these services are often cheaper than direct calls for some applications, but more expensive for others. before using a packet data network, you'll need to establish a "network user identification" (nui) with the pdn carrier. you must also know the network user address (nua) of the hosts that you want to access. in scandinavia, the local pdns are called datapak. they can be accessed by direct local calls or through leased lines. to personal users, direct calls are least expensive. a leased line may be cost efficient when the daily volume is high, like in a company. when you communicate with online services through a pdn, the latter will split your data and bundle it in standard envelopes or 'packets'. each packet is marked with a code and sent out into the data stream. based on this code, the packet is routed from computer center to computer center until it reaches its final destination. there, the information will be reassembled into its original form before being handed over to a user or online service. it is almost like traveling by train. the price per packet or traveler is lower than what it costs to rent the whole train for your trip. national telecommunications monopolies were the first to offer packet data services. their rates were moderately lower than for long distance calls, but it was hard to find the relationship between real costs and prices. this is still the situation in many countries. throughout the world, efforts to privatize nationwide phone networks continue. in many countries, this has given us some interesting competitors offering attractive rates for similar services. their rates differ considerably from country to country, as does the quality of transmissions. the advantage of using packet data also varies considerably, by application and by country. the best routing for retrieval of online news may be impossibly expensive for chats or complex online jobs. we can offer no hard rules of thumb, except this: compare rates regularly! what is cheapest? ----------------- some networks charge by the hour, while others charge by volume (number of characters transferred per minute). when volume is low, your best bet is to use network services with a low price per minute and high prices for volume. when volume is high, you may be better off using those charging by the minute. to estimate costs reliably, you'll need statistics. since your usage probably differs from what others do, start accumulating experience data now. like this: on services only charging for connect time ------------------------------------------ capture trip information to a log file. register the following information: * number of minutes connected * modem speed * number of characters transmitted. some communication programs can do this automatically for you. on services charging for time and volume ---------------------------------------- log the following information: * number of minutes connected * modem speed * number of segments or packets (measurements of volume) you need this to estimate the average volume of data transferred by minute. here are some general experiences and hints: long streams of data without stops are cheaper through services that only charge by the minute. retrieving software is a typical high volume application. trips that include navigation from conference to conference, with a little bit of up- and downloading here and there, make the average transfer speed fall dramatically. it's like driving through a big city at kilometers per hour. red lights will reduce the average speed considerably. the actual transferred volume of text per minute will differ from place to place (geographically), and often also from call to call. it depends on factors like: * how fast you can enter commands and how much time you spend staring at the display before pressing keys, * how long it takes for an online service to react to your commands. for example, the response time on compuserve at : gmt on a friday morning (it is evening in the u.s.) is much worse than at : gmt on a sunday morning. then, most users are asleep. * the load on your packet data network while you use the service (or the amount of noise and retransmission, when calling direct), * the type of modem you are using (speed, level of mnp), * the number of commands you (or your scripts) have to enter during your online visit. an increase in the number of commands, reduces the average transfer speed. * the amount of transfer overhead for color and screen handling (like, vt- codes) that is transferred with your text. * your use of menus and help texts while online, or whether you come as "expert" with a minimum of prompts. it's impossible to calculate the practical effects of these items. you will just have to bear them in mind when estimating typical jobs, measuring speeds, calculating costs, and comparing networks. finding the optimal network for our needs, will take time, but is well worth the effort. i think the figures may surprise you. the network services in this chapter will often give you better quality transfers than a direct call. on the other hand, calling direct may give more characters transferred per minute. the average speed tends to drop dramatically when using a packet data service. using national packet data services ----------------------------------- most commercial online services can be reached through national pdns, but you may have problems finding the correct nua (network user address) to get there. few pdns have a directory of available "electronic telephone numbers" for you to consult. the norwegian pdn, datapak, used to be my only alternative for access to foreign online services, and i thought that the cost was acceptable. not so anymore. my applications require that data be pumped back and forth at maximum speed. on network services charging by a combination of volume and time, percent of my costs are typically for volume, while percent is for connect time. when i log out after a successful visit to compuserve through datapak, the two services give me similar reports: thank you for using compuserve! off at : est -nov- connect time = : clr pad ( ) : : : the last line comes from datapak. it tells that i have received segments and sent . the "segment" is datapak's volume measure. a segment contains up to sixty-four characters and/or carriage returns. the price is calculated accordingly. at today's prices, datapak is still my cheapest alternative calling compuserve for chats. i use datapak when connecting to twics in tokyo, as the only alternative today is direct calls at a prohibitive cost. once i-com (see below) starts offering outdial to japan, i expect this service to be substantially cheaper. the slower your modem speed, the more attractive is datapak compared with direct calls. to get access to a national pdn, you must have a user identification and a password. (getting temporary access to pdn services while traveling abroad is often hard and expensive.) | note: if you have access to a national pdn, but need | | information about pdns in other countries, try hostess, the | | global network service's information service from british | | telecom in england. the nua is ( is | | the data network identifier code section of the address.) | | username or password is not required to use this service. | outdial through pc pursuit -------------------------- sprintnet (formerly gte telenet) lets american users call bulletin boards in north america at lower rates through their pc pursuit service. they pay a modest subscription to call a local number for access to pc pursuit. once connected, they can enter an electronic phone-number to connect to a so-called 'outdial modem' in another city. once connected to the outdial modem, they can give it dialing commands and have it call any local number. this way, they can use pc pursuit to call an online service in the area, or the private modem of a friend. we call pc pursuit an outdial service. such services normally offer lower rates for access to remote bulletin boards than what it costs to call by long distance. besides, they reduce the chances for noise on the line. outdial through i-com --------------------- i-com offers outdial to north american online services by reselling capacity from tymnet's network (owned by british telecommunications plc). in the united states, galaxy telecomm corp. offers a similar service under the name starlink. outdial to numbers in japan and europe is planned. i-com markets its services to users in europe and japan, and have local access in brussels, paris, lyon, milano, the hague, eindhoven, zurich, geneva, london, belfast, birmingham, bristol, cambridge, edinburgh, leeds, frankfurt, cologne, munich, madrid, stockholm, copenhagen, and more. the basic fee for access to the service is us$ . per hour ( ). you don't pay volume charges. the monthly subscription fee is us$ . . you can pay using visa or mastercard/eurocard. in norway, i have used i-com to connect to the well in san francisco, metanet in virginia, exec-pc in wisconsin, and scilink in toronto, canada. at the time, i-com was cheaper than direct calls and datapak for access to these services. while an id on your local pdn is only valid in your area or country, your i-com id can be used all over the world including several cities in north america. once your plane has landed in milano, you can dial the local i-com node to connect to your favorite service. i-com also has a bulletin board (us$ . /hour). these are some of its services: * search a database to find bbs numbers in a given area of interest, or to locate outdial numbers in a given city or area code. * conferences about how to use north american bulletin boards. * retrieval of shareware and public domain software. * online shopping of american goods at american prices. cheaper access to compuserve ---------------------------- wherever compuserve has local access points, you'll be better off using these. you do not have to sign any special agreements. your compuserve id is all you need. payment for using these services will appear on your compuserve bill. compuserve has special deals with a list of network services, like infonet europe (formerly computer sciences corp.), istel, falnet, fenics, compupass, lata networks, tymnet/sprintnet. enter the command go log on compuserve to get access information, and go rates for rates. i have been using compupass from japan, compuserve's own network in the united states, istel, infonet, and pdn services in europe. when at home, i usually use compuserve's bps node in stockholm, sweden. it is even cheaper than calling oslo for a bps node for most of my jobs. there is no surcharge when accessing at non-prime time, and us$ . per hour during prime time (weekdays : to : local time). in addition, i pay long distance rates to call the node. compuserve has no extra charges for volume. | whenever compuserve opens a new node in your vicinity, or | | upgrades the modem speed on one of their nodes, look at the | | effects on your total costs. | | | | use software for automatic access and navigation (like tapcis,| | ozcis, or ato). they give higher volume per minute and make | | your accesses even more cost efficient. | before leaving for a business trip, visit compuserve to find local access numbers in your destination cities. the list of countries includes australia, belgium, canada, denmark, finland, france, germany, hong kong, italy, japan, mexico, holland, south africa, spain, sweden, switzerland, and england. you can also access compuserve through i-com and other outdial services. compuserve has exchange of electronic mail with internet. you can also access the service by telnet to hermes.merit.edu (binary transfers are impossible, though). ixi - a european alternative to pdn ----------------------------------- ixi is an x. data network for european academic, industrial and governmental research centers. it is sponsored by the eec under the esrin project, and is operated by the dutch ptt. ixi interconnects national research networks, many national public data networks and several specialized international networks. it works like a national pdn service, but uses its own network user addresses. echo, stn, dimdi, data-star and other database vendors can be accessed through ixi. the service is not available to most users having email access through the internet. using dasnet to cross network boundaries ---------------------------------------- da systems forwards electronic mail and files (also binary files) across mailbox system boundaries for customers. they can send your mail to several large in-house systems, information networks, and over commercial mailbox systems in countries. these are some systems on their list: aba/net, alternex (brazil), att mail, bix, bitnet, cesac (italy), cignet, comnet (switzerland), connect, dialcom, deutsche mailbox, dialcom, envoy , eies, easylink, euromail (germany), fredsnaetet (sweden), galaxy, geonet (hosts in germany, england, u.s.a.), greennet, inet, infotap (luxembourg), mailbox benelux, mci mail, mercanmail (asia), mbk mediabox (germany), metanet, nicarao (nicaragua), nwi, otc peacenet/econet, pegasus (australia), pinet, portal, psychnet, san francisco/moscow teleport, telexphone (france), telerede (portugal), telehaus nordhorn (germany), telemail, textel (the caribbean), twics (japan), unison, uucp, web (canada), the well, internet. this list may suggest lack of connectivity between networks that do indeed have connections. for example, internet email may easily be sent to att mail, alternex, bix, bitnet, fredsnaetet, geonet, greennet, and many others on this list. connectivity changes constantly. check to see if you really need it, as this service is far from free. dasnet also lets you send email as telex, fax and by ordinary mail. they charge you by the number of characters transferred, and the destination address. (contact anna b. lange, da systems, inc., u.s.a. tel.: + - - - , or write her at annab@ .das.net). fidonet - grassroots playground ------------------------------- fidonet is an amateur network consisting of tens of thousands of bulletin boards all over the world. the network is "loosely coupled," meaning that most of the participating boards are not always connected. they call each others at regular intervals to exchange mail, often in the middle of the night when the rates are low. most fidonet boards have conferences, and allow you to send mail to users of other systems. netmail is a term often used for private fidonet email. echomail is used about its international conferences. the selection of echomail conferences on a given fidonet board can be as unique as the rest of the system. relaynet -------- is another global network of bulletin boards. it offers exchange of email between systems. messages and conference items entered on one system will automatically be copied to other participating boards. your costs for "talking" with others in other parts of the world are very small. other grassroots networks ------------------------- it doesn't take much to set up a bulletin board service, and it is as easy to connect bbs systems to each other in a dial-up network for regular exchanges of email, files and conferences. all over the world, grassroots networks keep popping up with names like ilink, amnet, suedd mb-verbund, starmail, magicnet, a- net, mausnet, zerberus-netz, smbx-net, basa-netz, you name it. many boards offer access to more than one grassroots network, as well as to the internet. thus, the ability to send global email is extended to new users every day. other services -------------- the pdn connect-usa competes with starlink in north america. (connect-usa communications, inc., pennsylvania ne suite , albuquerque, new mexico. - - (voice), - - (fax), - - (bbs). ) global access is a similar service reselling time on the sprintnet network in north america. reducing the cost of using mailing lists ---------------------------------------- the problem of subscribing to mailing lists is that all discussion items come to you in individual messages. each message comes with its own mailer header, and this information is generally completely useless. (read "returned mail" in chapter for details.) newer versions of the bitnet listserv software provide commands that solve this problem: set <list name> digest ---------------------- this command is sent to a listserv to make all daily messages come to you in one, single message. example: say you've joined kidcafe@vm .nodak.edu, which usually has a large number of messages each day. send the following command to the listserv: set kidcafe digest it will typically reduce the number of lines received from this mailing list by around percent. set <list name> index --------------------- this command is sent to a listserv to get a daily list of messages, like in this example from kidcafe: index date size poster and subject ----- ---- ---- ------------------ / from: david chalmers <david.chalmers@p .f .n .z .fidonet.org> subject: conor dublin ireland based on this list, you can use the listserv's search commands to retrieve individual messages of interest. these commands are similar to those used for searching in chapter . for more about searching mailing lists' message bases, send a message to listserv@vm .nodak.edu with the following command in the text of your mail: get kidlink tips some listservs offers simplified search commands and macros to make retrieval of individual messages simpler. chapter : keep what you find ============================== little is gained by being skillful at locating and accumulating information, and then becoming drowned in an avalanche of data that one cannot manage - or use. this chapter starts with how to build a personal data base on your own hard disk. we continue by investigating strategies for finding interesting information on your disk, before winding down with some words about what separates good information from bad. search and throw away --------------------- to novices, everything is difficult. during the first online trips, they may feel as if moving to the other side of the globe to start over: they need new newspapers, magazines, information sources, and services. trial and error are required to find online gold mines. as you get more experience, focus tends to shift from getting information to digesting. getting the data gets 'into your fingers', and doesn't bother much anymore. the number of retrieved lines increases. the only bad news is that your reading speed remains at the same old level. in our time, people tend to talk more than they listen, and you usually find more information than knowledge. therefore, say no to irrelevant information. it is seldom worth keeping. there is generally no good reason to learn things that you really don't need to know. practice "selective ignorance." regularly evaluate your online sources critically, and discard those costing you more than they are worth. concentrate on those giving the best returns. adjust the frequency with which you visit selected services to match their usefulness. what used to be daily visits, may have to be downgraded to once per week or month. consider replacing daily news monitoring by clipping services. plan 'overview' and 'details' with different frequencies. 'overview' refers to online trips to get an impression of what generally goes on. an example: my script system is set for automatic visits to the compuserve toshiba forum. whenever i visit, it 'digs out' unread messages based on key words on the item's subject line. during , it searched for these strings: ' ', t ', and ' '. once, this gave the following message to read: #: s /hi-power notebooks -oct- : : sb: #t sx recharger fm: steve kitahata , to: all i tried to order the battery recharger for my t sx from jade computer last weekend. the sales rep said it would take about a week, so i called today to check up on it. he told me that i could only buy the recharger with the car adapter as a bundled set for $ . they had both advertised in their flyer as separate items, which they should be. has anyone heard of this? does anyone know of any sources that have the battery recharger available? any help would be appreciated. thanx. -- steve my script found the search word "t " in the subject line's text (sb: #t sx recharger), and subsequently selected the message. once per month, the same system "scans the horizon" to give me an idea of what is going on. this is done by requesting a list of subjects being discussed. here is part of one such list: : dos upgrade replies : tdos upgrade questions replies : toshiba dos . ships! reply : dos . upgrade solution : toshibados=bad business replies : dos / stacker reply reading the list, allows me to see if new and interesting topics are up for discussion. if i use stacker and want contact with other users, i can request message number and the subsequent reply ( reply). that should give me some email addresses. | several advanced communication programs and offline readers | | have built-in quick scan features. for example, tapcis does | | this just fine in compuserve forums. | | | | when retrieving conference messages from bulletin boards using | | streader at high speed, like bps or above, then the cost | | of downloading all new items may be insignificant. therefore, | | you might just as well do it. | | | | later, when reading the captured mail, streader lets you | | select messages to read from a list of subjects. you can save | | what you want to keep, and delete the rest. | by regular scanning subject headers you reduce the risk of missing important trends, for example because authors were using other terms on the subject line than expected. scanning also lets us discover if the discussion is heading off in other, interesting directions. after a while, you'll have a set of sources, persons, and tools that will provide you with what you need. this is your personal infrastructure of electronic information. now, you must maintain and cultivate it. store incoming information -------------------------- chances are that you will retrieve more information than you can read. sometimes it takes weeks for me to get up to date with my own readings. if you visit several online services, consider storing the data in files with different names. use part of the file name to show the source of this information. if visiting a service regularly, consider using the date as part of the file names. this will make it easier to select, read and search them in a useful sequence. | example: say you're regularly visiting twics in tokyo. what you | | download on november , you may store in a file named | | | | tw .tmp | | | | my scripts do this automatically. on some services, they also | | split retrieved data into urgent and may be read later files. | | private mail from twics is stored in nb .tmp. by storing | | private mail separately, it is easier to see if somebody wants | | a quick reply. | all file names in this example have the extension .tmp (temporary). this signifies that these files are unread. when i read them, and select parts for permanent storage on my hard disk, i use different names. often, i use the year, or a month/year code in the file name extension. for example, the file dialog. contains information from dialog collected during . postprocessing the data ------------------------ the data capture is completed, and the retrieved data is stored on the hard disk in more or several files. your next task is to * read the received texts, * cut and paste selected parts to archive or work files, * prepare responses to your electronic mail. this may include quoting part of the incoming messages in your replies. * finally, delete all temporary files. many advanced programs have these features built in. if not, you may use your favorite word processor, or something else. there are many alternatives. list is my favorite ms-dos shareware file viewer program. it can be downloaded from most bulletin boards. using list, it is difficult to destroy your precious retrieved data while reading, cutting and pasting. | more about list: | | assume that all input data is stored in the disk catalog c:\in | | and that you're using the file name convention suggested above. | | type list and press enter. a list of file names will appear on | | your screen. press s to sort the list, and then d to have them | | sorted by creation date. the newest files are at the bottom of | | the list. | | move the cursor (using the arrow keys) to the input file | | that you want to read and press enter. scroll up and down in the| | file by pressing the pgup/pgdn or the arrow keys. | | let's assume that you are reading tw .tmp right now. | | on your screen is a piece of information that you want to | | keep for future reference. mark the text with alt-m commands | | (keep the alt key pressed down, while pressing m), and then | | alt-d. list will ask you for a file name. you enter twics. , | | and the text is appended to what is already there. | | this method allows you quickly to mark and append parts | | of your input file to various archive files. press esc to | | return to the file list when through, then press d. list asks | | if you really want to delete the file. press y, and tw .tmp | | is gone. | | list lets you find information stored in your archives | | (string search). what you find can be marked and copied to a | | work file. it can also be set to invoke an editor or a word | | processor for the selected file. | reuse of data on your hard disk ------------------------------- over time your personal archives will grow in size. you begin to experience the benefits of having all this information on your hard disk. yesterday's news is today's history, and may be used in many interesting ways. one business executive regularly monitors key technologies, customers, competitors, and suppliers. he does it by tapping sources like kompass, associated press, and reuters. interesting bits of information are regularly stored on his disk. tomorrow, there is an important meeting with a major customer. first, a quick search through the personal customer database to be reminded of important events since the last meeting. an unfamiliar person is also going to be present. maybe there is some background information, for example about a recent promotion. then, a quick check on major competitors. maybe they are up to something that he needs to know about. with efficient tools for searching your hard disk, finding information takes only a few seconds. if you are still left with open questions, go online to complement. on ms-dos computers, you can search the files with wordperfect, list, the dos utility find, and a long list of other programs. i prefer programs that let me search for more than one word at the time, like in hydro and petrochemical and contract, or exxon or mobil. | my favorite: my favorite search utility is lookfor. it can | | be downloaded from many bulletin boards. the ms-dos program | | is small, fast, and is superior for searches in dos text files.| | store your finds in work files, or print them out on paper. | | lookfor is not an indexing program. it is ready to search | | anywhere, anytime. | discipline and organization is required to get the most out of your file archives. you must decide what to do with each piece of information: should it be printed out and be read in front of the fireplace this evening, or should it be circulated? should it be stored on your hard disk, or be refined before storage? use standard file names that are easy to remember. if you don't, risk having to view files to find out what they contain. it may take longer to find a piece of information in a casual file on a large disk, than look up a piece of information on paper in your inbox. therefore, finish handling your capture file while you read it on your screen: send the pieces to their final destination. make immediate transfers to your to-do files. give the original file a name that makes it easier to move later. have a procedure that prevents duplication of effort. desinformation, deception and errors ------------------------------------ always use several sources of information. some people write to lead you astray. the online world exposed some interesting incidents that came out of the former soviet union before the attempted coup in . desinformation hurts everybody and comes from all sides. even professional news agencies, like associated press, reuters and agence france-presse, regularly stumble. most news is written by journalists reporting what they have seen, read or heard. their interpretation of the situation may be wrong. supplement online news with what knowledgeable people say (by email or in conferences), when knowing the facts is important. another point: errors will occasionally be discovered and reported by the news sources, but always after the fact. always store these reports in your archives, and make it a rule to search to the end when looking for something. otherwise, you may never discover these corrections. chapter : you pay little for a lot! ===================================== calculating costs ----------------- those living in norway may read up to twenty-six pages of news from associated press in the united states and financial times (england) for us$ . , or less. the trick is to dial long distance to a bps node in sweden when the telephone company and compuserve's non-prime time rates are in effect. at bps, you may transfer text at up to characters per second. one page of text (size a- ) holds around characters. a typical news story is one to two pages of text. | users watching the 'taximeter' can use online services at a | | very low cost. for many, global communication is almost free.| reading exactly the same news through another network or service, may cost you percent more. through yet another online service, the cost may double again. a full issue of the newsbytes newsletter is around , characters, or pages of text. retrieving it from a local bbs typically costs me around cents. retrieving the full text from compuserve would cost me over percent more. using newsnet for the job, at bps through datapak, would increase my current cost by more than us$ . . the time of day may be important. some services have different rates for access during the day, the evening, and the weekend. use your calculator often. when you pay by the minute -------------------------- when using bulletin boards, phone charges are often the only cost items. some boards require a subscription fee for full access to the system. still, it is easy to calculate the costs of your calls. divide the subscription fee by an estimated number of calls, and add to the cost of using the phone. the same applies to users of compuserve. their total cost is simply the sum of all connect charges, any network charges (to compuserve and others), part of the basic subscription fee, and local phone rates (for direct dialing to the service, or to reach the network's node). where a service uses a monthly subscription rate, add part of this to the time charges. distribute the rate using an estimated number of online hours per month. example: you pay us$ /hour to access a service during prime time. your modem speed is cps. theoretically, if the data flows without pauses at system prompts, you can transfer pages of text in one hour. even when you deduct some characters due to stops in the transfer, the resulting transferred volume remains respectable. to transfer one page of text takes around nine seconds ( characters divided by the speed, which is bps, or about characters per second). the cost is nine cents. a given binary file (a program) is bytes large. using the xmodem protocol, you can transfer it in about four minutes and thirteen seconds. the cost is us$ . . to find the cost when paying by the minute is simple. just calculate the cost per minute or second, and multiply by the estimated connect time. on many services, it will take a minute or two before you can start to receive text or files. disconnecting also takes a few seconds. add this to the connect time when calculating costs. pauses and delays in the transfer can be caused by you or others, and may have a dramatic impact. it is particularly important to take this into account when comparing alternatives using different networks. example: transfers to twics via datapak at bps rarely gave me higher effective speeds than cps. the reason was that the connection between the japanese telcom network and twics went through a bps gateway. a high speed connection to your data transporter's network does not guarantee a high speed connection to the remote computer. i used to go through datapak at bps to a computer center in oslo. there, i was connected through a local area network to the host computer. the effective speed was rarely higher than bps. calling direct gave twice the speed. try to measure the effective transfer speed before selecting a routing for your data. transfer the same amount of text through various networks. if future transfers are likely to take place at a given time of day, test at that time. if your planned application is retrieval of programs, retrieve programs. if you want to read news, then read news from the services that you want to compare. when a network service charging for volume (like datapak) will also be part of a comparison, measuring volume is particularly important. do not assume that you know the answer in advance. | note: always calculate the cost based on a fixed volume, like | | for the transfer of characters. this is particularly | | important when you need to use different transfer speeds to | | access competing services. | network load varies considerably throughout the day depending on the number of simultaneous users, and their applications. this also applies to online services. the load is normally lowest, when the bulk of the users are asleep, and during weekends. when the load is low, you get more done per minute. planning and self-discipline pays off ------------------------------------- the actual cost of using a given set of services depends a lot on your self-discipline, the tools you use, and on how well prepared you are: * if accessing manually, use "quick" commands rather than menus to move at maximum speed to desired sources of information. * do not set your services to be used with colors, sound, or special methods for displaying graphics, unless you have no choice, or are willing to pay the extra cost. they increase the volume of transferred text, and lower effective speed. * get the information and disconnect. it is expensive - and usually unnecessary - to read captured text while online. log off to read. call back for more to read, disconnect, and then call back again. * learn how to write your mail offline, and send the letters "in a batch" to your mailbox. your messages will often have fewer typing errors, be better thought out, and the cost will be considerably lower. * consider automating your communication (see chapter ). i use bergen by byte this way. a while ago, it gave me the following progress report: "time on: hrs min, today hrs min, total times." in average, i spend around . minutes per call. yesterday, i was connected for : minutes. the result was kilobytes' worth of conference mail. modem speed and cost -------------------- bps is a sensible modem speed for some applications, and used to be a good starting point for new onliners. the benefits of using a faster modem may be marginal under the following conditions: * when navigating the online service considerably reduces the effective speed, and you access the service manually. * when you pay considerably more for access at higher speed. (compuserve charges extra for bps access, but not much.) * when your networks do not offer higher speeds. * when the relative price of a faster modem in your country is prohibitive. on the other hand, a modem doing bps or more, does give you considerably faster communication. if doing things faster is more important than keeping costs down, then it is a wise investment. this is the case for me. besides, often it is definitely cheaper. your applications have a considerable impact on your costs. if you mainly use your modem for retrieval of programs and large data files from bulletin boards - and don't have to pay extra for volume - then higher modem speeds will immediately give reduced costs. a slower speed modem may also stop you from getting what you want. for example, there are several shareware programs on my board that users of bps modems are unable to download within their allotted minutes per day. when you pay for volume ----------------------- some network services, like datapak in norway, have high rates for volume, and very low rates for connect time. when using such services, automatic communication becomes less useful. rather than connecting, getting a piece of information, disconnecting, and then going back for more, you may find it cost efficient to review menus and results while online. when paying for volume, the online service's menus become luxury items. using quick commands for navigating is cheaper. your comparisons will never be accurate when comparing with services charging for connect time. it is particularly difficult when the measure of volume is 'packets' rather than 'number of characters transferred'. datapak and many other pdn services reports your sessions like this: clr pad ( ) : : : these numbers say that you have been connected to a service for minutes and seconds, that data 'packets' have been received, and that have been sent. use these figures to calculate the cost of the call. | one data 'packet' or segment contains up to characters. | | think of it as a measure of the number of lines. each line can | | have a maximum of characters. if you send the character a | | and a carriage return, then this also counts as a segment. | | | | consequently, it is hard to use the datapak record to estimate | | the real number of characters transferred. all we know is that | | + segments were transferred, and that segments may | | contain up to , characters. | when calculating the cost of a direct call, just the number of minutes counts. use the time reported by the online service, and not your stop watch. compuserve gives this type of report: thank you for using compuserve! off at : est -nov- connect time = : if the size of your log file was kb after the first test, and kb after the second, then just adjust the latter to compare (actual cost/ * ). it is easy to compare services that only charge by the minute. more practical hints -------------------- it is more expensive to call a service daily "to check the news," than to call it once per week to retrieve the same stories. navigating by menus is more expensive than going directly to a source, or going there by stacking commands (i.e., combining quick commands into one). many services let you read selective items in conferences by entering a search string. on my bbs, the following command r extended + c lets you read all messages containing the search string 'extended' in the text starting with message number . if you forget the "c" parameter, the flow will stop after each message. this will reduce the average effective speed. always use "nonstop" commands when reading stories, conference items, and other texts. now, read the next chapter. chapter : automatic communication =================================== automatic data communication as a development strategy. to get a lead on your competitors. to avoid duplication of effort. to reduce costs. to reduce boring and repetitive work. to avoid having to remember technical details. automatic communication is both for professionals and amateurs. first, because it keeps the costs down. second, because it lets you do the job faster and safer. we all have different needs --------------------------- automation will never be the same for everybody. our needs are too different. some get excited when a program can dial a bulletin board, retrieve a program, and then disconnect without them having to touch the keyboard. some want an "answering machine" that can respond to and forward email when he or she is away from the office. others want a communications system that can tap selected news sources, search databases, and do postprocessing on the retrieved material. for most professionals, doing things manually takes too much time. time is better spent reading, digesting, and using, rather than on stupid technical retrieval work. computers can do that. to others again, automation is a question of being able to use the online resource at all. if it takes seconds to get a piece of information, it may be possible to get before running for the next meeting. if it takes minutes, however, there may not be enough time. if you also need to read a help text to find out how to do it, you may not even consider it. the mind is full of other things right now. | when using a system for automatic communication, you do not | | have to learn and remember online commands. the system will | | do it for you. | the minimum solution -------------------- automatic data communication in its simplest form entails the following: * one keypress to get the communications program to dial a number, and send user name/password when the online service requests this information. * macro commands (like in a word processor) for navigating through an online service, searching, and to send complex commands by pressing one key. most communication programs have a macro language or a script language. you will probably never regret time spent on learning how to use these features. at a minimum, you should be able to have your system log on to a service automatically. autologon spares you the task of remembering your user name and password. besides, most people are only able to use the keyboard at a low speed. they easily get frustrated by having to correct typing errors. auto-logon with procomm ----------------------- procomm is one of the most popular communications program in use today (see appendix ). a procomm script file is a text file, which can contain a list of commands for dialing and navigating on an online service. when writing a procomm script for auto-logon, your first step is to list the commands that you believe required. enter them in a text file (as dos or ascii text). in such scripts, you can test for the occurrence of a small piece of information that the online service is supposed to send at a given time (like the question "password?"). when this information is found, procomm can be set to send the proper response or command (here, your secret password). scripts can be tied to your favorite online services through procomm's dialing directory. press a key to start the appropriate script file for access to a service. the following is a simple procomm script file. it can be used to access my bulletin board in norway. it assumes that your name is jens mikkelsen, and that the secret password is foxcrook . you'll have to change this before testing. ; ;script file for auto-logon to shs with procomm and procomm plus ; waitfor "our first name? " pause transmit "jens^m" waitfor "our last name? " pause transmit "mikkelsen^m" waitfor "ots will echo)? " pause transmit "foxcrook ^m" waitfor "^jmore (y),n,ns? " pause transmit "n^m" waitfor "^jmore (y),n,ns? " pause transmit "n^m" waitfor "r] to continue? " pause transmit "^m" it is not difficult. you probably understand a lot already. here is the explanation: * the ";" character at the beginning of a line identifies it as a comment line. procomm is to ignore it. we use such lines for notes. * waitfor "our first name? " has procomm wait for the text string "our first name?" from my bbs. it is a part of the question "what is your first name?". * pause halts the execution of the script file for one second. * transmit "jens^m" sends the name "jens" followed by a return (the code ^m in procomm). * waitfor "our last name? " makes procomm wait for the question "what is your last name?" the script continues like this. in waitfor commands, we use part of the text that is displayed on our screen once the scrolling stops. make sure that the search term is unique. it must not appear elsewhere in the text coming from the host computer. if it does, your name and password may be sent too early. you can call the script horror.cmd, and attach it to the entry for my board in your procomm phone directory. when you call it the next time, procomm will execute the commands in the file and "turn the keyboard over to you" when done. macros in procomm ----------------- above, we used a script to log on automatically to a service. when procomm gives us access to the keyboard again, we must continue manually. what we want to do online varies. sometimes, we want to read new messages in conferences. in other cases, the purpose is to check new programs in the file library. if we find programs of interest, we may want to download them. shorthand macros can help you do this faster and safer. for example, one macro can take you quickly to a conference for new messages. you can make procomm start this macro whenever you press alt- (keep the alt key down, then press ). you can have the macro key alt- send other commands when in the file archives. when i started using ms-dos computers for data communications, pc-talk became my favorite program. it has many of the same macro capabilities that procomm has. with pc-talk, i did autologon to newsnet. macro number one sent commands that gave me the contents of various newsletters. macro # picked up the contents in another group. macro # picked up stories from my mailbox, and macro # logged me off the service. my mission was completed by pressing four or five keys. automating the full task ------------------------ it's a long way from automated logon scripts and the use of macros to automating the whole task. the major difference is that with full automation, you do not have to look at the screen while the script is working. you can do other things. sometimes, you may not even be present when the job is being done. on a typical morning, i go directly from bed to my office to switch my communications computer on. while i visit the bathroom, my communications program calls three online services, retrieve and send information. when the script has disconnected from the first service, which is my bulletin board, it analyzes the received data. i want an alphabetic list of visitors since my last visit, a sorted list of downloaded programs, and names of those calling in at bps or higher. sometimes, the unexpected happen. there may be noise on the line, or a sudden disconnect. usually, my script can solve this without manual intervention. it is therefore allowed to work unattended most of the time. when i get to my office after breakfast, it is all done. my communications program is set for reading and responding to today's email. i can sit down, and immediately get to work. after having written all my replies, i say "send" to my system. for me, it's time for another cup of coffee. i am not needed by the keyboard while my mail is being sent. this is what an automatic communications system can do. my scripts also help plan and prepare online visits, and ease my work by postprocessing results. | when your communication is fully automated, you need not | | read incoming data while it scrolls over your screen, and | | then again after logging off the service. you do it only | | once. | how to get it? here are some alternatives: alternative : write your own system ------------------------------------ you can write procedures for powerful script-driven programs like proyam (from omen technology) and crosstalk mk iv. i started writing scripts for proyam over seven years ago. the system is constantly expanded to include new services, refined to include more functions, and enhanced to become more robust. the scripts make my system work like an autopilot. it calls online services, navigates, retrieves and sends data. postprocessing includes automatic reformatting of retrieved data, transfers to various internal databases, statistics, usage logs, and calculation of transfer costs. such scripts can do quite complex operations online. for example, it can - buy and sell stock when today's quotes are over/under given limits, - select news stories and other types of information based on information found in menus or titles. script writing is not for everybody. it is complicated, and takes a lot of time. therefore, it is only for the specially interested. on the other hand, those going for it seldom regret. tailor- made communication scripts give a wonderful flexibility. the software does not cost much, but again, it takes a lot of time! | do not use large and complex script files before you know the | | online service well. the scripts let you do things quicker and | | safer, but there is always a possibility for unexpected | | problems. | | | | test your scripts for a long time to make them robust by | | "training" them to handle the unexpected. leave them to work | | unattended when you are reasonably certain that they can do | | the job. - it may take months to get to that point. | | | | build a timeout feature into your scripts, so that they don't | | just hang there waiting for you after an encounter with fate. | alternative : use scripts made by others ----------------------------------------- some script authors generously let others use their creations. earle robinson of compuserve's ibm europe forum, share his proyam scripts for automatic usage of compuserve with others. they are available from the ibm communication forum library. enter go xtalk on compuserve to find advanced script files for crosstalk mk. . zcomm and proyam scripts for visiting my board automatically can be freely downloaded there. they split access up into these three phases: phase : menu driven offline preparation. phase : automatic logon, navigation through the system, and automatic disconnection. phase : automatic offline postprocessing. you will find scripts for other programs on many online services. alternative : special software ------------------------------- several online services sell communication programs with built-in functions that provides you with automation. they can have offline functions for reading and responding to mail. the degree of automation varies. there are also many programs written by third parties. most programs assume that you use 'expert' as your default operating mode on the online service. tapcis, autosig (ato), ozcis, cisop, compuserve navigator (for macintosh), autopilot (for amiga), arctic (for acorn archimedes), and quickcis (for atari) are popular choices on compuserve. tapcis is my personal favorite. (cim does not offer much automation!) aladdin is for genie. it automates your use of roundtables (conferences), file areas, and mail. dialog users turn to dialog- link. nexis news plus (for nexis, us$ ) has pull-down menus and detailed selection of commands. this ms-dos program helps users set up detailed search commands before logging on to the mead data central. your search results will be downloaded automatically. personal bibliographics software, inc. (ann arbor, mich, u.s.a. tel.: + - - - ) sells pro-search to dialog and brs users (for macintosh and ms-dos). pro-search will lead you through menus to find information on both services. it translates your plain english search commands into the cryptic search language used by the services. it logs on automatically, connects to these services, finds your information, and shows you the hits. alternative : offline readers ------------------------------ the alternatives above have one important weakness. noise on the line can prevent the "robot" from doing the job. all it takes is for noise to give a prompt another content than is expected by your program or script (as in "en@er a number:" instead of "enter a number:"). you can avoid noise problems by using get commands (see chapter ), and by making the online service use its minimum prompts ('expert mode') . still, this does not give full protection. the best is to let the online service do the navigation. think of it as logging on to run a batch file on the remote computer. combine this with automatic transfers of your commands, transmitted in of one stream of data with automatic error correction (in the software and in the modem), and you have a very robust system. the program logs on to the service. then the service takes over. it registers your user identity, checks your user profile for personal interests, retrieves and packs all messages, news and files into one compressed file, and sends it to you at high speed. your outgoing messages, search commands, commands to join or leave conferences, and more, are transferred to the remote computer in a similar packet (compressed file). when received by the remote computer, it unpacks the transfer file and distributes messages and commands to various services following your instructions. your "physical" contact with the service is when your modem is disconnected. the help menus that you read belong to your program, and not the online service. you read and respond to mail in a reading module (ref. the term "offline reader"). some offline readers give the caller access to more tools than is available on the online service itself. they may have spelling checkers, multimedia support, let you use your favorite editor or word processor, and offer various storage, search, and printing options. using offline readers is probably the easiest, cheapest, and safest way of using online services. these "readers" are popular among bulletin board users, and some commercial services are also starting to accommodate them. there are many offline reader programs. the most advanced take over completely upon logon, and manage transfers of commands and compressed information files to and from the host. (example: binkley term on fidonet) global link is an offline reader for econet. bergen by byte offers the bbs/cs mail grabber/reader, a script system used with the communications program telix and the service's "auto-get" function. the most popular systems on the pcboard based thunderball cave bbs are offline express, megareader, session manager, rose reader and ezreader. these are used with scripts written for various communication programs. some of them have built in communications (and script) modules. ezreader from thumper technologies (p.o. box , tulsa, ok - , u.s.a.) lets users retrieve mail from several online systems using transfer formats such as qwk, pcboard capture files, prodoor zipm files, xrs, mci mail, and others. cost: us$ ( ). streader from sparkware (post office box , hendersonville, tennessee , u.s.a.) is my personal favorite for accessing qmail based online systems. | note: some offline readers contain all the features required | | for fully automated communications. some bulletin boards allow | | up- and downloading to start right after connect. | | off-line xpress, an offline mail reader for qwk (qwikmail) | | packets, does not contain a communications module. it just does | | pre- and postprocessing of mail packets. | | you can use the off-line xpress as one element in a larger | | automated system. for example, a system for access to pcboard | | bulletin boards may consist of off-line xpress software, pkzip | | and pkunzip (popular shareware programs to compress/decompress | | mail packets), the qmodem communications program, and a script | | to navigate to/from the qwk packet send and receive area on the | | bbs. | | streader (version . ) contains a powerful script based | | communications module. it lets you compose replies, set search | | commands, subscriptions to services, add and drop conferences, | | and enter download commands offline. | automatic automation -------------------- we have explained how to write scripts with procomm. however, there are simpler and quicker ways. many communication programs can make scripts automatically using a learning function. it goes like this: start the learning function before calling the online service. then log on, navigate to the desired services, do what you want to automate, and disconnect. the learning feature analyzes the received data and builds a script file for automatic communication. if you call again with the new script, it will "drive the same route one more time." zcomm and proyam have a learning feature. this is how i made a script for accessing semaforum bbs using zcomm: zcomm asked for a phone number. i entered + - - . it asked for speed, and i entered bps. next, i had to choose one of the following: ( ) system uses ibm pc (ansi) line drawing ( ) bits even parity ( ) bits no parity my choice was . zcomm dialed the number. when the connection was established, i entered my name and password, navigated to the message section, read new messages, browsed new files in the library, and entered g for goodbye. this was the "tour" that i wanted to automate. when disconnected, i pressed the f key. this prompted the learning process based on a record of the online tour. the log described everything that had happened in detail, including my pauses to think. now i was prompted by the following question: 'newscr.t' exists. append/replace/quit? i selected append. then: do you want this script file as a new entry in your telephone directory (y/n)? i entered "y," and named it "semaforum." after a few seconds, my new script was ready: your new script is in the file 'newscr.t' !! you can append the file to your current script file (for example phodir.t) or have the commands executed by entering: call semaforum.newscr.t it was time to test the new wonder. i entered call semaforum.newscr.t at the zcomm command line, hit the enter key, and off it went. zcomm called the bbs and repeated everything - at far higher speed than i had done it manually. it went on-hook as planned when done. limitations ----------- auto-learn programs can create a script file that let you "drive the same route." for some applications this is enough. for others, it's just part of the way. you have to refine the script manually to get what you want. example: if you call my bulletin board with an auto-learned script made yesterday, chances are that everything works well. if you call twice on the same day, however, you're in for a surprise. the board greets you differently on your second visit. you will not get the menu of available bulletins. it will take you directly to the system's main menu. your script must take this into account. on most online services, many things can happen at each "junction of your road." at one point in one of my scripts, up to twenty things may happen. each event needs its own "routing." twenty possible events are an extreme, but three to four possibilities at each system prompt is not unusual. all of them need to be handled by your script, if you want it to visit online services unattended while asleep. it is quicker and simpler to use other people's scripts and programs, although this might force you to use a different program for each service. personally, i prefer offline readers on services where such are able to do the job. on other services, i usually depend on my own tailor-made scripts. chapter : gazing into the future ================================== thoughts about things to come. newspaper of the future --------------------------- some years ago, nicholas negroponte of massachusetts institute of technology, said that today's newspapers are old-fashioned and soon to be replaced by electronic "ultra personal" newspapers. "if the purpose is to sell news," he said, then it must be completely wrong to sell newspapers. personally, i think that it is a dreadful way of receiving the news." mit's media laboratory had developed a new type of electronic newspaper. daily, it delivered personalized news to each researcher. the newspaper was "written" by a computer that searched through the news services' cables and other news sources according to each person's interest profile. the system could present the stories on paper or on screen. it could convert them to speech, so that the "reader" could listen to the news in the car or the shower. in a tailor-made electronic newspaper, personal news makes big headlines. if you are off for san francisco tomorrow, the weather forecasts for this city is front page news. email from your son will also get a prominent place. "what counts in my newspaper is what i consider newsworthy," said negroponte. he claimed that the personal newspaper is a way of getting a grip on the information explosion. "we cannot do it the old way anymore. we need other agents that can do prereading for us. in this case, the computer happens to be our agent." the technology is already here. anyone can design similar papers using powerful communication programs with extensive script features. i have tried. my test edition of the saltrod daily news did not convert news to sound. it did not look like a newspaper page on my screen. not because it was impossible. i simply did not feel these 'extras' worth the effort. my personal interest profile was taken care of by my scripts. if i wanted news, the "news processor" went to work and "printed" a new edition. on tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays, i got an "extended edition." this is a section from my first edition: "front page," thursday, november . under the headline news from tokyo, the following items: toshiba to market inexpensive portable word processor tohoku university constructing semiconductor research lab meitec, u.s. firm to jointly market computer printer info toshiba to supply office equipment to olivetti nissan develops paint inspection robot made-to-order pocket computer from casio these articles were captured from kyoto news service through down jones/news retrieval. the column with news from the united states had stories from newsbytes newsletters: * day one comdex. * ibm's pre announcement of "clamshell" * at&t to jump in sooner with laptop computer * commodore third consecutive quarterly loss * zenith unveils touch-screen * hp's earnings drop hot news from england came from several sources, including financial times, and reuters (in compuserve's uk news). headlines read: * the christmas selling war * big macs going cheap to university students "page " was dedicated to technology intelligence. "page " had stories about telecommunications, mainly collected from newsnet's newsletters. "page " had stories about personal computer applications. as the cost of communicating and using online services continues to decrease, many people will be able to do the same. this is where we are heading. some people say it is too difficult to read news on a computer screen. maybe so, but pay attention to what is happening in notebook computers. this paragraph was written on a small pc by the fireplace in my living room. the computer is hardly any larger or heavier than a book. (sources for monitoring notebook trends: newsbytes' ibm and apple reports, compuserve's online today, and ibm hardware forum.) electronic news by radio ------------------------ if costs were of no concern, then your applications of the online world would probably change considerably. pay attention, as we are moving fast in that direction. radio is one of the supporting technologies. it is used to deliver usenet newsgroup to bulletin boards (example: pagesat inc. of palo alto, u.s.a.) also, consider this: businesses need a constant flow of news to remain competitive. desktop data inc. (tel. + - - - ) markets a real-time news service called newsedge in the united states and europe. they call it "live news processing." annual subscriptions start at us$ , for ten users ( ). newsedge continuously collects news from more than news wires, including sources like pr newswire, knight ridder/tribune business news, dow jones news service, dow jones professional investor report and reuters financial news. the stories are "packaged" and immediately feed to customers' personal computers and workstations by fm, satellite, or x. broadcast: * all news stories are integrated in a live news stream all day long, * the newsedge software manages the simultaneous receipt of news from multiple services, and alerts users to stories that match their individual interest profiles. it also maintains a full-text database of the most recent , stories on the user's server for quick searching. packet radio ------------ a global amateur radio network allows users to modem around the world, and even in outer space. its users never get a telephone bill. there are over packet radio based bulletin boards (pbbs). they are interconnected by short wave radio, vhf, uhf, and satellite links. technology aside, they look and feel just like standard bulletin boards. once you have the equipment, can afford the electricity to power it up, and the time it takes to get a radio amateur license, communication itself is free. packet radio equipment sells in the united states for less than us$ . this will give you a radio (vhr tranceiver), antenna, cable for connecting the antenna to the radio, and a controller (tnc - terminal node controller). most pbbs systems are connected to a network of packet radio based boards. many amateurs use bps, but speeds of up to , bps are being used on higher frequencies (the - mhz band in the united states). hams are working on real-time digitized voice communications, still-frame (and even moving) graphics, and live multiplayer games. in some countries, there are also gateways available to terrestrial public and commercial networks, such as compuserve, and usenet. packet radio is demonstrated as a feasible technology for wireless extension of the internet. radio and satellites are being used to help countries in the third world. volunteers in technical assistance (vita), a private, nonprofit organization, is one of those concerned with technology transfers in humanitarian assistance to these countries. vita's portable packet radio system was used for global email after a volcanic eruption in the philippines in . today, the emphasis is on africa. vita's "space mailbox" passes over each single point of the earth twice every hours at an altitude of kilometers. when the satellite is over a ground station, the station sends files and messages for storage in the satellite's computer memory and receives incoming mail. the cost of ground station operation is based on solar energy batteries, and therefore relatively cheap. to learn more about vita's projects, subscribe to their mailing list by email to listserv@auvm.bitnet. use the command sub devel-l <first-name last-name>. for more general information about packet radio, check out hamnet on compuserve, and especially its library . retrieve the file 'packet_radio' (packet radio in earth and space environments for relief and development) from gnet's archive (see chapter ). ilink has an hamradio conference. there is a packet radio mailing list at packet-radio@wsmr-simtel .army.mil (write packet- radio-request@@wsmr-simtel .army.mil to subscribe). usenet has rec.radio.amateur.packet (discussion about packet radio setups), and various other rec.radio conferences. there is ham_tech on fidonet, and ham radio under science on exec-pc. the american radio relay league (aarl) operates an internet information service called the arrl information server. to learn how to use it, send email to info@arrl.org with the word help in the body of the text. cable tv -------- expect cable tv networks to grow in importance as electronic high- ways, to offer gateways into the internet and others, and to get interconnected not unlike the internet itself. example: continental cablevision inc. (u.s.a.) lets customers plug pcs and a special modem directly into its cable lines to link up with the internet. the cable link bypasses local phone hookups and provide the capability to download whole books and other information at speeds up to million bits per second. electronic mail on the move --------------------------- for some time, we have been witnessing a battle between giants. on one side, the national telephone companies have been pushing x. backed by ccitt, and software companies like lotus, novell, and microsoft. on the other side, compuserve, dialcom, mci mail, geisco, sprint, and others have been fighting their wars. nobody really thought much about the internet, until suddenly, it was there for everybody. the incident has changed the global email scene fundamentally. one thing seems reasonably certain: that the internet will grow. in late , the president of the internet society (reston, va., u.s.a.) made the following prediction: ".. by the year the internet will consist of some million hosts, million networks, and billion users (close to the current population of the people's republic of china). much of this growth will certainly come from commercial traffic." we, the users, are the winners. most online services now understand that global exchange of email is a requirement, and that they must connect to the internet. meanwhile, wild things are taking place in the grassroots arena: * thousands of new bulletin boards are being connected to grassroots networks like fidonet (which in turn is connected to the internet for exchange of mail). * thousands of bulletin boards are being hooked directly into the internet (and usenet) offering such access to users at stunning rates. * the bbses are bringing email up to a new level by letting us use offline readers, and other types of powerful mail handling software. email will never be the same. cheaper and better communications --------------------------------- during christmas , a guru said that once the bps v. modems fell below the us$ , level, they would create a new standard. today, such modems can be bought at prices lower than us$ . in many countries, , bits/s modems are already the preferred choice. wild dreams get real -------------------- in the future, we will be able to do several things simultaneously on the same telephone line. this is what the promised land of isdn (integrated service digital networks) is supposed to give us. some users already have this capability. they write and talk on the same line using pictures, music, video, fax, voice and data. isdn is supposed to let us use services that are not generally available today. here are some key words: * chats, with the option of having pictures of the people we are talking to up on our local screen (for example in a window, each time he or she is saying something). eventually, we may get the pictures in -d. * database searches in text and pictures, with displays of both. * electronic transfers of video/movies over a telephone line (fractal image compression technology may give us another online revolution). imagine dances filmed by ethnologists at the smithsonian institution in washington, d.c., or an educational film about the laps in northern norway from an information provider called the norwegian broadcasting corp. the "internet talk radio" is already delivering programs by anonymous ftp (e.g., through ftp.nau.edu in the directory /talk-radio). * online amusement parks with group plays, creative offerings (drawing, painting, building of -d electronic sculptures), shopping (with "live" people presenting merchandise and good pictures of the offerings, test drives, etc.), casino (with real prizes), theater with live performance, online "dressing rooms" (submit a -d picture of yourself, and play with your looks), online car driving schools (drive a car through tokyo or new york, or go on safari). the sierra network has been playing around with these ideas for quite some time. * your favorite books, old as new, available for on-screen reading or searching in full text. remember, many libraries have no room to store all the new books that they receive. also, wear and tear tend to destroy books after some time. many books are already available online, including this one. * instant access to hundreds of thousands of 'data cottages'. these are computers in private homes of people around the world set up for remote access. with the technical advances in the art of transferring pictures, some of these may grow to become tiny online "television stations." these wild ideas are already here, but it will take time before they are generally available. new networks need to be in place. new and more powerful communications equipment has to be provided. farther down the road, we can see the contours of speech-based electronic conferences with automatic translation to and from the participants' languages. entries will be stored as text in a form that allows for advanced online searching. we may have a choice between the following: * to use voice when entering messages, rather than entering them through the keyboard. the ability to mix speech, text, sound and pictures (single frames or live pictures). * messages are delivered to you by voice, as text or as a combination of these (like in a lecture with visual aids). * text and voice can be converted to a basic text, which then may be converted to other languages, and forwarded to its destination as text or voice. one world --------- within the internet, the idea of "the network as one, large computer" has already given birth to many special services, like gopher and wais. potentially, we will be able to find and retrieve information from anywhere on the global grid of connected systems. bulletin boards have commenced to offer grassroots features modeled after telnet and ftp. these alternatives may even end up being better and more productive than the interactive commands offered "inside" the internet. the global integration of online services will continue at full speed, and in different ways. rates ----- there is a trend away from charging by the minute or hour. many services convert to subscription prices, a fixed price by the month, quarter or year. other services, among them some major database services, move toward a scheme where users only pay for what they get (no cure, no pay). mci mail was one of the first. there, you only pay when you send or read mail. on compuserve's iquest, you pay a fixed price for a fixed set of search results. cheaper transfers of data ------------------------- privatization of the national telephone monopolies has given us more alternatives. this will continue. possible scenarios: * major companies selling extra capacity from their own internal networks, * telecommunications companies exporting their services at extra low prices, * other pricing schemes (like a fixed amount per month with unlimited usage), * new technology (direct transmitting satellites, fm, etc.) so far, data transporters have been receiving a disproportionate share of the total costs. for example, the rate for accessing compuserve from norway through infonet is us$ . , while using the service itself costs us$ . at bps. increased global competition in data transportation is quickly changing this picture, supported by general access to the internet. prices will most likely continue their dramatic way toward zero. powerful new search tools ------------------------- as the sheer quantity of information expands, the development of adequate finding tools is gaining momentum. our major problem is how to use what we have access to. this is especially true on the internet. expect future personal information agents, called "knowbots," which will scan databases all over the online world for specific information at a user's bidding. this will make personal knowledge of where you need to go redundant. artificial intelligence will increase the value of searches, as they can be based on your personal searching history since your first day as a user. your personal information agents will make automatic decisions about what is important and what is not in a query. when you get information back, it will not just be in the normal chronological order. it will be ranked by what seems to be closest to the query. sources for future studies -------------------------- it seems appropriate to end this chapter with some online services focusing on the future: newsbytes has a section called trends. the topic is computers and communications. echo has the free database trend, the online edition of the trend monitor magazine. it contains short stories about the development within electronics and computers (log on to echo using the password trend). usenet has the newsgroup clari.news.trends (surveys and trends). why not complement what you find here by monitoring trends in associated areas (like music), to follow the development from different perspectives? the music forum rocknet on compuserve has a section called trends. compuserve's education forum has the section future talk. what educators think about the future of online services (and education) is always interesting. the well, based just outside silicon valley in the united states, has the future conference. uucp has info-futures. its purpose is "to provide a speculative forum for analyzing current and likely events in technology as they will affect our near future in computing and related areas." (contact: info-futures-request@cs.bu.edu for subscription.) usenet has comp.society.futures about "events in technology affecting future computing." it is tempting to add a list of conferences dedicated to science fiction, but i'll leave that pleasure to you. have a nice trip! appendix : list of selected online services ============================================ to make a list of online services is difficult. services come and go. addresses and access numbers are constantly changed. only one thing is certain. some of the details below will be outdated, when you read this. affaersdata i stockholm ab ------------------------- p.o. box , s- stockholm, sweden. tel.: + . america online -------------- has the cnn newsroom (turner educational services), the washington post, the national geographic magazine, pc world and macworld. aol has tailor-made graphical user interfaces for apple, macintosh, and pc compatible computers, and about . users (in june ). sending and receiving internet mail is possible. contact: america online, westwood center dr., vienna, va - , usa. phone: + - - - . apc --- the association for progressive communications (apc) is a worldwide partnership of member networks for peace and environmental users with host computers in several countries: alternex (brazil). email: support@ax.apc.org chasque (uruguay). email: apoyo@chasque.apc.org comlink e.v (germany). email: support@oln.comlink.apc.org ecuanex (ecuador). email: intercom@ecuanex.apc.org glasnet (russia). email: support@glas.apc.org greennet (england). email: support@gn.apc.org institute for global communications (u.s.a.), includes econet, peacenet, conflictnet, labornet. email: support@igc.apc.org nicarao - cries (nicaragua). email: ayuda@nicarao.apc.org nordnet (sweden). email: support@pns.apc.org pegasus (australia). email: support@peg.apc.org web (canada). email: support@web.apc.org while all these services are fee based, they bring a wealth of information on environmental preservation, peace (incl. greenpeace press releases), human rights, grant-making foundations, third world resources, united nations information service, pesticide information service, and more. for information about apc, write to apcadmin@igc.apc.org , or apc international secretariat, rua vincente de souza, , - rio de janeiro, brasil. fax: + - - - . for information about the peacenet world news service, which delivers news digests directly to your email box, send a request to pwn@igc.apc.org. bergen by byte -------------- norwegian online service with conferences and many files. modem tel.: + . pdn (datapak) address: . telnet: oscar.bbb.no ( . . . ). english-language interface available. annual subscription rates. you can register online. limited free usage. bibsys ------ book database operated by the norwegian universities' libraries. send internet mail to genserv@pollux.bibsys.no with your search word in the subject title of the message. big sky telegraph ----------------- is an online community for educators, business people etc. living in rural areas in north america. address: south atlantic, dillon, montana , u.s.a. bitnet ------ "because it's time network" started in as a small network for ibm computers in new york, u.s.a. today, bitnet encompasses , host computers by academic and research institutions all over the world. it has around , users (source: matrix news ) all connected hosts form a worldwide network using the nje (network job entry) protocols and with a single list of nodes. there is no single worldwide bitnet administration. several national or regional bodies administer the network. the european part of bitnet is called earn (european academic research network), while the canadian is called netnorth. in japan the name is asianet. bitnet also has connections to south america. other parts of the network have names like caren, ansp, scarnet, cearn, gulfnet, harnet, ecuanet, and runcol. normally, a bitnet email address looks like this: notrbcat@indycms the part to the left of the @-character is the users' mailbox code. the part to the right is the code of the mailbox computer. it is common for internet users to refer to bitnet addresses like this: notrbcat@indycms.bitnet . to send email from the internet to bitnet, it has to be sent through special gateway computers. on many systems, this is taken care of automatically. you type notrbcat@indycms.bitnet, and your mailbox system does the rest. on some systems, the user must give routing information in the bitnet address. for example, north american mail to bitnet can be sent through the gateway center cunyvm.cuny.edu . to make mail to notrbcat go through this gateway, its mail address must be changed as follows: notrbcat%indycms.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu explanation: the @ in the initial address is replaced with % . then add the gateway routing: ".bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu". if you must use a gateway in your address, always select one close to where you live. ask your local postmaster for the correct addressing in your case. bitnet has many conferences. we call them discussion lists or mailing lists. the lists are usually administered by a computer program called listserv. the dialog is based on redistribution of ordinary email by mailing lists. consequently, it is simple for users of other networks to participate in bitnet conferences. a list of discussion lists (at present around , one-line descriptions) is available by email from listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet. write the following command in the text of your message: list global new-list@ndsuvm .bitnet and netmonth (from bitlib@yalevm.bitnet) distribute regular notices about new discussion lists. subscribe to new-list by email to listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet. use the following command: sub new-list your-first-name your-last-name this is how we usually subscribe to discussion lists. send your subscription commands to a listserv close to where you live. the command "sendme bitnet overview" tells listserv to send more information about the services. bix --- is operated as a joint venture between general videotex corp. and the north american computer magazine byte (mcgraw-hill). to some extent, it mirrors what you can read on paper. bix offers global internet email, telnet and ftp, multiple conferences. in , the service had about , members. the nua address is . on internet, telnet x .bix.com . at the username: prompt, enter bix as a user name. at the second username: prompt, enter new if you don't already have an account on the service. you can sign up for the service, and play during your first visit to the service. read byte for more information, or write to general videotex corporation, massachusetts ave., cambridge, ma , usa. phone: + - - - . brs --- bibliographic retrieval services is owned by infopro technologies (see below). brs/after dark is a service for pc users. it can be accessed during evenings and weekends at attractive rates. infopro offers connection through their own network in europe, and through the internet. brs contains about databases within research, business, news, and science. the service's strengths are medicine and health. membership in brs costs us$ per year, plus hourly database usage charges. it is also available through compuserve (at a different price). contact in europe: brs information technologies, achilles house, western avenue, london w oua, england. tel. + . in north america: infopro technologies. tel.: + - - - . telnet: brs.com (us$ /hr). canada remote systems --------------------- is north america's largest bulletin board system ( ). it has a software library of more than , programs and files, and over , public forums and discussion areas. canada remote provides several news and information services, including the united press international and reuters news wires, north american stock exchange results, the twice-weekly edition of newsbytes, and other publications. tel.: + - - - (in the u.s.) and + - - - (canada). canada remote systems, crestlawn drive, unit d, mississauga, ontario, canada l w p . cgnet ----- is a network interconnecting a group of international research organizations. besides email, cgnet provides news clipping services, airline reservation information, and database search. (see dialcom) contact: cgnet services international, hamilton court, menlo park, california , usa. telephone: + - - - . fax: - - - telex: (cgn ui) . cix (england) ------------- british online-service available by telnet, through pdn services and by direct dial. telnet cix.compulink.co.uk. compulink information exchange ltd. claims to be europe's largest conferencing system. sign-up fee ( ): gbp . . monthly minimum: gbp . . off-peak connect rate gbp . . peak rate is . per hour. the service has full internet access, and email exchange with compuserve and dialcom. cix has many conferences, isdn access, usenet news, telnet and ftp. contact: the compulink information exchange ltd., the sanctuary oakhill grove, surbiton, surrey kt du, england. tel.: + - - - . fax: + - - - . nua: . data: + - - - /+ - - - . email: cixadmin@cix.compulink.co.uk . cix (usa) --------- the commercial internet exchange is a north american association of commercial internet providers in which they agree to carry each others' packets of mail, and more. clarinet -------- a commercial network publishing service providing information and news in over newsgroups by subject matter on usenet. read chapter for more information. single-user (individual) prices available. clarinet communications corp., king st. north, waterloo, ontario n j x , canada. email: info@clarinet.com . commercial mail relay service (cmr) ----------------------------------- this service is not available anymore. they used to be available on this address: intermail-request@intermail.isi.edu compuserve ---------- has about . million users (august ) all over the world, over , databases, forums, newspapers, online shopping from more than shops and entertainment. it's like a large electronic supermarket. you can access the service though local access numbers in over countries, through packet switching services, and outdial services. the international nua address is . a list of available forums can be retrieved from the ibm communication forum. participation in forums is normally free (no extra charge). the iquest database service gives access to more than publications, databases, and indexes within business, public affairs, research, news, etc. bibliographic and full-text searches. some iquest databases are physically residing on other online services, like newsnet, dialog, brs, and vu/text (u.s.a.), data- star (switzerland), datasolve (england. it has tass in the world reporter database), and questel (france). sometimes, it is cheaper to use these services on compuserve, than by a call to these services directly. the connect charge for compuserve's alternative pricing plan is us$ . /hour at and bps. bps costs us$ . /hour. monthly subscription us$ . . using the executive news service (clipping service) costs an extra us$ /hour. an optional flat-rate pricing plan (the standard pricing plan) is available for us$ . per month. it gives unlimited access to over basic services, including compuserve mail, the electronic mall, news, weather and sports, member support services, reference and travel services. hourly rates for standard pricing plan members using extended services go from us$ /hour for bits/s to us$ /hour for bits/s access. (feb. ) in addition, there are network charges. these differ a lot by country. for example, access through european compuserve nodes has no communication surcharges during non-prime time ( : - : local time). compuserve can be accessed by telnet to hermes.merit.edu, or . . . . host: compuserve. compuserve information services inc., pob , arlington centre blvd., columbus, ohio , u.s.a. in europe, call voice: + - - - , fax: + - - - or write to compuserve, jahnstrasse , d- unterhaching b., munich, germany. to contact compuserve africa, call ( ) - in south africa, or (+ )( ) - for everywhere else. cosine ------ cosine (cooperation for open systems interconnection networking in europe) is a european common market "eureka" project. it works to establish a communications network infrastructure for scientific and industrial research institutes all over europe. ixi is the international packet data network on which the cosine project is based. it is available europe-wide providing links of up to kbit/s, carries non commercial traffic for the research communities, and provides links to several public data networks. the concise online information service is a focal point for information of interest to european researchers. it has lists of sources of information. internet users can access concise through telnet. connect either to concise.ixi.ch ( . . . ) or concise.funet.fi ( . . . ). login: concise, password: concise. for help, send email to helpdesk@concise.level- .co.uk with the following command in the body of the text: start help cug-email this will give you the `concise user guide - email access'. dasnet ------ forwards mail between systems that do not have any email exchange agreements. see description in chapter . contact: da systems, inc., e. campbell ave., campbell, ca , u.s.a. dataarkiv --------- major scandinavian online service based in sweden. contact: dataarkiv, box , solna, sweden. fax: + . tel.: + . data-star --------- formerly owned by radio-suisse in switzerland, data-star is now owned by knight-ridder (u.s.a.). it offers over databases within business, science and medicine. scisearch is a database with references to over nine million stories from newspapers and magazines. other databases: current patents fast alert, flightline (with stories about air transport), the turing institute database on artificial intelligence, information access (international market data), parts of sovdata, who owns whom, etc.. access through internet: telnet to rserve.rs.ch [ . . . ] and login as rserve , and follow standard login procedure. contact in north america: d-s marketing, inc., suite , devon park drive, wayne, pa , tel.: + - - - . contact in scandinavia: data-star marketing ab, maessans gt. , box , s- gothenburg, sweden. tel.: + . delphi ------ has full access to internet. write to: general videotex corp., massachusetts ave., cambridge, ma , usa. dialcom ------- is owned by british telecom and is a network of data centers in many countries. dialcom is selling its services through many agents (like esistreet for the music industry, and cgnet for agricultural research). some selected services: the official airline guide, news (financial times profile, newsbytes, ap, upi, and reuters), mail (dialcom ), fax services and several conference type offerings (like campus for the education market). today, most dialcom users are unable to exchange mail with the internet (dasnet is a commercial alternative), but mail can be sent to users of sprintmail, ibm mail, at&ts easylink, mci mail, compania telefonica nacional de espana, and other x. systems. contact: dialcom, executive blvd., rockville, md , u.s.a. the british service telecom-gold is a subsidiary of dialcom uk. in north america, contact bt north america at tel.: + - - - . in europe, contact british telecom. cgnet can be reached through the internet. send a message to postmaster@cgnet.com for more information. dialog information services --------------------------- is owned by knight ridder and has more than databases online. they offer a long list of newspapers including the san francisco chronicle in full-text, newsbytes, information access, the japan technology database, most major global news wires, trademarkscan, usa today, teikoku databank from japan. knowledge index offers evening and weekend reduced-rate access to more than popular full-text and bibliographic databases and , journals ( ). dialog has gateways to other services, like compuserve and inet, making the databases available to a larger market. many databases are also available on cd-rom. in europe, contact dialog europe, p o box , oxford ox ax, england. you can telnet to dialog.com ( . . . , us$ /hour in ). down jones news/retrieval ------------------------- focuses on news for finance and business. djn/r is the sole online distributor of the wall street journal (with articles from the international editions), barron's, dow jones and telerate's newswires in full-text. further, it has pr newswire, many other newspapers in full- text, clipping service, online charting for investors, and gateways to other services like info globe (globe and mail in canada). address: p.o. box , princeton, n.j. - . djn/r is also accessible through a gateway from mci mail. you can telnet to djnr.dowjones.com . at the what service please prompt, enter djnr and press enter. an enter password prompt will appear. here, enter your normal djns account password. echo ---- european commission host organization is accessible via concise. telnet either to concise.ixi.ch ( . . . ) or concise.funet.fi ( . . . ). login: concise, password: concise. the nua address is . you can also telnet to echo.lu . login as echotest or echo. echo's i'm guide is a free database providing information about online services within the european common market. it includes cd- roms, databases and databanks, database producers, gateways, host organizations, ptt contact points, and information brokers in europe. echo's other databases are classified under the headings research and development, language industry, industry and economy. for information contact: echo customer service, bp , l- luxembourg. tel.: + . fax: + . exec-pc network bbs ------------------- is based in milwaukee (wisconsin, u.s.a.). in august , it had incoming phone lines, gigabytes of disk capacity, more than new programs/day, , programs available for downloading (including the complete selection from pc-sig california) and more than , active messages in its conferences. more than , persons called exec-pc each day. the service focuses on owners of ibm compatible computers (ms/pc-dos, windows, os/ , windows, unix), apple macintosh, amiga and atari st through over conferences. you can access exec-pc through i-com's outdial service, global access, pc-pursuit, connect-usa, and by direct dialing. annual subscription costs us$ . . you can sign on while online. unregistered users get thirty minutes per day free. fidonet ------- was founded in for automatic transfers of files from one place to the other at night, when the telephone rates are low. fidonet is one of the most widespread networks in the world. it consists mainly of personal computers (ibm/amiga/macintosh...). fidonet systems exchange documents by using a modem and calling another fidonet system. communication can be either direct to the destination system (calling long distance) or by routing a message to a local system. each computer connected to fidonet is called a node. there are nodes in around countries. in june , the net had , nodes throughout the world (source: fidonet nodelist). the number of nodes is growing at about percent per year. most nodes are operated by volunteers, and access is free. fidonet is believed to have over . million users ( ). conferences (called echos or echomail) are exchanged between interested nodes, and may thus have thousands of readers. a typical fidonet echomail conference gets to messages each day. any connected bbs may carry , , or more echomail conferences. net mail is the term for storing and delivering mail. fidonet users can send and receive mail through the internet. the list of member bulletin boards is called the nodelist. it can be retrieved from most boards. each node has one line on this list, like in this example: , ,home_of_pcq,warszawa,jan_stozek, - - , ,v ,mnp,xa the commas are field separators. the first field (empty in this example) starts a zone, region, local net, host, or denotes a private space (with the keyword pvt). the second field ( ) is the node number, and the third field (home_of_pcq) is the name for the node. the fourth field (warszawa) is a geographical notation, and the fifth field (jan_stozek) is the name of the owner. the sixth field is a telephone contact number, and the other fields contain various technical information used in making connections. fidonet has six major geographical zones: ( ) north america, ( ) europe, etc., ( ) oceania, ( ) america latina, ( ) africa, ( ) asia. for information, contact the international fidonet association (ifna), p.o. box , st. louis, mo , u.s.a. you can also write to postmaster@fidonet.fidonet.org . the fido subdirectory in the msdos directory on simtel (on the internet) contains extensive information, including explanation of fidonet, guide for its nodes, gateways between fidonet and internet, and various programs and utilities. (see trickle in chapter for more about how to get these files.) fog city online information service ----------------------------------- is the world's largest bulletin board with aids information. based in san francisco (u.s.a.) it offers free and anonymous access for everybody. call + - - - . enter "aids" by the question "first name?" and "info" by the question "last name?". ft profile ---------- has full-text articles from financial times in london, from several european databases (like the hoppenstedt database with more than , german companies), and the japanese database nikkei. profile is available through telecom-gold, and can also be accessed through other online services. clipping service. cd-rom. contact ft information services at tel.: + - - - . genie ----- general electric network for information exchange is ge's consumer information service. genie gives access to many databases and other information services. it has around , users ( ). the basic rate is us$ . /month plus connect charges. the surcharge is us$ /hour between : and : , and us$ . /hour for some services, like email, downloading of software, "chat," conferences, and multi-user games. access to internet email is available as a surcharged add-on service. (addressing format: userid@genie.geis.com) for information call + - - - . ge information services, n. washington st., rockville, md , u.s.a. ge information service co. (geis) --------------------------------- online service operated by general electric. available in over countries. geis' quik-comm service integrates multinational business communications for public and private mail systems. its services include telex access; and quik-comm to fax, which allows users to send messages from their workstations to fax machines throughout the world. contact: tel. + - - - genios ------ german online service (tel.: + ). offers information from novosti (moscow), data about companies in the former ddr, the hoppenstedt business directories, and more. glasnet ------- is an international computer network that provides lowcost telecommunications to nonprofit, nongovernment organizations throughout the countries of the former soviet union. email, fax, telex, public conferences. for nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations, basic glasnet service fees are rubles/month after a one-time registration fee of rubles. this does not include faxes or telexes. ( ) write to: glasnet, ulitsa yaroslavskaya , korpus room , moscow, russia. phone: ( ) - (voice). email: fick@glas.apc.org . global access ------------- is a north american outdial service (see chapter ) owned by g-a technologies, inc. it has an information bbs at + - - - . iasnet ------ the institute for automated systems network was the first public switched network in the xussr. its main goal is to provide a wide range of network services to the scientific community in the xussr, including access to online databases, a catalog of foreign databases, and conferencing (adonis). ibm information network ----------------------- the ibm information network, based in tampa, florida, is ibm's commercial value-added data network offering the ability to send email and data worldwide. it is one of the largest networks in the world, with operator-owned nodes in over countries. to send mail from the internet to a user of advantis ibmmail (also called imx or mail exchange), address to their userid at ibmmail.com. you need to know their userid (iea in ibmmail terminology) in advance. an ibmmail user can find how to address to internet by sending mail to inform at ibmmail with /get inet in the body of the text. i-com ----- offers outdial services to north america (ref. chapter ). contact: i-com, rue de geneve b , brussels, belgium. tel.: + . fax: + . modem: + . ilink (interlink) ----------------- is a network for exchange of conferences between bulletin boards in u.s.a., canada, scotland, england, norway, france, australia, new zealand, sweden, and other countries. infonet ------- is a privately owned vendor of packet data services with local operations in over countries, and access from more than countries. contact: infonet services corp., east grand ave., el segundo, ca , u.s.a. internet -------- started as arpanet, but is now a large group of more than , interconnected networks all over the world supporting mail, news, remote login, file transfer, and many other services. all participating hosts are using the protocol tcp/ip. there are around . million host computers with ip addresses (march . ref. rfc and rfc ). the number of users is estimated to more than ten million people. some one million people are said to exchange email messages daily. in addition, private enterprise networks have an estimated , , hosts using tcp/ip (source: matrix news august .) these offer mail exchange with the internet, but not services such as telnet or ftp to most parts of the internet, and are estimated to have some . million users. some claim that these figures are low. they believe it is possible to reach around million mailboxes by email through the internet. several commercial companies offer full internet services. among these are alternet (operated by uunet) and pci (operated by performance systems, inc.). the uk internet consortium offers similar services in great britain. internet gives users access to the ftp and telnet commands. ftp gives them interactive access to remote computers for transferring files. telnet gives access to a remote service for interactive dialog. the interest groups list of lists is a directory of conferences available by ftp from ftp.nisc.sri.com ( . . . ). log in to this host as user "anonymous." do a 'cd' (change directory) to the "netinfo" directory, then enter the command "get interest-groups." the list is more than kb characters long. you can also get it by email from mail-server@nisc.sri.com . write the following command in the text of the message: send netinfo/interest-groups you can telnet several bulletin boards through internet. here is a sample: name login as description ---- ---------- ----------- conrad.appstate.edu info world news collected by monitoring short wave broadcasts from bbs and other global sources. isca.icaen.uiowa.edu iscabbs a large amount of public domain programs atl.calstate.edu lewisnts electronic newspapers and the art world. tolsun.oulu.fi box finnish service. english available as an option. "internet services frequently asked questions and answers" can be retrieved by email from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu . write send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/faq in the body of your message. internet -------- is a term used on something many call "worldnet" or "the matrix." it includes the networks in internet, and a long list of networks that can send electronic mail to each other (though they may not be based on the tcp/ip protocol). the internet includes internet, bitnet, decnet, usenet, uucp, peacenet, igc, earn, uninett, fidonet, compuserve, alternex (brazil), att mail, fredsnaetet (sweden), applelink, geonet (hosts in germany, england, u.s.a.), greennet, mci mail, metanet, nicarao (nicaragua), otc peacenet/econet, pegasus (australia), bix, portal, psychnet, telemail, twics (japan), web (canada), the well, carinet, dasnet, janet (england) "answers to commonly asked new internet user' questions" is available by email from service@nic.ddn.mil . send email with the following command in the message's subject heading: rfc one important feature of the internet is that no one is in charge. the internet is essentially a voluntary association. another thing is that there are rarely any additional charges for sending and receiving electronic mail (even when sending to other networks), retrieving files, or reading usenet newsgroups.. intermail --------- see commercial mail relay service. istel ----- a privately owned vendor of packet data services, who has operator- owned nodes in belgium, canada, france, germany, italy, japan, holland, spain, sweden, england. contact: at&t istel. tel.: - (in england). kompass online and kompass europe -------------------------------- these databases are available through many services, including affaersdata in sweden and dialog. contact: (voice) + . infopro technologies -------------------- previously maxwell online. infopro's services include brs online and orbit online. brs owns brs online, brs colleague, brs after dark, and brs morning search, which focus on medical information. orbit focuses on patent and patent-related searches. orbit carries an annual membership fee of us$ ( ), and hourly fees that differ according to database. contact: infopro technologies, westpark drive, mclean, va , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . maxwell online -------------- see infopro technologies. mci mail -------- mci mail, box , m st. nw, washington, dc , u.s.a. mead data central ----------------- operates the nexis and lexis services. contact: mead data central international, international house, , st. katharine's way, london e un, england. telnet lexis.meaddata.com or . . . or . . . . terminal type = vt a. note: if characters do not echo back, set your terminal to "local" echo. metanet ------- contact: metasystems design group, north th street, suite , arlington, va , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . mix --- a scandinavian bulletin board network exchanging conferences. for information, call mike's bbs in norway at the following numbers: + - - , + - - and + - - . minitel ------- french videotex service, which is being marketed all over the world. it is based on a special graphics display format (teletel), has over , services, and appears like a large french online hypermarche with more than seven million users ( ). access to the french minitel network is available via the infonet international packet data network on a host-paid and chargeable account basis. mnematics --------- mnematics, main street sparkill, ny - , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . nec pc-van ---------- japan's largest online service measured both in number of users and geographical presence. your communications system must be able to display japanese characters to use the service. netnews ------- see usenet. newsnet ------- the world's leading vendor of full-text business and professional newsletters online. offers access to over newsletters and news services within industry classification groups ( ). includes the major international news wires. you can read individual newsletter issues, and search back issues or individual newsletters or publications within an industry classification. newsnet's clipping service is called newsflash. enter prices at the main command prompt for an alphabetic listing of all available services. contact: newsnet, haverford rd., bryn mawr, pa , u.s.a. nifty-serve ----------- is japan's number online service. it had , subscribers in january . access is possible via a gateway from compuserve. your communications system must be able to display japanese characters to use the service. nifty-serve is jointly operated by fujitsu and nissho iwai trading in a licensing agreement with compuserve. nwi --- networking and world information, inc. one time subscription fee: us$ (us$ is given to charity. us$ is returned to the user as free time). non-prime time access costs us$ . /hour at to bps. otherwise, the rate is us$ . . the service is available through pdn and outdial services. ( ) contact: nwi, east river drive, commerce center one, east hartford, ct , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . compuserve users can access nwi's participate conferences through a gateway. oclc ---- is a nonprofit computer library service and research organization whose computer network and products link more than , libraries in countries and territories. it serves all types of libraries, including public, academic, special, corporate, law, and medical libraries. contact: oclc, fratz rd., dublin, oh, u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . orbit ----- is owned by infopro technologies (formerly maxwell online and pergamon orbit infoline inc.). it offers more than science, technical and patent research, and company information databases. contact in north america: infopro technologies, west park drive, mcclean, va , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . in europe: orbit search service, achilles house, western avenue, london w ua, england. tel.: + , fax. + . telnet orbit.com (us$ /hr in ). pergamon financial data services -------------------------------- see orbit. polarnet -------- is a scandinavian distributed conferencing system available through many boards, including mike's bbs (see above). prestel ------- is owned by british telecom. it is a videotex service based on a special graphics display format. the service is also available as "tty teletype." nua address: . prodigy ------- is a north american videotex service owned by ibm and sears. you must have a special communications program to use the service, which claimed . million subscribers in early . (analysts estimated only , paying users). rates: us$ . per family per month for up to six family members and up to email messages. annual subscription: us$ . . the packet sent new users contains a communication program and a hayes-compatible bps modem. price: us$ . (early ) contact: prodigy services co., hamilton ave., white plains, ny , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . email (through internet): postmaster@inetgate.prodigy.com . relaynet -------- also called pcrelay-net. an international network for exchange of email and conferences between more than , bulletin boards. the relaynet international message exchange (rime) consists of some , systems ( ). relcom ------ means 'russian electronic communications.' this company provides email, other network services, a gateway to internet, and access to usenet. in early , relcom had regional nodes in cities of the xussr connecting over , organizations or , users. relcom has a gateway to iasnet. saltrod horror show ------------------- odd de presno's bbs system. tel.: + . the sierra network ------------------ is one of the best things out there for online games. the service claimed more than , subscribers in . contact: the sierra network, p.o. box , coarsegold, ca , u.s.a. signet ------ global bbs network with over nodes around the world ( ). simtel software archives -------------------------- is a system maintained by the us army information system command. it contains public domain software, shareware, documentation and mail archives under the following top-level headings: hz , info- ibmpc, msdos, pc-blue, ada, archives, cpm, cpmug, pcnet, sigm, stars, unix-c, vhdl, zsys, macintosh, misc, and tops . all files are accessible by anonymous ftp. for information, send a message to the address listserv@rpiecs.bitnet with the command 'help' in the first line of your text. sprintmail ---------- is a large, commercial vendor of email services. it has local nodes serving customers in countries through its sprintnet network ( ). internet mail to the sprintmail user identity 't.germain' can be sent to t.germain@sprint.sprint.com . for information, contact sprintmail, sunrise valley dr., reston, va , u.s.a. supernet -------- is an international network for exchange of conferences and mail between superbbs bulletin board systems. contact: supernet world host through fidonet at : / (+ - - ) lennart odeberg. tcn --- is a dialcom network. internet email to tcn is only possible if either the sender or recipient has registered with dasnet. the email address would be: tcnxxx@das.net (where xxx is the tcn number). thunderball cave ---------------- norwegian bulletin board connected to relaynet. call + - - or + - - . offers usenet news and internet mail. tocolo bbs ---------- bulletin board for people with disabilities in japan, or with "shintaishougaisha," which is the japanese term. call: + - - - . bps, ,n, . your communications system must be able to display japanese characters to use the service. tri-p ----- international outdial service. contact: intec america, inc., avenue of the americas, suite , new york, ny , u.s.a. in japan, contact intec at - - sarugaku-cho, chiyoda-ku, tokyo . fax: + - - - . twics beeline ------------- english-language japanese online service with participate, caucus and usenet netnews. half the users are japanese. others connect from u.s.a., england, canada, germany, france, south africa, and scandinavia. the nua address is: . direct call to + ( , kb/s), or + - - - ( bps). at connect, press enter a few times. wait about a second between keystrokes to get to the registration prompt. new users can sign on as guest for information. you can also write postmaster@twics.co.jp, or send mail to twics/iec, - yotsuya, shinjuku-ku, tokyo , japan. foreign users have free access ( ). umi/data courier ---------------- south street, louisville, ky , u.s.a. uninett ------- delivers networking services to norwegian research and educational services. unison ------ north american conferencing service using participate software. nua address: . password: us$ . . monthly subscription: us$ . . non-prime time access: us$ . /hour. prime time access: us$ . /hour. enter signup when online the first time and follow the prompts. ( ) uucp ---- uucp (unix to unix copy) is a protocol, a set of files and a set of commands to copy files from one unix computer to another. this copying procedure is the core of the uucp network, a loose association of systems all communicating with the uucp protocol. unix computers can participate in the uucp network (using leased line or dial-up) through any other unix host. the network now also has many ms-dos and other hosts, and consisted of , hosts in january (source: uucp map) serving more than , users. the uucp network is based on two systems connecting to each other at specific intervals, and executing any work scheduled for either of them. for example, the system oregano calls the system basil once every two hours. if there's mail waiting for oregano, basil will send it at that time. likewise, oregano will at that time send any mail waiting for basil. there are databases with connectivity information (uucp maps), and programs (pathalias) that will help you decide the correct routing of messages. however, many uucp hosts are not registered in the uucp map. eunet is a uucp based network in europe. junet is an equivalent network in japan. there are many gateway machines that exchange mail between uucp and the internet. among these, uunet.uu.net is among the most frequently used. usenet ------ usenet, netnews, or just "news" are common terms for a large many-to-many conferencing (only) system distributed through uucp, internet, fidonet, and bitnet. this grassroots driven "network" has grown out of the global university and research domains. it is a service rather than a real network. it is not an organization, and has no central authority. usenet's newsgroups are carried by over , host computers in five continents, and has over , , users (source: brian reid, ). many of these hosts have access to the internet. the european portion of usenet is called eunet (european unix net). the local administrator of each individual node in the network decides what newsgroups to receive and make available to its users. few systems offer access to all of them. netnews is organized in groups of 'conferences'. each of these classifications is organized into groups and subgroups according to topic. as of june , , there were newsgroups and regional newsgroups. several sites are carrying over topics. the groups distributed worldwide are divided into seven broad classifications: "comp" topics of interest to both computer professionals and hobbyists, including topics in computer science, software source, and information on hardware and software systems. "sci" discussions marked by special and usually practical knowledge, relating to research in or application of the established sciences. "misc" groups addressing themes not easily classified under any of the other headings or which incorporate themes from multiple categories. "soc" groups primarily addressing social issues and socializing. "talk" groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature long discussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts of generally useful information. "news" groups concerned with the news network and software themselves. "rec" groups oriented towards hobbies and recreational activities. also available are many "alternative" hierarchies, like: "alt" true anarchy; anything and everything can and does appear. subjects include sex, and privacy. "biz" business-related groups "clari" newsgroups gatewayed from commercial news services and other 'official' sources. (requires payment of a fee and execution of a licence. more information by email to info@clarinet.com). most netnews hosts offer both global and local conferences. many newsgroups can be read through bulletin boards, commercial online services, or through gateways from connected hosts (like from some bitnet hosts). a full list of available groups and conferences are normally available from hosts offering netnews, and on netnews servers. all users should subscribe to news.announce.important . vu/text ------- chestnut st., suite , philadelphia, pa , u.s.a. the well -------- the whole earth lectronic link is a commercial online service based in sausalito (u.s.a.). it has its own conferencing culture and is an interesting starting point for those wanting to "study" what makes the area around silicon valley so dynamic. the well has several hundred conferences, public and private, about , members, and is available in a variety of ways. the service has full internet access, and can be reached by telnet to well.sf.ca.us (or . . . ). modem tel.: + - - - at bps or + - - - at bps. you can subscribe online. rates: us$ /month plus us$ /hour (invoiced by the minute online - ). ziffnet ------- markets its services through compuserve (ziffnet and ziffnet/mac), prodigy, and its own online service in the u.s.a. their offerings include the ziff buyer's market, the ziffnet/mac buyer's guide, computer database plus, magazine database plus, newsbytes, and the cobb group online. contact: ziff communications company, first street, cambridge, ma , u.s.a. tel.: + - - - . appendix : short takes about how to get started ==================================== * a computer * modem and a communications program you must have a computer ------------------------ it is not important what kind of computer you have, though you may find out that it is an advantage to have a popular one. the most common type of microcomputer today is called ms-dos computers (or ibm pc compatibles or ibm clones). your computer should have enough memory for communication. this is seldom a problem. an ms-dos computer with kb ram is enough when using popular programs like procomm. your computer does not have to be very powerful and super fast, unless you want ultra fast transfers, use a slow communications program, or a complex system of script files. if this is the case, you'll know to appreciate speed and power. you do not need a hard disk. many do without. not having one, however, means more work, and less room for storage of all the nice things that you may want to retrieve by modem. personally, i want as much hard disk space as i can possibly get. when you have read the book, i guess you'll understand why. others may want to delay the purchase of a hard disk until they can spare the money. if you can afford it, however, do it! it is a decision that you'll never regret. you must have a modem --------------------- some computers are always connected to a network. if this is your situation, then you probably have what you need already. the rest of us need a modem. a modem is a small piece of equipment that is translating the internal, electrical signals of the computer to sound codes. these codes can be sent over an ordinary telephone line. you may think of it as a type of morse alphabet. the recipient of data also needs a modem. in his case, the sound codes will have to be translated back into their original form as digital codes. when this is done, he can view text and pictures on the screen, and use the received data in other applications. you can buy modems on an expansion card for installation in your computer, or in a separate box. often, a modem has already been built into the computer, when you buy it. whether to buy an internal or an external modem is a question of needs: a portable computer with an internal modem is easier to bring on travels than an external modem with a modem cable and a power adapter. an external modem can serve several computers. some of them are so compact that they fit besides your toothbrush in the toilet bag. an internal modem blocks one of your serial ports. external modems --------------- the options are many. the modems differ on speed, features, prices - and whether they are approved for usage in your country. some of them are connected to the phone line by cable. others are connected to the handset (to the talk and listen part) by two rubber cups. we call such modems acoustic modems (or acoustic couplers). acoustic modems are useful where connecting other modems to the telephone is difficult. the bad news is that you'll get more noise on the line. acoustic modems can therefore not be recommended for use in other cases. asynchronous or synchronous modems? ----------------------------------- formerly, data communication was done by sending job commands to a mainframe computer, and having the result returned in one batch. the modems were called synchronous. such modems (and computers) are still in use in some large corporations. most of today's online services are based on an interactive dialog between the user and the remote computer. the user enters a command, for example a letter or a number in a menu, and the result is returned almost immediately. the modems used for such work are called asynchronous (see "explanation of some words and terms" in appendix ). unless you know that you must have a synchronous modem, buy an asynchronous one. choice of speed --------------- speed is measured in many ways. one method is to use baud. another is to use characters per second (cps) or bits per second (bps). bps is a measure of how many data bits that can be transferred over a data channel in one second. (each byte is split up into bits before transfer during serial communication.) the relationship between baud and bits per second is complex, and often misused. bits per second is unambiguous. in this book, we will use it as bps. we can estimate the number of characters per second by dividing the number of bps by ten. for example. bps is roughly cps. in , , and bps asynchronous modems were the standard in many countries. around , the growth in bps modems and modem with faster speeds gained momentum. modem user manuals often give transfer speed by referring to some international classification codes. here are some ccitt codes with explanation: v. - bps still used by a small group. cannot full duplex communicate with the american bell standard. v. bps partly compatible with the american full duplex bell a standard. sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. v. bis bps used all over the world. very full duplex common. v. & rare protocol. used mainly in europe. bps w/ half duplex. bps return ch. v. ter bps used mainly in france full duplex v. ter / bps used in group iii fax half duplex v. , and used in gr. iii fax and in some (ame- bps rican) modems. do not buy v. if you half duplex want a bps modem. v. / bps current standard for bps modems full duplex v. bis / / , full duplex with faster interrogation. / bps v. bps a proposed high speed protocol that never made it. v. error correction protocol (an appendix yields compatibility w/mnp gr. , and (see mnp below). for v. , v. bis, v. ter and v. . v. bis data compression for v. modems. meant to replace mnp and lap. text can be transferred three times faster than with mnp, i.e., in up to bps using a bps modem. very common. v.fast upcoming standard. if approved by also called ccitt, it will support speeds to v. terbo , bps for uncompressed data transmission rates over regular dial- up, voice-grade lines. using v. bis data compression, up to , bps may be achievable. when you consider buying a modem with higher speed, remember that going from bps to is a percent increase, while going from to bps gives percent! on the other hand, if you currently have bits/s, going to . will only give you percent. mnp error correction and compression ------------------------------------ the microcom networking protocol (mnp) is a u.s. industry standard for modem-to-modem communication with automatic error correction and compression. automatic error correction is useful when there is noise on the telephone line. mnp splits the stream of data up into blocks before transmission. they are checked by the other modem upon receipt. if the contents are correct, an acknowledge message is sent back to the sending modem. if there has been an error in the transmission, the sending modem is asked to retransmit. when using compression, files are being preprocessed before transmission to decrease their size. the result is that the modem has to send fewer bytes, and the effect is higher speed. mnp level and up send data between two modems synchronously rather than asynchronously. since sending a start and stop bit with each transferred byte is no longer required, the effect is higher speed. mnp- or higher have automatic adjustment of block length when there is noise on the line. if the line is good, longer blocks are sent. the block size is decreased if the line is bad causing many retransmissions. mnp- has data compression. this gives a further increase in transfer speed by from to percent depending on the type of data sent. mnp- is capable of a three-to-one compression ratio. both users must have their modems set for mnp to use it. the speed of the computer's comm port ------------------------------------- installing a super fast modem does not guarantee an increase in the effective transfer speed. the serial port of your computer may be a limiting factor. owners of older ms-dos computers often have uarts (serial port processors) in the intel or national series. with these in the computer, it is difficult to achieve speeds above bps without losing data. take this into account when investing in a modem. mnp and efficiency ------------------ i call my bulletin board daily. my personal computer is set to communicate with a v. modem at , bps. the modem sends data to the telephone line at bps, which is this modem's maximum line speed. data is received by the remote computer's v. modem at bps, and forwarded to bulletin board at bps. why these differences in speed? mnp level compresses data in the modem before transfer, and gives error-free transfer to and from the bulletin board at higher speed than by using bps all the way through. the compression effectiveness differs by the type of data. when sending text, the effective transfer speed may double. speed will increase further if the text contains long sequences of similar characters. text is typically compressed by up to percent. this means that a bps modem using mnp- may obtain an effective speed of around the double when transferring such data. file transfers using mnp ------------------------ files are often compressed and stored in libraries before transfer. online services do this because compressed files take less space on their hard disks. also, it is easier for users to keep track of files sent in a library file. you rarely get speed advantages when transferring precompressed files using mnp or v. bis. with some modems, you must turn mnp and v. bis compression off before retrieval of compressed files. dumb or intelligent modem? -------------------------- some modems are operated with switches or buttons on a panel. they do not react to commands from your computer. we call them dumb. you must dial numbers manually, and press a key on the modem, when you hear the tone from a remote modem. only when the modem is connected to the remote modem, can you ask your communications program to take over. we call those modems 'intelligent' that can react to commands from your computer. most of them react to commands according to the hayes standard. buy intelligent, hayes-compatible modems - even when other standards may seem better. most of today's communication programs are designed to be used by such modems. note: buy modems that use the hayes extended command set. when a popular communications program, like procomm and crosstalk, tells the modem to "dial a number" or "go on hook," then the hayes- compatible modem will do just that. when you press alt-h in procomm, the modem will disconnect from the remote modem. if you press alt-d followed by the number " ," procomm will locate the number to an online service in your telephone directory, and dial that number. when the connection with the remote modem has been established, your modem will report back to you with a message like connect . this tells that a connection has been set up at bps. if i select "k" from a menu provided by my communications program's command scripts, then my system will retrieve today's business news from tokyo and put them up on my screen. in the process, my system tells the modem to do several things, including "call a number," "speed bps," "redial if busy," "go on-hook when done." the only thing that i have to do, is press "k". the communications program and the modem will do the rest. automatic communication is impossible without an intelligent modem. the hayes standard ------------------ the u.s. company hayes microcomputer products, inc. pioneered command-driven modems. their smartmodem became a success, and "hayes compatibility" a standard for intelligent modems. today, it is as unimportant to buy a hayes modem to get access to hayes commands, as to buy an ibm pc to run pc software. automatic dialing (autodial) was one of smartmodem's important features. the modem could call a number and prepare for data communication, once a connection had been set up. if the line was busy, it could wait a while and then redial. the operator could work with other things while waiting for the equipment to be ready for communication. the modem had automatic answer (autoanswer), i.e., when someone called in, the modem could take the phone off hook and set up a connection with a remote modem. the modem enabled a connected pc to act as an electronic answering machine. hayes-compatible modems can report call progress to the local screen using short numeric codes or words like connect, connect , connect , no carrier, no dialtone, busy, no answer, ring etc. there can be small differences between such modems. the message dialtone on one modem may be dial tone on another. most of the main progress messages, however, are the same across brands. the old smartmodem had switches used to configure the modem. most modern hayes-compatible modems come without switches and have more commands than their ancestor. today's hayes-compatible modems have a core of common commands, the "real" hayes-commands, and several unstandardized additional commands. here is an example: a standard on the move ---------------------- on the quattro sb modem, bps speed without automatic speed detection is set by the command "at&i ." the equivalent command on semafor's unimod is "at+c ". automatic detection of speed is a feature that lets the modem discover the speed of the remote modem to set its own speed at the same level. (other modems may use different commands to set this.) when i want procomm to call a bulletin board, it first sends a sequence of hayes commands to the semafor modem. the purpose is to "configure" the modem before calling. it sends the following: at s = +c s = s = &d the cryptic codes have the following meaning: at "attention modem. commands following.." s = no automatic answer +c no automatic speed detection (fixed speed) s = wait seconds for an answer tone from the remote modem. s = wait / seconds for detection of carrier &d go on-hook if the dtr signal is being changed. if this command is sent to the quattro modem, it will reply with "error". the code "+c " must be replaced with an "&i ". the rest of the commands are the same. (note: when a modem responds with "error," it has usually rejected all commands sent to it!) this setup is held in the modem's memory when procomm sends its dialing command: atdt . at stands for attention, as above. dt stands for dial tone. here, it is used to dial the number using tone signaling (rather than pulse dialing). the modem cable --------------- if you have an external modem, you must connect your computer to the modem with a cable. some modems are sold without a cable. this cable may be called a serial cable, a modem cable, a rs c cable, or something else. make sure that you buy the correct cable for your system. make sure that the connectors at each end of the cable are correct. if a male connector (with pins) is required in one end and a female (with holes) in the other, do not buy a cable with two male connectors. some connectors have pins/holes, while others have or - pin round plugs (apple computers). use a shielded cable to ensure minimal interference with radio and television reception. at this point, some discover that there is no place on the pc to attach the cable. look for a serial port at the rear of your machine, labeled modem, communications, serial, or with a phone symbol. if you find no suitable connector, you may have to install an asynchronous communication port in the box. connecting your equipment to earth ---------------------------------- secure your computer and modem against thunderstorms and other electrical problems. securing the electric outlet in the wall is not enough. problems can also enter through the telephone line. thunderstorms have sent electrical pulses through the telephone line destroying four modems, three pc-fax cards, one mother board, and at least one asynchronous communication port. to prevent this from happening to you, disconnect electrical and telephone cables from your equipment during thunderstorms. the communications program -------------------------- a powerful communications program is half the job. in my case it's the whole job. most of my work is done automatically. the communications program will help you with the mechanical transportation of data in both directions. it lets you store incoming information for later use and reduces the risks of errors. here are some items to consider when shopping communications program: * seriously consider buying automatic programs ('robots') for access to individual online services, even if that means having to use several programs for different applications. (read chapter for more details.) * menus and help texts are important for novices, and in environments with "less motivated personnel." advanced users may find it boring. * ability to transfer data without errors. the program should have transfer protocols like xmodem, kermit, xmodem/crc, ymodem and zmodem. the xmodem protocol is the most commonly used. you need these protocols if you want to transfer compiled computer programs (e.g., .com and .exe files). they are also used when transferring compressed files, graphics and music files. * does it let you tailor it to your taste/needs? some programs let you attach batches of commands to function keys and keypress combinations. for example, by having your computer call your favorite online service by pressing the f key. * does it let you "scroll back" information having disappeared out of your screen? this may be useful when you want to respond while online to an electronic mail message. the sender's address and name, which you need to respond, have scrolled off the screen. if you cannot review the "lost" information, you may have to disconnect and call back later to send your mail. connecting to the online service -------------------------------- the first couple of times, most people think that it is very difficult. soon it becomes a simple routine. on some computers, you just press a key, and that's it. on others, you have to call and press, and watch, while things are happening. cheap is often a synonym for more work. if you have a dumb modem connected to your personal computer, these are the typical steps that you must take: ( ) start your communications program and set it up, e.g., with bps, bits word length, stop bit, no parity. (this is the most common setup.) then set the program to "online." ( ) call the number (e.g., + ) ( ) when you hear the tone from the remote modem in the phone, press data to get the modems to connect to each other (i.e., to start to "handshake"). ( ) a front panel indicator may tell you when the connection has been set up. you can start transferring data. with an ms-dos computer, an automatic modem and a powerful program preset for the job, the steps may be as follows: ( ) start the program and display the telephone directory. select a service from the list by pressing a number. ( ) the modem will call automatically to the service. when connect has been established, your user identification and password are sent at the prompts for such information. when this is done, you are free to take control. with an ms-dos computer, tapcis, and an intelligent modem, you start by selecting forums and services to access on compuserve. enter 'o' to upload and download programs, or 'n' to have it fetch new message headers and messages. tapcis will dial the number, do the job, and tell you when it's done. meanwhile, you can go out to look at the moon, or sing a song. getting started with procomm ---------------------------- procomm is cheap and probably the most commonly used communications program for ms-dos computers. it's been like this for many years, though there are many better and cheaper alternatives. an older version of the program (version . . ) is still being distributed through bulletin boards all over the world. you may give copies of this version to anyone. the requirement is that you pay a contribution of us$ to the vendor if you like it and start to use it. procomm is simple for novices, can automate the work for advanced users and be run on almost any ms-dos computer. here is some of the features: press alt-f for a pull-down window text listing features and commands. press alt+d to call a number, update the telephone directory, or select a script file for autologon to a service. procomm can emulate (pretend to be) different terminal types, like ibm and dec vt- /vt- . most services covered in this book may be well served with the setting ansi.bbs. it let you use both dumb and intelligent hayes-compatible modems. if you have the latter, select numbers from the telephone directory for autologon. if the number is busy, procomm can call back until you can get through. you can define macros to automate your work. you can have one keystroke send your user identification, another for your password, and a third key to send a sequence of commands. macros make your communication faster and safer. you can write script files to automate the online work further. you can transfer text files and binary files using automatic error detection/correction protocols, like xmodem, ymodem, telink and kermit, at speeds from to bps. adding external protocols like zmodem is relatively simple. appendix : online with the world ===================== - practical data communication - your first trip online - typical pitfalls and simple solutions - receiving (downloading) letters, text and programs - sending (uploading) letters, text and programs practical data communication ---------------------------- the first thing novices want to know is how to set up the modem and computer for communication. this may take more time than expected and often seems complex for the uninitiated. you can save yourself much sweat and frustration by asking others for help. to set up your equipment for communication is a one time job. once done, you can almost forget what you did and why. there are so many different modems, computers and programs out there. we just cannot give practical advice on the use of all of them in one short appendix. instead, we will use one example. your job is to "translate" the text into a terminology that fits your tools. once your system is set up for communication, your first job will be to find what keys to press to get the job done. how you use your communications program may vary considerably from our example. in general, however, it will be the same for most people doing manual communication. once online, the environment is the same for all users. if you plan to use automatic communications as explained in chapter , this chapter may not be that important. your program will do the job for you. still, take a few minutes and browse through the text. it may enable you to handle unexpected problems better. our example assumes that you have an ms-dos computer. not because this is the best microcomputer in the world, but because there are more of them than anything else. we assume that you have an external, intelligent hayes-compatible modem and the communications program procomm (version . . ). in this example, your modem is tested by calling my bulletin board at + . not because this is the best board in the world, but because i have full control over how it looks and feels for those using it. assembling the equipment ------------------------ you have the modem, the cable (to connect your modem with the computer), a phone cable (to connect your modem with the phone or the wall jack), and a communications program. check that the modem's power switch is off. place the modem by the computer, and plug the power supply cord (or the power adapter cord) into the ac wall socket. switch on the modem. do not use -volt equipment in -volt sockets! connect modem and computer using the modem cable. there may be several optional sockets on the computer. these are usually marked rs- , comms, modem, or just nothing. the connector may be of a flat -pins, pins, or a round -pins type. use communication port number , , or whatever else is available for this purpose. if you have several options, and the socket for communication port number seems free, use this. if not, try one of the others. next, connect the modem to the telephone line. if in luck, the modem came with a phone cable that works with your setup. if so, it is simple: . disconnect the phone cable from the telephone. insert the modular plug into the right jack on the modem. this jack is often marked with the word line, with a drawing of a modular wall jack, or another understandable icon. . you may be able to connect the phone to the modem using the phone cord that came with the modem. this may allow you to use the phone for voice, when the line is not busy with communication. (you may have to make changes in this cord to make it work with the connected phone.) this concludes the technical assembly of your equipment. next step is to install the communications program. when this is done, we will check it out. installing the program ---------------------- let us assume that you have received procomm on a diskette, and that it is set up with its default configuration. procomm.exe is the program. the other files have no importance here. enter procomm and press enter. our first task is to prepare it for communication: if you are using a monochrome display, use the command procomm /b the program will greet you by a welcome text. at the bottom of the screen, the message "creating system files" may appear (if these have not been created yet), followed by a message from the creators of the program. press enter when you have read the text. the screen will be blanked, and a text line will appear at the bottom. now is the time to test if the technical installation has been successful. the dial tone ------------- lift the receiver from the phone and check if you can hear the dial tone. if you can, turn the pages to "does the computer have contact with the modem?" if you hear nothing, there are several possible causes: * the phone is not working. this is easily checked. disconnect it from the modem, and connect it to the wall (using the original cable!). if you get a dial tone now, then the phone is in order. * the cable between the modem and the wall jack may be broken, or wrongly configured. to check this, we must first check the connection between the modem and the computer. once we know that the connection between the modem and the computer is in order, we can use the modem to check our phone cable. * the cable between the modem and the phone may be in disorder. for example, the modular phone connector may have a cabling that differs from what is assumed in your country. if there is no dial tone, then the cable between the modem and the telephone must be repaired, or replaced. does your computer have contact with the modem? ----------------------------------------------- when you first use procomm, it is preset for communication at bps, use of port and ansi-bbs. (the control line at the bottom of your screen should read: alt-f help, ansi-bbs, hdx, n , log closed, prt off, cr and cr.) * if your modem is unable to communicate at bps, you must change the setup. press alt-p (keep the alt key down while pressing p) to get the menu line settings. choice gives bps with bits word length, no parity and one stop bit. this is a common setting. select "save changes" to make the setting permanent. * if you know that your modem is not connected to the computer's port number , then change this from the same menu. choice gives com , and choice gives com . if you don't know what communication port the modem has been connected to, you have to find out by testing. do this by entering (i.e., sending to the modem) the characters at. now, the modem is supposed to respond with an ok (or with the number " ," if the modem is set to reply with numeric codes). if you get an "ok" or a " " on your display, continue reading from "does the modem have contact with the phone line?" if you can see "at" on your screen while you enter it, you have contact with the modem. this is true even if it does not send any confirmation. the modem may have been instructed not to confirm. if you see the at characters, read from "does the modem have contact with the phone line?" if there is no contact between the modem and the computer, the screen will remain blank at all times. your problem may be the cable, your choice of modem port, or the modem setup. first, check if the modem is switched on (the power switch), and that the plugs are firmly in the jacks. then let's check the modem. it may have been set not to respond to your commands. let's try to change that. enter the following command, and press enter: atq e v this should make your modem: give result codes on your screen (q ), show the characters that you enter (e ), and use ok instead of the numerical result code (v ). if you still get no ok, the reason may still be in the modem. i have seen modems get "indigestion problems" when too many commands are given to them. try give a command to return it to its factory setting. this command is not the same on all hayes-compatible modems. on most of them, you can use one of the following: at&f, atf or atz (on some modems atz is used to reset to the stored configuration). locate the correct command to use in the modem's user manual. then, try atq e v again. if you are still without success, check your choice of modem port. if there are several communication connectors at the back of your computer, test these. if this doesn't help, connect the modem cable to the most probable jack. now, test the communication port for a response from the modem using another communications program setting. press alt-p, select another port (choice - ), press esc and try "at" again (or atq e v ). if there is still no reaction, test the computer's other communications connectors. if you have a mouse connected to your computers, make sure that it is not using the same port as your communications program. problems with the communications port are often caused by other equipment. remove all extra equipment (like a pc-fax card or a mouse), and all associated software (often represented by a line starting with "driver=" in config.sys, or a resident program driving a mouse). remove all resident programs from memory before testing. if you are still at the same unfortunate stage, chances are that the problem is either in the cable or the modem. if you know others who are into data communication, visit them for help. bring your cable and your modem to have them tested in an environment where things work. it is easier to isolate a problem by testing your units in sequence on your helper's system. first, the cable. connect it between his computer and his modem. test the connection to his modem with your cable as the only foreign element. if the test is successful, your cable is ok. next, the modem. if the test is successful, your modem is in order. the most probable cause of your problems is your computer's communications port. in communications, many parts have to work together. you may have problems with more than one of them at the same time. the rule is to test step by step to eliminate possible problems. if you get no reply from your modem, when it is connected to your friend's computer, chances are that it needs to be repaired. call the seller for help. a last refuge is to buy an extra communications card for your computer . . . does your modem have contact with the phone line? ------------------------------------------------- you have contact between your computer and modem. the modem answers "ok" as assumed. we now have to test if there is contact with the phone line. that is easy. enter the following command and press enter: atq e v when the modem answers ok, enter the dialing command: atdt the modem will try to call , the number to my bbs. (you may have to prefix the number with an international code, and the country code for norway. if international calls require the prefix , enter atdt - - ). your modem will wait for connect a preset number of seconds (rarely longer than seconds). if your modem does not detect the dial tone (within the preset waiting time), it will give you the following error message no dialtone all other messages (except error) declare that the modem did detect the dial tone. if it did, continue reading from "configuring your program." no dialtone ----------- the most probable causes of no dialtone are that your phone cable is not connected, that it has been damaged, or that it is the wrong cable for the job. the latter cause is common in many countries. for example, a cable made for a telephone network in the united states, may not work in norway. a cable made for connection to a switchboard, may not work when connected to a domestic phone line. a standard, domestic american phone cable contains four lines. two of these (line number and ) carry sounds. the others are not being used. a standard norwegian domestic cable is set up in the same way, but here line number and carry sound. changing the configuration of such cables is often simple. just cut the cable in two, and put the lines together correctly. this is typically required when your modem assumes that you use it in north america, while you are in a country with different cabling. configuring your program ------------------------ the modem answers. the dial tone is being detected. procomm is installed on your hard disk. now, check if the program has been correctly configured. press alt-s to get the setup menu. select , modem setup, from this menu. choice , modem init string, is a general setup command. this command will be sent to the modem each time you start procomm. you are free to make is as long and powerful as you want. our purpose now, however, is to check if it works. most modems do not react if one element in your setup command is wrong. they respond with error (or the numeric code), and disregard the rest. procomm's standard modem init string has the following commands: ate s = s = v x s = ! these work well with most modems, provided the speed is legal. go back to the blank screen (using esc). test the init command by entering it manually. (do not enter the "!" character. this is procomm's code for enter.) if the modem reacts with error, check with the modem manual to find out what is wrong. (check if the values s = and s = are not too high.) if you have to change the init command, go back to the modem init string menu choice. enter the correct commands. remember to add the "!" at the end. press esc to get to the main configuration menu and select , terminal setup. check if terminal emulation is ansi-bbs. change choice , duplex, to full. the other factory settings are none, cr, cr, dest, bs, off, on, , off. return to the setup menu (press esc). press "s" to save the setup to disk. your setting has now been stored, and procomm is ready to be used. dialing ------- now, test your setup by calling your favorite online service. we will show how to log on to my bulletin board. you can call manually by entering atdt followed by the phone number. the most practical method, however, is to use the built-in phone directory. press alt-d to get to the phone directory. press "r" to revise the list, and enter saltrod horror show somewhere on the list. i have it as number . answer the questions like this: name: saltrod horror show number: - - - baud: parity: n databits: stop bits: echo on? n command file: (press enter, meaning that you don't want to use a script file at this point) baud can be anything from bps to bps. it's up to you, and depends on your modem's capabilities. when done, enter " " and press enter. the modem will dial the number (that you have as item on the list), and try to connect. if the number is busy, you will get a warning. you can now leave procomm (alt+x), or set it for redialing (alt+r). when set for redialing, procomm will call back until a connection has been made. when connect is received from your modem, procomm announces the fact with a beep in the computer's loudspeaker. text will start scrolling over your screen. first, a short welcome text pops up. your interactive dialog with the bulletin board can start. the first question is "what is your first name?" enter your first name. then, "what is your last name?" enter your last name. your dialog with the remote computer will continue like this. the board will ask you questions, and you will enter your answers. what may go wrong? ------------------ a setting that works beautifully when calling one bulletin board, may be a disaster when calling another service. here are some typical problems: when dialing through a switchboard (pbx). ----------------------------------------- remember to add or for a city line, when dialing out from a pbx. if you forget, you'll get nowhere. use the following command (assuming that you must enter to get a city line, and use tone signaling): atdt w if you must use for a city line and pulse dialing, use the following command atdp w register your standard dialing command in procomm's modem setup. enter alt+s and then select , modem setup. choice , dialing command. the default entry is atdt. replace this with atdt w, atdp w or whatever makes dialing work for you. no answer from the remote computer ---------------------------------- your computer has to "talk the same language" as the remote host. if the parameters of your communications program have been set incorrectly, it may be impossible to set up a connection with the service. sometimes, you get connect, but your screen only gives you strange, unintelligible 'noise' characters. the reason may be connect at an incompatible speed, a service's use of special codes for displaying text (including special language characters), or that the service requires use of a special communications program or method (as when a service starts by interrogating for the use of an offline reader). many online services require that you use certain settings. most services, however, may be reached when using the following: speed: bps bits word length, no parity, one stop bit some services (notably some unix hosts) demand bits, even parity, one stop bit. sorry, no luck! --------------- try again, just in case. the remote computer may have had a temporary problem, when you called. the ptt may have given you a particularly noisy telephone line on this attempt. if this doesn't help, recheck each point in the communications process. it is so easy to do something wrong. if nothing helps, read the service's user information manuals. only rarely will you be able to blame the communications program (unless you have made it yourself), or the equipment. most errors are caused by finger trouble and misunderstandings. testing the saltrod horror show ------------------------------- first time visitors often experience problems, and in particular if this is their first time online using a hayes-compatible modem. here are some typical problems with suggested solutions: * disable guard tones from the modem when dialing. if it has this feature, you can often turn it off. put the required command in your modem init string. * don't press enter to "wake" my system. the software will automatically detect your speed and adjust accordingly. the same applies for many services. on some, you're just asking for problems by not waiting patiently (often the case when the remote software starts by checking if you use an offline reader). * my bbs accepts from to bps asynchronous, full duplex communication. you may not succeed with bps half duplex, bell bps or bps. * start with your communications program set for bits word length, no parity and one stop bit. try bits, even parity if there is too much noise on the line (you cannot retrieve programs using this setting, though). * when your modem is set at a low transfer speed, it may not wait long enough for carrier from my modem. most modems let you set this waiting time longer by giving a value to a s-register. (read in your modem's manual about how to do this). partial success --------------- some bulletin boards offer colors and music. if your equipment is set up correctly, you can receive the welcome text in full color graphics accompanied by a melody in your computer's speaker. if it is not, chances are that you will get many strange codes on your screen, and an ugly feeling that something is wrong. there are two ways out of this problem: . ask the bulletin board to send text only (select u for utilities, and then g for graphics to change setting), . set your computer for colors and graphics. this feature is only available for callers with an ms-dos computers. you may need to add the line device=ansi.sys in your config.sys. finally, you must have a communications program that allows you to display colors on your screen. procomm set with ansi-bbs does that. downloading programs -------------------- we call the transfer of programs and files from a remote computer for downloading. it means "transfer of data to your computer and storage of the data (down) on your local disk." you are downloading, when you call my board to retrieve a program. when you, overwhelmed by gratitude, send one of your favorite programs to my bulletin board, then we call it uploading. data can be many things. it may be news from washington post, a digital picture, an executable program, a pile of invoices, a piece of music, a voice file, an animated sequence of pictures and music, or compressed library files. downloading "plain text" (also called "plain ascii" or "dos text" on ms-dos machines) is relatively easy. such text usually only contains characters between number (space character) and (the ~ character) in the ascii table. characters with lower numbers have special functions (like the control characters escape and ctrl+c). these may not even be displayed on your screen. characters with higher numbers are used for graphics, special national characters, and other applications. special transfer methods are often required, when your data contains text with characters outside ascii number through . read under "protocol transfers" below for more information about how to do this. downloading text ---------------- most communication programs require that you begin by opening a file. they ask you to enter a file name. from this point and onwards all incoming text will be stored in this file until you say stop. communication programs do this in different ways. some let incoming data flow through a temporary storage area using the principle first in, first out. when you open a file, it starts storing data from the beginning of the temporary storage area, though this text may have scrolled off your screen some time ago. most communication programs start storing data from now. procomm works this way. you start downloading of text by pressing the pgdn key. a window will appear on your screen giving you a choice between various methods. select ascii. in another window, you are asked to enter a file name. when done, storage of incoming data starts. you stop the process by pressing the esc key. procomm has another method called "file logging." you start this by pressing alt-f . procomm requests the file name, and the storage process starts. (read under "strip" about the difference between these methods.) if you forget to tell procomm to store incoming data, then you will most probably lose this data for ever. do not waste time and money by forgetting to store what you receive! the term "append" ----------------- when downloading text - or anything - it is important to know whether you are appending information to an existing file, or overwriting it (i.e., destroying the old text). most communication programs complain with an audible signal, when you try to overwrite an existing file. they will ask you if you really want to delete it, or append the current data. the term "strip" ---------------- the purpose of 'strip' is to remove something from incoming data or to change it on the fly. when you use ascii downloading with procomm, all incoming data are being stored. this includes so-called escape sequences. if you use file logging, all control characters (except the line feed and new page characters) are being removed (filtered). if you download text from a computer that uses other ascii characters for linefeed and return, save time by having the communications program convert them on the fly to their correct form for your computer. you define strip procedures through procomm's setup menu (alt- s). you can also request automatic conversion of characters to graphics values, or local language variants. national characters ------------------- special national characters cause problems in many countries. one reason is that they are represented by different internal codes on various hardware platforms, and that some networks are unable to transmit -bits data. some systems represent these special characters by a -bit code, others by an -bit code. some depend on the computer having an internal national language rom, or that it uses a special (resident) conversion program. what gives good results on an ms-dos computer, may give rubbish on a macintosh, amiga, atari, or a pc using ms windows. many communication programs have features that can help you solve at least some these problems. they let you make translation tables for automatic conversion of special incoming and outgoing characters. if you call a scandinavian online service using bits even parity, many transfer the national special characters using the ascii code equivalents of number , , , , , and . similar, more or less formal standards are in place in other countries. protocol transfers ------------------ if your purpose is to transfer digitized pictures, a computer program, a batch of invoices, a piece of music or an animated sequence of pictures, it's important that each character (bit) arrives correctly. we achieve this by using protocol transfers. these files often contain control or binary characters. you cannot transfer binary files without the use of special methods. it is easy to understand why we need protocol transfers when retrieving plain text as tables of numbers, statistics, and financial reports. transfer errors may have fatal consequences. protocol transfers are also required when transferring word processor text files having imbedded control codes (like text made with wordperfect), and compressed files. here is an example: downloading public domain software ---------------------------------- first, you need the names and features of the programs that can be downloaded from a service. on most bulletin boards, you must enter a command to navigate to the file library. here, they normally greet you with a menu listing available commands. try h (for help!) or ? when you are stuck. public domain and shareware programs are stored in subdirectories on my bulletin board. the directories have numerical names. utility programs for ms-dos computers are stored in directory . games are stored in directory . enter l for a list of available directories (other bulletin boards may use different commands). enter "l " to list the files in directory . this will give file names, lengths in characters (to help you estimate download time), creation dates, and a short description of each file. you can search for files of interest. when looking for programs that can help you get more out of a printer, you may search using keywords like "printer." some programs are made available in text form. this is the case with older basic programs. (the file name extensions .bas, .asc or .txt suggest that the files contain plain text.) you can download these files using ascii. most programs are stored in their executable form, or as one executable file among several in a compressed transfer file (a library of files). on my board, most of these files have the file name extension .exe or .com. what transfer protocol to use, depends on what is available in your communications program. the protocol transfer method explained -------------------------------------- the protocol transfer algorithms use methods to check the transfer with automatic error correction. in principle, they work like this: the sending program calculates a check sum based on the contents of the file. the receiving program does the same calculation and compares the result with the senders' check sum. if the figures match, the transfer was successful. if not, all or part of the file will be retransmitted. these are some popular protocols: xmodem ------ has automatic error detection and correction. most modern programs have this feature. xmodem exists in programs for ms-dos computers, cp/m computers, apple, trs- model , etc. it is the most commonly used transfer protocol. xmodem assumes -bit settings in your communications program. the file to be sent is split up into bit sized blocks (or "packets") before transfer. the sender calculates the check sum and adds a check sum bit at the end of each packet. (packing, sending and checking is done automatically by the software.) the receiving program calculates its own check sum and compares with the sender's. if an error is detected, xmodem will request retransmission of the last block. xmodem is reasonably good when there is little noise on the telephone line is low. when the line is bad, however, there is always a chance that the transfer will stop. you cannot use xmodem on computer networks that use ascii flow control or escape codes. the transfer commands must be given to both computers. you can only transfer one file per command. xmodem's "packet size" (block length) is short. this has an impact on transfer speed, and especially when downloading from timesharing systems, packet switched networks, via satellites, and when using buffered (error correcting) modems. the control method ( -bit check sum) and unprotected transactions give a low level of safety against errors in the transmission. the transferred file may contain bytes with noise characters (at the end). the creation date of the file is lost in the transfer. these weaknesses have given us better methods. here are some of them: xmodem/crc ---------- crc is an abbreviation for cyclical redundancy check. the method guarantees . percent free transfer. it still has the other weaknesses of ordinary xmodem transfers. ymodem batch ------------ is faster than xmodem and gives a high level of safety in the transfers. when used with some programs, ymodem can transfer the files' creation time/date. you can transfer updated documents. this will replace documents with an older creation date. only one party must enter the file name. ymodem takes care of the rest. kermit ------ is used on many computer platforms, and especially where they use a terminal emulation mode (like vt- ) which makes the use of xmodem impossible. kermit is one of the few asynchronous error correction protocols that functions well when exchanging files having half duplex ibm front-end machines. kermit can transfer more than one file at the time. super-kermit ------------ is also called kermit with sliding windows. it can transfer many packets before stopping to check the transfer. the protocol is much faster than xmodem. zmodem ------ is currently the fastest transfer protocol for many applications. all transactions are protected with a -bit or -bit crc. zmodem is immune against most error conditions that prevent traditional protocols to achieve correct transfer. zmodem transfers the creation date of the file and its exact contents. the file name is read once, and all transfer commands may be given by the sending program. decompression of files ---------------------- if a file has name extensions like zip, lzh, arc, pak, lqr, lbr, zoo, arj, or qqq, you are facing a compressed file. we use such files to achieve faster transfers. files having the extension .exe or .com may be compressed files that have been converted into a self-extract format. to retrieve the files from a self-extract compressed file, just enter the file's name. to decompress files that have not been made self-extract, you need a utility program. these programs have many names and are available through most bulletin boards. transfer problems ----------------- most transfer problems are caused by the communication programs and their (lack of) features. some procomm users have problems with the kermit protocol. tip: use bit world length and no parity in your program setup. bits and even parity does not always work (on version . . ). uploading --------- the transfer of data "the other way," i.e., from your disk to a remote computer, requires that you start by making some decisions. is the file to be sent as plain ascii? should i compress it in a distribution file to reduce transfer time, and make it easier to handle for the recipient? if you are transferring a text file containing special national characters, then these may have to be converted to another format. if your text contains blank lines (like blank lines between paragraphs), you may have to insert a space character at the start of all such lines. some systems interpret a blank line as a signal telling that transmission is done. the invisible space character prevents this. some hosts have limitations on line length. they may require that lines be shorter than characters. if you send lines that are too long, the result may be fatal. sending electronic mail ----------------------- if you send your mail too fast, some online services tend to get digestion problems. you must be very accurate with the format of your message. it has to agree with the host machine's rules about line length, and maximum number of lines per message. let's assume that you want to send the following message to an electronic mailbox: to: datatid cc: anne-tove vestfossen sj: merry christmas! text: thanks for the box with herring. the taste was formidable. etc .. etc... etc... greetings, odd if this is all you have to say, doing it manually may be as fast as doing it automatically. however, if the line containing "etc .. etc .." is two full pages of text, you may feel differently. then, the best may be to upload a prewritten letter. many procomm users prefer to split the job in two. they enter the first four lines manually, and upload the body of the text (when the remote computer is ready to receive). press pgup to get a menu of various uploading protocols. select ascii for transfer of plain text. procomm will ask for the name of the file, which contains your letter. enter the name, and the file will be sent. slow down with "pacing" ----------------------- sometimes, the pgup method is just what you need. on other days, strange things may stop you in the middle of your transfer. one typical reason is that procomm is sending it too fast for the recipient. "pacing" is a method used to slow the speed of the transfer to a level that the recipient can handle. procomm lets you set a tiny pause after each line sent. another technique is to ask the program to wait for a given character (a "go-character"), before allowing it to send the next line. for example: the character ":" is often used in the prompts for the next line on bulletin boards. protocol transfers may be easier -------------------------------- you may find it easier to use a transfer protocol. with procomm, press the pgup key, and the program will ask for a protocol. select kermit or something else. the program will ask for a file name, you enter it, and off it goes. you will have no problems with blank lines, or lines that are too long. at times, even this will fail. the most common reasons are: * the recipient requires that procomm be set for -bits word length, no parity, stop bit, when using this protocol, but you have it set differently. * you think that the recipient's version of ymodem is the same that you have. wrong! total failure. do the following to upload the file test.txt to my bulletin board using xmodem: . navigate to the file area. tell shs what you want by using the following command: u;test.txt;x . press pgup, select xmodem, enter a file name (test.txt), and the transfer will start. (if you're too slow, shs may be tired of waiting for your commands . . .) . when the transfer is completed, my board will ask for a short description of the file. enter it, and you're done. enter g (for goodbye), and disconnect. appendix : explanation of some frequently used terms ========================================= we have included some terms that are commonly used in the online world. for more information, get a copy of "fyi: internet user's glossary." to get this file, send email to service@nic.ddn.mil with the following command in the subject of your mail: rfc . address ------- the string of characters that you must give an electronic mail program to direct a message to a particular person. the term "internet address" often refers to an assigned number, which identifies a host on this network. anonymous ftp ------------- the procedure of connecting to a remote computer, as an anonymous or guest user, to transfer files back to your computer. see ftp for more information. anon-ftp -------- see anonymous ftp. ansi ---- ( ) ansi is an organization that sets standards. ( ) 'ansi graphics' (ref. the term ansi-bbs) is a set of cursor control codes that originated on the vt terminal. many online services use these codes to help improve the sending of characters to communication programs. it uses the escape character, followed by other characters, to move the cursor on the screen, change color, and more. archie ------ an electronic directory service for locating information throughout the internet. you can use archie to locate files on anonymous ftp archive sites, other online directories and resource listings. it is useful for finding free software. archie offers access to the "whatis" description database. this database contains descriptions that include the name and a brief synopsis of the large number of public domain software, datasets and informational documents located on the internet. this book emphasizes email access to archie. you can also reach archie servers by telnet to one of the following addresses: archie.au . . . (australian server) archie.mcgill.ca . . . (canada) archie.funet.fi . . . (finland/europe s.) archie.th-darmstadt . . . (germany) archie.cs.huji.ac.il . . . (israel server) archie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp . . . (japan) archie.sogang.ac.kr . . . (korea) archie.nz . . . (new zealand) archie.ncu.edu.tw . . . (taiwan) archie.doc.ic.ac.uk . . . (uk/england server) archie.rutgers.edu . . . (u.s.a.) archie server ------------- an email-based file transfer facility offered by some systems connected to the internet. ascii ----- the american standard code for information interchange. a standard seven-bit code created to achieve compatibility between various types of data processing equipment. ascii, pronounced "ask-key," is the common code for microcomputer equipment. the standard ascii character set consists of decimal numbers ranging from zero through assigned to letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and the most common special characters. the extended ascii character set also consists of decimal numbers and ranges from through representing additional special, mathematical, graphic, and foreign characters. ascii download -------------- retrieval of plain ascii text (without special codes). normally, it takes place without automatic error correction, but it is typically managed by xon/xoff flow control. asynchronous transfer --------------------- serial communication between two computers. when signals are sent to a computer at irregular intervals, they are described as asynchronous. data is sent at irregular intervals by preceding each character with a start bit and following it with a stop bit. asynchronous transmission allows a character to be sent at random after the preceding character has been sent, without regard to any timing device. consequently, in case of line noise, the modem can find out right away where the next byte should start. autodial -------- when a modem dials a telephone number automatically. autodial may be started by the user entering the number manually, or the number may be sent automatically by the communications program (for example after having been selected from a phone register). baud ---- a unit of measurement that shows the number of discrete signal elements, such as bits, that can be sent per second. bits per second (bps) is the number of binary digits sent in one second. there is a difference between bps and baud rate, and the two are often confused. for example, a device such as a modem said to send at baud is not correct. it actually sends bits per second. both baud rate and bps refer to the rate at which the bits within a single frame are sent. the gaps between the frames can be of variable length. accordingly, neither baud rate nor bps refer accurately to the rate at which information is actually being transferred. bbs --- bulletin board or bulletin board system. see bulletin board. bell ---- standard frequencies used in older modems made in the united states. the standard for bps is called bell . the standard for bps full duplex is called bell a. modems using these standards are normally unable to communicate with ccitt standard modems at these speeds. big ---- coding scheme developed in taiwan for using chinese on computers. there are different varieties of big codes, the most common being et big (the code used by the taiwanese program eten, pronounced yi tian ) and hku big (the code used for programs developed at hong kong university). et big files must be read with the eten operating system. binary ------ the base number system in which only the digits and are used is called the binary system. the binary system lets us express any number, if we have enough bits, as a combination of 's and 's. also used to express conditions like on/off, true/false, yes/no. bits ---- bit is an abbreviation for binary digit. computer words and data are made-up of bits, the smallest unit of information. a bit can be either zero or one, represented in a circuit by an off or on state, respectively. the bits are set on or off to store data, or to form a code that in turn sends instructions to the computer's central processing unit. bits per second (bps) --------------------- bits per second (bps) is the number of binary digits sent in one second. it refers to the rate at which the bits within a single frame are sent ('frame' is another term for 'packet'). the gaps between frames can be of variable length. accordingly, bps does not refer to the rate at which information is actually being transferred. we usually estimate the amount of characters transferred per second (cps) by dividing the number of bps by . example: bps transfers around characters per second. boolean ------- search algorithm built on the algebraic theories of the english mathematician george booles. boolean algorithms are used in online databases to help narrow down the number of hits using the words and, or, and not. bounce ------ the return of a piece of mail because of an error in its delivery. bps --- abbreviation for bits per second. see above. browse ------ to view and possibly edit a file of data on screen similar to handling text in a word processing document. bulletin board -------------- a computer, often a microcomputer, set up to receive calls and work as an online service. the bbses let users communicate with each other through message bases, and exchange files. they and may also offer other services (like news, data base searches, and online shopping). carrier ------- the tone that the modem sends over a phone line before any data is sent on it. this tone has a fixed frequency and a fixed amplitude. it is then modified to indicate data. character --------- here used about a letter, a number or another typographical symbol or code. ccitt ----- the consultative committee for international telephony and telegraphy. an international consultative committee, organized by the united nations. membership includes telephone, governmental post, and telegraph authorities, scientific and trade associations, and private companies. ccitt is part of the international telecommunications union, a united nations treaty organization based in geneva, switzerland. ccitt sets international communications recommendations. these are often adopted as standards. it also develops interface, modem, and data network recommendations. the x. protocol for access to packet-switched networks was originally a recommendation of ccitt. a wide range of ccitt documents is available through the teledoc database of the international telecommunication union (itu): * ccitt and ccir administrative documents * lists of contributions (substantive input/proposals) to ccitt and ccir study groups * lists of ccitt reports and recommendations (i.e., standards) * summaries of ccitt new or revised recommendations * ccitt and ccir meeting schedules and other information concerning study groups structures and activities. for information, write to shaw@itu.arcom.ch or bautista@itu.arcom.ch the database is at teledoc@itu.arcom.ch . com port -------- a com port (or communication port) is a communications channel or pathway over which data is transferred between remote computing devices. ms-dos computers may have as many as four com ports, com , com , com , and com . these are serial ports most often used with a modem to set up a communications channel over telephone lines. they can also be used to send data to a serial printer, or to connect a serial mouse. conference ---------- also called sig (special interest group), forum, roundtable, echo. a conference is an area on a bulletin board or online service set up as a mini board. most conferences have separate message bases and often also file libraries and bulletins. conferences are focused on topics, like politics, games, multimedia and product support. connect time ------------ a term used for the hours, minutes, and seconds that a user is connected to an online service. on several commercial services, users have to pay for connect time. cps --- characters per second. see bits per second. data ---- information of any kind, including binary, decimal or hexadecimal numbers, integer numbers, text strings, etc. database -------- a database is a highly structured file (or set of files) that tries to provide all the information assigned to a particular subject and to allow programs to access only items they need. online services offer databases that users can search to find full-text or bibliographic references to desired topics. dce/dte ------- data communications equipment/data terminal equipment. equipment connected to an rs connector must be either a dce (like a modem or a printer) or a dte (computer or terminal). the term defines the types of equipment that will "talk" and "listen." default ------- when a value, parameter, attribute, or option is assigned by a communications program, modem, or online system unless something else is specified, it is called the default. for example, communication programs often have prespecified values for baud rate, bit size and parity that are used unless alternative values are given. these prespecified values are called the defaults. some services give users a choice between two or more options. if a selection is not made by the user, then a selection is automatically assigned, by default. discussion list --------------- see mailing list. domain name system (dns) ------------------------ email addressing system used in networks such as internet and bitnet. the internet dns consists of a hierarchical sequence of names, from the most specific to the most general (left to right), separated by dots, for example nic.ddn.mil. doors ----- a service offered by many bulletin boards to allow the user to leave the (remote) main software system to use one or several independent programs, like games and databases. downloading ----------- the transfer of data from an online service and "down" to your computers' disk. dtr --- data terminal ready is a circuit which, when on, tells the modem that your computer is ready to communicate. most modems are unable to tell your computer that a connection has been set up with a remote computer before this circuit has been switched off. if your computer turns this signal off, while it is in a dialog with a remote computer, the modem will normally disconnect. duplex ------ describes how you see text entered by the keyboard. when the setting is half duplex, all characters entered on your computer for transfer to an online service (or your modem) will be displayed. in addition, you will normally receive an echo from the online service (or modem). the result will often 'bbee lliikkee tthhiiss'. when using the setting full duplex, typed characters will not be shown. what you see, are characters echoed back to you from the online service and/or your modem. echo ---- ( ) when data is being sent, the receiving device often resends the information back so the sending device can be sure it was received correctly. ( ) term used on fidonet for this network's system of exchanging conferences (parallel conferencing). email ----- abbreviation for electronic mail. faq --- "frequently asked questions" about services on the internet. a list of faq documents is posted every four to six weeks to the usenet newsgroup news.announce.newusers. file server ----------- a file server is a device that "serves" files to everyone on a network. it allows everyone on the network to get files in a single place, on one computer. typically, it is a combination computer, data management software, and large capacity hard disk drive. file transfer ------------- the copying of a file from one computer to another over a computer network. finger ------ a program on computers directly connected to the internet that returns information about a registered user on a system. finger is useful before initiating chats, known on the internet as "talk." flame ----- a "flame" is a conference message sent by someone who generally disagrees so violently that they are willing to sink to personal attacks. flames can be extremely annoying, and can get the writer banished from several conference networks. fractal -------- a mathematical algorithm from which an image can be created. a fractal formula generates a fractal picture composed of an image based on a basic pattern. an outgrowth of chaos mathematics, it is being used for compressing and decompressing high quality images. generally, a fractally compressed image has an extremely small file size. ftp (file transfer protocol) ---------------------------- a program on the internet for sending and receiving files to and from a remote computer to your local host. ftp lets you connect to many remote computers, as an anonymous or guest user, to transfer files back to your computer. ftp only lets you list file directories on foreign systems, and get or retrieve files. you cannot browse menus, send email, or search databases. usually, type ftp at your system prompt, login on the remote system, and ask for the file you want to receive. it transfers to your local host machine. (for more on this, read under "internet" in appendix .) unless your computer is directly connected to the internet, the retrieved software will have to be transferred from your local host machine to your pc. where ftp is not available, you may use ftpmail (see chapter ). full duplex ----------- the term full-duplex means the transmission of data in two directions simultaneously as from a terminal to a computer or from the computer to the terminal. full-duplex is simultaneous two-way communication. full-text database ------------------ a database containing the full text of an article, a chapter in a book, or a book. the contents are not limited to abstracted information (indexes, bibliographic information). fyi --- "for your information." on the internet, a subseries of rfcs that are not technical standards or descriptions of protocols. gateway ------- here, we use the term gateway about an interconnection between two (or more) online services, set up to allow a user of one service to use the other service's offerings through the first service's user interface. the term also has other meanings: a gateway provides an interconnection between two networks with different communications protocols. gateways operate at the th through th layer of the osi model. for example, a pad (a packet assembler/disassembler) is a device used to interface non-x. devices to an x. network. the pad serves as a gateway. protocol converters are gateways between networks. the gateway, provided by an adapter card in a workstation, enables the network to perform as if it were a mainframe terminal connected directly to the mainframe. gopher ------ a world wide information service with many implementations. it works from a top-level subject-oriented menu system that accesses other information services across the internet. gopher combines a finding and fetching capability in one tool. gopher gets information from certain locations on the internet to which it is connected, and brings the information to your computer. it can also get information via other gophers at other locations connected to yet other hosts. the telneting or file transfer protocols are transparent to the user. "common questions and answers about the internet gopher" are posted to the following usenet newsgroups comp.infosystems.gopher, comp.answers, and news.answers every two weeks. the most recent version of this faq is also available by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in the /pub/usenet/news.answers directory. the file is called gopher.faq. to get it by email, write mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the command "send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body of the text. guobiao ------- coding scheme for using chinese on computers developed in mainland china. for more information, send email to listserv@uga.bitnet with one of the following commands in the text of your mail: get pc help (for pc users) get mac help (macintosh users) get cxterm help (x windows users) half duplex ----------- the term half-duplex means the transmission of data in either direction but only one direction at a time. ham --- amateur radio. handle ------ an alias used on a bulletin board or online service instead of your real name. often used in chats. header ------ ( ) in an email message, the part that precedes the body of a message and contains, among other things, the message originator, date and time. ( ) on a packet switched network, the portion of a package, preceding the actual data, containing source and destination addresses, and error checking and other fields. host ---- a term for host computer, remote computer or online service. here, we use it about a timesharing computer, a bbs system, or a central computer that controls a network and delivers online services. hytelnet -------- ( ) an internet service offering access to many other services, including university and library catalogues around the world. prefers vt- emulation. (telnet herald.usask.ca. login: hytelnet) the hytelnet anonymous ftp archive is at ftp.usask.ca. get the readme file in the /pub/hytelnet directory. ( ) a memory resident utility (ms-dos) that provides instant information on internet-accessible library catalogues, free-nets, campus wide information servers, gophers, wais, and much more. the program is available by ftp from access.usask.ca in the /pub/hytelnet/pc/ directory. file name is hytelnxx.zip where xx is the number of the latest version. hytel-l@kentvm.bitnet is a mailing list for announcements of new versions. information utility ------------------- a term often used about online services (not unlike the term power utility). internet -------- see appendix . internet number --------------- see ip address ip (internet protocol) ---------------------- the internet standard protocol that provides a common layer over dissimilar networks, used to move packets between host computers and through gateways if necessary. for more information, send a message to service@nic.ddn.mil with the following text in the subject title: rfc . ip address ---------- every machine on the internet has a unique address, called its internet number or ip address. usually, this address is represented by four numbers joined by periods ('.'), like . . . . the first two or three pieces represent the network that the system is on, called its subnet. for example, all of the computers for wesleyan university in the u.s.a. are in the subnet . , while the number in the previous paragraph represents a full address to one of the university's computers. irc --- internet relay chat is a worldwide "party line" protocol that allows one to converse with others in real time. isdn ---- an emerging technology being offered by many telephone carriers of the world. isdn combines voice and digital network services in a single medium, making it possible to offer customers digital data services as well as voice connections through a single "wire." the standards that define isdn are specified by ccitt. iso --- the international organization for standardization. a voluntary, nontreaty organization responsible for creating international standards in many areas, including computers and communications. its members are the national standards organizations of the member countries, including ansi for the u.s. iso is coordinator of the main internet networking standards that are in use today. iso@nic.ddn.mil is a mailing list focusing on the iso protocol stack. jis --- a japanese industry standard code for presenting the japanese character set kanji on computers. jis defines special ranges of user-defined characters. only the most popular ones are included. the newer shift jis standard sets aside certain character codes to signal the start of a two-character sequence. together, these define a single kanji metacharacter. there are many oddities to be found in handling kanji over the network. sending jis-encoded messages through the internet is done using a -bit code (standardized on junet). unfortunately, it incorporates the esc character, which some systems will filter out. (this problem can be overcome by using uuencoding.) some services, like apicnet in tokyo, converts outgoing kanji messages automatically to -bit format. jvarcserv --------- archive server for fidonet modelled after archie for the internet. it maintains file lists from fidonet systems throughout its area and will do searches on these file lists based on netmail requests made to it by remote systems. jvarcserv lets you search through file listings for the program you are looking for. it will send you an email message back telling you the bbs name, phone number, and file section of all the systems in the network that match the given criteria. kb -- kilobyte. a unit of data storage size which represents characters of information. kbits ----- , bits. kermit ------ protocol designed for transferring files between microcomputers and mainframe computers developed by catchings at columbia university. there are both public domain, and copyrighted kermit programs. some of these programs are complete programs in themselves offering the communication functions needed for the particular machine on which they are running. the complete kermit protocol manual and the source code for various versions are available from: kermit distribution, ( ) - columbia university center for computing activities west street, new york, ny knowbot ------- experimental directory services using intelligent computer programs that automate the search and gathering of data from distributed databases. the concept behind the knowbot is that it is supposed to be a knowledge robot -- something that goes hunting for information on the internet. to reach a knowbot: telnet cnri.reston.va.us port lan --- local area network. a data network intended to serve an area of only a few square kilometers or less. lap-m ----- link access procedure for modems is a ccitt standard for modem modulation and error control. it is the primary basis for the ccitt v. protocol. library ------- is used on online services about a collection of related databases (that you may search in) or files (that may be retrieved). list ---- file-viewing program for ms-dos computers (see chapter ). registration: us$ to buerg software, white oak circle, petaluma, ca , u.s.a. ( ). listserv -------- an automated mailing list distribution system enabling online discussions of technical and nontechnical issues conducted by electronic mail throughout the internet. the listserv program was originally designed for the bitnet/earn networks. similar lists, often using the unix readnews or rn facility, are available on the internet. lookfor ------- fast and flexible shareware program for boolean searches in text files. registration: us$ plus postage to david l. trafton, stoneham rd., bethesda, md. , u.s.a. lurking ------- no active participation by a subscriber to a mailing list, a conference, or usenet newsgroup. a person who is lurking is just listening to the discussion. mailbase -------- a program functioning like a listserv. for more information about the mailbase at newcastle university (england), send email to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk containing the following commands: send mailbase overview (for a general guide to mailbase) send mailbase userhelp (for a user guide) lists (for a list of available forums) this mailbase managed mailing lists in july . mail gateway ------------ a machine that connects to two or more electronic mail systems (including dissimilar mail systems) and transfers messages among them. mailing list ------------ a possibly moderated discussion group on the internet, distributed via email from a central computer maintaining the list of people involved in the discussion. anyone can send a message to a single mailing list address. the message is "reflected" to everyone on the list of addresses. the members of that list can respond, and the responses are reflected, forming a discussion group. (see listservers) mail path --------- a series of machine names used to direct electronic mail from one user to the other. mail server ----------- a software program that distributes files or information in response to requests sent by email. mhs --- ( ) message handling service. electronic mail software from action technologies licensed by novell for its netware operating systems. provides message routing and store and forward capabilities. mhs has gateways into profs, and x. message systems. it has been augmented with a directory naming service and binary attachments. ( ) message handling system. the standard defined by ccitt as x. and by iso as message-oriented text interchange standard (motis). mhs is the x. family of services and protocols that provides the functions for global email transfer among local mail systems. mnp --- microcom networking protocol. a proprietary standard of error control and data compression. modem ----- an acronym for modulator-demodulator. it is a device that converts digital data from a computer or terminal into analog data that can be sent over telephone lines. on the receiving end, it converts the analog data back to digital data. most modern modems can handle the dialing and answering of a telephone call and generate the speed of the data transmission, measured in bits per second, or baud rates. the telephone industry sometimes refers to a modem as a dataset. moderator --------- a person, or a small group of people, who manage moderated mailing lists and newsgroups. moderators are responsible for deciding which email submissions are passed on to list. mud --- multi-user dungeon. a multi-user, text based, virtual reality game. naplps ------ north american presentation-level protocol syntax. a text and graphics data transmission format for sending large amounts of information between computers. it was designed for the encoding of alphanumeric, alpha-mosaic, alpha-geometric and alpha-photographic constructs. the standard is resolution independent and device independent, and can easily accommodate international character sets, bit-mapped images in color, animation and sound. naplps was originally developed for videotext and teletext systems through the canadian standards association (csa-t - . it was later enhanced by at&t, and in became an ansi standard (ansi-x . - ). some videotext systems, including prodigy (u.s.a.), are based on naplps. on compuserve, naplps has been replaced with a newer protocol called gif, graphics interchange format. netfind ------- internet directory services that allow users to get information about individuals. search by name and organization/location. for more information, send email to listserv@brownvm.brown.edu with the following text in the body of your mail "get netfind help". netiquette ---------- a pun on "etiquette" referring to proper behavior on a network. netnews ------- see: usenet. network ------- a data communications system which interconnects computer systems at various sites. nic --- network information center. an organization that provides users with information about services provided by the internet network. nren ---- the national research and education network. a proposed computer network to be built in the u.s.a. nua --- network user address. the network address in a packet data network. the electronic number that is sent to the network to connect to an online service. also, called x. address. nui --- network user identification. the user name/password that you use to get access to (and use) a commercial packet switched network. offline ------- has the opposite meaning of "online" (see below). it signifies that your computer is not in direct communication with a remote online service. offline reader -------------- a computer program making the handling of mail and files from online services easier (and cheaper). some also provides automatic mail and file transfers. typically, you first connect to an online service (often a bbs) to capture new mail in a compressed file (typically through a "qmail door program.") many offline mail reader programs are idle while this goes on, while others can do communications as well. when disconnected from the service, the offline reader works as a combination message data base and message editor. it gives you the feeling of still being connected to the online service, while actually being completely disconnected. when you have read and replied to all messages offline, the offline reader creates a compressed "packet" containing any replies entered. some also let you prepare packets containing commands to join or leave conferences, subscribe to or signoff from special services, and download files. then, you dial back to the bbs to upload (send) the packet, either using the offline reader's communications module, or another communications program. readers are available for ms-dos, ms-windows, macintosh, amiga, atari st, unix, and cp/m computers. the programs may be downloaded from many bbses, and commercial services. online ------ in this book, it signifies the act of being in direct communication with a remote computer's central processing unit. an online database is a file of information that can be directly accessed by the user. osi --- open system interconnection. a set of protocols designed to be an international standard method for connecting unlike computers and networks. ozcis ----- dos-based program that automates access to compuserve using an elaborate array of menus. free for personal use. contact: ozarks west software, gleneagle drive, colorado springs, co , u.s.a. packet ------ ( ) a group of bits sent by a modem that comprise a byte of information. ( ) a group of bytes sent by a file transfer protocol. packet data networks -------------------- also called packet switching networks (pdn). value added networks offering long distance computer communications. they let users access a remote computer, by dialing a local node, or access point. the packet data networks use high speed digital links, which can be land lines or satellite communications, to transmit data from one computer to another using packets of data. they use synchronous communications, usually with the x. protocol. the routes are continually optimized, and successive packets of the same message need not necessarily follow the same path. packet switching ---------------- sending data in packets through a network to some remote location. the data to be sent is subdivided into individual packets of data, each having a unique identification and carrying its destination address. this allows each packet to go by a different route. the packet id lets the data be reassembled in proper sequence. pc -- personal computer. pdn --- see packet data networks. postmaster ---------- on the internet, the person responsible for handling electronic mail problems, answering queries about users, and other related work at a site. prompt ------ several times during interactive dialogs with online services, the flow of data stops while the host computer waits for commands from the user. at this point, the service often presents the user with a reminder, a cue, a prompt. these are some typical prompts: ? ! what now? (read) next letter - ulrik > system news - > enter #, <h>elp, or <cr> to continue? action ==> (inbox) command: enter command or <return> --> protocol -------- a formal description of message formats and the rules two computers must follow to exchange messages. protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interface (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across the wire), or high-level exchanges between allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the internet). proyam ------ powerful script-driven communications program. us$ + $ for postage from omen technology inc., -v nw sauvie island rd, portland, oregon , u.s.a. (visa and eurocard - ) pss --- british telecom's packet switch stream, an x. packet data network. ptt --- postal telegraph and telephone. a telephone service provider, often a monopoly, in a particular country. qwk --- qwikmail. a common offline message file format for bulletin boards offering mail through a qmail door. the .qwk door and file format has been used to develop entire bbs networks (example: ilink.) see "offline reader." rfc --- the internet's request for comments document series. working notes of the internet research and development community. script files ------------ a set of commands that enable a communications program to execute a given set of tasks automatically (macro commands). server ------ a provider of resources (e.g., file servers and name servers). sig --- special interest group. snail mail ---------- a pejorative term referring to the national postal service in different countries. string search ------------- a method for searching a database. works like the search function in a common word processor program. on online services, your commands will often search the full document (including the title, subtitles, keywords, and the full text). sometimes, string searches just return a line or a few lines around the hit. in other cases, they return the full screen or the full document. sysop ----- common name used on bulletin boards for system operator. this is the person in charge of maintenance and helping users. system ------ generic name for a computer with connected equipment or for an online service or bulletin board. talk ---- a command on the internet, which may remind of irc, but is a single link between two parties only. tapcis ------ a program for automatic access to compuserve. it lets callers read and respond to personal email and forum message threads offline, and download files. contact: support group, inc., lake technology park, mchenry, md , u.s.a. also: tapcis forum. internet mail: . @compuserve.com. on compuserve: , . registration: us$ . . tcp/ip ------ transmission control protocol/internet protocol. set of communications protocols that internetwork dissimilar systems connected to the internet. tcp/ip supports services such as remote login (telnet), file transfer (ftp), and mail (smtp). telnet ------ a program on the internet that allows logins to another computer to run software there. telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote system at another site as if the user's terminal was connected directly to the remote computer. with telnet, you can browse menus, read text files, use gopher services, and search online databases. sometimes, you can join live, interactive games and chat with other callers. usually, you cannot download files or list file directories. telnet is not available to users who have email only access to the internet. to telnet a remote computer, you must know its name. this can either be in words, like "vm .nodak.edu", or a numeric address, like " . . . ". some services require that you connect to a specific "port" on the remote system. enter the port number, if there is one, after the internet address. for a list of special internet connections, send email to bbslist@aug .augsburg.edu. you can also get it by ftp or gopher to csd .csd.uwm.edu, and through alt.internet.services on usenet. terminal emulator ----------------- a program that allows a computer to emulate a terminal. the workstation appears as a given type of terminal to the remote host. trickle ------- servers on the internet offering the simtel shareware and public domain files by email (uuencoded). these servers include: trickle@trearn.bitnet (turkey) trickle@bbrnsf .bitnet (belgium) trickle@taunivm.bitnet (israel) trickle@imipoli.bitnet (italy) trickle@db fub .bitnet (germany) trickle@awiwuw .bitnet (austria) trickle@unalcol.bitnet (colombia) for more information and a list of trickle servers, send a message to one of these addresses with the command "/help" in the body of your text. tty --- abbreviation for teletype, a special type of writing terminal (electrical/mechanical). also, known as 'dumb terminal'. tty mode -------- this is when a communications program emulates a tty machine, which only involves printing characters and recognizing the linefeed, carriage return and backspace characters. unix ---- an operating system that supports multi-user and multitasking operations. uploading --------- the act of transferring data from your computer's disk (up) to an online service and storage there. usenet ------ a global bulletin board, of sorts, in which millions of people exchange public information on every conceivable topic. for more information, see appendix . uucp ---- see appendix . veronica -------- a service on the internet. maintains an index of gopher items, and provides keyword searches of those titles. the result of a search is a set of gopher-type data items, which is returned to the user as a gopher menu. the user can access any of these data items by selecting from the returned menu. wais (wide area information servers) ------------------------------------ a kind of indexed online search tool to locate items based on what they contain - usually keyword text searches. it is a powerful tool for concurrent searches of large databases and/or newsgroups on the internet. example: telnet quake.think.com (or telnet . . . ). login as "wais". wan --- wide area network. the 'whatis' database --------------------- archie (see above) also permits access to the whatis description database. it contains the names and brief synopses of over , public domain software packages, datasets and informational documents located on the internet. whois ----- an internet program that lets users query a database of people and other internet entities, such as domains, networks, and hosts, kept at the nic (see above). for example, whois lets you scan through a registry of researchers in the network field to find an internet address, if you have only the last name or part of it. it will give you the person's company name, address, phone number, and email address. it had around , listings in december . to access the whois, telnet to rs.internic.net. when greeted by the host, type "whois" and press return. it also has a gopher service (type "gopher" go access, instead of "wais"). www (world wide web) -------------------- is much like gopher in that it provides top level access down to other services on the internet. www uses a hypertext interface with cross links between things. you can use highlighted words to jump off onto another track. wysiwyg ------- what you see is what you get. x. ---- a ccitt standard communications protocol used internationally in packet data networks. it provides error-checked communication between packet data networks and their users or other networks. rather than sending a stream of bits like a modem, an x. router sends packets of data. there are different packet sizes and types. each packet contains data to be transmitted, information about the packet's origin, destination, size, and its place in the order of the packets sent. there are clear packets that perform the equivalent of hanging-up the phone. there are reset, restart, and diagnostic packets. on the receiving end, the packet assembler/ disassembler (pad) in the router translates the packets back into a readable format. x. ----- the ccitt and iso standard for electronic mail. x. ----- the ccitt and iso standard for electronic directory services. appendix : books, articles, newsletters, etc. for further reading ====================================================== internet -------- "the matrix: computer networks and conferencing systems worldwide," john s. quarterman, digital press, bedford, ma, pages, . (internet address: mids@tic.com. gopher service at gopher.tic.com.) "matrix news," a newsletter about cross-network issues. networks frequently mentioned include usenet, uucp, fidonet, bitnet, the internet, and conferencing systems like the well and compuserve. matrix news is about all computer networks worldwide that exchange electronic mail. online subscription: us$ for twelve monthly issues, or us$ for students. paper subscriptions: us$ for twelve monthly issues, or us$ for students; for overseas postage, add us$ ( ). contact: matrix news, building suite , south capitol of texas highway, austin, tx , u.s.a. email: mids@tic.com . "!%@:: a directory of electronic mail addressing and networks," by donnalyn frey and rick adams (o'reilly & associates, inc., petaluma avenue, sebastopol, ca , u.s.a.). pages, us . . write to nuts@ora.com for ordering information. "the user's directory of computer networks" by tracy l. laquey (ed.), university of texas, digital press, crosby drive, bedford, ma , u.s.a. pages, . "zen and the art of the internet: a beginner's guide, second edition" by brendan p. kehoe, prentice-hall series in innovative technology, . pages, isbn - - - , us$ . . "the whole internet user's guide and catalog," by ed krol. . published by o'reilly and associates, inc., morris street, suite a, sebastopol, ca , u.s.a.. pages, us$ . . isbn - - - . email questions to nuts@ora.com or uunet!ora!nuts . "a guide to electronic mail networks and addressing," by donnalyn frey and rick adams. . o'reilly & associates, inc., morris street, suite a, sebastopol, ca , u.s.a. email address: nuts@ora.com . "managing uucp and the internet." published by o'reilly and associates, inc., morris street, suite a, sebastopol, ca , u.s.a. email address: nuts@ora.com . "the internet companion: a beginner's guide to global networking" by tracy laquey, with jeanne c. ryer. addison-wesley, , $ . , p. , isbn - - - . order direct from addison-wesley publishing co., inc., jacob way, reading, ma , u.s.a. "internet: getting started," april marine, ed., sri international, menlo park, ca, may . isbn: none, us$ . "the new user's guide to the internet" by daniel p. dern, mcgraw- hill, new york, usa. . isbn - - - (hc). isbn - - - (pbk). "an internet primer for information professionals: a basic guide to networking technology," by elizabeth s. lane, and craig a. summerhil, p. , meckler corp., westport, ct, usa. us$ . . isbn - - -x. "crossing the internet threshold," by roy tennant, john ober, and anne g. lipow, p. , library solutions press, industrial rd., suite , san carlos, ca , u.s.a. . isbn: - - - . us$ . plus shipping and handling. "the internet passport: northwestnet's guide to our world online" by kochmer, jonathan and northwestnet. th ed. p. bellevue, wa, usa: northwestnet, . isbn: - - - . price: us$ . . (us$ . nonprofit and educational). fax: + - - - . "internet: mailing lists edition." franklin f. kuo, sri internet information services. published by ptr prentice hall, new jersey, usa. isbn: - - - . paperback, pages. "internet connections: a librarian's guide to dial-up access and use" by mary e. engle, marilyn lutz, william w. jones, jr., and genevieve engel. library and information technology association's monographs series, # , . pages. isbn - - - . "internet world magazine", meckler corporation, ferry lane west, westport, ct , u.s.a. (meckler@jvnc.net) "the internet business journal," - springfield road, ottawa, canada, k m c . fax: + - - - . publisher: michael strangelove < . @compuserve.com>. "netpower: resource guide to online computer networks," by eric persson, fox chapel publishing, box , lancaster, pa - , u.s.a. us$ . . . + pages. email: netpower @aol.com . "information highways." magazine. annual subscription: $ . cdn. information highways, joicey blvd., toronto, ontario, m m v , canada. fax: + - - - . bulletin board systems and networks ----------------------------------- boardwatch magazine, weat jewell ave., suite , lakewood, co , u.s.a. email: jrickard@boardwatch.com . compuserve ---------- "compuserve from a to z," by charles bowen, bantam computer books, . us$ . . paperback, pages. genie ----- "glossbrenner's master guide to genie," alfred glossbrenner, osborne/mcgraw-hill, , us$ . , paperback, pages. various ------- "ecolinking: everyone's guide to online environmental information," by don rittner. peachpit press, , us$ . , paperback, pages, appendices, index. "online information hunting," by nahum goldman, tab books, inc., , us$ . , paperback, pages. "syslaw: the legal guide for online service providers" by lance rose, esq., and jonathan wallace, esq. sold by pc information group, east broadway, winona, mn , u.s.a. us$ . plus $ . shipping. "the information broker's handbook," by sue rugge and alfred glossbrenner, windcrest/mcgraw-hill. "dvorak's guide to pc telecommunications," john dvorak and nick anis ( , pages, us$ . ). second edition. articles -------- the following articles are available by email from listserv@uhupvm (bitnet) or listserv@uhupvm .uh.edu (internet). in the text of your message, write the get command shown after the article's citation below: bailey, charles w., jr. "electronic publishing on networks: a selective bibliography of recent works." the public-access computer systems review , no. ( ): - . get bailey prv n f=mail. harnad, stevan. "post-gutenberg galaxy: the fourth revolution in the means of production of knowledge." the public-access computer systems review , no. ( ): - . get harnad prv n f=mail. halbert, martin. "public-access computer systems and the internet." the public-access computer systems review , no. ( ): - . get halbert prv n f=mail. arms, caroline r. review of library resources on the internet: strategies for selection and use, by laine farley, ed. in the public-access computer systems review , no. ( ): - . get arms prv n f=mail. barron, billy. review of zen and the art of the internet: a beginner's guide to the internet, by brendan p. kehoe. in the public-access computer systems review , no. ( ): - . get barron prv n f=mail. cook, dave. review of the user's directory of computer networks, by tracy l. laquey, ed. in the public-access computer systems review , no. ( ): - . get cook prv n f=mail. appendix : international standard top-level country codes ============================================== top-level country codes derived from the international standards organization's international standard iso , except united kingdom that should be called great britain (gb) instead of uk. domain country comments ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ad andorra ae united arab emirates af afghanistan ag antigua and barbuda ai anguilla al albania am armenia ex-ussr an netherland antilles ao angola aq antarctica ar argentina as american samoa at austria au australia aw aruba az azerbaidjan ex-ussr ba bosnia-herzegovina ex-yugoslavia bb barbados bd bangladesh be belgium bf burkina faso bg bulgaria bh bahrain bi burundi bj benin bm bermuda bn brunei darussalam bo bolivia br brazil bs bahamas bt buthan bv bouvet island bw botswana by bielorussia ex-ussr bz belize ca canada cc cocos (keeling) isl. cf central african rep. cg congo ch switzerland ci ivory coast ck cook islands cl chile cm cameroon cn china co colombia cr costa rica cs czechoslovakia cu cuba cv cape verde cx christmas island cy cyprus de germany dj djibouti dk denmark dm dominica do dominican republic dz algeria ec ecuador ee estonia ex-ussr also via .su domain eg egypt eh western sahara es spain et ethiopia fi finland fj fiji fk falkland isl.(malvinas) fm micronesia fo faroe islands fr france fx france (european ter.) ??? ga gabon gb great britain (uk) x. address gateway gd grenada ge georgia ex-ussr gh ghana gi gibraltar gl greenland gp guadeloupe (fr.) gq equatorial guinea gf guyana (fr.) gm gambia gn guinea gr greece gt guatemala gu guam (us) gw guinea bissau gy guyana hk hong kong hm heard & mcdonald isl. hn honduras hr croatia ex-yugoslavia via .yu ht haiti hu hungary id indonesia ie ireland il israel in india io british indian o. terr. iq iraq ir iran is iceland it italy jm jamaica jo jordan jp japan ke kenya kg kirgistan ex-ussr kh cambodia ki kiribati km comoros kn st.kitts nevis anguilla kp korea (north) kr korea (south) kw kuwait ky cayman islands kz kazachstan ex-ussr la laos lb lebanon lc saint lucia li liechtenstein lk sri lanka lr liberia ls lesotho lt lithuania ex-ussr lu luxembourg lv latvia ex-ussr ly libya ma morocco mc monaco md moldavia ex-ussr mg madagascar mh marshall islands ml mali mm myanmar mn mongolia mo macau mp northern mariana isl. mq martinique (fr.) mr mauritania ms montserrat mt malta mu mauritius mv maldives mw malawi mx mexico my malaysia mz mozambique na namibia nc new caledonia (fr.) ne niger nf norfolk island ng nigeria ni nicaragua nl netherlands no norway np nepal nr nauru nt neutral zone nu niue nz new zealand om oman pa panama pe peru pf polynesia (fr.) pg papua new guinea ph philippines pk pakistan pl poland pm st. pierre & miquelon pn pitcairn pt portugal pr puerto rico (us) pw palau py paraguay qa qatar re reunion (fr.) in .fr domain ro romania ru russian federation ex-ussr rw rwanda sa saudi arabia sb solomon islands sc seychelles sd sudan se sweden sg singapore sh st. helena si slovenia ex-yugoslavia also via .yu sj svalbard & jan mayen is sl sierra leone sm san marino sn senegal so somalia sr suriname st st. tome and principe su soviet union still used. sv el salvador sy syria sz swaziland tc turks & caicos islands td chad tf french southern terr. tg togo th thailand tj tadjikistan ex-ussr tk tokelau tm turkmenistan ex-ussr tn tunisia to tonga tp east timor tr turkey tt trinidad & tobago tv tuvalu tw taiwan tz tanzania ua ukraine ex-ussr via .su domain ug uganda uk united kingdom iso code is gb um us minor outlying isl. us united states uy uruguay uz uzbekistan ex-ussr va vatican city state vc st.vincent & grenadines ve venezuela vg virgin islands (british) vi virgin islands (us) vn vietnam vu vanuatu wf wallis & futuna islands ws samoa ye yemen yu yugoslavia za south africa zm zambia zr zaire zw zimbabwe some other top level codes being used: -------------------------------------- arpa old style arpanet com commercial edu educational gov government int international field used by nato mil us military nato nato field being replaced by .int net network org non-profit organization the codes (domains) in this section are special in that some of them are used in more than one country. appendix : about the author ================ odd de presno (born ) lives in arendal, a small town in norway, with his computers and modems. he has written twelve books. half these focus on various aspects of the online world. the rest is about practical applications of ms-dos based personal computers. published in norway and england. his book "the online world" is distributed globally as shareware. over of his articles have been published in management and technical magazines in scandinavia, england, japan, and the u.s. writer. international public speaker. consultant. operates an english-language bulletin board system in norway (since ). area of special expertise: applications of global sources of online information, computer conferencing, global electronic mail, automation of information retrieval, ms-dos computer applications. founder and project director of kidlink, an international non- profit organization promoting a global dialog among the youth of the world. since its start in , kidlink has involved over ten thousand kids in the - years range in over countries. educational background includes a diploma degree in business administration from bedriftsoekonomisk institutt (norway). he founded the software company data logic a/s (norway) in and was president for five years. sales manager control data corp. seven years (in charge of cybernet/norway, an international online service). marketing manager iko software service a/s, two years. currently running his own business. member of the computer press association (u.s.a.) since , and nff (norway). listed in marquis' "who's who in the world" from . appendix : how to register your copy of the online world ============================================= the online world is extremely dynamic. services and offerings come and go. your registration will support further research, and production of updates. you can register your current copy, or sign up for six updates of the book during one year. details are given below. ============================================================================== please send to: odd de presno saltrod norway (europe) please add me as a supporter of the online world book: name ______________________________________________________________ company ______________________________________________________________ address ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ city ________________________________state _______ zip ____________ country ________________________________ email address ______________________________________________________ please mark off your selections with (x) below: basic registration for individuals ---------------------------------- ( ) nok . for payment by credit card. (around us$ . ) ( ) us$ . for all other methods of payment. (or, in norwegian currency: nok . .) option (for basic registration) ------------------------------- ( ) us$ . add to have a copy of the most recent version of the book sent you on diskette. only with registration! (in norway, nok . ) ( ) . " ms-dos disk ( ) . " disk kb ms-dos registration with six updates for individuals --------------------------------------------- six updates of the manuscript will be sent you during the next months. ( ) us$ . for all methods of payment. registration for businesses --------------------------- all corporate site licence options include six updates during the next months. ( ) us$ distribution for up to people on a single network ( ) us$ . distribution for up to people on a single network ( ) us$ . distribution for up to people on a single network ( ) us$ . distribution for up to people on a single network ( ) us$ . distribution for up to people on a single network ( ) us$ . distribution for over people on a single network discounts for schools and public libraries ------------------------------------------ special rates are available for schools and public libraries. for details, send a message to listserv@vm .nodak.edu (bitnet users can send it to listserv@ndsuvm ). in the text of the message, use the command: get tow schools get tow library ( ) please identify what type of discount you are taking advantage of: ref: ______________ description: ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ amount ____________________ date _______________ ( ) check or money order payable to odd de presno in u.s. funds enclosed ( ) swift transfer to . . (kredittkassen arendal, norway) ( ) visa ( ) mastercard ( ) american express credit card number __________________________________ exp date _______ if you already have an evaluation copy of the book, where did you get it? ________________________________________________ version number: ____ comments or suggestions for improvement of the online world __________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ date ___________________ signature _________________________________ zddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd? t h a n k y o u f o r s u p p o r t i n g s h a r e w a r e @dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddy the history of the telephone by herbert n. casson preface thirty-five short years, and presto! the newborn art of telephony is fullgrown. three million telephones are now scattered abroad in foreign countries, and seven millions are massed here, in the land of its birth. so entirely has the telephone outgrown the ridicule with which, as many people can well remember, it was first received, that it is now in most places taken for granted, as though it were a part of the natural phenomena of this planet. it has so marvellously extended the facilities of conversation--that "art in which a man has all mankind for competitors"--that it is now an indispensable help to whoever would live the convenient life. the disadvantage of being deaf and dumb to all absent persons, which was universal in pre-telephonic days, has now happily been overcome; and i hope that this story of how and by whom it was done will be a welcome addition to american libraries. it is such a story as the telephone itself might tell, if it could speak with a voice of its own. it is not technical. it is not statistical. it is not exhaustive. it is so brief, in fact, that a second volume could readily be made by describing the careers of telephone leaders whose names i find have been omitted unintentionally from this book--such indispensable men, for instance, as william r. driver, who has signed more telephone cheques and larger ones than any other man; geo. s. hibbard, henry w. pope, and w. d. sargent, three veterans who know telephony in all its phases; george y. wallace, the last survivor of the rocky mountain pioneers; jasper n. keller, of texas and new england; w. t. gentry, the central figure of the southeast, and the following presidents of telephone companies: bernard e. sunny, of chicago; e. b. field, of denver; d. leet wilson, of pittsburg; l. g. richardson, of indianapolis; caspar e. yost, of omaha; james e. caldwell, of nashville; thomas sherwin, of boston; henry t. scott, of san francisco; h. j. pettengill, of dallas; alonzo burt, of milwaukee; john kilgour, of cincinnati; and chas. s. gleed, of kansas city. i am deeply indebted to most of these men for the information which is herewith presented; and also to such pioneers, now dead, as o. e. madden, the first general agent; frank l. pope, the noted electrical expert; c. h. haskins, of milwaukee; george f. ladd, of san francisco; and geo. f. durant, of st. louis. h. n. c. pine hill, n. y., june , . contents chapter i the birth of the telephone ii the building of the business iii the holding of the business iv the development of the art v the expansion of the business vi notable users of the telephone vii the telephone and national efficiency viii the telephone in foreign countries ix the future of the telephone the history of the telephone chapter i. the birth of the telephone in that somewhat distant year , when the telegraph and the atlantic cable were the most wonderful things in the world, a tall young professor of elocution was desperately busy in a noisy machine-shop that stood in one of the narrow streets of boston, not far from scollay square. it was a very hot afternoon in june, but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. he was wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. it was a most absurd toy in appearance. it was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country. the young professor had been toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in june, , he heard an almost inaudible sound--a faint twang--come from the machine itself. for an instant he was stunned. he had been expecting just such a sound for several months, but it came so suddenly as to give him the sensation of surprise. his eyes blazed with delight, and he sprang in a passion of eagerness to an adjoining room in which stood a young mechanic who was assisting him. "snap that reed again, watson," cried the apparently irrational young professor. there was one of the odd-looking machines in each room, so it appears, and the two were connected by an electric wire. watson had snapped the reed on one of the machines and the professor had heard from the other machine exactly the same sound. it was no more than the gentle twang of a clock-spring; but it was the first time in the history of the world that a complete sound had been carried along a wire, reproduced perfectly at the other end, and heard by an expert in acoustics. that twang of the clock-spring was the first tiny cry of the newborn telephone, uttered in the clanging din of a machine-shop and happily heard by a man whose ear had been trained to recognize the strange voice of the little newcomer. there, amidst flying belts and jarring wheels, the baby telephone was born, as feeble and helpless as any other baby, and "with no language but a cry." the professor-inventor, who had thus rescued the tiny foundling of science, was a young scottish american. his name, now known as widely as the telephone itself, was alexander graham bell. he was a teacher of acoustics and a student of electricity, possibly the only man in his generation who was able to focus a knowledge of both subjects upon the problem of the telephone. to other men that exceedingly faint sound would have been as inaudible as silence itself; but to bell it was a thunder-clap. it was a dream come true. it was an impossible thing which had in a flash become so easy that he could scarcely believe it. here, without the use of a battery, with no more electric current than that made by a couple of magnets, all the waves of a sound had been carried along a wire and changed back to sound at the farther end. it was absurd. it was incredible. it was something which neither wire nor electricity had been known to do before. but it was true. no discovery has ever been less accidental. it was the last link of a long chain of discoveries. it was the result of a persistent and deliberate search. already, for half a year or longer, bell had known the correct theory of the telephone; but he had not realized that the feeble undulatory current generated by a magnet was strong enough for the transmission of speech. he had been taught to undervalue the incredible efficiency of electricity. not only was bell himself a teacher of the laws of speech, so highly skilled that he was an instructor in boston university. his father, also, his two brothers, his uncle, and his grandfather had taught the laws of speech in the universities of edinburgh, dublin, and london. for three generations the bells had been professors of the science of talking. they had even helped to create that science by several inven-tions. the first of them, alexander bell, had invented a system for the correction of stammering and similar defects of speech. the second, alexander melville bell, was the dean of british elocutionists, a man of creative brain and a most impressive facility of rhetoric. he was the author of a dozen text-books on the art of speaking correctly, and also of a most ingenious sign-language which he called "visible speech." every letter in the alphabet of this language represented a certain action of the lips and tongue; so that a new method was provided for those who wished to learn foreign languages or to speak their own language more correctly. and the third of these speech-improving bells, the inventor of the telephone, inherited the peculiar genius of his fathers, both inventive and rhetorical, to such a degree that as a boy he had constructed an artificial skull, from gutta-percha and india rubber, which, when enlivened by a blast of air from a hand-bellows, would actually pronounce several words in an almost human manner. the third bell, the only one of this remarkable family who concerns us at this time, was a young man, barely twenty-eight, at the time when his ear caught the first cry of the telephone. but he was already a man of some note on his own account. he had been educated in edinburgh, the city of his birth, and in london; and had in one way and another picked up a smattering of anatomy, music, electricity, and telegraphy. until he was sixteen years of age, he had read nothing but novels and poetry and romantic tales of scottish heroes. then he left home to become a teacher of elocution in various british schools, and by the time he was of age he had made several slight discoveries as to the nature of vowel-sounds. shortly afterwards, he met in london two distinguished men, alexander j. ellis and sir charles wheatstone, who did far more than they ever knew to forward bell in the direction of the telephone. ellis was the president of the london philological society. also, he was the translator of the famous book on "the sensations of tone," written by helmholtz, who, in the period from to made berlin the world-centre for the study of the physical sciences. so it happened that when bell ran to ellis as a young enthusiast and told his experiments, ellis informed him that helmholtz had done the same things several years before and done them more completely. he brought bell to his house and showed him what helmholtz had done--how he had kept tuning-forks in vibration by the power of electro-magnets, and blended the tones of several tuning-forks together to produce the complex quality of the human voice. now, helmholtz had not been trying to invent a telephone, nor any sort of message-carrier. his aim was to point out the physical basis of music, and nothing more. but this fact that an electro-magnet would set a tuning-fork humming was new to bell and very attractive. it appealed at once to him as a student of speech. if a tuning-fork could be made to sing by a magnet or an electrified wire, why would it not be possible to make a musical telegraph--a telegraph with a piano key-board, so that many messages could be sent at once over a single wire? unknown to bell, there were several dozen inven-tors then at work upon this problem, which proved in the end to be very elusive. but it gave him at least a starting-point, and he forthwith commenced his quest of the telephone. as he was then in england, his first step was naturally to visit sir charles wheatstone, the best known english expert on telegraphy. sir charles had earned his title by many inventions. he was a simple-natured scientist, and treated bell with the utmost kindness. he showed him an ingenious talking-machine that had been made by baron de kempelin. at this time bell was twenty-two and unknown; wheatstone was sixty-seven and famous. and the personality of the veteran scientist made so vivid a picture upon the mind of the impressionable young bell that the grand passion of science became henceforth the master-motif of his life. from this summit of glorious ambition he was thrown, several months later, into the depths of grief and despondency. the white plague had come to the home in edinburgh and taken away his two brothers. more, it had put its mark upon the young inventor himself. nothing but a change of climate, said his doctor, would put him out of danger. and so, to save his life, he and his father and mother set sail from glasgow and came to the small canadian town of brantford, where for a year he fought down his tendency to consumption, and satisfied his nervous energy by teaching "visible speech" to a tribe of mohawk indians. by this time it had become evident, both to his parents and to his friends, that young graham was destined to become some sort of a creative genius. he was tall and supple, with a pale complexion, large nose, full lips, jet-black eyes, and jet-black hair, brushed high and usually rumpled into a curly tangle. in temperament he was a true scientific bohemian, with the ideals of a savant and the disposition of an artist. he was wholly a man of enthusiasms, more devoted to ideas than to people; and less likely to master his own thoughts than to be mastered by them. he had no shrewdness, in any commercial sense, and very little knowledge of the small practical details of ordinary living. he was always intense, always absorbed. when he applied his mind to a problem, it became at once an enthralling arena, in which there went whirling a chariot-race of ideas and inventive fancies. he had been fascinated from boyhood by his father's system of "visible speech." he knew it so well that he once astonished a professor of oriental languages by repeating correctly a sentence of sanscrit that had been written in "visible speech" characters. while he was living in london his most absorbing enthusiasm was the instruction of a class of deaf-mutes, who could be trained to talk, he believed, by means of the "visible speech" alphabet. he was so deeply impressed by the progress made by these pupils, and by the pathos of their dumbness, that when he arrived in canada he was in doubt as to which of these two tasks was the more important--the teaching of deaf-mutes or the invention of a musical telegraph. at this point, and before bell had begun to experiment with his telegraph, the scene of the story shifts from canada to massachusetts. it appears that his father, while lecturing in boston, had mentioned graham's exploits with a class of deaf-mutes; and soon afterward the boston board of education wrote to graham, offering him five hundred dollars if he would come to boston and introduce his system of teaching in a school for deaf-mutes that had been opened recently. the young man joyfully agreed, and on the first of april, , crossed the line and became for the remainder of his life an american. for the next two years his telegraphic work was laid aside, if not forgotten. his success as a teacher of deaf-mutes was sudden and overwhelming. it was the educational sensation of . it won him a professorship in boston university; and brought so many pupils around him that he ventured to open an ambitious "school of vocal physiology," which became at once a profitable enterprise. for a time there seemed to be little hope of his escaping from the burden of this success and becoming an inventor, when, by a most happy coincidence, two of his pupils brought to him exactly the sort of stimulation and practical help that he needed and had not up to this time received. one of these pupils was a little deaf-mute tot, five years of age, named georgie sanders. bell had agreed to give him a series of private lessons for $ a year; and as the child lived with his grandmother in the city of salem, sixteen miles from boston, it was agreed that bell should make his home with the sanders family. here he not only found the keenest interest and sympathy in his air-castles of invention, but also was given permission to use the cellar of the house as his workshop. for the next three years this cellar was his favorite retreat. he littered it with tuning-forks, magnets, batteries, coils of wire, tin trumpets, and cigar-boxes. no one outside of the sanders family was allowed to enter it, as bell was nervously afraid of having his ideas stolen. he would even go to five or six stores to buy his supplies, for fear that his intentions should be discovered. almost with the secrecy of a conspirator, he worked alone in this cellar, usually at night, and quite oblivious of the fact that sleep was a necessity to him and to the sanders family. "often in the middle of the night bell would wake me up," said thomas sanders, the father of georgie. "his black eyes would be blazing with excitement. leaving me to go down to the cellar, he would rush wildly to the barn and begin to send me signals along his experimental wires. if i noticed any improvement in his machine, he would be delighted. he would leap and whirl around in one of his `war-dances' and then go contentedly to bed. but if the experiment was a failure, he would go back to his workbench and try some different plan." the second pupil who became a factor--a very considerable factor--in bell's career was a fifteen-year-old girl named mabel hubbard, who had lost her hearing, and consequently her speech, through an attack of scarlet-fever when a baby. she was a gentle and lovable girl, and bell, in his ardent and headlong way, lost his heart to her completely; and four years later, he had the happiness of making her his wife. mabel hubbard did much to encourage bell. she followed each step of his progress with the keenest interest. she wrote his letters and copied his patents. she cheered him on when he felt himself beaten. and through her sympathy with bell and his ambitions, she led her father--a widely known boston lawyer named gardiner g. hubbard--to become bell's chief spokesman and defender, a true apostle of the telephone. hubbard first became aware of bell's inventive efforts one evening when bell was visiting at his home in cambridge. bell was illustrating some of the mysteries of acoustics by the aid of a piano. "do you know," he said to hubbard, "that if i sing the note g close to the strings of the piano, that the g-string will answer me?" "well, what then?" asked hubbard. "it is a fact of tremendous importance," replied bell. "it is an evidence that we may some day have a musical telegraph, which will send as many messages simultaneously over one wire as there are notes on that piano." later, bell ventured to confide to hubbard his wild dream of sending speech over an electric wire, but hubbard laughed him to scorn. "now you are talking nonsense," he said. "such a thing never could be more than a scientific toy. you had better throw that idea out of your mind and go ahead with your musical telegraph, which if it is successful will make you a millionaire." but the longer bell toiled at his musical telegraph, the more he dreamed of replacing the telegraph and its cumbrous sign-language by a new machine that would carry, not dots and dashes, but the human voice. "if i can make a deaf-mute talk," he said, "i can make iron talk." for months he wavered between the two ideas. he had no more than the most hazy conception of what this voice-carrying machine would be like. at first he conceived of having a harp at one end of the wire, and a speaking-trumpet at the other, so that the tones of the voice would be reproduced by the strings of the harp. then, in the early summer of , while he was puzzling over this harp apparatus, the dim outline of a new path suddenly glinted in front of him. he had not been forgetful of "visible speech" all this while, but had been making experiments with two remarkable machines--the phonautograph and the manometric capsule, by means of which the vibrations of sound were made plainly visible. if these could be im-proved, he thought, then the deaf might be taught to speak by sight--by learning an alphabet of vibrations. he mentioned these experiments to a boston friend, dr. clarence j. blake, and he, being a surgeon and an aurist, naturally said, "why don't you use a real ear?" such an idea never had, and probably never could have, occurred to bell; but he accepted it with eagerness. dr. blake cut an ear from a dead man's head, together with the ear-drum and the associated bones. bell took this fragment of a skull and arranged it so that a straw touched the ear-drum at one end and a piece of moving smoked glass at the other. thus, when bell spoke loudly into the ear, the vibrations of the drum made tiny markings upon the glass. it was one of the most extraordinary incidents in the whole history of the telephone. to an uninitiated onlooker, nothing could have been more ghastly or absurd. how could any one have interpreted the gruesome joy of this young professor with the pale face and the black eyes, who stood earnestly singing, whispering, and shouting into a dead man's ear? what sort of a wizard must he be, or ghoul, or madman? and in salem, too, the home of the witchcraft superstition! certainly it would not have gone well with bell had he lived two centuries earlier and been caught at such black magic. what had this dead man's ear to do with the invention of the telephone? much. bell noticed how small and thin was the ear-drum, and yet how effectively it could send thrills and vibrations through heavy bones. "if this tiny disc can vibrate a bone," he thought, "then an iron disc might vibrate an iron rod, or at least, an iron wire." in a flash the conception of a membrane telephone was pictured in his mind. he saw in imagination two iron discs, or ear-drums, far apart and connected by an electrified wire, catching the vibrations of sound at one end, and reproducing them at the other. at last he was on the right path, and had a theoretical knowledge of what a speaking telephone ought to be. what remained to be done was to construct such a machine and find out how the electric current could best be brought into harness. then, as though fortune suddenly felt that he was winning this stupendous success too easily, bell was flung back by an avalanche of troubles. sanders and hubbard, who had been paying the cost of his experiments, abruptly announced that they would pay no more unless he confined his attention to the musical telegraph, and stopped wasting his time on ear-toys that never could be of any financial value. what these two men asked could scarcely be denied, as one of them was his best-paying patron and the other was the father of the girl whom he hoped to marry. "if you wish my daughter," said hubbard, "you must abandon your foolish telephone." bell's "school of vocal physiology," too, from which he had hoped so much, had come to an inglorious end. he had been too much absorbed in his experiments to sustain it. his professorship had been given up, and he had no pupils except georgie sanders and mabel hubbard. he was poor, much poorer than his associates knew. and his mind was torn and distracted by the contrary calls of science, poverty, business, and affection. pouring out his sorrows in a letter to his mother, he said: "i am now beginning to realize the cares and anxieties of being an inventor. i have had to put off all pupils and classes, for flesh and blood could not stand much longer such a strain as i have had upon me." while stumbling through this slough of despond, he was called to washington by his patent lawyer. not having enough money to pay the cost of such a journey, he borrowed the price of a return ticket from sanders and arranged to stay with a friend in washington, to save a hotel bill that he could not afford. at that time professor joseph henry, who knew more of the theory of electrical science than any other american, was the grand old man of washington; and poor bell, in his doubt and desperation, resolved to run to him for advice. then came a meeting which deserves to be historic. for an entire afternoon the two men worked together over the apparatus that bell had brought from boston, just as henry had worked over the telegraph before bell was born. henry was now a veteran of seventy-eight, with only three years remaining to his credit in the bank of time, while bell was twenty-eight. there was a long half-century between them; but the youth had discovered a new fact that the sage, in all his wisdom, had never known. "you are in possession of the germ of a great invention," said henry, "and i would advise you to work at it until you have made it complete." "but," replied bell, "i have not got the electrical knowledge that is necessary." "get it," responded the aged scientist. "i cannot tell you how much these two words have encouraged me," said bell afterwards, in describing this interview to his parents. "i live too much in an atmosphere of discouragement for scientific pursuits; and such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed seem to most minds scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over." by this time bell had moved his workshop from the cellar in salem to court street, boston, where he had rented a room from charles williams, a manufacturer of electrical supplies. thomas a. watson was his assistant, and both bell and watson lived nearby, in two cheap little bedrooms. the rent of the workshop and bedrooms, and watson's wages of nine dollars a week, were being paid by sanders and hubbard. consequently, when bell returned from washington, he was compelled by his agreement to devote himself mainly to the musical telegraph, although his heart was now with the telephone. for exactly three months after his interview with professor henry, he continued to plod ahead, along both lines, until, on that memorable hot afternoon in june, , the full twang of the clock-spring came over the wire, and the telephone was born. from this moment, bell was a man of one purpose. he won over sanders and hubbard. he converted watson into an enthusiast. he forgot his musical telegraph, his "visible speech," his classes, his poverty. he threw aside a profession in which he was already locally famous. and he grappled with this new mystery of electricity, as henry had advised him to do, encouraging himself with the fact that morse, who was only a painter, had mastered his electrical difficulties, and there was no reason why a professor of acoustics should not do as much. the telephone was now in existence, but it was the youngest and feeblest thing in the nation. it had not yet spoken a word. it had to be taught, developed, and made fit for the service of the irritable business world. all manner of discs had to be tried, some smaller and thinner than a dime and others of steel boiler-plate as heavy as the shield of achilles. in all the books of electrical science, there was nothing to help bell and watson in this journey they were making through an unknown country. they were as chartless as columbus was in . neither they nor any one else had acquired any experience in the rearing of a young telephone. no one knew what to do next. there was nothing to know. for forty weeks--long exasperating weeks--the telephone could do no more than gasp and make strange inarticulate noises. its educators had not learned how to manage it. then, on march , , it talked. it said distinctly-- "mr. watson, come here, i want you." watson, who was at the lower end of the wire, in the basement, dropped the receiver and rushed with wild joy up three flights of stairs to tell the glad tidings to bell. "i can hear you!" he shouted breathlessly. "i can hear the words." it was not easy, of course, for the weak young telephone to make itself heard in that noisy workshop. no one, not even bell and watson, was familiar with its odd little voice. usually watson, who had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, did the listening; and bell, who was a professional elocutionist, did the talking. and day by day the tone of the baby instrument grew clearer--a new note in the orchestra of civilization. on his twenty-ninth birthday, bell received his patent, no. , --"the most valuable single patent ever issued" in any country. he had created something so entirely new that there was no name for it in any of the world's languages. in describing it to the officials of the patent office, he was obliged to call it "an improvement in telegraphy," when, in truth, it was nothing of the kind. it was as different from the telegraph as the eloquence of a great orator is from the sign-language of a deaf-mute. other inventors had worked from the standpoint of the telegraph; and they never did, and never could, get any better results than signs and symbols. but bell worked from the standpoint of the human voice. he cross-fertilized the two sciences of acoustics and electricity. his study of "visible speech" had trained his mind so that he could mentally see the shape of a word as he spoke it. he knew what a spoken word was, and how it acted upon the air, or the ether, that carried its vibrations from the lips to the ear. he was a third-generation specialist in the nature of speech, and he knew that for the transmission of spoken words there must be "a pulsatory action of the electric current which is the exact equivalent of the aerial impulses." bell knew just enough about electricity, and not too much. he did not know the possible from the impossible. "had i known more about electricity, and less about sound," he said, "i would never have invented the telephone." what he had done was so amazing, so foolhardy, that no trained electrician could have thought of it. it was "the very hardihood of invention," and yet it was not in any sense a chance discovery. it was the natural output of a mind that had been led to assemble just the right materials for such a product. as though the very stars in their courses were working for this young wizard with the talking wire, the centennial exposition in philadelphia opened its doors exactly two months after the telephone had learned to talk. here was a superb opportunity to let the wide world know what had been done, and fortunately hubbard was one of the centennial commissioners. by his influence a small table was placed in the department of education, in a narrow space between a stairway and a wall, and on this table was deposited the first of the telephones. bell had no intention of going to the centennial himself. he was too poor. sanders and hubbard had never done more than pay his room-rent and the expense of his experiments. for his three or four years of inventing he had received nothing as yet--nothing but his patent. in order to live, he had been compelled to reorganize his classes in "visible speech," and to pick up the ravelled ends of his neglected profession. but one friday afternoon, toward the end of june, his sweetheart, mabel hubbard, was taking the train for the centennial; and he went to the depot to say good-bye. here miss hubbard learned for the first time that bell was not to go. she coaxed and pleaded, without effect. then, as the train was starting, leaving bell on the platform, the affectionate young girl could no longer control her feelings and was overcome by a passion of tears. at this the susceptible bell, like a true sir galahad, dashed after the moving train and sprang aboard, without ticket or baggage, oblivious of his classes and his poverty and of all else except this one maiden's distress. "i never saw a man," said watson, "so much in love as bell was." as it happened, this impromptu trip to the centennial proved to be one of the most timely acts of his life. on the following sunday after-noon the judges were to make a special tour of inspection, and mr. hubbard, after much trouble, had obtained a promise that they would spend a few minutes examining bell's telephone. by this time it had been on exhibition for more than six weeks, without attracting the serious attention of anybody. when sunday afternoon arrived, bell was at his little table, nervous, yet confident. but hour after hour went by, and the judges did not arrive. the day was intensely hot, and they had many wonders to examine. there was the first electric light, and the first grain-binder, and the musical telegraph of elisha gray, and the marvellous exhibit of printing telegraphs shown by the western union company. by the time they came to bell's table, through a litter of school-desks and blackboards, the hour was seven o'clock, and every man in the party was hot, tired, and hungry. several announced their intention of returning to their hotels. one took up a telephone receiver, looked at it blankly, and put it down again. he did not even place it to his ear. another judge made a slighting remark which raised a laugh at bell's expense. then a most marvellous thing happened--such an incident as would make a chapter in "the arabian nights entertainments." accompanied by his wife, the empress theresa, and by a bevy of courtiers, the emperor of brazil, dom pedro de alcantara, walked into the room, advanced with both hands outstretched to the bewildered bell, and exclaimed: "professor bell, i am delighted to see you again." the judges at once forgot the heat and the fatigue and the hunger. who was this young inventor, with the pale complexion and black eyes, that he should be the friend of emperors? they did not know, and for the moment even bell himself had forgotten, that dom pedro had once visited bell's class of deaf-mutes at boston university. he was especially interested in such humanitarian work, and had recently helped to organize the first brazilian school for deaf-mutes at rio de janeiro. and so, with the tall, blond-bearded dom pedro in the centre, the assembled judges, and scientists--there were fully fifty in all--entered with unusual zest into the proceedings of this first telephone exhibition. a wire had been strung from one end of the room to the other, and while bell went to the transmitter, dom pedro took up the receiver and placed it to his ear. it was a moment of tense expectancy. no one knew clearly what was about to happen, when the emperor, with a dramatic gesture, raised his head from the receiver and exclaimed with a look of utter amazement: "my god--it talks!" next came to the receiver the oldest scientist in the group, the venerable joseph henry, whose encouragement to bell had been so timely. he stopped to listen, and, as one of the bystanders afterwards said, no one could forget the look of awe that came into his face as he heard that iron disc talking with a human voice. "this," said he, "comes nearer to overthrowing the doctrine of the conservation of energy than anything i ever saw." then came sir william thomson, latterly known as lord kelvin. it was fitting that he should be there, for he was the foremost electrical scientist at that time in the world, and had been the engineer of the first atlantic cable. he listened and learned what even he had not known before, that a solid metallic body could take up from the air all the countless varieties of vibrations produced by speech, and that these vibrations could be carried along a wire and reproduced exactly by a second metallic body. he nodded his head solemnly as he rose from the receiver. "it does speak," he said emphatically. "it is the most wonderful thing i have seen in america." so, one after another, this notable company of men listened to the voice of the first telephone, and the more they knew of science, the less they were inclined to believe their ears. the wiser they were, the more they wondered. to henry and thomson, the masters of electrical magic, this instrument was as surprising as it was to the man in the street. and both were noble enough to admit frankly their astonishment in the reports which they made as judges, when they gave bell a certificate of award. "mr. bell has achieved a result of transcendent scientific interest," wrote sir william thomson. "i heard it speak distinctly several sentences.... i was astonished and delighted.... it is the greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric telegraph." until nearly ten o'clock that night the judges talked and listened by turns at the telephone. then, next morning, they brought the apparatus to the judges' pavilion, where for the remainder of the summer it was mobbed by judges and scientists. sir william thomson and his wife ran back and forth between the two ends of the wire like a pair of delighted children. and thus it happened that the crude little instrument that had been tossed into an out-of-the-way corner became the star of the centennial. it had been given no more than eighteen words in the official catalogue, and here it was acclaimed as the wonder of wonders. it had been conceived in a cellar and born in a machine-shop; and now, of all the gifts that our young american republic had received on its one-hundredth birthday, the telephone was honored as the rarest and most welcome of them all. chapter ii. the building of the business after the telephone had been born in boston, baptized in the patent office, and given a royal reception at the philadelphia centennial, it might be supposed that its life thenceforth would be one of peace and pleasantness. but as this is history, and not fancy, there must be set down the very surprising fact that the young newcomer received no welcome and no notice from the great business world. "it is a scientific toy," said the men of trade and commerce. "it is an interesting instrument, of course, for professors of electricity and acoustics; but it can never be a practical necessity. as well might you propose to put a telescope into a steel-mill or to hitch a balloon to a shoe-factory." poor bell, instead of being applauded, was pelted with a hailstorm of ridicule. he was an "impostor," a "ventriloquist," a "crank who says he can talk through a wire." the london times alluded pompously to the telephone as the latest american humbug, and gave many profound reasons why speech could not be sent over a wire, because of the intermittent nature of the electric current. almost all electricians--the men who were supposed to know--pronounced the telephone an impossible thing; and those who did not openly declare it to be a hoax, believed that bell had stumbled upon some freakish use of electricity, which could never be of any practical value. even though he came late in the succession of inventors, bell had to run the gantlet of scoffing and adversity. by the reception that the public gave to his telephone, he learned to sympathize with howe, whose first sewing-machine was smashed by a boston mob; with mccormick, whose first reaper was called "a cross between an astley chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying-machine"; with morse, whom ten congresses regarded as a nuisance; with cyrus field, whose atlantic cable was denounced as "a mad freak of stubborn ignorance"; and with westinghouse, who was called a fool for proposing "to stop a railroad train with wind." the very idea of talking at a piece of sheet-iron was so new and extraordinary that the normal mind repulsed it. alike to the laborer and the scientist, it was incomprehensible. it was too freakish, too bizarre, to be used outside of the laboratory and the museum. no one, literally, could understand how it worked; and the only man who offered a clear solution of the mystery was a boston mechanic, who maintained that there was "a hole through the middle of the wire." people who talked for the first time into a telephone box had a sort of stage fright. they felt foolish. to do so seemed an absurd performance, especially when they had to shout at the top of their voices. plainly, whatever of convenience there might be in this new contrivance was far outweighed by the loss of personal dignity; and very few men had sufficient imagination to picture the telephone as a part of the machinery of their daily work. the banker said it might do well enough for grocers, but that it would never be of any value to banking; and the grocer said it might do well enough for bankers, but that it would never be of any value to grocers. as bell had worked out his invention in salem, one editor displayed the headline, "salem witchcraft." the new york herald said: "the effect is weird and almost supernatural." the providence press said: "it is hard to resist the notion that the powers of darkness are somehow in league with it." and the boston times said, in an editorial of bantering ridicule: "a fellow can now court his girl in china as well as in east boston; but the most serious aspect of this invention is the awful and irresponsible power it will give to the average mother-in-law, who will be able to send her voice around the habitable globe." there were hundreds of shrewd capitalists in american cities in , looking with sharp eyes in all directions for business chances; but not one of them came to bell with an offer to buy his patent. not one came running for a state contract. and neither did any legislature, or city council, come forward to the task of giving the people a cheap and efficient telephone service. as for bell himself, he was not a man of affairs. in all practical business matters, he was as incompetent as a byron or a shelley. he had done his part, and it now remained for men of different abilities to take up his telephone and adapt it to the uses and conditions of the business world. the first man to undertake this work was gardiner g. hubbard, who became soon afterwards the father-in-law of bell. he, too, was a man of enthusiasm rather than of efficiency. he was not a man of wealth or business experience, but he was admirably suited to introduce the telephone to a hostile public. his father had been a judge of the massachusetts supreme court; and he himself was a lawyer whose practice had been mainly in matters of legislation. he was, in , a man of venerable appearance, with white hair, worn long, and a patriarchal beard. he was a familiar figure in washington, and well known among the public men of his day. a versatile and entertaining companion, by turns prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, gardiner hubbard became a really indispensable factor as the first advance agent of the telephone business. no other citizen had done more for the city of cambridge than hubbard. it was he who secured gas for cambridge in , and pure water, and a street-railway to boston. he had gone through the south in in the patriotic hope that he might avert the impending civil war. he had induced the legislature to establish the first public school for deaf-mutes, the school that drew bell to boston in . and he had been for years a most restless agitator for improvements in telegraphy and the post office. so, as a promoter of schemes for the public good, hubbard was by no means a novice. his first step toward capturing the attention of an indifferent nation was to beat the big drum of publicity. he saw that this new idea of telephoning must be made familiar to the public mind. he talked telephone by day and by night. whenever he travelled, he carried a pair of the magical instruments in his valise, and gave demonstrations on trains and in hotels. he buttonholed every influential man who crossed his path. he was a veritable "ancient mariner" of the telephone. no possible listener was allowed to escape. further to promote this campaign of publicity, hubbard encouraged bell and watson to perform a series of sensational feats with the telephone. a telegraph wire between new york and boston was borrowed for half an hour, and in the presence of sir william thomson, bell sent a tune over the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile line. "can you hear?" he asked the operator at the new york end. "elegantly," responded the operator. "what tune?" asked bell. "yankee doodle," came the answer. shortly afterwards, while bell was visiting at his father's house in canada, he bought up all the stove-pipe wire in the town, and tacked it to a rail fence between the house and a telegraph office. then he went to a village eight miles distant and sent scraps of songs and shakespearean quotations over the wire. there was still a large percentage of people who denied that spoken words could be transmitted by a wire. when watson talked to bell at public demonstrations, there were newspaper editors who referred sceptically to "the supposititious watson." so, to silence these doubters, bell and watson planned a most severe test of the telephone. they borrowed the telegraph line between boston and the cambridge observatory, and attached a telephone to each end. then they maintained, for three hours or longer, the first sustained conversation by telephone, each one taking careful notes of what he said and of what he heard. these notes were published in parallel columns in the boston advertiser, october , , and proved beyond question that the telephone was now a practical success. after this, one event crowded quickly on the heels of another. a series of ten lectures was arranged for bell, at a hundred dollars a lecture, which was the first money payment he had received for his invention. his opening night was in salem, before an audience of five hundred people, and with mrs. sand-ers, the motherly old lady who had sheltered bell in the days of his experiment, sitting proudly in one of the front seats. a pole was set up at the front of the hall, supporting the end of a telegraph wire that ran from salem to boston. and watson, who became the first public talker by telephone, sent messages from boston to various members of the audience. an account of this lecture was sent by telephone to the boston globe, which announced the next morning-- "this special despatch of the globe has been transmitted by telephone in the presence of twenty people, who have thus been witnesses to a feat never before attempted--the sending of news over the space of sixteen miles by the human voice." this globe despatch awoke the newspaper editors with an unexpected jolt. for the first time they began to notice that there was a new word in the language, and a new idea in the scientific world. no newspaper had made any mention whatever of the telephone for seventy-five days after bell received his patent. not one of the swarm of reporters who thronged the philadelphia centennial had regarded the telephone as a matter of any public interest. but when a column of news was sent by telephone to the boston globe, the whole newspaper world was agog with excitement. a thousand pens wrote the name of bell. requests to repeat his lecture came to bell from cyrus w. field, the veteran of the atlantic cable, from the poet longfellow, and from many others. as he was by profession an elocutionist, bell was able to make the most of these opportunities. his lectures became popular entertainments. they were given in the largest halls. at one lecture two japanese gentlemen were induced to talk to one another in their own language, via the telephone. at a second lecture a band played "the star-spangled banner," in boston, and was heard by an audience of two thousand people in providence. at a third, signor ferranti, who was in providence, sang a selection from "the marriage of figaro" to an audience in boston. at a fourth, an exhortation from moody and a song from sankey came over the vibrating wire. and at a fifth, in new haven, bell stood sixteen yale professors in line, hand in hand, and talked through their bodies--a feat which was then, and is to-day, almost too wonderful to believe. very slowly these lectures, and the tireless activity of hubbard, pushed back the ridicule and the incredulity; and in the merry month of may, , a man named emery drifted into hubbard's office from the near-by city of charlestown, and leased two telephones for twenty actual dollars--the first money ever paid for a telephone. this was the first feeble sign that such a novelty as the telephone business could be established; and no money ever looked handsomer than this twenty dollars did to bell, sanders, hubbard, and watson. it was the tiny first-fruit of fortune. greatly encouraged, they prepared a little circular which was the first advertisement of the telephone business. it is an oddly simple little document to-day, but to the brain it was startling. it modestly claimed that a telephone was superior to a telegraph for three reasons: "( ) no skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be had by speech without the intervention of a third person. "( ) the communication is much more rapid, the average number of words transmitted in a minute by the morse sounder being from fifteen to twenty, by telephone from one to two hundred. "( ) no expense is required, either for its operation or repair. it needs no battery and has no complicated machinery. it is unsurpassed for economy and simplicity." the only telephone line in the world at this time was between the williams' workshop in boston and the home of mr. williams in somerville. but in may, , a young man named e. t. holmes, who was running a burglar-alarm business in boston, proposed that a few telephones be linked to his wires. he was a friend and customer of williams, and suggested this plan half in jest and half in earnest. hubbard was quick to seize this opportunity, and at once lent holmes a dozen telephones. without asking permission, holmes went into six banks and nailed up a telephone in each. five bankers made no protest, but the sixth indignantly ordered "that playtoy" to be taken out. the other five telephones could be connected by a switch in holmes's office, and thus was born the first tiny and crude telephone exchange. here it ran for several weeks as a telephone system by day and a burglar-alarm by night. no money was paid by the bankers. the service was given to them as an exhibition and an advertisement. the little shelf with its five telephones was no more like the marvellous exchanges of to-day than a canoe is like a cunarder, but it was unquestionably the first place where several telephone wires came together and could be united. soon afterwards, holmes took his telephones out of the banks, and started a real telephone business among the express companies of boston. but by this time several exchanges had been opened for ordinary business, in new haven, bridgeport, new york, and philadelphia. also, a man from michigan had arrived, with the hardihood to ask for a state agency--george w. balch, of detroit. he was so welcome that hubbard joyfully gave him everything he asked--a perpetual right to the whole state of michigan. balch was not required to pay a cent in advance, except his railway fare, and before he was many years older he had sold his lease for a handsome fortune of a quarter of a million dollars, honestly earned by his initiative and enterprise. by august, when bell's patent was sixteen months old, there were telephones in use. this looked like success to the optimistic hubbard. he decided that the time had come to organize the business, so he created a simple agreement which he called the "bell telephone association." this agreement gave bell, hubbard and sanders a three-tenths interest apiece in the patents, and watson one-tenth. there was no capital. there was none to be had. the four men had at this time an absolute monopoly of the telephone business; and everybody else was quite willing that they should have it. the only man who had money and dared to stake it on the future of the telephone was thomas sanders, and he did this not mainly for business reasons. both he and hubbard were attached to bell primarily by sentiment, as bell had removed the blight of dumbness from sanders's little son, and was soon to marry hubbard's daughter. also, sanders had no expectation, at first, that so much money would be needed. he was not rich. his entire business, which was that of cutting out soles for shoe manufacturers, was not at any time worth more than thirty-five thousand dollars. yet, from to , he had advanced nine-tenths of the money that was spent on the telephone. he had paid bell's room-rent, and watson's wages, and williams's expenses, and the cost of the exhibit at the centennial. the first five thousand telephones, and more, were made with his money. and so many long, expensive months dragged by before any relief came to sanders, that he was compelled, much against his will and his business judgment, to stretch his credit within an inch of the breaking-point to help bell and the telephone. desperately he signed note after note until he faced a total of one hundred and ten thousand dollars. if the new "scientific toy" succeeded, which he often doubted, he would be the richest citizen in haverhill; and if it failed, which he sorely feared, he would be a bankrupt. a disheartening series of rebuffs slowly forced the truth in upon sanders's mind that the business world refused to accept the telephone as an article of commerce. it was a toy, a plaything, a scientific wonder, but not a necessity to be bought and used for ordinary purposes by ordinary people. capitalists treated it exactly as they treated the atlantic cable project when cyrus field visited boston in . they admired and marvelled; but not a man subscribed a dollar. also, sanders very soon learned that it was a most unpropitious time for the setting afloat of a new enterprise. it was a period of turmoil and suspicion. what with the jay cooke failure, the hayes-tilden deadlock, and the bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the news of the day to encourage investors. it was impossible for sanders, or bell, or hubbard, to prepare any definite plan. no matter what the plan might have been, they had no money to put it through. they believed that they had something new and marvellous, which some one, somewhere, would be willing to buy. until this good genie should arrive, they could do no more than flounder ahead, and take whatever business was the nearest and the cheapest. so while bell, in eloquent rhapsodies, painted word-pictures of a universal telephone service to applauding audiences, sanders and hubbard were leasing telephones two by two, to business men who previously had been using the private lines of the western union telegraph company. this great corporation was at the time their natural and inevitable enemy. it had swallowed most of its competitors, and was reaching out to monopolize all methods of communication by wire. the rosiest hope that shone in front of sanders and hubbard was that the western union might conclude to buy the bell patents, just as it had already bought many others. in one moment of discouragement they had offered the telephone to president orton, of the western union, for $ , ; and orton had refused it. "what use," he asked pleasantly, "could this company make of an electrical toy?" but besides the operation of its own wires, the western union was supplying customers with various kinds of printing-telegraphs and dial telegraphs, some of which could transmit sixty words a minute. these accurate instruments, it believed, could never be displaced by such a scientific oddity as the telephone. and it continued to believe this until one of its subsidiary companies--the gold and stock--reported that several of its machines had been superseded by telephones. at once the western union awoke from its indifference. even this tiny nibbling at its business must be stopped. it took action quickly and organized the "american speaking-telephone company," with $ , capital, and with three electrical inventors, edison, gray, and dolbear, on its staff. with all the bulk of its great wealth and prestige, it swept down upon bell and his little bodyguard. it trampled upon bell's patent with as little concern as an elephant can have when he tramples upon an ant's nest. to the complete bewilderment of bell, it coolly announced that it had "the only original telephone," and that it was ready to supply "superior telephones with all the latest improvements made by the original inventors--dolbear, gray, and edison." the result was strange and unexpected. the bell group, instead of being driven from the field, were at once lifted to a higher level in the business world. the effect was as if the standard oil company were to commence the manufacture of aeroplanes. in a flash, the telephone ceased to be a "scientific toy," and became an article of commerce. it began for the first time to be taken seriously. and the western union, in the endeavor to protect its private lines, became involuntarily a bell-wether to lead capitalists in the direction of the telephone. sanders's relatives, who were many and rich, came to his rescue. most of them were well-known business men--the bradleys, the saltonstalls, fay, silsbee, and carlton. these men, together with colonel william h. forbes, who came in as a friend of the bradleys, were the first capitalists who, for purely business reasons, invested money in the bell patents. two months after the western union had given its weighty endorsement to the telephone, these men organized a company to do business in new england only, and put fifty thousand dollars in its treasury. in a short time the delighted hubbard found himself leasing telephones at the rate of a thousand a month. he was no longer a promoter, but a general manager. men were standing in line to ask for agencies. crude little telephone exchanges were being started in a dozen or more cities. there was a spirit of confidence and enterprise; and the next step, clearly, was to create a business organization. none of the partners were competent to undertake such a work. hubbard had little aptitude as an organizer; bell had none; and sanders was held fast by his leather interests. here, at last, after four years of the most heroic effort, were the raw materials out of which a telephone business could be constructed. but who was to be the builder, and where was he to be found? one morning the indefatigable hubbard solved the problem. "watson," he said, "there's a young man in washington who can handle this situation, and i want you to run down and see what you think of him." watson went, reported favorably, and in a day or so the young man received a letter from hubbard, offering him the position of general manager, at a salary of thirty-five hundred dollars a year. "we rely," hubbard said, "upon your executive ability, your fidelity, and unremitting zeal." the young man replied, in one of those dignified letters more usual in the nineteenth than in the twentieth century. "my faith in the success of the enterprise is such that i am willing to trust to it," he wrote, "and i have confidence that we shall establish the harmony and cooperation that is essential to the success of an enterprise of this kind." one week later the young man, theodore n. vail, took his seat as general manager in a tiny office in reade street, new york, and the building of the business began. this arrival of vail at the critical moment emphasized the fact that bell was one of the most fortunate of inventors. he was not robbed of his invention, as might easily have happened. one by one there arrived to help him a number of able men, with all the various abilities that the changing situation required. there was such a focussing of factors that the whole matter appeared to have been previously rehearsed. no sooner had bell appeared on the stage than his supporting players, each in his turn, received his cue and took part in the action of the drama. there was not one of these men who could have done the work of any other. each was distinctive and indispensable. bell invented the telephone; watson constructed it; sanders financed it; hubbard introduced it; and vail put it on a business basis. the new general manager had, of course, no experience in the telephone business. neither had any one else. but he, like bell, came to his task with a most surprising fitness. he was a member of the historic vail family of morristown, new jersey, which had operated the speedwell iron works for four or five generations. his grand-uncle stephen had built the engines for the savannah, the first american steamship to cross the atlantic ocean; and his cousin alfred was the friend and co-worker of morse, the inventor of the telegraph. morse had lived for several years at the vail homestead in morristown; and it was here that he erected his first telegraph line, a three-mile circle around the iron works, in . he and alfred vail experimented side by side in the making of the telegraph, and vail eventually received a fortune for his share of the morse patent. thus it happened that young theodore vail learned the dramatic story of morse at his mother's knee. as a boy, he played around the first telegraph line, and learned to put messages on the wire. his favorite toy was a little telegraph that he constructed for himself. at twenty-two he went west, in the vague hope of possessing a bonanza farm; then he swung back into telegraphy, and in a few years found himself in the government mail service at washington. by , he was at the head of this department, which he completely reorganized. he introduced the bag system in postal cars, and made war on waste and clumsiness. by virtue of this position he was the one man in the united states who had a comprehensive view of all railways and telegraphs. he was much more apt, consequently, than other men to develop the idea of a national telephone system. while in the midst of this bureaucratic house-cleaning he met hubbard, who had just been appointed by president hayes as the head of a commission on mail transportation. he and hubbard were constantly thrown together, on trains and in hotels; and as hubbard invariably had a pair of telephones in his valise, the two men soon became co-enthusiasts. vail found himself painting brain-pictures of the future of the telephone, and by the time that he was asked to become its general manager, he had become so confident that, as he said afterwards, he "was willing to leave a government job with a small salary for a telephone job with no salary." so, just as amos kendall had left the post office service thirty years before to establish the telegraph business, theodore n. vail left the post office service to establish the telephone business. he had been in authority over thirty-five hundred postal employees, and was the developer of a system that covered every inhabited portion of the country. consequently, he had a quality of experience that was immensely valuable in straightening out the tangled affairs of the telephone. line by line, he mapped out a method, a policy, a system. he introduced a larger view of the telephone business, and swept off the table all schemes for selling out. he persuaded half a dozen of his post office friends to buy stock, so that in less than two months the first "bell telephone company" was organized, with $ , capital and a service of twelve thousand telephones. vail's first step, naturally, was to stiffen up the backbone of this little company, and to prevent the western union from frightening it into a surrender. he immediately sent a copy of bell's patent to every agent, with orders to hold the fort against all opposition. "we have the only original telephone patents," he wrote; "we have organized and introduced the business, and we do not propose to have it taken from us by any corporation." to one agent, who was showing the white feather, he wrote: "you have too great an idea of the western union. if it was all massed in your one city you might well fear it; but it is represented there by one man only, and he has probably as much as he can attend to outside of the telephone. for you to acknowledge that you cannot compete with his influence when you make it your special business, is hardly the thing. there may be a dozen concerns that will all go to the western union, but they will not take with them all their friends. i would advise that you go ahead and keep your present advantage. we must organize companies with sufficient vitality to carry on a fight, as it is simply useless to get a company started that will succumb to the first bit of opposition it may encounter." next, having encouraged his thoroughly alarmed agents, vail proceeded to build up a definite business policy. he stiffened up the contracts and made them good for five years only. he confined each agent to one place, and reserved all rights to connect one city with another. he established a department to collect and protect any new inventions that concerned the telephone. he agreed to take part of the royalties in stock, when any local company preferred to pay its debts in this way. and he took steps toward standardizing all telephonic apparatus by controlling the factories that made it. these various measures were part of vail's plan to create a national telephone system. his central idea, from the first, was not the mere leasing of telephones, but rather the creation of a federal company that would be a permanent partner in the entire telephone business. even in that day of small things, and amidst the confusion and rough-and-tumble of pioneering, he worked out the broad policy that prevails to-day; and this goes far to explain the fact that there are in the united states twice as many telephones as there are in all other countries combined. vail arrived very much as blucher did at the battle of waterloo--a trifle late, but in time to prevent the telephone forces from being routed by the old guard of the western union. he was scarcely seated in his managerial chair, when the western union threw the entire bell army into confusion by launching the edison transmitter. edison, who was at that time fairly started in his career of wizardry, had made an instrument of marvellous alertness. it was beyond all argument superior to the telephones then in use and the lessees of bell telephones clamored with one voice for "a transmitter as good as edison's." this, of course, could not be had in a moment, and the five months that followed were the darkest days in the childhood of the telephone. how to compete with the western union, which had this superior transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires, forty millions of capital, and a first claim upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and rights of way--that was the immediate problem that confronted the new general manager. every inch of progress had to be fought for. several of his captains deserted, and he was compelled to take control of their unprofitable exchanges. there was scarcely a mail that did not bring him some bulletin of discouragement or defeat. in the effort to conciliate a hostile public, the telephone rates had everywhere been made too low. hubbard had set a price of twenty dollars a year, for the use of two telephones on a private line; and when exchanges were started, the rate was seldom more than three dollars a month. there were deadheads in abundance, mostly officials and politicians. in st. louis, one of the few cities that charged a sufficient price, nine-tenths of the merchants refused to become subscribers. in boston, the first pay-station ran three months before it earned a dollar. even as late as , when the first national telephone convention was held at niagara falls, one of the delegates expressed the general situation very correctly when he said: "we were all in a state of enthusiastic uncertainty. we were full of hope, yet when we analyzed those hopes they were very airy indeed. there was probably not one company that could say it was making a cent, nor even that it expected to make a cent." especially in the largest cities, where the western union had most power, the lives of the telephone pioneers were packed with hardships and adventures. in philadelphia, for instance, a resolute young man named thomas e. cornish was attacked as though he had suddenly become a public enemy, when he set out to establish the first telephone service. no official would grant him a permit to string wires. his workmen were arrested. the printing-telegraph men warned him that he must either quit or be driven out. when he asked capitalists for money, they replied that he might as well expect to lease jew's-harps as telephones. finally, he was compelled to resort to strategy where argument had failed. he had received an order from colonel thomas scott, who wanted a wire between his house and his office. colonel scott was the president of the pennsylvania railroad, and therefore a man of the highest prestige in the city. so as soon as cornish had put this line in place, he kept his men at work stringing other lines. when the police interfered, he showed them colonel scott's signature and was let alone. in this way he put fifteen wires up before the trick was discovered; and soon afterwards, with eight subscribers, he founded the first philadelphia exchange. as may be imagined, such battling as this did not put much money into the treasury of the parent company; and the letters written by sanders at this time prove that it was in a hard plight. the following was one of the queries put to hubbard by the overburdened sanders: "how on earth do you expect me to meet a draft of two hundred and seventy-five dollars without a dollar in the treasury, and with a debt of thirty thousand dollars staring us in the face?" "vail's salary is small enough," he continued in a second letter, "but as to where it is coming from i am not so clear. bradley is awfully blue and discouraged. williams is tormenting me for money and my personal credit will not stand everything. i have advanced the company two thousand dollars to-day, and williams must have three thousand dollars more this month. his pay-day has come and his capital will not carry him another inch. if bradley throws up his hand, i will unfold to you my last desperate plan." and if the company had little money, it had less credit. once when vail had ordered a small bill of goods from a merchant named tillotson, of dey street, new york, the merchant replied that the goods were ready, and so was the bill, which was seven dollars. by a strange coincidence, the magnificent building of the new york telephone company stands to-day on the site of tillotson's store. month after month, the little bell company lived from hand to mouth. no salaries were paid in full. often, for weeks, they were not paid at all. in watson's note-book there are such entries during this period as "lent bell fifty cents," "lent hubbard twenty cents," "bought one bottle beer--too bad can't have beer every day." more than once hubbard would have gone hungry had not devonshire, the only clerk, shared with him the contents of a dinner-pail. each one of the little group was beset by taunts and temptations. watson was offered ten thousand dollars for his one-tenth interest, and hesitated three days before refusing it. railroad companies offered vail a salary that was higher and sure, if he would superintend their mail business. and as for sanders, his folly was the talk of haverhill. one haverhill capitalist, e. j. m. hale, stopped him on the street and asked, "have n't you got a good leather business, mr. sanders?" "yes," replied sanders. "well," said hale, "you had better attend to it and quit playing on wind instruments." sanders's banker, too, became uneasy on one occasion and requested him to call at the bank. "mr. sanders," he said, "i will be obliged if you will take that telephone stock out of the bank, and give me in its place your note for thirty thousand dollars. i am expecting the examiner here in a few days, and i don't want to get caught with that stuff in the bank." then, in the very midnight of this depression, poor bell returned from england, whither he and his bride had gone on their honeymoon, and announced that he had no money; that he had failed to establish a telephone business in england; and that he must have a thousand dollars at once to pay his urgent debts. he was thoroughly discouraged and sick. as he lay in the massachusetts general hospital, he wrote a cry for help to the embattled little company that was making its desperate fight to protect his patents. "thousands of telephones are now in operation in all parts of the country," he said, "yet i have not yet received one cent from my invention. on the contrary, i am largely out of pocket by my researches, as the mere value of the profession that i have sacrificed during my three years' work, amounts to twelve thousand dollars." fortunately, there came, in almost the same mail with bell's letter, another letter from a young bostonian named francis blake, with the good news that he had invented a transmitter as satisfactory as edison's, and that he would prefer to sell it for stock instead of cash. if ever a man came as an angel of light, that man was francis blake. the possession of his transmitter instantly put the bell company on an even footing with the western union, in the matter of apparatus. it encouraged the few capitalists who had invested money, and it stirred others to come forward. the general business situation had by this time become more settled, and in four months the company had twenty-two thousand telephones in use, and had reorganized into the national bell telephone company, with $ , capital and with colonel forbes as its first president. forbes now picked up the load that had been carried so long by sanders. as the son of an east india merchant and the son-in-law of ralph waldo emerson, he was a bostonian of the brahmin caste. he was a big, four-square man who was both popular and efficient; and his leadership at this crisis was of immense value. this reorganization put the telephone business into the hands of competent business men at every point. it brought the heroic and experimental period to an end. from this time onwards the telephone had strong friends in the financial world. it was being attacked by the western union and by rival inventors who were jealous of bell's achievement. it was being half-starved by cheap rates and crippled by clumsy apparatus. it was being abused and grumbled at by an impatient public. but the art of making and marketing it had at last been built up into a commercial enterprise. it was now a business, fighting for its life. chapter iii. the holding of the business for seventeen months no one disputed bell's claim to be the original inventor of the telephone. all the honor, such as it was, had been given to him freely, and no one came forward to say that it was not rightfully his. no one, so far as we know, had any strong desire to do so. no one conceived that the telephone would ever be any more than a whimsical oddity of science. it was so new, so unexpected, that from lord kelvin down to the messenger boys in the telegraph offices, it was an incomprehensible surprise. but after bell had explained his invention in public lectures before more than twenty thousand people, after it had been on exhibition for months at the philadelphia centennial, after several hundred articles on it had appeared in newspapers and scientific magazines, and after actual sales of telephones had been made in various parts of the country, there began to appear such a succession of claimants and infringers that the forgetful public came to believe that the telephone, like most inventions, was the product of many minds. just as morse, who was the sole inventor of the american telegraph in , was confronted by sixty-two rivals in , so bell, who was the sole inventor in , found himself two years later almost mobbed by the "tichborne claimants" of the telephone. the inventors who had been his competitors in the attempt to produce a musical telegraph, persuaded themselves that they had unconsciously done as much as he. any possessor of a telegraphic patent, who had used the common phrase "talking wire," had a chance to build up a plausible story of prior invention. and others came forward with claims so vague and elusive that bell would scarcely have been more surprised if the heirs of goethe had demanded a share of the telephone royalties on the ground that faust had spoken of "making a bridge through the moving air." this babel of inventors and pretenders amazed bell and disconcerted his backers. but it was no more than might have been expected. here was a patent--"the most valuable single patent ever issued"--and yet the invention itself was so simple that it could be duplicated easily by any smart boy or any ordinary mechanic. the making of a telephone was like the trick of columbus standing an egg on end. nothing was easier to those who knew how. and so it happened that, as the crude little model of bell's original telephone lay in the patent office open and unprotected except by a few phrases that clever lawyers might evade, there sprang up inevitably around it the most costly and persistent patent war that any country has ever known, continuing for eleven years and comprising six hundred lawsuits. the first attack upon the young telephone business was made by the western union telegraph company. it came charging full tilt upon bell, driving three inventors abreast--edison, gray, and dolbear. it expected an easy victory; in fact, the disparity between the two opponents was so evident, that there seemed little chance of a contest of any kind. "the western union will swallow up the telephone people," said public opinion, "just as it has already swallowed up all improvements in telegraphy." at that time, it should be remembered, the western union was the only corporation that was national in its extent. it was the most powerful electrical company in the world, and, as bell wrote to his parents, "probably the largest corporation that ever existed." it had behind it not only forty millions of capital, but the prestige of the vanderbilts, and the favor of financiers everywhere. also, it met the telephone pioneers at every point because it, too, was a wire company. it owned rights-of-way along roads and on house-tops. it had a monopoly of hotels and railroad offices. no matter in what direction the bell company turned, the live wire of the western union lay across its path. from the first, the western union relied more upon its strength than upon the merits of its case. its chief electrical expert, frank l. pope, had made a six months' examination of the bell patents. he had bought every book in the united states and europe that was likely to have any reference to the transmission of speech, and employed a professor who knew eight languages to translate them. he and his men ransacked libraries and patent offices; they rummaged and sleuthed and interviewed; and found nothing of any value. in his final report to the western union, mr. pope announced that there was no way to make a telephone except bell's way, and advised the purchase of the bell patents. "i am entirely unable to discover any apparatus or method anticipating the invention of bell as a whole," he said; "and i conclude that his patent is valid." but the officials of the great corporation refused to take this report seriously. they threw it aside and employed edison, gray, and dolbear to devise a telephone that could be put into competition with bell's. as we have seen in the previous chapter, there now came a period of violent competition which is remembered as the dark ages of the telephone business. the western union bought out several of the bell exchanges and opened up a lively war on the others. as befitting its size, it claimed everything. it introduced gray as the original inventor of the telephone, and ordered its lawyers to take action at once against the bell company for infringement of the gray patent. this high-handed action, it hoped, would most quickly bring the little bell group into a humble and submissive frame of mind. every morning the western union looked to see the white flag flying over the bell headquarters. but no white flag appeared. on the contrary, the news came that the bell company had secured two eminent lawyers and were ready to give battle. the case began in the autumn of and lasted for a year. then it came to a sudden and most unexpected ending. the lawyer-in-chief of the western union was george gifford, who was perhaps the ablest patent attorney of his day. he was versed in patent lore from alpha to omega; and as the trial proceeded, he became convinced that the bell patent was valid. he notified the western union confidentially, of course, that its case could not be proven, and that "bell was the original inventor of the telephone." the best policy, he suggested, was to withdraw their claims and make a settlement. this wise advice was accepted, and the next day the white flag was hauled up, not by the little group of bell fighters, who were huddled together in a tiny, two-room office, but by the mighty western union itself, which had been so arrogant when the encounter began. a committee of three from each side was appointed, and after months of disputation, a treaty of peace was drawn up and signed. by the terms of this treaty the western union agreed-- ( ) to admit that bell was the original inventor. ( ) to admit that his patents were valid. ( ) to retire from the telephone business. the bell company, in return for this surrender, agreed-- ( ) to buy the western union telephone system. ( ) to pay the western union a royalty of twenty per cent on all telephone rentals. ( ) to keep out of the telegraph business. this agreement, which was to remain in force for seventeen years, was a master-stroke of diplomacy on the part of the bell company. it was the magna charta of the telephone. it transformed a giant competitor into a friend. it added to the bell system fifty-six thousand telephones in fifty-five cities. and it swung the valiant little company up to such a pinnacle of prosperity that its stock went skyrocketing until it touched one thousand dollars a share. the western union had lost its case, for several very simple reasons: it had tried to operate a telephone system on telegraphic lines, a plan that has invariably been unsuccessful, it had a low idea of the possibilities of the telephone business; and its already busy agents had little time or knowledge or enthusiasm to give to the new enterprise. with all its power, it found itself outfought by this compact body of picked men, who were young, zealous, well-handled, and protected by a most invulnerable patent. the bell telephone now took its place with the telegraph, the railroad, the steamboat, the harvester, and the other necessities of a civilized country. its pioneer days were over. there was no more ridicule and incredulity. every one knew that the bell people had whipped the western union, and hastened to join in the grand te deum of applause. within five months from the signing of the agreement, there had to be a reorganization; and the american bell telephone company was created, with six million dollars capital. in the following year, , twelve hundred new towns and cities were marked on the telephone map, and the first dividends were paid--$ , . and in there came such a telephone boom that the bell system was multiplied by two, with more than a million dollars of gross earnings. at this point all the earliest pioneers of the telephone, except vail, pass out of its history. thomas sanders sold his stock for somewhat less than a million dollars, and presently lost most of it in a colorado gold mine. his mother, who had been so good a friend to bell, had her fortune doubled. gardiner g. hubbard withdrew from business life, and as it was impossible for a man of his ardent temperament to be idle, he plunged into the national geographical society. he was a colonel sellers whose dream of millions (for the telephone) had come true; and when he died, in , he was rich both in money and in the affection of his friends. charles williams, in whose workshop the first telephones were made, sold his factory to the bell company in for more money than he had ever expected to possess. thomas a. watson resigned at the same time, finding himself no longer a wage-worker but a millionaire. several years later he established a shipbuilding plant near boston, which grew until it employed four thousand workmen and had built half a dozen warships for the united states navy. as for bell, the first cause of the telephone business, he did what a true scientific bohemian might have been expected to do; he gave all his stock to his bride on their marriage-day and resumed his work as an instructor of deaf-mutes. few kings, if any, had ever given so rich a wedding present; and certainly no one in any country ever obtained and tossed aside an immense fortune as incidentally as did bell. when the bell company offered him a salary of ten thousand dollars a year to remain its chief inventor, he refused the offer cheerfully on the ground that he could not "invent to order." in , the french government gave him the volta prize of fifty thousand francs and the cross of the legion of honor. he has had many honors since then, and many interests. he has been for thirty years one of the most brilliant and picturesque personalities in american public life. but none of his later achievements can in any degree compare with what he did in a cellar in salem, at twenty-eight years of age. they had all become rich, these first friends of the telephone, but not fabulously so. there was not at that time, nor has there been since, any one who became a multimillionaire by the sale of telephone service. if the bell company had sold its stock at the highest price reached, in , it would have received less than nine million dollars--a huge sum, but not too much to pay for the invention of the telephone and the building up of a new art and a new industry. it was not as much as the value of the eggs laid during the last twelve months by the hens of iowa. but, as may be imagined, when the news of the western union agreement became known, the story of the telephone became a fairy tale of success. theodore vail was given a banquet by his old-time friends in the washington postal service, and toasted as "the monte cristo of the telephone." it was said that the actual cost of the bell plant was only one-twenty-fifth of its capital, and that every four cents of investment had thus become a dollar. even jay gould, carried beyond his usual caution by these stories, ran up to new haven and bought its telephone company, only to find out later that its earnings were less than its expenses. much to the bewilderment of the bell company, it soon learned that the troubles of wealth are as numerous as those of poverty. it was beset by a throng of promoters and stock-jobbers, who fell upon it and upon the public like a swarm of seventeen-year locusts. in three years, one hundred and twenty-five competing companies were started, in open defiance of the bell patents. the main object of these companies was not, like that of the western union, to do a legitimate telephone business, but to sell stock to the public. the face value of their stock was $ , , , although few of them ever sent a message. one company of unusual impertinence, without money or patents, had capitalized its audacity at $ , , . how to hold the business that had been established--that was now the problem. none of the bell partners had been mere stock-jobbers. at one time they had even taken a pledge not to sell any of their stock to outsiders. they had financed their company in a most honest and simple way; and they were desperately opposed to the financial banditti whose purpose was to transform the telephone business into a cheat and a gamble. at first, having held their own against the western union, they expected to make short work of the stock-jobbers. but it was a vain hope. these bogus companies, they found, did not fight in the open, as the western union had done. all manner of injurious rumors were presently set afloat concerning the bell patent. other inventors--some of them honest men, and some shameless pretenders--were brought forward with strangely concocted tales of prior invention. the granger movement was at that time a strong political factor in the middle west, and its blind fear of patents and "monopolies" was turned aggressively against the bell company. a few senators and legitimate capitalists were lifted up as the figureheads of the crusade. and a loud hue-and-cry was raised in the newspapers against "high rates and monopoly" to distract the minds of the people from the real issue of legitimate business versus stock-company bubbles. the most plausible and persistent of all the various inventors who snatched at bell's laurels, was elisha gray. he refused to abide by the adverse decision of the court. several years after his defeat, he came forward with new weapons and new methods of attack. he became more hostile and irreconcilable; and until his death, in , never renounced his claim to be the original inventor of the telephone. the reason for this persistence is very evident. gray was a professional inventor, a highly competent man who had begun his career as a blacksmith's apprentice, and risen to be a professor of oberlin. he made, during his lifetime, over five million dollars by his patents. in , he and bell were running a neck-and-neck race to see who could first invent a musical telegraph--when, presto! bell suddenly turned aside, because of his acoustical knowledge, and invented the telephone, while gray kept straight ahead. like all others who were in quest of a better telegraph instrument, gray had glimmerings of the possibility of sending speech by wire, and by one of the strangest of coincidences he filed a caveat on the subject on the same day that bell filed the application for a patent. bell had arrived first. as the record book shows, the fifth entry on that day was: "a. g. bell, $ "; and the thirty-ninth entry was "e. gray, $ ." there was a vast difference between gray's caveat and bell's application. a caveat is a declaration that the writer has not invented a thing, but believes that he is about to do so; while an application is a declaration that the writer has already perfected the invention. but gray could never forget that he had seemed to be, for a time, so close to the golden prize; and seven years after he had been set aside by the western union agreement, he reappeared with claims that had grown larger and more definite. when all the evidence in the various gray lawsuits is sifted out, there appear to have been three distinctly different grays: first, gray the scoffer, who examined bell's telephone at the centennial and said it was "nothing but the old lover's telegraph. it is impossible to make a practical speaking telephone on the principle shown by professor bell.... the currents are too feeble"; second, gray the convert, who wrote frankly to bell in , "i do not claim the credit of inventing it"; and third, gray the claimant, who endeavored to prove in that he was the original inventor. his real position in the matter was once well and wittily described by his partner, enos m. barton, who said: "of all the men who didn't invent the telephone, gray was the nearest." it is now clearly seen that the telephone owes nothing to gray. there are no gray telephones in use in any country. even gray himself, as he admitted in court, failed when he tried to make a telephone on the lines laid down in his caveat. the final word on the whole matter was recently spoken by george c. maynard, who established the telephone business in the city of washington. said mr. maynard: "mr. gray was an intimate and valued friend of mine, but it is no disrespect to his memory to say that on some points involved in the telephone matter, he was mistaken. no subject was ever so thoroughly investigated as the invention of the speaking telephone. no patent has ever been submitted to such determined assault from every direction as bell's; and no inventor has ever been more completely vindicated. bell was the first inventor, and gray was not." after gray, the weightiest challenger who came against bell was professor amos e. dolbear, of tufts college. he, like gray, had written a letter of applause to bell in . "i congratulate you, sir," he said, "upon your very great invention, and i hope to see it supplant all forms of existing telegraphs, and that you will be successful in obtaining the wealth and honor which is your due." but one year later, dolbear came to view with an opposition telephone. it was not an imitation of bell's, he insisted, but an improvement upon an electrical device made by a german named philip reis, in . thus there appeared upon the scene the so-called "reis telephone," which was not a telephone at all, in any practical sense, but which served well enough for nine years or more as a weapon to use against the bell patents. poor philip reis himself, the son of a baker in frankfort, germany, had hoped to make a telephone, but he had failed. his machine was operated by a "make-and-break" current, and so could not carry the infinitely delicate vibrations made by the human voice. it could transmit the pitch of a sound, but not the quality. at its best, it could carry a tune, but never at any time a spoken sentence. reis, in his later years, realized that his machine could never be used for the transmission of conversation; and in a letter to a friend he tells of a code of signals that he has invented. bell had once, during his three years of experimenting, made a reis machine, although at that time he had not seen one. but he soon threw it aside, as of no practical value. as a teacher of acoustics, bell knew that the one indispensable requirement of a telephone is that it shall transmit the whole of a sound, and not merely the pitch of it. such scientists as lord kelvin, joseph henry, and edison had seen the little reis instrument years before bell invented the telephone; but they regarded it as a mere musical toy. it was "not in any sense a speaking telephone," said lord kelvin. and edison, when trying to put the reis machine in the most favorable light, admitted humorously that when he used a reis transmitter he generally "knew what was coming; and knowing what was coming, even a reis transmitter, pure and simple, reproduces sounds which seem almost like that which was being transmitted; but when the man at the other end did not know what was coming, it was very seldom that any word was recognized." in the course of the dolbear lawsuit, a reis machine was brought into court, and created much amusement. it was able to squeak, but not to speak. experts and professors wrestled with it in vain. it refused to transmit one intelligible sentence. "it can speak, but it won't," explained one of dolbear's lawyers. it is now generally known that while a reis machine, when clogged and out of order, would transmit a word or two in an imperfect way, it was built on wrong lines. it was no more a telephone than a wagon is a sleigh, even though it is possible to chain the wheels and make them slide for a foot or two. said judge lowell, in rendering his famous decision: "a century of reis would never have produced a speaking telephone by mere improvement of construction. it was left for bell to discover that the failure was due not to workmanship but to the principle which was adopted as the basis of what had to be done. ... bell discovered a new art--that of transmitting speech by electricity, and his claim is not as broad as his invention.... to follow reis is to fail; but to follow bell is to succeed." after the victory over dolbear, the bell stock went soaring skywards; and the higher it went, the greater were the number of infringers and blowers of stock bubbles. to bait the bell company became almost a national sport. any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of prior invention, could find a speculator to support him. on they came, a motley array, "some in rags, some on nags, and some in velvet gowns." one of them claimed to have done wonders with an iron hoop and a file in ; a second had a marvellous table with glass legs; a third swore that he had made a telephone in , but did not know what it was until he saw bell's patent; and a fourth told a vivid story of having heard a bullfrog croak via a telegraph wire which was strung into a certain cellar in racine, in . this comic opera phase came to a head in the famous drawbaugh case, which lasted for nearly four years, and filled ten thousand pages with its evidence. having failed on reis, the german, the opponents of bell now brought forward an american inventor named daniel drawbaugh, and opened up a noisy newspaper campaign. to secure public sympathy for drawbaugh, it was said that he had invented a complete telephone and switchboard before , but was in such "utter and abject poverty" that he could not get himself a patent. five hundred witnesses were examined; and such a general turmoil was aroused that the bell lawyers were compelled to take the attack seriously, and to fight back with every pound of ammunition they possessed. the fact about drawbaugh is that he was a mechanic in a country village near harrisburg, pennsylvania. he was ingenious but not inventive; and loved to display his mechanical skill before the farmers and villagers. he was a subscriber to the scientific american; and it had become the fixed habit of his life to copy other people's inventions and exhibit them as his own. he was a trailer of inventors. more than forty instances of this imitative habit were shown at the trial, and he was severely scored by the judge, who accused him of "deliberately falsifying the facts." his ruling passion of imitation, apparently, was not diminished by the loss of his telephone claims, as he came to public view again in as a trailer of marconi. drawbaugh's defeat sent the bell stock up once more, and brought on a xerxes' army of opposition which called itself the "overland company." having learned that no one claim-ant could beat bell in the courts, this company massed the losers together and came forward with a scrap-basket full of patents. several powerful capitalists undertook to pay the expenses of this adventure. wires were strung; stock was sold; and the enterprise looked for a time so genuine that when the bell lawyers asked for an injunction against it, they were refused. this was as hard a blow as the bell people received in their eleven years of litigation; and the bell stock tumbled thirty-five points in a few days. infringing companies sprang up like gourds in the night. and all went merrily with the promoters until the overland company was thrown out of court, as having no evidence, except "the refuse and dregs of former cases--the heel-taps found in the glasses at the end of the frolic." but even after this defeat for the claimants, the frolic was not wholly ended. they next planned to get through politics what they could not get through law; they induced the government to bring suit for the annulment of the bell patents. it was a bold and desperate move, and enabled the promoters of paper companies to sell stock for several years longer. the whole dispute was re-opened, from gray to drawbaugh. every battle was re-fought; and in the end, of course, the government officials learned that they were being used to pull telephone chestnuts out of the fire. the case was allowed to die a natural death, and was informally dropped in . in all, the bell company fought out thirteen lawsuits that were of national interest, and five that were carried to the supreme court in washington. it fought out five hundred and eighty-seven other lawsuits of various natures; and with the exception of two trivial contract suits, it never lost a case. its experience is an unanswerable indictment of our system of protecting inventors. no inventor had ever a clearer title than bell. the patent office itself, in , made an eighteen-months' investigation of all telephone patents, and reported: "it is to bell that the world owes the possession of the speaking telephone." yet his patent was continuously under fire, and never at any time secure. stock companies whose paper capital totalled more than $ , , were organized to break it down; and from first to last the success of the telephone was based much less upon the monopoly of patents than upon the building up of a well organized business. fortunately for bell and the men who upheld him, they were defended by two master-lawyers who have seldom, if ever, had an equal for team work and efficiency--chauncy smith and james j. storrow. these two men were marvellously well mated. smith was an old-fashioned attorney of the websterian sort, dignified, ponderous, and impressive. by , when he came in to defend the little bell company against the towering western union, smith had become the most noted patent lawyer in boston. he was a large, thick-set man, a reminder of benjamin franklin, with clean-shaven face, long hair curling at the ends, frock coat, high collar, and beaver hat. storrow, on the contrary, was a small man, quiet in manner, conversational in argument, and an encyclopedia of definite information. he was so thorough that, when he became a bell lawyer, he first spent an entire summer at his country home in petersham, studying the laws of physics and electricity. he was never in the slightest degree spectacular. once only, during the eleven years of litigation, did he lose control of his temper. he was attacking the credibility of a witness whom he had put on the stand, but who had been tampered with by the opposition lawyers. "but this man is your own witness," protested the lawyers. "yes," shouted the usually soft-speaking storrow; "he was my witness, but now he is your liar." the efficiency of these two men was greatly increased by a third--thomas d. lockwood, who was chosen by vail in to establish a patent department. two years before, lockwood had heard bell lecture in chickering hall, new york, and was a "doubting thomas." but a closer study of the telephone transformed him into an enthusiast. having a memory like a filing system, and a knack for invention, lockwood was well fitted to create such a department. he was a man born for the place. and he has seen the number of electrical patents grow from a few hundred in to eighty thousand in . these three men were the defenders of the bell patents. as vail built up the young telephone business, they held it from being torn to shreds in an orgy of speculative competition. smith prepared the comprehensive plan of defence. by his sagacity and experience he was enabled to mark out the general principles upon which bell had a right to stand. usually, he closed the case, and he was immensely effective as he would declaim, in his deep voice: "i submit, your honor, that the literature of the world does not afford a passage which states how the human voice can be electrically transmitted, previous to the patent of mr. bell." his death, like his life, was dramatic. he was on his feet in the courtroom, battling against an infringer, when, in the middle of a sentence, he fell to the floor, overcome by sickness and the responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. storrow, in a different way, was fully as indispensable as smith. it was he who built up the superstructure of the bell defence. he was a master of details. his brain was keen and incisive; and some of his briefs will be studied as long as the art of telephony exists. he might fairly have been compared, in action, to a rapid-firing gatling gun; while smith was a hundred-ton cannon, and lockwood was the maker of the ammunition. smith and storrow had three main arguments that never were, and never could be, answered. fifty or more of the most eminent lawyers of that day tried to demolish these arguments, and failed. the first was bell's clear, straightforward story of how he did it, which rebuked and confounded the mob of pretenders. the second was the historical fact that the most eminent electrical scientists of europe and america had seen bell's telephone at the centennial and had declared it to be new--"not only new but marvellous," said tyndall. and the third was the very significant fact that no one challenged bell's claim to be the original inventor of the telephone until his patent was seventeen months old. the patent itself, too, was a remarkable document. it was a gibraltar of security to the bell company. for eleven years it was attacked from all sides, and never dented. it covered an entire art, yet it was sustained during its whole lifetime. printed in full, it would make ten pages of this book; but the core of it is in the last sentence: "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically, by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds." these words expressed an idea that had never been written before. it could not be evaded or overcome. there were only thirty-two words, but in six years these words represented an investment of a million dollars apiece. now that the clamor of this great patent war has died away, it is evident that bell received no more credit and no more reward than he deserved. there was no telephone until he made one, and since he made one, no one has found out any other way. hundreds of clever men have been trying for more than thirty years to outrival bell, and yet every telephone in the world is still made on the plan that bell discovered. no inventor who preceded bell did more, in the invention of the telephone, than to help bell indirectly, in the same way that fra mauro and toscanelli helped in the discovery of america by making the map and chart that were used by columbus. bell was helped by his father, who taught him the laws of acoustics; by helmholtz, who taught him the influence of magnets upon sound vibrations; by koenig and leon scott, who taught him the infinite variety of these vibrations; by dr. clarence j. blake, who gave him a human ear for his experiments; and by joseph henry and sir charles wheatstone, who encouraged him to persevere. in a still more indirect way, he was helped by morse's invention of the telegraph; by faraday's discovery of the phenomena of magnetic induction; by sturgeon's first electro-magnet; and by volta's electric battery. all that scientists had achieved, from galileo and newton to franklin and simon newcomb, helped bell in a general way, by creating a scientific atmosphere and habit of thought. but in the actual making of the telephone, there was no one with bell nor before him. he invented it first, and alone. chapter iv. the development of the art four wire-using businesses were already in the field when the telephone was born: the fire-alarm, burglar-alarm, telegraph, and messenger-boy service; and at first, as might have been expected, the humble little telephone was huddled in with these businesses as a sort of poor relation. to the general public, it was a mere scientific toy; but there were a few men, not many, in these wire-stringing trades, who saw a glimmering chance of creating a telephone business. they put telephones on the wires that were then in use. as these became popular, they added others. each of their customers wished to be able to talk to every one else. and so, having undertaken to give telephone service, they presently found themselves battling with the most intricate and baffling engineering problem of modern times--the construction around the tele-phone of such a mechanism as would bring it into universal service. the first of these men was thomas a. watson, the young mechanic who had been hired as bell's helper. he began a work that to-day requires an army of twenty-six thousand people. he was for a couple of years the total engineering and manufacturing department of the telephone business, and by had taken out sixty patents for his own suggestions. it was watson who took the telephone as bell had made it, really a toy, with its diaphragm so delicate that a warm breath would put it out of order, and toughened it into a more rugged machine. bell had used a disc of fragile gold-beaters' skin with a patch of sheet-iron glued to the centre. he could not believe, for a time, that a disc of all-iron would vibrate under the slight influence of a spoken word. but he and watson noticed that when the patch was bigger the talking was better, and presently they threw away the gold-beaters' skin and used the iron alone. also, it was watson who spent months experimenting with all sorts and sizes of iron discs, so as to get the one that would best convey the sound. if the iron was too thick, he discovered, the voice was shrilled into a punch-and-judy squeal; and if it was too thin, the voice became a hollow and sepulchral groan, as if the speaker had his head in a barrel. other months, too, were spent in finding out the proper size and shape for the air cavity in front of the disc. and so, after the telephone had been perfected, in principle, a full year was required to lift it out of the class of scientific toys, and another year or two to present it properly to the business world. until all bell telephone apparatus was made by watson in charles williams's little shop in court street, boston--a building long since transformed into a five-cent theatre. but the business soon grew too big for the shop. orders fell five weeks behind. agents stormed and fretted. some action had to be taken quickly, so licenses were given to four other manufacturers to make bells, switchboards, and so forth. by this time the western electric company of chicago had begun to make the infringing gray-edison telephones for the western union, so that there were soon six groups of mechanics puzzling their wits over the new talk-machinery. by there was plenty of telephonic apparatus being made, but in too many different varieties. not all the summer gowns of that year presented more styles and fancies. the next step, if there was to be any degree of uniformity, was plainly to buy and consolidate these six companies; and by vail had done this. it was the first merger in telephone history. it was a step of immense importance. had it not been taken, the telephone business would have been torn into fragments by the civil wars between rival inventors. from this time the western electric became the headquarters of telephonic apparatus. it was the big shop, all roads led to it. no matter where a new idea was born, sooner or later it came knocking at the door of the western electric to receive a material body. here were the skilled workmen who became the hands of the telephone business. and here, too, were many of the ablest inventors and engineers, who did most to develop the cables and switchboards of to-day. in boston, watson had resigned in , and in his place, a year or two later stood a timely new arrival named e. t. gilliland. this really notable man was a friend in need to the telephone. he had been a manufacturer of electrical apparatus in indianapolis, until vail's policy of consolidation drew him into the central group of pioneers and pathfinders. for five years gilliland led the way as a developer of better and cheaper equipment. he made the best of a most difficult situation. he was so handy, so resourceful, that he invariably found a way to unravel the mechanical tangles that perplexed the first telephone agents, and this, too, without compelling them to spend large sums of capital. he took the ideas and apparatus that were then in existence, and used them to carry the telephone business through the most critical period of its life, when there was little time or money to risk on experiments. he took the peg switchboard of the telegraph, for in-stance, and developed it to its highest point, to a point that was not even imagined possible by any one else. it was the most practical and complete switchboard of its day, and held the field against all comers until it was superseded by the modern type of board, vastly more elaborate and expensive. by , gathered around gilliland in boston and the western electric in chicago, there came to be a group of mechanics and high-school graduates, very young men, mostly, who had no reputations to lose; and who, partly for a living and mainly for a lark, plunged into the difficulties of this new business that had at that time little history and less prestige. these young adventurers, most of whom are still alive, became the makers of industrial history. they were unquestionably the founders of the present science of telephone engineering. the problem that they dashed at so lightheartedly was much larger than any of them imagined. it was a gibraltar of impossibilities. it was on the face of it a fantastic nightmare of a task--to weave such a web of wires, with interlocking centres, as would put any one telephone in touch with every other. there was no help for them in books or colleges. watson, who had acquired a little knowledge, had become a shipbuilder. electrical engineering, as a profession, was unborn. and as for their telegraphic experience, while it certainly helped them for a time, it started them in the wrong direction and led them to do many things which had afterwards to be undone. the peculiar electric current that these young pathfinders had to deal with is perhaps the quickest, feeblest, and most elusive force in the world. it is so amazing a thing that any description of it seems irrational. it is as gentle as a touch of a baby sunbeam, and as swift as the lightning flash. it is so small that the electric current of a single incandescent lamp is greater , , times. cool a spoonful of hot water just one degree, and the energy set free by the cooling will operate a telephone for ten thousand years. catch the falling tear-drop of a child, and there will be sufficient water-power to carry a spoken message from one city to another. such is the tiny genie of the wire that had to be protected and trained into obedience. it was the most defenceless of all electric sprites, and it had so many enemies. enemies! the world was populous with its enemies. there was the lightning, its elder brother, striking at it with murderous blows. there were the telegraphic and light-and-power currents, its strong and malicious cousins, chasing and assaulting it whenever it ventured too near. there were rain and sleet and snow and every sort of moisture, lying in wait to abduct it. there were rivers and trees and flecks of dust. it seemed as if all the known and unknown agencies of nature were in conspiracy to thwart or annihilate this gentle little messenger who had been conjured into life by the wizardry of alexander graham bell. all that these young men had received from bell and watson was that part of the telephone that we call the receiver. this was practically the sum total of bell's invention, and remains to-day as he made it. it was then, and is yet, the most sensitive instrument that has ever been put to general use in any country. it opened up a new world of sound. it would echo the tramp of a fly that walked across a table, or repeat in new orleans the prattle of a child in new york. this was what the young men received, and this was all. there were no switchboards of any account, no cables of any value, no wires that were in any sense adequate, no theory of tests or signals, no exchanges, no telephone system of any sort whatever. as for bell's first telephone lines, they were as simple as clothes-lines. each short little wire stood by itself, with one instrument at each end. there were no operators, switchboards, or exchanges. but there had now come a time when more than two persons wanted to be in the same conversational group. this was a larger use of the telephone; and while bell himself had foreseen it, he had not worked out a plan whereby it could be carried out. here was the new problem, and a most stupendous one--how to link together three telephones, or three hundred, or three thousand, or three million, so that any two of them could be joined at a moment's notice. and that was not all. these young men had not only to battle against mystery and "the powers of the air"; they had not only to protect their tiny electric messenger, and to create a system of wire highways along which he could run up and down safely; they had to do more. they had to make this system so simple and fool-proof that every one--every one except the deaf and dumb--could use it without any previous experience. they had to educate bell's genie of the wire so that he would not only obey his masters, but anybody--anybody who could speak to him in any language. no doubt, if the young men had stopped to consider their life-work as a whole, some of them might have turned back. but they had no time to philosophize. they were like the boy who learns how to swim by being pushed into deep water. once the telephone business was started, it had to be kept going; and as it grew, there came one after another a series of congestions. two courses were open; either the business had to be kept down to suit the apparatus, or the apparatus had to be developed to keep pace with the business. the telephone men, most of them, at least, chose development; and the brilliant inventions that afterwards made some of them famous were compelled by sheer necessity and desperation. the first notable improvement upon bell's invention was the making of the transmitter, in , by emile berliner. this, too, was a romance. berliner, as a poor german youth of nineteen, had landed in castle garden in to seek his fortune. he got a job as "a sort of bottle-washer at six dollars a week," he says, in a chemical shop in new york. at nights he studied science in the free classes of cooper union. then a druggist named engel gave him a copy of muller's book on physics, which was precisely the stimulus needed by his creative brain. in he was fascinated by the telephone, and set out to construct one on a different plan. several months later he had succeeded and was overjoyed to receive his first patent for a telephone transmitter. he had by this time climbed up from his bottle-washing to be a clerk in a drygoods store in washington; but he was still poor and as unpractical as most inventors. joseph henry, the sage of the american scientific world, was his friend, though too old to give him any help. consequently, when edison, two weeks later, also invented a transmitter, the prior claim of berliner was for a time wholly ignored. later the bell company bought berliner's patent and took up his side of the case. there was a seemingly endless succession of delays--fourteen years of the most vexatious delays--until finally the supreme court of the united states ruled that berliner, and not edison, was the original inventor of the transmitter. from first to last, the transmitter has been the product of several minds. its basic idea is the varying of the electric current by varying the pressure between two points. bell unquestionably suggested it in his famous patent, when he wrote of "increasing and diminishing the resistance." berliner was the first actually to construct one. edison greatly improved it by using soft carbon instead of a steel point. a kentucky professor, david e. hughes, started a new line of development by adapting a bell telephone into a "microphone," a fantastic little instrument that would detect the noise made by a fly in walking across a table. francis blake, of boston, changed a microphone into a practical transmitter. the rev. henry hunnings, an english clergyman, hit upon the happy idea of using carbon in the form of small granules. and one of the bell experts, named white, improved the hunnings transmitter into its present shape. both transmitter and receiver seem now to be as complete an artificial tongue and ear as human ingenuity can make them. they have persistently grown more elaborate, until today a telephone set, as it stands on a desk, contains as many as one hundred and thirty separate pieces, as well as a saltspoonful of glistening granules of carbon. next after the transmitter came the problem of the mysterious noises. this was, perhaps, the most weird and mystifying of all the telephone problems. the fact was that the telephone had brought within hearing distance a new wonder-world of sound. all wires at that time were single, and ran into the earth at each end, making what was called a "grounded circuit." and this connection with the earth, which is really a big magnet, caused all manner of strange and uncouth noises on the telephone wires. noises! such a jangle of meaningless noises had never been heard by human ears. there were spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming. there were the rustling of leaves, the croaking of frogs, the hissing of steam, and the flapping of birds' wings. there were clicks from telegraph wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, and curious little squeals that were unlike any known sound. the lines running east and west were noisier than the lines running north and south. the night was noisier than the day, and at the ghostly hour of midnight, for what strange reason no one knows, the babel was at its height. watson, who had a fanciful mind, suggested that perhaps these sounds were signals from the inhabitants of mars or some other sociable planet. but the matter-of-fact young telephonists agreed to lay the blame on "induction"--a hazy word which usually meant the natural meddlesomeness of electricity. whatever else the mysterious noises were, they were a nuisance. the poor little telephone business was plagued almost out of its senses. it was like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail. no matter where it went, it was pursued by this unearthly clatter. "we were ashamed to present our bills," said a. a. adee, one of the first agents; "for no matter how plainly a man talked into his telephone, his language was apt to sound like choctaw at the other end of the line." all manner of devices were solemnly tried to hush the wires, and each one usually proved to be as futile as an incantation. what was to be done? step by step the telephone men were driven back. they were beaten. there was no way to silence these noises. reluctantly, they agreed that the only way was to pull up the ends of each wire from the tainted earth, and join them by a second wire. this was the "metallic circuit" idea. it meant an appalling increase in the use of wire. it would compel the rebuild-ing of the switchboards and the invention of new signal systems. but it was inevitable; and in , while the dispute about it was in full blast, one of the young men quietly slipped it into use on a new line between boston and providence. the effect was magical. "at last," said the delighted manager, "we have a perfectly quiet line." this young man, a small, slim youth who was twenty-two years old and looked younger, was no other than j. j. carty, now the first of telephone engineers and almost the creator of his profession. three years earlier he had timidly asked for a job as operator in the boston exchange, at five dollars a week, and had shown such an aptitude for the work that he was soon made one of the captains. at thirty years of age he became a central figure in the development of the art of telephony. what carty has done is known by telephone men in all countries; but the story of carty himself--who he is, and why--is new. first of all, he is irish, pure irish. his father had left ireland as a boy in . during the civil war his father made guns in the city of cambridge, where young john joseph was born; and afterwards he made bells for church steeples. he was instinctively a mechanic and proud of his calling. he could tell the weight of a bell from the sound of it. moses g. farmer, the electrical inventor, and howe, the creator of the sewing-machine, were his friends. at five years of age, little john j. carty was taken by his father to the shop where the bells were made, and he was profoundly impressed by the magical strength of a big magnet, that picked up heavy weights as though they were feathers. at the high school his favorite study was physics; and for a time he and another boy named rolfe--now a distinguished man of science--carried on electrical experiments of their own in the cellar of the rolfe house. here they had a "tom thumb" telegraph, a telephone which they had ventured to improve, and a hopeless tangle of wires. whenever they could afford to buy more wires and batteries, they went to a near-by store which supplied electrical apparatus to the professors and students of harvard. this store, with its workshop in the rear, seemed to the two boys a veritable wonderland; and when carty, a youth of eighteen, was compelled to leave school because of his bad eyesight, he ran at once and secured the glorious job of being boy-of-all-work in this store of wonders. so, when he became an operator in the boston telephone exchange, a year later, he had already developed to a remarkable degree his natural genius for telephony. since then, carty and the telephone business have grown up together, he always a little distance in advance. no other man has touched the apparatus of telephony at so many points. he fought down the flimsy, clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. he found out how to do with wires what dickens did with words. "let us do it right, boys, and then we won't have any bad dreams"--this has been his motif. and, as the crown and climax of his work, he mapped out the profession of telephone engineering on the widest and most comprehensive lines. in carty, the engineer evolved into the educator. his end of the american telephone and telegraph company became the university of the telephone. he was himself a student by disposition, with a special taste for the writings of faraday, the forerunner; tyndall, the expounder; and spencer, the philosopher. and in , he gathered around him a winnowed group of college graduates--he has sixty of them on his staff to-day--so that he might bequeath to the telephone an engineering corps of loyal and efficient men. the next problem that faced the young men of the telephone, as soon as they had escaped from the clamor of the mysterious noises, was the necessity of taking down the wires in the city streets and putting them underground. at first, they had strung the wires on poles and roof-tops. they had done this, not because it was cheap, but because it was the only possible way, so far as any one knew in that kindergarten period. a telephone wire required the daintiest of handling. to bury it was to smother it, to make it dull or perhaps entirely useless. but now that the number of wires had swollen from hundreds to thousands, the overhead method had been outgrown. some streets in the larger cities had become black with wires. poles had risen to fifty feet in height, then sixty--seventy--eighty. finally the highest of all pole lines was built along west street, new york--every pole a towering norway pine, with its top ninety feet above the roadway, and carrying thirty cross-arms and three hundred wires. from poles the wires soon overflowed to housetops, until in new york alone they had overspread eleven thousand roofs. these roofs had to be kept in repair, and their chimneys were the deadly enemies of the iron wires. many a wire, in less than two or three years, was withered to the merest shred of rust. as if these troubles were not enough, there were the storms of winter, which might wipe out a year's revenue in a single day. the sleet storms were the worst. wires were weighted down with ice, often three pounds of ice per foot of wire. and so, what with sleet, and corrosion, and the cost of roof-repairing, and the lack of room for more wires, the telephone men were between the devil and the deep sea--between the urgent necessity of burying their wires, and the inexorable fact that they did not know how to do it. fortunately, by the time that this problem arrived, the telephone business was fairly well established. it had outgrown its early days of ridicule and incredulity. it was paying wages and salaries and even dividends. evidently it had arrived on the scene in the nick of time--after the telegraph and before the trolleys and electric lights. had it been born ten years later, it might not have been able to survive. so delicate a thing as a baby telephone could scarcely have protected itself against the powerful currents of electricity that came into general use in , if it had not first found out a way of hiding safely underground. the first declaration in favor of an underground system was made by the boston company in . "it may be expedient to place our entire system underground," said the sorely perplexed manager, "whenever a practicable method is found of accomplishing: it." all manner of theories were afloat but theodore n. vail, who was usually the man of constructive imagination in emergencies, began in a series of actual experiments at attleborough, massachusetts, to find out exactly what could, and what could not, be done with wires that were buried in the earth. a five-mile trench was dug beside a railway track. the work was done handily and cheaply by the labor-saving plan of hitching a locomotive to a plough. five ploughs were jerked apart before the work was finished. then, into this trench were laid wires with every known sort of covering. most of them, naturally, were wrapped with rubber or gutta-percha, after the fashion of a submarine cable. when all were in place, the willing locomotive was harnessed to a huge wooden drag, which threw the ploughed soil back into the trench and covered the wires a foot deep. it was the most professional cable-laying that any one at that time could do, and it succeeded, not brilliantly, but well enough to encourage the telephone engineers to go ahead. several weeks later, the first two cables for actual use were laid in boston and brooklyn; and in engineer j. p. davis was set to grapple with the herculean labor of putting a complete underground system in the wire-bound city of new york. this he did in spite of a bombardment of explosions from leaky gas-pipes, and with a woeful lack of experts and standard materials. all manner of makeshifts had to be tried in place of tile ducts, which were not known in . iron pipe was used at first, then asphalt, concrete, boxes of sand and creosoted wood. as for the wires, they were first wrapped in cotton, and then twisted into cables, usually of a hundred wires each. and to prevent the least taint of moisture, which means sudden death to a telephone current, these cables were invariably soaked in oil. this oil-filled type of cable carried the telephone business safely through half a dozen years. but it was not the final type. it was preliminary only, the best that could be made at that time. not one is in use to-day. in theodore vail set on foot a second series of experiments, to see if a cable could be made that was better suited as a highway for the delicate electric currents of the telephone. a young engineer named john a. barrett, who had already made his mark as an expert, by finding a way to twist and transpose the wires, was set apart to tackle this problem. being an economical vermonter, barrett went to work in a little wooden shed in the backyard of a brooklyn foundry. in this foundry he had seen a unique machine that could be made to mould hot lead around a rope of twisted wires. this was a notable discovery. it meant tight coverings. it meant a victory over that most troublesome of enemies--moisture. also, it meant that cables could henceforth be made longer, with fewer sleeves and splices, and without the oil, which had always been an unmitigated nuisance. next, having made the cable tight, barrett set out to produce it more cheaply and by accident stumbled upon a way to make it immensely more efficient. all wires were at that time wrapped with cotton, and his plan was to find some less costly material that would serve the same purpose. one of his workmen, a virginian, suggested the use of paper twine, which had been used in the south during the civil war, when cotton was scarce and expensive. barrett at once searched the south for paper twine and found it. he bought a barrel of it from a small factory in richmond, but after a trial it proved to be too flimsy. if such paper could be put on flat, he reasoned, it would be stronger. just then he heard of an erratic genius who had an invention for winding paper tape on wire for the use of milliners. paper-wound bonnet-wire! who could imagine any connection between this and the telephone? yet this hint was exactly what barrett needed. he experimented until he had devised a machine that crumpled the paper around the wire, instead of winding it tightly. this was the finishing touch. for a time these paper-wound cables were soaked in oil, but in engineer f. a. pickernell dared to trust to the tightness of the lead sheathing, and laid a "dry core" cable, the first of the modern type, in one of the streets of philadelphia. this cable was the event of the year. it was not only cheaper. it was the best-talking cable that had ever been harnessed to a telephone. what barrett had done was soon made clear. by wrapping the wire with loose paper, he had in reality cushioned it with air, which is the best possible insulator. not the paper, but the air in the paper, had improved the cable. more air was added by the omission of the oil. and presently barrett perceived that he had merely reproduced in a cable, as far as possible, the conditions of the overhead wires, which are separated by nothing but air. by there were two hundred thousand miles of wire snugly wrapped in paper and lying in leaden caskets beneath the streets of the cities, and to-day there are six million miles of it owned by the affiliated bell companies. instead of blackening the streets, the wire nerves of the telephone are now out of sight under the roadway, and twining into the basements of buildings like a new sort of metallic ivy. some cables are so large that a single spool of cable will weigh twenty-six tons and require a giant truck and a sixteen-horse team to haul it to its resting-place. as many as twelve hundred wires are often bunched into one sheath, and each cable lies loosely in a little duct of its own. it is reached by manholes where it runs under the streets and in little switching-boxes placed at intervals it is frayed out into separate pairs of wires that blossom at length into telephones. out in the open country there are still the open wires, which in point of talking are the best. in the suburbs of cities there are neat green posts with a single gray cable hung from a heavy wire. usually, a telephone pole is made from a sixty-year-old tree, a cedar, chestnut, or juniper. it lasts twelve years only, so that the one item of poles is still costing the telephone companies several millions a year. the total number of poles now in the united states, used by telephone and telegraph companies, once covered an area, before they were cut down, as large as the state of rhode island. but the highest triumph of wire-laying came when new york swept into the skyscraper age, and when hundreds of tall buildings, as high as the fall of the waters of niagara, grew up like a range of magical cliffs upon the precious rock of manhattan. here the work of the telephone engineer has been so well done that although every room in these cliff-buildings has its telephone, there is not a pole in sight, not a cross-arm, not a wire. nothing but the tip-ends of an immense system are visible. no sooner is a new skyscraper walled and roofed, than the telephones are in place, at once putting the tenants in touch with the rest of the city and the greater part of the united states. in a single one of these monstrous buildings, the hudson terminal, there is a cable that runs from basement to roof and ravels out to reach three thousand desks. this mighty geyser of wires is fifty tons in weight and would, if straightened out into a single line, connect new york with chicago. yet it is as invisible as the nerves and muscles of a human body. during this evolution of the cable, even the wire itself was being remade. vail and others had noticed that of all the varieties of wire that were for sale, not one was exactly suitable for a telephone system. the first telephone wire was of galvanized iron, which had at least the primitive virtue of being cheap. then came steel wire, stronger but less durable. but these wires were noisy and not good conductors of electricity. an ideal telephone wire, they found, must be made of either silver or copper. silver was out of the question, and copper wire was too soft and weak. it would not carry its own weight. the problem, therefore, was either to make steel wire a better conductor, or to produce a copper wire that would be strong enough. vail chose the latter, and forthwith gave orders to a bridgeport manufacturer to begin experiments. a young expert named thomas b. doolittle was at once set to work, and presently appeared the first hard-drawn copper wire, made tough-skinned by a fairly simple process. vail bought thirty pounds of it and scattered it in various parts of the united states, to note the effect upon it of different climates. one length of it may still be seen at the vail homestead in lyndonville, vermont. then this hard-drawn wire was put to a severe test by being strung between boston and new york. this line was a brilliant success, and the new wire was hailed with great delight as the ideal servant of the telephone. since then there has been little trouble with copper wire, except its price. it was four times as good as iron wire, and four times as expensive. every mile of it, doubled, weighed two hundred pounds and cost thirty dollars. on the long lines, where it had to be as thick as a lead pencil, the expense seemed to be ruinously great. when the first pair of wires was strung between new york and chicago, for instance, it was found to weigh , pounds--a full load for a twenty-two-car freight train; and the cost of the bare metal was $ , . so enormous has been the use of copper wire since then by the telephone companies, that fully one-fourth of all the capital invested in the telephone has gone to the owners of the copper mines. for several years the brains of the telephone men were focussed upon this problem--how to reduce the expenditure on copper. one uncanny device, which would seem to be a mere inventor's fantasy if it had not already saved the telephone companies four million dollars or more, is known as the "phantom circuit." it enables three messages to run at the same time, where only two ran before. a double track of wires is made to carry three talk-trains running abreast, a feat made possible by the whimsical disposition of electricity, and which is utterly inconceivable in railroading. this invention, which is the nearest approach as yet to multiple telephony, was conceived by jacobs in england and carty in the united states. but the most copper money has been saved--literally tens of millions of dollars--by persuading thin wires to work as efficiently as thick ones. this has been done by making better transmitters, by insulating the smaller wires with enamel instead of silk, and by placing coils of a certain nature at intervals upon the wires. the invention of this last device startled the telephone men like a flash of lightning out of a blue sky. it came from outside--from the quiet laboratory of a columbia professor who had arrived in the united states as a young hungarian immigrant not many years earlier. from this professor, michael j. pupin, came the idea of "loading" a telephone line, in such a way as to reinforce the electric current. it enabled a thin wire to carry as far as a thick one, and thus saved as much as forty dollars a wire per mile. as a reward for his cleverness, a shower of gold fell upon pupin, and made him in an instant as rich as one of the grand-dukes of his native land. it is now a most highly skilled occupation, supporting fully fifteen thousand families, to put the telephone wires in place and protect them against innumerable dangers. this is the profession of the wire chiefs and their men, a corps of human spiders, endlessly spinning threads under streets and above green fields, on the beds of rivers and the slopes of mountains, massing them in cities and fluffing them out among farms and villages. to tell the doings of a wire chief, in the course of his ordinary week's work, would in itself make a lively book of adventures. even a washerwoman, with one lone, non-electrical clothes-line of a hundred yards to operate, has often enough trouble with it. but the wire chiefs of the bell telephone have charge of as much wire as would make two hundred million clothes-lines--ten apiece to every family in the united states; and these lines are not punctuated with clothespins, but with the most delicate of electrical instruments. the wire chiefs must detect trouble under a thousand disguises. perhaps a small boy has thrown a snake across the wires or driven a nail into a cable. perhaps some self-reliant citizen has moved his own telephone from one room to another. perhaps a sudden rainstorm has splashed its fatal moisture upon an unwiped joint. or perhaps a submarine cable has been sat upon by the lusitania and flattened to death. but no matter what the trouble, a telephone system cannot be stopped for repairs. it cannot be picked up and put into a dry-dock. it must be repaired or improved by a sort of vivisection while it is working. it is an interlocking unit, a living, conscious being, half human and half machine; and an injury in any one place may cause a pain or sickness to its whole vast body. and just as the particles of a human body change every six or seven years, without disturb-ing the body, so the particles of our telephone systems have changed repeatedly without any interruption of traffic. the constant flood of new inventions has necessitated several complete rebuildings. little or nothing has ever been allowed to wear out. the new york system was rebuilt three times in sixteen years; and many a costly switchboard has gone to the scrap-heap at three or four years of age. what with repairs and inventions and new construction, the various bell companies have spent at least $ , , in the first ten years of the twentieth century, without hindering for a day the ceaseless torrent of electrical conversation. the crowning glory of a telephone system of to-day is not so much the simple telephone itself, nor the maze and mileage of its cables, but rather the wonderful mechanism of the switchboard. this is the part that will always remain mysterious to the public. it is seldom seen, and it remains as great a mystery to those who have seen it as to those who have not. explanations of it are futile. as well might any one expect to learn sanscrit in half an hour as to understand a switchboard by making a tour of investigation around it. it is not like anything else that either man or nature has ever made. it defies all metaphors and comparisons. it cannot be shown by photography, not even in moving-pictures, because so much of it is concealed inside its wooden body. and few people, if any, are initiated into its inner mysteries except those who belong to its own cortege of inventors and attendants. a telephone switchboard is a pyramid of inventions. if it is full-grown, it may have two million parts. it may be lit with fifteen thousand tiny electric lamps and nerved with as much wire as would reach from new york to berlin. it may cost as much as a thousand pianos or as much as three square miles of farms in indiana. the ten thousand wire hairs of its head are not only numbered, but enswathed in silk, and combed out in so marvellous a way that any one of them can in a flash be linked to any other. such hair-dressing! such puffs and braids and ringlet relays! whoever would learn the utmost that may be done with copper hairs of titian red, must study the fantastic coiffure of a telephone switchboard. if there were no switchboard, there would still be telephones, but not a telephone system. to connect five thousand people by telephone requires five thousand wires when the wires run to a switchboard; but without a switchboard there would have to be , , wires-- , to every telephone. as well might there be a nerve-system without a brain, as a telephone system without a switchboard. if there had been at first two separate companies, one owning the telephone and the other the switchboard, neither could have done the business. several years before the telephone got a switchboard of its own, it made use of the boards that had been designed for the telegraph. these were as simple as wheelbarrows, and became absurdly inadequate as soon as the telephone business began to grow. then there came adaptations by the dozen. every telephone manager became by compulsion an inventor. there was no source of information and each exchange did the best it could. hundreds of patents were taken out. and by there had come to be a fairly definite idea of what a telephone switchboard ought to be. the one man who did most to create the switchboard, who has been its devotee for more than thirty years, is a certain modest and little known inventor, still alive and busy, named charles e. scribner. of the nine thousand switchboard patents, scribner holds six hundred or more. ever since , when he devised the first "jackknife switch," scribner has been the wizard of the switchboard. it was he who saw most clearly its requirements. hundreds of others have helped, but scribner was the one man who persevered, who never asked for an easier job, and who in the end became the master of his craft. it may go far to explain the peculiar genius of scribner to say that he was born in , in the year of the laying of the atlantic cable; and that his mother was at the time profoundly interested in the work and anxious for its success. his father was a judge in toledo; but young scribner showed no aptitude for the tangles of the law. he preferred the tangles of wire and system in miniature, which he and several other boys had built and learned to operate. these boys had a benefactor in an old bachelor named thomas bond. he had no special interest in telegraphy. he was a dealer in hides. but he was attracted by the cleverness of the boys and gave them money to buy more wires and more batteries. one day he noticed an invention of young scribner's--a telegraph repeater. "this may make your fortune," he said, "but no mechanic in toledo can make a proper model of it for you. you must go to chicago, where telegraphic apparatus is made." the boy gladly took his advice and went to the western electric factory in chicago. here he accidentally met enos m. barton, the head of the factory. barton noted that the boy was a genius and offered him a job, which he accepted and has held ever since. such is the story of the entrance of charles e. scribner into the telephone business, where he has been well-nigh indispensable. his monumental work has been the development of the multiple switchboard, a much more brain-twisting problem than the building of the pyramids or the digging of the panama canal. the earlier types of switchboard had become too cumbersome by . they were well enough for five hundred wires but not for five thousand. in some exchanges as many as half a dozen operators were necessary to handle a single call; and the clamor and confusion were becoming unbearable. some handier and quieter way had to be devised, and thus arose the multiple board. the first crude idea of such a way had sprung to life in the brain of a chicago man named l. b. firman, in ; but he became a farmer and forsook his invention in its infancy. in the multiple board, as it grew up under the hands of scribner, the outgoing wires are duplicated so as to be within reach of every operator. a local call can thus be answered at once by the operator who receives it; and any operator who is overwhelmed by a sudden rush of business can be helped by her companions. every wire that comes into the board is tasselled out into many ends, and by means of a "busy test," invented by scribner, only one of these ends can be put into use at a time. the normal limit of such a board is ten thousand wires, and will always remain so, unless a race of long-armed giantesses should appear, who would be able to reach over a greater expanse of board. at present, a business of more than ten thousand lines means a second exchange. the multiple board was enormously expensive. it grew more and more elaborate until it cost one-third of a million dollars. the telephone men racked their brains to produce something cheaper to take its place, and they failed. the multiple boards swallowed up capital as a desert swallows water, but they saved ten seconds on every call. this was an unanswerable argument in their favor, and by twenty-one of them were in use. since then, the switchboard has had three or four rebuildings. there has seemed to be no limit to the demands of the public or the fertility of scribner's brain. persistent changes were made in the system of signalling. the first signal, used by bell and watson, was a tap on the diaphragm with the finger-nail. soon after-wards came a "buzzer," and then the magneto-electric bell. in joseph o'connell, of chicago, conceived of the use of tiny electric lights as signals, a brilliant idea, as an electric light makes no noise and can be seen either by night or by day. in , j. j. carty invented the "bridging bell," a way to put four houses on a single wire, with a different signal for each house. this idea made the "party line" practicable, and at once created a boom in the use of the telephone by enterprising farmers. in there came a most revolutionary change in switchboards. all things were made new. instead of individual batteries, one at each telephone, a large common battery was installed in the exchange itself. this meant better signalling and better talking. it reduced the cost of batteries and put them in charge of experts. it established uniformity. it introduced the federal idea into the mechanism of a telephone system. best of all, it saved four seconds on every call. the first of these centralizing switchboards was put in place at philadelphia; and other cities followed suit as fast as they could afford the expense of rebuilding. since then, there have come some switchboards that are wholly automatic. few of these have been put into use, for the reason that a switchboard, like a human body, must be semi-automatic only. to give the most efficient service, there will always need to be an expert to stand between it and the public. as the final result of all these varying changes in switchboards and signals and batteries, there grew up the modern telephone exchange. this is the solar plexus of the telephone body. it is the vital spot. it is the home of the switchboard. it is not any one's invention, as the telephone was. it is a growing mechanism that is not yet finished, and may never be; but it has already evolved far enough to be one of the wonders of the electrical world. there is probably no other part of an american city's equipment that is as sensitive and efficient as a telephone exchange. the idea of the exchange is somewhat older than the idea of the telephone itself. there were communication exchanges before the invention of the telephone. thomas b. doolittle had one in bridgeport, using telegraph instruments thomas b. a. david had one in pittsburg, using printing-telegraph machines, which required little skill to operate. and william a. childs had a third, for lawyers only, in new york, which used dials at first and afterwards printing machines. these little exchanges had set out to do the work that is done to-day by the telephone, and they did it after a fashion, in a most crude and expensive way. they helped to prepare the way for the telephone, by building up small constituencies that were ready for the telephone when it arrived. bell himself was perhaps the first to see the future of the telephone exchange. in a letter written to some english capitalists in , he said: "it is possible to connect every man's house, office or factory with a central station, so as to give him direct communication with his neighbors.... it is conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable with a central office." this remarkable prophecy has now become stale reading, as stale as darwin's "origin of species," or adam smith's "wealth of nations." but at the time that it was written it was a most fanciful dream. when the first infant exchange for telephone service was born in boston, in , it was the tiny offspring of a burglar-alarm business operated by e. t. holmes, a young man whose father had originated the idea of protecting property by electric wires in . holmes was the first practical man who dared to offer telephone service for sale. he had obtained two telephones, numbers six and seven, the first five having gone to the junk-heap; and he attached these to a wire in his burglar-alarm office. for two weeks his business friends played with the telephones, like boys with a fascinating toy; then holmes nailed up a new shelf in his office, and on this shelf placed six box-telephones in a row. these could be switched into connection with the burglar-alarm wires and any two of the six wires could be joined by a wire cord. nothing could have been simpler, but it was the arrival of a new idea in the business world. the holmes exchange was on the top floor of a little building, and in almost every other city the first exchange was as near the roof as possible, partly to save rent and partly because most of the wires were strung on roof-tops. as the telephone itself had been born in a cellar, so the exchange was born in a garret. usually, too, each exchange was an off-shoot of some other wire-using business. it was a medley of makeshifts. almost every part of its outfit had been made for other uses. in chicago all calls came in to one boy, who bawled them up a speaking-tube to the operators. in another city a boy received the calls, wrote them on white alleys, and rolled them to the boys at the switchboard. there was no number system. every one was called by name. even as late as , when new york boasted fifteen hundred telephones, names were still in use. and as the first telephones were used both as transmitters and receivers, there was usually posted up a rule that was highly important: "don't talk with your ear or listen with your mouth." to describe one of those early telephone exchanges in the silence of a printed page is a wholly impossible thing. nothing but a language of noise could convey the proper impression. an editor who visited the chicago exchange in said of it: "the racket is almost deafening. boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics engaged in a game of fox and geese." in the same year e. j. hall wrote from buffalo that his exchange with twelve boys had become "a perfect bedlam." by the clumsy methods of those days, from two to six boys were needed to handle each call. and as there was usually more or less of a cat-and-dog squabble between the boys and the public, with every one yelling at the top of his voice, it may be imagined that a telephone exchange was a loud and frantic place. boys, as operators, proved to be most complete and consistent failures. their sins of omission and commission would fill a book. what with whittling the switchboards, swearing at subscribers, playing tricks with the wires, and roaring on all occasions like young bulls of bashan, the boys in the first exchanges did their full share in adding to the troubles of the business. nothing could be done with them. they were immune to all schemes of discipline. like the mysterious noises they could not be controlled, and by general consent they were abolished. in place of the noisy and obstreperous boy came the docile, soft-voiced girl. if ever the rush of women into the business world was an unmixed blessing, it was when the boys of the telephone exchanges were superseded by girls. here at its best was shown the influence of the feminine touch. the quiet voice, pitched high, the deft fingers, the patient courtesy and attentiveness--these qualities were precisely what the gentle telephone required in its attendants. girls were easier to train; they did not waste time in retaliatory conversation; they were more careful; and they were much more likely to give "the soft answer that turneth away wrath." a telephone call under the boy regime meant bedlam and five minutes; afterwards, under the girl regime, it meant silence and twenty seconds. instead of the incessant tangle and tumult, there came a new species of exchange--a quiet, tense place, in which several score of young ladies sit and answer the language of the switchboard lights. now and then, not often, the signal lamps flash too quickly for these expert phonists. during the panic of there was one mad hour when almost every telephone in wall street region was being rung up by some desperate speculator. the switchboards were ablaze with lights. a few girls lost their heads. one fainted and was carried to the rest-room. but the others flung the flying shuttles of talk until, in a single exchange fifteen thousand conversations had been made possible in sixty minutes. there are always girls in reserve for such explosive occasions, and when the hands of any operator are seen to tremble, and she has a warning red spot on each cheek, she is taken off and given a recess until she recovers her poise. these telephone girls are the human part of a great communication machine. they are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern every minute. how many possible combinations there are with the five million telephones of the bell system, or what unthinkable mileage of conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. but whoever has once seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of the city's life. in the new york telephone company started a school, the first of its kind in the world, for the education of these telephone girls. this school is hidden amid ranges of skyscrapers, but seventeen thousand girls discover it in the course of the year. it is a most particular and exclusive school. it accepts fewer than two thousand of these girls, and rejects over fifteen thousand. not more than one girl in every eight can measure up to its standards; and it cheerfully refuses as many students in a year as would make three yales or harvards. this school is unique, too, in the fact that it charges no fees, pays every student five dollars a week, and then provides her with a job when she graduates. but it demands that every girl shall be in good health, quick-handed, clear-voiced, and with a certain poise and alertness of manner. presence of mind, which, in herbert spencer's opinion, ought to be taught in every university, is in various ways drilled into the temperament of the telephone girl. she is also taught the knack of concentration, so that she may carry the switchboard situation in her head, as a chess-player carries in his head the arrangement of the chess-men. and she is much more welcome at this strange school if she is young and has never worked in other trades, where less speed and vigilance are required. no matter how many millions of dollars may be spent upon cables and switchboards, the quality of telephone service depends upon the girl at the exchange end of the wire. it is she who meets the public at every point. she is the despatcher of all the talk trains; she is the ruler of the wire highways; and she is expected to give every passenger-voice an instantaneous express to its destination. more is demanded from her than from any other servant of the public. her clients refuse to stand in line and quietly wait their turn, as they are quite willing to do in stores and theatres and barber shops and railway stations and everywhere else. they do not see her at work and they do not know what her work is. they do not notice that she answers a call in an average time of three and a half seconds. they are in a hurry, or they would not be at the telephone; and each second is a minute long. any delay is a direct personal affront that makes a vivid impression upon their minds. and they are not apt to remember that most of the delays and blunders are being made, not by the expert girls, but by the careless people who persist in calling wrong numbers and in ignoring the niceties of telephone etiquette. the truth about the american telephone girl is that she has become so highly efficient that we now expect her to be a paragon of perfection. to give the young lady her due, we must acknowledge that she has done more than any other person to introduce courtesy into the business world. she has done most to abolish the old-time roughness and vulgarity. she has made big business to run more smoothly than little business did, half a century ago. she has shown us how to take the friction out of conversation, and taught us refinements of politeness which were rare even among the beau brummels of pre-telephonic days. who, for instance, until the arrival of the telephone girl, appreciated the difference between "who are you?" and "who is this?" or who else has so impressed upon us the value of the rising inflection, as a gentler habit of speech? this propaganda of politeness has gone so far that to-day the man who is profane or abusive at the telephone, is cut off from the use of it. he is cast out as unfit for a telephone-using community. and now, so that there shall be no anticlimax in this story of telephone development, we must turn the spot-light upon that immense aggregation of workshops in which have been made three-fifths of the telephone apparatus of the world--the western electric. the mother factory of this globe-trotting business is the biggest thing in the spacious back-yard of chicago, and there are eleven smaller factories--her children--scattered over the earth from new york to tokio. to put its totals into a sentence, it is an enterprise of , -man-power, and , , -dollar-power; and the telephonic goods that it produces in half a day are worth one hundred thousand dollars--as much, by the way, as the western union refused to pay for the bell patents in . the western electric was born in chicago, in the ashes of the big fire of ; and it has grown up to its present greatness quietly, without celebrating its birthdays. at first it had no telephones to make. none had been invented, so it made telegraphic apparatus, burglar-alarms, electric pens, and other such things. but in , when the western union made its short-lived attempt to compete with the bell company, the western electric agreed to make its telephones. three years later, when the brief spasm of competition was ended, the western electric was taken in hand by the bell people and has since then remained the great workshop of the telephone. the main plant in chicago is not especially remarkable from a manufacturing point of view. here are the inevitable lumber-yards and foundries and machine-shops. here is the mad waltz of the spindles that whirl silk and cotton threads around the copper wires, very similar to what may be seen in any braid factory. here electric lamps are made, five thousand of them in a day, in the same manner as elsewhere, except that here they are so small and dainty as to seem designed for fairy palaces. the things that are done with wire in the western electric factories are too many for any mere outsider to remember. some wire is wrapped with paper tape at a speed of nine thousand miles a day. some is fashioned into fantastic shapes that look like absurd sea-monsters, but which in reality are only the nerve systems of switchboards. and some is twisted into cables by means of a dozen whirling drums--a dizzying sight, as each pair of drums revolve in opposite directions. because of the fact that a cable's inevitable enemy is moisture, each cable is wound on an immense spool and rolled into an oven until it is as dry as a cinder. then it is put into a strait-jacket of lead pipe, sealed at both ends, and trundled into a waiting freight car. no other company uses so much wire and hard rubber, or so many tons of brass rods, as the western electric. of platinum, too, which is more expensive than gold, it uses one thousand pounds a year in the making of telephone transmitters. this is imported from the ural mountains. the silk thread comes from italy and japan; the iron for magnets, from norway; the paper tape, from manila; the mahogany, from south america; and the rubber, from brazil and the valley of the congo. at least seven countries must cooperate to make a telephone message possible. perhaps the most extraordinary feature in the western electric factories is the multitude of its inspectors. no other sort of manufacturing, not even a government navy-yard, has so many. nothing is too small to escape these sleuths of inspection. they test every tiny disc of mica, and throw away nine out of ten. they test every telephone by actual talk, set up every switchboard, and try out every cable. a single transmitter, by the time it is completed, has had to pass three hundred examinations; and a single coin-box is obliged to count ten thousand nickels before it graduates into the outer world. seven hundred inspectors are on guard in the two main plants at chicago and new york. this is a ruinously large number, from a profit-making point of view; but the inexorable fact is that in a telephone system nothing is insignificant. it is built on such altruistic lines that an injury to any one part is the concern of all. as usual, when we probe into the history of a business that has grown great and overspread the earth, we find a man; and the western electric is no exception to this rule. its man, still fairly hale and busy after forty years of leadership, is enos m. barton. his career is the typical american story of self-help. he was a telegraph messenger boy in new york during the civil war, then a telegraph operator in cleveland. in his salary was cut down from one hundred dollars a month to ninety dollars; whereupon he walked out and founded the western electric in a shabby little machine-shop. later he moved to chicago, took in elisha gray as his partner, and built up a trade in the making of telegraphic materials. when the telephone was invented, barton was one of the sceptics. "i well remember my disgust," he said, "when some one told me it was possible to send conversation along a wire." several months later he saw a telephone and at once became one of its apostles. by his plant had become the official workshop of the bell companies. it was the headquarters of invention and manufacturing. here was gathered a notable group of young men, brilliant and adventurous, who dared to stake their futures on the success of the telephone. and always at their head was barton, as a sort of human switchboard, who linked them all together and kept them busy. in appearance, enos m. barton closely resembles ex-president eliot, of harvard. he is slow in speech, simple in manner, and with a rare sagacity in business affairs. he was not an organizer, in the modern sense. his policy was to pick out a man, put him in a responsible place, and judge him by results. engineers could become bookkeepers, and bookkeepers could become engineers. such a plan worked well in the earlier days, when the art of telephony was in the making, and when there was no source of authority on telephonic problems. barton is the bishop emeritus of the western electric to-day; and the big industry is now being run by a group of young hustlers, with h. b. thayer at the head of the table. thayer is a vermonter who has climbed the ladder of experience from its lower rungs to the top. he is a typical yankee--lean, shrewd, tireless, and with a cold-blooded sense of justice that fits him for the leadership of twenty-six thousand people. so, as we have seen, the telephone as bell invented it, was merely a brilliant beginning in the development of the art of telephony. it was an elfin birth--an elusive and delicate sprite that had to be nurtured into maturity. it was like a soul, for which a body had to be created; and no one knew how to make such a body. had it been born in some less energetic country, it might have remained feeble and undeveloped; but not in the united states. here in one year it had become famous, and in three years it had become rich. bell's invincible patent was soon buttressed by hundreds of others. an open-door policy was adopted for invention. change followed change to such a degree that the experts of would be lost to-day in the mazes of a telephone exchange. the art of the telephone engineer has in thirty years grown from the most crude and clumsy of experiments into an exact and comprehensive profession. as carty has aptly said, "at first we invariably approached every problem from the wrong end. if we had been told to load a herd of cattle on a steamer, our method would have been to hire a hagenbeck to train the cattle for a couple of years, so that they would know enough to walk aboard of the ship when he gave the signal; but to-day, if we had to ship cattle, we would know enough to make a greased chute and slide them on board in a jiffy." the telephone world has now its own standards and ideals. it has a language of its own, a telephonese that is quite unintelligible to outsiders. it has as many separate branches of study as medicine or law. there are few men, half a dozen at most, who can now be said to have a general knowledge of telephony. and no matter how wise a telephone expert may be, he can never reach perfection, because of the amazing variety of things that touch or concern his profession. "no one man knows all the details now," said theodore vail. "several days ago i was walking through a telephone exchange and i saw something new. i asked mr. carty to explain it. he is our chief engineer; but he did not understand it. we called the manager. he did n't know, and called his assistant. he did n't know, and called the local engineer, who was able to tell us what it was." to sum up this development of the art of tele-phony--to present a bird's-eye view--it may be divided into four periods: . experiment. to . this was the period of invention, in which there were no experts and no authorities. telephonic apparatus consisted of makeshifts and adaptations. it was the period of iron wire, imperfect transmitters, grounded circuits, boy operators, peg switchboards, local batteries, and overhead lines. . development. to . in this period amateurs became engineers. the proper type of apparatus was discovered, and was improved to a high point of efficiency. in this period came the multiple switchboard, copper wire, girl operators, underground cables, metallic circuit, common battery, and the long-distance lines. . expansion. to . this was the era of big business. it was an autumn period, in which the telephone men and the public began to reap the fruits of twenty years of investment and hard work. it was the period of the message rate, the pay station, the farm line, and the private branch exchange. . organization. --. with the success of the pupin coil, there came a larger life for the telephone. it became less local and more national. it began to link together its scattered parts. it discouraged the waste and anarchy of duplication. it taught its older, but smaller brother, the telegraph, to cooperate. it put itself more closely in touch with the will of the public. and it is now pushing ahead, along the two roads of standardization and efficiency, toward its ideal of one universal telephone system for the whole nation. the key-word of the telephone development of to-day is this--organization. chapter v. the expansion of the business the telephone business did not really begin to grow big and overspread the earth until , but the keynote of expansion was first sounded by theodore vail in the earliest days, when as yet the telephone was a babe in arms. in vail said, in a letter written to one of his captains: "tell our agents that we have a proposition on foot to connect the different cities for the purpose of personal communication, and in other ways to organize a grand telephonic system." this was brave talk at that time, when there were not in the whole world as many telephones as there are to-day in cincinnati. it was brave talk in those days of iron wire, peg switchboards, and noisy diaphragms. most telephone men regarded it as nothing more than talk. they did not see any business future for the telephone except in short-distance service. but vail was in earnest. his previous experience as the head of the railway mail service had lifted him up to a higher point of view. he knew the need of a national system of communication that would be quicker and more direct than either the telegraph or the post office. "i saw that if the telephone could talk one mile to-day," he said, "it would be talking a hundred miles to-morrow." and he persisted, in spite of a considerable deal of ridicule, in maintaining that the telephone was destined to connect cities and nations as well as individuals. four months after he had prophesied the "grand telephonic system," he encouraged charles j. glidden, of world-tour fame, to build a telephone line between boston and lowell. this was the first inter-city line. it was well placed, as the owners of the lowell mills lived in boston, and it made a small profit from the start. this success cheered vail on to a master-effort. he resolved to build a line from boston to providence, and was so stubbornly bent upon doing this that when the bell company refused to act, he picked up the risk and set off with it alone. he organized a company of well-known rhode islanders--nicknamed the "governors' company"--and built the line. it was a failure at first, and went by the name of "vail's folly." but engineer carty, by a happy thought, doubled the wire, and thus in a moment established two new factors in the telephone business--the metallic circuit and the long distance line. at once the bell company came over to vail's point of view, bought his new line, and launched out upon what seemed to be the foolhardy enterprise of stringing a double wire from boston to new york. this was to be not only the longest of all telephone lines, strung on ten thousand poles; it was to be a line de luxe, built of glistening red copper, not iron. its cost was to be seventy thousand dollars, which was an enormous sum in those hardscrabble days. there was much opposition to such extravagance, and much ridicule. "i would n't take that line as a gift," said one of the bell company's officials. but when the last coil of wire was stretched into place, and the first "hello" leaped from boston to new york, the new line was a victorious success. it carried messages from the first day; and more, it raised the whole telephone business to a higher level. it swept away the prejudice that telephone service could become nothing more than a neighborhood affair. "it was the salvation of the business," said edward j. hill. it marked a turning-point in the history of the telephone, when the day of small things was ended and the day of great things was begun. no one man, no hundred men, had created it. it was the final result of ten years of invention and improvement. while this epoch-making line was being strung, vail was pushing his "grand telephonic system" policy by organizing the american telephone and telegraph company. this, too, was a master-stroke. it was the introduction of the staff-and-line method of organization into business. it was doing for the forty or fifty bell companies what von moltke did for the german army prior to the franco-prussian war. it was the creation of a central company that should link all local companies together, and itself own and operate the means by which these companies are united. this central company was to grapple with all national problems, to own all telephones and long-distance lines, to protect all patents, and to be the headquarters of invention, information, capital, and legal protection for the entire federation of bell companies. seldom has a company been started with so small a capital and so vast a purpose. it had no more than $ , of capital stock, in ; but its declared object was nothing less than to establish a system of wire communication for the human race. here are, in its own words, the marching orders of this company: "to connect one or more points in each and every city, town, or place an the state of new york, with one or more points in each and every other city, town, or place in said state, and in each and every other of the united states, and in canada, and mexico; and each and every of said cities, towns, and places is to be connected with each and every other city, town, or place in said states and countries, and also by cable and other appropriate means with the rest of the known world." so ran vail's dream, and for nine years he worked mightily to make it come true. he remained until the various parts of the business had grown together, and until his plan for a "grand telephonic system" was under way and fairly well understood. then he went out, into a series of picturesque enterprises, until he had built up a four-square fortune; and recently, in , he came back to be the head of the telephone business, and to complete the work of organization that he started thirty years before. when vail said auf wiedersehen to the telephone business, it had passed from infancy to childhood. it was well shaped but not fully grown. its pioneering days were over. it was self-supporting and had a little money in the bank. but it could not then have carried the load of traffic that it carries to-day. it had still too many problems to solve and too much general inertia to overcome. it needed to be conserved, drilled, educated, popularized. and the man who was finally chosen to replace vail was in many respects the appropriate leader for such a preparatory period. hudson--john elbridge hudson--was the name of the new head of the telephone people. he was a man of middle age, born in lynn and bred in boston; a long-pedigreed new englander, whose ancestors had smelted iron ore in lynn when charles the first was king. he was a lawyer by profession and a university professor by temperament. his specialty, as a man of affairs, had been marine law; and his hobby was the collection of rare books and old english engravings. he was a master of the greek language, and very fond of using it. on all possible occasions he used the language of pericles in his conversation; and even carried this preference so far as to write his business memoranda in greek. he was above all else a scholar, then a lawyer, and somewhat incidentally the central figure in the telephone world. but it was of tremendous value to the telephone business at that time to have at its head a man of hudson's intellectual and moral calibre. he gave it tone and prestige. he built up its credit. he kept it clean and clear above all suspicion of wrong-doing. he held fast whatever had been gained. and he prepared the way for the period of expansion by borrowing fifty millions for improvements, and by adding greatly to the strength and influence of the american telephone and telegraph company. hudson remained at the head of the telephone table until his death, in , and thus lived to see the dawn of the era of big business. under his regime great things were done in the development of the art. the business was pushed ahead at every point by its captains. every man in his place, trying to give a little better service than yesterday--that was the keynote of the hudson period. there was no one preeminent genius. each important step forward was the result of the cooperation of many minds, and the prodding necessities of a growing traffic. by , when the common battery system created a new era, the telephone engineer had pretty well mastered his simpler troubles. he was able to handle his wires, no matter how many. by this time, too, the public was ready for the telephone. a new generation had grown up, without the prejudices of its fathers. people had grown away from the telegraphic habit of thought, which was that wire communications were expensive luxuries for the few. the telephone was, in fact, a new social nerve, so new and so novel that very nearly twenty years went by before it had fully grown into place, and before the social body developed the instinct of using it. not that the difficulties of the telephone engineers were over, for they were not. they have seemed to grow more numerous and complex every year. but by enough had been done to warrant a forward movement. for the next ten-year period the keynote of telephone history was expansion. under the prevailing flat-rate plan of payment, all customers paid the same yearly price and then used their telephones as often as they pleased. this was a simple method, and the most satisfactory for small towns and farming regions. but in a great city such a plan grew to be suicidal. in new york, for instance, the price had to be raised to $ , which lifted the telephone as high above the mass of the citizens as though it were a piano or a diamond sunburst. such a plan was strangling the business. it was shutting out the small users. it was clogging the wires with deadhead calls. it was giving some people too little service and others too much. it was a very unsatisfactory situation. how to extend the service and at the same time cheapen it to small users--that was the gordian knot; and the man who unquestionably did most to untie it was edward j. hall. mr. hall founded the telephone business in buffalo in , and seven years afterwards became the chief of the long-distance traffic. he was then, and is to-day, one of the statesmen of the telephone. for more than thirty years he has been the "candid friend" of the business, incessantly suggesting, probing, and criticising. keen and dispassionate, with a genius for mercilessly cutting to the marrow of a proposition, hall has at the same time been a zealot for the improvement and extension of telephone service. it was he who set the agents free from the ball-and-chain of royalties, allowing them to pay instead a percentage of gross receipts. and it was he who "broke the jam," as a lumberman would say, by suggesting the message rate system. by this plan, which u. n. bethell developed to its highest point in new york, a user of the telephone pays a fixed minimum price for a certain number of messages per year, and extra for all messages over this number. the large user pays more, and the little user pays less. it opened up the way to such an expansion of telephone business as bell, in his rosiest dreams, had never imagined. in three years, after , there were twice as many users; in six years there were four times as many; in ten years there were eight to one. what with the message rate and the pay station, the telephone was now on its way to be universal. it was adapted to all kinds and conditions of men. a great corporation, nerved at every point with telephone wires, may now pay fifty thousand dollars to the bell company, while at the same time a young irish immigrant boy, just arrived in new york city, may offer five coppers and find at his disposal a fifty million dollar telephone system. when the message rate was fairly well established, hudson died--fell suddenly to the ground as he was about to step into a railway carriage. in his place came frederick p. fish, also a lawyer and a bostonian. fish was a popular, optimistic man, with a "full-speed-ahead" temperament. he pushed the policy of expansion until he broke all the records. he borrowed money in stupendous amounts--$ , , at one time--and flung it into a campaign of red-hot development. more business he demanded, and more, and more, until his captains, like a thirty-horse team of galloping horses, became very nearly uncontrollable. it was a fast and furious period. the whole country was ablaze with a passion of prosperity. after generations of conflict, the men with large ideas had at last put to rout the men of small ideas. the waste and folly of competition had everywhere driven men to the policy of cooperation. mills were linked to mills and factories to factories, in a vast mutualism of industry such as no other age, perhaps, has ever known. and as the telephone is essentially the instrument of co-working and interdependent people, it found itself suddenly welcomed as the most popular and indispensable of all the agencies that put men in touch with each other. to describe this growth in a single sentence, we might say that the bell telephone secured its first million of capital in ; its first million of earnings in ; its first million of dividends in ; its first million of surplus in . it had paid out its first million for legal expenses by ; began first to send a million messages a day in ; had strung its first million miles of wire in ; and had installed its first million telephones in . by it had spun as many cobwebs of wire as the mighty western union itself; by it had twice as many miles of wire as the western union, and in five times as many. such was the plunging progress of the bell companies in this period of expansion, that by they had swept past all european countries combined, not only in the quality of the service but in the actual number of telephones in use. this, too, without a cent of public money, or the protection of a tariff, or the prestige of a governmental bureau. by boston and new york were talking to chicago, milwaukee, pittsburg, and washington. one-half of the people of the united states were within talking distance of each other. the thousand-mile talk had ceased to be a fairy tale. several years later the western end of the line was pushed over the plains to nebraska, enabling the spoken word in boston to be heard in omaha. slowly and with much effort the public were taught to substitute the telephone for travel. a special long-distance salon was fitted up in new york city to entice people into the habit of talking to other cities. cabs were sent for customers; and when one arrived, he was escorted over oriental rugs to a gilded booth, draped with silken curtains. this was the famous "room nine." by such and many other allurements a larger idea of telephone service was given to the public mind; until in at least eighteen thousand new york-chicago conversations were held, and the revenue from strictly long-distance messages was twenty-two thousand dollars a day. by even the rocky mountain bell company had grown to be a ten-million-dollar enterprise. it began at salt lake city with a hundred telephones, in . then it reached out to master an area of four hundred and thirteen thousand square miles--a great lone land of undeveloped resources. its linemen groped through dense forests where their poles looked like toothpicks beside the towering pines and cedars. they girdled the mountains and basted the prairies with wire, until the lonely places were brought together and made sociable. they drove off the indians, who wanted the bright wire for ear-rings and bracelets; and the bears, which mistook the humming of the wires for the buzzing of bees, and persisted in gnawing the poles down. with the most heroic optimism, this rocky mountain company persevered until, in , it had created a seventy-thousand-mile nerve-system for the far west. chicago, in this year, had two hundred thou-sand telephones in use, in her two hundred square miles of area. the business had been built up by general anson stager, who was himself wealthy, and able to attract the support of such men as john crerar, h. h. porter, and robert t. lincoln. since it has paid dividends, and in one glorious year its stock soared to four hundred dollars a share. the old-timers--the men who clambered over roof-tops in and tacked iron wires wherever they could without being chased off--are still for the most part in control of the chicago company. but as might have been expected, it was new york city that was the record-breaker when the era of telephone expansion arrived. here the flood of big business struck with the force of a tidal wave. the number of users leaped from , in up to , in . in a single year of sweating and breathless activity, , new telephones were put on desks or hung on walls--an average of one new user for every two minutes of the business day. literally tons, and hundreds of tons, of telephones were hauled in drays from the factory and put in place in new york's homes and offices. more and more were demanded, until to-day there are more telephones in new york than there are in the four countries, france, belgium, holland, and switzerland combined. as a user of telephones new york has risen to be unapproachable. mass together all the telephones of london, glasgow, liverpool, manchester, birmingham, leeds, sheffleld, bristol, and belfast, and there will even then be barely as many as are carrying the conversations of this one american city. in the new york telephone directory was a small card, showing two hundred and fifty-two names; but now it has grown to be an eight-hundred-page quarterly, with a circulation of half a million, and requiring twenty drays, forty horses, and four hundred men to do the work of distribution. there was one shabby little exchange thirty years ago; but now there are fifty-two exchanges, as the nerve-centres of a vast fifty-million-dollar system. incredible as it may seem to foreigners, it is literally true that in a single building in new york, the hudson terminal, there are more telephones than in odessa or madrid, more than in the two kingdoms of greece and bulgaria combined. merely to operate this system requires an army of more than five thousand girls. merely to keep their records requires two hundred and thirty-five million sheets of paper a year. merely to do the writing of these records wears away five hundred and sixty thousand lead pencils. and merely to give these girls a cup of tea or coffee at noon, compels the bell company to buy yearly six thousand pounds of tea, seventeen thousand pounds of coffee, forty-eight thousand cans of condensed milk, and one hundred and forty barrels of sugar. the myriad wires of this new york system are tingling with talk every minute of the day and night. they are most at rest between three and four o'clock in the morning, although even then there are usually ten calls a minute. between five and six o'clock, two thousand new yorkers are awake and at the telephone. half an hour later there are twice as many. between seven and eight twenty-five thousand people have called up twenty-five thousand other people, so that there are as many people talking by wire as there were in the whole city of new york in the revolutionary period. even this is only the dawn of the day's business. by half-past eight it is doubled; by nine it is trebled; by ten it is multiplied sixfold; and by eleven the roar has become an incredible babel of one hundred and eighty thousand conversations an hour, with fifty new voices clamoring at the exchanges every second. this is "the peak of the load." it is the topmost pinnacle of talk. it is the utmost degree of service that the telephone has been required to give in any city. and it is as much a world's wonder, to men and women of imagination, as the steel mills of homestead or the turbine leviathans that curve across the atlantic ocean in four and a half days. as to the men who built it up: charles f. cutler died in , but most of the others are still alive and busy. union n. bethell, now in cutler's place at the head of the new york company, has been the operating chief for eighteen years. he is a man of shrewdness and sympathy, with a rare sagacity in solving knotty problems, a president of the new type, who regards his work as a sort of obligation he owes to the public. and just as foreigners go to pittsburg to see the steel business at its best; just as they go to iowa and kansas to see the new farmer, so they make pilgrimages to bethell's office to learn the profession of telephony. this unparalleled telephone system of new york grew up without having at any time the rivalry of competition. but in many other cities and especially in the middle west, there sprang up in a medley of independent companies. the time of the original patents had expired, and the bell companies found themselves freed from the expense of litigation only to be snarled up in a tangle of duplication. in a few years there were six thousand of these little robinson crusoe companies. and by they had put in use more than a million telephones and were professing to have a capital of a hundred millions. most of these companies were necessary and did much to expand the telephone business into new territory. they were in fact small mutual associations of a dozen or a hundred farmers, whose aim was to get telephone service at cost. but there were other companies, probably a thousand or more, which were organized by promoters who built their hopes on the fact that the bell companies were unpopular, and on the myth that they were fabulously rich. instead of legitimately extending telephone lines into communities that had none, these promoters proceeded to inflict the messy snarl of an overlapping system upon whatever cities would give them permission to do so. in this way, masked as competition, the nuisance and waste of duplication began in most american cities. the telephone business was still so young, it was so little appreciated even by the telephone officials and engineers, that the public regarded a second or a third telephone system in one city as quite a possible and desirable innovation. "we have two ears," said one promoter; "why not therefore have two telephones?" this duplication went merrily on for years before it was generally discovered that the telephone is not an ear, but a nerve system; and that such an experiment as a duplicate nerve system has never been attempted by nature, even in her most frivolous moods. most people fancied that a telephone system was practically the same as a gas or electric light system, which can often be duplicated with the result of cheaper rates and better service. they did not for years discover that two telephone companies in one city means either half service or double cost, just as two fire departments or two post offices would. some of these duplicate companies built up a complete plant, and gave good local service, while others proved to be mere stock bubbles. most of them were over-capitalized, depending upon public sympathy to atone for deficiencies in equipment. one which had printed fifty million dollars of stock for sale was sold at auction in for four hundred thousand dollars. all told, there were twenty-three of these bubbles that burst in , twenty-one in , and twelve in . so high has been the death-rate among these isolated companies that at a recent convention of telephone agents, the chairman's gavel was made of thirty-five pieces of wood, taken from thirty-five switchboards of thirty-five extinct companies. a study of twelve single-system cities and twenty-seven double-system cities shows that there are about eleven per cent more telephones under the double-system, and that where the second system is put in, every fifth user is obliged to pay for two telephones. the rates are alike, whether a city has one or two systems. duplicating companies raised their rates in sixteen cities out of the twenty-seven, and reduced them in one city. taking the united states as a whole, there are to-day fully two hundred and fifty thousand people who are paying for two telephones instead of one, an economic waste of at least ten million dollars a year. a fair-minded survey of the entire independent telephone movement would probably show that it was at first a stimulant, followed, as stimulants usually are, by a reaction. it was unquestionably for several years a spur to the bell companies. but it did not fulfil its promises of cheap rates, better service, and high dividends; it did little or nothing to improve telephonic apparatus, producing nothing new except the automatic switchboard--a brilliant invention, which is now in its experimental period. in the main, perhaps, it has been a reactionary and troublesome movement in the cities, and a progressive movement among the farmers. by it was a wave that had spent its force. it was no longer rolling along easily on the broad ocean of hope, but broken and turned aside by the rocks of actual conditions. one by one the telephone promoters learned the limitations of an isolated company, and asked to be included as members of the bell family. in four hundred and fifty-eight thousand independent telephones were linked by wire to the nearest bell company; and in these were followed by three hundred and fifty thousand more. after this landslide to the policy of consolidation, there still remained a fairly large assortment of independent companies; but they had lost their dreams and their illusions. as might have been expected, the independent movement produced a number of competent local leaders, but none of national importance. the bell companies, on the other hand, were officered by men who had for a quarter of a century been surveying telephone problems from a national point of view. at their head, from onwards, was theodore n. vail, who had returned dramatically, at the precise moment when he was needed, to finish the work that he had begun in . he had been absent for twenty years, developing water-power and building street-railways in south america. in the first act of the telephone drama, it was he who put the enterprise upon a business basis, and laid down the first principles of its policy. in the second and third acts he had no place; but when the curtain rose upon the fourth act, vail was once more the central figure, standing white-haired among his captains, and pushing forward the completion of the "grand telephonic system" that he had dreamed of when the telephone was three years old. thus it came about that the telephone business was created by vail, conserved by hudson, expanded by fish, and is now in process of being consolidated by vail. it is being knit together into a stupendous bell system--a federation of self-governing companies, united by a central company that is the busiest of them all. it is no longer protected by any patent monopoly. whoever is rich enough and rash enough may enter the field. but it has all the immeasurable advantages that come from long experience, immense bulk, the most highly skilled specialists, and an abundance of capital. "the bell system is strong," says vail, "because we are all tied up together; and the success of one is therefore the concern of all." the bell system! here we have the motif of american telephone development. here is the most comprehensive idea that has entered any telephone engineer's brain. already this bell system has grown to be so vast, so nearly akin to a national nerve system, that there is nothing else to which we can compare it. it is so wide-spread that few are aware of its greatness. it is strung out over fifty thousand cities and communities. if it were all gathered together into one place, this bell system, it would make a city of telephonia as large as baltimore. it would contain half of the telephone property of the world. its actual wealth would be fully $ , , , and its revenue would be greater than the revenue of the city of new york. part of the property of the city of telephonia consists of ten million poles, as many as would make a fence from new york to california, or put a stockade around texas. if the telephonians wished to use these poles at home, they might drive them in as piles along their water-front, and have a twenty-five thousand-acre dock; or if their city were a hundred square miles in extent, they might set up a seven-ply wall around it with these poles. wire, too! eleven million miles of it! this city of telephonia would be the capital of an empire of wire. not all the men in new york state could shoulder this burden of wire and carry it. throw all the people of illinois in one end of the scale, and put on the other side the wire-wealth of telephonia, and long before the last coil was in place, the illinoisans would be in the air. what would this city do for a living? it would make two-thirds of the telephones, cables, and switchboards of all countries. nearly one-quarter of its citizens would work in factories, while the others would be busy in six thousand exchanges, making it possible for the people of the united states to talk to one another at the rate of seven thousand million conversations a year. the pay-envelope army that moves to work every morning in telephonia would be a host of one hundred and ten thousand men and girls, mostly girls,--as many girls as would fill vassar college a hundred times and more, or double the population of nevada. put these men and girls in line, march them ten abreast, and six hours would pass before the last company would arrive at the reviewing stand. in single file this throng of telephonians would make a living wall from new york to new haven. such is the extraordinary city of which alexander graham bell was the only resident in . it has been built up without the backing of any great bank or multi-millionaire. there have been no vanderbilts in it, no astors, rockefellers, rothschilds, harrimans. there are even now only four men who own as many as ten thousand shares of the stock of the central company. this bell system stands as the life-work of unprivileged men, who are for the most part still alive and busy. with very few and trivial exceptions, every part of it was made in the united states. no other industrial organism of equal size owes foreign countries so little. alike in its origin, its development, and its highest point of efficiency and expansion, the telephone is as essentially american as the declaration of independence or the monument on bunker hill. chapter vi. notable users of the telephone what we might call the telephonization of city life, for lack of a simpler word, has remarkably altered our manner of living from what it was in the days of abraham lincoln. it has enabled us to be more social and cooperative. it has literally abolished the isolation of separate families, and has made us members of one great family. it has become so truly an organ of the social body that by telephone we now enter into contracts, give evidence, try lawsuits, make speeches, propose marriage, confer degrees, appeal to voters, and do almost everything else that is a matter of speech. in stores and hotels this wire traffic has grown to an almost bewildering extent, as these are the places where many interests meet. the hundred largest hotels in new york city have twenty-one thousand telephones--nearly as many as the continent of africa and more than the kingdom of spain. in an average year they send six million messages. the waldorf-astoria alone tops all residential buildings with eleven hundred and twenty telephones and five hundred thousand calls a year; while merely the christmas eve orders that flash into marshall field's store, or john wanamaker's, have risen as high as the three thousand mark. whether the telephone does most to concentrate population, or to scatter it, is a question that has not yet been examined. it is certainly true that it has made the skyscraper possible, and thus helped to create an absolutely new type of city, such as was never imagined even in the fairy tales of ancient nations. the skyscraper is ten years younger than the telephone. it is now generally seen to be the ideal building for business offices. it is one of the few types of architecture that may fairly be called american. and its efficiency is largely, if not mainly, due to the fact that its inhabitants may run errands by telephone as well as by elevator. there seems to be no sort of activity which is not being made more convenient by the telephone. it is used to call the duck-shooters in western canada when a flock of birds has arrived; and to direct the movements of the dragon in wagner's grand opera "siegfried." at the last yale-harvard football game, it conveyed almost instantaneous news to fifty thousand people in various parts of new england. at the vanderbilt cup race its wires girdled the track and reported every gain or mishap of the racing autos. and at such expensive pageants as that of the quebec tercentenary in , where four thousand actors came and went upon a ten-acre stage, every order was given by telephone. public officials, even in the united states, have been slow to change from the old-fashioned and more dignified use of written documents and uniformed messengers; but in the last ten years there has been a sweeping revolution in this respect. government by telephone! this is a new idea that has already arrived in the more efficient departments of the federal service. and as for the present congress, that body has gone so far as to plan for a special system of its own, in both houses, so that all official announcements may be heard by wire. garfield was the first among american presidents to possess a telephone. an exhibition instrument was placed in his house, without cost, in , while he was still a member of congress. neither cleveland nor harrison, for temperamental reasons, used the magic wire very often. under their regime, there was one lonely idle telephone in the white house, used by the servants several times a week. but with mckinley came a new order of things. to him a telephone was more than a necessity. it was a pastime, an exhilarating sport. he was the one president who really revelled in the comforts of telephony. in he sat in his canton home and heard the cheers of the chicago convention. later he sat there and ran the first presidential telephone campaign; talked to his managers in thirty-eight states. thus he came to regard the telephone with a higher degree of appreciation than any of his predecessors had done, and eulogized it on many public occasions. "it is bringing us all closer together," was his favorite phrase. to roosevelt the telephone was mainly for emergencies. he used it to the full during the chicago convention of and the peace conference at portsmouth. but with taft the telephone became again the common avenue of conversation. he has introduced at least one new telephonic custom a long-distance talk with his family every evening, when he is away from home. instead of the solitary telephone of cleveland-harrison days, the white house has now a branch exchange of its own--main --with a sheaf of wires that branch out into every room as well as to the nearest central. next to public officials, bankers were perhaps the last to accept the facilities of the telephone. they were slow to abandon the fallacy that no business can be done without a written record. james stillman, of new york, was first among bankers to foresee the telephone era. as early as , while bell was teaching his infant telephone to talk, stillman risked two thousand dollars in a scheme to establish a crude dial system of wire communication, which later grew into new york's first telephone exchange. at the present time, the banker who works closest to his telephone is probably george w. perkins, of the j. p. morgan group of bankers. "he is the only man," says morgan, "who can raise twenty millions in twenty minutes." the perkins plan of rapid transit telephony is to prepare a list of names, from ten to thirty, and to flash from one to another as fast as the operator can ring them up. recently one of the other members of the morgan bank proposed to enlarge its telephone equipment. "what will we gain by more wires?" asked the operator. "if we were to put in a six-hundred pair cable, mr. perkins would keep it busy." the most brilliant feat of the telephone in the financial world was done during the panic of . at the height of the storm, on a saturday evening, the new york bankers met in an almost desperate conference. they decided, as an emergency measure of self-protection, not to ship cash to western banks. at midnight they telephoned this decision to the bankers of chicago and st. louis. these men, in turn, conferred by telephone, and on sunday afternoon called up the bankers of neighboring states. and so the news went from 'phone to 'phone, until by monday morning all bankers and chief depositors were aware of the situation, and prepared for the team-play that prevented any general disaster. as for stockbrokers of the wall street species, they transact practically all their business by telephone. in their stock exchange stand six hundred and forty one booths, each one the terminus of a private wire. a firm of brokers will count it an ordinary year's talking to send fifty thousand messages; and there is one firm which last year sent twice as many. of all brokers, the one who finally accomplished most by telephony was unquestionably e. h. harriman. in the mansion that he built at arden, there were a hundred telephones, sixty of them linked to the long-distance lines. what the brush is to the artist, what the chisel is to the sculptor, the telephone was to harriman. he built his fortune with it. it was in his library, his bathroom, his private car, his camp in the oregon wilder-ness. no transaction was too large or too involved to be settled over its wires. he saved the credit of the erie by telephone--lent it five million dollars as he lay at home on a sickbed. "he is a slave to the telephone," wrote a magazine writer. "nonsense," replied harriman, "it is a slave to me." the telephone arrived in time to prevent big corporations from being unwieldy and aristocratic. the foreman of a pittsburg coal company may now stand in his subterranean office and talk to the president of the steel trust, who sits on the twenty-first floor of a new york skyscraper. the long-distance talks, especially, have grown to be indispensable to the corporations whose plants are scattered and geographically misplaced--to the mills of new england, for instance, that use the cotton of the south and sell so much of their product to the middle west. to the companies that sell perishable commodities, an instantaneous conversation with a buyer in a distant city has often saved a carload or a cargo. such caterers as the meat-packers, who were among the first to realize what bell had made possible, have greatly accelerated the wheels of their business by inter-city conversations. for ten years or longer the cudahys have talked every business morning between omaha and boston, via fifteen hundred and seventy miles of wire. in the refining of oil, the standard oil company alone, at its new york office, sends two hundred and thirty thousand messages a year. in the making of steel, a chemical analysis is made of each caldron of molten pig-iron, when it starts on its way to be refined, and this analysis is sent by telephone to the steelmaker, so that he will know exactly how each potful is to be handled. in the floating of logs down rivers, instead of having relays of shouters to prevent the logs from jamming, there is now a wire along the bank, with a telephone linked on at every point of danger. in the rearing of skyscrapers, it is now usual to have a temporary wire strung vertically, so that the architect may stand on the ground and confer with a foreman who sits astride of a naked girder three hundred feet up in the air. and in the electric light business, the current is distributed wholly by telephoned orders. to give new york the seven million electric lights that have abolished night in that city requires twelve private exchanges and five hundred and twelve telephones. all the power that creates this artificial daylight is generated at a single station, and let flow to twenty-five storage centres. minute by minute, its flow is guided by an expert, who sits at a telephone exchange as though he were a pilot at the wheel of an ocean liner. the first steamship line to take notice of the telephone was the clyde, which had a wire from dock to office in ; and the first railway was the pennsylvania, which two years later was persuaded by professor bell himself to give it a trial in altoona. since then, this railroad has become the chief beneficiary of the art of telephony. it has one hundred and seventy-five exchanges, four hundred operators, thirteen thousand telephones, and twenty thousand miles of wire--a more ample system than the city of new york had in . to-day the telephone goes to sea in the passenger steamer and the warship. its wires are waiting at the dock and the depot, so that a tourist may sit in his stateroom and talk with a friend in some distant office. it is one of the most incredible miracles of telephony that a passenger at new york, who is about to start for chicago on a fast express, may telephone to chicago from the drawing-room of a pullman. he himself, on the swiftest of all trains, will not arrive in chicago for eighteen hours; but the flying words can make the journey, and return, while his train is waiting for the signal to start. in the operation of trains, the railroads have waited thirty years before they dared to trust the telephone, just as they waited fifteen years before they dared to trust the telegraph. in a few railways used the telephone in a small way, but in , when a law was passed that made telegraphers highly expensive, there was a general swing to the telephone. several dozen roads have now put it in use, some employing it as an associate of the morse method and others as a complete substitute. it has already been found to be the quickest way of despatching trains. it will do in five minutes what the telegraph did in ten. and it has enabled railroads to hire more suitable men for the smaller offices. in news-gathering, too, much more than in railroading, the day of the telephone has arrived. the boston globe was the first paper to receive news by telephone. later came the washington star, which had a wire strung to the capitol, and thereby gained an hour over its competitors. to-day the evening papers receive most of their news over the wire a la bell instead of a la morse. this has resulted in a specialization of reporters--one man runs for the news and another man writes it. some of the runners never come to the office. they receive their assignments by telephone, and their salaries by mail. there are even a few who are allowed to telephone their news directly to a swift linotype operator, who clicks it into type on his machine, without the scratch of a pencil. this, of course, is the ideal method of news-gathering, which is rarely possible. a paper of the first class, such as the new york world, has now an outfit of twenty trunk lines and eighty telephones. its outgoing calls are two hundred thousand a year and its incoming calls three hundred thousand, which means that for every morning, evening, or sunday edition, there has been an average of seven hundred and fifty messages. the ordinary newspaper in a small town cannot afford such a service, but recently the united press has originated a cooperative method. it telephones the news over one wire to ten or twelve newspapers at one time. in ten minutes a thousand words can in this way be flung out to a dozen towns, as quickly as by telegraph and much cheaper. but it is in a dangerous crisis, when safety seems to hang upon a second, that the telephone is at its best. it is the instrument of emergencies, a sort of ubiquitous watchman. when the girl operator in the exchange hears a cry for help--"quick! the hospital!" "the fire department!" "the police!" she seldom waits to hear the number. she knows it. she is trained to save half-seconds. and it is at such moments, if ever, that the users of a telephone can appreciate its insurance value. no doubt, if a king richard iii were worsted on a modern battlefield, his instinctive cry would be, "my kingdom for a telephone!" when instant action is needed in the city of new york, a general alarm can in five minutes be sent by the police wires over its whole vast area of three hundred square miles. when, recently, a gas main broke in brooklyn, sixty girls were at once called to the centrals in that part of the city to warn the ten thousand families who had been placed in danger. when the ill-fated general slocum caught fire, a mechanic in a factory on the water-front saw the blaze, and had the presence of mind to telephone the newspapers, the hospitals, and the police. when a small child is lost, or a convict has escaped from prison, or the forest is on fire, or some menace from the weather is at hand, the telephone bells clang out the news, just as the nerves jangle the bells of pain when the body is in danger. in one tragic case, the operator in folsom, new mexico, refused to quit her post until she had warned her people of a flood that had broken loose in the hills above the village. because of her courage, nearly all were saved, though she herself was drowned at the switchboard. her name--mrs. s. j. rooke--deserves to be remembered. if a disaster cannot be prevented, it is the telephone, usually, that brings first aid to the injured. after the destruction of san francisco, governor guild, of massachusetts, sent an appeal for the stricken city to the three hundred and fifty-four mayors of his state; and by the courtesy of the bell company, which carried the messages free, they were delivered to the last and furthermost mayors in less than five hours. after the destruction of messina, an order for enough lumber to build ten thousand new houses was cabled to new york and telephoned to western lumbermen. so quickly was this order filled that on the twelfth day after the arrival of the cablegram, the ships were on their way to messina with the lumber. after the kansas city flood of , when the drenched city was without railways or street-cars or electric lights, it was the telephone that held the city together and brought help to the danger-spots. and after the baltimore fire, the telephone exchange was the last force to quit and the first to recover. its girls sat on their stools at the switchboard until the window-panes were broken by the heat. then they pulled the covers over the board and walked out. two hours later the building was in ashes. three hours later another building was rented on the unburned rim of the city, and the wire chiefs were at work. in one day there was a system of wires for the use of the city officials. in two days these were linked to long-distance wires; and in eleven days a two-thousand-line switchboard was in full working trim. this feat still stands as the record in rebuilding. in the supreme emergency of war, the telephone is as indispensable, very nearly, as the cannon. this, at least, is the belief of the japanese, who handled their armies by telephone when they drove back the russians. each body of japanese troops moved forward like a silkworm, leaving behind it a glistening strand of red copper wire. at the decisive battle of mukden, the silk-worm army, with a million legs, crept against the russian hosts in a vast crescent, a hundred miles from end to end. by means of this glistening red wire, the various batteries and regiments were organized into fifteen divisions. each group of three divisions was wired to a general, and the five generals were wired to the great oyama himself, who sat ten miles back of the firing-line and sent his orders. whenever a regiment lunged forward, one of the soldiers carried a telephone set. if they held their position, two other soldiers ran forward with a spool of wire. in this way and under fire of the russian cannon, one hundred and fifty miles of wire were strung across the battlefield. as the japanese said, it was this "flying telephone" that enabled oyama to manipulate his forces as handily as though he were playing a game of chess. it was in this war, too, that the mikado's soldiers strung the costliest of all telephone lines, at metre hill. when the wire had been basted up this hill to the summit, the fortress of port arthur lay at their mercy. but the climb had cost them twenty-four thousand lives. of the seven million telephones in the united states, about two million are now in farmhouses. every fourth american farmer is in telephone touch with his neighbors and the market. iowa leads, among the farming states. in iowa, not to have a telephone is to belong to what a londoner would call the "submerged tenth" of the population. second in line comes illinois, with kansas, nebraska, and indiana following closely behind; and at the foot of the list, in the matter of farm telephones, are connecticut and louisiana. the first farmer who discovered the value of the telephone was the market gardener. next came the bonanza farmer of the red river valley--such a man, for instance, as oliver dalrymple, of north dakota, who found that by the aid of the telephone he could plant and harvest thirty thousand acres of wheat in a single season. then, not more than half a dozen years ago, there arose a veritable telephone crusade among the farmers of the middle west. cheap telephones, yet fairly good, had by this time been made possible by the improvements of the bell engineers; and stories of what could be done by telephone became the favorite gossip of the day. one farmer had kept his barn from being burned down by telephoning for his neighbors; another had cleared five hundred dollars extra profit on the sale of his cattle, by telephoning to the best market; a third had rescued a flock of sheep by sending quick news of an approaching blizzard; a fourth had saved his son's life by getting an instantaneous message to the doctor; and so on. how the telephone saved a three million dollar fruit crop in colorado, in , is the story that is oftenest told in the west. until that year, the frosts in the spring nipped the buds. no farmer could be sure of his harvest. but in , the fruit-growers bought smudge-pots--three hundred thousand or more. these were placed in the orchards, ready to be lit at a moment's notice. next, an alliance was made with the united states weather bureau so that whenever the frost king came down from the north, a warning could be telephoned to the farmers. just when colorado was pink with apple blossoms, the first warning came. "get ready to light up your smudge-pots in half an hour." then the farmers telephoned to the nearest towns: "frost is coming; come and help us in the orchards." hundreds of men rushed out into the country on horseback and in wagons. in half an hour the last warning came: "light up; the thermometer registers twenty-nine." the smudge-pot artillery was set ablaze, and kept blazing until the news came that the icy forces had retreated. and in this way every colorado farmer who had a telephone saved his fruit. in some farming states, the enthusiasm for the telephone is running so high that mass meetings are held, with lavish oratory on the general theme of "good roads and telephones." and as a result of this telephone crusade, there are now nearly twenty thousand groups of farmers, each one with a mutual telephone system, and one-half of them with sufficient enterprise to link their little webs of wires to the vast bell system, so that at least a million farmers have been brought as close to the great cities as they are to their own barns. what telephones have done to bring in the present era of big crops, is an interesting story in itself. to compress it into a sentence, we might say that the telephone has completed the labor-saving movement which started with the mccormick reaper in . it has lifted the farmer above the wastefulness of being his own errand-boy. the average length of haul from barn to market in the united states is nine and a half miles, so that every trip saved means an extra day's work for a man and team. instead of travelling back and forth, often to no purpose, the farmer may now stay at home and attend to his stock and his crops. as yet, few farmers have learned to appreciate the value of quality in telephone service, as they have in other lines. the same man who will pay six prices for the best seed-corn, and who will allow nothing but high-grade cattle in his barn, will at the same time be content with the shabbiest and flimsiest telephone service, without offering any other excuse than that it is cheap. but this is a transient phase of farm telephony. the cost of an efficient farm system is now so little--not more than two dollars a month, that the present trashy lines are certain sooner or later to go to the junk-heap with the sickle and the flail and all the other cheap and unprofitable things. chapter vii. the telephone and national efficiency the larger significance of the telephone is that it completes the work of eliminating the hermit and gypsy elements of civilization. in an almost ideal way, it has made intercommunication possible without travel. it has enabled a man to settle permanently in one place, and yet keep in personal touch with his fellows. until the last few centuries, much of the world was probably what morocco is to-day--a region without wheeled vehicles or even roads of any sort. there is a mythical story of a wonderful speaking-trumpet possessed by alexander the great, by which he could call a soldier who was ten miles distant; but there was probably no substitute for the human voice except flags and beacon-fires, or any faster method of travel than the gait of a horse or a camel across ungraded plains. the first sensation of rapid transit doubtless came with the sailing vessel; but it was the play-toy of the winds, and unreliable. when columbus dared to set out on his famous voyage, he was five weeks in crossing from spain to the west indies, his best day's record two hundred miles. the swift steamship travel of to-day did not begin until , when the great western raced over the atlantic in fifteen days. as for organized systems of intercommunication, they were unknown even under the rule of a pericles or a caesar. there was no post office in great britain until --a generation after america had begun to be colonized. there was no english mail-coach until ; and when benjamin franklin was postmaster general at philadelphia, an answer by mail from boston, when all went well, required not less than three weeks. there was not even a hard-surface road in the thirteen united states until ; nor even a postage stamp until , the year in which alexander graham bell was born. in this same year henry clay delivered his memorable speech on the mexican war, at lexington, kentucky, and it was telegraphed to the new york herald at a cost of five hundred dollars, thus breaking all previous records for news-gathering enterprise. eleven years later the first cable established an instantaneous sign-language between americans and europeans; and in there came the perfect distance-talking of the telephone. no invention has been more timely than the telephone. it arrived at the exact period when it was needed for the organization of great cities and the unification of nations. the new ideas and energies of science, commerce, and cooperation were beginning to win victories in all parts of the earth. the first railroad had just arrived in china; the first parliament in japan; the first constitution in spain. stanley was moving like a tiny point of light through the heart of the dark continent. the universal postal union had been organized in a little hall in berne. the red cross movement was twelve years old. an international congress of hygiene was being held at brussells, and an international congress of medicine at philadelphia. de lesseps had finished the suez canal and was examining panama. italy and germany had recently been built into nations; france had finally swept aside the empire and the commune and established the republic. and what with the new agencies of railroads, steamships, cheap newspapers, cables, and telegraphs, the civilized races of mankind had begun to be knit together into a practical consolidation. to the united states, especially, the telephone came as a friend in need. after a hundred years of growth, the republic was still a loose confederation of separate states, rather than one great united nation. it had recently fallen apart for four years, with a wide gulf of blood between; and with two flags, two presidents, and two armies. in it was hesitating halfway between doubt and confidence, between the old political issues of north and south, and the new industrial issues of foreign trade and the development of material resources. the west was being thrown open. the indians and buffaloes were being driven back. there was a line of railway from ocean to ocean. the population was gaining at the rate of a million a year. colorado had just been baptized as a new state. and it was still an unsolved problem whether or not the united states could be kept united, whether or not it could be built into an organic nation without losing the spirit of self-help and democracy. it is not easy for us to realize to-day how young and primitive was the united states of . yet the fact is that we have twice the population that we had when the telephone was invented. we have twice the wheat crop and twice as much money in circulation. we have three times the railways, banks, libraries, newspapers, exports, farm values, and national wealth. we have ten million farmers who make four times as much money as seven million farmers made in . we spend four times as much on our public schools, and we put four times as much in the savings bank. we have five times as many students in the colleges. and we have so revolutionized our methods of production that we now produce seven times as much coal, fourteen times as much oil and pig-iron, twenty-two times as much copper, and forty-three times as much steel. there were no skyscrapers in , no trolleys, no electric lights, no gasoline engines, no self-binders, no bicycles, no automobiles. there was no oklahoma, and the combined population of montana, wyoming, idaho, and arizona was about equal to that of des moines. it was in this year that general custer was killed by the sioux; that the flimsy iron railway bridge fell at ashtabula; that the "molly maguires" terrorized pennsylvania; that the first wire of the brooklyn bridge was strung; and that boss tweed and hell gate were both put out of the way in new york. the great elm, under which the revolutionary patriots had met, was still standing on boston common. daniel drew, the new york financier, who was born before the american constitution was adopted, was still alive; so were commodore vanderbilt, joseph henry, a. t. stewart, thurlow weed, peter cooper, cyrus mccormick, lucretia mott, bryant, longfellow, and emerson. most old people could remember the running of the first railway train; people of middle age could remember the sending of the first telegraph message; and the children in the high schools remembered the laying of the first atlantic cable. the grandfathers of were fond of telling how webster opposed taking texas and oregon into the union; how george washington advised against including the mississippi river; and how monroe warned congress that a country that reached from the atlantic to the middle west was "too extensive to be governed but by a despotic monarchy." they told how abraham lincoln, when he was postmaster of new salem, used to carry the letters in his coon-skin cap and deliver them at sight; how in the mails were carried on horseback and not in stages, so as to have the quickest possible service; and how the news of madison's election was three weeks in reaching the people of kentucky. when the telegraph was mentioned, they told how in revolutionary days the patriots used a system of signalling called "washington's tele-graph," consisting of a pole, a flag, a basket, and a barrel. so, the young republic was still within hearing distance of its childhood, in . both in sentiment and in methods of work it was living close to the log-cabin period. many of the old slow ways survived, the ways that were fast enough in the days of the stage-coach and the tinder-box. there were seventy-seven thousand miles of railway, but poorly built and in short lengths. there were manufacturing industries that employed two million, four hundred thousand people, but every trade was broken up into a chaos of small competitive units, each at war with all the others. there were energy and enterprise in the highest degree, but not efficiency or organization. little as we knew it, in we were mainly gathering together the plans and the raw materials for the building up of the modern business world, with its quick, tense life and its national structure of immense coordinated industries. in the age of specialization and community of interest was in its dawn. the cobbler had given place to the elaborate factory, in which seventy men cooperated to make one shoe. the merchant who had hitherto lived over his store now ventured to have a home in the suburbs. no man was any longer a self-sufficient robinson crusoe. he was a fraction, a single part of a social mechanism, who must necessarily keep in the closest touch with many others. a new interdependent form of civilization was about to be developed, and the telephone arrived in the nick of time to make this new civilization workable and convenient. it was the unfolding of a new organ. just as the eye had become the telescope, and the hand had become machinery, and the feet had become railways, so the voice became the telephone. it was a new ideal method of communication that had been made indispensable by new conditions. the prophecy of carlyle had come true, when he said that "men cannot now be bound to men by brass collars; you will have to bind them by other far nobler and cunninger methods." railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by "nobler and cunninger methods." the telegraph and cable had gone still farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet. and then came the telephone, giving direct instantaneous communication and putting the people of each nation within hearing distance of each other. it was the completion of a long series of inventions. it was the keystone of the arch. it was the one last improvement that enabled interdependent nations to handle themselves and to hold together. to make railways and steamboats carry letters was much, in the evolution of the means of communication. to make the electric wire carry signals was more, because of the instantaneous transmission of important news. but to make the electric wire carry speech was most, because it put all fellow-citizens face to face, and made both message and answer instantaneous. the invention of the telephone taught the genie of electricity to do better than to carry mes-sages in the sign language of the dumb. it taught him to speak. as emerson has finely said: "we had letters to send. couriers could not go fast enough, nor far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snowdrifts in winter, heat in summer--could not get their horses out of a walk. but we found that the air and the earth were full of electricity, and always going our way, just the way we wanted to send. would he take a message, just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time." as to the exact value of the telephone to the united states in dollars and cents, no one can tell. one statistician has given us a total of three million dollars a day as the amount saved by using telephones. this sum may be far too high, or too low. it can be no more than a guess. the only adequate way to arrive at the value of the telephone is to consider the nation as a whole, to take it all in all as a going concern, and to note that such a nation would be absolutely impossible without its telephone service. some sort of a slower and lower grade republic we might have, with small industrial units, long hours of labor, lower wages, and clumsier ways. the money loss would be enormous, but more serious still would be the loss in the quality of the national life. inevitably, an untelephoned nation is less social, less unified, less progressive, and less efficient. it belongs to an inferior species. how to make a civilization that is organized and quick, instead of a barbarism that was chaotic and slow--that is the universal human problem, not wholly solved to-day. and how to develop a science of intercommunication, which commenced when the wild animals began to travel in herds and to protect themselves from their enemies by a language of danger-signals, and to democratize this science until the entire nation becomes self-conscious and able to act as one living being--that is the part of this universal problem which finally necessitated the invention of the telephone. with the use of the telephone has come a new habit of mind. the slow and sluggish mood has been sloughed off. the old to-morrow habit has been superseded by "do it to-day"; and life has become more tense, alert, vivid. the brain has been relieved of the suspense of waiting for an answer, which is a psychological gain of great importance. it receives its reply at once and is set free to consider other matters. there is less burden upon the memory and the whole mind can be given to each new proposition. a new instinct of speed has been developed, much more fully in the united states than elsewhere. "no american goes slow," said ian maclaren, "if he has the chance of going fast; he does not stop to talk if he can talk walking; and he does not walk if he can ride." he is as pleased as a child with a new toy when some speed record is broken, when a pair of shoes is made in eleven minutes, when a man lays twelve hundred bricks in an hour, or when a ship crosses the atlantic in four and a half days. even seconds are now counted and split up into fractions. the average time, for instance, taken to reply to a telephone call by a new york operator, is now three and two-fifth seconds; and even this tiny atom of time is being strenuously worn down. as a witty frenchman has said, one of our most lively regrets is that while we are at the telephone we cannot do business with our feet. we regard it as a victory over the hostility of nature when we do an hour's work in a minute or a minute's work in a second. instead of saying, as the spanish do, "life is too short; what can one person do?" an american is more apt to say, "life is too short; therefore i must do to-day's work to-day." to pack a lifetime with energy--that is the american plan, and so to economize that energy as to get the largest results. to get a question asked and answered in five minutes by means of an electric wire, instead of in two hours by the slow trudging of a messenger boy--that is the method that best suits our passion for instantaneous service. it is one of the few social laws of which we are fairly sure, that a nation organizes in proportion to its velocity. we know that a four-mile-an-hour nation must remain a huge inert mass of peasants and villagers; or if, after centuries of slow toil, it should pile up a great city, the city will sooner or later fall to pieces of its own weight. in such a way babylon rose and fell, and nineveh, and thebes, and carthage, and rome. mere bulk, unorganized, becomes its own destroyer. it dies of clogging and congestion. but when stephenson's rocket ran twenty-nine miles an hour, and morse's telegraph clicked its signals from washington to baltimore, and bell's telephone flashed the vibrations of speech between boston and salem, a new era began. in came the era of speed and the finely organized nations. in came cities of unprecedented bulk, but held together so closely by a web-work of steel rails and copper wires that they have become more alert and cooperative than any tiny hamlet of mud huts on the banks of the congo. that the telephone is now doing most of all, in this binding together of all manner of men, is perhaps not too much to claim, when we remember that there are now in the united states seventy thousand holders of bell telephone stock and ten million users of telephone service. there are two hundred and sixty-four wires crossing the mississippi, in the bell system; and five hundred and forty-four crossing mason and dixon's line. it is the telephone which does most to link together cottage and skyscraper and mansion and factory and farm. it is not limited to experts or college graduates. it reaches the man with a nickel as well as the man with a million. it speaks all languages and serves all trades. it helps to prevent sectionalism and race feuds. it gives a common meeting place to capitalists and wage-workers. it is so essentially the instrument of all the people, in fact, that we might almost point to it as a national emblem, as the trade-mark of democracy and the american spirit. in a country like ours, where there are eighty nationalities in the public schools, the telephone has a peculiar value as a part of the national digestive apparatus. it prevents the growth of dialects and helps on the process of assimilation. such is the push of american life, that the humble immigrants from southern europe, before they have been here half a dozen years, have acquired the telephone habit and have linked on their small shops to the great wire network of intercommunication. in the one community of brownsville, for example, settled several years ago by an overflow of russian jews from the east side of new york, there are now as many telephones as in the kingdom of greece. and in the swarming east side itself, there is a single exchange in orchard street which has more wires than there are in all the exchanges of egypt. there can be few higher ideals of practical democracy than that which comes to us from the telephone engineer. his purpose is much more comprehensive than the supplying of telephones to those who want them. it is rather to make the telephone as universal as the water faucet, to bring within speaking distance every economic unit, to connect to the social organism every person who may at any time be needed. just as the click of the reaper means bread, and the purr of the sewing-machine means clothes, and the roar of the bessemer converter means steel, and the rattle of the press means education, so the ring of the telephone bell has come to mean unity and organization. already, by cable, telegraph, and telephone, no two towns in the civilized world are more than one hour apart. we have even girdled the earth with a cablegram in twelve minutes. we have made it possible for any man in new york city to enter into conversation with any other new yorker in twenty-one seconds. we have not been satisfied with establishing such a system of transportation that we can start any day for anywhere from anywhere else; neither have we been satisfied with establishing such a system of communication that news and gossip are the common property of all nations. we have gone farther. we have established in every large region of population a system of voice-nerves that puts every man at every other man's ear, and which so magically eliminates the factor of distance that the united states becomes three thousand miles of neighbors, side by side. this effort to conquer time and space is above all else the instinct of material progress. to shrivel up the miles and to stretch out the minutes--this has been one of the master passions of the human race. and thus the larger truth about the telephone is that it is vastly more than a mere convenience. it is not to be classed with safety razors and piano players and fountain pens. it is nothing less than the high-speed tool of civilization, gearing up the whole mechanism to more effective social service. it is the symbol of national efficiency and cooperation. all this the telephone is doing, at a total cost to the nation of probably $ , , a year--no more than american farmers earn in ten days. we pay the same price for it as we do for the potatoes, or for one-third of the hay crop, or for one-eighth of the corn. out of every nickel spent for electrical service, one cent goes to the telephone. we could settle our telephone bill, and have several millions left over, if we cut off every fourth glass of liquor and smoke of tobacco. whoever rents a typewriting machine, or uses a street car twice a day, or has his shoes polished once a day, may for the same expense have a very good telephone service. merely to shovel away the snow of a single storm in cost the city government of new york as much as it will pay for five or six years of telephoning. this almost incredible cheapness of telephony is still far from being generally perceived, mainly for psychological reasons. a telephone is not impressive. it has no bulk. it is not like the singer building or the lusitania. its wires and switchboards and batteries are scattered and hidden, and few have sufficient imagination to picture them in all their complexity. if only it were possible to assemble the hundred or more telephone buildings of new york in one vast plaza, and if the two thousand clerks and three thousand maintenance men and six thousand girl operators were to march to work each morning with bands and banners, then, perhaps, there might be the necessary quality of impressiveness by which any large idea must always be imparted to the public mind. for lack of a seven and one-half cent coin, there is now five-cent telephony even in the largest american cities. for five cents whoever wishes has an entire wire-system at his service, a system that is kept waiting by day and night, so that it will be ready the instant he needs it. this system may have cost from twenty to fifty millions, yet it may be hired for one-eighth the cost of renting an automobile. even in long-distance telephony, the expense of a message dwindles when it is compared with the price of a return railway ticket. a talk from new york to philadelphia, for instance, costs seventy-five cents, while the railway fare would be four dollars. from new york to chicago a talk costs five dollars as against seventy dollars by rail. as harriman once said, "i can't get from my home to the depot for the price of a talk to omaha." to say what the net profits have been, to the entire body of people who have invested money in the telephone, will always be more or less of a guess. the general belief that immense fortunes were made by the lucky holders of bell stock, is an exaggeration that has been kept alive by the promoters of wildcat companies. no such fortunes were made. "i do not believe," says theodore vail, "that any one man ever made a clear million out of the telephone." there are not apt to be any get-rich-quick for-tunes made in corporations that issue no watered stock and do not capitalize their franchises. on the contrary, up to , the holders of stock in the bell companies had paid in four million, seven hundred thousand dollars more than the par value; and in the recent consolidation of eastern companies, under the presidency of union n. bethell, the new stock was actually eight millions less than the stock that was retired. few telephone companies paid any profits at first. they had undervalued the cost of building and maintenance. denver expected the cost to be two thousand, five hundred dollars and spent sixty thousand dollars. buffalo expected to pay three thousand dollars and had to pay one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. also, they made the unwelcome discovery that an exchange of two hundred costs more than twice as much as an exchange of one hundred, because of the greater amount of traffic. usually a dollar that is paid to a telephone company is divided as follows: rent............ c taxes........... c interest........ c surplus......... c maintenance.... c dividends...... c labor.......... c ---- $ . most of the rate troubles (and their name has been legion) have arisen because the telephone business was not understood. in fact, until recently, it did not understand itself. it persisted in holding to a local and individualistic view of its business. it was slow to put telephones in unprofitable places. it expected every instrument to pay its way. in many states, both the telephone men and the public overlooked the most vital fact in the case, which is that the members of a telephone system are above all else interdependent. one telephone by itself has no value. it is as useless as a reed cut out of an organ or a finger that is severed from a hand. it is not even ornamental or adaptable to any other pur-pose. it is not at all like a piano or a talking-machine, which has a separate existence. it is useful only in proportion to the number of other telephones it reaches. and every telephone anywhere adds value to every other telephone on the same system of wires. that, in a sentence, is the keynote of equitable rates. many a telephone, for the general good, must be put where it does not earn its own living. at any time some sudden emergency may arise that will make it for the moment priceless. especially since the advent of the automobile, there is no nook or corner from which it may not be supremely necessary, now and then, to send a message. this principle was acted upon recently in a most practical way by the pennsylvania railroad, which at its own expense installed five hundred and twenty-five telephones in the homes of its workmen in altoona. in the same way, it is clearly the social duty of the telephone company to widen out its system until every point is covered, and then to distribute its gross charges as fairly as it can. the whole must carry the whole--that is the philosophy of rates which must finally be recognized by legislatures and telephone companies alike. it can never, of course, be reduced to a system or formula. it will always be a matter of opinion and compromise, requiring much skill and much patience. but there will seldom be any serious trouble when once its basic principles are understood. like all time-saving inventions, like the railroad, the reaper, and the bessemer converter, the telephone, in the last analysis, costs nothing; it is the lack of it that costs. the nation that most is the nation without it. chapter viii. the telephone in foreign countries the telephone was nearly a year old before europe was aware of its existence. it received no public notice of any kind whatever until march , , when the london athenaeum mentioned it in a few careful sentences. it was not welcomed, except by those who wished an evening's entertainment. and to the entire commercial world it was for four or five years a sort of scientific billiken, that never could be of any service to serious people. one after another, several american enthusiasts rushed posthaste to europe, with dreams of eager nations clamoring for telephone systems, and one after another they failed. frederick a. gower was the first of these. he was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propagandist. later he met a prima donna, fell in love with and married her, forsook telephony for ballooning, and lost his life in attempting to fly across the english channel. next went william h. reynolds, of providence, who had bought five-eights of the british patent for five thousand dollars, and half the right to russia, spain, portugal, and italy for two thousand, five hundred dollars. how he was received may be seen from a letter of his which has been preserved. "i have been working in london for four months," he writes; "i have been to the bank of england and elsewhere; and i have not found one man who will put one shilling into the telephone." bell himself hurried to england and scotland on his wedding tour in , with great expectations of having his invention appreciated in his native land. but from a business point of view, his mission was a total failure. he received dinners a-plenty, but no contracts; and came back to the united states an impoverished and disheartened man. then the optimistic gardiner g. hubbard, bell's father-in-law, threw himself against the european inertia and organized the international and oriental telephone companies, which came to nothing of any importance. in the same year even enos m. barton, the sagacious founder of the western electric, went to france and england to establish an export trade in telephones, and failed. these able men found their plans thwarted by the indifference of the public, and often by open hostility. "the telephone is little better than a toy," said the saturday review; "it amazes ignorant people for a moment, but it is inferior to the well-established system of air-tubes." "what will become of the privacy of life?" asked another london editor. "what will become of the sanctity of the domestic hearth?" writers vied with each other in inventing methods of pooh-poohing bell and his invention. "it is ridiculously simple," said one. "it is only an electrical speaking-tube," said another. "it is a complicated form of speaking-trumpet," said a third. no british editor could at first conceive of any use for the telephone, except for divers and coal miners. the price, too, created a general outcry. floods of toy telephones were being sold on the streets at a shilling apiece; and although the government was charging sixty dollars a year for the use of its printing-telegraphs, people protested loudly against paying half as much for telephones. as late as , herbert spencer writes: "the telephone is scarcely used at all in london, and is unknown in the other english cities." the first man of consequence to befriend the telephone was lord kelvin, then an untitled young scientist. he had seen the original telephones at the centennial in philadelphia, and was so fascinated with them that the impulsive bell had thrust them into his hands as a gift. at the next meeting of the british association for the advancement of science, lord kelvin exhibited these. he did more. he became the champion of the telephone. he staked his reputation upon it. he told the story of the tests made at the centennial, and assured the sceptical scientists that he had not been deceived. "all this my own ears heard," he said, "spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by this circular disc of iron." the scientists and electrical experts were, for the most part, split up into two camps. some of them said the telephone was impossible, while others said that "nothing could be simpler." almost all were agreed that what bell had done was a humorous trifle. but lord kelvin persisted. he hammered the truth home that the telephone was "one of the most interesting inventions that has ever been made in the history of science." he gave a demonstration with one end of the wire in a coal mine. he stood side by side with bell at a public meeting in glasgow, and declared: "the things that were called telephones before bell were as different from bell's telephone as a series of hand-claps are different from the human voice. they were in fact electrical claps; while bell conceived the idea--the wholly original and novel idea--of giving continuity to the shocks, so as to perfectly reproduce the human voice." one by one the scientists were forced to take the telephone seriously. at a public test there was one noted professor who still stood in the ranks of the doubters. he was asked to send a message. he went to the instrument with a grin of incredulity, and thinking the whole exhibition a joke, shouted into the mouthpiece: "hi diddle diddle--follow up that." then he listened for an answer. the look on his face changed to one of the utmost amazement. "it says--`the cat and the fiddle,'" he gasped, and forthwith he became a convert to telephony. by such tests the men of science were won over, and by the middle of bell received a "vociferous welcome" when he addressed them at their annual convention at plymouth. soon afterwards, the london times surrendered. it whirled right-about-face and praised the telephone to the skies. "suddenly and quietly the whole human race is brought within speaking and hearing distance," it exclaimed; "scarcely anything was more desired and more impossible." the next paper to quit the mob of scoffers was the tatler, which said in an editorial peroration, "we cannot but feel im-pressed by the picture of a human child commanding the subtlest and strongest force in nature to carry, like a slave, some whisper around the world." closely after the scientists and editors came the nobility. the earl of caithness led the way. he declared in public that "the telephone is the most extraordinary thing i ever saw in my life." and one wintry morning in queen victoria drove to the house of sir thomas biddulph, in london, and for an hour talked and listened by telephone to kate field, who sat in a downing street office. miss field sang "kathleen mavourneen," and the queen thanked her by telephone, saying she was "immensely pleased." she congratulated bell himself, who was present, and asked if she might be permitted to buy the two telephones; whereupon bell presented her with a pair done in ivory. this incident, as may be imagined, did much to establish the reputation of telephony in great britain. a wire was at once strung to windsor castle. others were ordered by the daily news, the persian ambassador, and five or six lords and baronets. then came an order which raised the hopes of the telephone men to the highest heaven, from the banking house of j. s. morgan & co. it was the first recognition from the "seats of the mighty" in the business and financial world. a tiny exchange, with ten wires, was promptly started in london; and on april d, , theodore vail, the young manager of the bell company, sent an order to the factory in boston, "please make one hundred hand telephones for export trade as early as possible." the foreign trade had begun. then there came a thunderbolt out of a blue sky, a wholly unforeseen disaster. just as a few energetic companies were sprouting up, the postmaster general suddenly proclaimed that the telephone was a species of telegraph. according to a british law the telegraph was required to be a government monopoly. this law had been passed six years before the telephone was born, but no matter. the telephone men protested and argued. tyndall and lord kelvin warned the government that it was making an indefensible mistake. but nothing could be done. just as the first railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly declared to be a telegraph. also, to add to the absurd humor of the situation, judge stephen, of the high court of justice, spoke the final word that compelled the telephone legally to be a telegraph, and sustained his opinion by a quotation from webster's dictionary, which was published twenty years before the telephone was invented. having captured this new rival, what next? the postmaster general did not know. he had, of course, no experience in telephony, and neither had any of his officials in the telegraph department. there was no book and no college to instruct him. his telegraph was then, as it is to-day, a business failure. it was not earning its keep. therefore he did not dare to shoulder the risk of constructing a second system of wires, and at last consented to give licenses to private companies. but the muddle continued. in order to compel competition, according to the academic theories of the day, licenses were given to thir-teen private companies. as might have been expected, the ablest company quickly swallowed the other twelve. if it had been let alone, this company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in by jealous regulations. it was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross earnings to the post office. it was to hold itself ready to sell out at six months' notice. and as soon as it had strung a long-distance system of wires, the postmaster general pounced down upon it and took it away. then, in , the post office tossed aside all obligations to the licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition. it undertook to start a second system in london, and in two years discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. it granted licenses to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. these cities set out bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, and finally quit. even glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, met its waterloo in the telephone. it spent one million, eight hundred thousand dollars on a plant that was obsolete when it was new, ran it for a time at a loss, and then sold it to the post office in for one million, five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. so, from first to last, the story of the telephone in great britain has been a "comedy of errors." there are now, in the two islands, not six hundred thousand telephones in use. london, with its six hundred and forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining at the rate of ten thousand a year. no large improvements are under way, as the post office has given notice that it will take over and operate all private companies on new year's day, . the bureaucratic muddle, so it seems, is to continue indefinitely. in germany there has been the same burden of bureaucracy, but less backing and filling. there is a complete government monopoly. whoever commits the crime of leasing telephone service to his neighbors may be sent to jail for six months. here, too, the postmaster general has been supreme. he has forced the telephone business into a postal mould. the man in a small city must pay as high a rate for a small service, as the man in a large city pays for a large service. there is a fair degree of efficiency, but no high speed or record-breaking. the german engineers have not kept in close touch with the progress of telephony in the united states. they have preferred to devise methods of their own, and so have created a miscellaneous assortment of systems, good, bad, and indifferent. all told, there is probably an investment of seventy-five million dollars and a total of nine hundred thousand telephones. telephony has always been in high favor with the kaiser. it is his custom, when planning a hunting party, to have a special wire strung to the forest headquarters, so that he can converse every morning with his cabinet. he has conferred degrees and honors by telephone. even his former chancellor, von buelow, received his title of count in this informal way. but the first friend of the telephone in germany was bismarck. the old unifier saw instantly its value in holding a nation together, and ordered a line between his palace in berlin and his farm at varzin, which lay two hundred and thirty miles apart. this was as early as the fall of , and was thus the first long-distance line in europe. in france, as in england, the government seized upon the telephone business as soon as the pioneer work had been done by private citizens. in it practically confiscated the paris system, and after nine years of litigation paid five million francs to its owners. with this reckless beginning, it floundered from bad to worse. it assembled the most complete assortment of other nations' mistakes, and invented several of its own. almost every known evil of bureaucracy was developed. the system of rates was turned upside down; the flat rate, which can be profitably permitted in small cities only, was put in force in the large cities, and the message rate, which is applicable only to large cities, was put in force in small places. the girl operators were entangled in a maze of civil service rules. they were not allowed to marry without the permission of the postmaster general; and on no account might they dare to marry a mayor, a policeman, a cashier, or a foreigner, lest they betray the secrets of the switchboard. there was no national plan, no standardization, no staff of inventors and improvers. every user was required to buy his own telephone. as george ade has said, "anything attached to a wall is liable to be a telephone in paris." and so, what with poor equipment and red tape, the french system became what it remains to-day, the most conspicuous example of what not to do in telephony. there are barely as many telephones in the whole of france as ought normally to be in the city of paris. there are not as many as are now in use in chicago. the exasperated parisians have protested. they have presented a petition with thirty-two thousand names. they have even organized a "kickers' league"--the only body of its kind in any country--to demand good service at a fair price. the daily loss from bureaucratic telephony has become enormous. "one blundering girl in a telephone exchange cost me five thousand dollars on the day of the panic in ," said george kessler. but the government clears a net profit of three million dollars a year from its telephone monopoly; and until , when a committee of betterment was appointed, it showed no concern at the discomfort of the public. there was one striking lesson in telephone efficiency which paris received in , when its main exchange was totally destroyed by fire. "to build a new switchboard," said european manufacturers, "will require four or five months." a hustling young chicagoan appeared on the scene. "we 'll put in a new switchboard in sixty days," he said; "and agree to forfeit six hundred dollars a day for delay." such quick work had never been known. but it was chicago's chance to show what she could do. paris and chicago are four thousand, five hundred miles apart, a twelve days' journey. the switchboard was to be a hundred and eighty feet in length, with ten thousand wires. yet the western electric finished it in three weeks. it was rushed on six freight-cars to new york, loaded on the french steamer la provence, and deposited at paris in thirty-six days; so that by the time the sixty days had expired, it was running full speed with a staff of ninety operators. russia and austria-hungary have now about one hundred and twenty-five thousand telephones apiece. they are neck and neck in a race that has not at any time been a fast one. in each country the government has been a neglectful stepmother to the telephone. it has starved the business with a lack of capital and used no enterprise in expanding it. outside of vienna, budapest, st. petersburg, and moscow there are no wire-systems of any consequence. the political deadlock between austria and hungary shuts out any immediate hope of a happier life for the telephone in those countries; but in russia there has recently been a change in policy that may open up a new era. permits are now being offered to one private company in each city, in return for three per cent of the revenue. by this step russia has unexpectedly swept to the front and is now, to telephone men, the freest country in europe. in tiny switzerland there has been government ownership from the first, but with less detriment to the business than elsewhere. here the officials have actually jilted the telegraph for the telephone. they have seen the value of the talking wire to hold their valley villages together; and so have cries-crossed the alps with a cheap and somewhat flimsy system of telephony that carries sixty million conversations a year. even the monks of st. bernard, who rescue snowbound travellers, have now equipped their mountain with a series of telephone booths. the highest telephone in the world is on the peak of monte rosa, in the italian alps, very nearly three miles above the level of the sea. it is linked to a line that runs to rome, in order that a queen may talk to a professor. in this case the queen is margherita of italy and the professor is signor mosso, the astronomer, who studies the heavens from an observatory on monte rosa. at her own expense, the queen had this wire strung by a crew of linemen, who slipped and floundered on the mountain for six years before they had it pegged in place. the general situation in italy is like that in great britain. the government has always monopolized the long-distance lines, and is now about to buy out all private companies. there are only fifty-five thousand telephones to thirty-two million people--as many as in norway and less than in denmark. and in many of the southern and sicilian provinces the jingle of the telephone bell is still an unfamiliar sound. the main peculiarity in holland is that there is no national plan, but rather a patchwork, that resembles joseph's coat of many colors. each city engineer has designed his own type of apparatus and had it made to order. also, each company is fenced in by law within a six-mile circle, so that holland is dotted with thumb-nail systems, no two of which are alike. in belgium there has been a government system since , hence there is unity, but no enterprise. the plant is old-fashioned and too small. spain has private companies, which give fairly good service to twenty thousand people. roumania has half as many. portugal has two small companies in lisbon and oporto. greece, servia, and bulgaria have a scanty two thousand apiece. the frozen little isle of iceland has one-quarter as many; and even into turkey, which was a forbidden land under the regime of the old sultan, the young turks are importing boxes of telephones and coils of copper wire. there is one european country, and only one, which has caught the telephone spirit--sweden. here telephony had a free swinging start. it was let alone by the post office; and better still, it had a man, a business-builder of remarkable force and ability, named henry cedergren. had this man been made the telephone-master of europe, there would have been a different story to tell. by his insistent enterprise he made stockholm the best telephoned city outside of the united states. he pushed his country forward until, having one hundred and sixty-five thousand telephones, it stood fourth among the european nations. since his death the government has entered the field with a duplicate system, and a war has been begun which grows yearly more costly and absurd. asia, as yet, with her eight hundred and fifty million people, has fewer telephones than philadelphia, and three-fourths of them are in the tiny island of japan. the japanese were enthusiastic telephonists from the first. they had a busy exchange in tokio in . this has now grown to have twenty-five thousand users, and might have more, if it had not been stunted by the peculiar policy of the government. the public officials who operate the system are able men. they charge a fair price and make ten per cent profit for the state. but they do not keep pace with the demand. it is one of the oddest vagaries of public ownership that there is now in tokio a waiting list of eight thousand citizens, who are offering to pay for telephones and cannot get them. and when a tokian dies, his franchise to a telephone, if he has one, is usually itemized in his will as a four-hundred-dollar property. india, which is second on the asiatic list, has no more than nine thousand telephones--one to every thirty-three thousand of her population! not quite so many, in fact, as there are in five of the skyscrapers of new york. the dutch east indies and china have only seven thousand apiece, but in china there has recently come a forward movement. a fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. peking is now pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. others are being built in canton, hankow, and tien-tsin. ultimately, the telephone will flourish in china, as it has done in the chinese quarter in san francisco. the empress of china, after the siege of peking, commanded that a telephone should be hung in her palace, within reach of her dragon throne; and she was very friendly with any representative of the "speaking lightning sounds" business, as the chinese term telephony. in persia the telephone made its entry recently in true comic-opera fashion. a new shah, in an outburst of confidence, set up a wire between his palace and the market-place in teheran, and invited his people to talk to him whenever they had grievances. and they talked! they talked so freely and used such language, that the shah ordered out his soldiers and attacked them. he fired upon the new parliament, and was at once chased out of persia by the enraged people. from this it would appear that the telephone ought to be popular in persia, although at present there are not more than twenty in use. south america, outside of buenos ayres, has few telephones, probably not more than thirty thousand. dom pedro of brazil, who befriended bell at the centennial, introduced telephony into his country in ; but it has not in thirty years been able to obtain ten thousand users. canada has exactly the same number as sweden--one hundred and sixty-five thousand. mexico has perhaps ten thousand; new zealand twenty-six thousand; and australia fifty-five thousand. far down in the list of continents stands africa. egypt and algeria have twelve thousand at the north; british south africa has as many at the south; and in the vast stretches between there are barely a thousand more. whoever pushes into central africa will still hear the beat of the wooden drum, which is the clattering sign-language of the natives. one strand of copper wire there is, through the congo region, placed there by order of the late king of belgium. to string it was probably the most adventurous piece of work in the history of telephone linemen. there was one seven hundred and fifty mile stretch of the central jungle. there were white ants that ate the wooden poles, and wild elephants that pulled up the iron poles. there were monkeys that played tag on the lines, and savages that stole the wire for arrow-heads. but the line was carried through, and to-day is alive with conversations concerning rubber and ivory. so, we may almost say of the telephone that "there is no speech nor language where its voice is not heard." there are even a thousand miles of its wire in abyssinia and one hundred and fifty miles in the fiji islands. roughly speaking, there are now ten million telephones in all countries, employing two hundred and fifty thousand people, requiring twenty-one million miles of wire, representing a cost of fifteen hundred million dollars, and carrying fourteen thousand million conversations a year. all this, and yet the men who heard the first feeble cry of the infant telephone are still alive, and not by any means old. no foreign country has reached the high american level of telephony. the united states has eight telephones per hundred of population, while no other country has one-half as many. canada stands second, with almost four per hundred; and sweden is third. germany has as many telephones as the state of new york; and great britain as many as ohio. chicago has more than london; and boston twice as many as paris. in the whole of europe, with her twenty nations, there are one-third as many telephones as in the united states. in proportion to her population, europe has only one-thirteenth as many. the united states writes half as many letters as europe, sends one-third as many telegrams, and talks twice as much at the telephone. the average european family sends three telegrams a year, and three letters and one telephone message a week; while the average american family sends five telegrams a year, and seven letters and eleven telephone messages a week. this one na-tion, which owns six per cent of the earth and is five per cent of the human race, has seventy per cent of the telephones. and fifty per cent, or one-half, of the telephony of the world, is now comprised in the bell system of this country. there are only six nations in europe that make a fair showing--the germans, british, swedish, danes, norwegians, and swiss. the others have less than one telephone per hundred. little denmark has more than austria. little finland has better service than france. the belgian telephones have cost the most--two hundred and seventy-three dollars apiece; and the finnish telephones the least--eighty-one dollars. but a telephone in belgium earns three times as much as one in norway. in general, the lesson in europe is this, that the telephone is what a nation makes it. its usefulness depends upon the sense and enterprise with which it is handled. it may be either an invaluable asset or a nuisance. too much government! that has been the basic reason for failure in most countries. before the telephone was invented, the telegraph had been made a state monopoly; and the tele-phone was regarded as a species of telegraph. the public officials did not see that a telephone system is a highly complex and technical problem, much more like a piano factory or a steel-mill. and so, wherever a group of citizens established a telephone service, the government officials looked upon it with jealous eyes, and usually snatched it away. the telephone thus became a part of the telegraph, which is a part of the post office, which is a part of the government. it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction--a mere twig of bureaucracy. under such conditions the telephone could not prosper. the wonder is that it survived. handled on the american plan, the telephone abroad may be raised to american levels. there is no racial reason for failure. the slow service and the bungling are the natural results of treating the telephone as though it were a road or a fire department; and any nation that rises to a proper conception of the telephone, that dares to put it into competent hands and to strengthen it with enough capital, can secure as alert and brisk a service as heart can wish. some nations are already on the way. china, japan, and france have sent delegations to new york city--"the mecca of telephone men," to learn the art of telephony in its highest development. even russia has rescued the telephone from her bureaucrats and is now offering it freely to men of enterprise. in most foreign countries telephone service is being steadily geared up to a faster pace. the craze for "cheap and nasty" telephony is passing; and the idea that the telephone is above all else a speed instrument, is gaining ground. a faster long-distance service, at double rates, is being well patronized. slow-moving races are learning the value of time, which is the first lesson in telephony. our reapers and mowers now go to seventy-five nations. our street cars run in all great cities. morocco is importing our dollar watches; korea is learning the waste of allowing nine men to dig with one spade. and all this means telephones. in thirty years, the western electric has sold sixty-seven million dollars' worth of telephonic apparatus to foreign countries. but this is no more than a fair beginning. to put one telephone in china to every hundred people will mean an outlay of three hundred million dollars. to give europe as fit an equipment as the united states now has, will mean thirty million telephones, with proper wire and switchboards to match. and while telephony for the masses is not yet a live question in many countries, sooner or later, in the relentless push of civilization, it must come. possibly, in that far future of peace and goodwill among nations, when each country does for all the others what it can do best, the united states may be generally recognized as the source of skill and authority on telephony. it may be called in to rebuild or operate the telephone systems of other countries, in the same way that it is now supplying oil and steel rails and farm machinery. just as the wise buyer of to-day asks france for champagne, germany for toys, england for cottons, and the orient for rugs, so he will learn to look upon the united states as the natural home and headquarters of the telephone. chapter ix. the future of the telephone in the spring of theodore n. vail, a rugged, ruddy, white-haired man, was superintending the building of a big barn in northern vermont. his house stood near-by, on a balcony of rolling land that overlooked the town of lyndon and far beyond, across evergreen forests to the massive bulk of burke mountain. his farm, very nearly ten square miles in area, lay back of the house in a great oval of field and woodland, with several dozen cottages in the clearings. his welsh ponies and swiss cattle were grazing on the may grass, and the men were busy with the ploughs and harrows and seeders. it was almost thirty years since he had been called in to create the business structure of telephony, and to shape the general plan of its development. since then he had done many other things. the one city of buenos ayres had paid him more, merely for giving it a system of trolleys and electric lights, than the united states had paid him for putting the telephone on a business basis. he was now rich and retired, free to enjoy his play-work of the farm and to forget the troubles of the city and the telephone. but, as he stood among his barn-builders, there arrived from boston and new york a delegation of telephone directors. most of them belonged to the "old guard" of telephony. they had fought under vail in the pioneer days; and now they had come to ask him to return to the telephone business, after twenty years of absence. vail laughed at the suggestion. "nonsense," he said, "i'm too old. i'm sixty-two years of age." the directors persisted. they spoke of the approaching storm-cloud of panic and the need of another strong hand at the wheel until the crisis was over, but vail still refused. they spoke of old times and old memories, but he shook his head. "all my life," he said, "i have wanted to be a farmer." then they drew a picture of the telephone situation. they showed him that the "grand telephonic system" which he had planned was unfinished. he was its architect, and it was undone. the telephone business was energetic and prosperous. under the brilliant leadership of frederick p. fish, it had grown by leaps and bounds. but it was still far from being the system that vail had dreamed of in his younger days; and so, when the directors put before him his unfinished plan, he surrendered. the instinct for completeness, which is one of the dominating characteristics of his mind, compelled him to consent. it was the call of the telephone. since that may morning, , great things have been done by the men of the telephone and telegraph world. the bell system was brought through the panic without a scratch. when the doubt and confusion were at their worst, vail wrote an open letter to his stock-holders, in his practical, farmer-like way. he said: "our net earnings for the last ten months were $ , , , as against $ , , for the same period in . we have now in the banks over $ , , ; and we will not need to borrow any money for two years." soon afterwards, the work of consolidation began. companies that overlapped were united. small local wire-clusters, several thousands of them, were linked to the national lines. a policy of publicity superseded the secrecy which had naturally grown to be a habit in the days of patent litigation. visitors and reporters found an open door. educational advertisements were published in the most popular magazines. the corps of inventors was spurred up to conquer the long-distance problems. and in return for a thirty million check, the control of the historic western union was transferred from the children of jay gould to the thirty thousand stock-holders of the american telephone and telegraph company. from what has been done, therefore, we may venture a guess as to the future of the telephone. this "grand telephonic system" which had no existence thirty years ago, except in the imagination of vail, seems to be at hand. the very newsboys in the streets are crying it. and while there is, of course, no exact blueprint of a best possible telephone system, we can now see the general outlines of vail's plan. there is nothing mysterious or ominous in this plan. it has nothing to do with the pools and conspiracies of wall street. no one will be squeezed out except the promoters of paper companies. the simple fact is that vail is organizing a complete bell system for the same reason that he built one big comfortable barn for his swiss cattle and his welsh ponies, instead of half a dozen small uncomfortable sheds. he has never been a "high financier" to juggle profits out of other men's losses. he is merely applying to the telephone business the same hard sense that any farmer uses in the management of his farm. he is building a big barn, metaphorically, for the telephone and telegraph. plainly, the telephone system of the future will be national, so that any two people in the same country will be able to talk to one another. it will not be competitive, for the reason that no farmer would think for a moment of running his farm on competitive lines. it will have a staff-and-line organization, to use a military phrase. each local company will continue to handle its own local affairs, and exercise to the full the basic virtue of self-help. but there will also be, as now, a central body of experts to handle the larger affairs that are common to all companies. no separateness or secession on the one side, nor bureaucracy on the other--that is the typically american idea that underlies the ideal telephone system. the line of authority, in such a system, will begin with the local manager. from him it will rise to the directors of the state company; then higher still to the directors of the national company; and finally, above all corporate leaders to the federal government itself. the failure of government ownership of the telephone in so many foreign countries does not mean that the private companies will have absolute power. quite the reverse. the lesson of thirty years' experience shows that a private telephone company is apt to be much more obedient to the will of the people than if it were a government department. but it is an axiom of democracy that no company, however well conducted, will be permitted to control a public convenience without being held strictly responsible for its own acts. as politics becomes less of a game and more of a responsibility, the telephone of the future will doubtless be supervised by some sort of public committee, which will have power to pass upon complaints, and to prevent the nuisance of duplication and the swindle of watering stock. as this federal supervision becomes more and more efficient, the present fear of monopoly will decrease, just as it did in the case of the railways. it is a fact, although now generally forgotten, that the first railways of the united states were run for ten years or more on an anti-monopoly plan. the tracks were free to all. any one who owned a cart with flanged wheels could drive it on the rails and compete with the locomotives. there was a happy-go-lucky jumble of trains and wagons, all held back by the slowest team; and this continued on some railways until as late as . by that time the people saw that com-petition on a railway track was absurd. they allowed each track to be monopolized by one company, and the era of expansion began. no one, certainly, at the present time, regrets the passing of the independent teamster. he was much more arbitrary and expensive than any railroad has ever dared to be; and as the country grew, he became impossible. he was not the fittest to survive. for the general good, he was held back from competing with the railroad, and taught to cooperate with it by hauling freight to and from the depots. this, to his surprise, he found much more profitable and pleasant. he had been squeezed out of a bad job into a good one. and by a similar process of evolution, the united states is rapidly outgrowing the small independent telephone companies. these will eventually, one by one, rise as the teamster did to a higher social value, by clasping wires with the main system of telephony. until the bell system was in the hands of a family group. it was a strictly private enterprise. the public had been asked to help in its launching, and had refused. but after it passed into the control of the small stock-holders, and has remained there without a break. it is now one of our most democratized businesses, scattering either wages or dividends into more than a hundred thousand homes. it has at times been exclusive, but never sordid. it has never been dollar-mad, nor frenzied by the virus of stock-gambling. there has always been a vein of sentiment in it that kept it in touch with human nature. even at the present time, each check of the american telephone and telegraph company carries on it a picture of a pretty cupid, sitting on a chair upon which he has placed a thick book, and gayly prattling into a telephone. several sweeping changes may be expected in the near future, now that there is team-play between the bell system and the western union. already, by a stroke of the pen, five million users of telephones have been put on the credit books of the western union; and every bell telephone office is now a telegraph office. three telephone messages and eight telegrams may be sent at the same time over two pairs of wires: that is one of the recent miracles of science, and is now to be tried out upon a gigantic scale. most of the long-distance telephone wires, fully two million miles, can be used for telegraphic purposes; and a third of the western union wires, five hundred thousand miles, may with a few changes be used for talking. the western union is paying rent for twenty-two thousand, five hundred offices, all of which helps to make telegraphy a luxury of the few. it is employing as large a force of messenger-boys as the army that marched with general sherman from atlanta to the sea. both of these items of expense will dwindle when a bell wire and a morse wire can be brought to a common terminal; and when a telegram can be received or delivered by telephone. there will also be a gain, perhaps the largest of all, in removing the trudging little messenger-boy from the streets and sending him either to school or to learn some useful trade. the fact is that the united states is the first country that has succeeded in putting both telephone and telegraph upon the proper basis. elsewhere either the two are widely apart, or the telephone is a mere adjunct of a telegraphic department. according to the new american plan, the two are not competitive, but complementary. the one is a supplement to the other. the post office sends a package; the telegraph sends the contents of the package; but the telephone sends nothing. it is an apparatus that makes conversation possible between two separated people. each of the three has a distinct field of its own, so that there has never been any cause for jealousy among them. to make the telephone an annex of the post office or the telegraph has become absurd. there are now in the whole world very nearly as many messages sent by telephone as by letter; and there are thirty-two times as many telephone calls as telegrams. in the united states, the telephone has grown to be the big brother of the telegraph. it has six times the net earnings and eight times the wire. and it transmits as many messages as the combined total of telegrams, letters, and railroad passengers. this universal trend toward consolidation has introduced a variety of problems that will engage the ablest brains in the telephone world for many years to come. how to get the benefits of organization without its losses, to become strong without losing quickness, to become systematic without losing the dash and dare of earlier days, to develop the working force into an army of high-speed specialists without losing the bird's-eye view of the whole situation,--these are the riddles of the new type, for which the telephonists of the next generation must find the answers. they illustrate the nature of the big jobs that the telephone has to offer to an ambitious and gifted young man of to-day. "the problems never were as large or as complex as they are right now," says j. j. carty, the chief of the telephone engineers. the eternal struggle remains between the large and little ideas--between the men who see what might be and the men who only see what is. there is still the race to break records. already the girl at the switchboard can find the person wanted in thirty seconds. this is one-tenth of the time that was taken in the early centrals; but it is still too long. it is one-half of a valuable minute. it must be cut to twenty-five seconds, or twenty or fifteen. there is still the inventors' battle to gain miles. the distance over which conversations can be held has been increased from twenty miles to twenty-five hundred. but this is not far enough. there are some civilized human beings who are twelve thousand miles apart, and who have interests in common. during the boxer rebellion in china, for instance, there were americans in peking who would gladly have given half of their fortune for the use of a pair of wires to new york. in the earliest days of the telephone, bell was fond of prophesying that "the time will come when we will talk across the atlantic ocean"; but this was regarded as a poetical fancy until pupin invented his method of automatically propelling the electric current. since then the most conservative engineer will discuss the problem of transatlantic telephony. and as for the poets, they are now dreaming of the time when a man may speak and hear his own voice come back to him around the world. the immediate long-distance problem is, of course, to talk from new york to the pacific. the two oceans are now only three and a half days apart by rail. seattle is clamoring for a wire to the east. san diego wants one in time for her panama canal exposition in . the wires are already strung to san francisco, but cannot be used in the present stage of the art. and vail's captains are working now with almost breathless haste to give him a birthday present of a talk across the continent from his farm in vermont. "i can see a universal system of telephony for the united states in the very near future," says carty. "there is a statue of seward standing in one of the streets of seattle. the inscription upon it is, `to a united country.' but as an easterner stands there, he feels the isolation of that far western state, and he will always feel it, until he can talk from one side of the united states to the other. for my part," continues carty, "i believe we will talk across continents and across oceans. why not? are there not more cells in one human body than there are people in the whole earth?" some future carty may solve the abandoned problem of the single wire, and cut the copper bill in two by restoring the grounded circuit. he may transmit vision as well as speech. he may perfect a third-rail system for use on moving trains. he may conceive of an ideal insulating material to supersede glass, mica, paper, and enamel. he may establish a universal code, so that all persons of importance in the united states shall have call-numbers by which they may instantly be located, as books are in a library. some other young man may create a commercial department on wide lines, a work which telephone men have as yet been too specialized to do. whoever does this will be a man of comprehensive brain. he will be as closely in touch with the average man as with the art of telephony. he will know the gossip of the street, the demands of the labor unions, and the policies of governors and presidents. the psychology of the western farmer will concern him, and the tone of the daily press, and the methods of department stores. it will be his aim to know the subtle chemistry of public opinion, and to adapt the telephone service to the shifting moods and necessities of the times. he will fit telephony like a garment around the habits of the people. also, now that the telephone business has become strong, its next anxiety must be to develop the virtues, and not the defects, of strength. its motto must be "ich dien"--i serve; and it will be the work of the future statesmen of the telephone to illustrate this motto in all its practical variations. they will cater and explain, and explain and cater. they will educate and educate, until they have created an expert public. they will teach by pictures and lectures and exhibitions. they will have charts and diagrams hung in the telephone booths, so that the person who is waiting for a call may learn a little and pass the time more pleasantly. they will, in a word, attend to those innumerable trifles that make the perfection of public service. already the bell system has gone far in this direction by organizing what might fairly be called a foresight department. here is where the fortune-tellers of the business sit. when new lines or exchanges are to be built, these men study the situation with an eye to the future. they prepare a "fundamental plan," outlining what may reasonably be expected to happen in fifteen or twenty years. invariably they are optimists. they make provision for growth, but none at all for shrinkage. by their advice, there is now twenty-five million dollars' worth of reserve plant in the various bell companies, waiting for the country to grow up to it. even in the city of new york, one-half of the cable ducts are empty, in expectation of the greater city of eight million population which is scheduled to arrive in . there are perhaps few more impressive evidences of practical optimism and confidence than a new telephone exchange, with two-thirds of its wires waiting for the business of the future. eventually, this foresight department will expand. it may, if a leader of genius appear, become the first real corps of practical sociologists, which will substitute facts for the present hotch-potch of theories. it will prepare a "fundamental plan" of the whole united states, showing the centre of each industry and the main runways of traffic. it will act upon the basic fact that wherever there is interdependence, there is bound to be telephony; and it will therefore prepare maps of interdependence, showing the widely scattered groups of industry and finance, and the lines that weave them into a pattern of national cooperation. as yet, no nation, not even our own, has seen the full value of the long-distance telephone. few have the imagination to see what has been made possible, and to realize that an actual face-to-face conversation may take place, even though there be a thousand miles between. neither can it seem credible that a man in a distant city may be located as readily as though he were close at hand. it is too amazing to be true, and possibly a new generation will have to arrive before it will be taken for granted and acted upon freely. ultimately, there can be no doubt that long-distance telephony will be regarded as a national asset of the highest value, for the reason that it can prevent so much of the enormous economic waste of travel. nothing that science can say will ever decrease the marvel of a long-distance conversation, and there may come in the future an interpreter who will put it before our eyes in the form of a moving-picture. he will enable us to follow the flying words in a talk from boston to denver. we will flash first to worcester, cross the hudson on the high bridge at poughkeepsie, swing southwest through a dozen coal towns to the outskirts of philadelphia, leap across the susquehanna, zigzag up and down the alleghenies into the murk of pittsburg, cross the ohio at wheeling, glance past columbus and indianapolis, over the wabash at terre haute, into st. louis by the eads bridge, through kansas city, across the missouri, along the corn-fields of kansas, and then on--on--on with the sante fe railway, across vast plains and past the brink of the grand canyon, to pueblo and the lofty city of denver. twenty-five hundred miles along a thousand tons of copper wire! from bunker hill to pike's peak in a second! herbert spencer, in his autobiography, alludes to the impressive fact that while the eye is reading a single line of type, the earth has travelled thirty miles through space. but this, in telephony, would be slow travelling. it is simple everyday truth to say that while your eye is reading this dash,--, a telephone sound can be carried from new york to chicago. there are many reasons to believe that for the practical idealists of the future, the supreme study will be the force that makes such miracles possible. six thousand million dollars--one-twentieth of our national wealth--is at the present time invested in electrical development. the electrical age has not yet arrived; but it is at hand; and no one can tell how brilliant the result may be, when the creative minds of a nation are focussed upon the subdual of this mysterious force, which has more power and more delicacy than any other force that man has been able to harness. as a tame and tractable energy, electricity is new. it has no past and no pedigree. it is younger than many people who are now alive. among the wise men of greece and rome, few knew its existence, and none put it to any practical use. the wisest knew that a piece of amber, when rubbed, will attract feathery substances. but they regarded this as poetry rather than science. there was a pretty legend among the phoenicians that the pieces of amber were the petrified tears of maidens who had thrown themselves into the sea because of unrequited love, and each bead of amber was highly prized. it was worn as an amulet and a symbol of purity. not for two thousand years did any one dream that within its golden heart lay hidden the secret of a new electrical civilization. not even in , when benjamin franklin flew his famous kite on the banks of the schuylkill river, and captured the first canned lightning, was there any definite knowledge of electrical energy. his lightning-rod was regarded as an insult to the deity of heaven. it was blamed for the earthquake of . and not until the telegraph of morse came into general use, did men dare to think of the thunder-bolt of jove as a possible servant of the human race. thus it happened that when bell invented the telephone, he surprised the world with a new idea. he had to make the thought as well as the thing. no jules verne or h. g. wells had foreseen it. the author of the arabian nights fantasies had conceived of a flying carpet, but neither he nor any one else had conceived of flying conversation. in all the literature of ancient days, there is not a line that will apply to the telephone, except possibly that expressive phrase in the bible, "and there came a voice." in these more privileged days, the telephone has come to be regarded as a commonplace fact of everyday life; and we are apt to forget that the wonder of it has become greater and not less; and that there are still honor and profit, plenty of both, to be won by the inventor and the scientist. the flood of electrical patents was never higher than now. there are literally more in a single month than the total number issued by the patent office up to . the bell system has three hundred experts who are paid to do nothing else but try out all new ideas and inventions; and before these words can pass into the printed book, new uses and new methods will have been discovered. there is therefore no immediate danger that the art of telephony will be less fascinating in the future than it has been in the past. it will still be the most alluring and elusive sprite that ever led the way through a dark continent of mysterious phenomena. there still remains for some future scientist the task of showing us in detail exactly what the telephone current does. such a man will study vibrations as darwin studied the differentiation of species. he will investigate how a child's voice, speaking from boston to omaha, can vibrate more than a million pounds of copper wire; and he will invent a finer system of time to fit the telephone, which can do as many different things in a second as a man can do in a day, transmitting with every tick of the clock from twenty-five to eighty thousand vibrations. he will deal with the various vibrations of nerves and wires and wireless air, that are necessary in conveying thought between two separated minds. he will make clear how a thought, originating in the brain, passes along the nerve-wires to the vocal chords, and then in wireless vibration of air to the disc of the transmitter. at the other end of the line the second disc re-creates these vibrations, which impinge upon the nerve-wires of an ear, and are thus carried to the consciousness of another brain. and so, notwithstanding all that has been done since bell opened up the way, the telephone remains the acme of electrical marvels. no other thing does so much with so little energy. no other thing is more enswathed in the unknown. not even the gray-haired pioneers who have lived with the telephone since its birth, can understand their protege. as to the why and the how, there is as yet no answer. it is as true of telephony to-day as it was in , that a child can use what the wisest sages cannot comprehend. here is a tiny disc of sheet-iron. i speak--it shudders. it has a different shudder for every sound. it has thousands of millions of different shudders. there is a second disc many miles away, perhaps twenty-five hundred miles away. between the two discs runs a copper wire. as i speak, a thrill of electricity flits along the wire. this thrill is moulded by the shudder of the disc. it makes the second disc shudder. and the shudder of the second disc reproduces my voice. that is what happens. but how--not all the scientists of the world can tell. the telephone current is a phenomenon of the ether, say the theorists. but what is ether? no one knows. sir oliver lodge has guessed that it is "perhaps the only substantial thing in the material universe"; but no one knows. there is nothing to guide us in that unknown country except a sign-post that points upwards and bears the one word--"perhaps." the ether of space! here is an eldorado for the scientists of the future, and whoever can first map it out will go far toward discovering the secret of telephony. some day--who knows?--there may come the poetry and grand opera of the telephone. artists may come who will portray the marvel of the wires that quiver with electrified words, and the romance of the switchboards that tremble with the secrets of a great city. already puvis de chavannes, by one of his superb panels in the boston library, has admitted the telephone and the telegraph to the world of art. he has embodied them as two flying figures, poised above the electric wires, and with the following inscription underneath: "by the wondrous agency of electricity, speech dashes through space and swift as lightning bears tidings of good and evil." but these random guesses as to the future of the telephone may fall far short of what the reality will be. in these dazzling days it is idle to predict. the inventor has everywhere put the prophet out of business. fact has outrun fancy. when morse, for instance, was tacking up his first little line of wire around the speedwell iron works, who could have foreseen two hundred and fifty thousand miles of submarine cables, by which the very oceans are all aquiver with the news of the world? when fulton's tiny tea-kettle of a boat steamed up the hudson to albany in two days, who could have foreseen the steel leviathans, one-sixth of a mile in length, that can in the same time cut the atlantic ocean in halves? and when bell stood in a dingy workshop in boston and heard the clang of a clock-spring come over an electric wire, who could have foreseen the massive structure of the bell system, built up by half the telephones of the world, and by the investment of more actual capital than has gone to the making of any other industrial association? who could have foreseen what the telephone bells have done to ring out the old ways and to ring in the new; to ring out delay, and isolation and to ring in the efficiency and the friendliness of a truly united people? edison his life and inventions by frank lewis dyer general counsel for the edison laboratory and allied interests and thomas commerford martin ex-president of the american institute of electrical engineers contents introduction i. the age of electricity ii. edison's pedigree iii. boyhood at port huron, michigan iv. the young telegraph operator v. arduous years in the central west vi. work and invention in boston vii. the stock ticker viii. automatic, duplex, and quadruplex telegraphy ix. the telephone, motograph, and microphone x. the phonograph xi. the invention of the incandescent lamp xii. memories of menlo park xiii. a world-hunt for filament material xiv. inventing a complete system of lighting xv. introduction of the edison electric light xvi. the first edison central station xvii. other early stations--the meter xviii. the electric railway xix. magnetic ore milling work xx. edison portland cement xxi. motion pictures xxii. the development of the edison storage battery xxiii. miscellaneous inventions xxiv. edison's method in inventing xxv. the laboratory at orange and the staff xxvi. edison in commerce and manufacture xxvii. the value of edison's inventions to the world xxviii. the black flag xxix. the social side of edison appendix list of united states patents foreign patents index introduction prior to this, no complete, authentic, and authorized record of the work of mr. edison, during an active life, has been given to the world. that life, if there is anything in heredity, is very far from finished; and while it continues there will be new achievement. an insistently expressed desire on the part of the public for a definitive biography of edison was the reason for the following pages. the present authors deem themselves happy in the confidence reposed in them, and in the constant assistance they have enjoyed from mr. edison while preparing these pages, a great many of which are altogether his own. this co-operation in no sense relieves the authors of responsibility as to any of the views or statements of their own that the book contains. they have realized the extreme reluctance of mr. edison to be made the subject of any biography at all; while he has felt that, if it must be written, it were best done by the hands of friends and associates of long standing, whose judgment and discretion he could trust, and whose intimate knowledge of the facts would save him from misrepresentation. the authors of the book are profoundly conscious of the fact that the extraordinary period of electrical development embraced in it has been prolific of great men. they have named some of them; but there has been no idea of setting forth various achievements or of ascribing distinctive merits. this treatment is devoted to one man whom his fellow-citizens have chosen to regard as in many ways representative of the american at his finest flowering in the field of invention during the nineteenth century. it is designed in these pages to bring the reader face to face with edison; to glance at an interesting childhood and a youthful period marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an insatiable thirst for knowledge; then to accompany him into the great creative stretch of forty years, during which he has done so much. this book shows him plunged deeply into work for which he has always had an incredible capacity, reveals the exercise of his unsurpassed inventive ability, his keen reasoning powers, his tenacious memory, his fertility of resource; follows him through a series of innumerable experiments, conducted methodically, reaching out like rays of search-light into all the regions of science and nature, and finally exhibits him emerging triumphantly from countless difficulties bearing with him in new arts the fruits of victorious struggle. these volumes aim to be a biography rather than a history of electricity, but they have had to cover so much general ground in defining the relations and contributions of edison to the electrical arts, that they serve to present a picture of the whole development effected in the last fifty years, the most fruitful that electricity has known. the effort has been made to avoid technique and abstruse phrases, but some degree of explanation has been absolutely necessary in regard to each group of inventions. the task of the authors has consisted largely in summarizing fairly the methods and processes employed by edison; and some idea of the difficulties encountered by them in so doing may be realized from the fact that one brief chapter, for example,--that on ore milling--covers nine years of most intense application and activity on the part of the inventor. it is something like exhibiting the geological eras of the earth in an outline lantern slide, to reduce an elaborate series of strenuous experiments and a vast variety of ingenious apparatus to the space of a few hundred words. a great deal of this narrative is given in mr. edison's own language, from oral or written statements made in reply to questions addressed to him with the object of securing accuracy. a further large part is based upon the personal contributions of many loyal associates; and it is desired here to make grateful acknowledgment to such collaborators as messrs. samuel insull, e. h. johnson, f. r. upton, r. n dyer, s. b. eaton, francis jehl, w. s. andrews, w. j. jenks, w. j. hammer, f. j. sprague, w. s. mallory, and c. l. clarke, and others, without whose aid the issuance of this book would indeed have been impossible. in particular, it is desired to acknowledge indebtedness to mr. w. h. meadowcroft not only for substantial aid in the literary part of the work, but for indefatigable effort to group, classify, and summarize the boundless material embodied in edison's note-books and memorabilia of all kinds now kept at the orange laboratory. acknowledgment must also be made of the courtesy and assistance of mrs. edison, and especially of the loan of many interesting and rare photographs from her private collection. edison his life and inventions chapter i the age of electricity the year marked a period of great territorial acquisition by the american people, with incalculable additions to their actual and potential wealth. by the rational compromise with england in the dispute over the oregon region, president polk had secured during , for undisturbed settlement, three hundred thousand square miles of forest, fertile land, and fisheries, including the whole fair columbia valley. our active "policy of the pacific" dated from that hour. with swift and clinching succession came the melodramatic mexican war, and february, , saw another vast territory south of oregon and west of the rocky mountains added by treaty to the united states. thus in about eighteen months there had been pieced into the national domain for quick development and exploitation a region as large as the entire union of thirteen states at the close of the war of independence. moreover, within its boundaries was embraced all the great american gold-field, just on the eve of discovery, for marshall had detected the shining particles in the mill-race at the foot of the sierra nevada nine days before mexico signed away her rights in california and in all the vague, remote hinterland facing cathayward. equally momentous were the times in europe, where the attempt to secure opportunities of expansion as well as larger liberty for the individual took quite different form. the old absolutist system of government was fast breaking up, and ancient thrones were tottering. the red lava of deep revolutionary fires oozed up through many glowing cracks in the political crust, and all the social strata were shaken. that the wild outbursts of insurrection midway in the fifth decade failed and died away was not surprising, for the superincumbent deposits of tradition and convention were thick. but the retrospect indicates that many reforms and political changes were accomplished, although the process involved the exile of not a few ardent spirits to america, to become leading statesmen, inventors, journalists, and financiers. in , too, russia began her tremendous march eastward into central asia, just as france was solidifying her first gains on the littoral of northern africa. in england the fierce fervor of the chartist movement, with its violent rhetoric as to the rights of man, was sobering down and passing pervasively into numerous practical schemes for social and political amelioration, constituting in their entirety a most profound change throughout every part of the national life. into such times thomas alva edison was born, and his relations to them and to the events of the past sixty years are the subject of this narrative. aside from the personal interest that attaches to the picturesque career, so typically american, there is a broader aspect in which the work of the "franklin of the nineteenth century" touches the welfare and progress of the race. it is difficult at any time to determine the effect of any single invention, and the investigation becomes more difficult where inventions of the first class have been crowded upon each other in rapid and bewildering succession. but it will be admitted that in edison one deals with a central figure of the great age that saw the invention and introduction in practical form of the telegraph, the submarine cable, the telephone, the electric light, the electric railway, the electric trolley-car, the storage battery, the electric motor, the phonograph, the wireless telegraph; and that the influence of these on the world's affairs has not been excelled at any time by that of any other corresponding advances in the arts and sciences. these pages deal with edison's share in the great work of the last half century in abridging distance, communicating intelligence, lessening toil, improving illumination, recording forever the human voice; and on behalf of inventive genius it may be urged that its beneficent results and gifts to mankind compare with any to be credited to statesman, warrior, or creative writer of the same period. viewed from the standpoint of inventive progress, the first half of the nineteenth century had passed very profitably when edison appeared--every year marked by some notable achievement in the arts and sciences, with promise of its early and abundant fruition in commerce and industry. there had been exactly four decades of steam navigation on american waters. railways were growing at the rate of nearly one thousand miles annually. gas had become familiar as a means of illumination in large cities. looms and tools and printing-presses were everywhere being liberated from the slow toil of man-power. the first photographs had been taken. chloroform, nitrous oxide gas, and ether had been placed at the service of the physician in saving life, and the revolver, guncotton, and nitroglycerine added to the agencies for slaughter. new metals, chemicals, and elements had become available in large numbers, gases had been liquefied and solidified, and the range of useful heat and cold indefinitely extended. the safety-lamp had been given to the miner, the caisson to the bridge-builder, the anti-friction metal to the mechanic for bearings. it was already known how to vulcanize rubber, and how to galvanize iron. the application of machinery in the harvest-field had begun with the embryonic reaper, while both the bicycle and the automobile were heralded in primitive prototypes. the gigantic expansion of the iron and steel industry was foreshadowed in the change from wood to coal in the smelting furnaces. the sewing-machine had brought with it, like the friction match, one of the most profound influences in modifying domestic life, and making it different from that of all preceding time. even in few of these things had lost their novelty, most of them were in the earlier stages of development. but it is when we turn to electricity that the rich virgin condition of an illimitable new kingdom of discovery is seen. perhaps the word "utilization" or "application" is better than discovery, for then, as now, an endless wealth of phenomena noted by experimenters from gilbert to franklin and faraday awaited the invention that could alone render them useful to mankind. the eighteenth century, keenly curious and ceaselessly active in this fascinating field of investigation, had not, after all, left much of a legacy in either principles or appliances. the lodestone and the compass; the frictional machine; the leyden jar; the nature of conductors and insulators; the identity of electricity and the thunder-storm flash; the use of lightning-rods; the physiological effects of an electrical shock--these constituted the bulk of the bequest to which philosophers were the only heirs. pregnant with possibilities were many of the observations that had been recorded. but these few appliances made up the meagre kit of tools with which the nineteenth century entered upon its task of acquiring the arts and conveniences now such an intimate part of "human nature's daily food" that the average american to-day pays more for his electrical service than he does for bread. with the first year of the new century came volta's invention of the chemical battery as a means of producing electricity. a well-known italian picture represents volta exhibiting his apparatus before the young conqueror napoleon, then ravishing from the peninsula its treasure of ancient art and founding an ephemeral empire. at such a moment this gift of despoiled italy to the world was a noble revenge, setting in motion incalculable beneficent forces and agencies. for the first time man had command of a steady supply of electricity without toil or effort. the useful results obtainable previously from the current of a frictional machine were not much greater than those to be derived from the flight of a rocket. while the frictional appliance is still employed in medicine, it ranks with the flint axe and the tinder-box in industrial obsolescence. no art or trade could be founded on it; no diminution of daily work or increase of daily comfort could be secured with it. but the little battery with its metal plates in a weak solution proved a perennial reservoir of electrical energy, safe and controllable, from which supplies could be drawn at will. that which was wild had become domesticated; regular crops took the place of haphazard gleanings from brake or prairie; the possibility of electrical starvation was forever left behind. immediately new processes of inestimable value revealed themselves; new methods were suggested. almost all the electrical arts now employed made their beginnings in the next twenty-five years, and while the more extensive of them depend to-day on the dynamo for electrical energy, some of the most important still remain in loyal allegiance to the older source. the battery itself soon underwent modifications, and new types were evolved--the storage, the double-fluid, and the dry. various analogies next pointed to the use of heat, and the thermoelectric cell emerged, embodying the application of flame to the junction of two different metals. davy, of the safety-lamp, threw a volume of current across the gap between two sticks of charcoal, and the voltaic arc, forerunner of electric lighting, shed its bright beams upon a dazzled world. the decomposition of water by electrolytic action was recognized and made the basis of communicating at a distance even before the days of the electromagnet. the ties that bind electricity and magnetism in twinship of relation and interaction were detected, and faraday's work in induction gave the world at once the dynamo and the motor. "hitch your wagon to a star," said emerson. to all the coal-fields and all the waterfalls faraday had directly hitched the wheels of industry. not only was it now possible to convert mechanical energy into electricity cheaply and in illimitable quantities, but electricity at once showed its ubiquitous availability as a motive power. boats were propelled by it, cars were hauled, and even papers printed. electroplating became an art, and telegraphy sprang into active being on both sides of the atlantic. at the time edison was born, in , telegraphy, upon which he was to leave so indelible an imprint, had barely struggled into acceptance by the public. in england, wheatstone and cooke had introduced a ponderous magnetic needle telegraph. in america, in , morse had taken out his first patent on an electromagnetic telegraph, the principle of which is dominating in the art to this day. four years later the memorable message "what hath god wrought!" was sent by young miss ellsworth over his circuits, and incredulous washington was advised by wire of the action of the democratic convention in baltimore in nominating polk. by circuits had been strung between washington and new york, under private enterprise, the government having declined to buy the morse system for $ , . everything was crude and primitive. the poles were two hundred feet apart and could barely hold up a wash-line. the slim, bare, copper wire snapped on the least provocation, and the circuit was "down" for thirty-six days in the first six months. the little glass-knob insulators made seductive targets for ignorant sportsmen. attempts to insulate the line wire were limited to coating it with tar or smearing it with wax for the benefit of all the bees in the neighborhood. the farthest western reach of the telegraph lines in was pittsburg, with three-ply iron wire mounted on square glass insulators with a little wooden pentroof for protection. in that office, where andrew carnegie was a messenger boy, the magnets in use to receive the signals sent with the aid of powerful nitric-acid batteries weighed as much as seventy-five pounds apiece. but the business was fortunately small at the outset, until the new device, patronized chiefly by lottery-men, had proved its utility. then came the great outburst of activity. within a score of years telegraph wires covered the whole occupied country with a network, and the first great electrical industry was a pronounced success, yielding to its pioneers the first great harvest of electrical fortunes. it had been a sharp struggle for bare existence, during which such a man as the founder of cornell university had been glad to get breakfast in new york with a quarter-dollar picked up on broadway. chapter ii edison's pedigree thomas alva edison was born at milan ohio, february , . the state that rivals virginia as a "mother of presidents" has evidently other titles to distinction of the same nature. for picturesque detail it would not be easy to find any story excelling that of the edison family before it reached the western reserve. the story epitomizes american idealism, restlessness, freedom of individual opinion, and ready adjustment to the surrounding conditions of pioneer life. the ancestral edisons who came over from holland, as nearly as can be determined, in , were descendants of extensive millers on the zuyder zee, and took up patents of land along the passaic river, new jersey, close to the home that mr. edison established in the orange mountains a hundred and sixty years later. they landed at elizabethport, new jersey, and first settled near caldwell in that state, where some graves of the family may still be found. president cleveland was born in that quiet hamlet. it is a curious fact that in the edison family the pronunciation of the name has always been with the long "e" sound, as it would naturally be in the dutch language. the family prospered and must have enjoyed public confidence, for we find the name of thomas edison, as a bank official on manhattan island, signed to continental currency in . according to the family records this edison, great-grandfather of thomas alva, reached the extreme old age of years. but all was not well, and, as has happened so often before, the politics of father and son were violently different. the loyalist movement that took to nova scotia so many americans after the war of independence carried with it john, the son of this stalwart continental. thus it came about that samuel edison, son of john, was born at digby, nova scotia, in . seven years later john edison who, as a loyalist or united empire emigrant, had become entitled under the laws of canada to a grant of six hundred acres of land, moved westward to take possession of this property. he made his way through the state of new york in wagons drawn by oxen to the remote and primitive township of bayfield, in upper canada, on lake huron. although the journey occurred in balmy june, it was necessarily attended with difficulty and privation; but the new home was situated in good farming country, and once again this interesting nomadic family settled down. john edison moved from bayfield to vienna, ontario, on the northern bank of lake erie. mr. edison supplies an interesting reminiscence of the old man and his environment in those early canadian days. "when i was five years old i was taken by my father and mother on a visit to vienna. we were driven by carriage from milan, ohio, to a railroad, then to a port on lake erie, thence by a canal-boat in a tow of several to port burwell, in canada, across the lake, and from there we drove to vienna, a short distance away. i remember my grandfather perfectly as he appeared, at years of age, when he died. in the middle of the day he sat under a large tree in front of the house facing a well-travelled road. his head was covered completely with a large quantity of very white hair, and he chewed tobacco incessantly, nodding to friends as they passed by. he used a very large cane, and walked from the chair to the house, resenting any assistance. i viewed him from a distance, and could never get very close to him. i remember some large pipes, and especially a molasses jug, a trunk, and several other things that came from holland." john edison was long-lived, like his father, and reached the ripe old age of , leaving his son samuel charged with the care of the family destinies, but with no great burden of wealth. little is known of the early manhood of this father of t. a. edison until we find him keeping a hotel at vienna, marrying a school-teacher there (miss nancy elliott, in ), and taking a lively share in the troublous politics of the time. he was six feet in height, of great bodily vigor, and of such personal dominance of character that he became a captain of the insurgent forces rallying under the banners of papineau and mackenzie. the opening years of queen victoria's reign witnessed a belated effort in canada to emphasize the principle that there should not be taxation without representation; and this descendant of those who had left the united states from disapproval of such a doctrine, flung himself headlong into its support. it has been said of earl durham, who pacified canada at this time and established the present system of government, that he made a country and marred a career. but the immediate measures of repression enforced before a liberal policy was adopted were sharp and severe, and samuel edison also found his own career marred on canadian soil as one result of the durham administration. exile to bermuda with other insurgents was not so attractive as the perils of a flight to the united states. a very hurried departure was effected in secret from the scene of trouble, and there are romantic traditions of his thrilling journey of one hundred and eighty-two miles toward safety, made almost entirely without food or sleep, through a wild country infested with indians of unfriendly disposition. thus was the edison family repatriated by a picturesque political episode, and the great inventor given a birthplace on american soil, just as was benjamin franklin when his father came from england to boston. samuel edison left behind him, however, in canada, several brothers, all of whom lived to the age of ninety or more, and from whom there are descendants in the region. after some desultory wanderings for a year or two along the shores of lake erie, among the prosperous towns then springing up, the family, with its canadian home forfeited, and in quest of another resting-place, came to milan, ohio, in . that pretty little village offered at the moment many attractions as a possible chicago. the railroad system of ohio was still in the future, but the western reserve had already become a vast wheat-field, and huge quantities of grain from the central and northern counties sought shipment to eastern ports. the huron river, emptying into lake erie, was navigable within a few miles of the village, and provided an admirable outlet. large granaries were established, and proved so successful that local capital was tempted into the project of making a tow-path canal from lockwood landing all the way to milan itself. the quaint old moravian mission and quondam indian settlement of one hundred inhabitants found itself of a sudden one of the great grain ports of the world, and bidding fair to rival russian odessa. a number of grain warehouses, or primitive elevators, were built along the bank of the canal, and the produce of the region poured in immediately, arriving in wagons drawn by four or six horses with loads of a hundred bushels. no fewer than six hundred wagons came clattering in, and as many as twenty sail vessels were loaded with thirty-five thousand bushels of grain, during a single day. the canal was capable of being navigated by craft of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty tons burden, and the demand for such vessels soon led to the development of a brisk ship-building industry, for which the abundant forests of the region supplied the necessary lumber. an evidence of the activity in this direction is furnished by the fact that six revenue cutters were launched at this port in these brisk days of its prime. samuel edison, versatile, buoyant of temper, and ever optimistic, would thus appear to have pitched his tent with shrewd judgment. there was plenty of occupation ready to his hand, and more than one enterprise received his attention; but he devoted his energies chiefly to the making of shingles, for which there was a large demand locally and along the lake. canadian lumber was used principally in this industry. the wood was imported in "bolts" or pieces three feet long. a bolt made two shingles; it was sawn asunder by hand, then split and shaved. none but first-class timber was used, and such shingles outlasted far those made by machinery with their cross-grain cut. a house in milan, on which some of those shingles were put in , was still in excellent condition forty-two years later. samuel edison did well at this occupation, and employed several men, but there were other outlets from time to time for his business activity and speculative disposition. edison's mother was an attractive and highly educated woman, whose influence upon his disposition and intellect has been profound and lasting. she was born in chenango county, new york, in , and was the daughter of the rev. john elliott, a baptist minister and descendant of an old revolutionary soldier, capt. ebenezer elliott, of scotch descent. the old captain was a fine and picturesque type. he fought all through the long war of independence--seven years--and then appears to have settled down at stonington, connecticut. there, at any rate, he found his wife, "grandmother elliott," who was mercy peckham, daughter of a scotch quaker. then came the residence in new york state, with final removal to vienna, for the old soldier, while drawing his pension at buffalo, lived in the little canadian town, and there died, over years old. the family was evidently one of considerable culture and deep religious feeling, for two of mrs. edison's uncles and two brothers were also in the same baptist ministry. as a young woman she became a teacher in the public high school at vienna, and thus met her husband, who was residing there. the family never consisted of more than three children, two boys and a girl. a trace of the canadian environment is seen in the fact that edison's elder brother was named william pitt, after the great english statesman. both his brother and the sister exhibited considerable ability. william pitt edison as a youth was so clever with his pencil that it was proposed to send him to paris as an art student. in later life he was manager of the local street railway lines at port huron, michigan, in which he was heavily interested. he also owned a good farm near that town, and during the ill-health at the close of his life, when compelled to spend much of the time indoors, he devoted himself almost entirely to sketching. it has been noted by intimate observers of thomas a. edison that in discussing any project or new idea his first impulse is to take up any piece of paper available and make drawings of it. his voluminous note-books are a mass of sketches. mrs-tannie edison bailey, the sister, had, on the other hand, a great deal of literary ability, and spent much of her time in writing. the great inventor, whose iron endurance and stern will have enabled him to wear down all his associates by work sustained through arduous days and sleepless nights, was not at all strong as a child, and was of fragile appearance. he had an abnormally large but well-shaped head, and it is said that the local doctors feared he might have brain trouble. in fact, on account of his assumed delicacy, he was not allowed to go to school for some years, and even when he did attend for a short time the results were not encouraging--his mother being hotly indignant upon hearing that the teacher had spoken of him to an inspector as "addled." the youth was, indeed, fortunate far beyond the ordinary in having a mother at once loving, well-informed, and ambitious, capable herself, from her experience as a teacher, of undertaking and giving him an education better than could be secured in the local schools of the day. certain it is that under this simple regime studious habits were formed and a taste for literature developed that have lasted to this day. if ever there was a man who tore the heart out of books it is edison, and what has once been read by him is never forgotten if useful or worthy of submission to the test of experiment. but even thus early the stronger love of mechanical processes and of probing natural forces manifested itself. edison has said that he never saw a statement in any book as to such things that he did not involuntarily challenge, and wish to demonstrate as either right or wrong. as a mere child the busy scenes of the canal and the grain warehouses were of consuming interest, but the work in the ship-building yards had an irresistible fascination. his questions were so ceaseless and innumerable that the penetrating curiosity of an unusually strong mind was regarded as deficiency in powers of comprehension, and the father himself, a man of no mean ingenuity and ability, reports that the child, although capable of reducing him to exhaustion by endless inquiries, was often spoken of as rather wanting in ordinary acumen. this apparent dulness is, however, a quite common incident to youthful genius. the constructive tendencies of this child of whom his father said once that he had never had any boyhood days in the ordinary sense, were early noted in his fondness for building little plank roads out of the debris of the yards and mills. his extraordinarily retentive memory was shown in his easy acquisition of all the songs of the lumber gangs and canal men before he was five years old. one incident tells how he was found one day in the village square copying laboriously the signs of the stores. a highly characteristic event at the age of six is described by his sister. he had noted a goose sitting on her eggs and the result. one day soon after, he was missing. by-and-by, after an anxious search, his father found him sitting in a nest he had made in the barn, filled with goose-eggs and hens' eggs he had collected, trying to hatch them out. one of mr. edison's most vivid recollections goes back to , when as a child three of four years old he saw camped in front of his home six covered wagons, "prairie schooners," and witnessed their departure for california. the great excitement over the gold discoveries was thus felt in milan, and these wagons, laden with all the worldly possessions of their owners, were watched out of sight on their long journey by this fascinated urchin, whose own discoveries in later years were to tempt many other argonauts into the auriferous realms of electricity. another vivid memory of this period concerns his first realization of the grim mystery of death. he went off one day with the son of the wealthiest man in the town to bathe in the creek. soon after they entered the water the other boy disappeared. young edison waited around the spot for half an hour or more, and then, as it was growing dark, went home puzzled and lonely, but silent as to the occurrence. about two hours afterward, when the missing boy was being searched for, a man came to the edison home to make anxious inquiry of the companion with whom he had last been seen. edison told all the circumstances with a painful sense of being in some way implicated. the creek was at once dragged, and then the body was recovered. edison had himself more than one narrow escape. of course he fell in the canal and was nearly drowned; few boys in milan worth their salt omitted that performance. on another occasion he encountered a more novel peril by falling into the pile of wheat in a grain elevator and being almost smothered. holding the end of a skate-strap for another lad to shorten with an axe, he lost the top of a finger. fire also had its perils. he built a fire in a barn, but the flames spread so rapidly that, although he escaped himself, the barn was wholly destroyed, and he was publicly whipped in the village square as a warning to other youths. equally well remembered is a dangerous encounter with a ram that attacked him while he was busily engaged digging out a bumblebee's nest near an orchard fence. the animal knocked him against the fence, and was about to butt him again when he managed to drop over on the safe side and escape. he was badly hurt and bruised, and no small quantity of arnica was needed for his wounds. meantime little milan had reached the zenith of its prosperity, and all of a sudden had been deprived of its flourishing grain trade by the new columbus, sandusky & hocking railroad; in fact, the short canal was one of the last efforts of its kind in this country to compete with the new means of transportation. the bell of the locomotive was everywhere ringing the death-knell of effective water haulage, with such dire results that, in , of the miles of american freight canal, that had cost $ , , , no fewer than miles had been abandoned, and of the remaining miles quite a large proportion was not paying expenses. the short milan canal suffered with the rest, and to-day lies well-nigh obliterated, hidden in part by vegetable gardens, a mere grass-grown depression at the foot of the winding, shallow valley. other railroads also prevented any further competition by the canal, for a branch of the wheeling & lake erie now passes through the village, while the lake shore & michigan southern runs a few miles to the south. the owners of the canal soon had occasion to regret that they had disdained the overtures of enterprising railroad promoters desirous of reaching the village, and the consequences of commercial isolation rapidly made themselves felt. it soon became evident to samuel edison and his wife that the cozy brick home on the bluff must be given up and the struggle with fortune resumed elsewhere. they were well-to-do, however, and removing, in , to port huron, michigan, occupied a large colonial house standing in the middle of an old government fort reservation of ten acres overlooking the wide expanse of the st. clair river just after it leaves lake huron. it was in many ways an ideal homestead, toward which the family has always felt the strongest attachment, but the association with milan has never wholly ceased. the old house in which edison was born is still occupied (in ) by mr. s. o. edison, a half-brother of edison's father, and a man of marked inventive ability. he was once prominent in the iron-furnace industry of ohio, and was for a time associated in the iron trade with the father of the late president mckinley. among his inventions may be mentioned a machine for making fuel from wheat straw, and a smoke-consuming device. this birthplace of edison remains the plain, substantial little brick house it was originally: one-storied, with rooms finished on the attic floor. being built on the hillside, its basement opens into the rear yard. it was at first heated by means of open coal grates, which may not have been altogether adequate in severe winters, owing to the altitude and the north-eastern exposure, but a large furnace is one of the more modern changes. milan itself is not materially unlike the smaller ohio towns of its own time or those of later creation, but the venerable appearance of the big elm-trees that fringe the trim lawns tells of its age. it is, indeed, an extremely neat, snug little place, with well-kept homes, mostly of frame construction, and flagged streets crossing each other at right angles. there are no poor--at least, everybody is apparently well-to-do. while a leisurely atmosphere pervades the town, few idlers are seen. some of the residents are engaged in local business; some are occupied in farming and grape culture; others are employed in the iron-works near-by, at norwalk. the stores and places of public resort are gathered about the square, where there is plenty of room for hitching when the saturday trading is done at that point, at which periods the fitful bustle recalls the old wheat days when young edison ran with curiosity among the six and eight horse teams that had brought in grain. this square is still covered with fine primeval forest trees, and has at its centre a handsome soldiers' monument of the civil war, to which four paved walks converge. it is an altogether pleasant and unpretentious town, which cherishes with no small amount of pride its association with the name of thomas alva edison. in view of edison's dutch descent, it is rather singular to find him with the name of alva, for the spanish duke of alva was notoriously the worst tyrant ever known to the low countries, and his evil deeds occupy many stirring pages in motley's famous history. as a matter of fact, edison was named after capt. alva bradley, an old friend of his father, and a celebrated ship-owner on the lakes. captain bradley died a few years ago in wealth, while his old associate, with equal ability for making money, was never able long to keep it (differing again from the revolutionary new york banker from whom his son's other name, "thomas," was taken). chapter iii boyhood at port huron, michigan the new home found by the edison family at port huron, where alva spent his brief boyhood before he became a telegraph operator and roamed the whole middle west of that period, was unfortunately destroyed by fire just after the close of the civil war. a smaller but perhaps more comfortable home was then built by edison's father on some property he had bought at the near-by village of gratiot, and there his mother spent the remainder of her life in confirmed invalidism, dying in . hence the pictures and postal cards sold largely to souvenir-hunters as the port huron home do not actually show that in or around which the events now referred to took place. it has been a romance of popular biographers, based upon the fact that edison began his career as a newsboy, to assume that these earlier years were spent in poverty and privation, as indeed they usually are by the "newsies" who swarm and shout their papers in our large cities. while it seems a pity to destroy this erroneous idea, suggestive of a heroic climb from the depths to the heights, nothing could be further from the truth. socially the edison family stood high in port huron at a time when there was relatively more wealth and general activity than to-day. the town in its pristine prime was a great lumber centre, and hummed with the industry of numerous sawmills. an incredible quantity of lumber was made there yearly until the forests near-by vanished and the industry with them. the wealth of the community, invested largely in this business and in allied transportation companies, was accumulated rapidly and as freely spent during those days of prosperity in st. clair county, bringing with it a high standard of domestic comfort. in all this the edisons shared on equal terms. thus, contrary to the stories that have been so widely published, the edisons, while not rich by any means, were in comfortable circumstances, with a well-stocked farm and large orchard to draw upon also for sustenance. samuel edison, on moving to port huron, became a dealer in grain and feed, and gave attention to that business for many years. but he was also active in the lumber industry in the saginaw district and several other things. it was difficult for a man of such mercurial, restless temperament to stay constant to any one occupation; in fact, had he been less visionary he would have been more prosperous, but might not have had a son so gifted with insight and imagination. one instance of the optimistic vagaries which led him incessantly to spend time and money on projects that would not have appealed to a man less sanguine was the construction on his property of a wooden observation tower over a hundred feet high, the top of which was reached toilsomely by winding stairs, after the payment of twenty-five cents. it is true that the tower commanded a pretty view by land and water, but colonel sellers himself might have projected this enterprise as a possible source of steady income. at first few visitors panted up the long flights of steps to the breezy platform. during the first two months edison's father took in three dollars, and felt extremely blue over the prospect, and to young edison and his relatives were left the lonely pleasures of the lookout and the enjoyment of the telescope with which it was equipped. but one fine day there came an excursion from an inland town to see the lake. they picnicked in the grove, and six hundred of them went up the tower. after that the railroad company began to advertise these excursions, and the receipts each year paid for the observatory. it might be thought that, immersed in business and preoccupied with schemes of this character, mr. edison was to blame for the neglect of his son's education. but that was not the case. the conditions were peculiar. it was at the port huron public school that edison received all the regular scholastic instruction he ever enjoyed--just three months. he might have spent the full term there, but, as already noted, his teacher had found him "addled." he was always, according to his own recollection, at the foot of the class, and had come almost to regard himself as a dunce, while his father entertained vague anxieties as to his stupidity. the truth of the matter seems to be that mrs. edison, a teacher of uncommon ability and force, held no very high opinion of the average public-school methods and results, and was both eager to undertake the instruction of her son and ambitious for the future of a boy whom she knew from pedagogic experience to be receptive and thoughtful to a very unusual degree. with her he found study easy and pleasant. the quality of culture in that simple but refined home, as well as the intellectual character of this youth without schooling, may be inferred from the fact that before he had reached the age of twelve he had read, with his mother's help, gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire, hume's history of england, sears' history of the world, burton's anatomy of melancholy, and the dictionary of sciences; and had even attempted to struggle through newton's principia, whose mathematics were decidedly beyond both teacher and student. besides, edison, like faraday, was never a mathematician, and has had little personal use for arithmetic beyond that which is called "mental." he said once to a friend: "i can always hire some mathematicians, but they can't hire me." his father, by-the-way, always encouraged these literary tastes, and paid him a small sum for each new book mastered. it will be noted that fiction makes no showing in the list; but it was not altogether excluded from the home library, and edison has all his life enjoyed it, particularly the works of such writers as victor hugo, after whom, because of his enthusiastic admiration--possibly also because of his imagination--he was nicknamed by his fellow-operators, "victor hugo edison." electricity at that moment could have no allure for a youthful mind. crude telegraphy represented what was known of it practically, and about that the books read by young edison were not redundantly informational. even had that not been so, the inclinations of the boy barely ten years old were toward chemistry, and fifty years later there is seen no change of predilection. it sounds like heresy to say that edison became an electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. one of the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would enable him to fly. the agonies of the victim attracted attention, and edison's mother marked her displeasure by an application of the switch kept behind the old seth thomas "grandfather clock." the disastrous result of this experiment did not discourage edison at all, as he attributed failure to the lad rather than to the motive power. in the cellar of the edison homestead young alva soon accumulated a chemical outfit, constituting the first in a long series of laboratories. the word "laboratory" had always been associated with alchemists in the past, but as with "filament" this untutored stripling applied an iconoclastic practicability to it long before he realized the significance of the new departure. goethe, in his legend of faust, shows the traditional or conventional philosopher in his laboratory, an aged, tottering, gray-bearded investigator, who only becomes youthful upon diabolical intervention, and would stay senile without it. in the edison laboratory no such weird transformation has been necessary, for the philosopher had youth, fiery energy, and a grimly practical determination that would submit to no denial of the goal of something of real benefit to mankind. edison and faust are indeed the extremes of philosophic thought and accomplishment. the home at port huron thus saw the first edison laboratory. the boy began experimenting when he was about ten or eleven years of age. he got a copy of parker's school philosophy, an elementary book on physics, and about every experiment in it he tried. young alva, or "al," as he was called, thus early displayed his great passion for chemistry, and in the cellar of the house he collected no fewer than two hundred bottles, gleaned in baskets from all parts of the town. these were arranged carefully on shelves and all labelled "poison," so that no one else would handle or disturb them. they contained the chemicals with which he was constantly experimenting. to others this diversion was both mysterious and meaningless, but he had soon become familiar with all the chemicals obtainable at the local drug stores, and had tested to his satisfaction many of the statements encountered in his scientific reading. edison has said that sometimes he has wondered how it was he did not become an analytical chemist instead of concentrating on electricity, for which he had at first no great inclination. deprived of the use of a large part of her cellar, tiring of the "mess" always to be found there, and somewhat fearful of results, his mother once told the boy to clear everything out and restore order. the thought of losing all his possessions was the cause of so much ardent distress that his mother relented, but insisted that he must get a lock and key, and keep the embryonic laboratory closed up all the time except when he was there. this was done. from such work came an early familiarity with the nature of electrical batteries and the production of current from them. apparently the greater part of his spare time was spent in the cellar, for he did not share to any extent in the sports of the boys of the neighborhood, his chum and chief companion, michael oates, being a lad of dutch origin, many years older, who did chores around the house, and who could be recruited as a general utility friday for the experiments of this young explorer--such as that with the seidlitz powders. such pursuits as these consumed the scant pocket-money of the boy very rapidly. he was not in regular attendance at school, and had read all the books within reach. it was thus he turned newsboy, overcoming the reluctance of his parents, particularly that of his mother, by pointing out that he could by this means earn all he wanted for his experiments and get fresh reading in the shape of papers and magazines free of charge. besides, his leisure hours in detroit he would be able to spend at the public library. he applied (in ) for the privilege of selling newspapers on the trains of the grand trunk railroad, between port huron and detroit, and obtained the concession after a short delay, during which he made an essay in his task of selling newspapers. edison had, as a fact, already had some commercial experience from the age of eleven. the ten acres of the reservation offered an excellent opportunity for truck-farming, and the versatile head of the family could not avoid trying his luck in this branch of work. a large "market garden" was laid out, in which edison worked pretty steadily with the help of the dutch boy, michael oates--he of the flying experiment. these boys had a horse and small wagon intrusted to them, and every morning in the season they would load up with onions, lettuce, peas, etc., and go through the town. as much as $ was turned over to mrs. edison in one year from this source. the boy was indefatigable but not altogether charmed with agriculture. "after a while i tired of this work, as hoeing corn in a hot sun is unattractive, and i did not wonder that it had built up cities. soon the grand trunk railroad was extended from toronto to port huron, at the foot of lake huron, and thence to detroit, at about the same time the war of the rebellion broke out. by a great amount of persistence i got permission from my mother to go on the local train as a newsboy. the local train from port huron to detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles, left at a.m. and arrived again at . p.m. after being on the train for several months, i started two stores in port huron--one for periodicals, and the other for vegetables, butter, and berries in the season. these were attended by two boys who shared in the profits. the periodical store i soon closed, as the boy in charge could not be trusted. the vegetable store i kept up for nearly a year. after the railroad had been opened a short time, they put on an express which left detroit in the morning and returned in the evening. i received permission to put a newsboy on this train. connected with this train was a car, one part for baggage and the other part for u. s. mail, but for a long time it was not used. every morning i had two large baskets of vegetables from the detroit market loaded in the mail-car and sent to port huron, where the boy would take them to the store. they were much better than those grown locally, and sold readily. i never was asked to pay freight, and to this day cannot explain why, except that i was so small and industrious, and the nerve to appropriate a u. s. mail-car to do a free freight business was so monumental. however, i kept this up for a long time, and in addition bought butter from the farmers along the line, and an immense amount of blackberries in the season. i bought wholesale and at a low price, and permitted the wives of the engineers and trainmen to have the benefit of the discount. after a while there was a daily immigrant train put on. this train generally had from seven to ten coaches filled always with norwegians, all bound for iowa and minnesota. on these trains i employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and stick candy. as the war progressed the daily newspaper sales became very profitable, and i gave up the vegetable store." the hours of this occupation were long, but the work was not particularly heavy, and edison soon found opportunity for his favorite avocation--chemical experimentation. his train left port huron at a.m., and made its southward trip to detroit in about three hours. this gave a stay in that city from a.m. until the late afternoon, when the train left, arriving at port huron about . p.m. the train was made up of three coaches--baggage, smoking, and ordinary passenger or "ladies." the baggage-car was divided into three compartments--one for trunks and packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking. in those days no use was made of the smoking-compartment, as there was no ventilation, and it was turned over to young edison, who not only kept papers there and his stock of goods as a "candy butcher," but soon had it equipped with an extraordinary variety of apparatus. there was plenty of leisure on the two daily runs, even for an industrious boy, and thus he found time to transfer his laboratory from the cellar and re-establish it on the train. his earnings were also excellent--so good, in fact, that eight or ten dollars a day were often taken in, and one dollar went every day to his mother. thus supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. and spent it was, for with access to detroit and its large stores, where he bought his supplies, and to the public library, where he could quench his thirst for technical information, edison gave up all his spare time and money to chemistry. surely the country could have presented at that moment no more striking example of the passionate pursuit of knowledge under difficulties than this newsboy, barely fourteen years of age, with his jars and test-tubes installed on a railway baggage-car. nor did this amazing equipment stop at batteries and bottles. the same little space a few feet square was soon converted by this precocious youth into a newspaper office. the outbreak of the civil war gave a great stimulus to the demand for all newspapers, noticing which he became ambitious to publish a local journal of his own, devoted to the news of that section of the grand trunk road. a small printing-press that had been used for hotel bills of fare was picked up in detroit, and type was also bought, some of it being placed on the train so that composition could go on in spells of leisure. to one so mechanical in his tastes as edison, it was quite easy to learn the rudiments of the printing art, and thus the weekly herald came into existence, of which he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and newsdealer. only one or two copies of this journal are now discoverable, but its appearance can be judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. the thing was indeed well done as the work of a youth shown by the date to be less than fifteen years old. the literary style is good, there are only a few trivial slips in spelling, and the appreciation is keen of what would be interesting news and gossip. the price was three cents a copy, or eight cents a month for regular subscribers, and the circulation ran up to over four hundred copies an issue. this was by no means the result of mere public curiosity, but attested the value of the sheet as a genuine newspaper, to which many persons in the railroad service along the line were willing contributors. indeed, with the aid of the railway telegraph, edison was often able to print late news of importance, of local origin, that the distant regular papers like those of detroit, which he handled as a newsboy, could not get. it is no wonder that this clever little sheet received the approval and patronage of the english engineer stephenson when inspecting the grand trunk system, and was noted by no less distinguished a contemporary than the london times as the first newspaper in the world to be printed on a train in motion. the youthful proprietor sometimes cleared as much as twenty to thirty dollars a month from this unique journalistic enterprise. but all this extra work required attention, and edison solved the difficulty of attending also to the newsboy business by the employment of a young friend, whom he trained and treated liberally as an understudy. there was often plenty of work for both in the early days of the war, when the news of battle caused intense excitement and large sales of papers. edison, with native shrewdness already so strikingly displayed, would telegraph the station agents and get them to bulletin the event of the day at the front, so that when each station was reached there were eager purchasers waiting. he recalls in particular the sensation caused by the great battle of shiloh, or pittsburg landing, in april, , in which both grant and sherman were engaged, in which johnston died, and in which there was a ghastly total of , killed and wounded. in describing his enterprising action that day, edison says that when he reached detroit the bulletin-boards of the newspaper offices were surrounded with dense crowds, which read awestricken the news that there were , killed and wounded, and that the result was uncertain. "i knew that if the same excitement was attained at the various small towns along the road, and especially at port huron, the sale of papers would be great. i then conceived the idea of telegraphing the news ahead, went to the operator in the depot, and by giving him harper's weekly and some other papers for three months, he agreed to telegraph to all the stations the matter on the bulletin-board. i hurriedly copied it, and he sent it, requesting the agents to display it on the blackboards used for stating the arrival and departure of trains. i decided that instead of the usual one hundred papers i could sell one thousand; but not having sufficient money to purchase that number, i determined in my desperation to see the editor himself and get credit. the great paper at that time was the detroit free press. i walked into the office marked 'editorial' and told a young man that i wanted to see the editor on important business--important to me, anyway, i was taken into an office where there were two men, and i stated what i had done about telegraphing, and that i wanted a thousand papers, but only had money for three hundred, and i wanted credit. one of the men refused it, but the other told the first spokesman to let me have them. this man, i afterward learned, was wilbur f. storey, who subsequently founded the chicago times, and became celebrated in the newspaper world. by the aid of another boy i lugged the papers to the train and started folding them. the first station, called utica, was a small one where i generally sold two papers. i saw a crowd ahead on the platform, and thought it some excursion, but the moment i landed there was a rush for me; then i realized that the telegraph was a great invention. i sold thirty-five papers there. the next station was mount clemens, now a watering-place, but then a town of about one thousand. i usually sold six to eight papers there. i decided that if i found a corresponding crowd there, the only thing to do to correct my lack of judgment in not getting more papers was to raise the price from five cents to ten. the crowd was there, and i raised the price. at the various towns there were corresponding crowds. it had been my practice at port huron to jump from the train at a point about one-fourth of a mile from the station, where the train generally slackened speed. i had drawn several loads of sand to this point to jump on, and had become quite expert. the little dutch boy with the horse met me at this point. when the wagon approached the outskirts of the town i was met by a large crowd. i then yelled: 'twenty-five cents apiece, gentlemen! i haven't enough to go around!' i sold all out, and made what to me then was an immense sum of money." such episodes as this added materially to his income, but did not necessarily increase his savings, for he was then, as now, an utter spendthrift so long as some new apparatus or supplies for experiment could be had. in fact, the laboratory on wheels soon became crowded with such equipment, most costly chemicals were bought on the instalment plan, and fresenius' qualitative analysis served as a basis for ceaseless testing and study. george pullman, who then had a small shop at detroit and was working on his sleeping-car, made edison a lot of wooden apparatus for his chemicals, to the boy's delight. unfortunately a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. the train, running one day at thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor, and burst into flame. the car took fire, and the boy, in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a quick-tempered scotchman, who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to the scene with water and saved his car. on the arrival at mount clemens station, its next stop, edison and his entire outfit, laboratory, printing-plant, and all, were promptly ejected by the enraged conductor, and the train then moved off, leaving him on the platform, tearful and indignant in the midst of his beloved but ruined possessions. it was lynch law of a kind; but in view of the responsibility, this action of the conductor lay well within his rights and duties. it was through this incident that edison acquired the deafness that has persisted all through his life, a severe box on the ears from the scorched and angry conductor being the direct cause of the infirmity. although this deafness would be regarded as a great affliction by most people, and has brought in its train other serious baubles, mr. edison has always regarded it philosophically, and said about it recently: "this deafness has been of great advantage to me in various ways. when in a telegraph office, i could only hear the instrument directly on the table at which i sat, and unlike the other operators, i was not bothered by the other instruments. again, in experimenting on the telephone, i had to improve the transmitter so i could hear it. this made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. it was the same with the phonograph. the great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the overtones in music, and the hissing consonants in speech. i worked over one year, twenty hours a day, sundays and all, to get the word 'specie' perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. when this was done i knew that everything else could be done which was a fact. again, my nerves have been preserved intact. broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal hearing." saddened but not wholly discouraged, edison soon reconstituted his laboratory and printing-office at home, although on the part of the family there was some fear and objection after this episode, on the score of fire. but edison promised not to bring in anything of a dangerous nature. he did not cease the publication of the weekly herald. on the contrary, he prospered in both his enterprises until persuaded by the "printer's devil" in the office of the port huron commercial to change the character of his journal, enlarge it, and issue it under the name of paul pry, a happy designation for this or kindred ventures in the domain of society journalism. no copies of paul pry can now be found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, that gossip was its specialty, and that no small offence was given to the people whose peculiarities or peccadilloes were discussed in a frank and breezy style by the two boys. in one instance the resentment of the victim of such unsought publicity was so intense he laid hands on edison and pitched the startled young editor into the st. clair river. the name of this violator of the freedom of the press was thereafter excluded studiously from the columns of paul pry, and the incident may have been one of those which soon caused the abandonment of the paper. edison had great zest in this work, and but for the strong influences in other directions would probably have continued in the newspaper field, in which he was, beyond question, the youngest publisher and editor of the day. before leaving this period of his career, it is to be noted that it gave edison many favorable opportunities. in detroit he could spend frequent hours in the public library, and it is matter of record that he began his liberal acquaintance with its contents by grappling bravely with a certain section and trying to read it through consecutively, shelf by shelf, regardless of subject. in a way this is curiously suggestive of the earnest, energetic method of "frontal attack" with which the inventor has since addressed himself to so many problems in the arts and sciences. the grand trunk railroad machine-shops at port huron were a great attraction to the boy, who appears to have spent a good deal of his time there. he who was to have much to do with the evolution of the modern electric locomotive was fascinated by the mechanism of the steam locomotive; and whenever he could get the chance edison rode in the cab with the engineer of his train. he became thoroughly familiar with the intricacies of fire-box, boiler, valves, levers, and gears, and liked nothing better than to handle the locomotive himself during the run. on one trip, when the engineer lay asleep while his eager substitute piloted the train, the boiler "primed," and a deluge overwhelmed the young driver, who stuck to his post till the run and the ordeal were ended. possibly this helped to spoil a locomotive engineer, but went to make a great master of the new motive power. "steam is half an englishman," said emerson. the temptation is strong to say that workaday electricity is half an american. edison's own account of the incident is very laughable: "the engine was one of a number leased to the grand trunk by the chicago, burlington & quincy. it had bright brass bands all over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished, which was the custom up to the time old commodore vanderbilt stopped it on his roads. after running about fifteen miles the fireman couldn't keep his eyes open (this event followed an all-night dance of the trainmen's fraternal organization), and he agreed to permit me to run the engine. i took charge, reducing the speed to about twelve miles an hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her destination at the grand trunk junction safely. but something occurred which was very much out of the ordinary. i was very much worried about the water, and i knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to explode. i hadn't gone twenty miles before black damp mud blew out of the stack and covered every part of the engine, including myself. i was about to awaken the fireman to find out the cause of this when it stopped. then i approached a station where the fireman always went out to the cowcatcher, opened the oil-cup on the steam-chest, and poured oil in. i started to carry out the procedure when, upon opening the oil-cup, the steam rushed out with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking me off the engine. i succeeded in closing the oil-cup and got back in the cab, and made up my mind that she would pull through without oil. i learned afterward that the engineer always shut off steam when the fireman went out to oil. this point i failed to notice. my powers of observation were very much improved after this occurrence. just before i reached the junction another outpour of black mud occurred, and the whole engine was a sight--so much so that when i pulled into the yard everybody turned to see it, laughing immoderately. i found the reason of the mud was that i carried so much water it passed over into the stack, and this washed out all the accumulated soot." one afternoon about a week before christmas edison's train jumped the track near utica, a station on the line. four old michigan central cars with rotten sills collapsed in the ditch and went all to pieces, distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over the track and the vicinity. hating to see so much waste, edison tried to save all he could by eating it on the spot, but as a result "our family doctor had the time of his life with me in this connection." an absurd incident described by edison throws a vivid light on the free-and-easy condition of early railroad travel and on the southern extravagance of the time. "in , just before the war broke out there came to the train one afternoon, in detroit, two fine-looking young men accompanied by a colored servant. they bought tickets for port huron, the terminal point for the train. after leaving the junction just outside of detroit, i brought in the evening papers. when i came opposite the two young men, one of them said: 'boy, what have you got?' i said: 'papers.' 'all right.' he took them and threw them out of the window, and, turning to the colored man, said: 'nicodemus, pay this boy.' i told nicodemus the amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me. the passengers didn't know what to make of the transaction. i returned with the illustrated papers and magazines. these were seized and thrown out of the window, and i was told to get my money of nicodemus. i then returned with all the old magazines and novels i had not been able to sell, thinking perhaps this would be too much for them. i was small and thin, and the layer reached above my head, and was all i could possibly carry. i had prepared a list, and knew the amount in case they bit again. when i opened the door, all the passengers roared with laughter. i walked right up to the young men. one asked me what i had. i said 'magazines and novels.' he promptly threw them out of the window, and nicodemus settled. then i came in with cracked hickory nuts, then pop-corn balls, and, finally, molasses candy. all went out of the window. i felt like alexander the great!--i had no more chance! i had sold all i had. finally i put a rope to my trunk, which was about the size of a carpenter's chest, and started to pull this from the baggage-car to the passenger-car. it was almost too much for my strength, but at last i got it in front of those men. i pulled off my coat, shoes, and hat, and laid them on the chest. then he asked: 'what have you got, boy?' i said: 'everything, sir, that i can spare that is for sale.' the passengers fairly jumped with laughter. nicodemus paid me $ for this last sale, and threw the whole out of the door in the rear of the car. these men were from the south, and i have always retained a soft spot in my heart for a southern gentleman." while edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day to go to the office of e. b. ward & company, at that time the largest owners of steamboats on the great lakes. the captain of their largest boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another captain who lived about fourteen miles from ridgeway station on the railroad. this captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and had cleared part of it. edison was offered $ by mr. ward to go and fetch him, but as it was a wild country and would be dark, edison stood out for $ , so that he could get the companionship of another lad. the terms were agreed to. edison arrived at ridgeway at . p.m., when it was raining and as dark as ink. getting another boy with difficulty to volunteer, he launched out on his errand in the pitch-black night. the two boys carried lanterns, but the road was a rough path through dense forest. the country was wild, and it was a usual occurrence to see deer, bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides of houses to dry. edison had read about bears, but couldn't remember whether they were day or night prowlers. the farther they went the more apprehensive they became, and every stump in the ravished forest looked like a bear. the other lad proposed seeking safety up a tree, but edison demurred on the plea that bears could climb, and that the message must be delivered that night to enable the captain to catch the morning train. first one lantern went out, then the other. "we leaned up against a tree and cried. i thought if i ever got out of that scrape alive i would know more about the habits of animals and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of mischance when i undertook an enterprise. however, the intense darkness dilated the pupils of our eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and we could just see at times the outlines of the road. finally, just as a faint gleam of daylight arrived, we entered the captain's yard and delivered the message. in my whole life i never spent such a night of horror as this, but i got a good lesson." an amusing incident of this period is told by edison. "when i was a boy," he says, "the prince of wales, the late king edward, came to canada ( ). great preparations were made at sarnia, the canadian town opposite port huron. about every boy, including myself, went over to see the affair. the town was draped in flags most profusely, and carpets were laid on the cross-walks for the prince to walk on. there were arches, etc. a stand was built raised above the general level, where the prince was to be received by the mayor. seeing all these preparations, my idea of a prince was very high; but when he did arrive i mistook the duke of newcastle for him, the duke being a fine-looking man. i soon saw that i was mistaken: that the prince was a young stripling, and did not meet expectations. several of us expressed our belief that a prince wasn't much, after all, and said that we were thoroughly disappointed. for this one boy was whipped. soon the canuck boys attacked the yankee boys, and we were all badly licked. i, myself, got a black eye. that has always prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly." it is certainly interesting to note that in later years the prince for whom edison endured the ignominy of a black eye made generous compensation in a graceful letter accompanying the gold albert medal awarded by the royal society of arts. another incident of the period is as follows: "after selling papers in port huron, which was often not reached until about . at night, i seldom got home before . or . . about half-way home from the station and the town, and within twenty-five feet of the road in a dense wood, was a soldiers' graveyard where three hundred soldiers were buried, due to a cholera epidemic which took place at fort gratiot, near by, many years previously. at first we used to shut our eyes and run the horse past this graveyard, and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart would give a violent movement, and it is a wonder that i haven't some valvular disease of that organ. but soon this running of the horse became monotonous, and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely disappeared from my system. i was in the condition of sam houston, the pioneer and founder of texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. houston lived some distance from the town and generally went home late at night, having to pass through a dark cypress swamp over a corduroy road. one night, to test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed himself behind a tree and enveloped himself in a sheet. he confronted houston suddenly, and sam stopped and said: 'if you are a man, you can't hurt me. if you are a ghost, you don't want to hurt me. and if you are the devil, come home with me; i married your sister!'" it is not to be inferred, however, from some of the preceding statements that the boy was of an exclusively studious bent of mind. he had then, as now, the keen enjoyment of a joke, and no particular aversion to the practical form. an incident of the time is in point. "after the breaking out of the war there was a regiment of volunteer soldiers quartered at fort gratiot, the reservation extending to the boundary line of our house. nearly every night we would hear a call, such as 'corporal of the guard, no. .' this would be repeated from sentry to sentry until it reached the barracks, when corporal of the guard, no. , would come and see what was wanted. i and the little dutch boy, after returning from the town after selling our papers, thought we would take a hand at military affairs. so one night, when it was very dark, i shouted for corporal of the guard, no. . the second sentry, thinking it was the terminal sentry who shouted, repeated it to the third, and so on. this brought the corporal along the half mile, only to find that he was fooled. we tried him three nights; but the third night they were watching, and caught the little dutch boy, took him to the lock-up at the fort, and shut him up. they chased me to the house. i rushed for the cellar. in one small apartment there were two barrels of potatoes and a third one nearly empty. i poured these remnants into the other barrels, sat down, and pulled the barrel over my head, bottom up. the soldiers had awakened my father, and they were searching for me with candles and lanterns. the corporal was absolutely certain i came into the cellar, and couldn't see how i could have gotten out, and wanted to know from my father if there was no secret hiding-place. on assurance of my father, who said that there was not, he said it was most extraordinary. i was glad when they left, as i was cramped, and the potatoes were rotten that had been in the barrel and violently offensive. the next morning i was found in bed, and received a good switching on the legs from my father, the first and only one i ever received from him, although my mother kept a switch behind the old seth thomas clock that had the bark worn off. my mother's ideas and mine differed at times, especially when i got experimenting and mussed up things. the dutch boy was released next morning." chapter iv the young telegraph operator "while a newsboy on the railroad," says edison, "i got very much interested in electricity, probably from visiting telegraph offices with a chum who had tastes similar to mine." it will also have been noted that he used the telegraph to get items for his little journal, and to bulletin his special news of the civil war along the line. the next step was natural, and having with his knowledge of chemistry no trouble about "setting up" his batteries, the difficulties of securing apparatus were chiefly those connected with the circuits and the instruments. american youths to-day are given, if of a mechanical turn of mind, to amateur telegraphy or telephony, but seldom, if ever, have to make any part of the system constructed. in edison's boyish days it was quite different, and telegraphic supplies were hard to obtain. but he and his "chum" had a line between their homes, built of common stove-pipe wire. the insulators were bottles set on nails driven into trees and short poles. the magnet wire was wound with rags for insulation, and pieces of spring brass were used for keys. with an idea of securing current cheaply, edison applied the little that he knew about static electricity, and actually experimented with cats, which he treated vigorously as frictional machines until the animals fled in dismay, and edison had learned his first great lesson in the relative value of sources of electrical energy. the line was made to work, however, and additional to the messages that the boys interchanged, edison secured practice in an ingenious manner. his father insisted on . as proper bedtime, which left but a short interval after the long day on the train. but each evening, when the boy went home with a bundle of papers that had not been sold in the town, his father would sit up reading the "returnables." edison, therefore, on some excuse, left the papers with his friend, but suggested that he could get the news from him by telegraph, bit by bit. the scheme interested his father, and was put into effect, the messages being written down and handed over for perusal. this yielded good practice nightly, lasting until and o'clock, and was maintained for some time until mr. edison became willing that his son should stay up for a reasonable time. the papers were then brought home again, and the boys amused themselves to their hearts' content until the line was pulled down by a stray cow wandering through the orchard. meantime better instruments had been secured, and the rudiments of telegraphy had been fairly mastered. the mixed train on which edison was employed as newsboy did the way-freight work and shunting at the mount clemens station, about half an hour being usually spent in the work. one august morning, in , while the shunting was in progress, and a laden box-car had been pushed out of a siding, edison, who was loitering about the platform, saw the little son of the station agent, mr. j. u. mackenzie, playing with the gravel on the main track along which the car without a brakeman was rapidly approaching. edison dropped his papers and his glazed cap, and made a dash for the child, whom he picked up and lifted to safety without a second to spare, as the wheel of the car struck his heel; and both were cut about the face and hands by the gravel ballast on which they fell. the two boys were picked up by the train-hands and carried to the platform, and the grateful father at once offered to teach the rescuer, whom he knew and liked, the art of train telegraphy and to make an operator of him. it is needless to say that the proposal was eagerly accepted. edison found time for his new studies by letting one of his friends look after the newsboy work on the train for part of the trip, reserving to himself the run between port huron and mount clemens. that he was already well qualified as a beginner is evident from the fact that he had mastered the morse code of the telegraphic alphabet, and was able to take to the station a neat little set of instruments he had just finished with his own hands at a gun-shop in detroit. this was probably a unique achievement in itself among railway operators of that day or of later times. the drill of the student involved chiefly the acquisition of the special signals employed in railway work, including the numerals and abbreviations applied to save time. some of these have passed into the slang of the day, " " being well known as a telegrapher's expression of compliments or good wishes, while " " is an accident or death message, and has been given broader popular significance as a general synonym for "hoodoo." all of this came easily to edison, who had, moreover, as his herald showed, an unusual familiarity with train movement along that portion of the grand trunk road. three or four months were spent pleasantly and profitably by the youth in this course of study, and edison took to it enthusiastically, giving it no less than eighteen hours a day. he then put up a little telegraph line from the station to the village, a distance of about a mile, and opened an office in a drug store; but the business was naturally very small. the telegraph operator at port huron knowing of his proficiency, and wanting to get into the united states military telegraph corps, where the pay in those days of the civil war was high, succeeded in convincing his brother-in-law, mr. m. walker, that young edison could fill the position. edison was, of course, well acquainted with the operators along the road and at the southern terminal, and took up his new duties very easily. the office was located in a jewelry store, where newspapers and periodicals were also sold. edison was to be found at the office both day and night, sleeping there. "i became quite valuable to mr. walker. after working all day i worked at the office nights as well, for the reason that 'press report' came over one of the wires until a.m., and i would cut in and copy it as well as i could, to become more rapidly proficient. the goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be able to take press. mr. walker tried to get my father to apprentice me at $ per month, but they could not agree. i then applied for a job on the grand trunk railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place, nights, at stratford junction, canada." apparently his friend mackenzie helped him in the matter. the position carried a salary of $ per month. no serious objections were raised by his family, for the distance from port huron was not great, and stratford was near bayfield, the old home from which the edisons had come, so that there were doubtless friends or even relatives in the vicinity. this was in . mr. walker was an observant man, who has since that time installed a number of waterworks systems and obtained several patents of his own. he describes the boy of sixteen as engrossed intensely in his experiments and scientific reading, and somewhat indifferent, for this reason, to his duties as operator. this office was not particularly busy, taking from $ to $ a month, but even the messages taken in would remain unsent on the hook while edison was in the cellar below trying to solve some chemical problem. the manager would see him studying sometimes an article in such a paper as the scientific american, and then disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. returning from the drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until required by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if possible, in this offhand manner, whether what he had read was correct or not. when he had completed his experiment all interest in it was lost, and the jars and wires would be left to any fate that might befall them. in like manner edison would make free use of the watchmaker's tools that lay on the little table in the front window, and would take the wire pliers there without much thought as to their value as distinguished from a lineman's tools. the one idea was to do quickly what he wanted to do; and the same swift, almost headlong trial of anything that comes to hand, while the fervor of a new experiment is felt, has been noted at all stages of the inventor's career. one is reminded of palissy's recklessness, when in his efforts to make the enamel melt on his pottery he used the very furniture of his home for firewood. mr. edison remarks the fact that there was very little difference between the telegraph of that time and of to-day, except the general use of the old morse register with the dots and dashes recorded by indenting paper strips that could be read and checked later at leisure if necessary. he says: "the telegraph men couldn't explain how it worked, and i was always trying to get them to do so. i think they couldn't. i remember the best explanation i got was from an old scotch line repairer employed by the montreal telegraph company, which operated the railroad wires. he said that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from edinburgh to london, if you pulled his tail in edinburgh he would bark in london. i could understand that, but i never could get it through me what went through the dog or over the wire." to-day mr. edison is just as unable to solve the inner mystery of electrical transmission. nor is he alone. at the banquet given to celebrate his jubilee in as professor at glasgow university, lord kelvin, the greatest physicist of our time, admitted with tears in his eyes and the note of tragedy in his voice, that when it came to explaining the nature of electricity, he knew just as little as when he had begun as a student, and felt almost as though his life had been wasted while he tried to grapple with the great mystery of physics. another episode of this period is curious in its revelation of the tenacity with which edison has always held to some of his oldest possessions with a sense of personal attachment. "while working at stratford junction," he says, "i was told by one of the freight conductors that in the freight-house at goodrich there were several boxes of old broken-up batteries. i went there and found over eighty cells of the well-known grove nitric-acid battery. the operator there, who was also agent, when asked by me if i could have the electrodes of each cell, made of sheet platinum, gave his permission readily, thinking they were of tin. i removed them all, amounting to several ounces. platinum even in those days was very expensive, costing several dollars an ounce, and i owned only three small strips. i was overjoyed at this acquisition, and those very strips and the reworked scrap are used to this day in my laboratory over forty years later." it was at stratford that edison's inventiveness was first displayed. the hours of work of a night operator are usually from p.m. to a.m., and to insure attention while on duty it is often provided that the operator every hour, from p.m. until relieved by the day operator, shall send in the signal " " to the train dispatcher's office. edison revelled in the opportunity for study and experiment given him by his long hours of freedom in the daytime, but needed sleep, just as any healthy youth does. confronted by the necessity of sending in this watchman's signal as evidence that he was awake and on duty, he constructed a small wheel with notches on the rim, and attached it to the clock in such a manner that the night-watchman could start it when the line was quiet, and at each hour the wheel revolved and sent in accurately the dots required for "sixing." the invention was a success, the device being, indeed, similar to that of the modern district messenger box; but it was soon noticed that, in spite of the regularity of the report, "sf" could not be raised even if a train message were sent immediately after. detection and a reprimand came in due course, but were not taken very seriously. a serious occurrence that might have resulted in accident drove him soon after from canada, although the youth could hardly be held to blame for it. edison says: "this night job just suited me, as i could have the whole day to myself. i had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few minutes at a time. i taught the night-yardman my call, so i could get half an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case the station was called the watchman would awaken me. one night i got an order to hold a freight train, and i replied that i would. i rushed out to find the signalman, but before i could find him and get the signal set, the train ran past. i ran to the telegraph office, and reported that i could not hold her. the reply was: 'hell!' the train dispatcher, on the strength of my message that i would hold the train, had permitted another to leave the last station in the opposite direction. there was a lower station near the junction where the day operator slept. i started for it on foot. the night was dark, and i fell into a culvert and was knocked senseless." owing to the vigilance of the two engineers on the locomotives, who saw each other approaching on the straight single track, nothing more dreadful happened than a summons to the thoughtless operator to appear before the general manager at toronto. on reaching the manager's office, his trial for neglect of duty was fortunately interrupted by the call of two englishmen; and while their conversation proceeded, edison slipped quietly out of the room, hurried to the grand trunk freight depot, found a conductor he knew taking out a freight train for sarnia, and was not happy until the ferry-boat from sarnia had landed him once more on the michigan shore. the grand trunk still owes mr. edison the wages due him at the time he thus withdrew from its service, but the claim has never been pressed. the same winter of - , while at port huron, edison had a further opportunity of displaying his ingenuity. an ice-jam had broken the light telegraph cable laid in the bed of the river across to sarnia, and thus communication was interrupted. the river is three-quarters of a mile wide, and could not be crossed on foot; nor could the cable be repaired. edison at once suggested using the steam whistle of the locomotive, and by manipulating the valve conversed the short and long outbursts of shrill sound into the morse code. an operator on the sarnia shore was quick enough to catch the significance of the strange whistling, and messages were thus sent in wireless fashion across the ice-floes in the river. it is said that such signals were also interchanged by military telegraphers during the war, and possibly edison may have heard of the practice; but be that as it may, he certainly showed ingenuity and resource in applying such a method to meet the necessity. it is interesting to note that at this point the grand trunk now has its st. clair tunnel, through which the trains are hauled under the river-bed by electric locomotives. edison had now begun unconsciously the roaming and drifting that took him during the next five years all over the middle states, and that might well have wrecked the career of any one less persistent and industrious. it was a period of his life corresponding to the wanderjahre of the german artisan, and was an easy way of gratifying a taste for travel without the risk of privation. to-day there is little temptation to the telegrapher to go to distant parts of the country on the chance that he may secure a livelihood at the key. the ranks are well filled everywhere, and of late years the telegraph as an art or industry has shown relatively slight expansion, owing chiefly to the development of telephony. hence, if vacancies occur, there are plenty of operators available, and salaries have remained so low as to lead to one or two formidable and costly strikes that unfortunately took no account of the economic conditions of demand and supply. but in the days of the civil war there was a great dearth of skilful manipulators of the key. about fifteen hundred of the best operators in the country were at the front on the federal side alone, and several hundred more had enlisted. this created a serious scarcity, and a nomadic operator going to any telegraphic centre would be sure to find a place open waiting for him. at the close of the war a majority of those who had been with the two opposed armies remained at the key under more peaceful surroundings, but the rapid development of the commercial and railroad systems fostered a new demand, and then for a time it seemed almost impossible to train new operators fast enough. in a few years, however, the telephone sprang into vigorous existence, dating from , drawing off some of the most adventurous spirits from the telegraph field; and the deterrent influence of the telephone on the telegraph had made itself felt by . the expiration of the leading bell telephone patents, five years later, accentuated even more sharply the check that had been put on telegraphy, as hundreds and thousands of "independent" telephone companies were then organized, throwing a vast network of toll lines over ohio, indiana, illinois, iowa, and other states, and affording cheap, instantaneous means of communication without any necessity for the intervention of an operator. it will be seen that the times have changed radically since edison became a telegrapher, and that in this respect a chapter of electrical history has been definitely closed. there was a day when the art offered a distinct career to all of its practitioners, and young men of ambition and good family were eager to begin even as messenger boys, and were ready to undergo a severe ordeal of apprenticeship with the belief that they could ultimately attain positions of responsibility and profit. at the same time operators have always been shrewd enough to regard the telegraph as a stepping-stone to other careers in life. a bright fellow entering the telegraph service to-day finds the experience he may gain therein valuable, but he soon realizes that there are not enough good-paying official positions to "go around," so as to give each worthy man a chance after he has mastered the essentials of the art. he feels, therefore, that to remain at the key involves either stagnation or deterioration, and that after, say, twenty-five years of practice he will have lost ground as compared with friends who started out in other occupations. the craft of an operator, learned without much difficulty, is very attractive to a youth, but a position at the key is no place for a man of mature years. his services, with rare exceptions, grow less valuable as he advances in age and nervous strain breaks him down. on the contrary, men engaged in other professions find, as a rule, that they improve and advance with experience, and that age brings larger rewards and opportunities. the list of well-known americans who have been graduates of the key is indeed an extraordinary one, and there is no department of our national life in which they have not distinguished themselves. the contrast, in this respect, between them and their european colleagues is highly significant. in europe the telegraph systems are all under government management, the operators have strictly limited spheres of promotion, and at the best the transition from one kind of employment to another is not made so easily as in the new world. but in the united states we have seen rufus bullock become governor of georgia, and ezra cornell governor of new york. marshall jewell was postmaster-general of president grant's cabinet, and daniel lamont was secretary of state in president cleveland's. gen. t. t. eckert, past-president of the western union telegraph company, was assistant secretary of war under president lincoln; and robert j. wynne, afterward a consul-general, served as assistant postmaster general. a very large proportion of the presidents and leading officials of the great railroad systems are old telegraphers, including messrs. w. c. brown, president of the new york central railroad, and marvin hughitt, president of the chicago & north western railroad. in industrial and financial life there have been theodore n. vail, president of the bell telephone system; l. c. weir, late president of the adams express; a. b. chandler, president of the postal telegraph and cable company; sir w. van home, identified with canadian development; robert c. clowry, president of the western union telegraph company; d. h. bates, manager of the baltimore & ohio telegraph for robert garrett; and andrew carnegie, the greatest ironmaster the world has ever known, as well as its greatest philanthropist. in journalism there have been leaders like edward rosewater, founder of the omaha bee; w. j. elverson, of the philadelphia press; and frank a. munsey, publisher of half a dozen big magazines. george kennan has achieved fame in literature, and guy carleton and harry de souchet have been successful as dramatists. these are but typical of hundreds of men who could be named who have risen from work at the key to become recognized leaders in differing spheres of activity. but roving has never been favorable to the formation of steady habits. the young men who thus floated about the country from one telegraph office to another were often brilliant operators, noted for speed in sending and receiving, but they were undisciplined, were without the restraining influences of home life, and were so highly paid for their work that they could indulge freely in dissipation if inclined that way. subjected to nervous tension for hours together at the key, many of them unfortunately took to drink, and having ended one engagement in a city by a debauch that closed the doors of the office to them, would drift away to the nearest town, and there securing work, would repeat the performance. at one time, indeed, these men were so numerous and so much in evidence as to constitute a type that the public was disposed to accept as representative of the telegraphic fraternity; but as the conditions creating him ceased to exist, the "tramp operator" also passed into history. it was, however, among such characters that edison was very largely thrown in these early days of aimless drifting, to learn something perhaps of their nonchalant philosophy of life, sharing bed and board with them under all kinds of adverse conditions, but always maintaining a stoic abstemiousness, and never feeling other than a keen regret at the waste of so much genuine ability and kindliness on the part of those knights errant of the key whose inevitable fate might so easily have been his own. such a class or group of men can always be presented by an individual type, and this is assuredly best embodied in milton f. adams, one of edison's earliest and closest friends, to whom reference will be made in later chapters, and whose life has been so full of adventurous episodes that he might well be regarded as the modern gil blas. that career is certainly well worth the telling as "another story," to use the kipling phrase. of him edison says: "adams was one of a class of operators never satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. he had the 'wanderlust.' after enjoying hospitality in boston in - , on the floor of my hall-bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist, while the boarding-house itself was run on the banting system of flesh reduction, he came to me one day and said: 'good-bye, edison; i have got sixty cents, and i am going to san francisco.' and he did go. how, i never knew personally. i learned afterward that he got a job there, and then within a week they had a telegraphers' strike. he got a big torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the strikers. then he went to peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in that city. the grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme died. then adams crossed the andes, and started a market-report bureau in buenos ayres. this didn't pay, so he started a restaurant in pernambuco, brazil. there he did very well, but something went wrong (as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the transvaal, and ran a panorama called 'paradise lost' in the kaffir kraals. this didn't pay, and he became the editor of a newspaper; then went to england to raise money for a railroad in cape colony. next i heard of him in new york, having just arrived from bogota, united states of colombia, with a power of attorney and $ from a native of that republic, who had applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a pulley--a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. i gave adams, then, a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. this he soon got tired of, and i lost sight of him." adams, in speaking of this episode, says that when he asked for transportation expenses to st. louis, edison pulled out of his pocket a ferry ticket to hoboken, and said to his associates: "i'll give him that, and he'll get there all right." this was in the early days of electric lighting; but down to the present moment the peregrinations of this versatile genius of the key have never ceased in one hemisphere or the other, so that as mr. adams himself remarked to the authors in april, : "the life has been somewhat variegated, but never dull." the fact remains also that throughout this period edison, while himself a very ishmael, never ceased to study, explore, experiment. referring to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact that throws light on his ceaseless application. "after i became a telegraph operator," he says, "i practiced for a long time to become a rapid reader of print, and got so expert i could sense the meaning of a whole line at once. this faculty, i believe, should be taught in schools, as it appears to be easily acquired. then one can read two or three books in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed, reading is laborious." chapter v arduous years in the central west in , when accepting the position of honorary electrician to the international exposition held in st. louis in , to commemorate the centenary of the louisiana purchase, mr. edison spoke in his letter of the central west as a "region where as a young telegraph operator i spent many arduous years before moving east." the term of probation thus referred to did not end until , and while it lasted edison's wanderings carried him from detroit to new orleans, and took him, among other cities, to indianapolis, cincinnati, louisville, and memphis, some of which he visited twice in his peregrinations to secure work. from canada, after the episodes noted in the last chapter, he went to adrian, michigan, and of what happened there edison tells a story typical of his wanderings for several years to come. "after leaving my first job at stratford junction, i got a position as operator on the lake shore & michigan southern at adrian, michigan, in the division superintendent's office. as usual, i took the 'night trick,' which most operators disliked, but which i preferred, as it gave me more leisure to experiment. i had obtained from the station agent a small room, and had established a little shop of my own. one day the day operator wanted to get off, and i was on duty. about o'clock the superintendent handed me a despatch which he said was very important, and which i must get off at once. the wire at the time was very busy, and i asked if i should break in. i got orders to do so, and acting under those orders of the superintendent, i broke in and tried to send the despatch; but the other operator would not permit it, and the struggle continued for ten minutes. finally i got possession of the wire and sent the message. the superintendent of telegraph, who then lived in adrian and went to his office in toledo every day, happened that day to be in the western union office up-town--and it was the superintendent i was really struggling with! in about twenty minutes he arrived livid with rage, and i was discharged on the spot. i informed him that the general superintendent had told me to break in and send the despatch, but the general superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. their families were socially close, so i was sacrificed. my faith in human nature got a slight jar." edison then went to toledo and secured a position at fort wayne, on the pittsburg, fort wayne & chicago railroad, now leased to the pennsylvania system. this was a "day job," and he did not like it. he drifted two months later to indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of , when he was at first assigned to duty at the union station at a salary of $ a month for the western union telegraph company, whose service he now entered, and with which he has been destined to maintain highly important and close relationships throughout a large part of his life. superintendent wallick appears to have treated him generously and to have loaned him instruments, a kindness that was greatly appreciated, for twenty years later the inventor called on his old employer, and together they visited the scene where the borrowed apparatus had been mounted on a rough board in the depot. edison did not stay long in indianapolis, however, resigning in february, , and proceeding to cincinnati. the transfer was possibly due to trouble caused by one of his early inventions embodying what has been characterized by an expert as "probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of connections for a repeater." his ambition was to take "press report," but finding, even after considerable practice, that he "broke" frequently, he adjusted two embossing morse registers--one to receive the press matter, and the other to repeat the dots and dashes at a lower speed, so that the message could be copied leisurely. hence he could not be rushed or "broken" in receiving, while he could turn out "copy" that was a marvel of neatness and clearness. all was well so long as ordinary conditions prevailed, but when an unusual pressure occurred the little system fell behind, and the newspapers complained of the slowness with which reports were delivered to them. it is easy to understand that with matter received at a rate of forty words per minute and worked off at twenty-five words per minute a serious congestion or delay would result, and the newspapers were more anxious for the news than they were for fine penmanship. of this device mr. edison remarks: "together we took press for several nights, my companion keeping the apparatus in adjustment and i copying. the regular press operator would go to the theatre or take a nap, only finishing the report after a.m. one of the newspapers complained of bad copy toward the end of the report--that, is from to a.m., and requested that the operator taking the report up to a.m.--which was ourselves--take it all, as the copy then was perfectly unobjectionable. this led to an investigation by the manager, and the scheme was forbidden. "this instrument, many years afterward, was applied by me for transferring messages from one wire to any other wire simultaneously, or after any interval of time. it consisted of a disk of paper, the indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disk phonograph to-day. it was this instrument which gave me the idea of the phonograph while working on the telephone." arrived in cincinnati, where he got employment in the western union commercial telegraph department at a wage of $ per month, edison made the acquaintance of milton f. adams, already referred to as facile princeps the typical telegrapher in all his more sociable and brilliant aspects. speaking of that time, mr. adams says: "i can well recall when edison drifted in to take a job. he was a youth of about eighteen years, decidedly unprepossessing in dress and rather uncouth in manner. i was twenty-one, and very dudish. he was quite thin in those days, and his nose was very prominent, giving a napoleonic look to his face, although the curious resemblance did not strike me at the time. the boys did not take to him cheerfully, and he was lonesome. i sympathized with him, and we became close companions. as an operator he had no superiors and very few equals. most of the time he was monkeying with the batteries and circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less irksome. he also relieved the monotony of office-work by fitting up the battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to deal with the vermin that infested the premises. he arranged in the cellar what he called his 'rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance consisting of two plates insulated from each other and connected with the main battery. they were so placed that when a rat passed over them the fore feet on the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit and the rat departed this life, electrocuted." shortly after edison's arrival at cincinnati came the close of the civil war and the assassination of president lincoln. it was natural that telegraphers should take an intense interest in the general struggle, for not only did they handle all the news relating to it, but many of them were at one time or another personal participants. for example, one of the operators in the cincinnati office was george ellsworth, who was telegrapher for morgan, the famous southern guerrilla, and was with him when he made his raid into ohio and was captured near the pennsylvania line. ellsworth himself made a narrow escape by swimming the ohio river with the aid of an army mule. yet we can well appreciate the unimpressionable way in which some of the men did their work, from an anecdote that mr. edison tells of that awful night of friday, april , : "i noticed," he says, "an immense crowd gathering in the street outside a newspaper office. i called the attention of the other operators to the crowd, and we sent a messenger boy to find the cause of the excitement. he returned in a few minutes and shouted 'lincoln's shot.' instinctively the operators looked from one face to another to see which man had received the news. all the faces were blank, and every man said he had not taken a word about the shooting. 'look over your files,' said the boss to the man handling the press stuff. for a few moments we waited in suspense, and then the man held up a sheet of paper containing a short account of the shooting of the president. the operator had worked so mechanically that he had handled the news without the slightest knowledge of its significance." mr. adams says that at the time the city was en fete on account of the close of the war, the name of the assassin was received by telegraph, and it was noted with a thrill of horror that it was that of a brother of edwin booth and of junius brutus booth--the latter of whom was then playing at the old national theatre. booth was hurried away into seclusion, and the next morning the city that had been so gay over night with bunting was draped with mourning. edison's diversions in cincinnati were chiefly those already observed. he read a great deal, but spent most of his leisure in experiment. mr. adams remarks: "edison and i were very fond of tragedy. forrest and john mccullough were playing at the national theatre, and when our capital was sufficient we would go to see those eminent tragedians alternate in othello and iago. edison always enjoyed othello greatly. aside from an occasional visit to the loewen garden 'over the rhine,' with a glass of beer and a few pretzels, consumed while listening to the excellent music of a german band, the theatre was the sum and substance of our innocent dissipation." the cincinnati office, as a central point, appears to have been attractive to many of the clever young operators who graduated from it to positions of larger responsibility. some of them were conspicuous for their skill and versatility. mr. adams tells this interesting story as an illustration: "l. c. weir, or charlie, as he was known, at that time agent for the adams express company, had the remarkable ability of taking messages and copying them twenty-five words behind the sender. one day he came into the operating-room, and passing a table he heard louisville calling cincinnati. he reached over to the key and answered the call. my attention was arrested by the fact that he walked off after responding, and the sender happened to be a good one. weir coolly asked for a pen, and when he sat down the sender was just one message ahead of him with date, address, and signature. charlie started in, and in a beautiful, large, round hand copied that message. the sender went right along, and when he finished with six messages closed his key. when weir had done with the last one the sender began to think that after all there had been no receiver, as weir did not 'break,' but simply gave his o. k. he afterward became president of the adams express, and was certainly a wonderful operator." the operating-room referred to was on the fifth floor of the building with no elevators. those were the early days of trade unionism in telegraphy, and the movement will probably never quite die out in the craft which has always shown so much solidarity. while edison was in cincinnati a delegation of five union operators went over from cleveland to form a local branch, and the occasion was one of great conviviality. night came, but the unionists were conspicuous by their absence, although more circuits than one were intolerant of delay and clamorous for attention---eight local unionists being away. the cleveland report wire was in special need, and edison, almost alone in the office, devoted himself to it all through the night and until o'clock the next morning, when he was relieved. he had previously been getting $ a month, and had eked this out by copying plays for the theatre. his rating was that of a "plug" or inferior operator; but he was determined to lift himself into the class of first-class operators, and had kept up the practice of going to the office at night to "copy press," acting willingly as a substitute for any operator who wanted to get off for a few hours--which often meant all night. speaking of this special ordeal, for which he had thus been unconsciously preparing, edison says: "my copy looked fine if viewed as a whole, as i could write a perfectly straight line across the wide sheet, which was not ruled. there were no flourishes, but the individual letters would not bear close inspection. when i missed understanding a word, there was no time to think what it was, so i made an illegible one to fill in, trusting to the printers to sense it. i knew they could read anything, although mr. bloss, an editor of the inquirer, made such bad copy that one of his editorials was pasted up on the notice-board in the telegraph office with an offer of one dollar to any man who could 'read twenty consecutive words.' nobody ever did it. when i got through i was too nervous to go home, so waited the rest of the night for the day manager, mr. stevens, to see what was to be the outcome of this union formation and of my efforts. he was an austere man, and i was afraid of him. i got the morning papers, which came out at a. m., and the press report read perfectly, which surprised me greatly. i went to work on my regular day wire to portsmouth, ohio, and there was considerable excitement, but nothing was said to me, neither did mr. stevens examine the copy on the office hook, which i was watching with great interest. however, about p. m. he went to the hook, grabbed the bunch and looked at it as a whole without examining it in detail, for which i was thankful. then he jabbed it back on the hook, and i knew i was all right. he walked over to me, and said: 'young man, i want you to work the louisville wire nights; your salary will be $ .' thus i got from the plug classification to that of a 'first-class man.'" but no sooner was this promotion secured than he started again on his wanderings southward, while his friend adams went north, neither having any difficulty in making the trip. "the boys in those days had extraordinary facilities for travel. as a usual thing it was only necessary for them to board a train and tell the conductor they were operators. then they would go as far as they liked. the number of operators was small, and they were in demand everywhere." it was in this way edison made his way south as far as memphis, tennessee, where the telegraph service at that time was under military law, although the operators received $ a month. here again edison began to invent and improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to "move on." the story may be told in his own terse language: "i was not the inventor of the auto repeater, but while in memphis i worked on one. learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the superintendent, was trying in some way to put new york and new orleans together for the first time since the close of the war, i redoubled my efforts, and at o'clock one morning i had them speaking to each other. the office of the memphis avalanche was in the same building. the paper got wind of it and sent messages. a column came out in the morning about it; but when i went to the office in the afternoon to report for duty i was discharged with out explanation. the superintendent would not even give me a pass to nashville, so i had to pay my fare. i had so little money left that i nearly starved at decatur, alabama, and had to stay three days before going on north to nashville. arrived in that city, i went to the telegraph office, got money enough to buy a little solid food, and secured a pass to louisville. i had a companion with me who was also out of a job. i arrived at louisville on a bitterly cold day, with ice in the gutters. i was wearing a linen duster and was not much to look at, but got a position at once, working on a press wire. my travelling companion was less successful on account of his 'record.' they had a limit even in those days when the telegraph service was so demoralized." some reminiscences of mr. edison are of interest as bearing not only upon the "demoralized" telegraph service, but the conditions from which the new south had to emerge while working out its salvation. "the telegraph was still under military control, not having been turned over to the original owners, the southern telegraph company. in addition to the regular force, there was an extra force of two or three operators, and some stranded ones, who were a burden to us, for board was high. one of these derelicts was a great source of worry to me, personally. he would come in at all hours and either throw ink around or make a lot of noise. one night he built a fire in the grate and started to throw pistol cartridges into the flames. these would explode, and i was twice hit by the bullets, which left a black-and-blue mark. another night he came in and got from some part of the building a lot of stationery with 'confederate states' printed at the head. he was a fine operator, and wrote a beautiful hand. he would take a sheet of this paper, write capital 'a', and then take another sheet and make the 'a' differently; and so on through the alphabet; each time crumpling the paper up in his hand and throwing it on the floor. he would keep this up until the room was filled nearly flush with the table. then he would quit. "everything at that time was 'wide open.' disorganization reigned supreme. there was no head to anything. at night myself and a companion would go over to a gorgeously furnished faro-bank and get our midnight lunch. everything was free. there were over twenty keno-rooms running. one of them that i visited was in a baptist church, the man with the wheel being in the pulpit, and the gamblers in the pews. "while there the manager of the telegraph office was arrested for something i never understood, and incarcerated in a military prison about half a mile from the office. the building was in plain sight from the office, and four stories high. he was kept strictly incommunicado. one day, thinking he might be confined in a room facing the office, i put my arm out of the window and kept signalling dots and dashes by the movement of the arm. i tried this several times for two days. finally he noticed it, and putting his arm through the bars of the window he established communication with me. he thus sent several messages to his friends, and was afterward set free." another curious story told by edison concerns a fellow-operator on night duty at chattanooga junction, at the time he was at memphis: "when it was reported that hood was marching on nashville, one night a jew came into the office about o'clock in great excitement, having heard the hood rumor. he, being a large sutler, wanted to send a message to save his goods. the operator said it was impossible--that orders had been given to send no private messages. then the jew wanted to bribe my friend, who steadfastly refused for the reason, as he told the jew, that he might be court-martialled and shot. finally the jew got up to $ . the operator swore him to secrecy and sent the message. now there was no such order about private messages, and the jew, finding it out, complained to captain van duzer, chief of telegraphs, who investigated the matter, and while he would not discharge the operator, laid him off indefinitely. van duzer was so lenient that if an operator were discharged, all the operator had to do was to wait three days and then go and sit on the stoop of van duzer's office all day, and he would be taken back. but van duzer swore he would never give in in this case. he said that if the operator had taken $ and sent the message at the regular rate, which was twenty-five cents, it would have been all right, as the jew would be punished for trying to bribe a military operator; but when the operator took the $ and then sent the message deadhead, he couldn't stand it, and he would never relent." a third typical story of this period deals with a cipher message for thomas. mr. edison narrates it as follows: "when i was an operator in cincinnati working the louisville wire nights for a time, one night a man over on the pittsburg wire yelled out: 'd. i. cipher,' which meant that there was a cipher message from the war department at washington and that it was coming--and he yelled out 'louisville.' i started immediately to call up that place. it was just at the change of shift in the office. i could not get louisville, and the cipher message began to come. it was taken by the operator on the other table direct from the war department. it was for general thomas, at nashville. i called for about twenty minutes and notified them that i could not get louisville. i kept at it for about fifteen minutes longer, and notified them that there was still no answer from louisville. they then notified the war department that they could not get louisville. then we tried to get it by all kinds of roundabout ways, but in no case could anybody get them at that office. soon a message came from the war department to send immediately for the manager of the cincinnati office. he was brought to the office and several messages were exchanged, the contents of which, of course, i did not know, but the matter appeared to be very serious, as they were afraid of general hood, of the confederate army, who was then attempting to march on nashville; and it was very important that this cipher of about twelve hundred words or so should be got through immediately to general thomas. i kept on calling up to or o'clock, but no louisville. about o'clock the operator at the indianapolis office got hold of an operator on a wire which ran from indianapolis to louisville along the railroad, who happened to come into his office. he arranged with this operator to get a relay of horses, and the message was sent through indianapolis to this operator who had engaged horses to carry the despatches to louisville and find out the trouble, and get the despatches through without delay to general thomas. in those days the telegraph fraternity was rather demoralized, and the discipline was very lax. it was found out a couple of days afterward that there were three night operators at louisville. one of them had gone over to jeffersonville and had fallen off a horse and broken his leg, and was in a hospital. by a remarkable coincidence another of the men had been stabbed in a keno-room, and was also in hospital while the third operator had gone to cynthiana to see a man hanged and had got left by the train." i think the most important line of investigation is the production of electricity direct from carbon. edison young edison remained in louisville for about two years, quite a long stay for one with such nomadic instincts. it was there that he perfected the peculiar vertical style of writing which, beginning with him in telegraphy, later became so much of a fad with teachers of penmanship and in the schools. he says of this form of writing, a current example of which is given above: "i developed this style in louisville while taking press reports. my wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a repeater at cincinnati, so that if i missed a word or sentence, or if the wire worked badly, i could not break in and get the last words, because the cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me. i had to take what came. when i got the job, the cable across the ohio river at covington, connecting with the line to louisville, had a variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signalling current to make violent fluctuations. i obviated this by using several relays, each with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected with one sounding-plate. the clatter was bad, but i could read it with fair ease. when, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to cleveland worked badly, it required a large amount of imagination to get the sense of what was being sent. an imagination requires an appreciable time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the rate of thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult to write down what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. hence it was necessary to become a very rapid writer, so i started to find the fastest style. i found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that the smaller the letter the greater the rapidity. as i took on an average from eight to fifteen columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect this method." mr. edison has adhered to this characteristic style of penmanship down to the present time. as a matter of fact, the conditions at louisville at that time were not much better than they had been at memphis. the telegraph operating-room was in a deplorable condition. it was on the second story of a dilapidated building on the principal street of the city, with the battery-room in the rear; behind which was the office of the agent of the associated press. the plastering was about one-third gone from the ceiling. a small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. the office was never cleaned. the switchboard for manipulating the wires was about thirty-four inches square. the brass connections on it were black with age and with the arcing effects of lightning, which, to young edison, seemed particularly partial to louisville. "it would strike on the wires," he says, "with an explosion like a cannon-shot, making that office no place for an operator with heart-disease." around the dingy walls were a dozen tables, the ends next to the wall. they were about the size of those seen in old-fashioned country hotels for holding the wash-bowl and pitcher. the copper wires connecting the instruments to the switchboard were small, crystallized, and rotten. the battery-room was filled with old record-books and message bundles, and one hundred cells of nitric-acid battery, arranged on a stand in the centre of the room. this stand, as well as the floor, was almost eaten through by the destructive action of the powerful acid. grim and uncompromising as the description reads, it was typical of the equipment in those remote days of the telegraph at the close of the war. illustrative of the length to which telegraphers could go at a time when they were so much in demand, edison tells the following story: "when i took the position there was a great shortage of operators. one night at a.m. another operator and i were on duty. i was taking press report, and the other man was working the new york wire. we heard a heavy tramp, tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs. suddenly the door was thrown open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. there appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who worked daytime, and who was of a very quiet disposition except when intoxicated. he was a great friend of the manager of the office. his eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one sleeve had been torn away from his coat. without noticing either of us he went up to the stove and kicked it over. the stove-pipe fell, dislocated at every joint. it was half full of exceedingly fine soot, which floated out and filled the room completely. this produced a momentary respite to his labors. when the atmosphere had cleared sufficiently to see, he went around and pulled every table away from the wall, piling them on top of the stove in the middle of the room. then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from the wall. it was held tightly by screws. he succeeded, finally, and when it gave way he fell with the board, and striking on a table cut himself so that he soon became covered with blood. he then went to the battery-room and knocked all the batteries off on the floor. the nitric acid soon began to combine with the plaster in the room below, which was the public receiving-room for messengers and bookkeepers. the excess acid poured through and ate up the account-books. after having finished everything to his satisfaction, he left. i told the other operator to do nothing. we would leave things just as they were, and wait until the manager came. in the mean time, as i knew all the wires coming through to the switchboard, i rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that the new york business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder of the press matter. at o'clock the day men began to appear. they were told to go down-stairs and wait the coming of the manager. at o'clock he appeared, walked around, went into the battery-room, and then came to me, saying: 'edison, who did this?' i told him that billy l. had come in full of soda-water and invented the ruin before him. he walked backward and forward, about a minute, then coming up to my table put his fist down, and said: 'if billy l. ever does that again, i will discharge him.' it was needless to say that there were other operators who took advantage of that kind of discipline, and i had many calls at night after that, but none with such destructive effects." this was one aspect of life as it presented itself to the sensitive and observant young operator in louisville. but there was another, more intellectual side, in the contact afforded with journalism and its leaders, and the information taken in almost unconsciously as to the political and social movements of the time. mr. edison looks back on this with great satisfaction. "i remember," he says, "the discussions between the celebrated poet and journalist george d. prentice, then editor of the courier-journal, and mr. tyler, of the associated press. i believe prentice was the father of the humorous paragraph of the american newspaper. he was poetic, highly educated, and a brilliant talker. he was very thin and small. i do not think he weighed over one hundred and twenty five pounds. tyler was a graduate of harvard, and had a very clear enunciation, and, in sharp contrast to prentice, he was a large man. after the paper had gone to press, prentice would generally come over to tyler's office and start talking. having while in tyler's office heard them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc., i asked permission of mr. tyler if, after finishing the press matter, i might come in and listen to the conversation, which i did many times after. one thing i never could comprehend was that tyler had a sideboard with liquors and generally crackers. prentice would pour out half a glass of what they call corn whiskey, and would dip the crackers in it and eat them. tyler took it sans food. one teaspoonful of that stuff would put me to sleep." mr. edison throws also a curious side-light on the origin of the comic column in the modern american newspaper, the telegraph giving to a new joke or a good story the ubiquity and instantaneity of an important historical event. "it was the practice of the press operators all over the country at that time, when a lull occurred, to start in and send jokes or stories the day men had collected; and these were copied and pasted up on the bulletin-board. cleveland was the originating office for 'press,' which it received from new york, and sent it out simultaneously to milwaukee, chicago, toledo, detroit, pittsburg, columbus, dayton, cincinnati, indianapolis, vincennes, terre haute, st. louis, and louisville. cleveland would call first on milwaukee, if he had anything. if so, he would send it, and cleveland would repeat it to all of us. thus any joke or story originating anywhere in that area was known the next day all over. the press men would come in and copy anything which could be published, which was about three per cent. i collected, too, quite a large scrap-book of it, but unfortunately have lost it." edison tells an amusing story of his own pursuits at this time. always an omnivorous reader, he had some difficulty in getting a sufficient quantity of literature for home consumption, and was in the habit of buying books at auctions and second-hand stores. one day at an auction-room he secured a stack of twenty unbound volumes of the north american review for two dollars. these he had bound and delivered at the telegraph office. one morning, when he was free as usual at o'clock, he started off at a rapid pace with ten volumes on his shoulder. he found himself very soon the subject of a fusillade. when he stopped, a breathless policeman grabbed him by the throat and ordered him to drop his parcel and explain matters, as a suspicious character. he opened the package showing the books, somewhat to the disgust of the officer, who imagined he had caught a burglar sneaking away in the dark alley with his booty. edison explained that being deaf he had heard no challenge, and therefore had kept moving; and the policeman remarked apologetically that it was fortunate for edison he was not a better shot. the incident is curiously revelatory of the character of the man, for it must be admitted that while literary telegraphers are by no means scarce, there are very few who would spend scant savings on back numbers of a ponderous review at an age when tragedy, beer, and pretzels are far more enticing. through all his travels edison has preserved those books, and has them now in his library at llewellyn park, on orange mountain, new jersey. drifting after a time from louisville, edison made his way as far north as detroit, but, like the famous duke of york, soon made his way back again. possibly the severer discipline after the happy-go-lucky regime in the southern city had something to do with this restlessness, which again manifested itself, however, on his return thither. the end of the war had left the south a scene of destruction and desolation, and many men who had fought bravely and well found it hard to reconcile themselves to the grim task of reconstruction. to them it seemed better to "let ill alone" and seek some other clime where conditions would be less onerous. at this moment a great deal of exaggerated talk was current as to the sunny life and easy wealth of latin america, and under its influences many "unreconstructed" southerners made their way to mexico, brazil, peru, or the argentine. telegraph operators were naturally in touch with this movement, and edison's fertile imagination was readily inflamed by the glowing idea of all these vague possibilities. again he threw up his steady work and, with a couple of sanguine young friends, made his way to new orleans. they had the notion of taking positions in the brazilian government telegraphs, as an advertisement had been inserted in some paper stating that operators were wanted. they had timed their departure from louisville so as to catch a specially chartered steamer, which was to leave new orleans for brazil on a certain day, to convey a large number of confederates and their families, who were disgusted with the united states and were going to settle in brazil, where slavery still prevailed. edison and his friends arrived in new orleans just at the time of the great riot, when several hundred negroes were killed, and the city was in the hands of a mob. the government had seized the steamer chartered for brazil, in order to bring troops from the yazoo river to new orleans to stop the rioting. the young operators therefore visited another shipping-office to make inquiries as to vessels for brazil, and encountered an old spaniard who sat in a chair near the steamer agent's desk, and to whom they explained their intentions. he had lived and worked in south america, and was very emphatic in his assertion, as he shook his yellow, bony finger at them, that the worst mistake they could possibly make would be to leave the united states. he would not leave on any account, and they as young americans would always regret it if they forsook their native land, whose freedom, climate, and opportunities could not be equalled anywhere on the face of the globe. such sincere advice as this could not be disdained, and edison made his way north again. one cannot resist speculation as to what might have happened to edison himself and to the development of electricity had he made this proposed plunge into the enervating tropics. it will be remembered that at a somewhat similar crisis in life young robert burns entertained seriously the idea of forsaking scotland for the west indies. that he did not go was certainly better for scottish verse, to which he contributed later so many immortal lines; and it was probably better for himself, even if he died a gauger. it is simply impossible to imagine edison working out the phonograph, telephone, and incandescent lamp under the tropical climes he sought. some years later he was informed that both his companions had gone to vera cruz, mexico, and had died there of yellow fever. work was soon resumed at louisville, where the dilapidated old office occupied at the close of the war had been exchanged for one much more comfortable and luxurious in its equipment. as before, edison was allotted to press report, and remembers very distinctly taking the presidential message and veto of the district of columbia bill by president johnson. as the matter was received over the wire he paragraphed it so that each printer had exactly three lines, thus enabling the matter to be set up very expeditiously in the newspaper offices. this earned him the gratitude of the editors, a dinner, and all the newspaper "exchanges" he wanted. edison's accounts of the sprees and debauches of other night operators in the loosely managed offices enable one to understand how even a little steady application to the work in hand would be appreciated. on one occasion edison acted as treasurer for his bibulous companions, holding the stakes, so to speak, in order that the supply of liquor might last longer. one of the mildest mannered of the party took umbrage at the parsimony of the treasurer and knocked him down, whereupon the others in the party set upon the assailant and mauled him so badly that he had to spend three weeks in hospital. at another time two of his companions sharing the temporary hospitality of his room smashed most of the furniture, and went to bed with their boots on. then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "i felt that this was running hospitality into the ground, so i pulled them out and left them on the floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance." edison seems on the whole to have been fairly comfortable and happy in louisville, surrounding himself with books and experimental apparatus, and even inditing a treatise on electricity. but his very thirst for knowledge and new facts again proved his undoing. the instruments in the handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places, and operators were strictly forbidden to remove them, or to use the batteries except on regular work. this prohibition meant little to edison, who had access to no other instruments except those of the company. "i went one night," he says, "into the battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for experimenting. the carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. the next morning i was summoned before him, and told that what the company wanted was operators, not experimenters. i was at liberty to take my pay and get out." the fact that edison is a very studious man, an insatiate lover and reader of books, is well known to his associates; but surprise is often expressed at his fund of miscellaneous information. this, it will be seen, is partly explained by his work for years as a "press" reporter. he says of this: "the second time i was in louisville, they had moved into a new office, and the discipline was now good. i took the press job. in fact, i was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking of press report a specialty. the newspaper men allowed me to come over after going to press at a.m. and get all the exchanges i wanted. these i would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. i never slept more than four or five hours' so that i would awake at nine or ten and read these papers until dinner-time. i thus kept posted, and knew from their activity every member of congress, and what committees they were on; and all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of breadstuffs in all the primary markets. i was in a much better position than most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or sentences, which were frequent in those days of old, rotten wires, badly insulated, especially on stormy nights. upon such occasions i had to supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter--pure guessing--but i got caught only once. there had been some kind of convention in virginia, in which john minor botts was the leading figure. there was great excitement about it, and two votes had been taken in the convention on the two days. there was no doubt that the vote the next day would go a certain way. a very bad storm came up about o'clock, and my wire worked very badly. then there was a cessation of all signals; then i made out the words 'minor botts.' the next was a new york item. i filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the vote had gone, as i was sure it would. but next day i learned that instead of there being a vote the convention had adjourned without action until the day after." in like manner, it was at louisville that mr. edison got an insight into the manner in which great political speeches are more frequently reported than the public suspects. "the associated press had a shorthand man travelling with president johnson when he made his celebrated swing around the circle in a private train delivering hot speeches in defence of his conduct. the man engaged me to write out the notes from his reading. he came in loaded and on the verge of incoherence. we started in, but about every two minutes i would have to scratch out whole paragraphs and insert the same things said in another and better way. he would frequently change words, always to the betterment of the speech. i couldn't understand this, and when he got through, and i had copied about three columns, i asked him why those changes, if he read from notes. 'sonny,' he said, 'if these politicians had their speeches published as they deliver them, a great many shorthand writers would be out of a job. the best shorthanders and the holders of good positions are those who can take a lot of rambling, incoherent stuff and make a rattling good speech out of it.'" going back to cincinnati and beginning his second term there as an operator, edison found the office in new quarters and with greatly improved management. he was again put on night duty, much to his satisfaction. he rented a room in the top floor of an office building, bought a cot and an oil-stove, a foot lathe, and some tools. he cultivated the acquaintance of mr. sommers, superintendent of telegraph of the cincinnati & indianapolis railroad, who gave him permission to take such scrap apparatus as he might desire, that was of no use to the company. with sommers on one occasion he had an opportunity to indulge his always strong sense of humor. "sommers was a very witty man," he says, "and fond of experimenting. we worked on a self-adjusting telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have got it. i soon became the possessor of a second-hand ruhmkorff induction coil, which, although it would only give a small spark, would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let go of the apparatus. one day we went down to the round-house of the cincinnati & indianapolis railroad and connected up the long wash-tank in the room with the coil, one electrode being connected to earth. above this wash-room was a flat roof. we bored a hole through the roof, and could see the men as they came in. the first man as he entered dipped his hands in the water. the floor being wet he formed a circuit, and up went his hands. he tried it the second time, with the same result. he then stood against the wall with a puzzled expression. we surmised that he was waiting for somebody else to come in, which occurred shortly after--with the same result. then they went out, and the place was soon crowded, and there was considerable excitement. various theories were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. we enjoyed the sport immensely." it must be remembered that this was over forty years ago, when there was no popular instruction in electricity, and when its possibilities for practical joking were known to very few. to-day such a crowd of working-men would be sure to include at least one student of a night school or correspondence course who would explain the mystery offhand. note has been made of the presence of ellsworth in the cincinnati office, and his service with the confederate guerrilla morgan, for whom he tapped federal wires, read military messages, sent false ones, and did serious mischief generally. it is well known that one operator can recognize another by the way in which he makes his signals--it is his style of handwriting. ellsworth possessed in a remarkable degree the skill of imitating these peculiarities, and thus he deceived the union operators easily. edison says that while apparently a quiet man in bearing, ellsworth, after the excitement of fighting, found the tameness of a telegraph office obnoxious, and that he became a bad "gun man" in the panhandle of texas, where he was killed. "we soon became acquainted," says edison of this period in cincinnati, "and he wanted me to invent a secret method of sending despatches so that an intermediate operator could not tap the wire and understand it. he said that if it could be accomplished, he could sell it to the government for a large sum of money. this suited me, and i started in and succeeded in making such an instrument, which had in it the germ of my quadruplex now used throughout the world, permitting the despatch of four messages over one wire simultaneously. by the time i had succeeded in getting the apparatus to work, ellsworth suddenly disappeared. many years afterward i used this little device again for the same purpose. at menlo park, new jersey, i had my laboratory. there were several western union wires cut into the laboratory, and used by me in experimenting at night. one day i sat near an instrument which i had left connected during the night. i soon found it was a private wire between new york and philadelphia, and i heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. a week after that i had occasion to go to new york, and, visiting the office of the lessee of the wire, i asked him if he hadn't sent such and such a message. the expression that came over his face was a sight. he asked me how i knew of any message. i told him the circumstances, and suggested that he had better cipher such communications, or put on a secret sounder. the result of the interview was that i installed for him my old cincinnati apparatus, which was used thereafter for many years." edison did not make a very long stay in cincinnati this time, but went home after a while to port huron. soon tiring of idleness and isolation he sent "a cry from macedonia" to his old friend "milt" adams, who was in boston, and whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work promptly in the east. edison himself gives the details of this eventful move, when he went east to grow up with the new art of electricity. "i had left louisville the second time, and went home to see my parents. after stopping at home for some time, i got restless, and thought i would like to work in the east. knowing that a former operator named adams, who had worked with me in the cincinnati office, was in boston, i wrote him that i wanted a job there. he wrote back that if i came on immediately he could get me in the western union office. i had helped out the grand trunk railroad telegraph people by a new device when they lost one of the two submarine cables they had across the river, making the remaining cable act just as well for their purpose, as if they had two. i thought i was entitled to a pass, which they conceded; and i started for boston. after leaving toronto a terrific blizzard came up and the train got snowed under in a cut. after staying there twenty-four hours, the trainmen made snowshoes of fence-rail splints and started out to find food, which they did about a half mile away. they found a roadside inn, and by means of snowshoes all the passengers were taken to the inn. the train reached montreal four days late. a number of the passengers and myself went to the military headquarters to testify in favor of a soldier who was on furlough, and was two days late, which was a serious matter with military people, i learned. we willingly did this, for this soldier was a great story-teller, and made the time pass quickly. i met here a telegraph operator named stanton, who took me to his boarding-house, the most cheerless i have ever been in. nobody got enough to eat; the bedclothes were too short and too thin; it was degrees below zero, and the wash-water was frozen solid. the board was cheap, being only $ . per week. "stanton said that the usual live-stock accompaniment of operators' boarding-houses was absent; he thought the intense cold had caused them to hibernate. stanton, when i was working in cincinnati, left his position and went out on the union pacific to work at julesburg, which was a cattle town at that time and very tough. i remember seeing him off on the train, never expecting to see him again. six months afterward, while working press wire in cincinnati, about a.m., there was flung into the middle of the operating-room a large tin box. it made a report like a pistol, and we all jumped up startled. in walked stanton. 'gentlemen,' he said 'i have just returned from a pleasure trip to the land beyond the mississippi. all my wealth is contained in my metallic travelling case and you are welcome to it.' the case contained one paper collar. he sat down, and i noticed that he had a woollen comforter around his neck with his coat buttoned closely. the night was intensely warm. he then opened his coat and revealed the fact that he had nothing but the bare skin. 'gentlemen,' said he, 'you see before you an operator who has reached the limit of impecuniosity.'" not far from the limit of impecuniosity was edison himself, as he landed in boston in after this wintry ordeal. this chapter has run to undue length, but it must not close without one citation from high authority as to the service of the military telegraph corps so often referred to in it. general grant in his memoirs, describing the movements of the army of the potomac, lays stress on the service of his telegraph operators, and says: "nothing could be more complete than the organization and discipline of this body of brave and intelligent men. insulated wires were wound upon reels, two men and a mule detailed to each reel. the pack-saddle was provided with a rack like a sawbuck, placed crosswise, so that the wheel would revolve freely; there was a wagon provided with a telegraph operator, battery, and instruments for each division corps and army, and for my headquarters. wagons were also loaded with light poles supplied with an iron spike at each end to hold the wires up. the moment troops were in position to go into camp, the men would put up their wires. thus in a few minutes' longer time than it took a mule to walk the length of its coil, telegraphic communication would be effected between all the headquarters of the army. no orders ever had to be given to establish the telegraph." chapter vi work and invention in boston milton adams was working in the office of the franklin telegraph company in boston when he received edison's appeal from port huron, and with characteristic impetuosity at once made it his business to secure a position for his friend. there was no opening in the franklin office, so adams went over to the western union office, and asked the manager, mr. george f. milliken, if he did not want an operator who, like young lochinvar, came out of the west. "what kind of copy does he make?" was the cautious response. "i passed edison's letter through the window for his inspection. milliken read it, and a look of surprise came over his countenance as he asked me if he could take it off the line like that. i said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick him. milliken said that if he was that kind of an operator i could send for him, and i wrote to edison to come on, as i had a job for him in the main office of the western union." meantime edison had secured his pass over the grand trunk railroad, and spent four days and nights on the journey, suffering extremes of cold and hunger. franklin's arrival in philadelphia finds its parallel in the very modest debut of adams's friend in boston. it took only five minutes for edison to get the "job," for superintendent milliken, a fine type of telegraph official, saw quickly through the superficialities, and realized that it was no ordinary young operator he was engaging. edison himself tells the story of what happened. "the manager asked me when i was ready to go to work. 'now,' i replied i was then told to return at . p.m., and punctually at that hour i entered the main operating-room and was introduced to the night manager. the weather being cold, and being clothed poorly, my peculiar appearance caused much mirth, and, as i afterward learned, the night operators had consulted together how they might 'put up a job on the jay from the woolly west.' i was given a pen and assigned to the new york no. wire. after waiting an hour, i was told to come over to a special table and take a special report for the boston herald, the conspirators having arranged to have one of the fastest senders in new york send the despatch and 'salt' the new man. i sat down unsuspiciously at the table, and the new york man started slowly. soon he increased his speed, to which i easily adapted my pace. this put my rival on his mettle, and he put on his best powers, which, however, were soon reached. at this point i happened to look up, and saw the operators all looking over my shoulder, with their faces shining with fun and excitement. i knew then that they were trying to put up a job on me, but kept my own counsel. the new york man then commenced to slur over his words, running them together and sticking the signals; but i had been used to this style of telegraphy in taking report, and was not in the least discomfited. finally, when i thought the fun had gone far enough, and having about completed the special, i quietly opened the key and remarked, telegraphically, to my new york friend: 'say, young man, change off and send with your other foot.' this broke the new york man all up, and he turned the job over to another man to finish." edison had a distaste for taking press report, due to the fact that it was steady, continuous work, and interfered with the studies and investigations that could be carried on in the intervals of ordinary commercial telegraphy. he was not lazy in any sense. while he had no very lively interest in the mere routine work of a telegraph office, he had the profoundest curiosity as to the underlying principles of electricity that made telegraphy possible, and he had an unflagging desire and belief in his own ability to improve the apparatus he handled daily. the whole intellectual atmosphere of boston was favorable to the development of the brooding genius in this shy, awkward, studious youth, utterly indifferent to clothes and personal appearance, but ready to spend his last dollar on books and scientific paraphernalia. it is matter of record that he did once buy a new suit for thirty dollars in boston, but the following sunday, while experimenting with acids in his little workshop, the suit was spoiled. "that is what i get for putting so much money in a new suit," was the laconic remark of the youth, who was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of faraday's works about the same time. adams says that when edison brought home these books at a.m. he read steadily until breakfast-time, and then he remarked, enthusiastically: "adams, i have got so much to do and life is so short, i am going to hustle." and thereupon he started on a run for breakfast. edison himself says: "it was in boston i bought faraday's works. i think i must have tried about everything in those books. his explanations were simple. he used no mathematics. he was the master experimenter. i don't think there were many copies of faraday's works sold in those days. the only people who did anything in electricity were the telegraphers and the opticians making simple school apparatus to demonstrate the principles." one of these firms was palmer & hall, whose catalogue of showed a miniature electric locomotive made by mr. thomas hall, and exhibited in operation the following year at the charitable mechanics' fair in boston. in mr. hall made for a dr. a. l. henderson, of buffalo, new york, a model line of railroad with electric-motor engine, telegraph line, and electric railroad signals, together with a figure operating the signals at each end of the line automatically. this was in reality the first example of railroad trains moved by telegraph signals, a practice now so common and universal as to attract no comment. to show how little some fundamental methods can change in fifty years, it may be noted that hall conveyed the current to his tiny car through forty feet of rail, using the rail as conductor, just as edison did more than thirty years later in his historic experiments for villard at menlo park; and just as a large proportion of american trolley systems do at this present moment. it was among such practical, investigating folk as these that edison was very much at home. another notable man of this stamp, with whom edison was thrown in contact, was the late mr. charles williams, who, beginning his career in the electrical field in the forties, was at the height of activity as a maker of apparatus when edison arrived in the city; and who afterward, as an associate of alexander graham bell, enjoyed the distinction of being the first manufacturer in the world of telephones. at his court street workshop edison was a frequent visitor. telegraph repairs and experiments were going on constantly, especially on the early fire-alarm telegraphs [ ] of farmer and gamewell, and with the aid of one of the men there--probably george anders--edison worked out into an operative model his first invention, a vote-recorder, the first edison patent, for which papers were executed on october , , and which was taken out june , , no. , . the purpose of this particular device was to permit a vote in the national house of representatives to be taken in a minute or so, complete lists being furnished of all members voting on the two sides of any question mr. edison, in recalling the circumstances, says: "roberts was the telegraph operator who was the financial backer to the extent of $ . the invention when completed was taken to washington. i think it was exhibited before a committee that had something to do with the capitol. the chairman of the committee, after seeing how quickly and perfectly it worked, said: 'young man, if there is any invention on earth that we don't want down here, it is this. one of the greatest weapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation is filibustering on votes, and this instrument would prevent it.' i saw the truth of this, because as press operator i had taken miles of congressional proceedings, and to this day an enormous amount of time is wasted during each session of the house in foolishly calling the members' names and recording and then adding their votes, when the whole operation could be done in almost a moment by merely pressing a particular button at each desk. for filibustering purposes, however, the present methods are most admirable." edison determined from that time forth to devote his inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine demand, something that subserved the actual necessities of humanity. this first patent was taken out for him by the late hon. carroll d. wright, afterward u. s. commissioner of labor, and a well-known publicist, then practicing patent law in boston. he describes edison as uncouth in manner, a chewer rather than a smoker of tobacco, but full of intelligence and ideas. [footnote : the general scheme of a fire-alarm telegraph system embodies a central office to which notice can be sent from any number of signal boxes of the outbreak of a fire in the district covered by the box, the central office in turn calling out the nearest fire engines, and warning the fire department in general of the occurrence. such fire alarms can be exchanged automatically, or by operators, and are sometimes associated with a large fire-alarm bell or whistle. some boxes can be operated by the passing public; others need special keys. the box mechanism is usually of the ratchet, step-by-step movement, familiar in district messenger call-boxes.] edison's curiously practical, though imaginative, mind demanded realities to work upon, things that belong to "human nature's daily food," and he soon harked back to telegraphy, a domain in which he was destined to succeed, and over which he was to reign supreme as an inventor. he did not, however, neglect chemistry, but indulged his tastes in that direction freely, although we have no record that this work was anything more, at that time, than the carrying out of experiments outlined in the books. the foundations were being laid for the remarkable chemical knowledge that later on grappled successfully with so many knotty problems in the realm of chemistry; notably with the incandescent lamp and the storage battery. of one incident in his chemical experiments he tells the following story: "i had read in a scientific paper the method of making nitroglycerine, and was so fired by the wonderful properties it was said to possess, that i determined to make some of the compound. we tested what we considered a very small quantity, but this produced such terrible and unexpected results that we became alarmed, the fact dawning upon us that we had a very large white elephant in our possession. at a.m. i put the explosive into a sarsaparilla bottle, tied a string to it, wrapped it in a paper, and gently let it down into the sewer, corner of state and washington streets." the associate in this was a man whom he had found endeavoring to make electrical apparatus for sleight-of-hand performances. in the boston telegraph office at that time, as perhaps at others, there were operators studying to enter college; possibly some were already in attendance at harvard university. this condition was not unusual at one time; the first electrical engineer graduated from columbia university, new york, followed up his studies while a night operator, and came out brilliantly at the head of his class. edison says of these scholars that they paraded their knowledge rather freely, and that it was his delight to go to the second-hand book stores on cornhill and study up questions which he could spring upon them when he got an occasion. with those engaged on night duty he got midnight lunch from an old irishman called "the cake man," who appeared regularly with his wares at midnight. "the office was on the ground floor, and had been a restaurant previous to its occupation by the western union telegraph company. it was literally loaded with cockroaches, which lived between the wall and the board running around the room at the floor, and which came after the lunch. these were such a bother on my table that i pasted two strips of tinfoil on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive pole of the big battery supplying current to the wires and the negative pole to the other strip. the cockroaches moving up on the wall would pass over the strips. the moment they got their legs across both strips there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. this automatic electrocuting device attracted so much attention, and got half a column in an evening paper, that the manager made me stop it." the reader will remember that a similar plan of campaign against rats was carried out by edison while in the west. about this time edison had a narrow escape from injury that might easily have shortened his career, and he seems to have provoked the trouble more or less innocently by using a little elementary chemistry. "after being in boston several months," he says, "working new york wire no. , i was requested to work the press wire, called the 'milk route,' as there were so many towns on it taking press simultaneously. new york office had reported great delays on the wire, due to operators constantly interrupting, or 'breaking,' as it was called, to have words repeated which they had failed to get; and new york claimed that boston was one of the worst offenders. it was a rather hard position for me, for if i took the report without breaking, it would prove the previous boston operator incompetent. the results made the operator have some hard feelings against me. he was put back on the wire, and did much better after that. it seems that the office boy was down on this man. one night he asked me if i could tell him how to fix a key so that it would not 'break,' even if the circuit-breaker was open, and also so that it could not be easily detected. i told him to jab a penful of ink on the platinum points, as there was sugar enough to make it sufficiently thick to hold up when the operator tried to break--the current still going through the ink so that he could not break. "the next night about a.m. this operator, on the press wire, while i was standing near a house printer studying it, pulled out a glass insulator, then used upside down as a substitute for an ink-bottle, and threw it with great violence at me, just missing my head. it would certainly have killed me if it had not missed. the cause of the trouble was that this operator was doing the best he could not to break, but being compelled to, opened his key and found he couldn't. the press matter came right along, and he could not stop it. the office boy had put the ink in a few minutes before, when the operator had turned his head during a lull. he blamed me instinctively as the cause of the trouble. later on we became good friends. he took his meals at the same emaciator that i did. his main object in life seemed to be acquiring the art of throwing up wash-pitchers and catching them without breaking them. about one-third of his salary was used up in paying for pitchers." one day a request reached the western union telegraph office in boston, from the principal of a select school for young ladies, to the effect that she would like some one to be sent up to the school to exhibit and describe the morse telegraph to her "children." there has always been a warm interest in boston in the life and work of morse, who was born there, at charlestown, barely a mile from the birthplace of franklin, and this request for a little lecture on morse's telegraph was quite natural. edison, who was always ready to earn some extra money for his experiments, and was already known as the best-informed operator in the office, accepted the invitation. what happened is described by adams as follows: "we gathered up a couple of sounders, a battery, and sonic wire, and at the appointed time called on her to do the stunt. her school-room was about twenty by twenty feet, not including a small platform. we rigged up the line between the two ends of the room, edison taking the stage while i was at the other end of the room. all being in readiness, the principal was told to bring in her children. the door opened and in came about twenty young ladies elegantly gowned, not one of whom was under seventeen. when edison saw them i thought he would faint. he called me on the line and asked me to come to the stage and explain the mysteries of the morse system. i replied that i thought he was in the right place, and told him to get busy with his talk on dots and dashes. always modest, edison was so overcome he could hardly speak, but he managed to say, finally, that as his friend mr. adams was better equipped with cheek than he was, we would change places, and he would do the demonstrating while i explained the whole thing. this caused the bevy to turn to see where the lecturer was. i went on the stage, said something, and we did some telegraphing over the line. i guess it was satisfactory; we got the money, which was the main point to us." edison tells the story in a similar manner, but insists that it was he who saved the situation. "i managed to say that i would work the apparatus, and mr. adams would make the explanations. adams was so embarrassed that he fell over an ottoman. the girls tittered, and this increased his embarrassment until he couldn't say a word. the situation was so desperate that for a reason i never could explain i started in myself and talked and explained better than i ever did before or since. i can talk to two or three persons; but when there are more they radiate some unknown form of influence which paralyzes my vocal cords. however, i got out of this scrape, and many times afterward when i chanced with other operators to meet some of the young ladies on their way home from school, they would smile and nod, much to the mystification of the operators, who were ignorant of this episode." another amusing story of this period of impecuniosity and financial strain is told thus by edison: "my friend adams was working in the franklin telegraph company, which competed with the western union. adams was laid off, and as his financial resources had reached absolute zero centigrade, i undertook to let him sleep in my hall bedroom. i generally had hall bedrooms, because they were cheap and i needed money to buy apparatus. i also had the pleasure of his genial company at the boarding-house about a mile distant, but at the sacrifice of some apparatus. one morning, as we were hastening to breakfast, we came into tremont row, and saw a large crowd in front of two small 'gents' furnishing goods stores. we stopped to ascertain the cause of the excitement. one store put up a paper sign in the display window which said: 'three-hundred pairs of stockings received this day, five cents a pair--no connection with the store next door.' presently the other store put up a sign stating they had received three hundred pairs, price three cents per pair, and stated that they had no connection with the store next door. nobody went in. the crowd kept increasing. finally, when the price had reached three pairs for one cent, adams said to me: 'i can't stand this any longer; give me a cent.' i gave him a nickel, and he elbowed his way in; and throwing the money on the counter, the store being filled with women clerks, he said: 'give me three pairs.' the crowd was breathless, and the girl took down a box and drew out three pairs of baby socks. 'oh!' said adams, 'i want men's size.' 'well, sir, we do not permit one to pick sizes for that amount of money.' and the crowd roared; and this broke up the sales." it has generally been supposed that edison did not take up work on the stock ticker until after his arrival a little later in new york; but he says: "after the vote-recorder i invented a stock ticker, and started a ticker service in boston; had thirty or forty subscribers, and operated from a room over the gold exchange. this was about a year after callahan started in new york." to say the least, this evidenced great ability and enterprise on the part of the youth. the dealings in gold during the civil war and after its close had brought gold indicators into use, and these had soon been followed by "stock tickers," the first of which was introduced in new york in . the success of this new but still primitively crude class of apparatus was immediate. four manufacturers were soon busy trying to keep pace with the demands for it from brokers; and the gold & stock telegraph company formed to exploit the system soon increased its capital from $ , to $ , , paying per cent. dividends on the latter amount. within its first year the capital was again increased to $ , , , and dividends of per cent. were paid easily on that sum also. it is needless to say that such facts became quickly known among the operators, from whose ranks, of course, the new employees were enlisted; and it was a common ambition among the more ingenious to produce a new ticker. from the beginning, each phase of electrical development--indeed, each step in mechanics--has been accompanied by the well-known phenomenon of invention; namely, the attempt of the many to perfect and refine and even re-invent where one or two daring spirits have led the way. the figures of capitalization and profit just mentioned were relatively much larger in the sixties than they are to-day; and to impressionable young operators they spelled illimitable wealth. edison was, how ever, about the only one in boston of whom history makes record as achieving any tangible result in this new art; and he soon longed for the larger telegraphic opportunity of new york. his friend, milt adams, went west with quenchless zest for that kind of roving life and aimless adventure of which the serious minded edison had already had more than enough. realizing that to new york he must look for further support in his efforts, edison, deep in debt for his embryonic inventions, but with high hope and courage, now made the next momentous step in his career. he was far riper in experience and practice of his art than any other telegrapher of his age, and had acquired, moreover, no little knowledge of the practical business of life. note has been made above of his invention of a stock ticker in boston, and of his establishing a stock-quotation circuit. this was by no means all, and as a fitting close to this chapter he may be quoted as to some other work and its perils in experimentation: "i also engaged in putting up private lines, upon which i used an alphabetical dial instrument for telegraphing between business establishments, a forerunner of modern telephony. this instrument was very simple and practical, and any one could work it after a few minutes' explanation. i had these instruments made at mr. hamblet's, who had a little shop where he was engaged in experimenting with electric clocks. mr. hamblet was the father and introducer in after years of the western union telegraph system of time distribution. my laboratory was the headquarters for the men, and also of tools and supplies for those private lines. they were put up cheaply, as i used the roofs of houses, just as the western union did. it never occurred to me to ask permission from the owners; all we did was to go to the store, etc., say we were telegraph men, and wanted to go up to the wires on the roof; and permission was always granted. "in this laboratory i had a large induction coil which i had borrowed to make some experiments with. one day i got hold of both electrodes of the coil, and it clinched my hand on them so that i couldn't let go. the battery was on a shelf. the only way i could get free was to back off and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells off the shelf and thus break the circuit. i shut my eyes and pulled, but the nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back. i rushed to a sink, which was only half big enough, and got in as well as i could and wiggled around for several minutes to permit the water to dilute the acid and stop the pain. my face and back were streaked with yellow; the skin was thoroughly oxidized. i did not go on the street by daylight for two weeks, as the appearance of my face was dreadful. the skin, however, peeled off, and new skin replaced it without any damage." chapter vii the stock ticker "the letters and figures used in the language of the tape," said a well-known boston stock speculator, "are very few, but they spell ruin in ninety-nine million ways." it is not to be inferred, however, that the modern stock ticker has anything to do with the making or losing of fortunes. there were regular daily stock-market reports in london newspapers in , and new york soon followed the example. as far back as , houghton issued in london a weekly review of financial and commercial transactions, upon which macaulay based the lively narrative of stock speculation in the seventeenth century, given in his famous history. that which the ubiquitous stock ticker has done is to give instantaneity to the news of what the stock market is doing, so that at every minute, thousands of miles apart, brokers, investors, and gamblers may learn the exact conditions. the existence of such facilities is to be admired rather than deplored. news is vital to wall street, and there is no living man on whom the doings in wall street are without effect. the financial history of the united states and of the world, as shown by the prices of government bonds and general securities, has been told daily for forty years on these narrow strips of paper tape, of which thousands of miles are run yearly through the "tickers" of new york alone. it is true that the record of the chattering little machine, made in cabalistic abbreviations on the tape, can drive a man suddenly to the very verge of insanity with joy or despair; but if there be blame for that, it attaches to the american spirit of speculation and not to the ingenious mechanism which reads and registers the beating of the financial pulse. edison came first to new york in , with his early stock printer, which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. he went back to boston, and quite undismayed got up a duplex telegraph. "toward the end of my stay in boston," he says, "i obtained a loan of money, amounting to $ , to build a peculiar kind of duplex telegraph for sending two messages over a single wire simultaneously. the apparatus was built, and i left the western union employ and went to rochester, new york, to test the apparatus on the lines of the atlantic & pacific telegraph between that city and new york. but the assistant at the other end could not be made to understand anything, notwithstanding i had written out a very minute description of just what to do. after trying for a week i gave it up and returned to new york with but a few cents in my pocket." thus he who has never speculated in a stock in his life was destined to make the beginnings of his own fortune by providing for others the apparatus that should bring to the eye, all over a great city, the momentary fluctuations of stocks and bonds. no one could have been in direr poverty than he when the steamboat landed him in new york in . he was in debt, and his few belongings in books and instruments had to be left behind. he was not far from starving. mr. w. s. mallory, an associate of many years, quotes directly from him on this point: "some years ago we had a business negotiation in new york which made it necessary for mr. edison and me to visit the city five or six times within a comparatively short period. it was our custom to leave orange about a.m., and on arrival in new york to get our lunch before keeping the appointments, which were usually made for two o'clock. several of these lunches were had at delmonico's, sherry's, and other places of similar character, but one day, while en route, mr. edison said: 'i have been to lunch with you several times; now to-day i am going to take you to lunch with me, and give you the finest lunch you ever had.' when we arrived in hoboken, we took the downtown ferry across the hudson, and when we arrived on the manhattan side mr. edison led the way to smith & mcnell's, opposite washington market, and well known to old new yorkers. we went inside and as soon as the waiter appeared mr. edison ordered apple dumplings and a cup of coffee for himself. he consumed his share of the lunch with the greatest possible pleasure. then, as soon as he had finished, he went to the cigar counter and purchased cigars. as we walked to keep the appointment he gave me the following reminiscence: when he left boston and decided to come to new york he had only money enough for the trip. after leaving the boat his first thought was of breakfast; but he was without money to obtain it. however, in passing a wholesale tea-house he saw a man tasting tea, so he went in and asked the 'taster' if he might have some of the tea. this the man gave him, and thus he obtained his first breakfast in new york. he knew a telegraph operator here, and on him he depended for a loan to tide him over until such time as he should secure a position. during the day he succeeded in locating this operator, but found that he also was out of a job, and that the best he could do was to loan him one dollar, which he did. this small sum of money represented both food and lodging until such time as work could be obtained. edison said that as the result of the time consumed and the exercise in walking while he found his friend, he was extremely hungry, and that he gave most serious consideration as to what he should buy in the way of food, and what particular kind of food would be most satisfying and filling. the result was that at smith & mcnell's he decided on apple dumplings and a cup of coffee, than which he never ate anything more appetizing. it was not long before he was at work and was able to live in a normal manner." during the civil war, with its enormous increase in the national debt and the volume of paper money, gold had gone to a high premium; and, as ever, by its fluctuations in price the value of all other commodities was determined. this led to the creation of a "gold room" in wall street, where the precious metal could be dealt in; while for dealings in stocks there also existed the "regular board," the "open board," and the "long room." devoted to one, but the leading object of speculation, the "gold room" was the very focus of all the financial and gambling activity of the time, and its quotations governed trade and commerce. at first notations in chalk on a blackboard sufficed, but seeing their inadequacy, dr. s. s. laws, vice-president and actual presiding officer of the gold exchange, devised and introduced what was popularly known as the "gold indicator." this exhibited merely the prevailing price of gold; but as its quotations changed from instant to instant, it was in a most literal sense "the cynosure of neighboring eyes." one indicator looked upon the gold room; the other opened toward the street. within the exchange the face could easily be seen high up on the west wall of the room, and the machine was operated by mr. mersereau, the official registrar of the gold board. doctor laws, who afterward became president of the state university of missouri, was an inventor of unusual ability and attainments. in his early youth he had earned his livelihood in a tool factory; and, apparently with his savings, he went to princeton, where he studied electricity under no less a teacher than the famous joseph henry. at the outbreak of the war in he was president of one of the presbyterian synodical colleges in the south, whose buildings passed into the hands of the government. going to europe, he returned to new york in , and, becoming interested with a relative in financial matters, his connection with the gold exchange soon followed, when it was organized. the indicating mechanism he now devised was electrical, controlled at central by two circuit-closing keys, and was a prototype of all the later and modern step-by-step printing telegraphs, upon which the distribution of financial news depends. the "fraction" drum of the indicator could be driven in either direction, known as the advance and retrograde movements, and was divided and marked in eighths. it geared into a "unit" drum, just as do speed-indicators and cyclometers. four electrical pulsations were required to move the drum the distance between the fractions. the general operation was simple, and in normally active times the mechanism and the registrar were equal to all emergencies. but it is obvious that the record had to be carried away to the brokers' offices and other places by messengers; and the delay, confusion, and mistakes soon suggested to doctor laws the desirability of having a number of indicators at such scattered points, operated by a master transmitter, and dispensing with the regiments of noisy boys. he secured this privilege of distribution, and, resigning from the exchange, devoted his exclusive attention to the "gold reporting telegraph," which he patented, and for which, at the end of , he had secured fifty subscribers. his indicators were small oblong boxes, in the front of which was a long slot, allowing the dials as they travelled past, inside, to show the numerals constituting the quotation; the dials or wheels being arranged in a row horizontally, overlapping each other, as in modern fare registers which are now seen on most trolley cars. it was not long before there were three hundred subscribers; but the very success of this device brought competition and improvement. mr. e. a. callahan, an ingenious printing-telegraph operator, saw that there were unexhausted possibilities in the idea, and his foresight and inventiveness made him the father of the "ticker," in connection with which he was thus, like laws, one of the first to grasp and exploit the underlying principle of the "central station" as a universal source of supply. the genesis of his invention mr. callahan has told in an interesting way: "in , on the site of the present mills building on broad street, opposite the stock exchange of today, was an old building which had been cut up to subserve the necessities of its occupants, all engaged in dealing in gold and stocks. it had one main entrance from the street to a hallway, from which entrance to the offices of two prominent broker firms was obtained. each firm had its own army of boys, numbering from twelve to fifteen, whose duties were to ascertain the latest quotations from the different exchanges. each boy devoted his attention to some particularly active stock. pushing each other to get into these narrow quarters, yelling out the prices at the door, and pushing back for later ones, the hustle made this doorway to me a most undesirable refuge from an april shower. i was simply whirled into the street. i naturally thought that much of this noise and confusion might be dispensed with, and that the prices might be furnished through some system of telegraphy which would not require the employment of skilled operators. the conception of the stock ticker dates from this incident." mr. callahan's first idea was to distribute gold quotations, and to this end he devised an "indicator." it consisted of two dials mounted separately, each revolved by an electromagnet, so that the desired figures were brought to an aperture in the case enclosing the apparatus, as in the laws system. each shaft with its dial was provided with two ratchet wheels, one the reverse of the other. one was used in connection with the propelling lever, which was provided with a pawl to fit into the teeth of the reversed ratchet wheel on its forward movement. it was thus made impossible for either dial to go by momentum beyond its limit. learning that doctor laws, with the skilful aid of f. l. pope, was already active in the same direction, mr. callahan, with ready wit, transformed his indicator into a "ticker" that would make a printed record. the name of the "ticker" came through the casual remark of an observer to whom the noise was the most striking feature of the mechanism. mr. callahan removed the two dials, and, substituting type wheels, turned the movements face to face, so that each type wheel could imprint its characters upon a paper tape in two lines. three wires stranded together ran from the central office to each instrument. of these one furnished the current for the alphabet wheel, one for the figure wheel, and one for the mechanism that took care of the inking and printing on the tape. callahan made the further innovation of insulating his circuit wires, although the cost was then forty times as great as that of bare wire. it will be understood that electromagnets were the ticker's actuating agency. the ticker apparatus was placed under a neat glass shade and mounted on a shelf. twenty-five instruments were energized from one circuit, and the quotations were supplied from a "central" at new street. the gold & stock telegraph company was promptly organized to supply to brokers the system, which was very rapidly adopted throughout the financial district of new york, at the southern tip of manhattan island. quotations were transmitted by the morse telegraph from the floor of the stock exchange to the "central," and thence distributed to the subscribers. success with the "stock" news system was instantaneous. it was at this juncture that edison reached new york, and according to his own statement found shelter at night in the battery-room of the gold indicator company, having meantime applied for a position as operator with the western union. he had to wait a few days, and during this time he seized the opportunity to study the indicators and the complicated general transmitter in the office, controlled from the keyboard of the operator on the floor of the gold exchange. what happened next has been the basis of many inaccurate stories, but is dramatic enough as told in mr. edison's own version: "on the third day of my arrival and while sitting in the office, the complicated general instrument for sending on all the lines, and which made a very great noise, suddenly came to a stop with a crash. within two minutes over three hundred boys--a boy from every broker in the street--rushed up-stairs and crowded the long aisle and office, that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker's wire was out of order and to fix it at once. it was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. i went to the indicator, and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it. one of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen down between the two gear wheels and stopped the instrument; but it was not very noticeable. as i went out to tell the man in charge what the matter was, doctor laws appeared on the scene, the most excited person i had seen. he demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man was speechless. i ventured to say that i knew what the trouble was, and he said, 'fix it! fix it! be quick!' i removed the spring and set the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men all scattered through the financial district to set the instruments. in about two hours things were working again. doctor laws came in to ask my name and what i was doing. i told him, and he asked me to come to his private office the following day. his office was filled with stacks of books all relating to metaphysics and kindred matters. he asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and i showed him how he could simplify things generally. he then requested that i should call next day. on arrival, he stated at once that he had decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary would be $ per month! this was such a violent jump from anything i had ever seen before, that it rather paralyzed me for a while, i thought it was too much to be lasting, but i determined to try and live up to that salary if twenty hours a day of hard work would do it. i kept this position, made many improvements, devised several stock tickers, until the gold & stock telegraph company consolidated with the gold indicator company." certainly few changes in fortune have been more sudden and dramatic in any notable career than this which thus placed an ill-clad, unkempt, half-starved, eager lad in a position of such responsibility in days when the fluctuations in the price of gold at every instant meant fortune or ruin to thousands. edison, barely twenty-one years old, was a keen observer of the stirring events around him. "wall street" is at any time an interesting study, but it was never at a more agitated and sensational period of its history than at this time. edison's arrival in new york coincided with an active speculation in gold which may, indeed, be said to have provided him with occupation; and was soon followed by the attempt of mr. jay gould and his associates to corner the gold market, precipitating the panic of black friday, september , . securing its import duties in the precious metal and thus assisting to create an artificial stringency in the gold market, the government had made it a practice to relieve the situation by selling a million of gold each month. the metal was thus restored to circulation. in some manner, president grant was persuaded that general conditions and the movement of the crops would be helped if the sale of gold were suspended for a time; and, this put into effect, he went to visit an old friend in pennsylvania remote from railroads and telegraphs. the gould pool had acquired control of $ , , in gold, and drove the price upward rapidly from toward their goal of . on black friday they purchased another $ , , at , and still the price went up. the financial and commercial interests of the country were in panic; but the pool persevered in its effort to corner gold, with a profit of many millions contingent on success. yielding to frantic requests, president grant, who returned to washington, caused secretary boutwell, of the treasury, to throw $ , , of gold into the market. relief was instantaneous, the corner was broken, but the harm had been done. edison's remarks shed a vivid side-light on this extraordinary episode: "on black friday," he says, "we had a very exciting time with the indicators. the gould and fisk crowd had cornered gold, and had run the quotations up faster than the indicator could follow. the indicator was composed of several wheels; on the circumference of each wheel were the numerals; and one wheel had fractions. it worked in the same way as an ordinary counter; one wheel made ten revolutions, and at the tenth it advanced the adjacent wheel; and this in its turn having gone ten revolutions, advanced the next wheel, and so on. on the morning of black friday the indicator was quoting premium, whereas the bids by gould's agents in the gold room were for five millions or any part. we had a paper-weight at the transmitter (to speed it up), and by one o'clock reached the right quotation. the excitement was prodigious. new street, as well as broad street, was jammed with excited people. i sat on the top of the western union telegraph booth to watch the surging, crazy crowd. one man came to the booth, grabbed a pencil, and attempted to write a message to boston. the first stroke went clear off the blank; he was so excited that he had the operator write the message for him. amid great excitement speyer, the banker, went crazy and it took five men to hold him; and everybody lost their head. the western union operator came to me and said: 'shake, edison, we are o. k. we haven't got a cent.' i felt very happy because we were poor. these occasions are very enjoyable to a poor man; but they occur rarely." there is a calm sense of detachment about this description that has been possessed by the narrator even in the most anxious moments of his career. he was determined to see all that could be seen, and, quitting his perch on the telegraph booth, sought the more secluded headquarters of the pool forces. "a friend of mine was an operator who worked in the office of belden & company, broadway, which were headquarters for fisk. mr. gould was up-town in the erie offices in the grand opera house. the firm on broad street, smith, gould & martin, was the other branch. all were connected with wires. gould seemed to be in charge, fisk being the executive down-town. fisk wore a velvet corduroy coat and a very peculiar vest. he was very chipper, and seemed to be light-hearted and happy. sitting around the room were about a dozen fine-looking men. all had the complexion of cadavers. there was a basket of champagne. hundreds of boys were rushing in paying checks, all checks being payable to belden & company. when james brown, of brown brothers & company, broke the corner by selling five million gold, all payments were repudiated by smith, gould & martin; but they continued to receive checks at belden & company's for some time, until the street got wind of the game. there was some kind of conspiracy with the government people which i could not make out, but i heard messages that opened my eyes as to the ramifications of wall street. gold fell to , and it took us all night to get the indicator back to that quotation. all night long the streets were full of people. every broker's office was brilliantly lighted all night, and all hands were at work. the clearing-house for gold had been swamped, and all was mixed up. no one knew if he was bankrupt or not." edison in those days rather liked the modest coffee-shops, and mentions visiting one. "when on the new york no. wire, that i worked in boston, there was an operator named jerry borst at the other end. he was a first-class receiver and rapid sender. we made up a scheme to hold this wire, so he changed one letter of the alphabet and i soon got used to it; and finally we changed three letters. if any operator tried to receive from borst, he couldn't do it, so borst and i always worked together. borst did less talking than any operator i ever knew. never having seen him, i went while in new york to call upon him. i did all the talking. he would listen, stroke his beard, and say nothing. in the evening i went over to an all-night lunch-house in printing house square in a basement--oliver's. night editors, including horace greeley, and henry raymond, of the new york times, took their midnight lunch there. when i went with borst and another operator, they pointed out two or three men who were then celebrated in the newspaper world. the night was intensely hot and close. after getting our lunch and upon reaching the sidewalk, borst opened his mouth, and said: 'that's a great place; a plate of cakes, a cup of coffee, and a russian bath, for ten cents.' this was about fifty per cent. of his conversation for two days." the work of edison on the gold-indicator had thrown him into close relationship with mr. franklin l. pope, the young telegraph engineer then associated with doctor laws, and afterward a distinguished expert and technical writer, who became president of the american institute of electrical engineers in . each recognized the special ability of the other, and barely a week after the famous events of black friday the announcement of their partnership appeared in the telegrapher of october , . this was the first "professional card," if it may be so described, ever issued in america by a firm of electrical engineers, and is here reproduced. it is probable that the advertisement, one of the largest in the telegrapher, and appearing frequently, was not paid for at full rates, as the publisher, mr. j. n. ashley, became a partner in the firm, and not altogether a "sleeping one" when it came to a division of profits, which at times were considerable. in order to be nearer his new friend edison boarded with pope at elizabeth, new jersey, for some time, living "the strenuous life" in the performance of his duties. associated with pope and ashley, he followed up his work on telegraph printers with marked success. "while with them i devised a printer to print gold quotations instead of indicating them. the lines were started, and the whole was sold out to the gold & stock telegraph company. my experimenting was all done in the small shop of a doctor bradley, located near the station of the pennsylvania railroad in jersey city. every night i left for elizabeth on the a.m. train, then walked half a mile to mr. pope's house and up at a.m. for breakfast to catch the a.m. train. this continued all winter, and many were the occasions when i was nearly frozen in the elizabeth walk." this doctor bradley appears to have been the first in this country to make electrical measurements of precision with the galvanometer, but was an old-school experimenter who would work for years on an instrument without commercial value. he was also extremely irascible, and when on one occasion the connecting wire would not come out of one of the binding posts of a new and costly galvanometer, he jerked the instrument to the floor and then jumped on it. he must have been, however, a man of originality, as evidenced by his attempt to age whiskey by electricity, an attempt that has often since been made. "the hobby he had at the time i was there," says edison, "was the aging of raw whiskey by passing strong electric currents through it. he had arranged twenty jars with platinum electrodes held in place by hard rubber. when all was ready, he filled the cells with whiskey, connected the battery, locked the door of the small room in which they were placed, and gave positive orders that no one should enter. he then disappeared for three days. on the second day we noticed a terrible smell in the shop, as if from some dead animal. the next day the doctor arrived and, noticing the smell, asked what was dead. we all thought something had got into his whiskey-room and died. he opened it and was nearly overcome. the hard rubber he used was, of course, full of sulphur, and this being attacked by the nascent hydrogen, had produced sulphuretted hydrogen gas in torrents, displacing all of the air in the room. sulphuretted hydrogen is, as is well known, the gas given off by rotten eggs." another glimpse of this period of development is afforded by an interesting article on the stock-reporting telegraph in the electrical world of march , , by mr. ralph w. pope, the well-known secretary of the american institute of electrical engineers, who had as a youth an active and intimate connection with that branch of electrical industry. in the course of his article he mentions the curious fact that doctor laws at first, in receiving quotations from the exchanges, was so distrustful of the morse system that he installed long lines of speaking-tube as a more satisfactory and safe device than a telegraph wire. as to the relations of that time mr. pope remarks: "the rivalry between the two concerns resulted in consolidation, doctor laws's enterprise being absorbed by the gold & stock telegraph company, while the laws stock printer was relegated to the scrap-heap and the museum. competition in the field did not, however, cease. messrs. pope and edison invented a one-wire printer, and started a system of 'gold printers' devoted to the recording of gold quotations and sterling exchange only. it was intended more especially for importers and exchange brokers, and was furnished at a lower price than the indicator service.... the building and equipment of private telegraph lines was also entered upon. this business was also subsequently absorbed by the gold & stock telegraph company, which was probably at this time at the height of its prosperity. the financial organization of the company was peculiar and worthy of attention. each subscriber for a machine paid in $ for the privilege of securing an instrument. for the service he paid $ weekly. in case he retired or failed, he could transfer his 'right,' and employees were constantly on the alert for purchasable rights, which could be disposed of at a profit. it was occasionally worth the profit to convince a man that he did not actually own the machine which had been placed in his office.... the western union telegraph company secured a majority of its stock, and gen. marshall lefferts was elected president. a private-line department was established, and the business taken over from pope, edison, and ashley was rapidly enlarged." at this juncture general lefferts, as president of the gold & stock telegraph company, requested edison to go to work on improving the stock ticker, furnishing the money; and the well-known "universal" ticker, in wide-spread use in its day, was one result. mr. edison gives a graphic picture of the startling effect on his fortunes: "i made a great many inventions; one was the special ticker used for many years outside of new york in the large cities. this was made exceedingly simple, as they did not have the experts we had in new york to handle anything complicated. the same ticker was used on the london stock exchange. after i had made a great number of inventions and obtained patents, the general seemed anxious that the matter should be closed up. one day i exhibited and worked a successful device whereby if a ticker should get out of unison in a broker's office and commence to print wild figures, it could be brought to unison from the central station, which saved the labor of many men and much trouble to the broker. he called me into his office, and said: 'now, young man, i want to close up the matter of your inventions. how much do you think you should receive?' i had made up my mind that, taking into consideration the time and killing pace i was working at, i should be entitled to $ , but could get along with $ . when the psychological moment arrived, i hadn't the nerve to name such a large sum, so i said: 'well, general, suppose you make me an offer.' then he said: 'how would $ , strike you?' this caused me to come as near fainting as i ever got. i was afraid he would hear my heart beat. i managed to say that i thought it was fair. 'all right, i will have a contract drawn; come around in three days and sign it, and i will give you the money.' i arrived on time, but had been doing some considerable thinking on the subject. the sum seemed to be very large for the amount of work, for at that time i determined the value by the time and trouble, and not by what the invention was worth to others. i thought there was something unreal about it. however, the contract was handed to me. i signed without reading it." edison was then handed the first check he had ever received, one for $ , drawn on the bank of new york, at the corner of william and wall streets. on going to the bank and passing in the check at the wicket of the paying teller, some brief remarks were made to him, which in his deafness he did not understand. the check was handed back to him, and edison, fancying for a moment that in some way he had been cheated, went outside "to the large steps to let the cold sweat evaporate." he then went back to the general, who, with his secretary, had a good laugh over the matter, told him the check must be endorsed, and sent with him a young man to identify him. the ceremony of identification performed with the paying teller, who was quite merry over the incident, edison was given the amount in bundles of small bills "until there certainly seemed to be one cubic foot." unaware that he was the victim of a practical joke, edison proceeded gravely to stow away the money in his overcoat pockets and all his other pockets. he then went to newark and sat up all night with the money for fear it might be stolen. once more he sought help next morning, when the general laughed heartily, and, telling the clerk that the joke must not be carried any further, enabled him to deposit the currency in the bank and open an account. thus in an inconceivably brief time had edison passed from poverty to independence; made a deep impression as to his originality and ability on important people, and brought out valuable inventions; lifting himself at one bound out of the ruck of mediocrity, and away from the deadening drudgery of the key. best of all he was enterprising, one of the leaders and pioneers for whom the world is always looking; and, to use his own criticism of himself, he had "too sanguine a temperament to keep money in solitary confinement." with quiet self-possession he seized his opportunity, began to buy machinery, rented a shop and got work for it. moving quickly into a larger shop, nos. and ward street, newark, new jersey, he secured large orders from general lefferts to build stock tickers, and employed fifty men. as business increased he put on a night force, and was his own foreman on both shifts. half an hour of sleep three or four times in the twenty-four hours was all he needed in those days, when one invention succeeded another with dazzling rapidity, and when he worked with the fierce, eruptive energy of a great volcano, throwing out new ideas incessantly with spectacular effect on the arts to which they related. it has always been a theory with edison that we sleep altogether too much; but on the other hand he never, until long past fifty, knew or practiced the slightest moderation in work or in the use of strong coffee and black cigars. he has, moreover, while of tender and kindly disposition, never hesitated to use men up as freely as a napoleon or grant; seeing only the goal of a complete invention or perfected device, to attain which all else must become subsidiary. he gives a graphic picture of his first methods as a manufacturer: "nearly all my men were on piece work, and i allowed them to make good wages, and never cut until the pay became absurdly high as they got more expert. i kept no books. i had two hooks. all the bills and accounts i owed i jabbed on one hook; and memoranda of all owed to myself i put on the other. when some of the bills fell due, and i couldn't deliver tickers to get a supply of money, i gave a note. when the notes were due, a messenger came around from the bank with the note and a protest pinned to it for $ . . then i would go to new york and get an advance, or pay the note if i had the money. this method of giving notes for my accounts and having all notes protested i kept up over two years, yet my credit was fine. every store i traded with was always glad to furnish goods, perhaps in amazed admiration of my system of doing business, which was certainly new." after a while edison got a bookkeeper, whose vagaries made him look back with regret on the earlier, primitive method. "the first three months i had him go over the books to find out how much we had made. he reported $ . i gave a supper to some of my men to celebrate this, only to be told two days afterward that he had made a mistake, and that we had lost $ ; and then a few days after that he came to me again and said he was all mixed up, and now found that we had made over $ ." edison changed bookkeepers, but never thereafter counted anything real profit until he had paid all his debts and had the profits in the bank. the factory work at this time related chiefly to stock tickers, principally the "universal," of which at one time twelve hundred were in use. edison's connection with this particular device was very close while it lasted. in a review of the ticker art, mr. callahan stated, with rather grudging praise, that "a ticker at the present time ( ) would be considered as impracticable and unsalable if it were not provided with a unison device," and he goes on to remark: "the first unison on stock tickers was one used on the laws printer. [ ] it was a crude and unsatisfactory piece of mechanism and necessitated doubling of the battery in order to bring it into action. it was short-lived. the edison unison comprised a lever with a free end travelling in a spiral or worm on the type-wheel shaft until it met a pin at the end of the worm, thus obstructing the shaft and leaving the type-wheels at the zero-point until released by the printing lever. this device is too well known to require a further description. it is not applicable to any instrument using two independently moving type-wheels; but on nearly if not all other instruments will be found in use." the stock ticker has enjoyed the devotion of many brilliant inventors--g. m. phelps, h. van hoevenbergh, a. a. knudson, g. b. scott, s. d. field, john burry--and remains in extensive use as an appliance for which no substitute or competitor has been found. in new york the two great stock exchanges have deemed it necessary to own and operate a stock-ticker service for the sole benefit of their members; and down to the present moment the process of improvement has gone on, impelled by the increasing volume of business to be reported. it is significant of edison's work, now dimmed and overlaid by later advances, that at the very outset he recognized the vital importance of interchangeability in the construction of this delicate and sensitive apparatus. but the difficulties of these early days were almost insurmountable. mr. r. w. pope says of the "universal" machines that they were simple and substantial and generally satisfactory, but adds: "these instruments were supposed to have been made with interchangeable parts; but as a matter of fact the instances in which these parts would fit were very few. the instruction-book prepared for the use of inspectors stated that 'the parts should not be tinkered nor bent, as they are accurately made and interchangeable.' the difficulties encountered in fitting them properly doubtless gave rise to a story that mr. edison had stated that there were three degrees of interchangeability. this was interpreted to mean: first, the parts will fit; second, they will almost fit; third, they do not fit, and can't be made to fit." [footnote : this i invented as well.--t. a. e.] this early shop affords an illustration of the manner in which edison has made a deep impression on the personnel of the electrical arts. at a single bench there worked three men since rich or prominent. one was sigmund bergmann, for a time partner with edison in his lighting developments in the united states, and now head and principal owner of electrical works in berlin employing ten thousand men. the next man adjacent was john kruesi, afterward engineer of the great general electric works at schenectady. a third was schuckert, who left the bench to settle up his father's little estate at nuremberg, stayed there and founded electrical factories, which became the third largest in germany, their proprietor dying very wealthy. "i gave them a good training as to working hours and hustling," says their quondam master; and this is equally true as applied to many scores of others working in companies bearing the edison name or organized under edison patents. it is curiously significant in this connection that of the twenty-one presidents of the national society, the american institute of electrical engineers, founded in , eight have been intimately associated with edison--namely, norvin green and f. l. pope, as business colleagues of the days of which we now write; while messrs. frank j. sprague, t. c. martin, a. e. kennelly, s. s. wheeler, john w. lieb, jr., and louis a. ferguson have all been at one time or another in the edison employ. the remark was once made that if a famous american teacher sat at one end of a log and a student at the other end, the elements of a successful university were present. it is equally true that in edison and the many men who have graduated from his stern school of endeavor, america has had its foremost seat of electrical engineering. chapter viii automatic, duplex, and quadruplex telegraphy work of various kinds poured in upon the young manufacturer, busy also with his own schemes and inventions, which soon began to follow so many distinct lines of inquiry that it ceases to be easy or necessary for the historian to treat them all in chronological sequence. some notion of his ceaseless activity may be formed from the fact that he started no fewer than three shops in newark during - , and while directing these was also engaged by the men who controlled the automatic telegraph company of new york, which had a circuit to washington, to help it out of its difficulties. "soon after starting the large shop ( and ward street, newark), i rented shop-room to the inventor of a new rifle. i think it was the berdan. in any event, it was a rifle which was subsequently adopted by the british army. the inventor employed a tool-maker who was the finest and best tool-maker i had ever seen. i noticed that he worked pretty near the whole of the twenty-four hours. this kind of application i was looking for. he was getting $ . per week, and was also paid for overtime. i asked him if he could run the shop. 'i don't know; try me!' he said. 'all right, i will give you $ per week to run both shifts.' he went at it. his executive ability was greater than that of any other man i have yet seen. his memory was prodigious, conversation laconic, and movements rapid. he doubled the production inside three months, without materially increasing the pay-roll, by increasing the cutting speeds of tools, and by the use of various devices. when in need of rest he would lie down on a work-bench, sleep twenty or thirty minutes, and wake up fresh. as this was just what i could do, i naturally conceived a great pride in having such a man in charge of my work. but almost everything has trouble connected with it. he disappeared one day, and although i sent men everywhere that it was likely he could be found, he was not discovered. after two weeks he came into the factory in a terrible condition as to clothes and face. he sat down and, turning to me, said: 'edison, it's no use, this is the third time; i can't stand prosperity. put my salary back and give me a job.' i was very sorry to learn that it was whiskey that spoiled such a career. i gave him an inferior job and kept him for a long time." edison had now entered definitely upon that career as an inventor which has left so deep an imprint on the records of the united states patent office, where from his first patent in up to the summer of no fewer than separate patents have been applied for in his name, averaging thirty-two every year, and one about every eleven days; with a substantially corresponding number issued. the height of this inventive activity was attained about , in which year no fewer than patents were applied for, and seventy-five granted to him, or nearly nine times as many as in , when invention as a profession may be said to have been adopted by this prolific genius. it will be understood, of course, that even these figures do not represent the full measure of actual invention, as in every process and at every step there were many discoveries that were not brought to patent registration, but remained "trade secrets." and furthermore, that in practically every case the actual patented invention followed from one to a dozen or more gradually developing forms of the same idea. an englishman named george little had brought over a system of automatic telegraphy which worked well on a short line, but was a failure when put upon the longer circuits for which automatic methods are best adapted. the general principle involved in automatic or rapid telegraphs, except the photographic ones, is that of preparing the message in advance, for dispatch, by perforating narrow strips of paper with holes--work which can be done either by hand-punches or by typewriter apparatus. a certain group of perforations corresponds to a morse group of dots and dashes for a letter of the alphabet. when the tape thus made ready is run rapidly through a transmitting machine, electrical contact occurs wherever there is a perforation, permitting the current from the battery to flow into the line and thus transmit signals correspondingly. at the distant end these signals are received sometimes on an ink-writing recorder as dots and dashes, or even as typewriting letters; but in many of the earlier systems, like that of bain, the record at the higher rates of speed was effected by chemical means, a tell-tale stain being made on the travelling strip of paper by every spurt of incoming current. solutions of potassium iodide were frequently used for this purpose, giving a sharp, blue record, but fading away too rapidly. the little system had perforating apparatus operated by electromagnets; its transmitting machine was driven by a small electromagnetic motor; and the record was made by electrochemical decomposition, the writing member being a minute platinum roller instead of the more familiar iron stylus. moreover, a special type of wire had been put up for the single circuit of two hundred and eighty miles between new york and washington. this is believed to have been the first "compound" wire made for telegraphic or other signalling purposes, the object being to secure greater lightness with textile strength and high conductivity. it had a steel core, with a copper ribbon wound spirally around it, and tinned to the core wire. but the results obtained were poor, and in their necessity the parties in interest turned to edison. mr. e. h. johnson tells of the conditions: "gen. w. j. palmer and some new york associates had taken up the little automatic system and had expended quite a sum in its development, when, thinking they had reduced it to practice, they got tom scott, of the pennsylvania railroad to send his superintendent of telegraph over to look into and report upon it. of course he turned it down. the syndicate was appalled at this report, and in this extremity general palmer thought of the man who had impressed him as knowing it all by the telling of telegraphic tales as a means of whiling away lonesome hours on the plains of colorado, where they were associated in railroad-building. so this man--it was i--was sent for to come to new york and assuage their grief if possible. my report was that the system was sound fundamentally, that it contained the germ of a good thing, but needed working out. associated with general palmer was one col. josiah c. reiff, then eastern bond agent for the kansas pacific railroad. the colonel was always resourceful, and didn't fail in this case. he knew of a young fellow who was doing some good work for marshall lefferts, and who it was said was a genius at invention, and a very fiend for work. his name was edison, and he had a shop out at newark, new jersey. he came and was put in my care for the purpose of a mutual exchange of ideas and for a report by me as to his competency in the matter. this was my introduction to edison. he confirmed my views of the automatic system. he saw its possibilities, as well as the chief obstacles to be overcome--viz., the sluggishness of the wire, together with the need of mechanical betterment of the apparatus; and he agreed to take the job on one condition--namely, that johnson would stay and help, as 'he was a man with ideas.' mr. johnson was accordingly given three months' leave from colorado railroad-building, and has never seen colorado since." applying himself to the difficulties with wonted energy, edison devised new apparatus, and solved the problem to such an extent that he and his assistants succeeded in transmitting and recording one thousand words per minute between new york and washington, and thirty-five hundred words per minute to philadelphia. ordinary manual transmission by key is not in excess of forty to fifty words a minute. stated very briefly, edison's principal contribution to the commercial development of the automatic was based on the observation that in a line of considerable length electrical impulses become enormously extended, or sluggish, due to a phenomenon known as self-induction, which with ordinary morse work is in a measure corrected by condensers. but in the automatic the aim was to deal with impulses following each other from twenty-five to one hundred times as rapidly as in morse lines, and to attempt to receive and record intelligibly such a lightning-like succession of signals would have seemed impossible. but edison discovered that by utilizing a shunt around the receiving instrument, with a soft iron core, the self-induction would produce a momentary and instantaneous reversal of the current at the end of each impulse, and thereby give an absolutely sharp definition to each signal. this discovery did away entirely with sluggishness, and made it possible to secure high speeds over lines of comparatively great lengths. but edison's work on the automatic did not stop with this basic suggestion, for he took up and perfected the mechanical construction of the instruments, as well as the perforators, and also suggested numerous electrosensitive chemicals for the receivers, so that the automatic telegraph, almost entirely by reason of his individual work, was placed on a plane of commercial practicability. the long line of patents secured by him in this art is an interesting exhibit of the development of a germ to a completed system, not, as is usually the case, by numerous inventors working over considerable periods of time, but by one man evolving the successive steps at a white heat of activity. this system was put in commercial operation, but the company, now encouraged, was quite willing to allow edison to work out his idea of an automatic that would print the message in bold roman letters instead of in dots and dashes; with consequent gain in speed in delivery of the message after its receipt in the operating-room, it being obviously necessary in the case of any message received in morse characters to copy it in script before delivery to the recipient. a large shop was rented in newark, equipped with $ , worth of machinery, and edison was given full charge. here he built their original type of apparatus, as improved, and also pushed his experiments on the letter system so far that at a test, between new york and philadelphia, three thousand words were sent in one minute and recorded in roman type. mr. d. n. craig, one of the early organizers of the associated press, became interested in this company, whose president was mr. george harrington, formerly assistant secretary of the united states treasury. mr. craig brought with him at this time--the early seventies--from milwaukee a mr. sholes, who had a wooden model of a machine to which had been given the then new and unfamiliar name of "typewriter." craig was interested in the machine, and put the model in edison's hands to perfect. "this typewriter proved a difficult thing," says edison, "to make commercial. the alignment of the letters was awful. one letter would be one-sixteenth of an inch above the others; and all the letters wanted to wander out of line. i worked on it till the machine gave fair results. [ ] some were made and used in the office of the automatic company. craig was very sanguine that some day all business letters would be written on a typewriter. he died before that took place; but it gradually made its way. the typewriter i got into commercial shape is now known as the remington. about this time i got an idea i could devise an apparatus by which four messages could simultaneously be sent over a single wire without interfering with each other. i now had five shops, and with experimenting on this new scheme i was pretty busy; at least i did not have ennui." [footnote : see illustration on opposite page, showing reproduction of the work done with this machine.] a very interesting picture of mr. edison at this time is furnished by mr. patrick b. delany, a well-known inventor in the field of automatic and multiplex telegraphy, who at that time was a chief operator of the franklin telegraph company at philadelphia. his remark about edison that "his ingenuity inspired confidence, and wavering financiers stiffened up when it became known that he was to develop the automatic" is a noteworthy evidence of the manner in which the young inventor had already gained a firm footing. he continues: "edward h. johnson was brought on from the denver & rio grande railway to assist in the practical introduction of automatic telegraphy on a commercial basis, and about this time, in , i joined the enterprise. fairly good results were obtained between new york and washington, and edison, indifferent to theoretical difficulties, set out to prove high speeds between new york and charleston, south carolina, the compound wire being hitched up to one of the southern & atlantic wires from washington to charleston for the purpose of experimentation. johnson and i went to the charleston end to carry out edison's plans, which were rapidly unfolded by telegraph every night from a loft on lower broadway, new york. we could only get the wire after all business was cleared, usually about midnight, and for months, in the quiet hours, that wire was subjected to more electrical acrobatics than any other wire ever experienced. when the experiments ended, edison's system was put into regular commercial operation between new york and washington; and did fine work. if the single wire had not broken about every other day, the venture would have been a financial success; but moisture got in between the copper ribbon and the steel core, setting up galvanic action which made short work of the steel. the demonstration was, however, sufficiently successful to impel jay gould to contract to pay about $ , , in stock for the patents. the contract was never completed so far as the $ , , were concerned, but gould made good use of it in getting control of the western union." one of the most important persons connected with the automatic enterprise was mr. george harrington, to whom we have above referred, and with whom mr. edison entered into close confidential relations, so that the inventions made were held jointly, under a partnership deed covering "any inventions or improvements that may be useful or desired in automatic telegraphy." mr. harrington was assured at the outset by edison that while the little perforator would give on the average only seven or eight words per minute, which was not enough for commercial purposes, he could devise one giving fifty or sixty words, and that while the little solution for the receiving tape cost $ to $ per gallon, he could furnish a ferric solution costing only five or six cents per gallon. in every respect edison "made good," and in a short time the system was a success, "mr. little having withdrawn his obsolete perforator, his ineffective resistance, his costly chemical solution, to give place to edison's perforator, edison's resistance and devices, and edison's solution costing a few cents per gallon. but," continues mr. harrington, in a memorable affidavit, "the inventive efforts of mr. edison were not confined to automatic telegraphy, nor did they cease with the opening of that line to washington." they all led up to the quadruplex. flattered by their success, messrs. harrington and reiff, who owned with edison the foreign patents for the new automatic system, entered into an arrangement with the british postal telegraph authorities for a trial of the system in england, involving its probable adoption if successful. edison was sent to england to make the demonstration, in , reporting there to col. george e. gouraud, who had been an associate in the united states treasury with mr. harrington, and was now connected with the new enterprise. with one small satchel of clothes, three large boxes of instruments, and a bright fellow-telegrapher named jack wright, he took voyage on the jumping java, as she was humorously known, of the cunard line. the voyage was rough and the little java justified her reputation by jumping all over the ocean. "at the table," says edison, "there were never more than ten or twelve people. i wondered at the time how it could pay to run an ocean steamer with so few people; but when we got into calm water and could see the green fields, i was astounded to see the number of people who appeared. there were certainly two or three hundred. i learned afterward that they were mostly going to the vienna exposition. only two days could i get on deck, and on one of these a gentleman had a bad scalp wound from being thrown against the iron wall of a small smoking-room erected over a freight hatch." arrived in london, edison set up his apparatus at the telegraph street headquarters, and sent his companion to liverpool with the instruments for that end. the condition of the test was that he was to send from liverpool and receive in london, and to record at the rate of one thousand words per minute, five hundred words to be sent every half hour for six hours. edison was given a wire and batteries to operate with, but a preliminary test soon showed that he was going to fail. both wire and batteries were poor, and one of the men detailed by the authorities to watch the test remarked quietly, in a friendly way: "you are not going to have much show. they are going to give you an old bridgewater canal wire that is so poor we don't work it, and a lot of 'sand batteries' at liverpool." [ ] the situation was rather depressing to the young american thus encountering, for the first time, the stolid conservatism and opposition to change that characterizes so much of official life and methods in europe. "i thanked him," says edison, "and hoped to reciprocate somehow. i knew i was in a hole. i had been staying at a little hotel in covent garden called the hummums! and got nothing but roast beef and flounders, and my imagination was getting into a coma. what i needed was pastry. that night i found a french pastry shop in high holborn street and filled up. my imagination got all right. early in the morning i saw gouraud, stated my case, and asked if he would stand for the purchase of a powerful battery to send to liverpool. he said 'yes.' i went immediately to apps on the strand and asked if he had a powerful battery. he said he hadn't; that all that he had was tyndall's royal institution battery, which he supposed would not serve. i saw it--one hundred cells--and getting the price--one hundred guineas--hurried to gouraud. he said 'go ahead.' i telegraphed to the man in liverpool. he came on, got the battery to liverpool, set up and ready, just two hours before the test commenced. one of the principal things that made the system a success was that the line was put to earth at the sending end through a magnet, and the extra current from this, passed to the line, served to sharpen the recording waves. this new battery was strong enough to pass a powerful current through the magnet without materially diminishing the strength of the line current." [footnote : the sand battery is now obsolete. in this type, the cell containing the elements was filled with sand, which was kept moist with an electrolyte.] the test under these more favorable circumstances was a success. "the record was as perfect as copper plate, and not a single remark was made in the 'time lost' column." edison was now asked if he thought he could get a greater speed through submarine cables with this system than with the regular methods, and replied that he would like a chance to try it. for this purpose, twenty-two hundred miles of brazilian cable then stored under water in tanks at the greenwich works of the telegraph construction & maintenance company, near london, was placed at his disposal from p.m. until a.m. "this just suited me, as i preferred night-work. i got my apparatus down and set up, and then to get a preliminary idea of what the distortion of the signal would be, i sent a single dot, which should have been recorded upon my automatic paper by a mark about one-thirty-second of an inch long. instead of that it was twenty-seven feet long! if i ever had any conceit, it vanished from my boots up. i worked on this cable more than two weeks, and the best i could do was two words per minute, which was only one-seventh of what the guaranteed speed of the cable should be when laid. what i did not know at the time was that a coiled cable, owing to induction, was infinitely worse than when laid out straight, and that my speed was as good as, if not better than, with the regular system; but no one told me this." while he was engaged on these tests colonel gouraud came down one night to visit him at the lonely works, spent a vigil with him, and toward morning wanted coffee. there was only one little inn near by, frequented by longshoremen and employees from the soap-works and cement-factories--a rough lot--and there at daybreak they went as soon as the other customers had left for work. "the place had a bar and six bare tables, and was simply infested with roaches. the only things that i ever could get were coffee made from burnt bread, with brown molasses-cake. i ordered these for gouraud. the taste of the coffee, the insects, etc., were too much. he fainted. i gave him a big dose of gin, and this revived him. he went back to the works and waited until six when the day men came, and telegraphed for a carriage. he lost all interest in the experiments after that, and i was ordered back to america." edison states, however, that the automatic was finally adopted in england and used for many years; indeed, is still in use there. but they took whatever was needed from his system, and he "has never had a cent from them." arduous work was at once resumed at home on duplex and quadruplex telegraphy, just as though there had been no intermission or discouragement over dots twenty-seven feet long. a clue to his activity is furnished in the fact that in he had applied for thirty-eight patents in the class of telegraphy, and twenty-five in ; several of these being for duplex methods, on which he had experimented. the earlier apparatus had been built several years prior to this, as shown by a curious little item of news that appeared in the telegrapher of january , : "t. a. edison has resigned his situation in the western union office, boston, and will devote his time to bringing out his inventions." oh, the supreme, splendid confidence of youth! six months later, as we have seen, he had already made his mark, and the same journal, in october, , could say: "mr. edison is a young man of the highest order of mechanical talent, combined with good scientific electrical knowledge and experience. he has already invented and patented a number of valuable and useful inventions, among which may be mentioned the best instrument for double transmission yet brought out." not bad for a novice of twenty-two. it is natural, therefore, after his intervening work on indicators, stock tickers, automatic telegraphs, and typewriters, to find him harking back to duplex telegraphy, if, indeed, he can be said to have dropped it in the interval. it has always been one of the characteristic features of edison's method of inventing that work in several lines has gone forward at the same time. no one line of investigation has ever been enough to occupy his thoughts fully; or to express it otherwise, he has found rest in turning from one field of work to another, having absolutely no recreations or hobbies, and not needing them. it may also be said that, once entering it, mr. edison has never abandoned any field of work. he may change the line of attack; he may drop the subject for a time; but sooner or later the note-books or the patent office will bear testimony to the reminiscent outcropping of latent thought on the matter. his attention has shifted chronologically, and by process of evolution, from one problem to another, and some results are found to be final; but the interest of the man in the thing never dies out. no one sees more vividly than he the fact that in the interplay of the arts one industry shapes and helps another, and that no invention lives to itself alone. the path to the quadruplex lay through work on the duplex, which, suggested first by moses g. farmer in , had been elaborated by many ingenious inventors, notably in this country by stearns, before edison once again applied his mind to it. the different methods of such multiple transmission--namely, the simultaneous dispatch of the two communications in opposite directions over the same wire, or the dispatch of both at once in the same direction--gave plenty of play to ingenuity. prescott's elements of the electric telegraph, a standard work in its day, described "a method of simultaneous transmission invented by t. a. edison, of new jersey, in ," and says of it: "its peculiarity consists in the fact that the signals are transmitted in one direction by reversing the polarity of a constant current, and in the opposite direction by increasing or decreasing the strength of the same current." herein lay the germ of the edison quadruplex. it is also noted that "in edison invented a method of simultaneous transmission by induced currents, which has given very satisfactory results in experimental trials." interest in the duplex as a field of invention dwindled, however, as the quadruplex loomed up, for while the one doubled the capacity of a circuit, the latter created three "phantom wires," and thus quadruplexed the working capacity of any line to which it was applied. as will have been gathered from the above, the principle embodied in the quadruplex is that of working over the line with two currents from each end that differ from each other in strength or nature, so that they will affect only instruments adapted to respond to just such currents and no others; and by so arranging the receiving apparatus as not to be affected by the currents transmitted from its own end of the line. thus by combining instruments that respond only to variation in the strength of current from the distant station, with instruments that respond only to the change in the direction of current from the distant station, and by grouping a pair of these at each end of the line, the quadruplex is the result. four sending and four receiving operators are kept busy at each end, or eight in all. aside from other material advantages, it is estimated that at least from $ , , to $ , , has been saved by the edison quadruplex merely in the cost of line construction in america. the quadruplex has not as a rule the same working efficiency that four separate wires have. this is due to the fact that when one of the receiving operators is compelled to "break" the sending operator for any reason, the "break" causes the interruption of the work of eight operators, instead of two, as would be the case on a single wire. the working efficiency of the quadruplex, therefore, with the apparatus in good working condition, depends entirely upon the skill of the operators employed to operate it. but this does not reflect upon or diminish the ingenuity required for its invention. speaking of the problem involved, edison said some years later to mr. upton, his mathematical assistant, that "he always considered he was only working from one room to another. thus he was not confused by the amount of wire and the thought of distance." the immense difficulties of reducing such a system to practice may be readily conceived, especially when it is remembered that the "line" itself, running across hundreds of miles of country, is subject to all manner of atmospheric conditions, and varies from moment to moment in its ability to carry current, and also when it is borne in mind that the quadruplex requires at each end of the line a so-called "artificial line," which must have the exact resistance of the working line and must be varied with the variations in resistance of the working line. at this juncture other schemes were fermenting in his brain; but the quadruplex engrossed him. "this problem was of most difficult and complicated kind, and i bent all my energies toward its solution. it required a peculiar effort of the mind, such as the imagining of eight different things moving simultaneously on a mental plane, without anything to demonstrate their efficiency." it is perhaps hardly to be wondered at that when notified he would have to pay / per cent. extra if his taxes in newark were not at once paid, he actually forgot his own name when asked for it suddenly at the city hall, lost his place in the line, and, the fatal hour striking, had to pay the surcharge after all! so important an invention as the quadruplex could not long go begging, but there were many difficulties connected with its introduction, some of which are best described in mr. edison's own words: "around the owners of the automatic telegraph company commenced negotiations with jay gould for the purchase of the wires between new york and washington, and the patents for the system, then in successful operation. jay gould at that time controlled the atlantic & pacific telegraph company, and was competing with the western union and endeavoring to depress western union stock on the exchange. about this time i invented the quadruplex. i wanted to interest the western union telegraph company in it, with a view of selling it, but was unsuccessful until i made an arrangement with the chief electrician of the company, so that he could be known as a joint inventor and receive a portion of the money. at that time i was very short of money, and needed it more than glory. this electrician appeared to want glory more than money, so it was an easy trade. i brought my apparatus over and was given a separate room with a marble-tiled floor, which, by-the-way, was a very hard kind of floor to sleep on, and started in putting on the finishing touches. "after two months of very hard work, i got a detail at regular times of eight operators, and we got it working nicely from one room to another over a wire which ran to albany and back. under certain conditions of weather, one side of the quadruplex would work very shakily, and i had not succeeded in ascertaining the cause of the trouble. on a certain day, when there was a board meeting of the company, i was to make an exhibition test. the day arrived. i had picked the best operators in new york, and they were familiar with the apparatus. i arranged that if a storm occurred, and the bad side got shaky, they should do the best they could and draw freely on their imaginations. they were sending old messages. about , o'clock everything went wrong, as there was a storm somewhere near albany, and the bad side got shaky. mr. orton, the president, and wm. h. vanderbilt and the other directors came in. i had my heart trying to climb up around my oesophagus. i was paying a sheriff five dollars a day to withhold judgment which had been entered against me in a case which i had paid no attention to; and if the quadruplex had not worked before the president, i knew i was to have trouble and might lose my machinery. the new york times came out next day with a full account. i was given $ as part payment for the invention, which made me easy, and i expected the whole thing would be closed up. but mr. orton went on an extended tour just about that time. i had paid for all the experiments on the quadruplex and exhausted the money, and i was again in straits. in the mean time i had introduced the apparatus on the lines of the company, where it was very successful. "at that time the general superintendent of the western union was gen. t. t. eckert (who had been assistant secretary of war with stanton). eckert was secretly negotiating with gould to leave the western union and take charge of the atlantic & pacific--gould's company. one day eckert called me into his office and made inquiries about money matters. i told him mr. orton had gone off and left me without means, and i was in straits. he told me i would never get another cent, but that he knew a man who would buy it. i told him of my arrangement with the electrician, and said i could not sell it as a whole to anybody; but if i got enough for it, i would sell all my interest in any share i might have. he seemed to think his party would agree to this. i had a set of quadruplex over in my shop, and ward street, newark, and he arranged to bring him over next evening to see the apparatus. so the next morning eckert came over with jay gould and introduced him to me. this was the first time i had ever seen him. i exhibited and explained the apparatus, and they departed. the next day eckert sent for me, and i was taken up to gould's house, which was near the windsor hotel, fifth avenue. in the basement he had an office. it was in the evening, and we went in by the servants' entrance, as eckert probably feared that he was watched. gould started in at once and asked me how much i wanted. i said: 'make me an offer.' then he said: 'i will give you $ , .' i said: 'i will sell any interest i may have for that money,' which was something more than i thought i could get. the next morning i went with gould to the office of his lawyers, sherman & sterling, and received a check for $ , , with a remark by gould that i had got the steamboat plymouth rock, as he had sold her for $ , and had just received the check. there was a big fight on between gould's company and the western union, and this caused more litigation. the electrician, on account of the testimony involved, lost his glory. the judge never decided the case, but went crazy a few months afterward." it was obviously a characteristically shrewd move on the part of mr. gould to secure an interest in the quadruplex, as a factor in his campaign against the western union, and as a decisive step toward his control of that system, by the subsequent merger that included not only the atlantic & pacific telegraph company, but the american union telegraph company. nor was mr. gould less appreciative of the value of edison's automatic system. referring to matters that will be taken up later in the narrative, edison says: "after this gould wanted me to help install the automatic system in the atlantic & pacific company, of which general eckert had been elected president, the company having bought the automatic telegraph company. i did a lot of work for this company making automatic apparatus in my shop at newark. about this time i invented a district messenger call-box system, and organized a company called the domestic telegraph company, and started in to install the system in new york. i had great difficulty in getting subscribers, having tried several canvassers, who, one after the other, failed to get subscribers. when i was about to give it up, a test operator named brown, who was on the automatic telegraph wire between new york and washington, which passed through my newark shop, asked permission to let him try and see if he couldn't get subscribers. i had very little faith in his ability to get any, but i thought i would give him a chance, as he felt certain of his ability to succeed. he started in, and the results were surprising. within a month he had procured two hundred subscribers, and the company was a success. i have never quite understood why six men should fail absolutely, while the seventh man should succeed. perhaps hypnotism would account for it. this company was sold out to the atlantic & pacific company." as far back as , edison had applied for a patent on district messenger signal boxes, but it was not issued until january, , another patent being granted in september of the same year. in this field of telegraph application, as in others, edison was a very early comer, his only predecessor being the fertile and ingenious callahan, of stock-ticker fame. the first president of the gold & stock telegraph company, elisha w. andrews, had resigned in in order to go to england to introduce the stock ticker in london. he lived in englewood, new jersey, and the very night he had packed his trunk the house was burglarized. calling on his nearest friend the next morning for even a pair of suspenders, mr. andrews was met with regrets of inability, because the burglars had also been there. a third and fourth friend in the vicinity was appealed to with the same disheartening reply of a story of wholesale spoliation. mr. callahan began immediately to devise a system of protection for englewood; but at that juncture a servant-girl who had been for many years with a family on the heights in brooklyn went mad suddenly and held an aged widow and her daughter as helpless prisoners for twenty-four hours without food or water. this incident led to an extension of the protective idea, and very soon a system was installed in brooklyn with one hundred subscribers. out of this grew in turn the district messenger system, for it was just as easy to call a messenger as to sound a fire-alarm or summon the police. to-day no large city in america is without a service of this character, but its function was sharply limited by the introduction of the telephone. returning to the automatic telegraph it is interesting to note that so long as edison was associated with it as a supervising providence it did splendid work, which renders the later neglect of automatic or "rapid telegraphy" the more remarkable. reid's standard telegraph in america bears astonishing testimony on this point in , as follows: "the atlantic & pacific telegraph company had twenty-two automatic stations. these included the chief cities on the seaboard, buffalo, chicago, and omaha. the through business during nearly two years was largely transmitted in this way. between new york and boston two thousand words a minute have been sent. the perforated paper was prepared at the rate of twenty words per minute. whatever its demerits this system enabled the atlantic & pacific company to handle a much larger business during and than it could otherwise have done with its limited number of wires in their then condition." mr. reid also notes as a very thorough test of the perfect practicability of the system, that it handled the president's message, december , , of , words with complete success. this long message was filed at washington at . and delivered in new york at . . the first words were transmitted in forty-five minutes. the perforated strips were prepared in thirty minutes by ten persons, and duplicated by nine copyists. but to-day, nearly thirty-five years later, telegraphy in america is still practically on a basis of hand transmission! of this period and his association with jay gould, some very interesting glimpses are given by edison. "while engaged in putting in the automatic system, i saw a great deal of gould, and frequently went uptown to his office to give information. gould had no sense of humor. i tried several times to get off what seemed to me a funny story, but he failed to see any humor in them. i was very fond of stories, and had a choice lot, always kept fresh, with which i could usually throw a man into convulsions. one afternoon gould started in to explain the great future of the union pacific railroad, which he then controlled. he got a map, and had an immense amount of statistics. he kept at it for over four hours, and got very enthusiastic. why he should explain to me, a mere inventor, with no capital or standing, i couldn't make out. he had a peculiar eye, and i made up my mind that there was a strain of insanity somewhere. this idea was strengthened shortly afterward when the western union raised the monthly rental of the stock tickers. gould had one in his house office, which he watched constantly. this he had removed, to his great inconvenience, because the price had been advanced a few dollars! he railed over it. this struck me as abnormal. i think gould's success was due to abnormal development. he certainly had one trait that all men must have who want to succeed. he collected every kind of information and statistics about his schemes, and had all the data. his connection with men prominent in official life, of which i was aware, was surprising to me. his conscience seemed to be atrophied, but that may be due to the fact that he was contending with men who never had any to be atrophied. he worked incessantly until or o'clock at night. he took no pride in building up an enterprise. he was after money, and money only. whether the company was a success or a failure mattered not to him. after he had hammered the western union through his opposition company and had tired out mr. vanderbilt, the latter retired from control, and gould went in and consolidated his company and controlled the western union. he then repudiated the contract with the automatic telegraph people, and they never received a cent for their wires or patents, and i lost three years of very hard labor. but i never had any grudge against him, because he was so able in his line, and as long as my part was successful the money with me was a secondary consideration. when gould got the western union i knew no further progress in telegraphy was possible, and i went into other lines." the truth is that general eckert was a conservative--even a reactionary--and being prejudiced like many other american telegraph managers against "machine telegraphy," threw out all such improvements. the course of electrical history has been variegated by some very remarkable litigation; but none was ever more extraordinary than that referred to here as arising from the transfer of the automatic telegraph company to mr. jay gould and the atlantic & pacific telegraph company. the terms accepted by colonel reiff from mr. gould, on december , , provided that the purchasing telegraph company should increase its capital to $ , , , of which the automatic interests were to receive $ , , for their patents, contracts, etc. the stock was then selling at about , and in the later consolidation with the western union "went in" at about ; so that the real purchase price was not less than $ , , in cash. there was a private arrangement in writing with mr. gould that he was to receive one-tenth of the "result" to the automatic group, and a tenth of the further results secured at home and abroad. mr. gould personally bought up and gave money and bonds for one or two individual interests on the above basis, including that of harrington, who in his representative capacity executed assignments to mr. gould. but payments were then stopped, and the other owners were left without any compensation, although all that belonged to them in the shape of property and patents was taken over bodily into atlantic & pacific hands, and never again left them. attempts at settlement were made in their behalf, and dragged wearily, due apparently to the fact that the plans were blocked by general eckert, who had in some manner taken offence at a transaction effected without his active participation in all the details. edison, who became under the agreement the electrician of the atlantic & pacific telegraph company, has testified to the unfriendly attitude assumed toward him by general eckert, as president. in a graphic letter from menlo park to mr. gould, dated february , , edison makes a most vigorous and impassioned complaint of his treatment, "which, acting cumulatively, was a long, unbroken disappointment to me"; and he reminds mr. gould of promises made to him the day the transfer had been effected of edison's interest in the quadruplex. the situation was galling to the busy, high-spirited young inventor, who, moreover, "had to live"; and it led to his resumption of work for the western union telegraph company, which was only too glad to get him back. meantime, the saddened and perplexed automatic group was left unpaid, and it was not until , on a bill filed nearly thirty years before, that judge hazel, in the united states circuit court for the southern district of new york, found strongly in favor of the claimants and ordered an accounting. the court held that there had been a most wrongful appropriation of the patents, including alike those relating to the automatic, the duplex, and the quadruplex, all being included in the general arrangement under which mr. gould had held put his tempting bait of $ , , . in the end, however, the complainant had nothing to show for all his struggle, as the master who made the accounting set the damages at one dollar! aside from the great value of the quadruplex, saving millions of dollars, for a share in which edison received $ , , the automatic itself is described as of considerable utility by sir william thomson in his juror report at the centennial exposition of , recommending it for award. this leading physicist of his age, afterward lord kelvin, was an adept in telegraphy, having made the ocean cable talk, and he saw in edison's "american automatic," as exhibited by the atlantic & pacific company, a most meritorious and useful system. with the aid of mr. e. h. johnson he made exhaustive tests, carrying away with him to glasgow university the surprising records that he obtained. his official report closes thus: "the electromagnetic shunt with soft iron core, invented by mr. edison, utilizing professor henry's discovery of electromagnetic induction in a single circuit to produce a momentary reversal of the line current at the instant when the battery is thrown off and so cut off the chemical marks sharply at the proper instant, is the electrical secret of the great speed he has achieved. the main peculiarities of mr. edison's automatic telegraph shortly stated in conclusion are: ( ) the perforator; ( ) the contact-maker; ( ) the electromagnetic shunt; and ( ) the ferric cyanide of iron solution. it deserves award as a very important step in land telegraphy." the attitude thus disclosed toward mr. edison's work was never changed, except that admiration grew as fresh inventions were brought forward. to the day of his death lord kelvin remained on terms of warmest friendship with his american co-laborer, with whose genius he thus first became acquainted at philadelphia in the environment of franklin. it is difficult to give any complete idea of the activity maintained at the newark shops during these anxious, harassed years, but the statement that at one time no fewer than forty-five different inventions were being worked upon, will furnish some notion of the incandescent activity of the inventor and his assistants. the hours were literally endless; and upon one occasion, when the order was in hand for a large quantity of stock tickers, edison locked his men in until the job had been finished of making the machine perfect, and "all the bugs taken out," which meant sixty hours of unintermitted struggle with the difficulties. nor were the problems and inventions all connected with telegraphy. on the contrary, edison's mind welcomed almost any new suggestion as a relief from the regular work in hand. thus: "toward the latter part of , in the newark shop, i invented a device for multiplying copies of letters, which i sold to mr. a. b. dick, of chicago, and in the years since it has been universally introduced throughout the world. it is called the 'mimeograph.' i also invented devices for and introduced paraffin paper, now used universally for wrapping up candy, etc." the mimeograph employs a pointed stylus, used as in writing with a lead-pencil, which is moved over a kind of tough prepared paper placed on a finely grooved steel plate. the writing is thus traced by means of a series of minute perforations in the sheet, from which, as a stencil, hundreds of copies can be made. such stencils can be prepared on typewriters. edison elaborated this principle in two other forms--one pneumatic and one electric--the latter being in essence a reciprocating motor. inside the barrel of the electric pen a little plunger, carrying the stylus, travels to and fro at a very high rate of speed, due to the attraction and repulsion of the solenoid coils of wire surrounding it; and as the hand of the writer guides it the pen thus makes its record in a series of very minute perforations in the paper. the current from a small battery suffices to energize the pen, and with the stencil thus made hundreds of copies of the document can be furnished. as a matter of fact, as many as three thousand copies have been made from a single mimeographic stencil of this character. chapter ix the telephone, motograph, and microphone a very great invention has its own dramatic history. episodes full of human interest attend its development. the periods of weary struggle, the daring adventure along unknown paths, the clash of rival claimants, are closely similar to those which mark the revelation and subjugation of a new continent. at the close of the epoch of discovery it is seen that mankind as a whole has made one more great advance; but in the earlier stages one watched chiefly the confused vicissitudes of fortune of the individual pioneers. the great modern art of telephony has had thus in its beginnings, its evolution, and its present status as a universal medium of intercourse, all the elements of surprise, mystery, swift creation of wealth, tragic interludes, and colossal battle that can appeal to the imagination and hold public attention. and in this new electrical industry, in laying its essential foundations, edison has again been one of the dominant figures. as far back as , the american, page, discovered the curious fact that an iron bar, when magnetized and demagnetized at short intervals of time, emitted sounds due to the molecular disturbances in the mass. philipp reis, a simple professor in germany, utilized this principle in the construction of apparatus for the transmission of sound; but in the grasp of the idea he was preceded by charles bourseul, a young french soldier in algeria, who in , under the title of "electrical telephony," in a parisian illustrated paper, gave a brief and lucid description as follows: "we know that sounds are made by vibrations, and are made sensible to the ear by the same vibrations, which are reproduced by the intervening medium. but the intensity of the vibrations diminishes very rapidly with the distance; so that even with the aid of speaking-tubes and trumpets it is impossible to exceed somewhat narrow limits. suppose a man speaks near a movable disk sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disk alternately makes and breaks the connection with a battery; you may have at a distance another disk which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... any one who is not deaf and dumb may use this mode of transmission, which would require no apparatus except an electric battery, two vibrating disks, and a wire." this would serve admirably for a portrayal of the bell telephone, except that it mentions distinctly the use of the make-and-break method (i. e., where the circuit is necessarily opened and closed as in telegraphy, although, of course, at an enormously higher rate), which has never proved practical. so far as is known bourseul was not practical enough to try his own suggestion, and never made a telephone. about , reis built several forms of electrical telephonic apparatus, all imitating in some degree the human ear, with its auditory tube, tympanum, etc., and examples of the apparatus were exhibited in public not only in germany, but in england. there is a variety of testimony to the effect that not only musical sounds, but stray words and phrases, were actually transmitted with mediocre, casual success. it was impossible, however, to maintain the devices in adjustment for more than a few seconds, since the invention depended upon the make-and-break principle, the circuit being made and broken every time an impulse-creating sound went through it, causing the movement of the diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinged. reis himself does not appear to have been sufficiently interested in the marvellous possibilities of the idea to follow it up--remarking to the man who bought his telephonic instruments and tools that he had shown the world the way. in reality it was not the way, although a monument erected to his memory at frankfort styles him the inventor of the telephone. as one of the american judges said, in deciding an early litigation over the invention of the telephone, a hundred years of reis would not have given the world the telephonic art for public use. many others after reis tried to devise practical make-and-break telephones, and all failed; although their success would have rendered them very valuable as a means of fighting the bell patent. but the method was a good starting-point, even if it did not indicate the real path. if reis had been willing to experiment with his apparatus so that it did not make-and-break, he would probably have been the true father of the telephone, besides giving it the name by which it is known. it was not necessary to slam the gate open and shut. all that was required was to keep the gate closed, and rattle the latch softly. incidentally it may be noted that edison in experimenting with the reis transmitter recognized at once the defect caused by the make-and-break action, and sought to keep the gap closed by the use, first, of one drop of water, and later of several drops. but the water decomposed, and the incurable defect was still there. the reis telephone was brought to america by dr. p. h. van der weyde, a well-known physicist in his day, and was exhibited by him before a technical audience at cooper union, new york, in , and described shortly after in the technical press. the apparatus attracted attention, and a set was secured by prof. joseph henry for the smithsonian institution. there the famous philosopher showed and explained it to alexander graham bell, when that young and persevering scotch genius went to get help and data as to harmonic telegraphy, upon which he was working, and as to transmitting vocal sounds. bell took up immediately and energetically the idea that his two predecessors had dropped--and reached the goal. in bell, who as a student and teacher of vocal physiology had unusual qualifications for determining feasible methods of speech transmission, constructed his first pair of magneto telephones for such a purpose. in february of his first telephone patent was applied for, and in march it was issued. the first published account of the modern speaking telephone was a paper read by bell before the american academy of arts and sciences in boston in may of that year; while at the centennial exposition at philadelphia the public first gained any familiarity with it. it was greeted at once with scientific acclaim and enthusiasm as a distinctly new and great invention, although at first it was regarded more as a scientific toy than as a commercially valuable device. by an extraordinary coincidence, the very day that bell's application for a patent went into the united states patent office, a caveat was filed there by elisha gray, of chicago, covering the specific idea of transmitting speech and reproducing it in a telegraphic circuit "through an instrument capable of vibrating responsively to all the tones of the human voice, and by which they are rendered audible." out of this incident arose a struggle and a controversy whose echoes are yet heard as to the legal and moral rights of the two inventors, the assertion even being made that one of the most important claims of gray, that on a liquid battery transmitter, was surreptitiously "lifted" into the bell application, then covering only the magneto telephone. it was also asserted that the filing of the gray caveat antedated by a few hours the filing of the bell application. all such issues when brought to the american courts were brushed aside, the bell patent being broadly maintained in all its remarkable breadth and fullness, embracing an entire art; but gray was embittered and chagrined, and to the last expressed his belief that the honor and glory should have been his. the path of gray to the telephone was a natural one. a quaker carpenter who studied five years at oberlin college, he took up electrical invention, and brought out many ingenious devices in rapid succession in the telegraphic field, including the now universal needle annunciator for hotels, etc., the useful telautograph, automatic self-adjusting relays, private-line printers--leading up to his famous "harmonic" system. this was based upon the principle that a sound produced in the presence of a reed or tuning-fork responding to the sound, and acting as the armature of a magnet in a closed circuit, would, by induction, set up electric impulses in the circuit and cause a distant magnet having a similarly tuned armature to produce the same tone or note. he also found that over the same wire at the same time another series of impulses corresponding to another note could be sent through the agency of a second set of magnets without in any way interfering with the first series of impulses. building the principle into apparatus, with a keyboard and vibrating "reeds" before his magnets, doctor gray was able not only to transmit music by his harmonic telegraph, but went so far as to send nine different telegraph messages at the same instant, each set of instruments depending on its selective note, while any intermediate office could pick up the message for itself by simply tuning its relays to the keynote required. theoretically the system could be split up into any number of notes and semi-tones. practically it served as the basis of some real telegraphic work, but is not now in use. any one can realize, however, that it did not take so acute and ingenious a mind very long to push forward to the telephone, as a dangerous competitor with bell, who had also, like edison, been working assiduously in the field of acoustic and multiple telegraphs. seen in the retrospect, the struggle for the goal at this moment was one of the memorable incidents in electrical history. among the interesting papers filed at the orange laboratory is a lithograph, the size of an ordinary patent drawing, headed "first telephone on record." the claim thus made goes back to the period when all was war, and when dispute was hot and rife as to the actual invention of the telephone. the device shown, made by edison in , was actually included in a caveat filed january , , a month before bell or gray. it shows a little solenoid arrangement, with one end of the plunger attached to the diaphragm of a speaking or resonating chamber. edison states that while the device is crudely capable of use as a magneto telephone, he did not invent it for transmitting speech, but as an apparatus for analyzing the complex waves arising from various sounds. it was made in pursuance of his investigations into the subject of harmonic telegraphs. he did not try the effect of sound-waves produced by the human voice until bell came forward a few months later; but he found then that this device, made in , was capable of use as a telephone. in his testimony and public utterances edison has always given bell credit for the discovery of the transmission of articulate speech by talking against a diaphragm placed in front of an electromagnet; but it is only proper here to note, in passing, the curious fact that he had actually produced a device that could talk, prior to , and was therefore very close to bell, who took the one great step further. a strong characterization of the value and importance of the work done by edison in the development of the carbon transmitter will be found in the decision of judge brown in the united states circuit court of appeals, sitting in boston, on february , , declaring void the famous berliner patent of the bell telephone system. [ ] [footnote : see federal reporter, vol. , p. et seq.] bell's patent of was of an all-embracing character, which only the make-and-break principle, if practical, could have escaped. it was pointed out in the patent that bell discovered the great principle that electrical undulations induced by the vibrations of a current produced by sound-waves can be represented graphically by the same sinusoidal curve that expresses the original sound vibrations themselves; or, in other words, that a curve representing sound vibrations will correspond precisely to a curve representing electric impulses produced or generated by those identical sound vibrations--as, for example, when the latter impinge upon a diaphragm acting as an armature of an electromagnet, and which by movement to and fro sets up the electric impulses by induction. to speak plainly, the electric impulses correspond in form and character to the sound vibration which they represent. this reduced to a patent "claim" governed the art as firmly as a papal bull for centuries enabled spain to hold the western world. the language of the claim is: "the method of and apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically as herein described, by causing electrical undulations similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds substantially as set forth." it was a long time, however, before the inclusive nature of this grant over every possible telephone was understood or recognized, and litigation for and against the patent lasted during its entire life. at the outset, the commercial value of the telephone was little appreciated by the public, and bell had the greatest difficulty in securing capital; but among far-sighted inventors there was an immediate "rush to the gold fields." bell's first apparatus was poor, the results being described by himself as "unsatisfactory and discouraging," which was almost as true of the devices he exhibited at the philadelphia centennial. the new-comers, like edison, berliner, blake, hughes, gray, dolbear, and others, brought a wealth of ideas, a fund of mechanical ingenuity, and an inventive ability which soon made the telephone one of the most notable gains of the century, and one of the most valuable additions to human resources. the work that edison did was, as usual, marked by infinite variety of method as well as by the power to seize on the one needed element of practical success. every one of the six million telephones in use in the united states, and of the other millions in use through out the world, bears the imprint of his genius, as at one time the instruments bore his stamped name. for years his name was branded on every bell telephone set, and his patents were a mainstay of what has been popularly called the "bell monopoly." speaking of his own efforts in this field, mr. edison says: "in i started again to experiment for the western union and mr. orton. this time it was the telephone. bell invented the first telephone, which consisted of the present receiver, used both as a transmitter and a receiver (the magneto type). it was attempted to introduce it commercially, but it failed on account of its faintness and the extraneous sounds which came in on its wires from various causes. mr. orton wanted me to take hold of it and make it commercial. as i had also been working on a telegraph system employing tuning-forks, simultaneously with both bell and gray, i was pretty familiar with the subject. i started in, and soon produced the carbon transmitter, which is now universally used. "tests were made between new york and philadelphia, also between new york and washington, using regular western union wires. the noises were so great that not a word could be heard with the bell receiver when used as a transmitter between new york and newark, new jersey. mr. orton and w. k. vanderbilt and the board of directors witnessed and took part in the tests. the western union then put them on private lines. mr. theodore puskas, of budapest, hungary, was the first man to suggest a telephone exchange, and soon after exchanges were established. the telephone department was put in the hands of hamilton mck. twombly, vanderbilt's ablest son-in-law, who made a success of it. the bell company, of boston, also started an exchange, and the fight was on, the western union pirating the bell receiver, and the boston company pirating the western union transmitter. about this time i wanted to be taken care of. i threw out hints of this desire. then mr. orton sent for me. he had learned that inventors didn't do business by the regular process, and concluded he would close it right up. he asked me how much i wanted. i had made up my mind it was certainly worth $ , , if it ever amounted to anything for central-station work, so that was the sum i had in mind to stick to and get--obstinately. still it had been an easy job, and only required a few months, and i felt a little shaky and uncertain. so i asked him to make me an offer. he promptly said he would give me $ , . 'all right,' i said. 'it is yours on one condition, and that is that you do not pay it all at once, but pay me at the rate of $ per year for seventeen years'--the life of the patent. he seemed only too pleased to do this, and it was closed. my ambition was about four times too large for my business capacity, and i knew that i would soon spend this money experimenting if i got it all at once, so i fixed it that i couldn't. i saved seventeen years of worry by this stroke." thus modestly is told the debut of edison in the telephone art, to which with his carbon transmitter he gave the valuable principle of varying the resistance of the transmitting circuit with changes in the pressure, as well as the vital practice of using the induction coil as a means of increasing the effective length of the talking circuit. without these, modern telephony would not and could not exist. [ ] but edison, in telephonic work, as in other directions, was remarkably fertile and prolific. his first inventions in the art, made in - , continue through many later years, including all kinds of carbon instruments --the water telephone, electrostatic telephone, condenser telephone, chemical telephone, various magneto telephones, inertia telephone, mercury telephone, voltaic pile telephone, musical transmitter, and the electromotograph. all were actually made and tested. [footnote : briefly stated, the essential difference between bell's telephone and edison's is this: with the former the sound vibrations impinge upon a steel diaphragm arranged adjacent to the pole of a bar electromagnet, whereby the diaphragm acts as an armature, and by its vibrations induces very weak electric impulses in the magnetic coil. these impulses, according to bell's theory, correspond in form to the sound-waves, and passing over the line energize the magnet coil at the receiving end, and by varying the magnetism cause the receiving diaphragm to be similarly vibrated to reproduce the sounds. a single apparatus is therefore used at each end, performing the double function of transmitter and receiver. with edison's telephone a closed circuit is used on which is constantly flowing a battery current, and included in that circuit is a pair of electrodes, one or both of which is of carbon. these electrodes are always in contact with a certain initial pressure, so that current will be always flowing over the circuit. one of the electrodes is connected with the diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinge, and the vibration of this diaphragm causes the pressure between the electrodes to be correspondingly varied, and thereby effects a variation in the current, resulting in the production of impulses which actuate the receiving magnet. in other words, with bell's telephone the sound-waves themselves generate the electric impulses, which are hence extremely faint. with the edison telephone, the sound-waves actuate an electric valve, so to speak, and permit variations in a current of any desired strength. a second distinction between the two telephones is this: with the bell apparatus the very weak electric impulses generated by the vibration of the transmitting diaphragm pass over the entire line to the receiving end, and in consequence the permissible length of line is limited to a few miles under ideal conditions. with edison's telephone the battery current does not flow on the main line, but passes through the primary circuit of an induction coil, by which corresponding impulses of enormously higher potential are sent out on the main line to the receiving end. in consequence, the line may be hundreds of miles in length. no modern telephone system in use to-day lacks these characteristic features--the varying resistance and the induction coil.] the principle of the electromotograph was utilized by edison in more ways than one, first of all in telegraphy at this juncture. the well-known page patent, which had lingered in the patent office for years, had just been issued, and was considered a formidable weapon. it related to the use of a retractile spring to withdraw the armature lever from the magnet of a telegraph or other relay or sounder, and thus controlled the art of telegraphy, except in simple circuits. "there was no known way," remarks edison, "whereby this patent could be evaded, and its possessor would eventually control the use of what is known as the relay and sounder, and this was vital to telegraphy. gould was pounding the western union on the stock exchange, disturbing its railroad contracts, and, being advised by his lawyers that this patent was of great value, bought it. the moment mr. orton heard this he sent for me and explained the situation, and wanted me to go to work immediately and see if i couldn't evade it or discover some other means that could be used in case gould sustained the patent. it seemed a pretty hard job, because there was no known means of moving a lever at the other end of a telegraph wire except by the use of a magnet. i said i would go at it that night. in experimenting some years previously, i had discovered a very peculiar phenomenon, and that was that if a piece of metal connected to a battery was rubbed over a moistened piece of chalk resting on a metal connected to the other pole, when the current passed the friction was greatly diminished. when the current was reversed the friction was greatly increased over what it was when no current was passing. remembering this, i substituted a piece of chalk rotated by a small electric motor for the magnet, and connecting a sounder to a metallic finger resting on the chalk, the combination claim of page was made worthless. a hitherto unknown means was introduced in the electric art. two or three of the devices were made and tested by the company's expert. mr. orton, after he had me sign the patent application and got it in the patent office, wanted to settle for it at once. he asked my price. again i said: 'make me an offer.' again he named $ , . i accepted, providing he would pay it at the rate of $ a year for seventeen years. this was done, and thus, with the telephone money, i received $ , yearly for that period from the western union telegraph company." a year or two later the motograph cropped up again in edison's work in a curious manner. the telephone was being developed in england, and edison had made arrangements with colonel gouraud, his old associate in the automatic telegraph, to represent his interests. a company was formed, a large number of instruments were made and sent to gouraud in london, and prospects were bright. then there came a threat of litigation from the owners of the bell patent, and gouraud found he could not push the enterprise unless he could avoid using what was asserted to be an infringement of the bell receiver. he cabled for help to edison, who sent back word telling him to hold the fort. "i had recourse again," says edison, "to the phenomenon discovered by me years previous, that the friction of a rubbing electrode passing over a moist chalk surface was varied by electricity. i devised a telephone receiver which was afterward known as the 'loud-speaking telephone,' or 'chalk receiver.' there was no magnet, simply a diaphragm and a cylinder of compressed chalk about the size of a thimble. a thin spring connected to the centre of the diaphragm extended outwardly and rested on the chalk cylinder, and was pressed against it with a pressure equal to that which would be due to a weight of about six pounds. the chalk was rotated by hand. the volume of sound was very great. a person talking into the carbon transmitter in new york had his voice so amplified that he could be heard one thousand feet away in an open field at menlo park. this great excess of power was due to the fact that the latter came from the person turning the handle. the voice, instead of furnishing all the power as with the present receiver, merely controlled the power, just as an engineer working a valve would control a powerful engine. "i made six of these receivers and sent them in charge of an expert on the first steamer. they were welcomed and tested, and shortly afterward i shipped a hundred more. at the same time i was ordered to send twenty young men, after teaching them to become expert. i set up an exchange, around the laboratory, of ten instruments. i would then go out and get each one out of order in every conceivable way, cutting the wires of one, short-circuiting another, destroying the adjustment of a third, putting dirt between the electrodes of a fourth, and so on. a man would be sent to each to find out the trouble. when he could find the trouble ten consecutive times, using five minutes each, he was sent to london. about sixty men were sifted to get twenty. before all had arrived, the bell company there, seeing we could not be stopped, entered into negotiations for consolidation. one day i received a cable from gouraud offering ' , ' for my interest. i cabled back i would accept. when the draft came i was astonished to find it was for l , . i had thought it was dollars." in regard to this singular and happy conclusion, edison makes some interesting comments as to the attitude of the courts toward inventors, and the difference between american and english courts. "the men i sent over were used to establish telephone exchanges all over the continent, and some of them became wealthy. it was among this crowd in london that bernard shaw was employed before he became famous. the chalk telephone was finally discarded in favor of the bell receiver--the latter being more simple and cheaper. extensive litigation with new-comers followed. my carbon-transmitter patent was sustained, and preserved the monopoly of the telephone in england for many years. bell's patent was not sustained by the courts. sir richard webster, now chief-justice of england, was my counsel, and sustained all of my patents in england for many years. webster has a marvellous capacity for understanding things scientific; and his address before the courts was lucidity itself. his brain is highly organized. my experience with the legal fraternity is that scientific subjects are distasteful to them, and it is rare in this country, on account of the system of trying patent suits, for a judge really to reach the meat of the controversy, and inventors scarcely ever get a decision squarely and entirely in their favor. the fault rests, in my judgment, almost wholly with the system under which testimony to the extent of thousands of pages bearing on all conceivable subjects, many of them having no possible connection with the invention in dispute, is presented to an over-worked judge in an hour or two of argument supported by several hundred pages of briefs; and the judge is supposed to extract some essence of justice from this mass of conflicting, blind, and misleading statements. it is a human impossibility, no matter how able and fair-minded the judge may be. in england the case is different. there the judges are face to face with the experts and other witnesses. they get the testimony first-hand and only so much as they need, and there are no long-winded briefs and arguments, and the case is decided then and there, a few months perhaps after suit is brought, instead of many years afterward, as in this country. and in england, when a case is once finally decided it is settled for the whole country, while here it is not so. here a patent having once been sustained, say, in boston, may have to be litigated all over again in new york, and again in philadelphia, and so on for all the federal circuits. furthermore, it seems to me that scientific disputes should be decided by some court containing at least one or two scientific men--men capable of comprehending the significance of an invention and the difficulties of its accomplishment--if justice is ever to be given to an inventor. and i think, also, that this court should have the power to summon before it and examine any recognized expert in the special art, who might be able to testify to facts for or against the patent, instead of trying to gather the truth from the tedious essays of hired experts, whose depositions are really nothing but sworn arguments. the real gist of patent suits is generally very simple, and i have no doubt that any judge of fair intelligence, assisted by one or more scientific advisers, could in a couple of days at the most examine all the necessary witnesses; hear all the necessary arguments, and actually decide an ordinary patent suit in a way that would more nearly be just, than can now be done at an expenditure of a hundred times as much money and months and years of preparation. and i have no doubt that the time taken by the court would be enormously less, because if a judge attempts to read the bulky records and briefs, that work alone would require several days. "acting as judges, inventors would not be very apt to correctly decide a complicated law point; and on the other hand, it is hard to see how a lawyer can decide a complicated scientific point rightly. some inventors complain of our patent office, but my own experience with the patent office is that the examiners are fair-minded and intelligent, and when they refuse a patent they are generally right; but i think the whole trouble lies with the system in vogue in the federal courts for trying patent suits, and in the fact, which cannot be disputed, that the federal judges, with but few exceptions, do not comprehend complicated scientific questions. to secure uniformity in the several federal circuits and correct errors, it has been proposed to establish a central court of patent appeals in washington. this i believe in; but this court should also contain at least two scientific men, who would not be blind to the sophistry of paid experts. [ ] men whose inventions would have created wealth of millions have been ruined and prevented from making any money whereby they could continue their careers as creators of wealth for the general good, just because the experts befuddled the judge by their misleading statements." [footnote : as an illustration of the perplexing nature of expert evidence in patent cases, the reader will probably be interested in perusing the following extracts from the opinion of judge dayton, in the suit of bryce bros. co. vs. seneca glass co., tried in the united states circuit court, northern district of west virginia, reported in the federal reporter, , page : "on this subject of the validity of this patent, a vast amount of conflicting, technical, perplexing, and almost hypercritical discussion and opinion has been indulged, both in the testimony and in the able and exhaustive arguments and briefs of counsel. expert osborn for defendant, after setting forth minutely his superior qualifications mechanical education, and great experience, takes up in detail the patent claims, and shows to his own entire satisfaction that none of them are new; that all of them have been applied, under one form or another, in some twenty-two previous patents, and in two other machines, not patented, to-wit, the central glass and kuny kahbel ones; that the whole machine is only 'an aggregation of well-known mechanical elements that any skilled designer would bring to his use in the construction of such a machine.' this certainly, under ordinary conditions, would settle the matter beyond peradventure; for this witness is a very wise and learned man in these things, and very positive. but expert clarke appears for the plaintiff, and after setting forth just as minutely his superior qualifications, mechanical education, and great experience, which appear fully equal in all respects to those of expert osborn, proceeds to take up in detail the patent claims, and shows to his entire satisfaction that all, with possibly one exception, are new, show inventive genius, and distinct advances upon the prior art. in the most lucid, and even fascinating, way he discusses all the parts of this machine, compares it with the others, draws distinctions, points out the merits of the one in controversy and the defects of all the others, considers the twenty-odd patents referred to by osborn, and in the politest, but neatest, manner imaginable shows that expert osborn did not know what he was talking about, and sums the whole matter up by declaring this 'invention of mr. schrader's, as embodied in the patent in suit, a radical and wide departure, from the kahbel machine' (admitted on all sides to be nearest prior approach to it), 'a distinct and important advance in the art of engraving glassware, and generally a machine for this purpose which has involved the exercise of the inventive faculty in the highest degree.' "thus a more radical and irreconcilable disagreement between experts touching the same thing could hardly be found. so it is with the testimony. if we take that for the defendant, the central glass company machine, and especially the kuny kahbel machine, built and operated years before this patent issued, and not patented, are just as good, just as effective and practical, as this one, and capable of turning out just as perfect work and as great a variety of it. on the other hand, if we take that produced by the plaintiff, we are driven to the conclusion that these prior machines, the product of the same mind, were only progressive steps forward from utter darkness, so to speak, into full inventive sunlight, which made clear to him the solution of the problem in this patented machine. the shortcomings of the earlier machines are minutely set forth, and the witnesses for the plaintiff are clear that they are neither practical nor profitable. "but this is not all of the trouble that confronts us in this case. counsel of both sides, with an indomitable courage that must command admiration, a courage that has led them to a vast amount of study, investigation, and thought, that in fact has made them all experts, have dissected this record of closely printed pages, applied all mechanical principles and laws to the facts as they see them, and, besides, have ransacked the law-books and cited an enormous number of cases, more or less in point, as illustration of their respective contentions. the courts find nothing more difficult than to apply an abstract principle to all classes of cases that may arise. the facts in each case so frequently create an exception to the general rule that such rule must be honored rather in its breach than in its observance. therefore, after a careful examination of these cases, it is no criticism of the courts to say that both sides have found abundant and about an equal amount of authority to sustain their respective contentions, and, as a result, counsel have submitted, in briefs, a sum total of closely printed pages, in which they have clearly, yet, almost to a mathematical certainty, demonstrated on the one side that this schrader machine is new and patentable, and on the other that it is old and not so. under these circumstances, it would be unnecessary labor and a fruitless task for me to enter into any further technical discussion of the mechanical problems involved, for the purpose of seeking to convince either side of its error. in cases of such perplexity as this generally some incidents appear that speak more unerringly than do the tongues of the witnesses, and to some of these i purpose to now refer."] mr. bernard shaw, the distinguished english author, has given a most vivid and amusing picture of this introduction of edison's telephone into england, describing the apparatus as "a much too ingenious invention, being nothing less than a telephone of such stentorian efficiency that it bellowed your most private communications all over the house, instead of whispering them with some sort of discretion." shaw, as a young man, was employed by the edison telephone company, and was very much alive to his surroundings, often assisting in public demonstrations of the apparatus "in a manner which i am persuaded laid the foundation of mr. edison's reputation." the sketch of the men sent over from america is graphic: "whilst the edison telephone company lasted it crowded the basement of a high pile of offices in queen victoria street with american artificers. these deluded and romantic men gave me a glimpse of the skilled proletariat of the united states. they sang obsolete sentimental songs with genuine emotion; and their language was frightful even to an irishman. they worked with a ferocious energy which was out of all proportion to the actual result achieved. indomitably resolved to assert their republican manhood by taking no orders from a tall-hatted englishman whose stiff politeness covered his conviction that they were relatively to himself inferior and common persons, they insisted on being slave-driven with genuine american oaths by a genuine free and equal american foreman. they utterly despised the artfully slow british workman, who did as little for his wages as he possibly could; never hurried himself; and had a deep reverence for one whose pocket could be tapped by respectful behavior. need i add that they were contemptuously wondered at by this same british workman as a parcel of outlandish adult boys who sweated themselves for their employer's benefit instead of looking after their own interest? they adored mr. edison as the greatest man of all time in every possible department of science, art, and philosophy, and execrated mr. graham bell, the inventor of the rival telephone, as his satanic adversary; but each of them had (or intended to have) on the brink of completion an improvement on the telephone, usually a new transmitter. they were free-souled creatures, excellent company, sensitive, cheerful, and profane; liars, braggarts, and hustlers, with an air of making slow old england hum, which never left them even when, as often happened, they were wrestling with difficulties of their own making, or struggling in no-thoroughfares, from which they had to be retrieved like stray sheep by englishmen without imagination enough to go wrong." mr. samuel insull, who afterward became private secretary to mr. edison, and a leader in the development of american electrical manufacturing and the central-station art, was also in close touch with the london situation thus depicted, being at the time private secretary to colonel gouraud, and acting for the first half hour as the amateur telephone operator in the first experimental exchange erected in europe. he took notes of an early meeting where the affairs of the company were discussed by leading men like sir john lubbock (lord avebury) and the right hon. e. p. bouverie (then a cabinet minister), none of whom could see in the telephone much more than an auxiliary for getting out promptly in the next morning's papers the midnight debates in parliament. "i remember another incident," says mr. insull. "it was at some celebration of one of the royal societies at the burlington house, piccadilly. we had a telephone line running across the roofs to the basement of the building. i think it was to tyndall's laboratory in burlington street. as the ladies and gentlemen came through, they naturally wanted to look at the great curiosity, the loud-speaking telephone: in fact, any telephone was a curiosity then. mr. and mrs. gladstone came through. i was handling the telephone at the burlington house end. mrs. gladstone asked the man over the telephone whether he knew if a man or woman was speaking; and the reply came in quite loud tones that it was a man!" with mr. e. h. johnson, who represented edison, there went to england for the furtherance of this telephone enterprise, mr. charles edison, a nephew of the inventor. he died in paris, october, , not twenty years of age. stimulated by the example of his uncle, this brilliant youth had already made a mark for himself as a student and inventor, and when only eighteen he secured in open competition the contract to install a complete fire-alarm telegraph system for port huron. a few months later he was eagerly welcomed by his uncle at menlo park, and after working on the telephone was sent to london to aid in its introduction. there he made the acquaintance of professor tyndall, exhibited the telephone to the late king of england; and also won the friendship of the late king of the belgians, with whom he took up the project of establishing telephonic communication between belgium and england. at the time of his premature death he was engaged in installing the edison quadruplex between brussels and paris, being one of the very few persons then in europe familiar with the working of that invention. meantime, the telephonic art in america was undergoing very rapid development. in march, , addressing "the capitalists of the electric telephone company" on the future of his invention, bell outlined with prophetic foresight and remarkable clearness the coming of the modern telephone exchange. comparing with gas and water distribution, he said: "in a similar manner, it is conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground or suspended overhead communicating by branch wires with private dwellings, country houses, shops, manufactories, etc., uniting them through the main cable with a central office, where the wire could be connected as desired, establishing direct communication between any two places in the city.... not only so, but i believe, in the future, wires will unite the head offices of telephone companies in different cities; and a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place." all of which has come to pass. professor bell also suggested how this could be done by "the employ of a man in each central office for the purpose of connecting the wires as directed." he also indicated the two methods of telephonic tariff--a fixed rental and a toll; and mentioned the practice, now in use on long-distance lines, of a time charge. as a matter of fact, this "centralizing" was attempted in may, , in boston, with the circuits of the holmes burglar-alarm system, four banking-houses being thus interconnected; while in january of the bell telephone central-office system at new haven, connecticut, was opened for business, "the first fully equipped commercial telephone exchange ever established for public or general service." all through this formative period bell had adhered to and introduced the magneto form of telephone, now used only as a receiver, and very poorly adapted for the vital function of a speech-transmitter. from august, , the western union telegraph company worked along the other line, and in , with its allied gold & stock telegraph company, it brought into existence the american speaking telephone company to introduce the edison apparatus, and to create telephone exchanges all over the country. in this warfare, the possession of a good battery transmitter counted very heavily in favor of the western union, for upon that the real expansion of the whole industry depended; but in a few months the bell system had its battery transmitter, too, tending to equalize matters. late in the same year patent litigation was begun which brought out clearly the merits of bell, through his patent, as the original and first inventor of the electric speaking telephone; and the western union telegraph company made terms with its rival. a famous contract bearing date of november , , showed that under the edison and other controlling patents the western union company had already set going some eighty-five exchanges, and was making large quantities of telephonic apparatus. in return for its voluntary retirement from the telephonic field, the western union telegraph company, under this contract, received a royalty of per cent. of all the telephone earnings of the bell system while the bell patents ran; and thus came to enjoy an annual income of several hundred thousand dollars for some years, based chiefly on its modest investment in edison's work. it was also paid several thousand dollars in cash for the edison, phelps, gray, and other apparatus on hand. it secured further per cent. of the stock of the local telephone systems of new york and chicago; and last, but by no means least, it exacted from the bell interests an agreement to stay out of the telegraph field. by march, , there were in the united states only nine cities of more than ten thousand inhabitants, and only one of more than fifteen thousand, without a telephone exchange. the industry thrived under competition, and the absence of it now had a decided effect in checking growth; for when the bell patent expired in , the total of telephone sets in operation in the united states was only , . to quote from an official bell statement: "the brief but vigorous western union competition was a kind of blessing in disguise. the very fact that two distinct interests were actively engaged in the work of organizing and establishing competing telephone exchanges all over the country, greatly facilitated the spread of the idea and the growth of the business, and familiarized the people with the use of the telephone as a business agency; while the keenness of the competition, extending to the agents and employees of both companies, brought about a swift but quite unforeseen and unlooked-for expansion in the individual exchanges of the larger cities, and a corresponding advance in their importance, value, and usefulness." the truth of this was immediately shown in , after the bell patents had expired, by the tremendous outburst of new competitive activity, in "independent" country systems and toll lines through sparsely settled districts--work for which the edison apparatus and methods were peculiarly adapted, yet against which the influence of the edison patent was invoked. the data secured by the united states census office in showed that the whole industry had made gigantic leaps in eight years, and had , , telephone stations in service, of which , , were wholly or nominally independent of the bell. by an even more notable increase was shown, and the census figures for that year included no fewer than , , stations, of which , , were "independent." these six million instruments every single set employing the principle of the carbon transmitter--were grouped into , public exchanges, in the very manner predicted by bell thirty years before, and they gave service in the shape of over eleven billions of talks. the outstanding capitalized value of the plant was $ , , , the income for the year was nearly $ , , , and the people employed were , . if edison had done nothing else, his share in the creation of such an industry would have entitled him to a high place among inventors. this chapter is of necessity brief in its reference to many extremely interesting points and details; and to some readers it may seem incomplete in its references to the work of other men than edison, whose influence on telephony as an art has also been considerable. in reply to this pertinent criticism, it may be pointed out that this is a life of edison, and not of any one else; and that even the discussion of his achievements alone in these various fields requires more space than the authors have at their disposal. the attempt has been made, however, to indicate the course of events and deal fairly with the facts. the controversy that once waged with great excitement over the invention of the microphone, but has long since died away, is suggestive of the difficulties involved in trying to do justice to everybody. a standard history describes the microphone thus: "a form of apparatus produced during the early days of the telephone by professor hughes, of england, for the purpose of rendering faint, indistinct sounds distinctly audible, depended for its operation on the changes that result in the resistance of loose contacts. this apparatus was called the microphone, and was in reality but one of the many forms that it is possible to give to the telephone transmitter. for example, the edison granular transmitter was a variety of microphone, as was also edison's transmitter, in which the solid button of carbon was employed. indeed, even the platinum point, which in the early form of the reis transmitter pressed against the platinum contact cemented to the centre of the diaphragm, was a microphone." at a time when most people were amazed at the idea of hearing, with the aid of a "microphone," a fly walk at a distance of many miles, the priority of invention of such a device was hotly disputed. yet without desiring to take anything from the credit of the brilliant american, hughes, whose telegraphic apparatus is still in use all over europe, it may be pointed out that this passage gives edison the attribution of at least two original forms of which those suggested by hughes were mere variations and modifications. with regard to this matter, mr. edison himself remarks: "after i sent one of my men over to london especially, to show preece the carbon transmitter, and where hughes first saw it, and heard it--then within a month he came out with the microphone, without any acknowledgment whatever. published dates will show that hughes came along after me." there have been other ways also in which edison has utilized the peculiar property that carbon possesses of altering its resistance to the passage of current, according to the pressure to which it is subjected, whether at the surface, or through closer union of the mass. a loose road with a few inches of dust or pebbles on it offers appreciable resistance to the wheels of vehicles travelling over it; but if the surface is kept hard and smooth the effect is quite different. in the same way carbon, whether solid or in the shape of finely divided powder, offers a high resistance to the passage of electricity; but if the carbon is squeezed together the conditions change, with less resistance to electricity in the circuit. for his quadruplex system, mr. edison utilized this fact in the construction of a rheostat or resistance box. it consists of a series of silk disks saturated with a sizing of plumbago and well dried. the disks are compressed by means of an adjustable screw; and in this manner the resistance of a circuit can be varied over a wide range. in like manner edison developed a "pressure" or carbon relay, adapted to the transference of signals of variable strength from one circuit to another. an ordinary relay consists of an electromagnet inserted in the main line for telegraphing, which brings a local battery and sounder circuit into play, reproducing in the local circuit the signals sent over the main line. the relay is adjusted to the weaker currents likely to be received, but the signals reproduced on the sounder by the agency of the relay are, of course, all of equal strength, as they depend upon the local battery, which has only this steady work to perform. in cases where it is desirable to reproduce the signals in the local circuit with the same variations in strength as they are received by the relay, the edison carbon pressure relay does the work. the poles of the electromagnet in the local circuit are hollowed out and filled up with carbon disks or powdered plumbago. the armature and the carbon-tipped poles of the electromagnet form part of the local circuit; and if the relay is actuated by a weak current the armature will be attracted but feebly. the carbon being only slightly compressed will offer considerable resistance to the flow of current from the local battery, and therefore the signal on the local sounder will be weak. if, on the contrary, the incoming current on the main line be strong, the armature will be strongly attracted, the carbon will be sharply compressed, the resistance in the local circuit will be proportionately lowered, and the signal heard on the local sounder will be a loud one. thus it will be seen, by another clever juggle with the willing agent, carbon, for which he has found so many duties, edison is able to transfer or transmit exactly, to the local circuit, the main-line current in all its minutest variations. in his researches to determine the nature of the motograph phenomena, and to open up other sources of electrical current generation, edison has worked out a very ingenious and somewhat perplexing piece of apparatus known as the "chalk battery." it consists of a series of chalk cylinders mounted on a shaft revolved by hand. resting against each of these cylinders is a palladium-faced spring, and similar springs make contact with the shaft between each cylinder. by connecting all these springs in circuit with a galvanometer and revolving the shaft rapidly, a notable deflection is obtained of the galvanometer needle, indicating the production of electrical energy. the reason for this does not appear to have been determined. last but not least, in this beautiful and ingenious series, comes the "tasimeter," an instrument of most delicate sensibility in the presence of heat. the name is derived from the greek, the use of the apparatus being primarily to measure extremely minute differences of pressure. a strip of hard rubber with pointed ends rests perpendicularly on a platinum plate, beneath which is a carbon button, under which again lies another platinum plate. the two plates and the carbon button form part of an electric circuit containing a battery and a galvanometer. the hard-rubber strip is exceedingly sensitive to heat. the slightest degree of heat imparted to it causes it to expand invisibly, thus increasing the pressure contact on the carbon button and producing a variation in the resistance of the circuit, registered immediately by the little swinging needle of the galvanometer. the instrument is so sensitive that with a delicate galvanometer it will show the impingement of the heat from a person's hand thirty feet away. the suggestion to employ such an apparatus in astronomical observations occurs at once, and it may be noted that in one instance the heat of rays of light from the remote star arcturus gave results. chapter x the phonograph at the opening of the electrical show in new york city in october, , to celebrate the jubilee of the atlantic cable and the first quarter century of lighting with the edison service on manhattan island, the exercises were all conducted by means of the edison phonograph. this included the dedicatory speech of governor hughes, of new york; the modest remarks of mr. edison, as president; the congratulations of the presidents of several national electric bodies, and a number of vocal and instrumental selections of operatic nature. all this was heard clearly by a very large audience, and was repeated on other evenings. the same speeches were used again phonographically at the electrical show in chicago in --and now the records are preserved for reproduction a hundred or a thousand years hence. this tour de force, never attempted before, was merely an exemplification of the value of the phonograph not only in establishing at first hand the facts of history, but in preserving the human voice. what would we not give to listen to the very accents and tones of the sermon on the mount, the orations of demosthenes, the first pitt's appeal for american liberty, the farewell of washington, or the address at gettysburg? until edison made his wonderful invention in , the human race was entirely without means for preserving or passing on to posterity its own linguistic utterances or any other vocal sound. we have some idea how the ancients looked and felt and wrote; the abundant evidence takes us back to the cave-dwellers. but all the old languages are dead, and the literary form is their embalmment. we do not even know definitely how shakespeare's and goldsmith's plays were pronounced on the stage in the theatres of the time; while it is only a guess that perhaps chaucer would sound much more modern than he scans. the analysis of sound, which owes so much to helmholtz, was one step toward recording; and the various means of illustrating the phenomena of sound to the eye and ear, prior to the phonograph, were all ingenious. one can watch the dancing little flames of koenig, and see a voice expressed in tongues of fire; but the record can only be photographic. in like manner, the simple phonautograph of leon scott, invented about , records on a revolving cylinder of blackened paper the sound vibrations transmitted through a membrane to which a tiny stylus is attached; so that a human mouth uses a pen and inscribes its sign vocal. yet after all we are just as far away as ever from enabling the young actors at harvard to give aristophanes with all the true, subtle intonation and inflection of the athens of b.c. the instrument is dumb. ingenuity has been shown also in the invention of "talking-machines," like faber's, based on the reed organ pipe. these automata can be made by dexterous manipulation to jabber a little, like a doll with its monotonous "ma-ma," or a cuckoo clock; but they lack even the sterile utility of the imitative art of ventriloquism. the real great invention lies in creating devices that shall be able to evoke from tinfoil, wax, or composition at any time to-day or in the future the sound that once was as evanescent as the vibrations it made on the air. contrary to the general notion, very few of the great modern inventions have been the result of a sudden inspiration by which, minerva-like, they have sprung full-fledged from their creators' brain; but, on the contrary, they have been evolved by slow and gradual steps, so that frequently the final advance has been often almost imperceptible. the edison phonograph is an important exception to the general rule; not, of course, the phonograph of the present day with all of its mechanical perfection, but as an instrument capable of recording and reproducing sound. its invention has been frequently attributed to the discovery that a point attached to a telephone diaphragm would, under the effect of sound-waves, vibrate with sufficient force to prick the finger. the story, though interesting, is not founded on fact; but, if true, it is difficult to see how the discovery in question could have contributed materially to the ultimate accomplishment. to a man of edison's perception it is absurd to suppose that the effect of the so-called discovery would not have been made as a matter of deduction long before the physical sensation was experienced. as a matter of fact, the invention of the phonograph was the result of pure reason. some time prior to , edison had been experimenting on an automatic telegraph in which the letters were formed by embossing strips of paper with the proper arrangement of dots and dashes. by drawing this strip beneath a contact lever, the latter was actuated so as to control the circuits and send the desired signals over the line. it was observed that when the strip was moved very rapidly the vibration of the lever resulted in the production of an audible note. with these facts before him, edison reasoned that if the paper strip could be imprinted with elevations and depressions representative of sound-waves, they might be caused to actuate a diaphragm so as to reproduce the corresponding sounds. the next step in the line of development was to form the necessary undulations on the strip, and it was then reasoned that original sounds themselves might be utilized to form a graphic record by actuating a diaphragm and causing a cutting or indenting point carried thereby to vibrate in contact with a moving surface, so as to cut or indent the record therein. strange as it may seem, therefore, and contrary to the general belief, the phonograph was developed backward, the production of the sounds being of prior development to the idea of actually recording them. mr. edison's own account of the invention of the phonograph is intensely interesting. "i was experimenting," he says, "on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. the platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm travelled over the disk; and any signals given through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. if this disk was removed from the machine and put on a similar machine provided with a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signals to be repeated into another wire. the ordinary speed of telegraphic signals is thirty-five to forty words a minute; but with this machine several hundred words were possible. "from my experiments on the telephone i knew of the power of a diaphragm to take up sound vibrations, as i had made a little toy which, when you recited loudly in the funnel, would work a pawl connected to the diaphragm; and this engaging a ratchet-wheel served to give continuous rotation to a pulley. this pulley was connected by a cord to a little paper toy representing a man sawing wood. hence, if one shouted: 'mary had a little lamb,' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. i reached the conclusion that if i could record the movements of the diaphragm properly, i could cause such record to reproduce the original movements imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in recording and reproducing the human voice. "instead of using a disk i designed a little machine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. over this was to be placed tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. a sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $ , was marked on the sketch. i was in the habit of marking the price i would pay on each sketch. if the workman lost, i would pay his regular wages; if he made more than the wages, he kept it. the workman who got the sketch was john kruesi. i didn't have much faith that it would work, expecting that i might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. i told him i was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. he thought it absurd. however, it was finished, the foil was put on; i then shouted 'mary had a little lamb,' etc. i adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. i was never so taken aback in my life. everybody was astonished. i was always afraid of things that worked the first time. long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of." no wonder that honest john kruesi, as he stood and listened to the marvellous performance of the simple little machine he had himself just finished, ejaculated in an awe-stricken tone: "mein gott im himmel!" and yet he had already seen edison do a few clever things. no wonder they sat up all night fixing and adjusting it so as to get better and better results--reciting and singing, trying each other's voices, and then listening with involuntary awe as the words came back again and again, just as long as they were willing to revolve the little cylinder with its dotted spiral indentations in the tinfoil under the vibrating stylus of the reproducing diaphragm. it took a little time to acquire the knack of turning the crank steadily while leaning over the recorder to talk into the machine; and there was some deftness required also in fastening down the tinfoil on the cylinder where it was held by a pin running in a longitudinal slot. paraffined paper appears also to have been experimented with as an impressible material. it is said that carman, the foreman of the machine shop, had gone the length of wagering edison a box of cigars that the device would not work. all the world knows that he lost. the original edison phonograph thus built by kruesi is preserved in the south kensington museum, london. that repository can certainly have no greater treasure of its kind. but as to its immediate use, the inventor says: "that morning i took it over to new york and walked into the office of the scientific american, went up to mr. beach's desk, and said i had something to show him. he asked what it was. i told him i had a machine that would record and reproduce the human voice. i opened the package, set up the machine and recited, 'mary had a little lamb,' etc. then i reproduced it so that it could be heard all over the room. they kept me at it until the crowd got so great mr. beach was afraid the floor would collapse; and we were compelled to stop. the papers next morning contained columns. none of the writers seemed to understand how it was done. i tried to explain, it was so very simple, but the results were so surprising they made up their minds probably that they never would understand it--and they didn't. "i started immediately making several larger and better machines, which i exhibited at menlo park to crowds. the pennsylvania railroad ran special trains. washington people telegraphed me to come on. i took a phonograph to washington and exhibited it in the room of james g. blaine's niece (gail hamilton); and members of congress and notable people of that city came all day long until late in the evening. i made one break. i recited 'mary,' etc., and another ditty: 'there was a little girl, who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead; and when she was good she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.' "it will be remembered that senator roscoe conkling, then very prominent, had a curl of hair on his forehead; and all the caricaturists developed it abnormally. he was very sensitive about the subject. when he came in he was introduced; but being rather deaf, i didn't catch his name, but sat down and started the curl ditty. everybody tittered, and i was told that mr. conkling was displeased. about o'clock at night word was received from president hayes that he would be very much pleased if i would come up to the white house. i was taken there, and found mr. hayes and several others waiting. among them i remember carl schurz, who was playing the piano when i entered the room. the exhibition continued till about . a.m., when mrs. hayes and several other ladies, who had been induced to get up and dress, appeared. i left at . a.m. "for a long time some people thought there was trickery. one morning at menlo park a gentleman came to the laboratory and asked to see the phonograph. it was bishop vincent, who helped lewis miller found the chautauqua i exhibited it, and then he asked if he could speak a few words. i put on a fresh foil and told him to go ahead. he commenced to recite biblical names with immense rapidity. on reproducing it he said: 'i am satisfied, now. there isn't a man in the united states who could recite those names with the same rapidity.'" the phonograph was now fairly launched as a world sensation, and a reference to the newspapers of will show the extent to which it and edison were themes of universal discussion. some of the press notices of the period were most amazing--and amusing. as though the real achievements of this young man, barely thirty, were not tangible and solid enough to justify admiration of his genius, the "yellow journalists" of the period began busily to create an "edison myth," with gross absurdities of assertion and attribution from which the modest subject of it all has not yet ceased to suffer with unthinking people. a brilliantly vicious example of this method of treatment is to be found in the paris figaro of that year, which under the appropriate title of "this astounding eddison" lay bare before the french public the most startling revelations as to the inventor's life and character. "it should be understood," said this journal, "that mr. eddison does not belong to himself. he is the property of the telegraph company which lodges him in new york at a superb hotel; keeps him on a luxurious footing, and pays him a formidable salary so as to be the one to know of and profit by his discoveries. the company has, in the dwelling of eddison, men in its employ who do not quit him for a moment, at the table, on the street, in the laboratory. so that this wretched man, watched more closely than ever was any malefactor, cannot even give a moment's thought to his own private affairs without one of his guards asking him what he is thinking about." this foolish "blague" was accompanied by a description of edison's new "aerophone," a steam machine which carried the voice a distance of one and a half miles. "you speak to a jet of vapor. a friend previously advised can answer you by the same method." nor were american journals backward in this wild exaggeration. the furor had its effect in stimulating a desire everywhere on the part of everybody to see and hear the phonograph. a small commercial organization was formed to build and exploit the apparatus, and the shops at menlo park laboratory were assisted by the little bergmann shop in new york. offices were taken for the new enterprise at broadway, where the mail and express building now stands, and where, in a general way, under the auspices of a talented dwarf, c. a. cheever, the embryonic phonograph and the crude telephone shared rooms and expenses. gardiner g. hubbard, father-in-law of alex. graham bell, was one of the stockholders in the phonograph company, which paid edison $ , cash and a per cent. royalty. this curious partnership was maintained for some time, even when the bell telephone offices were removed to reade street, new york, whither the phonograph went also; and was perhaps explained by the fact that just then the ability of the phonograph as a money-maker was much more easily demonstrated than was that of the telephone, still in its short range magneto stage and awaiting development with the aid of the carbon transmitter. the earning capacity of the phonograph then, as largely now, lay in its exhibition qualities. the royalties from boston, ever intellectually awake and ready for something new, ran as high as $ a week. in new york there was a ceaseless demand for it, and with the aid of hilbourne l. roosevelt, a famous organ builder, and uncle of ex-president roosevelt, concerts were given at which the phonograph was "featured." to manage this novel show business the services of james redpath were called into requisition with great success. redpath, famous as a friend and biographer of john brown, as a civil war correspondent, and as founder of the celebrated redpath lyceum bureau in boston, divided the country into territories, each section being leased for exhibition purposes on a basis of a percentage of the "gate money." to broadway from all over the union flocked a swarm of showmen, cranks, and particularly of old operators, who, the seedier they were in appearance, the more insistent they were that "tom" should give them, for the sake of "auld lang syne," this chance to make a fortune for him and for themselves. at the top of the building was a floor on which these novices were graduated in the use and care of the machine, and then, with an equipment of tinfoil and other supplies, they were sent out on the road. it was a diverting experience while it lasted. the excitement over the phonograph was maintained for many months, until a large proportion of the inhabitants of the country had seen it; and then the show receipts declined and dwindled away. many of the old operators, taken on out of good-nature, were poor exhibitors and worse accountants, and at last they and the machines with which they had been intrusted faded from sight. but in the mean time edison had learned many lessons as to this practical side of development that were not forgotten when the renascence of the phonograph began a few years later, leading up to the present enormous and steady demand for both machines and records. it deserves to be pointed out that the phonograph has changed little in the intervening years from the first crude instruments of - . it has simply been refined and made more perfect in a mechanical sense. edison was immensely impressed with its possibilities, and greatly inclined to work upon it, but the coming of the electric light compelled him to throw all his energies for a time into the vast new field awaiting conquest. the original phonograph, as briefly noted above, was rotated by hand, and the cylinder was fed slowly longitudinally by means of a nut engaging a screw thread on the cylinder shaft. wrapped around the cylinder was a sheet of tinfoil, with which engaged a small chisel-like recording needle, connected adhesively with the centre of an iron diaphragm. obviously, as the cylinder was turned, the needle followed a spiral path whose pitch depended upon that of the feed screw. along this path a thread was cut in the cylinder so as to permit the needle to indent the foil readily as the diaphragm vibrated. by rotating the cylinder and by causing the diaphragm to vibrate under the effect of vocal or musical sounds, the needle-like point would form a series of indentations in the foil corresponding to and characteristic of the sound-waves. by now engaging the point with the beginning of the grooved record so formed, and by again rotating the cylinder, the undulations of the record would cause the needle and its attached diaphragm to vibrate so as to effect the reproduction. such an apparatus was necessarily undeveloped, and was interesting only from a scientific point of view. it had many mechanical defects which prevented its use as a practical apparatus. since the cylinder was rotated by hand, the speed at which the record was formed would vary considerably, even with the same manipulator, so that it would have been impossible to record and reproduce music satisfactorily; in doing which exact uniformity of speed is essential. the formation of the record in tinfoil was also objectionable from a practical standpoint, since such a record was faint and would be substantially obliterated after two or three reproductions. furthermore, the foil could not be easily removed from and replaced upon the instrument, and consequently the reproduction had to follow the recording immediately, and the successive tinfoils were thrown away. the instrument was also heavy and bulky. notwithstanding these objections the original phonograph created, as already remarked, an enormous popular excitement, and the exhibitions were considered by many sceptical persons as nothing more than clever ventriloquism. the possibilities of the instrument as a commercial apparatus were recognized from the very first, and some of the fields in which it was predicted that the phonograph would be used are now fully occupied. some have not yet been realized. writing in in the north american-review, mr. edison thus summed up his own ideas as to the future applications of the new invention: "among the many uses to which the phonograph will be applied are the following: . letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer. . phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part. . the teaching of elocution. . reproduction of music. . the 'family record'--a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of dying persons. . music-boxes and toys. . clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home, going to meals, etc. . the preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing. . educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory. . connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication." of the above fields of usefulness in which it was expected that the phonograph might be applied, only three have been commercially realized--namely, the reproduction of musical, including vaudeville or talking selections, for which purpose a very large proportion of the phonographs now made is used; the employment of the machine as a mechanical stenographer, which field has been taken up actively only within the past few years; and the utilization of the device for the teaching of languages, for which purpose it has been successfully employed, for example, by the international correspondence schools of scranton, pennsylvania, for several years. the other uses, however, which were early predicted for the phonograph have not as yet been worked out practically, although the time seems not far distant when its general utility will be widely enlarged. both dolls and clocks have been made, but thus far the world has not taken them seriously. the original phonograph, as invented by edison, remained in its crude and immature state for almost ten years--still the object of philosophical interest, and as a convenient text-book illustration of the effect of sound vibration. it continued to be a theme of curious interest to the imaginative, and the subject of much fiction, while its neglected commercial possibilities were still more or less vaguely referred to. during this period of arrested development, edison was continuously working on the invention and commercial exploitation of the incandescent lamp. in his time was comparatively free, and the phonograph was then taken up with renewed energy, and the effort made to overcome its mechanical defects and to furnish a commercial instrument, so that its early promise might be realized. the important changes made from that time up to converted the phonograph from a scientific toy into a successful industrial apparatus. the idea of forming the record on tinfoil had been early abandoned, and in its stead was substituted a cylinder of wax-like material, in which the record was cut by a minute chisel-like gouging tool. such a record or phonogram, as it was then called, could be removed from the machine or replaced at any time, many reproductions could be obtained without wearing out the record, and whenever desired the record could be shaved off by a turning-tool so as to present a fresh surface on which a new record could be formed, something like an ancient palimpsest. a wax cylinder having walls less than one-quarter of an inch in thickness could be used for receiving a large number of records, since the maximum depth of the record groove is hardly ever greater than one one-thousandth of an inch. later on, and as the crowning achievement in the phonograph field, from a commercial point of view, came the duplication of records to the extent of many thousands from a single "master." this work was actively developed between the years and , and its difficulties may be appreciated when the problem is stated; the copying from a single master of many millions of excessively minute sound-waves having a maximum width of one hundredth of an inch, and a maximum depth of one thousandth of an inch, or less than the thickness of a sheet of tissue-paper. among the interesting developments of this process was the coating of the original or master record with a homogeneous film of gold so thin that three hundred thousand of these piled one on top of the other would present a thickness of only one inch! another important change was in the nature of a reversal of the original arrangement, the cylinder or mandrel carrying the record being mounted in fixed bearings, and the recording or reproducing device being fed lengthwise, like the cutting-tool of a lathe, as the blank or record was rotated. it was early recognized that a single needle for forming the record and the reproduction therefrom was an undesirable arrangement, since the formation of the record required a very sharp cutting-tool, while satisfactory and repeated reproduction suggested the use of a stylus which would result in the minimum wear. after many experiments and the production of a number of types of machines, the present recorders and reproducers were evolved, the former consisting of a very small cylindrical gouging tool having a diameter of about forty thousandths of an inch, and the latter a ball or button-shaped stylus with a diameter of about thirty-five thousandths of an inch. by using an incisor of this sort, the record is formed of a series of connected gouges with rounded sides, varying in depth and width, and with which the reproducer automatically engages and maintains its engagement. another difficulty encountered in the commercial development of the phonograph was the adjustment of the recording stylus so as to enter the wax-like surface to a very slight depth, and of the reproducer so as to engage exactly the record when formed. the earlier types of machines were provided with separate screws for effecting these adjustments; but considerable skill was required to obtain good results, and great difficulty was experienced in meeting the variations in the wax-like cylinders, due to the warping under atmospheric changes. consequently, with the early types of commercial phonographs, it was first necessary to shave off the blank accurately before a record was formed thereon, in order that an absolutely true surface might be presented. to overcome these troubles, the very ingenious suggestion was then made and adopted, of connecting the recording and reproducing styluses to their respective diaphragms through the instrumentality of a compensating weight, which acted practically as a fixed support under the very rapid sound vibrations, but which yielded readily to distortions or variations in the wax-like cylinders. by reason of this improvement, it became possible to do away with all adjustments, the mass of the compensating weight causing the recorder to engage the blank automatically to the required depth, and to maintain the reproducing stylus always with the desired pressure on the record when formed. these automatic adjustments were maintained even though the blank or record might be so much out of true as an eighth of an inch, equal to more than two hundred times the maximum depth of the record groove. another improvement that followed along the lines adopted by edison for the commercial development of the phonograph was making the recording and reproducing styluses of sapphire, an extremely hard, non-oxidizable jewel, so that those tiny instruments would always retain their true form and effectively resist wear. of course, in this work many other things were done that may still be found on the perfected phonograph as it stands to-day, and many other suggestions were made which were contemporaneously adopted, but which were later abandoned. for the curious-minded, reference is made to the records in the patent office, which will show that up to edison had obtained upward of sixty-five patents in this art, from which his line of thought can be very closely traced. the phonograph of to-day, except for the perfection of its mechanical features, in its beauty of manufacture and design, and in small details, may be considered identical with the machine of , with the exception that with the latter the rotation of the record cylinder was effected by an electric motor. its essential use as then contemplated was as a substitute for stenographers, and the most extravagant fancies were indulged in as to utility in that field. to exploit the device commercially, the patents were sold to philadelphia capitalists, who organized the north american phonograph company, through which leases for limited periods were granted to local companies doing business in special territories, generally within the confines of a single state. under that plan, resembling the methods of , the machines and blank cylinders were manufactured by the edison phonograph works, which still retains its factories at orange, new jersey. the marketing enterprise was early doomed to failure, principally because the instruments were not well understood, and did not possess the necessary refinements that would fit them for the special field in which they were to be used. at first the instruments were leased; but it was found that the leases were seldom renewed. efforts were then made to sell them, but the prices were high--from $ to $ . in the midst of these difficulties, the chief promoter of the enterprise, mr. lippincott, died; and it was soon found that the roseate dreams of success entertained by the sanguine promoters were not to be realized. the north american phonograph company failed, its principal creditor being mr. edison, who, having acquired the assets of the defunct concern, organized the national phonograph company, to which he turned over the patents; and with characteristic energy he attempted again to build up a business with which his favorite and, to him, most interesting invention might be successfully identified. the national phonograph company from the very start determined to retire at least temporarily from the field of stenographic use, and to exploit the phonograph for musical purposes as a competitor of the music-box. hence it was necessary that for such work the relatively heavy and expensive electric motor should be discarded, and a simple spring motor constructed with a sufficiently sensitive governor to permit accurate musical reproduction. such a motor was designed, and is now used on all phonographs except on such special instruments as may be made with electric motors, as well as on the successful apparatus that has more recently been designed and introduced for stenographic use. improved factory facilities were introduced; new tools were made, and various types of machines were designed so that phonographs can now be bought at prices ranging from $ to $ . even with the changes which were thus made in the two machines, the work of developing the business was slow, as a demand had to be created; and the early prejudice of the public against the phonograph, due to its failure as a stenographic apparatus, had to be overcome. the story of the phonograph as an industrial enterprise, from this point of departure, is itself full of interest, but embraces so many details that it is necessarily given in a separate later chapter. we must return to the days of , when edison, with at least three first-class inventions to his credit--the quadruplex, the carbon telephone, and the phonograph--had become a man of mark and a "world character." the invention of the phonograph was immediately followed, as usual, by the appearance of several other incidental and auxiliary devices, some patented, and others remaining simply the application of the principles of apparatus that had been worked out. one of these was the telephonograph, a combination of a telephone at a distant station with a phonograph. the diaphragm of the phonograph mouthpiece is actuated by an electromagnet in the same way as that of an ordinary telephone receiver, and in this manner a record of the message spoken from a distance can be obtained and turned into sound at will. evidently such a process is reversible, and the phonograph can send a message to the distant receiver. this idea was brilliantly demonstrated in practice in february, , by mr. w. j. hammer, one of edison's earliest and most capable associates, who carried on telephonographic communication between new york and an audience in philadelphia. the record made in new york on the edison phonograph was repeated into an edison carbon transmitter, sent over one hundred and three miles of circuit, including six miles of underground cable; received by an edison motograph; repeated by that on to a phonograph; transferred from the phonograph to an edison carbon transmitter, and by that delivered to the edison motograph receiver in the enthusiastic lecture-hall, where every one could hear each sound and syllable distinctly. in real practice this spectacular playing with sound vibrations, as if they were lacrosse balls to toss around between the goals, could be materially simplified. the modern megaphone, now used universally in making announcements to large crowds, particularly at sporting events, is also due to this period as a perfection by edison of many antecedent devices going back, perhaps, much further than the legendary funnels through which alexander the great is said to have sent commands to his outlying forces. the improved edison megaphone for long-distance work comprised two horns of wood or metal about six feet long, tapering from a diameter of two feet six inches at the mouth to a small aperture provided with ear-tubes. these converging horns or funnels, with a large speaking-trumpet in between them, are mounted on a tripod, and the megaphone is complete. conversation can be carried on with this megaphone at a distance of over two miles, as with a ship or the balloon. the modern megaphone now employs the receiver form thus introduced as its very effective transmitter, with which the old-fashioned speaking-trumpet cannot possibly compete; and the word "megaphone" is universally applied to the single, side-flaring horn. a further step in this line brought edison to the "aerophone," around which the figaro weaved its fanciful description. in the construction of the aerophone the same kind of tympanum is used as in the phonograph, but the imitation of the human voice, or the transmission of sound, is effected by the quick opening and closing of valves placed within a steam-whistle or an organ-pipe. the vibrations of the diaphragm communicated to the valves cause them to operate in synchronism, so that the vibrations are thrown upon the escaping air or steam; and the result is an instrument with a capacity of magnifying the sounds two hundred times, and of hurling them to great distances intelligibly, like a huge fog-siren, but with immense clearness and penetration. all this study of sound transmission over long distances without wires led up to the consideration and invention of pioneer apparatus for wireless telegraphy--but that also is another chapter. yet one more ingenious device of this period must be noted--edison's vocal engine, the patent application for which was executed in august, , the patent being granted the following december. reference to this by edison himself has already been quoted. the "voice-engine," or "phonomotor," converts the vibrations of the voice or of music, acting on the diaphragm, into motion which is utilized to drive some secondary appliance, whether as a toy or for some useful purpose. thus a man can actually talk a hole through a board. somewhat weary of all this work and excitement, and not having enjoyed any cessation from toil, or period of rest, for ten years, edison jumped eagerly at the opportunity afforded him in the summer of of making a westward trip. just thirty years later, on a similar trip over the same ground, he jotted down for this volume some of his reminiscences. the lure of was the opportunity to try the ability of his delicate tasimeter during the total eclipse of the sun, july . his admiring friend, prof. george f. barker, of the university of pennsylvania, with whom he had now been on terms of intimacy for some years, suggested the holiday, and was himself a member of the excursion party that made its rendezvous at rawlins, wyoming territory. edison had tested his tasimeter, and was satisfied that it would measure down to the millionth part of a degree fahrenheit. it was just ten years since he had left the west in poverty and obscurity, a penniless operator in search of a job; but now he was a great inventor and famous, a welcome addition to the band of astronomers and physicists assembled to observe the eclipse and the corona. "there were astronomers from nearly every nation," says mr. edison. "we had a special car. the country at that time was rather new; game was in great abundance, and could be seen all day long from the car window, especially antelope. we arrived at rawlins about p.m. it had a small machine shop, and was the point where locomotives were changed for the next section. the hotel was a very small one, and by doubling up we were barely accommodated. my room-mate was fox, the correspondent of the new york herald. after we retired and were asleep a thundering knock on the door awakened us. upon opening the door a tall, handsome man with flowing hair dressed in western style entered the room. his eyes were bloodshot, and he was somewhat inebriated. he introduced himself as 'texas jack'--joe chromondo--and said he wanted to see edison, as he had read about me in the newspapers. both fox and i were rather scared, and didn't know what was to be the result of the interview. the landlord requested him not to make so much noise, and was thrown out into the hall. jack explained that he had just come in with a party which had been hunting, and that he felt fine. he explained, also, that he was the boss pistol-shot of the west; that it was he who taught the celebrated doctor carver how to shoot. then suddenly pointing to a weather-vane on the freight depot, he pulled out a colt revolver and fired through the window, hitting the vane. the shot awakened all the people, and they rushed in to see who was killed. it was only after i told him i was tired and would see him in the morning that he left. both fox and i were so nervous we didn't sleep any that night. "we were told in the morning that jack was a pretty good fellow, and was not one of the 'bad men,' of whom they had a good supply. they had one in the jail, and fox and i went over to see him. a few days before he had held up a union pacific train and robbed all the passengers. in the jail also was a half-breed horse-thief. we interviewed the bad man through bars as big as railroad rails. he looked like a 'bad man.' the rim of his ear all around came to a sharp edge and was serrated. his eyes were nearly white, and appeared as if made of glass and set in wrong, like the life-size figures of indians in the smithsonian institution. his face was also extremely irregular. he wouldn't answer a single question. i learned afterward that he got seven years in prison, while the horse-thief was hanged. as horses ran wild, and there was no protection, it meant death to steal one." this was one interlude among others. "the first thing the astronomers did was to determine with precision their exact locality upon the earth. a number of observations were made, and watson, of michigan university, with two others, worked all night computing, until they agreed. they said they were not in error more than one hundred feet, and that the station was twelve miles out of the position given on the maps. it seemed to take an immense amount of mathematics. i preserved one of the sheets, which looked like the time-table of a chinese railroad. the instruments of the various parties were then set up in different parts of the little town, and got ready for the eclipse which was to occur in three or four days. two days before the event we all got together, and obtaining an engine and car, went twelve miles farther west to visit the united states government astronomers at a place called separation, the apex of the great divide, where the waters run east to the mississippi and west to the pacific. fox and i took our winchester rifles with an idea of doing a little shooting. after calling on the government people we started to interview the telegraph operator at this most lonely and desolate spot. after talking over old acquaintances i asked him if there was any game around. he said, 'plenty of jack-rabbits.' these jack-rabbits are a very peculiar species. they have ears about six inches long and very slender legs, about three times as long as those of an ordinary rabbit, and travel at a great speed by a series of jumps, each about thirty feet long, as near as i could judge. the local people called them 'narrow-gauge mules.' asking the operator the best direction, he pointed west, and noticing a rabbit in a clear space in the sage bushes, i said, 'there is one now.' i advanced cautiously to within one hundred feet and shot. the rabbit paid no attention. i then advanced to within ten feet and shot again--the rabbit was still immovable. on looking around, the whole crowd at the station were watching--and then i knew the rabbit was stuffed! however, we did shoot a number of live ones until fox ran out of cartridges. on returning to the station i passed away the time shooting at cans set on a pile of tins. finally the operator said to fox: 'i have a fine springfield musket, suppose you try it!' so fox took the musket and fired. it knocked him nearly over. it seems that the musket had been run over by a handcar, which slightly bent the long barrel, but not sufficiently for an amateur like fox to notice. after fox had his shoulder treated with arnica at the government hospital tent, we returned to rawlins." the eclipse was, however, the prime consideration, and edison followed the example of his colleagues in making ready. the place which he secured for setting up his tasimeter was an enclosure hardly suitable for the purpose, and he describes the results as follows: "i had my apparatus in a small yard enclosed by a board fence six feet high, at one end there was a house for hens. i noticed that they all went to roost just before totality. at the same time a slight wind arose, and at the moment of totality the atmosphere was filled with thistle-down and other light articles. i noticed one feather, whose weight was at least one hundred and fifty milligrams, rise perpendicularly to the top of the fence, where it floated away on the wind. my apparatus was entirely too sensitive, and i got no results." it was found that the heat from the corona of the sun was ten times the index capacity of the instrument; but this result did not leave the value of the device in doubt. the scientific american remarked; "seeing that the tasimeter is affected by a wider range of etheric undulations than the eye can take cognizance of, and is withal far more acutely sensitive, the probabilities are that it will open up hitherto inaccessible regions of space, and possibly extend the range of aerial knowledge as far beyond the limit obtained by the telescope as that is beyond the narrow reach of unaided vision." the eclipse over, edison, with professor barker, major thornberg, several soldiers, and a number of railroad officials, went hunting about one hundred miles south of the railroad in the ute country. a few months later the major and thirty soldiers were ambushed near the spot at which the hunting-party had camped, and all were killed. through an introduction from mr. jay gould, who then controlled the union pacific, edison was allowed to ride on the cow-catchers of the locomotives. "the different engineers gave me a small cushion, and every day i rode in this manner, from omaha to the sacramento valley, except through the snow-shed on the summit of the sierras, without dust or anything else to obstruct the view. only once was i in danger when the locomotive struck an animal about the size of a small cub bear--which i think was a badger. this animal struck the front of the locomotive just under the headlight with great violence, and was then thrown off by the rebound. i was sitting to one side grasping the angle brace, so no harm was done." this welcome vacation lasted nearly two months; but edison was back in his laboratory and hard at work before the end of august, gathering up many loose ends, and trying out many thoughts and ideas that had accumulated on the trip. one hot afternoon--august th, as shown by the document in the case--mr. edison was found by one of the authors of this biography employed most busily in making a mysterious series of tests on paper, using for ink acids that corrugated and blistered the paper where written upon. when interrogated as to his object, he stated that the plan was to afford blind people the means of writing directly to each other, especially if they were also deaf and could not hear a message on the phonograph. the characters which he was thus forming on the paper were high enough in relief to be legible to the delicate touch of a blind man's fingers, and with simple apparatus letters could be thus written, sent, and read. there was certainly no question as to the result obtained at the moment, which was all that was asked; but the edison autograph thus and then written now shows the paper eaten out by the acid used, although covered with glass for many years. mr. edison does not remember that he ever recurred to this very interesting test. he was, however, ready for anything new or novel, and no record can ever be made or presented that would do justice to a tithe of the thoughts and fancies daily and hourly put upon the rack. the famous note-books, to which reference will be made later, were not begun as a regular series, as it was only the profusion of these ideas that suggested the vital value of such systematic registration. then as now, the propositions brought to edison ranged over every conceivable subject, but the years have taught him caution in grappling with them. he tells an amusing story of one dilemma into which his good-nature led him at this period: "at menlo park one day, a farmer came in and asked if i knew any way to kill potato-bugs. he had twenty acres of potatoes, and the vines were being destroyed. i sent men out and culled two quarts of bugs, and tried every chemical i had to destroy them. bisulphide of carbon was found to do it instantly. i got a drum and went over to the potato farm and sprinkled it on the vines with a pot. every bug dropped dead. the next morning the farmer came in very excited and reported that the stuff had killed the vines as well. i had to pay $ for not experimenting properly." during this year, , the phonograph made its way also to europe, and various sums of money were paid there to secure the rights to its manufacture and exploitation. in england, for example, the microscopic company paid $ down and agreed to a royalty, while arrangements were effected also in france, russia, and other countries. in every instance, as in this country, the commercial development had to wait several years, for in the mean time another great art had been brought into existence, demanding exclusive attention and exhaustive toil. and when the work was done the reward was a new heaven and a new earth--in the art of illumination. chapter xi the invention of the incandescent lamp it is possible to imagine a time to come when the hours of work and rest will once more be regulated by the sun. but the course of civilization has been marked by an artificial lengthening of the day, and by a constant striving after more perfect means of illumination. why mankind should sleep through several hours of sunlight in the morning, and stay awake through a needless time in the evening, can probably only be attributed to total depravity. it is certainly a most stupid, expensive, and harmful habit. in no one thing has man shown greater fertility of invention than in lighting; to nothing does he cling more tenaciously than to his devices for furnishing light. electricity to-day reigns supreme in the field of illumination, but every other kind of artificial light that has ever been known is still in use somewhere. toward its light-bringers the race has assumed an attitude of veneration, though it has forgotten, if it ever heard, the names of those who first brightened its gloom and dissipated its darkness. if the tallow candle, hitherto unknown, were now invented, its creator would be hailed as one of the greatest benefactors of the present age. up to the close of the eighteenth century, the means of house and street illumination were of two generic kinds--grease and oil; but then came a swift and revolutionary change in the adoption of gas. the ideas and methods of murdoch and lebon soon took definite shape, and "coal smoke" was piped from its place of origin to distant points of consumption. as early as , the first company ever organized for gas lighting was formed in london, one side of pall mall being lit up by the enthusiastic pioneer, winsor, in . equal activity was shown in america, and baltimore began the practice of gas lighting in . it is true that there were explosions, and distinguished men like davy and watt opined that the illuminant was too dangerous; but the "spirit of coal" had demonstrated its usefulness convincingly, and a commercial development began, which, for extent and rapidity, was not inferior to that marking the concurrent adoption of steam in industry and transportation. meantime the wax candle and the argand oil lamp held their own bravely. the whaling fleets, long after gas came into use, were one of the greatest sources of our national wealth. to new bedford, massachusetts, alone, some three or four hundred ships brought their whale and sperm oil, spermaceti, and whalebone; and at one time that port was accounted the richest city in the united states in proportion to its population. the ship-owners and refiners of that whaling metropolis were slow to believe that their monopoly could ever be threatened by newer sources of illumination; but gas had become available in the cities, and coal-oil and petroleum were now added to the list of illuminating materials. the american whaling fleet, which at the time of edison's birth mustered over seven hundred sail, had dwindled probably to a bare tenth when he took up the problem of illumination; and the competition of oil from the ground with oil from the sea, and with coal-gas, had made the artificial production of light cheaper than ever before, when up to the middle of the century it had remained one of the heaviest items of domestic expense. moreover, just about the time that edison took up incandescent lighting, water-gas was being introduced on a large scale as a commercial illuminant that could be produced at a much lower cost than coal-gas. throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the search for a practical electric light was almost wholly in the direction of employing methods analogous to those already familiar; in other words, obtaining the illumination from the actual consumption of the light-giving material. in the third quarter of the century these methods were brought to practicality, but all may be referred back to the brilliant demonstrations of sir humphry davy at the royal institution, circa - , when, with the current from a battery of two thousand cells, he produced an intense voltaic arc between the points of consuming sticks of charcoal. for more than thirty years the arc light remained an expensive laboratory experiment; but the coming of the dynamo placed that illuminant on a commercial basis. the mere fact that electrical energy from the least expensive chemical battery using up zinc and acids costs twenty times as much as that from a dynamo--driven by steam-engine--is in itself enough to explain why so many of the electric arts lingered in embryo after their fundamental principles had been discovered. here is seen also further proof of the great truth that one invention often waits for another. from onward the improvements in both the arc lamp and the dynamo were rapid; and under the superintendence of the great faraday, in , protecting beams of intense electric light from the voltaic arc were shed over the waters of the straits of dover from the beacons of south foreland and dungeness. by the arc-lighting industry had sprung into existence in so promising a manner as to engender an extraordinary fever and furor of speculation. at the philadelphia centennial exposition of , wallace-farmer dynamos built at ansonia, connecticut, were shown, with the current from which arc lamps were there put in actual service. a year or two later the work of charles f. brush and edward weston laid the deep foundation of modern arc lighting in america, securing as well substantial recognition abroad. thus the new era had been ushered in, but it was based altogether on the consumption of some material--carbon--in a lamp open to the air. every lamp the world had ever known did this, in one way or another. edison himself began at that point, and his note-books show that he made various experiments with this type of lamp at a very early stage. indeed, his experiments had led him so far as to anticipate in what are now known as "flaming arcs," the exceedingly bright and generally orange or rose-colored lights which have been introduced within the last few years, and are now so frequently seen in streets and public places. while the arcs with plain carbons are bluish-white, those with carbons containing calcium fluoride have a notable golden glow. he was convinced, however, that the greatest field of lighting lay in the illumination of houses and other comparatively enclosed areas, to replace the ordinary gas light, rather than in the illumination of streets and other outdoor places by lights of great volume and brilliancy. dismissing from his mind quickly the commercial impossibility of using arc lights for general indoor illumination, he arrived at the conclusion that an electric lamp giving light by incandescence was the solution of the problem. edison was familiar with the numerous but impracticable and commercially unsuccessful efforts that had been previously made by other inventors and investigators to produce electric light by incandescence, and at the time that he began his experiments, in , almost the whole scientific world had pronounced such an idea as impossible of fulfilment. the leading electricians, physicists, and experts of the period had been studying the subject for more than a quarter of a century, and with but one known exception had proven mathematically and by close reasoning that the "subdivision of the electric light," as it was then termed, was practically beyond attainment. opinions of this nature have ever been but a stimulus to edison when he has given deep thought to a subject, and has become impressed with strong convictions of possibility, and in this particular case he was satisfied that the subdivision of the electric light--or, more correctly, the subdivision of the electric current--was not only possible but entirely practicable. it will have been perceived from the foregoing chapters that from the time of boyhood, when he first began to rub against the world, his commercial instincts were alert and predominated in almost all of the enterprises that he set in motion. this characteristic trait had grown stronger as he matured, having received, as it did, fresh impetus and strength from his one lapse in the case of his first patented invention, the vote-recorder. the lesson he then learned was to devote his inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine demand, and that would subserve the actual necessities of humanity; and it was probably a fortunate circumstance that this lesson was learned at the outset of his career as an inventor. he has never assumed to be a philosopher or "pure scientist." in order that the reader may grasp an adequate idea of the magnitude and importance of edison's invention of the incandescent lamp, it will be necessary to review briefly the "state of the art" at the time he began his experiments on that line. after the invention of the voltaic battery, early in the last century, experiments were made which determined that heat could be produced by the passage of the electric current through wires of platinum and other metals, and through pieces of carbon, as noted already, and it was, of course, also observed that if sufficient current were passed through these conductors they could be brought from the lower stage of redness up to the brilliant white heat of incandescence. as early as the results of these experiments were taken advantage of when starr, a talented american who died at the early age of twenty-five, suggested, in his english patent of that year, two forms of small incandescent electric lamps, one having a burner made from platinum foil placed under a glass cover without excluding the air; and the other composed of a thin plate or pencil of carbon enclosed in a torricellian vacuum. these suggestions of young starr were followed by many other experimenters, whose improvements consisted principally in devices to increase the compactness and portability of the lamp, in the sealing of the lamp chamber to prevent the admission of air, and in means for renewing the carbon burner when it had been consumed. thus roberts, in , proposed to cement the neck of the glass globe into a metallic cup, and to provide it with a tube or stop-cock for exhaustion by means of a hand-pump. lodyguine, konn, kosloff, and khotinsky, between and , proposed various ingenious devices for perfecting the joint between the metal base and the glass globe, and also provided their lamps with several short carbon pencils, which were automatically brought into circuit successively as the pencils were consumed. in or , bouliguine proposed the employment of a long carbon pencil, a short section only of which was in circuit at any one time and formed the burner, the lamp being provided with a mechanism for automatically pushing other sections of the pencil into position between the contacts to renew the burner. sawyer and man proposed, in , to make the bottom plate of glass instead of metal, and provided ingenious arrangements for charging the lamp chamber with an atmosphere of pure nitrogen gas which does not support combustion. these lamps and many others of similar character, ingenious as they were, failed to become of any commercial value, due, among other things, to the brief life of the carbon burner. even under the best conditions it was found that the carbon members were subject to a rapid disintegration or evaporation, which experimenters assumed was due to the disrupting action of the electric current; and hence the conclusion that carbon contained in itself the elements of its own destruction, and was not a suitable material for the burner of an incandescent lamp. on the other hand, platinum, although found to be the best of all materials for the purpose, aside from its great expense, and not combining with oxygen at high temperatures as does carbon, required to be brought so near the melting-point in order to give light, that a very slight increase in the temperature resulted in its destruction. it was assumed that the difficulty lay in the material of the burner itself, and not in its environment. it was not realized up to such a comparatively recent date as that the solution of the great problem of subdivision of the electric current would not, however, be found merely in the production of a durable incandescent electric lamp--even if any of the lamps above referred to had fulfilled that requirement. the other principal features necessary to subdivide the electric current successfully were: the burning of an indefinite number of lights on the same circuit; each light to give a useful and economical degree of illumination; and each light to be independent of all the others in regard to its operation and extinguishment. the opinions of scientific men of the period on the subject are well represented by the two following extracts--the first, from a lecture at the royal united service institution, about february, , by mr. (sir) w. h. preece, one of the most eminent electricians in england, who, after discussing the question mathematically, said: "hence the sub-division of the light is an absolute ignis fatuus." the other extract is from a book written by paget higgs, ll.d., d.sc., published in london in , in which he says: "much nonsense has been talked in relation to this subject. some inventors have claimed the power to 'indefinitely divide' the electric current, not knowing or forgetting that such a statement is incompatible with the well-proven law of conservation of energy." "some inventors," in the last sentence just quoted, probably--indeed, we think undoubtedly--refers to edison, whose earlier work in electric lighting ( ) had been announced in this country and abroad, and who had then stated boldly his conviction of the practicability of the subdivision of the electrical current. the above extracts are good illustrations, however, of scientific opinions up to the end of , when mr. edison's epoch-making invention rendered them entirely untenable. the eminent scientist, john tyndall, while not sharing these precise views, at least as late as january , , delivered a lecture before the royal institution on "the electric light," when, after pointing out the development of the art up to edison's work, and showing the apparent hopelessness of the problem, he said: "knowing something of the intricacy of the practical problem, i should certainly prefer seeing it in edison's hands to having it in mine." the reader may have deemed this sketch of the state of the art to be a considerable digression; but it is certainly due to the subject to present the facts in such a manner as to show that this great invention was neither the result of improving some process or device that was known or existing at the time, nor due to any unforeseen lucky chance, nor the accidental result of other experiments. on the contrary, it was the legitimate outcome of a series of exhaustive experiments founded upon logical and original reasoning in a mind that had the courage and hardihood to set at naught the confirmed opinions of the world, voiced by those generally acknowledged to be the best exponents of the art--experiments carried on amid a storm of jeers and derision, almost as contemptuous as if the search were for the discovery of perpetual motion. in this we see the man foreshadowed by the boy who, when he obtained his books on chemistry or physics, did not accept any statement of fact or experiment therein, but worked out every one of them himself to ascertain whether or not they were true. although this brings the reader up to the year , one must turn back two years and accompany edison in his first attack on the electric-light problem. in he sold his telephone invention (the carbon transmitter) to the western union telegraph company, which had previously come into possession also of his quadruplex inventions, as already related. he was still busily engaged on the telephone, on acoustic electrical transmission, sextuplex telegraphs, duplex telegraphs, miscellaneous carbon articles, and other inventions of a minor nature. during the whole of the previous year and until late in the summer of , he had been working with characteristic energy and enthusiasm on the telephone; and, in developing this invention to a successful issue, had preferred the use of carbon and had employed it in numerous forms, especially in the form of carbonized paper. eighteen hundred and seventy-seven in edison's laboratory was a veritable carbon year, for it was carbon in some shape or form for interpolation in electric circuits of various kinds that occupied the thoughts of the whole force from morning to night. it is not surprising, therefore, that in september of that year, when edison turned his thoughts actively toward electric lighting by incandescence, his early experiments should be in the line of carbon as an illuminant. his originality of method was displayed at the very outset, for one of the first experiments was the bringing to incandescence of a strip of carbon in the open air to ascertain merely how much current was required. this conductor was a strip of carbonized paper about an inch long, one-sixteenth of an inch broad, and six or seven one-thousandths of an inch thick, the ends of which were secured to clamps that formed the poles of a battery. the carbon was lighted up to incandescence, and, of course, oxidized and disintegrated immediately. within a few days this was followed by experiments with the same kind of carbon, but in vacuo by means of a hand-worked air-pump. this time the carbon strip burned at incandescence for about eight minutes. various expedients to prevent oxidization were tried, such, for instance, as coating the carbon with powdered glass, which in melting would protect the carbon from the atmosphere, but without successful results. edison was inclined to concur in the prevailing opinion as to the easy destructibility of carbon, but, without actually settling the point in his mind, he laid aside temporarily this line of experiment and entered a new field. he had made previously some trials of platinum wire as an incandescent burner for a lamp, but left it for a time in favor of carbon. he now turned to the use of almost infusible metals--such as boron, ruthenium, chromium, etc.--as separators or tiny bridges between two carbon points, the current acting so as to bring these separators to a high degree of incandescence, at which point they would emit a brilliant light. he also placed some of these refractory metals directly in the circuit, bringing them to incandescence, and used silicon in powdered form in glass tubes placed in the electric circuit. his notes include the use of powdered silicon mixed with lime or other very infusible non-conductors or semi-conductors. edison's conclusions on these substances were that, while in some respects they were within the bounds of possibility for the subdivision of the electric current, they did not reach the ideal that he had in mind for commercial results. edison's systematized attacks on the problem were two in number, the first of which we have just related, which began in september, , and continued until about january, . contemporaneously, he and his force of men were very busily engaged day and night on other important enterprises and inventions. among the latter, the phonograph may be specially mentioned, as it was invented in the late fall of . from that time until july, , his time and attention day and night were almost completely absorbed by the excitement caused by the invention and exhibition of the machine. in july, feeling entitled to a brief vacation after several years of continuous labor, edison went with the expedition to wyoming to observe an eclipse of the sun, and incidentally to test his tasimeter, a delicate instrument devised by him for measuring heat transmitted through immense distances of space. his trip has been already described. he was absent about two months. coming home rested and refreshed, mr. edison says: "after my return from the trip to observe the eclipse of the sun, i went with professor barker, professor of physics in the university of pennsylvania, and doctor chandler, professor of chemistry in columbia college, to see mr. wallace, a large manufacturer of brass in ansonia, connecticut. wallace at this time was experimenting on series arc lighting. just at that time i wanted to take up something new, and professor barker suggested that i go to work and see if i could subdivide the electric light so it could be got in small units like gas. this was not a new suggestion, because i had made a number of experiments on electric lighting a year before this. they had been laid aside for the phonograph. i determined to take up the search again and continue it. on my return home i started my usual course of collecting every kind of data about gas; bought all the transactions of the gas-engineering societies, etc., all the back volumes of gas journals, etc. having obtained all the data, and investigated gas-jet distribution in new york by actual observations, i made up my mind that the problem of the subdivision of the electric current could be solved and made commercial." about the end of august, , he began his second organized attack on the subdivision of the current, which was steadily maintained until he achieved signal victory a year and two months later. the date of this interesting visit to ansonia is fixed by an inscription made by edison on a glass goblet which he used. the legend in diamond scratches runs: "thomas a. edison, september , , made under the electric light." other members of the party left similar memorials, which under the circumstances have come to be greatly prized. a number of experiments were witnessed in arc lighting, and edison secured a small wallace-farmer dynamo for his own work, as well as a set of wallace arc lamps for lighting the menlo park laboratory. before leaving ansonia, edison remarked, significantly: "wallace, i believe i can beat you making electric lights. i don't think you are working in the right direction." another date which shows how promptly the work was resumed is october , , when edison filed an application for his first lighting patent: "improvement in electric lights." in after years, discussing the work of wallace, who was not only a great pioneer electrical manufacturer, but one of the founders of the wire-drawing and brass-working industry, edison said: "wallace was one of the earliest pioneers in electrical matters in this country. he has done a great deal of good work, for which others have received the credit; and the work which he did in the early days of electric lighting others have benefited by largely, and he has been crowded to one side and forgotten." associated in all this work with wallace at ansonia was prof. moses g. farmer, famous for the introduction of the fire-alarm system; as the discoverer of the self-exciting principle of the modern dynamo; as a pioneer experimenter in the electric-railway field; as a telegraph engineer, and as a lecturer on mines and explosives to naval classes at newport. during , farmer, who, like edison, was a ceaseless investigator, had made a series of studies upon the production of light by electricity, and had even invented an automatic regulator by which a number of platinum lamps in multiple arc could be kept at uniform voltage for any length of time. in july, , he lit up one of the rooms of his house at salem, massachusetts, every evening with such lamps, using in them small pieces of platinum and iridium wire, which were made to incandesce by means of current from primary batteries. farmer was not one of the party that memorable day in september, but his work was known through his intimate connection with wallace, and there is no doubt that reference was made to it. such work had not led very far, the "lamps" were hopelessly short-lived, and everything was obviously experimental; but it was all helpful and suggestive to one whose open mind refused no hint from any quarter. at the commencement of his new attempts, edison returned to his experiments with carbon as an incandescent burner for a lamp, and made a very large number of trials, all in vacuo. not only were the ordinary strip paper carbons tried again, but tissue-paper coated with tar and lampblack was rolled into thin sticks, like knitting-needles, carbonized and raised to incandescence in vacuo. edison also tried hard carbon, wood carbons, and almost every conceivable variety of paper carbon in like manner. with the best vacuum that he could then get by means of the ordinary air-pump, the carbons would last, at the most, only from ten to fifteen minutes in a state of incandescence. such results were evidently not of commercial value. edison then turned his attention in other directions. in his earliest consideration of the problem of subdividing the electric current, he had decided that the only possible solution lay in the employment of a lamp whose incandescing body should have a high resistance combined with a small radiating surface, and be capable of being used in what is called "multiple arc," so that each unit, or lamp, could be turned on or off without interfering with any other unit or lamp. no other arrangement could possibly be considered as commercially practicable. the full significance of the three last preceding sentences will not be obvious to laymen, as undoubtedly many of the readers of this book may be; and now being on the threshold of the series of edison's experiments that led up to the basic invention, we interpolate a brief explanation, in order that the reader may comprehend the logical reasoning and work that in this case produced such far-reaching results. if we consider a simple circuit in which a current is flowing, and include in the circuit a carbon horseshoe-like conductor which it is desired to bring to incandescence by the heat generated by the current passing through it, it is first evident that the resistance offered to the current by the wires themselves must be less than that offered by the burner, because, otherwise current would be wasted as heat in the conducting wires. at the very foundation of the electric-lighting art is the essentially commercial consideration that one cannot spend very much for conductors, and edison determined that, in order to use wires of a practicable size, the voltage of the current (i.e., its pressure or the characteristic that overcomes resistance to its flow) should be one hundred and ten volts, which since its adoption has been the standard. to use a lower voltage or pressure, while making the solution of the lighting problem a simple one as we shall see, would make it necessary to increase the size of the conducting wires to a prohibitive extent. to increase the voltage or pressure materially, while permitting some saving in the cost of conductors, would enormously increase the difficulties of making a sufficiently high resistance conductor to secure light by incandescence. this apparently remote consideration --weight of copper used--was really the commercial key to the problem, just as the incandescent burner was the scientific key to that problem. before edison's invention incandescent lamps had been suggested as a possibility, but they were provided with carbon rods or strips of relatively low resistance, and to bring these to incandescence required a current of low pressure, because a current of high voltage would pass through them so readily as not to generate heat; and to carry a current of low pressure through wires without loss would require wires of enormous size. [ ] having a current of relatively high pressure to contend with, it was necessary to provide a carbon burner which, as compared with what had previously been suggested, should have a very great resistance. carbon as a material, determined after patient search, apparently offered the greatest hope, but even with this substance the necessary high resistance could be obtained only by making the burner of extremely small cross-section, thereby also reducing its radiating surface. therefore, the crucial point was the production of a hair-like carbon filament, with a relatively great resistance and small radiating surface, capable of withstanding mechanical shock, and susceptible of being maintained at a temperature of over two thousand degrees for a thousand hours or more before breaking. and this filamentary conductor required to be supported in a vacuum chamber so perfectly formed and constructed that during all those hours, and subjected as it is to varying temperatures, not a particle of air should enter to disintegrate the filament. and not only so, but the lamp after its design must not be a mere laboratory possibility, but a practical commercial article capable of being manufactured at low cost and in large quantities. a statement of what had to be done in those days of actual as well as scientific electrical darkness is quite sufficient to explain tyndall's attitude of mind in preferring that the problem should be in edison's hands rather than in his own. to say that the solution of the problem lay merely in reducing the size of the carbon burner to a mere hair, is to state a half-truth only; but who, we ask, would have had the temerity even to suggest that such an attenuated body could be maintained at a white heat, without disintegration, for a thousand hours? the solution consisted not only in that, but in the enormous mass of patiently worked-out details--the manufacture of the filaments, their uniform carbonization, making the globes, producing a perfect vacuum, and countless other factors, the omission of any one of which would probably have resulted eventually in failure. [footnote : as a practical illustration of these facts it was calculated by professor barker, of the university of pennsylvania (after edison had invented the incandescent lamp), that if it should cost $ , for copper conductors to supply current to edison lamps in a given area, it would cost about $ , , for copper conductors for lighting the same area by lamps of the earlier experimenters--such, for instance, as the lamp invented by konn in . this enormous difference would be accounted for by the fact that edison's lamp was one having a high resistance and relatively small radiating surface, while konn's lamp was one having a very low resistance and large radiating surface.] continuing the digression one step farther in order to explain the term "multiple arc," it may be stated that there are two principal systems of distributing electric current, one termed "series," and the other "multiple arc." the two are illustrated, diagrammatically, side by side, the arrows indicating flow of current. the series system, it will be seen, presents one continuous path for the current. the current for the last lamp must pass through the first and all the intermediate lamps. hence, if any one light goes out, the continuity of the path is broken, current cannot flow, and all the lamps are extinguished unless a loop or by-path is provided. it is quite obvious that such a system would be commercially impracticable where small units, similar to gas jets, were employed. on the other hand, in the multiple-arc system, current may be considered as flowing in two parallel conductors like the vertical sides of a ladder, the ends of which never come together. each lamp is placed in a separate circuit across these two conductors, like a rung in the ladder, thus making a separate and independent path for the current in each case. hence, if a lamp goes out, only that individual subdivision, or ladder step, is affected; just that one particular path for the current is interrupted, but none of the other lamps is interfered with. they remain lighted, each one independent of the other. the reader will quite readily understand, therefore, that a multiple-arc system is the only one practically commercial where electric light is to be used in small units like those of gas or oil. such was the nature of the problem that confronted edison at the outset. there was nothing in the whole world that in any way approximated a solution, although the most brilliant minds in the electrical art had been assiduously working on the subject for a quarter of a century preceding. as already seen, he came early to the conclusion that the only solution lay in the use of a lamp of high resistance and small radiating surface, and, with characteristic fervor and energy, he attacked the problem from this standpoint, having absolute faith in a successful outcome. the mere fact that even with the successful production of the electric lamp the assault on the complete problem of commercial lighting would hardly be begun did not deter him in the slightest. to one of edison's enthusiastic self-confidence the long vista of difficulties ahead--we say it in all sincerity--must have been alluring. after having devoted several months to experimental trials of carbon, at the end of , as already detailed, he turned his attention to the platinum group of metals and began a series of experiments in which he used chiefly platinum wire and iridium wire, and alloys of refractory metals in the form of wire burners for incandescent lamps. these metals have very high fusing-points, and were found to last longer than the carbon strips previously used when heated up to incandescence by the electric current, although under such conditions as were then possible they were melted by excess of current after they had been lighted a comparatively short time, either in the open air or in such a vacuum as could be obtained by means of the ordinary air-pump. nevertheless, edison continued along this line of experiment with unremitting vigor, making improvement after improvement, until about april, , he devised a means whereby platinum wire of a given length, which would melt in the open air when giving a light equal to four candles, would emit a light of twenty-five candle-power without fusion. this was accomplished by introducing the platinum wire into an all-glass globe, completely sealed and highly exhausted of air, and passing a current through the platinum wire while the vacuum was being made. in this, which was a new and radical invention, we see the first step toward the modern incandescent lamp. the knowledge thus obtained that current passing through the platinum during exhaustion would drive out occluded gases (i.e., gases mechanically held in or upon the metal), and increase the infusibility of the platinum, led him to aim at securing greater perfection in the vacuum, on the theory that the higher the vacuum obtained, the higher would be the infusibility of the platinum burner. and this fact also was of the greatest importance in making successful the final use of carbon, because without the subjection of the carbon to the heating effect of current during the formation of the vacuum, the presence of occluded gases would have been a fatal obstacle. continuing these experiments with most fervent zeal, taking no account of the passage of time, with an utter disregard for meals, and but scanty hours of sleep snatched reluctantly at odd periods of the day or night, edison kept his laboratory going without cessation. a great variety of lamps was made of the platinum-iridium type, mostly with thermal devices to regulate the temperature of the burner and prevent its being melted by an excess of current. the study of apparatus for obtaining more perfect vacua was unceasingly carried on, for edison realized that in this there lay a potent factor of ultimate success. about august he had obtained a pump that would produce a vacuum up to about the one-hundred-thousandth part of an atmosphere, and some time during the next month, or beginning of october, had obtained one that would produce a vacuum up to the one-millionth part of an atmosphere. it must be remembered that the conditions necessary for maintaining this high vacuum were only made possible by his invention of the one-piece all-glass globe, in which all the joints were hermetically sealed during its manufacture into a lamp, whereby a high vacuum could be retained continuously for any length of time. in obtaining this perfection of vacuum apparatus, edison realized that he was approaching much nearer to a solution of the problem. in his experiments with the platinum-iridium lamps, he had been working all the time toward the proposition of high resistance and small radiating surface, until he had made a lamp having thirty feet of fine platinum wire wound upon a small bobbin of infusible material; but the desired economy, simplicity, and durability were not obtained in this manner, although at all times the burner was maintained at a critically high temperature. after attaining a high degree of perfection with these lamps, he recognized their impracticable character, and his mind reverted to the opinion he had formed in his early experiments two years before--viz., that carbon had the requisite resistance to permit a very simple conductor to accomplish the object if it could be used in the form of a hair-like "filament," provided the filament itself could be made sufficiently homogeneous. as we have already seen, he could not use carbon successfully in his earlier experiments, for the strips of carbon he then employed, although they were much larger than "filaments," would not stand, but were consumed in a few minutes under the imperfect conditions then at his command. now, however, that he had found means for obtaining and maintaining high vacua, edison immediately went back to carbon, which from the first he had conceived of as the ideal substance for a burner. his next step proved conclusively the correctness of his old deductions. on october , , after many patient trials, he carbonized a piece of cotton sewing-thread bent into a loop or horseshoe form, and had it sealed into a glass globe from which he exhausted the air until a vacuum up to one-millionth of an atmosphere was produced. this lamp, when put on the circuit, lighted up brightly to incandescence and maintained its integrity for over forty hours, and lo! the practical incandescent lamp was born. the impossible, so called, had been attained; subdivision of the electric-light current was made practicable; the goal had been reached; and one of the greatest inventions of the century was completed. up to this time edison had spent over $ , in his electric-light experiments, but the results far more than justified the expenditure, for with this lamp he made the discovery that the filament of carbon, under the conditions of high vacuum, was commercially stable and would stand high temperatures without the disintegration and oxidation that took place in all previous attempts that he knew of for making an incandescent burner out of carbon. besides, this lamp possessed the characteristics of high resistance and small radiating surface, permitting economy in the outlay for conductors, and requiring only a small current for each unit of light--conditions that were absolutely necessary of fulfilment in order to accomplish commercially the subdivision of the electric-light current. this slender, fragile, tenuous thread of brittle carbon, glowing steadily and continuously with a soft light agreeable to the eyes, was the tiny key that opened the door to a world revolutionized in its interior illumination. it was a triumphant vindication of edison's reasoning powers, his clear perceptions, his insight into possibilities, and his inventive faculty, all of which had already been productive of so many startling, practical, and epoch-making inventions. and now he had stepped over the threshold of a new art which has since become so world-wide in its application as to be an integral part of modern human experience. [ ] [footnote : the following extract from walker on patents ( th edition) will probably be of interest to the reader: "sec. a. a meritorious exception, to the rule of the last section, is involved in the adjudicated validity of the edison incandescent-light patent. the carbon filament, which constitutes the only new part of the combination of the second claim of that patent, differs from the earlier carbon burners of sawyer and man, only in having a diameter of one- sixty-fourth of an inch or less, whereas the burners of sawyer and man had a diameter of one-thirty-second of an inch or more. but that reduction of one-half in diameter increased the resistance of the burner fourfold, and reduced its radiating surface twofold, and thus increased eightfold, its ratio of resistance to radiating surface. that eightfold increase of proportion enabled the resistance of the conductor of electricity from the generator to the burner to be increased eightfold, without any increase of percentage of loss of energy in that conductor, or decrease of percentage of development of heat in the burner; and thus enabled the area of the cross-section of that conductor to be reduced eightfold, and thus to be made with one-eighth of the amount of copper or other metal, which would be required if the reduction of diameter of the burner from one-thirty- second to one-sixty-fourth of an inch had not been made. and that great reduction in the size and cost of conductors, involved also a great difference in the composition of the electric energy employed in the system; that difference consisting in generating the necessary amount of electrical energy with comparatively high electromotive force, and comparatively low current, instead of contrariwise. for this reason, the use of carbon filaments, one-sixty-fourth of an inch in diameter or less, instead of carbon burners one- thirty-second of an inch in diameter or more, not only worked an enormous economy in conductors, but also necessitated a great change in generators, and did both according to a philosophy, which edison was the first to know, and which is stated in this paragraph in its simplest form and aspect, and which lies at the foundation of the incandescent electric lighting of the world."] no sooner had the truth of this new principle been established than the work to establish it firmly and commercially was carried on more assiduously than ever. the next immediate step was a further investigation of the possibilities of improving the quality of the carbon filament. edison had previously made a vast number of experiments with carbonized paper for various electrical purposes, with such good results that he once more turned to it and now made fine filament-like loops of this material which were put into other lamps. these proved even more successful (commercially considered) than the carbonized thread--so much so that after a number of such lamps had been made and put through severe tests, the manufacture of lamps from these paper carbons was begun and carried on continuously. this necessitated first the devising and making of a large number of special tools for cutting the carbon filaments and for making and putting together the various parts of the lamps. meantime, great excitement had been caused in this country and in europe by the announcement of edison's success. in the old world, scientists generally still declared the impossibility of subdividing the electric-light current, and in the public press mr. edison was denounced as a dreamer. other names of a less complimentary nature were applied to him, even though his lamp were actually in use, and the principle of commercial incandescent lighting had been established. between october , , and december , , some hundreds of these paper-carbon lamps had been made and put into actual use, not only in the laboratory, but in the streets and several residences at menlo park, new jersey, causing great excitement and bringing many visitors from far and near. on the latter date a full-page article appeared in the new york herald which so intensified the excited feeling that mr. edison deemed it advisable to make a public exhibition. on new year's eve, , special trains were run to menlo park by the pennsylvania railroad, and over three thousand persons took advantage of the opportunity to go out there and witness this demonstration for themselves. in this great crowd were many public officials and men of prominence in all walks of life, who were enthusiastic in their praises. in the mean time, the mind that conceived and made practical this invention could not rest content with anything less than perfection, so far as it could be realized. edison was not satisfied with paper carbons. they were not fully up to the ideal that he had in mind. what he sought was a perfectly uniform and homogeneous carbon, one like the "one-hoss shay," that had no weak spots to break down at inopportune times. he began to carbonize everything in nature that he could lay hands on. in his laboratory note-books are innumerable jottings of the things that were carbonized and tried, such as tissue-paper, soft paper, all kinds of cardboards, drawing-paper of all grades, paper saturated with tar, all kinds of threads, fish-line, threads rubbed with tarred lampblack, fine threads plaited together in strands, cotton soaked in boiling tar, lamp-wick, twine, tar and lampblack mixed with a proportion of lime, vulcanized fibre, celluloid, boxwood, cocoanut hair and shell, spruce, hickory, baywood, cedar and maple shavings, rosewood, punk, cork, bagging, flax, and a host of other things. he also extended his searches far into the realms of nature in the line of grasses, plants, canes, and similar products, and in these experiments at that time and later he carbonized, made into lamps, and tested no fewer than six thousand different species of vegetable growths. the reasons for such prodigious research are not apparent on the face of the subject, nor is this the occasion to enter into an explanation, as that alone would be sufficient to fill a fair-sized book. suffice it to say that edison's omnivorous reading, keen observation, power of assimilating facts and natural phenomena, and skill in applying the knowledge thus attained to whatever was in hand, now came into full play in determining that the results he desired could only be obtained in certain directions. at this time he was investigating everything with a microscope, and one day in the early part of he noticed upon a table in the laboratory an ordinary palm-leaf fan. he picked it up and, looking it over, observed that it had a binding rim made of bamboo, cut from the outer edge of the cane; a very long strip. he examined this, and then gave it to one of his assistants, telling him to cut it up and get out of it all the filaments he could, carbonize them, put them into lamps, and try them. the results of this trial were exceedingly successful, far better than with anything else thus far used; indeed, so much so, that after further experiments and microscopic examinations edison was convinced that he was now on the right track for making a thoroughly stable, commercial lamp; and shortly afterward he sent a man to japan to procure further supplies of bamboo. the fascinating story of the bamboo hunt will be told later; but even this bamboo lamp was only one item of a complete system to be devised--a system that has since completely revolutionized the art of interior illumination. reference has been made in this chapter to the preliminary study that edison brought to bear on the development of the gas art and industry. this study was so exhaustive that one can only compare it to the careful investigation made in advance by any competent war staff of the elements of strength and weakness, on both sides, in a possible campaign. a popular idea of edison that dies hard, pictures a breezy, slap-dash, energetic inventor arriving at new results by luck and intuition, making boastful assertions and then winning out by mere chance. the native simplicity of the man, the absence of pose and ceremony, do much to strengthen this notion; but the real truth is that while gifted with unusual imagination, edison's march to the goal of a new invention is positively humdrum and monotonous in its steady progress. no one ever saw edison in a hurry; no one ever saw him lazy; and that which he did with slow, careful scrutiny six months ago, he will be doing with just as much calm deliberation of research six months hence--and six years hence if necessary. if, for instance, he were asked to find the most perfect pebble on the atlantic shore of new jersey, instead of hunting here, there, and everywhere for the desired object, we would no doubt find him patiently screening the entire beach, sifting out the most perfect stones and eventually, by gradual exclusion, reaching the long-sought-for pebble; and the mere fact that in this search years might be taken, would not lessen his enthusiasm to the slightest extent. in the "prospectus book" among the series of famous note-books, all the references and data apply to gas. the book is numbered , falls into the period now dealt with, and runs along casually with items spread out over two or three years. all these notes refer specifically to "electricity vs. gas as general illuminants," and cover an astounding range of inquiry and comment. one of the very first notes tells the whole story: "object, edison to effect exact imitation of all done by gas, so as to replace lighting by gas by lighting by electricity. to improve the illumination to such an extent as to meet all requirements of natural, artificial, and commercial conditions." a large programme, but fully executed! the notes, it will be understood, are all in edison's handwriting. they go on to observe that "a general system of distribution is the only possible means of economical illumination," and they dismiss isolated-plant lighting as in mills and factories as of so little importance to the public--"we shall leave the consideration of this out of this book." the shrewd prophecy is made that gas will be manufactured less for lighting, as the result of electrical competition, and more and more for heating, etc., thus enlarging its market and increasing its income. comment is made on kerosene and its cost, and all kinds of general statistics are jotted down as desirable. data are to be obtained on lamp and dynamo efficiency, and "another review of the whole thing as worked out upon pure science principles by rowland, young, trowbridge; also rowland on the possibilities and probabilities of cheaper production by better manufacture--higher incandescence without decrease of life of lamps." notes are also made on meters and motors. "it doesn't matter if electricity is used for light or for power"; while small motors, it is observed, can be used night or day, and small steam-engines are inconvenient. again the shrewd comment: "generally poorest district for light, best for power, thus evening up whole city--the effect of this on investment." it is pointed out that "previous inventions failed--necessities for commercial success and accomplishment by edison. edison's great effort--not to make a large light or a blinding light, but a small light having the mildness of gas." curves are then called for of iron and copper investment--also energy line--curves of candle-power and electromotive force; curves on motors; graphic representation of the consumption of gas january to december; tables and formulae; representations graphically of what one dollar will buy in different kinds of light; "table, weight of copper required different distance, -ohm lamp, candles"; table with curves showing increased economy by larger engine, higher power, etc. there is not much that is dilettante about all this. note is made of an article in april, , putting the total amount of gas investment in the whole world at that time at $ , , , ; which is now ( ) about the amount of the electric-lighting investment in the united states. incidentally a note remarks: "so unpleasant is the effect of the products of gas that in the new madison square theatre every gas jet is ventilated by special tubes to carry away the products of combustion." in short, there is no aspect of the new problem to which edison failed to apply his acutest powers; and the speed with which the new system was worked out and introduced was simply due to his initial mastery of all the factors in the older art. luther stieringer, an expert gas engineer and inventor, whose services were early enlisted, once said that edison knew more about gas than any other man he had ever met. the remark is an evidence of the kind of preparation edison gave himself for his new task. chapter xii memories of menlo park from the spring of to edison lived and did his work at menlo park; and at this stage of the narrative, midway in that interesting and eventful period, it is appropriate to offer a few notes and jottings on the place itself, around which tradition is already weaving its fancies, just as at the time the outpouring of new inventions from it invested the name with sudden prominence and with the glamour of romance. "in i moved," says edison, "to menlo park, new jersey, on the pennsylvania railroad, several miles below elizabeth. the move was due to trouble i had about rent. i had rented a small shop in newark, on the top floor of a padlock factory, by the month. i gave notice that i would give it up at the end of the month, paid the rent, moved out, and delivered the keys. shortly afterward i was served with a paper, probably a judgment, wherein i was to pay nine months' rent. there was some law, it seems, that made a monthly renter liable for a year. this seemed so unjust that i determined to get out of a place that permitted such injustice." for several sundays he walked through different parts of new jersey with two of his assistants before he decided on menlo park. the change was a fortunate one, for the inventor had married miss mary e. stillwell, and was now able to establish himself comfortably with his wife and family while enjoying immediate access to the new laboratory. every moment thus saved was valuable. to-day the place and region have gone back to the insignificance from which edison's genius lifted them so startlingly. a glance from the car windows reveals only a gently rolling landscape dotted with modest residences and unpretentious barns; and there is nothing in sight by way of memorial to suggest that for nearly a decade this spot was the scene of the most concentrated and fruitful inventive activity the world has ever known. close to the menlo park railway station is a group of gaunt and deserted buildings, shelter of the casual tramp, and slowly crumbling away when not destroyed by the carelessness of some ragged smoker. this silent group of buildings comprises the famous old laboratory and workshops of mr. edison, historic as being the birthplace of the carbon transmitter, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, and the spot where edison also worked out his systems of electrical distribution, his commercial dynamo, his electric railway, his megaphone, his tasimeter, and many other inventions of greater or lesser degree. here he continued, moreover, his earlier work on the quadruplex, sextuplex, multiplex, and automatic telegraphs, and did his notable pioneer work in wireless telegraphy. as the reader knows, it had been a master passion with edison from boyhood up to possess a laboratory, in which with free use of his own time and powers, and with command of abundant material resources, he could wrestle with nature and probe her closest secrets. thus, from the little cellar at port huron, from the scant shelves in a baggage car, from the nooks and corners of dingy telegraph offices, and the grimy little shops in new york and newark, he had now come to the proud ownership of an establishment to which his favorite word "laboratory" might justly be applied. here he could experiment to his heart's content and invent on a larger, bolder scale than ever--and he did! menlo park was the merest hamlet. omitting the laboratory structures, it had only about seven houses, the best looking of which edison lived in, a place that had a windmill pumping water into a reservoir. one of the stories of the day was that edison had his front gate so connected with the pumping plant that every visitor as he opened or closed the gate added involuntarily to the supply in the reservoir. two or three of the houses were occupied by the families of members of the staff; in the others boarders were taken, the laboratory, of course, furnishing all the patrons. near the railway station was a small saloon kept by an old scotchman named davis, where billiards were played in idle moments, and where in the long winter evenings the hot stove was a centre of attraction to loungers and story-tellers. the truth is that there was very little social life of any kind possible under the strenuous conditions prevailing at the laboratory, where, if anywhere, relaxation was enjoyed at odd intervals of fatigue and waiting. the main laboratory was a spacious wooden building of two floors. the office was in this building at first, until removed to the brick library when that was finished. there s. l. griffin, an old telegraph friend of edison, acted as his secretary and had charge of a voluminous and amazing correspondence. the office employees were the carman brothers and the late john f. randolph, afterwards secretary. according to mr. francis jehl, of budapest, then one of the staff, to whom the writers are indebted for a great deal of valuable data on this period: "it was on the upper story of this laboratory that the most important experiments were executed, and where the incandescent lamp was born. this floor consisted of a large hall containing several long tables, upon which could be found all the various instruments, scientific and chemical apparatus that the arts at that time could produce. books lay promiscuously about, while here and there long lines of bichromate-of-potash cells could be seen, together with experimental models of ideas that edison or his assistants were engaged upon. the side walls of this hall were lined with shelves filled with bottles, phials, and other receptacles containing every imaginable chemical and other material that could be obtained, while at the end of this hall, and near the organ which stood in the rear, was a large glass case containing the world's most precious metals in sheet and wire form, together with very rare and costly chemicals. when evening came on, and the last rays of the setting sun penetrated through the side windows, this hall looked like a veritable faust laboratory. "on the ground floor we had our testing-table, which stood on two large pillars of brick built deep into the earth in order to get rid of all vibrations on account of the sensitive instruments that were upon it. there was the thomson reflecting mirror galvanometer and electrometer, while nearby were the standard cells by which the galvanometers were adjusted and standardized. this testing-table was connected by means of wires with all parts of the laboratory and machine-shop, so that measurements could be conveniently made from a distance, as in those days we had no portable and direct-reading instruments, such as now exist. opposite this table we installed, later on, our photometrical chamber, which was constructed on the bunsen principle. a little way from this table, and separated by a partition, we had the chemical laboratory with its furnaces and stink-chambers. later on another chemical laboratory was installed near the photometer-room, and this dr. a. haid had charge of." next to the laboratory in importance was the machine-shop, a large and well-lighted building of brick, at one end of which there was the boiler and engine-room. this shop contained light and heavy lathes, boring and drilling machines, all kinds of planing machines; in fact, tools of all descriptions, so that any apparatus, however delicate or heavy, could be made and built as might be required by edison in experimenting. mr. john kruesi had charge of this shop, and was assisted by a number of skilled mechanics, notably john ott, whose deft fingers and quick intuitive grasp of the master's ideas are still in demand under the more recent conditions at the llewellyn park laboratory in orange. between the machine-shop and the laboratory was a small building of wood used as a carpenter-shop, where tom logan plied his art. nearby was the gasoline plant. before the incandescent lamp was perfected, the only illumination was from gasoline gas; and that was used later for incandescent-lamp glass-blowing, which was done in another small building on one side of the laboratory. apparently little or no lighting service was obtained from the wallace-farmer arc lamps secured from ansonia, connecticut. the dynamo was probably needed for edison's own experiments. on the outskirts of the property was a small building in which lampblack was crudely but carefully manufactured and pressed into very small cakes, for use in the edison carbon transmitters of that time. the night-watchman, alfred swanson, took care of this curious plant, which consisted of a battery of petroleum lamps that were forced to burn to the sooting point. during his rounds in the night swanson would find time to collect from the chimneys the soot that the lamps gave. it was then weighed out into very small portions, which were pressed into cakes or buttons by means of a hand-press. these little cakes were delicately packed away between layers of cotton in small, light boxes and shipped to bergmann in new york, by whom the telephone transmitters were being made. a little later the edison electric railway was built on the confines of the property out through the woods, at first only a third of a mile in length, but reaching ultimately to pumptown, almost three miles away. mr. edison's own words may be quoted as to the men with whom he surrounded himself here and upon whose services he depended principally for help in the accomplishment of his aims. in an autobiographical article in the electrical world of march , , he says: "it is interesting to note that in addition to those mentioned above (charles batchelor and frank upton), i had around me other men who ever since have remained active in the field, such as messrs. francis jehl, william j. hammer, martin force, ludwig k. boehm, not forgetting that good friend and co-worker, the late john kruesi. they found plenty to do in the various developments of the art, and as i now look back i sometimes wonder how we did so much in so short a time." mr. jehl in his reminiscences adds another name to the above--namely, that of john w. lawson, and then goes on to say: "these are the names of the pioneers of incandescent lighting, who were continuously at the side of edison day and night for some years, and who, under his guidance, worked upon the carbon-filament lamp from its birth to ripe maturity. these men all had complete faith in his ability and stood by him as on a rock, guarding their work with the secretiveness of a burglar-proof safe. whenever it leaked out in the world that edison was succeeding in his work on the electric light, spies and others came to the park; so it was of the utmost importance that the experiments and their results should be kept a secret until edison had secured the protection of the patent office." with this staff was associated from the first mr. e. h. johnson, whose work with mr. edison lay chiefly, however, outside the laboratory, taking him to all parts of the country and to europe. there were also to be regarded as detached members of it the bergmann brothers, manufacturing for mr. edison in new york, and incessantly experimenting for him. in addition there must be included mr. samuel insull, whose activities for many years as private secretary and financial manager were devoted solely to mr. edison's interests, with menlo park as a centre and main source of anxiety as to pay-rolls and other constantly recurring obligations. the names of yet other associates occur from time to time in this narrative--"edison men" who have been very proud of their close relationship to the inventor and his work at old menlo. "there was also mr. charles l. clarke, who devoted himself mainly to engineering matters, and later on acted as chief engineer of the edison electric light company for some years. then there were william holzer and james hipple, both of whom took an active part in the practical development of the glass-blowing department of the laboratory, and, subsequently, at the first edison lamp factory at menlo park. later on messrs. jehl, hipple, and force assisted mr. batchelor to install the lamp-works of the french edison company at ivry-sur-seine. then there were messrs. charles t. hughes, samuel d. mott, and charles t. mott, who devoted their time chiefly to commercial affairs. mr. hughes conducted most of this work, and later on took a prominent part in edison's electric-railway experiments. his business ability was on a high level, while his personal character endeared him to us all." among other now well-known men who came to us and assisted in various kinds of work were messrs. acheson, worth, crosby, herrick, and hill, while doctor haid was placed by mr. edison in charge of a special chemical laboratory. dr. e. l. nichols was also with us for a short time conducting a special series of experiments. there was also mr. isaacs, who did a great deal of photographic work, and to whom we must be thankful for the pictures of menlo park in connection with edison's work. "among others who were added to mr. kruesi's staff in the machine-shop were messrs. j. h. vail and w. s. andrews. mr. vail had charge of the dynamo-room. he had a good general knowledge of machinery, and very soon acquired such familiarity with the dynamos that he could skip about among them with astonishing agility to regulate their brushes or to throw rosin on the belts when they began to squeal. later on he took an active part in the affairs and installations of the edison light company. mr. andrews stayed on mr. kruesi's staff as long as the laboratory machine-shop was kept open, after which he went into the employ of the edison electric light company and became actively engaged in the commercial and technical exploitation of the system. another man who was with us at menlo park was mr. herman claudius, an austrian, who at one time was employed in connection with the state telegraphs of his country. to him mr. edison assigned the task of making a complete model of the network of conductors for the contemplated first station in new york." mr. francis r. upton, who was early employed by mr. edison as his mathematician, furnishes a pleasant, vivid picture of his chief associates engaged on the memorable work at menlo park. he says: "mr. charles batchelor was mr. edison's principal assistant at that time. he was an englishman, and came to this country to set up the thread-weaving machinery for the clark thread-works. he was a most intelligent, patient, competent, and loyal assistant to mr. edison. i remember distinctly seeing him work many hours to mount a small filament; and his hand would be as steady and his patience as unyielding at the end of those many hours as it was at the beginning, in spite of repeated failures. he was a wonderful mechanic; the control that he had of his fingers was marvellous, and his eyesight was sharp. mr. batchelor's judgment and good sense were always in evidence. "mr. kruesi was the superintendent, a swiss trained in the best swiss ideas of accuracy. he was a splendid mechanic with a vigorous temper, and wonderful ability to work continuously and to get work out of men. it was an ideal combination, that of edison, batchelor, and kruesi. mr. edison with his wonderful flow of ideas which were sharply defined in his mind, as can be seen by any of the sketches that he made, as he evidently always thinks in three dimensions; mr. kruesi, willing to take the ideas, and capable of comprehending them, would distribute the work so as to get it done with marvellous quickness and great accuracy. mr. batchelor was always ready for any special fine experimenting or observation, and could hold to whatever he was at as long as mr. edison wished; and always brought to bear on what he was at the greatest skill." while edison depended upon upton for his mathematical work, he was wont to check it up in a very practical manner, as evidenced by the following incident described by mr. jehl: "i was once with mr. upton calculating some tables which he had put me on, when mr. edison appeared with a glass bulb having a pear-shaped appearance in his hand. it was the kind that we were going to use for our lamp experiments; and mr. edison asked mr. upton to please calculate for him its cubic contents in centimetres. now mr. upton was a very able mathematician, who, after he finished his studies at princeton, went to germany and got his final gloss under that great master, helmholtz. whatever he did and worked on was executed in a pure mathematical manner, and any wrangler at oxford would have been delighted to see him juggle with integral and differential equations, with a dexterity that was surprising. he drew the shape of the bulb exactly on paper, and got the equation of its lines with which he was going to calculate its contents, when mr. edison again appeared and asked him what it was. he showed edison the work he had already done on the subject, and told him that he would very soon finish calculating it. 'why,' said edison, 'i would simply take that bulb and fill it with mercury and weigh it; and from the weight of the mercury and its specific gravity i'll get it in five minutes, and use less mental energy than is necessary in such a fatiguing operation.'" menlo park became ultimately the centre of edison's business life as it was of his inventing. after the short distasteful period during the introduction of his lighting system, when he spent a large part of his time at the offices at fifth avenue, new york, or on the actual work connected with the new york edison installation, he settled back again in menlo park altogether. mr. samuel insull describes the business methods which prevailed throughout the earlier menlo park days of "storm and stress," and the curious conditions with which he had to deal as private secretary: "i never attempted to systematize edison's business life. edison's whole method of work would upset the system of any office. he was just as likely to be at work in his laboratory at midnight as midday. he cared not for the hours of the day or the days of the week. if he was exhausted he might more likely be asleep in the middle of the day than in the middle of the night, as most of his work in the way of inventions was done at night. i used to run his office on as close business methods as my experience admitted; and i would get at him whenever it suited his convenience. sometimes he would not go over his mail for days at a time; but other times he would go regularly to his office in the morning. at other times my engagements used to be with him to go over his business affairs at menlo park at night, if i was occupied in new york during the day. in fact, as a matter of convenience i used more often to get at him at night, as it left my days free to transact his affairs, and enabled me, probably at a midnight luncheon, to get a few minutes of his time to look over his correspondence and get his directions as to what i should do in some particular negotiation or matter of finance. while it was a matter of suiting edison's convenience as to when i should transact business with him, it also suited my own ideas, as it enabled me after getting through my business with him to enjoy the privilege of watching him at his work, and to learn something about the technical side of matters. whatever knowledge i may have of the electric light and power industry i feel i owe it to the tuition of edison. he was about the most willing tutor, and i must confess that he had to be a patient one." here again occurs the reference to the incessant night-work at menlo park, a note that is struck in every reminiscence and in every record of the time. but it is not to be inferred that the atmosphere of grim determination and persistent pursuit of the new invention characteristic of this period made life a burden to the small family of laborers associated with edison. many a time during the long, weary nights of experimenting edison would call a halt for refreshments, which he had ordered always to be sent in when night-work was in progress. everything would be dropped, all present would join in the meal, and the last good story or joke would pass around. in his notes mr. jehl says: "our lunch always ended with a cigar, and i may mention here that although edison was never fastidious in eating, he always relished a good cigar, and seemed to find in it consolation and solace.... it often happened that while we were enjoying the cigars after our midnight repast, one of the boys would start up a tune on the organ and we would all sing together, or one of the others would give a solo. another of the boys had a voice that sounded like something between the ring of an old tomato can and a pewter jug. he had one song that he would sing while we roared with laughter. he was also great in imitating the tin-foil phonograph.... when boehm was in good-humor he would play his zither now and then, and amuse us by singing pretty german songs. on many of these occasions the laboratory was the rendezvous of jolly and convivial visitors, mostly old friends and acquaintances of mr. edison. some of the office employees would also drop in once in a while, and as everybody present was always welcome to partake of the midnight meal, we all enjoyed these gatherings. after a while, when we were ready to resume work, our visitors would intimate that they were going home to bed, but we fellows could stay up and work, and they would depart, generally singing some song like good-night, ladies! . . . it often happened that when edison had been working up to three or four o'clock in the morning, he would lie down on one of the laboratory tables, and with nothing but a couple of books for a pillow, would fall into a sound sleep. he said it did him more good than being in a soft bed, which spoils a man. some of the laboratory assistants could be seen now and then sleeping on a table in the early morning hours. if their snoring became objectionable to those still at work, the 'calmer' was applied. this machine consisted of a babbitt's soap box without a cover. upon it was mounted a broad ratchet-wheel with a crank, while into the teeth of the wheel there played a stout, elastic slab of wood. the box would be placed on the table where the snorer was sleeping and the crank turned rapidly. the racket thus produced was something terrible, and the sleeper would jump up as though a typhoon had struck the laboratory. the irrepressible spirit of humor in the old days, although somewhat strenuous at times, caused many a moment of hilarity which seemed to refresh the boys, and enabled them to work with renewed vigor after its manifestation." mr. upton remarks that often during the period of the invention of the incandescent lamp, when under great strain and fatigue, edison would go to the organ and play tunes in a primitive way, and come back to crack jokes with the staff. "but i have often felt that mr. edison never could comprehend the limitations of the strength of other men, as his own physical and mental strength have always seemed to be without limit. he could work continuously as long as he wished, and had sleep at his command. his sleep was always instant, profound, and restful. he has told me that he never dreamed. i have known mr. edison now for thirty-one years, and feel that he has always kept his mind direct and simple, going straight to the root of troubles. one of the peculiarities i have noticed is that i have never known him to break into a conversation going on around him, and ask what people were talking about. the nearest he would ever come to it was when there had evidently been some story told, and his face would express a desire to join in the laugh, which would immediately invite telling the story to him." next to those who worked with edison at the laboratory and were with him constantly at menlo park were the visitors, some of whom were his business associates, some of them scientific men, and some of them hero-worshippers and curiosity-hunters. foremost in the first category was mr. e. h. johnson, who was in reality edison's most intimate friend, and was required for constant consultation; but whose intense activity, remarkable grasp of electrical principles, and unusual powers of exposition, led to his frequent detachment for long trips, including those which resulted in the introduction of the telephone, phonograph, and electric light in england and on the continent. a less frequent visitor was mr. s. bergmann, who had all he needed to occupy his time in experimenting and manufacturing, and whose contemporaneous wooster street letter-heads advertised edison's inventions as being made there, among the scientists were prof. george f. barker, of philadelphia, a big, good-natured philosopher, whose valuable advice edison esteemed highly. in sharp contrast to him was the earnest, serious rowland, of johns hopkins university, afterward the leading american physicist of his day. profs. c. f. brackett and c. f. young, of princeton university, were often received, always interested in what edison was doing, and proud that one of their own students, mr. upton, was taking such a prominent part in the development of the work. soon after the success of the lighting experiments and the installation at menlo park became known, edison was besieged by persons from all parts of the world anxious to secure rights and concessions for their respective countries. among these was mr. louis rau, of paris, who organized the french edison company, the pioneer edison lighting corporation in europe, and who, with the aid of mr. batchelor, established lamp-works and a machine-shop at ivry sur-seine, near paris, in . it was there that mr. nikola tesla made his entree into the field of light and power, and began his own career as an inventor; and there also mr. etienne fodor, general manager of the hungarian general electric company at budapest, received his early training. it was he who erected at athens the first european edison station on the now universal three-wire system. another visitor from europe, a little later, was mr. emil rathenau, the present director of the great allgemeine elektricitaets gesellschaft of germany. he secured the rights for the empire, and organized the berlin edison system, now one of the largest in the world. through his extraordinary energy and enterprise the business made enormous strides, and mr. rathenau has become one of the most conspicuous industrial figures in his native country. from italy came professor colombo, later a cabinet minister, with his friend signor buzzi, of milan. the rights were secured for the peninsula; colombo and his friends organized the italian edison company, and erected at milan the first central station in that country. mr. john w. lieb, jr., now a vice-president of the new york edison company, was sent over by mr. edison to steer the enterprise technically, and spent ten years in building it up, with such brilliant success that he was later decorated as commander of the order of the crown of italy by king victor. another young american enlisted into european service was mr. e. g. acheson, the inventor of carborundum, who built a number of plants in italy and france before he returned home. mr. lieb has since become president of the american institute of electrical engineers and the association of edison illuminating companies, while doctor acheson has been president of the american electrochemical society. switzerland sent messrs. turrettini, biedermann, and thury, all distinguished engineers, to negotiate for rights in the republic; and so it went with regard to all the other countries of europe, as well as those of south america. it was a question of keeping such visitors away rather than of inviting them to take up the exploitation of the edison system; for what time was not spent in personal interviews was required for the masses of letters from every country under the sun, all making inquiries, offering suggestions, proposing terms. nor were the visitors merely those on business bent. there were the lion-hunters and celebrities, of whom sarah bernhardt may serve as a type. one visit of note was that paid by lieut. g. w. de long, who had an earnest and protracted conversation with edison over the arctic expedition he was undertaking with the aid of mr. james gordon bennett, of the new york herald. the jeannette was being fitted out, and edison told de long that he would make and present him with a small dynamo machine, some incandescent lamps, and an arc lamp. while the little dynamo was being built all the men in the laboratory wrote their names on the paper insulation that was wound upon the iron core of the armature. as the jeannette had no steam-engine on board that could be used for the purpose, edison designed the dynamo so that it could be worked by man power and told lieutenant de long "it would keep the boys warm up in the arctic," when they generated current with it. the ill-fated ship never returned from her voyage, but went down in the icy waters of the north, there to remain until some future cataclysm of nature, ten thousand years hence, shall reveal the ship and the first marine dynamo as curious relics of a remote civilization. edison also furnished de long with a set of telephones provided with extensible circuits, so that parties on the ice-floes could go long distances from the ship and still keep in communication with her. so far as the writers can ascertain this is the first example of "field telephony." another nautical experiment that he made at this time, suggested probably by the requirements of the arctic expedition, was a buoy that was floated in new york harbor, and which contained a small edison dynamo and two or three incandescent lamps. the dynamo was driven by the wave or tide motion through intermediate mechanism, and thus the lamps were lit up from time to time, serving as signals. these were the prototypes of the lighted buoys which have since become familiar, as in the channel off sandy hook. one notable afternoon was that on which the new york board of aldermen took a special train out to menlo park to see the lighting system with its conductors underground in operation. the edison electric illuminating company was applying for a franchise, and the aldermen, for lack of scientific training and specific practical information, were very sceptical on the subject--as indeed they might well be. "mr. edison demonstrated personally the details and merits of the system to them. the voltage was increased to a higher pressure than usual, and all the incandescent lamps at menlo park did their best to win the approbation of the new york city fathers. after edison had finished exhibiting all the good points of his system, he conducted his guests upstairs in the laboratory, where a long table was spread with the best things that one of the most prominent new york caterers could furnish. the laboratory witnessed high times that night, for all were in the best of humor, and many a bottle was drained in toasting the health of edison and the aldermen." this was one of the extremely rare occasions on which edison has addressed an audience; but the stake was worth the effort. the representatives of new york could with justice drink the health of the young inventor, whose system is one of the greatest boons the city has ever had conferred upon it. among other frequent visitors was mr, edison's father, "one of those amiable, patriarchal characters with a horace greeley beard, typical americans of the old school," who would sometimes come into the laboratory with his two grandchildren, a little boy and girl called "dash" and "dot." he preferred to sit and watch his brilliant son at work "with an expression of satisfaction on his face that indicated a sense of happiness and content that his boy, born in that distant, humble home in ohio, had risen to fame and brought such honor upon the name. it was, indeed, a pathetic sight to see a father venerate his son as the elder edison did." not less at home was mr. mackenzie, the mt. clemens station agent, the life of whose child edison had saved when a train newsboy. the old scotchman was one of the innocent, chartered libertines of the place, with an unlimited stock of good jokes and stories, but seldom of any practical use. on one occasion, however, when everything possible and impossible under the sun was being carbonized for lamp filaments, he allowed a handful of his bushy red beard to be taken for the purpose; and his laugh was the loudest when the edison-mackenzie hair lamps were brought up to incandescence--their richness in red rays being slyly attributed to the nature of the filamentary material! oddly enough, a few years later, some inventor actually took out a patent for making incandescent lamps with carbonized hair for filaments! yet other visitors again haunted the place, and with the following reminiscence of one of them, from mr. edison himself, this part of the chapter must close: "at menlo park one cold winter night there came into the laboratory a strange man in a most pitiful condition. he was nearly frozen, and he asked if he might sit by the stove. in a few moments he asked for the head man, and i was brought forward. he had a head of abnormal size, with highly intellectual features and a very small and emaciated body. he said he was suffering very much, and asked if i had any morphine. as i had about everything in chemistry that could be bought, i told him i had. he requested that i give him some, so i got the morphine sulphate. he poured out enough to kill two men, when i told him that we didn't keep a hotel for suicides, and he had better cut the quantity down. he then bared his legs and arms, and they were literally pitted with scars, due to the use of hypodermic syringes. he said he had taken it for years, and it required a big dose to have any effect. i let him go ahead. in a short while he seemed like another man and began to tell stories, and there were about fifty of us who sat around listening until morning. he was a man of great intelligence and education. he said he was a jew, but there was no distinctive feature to verify this assertion. he continued to stay around until he finished every combination of morphine with an acid that i had, probably ten ounces all told. then he asked if he could have strychnine. i had an ounce of the sulphate. he took enough to kill a horse, and asserted it had as good an effect as morphine. when this was gone, the only thing i had left was a chunk of crude opium, perhaps two or three pounds. he chewed this up and disappeared. i was greatly disappointed, because i would have laid in another stock of morphine to keep him at the laboratory. about a week afterward he was found dead in a barn at perth amboy." returning to the work itself, note of which has already been made in this and preceding chapters, we find an interesting and unique reminiscence in mr. jehl's notes of the reversion to carbon as a filament in the lamps, following an exhibition of metallic-filament lamps given in the spring of to the men in the syndicate advancing the funds for these experiments: "they came to menlo park on a late afternoon train from new york. it was already dark when they were conducted into the machine-shop, where we had several platinum lamps installed in series. when edison had finished explaining the principles and details of the lamp, he asked kruesi to let the dynamo machine run. it was of the gramme type, as our first dynamo of the edison design was not yet finished. edison then ordered the 'juice' to be turned on slowly. to-day i can see those lamps rising to a cherry red, like glowbugs, and hear mr. edison saying 'a little more juice,' and the lamps began to glow. 'a little more' is the command again, and then one of the lamps emits for an instant a light like a star in the distance, after which there is an eruption and a puff; and the machine-shop is in total darkness. we knew instantly which lamp had failed, and batchelor replaced that by a good one, having a few in reserve near by. the operation was repeated two or three times with about the same results, after which the party went into the library until it was time to catch the train for new york." such an exhibition was decidedly discouraging, and it was not a jubilant party that returned to new york, but: "that night edison remained in the laboratory meditating upon the results that the platinum lamp had given so far. i was engaged reading a book near a table in the front, while edison was seated in a chair by a table near the organ. with his head turned downward, and that conspicuous lock of hair hanging loosely on one side, he looked like napoleon in the celebrated picture, on the eve of a great battle. those days were heroic ones, for he then battled against mighty odds, and the prospects were dim and not very encouraging. in cases of emergency edison always possessed a keen faculty of deciding immediately and correctly what to do; and the decision he then arrived at was predestined to be the turning-point that led him on to ultimate success.... after that exhibition we had a house-cleaning at the laboratory, and the metallic-filament lamps were stored away, while preparations were made for our experiments on carbon lamps." thus the work went on. menlo park has hitherto been associated in the public thought with the telephone, phonograph, and incandescent lamp; but it was there, equally, that the edison dynamo and system of distribution were created and applied to their specific purposes. while all this study of a possible lamp was going on, mr. upton was busy calculating the economy of the "multiple arc" system, and making a great many tables to determine what resistance a lamp should have for the best results, and at what point the proposed general system would fall off in economy when the lamps were of the lower resistance that was then generally assumed to be necessary. the world at that time had not the shadow of an idea as to what the principles of a multiple arc system should be, enabling millions of lamps to be lighted off distributing circuits, each lamp independent of every other; but at menlo park at that remote period in the seventies mr. edison's mathematician was formulating the inventor's conception in clear, instructive figures; "and the work then executed has held its own ever since." from the beginning of his experiments on electric light, mr. edison had a well-defined idea of producing not only a practicable lamp, but also a system of commercial electric lighting. such a scheme involved the creation of an entirely new art, for there was nothing on the face of the earth from which to draw assistance or precedent, unless we except the elementary forms of dynamos then in existence. it is true, there were several types of machines in use for the then very limited field of arc lighting, but they were regarded as valueless as a part of a great comprehensive scheme which could supply everybody with light. such machines were confessedly inefficient, although representing the farthest reach of a young art. a commission appointed at that time by the franklin institute, and including prof. elihu thomson, investigated the merits of existing dynamos and reported as to the best of them: "the gramme machine is the most economical as a means of converting motive force into electricity; it utilizes in the arc from to per cent. of the motive work produced, after deduction is made for friction and the resistance of the air." they reported also that the brush arc lighting machine "produces in the luminous arc useful work equivalent to per cent. of the motive power employed, or to / per cent. after the friction has been deducted." commercial possibilities could not exist in the face of such low economy as this, and mr. edison realized that he would have to improve the dynamo himself if he wanted a better machine. the scientific world at that time was engaged in a controversy regarding the external and internal resistance of a circuit in which a generator was situated. discussing the subject mr. jehl, in his biographical notes, says: "while this controversy raged in the scientific papers, and criticism and confusion seemed at its height, edison and upton discussed this question very thoroughly, and edison declared he did not intend to build up a system of distribution in which the external resistance would be equal to the internal resistance. he said he was just about going to do the opposite; he wanted a large external resistance and a low internal one. he said he wanted to sell the energy outside of the station and not waste it in the dynamo and conductors, where it brought no profits.... in these later days, when these ideas of edison are used as common property, and are applied in every modern system of distribution, it is astonishing to remember that when they were propounded they met with most vehement antagonism from the world at large." edison, familiar with batteries in telegraphy, could not bring himself to believe that any substitute generator of electrical energy could be efficient that used up half its own possible output before doing an equal amount of outside work. undaunted by the dicta of contemporaneous science, mr. edison attacked the dynamo problem with his accustomed vigor and thoroughness. he chose the drum form for his armature, and experimented with different kinds of iron. cores were made of cast iron, others of forged iron; and still others of sheets of iron of various thicknesses separated from each other by paper or paint. these cores were then allowed to run in an excited field, and after a given time their temperature was measured and noted. by such practical methods edison found that the thin, laminated cores of sheet iron gave the least heat, and had the least amount of wasteful eddy currents. his experiments and ideas on magnetism at that period were far in advance of the time. his work and tests regarding magnetism were repeated later on by hopkinson and kapp, who then elucidated the whole theory mathematically by means of formulae and constants. before this, however, edison had attained these results by pioneer work, founded on his original reasoning, and utilized them in the construction of his dynamo, thus revolutionizing the art of building such machines. after thorough investigation of the magnetic qualities of different kinds of iron, edison began to make a study of winding the cores, first determining the electromotive force generated per turn of wire at various speeds in fields of different intensities. he also considered various forms and shapes for the armature, and by methodical and systematic research obtained the data and best conditions upon which he could build his generator. in the field magnets of his dynamo he constructed the cores and yoke of forged iron having a very large cross-section, which was a new thing in those days. great attention was also paid to all the joints, which were smoothed down so as to make a perfect magnetic contact. the edison dynamo, with its large masses of iron, was a vivid contrast to the then existing types with their meagre quantities of the ferric element. edison also made tests on his field magnets by slowly raising the strength of the exciting current, so that he obtained figures similar to those shown by a magnetic curve, and in this way found where saturation commenced, and where it was useless to expend more current on the field. if he had asked upton at the time to formulate the results of his work in this direction, for publication, he would have anticipated the historic work on magnetism that was executed by the two other investigators; hopkinson and kapp, later on. the laboratory note-books of the period bear abundant evidence of the systematic and searching nature of these experiments and investigations, in the hundreds of pages of notes, sketches, calculations, and tables made at the time by edison, upton, batchelor, jehl, and by others who from time to time were intrusted with special experiments to elucidate some particular point. mr. jehl says: "the experiments on armature-winding were also very interesting. edison had a number of small wooden cores made, at both ends of which we inserted little brass nails, and we wound the wooden cores with twine as if it were wire on an armature. in this way we studied armature-winding, and had matches where each of us had a core, while bets were made as to who would be the first to finish properly and correctly a certain kind of winding. care had to be taken that the wound core corresponded to the direction of the current, supposing it were placed in a field and revolved. after edison had decided this question, upton made drawings and tables from which the real armatures were wound and connected to the commutator. to a student of to-day all this seems simple, but in those days the art of constructing dynamos was about as dark as air navigation is at present.... edison also improved the armature by dividing it and the commutator into a far greater number of sections than up to that time had been the practice. he was also the first to use mica in insulating the commutator sections from each other." in the mean time, during the progress of the investigations on the dynamo, word had gone out to the world that edison expected to invent a generator of greater efficiency than any that existed at the time. again he was assailed and ridiculed by the technical press, for had not the foremost electricians and physicists of europe and america worked for years on the production of dynamos and arc lamps as they then existed? even though this young man at menlo park had done some wonderful things for telegraphy and telephony; even if he had recorded and reproduced human speech, he had his limitations, and could not upset the settled dictum of science that the internal resistance must equal the external resistance. such was the trend of public opinion at the time, but "after mr. kruesi had finished the first practical dynamo, and after mr. upton had tested it thoroughly and verified his figures and results several times--for he also was surprised--edison was able to tell the world that he had made a generator giving an efficiency of per cent." ninety per cent. as against per cent. was a mighty hit, and the world would not believe it. criticism and argument were again at their height, while upton, as edison's duellist, was kept busy replying to private and public challenges of the fact.... "the tremendous progress of the world in the last quarter of a century, owing to the revolution caused by the all-conquering march of 'heavy current engineering,' is the outcome of edison's work at menlo park that raised the efficiency of the dynamo from per cent. to per cent." mr. upton sums it all up very precisely in his remarks upon this period: "what has now been made clear by accurate nomenclature was then very foggy in the text-books. mr. edison had completely grasped the effect of subdivision of circuits, and the influence of wires leading to such subdivisions, when it was most difficult to express what he knew in technical language. i remember distinctly when mr. edison gave me the problem of placing a motor in circuit in multiple arc with a fixed resistance; and i had to work out the problem entirely, as i could find no prior solution. there was nothing i could find bearing upon the counter electromotive force of the armature, and the effect of the resistance of the armature on the work given out by the armature. it was a wonderful experience to have problems given me out of the intuitions of a great mind, based on enormous experience in practical work, and applying to new lines of progress. one of the main impressions left upon me after knowing mr. edison for many years is the marvellous accuracy of his guesses. he will see the general nature of a result long before it can be reached by mathematical calculation. his greatness was always to be clearly seen when difficulties arose. they always made him cheerful, and started him thinking; and very soon would come a line of suggestions which would not end until the difficulty was met and overcome, or found insurmountable. i have often felt that mr. edison got himself purposely into trouble by premature publications and otherwise, so that he would have a full incentive to get himself out of the trouble." this chapter may well end with a statement from mr. jehl, shrewd and observant, as a participator in all the early work of the development of the edison lighting system: "those who were gathered around him in the old menlo park laboratory enjoyed his confidence, and he theirs. nor was this confidence ever abused. he was respected with a respect which only great men can obtain, and he never showed by any word or act that he was their employer in a sense that would hurt the feelings, as is often the case in the ordinary course of business life. he conversed, argued, and disputed with us all as if he were a colleague on the same footing. it was his winning ways and manners that attached us all so loyally to his side, and made us ever ready with a boundless devotion to execute any request or desire." thus does a great magnet, run through a heap of sand and filings, exert its lines of force and attract irresistibly to itself the iron and steel particles that are its affinity, and having sifted them out, leaving the useless dust behind, hold them to itself with responsive tenacity. chapter xiii a world-hunt for filament material in writing about the old experimenting days at menlo park, mr. f. r. upton says: "edison's day is twenty-four hours long, for he has always worked whenever there was anything to do, whether day or night, and carried a force of night workers, so that his experiments could go on continually. if he wanted material, he always made it a principle to have it at once, and never hesitated to use special messengers to get it. i remember in the early days of the electric light he wanted a mercury pump for exhausting the lamps. he sent me to princeton to get it. i got back to metuchen late in the day, and had to carry the pump over to the laboratory on my back that evening, set it up, and work all night and the next day getting results." this characteristic principle of obtaining desired material in the quickest and most positive way manifested itself in the search that edison instituted for the best kind of bamboo for lamp filaments, immediately after the discovery related in a preceding chapter. it is doubtful whether, in the annals of scientific research and experiment, there is anything quite analogous to the story of this search and the various expeditions that went out from the edison laboratory in and subsequent years, to scour the earth for a material so apparently simple as a homogeneous strip of bamboo, or other similar fibre. prolonged and exhaustive experiment, microscopic examination, and an intimate knowledge of the nature of wood and plant fibres, however, had led edison to the conclusion that bamboo or similar fibrous filaments were more suitable than anything else then known for commercial incandescent lamps, and he wanted the most perfect for that purpose. hence, the quickest way was to search the tropics until the proper material was found. the first emissary chosen for this purpose was the late william h. moore, of rahway, new jersey, who left new york in the summer of , bound for china and japan, these being the countries preeminently noted for the production of abundant species of bamboo. on arrival in the east he quickly left the cities behind and proceeded into the interior, extending his search far into the more remote country districts, collecting specimens on his way, and devoting much time to the study of the bamboo, and in roughly testing the relative value of its fibre in canes of one, two, three, four, and five year growths. great bales of samples were sent to edison, and after careful tests a certain variety and growth of japanese bamboo was determined to be the most satisfactory material for filaments that had been found. mr. moore, who was continuing his searches in that country, was instructed to arrange for the cultivation and shipment of regular supplies of this particular species. arrangements to this end were accordingly made with a japanese farmer, who began to make immediate shipments, and who subsequently displayed so much ingenuity in fertilizing and cross-fertilizing that the homogeneity of the product was constantly improved. the use of this bamboo for edison lamp filaments was continued for many years. although mr. moore did not meet with the exciting adventures of some subsequent explorers, he encountered numerous difficulties and novel experiences in his many months of travel through the hinterland of japan and china. the attitude toward foreigners thirty years ago was not as friendly as it has since become, but edison, as usual, had made a happy choice of messengers, as mr. moore's good nature and diplomacy attested. these qualities, together with his persistence and perseverance and faculty of intelligent discrimination in the matter of fibres, helped to make his mission successful, and gave to him the honor of being the one who found the bamboo which was adopted for use as filaments in commercial edison lamps. although edison had satisfied himself that bamboo furnished the most desirable material thus far discovered for incandescent-lamp filaments, he felt that in some part of the world there might be found a natural product of the same general character that would furnish a still more perfect and homogeneous material. in his study of this subject, and during the prosecution of vigorous and searching inquiries in various directions, he learned that mr. john c. brauner, then residing in brooklyn, new york, had an expert knowledge of indigenous plants of the particular kind desired. during the course of a geological survey which he had made for the brazilian government, mr. brauner had examined closely the various species of palms which grow plentifully in that country, and of them there was one whose fibres he thought would be just what edison wanted. accordingly, mr. brauner was sent for and dispatched to brazil in december, , to search for and send samples of this and such other palms, fibres, grasses, and canes as, in his judgment, would be suitable for the experiments then being carried on at menlo park. landing at para, he crossed over into the amazonian province, and thence proceeded through the heart of the country, making his way by canoe on the rivers and their tributaries, and by foot into the forests and marshes of a vast and almost untrodden wilderness. in this manner mr. brauner traversed about two thousand miles of the comparatively unknown interior of southern brazil, and procured a large variety of fibrous specimens, which he shipped to edison a few months later. when these fibres arrived in the united states they were carefully tested and a few of them found suitable but not superior to the japanese bamboo, which was then being exclusively used in the manufacture of commercial edison lamps. later on edison sent out an expedition to explore the wilds of cuba and jamaica. a two months' investigation of the latter island revealed a variety of bamboo growths, of which a great number of specimens were obtained and shipped to menlo park; but on careful test they were found inferior to the japanese bamboo, and hence rejected. the exploration of the glades and swamps of florida by three men extended over a period of five months in a minute search for fibrous woods of the palmetto species. a great variety was found, and over five hundred boxes of specimens were shipped to the laboratory from time to time, but none of them tested out with entirely satisfactory results. the use of japanese bamboo for carbon filaments was therefore continued in the manufacture of lamps, although an incessant search was maintained for a still more perfect material. the spirit of progress, so pervasive in edison's character, led him, however, to renew his investigations further afield by sending out two other men to examine the bamboo and similar growths of those parts of south america not covered by mr. brauner. these two men were frank mcgowan and c. f. hanington, both of whom had been for nearly seven years in the employ of the edison electric light company in new york. the former was a stocky, rugged irishman, possessing the native shrewdness and buoyancy of his race, coupled with undaunted courage and determination; and the latter was a veteran of the civil war, with some knowledge of forest and field, acquired as a sportsman. they left new york in september, , arriving in due time at para, proceeding thence twenty-three hundred miles up the amazon river to iquitos. nothing of an eventful nature occurred during this trip, but on arrival at iquitos the two men separated; mr. mcgowan to explore on foot and by canoe in peru, ecuador, and colombia, while mr. hanington returned by the amazon river to para. thence hanington went by steamer to montevideo, and by similar conveyance up the river de la plata and through uruguay, argentine, and paraguay to the southernmost part of brazil, collecting a large number of specimens of palms and grasses. the adventures of mr. mcgowan, after leaving iquitos, would fill a book if related in detail. the object of the present narrative and the space at the authors' disposal, however, do not permit of more than a brief mention of his experiences. his first objective point was quito, about five hundred miles away, which he proposed to reach on foot and by means of canoeing on the napo river through a wild and comparatively unknown country teeming with tribes of hostile natives. the dangers of the expedition were pictured to him in glowing colors, but spurning prophecies of dire disaster, he engaged some native indians and a canoe and started on his explorations, reaching quito in eighty-seven days, after a thorough search of the country on both sides of the napo river. from quito he went to guayaquil, from there by steamer to buenaventura, and thence by rail, twelve miles, to cordova. from this point he set out on foot to explore the cauca valley and the cordilleras. mr. mcgowan found in these regions a great variety of bamboo, small and large, some species growing seventy-five to one hundred feet in height, and from six to nine inches in diameter. he collected a large number of specimens, which were subsequently sent to orange for edison's examination. after about fifteen months of exploration attended by much hardship and privation, deserted sometimes by treacherous guides, twice laid low by fevers, occasionally in peril from indian attacks, wild animals and poisonous serpents, tormented by insect pests, endangered by floods, one hundred and nineteen days without meat, ninety-eight days without taking off his clothes, mr. mcgowan returned to america, broken in health but having faithfully fulfilled the commission intrusted to him. the evening sun, new york, obtained an interview with him at that time, and in its issue of may , , gave more than a page to a brief story of his interesting adventures, and then commented editorially upon them, as follows: "a romance of science" "the narrative given elsewhere in the evening sun of the wanderings of edison's missionary of science, mr. frank mcgowan, furnishes a new proof that the romances of real life surpass any that the imagination can frame. "in pursuit of a substance that should meet the requirements of the edison incandescent lamp, mr. mcgowan penetrated the wilderness of the amazon, and for a year defied its fevers, beasts, reptiles, and deadly insects in his quest of a material so precious that jealous nature has hidden it in her most secret fastnesses. "no hero of mythology or fable ever dared such dragons to rescue some captive goddess as did this dauntless champion of civilization. theseus, or siegfried, or any knight of the fairy books might envy the victories of edison's irresistible lieutenant. "as a sample story of adventure, mr. mcgowan's narrative is a marvel fit to be classed with the historic journeyings of the greatest travellers. but it gains immensely in interest when we consider that it succeeded in its scientific purpose. the mysterious bamboo was discovered, and large quantities of it were procured and brought to the wizard's laboratory, there to suffer another wondrous change and then to light up our pleasure-haunts and our homes with a gentle radiance." a further, though rather sad, interest attaches to the mcgowan story, for only a short time had elapsed after his return to america when he disappeared suddenly and mysteriously, and in spite of long-continued and strenuous efforts to obtain some light on the subject, no clew or trace of him was ever found. he was a favorite among the edison "oldtimers," and his memory is still cherished, for when some of the "boys" happen to get together, as they occasionally do, some one is almost sure to "wonder what became of poor 'mac.'" he was last seen at mouquin's famous old french restaurant on fulton street, new york, where he lunched with one of the authors of this book and the late luther stieringer. he sat with them for two or three hours discussing his wonderful trip, and telling some fascinating stories of adventure. then the party separated at the ann street door of the restaurant, after making plans to secure the narrative in more detailed form for subsequent use--and mcgowan has not been seen from that hour to this. the trail of the explorer was more instantly lost in new york than in the vast recesses of the amazon swamps. the next and last explorer whom edison sent out in search of natural fibres was mr. james ricalton, of maplewood, new jersey, a school-principal, a well-known traveller, and an ardent student of natural science. mr. ricalton's own story of his memorable expedition is so interesting as to be worthy of repetition here: "a village schoolmaster is not unaccustomed to door-rappings; for the steps of belligerent mothers are often thitherward bent seeking redress for conjured wrongs to their darling boobies. "it was a bewildering moment, therefore, to the maplewood teacher when, in answering a rap at the door one afternoon, he found, instead of an irate mother, a messenger from the laboratory of the world's greatest inventor bearing a letter requesting an audience a few hours later. "being the teacher to whom reference is made, i am now quite willing to confess that for the remainder of that afternoon, less than a problem in euclid would have been sufficient to disqualify me for the remaining scholastic duties of the hour. i felt it, of course, to be no small honor for a humble teacher to be called to the sanctum of thomas a. edison. the letter, however, gave no intimation of the nature of the object for which i had been invited to appear before mr. edison.... "when i was presented to mr. edison his way of setting forth the mission he had designated for me was characteristic of how a great mind conceives vast undertakings and commands great things in few words. at this time mr. edison had discovered that the fibre of a certain bamboo afforded a very desirable carbon for the electric lamp, and the variety of bamboo used was a product of japan. it was his belief that in other parts of the world other and superior varieties might be found, and to that end he had dispatched explorers to bamboo regions in the valleys of the great south american rivers, where specimens were found of extraordinary quality; but the locality in which these specimens were found was lost in the limitless reaches of those great river-bottoms. the great necessity for more durable carbons became a desideratum so urgent that the tireless inventor decided to commission another explorer to search the tropical jungles of the orient. "this brings me then to the first meeting of edison, when he set forth substantially as follows, as i remember it twenty years ago, the purpose for which he had called me from my scholastic duties. with a quizzical gleam in his eye, he said: 'i want a man to ransack all the tropical jungles of the east to find a better fibre for my lamp; i expect it to be found in the palm or bamboo family. how would you like that job?' suiting my reply to his love of brevity and dispatch, i said, 'that would suit me.' 'can you go to-morrow?' was his next question. 'well, mr. edison, i must first of all get a leave of absence from my board of education, and assist the board to secure a substitute for the time of my absence. how long will it take, mr. edison?' 'how can i tell? maybe six months, and maybe five years; no matter how long, find it.' he continued: 'i sent a man to south america to find what i want; he found it; but lost the place where he found it, so he might as well never have found it at all.' hereat i was enjoined to proceed forthwith to court the board of education for a leave of absence, which i did successfully, the board considering that a call so important and honorary was entitled to their unqualified favor, which they generously granted. "i reported to mr. edison on the following day, when he instructed me to come to the laboratory at once to learn all the details of drawing and carbonizing fibres, which it would be necessary to do in the oriental jungles. this i did, and, in the mean time, a set of suitable tools for this purpose had been ordered to be made in the laboratory. as soon as i learned my new trade, which i accomplished in a few days, mr. edison directed me to the library of the laboratory to occupy a few days in studying the geography of the orient and, particularly, in drawing maps of the tributaries of the ganges, the irrawaddy, and the brahmaputra rivers, and other regions which i expected to explore. "it was while thus engaged that mr. edison came to me one day and said: 'if you will go up to the house' (his palatial home not far away) 'and look behind the sofa in the library you will find a joint of bamboo, a specimen of that found in south america; bring it down and make a study of it; if you find something equal to that i will be satisfied.' at the home i was guided to the library by an irish servant-woman, to whom i communicated my knowledge of the definite locality of the sample joint. she plunged her arm, bare and herculean, behind the aforementioned sofa, and holding aloft a section of wood, called out in a mood of discovery: 'is that it?' replying in the affirmative, she added, under an impulse of innocent divination that whatever her wizard master laid hands upon could result in nothing short of an invention, 'sure, sor, and what's he going to invint out o' that?' "my kit of tools made, my maps drawn, my oriental geography reviewed, i come to the point when matters of immediate departure are discussed; and when i took occasion to mention to my chief that, on the subject of life insurance, underwriters refuse to take any risks on an enterprise so hazardous, mr. edison said that, if i did not place too high a valuation on my person, he would take the risk himself. i replied that i was born and bred in new york state, but now that i had become a jersey man i did not value myself at above fifteen hundred dollars. edison laughed and said that he would assume the risk, and another point was settled. the next matter was the financing of the trip, about which mr. edison asked in a tentative way about the rates to the east. i told him the expense of such a trip could not be determined beforehand in detail, but that i had established somewhat of a reputation for economic travel, and that i did not believe any traveller could surpass me in that respect. he desired no further assurance in that direction, and thereupon ordered a letter of credit made out with authorization to order a second when the first was exhausted. herein then are set forth in briefest space the preliminaries of a circuit of the globe in quest of fibre. "it so happened that the day on which i set out fell on washington's birthday, and i suggested to my boys and girls at school that they make a line across the station platform near the school at maplewood, and from this line i would start eastward around the world, and if good-fortune should bring me back i would meet them from the westward at the same line. as i had often made them 'toe the scratch,' for once they were only too well pleased to have me toe the line for them. "this was done, and i sailed via england and the suez canal to ceylon, that fair isle to which sindbad the sailor made his sixth voyage, picturesquely referred to in history as the 'brightest gem in the british colonial crown.' i knew ceylon to be eminently tropical; i knew it to be rich in many varieties of the bamboo family, which has been called the king of the grasses; and in this family had i most hope of finding the desired fibre. weeks were spent in this paradisiacal isle. every part was visited. native wood craftsmen were offered a premium on every new species brought in, and in this way nearly a hundred species were tested, a greater number than was found in any other country. one of the best specimens tested during the entire trip around the world was found first in ceylon, although later in burmah, it being indigenous to the latter country. it is a gigantic tree-grass or reed growing in clumps of from one to two hundred, often twelve inches in diameter, and one hundred and fifty feet high, and known as the giant bamboo (bambusa gigantia). this giant grass stood the highest test as a carbon, and on account of its extraordinary size and qualities i extend it this special mention. with others who have given much attention to this remarkable reed, i believe that in its manifold uses the bamboo is the world's greatest dendral benefactor. "from ceylon i proceeded to india, touching the great peninsula first at cape comorin, and continuing northward by way of pondicherry, madura, and madras; and thence to the tableland of bangalore and the western ghauts, testing many kinds of wood at every point, but particularly the palm and bamboo families. from the range of the western ghauts i went to bombay and then north by the way of delhi to simla, the summer capital of the himalayas; thence again northward to the headwaters of the sutlej river, testing everywhere on my way everything likely to afford the desired carbon. "on returning from the mountains i followed the valleys of the jumna and the ganges to calcutta, whence i again ascended the sub-himalayas to darjeeling, where the numerous river-bottoms were sprinkled plentifully with many varieties of bamboo, from the larger sizes to dwarfed species covering the mountain slopes, and not longer than the grass of meadows. again descending to the plains i passed eastward to the brahmaputra river, which i ascended to the foot-hills in assam; but finding nothing of superior quality in all this northern region i returned to calcutta and sailed thence to rangoon, in burmah; and there, finding no samples giving more excellent tests in the lower reaches of the irrawaddy, i ascended that river to mandalay, where, through burmese bamboo wiseacres, i gathered in from round about and tested all that the unusually rich burmese flora could furnish. in burmah the giant bamboo, as already mentioned, is found indigenous; but beside it no superior varieties were found. samples tested at several points on the malay peninsula showed no new species, except at a point north of singapore, where i found a species large and heavy which gave a test nearly equal to that of the giant bamboo in ceylon. "after completing the malay peninsula i had planned to visit java and borneo; but having found in the malay peninsula and in ceylon a bamboo fibre which averaged a test from one to two hundred per cent. better than that in use at the lamp factory, i decided it was unnecessary to visit these countries or new guinea, as my 'eureka' had already been established, and that i would therefore set forth over the return hemisphere, searching china and japan on the way. the rivers in southern china brought down to canton bamboos of many species, where this wondrously utilitarian reed enters very largely into the industrial life of that people, and not merely into the industrial life, but even into the culinary arts, for bamboo sprouts are a universal vegetable in china; but among all the bamboos of china i found none of superexcellence in carbonizing qualities. japan came next in the succession of countries to be explored, but there the work was much simplified, from the fact that the tokio museum contains a complete classified collection of all the different species in the empire, and there samples could be obtained and tested. "now the last of the important bamboo-producing countries in the globe circuit had been done, and the 'home-lap' was in order; the broad pacific was spanned in fourteen days; my natal continent in six; and on the d of february, on the same day, at the same hour, at the same minute, one year to a second, 'little maude,' a sweet maid of the school, led me across the line which completed the circuit of the globe, and where i was greeted by the cheers of my boys and girls. i at once reported to mr. edison, whose manner of greeting my return was as characteristic of the man as his summary and matter-of-fact manner of my dispatch. his little catechism of curious inquiry was embraced in four small and intensely anglo-saxon words--with his usual pleasant smile he extended his hand and said: 'did you get it?' this was surely a summing of a year's exploration not less laconic than caesar's review of his gallic campaign. when i replied that i had, but that he must be the final judge of what i had found, he said that during my absence he had succeeded in making an artificial carbon which was meeting the requirements satisfactorily; so well, indeed, that i believe no practical use was ever made of the bamboo fibres thereafter. "i have herein given a very brief resume of my search for fibre through the orient; and during my connection with that mission i was at all times not less astonished at mr. edison's quick perception of conditions and his instant decision and his bigness of conceptions, than i had always been with his prodigious industry and his inventive genius. "thinking persons know that blatant men never accomplish much, and edison's marvellous brevity of speech along with his miraculous achievements should do much to put bores and garrulity out of fashion." although edison had instituted such a costly and exhaustive search throughout the world for the most perfect of natural fibres, he did not necessarily feel committed for all time to the exclusive use of that material for his lamp filaments. while these explorations were in progress, as indeed long before, he had given much thought to the production of some artificial compound that would embrace not only the required homogeneity, but also many other qualifications necessary for the manufacture of an improved type of lamp which had become desirable by reason of the rapid adoption of his lighting system. at the very time mr. mcgowan was making his explorations deep in south america, and mr. ricalton his swift trip around the world, edison, after much investigation and experiment, had produced a compound which promised better results than bamboo fibres. after some changes dictated by experience, this artificial filament was adopted in the manufacture of lamps. no radical change was immediately made, however, but the product of the lamp factory was gradually changed over, during the course of a few years, from the use of bamboo to the "squirted" filament, as the new material was called. an artificial compound of one kind or another has indeed been universally adopted for the purpose by all manufacturers; hence the incandescing conductors in all carbon-filament lamps of the present day are made in that way. the fact remains, however, that for nearly nine years all edison lamps (many millions in the aggregate) were made with bamboo filaments, and many of them for several years after that, until bamboo was finally abandoned in the early nineties, except for use in a few special types which were so made until about the end of . the last few years have witnessed a remarkable advance in the manufacture of incandescent lamps in the substitution of metallic filaments for those of carbon. it will be remembered that many of the earlier experiments were based on the use of strips of platinum; while other rare metals were the subject of casual trial. no real success was attained in that direction, and for many years the carbon-filament lamp reigned supreme. during the last four or five years lamps with filaments made from tantalum and tungsten have been produced and placed on the market with great success, and are now largely used. their price is still very high, however, as compared with that of the carbon lamp, which has been vastly improved in methods of construction, and whose average price of fifteen cents is only one-tenth of what it was when edison first brought it out. with the close of mr. mcgowan's and mr. ricalton's expeditions, there ended the historic world-hunt for natural fibres. from start to finish the investigations and searches made by edison himself, and carried on by others under his direction, are remarkable not only from the fact that they entailed a total expenditure of about $ , , (disbursed under his supervision by mr. upton), but also because of their unique inception and thoroughness they illustrate one of the strongest traits of his character--an invincible determination to leave no stone unturned to acquire that which he believes to be in existence, and which, when found, will answer the purpose that he has in mind. chapter xiv inventing a complete system of lighting in berlin, on december , , with notable eclat, the seventieth birthday was celebrated of emil rathenau, the founder of the great allgemein elektricitaets gesellschaft. this distinguished german, creator of a splendid industry, then received the congratulations of his fellow-countrymen, headed by emperor william, who spoke enthusiastically of his services to electro-technics and to germany. in his interesting acknowledgment, mr. rathenau told how he went to paris in , and at the electrical exhibition there saw the display of edison's inventions in electric lighting "which have met with as little proper appreciation as his countless innovations in connection with telegraphy, telephony, and the entire electrical industry." he saw the edison dynamo, and he saw the incandescent lamp, "of which millions have been manufactured since that day without the great master being paid the tribute to his invention." but what impressed the observant, thoroughgoing german was the breadth with which the whole lighting art had been elaborated and perfected, even at that early day. "the edison system of lighting was as beautifully conceived down to the very details, and as thoroughly worked out as if it had been tested for decades in various towns. neither sockets, switches, fuses, lamp-holders, nor any of the other accessories necessary to complete the installation were wanting; and the generating of the current, the regulation, the wiring with distributing boxes, house connections, meters, etc., all showed signs of astonishing skill and incomparable genius." such praise on such an occasion from the man who introduced incandescent electric lighting into germany is significant as to the continued appreciation abroad of mr. edison's work. if there is one thing modern germany is proud and jealous of, it is her leadership in electrical engineering and investigation. but with characteristic insight, mr. rathenau here placed his finger on the great merit that has often been forgotten. edison was not simply the inventor of a new lamp and a new dynamo. they were invaluable elements, but far from all that was necessary. his was the mighty achievement of conceiving and executing in all its details an art and an industry absolutely new to the world. within two years this man completed and made that art available in its essential, fundamental facts, which remain unchanged after thirty years of rapid improvement and widening application. such a stupendous feat, whose equal is far to seek anywhere in the history of invention, is worth studying, especially as the task will take us over much new ground and over very little of the territory already covered. notwithstanding the enormous amount of thought and labor expended on the incandescent lamp problem from the autumn of to the winter of , it must not be supposed for one moment that edison's whole endeavor and entire inventive skill had been given to the lamp alone, or the dynamo alone. we have sat through the long watches of the night while edison brooded on the real solution of the swarming problems. we have gazed anxiously at the steady fingers of the deft and cautious batchelor, as one fragile filament after another refused to stay intact until it could be sealed into its crystal prison and there glow with light that never was before on land or sea. we have calculated armatures and field coils for the new dynamo with upton, and held the stakes for jehl and his fellows at their winding bees. we have seen the mineral and vegetable kingdoms rifled and ransacked for substances that would yield the best "filament." we have had the vague consciousness of assisting at a great development whose evidences to-day on every hand attest its magnitude. we have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort, lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. but it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to concrete data, and in reducing, to unfold its colossal dimensions. the lighting system that edison contemplated in this entirely new departure from antecedent methods included the generation of electrical energy, or current, on a very large scale; its distribution throughout extended areas, and its division and subdivision into small units converted into light at innumerable points in every direction from the source of supply, each unit to be independent of every other and susceptible to immediate control by the user. this was truly an altogether prodigious undertaking. we need not wonder that professor tyndall, in words implying grave doubt as to the possibility of any solution of the various problems, said publicly that he would much rather have the matter in edison's hands than in his own. there were no precedents, nothing upon which to build or improve. the problems could only be answered by the creation of new devices and methods expressly worked out for their solution. an electric lamp answering certain specific requirements would, indeed, be the key to the situation, but its commercial adaptation required a multifarious variety of apparatus and devices. the word "system" is much abused in invention, and during the early days of electric lighting its use applied to a mere freakish lamp or dynamo was often ludicrous. but, after all, nothing short of a complete system could give real value to the lamp as an invention; nothing short of a system could body forth the new art to the public. let us therefore set down briefly a few of the leading items needed for perfect illumination by electricity, all of which were part of the edison programme: first--to conceive a broad and fundamentally correct method of distributing the current, satisfactory in a scientific sense and practical commercially in its efficiency and economy. this meant, ready made, a comprehensive plan analogous to illumination by gas, with a network of conductors all connected together, so that in any given city area the lights could be fed with electricity from several directions, thus eliminating any interruption due to the disturbance on any particular section. second--to devise an electric lamp that would give about the same amount of light as a gas jet, which custom had proven to be a suitable and useful unit. this lamp must possess the quality of requiring only a small investment in the copper conductors reaching it. each lamp must be independent of every other lamp. each and all the lights must be produced and operated with sufficient economy to compete on a commercial basis with gas. the lamp must be durable, capable of being easily and safely handled by the public, and one that would remain capable of burning at full incandescence and candle-power a great length of time. third--to devise means whereby the amount of electrical energy furnished to each and every customer could be determined, as in the case of gas, and so that this could be done cheaply and reliably by a meter at the customer's premises. fourth--to elaborate a system or network of conductors capable of being placed underground or overhead, which would allow of being tapped at any intervals, so that service wires could be run from the main conductors in the street into each building. where these mains went below the surface of the thoroughfare, as in large cities, there must be protective conduit or pipe for the copper conductors, and these pipes must allow of being tapped wherever necessary. with these conductors and pipes must also be furnished manholes, junction-boxes, connections, and a host of varied paraphernalia insuring perfect general distribution. fifth--to devise means for maintaining at all points in an extended area of distribution a practically even pressure of current, so that all the lamps, wherever located, near or far away from the central station, should give an equal light at all times, independent of the number that might be turned on; and safeguarding the lamps against rupture by sudden and violent fluctuations of current. there must also be means for thus regulating at the point where the current was generated the quality or pressure of the current throughout the whole lighting area, with devices for indicating what such pressure might actually be at various points in the area. sixth--to design efficient dynamos, such not being in existence at the time, that would convert economically the steam-power of high-speed engines into electrical energy, together with means for connecting and disconnecting them with the exterior consumption circuits; means for regulating, equalizing their loads, and adjusting the number of dynamos to be used according to the fluctuating demands on the central station. also the arrangement of complete stations with steam and electric apparatus and auxiliary devices for insuring their efficient and continuous operation. seventh--to invent devices that would prevent the current from becoming excessive upon any conductors, causing fire or other injury; also switches for turning the current on and off; lamp-holders, fixtures, and the like; also means and methods for establishing the interior circuits that were to carry current to chandeliers and fixtures in buildings. here was the outline of the programme laid down in the autumn of , and pursued through all its difficulties to definite accomplishment in about eighteen months, some of the steps being made immediately, others being taken as the art evolved. it is not to be imagined for one moment that edison performed all the experiments with his own hands. the method of working at menlo park has already been described in these pages by those who participated. it would not only have been physically impossible for one man to have done all this work himself, in view of the time and labor required, and the endless detail; but most of the apparatus and devices invented or suggested by him as the art took shape required the handiwork of skilled mechanics and artisans of a high order of ability. toward the end of the laboratory force thus numbered at least one hundred earnest men. in this respect of collaboration, edison has always adopted a policy that must in part be taken to explain his many successes. some inventors of the greatest ability, dealing with ideas and conceptions of importance, have found it impossible to organize or even to tolerate a staff of co-workers, preferring solitary and secret toil, incapable of team work, or jealous of any intrusion that could possibly bar them from a full and complete claim to the result when obtained. edison always stood shoulder to shoulder with his associates, but no one ever questioned the leadership, nor was it ever in doubt where the inspiration originated. the real truth is that edison has always been so ceaselessly fertile of ideas himself, he has had more than his whole staff could ever do to try them all out; he has sought co-operation, but no exterior suggestion. as a matter of fact a great many of the "edison men" have made notable inventions of their own, with which their names are imperishably associated; but while they were with edison it was with his work that they were and must be busied. it was during this period of "inventing a system" that so much systematic and continuous work with good results was done by edison in the design and perfection of dynamos. the value of his contributions to the art of lighting comprised in this work has never been fully understood or appreciated, having been so greatly overshadowed by his invention of the incandescent lamp, and of a complete system of distribution. it is a fact, however, that the principal improvements he made in dynamo-electric generators were of a radical nature and remain in the art. thirty years bring about great changes, especially in a field so notably progressive as that of the generation of electricity; but different as are the dynamos of to-day from those of the earlier period, they embody essential principles and elements that edison then marked out and elaborated as the conditions of success. there was indeed prompt appreciation in some well-informed quarters of what edison was doing, evidenced by the sensation caused in the summer of , when he designed, built, and shipped to paris for the first electrical exposition ever held, the largest dynamo that had been built up to that time. it was capable of lighting twelve hundred incandescent lamps, and weighed with its engine twenty-seven tons, the armature alone weighing six tons. it was then, and for a long time after, the eighth wonder of the scientific world, and its arrival and installation in paris were eagerly watched by the most famous physicists and electricians of europe. edison's amusing description of his experience in shipping the dynamo to paris when built may appropriately be given here: "i built a very large dynamo with the engine directly connected, which i intended for the paris exposition of . it was one or two sizes larger than those i had previously built. i had only a very short period in which to get it ready and put it on a steamer to reach the exposition in time. after the machine was completed we found the voltage was too low. i had to devise a way of raising the voltage without changing the machine, which i did by adding extra magnets. after this was done, we tested the machine, and the crank-shaft of the engine broke and flew clear across the shop. by working night and day a new crank-shaft was put in, and we only had three days left from that time to get it on board the steamer; and had also to run a test. so we made arrangements with the tammany leader, and through him with the police, to clear the street--one of the new york crosstown streets--and line it with policemen, as we proposed to make a quick passage, and didn't know how much time it would take. about four hours before the steamer had to get it, the machine was shut down after the test, and a schedule was made out in advance of what each man had to do. sixty men were put on top of the dynamo to get it ready, and each man had written orders as to what he was to perform. we got it all taken apart and put on trucks and started off. they drove the horses with a fire-bell in front of them to the french pier, the policemen lining the streets. fifty men were ready to help the stevedores get it on the steamer--and we were one hour ahead of time." this exposition brings us, indeed, to a dramatic and rather pathetic parting of the ways. the hour had come for the old laboratory force that had done such brilliant and memorable work to disband, never again to assemble under like conditions for like effort, although its members all remained active in the field, and many have ever since been associated prominently with some department of electrical enterprise. the fact was they had done their work so well they must now disperse to show the world what it was, and assist in its industrial exploitation. in reality, they were too few for the demands that reached edison from all parts of the world for the introduction of his system; and in the emergency the men nearest to him and most trusted were those upon whom he could best depend for such missionary work as was now required. the disciples full of fire and enthusiasm, as well as of knowledge and experience, were soon scattered to the four winds, and the rapidity with which the edison system was everywhere successfully introduced is testimony to the good judgment with which their leader had originally selected them as his colleagues. no one can say exactly just how this process of disintegration began, but mr. e. h. johnson had already been sent to england in the edison interests, and now the question arose as to what should be done with the french demands and the paris electrical exposition, whose importance as a point of new departure in electrical industry was speedily recognized on both sides of the atlantic. it is very interesting to note that as the earlier staff broke up, edison became the centre of another large body, equally devoted, but more particularly concerned with the commercial development of his ideas. mr. e. g. acheson mentions in his personal notes on work at the laboratory, that in december of , while on some experimental work, he was called to the new lamp factory started recently at menlo park, and there found edison, johnson, batchelor, and upton in conference, and "edison informed me that mr. batchelor, who was in charge of the construction, development, and operation of the lamp factory, was soon to sail for europe to prepare for the exhibit to be made at the electrical exposition to be held in paris during the coming summer." these preparations overlap the reinforcement of the staff with some notable additions, chief among them being mr. samuel insull, whose interesting narrative of events fits admirably into the story at this stage, and gives a vivid idea of the intense activity and excitement with which the whole atmosphere around edison was then surcharged: "i first met edison on march , . i arrived in new york on the city of chester about five or six in the evening, and went direct to fifth avenue. i had come over to act as edison's private secretary, the position having been obtained for me through the good offices of mr. e. h. johnson, whom i had known in london, and who wrote to mr. u. h. painter, of washington, about me in the fall of . mr. painter sent the letter on to mr. batchelor, who turned it over to edison. johnson returned to america late in the fall of , and in january, , cabled to me to come to this country. at the time he cabled for me edison was still at menlo park, but when i arrived in new york the famous offices of the edison electric light company had been opened at ' ' fifth avenue, and edison had moved into new york with the idea of assisting in the exploitation of the light company's business. "i was taken by johnson direct from the inman steamship pier to fifth avenue, and met edison for the first time. there were three rooms on the ground floor at that time. the front one was used as a kind of reception-room; the room immediately behind it was used as the office of the president of the edison electric light company, major s. b. eaton. the rear room, which was directly back of the front entrance hall, was edison's office, and there i first saw him. there was very little in the room except a couple of walnut roller-top desks--which were very generally used in american offices at that time. edison received me with great cordiality. i think he was possibly disappointed at my being so young a man; i had only just turned twenty-one, and had a very boyish appearance. the picture of edison is as vivid to me now as if the incident occurred yesterday, although it is now more than twenty-nine years since that first meeting. i had been connected with edison's affairs in england as private secretary to his london agent for about two years; and had been taught by johnson to look on edison as the greatest electrical inventor of the day--a view of him, by-the-way, which has been greatly strengthened as the years have rolled by. owing to this, and to the fact that i felt highly flattered at the appointment as his private secretary, i was naturally prepared to accept him as a hero. with my strict english ideas as to the class of clothes to be worn by a prominent man, there was nothing in edison's dress to impress me. he wore a rather seedy black diagonal prince albert coat and waistcoat, with trousers of a dark material, and a white silk handkerchief around his neck, tied in a careless knot falling over the stiff bosom of a white shirt somewhat the worse for wear. he had a large wide-awake hat of the sombrero pattern then generally used in this country, and a rough, brown overcoat, cut somewhat similarly to his prince albert coat. his hair was worn quite long, and hanging carelessly over his fine forehead. his face was at that time, as it is now, clean shaven. he was full in face and figure, although by no means as stout as he has grown in recent years. what struck me above everything else was the wonderful intelligence and magnetism of his expression, and the extreme brightness of his eyes. he was far more modest than in my youthful picture of him. i had expected to find a man of distinction. his appearance, as a whole, was not what you would call 'slovenly,' it is best expressed by the word 'careless.'" mr. insull supplements this pen-picture by another, bearing upon the hustle and bustle of the moment: "after a short conversation johnson hurried me off to meet his family, and later in the evening, about eight o'clock, he and i returned to edison's office; and i found myself launched without further ceremony into edison's business affairs. johnson had already explained to me that he was sailing the next morning, march d, on the s.s. arizona, and that mr. edison wanted to spend the evening discussing matters in connection with his european affairs. it was assumed, inasmuch as i had just arrived from london, that i would be able to give more or less information on this subject. as johnson was to sail the next morning at five o'clock, edison explained that it would be necessary for him to have an understanding of european matters. edison started out by drawing from his desk a check-book and stating how much money he had in the bank; and he wanted to know what european telephone securities were most salable, as he wished to raise the necessary funds to put on their feet the incandescent lamp factory, the electric tube works, and the necessary shops to build dynamos. all through the interview i was tremendously impressed with edison's wonderful resourcefulness and grasp, and his immediate appreciation of any suggestion of consequence bearing on the subject under discussion. "he spoke with very great enthusiasm of the work before him--namely, the development of his electric-lighting system; and his one idea seemed to be to raise all the money he could with the object of pouring it into the manufacturing side of the lighting business. i remember how extraordinarily i was impressed with him on this account, as i had just come from a circle of people in london who not only questioned the possibility of the success of edison's invention, but often expressed doubt as to whether the work he had done could be called an invention at all. after discussing affairs with johnson--who was receiving his final instructions from edison--far into the night, and going down to the steamer to see johnson aboard, i finished my first night's business with edison somewhere between four and five in the morning, feeling thoroughly imbued with the idea that i had met one of the great master minds of the world. you must allow for my youthful enthusiasm, but you must also bear in mind edison's peculiar gift of magnetism, which has enabled him during his career to attach so many men to him. i fell a victim to the spell at the first interview." events moved rapidly in those days. the next morning, tuesday, edison took his new fidus achates with him to a conference with john roach, the famous old ship-builder, and at it agreed to take the aetna iron works, where roach had laid the foundations of his fame and fortune. these works were not in use at the time. they were situated on goerck street, new york, north of grand street, on the east side of the city, and there, very soon after, was established the first edison dynamo-manufacturing establishment, known for many years as the edison machine works. the same night insull made his first visit to menlo park. up to that time he had seen very little incandescent lighting, for the simple reason that there was very little to see. johnson had had a few edison lamps in london, lit up from primary batteries, as a demonstration; and in the summer of swan had had a few series lamps burning in london. in new york a small gas-engine plant was being started at the edison offices on fifth avenue. but out at menlo park there was the first actual electric-lighting central station, supplying distributed incandescent lamps and some electric motors by means of underground conductors imbedded in asphaltum and surrounded by a wooden box. mr. insull says: "the system employed was naturally the two-wire, as at that time the three-wire had not been thought of. the lamps were partly of the horseshoe filament paper-carbon type, and partly bamboo-filament lamps, and were of an efficiency of to watts per c.p. i can never forget the impression that this first view of the electric-lighting industry produced on me. menlo park must always be looked upon as the birthplace of the electric light and power industry. at that time it was the only place where could be seen an electric light and power multiple arc distribution system, the operation of which seemed as successful to my youthful mind as the operation of one of the large metropolitan systems to-day. i well remember about ten o'clock that night going down to the menlo park depot and getting the station agent, who was also the telegraph operator, to send some cable messages for me to my london friends, announcing that i had seen edison's incandescent lighting system in actual operation, and that so far as i could tell it was an accomplished fact. a few weeks afterward i received a letter from one of my london friends, who was a doubting thomas, upbraiding me for coming so soon under the spell of the 'yankee inventor.'" it was to confront and deal with just this element of doubt in london and in europe generally, that the dispatch of johnson to england and of batchelor to france was intended. throughout the edison staff there was a mingled feeling of pride in the work, resentment at the doubts expressed about it, and keen desire to show how excellent it was. batchelor left for paris in july, --on his second trip to europe that year--and the exhibit was made which brought such an instantaneous recognition of the incalculable value of edison's lighting inventions, as evidenced by the awards and rewards immediately bestowed upon him. he was made an officer of the legion of honor, and prof. george f. barker cabled as follows from paris, announcing the decision of the expert jury which passed upon the exhibits: "accept my congratulations. you have distanced all competitors and obtained a diploma of honor, the highest award given in the exposition. no person in any class in which you were an exhibitor received a like reward." nor was this all. eminent men in science who had previously expressed their disbelief in the statements made as to the edison system were now foremost in generous praise of his notable achievements, and accorded him full credit for its completion. a typical instance was m. du moncel, a distinguished electrician, who had written cynically about edison's work and denied its practicability. he now recanted publicly in this language, which in itself shows the state of the art when edison came to the front: "all these experiments achieved but moderate success, and when, in , the new edison incandescent carbon lamp was announced, many of the scientists, and i, particularly, doubted the accuracy of the reports which came from america. this horseshoe of carbonized paper seemed incapable to resist mechanical shocks and to maintain incandescence for any considerable length of time. nevertheless, mr. edison was not discouraged, and despite the active opposition made to his lamp, despite the polemic acerbity of which he was the object, he did not cease to perfect it; and he succeeded in producing the lamps which we now behold exhibited at the exposition, and are admired by all for their perfect steadiness." the competitive lamps exhibited and tested at this time comprised those of edison, maxim, swan, and lane-fox. the demonstration of edison's success stimulated the faith of his french supporters, and rendered easier the completion of plans for the societe edison continental, of paris, formed to operate the edison patents on the continent of europe. mr. batchelor, with messrs. acheson and hipple, and one or two other assistants, at the close of the exposition transferred their energies to the construction and equipment of machine-shops and lamp factories at ivry-sur-seine for the company, and in a very short time the installation of plants began in various countries--france, italy, holland, belgium, etc. all through johnson was very busy, for his part, in england. the first "jumbo" edison dynamo had gone to paris; the second and third went to london, where they were installed in by mr. johnson and his assistant, mr. w. j. hammer, in the three-thousand-light central station on holborn viaduct, the plant going into operation on january , . outside of menlo park this was the first regular station for incandescent lighting in the world, as the pearl street station in new york did not go into operation until september of the same year. this historic plant was hurriedly thrown together on crown land, and would doubtless have been the nucleus of a great system but for the passage of the english electric lighting act of , which at once throttled the industry by its absurd restrictive provisions, and which, though greatly modified, has left england ever since in a condition of serious inferiority as to development in electric light and power. the streets and bridges of holborn viaduct were lighted by lamps turned on and off from the station, as well as the famous city temple of dr. joseph parker, the first church in the world to be lighted by incandescent lamps--indeed, so far as can be ascertained, the first church to be illuminated by electricity in any form. mr. w. j. hammer, who supplies some very interesting notes on the installation, says: "i well remember the astonishment of doctor parker and his associates when they noted the difference of temperature as compared with gas. i was informed that the people would not go in the gallery in warm weather, owing to the great heat caused by the many gas jets, whereas on the introduction of the incandescent lamp there was no complaint." the telegraph operating-room of the general post-office, at st. martin's-le grand and newgate street nearby, was supplied with four hundred lamps through the instrumentality of mr. (sir) w. h. preece, who, having been seriously sceptical as to mr. edison's results, became one of his most ardent advocates, and did much to facilitate the introduction of the light. this station supplied its customers by a network of feeders and mains of the standard underground two-wire edison tubing-conductors in sections of iron pipe--such as was used subsequently in new york, milan, and other cities. it also had a measuring system for the current, employing the edison electrolytic meter. arc lamps were operated from its circuits, and one of the first sets of practicable storage batteries was used experimentally at the station. in connection with these batteries mr. hammer tells a characteristic anecdote of edison: "a careless boy passing through the station whistling a tune and swinging carelessly a hammer in his hand, rapped a carboy of sulphuric acid which happened to be on the floor above a 'jumbo' dynamo. the blow broke the glass carboy, and the acid ran down upon the field magnets of the dynamo, destroying the windings of one of the twelve magnets. this accident happened while i was taking a vacation in germany, and a prominent scientific man connected with the company cabled mr. edison to know whether the machine would work if the coil was cut out. mr. edison sent the laconic reply: 'why doesn't he try it and see?' mr. e. h. johnson was kept busy not only with the cares and responsibilities of this pioneer english plant, but by negotiations as to company formations, hearings before parliamentary committees, and particularly by distinguished visitors, including all the foremost scientific men in england, and a great many well-known members of the peerage. edison was fortunate in being represented by a man with so much address, intimate knowledge of the subject, and powers of explanation. as one of the leading english papers said at the time, with equal humor and truth: 'there is but one edison, and johnson is his prophet.'" as the plant continued in operation, various details and ideas of improvement emerged, and mr. hammer says: "up to the time of the construction of this plant it had been customary to place a single-pole switch on one wire and a safety fuse on the other; and the practice of putting fuses on both sides of a lighting circuit was first used here. some of the first, if not the very first, of the insulated fixtures were used in this plant, and many of the fixtures were equipped with ball insulating joints, enabling the chandeliers--or 'electroliers'--to be turned around, as was common with the gas chandeliers. this particular device was invented by mr. john b. verity, whose firm built many of the fixtures for the edison company, and constructed the notable electroliers shown at the crystal palace exposition of ." we have made a swift survey of developments from the time when the system of lighting was ready for use, and when the staff scattered to introduce it. it will be readily understood that edison did not sit with folded hands or drop into complacent satisfaction the moment he had reached the practical stage of commercial exploitation. he was not willing to say "let us rest and be thankful," as was one of england's great liberal leaders after a long period of reform. on the contrary, he was never more active than immediately after the work we have summed up at the beginning of this chapter. while he had been pursuing his investigations of the generator in conjunction with the experiments on the incandescent lamp, he gave much thought to the question of distribution of the current over large areas, revolving in his mind various plans for the accomplishment of this purpose, and keeping his mathematicians very busy working on the various schemes that suggested themselves from time to time. the idea of a complete system had been in his mind in broad outline for a long time, but did not crystallize into commercial form until the incandescent lamp was an accomplished fact. thus in january, , his first patent application for a "system of electrical distribution" was signed. it was filed in the patent office a few days later, but was not issued as a patent until august , . it covered, fundamentally, multiple arc distribution, how broadly will be understood from the following extracts from the new york electrical review of september , : "it would appear as if the entire field of multiple distribution were now in the hands of the owners of this patent.... the patent is about as broad as a patent can be, being regardless of specific devices, and laying a powerful grasp on the fundamental idea of multiple distribution from a number of generators throughout a metallic circuit." mr. edison made a number of other applications for patents on electrical distribution during the year . among these was the one covering the celebrated "feeder" invention, which has been of very great commercial importance in the art, its object being to obviate the "drop" in pressure, rendering lights dim in those portions of an electric-light system that were remote from the central station. [ ] [footnote : for further explanation of "feeder" patent, see appendix.] from these two patents alone, which were absolutely basic and fundamental in effect, and both of which were, and still are, put into actual use wherever central-station lighting is practiced, the reader will see that mr. edison's patient and thorough study, aided by his keen foresight and unerring judgment, had enabled him to grasp in advance with a master hand the chief and underlying principles of a true system--that system which has since been put into practical use all over the world, and whose elements do not need the touch or change of more modern scientific knowledge. these patents were not by any means all that he applied for in the year , which it will be remembered was the year in which he was perfecting the incandescent electric lamp and methods, to put into the market for competition with gas. it was an extraordinarily busy year for mr. edison and his whole force, which from time to time was increased in number. improvement upon improvement was the order of the day. that which was considered good to-day was superseded by something better and more serviceable to-morrow. device after device, relating to some part of the entire system, was designed, built, and tried, only to be rejected ruthlessly as being unsuitable; but the pursuit was not abandoned. it was renewed over and over again in innumerable ways until success had been attained. during the year edison had made application for sixty patents, of which thirty-two were in relation to incandescent lamps; seven covered inventions relating to distributing systems (including the two above particularized); five had reference to inventions of parts, such as motors, sockets, etc.; six covered inventions relating to dynamo-electric machines; three related to electric railways, and seven to miscellaneous apparatus, such as telegraph relays, magnetic ore separators, magneto signalling apparatus, etc. the list of mr. edison's patents (see appendices) is not only a monument to his life's work, but serves to show what subjects he has worked on from year to year since . the reader will see from an examination of this list that the years , , , and were the most prolific periods of invention. it is worth while to scrutinize this list closely to appreciate the wide range of his activities. not that his patents cover his entire range of work by any means, for his note-books reveal a great number of major and minor inventions for which he has not seen fit to take out patents. moreover, at the period now described edison was the victim of a dishonest patent solicitor, who deprived him of a number of patents in the following manner: "around - i had several solicitors attending to different classes of work. one of these did me a most serious injury. it was during the time that i was developing my electric-lighting system, and i was working and thinking very hard in order to cover all the numerous parts, in order that it would be complete in every detail. i filed a great many applications for patents at that time, but there were seventy-eight of the inventions i made in that period that were entirely lost to me and my company by reason of the dishonesty of this patent solicitor. specifications had been drawn, and i had signed and sworn to the application for patents for these seventy-eight inventions, and naturally i supposed they had been filed in the regular way. "as time passed i was looking for some action of the patent office, as usual, but none came. i thought it very strange, but had no suspicions until i began to see my inventions recorded in the patent office gazette as being patented by others. of course i ordered an investigation, and found that the patent solicitor had drawn from the company the fees for filing all these applications, but had never filed them. all the papers had disappeared, however, and what he had evidently done was to sell them to others, who had signed new applications and proceeded to take out patents themselves on my inventions. i afterward found that he had been previously mixed up with a somewhat similar crooked job in connection with telephone patents. "i am free to confess that the loss of these seventy-eight inventions has left a sore spot in me that has never healed. they were important, useful, and valuable, and represented a whole lot of tremendous work and mental effort, and i had had a feeling of pride in having overcome through them a great many serious obstacles, one of these inventions covered the multipolar dynamo. it was an elaborated form of the type covered by my patent no. , which had a ring armature. i modified and improved on this form and had a number of pole pieces placed all around the ring, with a modified form of armature winding. i built one of these machines and ran it successfully in our early days at the goerck street shop. "it is of no practical use to mention the man's name. i believe he is dead, but he may have left a family. the occurrence is a matter of the old edison company's records." it will be seen from an examination of the list of patents in the appendix that mr. edison has continued year after year adding to his contributions to the art of electric lighting, and in the last twenty-eight years-- - --has taken out no fewer than three hundred and seventy-five patents in this branch of industry alone. these patents may be roughly tabulated as follows: incandescent lamps and their manufacture.................... distributing systems and their control and regulation....... dynamo-electric machines and accessories.................... minor parts, such as sockets, switches, safety catches, meters, underground conductors and parts, etc............... quite naturally most of these patents cover inventions that are in the nature of improvements or based upon devices which he had already created; but there are a number that relate to inventions absolutely fundamental and original in their nature. some of these have already been alluded to; but among the others there is one which is worthy of special mention in connection with the present consideration of a complete system. this is patent no. , , applied for november , , and is known as the "three-wire" patent. it is described more fully in the appendix. the great importance of the "feeder" and "three-wire" inventions will be apparent when it is realized that without them it is a question whether electric light could be sold to compete with low-priced gas, on account of the large investment in conductors that would be necessary. if a large city area were to be lighted from a central station by means of copper conductors running directly therefrom to all parts of the district, it would be necessary to install large conductors, or suffer such a drop of pressure at the ends most remote from the station as to cause the lights there to burn with a noticeable diminution of candle-power. the feeder invention overcame this trouble, and made it possible to use conductors only one-eighth the size that would otherwise have been necessary to produce the same results. a still further economy in cost of conductors was effected by the "three-wire" invention, by the use of which the already diminished conductors could be still further reduced to one-third of this smaller size, and at the same time allow of the successful operation of the station with far better results than if it were operated exactly as at first conceived. the feeder and three-wire systems are at this day used in all parts of the world, not only in central-station work, but in the installation and operation of isolated electric-light plants in large buildings. no sensible or efficient station manager or electric contractor would ever think of an installation made upon any other plan. thus mr. edison's early conceptions of the necessities of a complete system, one of them made even in advance of practice, have stood firm, unimproved, and unchanged during the past twenty-eight years, a period of time which has witnessed more wonderful and rapid progress in electrical science and art than has been known during any similar art or period of time since the world began. it must be remembered that the complete system in all its parts is not comprised in the few of mr. edison's patents, of which specific mention is here made. in order to comprehend the magnitude and extent of his work and the quality of his genius, it is necessary to examine minutely the list of patents issued for the various elements which go to make up such a system. to attempt any relation in detail of the conception and working-out of each part or element; to enter into any description of the almost innumerable experiments and investigations that were made would entail the writing of several volumes, for mr. edison's close-written note-books covering these subjects number nearly two hundred. it is believed that enough evidence has been given in this chapter to lead to an appreciation of the assiduous work and practical skill involved in "inventing a system" of lighting that would surpass, and to a great extent, in one single quarter of a century, supersede all the other methods of illumination developed during long centuries. but it will be appropriate before passing on to note that on january , , while this biography was being written, mr. edison became the fourth recipient of the john fritz gold medal for achievement in industrial progress. this medal was founded in by the professional friends and associates of the veteran american ironmaster and metallurgical inventor, in honor of his eightieth birthday. awards are made by a board of sixteen engineers appointed in equal numbers from the four great national engineering societies--the american society of civil engineers, the american institute of mining engineers, the american society of mechanical engineers, and the american institute of electrical engineers, whose membership embraces the very pick and flower of professional engineering talent in america. up to the time of the edison award, three others had been made. the first was to lord kelvin, the nestor of physics in europe, for his work in submarine-cable telegraphy and other scientific achievement. the second was to george westinghouse for the air-brake. the third was to alexander graham bell for the invention and introduction of the telephone. the award to edison was not only for his inventions in duplex and quadruplex telegraphy, and for the phonograph, but for the development of a commercially practical incandescent lamp, and the development of a complete system of electric lighting, including dynamos, regulating devices, underground system, protective devices, and meters. great as has been the genius brought to bear on electrical development, there is no other man to whom such a comprehensive tribute could be paid. chapter xv introduction of the edison electric light in the previous chapter on the invention of a system, the narrative has been carried along for several years of activity up to the verge of the successful and commercial application of edison's ideas and devices for incandescent electric lighting. the story of any one year in this period, if treated chronologically, would branch off in a great many different directions, some going back to earlier work, others forward to arts not yet within the general survey; and the effect of such treatment would be confusing. in like manner the development of the edison lighting system followed several concurrent, simultaneous lines of advance; and an effort was therefore made in the last chapter to give a rapid glance over the whole movement, embracing a term of nearly five years, and including in its scope both the old world and the new. what is necessary to the completeness of the story at this stage is not to recapitulate, but to take up some of the loose ends of threads woven in and follow them through until the clear and comprehensive picture of events can be seen. some things it would be difficult to reproduce in any picture of the art and the times. one of the greatest delusions of the public in regard to any notable invention is the belief that the world is waiting for it with open arms and an eager welcome. the exact contrary is the truth. there is not a single new art or device the world has ever enjoyed of which it can be said that it was given an immediate and enthusiastic reception. the way of the inventor is hard. he can sometimes raise capital to help him in working out his crude conceptions, but even then it is frequently done at a distressful cost of personal surrender. when the result is achieved the invention makes its appeal on the score of economy of material or of effort; and then "labor" often awaits with crushing and tyrannical spirit to smash the apparatus or forbid its very use. where both capital and labor are agreed that the object is worthy of encouragement, there is the supreme indifference of the public to overcome, and the stubborn resistance of pre-existing devices to combat. the years of hardship and struggle are thus prolonged, the chagrin of poverty and neglect too frequently embitters the inventor's scanty bread; and one great spirit after another has succumbed to the defeat beyond which lay the procrastinated triumph so dearly earned. even in america, where the adoption of improvements and innovations is regarded as so prompt and sure, and where the huge tolls of the patent office and the courts bear witness to the ceaseless efforts of the inventor, it is impossible to deny the sad truth that unconsciously society discourages invention rather than invites it. possibly our national optimism as revealed in invention--the seeking a higher good--needs some check. possibly the leaders would travel too fast and too far on the road to perfection if conservatism did not also play its salutary part in insisting that the procession move forward as a whole. edison and his electric light were happily more fortunate than other men and inventions, in the relative cordiality of the reception given them. the merit was too obvious to remain unrecognized. nevertheless, it was through intense hostility and opposition that the young art made its way, pushed forward by edison's own strong personality and by his unbounded, unwavering faith in the ultimate success of his system. it may seem strange that great effort was required to introduce a light so manifestly convenient, safe, agreeable, and advantageous, but the facts are matter of record; and to-day the recollection of some of the episodes brings a fierce glitter into the eye and keen indignation into the voice of the man who has come so victoriously through it all. it was not a fact at any time that the public was opposed to the idea of the electric light. on the contrary, the conditions for its acceptance had been ripening fast. yet the very vogue of the electric arc light made harder the arrival of the incandescent. as a new illuminant for the streets, the arc had become familiar, either as a direct substitute for the low gas lamp along the sidewalk curb, or as a novel form of moonlight, raised in groups at the top of lofty towers often a hundred and fifty feet high. some of these lights were already in use for large indoor spaces, although the size of the unit, the deadly pressure of the current, and the sputtering sparks from the carbons made them highly objectionable for such purposes. a number of parent arc-lighting companies were in existence, and a great many local companies had been called into being under franchises for commercial business and to execute regular city contracts for street lighting. in this manner a good deal of capital and the energies of many prominent men in politics and business had been rallied distinctively to the support of arc lighting. under the inventive leadership of such brilliant men as brush, thomson, weston, and van depoele--there were scores of others--the industry had made considerable progress and the art had been firmly established. here lurked, however, very vigorous elements of opposition, for edison predicted from the start the superiority of the small electric unit of light, and devoted himself exclusively to its perfection and introduction. it can be readily seen that this situation made it all the more difficult for the edison system to secure the large sums of money needed for its exploitation, and to obtain new franchises or city ordinances as a public utility. thus in a curious manner the modern art of electric lighting was in a very true sense divided against itself, with intense rivalries and jealousies which were none the less real because they were but temporary and occurred in a field where ultimate union of forces was inevitable. for a long period the arc was dominant and supreme in the lighting branch of the electrical industries, in all respects, whether as to investment, employees, income, and profits, or in respect to the manufacturing side. when the great national electric light association was formed in , its organizers were the captains of arc lighting, and not a single edison company or licensee could be found in its ranks, or dared to solicit membership. the edison companies, soon numbering about three hundred, formed their own association--still maintained as a separate and useful body--and the lines were tensely drawn in a way that made it none too easy for the edison service to advance, or for an impartial man to remain friendly with both sides. but the growing popularity of incandescent lighting, the flexibility and safety of the system, the ease with which other electric devices for heat, power, etc., could be put indiscriminately on the same circuits with the lamps, in due course rendered the old attitude of opposition obviously foolish and untenable. the united states census office statistics of show that the income from incandescent lighting by central stations had by that time become over per cent. of the total, while that from arc lighting was less than ; and electric-power service due to the ease with which motors could be introduced on incandescent circuits brought in per cent. more. hence twenty years after the first edison stations were established the methods they involved could be fairly credited with no less than per cent. of all central-station income in the country, and the proportion has grown since then. it will be readily understood that under these conditions the modern lighting company supplies to its customers both incandescent and arc lighting, frequently from the same dynamo-electric machinery as a source of current; and that the old feud as between the rival systems has died out. in fact, for some years past the presidents of the national electric light association have been chosen almost exclusively from among the managers of the great edison lighting companies in the leading cities. the other strong opposition to the incandescent light came from the gas industry. there also the most bitter feeling was shown. the gas manager did not like the arc light, but it interfered only with his street service, which was not his largest source of income by any means. what did arouse his ire and indignation was to find this new opponent, the little incandescent lamp, pushing boldly into the field of interior lighting, claiming it on a great variety of grounds of superiority, and calmly ignoring the question of price, because it was so much better. newspaper records and the pages of the technical papers of the day show to what an extent prejudice and passion were stirred up and the astounding degree to which the opposition to the new light was carried. here again was given a most convincing demonstration of the truth that such an addition to the resources of mankind always carries with it unsuspected benefits even for its enemies. in two distinct directions the gas art was immediately helped by edison's work. the competition was most salutary in the stimulus it gave to improvements in processes for making, distributing, and using gas, so that while vast economies have been effected at the gas works, the customer has had an infinitely better light for less money. in the second place, the coming of the incandescent light raised the standard of illumination in such a manner that more gas than ever was wanted in order to satisfy the popular demand for brightness and brilliancy both indoors and on the street. the result of the operation of these two forces acting upon it wholly from without, and from a rival it was desired to crush, has been to increase enormously the production and use of gas in the last twenty-five years. it is true that the income of the central stations is now over $ , , a year, and that isolated-plant lighting represents also a large amount of diverted business; but as just shown, it would obviously be unfair to regard all this as a loss from the standpoint of gas. it is in great measure due to new sources of income developed by electricity for itself. a retrospective survey shows that had the men in control of the american gas-lighting art, in , been sufficiently far-sighted, and had they taken a broader view of the situation, they might easily have remained dominant in the whole field of artificial lighting by securing the ownership of the patents and devices of the new industry. apparently not a single step of that kind was undertaken, nor probably was there a gas manager who would have agreed with edison in the opinion written down by him at the time in little note-book no. , that gas properties were having conferred on them an enhanced earning capacity. it was doubtless fortunate and providential for the electric-lighting art that in its state of immature development it did not fall into the hands of men who were opposed to its growth, and would not have sought its technical perfection. it was allowed to carve out its own career, and thus escaped the fate that is supposed to have attended other great inventions--of being bought up merely for purposes of suppression. there is a vague popular notion that this happens to the public loss; but the truth is that no discovery of any real value is ever entirely lost. it may be retarded; but that is all. in the case of the gas companies and the incandescent light, many of them to whom it was in the early days as great an irritant as a red flag to a bull, emulated the performance of that animal and spent a great deal of money and energy in bellowing and throwing up dirt in the effort to destroy the hated enemy. this was not long nor universally the spirit shown; and to-day in hundreds of cities the electric and gas properties are united under the one management, which does not find it impossible to push in a friendly and progressive way the use of both illuminants. the most conspicuous example of this identity of interest is given in new york itself. so much for the early opposition, of which there was plenty. but it may be questioned whether inertia is not equally to be dreaded with active ill-will. nothing is more difficult in the world than to get a good many hundreds of thousands or millions of people to do something they have never done before. a very real difficulty in the introduction of his lamp and lighting system by edison lay in the absolute ignorance of the public at large, not only as to its merits, but as to the very appearance of the light, some few thousand people had gone out to menlo park, and had there seen the lamps in operation at the laboratory or on the hillsides, but they were an insignificant proportion of the inhabitants of the united states. of course, a great many accounts were written and read, but while genuine interest was aroused it was necessarily apathetic. a newspaper description or a magazine article may be admirably complete in itself, with illustrations, but until some personal experience is had of the thing described it does not convey a perfect mental picture, nor can it always make the desire active and insistent. generally, people wait to have the new thing brought to them; and hence, as in the case of the edison light, an educational campaign of a practical nature is a fundamental condition of success. another serious difficulty confronting edison and his associates was that nowhere in the world were there to be purchased any of the appliances necessary for the use of the lighting system. edison had resolved from the very first that the initial central station embodying his various ideas should be installed in new york city, where he could superintend the installation personally, and then watch the operation. plans to that end were now rapidly maturing; but there would be needed among many other things--every one of them new and novel--dynamos, switchboards, regulators, pressure and current indicators, fixtures in great variety, incandescent lamps, meters, sockets, small switches, underground conductors, junction-boxes, service-boxes, manhole-boxes, connectors, and even specially made wire. now, not one of these miscellaneous things was in existence; not an outsider was sufficiently informed about such devices to make them on order, except perhaps the special wire. edison therefore started first of all a lamp factory in one of the buildings at menlo park, equipped it with novel machinery and apparatus, and began to instruct men, boys, and girls, as they could be enlisted, in the absolutely new art, putting mr. upton in charge. with regard to the conditions attendant upon the manufacture of the lamps, edison says: "when we first started the electric light we had to have a factory for manufacturing lamps. as the edison light company did not seem disposed to go into manufacturing, we started a small lamp factory at menlo park with what money i could raise from my other inventions and royalties, and some assistance. the lamps at that time were costing about $ . each to make, so i said to the company: 'if you will give me a contract during the life of the patents, i will make all the lamps required by the company and deliver them for forty cents.' the company jumped at the chance of this offer, and a contract was drawn up. we then bought at a receiver's sale at harrison, new jersey, a very large brick factory building which had been used as an oil-cloth works. we got it at a great bargain, and only paid a small sum down, and the balance on mortgage. we moved the lamp works from menlo park to harrison. the first year the lamps cost us about $ . each. we sold them for forty cents; but there were only about twenty or thirty thousand of them. the next year they cost us about seventy cents, and we sold them for forty. there were a good many, and we lost more money the second year than the first. the third year i succeeded in getting up machinery and in changing the processes, until it got down so that they cost somewhere around fifty cents. i still sold them for forty cents, and lost more money that year than any other, because the sales were increasing rapidly. the fourth year i got it down to thirty-seven cents, and i made all the money up in one year that i had lost previously. i finally got it down to twenty-two cents, and sold them for forty cents; and they were made by the million. whereupon the wall street people thought it was a very lucrative business, so they concluded they would like to have it, and bought us out. "one of the incidents which caused a very great cheapening was that, when we started, one of the important processes had to be done by experts. this was the sealing on of the part carrying the filament into the globe, which was rather a delicate operation in those days, and required several months of training before any one could seal in a fair number of parts in a day. when we got to the point where we employed eighty of these experts they formed a union; and knowing it was impossible to manufacture lamps without them, they became very insolent. one instance was that the son of one of these experts was employed in the office, and when he was told to do anything would not do it, or would give an insolent reply. he was discharged, whereupon the union notified us that unless the boy was taken back the whole body would go out. it got so bad that the manager came to me and said he could not stand it any longer; something had got to be done. they were not only more surly; they were diminishing the output, and it became impossible to manage the works. he got me enthused on the subject, so i started in to see if it were not possible to do that operation by machinery. after feeling around for some days i got a clew how to do it. i then put men on it i could trust, and made the preliminary machinery. that seemed to work pretty well. i then made another machine which did the work nicely. i then made a third machine, and would bring in yard men, ordinary laborers, etc., and when i could get these men to put the parts together as well as the trained experts, in an hour, i considered the machine complete. i then went secretly to work and made thirty of the machines. up in the top loft of the factory we stored those machines, and at night we put up the benches and got everything all ready. then we discharged the office-boy. then the union went out. it has been out ever since. "when we formed the works at harrison we divided the interests into one hundred shares or parts at $ par. one of the boys was hard up after a time, and sold two shares to bob cutting. up to that time we had never paid anything; but we got around to the point where the board declared a dividend every saturday night. we had never declared a dividend when cutting bought his shares, and after getting his dividends for three weeks in succession, he called up on the telephone and wanted to know what kind of a concern this was that paid a weekly dividend. the works sold for $ , , ." incidentally it may be noted, as illustrative of the problems brought to edison, that while he had the factory at harrison an importer in the chinese trade went to him and wanted a dynamo to be run by hand power. the importer explained that in china human labor was cheaper than steam power. edison devised a machine to answer the purpose, and put long spokes on it, fitted it up, and shipped it to china. he has not, however, heard of it since. for making the dynamos edison secured, as noted in the preceding chapter, the roach iron works on goerck street, new york, and this was also equipped. a building was rented on washington street, where machinery and tools were put in specially designed for making the underground tube conductors and their various paraphernalia; and the faithful john kruesi was given charge of that branch of production. to sigmund bergmann, who had worked previously with edison on telephone apparatus and phonographs, and was already making edison specialties in a small way in a loft on wooster street, new york, was assigned the task of constructing sockets, fixtures, meters, safety fuses, and numerous other details. thus, broadly, the manufacturing end of the problem of introduction was cared for. in the early part of the edison electric light company leased the old bishop mansion at fifth avenue, close to fourteenth street, for its headquarters and show-rooms. this was one of the finest homes in the city of that period, and its acquisition was a premonitory sign of the surrender of the famous residential avenue to commerce. the company needed not only offices, but, even more, such an interior as would display to advantage the new light in everyday use; and this house with its liberal lines, spacious halls, lofty ceilings, wide parlors, and graceful, winding stairway was ideal for the purpose. in fact, in undergoing this violent change, it did not cease to be a home in the real sense, for to this day many an edison veteran's pulse is quickened by some chance reference to " ," where through many years the work of development by a loyal and devoted band of workers was centred. here edison and a few of his assistants from menlo park installed immediately in the basement a small generating plant, at first with a gas-engine which was not successful, and then with a hampson high-speed engine and boiler, constituting a complete isolated plant. the building was wired from top to bottom, and equipped with all the appliances of the art. the experience with the little gas-engine was rather startling. "at an early period at ' ' we decided," says edison, "to light it up with the edison system, and put a gas-engine in the cellar, using city gas. one day it was not going very well, and i went down to the man in charge and got exploring around. finally i opened the pedestal--a storehouse for tools, etc. we had an open lamp, and when we opened the pedestal, it blew the doors off, and blew out the windows, and knocked me down, and the other man." for the next four or five years " " was a veritable beehive, day and night. the routine was very much the same as that at the laboratory, in its utter neglect of the clock. the evenings were not only devoted to the continuance of regular business, but the house was thrown open to the public until late at night, never closing before ten o'clock, so as to give everybody who wished an opportunity to see that great novelty of the time--the incandescent light--whose fame had meanwhile been spreading all over the globe. the first year, , was naturally that which witnessed the greatest rush of visitors; and the building hardly ever closed its doors till midnight. during the day business was carried on under great stress, and mr. insull has described how edison was to be found there trying to lead the life of a man of affairs in the conventional garb of polite society, instead of pursuing inventions and researches in his laboratory. but the disagreeable ordeal could not be dodged. after the experience edison could never again be tempted to quit his laboratory and work for any length of time; but in this instance there were some advantages attached to the sacrifice, for the crowds of lion-hunters and people seeking business arrangements would only have gone out to menlo park; while, on the other hand, the great plans for lighting new york demanded very close personal attention on the spot. as it was, not only edison, but all the company's directors, officers, and employees, were kept busy exhibiting and explaining the light. to the public of that day, when the highest known form of house illuminant was gas, the incandescent lamp, with its ability to burn in any position, its lack of heat so that you could put your hand on the brilliant glass globe; the absence of any vitiating effect on the atmosphere, the obvious safety from fire; the curious fact that you needed no matches to light it, and that it was under absolute control from a distance--these and many other features came as a distinct revelation and marvel, while promising so much additional comfort, convenience, and beauty in the home, that inspection was almost invariably followed by a request for installation. the camaraderie that existed at this time was very democratic, for all were workers in a common cause; all were enthusiastic believers in the doctrine they proclaimed, and hoped to profit by the opening up of the new art. often at night, in the small hours, all would adjourn for refreshments to a famous resort nearby, to discuss the events of to-day and to-morrow, full of incident and excitement. the easy relationship of the time is neatly sketched by edison in a humorous complaint as to his inability to keep his own cigars: "when at ' ' i used to have in my desk a box of cigars. i would go to the box four or five times to get a cigar, but after it got circulated about the building, everybody would come to get my cigars, so that the box would only last about a day and a half. i was telling a gentleman one day that i could not keep a cigar. even if i locked them up in my desk they would break it open. he suggested to me that he had a friend over on eighth avenue who made a superior grade of cigars, and who would show them a trick. he said he would have some of them made up with hair and old paper, and i could put them in without a word and see the result. i thought no more about the matter. he came in two or three months after, and said: 'how did that cigar business work?' i didn't remember anything about it. on coming to investigate, it appeared that the box of cigars had been delivered and had been put in my desk, and i had smoked them all! i was too busy on other things to notice." it was no uncommon sight to see in the parlors in the evening john pierpont morgan, norvin green, grosvenor p. lowrey, henry villard, robert l. cutting, edward d. adams, j. hood wright, e. g. fabbri, r. m. galloway, and other men prominent in city life, many of them stock-holders and directors; all interested in doing this educational work. thousands of persons thus came--bankers, brokers, lawyers, editors, and reporters, prominent business men, electricians, insurance experts, under whose searching and intelligent inquiries the facts were elicited, and general admiration was soon won for the system, which in advance had solved so many new problems. edison himself was in universal request and the subject of much adulation, but altogether too busy and modest to be spoiled by it. once in a while he felt it his duty to go over the ground with scientific visitors, many of whom were from abroad, and discuss questions which were not simply those of technique, but related to newer phenomena, such as the action of carbon, the nature and effects of high vacua; the principles of electrical subdivision; the value of insulation, and many others which, unfortunate to say, remain as esoteric now as they were then, ever fruitful themes of controversy. speaking of those days or nights, edison says: "years ago one of the great violinists was remenyi. after his performances were over he used to come down to ' ' and talk economics, philosophy, moral science, and everything else. he was highly educated and had great mental capacity. he would talk with me, but i never asked him to bring his violin. one night he came with his violin, about twelve o'clock. i had a library at the top of the house, and remenyi came up there. he was in a genial humor, and played the violin for me for about two hours--$ worth. the front doors were closed, and he walked up and down the room as he played. after that, every time he came to new york he used to call at ' ' late at night with his violin. if we were not there, he could come down to the slums at goerck street, and would play for an hour or two and talk philosophy. i would talk for the benefit of his music. henry e. dixey, then at the height of his 'adonis' popularity, would come in in those days, after theatre hours, and would entertain us with stories-- - . another visitor who used to give us a good deal of amusement and pleasure was captain shaw, the head of the london fire brigade. he was good company. he would go out among the fire-laddies and have a great time. one time robert lincoln and anson stager, of the western union, interested in the electric light, came on to make some arrangement with major eaton, president of the edison electric light company. they came to ' ' in the afternoon, and lincoln commenced telling stories--like his father. they told stories all the afternoon, and that night they left for chicago. when they got to cleveland, it dawned upon them that they had not done any business, so they had to come back on the next train to new york to transact it. they were interested in the chicago edison company, now one of the largest of the systems in the world. speaking of telling stories, i once got telling a man stories at the harrison lamp factory, in the yard, as he was leaving. it was winter, and he was all in furs. i had nothing on to protect me against the cold. i told him one story after the other--six of them. then i got pleurisy, and had to be shipped to florida for cure." the organization of the edison electric light company went back to ; but up to the time of leasing fifth avenue it had not been engaged in actual business. it had merely enjoyed the delights of anxious anticipation, and the perilous pleasure of backing edison's experiments. now active exploitation was required. dr. norvin green, the well-known president of the western union telegraph company, was president also of the edison company, but the pressing nature of his regular duties left him no leisure for such close responsible management as was now required. early in mr. grosvenor p. lowrey, after consultation with mr. edison, prevailed upon major s. b. eaton, the leading member of a very prominent law firm in new york, to accept the position of vice-president and general manager of the company, in which, as also in some of the subsidiary edison companies, and as president, he continued actively and energetically for nearly four years, a critical, formative period in which the solidity of the foundation laid is attested by the magnitude and splendor of the superstructure. the fact that edison conferred at this point with mr. lowrey should, perhaps, be explained in justice to the distinguished lawyer, who for so many years was the close friend of the inventor, and the chief counsel in all the tremendous litigation that followed the effort to enforce and validate the edison patents. as in england mr. edison was fortunate in securing the legal assistance of sir richard webster, afterward lord chief justice of england, so in america it counted greatly in his favor to enjoy the advocacy of such a man as lowrey, prominent among the famous leaders of the new york bar. born in massachusetts, mr. lowrey, in his earlier days of straitened circumstances, was accustomed to defray some portion of his educational expenses by teaching music in the berkshire villages, and by a curious coincidence one of his pupils was f. l. pope, later edison's partner for a time. lowrey went west to "bleeding kansas" with the first governor, reeder, and both were active participants in the exciting scenes of the "free state" war until driven away in , like many other free-soilers, by the acts of the "border ruffian" legislature. returning east, mr. lowrey took up practice in new york, soon becoming eminent in his profession, and upon the accession of william orton to the presidency of the western union telegraph company in , he was appointed its general counsel, the duties of which post he discharged for fifteen years. one of the great cases in which he thus took a leading and distinguished part was that of the quadruplex telegraph; and later he acted as legal adviser to henry villard in his numerous grandiose enterprises. lowrey thus came to know edison, to conceive an intense admiration for him, and to believe in his ability at a time when others could not detect the fire of genius smouldering beneath the modest exterior of a gaunt young operator slowly "finding himself." it will be seen that mr lowrey was in a peculiarly advantageous position to make his convictions about edison felt, so that it was he and his friends who rallied quickly to the new banner of discovery, and lent to the inventor the aid that came at a critical period. in this connection it may be well to quote an article that appeared at the time of mr. lowrey's death, in : "one of the most important services which mr. lowrey has ever performed was in furnishing and procuring the necessary financial backing for thomas a. edison in bringing out and perfecting his system of incandescent lighting. with characteristic pertinacity, mr. lowrey stood by the inventor through thick and thin, in spite of doubt, discouragement, and ridicule, until at last success crowned his efforts. in all the litigation which has resulted from the wide-spread infringements of the edison patents, mr. lowrey has ever borne the burden and heat of the day, and perhaps in no other field has he so personally distinguished himself as in the successful advocacy of the claims of edison to the invention of the incandescent lamp and everything 'hereunto pertaining.'" this was the man of whom edison had necessarily to make a confidant and adviser, and who supplied other things besides the legal direction and financial alliance, by his knowledge of the world and of affairs. there were many vital things to be done in the exploitation of the system that edison simply could not and would not do; but in lowrey's savoir faire, ready wit and humor, chivalry of devotion, graceful eloquence, and admirable equipoise of judgment were all the qualities that the occasion demanded and that met the exigencies. we are indebted to mr. insull for a graphic sketch of edison at this period, and of the conditions under which work was done and progress was made: "i do not think i had any understanding with edison when i first went with him as to my duties. i did whatever he told me, and looked after all kinds of affairs, from buying his clothes to financing his business. i used to open the correspondence and answer it all, sometimes signing edison's name with my initial, and sometimes signing my own name. if the latter course was pursued, and i was addressing a stranger, i would sign as edison's private secretary. i held his power of attorney, and signed his checks. it was seldom that edison signed a letter or check at this time. if he wanted personally to send a communication to anybody, if it was one of his close associates, it would probably be a pencil memorandum signed 'edison.' i was a shorthand writer, but seldom took down from edison's dictation, unless it was on some technical subject that i did not understand. i would go over the correspondence with edison, sometimes making a marginal note in shorthand, and sometimes edison would make his own notes on letters, and i would be expected to clean up the correspondence with edison's laconic comments as a guide as to the character of answer to make. it was a very common thing for edison to write the words 'yes' or 'no,' and this would be all i had on which to base my answer. edison marginalized documents extensively. he had a wonderful ability in pointing out the weak points of an agreement or a balance-sheet, all the while protesting he was no lawyer or accountant; and his views were expressed in very few words, but in a characteristic and emphatic manner. "the first few months i was with edison he spent most of the time in the office at fifth avenue. then there was a great deal of trouble with the life of the lamps there, and he disappeared from the office and spent his time largely at menlo park. at another time there was a great deal of trouble with some of the details of construction of the dynamos, and edison spent a lot of time at goerck street, which had been rapidly equipped with the idea of turning out bi-polar dynamo-electric machines, direct-connected to the engine, the first of which went to paris and london, while the next were installed in the old pearl street station of the edison electric illuminating company of new york, just south of fulton street, on the west side of the street. edison devoted a great deal of his time to the engineering work in connection with the laying out of the first incandescent electric-lighting system in new york. apparently at that time--between the end of and spring of --the most serious work was the manufacture and installation of underground conductors in this territory. these conductors were manufactured by the electric tube company, which edison controlled in a shop at washington street, run by john kruesi. half-round copper conductors were used, kept in place relatively to each other and in the tube, first of all by a heavy piece of cardboard, and later on by a rope; and then put in a twenty-foot iron pipe; and a combination of asphaltum and linseed oil was forced into the pipe for the insulation. i remember as a coincidence that the building was only twenty feet wide. these lengths of conductors were twenty feet six inches long, as the half-round coppers extended three inches beyond the drag-ends of the lengths of pipe; and in one of the operations we used to take the length of tubing out of the window in order to turn it around. i was elected secretary of the electric tube company, and was expected to look after its finance; and it was in this position that my long intimacy with john kruesi started." at this juncture a large part of the correspondence referred very naturally to electric lighting, embodying requests for all kinds of information, catalogues, prices, terms, etc.; and all these letters were turned over to the lighting company by edison for attention. the company was soon swamped with propositions for sale of territorial rights and with other negotiations, and some of these were accompanied by the offer of very large sums of money. it was the beginning of the electric-light furor which soon rose to sensational heights. had the company accepted the cash offers from various localities, it could have gathered several millions of dollars at once into its treasury; but this was not at all in accord with mr. edison's idea, which was to prove by actual experience the commercial value of the system, and then to license central-station companies in large cities and towns, the parent company taking a percentage of their capital for the license under the edison patents, and contracting also for the supply of apparatus, lamps, etc. this left the remainder of the country open for the cash sale of plants wherever requested. his counsels prevailed, and the wisdom of the policy adopted was seen in the swift establishment of edison companies in centres of population both great and small, whose business has ever been a constant and growing source of income for the parent manufacturing interests. from first to last edison has been an exponent and advocate of the central-station idea of distribution now so familiar to the public mind, but still very far from being carried out to its logical conclusion. in this instance, demands for isolated plants for lighting factories, mills, mines, hotels, etc., began to pour in, and something had to be done with them. this was a class of plant which the inquirers desired to purchase outright and operate themselves, usually because of remoteness from any possible source of general supply of current. it had not been edison's intention to cater to this class of customer until his broad central-station plan had been worked out, and he has always discouraged the isolated plant within the limits of urban circuits; but this demand was so insistent it could not be denied, and it was deemed desirable to comply with it at once, especially as it was seen that the steady call for supplies and renewals would benefit the new edison manufacturing plants. after a very short trial, it was found necessary to create a separate organization for this branch of the industry, leaving the edison electric light company to continue under the original plan of operation as a parent, patent-holding and licensing company. accordingly a new and distinct corporation was formed called the edison company for isolated lighting, to which was issued a special license to sell and operate plants of a self-contained character. as a matter of fact such work began in advance of almost every other kind. a small plant using the paper-carbon filament lamps was furnished by edison at the earnest solicitation of mr. henry villard for the steamship columbia, in , and it is amusing to note that mr. upton carried the lamps himself to the ship, very tenderly and jealously, like fresh eggs, in a market-garden basket. the installation was most successful. another pioneer plant was that equipped and started in january, , for hinds & ketcham, a new york firm of lithographers and color printers, who had previously been able to work only by day, owing to difficulties in color-printing by artificial light. a year later they said: "it is the best substitute for daylight we have ever known, and almost as cheap." mr. edison himself describes various instances in which the demand for isolated plants had to be met: "one night at ' ,'" he says, "james gordon bennett came in. we were very anxious to get into a printing establishment. i had caused a printer's composing case to be set up with the idea that if we could get editors and publishers in to see it, we should show them the advantages of the electric light. so ultimately mr. bennett came, and after seeing the whole operation of everything, he ordered mr. howland, general manager of the herald, to light the newspaper offices up at once with electricity." another instance of the same kind deals with the introduction of the light for purely social purposes: "while at fifth avenue," remarks mr. edison, "i got to know christian herter, then the largest decorator in the united states. he was a highly intellectual man, and i loved to talk to him. he was always railing against the rich people, for whom he did work, for their poor taste. one day mr. w. h. vanderbilt came to ' ,' saw the light, and decided that he would have his new house lighted with it. this was one of the big 'box houses' on upper fifth avenue. he put the whole matter in the hands of his son-in-law, mr. h. mck. twombly, who was then in charge of the telephone department of the western union. twombly closed the contract with us for a plant. mr. herter was doing the decoration, and it was extraordinarily fine. after a while we got the engines and boilers and wires all done, and the lights in position, before the house was quite finished, and thought we would have an exhibit of the light. about eight o'clock in the evening we lit up, and it was very good. mr. vanderbilt and his wife and some of his daughters came in, and were there a few minutes when a fire occurred. the large picture-gallery was lined with silk cloth interwoven with fine metallic thread. in some manner two wires had got crossed with this tinsel, which became red-hot, and the whole mass was soon afire. i knew what was the matter, and ordered them to run down and shut off. it had not burst into flame, and died out immediately. mrs. vanderbilt became hysterical, and wanted to know where it came from. we told her we had the plant in the cellar, and when she learned we had a boiler there she said she would not occupy the house. she would not live over a boiler. we had to take the whole installation out. the houses afterward went onto the new york edison system." the art was, however, very crude and raw, and as there were no artisans in existence as mechanics or electricians who had any knowledge of the practice, there was inconceivable difficulty in getting such isolated plants installed, as well as wiring the buildings in the district to be covered by the first central station in new york. a night school was, therefore, founded at fifth avenue, and was put in charge of mr. e. h. johnson, fresh from his successes in england. the most available men for the purpose were, of course, those who had been accustomed to wiring for the simpler electrical systems then in vogue--telephones, district-messenger calls, burglar alarms, house annunciators, etc., and a number of these "wiremen" were engaged and instructed patiently in the rudiments of the new art by means of a blackboard and oral lessons. students from the technical schools and colleges were also eager recruits, for here was something that promised a career, and one that was especially alluring to youth because of its novelty. these beginners were also instructed in general engineering problems under the guidance of mr. c. l. clarke, who was brought in from the menlo park laboratory to assume charge of the engineering part of the company's affairs. many of these pioneer students and workmen became afterward large and successful contractors, or have filled positions of distinction as managers and superintendents of central stations. possibly the electrical industry may not now attract as much adventurous genius as it did then, for automobiles, aeronautics, and other new arts have come to the front in a quarter of a century to enlist the enthusiasm of a younger generation of mercurial spirits; but it is certain that at the period of which we write, edison himself, still under thirty-five, was the centre of an extraordinary group of men, full of effervescing and aspiring talent, to which he gave glorious opportunity. a very novel literary feature of the work was the issuance of a bulletin devoted entirely to the edison lighting propaganda. nowadays the "house organ," as it is called, has become a very hackneyed feature of industrial development, confusing in its variety and volume, and a somewhat doubtful adjunct to a highly perfected, widely circulating periodical technical press. but at that time, , the bulletin of the edison electric light company, published in ordinary mo form, was distinctly new in advertising and possibly unique, as it is difficult to find anything that compared with it. the bulletin was carried on for some years, until its necessity was removed by the development of other opportunities for reaching the public; and its pages serve now as a vivid and lively picture of the period to which its record applies. the first issue, of january , , was only four pages, but it dealt with the question of insurance; plants at santiago, chili, and rio de janeiro; the european company with , , francs subscribed; the work in paris, london, strasburg, and moscow; the laying of over six miles of street mains in new york; a patent decision in favor of edison; and the size of safety catch wire. by april of , the bulletin had attained the respectable size of sixteen pages; and in december it was a portly magazine of forty-eight. every item bears testimony to the rapid progress being made; and by the end of it is seen that no fewer than isolated edison plants had been installed in the united states alone, with a capacity of , lamps. moreover, the new york central station had gone into operation, starting at p.m. on september , and at the close of it was lighting houses wired for about lamps. this epochal story will be told in the next chapter. most interesting are the bulletin notes from england, especially in regard to the brilliant exhibition given by mr. e. h. johnson at the crystal palace, sydenham, visited by the duke and duchess of edinburgh, twice by the dukes of westminster and sutherland, by three hundred members of the gas institute, and by innumerable delegations from cities, boroughs, etc. describing this before the royal society of arts, sir w. h. preece, f.r.s., remarked: "many unkind things have been said of mr. edison and his promises; perhaps no one has been severer in this direction than myself. it is some gratification for me to announce my belief that he has at last solved the problem he set himself to solve, and to be able to describe to the society the way in which he has solved it." before the exhibition closed it was visited by the prince and princess of wales--now the deceased edward vii. and the dowager queen alexandra--and the princess received from mr. johnson as a souvenir a tiny electric chandelier fashioned like a bouquet of fern leaves and flowers, the buds being some of the first miniature incandescent lamps ever made. the first item in the first bulletin dealt with the "fire question," and all through the successive issues runs a series of significant items on the same subject. many of them are aimed at gas, and there are several grim summaries of death and fires due to gas-leaks or explosions. a tendency existed at the time to assume that electricity was altogether safe, while its opponents, predicating their attacks on arc-lighting casualties, insisted it was most dangerous. edison's problem in educating the public was rather difficult, for while his low-pressure, direct-current system has always been absolutely without danger to life, there has also been the undeniable fact that escaping electricity might cause a fire just as a leaky water-pipe can flood a house. the important question had arisen, therefore, of satisfying the fire underwriters as to the safety of the system. he had foreseen that there would be an absolute necessity for special devices to prevent fires from occurring by reason of any excess of current flowing in any circuit; and several of his earliest detail lighting inventions deal with this subject. the insurance underwriters of new york and other parts of the country gave a great deal of time and study to the question through their most expert representatives, with the aid of edison and his associates, other electric-light companies cooperating; and the knowledge thus gained was embodied in insurance rules to govern wiring for electric lights, formulated during the latter part of , adopted by the new york board of fire underwriters, january , , and subsequently endorsed by other boards in the various insurance districts. under temporary rulings, however, a vast amount of work had already been done, but it was obvious that as the industry grew there would be less and less possibility of supervision except through such regulations, insisting upon the use of the best devices and methods. indeed, the direct superintendence soon became unnecessary, owing to the increasing knowledge and greater skill acquired by the installing staff; and this system of education was notably improved by a manual written by mr. edison himself. copies of this brochure are as scarce to-day as first folio shakespeares, and command prices equal to those of other american first editions. the little book is the only known incursion of its author into literature, if we except the brief articles he has written for technical papers and for the magazines. it contained what was at once a full, elaborate, and terse explanation of a complete isolated plant, with diagrams of various methods of connection and operation, and a carefully detailed description of every individual part, its functions and its characteristics. the remarkable success of those early years was indeed only achieved by following up with chinese exactness the minute and intimate methods insisted upon by edison as to the use of the apparatus and devices employed. it was a curious example of establishing standard practice while changing with kaleidoscopic rapidity all the elements involved. he was true to an ideal as to the pole-star, but was incessantly making improvements in every direction. with an iconoclasm that has often seemed ruthless and brutal he did not hesitate to sacrifice older devices the moment a new one came in sight that embodied a real advance in securing effective results. the process is heroic but costly. nobody ever had a bigger scrap-heap than edison; but who dare proclaim the process intrinsically wasteful if the losses occur in the initial stages, and the economies in all the later ones? with edison in this introduction of his lighting system the method was ruthless, but not reckless. at an early stage of the commercial development a standardizing committee was formed, consisting of the heads of all the departments, and to this body was intrusted the task of testing and criticising all existing and proposed devices, as well as of considering the suggestions and complaints of workmen offered from time to time. this procedure was fruitful in two principal results--the education of the whole executive force in the technical details of the system; and a constant improvement in the quality of the edison installations; both contributing to the rapid growth of the industry. for many years goerck street played an important part in edison's affairs, being the centre of all his manufacture of heavy machinery. but it was not in a desirable neighborhood, and owing to the rapid growth of the business soon became disadvantageous for other reasons. edison tells of his frequent visits to the shops at night, with the escort of "jim" russell, a well-known detective, who knew all the denizens of the place: "we used to go out at night to a little, low place, an all-night house--eight feet wide and twenty-two feet long--where we got a lunch at two or three o'clock in the morning. it was the toughest kind of restaurant ever seen. for the clam chowder they used the same four clams during the whole season, and the average number of flies per pie was seven. this was by actual count." as to the shops and the locality: "the street was lined with rather old buildings and poor tenements. we had not much frontage. as our business increased enormously, our quarters became too small, so we saw the district tammany leader and asked him if we could not store castings and other things on the sidewalk. he gave us permission--told us to go ahead, and he would see it was all right. the only thing he required for this was that when a man was sent with a note from him asking us to give him a job, he was to be put on. we had a hand-laborer foreman--'big jim'--a very powerful irishman, who could lift above half a ton. when one of the tammany aspirants appeared, he was told to go right to work at $ . per day. the next day he was told off to lift a certain piece, and if the man could not lift it he was discharged. that made the tammany man all safe. jim could pick the piece up easily. the other man could not, and so we let him out. finally the tammany leader called a halt, as we were running big engine lathes out on the sidewalk, and he was afraid we were carrying it a little too far. the lathes were worked right out in the street, and belted through the windows of the shop." at last it became necessary to move from goerck street, and mr. edison gives a very interesting account of the incidents in connection with the transfer of the plant to schenectady, new york: "after our works at goerck street got too small, we had labor troubles also. it seems i had rather a socialistic strain in me, and i raised the pay of the workmen twenty-five cents an hour above the prevailing rate of wages, whereupon hoe & company, our near neighbors, complained at our doing this. i said i thought it was all right. but the men, having got a little more wages, thought they would try coercion and get a little more, as we were considered soft marks. whereupon they struck at a time that was critical. however, we were short of money for pay-rolls; and we concluded it might not be so bad after all, as it would give us a couple of weeks to catch up. so when the men went out they appointed a committee to meet us; but for two weeks they could not find us, so they became somewhat more anxious than we were. finally they said they would like to go back. we said all right, and back they went. it was quite a novelty to the men not to be able to find us when they wanted to; and they didn't relish it at all. "what with these troubles and the lack of room, we decided to find a factory elsewhere, and decided to try the locomotive works up at schenectady. it seems that the people there had had a falling out among themselves, and one of the directors had started opposition works; but before he had completed all the buildings and put in machinery some compromise was made, and the works were for sale. we bought them very reasonably and moved everything there. these works were owned by me and my assistants until sold to the edison general electric company. at one time we employed several thousand men; and since then the works have been greatly expanded. "at these new works our orders were far in excess of our capital to handle the business, and both mr. insull and i were afraid we might get into trouble for lack of money. mr. insull was then my business manager, running the whole thing; and, therefore, when mr. henry villard and his syndicate offered to buy us out, we concluded it was better to be sure than be sorry; so we sold out for a large sum. villard was a very aggressive man with big ideas, but i could never quite understand him. he had no sense of humor. i remember one time we were going up on the hudson river boat to inspect the works, and with us was mr. henderson, our chief engineer, who was certainly the best raconteur of funny stories i ever knew. we sat at the tail-end of the boat, and he started in to tell funny stories. villard could not see a single point, and scarcely laughed at all; and henderson became so disconcerted he had to give it up. it was the same way with gould. in the early telegraph days i remember going with him to see mackay in 'the impecunious country editor.' it was very funny, full of amusing and absurd situations; but gould never smiled once." the formation of the edison general electric company involved the consolidation of the immediate edison manufacturing interests in electric light and power, with a capitalization of $ , , , now a relatively modest sum; but in those days the amount was large, and the combination caused a great deal of newspaper comment as to such a coinage of brain power. the next step came with the creation of the great general electric company of to-day, a combination of the edison, thomson-houston, and brush lighting interests in manufacture, which to this day maintains the ever-growing plants at harrison, lynn, and schenectady, and there employs from twenty to twenty-five thousand people. chapter xvi the first edison central station a noted inventor once said at the end of a lifetime of fighting to defend his rights, that he found there were three stages in all great inventions: the first, in which people said the thing could not be done; the second, in which they said anybody could do it; and the third, in which they said it had always been done by everybody. in his central-station work edison has had very much this kind of experience; for while many of his opponents came to acknowledge the novelty and utility of his plans, and gave him unstinted praise, there are doubtless others who to this day profess to look upon him merely as an adapter. how different the view of so eminent a scientist as lord kelvin was, may be appreciated from his remark when in later years, in reply to the question why some one else did not invent so obvious and simple a thing as the feeder system, he said: "the only answer i can think of is that no one else was edison." undaunted by the attitude of doubt and the predictions of impossibility, edison had pushed on until he was now able to realize all his ideas as to the establishment of a central station in the work that culminated in new york city in . after he had conceived the broad plan, his ambition was to create the initial plant on manhattan island, where it would be convenient of access for watching its operation, and where the demonstration of its practicability would have influence in financial circles. the first intention was to cover a district extending from canal street on the north to wall street on the south; but edison soon realized that this territory was too extensive for the initial experiment, and he decided finally upon the district included between wall, nassau, spruce, and ferry streets, peck slip and the east river, an area nearly a square mile in extent. one of the preliminary steps taken to enable him to figure on such a station and system was to have men go through this district on various days and note the number of gas jets burning at each hour up to two or three o'clock in the morning. the next step was to divide the region into a number of sub-districts and institute a house-to-house canvass to ascertain precisely the data and conditions pertinent to the project. when the canvass was over, edison knew exactly how many gas jets there were in every building in the entire district, the average hours of burning, and the cost of light; also every consumer of power, and the quantity used; every hoistway to which an electric motor could be applied; and other details too numerous to mention, such as related to the gas itself, the satisfaction of the customers, and the limitations of day and night demand. all this information was embodied graphically in large maps of the district, by annotations in colored inks; and edison thus could study the question with every detail before him. such a reconnaissance, like that of a coming field of battle, was invaluable, and may help give a further idea of the man's inveterate care for the minutiae of things. the laboratory note-books of this period-- - , more particularly--show an immense amount of calculation by edison and his chief mathematician, mr. upton, on conductors for the distribution of current over large areas, and then later in the district described. with the results of this canvass before them, the sizes of the main conductors to be laid throughout the streets of this entire territory were figured, block by block; and the results were then placed on the map. these data revealed the fact that the quantity of copper required for the main conductors would be exceedingly large and costly; and, if ever, edison was somewhat dismayed. but as usual this apparently insurmountable difficulty only spurred him on to further effort. it was but a short time thereafter that he solved the knotty problem by an invention mentioned in a previous chapter. this is known as the "feeder and main" system, for which he signed the application for a patent on august , . as this invention effected a saving of seven-eighths of the cost of the chief conductors in a straight multiple arc system, the mains for the first district were refigured, and enormous new maps were made, which became the final basis of actual installation, as they were subsequently enlarged by the addition of every proposed junction-box, bridge safety-catch box, and street-intersection box in the whole area. when this patent, after protracted fighting, was sustained by judge green in , the electrical engineer remarked that the general electric company "must certainly feel elated" because of its importance; and the journal expressed its fear that although the specifications and claims related only to the maintenance of uniform pressure of current on lighting circuits, the owners might naturally seek to apply it also to feeders used in the electric-railway work already so extensive. at this time, however, the patent had only about a year of life left, owing to the expiration of the corresponding english patent. the fact that thirteen years had elapsed gives a vivid idea of the ordeal involved in sustaining a patent and the injustice to the inventor, while there is obviously hardship to those who cannot tell from any decision of the court whether they are infringing or not. it is interesting to note that the preparation for hearing this case in new jersey was accompanied by models to show the court exactly the method and its economy, as worked out in comparison with what is known as the "tree system" of circuits--the older alternative way of doing it. as a basis of comparison, a district of thirty-six city blocks in the form of a square was assumed. the power station was placed at the centre of the square; each block had sixteen consumers using fifteen lights each. conductors were run from the station to supply each of the four quarters of the district with light. in one example the "feeder" system was used; in the other the "tree." with these models were shown two cubes which represented one one-hundredth of the actual quantity of copper required for each quarter of the district by the two-wire tree system as compared with the feeder system under like conditions. the total weight of copper for the four quarter districts by the tree system was , pounds, but when the feeder system was used it was only , pounds! this was a reduction from $ . per lamp for copper to $ . per lamp. other models emphasized this extraordinary contrast. at the time edison was doing this work on economizing in conductors, much of the criticism against him was based on the assumed extravagant use of copper implied in the obvious "tree" system, and it was very naturally said that there was not enough copper in the world to supply his demands. it is true that the modern electrical arts have been a great stimulator of copper production, now taking a quarter of all made; yet evidently but for such inventions as this such arts could not have come into existence at all, or else in growing up they would have forced copper to starvation prices. [ ] [footnote : for description of feeder patent see appendix.] it should be borne in mind that from the outset edison had determined upon installing underground conductors as the only permanent and satisfactory method for the distribution of current from central stations in cities; and that at menlo park he laid out and operated such a system with about four hundred and twenty-five lamps. the underground system there was limited to the immediate vicinity of the laboratory and was somewhat crude, as well as much less complicated than would be the network of over eighty thousand lineal feet, which he calculated to be required for the underground circuits in the first district of new york city. at menlo park no effort was made for permanency; no provision was needed in regard to occasional openings of the street for various purposes; no new customers were to be connected from time to time to the mains, and no repairs were within contemplation. in new york the question of permanency was of paramount importance, and the other contingencies were sure to arise as well as conditions more easy to imagine than to forestall. these problems were all attacked in a resolute, thoroughgoing manner, and one by one solved by the invention of new and unprecedented devices that were adequate for the purposes of the time, and which are embodied in apparatus of slight modification in use up to the present day. just what all this means it is hard for the present generation to imagine. new york and all the other great cities in , and for some years thereafter, were burdened and darkened by hideous masses of overhead wires carried on ugly wooden poles along all the main thoroughfares. one after another rival telegraph and telephone, stock ticker, burglar-alarm, and other companies had strung their circuits without any supervision or restriction; and these wires in all conditions of sag or decay ramified and crisscrossed in every direction, often hanging broken and loose-ended for months, there being no official compulsion to remove any dead wire. none of these circuits carried dangerous currents; but the introduction of the arc light brought an entirely new menace in the use of pressures that were even worse than the bully of the west who "kills on sight," because this kindred peril was invisible, and might lurk anywhere. new poles were put up, and the lighting circuits on them, with but a slight insulation of cotton impregnated with some "weather-proof" compound, straggled all over the city exposed to wind and rain and accidental contact with other wires, or with the metal of buildings. so many fatalities occurred that the insulated wire used, called "underwriters," because approved by the insurance bodies, became jocularly known as "undertakers," and efforts were made to improve its protective qualities. then came the overhead circuits for distributing electrical energy to motors for operating elevators, driving machinery, etc., and these, while using a lower, safer potential, were proportionately larger. there were no wires underground. morse had tried that at the very beginning of electrical application, in telegraphy, and all agreed that renewals of the experiment were at once costly and foolish. at last, in cities like new york, what may be styled generically the "overhead system" of wires broke down under its own weight; and various methods of underground conductors were tried, hastened in many places by the chopping down of poles and wires as the result of some accident that stirred the public indignation. one typical tragic scene was that in new york, where, within sight of the city hall, a lineman was killed at his work on the arc light pole, and his body slowly roasted before the gaze of the excited populace, which for days afterward dropped its silver and copper coin into the alms-box nailed to the fatal pole for the benefit of his family. out of all this in new york came a board of electrical control, a conduit system, and in the final analysis the public service commission, that is credited to governor hughes as the furthest development of utility corporation control. the "road to yesterday" back to edison and his insistence on underground wires is a long one, but the preceding paragraph traces it. even admitting that the size and weight of his low-tension conductors necessitated putting them underground, this argues nothing against the propriety and sanity of his methods. he believed deeply and firmly in the analogy between electrical supply and that for water and gas, and pointed to the trite fact that nobody hoisted the water and gas mains into the air on stilts, and that none of the pressures were inimical to human safety. the arc-lighting methods were unconsciously and unwittingly prophetic of the latter-day long-distance transmissions at high pressure that, electrically, have placed the energy of niagara at the command of syracuse and utica, and have put the power of the falling waters of the sierras at the disposal of san francisco, two hundred miles away. but within city limits overhead wires, with such space-consuming potentials, are as fraught with mischievous peril to the public as the dynamite stored by a nonchalant contractor in the cellar of a schoolhouse. as an offset, then, to any tendency to depreciate the intrinsic value of edison's lighting work, let the claim be here set forth modestly and subject to interference, that he was the father of underground wires in america, and by his example outlined the policy now dominant in every city of the first rank. even the comment of a cynic in regard to electrical development may be accepted: "some electrical companies wanted all the air; others apparently had use for all the water; edison only asked for the earth." the late jacob hess, a famous new york republican politician, was a member of the commission appointed to put the wires underground in new york city, in the "eighties." he stated that when the commission was struggling with the problem, and examining all kinds of devices and plans, patented and unpatented, for which fabulous sums were often asked, the body turned to edison in its perplexity and asked for advice. edison said: "all you have to do, gentlemen, is to insulate your wires, draw them through the cheapest thing on earth--iron pipe--run your pipes through channels or galleries under the street, and you've got the whole thing done." this was practically the system adopted and in use to this day. what puzzled the old politician was that edison would accept nothing for his advice. another story may also be interpolated here as to the underground work done in new york for the first edison station. it refers to the "man higher up," although the phrase had not been coined in those days of lower public morality. that a corporation should be "held up" was accepted philosophically by the corporation as one of the unavoidable incidents of its business; and if the corporation "got back" by securing some privilege without paying for it, the public was ready to condone if not applaud. public utilities were in the making, and no one in particular had a keen sense of what was right or what was wrong, in the hard, practical details of their development. edison tells this illuminating story: "when i was laying tubes in the streets of new york, the office received notice from the commissioner of public works to appear at his office at a certain hour. i went up there with a gentleman to see the commissioner, h. o. thompson. on arrival he said to me: 'you are putting down these tubes. the department of public works requires that you should have five inspectors to look after this work, and that their salary shall be $ per day, payable at the end of each week. good-morning.' i went out very much crestfallen, thinking i would be delayed and harassed in the work which i was anxious to finish, and was doing night and day. we watched patiently for those inspectors to appear. the only appearance they made was to draw their pay saturday afternoon." just before christmas in --december --as an item for the silk stocking of father knickerbocker--the edison electric illuminating company of new york was organized. in pursuance of the policy adhered to by edison, a license was issued to it for the exclusive use of the system in that territory--manhattan island--in consideration of a certain sum of money and a fixed percentage of its capital in stock for the patent rights. early in it was altogether a paper enterprise, but events moved swiftly as narrated already, and on june , , the first "jumbo" prototype of the dynamo-electric machines to generate current at the pearl street station was put through its paces before being shipped to paris to furnish new sensations to the flaneur of the boulevards. a number of the edison officers and employees assembled at goerck street to see this "gigantic" machine go into action, and watched its performance with due reverence all through the night until five o'clock on sunday morning, when it respected the conventionalities by breaking a shaft and suspending further tests. after this dynamo was shipped to france, and its successors to england for the holborn viaduct plant, edison made still further improvements in design, increasing capacity and economy, and then proceeded vigorously with six machines for pearl street. an ideal location for any central station is at the very centre of the district served. it may be questioned whether it often goes there. in the new york first district the nearest property available was a double building at nos. and pearl street, occupying a lot so by feet. it was four stories high, with a fire-wall dividing it into two equal parts. one of these parts was converted for the uses of the station proper, and the other was used as a tube-shop by the underground construction department, as well as for repair-shops, storage, etc. those were the days when no one built a new edifice for station purposes; that would have been deemed a fantastic extravagance. one early station in new york for arc lighting was an old soap-works whose well-soaked floors did not need much additional grease to render them choice fuel for the inevitable flames. in this pearl street instance, the building, erected originally for commercial uses, was quite incapable of sustaining the weight of the heavy dynamos and steam-engines to be installed on the second floor; so the old flooring was torn out and a new one of heavy girders supported by stiff columns was substituted. this heavy construction, more familiar nowadays, and not unlike the supporting metal structure of the manhattan elevated road, was erected independent of the enclosing walls, and occupied the full width of pearl street, and about three-quarters of its depth. this change in the internal arrangements did not at all affect the ugly external appearance, which did little to suggest the stately and ornate stations since put up by the new york edison company, the latest occupying whole city blocks. of this episode edison gives the following account: "while planning for my first new york station--pearl street--of course, i had no real estate, and from lack of experience had very little knowledge of its cost in new york; so i assumed a rather large, liberal amount of it to plan my station on. it occurred to me one day that before i went too far with my plans i had better find out what real estate was worth. in my original plan i had by feet. i thought that by going down on a slum street near the water-front i would get some pretty cheap property. so i picked out the worst dilapidated street there was, and found i could only get two buildings, each feet front, one feet deep and the other feet deep. i thought about $ , each would cover it; but when i got the price i found that they wanted $ , for one and $ , for the other. then i was compelled to change my plans and go upward in the air where real estate was cheap. i cleared out the building entirely to the walls and built my station of structural ironwork, running it up high." into this converted structure was put the most complete steam plant obtainable, together with all the mechanical and engineering adjuncts bearing upon economical and successful operation. being in a narrow street and a congested district, the plant needed special facilities for the handling of coal and ashes, as well as for ventilation and forced draught. all of these details received mr. edison's personal care and consideration on the spot, in addition to the multitude of other affairs demanding his thought. although not a steam or mechanical engineer, his quick grasp of principles and omnivorous reading had soon supplied the lack of training; nor had he forgotten the practical experience picked up as a boy on the locomotives of the grand trunk road. it is to be noticed as a feature of the plant, in common with many of later construction, that it was placed well away from the water's edge, and equipped with non-condensing engines; whereas the modern plant invariably seeks the bank of a river or lake for the purpose of a generous supply of water for its condensing engines or steam-turbines. these are among the refinements of practice coincidental with the advance of the art. at the award of the john fritz gold medal in april, , to charles t. porter for his work in advancing the knowledge of steam-engineering, and for improvements in engine construction, mr. frank j. sprague spoke on behalf of the american institute of electrical engineers of the debt of electricity to the high-speed steam-engine. he recalled the fact that at the french exposition of mr. porter installed two porter-allen engines to drive electric alternating-current generators for supplying current to primitive lighthouse apparatus. while the engines were not directly coupled to the dynamos, it was a curious fact that the piston speeds and number of revolutions were what is common to-day in isolated direct-coupled plants. in the dozen years following mr. porter built many engines with certain common characteristics--i.e., high piston speed and revolutions, solid engine bed, and babbitt-metal bearings; but there was no electric driving until , when mr. porter installed a high-speed engine for edison at his laboratory in menlo park. shortly after this he was invited to construct for the edison pearl street station the first of a series of engines for so-called "steam-dynamos," each independently driven by a direct-coupled engine. mr. sprague compared the relations thus established between electricity and the high-speed engine not to those of debtor and creditor, but rather to those of partners--an industrial marriage--one of the most important in the engineering world. here were two machines destined to be joined together, economizing space, enhancing economy, augmenting capacity, reducing investment, and increasing dividends. while rapid progress was being made in this and other directions, the wheels of industry were humming merrily at the edison tube works, for over fifteen miles of tube conductors were required for the district, besides the boxes to connect the network at the street intersections, and the hundreds of junction boxes for taking the service conductors into each of the hundreds of buildings. in addition to the immense amount of money involved, this specialized industry required an enormous amount of experiment, as it called for the development of an entirely new art. but with edison's inventive fertility--if ever there was a cross-fertilizer of mechanical ideas it is he--and with mr. kruesi's never-failing patience and perseverance applied to experiment and evolution, rapid progress was made. a franchise having been obtained from the city, the work of laying the underground conductors began in the late fall of , and was pushed with almost frantic energy. it is not to be supposed, however, that the edison tube system had then reached a finality of perfection in the eyes of its inventor. in his correspondence with kruesi, as late as , we find edison bewailing the inadequacy of the insulation of the conductors under twelve hundred volts pressure, as for example: "dear kruesi,--there is nothing wrong with your present compound. it is splendid. the whole trouble is air-bubbles. the hotter it is poured the greater the amount of air-bubbles. at it can be put on rods and there is no bubble. i have a man experimenting and testing all the time. until i get at the proper method of pouring and getting rid of the air-bubbles, it will be waste of time to experiment with other asphalts. resin oil distils off easily. it may answer, but paraffine or other similar substances must be put in to prevent brittleness, one thing is certain, and that is, everything must be poured in layers, not only the boxes, but the tubes. the tube itself should have a thin coating. the rope should also have a coating. the rods also. the whole lot, rods and rope, when ready for tube, should have another coat, and then be placed in tube and filled. this will do the business." broad and large as a continent in his ideas, if ever there was a man of finical fussiness in attention to detail, it is edison. a letter of seven pages of about the same date in expatiates on the vicious troubles caused by the air-bubble, and remarks with fine insight into the problems of insulation and the idea of layers of it: "thus you have three separate coatings, and it is impossible an air-hole in one should match the other." to a man less thorough and empirical in method than edison, it would have been sufficient to have made his plans clear to associates or subordinates and hold them responsible for accurate results. no such vicarious treatment would suit him, ready as he has always been to share the work where he could give his trust. in fact he realized, as no one else did at this stage, the tremendous import of this novel and comprehensive scheme for giving the world light; and he would not let go, even if busy to the breaking-point. though plunged in a veritable maelstrom of new and important business interests, and though applying for no fewer than eighty-nine patents in , all of which were granted, he superintended on the spot all this laying of underground conductors for the first district. nor did he merely stand around and give orders. day and night he actually worked in the trenches with the laborers, amid the dirt and paving-stones and hurry-burly of traffic, helping to lay the tubes, filling up junction-boxes, and taking part in all the infinite detail. he wanted to know for himself how things went, why for some occult reason a little change was necessary, what improvement could be made in the material. his hours of work were not regulated by the clock, but lasted until he felt the need of a little rest. then he would go off to the station building in pearl street, throw an overcoat on a pile of tubes, lie down and sleep for a few hours, rising to resume work with the first gang. there was a small bedroom on the third floor of the station available for him, but going to bed meant delay and consumed time. it is no wonder that such impatience, such an enthusiasm, drove the work forward at a headlong pace. edison says of this period: "when we put down the tubes in the lower part of new york, in the streets, we kept a big stock of them in the cellar of the station at pearl street. as i was on all the time, i would take a nap of an hour or so in the daytime--any time--and i used to sleep on those tubes in the cellar. i had two germans who were testing there, and both of them died of diphtheria, caught in the cellar, which was cold and damp. it never affected me." it is worth pausing just a moment to glance at this man taking a fitful rest on a pile of iron pipe in a dingy building. his name is on the tip of the world's tongue. distinguished scientists from every part of europe seek him eagerly. he has just been decorated and awarded high honors by the french government. he is the inventor of wonderful new apparatus, and the exploiter of novel and successful arts. the magic of his achievements and the rumors of what is being done have caused a wild drop in gas securities, and a sensational rise in his own electric-light stock from $ to $ a share. yet these things do not at all affect his slumber or his democratic simplicity, for in that, as in everything else, he is attending strictly to business, "doing the thing that is next to him." part of the rush and feverish haste was due to the approach of frost, which, as usual in new york, suspended operations in the earth; but the laying of the conductors was resumed promptly in the spring of ; and meantime other work had been advanced. during the fall and winter months two more "jumbo" dynamos were built and sent to london, after which the construction of six for new york was swiftly taken in hand. in the month of may three of these machines, each with a capacity of twelve hundred incandescent lamps, were delivered at pearl street and assembled on the second floor. on july th--owing to the better opportunity for ceaseless toil given by a public holiday--the construction of the operative part of the station was so far completed that the first of the dynamos was operated under steam; so that three days later the satisfactory experiment was made of throwing its flood of electrical energy into a bank of one thousand lamps on an upper floor. other tests followed in due course. all was excitement. the field-regulating apparatus and the electrical-pressure indicator--first of its kind--were also tested, and in turn found satisfactory. another vital test was made at this time--namely, of the strength of the iron structure itself on which the plant was erected. this was done by two structural experts; and not till he got their report as to ample factors of safety was edison reassured as to this detail. a remark of edison, familiar to all who have worked with him, when it is reported to him that something new goes all right and is satisfactory from all points of view, is: "well, boys, now let's find the bugs," and the hunt for the phylloxera begins with fiendish, remorseless zest. before starting the plant for regular commercial service, he began personally a series of practical experiments and tests to ascertain in advance what difficulties would actually arise in practice, so that he could provide remedies or preventives. he had several cots placed in the adjoining building, and he and a few of his most strenuous assistants worked day and night, leaving the work only for hurried meals and a snatch of sleep. these crucial tests, aiming virtually to break the plant down if possible within predetermined conditions, lasted several weeks, and while most valuable in the information they afforded, did not hinder anything, for meantime customers' premises throughout the district were being wired and supplied with lamps and meters. on monday, september , , at o'clock, p.m., edison realized the consummation of his broad and original scheme. the pearl street station was officially started by admitting steam to the engine of one of the "jumbos," current was generated, turned into the network of underground conductors, and was transformed into light by the incandescent lamps that had thus far been installed. this date and event may properly be regarded as historical, for they mark the practical beginning of a new art, which in the intervening years has grown prodigiously, and is still increasing by leaps and bounds. everything worked satisfactorily in the main. there were a few mechanical and engineering annoyances that might naturally be expected to arise in a new and unprecedented enterprise; but nothing of sufficient moment to interfere with the steady and continuous supply of current to customers at all hours of the day and night. indeed, once started, this station was operated uninterruptedly for eight years with only insignificant stoppage. it will have been noted by the reader that there was nothing to indicate rashness in starting up the station, as only one dynamo was put in operation. within a short time, however, it was deemed desirable to supply the underground network with more current, as many additional customers had been connected and the demand for the new light was increasing very rapidly. although edison had successfully operated several dynamos in multiple arc two years before--i.e., all feeding current together into the same circuits--there was not, at this early period of experience, any absolute certainty as to what particular results might occur upon the throwing of the current from two or more such massive dynamos into a great distributing system. the sequel showed the value of edison's cautious method in starting the station by operating only a single unit at first. he decided that it would be wise to make the trial operation of a second "jumbo" on a sunday, when business houses were closed in the district, thus obviating any danger of false impressions in the public mind in the event of any extraordinary manifestations. the circumstances attending the adding of a second dynamo are thus humorously described by edison: "my heart was in my mouth at first, but everything worked all right.... then we started another engine and threw them in parallel. of all the circuses since adam was born, we had the worst then! one engine would stop, and the other would run up to about a thousand revolutions, and then they would see-saw. the trouble was with the governors. when the circus commenced, the gang that was standing around ran out precipitately, and i guess some of them kept running for a block or two. i grabbed the throttle of one engine, and e. h. johnson, who was the only one present to keep his wits, caught hold of the other, and we shut them off." one of the "gang" that ran, but, in this case, only to the end of the room, afterward said: "at the time it was a terrifying experience, as i didn't know what was going to happen. the engines and dynamos made a horrible racket, from loud and deep groans to a hideous shriek, and the place seemed to be filled with sparks and flames of all colors. it was as if the gates of the infernal regions had been suddenly opened." this trouble was at once attacked by edison in his characteristic and strenuous way. the above experiment took place between three and four o'clock on a sunday afternoon, and within a few hours he had gathered his superintendent and men of the machine-works and had them at work on a shafting device that he thought would remedy the trouble. he says: "of course, i discovered that what had happened was that one set was running the other as a motor. i then put up a long shaft, connecting all the governors together, and thought this would certainly cure the trouble; but it didn't. the torsion of the shaft was so great that one governor still managed to get ahead of the others. well, it was a serious state of things, and i worried over it a lot. finally i went down to goerck street and got a piece of shafting and a tube in which it fitted. i twisted the shafting one way and the tube the other as far as i could, and pinned them together. in this way, by straining the whole outfit up to its elastic limit in opposite directions, the torsion was practically eliminated, and after that the governors ran together all right." edison realized, however, that in commercial practice this was only a temporary expedient, and that a satisfactory permanence of results could only be attained with more perfect engines that could be depended upon for close and simple regulation. the engines that were made part of the first three "jumbos" placed in the station were the very best that could be obtained at the time, and even then had been specially designed and built for the purpose. once more quoting edison on this subject: "about that time" (when he was trying to run several dynamos in parallel in the pearl street station) "i got hold of gardiner c. sims, and he undertook to build an engine to run at three hundred and fifty revolutions and give one hundred and seventy-five horse-power. he went back to providence and set to work, and brought the engine back with him to the shop. it worked only a few minutes when it busted. that man sat around that shop and slept in it for three weeks, until he got his engine right and made it work the way he wanted it to. when he reached this period i gave orders for the engine-works to run night and day until we got enough engines, and when all was ready we started the engines. then everything worked all right.... one of these engines that sims built ran twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, for over a year before it stopped." [ ] [footnote : we quote the following interesting notes of mr. charles l. clarke on the question of see-sawing, or "hunting," as it was afterward termed: "in the holborn viaduct station the difficulty of 'hunting' was not experienced. at the time the 'jumbos' were first operated in multiple arc, april , , one machine was driven by a porter-allen engine, and the other by an armington & sims engine, and both machines were on a solid foundation. at the station at milan, italy, the first 'jumbos' operated in multiple arc were driven by porter-allen engines, and dash-pots were applied to the governors. these machines were also upon a solid foundation, and no trouble was experienced. "at the pearl street station, however, the machines were supported upon long iron floor-beams, and at the high speed of revolutions per minute, considerable vertical vibration was given to the engines. and the writer is inclined to the opinion that this vibration, acting in the same direction as the action of gravitation, which was one of the two controlling forces in the operation of the porter-allen governor, was the primary cause of the 'hunting.' in the armington & sims engine the controlling forces in the operation of the governor were the centrifugal force of revolving weights, and the opposing force of compressed springs, and neither the action of gravitation nor the vertical vibrations of the engine could have any sensible effect upon the governor."] the pearl street station, as this first large plant was called, made rapid and continuous growth in its output of electric current. it started, as we have said, on september , , supplying about four hundred lights to a comparatively small number of customers. among those first supplied was the banking firm of drexel, morgan & company, corner of broad and wall streets, at the outermost limits of the system. before the end of december of the same year the light had so grown in favor that it was being supplied to over two hundred and forty customers whose buildings were wired for over five thousand lamps. by this time three more "jumbos" had been added to the plant. the output from this time forward increased steadily up to the spring of , when the demands of the station necessitated the installation of two additional "jumbos" in the adjoining building, which, with the venous improvements that had been made in the mean time, gave the station a capacity of over eleven thousand lamps actually in service at any one time. during the first three months of operating the pearl street station light was supplied to customers without charge. edison had perfect confidence in his meters, and also in the ultimate judgment of the public as to the superiority of the incandescent electric light as against other illuminants. he realized, however, that in the beginning of the operation of an entirely novel plant there was ample opportunity for unexpected contingencies, although the greatest care had been exercised to make everything as perfect as possible. mechanical defects or other unforeseen troubles in any part of the plant or underground system might arise and cause temporary stoppages of operation, thus giving grounds for uncertainty which would create a feeling of public distrust in the permanence of the supply of light. as to the kind of mishap that was wont to occur, edison tells the following story: "one afternoon, after our pearl street station started, a policeman rushed in and told us to send an electrician at once up to the corner of ann and nassau streets--some trouble. another man and i went up. we found an immense crowd of men and boys there and in the adjoining streets--a perfect jam. there was a leak in one of our junction-boxes, and on account of the cellars extending under the street, the top soil had become insulated. hence, by means of this leak powerful currents were passing through this thin layer of moist earth. when a horse went to pass over it he would get a very severe shock. when i arrived i saw coming along the street a ragman with a dilapidated old horse, and one of the boys told him to go over on the other side of the road--which was the place where the current leaked. when the ragman heard this he took that side at once. the moment the horse struck the electrified soil he stood straight up in the air, and then reared again; and the crowd yelled, the policeman yelled; and the horse started to run away. this continued until the crowd got so serious that the policeman had to clear it out; and we were notified to cut the current off. we got a gang of men, cut the current off for several junction-boxes, and fixed the leak. one man who had seen it came to me next day and wanted me to put in apparatus for him at a place where they sold horses. he said he could make a fortune with it, because he could get old nags in there and make them act like thoroughbreds." so well had the work been planned and executed, however, that nothing happened to hinder the continuous working of the station and the supply of light to customers. hence it was decided in december, , to begin charging a price for the service, and, accordingly, edison electrolytic meters were installed on the premises of each customer then connected. the first bill for lighting, based upon the reading of one of these meters, amounted to $ . , and was collected on january , , from the ansonia brass and copper company, and cliff street. generally speaking, customers found that their bills compared fairly with gas bills for corresponding months where the same amount of light was used, and they paid promptly and cheerfully, with emphatic encomiums of the new light. during november, , a little over one year after the station was started, bills for lighting amounting to over $ were collected. an interesting story of meter experience in the first few months of operation of the pearl street station is told by one of the "boys" who was then in position to know the facts; "mr. j. p. morgan, whose firm was one of the first customers, expressed to mr. edison some doubt as to the accuracy of the meter. the latter, firmly convinced of its correctness, suggested a strict test by having some cards printed and hung on each fixture at mr. morgan's place. on these cards was to be noted the number of lamps in the fixture, and the time they were turned on and off each day for a month. at the end of that time the lamp-hours were to be added together by one of the clerks and figured on a basis of a definite amount per lamp-hour, and compared with the bill that would be rendered by the station for the corresponding period. the results of the first month's test showed an apparent overcharge by the edison company. mr. morgan was exultant, while mr. edison was still confident and suggested a continuation of the test. another month's trial showed somewhat similar results. mr. edison was a little disturbed, but insisted that there was a mistake somewhere. he went down to drexel, morgan & company's office to investigate, and, after looking around, asked when the office was cleaned out. he was told it was done at night by the janitor, who was sent for, and upon being interrogated as to what light he used, said that he turned on a central fixture containing about ten lights. it came out that he had made no record of the time these lights were in use. he was told to do so in future, and another month's test was made. on comparison with the company's bill, rendered on the meter-reading, the meter came within a few cents of the amount computed from the card records, and mr. morgan was completely satisfied of the accuracy of the meter." it is a strange but not extraordinary commentary on the perversity of human nature and the lack of correct observation, to note that even after the pearl street station had been in actual operation twenty-four hours a day for nearly three months, there should still remain an attitude of "can't be done." that such a scepticism still obtained is evidenced by the public prints of the period. edison's electric-light system and his broad claims were freely discussed and animadverted upon at the very time he was demonstrating their successful application. to show some of the feeling at the time, we reproduce the following letter, which appeared november , : "to the editor of the sun: "sir,--in reading the discussions relative to the pearl street station of the edison light, i have noted that while it is claimed that there is scarcely any loss from leakage of current, nothing is said about the loss due to the resistance of the long circuits. i am informed that this is the secret of the failure to produce with the power in position a sufficient amount of current to run all the lamps that have been put up, and that while six, and even seven, lights to the horse-power may be produced from an isolated plant, the resistance of the long underground wires reduces this result in the above case to less than three lights to the horse-power, thus making the cost of production greatly in excess of gas. can the edison company explain this? 'investigator'." this was one of the many anonymous letters that had been written to the newspapers on the subject, and the following reply by the edison company was printed december , : "to the editor of the sun: "sir,--'investigator' in wednesday's sun, says that the edison company is troubled at its pearl street station with a 'loss of current, due to the resistance of the long circuits'; also that, whereas edison gets 'six or even seven lights to the horse-power in isolated plants, the resistance of the long underground wires reduces that result in the pearl street station to less than three lights to the horse-power.' both of these statements are false. as regards loss due to resistance, there is a well-known law for determining it, based on ohm's law. by use of that law we knew in advance, that is to say, when the original plans for the station were drawn, just what this loss would be, precisely the same as a mechanical engineer when constructing a mill with long lines of shafting can forecast the loss of power due to friction. the practical result in the pearl street station has fully demonstrated the correctness of our estimate thus made in advance. as regards our getting only three lights per horse-power, our station has now been running three months, without stopping a moment, day or night, and we invariably get over six lamps per horse-power, or substantially the same as we do in our isolated plants. we are now lighting one hundred and ninety-three buildings, wired for forty-four hundred lamps, of which about two-thirds are in constant use, and we are adding additional houses and lamps daily. these figures can be verified at the office of the board of underwriters, where certificates with full details permitting the use of our light are filed by their own inspector. to light these lamps we run from one to three dynamos, according to the lamps in use at any given time, and we shall start additional dynamos as fast as we can connect more buildings. neither as regards the loss due to resistance, nor as regards the number of lamps per horse-power, is there the slightest trouble or disappointment on the part of our company, and your correspondent is entirely in error is assuming that there is. let me suggest that if 'investigator' really wishes to investigate, and is competent and willing to learn the exact facts, he can do so at this office, where there is no mystery of concealment, but, on the contrary, a strong desire to communicate facts to intelligent inquirers. such a method of investigating must certainly be more satisfactory to one honestly seeking knowledge than that of first assuming an error as the basis of a question, and then demanding an explanation. "yours very truly, "s. b. eaton, president." viewed from the standpoint of over twenty-seven years later, the wisdom and necessity of answering anonymous newspaper letters of this kind might be deemed questionable, but it must be remembered that, although the pearl street station was working successfully, and edison's comprehensive plans were abundantly vindicated, the enterprise was absolutely new and only just stepping on the very threshold of commercial exploitation. to enter in and possess the land required the confidence of capital and the general public. hence it was necessary to maintain a constant vigilance to defeat the insidious attacks of carping critics and others who would attempt to injure the edison system by misleading statements. it will be interesting to the modern electrician to note that when this pioneer station was started, and in fact for some little time afterward, there was not a single electrical instrument in the whole station--not a voltmeter or an ammeter! nor was there a central switchboard! each dynamo had its own individual control switch. the feeder connections were all at the front of the building, and the general voltage control apparatus was on the floor above. an automatic pressure indicator had been devised and put in connection with the main circuits. it consisted, generally speaking, of an electromagnet with relays connecting with a red and a blue lamp. when the electrical pressure was normal, neither lamp was lighted; but if the electromotive force rose above a predetermined amount by one or two volts, the red lamp lighted up, and the attendant at the hand-wheel of the field regulator inserted resistance in the field circuit, whereas, if the blue lamp lighted, resistance was cut out until the pressure was raised to normal. later on this primitive indicator was supplanted by the "bradley bridge," a crude form of the "howell" pressure indicators, which were subsequently used for many years in the edison stations. much could be added to make a complete pictorial description of the historic pearl street station, but it is not within the scope of this narrative to enter into diffuse technical details, interesting as they may be to many persons. we cannot close this chapter, however, without mention of the fate of the pearl street station, which continued in successful commercial operation until january , , when it was partially destroyed by fire. all the "jumbos" were ruined, excepting no. , which is still a venerated relic in the possession of the new york edison company. luckily, the boilers were unharmed. belt-driven generators and engines were speedily installed, and the station was again in operation in a few days. the uninjured "jumbo," no. , again continued to perform its duty. but in the words of mr. charles l. clarke, "the glory of the old pearl street station, unique in bearing the impress of mr. edison's personality, and, as it were, constructed with his own hands, disappeared in the flame and smoke of that thursday morning fire." the few days' interruption of the service was the only serious one that has taken place in the history of the new york edison company from september , , to the present date. the pearl street station was operated for some time subsequent to the fire, but increasing demands in the mean time having led to the construction of other stations, the mains of the first district were soon afterward connected to another plant, the pearl street station was dismantled, and the building was sold in . the prophetic insight into the magnitude of central-station lighting that edison had when he was still experimenting on the incandescent lamp over thirty years ago is a little less than astounding, when it is so amply verified in the operations of the new york edison company (the successor of the edison electric illuminating company of new york) and many others. at the end of the new york edison company alone was operating twenty-eight stations and substations, having a total capacity of , kilowatts. connected with its lines were approximately , customers wired for , , incandescent lamps and nearly , horse-power through industrial electric motors connected with the underground service. a large quantity of electrical energy is also supplied for heating and cooking, charging automobiles, chemical and plating work, and various other uses. chapter xvii other early stations--the meter we have now seen the edison lighting system given a complete, convincing demonstration in paris, london, and new york; and have noted steps taken for its introduction elsewhere on both sides of the atlantic. the paris plant, like that at the crystal palace, was a temporary exhibit. the london plant was less temporary, but not permanent, supplying before it was torn out no fewer than three thousand lamps in hotels, churches, stores, and dwellings in the vicinity of holborn viaduct. there messrs. johnson and hammer put into practice many of the ideas now standard in the art, and secured much useful data for the work in new york, of which the story has just been told. as a matter of fact the first edison commercial station to be operated in this country was that at appleton, wisconsin, but its only serious claim to notice is that it was the initial one of the system driven by water-power. it went into service august , , about three weeks before the pearl street station. it consisted of one small dynamo of a capacity of two hundred and eighty lights of c.p. each, and was housed in an unpretentious wooden shed. the dynamo-electric machine, though small, was robust, for under all the varying speeds of water-power, and the vicissitudes of the plant to which it, belonged, it continued in active use until --seventeen years. edison was from the first deeply impressed with the possibilities of water-power, and, as this incident shows, was prompt to seize such a very early opportunity. but his attention was in reality concentrated closely on the supply of great centres of population, a task which he then felt might well occupy his lifetime; and except in regard to furnishing isolated plants he did not pursue further the development of hydro-electric stations. that was left to others, and to the application of the alternating current, which has enabled engineers to harness remote powers, and, within thoroughly economical limits, transmit thousands of horse-power as much as two hundred miles at pressures of , and , volts. owing to his insistence on low pressure, direct current for use in densely populated districts, as the only safe and truly universal, profitable way of delivering electrical energy to the consumers, edison has been frequently spoken of as an opponent of the alternating current. this does him an injustice. at the time a measure was before the virginia legislature, in , to limit the permissible pressures of current so as to render it safe, he said: "you want to allow high pressure wherever the conditions are such that by no possible accident could that pressure get into the houses of the consumers; you want to give them all the latitude you can." in explaining this he added: "suppose you want to take the falls down at richmond, and want to put up a water-power? why, if we erect a station at the falls, it is a great economy to get it up to the city. by digging a cheap trench and putting in an insulated cable, and connecting such station with the central part of richmond, having the end of the cable come up into the station from the earth and there connected with motors, the power of the falls would be transmitted to these motors. if now the motors were made to run dynamos conveying low-pressure currents to the public, there is no possible way whereby this high-pressure current could get to the public." in other words, edison made the sharp fundamental distinction between high pressure alternating current for transmission and low pressure direct current for distribution; and this is exactly the practice that has been adopted in all the great cities of the country to-day. there seems no good reason for believing that it will change. it might perhaps have been altogether better for edison, from the financial standpoint, if he had not identified himself so completely with one kind of current, but that made no difference to him, as it was a matter of conviction; and edison's convictions are granitic. moreover, this controversy over the two currents, alternating and direct, which has become historical in the field of electricity--and is something like the "irrepressible conflict" we heard of years ago in national affairs--illustrates another aspect of edison's character. broad as the prairies and free in thought as the winds that sweep them, he is idiosyncratically opposed to loose and wasteful methods, to plans of empire that neglect the poor at the gate. everything he has done has been aimed at the conservation of energy, the contraction of space, the intensification of culture. burbank and his tribe represent in the vegetable world, edison in the mechanical. not only has he developed distinctly new species, but he has elucidated the intensive art of getting $ out of an electrical acre instead of $ --a manured market-garden inside london and a ten-bushel exhausted wheat farm outside lawrence, kansas, being the antipodes of productivity--yet very far short of exemplifying the difference of electrical yield between an acre of territory in edison's "first new york district" and an acre in some small town. edison's lighting work furnished an excellent basis--in fact, the only one--for the development of the alternating current now so generally employed in central-station work in america; and in the mcgraw electrical directory of april, , no fewer than stations out of reported its use. when the alternating current was introduced for practical purposes it was not needed for arc lighting, the circuit for which, from a single dynamo, would often be twenty or thirty miles in length, its current having a pressure of not less than five or six thousand volts. for some years it was not found feasible to operate motors on alternating-current circuits, and that reason was often urged against it seriously. it could not be used for electroplating or deposition, nor could it charge storage batteries, all of which are easily within the ability of the direct current. but when it came to be a question of lighting a scattered suburb, a group of dwellings on the outskirts, a remote country residence or a farm-house, the alternating current, in all elements save its danger, was and is ideal. its thin wires can be carried cheaply over vast areas, and at each local point of consumption the transformer of size exactly proportioned to its local task takes the high-voltage transmission current and lowers its potential at a ratio of or to , for use in distribution and consumption circuits. this evolution has been quite distinct, with its own inventors like gaulard and gibbs and stanley, but came subsequent to the work of supplying small, dense areas of population; the art thus growing from within, and using each new gain as a means for further achievement. nor was the effect of such great advances as those made by edison limited to the electrical field. every department of mechanics was stimulated and benefited to an extraordinary degree. copper for the circuits was more highly refined than ever before to secure the best conductivity, and purity was insisted on in every kind of insulation. edison was intolerant of sham and shoddy, and nothing would satisfy him that could not stand cross-examination by microscope, test-tube, and galvanometer. it was, perhaps, the steam-engine on which the deepest imprint for good was made, referred to already in the remarks of mr. f. j. sprague in the preceding chapter, but best illustrated in the perfection of the modern high-speed engine of the armington & sims type. unless he could secure an engine of smoother running and more exactly governed and regulated than those available for his dynamo and lamp, edison realized that he would find it almost impossible to give a steady light. he did not want his customers to count the heart-beats of the engine in the flicker of the lamp. not a single engine was even within gunshot of the standard thus set up, but the emergency called forth its man in gardiner c. sims, a talented draughtsman and designer who had been engaged in locomotive construction and in the engineering department of the united states navy. he may be quoted as to what happened: "the deep interest, financial and moral, and friendly backing i received from mr. edison, together with valuable suggestions, enabled me to bring out the engine; as i was quite alone in the world--poor--i had found a friend who knew what he wanted and explained it clearly. mr. edison was a leader far ahead of the time. he compelled the design of the successful engine. "our first engine compelled the inventing and making of a suitable engine indicator to indicate it--the tabor. he obtained the desired speed and load with a friction brake; also regulator of speed; but waited for an indicator to verify it. then again there was no known way to lubricate an engine for continuous running, and mr. edison informed me that as a marine engine started before the ship left new york and continued running until it reached its home port, so an engine for his purposes must produce light at all times. that was a poser to me, for a five-hours' run was about all that had been required up to that time. "a day or two later mr. edison inquired: 'how far is it from here to lawrence; it is a long walk, isn't it?' 'yes, rather.' he said: 'of course you will understand i meant without oil.' to say i was deeply perplexed does not express my feelings. we were at the machine works, goerck street. i started for the oil-room, when, about entering, i saw a small funnel lying on the floor. it had been stepped on and flattened. i took it up, and it had solved the engine-oiling problem--and my walk to lawrence like a tramp actor's was off! the eccentric strap had a round glass oil-cup with a brass base that screwed into the strap. i took it off, and making a sketch, went to dave cunningham, having the funnel in my hand to illustrate what i wanted made. i requested him to make a sheet-brass oil-cup and solder it to the base i had. he did so. i then had a standard made to hold another oil-cup, so as to see and regulate the drop-feed. on this combination i obtained a patent which is now universally used." it is needless to say that in due course the engine builders of the united states developed a variety of excellent prime movers for electric-light and power plants, and were grateful to the art from which such a stimulus came to their industry; but for many years one never saw an edison installation without expecting to find one or more armington & sims high-speed engines part of it. though the type has gone out of existence, like so many other things that are useful in their day and generation, it was once a very vital part of the art, and one more illustration of that intimate manner in which the advances in different fields of progress interact and co-operate. edison had installed his historic first great central-station system in new york on the multiple arc system covered by his feeder and main invention, which resulted in a notable saving in the cost of conductors as against a straight two-wire system throughout of the "tree" kind. he soon foresaw that still greater economy would be necessary for commercial success not alone for the larger territory opening, but for the compact districts of large cities. being firmly convinced that there was a way out, he pushed aside a mass of other work, and settled down to this problem, with the result that on november , , only two months after current had been sent out from pearl street, he executed an application for a patent covering what is now known as the "three-wire system." it has been universally recognized as one of the most valuable inventions in the history of the lighting art. [ ] its use resulted in a saving of over per cent. of copper in conductors, figured on the most favorable basis previously known, inclusive of those calculated under his own feeder and main system. such economy of outlay being effected in one of the heaviest items of expense in central-station construction, it was now made possible to establish plants in towns where the large investment would otherwise have been quite prohibitive. the invention is in universal use today, alike for direct and for alternating current, and as well in the equipment of large buildings as in the distribution system of the most extensive central-station networks. one cannot imagine the art without it. [footnote : for technical description and illustration of this invention, see appendix.] the strong position held by the edison system, under the strenuous competition that was already springing up, was enormously improved by the introduction of the three-wire system; and it gave an immediate impetus to incandescent lighting. desiring to put this new system into practical use promptly, and receiving applications for licenses from all over the country, edison selected brockton, massachusetts, and sunbury, pennsylvania, as the two towns for the trial. of these two brockton required the larger plant, but with the conductors placed underground. it was the first to complete its arrangements and close its contract. mr. henry villard, it will be remembered, had married the daughter of garrison, the famous abolitionist, and it was through his relationship with the garrison family that brockton came to have the honor of exemplifying so soon the principles of an entirely new art. sunbury, however, was a much smaller installation, employed overhead conductors, and hence was the first to "cross the tape." it was specially suited for a trial plant also, in the early days when a yield of six or eight lamps to the horse-power was considered subject for congratulation. the town being situated in the coal region of pennsylvania, good coal could then be obtained there at seventy-five cents a ton. the sunbury generating plant consisted of an armington & sims engine driving two small edison dynamos having a total capacity of about four hundred lamps of c.p. the indicating instruments were of the crudest construction, consisting of two voltmeters connected by "pressure wires" to the centre of electrical distribution. one ammeter, for measuring the quantity of current output, was interpolated in the "neutral bus" or third-wire return circuit to indicate when the load on the two machines was out of balance. the circuits were opened and closed by means of about half a dozen roughly made plug-switches. [ ] the "bus-bars" to receive the current from the dynamos were made of no. copper line wire, straightened out and fastened to the wooden sheathing of the station by iron staples without any presence to insulation. commenting upon this mr. w. s. andrews, detailed from the central staff, says: "the interior winding of the sunbury station, including the running of two three-wire feeders the entire length of the building from back to front, the wiring up of the dynamos and switchboard and all instruments, together with bus-bars, etc.--in fact, all labor and material used in the electrical wiring installation--amounted to the sum of $ . i received a rather sharp letter from the new york office expostulating for this extravagant expenditure, and stating that great economy must be observed in future!" the street conductors were of the overhead pole-line construction, and were installed by the construction company that had been organized by edison to build and equip central stations. a special type of street pole had been devised by him for the three-wire system. [footnote : by reason of the experience gained at this station through the use of these crude plug-switches, mr. edison started a competition among a few of his assistants to devise something better. the result was the invention of a "breakdown" switch by mr. w. s. andrews, which was accepted by mr. edison as the best of the devices suggested, and was developed and used for a great many years afterward.] supplementing the story of mr. andrews is that of lieut. f. j. sprague, who also gives a curious glimpse of the glorious uncertainties and vicissitudes of that formative period. mr. sprague served on the jury at the crystal palace exhibition with darwin's son--the present sir horace--and after the tests were ended left the navy and entered edison's service at the suggestion of mr. e. h. johnson, who was edison's shrewd recruiting sergeant in those days: "i resigned sooner than johnson expected, and he had me on his hands. meanwhile he had called upon me to make a report of the three-wire system, known in england as the hopkinson, both dr. john hopkinson and mr. edison being independent inventors at practically the same time. i reported on that, left london, and landed in new york on the day of the opening of the brooklyn bridge in --may --with a year's leave of absence. "i reported at the office of mr. edison on fifth avenue and told him i had seen johnson. he looked me over and said: 'what did he promise you?' i replied: 'twenty-five hundred dollars a year.' he did not say much, but looked it. about that time mr. andrews and i came together. on july d of that year we were ordered to sunbury, and to be ready to start the station on the fourth. the electrical work had to be done in forty-eight hours! having travelled around the world, i had cultivated an indifference to any special difficulties of that kind. mr. andrews and i worked in collaboration until the night of the third. i think he was perhaps more appreciative than i was of the discipline of the edison construction department, and thought it would be well for us to wait until the morning of the fourth before we started up. i said we were sent over to get going, and insisted on starting up on the night of the third. we had an armington & sims engine with sight-feed oiler. i had never seen one, and did not know how it worked, with the result that we soon burned up the babbitt metal in the bearings and spent a good part of the night getting them in order. the next day mr. edison, mr. insull, and the chief engineer of the construction department appeared on the scene and wanted to know what had happened. they found an engine somewhat loose in the bearings, and there followed remarks which would not look well in print. andrews skipped from under; he obeyed orders; i did not. but the plant ran, and it was the first three-wire station in this country." seen from yet another angle, the worries of this early work were not merely those of the men on the "firing line." mr. insull, in speaking of this period, says: "when it was found difficult to push the central-station business owing to the lack of confidence in its financial success, edison decided to go into the business of promoting and constructing central-station plants, and he formed what was known as the thomas a. edison construction department, which he put me in charge of. the organization was crude, the steam-engineering talent poor, and owing to the impossibility of getting any considerable capital subscribed, the plants were put in as cheaply as possible. i believe that this construction department was unkindly named the 'destruction department.' it served its purpose; never made any money; and i had the unpleasant task of presiding at its obsequies." on july th the sunbury plant was put into commercial operation by edison, and he remained a week studying its conditions and watching for any unforeseen difficulty that might arise. nothing happened, however, to interfere with the successful running of the station, and for twenty years thereafter the same two dynamos continued to furnish light in sunbury. they were later used as reserve machines, and finally, with the engine, retired from service as part of the "collection of edisonia"; but they remain in practically as good condition as when installed in . sunbury was also provided with the first electro-chemical meters used in the united states outside new york city, so that it served also to accentuate electrical practice in a most vital respect--namely, the measurement of the electrical energy supplied to customers. at this time and long after, all arc lighting was done on a "flat rate" basis. the arc lamp installed outside a customer's premises, or in a circuit for public street lighting, burned so many hours nightly, so many nights in the month; and was paid for at that rate, subject to rebate for hours when the lamp might be out through accident. the early arc lamps were rated to require to amperes of current, at volts pressure each, receiving which they were estimated to give c.p., which was arrived at by adding together the light found at four different positions, so that in reality the actual light was about c.p. few of these data were ever actually used, however; and it was all more or less a matter of guesswork, although the central-station manager, aiming to give good service, would naturally see that the dynamos were so operated as to maintain as steadily as possible the normal potential and current. the same loose methods applied to the early attempts to use electric motors on arc-lighting circuits, and contracts were made based on the size of the motor, the width of the connecting belt, or the amount of power the customer thought he used--never on the measurement of the electrical energy furnished him. here again edison laid the foundation of standard practice. it is true that even down to the present time the flat rate is applied to a great deal of incandescent lighting, each lamp being charged for individually according to its probable consumption during each month. this may answer, perhaps, in a small place where the manager can gauge pretty closely from actual observation what each customer does; but even then there are elements of risk and waste; and obviously in a large city such a method would soon be likely to result in financial disaster to the plant. edison held that the electricity sold must be measured just like gas or water, and he proceeded to develop a meter. there was infinite scepticism around him on the subject, and while other inventors were also giving the subject their thought, the public took it for granted that anything so utterly intangible as electricity, that could not be seen or weighed, and only gave secondary evidence of itself at the exact point of use, could not be brought to accurate registration. the general attitude of doubt was exemplified by the incident in mr. j. p. morgan's office, noted in the last chapter. edison, however, had satisfied himself that there were various ways of accomplishing the task, and had determined that the current should be measured on the premises of every consumer. his electrolytic meter was very successful, and was of widespread use in america and in europe until the perfection of mechanical meters by elihu thomson and others brought that type into general acceptance. hence the edison electrolytic meter is no longer used, despite its excellent qualities. houston & kennelly in their electricity in everyday life sum the matter up as follows: "the edison chemical meter is capable of giving fair measurements of the amount of current passing. by reason, however, of dissatisfaction caused from the inability of customers to read the indications of the meter, it has in later years, to a great extent, been replaced by registering meters that can be read by the customer." the principle employed in the edison electrolytic meter is that which exemplifies the power of electricity to decompose a chemical substance. in other words it is a deposition bath, consisting of a glass cell in which two plates of chemically pure zinc are dipped in a solution of zinc sulphate. when the lights or motors in the circuit are turned on, and a certain definite small portion of the current is diverted to flow through the meter, from the positive plate to the negative plate, the latter increases in weight by receiving a deposit of metallic zinc; the positive plate meantime losing in weight by the metal thus carried away from it. this difference in weight is a very exact measure of the quantity of electricity, or number of ampere-hours, that have, so to speak, passed through the cell, and hence of the whole consumption in the circuit. the amount thus due from the customer is ascertained by removing the cell, washing and drying the plates, and weighing them in a chemical balance. associated with this simple form of apparatus were various ingenious details and refinements to secure regularity of operation, freedom from inaccuracy, and immunity from such tampering as would permit theft of current or damage. as the freezing of the zinc sulphate solution in cold weather would check its operation, edison introduced, for example, into the meter an incandescent lamp and a thermostat so arranged that when the temperature fell to a certain point, or rose above another point, it was cut in or out; and in this manner the meter could be kept from freezing. the standard edison meter practice was to remove the cells once a month to the meter-room of the central-station company for examination, another set being substituted. the meter was cheap to manufacture and install, and not at all liable to get out of order. in december, , mr. w. j. jenks read an interesting paper before the american institute of electrical engineers on the six years of practical experience had up to that time with the meter, then more generally in use than any other. it appears from the paper that twenty-three edison stations were then equipped with meters, which were relied upon for billing the monthly current consumption of , lamps and motors of horse-power total. this represented about per cent. of the entire lamp capacity of the stations. there was an average cost per lamp for meter operation of twenty-two cents a year, and each meter took care of an average of seventeen lamps. it is worthy of note, as to the promptness with which the edison stations became paying properties, that four of the metered stations were earning upward of per cent. on their capital stock; three others between and per cent.; eight between and per cent.; the others having been in operation too short a time to show definite results, although they also went quickly to a dividend basis. reports made in the discussion at the meeting by engineers showed the simplicity and success of the meter. mr. c. l. edgar, of the boston edison system, stated that he had of the meters in service cared for by two men and three boys, the latter employed in collecting the meter cells; the total cost being perhaps $ a year. mr. j. w. lieb wrote from milan, italy, that he had in use on the edison system there meters ranging from ampere-hours per month up to , . in this connection it should be mentioned that the association of edison illuminating companies in the same year adopted resolutions unanimously to the effect that the edison meter was accurate, and that its use was not expensive for stations above one thousand lights; and that the best financial results were invariably secured in a station selling current by meter. before the same association, at its meeting in september, , at sault ste. marie, mr. c. s. shepard read a paper on the meter practice of the new york edison company, giving data as to the large number of edison meters in use and the transition to other types, of which to-day the company has several on its circuits: "until october, , the new york edison company metered its current in consumer's premises exclusively by the old-style chemical meters, of which there were connected on that date . it was then determined to purchase no more." mr. shepard went on to state that the chemical meters were gradually displaced, and that on september , , there were on the system mechanical and chemical. the meter continued in general service during , and probably up to the close of the century. mr. andrews relates a rather humorous meter story of those early days: "the meter man at sunbury was a firm and enthusiastic believer in the correctness of the edison meter, having personally verified its reading many times by actual comparison of lamp-hours. one day, on making out a customer's bill, his confidence received a severe shock, for the meter reading showed a consumption calling for a charge of over $ , whereas he knew that the light actually used should not cost more than one-quarter of that amount. he weighed and reweighed the meter plates, and pursued every line of investigation imaginable, but all in vain. he felt he was up against it, and that perhaps another kind of a job would suit him better. once again he went to the customer's meter to look around, when a small piece of thick wire on the floor caught his eye. the problem was solved. he suddenly remembered that after weighing the plates he went and put them in the customer's meter; but the wire attached to one of the plates was too long to go in the meter, and he had cut it off. he picked up the piece of wire, took it to the station, weighed it carefully, and found that it accounted for about $ worth of electricity, which was the amount of the difference." edison himself is, however, the best repertory of stories when it comes to the difficulties of that early period, in connection with metering the current and charging for it. he may be quoted at length as follows: "when we started the station at pearl street, in september, , we were not very commercial. we put many customers on, but did not make out many bills. we were more interested in the technical condition of the station than in the commercial part. we had meters in which there were two bottles of liquid. to prevent these electrolytes from freezing we had in each meter a strip of metal. when it got very cold the metal would contract and close a circuit, and throw a lamp into circuit inside the meter. the heat from this lamp would prevent the liquid from freezing, so that the meter could go on doing its duty. the first cold day after starting the station, people began to come in from their offices, especially down in front street and water street, saying the meter was on fire. we received numerous telephone messages about it. some had poured water on it, and others said: 'send a man right up to put it out.' "after the station had been running several months and was technically a success, we began to look after the financial part. we started to collect some bills; but we found that our books were kept badly, and that the person in charge, who was no business man, had neglected that part of it. in fact, he did not know anything about the station, anyway. so i got the directors to permit me to hire a man to run the station. this was mr. chinnock, who was then superintendent of the metropolitan telephone company of new york. i knew chinnock to be square and of good business ability, and induced him to leave his job. i made him a personal guarantee, that if he would take hold of the station and put it on a commercial basis, and pay per cent. on $ , , i would give him $ , out of my own pocket. he took hold, performed the feat, and i paid him the $ , . i might remark in this connection that years afterward i applied to the edison electric light company asking them if they would not like to pay me this money, as it was spent when i was very hard up and made the company a success, and was the foundation of their present prosperity. they said they 'were sorry'--that is, 'wall street sorry'--and refused to pay it. this shows what a nice, genial, generous lot of people they have over in wall street. "chinnock had a great deal of trouble getting the customers straightened out. i remember one man who had a saloon on nassau street. he had had his lights burning for two or three months. it was in june, and chinnock put in a bill for $ ; july for $ ; august about $ ; september about $ . of course the nights were getting longer. october about $ ; november about $ . then the man called chinnock up. he said: 'i want to see you about my electric-light bill.' chinnock went up to see him. he said: 'are you the manager of this electric-light plant?' chinnock said: 'i have the honor.' 'well,' he said, my bill has gone from $ up to $ , $ , $ . i want you to understand, young fellow, that my limit is $ .' "after chinnock had had all this trouble due to the incompetency of the previous superintendent, a man came in and said to him: 'did mr. blank have charge of this station?' 'yes.' 'did he know anything about running a station like this?' chinnock said: 'does he know anything about running a station like this? no, sir. he doesn't even suspect anything.' "one day chinnock came to me and said: 'i have a new customer.' i said: 'what is it?' he said: 'i have a fellow who is going to take two hundred and fifty lights.' i said: 'what for?' 'he has a place down here in a top loft, and has got two hundred and fifty barrels of "rotgut" whiskey. he puts a light down in the barrel and lights it up, and it ages the whiskey.' i met chinnock several weeks after, and said: 'how is the whiskey man getting along?' 'it's all right; he is paying his bill. it fixes the whiskey and takes the shudder right out of it.' somebody went and took out a patent on this idea later. "in the second year we put the stock exchange on the circuits of the station, but were very fearful that there would be a combination of heavy demand and a dark day, and that there would be an overloaded station. we had an index like a steam-gauge, called an ampere-meter, to indicate the amount of current going out. i was up at fifth avenue one afternoon. a sudden black cloud came up, and i telephoned to chinnock and asked him about the load. he said: 'we are up to the muzzle, and everything is running all right.' by-and-by it became so thick we could not see across the street. i telephoned again, and felt something would happen, but fortunately it did not. i said to chinnock: 'how is it now?' he replied: 'everything is red-hot, and the ampere-meter has made seventeen revolutions.'" in no such fittings as "fixture insulators" were known. it was the common practice to twine the electric wires around the disused gas-fixtures, fasten them with tape or string, and connect them to lamp-sockets screwed into attachments under the gas-burners--elaborated later into what was known as the "combination fixture." as a result it was no uncommon thing to see bright sparks snapping between the chandelier and the lighting wires during a sharp thunder-storm. a startling manifestation of this kind happened at sunbury, when the vivid display drove nervous guests of the hotel out into the street, and the providential storm led mr. luther stieringer to invent the "insulating joint." this separated the two lighting systems thoroughly, went into immediate service, and is universally used to-day. returning to the more specific subject of pioneer plants of importance, that at brockton must be considered for a moment, chiefly for the reason that the city was the first in the world to possess an edison station distributing current through an underground three-wire network of conductors--the essentially modern contemporaneous practice, standard twenty-five years later. it was proposed to employ pole-line construction with overhead wires, and a party of edison engineers drove about the town in an open barouche with a blue-print of the circuits and streets spread out on their knees, to determine how much tree-trimming would be necessary. when they came to some heavily shaded spots, the fine trees were marked "t" to indicate that the work in getting through them would be "tough." where the trees were sparse and the foliage was thin, the same cheerful band of vandals marked the spots "e" to indicate that there it would be "easy" to run the wires. in those days public opinion was not so alive as now to the desirability of preserving shade-trees, and of enhancing the beauty of a city instead of destroying it. brockton had a good deal of pride in its fine trees, and a strong sentiment was very soon aroused against the mutilation proposed so thoughtlessly. the investors in the enterprise were ready and anxious to meet the extra cost of putting the wires underground. edison's own wishes were altogether for the use of the methods he had so carefully devised; and hence that bustling home of shoe manufacture was spared this infliction of more overhead wires. the station equipment at brockton consisted at first of three dynamos, one of which was so arranged as to supply both sides of the system during light loads by a breakdown switch connection. this arrangement interfered with correct meter registration, as the meters on one side of the system registered backward during the hours in which the combination was employed. hence, after supplying an all-night customer whose lamps were on one side of the circuits, the company might be found to owe him some thing substantial in the morning. soon after the station went into operation this ingenious plan was changed, and the third dynamo was replaced by two others. the edison construction department took entire charge of the installation of the plant, and the formal opening was attended on october , , by mr. edison, who then remained a week in ceaseless study and consultation over the conditions developed by this initial three-wire underground plant. some idea of the confidence inspired by the fame of edison at this period is shown by the fact that the first theatre ever lighted from a central station by incandescent lamps was designed this year, and opened in at brockton with an equipment of three hundred lamps. the theatre was never piped for gas! it was also from the brockton central station that current was first supplied to a fire-engine house--another display of remarkably early belief in the trustworthiness of the service, under conditions where continuity of lighting was vital. the building was equipped in such a manner that the striking of the fire-alarm would light every lamp in the house automatically and liberate the horses. it was at this central station that lieutenant sprague began his historic work on the electric motor; and here that another distinguished engineer and inventor, mr. h. ward leonard, installed the meters and became meter man, in order that he might study in every intimate detail the improvements and refinements necessary in that branch of the industry. the authors are indebted for these facts and some other data embodied in this book to mr. w. j. jenks, who as manager of this plant here made his debut in the edison ranks. he had been connected with local telephone interests, but resigned to take active charge of this plant, imbibing quickly the traditional edison spirit, working hard all day and sleeping in the station at night on a cot brought there for that purpose. it was a time of uninterrupted watchfulness. the difficulty of obtaining engineers in those days to run the high-speed engines (three hundred and fifty revolutions per minute) is well illustrated by an amusing incident in the very early history of the station. a locomotive engineer had been engaged, as it was supposed he would not be afraid of anything. one evening there came a sudden flash of fire and a spluttering, sizzling noise. there had been a short-circuit on the copper mains in the station. the fireman hid behind the boiler and the engineer jumped out of the window. mr. sprague realized the trouble, quickly threw off the current and stopped the engine. mr. jenks relates another humorous incident in connection with this plant: "one night i heard a knock at the office door, and on opening it saw two well-dressed ladies, who asked if they might be shown through. i invited them in, taking them first to the boiler-room, where i showed them the coal-pile, explaining that this was used to generate steam in the boiler. we then went to the dynamo-room, where i pointed out the machines converting the steam-power into electricity, appearing later in the form of light in the lamps. after that they were shown the meters by which the consumption of current was measured. they appeared to be interested, and i proceeded to enter upon a comparison of coal made into gas or burned under a boiler to be converted into electricity. the ladies thanked me effusively and brought their visit to a close. as they were about to go through the door, one of them turned to me and said: 'we have enjoyed this visit very much, but there is one question we would like to ask: what is it that you make here?'" the brockton station was for a long time a show plant of the edison company, and had many distinguished visitors, among them being prof. elihu thomson, who was present at the opening, and sir w. h. preece, of london. the engineering methods pursued formed the basis of similar installations in lawrence, massachusetts, in november, ; in fall river, massachusetts, in december, ; and in newburgh, new york, the following spring. another important plant of this period deserves special mention, as it was the pioneer in the lighting of large spaces by incandescent lamps. this installation of five thousand lamps on the three-wire system was made to illuminate the buildings at the louisville, kentucky, exposition in , and, owing to the careful surveys, calculations, and preparations of h. m. byllesby and the late luther stieringer, was completed and in operation within six weeks after the placing of the order. the jury of awards, in presenting four medals to the edison company, took occasion to pay a high compliment to the efficiency of the system. it has been thought by many that the magnificent success of this plant did more to stimulate the growth of the incandescent lighting business than any other event in the history of the edison company. it was literally the beginning of the electrical illumination of american expositions, carried later to such splendid displays as those of the chicago world's fair in , buffalo in , and st. louis in . thus the art was set going in the united states under many difficulties, but with every sign of coming triumph. reference has already been made to the work abroad in paris and london. the first permanent edison station in europe was that at milan, italy, for which the order was given as early as may, , by an enterprising syndicate. less than a year later, march , , the installation was ready and was put in operation, the theatre santa radegonda having been pulled down and a new central-station building erected in its place--probably the first edifice constructed in europe for the specific purpose of incandescent lighting. here "jumbos" were installed from time to time, until at last there were no fewer than ten of them; and current was furnished to customers with a total of nearly ten thousand lamps connected to the mains. this pioneer system was operated continuously until february , , or for a period of about seventeen years, when the sturdy old machines, still in excellent condition, were put out of service, so that a larger plant could be installed to meet the demand. this new plant takes high-tension polyphase current from a water-power thirty or forty miles away at paderno, on the river adda, flowing from the apennines; but delivers low-tension direct current for distribution to the regular edison three-wire system throughout milan. about the same time that southern europe was thus opened up to the new system, south america came into line, and the first edison central station there was installed at santiago, chile, in the summer of , under the supervision of mr. w. n. stewart. this was the result of the success obtained with small isolated plants, leading to the formation of an edison company. it can readily be conceived that at such an extreme distance from the source of supply of apparatus the plant was subject to many peculiar difficulties from the outset, of which mr. stewart speaks as follows: "i made an exhibition of the 'jumbo' in the theatre at santiago, and on the first evening, when it was filled with the aristocracy of the city, i discovered to my horror that the binding wire around the armature was slowly stripping off and going to pieces. we had no means of boring out the field magnets, and we cut grooves in them. i think the machine is still running ( ). the station went into operation soon after with an equipment of eight edison 'k' dynamos with certain conditions inimical to efficiency, but which have not hindered the splendid expansion of the local system. with those eight dynamos we had four belts between each engine and the dynamo. the steam pressure was limited to seventy-five pounds per square inch. we had two-wire underground feeders, sent without any plans or specifications for their installation. the station had neither voltmeter nor ammeter. the current pressure was regulated by a galvanometer. we were using coal costing $ a ton, and were paid for our light in currency worth fifty cents on the dollar. the only thing i can be proud of in connection with the plant is the fact that i did not design it, that once in a while we made out to pay its operating expenses, and that occasionally we could run it for three months without a total breakdown." it was not until that the first edison station in germany was established; but the art was still very young, and the plant represented pioneer lighting practice in the empire. the station at berlin comprised five boilers, and six vertical steam-engines driving by belts twelve edison dynamos, each of about fifty-five horse-power capacity. a model of this station is preserved in the deutschen museum at munich. in the bulletin of the berlin electricity works for may, , it is said with regard to the events that led up to the creation of the system, as noted already at the rathenau celebration: "the year was a mile-stone in the history of the allgemeine elektricitaets gesellschaft. the international electrical exposition at paris was intended to place before the eyes of the civilized world the achievements of the century. among the exhibits of that exposition was the edison system of incandescent lighting. it became the basis of modern heavy current technics." the last phrase is italicized as being a happy and authoritative description, as well as a tribute. this chapter would not be complete if it failed to include some reference to a few of the earlier isolated plants of a historic character. note has already been made of the first edison plants afloat on the jeannette and columbia, and the first commercial plant in the new york lithographic establishment. the first mill plant was placed in the woollen factory of james harrison at newburgh, new york, about september , . a year later, mr. harrison wrote with some pride: "i believe my mill was the first lighted with your electric light, and therefore may be called no. . besides being job no. it is a no. job, and a no. light, being better and cheaper than gas and absolutely safe as to fire." the first steam-yacht lighted by incandescent lamps was james gordon bennett's namouna, equipped early in with a plant for one hundred and twenty lamps of eight candlepower, which remained in use there many years afterward. the first edison plant in a hotel was started in october, , at the blue mountain house in the adirondacks, and consisted of two "z" dynamos with a complement of eight and sixteen candle lamps. the hotel is situated at an elevation of thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, and was at that time forty miles from the railroad. the machinery was taken up in pieces on the backs of mules from the foot of the mountain. the boilers were fired by wood, as the economical transportation of coal was a physical impossibility. for a six-hour run of the plant one-quarter of a cord of wood was required, at a cost of twenty-five cents per cord. the first theatre in the united states to be lighted by an edison isolated plant was the bijou theatre, boston. the installation of boilers, engines, dynamos, wiring, switches, fixtures, three stage regulators, and six hundred and fifty lamps, was completed in eleven days after receipt of the order, and the plant was successfully operated at the opening of the theatre, on december , . the first plant to be placed on a united states steamship was the one consisting of an edison "z" dynamo and one hundred and twenty eight-candle lamps installed on the fish commission's steamer albatross in . the most interesting feature of this installation was the employment of special deep-sea lamps, supplied with current through a cable nine hundred and forty feet in length, for the purpose of alluring fish. by means of the brilliancy of the lamps marine animals in the lower depths were attracted and then easily ensnared. chapter xviii the electric railway edison had no sooner designed his dynamo in than he adopted the same form of machine for use as a motor. the two are shown in the scientific american of october , , and are alike, except that the dynamo is vertical and the motor lies in a horizontal position, the article remarking: "its construction differs but slightly from the electric generator." this was but an evidence of his early appreciation of the importance of electricity as a motive power; but it will probably surprise many people to know that he was the inventor of an electric motor before he perfected his incandescent lamp. his interest in the subject went back to his connection with general lefferts in the days of the evolution of the stock ticker. while edison was carrying on his shop at newark, new jersey, there was considerable excitement in electrical circles over the payne motor, in regard to the alleged performance of which governor cornell of new york and other wealthy capitalists were quite enthusiastic. payne had a shop in newark, and in one small room was the motor, weighing perhaps six hundred pounds. it was of circular form, incased in iron, with the ends of several small magnets sticking through the floor. a pulley and belt, connected to a circular saw larger than the motor, permitted large logs of oak timber to be sawed with ease with the use of two small cells of battery. edison's friend, general lefferts, had become excited and was determined to invest a large sum of money in the motor company, but knowing edison's intimate familiarity with all electrical subjects he was wise enough to ask his young expert to go and see the motor with him. at an appointed hour edison went to the office of the motor company and found there the venerable professor morse, governor cornell, general lefferts, and many others who had been invited to witness a performance of the motor. they all proceeded to the room where the motor was at work. payne put a wire in the binding-post of the battery, the motor started, and an assistant began sawing a heavy oak log. it worked beautifully, and so great was the power developed, apparently, from the small battery, that morse exclaimed: "i am thankful that i have lived to see this day." but edison kept a close watch on the motor. the results were so foreign to his experience that he knew there was a trick in it. he soon discovered it. while holding his hand on the frame of the motor he noticed a tremble coincident with the exhaust of an engine across the alleyway, and he then knew that the power came from the engine by a belt under the floor, shifted on and off by a magnet, the other magnets being a blind. he whispered to the general to put his hand on the frame of the motor, watch the exhaust, and note the coincident tremor. the general did so, and in about fifteen seconds he said: "well, edison, i must go now. this thing is a fraud." and thus he saved his money, although others not so shrewdly advised were easily persuaded to invest by such a demonstration. a few years later, in , edison went to wyoming with a group of astronomers, to test his tasimeter during an eclipse of the sun, and saw the land white to harvest. he noticed the long hauls to market or elevator that the farmers had to make with their loads of grain at great expense, and conceived the idea that as ordinary steam-railroad service was too costly, light electric railways might be constructed that could be operated automatically over simple tracks, the propelling motors being controlled at various points. cheap to build and cheap to maintain, such roads would be a great boon to the newer farming regions of the west, where the highways were still of the crudest character, and where transportation was the gravest difficulty with which the settlers had to contend. the plan seems to have haunted him, and he had no sooner worked out a generator and motor that owing to their low internal resistance could be operated efficiently, than he turned his hand to the practical trial of such a railroad, applicable to both the haulage of freight and the transportation of passengers. early in , when the tremendous rush of work involved in the invention of the incandescent lamp intermitted a little, he began the construction of a stretch of track close to the menlo park laboratory, and at the same time built an electric locomotive to operate over it. this is a fitting stage at which to review briefly what had been done in electric traction up to that date. there was absolutely no art, but there had been a number of sporadic and very interesting experiments made. the honor of the first attempt of any kind appears to rest with this country and with thomas davenport, a self-trained blacksmith, of brandon, vermont, who made a small model of a circular electric railway and cars in , and exhibited it the following year in springfield, boston, and other cities. of course he depended upon batteries for current, but the fundamental idea was embodied of using the track for the circuit, one rail being positive and the other negative, and the motor being placed across or between them in multiple arc to receive the current. such are also practically the methods of to-day. the little model was in good preservation up to the year , when, being shipped to the paris exposition, it was lost, the steamer that carried it foundering in mid-ocean. the very broad patent taken out by this simple mechanic, so far ahead of his times, was the first one issued in america for an electric motor. davenport was also the first man to apply electric power to the printing-press, in . in his traction work he had a close second in robert davidson, of aberdeen, scotland, who in operated both a lathe and a small locomotive with the motor he had invented. his was the credit of first actually carrying passengers--two at a time, over a rough plank road--while it is said that his was the first motor to be tried on real tracks, those of the edinburgh-glasgow road, making a speed of four miles an hour. the curse of this work and of all that succeeded it for a score of years was the necessity of depending upon chemical batteries for current, the machine usually being self-contained and hauling the batteries along with itself, as in the case of the famous page experiments in april, , when a speed of nineteen miles an hour was attained on the line of the washington & baltimore road. to this unfruitful period belonged, however, the crude idea of taking the current from a stationary source of power by means of an overhead contact, which has found its practical evolution in the modern ubiquitous trolley; although the patent for this, based on his caveat of , was granted several years later than that to stephen d. field, for the combination of an electric motor operated by means of a current from a stationary dynamo or source of electricity conducted through the rails. as a matter of fact, in and again in , george f. green, a jobbing machinist, of kalamazoo, michigan, built small cars and tracks to which current was fed from a distant battery, enough energy being utilized to haul one hundred pounds of freight or one passenger up and down a "road" two hundred feet long. all the work prior to the development of the dynamo as a source of current was sporadic and spasmodic, and cannot be said to have left any trace on the art, though it offered many suggestions as to operative methods. the close of the same decade of the nineteenth century that saw the electric light brought to perfection, saw also the realization in practice of all the hopes of fifty years as to electric traction. both utilizations depended upon the supply of current now cheaply obtainable from the dynamo. these arts were indeed twins, feeding at inexhaustible breasts. in , at the berlin exhibition, the distinguished firm of siemens, to whose ingenuity and enterprise electrical development owes so much, installed a road about one-third of a mile in length, over which the locomotive hauled a train of three small cars at a speed of about eight miles an hour, carrying some twenty persons every trip. current was fed from a dynamo to the motor through a central third rail, the two outer rails being joined together as the negative or return circuit. primitive but essentially successful, this little road made a profound impression on the minds of many inventors and engineers, and marked the real beginning of the great new era, which has already seen electricity applied to the operation of main lines of trunk railways. but it is not to be supposed that on the part of the public there was any great amount of faith then discernible; and for some years the pioneers had great difficulty, especially in this country, in raising money for their early modest experiments. of the general conditions at this moment frank j. sprague says in an article in the century magazine of july, , on the creation of the new art: "edison was perhaps nearer the verge of great electric-railway possibilities than any other american. in the face of much adverse criticism he had developed the essentials of the low-internal-resistance dynamo with high-resistance field, and many of the essential features of multiple-arc distribution, and in he built a small road at his laboratory at menlo park." on may th of the year named this interesting road went into operation as the result of hard and hurried work of preparation during the spring months. the first track was about a third of a mile in length, starting from the shops, following a country road, passing around a hill at the rear and curving home, in the general form of the letter "u." the rails were very light. charles t. hughes, who went with edison in , and was in charge of much of the work, states that they were "second" street-car rails, insulated with tar canvas paper and things of that sort--"asphalt." they were spiked down on ordinary sleepers laid upon the natural grade, and the gauge was about three feet six inches. at one point the grade dropped some sixty feet in a distance of three hundred, and the curves were of recklessly short radius. the dynamos supplying current to the road were originally two of the standard size "z" machines then being made at the laboratory, popularly known throughout the edison ranks as "longwaisted mary anns," and the circuits from these were carried out to the rails by underground conductors. they were not large--about twelve horse-power each--generating seventy-five amperes of current at one hundred and ten volts, so that not quite twenty-five horse-power of electrical energy was available for propulsion. the locomotive built while the roadbed was getting ready was a four-wheeled iron truck, an ordinary flat dump-car about six feet long and four feet wide, upon which was mounted a "z" dynamo used as a motor, so that it had a capacity of about twelve horsepower. this machine was laid on its side, with the armature end coming out at the front of the locomotive, and the motive power was applied to the driving-axle by a cumbersome series of friction pulleys. each wheel of the locomotive had a metal rim and a centre web of wood or papier-mache, and the current picked up by one set of wheels was carried through contact brushes and a brass hub to the motor; the circuit back to the track, or other rail, being closed through the other wheels in a similar manner. the motor had its field-magnet circuit in permanent connection as a shunt across the rails, protected by a crude bare copper-wire safety-catch. a switch in the armature circuit enabled the motorman to reverse the direction of travel by reversing the current flow through the armature coils. things went fairly well for a time on that memorable thursday afternoon, when all the laboratory force made high holiday and scrambled for foothold on the locomotive for a trip; but the friction gearing was not equal to the sudden strain put upon it during one run and went to pieces. some years later, also, daft again tried friction gear in his historical experiments on the manhattan elevated road, but the results were attended with no greater success. the next resort of edison was to belts, the armature shafting belted to a countershaft on the locomotive frame, and the countershaft belted to a pulley on the car-axle. the lever which threw the former friction gear into adjustment was made to operate an idler pulley for tightening the axle-belt. when the motor was started, the armature was brought up to full revolution and then the belt was tightened on the car-axle, compelling motion of the locomotive. but the belts were liable to slip a great deal in the process, and the chafing of the belts charred them badly. if that did not happen, and if the belt was made taut suddenly, the armature burned out--which it did with disconcerting frequency. the next step was to use a number of resistance-boxes in series with the armature, so that the locomotive could start with those in circuit, and then the motorman could bring it up to speed gradually by cutting one box out after the other. to stop the locomotive, the armature circuit was opened by the main switch, stopping the flow of current, and then brakes were applied by long levers. matters generally and the motors in particular went much better, even if the locomotive was so freely festooned with resistance-boxes all of perceptible weight and occupying much of the limited space. these details show forcibly and typically the painful steps of advance that every inventor in this new field had to make in the effort to reach not alone commercial practicability, but mechanical feasibility. it was all empirical enough; but that was the only way open even to the highest talent. smugglers landing laces and silks have been known to wind them around their bodies, as being less ostentatious than carrying them in a trunk. edison thought his resistance-boxes an equally superfluous display, and therefore ingeniously wound some copper resistance wire around one of the legs of the motor field magnet, where it was out of the way, served as a useful extra field coil in starting up the motor, and dismissed most of the boxes back to the laboratory--a few being retained under the seat for chance emergencies. like the boxes, this coil was in series with the armature, and subject to plugging in and out at will by the motorman. thus equipped, the locomotive was found quite satisfactory, and long did yeoman service. it was given three cars to pull, one an open awning-car with two park benches placed back to back; one a flat freight-car, and one box-car dubbed the "pullman," with which edison illustrated a system of electric braking. although work had been begun so early in the year, and the road had been operating since may, it was not until july that edison executed any application for patents on his "electromagnetic railway engine," or his ingenious braking system. every inventor knows how largely his fate lies in the hands of a competent and alert patent attorney, in both the preparation and the prosecution of his case; and mr. sprague is justified in observing in his century article: "the paucity of controlling claims obtained in these early patents is remarkable." it is notorious that edison did not then enjoy the skilful aid in safeguarding his ideas that he commanded later. the daily newspapers and technical journals lost no time in bringing the road to public attention, and the new york herald of june th was swift to suggest that here was the locomotive that would be "most pleasing to the average new yorker, whose head has ached with noise, whose eyes have been filled with dust, or whose clothes have been ruined with oil." a couple of days later, the daily graphic illustrated and described the road and published a sketch of a one-hundred-horse-power electric locomotive for the use of the pennsylvania railroad between perth amboy and rahway. visitors, of course, were numerous, including many curious, sceptical railroad managers, few if any of whom except villard could see the slightest use for the new motive power. there is, perhaps, some excuse for such indifference. no men in the world have more new inventions brought to them than railroad managers, and this was the rankest kind of novelty. it was not, indeed, until a year later, in may, , that the first regular road collecting fares was put in operation--a little stretch of one and a half miles from berlin to lichterfelde, with one miniature motorcar. edison was in reality doing some heavy electric-railway engineering, his apparatus full of ideas, suggestions, prophecies; but to the operators of long trunk lines it must have seemed utterly insignificant and "excellent fooling." speaking of this situation, mr. edison says: "one day frank thomson, the president of the pennsylvania railroad, came out to see the electric light and the electric railway in operation. the latter was then about a mile long. he rode on it. at that time i was getting out plans to make an electric locomotive of three hundred horse-power with six-foot drivers, with the idea of showing people that they could dispense with their steam locomotives. mr. thomson made the objection that it was impracticable, and that it would be impossible to supplant steam. his great experience and standing threw a wet blanket on my hopes. but i thought he might perhaps be mistaken, as there had been many such instances on record. i continued to work on the plans, and about three years later i started to build the locomotive at the works at goerck street, and had it about finished when i was switched off on some other work. one of the reasons why i felt the electric railway to be eminently practical was that henry villard, the president of the northern pacific, said that one of the greatest things that could be done would be to build right-angle feeders into the wheat-fields of dakota and bring in the wheat to the main lines, as the farmers then had to draw it from forty to eighty miles. there was a point where it would not pay to raise it at all; and large areas of the country were thus of no value. i conceived the idea of building a very light railroad of narrow gauge, and had got all the data as to the winds on the plains, and found that it would be possible with very large windmills to supply enough power to drive those wheat trains." among others who visited the little road at this juncture were persons interested in the manhattan elevated system of new york, on which experiments were repeatedly tried later, but which was not destined to adopt a method so obviously well suited to all the conditions until after many successful demonstrations had been made on elevated roads elsewhere. it must be admitted that mr. edison was not very profoundly impressed with the desire entertained in that quarter to utilize any improvement, for he remarks: "when the elevated railroad in new york, up sixth avenue, was started there was a great clamor about the noise, and injunctions were threatened. the management engaged me to make a report on the cause of the noise. i constructed an instrument that would record the sound, and set out to make a preliminary report, but i found that they never intended to do anything but let the people complain." it was upon the co-operation of villard that edison fell back, and an agreement was entered into between them on september , , which provided that the latter would "build two and a half miles of electric railway at menlo park, equipped with three cars, two locomotives, one for freight, and one for passengers, capacity of latter sixty miles an hour. capacity freight engine, ten tons net freight; cost of handling a ton of freight per mile per horse-power to be less than ordinary locomotive.... if experiments are successful, villard to pay actual outlay in experiments, and to treat with the light company for the installation of at least fifty miles of electric railroad in the wheat regions." mr. edison is authority for the statement that mr. villard advanced between $ , and $ , , and that the work done was very satisfactory; but it did not end at that time in any practical results, as the northern pacific went into the hands of a receiver, and mr. villard's ability to help was hopelessly crippled. the directors of the edison electric light company could not be induced to have anything to do with the electric railway, and mr. insull states that the money advanced was treated by mr. edison as a personal loan and repaid to mr. villard, for whom he had a high admiration and a strong feeling of attachment. mr. insull says: "among the financial men whose close personal friendship edison enjoyed, i would mention henry villard, who, i think, had a higher appreciation of the possibilities of the edison system than probably any other man of his time in wall street. he dropped out of the business at the time of the consolidation of the thomson-houston company with the edison general electric company; but from the earliest days of the business, when it was in its experimental period, when the edison light and power system was but an idea, down to the day of his death, henry villard continued a strong supporter not only with his influence, but with his money. he was the first capitalist to back individually edison's experiments in electric railways." in speaking of his relationships with mr. villard at this time, edison says: "when villard was all broken down, and in a stupor caused by his disasters in connection with the northern pacific, mrs. villard sent for me to come and cheer him up. it was very difficult to rouse him from his despair and apathy, but i talked about the electric light to him, and its development, and told him that it would help him win it all back and put him in his former position. villard made his great rally; he made money out of the electric light; and he got back control of the northern pacific. under no circumstances can a hustler be kept down. if he is only square, he is bound to get back on his feet. villard has often been blamed and severely criticised, but he was not the only one to blame. his engineers had spent $ , , too much in building the road, and it was not his fault if he found himself short of money, and at that time unable to raise any more." villard maintained his intelligent interest in electric-railway development, with regard to which edison remarks: "at one time mr. villard got the idea that he would run the mountain division of the northern pacific railroad by electricity. he asked me if it could be done. i said: 'certainly, it is too easy for me to undertake; let some one else do it.' he said: 'i want you to tackle the problem,' and he insisted on it. so i got up a scheme of a third rail and shoe and erected it in my yard here in orange. when i got it all ready, he had all his division engineers come on to new york, and they came over here. i showed them my plans, and the unanimous decision of the engineers was that it was absolutely and utterly impracticable. that system is on the new york central now, and was also used on the new haven road in its first work with electricity." at this point it may be well to cite some other statements of edison as to kindred work, with which he has not usually been associated in the public mind. "in the same manner i had worked out for the manhattan elevated railroad a system of electric trains, and had the control of each car centred at one place--multiple control. this was afterward worked out and made practical by frank sprague. i got up a slot contact for street railways, and have a patent on it--a sliding contact in a slot. edward lauterbach was connected with the third avenue railroad in new york--as counsel--and i told him he was making a horrible mistake putting in the cable. i told him to let the cable stand still and send electricity through it, and he would not have to move hundreds of tons of metal all the time. he would rue the day when he put the cable in." it cannot be denied that the prophecy was fulfilled, for the cable was the beginning of the frightful financial collapse of the system, and was torn out in a few years to make way for the triumphant "trolley in the slot." incidental glimpses of this work are both amusing and interesting. hughes, who was working on the experimental road with mr. edison, tells the following story: "villard sent j. c. henderson, one of his mechanical engineers, to see the road when it was in operation, and we went down one day--edison, henderson, and i--and went on the locomotive. edison ran it, and just after we started there was a trestle sixty feet long and seven feet deep, and edison put on all the power. when we went over it we must have been going forty miles an hour, and i could see the perspiration come out on henderson. after we got over the trestle and started on down the track, henderson said: 'when we go back i will walk. if there is any more of that kind of running i won't be in it myself.'" to the correspondence of grosvenor p. lowrey we are indebted for a similar reminiscence, under date of june , : "goddard and i have spent a part of the day at menlo, and all is glorious. i have ridden at forty miles an hour on mr. edison's electric railway--and we ran off the track. i protested at the rate of speed over the sharp curves, designed to show the power of the engine, but edison said they had done it often. finally, when the last trip was to be taken, i said i did not like it, but would go along. the train jumped the track on a short curve, throwing kruesi, who was driving the engine, with his face down in the dirt, and another man in a comical somersault through some underbrush. edison was off in a minute, jumping and laughing, and declaring it a most beautiful accident. kruesi got up, his face bleeding and a good deal shaken; and i shall never forget the expression of voice and face in which he said, with some foreign accent: 'oh! yes, pairfeckly safe.' fortunately no other hurts were suffered, and in a few minutes we had the train on the track and running again." all this rough-and-ready dealing with grades and curves was not mere horse-play, but had a serious purpose underlying it, every trip having its record as to some feature of defect or improvement. one particular set of experiments relating to such work was made on behalf of visitors from south america, and were doubtless the first tests of the kind made for that continent, where now many fine electric street and interurban railway systems are in operation. mr. edison himself supplies the following data: "during the electric-railway experiments at menlo park, we had a short spur of track up one of the steep gullies. the experiment came about in this way. bogota, the capital of columbia, is reached on muleback--or was--from honda on the headwaters of the magdalena river. there were parties who wanted to know if transportation over the mule route could not be done by electricity. they said the grades were excessive, and it would cost too much to do it with steam locomotives, even if they could climb the grades. i said: 'well, it can't be much more than per cent.; we will try that first. if it will do that it will do anything else.' i started at per cent. i got up an electric locomotive with a grip on the rail by which it went up the per cent. grade. then they said the curves were very short. i put the curves in. we started the locomotive with nobody on it, and got up to twenty miles an hour, taking those curves of very short radius; but it was weeks before we could prevent it from running off. we had to bank the tracks up to an angle of thirty degrees before we could turn the curve and stay on. these spanish parties were perfectly satisfied we could put in an electric railway from honda to bogota successfully, and then they disappeared. i have never seen them since. as usual, i paid for the experiment." in the spring of the electric railway company of america was incorporated in the state of new york with a capital of $ , , to develop the patents and inventions of edison and stephen d. field, to the latter of whom the practical work of active development was confided, and in june of the same year an exhibit was made at the chicago railway exposition, which attracted attention throughout the country, and did much to stimulate the growing interest in electric-railway work. with the aid of messrs. f. b. rae, c. l. healy, and c. o. mailloux a track and locomotive were constructed for the company by mr. field and put in service in the gallery of the main exhibition building. the track curved sharply at either end on a radius of fifty-six feet, and the length was about one-third of a mile. the locomotive named "the judge," after justice field, an uncle of stephen d. field, took current from a central rail between the two outer rails, that were the return circuit, the contact being a rubbing wire brush on each side of the "third rail," answering the same purpose as the contact shoe of later date. the locomotive weighed three tons, was twelve feet long, five feet wide, and made a speed of nine miles an hour with a trailer car for passengers. starting on june th, when the exhibition closed on june d this tiny but typical road had operated for over hours, had made over miles, and had carried , passengers. after the exposition closed the outfit was taken during the same year to the exposition at louisville, kentucky, where it was also successful, carrying a large number of passengers. it deserves note that at chicago regular railway tickets were issued to paying passengers, the first ever employed on american electric railways. with this modest but brilliant demonstration, to which the illustrious names of edison and field were attached, began the outburst of excitement over electric railways, very much like the eras of speculation and exploitation that attended only a few years earlier the introduction of the telephone and the electric light, but with such significant results that the capitalization of electric roads in america is now over $ , , , , or twice as much as that of the other two arts combined. there was a tremendous rush into the electric-railway field after , and an outburst of inventive activity that has rarely, if ever, been equalled. it is remarkable that, except siemens, no european achieved fame in this early work, while from america the ideas and appliances of edison, van depoele, sprague, field, daft, and short have been carried and adopted all over the world. mr. edison was consulting electrician for the electric railway company, but neither a director nor an executive officer. just what the trouble was as to the internal management of the corporation it is hard to determine a quarter of a century later; but it was equipped with all essential elements to dominate an art in which after its first efforts it remained practically supine and useless, while other interests forged ahead and reaped both the profit and the glory. dissensions arose between the representatives of the field and edison interests, and in april, , the railway company assigned its rights to the edison patents to the edison general electric company, recently formed by the consolidation of all the branches of the edison light, power, and manufacturing industry under one management. the only patent rights remaining to the railway company were those under three field patents, one of which, with controlling claims, was put in suit june, , against the jamaica & brooklyn road company, a customer of the edison general electric company. this was, to say the least, a curious and anomalous situation. voluminous records were made by both parties to the suit, and in the spring of the case was argued before the late judge townsend, who wrote a long opinion dismissing the bill of complaint. [ ] the student will find therein a very complete and careful study of the early electric-railway art. after this decision was rendered, the electric railway company remained for several years in a moribund condition, and on the last day of its property was placed in the hands of a receiver. in february of the receiver sold the three field patents to their original owner, and he in turn sold them to the westinghouse electric and manufacturing company. the railway company then went into voluntary dissolution, a sad example of failure to seize the opportunity at the psychological moment, and on the part of the inventor to secure any adequate return for years of effort and struggle in founding one of the great arts. neither of these men was squelched by such a calamitous result, but if there were not something of bitterness in their feelings as they survey what has come of their work, they would not be human. as a matter of fact, edison retained a very lively interest in electric-railway progress long after the pregnant days at menlo park, one of the best evidences of which is an article in the new york electrical engineer of november , , which describes some important and original experiments in the direction of adapting electrical conditions to the larger cities. the overhead trolley had by that time begun its victorious career, but there was intense hostility displayed toward it in many places because of the inevitable increase in the number of overhead wires, which, carrying, as they did, a current of high voltage and large quantity, were regarded as a menace to life and property. edison has always manifested a strong objection to overhead wires in cities, and urged placing them underground; and the outcry against the overhead "deadly" trolley met with his instant sympathy. his study of the problem brought him to the development of the modern "substation," although the twists that later evolutions have given the idea have left it scarcely recognizable. [footnote : see fed. rep. .] mr. villard, as president of the edison general electric company, requested mr. edison, as electrician of the company, to devise a street-railway system which should be applicable to the largest cities where the use of the trolley would not be permitted, where the slot conduit system would not be used, and where, in general, the details of construction should be reduced to the simplest form. the limits imposed practically were such as to require that the system should not cost more than a cable road to install. edison reverted to his ingenious lighting plan of years earlier, and thus settled on a method by which current should be conveyed from the power plant at high potential to motor-generators placed below the ground in close proximity to the rails. these substations would convert the current received at a pressure of, say, one thousand volts to one of twenty volts available between rail and rail, with a corresponding increase in the volume of the current. with the utilization of heavy currents at low voltage it became necessary, of course, to devise apparatus which should be able to pick up with absolute certainty one thousand amperes of current at this pressure through two inches of mud, if necessary. with his wonted activity and fertility edison set about devising such a contact, and experimented with metal wheels under all conditions of speed and track conditions. it was several months before he could convey one hundred amperes by means of such contacts, but he worked out at last a satisfactory device which was equal to the task. the next point was to secure a joint between contiguous rails such as would permit of the passage of several thousand amperes without introducing undue resistance. this was also accomplished. objections were naturally made to rails out in the open on the street surface carrying large currents at a potential of twenty volts. it was said that vehicles with iron wheels passing over the tracks and spanning the two rails would short-circuit the current, "chew" themselves up, and destroy the dynamos generating the current by choking all that tremendous amount of energy back into them. edison tackled the objection squarely and short-circuited his track with such a vehicle, but succeeded in getting only about two hundred amperes through the wheels, the low voltage and the insulating properties of the axle-grease being sufficient to account for such a result. an iron bar was also used, polished, and with a man standing on it to insure solid contact; but only one thousand amperes passed through it--i.e., the amount required by a single car, and, of course, much less than the capacity of the generators able to operate a system of several hundred cars. further interesting experiments showed that the expected large leakage of current from the rails in wet weather did not materialize. edison found that under the worst conditions with a wet and salted track, at a potential difference of twenty volts between the two rails, the extreme loss was only two and one-half horse-power. in this respect the phenomenon followed the same rule as that to which telegraph wires are subject--namely, that the loss of insulation is greater in damp, murky weather when the insulators are covered with wet dust than during heavy rains when the insulators are thoroughly washed by the action of the water. in like manner a heavy rain-storm cleaned the tracks from the accumulations due chiefly to the droppings of the horses, which otherwise served largely to increase the conductivity. of course, in dry weather the loss of current was practically nothing, and, under ordinary conditions, edison held, his system was in respect to leakage and the problems of electrolytic attack of the current on adjacent pipes, etc., as fully insulated as the standard trolley network of the day. the cost of his system mr. edison placed at from $ , to $ , per mile of double track, in accordance with local conditions, and in this respect comparing very favorably with the cable systems then so much in favor for heavy traffic. all the arguments that could be urged in support of this ingenious system are tenable and logical at the present moment; but the trolley had its way except on a few lines where the conduit-and-shoe method was adopted; and in the intervening years the volume of traffic created and handled by electricity in centres of dense population has brought into existence the modern subway. but down to the moment of the preparation of this biography, edison has retained an active interest in transportation problems, and his latest work has been that of reviving the use of the storage battery for street-car purposes. at one time there were a number of storage-battery lines and cars in operation in such cities as washington, new york, chicago, and boston; but the costs of operation and maintenance were found to be inordinately high as compared with those of the direct-supply methods, and the battery cars all disappeared. the need for them under many conditions remained, as, for example, in places in greater new york where the overhead trolley wires are forbidden as objectionable, and where the ground is too wet or too often submerged to permit of the conduit with the slot. some of the roads in greater new york have been anxious to secure such cars, and, as usual, the most resourceful electrical engineer and inventor of his times has made the effort. a special experimental track has been laid at the orange laboratory, and a car equipped with the edison storage battery and other devices has been put under severe and extended trial there and in new york. menlo park, in ruin and decay, affords no traces of the early edison electric-railway work, but the crude little locomotive built by charles t. hughes was rescued from destruction, and has become the property of the pratt institute, of brooklyn, to whose thousands of technical students it is a constant example and incentive. it was loaned in to the association of edison illuminating companies, and by it exhibited as part of the historical edison collection at the st. louis exposition. chapter xix magnetic ore milling work during the hudson-fulton celebration of october, , burgomaster van leeuwen, of amsterdam, member of the delegation sent officially from holland to escort the half moon and participate in the functions of the anniversary, paid a visit to the edison laboratory at orange to see the inventor, who may be regarded as pre-eminent among those of dutch descent in this country. found, as usual, hard at work--this time on his cement house, of which he showed the iron molds--edison took occasion to remark that if he had achieved anything worth while, it was due to the obstinacy and pertinacity he had inherited from his forefathers. to which it may be added that not less equally have the nature of inheritance and the quality of atavism been exhibited in his extraordinary predilection for the miller's art. while those batavian ancestors on the low shores of the zuyder zee devoted their energies to grinding grain, he has been not less assiduous than they in reducing the rocks of the earth itself to flour. although this phase of mr. edison's diverse activities is not as generally known to the world as many others of a more popular character, the milling of low-grade auriferous ores and the magnetic separation of iron ores have been subjects of engrossing interest and study to him for many years. indeed, his comparatively unknown enterprise of separating magnetically and putting into commercial form low-grade iron ore, as carried on at edison, new jersey, proved to be the most colossal experiment that he has ever made. if a person qualified to judge were asked to answer categorically as to whether or not that enterprise was a failure, he could truthfully answer both yes and no. yes, in that circumstances over which mr. edison had no control compelled the shutting down of the plant at the very moment of success; and no, in that the mechanically successful and commercially practical results obtained, after the exercise of stupendous efforts and the expenditure of a fortune, are so conclusive that they must inevitably be the reliance of many future iron-masters. in other words, mr. edison was at least a quarter of a century ahead of the times in the work now to be considered. before proceeding to a specific description of this remarkable enterprise, however, let us glance at an early experiment in separating magnetic iron sands on the atlantic sea-shore: "some years ago i heard one day that down at quogue, long island, there were immense deposits of black magnetic sand. this would be very valuable if the iron could be separated from the sand. so i went down to quogue with one of my assistants and saw there for miles large beds of black sand on the beach in layers from one to six inches thick--hundreds of thousands of tons. my first thought was that it would be a very easy matter to concentrate this, and i found i could sell the stuff at a good price. i put up a small plant, but just as i got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. during the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back." this incident was really the prelude to the development set forth in this chapter. in the early eighties edison became familiar with the fact that the eastern steel trade was suffering a disastrous change, and that business was slowly drifting westward, chiefly by reason of the discovery and opening up of enormous deposits of high-grade iron ore in the upper peninsula of michigan. this ore could be excavated very cheaply by means of improved mining facilities, and transported at low cost to lake ports. hence the iron and steel mills east of the alleghanies--compelled to rely on limited local deposits of bessemer ore, and upon foreign ores which were constantly rising in value--began to sustain a serious competition with western mills, even in eastern markets. long before this situation arose, it had been recognized by eastern iron-masters that sooner or later the deposits of high-grade ore would be exhausted, and, in consequence, there would ensue a compelling necessity to fall back on the low-grade magnetic ores. for many years it had been a much-discussed question how to make these ores available for transportation to distant furnaces. to pay railroad charges on ores carrying perhaps to per cent. of useless material would be prohibitive. hence the elimination of the worthless "gangue" by concentration of the iron particles associated with it, seemed to be the only solution of the problem. many attempts had been made in by-gone days to concentrate the iron in such ores by water processes, but with only a partial degree of success. the impossibility of obtaining a uniform concentrate was a most serious objection, had there not indeed been other difficulties which rendered this method commercially impracticable. it is quite natural, therefore, that the idea of magnetic separation should have occurred to many inventors. thus we find numerous instances throughout the last century of experiments along this line; and particularly in the last forty or fifty years, during which various attempts have been made by others than edison to perfect magnetic separation and bring it up to something like commercial practice. at the time he took up the matter, however, no one seems to have realized the full meaning of the tremendous problems involved. from to , while still very busy in the development of his electric-light system, edison found opportunity to plan crushing and separating machinery. his first patent on the subject was applied for and issued early in . he decided, after mature deliberation, that the magnetic separation of low-grade ores on a colossal scale at a low cost was the only practical way of supplying the furnace-man with a high quality of iron ore. it was his opinion that it was cheaper to quarry and concentrate lean ore in a big way than to attempt to mine, under adverse circumstances, limited bodies of high-grade ore. he appreciated fully the serious nature of the gigantic questions involved; and his plans were laid with a view to exercising the utmost economy in the design and operation of the plant in which he contemplated the automatic handling of many thousands of tons of material daily. it may be stated as broadly true that edison engineered to handle immense masses of stuff automatically, while his predecessors aimed chiefly at close separation. reduced to its barest, crudest terms, the proposition of magnetic separation is simplicity itself. a piece of the ore (magnetite) may be reduced to powder and the ore particles separated therefrom by the help of a simple hand magnet. to elucidate the basic principle of edison's method, let the crushed ore fall in a thin stream past such a magnet. the magnetic particles are attracted out of the straight line of the falling stream, and being heavy, gravitate inwardly and fall to one side of a partition placed below. the non-magnetic gangue descends in a straight line to the other side of the partition. thus a complete separation is effected. simple though the principle appears, it was in its application to vast masses of material and in the solving of great engineering problems connected therewith that edison's originality made itself manifest in the concentrating works that he established in new jersey, early in the nineties. not only did he develop thoroughly the refining of the crushed ore, so that after it had passed the four hundred and eighty magnets in the mill, the concentrates came out finally containing to per cent. of iron oxide, but he also devised collateral machinery, methods and processes all fundamental in their nature. these are too numerous to specify in detail, as they extended throughout the various ramifications of the plant, but the principal ones are worthy of mention, such as: the giant rolls (for crushing). intermediate rolls. three-high rolls. giant cranes ( feet long span). vertical dryer. belt conveyors. air separation. mechanical separation of phosphorus. briquetting. that mr. edison's work was appreciated at the time is made evident by the following extract from an article describing the edison plant, published in the iron age of october , ; in which, after mentioning his struggle with adverse conditions, it says: "there is very little that is showy, from the popular point of view, in the gigantic work which mr. edison has done during these years, but to those who are capable of grasping the difficulties encountered, mr. edison appears in the new light of a brilliant constructing engineer grappling with technical and commercial problems of the highest order. his genius as an inventor is revealed in many details of the great concentrating plant.... but to our mind, originality of the highest type as a constructor and designer appears in the bold way in which he sweeps aside accepted practice in this particular field and attains results not hitherto approached. he pursues methods in ore-dressing at which those who are trained in the usual practice may well stand aghast. but considering the special features of the problems to be solved, his methods will be accepted as those economically wise and expedient." a cursory glance at these problems will reveal their import. mountains must be reduced to dust; all this dust must be handled in detail, so to speak, and from it must be separated the fine particles of iron constituting only one-fourth or one-fifth of its mass; and then this iron-ore dust must be put into such shape that it could be commercially shipped and used. one of the most interesting and striking investigations made by edison in this connection is worthy of note, and may be related in his own words: "i felt certain that there must be large bodies of magnetite in the east, which if crushed and concentrated would satisfy the wants of the eastern furnaces for steel-making. having determined to investigate the mountain regions of new jersey, i constructed a very sensitive magnetic needle, which would dip toward the earth if brought over any considerable body of magnetic iron ore. one of my laboratory assistants went out with me and we visited many of the mines of new jersey, but did not find deposits of any magnitude. one day, however, as we drove over a mountain range, not known as iron-bearing land, i was astonished to find that the needle was strongly attracted and remained so; thus indicating that the whole mountain was underlaid with vast bodies of magnetic ore. "i knew it was a commercial problem to produce high-grade bessemer ore from these deposits, and took steps to acquire a large amount of the property. i also planned a great magnetic survey of the east, and i believe it remains the most comprehensive of its kind yet performed. i had a number of men survey a strip reaching from lower canada to north carolina. the only instrument we used was the special magnetic needle. we started in lower canada and travelled across the line of march twenty-five miles; then advanced south one thousand feet; then back across the line of march again twenty-five miles; then south another thousand feet, across again, and so on. thus we advanced all the way to north carolina, varying our cross-country march from two to twenty-five miles, according to geological formation. our magnetic needle indicated the presence and richness of the invisible deposits of magnetic ore. we kept minute records of these indications, and when the survey was finished we had exact information of the deposits in every part of each state we had passed through. we also knew the width, length, and approximate depth of every one of these deposits, which were enormous. "the amount of ore disclosed by this survey was simply fabulous. how much so may be judged from the fact that in the three thousand acres immediately surrounding the mills that i afterward established at edison there were over , , tons of low-grade ore. i also secured sixteen thousand acres in which the deposit was proportionately as large. these few acres alone contained sufficient ore to supply the whole united states iron trade, including exports, for seventy years." given a mountain of rock containing only one-fifth to one-fourth magnetic iron, the broad problem confronting edison resolved itself into three distinct parts--first, to tear down the mountain bodily and grind it to powder; second, to extract from this powder the particles of iron mingled in its mass; and, third, to accomplish these results at a cost sufficiently low to give the product a commercial value. edison realized from the start that the true solution of this problem lay in the continuous treatment of the material, with the maximum employment of natural forces and the minimum of manual labor and generated power. hence, all his conceptions followed this general principle so faithfully and completely that we find in the plant embodying his ideas the forces of momentum and gravity steadily in harness and keeping the traces taut; while there was no touch of the human hand upon the material from the beginning of the treatment to its finish--the staff being employed mainly to keep watch on the correct working of the various processes. it is hardly necessary to devote space to the beginnings of the enterprise, although they are full of interest. they served, however, to convince edison that if he ever expected to carry out his scheme on the extensive scale planned, he could not depend upon the market to supply suitable machinery for important operations, but would be obliged to devise and build it himself. thus, outside the steam-shovel and such staple items as engines, boilers, dynamos, and motors, all of the diverse and complex machinery of the entire concentrating plant, as subsequently completed, was devised by him especially for the purpose. the necessity for this was due to the many radical variations made from accepted methods. no such departure was as radical as that of the method of crushing the ore. existing machinery for this purpose had been designed on the basis of mining methods then in vogue, by which the rock was thoroughly shattered by means of high explosives and reduced to pieces of one hundred pounds or less. these pieces were then crushed by power directly applied. if a concentrating mill, planned to treat five or six thousand tons per day, were to be operated on this basis the investment in crushers and the supply of power would be enormous, to say nothing of the risk of frequent breakdowns by reason of multiplicity of machinery and parts. from a consideration of these facts, and with his usual tendency to upset traditional observances, edison conceived the bold idea of constructing gigantic rolls which, by the force of momentum, would be capable of crushing individual rocks of vastly greater size than ever before attempted. he reasoned that the advantages thus obtained would be fourfold: a minimum of machinery and parts; greater compactness; a saving of power; and greater economy in mining. as this last-named operation precedes the crushing, let us first consider it as it was projected and carried on by him. perhaps quarrying would be a better term than mining in this case, as edison's plan was to approach the rock and tear it down bodily. the faith that "moves mountains" had a new opportunity. in work of this nature it had been customary, as above stated, to depend upon a high explosive, such as dynamite, to shatter and break the ore to lumps of one hundred pounds or less. this, however, he deemed to be a most uneconomical process, for energy stored as heat units in dynamite at $ per ton was much more expensive than that of calories in a ton of coal at $ per ton. hence, he believed that only the minimum of work should be done with the costly explosive; and, therefore, planned to use dynamite merely to dislodge great masses of rock, and depended upon the steam-shovel, operated by coal under the boiler, to displace, handle, and remove the rock in detail. this was the plan that was subsequently put into practice in the great works at edison, new jersey. a series of three-inch holes twenty feet deep were drilled eight feet apart, about twelve feet back of the ore-bank, and into these were inserted dynamite cartridges. the blast would dislodge thirty to thirty-five thousand tons of rock, which was scooped up by great steam-shovels and loaded on to skips carried by a line of cars on a narrow-gauge railroad running to and from the crushing mill. here the material was automatically delivered to the giant rolls. the problem included handling and crushing the "run of the mine," without selection. the steam-shovel did not discriminate, but picked up handily single pieces weighing five or six tons and loaded them on the skips with quantities of smaller lumps. when the skips arrived at the giant rolls, their contents were dumped automatically into a superimposed hopper. the rolls were well named, for with ear-splitting noise they broke up in a few seconds the great pieces of rock tossed in from the skips. it is not easy to appreciate to the full the daring exemplified in these great crushing rolls, or rather "rock-crackers," without having watched them in operation delivering their "solar-plexus" blows. it was only as one might stand in their vicinity and hear the thunderous roar accompanying the smashing and rending of the massive rocks as they disappeared from view that the mind was overwhelmed with a sense of the magnificent proportions of this operation. the enormous force exerted during this process may be illustrated from the fact that during its development, in running one of the early forms of rolls, pieces of rock weighing more than half a ton would be shot up in the air to a height of twenty or twenty-five feet. the giant rolls were two solid cylinders, six feet in diameter and five feet long, made of cast iron. to the faces of these rolls were bolted a series of heavy, chilled-iron plates containing a number of projecting knobs two inches high. each roll had also two rows of four-inch knobs, intended to strike a series of hammer-like blows. the rolls were set face to face fourteen inches apart, in a heavy frame, and the total weight was one hundred and thirty tons, of which seventy tons were in moving parts. the space between these two rolls allowed pieces of rock measuring less than fourteen inches to descend to other smaller rolls placed below. the giant rolls were belt-driven, in opposite directions, through friction clutches, although the belt was not depended upon for the actual crushing. previous to the dumping of a skip, the rolls were speeded up to a circumferential velocity of nearly a mile a minute, thus imparting to them the terrific momentum that would break up easily in a few seconds boulders weighing five or six tons each. it was as though a rock of this size had got in the way of two express trains travelling in opposite directions at nearly sixty miles an hour. in other words, it was the kinetic energy of the rolls that crumbled up the rocks with pile-driver effect. this sudden strain might have tended to stop the engine driving the rolls; but by an ingenious clutch arrangement the belt was released at the moment of resistance in the rolls by reason of the rocks falling between them. the act of breaking and crushing would naturally decrease the tremendous momentum, but after the rock was reduced and the pieces had passed through, the belt would again come into play, and once more speed up the rolls for a repetition of their regular prize-fighter duty. on leaving the giant rolls the rocks, having been reduced to pieces not larger than fourteen inches, passed into the series of "intermediate rolls" of similar construction and operation, by which they were still further reduced, and again passed on to three other sets of rolls of smaller dimensions. these latter rolls were also face-lined with chilled-iron plates; but, unlike the larger ones, were positively driven, reducing the rock to pieces of about one-half-inch size, or smaller. the whole crushing operation of reduction from massive boulders to small pebbly pieces having been done in less time than the telling has occupied, the product was conveyed to the "dryer," a tower nine feet square and fifty feet high, heated from below by great open furnace fires. all down the inside walls of this tower were placed cast-iron plates, nine feet long and seven inches wide, arranged alternately in "fish-ladder" fashion. the crushed rock, being delivered at the top, would fall down from plate to plate, constantly exposing different surfaces to the heat, until it landed completely dried in the lower portion of the tower, where it fell into conveyors which took it up to the stock-house. this method of drying was original with edison. at the time this adjunct to the plant was required, the best dryer on the market was of a rotary type, which had a capacity of only twenty tons per hour, with the expenditure of considerable power. as edison had determined upon treating two hundred and fifty tons or more per hour, he decided to devise an entirely new type of great capacity, requiring a minimum of power (for elevating the material), and depending upon the force of gravity for handling it during the drying process. a long series of experiments resulted in the invention of the tower dryer with a capacity of three hundred tons per hour. the rock, broken up into pieces about the size of marbles, having been dried and conveyed to the stock-house, the surplusage was automatically carried out from the other end of the stock-house by conveyors, to pass through the next process, by which it was reduced to a powder. the machinery for accomplishing this result represents another interesting and radical departure of edison from accepted usage. he had investigated all the crushing-machines on the market, and tried all he could get. he found them all greatly lacking in economy of operation; indeed, the highest results obtainable from the best were per cent. of actual work, involving a loss of per cent. by friction. his nature revolted at such an immense loss of power, especially as he proposed the crushing of vast quantities of ore. thus, he was obliged to begin again at the foundation, and he devised a crushing-machine which was subsequently named the "three-high rolls," and which practically reversed the above figures, as it developed per cent. of work done with only per cent. loss in friction. a brief description of this remarkable machine will probably interest the reader. in the two end pieces of a heavy iron frame were set three rolls, or cylinders--one in the centre, another below, and the other above--all three being in a vertical line. these rolls were of cast iron three feet in diameter, having chilled-iron smooth face-plates of considerable thickness. the lowest roll was set in a fixed bearing at the bottom of the frame, and, therefore, could only turn around on its axis. the middle and top rolls were free to move up or down from and toward the lower roll, and the shafts of the middle and upper rolls were set in a loose bearing which could slip up and down in the iron frame. it will be apparent, therefore, that any material which passed in between the top and the middle rolls, and the middle and bottom rolls, could be ground as fine as might be desired, depending entirely upon the amount of pressure applied to the loose rolls. in operation the material passed first through the upper and middle rolls, and then between the middle and lowest rolls. this pressure was applied in a most ingenious manner. on the ends of the shafts of the bottom and top rolls there were cylindrical sleeves, or bearings, having seven sheaves, in which was run a half-inch endless wire rope. this rope was wound seven times over the sheaves as above, and led upward and over a single-groove sheave which was operated by the piston of an air cylinder, and in this manner the pressure was applied to the rolls. it will be seen, therefore, that the system consisted in a single rope passed over sheaves and so arranged that it could be varied in length, thus providing for elasticity in exerting pressure and regulating it as desired. the efficiency of this system was incomparably greater than that of any other known crusher or grinder, for while a pressure of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds could be exerted by these rolls, friction was almost entirely eliminated because the upper and lower roll bearings turned with the rolls and revolved in the wire rope, which constituted the bearing proper. the same cautious foresight exercised by edison in providing a safety device--the fuse--to prevent fires in his electric-light system, was again displayed in this concentrating plant, where, to save possible injury to its expensive operating parts, he devised an analogous factor, providing all the crushing machinery with closely calculated "safety pins," which, on being overloaded, would shear off and thus stop the machine at once. the rocks having thus been reduced to fine powder, the mass was ready for screening on its way to the magnetic separators. here again edison reversed prior practice by discarding rotary screens and devising a form of tower screen, which, besides having a very large working capacity by gravity, eliminated all power except that required to elevate the material. the screening process allowed the finest part of the crushed rock to pass on, by conveyor belts, to the magnetic separators, while the coarser particles were in like manner automatically returned to the rolls for further reduction. in a narrative not intended to be strictly technical, it would probably tire the reader to follow this material in detail through the numerous steps attending the magnetic separation. these may be seen in a diagram reproduced from the above-named article in the iron age, and supplemented by the following extract from the electrical engineer, new york, october , : "at the start the weakest magnet at the top frees the purest particles, and the second takes care of others; but the third catches those to which rock adheres, and will extract particles of which only one-eighth is iron. this batch of material goes back for another crushing, so that everything is subjected to an equality of refining. we are now in sight of the real 'concentrates,' which are conveyed to dryer no. for drying again, and are then delivered to the fifty-mesh screens. whatever is fine enough goes through to the eight-inch magnets, and the remainder goes back for recrushing. below the eight-inch magnets the dust is blown out of the particles mechanically, and they then go to the four-inch magnets for final cleansing and separation.... obviously, at each step the percentage of felspar and phosphorus is less and less until in the final concentrates the percentage of iron oxide is to per cent. as intimated at the outset, the tailings will be per cent. of the rock taken from the veins of ore, so that every four tons of crude, raw, low-grade ore will have yielded roughly one ton of high-grade concentrate and three tons of sand, the latter also having its value in various ways." this sand was transported automatically by belt conveyors to the rear of the works to be stored and sold. being sharp, crystalline, and even in quality, it was a valuable by-product, finding a ready sale for building purposes, railway sand-boxes, and various industrial uses. the concentrate, in fine powdery form, was delivered in similar manner to a stock-house. as to the next step in the process, we may now quote again from the article in the iron age: "while mr. edison and his associates were working on the problem of cheap concentration of iron ore, an added difficulty faced them in the preparation of the concentrates for the market. furnacemen object to more than a very small proportion of fine ore in their mixtures, particularly when the ore is magnetic, not easily reduced. the problem to be solved was to market an agglomerated material so as to avoid the drawbacks of fine ore. the agglomerated product must be porous so as to afford access of the furnace-reducing gases to the ore. it must be hard enough to bear transportation, and to carry the furnace burden without crumbling to pieces. it must be waterproof, to a certain extent, because considerations connected with securing low rates of freight make it necessary to be able to ship the concentrates to market in open coal cars, exposed to snow and rain. in many respects the attainment of these somewhat conflicting ends was the most perplexing of the problems which confronted mr. edison. the agglomeration of the concentrates having been decided upon, two other considerations, not mentioned above, were of primary importance--first, to find a suitable cheap binding material; and, second, its nature must be such that very little would be necessary per ton of concentrates. these severe requirements were staggering, but mr. edison's courage did not falter. although it seemed a well-nigh hopeless task, he entered upon the investigation with his usual optimism and vim. after many months of unremitting toil and research, and the trial of thousands of experiments, the goal was reached in the completion of a successful formula for agglomerating the fine ore and pressing it into briquettes by special machinery." this was the final process requisite for the making of a completed commercial product. its practice, of course, necessitated the addition of an entirely new department of the works, which was carried into effect by the construction and installation of the novel mixing and briquetting machinery, together with extensions of the conveyors, with which the plant had already been liberally provided. briefly described, the process consisted in mixing the concentrates with the special binding material in machines of an entirely new type, and in passing the resultant pasty mass into the briquetting machines, where it was pressed into cylindrical cakes three inches in diameter and one and a half inches thick, under successive pressures of , , , and , pounds. each machine made these briquettes at the rate of sixty per minute, and dropped them into bucket conveyors by which they were carried into drying furnaces, through which they made five loops, and were then delivered to cross-conveyors which carried them into the stock-house. at the end of this process the briquettes were so hard that they would not break or crumble in loading on the cars or in transportation by rail, while they were so porous as to be capable of absorbing per cent. of their own volume in alcohol, but repelling water absolutely--perfect "old soaks." thus, with never-failing persistence and patience, coupled with intense thought and hard work, edison met and conquered, one by one, the complex difficulties that confronted him. he succeeded in what he had set out to do, and it is now to be noted that the product he had striven so sedulously to obtain was a highly commercial one, for not only did the briquettes of concentrated ore fulfil the purpose of their creation, but in use actually tended to increase the working capacity of the furnace, as the following test, quoted from the iron age, october , , will attest: "the only trial of any magnitude of the briquettes in the blast-furnace was carried through early this year at the crane iron works, catasauqua, pennsylvania, by leonard peckitt. "the furnace at which the test was made produces from one hundred to one hundred and ten tons per day when running on the ordinary mixture. the charging of briquettes was begun with a percentage of per cent., and was carried up to per cent. the following is the record of the results: results of working briquettes at the crane furnace quantity of phos- mandate briquette tons silica phorus sulphur ganese working per cent. january th . . . . january th / / . . . january th / . . . . january th . . . . january th / . . . . "on the th, at p.m., the briquettes having been nearly exhausted, the percentage was dropped to per cent., and on the th the output dropped to tons, and on the th the furnace had resumed the usual work on the regular standard ores. "these figures prove that the yield of the furnace is considerably increased. the crane trial was too short to settle the question to what extent the increase in product may be carried. this increase in output, of course, means a reduction in the cost of labor and of general expenses. "the richness of the ore and its purity of course affect the limestone consumption. in the case of the crane trial there was a reduction from per cent. to per cent. of the ore charge. "finally, the fuel consumption is reduced, which in the case of the eastern plants, with their relatively costly coke, is a very important consideration. it is regarded as possible that eastern furnaces will be able to use a smaller proportion of the costlier coke and correspondingly increase in anthracite coal, which is a cheaper fuel in that section. so far as foundry iron is concerned, the experience at catasauqua, pennsylvania, brief as it has been, shows that a stronger and tougher metal is made." edison himself tells an interesting little story in this connection, when he enjoyed the active help of that noble character, john fritz, the distinguished inventor and pioneer of the modern steel industry in america. he says: "when i was struggling along with the iron-ore concentration, i went to see several blast-furnace men to sell the ore at the market price. they saw i was very anxious to sell it, and they would take advantage of my necessity. but i happened to go to mr. john fritz, of the bethlehem steel company, and told him what i was doing. 'well,' he said to me, 'edison, you are doing a good thing for the eastern furnaces. they ought to help you, for it will help us out. i am willing to help you. i mix a little sentiment with business, and i will give you an order for one hundred thousand tons.' and he sat right down and gave me the order." the edison concentrating plant has been sketched in the briefest outline with a view of affording merely a bare idea of the great work of its projector. to tell the whole story in detail and show its logical sequence, step by step, would take little less than a volume in itself, for edison's methods, always iconoclastic when progress is in sight, were particularly so at the period in question. it has been said that "edison's scrap-heap contains the elements of a liberal education," and this was essentially true of the "discard" during the ore-milling experience. interesting as it might be to follow at length the numerous phases of ingenious and resourceful development that took place during those busy years, the limit of present space forbids their relation. it would, however, be denying the justice that is edison's due to omit all mention of two hitherto unnamed items in particular that have added to the world's store of useful devices. we refer first to the great travelling hoisting-crane having a span of two hundred and fifteen feet, and used for hoisting loads equal to ten tons, this being the largest of the kind made up to that time, and afterward used as a model by many others. the second item was the ingenious and varied forms of conveyor belt, devised and used by edison at the concentrating works, and subsequently developed into a separate and extensive business by an engineer to whom he gave permission to use his plans and patterns. edison's native shrewdness and knowledge of human nature was put to practical use in the busy days of plant construction. it was found impossible to keep mechanics on account of indifferent residential accommodations afforded by the tiny village, remote from civilization, among the central mountains of new jersey. this puzzling question was much discussed between him and his associate, mr. w. s. mallory, until finally he said to the latter: "if we want to keep the men here we must make it attractive for the women--so let us build some houses that will have running water and electric lights, and rent at a low rate." he set to work, and in a day finished a design for a type of house. fifty were quickly built and fully described in advertising for mechanics. three days' advertisements brought in over six hundred and fifty applications, and afterward edison had no trouble in obtaining all the first-class men he required, as settlers in the artificial yosemite he was creating. we owe to mr. mallory a characteristic story of this period as to an incidental unbending from toil, which in itself illustrates the ever-present determination to conquer what is undertaken: "along in the latter part of the nineties, when the work on the problem of concentrating iron ore was in progress, it became necessary when leaving the plant at edison to wait over at lake hopatcong one hour for a connecting train. during some of these waits mr. edison had seen me play billiards. at the particular time this incident happened, mrs. edison and her family were away for the summer, and i was staying at the glenmont home on the orange mountains. "one hot saturday night, after mr. edison had looked over the evening papers, he said to me: 'do you want to play a game of billiards?' naturally this astonished me very much, as he is a man who cares little or nothing for the ordinary games, with the single exception of parcheesi, of which he is very fond. i said i would like to play, so we went up into the billiard-room of the house. i took off the cloth, got out the balls, picked out a cue for mr. edison, and when we banked for the first shot i won and started the game. after making two or three shots i missed, and a long carom shot was left for mr. edison, the cue ball and object ball being within about twelve inches of each other, and the other ball a distance of nearly the length of the table. mr. edison attempted to make the shot, but missed it and said 'put the balls back.' so i put them back in the same position and he missed it the second time. i continued at his request to put the balls back in the same position for the next fifteen minutes, until he could make the shot every time--then he said: 'i don't want to play any more.'" having taken a somewhat superficial survey of the great enterprise under consideration; having had a cursory glance at the technical development of the plant up to the point of its successful culmination in the making of a marketable, commercial product as exemplified in the test at the crane furnace, let us revert to that demonstration and note the events that followed. the facts of this actual test are far more eloquent than volumes of argument would be as a justification of edison's assiduous labors for over eight years, and of the expenditure of a fortune in bringing his broad conception to a concrete possibility. in the patient solving of tremendous problems he had toiled up the mountain-side of success--scaling its topmost peak and obtaining a view of the boundless prospect. but, alas! "the best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft agley." the discovery of great deposits of rich bessemer ore in the mesaba range of mountains in minnesota a year or two previous to the completion of his work had been followed by the opening up of those deposits and the marketing of the ore. it was of such rich character that, being cheaply mined by greatly improved and inexpensive methods, the market price of crude ore of like iron units fell from about $ . to $ . per ton at the time when edison was ready to supply his concentrated product. at the former price he could have supplied the market and earned a liberal profit on his investment, but at $ . per ton he was left without a reasonable chance of competition. thus was swept away the possibility of reaping the reward so richly earned by years of incessant thought, labor, and care. this great and notable plant, representing a very large outlay of money, brought to completion, ready for business, and embracing some of the most brilliant and remarkable of edison's inventions and methods, must be abandoned by force of circumstances over which he had no control, and with it must die the high hopes that his progressive, conquering march to success had legitimately engendered. the financial aspect of these enterprises is often overlooked and forgotten. in this instance it was of more than usual import and seriousness, as edison was virtually his own "backer," putting into the company almost the whole of all the fortune his inventions had brought him. there is a tendency to deny to the capital that thus takes desperate chances its full reward if things go right, and to insist that it shall have barely the legal rate of interest and far less than the return of over-the-counter retail trade. it is an absolute fact that the great electrical inventors and the men who stood behind them have had little return for their foresight and courage. in this instance, when the inventor was largely his own financier, the difficulties and perils were redoubled. let mr. mallory give an instance: "during the latter part of the panic of there came a period when we were very hard up for ready cash, due largely to the panicky conditions; and a large pay-roll had been raised with considerable difficulty. a short time before pay-day our treasurer called me up by telephone, and said: 'i have just received the paid checks from the bank, and i am fearful that my assistant, who has forged my name to some of the checks, has absconded with about $ .' i went immediately to mr. edison and told him of the forgery and the amount of money taken, and in what an embarrassing position we were for the next pay-roll. when i had finished he said: 'it is too bad the money is gone, but i will tell you what to do. go and see the president of the bank which paid the forged checks. get him to admit the bank's liability, and then say to him that mr. edison does not think the bank should suffer because he happened to have a dishonest clerk in his employ. also say to him that i shall not ask them to make the amount good.' this was done; the bank admitting its liability and being much pleased with this action. when i reported to mr. edison he said: 'that's all right. we have made a friend of the bank, and we may need friends later on.' and so it happened that some time afterward, when we greatly needed help in the way of loans, the bank willingly gave us the accommodations we required to tide us over a critical period." this iron-ore concentrating project had lain close to edison's heart and ambition--indeed, it had permeated his whole being to the exclusion of almost all other investigations or inventions for a while. for five years he had lived and worked steadily at edison, leaving there only on saturday night to spend sunday at his home in orange, and returning to the plant by an early train on monday morning. life at edison was of the simple kind--work, meals, and a few hours' sleep--day by day. the little village, called into existence by the concentrating works, was of the most primitive nature and offered nothing in the way of frivolity or amusement. even the scenery is austere. hence edison was enabled to follow his natural bent in being surrounded day and night by his responsible chosen associates, with whom he worked uninterrupted by outsiders from early morning away into the late hours of the evening. those who were laboring with him, inspired by his unflagging enthusiasm, followed his example and devoted all their long waking hours to the furtherance of his plans with a zeal that ultimately bore fruit in the practical success here recorded. in view of its present status, this colossal enterprise at edison may well be likened to the prologue of a play that is to be subsequently enacted for the benefit of future generations, but before ringing down the curtain it is desirable to preserve the unities by quoting the words of one of the principal actors, mr. mallory, who says: "the concentrating works had been in operation, and we had produced a considerable quantity of the briquettes, and had been able to sell only a portion of them, the iron market being in such condition that blast-furnaces were not making any new purchases of iron ore, and were having difficulty to receive and consume the ores which had been previously contracted for, so what sales we were able to make were at extremely low prices, my recollection being that they were between $ . and $ . per ton, whereas when the works had started we had hoped to obtain $ . to $ . per ton for the briquettes. we had also thoroughly investigated the wonderful deposit at mesaba, and it was with the greatest possible reluctance that mr. edison was able to come finally to the conclusion that, under existing conditions, the concentrating plant could not then be made a commercial success. this decision was reached only after the most careful investigations and calculations, as mr. edison was just as full of fight and ambition to make it a success as when he first started. "when this decision was reached mr. edison and i took the jersey central train from edison, bound for orange, and i did not look forward to the immediate future with any degree of confidence, as the concentrating plant was heavily in debt, without any early prospect of being able to pay off its indebtedness. on the train the matter of the future was discussed, and mr. edison said that, inasmuch as we had the knowledge gained from our experience in the concentrating problem, we must, if possible, apply it to some practical use, and at the same time we must work out some other plans by which we could make enough money to pay off the concentrating company's indebtedness, mr. edison stating most positively that no company with which he had personally been actively connected had ever failed to pay its debts, and he did not propose to have the concentrating company any exception. "in the discussion that followed he suggested several kinds of work which he had in his mind, and which might prove profitable. we figured carefully over the probabilities of financial returns from the phonograph works and other enterprises, and after discussing many plans, it was finally decided that we would apply the knowledge we had gained in the concentrating plant by building a plant for manufacturing portland cement, and that mr. edison would devote his attention to the developing of a storage battery which did not use lead and sulphuric acid. so these two lines of work were taken up by mr. edison with just as much enthusiasm and energy as is usual with him, the commercial failure of the concentrating plant seeming not to affect his spirits in any way. in fact, i have often been impressed strongly with the fact that, during the dark days of the concentrating problem, mr. edison's desire was very strong that the creditors of the concentrating works should be paid in full; and only once did i hear him make any reference to the financial loss which he himself made, and he then said: 'as far as i am concerned, i can any time get a job at $ per month as a telegrapher, and that will amply take care of all my personal requirements.' as already stated, however, he started in with the maximum amount of enthusiasm and ambition, and in the course of about three years we succeeded in paying off all the indebtedness of the concentrating works, which amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. "as to the state of mr. edison's mind when the final decision was reached to close down, if he was specially disappointed, there was nothing in his manner to indicate it, his every thought being for the future, and as to what could be done to pull us out of the financial situation in which we found ourselves, and to take advantage of the knowledge which we had acquired at so great a cost." it will have been gathered that the funds for this great experiment were furnished largely by edison. in fact, over two million dollars were spent in the attempt. edison's philosophic view of affairs is given in the following anecdote from mr. mallory: "during the boom times of , when the old general electric stock sold at its high-water mark of about $ , mr. edison and i were on our way from the cement plant at new village, new jersey, to his home at orange. when we arrived at dover, new jersey, we got a new york newspaper, and i called his attention to the quotation of that day on general electric. mr. edison then asked: 'if i hadn't sold any of mine, what would it be worth to-day?' and after some figuring i replied: 'over four million dollars.' when mr. edison is thinking seriously over a problem he is in the habit of pulling his right eyebrow, which he did now for fifteen or twenty seconds. then his face lighted up, and he said: 'well, it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it.'" with which revelation of an attitude worthy of mark tapley himself, this chapter may well conclude. chapter xx edison portland cement new developments in recent years have been more striking than the general adoption of cement for structural purposes of all kinds in the united states; or than the increase in its manufacture here. as a material for the construction of office buildings, factories, and dwellings, it has lately enjoyed an extraordinary vogue; yet every indication is confirmatory of the belief that such use has barely begun. various reasons may be cited, such as the growing scarcity of wood, once the favorite building material in many parts of the country, and the increasing dearness of brick and stone. the fact remains, indisputable, and demonstrated flatly by the statistics of production. in the american output of cement was placed at about , , barrels, valued at over $ , , . in the production is given as nearly , , barrels. here then is an industry that doubled in five years. the average rate of industrial growth in the united states is per cent. a year, or doubling every ten years. it is a singular fact that electricity also so far exceeds the normal rate as to double in value and quantity of output and investment every five years. there is perhaps more than ordinary coincidence in the association of edison with two such active departments of progress. as a purely manufacturing business the general cement industry is one of even remote antiquity, and if edison had entered into it merely as a commercial enterprise by following paths already so well trodden, the fact would hardly have been worthy of even passing notice. it is not in his nature, however, to follow a beaten track except in regard to the recognition of basic principles; so that while the manufacture of edison portland cement embraces the main essentials and familiar processes of cement-making, such as crushing, drying, mixing, roasting, and grinding, his versatility and originality, as exemplified in the conception and introduction of some bold and revolutionary methods and devices, have resulted in raising his plant from the position of an outsider to the rank of the fifth largest producer in the united states, in the short space of five years after starting to manufacture. long before his advent in cement production, edison had held very pronounced views on the value of that material as the one which would obtain largely for future building purposes on account of its stability. more than twenty-five years ago one of the writers of this narrative heard him remark during a discussion on ancient buildings: "wood will rot, stone will chip and crumble, bricks disintegrate, but a cement and iron structure is apparently indestructible. look at some of the old roman baths. they are as solid as when they were built." with such convictions, and the vast fund of practical knowledge and experience he had gained at edison in the crushing and manipulation of large masses of magnetic iron ore during the preceding nine years, it is not surprising that on that homeward railway journey, mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter, he should have decided to go into the manufacture of cement, especially in view of the enormous growth of its use for structural purposes during recent times. the field being a new one to him, edison followed his usual course of reading up every page of authoritative literature on the subject, and seeking information from all quarters. in the mean time, while he was busy also with his new storage battery, mr. mallory, who had been hard at work on the cement plan, announced that he had completed arrangements for organizing a company with sufficient financial backing to carry on the business; concluding with the remark that it was now time to engage engineers to lay out the plant. edison replied that he intended to do that himself, and invited mr. mallory to go with him to one of the draughting-rooms on an upper floor of the laboratory. here he placed a large sheet of paper on a draughting-table, and immediately began to draw out a plan of the proposed works, continuing all day and away into the evening, when he finished; thus completing within the twenty-four hours the full lay-out of the entire plant as it was subsequently installed, and as it has substantially remained in practical use to this time. it will be granted that this was a remarkable engineering feat, especially in view of the fact that edison was then a new-comer in the cement business, and also that if the plant were to be rebuilt to-day, no vital change would be desirable or necessary. in that one day's planning every part was considered and provided for, from the crusher to the packing-house. from one end to the other, the distance over which the plant stretches in length is about half a mile, and through the various buildings spread over this space there passes, automatically, in course of treatment, a vast quantity of material resulting in the production of upward of two and a quarter million pounds of finished cement every twenty-four hours, seven days in the week. in that one day's designing provision was made not only for all important parts, but minor details, such, for instance, as the carrying of all steam, water, and air pipes, and electrical conductors in a large subway running from one end of the plant to the other; and, an oiling system for the entire works. this latter deserves special mention, not only because of its arrangement for thorough lubrication, but also on account of the resultant economy affecting the cost of manufacture. edison has strong convictions on the liberal use of lubricants, but argued that in the ordinary oiling of machinery there is great waste, while much dirt is conveyed into the bearings. he therefore planned a system by which the ten thousand bearings in the plant are oiled automatically; requiring the services of only two men for the entire work. this is accomplished by a central pumping and filtering plant and the return of the oil from all parts of the works by gravity. every bearing is made dust-proof, and is provided with two interior pipes. one is above and the other below the bearing. the oil flows in through the upper pipe, and, after lubricating the shaft, flows out through the lower pipe back to the pumping station, where any dirt is filtered out and the oil returned to circulation. while this system of oiling is not unique, it was the first instance of its adaptation on so large and complete a scale, and illustrates the far-sightedness of his plans. in connection with the adoption of this lubricating system there occurred another instance of his knowledge of materials and intuitive insight into the nature of things. he thought that too frequent circulation of a comparatively small quantity of oil would, to some extent, impair its lubricating qualities, and requested his assistants to verify this opinion by consultation with competent authorities. on making inquiry of the engineers of the standard oil company, his theory was fully sustained. hence, provision was made for carrying a large stock of oil, and for giving a certain period of rest to that already used. a keen appreciation of ultimate success in the production of a fine quality of cement led edison to provide very carefully in his original scheme for those details that he foresaw would become requisite--such, for instance, as ample stock capacity for raw materials and their automatic delivery in the various stages of manufacture, as well as mixing, weighing, and frequent sampling and analyzing during the progress through the mills. this provision even included the details of the packing-house, and his perspicacity in this case is well sustained from the fact that nine years afterward, in anticipation of building an additional packing-house, the company sent a representative to different parts of the country to examine the systems used by manufacturers in the packing of large quantities of various staple commodities involving somewhat similar problems, and found that there was none better than that devised before the cement plant was started. hence, the order was given to build the new packing-house on lines similar to those of the old one. among the many innovations appearing in this plant are two that stand out in bold relief as indicating the large scale by which edison measures his ideas. one of these consists of the crushing and grinding machinery, and the other of the long kilns. in the preceding chapter there has been given a description of the giant rolls, by means of which great masses of rock, of which individual pieces may weigh eight or more tons, are broken and reduced to about a fourteen-inch size. the economy of this is apparent when it is considered that in other cement plants the limit of crushing ability is "one-man size"--that is, pieces not too large for one man to lift. the story of the kiln, as told by mr. mallory, is illustrative of edison's tendency to upset tradition and make a radical departure from generally accepted ideas. "when mr. edison first decided to go into the cement business, it was on the basis of his crushing-rolls and air separation, and he had every expectation of installing duplicates of the kilns which were then in common use for burning cement. these kilns were usually made of boiler iron, riveted, and were about sixty feet long and six feet in diameter, and had a capacity of about two hundred barrels of cement clinker in twenty-four hours. "when the detail plans for our plant were being drawn, mr. edison and i figured over the coal capacity and coal economy of the sixty-foot kiln, and each time thought that both could he materially bettered. after having gone over this matter several times, he said: 'i believe i can make a kiln which will give an output of one thousand barrels in twenty-four hours.' although i had then been closely associated with him for ten years and was accustomed to see him accomplish great things, i could not help feeling the improbability of his being able to jump into an old-established industry--as a novice--and start by improving the 'heart' of the production so as to increase its capacity per cent. when i pressed him for an explanation, he was unable to give any definite reasons, except that he felt positive it could be done. in this connection let me say that very many times i have heard mr. edison make predictions as to what a certain mechanical device ought to do in the way of output and costs, when his statements did not seem to be even among the possibilities. subsequently, after more or less experience, these predictions have been verified, and i cannot help coming to the conclusion that he has a faculty, not possessed by the average mortal, of intuitively and correctly sizing up mechanical and commercial possibilities. "but, returning to the kiln, mr. edison went to work immediately and very soon completed the design of a new type which was to be one hundred and fifty feet long and nine feet in diameter, made up in ten-foot sections of cast iron bolted together and arranged to be revolved on fifteen bearings. he had a wooden model made and studied it very carefully, through a series of experiments. these resulted so satisfactorily that this form was finally decided upon, and ultimately installed as part of the plant. "well, for a year or so the kiln problem was a nightmare to me. when we started up the plant experimentally, and the long kiln was first put in operation, an output of about four hundred barrels in twenty-four hours was obtained. mr. edison was more than disappointed at this result. his terse comment on my report was: 'rotten. try it again.' when we became a little more familiar with the operation of the kiln we were able to get the output up to about five hundred and fifty barrels, and a little later to six hundred and fifty barrels per day. i would go down to orange and report with a great deal of satisfaction the increase in output, but mr. edison would apparently be very much disappointed, and often said to me that the trouble was not with the kiln, but with our method of operating it; and he would reiterate his first statement that it would make one thousand barrels in twenty-four hours. "each time i would return to the plant with the determination to increase the output if possible, and we did increase it to seven hundred and fifty, then to eight hundred and fifty barrels. every time i reported these increases mr. edison would still be disappointed. i said to him several times that if he was so sure the kiln could turn out one thousand barrels in twenty-four hours we would be very glad to have him tell us how to do it, and that we would run it in any way he directed. he replied that he did not know what it was that kept the output down, but he was just as confident as ever that the kiln would make one thousand barrels per day, and that if he had time to work with and watch the kiln it would not take him long to find out the reasons why. he had made a number of suggestions throughout these various trials, however, and, as we continued to operate, we learned additional points in handling, and were able to get the output up to nine hundred barrels, then one thousand, and finally to over eleven hundred barrels per day, thus more than realizing the prediction made by mr. edison before even the plans were drawn. it is only fair to say, however, that prolonged experience has led us to the conclusion that the maximum economy in continuous operation of these kilns is obtained by working them at a little less than their maximum capacity. "it is interesting to note, in connection with the edison type of kiln, that when the older cement manufacturers first learned of it, they ridiculed the idea universally, and were not slow to predict our early 'finish' as cement manufacturers. the ultimate success of the kiln, however, proved their criticisms to be unwarranted. once aware of its possibility, some of the cement manufacturers proceeded to avail themselves of the innovation (at first without mr. edison's consent), and to-day more than one-half of the portland cement produced in this country is made in kilns of the edison type. old plants are lengthening their kilns wherever practicable, and no wide-awake manufacturer building a modern plant could afford to install other than these long kilns. this invention of mr. edison has been recognized by the larger cement manufacturers, and there is every prospect now that the entire trade will take licenses under his kiln patents." when he decided to go into the cement business, edison was thoroughly awake to the fact that he was proposing to "butt into" an old-established industry, in which the principal manufacturers were concerns of long standing. he appreciated fully its inherent difficulties, not only in manufacture, but also in the marketing of the product. these considerations, together with his long-settled principle of striving always to make the best, induced him at the outset to study methods of producing the highest quality of product. thus he was led to originate innovations in processes, some of which have been preserved as trade secrets; but of the others there are two deserving special notice--namely, the accuracy of mixing and the fineness of grinding. in cement-making, generally speaking, cement rock and limestone in the rough are mixed together in such relative quantities as may be determined upon in advance by chemical analysis. in many plants this mixture is made by barrow or load units, and may be more or less accurate. rule-of-thumb methods are never acceptable to edison, and he devised therefore a system of weighing each part of the mixture, so that it would be correct to a pound, and, even at that, made the device "fool-proof," for as he observed to one of his associates: "the man at the scales might get to thinking of the other fellow's best girl, so fifty or a hundred pounds of rock, more or less, wouldn't make much difference to him." the edison checking plan embraces two hoppers suspended above two platform scales whose beams are electrically connected with a hopper-closing device by means of needles dipping into mercury cups. the scales are set according to the chemist's weighing orders, and the material is fed into the scales from the hoppers. the instant the beam tips, the connection is broken and the feed stops instantly, thus rendering it impossible to introduce any more material until the charge has been unloaded. the fine grinding of cement clinker is distinctively edisonian in both origin and application. as has been already intimated, its author followed a thorough course of reading on the subject long before reaching the actual projection or installation of a plant, and he had found all authorities to agree on one important point--namely, that the value of cement depends upon the fineness to which it is ground. [ ] he also ascertained that in the trade the standard of fineness was that per cent. of the whole mass would pass through a -mesh screen. having made some improvements in his grinding and screening apparatus, and believing that in the future engineers, builders, and contractors would eventually require a higher degree of fineness, he determined, in advance of manufacturing, to raise the standard ten points, so that at least per cent. of his product should pass through a -mesh screen. this was a bold step to be taken by a new-comer, but his judgment, backed by a full confidence in ability to live up to this standard, has been fully justified in its continued maintenance, despite the early incredulity of older manufacturers as to the possibility of attaining such a high degree of fineness. [footnote : for a proper understanding and full appreciation of the importance of fine grinding, it may be explained that portland cement (as manufactured in the lehigh valley) is made from what is commonly spoken of as "cement rock," with the addition of sufficient limestone to give the necessary amount of lime. the rock is broken down and then ground to a fineness of to per cent. through a -mesh screen. this ground material passes through kilns and comes out in "clinker." this is ground and that part of this finely ground clinker that will pass a -mesh screen is cement; the residue is still clinker. these coarse particles, or clinkers, absorb water very slowly, are practically inert, and have very feeble cementing properties. the residue on a -mesh screen is useless.] if edison measured his happiness, as men often do, by merely commercial or pecuniary rewards of success, it would seem almost redundant to state that he has continued to manifest an intense interest in the cement plant. ordinarily, his interest as an inventor wanes in proportion to the approach to mere commercialism--in other words, the keenness of his pleasure is in overcoming difficulties rather than the mere piling up of a bank account. he is entirely sensible of the advantages arising from a good balance at the banker's, but that has not been the goal of his ambition. hence, although his cement enterprise reached the commercial stage a long time ago, he has been firmly convinced of his own ability to devise still further improvements and economical processes of greater or less fundamental importance, and has, therefore, made a constant study of the problem as a whole and in all its parts. by means of frequent reports, aided by his remarkable memory, he keeps in as close touch with the plant as if he were there in person every day, and is thus enabled to suggest improvement in any particular detail. the engineering force has a great respect for the accuracy of his knowledge of every part of the plant, for he remembers the dimensions and details of each item of machinery, sometimes to the discomfiture of those who are around it every day. a noteworthy instance of edison's memory occurred in connection with this cement plant. some years ago, as its installation was nearing completion, he went up to look it over and satisfy himself as to what needed to be done. on the arrival of the train at . in the morning, he went to the mill, and, with mr. mason, the general superintendent, started at the crusher at one end, and examined every detail all the way through to the packing-house at the other end. he made neither notes nor memoranda, but the examination required all the day, which happened to be a saturday. he took a train for home at . in the afternoon, and on arriving at his residence at orange, got out some note-books and began to write entirely from memory each item consecutively. he continued at this task all through saturday night, and worked steadily on until sunday afternoon, when he completed a list of nearly six hundred items. the nature of this feat is more appreciable from the fact that a large number of changes included all the figures of new dimensions he had decided upon for some of the machinery throughout the plant. as the reader may have a natural curiosity to learn whether or not the list so made was practical, it may be stated that it was copied and sent up to the general superintendent with instructions to make the modifications suggested, and report by numbers as they were attended to. this was faithfully done, all the changes being made before the plant was put into operation. subsequent experience has amply proven the value of edison's prescience at this time. although edison's achievements in the way of improved processes and machinery have already made a deep impression in the cement industry, it is probable that this impression will become still more profoundly stamped upon it in the near future with the exploitation of his "poured cement house." the broad problem which he set himself was to provide handsome and practically indestructible detached houses, which could be taken by wage-earners at very moderate monthly rentals. he turned this question over in his mind for several years, and arrived at the conclusion that a house cast in one piece would be the answer. to produce such a house involved the overcoming of many engineering and other technical difficulties. these he attacked vigorously and disposed of patiently one by one. in this connection a short anecdote may be quoted from edison as indicative of one of the influences turning his thoughts in this direction. in the story of the ore-milling work, it has been noted that the plant was shut down owing to the competition of the cheap ore from the mesaba range. edison says: "when i shut down, the insurance companies cancelled my insurance. i asked the reason why. 'oh,' they said, 'this thing is a failure. the moral risk is too great.' 'all right; i am glad to hear it. i will now construct buildings that won't have any moral risk.' i determined to go into the portland cement business. i organized a company and started cement-works which have now been running successfully for several years. i had so perfected the machinery in trying to get my ore costs down that the making of cheap cement was an easy matter to me. i built these works entirely of concrete and steel, so that there is not a wagon-load of lumber in them; and so that the insurance companies would not have any possibility of having any 'moral risk.' since that time i have put up numerous factory buildings all of steel and concrete, without any combustible whatever about them--to avoid this 'moral risk.' i am carrying further the application of this idea in building private houses for poor people, in which there will be no 'moral risk' at all--nothing whatever to burn, not even by lightning." as a casting necessitates a mold, together with a mixture sufficiently fluid in its nature to fill all the interstices completely, edison devoted much attention to an extensive series of experiments for producing a free-flowing combination of necessary materials. his proposition was against all precedent. all expert testimony pointed to the fact that a mixture of concrete (cement, sand, crushed stone, and water) could not be made to flow freely to the smallest parts of an intricate set of molds; that the heavy parts of the mixture could not be held in suspension, but would separate out by gravity and make an unevenly balanced structure; that the surface would be full of imperfections, etc. undeterred by the unanimity of adverse opinions, however, he pursued his investigations with the thorough minuteness that characterizes all his laboratory work, and in due time produced a mixture which on elaborate test overcame all objections and answered the complex requirements perfectly, including the making of a surface smooth, even, and entirely waterproof. all the other engineering problems have received study in like manner, and have been overcome, until at the present writing the whole question is practically solved and has been reduced to actual practice. the edison poured or cast cement house may be reckoned as a reality. the general scheme, briefly outlined, is to prepare a model and plans of the house to be cast, and then to design a set of molds in sections of convenient size. when all is ready, these molds, which are of cast iron with smooth interior surfaces, are taken to the place where the house is to be erected. here there has been provided a solid concrete cellar floor, technically called "footing." the molds are then locked together so that they rest on this footing. hundreds of pieces are necessary for the complete set. when they have been completely assembled, there will be a hollow space in the interior, representing the shape of the house. reinforcing rods are also placed in the molds, to be left behind in the finished house. next comes the pouring of the concrete mixture into this form. large mechanical mixers are used, and, as it is made, the mixture is dumped into tanks, from which it is conveyed to a distributing tank on the top, or roof, of the form. from this tank a large number of open troughs or pipes lead the mixture to various openings in the roof, whence it flows down and fills all parts of the mold from the footing in the basement until it overflows at the tip of the roof. the pouring of the entire house is accomplished in about six hours, and then the molds are left undisturbed for six days, in order that the concrete may set and harden. after that time the work of taking away the molds is begun. this requires three or four days. when the molds are taken away an entire house is disclosed, cast in one piece, from cellar to tip of roof, complete with floors, interior walls, stairways, bath and laundry tubs, electric-wire conduits, gas, water, and heating pipes. no plaster is used anywhere; but the exterior and interior walls are smooth and may be painted or tinted, if desired. all that is now necessary is to put in the windows, doors, heater, and lighting fixtures, and to connect up the plumbing and heating arrangements, thus making the house ready for occupancy. as these iron molds are not ephemeral like the wooden framing now used in cement construction, but of practically illimitable life, it is obvious that they can be used a great number of times. a complete set of molds will cost approximately $ , , while the necessary plant will cost about $ , more. it is proposed to work as a unit plant for successful operation at least six sets of molds, to keep the men busy and the machinery going. any one, with a sheet of paper, can ascertain the yearly interest on the investment as a fixed charge to be assessed against each house, on the basis that one hundred and forty-four houses can be built in a year with the battery of six sets of molds. putting the sum at $ , , and the interest at per cent. on the cost of the molds and per cent. for breakage, together with per cent. interest and per cent. depreciation on machinery, the plant charge is approximately $ per house. it does not require a particularly acute prophetic vision to see "flower towns" of "poured houses" going up in whole suburbs outside all our chief centres of population. edison's conception of the workingman's ideal house has been a broad one from the very start. he was not content merely to provide a roomy, moderately priced house that should be fireproof, waterproof, and vermin-proof, and practically indestructible, but has been solicitous to get away from the idea of a plain "packing-box" type. he has also provided for ornamentation of a high class in designing the details of the structure. as he expressed it: "we will give the workingman and his family ornamentation in their house. they deserve it, and besides, it costs no more after the pattern is made to give decorative effects than it would to make everything plain." the plans have provided for a type of house that would cost not far from $ , if built of cut stone. he gave to messrs. mann & mcnaillie, architects, new york, his idea of the type of house he wanted. on receiving these plans he changed them considerably, and built a model. after making many more changes in this while in the pattern shop, he produced a house satisfactory to himself. this one-family house has a floor plan twenty-five by thirty feet, and is three stories high. the first floor is divided off into two large rooms--parlor and living-room--and the upper floors contain four large bedrooms, a roomy bath-room, and wide halls. the front porch extends eight feet, and the back porch three feet. a cellar seven and a half feet high extends under the whole house, and will contain the boiler, wash-tubs, and coal-bunker. it is intended that the house shall be built on lots forty by sixty feet, giving a lawn and a small garden. it is contemplated that these houses shall be built in industrial communities, where they can be put up in groups of several hundred. if erected in this manner, and by an operator buying his materials in large quantities, edison believes that these houses can be erected complete, including heating apparatus and plumbing, for $ each. this figure would also rest on the basis of using in the mixture the gravel excavated on the site. comment has been made by persons of artistic taste on the monotony of a cluster of houses exactly alike in appearance, but this criticism has been anticipated, and the molds are so made as to be capable of permutations of arrangement. thus it will be possible to introduce almost endless changes in the style of house by variation of the same set of molds. for more than forty years edison was avowedly an inventor for purely commercial purposes; but within the last two years he decided to retire from that field so far as new inventions were concerned, and to devote himself to scientific research and experiment in the leisure hours that might remain after continuing to improve his existing devices. but although the poured cement house was planned during the commercial period, the spirit in which it was conceived arose out of an earnest desire to place within the reach of the wage-earner an opportunity to better his physical, pecuniary, and mental conditions in so far as that could be done through the medium of hygienic and beautiful homes at moderate rentals. from the first edison has declared that it was not his intention to benefit pecuniarily through the exploitation of this project. having actually demonstrated the practicability and feasibility of his plans, he will allow responsible concerns to carry them into practice under such limitations as may be necessary to sustain the basic object, but without any payment to him except for the actual expense incurred. the hypercritical may cavil and say that, as a manufacturer of cement, edison will be benefited. true, but as any good portland cement can be used, and no restrictions as to source of supply are enforced, he, or rather his company, will be merely one of many possible purveyors. this invention is practically a gift to the workingmen of the world and their families. the net result will be that those who care to avail themselves of the privilege may, sooner or later, forsake the crowded apartment or tenement and be comfortably housed in sanitary, substantial, and roomy homes fitted with modern conveniences, and beautified by artistic decorations, with no outlay for insurance or repairs; no dread of fire, and all at a rental which edison believes will be not more, but probably less than, $ per month in any city of the united states. while his achievement in its present status will bring about substantial and immediate benefits to wage-earners, his thoughts have already travelled some years ahead in the formulation of a still further beneficial project looking toward the individual ownership of these houses on a basis startling in its practical possibilities. chapter xxi motion pictures the preceding chapters have treated of edison in various aspects as an inventor, some of which are familiar to the public, others of which are believed to be in the nature of a novel revelation, simply because no one had taken the trouble before to put the facts together. to those who have perhaps grown weary of seeing edison's name in articles of a sensational character, it may sound strange to say that, after all, justice has not been done to his versatile and many-sided nature; and that the mere prosaic facts of his actual achievement outrun the wildest flights of irrelevant journalistic imagination. edison hates nothing more than to be dubbed a genius or played up as a "wizard"; but this fate has dogged him until he has come at last to resign himself to it with a resentful indignation only to be appreciated when watching him read the latest full-page sunday "spread" that develops a casual conversation into oracular verbosity, and gives to his shrewd surmise the cast of inspired prophecy. in other words, edison's real work has seldom been seriously discussed. rather has it been taken as a point of departure into a realm of fancy and romance, where as a relief from drudgery he is sometimes quite willing to play the pipe if some one will dance to it. indeed, the stories woven around his casual suggestions are tame and vapid alongside his own essays in fiction, probably never to be published, but which show what a real inventor can do when he cuts loose to create a new heaven and a new earth, unrestrained by any formal respect for existing conditions of servitude to three dimensions and the standard elements. the present chapter, essentially technical in its subject-matter, is perhaps as significant as any in this biography, because it presents edison as the master impresario of his age, and maybe of many following ages also. his phonographs and his motion pictures have more audiences in a week than all the theatres in america in a year. the "nickelodeon" is the central fact in modern amusement, and edison founded it. all that millions know of music and drama he furnishes; and the whole study of the theatrical managers thus reaching the masses is not to ascertain the limitations of the new art, but to discover its boundless possibilities. none of the exuberant versions of things edison has not done could endure for a moment with the simple narrative of what he has really done as the world's new purveyor of pleasure. and yet it all depends on the toilful conquest of a subtle and intricate art. the story of the invention of the phonograph has been told. that of the evolution of motion pictures follows. it is all one piece of sober, careful analysis, and stubborn, successful attack on the problem. the possibility of making a record of animate movement, and subsequently reproducing it, was predicted long before the actual accomplishment. this, as we have seen, was also the case with the phonograph, the telephone, and the electric light. as to the phonograph, the prediction went only so far as the result; the apparent intricacy of the problem being so great that the means for accomplishing the desired end were seemingly beyond the grasp of the imagination or the mastery of invention. with the electric light and the telephone the prediction included not only the result to be accomplished, but, in a rough and general way, the mechanism itself; that is to say, long before a single sound was intelligibly transmitted it was recognized that such a thing might be done by causing a diaphragm, vibrated by original sounds, to communicate its movements to a distant diaphragm by a suitably controlled electric current. in the case of the electric light, the heating of a conductor to incandescence in a highly rarefied atmosphere was suggested as a scheme of illumination long before its actual accomplishment, and in fact before the production of a suitable generator for delivering electric current in a satisfactory and economical manner. it is a curious fact that while the modern art of motion pictures depends essentially on the development of instantaneous photography, the suggestion of the possibility of securing a reproduction of animate motion, as well as, in a general way, of the mechanism for accomplishing the result, was made many years before the instantaneous photograph became possible. while the first motion picture was not actually produced until the summer of , its real birth was almost a century earlier, when plateau, in france, constructed an optical toy, to which the impressive name of "phenakistoscope" was applied, for producing an illusion of motion. this toy in turn was the forerunner of the zoetrope, or so-called "wheel of life," which was introduced into this country about the year . these devices were essentially toys, depending for their successful operation (as is the case with motion pictures) upon a physiological phenomenon known as persistence of vision. if, for instance, a bright light is moved rapidly in front of the eye in a dark room, it appears not as an illuminated spark, but as a line of fire; a so-called shooting star, or a flash of lightning produces the same effect. this result is purely physiological, and is due to the fact that the retina of the eye may be considered as practically a sensitized plate of relatively slow speed, and an image impressed upon it remains, before being effaced, for a period of from one-tenth to one-seventh of a second, varying according to the idiosyncrasies of the individual and the intensity of the light. when, therefore, it is said that we should only believe things we actually see, we ought to remember that in almost every instance we never see things as they are. bearing in mind the fact that when an image is impressed on the human retina it persists for an appreciable period, varying as stated, with the individual, and depending also upon the intensity of the illumination, it will be seen that, if a number of pictures or photographs are successively presented to the eye, they will appear as a single, continuous photograph, provided the periods between them are short enough to prevent one of the photographs from being effaced before its successor is presented. if, for instance, a series of identical portraits were rapidly presented to the eye, a single picture would apparently be viewed, or if we presented to the eye the series of photographs of a moving object, each one representing a minute successive phase of the movement, the movements themselves would apparently again take place. with the zoetrope and similar toys rough drawings were used for depicting a few broadly outlined successive phases of movement, because in their day instantaneous photography was unknown, and in addition there were certain crudities of construction that seriously interfered with the illumination of the pictures, rendering it necessary to make them practically as silhouettes on a very conspicuous background. hence it will be obvious that these toys produced merely an illusion of theoretical motion. but with the knowledge of even an illusion of motion, and with the philosophy of persistence of vision fully understood, it would seem that, upon the development of instantaneous photography, the reproduction of actual motion by means of pictures would have followed, almost as a necessary consequence. yet such was not the case, and success was ultimately accomplished by edison only after persistent experimenting along lines that could not have been predicted, including the construction of apparatus for the purpose, which, if it had not been made, would undoubtedly be considered impossible. in fact, if it were not for edison's peculiar mentality, that refuses to recognize anything as impossible until indubitably demonstrated to be so, the production of motion pictures would certainly have been delayed for years, if not for all time. one of the earliest suggestions of the possibility of utilizing photography for exhibiting the illusion of actual movement was made by ducos, who, as early as , obtained a patent in france, in which he said: "my invention consists in substituting rapidly and without confusion to the eye not only of an individual, but when so desired of a whole assemblage, the enlarged images of a great number of pictures when taken instantaneously and successively at very short intervals.... the observer will believe that he sees only one image, which changes gradually by reason of the successive changes of form and position of the objects which occur from one picture to the other. even supposing that there be a slight interval of time during which the same object was not shown, the persistence of the luminous impression upon the eye will fill this gap. there will be as it were a living representation of nature and . . . the same scene will be reproduced upon the screen with the same degree of animation.... by means of my apparatus i am enabled especially to reproduce the passing of a procession, a review of military manoeuvres, the movements of a battle, a public fete, a theatrical scene, the evolution or the dances of one or of several persons, the changing expression of countenance, or, if one desires, the grimaces of a human face; a marine view, the motion of waves, the passage of clouds in a stormy sky, particularly in a mountainous country, the eruption of a volcano," etc. other dreamers, contemporaries of ducos, made similar suggestions; they recognized the scientific possibility of the problem, but they were irretrievably handicapped by the shortcomings of photography. even when substantially instantaneous photographs were evolved at a somewhat later date they were limited to the use of wet plates, which have to be prepared by the photographer and used immediately, and were therefore quite out of the question for any practical commercial scheme. besides this, the use of plates would have been impracticable, because the limitations of their weight and size would have prevented the taking of a large number of pictures at a high rate of speed, even if the sensitized surface had been sufficiently rapid. nothing ever came of ducos' suggestions and those of the early dreamers in this essentially practical and commercial art, and their ideas have made no greater impress upon the final result than jules verne's nautilus of our boyhood days has developed the modern submarine. from time to time further suggestions were made, some in patents, and others in photographic and scientific publications, all dealing with the fascinating thought of preserving and representing actual scenes and events. the first serious attempt to secure an illusion of motion by photography was made in by edward muybridge as a result of a wager with the late senator leland stanford, the california pioneer and horse-lover, who had asserted, contrary to the usual belief, that a trotting-horse at one point in its gait left the ground entirely. at this time wet plates of very great rapidity were known, and by arranging a series of cameras along the line of a track and causing the horse in trotting past them, by striking wires or strings attached to the shutters, to actuate the cameras at the right instant, a series of very clear instantaneous photographs was obtained. from these negatives, when developed, positive prints were made, which were later mounted on a modified form of zoetrope and projected upon a screen. one of these early exhibitions is described in the scientific american of june , : "while the separate photographs had shown the successive positions of a trotting or running horse in making a single stride, the zoogyroscope threw upon the screen apparently the living animal. nothing was wanting but the clatter of hoofs upon the turf, and an occasional breath of steam from the nostrils, to make the spectator believe that he had before him genuine flesh-and-blood steeds. in the views of hurdle-leaping, the simulation was still more admirable, even to the motion of the tail as the animal gathered for the jump, the raising of his head, all were there. views of an ox trotting, a wild bull on the charge, greyhounds and deer running and birds flying in mid-air were shown, also athletes in various positions." it must not be assumed from this statement that even as late as the work of muybridge anything like a true illusion of movement had been obtained, because such was not the case. muybridge secured only one cycle of movement, because a separate camera had to be used for each photograph and consequently each cycle was reproduced over and over again. to have made photographs of a trotting-horse for one minute at the moderate rate of twelve per second would have required, under the muybridge scheme, seven hundred and twenty separate cameras, whereas with the modern art only a single camera is used. a further defect with the muybridge pictures was that since each photograph was secured when the moving object was in the centre of the plate, the reproduction showed the object always centrally on the screen with its arms or legs in violent movement, but not making any progress, and with the scenery rushing wildly across the field of view! in the early 's the dry plate was first introduced into general use, and from that time onward its rapidity and quality were gradually improved; so much so that after prof. e. j. marey, of the french academy, who in had published a well-known treatise on "animal movement," was able by the use of dry plates to carry forward the experiments of muybridge on a greatly refined scale. marey was, however, handicapped by reason of the fact that glass plates were still used, although he was able with a single camera to obtain twelve photographs on successive plates in the space of one second. marey, like muybridge, photographed only one cycle of the movements of a single object, which was subsequently reproduced over and over again, and the camera was in the form of a gun, which could follow the object so that the successive pictures would be always located in the centre of the plates. the review above given, as briefly as possible, comprises substantially the sum of the world's knowledge at the time the problem of recording and reproducing animate movement was first undertaken by edison. the most that could be said of the condition of the art when edison entered the field was that it had been recognized that if a series of instantaneous photographs of a moving object could be secured at an enormously high rate many times per second--they might be passed before the eye either directly or by projection upon a screen, and thereby result in a reproduction of the movements. two very serious difficulties lay in the way of actual accomplishment, however--first, the production of a sensitive surface in such form and weight as to be capable of being successively brought into position and exposed, at the necessarily high rate; and, second, the production of a camera capable of so taking the pictures. there were numerous other workers in the field, but they added nothing to what had already been proposed. edison himself knew nothing of ducos, or that the suggestions had advanced beyond the single centrally located photographs of muybridge and marey. as a matter of public policy, the law presumes that an inventor must be familiar with all that has gone before in the field within which he is working, and if a suggestion is limited to a patent granted in new south wales, or is described in a single publication in brazil, an inventor in america, engaged in the same field of thought, is by legal fiction presumed to have knowledge not only of the existence of that patent or publication, but of its contents. we say this not in the way of an apology for the extent of edison's contribution to the motion-picture art, because there can be no question that he was as much the creator of that art as he was of the phonographic art; but to show that in a practical sense the suggestion of the art itself was original with him. he himself says: "in the year the idea occurred to me that it was possible to devise an instrument which should do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, and that by a combination of the two, all motion and sound could be recorded and reproduced simultaneously. this idea, the germ of which came from the little toy called the zoetrope and the work of muybridge, marey, and others, has now been accomplished, so that every change of facial expression can be recorded and reproduced life-size. the kinetoscope is only a small model illustrating the present stage of the progress, but with each succeeding month new possibilities are brought into view. i believe that in coming years, by my own work and that of dickson, muybridge, marey, and others who will doubtless enter the field, grand opera can be given at the metropolitan opera house at new york without any material change from the original, and with artists and musicians long since dead." in the earliest experiments attempts were made to secure the photographs, reduced microscopically, arranged spirally on a cylinder about the size of a phonograph record, and coated with a highly sensitized surface, the cylinder being given an intermittent movement, so as to be at rest during each exposure. reproductions were obtained in the same way, positive prints being observed through a magnifying glass. various forms of apparatus following this general type were made, but they were all open to the serious objection that the very rapid emulsions employed were relatively coarse-grained and prevented the securing of sharp pictures of microscopic size. on the other hand, the enlarging of the apparatus to permit larger pictures to be obtained would present too much weight to be stopped and started with the requisite rapidity. in these early experiments, however, it was recognized that, to secure proper results, a single camera should be used, so that the objects might move across its field just as they move across the field of the human eye; and the important fact was also observed that the rate at which persistence of vision took place represented the minimum speed at which the pictures should be obtained. if, for instance, five pictures per second were taken (half of the time being occupied in exposure and the other half in moving the exposed portion of the film out of the field of the lens and bringing a new portion into its place), and the same ratio is observed in exhibiting the pictures, the interval of time between successive pictures would be one-tenth of a second; and for a normal eye such an exhibition would present a substantially continuous photograph. if the angular movement of the object across the field is very slow, as, for instance, a distant vessel, the successive positions of the object are so nearly coincident that when reproduced before the eye an impression of smooth, continuous movement is secured. if, however, the object is moving rapidly across the field of view, one picture will be separated from its successor to a marked extent, and the resulting impression will be jerky and unnatural. recognizing this fact, edison always sought for a very high speed, so as to give smooth and natural reproductions, and even with his experimental apparatus obtained upward of forty-eight pictures per second, whereas, in practice, at the present time, the accepted rate varies between twenty and thirty per second. in the efforts of the present day to economize space by using a minimum length of film, pictures are frequently taken at too slow a rate, and the reproductions are therefore often objectionable, by reason of more or less jerkiness. during the experimental period and up to the early part of , the kodak film was being slowly developed by the eastman kodak company. edison perceived in this product the solution of the problem on which he had been working, because the film presented a very light body of tough material on which relatively large photographs could be taken at rapid intervals. the surface, however, was not at first sufficiently sensitive to admit of sharply defined pictures being secured at the necessarily high rates. it seemed apparent, therefore, that in order to obtain the desired speed there would have to be sacrificed that fineness of emulsion necessary for the securing of sharp pictures. but as was subsequently seen, this sacrifice was in time rendered unnecessary. much credit is due the eastman experts--stimulated and encouraged by edison, but independently of him--for the production at last of a highly sensitized, fine-grained emulsion presenting the highly sensitized surface that edison sought. having at last obtained apparently the proper material upon which to secure the photographs, the problem then remained to devise an apparatus by means of which from twenty to forty pictures per second could be taken; the film being stationary during the exposure and, upon the closing of the shutter, being moved to present a fresh surface. in connection with this problem it is interesting to note that this question of high speed was apparently regarded by all edison's predecessors as the crucial point. ducos, for example, expended a great deal of useless ingenuity in devising a camera by means of which a tape-line film could receive the photographs while being in continuous movement, necessitating the use of a series of moving lenses. another experimenter, dumont, made use of a single large plate and a great number of lenses which were successively exposed. muybridge, as we have seen, used a series of cameras, one for each plate. marey was limited to a very few photographs, because the entire surface had to be stopped and started in connection with each exposure. after the accomplishment of the fact, it would seem to be the obvious thing to use a single lens and move the sensitized film with respect to it, intermittently bringing the surface to rest, then exposing it, then cutting off the light and moving the surface to a fresh position; but who, other than edison, would assume that such a device could be made to repeat these movements over and over again at the rate of twenty to forty per second? users of kodaks and other forms of film cameras will appreciate perhaps better than others the difficulties of the problem, because in their work, after an exposure, they have to advance the film forward painfully to the extent of the next picture before another exposure can take place, these operations permitting of speeds of but a few pictures per minute at best. edison's solution of the problem involved the production of a kodak in which from twenty to forty pictures should be taken in each second, and with such fineness of adjustment that each should exactly coincide with its predecessors even when subjected to the test of enlargement by projection. this, however, was finally accomplished, and in the summer of the first modern motion-picture camera was made. more than this, the mechanism for operating the film was so constructed that the movement of the film took place in one-tenth of the time required for the exposure, giving the film an opportunity to come to rest prior to the opening of the shutter. from that day to this the edison camera has been the accepted standard for securing pictures of objects in motion, and such changes as have been made in it have been purely in the nature of detail mechanical refinements. the earliest form of exhibiting apparatus, known as the kinetoscope, was a machine in which a positive print from the negative obtained in the camera was exhibited directly to the eye through a peep-hole; but in the films were applied to modified forms of magic lanterns, by which the images are projected upon a screen. since that date the industry has developed very rapidly, and at the present time ( ) all of the principal american manufacturers of motion pictures are paying a royalty to edison under his basic patents. from the early days of pictures representing simple movements, such as a man sneezing, or a skirt-dance, there has been a gradual evolution, until now the pictures represent not only actual events in all their palpitating instantaneity, but highly developed dramas and scenarios enacted in large, well-equipped glass studios, and the result of infinite pains and expense of production. these pictures are exhibited in upward of eight thousand places of amusement in the united states, and are witnessed by millions of people each year. they constitute a cheap, clean form of amusement for many persons who cannot spare the money to go to the ordinary theatres, or they may be exhibited in towns that are too small to support a theatre. more than this, they offer to the poor man an effective substitute for the saloon. probably no invention ever made has afforded more pleasure and entertainment than the motion picture. aside from the development of the motion picture as a spectacle, there has gone on an evolution in its use for educational purposes of wide range, which must not be overlooked. in fact, this form of utilization has been carried further in europe than in this country as a means of demonstration in the arts and sciences. one may study animal life, watch a surgical operation, follow the movement of machinery, take lessons in facial expression or in calisthenics. it seems a pity that in motion pictures should at last have been found the only competition that the ancient marionettes cannot withstand. but aside from the disappearance of those entertaining puppets, all else is gain in the creation of this new art. the work at the edison laboratory in the development of the motion picture was as usual intense and concentrated, and, as might be expected, many of the early experiments were quite primitive in their character until command had been secured of relatively perfect apparatus. the subjects registered jerkily by the films were crude and amusing, such as of fred ott's sneeze, carmencita dancing, italians and their performing bears, fencing, trapeze stunts, horsemanship, blacksmithing--just simple movements without any attempt to portray the silent drama. one curious incident of this early study occurred when "jim" corbett was asked to box a few rounds in front of the camera, with a "dark un" to be selected locally. this was agreed to, and a celebrated bruiser was brought over from newark. when this "sparring partner" came to face corbett in the imitation ring he was so paralyzed with terror he could hardly move. it was just after corbett had won one of his big battles as a prize-fighter, and the dismay of his opponent was excusable. the "boys" at the laboratory still laugh consumedly when they tell about it. the first motion-picture studio was dubbed by the staff the "black maria." it was an unpretentious oblong wooden structure erected in the laboratory yard, and had a movable roof in the central part. this roof could be raised or lowered at will. the building was covered with black roofing paper, and was also painted black inside. there was no scenery to render gay this lugubrious environment, but the black interior served as the common background for the performers, throwing all their actions into high relief. the whole structure was set on a pivot so that it could be swung around with the sun; and the movable roof was opened so that the accentuating sunlight could stream in upon the actor whose gesticulations were being caught by the camera. these beginnings and crudities are very remote from the elaborate and expensive paraphernalia and machinery with which the art is furnished to-day. at the present time the studios in which motion pictures are taken are expensive and pretentious affairs. an immense building of glass, with all the properties and stage-settings of a regular theatre, is required. the bronx park studio of the edison company cost at least one hundred thousand dollars, while the well-known house of pathe freres in france--one of edison's licensees--makes use of no fewer than seven of these glass theatres. all of the larger producers of pictures in this country and abroad employ regular stock companies of actors, men and women selected especially for their skill in pantomime, although, as most observers have perhaps suspected, in the actual taking of the pictures the performers are required to carry on an animated and prepared dialogue with the same spirit and animation as on the regular stage. before setting out on the preparation of a picture, the book is first written--known in the business as a scenario--giving a complete statement as to the scenery, drops and background, and the sequence of events, divided into scenes as in an ordinary play. these are placed in the hands of a "producer," corresponding to a stage-director, generally an actor or theatrical man of experience, with a highly developed dramatic instinct. the various actors are selected, parts are assigned, and the scene-painters are set to work on the production of the desired scenery. before the photographing of a scene, a long series of rehearsals takes place, the incidents being gone over and over again until the actors are "letter perfect." so persistent are the producers in the matter of rehearsals and the refining and elaboration of details, that frequently a picture that may be actually photographed and reproduced in fifteen minutes, may require two or three weeks for its production. after the rehearsal of a scene has advanced sufficiently to suit the critical requirements of the producer, the camera man is in requisition, and he is consulted as to lighting so as to produce the required photographic effect. preferably, of course, sunlight is used whenever possible, hence the glass studios; but on dark days, and when night-work is necessary, artificial light of enormous candle-power is used, either mercury arcs or ordinary arc lights of great size and number. under all conditions the light is properly screened and diffused to suit the critical eye of the camera man. all being in readiness, the actual picture is taken, the actors going through their rehearsed parts, the producer standing out of the range of the camera, and with a megaphone to his lips yelling out his instructions, imprecations, and approval, and the camera man grinding at the crank of the camera and securing the pictures at the rate of twenty or more per second, making a faithful and permanent record of every movement and every change of facial expression. at the end of the scene the negative is developed in the ordinary way, and is then ready for use in the printing of the positives for sale. when a further scene in the play takes place in the same setting, and without regard to its position in the plot, it is taken up, rehearsed, and photographed in the same way, and afterward all the scenes are cemented together in the proper sequence, and form the complete negative. frequently, therefore, in the production of a motion-picture play, the first and the last scene may be taken successively, the only thing necessary being, of course, that after all is done the various scenes should be arranged in their proper order. the frames, having served their purpose, now go back to the scene-painter for further use. all pictures are not taken in studios, because when light and weather permit and proper surroundings can be secured outside, scenes can best be obtained with natural scenery--city streets, woods, and fields. the great drawback to the taking of pictures out-of-doors, however, is the inevitable crowd, attracted by the novelty of the proceedings, which makes the camera man's life a torment by getting into the field of his instrument. the crowds are patient, however, and in one edison picture involving the blowing up of a bridge by the villain of the piece and the substitution of a pontoon bridge by a company of engineers just in time to allow the heroine to pass over in her automobile, more than a thousand people stood around for almost an entire day waiting for the tedious rehearsals to end and the actual performance to begin. frequently large bodies of men are used in pictures, such as troops of soldiers, and it is an open secret that for weeks during the boer war regularly equipped british and boer armies confronted each other on the peaceful hills of orange, new jersey, ready to enact before the camera the stirring events told by the cable from the seat of hostilities. these conflicts were essentially harmless, except in one case during the battle of spion kopje, when "general cronje," in his efforts to fire a wooden cannon, inadvertently dropped his fuse into a large glass bottle containing gunpowder. the effect was certainly most dramatic, and created great enthusiasm among the many audiences which viewed the completed production; but the unfortunate general, who is still an employee, was taken to the hospital, and even now, twelve years afterward, he says with a grin that whenever he has a moment of leisure he takes the time to pick a few pieces of glass from his person! edison's great contribution to the regular stage was the incandescent electric lamp, which enabled the production of scenic effects never before even dreamed of, but which we accept now with so much complacency. yet with the motion picture, effects are secured that could not be reproduced to the slightest extent on the real stage. the villain, overcome by a remorseful conscience, sees on the wall of the room the very crime which he committed, with himself as the principal actor; one of the easy effects of double exposure. the substantial and ofttimes corpulent ghost or spirit of the real stage has been succeeded by an intangible wraith, as transparent and unsubstantial as may be demanded in the best book of fairy tales--more double exposure. a man emerges from the water with a splash, ascends feet foremost ten yards or more, makes a graceful curve and lands on a spring-board, runs down it to the bank, and his clothes fly gently up from the ground and enclose his person--all unthinkable in real life, but readily possible by running the motion-picture film backward! the fairy prince commands the princess to appear, consigns the bad brothers to instant annihilation, turns the witch into a cat, confers life on inanimate things; and many more startling and apparently incomprehensible effects are carried out with actual reality, by stop-work photography. in one case, when the command for the heroine to come forth is given, the camera is stopped, the young woman walks to the desired spot, and the camera is again started; the effect to the eye--not knowing of this little by-play--is as if she had instantly appeared from space. the other effects are perhaps obvious, and the field and opportunities are absolutely unlimited. other curious effects are secured by taking the pictures at a different speed from that at which they are exhibited. if, for example, a scene occupying thirty seconds is reproduced in ten seconds, the movements will be three times as fast, and vice versa. many scenes familiar to the reader, showing automobiles tearing along the road and rounding corners at an apparently reckless speed, are really pictures of slow and dignified movements reproduced at a high speed. brief reference has been made to motion pictures of educational subjects, and in this field there are very great opportunities for development. the study of geography, scenes and incidents in foreign countries, showing the lives and customs and surroundings of other peoples, is obviously more entertaining to the child when actively depicted on the screen than when merely described in words. the lives of great men, the enacting of important historical events, the reproduction of great works of literature, if visually presented to the child must necessarily impress his mind with greater force than if shown by mere words. we predict that the time is not far distant when, in many of our public schools, two or three hours a week will be devoted to this rational and effective form of education. by applying microphotography to motion pictures an additional field is opened up, one phase of which may be the study of germ life and bacteria, so that our future medical students may become as familiar with the habits and customs of the anthrax bacillus, for example, as of the domestic cat. from whatever point of view the subject is approached, the fact remains that in the motion picture, perhaps more than with any other invention, edison has created an art that must always make a special appeal to the mind and emotions of men, and although so far it has not advanced much beyond the field of amusement, it contains enormous possibilities for serious development in the future. let us not think too lightly of the humble five-cent theatre with its gaping crowd following with breathless interest the vicissitudes of the beautiful heroine. before us lies an undeveloped land of opportunity which is destined to play an important part in the growth and welfare of the human race. chapter xxii the development of the edison storage battery it is more than a hundred years since the elementary principle of the storage battery or "accumulator" was detected by a frenchman named gautherot; it is just fifty years since another frenchman, named plante, discovered that on taking two thin plates of sheet lead, immersing them in dilute sulphuric acid, and passing an electric current through the cell, the combination exhibited the ability to give back part of the original charging current, owing to the chemical changes and reactions set up. plante coiled up his sheets into a very handy cell like a little roll of carpet or pastry; but the trouble was that the battery took a long time to "form." one sheet becoming coated with lead peroxide and the other with finely divided or spongy metallic lead, they would receive current, and then, even after a long period of inaction, furnish or return an electromotive force of from . to . volts. this ability to store up electrical energy produced by dynamos in hours otherwise idle, whether driven by steam, wind, or water, was a distinct advance in the art; but the sensational step was taken about , when faure in france and brush in america broke away from the slow and weary process of "forming" the plates, and hit on clever methods of furnishing them "ready made," so to speak, by dabbing red lead onto lead-grid plates, just as butter is spread on a slice of home-made bread. this brought the storage battery at once into use as a practical, manufactured piece of apparatus; and the world was captivated with the idea. the great english scientist, sir william thomson, went wild with enthusiasm when a faure "box of electricity" was brought over from paris to him in containing a million foot-pounds of stored energy. his biographer, dr. sylvanus p. thompson, describes him as lying ill in bed with a wounded leg, and watching results with an incandescent lamp fastened to his bed curtain by a safety-pin, and lit up by current from the little faure cell. said sir william: "it is going to be a most valuable, practical affair--as valuable as water-cisterns to people whether they had or had not systems of water-pipes and water-supply." indeed, in one outburst of panegyric the shrewd physicist remarked that he saw in it "a realization of the most ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life--an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." a little later, however, sir william, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. nevertheless, he accepted the principle as valuable, and put the battery to actual use. for many years after this episode, the modern lead-lead type of battery thus brought forward with so great a flourish of trumpets had a hard time of it. edison's attitude toward it, even as a useful supplement to his lighting system, was always one of scepticism, and he remarked contemptuously that the best storage battery he knew was a ton of coal. the financial fortunes of the battery, on both sides of the atlantic, were as varied and as disastrous as its industrial; but it did at last emerge, and "made good." by , the production of lead-lead storage batteries in the united states alone had reached a value for the year of nearly $ , , , and it has increased greatly since that time. the storage battery is now regarded as an important and indispensable adjunct in nearly all modern electric-lighting and electric-railway systems of any magnitude; and in , in spite of its weight, it had found adoption in over ten thousand automobiles of the truck, delivery wagon, pleasure carriage, and runabout types in america. edison watched closely all this earlier development for about fifteen years, not changing his mind as to what he regarded as the incurable defects of the lead-lead type, but coming gradually to the conclusion that if a storage battery of some other and better type could be brought forward, it would fulfil all the early hopes, however extravagant, of such men as kelvin (sir william thomson), and would become as necessary and as universal as the incandescent lamp or the electric motor. the beginning of the present century found him at his point of new departure. generally speaking, non-technical and uninitiated persons have a tendency to regard an invention as being more or less the ultimate result of some happy inspiration. and, indeed, there is no doubt that such may be the fact in some instances; but in most cases the inventor has intentionally set out to accomplish a definite and desired result--mostly through the application of the known laws of the art in which he happens to be working. it is rarely, however, that a man will start out deliberately, as edison did, to evolve a radically new type of such an intricate device as the storage battery, with only a meagre clew and a vague starting-point. in view of the successful outcome of the problem which, in , he undertook to solve, it will be interesting to review his mental attitude at that period. it has already been noted at the end of a previous chapter that on closing the magnetic iron-ore concentrating plant at edison, new jersey, he resolved to work on a new type of storage battery. it was about this time that, in the course of a conversation with mr. r. h. beach, then of the street-railway department of the general electric company, he said: "beach, i don't think nature would be so unkind as to withhold the secret of a good storage battery if a real earnest hunt for it is made. i'm going to hunt." frequently edison has been asked what he considers the secret of achievement. to this query he has invariably replied: "hard work, based on hard thinking." the laboratory records bear the fullest witness that he has consistently followed out this prescription to the utmost. the perfection of all his great inventions has been signalized by patient, persistent, and incessant effort which, recognizing nothing short of success, has resulted in the ultimate accomplishment of his ideas. optimistic and hopeful to a high degree, edison has the happy faculty of beginning the day as open-minded as a child--yesterday's disappointments and failures discarded and discounted by the alluring possibilities of to-morrow. of all his inventions, it is doubtful whether any one of them has called forth more original thought, work, perseverance, ingenuity, and monumental patience than the one we are now dealing with. one of his associates who has been through the many years of the storage-battery drudgery with him said: "if edison's experiments, investigations, and work on this storage battery were all that he had ever done, i should say that he was not only a notable inventor, but also a great man. it is almost impossible to appreciate the enormous difficulties that have been overcome." from a beginning which was made practically in the dark, it was not until he had completed more than ten thousand experiments that he obtained any positive preliminary results whatever. through all this vast amount of research there had been no previous signs of the electrical action he was looking for. these experiments had extended over many months of constant work by day and night, but there was no breakdown of edison's faith in ultimate success--no diminution of his sanguine and confident expectations. the failure of an experiment simply meant to him that he had found something else that would not work, thus bringing the possible goal a little nearer by a process of painstaking elimination. now, however, after these many months of arduous toil, in which he had examined and tested practically all the known elements in numerous chemical combinations, the electric action he sought for had been obtained, thus affording him the first inkling of the secret that he had industriously tried to wrest from nature. it should be borne in mind that from the very outset edison had disdained any intention of following in the only tracks then known by employing lead and sulphuric acid as the components of a successful storage battery. impressed with what he considered the serious inherent defects of batteries made of these materials, and the tremendously complex nature of the chemical reactions taking place in all types of such cells, he determined boldly at the start that he would devise a battery without lead, and one in which an alkaline solution could be used--a form which would, he firmly believed, be inherently less subject to decay and dissolution than the standard type, which after many setbacks had finally won its way to an annual production of many thousands of cells, worth millions of dollars. two or three thousand of the first experiments followed the line of his well-known primary battery in the attempted employment of copper oxide as an element in a new type of storage cell; but its use offered no advantages, and the hunt was continued in other directions and pursued until edison satisfied himself by a vast number of experiments that nickel and iron possessed the desirable qualifications he was in search of. this immense amount of investigation which had consumed so many months of time, and which had culminated in the discovery of a series of reactions between nickel and iron that bore great promise, brought edison merely within sight of a strange and hitherto unexplored country. slowly but surely the results of the last few thousands of his preliminary experiments had pointed inevitably to a new and fruitful region ahead. he had discovered the hidden passage and held the clew which he had so industriously sought. and now, having outlined a definite path, edison was all afire to push ahead vigorously in order that he might enter in and possess the land. it is a trite saying that "history repeats itself," and certainly no axiom carries more truth than this when applied to the history of each of edison's important inventions. the development of the storage battery has been no exception; indeed, far from otherwise, for in the ten years that have elapsed since the time he set himself and his mechanics, chemists, machinists, and experimenters at work to develop a practical commercial cell, the old story of incessant and persistent efforts so manifest in the working out of other inventions was fully repeated. very soon after he had decided upon the use of nickel and iron as the elemental metals for his storage battery, edison established a chemical plant at silver lake, new jersey, a few miles from the orange laboratory, on land purchased some time previously. this place was the scene of the further experiments to develop the various chemical forms of nickel and iron, and to determine by tests what would be best adapted for use in cells manufactured on a commercial scale. with a little handful of selected experimenters gathered about him, edison settled down to one of his characteristic struggles for supremacy. to some extent it was a revival of the old menlo park days (or, rather, nights). some of these who had worked on the preliminary experiments, with the addition of a few new-comers, toiled together regardless of passing time and often under most discouraging circumstances, but with that remarkable esprit de corps that has ever marked edison's relations with his co-workers, and that has contributed so largely to the successful carrying out of his ideas. the group that took part in these early years of edison's arduous labors included his old-time assistant, fred ott, together with his chemist, j. w. aylsworth, as well as e. j. ross, jr., w. e. holland, and ralph arbogast, and a little later w. g. bee, all of whom have grown up with the battery and still devote their energies to its commercial development. one of these workers, relating the strenuous experiences of these few years, says: "it was hard work and long hours, but still there were some things that made life pleasant. one of them was the supper-hour we enjoyed when we worked nights. mr. edison would have supper sent in about midnight, and we all sat down together, including himself. work was forgotten for the time, and all hands were ready for fun. i have very pleasant recollections of mr. edison at these times. he would always relax and help to make a good time, and on some occasions i have seen him fairly overflow with animal spirits, just like a boy let out from school. after the supper-hour was over, however, he again became the serious, energetic inventor, deeply immersed in the work at hand. "he was very fond of telling and hearing stories, and always appreciated a joke. i remember one that he liked to get off on us once in a while. our lighting plant was in duplicate, and about . or o'clock in the morning, at the close of the supper-hour, a change would be made from one plant to the other, involving the gradual extinction of the electric lights and their slowly coming up to candle-power again, the whole change requiring probably about thirty seconds. sometimes, as this was taking place, edison would fold his hands, compose himself as if he were in sound sleep, and when the lights were full again would apparently wake up, with the remark, 'well, boys, we've had a fine rest; now let's pitch into work again.'" another interesting and amusing reminiscence of this period of activity has been gathered from another of the family of experimenters: "sometimes, when mr. edison had been working long hours, he would want to have a short sleep. it was one of the funniest things i ever witnessed to see him crawl into an ordinary roll-top desk and curl up and take a nap. if there was a sight that was still more funny, it was to see him turn over on his other side, all the time remaining in the desk. he would use several volumes of watts's dictionary of chemistry for a pillow, and we fellows used to say that he absorbed the contents during his sleep, judging from the flow of new ideas he had on waking." such incidents as these serve merely to illustrate the lighter moments that stand out in relief against the more sombre background of the strenuous years, for, of all the absorbingly busy periods of edison's inventive life, the first five years of the storage-battery era was one of the very busiest of them all. it was not that there remained any basic principle to be discovered or simplified, for that had already been done; but it was in the effort to carry these principles into practice that there arose the numerous difficulties that at times seemed insurmountable. but, according to another co-worker, "edison seemed pleased when he used to run up against a serious difficulty. it would seem to stiffen his backbone and make him more prolific of new ideas. for a time i thought i was foolish to imagine such a thing, but i could never get away from the impression that he really appeared happy when he ran up against a serious snag. that was in my green days, and i soon learned that the failure of an experiment never discourages him unless it is by reason of the carelessness of the man making it. then edison gets disgusted. if it fails on its merits, he doesn't worry or fret about it, but, on the contrary, regards it as a useful fact learned; remains cheerful and tries something else. i have known him to reverse an unsuccessful experiment and come out all right." to follow edison's trail in detail through the innumerable twists and turns of his experimentation and research on the storage battery, during the past ten years, would not be in keeping with the scope of this narrative, nor would it serve any useful purpose. besides, such details would fill a big volume. the narrative, however, would not be complete without some mention of the general outline of his work, and reference may be made briefly to a few of the chief items. and lest the reader think that the word "innumerable" may have been carelessly or hastily used above, we would quote the reply of one of the laboratory assistants when asked how many experiments had been made on the edison storage battery since the year : "goodness only knows! we used to number our experiments consecutively from to , , and when we got up to , we turned back to and ran up to , again, and so on. we ran through several series--i don't know how many, and have lost track of them now, but it was not far from fifty thousand." from the very first, edison's broad idea of his storage battery was to make perforated metallic containers having the active materials packed therein; nickel hydrate for the positive and iron oxide for the negative plate. this plan has been adhered to throughout, and has found its consummation in the present form of the completed commercial cell, but in the middle ground which stands between the early crude beginnings and the perfected type of to-day there lies a world of original thought, patient plodding, and achievement. the first necessity was naturally to obtain the best and purest compounds for active materials. edison found that comparatively little was known by manufacturing chemists about nickel and iron oxides of the high grade and purity he required. hence it became necessary for him to establish his own chemical works and put them in charge of men specially trained by himself, with whom he worked. this was the plant at silver lake, above referred to. here, for several years, there was ceaseless activity in the preparation of these chemical compounds by every imaginable process and subsequent testing. edison's chief chemist says: "we left no stone unturned to find a way of making those chemicals so that they would give the highest results. we carried on the experiments with the two chemicals together. sometimes the nickel would be ahead in the tests, and then again it would fall behind. to stimulate us to greater improvement, edison hung up a card which showed the results of tests in milliampere-hours given by the experimental elements as we tried them with the various grades of nickel and iron we had made. this stirred up a great deal of ambition among the boys to push the figures up. some of our earliest tests showed around , but as we improved the material, they gradually crept up to over . just about that time edison made a trip to canada, and when he came back we had made such good progress that the figures had crept up to about . i well remember how greatly he was pleased." in speaking of the development of the negative element of the battery, mr. aylsworth said: "in like manner the iron element had to be developed and improved; and finally the iron, which had generally enjoyed superiority in capacity over its companion, the nickel element, had to go in training in order to retain its lead, which was imperative, in order to produce a uniform and constant voltage curve. in talking with me one day about the difficulties under which we were working and contrasting them with the phonograph experimentation, edison said: 'in phonographic work we can use our ears and our eyes, aided with powerful microscopes; but in the battery our difficulties cannot be seen or heard, but must be observed by our mind's eye!' and by reason of the employment of such vision in the past, edison is now able to see quite clearly through the forest of difficulties after eliminating them one by one." the size and shape of the containing pockets in the battery plates or elements and the degree of their perforation were matters that received many years of close study and experiment; indeed, there is still to-day constant work expended on their perfection, although their present general form was decided upon several years ago. the mechanical construction of the battery, as a whole, in its present form, compels instant admiration on account of its beauty and completeness. mr. edison has spared neither thought, ingenuity, labor, nor money in the effort to make it the most complete and efficient storage cell obtainable, and the results show that his skill, judgment, and foresight have lost nothing of the power that laid the foundation of, and built up, other great arts at each earlier stage of his career. among the complex and numerous problems that presented themselves in the evolution of the battery was the one concerning the internal conductivity of the positive unit. the nickel hydrate was a poor electrical conductor, and although a metallic nickel pocket might be filled with it, there would not be the desired electrical action unless a conducting substance were mixed with it, and so incorporated and packed that there would be good electrical contact throughout. this proved to be a most knotty and intricate puzzle--tricky and evasive--always leading on and promising something, and at the last slipping away leaving the work undone. edison's remarkable patience and persistence in dealing with this trying problem and in finally solving it successfully won for him more than ordinary admiration from his associates. one of them, in speaking of the seemingly interminable experiments to overcome this trouble, said: "i guess that question of conductivity of the positive pocket brought lots of gray hairs to his head. i never dreamed a man could have such patience and perseverance. any other man than edison would have given the whole thing up a thousand times, but not he! things looked awfully blue to the whole bunch of us many a time, but he was always hopeful. i remember one time things looked so dark to me that i had just about made up my mind to throw up my job, but some good turn came just then and i didn't. now i'm glad i held on, for we've got a great future." the difficulty of obtaining good electrical contact in the positive element was indeed edison's chief trouble for many years. after a great amount of work and experimentation he decided upon a certain form of graphite, which seemed to be suitable for the purpose, and then proceeded to the commercial manufacture of the battery at a special factory in glen ridge, new jersey, installed for the purpose. there was no lack of buyers, but, on the contrary, the factory was unable to turn out batteries enough. the newspapers had previously published articles showing the unusual capacity and performance of the battery, and public interest had thus been greatly awakened. notwithstanding the establishment of a regular routine of manufacture and sale, edison did not cease to experiment for improvement. although the graphite apparently did the work desired of it, he was not altogether satisfied with its performance and made extended trials of other substances, but at that time found nothing that on the whole served the purpose better. continuous tests of the commercial cells were carried on at the laboratory, as well as more practical and heavy tests in automobiles, which were constantly kept running around the adjoining country over all kinds of roads. all these tests were very closely watched by edison, who demanded rigorously that the various trials of the battery should be carried on with all strenuousness so as to get the utmost results and develop any possible weakness. so insistent was he on this, that if any automobile should run several days without bursting a tire or breaking some part of the machine, he would accuse the chauffeur of picking out easy roads. after these tests had been going on for some time, and some thousands of cells had been sold and were giving satisfactory results to the purchasers, the test sheets and experience gathered from various sources pointed to the fact that occasionally a cell here and there would show up as being short in capacity. inasmuch as the factory processes were very exact and carefully guarded, and every cell was made as uniform as human skill and care could provide, there thus arose a serious problem. edison concentrated his powers on the investigation of this trouble, and found that the chief cause lay in the graphite. some other minor matters also attracted his attention. what to do, was the important question that confronted him. to shut down the factory meant great loss and apparent failure. he realized this fully, but he also knew that to go on would simply be to increase the number of defective batteries in circulation, which would ultimately result in a permanent closure and real failure. hence he took the course which one would expect of edison's common sense and directness of action. he was not satisfied that the battery was a complete success, so he shut down and went to experimenting once more. "and then," says one of the laboratory men, "we started on another series of record-breaking experiments that lasted over five years. i might almost say heart-breaking, too, for of all the elusive, disappointing things one ever hunted for that was the worst. but secrets have to be long-winded and roost high if they want to get away when the 'old man' goes hunting for them. he doesn't get mad when he misses them, but just keeps on smiling and firing, and usually brings them into camp. that's what he did on the battery, for after a whole lot of work he perfected the nickel-flake idea and process, besides making the great improvement of using tubes instead of flat pockets for the positive. he also added a minor improvement here and there, and now we have a finer battery than we ever expected." in the interim, while the experimentation of these last five years was in progress, many customers who had purchased batteries of the original type came knocking at the door with orders in their hands for additional outfits wherewith to equip more wagons and trucks. edison expressed his regrets, but said he was not satisfied with the old cells and was engaged in improving them. to which the customers replied that they were entirely satisfied and ready and willing to pay for more batteries of the same kind; but edison could not be moved from his determination, although considerable pressure was at times brought to bear to sway his decision. experiment was continued beyond the point of peradventure, and after some new machinery had been built, the manufacture of the new type of cell was begun in the early summer of , and at the present writing is being extended as fast as the necessary additional machinery can be made. the product is shipped out as soon as it is completed. the nickel flake, which is edison's ingenious solution of the conductivity problem, is of itself a most interesting product, intensely practical in its application and fascinating in its manufacture. the flake of nickel is obtained by electroplating upon a metallic cylinder alternate layers of copper and nickel, one hundred of each, after which the combined sheet is stripped from the cylinder. so thin are the layers that this sheet is only about the thickness of a visiting-card, and yet it is composed of two hundred layers of metal. the sheet is cut into tiny squares, each about one-sixteenth of an inch, and these squares are put into a bath where the copper is dissolved out. this releases the layers of nickel, so that each of these small squares becomes one hundred tiny sheets, or flakes, of pure metallic nickel, so thin that when they are dried they will float in the air, like thistle-down. in their application to the manufacture of batteries, the flakes are used through the medium of a special machine, so arranged that small charges of nickel hydrate and nickel flake are alternately fed into the pockets intended for positives, and tamped down with a pressure equal to about four tons per square inch. this insures complete and perfect contact and consequent electrical conductivity throughout the entire unit. the development of the nickel flake contains in itself a history of patient investigation, labor, and achievement, but we have not space for it, nor for tracing the great work that has been done in developing and perfecting the numerous other parts and adjuncts of this remarkable battery. suffice it to say that when edison went boldly out into new territory, after something entirely unknown, he was quite prepared for hard work and exploration. he encountered both in unstinted measure, but kept on going forward until, after long travel, he had found all that he expected and accomplished something more beside. nature did respond to his whole-hearted appeal, and, by the time the hunt was ended, revealed a good storage battery of entirely new type. edison not only recognized and took advantage of the principles he had discovered, but in adapting them for commercial use developed most ingenious processes and mechanical appliances for carrying his discoveries into practical effect. indeed, it may be said that the invention of an enormous variety of new machines and mechanical appliances rendered necessary by each change during the various stages of development of the battery, from first to last, stands as a lasting tribute to the range and versatility of his powers. it is not within the scope of this narrative to enter into any description of the relative merits of the edison storage battery, that being the province of a commercial catalogue. it does, however, seem entirely allowable to say that while at the present writing the tests that have been made extend over a few years only, their results and the intrinsic value of this characteristic edison invention are of such a substantial nature as to point to the inevitable growth of another great industry arising from its manufacture, and to its wide-spread application to many uses. the principal use that edison has had in mind for his battery is transportation of freight and passengers by truck, automobile, and street-car. the greatly increased capacity in proportion to weight of the edison cell makes it particularly adaptable for this class of work on account of the much greater radius of travel that is possible by its use. the latter point of advantage is the one that appeals most to the automobilist, as he is thus enabled to travel, it is asserted, more than three times farther than ever before on a single charge of the battery. edison believes that there are important advantages possible in the employment of his storage battery for street-car propulsion. under the present system of operation, a plant furnishing the electric power for street railways must be large enough to supply current for the maximum load during "rush hours," although much of the machinery may be lying idle and unproductive in the hours of minimum load. by the use of storage-battery cars, this immense and uneconomical maximum investment in plant can be cut down to proportions of true commercial economy, as the charging of the batteries can be conducted at a uniform rate with a reasonable expenditure for generating machinery. not only this, but each car becomes an independently moving unit, not subject to delay by reason of a general breakdown of the power plant or of the line. in addition to these advantages, the streets would be freed from their burden of trolley wires or conduits. to put his ideas into practice, edison built a short railway line at the orange works in the winter of - , and, in co-operation with mr. r. h. beach, constructed a special type of street-car, and equipped it with motor, storage battery, and other necessary operating devices. this car was subsequently put upon the street-car lines in new york city, and demonstrated its efficiency so completely that it was purchased by one of the street-car companies, which has since ordered additional cars for its lines. the demonstration of this initial car has been watched with interest by many railroad officials, and its performance has been of so successful a nature that at the present writing (the summer of ) it has been necessary to organize and equip a preliminary factory in which to construct many other cars of a similar type that have been ordered by other street-railway companies. this enterprise will be conducted by a corporation which has been specially organized for the purpose. thus, there has been initiated the development of a new and important industry whose possible ultimate proportions are beyond the range of present calculation. extensive as this industry may become, however, edison is firmly convinced that the greatest field for his storage battery lies in its adaptation to commercial trucking and hauling, and to pleasure vehicles, in comparison with which the street-car business even with its great possibilities--will not amount to more than per cent. edison has pithily summed up his work and his views in an article on "the to-morrows of electricity and invention" in popular electricity for june, , in which he says: "for years past i have been trying to perfect a storage battery, and have now rendered it entirely suitable to automobile and other work. there is absolutely no reason why horses should be allowed within city limits; for between the gasoline and the electric car, no room is left for them. they are not needed. the cow and the pig have gone, and the horse is still more undesirable. a higher public ideal of health and cleanliness is working toward such banishment very swiftly; and then we shall have decent streets, instead of stables made out of strips of cobblestones bordered by sidewalks. the worst use of money is to make a fine thoroughfare, and then turn it over to horses. besides that, the change will put the humane societies out of business. many people now charge their own batteries because of lack of facilities; but i believe central stations will find in this work very soon the largest part of their load. the new york edison company, or the chicago edison company, should have as much current going out for storage batteries as for power motors; and it will be so some near day." chapter xxiii miscellaneous inventions it has been the endeavor in this narrative to group edison's inventions and patents so that his work in the different fields can be studied independently and separately. the history of his career has therefore fallen naturally into a series of chapters, each aiming to describe some particular development or art; and, in a way, the plan has been helpful to the writers while probably useful to the readers. it happens, however, that the process has left a vast mass of discovery and invention wholly untouched, and relegates to a concluding brief chapter some of the most interesting episodes of a fruitful life. any one who will turn to the list of edison patents at the end of the book will find a large number of things of which not even casual mention has been made, but which at the time occupied no small amount of the inventor's time and attention, and many of which are now part and parcel of modern civilization. edison has, indeed, touched nothing that he did not in some way improve. as thoreau said: "the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive," and there never was any one more sensitive to the defects of every art and appliance, nor any one more active in applying the law of evolution. it is perhaps this many-sidedness of edison that has impressed the multitude, and that in the "popular vote" taken a couple of years ago by the new york herald placed his name at the head of the list of ten greatest living americans. it is curious and pertinent to note that a similar plebiscite taken by a technical journal among its expert readers had exactly the same result. evidently the public does not agree with the opinion expressed by the eccentric artist blake in his "marriage of heaven and hell," when he said: "improvement makes strange roads; but the crooked roads without improvements are roads of genius." the product of edison's brain may be divided into three classes. the first embraces such arts and industries, or such apparatus, as have already been treated. the second includes devices like the tasimeter, phonomotor, odoroscope, etc., and others now to be noted. the third embraces a number of projected inventions, partially completed investigations, inventions in use but not patented, and a great many caveats filed in the patent office at various times during the last forty years for the purpose of protecting his ideas pending their contemplated realization in practice. these caveats served their purpose thoroughly in many instances, but there have remained a great variety of projects upon which no definite action was ever taken. one ought to add the contents of an unfinished piece of extraordinary fiction based wholly on new inventions and devices utterly unknown to mankind. some day the novel may be finished, but edison has no inclination to go back to it, and says he cannot understand how any man is able to make a speech or write a book, for he simply can't do it. after what has been said in previous chapters, it will not seem so strange that edison should have hundreds of dormant inventions on his hands. there are human limitations even for such a tireless worker as he is. while the preparation of data for this chapter was going on, one of the writers in discussing with him the vast array of unexploited things said: "don't you feel a sense of regret in being obliged to leave so many things uncompleted?" to which he replied: "what's the use? one lifetime is too short, and i am busy every day improving essential parts of my established industries." it must suffice to speak briefly of a few leading inventions that have been worked out, and to dismiss with scant mention all the rest, taking just a few items, as typical and suggestive, especially when edison can himself be quoted as to them. incidentally it may be noted that things, not words, are referred to; for edison, in addition to inventing the apparatus, has often had to coin the word to describe it. a large number of the words and phrases in modern electrical parlance owe their origin to him. even the "call-word" of the telephone, "hello!" sent tingling over the wire a few million times daily was taken from menlo park by men installing telephones in different parts of the world, men who had just learned it at the laboratory, and thus made it a universal sesame for telephonic conversation. it is hard to determine where to begin with edison's miscellaneous inventions, but perhaps telegraphy has the "right of line," and edison's work in that field puts him abreast of the latest wireless developments that fill the world with wonder. "i perfected a system of train telegraphy between stations and trains in motion whereby messages could be sent from the moving train to the central office; and this was the forerunner of wireless telegraphy. this system was used for a number of years on the lehigh valley railroad on their construction trains. the electric wave passed from a piece of metal on top of the car across the air to the telegraph wires; and then proceeded to the despatcher's office. in my first experiments with this system i tried it on the staten island railroad, and employed an operator named king to do the experimenting. he reported results every day, and received instructions by mail; but for some reason he could send messages all right when the train went in one direction, but could not make it go in the contrary direction. i made suggestions of every kind to get around this phenomenon. finally i telegraphed king to find out if he had any suggestions himself; and i received a reply that the only way he could propose to get around the difficulty was to put the island on a pivot so it could be turned around! i found the trouble finally, and the practical introduction on the lehigh valley road was the result. the system was sold to a very wealthy man, and he would never sell any rights or answer letters. he became a spiritualist subsequently, which probably explains it." it is interesting to note that edison became greatly interested in the later developments by marconi, and is an admiring friend and adviser of that well-known inventor. the earlier experiments with wireless telegraphy at menlo park were made at a time when edison was greatly occupied with his electric-light interests, and it was not until the beginning of that he was able to spare the time to make a public demonstration of the system as applied to moving trains. ezra t. gilliland, of boston, had become associated with him in his experiments, and they took out several joint patents subsequently. the first practical use of the system took place on a thirteen-mile stretch of the staten island railroad with the results mentioned by edison above. a little later, edison and gilliland joined forces with lucius j. phelps, another investigator, who had been experimenting along the same lines and had taken out several patents. the various interests were combined in a corporation under whose auspices the system was installed on the lehigh valley railroad, where it was used for several years. the official demonstration trip on this road took place on october , , on a six-car train running to easton, pennsylvania, a distance of fifty-four miles. a great many telegrams were sent and received while the train was at full speed, including a despatch to the "cable king," john pender. london, england, and a reply from him. [ ] [footnote : broadly described in outline, the system consisted of an induction circuit obtained by laying strips of tin along the top or roof of a railway car, and the installation of a special telegraph line running parallel with the track and strung on poles of only medium height. the train and also each signalling station were equipped with regulation telegraphic apparatus, such as battery, key, relay, and sounder, together with induction-coil and condenser. in addition, there was a transmitting device in the shape of a musical reed, or buzzer. in practice, this buzzer was continuously operated at high speed by a battery. its vibrations were broken by means of a key into long and short periods, representing morse characters, which were transmitted inductively from the train circuit to the pole line, or vice versa, and received by the operator at the other end through a high-resistance telephone receiver inserted in the secondary circuit of the induction-coil.] although the space between the cars and the pole line was probably not more than about fifty feet, it is interesting to note that in edison's early experiments at menlo park he succeeded in transmitting messages through the air at a distance of feet. speaking of this and of his other experiments with induction telegraphy by means of kites, communicating from one to the other and thus from the kites to instruments on the earth, edison said recently: "we only transmitted about two and one-half miles through the kites. what has always puzzled me since is that i did not think of using the results of my experiments on 'etheric force' that i made in . i have never been able to understand how i came to overlook them. if i had made use of my own work i should have had long-distance wireless telegraphy." in one of the appendices to this book is given a brief technical account of edison's investigations of the phenomena which lie at the root of modern wireless or "space" telegraphy, and the attention of the reader is directed particularly to the description and quotations there from the famous note-books of edison's experiments in regard to what he called "etheric force." it will be seen that as early as edison detected and studied certain phenomena--i.e., the production of electrical effects in non-closed circuits, which for a time made him think he was on the trail of a new force, as there was no plausible explanation for them by the then known laws of electricity and magnetism. later came the magnificent work of hertz identifying the phenomena as "electromagnetic waves" in the ether, and developing a new world of theory and science based upon them and their production by disruptive discharges. edison's assertions were treated with scepticism by the scientific world, which was not then ready for the discovery and not sufficiently furnished with corroborative data. it is singular, to say the least, to note how edison's experiments paralleled and proved in advance those that came later; and even his apparatus such as the "dark box" for making the tiny sparks visible (as the waves impinged on the receiver) bears close analogy with similar apparatus employed by hertz. indeed, as edison sent the dark-box apparatus to the paris exposition in , and let batchelor repeat there the puzzling experiments, it seems by no means unlikely that, either directly or on the report of some friend, hertz may thus have received from edison a most valuable suggestion, the inventor aiding the physicist in opening up a wonderful new realm. in this connection, indeed, it is very interesting to quote two great authorities. in may, , at a meeting of the institution of electrical engineers in london, dr. (now sir) oliver lodge remarked in a discussion on a paper of his own on lightning conductors, embracing the hertzian waves in its treatment: "many of the effects i have shown--sparks in unsuspected places and other things--have been observed before. henry observed things of the kind and edison noticed some curious phenomena, and said it was not electricity but 'etheric force' that caused these sparks; and the matter was rather pooh-poohed. it was a small part of this very thing; only the time was not ripe; theoretical knowledge was not ready for it." again in his "signalling without wires," in giving the history of the coherer principle, lodge remarks: "sparks identical in all respects with those discovered by hertz had been seen in recent times both by edison and by sylvanus thompson, being styled 'etheric force' by the former; but their theoretic significance had not been perceived, and they were somewhat sceptically regarded." during the same discussion in london, in , sir william thomson (lord kelvin), after citing some experiments by faraday with his insulated cage at the royal institution, said: "his (faraday's) attention was not directed to look for hertz sparks, or probably he might have found them in the interior. edison seems to have noticed something of the kind in what he called 'etheric force.' his name 'etheric' may thirteen years ago have seemed to many people absurd. but now we are all beginning to call these inductive phenomena 'etheric.'" with which testimony from the great kelvin as to his priority in determining the vital fact, and with the evidence that as early as he built apparatus that demonstrated the fact, edison is probably quite content. it should perhaps be noted at this point that a curious effect observed at the laboratory was shown in connection with edison lamps at the philadelphia exhibition of . it became known in scientific parlance as the "edison effect," showing a curious current condition or discharge in the vacuum of the bulb. it has since been employed by fleming in england and de forest in this country, and others, as the basis for wireless-telegraph apparatus. it is in reality a minute rectifier of alternating current, and analogous to those which have since been made on a large scale. when roentgen came forward with his discovery of the new "x"-ray in , edison was ready for it, and took up experimentation with it on a large scale; some of his work being recorded in an article in the century magazine of may, , where a great deal of data may be found. edison says with regard to this work: "when the x-ray came up, i made the first fluoroscope, using tungstate of calcium. i also found that this tungstate could be put into a vacuum chamber of glass and fused to the inner walls of the chamber; and if the x-ray electrodes were let into the glass chamber and a proper vacuum was attained, you could get a fluorescent lamp of several candle-power. i started in to make a number of these lamps, but i soon found that the x-ray had affected poisonously my assistant, mr. dally, so that his hair came out and his flesh commenced to ulcerate. i then concluded it would not do, and that it would not be a very popular kind of light; so i dropped it. "at the time i selected tungstate of calcium because it was so fluorescent, i set four men to making all kinds of chemical combinations, and thus collected upward of different crystals of various chemical combinations, discovering several hundred different substances which would fluoresce to the x-ray. so far little had come of x-ray work, but it added another letter to the scientific alphabet. i don't know any thing about radium, and i have lots of company." the electrical engineer of june , , contains a photograph of mr. edison taken by the light of one of his fluorescent lamps. the same journal in its issue of april , , shows an edison fluoroscope in use by an observer, in the now familiar and universal form somewhat like a stereoscope. this apparatus as invented by edison consists of a flaring box, curved at one end to fit closely over the forehead and eyes, while the other end of the box is closed by a paste-board cover. on the inside of this is spread a layer of tungstate of calcium. by placing the object to be observed, such as the hand, between the vacuum-tube and the fluorescent screen, the "shadow" is formed on the screen and can be observed at leisure. the apparatus has proved invaluable in surgery and has become an accepted part of the equipment of modern surgery. in , at the electrical exhibition in the grand central palace, new york city, given under the auspices of the national electric light association, thousands and thousands of persons with the use of this apparatus in edison's personal exhibit were enabled to see their own bones; and the resultant public sensation was great. mr. mallory tells a characteristic story of edison's own share in the memorable exhibit: "the exhibit was announced for opening on monday. on the preceding friday all the apparatus, which included a large induction-coil, was shipped from orange to new york, and on saturday afternoon edison, accompanied by fred ott, one of his assistants, and myself, went over to install it so as to have it ready for monday morning. had everything been normal, a few hours would have sufficed for completion of the work, but on coming to test the big coil, it was found to be absolutely out of commission, having been so seriously injured as to necessitate its entire rewinding. it being summer-time, all the machine shops were closed until monday morning, and there were several miles of wire to be wound on the coil. edison would not consider a postponement of the exhibition, so there was nothing to do but go to work and wind it by hand. we managed to find a lathe, but there was no power; so each of us, including edison, took turns revolving the lathe by pulling on the belt, while the other two attended to the winding of the wire. we worked continuously all through that saturday night and all day sunday until evening, when we finished the job. i don't remember ever being conscious of more muscles in my life. i guess edison was tired also, but he took it very philosophically." this was apparently the first public demonstration of the x-ray to the american public. edison's ore-separation work has been already fully described, but the story would hardly be complete without a reference to similar work in gold extraction, dating back to the menlo park days: "i got up a method," says edison, "of separating placer gold by a dry process, in which i could work economically ore as lean as five cents of gold to the cubic yard. i had several car-loads of different placer sands sent to me and proved i could do it. some parties hearing i had succeeded in doing such a thing went to work and got hold of what was known as the ortiz mine grant, twelve miles from santa fe, new mexico. this mine, according to the reports of several mining engineers made in the last forty years, was considered one of the richest placer deposits in the united states, and various schemes had been put forward to bring water from the mountains forty miles away to work those immense beds. the reports stated that the mexicans had been panning gold for a hundred years out of these deposits. "these parties now made arrangements with the stockholders or owners of the grant, and with me, to work the deposits by my process. as i had had some previous experience with the statements of mining men, i concluded i would just send down a small plant and prospect the field before putting up a large one. this i did, and i sent two of my assistants, whom i could trust, down to this place to erect the plant; and started to sink shafts fifty feet deep all over the area. we soon learned that the rich gravel, instead of being spread over an area of three by seven miles, and rich from the grass roots down, was spread over a space of about twenty-five acres, and that even this did not average more than ten cents to the cubic yard. the whole placer would not give more than one and one-quarter cents per cubic yard. as my business arrangements had not been very perfectly made, i lost the usual amount." going to another extreme, we find edison grappling with one of the biggest problems known to the authorities of new york--the disposal of its heavy snows. it is needless to say that witnessing the ordinary slow and costly procedure would put edison on his mettle. "one time when they had a snow blockade in new york i started to build a machine with batchelor--a big truck with a steam-engine and compressor on it. we would run along the street, gather all the snow up in front of us, pass it into the compressor, and deliver little blocks of ice behind us in the gutter, taking one-tenth the room of the snow, and not inconveniencing anybody. we could thus take care of a snow-storm by diminishing the bulk of material to be handled. the preliminary experiment we made was dropped because we went into other things. the machine would go as fast as a horse could walk." edison has always taken a keen interest in aerial flight, and has also experimented with aeroplanes, his preference inclining to the helicopter type, as noted in the newspapers and periodicals from time to time. the following statement from him refers to a type of aeroplane of great novelty and ingenuity: "james gordon bennett came to me and asked that i try some primary experiments to see if aerial navigation was feasible with 'heavier-than-air' machines. i got up a motor and put it on the scales and tried a large number of different things and contrivances connected to the motor, to see how it would lighten itself on the scales. i got some data and made up my mind that what was needed was a very powerful engine for its weight, in small compass. so i conceived of an engine employing guncotton. i took a lot of ticker paper tape, turned it into guncotton and got up an engine with an arrangement whereby i could feed this gun-cotton strip into the cylinder and explode it inside electrically. the feed took place between two copper rolls. the copper kept the temperature down, so that it could only explode up to the point where it was in contact with the feed rolls. it worked pretty well; but once the feed roll didn't save it, and the flame went through and exploded the whole roll and kicked up such a bad explosion i abandoned it. but the idea might be made to work." turning from the air to the earth, it is interesting to note that the introduction of the underground edison system in new york made an appeal to inventive ingenuity and that one of the difficulties was met as follows: "when we first put the pearl street station in operation, in new york, we had cast-iron junction-boxes at the intersections of all the streets. one night, or about two o'clock in the morning, a policeman came in and said that something had exploded at the corner of william and nassau streets. i happened to be in the station, and went out to see what it was. i found that the cover of the manhole, weighing about pounds, had entirely disappeared, but everything inside was intact. it had even stripped some of the threads of the bolts, and we could never find that cover. i concluded it was either leakage of gas into the manhole, or else the acid used in pickling the casting had given off hydrogen, and air had leaked in, making an explosive mixture. as this was a pretty serious problem, and as we had a good many of the manholes, it worried me very much for fear that it would be repeated and the company might have to pay a lot of damages, especially in districts like that around william and nassau, where there are a good many people about. if an explosion took place in the daytime it might lift a few of them up. however, i got around the difficulty by putting a little bottle of chloroform in each box, corked up, with a slight hole in the cork. the chloroform being volatile and very heavy, settled in the box and displaced all the air. i have never heard of an explosion in a manhole where this chloroform had been used. carbon tetrachloride, now made electrically at niagara falls, is very cheap and would be ideal for the purpose." edison has never paid much attention to warfare, and has in general disdained to develop inventions for the destruction of life and property. some years ago, however, he became the joint inventor of the edison-sims torpedo, with mr. w. scott sims, who sought his co-operation. this is a dirigible submarine torpedo operated by electricity. in the torpedo proper, which is suspended from a long float so as to be submerged a few feet under water, are placed the small electric motor for propulsion and steering, and the explosive charge. the torpedo is controlled from the shore or ship through an electric cable which it pays out as it goes along, and all operations of varying the speed, reversing, and steering are performed at the will of the distant operator by means of currents sent through the cable. during the spanish-american war of edison suggested to the navy department the adoption of a compound of calcium carbide and calcium phosphite, which when placed in a shell and fired from a gun would explode as soon as it struck water and ignite, producing a blaze that would continue several minutes and make the ships of the enemy visible for four or five miles at sea. moreover, the blaze could not be extinguished. edison has always been deeply interested in "conservation," and much of his work has been directed toward the economy of fuel in obtaining electrical energy directly from the consumption of coal. indeed, it will be noted that the example of his handwriting shown in these volumes deals with the importance of obtaining available energy direct from the combustible without the enormous loss in the intervening stages that makes our best modern methods of steam generation and utilization so barbarously extravagant and wasteful. several years ago, experimenting in this field, edison devised and operated some ingenious pyromagnetic motors and generators, based, as the name implies, on the direct application of heat to the machines. the motor is founded upon the principle discovered by the famous dr. william gilbert--court physician to queen elizabeth, and the father of modern electricity--that the magnetic properties of iron diminish with heat. at a light-red heat, iron becomes non-magnetic, so that a strong magnet exerts no influence over it. edison employed this peculiar property by constructing a small machine in which a pivoted bar is alternately heated and cooled. it is thus attracted toward an adjacent electromagnet when cold and is uninfluenced when hot, and as the result motion is produced. the pyromagnetic generator is based on the same phenomenon; its aim being of course to generate electrical energy directly from the heat of the combustible. the armature, or moving part of the machine, consists in reality of eight separate armatures all constructed of corrugated sheet iron covered with asbestos and wound with wire. these armatures are held in place by two circular iron plates, through the centre of which runs a shaft, carrying at its lower extremity a semicircular shield of fire-clay, which covers the ends of four of the armatures. the heat, of whatever origin, is applied from below, and the shaft being revolved, four of the armatures lose their magnetism constantly, while the other four gain it, so to speak. as the moving part revolves, therefore, currents of electricity are set up in the wires of the armatures and are collected by a commutator, as in an ordinary dynamo, placed on the upper end of the central shaft. a great variety of electrical instruments are included in edison's inventions, many of these in fundamental or earlier forms being devised for his systems of light and power, as noted already. there are numerous others, and it might be said with truth that edison is hardly ever without some new device of this kind in hand, as he is by no means satisfied with the present status of electrical measurements. he holds in general that the meters of to-day, whether for heavy or for feeble currents, are too expensive, and that cheaper instruments are a necessity of the times. these remarks apply more particularly to what may be termed, in general, circuit meters. in other classes edison has devised an excellent form of magnetic bridge, being an ingenious application of the principles of the familiar wheatstone bridge, used so extensively for measuring the electrical resistance of wires; the testing of iron for magnetic qualities being determined by it in the same way. another special instrument is a "dead beat" galvanometer which differs from the ordinary form of galvanometer in having no coils or magnetic needle. it depends for its action upon the heating effect of the current, which causes a fine platinum-iridium wire enclosed in a glass tube to expand; thus allowing a coiled spring to act on a pivoted shaft carrying a tiny mirror. the mirror as it moves throws a beam of light upon a scale and the indications are read by the spot of light. most novel of all the apparatus of this measuring kind is the odoroscope, which is like the tasimeter described in an earlier chapter, except that a strip of gelatine takes the place of hard rubber, as the sensitive member. besides being affected by heat, this device is exceedingly sensitive to moisture. a few drops of water or perfume thrown on the floor of a room are sufficient to give a very decided indication on the galvanometer in circuit with the instrument. barometers, hygrometers, and similar instruments of great delicacy can be constructed on the principle of the odoroscope; and it may also be used in determining the character or pressure of gases and vapors in which it has been placed. in the list of edison's patents at the end of this work may be noted many other of his miscellaneous inventions, covering items such as preserving fruit in vacuo, making plate-glass, drawing wire, and metallurgical processes for treatment of nickel, gold, and copper ores; but to mention these inventions separately would trespass too much on our limited space here. hence, we shall leave the interested reader to examine that list for himself. from first to last edison has filed in the united states patent office--in addition to more than applications for patents--some caveats embracing not less than inventions. a "caveat" is essentially a notice filed by an inventor, entitling him to receive warning from the office of any application for a patent for an invention that would "interfere" with his own, during the year, while he is supposed to be perfecting his device. the old caveat system has now been abolished, but it served to elicit from edison a most astounding record of ideas and possible inventions upon which he was working, and many of which he of course reduced to practice. as an example of edison's fertility and the endless variety of subjects engaging his thoughts, the following list of matters covered by one caveat is given. it is needless to say that all the caveats are not quite so full of "plums," but this is certainly a wonder. forty-one distinct inventions relating to the phonograph, covering various forms of recorders, arrangement of parts, making of records, shaving tool, adjustments, etc. eight forms of electric lamps using infusible earthy oxides and brought to high incandescence in vacuo by high potential current of several thousand volts; same character as impingement of x-rays on object in bulb. a loud-speaking telephone with quartz cylinder and beam of ultra-violet light. four forms of arc light with special carbons. a thermostatic motor. a device for sealing together the inside part and bulb of an incandescent lamp mechanically. regulators for dynamos and motors. three devices for utilizing vibrations beyond the ultra violet. a great variety of methods for coating incandescent lamp filaments with silicon, titanium, chromium, osmium, boron, etc. several methods of making porous filaments. several methods of making squirted filaments of a variety of materials, of which about thirty are specified. seventeen different methods and devices for separating magnetic ores. a continuously operative primary battery. a musical instrument operating one of helmholtz's artificial larynxes. a siren worked by explosion of small quantities of oxygen and hydrogen mixed. three other sirens made to give vocal sounds or articulate speech. a device for projecting sound-waves to a distance without spreading and in a straight line, on the principle of smoke rings. a device for continuously indicating on a galvanometer the depths of the ocean. a method of preventing in a great measure friction of water against the hull of a ship and incidentally preventing fouling by barnacles. a telephone receiver whereby the vibrations of the diaphragm are considerably amplified. two methods of "space" telegraphy at sea. an improved and extended string telephone. devices and method of talking through water for considerable distances. an audiphone for deaf people. sound-bridge for measuring resistance of tubes and other materials for conveying sound. a method of testing a magnet to ascertain the existence of flaws in the iron or steel composing the same. method of distilling liquids by incandescent conductor immersed in the liquid. method of obtaining electricity direct from coal. an engine operated by steam produced by the hydration and dehydration of metallic salts. device and method for telegraphing photographically. carbon crucible kept brilliantly incandescent by current in vacuo, for obtaining reaction with refractory metals. device for examining combinations of odors and their changes by rotation at different speeds. from one of the preceding items it will be noted that even in the eighties edison perceived much advantage to be gained in the line of economy by the use of lamp filaments employing refractory metals in their construction. from another caveat, filed in , we extract the following, which shows that he realized the value of tungsten also for this purpose. "filaments of carbon placed in a combustion tube with a little chloride ammonium. chloride tungsten or titanium passed through hot tube, depositing a film of metal on the carbon; or filaments of zirconia oxide, or alumina or magnesia, thoria or other infusible oxides mixed or separate, and obtained by moistening and squirting through a die, are thus coated with above metals and used for incandescent lamps. osmium from a volatile compound of same thus deposited makes a filament as good as carbon when in vacuo." in , long before there arose the actual necessity of duplicating phonograph records so as to produce replicas in great numbers, edison described in one of his caveats a method and process much similar to the one which was put into practice by him in later years. in the same caveat he describes an invention whereby the power to indent on a phonograph cylinder, instead of coming directly from the voice, is caused by power derived from the rotation or movement of the phonogram surface itself. he did not, however, follow up this invention and put it into practice. some twenty years later it was independently invented and patented by another inventor. a further instance of this kind is a method of telegraphy at sea by means of a diaphragm in a closed port-hole flush with the side of the vessel, and actuated by a steam-whistle which is controlled by a lever, similarly to a morse key. a receiving diaphragm is placed in another and near-by chamber, which is provided with very sensitive stethoscopic ear-pieces, by which the morse characters sent from another vessel may be received. this was also invented later by another inventor, and is in use to-day, but will naturally be rivalled by wireless telegraphy. still another instance is seen in one of edison's caveats, where he describes a method of distilling liquids by means of internally applied heat through electric conductors. although edison did not follow up the idea and take out a patent, this system of distillation was later hit upon by others and is in use at the present time. in the foregoing pages of this chapter the authors have endeavored to present very briefly a sketchy notion of the astounding range of edison's practical ideas, but they feel a sense of impotence in being unable to deal adequately with the subject in the space that can be devoted to it. to those who, like the authors, have had the privilege of examining the voluminous records which show the flights of his imagination, there comes a feeling of utter inadequacy to convey to others the full extent of the story they reveal. the few specific instances above related, although not representing a tithe of edison's work, will probably be sufficient to enable the reader to appreciate to some extent his great wealth of ideas and fertility of imagination, and also to realize that this imagination is not only intensely practical, but that it works prophetically along lines of natural progress. chapter xxiv edison's method in inventing while the world's progress depends largely upon their ingenuity, inventors are not usually persons who have adopted invention as a distinct profession, but, generally speaking, are otherwise engaged in various walks of life. by reason of more or less inherent native genius they either make improvements along lines of present occupation, or else evolve new methods and means of accomplishing results in fields for which they may have personal predilections. now and then, however, there arises a man so greatly endowed with natural powers and originality that the creative faculty within him is too strong to endure the humdrum routine of affairs, and manifests itself in a life devoted entirely to the evolution of methods and devices calculated to further the world's welfare. in other words, he becomes an inventor by profession. such a man is edison. notwithstanding the fact that nearly forty years ago (not a great while after he had emerged from the ranks of peripatetic telegraph operators) he was the owner of a large and profitable business as a manufacturer of the telegraphic apparatus invented by him, the call of his nature was too strong to allow of profits being laid away in the bank to accumulate. as he himself has said, he has "too sanguine a temperament to allow money to stay in solitary confinement." hence, all superfluous cash was devoted to experimentation. in the course of years he grew more and more impatient of the shackles that bound him to business routine, and, realizing the powers within him, he drew away gradually from purely manufacturing occupations, determining deliberately to devote his life to inventive work, and to depend upon its results as a means of subsistence. all persons who make inventions will necessarily be more or less original in character, but to the man who chooses to become an inventor by profession must be conceded a mind more than ordinarily replete with virility and originality. that these qualities in edison are superabundant is well known to all who have worked with him, and, indeed, are apparent to every one from his multiplied achievements within the period of one generation. if one were allowed only two words with which to describe edison, it is doubtful whether a close examination of the entire dictionary would disclose any others more suitable than "experimenter--inventor." these would express the overruling characteristics of his eventful career. it is as an "inventor" that he sets himself down in the membership list of the american institute of electrical engineers. to attempt the strict placing of these words in relation to each other (except alphabetically) would be equal to an endeavor to solve the old problem as to which came first, the egg or the chicken; for although all his inventions have been evolved through experiment, many of his notable experiments have called forth the exercise of highly inventive faculties in their very inception. investigation and experiment have been a consuming passion, an impelling force from within, as it were, from his petticoat days when he collected goose-eggs and tried to hatch them out by sitting over them himself. one might be inclined to dismiss this trivial incident smilingly, as a mere childish, thoughtless prank, had not subsequent development as a child, boy, and man revealed a born investigator with original reasoning powers that, disdaining crooks and bends, always aimed at the centre, and, like the flight of the bee, were accurate and direct. it is not surprising, therefore, that a man of this kind should exhibit a ceaseless, absorbing desire for knowledge, and an apparently uncontrollable tendency to experiment on every possible occasion, even though his last cent were spent in thus satisfying the insatiate cravings of an inquiring mind. during edison's immature years, when he was flitting about from place to place as a telegraph operator, his experimentation was of a desultory, hand-to-mouth character, although it was always notable for originality, as expressed in a number of minor useful devices produced during this period. small wonder, then, that at the end of these wanderings, when he had found a place to "rest the sole of his foot," he established a laboratory in which to carry on his researches in a more methodical and practical manner. in this was the beginning of the work which has since made such a profound impression on contemporary life. there is nothing of the helter-skelter, slap-dash style in edison's experiments. although all the laboratory experimenters agree in the opinion that he "tries everything," it is not merely the mixing of a little of this, some of that, and a few drops of the other, in the hope that something will come of it. nor is the spirit of the laboratory work represented in the following dialogue overheard between two alleged carpenters picked up at random to help on a hurry job. "how near does she fit, mike?" "about an inch." "nail her!" a most casual examination of any of the laboratory records will reveal evidence of the minutest exactitude insisted on in the conduct of experiments, irrespective of the length of time they occupied. edison's instructions, always clear cut and direct, followed by his keen oversight, admit of nothing less than implicit observance in all details, no matter where they may lead, and impel to the utmost minuteness and accuracy. to some extent there has been a popular notion that many of edison's successes have been due to mere dumb fool luck--to blind, fortuitous "happenings." nothing could be further from the truth, for, on the contrary, it is owing almost entirely to the comprehensive scope of his knowledge, the breadth of his conception, the daring originality of his methods, and minuteness and extent of experiment, combined with unwavering pertinacity, that new arts have been created and additions made to others already in existence. indeed, without this tireless minutiae, and methodical, searching spirit, it would have been practically impossible to have produced many of the most important of these inventions. needless to say, mastery of its literature is regarded by him as a most important preliminary in taking up any line of investigation. what others may have done, bearing directly or collaterally on the subject, in print, is carefully considered and sifted to the point of exhaustion. not that he takes it for granted that the conclusions are correct, for he frequently obtains vastly different results by repeating in his own way experiments made by others as detailed in books. "edison can travel along a well-used road and still find virgin soil," remarked recently one of his most practical experimenters, who had been working along a certain line without attaining the desired result. "he wanted to get a particular compound having definite qualities, and i had tried in all sorts of ways to produce it but with only partial success. he was confident that it could be done, and said he would try it himself. in doing so he followed the same path in which i had travelled, but, by making an undreamed-of change in one of the operations, succeeded in producing a compound that virtually came up to his specifications. it is not the only time i have known this sort of thing to happen." in speaking of edison's method of experimenting, another of his laboratory staff says: "he is never hindered by theory, but resorts to actual experiment for proof. for instance, when he conceived the idea of pouring a complete concrete house it was universally held that it would be impossible because the pieces of stone in the mixture would not rise to the level of the pouring-point, but would gravitate to a lower plane in the soft cement. this, however, did not hinder him from making a series of experiments which resulted in an invention that proved conclusively the contrary." having conceived some new idea and read everything obtainable relating to the subject in general, edison's fertility of resource and originality come into play. taking one of the laboratory note-books, he will write in it a memorandum of the experiments to be tried, illustrated, if necessary, by sketches. this book is then passed on to that member of the experimental staff whose special training and experience are best adapted to the work. here strenuousness is expected; and an immediate commencement of investigation and prompt report are required. sometimes the subject may be such as to call for a long line of frequent tests which necessitate patient and accurate attention to minute details. results must be reported often--daily, or possibly with still greater frequency. edison does not forget what is going on; but in his daily tours through the laboratory keeps in touch with all the work that is under the hands of his various assistants, showing by an instant grasp of the present conditions of any experiment that he has a full consciousness of its meaning and its reference to his original conception. the year saw the beginning of edison's career as an acknowledged inventor of commercial devices. from the outset, an innate recognition of system dictated the desirability and wisdom of preserving records of his experiments and inventions. the primitive records, covering the earliest years, were mainly jotted down on loose sheets of paper covered with sketches, notes, and data, pasted into large scrap-books, or preserved in packages; but with the passing of years and enlargement of his interests, it became the practice to make all original laboratory notes in large, uniform books. this course was pursued until the menlo park period, when he instituted a new regime that has been continued down to the present day. a standard form of note-book, about eight and a half by six inches, containing about two hundred pages, was adopted. a number of these books were (and are now) always to be found scattered around in the different sections of the laboratory, and in them have been noted by edison all his ideas, sketches, and memoranda. details of the various experiments concerning them have been set down by his assistants from time to time. these later laboratory note-books, of which there are now over one thousand in the series, are eloquent in the history they reveal of the strenuous labors of edison and his assistants and the vast fields of research he has covered during the last thirty years. they are overwhelmingly rich in biographic material, but analysis would be a prohibitive task for one person, and perhaps interesting only to technical readers. their pages cover practically every department of science. the countless thousands of separate experiments recorded exhibit the operations of a master mind seeking to surprise nature into a betrayal of her secrets by asking her the same question in a hundred different ways. for instance, when edison was investigating a certain problem of importance many years ago, the note-books show that on this point alone about fifteen thousand experiments and tests were made by one of his assistants. a most casual glance over these note-books will illustrate the following remark, which was made to one of the writers not long ago by a member of the laboratory staff who has been experimenting there for twenty years: "edison can think of more ways of doing a thing than any man i ever saw or heard of. he tries everything and never lets up, even though failure is apparently staring him in the face. he only stops when he simply can't go any further on that particular line. when he decides on any mode of procedure he gives his notes to the experimenter and lets him alone, only stepping in from time to time to look at the operations and receive reports of progress." the history of the development of the telephone transmitter, phonograph, incandescent lamp, dynamo, electrical distributing systems from central stations, electric railway, ore-milling, cement, motion pictures, and a host of minor inventions may be found embedded in the laboratory note-books. a passing glance at a few pages of these written records will serve to illustrate, though only to a limited extent, the thoroughness of edison's method. it is to be observed that these references can be but of the most meagre kind, and must be regarded as merely throwing a side-light on the subject itself. for instance, the complex problem of a practical telephone transmitter gave rise to a series of most exhaustive experiments. combinations in almost infinite variety, including gums, chemical compounds, oils, minerals, and metals were suggested by edison; and his assistants were given long lists of materials to try with reference to predetermined standards of articulation, degrees of loudness, and perfection of hissing sounds. the note-books contain hundreds of pages showing that a great many thousands of experiments were tried and passed upon. such remarks as "n. g."; "pretty good"; "whistling good, but no articulation"; "rattly"; "articulation, whispering, and whistling good"; "best to-night so far"; and others are noted opposite the various combinations as they were tried. thus, one may follow the investigation through a maze of experiments which led up to the successful invention of the carbon button transmitter, the vital device to give the telephone its needed articulation and perfection. the two hundred and odd note-books, covering the strenuous period during which edison was carrying on his electric-light experiments, tell on their forty thousand pages or more a fascinating story of the evolution of a new art in its entirety. from the crude beginnings, through all the varied phases of this evolution, the operations of a master mind are apparent from the contents of these pages, in which are recorded the innumerable experiments, calculations, and tests that ultimately brought light out of darkness. the early work on a metallic conductor for lamps gave rise to some very thorough research on melting and alloying metals, the preparation of metallic oxides, the coating of fine wires by immersing them in a great variety of chemical solutions. following his usual custom, edison would indicate the lines of experiment to be followed, which were carried out and recorded in the note-books. he himself, in january, , made personally a most minute and searching investigation into the properties and behavior of plating-iridium, boron, rutile, zircon, chromium, molybdenum, and nickel, under varying degrees of current strength, on which there may be found in the notes about forty pages of detailed experiments and deductions in his own handwriting, concluding with the remark (about nickel): "this is a great discovery for electric light in the way of economy." this period of research on nickel, etc., was evidently a trying one, for after nearly a month's close application he writes, on january , : "owing to the enormous power of the light my eyes commenced to pain after seven hours' work, and i had to quit." on the next day appears the following entry: "suffered the pains of hell with my eyes last night from p.m. till a.m., when got to sleep with a big dose of morphine. eyes getting better, and do not pain much at p.m.; but i lose to-day." the "try everything" spirit of edison's method is well illustrated in this early period by a series of about sixteen hundred resistance tests of various ores, minerals, earths, etc., occupying over fifty pages of one of the note-books relating to the metallic filament for his lamps. but, as the reader has already learned, the metallic filament was soon laid aside in favor of carbon, and we find in the laboratory notes an amazing record of research and experiment conducted in the minute and searching manner peculiar to edison's method. his inquiries were directed along all the various roads leading to the desired goal, for long before he had completed the invention of a practical lamp he realized broadly the fundamental requirements of a successful system of electrical distribution, and had given instructions for the making of a great variety of calculations which, although far in advance of the time, were clearly foreseen by him to be vitally important in the ultimate solution of the complicated problem. thus we find many hundreds of pages of the note-books covered with computations and calculations by mr. upton, not only on the numerous ramifications of the projected system and comparisons with gas, but also on proposed forms of dynamos and the proposed station in new york. a mere recital by titles of the vast number of experiments and tests on carbons, lamps, dynamos, armatures, commutators, windings, systems, regulators, sockets, vacuum-pumps, and the thousand and one details relating to the subject in general, originated by edison, and methodically and systematically carried on under his general direction, would fill a great many pages here, and even then would serve only to convey a confused impression of ceaseless probing. it is possible only to a broad, comprehensive mind well stored with knowledge, and backed with resistless, boundless energy, that such a diversified series of experiments and investigations could be carried on simultaneously and assimilated, even though they should relate to a class of phenomena already understood and well defined. but if we pause to consider that the commercial subdivision of the electric current (which was virtually an invention made to order) involved the solution of problems so unprecedented that even they themselves had to be created, we cannot but conclude that the afflatus of innate genius played an important part in the unique methods of investigation instituted by edison at that and other times. the idea of attributing great successes to "genius" has always been repudiated by edison, as evidenced by his historic remark that "genius is per cent. inspiration and per cent. perspiration." again, in a conversation many years ago at the laboratory between edison, batchelor, and e. h. johnson, the latter made allusion to edison's genius as evidenced by some of his achievements, when edison replied: "stuff! i tell you genius is hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and common sense." "yes," said johnson, "i admit there is all that to it, but there's still more. batch and i have those qualifications, but although we knew quite a lot about telephones, and worked hard, we couldn't invent a brand-new non-infringing telephone receiver as you did when gouraud cabled for one. then, how about the subdivision of the electric light?" "electric current," corrected edison. "true," continued johnson; "you were the one to make that very distinction. the scientific world had been working hard on subdivision for years, using what appeared to be common sense. results worse than nil. then you come along, and about the first thing you do, after looking the ground over, is to start off in the opposite direction, which subsequently proves to be the only possible way to reach the goal. it seems to me that this is pretty close to the dictionary definition of genius." it is said that edison replied rather incoherently and changed the topic of conversation. this innate modesty, however, does not prevent edison from recognizing and classifying his own methods of investigation. in a conversation with two old associates recently (april, ), he remarked: "it has been said of me that my methods are empirical. that is true only so far as chemistry is concerned. did you ever realize that practically all industrial chemistry is colloidal in its nature? hard rubber, celluloid, glass, soap, paper, and lots of others, all have to deal with amorphous substances, as to which comparatively little has been really settled. my methods are similar to those followed by luther burbank. he plants an acre, and when this is in bloom he inspects it. he has a sharp eye, and can pick out of thousands a single plant that has promise of what he wants. from this he gets the seed, and uses his skill and knowledge in producing from it a number of new plants which, on development, furnish the means of propagating an improved variety in large quantity. so, when i am after a chemical result that i have in mind, i may make hundreds or thousands of experiments out of which there may be one that promises results in the right direction. this i follow up to its legitimate conclusion, discarding the others, and usually get what i am after. there is no doubt about this being empirical; but when it comes to problems of a mechanical nature, i want to tell you that all i've ever tackled and solved have been done by hard, logical thinking." the intense earnestness and emphasis with which this was said were very impressive to the auditors. this empirical method may perhaps be better illustrated by a specific example. during the latter part of the storage battery investigations, after the form of positive element had been determined upon, it became necessary to ascertain what definite proportions and what quality of nickel hydrate and nickel flake would give the best results. a series of positive tubes were filled with the two materials in different proportions--say, nine parts hydrate to one of flake; eight parts hydrate to two of flake; seven parts hydrate to three of flake, and so on through varying proportions. three sets of each of these positives were made, and all put into separate test tubes with a uniform type of negative element. these were carried through a long series of charges and discharges under strict test conditions. from the tabulated results of hundreds of tests there were selected three that showed the best results. these, however, showed only the superiority of certain proportions of the materials. the next step would be to find out the best quality. now, as there are several hundred variations in the quality of nickel flake, and perhaps a thousand ways to make the hydrate, it will be realized that edison's methods led to stupendous detail, for these tests embraced a trial of all the qualities of both materials in the three proportions found to be most suitable. among these many thousands of experiments any that showed extraordinary results were again elaborated by still further series of tests, until edison was satisfied that he had obtained the best result in that particular line. the laboratory note-books do not always tell the whole story or meaning of an experiment that may be briefly outlined on one of their pages. for example, the early filament made of a mixture of lampblack and tar is merely a suggestion in the notes, but its making afforded an example of edison's pertinacity. these materials, when mixed, became a friable mass, which he had found could be brought into such a cohesive, putty-like state by manipulation, as to be capable of being rolled out into filaments as fine as seven-thousandths of an inch in cross-section. one of the laboratory assistants was told to make some of this mixture, knead it, and roll some filaments. after a time he brought the mass to edison, and said: "there's something wrong about this, for it crumbles even after manipulating it with my fingers." "how long did you knead it?" said edison. "oh! more than an hour," replied the assistant. "well, just keep on for a few hours more and it will come out all right," was the rejoinder. and this proved to be correct, for, after a prolonged kneading and rolling, the mass changed into a cohesive, stringy, homogeneous putty. it was from a mixture of this kind that spiral filaments were made and used in some of the earliest forms of successful incandescent lamps; indeed, they are described and illustrated in edison's fundamental lamp patent (no. , ). the present narrative would assume the proportions of a history of the incandescent lamp, should the authors attempt to follow edison's investigations through the thousands of pages of note-books away back in the eighties and early nineties. improvement of the lamp was constantly in his mind all those years, and besides the vast amount of detail experimental work he laid out for his assistants, he carried on a great deal of research personally. sometimes whole books are filled in his own handwriting with records of experiments showing every conceivable variation of some particular line of inquiry; each trial bearing some terse comment expressive of results. in one book appear the details of one of these experiments on september , , at . a.m., with the comment: "brought up lamp higher than a -c.p. was ever brought before--hurrah!" notwithstanding the late hour, he turns over to the next page and goes on to write his deductions from this result as compared with those previously obtained. proceeding day by day, as appears by this same book, he follows up another line of investigation on lamps, apparently full of difficulty, for after one hundred and thirty-two other recorded experiments we find this note: "saturday . went home disgusted with incandescent lamps." this feeling was evidently evanescent, for on the succeeding monday the work was continued and carried on by him as keenly as before, as shown by the next batch of notes. this is the only instance showing any indication of impatience that the authors have found in looking through the enormous mass of laboratory notes. all his assistants agree that edison is the most patient, tireless experimenter that could be conceived of. failures do not distress him; indeed, he regards them as always useful, as may be gathered from the following, related by dr. e. g. acheson, formerly one of his staff: "i once made an experiment in edison's laboratory at menlo park during the latter part of , and the results were not as looked for. i considered the experiment a perfect failure, and while bemoaning the results of this apparent failure mr. edison entered, and, after learning the facts of the case, cheerfully remarked that i should not look upon it as a failure, for he considered every experiment a success, as in all cases it cleared up the atmosphere, and even though it failed to accomplish the results sought for, it should prove a valuable lesson for guidance in future work. i believe that mr. edison's success as an experimenter was, to a large extent, due to this happy view of all experiments." edison has frequently remarked that out of a hundred experiments he does not expect more than one to be successful, and as to that one he is always suspicious until frequent repetition has verified the original results. this patient, optimistic view of the outcome of experiments has remained part of his character down to this day, just as his painstaking, minute, incisive methods are still unchanged. but to the careless, stupid, or lazy person he is a terror for the short time they remain around him. honest mistakes may be tolerated, but not carelessness, incompetence, or lack of attention to business. in such cases edison is apt to express himself freely and forcibly, as when he was asked why he had parted with a certain man, he said: "oh, he was so slow that it would take him half an hour to get out of the field of a microscope." another instance will be illustrative. soon after the brockton (massachusetts) central station was started in operation many years ago, he wrote a note to mr. w. s. andrews, containing suggestions as to future stations, part of which related to the various employees and their duties. after outlining the duties of the meter man, edison says: "i should not take too young a man for this, say, a man from twenty-three to thirty years old, bright and businesslike. don't want any one who yearns to enter a laboratory and experiment. we have a bad case of that at brockton; he neglects business to potter. what we want is a good lamp average and no unprofitable customer. you should have these men on probation and subject to passing an examination by me. this will wake them up." edison's examinations are no joke, according to mr. j. h. vail, formerly one of the menlo park staff. "i wanted a job," he said, "and was ambitious to take charge of the dynamo-room. mr. edison led me to a heap of junk in a corner and said: 'put that together and let me know when it's running.' i didn't know what it was, but received a liberal education in finding out. it proved to be a dynamo, which i finally succeeded in assembling and running. i got the job." another man who succeeded in winning a place as assistant was mr. john f. ott, who has remained in his employ for over forty years. in , when edison was occupying his first manufacturing shop (the third floor of a small building in newark), he wanted a first-class mechanician, and mr. ott was sent to him. "he was then an ordinary-looking young fellow," says mr. ott, "dirty as any of the other workmen, unkempt, and not much better dressed than a tramp, but i immediately felt that there was a great deal in him." this is the conversation that ensued, led by mr. edison's question: "what do you want?" "work." "can you make this machine work?" (exhibiting it and explaining its details). "yes." "are you sure?" "well, you needn't pay me if i don't." and thus mr. ott went to work and succeeded in accomplishing the results desired. two weeks afterward mr. edison put him in charge of the shop. edison's life fairly teems with instances of unruffled patience in the pursuit of experiments. when he feels thoroughly impressed with the possibility of accomplishing a certain thing, he will settle down composedly to investigate it to the end. this is well illustrated in a story relating to his invention of the type of storage battery bearing his name. mr. w. s. mallory, one of his closest associates for many years, is the authority for the following: "when mr. edison decided to shut down the ore-milling plant at edison, new jersey, in which i had been associated with him, it became a problem as to what he could profitably take up next, and we had several discussions about it. he finally thought that a good storage battery was a great requisite, and decided to try and devise a new type, for he declared emphatically he would make no battery requiring sulphuric acid. after a little thought he conceived the nickel-iron idea, and started to work at once with characteristic energy. about or . a.m. he would go down to the laboratory and experiment, only stopping for a short time at noon to eat a lunch sent down from the house. about o'clock the carriage would call to take him to dinner, from which he would return by . or o'clock to resume work. the carriage came again at midnight to take him home, but frequently had to wait until or o'clock, and sometimes return without him, as he had decided to continue all night. "this had been going on more than five months, seven days a week, when i was called down to the laboratory to see him. i found him at a bench about three feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps of chemists and experimenters. he was seated at this bench testing, figuring, and planning. i then learned that he had thus made over nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not produced a single thing that promised to solve the question. in view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment, and i said: 'isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven't been able to get any results?' edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: 'results! why, man, i have gotten a lot of results! i know several thousand things that won't work.' "at that time he sent me out west on a special mission. on my return, a few weeks later, his experiments had run up to over ten thousand, but he had discovered the missing link in the combination sought for. of course, we all remember how the battery was completed and put on the market. then, because he was dissatisfied with it, he stopped the sales and commenced a new line of investigation, which has recently culminated successfully. i shouldn't wonder if his experiments on the battery ran up pretty near to fifty thousand, for they fill more than one hundred and fifty of the note-books, to say nothing of some thousands of tests in curve sheets." although edison has an absolute disregard for the total outlay of money in investigation, he is particular to keep down the cost of individual experiments to a minimum, for, as he observed to one of his assistants: "a good many inventors try to develop things life-size, and thus spend all their money, instead of first experimenting more freely on a small scale." to edison life is not only a grand opportunity to find out things by experiment, but, when found, to improve them by further experiment. one night, after receiving a satisfactory report of progress from mr. mason, superintendent of the cement plant, he said: "the only way to keep ahead of the procession is to experiment. if you don't, the other fellow will. when there's no experimenting there's no progress. stop experimenting and you go backward. if anything goes wrong, experiment until you get to the very bottom of the trouble." it is easy to realize, therefore, that a character so thoroughly permeated with these ideas is not apt to stop and figure out expense when in hot pursuit of some desired object. when that object has been attained, however, and it passes from the experimental to the commercial stage, edison's monetary views again come into strong play, but they take a diametrically opposite position, for he then begins immediately to plan the extreme of economy in the production of the article. a thousand and one instances could be quoted in illustration; but as they would tend to change the form of this narrative into a history of economy in manufacture, it will suffice to mention but one, and that a recent occurrence, which serves to illustrate how closely he keeps in touch with everything, and also how the inventive faculty and instinct of commercial economy run close together. it was during edison's winter stay in florida, in march, . he had reports sent to him daily from various places, and studied them carefully, for he would write frequently with comments, instructions, and suggestions; and in one case, commenting on the oiling system at the cement plant, he wrote: "your oil losses are now getting lower, i see." then, after suggesting some changes to reduce them still further, he went on to say: "here is a chance to save a mill per barrel based on your regular daily output." this thorough consideration of the smallest detail is essentially characteristic of edison, not only in economy of manufacture, but in all his work, no matter of what kind, whether it be experimenting, investigating, testing, or engineering. to follow him through the labyrinthine paths of investigation contained in the great array of laboratory note-books is to become involved in a mass of minutely detailed searches which seek to penetrate the inmost recesses of nature by an ultimate analysis of an infinite variety of parts. as the reader will obtain a fuller comprehension of this idea, and of edison's methods, by concrete illustration rather than by generalization, the authors have thought it well to select at random two typical instances of specific investigations out of the thousands that are scattered through the notebooks. these will be found in the following extracts from one of the note-books, and consist of edison's instructions to be carried out in detail by his experimenters: "take, say, lbs. hard cuban asphalt and separate all the different hydrocarbons, etc., as far as possible by means of solvents. it will be necessary first to dissolve everything out by, say, hot turpentine, then successively treat the residue with bisulphide carbon, benzol, ether, chloroform, naphtha, toluol, alcohol, and other probable solvents. after you can go no further, distil off all the solvents so the asphalt material has a tar-like consistency. be sure all the ash is out of the turpentine portion; now, after distilling the turpentine off, act on the residue with all the solvents that were used on the residue, using for the first the solvent which is least likely to dissolve a great part of it. by thus manipulating the various solvents you will be enabled probably to separate the crude asphalt into several distinct hydrocarbons. put each in a bottle after it has been dried, and label the bottle with the process, etc., so we may be able to duplicate it; also give bottle a number and describe everything fully in note-book." "destructively distil the following substances down to a point just short of carbonization, so that the residuum can be taken out of the retort, powdered, and acted on by all the solvents just as the asphalt in previous page. the distillation should be carried to, say, degrees or degrees fahr., but not continued long enough to wholly reduce mass to charcoal, but always run to blackness. separate the residuum in as many definite parts as possible, bottle and label, and keep accurate records as to process, weights, etc., so a reproduction of the experiment can at any time be made: gelatine, lbs.; asphalt, hard cuban, lbs.; coal-tar or pitch, lbs.; wood-pitch, lbs.; syrian asphalt, lbs.; bituminous coal, lbs.; cane-sugar, lbs.; glucose, lbs.; dextrine, lbs.; glycerine, lbs.; tartaric acid, lbs.; gum guiac, lbs.; gum amber, lbs.; gum tragacanth, lbs.; aniline red, lb.; aniline oil, lb.; crude anthracene, lbs.; petroleum pitch, lbs.; albumen from eggs, lbs.; tar from passing chlorine through aniline oil, lbs.; citric acid, lbs.; sawdust of boxwood, lbs.; starch, lbs.; shellac, lbs.; gum arabic, lbs.; castor oil, lbs." the empirical nature of his method will be apparent from an examination of the above items; but in pursuing it he leaves all uncertainty behind and, trusting nothing to theory, he acquires absolute knowledge. whatever may be the mental processes by which he arrives at the starting-point of any specific line of research, the final results almost invariably prove that he does not plunge in at random; indeed, as an old associate remarked: "when edison takes up any proposition in natural science, his perceptions seem to be elementally broad and analytical, that is to say, in addition to the knowledge he has acquired from books and observation, he appears to have an intuitive apprehension of the general order of things, as they might be supposed to exist in natural relation to each other. it has always seemed to me that he goes to the core of things at once." although nothing less than results from actual experiments are acceptable to him as established facts, this view of edison may also account for his peculiar and somewhat weird ability to "guess" correctly, a faculty which has frequently enabled him to take short cuts to lines of investigation whose outcome has verified in a most remarkable degree statements apparently made offhand and without calculation. mr. upton says: "one of the main impressions left upon me, after knowing mr. edison for many years, is the marvellous accuracy of his guesses. he will see the general nature of a result long before it can be reached by mathematical calculation." this was supplemented by one of his engineering staff, who remarked: "mr. edison can guess better than a good many men can figure, and so far as my experience goes, i have found that he is almost invariably correct. his guess is more than a mere starting-point, and often turns out to be the final solution of a problem. i can only account for it by his remarkable insight and wonderful natural sense of the proportion of things, in addition to which he seems to carry in his head determining factors of all kinds, and has the ability to apply them instantly in considering any mechanical problem." while this mysterious intuitive power has been of the greatest advantage in connection with the vast number of technical problems that have entered into his life-work, there have been many remarkable instances in which it has seemed little less than prophecy, and it is deemed worth while to digress to the extent of relating two of them. one day in the summer of , when the incandescent lamp-industry was still in swaddling clothes, edison was seated in the room of major eaton, vice-president of the edison electric light company, talking over business matters, when mr. upton came in from the lamp factory at menlo park, and said: "well, mr. edison, we completed a thousand lamps to-day." edison looked up and said "good," then relapsed into a thoughtful mood. in about two minutes he raised his head, and said: "upton, in fifteen years you will be making forty thousand lamps a day." none of those present ventured to make any remark on this assertion, although all felt that it was merely a random guess, based on the sanguine dream of an inventor. the business had not then really made a start, and being entirely new was without precedent upon which to base any such statement, but, as a matter of fact, the records of the lamp factory show that in its daily output of lamps was actually about forty thousand. the other instance referred to occurred shortly after the edison machine works was moved up to schenectady, in . one day, when he was at the works, edison sat down and wrote on a sheet of paper fifteen separate predictions of the growth and future of the electrical business. notwithstanding the fact that the industry was then in an immature state, and that the great boom did not set in until a few years afterward, twelve of these predictions have been fully verified by the enormous growth and development in all branches of the art. what the explanation of this gift, power, or intuition may be, is perhaps better left to the psychologist to speculate upon. if one were to ask edison, he would probably say, "hard work, not too much sleep, and free use of the imagination." whether or not it would be possible for the average mortal to arrive at such perfection of "guessing" by faithfully following this formula, even reinforced by the edison recipe for stimulating a slow imagination with pastry, is open for demonstration. somewhat allied to this curious faculty is another no less remarkable, and that is, the ability to point out instantly an error in a mass of reported experimental results. while many instances could be definitely named, a typical one, related by mr. j. d. flack, formerly master mechanic at the lamp factory, may be quoted: "during the many years of lamp experimentation, batches of lamps were sent to the photometer department for test, and edison would examine the tabulated test sheets. he ran over every item of the tabulations rapidly, and, apparently without any calculation whatever, would check off errors as fast as he came to them, saying: 'you have made a mistake; try this one over.' in every case the second test proved that he was right. this wonderful aptitude for infallibly locating an error without an instant's hesitation for mental calculation, has always appealed to me very forcibly." the ability to detect errors quickly in a series of experiments is one of the things that has enabled edison to accomplish such a vast amount of work as the records show. examples of the minuteness of detail into which his researches extend have already been mentioned, and as there are always a number of such investigations in progress at the laboratory, this ability stands edison in good stead, for he is thus enabled to follow, and, if necessary, correct each one step by step. in this he is aided by the great powers of a mind that is able to free itself from absorbed concentration on the details of one problem, and instantly to shift over and become deeply and intelligently concentrated in another and entirely different one. for instance, he may have been busy for hours on chemical experiments, and be called upon suddenly to determine some mechanical questions. the complete and easy transition is the constant wonder of his associates, for there is no confusion of ideas resulting from these quick changes, no hesitation or apparent effort, but a plunge into the midst of the new subject, and an instant acquaintance with all its details, as if he had been studying it for hours. a good stiff difficulty--one which may, perhaps, appear to be an unsurmountable obstacle--only serves to make edison cheerful, and brings out variations of his methods in experimenting. such an occurrence will start him thinking, which soon gives rise to a line of suggestions for approaching the trouble from various sides; or he will sit down and write out a series of eliminations, additions, or changes to be worked out and reported upon, with such variations as may suggest themselves during their progress. it is at such times as these that his unfailing patience and tremendous resourcefulness are in evidence. ideas and expedients are poured forth in a torrent, and although some of them have temporarily appeared to the staff to be ridiculous or irrelevant, they have frequently turned out to be the ones leading to a correct solution of the trouble. edison's inexhaustible resourcefulness and fertility of ideas have contributed largely to his great success, and have ever been a cause of amazement to those around him. frequently, when it would seem to others that the extreme end of an apparently blind alley had been reached, and that it was impossible to proceed further, he has shown that there were several ways out of it. examples without number could be quoted, but one must suffice by way of illustration. during the progress of the ore-milling work at edison, it became desirable to carry on a certain operation by some special machinery. he requested the proper person on his engineering staff to think this matter up and submit a few sketches of what he would propose to do. he brought three drawings to edison, who examined them and said none of them would answer. the engineer remarked that it was too bad, for there was no other way to do it. mr. edison turned to him quickly, and said: "do you mean to say that these drawings represent the only way to do this work?" to which he received the reply: "i certainly do." edison said nothing. this happened on a saturday. he followed his usual custom of spending sunday at home in orange. when he returned to the works on monday morning, he took with him sketches he had made, showing forty-eight other ways of accomplishing the desired operation, and laid them on the engineer's desk without a word. subsequently one of these ideas, with modifications suggested by some of the others, was put into successful practice. difficulties seem to have a peculiar charm for edison, whether they relate to large or small things; and although the larger matters have contributed most to the history of the arts, the same carefulness of thought has often been the means of leading to improvements of permanent advantage even in minor details. for instance, in the very earliest days of electric lighting, the safe insulation of two bare wires fastened together was a serious problem that was solved by him. an iron pot over a fire, some insulating material melted therein, and narrow strips of linen drawn through it by means of a wooden clamp, furnished a readily applied and adhesive insulation, which was just as perfect for the purpose as the regular and now well-known insulating tape, of which it was the forerunner. dubious results are not tolerated for a moment in edison's experimental work. rather than pass upon an uncertainty, the experiment will be dissected and checked minutely in order to obtain absolute knowledge, pro and con. this searching method is followed not only in chemical or other investigations, into which complexities might naturally enter, but also in more mechanical questions, where simplicity of construction might naturally seem to preclude possibilities of uncertainty. for instance, at the time when he was making strenuous endeavors to obtain copper wire of high conductivity, strict laboratory tests were made of samples sent by manufacturers. one of these samples tested out poorer than a previous lot furnished from the same factory. a report of this to edison brought the following note: "perhaps the ---- wire had a bad spot in it. please cut it up into lengths and test each one and send results to me immediately." possibly the electrical fraternity does not realize that this earnest work of edison, twenty-eight years ago, resulted in the establishment of the high quality of copper wire that has been the recognized standard since that time. says edison on this point: "i furnished the expert and apparatus to the ansonia brass and copper company in , and he is there yet. it was this expert and this company who pioneered high-conductivity copper for the electrical trade." nor is it generally appreciated in the industry that the adoption of what is now regarded as a most obvious proposition--the high-economy incandescent lamp--was the result of that characteristic foresight which there has been occasion to mention frequently in the course of this narrative, together with the courage and "horse-sense" which have always been displayed by the inventor in his persistent pushing out with far-reaching ideas, in the face of pessimistic opinions. as is well known, the lamps of the first ten or twelve years of incandescent lighting were of low economy, but had long life. edison's study of the subject had led him to the conviction that the greatest growth of the electric-lighting industry would be favored by a lamp taking less current, but having shorter, though commercially economical life; and after gradually making improvements along this line he developed, finally, a type of high-economy lamp which would introduce a most radical change in existing conditions, and lead ultimately to highly advantageous results. his start on this lamp, and an expressed desire to have it manufactured for regular use, filled even some of his business associates with dismay, for they could see nothing but disaster ahead in forcing such a lamp on the market. his persistence and profound conviction of the ultimate results were so strong and his arguments so sound, however, that the campaign was entered upon. although it took two or three years to convince the public of the correctness of his views, the idea gradually took strong root, and has now become an integral principle of the business. in this connection it may be noted that with remarkable prescience edison saw the coming of the modern lamps of to-day, which, by reason of their small consumption of energy to produce a given candle-power, have dismayed central-station managers. a few years ago a consumption of . watts per candle-power might safely be assumed as an excellent average, and many stations fixed their rates and business on such a basis. the results on income when the consumption, as in the new metallic-filament lamps, drops to . watts per candle can readily be imagined. edison has insisted that central stations are selling light and not current; and he points to the predicament now confronting them as truth of his assertion that when selling light they share in all the benefits of improvement, but that when they sell current the consumer gets all those benefits without division. the dilemma is encountered by central stations in a bewildered way, as a novel and unexpected experience; but edison foresaw the situation and warned against it long ago. it is one of the greatest gifts of statesmanship to see new social problems years before they arise and solve them in advance. it is one of the greatest attributes of invention to foresee and meet its own problems in exactly the same way. chapter xxv the laboratory at orange and the staff a living interrogation-point and a born investigator from childhood, edison has never been without a laboratory of some kind for upward of half a century. in youthful years, as already described in this book, he became ardently interested in chemistry, and even at the early age of twelve felt the necessity for a special nook of his own, where he could satisfy his unconvinced mind of the correctness or inaccuracy of statements and experiments contained in the few technical books then at his command. ordinarily he was like other normal lads of his age--full of boyish, hearty enjoyments--but withal possessed of an unquenchable spirit of inquiry and an insatiable desire for knowledge. being blessed with a wise and discerning mother, his aspirations were encouraged; and he was allowed a corner in her cellar. it is fair to offer tribute here to her bravery as well as to her wisdom, for at times she was in mortal terror lest the precocious experimenter below should, in his inexperience, make some awful combination that would explode and bring down the house in ruins on himself and the rest of the family. fortunately no such catastrophe happened, but young edison worked away in his embryonic laboratory, satisfying his soul and incidentally depleting his limited pocket-money to the vanishing-point. it was, indeed, owing to this latter circumstance that in a year or two his aspirations necessitated an increase of revenue; and a consequent determination to earn some money for himself led to his first real commercial enterprise as "candy butcher" on the grand trunk railroad, already mentioned in a previous chapter. it has also been related how his precious laboratory was transferred to the train; how he and it were subsequently expelled; and how it was re-established in his home, where he continued studies and experiments until the beginning of his career as a telegraph operator. the nomadic life of the next few years did not lessen his devotion to study; but it stood seriously in the way of satisfying the ever-present craving for a laboratory. the lack of such a place never prevented experimentation, however, as long as he had a dollar in his pocket and some available "hole in the wall." with the turning of the tide of fortune that suddenly carried him, in new york in , from poverty to the opulence of $ a month, he drew nearer to a realization of his cherished ambition in having money, place, and some time (stolen from sleep) for more serious experimenting. thus matters continued until, at about the age of twenty-two, edison's inventions had brought him a relatively large sum of money, and he became a very busy manufacturer, and lessee of a large shop in newark, new jersey. now, for the first time since leaving that boyish laboratory in the old home at port huron, edison had a place of his own to work in, to think in; but no one in any way acquainted with newark as a swarming centre of miscellaneous and multitudinous industries would recommend it as a cloistered retreat for brooding reverie and introspection, favorable to creative effort. some people revel in surroundings of hustle and bustle, and find therein no hindrance to great accomplishment. the electrical genius of newark is edward weston, who has thriven amid its turmoil and there has developed his beautiful instruments of precision; just as brush worked out his arc-lighting system in cleveland; or even as faraday, surrounded by the din and roar of london, laid the intellectual foundations of the whole modern science of dynamic electricity. but edison, though deaf, could not make too hurried a retreat from newark to menlo park, where, as if to justify his change of base, vital inventions soon came thick and fast, year after year. the story of menlo has been told in another chapter, but the point was not emphasized that edison then, as later, tried hard to drop manufacturing. he would infinitely rather be philosopher than producer; but somehow the necessity of manufacturing is constantly thrust back upon him by a profound--perhaps finical--sense of dissatisfaction with what other people make for him. the world never saw a man more deeply and desperately convinced that nothing in it approaches perfection. edison is the doctrine of evolution incarnate, applied to mechanics. as to the removal from newark, he may be allowed to tell his own story: "i had a shop at newark in which i manufactured stock tickers and such things. when i moved to menlo park i took out only the machinery that would be necessary for experimental purposes and left the manufacturing machinery in the place. it consisted of many milling machines and other tools for duplicating. i rented this to a man who had formerly been my bookkeeper, and who thought he could make money out of manufacturing. there was about $ , worth of machinery. he was to pay me $ a year for the rent of the machinery and keep it in good order. after i moved to menlo park, i was very busy with the telephone and phonograph, and i paid no attention to this little arrangement. about three years afterward, it occurred to me that i had not heard at all from the man who had rented this machinery, so i thought i would go over to newark and see how things were going. when i got there, i found that instead of being a machine shop it was a hotel! i have since been utterly unable to find out what became of the man or the machinery." such incidents tend to justify edison in his rather cynical remark that he has always been able to improve machinery much quicker than men. all the way up he has had discouraging experiences. "one day while i was carrying on my work in newark, a wall street broker came from the city and said he was tired of the 'street,' and wanted to go into something real. he said he had plenty of money. he wanted some kind of a job to keep his mind off wall street. so we gave him a job as a 'mucker' in chemical experiments. the second night he was there he could not stand the long hours and fell asleep on a sofa. one of the boys took a bottle of bromine and opened it under the sofa. it floated up and produced a violent effect on the mucous membrane. the broker was taken with such a fit of coughing he burst a blood-vessel, and the man who let the bromine out got away and never came back. i suppose he thought there was going to be a death. but the broker lived, and left the next day; and i have never seen him since, either." edison tells also of another foolhardy laboratory trick of the same kind: "some of my assistants in those days were very green in the business, as i did not care whether they had had any experience or not. i generally tried to turn them loose. one day i got a new man, and told him to conduct a certain experiment. he got a quart of ether and started to boil it over a naked flame. of course it caught fire. the flame was about four feet in diameter and eleven feet high. we had to call out the fire department; and they came down and put a stream through the window. that let all the fumes and chemicals out and overcame the firemen; and there was the devil to pay. another time we experimented with a tub full of soapy water, and put hydrogen into it to make large bubbles. one of the boys, who was washing bottles in the place, had read in some book that hydrogen was explosive, so he proceeded to blow the tub up. there was about four inches of soap in the bottom of the tub, fourteen inches high; and he filled it with soap bubbles up to the brim. then he took a bamboo fish-pole, put a piece of paper at the end, and touched it off. it blew every window out of the place." always a shrewd, observant, and kindly critic of character, edison tells many anecdotes of the men who gathered around him in various capacities at that quiet corner of new jersey--menlo park--and later at orange, in the llewellyn park laboratory; and these serve to supplement the main narrative by throwing vivid side-lights on the whole scene. here, for example, is a picture drawn by edison of a laboratory interlude--just a bit rabelaisian: "when experimenting at menlo park we had all the way from forty to fifty men. they worked all the time. each man was allowed from four to six hours' sleep. we had a man who kept tally, and when the time came for one to sleep, he was notified. at midnight we had lunch brought in and served at a long table at which the experimenters sat down. i also had an organ which i procured from hilbourne roosevelt--uncle of the ex-president--and we had a man play this organ while we ate our lunch. during the summertime, after we had made something which was successful, i used to engage a brick-sloop at perth amboy and take the whole crowd down to the fishing-banks on the atlantic for two days. on one occasion we got outside sandy hook on the banks and anchored. a breeze came up, the sea became rough, and a large number of the men were sick. there was straw in the bottom of the boat, which we all slept on. most of the men adjourned to this straw very sick. those who were not got a piece of rancid salt pork from the skipper, and cut a large, thick slice out of it. this was put on the end of a fish-hook and drawn across the men's faces. the smell was terrific, and the effect added to the hilarity of the excursion. "i went down once with my father and two assistants for a little fishing inside sandy hook. for some reason or other the fishing was very poor. we anchored, and i started in to fish. after fishing for several hours there was not a single bite. the others wanted to pull up anchor, but i fished two days and two nights without a bite, until they pulled up anchor and went away. i would not give up. i was going to catch that fish if it took a week." this is general. let us quote one or two piquant personal observations of a more specific nature as to the odd characters edison drew around him in his experimenting. "down at menlo park a man came in one day and wanted a job. he was a sailor. i hadn't any particular work to give him, but i had a number of small induction coils, and to give him something to do i told him to fix them up and sell them among his sailor friends. they were fixed up, and he went over to new york and sold them all. he was an extraordinary fellow. his name was adams. one day i asked him how long it was since he had been to sea, and he replied two or three years. i asked him how he had made a living in the mean time, before he came to menlo park. he said he made a pretty good living by going around to different clinics and getting $ at each clinic, because of having the worst case of heart-disease on record. i told him if that was the case he would have to be very careful around the laboratory. i had him there to help in experimenting, and the heart-disease did not seem to bother him at all. "it appeared that he had once been a slaver; and altogether he was a tough character. having no other man i could spare at that time, i sent him over with my carbon transmitter telephone to exhibit it in england. it was exhibited before the post-office authorities. professor hughes spent an afternoon in examining the apparatus, and in about a month came out with his microphone, which was absolutely nothing more nor less than my exact invention. but no mention was made of the fact that, just previously, he had seen the whole of my apparatus. adams stayed over in europe connected with the telephone for several years, and finally died of too much whiskey--but not of heart-disease. this shows how whiskey is the more dangerous of the two. "adams said that at one time he was aboard a coffee-ship in the harbor of santos, brazil. he fell down a hatchway and broke his arm. they took him up to the hospital--a portuguese one--where he could not speak the language, and they did not understand english. they treated him for two weeks for yellow fever! he was certainly the most profane man we ever had around the laboratory. he stood high in his class." and there were others of a different stripe. "we had a man with us at menlo called segredor. he was a queer kind of fellow. the men got in the habit of plaguing him; and, finally, one day he said to the assembled experimenters in the top room of the laboratory: 'the next man that does it, i will kill him.' they paid no attention to this, and next day one of them made some sarcastic remark to him. segredor made a start for his boarding-house, and when they saw him coming back up the hill with a gun, they knew there would be trouble, so they all made for the woods. one of the men went back and mollified him. he returned to his work; but he was not teased any more. at last, when i sent men out hunting for bamboo, i dispatched segredor to cuba. he arrived in havana on tuesday, and on the friday following he was buried, having died of the black vomit. on the receipt of the news of his death, half a dozen of the men wanted his job, but my searcher in the astor library reported that the chances of finding the right kind of bamboo for lamps in cuba were very small; so i did not send a substitute." another thumb-nail sketch made of one of his associates is this: "when experimenting with vacuum-pumps to exhaust the incandescent lamps, i required some very delicate and close manipulation of glass, and hired a german glass-blower who was said to be the most expert man of his kind in the united states. he was the only one who could make clinical thermometers. he was the most extraordinarily conceited man i have ever come across. his conceit was so enormous, life was made a burden to him by all the boys around the laboratory. he once said that he was educated in a university where all the students belonged to families of the aristocracy; and the highest class in the university all wore little red caps. he said he wore one." of somewhat different caliber was "honest" john kruesi, who first made his mark at menlo park, and of whom edison says: "one of the workmen i had at menlo park was john kruesi, who afterward became, from his experience, engineer of the lighting station, and subsequently engineer of the edison general electric works at schenectady. kruesi was very exact in his expressions. at the time we were promoting and putting up electric-light stations in pennsylvania, new york, and new england, there would be delegations of different people who proposed to pay for these stations. they would come to our office in new york, at ' ,' to talk over the specifications, the cost, and other things. at first, mr. kruesi was brought in, but whenever a statement was made which he could not understand or did not believe could be substantiated, he would blurt right out among these prospects that he didn't believe it. finally it disturbed these committees so much, and raised so many doubts in their minds, that one of my chief associates said: 'here, kruesi, we don't want you to come to these meetings any longer. you are too painfully honest.' i said to him: 'we always tell the truth. it may be deferred truth, but it is the truth.' he could not understand that." various reasons conspired to cause the departure from menlo park midway in the eighties. for edison, in spite of the achievement with which its name will forever be connected, it had lost all its attractions and all its possibilities. it had been outgrown in many ways, and strange as the remark may seem, it was not until he had left it behind and had settled in orange, new jersey, that he can be said to have given definite shape to his life. he was only forty in , and all that he had done up to that time, tremendous as much of it was, had worn a haphazard, bohemian air, with all the inconsequential freedom and crudeness somehow attaching to pioneer life. the development of the new laboratory in west orange, just at the foot of llewellyn park, on the orange mountains, not only marked the happy beginning of a period of perfect domestic and family life, but saw in the planning and equipment of a model laboratory plant the consummation of youthful dreams, and of the keen desire to enjoy resources adequate at any moment to whatever strain the fierce fervor of research might put upon them. curiously enough, while hitherto edison had sought to dissociate his experimenting from his manufacturing, here he determined to develop a large industry to which a thoroughly practical laboratory would be a central feature, and ever a source of suggestion and inspiration. edison's standpoint to-day is that an evil to be dreaded in manufacture is that of over-standardization, and that as soon as an article is perfect that is the time to begin improving it. but he who would improve must experiment. the orange laboratory, as originally planned, consisted of a main building two hundred and fifty feet long and three stories in height, together with four other structures, each one hundred by twenty-five feet, and only one story in height. all these were substantially built of brick. the main building was divided into five chief divisions--the library, office, machine shops, experimental and chemical rooms, and stock-room. the use of the smaller buildings will be presently indicated. surrounding the whole was erected a high picket fence with a gate placed on valley road. at this point a gate-house was provided and put in charge of a keeper, for then, as at the present time, edison was greatly sought after; and, in order to accomplish any work at all, he was obliged to deny himself to all but the most important callers. the keeper of the gate was usually chosen with reference to his capacity for stony-hearted implacability and adherence to instructions; and this choice was admirably made in one instance when a new gateman, not yet thoroughly initiated, refused admittance to edison himself. it was of no use to try and explain. to the gateman every one was persona non grata without proper credentials, and edison had to wait outside until he could get some one to identify him. on entering the main building the first doorway from the ample passage leads the visitor into a handsome library finished throughout in yellow pine, occupying the entire width of the building, and almost as broad as long. the centre of this spacious room is an open rectangular space about forty by twenty-five feet, rising clear about forty feet from the main floor to a panelled ceiling. around the sides of the room, bounding this open space, run two tiers of gallery, divided, as is the main floor beneath them; into alcoves of liberal dimensions. these alcoves are formed by racks extending from floor to ceiling, fitted with shelves, except on two sides of both galleries, where they are formed by a series of glass-fronted cabinets containing extensive collections of curious and beautiful mineralogical and geological specimens, among which is the notable tiffany-kunz collection of minerals acquired by edison some years ago. here and there in these cabinets may also be found a few models which he has used at times in his studies of anatomy and physiology. the shelves on the remainder of the upper gallery and part of those on the first gallery are filled with countless thousands of specimens of ores and minerals of every conceivable kind gathered from all parts of the world, and all tagged and numbered. the remaining shelves of the first gallery are filled with current numbers (and some back numbers) of the numerous periodicals to which edison subscribes. here may be found the popular magazines, together with those of a technical nature relating to electricity, chemistry, engineering, mechanics, building, cement, building materials, drugs, water and gas, power, automobiles, railroads, aeronautics, philosophy, hygiene, physics, telegraphy, mining, metallurgy, metals, music, and others; also theatrical weeklies, as well as the proceedings and transactions of various learned and technical societies. the first impression received as one enters on the main floor of the library and looks around is that of noble proportions and symmetry as a whole. the open central space of liberal dimensions and height, flanked by the galleries and relieved by four handsome electric-lighting fixtures suspended from the ceiling by long chains, conveys an idea of lofty spaciousness; while the huge open fireplace, surmounted by a great clock built into the wall, at one end of the room, the large rugs, the arm-chairs scattered around, the tables and chairs in the alcoves, give a general air of comfort combined with utility. in one of the larger alcoves, at the sunny end of the main hall, is edison's own desk, where he may usually be seen for a while in the early morning hours looking over his mail or otherwise busily working on matters requiring his attention. at the opposite end of the room, not far from the open fireplace, is a long table surrounded by swivel desk-chairs. it is here that directors' meetings are sometimes held, and also where weighty matters are often discussed by edison at conference with his closer associates. it has been the privilege of the writers to be present at some of these conferences, not only as participants, but in some cases as lookers-on while awaiting their turn. on such occasions an interesting opportunity is offered to study edison in his intense and constructive moods. apparently oblivious to everything else, he will listen with concentrated mind and close attention, and then pour forth a perfect torrent of ideas and plans, and, if the occasion calls for it, will turn around to the table, seize a writing-pad and make sketch after sketch with lightning-like rapidity, tearing off each sheet as filled and tossing it aside to the floor. it is an ordinary indication that there has been an interesting meeting when the caretaker about fills a waste-basket with these discarded sketches. directly opposite the main door is a beautiful marble statue purchased by edison at the paris exposition in , on the occasion of his visit there. the statue, mounted on a base three feet high, is an allegorical representation of the supremacy of electric light over all other forms of illumination, carried out by the life-size figure of a youth with half-spread wings seated upon the ruins of a street gas-lamp, holding triumphantly high above his head an electric incandescent lamp. grouped about his feet are a gear-wheel, voltaic pile, telegraph key, and telephone. this work of art was executed by a. bordiga, of rome, held a prominent place in the department devoted to italian art at the paris exposition, and naturally appealed to edison as soon as he saw it. in the middle distance, between the entrance door and this statue, has long stood a magnificent palm, but at the present writing it has been set aside to give place to a fine model of the first type of the edison poured cement house, which stands in a miniature artificial lawn upon a special table prepared for it; while on the floor at the foot of the table are specimens of the full-size molds in which the house will be cast. the balustrades of the galleries and all other available places are filled with portraits of great scientists and men of achievement, as well as with pictures of historic and scientific interest. over the fireplace hangs a large photograph showing the edison cement plant in its entire length, flanked on one end of the mantel by a bust of humboldt, and on the other by a statuette of sandow, the latter having been presented to edison by the celebrated athlete after the visit he made to orange to pose for the motion pictures in the earliest days of their development. on looking up under the second gallery at this end is seen a great roll resting in sockets placed on each side of the room. this is a huge screen or curtain which may be drawn down to the floor to provide a means of projection for lantern slides or motion pictures, for the entertainment or instruction of edison and his guests. in one of the larger alcoves is a large terrestrial globe pivoted in its special stand, together with a relief map of the united states; and here and there are handsomely mounted specimens of underground conductors and electric welds that were made at the edison machine works at schenectady before it was merged into the general electric company. on two pedestals stand, respectively, two other mementoes of the works, one a fifteen-light dynamo of the edison type, and the other an elaborate electric fan--both of them gifts from associates or employees. in noting these various objects of interest one must not lose sight of the fact that this part of the building is primarily a library, if indeed that fact did not at once impress itself by a glance at the well-filled unglazed book-shelves in the alcoves of the main floor. here edison's catholic taste in reading becomes apparent as one scans the titles of thousands of volumes ranged upon the shelves, for they include astronomy, botany, chemistry, dynamics, electricity, engineering, forestry, geology, geography, mechanics, mining, medicine, metallurgy, magnetism, philosophy, psychology, physics, steam, steam-engines, telegraphy, telephony, and many others. besides these there are the journals and proceedings of numerous technical societies; encyclopaedias of various kinds; bound series of important technical magazines; a collection of united states and foreign patents, embracing some hundreds of volumes, together with an extensive assortment of miscellaneous books of special and general interest. there is another big library up in the house on the hill--in fact, there are books upon books all over the home. and wherever they are, those books are read. as one is about to pass out of the library attention is arrested by an incongruity in the form of a cot, which stands in an alcove near the door. here edison, throwing himself down, sometimes seeks a short rest during specially long working tours. sleep is practically instantaneous and profound, and he awakes in immediate and full possession of his faculties, arising from the cot and going directly "back to the job" without a moment's hesitation, just as a person wide awake would arise from a chair and proceed to attend to something previously determined upon. immediately outside the library is the famous stock-room, about which much has been written and invented. its fame arose from the fact that edison planned it to be a repository of some quantity, great or small, of every known and possibly useful substance not readily perishable, together with the most complete assortment of chemicals and drugs that experience and knowledge could suggest. always strenuous in his experimentation, and the living embodiment of the spirit of the song, i want what i want when i want it, edison had known for years what it was to be obliged to wait, and sometimes lack, for some substance or chemical that he thought necessary to the success of an experiment. naturally impatient at any delay which interposed in his insistent and searching methods, and realizing the necessity of maintaining the inspiration attending his work at any time, he determined to have within his immediate reach the natural resources of the world. hence it is not surprising to find the stock-room not only a museum, but a sample-room of nature, as well as a supply department. to a casual visitor the first view of this heterogeneous collection is quite bewildering, but on more mature examination it resolves itself into a natural classification--as, for instance, objects pertaining to various animals, birds, and fishes, such as skins, hides, hair, fur, feathers, wool, quills, down, bristles, teeth, bones, hoofs, horns, tusks, shells; natural products, such as woods, barks, roots, leaves, nuts, seeds, herbs, gums, grains, flours, meals, bran; also minerals in great assortment; mineral and vegetable oils, clay, mica, ozokerite, etc. in the line of textiles, cotton and silk threads in great variety, with woven goods of all kinds from cheese-cloth to silk plush. as for paper, there is everything in white and colored, from thinnest tissue up to the heaviest asbestos, even a few newspapers being always on hand. twines of all sizes, inks, waxes, cork, tar, resin, pitch, turpentine, asphalt, plumbago, glass in sheets and tubes; and a host of miscellaneous articles revealed on looking around the shelves, as well as an interminable collection of chemicals, including acids, alkalies, salts, reagents, every conceivable essential oil and all the thinkable extracts. it may be remarked that this collection includes the eighteen hundred or more fluorescent salts made by edison during his experimental search for the best material for a fluoroscope in the initial x-ray period. all known metals in form of sheet, rod and tube, and of great variety in thickness, are here found also, together with a most complete assortment of tools and accessories for machine shop and laboratory work. the list is confined to the merest general mention of the scope of this remarkable and interesting collection, as specific details would stretch out into a catalogue of no small proportions. when it is stated, however, that a stock clerk is kept exceedingly busy all day answering the numerous and various demands upon him, the reader will appreciate that this comprehensive assortment is not merely a fad of edison's, but stands rather as a substantial tribute to his wide-angled view of possible requirements as his various investigations take him far afield. it has no counterpart in the world! beyond the stock-room, and occupying about half the building on the same floor, lie a machine shop, engine-room, and boiler-room. this machine shop is well equipped, and in it is constantly employed a large force of mechanics whose time is occupied in constructing the heavier class of models and mechanical devices called for by the varied experiments and inventions always going on. immediately above, on the second floor, is found another machine shop in which is maintained a corps of expert mechanics who are called upon to do work of greater precision and fineness, in the construction of tools and experimental models. this is the realm presided over lovingly by john f. ott, who has been edison's designer of mechanical devices for over forty years. he still continues to ply his craft with unabated skill and oversees the work of the mechanics as his productions are wrought into concrete shape. in one of the many experimental-rooms lining the sides of the second floor may usually be seen his younger brother, fred ott, whose skill as a dexterous manipulator and ingenious mechanic has found ample scope for exercise during the thirty-two years of his service with edison, not only at the regular laboratories, but also at that connected with the inventor's winter home in florida. still another of the ott family, the son of john f., for some years past has been on the experimental staff of the orange laboratory. although possessing in no small degree the mechanical and manipulative skill of the family, he has chosen chemistry as his special domain, and may be found with the other chemists in one of the chemical-rooms. on this same floor is the vacuum-pump room with a glass-blowers' room adjoining, both of them historic by reason of the strenuous work done on incandescent lamps and x-ray tubes within their walls. the tools and appliances are kept intact, for edison calls occasionally for their use in some of his later experiments, and there is a suspicion among the laboratory staff that some day he may resume work on incandescent lamps. adjacent to these rooms are several others devoted to physical and mechanical experiments, together with a draughting-room. last to be mentioned, but the first in order as one leaves the head of the stairs leading up to this floor, is no. , edison's favorite room, where he will frequently be found. plain of aspect, being merely a space boarded off with tongued-and-grooved planks--as all the other rooms are--without ornament or floor covering, and containing only a few articles of cheap furniture, this room seems to exercise a nameless charm for him. the door is always open, and often he can be seen seated at a plain table in the centre of the room, deeply intent on some of the numerous problems in which he is interested. the table is usually pretty well filled with specimens or data of experimental results which have been put there for his examination. at the time of this writing these specimens consist largely of sections of positive elements of the storage battery, together with many samples of nickel hydrate, to which edison devotes deep study. close at hand is a microscope which is in frequent use by him in these investigations. around the room, on shelves, are hundreds of bottles each containing a small quantity of nickel hydrate made in as many different ways, each labelled correspondingly. always at hand will be found one or two of the laboratory note-books, with frequent entries or comments in the handwriting which once seen is never forgotten. no. is at times a chemical, a physical, or a mechanical room--occasionally a combination of all, while sometimes it might be called a consultation-room or clinic--for often edison may be seen there in animated conference with a group of his assistants; but its chief distinction lies in its being one of his favorite haunts, and in the fact that within its walls have been settled many of the perplexing problems and momentous questions that have brought about great changes in electrical and engineering arts during the twenty-odd years that have elapsed since the orange laboratory was built. passing now to the top floor the visitor finds himself at the head of a broad hall running almost the entire length of the building, and lined mostly with glass-fronted cabinets containing a multitude of experimental incandescent lamps and an immense variety of models of phonographs, motors, telegraph and telephone apparatus, meters, and a host of other inventions upon which edison's energies have at one time and another been bent. here also are other cabinets containing old papers and records, while further along the wall are piled up boxes of historical models and instruments. in fact, this hallway, with its conglomerate contents, may well be considered a scientific attic. it is to be hoped that at no distant day these edisoniana will be assembled and arranged in a fireproof museum for the benefit of posterity. in the front end of the building, and extending over the library, is a large room intended originally and used for a time as the phonograph music-hall for record-making, but now used only as an experimental-room for phonograph work, as the growth of the industry has necessitated a very much larger and more central place where records can be made on a commercial scale. even the experimental work imposes no slight burden on it. on each side of the hallway above mentioned, rooms are partitioned off and used for experimental work of various kinds, mostly phonographic, although on this floor are also located the storage-battery testing-room, a chemical and physical room and edison's private office, where all his personal correspondence and business affairs are conducted by his personal secretary, mr. h. f. miller. a visitor to this upper floor of the laboratory building cannot but be impressed with a consciousness of the incessant efforts that are being made to improve the reproducing qualities of the phonograph, as he hears from all sides the sounds of vocal and instrumental music constantly varying in volume and timbre, due to changes in the experimental devices under trial. the traditions of the laboratory include cots placed in many of the rooms of these upper floors, but that was in the earlier years when the strenuous scenes of menlo park were repeated in the new quarters. edison and his closest associates were accustomed to carry their labors far into the wee sma' hours, and when physical nature demanded a respite from work, a short rest would be obtained by going to bed on a cot. one would naturally think that the wear and tear of this intense application, day after day and night after night, would have tended to induce a heaviness and gravity of demeanor in these busy men; but on the contrary, the old spirit of good-humor and prankishness was ever present, as its frequent outbursts manifested from time to time. one instance will serve as an illustration. one morning, about . , the late charles batchelor announced that he was tired and would go to bed. leaving edison and the others busily working, he went out and returned quietly in slippered feet, with his nightgown on, the handle of a feather duster stuck down his back with the feathers waving over his head, and his face marked. with unearthly howls and shrieks, a l'indien, he pranced about the room, incidentally giving edison a scare that made him jump up from his work. he saw the joke quickly, however, and joined in the general merriment caused by this prank. leaving the main building with its corps of busy experimenters, and coming out into the spacious yard, one notes the four long single-story brick structures mentioned above. the one nearest the valley road is called the galvanometer-room, and was originally intended by edison to be used for the most delicate and minute electrical measurements. in order to provide rigid resting-places for the numerous and elaborate instruments he had purchased for this purpose, the building was equipped along three-quarters of its length with solid pillars, or tables, of brick set deep in the earth. these were built up to a height of about two and a half feet, and each was surmounted with a single heavy slab of black marble. a cement floor was laid, and every precaution was taken to render the building free from all magnetic influences, so that it would be suitable for electrical work of the utmost accuracy and precision. hence, iron and steel were entirely eliminated in its construction, copper being used for fixtures for steam and water piping, and, indeed, for all other purposes where metal was employed. this room was for many years the headquarters of edison's able assistant, dr. a. e. kennelly, now professor of electrical engineering in harvard university to whose energetic and capable management were intrusted many scientific investigations during his long sojourn at the laboratory. unfortunately, however, for the continued success of edison's elaborate plans, he had not been many years established in the laboratory before a trolley road through west orange was projected and built, the line passing in front of the plant and within seventy-five feet of the galvanometer-room, thus making it practically impossible to use it for the delicate purposes for which it was originally intended. for some time past it has been used for photography and some special experiments on motion pictures as well as for demonstrations connected with physical research; but some reminders of its old-time glory still remain in evidence. in lofty and capacious glass-enclosed cabinets, in company with numerous models of edison's inventions, repose many of the costly and elaborate instruments rendered useless by the ubiquitous trolley. instruments are all about, on walls, tables, and shelves, the photometer is covered up; induction coils of various capacities, with other electrical paraphernalia, lie around, almost as if the experimenter were absent for a few days but would soon return and resume his work. in numbering the group of buildings, the galvanometer-room is no. , while the other single-story structures are numbered respectively , , and . on passing out of no. and proceeding to the succeeding building is noticed, between the two, a garage of ample dimensions and a smaller structure, at the door of which stands a concrete-mixer. in this small building edison has made some of his most important experiments in the process of working out his plans for the poured house. it is in this little place that there was developed the remarkable mixture which is to play so vital a part in the successful construction of these everlasting homes for living millions. drawing near to building no. , olfactory evidence presents itself of the immediate vicinity of a chemical laboratory. this is confirmed as one enters the door and finds that the entire building is devoted to chemistry. long rows of shelves and cabinets filled with chemicals line the room; a profusion of retorts, alembics, filters, and other chemical apparatus on numerous tables and stands, greet the eye, while a corps of experimenters may be seen busy in the preparation of various combinations, some of which are boiling or otherwise cooking under their dexterous manipulation. it would not require many visits to discover that in this room, also, edison has a favorite nook. down at the far end in a corner are a plain little table and chair, and here he is often to be found deeply immersed in a study of the many experiments that are being conducted. not infrequently he is actively engaged in the manipulation of some compound of special intricacy, whose results might be illuminative of obscure facts not patent to others than himself. here, too, is a select little library of chemical literature. the next building, no. , has a double mission--the farther half being partitioned off for a pattern-making shop, while the other half is used as a store-room for chemicals in quantity and for chemical apparatus and utensils. a grimly humorous incident, as related by one of the laboratory staff, attaches to no. . it seems that some time ago one of the helpers in the chemical department, an excitable foreigner, became dissatisfied with his wages, and after making an unsuccessful application for an increase, rushed in desperation to edison, and said "eef i not get more money i go to take ze cyanide potassia." edison gave him one quick, searching glance and, detecting a bluff, replied in an offhand manner: "there's a five-pound bottle in no. ," and turned to his work again. the foreigner did not go to get the cyanide, but gave up his job. the last of these original buildings, no. , was used for many years in edison's ore-concentrating experiments, and also for rough-and-ready operations of other kinds, such as furnace work and the like. at the present writing it is used as a general stock-room. in the foregoing details, the reader has been afforded but a passing glance at the great practical working equipment which constitutes the theatre of edison's activities, for, in taking a general view of such a unique and comprehensive laboratory plant, its salient features only can be touched upon to advantage. it would be but repetition to enumerate here the practical results of the laboratory work during the past two decades, as they appear on other pages of this work. nor can one assume for a moment that the history of edison's laboratory is a closed book. on the contrary, its territorial boundaries have been increasing step by step with the enlargement of its labors, until now it has been obliged to go outside its own proper domains to occupy some space in and about the great edison industrial buildings and space immediately adjacent. it must be borne in mind that the laboratory is only the core of a group of buildings devoted to production on a huge scale by hundreds of artisans. incidental mention has already been made of the laboratory at edison's winter residence in florida, where he goes annually to spend a month or six weeks. this is a miniature copy of the orange laboratory, with its machine shop, chemical-room, and general experimental department. while it is only in use during his sojourn there, and carries no extensive corps of assistants, the work done in it is not of a perfunctory nature, but is a continuation of his regular activities, and serves to keep him in touch with the progress of experiments at orange, and enables him to give instructions for their variation and continuance as their scope is expanded by his own investigations made while enjoying what he calls "vacation." what edison in florida speaks of as "loafing" would be for most of us extreme and healthy activity in the cooler far north. a word or two may be devoted to the visitors received at the laboratory, and to the correspondence. it might be injudicious to gauge the greatness of a man by the number of his callers or his letters; but they are at least an indication of the degree to which he interests the world. in both respects, for these forty years, edison has been a striking example of the manner in which the sentiment of hero-worship can manifest itself, and of the deep desire of curiosity to get satisfaction by personal observation or contact. edison's mail, like that of most well-known men, is extremely large, but composed in no small degree of letters--thousands of them yearly--that concern only the writers, and might well go to the waste-paper basket without prolonged consideration. the serious and important part of the mail, some personal and some business, occupies the attention of several men; all such letters finding their way promptly into the proper channels, often with a pithy endorsement by edison scribbled on the margin. what to do with a host of others it is often difficult to decide, even when written by "cranks," who imagine themselves subject to strange electrical ailments from which edison alone can relieve them. many people write asking his opinion as to a certain invention, or offering him an interest in it if he will work it out. other people abroad ask help in locating lost relatives; and many want advice as to what they shall do with their sons, frequently budding geniuses whose ability to wire a bell has demonstrated unusual qualities. a great many persons want autographs, and some would like photographs. the amazing thing about it all is that this flood of miscellaneous letters flows on in one steady, uninterrupted stream, year in and year out; always a curious psychological study in its variety and volume; and ever a proof of the fact that once a man has become established as a personality in the public eye and mind, nothing can stop the tide of correspondence that will deluge him. it is generally, in the nature of things, easier to write a letter than to make a call; and the semi-retirement of edison at a distance of an hour by train from new york stands as a means of protection to him against those who would certainly present their respects in person, if he could be got at without trouble. but it may be seriously questioned whether in the aggregate edison's visitors are less numerous or less time-consuming than his epistolary besiegers. it is the common experience of any visitor to the laboratory that there are usually several persons ahead of him, no matter what the hour of the day, and some whose business has been sufficiently vital to get them inside the porter's gate, or even into the big library and lounging-room. celebrities of all kinds and distinguished foreigners are numerous--princes, noblemen, ambassadors, artists, litterateurs, scientists, financiers, women. a very large part of the visiting is done by scientific bodies and societies; and then the whole place will be turned over to hundreds of eager, well-dressed men and women, anxious to see everything and to be photographed in the big courtyard around the central hero. nor are these groups and delegations limited to this country, for even large parties of english, dutch, italian, or japanese visitors come from time to time, and are greeted with the same ready hospitality, although edison, it is easy to see, is torn between the conflicting emotions of a desire to be courteous, and an anxiety to guard the precious hours of work, or watch the critical stage of a new experiment. one distinct group of visitors has always been constituted by the "newspaper men." hardly a day goes by that the journals do not contain some reference to edison's work or remarks; and the items are generally based on an interview. the reporters are never away from the laboratory very long; for if they have no actual mission of inquiry, there is always the chance of a good story being secured offhand; and the easy, inveterate good-nature of edison toward reporters is proverbial in the craft. indeed, it must be stated here that once in a while this confidence has been abused; that stories have been published utterly without foundation; that interviews have been printed which never took place; that articles with edison's name as author have been widely circulated, although he never saw them; and that in such ways he has suffered directly. but such occasional incidents tend in no wise to lessen edison's warm admiration of the press or his readiness to avail himself of it whenever a representative goes over to orange to get the truth or the real facts in regard to any matter of public importance. as for the newspaper clippings containing such articles, or others in which edison's name appears--they are literally like sands of the sea-shore for number; and the archives of the laboratory that preserve only a very minute percentage of them are a further demonstration of what publicity means, where a figure like edison is concerned. chapter xxvi edison in commerce and manufacture an applicant for membership in the engineers' club of philadelphia is required to give a brief statement of the professional work he has done. some years ago a certain application was made, and contained the following terse and modest sentence: "i have designed a concentrating plant and built a machine shop, etc., etc. thomas a. edison." although in the foregoing pages the reader has been made acquainted with the tremendous import of the actualities lying behind those "etc., etc.," the narrative up to this point has revealed edison chiefly in the light of inventor, experimenter, and investigator. there have been some side glimpses of the industries he has set on foot, and of their financial aspects, and a later chapter will endeavor to sum up the intrinsic value of edison's work to the world. but there are some other interesting points that may be touched on now in regard to a few of edison's financial and commercial ventures not generally known or appreciated. it is a popular idea founded on experience that an inventor is not usually a business man. one of the exceptions proving the rule may perhaps be met in edison, though all depends on the point of view. all his life he has had a great deal to do with finance and commerce, and as one looks at the magnitude of the vast industries he has helped to create, it would not be at all unreasonable to expect him to be among the multi-millionaires. that he is not is due to the absence of certain qualities, the lack of which edison is himself the first to admit. those qualities may not be amiable, but great wealth is hardly ever accumulated without them. if he had not been so intent on inventing he would have made more of his great opportunities for getting rich. if this utter detachment from any love of money for its own sake has not already been illustrated in some of the incidents narrated, one or two stories are available to emphasize the point. they do not involve any want of the higher business acumen that goes to the proper conduct of affairs. it was said of gladstone that he was the greatest chancellor of the exchequer england ever saw, but that as a retail merchant he would soon have ruined himself by his bookkeeping. edison confesses that he has never made a cent out of his patents in electric light and power--in fact, that they have been an expense to him, and thus a free gift to the world. [ ] this was true of the european patents as well as the american. "i endeavored to sell my lighting patents in different countries of europe, and made a contract with a couple of men. on account of their poor business capacity and lack of practicality, they conveyed under the patents all rights to different corporations but in such a way and with such confused wording of the contracts that i never got a cent. one of the companies started was the german edison, now the great allgemeine elektricitaets gesellschaft. the english company i never got anything for, because a lawyer had originally advised drexel, morgan & co. as to the signing of a certain document, and said it was all right for me to sign. i signed, and i never got a cent because there was a clause in it which prevented me from ever getting anything." a certain easy-going belief in human nature, and even a certain carelessness of attitude toward business affairs, are here revealed. we have already pointed out two instances where in his dealings with the western union company he stipulated that payments of $ per year for seventeen years were to be made instead of $ , in cash, evidently forgetful of the fact that the annual sum so received was nothing more than legal interest, which could have been earned indefinitely if the capital had been only insisted upon. in later life edison has been more circumspect, but throughout his early career he was constantly getting into some kind of scrape. of one experience he says: [footnote : edison received some stock from the parent lighting company, but as the capital stock of that company was increased from time to time, his proportion grew smaller, and he ultimately used it to obtain ready money with which to create and finance the various "shops" in which were manufactured the various items of electric- lighting apparatus necessary to exploit his system. besides, he was obliged to raise additional large sums of money from other sources for this purpose. he thus became a manufacturer with capital raised by himself, and the stock that he received later, on the formation of the general electric company, was not for his electric-light patents, but was in payment for his manufacturing establishments, which had then grown to be of great commercial importance.] "in the early days i was experimenting with metallic filaments for the incandescent light, and sent a certain man out to california in search of platinum. he found a considerable quantity in the sluice-boxes of the cherokee valley mining company; but just then he found also that fruit-gardening was the thing, and dropped the subject. he then came to me and said that if he could raise $ he could go into some kind of orchard arrangement out there, and would give me half the profits. i was unwilling to do it, not having very much money just then, but his persistence was such that i raised the money and gave it to him. he went back to california, and got into mining claims and into fruit-growing, and became one of the politicians of the coast, and, i believe, was on the staff of the governor of the state. a couple of years ago he wounded his daughter and shot himself because he had become ruined financially. i never heard from him after he got the money." edison tells of another similar episode. "i had two men working for me--one a german, the other a jew. they wanted me to put up a little money and start them in a shop in new york to make repairs, etc. i put up $ , and was to get half of the profits, and each of them one-quarter. i never got anything for it. a few years afterward i went to see them, and asked what they were doing, and said i would like to sell my interest. they said: 'sell out what?' 'why,' i said, 'my interest in the machinery.' they said: 'you don't own this machinery. this is our machinery. you have no papers to show anything. you had better get out.' i am inclined to think that the percentage of crooked people was smaller when i was young. it has been steadily rising, and has got up to a very respectable figure now. i hope it will never reach par." to which lugubrious episode so provocative of cynicism, edison adds: "when i was a young fellow the first thing i did when i went to a town was to put something into the savings-bank and start an account. when i came to new york i put $ into a savings-bank under the new york sun office. after the money had been in about two weeks the bank busted. that was in . in i got back $ . , with a charge for $ . for law expenses. that shows the beauty of new york receiverships." it is hardly to be wondered at that edison is rather frank and unsparing in some of his criticisms of shady modern business methods, and the mention of the following incident always provokes him to a fine scorn. "i had an interview with one of the wealthiest men in new york. he wanted me to sell out my associates in the electric lighting business, and offered me all i was going to get and $ , besides. of course i would not do it. i found out that the reason for this offer was that he had had trouble with mr. morgan, and wanted to get even with him." wall street is, in fact, a frequent object of rather sarcastic reference, applying even to its regular and probably correct methods of banking. "when i was running my ore-mine," he says, "and got up to the point of making shipments to john fritz, i didn't have capital enough to carry the ore, so i went to j. p. morgan & co. and said i wanted them to give me a letter to the city bank. i wanted to raise some money. i got a letter to mr. stillman; and went over and told him i wanted to open an account and get some loans and discounts. he turned me down, and would not do it. 'well,' i said, 'isn't it banking to help a man in this way?' he said: 'what you want is a partner.' i felt very much crestfallen. i went over to a bank in newark--the merchants'--and told them what i wanted. they said: 'certainly, you can have the money.' i made my deposit, and they pulled me through all right. my idea of wall street banking has been very poor since that time. merchant banking seems to be different." as a general thing, edison has had no trouble in raising money when he needed it, the reason being that people have faith in him as soon as they come to know him. a little incident bears on this point. "in operating the schenectady works mr. insull and i had a terrible burden. we had enormous orders and little money, and had great difficulty to meet our payrolls and buy supplies. at one time we had so many orders on hand we wanted $ , worth of copper, and didn't have a cent to buy it. we went down to the ansonia brass and copper company, and told mr. cowles just how we stood. he said: 'i will see what i can do. will you let my bookkeeper look at your books?' we said: 'come right up and look them over.' he sent his man up and found we had the orders and were all right, although we didn't have the money. he said: 'i will let you have the copper.' and for years he trusted us for all the copper we wanted, even if we didn't have the money to pay for it." it is not generally known that edison, in addition to being a newsboy and a contributor to the technical press, has also been a backer and an "angel" for various publications. this is perhaps the right place at which to refer to the matter, as it belongs in the list of his financial or commercial enterprises. edison sums up this chapter of his life very pithily. "i was interested, as a telegrapher, in journalism, and started the telegraph journal, and got out about a dozen numbers when it was taken over by w. j. johnston, who afterward founded the electrical world on it as an offshoot from the operator. i also started science, and ran it for a year and a half. it cost me too much money to maintain, and i sold it to gardiner hubbard, the father-in-law of alexander graham bell. he carried it along for years." both these papers are still in prosperous existence, particularly the electrical world, as the recognized exponent of electrical development in america, where now the public spends as much annually for electricity as it does for daily bread. from all that has been said above it will be understood that edison's real and remarkable capacity for business does not lie in ability to "take care of himself," nor in the direction of routine office practice, nor even in ordinary administrative affairs. in short, he would and does regard it as a foolish waste of his time to give attention to the mere occupancy of a desk. his commercial strength manifests itself rather in the outlining of matters relating to organization and broad policy with a sagacity arising from a shrewd perception and appreciation of general business requirements and conditions, to which should be added his intensely comprehensive grasp of manufacturing possibilities and details, and an unceasing vigilance in devising means of improving the quality of products and increasing the economy of their manufacture. like other successful commanders, edison also possesses the happy faculty of choosing suitable lieutenants to carry out his policies and to manage the industries he has created, such, for instance, as those with which this chapter has to deal--namely, the phonograph, motion picture, primary battery, and storage battery enterprises. the portland cement business has already been dealt with separately, and although the above remarks are appropriate to it also, edison being its head and informing spirit, the following pages are intended to be devoted to those industries that are grouped around the laboratory at orange, and that may be taken as typical of edison's methods on the manufacturing side. within a few months after establishing himself at the present laboratory, in , edison entered upon one of those intensely active periods of work that have been so characteristic of his methods in commercializing his other inventions. in this case his labors were directed toward improving the phonograph so as to put it into thoroughly practicable form, capable of ordinary use by the public at large. the net result of this work was the general type of machine of which the well-known phonograph of today is a refinement evolved through many years of sustained experiment and improvement. after a considerable period of strenuous activity in the eighties, the phonograph and its wax records were developed to a sufficient degree of perfection to warrant him in making arrangements for their manufacture and commercial introduction. at this time the surroundings of the orange laboratory were distinctly rural in character. immediately adjacent to the main building and the four smaller structures, constituting the laboratory plant, were grass meadows that stretched away for some considerable distance in all directions, and at its back door, so to speak, ducks paddled around and quacked in a pond undisturbed. being now ready for manufacturing, but requiring more facilities, edison increased his real-estate holdings by purchasing a large tract of land lying contiguous to what he already owned. at one end of the newly acquired land two unpretentious brick structures were erected, equipped with first-class machinery, and put into commission as shops for manufacturing phonographs and their record blanks; while the capacious hall forming the third story of the laboratory, over the library, was fitted up and used as a music-room where records were made. thus the modern edison phonograph made its modest debut in , in what was then called the "improved" form to distinguish it from the original style of machine he invented in , in which the record was made on a sheet of tin-foil held in place upon a metallic cylinder. the "improved" form is the general type so well known for many years and sold at the present day--viz., the spring or electric motor-driven machine with the cylindrical wax record--in fact, the regulation edison phonograph. it did not take a long time to find a market for the products of the newly established factory, for a world-wide public interest in the machine had been created by the appearance of newspaper articles from time to time, announcing the approaching completion by edison of his improved phonograph. the original (tin-foil) machine had been sufficient to illustrate the fact that the human voice and other sounds could be recorded and reproduced, but such a type of machine had sharp limitations in general use; hence the coming into being of a type that any ordinary person could handle was sufficient of itself to insure a market. thus the demand for the new machines and wax records grew apace as the corporations organized to handle the business extended their lines. an examination of the newspaper files of the years , , and will reveal the great excitement caused by the bringing out of the new phonograph, and how frequently and successfully it was employed in public entertainments, either for the whole or part of an evening. in this and other ways it became popularized to a still further extent. this led to the demand for a nickel-in-the-slot machine, which, when established, became immensely popular over the whole country. in its earlier forms the "improved" phonograph was not capable of such general non-expert handling as is the machine of the present day, and consequently there was a constant endeavor on edison's part to simplify the construction of the machine and its manner of operation. experimentation was incessantly going on with this in view, and in the processes of evolution changes were made here and there that resulted in a still greater measure of perfection. in various ways there was a continual slow and steady growth of the industry thus created, necessitating the erection of many additional buildings as the years passed by. during part of the last decade there was a lull, caused mostly from the failure of corporate interests to carry out their contract relations with edison, and he was thereby compelled to resort to legal proceedings, at the end of which he bought in the outstanding contracts and assumed command of the business personally. being thus freed from many irksome restrictions that had hung heavily upon him, edison now proceeded to push the phonograph business under a broader policy than that which obtained under his previous contractual relations. with the ever-increasing simplification and efficiency of the machine and a broadening of its application, the results of this policy were manifested in a still more rapid growth of the business that necessitated further additions to the manufacturing plant. and thus matters went on until the early part of the present decade, when the factory facilities were becoming so rapidly outgrown as to render radical changes necessary. it was in these circumstances that edison's sagacity and breadth of business capacity came to the front. with characteristic boldness and foresight he planned the erection of the series of magnificent concrete buildings that now stand adjacent to and around the laboratory, and in which the manufacturing plant is at present housed. there was no narrowness in his views in designing these buildings, but, on the contrary, great faith in the future, for his plans included not only the phonograph industry, but provided also for the coming development of motion pictures and of the primary and storage battery enterprises. in the aggregate there are twelve structures (including the administration building), of which six are of imposing dimensions, running from feet long by feet wide to feet in length by feet in width, all these larger buildings, except one, being five stories in height. they are constructed entirely of reinforced concrete with edison cement, including walls, floors, and stairways, thus eliminating fire hazard to the utmost extent, and insuring a high degree of protection, cleanliness, and sanitation. as fully three-fourths of the area of their exterior framework consists of windows, an abundance of daylight is secured. these many advantages, combined with lofty ceilings on every floor, provide ideal conditions for the thousands of working people engaged in this immense plant. in addition to these twelve concrete structures there are a few smaller brick and wooden buildings on the grounds, in which some special operations are conducted. these, however, are few in number, and at some future time will be concentrated in one or more additional concrete buildings. it will afford a clearer idea of the extent of the industries clustered immediately around the laboratory when it is stated that the combined floor space which is occupied by them in all these buildings is equivalent in the aggregate to over fourteen acres. it would be instructive, but scarcely within the scope of the narrative, to conduct the reader through this extensive plant and see its many interesting operations in detail. it must suffice, however, to note its complete and ample equipment with modern machinery of every kind applicable to the work; its numerous (and some of them wonderfully ingenious) methods, processes, machines, and tools specially designed or invented for the manufacture of special parts and supplemental appliances for the phonograph or other edison products; and also to note the interesting variety of trades represented in the different departments, in which are included chemists, electricians, electrical mechanicians, machinists, mechanics, pattern-makers, carpenters, cabinet-makers, varnishers, japanners, tool-makers, lapidaries, wax experts, photographic developers and printers, opticians, electroplaters, furnacemen, and others, together with factory experimenters and a host of general employees, who by careful training have become specialists and experts in numerous branches of these industries. edison's plans for this manufacturing plant were sufficiently well outlined to provide ample capacity for the natural growth of the business; and although that capacity (so far as phonographs is concerned) has actually reached an output of over complete phonographs per week, and upward of , molded records per day--with a pay-roll embracing over employees, including office force--and amounting to about $ , per week--the limits of production have not yet been reached. the constant outpouring of products in such large quantities bespeaks the unremitting activities of an extensive and busy selling organization to provide for their marketing and distribution. this important department (the national phonograph company), in all its branches, from president to office-boy, includes about two hundred employees on its office pay-roll, and makes its headquarters in the administration building, which is one of the large concrete structures above referred to. the policy of the company is to dispose of its wares through regular trade channels rather than to deal direct with the public, trusting to local activity as stimulated by a liberal policy of national advertising. thus, there has been gradually built up a very extensive business until at the present time an enormous output of phonographs and records is distributed to retail customers in the united states and canada through the medium of about one hundred and fifty jobbers and over thirteen thousand dealers. the edison phonograph industry thus organized is helped by frequent conventions of this large commercial force. besides this, the national phonograph company maintains a special staff for carrying on the business with foreign countries. while the aggregate transactions of this department are not as extensive as those for the united states and canada, they are of considerable volume, as the foreign office distributes in bulk a very large number of phonographs and records to selling companies and agencies in europe, asia, australia, japan, and, indeed, to all the countries of the civilized world. [ ] like england's drumbeat, the voice of the edison phonograph is heard around the world in undying strains throughout the twenty-four hours. [footnote : it may be of interest to the reader to note some parts of the globe to which shipments of phonographs and records are made: samoan islands falkland islands siam corea crete island paraguay chile canary islands egypt british east africa cape colony portuguese east africa liberia java straits settlements madagascar fanning islands new zealand french indo-china morocco ecuador brazil madeira south africa azores manchuria ceylon sierra leone] in addition to the main manufacturing plant at orange, another important adjunct must not be forgotten, and that is, the recording department in new york city, where the master records are made under the superintendence of experts who have studied the intricacies of the art with edison himself. this department occupies an upper story in a lofty building, and in its various rooms may be seen and heard many prominent musicians, vocalists, speakers, and vaudeville artists studiously and busily engaged in making the original records, which are afterward sent to orange, and which, if approved by the expert committee, are passed on to the proper department for reproduction in large quantities. when we consider the subject of motion pictures we find a similarity in general business methods, for while the projecting machines and copies of picture films are made in quantity at the orange works (just as phonographs and duplicate records are so made), the original picture, or film, like the master record, is made elsewhere. there is this difference, however: that, from the particular nature of the work, practically all master records are made at one convenient place, while the essential interest in some motion pictures lies in the fact that they are taken in various parts of the world, often under exceptional circumstances. the "silent drama," however, calls also for many representations which employ conventional acting, staging, and the varied appliances of stagecraft. hence, edison saw early the necessity of providing a place especially devised and arranged for the production of dramatic performances in pantomime. it is a far cry from the crude structure of early days--the "black maria" of , swung around on its pivot in the orange laboratory yard--to the well-appointed edison theatres, or pantomime studios, in new york city. the largest of these is located in the suburban borough of the bronx, and consists of a three-story-and-basement building of reinforced concrete, in which are the offices, dressing-rooms, wardrobe and property-rooms, library and developing department. contiguous to this building, and connected with it, is the theatre proper, a large and lofty structure whose sides and roof are of glass, and whose floor space is sufficiently ample for six different sets of scenery at one time, with plenty of room left for a profusion of accessories, such as tables, chairs, pianos, bunch-lights, search-lights, cameras, and a host of varied paraphernalia pertaining to stage effects. the second edison theatre, or studio, is located not far from the shopping district in new york city. in all essential features, except size and capacity, it is a duplicate of the one in the bronx, of which it is a supplement. to a visitor coming on the floor of such a theatre for the first time there is a sense of confusion in beholding the heterogeneous "sets" of scenery and the motley assemblage of characters represented in the various plays in the process of "taking," or rehearsal. while each set constitutes virtually a separate stage, they are all on the same floor, without wings or proscenium-arches, and separated only by a few feet. thus, for instance, a japanese house interior may be seen cheek by jowl with an ordinary prison cell, flanked by a mining-camp, which in turn stands next to a drawing-room set, and in each a set of appropriate characters in pantomimic motion. the action is incessant, for in any dramatic representation intended for the motion-picture film every second counts. the production of several completed plays per week necessitates the employment of a considerable staff of people of miscellaneous trades and abilities. at each of these two studios there is employed a number of stage-directors, scene-painters, carpenters, property-men, photographers, costumers, electricians, clerks, and general assistants, besides a capable stock company of actors and actresses, whose generous numbers are frequently augmented by the addition of a special star, or by a number of extra performers, such as rough riders or other specialists. it may be, occasionally, that the exigencies of the occasion require the work of a performing horse, dog, or other animal. no matter what the object required may be, whether animate or inanimate, if it is necessary for the play it is found and pressed into service. these two studios, while separated from the main plant, are under the same general management, and their original negative films are forwarded as made to the orange works, where the large copying department is located in one of the concrete buildings. here, after the film has been passed upon by a committee, a considerable number of positive copies are made by ingenious processes, and after each one is separately tested, or "run off," in one or other of the three motion-picture theatres in the building, they are shipped out to film exchanges in every part of the country. how extensive this business has become may be appreciated when it is stated that at the orange plant there are produced at this time over eight million feet of motion-picture film per year. and edison's company is only one of many producers. another of the industries at the orange works is the manufacture of projecting kinetoscopes, by means of which the motion pictures are shown. while this of itself is also a business of considerable magnitude in its aggregate yearly transactions, it calls for no special comment in regard to commercial production, except to note that a corps of experimenters is constantly employed refining and perfecting details of the machine. its basic features of operation as conceived by edison remain unchanged. on coming to consider the edison battery enterprises, we must perforce extend the territorial view to include a special chemical-manufacturing plant, which is in reality a branch of the laboratory and the orange works, although actually situated about three miles away. both the primary and the storage battery employ certain chemical products as essential parts of their elements, and indeed owe their very existence to the peculiar preparation and quality of such products, as exemplified by edison's years of experimentation and research. hence the establishment of his own chemical works at silver lake, where, under his personal supervision, the manufacture of these products is carried on in charge of specially trained experts. at the present writing the plant covers about seven acres of ground; but there is ample room for expansion, as edison, with wise forethought, secured over forty acres of land, so as to be prepared for developments. not only is the silver lake works used for the manufacture of the chemical substances employed in the batteries, but it is the plant at which the edison primary battery is wholly assembled and made up for distribution to customers. this in itself is a business of no small magnitude, having grown steadily on its merits year by year until it has now arrived at a point where its sales run into the hundreds of thousands of cells per annum, furnished largely to the steam railroads of the country for their signal service. as to the storage battery, the plant at silver lake is responsible only for the production of the chemical compounds, nickel-hydrate and iron oxide, which enter into its construction. all the mechanical parts, the nickel plating, the manufacture of nickel flake, the assembling and testing, are carried on at the orange works in two of the large concrete buildings above referred to. a visit to this part of the plant reveals an amazing fertility of resourcefulness and ingenuity in the devising of the special machines and appliances employed in constructing the mechanical parts of these cells, for it is practically impossible to fashion them by means of machinery and tools to be found in the open market, notwithstanding the immense variety that may be there obtained. since edison completed his final series of investigations on his storage battery and brought it to its present state of perfection, the commercial values have increased by leaps and bounds. the battery, as it was originally put out some years ago, made for itself an enviable reputation; but with its improved form there has come a vast increase of business. although the largest of the concrete buildings where its manufacture is carried on is over four hundred feet long and four stories in height, it has already become necessary to plan extensions and enlargements of the plant in order to provide for the production of batteries to fill the present demands. it was not until the summer of that edison was willing to pronounce the final verdict of satisfaction with regard to this improved form of storage battery; but subsequent commercial results have justified his judgment, and it is not too much to predict that in all probability the business will assume gigantic proportions within a very few years. at the present time ( ) the edison storage-battery enterprise is in its early stages of growth, and its status may be compared with that of the electric-light system about the year . there is one more industry, though of comparatively small extent, that is included in the activities of the orange works, namely, the manufacture and sale of the bates numbering machine. this is a well-known article of commerce, used in mercantile establishments for the stamping of consecutive, duplicate, and manifold numbers on checks and other documents. it is not an invention of edison, but the organization owning it, together with the patent rights, were acquired by him some years ago, and he has since continued and enlarged the business both in scope and volume, besides, of course, improving and perfecting the apparatus itself. these machines are known everywhere throughout the country, and while the annual sales are of comparatively moderate amount in comparison with the totals of the other edison industries at orange, they represent in the aggregate a comfortable and encouraging business. in this brief outline review of the flourishing and extensive commercial enterprises centred around the orange laboratory, the facts, it is believed, contain a complete refutation of the idea that an inventor cannot be a business man. they also bear abundant evidence of the compatibility of these two widely divergent gifts existing, even to a high degree, in the same person. a striking example of the correctness of this proposition is afforded in the present case, when it is borne in mind that these various industries above described (whose annual sales run into many millions of dollars) owe not only their very creation (except the bates machine) and existence to edison's inventive originality and commercial initiative, but also their continued growth and prosperity to his incessant activities in dealing with their multifarious business problems. in publishing a portrait of edison this year, one of the popular magazines placed under it this caption: "were the age called upon to pay thomas a. edison all it owes to him, the age would have to make an assignment." the present chapter will have thrown some light on the idiosyncrasies of edison as financier and as manufacturer, and will have shown that while the claim thus suggested may be quite good, it will certainly never be pressed or collected. chapter xxvii the value of edison's inventions to the world if the world were to take an account of stock, so to speak, and proceed in orderly fashion to marshal its tangible assets in relation to dollars and cents, the natural resources of our globe, from centre to circumference, would head the list. next would come inventors, whose value to the world as an asset could be readily estimated from an increase of its wealth resulting from the actual transformations of these resources into items of convenience and comfort through the exercise of their inventive ingenuity. inventors of practical devices may be broadly divided into two classes--first, those who may be said to have made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before; and, second, great inventors, who have made grass grow plentifully on hitherto unproductive ground. the vast majority of practical inventors belong to and remain in the first of these divisions, but there have been, and probably always will be, a less number who, by reason of their greater achievements, are entitled to be included in both classes. of these latter, thomas alva edison is one, but in the pages of history he stands conspicuously pre-eminent--a commanding towering figure, even among giants. the activities of edison have been of such great range, and his conquests in the domains of practical arts so extensive and varied, that it is somewhat difficult to estimate with any satisfactory degree of accuracy the money value of his inventions to the world of to-day, even after making due allowance for the work of other great inventors and the propulsive effect of large amounts of capital thrown into the enterprises which took root, wholly or in part, through the productions of his genius and energies. this difficulty will be apparent, for instance, when we consider his telegraph and telephone inventions. these were absorbed in enterprises already existing, and were the means of assisting their rapid growth and expansion, particularly the telephone industry. again, in considering the fact that edison was one of the first in the field to design and perfect a practical and operative electric railway, the main features of which are used in all electric roads of to-day, we are confronted with the problem as to what proportion of their colossal investment and earnings should be ascribed to him. difficulties are multiplied when we pause for a moment to think of edison's influence on collateral branches of business. in the public mind he is credited with the invention of the incandescent electric light, the phonograph, and other widely known devices; but how few realize his actual influence on other trades that are not generally thought of in connection with these things. for instance, let us note what a prominent engine builder, the late gardiner c. sims, has said: "watt, corliss, and porter brought forward steam-engines to a high state of proficiency, yet it remained for mr. edison to force better proportions, workmanship, designs, use of metals, regulation, the solving of the complex problems of high speed and endurance, and the successful development of the shaft governor. mr. edison is preeminent in the realm of engineering." the phenomenal growth of the copper industry was due to a rapid and ever-increasing demand, owing to the exploitation of the telephone, electric light, electric motor, and electric railway industries. without these there might never have been the romance of "coppers" and the rise and fall of countless fortunes. and although one cannot estimate in definite figures the extent of edison's influence in the enormous increase of copper production, it is to be remembered that his basic inventions constitute a most important factor in the demand for the metal. besides, one must also give him the credit, as already noted, for having recognized the necessity for a pure quality of copper for electric conductors, and for his persistence in having compelled the manufacturers of that period to introduce new and additional methods of refinement so as to bring about that result, which is now a sine qua non. still considering his influence on other staples and collateral trades, let us enumerate briefly and in a general manner some of the more important and additional ones that have been not merely stimulated, but in many cases the business and sales have been directly increased and new arts established through the inventions of this one man--namely, iron, steel, brass, zinc, nickel, platinum ($ per ounce in , now $ an ounce), rubber, oils, wax, bitumen, various chemical compounds, belting, boilers, injectors, structural steel, iron tubing, glass, silk, cotton, porcelain, fine woods, slate, marble, electrical measuring instruments, miscellaneous machinery, coal, wire, paper, building materials, sapphires, and many others. the question before us is, to what extent has edison added to the wealth of the world by his inventions and his energy and perseverance? it will be noted from the foregoing that no categorical answer can be offered to such a question, but sufficient material can be gathered from a statistical review of the commercial arts directly influenced to afford an approximate idea of the increase in national wealth that has been affected by or has come into being through the practical application of his ideas. first of all, as to inventions capable of fairly definite estimate, let us mention the incandescent electric light and systems of distribution of electric light, heat, and power, which may justly be considered as the crowning inventions of edison's life. until october , , there was nothing in existence resembling our modern incandescent lamp. on that date, as we have seen in a previous chapter, edison's labors culminated in his invention of a practical incandescent electric lamp embodying absolutely all the essentials of the lamp of to-day, thus opening to the world the doors of a new art and industry. to-day there are in the united states more than , , of these lamps, connected to existing central-station circuits in active operation. such circuits necessarily imply the existence of central stations with their equipment. until the beginning of there were only a few arc-lighting stations in existence for the limited distribution of current. at the present time there are over central stations in this country for the distribution of electric current for light, heat, and power, with capital obligations amounting to not less than $ , , , . besides the above-named , , incandescent lamps connected to their mains, there are about , arc lamps and , motors, using , horse-power, besides countless fan motors and electric heating and cooking appliances. when it is stated that the gross earnings of these central stations approximate the sum of $ , , yearly, the significant import of these statistics of an art that came so largely from edison's laboratory about thirty years ago will undoubtedly be apparent. but the above are not by any means all the facts relating to incandescent electric lighting in the united states, for in addition to central stations there are upward of , isolated or private plants in mills, factories, steamships, hotels, theatres, etc., owned by the persons or concerns who operate them. these plants represent an approximate investment of $ , , , and the connection of not less than , , incandescent lamps or their equivalent. then there are the factories where these incandescent lamps are made, about forty in number, representing a total investment that may be approximated at $ , , . it is true that many of these factories are operated by other than the interests which came into control of the edison patents (general electric company), but the , , incandescent electric lamps now annually made are broadly covered in principle by edison's fundamental ideas and patents. it will be noted that these figures are all in round numbers, but they are believed to be well within the mark, being primarily founded upon the special reports of the census bureau issued in and , with the natural increase from that time computed by experts who are in position to obtain the facts. it would be manifestly impossible to give exact figures of such a gigantic and swiftly moving industry, whose totals increase from week to week. the reader will naturally be disposed to ask whether it is intended to claim that edison has brought about all this magnificent growth of the electric-lighting art. the answer to this is decidedly in the negative, for the fact is that he laid some of the foundation and erected a building thereon, and in the natural progressive order of things other inventors of more or less fame have laid substructures or added a wing here and a story there until the resultant great structure has attained such proportions as to evoke the admiration of the beholder; but the old foundation and the fundamental building still remain to support other parts. in other words, edison created the incandescent electric lamp, and invented certain broad and fundamental systems of distribution of current, with all the essential devices of detail necessary for successful operation. these formed a foundation. he also spent great sums of money and devoted several years of patient labor in the early practical exploitation of the dynamo and central station and isolated plants, often under, adverse and depressing circumstances, with a dogged determination that outlived an opposition steadily threatening defeat. these efforts resulted in the firm commercial establishment of modern electric lighting. it is true that many important inventions of others have a distinguished place in the art as it is exploited today, but the fact remains that the broad essentials, such as the incandescent lamp, systems of distribution, and some important details, are not only universally used, but are as necessary to-day for successful commercial practice as they were when edison invented them many years ago. the electric railway next claims our consideration, but we are immediately confronted by a difficulty which seems insurmountable when we attempt to formulate any definite estimate of the value and influence of edison's pioneer work and inventions. there is one incontrovertible fact--namely, that he was the first man to devise, construct, and operate from a central station a practicable, life-size electric railroad, which was capable of transporting and did transport passengers and freight at variable speeds over varying grades, and under complete control of the operator. these are the essential elements in all electric railroading of the present day; but while edison's original broad ideas are embodied in present practice, the perfection of the modern electric railway is greatly due to the labors and inventions of a large number of other well-known inventors. there was no reason why edison could not have continued the commercial development of the electric railway after he had helped to show its practicability in , , and , just as he had completed his lighting system, had it not been that his financial allies of the period lacked faith in the possibilities of electric railroads, and therefore declined to furnish the money necessary for the purpose of carrying on the work. with these facts in mind, we shall ask the reader to assign to edison a due proportion of credit for his pioneer and basic work in relation to the prodigious development of electric railroading that has since taken place. the statistics of for american street and elevated railways show that within twenty-five years the electric-railway industry has grown to embrace , miles of track on streets and for elevated railways, operated under the ownership of separate companies, whose total capitalization amounted to the enormous sum of $ , , , . in the equipments owned by such companies there are included , electric cars and , trailers and others, making a total of , of such vehicles. these cars and equipments earned over $ , , in , in giving the public transportation, at a cost, including transfers, of a little over three cents per passenger, for whom a fifteen-mile ride would be possible. it is the cheapest transportation in the world. some mention should also be made of the great electrical works of the country, in which the dynamos, motors, and other varied paraphernalia are made for electric lighting, electric railway, and other purposes. the largest of these works is undoubtedly that of the general electric company at schenectady, new york, a continuation and enormous enlargement of the shops which edison established there in . this plant at the present time embraces over acres, of which sixty acres are covered by fifty large and over one hundred small buildings; besides which the company also owns other large plants elsewhere, representing a total investment approximating the sum of $ , , up to . the productions of the general electric company alone average annual sales of nearly $ , , , but they do not comprise the total of the country's manufactures in these lines. turning our attention now to the telephone, we again meet a condition that calls for thoughtful consideration before we can properly appreciate how much the growth of this industry owes to edison's inventive genius. in another place there has already been told the story of the telephone, from which we have seen that to alexander graham bell is due the broad idea of transmission of speech by means of an electrical circuit; also that he invented appropriate instruments and devices through which he accomplished this result, although not to that extent which gave promise of any great commercial practicability for the telephone as it then existed. while the art was in this inefficient condition, edison went to work on the subject, and in due time, as we have already learned, invented and brought out the carbon transmitter, which is universally acknowledged to have been the needed device that gave to the telephone the element of commercial practicability, and has since led to its phenomenally rapid adoption and world-wide use. it matters not that others were working in the same direction, edison was legally adjudicated to have been the first to succeed in point of time, and his inventions were put into actual use, and may be found in principle in every one of the , , telephones which are estimated to be employed in the country at the present day. basing the statements upon facts shown by the census reports of and , and adding thereto the growth of the industry since that time, we find on a conservative estimate that at this writing the investment has been not less than $ , , in now existing telephone systems, while no fewer than , , , talks went over the lines during the year . these figures relate only to telephone systems, and do not include any details regarding the great manufacturing establishments engaged in the construction of telephone apparatus, of which there is a production amounting to at least $ , , per annum. leaving the telephone, let us now turn our attention to the telegraph, and endeavor to show as best we can some idea of the measure to which it has been affected by edison's inventions. although, as we have seen in a previous part of this book, his earliest fame arose from his great practical work in telegraphic inventions and improvements, there is no way in which any definite computation can be made of the value of his contributions in the art except, perhaps, in the case of his quadruplex, through which alone it is estimated that there has been saved from $ , , to $ , , in the cost of line construction in this country. if this were the only thing that he had ever accomplished, it would entitle him to consideration as an inventor of note. the quadruplex, however, has other material advantages, but how far they and the natural growth of the business have contributed to the investment and earnings of the telegraph companies, is beyond practicable computation. it would, perhaps, be interesting to speculate upon what might have been the growth of the telegraph and the resultant benefit to the community had edison's automatic telegraph inventions been allowed to take their legitimate place in the art, but we shall not allow ourselves to indulge in flights of fancy, as the value of this chapter rests not upon conjecture, but only upon actual fact. nor shall we attempt to offer any statistics regarding edison's numerous inventions relating to telegraphs and kindred devices, such as stock tickers, relays, magnets, rheotomes, repeaters, printing telegraphs, messenger calls, etc., on which he was so busily occupied as an inventor and manufacturer during the ten years that began with january, . the principles of many of these devices are still used in the arts, but have become so incorporated in other devices as to be inseparable, and cannot now be dealt with separately. to show what they mean, however, it might be noted that new york city alone has stock "tickers," consuming , miles of record tape every year. turning now to other important arts and industries which have been created by edison's inventions, and in which he is at this time taking an active personal interest, let us visit orange, new jersey. when his present laboratory was nearing completion in , he wrote to mr. j. hood wright, a partner in the firm of drexel, morgan & co.: "my ambition is to build up a great industrial works in the orange valley, starting in a small way and gradually working up." in this plant, which represents an investment approximating the sum of $ , , , are grouped a number of industrial enterprises of which edison is either the sole or controlling owner and the guiding spirit. these enterprises are the national phonograph company, the edison business phonograph company, the edison phonograph works, the edison manufacturing company, the edison storage battery company, and the bates manufacturing company. the importance of these industries will be apparent when it is stated that at this plant the maximum pay-roll shows the employment of over persons, with annual earnings in salaries and wages of more than $ , , . in considering the phonograph in its commercial aspect, and endeavoring to arrive at some idea of the world's estimate of the value of this invention, we feel the ground more firm under our feet, for edison has in later years controlled its manufacture and sale. it will be remembered that the phonograph lay dormant, commercially speaking, for about ten years after it came into being, and then later invention reduced it to a device capable of more popular utility. a few years of rather unsatisfactory commercial experience brought about a reorganization, through which edison resumed possession of the business. it has since been continued under his general direction and ownership, and he has made a great many additional inventions tending to improve the machine in all its parts. the uses made of the phonograph up to this time have been of four kinds, generally speaking--first, and principally, for amusement; second, for instruction in languages; third, for business, in the dictation of correspondence; and fourth, for sentimental reasons in preserving the voices of friends. no separate figures are available to show the extent of its employment in the second and fourth classes, as they are probably included in machines coming under the first subdivision. under this head we find that there have been upward of , , phonographs sold during the last twenty years, with and for which there have been made and sold no fewer than , , records of a musical or other character. phonographic records are now being manufactured at orange at the rate of , a day, the annual sale of phonographs and records being approximately $ , , , including business phonographs. this does not include blank records, of which large numbers have also been supplied to the public. the adoption of the business phonograph has not been characterized by the unanimity that obtained in the case of the one used merely for amusement, as its use involves some changes in methods that business men are slow to adopt until they realize the resulting convenience and economy. although it is only a few years since the business phonograph has begun to make some headway, it is not difficult to appreciate that edison's prediction in as to the value of such an appliance is being realized, when we find that up to this time the sales run up to , in number. at the present time the annual sales of the business phonographs and supplies, cylinders, etc., are not less than $ , . we must not forget that the basic patent of edison on the phonograph has long since expired, thus throwing open to the world the wonderful art of reproducing human speech and other sounds. the world was not slow to take advantage of the fact, hence there are in the field numerous other concerns in the same business. it is conservatively estimated by those who know the trade and are in position to form an opinion, that the figures above given represent only about one-half of the entire business of the country in phonographs, records, cylinders, and supplies. taking next his inventions that pertain to a more recently established but rapidly expanding branch of business that provides for the amusement of the public, popularly known as "motion pictures," we also find a general recognition of value created. referring the reader to a previous chapter for a discussion of edison's standing as a pioneer inventor in this art, let us glance at the commercial proportions of this young but lusty business, whose ramifications extend to all but the most remote and primitive hamlets of our country. the manufacture of the projecting machines and accessories, together with the reproduction of films, is carried on at the orange valley plant, and from the inception of the motion-picture business to the present time there have been made upward of , projecting machines and many million feet of films carrying small photographs of moving objects. although the motion-picture business, as a commercial enterprise, is still in its youth, it is of sufficient moment to call for the annual production of thousands of machines and many million feet of films in edison's shops, having a sale value of not less than $ , . to produce the originals from which these edison films are made, there have been established two "studios," the largest of which is in the bronx, new york city. in this, as well as in the phonograph business, there are many other manufacturers in the field. indeed, the annual product of the edison manufacturing company in this line is only a fractional part of the total that is absorbed by the or more motion-picture theatres and exhibitions that are in operation in the united states at the present time, and which represent an investment of some $ , , . licensees under edison patents in this country alone produce upward of , , feet of films annually, containing more than a billion and a half separate photographs. to what extent the motion-picture business may grow in the not remote future it is impossible to conjecture, for it has taken a place in the front rank of rapidly increasing enterprises. the manufacture and sale of the edison-lalande primary battery, conducted by the edison manufacturing company at the orange valley plant, is a business of no mean importance. beginning about twenty years ago with a battery that, without polarizing, would furnish large currents specially adapted for gas-engine ignition and other important purposes, the business has steadily grown in magnitude until the present output amounts to about , cells annually; the total number of cells put into the hands of the public up to date being approximately , , . it will be readily conceded that to most men this alone would be an enterprise of a lifetime, and sufficient in itself to satisfy a moderate ambition. but, although it has yielded a considerable profit to edison and gives employment to many people, it is only one of the many smaller enterprises that owe an existence to his inventive ability and commercial activity. so it also is in regard to the mimeograph, whose forerunner, the electric pen, was born of edison's brain in . he had been long impressed by the desirability of the rapid production of copies of written documents, and, as we have seen by a previous chapter, he invented the electric pen for this purpose, only to improve upon it later with a more desirable device which he called the mimeograph, that is in use, in various forms, at this time. although the electric pen had a large sale and use in its time, the statistics relating to it are not available. the mimeograph, however, is, and has been for many years, a standard office appliance, and is entitled to consideration, as the total number put into use up to this time is approximately , , valued at $ , , , while the annual output is in the neighborhood of machines, sold for about $ , , besides the vast quantity of special paper and supplies which its use entails in the production of the many millions of facsimile letters and documents. the extent of production and sale of supplies for the mimeograph may be appreciated when it is stated that they bring annually an equivalent of three times the amount realized from sales of machines. the manufacture and sale of the mimeograph does not come within the enterprises conducted under edison's personal direction, as he sold out the whole thing some years ago to mr. a. b. dick, of chicago. in making a somewhat radical change of subject, from duplicating machines to cement, we find ourselves in a field in which edison has made a most decided impression. the reader has already learned that his entry into this field was, in a manner, accidental, although logically in line with pronounced convictions of many years' standing, and following up the fund of knowledge gained in the magnetic ore-milling business. from being a new-comer in the cement business, his corporation in five years has grown to be the fifth largest producer in the united states, with a still increasing capacity. from the inception of this business there has been a steady and rapid development, resulting in the production of a grand total of over , , barrels of cement up to the present date, having a value of about $ , , , exclusive of package. at the time of this writing, the rate of production is over barrels of cement per day, or, say, , , barrels per year, having an approximate selling value of a little less than $ , , , with prospects of increasing in the near future to a daily output of , barrels. this enterprise is carried on by a corporation called the edison portland cement company, in which he is very largely interested, and of which he is the active head and guiding spirit. had not edison suspended the manufacture and sale of his storage battery a few years ago because he was not satisfied with it, there might have been given here some noteworthy figures of an extensive business, for the company's books show an astonishing number of orders that were received during the time of the shut-down. he was implored for batteries, but in spite of the fact that good results had been obtained from the , or , cells sold some years ago, he adhered firmly to his determination to perfect them to a still higher standard before resuming and continuing their manufacture as a regular commodity. as we have noted in a previous chapter, however, deliveries of the perfected type were begun in the summer of , and since that time the business has continued to grow in the measure indicated by the earlier experience. thus far we have concerned ourselves chiefly with those figures which exhibit the extent of investment and production, but there is another and humanly important side that presents itself for consideration namely, the employment of a vast industrial army of men and women, who earn a living through their connection with some of the arts and industries to which our narrative has direct reference. to this the reader's attention will now be drawn. the following figures are based upon the special reports of the census bureau, and , with additions computed upon the increase that has subsequently taken place. in the totals following is included the compensation paid to salaried officials and clerks. details relating to telegraph systems are omitted. taking the electric light into consideration first, we find that in the central stations of the united states there are not less than an average of , persons employed, requiring an aggregate yearly payroll of over $ , , . this does not include the , or more isolated electric-light plants scattered throughout the land. many of these are quite large, and at least one-third of them require one additional helper, thus adding, say, , employees to the number already mentioned. if we assume as low a wage as $ per week for each of these helpers, we must add to the foregoing an additional sum of over $ , , paid annually for wages, almost entirely in the isolated incandescent electric lighting field. central stations and isolated plants consume over , , incandescent electric lamps annually, and in the production of these there are engaged about forty factories, on whose pay-rolls appear an average of , employees, earning an aggregate yearly sum of $ , , . following the incandescent lamp we must not forget an industry exclusively arising from it and absolutely dependent upon it--namely, that of making fixtures for such lamps, the manufacture of which gives employment to upward of persons, who annually receive at least $ , , in compensation. the detail devices of the incandescent electric lighting system also contribute a large quota to the country's wealth in the millions of dollars paid out in salaries and wages to many thousands of persons who are engaged in their manufacture. the electric railways of our country show even larger figures than the lighting stations and plants, as they employ on the average over , persons, whose annual compensation amounts to not less than $ , , . in the manufacture of about $ , , worth of dynamos and motors annually, for central-station equipment, isolated plants, electric railways, and other purposes, the manufacturers of the country employ an average of not less than , people, whose yearly pay-roll amounts to no less a sum than $ , , . the growth of the telephone systems of the united states also furnishes us with statistics of an analogous nature, for we find that the average number of employees engaged in this industry is at least , , whose annual earnings aggregate a minimum of $ , , ; besides which the manufacturers of telephone apparatus employ over , persons, to whom is paid annually about $ , , . no attempt is made to include figures of collateral industries, such, for instance, as copper, which is very closely allied with the electrical arts, and the great bulk of which is refined electrically. the or so motion-picture theatres of the country employ no fewer than , people, whose aggregate annual income amounts to not less than $ , , . coming now to the orange valley plant, we take a drop from these figures to the comparatively modest ones which give us an average of employees and calling for an annual pay-roll of about $ , , . it must be remembered, however, that the sums mentioned above represent industries operated by great aggregations of capital, while the orange valley plant, as well as the edison portland cement company, with an average daily number of employees and over $ , annual pay-roll, represent in a large measure industries that are more in the nature of closely held enterprises and practically under the direction of one mind. the table herewith given summarizes the figures that have just been presented, and affords an idea of the totals affected by the genius of this one man. it is well known that many other men and many other inventions have been needed for the perfection of these arts; but it is equally true that, as already noted, some of these industries are directly the creation of edison, while in every one of the rest his impress has been deep and significant. before he began inventing, only two of them were known at all as arts--telegraphy and the manufacture of cement. moreover, these figures deal only with the united states, and take no account of the development of many of the edison inventions in europe or of their adoption throughout the world at large. let it suffice statistical resume (approximate) of some of the industries in the united states directly founded upon or affected by inventions of thomas a. edison annual gross rev- number annual class of industry investment enue or of em- pay-rolls sales central station lighting and power $ , , , $ , , , $ , , isolated incandescent lighting , , -- , , incandescent lamps , , , , , , electric fixtures , , , , , , , dynamos and motors , , , , , , , electric railways , , , , , , , , telephone systems , , , , , , , telephone apparatus , , , , , , , phonograph and motion pictures , , , , , , , motion picture theatres , , , , , , , edison portland cement , , , , , telegraphy , , , , , , , --------------------------------------------------------------------------totals , , , , , , , , , that in america alone the work of edison has been one of the most potent factors in bringing into existence new industries now capitalized at nearly $ , , , , earning annually over $ , , , , and giving employment to an army of more than six hundred thousand people. a single diamond, prismatically flashing from its many facets the beauties of reflected light, comes well within the limits of comprehension of the human mind and appeals to appreciation by the finer sensibilities; but in viewing an exhibition of thousands of these beautiful gems, the eye and brain are simply bewildered with the richness of a display which tends to confuse the intellect until the function of analysis comes into play and leads to more adequate apprehension. so, in presenting the mass of statistics contained in this chapter, we fear that the result may have been the bewilderment of the reader to some extent. nevertheless, in writing a biography of edison, the main object is to present the facts as they are, and leave it to the intelligent reader to classify, apply, and analyze them in such manner as appeals most forcibly to his intellectual processes. if in the foregoing pages there has appeared to be a tendency to attribute to edison the entire credit for the growth to which many of the above-named great enterprises have in these latter days attained, we must especially disclaim any intention of giving rise to such a deduction. no one who has carefully followed the course of this narrative can deny, however, that edison is the father of some of the arts and industries that have been mentioned, and that as to some of the others it was the magic of his touch that helped make them practicable. not only to his work and ingenuity is due the present magnitude of these arts and industries, but it is attributable also to the splendid work and numerous contributions of other great inventors, such as brush, bell, elihu thomson, weston, sprague, and many others, as well as to the financiers and investors who in the past thirty years have furnished the vast sums of money that were necessary to exploit and push forward these enterprises. the reader may have noticed in a perusal of this chapter the lack of autobiographical quotations, such as have appeared in other parts of this narrative. edison's modesty has allowed us but one remark on the subject. this was made by him to one of the writers a short time ago, when, after an interesting indulgence in reminiscences of old times and early inventions, he leaned back in his chair, and with a broad smile on his face, said, reflectively: "say, i have been mixed up in a whole lot of things, haven't i?" chapter xxviii the black flag throughout the forty-odd years of his creative life, edison has realized by costly experience the truth of the cynical proverb that "a patent is merely a title to a lawsuit." it is not intended, however, by this statement to lead to any inference on the part of the reader that he stands peculiarly alone in any such experience, for it has been and still is the common lot of every successful inventor, sooner or later. to attribute dishonesty or cupidity as the root of the defence in all patent litigation would be aiming very wide of the mark, for in no class of suits that come before the courts are there any that present a greater variety of complex, finely shaded questions, or that require more delicacy of interpretation, than those that involve the construction of patents, particularly those relating to electrical devices. indeed, a careful study of legal procedure of this character could not be carried far without discovery of the fact that in numerous instances the differences of opinion between litigants were marked by the utmost bona fides. on the other hand, such study would reveal many cases of undoubted fraudulent intent, as well as many bold attempts to deprive the inventor of the fruits of his endeavors by those who have sought to evade, through subtle technicalities of the law, the penalty justly due them for trickery, evasion, or open contempt of the rights of others. in the history of science and of the arts to which the world has owed its continued progress from year to year there is disclosed one remarkable fact, and that is, that whenever any important discovery or invention has been made and announced by one man, it has almost always been disclosed later that other men--possibly widely separated and knowing nothing of the other's work--have been following up the same general lines of investigation, independently, with the same object in mind. their respective methods might be dissimilar while tending to the same end, but it does not necessarily follow that any one of these other experimenters might ever have achieved the result aimed at, although, after the proclamation of success by one, it is easy to believe that each of the other independent investigators might readily persuade himself that he would ultimately have reached the goal in just that same way. this peculiar coincidence of simultaneous but separate work not only comes to light on the bringing out of great and important discoveries or inventions, but becomes more apparent if a new art is disclosed, for then the imagination of previous experimenters is stimulated through wide dissemination of the tidings, sometimes resulting in more or less effort to enter the newly opened field with devices or methods that resemble closely the original and fundamental ones in principle and application. in this and other ways there arises constantly in the united states patent office a large number of contested cases, called "interferences," where applications for patents covering the invention of a similar device have been independently filed by two or even more persons. in such cases only one patent can be issued, and that to the inventor who on the taking of testimony shows priority in date of invention. [ ] [footnote : a most remarkable instance of contemporaneous invention and without a parallel in the annals of the united states patent office, occurred when, on the same day, february , , two separate descriptions were filed in that office, one a complete application and the other a caveat, but each covering an invention for "transmitting vocal sounds telegraphically." the application was made by alexander graham bell, of salem, massachusetts, and the caveat by elisha gray, of chicago, illinois. on examination of the two papers it was found that both of them covered practically the same ground, hence, as only one patent could be granted, it became necessary to ascertain the precise hour at which the documents were respectively filed, and put the parties in interference. this was done, with the result that the patent was ultimately awarded to bell.] in the opening up and development of any new art based upon a fundamental discovery or invention, there ensues naturally an era of supplemental or collateral inventive activity--the legitimate outcome of the basic original ideas. part of this development may be due to the inventive skill and knowledge of the original inventor and his associates, who, by reason of prior investigation, would be in better position to follow up the art in its earliest details than others, who might be regarded as mere outsiders. thus a new enterprise may be presented before the world by its promoters in the belief that they are strongly fortified by patent rights which will protect them in a degree commensurate with the risks they have assumed. supplemental inventions, however, in any art, new or old, are not limited to those which emanate from the original workers, for the ingenuity of man, influenced by the spirit of the times, seizes upon any novel line of action and seeks to improve or enlarge upon it, or, at any rate, to produce more or less variation of its phases. consequently, there is a constant endeavor on the part of a countless host of men possessing some degree of technical skill and inventive ability, to win fame and money by entering into the already opened fields of endeavor with devices and methods of their own, for which subsidiary patents may be obtainable. some of such patents may prove to be valuable, while it is quite certain that in the natural order of things others will be commercially worthless, but none may be entirely disregarded in the history and development of the art. it will be quite obvious, therefore, that the advent of any useful invention or discovery, great or small, is followed by a clashing of many interests which become complex in their interpretation by reason of the many conflicting claims that cluster around the main principle. nor is the confusion less confounded through efforts made on the part of dishonest persons, who, like vultures, follow closely on the trail of successful inventors and (sometimes through information derived by underhand methods) obtain patents on alleged inventions, closely approximating the real ones, solely for the purpose of harassing the original patentee until they are bought up, or else, with the intent of competing boldly in the new business, trust in the delays of legal proceedings to obtain a sure foothold in their questionable enterprise. then again there are still others who, having no patent rights, but waving aside all compunction and in downright fraud, simply enter the commercial field against the whole world, using ruthlessly whatever inventive skill and knowledge the original patentee may have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. in nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and guided by skilful experts who may suggest really trivial changes here and there over the patented structure, and with the aid of keen and able counsel, hardly a patent exists that could not be invaded by such infringers. such is the condition of our laws and practice that the patentee in seeking to enforce his rights labors under a terrible handicap. and, finally, in this recital of perplexing conditions confronting the inventor, there must not be forgotten the commercial "shark," whose predatory instincts are ever keenly alert for tender victims. in the wake of every newly developed art of world-wide importance there is sure to follow a number of unscrupulous adventurers, who hasten to take advantage of general public ignorance of the true inwardness of affairs. basing their operations on this lack of knowledge, and upon the tendency of human nature to give credence to widely advertised and high-sounding descriptions and specious promises of vast profits, these men find little difficulty in conjuring money out of the pockets of the unsophisticated and gullible, who rush to become stockholders in concerns that have "airy nothings" for a foundation, and that collapse quickly when the bubble is pricked. [ ] [footnote : a notable instance of the fleecing of unsuspecting and credulous persons occurred in the early eighties, during the furor occasioned by the introduction of mr. edison's electric-light system. a corporation claiming to have a self-generating dynamo (practically perpetual motion) advertised its preposterous claims extensively, and actually succeeded in selling a large amount of stock, which, of course, proved to be absolutely worthless.] to one who is unacquainted with the trying circumstances attending the introduction and marketing of patented devices, it might seem unnecessary that an inventor and his business associates should be obliged to take into account the unlawful or ostensible competition of pirates or schemers, who, in the absence of legal decision, may run a free course for a long time. nevertheless, as public patronage is the element vitally requisite for commercial success, and as the public is not usually in full possession of all the facts and therefore cannot discriminate between the genuine and the false, the legitimate inventor must avail himself of every possible means of proclaiming and asserting his rights if he desires to derive any benefit from the results of his skill and labor. not only must he be prepared to fight in the patent office and pursue a regular course of patent litigation against those who may honestly deem themselves to be protected by other inventions or patents of similar character, and also proceed against more palpable infringers who are openly, defiantly, and illegitimately engaged in competitive business operations, but he must, as well, endeavor to protect himself against the assaults of impudent fraud by educating the public mind to a point of intelligent apprehension of the true status of his invention and the conflicting claims involved. when the nature of a patent right is considered it is difficult to see why this should be so. the inventor creates a new thing--an invention of utility--and the people, represented by the federal government, say to him in effect: "disclose your invention to us in a patent so that we may know how to practice it, and we will agree to give you a monopoly for seventeen years, after which we shall be free to use it. if the right thus granted is invaded, apply to a federal court and the infringer will be enjoined and required to settle in damages." fair and false promise! is it generally realized that no matter how flagrant the infringement nor how barefaced and impudent the infringer, no federal court will grant an injunction until the patent shall have been first litigated to final hearing and sustained? a procedure, it may be stated, requiring years of time and thousands of dollars, during which other infringers have generally entered the field, and all have grown fat. thus edison and his business associates have been forced into a veritable maelstrom of litigation during the major part of the last forty years, in the effort to procure for themselves a small measure of protection for their interests under the numerous inventions of note that he has made at various times in that period. the earlier years of his inventive activity, while productive of many important contributions to electrical industries, such as stock tickers and printers, duplex, quadruplex, and automatic telegraphs, were not marked by the turmoil of interminable legal conflicts that arose after the beginning of the telephone and electric-light epochs. in fact, his inventions; up to and including his telephone improvements (which entered into already existing arts), had been mostly purchased by the western union and other companies, and while there was more or less contesting of his claims (especially in respect of the telephone), the extent of such litigation was not so conspicuously great as that which centred subsequently around his patents covering incandescent electric lighting and power systems. through these inventions there came into being an entirely new art, complete in its practicability evolved by edison after protracted experiments founded upon most patient, thorough, and original methods of investigation extending over several years. long before attaining the goal, he had realized with characteristic insight the underlying principles of the great and comprehensive problem he had started out to solve, and plodded steadily along the path that he had marked out, ignoring the almost universal scientific disbelief in his ultimate success. "dreamer," "fool," "boaster" were among the appellations bestowed upon him by unbelieving critics. ridicule was heaped upon him in the public prints, and mathematics were called into service by learned men to settle the point forever that he was attempting the utterly impossible. but, presto! no sooner had he accomplished the task and shown concrete results to the world than he found himself in the anomalous position of being at once surrounded by the conditions which inevitably confront every inventor. the path through the trackless forest had been blazed, and now every one could find the way. at the end of the road was a rich prize belonging rightfully to the man who had opened a way to it, but the struggles of others to reach it by more or less honest methods now began and continued for many years. if, as a former commissioner once said, "edison was the man who kept the path to the patent office hot with his footsteps," there were other great inventors abreast or immediately on his heels, some, to be sure, with legitimate, original methods and vital improvements representing independent work; while there were also those who did not trouble to invent, but simply helped themselves to whatever ideas were available, and coming from any source. possibly events might have happened differently had edison been able to prevent the announcement of his electric-light inventions until he was entirely prepared to bring out the system as a whole, ready for commercial exploitation, but the news of his production of a practical and successful incandescent lamp became known and spread like wild-fire to all corners of the globe. it took more than a year after the evolution of the lamp for edison to get into position to do actual business, and during that time his laboratory was the natural mecca of every inquiring person. small wonder, then, that when he was prepared to market his invention he should find others entering that market, at home and abroad, at the same time, and with substantially similar merchandise. edison narrates two incidents that may be taken as characteristic of a good deal that had to be contended with, coming in the shape of nefarious attack. "in the early days of my electric light," he says, "curiosity and interest brought a great many people to menlo park to see it. some of them did not come with the best of intentions. i remember the visit of one expert, a well-known electrician, a graduate of johns hopkins university, and who then represented a baltimore gas company. we had the lamps exhibited in a large room, and so arranged on a table as to illustrate the regular layout of circuits for houses and streets. sixty of the men employed at the laboratory were used as watchers, each to keep an eye on a certain section of the exhibit, and see there was no monkeying with it. this man had a length of insulated no. wire passing through his sleeves and around his back, so that his hands would conceal the ends and no one would know he had it. his idea, of course, was to put this wire across the ends of the supplying circuits, and short-circuit the whole thing--put it all out of business without being detected. then he could report how easily the electric light went out, and a false impression would be conveyed to the public. he did not know that we had already worked out the safety-fuse, and that every group of lights was thus protected independently. he put this jumper slyly in contact with the wires--and just four lamps went out on the section he tampered with. the watchers saw him do it, however, and got hold of him and just led him out of the place with language that made the recording angels jump for their typewriters." the other incident is as follows: "soon after i had got out the incandescent light i had an interference in the patent office with a man from wisconsin. he filed an application for a patent and entered into a conspiracy to 'swear back' of the date of my invention, so as to deprive me of it. detectives were put on the case, and we found he was a 'faker,' and we took means to break the thing up. eugene lewis, of eaton & lewis, had this in hand for me. several years later this same man attempted to defraud a leading firm of manufacturing chemists in new york, and was sent to state prison. a short time after that a syndicate took up a man named goebel and tried to do the same thing, but again our detective-work was too much for them. this was along the same line as the attempt of drawbaugh to deprive bell of his telephone. whenever an invention of large prospective value comes out, these cases always occur. the lamp patent was sustained in the new york federal court. i thought that was final and would end the matter, but another federal judge out in st. louis did not sustain it. the result is i have never enjoyed any benefits from my lamp patents, although i fought for many years." the goebel case will be referred to later in this chapter. the original owner of the patents and inventions covering his electric-lighting system, the edison electric light company (in which edison was largely interested as a stockholder), thus found at the outset that its commercial position was imperilled by the activity of competitors who had sprung up like mushrooms. it became necessary to take proper preliminary legal steps to protect the interests which had been acquired at the cost of so much money and such incessant toil and experiment. during the first few years in which the business of the introduction of the light was carried on with such strenuous and concentrated effort, the attention of edison and his original associates was constantly focused upon the commercial exploitation and the further development of the system at home and abroad. the difficult and perplexing situation at that time is thus described by major s. b. eaton: "the reason for the delay in beginning and pushing suits for infringements of the lamp patent has never been generally understood. in my official position as president of the edison electric light company i became the target, along with mr. edison, for censure from the stockholders and others on account of this delay, and i well remember how deep the feeling was. in view of the facts that a final injunction on the lamp patent was not obtained until the life of the patent was near its end, and, next, that no damages in money were ever paid by the guilty infringers, it has been generally believed that mr. edison sacrificed the interest of his stockholders selfishly when he delayed the prosecution of patent suits and gave all his time and energies to manufacturing. this belief was the stronger because the manufacturing enterprises belonged personally to mr. edison and not to his company. but the facts render it easy to dispel this false belief. the edison inventions were not only a lamp; they comprised also an entire system of central stations. such a thing was new to the world, and the apparatus, as well as the manufacture thereof, was equally new. boilers, engines, dynamos, motors, distribution mains, meters, house-wiring, safety-devices, lamps, and lamp-fixtures--all were vital parts of the whole system. most of them were utterly novel and unknown to the arts, and all of them required quick, and, i may say, revolutionary thought and invention. the firm of babcock & wilcox gave aid on the boilers, armington & sims undertook the engines, but everything else was abnormal. no factories in the land would take up the manufacture. i remember, for instance, our interviews with messrs. mitchell, vance & co., the leading manufacturers of house gas-lighting fixtures, such as brackets and chandeliers. they had no faith in electric lighting, and rejected all our overtures to induce them to take up the new business of making electric-light fixtures. as regards other parts of the edison system, notably the edison dynamo, no such machines had ever existed; there was no factory in the world equipped to make them, and, most discouraging of all, the very scientific principles of their construction were still vague and experimental. "what was to be done? mr. edison has never been greater than when he met and solved this crisis. 'if there are no factories,' he said, 'to make my inventions, i will build the factories myself. since capital is timid, i will raise and supply it. the issue is factories or death.' mr. edison invited the cooperation of his leading stockholders. they lacked confidence or did not care to increase their investments. he was forced to go on alone. the chain of edison shops was then created. by far the most perplexing of these new manufacturing problems was the lamp. not only was it a new industry, one without shadow of prototype, but the mechanical devices for making the lamps, and to some extent the very machines to make those devices, were to be invented. all of this was done by the courage, capital, and invincible energy and genius of the great inventor. but mr. edison could not create these great and diverse industries and at the same time give requisite attention to litigation. he could not start and develop the new and hard business of electric lighting and yet spare one hour to pursue infringers. one thing or the other must wait. all agreed that it must be the litigation. and right there a lasting blow was given to the prestige of the edison patents. the delay was translated as meaning lack of confidence; and the alert infringer grew strong in courage and capital. moreover, and what was the heaviest blow of all, he had time, thus unmolested, to get a good start. "in looking back on those days and scrutinizing them through the years, i am impressed by the greatness, the solitary greatness i may say, of mr. edison. we all felt then that we were of importance, and that our contribution of effort and zeal were vital. i can see now, however, that the best of us was nothing but the fly on the wheel. suppose anything had happened to edison? all would have been chaos and ruin.. to him, therefore, be the glory, if not the profit." the foregoing remarks of major eaton show authoritatively how the much-discussed delay in litigating the edison patents was so greatly misunderstood at the time, and also how imperatively necessary it was for edison and his associates to devote their entire time and energies to the commercial development of the art. as the lighting business increased, however, and a great number of additional men were initiated into its mysteries, edison and his experts were able to spare some time to legal matters, and an era of active patent litigation against infringers was opened about the year by the edison company, and thereafter continued for many years. while the history of this vast array of legal proceedings possesses a fascinating interest for those involved, as well as for professional men, legal and scientific, it could not be expected that it would excite any such feeling on the part of a casual reader. hence, it is not proposed to encumber this narrative with any detailed record of the numerous suits that were brought and conducted through their complicated ramifications by eminent counsel. suffice it to say that within about sixteen years after the commencement of active patent litigation, there had been spent by the owners of the edison lighting patents upward of two million dollars in prosecuting more than two hundred lawsuits brought against persons who were infringing many of the patents of edison on the incandescent electric lamp and component parts of his system. over fifty separate patents were involved in these suits, including the basic one on the lamp (ordinarily called the "filament" patent), other detail lamp patents, as well as those on sockets, switches, dynamos, motors, and distributing systems. the principal, or "test," suit on the "filament" patent was that brought against "the united states electric lighting company," which became a cause celebre in the annals of american jurisprudence. edison's claims were strenuously and stubbornly contested throughout a series of intense legal conflicts that raged in the courts for a great many years. both sides of the controversy were represented by legal talent of the highest order, under whose examination and cross-examination volumes of testimony were taken, until the printed record (including exhibits) amounted to more than six thousand pages. scientific and technical literature and records in all parts of the civilized world were subjected to the most minute scrutiny of opposing experts in the endeavor to prove edison to be merely an adapter of methods and devices already projected or suggested by others. the world was ransacked for anything that might be claimed as an anticipation of what he had done. every conceivable phase of ingenuity that could be devised by technical experts was exercised in the attempt to show that edison had accomplished nothing new. everything that legal acumen could suggest--every subtle technicality of the law--all the complicated variations of phraseology that the novel nomenclature of a young art would allow--all were pressed into service and availed of by the contestors of the edison invention in their desperate effort to defeat his claims. it was all in vain, however, for the decision of the court was in favor of edison, and his lamp patent was sustained not only by the tribunal of the first resort, but also by the appellate court some time afterward. the first trial was had before judge wallace in the united states circuit court for the southern district of new york, and the appeal was heard by judges lacombe and shipman, of the united states circuit court of appeals. before both tribunals the cause had been fully represented by counsel chosen from among the most eminent representatives of the bar at that time, those representing the edison interests being the late clarence a. seward and grosvenor p. lowrey, together with sherburne blake eaton, albert h. walker, and richard n. dyer. the presentation of the case to the courts had in both instances been marked by masterly and able arguments, elucidated by experiments and demonstrations to educate the judges on technical points. some appreciation of the magnitude of this case may be gained from the fact that the argument on its first trial employed a great many days, and the minutes covered hundreds of pages of closely typewritten matter, while the argument on appeal required eight days, and was set forth in eight hundred and fifty pages of typewriting. eliminating all purely forensic eloquence and exparte statements, the addresses of counsel in this celebrated suit are worthy of deep study by an earnest student, for, taken together, they comprise the most concise, authentic, and complete history of the prior state of the art and the development of the incandescent lamp that had been made up to that time. [ ] [ ] the argument on appeal was conducted with the dignity and decorum that characterize such a proceeding in that court. there is usually little that savors of humor in the ordinary conduct of a case of this kind, but in the present instance a pertinent story was related by mr. lowrey, and it is now reproduced. in the course of his address to the court, mr. lowrey said: "i have to mention the name of one expert whose testimony will, i believe, be found as accurate, as sincere, as straightforward as if it were the preaching of the gospel. i do it with great pleasure, and i ask you to read the testimony of charles l. clarke along with that of thomas a. edison. he had rather a hard row to hoe. he is a young gentleman; he is a very well-instructed man in his profession; he is not what i have called in the argument below an expert in the art of testifying, like some of the others, he has not yet become expert; what he may descend to later cannot be known; he entered upon his first experience, i think, with my brother duncan, who is no trifler when he comes to deal with these questions, and for several months mr. clarke was pursued up and down, over a range of suggestions of what he would have thought if he had thought something else had been said at some time when something else was not said." mr. duncan--"i got three pages a day out of him, too." mr. lowrey--"well, it was a good result. it always recalled to me what i venture now, since my friend breaks in upon me in this rude manner, to tell the court as well illustrative of what happened there. it is the story of the pickerel and the roach. my friend, professor von reisenberg, of the university of ghent, pursued a series of investigations into the capacity of various animals to receive ideas. among the rest he put a pickerel into a tank containing water, and separated across its middle by a transparent glass plate, and on the other side he put a red roach. now your honors both know how a pickerel loves a red roach, and i have no doubt you will remember that he is a fish of a very low forehead and an unlimited appetite. when this pickerel saw the red roach through the glass, he made one of those awful dashes which is usually the ruin of whatever stands in its way; but he didn't reach the red roach. he received an impression, doubtless. it was not sufficient, however, to discourage him, and he immediately tried again, and he continued to try for three-quarters of an hour. at the end of three-quarters of an hour he seemed a little shaken and discouraged, and stopped, and the red roach was taken out for that day and the pickerel left. on the succeeding day the red roach was restored, and the pickerel had forgotten the impressions of the first day, and he repeated this again. at the end of the second day the roach was taken out. this was continued, not through so long a period as the effort to take my friend clarke and devour him, but for a period of about three weeks. at the end of the three weeks, the time during which the pickerel persisted each day had been shortened and shortened, until it was at last discovered that he didn't try at all. the plate glass was then removed, and the pickerel and the red roach sailed around together in perfect peace ever afterward. the pickerel doubtless attributed to the roach all this shaking, the rebuff which he had received. and that is about the condition in which my brother duncan and my friend clarke were at the end of this examination." mr. duncan--"i notice on the redirect that mr. clarke changed his color." mr. lowrey--"well, perhaps he was a different kind of a roach then; but you didn't succeed in taking him. "i beg your honors to read the testimony of mr. clarke in the light of the anecdote of the pickerel and the roach." owing to long-protracted delays incident to the taking of testimony and preparation for trial, the argument before the united states circuit court of appeals was not had until the late spring of , and its decision in favor of the edison lamp patent was filed on october , , more than twelve years after the issuance of the patent itself. as the term of the patent had been limited under the law, because certain foreign patents had been issued to edison before that in this country, there was now but a short time left for enjoyment of the exclusive rights contemplated by the statute and granted to edison and his assigns by the terms of the patent itself. a vigorous and aggressive legal campaign was therefore inaugurated by the edison electric light company against the numerous infringing companies and individuals that had sprung up while the main suit was pending. old suits were revived and new ones instituted. injunctions were obtained against many old offenders, and it seemed as though the edison interests were about to come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the edison camp in the shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously by one henry goebel. thus, in , the litigation was reopened, and a protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was fought in the courts. goebel's claims were not unknown to the edison company, for as far back as they had been officially brought to its notice coupled with an offer of sale for a few thousand dollars. a very brief examination into their merits, however, sufficed to demonstrate most emphatically that goebel had never made a practical incandescent lamp, nor had he ever contributed a single idea or device bearing, remotely or directly, on the development of the art. edison and his company, therefore, rejected the offer unconditionally and declined to enter into any arrangements whatever with goebel. during the prosecution of the suits in it transpired that the goebel claims had also been investigated by the counsel of the defendant company in the principal litigation already related, but although every conceivable defence and anticipation had been dragged into the case during the many years of its progress, the alleged goebel anticipation was not even touched upon therein. from this fact it is quite apparent that they placed no credence on its bona fides. but desperate cases call for desperate remedies. some of the infringing lamp-manufacturing concerns, which during the long litigation had grown strong and lusty, and thus far had not been enjoined by the court, now saw injunctions staring them in the face, and in desperation set up the goebel so-called anticipation as a defence in the suits brought against them. this german watchmaker, goebel, located in the east side of new york city, had undoubtedly been interested, in a desultory kind of way, in simple physical phenomena, and a few trifling experiments made by him some forty or forty-five years previously were magnified and distorted into brilliant and all-comprehensive discoveries and inventions. avalanches of affidavits of himself, "his sisters and his cousins and his aunts," practically all persons in ordinary walks of life, and of old friends, contributed a host of recollections that seemed little short of miraculous in their detailed accounts of events of a scientific nature that were said to have occurred so many years before. according to affidavits of goebel himself and some of his family, nothing that would anticipate edison's claim had been omitted from his work, for he (goebel) claimed to have employed the all-glass globe, into which were sealed platinum wires carrying a tenuous carbon filament, from which the occluded gases had been liberated during the process of high exhaustion. he had even determined upon bamboo as the best material for filaments. on the face of it he was seemingly gifted with more than human prescience, for in at least one of his exhibit lamps, said to have been made twenty years previously, he claimed to have employed processes which edison and his associates had only developed by several years of experience in making thousands of lamps! the goebel story was told by the affidavits in an ingenuous manner, with a wealth of simple homely detail that carried on its face an appearance of truth calculated to deceive the elect, had not the elect been somewhat prepared by their investigation made some eleven years before. the story was met by the edison interests with counter-affidavits, showing its utter improbabilities and absurdities from the standpoint of men of science and others versed in the history and practice of the art; also affidavits of other acquaintances and neighbors of goebel flatly denying the exhibitions he claimed to have made. the issue thus being joined, the legal battle raged over different sections of the country. a number of contumeliously defiant infringers in various cities based fond hopes of immunity upon the success of this goebel evidence, but were defeated. the attitude of the courts is well represented in the opinion of judge colt, rendered in a motion for injunction against the beacon vacuum pump and electrical company. the defence alleged the goebel anticipation, in support of which it offered in evidence four lamps, nos. , , and purporting to have been made before , and no. before . after a very full review of the facts in the case, and a fair consideration of the defendants' affidavits, judge colt in his opinion goes on to say: "it is extremely improbable that henry goebel constructed a practical incandescent lamp in . this is manifest from the history of the art for the past fifty years, the electrical laws which since that time have been discovered as applicable to the incandescent lamp, the imperfect means which then existed for obtaining a vacuum, the high degree of skill necessary in the construction of all its parts, and the crude instruments with which goebel worked. "whether goebel made the fiddle-bow lamps, , , and , is not necessary to determine. the weight of evidence on this motion is in the direction that he made these lamp or lamps similar in general appearance, though it is manifest that few, if any, of the many witnesses who saw the goebel lamp could form an accurate judgment of the size of the filament or burner. but assuming they were made, they do not anticipate the invention of edison. at most they were experimental toys used to advertise his telescope, or to flash a light upon his clock, or to attract customers to his shop. they were crudely constructed, and their life was brief. they could not be used for domestic purposes. they were in no proper sense the practical commercial lamp of edison. the literature of the art is full of better lamps, all of which are held not to anticipate the edison patent. "as for lamp no. , i cannot but view it with suspicion. it presents a new appearance. the reason given for not introducing it before the hearing is unsatisfactory. this lamp, to my mind, envelops with a cloud of distrust the whole goebel story. it is simply impossible under the circumstances to believe that a lamp so constructed could have been made by goebel before . nothing in the evidence warrants such a supposition, and other things show it to be untrue. this lamp has a carbon filament, platinum leading-in wires, a good vacuum, and is well sealed and highly finished. it is said that this lamp shows no traces of mercury in the bulb because the mercury was distilled, but goebel says nothing about distilled mercury in his first affidavit, and twice he speaks of the particles of mercury clinging to the inside of the chamber, and for that reason he constructed a geissler pump after he moved to grand street, which was in . again, if this lamp has been in his possession since before , as he and his son swear, why was it not shown to mr. crosby, of the american company, when he visited his shop in and was much interested in his lamps? why was it not shown to mr. curtis, the leading counsel for the defendants in the new york cases, when he was asked to produce a lamp and promised to do so? why did not his son take this lamp to mr. bull's office in , when he took the old fiddle-bow lamps, , , and ? why did not his son take this lamp to mr. eaton's office in , when he tried to negotiate the sale of his father's inventions to the edison company? a lamp so constructed and made before was worth a large sum of money to those interested in defeating the edison patent like the american company, and goebel was not a rich man. both he and one of his sons were employed in by the american company. why did he not show this lamp to mcmahon when he called in the interest of the american company and talked over the electrical matters? when mr. dreyer tried to organize a company in , and procured an option from him of all his inventions relating to electric lighting for which $ was paid, and when an old lamp of this kind was of vital consequence and would have insured a fortune, why was it not forthcoming? mr. dreyer asked goebel to produce an old lamp, and was especially anxious to find one pending his negotiations with the edison company for the sale of goebel's inventions. why did he not produce this lamp in his interviews with bohm, of the american company, or moses, of the edison company, when it was for his interest to do so? the value of such an anticipation of the edison lamp was made known to him. he was desirous of realizing upon his inventions. he was proud of his incandescent lamps, and was pleased to talk about them with anybody who would listen. is it conceivable under all these circumstances, that he should have had this all-important lamp in his possession from to , and yet no one have heard of it or seen it except his son? it cannot be said that ignorance of the english language offers an excuse. he knew english very well although bohm and dreyer conversed with him in german. his children spoke english. neither his ignorance nor his simplicity prevented him from taking out three patents: the first in for a sewing-machine hemmer, and the last in for an improvement in incandescent lamps. if he made lamp no. previous to , why was it not also patented? "there are other circumstances which throw doubt on this alleged goebel anticipation. the suit against the united states electric lighting company was brought in the southern district of new york in . large interests were at stake, and the main defence to the edison patent was based on prior inventions. this goebel claim was then investigated by the leading counsel for the defence, mr. curtis. it was further inquired into in , in the case against the sawyer-man company. it was brought to the attention and considered by the edison company in . it was at that time known to the american company, who hoped by this means to defeat the monopoly under the edison patent. dreyer tried to organize a company for its purchase. young goebel tried to sell it. it must have been known to hundreds of people. and now when the edison company after years of litigation, leaving but a short time for the patent to run, have obtained a final adjudication establishing its validity, this claim is again resurrected to defeat the operation of the judgment so obtained. a court in equity should not look with favor on such a defence. upon the evidence here presented, i agree with the first impression of mr. curtis and with the opinion of mr. dickerson that whatever goebel did must be considered as an abandoned experiment. "it has often been laid down that a meritorious invention is not to be defeated by something which rests in speculation or experiment, or which is rudimentary or incomplete. "the law requires not conjecture, but certainty. it is easy after an important invention has gone into public use for persons to come forward with claims that they invented the same thing years before, and to endeavor to establish this by the recollection of witnesses as to events long past. such evidence is to be received with great caution, and the presumption of novelty arising from the grant of the patent is not to be overcome except upon clear and convincing proof. "when the defendant company entered upon the manufacture of incandescent lamps in may, , it well knew the consequences which must follow a favorable decision for the edison company in the new york case." the injunction was granted. other courts took practically the same view of the goebel story as was taken by judge colt, and the injunctions asked in behalf of the edison interests were granted on all applications except one in st. louis, missouri, in proceedings instituted against a strong local concern of that city. thus, at the eleventh hour in the life of this important patent, after a long period of costly litigation, edison and his associates were compelled to assume the defensive against a claimant whose utterly baseless pretensions had already been thoroughly investigated and rejected years before by every interested party, and ultimately, on examination by the courts, pronounced legally untenable, if not indeed actually fraudulent. irritating as it was to be forced into the position of combating a proposition so well known to be preposterous and insincere, there was nothing else to do but to fight this fabrication with all the strenuous and deadly earnestness that would have been brought to bear on a really meritorious defence. not only did this goebel episode divert for a long time the energies of the edison interests from activities in other directions, but the cost of overcoming the extravagantly absurd claims ran up into hundreds of thousands of dollars. another quotation from major eaton is of interest in this connection: "now a word about the goebel case. i took personal charge of running down this man and his pretensions in the section of the city where he lived and among his old neighbors. they were a typical east side lot--ignorant, generally stupid, incapable of long memory, but ready to oblige a neighbor and to turn an easy dollar by putting a cross-mark at the bottom of a forthcoming friendly affidavit. i can say in all truth and justice that their testimony was utterly false, and that the lawyers who took it must have known it. "the goebel case emphasizes two defects in the court procedure in patent cases. one is that they may be spun out almost interminably, even, possibly, to the end of the life of the patent; the other is that the judge who decides the case does not see the witnesses. that adverse decision at st. louis would never have been made if the court could have seen the men who swore for goebel. when i met mr. f. p. fish on his return from st. louis, after he had argued the edison side, he felt keenly that disadvantage, to say nothing of the hopeless difficulty of educating the court." in the earliest days of the art, when it was apparent that incandescent lighting had come to stay, the edison company was a shining mark at which the shafts of the dishonest were aimed. many there were who stood ready to furnish affidavits that they or some one else whom they controlled had really invented the lamp, but would obligingly withdraw and leave edison in possession of the field on payment of money. investigation of these cases, however, revealed invariably the purely fraudulent nature of all such offers, which were uniformly declined. as the incandescent light began to advance rapidly in public favor, the immense proportions of the future market became sufficiently obvious to tempt unauthorized persons to enter the field and become manufacturers. when the lamp became a thoroughly established article it was not a difficult matter to copy it, especially when there were employees to be hired away at increased pay, and their knowledge utilized by the more unscrupulous of these new competitors. this is not conjecture but known to be a fact, and the practice continued many years, during which new lamp companies sprang up on every side. hence, it is not surprising that, on the whole, the edison lamp litigation was not less remarkable for quantity than quality. between eighty and ninety separate suits upon edison's fundamental lamp and detail patents were brought in the courts of the united states and prosecuted to completion. in passing it may be mentioned that in england france, and germany also the edison fundamental lamp patent was stubbornly fought in the judicial arena, and his claim to be the first inventor of practical incandescent lighting was uniformly sustained in all those countries. infringement was not, however, confined to the lamp alone, but, in america, extended all along the line of edison's patents relating to the production and distribution of electric light, including those on dynamos, motors, distributing systems, sockets, switches, and other details which he had from time to time invented. consequently, in order to protect its interests at all points, the edison company had found it necessary to pursue a vigorous policy of instituting legal proceedings against the infringers of these various patents, and, in addition to the large number of suits on the lamp alone, not less than one hundred and twenty-five other separate actions, involving some fifty or more of edison's principal electric-lighting patents, were brought against concerns which were wrongfully appropriating his ideas and actively competing with his companies in the market. the ramifications of this litigation became so extensive and complex as to render it necessary to institute a special bureau, or department, through which the immense detail could be systematically sifted, analyzed, and arranged in collaboration with the numerous experts and counsel responsible for the conduct of the various cases. this department was organized in by major eaton, who was at this time and for some years afterward its general counsel. in the selection of the head of this department a man of methodical and analytical habit of mind was necessary, capable of clear reasoning, and at the same time one who had gained a thoroughly practical experience in electric light and power fields, and the choice fell upon mr. w. j. jenks, the manager of the edison central station at brockton, massachusetts. he had resigned that position in , and had spent the intervening period in exploiting the edison municipal system of lighting, as well as taking an active part in various other branches of the edison enterprises. thus, throughout the life of edison's patents on electric light, power, and distribution, the interminable legal strife has continued from day to day, from year to year. other inventors, some of them great and notable, have been coming into the field since the foundation of the art, patents have multiplied exceedingly, improvement has succeeded improvement, great companies have grown greater, new concerns have come into existence, coalitions and mergers have taken place, all tending to produce changes in methods, but not much in diminution of patent litigation. while edison has not for a long time past interested himself particularly in electric light and power inventions, the bureau which was initiated under the old regime in still continues, enlarged in scope, directed by its original chief, but now conducted under the auspices of several allied companies whose great volumes of combined patents (including those of edison) cover a very wide range of the electrical field. as the general conception and theory of a lawsuit is the recovery of some material benefit, the lay mind is apt to conceive of great sums of money being awarded to a complainant by way of damages upon a favorable decision in an important patent case. it might, therefore, be natural to ask how far edison or his companies have benefited pecuniarily by reason of the many belated victories they have scored in the courts. to this question a strict regard for truth compels the answer that they have not been benefited at all, not to the extent of a single dollar, so far as cash damages are concerned. it is not to be denied, however, that substantial advantages have accrued to them more or less directly through the numerous favorable decisions obtained by them as a result of the enormous amount of litigation, in the prosecution of which so great a sum of money has been spent and so concentrated an amount of effort and time lavished. indeed, it would be strange and unaccountable were the results otherwise. while the benefits derived were not directly pecuniary in their nature, they were such as tended to strengthen commercially the position of the rightful owners of the patents. many irresponsible and purely piratical concerns were closed altogether; others were compelled to take out royalty licenses; consolidations of large interests were brought about; the public was gradually educated to a more correct view of the true merits of conflicting claims, and, generally speaking, the business has been greatly unified and brought within well-defined and controllable lines. not only in relation to his electric light and power inventions has the progress of edison and his associates been attended by legal controversy all through the years of their exploitation, but also in respect to other inventions, notably those relating to the phonograph and to motion pictures. the increasing endeavors of infringers to divert into their own pockets some of the proceeds arising from the marketing of the devices covered by edison's inventions on these latter lines, necessitated the institution by him, some years ago, of a legal department which, as in the case of the light inventions, was designed to consolidate all law and expert work and place it under the management of a general counsel. the department is of considerable extent, including a number of resident and other associate counsel, and a general office staff, all of whom are constantly engaged from day to day in patent litigation and other legal work necessary to protect the edison interests. through their labors the old story is reiterated in the contesting of approximate but conflicting claims, the never-ending effort to suppress infringement, and the destruction as far as possible of the commercial pirates who set sail upon the seas of all successful enterprises. the details, circumstances, and technical questions are, of course, different from those relating to other classes of inventions, and although there has been no cause celebre concerning the phonograph and motion-picture patents, the contention is as sharp and strenuous as it was in the cases relating to electric lighting and heavy current technics. mr. edison's storage battery and the poured cement house have not yet reached the stage of great commercial enterprises, and therefore have not yet risen to the dignity of patent litigation. if, however, the experience of past years is any criterion, there will probably come a time in the future when, despite present widely expressed incredulity and contemptuous sniffs of unbelief in the practicability of his ideas in these directions, ultimate success will give rise to a series of hotly contested legal conflicts such as have signalized the practical outcome of his past efforts in other lines. when it is considered what edison has done, what the sum and substance of his contributions to human comfort and happiness have been, the results, as measured by legal success, have been pitiable. with the exception of the favorable decision on the incandescent lamp filament patent, coming so late, however, that but little practical good was accomplished, the reader may search the law-books in vain for a single decision squarely and fairly sustaining a single patent of first order. there never was a monopoly in incandescent electric lighting, and even from the earliest days competitors and infringers were in the field reaping the benefits, and though defeated in the end, paying not a cent of tribute. the market was practically as free and open as if no patent existed. there never was a monopoly in the phonograph; practically all of the vital inventions were deliberately appropriated by others, and the inventor was laughed at for his pains. even so beautiful a process as that for the duplication of phonograph records was solemnly held by a federal judge as lacking invention--as being obvious to any one. the mere fact that edison spent years of his life in developing that process counted for nothing. the invention of the three-wire system, which, when it was first announced as saving over per cent. of copper in the circuits, was regarded as an utter impossibility--this patent was likewise held by a federal judge to be lacking in invention. in the motion-picture art, infringements began with its very birth, and before the inevitable litigation could be terminated no less than ten competitors were in the field, with whom compromises had to be made. in a foreign country, edison would have undoubtedly received signal honors; in his own country he has won the respect and admiration of millions; but in his chosen field as an inventor and as a patentee his reward has been empty. the courts abroad have considered his patents in a liberal spirit and given him his due; the decisions in this country have fallen wide of the mark. we make no criticism of our federal judges; as a body they are fair, able, and hard-working; but they operate under a system of procedure that stifles absolutely the development of inventive genius. until that system is changed and an opportunity offered for a final, swift, and economical adjudication of patent rights, american inventors may well hesitate before openly disclosing their inventions to the public, and may seriously consider the advisability of retaining them as "trade secrets." chapter xxix the social side of edison the title of this chapter might imply that there is an unsocial side to edison. in a sense this is true, for no one is more impatient or intolerant of interruption when deeply engaged in some line of experiment. then the caller, no matter how important or what his mission, is likely to realize his utter insignificance and be sent away without accomplishing his object. but, generally speaking, edison is easy tolerance itself, with a peculiar weakness toward those who have the least right to make any demands on his time. man is a social animal, and that describes edison; but it does not describe accurately the inventor asking to be let alone. edison never sought society; but "society" has never ceased to seek him, and to-day, as ever, the pressure upon him to give up his work and receive honors, meet distinguished people, or attend public functions, is intense. only two or three years ago, a flattering invitation came from one of the great english universities to receive a degree, but at that moment he was deep in experiments on his new storage battery, and nothing could budge him. he would not drop the work, and while highly appreciative of the proposed honor, let it go by rather than quit for a week or two the stern drudgery of probing for the fact and the truth. whether one approves or not, it is at least admirable stoicism, of which the world has too little. a similar instance is that of a visit paid to the laboratory by some one bringing a gold medal from a foreign society. it was a very hot day in summer, the visitor was in full social regalia of silk hat and frock-coat, and insisted that he could deliver the medal only into edison's hands. at that moment edison, stripped pretty nearly down to the buff, was at the very crisis of an important experiment, and refused absolutely to be interrupted. he had neither sought nor expected the medal; and if the delegate didn't care to leave it he could take it away. at last edison was overpersuaded, and, all dirty and perspiring as he was, received the medal rather than cause the visitor to come again. on one occasion, receiving a medal in new york, edison forgot it on the ferry-boat and left it behind him. a few years ago, when edison had received the albert medal of the royal society of arts, one of the present authors called at the laboratory to see it. nobody knew where it was; hours passed before it could be found; and when at last the accompanying letter was produced, it had an office date stamp right over the signature of the royal president. a visitor to the laboratory with one of these medallic awards asked edison if he had any others. "oh yes," he said, "i have a couple of quarts more up at the house!" all this sounds like lack of appreciation, but it is anything else than that. while in paris, in , he wore the decoration of the legion of honor whenever occasion required, but at all other times turned the badge under his lapel "because he hated to have fellow-americans think he was showing off." and any one who knows edison will bear testimony to his utter absence of ostentation. it may be added that, in addition to the two quarts of medals up at the house, there will be found at glenmont many other signal tokens of esteem and good-will--a beautiful cigar-case from the late tsar of russia, bronzes from the government of japan, steel trophies from krupp, and a host of other mementos, to one of which he thus refers: "when the experiments with the light were going on at menlo park, sarah bernhardt came to america. one evening, robert l. cutting, of new york, brought her out to see the light. she was a terrific 'rubberneck.' she jumped all over the machinery, and i had one man especially to guard her dress. she wanted to know everything. she would speak in french, and cutting would translate into english. she stayed there about an hour and a half. bernhardt gave me two pictures, painted by herself, which she sent me from paris." reference has already been made to the callers upon edison; and to give simply the names of persons of distinction would fill many pages of this record. some were mere consumers of time; others were gladly welcomed, like lord kelvin, the greatest physicist of the last century, with whom edison was always in friendly communication. "the first time i saw lord kelvin, he came to my laboratory at menlo park in ." (he reported most favorably on edison's automatic telegraph system at the philadelphia exposition of .) "i was then experimenting with sending eight messages simultaneously over a wire by means of synchronizing tuning-forks. i would take a wire with similar apparatus at both ends, and would throw it over on one set of instruments, take it away, and get it back so quickly that you would not miss it, thereby taking advantage of the rapidity of electricity to perform operations. on my local wire i got it to work very nicely. when sir william thomson (kelvin) came in the room, he was introduced to me, and had a number of friends with him. he said: 'what have you here?' i told him briefly what it was. he then turned around, and to my great surprise explained the whole thing to his friends. quite a different exhibition was given two weeks later by another well-known englishman, also an electrician, who came in with his friends, and i was trying for two hours to explain it to him and failed." after the introduction of the electric light, edison was more than ever in demand socially, but he shunned functions like the plague, not only because of the serious interference with work, but because of his deafness. some dinners he had to attend, but a man who ate little and heard less could derive practically no pleasure from them. "george washington childs was very anxious i should go down to philadelphia to dine with him. i seldom went to dinners. he insisted i should go--that a special car would leave new york. it was for me to meet mr. joseph chamberlain. we had the private car of mr. roberts, president of the pennsylvania railroad. we had one of those celebrated dinners that only mr. childs could give, and i heard speeches from charles francis adams and different people. when i came back to the depot, mr. roberts was there, and insisted on carrying my satchel for me. i never could understand that." among the more distinguished visitors of the electric-lighting period was president diaz, with whom edison became quite intimate. "president diaz, of mexico, visited this country with mrs. diaz, a highly educated and beautiful woman. she spoke very good english. they both took a deep interest in all they saw. i don't know how it ever came about, as it is not in my line, but i seemed to be delegated to show them around. i took them to railroad buildings, electric-light plants, fire departments, and showed them a great variety of things. it lasted two days." of another visit edison says: "sitting bull and fifteen sioux indians came to washington to see the great father, and then to new york, and went to the goerck street works. we could make some very good pyrotechnics there, so we determined to give the indians a scare. but it didn't work. we had an arc there of a most terrifying character, but they never moved a muscle." another episode at goerck street did not find the visitors quite so stoical. "in testing dynamos at goerck street we had a long flat belt running parallel with the floor, about four inches above it, and travelling four thousand feet a minute. one day one of the directors brought in three or four ladies to the works to see the new electric-light system. one of the ladies had a little poodle led by a string. the belt was running so smoothly and evenly, the poodle did not notice the difference between it and the floor, and got into the belt before we could do anything. the dog was whirled around forty or fifty times, and a little flat piece of leather came out--and the ladies fainted." a very interesting period, on the social side, was the visit paid by edison and his family to europe in , when he had made a splendid exhibit of his inventions and apparatus at the great paris centennial exposition of that year, to the extreme delight of the french, who welcomed him with open arms. the political sentiments that the exposition celebrated were not such as to find general sympathy in monarchical europe, so that the "crowned heads" were conspicuous by their absence. it was not, of course, by way of theatrical antithesis that edison appeared in paris at such a time. but the contrast was none the less striking and effective. it was felt that, after all, that which the great exposition exemplified at its best--the triumph of genius over matter, over ignorance, over superstition--met with its due recognition when edison came to participate, and to felicitate a noble nation that could show so much in the victories of civilization and the arts, despite its long trials and its long struggle for liberty. it is no exaggeration to say that edison was greeted with the enthusiastic homage of the whole french people. they could find no praise warm enough for the man who had "organized the echoes" and "tamed the lightning," and whose career was so picturesque with eventful and romantic development. in fact, for weeks together it seemed as though no parisian paper was considered complete and up to date without an article on edison. the exuberant wit and fancy of the feuilletonists seized upon his various inventions evolving from them others of the most extraordinary nature with which to bedazzle and bewilder the reader. at the close of the exposition edison was created a commander of the legion of honor. his own exhibit, made at a personal expense of over $ , , covered several thousand square feet in the vast machinery hall, and was centred around a huge edison lamp built of myriads of smaller lamps of the ordinary size. the great attraction, however, was the display of the perfected phonograph. several instruments were provided, and every day, all day long, while the exposition lasted, queues of eager visitors from every quarter of the globe were waiting to hear the little machine talk and sing and reproduce their own voices. never before was such a collection of the languages of the world made. it was the first linguistic concourse since babel times. we must let edison tell the story of some of his experiences: "at the universal exposition at paris, in , i made a personal exhibit covering about an acre. as i had no intention of offering to sell anything i was showing, and was pushing no companies, the whole exhibition was made for honor, and without any hope of profit. but the paris newspapers came around and wanted pay for notices of it, which we promptly refused; whereupon there was rather a stormy time for a while, but nothing was published about it. "while at the exposition i visited the opera-house. the president of france lent me his private box. the opera-house was one of the first to be lighted by the incandescent lamp, and the managers took great pleasure in showing me down through the labyrinth containing the wiring, dynamos, etc. when i came into the box, the orchestra played the 'star-spangled banner,' and all the people in the house arose; whereupon i was very much embarrassed. after i had been an hour at the play, the manager came around and asked me to go underneath the stage, as they were putting on a ballet of girls, the finest ballet in europe. it seems there is a little hole on the stage with a hood over it, in which the prompter sits when opera is given. in this instance it was not occupied, and i was given the position in the prompter's seat, and saw the whole ballet at close range. "the city of paris gave me a dinner at the new hotel de ville, which was also lighted with the edison system. they had a very fine installation of machinery. as i could not understand or speak a word of french, i went to see our minister, mr. whitelaw reid, and got him to send a deputy to answer for me, which he did, with my grateful thanks. then the telephone company gave me a dinner, and the engineers of france; and i attended the dinner celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of photography. then they sent to reid my decoration, and they tried to put a sash on me, but i could not stand for that. my wife had me wear the little red button, but when i saw americans coming i would slip it out of my lapel, as i thought they would jolly me for wearing it." nor was this all. edison naturally met many of the celebrities of france: "i visited the eiffel tower at the invitation of eiffel. we went to the top, where there was an extension and a small place in which was eiffel's private office. in this was a piano. when my wife and i arrived at the top, we found that gounod, the composer, was there. we stayed a couple of hours, and gounod sang and played for us. we spent a day at meudon, an old palace given by the government to jansen, the astronomer. he occupied three rooms, and there were . he had the grand dining-room for his laboratory. he showed me a gyroscope he had got up which made the incredible number of revolutions in a second. a modification of this was afterward used on the french atlantic lines for making an artificial horizon to take observations for position at sea. in connection with this a gentleman came to me a number of years afterward, and i got out a part of some plans for him. he wanted to make a gigantic gyroscope weighing several tons, to be run by an electric motor and put on a sailing ship. he wanted this gyroscope to keep a platform perfectly horizontal, no matter how rough the sea was. upon this platform he was going to mount a telescope to observe an eclipse off the gold coast of africa. but for some reason it was never completed. "pasteur invited me to come down to the institute, and i went and had quite a chat with him. i saw a large number of persons being inoculated, and also the whole modus operandi, which was very interesting. i saw one beautiful boy about ten, the son of an english lord. his father was with him. he had been bitten in the face, and was taking the treatment. i said to pasteur, 'will he live?' 'no,' said he, 'the boy will be dead in six days. he was bitten too near the top of the spinal column, and came too late!'" edison has no opinion to offer as an expert on art, but has his own standard of taste: "of course i visited the louvre and saw the old masters, which i could not enjoy. and i attended the luxembourg, with modern masters, which i enjoyed greatly. to my mind, the old masters are not art, and i suspect that many others are of the same opinion; and that their value is in their scarcity and in the variety of men with lots of money." somewhat akin to this is a shrewd comment on one feature of the exposition: "i spent several days in the exposition at paris. i remember going to the exhibit of the kimberley diamond mines, and they kindly permitted me to take diamonds from some of the blue earth which they were washing by machinery to exhibit the mine operations. i found several beautiful diamonds, but they seemed a little light weight to me when i was picking them out. they were diamonds for exhibition purposes --probably glass." this did not altogether complete the european trip of , for edison wished to see helmholtz. "after leaving paris we went to berlin. the french papers then came out and attacked me because i went to germany; and said i was now going over to the enemy. i visited all the things of interest in berlin; and then on my way home i went with helmholtz and siemens in a private compartment to the meeting of the german association of science at heidelberg, and spent two days there. when i started from berlin on the trip, i began to tell american stories. siemens was very fond of these stories and would laugh immensely at them, and could see the points and the humor, by his imagination; but helmholtz could not see one of them. siemens would quickly, in german, explain the point, but helmholtz could not see it, although he understood english, which siemens could speak. still the explanations were made in german. i always wished i could have understood siemens's explanations of the points of those stories. at heidelberg, my assistant, mr. wangemann, an accomplished german-american, showed the phonograph before the association." then came the trip from the continent to england, of which this will certainly pass as a graphic picture: "when i crossed over to england i had heard a good deal about the terrors of the english channel as regards seasickness. i had been over the ocean three times and did not know what seasickness was, so far as i was concerned myself. i was told that while a man might not get seasick on the ocean, if he met a good storm on the channel it would do for him. when we arrived at calais to cross over, everybody made for the restaurant. i did not care about eating, and did not go to the restaurant, but my family did. i walked out and tried to find the boat. going along the dock i saw two small smokestacks sticking up, and looking down saw a little boat. 'where is the steamer that goes across the channel?' 'this is the boat.' there had been a storm in the north sea that had carried away some of the boats on the german steamer, and it certainly looked awful tough outside. i said to the man: 'will that boat live in that sea?' 'oh yes,' he said, 'but we've had a bad storm.' so i made up my mind that perhaps i would get sick this time. the managing director of the english railroad owning this line was forbes, who heard i was coming over, and placed the private saloon at my disposal. the moment my family got in the room with the french lady's maid and the rest, they commenced to get sick, so i felt pretty sure i was in for it. we started out of the little inlet and got into the channel, and that boat went in seventeen directions simultaneously. i waited awhile to see what was going to occur, and then went into the smoking-compartment. nobody was there. by-and-by the fun began. sounds of all kinds and varieties were heard in every direction. they were all sick. there must have been people aboard. i didn't see a single exception except the waiters and myself. i asked one of the waiters concerning the boat itself, and was taken to see the engineer, and went down to look at the engines, and saw the captain. but i kept mostly in the smoking-room. i was smoking a big cigar, and when a man looked in i would give a big puff, and every time they saw that they would go away and begin again. the english channel is a holy terror, all right, but it didn't affect me. i must be out of balance." while in paris, edison had met sir john pender, the english "cable king," and had received an invitation from him to make a visit to his country residence: "sir john pender, the master of the cable system of the world at that time, i met in paris. i think he must have lived among a lot of people who were very solemn, because i went out riding with him in the bois de boulogne and started in to tell him american stories. although he was a scotchman he laughed immoderately. he had the faculty of understanding and quickly seeing the point of the stories; and for three days after i could not get rid of him. finally i made him a promise that i would go to his country house at foot's cray, near london. so i went there, and spent two or three days telling him stories. "while at foot's cray, i met some of the backers of ferranti, then putting up a gigantic alternating-current dynamo near london to send ten or fifteen thousand volts up into the main district of the city for electric lighting. i think pender was interested. at any rate the people invited to dinner were very much interested, and they questioned me as to what i thought of the proposition. i said i hadn't any thought about it, and could not give any opinion until i saw it. so i was taken up to london to see the dynamo in course of construction and the methods employed; and they insisted i should give them some expression of my views. while i gave them my opinion, it was reluctantly; i did not want to do so. i thought that commercially the thing was too ambitious, that ferranti's ideas were too big, just then; that he ought to have started a little smaller until he was sure. i understand that this installation was not commercially successful, as there were a great many troubles. but ferranti had good ideas, and he was no small man." incidentally it may be noted here that during the same year ( ) the various manufacturing edison lighting interests in america were brought together, under the leadership of mr. henry villard, and consolidated in the edison general electric company with a capital of no less than $ , , on an eight-per-cent.-dividend basis. the numerous edison central stations all over the country represented much more than that sum, and made a splendid outlet for the product of the factories. a few years later came the consolidation with the thomson-houston interests in the general electric company, which under the brilliant and vigorous management of president c. a. coffin has become one of the greatest manufacturing institutions of the country, with an output of apparatus reaching toward $ , , annually. the net result of both financial operations was, however, to detach edison from the special field of invention to which he had given so many of his most fruitful years; and to close very definitely that chapter of his life, leaving him free to develop other ideas and interests as set forth in these volumes. it might appear strange on the surface, but one of the reasons that most influenced edison to regrets in connection with the "big trade" of was that it separated him from his old friend and ally, bergmann, who, on selling out, saw a great future for himself in germany, went there, and realized it. edison has always had an amused admiration for bergmann, and his "social side" is often made evident by his love of telling stories about those days of struggle. some of the stories were told for this volume. "bergmann came to work for me as a boy," says edison. "he started in on stock-quotation printers. as he was a rapid workman and paid no attention to the clock, i took a fancy to him, and gave him piece-work. he contrived so many little tools to cheapen the work that he made lots of money. i even helped him get up tools until it occurred to me that this was too rapid a process of getting rid of my money, as i hadn't the heart to cut the price when it was originally fair. after a year or so, bergmann got enough money to start a small shop in wooster street, new york, and it was at this shop that the first phonographs were made for sale. then came the carbon telephone transmitter, a large number of which were made by bergmann for the western union. finally came the electric light. a dynamo was installed in bergmann's shop to permit him to test the various small devices which he was then making for the system. he rented power from a jew who owned the building. power was supplied from a fifty-horse-power engine to other tenants on the several floors. soon after the introduction of the big dynamo machine, the landlord appeared in the shop and insisted that bergmann was using more power than he was paying for, and said that lately the belt on the engine was slipping and squealing. bergmann maintained that he must be mistaken. the landlord kept going among his tenants and finally discovered the dynamo. 'oh! mr. bergmann, now i know where my power goes to,' pointing to the dynamo. bergmann gave him a withering look of scorn, and said, 'come here and i will show you.' throwing off the belt and disconnecting the wires, he spun the armature around by hand. 'there,' said bergmann, 'you see it's not here that you must look for your loss.' this satisfied the landlord, and he started off to his other tenants. he did not know that that machine, when the wires were connected, could stop his engine. "soon after, the business had grown so large that e. h. johnson and i went in as partners, and bergmann rented an immense factory building at the corner of avenue b and east seventeenth street, new york, six stories high and covering a quarter of a block. here were made all the small things used on the electric-lighting system, such as sockets, chandeliers, switches, meters, etc. in addition, stock tickers, telephones, telephone switchboards, and typewriters were made the hammond typewriters were perfected and made there. over men were finally employed. this shop was very successful both scientifically and financially. bergmann was a man of great executive ability and carried economy of manufacture to the limit. among all the men i have had associated with me, he had the commercial instinct most highly developed." one need not wonder at edison's reminiscent remark that, "in any trade any of my 'boys' made with bergmann he always got the best of them, no matter what it was. one time there was to be a convention of the managers of edison illuminating companies at chicago. there were a lot of representatives from the east, and a private car was hired. at jersey city a poker game was started by one of the delegates. bergmann was induced to enter the game. this was played right through to chicago without any sleep, but the boys didn't mind that. i had gotten them immune to it. bergmann had won all the money, and when the porter came in and said 'chicago,' bergmann jumped up and said: 'what! chicago! i thought it was only philadelphia!'" but perhaps this further story is a better indication of developed humor and shrewdness: "a man by the name of epstein had been in the habit of buying brass chips and trimmings from the lathes, and in some way bergmann found out that he had been cheated. this hurt his pride, and he determined to get even. one day epstein appeared and said: 'good-morning, mr. bergmann, have you any chips to-day?' 'no,' said bergmann, 'i have none.' 'that's strange, mr. bergmann; won't you look?' no, he wouldn't look; he knew he had none. finally epstein was so persistent that bergmann called an assistant and told him to go and see if he had any chips. he returned and said they had the largest and finest lot they ever had. epstein went up to several boxes piled full of chips, and so heavy that he could not lift even one end of a box. 'now, mr. bergmann,' said epstein, 'how much for the lot?' 'epstein,' said bergmann, 'you have cheated me, and i will no longer sell by the lot, but will sell only by the pound.' no amount of argument would apparently change bergmann's determination to sell by the pound, but finally epstein got up to $ for the lot, and bergmann, appearing as if disgusted, accepted and made him count out the money. then he said: 'well, epstein, good-bye, i've got to go down to wall street.' epstein and his assistant then attempted to lift the boxes to carry them out, but couldn't; and then discovered that calculations as to quantity had been thrown out because the boxes had all been screwed down to the floor and mostly filled with boards with a veneer of brass chips. he made such a scene that he had to be removed by the police. i met him several days afterward and he said he had forgiven mr. bergmann, as he was such a smart business man, and the scheme was so ingenious. "one day as a joke i filled three or four sheets of foolscap paper with a jumble of figures and told bergmann they were calculations showing the great loss of power from blowing the factory whistle. bergmann thought it real, and never after that would he permit the whistle to blow." another glimpse of the "social side" is afforded in the following little series of pen-pictures of the same place and time: "i had my laboratory at the top of the bergmann works, after moving from menlo park. the building was six stories high. my father came there when he was eighty years of age. the old man had powerful lungs. in fact, when i was examined by the mutual life insurance company, in , my lung expansion was taken by the doctor, and the old gentleman was there at the time. he said to the doctor: 'i wish you would take my lung expansion, too.' the doctor took it, and his surprise was very great, as it was one of the largest on record. i think it was five and one-half inches. there were only three or four could beat it. little bergmann hadn't much lung power. the old man said to him, one day: 'let's run up-stairs.' bergmann agreed and ran up. when they got there bergmann was all done up, but my father never showed a sign of it. there was an elevator there, and each day while it was travelling up i held the stem of my waterbury watch up against the column in the elevator shaft and it finished the winding by the time i got up the six stories." this original method of reducing the amount of physical labor involved in watch-winding brings to mind another instance of shrewdness mentioned by edison, with regard to his newsboy days. being asked whether he did not get imposed upon with bad bank-bills, he replied that he subscribed to a bank-note detector and consulted it closely whenever a note of any size fell into his hands. he was then less than fourteen years old. the conversations with edison that elicited these stories brought out some details as to peril that attends experimentation. he has confronted many a serious physical risk, and counts himself lucky to have come through without a scratch or scar. four instances of personal danger may be noted in his own language: "when i started at menlo, i had an electric furnace for welding rare metals that i did not know about very clearly. i was in the dark-room, where i had a lot of chloride of sulphur, a very corrosive liquid. i did not know that it would decompose by water. i poured in a beakerful of water, and the whole thing exploded and threw a lot of it into my eyes. i ran to the hydrant, leaned over backward, opened my eyes, and ran the hydrant water right into them. but it was two weeks before i could see. "the next time we just saved ourselves. i was making some stuff to squirt into filaments for the incandescent lamp. i made about a pound of it. i had used ammonia and bromine. i did not know it at the time, but i had made bromide of nitrogen. i put the large bulk of it in three filters, and after it had been washed and all the water had come through the filter, i opened the three filters and laid them on a hot steam plate to dry with the stuff. while i and mr. sadler, one of my assistants, were working near it, there was a sudden flash of light, and a very smart explosion. i said to sadler: 'what is that?' 'i don't know,' he said, and we paid no attention. in about half a minute there was a sharp concussion, and sadler said: 'see, it is that stuff on the steam plate.' i grabbed the whole thing and threw it in the sink, and poured water on it. i saved a little of it and found it was a terrific explosive. the reason why those little preliminary explosions took place was that a little had spattered out on the edge of the filter paper, and had dried first and exploded. had the main body exploded there would have been nothing left of the laboratory i was working in. "at another time, i had a briquetting machine for briquetting iron ore. i had a lever held down by a powerful spring, and a rod one inch in diameter and four feet long. while i was experimenting with it, and standing beside it, a washer broke, and that spring threw the rod right up to the ceiling with a blast; and it came down again just within an inch of my nose, and went clear through a two-inch plank. that was 'within an inch of your life,' as they say. "in my experimental plant for concentrating iron ore in the northern part of new jersey, we had a vertical drier, a column about nine feet square and eighty feet high. at the bottom there was a space where two men could go through a hole; and then all the rest of the column was filled with baffle plates. one day this drier got blocked, and the ore would not run down. so i and the vice-president of the company, mr. mallory, crowded through the manhole to see why the ore would not come down. after we got in, the ore did come down and there were fourteen tons of it above us. the men outside knew we were in there, and they had a great time digging us out and getting air to us." such incidents brought out in narration the fact that many of the men working with him had been less fortunate, particularly those who had experimented with the roentgen x-ray, whose ravages, like those of leprosy, were responsible for the mutilation and death of at least one expert assistant. in the early days of work on the incandescent lamp, also, there was considerable trouble with mercury. "i had a series of vacuum-pumps worked by mercury and used for exhausting experimental incandescent lamps. the main pipe, which was full of mercury, was about seven and one-half feet from the floor. along the length of the pipe were outlets to which thick rubber tubing was connected, each tube to a pump. one day, while experimenting with the mercury pump, my assistant, an awkward country lad from a farm on staten island, who had adenoids in his nose and breathed through his mouth, which was always wide open, was looking up at this pipe, at a small leak of mercury, when the rubber tube came off and probably two pounds of mercury went into his mouth and down his throat, and got through his system somehow. in a short time he became salivated, and his teeth got loose. he went home, and shortly his mother appeared at the laboratory with a horsewhip, which she proposed to use on the proprietor. i was fortunately absent, and she was mollified somehow by my other assistants. i had given the boy considerable iodide of potassium to prevent salivation, but it did no good in this case. "when the first lamp-works were started at menlo park, one of my experiments seemed to show that hot mercury gave a better vacuum in the lamp than cold mercury. i thereupon started to heat it. soon all the men got salivated, and things looked serious; but i found that in the mirror factories, where mercury was used extensively, the french government made the giving of iodide of potassium compulsory to prevent salivation. i carried out this idea, and made every man take a dose every day, but there was great opposition, and hot mercury was finally abandoned." it will have been gathered that edison has owed his special immunity from "occupational diseases" not only to luck but to unusual powers of endurance, and a strong physique, inherited, no doubt, from his father. mr. mallory mentions a little fact that bears on this exceptional quality of bodily powers. "i have often been surprised at edison's wonderful capacity for the instant visual perception of differences in materials that were invisible to others until he would patiently point them out. this had puzzled me for years, but one day i was unexpectedly let into part of the secret. for some little time past mr. edison had noticed that he was bothered somewhat in reading print, and i asked him to have an oculist give him reading-glasses. he partially promised, but never took time to attend to it. one day he and i were in the city, and as mrs. edison had spoken to me about it, and as we happened to have an hour to spare, i persuaded him to go to an oculist with me. using no names, i asked the latter to examine the gentleman's eyes. he did so very conscientiously, and it was an interesting experience, for he was kept busy answering mr. edison's numerous questions. when the oculist finished, he turned to me and said: 'i have been many years in the business, but have never seen an optic nerve like that of this gentleman. an ordinary optic nerve is about the thickness of a thread, but his is like a cord. he must be a remarkable man in some walk of life. who is he?'" it has certainly required great bodily vigor and physical capacity to sustain such fatigue as edison has all his life imposed upon himself, to the extent on one occasion of going five days without sleep. in a conversation during , he remarked, as though it were nothing out of the way, that up to seven years previously his average of daily working hours was nineteen and one-half, but that since then he figured it at eighteen. he said he stood it easily, because he was interested in everything, and was reading and studying all the time. for instance, he had gone to bed the night before exactly at twelve and had arisen at . a. m. to read some new york law reports. it was suggested that the secret of it might be that he did not live in the past, but was always looking forward to a greater future, to which he replied: "yes, that's it. i don't live with the past; i am living for to-day and to-morrow. i am interested in every department of science, arts, and manufacture. i read all the time on astronomy, chemistry, biology, physics, music, metaphysics, mechanics, and other branches--political economy, electricity, and, in fact, all things that are making for progress in the world. i get all the proceedings of the scientific societies, the principal scientific and trade journals, and read them. i also read the clipper, the police gazette, the billboard, the dramatic mirror, and a lot of similar publications, for i like to know what is going on. in this way i keep up to date, and live in a great moving world of my own, and, what's more, i enjoy every minute of it." referring to some event of the past, he said: "spilt milk doesn't interest me. i have spilt lots of it, and while i have always felt it for a few days, it is quickly forgotten, and i turn again to the future." during another talk on kindred affairs it was suggested to edison that, as he had worked so hard all his life, it was about time for him to think somewhat of the pleasures of travel and the social side of life. to which he replied laughingly: "i already have a schedule worked out. from now until i am seventy-five years of age, i expect to keep more or less busy with my regular work, not, however, working as many hours or as hard as i have in the past. at seventy five i expect to wear loud waistcoats with fancy buttons; also gaiter tops; at eighty i expect to learn how to play bridge whist and talk foolishly to the ladies. at eighty-five i expect to wear a full-dress suit every evening at dinner, and at ninety--well, i never plan more than thirty years ahead." the reference to clothes is interesting, as it is one of the few subjects in which edison has no interest. it rather bores him. his dress is always of the plainest; in fact, so plain that, at the bergmann shops in new york, the children attending a parochial catholic school were wont to salute him with the finger to the head, every time he went by. upon inquiring, he found that they took him for a priest, with his dark garb, smooth-shaven face, and serious expression. edison says: "i get a suit that fits me; then i compel the tailors to use that as a jig or pattern or blue-print to make others by. for many years a suit was used as a measurement; once or twice they took fresh measurements, but these didn't fit and they had to go back. i eat to keep my weight constant, hence i need never change measurements." in regard to this, mr. mallory furnishes a bit of chat as follows: "in a lawsuit in which i was a witness, i went out to lunch with the lawyers on both sides, and the lawyer who had been cross-examining me stated that he had for a client a fifth avenue tailor, who had told him that he had made all of mr. edison's clothes for the last twenty years, and that he had never seen him. he said that some twenty years ago a suit was sent to him from orange, and measurements were made from it, and that every suit since had been made from these measurements. i may add, from my own personal observation, that in mr. edison's clothes there is no evidence but that every new suit that he has worn in that time looks as if he had been specially measured for it, which shows how very little he has changed physically in the last twenty years." edison has never had any taste for amusements, although he will indulge in the game of "parchesi" and has a billiard-table in his house. the coming of the automobile was a great boon to him, because it gave him a form of outdoor sport in which he could indulge in a spirit of observation, without the guilty feeling that he was wasting valuable time. in his automobile he has made long tours, and with his family has particularly indulged his taste for botany. that he has had the usual experience in running machines will be evidenced by the following little story from mr. mallory: "about three years ago i had a motor-car of a make of which mr. edison had already two cars; and when the car was received i made inquiry as to whether any repair parts were carried by any of the various garages in easton, pennsylvania, near our cement works. i learned that this particular car was the only one in easton. knowing that mr. edison had had an experience lasting two or three years with this particular make of car, i determined to ask him for information relative to repair parts; so the next time i was at the laboratory i told him i was unable to get any repair parts in easton, and that i wished to order some of the most necessary, so that, in case of breakdowns, i would not be compelled to lose the use of the car for several days until the parts came from the automobile factory. i asked his advice as to what i should order, to which he replied: 'i don't think it will be necessary to order an extra top.'" since that episode, which will probably be appreciated by most automobilists, edison has taken up the electric automobile, and is now using it as well as developing it. one of the cars equipped with his battery is the bailey, and mr. bee tells the following story in regard to it: "one day colonel bailey, of amesbury, massachusetts, who was visiting the automobile show in new york, came out to the laboratory to see mr. edison, as the latter had expressed a desire to talk with him on his next visit to the metropolis. when he arrived at the laboratory, mr. edison, who had been up all night experimenting, was asleep on the cot in the library. as a rule we never wake mr. edison from sleep, but as he wanted to see colonel bailey, who had to go, i felt that an exception should be made, so i went and tapped him on the shoulder. he awoke at once, smiling, jumped up, was instantly himself as usual, and advanced and greeted the visitor. his very first question was: 'well, colonel, how did you come out on that experiment?'--referring to some suggestions he had made at their last meeting a year before. for a minute colonel bailey did not recall what was referred to; but a few words from mr. edison brought it back to his remembrance, and he reported that the results had justified mr. edison's expectations." it might be expected that edison would have extreme and even radical ideas on the subject of education--and he has, as well as a perfect readiness to express them, because he considers that time is wasted on things that are not essential: "what we need," he has said, "are men capable of doing work. i wouldn't give a penny for the ordinary college graduate, except those from the institutes of technology. those coming up from the ranks are a darned sight better than the others. they aren't filled up with latin, philosophy, and the rest of that ninny stuff." a further remark of his is: "what the country needs now is the practical skilled engineer, who is capable of doing everything. in three or four centuries, when the country is settled, and commercialism is diminished, there will be time for the literary men. at present we want engineers, industrial men, good business-like managers, and railroad men." it is hardly to be marvelled at that such views should elicit warm protest, summed up in the comment: "mr. edison and many like him see in reverse the course of human progress. invention does not smooth the way for the practical men and make them possible. there is always too much danger of neglecting thoughts for things, ideas for machinery. no theory of education that aggravates this danger is consistent with national well-being." edison is slow to discuss the great mysteries of life, but is of reverential attitude of mind, and ever tolerant of others' beliefs. he is not a religious man in the sense of turning to forms and creeds, but, as might be expected, is inclined as an inventor and creator to argue from the basis of "design" and thence to infer a designer. "after years of watching the processes of nature," he says, "i can no more doubt the existence of an intelligence that is running things than i do of the existence of myself. take, for example, the substance water that forms the crystals known as ice. now, there are hundreds of combinations that form crystals, and every one of them, save ice, sinks in water. ice, i say, doesn't, and it is rather lucky for us mortals, for if it had done so, we would all be dead. why? simply because if ice sank to the bottoms of rivers, lakes, and oceans as fast as it froze, those places would be frozen up and there would be no water left. that is only one example out of thousands that to me prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that some vast intelligence is governing this and other planets." a few words as to the domestic and personal side of edison's life, to which many incidental references have already been made in these pages. he was married in to miss mary stillwell, who died in , leaving three children--thomas alva, william leslie, and marion estelle. mr. edison was married again in to miss mina miller, daughter of mr. lewis miller, a distinguished pioneer inventor and manufacturer in the field of agricultural machinery, and equally entitled to fame as the father of the "chautauqua idea," and the founder with bishop vincent of the original chautauqua, which now has so many replicas all over the country, and which started in motion one of the great modern educational and moral forces in america. by this marriage there are three children--charles, madeline, and theodore. for over a score of years, dating from his marriage to miss miller, edison's happy and perfect domestic life has been spent at glenmont, a beautiful property acquired at that time in llewellyn park, on the higher slopes of orange mountain, new jersey, within easy walking distance of the laboratory at the foot of the hill in west orange. as noted already, the latter part of each winter is spent at fort myers, florida, where edison has, on the banks of the calahoutchie river, a plantation home that is in many ways a miniature copy of the home and laboratory up north. glenmont is a rather elaborate and florid building in queen anne english style, of brick, stone, and wooden beams showing on the exterior, with an abundance of gables and balconies. it is set in an environment of woods and sweeps of lawn, flanked by unusually large conservatories, and always bright in summer with glowing flower beds. it would be difficult to imagine edison in a stiffly formal house, and this big, cozy, three-story, rambling mansion has an easy freedom about it, without and within, quite in keeping with the genius of the inventor, but revealing at every turn traces of feminine taste and culture. the ground floor, consisting chiefly of broad drawing-rooms, parlors, and dining-hall, is chiefly noteworthy for the "den," or lounging-room, at the end of the main axis, where the family and friends are likely to be found in the evening hours, unless the party has withdrawn for more intimate social intercourse to the interesting and fascinating private library on the floor above. the lounging-room on the ground floor is more or less of an edison museum, for it is littered with souvenirs from great people, and with mementos of travel, all related to some event or episode. a large cabinet contains awards, decorations, and medals presented to edison, accumulating in the course of a long career, some of which may be seen in the illustration opposite. near by may be noticed a bronze replica of the edison gold medal which was founded in the american institute of electrical engineers, the first award of which was made to elihu thomson during the present year ( ). there are statues of serpentine marble, gifts of the late tsar of russia, whose admiration is also represented by a gorgeous inlaid and enamelled cigar-case. there are typical bronze vases from the society of engineers of japan, and a striking desk-set of writing apparatus from krupp, all the pieces being made out of tiny but massive guns and shells of krupp steel. in addition to such bric-a-brac and bibelots of all kinds are many pictures and photographs, including the original sketches of the reception given to edison in by the paris figaro, and a letter from madame carnot, placing the presidential opera-box at the disposal of mr. and mrs. edison. one of the most conspicuous features of the room is a phonograph equipment on which the latest and best productions by the greatest singers and musicians can always be heard, but which edison himself is everlastingly experimenting with, under the incurable delusion that this domestic retreat is but an extension of his laboratory. the big library--semi-boudoir--up-stairs is also very expressive of the home life of edison, but again typical of his nature and disposition, for it is difficult to overlay his many technical books and scientific periodicals with a sufficiently thick crust of popular magazines or current literature to prevent their outcropping into evidence. in like manner the chat and conversation here, however lightly it may begin, turns invariably to large questions and deep problems, especially in the fields of discovery and invention; and edison, in an easy-chair, will sit through the long evenings till one or two in the morning, pulling meditatively at his eyebrows, quoting something he has just read pertinent to the discussion, hearing and telling new stories with gusto, offering all kinds of ingenious suggestions, and without fail getting hold of pads and sheets of paper on which to make illustrative sketches. he is wonderfully handy with the pencil, and will sometimes amuse himself, while chatting, with making all kinds of fancy bits of penmanship, twisting his signature into circles and squares, but always writing straight lines--so straight they could not be ruled truer. many a night it is a question of getting edison to bed, for he would much rather probe a problem than eat or sleep; but at whatever hour the visitor retires or gets up, he is sure to find the master of the house on hand, serene and reposeful, and just as brisk at dawn as when he allowed the conversation to break up at midnight. the ordinary routine of daily family life is of course often interrupted by receptions and parties, visits to the billiard-room, the entertainment of visitors, the departure to and return from college, at vacation periods, of the young people, and matters relating to the many social and philanthropic causes in which mrs. edison is actively interested; but, as a matter of fact, edison's round of toil and relaxation is singularly uniform and free from agitation, and that is the way he would rather have it. edison at sixty-three has a fine physique, and being free from serious ailments of any kind, should carry on the traditions of his long-lived ancestors as to a vigorous old age. his hair has whitened, but is still thick and abundant, and though he uses glasses for certain work, his gray-blue eyes are as keen and bright and deeply lustrous as ever, with the direct, searching look in them that they have ever worn. he stands five feet nine and one-half inches high, weighs one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and has not varied as to weight in a quarter of a century, although as a young man he was slim to gauntness. he is very abstemious, hardly ever touching alcohol, caring little for meat, but fond of fruit, and never averse to a strong cup of coffee or a good cigar. he takes extremely little exercise, although his good color and quickness of step would suggest to those who do not know better that he is in the best of training, and one who lives in the open air. his simplicity as to clothes has already been described. one would be startled to see him with a bright tie, a loud checked suit, or a fancy waistcoat, and yet there is a curious sense of fastidiousness about the plain things he delights in. perhaps he is not wholly responsible personally for this state of affairs. in conversation edison is direct, courteous, ready to discuss a topic with anybody worth talking to, and, in spite of his sore deafness, an excellent listener. no one ever goes away from edison in doubt as to what he thinks or means, but he is ever shy and diffident to a degree if the talk turns on himself rather than on his work. if the authors were asked, after having written the foregoing pages, to explain here the reason for edison's success, based upon their observations so far made, they would first answer that he combines with a vigorous and normal physical structure a mind capable of clear and logical thinking, and an imagination of unusual activity. but this would by no means offer a complete explanation. there are many men of equal bodily and mental vigor who have not achieved a tithe of his accomplishment. what other factors are there to be taken into consideration to explain this phenomenon? first, a stolid, almost phlegmatic, nervous system which takes absolutely no notice of ennui--a system like that of a chinese ivory-carver who works day after day and month after month on a piece of material no larger than your hand. no better illustration of this characteristic can be found than in the development of the nickel pocket for the storage battery, an element the size of a short lead-pencil, on which upward of five years were spent in experiments, costing over a million dollars, day after day, always apparently with the same tubes but with small variations carefully tabulated in the note-books. to an ordinary person the mere sight of such a tube would have been as distasteful, certainly after a week or so, as the smell of a quail to a man striving to eat one every day for a month, near the end of his gastronomic ordeal. but to edison these small perforated steel tubes held out as much of a fascination at the end of five years as when the search was first begun, and every morning found him as eager to begin the investigation anew as if the battery was an absolutely novel problem to which his thoughts had just been directed. another and second characteristic of edison's personality contributing so strongly to his achievements is an intense, not to say courageous, optimism in which no thought of failure can enter, an optimism born of self-confidence, and becoming--after forty or fifty years of experience more and more a sense of certainty in the accomplishment of success. in the overcoming of difficulties he has the same intellectual pleasure as the chess-master when confronted with a problem requiring all the efforts of his skill and experience to solve. to advance along smooth and pleasant paths, to encounter no obstacles, to wrestle with no difficulties and hardships--such has absolutely no fascination to him. he meets obstruction with the keen delight of a strong man battling with the waves and opposing them in sheer enjoyment, and the greater and more apparently overwhelming the forces that may tend to sweep him back, the more vigorous his own efforts to forge through them. at the conclusion of the ore-milling experiments, when practically his entire fortune was sunk in an enterprise that had to be considered an impossibility, when at the age of fifty he looked back upon five or six years of intense activity expended apparently for naught, when everything seemed most black and the financial clouds were quickly gathering on the horizon, not the slightest idea of repining entered his mind. the main experiment had succeeded--he had accomplished what he sought for. nature at another point had outstripped him, yet he had broadened his own sum of knowledge to a prodigious extent. it was only during the past summer ( ) that one of the writers spent a sunday with him riding over the beautiful new jersey roads in an automobile, edison in the highest spirits and pointing out with the keenest enjoyment the many beautiful views of valley and wood. the wanderings led to the old ore-milling plant at edison, now practically a mass of deserted buildings all going to decay. it was a depressing sight, marking such titanic but futile struggles with nature. to edison, however, no trace of sentiment or regret occurred, and the whole ruins were apparently as much a matter of unconcern as if he were viewing the remains of pompeii. sitting on the porch of the white house, where he lived during that period, in the light of the setting sun, his fine face in repose, he looked as placidly over the scene as a happy farmer over a field of ripening corn. all that he said was: "i never felt better in my life than during the five years i worked here. hard work, nothing to divert my thought, clear air and simple food made my life very pleasant. we learned a great deal. it will be of benefit to some one some time." similarly, in connection with the storage battery, after having experimented continuously for three years, it was found to fall below his expectations, and its manufacture had to be stopped. hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent on the experiments, and, largely without edison's consent, the battery had been very generally exploited in the press. to stop meant not only to pocket a great loss already incurred, facing a dark and uncertain future, but to most men animated by ordinary human feelings, it meant more than anything else, an injury to personal pride. pride? pooh! that had nothing to do with the really serious practical problem, and the writers can testify that at the moment when his decision was reached, work stopped and the long vista ahead was peered into, edison was as little concerned as if he had concluded that, after all, perhaps peach-pie might be better for present diet than apple-pie. he has often said that time meant very little to him, that he had but a small realization of its passage, and that ten or twenty years were as nothing when considering the development of a vital invention. these references to personal pride recall another characteristic of edison wherein he differs from most men. there are many individuals who derive an intense and not improper pleasure in regalia or military garments, with plenty of gold braid and brass buttons, and thus arrayed, in appearing before their friends and neighbors. putting at the head of the procession the man who makes his appeal to public attention solely because of the brilliancy of his plumage, and passing down the ranks through the multitudes having a gradually decreasing sense of vanity in their personal accomplishment, edison would be placed at the very end. reference herein has been made to the fact that one of the two great english universities wished to confer a degree upon him, but that he was unable to leave his work for the brief time necessary to accept the honor. at that occasion it was pointed out to him that he should make every possible sacrifice to go, that the compliment was great, and that but few americans had been so recognized. it was hopeless--an appeal based on sentiment. before him was something real--work to be accomplished--a problem to be solved. beyond, was a prize as intangible as the button of the legion of honor, which he concealed from his friends that they might not feel he was "showing off." the fact is that edison cares little for the approval of the world, but that he cares everything for the approval of himself. difficult as it may be--perhaps impossible--to trace its origin, edison possesses what he would probably call a well-developed case of new england conscience, for whose approval he is incessantly occupied. these, then, may be taken as the characteristics of edison that have enabled him to accomplish more than most men--a strong body, a clear and active mind, a developed imagination, a capacity of great mental and physical concentration, an iron-clad nervous system that knows no ennui, intense optimism, and courageous self-confidence. any one having these capacities developed to the same extent, with the same opportunities for use, would probably accomplish as much. and yet there is a peculiarity about him that so far as is known has never been referred to before in print. he seems to be conscientiously afraid of appearing indolent, and in consequence subjects himself regularly to unnecessary hardship. working all night is seldom necessary, or until two or three o'clock in the morning, yet even now he persists in such tests upon his strength. recently one of the writers had occasion to present to him a long typewritten document of upward of thirty pages for his approval. it was taken home to glenmont. edison had a few minor corrections to make, probably not more than a dozen all told. they could have been embodied by interlineations and marginal notes in the ordinary way, and certainly would not have required more than ten or fifteen minutes of his time. yet what did he do? he copied out painstakingly the entire paper in long hand, embodying the corrections as he went along, and presented the result of his work the following morning. at the very least such a task must have occupied several hours. how can such a trait--and scores of similar experiences could be given--be explained except by the fact that, evidently, he felt the need of special schooling in industry--that under no circumstances must he allow a thought of indolence to enter his mind? undoubtedly in the days to come edison will not only be recognized as an intellectual prodigy, but as a prodigy of industry--of hard work. in his field as inventor and man of science he stands as clear-cut and secure as the lighthouse on a rock, and as indifferent to the tumult around. but as the "old man"--and before he was thirty years old he was affectionately so called by his laboratory associates--he is a normal, fun-loving, typical american. his sense of humor is intense, but not of the hothouse, overdeveloped variety. one of his favorite jokes is to enter the legal department with an air of great humility and apply for a job as an inventor! never is he so preoccupied or fretted with cares as not to drop all thought of his work for a few moments to listen to a new story, with a ready smile all the while, and a hearty, boyish laugh at the end. his laugh, in fact, is sometimes almost aboriginal; slapping his hands delightedly on his knees, he rocks back and forth and fairly shouts his pleasure. recently a daily report of one of his companies that had just been started contained a large order amounting to several thousand dollars, and was returned by him with a miniature sketch of a small individual viewing that particular item through a telescope! his facility in making hasty but intensely graphic sketches is proverbial. he takes great delight in imitating the lingo of the new york street gamin. a dignified person named james may be greeted with: "hully gee! chimmy, when did youse blow in?" he likes to mimic and imitate types, generally, that are distasteful to him. the sanctimonious hypocrite, the sleek speculator, and others whom he has probably encountered in life are done "to the queen's taste." one very cold winter's day he entered the laboratory library in fine spirits, "doing" the decayed dandy, with imaginary cane under his arm, struggling to put on a pair of tattered imaginary gloves, with a self-satisfied smirk and leer that would have done credit to a real comedian. this particular bit of acting was heightened by the fact that even in the coldest weather he wears thin summer clothes, generally acid-worn and more or less disreputable. for protection he varies the number of his suits of underclothing, sometimes wearing three or four sets, according to the thermometer. if one could divorce edison from the idea of work, and could regard him separate and apart from his embodiment as an inventor and man of science, it might truly be asserted that his temperament is essentially mercurial. often he is in the highest spirits, with all the spontaneity of youth, and again he is depressed, moody, and violently angry. anger with him, however, is a good deal like the story attributed to napoleon: "sire, how is it that your judgment is not affected by your great rage?" asked one of his courtiers. "because," said the emperor, "i never allow it to rise above this line," drawing his hand across his throat. edison has been seen sometimes almost beside himself with anger at a stupid mistake or inexcusable oversight on the part of an assistant, his voice raised to a high pitch, sneeringly expressing his feelings of contempt for the offender; and yet when the culprit, like a bad school-boy, has left the room, edison has immediately returned to his normal poise, and the incident is a thing of the past. at other times the unsettled condition persists, and his spleen is vented not only on the original instigator but upon others who may have occasion to see him, sometimes hours afterward. when such a fit is on him the word is quickly passed around, and but few of his associates find it necessary to consult with him at the time. the genuine anger can generally be distinguished from the imitation article by those who know him intimately by the fact that when really enraged his forehead between the eyes partakes of a curious rotary movement that cannot be adequately described in words. it is as if the storm-clouds within are moving like a whirling cyclone. as a general rule, edison does not get genuinely angry at mistakes and other human weaknesses of his subordinates; at best he merely simulates anger. but woe betide the one who has committed an act of bad faith, treachery, dishonesty, or ingratitude; then edison can show what it is for a strong man to get downright mad. but in this respect he is singularly free, and his spells of anger are really few. in fact, those who know him best are continually surprised at his moderation and patience, often when there has been great provocation. people who come in contact with him and who may have occasion to oppose his views, may leave with the impression that he is hot-tempered; nothing could be further from the truth. he argues his point with great vehemence, pounds on the table to emphasize his views, and illustrates his theme with a wealth of apt similes; but, on account of his deafness, it is difficult to make the argument really two-sided. before the visitor can fully explain his side of the matter some point is brought up that starts edison off again, and new arguments from his viewpoint are poured forth. this constant interruption is taken by many to mean that edison has a small opinion of any arguments that oppose him; but he is only intensely in earnest in presenting his own side. if the visitor persists until edison has seen both sides of the controversy, he is always willing to frankly admit that his own views may be unsound and that his opponent is right. in fact, after such a controversy, both parties going after each other hammer and tongs, the arguments to him being carried on at the very top of one's voice to enable him to hear, and from him being equally loud in the excitement of the discussion, he has often said: "i see now that my position was absolutely rotten." obviously, however, all of these personal characteristics have nothing to do with edison's position in the world of affairs. they show him to be a plain, easy-going, placid american, with no sense of self-importance, and ready at all times to have his mind turned into a lighter channel. in private life they show him to be a good citizen, a good family man, absolutely moral, temperate in all things, and of great charitableness to all mankind. but what of his position in the age in which he lives? where does he rank in the mountain range of great americans? it is believed that from the other chapters of this book the reader can formulate his own answer to the question. introduction to the appendix the reader who has followed the foregoing narrative may feel that inasmuch as it is intended to be an historical document, an appropriate addendum thereto would be a digest of all the inventions of edison. the desirability of such a digest is not to be denied, but as there are some twenty-five hundred or more inventions to be considered (including those covered by caveats), the task of its preparation would be stupendous. besides, the resultant data would extend this book into several additional volumes, thereby rendering it of value chiefly to the technical student, but taking it beyond the bounds of biography. we should, however, deem our presentation of mr. edison's work to be imperfectly executed if we neglected to include an intelligible exposition of the broader theoretical principles of his more important inventions. in the following appendix we have therefore endeavored to present a few brief statements regarding mr. edison's principal inventions, classified as to subject-matter and explained in language as free from technicalities as is possible. no attempt has been made to conform with strictly scientific terminology, but, for the benefit of the general reader, well-understood conventional expressions, such as "flow of current," etc., have been employed. it should be borne in mind that each of the following items has been treated as a whole or class, generally speaking, and not as a digest of all the individual patents relating to it. any one who is sufficiently interested can obtain copies of any of the patents referred to for five cents each by addressing the commissioner of patents, washington, d. c. appendix i. the stock printer in these modern days, when the stock ticker is in universal use, one seldom, if ever, hears the name of edison coupled with the little instrument whose chatterings have such tremendous import to the whole world. it is of much interest, however, to remember the fact that it was by reason of his notable work in connection with this device that he first became known as an inventor. indeed, it was through the intrinsic merits of his improvements in stock tickers that he made his real entree into commercial life. the idea of the ticker did not originate with edison, as we have already seen in chapter vii of the preceding narrative, but at the time of his employment with the western union, in boston, in , the crudities of the earlier forms made an impression on his practical mind, and he got out an improved instrument of his own, which he introduced in boston through the aid of a professional promoter. edison, then only twenty-one, had less business experience than the promoter, through whose manipulation he soon lost his financial interest in this early ticker enterprise. the narrative tells of his coming to new york in , and immediately plunging into the business of gold and stock reporting. it was at this period that his real work on stock printers commenced, first individually, and later as a co-worker with f. l. pope. this inventive period extended over a number of years, during which time he took out forty-six patents on stock-printing instruments and devices, two of such patents being issued to edison and pope as joint inventors. these various inventions were mostly in the line of development of the art as it progressed during those early years, but out of it all came the edison universal printer, which entered into very extensive use, and which is still used throughout the united states and in some foreign countries to a considerable extent at this very day. edison's inventive work on stock printers has left its mark upon the art as it exists at the present time. in his earlier work he directed his attention to the employment of a single-circuit system, in which only one wire was required, the two operations of setting the type-wheels and of printing being controlled by separate electromagnets which were actuated through polarized relays, as occasion required, one polarity energizing the electromagnet controlling the type-wheels, and the opposite polarity energizing the electromagnet controlling the printing. later on, however, he changed over to a two-wire circuit, such as shown in fig. of this article in connection with the universal stock printer. in the earliest days of the stock printer, edison realized the vital commercial importance of having all instruments recording precisely alike at the same moment, and it was he who first devised (in ) the "unison stop," by means of which all connected instruments could at any moment be brought to zero from the central transmitting station, and thus be made to work in correspondence with the central instrument and with one another. he also originated the idea of using only one inking-pad and shifting it from side to side to ink the type-wheels. it was also in edison's stock printer that the principle of shifting type-wheels was first employed. hence it will be seen that, as in many other arts, he made a lasting impression in this one by the intrinsic merits of the improvements resulting from his work therein. we shall not attempt to digest the forty-six patents above named, nor to follow edison through the progressive steps which led to the completion of his universal printer, but shall simply present a sketch of the instrument itself, and follow with a very brief and general explanation of its theory. the edison universal printer, as it virtually appears in practice, is illustrated in fig. below, from which it will be seen that the most prominent parts are the two type-wheels, the inking-pad, and the paper tape feeding from the reel, all appropriately placed in a substantial framework. the electromagnets and other actuating mechanism cannot be seen plainly in this figure, but are produced diagrammatically in fig. , and somewhat enlarged for convenience of explanation. it will be seen that there are two electromagnets, one of which, tm, is known as the "type-magnet," and the other, pm, as the "press-magnet," the former having to do with the operation of the type-wheels, and the latter with the pressing of the paper tape against them. as will be seen from the diagram, the armature, a, of the type-magnet has an extension arm, on the end of which is an escapement engaging with a toothed wheel placed at the extremity of the shaft carrying the type-wheels. this extension arm is pivoted at b. hence, as the armature is alternately attracted when current passes around its electromagnet, and drawn up by the spring on cessation of current, it moves up and down, thus actuating the escapement and causing a rotation of the toothed wheel in the direction of the arrow. this, in turn, brings any desired letters or figures on the type-wheels to a central point, where they may be impressed upon the paper tape. one type-wheel carries letters, and the other one figures. these two wheels are mounted rigidly on a sleeve carried by the wheel-shaft. as it is desired to print from only one type-wheel at a time, it becomes necessary to shift them back and forth from time to time, in order to bring the desired characters in line with the paper tape. this is accomplished through the movements of a three-arm rocking-lever attached to the wheel-sleeve at the end of the shaft. this lever is actuated through the agency of two small pins carried by an arm projecting from the press-lever, pl. as the latter moves up and down the pins play upon the under side of the lower arm of the rocking-lever, thus canting it and pushing the type-wheels to the right or left, as the case may be. the operation of shifting the type-wheels will be given further on. the press-lever is actuated by the press-magnet. from the diagram it will be seen that the armature of the latter has a long, pivoted extension arm, or platen, trough-like in shape, in which the paper tape runs. it has already been noted that the object of the press-lever is to press this tape against that character of the type-wheel centrally located above it at the moment. it will at once be perceived that this action takes place when current flows through the electromagnet and its armature is attracted downward, the platen again dropping away from the type-wheel as the armature is released upon cessation of current. the paper "feed" is shown at the end of the press-lever, and consists of a push "dog," or pawl, which operates to urge the paper forward as the press-lever descends. the worm-gear which appears in the diagram on the shaft, near the toothed wheel, forms part of the unison stop above referred to, but this device is not shown in full, in order to avoid unnecessary complications of the drawing. at the right-hand side of the diagram (fig. ) is shown a portion of the transmitting apparatus at a central office. generally speaking, this consists of a motor-driven cylinder having metallic pins placed at intervals, and arranged spirally, around its periphery. these pins correspond in number to the characters on the type-wheels. a keyboard (not shown) is arranged above the cylinder, having keys lettered and numbered corresponding to the letters and figures on the type-wheels. upon depressing any one of these keys the motion of the cylinder is arrested when one of its pins is caught and held by the depressed key. when the key is released the cylinder continues in motion. hence, it is evident that the revolution of the cylinder may be interrupted as often as desired by manipulation of the various keys in transmitting the letters and figures which are to be recorded by the printing instrument. the method of transmission will presently appear. in the sketch (fig. ) there will be seen, mounted upon the cylinder shaft, two wheels made up of metallic segments insulated from each other, and upon the hubs of these wheels are two brushes which connect with the main battery. resting upon the periphery of these two segmental wheels there are two brushes to which are connected the wires which carry the battery current to the type-magnet and press-magnet, respectively, as the brushes make circuit by coming in contact with the metallic segments. it will be remembered that upon the cylinder there are as many pins as there are characters on the type-wheels of the ticker, and one of the segmental wheels, w, has a like number of metallic segments, while upon the other wheel, w', there are only one-half that number. the wheel w controls the supply of current to the press-magnet, and the wheel w' to the type-magnet. the type-magnet advances the letter and figure wheels one step when the magnet is energized, and a succeeding step when the circuit is broken. hence, the metallic contact surfaces on wheel w' are, as stated, only half as many as on the wheel w, which controls the press-magnet. it should be borne in mind, however, that the contact surfaces and insulated surfaces on wheel w' are together equal in number to the characters on the type-wheels, but the retractile spring of tm does half the work of operating the escapement. on the other hand, the wheel w has the full number of contact surfaces, because it must provide for the operative closure of the press-magnet circuit whether the brush b' is in engagement with a metallic segment or an insulated segment of the wheel w'. as the cylinder revolves, the wheels are carried around with its shaft and current impulses flow through the wires to the magnets as the brushes make contact with the metallic segments of these wheels. one example will be sufficient to convey to the reader an idea of the operation of the apparatus. assuming, for instance, that it is desired to send out the letters am to the printer, let us suppose that the pin corresponding to the letter a is at one end of the cylinder and near the upper part of its periphery, and that the letter m is about the centre of the cylinder and near the lower part of its periphery. the operator at the keyboard would depress the letter a, whereupon the cylinder would in its revolution bring the first-named pin against the key. during the rotation of the cylinder a current would pass through wheel w' and actuate tm, drawing down the armature and operating the escapement, which would bring the type-wheel to a point where the letter a would be central as regards the paper tape when the cylinder came to rest, current would flow through the brush of wheel w to pm, and its armature would be attracted, causing the platen to be lifted and thus bringing the paper tape in contact with the type-wheel and printing the letter a. the operator next sends the letter m by depressing the appropriate key. on account of the position of the corresponding pin, the cylinder would make nearly half a revolution before bringing the pin to the key. during this half revolution the segmental wheels have also been turning, and the brushes have transmitted a number of current impulses to tm, which have caused it to operate the escapement a corresponding number of times, thus turning the type-wheels around to the letter m. when the cylinder stops, current once more goes to the press-magnet, and the operation of lifting and printing is repeated. as a matter of fact, current flows over both circuits as the cylinder is rotated, but the press-magnet is purposely made to be comparatively "sluggish" and the narrowness of the segments on wheel w tends to diminish the flow of current in the press circuit until the cylinder comes to rest, when the current continuously flows over that circuit without interruption and fully energizes the press-magnet. the shifting of the type-wheels is brought about as follows: on the keyboard of the transmitter there are two characters known as "dots"--namely, the letter dot and the figure dot. if the operator presses one of these dot keys, it is engaged by an appropriate pin on the revolving cylinder. meanwhile the type-wheels are rotating, carrying with them the rocking-lever, and current is pulsating over both circuits. when the type-wheels have arrived at the proper point the rocking-lever has been carried to a position where its lower arm is directly over one of the pins on the arm extending from the platen of the press-lever. the cylinder stops, and current operates the sluggish press-magnet, causing its armature to be attracted, thus lifting the platen and its projecting arm. as the arm lifts upward, the pin moves along the under side of the lower arm of the rocking-lever, thus causing it to cant and shift the type-wheels to the right or left, as desired. the principles of operation of this apparatus have been confined to a very brief and general description, but it is believed to be sufficient for the scope of this article. note.--the illustrations in this article are reproduced from american telegraphy and encyclopedia of the telegraph, by william maver, jr., by permission of maver publishing company, new york. ii. the quadruplex and phonoplex edison's work in stock printers and telegraphy had marked him as a rising man in the electrical art of the period but his invention of quadruplex telegraphy in was what brought him very prominently before the notice of the public. duplex telegraphy, or the sending of two separate messages in opposite directions at the same time over one line was known and practiced previous to this time, but quadruplex telegraphy, or the simultaneous sending of four separate messages, two in each direction, over a single line had not been successfully accomplished, although it had been the subject of many an inventor's dream and the object of anxious efforts for many long years. in the early part of , and for some time afterward, the system invented by joseph stearns was the duplex in practical use. in april of that year, however, edison took up the study of the subject and filed two applications for patents. one of these applications [ ] embraced an invention by which two messages could be sent not only duplex, or in opposite directions as above explained, but could also be sent "diplex"--that is to say, in one direction, simultaneously, as separate and distinct messages, over the one line. thus there was introduced a new feature into the art of multiplex telegraphy, for, whereas duplexing (accomplished by varying the strength of the current) permitted messages to be sent simultaneously from opposite stations, diplexing (achieved by also varying the direction of the current) permitted the simultaneous transmission of two messages from the same station and their separate reception at the distant station. [footnote : afterward issued as patent no. , , april , .] the quadruplex was the tempting goal toward which edison now constantly turned, and after more than a year's strenuous work he filed a number of applications for patents in the late summer of . among them was one which was issued some years afterward as patent no. , , covering his well-known quadruplex. he had improved his own diplex, combined it with the stearns duplex and thereby produced a system by means of which four messages could be sent over a single line at the same time, two in each direction. as the reader will probably be interested to learn something of the theoretical principles of this fascinating invention, we shall endeavor to offer a brief and condensed explanation thereof with as little technicality as the subject will permit. this explanation will necessarily be of somewhat elementary character for the benefit of the lay reader, whose indulgence is asked for an occasional reiteration introduced for the sake of clearness of comprehension. while the apparatus and the circuits are seemingly very intricate, the principles are really quite simple, and the difficulty of comprehension is more apparent than real if the underlying phenomena are studied attentively. at the root of all systems of telegraphy, including multiplex systems, there lies the single basic principle upon which their performance depends--namely, the obtaining of a slight mechanical movement at the more or less distant end of a telegraph line. this is accomplished through the utilization of the phenomena of electromagnetism. these phenomena are easy of comprehension and demonstration. if a rod of soft iron be wound around with a number of turns of insulated wire, and a current of electricity be sent through the wire, the rod will be instantly magnetized and will remain a magnet as long as the current flows; but when the current is cut off the magnetic effect instantly ceases. this device is known as an electromagnet, and the charging and discharging of such a magnet may, of course, be repeated indefinitely. inasmuch as a magnet has the power of attracting to itself pieces of iron or steel, the basic importance of an electromagnet in telegraphy will be at once apparent when we consider the sounder, whose clicks are familiar to every ear. this instrument consists essentially of an electro-magnet of horseshoe form with its two poles close together, and with its armature, a bar of iron, maintained in close proximity to the poles, but kept normally in a retracted position by a spring. when the distant operator presses down his key the circuit is closed and a current passes along the line and through the (generally two) coils of the electromagnet, thus magnetizing the iron core. its attractive power draws the armature toward the poles. when the operator releases the pressure on his key the circuit is broken, current does not flow, the magnetic effect ceases, and the armature is drawn back by its spring. these movements give rise to the clicking sounds which represent the dots and dashes of the morse or other alphabet as transmitted by the operator. similar movements, produced in like manner, are availed of in another instrument known as the relay, whose office is to act practically as an automatic transmitter key, repeating the messages received in its coils, and sending them on to the next section of the line, equipped with its own battery; or, when the message is intended for its own station, sending the message to an adjacent sounder included in a local battery circuit. with a simple circuit, therefore, between two stations and where an intermediate battery is not necessary, a relay is not used. passing on to the consideration of another phase of the phenomena of electromagnetism, the reader's attention is called to fig. , in which will be seen on the left a simple form of electromagnet consisting of a bar of soft iron wound around with insulated wire, through which a current is flowing from a battery. the arrows indicate the direction of flow. all magnets have two poles, north and south. a permanent magnet (made of steel, which, as distinguished from soft iron, retains its magnetism for long periods) is so called because it is permanently magnetized and its polarity remains fixed. in an electromagnet the magnetism exists only as long as current is flowing through the wire, and the polarity of the soft-iron bar is determined by the direction of flow of current around it for the time being. if the direction is reversed, the polarity will also be reversed. assuming, for instance, the bar to be end-on toward the observer, that end will be a south pole if the current is flowing from left to right, clockwise, around the bar; or a north pole if flowing in the other direction, as illustrated at the right of the figure. it is immaterial which way the wire is wound around the bar, the determining factor of polarity being the direction of the current. it will be clear, therefore, that if two equal currents be passed around a bar in opposite directions (fig. ) they will tend to produce exactly opposite polarities and thus neutralize each other. hence, the bar would remain non-magnetic. as the path to the quadruplex passes through the duplex, let us consider the stearns system, after noting one other principle--namely, that if more than one path is presented in which an electric current may complete its circuit, it divides in proportion to the resistance of each path. hence, if we connect one pole of a battery with the earth, and from the other pole run to the earth two wires of equal resistance as illustrated in fig. , equal currents will traverse the wires. the above principles were employed in the stearns differential duplex system in the following manner: referring to fig. , suppose a wire, a, is led from a battery around a bar of soft iron from left to right, and another wire of equal resistance and equal number of turns, b, around from right to left. the flow of current will cause two equal opposing actions to be set up in the bar; one will exactly offset the other, and no magnetic effect will be produced. a relay thus wound is known as a differential relay--more generally called a neutral relay. the non-technical reader may wonder what use can possibly be made of an apparently non-operative piece of apparatus. it must be borne in mind, however, in considering a duplex system, that a differential relay is used at each end of the line and forms part of the circuit; and that while each relay must be absolutely unresponsive to the signals sent out from its home office, it must respond to signals transmitted by a distant office. hence, the next figure ( ), with its accompanying explanation, will probably make the matter clear. if another battery, d, be introduced at the distant end of the wire a the differential or neutral relay becomes actively operative as follows: battery c supplies wires a and b with an equal current, but battery d doubles the strength of the current traversing wire a. this is sufficient to not only neutralize the magnetism which the current in wire b would tend to set up, but also--by reason of the excess of current in wire a--to make the bar a magnet whose polarity would be determined by the direction of the flow of current around it. in the arrangement shown in fig. the batteries are so connected that current flow is in the same direction, thus doubling the amount of current flowing through wire a. but suppose the batteries were so connected that the current from each set flowed in an opposite direction? the result would be that these currents would oppose and neutralize each other, and, therefore, none would flow in wire a. inasmuch, however, as there is nothing to hinder, current would flow from battery c through wire b, and the bar would therefore be magnetized. hence, assuming that the relay is to be actuated from the distant end, d, it is in a sense immaterial whether the batteries connected with wire a assist or oppose each other, as, in either case, the bar would be magnetized only through the operation of the distant key. a slight elaboration of fig. will further illustrate the principle of the differential duplex. in fig. are two stations, a the home end, and b the distant station to which a message is to be sent. the relay at each end has two coils, and , no. in each case being known as the "main-line coil" and as the "artificial-line coil." the latter, in each case, has in its circuit a resistance, r, to compensate for the resistance of the main line, so that there shall be no inequalities in the circuits. the artificial line, as well as that to which the two coils are joined, are connected to earth. there is a battery, c, and a key, k. when the key is depressed, current flows through the relay coils at a, but no magnetism is produced, as they oppose each other. the current, however, flows out through the main-line coil over the line and through the main-line coil at b, completing its circuit to earth and magnetizing the bar of the relay, thus causing its armature to be attracted. on releasing the key the circuit is broken and magnetism instantly ceases. it will be evident, therefore, that the operator at a may cause the relay at b to act without affecting his own relay. similar effects would be produced from b to a if the battery and key were placed at the b end. if, therefore, like instruments are placed at each end of the line, as in fig. , we have a differential duplex arrangement by means of which two operators may actuate relays at the ends distant from them, without causing the operation of the relays at their home ends. in practice this is done by means of a special instrument known as a continuity preserving transmitter, or, usually, as a transmitter. this consists of an electromagnet, t, operated by a key, k, and separate battery. the armature lever, l, is long, pivoted in the centre, and is bent over at the end. at a point a little beyond its centre is a small piece of insulating material to which is screwed a strip of spring metal, s. conveniently placed with reference to the end of the lever is a bent metallic piece, p, having a contact screw in its upper horizontal arm, and attached to the lower end of this bent piece is a post, or standard, to which the main battery is electrically connected. the relay coils are connected by wire to the spring piece, s, and the armature lever is connected to earth. if the key is depressed, the armature is attracted and its bent end is moved upward, depressing the spring which makes contact with the upper screw, which places the battery to the line, and simultaneously breaks the ground connection between the spring and the upturned end of the lever, as shown at the left. when the key is released the battery is again connected to earth. the compensating resistances and condensers necessary for a duplex arrangement are shown in the diagram. in fig. one transmitter is shown as closed, at a, while the other one is open. from our previous illustrations and explanations it will be readily seen that, with the transmitter closed at station a, current flows via post p, through s, and to both relay coils at a, thence over the main line to main-line coil at b, and down to earth through s and the armature lever with its grounded wire. the relay at a would be unresponsive, but the core of the relay at b would be magnetized and its armature respond to signals from a. in like manner, if the transmitter at b be closed, current would flow through similar parts and thus cause the relay at a to respond. if both transmitters be closed simultaneously, both batteries will be placed to the line, which would practically result in doubling the current in each of the main-line coils, in consequence of which both relays are energized and their armatures attracted through the operation of the keys at the distant ends. hence, two messages can be sent in opposite directions over the same line simultaneously. the reader will undoubtedly see quite clearly from the above system, which rests upon varying the strength of the current, that two messages could not be sent in the same direction over the one line at the same time. to accomplish this object edison introduced another and distinct feature--namely, the using of the same current, but also varying its direction of flow; that is to say, alternately reversing the polarity of the batteries as applied to the line and thus producing corresponding changes in the polarity of another specially constructed type of relay, called a polarized relay. to afford the reader a clear conception of such a relay we would refer again to fig. and its explanation, from which it appears that the polarity of a soft-iron bar is determined not by the strength of the current flowing around it but by the direction thereof. with this idea clearly in mind, the theory of the polarized relay, generally called "polar" relay, as presented in the diagram (fig. ), will be readily understood. a is a bar of soft iron, bent as shown, and wound around with insulated copper wire, the ends of which are connected with a battery, b, thus forming an electromagnet. an essential part of this relay consists of a swinging permanent magnet, c, whose polarity remains fixed, that end between the terminals of the electromagnet being a north pole. inasmuch as unlike poles of magnets are attracted to each other and like poles repelled, it follows that this north pole will be repelled by the north pole of the electromagnet, but will swing over and be attracted by its south pole. if the direction of flow of current be reversed, by reversing the battery, the electromagnetic polarity also reverses and the end of the permanent magnet swings over to the other side. this is shown in the two figures of fig. . this device being a relay, its purpose is to repeat transmitted signals into a local circuit, as before explained. for this purpose there are provided at d and e a contact and a back stop, the former of which is opened and closed by the swinging permanent magnet, thus opening and closing the local circuit. manifestly there must be provided some convenient way for rapidly transposing the direction of the current flow if such a device as the polar relay is to be used for the reception of telegraph messages, and this is accomplished by means of an instrument called a pole-changer, which consists essentially of a movable contact piece connected permanently to the earth, or grounded, and arranged to connect one or the other pole of a battery to the line and simultaneously ground the other pole. this action of the pole-changer is effected by movements of the armature of an electromagnet through the manipulation of an ordinary telegraph key by an operator at the home station, as in the operation of the "transmitter," above referred to. by a combination of the neutral relay and the polar relay two operators, by manipulating two telegraph keys in the ordinary way, can simultaneously send two messages over one line in the same direction with the same current, one operator varying its strength and the other operator varying its polarity or direction of flow. this principle was covered by edison's patent no. , , and was known as the "diplex" system, although, in the patent referred to, edison showed and claimed the adaptation of the principle to duplex telegraphy. indeed, as a matter of fact, it was found that by winding the polar relay differentially and arranging the circuits and collateral appliances appropriately, the polar duplex system was more highly efficient than the neutral system, and it is extensively used to the present day. thus far we have referred to two systems, one the neutral or differential duplex, and the other the combination of the neutral and polar relays, making a diplex system. by one of these two systems a single wire could be used for sending two messages in opposite directions, and by the other in the same direction or in opposite directions. edison followed up his work on the diplex and combined the two systems into the quadruplex, by means of which four messages could be sent and received simultaneously over the one wire, two in each direction, thus employing eight operators--four at each end--two sending and two receiving. the general principles of quadruplex telegraphy are based upon the phenomena which we have briefly outlined in connection with the neutral relay and the polar relay. the equipment of such a system at each end of the line consists of these two instruments, together with the special form of transmitter and the pole-changer and their keys for actuating the neutral and polar relays at the other, or distant, end. besides these there are the compensating resistances and condensers. all of these will be seen in the diagram (fig. ). it will be understood, of course, that the polar relay, as used in the quadruplex system, is wound differentially, and therefore its operation is somewhat similar in principle to that of the differentially wound neutral relay, in that it does not respond to the operation of the key at the home office, but only operates in response to the movements of the distant key. our explanation has merely aimed to show the underlying phenomena and principles in broad outline without entering into more detail than was deemed absolutely necessary. it should be stated, however, that between the outline and the filling in of the details there was an enormous amount of hard work, study, patient plodding, and endless experiments before edison finally perfected his quadruplex system in the year . if it were attempted to offer here a detailed explanation of the varied and numerous operations of the quadruplex, this article would assume the proportions of a treatise. an idea of their complexity may be gathered from the following, which is quoted from american telegraphy and encyclopedia of the telegraph, by william maver, jr.: "it may well be doubted whether in the whole range of applied electricity there occur such beautiful combinations, so quickly made, broken up, and others reformed, as in the operation of the edison quadruplex. for example, it is quite demonstrable that during the making of a simple dash of the morse alphabet by the neutral relay at the home station the distant pole-changer may reverse its battery several times; the home pole-changer may do likewise, and the home transmitter may increase and decrease the electromotive force of the home battery repeatedly. simultaneously, and, of course, as a consequence of the foregoing actions, the home neutral relay itself may have had its magnetism reversed several times, and the signal, that is, the dash, will have been made, partly by the home battery, partly by the distant and home batteries combined, partly by current on the main line, partly by current on the artificial line, partly by the main-line 'static' current, partly by the condenser static current, and yet, on a well-adjusted circuit the dash will have been produced on the quadruplex sounder as clearly as any dash on an ordinary single-wire sounder." we present a diagrammatic illustration of the edison quadruplex, battery key system, in fig. , and refer the reader to the above or other text-books if he desires to make a close study of its intricate operations. before finally dismissing the quadruplex, and for the benefit of the inquiring reader who may vainly puzzle over the intricacies of the circuits shown in fig. , a hint as to an essential difference between the neutral relay, as used in the duplex and as used in the quadruplex, may be given. with the duplex, as we have seen, the current on the main line is changed in strength only when both keys at opposite stations are closed together, so that a current due to both batteries flows over the main line. when a single message is sent from one station to the other, or when both stations are sending messages that do not conflict, only one battery or the other is connected to the main line; but with the quadruplex, suppose one of the operators, in new york for instance, is sending reversals of current to chicago; we can readily see how these changes in polarity will operate the polar relay at the distant station, but why will they not also operate the neutral relay at the distant station as well? this difficulty was solved by dividing the battery at each station into two unequal parts, the smaller battery being always in circuit with the pole-changer ready to have its polarity reversed on the main line to operate the distant polar relay, but the spring retracting the armature of the neutral relay is made so stiff as to resist these weak currents. if, however, the transmitter is operated at the same end, the entire battery is connected to the main line, and the strength of this current is sufficient to operate the neutral relay. whether the part or all the battery is alternately connected to or disconnected from the main line by the transmitter, the current so varied in strength is subject to reversal of polarity by the pole-changer; but the variations in strength have no effect upon the distant polar relay, because that relay being responsive to changes in polarity of a weak current is obviously responsive to corresponding changes in polarity of a powerful current. with this distinction before him, the reader will have no difficulty in following the circuits of fig. , bearing always in mind that by reason of the differential winding of the polar and neutral relays, neither of the relays at one station will respond to the home battery, and can only respond to the distant battery--the polar relay responding when the polarity of the current is reversed, whether the current be strong or weak, and the neutral relay responding when the line-current is increased, regardless of its polarity. it should be added that besides the system illustrated in fig. , which is known as the differential principle, the quadruplex was also arranged to operate on the wheatstone bridge principle; but it is not deemed necessary to enter into its details. the underlying phenomena were similar, the difference consisting largely in the arrangement of the circuits and apparatus. [ ] [footnote : many of the illustrations in this article are reproduced from american telegraphy and encyclopedia of the telegraph, by william maver, jr., by permission of maver publishing company, new york.] edison made another notable contribution to multiplex telegraphy some years later in the phonoplex. the name suggests the use of the telephone, and such indeed is the case. the necessity for this invention arose out of the problem of increasing the capacity of telegraph lines employed in "through" and "way" service, such as upon railroads. in a railroad system there are usually two terminal stations and a number of way stations. there is naturally much intercommunication, which would be greatly curtailed by a system having the capacity of only a single message at a time. the duplexes above described could not be used on a railroad telegraph system, because of the necessity of electrically balancing the line, which, while entirely feasible on a through line, would not be practicable between a number of intercommunicating points. edison's phonoplex normally doubled the capacity of telegraph lines, whether employed on way business or through traffic, but in actual practice made it possible to obtain more than double service. it has been in practical use for many years on some of the leading railroads of the united states. the system is a combination of telegraphic apparatus and telephone receiver, although in this case the latter instrument is not used in the generally understood manner. it is well known that the diaphragm of a telephone vibrates with the fluctuations of the current energizing the magnet beneath it. if the make and break of the magnetizing current be rapid, the vibrations being within the limits of the human ear, the diaphragm will produce an audible sound; but if the make and break be as slow as with ordinary morse transmission, the diaphragm will be merely flexed and return to its original form without producing a sound. if, therefore, there be placed in the same circuit a regular telegraph relay and a special telephone, an operator may, by manipulating a key, operate the relay (and its sounder) without producing a sound in the telephone, as the makes and breaks of the key are far below the limit of audibility. but if through the same circuit, by means of another key suitably connected there is sent the rapid changes in current from an induction-coil, it will cause a series of loud clicks in the telephone, corresponding to the signals transmitted; but this current is too weak to affect the telegraph relay. it will be seen, therefore, that this method of duplexing is practiced, not by varying the strength or polarity, but by sending two kinds of current over the wire. thus, two sets of morse signals can be transmitted by two operators over one line at the same time without interfering with each other, and not only between terminal offices, but also between a terminal office and any intermediate office, or between two intermediate offices alone. iii automatic telegraphy from the year , when a scotchman, alexander bain, first devised a scheme for rapid telegraphy by automatic methods, down to the beginning of the seventies, many other inventors had also applied themselves to the solution of this difficult problem, with only indifferent success. "cheap telegraphy" being the slogan of the time, edison became arduously interested in the subject, and at the end of three years of hard work produced an entirely successful system, a public test of which was made on december , when about twelve thousand ( , ) words were transmitted over a single wire from washington to new york. in twenty-two and one-half minutes. edison's system was commercially exploited for several years by the automatic telegraph company, as related in the preceding narrative. as a premise to an explanation of the principles involved it should be noted that the transmission of telegraph messages by hand at a rate of fifty words per minute is considered a good average speed; hence, the availability of a telegraph line, as thus operated, is limited to this capacity except as it may be multiplied by two with the use of the duplex, or by four, with the quadruplex. increased rapidity of transmission may, however, be accomplished by automatic methods, by means of which, through the employment of suitable devices, messages may be stamped in or upon a paper tape, transmitted through automatically acting instruments, and be received at distant points in visible characters, upon a similar tape, at a rate twenty or more times greater--a speed far beyond the possibilities of the human hand to transmit or the ear to receive. in edison's system of automatic telegraphy a paper tape was perforated with a series of round holes, so arranged and spaced as to represent morse characters, forming the words of the message to be transmitted. this was done in a special machine of edison's invention, called a perforator, consisting of a series of punches operated by a bank of keys--typewriter fashion. the paper tape passed over a cylinder, and was kept in regular motion so as to receive the perforations in proper sequence. the perforated tape was then placed in the transmitting instrument, the essential parts of which were a metallic drum and a projecting arm carrying two small wheels, which, by means of a spring, were maintained in constant pressure on the drum. the wheels and drum were electrically connected in the line over which the message was to be sent. current being supplied by batteries in the ordinary manner. when the transmitting instrument was in operation, the perforated tape was passed over the drum in continuous, progressive motion. thus, the paper passed between the drum and the two small wheels, and, as dry paper is a non-conductor, current was prevented from passing until a perforation was reached. as the paper passed along, the wheels dropped into the perforations, making momentary contacts with the drum beneath and causing momentary impulses of current to be transmitted over the line in the same way that they would be produced by the manipulation of the telegraph key, but with much greater rapidity. the perforations being so arranged as to regulate the length of the contact, the result would be the transmission of long and short impulses corresponding with the dots and dashes of the morse alphabet. the receiving instrument at the other end of the line was constructed upon much the same general lines as the transmitter, consisting of a metallic drum and reels for the paper tape. instead of the two small contact wheels, however, a projecting arm carried an iron pin or stylus, so arranged that its point would normally impinge upon the periphery of the drum. the iron pin and the drum were respectively connected so as to be in circuit with the transmission line and batteries. as the principle involved in the receiving operation was electrochemical decomposition, the paper tape upon which the incoming message was to be received was moistened with a chemical solution readily decomposable by the electric current. this paper, while still in a damp condition, was passed between the drum and stylus in continuous, progressive motion. when an electrical impulse came over the line from the transmitting end, current passed through the moistened paper from the iron pin, causing chemical decomposition, by reason of which the iron would be attacked and would mark a line on the paper. such a line would be long or short, according to the duration of the electric impulse. inasmuch as a succession of such impulses coming over the line owed their origin to the perforations in the transmitting tape, it followed that the resulting marks upon the receiving tape would correspond thereto in their respective lengths. hence, the transmitted message was received on the tape in visible dots and dashes representing characters of the morse alphabet. the system will, perhaps, be better understood by reference to the following diagrammatic sketch of its general principles: some idea of the rapidity of automatic telegraphy may be obtained when we consider the fact that with the use of edison's system in the early seventies it was common practice to transmit and receive from three to four thousand words a minute over a single line between new york and philadelphia. this system was exploited through the use of a moderately paid clerical force. in practice, there was employed such a number of perforating machines as the exigencies of business demanded. each machine was operated by a clerk, who translated the message into telegraphic characters and prepared the transmitting tape by punching the necessary perforations therein. an expert clerk could perforate such a tape at the rate of fifty to sixty words per minute. at the receiving end the tape was taken by other clerks who translated the morse characters into ordinary words, which were written on message blanks for delivery to persons for whom the messages were intended. this latter operation--"copying." as it was called--was not consistent with truly economical business practice. edison therefore undertook the task of devising an improved system whereby the message when received would not require translation and rewriting, but would automatically appear on the tape in plain letters and words, ready for instant delivery. the result was his automatic roman letter system, the basis for which included the above-named general principles of perforated transmission tape and electrochemical decomposition. instead of punching morse characters in the transmission tape however, it was perforated with a series of small round holes forming roman letters. the verticals of these letters were originally five holes high. the transmitting instrument had five small wheels or rollers, instead of two, for making contacts through the perforations and causing short electric impulses to pass over the lines. at first five lines were used to carry these impulses to the receiving instrument, where there were five iron pins impinging on the drum. by means of these pins the chemically prepared tape was marked with dots corresponding to the impulses as received, leaving upon it a legible record of the letters and words transmitted. for purposes of economy in investment and maintenance, edison devised subsequently a plan by which the number of conducting lines was reduced to two, instead of five. the verticals of the letters were perforated only four holes high, and the four rollers were arranged in pairs, one pair being slightly in advance of the other. there were, of course, only four pins at the receiving instrument. two were of iron and two of tellurium, it being the gist of edison's plan to effect the marking of the chemical paper by one metal with a positive current, and by the other metal with a negative current. in the following diagram, which shows the theory of this arrangement, it will be seen that both the transmitting rollers and the receiving pins are arranged in pairs, one pair in each case being slightly in advance of the other. of these receiving pins, one pair-- and --are of iron, and the other pair-- and --of tellurium. pins - and - are electrically connected together in other pairs, and then each of these pairs is connected with one of the main lines that run respectively to the middle of two groups of batteries at the transmitting end. the terminals of these groups of batteries are connected respectively to the four rollers which impinge upon the transmitting drum, the negatives being connected to and , and the positives to and , as denoted by the letters n and p. the transmitting and receiving drums are respectively connected to earth. in operation the perforated tape is placed on the transmission drum, and the chemically prepared tape on the receiving drum. as the perforated tape passes over the transmission drum the advanced rollers or first close the circuit through the perforations, and a positive current passes from the batteries through the drum and down to the ground; thence through the earth at the receiving end up to the other drum and back to the batteries via the tellurium pins or and the line wire. with this positive current the tellurium pins make marks upon the paper tape, but the iron pins make no mark. in the merest fraction of a second, as the perforated paper continues to pass over the transmission drum, the rollers or close the circuit through other perforations and t e current passes in the opposite direction, over the line wire, through pins or , and returns through the earth. in this case the iron pins mark the paper tape, but the tellurium pins make no mark. it will be obvious, therefore, that as the rollers are set so as to allow of currents of opposite polarity to be alternately and rapidly sent by means of the perforations, the marks upon the tape at the receiving station will occupy their proper relative positions, and the aggregate result will be letters corresponding to those perforated in the transmission tape. edison subsequently made still further improvements in this direction, by which he reduced the number of conducting wires to one, but the principles involved were analogous to the one just described. this roman letter system was in use for several years on lines between new york, philadelphia, and washington, and was so efficient that a speed of three thousand words a minute was attained on the line between the two first-named cities. inasmuch as there were several proposed systems of rapid automatic telegraphy in existence at the time edison entered the field, but none of them in practical commercial use, it becomes a matter of interest to inquire wherein they were deficient, and what constituted the elements of edison's success. the chief difficulties in the transmission of morse characters had been two in number, the most serious of which was that on the receiving tape the characters would be prolonged and run into one another, forming a draggled line and thus rendering the message unintelligible. this arose from the fact that, on account of the rapid succession of the electric impulses, there was not sufficient time between them for the electric action to cease entirely. consequently the line could not clear itself, and became surcharged, as it were; the effect being an attenuated prolongation of each impulse as manifested in a weaker continuation of the mark on the tape, thus making the whole message indistinct. these secondary marks were called "tailings." for many years electricians had tried in vain to overcome this difficulty. edison devoted a great deal of thought and energy to the question, in the course of which he experimented through one hundred and twenty consecutive nights, in the year , on the line between new york and washington. his solution of the problem was simple but effectual. it involved the principle of inductive compensation. in a shunt circuit with the receiving instrument he introduced electromagnets. the pulsations of current passed through the helices of these magnets, producing an augmented marking effect upon the receiving tape, but upon the breaking of the current, the magnet, in discharging itself of the induced magnetism, would set up momentarily a counter-current of opposite polarity. this neutralized the "tailing" effect by clearing the line between pulsations, thus allowing the telegraphic characters to be clearly and distinctly outlined upon the tape. further elaboration of this method was made later by the addition of rheostats, condensers, and local opposition batteries on long lines. the other difficulty above referred to was one that had also occupied considerable thought and attention of many workers in the field, and related to the perforating of the dash in the transmission tape. it involved mechanical complications that seemed to be insurmountable, and up to the time edison invented his perforating machine no really good method was available. he abandoned the attempt to cut dashes as such, in the paper tape, but instead punched three round holes so arranged as to form a triangle. a concrete example is presented in the illustration below, which shows a piece of tape with perforations representing the word "same." the philosophy of this will be at once perceived when it is remembered that the two little wheels running upon the drum of the transmitting instrument were situated side by side, corresponding in distance to the two rows of holes. when a triangle of three holes, intended to form the dash, reached the wheels, one of them dropped into a lower hole. before it could get out, the other wheel dropped into the hole at the apex of the triangle, thus continuing the connection, which was still further prolonged by the first wheel dropping into the third hole. thus, an extended contact was made, which, by transmitting a long impulse, resulted in the marking of a dash upon the receiving tape. this method was in successful commercial use for some time in the early seventies, giving a speed of from three to four thousand words a minute over a single line, but later on was superseded by edison's roman letter system, above referred to. the subject of automatic telegraphy received a vast amount of attention from inventors at the time it was in vogue. none was more earnest or indefatigable than edison, who, during the progress of his investigations, took out thirty-eight patents on various inventions relating thereto, some of them covering chemical solutions for the receiving paper. this of itself was a subject of much importance and a vast amount of research and labor was expended upon it. in the laboratory note-books there are recorded thousands of experiments showing that edison's investigations not only included an enormous number of chemical salts and compounds, but also an exhaustive variety of plants, flowers, roots, herbs, and barks. it seems inexplicable at first view that a system of telegraphy sufficiently rapid and economical to be practically available for important business correspondence should have fallen into disuse. this, however, is made clear--so far as concerns edison's invention at any rate--in chapter viii of the preceding narrative. iv. wireless telegraphy although mr. edison has taken no active part in the development of the more modern wireless telegraphy, and his name has not occurred in connection therewith, the underlying phenomena had been noted by him many years in advance of the art, as will presently be explained. the authors believe that this explanation will reveal a status of edison in relation to the subject that has thus far been unknown to the public. while the term "wireless telegraphy," as now applied to the modern method of electrical communication between distant points without intervening conductors, is self-explanatory, it was also applicable, strictly speaking, to the previous art of telegraphing to and from moving trains, and between points not greatly remote from each other, and not connected together with wires. the latter system (described in chapter xxiii and in a succeeding article of this appendix) was based upon the phenomena of electromagnetic or electrostatic induction between conductors separated by more or less space, whereby electric impulses of relatively low potential and low frequency set up in. one conductor were transmitted inductively across the air to another conductor, and there received through the medium of appropriate instruments connected therewith. as distinguished from this system, however, modern wireless telegraphy--so called--has its basis in the utilization of electric or ether waves in free space, such waves being set up by electric oscillations, or surgings, of comparatively high potential and high frequency, produced by the operation of suitable electrical apparatus. broadly speaking, these oscillations arise from disruptive discharges of an induction coil, or other form of oscillator, across an air-gap, and their character is controlled by the manipulation of a special type of circuit-breaking key, by means of which long and short discharges are produced. the electric or etheric waves thereby set up are detected and received by another special form of apparatus more or less distant, without any intervening wires or conductors. in november, , edison, while experimenting in his newark laboratory, discovered a new manifestation of electricity through mysterious sparks which could be produced under conditions unknown up to that time. recognizing at once the absolutely unique character of the phenomena, he continued his investigations enthusiastically over two mouths, finally arriving at a correct conclusion as to the oscillatory nature of the hitherto unknown manifestations. strange to say, however, the true import and practical applicability of these phenomena did not occur to his mind. indeed, it was not until more than twelve years afterward, in , upon the publication of the notable work of prof. h. hertz proving the existence of electric waves in free space, that edison realized the fact that the fundamental principle of aerial telegraphy had been within his grasp in the winter of ; for although the work of hertz was more profound and mathematical than that of edison, the principle involved and the phenomena observed were practically identical--in fact, it may be remarked that some of the methods and experimental apparatus were quite similar, especially the "dark box" with micrometer adjustment, used by both in observing the spark. [ ] [footnote : during the period in which edison exhibited his lighting system at the paris exposition in , his representative, mr. charles batchelor, repeated edison's remarkable experiments of the winter of for the benefit of a great number of european savants, using with other apparatus the original "dark box" with micrometer adjustment.] there is not the slightest intention on the part of the authors to detract in the least degree from the brilliant work of hertz, but, on the contrary, to ascribe to him the honor that is his due in having given mathematical direction and certainty to so important a discovery. the adaptation of the principles thus elucidated and the subsequent development of the present wonderful art by marconi, branly, lodge, slaby, and others are now too well known to call for further remark at this place. strange to say, that although edison's early experiments in "etheric force" called forth extensive comment and discussion in the public prints of the period, they seemed to have been generally overlooked when the work of hertz was published. at a meeting of the institution of electrical engineers, held in london on may , , at which there was a discussion on the celebrated paper of prof. (sir) oliver lodge on "lightning conductors," however; the chairman, sir william thomson (lord kelvin), made the following remarks: "we all know how faraday made himself a cage six feet in diameter, hung it up in mid-air in the theatre of the royal institution, went into it, and, as he said, lived in it and made experiments. it was a cage with tin-foil hanging all round it; it was not a complete metallic enclosing shell. faraday had a powerful machine working in the neighborhood, giving all varieties of gradual working-up and discharges by 'impulsive rush'; and whether it was a sudden discharge of ordinary insulated conductors, or of leyden jars in the neighborhood outside the cage, or electrification and discharge of the cage itself, he saw no effects on his most delicate gold-leaf electroscopes in the interior. his attention was not directed to look for hertz sparks, or probably he might have found them in the interior. edison seems to have noticed something of the kind in what he called the etheric force. his name 'etheric' may, thirteen years ago, have seemed to many people absurd. but now we are all beginning to call these inductive phenomena 'etheric.'" with these preliminary observations, let us now glance briefly at edison's laboratory experiments, of which mention has been made. oh the first manifestation of the unusual phenomena in november, , edison's keenness of perception led him at once to believe that he had discovered a new force. indeed, the earliest entry of this discovery in the laboratory note-book bore that caption. after a few days of further experiment and observation, however, he changed it to "etheric force," and the further records thereof (all in mr. batchelor's handwriting) were under that heading. the publication of edison's discovery created considerable attention at the time, calling forth a storm of general ridicule and incredulity. but a few scientific men of the period, whose experimental methods were careful and exact, corroborated his deductions after obtaining similar phenomena by repeating his experiments with intelligent precision. among these was the late dr. george m. beard, a noted physicist, who entered enthusiastically into the investigation, and, in addition to a great deal of independent experiment, spent much time with edison at his laboratory. doctor beard wrote a treatise of some length on the subject, in which he concurred with edison's deduction that the phenomena were the manifestation of oscillations, or rapidly reversing waves of electricity, which did not respond to the usual tests. edison had observed the tendency of this force to diffuse itself in various directions through the air and through matter, hence the name "etheric" that he had provisionally applied to it. edison's laboratory notes on this striking investigation are fascinating and voluminous, but cannot be reproduced in full for lack of space. in view of the later practical application of the principles involved, however, the reader will probably be interested in perusing a few extracts therefrom as illustrated by facsimiles of the original sketches from the laboratory note-book. as the full significance of the experiments shown by these extracts may not be apparent to a lay reader, it may be stated by way of premise that, ordinarily, a current only follows a closed circuit. an electric bell or electric light is a familiar instance of this rule. there is in each case an open (wire) circuit which is closed by pressing the button or turning the switch, thus making a complete and uninterrupted path in which the current may travel and do its work. until the time of edison's investigations of , now under consideration, electricity had never been known to manifest itself except through a closed circuit. but, as the reader will see from the following excerpts, edison discovered a hitherto unknown phenomenon--namely, that under certain conditions the rule would be reversed and electricity would pass through space and through matter entirely unconnected with its point of origin. in other words, he had found the forerunner of wireless telegraphy. had he then realized the full import of his discovery, all he needed was to increase the strength of the waves and to provide a very sensitive detector, like the coherer, in order to have anticipated the principal developments that came many years afterward. with these explanatory observations, we will now turn to the excerpts referred to, which are as follows: "november , . new force.--in experimenting with a vibrator magnet consisting of a bar of stubb's steel fastened at one end and made to vibrate by means of a magnet, we noticed a spark coming from the cores of the magnet. this we have noticed often in relays, in stock-printers, when there were a little iron filings between the armature and core, and more often in our new electric pen, and we have always come to the conclusion that it was caused by strong induction. but when we noticed it on this vibrator it seemed so strong that it struck us forcibly there might be something more than induction. we now found that if we touched any metallic part of the vibrator or magnet we got the spark. the larger the body of iron touched to the vibrator the larger the spark. we now connected a wire to x, the end of the vibrating rod, and we found we could get a spark from it by touching a piece of iron to it, and one of the most curious phenomena is that if you turn the wire around on itself and let the point of the wire touch any other portion of itself you get a spark. by connecting x to the gas-pipe we drew sparks from the gas-pipes in any part of the room by drawing an iron wire over the brass jet of the cock. this is simply wonderful, and a good proof that the cause of the spark is a true unknown force." "november , . new force.--the following very curious result was obtained with it. the vibrator shown in fig. and battery were placed on insulated stands; and a wire connected to x (tried both copper and iron) carried over to the stove about twenty feet distant. when the end of the wire was rubbed on the stove it gave out splendid sparks. when permanently connected to the stove, sparks could be drawn from the stove by a piece of wire held in the hand. the point x of vibrator was now connected to the gas-pipe and still the sparks could be drawn from the stove." . . . . . . . . . "put a coil of wire over the end of rod x and passed the ends of spool through galvanometer without affecting it in any way. tried a -ohm spool add a -ohm. we now tried all the metals, touching each one in turn to the point x." [here follows a list of metals and the character of spark obtained with each.] . . . . . . . . . "by increasing the battery from eight to twelve cells we get a spark when the vibrating magnet is shunted with ohms. cannot taste the least shock at b, yet between carbon points the spark is very vivid. as will be seen, x has no connection with anything. with a glass rod four feet long, well rubbed with a piece of silk over a hot stove, with a piece of battery carbon secured to one end, we received vivid sparks into the carbon when the other end was held in the hand with the handkerchief, yet the galvanometer, chemical paper, the sense of shock in the tongue, and a gold-leaf electroscope which would diverge at two feet from a half-inch spark plate-glass machine were not affected in the least by it. "a piece of coal held to the wire showed faint sparks. "we had a box made thus: whereby two points could be brought together within a dark box provided with an eyepiece. the points were iron, and we found the sparks were very irregular. after testing some time two lead-pencils found more regular and very much more vivid. we then substituted the graphite points instead of iron." [ ] [footnote : the dark box had micrometer screws for delicate adjustment of the carbon points, and was thereafter largely used in this series of investigations for better study of the spark. when mr. edison's experiments were repeated by mr. batchelor, who represented him at the paris exposition of , the dark box was employed for a similar purpose.] . . . . . . . . . after recording a considerable number of other experiments, the laboratory notes go on to state: "november , . etheric force.--we found the addition of battery to the stubb's wire vibrator greatly increased the volume of spark. several persons could obtain sparks from the gas-pipes at once, each spark being equal in volume and brilliancy to the spark drawn by a single person.... edison now grasped the (gas) pipe, and with the other hand holding a piece of metal, he touched several other metallic substances, obtained sparks, showing that the force passed through his body." . . . . . . . . . "december , . etheric force.--charley edison hung to the gas-pipe with feet above the floor, and with a knife got a spark from the pipe he was hanging on. we now took the wire from the vibrator in one hand and stood on a block of paraffin eighteen inches square and six inches thick; holding a knife in the other hand, we drew sparks from the stove-pipe. we now tried the crucial test of passing the etheric current through the sciatic nerve of a frog just killed. previous to trying, we tested its sensibility by the current from a single bunsen cell. we put in resistance up to , ohms, and the twitching was still perceptible. we tried the induced current from our induction coil having one cell on primary,, the spark jumping about one-fiftieth of an inch, the terminal of the secondary connected to the frog and it straightened out with violence. we arranged frog's legs to pass etheric force through. we placed legs on an inverted beaker, and held the two ends of the wires on glass rods eight inches long. on connecting one to the sciatic nerve and the other to the fleshy part of the leg no movement could be discerned, although brilliant sparks could be obtained on the graphite points when the frog was in circuit. doctor beard was present when this was tried." . . . . . . . . . "december , . etheric force.--three persons grasping hands and standing upon blocks of paraffin twelve inches square and six thick drew sparks from the adjoining stove when another person touched the sounder with any piece of metal.... a galvanoscopic frog giving contractions with one cell through two water rheostats was then placed in circuit. when the wires from the vibrator and the gas-pipe were connected, slight contractions were noted, sometimes very plain and marked, showing the apparent presence of electricity, which from the high insulation seemed improbable. doctor beard, who was present, inferred from the way the leg contracted that it moved on both opening and closing the circuit. to test this we disconnected the wire between the frog and battery, and placed, instead of a vibrating sounder, a simple morse key and a sounder taking the 'etheric' from armature. the spark was now tested in dark box and found to be very strong. it was then connected to the nerves of the frog, but no movement of any kind could be detected upon working the key, although the brilliancy and power of the spark were undiminished. the thought then occurred to edison that the movement of the frog was due to mechanical vibrations from the vibrator (which gives probably two hundred and fifty vibrations per second), passing through the wires and irritating the sensitive nerves of the frog. upon disconnecting the battery wires and holding a tuning-fork giving three hundred and twenty-six vibrations per second to the base of the sounder, the vibrations over the wire made the frog contract nearly every time.... the contraction of the frog's legs may with considerable safety be said to be caused by these mechanical vibrations being transmitted through the conducting wires." edison thought that the longitudinal vibrations caused by the sounder produced a more marked effect, and proceeded to try out his theory. the very next entry in the laboratory note-book bears the same date as the above (december , ), and is entitled "longitudinal vibrations," and reads as follows: "we took a long iron wire one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter and rubbed it lengthways with a piece of leather with resin on for about three feet, backward and forward. about ten feet away we applied the wire to the back of the neck and it gives a horrible sensation, showing the vibrations conducted through the wire." . . . . . . . . . the following experiment illustrates notably the movement of the electric waves through free space: "december , . etheric force.--an experiment tried to-night gives a curious result. a is a vibrator, b, c, d, e are sheets of tin-foil hung on insulating stands. the sheets are about twelve by eight inches. b and c are twenty-six inches apart, c and d forty-eight inches and d and e twenty-six inches. b is connected to the vibrator and e to point in dark box, the other point to ground. we received sparks at intervals, although insulated by such space." with the above our extracts must close, although we have given but a few of the interesting experiments tried at the time. it will be noticed, however, that these records show much progression in a little over a month. just after the item last above extracted, the edison shop became greatly rushed on telegraphic inventions, and not many months afterward came the removal to menlo park; hence the etheric-force investigations were side-tracked for other matters deemed to be more important at that time. doctor beard in his previously mentioned treatise refers, on page , to the views of others who have repeated edison's experiments and observed the phenomena, and in a foot-note says: "professor houston, of philadelphia, among others, has repeated some of these physical experiments, has adopted in full and after but a partial study of the subject, the hypothesis of rapidly reversed electricity as suggested in my letter to the tribune of december th, and further claims priority of discovery, because he observed the spark of this when experimenting with a ruhmkorff coil four years ago. to this claim, if it be seriously entertained, the obvious reply is that thousands of persons, probably, had seen this spark before it was discovered by mr. edison; it had been seen by professor nipher, who supposed, and still supposes, it is the spark of the extra current; it has been seen by my friend, prof. j. e. smith, who assumed, as he tells me, without examination, that it was inductive electricity breaking through bad insulation; it had been seen, as has been stated, by mr. edison many times before he thought it worthy of study, it was undoubtedly seen by professor houston, who, like so many others, failed to even suspect its meaning and thus missed an important discovery. the honor of a scientific discovery belongs, not to him who first sees a thing, but to him who first sees it with expert eyes; not to him even who drops an original suggestion, but to him who first makes, that suggestion fruitful of results. if to see with the eyes a phenomenon is to discover the law of which that phenomenon is a part, then every schoolboy who, before the time of newton, ever saw an apple fall, was a discoverer of the law of gravitation...." edison took out only one patent on long-distance telegraphy without wires. while the principle involved therein (induction) was not precisely analogous to the above, or to the present system of wireless telegraphy, it was a step forward in the progress of the art. the application was filed may , , at the time he was working on induction telegraphy (two years before the publication of the work of hertz), but the patent (no. , ) was not issued until december , . in it was purchased from him by the marconi wireless telegraph company. edison has always had a great admiration for marconi and his work, and a warm friendship exists between the two men. during the formative period of the marconi company attempts were made to influence edison to sell this patent to an opposing concern, but his regard for marconi and belief in the fundamental nature of his work were so strong that he refused flatly, because in the hands of an enemy the patent might be used inimically to marconi's interests. edison's ideas, as expressed in the specifications of this patent, show very clearly the close analogy of his system to that now in vogue. as they were filed in the patent office several years before the possibility of wireless telegraphy was suspected, it will undoubtedly be of interest to give the following extract therefrom: "i have discovered that if sufficient elevation be obtained to overcome the curvature of the earth's surface and to reduce to the minimum the earth's absorption, electric telegraphing or signalling between distant points can be carried on by induction without the use of wires connecting such distant points. this discovery is especially applicable to telegraphing across bodies of water, thus avoiding the use of submarine cables, or for communicating between vessels at sea, or between vessels at sea and points on land, but it is also applicable to electric communication between distant points on land, it being necessary, however, on land (with the exception of communication over open prairie) to increase the elevation in order to reduce to the minimum the induction-absorbing effect of houses, trees, and elevations in the land itself. at sea from an elevation of one hundred feet i can communicate electrically a great distance, and since this elevation or one sufficiently high can be had by utilizing the masts of ships, signals can be sent and received between ships separated a considerable distance, and by repeating the signals from ship to ship communication can be established between points at any distance apart or across the largest seas and even oceans. the collision of ships in fogs can be prevented by this character of signalling, by the use of which, also, the safety of a ship in approaching a dangerous coast in foggy weather can be assured. in communicating between points on land, poles of great height can be used, or captive balloons. at these elevated points, whether upon the masts of ships, upon poles or balloons, condensing surfaces of metal or other conductor of electricity are located. each condensing surface is connected with earth by an electrical conducting wire. on land this earth connection would be one of usual character in telegraphy. at sea the wire would run to one or more metal plates on the bottom of the vessel, where the earth connection would be made with the water. the high-resistance secondary circuit of an induction coil is located in circuit between the condensing surface and the ground. the primary circuit of the induction coil includes a battery and a device for transmitting signals, which may be a revolving circuit-breaker operated continually by a motor of any suitable kind, either electrical or mechanical, and a key normally short-circuiting the circuit-breaker or secondary coil. for receiving signals i locate in said circuit between the condensing surface and the ground a diaphragm sounder, which is preferably one of my electromotograph telephone receivers. the key normally short-circuiting the revolving circuit-breaker, no impulses are produced in the induction coil until the key is depressed, when a large number of impulses are produced in the primary, and by means of the secondary corresponding impulses or variations in tension are produced at the elevated condensing surface, producing thereat electrostatic impulses. these electrostatic impulses are transmitted inductively to the elevated condensing surface at the distant point, and are made audible by the electromotograph connected in the ground circuit with such distant condensing surface." the accompanying illustrations are reduced facsimiles of the drawings attached to the above patent, no. , . v. the electromotograph in solving a problem that at the time was thought to be insurmountable, and in the adaptability of its principles to the successful overcoming of apparently insuperable difficulties subsequently arising in other lines of work, this invention is one of the most remarkable of the many that edison has made in his long career as an inventor. the object primarily sought to be accomplished was the repeating of telegraphic signals from a distance without the aid of a galvanometer or an electromagnetic relay, to overcome the claims of the page patent referred to in the preceding narrative. this object was achieved in the device described in edison's basic patent no. , , issued january , , by the substitution of friction and anti-friction for the presence and absence of magnetism in a regulation relay. it may be observed, parenthetically, for the benefit of the lay reader, that in telegraphy the device known as the relay is a receiving instrument containing an electromagnet adapted to respond to the weak line-current. its armature moves in accordance with electrical impulses, or signals, transmitted from a distance, and, in so responding, operates mechanically to alternately close and open a separate local circuit in which there is a sounder and a powerful battery. when used for true relaying purposes the signals received from a distance are in turn repeated over the next section of the line, the powerful local battery furnishing current for this purpose. as this causes a loud repetition of the original signals, it will be seen that relaying is an economic method of extending a telegraph circuit beyond the natural limits of its battery power. at the time of edison's invention, as related in chapter ix of the preceding narrative, there existed no other known method than the one just described for the repetition of transmitted signals, thus limiting the application of telegraphy to the pleasure of those who might own any patent controlling the relay, except on simple circuits where a single battery was sufficient. edison's previous discovery of differential friction of surfaces through electrochemical decomposition was now adapted by him to produce motion at the end of a circuit without the intervention of an electromagnet. in other words, he invented a telegraph instrument having a vibrator controlled by electrochemical decomposition, to take the place of a vibrating armature operated by an electromagnet, and thus opened an entirely new and unsuspected avenue in the art. edison's electromotograph comprised an ingeniously arranged apparatus in which two surfaces, normally in contact with each other, were caused to alternately adhere by friction or slip by reason of electrochemical decomposition. one of these surfaces consisted of a small drum or cylinder of chalk, which was kept in a moistened condition with a suitable chemical solution, and adapted to revolve continuously by clockwork. the other surface consisted of a small pad which rested with frictional pressure on the periphery of the drum. this pad was carried on the end of a vibrating arm whose lateral movement was limited between two adjustable points. normally, the frictional pressure between the drum and pad would carry the latter with the former as it revolved, but if the friction were removed a spring on the end of the vibrator arm would draw it back to its starting-place. in practice, the chalk drum was electrically connected with one pole of an incoming telegraph circuit, and the vibrating arm and pad with the other pole. when the drum rotated, the friction of the pad carried the vibrating arm forward, but an electrical impulse coming over the line would decompose the chemical solution with which the drum was moistened, causing an effect similar to lubrication, and thus allowing the pad to slip backward freely in response to the pull of its retractile spring. the frictional movements of the pad with the drum were comparatively long or short, and corresponded with the length of the impulses sent in over the line. thus, the transmission of morse dots and dashes by the distant operator resulted in movements of corresponding length by the frictional pad and vibrating arm. this brings us to the gist of the ingenious way in which edison substituted the action of electrochemical decomposition for that of the electromagnet to operate a relay. the actual relaying was accomplished through the medium of two contacts making connection with the local or relay circuit. one of these contacts was fixed, while the other was carried by the vibrating arm; and, as the latter made its forward and backward movements, these contacts were alternately brought together or separated, thus throwing in and out of circuit the battery and sounder in the local circuit and causing a repetition of the incoming signals. the other side of the local circuit was permanently connected to an insulated block on the vibrator. this device not only worked with great rapidity, but was extremely sensitive, and would respond to currents too weak to affect the most delicate electromagnetic relay. it should be stated that edison did not confine himself to the working of the electromotograph by the slipping of surfaces through the action of incoming current, but by varying the character of the surfaces in contact the frictional effect might be intensified by the electrical current. in such a case the movements would be the reverse of those above indicated, but the end sought--namely, the relaying of messages--would be attained with the same certainty. while the principal object of this invention was to accomplish the repetition of signals without the aid of an electromagnetic relay, the instrument devised by edison was capable of use as a recorder also, by employing a small wheel inked by a fountain wheel and attached to the vibrating arm through suitable mechanism. by means of this adjunct the dashes and dots of the transmitted impulses could be recorded upon a paper ribbon passing continuously over the drum. the electromotograph is shown diagrammatically in figs. and , in plan and vertical section respectively. the reference letters in each case indicate identical parts: a being the chalk drum, b the paper tape, c the auxiliary cylinder, d the vibrating arm, e the frictional pad, f the spring, g and h the two contacts, i and j the two wires leading to local circuit, k a battery, and l an ordinary telegraph key. the two last named, k and l, are shown to make the sketch complete but in practice would be at the transmitting end, which might be hundreds of miles away. it will be understood, of course, that the electromotograph is a receiving and relaying instrument. another notable use of the electromotograph principle was in its adaptation to the receiver in edison's loud-speaking telephone, on which united states patent no. , was issued november , . a chalk cylinder moistened with a chemical solution was revolved by hand or a small motor. resting on the cylinder was a palladium-faced pen or spring, which was attached to a mica diaphragm in a resonator. the current passed from the main line through the pen to the chalk and to the battery. the sound-waves impinging upon the distant transmitter varied the resistance of the carbon button therein, thus causing corresponding variations in the strength of the battery current. these variations, passing through the chalk cylinder produced more or less electrochemical decomposition, which in turn caused differences of adhesion between the pen and cylinder and hence gave rise to mechanical vibrations of the diaphragm by reason of which the speaker's words were reproduced. telephones so operated repeated speaking and singing in very loud tones. in one instance, spoken words and the singing of songs originating at a distance were heard perfectly by an audience of over five thousand people. the loud-speaking telephone is shown in section, diagrammatically, in the sketch (fig. ), in which a is the chalk cylinder mounted on a shaft, b. the palladium-faced pen or spring, c, is connected to diaphragm d. the instrument in its commercial form is shown in fig. . vi. the telephone on april , , edison filed in the united states patent office an application for a patent on a telephone, and on may , , more than fifteen years afterward, patent no. , was granted thereon. numerous other patents have been issued to him for improvements in telephones, but the one above specified may be considered as the most important of them, since it is the one that first discloses the principle of the carbon transmitter. this patent embodies but two claims, which are as follows: " . in a speaking-telegraph transmitter, the combination of a metallic diaphragm and disk of plumbago or equivalent material, the contiguous faces of said disk and diaphragm being in contact, substantially as described. " . as a means for effecting a varying surface contact in the circuit of a speaking-telegraph transmitter, the combination of two electrodes, one of plumbago or similar material, and both having broad surfaces in vibratory contact with each other, substantially as described." the advance that was brought about by edison's carbon transmitter will be more apparent if we glance first at the state of the art of telephony prior to his invention. bell was undoubtedly the first inventor of the art of transmitting speech over an electric circuit, but, with his particular form of telephone, the field was circumscribed. bell's telephone is shown in the diagrammatic sectional sketch (fig. ). in the drawing m is a bar magnet contained in the rubber case, l. a bobbin, or coil of wire, b, surrounds one end of the magnet. a diaphragm of soft iron is shown at d, and e is the mouthpiece. the wire terminals of the coil, b, connect with the binding screws, c c. the next illustration shows a pair of such telephones connected for use, the working parts only being designated by the above reference letters. it will be noted that the wire terminals are here put to their proper uses, two being joined together to form a line of communication, and the other two being respectively connected to "ground." now, if we imagine a person at each one of the instruments (fig. ) we shall find that when one of them speaks the sound vibrations impinge upon the diaphragm and cause it to act as a vibrating armature. by reason of its vibrations, this diaphragm induces very weak electric impulses in the magnetic coil. these impulses, according to bell's theory, correspond in form to the sound-waves, and, passing over the line, energize the magnet coil at the receiving end, thus giving rise to corresponding variations in magnetism by reason of which the receiving diaphragm is similarly vibrated so as to reproduce the sounds. a single apparatus at each end is therefore sufficient, performing the double function of transmitter and receiver. it will be noticed that in this arrangement no battery is used the strength of the impulses transmitted is therefore limited to that of the necessarily weak induction currents generated by the original sounds minus any loss arising by reason of resistance in the line. edison's carbon transmitter overcame this vital or limiting weakness by providing for independent power on the transmission circuit, and by introducing the principle of varying the resistance of that circuit with changes in the pressure. with edison's telephone there is used a closed circuit on which a battery current constantly flows, and in that circuit is a pair of electrodes, one or both of which is carbon. these electrodes are always in contact with a certain initial pressure, so that current will be always flowing over the circuit. one of the electrodes is connected with the diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinge, and the vibrations of this diaphragm cause corresponding variations in pressure between the electrodes, and thereby effect similar variations in the current which is passing over the line to the receiving end. this current, flowing around the receiving magnet, causes corresponding impulses therein, which, acting upon its diaphragm, effect a reproduction of the original vibrations and hence of the original sounds. in other words, the essential difference is that with bell's telephone the sound-waves themselves generate the electric impulses, which are therefore extremely faint. with edison's telephone the sound-waves simply actuate an electric valve, so to speak, and permit variations in a current of any desired strength. a second distinction between the two telephones is this: with the bell apparatus the very weak electric impulses generated by the vibration of the transmitting diaphragm pass over the entire line to the receiving end, and, in consequence, the possible length of line is limited to a few miles, even under ideal conditions. with edison's telephone the battery current does not flow on the main line, but passes through the primary circuit of an induction-coil, from the secondary of which corresponding impulses of enormously higher potential are sent out on the main line to the receiving end. in consequence, the line may be hundreds of miles in length. no modern telephone system is in use to-day that does not use these characteristic features: the varying resistance and the induction-coil. the system inaugurated by edison is shown by the diagram (fig. ), in which the carbon transmitter, the induction-coil, the line, and the distant receiver are respectively indicated. in fig. an early form of the edison carbon transmitter is represented in sectional view. the carbon disk is represented by the black portion, e, near the diaphragm, a, placed between two platinum plates d and g, which are connected in the battery circuit, as shown by the lines. a small piece of rubber tubing, b, is attached to the centre of the metallic diaphragm, and presses lightly against an ivory piece, f, which is placed directly over one of the platinum plates. whenever, therefore, any motion is given to the diaphragm, it is immediately followed by a corresponding pressure upon the carbon, and by a change of resistance in the latter, as described above. it is interesting to note the position which edison occupies in the telephone art from a legal standpoint. to this end the reader's attention is called to a few extracts from a decision of judge brown in two suits brought in the united states circuit court, district of massachusetts, by the american bell telephone company against the national telephone manufacturing company, et al., and century telephone company, et al., reported in federal reporter, , page , et seq. these suits were brought on the berliner patent, which, it was claimed, covered broadly the electrical transmission of speech by variations of pressure between opposing electrodes in constant contact. the berliner patent was declared invalid, and in the course of a long and exhaustive opinion, in which the state of art and the work of bell, edison, berliner, and others was fully discussed, the learned judge made the following remarks: "the carbon electrode was the invention of edison.... edison preceded berliner in the transmission of speech.... the carbon transmitter was an experimental invention of a very high order of merit.... edison, by countless experiments, succeeded in advancing the art. . . . that edison did produce speech with solid electrodes before berliner is clearly proven.... the use of carbon in a transmitter is, beyond controversy, the invention of edison. edison was the first to make apparatus in which carbon was used as one of the electrodes.... the carbon transmitter displaced bell's magnetic transmitter, and, under several forms of construction, remains the only commercial instrument.... the advance in the art was due to the carbon electrode of edison.... it is conceded that the edison transmitter as apparatus is a very important invention.... an immense amount of painstaking and highly ingenious experiment preceded edison's successful result. the discovery of the availability of carbon was unquestionably invention, and it resulted in the 'first practical success in the art.'" vii. edison's tasimeter this interesting and remarkable device is one of edison's many inventions not generally known to the public at large, chiefly because the range of its application has been limited to the higher branches of science. he never applied for a patent on the instrument, but dedicated it to the public. the device was primarily intended for use in detecting and measuring infinitesimal degrees of temperature, however remote, and its conception followed edison's researches on the carbon telephone transmitter. its principle depends upon the variable resistance of carbon in accordance with the degree of pressure to which it is subjected. by means of this instrument, pressures that are otherwise inappreciable and undiscoverable may be observed and indicated. the detection of small variations of temperatures is brought about through the changes which heat or cold will produce in a sensitive material placed in contact with a carbon button, which is put in circuit with a battery and delicate galvanometer. in the sketch (fig. ) there is illustrated, partly in section, the form of tasimeter which edison took with him to rawlins, wyoming, in july, , on the expedition to observe the total eclipse of the sun. the substance on whose expansion the working of the instrument depends is a strip of some material extremely sensitive to heat, such as vulcanite. shown at a, and firmly clamped at b. its lower end fits into a slot in a metal plate, c, which in turn rests upon a carbon button. this latter and the metal plate are connected in an electric circuit which includes a battery and a sensitive galvanometer. a vulcanite or other strip is easily affected by differences of temperature, expanding and contracting by reason of the minutest changes. thus, an infinitesimal variation in its length through expansion or contraction changes the pressure on the carbon and affects the resistance of the circuit to a corresponding degree, thereby causing a deflection of the galvanometer; a movement of the needle in one direction denoting expansion, and in the other contraction. the strip, a, is first put under a slight pressure, deflecting the needle a few degrees from zero. any subsequent expansion or contraction of the strip may readily be noted by further movements of the needle. in practice, and for measurements of a very delicate nature, the tasimeter is inserted in one arm of a wheatstone bridge, as shown at a in the diagram (fig. ). the galvanometer is shown at b in the bridge wire, and at c, d, and e there are shown the resistances in the other arms of the bridge, which are adjusted to equal the resistance of the tasimeter circuit. the battery is shown at f. this arrangement tends to obviate any misleading deflections that might arise through changes in the battery. the dial on the front of the instrument is intended to indicate the exact amount of physical expansion or contraction of the strip. this is ascertained by means of a micrometer screw, s, which moves a needle, t, in front of the dial. this screw engages with a second and similar screw which is so arranged as to move the strip of vulcanite up or down. after a galvanometer deflection has been obtained through the expansion or contraction of the strip by reason of a change of temperature, a similar deflection is obtained mechanically by turning the screw, s, one way or the other. this causes the vulcanite strip to press more or less upon the carbon button, and thus produces the desired change in the resistance of the circuit. when the galvanometer shows the desired deflection, the needle, t, will indicate upon the dial, in decimal fractions of an inch, the exact distance through which the strip has been moved. with such an instrument as the above, edison demonstrated the existence of heat in the corona at the above-mentioned total eclipse of the sun, but exact determinations could not be made at that time, because the tasimeter adjustment was too delicate, and at the best the galvanometer deflections were so marked that they could not be kept within the limits of the scale. the sensitiveness of the instrument may be easily comprehended when it is stated that the heat of the hand thirty feet away from the cone-like funnel of the tasimeter will so affect the galvanometer as to cause the spot of light to leave the scale. this instrument can also be used to indicate minute changes of moisture in the air by substituting a strip of gelatine in place of the vulcanite. when so arranged a moistened piece of paper held several feet away will cause a minute expansion of the gelatine strip, which effects a pressure on the carbon, and causes a variation in the circuit sufficient to throw the spot of light from the galvanometer mirror off the scale. the tasimeter has been used to demonstrate heat from remote stars (suns), such as arcturus. viii. the edison phonograph the first patent that was ever granted on a device for permanently recording the human voice and other sounds, and for reproducing the same audibly at any future time, was united states patent no. , , issued to thomas a. edison on february , , the application having been filed december , . it is worthy of note that no references whatever were cited against the application while under examination in the patent office. this invention therefore, marked the very beginning of an entirely new art, which, with the new industries attendant upon its development, has since grown to occupy a position of worldwide reputation. that the invention was of a truly fundamental character is also evident from the fact that although all "talking-machines" of to-day differ very widely in refinement from the first crude but successful phonograph of edison, their performance is absolutely dependent upon the employment of the principles stated by him in his patent no. , . quoting from the specification attached to this patent, we find that edison said: "the invention consists in arranging a plate, diaphragm or other flexible body capable of being vibrated by the human voice or other sounds, in conjunction with a material capable of registering the movements of such vibrating body by embossing or indenting or altering such material, in such a manner that such register marks will be sufficient to cause a second vibrating plate or body to be set in motion by them, and thus reproduce the motions of the first vibrating body." it will be at once obvious that these words describe perfectly the basic principle of every modern phonograph or other talking-machine, irrespective of its manufacture or trade name. edison's first model of the phonograph is shown in the following illustration. it consisted of a metallic cylinder having a helical indenting groove cut upon it from end to end. this cylinder was mounted on a shaft supported on two standards. this shaft at one end was fitted with a handle, by means of which the cylinder was rotated. there were two diaphragms, one on each side of the cylinder, one being for recording and the other for reproducing speech or other sounds. each diaphragm had attached to it a needle. by means of the needle attached to the recording diaphragm, indentations were made in a sheet of tin-foil stretched over the peripheral surface of the cylinder when the diaphragm was vibrated by reason of speech or other sounds. the needle on the other diaphragm subsequently followed these indentations, thus reproducing the original sounds. crude as this first model appears in comparison with machines of later development and refinement, it embodied their fundamental essentials, and was in fact a complete, practical phonograph from the first moment of its operation. the next step toward the evolution of the improved phonograph of to-day was another form of tin-foil machine, as seen in the illustration. it will be noted that this was merely an elaborated form of the first model, and embodied several mechanical modifications, among which was the employment of only one diaphragm for recording and reproducing. such was the general type of phonograph used for exhibition purposes in america and other countries in the three or four years immediately succeeding the date of this invention. in operating the machine the recording diaphragm was advanced nearly to the cylinder, so that as the diaphragm was vibrated by the voice the needle would prick or indent a wave-like record in the tin-foil that was on the cylinder. the cylinder was constantly turned during the recording, and in turning, was simultaneously moved forward. thus the record would be formed on the tin-foil in a continuous spiral line. to reproduce this record it was only necessary to again start at the beginning and cause the needle to retrace its path in the spiral line. the needle, in passing rapidly in contact with the recorded waves, was vibrated up and down, causing corresponding vibrations of the diaphragm. in this way sound-waves similar to those caused by the original sounds would be set up in the air, thus reproducing the original speech. the modern phonograph operates in a precisely similar way, the only difference being in details of refinement. instead of tin-foil, a wax cylinder is employed, the record being cut thereon by a cutting-tool attached to a diaphragm, while the reproduction is effected by means of a blunt stylus similarly attached. the cutting-tool and stylus are devices made of sapphire, a gem next in hardness to a diamond, and they have to be cut and formed to an exact nicety by means of diamond dust, most of the work being performed under high-powered microscopes. the minute proportions of these devices will be apparent by a glance at the accompanying illustrations, in which the object on the left represents a common pin, and the objects on the right the cutting-tool and reproducing stylus, all actual sizes. in the next illustration (fig. ) there is shown in the upper sketch, greatly magnified, the cutting or recording tool in the act of forming the record, being vibrated rapidly by the diaphragm; and in the lower sketch, similarly enlarged, a representation of the stylus travelling over the record thus made, in the act of effecting a reproduction. from the late summer of and to the fall of edison was intensely busy on the electric light, electric railway, and other problems, and virtually gave no attention to the phonograph. hence, just prior to the latter-named period the instrument was still in its tin-foil age; but he then began to devote serious attention to the development of an improved type that should be of greater commercial importance. the practical results are too well known to call for further comment. that his efforts were not limited in extent may be inferred from the fact that since the fall of to the present writing he has been granted in the united states one hundred and four patents relating to the phonograph and its accessories. interesting as the numerous inventions are, it would be a work of supererogation to digest all these patents in the present pages, as they represent not only the inception but also the gradual development and growth of the wax-record type of phonograph from its infancy to the present perfected machine and records now so widely known all over the world. from among these many inventions, however, we will select two or three as examples of ingenuity and importance in their bearing upon present perfection of results. one of the difficulties of reproduction for many years was the trouble experienced in keeping the stylus in perfect engagement with the wave-like record, so that every minute vibration would be reproduced. it should be remembered that the deepest cut of the recording tool is only about one-third the thickness of tissue-paper. hence, it will be quite apparent that the slightest inequality in the surface of the wax would be sufficient to cause false vibration, and thus give rise to distorted effects in such music or other sounds as were being reproduced. to remedy this, edison added an attachment which is called a "floating weight," and is shown at a in the illustration above. the function of the floating weight is to automatically keep the stylus in close engagement with the record, thus insuring accuracy of reproduction. the weight presses the stylus to its work, but because of its mass it cannot respond to the extremely rapid vibrations of the stylus. they are therefore communicated to the diaphragm. some of edison's most remarkable inventions are revealed in a number of interesting patents relating to the duplication of phonograph records. it would be obviously impossible, from a commercial standpoint, to obtain a musical record from a high-class artist and sell such an original to the public, as its cost might be from one hundred to several thousand dollars. consequently, it is necessary to provide some way by which duplicates may be made cheaply enough to permit their purchase by the public at a reasonable price. the making of a perfect original musical or other record is a matter of no small difficulty, as it requires special technical knowledge and skill gathered from many years of actual experience; but in the exact copying, or duplication, of such a record, with its many millions of microscopic waves and sub-waves, the difficulties are enormously increased. the duplicates must be microscopically identical with the original, they must be free from false vibrations or other defects, although both original and duplicates are of such easily defacable material as wax; and the process must be cheap and commercial not a scientific laboratory possibility. for making duplicates it was obviously necessary to first secure a mold carrying the record in negative or reversed form. from this could be molded, or cast, positive copies which would be identical with the original. while the art of electroplating would naturally suggest itself as the means of making such a mold, an apparently insurmountable obstacle appeared on the very threshold. wax, being a non-conductor, cannot be electroplated unless a conducting surface be first applied. the coatings ordinarily used in electro-deposition were entirely out of the question on account of coarseness, the deepest waves of the record being less than one-thousandth of an inch in depth, and many of them probably ten to one hundred times as shallow. edison finally decided to apply a preliminary metallic coating of infinitesimal thinness, and accomplished this object by a remarkable process known as the vacuous deposit. with this he applied to the original record a film of gold probably no thicker than one three-hundred-thousandth of an inch, or several hundred times less than the depth of an average wave. three hundred such layers placed one on top of the other would make a sheet no thicker than tissue-paper. the process consists in placing in a vacuum two leaves, or electrodes, of gold, and between them the original record. a constant discharge of electricity of high tension between the electrodes is effected by means of an induction-coil. the metal is vaporized by this discharge, and is carried by it directly toward and deposited upon the original record, thus forming the minute film of gold above mentioned. the record is constantly rotated until its entire surface is coated. a sectional diagram of the apparatus (fig. .) will aid to a clearer understanding of this ingenious process. after the gold film is formed in the manner described above, a heavy backing of baser metal is electroplated upon it, thus forming a substantial mold, from which the original record is extracted by breakage or shrinkage. duplicate records in any quantity may now be made from this mold by surrounding it with a cold-water jacket and dipping it in a molten wax-like material. this congeals on the record surface just as melted butter would collect on a cold knife, and when the mold is removed the surplus wax falls out, leaving a heavy deposit of the material which forms the duplicate record. numerous ingenious inventions have been made by edison providing for a variety of rapid and economical methods of duplication, including methods of shrinking a newly made copy to facilitate its quick removal from the mold; methods of reaming, of forming ribs on the interior, and for many other important and essential details, which limits of space will not permit of elaboration. those mentioned above are but fair examples of the persistent and effective work he has done to bring the phonograph to its present state of perfection. in perusing chapter x of the foregoing narrative, the reader undoubtedly noted edison's clear apprehension of the practical uses of the phonograph, as evidenced by his prophetic utterances in the article written by him for the north american review in june, . in view of the crudity of the instrument at that time, it must be acknowledged that edison's foresight, as vindicated by later events was most remarkable. no less remarkable was his intensely practical grasp of mechanical possibilities of future types of the machine, for we find in one of his early english patents (no. of ) the disk form of phonograph which, some ten to fifteen years later, was supposed to be a new development in the art. this disk form was also covered by edison's application for a united states patent, filed in . this application met with some merely minor technical objections in the patent office, and seems to have passed into the "abandoned" class for want of prosecution, probably because of being overlooked in the tremendous pressure arising from his development of his electric-lighting system. ix. the incandescent lamp although edison's contributions to human comfort and progress are extensive in number and extraordinarily vast and comprehensive in scope and variety, the universal verdict of the world points to his incandescent lamp and system of distribution of electrical current as the central and crowning achievements of his life up to this time. this view would seem entirely justifiable when we consider the wonderful changes in the conditions of modern life that have been brought about by the wide-spread employment of these inventions, and the gigantic industries that have grown up and been nourished by their world-wide application. that he was in this instance a true pioneer and creator is evident as we consider the subject, for the united states patent no. , , issued to edison on january , , for an incandescent lamp, was of such fundamental character that it opened up an entirely new and tremendously important art--the art of incandescent electric lighting. this statement cannot be successfully controverted, for it has been abundantly verified after many years of costly litigation. if further proof were desired, it is only necessary to point to the fact that, after thirty years of most strenuous and practical application in the art by the keenest intellects of the world, every incandescent lamp that has ever since been made, including those of modern days, is still dependent upon the employment of the essentials disclosed in the above-named patent--namely, a filament of high resistance enclosed in a sealed glass globe exhausted of air, with conducting wires passing through the glass. an incandescent lamp is such a simple-appearing article--merely a filament sealed into a glass globe--that its intrinsic relation to the art of electric lighting is far from being apparent at sight. to the lay mind it would seem that this must have been the obvious device to make in order to obtain electric light by incandescence of carbon or other material. but the reader has already learned from the preceding narrative that prior to its invention by edison such a device was not obvious, even to the most highly trained experts of the world at that period; indeed, it was so far from being obvious that, for some time after he had completed practical lamps and was actually lighting them up twenty-four hours a day, such a device and such a result were declared by these same experts to be an utter impossibility. for a short while the world outside of menlo park held edison's claims in derision. his lamp was pronounced a fake, a myth, possibly a momentary success magnified to the dignity of a permanent device by an overenthusiastic inventor. such criticism, however, did not disturb edison. he knew that he had reached the goal. long ago, by a close process of reasoning, he had clearly seen that the only road to it was through the path he had travelled, and which was now embodied in the philosophy of his incandescent lamp--namely, a filament, or carbon, of high resistance and small radiating surface, sealed into a glass globe exhausted of air to a high degree of vacuum. in originally committing himself to this line of investigation he was well aware that he was going in a direction diametrically opposite to that followed by previous investigators. their efforts had been confined to low-resistance burners of large radiating surface for their lamps, but he realized the utter futility of such devices. the tremendous problems of heat and the prohibitive quantities of copper that would be required for conductors for such lamps would be absolutely out of the question in commercial practice. he was convinced from the first that the true solution of the problem lay in a lamp which should have as its illuminating body a strip of material which would offer such a resistance to the flow of electric current that it could be raised to a high temperature--incandescence--and be of such small cross-section that it would radiate but little heat. at the same time such a lamp must require a relatively small amount of current, in order that comparatively small conductors could be used, and its burner must be capable of withstanding the necessarily high temperatures without disintegration. it is interesting to note that these conceptions were in edison's mind at an early period of his investigations, when the best expert opinion was that the subdivision of the electric current was an ignis fatuus. hence we quote the following notes he made, november , , in one of the laboratory note-books: "a given straight wire having ohm resistance and certain length is brought to a given degree of temperature by given battery. if the same wire be coiled in such a manner that but one-quarter of its surface radiates, its temperature will be increased four times with the same battery, or, one-quarter of this battery will bring it to the temperature of straight wire. or the same given battery will bring a wire whose total resistance is ohms to the same temperature as straight wire. "this was actually determined by trial. "the amount of heat lost by a body is in proportion to the radiating surface of that body. if one square inch of platina be heated to degrees it will fall to, say, zero in one second, whereas, if it was at degrees it would require two seconds. "hence, in the case of incandescent conductors, if the radiating surface be twelve inches and the temperature on each inch be , or for all, if it is so coiled or arranged that there is but one-quarter, or three inches, of radiating surface, then the temperature on each inch will be . if reduced to three-quarters of an inch it will have on that three-quarters of an inch degrees fahr., notwithstanding the original total amount was but , because the radiation has been reduced to three-quarters, or units; hence, the effect of the lessening of the radiation is to raise the temperature of each remaining inch not radiating to degrees. if the radiating surface should be reduced to three-thirty-seconds of an inch, the temperature would reach degrees fahr. to carry out this law to the best advantage in regard to platina, etc., then with a given length of wire to quadruple the heat we must lessen the radiating surface to one-quarter, and to do this in a spiral, three-quarters must be within the spiral and one-quarter outside for radiating; hence, a square wire or other means, such as a spiral within a spiral, must be used. these results account for the enormous temperature of the electric arc with one horse-power; as, for instance, if one horse-power will heat twelve inches of wire to degrees fahr., and this is concentrated to have one-quarter of the radiating surface, it would reach a temperature of degrees or sufficient to melt it; but, supposing it infusible, the further concentration to one-eighth its surface, it would reach a temperature of , degrees, and to one-thirty-second its surface, which would be about the radiating surface of the electric arc, it would reach , degrees fahr. of course, when light is radiated in great quantities not quite these temperatures would be reached. "another curious law is this: it will require a greater initial battery to bring an iron wire of the same size and resistance to a given temperature than it will a platina wire in proportion to their specific heats, and in the case of carbon, a piece of carbon three inches long and one-eighth diameter, with a resistance of ohm, will require a greater battery power to bring it to a given temperature than a cylinder of thin platina foil of the same length, diameter, and resistance, because the specific heat of carbon is many times greater; besides, if i am not mistaken, the radiation of a roughened body for heat is greater than a polished one like platina." proceeding logically upon these lines of thought and following them out through many ramifications, we have seen how he at length made a filament of carbon of high resistance and small radiating surface, and through a concurrent investigation of the phenomena of high vacua and occluded gases was able to produce a true incandescent lamp. not only was it a lamp as a mere article--a device to give light--but it was also an integral part of his great and complete system of lighting, to every part of which it bore a fixed and definite ratio, and in relation to which it was the keystone that held the structure firmly in place. the work of edison on incandescent lamps did not stop at this fundamental invention, but extended through more than eighteen years of a most intense portion of his busy life. during that period he was granted one hundred and forty-nine other patents on the lamp and its manufacture. although very many of these inventions were of the utmost importance and value, we cannot attempt to offer a detailed exposition of them in this necessarily brief article, but must refer the reader, if interested, to the patents themselves, a full list being given at the end of this appendix. the outline sketch will indicate the principal patents covering the basic features of the lamp. the litigation on the edison lamp patents was one of the most determined and stubbornly fought contests in the history of modern jurisprudence. vast interests were at stake. all of the technical, expert, and professional skill and knowledge that money could procure or experience devise were availed of in the bitter fights that raged in the courts for many years. and although the edison interests had spent from first to last nearly $ , , , and had only about three years left in the life of the fundamental patent, edison was thoroughly sustained as to priority by the decisions in the various suits. we shall offer a few brief extracts from some of these decisions. in a suit against the united states electric lighting company, united states circuit court for the southern district of new york, july , , judge wallace said, in his opinion: "the futility of hoping to maintain a burner in vacuo with any permanency had discouraged prior inventors, and mr. edison is entitled to the credit of obviating the mechanical difficulties which disheartened them.... he was the first to make a carbon of materials, and by a process which was especially designed to impart high specific resistance to it; the first to make a carbon in the special form for the special purpose of imparting to it high total resistance; and the first to combine such a burner with the necessary adjuncts of lamp construction to prevent its disintegration and give it sufficiently long life. by doing these things he made a lamp which was practically operative and successful, the embryo of the best lamps now in commercial use, and but for which the subdivision of the electric light by incandescence would still be nothing but the ignis fatuus which it was proclaimed to be in by some of the reamed experts who are now witnesses to belittle his achievement and show that it did not rise to the dignity of an invention.... it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the invention of the slender thread of carbon as a substitute for the burners previously employed opened the path to the practical subdivision of the electric light." an appeal was taken in the above suit to the united states circuit court of appeals, and on october , , the decree of the lower court was affirmed. the judges (lacombe and shipman), in a long opinion reviewed the facts and the art, and said, inter alia: "edison's invention was practically made when he ascertained the theretofore unknown fact that carbon would stand high temperature, even when very attenuated, if operated in a high vacuum, without the phenomenon of disintegration. this fact he utilized by the means which he has described, a lamp having a filamentary carbon burner in a nearly perfect vacuum." in a suit against the boston incandescent lamp company et al., in the united states circuit court for the district of massachusetts, decided in favor of edison on june , , judge colt, in his opinion, said, among other things: "edison made an important invention; he produced the first practical incandescent electric lamp; the patent is a pioneer in the sense of the patent law; it may be said that his invention created the art of incandescent electric lighting." opinions of other courts, similar in tenor to the foregoing, might be cited, but it would be merely in the nature of reiteration. the above are sufficient to illustrate the direct clearness of judicial decision on edison's position as the founder of the art of electric lighting by incandescence. x. edison's dynamo work at the present writing, when, after the phenomenally rapid electrical development of thirty years, we find on the market a great variety of modern forms of efficient current generators advertised under the names of different inventors (none, however, bearing the name of edison), a young electrical engineer of the present generation might well inquire whether the great inventor had ever contributed anything to the art beyond a mere type of machine formerly made and bearing his name, but not now marketed except second hand. for adequate information he might search in vain the books usually regarded as authorities on the subject of dynamo-electric machinery, for with slight exceptions there has been a singular unanimity in the omission of writers to give edison credit for his great and basic contributions to heavy-current technics, although they have been universally acknowledged by scientific and practical men to have laid the foundation for the efficiency of, and to be embodied in all modern generators of current. it might naturally be expected that the essential facts of edison's work would appear on the face of his numerous patents on dynamo-electric machinery, but such is not necessarily the case, unless they are carefully studied in the light of the state of the art as it existed at the time. while some of these patents (especially the earlier ones) cover specific devices embodying fundamental principles that not only survive to the present day, but actually lie at the foundation of the art as it now exists, there is no revelation therein of edison's preceding studies of magnets, which extended over many years, nor of his later systematic investigations and deductions. dynamo-electric machines of a primitive kind had been invented and were in use to a very limited extent for arc lighting and electroplating for some years prior to the summer of , when edison, with an embryonic lighting system in mind, cast about for a type of machine technically and commercially suitable for the successful carrying out of his plans. he found absolutely none. on the contrary, all of the few types then obtainable were uneconomical, indeed wasteful, in regard to efficiency. the art, if indeed there can be said to have been an art at that time, was in chaotic confusion, and only because of edison's many years' study of the magnet was he enabled to conclude that insufficiency in quantity of iron in the magnets of such machines, together with poor surface contacts, rendered the cost of magnetization abnormally high. the heating of solid armatures, the only kind then known, and poor insulation in the commutators, also gave rise to serious losses. but perhaps the most serious drawback lay in the high-resistance armature, based upon the highest scientific dictum of the time that in order to obtain the maximum amount of work from a machine, the internal resistance of the armature must equal the resistance of the exterior circuit, although the application of this principle entailed the useless expenditure of at least per cent. of the applied energy. it seems almost incredible that only a little over thirty years ago the sum of scientific knowledge in regard to dynamo-electric machines was so meagre that the experts of the period should settle upon such a dictum as this, but such was the fact, as will presently appear. mechanical generators of electricity were comparatively new at that time; their theory and practice were very imperfectly understood; indeed, it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that the correct principles were befogged by reason of the lack of practical knowledge of their actual use. electricians and scientists of the period had been accustomed for many years past to look to the chemical battery as the source from which to obtain electrical energy; and in the practical application of such energy to telegraphy and kindred uses, much thought and ingenuity had been expended in studying combinations of connecting such cells so as to get the best results. in the text-books of the period it was stated as a settled principle that, in order to obtain the maximum work out of a set of batteries, the internal resistance must approximately equal the resistance of the exterior circuit. this principle and its application in practice were quite correct as regards chemical batteries, but not as regards dynamo machines. both were generators of electrical current, but so different in construction and operation, that rules applicable to the practical use of the one did not apply with proper commercial efficiency to the other. at the period under consideration, which may be said to have been just before dawn of the day of electric light, the philosophy of the dynamo was seen only in mysterious, hazy outlines--just emerging from the darkness of departing night. perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the dynamo was loosely regarded by electricians as the practical equivalent of a chemical battery; that many of the characteristics of performance of the chemical cell were also attributed to it, and that if the maximum work could be gotten out of a set of batteries when the internal and external resistances were equal (and this was commercially the best thing to do), so must it be also with a dynamo. it was by no miracle that edison was far and away ahead of his time when he undertook to improve the dynamo. he was possessed of absolute knowledge far beyond that of his contemporaries. this he ad acquired by the hardest kind of work and incessant experiment with magnets of all kinds during several years preceding, particularly in connection with his study of automatic telegraphy. his knowledge of magnets was tremendous. he had studied and experimented with electromagnets in enormous variety, and knew their peculiarities in charge and discharge, lag, self-induction, static effects, condenser effects, and the various other phenomena connected therewith. he had also made collateral studies of iron, steel, and copper, insulation, winding, etc. hence, by reason of this extensive work and knowledge, edison was naturally in a position to realize the utter commercial impossibility of the then best dynamo machine in existence, which had an efficiency of only about per cent., and was constructed on the "cut-and-try" principle. he was also naturally in a position to assume the task he set out to accomplish, of undertaking to plan and-build an improved type of machine that should be commercial in having an efficiency of at least per cent. truly a prodigious undertaking in those dark days, when from the standpoint of edison's large experience the most practical and correct electrical treatise was contained in the encyclopaedia britannica, and in a german publication which mr. upton had brought with him after he had finished his studies with the illustrious helmholtz. it was at this period that mr. upton commenced his association with edison, bringing to the great work the very latest scientific views and the assistance of the higher mathematics, to which he had devoted his attention for several years previously. as some account of edison's investigations in this connection has already been given in chapter xii of the narrative, we shall not enlarge upon them here, but quote from an historical review, by charles l. clarke, laboratory assistant at menlo park, - ; chief engineer of the edison electric light company, - : "in june, , was published the account of the edison dynamo-electric machine that survived in the art. this machine went into extensive commercial use, and was notable for its very massive and powerful field-magnets and armature of extremely low resistance as compared with the combined external resistance of the supply-mains and lamps. by means of the large masses of iron in the field-magnets, and closely fitted joints between the several parts thereof, the magnetic resistance (reluctance) of the iron parts of the magnetic circuit was reduced to a minimum, and the required magnetization effected with the maximum economy. at the same time mr. edison announced the commercial necessity of having the armature of the dynamo of low resistance, as compared with the external resistance, in order that a large percentage of the electrical energy developed should be utilized in the lamps, and only a small percentage lost in the armature, albeit this procedure reduced the total generating capacity of the machine. he also proposed to make the resistance of the supply-mains small, as compared with the combined resistance of the lamps in multiple arc, in order to still further increase the percentage of energy utilized in the lamps. and likewise to this end the combined resistance of the generator armatures in multiple arc was kept relatively small by adjusting the number of generators operating in multiple at any time to the number of lamps then in use. the field-magnet circuits of the dynamos were connected in multiple with a separate energizing source; and the field-current; and strength of field, were regulated to maintain the required amount of electromotive force upon the supply-mains under all conditions of load from the maximum to the minimum number of lamps in use, and to keep the electromotive force of all machines alike." among the earliest of edison's dynamo experiments were those relating to the core of the armature. he realized at once that the heat generated in a solid core was a prolific source of loss. he experimented with bundles of iron wires variously insulated, also with sheet-iron rolled cylindrically and covered with iron wire wound concentrically. these experiments and many others were tried in a great variety of ways, until, as the result of all this work, edison arrived at the principle which has remained in the art to this day. he split up the iron core of the armature into thin laminations, separated by paper, thus practically suppressing foucault currents therein and resulting heating effect. it was in his machine also that mica was used for the first time as an insulating medium in a commutator. [ ] [footnote : the commercial manufacture of built-up sheets of mica for electrical purposes was first established at the edison machine works, goerck street, new york, in .] elementary as these principles will appear to the modern student or engineer, they were denounced as nothing short of absurdity at the time of their promulgation--especially so with regard to edison's proposal to upset the then settled dictum that the armature resistance should be equal to the external resistance. his proposition was derided in the technical press of the period, both at home and abroad. as public opinion can be best illustrated by actual quotation, we shall present a characteristic instance. in the scientific american of october , , there appeared an illustrated article by mr. upton on edison's dynamo machine, in which edison's views and claims were set forth. a subsequent issue contained a somewhat acrimonious letter of criticism by a well-known maker of dynamo machines. at the risk of being lengthy, we must quote nearly all this letter: "i can scarcely conceive it as possible that the article on the above subject '(edison's electric generator)' in last week's scientific american could have been written from statements derived from mr. edison himself, inasmuch as so many of the advantages claimed for the machine described and statements of the results obtained are so manifestly absurd as to indicate on the part of both writer and prompter a positive want of knowledge of the electric circuit and the principles governing the construction and operation of electric machines. "it is not my intention to criticise the design or construction of the machine (not because they are not open to criticism), as i am now and have been for many years engaged in the manufacture of electric machines, but rather to call attention to the impossibility of obtaining the described results without destroying the doctrine of the conservation and correlation of forces. . . . . . "it is stated that 'the internal resistance of the armature' of this machine 'is only / ohm.' on this fact and the disproportion between this resistance and that of the external circuit, the theory of the alleged efficiency of the machine is stated to be based, for we are informed that, 'while this generator in general principle is the same as in the best well-known forms, still there is an all-important difference, which is that it will convert and deliver for useful work nearly double the number of foot-pounds that any other machine will under like conditions.'" the writer of this critical letter then proceeds to quote mr. upton's statement of this efficiency: "'now the energy converted is distributed over the whole resistance, hence if the resistance of the machine be represented by and the exterior circuit by , then of the total energy converted nine-tenths will be useful, as it is outside of the machine, and one-tenth is lost in the resistance of the machine.'" after this the critic goes on to say: "how any one acquainted with the laws of the electric circuit can make such statements is what i cannot understand. the statement last quoted is mathematically absurd. it implies either that the machine is capable of increasing its own electromotive force nine times without an increased expenditure of power, or that external resistance is not resistance to the current induced in the edison machine. "does mr. edison, or any one for him, mean to say that r/n enables him to obtain ne, and that c is not = e / (r/n + r)? if so mr. edison has discovered something more than perpetual motion, and mr. keely had better retire from the field. "further on the writer (mr. upton) gives us another example of this mode of reasoning when, emboldened and satisfied with the absurd theory above exposed, he endeavors to prove the cause of the inefficiency of the siemens and other machines. couldn't the writer of the article see that since c = e/(r + r) that by r/n or by making r = r, the machine would, according to his theory, have returned more useful current to the circuit than could be due to the power employed (and in the ratio indicated), so that there would actually be a creation of force! . . . . "in conclusion allow me to say that if mr edison thinks he has accomplished so much by the reduction of the internal resistance of his machine, that he has much more to do in this direction before his machine will equal in this respect others already in the market." another participant in the controversy on edison's generator was a scientific gentleman, who in a long article published in the scientific american, in november, , gravely undertook to instruct edison in the a b c of electrical principles, and then proceeded to demonstrate mathematically the impossibility of doing what edison had actually done. this critic concludes with a gentle rebuke to the inventor for ill-timed jesting, and a suggestion to furnish authentic information! in the light of facts, as they were and are, this article is so full of humor that we shall indulge in a few quotations it commences in a b c fashion as follows: "electric machines convert mechanical into electrical energy.... the ratio of yield to consumption is the expression of the efficiency of the machine.... how many foot-pounds of electricity can be got out of foot-pounds of mechanical energy? certainly not more than : certainly less.... the facts and laws of physics, with the assistance of mathematical logic, never fail to furnish precious answers to such questions." the would-be critic then goes on to tabulate tests of certain other dynamo machines by a committee of the franklin institute in , the results of which showed that these machines returned about per cent. of the applied mechanical energy, ingenuously remarking: "why is it that when we have produced the electricity, half of it must slip away? some persons will be content if they are told simply that it is a way which electricity has of behaving. but there is a satisfactory rational explanation which i believe can be made plain to persons of ordinary intelligence. it ought to be known to all those who are making or using machines. i am grieved to observe that many persons who talk and write glibly about electricity do not understand it; some even ignore or deny the fact to be explained." here follows his explanation, after which he goes on to say: "at this point plausibly comes in a suggestion that the internal part of the circuit be made very small and the external part very large. why not (say) make the internal part and the external , thus saving nine-tenths and losing only one-tenth? unfortunately, the suggestion is not practical; a fallacy is concealed in it." he then goes on to prove his case mathematically, to his own satisfaction, following it sadly by condoling with and a warning to edison: "but about edison's electric generator! . . . no one capable of making the improvements in the telegraph and telephone, for which we are indebted to mr. edison, could be other than an accomplished electrician. his reputation as a scientist, indeed, is smirched by the newspaper exaggerations, and no doubt he will be more careful in future. but there is a danger nearer home, indeed, among his own friends and in his very household. ". . . the writer of page " (the original article) "is probably a friend of mr. edison, but possibly, alas! a wicked partner. why does he say such things as these? 'mr. edison claims that he realizes per cent. of the power applied to this machine in external work.' . . . perhaps the writer is a humorist, and had in his mind colonel sellers, etc., which he could not keep out of a serious discussion; but such jests are not good. "mr. edison has built a very interesting machine, and he has the opportunity of making a valuable contribution to the electrical arts by furnishing authentic accounts of its capabilities." the foregoing extracts are unavoidably lengthy, but, viewed in the light of facts, serve to illustrate most clearly that edison's conceptions and work were far and away ahead of the comprehension of his contemporaries in the art, and that his achievements in the line of efficient dynamo design and construction were indeed truly fundamental and revolutionary in character. much more of similar nature to the above could be quoted from other articles published elsewhere, but the foregoing will serve as instances generally representing all. in the controversy which appeared in the columns of the scientific american, mr. upton, edison's mathematician, took up the question on his side, and answered the critics by further elucidations of the principles on which edison had founded such remarkable and radical improvements in the art. the type of edison's first dynamo-electric machine, the description of which gave rise to the above controversy, is shown in fig. . any account of edison's work on the dynamo would be incomplete did it omit to relate his conception and construction of the great direct-connected steam-driven generator that was the prototype of the colossal units which are used throughout the world to-day. in the demonstrating plant installed and operated by him at menlo park in ten dynamos of eight horse-power each were driven by a slow-speed engine through a complicated system of counter-shafting, and, to quote from mr. clarke's historical review, "it was found that a considerable percentage of the power of the engine was necessarily wasted in friction by this method of driving, and to prevent this waste and thus increase the economy of his system, mr. edison conceived the idea of substituting a single large dynamo for the several small dynamos, and directly coupling it with the driving engine, and at the same time preserve the requisite high armature speed by using an engine of the high-speed type. he also expected to realize still further gains in economy from the use of a large dynamo in place of several small machines by a more than correspondingly lower armature resistance, less energy for magnetizing the field, and for other minor reasons. to the same end, he intended to supply steam to the engine under a much higher boiler pressure than was customary in stationary-engine driving at that time." the construction of the first one of these large machines was commenced late in the year . early in it was completed and tested, but some radical defects in armature construction were developed, and it was also demonstrated that a rate of engine speed too high for continuously safe and economical operation had been chosen. the machine was laid aside. an accurate illustration of this machine, as it stood in the engine-room at menlo park, is given in van nostrand's engineering magazine, vol. xxv, opposite page , and a brief description is given on page . with the experience thus gained, edison began, in the spring of , at the edison machine works, goerck street, new york city, the construction of the first successful machine of this type. this was the great machine known as "jumbo no. ," which is referred to in the narrative as having been exhibited at the paris international electrical exposition, where it was regarded as the wonder of the electrical world. an intimation of some of the tremendous difficulties encountered in the construction of this machine has already been given in preceding pages, hence we shall not now enlarge on the subject, except to note in passing that the terribly destructive effects of the spark of self-induction and the arcing following it were first manifested in this powerful machine, but were finally overcome by edison after a strenuous application of his powers to the solution of the problem. it may be of interest, however, to mention some of its dimensions and electrical characteristics, quoting again from mr. clarke: "the field-magnet had eight solid cylindrical cores, inches in diameter and inches long, upon each of which was wound an exciting-coil of . ohms resistance, consisting of turns of no. b. w. g. insulated copper wire, disposed in six layers. the laminated iron core of the armature, formed of thin iron disks, was / inches long, and had an internal diameter of / inches, and an external diameter of / inches. it was mounted on a -inch shaft. the field-poles were / inches long, and / inches inside diameter the armature winding consisted of copper bars on the face of the core, connected into a closed-coil winding by means of copper disks at each end of the core. the cross-sectional area of each bar was . square inch their average length was . inches, and the copper end-disks were . inch thick. the commutator had sections. the armature resistance was . ohm, [ ] of which . ohm was in the armature bars and . ohm in the end-disks." an illustration of the next latest type of this machine is presented in fig. . [footnote : had edison in upton's scientific american article in proposed such an exceedingly low armature resistance for this immense generator (although its ratio was proportionate to the original machine), his critics might probably have been sufficiently indignant as to be unable to express themselves coherently.] the student may find it interesting to look up edison's united states patents nos. , , , , , , and , , bearing upon the construction of the "jumbo"; also illustrated articles in the technical journals of the time, among which may be mentioned: scientific american, vol. xlv, page ; engineering, london, vol. xxxii, pages and , the telegraphic journal and electrical review, london, vol. ix, pages - , - ; la nature, paris, th year, part ii, pages - ; zeitschrift fur angewandte elektricitaatslehre, munich and leipsic, vol. iv, pages - ; and dredge's electric illumination, , vol. i, page . the further development of these great machines later on, and their extensive practical use, are well known and need no further comment, except in passing it may be noted that subsequent machines had each a capacity of lamps of candle-power, and that the armature resistance was still further reduced to . ohm. edison's clear insight into the future, as illustrated by his persistent advocacy of large direct-connected generating units, is abundantly vindicated by present-day practice. his jumbo machines, of horse-power, so enormous for their time, have served as prototypes, and have been succeeded by generators which have constantly grown in size and capacity until at this time ( ) it is not uncommon to employ such generating units of a capacity of , kilowatts, or about , horse-power. we have not entered into specific descriptions of the many other forms of dynamo machines invented by edison, such as the multipolar, the disk dynamo, and the armature with two windings, for sub-station distribution; indeed, it is not possible within our limited space to present even a brief digest of edison's great and comprehensive work on the dynamo-electric machine, as embodied in his extensive experiments and in over one hundred patents granted to him. we have, therefore, confined ourselves to the indication of a few salient and basic features, leaving it to the interested student to examine the patents and the technical literature of the long period of time over which edison's labors were extended. although he has not given any attention to the subject of generators for many years, an interesting instance of his incisive method of overcoming minor difficulties occurred while the present volumes were under preparation ( ). carbon for commutator brushes has been superseded by graphite in some cases, the latter material being found much more advantageous, electrically. trouble developed, however, for the reason that while carbon was hard and would wear away the mica insulation simultaneously with the copper, graphite, being softer, would wear away only the copper, leaving ridges of mica and thus causing sparking through unequal contact. at this point edison was asked to diagnose the trouble and provide a remedy. he suggested the cutting out of the mica pieces almost to the bottom, leaving the commutator bars separated by air-spaces. this scheme was objected to on the ground that particles of graphite would fill these air-spaces and cause a short-circuit. his answer was that the air-spaces constituted the value of his plan, as the particles of graphite falling into them would be thrown out by the action of centrifugal force as the commutator revolved. and thus it occurred as a matter of fact, and the trouble was remedied. this idea was subsequently adopted by a great manufacturer of generators. xi. the edison feeder system to quote from the preamble of the specifications of united states patent no. , , issued to thomas a. edison september , : "this invention relates to a method of equalizing the tension or 'pressure' of the current through an entire system of electric lighting or other translation of electric force, preventing what is ordinarily known as a 'drop' in those portions of the system the more remote from the central station...." the problem which was solved by the edison feeder system was that relating to the equal distribution of current on a large scale over extended areas, in order that a constant and uniform electrical pressure could be maintained in every part of the distribution area without prohibitory expenditure for copper for mains and conductors. this problem had a twofold aspect, although each side was inseparably bound up in the other. on the one hand it was obviously necessary in a lighting system that each lamp should be of standard candle-power, and capable of interchangeable use on any part of the system, giving the same degree of illumination at every point, whether near to or remote from the source of electrical energy. on the other hand, this must be accomplished by means of a system of conductors so devised and arranged that while they would insure the equal pressure thus demanded, their mass and consequent cost would not exceed the bounds of practical and commercially economical investment. the great importance of this invention can be better understood and appreciated by a brief glance at the state of the art in - , when edison was conducting the final series of investigations which culminated in his invention of the incandescent lamp and system of lighting. at this time, and for some years previously, the scientific world had been working on the "subdivision of the electric light," as it was then termed. some leading authorities pronounced it absolutely impossible of achievement on any extended scale, while a very few others, of more optimistic mind, could see no gleam of light through the darkness, but confidently hoped for future developments by such workers as edison. the earlier investigators, including those up to the period above named, thought of the problem as involving the subdivision of a fixed unit of current, which, being sufficient to cause illumination by one large lamp, might be divided into a number of small units whose aggregate light would equal the candle-power of this large lamp. it was found, however, in their experiments that the contrary effect was produced, for with every additional lamp introduced in the circuit the total candle-power decreased instead of increasing. if they were placed in series the light varied inversely as the square of the number of lamps in circuit; while if they were inserted in multiple arc, the light diminished as the cube of the number in circuit. [ ] the idea of maintaining a constant potential and of proportioning the current to the number of lamps in circuit did not occur to most of these early investigators as a feasible method of overcoming the supposed difficulty. [footnote : m. fontaine, in his book on electric lighting ( ), showed that with the current of a battery composed of sixteen elements, one lamp gave an illumination equal to burners; whereas two similar lamps, if introduced in parallel or multiple arc, gave the light of only / burners in all; three lamps of only burners in all; four lamps of only / of one burner, and five lamps of / of a burner.] it would also seem that although the general method of placing experimental lamps in multiple arc was known at this period, the idea of "drop" of electrical pressure was imperfectly understood, if, indeed, realized at all, as a most important item to be considered in attempting the solution of the problem. as a matter of fact, the investigators preceding edison do not seem to have conceived the idea of a "system" at all; hence it is not surprising to find them far astray from the correct theory of subdivision of the electric current. it may easily be believed that the term "subdivision" was a misleading one to these early experimenters. for a very short time edison also was thus misled, but as soon as he perceived that the problem was one involving the multiplication of current units, his broad conception of a "system" was born. generally speaking, all conductors of electricity offer more or less resistance to the passage of current through them and in the technical terminology of electrical science the word "drop" (when used in reference to a system of distribution) is used to indicate a fall or loss of initial electrical pressure arising from the resistance offered by the copper conductors leading from the source of energy to the lamps. the result of this resistance is to convert or translate a portion of the electrical energy into another form--namely, heat, which in the conductors is useless and wasteful and to some extent inevitable in practice, but is to be avoided and remedied as far as possible. it is true that in an electric-lighting system there is also a fall or loss of electrical pressure which occurs in overcoming the much greater resistance of the filament in an incandescent lamp. in this case there is also a translation of the energy, but here it accomplishes a useful purpose, as the energy is converted into the form of light through the incandescence of the filament. such a conversion is called "work" as distinguished from "drop," although a fall of initial electrical pressure is involved in each case. the percentage of "drop" varies according to the quantity of copper used in conductors, both as to cross-section and length. the smaller the cross-sectional area, the greater the percentage of drop. the practical effect of this drop would be a loss of illumination in the lamps as we go farther away from the source of energy. this may be illustrated by a simple diagram in which g is a generator, or source of energy, furnishing current at a potential or electrical pressure of volts; and are main conductors, from which -volt lamps, l, are taken in derived circuits. it will be understood that the circuits represented in fig. are theoretically supposed to extend over a large area. the main conductors are sufficiently large in cross-section to offer but little resistance in those parts which are comparatively near the generator, but as the current traverses their extended length there is a gradual increase of resistance to overcome, and consequently the drop increases, as shown by the figures. the result of the drop in such a case would be that while the two lamps, or groups, nearest the generator would be burning at their proper degree of illumination, those beyond would give lower and lower candle-power, successively, until the last lamp, or group, would be giving only about two-thirds the light of the first two. in other words, a very slight drop in voltage means a disproportionately great loss in illumination. hence, by using a primitive system of distribution, such as that shown by fig. , the initial voltage would have to be so high, in order to obtain the proper candle-power at the end of the circuit, that the lamps nearest the generator would be dangerously overheated. it might be suggested as a solution of this problem that lamps of different voltages could be used. but, as we are considering systems of extended distribution employing vast numbers of lamps (as in new york city, where millions are in use), it will be seen that such a method would lead to inextricable confusion, and therefore be absolutely out of the question. inasmuch as the percentage of drop decreases in proportion to the increased cross-section of the conductors, the only feasible plan would seem to be to increase their size to such dimensions as to eliminate the drop altogether, beginning with conductors of large cross-section and tapering off as necessary. this would, indeed, obviate the trouble, but, on the other hand, would give rise to a much more serious difficulty--namely, the enormous outlay for copper; an outlay so great as to be absolutely prohibitory in considering the electric lighting of large districts, as now practiced. another diagram will probably make this more clear. the reference figures are used as before, except that the horizontal lines extending from square marked g represent the main conductors. as each lamp requires and takes its own proportion of the total current generated, it is obvious that the size of the conductors to carry the current for a number of lamps must be as large as the sum of all the separate conductors which would be required to carry the necessary amount of current to each lamp separately. hence, in a primitive multiple-arc system, it was found that the system must have conductors of a size equal to the aggregate of the individual conductors necessary for every lamp. such conductors might either be separate, as shown above (fig. ), or be bunched together, or made into a solid tapering conductor, as shown in the following figure: the enormous mass of copper needed in such a system can be better appreciated by a concrete example. some years ago mr. w. j. jenks made a comparative calculation which showed that such a system of conductors (known as the "tree" system), to supply lamps in a territory extending over so small an area as nine city blocks, would require , pounds of copper, which at the then price of cents per pound would cost $ , . ! such, in brief, was the state of the art, generally speaking, at the period above named ( - ). as early in the art as the latter end of the year , edison had developed his ideas sufficiently to determine that the problem of electric illumination by small units could be solved by using incandescent lamps of high resistance and small radiating surface, and by distributing currents of constant potential thereto in multiple arc by means of a ramification of conductors, starting from a central source and branching therefrom in every direction. this was an equivalent of the method illustrated in fig. , known as the "tree" system, and was, in fact, the system used by edison in the first and famous exhibition of his electric light at menlo park around the christmas period of . he realized, however, that the enormous investment for copper would militate against the commercial adoption of electric lighting on an extended scale. his next inventive step covered the division of a large city district into a number of small sub-stations supplying current through an interconnected network of conductors, thus reducing expenditure for copper to some extent, because each distribution unit was small and limited the drop. his next development was the radical advancement of the state of the art to the feeder system, covered by the patent now under discussion. this invention swept away the tree and other systems, and at one bound brought into being the possibility of effectively distributing large currents over extended areas with a commercially reasonable investment for copper. the fundamental principles of this invention were, first, to sever entirely any direct connection of the main conductors with the source of energy; and, second, to feed current at a constant potential to central points in such main conductors by means of other conductors, called "feeders," which were to be connected directly with the source of energy at the central station. this idea will be made more clear by reference to the following simple diagram, in which the same letters are used as before, with additions: in further elucidation of the diagram, it may be considered that the mains are laid in the street along a city block, more or less distant from the station, while the feeders are connected at one end with the source of energy at the station, their other extremities being connected to the mains at central points of distribution. of course, this system was intended to be applied in every part of a district to be supplied with current, separate sets of feeders running out from the station to the various centres. the distribution mains were to be of sufficiently large size that between their most extreme points the loss would not be more than volts. such a slight difference would not make an appreciable variation in the candle-power of the lamps. by the application of these principles, the inevitable but useless loss, or "drop," required by economy might be incurred, but was localized in the feeders, where it would not affect the uniformity of illumination of the lamps in any of the circuits, whether near to or remote from the station, because any variations of loss in the feeders would not give rise to similar fluctuations in any lamp circuit. the feeders might be operated at any desired percentage of loss that would realize economy in copper, so long as they delivered current to the main conductors at the potential represented by the average voltage of the lamps. thus the feeders could be made comparatively small in cross-section. it will be at once appreciated that, inasmuch as the mains required to be laid only along the blocks to be lighted, and were not required to be run all the way to the central station (which might be half a mile or more away), the saving of copper by edison's feeder system was enormous. indeed, the comparative calculation of mr. jenks, above referred to, shows that to operate the same number of lights in the same extended area of territory, the feeder system would require only , pounds of copper, which, at the then price of cents per pound, would cost only $ , , or a saving of $ , . for copper in this very small district of only nine blocks. an additional illustration, appealing to the eye, is presented in the following sketch, in which the comparative masses of copper of the tree and feeder systems for carrying the same current are shown side by side: xii. the three-wire system this invention is covered by united states patent no. , , issued to edison on march , . the object of the invention was to provide for increased economy in the quantity of copper employed for the main conductors in electric light and power installations of considerable extent at the same time preserving separate and independent control of each lamp, motor, or other translating device, upon any one of the various distribution circuits. immediately prior to this invention the highest state of the art of electrical distribution was represented by edison's feeder system, which has already been described as a straight parallel or multiple-arc system wherein economy of copper was obtained by using separate sets of conductors--minus load--feeding current at standard potential or electrical pressure into the mains at centres of distribution. it should be borne in mind that the incandescent lamp which was accepted at the time as a standard (and has so remained to the present day) was a lamp of volts or thereabouts. in using the word "standard," therefore, it is intended that the same shall apply to lamps of about that voltage, as well as to electrical circuits of the approximate potential to operate them. briefly stated, the principle involved in the three-wire system is to provide main circuits of double the standard potential, so as to operate standard lamps, or other translating devices, in multiple series of two to each series; and for the purpose of securing independent, individual control of each unit, to divide each main circuit into any desired number of derived circuits of standard potential (properly balanced) by means of a central compensating conductor which would be normally neutral, but designed to carry any minor excess of current that might flow by reason of any temporary unbalancing of either side of the main circuit. reference to the following diagrams will elucidate this principle more clearly than words alone can do. for the purpose of increased lucidity we will first show a plain multiple-series system. in this diagram g< s> and g< s> represent two generators, each producing current at a potential of volts. by connecting them in series this potential is doubled, thus providing a main circuit (p and n) of volts. the figures marked l represent eight lamps of volts each, in multiple series of two, in four derived circuits. the arrows indicate the flow of current. by this method each pair of lamps takes, together, only the same quantity or volume of current required by a single lamp in a simple multiple-arc system; and, as the cross-section of a conductor depends upon the quantity of current carried, such an arrangement as the above would allow the use of conductors of only one-fourth the cross-section that would be otherwise required. from the standpoint of economy of investment such an arrangement would be highly desirable, but considered commercially it is impracticable because the principle of independent control of each unit would be lost, as the turning out of a lamp in any series would mean the extinguishment of its companion also. by referring to the diagram it will be seen that each series of two forms one continuous path between the main conductors, and if this path be broken at any one point current will immediately cease to flow in that particular series. edison, by his invention of the three-wire system, overcame this difficulty entirely, and at the same time conserved approximately, the saving of copper, as will be apparent from the following illustration of that system, in its simplest form. the reference figures are similar to those in the preceding diagram, and all conditions are also alike except that a central compensating, or balancing, conductor, pn, is here introduced. this is technically termed the "neutral" wire, and in the discharge of its functions lies the solution of the problem of economical distribution. theoretically, a three-wire installation is evenly balanced by wiring for an equal number of lamps on both sides. if all these lamps were always lighted, burned, and extinguished simultaneously the central conductor would, in fact, remain neutral, as there would be no current passing through it, except from lamp to lamp. in practice, however, no such perfect conditions can obtain, hence the necessity of the provision for balancing in order to maintain the principle of independent control of each unit. it will be apparent that the arrangement shown in fig. comprises practically two circuits combined in one system, in which the central conductor, pn, in case of emergency, serves in two capacities--namely, as negative to generator g< s> or as positive to generator g< s>, although normally neutral. there are two sides to the system, the positive side being represented by the conductors p and pn, and the negative side by the conductors pn and n. each side, if considered separately, has a potential of about volts, yet the potential of the two outside conductors, p and n, is volts. the lamps are volts. in practical use the operation of the system is as follows: if all the lamps were lighted the current would flow along p and through each pair of lamps to n, and so back to the source of energy. in this case the balance is preserved and the central wire remains neutral, as no return current flows through it to the source of energy. but let us suppose that one lamp on the positive side is extinguished. none of the other lamps is affected thereby, but the system is immediately thrown out of balance, and on the positive side there is an excess of current to this extent which flows along or through the central conductor and returns to the generator, the central conductor thus becoming the negative of that side of the system for the time being. if the lamp extinguished had been one of those on the negative side of the system results of a similar nature would obtain, except that the central conductor would for the time being become the positive of that side, and the excess of current would flow through the negative, n, back to the source of energy. thus it will be seen that a three-wire system, considered as a whole, is elastic in that it may operate as one when in balance and as two when unbalanced, but in either event giving independent control of each unit. for simplicity of illustration a limited number of circuits, shown in fig. , has been employed. in practice, however, where great numbers of lamps are in use (as, for instance, in new york city, where about , , lamps are operated from various central stations), there is constantly occurring more or less change in the balance of many circuits extending over considerable distances, but of course there is a net result which is always on one side of the system or the other for the time being, and this is met by proper adjustment at the appropriate generator in the station. in order to make the explanation complete, there is presented another diagram showing a three-wire system unbalanced: the reference figures are used as before, but in this case the vertical lines represent branches taken from the main conductors into buildings or other spaces to be lighted, and the loops between these branch wires represent lamps in operation. it will be seen from this sketch that there are ten lamps on the positive side and twelve on the negative side. hence, the net result is an excess of current equal to that required by two lamps flowing through the central or compensating conductor, which is now acting as positive to generator g< s> the arrows show the assumed direction of flow of current throughout the system, and the small figures at the arrow-heads the volume of that current expressed in the number of lamps which it supplies. the commercial value of this invention may be appreciated from the fact that by the application of its principles there is effected a saving of / per cent. of the amount of copper over that which would be required for conductors in any previously devised two-wire system carrying the same load. this arises from the fact that by the doubling of potential the two outside mains are reduced to one-quarter the cross-section otherwise necessary. a saving of per cent. would thus be assured, but the addition of a third, or compensating, conductor of the same cross-section as one of the outside mains reduces the total saving to / per cent. the three-wire system is in universal use throughout the world at the present day. xiii. edison's electric railway as narrated in chapter xviii, there were two electric railroads installed by edison at menlo park--one in , originally a third of a mile long, but subsequently increased to about a mile in length, and the other in , about three miles long. as the road was built very soon after edison's notable improvements in dynamo machines, and as the art of operating them to the best advantage was then being developed, this early road was somewhat crude as compared with the railroad of ; but both were practicable and serviceable for the purpose of hauling passengers and freight. the scope of the present article will be confined to a description of the technical details of these two installations. the illustration opposite page of the preceding narrative shows the first edison locomotive and train of at menlo park. for the locomotive a four-wheel iron truck was used, and upon it was mounted one of the long "z" type -volt edison dynamos, with a capacity of amperes, which was to be used as a motor. this machine was laid on its side, its armature being horizontal and located toward the front of the locomotive. we now quote from an article by mr. e. w. hammer, published in the electrical world, new york, june , , and afterward elaborated and reprinted in a volume entitled edisonia, compiled and published under the auspices of a committee of the association of edison illuminating companies, in : "the gearing originally employed consisted of a friction-pulley upon the armature shaft, another friction-pulley upon the driven axle, and a third friction-pulley which could be brought in contact with the other two by a suitable lever. each wheel of the locomotive was made with metallic rim and a centre portion made of wood or papier-mache. a three-legged spider connected the metal rim of each front wheel to a brass hub, upon which rested a collecting brush. the other wheels were subsequently so equipped. it was the intention, therefore, that the current should enter the locomotive wheels at one side, and after passing through the metal spiders, collecting brushes and motor, would pass out through the corresponding brushes, spiders, and wheels to the other rail." as to the road: "the rails were light and were spiked to ordinary sleepers, with a gauge of about three and one-half feet. the sleepers were laid upon the natural grade, and there was comparatively no effort made to ballast the road. . . . no special precautions were taken to insulate the rails from the earth or from each other." the road started about fifty feet away from the generating station, which in this case was the machine shop. two of the "z" type dynamos were used for generating the current, which was conveyed to the two rails of the road by underground conductors. on thursday, may , , at o'clock in the afternoon, this historic locomotive made its first trip, packed with as many of the "boys" as could possibly find a place to hang on. "everything worked to a charm, until, in starting up at one end of the road, the friction gearing was brought into action too suddenly and it was wrecked. this accident demonstrated that some other method of connecting the armature with the driven axle should be arranged. "as thus originally operated, the motor had its field circuit in permanent connection as a shunt across the rails, and this field circuit was protected by a safety-catch made by turning up two bare ends of the wire in its circuit and winding a piece of fine copper wire across from one bare end to the other. the armature circuit had a switch in it which permitted the locomotive to be reversed by reversing the direction of current flow through the armature. "after some consideration of the gearing question, it was decided to employ belts instead of the friction-pulleys." accordingly, edison installed on the locomotive a system of belting, including an idler-pulley which was used by means of a lever to tighten the main driving-belt, and thus power was applied to the driven axle. this involved some slipping and consequent burning of belts; also, if the belt were prematurely tightened, the burning-out of the armature. this latter event happened a number of times, "and proved to be such a serious annoyance that resistance-boxes were brought out from the laboratory and placed upon the locomotive in series with the armature. this solved the difficulty. the locomotive would be started with these resistance-boxes in circuit, and after reaching full speed the operator could plug the various boxes out of circuit, and in that way increase the speed." to stop, the armature circuit was opened by the main switch and the brake applied. this arrangement was generally satisfactory, but the resistance-boxes scattered about the platform and foot-rests being in the way, edison directed that some no. b. & s. copper wire be wound on the lower leg of the motor field-magnet. "by doing this the resistance was put where it would take up the least room, and where it would serve as an additional field-coil when starting the motor, and it replaced all the resistance-boxes which had heretofore been in plain sight. the boxes under the seat were still retained in service. the coil of coarse wire was in series with the armature, just as the resistance-boxes had been, and could be plugged in or out of circuit at the will of the locomotive driver. the general arrangement thus secured was operated as long as this road was in commission." on this short stretch of road there were many sharp curves and steep grades, and in consequence of the high speed attained (as high as forty-two miles an hour) several derailments took place, but fortunately without serious results. three cars were in service during the entire time of operating this railroad: one a flat-car for freight; one an open car with two benches placed back to back; and the third a box-car, familiarly known as the "pullman." this latter car had an interesting adjunct in an electric braking system (covered by edison's patent no. , ). "each car axle had a large iron disk mounted on and revolving with it between the poles of a powerful horseshoe electromagnet. the pole-pieces of the magnet were movable, and would be attracted to the revolving disk when the magnet was energized, grasping the same and acting to retard the revolution of the car axle." interesting articles on edison's first electric railroad were published in the technical and other papers, among which may be mentioned the new york herald, may and july , ; the new york graphic, july , ; and the scientific american, june , . edison's second electric railroad of was more pretentious as regards length, construction, and equipment. it was about three miles long, of nearly standard gauge, and substantially constructed. curves were modified, and grades eliminated where possible by the erection of numerous trestles. this road also had some features of conventional railroads, such as sidings, turn-tables, freight platform, and car-house. "current was supplied to the road by underground feeder cables from the dynamo-room of the laboratory. the rails were insulated from the ties by giving them two coats of japan, baking them in the oven, and then placing them on pads of tar-impregnated muslin laid on the ties. the ends of the rails were not japanned, but were electroplated, to give good contact surfaces for fish-plates and copper bonds." the following notes of mr. frederick a. scheffler, who designed the passenger locomotive for the road, throw an interesting light on its technical details: "in may, , i was engaged by mr. m. f. moore, who was the first general manager of the edison company for isolated lighting, as a draftsman to undertake the work of designing and building edison's electric locomotive no. . "previous to that time i had been employed in the engineering department of grant locomotive works, paterson, new jersey, and the rhode island locomotive works, providence, rhode island.... "it was mr. edison's idea, as i understood it at that time, to build a locomotive along the general lines of steam locomotives (at least, in outward appearance), and to combine in that respect the framework, truck, and other parts known to be satisfactory in steam locomotives at the same time. "this naturally required the services of a draftsman accustomed to steam-locomotive practice.... mr. moore was a man of great railroad and locomotive experience, and his knowledge in that direction was of great assistance in the designing and building of this locomotive. "at that time i had no knowledge of electricity.... one could count so-called electrical engineers on his fingers then, and have some fingers left over. "consequently, the electrical equipment was designed by mr. edison and his assistants. the data and parts, such as motor, rheostat, switches, etc., were given to me, and my work was to design the supporting frame, axles, countershafts, driving mechanism, speed control, wheels and boxes, cab, running board, pilot (or 'cow-catcher'), buffers, and even supports for the headlight. i believe i also designed a bell and supports. from this it will be seen that the locomotive had all the essential paraphernalia to make it look like a steam locomotive. "the principal part of the outfit was the electric motor. at that time motors were curiosities. there were no electric motors even for stationary purposes, except freaks built for experimental uses. this motor was made from the parts--such as fields, armature, commutator, shaft and bearings, etc., of an edison 'z,' or -light dynamo. it was the only size of dynamo that the edison company had marketed at that time.... as a motor, it was wound to run at maximum speed to develop a torque equal to about fifteen horse-power with volts. at the generating station at menlo park four z dynamos of volts were used, connected two in series, in multiple arc, giving a line voltage of . "the motor was located in the front part of the locomotive, on its side, with the armature shaft across the frames, or parallel with the driving axles. "on account of the high speed of the armature shaft it was not possible to connect with driving-axles direct, but this was an advantage in one way, as by introducing an intermediate counter-shaft (corresponding to the well-known type of double-reduction motor used on trolley-cars since ), a fairly good arrangement was obtained to regulate the speed of the locomotive, exclusive of resistance in the electric circuit. "endless leather belting was used to transmit the power from the motor to the counter-shaft, and from the latter to the driving-wheels, which were the front pair. a vertical idler-pulley was mounted in a frame over the belt from motor to counter-shaft, terminating in a vertical screw and hand-wheel for tightening the belt to increase speed, or the reverse to lower speed. this hand-wheel was located in the cab, where it was easily accessible.... "the rough outline sketched below shows the location of motor in relation to counter-shaft, belting, driving-wheels, idler, etc.: "on account of both rails being used for circuits, . . . the driving-wheels had to be split circumferentially and completely insulated from the axles. this was accomplished by means of heavy wood blocks well shellacked or otherwise treated to make them water and weather proof, placed radially on the inside of the wheels, and then substantially bolted to the hubs and rims of the latter. "the weight of the locomotive was distributed over the driving-wheels in the usual locomotive practice by means of springs and equalizers. "the current was taken from the rims of the driving-wheels by a three-pronged collector of brass, against which flexible copper brushes were pressed--a simple manner of overcoming any inequalities of the road-bed. "the late mr. charles t. hughes was in charge of the track construction at menlo park.... his work was excellent throughout, and the results were highly satisfactory so far as they could possibly be with the arrangement originally planned by mr. edison and his assistants. "mr. charles l. clarke, one of the earliest electrical engineers employed by mr. edison, made a number of tests on this railroad. i believe that the engine driving the four z generators at the power-house indicated as high as seventy horse-power at the time the locomotive was actually in service." the electrical features of the locomotive were very similar to those of the earlier one, already described. shunt and series field-windings were added to the motor, and the series windings could be plugged in and out of circuit as desired. the series winding was supplemented by resistance-boxes, also capable of being plugged in or out of circuit. these various electrical features are diagrammatically shown in fig. , which also illustrates the connection with the generating plant. we quote again from mr. hammer, who says: "the freight-locomotive had single reduction gears, as is the modern practice, but the power was applied through a friction-clutch the passenger-locomotive was very speedy, and ninety passengers have been carried at a time by it; the freight-locomotive was not so fast, but could pull heavy trains at a good speed. many thousand people were carried on this road during ." the general appearance of edison's electric locomotive of is shown in the illustration opposite page of the preceding narrative. in the picture mr. edison may be seen in the cab, and mr. insull on the front platform of the passenger-car. xiv. train telegraphy while the one-time art of telegraphing to and from moving trains was essentially a wireless system, and allied in some of its principles to the art of modern wireless telegraphy through space, the two systems cannot, strictly speaking be regarded as identical, as the practice of the former was based entirely on the phenomenon of induction. briefly described in outline, the train telegraph system consisted of an induction circuit obtained by laying strips of metal along the top or roof of a railway-car, and the installation of a special telegraph line running parallel with the track and strung on poles of only medium height. the train, and also each signalling station, was equipped with regulation telegraph apparatus, such as battery, key, relay, and sounder, together with induction-coil and condenser. in addition, there was a special transmitting device in the shape of a musical reed, or "buzzer." in practice, this buzzer was continuously operated at a speed of about five hundred vibrations per second by an auxiliary battery. its vibrations were broken by means of a telegraph key into long and short periods, representing morse characters, which were transmitted inductively from the train circuit to the pole line or vice versa, and received by the operator at the other end through a high-resistance telephone receiver inserted in the secondary circuit of the induction-coil. the accompanying diagrammatic sketch of a simple form of the system, as installed on a car, will probably serve to make this more clear. an insulated wire runs from the metallic layers on the roof of the car to switch s, which is shown open in the sketch. when a message is to be received on the car from a station more or less remote, the switch is thrown to the left to connect with a wire running to the telephone receiver, t. the other wire from this receiver is run down to one of the axles and there permanently connected, thus making a ground. the operator puts the receiver to his ear and listens for the message, which the telephone renders audible in the morse characters. if a message is to be transmitted from the car to a receiving station, near or distant, the switch, s, is thrown to the other side, thus connecting with a wire leading to one end of the secondary of induction-coil c. the other end of the secondary is connected with the grounding wire. the primary of the induction-coil is connected as shown, one end going to key k and the other to the buzzer circuit. the other side of the key is connected to the transmitting battery, while the opposite pole of this battery is connected in the buzzer circuit. the buzzer, r, is maintained in rapid vibration by its independent auxiliary battery, b< s>. when the key is pressed down the circuit is closed, and current from the transmitting battery, b, passes through primary of the coil, c, and induces a current of greatly increased potential in the secondary. the current as it passes into the primary, being broken up into short impulses by the tremendously rapid vibrations of the buzzer, induces similarly rapid waves of high potential in the secondary, and these in turn pass to the roof and thence through the intervening air by induction to the telegraph wire. by a continued lifting and depression of the key in the regular manner, these waves are broken up into long and short periods, and are thus transmitted to the station, via the wire, in morse characters, dots and dashes. the receiving stations along the line of the railway were similarly equipped as to apparatus, and, generally speaking the operations of sending and receiving messages were substantially the same as above described. the equipment of an operator on a car was quite simple consisting merely of a small lap-board, on which were mounted the key, coil, and buzzer, leaving room for telegraph blanks. to this board were also attached flexible conductors having spring clips, by means of which connections could be made quickly with conveniently placed terminals of the ground, roof, and battery wires. the telephone receiver was held on the head with a spring, the flexible connecting wire being attached to the lap board, thus leaving the operator with both hands free. the system, as shown in the sketch and elucidated by the text, represents the operation of train telegraphy in a simple form, but combining the main essentials of the art as it was successfully and commercially practiced for a number of years after edison and gilliland entered the field. they elaborated the system in various ways, making it more complete; but it has not been deemed necessary to enlarge further upon the technical minutiae of the art for the purpose of this work. xv. kinetograph and projecting kinetoscope although many of the arts in which edison has been a pioneer have been enriched by his numerous inventions and patents, which were subsequent to those of a fundamental nature, the (so-called) motion-picture art is an exception, as the following, together with three other additional patents [ ] comprise all that he has taken out on this subject: united states patent no. , , issued august , , reissued in two parts--namely, no. , , under date of september , , and no. , , under date of january , . application filed august , . [footnote : not , , issued february , ; no. , , issued march , ; no. , , issued october , .] there is nothing surprising in this, however, as the possibility of photographing and reproducing actual scenes of animate life are so thoroughly exemplified and rendered practicable by the apparatus and methods disclosed in the patents above cited, that these basic inventions in themselves practically constitute the art--its development proceeding mainly along the line of manufacturing details. that such a view of his work is correct, the highest criterion--commercial expediency--bears witness; for in spite of the fact that the courts have somewhat narrowed the broad claims of edison's patents by reason of the investigations of earlier experimenters, practically all the immense amount of commercial work that is done in the motion-picture field to-day is accomplished through the use of apparatus and methods licensed under the edison patents. the philosophy of this invention having already been described in chapter xxi, it will be unnecessary to repeat it here. suffice it to say by way of reminder that it is founded upon the physiological phenomenon known as the persistence of vision, through which a series of sequential photographic pictures of animate motion projected upon a screen in rapid succession will reproduce to the eye all the appearance of the original movements. edison's work in this direction comprised the invention not only of a special form of camera for making original photographic exposures from a single point of view with very great rapidity, and of a machine adapted to effect the reproduction of such pictures in somewhat similar manner but also of the conception and invention of a continuous uniform, and evenly spaced tape-like film, so absolutely essential for both the above objects. the mechanism of such a camera, as now used, consists of many parts assembled in such contiguous proximity to each other that an illustration from an actual machine would not help to clearness of explanation to the general reader. hence a diagram showing a sectional view of a simple form of such a camera is presented below. in this diagram, a represents an outer light-tight box containing a lens, c, and the other necessary mechanism for making the photographic exposures, h< s> and h< s> being cases for holding reels of film before and after exposure, f the long, tape-like film, g a sprocket whose teeth engage in perforations on the edges of the film, such sprocket being adapted to be revolved with an intermittent or step-by-step movement by hand or by motor, and b a revolving shutter having an opening and connected by gears with g, and arranged to expose the film during the periods of rest. a full view of this shutter is also represented, with its opening, d, in the small illustration to the right. in practice, the operation would be somewhat as follows, generally speaking: the lens would first be focussed on the animate scene to be photographed. on turning the main shaft of the camera the sprocket, g, is moved intermittently, and its teeth, catching in the holes in the sensitized film, draws it downward, bringing a new portion of its length in front of the lens, the film then remaining stationary for an instant. in the mean time, through gearing connecting the main shaft with the shutter, the latter is rotated, bringing its opening, d, coincident with the lens, and therefore exposing the film while it is stationary, after which the film again moves forward. so long as the action is continued these movements are repeated, resulting in a succession of enormously rapid exposures upon the film during its progress from reel h< s> to its automatic rewinding on reel h< s>. while the film is passing through the various parts of the machine it is guided and kept straight by various sets of rollers between which it runs, as indicated in the diagram. by an ingenious arrangement of the mechanism, the film moves intermittently so that it may have a much longer period of rest than of motion. as in practice the pictures are taken at a rate of twenty or more per second, it will be quite obvious that each period of rest is infinitesimally brief, being generally one-thirtieth of a second or less. still it is sufficient to bring the film to a momentary condition of complete rest, and to allow for a maximum time of exposure, comparatively speaking, thus providing means for taking clearly defined pictures. the negatives so obtained are developed in the regular way, and the positive prints subsequently made from them are used for reproduction. the reproducing machine, or, as it is called in practice, the projecting kinetoscope, is quite similar so far as its general operations in handling the film are concerned. in appearance it is somewhat different; indeed, it is in two parts, the one containing the lighting arrangements and condensing lens, and the other embracing the mechanism and objective lens. the "taking" camera must have its parts enclosed in a light-tight box, because of the undeveloped, sensitized film, but the projecting kinetoscope, using only a fully developed positive film, may, and, for purposes of convenient operation, must be accessibly open. the illustration (fig. ) will show the projecting apparatus as used in practice. the philosophy of reproduction is very simple, and is illustrated diagrammatically in fig. , reference letters being the same as in fig. . as to the additional reference letters, i is a condenser j the source of light, and k a reflector. the positive film is moved intermittently but swiftly throughout its length between the objective lens and a beam of light coming through the condenser, being exposed by the shutter during the periods of rest. this results in a projection of the photographs upon a screen in such rapid succession as to present an apparently continuous photograph of the successive positions of the moving objects, which, therefore, appear to the human eye to be in motion. the first claim of reissue patent no. , describes the film. it reads as follows: "an unbroken transparent or translucent tape-like photographic film having thereon uniform, sharply defined, equidistant photographs of successive positions of an object in motion as observed from a single point of view at rapidly recurring intervals of time, such photographs being arranged in a continuous straight-line sequence, unlimited in number save by the length of the film, and sufficient in number to represent the movements of the object throughout an extended period of time." xvi. edison's ore-milling inventions the wide range of edison's activities in this department of the arts is well represented in the diversity of the numerous patents that have been issued to him from time to time. these patents are between fifty and sixty in number, and include magnetic ore separators of ten distinct types; also breaking, crushing, and grinding rolls, conveyors, dust-proof bearings, screens, driers, mixers, bricking apparatus and machines, ovens, and processes of various kinds. a description of the many devices in each of these divisions would require more space than is available; hence, we shall confine ourselves to a few items of predominating importance, already referred to in the narrative, commencing with the fundamental magnetic ore separator, which was covered by united states patent no. , , issued june , . the illustration here presented is copied from the drawing forming part of this patent. a hopper with adjustable feed is supported several feet above a bin having a central partition. almost midway between the hopper and the bin is placed an electromagnet whose polar extension is so arranged as to be a little to one side of a stream of material falling from the hopper. normally, a stream of finely divided ore falling from the hopper would fall into that portion of the bin lying to the left of the partition. if, however, the magnet is energized from a source of current, the magnetic particles in the falling stream are attracted by and move toward the magnet, which is so placed with relation to the falling material that the magnetic particles cannot be attracted entirely to the magnet before gravity has carried them past. hence, their trajectory is altered, and they fall on the right-hand side of the partition in the bin, while the non-magnetic portion of the stream continues in a straight line and falls on the other side, thus effecting a complete separation. this simple but effective principle was the one employed by edison in his great concentrating plant already described. in practice, the numerous hoppers, magnets, and bins were many feet in length; and they were arranged in batteries of varied magnetic strength, in order that the intermingled mass of crushed rock and iron ore might be more thoroughly separated by being passed through magnetic fields of successively increasing degrees of attracting power. altogether there were about four hundred and eighty of these immense magnets in the plant, distributed in various buildings in batteries as above mentioned, the crushed rock containing the iron ore being delivered to them by conveyors, and the gangue and ore being taken away after separation by two other conveyors and delivered elsewhere. the magnetic separators at first used by edison at this plant were of the same generality as the ones employed some years previously in the separation of sea-shore sand, but greatly enlarged and improved. the varied experiences gained in the concentration of vast quantities of ore led naturally to a greater development, and several new types and arrangements of magnetic separators were evolved and elaborated by him from first to last, during the progress of the work at the concentrating plant. the magnetic separation of iron from its ore being the foundation idea of the inventions now under discussion, a consideration of the separator has naturally taken precedence over those of collateral but inseparable interest. the ore-bearing rock, however, must first be ground to powder before it can be separated; hence, we will now begin at the root of this operation and consider the "giant rolls," which edison devised for breaking huge masses of rock. in his application for united states patent no. , , issued april , , applied for on july , , he says: "the object of my invention is to produce a method for the breaking of rock which will be simple and effective, will not require the hand-sledging or blasting of the rock down to pieces of moderate size, and will involve the consumption of a small amount of power." while this quotation refers to the method as "simple," the patent under consideration covers one of the most bold and daring projects that edison has ever evolved. he proposed to eliminate the slow and expensive method of breaking large boulders manually, and to substitute therefor momentum and kinetic energy applied through the medium of massive machinery, which, in a few seconds, would break into small pieces a rock as big as an ordinary upright cottage piano, and weighing as much as six tons. engineers to whom edison communicated his ideas were unanimous in declaring the thing an impossibility; it was like driving two express-trains into each other at full speed to crack a great rock placed between them; that no practical machinery could be built to stand the terrific impact and strains. edison's convictions were strong, however, and he persisted. the experiments were of heroic size, physically and financially, but after a struggle of several years and an expenditure of about $ , , he realized the correctness and practicability of his plans in the success of the giant rolls, which were the outcome of his labors. the giant rolls consist of a pair of iron cylinders of massive size and weight, with removable wearing plates having irregular surfaces formed by projecting knobs. these rolls are mounted side by side in a very heavy frame (leaving a gap of about fourteen inches between them), and are so belted up with the source of power that they run in opposite directions. the giant rolls described by edison in the above-named patent as having been built and operated by him had a combined weight of , pounds, including all moving parts, which of themselves weighed about seventy tons, each roll being six feet in diameter and five feet long. a top view of the rolls is shown in the sketch, one roll and one of its bearings being shown in section. in fig. the rolls are illustrated diagrammatically. as a sketch of this nature, even if given with a definite scale, does not always carry an adequate idea of relative dimensions to a non-technical reader, we present in fig. a perspective illustration of the giant rolls as installed in the concentrating plant. in practice, a small amount of power is applied to run the giant rolls gradually up to a surface speed of several thousand feet a minute. when this high speed is attained, masses of rock weighing several tons in one or more pieces are dumped into a hopper which guides them into the gap between the rapidly revolving rolls. the effect is to partially arrest the swift motion of the rolls instantaneously, and thereby develop and expend an enormous amount of kinetic energy, which with pile-driver effect cracks the rocks and breaks them into pieces small enough to pass through the fourteen-inch gap. as the power is applied to the rolls through slipping friction-clutches, the speed of the driving-pulleys is not materially reduced; hence the rolls may again be quickly speeded up to their highest velocity while another load of rock is being hoisted in position to be dumped into the hopper. it will be obvious from the foregoing that if it were attempted to supply the great energy necessary for this operation by direct application of steam-power, an engine of enormous horse-power would be required, and even then it is doubtful if one could be constructed of sufficient strength to withstand the terrific strains that would ensue. but the work is done by the great momentum and kinetic energy obtained by speeding up these tremendous masses of metal, and then suddenly opposing their progress, the engine being relieved of all strain through the medium of the slipping friction-clutches. thus, this cyclopean operation may be continuously conducted with an amount of power prodigiously inferior, in proportion, to the results accomplished. the sketch (fig. ) showing a large boulder being dumped into the hopper, or roll-pit, will serve to illustrate the method of feeding these great masses of rock to the rolls, and will also enable the reader to form an idea of the rapidity of the breaking operation, when it is stated that a boulder of the size represented would be reduced by the giant rolls to pieces a trifle larger than a man's head in a few seconds. after leaving the giant rolls the broken rock passed on through other crushing-rolls of somewhat similar construction. these also were invented by edison, but antedated those previously described; being covered by patent no. , , issued september , . these rolls were intended for the reducing of "one-man-size" rocks to small pieces, which at the time of their original inception was about the standard size of similar machines. at the edison concentrating plant the broken rock, after passing through these rolls, was further reduced in size by other rolls, and was then ready to be crushed to a fine powder through the medium of another remarkable machine devised by edison to meet his ever-recurring and well-defined ideas of the utmost economy and efficiency. note.--figs. and are reproduced from similar sketches on pages and of mcclure's magazine for november, , by permission of s. s. mcclure co. the best fine grinding-machines that it was then possible to obtain were so inefficient as to involve a loss of per cent. of the power applied. the thought of such an enormous loss was unbearable, and he did not rest until he had invented and put into use an entirely new grinding-machine, which was called the "three-high" rolls. the device was covered by a patent issued to him on november , , no. , . it was a most noteworthy invention, for it brought into the art not only a greater efficiency of grinding than had ever been dreamed of before, but also a tremendous economy by the saving of power; for whereas the previous efficiency had been per cent. and the loss per cent., edison reversed these figures, and in his three-high rolls produced a working efficiency of per cent., thus reducing the loss of power by friction to per cent. a diagrammatic sketch of this remarkable machine is shown in fig. , which shows a front elevation with the casings, hopper, etc., removed, and also shows above the rolls the rope and pulleys, the supports for which are also removed for the sake of clearness in the illustration. for the convenience of the reader, in referring to fig. , we will repeat the description of the three-high rolls, which is given on pages and of the preceding narrative. in the two end-pieces of a heavy iron frame were set three rolls, or cylinders--one in the centre, another below, and the other above--all three being in a vertical line. these rolls were about three feet in diameter, made of cast-iron, and had face-plates of chilled-iron. [ ] the lowest roll was set in a fixed bearing at the bottom of the frame, and, therefore, could only turn around on its axis. the middle and top rolls were free to move up or down from and toward the lower roll, and the shafts of the middle and upper rolls were set in a loose bearing which could slip up and down in the iron frame. it will be apparent, therefore, that any material which passed in between the top and the middle rolls, and the middle and bottom rolls, could be ground as fine as might be desired, depending entirely upon the amount of pressure applied to the loose rolls. in operation the material passed first through the upper and middle rolls, and then between the middle and lowest rolls. [footnote : the faces of these rolls were smooth, but as three-high rolls came into use later in edison's portland cement operations the faces were corrugated so as to fit into each other, gear-fashion, to provide for a high rate of feed] this pressure was applied in a most ingenious manner. on the ends of the shafts of the bottom and top rolls there were cylindrical sleeves, or bearings, having seven sheaves in which was run a half-inch endless wire rope. this rope was wound seven times over the sheaves as above, and led upward and over a single-groove sheave, which was operated by the piston of an air-cylinder, and in this manner the pressure was applied to the rolls. it will be seen, therefore that the system consisted in a single rope passed over sheaves and so arranged that it could be varied in length, thus providing for elasticity in exerting pressure and regulating it as desired. the efficiency of this system was incomparably greater than that of any other known crusher or grinder, for while a pressure of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds could be exerted by these rolls, friction was almost entirely eliminated, because the upper and lower roll bearings turned with the rolls and revolved in the wire rope, which constituted the bearing proper. several other important patents have been issued to edison for crushing and grinding rolls, some of them being for elaborations and improvements of those above described but all covering methods of greater economy and effectiveness in rock-grinding. edison's work on conveyors during the period of his ore-concentrating labors was distinctively original, ingenious and far in advance of the times. his conception of the concentrating problem was broad and embraced an entire system, of which a principal item was the continuous transfer of enormous quantities of material from place to place at the lowest possible cost. as he contemplated the concentration of six thousand tons daily, the expense of manual labor to move such an immense quantity of rock, sand, and ore would be absolutely prohibitive. hence, it became necessary to invent a system of conveyors that would be capable of transferring this mass of material from one place to another. and not only must these conveyors be capable of carrying the material, but they must also be devised so that they would automatically receive and discharge their respective loads at appointed places. edison's ingenuity, engineering ability, and inventive skill were equal to the task, however, and were displayed in a system and variety of conveyors that in practice seemed to act with almost human discrimination. when fully installed throughout the plant, they automatically transferred daily a mass of material equal to about one hundred thousand cubic feet, from mill to mill, covering about a mile in the transit. up and down, winding in and out, turning corners, delivering material from one to another, making a number of loops in the drying-oven, filling up bins and passing on to the next when they were full, these conveyors in automatic action seemingly played their part with human intelligence, which was in reality the reflection of the intelligence and ingenuity that had originally devised them and set them in motion. six of edison's patents on conveyors include a variety of devices that have since came into broad general use for similar work, and have been the means of effecting great economies in numerous industries of widely varying kinds. interesting as they are, however, we shall not attempt to describe them in detail, as the space required would be too great. they are specified in the list of patents following this appendix, and may be examined in detail by any interested student. in the same list will also be found a large number of edison's patents on apparatus and methods of screening, drying, mixing, and briquetting, as well as for dust-proof bearings, and various types and groupings of separators, all of which were called forth by the exigencies and magnitude of his great undertaking, and without which he could not possibly have attained the successful physical results that crowned his labors. edison's persistence in reducing the cost of his operations is noteworthy in connection with his screening and drying inventions, in which the utmost advantage is taken of the law of gravitation. with its assistance, which cost nothing, these operations were performed perfectly. it was only necessary to deliver the material at the top of the chambers, and during its natural descent it was screened or dried as the case might be. all these inventions and devices, as well as those described in detail above (except magnetic separators and mixing and briquetting machines), are being used by him to-day in the manufacture of portland cement, as that industry presents many of the identical problems which presented themselves in relation to the concentration of iron ore. xvii. the long cement kiln in this remarkable invention, which has brought about a striking innovation in a long-established business, we see another characteristic instance of edison's incisive reasoning and boldness of conception carried into practical effect in face of universal opinions to the contrary. for the information of those unacquainted with the process of manufacturing portland cement, it may be stated that the material consists preliminarily of an intimate mixture of cement rock and limestone, ground to a very fine powder. this powder is technically known in the trade as "chalk," and is fed into rotary kilns and "burned"; that is to say, it is subjected to a high degree of heat obtained by the combustion of pulverized coal, which is injected into the interior of the kiln. this combustion effects a chemical decomposition of the chalk, and causes it to assume a plastic consistency and to collect together in the form of small spherical balls, which are known as "clinker." kilns are usually arranged with a slight incline, at the upper end of which the chalk is fed in and gradually works its way down to the interior flame of burning fuel at the other end. when it arrives at the lower end, the material has been "burned," and the clinker drops out into a receiving chamber below. the operation is continuous, a constant supply of chalk passing in at one end of the kiln and a continuous dribble of clinker-balls dropping out at the other. after cooling, the clinker is ground into very fine powder, which is the portland cement of commerce. it is self-evident that an ideal kiln would be one that produced the maximum quantity of thoroughly clinkered material with a minimum amount of fuel, labor, and investment. when edison was preparing to go into the cement business, he looked the ground over thoroughly, and, after considerable investigation and experiment, came to the conclusion that prevailing conditions as to kilns were far from ideal. the standard kilns then in use were about sixty feet in length, with an internal diameter of about five feet. in all rotary kilns for burning cement, the true clinkering operation takes place only within a limited portion of their total length, where the heat is greatest; hence the interior of the kiln may be considered as being divided longitudinally into two parts or zones--namely, the combustion, or clinkering, zone, and the zone of oncoming raw material. in the sixty-foot kiln the length of the combustion zone was about ten feet, extending from a point six or eight feet from the lower, or discharge, end to a point about eighteen feet from that end. consequently, beyond that point there was a zone of only about forty feet, through which the heated gases passed and came in contact with the oncoming material, which was in movement down toward the clinkering zone. since the bulk of oncoming material was small, the gases were not called upon to part with much of their heat, and therefore passed on up the stack at very high temperatures, ranging from degrees to degrees fahr. obviously, this heat was entirely lost. an additional loss of efficiency arose from the fact that the material moved so rapidly toward the combustion zone that it had not given up all its carbon dioxide on reaching there; and by the giving off of large quantities of that gas within the combustion zone, perfect and economical combustion of coal could not be effected. the comparatively short length of the sixty-foot kiln not only limited the amount of material that could be fed into it, but the limitation in length of the combustion zone militated against a thorough clinkering of the material, this operation being one in which the elements of time and proper heat are prime considerations. thus the quantity of good clinker obtainable was unfavorably affected. by reason of these and other limitations and losses, it had been possible, in practice, to obtain only about two hundred and fifty barrels of clinker per day of twenty-four hours; and that with an expenditure for coal proportionately equal to about to per cent. of the quantity of clinker produced, even assuming that all the clinker was of good quality. edison realized that the secret of greater commercial efficiency and improvement of quality lay in the ability to handle larger quantities of material within a given time, and to produce a more perfect product without increasing cost or investment in proportion. his reasoning led him to the conclusion that this result could only be obtained through the use of a kiln of comparatively great length, and his investigations and experiments enabled him to decide upon a length of one hundred and fifty feet, but with an increase in diameter of only six inches to a foot over that of the sixty-foot kiln. the principal considerations that influenced edison in making this radical innovation may be briefly stated as follows: first. the ability to maintain in the kiln a load from five to seven times greater than ordinarily employed, thereby tending to a more economical output. second. the combustion of a vastly increased bulk of pulverized coal and a greatly enlarged combustion zone, extending about forty feet longitudinally into the kiln--thus providing an area within which the material might be maintained in a clinkering temperature for a sufficiently long period to insure its being thoroughly clinkered from periphery to centre. third. by reason of such a greatly extended length of the zone of oncoming material (and consequently much greater bulk), the gases and other products of combustion would be cooled sufficiently between the combustion zone and the stack so as to leave the kiln at a comparatively low temperature. besides, the oncoming material would thus be gradually raised in temperature instead of being heated abruptly, as in the shorter kilns. fourth. the material having thus been greatly raised in temperature before reaching the combustion zone would have parted with substantially all its carbon dioxide, and therefore would not introduce into the combustion zone sufficient of that gas to disturb the perfect character of the combustion. fifth. on account of the great weight of the heavy load in a long kiln, there would result the formation of a continuous plastic coating on that portion of the inner surface of the kiln where temperatures are highest. this would effectively protect the fire-brick lining from the destructive effects of the heat. such, in brief, were the essential principles upon which edison based his conception and invention of the long kiln, which has since become so well known in the cement business. many other considerations of a minor and mechanical nature, but which were important factors in his solution of this difficult problem, are worthy of study by those intimately associated with or interested in the art. not the least of the mechanical questions was settled by edison's decision to make this tremendously long kiln in sections of cast-iron, with flanges, bolted together, and supported on rollers rotated by electric motors. longitudinal expansion and thrust were also important factors to be provided for, as well as special devices to prevent the packing of the mass of material as it passed in and out of the kiln. special provision was also made for injecting streams of pulverized coal in such manner as to create the largely extended zone of combustion. as to the details of these and many other ingenious devices, we must refer the curious reader to the patents, as it is merely intended in these pages to indicate in a brief manner the main principles of edison's notable inventions. the principal united states patent on the long kiln was issued october , , no. , . that his reasonings and deductions were correct in this case have been indubitably proven by some years of experience with the long kiln in its ability to produce from eight hundred to one thousand barrels of good clinker every twenty-four hours, with an expenditure for coal proportionately equal to about only per cent. of the quantity of clinker produced. to illustrate the long cement kiln by diagram would convey but little to the lay mind, and we therefore present an illustration (fig. ) of actual kilns in perspective, from which sense of their proportions may be gathered. xviii. edison's new storage battery generically considered, a "battery" is a device which generates electric current. there are two distinct species of battery, one being known as "primary," and the other as "storage," although the latter is sometimes referred to as a "secondary battery" or "accumulator." every type of each of these two species is essentially alike in its general make-up; that is to say, every cell of battery of any kind contains at least two elements of different nature immersed in a more or less liquid electrolyte of chemical character. on closing the circuit of a primary battery an electric current is generated by reason of the chemical action which is set up between the electrolyte and the elements. this involves a gradual consumption of one of the elements and a corresponding exhaustion of the active properties of the electrolyte. by reason of this, both the element and the electrolyte that have been used up must be renewed from time to time, in order to obtain a continued supply of electric current. the storage battery also generates electric current through chemical action, but without involving the constant repriming with active materials to replace those consumed and exhausted as above mentioned. the term "storage," as applied to this species of battery, is, however, a misnomer, and has been the cause of much misunderstanding to nontechnical persons. to the lay mind a "storage" battery presents itself in the aspect of a device in which electric energy is stored, just as compressed air is stored or accumulated in a tank. this view, however, is not in accordance with facts. it is exactly like the primary battery in the fundamental circumstance that its ability for generating electric current depends upon chemical action. in strict terminology it is a "reversible" battery, as will be quite obvious if we glance briefly at its philosophy. when a storage battery is "charged," by having an electric current passed through it, the electric energy produces a chemical effect, adding oxygen to the positive plate, and taking oxygen away from the negative plate. thus, the positive plate becomes oxidized, and the negative plate reduced. after the charging operation is concluded the battery is ready for use, and upon its circuit being closed through a translating device, such as a lamp or motor, a reversion ("discharge") takes place, the positive plate giving up its oxygen, and the negative plate being oxidized. these chemical actions result in the generation of an electric current as in a primary battery. as a matter of fact, the chemical actions and reactions in a storage battery are much more complex, but the above will serve to afford the lay reader a rather simple idea of the general result arrived at through the chemical activity referred to. the storage battery, as a commercial article, was introduced into the market in the year . at that time, and all through the succeeding years, until about , there was only one type that was recognized as commercially practicable--namely, that known as the lead-sulphuric-acid cell, consisting of lead plates immersed in an electrolyte of dilute sulphuric acid. in the year last named edison first brought out his new form of nickel-iron cell with alkaline electrolyte, as we have related in the preceding narrative. early in the eighties, at menlo park, he had given much thought to the lead type of storage battery, and during the course of three years had made a prodigious number of experiments in the direction of improving it, probably performing more experiments in that time than the aggregate of those of all other investigators. even in those early days he arrived at the conclusion that the lead-sulphuric-acid combination was intrinsically wrong, and did not embrace the elements of a permanent commercial device. he did not at that time, however, engage in a serious search for another form of storage battery, being tremendously occupied with his lighting system and other matters. it may here be noted, for the information of the lay reader, that the lead-acid type of storage battery consists of two or more lead plates immersed in dilute sulphuric acid and contained in a receptacle of glass, hard rubber, or other special material not acted upon by acid. the plates are prepared and "formed" in various ways, and the chemical actions are similar to those above stated, the positive plate being oxidized and the negative reduced during "charge," and reversed during "discharge." this type of cell, however, has many serious disadvantages inherent to its very nature. we will name a few of them briefly. constant dropping of fine particles of active material often causes short-circuiting of the plates, and always necessitates occasional washing out of cells; deterioration through "sulphation" if discharge is continued too far or if recharging is not commenced quickly enough; destruction of adjacent metalwork by the corrosive fumes given out during charge and discharge; the tendency of lead plates to "buckle" under certain conditions; the limitation to the use of glass, hard rubber, or similar containers on account of the action of the acid; and the immense weight for electrical capacity. the tremendously complex nature of the chemical reactions which take place in the lead-acid storage battery also renders it an easy prey to many troublesome diseases. in the year , when edison undertook to invent a storage battery, he declared it should be a new type into which neither sulphuric nor any other acid should enter. he said that the intimate and continued companionship of an acid and a metal was unnatural, and incompatible with the idea of durability and simplicity. he furthermore stated that lead was an unmechanical metal for a battery, being heavy and lacking stability and elasticity, and that as most metals were unaffected by alkaline solutions, he was going to experiment in that direction. the soundness of his reasoning is amply justified by the perfection of results obtained in the new type of storage battery bearing his name, and now to be described. the essential technical details of this battery are fully described in an article written by one of edison's laboratory staff, walter e. holland, who for many years has been closely identified with the inventor's work on this cell the article was published in the electrical world, new york, april , ; and the following extracts therefrom will afford an intelligent comprehension of this invention: "the 'a' type edison cell is the outcome of nine years of costly experimentation and persistent toil on the part of its inventor and his associates.... "the edison invention involves the use of an entirely new voltaic combination in an alkaline electrolyte, in place of the lead-lead-peroxide combination and acid electrolyte, characteristic of all other commercial storage batteries. experience has proven that this not only secures durability and greater output per unit-weight of battery, but in addition there is eliminated a long list of troubles and diseases inherent in the lead-acid combination.... "the principle on which the action of this new battery is based is the oxidation and reduction of metals in an electrolyte which does not combine with, and will not dissolve, either the metals or their oxides; and an electrolyte, furthermore, which, although decomposed by the action of the battery, is immediately re-formed in equal quantity; and therefore in effect is a constant element, not changing in density or in conductivity. "a battery embodying this basic principle will have features of great value where lightness and durability are desiderata. for instance, the electrolyte, being a constant factor, as explained, is not required in any fixed and large amount, as is the case with sulphuric acid in the lead battery; thus the cell may be designed with minimum distancing of plates and with the greatest economy of space that is consistent with safe insulation and good mechanical design. again, the active materials of the electrodes being insoluble in, and absolutely unaffected by, the electrolyte, are not liable to any sort of chemical deterioration by action of the electrolyte--no matter how long continued.... "the electrolyte of the edison battery is a per cent. solution of potassium hydrate having, in addition, a small amount of lithium hydrate. the active metals of the electrodes--which will oxidize and reduce in this electrolyte without dissolution or chemical deterioration--are nickel and iron. these active elements are not put in the plates as metals; but one, nickel, in the form of a hydrate, and the other, iron, as an oxide. "the containing cases of both kinds of active material (fig. ), and their supporting grids (fig. ), as well as the bolts, washers, and nuts used in assembling (fig. ), and even the retaining can and its cover (fig. ), are all made of nickel-plated steel--a material in which lightness, durability and mechanical strength are most happily combined, and a material beyond suspicion as to corrosion in an alkaline electrolyte.... "an essential part of edison's discovery of active masetials for an alkaline storage battery was the preparation of these materials. metallic powder of iron and nickel, or even oxides of these metals, prepared in the ordinary way, are not chemically active in a sufficient degree to work in a battery. it is only when specially prepared iron oxide of exceeding fineness, and nickel hydrate conforming to certain physical, as well as chemical, standards can be made that the alkaline battery is practicable. needless to say, the working out of the conditions and processes of manufacture of the materials has involved great ingenuity and endless experimentation." the article then treats of edison's investigations into means for supporting and making electrical connection with the active materials, showing some of the difficulties encountered and the various discoveries made in developing the perfected cell, after which the writer continues his description of the "a" type cell, as follows: "it will be seen at once that the construction of the two kinds of plate is radically different. the negative or iron plate (fig. ) has the familiar flat-pocket construction. each negative contains twenty-four pockets--a pocket being / inch wide by inches long, and having a maximum thickness of a little more than / inch. the positive or nickel plate (fig. ) is seen to consist of two rows of round rods or pencils, thirty in number, held in a vertical position by a steel support-frame. the pencils have flat flanges at the ends (formed by closing in the metal case), by which they are supported and electrical connection is made. the frame is slit at the inner horizontal edges, and then folded in such a way as to make individual clamping-jaws for each end-flange. the clamping-in is done at great pressure, and the resultant plate has great rigidity and strength. "the perforated tubes into which the nickel active material is loaded are made of nickel-plated steel of high quality. they are put together with a double-lapped spiral seam to give expansion-resisting qualities, and as an additional precaution small metal rings are slipped on the outside. each tube is / inch in diameter by / inches long, add has eight of the reinforcing rings. "it will be seen that the 'a' positive plate has been given the theoretically best design to prevent expansion and overcome trouble from that cause. actual tests, long continued under very severe conditions, have shown that the construction is right, and fulfils the most sanguine expectations." mr. holland in his article then goes on to explain the development of the nickel flakes as the conducting factor in the positive element, but as this has already been described in chapter xxii, we shall pass on to a later point, where he says: "an idea of the conditions inside a loaded tube can best be had by microscopic examination. fig. shows a magnified section of a regularly loaded tube which has been sawed lengthwise. the vertical bounding walls are edges of the perforated metal containing tube; the dark horizontal lines are layers of nickel flake, while the light-colored thicker layers represent the nickel hydrate. it should be noted that the layers of flake nickel extend practically unbroken across the tube and make contact with the metal wall at both sides. these metal layers conduct current to or from the active nickel hydrate in all parts of the tube very efficiently. there are about three hundred and fifty layers of each kind of material in a / -inch tube, each layer of nickel hydrate being about . inch thick; so it will be seen that the current does not have to penetrate very far into the nickel hydrate--one-half a layer's thickness being the maximum distance. the perforations of the containing tube, through which the electrolyte reaches the active material, are also shown in fig. ." in conclusion, the article enumerates the chief characteristics of the edison storage battery which fit it preeminently for transportation service, as follows: . no loss of active material, hence no sediment short-circuits. . no jar breakage. . possibility of quick disconnection or replacement of any cell without employment of skilled labor. . impossibility of "buckling" and harmlessness of a dead short-circuit. . simplicity of care required. . durability of materials and construction. . impossibility of "sulphation." . entire absence of corrosive fumes. . commercial advantages of light weight. . duration on account of its dependability. . its high practical efficiency. xix. edison's poured cement house the inventions that have been thus far described fall into two classes--first, those that were fundamental in the great arts and industries which have been founded and established upon them, and, second, those that have entered into and enlarged other arts that were previously in existence. on coming to consider the subject now under discussion, however, we find ourselves, at this writing, on the threshold of an entirely new and undeveloped art of such boundless possibilities that its ultimate extent can only be a matter of conjecture. edison's concrete house, however, involves two main considerations, first of which was the conception or creation of the idea--vast and comprehensive--of providing imperishable and sanitary homes for the wage-earner by molding an entire house in one piece in a single operation, so to speak, and so simply that extensive groups of such dwellings could be constructed rapidly and at very reasonable cost. with this idea suggested, one might suppose that it would be a simple matter to make molds and pour in a concrete mixture. not so, however. and here the second consideration presents itself. an ordinary cement mixture is composed of crushed stone, sand, cement, and water. if such a mixture be poured into deep molds the heavy stone and sand settle to the bottom. should the mixture be poured into a horizontal mold, like the floor of a house, the stone and sand settle, forming an ununiform mass. it was at this point that invention commenced, in order to produce a concrete mixture which would overcome this crucial difficulty. edison, with characteristic thoroughness, took up a line of investigation, and after a prolonged series of experiments succeeded in inventing a mixture that upon hardening remained uniform throughout its mass. in the beginning of his experimentation he had made the conditions of test very severe by the construction of forms similar to that shown in the sketch below. this consisted of a hollow wooden form of the dimensions indicated. the mixture was to be poured into the hopper until the entire form was filled, such mixture flowing down and along the horizontal legs and up the vertical members. it was to be left until the mixture was hard, and the requirement of the test was that there should be absolute uniformity of mixture and mass throughout. this was finally accomplished, and further invention then proceeded along engineering lines looking toward the devising of a system of molds with which practicable dwellings might be cast. edison's boldness and breadth of conception are well illustrated in his idea of a poured house, in which he displays his accustomed tendency to reverse accepted methods. in fact, it is this very reversal of usual procedure that renders it difficult for the average mind to instantly grasp the full significance of the principles involved and the results attained. up to this time we have been accustomed to see the erection of a house begun at the foundation and built up slowly, piece by piece, of solid materials: first the outer frame, then the floors and inner walls, followed by the stairways, and so on up to the putting on of the roof. hence, it requires a complete rearrangement of mental conceptions to appreciate edison's proposal to build a house from the top downward, in a few hours, with a freely flowing material poured into molds, and in a few days to take away the molds and find a complete indestructible sanitary house, including foundation, frame, floors, walls, stairways, chimneys, sanitary arrangements, and roof, with artistic ornamentation inside and out, all in one solid piece, as if it were graven or bored out of a rock. to bring about the accomplishment of a project so extraordinarily broad involves engineering and mechanical conceptions of a high order, and, as we have seen, these have been brought to bear on the subject by edison, together with an intimate knowledge of compounded materials. the main features of this invention are easily comprehensible with the aid of the following diagrammatic sectional sketch: it should be first understood that the above sketch is in broad outline, without elaboration, merely to illustrate the working principle; and while the upright structure on the right is intended to represent a set of molds in position to form a three-story house, with cellar, no regular details of such a building (such as windows, doors, stairways, etc.) are here shown, as they would only tend to complicate an explanation. it will be noted that there are really two sets of molds, an inside and an outside set, leaving a space between them throughout. although not shown in the sketch, there is in practice a number of bolts passing through these two sets of molds at various places to hold them together in their relative positions. in the open space between the molds there are placed steel rods for the purpose of reinforcement; while all through the entire structure provision is made for water and steam pipes, gas-pipes and electric-light wires being placed in appropriate positions as the molds are assembled. at the centre of the roof there will be noted a funnel-shaped opening. into this there is delivered by the endless chain of buckets shown on the left a continuous stream of a special free-flowing concrete mixture. this mixture descends by gravity, and gradually fills the entire space between the two sets of molds. the delivery of the material--or "pouring," as it is called--is continued until every part of the space is filled and the mixture is even with the tip of the roof, thus completing the pouring, or casting, of the house. in a few days afterward the concrete will have hardened sufficiently to allow the molds to be taken away leaving an entire house, from cellar floor to the peak of the roof, complete in all its parts, even to mantels and picture molding, and requiring only windows and doors, plumbing, heating, and lighting fixtures to make it ready for habitation. in the above sketch the concrete mixers, a, b, are driven by the electric motor, c. as the material is mixed it descends into the tank, d, and flows through a trough into a lower tank, e, in which it is constantly stirred, and from which it is taken by the endless chain of buckets and dumped into the funnel-shaped opening at the top of the molds, as above described. the molds are made of cast-iron in sections of such size and weight as will be most convenient for handling, mostly in pieces not exceeding two by four feet in rectangular dimensions. the subjoined sketch shows an exterior view of several of these molds as they appear when bolted together, the intersecting central portions representing ribs, which are included as part of the casting for purposes of strength and rigidity. the molds represented above are those for straight work, such as walls and floors. those intended for stairways, eaves, cornices, windows, doorways, etc., are much more complicated in design, although the same general principles are employed in their construction. while the philosophy of pouring or casting a complete house in its entirety is apparently quite simple, the development of the engineering and mechanical questions involves the solution of a vast number of most intricate and complicated problems covering not only the building as a whole, but its numerous parts, down to the minutest detail. safety, convenience, duration, and the practical impossibility of altering a one-piece solid dwelling are questions that must be met before its construction, and therefore edison has proceeded calmly on his way toward the goal he has ever had clearly in mind, with utter indifference to the criticisms and jeers of those who, as "experts," have professed positive knowledge of the impossibility of his carrying out this daring scheme. list of united states patents list of united states patents granted to thomas a. edison, arranged according to dates of execution of applications for such patents. this list shows the inventions as mr. edison has worked upon them from year to year no. title of patent date executed date executed , , electrographic vote recorder . . . . .oct. , , printing telegraph (reissued october , , numbered , and august , , numbered ). . . . . . . .jan. , , apparatus for printing telegraph (reissued february , , numbered ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , electrical switch for telegraph apparatus aug. , , printing telegraph--pope and edison (reissued april , , numbered , and december , , numbered , ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , printing telegraphs--pope and edison (reissued august , ) , electromotor escapement. . . . . . . . feb. , , printing telegraph instruments . . . . .may , , telegraph transmitting instruments . .june , , electro magnets for telegraph instruments. . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , relay magnets for telegraph instruments. . . . . . . . . . . . . .sept. , , electric motor governors . . . . . . .june , , printing telegraph apparatus . . . . .nov. , , printing telegraph apparatus . . . . .jan. , , telegraph apparatus. . . . . . . . . .july , , printing telegraph . . . . . . . . . .july , , telegraph apparatus. . . . . . . . . .july , , telegraphic recording instruments. . .aug. , , machinery for perforating paper for telegraph purposes . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .nov. , , typewriting machine. . . . . . . . . .nov. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .jan. , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .jan. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .jan. , , type wheels for printing telegraphs. .jan. , , type wheels for printing telegraphs. .jan. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , apparatus for perforating paper for telegraphic use. . . . . . . . . . . march , , improvement in paper for chemical telegraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , electrical printing machine. . . . . april , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , rheotomes or circuit directors . . . . .may , , automatic telegraph instruments. . . . .may , , electro magnetic adjusters . . . . . . .may , , electro magnets. . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .may , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . may , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .june , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .june , , transmitters and circuits for printing telegraph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .june , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .june , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .june , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .june , , unison stops for printing telegraphs .june , , printing and telegraph instruments . .oct. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .oct. , , galvanic batteries . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , automatic or chemical telegraphs . . . nov. , , circuits for chemical telegraphs . . . nov. , , telegraph signal boxes . . . . . . . .nov. , , circuits for automatic telegraphs. . .dec. , , circuits for automatic telegraphs. . .dec. , , chemical or automatic telegraphs . . .dec. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .jan. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .march , , chemical telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .march , , perforator for automatic telegraphs. .march , , relay magnets. . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , electric regulators for transmitting instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , duplex chemical telegraphs . . . . . .march , , perforators for automatic telegraphy march , , circuits for chemical telegraphs . . march , , receiving instruments for chemical telegraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , printing telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , electric telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , chemical telegraphs. . . . . . . . . april , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . april , , telegraph relays . . . . . . . . . . april , , adjustable electro magnets for relays, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . april , , automatic telegraphy and perforators therefor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , solutions for chemical telegraph papersept. , , solutions for chemical telegraph papersept. , , solutions for chemical telegraph paperoct. , , solutions for chemical telegraph paperoct. , , district telegraph signal box. . . . .april , , printing telegraph . . . . . . . . . . may , , chemical telegraphy. . . . . . . . . . june , , chemical telegraphy. . . . . . . . . . june , , chemical telegraphy. . . . . . . . . . june , , telegraph apparatus. . . . . . . . . . aug. , , automatic roman character telegraph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , automatic telegraphy . . . . . . . . . aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , transmitter and receiver for automatic telegraph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , automatic telegraphs . . . . . . . . .jan. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , solution for chemical telegraphs . . .jan. , , recording point for chemical telegraph jan. , , automatic telegraphs . . . . . . . . . jan. , automatic telegraphs . . . . . . . . .jan. , , telegraph apparatus. . . . . . . . . . feb , , electric signalling instrument . . . . feb , , quadruplex telegraph repeaters (reissued september , , numbered ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb , , autographic printing . . . . . . . . .march , , telephonic telegraphs. . . . . . . . .april , , telephonic or electro harmonic telegraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .april , , acoustic telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .may , , acoustic electric telegraphs . . . . . .may , , telegraph alarm and signal apparatus . .may , , telephonic telegraphs. . . . . . . . . .may , , electro harmonic multiplex telegraph .aug. , , acoustic telegraph . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , acoustic telegraph . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , synchronous movements for electric telegraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , automatic telegraph perforator and transmitter. . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , pneumatic stencil pens . . . . . . . . feb. , , automatic telegraphs . . . . . . . . . feb. , , stencil pens . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , perforating pens . . . . . . . . . . april , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . april , , sextuplex telegraph. . . . . . . . . . .may , , addressing machine . . . . . . . . . . .may , , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , sextuplex telegraph. . . . . . . . . . may , , sextuplex telegraph. . . . . . . . . . may , , sextuplex telegraph. . . . . . . . . . may , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . . july , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . .july , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . .july , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , quadruplex telegraph . . . . . . . . .aug. , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . . dec. , telephone or speaking telegraph. . . . dec. , phonograph or speaking machine . . . .dec. , , circuit for acoustic or telephonic telegraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , speaking machines. . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , speaking machines. . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , telephone call signals . . . . . . . .feb. , , electric lights. . . . . . . . . . . . oct. , , carbon telephones. . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , duplex telegraphs. . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , thermal regulator for electric lights.nov. , , vocal engines. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , magneto electric machines. . . . . . . dec. , , electric lighting apparatus. . . . . . dec. , , electric lights. . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , typewriter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , electric lights. . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , electric lighting apparatus. . . . . .jan. , , electric lights. . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , electric lights. . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , . autographic stencils for printing. . march , . phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , electric lights. . . . . . . . . . . april , , magneto electric machines. . . . . . april , , dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . july , , electro chemical receiving telephone .july , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , magneto electric machines. . . . . . .sept. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , apparatus for producing high vacuums jan. , electric lamp and holder for same. . . jan. , system of electrical distribution. . .jan. , , safety conductor for electric lights .march , , brake for electro magnetic motors. . march , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . march , , manufacture of carbons for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , dynamo or magneto electric machines. march , , magnetic ore separator . . . . . . . .april , , manufacture of carbons for incandescent electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . april , , electric light . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , manufacturing carbons for electric lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , treating carbons for electric lights .june , , electro magnetic brake . . . . . . . . july , , electro magnetic railway engine. . . . july , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . .july , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , testing electric light carbons--edison and batchelor. . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , carbon electric lamps. . . . . . . . .july , , manufacture of carbons for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , telegraph relay. . . . . . . . . . . .july , carbonizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , dynamo electric machines . . . . . . .july , , governor for electric engines. . . . .july , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .july , , electric distribution and translation system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , insulation of railroad tracks used for electric circuits. . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , utilizing electricity as motive power.aug. , , electro magnetic roller. . . . . . . .aug. , , system of conductors for the distribution of electricity . . . . . . . . . . . .sept. , , webermeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .oct. , , treating carbons for electric lights .oct. , , magneto signalling apparatus--edison and johnson. . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , manufacturing carbons for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , regulator for magneto or dynamo electric machines. . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , apparatus for treating carbons for electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , forming enlarged ends on carbon filaments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , design patent--incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . . dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . dec. , , webermeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , relay for telegraphs . . . . . . . . .dec. , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .dec. , , preserving fruit . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , treating carbons for electric lamps. .dec. , , regulating the generation of electric currents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , apparatus for treating carbons for electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , apparatus for treating carbons for electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , manufacture of carbons for electric lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , electric lighting. . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . jan. , vacuum apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . jan. , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . .jan. , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .jan. , , dynamo or magneto electric machine . . feb. , , electric motor . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , electric motor . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , current regulator for dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , magneto or dynamo electric machines. .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , means for controlling electric generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , fixture and attachment for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , electric chandeliers . . . . . . . . .march , , electric lamp and socket or holder . .march , , fitting and fixtures for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . march , , system of electric light . . . . . . april , , making incandescents . . . . . . . . april , , electric incandescent lamp . . . . . april , , underground conductors . . . . . . . april , , electric lighting system . . . . . . april , , depositing cell for plating the connections of electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . may , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , regulator for dynamo or magneto electric machine . . . . . . . . . . . may , , webermeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , regulator for magneto electric machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , electro magnetic motor . . . . . . . . may , , manufacture of electric lamps. . . . . may , , electric lamp and the manufacture thereof. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , webermeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . may , , system of electric lighting. . . . . . may , , electric chandelier. . . . . . . . . . may , , straightening carbons for incandescent lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . may , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , electric light . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , measurement of electricity in distribution system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , electrical governor. . . . . . . . . . june , , magneto or dynamo electric machines. june , , magnetic ore separator . . . . . . . . june , , means for charging and using secondary batteries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , magneto or dynamo electric machines. .june , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .june , , vacuum apparatus . . . . . . . . . . .july , , electric lighting system . . . . . . . july , , commutator for dynamo or magneto electric machines. . . . . . . . . . .july , , facsimile telegraph--edison and kenny.july , , ore separator. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , commutator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , dynamo or magneto electric machine . .aug. , , electrical distribution system . . . .aug. , , dynamo or magneto electric machines. .aug. , , electrical distribution system . . . .aug. , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .sept. , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .sept. , , mold for carbonizing incandescents . sept. , , maintaining temperatures in webermeters. . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , dynamo or magneto electric machines. sept. , , electric lighting system . . . . . . sept. , , regulator for dynamo electrical machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , malleableizing iron. . . . . . . . . . oct. , , webermeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oct. , , locomotives for electric railways. . .oct. , , regulator for dynamo or magneto electric machines. . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , dynamo or magneto electric machines. oct. , , dynamo or magneto electric machines. oct. , , electrical drop light. . . . . . . . .oct. , , electric distribution system . . . . .oct. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .oct. , , regulator for dynamo electric machine. nov. , , electric arc light . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , electric arc light . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , electric arc light . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , dynamo magneto electric machines . . .nov. , , vacuum apparatus . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , vacuum pump. . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , manufacturing incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . dec. , , junction box for electric wires. . . . dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .dec. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . .dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .dec. , , dynamo electric machines . . . . . . .dec. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . .feb. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , transmitting telephone . . . . . . . march , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , dynamo or magneto electric machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , secondary battery. . . . . . . . . . . may , , process of and apparatus for generating electricity . . . . . . . . may , , electrolytic decomposition . . . . . .may ,. , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , apparatus for electrical transmission of power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , system of underground conductors of electric distribution. . . . . . . . . may , , system of electrical distribution. . . may , , secondary battery. . . . . . . . . . . june , , dynamo or magneto electric machine . . june , , dynamo or magneto electric machine . . june , , filament for incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , electric are light . . . . . . . . . . .june , incandescent conductor for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . june , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . june , , incandescing electric lamps. . . . . . june , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . june , , turn-table for electric railway. . . . june , , electro magnetic railway system. . . . june , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .june , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .june , , electric lighting system . . . . . . .june , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .june , , system of distributing electricity . .june , , electrical meter . . . . . . . . . . .june , , manufacture of incandescents . . . . . july , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . july , , regulator for dynamo electric machines july , , regulator for dynamo electric machines july , , regulator for dynamo electric machines july , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . . july , , electrical railroad. . . . . . . . . . july , , translating electric currents from high to low tension . . . . . . . . . . . . july , , electrical meter . . . . . . . . . . . july , , mold for carbonizing . . . . . . . . . july , , electric railway . . . . . . . . . . . july , , magnetic electric signalling apparatus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , magnetic electric signalling apparatus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , electric railway . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , electric lighting system . . . . . . .aug. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , carbonizing chamber. . . . . . . . . .aug. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines sept. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . sept. , , manufacturing electric lamps . . . . sept. , , regulator for systems of electrical distribution--edison and c. l. clarke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oct. , , valve gear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oct. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . oct. , , filament for incandescent lamp . . . . oct. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . .oct. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . .oct. , , electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , process for treating products derived from vegetable fibres. . . . . . . . .oct. , , filament for incandescent lamps. . . .oct. , , shafting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , governor for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , regulator for driving engines of electrical generators. . . . . . . . .oct. , , valve gear for electrical generator engines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , manufacturing carbon filaments . . . .oct. , , coating conductors for incandescent lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . .oct. , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . .oct. , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . .oct. , , incandescing conductor for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . nov. , , filament for incandescent lamps. . . . nov. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .nov. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .nov. , , electrical generator and motor . . . .nov. , , system of electrical distribution. . .nov. , , mold for carbonizer. . . . . . . . . .nov. , , regulator for dynamo electric machinesnov. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , manufacturing incandescing electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , operating and regulating electrical generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , regulator for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , system of electrical distribution. . . jan. , system o' electrical distribution. . . jan. , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , design patent--incandescing electric lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , system of electrical distribution. . . feb. , circuit controller for dynamo machine.feb. , , dynamo or magneto electric machine . .feb. , , molds for carbonizing. . . . . . . . .feb. , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . .feb. , , manufacture of filaments for incandescent electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .feb. , , electrical generator . . . . . . . . .march , , system of electrical distribution. . .march , , system of electrical distribution. . .march , , system of electrical distribution. . .april , , manufacture of carbon conductors . . .april , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . .april , , carbonizing flask. . . . . . . . . . .april , , manufacture of filament for incandescing electric lamp. . . . . . . . . . . . april , , system of electrical distribution. . . .may , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . .may , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . .may , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , electrical transmission of power . . . june , , gauge for testing fibres for incandescent lamp carbons. . . . . . . june , , electric regulator . . . . . . . . . .june , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .june , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .june , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .june , , system of electrical distribution. . .june , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .june , , commutator for dynamo electric machines june , , electric lighting system . . . . . . .june , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .june , , dynamo electric machines . . . . . . .july , , dynamo electric machines . . . . . . .july ; , device for protecting electric light systems from lightning . . . . . . . .july , , commutator for dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , system of electrical distribution. . .july , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . . aug. , , electrical meter . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , incandescing conductor for electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , electrical conductor . . . . . . . . sept. , , process and apparatus for generating electricity. . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , manufacture of filaments for incandescent lamps . . . . . . . . . sept. , , generating electricity . . . . . . . . oct. , , electrical generator or motor. . . . .oct. , , electrical indicator . . . . . . . . . nov. , , telephone--edison and bergmann . . . .nov. , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .nov. , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .nov. , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .nov. , , system of electrical distribution. . .nov. , , system of electrical distribution. . .nov. , , incandescent lamp. . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .dec. , , operating dynamo electric machine. . . jan. , , electrical conductor . . . . . . . . .jan. , , incandescent lamp filament . . . . . .jan. , , plating one material with another. . .jan. , , system of electrical distribution. . . feb. , , chemical stock quotation telegraph-- edison and kenny . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , method and apparatus for drawing wire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . june , , apparatus for drawing wire . . . . . . june , , arc lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . june , , system of electrical distribution. . .june , , system of electric lighting. . . . . .july , , system of electric lighting. . . . . sept. , , system of electric lighting. . . . . sept. , , system of electric lighting. . . . . sept. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . sept. , , electric signalling apparatus. . . . sept. , , apparatus for speaking telephones-- edison and gilliland . . . . . . . . .oct. , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , telephone repeater . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , telephone repeater . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , telephonic repeater. . . . . . . . . . dec. , , electrical signalling apparatus. . . .dec. , , electrical signalling apparatus. . . .dec. , , telephone repeater . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , telephone circuit--edison and gilliland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jan. , , telephone transmitter. . . . . . . . . jan. , , electrode for telephone transmitters .jan. , , fuse block . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , system of railway signalling--edison and gilliland. . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , system of railway signalling--edison and gilliland. . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , duplex telegraphy. . . . . . . . . . april , , way station quadruplex telegraph . . . .may , , means for transmitting signals electrically may , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oct. , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oct. , , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . nov. i , , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , telephone - edison and gilliland . . .dec. , , railway telegraphy--edison and gilliland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , speaking telegraph . . . . . . . . . .feb. , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , manufacture of incandescent lamps. . .july , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . july i , , telegraph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july is, , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , manufacture of incandescent electric lamps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . sept. , , incandescent lamp filaments. . . . . .oct. , , cut-out for incandescent lamps--edison and j. f. ott. . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . .oct. , , manufacture of carbon filaments for electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , system of electrical distribution. . . nov. , , system of electrical distribution. . . nov. , , system of electrical distribution. . .nov. , system of electrical distribution. . .nov. , railway signalling--edison and gilliland nov. , , commutator for dynamo electric machinesnov. , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . .nov. , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . . .dec , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . . .dec , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . . dec. , , system of electrical distribution. . .dec. , , system of electrical distribution. . .dec. , , system of electrical distribution. . .dec. , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . .dec. , , manufacture of carbon filaments. . . .dec. , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . .dec. , , converter system for electric railways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , pyromagnetic motor . . . . . . . . . . may , , pyromagnetic generator . . . . . . . . .may , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . . june , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . .june , , railway signalling . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , system of electrical distribution. . .aug. , , system of electrical distribution. . .sept. , system of electrical distribution. . .sept. , electric conductor . . . . . . . . . sept. , , method of and apparatus for drawing wire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , system of electrical distribution. . . nov. , , making plate glass . . . . . . . . . . nov. , , burnishing attachments for phonographsnov. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , feed and return mechanism for phonographsnov. , , system of electrical distribution. . . dec. , , phonogram blanks . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , duplicating phonograms . . . . . . . .jan. , , electric generator . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , thermo electric battery. . . . . . . .jan. , , making phonogram blanks. . . . . . . .jan. , , incandescing electric lamp . . . . . . feb. , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , making carbon filaments. . . . . . . .feb. , , phonograph recorder. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , phonograph reproducer. . . . . . . . .feb. , , duplicating phonograms . . . . . . . .march , , cut-out for incandescent lamps . . . .march , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . .march , , making phonogram blanks. . . . . . . april , , machine for making phonogram blanks. april , , machine for making phonogram blanks. april , , induction converter. . . . . . . . . . .may , , method of and apparatus for separating ores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .may , , phonograph recorder and reproducer . . may , , phonograph reproducer. . . . . . . . . may , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , manufacture of filaments for incandescent electric lamps . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , preparing phonograph recording surfaces june , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , device for turning off phonogram blanks june , , phonograph recorder. . . . . . . . . .july , , recording and reproducing sounds . . .july , , recording and reproducing sounds . . .july , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . .july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , phonograph recorder. . . . . . . . . .july , , incandescent lamp filament . . . . . .july , , turning-off device for phonographs . .july , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . .july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , winding field magnets. . . . . . . . .aug. , , making armatures for dynamo electric machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . sept. , , extracting gold from sulphide ores . sept. , , phonograph recorder and reproducer . sept. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , making phonogram blanks. . . . . . . sept. , , making phonogram blanks. . . . . . . .oct. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , phonograph recorder. . . . . . . . . .oct. , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , treating phonogram blanks. . . . . . . feb. , , automatic determining device for phonographs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , automatic determining device for phonographs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , automatic determining device for phonographs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , automatic determining device for phonographs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , automatic determining device for phonographs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , phonograph recorder. . . . . . . . . . feb. , , phonogram blanks . . . . . . . . . . march , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , incandescent electric lamps. . . . . march , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .april , , insulating electrical conductors . . april , , phonograph doll or other toys. . . . .june , , automatic determining device for phonographs. . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , voltaic battery. . . . . . . . . . . .june , , apparatus for making glass . . . . . .june , , phonogram blanks . . . . . . . . . . .july , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . .july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , magnetic ore separator--edison and w. k. l. dickson . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , making phonogram blanks. . . . . . . . feb. , , extracting copper pyrites. . . . . . . feb. , , propelling mechanism for electric vehicles feb. , , lamp base. . . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , propelling device for electric cars. april , , phonogram blank. . . . . . . . . . . april , , phonograph recorder and reproducer . . .may , , electric motor . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , phonograph cutting tool. . . . . . . . may , , phonograph reproducer. . . . . . . . . may , , apparatus for transmitting power . . . june , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . july , , phonograph doll. . . . . . . . . . . . july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . july , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , expansible pulley. . . . . . . . . . . aug. , , transmission of power. . . . . . . . . aug. , , magnetic belting . . . . . . . . . . .sept. , , leading-in wires for incandescent electric lamps (reissued october , , no. , ). . . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . sept. , trolley for electric railways. . . . .oct. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , smoothing tool for phonogram blanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , phonogram blank carrier. . . . . . . .nov. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , electric locomotive. . . . . . . . . .dec. , , incandescent electric lamp . . . . . .jan. , , dynamo electric machine or motor . . . feb. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , means for propelling electric cars . .feb. , , electric locomotive. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , armatures for dynamos or motors. . . .march , , driving mechanism for cars . . . . . .march , , armature connection for motors or generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , commutator brush for electric motors and dynamos. . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , electric locomotive. . . . . . . . . . june , , electric locomotive. . . . . . . . . . june , , electric locomotive. . . . . . . . . . june , , electric railway . . . . . . . . . . . june , , bricking fine ores . . . . . . . . . .july , , alternating current generator. . . . .july , , lightning arrester . . . . . . . . . .july , , conductor for electric railways. . . .july , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , electric arc . . . . . . . . . . . . .july , , electrical depositing meter. . . . . .july , , bricking fine iron ores. . . . . . . .july , , apparatus for exhibiting photographs of moving objects. . . . . . . . . . .july , , electric railway . . . . . . . . . . .july , , kinetographic camera (reissued september , , numbered , and , , and january , , numbered , ) . . . . . . . . . . .july , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , ore conveyor and method of arranging ore thereon. . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , dust-proof bearings for shafts . . . .aug. , , dust-proof journal bearings. . . . . .aug. , , ore-screening apparatus. . . . . . . .aug. , , ore-conveying apparatus. . . . . . . .aug. , , dust-proof swivel shaft bearing. . . .aug. , , rollers for ore-crushing or other material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , dynamo electric machine. . . . . . . . .oct , , ore-screening apparatus. . . . . . . . .oct , , cut-out for incandescent electric lamps nov. , , stop device. . . . . . . . . . . . . . april , separating ores. . . . . . . . . . . .june ;, , magnetic ore separation. . . . . . . . july , , mechanically separating ores . . . . . july , , method of and apparatus for mixing materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , composition brick and making same. . march , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , crushing rolls . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , conveyor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , filament for incandescent lamps. . . .dec. , , fluorescent electric lamp. . . . . . . may , . governor for motors. . . . . . . . . .jan. , , phonograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , rolls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , breaking rock. . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . . may , , magnetic separator . . . . . . . . . . may , , drying apparatus . . . . . . . . . . .june , , mixer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , flight conveyor. . . . . . . . . . . .june , , lubricating journal bearings . . . . .june , , conveyor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , screening pulverized material. . . . .june , , duplicating phonograms . . . . . . . .feb. , , reproducer for phonographs . . . . . march , , filament for incandescent lamps and manufacturing same . . . . . . . . . .march , , dryer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , machine for forming pulverized material in briquettes . . . . . . . april , , crushing rolls . . . . . . . . . . . april , , apparatus for bricking pulverized material april , , apparatus for concentrating magnetic iron ores. . . . . . . . . . . . . . april , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , screening or sizing very fine materials feb. , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , phonographic recording apparatus . . .feb. , , reheating compressed air for industrial purposes. . . . . . . . . .feb. , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , expanding pulley--edison and johnson .march , , grinding rolls . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , phonograph (reissued september , , numbered , ) . . . . . . . sept. , , apparatus for duplicating phonograph records. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , apparatus for reheating compressed air for industrial purposes. . . . . .nov. , , apparatus for reheating compressed air for industrial purposes. . . . . . dec. , , magnetic separating apparatus. . . . . jan. , , apparatus for sampling, averaging, mixing, and storing materials in bulk jan. , , process of sampling, averaging, mixing, and storing materials in bulk. . . . . jan. , , apparatus for screening fine materials jan. , , apparatus for screening fine materials feb. , , apparatus for screening fine materials march , , burning portland cement clinker, etc april , , apparatus for burning portland cement clinker, etc . . . . . . . . . . . . .april , phonographic reproducing device. . . .april , making metallic phonograph records . april , , duplicating phonograph records . . . april , , duplicating phonograph records . . . april , , coating phonograph records . . . . . . may is, , magnetic separating apparatus. . . . . june , magnetic separating apparatus. . . . . june , phonograph records . . . . . . . . . .july , , apparatus for breaking rock. . . . . . aug. , , phonographic recording apparatus . . .aug. , , electric meter . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . . oct. is , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . . oct. is , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .dec. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . . feb. , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . . feb. , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .feb. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . . may , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .june , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .june , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .june , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .june , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .june , , reproducer for sound records . . . . .oct. , , sound recording apparatus. . . . . . .oct. , , calcining furnaces . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , process of nickel-plating. . . . . . .feb. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . sept. , , manufacturing electrolytically active finely divided iron. . . . . . . . . .oct. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .nov. , , funnel for filling storage battery jars nov. , , electrode for storage batteries. . . .nov. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .nov. , , compressing dies . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , storage battery tray . . . . . . . . .nov. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .nov. , , separating mechanically entrained globules from gases. . . . . . . . . .nov. , , apparatus for burning portland cement clinker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , secondary batteries. . . . . . . . . .nov. , , handling cable drawn cars on inclines. dec. , , operating motors in dust laden atmospheres. . . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , electrical automobile. . . . . . . . .dec. , , stock house conveyor . . . . . . . . .dec. , , feed regulators for grinding machines. dec. , , automatic weighing and mixing apparatus dec. , , photographic film for moving picture machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , apparatus for separating and grinding fine materials . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , duplicating phonograph records . . . .jan. . , storage battery electrode plate. . . .jan. , , dry separator. . . . . . . . . . . . april , , process of treating ores from magnetic gangue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . may , , rotary cement kilns. . . . . . . . . .july , , apparatus for vacuously depositing metals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . july , lamp guard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . july , vehicle wheel. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , making articles by electro-plating . . .oct , , can or receptacle for storage batteries.oct , , primary battery. . . . . . . . . . . .nov. , , sound recording apparatus. . . . . . .nov. , , reversible galvanic battery. . . . . .nov. , , filling apparatus for storage battery jars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , rendering storage battery gases non- explosive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . june , , portland cement and manufacturing same june , , phonograph records and making same . .june , , cleaning metallic surfaces . . . . . .june , , alkaline storage batteries . . . . . .june , , process of producing very thin sheet metal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , alkaline batteries . . . . . . . . . .july , , sheet metal for perforated pockets of storage batteries. . . . . . . . . . .july , , electrical welding apparatus . . . . .july , , storage battery. . . . . . . . . . . . aug , , can or receptacle for storage battery. aug , , methods and apparatus for making sound records. . . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , treating alkaline storage batteries. sept. , , method of treating cans of alkaline storage batteries. . . . . . . . . . sept. , , cement kiln. . . . . . . . . . . . . . oct , , treating alkaline storage batteries. . oct , , storage battery filling apparatus. . . nov. , , gas separator for storage battery. . .oct. , , apparatus for producing very thin sheet metal. . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , apparatus for perforating sheet metal march , , apparatus for producing perforated strips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . march , , secondary battery electrodes . . . . march , , process of making metallic films or flakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .march , , making metallic flakes or scales . . .march , , making composite metal . . . . . . . .march , , coating active material with flake-like conducting material. . . . . . . . . .march , , making storage battery electrodes. . .march , , storage battery electrodes . . . . . march , , storage battery electrodes . . . . . april , , process of making seamless tubular pockets or receptacles for storage battery electrodes . . . . . . . . . april , , phonograph records or blanks . . . . april , , pocket filling machine . . . . . . . . may , , making conducting films. . . . . . . . may , , horns for talking machines . . . . . . may , phonograph recording apparatus . . . . may , gas separator for storage batteries. .july , , apparatus for making metallic films or flakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , tube filling and tamping machine . . .oct. , , tube forming machines--edison and john f. ott. . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , electrode elements for storage batteries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , method of making storage battery electrodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oct. , , secondary batteries. . . . . . . . . . dec. , , storage battery. . . . . . . . . . . . dec. , , primary and secondary batteries. . . . jan. , , composite metal. . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , processes of electro-plating . . . . .feb. , , making thin metallic flakes. . . . . .july , , crushing rolls . . . . . . . . . . . .sept. , , shaft coupling . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , crushing rolls . . . . . . . . . . . sept. , , apparatus for burning portland cement. oct. , making articles by electro-plating . . nov. , , apparatus for burning portland cement.nov. , , apparatus for burning portland cement. nov. , apparatus for grinding coal. . . . . . nov, , storage battery electrodes . . . . . .nov. , , sound records. . . . . . . . . . . . .dec. , , making metallic films or flakes. . . .jan. , , feed mechanism for phonographs and other machines . . . . . . . . . . . .jan. , , making metallic films or flakes. . . .jan. , , making nickel films. . . . . . . . . .jan. , , cement kiln. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , diaphragm for talking machines . . . .feb. , , phonographic recording and reproducing machine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , process and apparatus for artificially aging or seasoning portland cement . .feb. , , electrolyte for alkaline storage batteries may , , making storage battery electrodes. . . may , , discharging apparatus for belt conveyors june , , sprocket chain drives. . . . . . . . .june , , telegraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .june , , metallic film for use with storage batteries and process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , electrode element for storage batteries feb. , , water-proofing paint for portland cement buildings . . . . . . . . . . . feb. , , storage batteries. . . . . . . . . . march , , processes and apparatus for artificially aging or seasoning portland cement. march , , automobiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . march ,- , water-proofing fibres and fabrics. . . may , , water-proofing paint for portland cement structures. . . . . . . . . . . may , , flying machines. . . . . . . . . . . .aug. , , gas purifier . . . . . . . . . . . . .feb. , , design patent for phonograph cabinet. sept. , foreign patents in addition to the united states patents issued to edison, as above enumerated, there have been granted to him (up to october, ) by foreign governments patents, as follows: argentine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . austria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . belgium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cape of good hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . ceylon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cuba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . denmark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . france . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . germany. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . great britain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . hungary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . india. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . italy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . japan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . natal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . new south wales. . . . . . . . . . . . . new zealand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . orange free state. . . . . . . . . . . . . portugal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . queensland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . south african republic . . . . . . . . . . south australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . spain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . switzerland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tasmania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . victoria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . west australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . total of edison's foreign patents. . . none the line, passed through a coil and deflected a suspended magnet to the right or left, according to the direction of the current. a mirror attached to the suspension magnified the movement of the needle, and indicated the signals after the manner of the thomson mirror galvanometer. this telegraph, which was large and clumsy, was nevertheless used not only for scientific, but for general correspondence. steinheil, of munich, simplified it, and added an alarm in the form of a bell. in , steinheil also devised a recording telegraph, in which the movable needles indicated the message by marking dots and dashes with printer's ink on a ribbon of travelling paper, according to an artificial code in which the fewest signs were given to the commonest letters in the german language. with this apparatus the message was registered at the rate of six words a minute. the early experimenters, as we have seen, especially salva, had utilised the ground as the return part of the circuit; and salva had proposed to use it on his telegraph, but steinheil was the first to demonstrate its practical value. in trying, on the suggestion of gauss, to employ the rails of the nurenberg to furth railway as the conducting line for a telegraph in the year , he found they would not serve; but the failure led him to employ the earth as the return half of the circuit. in , professor stratingh, of groninque, holland, devised a telegraph in which the signals were made by electro-magnets actuating the hammers of two gongs or bells of different tone; and m. amyot invented an automatic sending key in the nature of a musical box. from - , edward davy, a devonshire surgeon, exhibited a needle telegraph in london, and proposed one based on the discovery of arago, that a piece of soft iron is temporarily magnetised by the passage of an electric current through a coil surrounding it. this principle was further applied by morse in his electro-magnetic printing telegraph. davy was a prolific inventor, and also sketched out a telegraph in which the gases evolved from water which was decomposed by the current actuated a recording pen. but his most valuable discovery was the 'relay,' that is to say, an auxiliary device by which a current too feeble to indicate the signals could call into play a local battery strong enough to make them. davy was in a fair way of becoming one of the fathers of the working telegraph, when his private affairs obliged him to emigrate to australia, and leave the course open to cooke and wheatstone. chapter ii. charles wheatstone. the electric telegraph, like the steam-engine and the railway, was a gradual development due to the experiments and devices of a long train of thinkers. in such a case he who crowns the work, making it serviceable to his fellow-men, not only wins the pecuniary prize, but is likely to be hailed and celebrated as the chief, if not the sole inventor, although in a scientific sense the improvement he has made is perhaps less than that of some ingenious and forgotten forerunner. he who advances the work from the phase of a promising idea, to that of a common boon, is entitled to our gratitude. but in honouring the keystone of the arch, as it were, let us acknowledge the substructure on which it rests, and keep in mind the entire bridge. justice at least is due to those who have laboured without reward. sir william fothergill cooke and sir charles wheatstone were the first to bring the electric telegraph into daily use. but we have selected wheatstone as our hero, because he was eminent as a man of science, and chiefly instrumental in perfecting the apparatus. as james watt is identified with the steam-engine, and george stephenson with the railway, so is wheatstone with the telegraph. charles wheatstone was born near gloucester, in february, . his father was a music-seller in the town, who, four years later, removed to , pall mall, london, and became a teacher of the flute. he used to say, with not a little pride, that he had been engaged in assisting at the musical education of the princess charlotte. charles, the second son, went to a village school, near gloucester, and afterwards to several institutions in london. one of them was in kennington, and kept by a mrs. castlemaine, who was astonished at his rapid progress. from another he ran away, but was captured at windsor, not far from the theatre of his practical telegraph. as a boy he was very shy and sensitive, liking well to retire into an attic, without any other company than his own thoughts. when he was about fourteen years old he was apprenticed to his uncle and namesake, a maker and seller of musical instruments, at , strand, london; but he showed little taste for handicraft or business, and loved better to study books. his father encouraged him in this, and finally took him out of the uncle's charge. at the age of fifteen, wheatstone translated french poetry, and wrote two songs, one of which was given to his uncle, who published it without knowing it as his nephew's composition. some lines of his on the lyre became the motto of an engraving by bartolozzi. small for his age, but with a fine brow, and intelligent blue eyes, he often visited an old book-stall in the vicinity of pall mall, which was then a dilapidated and unpaved thoroughfare. most of his pocket-money was spent in purchasing the books which had taken his fancy, whether fairy tales, history, or science. one day, to the surprise of the bookseller, he coveted a volume on the discoveries of volta in electricity, but not having the price, he saved his pennies and secured the volume. it was written in french, and so he was obliged to save again, till he could buy a dictionary. then he began to read the volume, and, with the help of his elder brother, william, to repeat the experiments described in it, with a home-made battery, in the scullery behind his father's house. in constructing the battery the boy philosophers ran short of money to procure the requisite copper-plates. they had only a few copper coins left. a happy thought occurred to charles, who was the leading spirit in these researches, 'we must use the pennies themselves,' said he, and the battery was soon complete. in september, , wheatstone brought himself into public notice by exhibiting the 'enchanted lyre,' or 'aconcryptophone,' at a music-shop at pall mall and in the adelaide gallery. it consisted of a mimic lyre hung from the ceiling by a cord, and emitting the strains of several instruments--the piano, harp, and dulcimer. in reality it was a mere sounding box, and the cord was a steel rod that conveyed the vibrations of the music from the several instruments which were played out of sight and ear-shot. at this period wheatstone made numerous experiments on sound and its transmission. some of his results are preserved in thomson's annals of philosophy for . he recognised that sound is propagated by waves or oscillations of the atmosphere, as light by undulations of the luminiferous ether. water, and solid bodies, such as glass, or metal, or sonorous wood, convey the modulations with high velocity, and he conceived the plan of transmitting sound-signals, music, or speech to long distances by this means. he estimated that sound would travel miles a second through solid rods, and proposed to telegraph from london to edinburgh in this way. he even called his arrangement a 'telephone.' [robert hooke, in his micrographia, published in , writes: 'i can assure the reader that i have, by the help of a distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light.' nor was it essential the wire should be straight; it might be bent into angles. this property is the basis of the mechanical or lover's telephone, said to have been known to the chinese many centuries ago. hooke also considered the possibility of finding a way to quicken our powers of hearing.] a writer in the repository of arts for september , , in referring to the 'enchanted lyre,' beholds the prospect of an opera being performed at the king's theatre, and enjoyed at the hanover square rooms, or even at the horns tavern, kennington. the vibrations are to travel through underground conductors, like to gas in pipes. 'and if music be capable of being thus conducted,' he observes,'perhaps the words of speech may be susceptible of the same means of propagation. the eloquence of counsel, the debates of parliament, instead of being read the next day only,--but we shall lose ourselves in the pursuit of this curious subject.' besides transmitting sounds to a distance, wheatstone devised a simple instrument for augmenting feeble sounds, to which he gave the name of 'microphone.' it consisted of two slender rods, which conveyed the mechanical vibrations to both ears, and is quite different from the electrical microphone of professor hughes. in , his uncle, the musical instrument maker, died, and wheatstone, with his elder brother, william, took over the business. charles had no great liking for the commercial part, but his ingenuity found a vent in making improvements on the existing instruments, and in devising philosophical toys. at the end of six years he retired from the undertaking. in , wheatstone introduced his 'kaleidoscope,' a device for rendering the vibrations of a sounding body apparent to the eye. it consists of a metal rod, carrying at its end a silvered bead, which reflects a 'spot' of light. as the rod vibrates the spot is seen to describe complicated figures in the air, like a spark whirled about in the darkness. his photometer was probably suggested by this appliance. it enables two lights to be compared by the relative brightness of their reflections in a silvered bead, which describes a narrow ellipse, so as to draw the spots into parallel lines. in , wheatstone improved the german wind instrument, called the mund harmonica, till it became the popular concertina, patented on june , the portable harmonium is another of his inventions, which gained a prize medal at the great exhibition of . he also improved the speaking machine of de kempelen, and endorsed the opinion of sir david brewster, that before the end of this century a singing and talking apparatus would be among the conquests of science. in , wheatstone, who had won a name for himself, was appointed to the chair of experimental physics in king's college, london, but his first course of lectures on sound were a complete failure, owing to an invincible repugnance to public speaking, and a distrust of his powers in that direction. in the rostrum he was tongue-tied and incapable, sometimes turning his back on the audience and mumbling to the diagrams on the wall. in the laboratory he felt himself at home, and ever after confined his duties mostly to demonstration. he achieved renown by a great experiment--the measurement of the velocity of electricity in a wire. his method was beautiful and ingenious. he cut the wire at the middle, to form a gap which a spark might leap across, and connected its ends to the poles of a leyden jar filled with electricity. three sparks were thus produced, one at either end of the wire, and another at the middle. he mounted a tiny mirror on the works of a watch, so that it revolved at a high velocity, and observed the reflections of his three sparks in it. the points of the wire were so arranged that if the sparks were instantaneous, their reflections would appear in one straight line; but the middle one was seen to lag behind the others, because it was an instant later. the electricity had taken a certain time to travel from the ends of the wire to the middle. this time was found by measuring the amount of lag, and comparing it with the known velocity of the mirror. having got the time, he had only to compare that with the length of half the wire, and he found that the velocity of electricity was , miles a second. till then, many people had considered the electric discharge to be instantaneous; but it was afterwards found that its velocity depended on the nature of the conductor, its resistance, and its electro-static capacity. faraday showed, for example, that its velocity in a submarine wire, coated with insulator and surrounded with water, is only , miles a second, or still less. wheatstone's device of the revolving mirror was afterwards employed by foucault and fizeau to measure the velocity of light. in , at the dublin meeting of the british association, wheatstone showed that when metals were volatilised in the electric spark, their light, examined through a prism, revealed certain rays which were characteristic of them. thus the kind of metals which formed the sparking points could be determined by analysing the light of the spark. this suggestion has been of great service in spectrum analysis, and as applied by bunsen, kirchoff, and others, has led to the discovery of several new elements, such as rubidium and thallium, as well as increasing our knowledge of the heavenly bodies. two years later, he called attention to the value of thermo-electricity as a mode of generating a current by means of heat, and since then a variety of thermo-piles have been invented, some of which have proved of considerable advantage. wheatstone abandoned his idea of transmitting intelligence by the mechanical vibration of rods, and took up the electric telegraph. in he lectured on the system of baron schilling, and declared that the means were already known by which an electric telegraph could be made of great service to the world. he made experiments with a plan of his own, and not only proposed to lay an experimental line across the thames, but to establish it on the london and birmingham railway. before these plans were carried out, however, he received a visit from mr. fothergill cooke at his house in conduit street on february , , which had an important influence on his future. mr. cooke was an officer in the madras army, who, being home on furlough, was attending some lectures on anatomy at the university of heidelberg, where, on march , , he witnessed a demonstration with the telegraph of professor moncke, and was so impressed with its importance, that he forsook his medical studies and devoted all his efforts to the work of introducing the telegraph. he returned to london soon after, and was able to exhibit a telegraph with three needles in january, . feeling his want of scientific knowledge, he consulted faraday and dr. roget, the latter of whom sent him to wheatstone. at a second interview, mr. cooke told wheatstone of his intention to bring out a working telegraph, and explained his method. wheatstone, according to his own statement, remarked to cooke that the method would not act, and produced his own experimental telegraph. finally, cooke proposed that they should enter into a partnership, but wheatstone was at first reluctant to comply. he was a well-known man of science, and had meant to publish his results without seeking to make capital of them. cooke, on the other hand, declared that his sole object was to make a fortune from the scheme. in may they agreed to join their forces, wheatstone contributing the scientific, and cooke the administrative talent. the deed of partnership was dated november , . a joint patent was taken out for their inventions, including the five-needle telegraph of wheatstone, and an alarm worked by a relay, in which the current, by dipping a needle into mercury, completed a local circuit, and released the detent of a clockwork. the five-needle telegraph, which was mainly, if not entirely, due to wheatstone, was similar to that of schilling, and based on the principle enunciated by ampere--that is to say, the current was sent into the line by completing the circuit of the battery with a make and break key, and at the other end it passed through a coil of wire surrounding a magnetic needle free to turn round its centre. according as one pole of the battery or the other was applied to the line by means of the key, the current deflected the needle to one side or the other. there were five separate circuits actuating five different needles. the latter were pivoted in rows across the middle of a dial shaped like a diamond, and having the letters of the alphabet arranged upon it in such a way that a letter was literally pointed out by the current deflecting two of the needles towards it. an experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the euston terminus and camden town station of the london and north western railway on july , . the actual distance was only one and a half mile, but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its length. it was late in the evening before the trial took place. mr. cooke was in charge at camden town, while mr. robert stephenson and other gentlemen looked on; and wheatstone sat at his instrument in a dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at euston. wheatstone sent the first message, to which cooke replied, and 'never,' said wheatstone, 'did i feel such a tumultuous sensation before, as when, all alone in the still room, i heard the needles click, and as i spelled the words, i felt all the magnitude of the invention pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.' in spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated the 'new-fangled' invention with indifference, and requested its removal. in july, , however, it was favoured by the great western railway, and a line erected from the paddington terminus to west drayton station, a distance of thirteen miles. part of the wire was laid underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts along the line. their circuit was eventually extended to slough in , and was publicly exhibited at paddington as a marvel of science, which could transmit fifty signals a distance of , miles in a minute. the price of admission was a shilling. notwithstanding its success, the public did not readily patronise the new invention until its utility was noised abroad by the clever capture of the murderer tawell. between six and seven o'clock one morning a woman named sarah hart was found dead in her home at salt hill, and a man had been observed to leave her house some time before. the police knew that she was visited from time to time by a mr. john tawell, from berkhampstead, where he was much respected, and on inquiring and arriving at slough, they found that a person answering his description had booked by a slow train for london, and entered a first-class carriage. the police telegraphed at once to paddington, giving the particulars, and desiring his capture. 'he is in the garb of a quaker,' ran the message, 'with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly to his feet.' there was no 'q' in the alphabet of the five-needle instrument, and the clerk at slough began to spell the word 'quaker' with a 'kwa'; but when he had got so far he was interrupted by the clerk at paddington, who asked him to 'repent.' the repetition fared no better, until a boy at paddington suggested that slough should be allowed to finish the word. 'kwaker' was understood, and as soon as tawell stepped out on the platform at paddington he was 'shadowed' by a detective, who followed him into a new road omnibus, and arrested him in a coffee tavern. tawell was tried for the murder of the woman, and astounding revelations were made as to his character. transported in for the crime of forgery, he obtained a ticket-of-leave, and started as a chemist in sydney, where he flourished, and after fifteen years left it a rich man. returning to england, he married a quaker lady as his second wife. he confessed to the murder of sarah hart, by prussic acid, his motive being a dread of their relations becoming known. tawell was executed, and the notoriety of the case brought the telegraph into repute. its advantages as a rapid means of conveying intelligence and detecting criminals had been signally demonstrated, and it was soon adopted on a more extensive scale. in wheatstone introduced two improved forms of the apparatus, namely, the 'single' and the 'double' needle instruments, in which the signals were made by the successive deflections of the needles. of these, the single-needle instrument, requiring only one wire, is still in use. in a difference arose between cooke and wheatstone as to the share of each in the honour of inventing the telegraph. the question was submitted to the arbitration of the famous engineer, marc isambard brunel, on behalf of cooke, and professor daniell, of king's college, the inventor of the daniell battery, on the part of wheatstone. they awarded to cooke the credit of having introduced the telegraph as a useful undertaking which promised to be of national importance, and to wheatstone that of having by his researches prepared the public to receive it. they concluded with the words: 'it is to the united labours of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance that we must attribute the rapid progress which this important invention has made during five years since they have been associated.' the decision, however vague, pronounces the needle telegraph a joint production. if it was mainly invented by wheatstone, it was chiefly introduced by cooke. their respective shares in the undertaking might be compared to that of an author and his publisher, but for the fact that cooke himself had a share in the actual work of invention. in wheatstone had patented an alphabetical telegraph, or, 'wheatstone a b c instrument,' which moved with a step-by-step motion, and showed the letters of the message upon a dial. the same principle was utilised in his type-printing telegraph, patented in . this was the first apparatus which printed a telegram in type. it was worked by two circuits, and as the type revolved a hammer, actuated by the current, pressed the required letter on the paper. in wheatstone also brought out his magneto-electrical machine for generating continuous currents, and his chronoscope, for measuring minute intervals of time, which was used in determining the speed of a bullet or the passage of a star. in this apparatus an electric current actuated an electro-magnet, which noted the instant of an occurrence by means of a pencil on a moving paper. it is said to have been capable of distinguishing / part of a second, and the time a body took to fall from a height of one inch. the same year he was awarded the royal medal of the royal society for his explanation of binocular vision, a research which led him to construct the stereoscope. he showed that our impression of solidity is gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view. thus, in the stereoscope, an arrangement of lenses and mirrors, two photographs of the same object taken from different points are so combined as to make the object stand out with a solid aspect. sir david brewster improved the stereoscope by dispensing with the mirrors, and bringing it into its existing form. the 'pseudoscope' (wheatstone was partial to exotic forms of speech) was introduced by its professor in , and is in some sort the reverse of the stereoscope, since it causes a solid object to seem hollow, and a nearer one to be farther off; thus, a bust appears to be a mask, and a tree growing outside of a window looks as if it were growing inside the room. on november , , he exhibited his electro-magnetic clock in the library of the royal society, and propounded a plan for distributing the correct time from a standard clock to a number of local timepieces. the circuits of these were to be electrified by a key or contact-maker actuated by the arbour of the standard, and their hands corrected by electro-magnetism. the following january alexander bain took out a patent for an electro-magnetic clock, and he subsequently charged wheatstone with appropriating his ideas. it appears that bain worked as a mechanist to wheatstone from august to december, , and he asserted that he had communicated the idea of an electric clock to wheatstone during that period; but wheatstone maintained that he had experimented in that direction during may. bain further accused wheatstone of stealing his idea of the electro-magnetic printing telegraph; but wheatstone showed that the instrument was only a modification of his own electro-magnetic telegraph. in wheatstone communicated an important paper to the royal society, entitled 'an account of several new processes for determining the constants of a voltaic circuit.' it contained an exposition of the well-known balance for measuring the electrical resistance of a conductor, which still goes by the name of wheatstone's bridge or balance, although it was first devised by mr. s. w. christie, of the royal military academy, woolwich, who published it in the philosophical transactions for . the method was neglected until wheatstone brought it into notice. his paper abounds with simple and practical formula: for the calculation of currents and resistances by the law of ohm. he introduced a unit of resistance, namely, a foot of copper wire weighing one hundred grains, and showed how it might be applied to measure the length of wire by its resistance. he was awarded a medal for his paper by the society. the same year he invented an apparatus which enabled the reading of a thermometer or a barometer to be registered at a distance by means of an electric contact made by the mercury. a sound telegraph, in which the signals were given by the strokes of a bell, was also patented by cooke and wheatstone in may of that year. the introduction of the telegraph had so far advanced that, on september , , the electric telegraph company was registered, and wheatstone, by his deed of partnership with cooke, received a sum of l , for the use of their joint inventions. from - wheatstone had thought a good deal about submarine telegraphs, and in he gave evidence before the railway committee of the house of commons on the feasibility of the proposed line from dover to calais. he had even designed the machinery for making and laying the cable. in the autumn of , with the assistance of mr. j. d. llewellyn, he submerged a length of insulated wire in swansea bay, and signalled through it from a boat to the mumbles lighthouse. next year he suggested the use of gutta-percha for the coating of the intended wire across the channel. though silent and reserved in public, wheatstone was a clear and voluble talker in private, if taken on his favourite studies, and his small but active person, his plain but intelligent countenance, was full of animation. sir henry taylor tells us that he once observed wheatstone at an evening party in oxford earnestly holding forth to lord palmerston on the capabilities of his telegraph. 'you don't say so!' exclaimed the statesman. 'i must get you to tell that to the lord chancellor.' and so saying, he fastened the electrician on lord westbury, and effected his escape. a reminiscence of this interview may have prompted palmerston to remark that a time was coming when a minister might be asked in parliament if war had broken out in india, and would reply, 'wait a minute; i'll just telegraph to the governor-general, and let you know.' at christchurch, marylebone, on february , , wheatstone was married. his wife was the daughter of a taunton tradesman, and of handsome appearance. she died in , leaving a family of five young children to his care. his domestic life was quiet and uneventful. one of wheatstone's most ingenious devices was the 'polar clock,' exhibited at the meeting of the british association in . it is based on the fact discovered by sir david brewster, that the light of the sky is polarised in a plane at an angle of ninety degrees from the position of the sun. it follows that by discovering that plane of polarisation, and measuring its azimuth with respect to the north, the position of the sun, although beneath the horizon, could be determined, and the apparent solar time obtained. the clock consisted of a spy-glass, having a nichol or double-image prism for an eye-piece, and a thin plate of selenite for an object-glass. when the tube was directed to the north pole--that is, parallel to the earth's axis--and the prism of the eye-piece turned until no colour was seen, the angle of turning, as shown by an index moving with the prism over a graduated limb, gave the hour of day. the device is of little service in a country where watches are reliable; but it formed part of the equipment of the north polar expedition commanded by captain nares. wheatstone's remarkable ingenuity was displayed in the invention of cyphers which have never been unravelled, and interpreting cypher manuscripts in the british museum which had defied the experts. he devised a cryptograph or machine for turning a message into cypher which could only be interpreted by putting the cypher into a corresponding machine adjusted to reproduce it. the rapid development of the telegraph in europe may be gathered from the fact that in , the death of the emperor nicholas at st. petersburg, about one o'clock in the afternoon, was announced in the house of lords a few hours later; and as a striking proof of its further progress, it may be mentioned that the result of the oaks of was received in new york fifteen seconds after the horses passed the winning-post. wheatstone's next great invention was the automatic transmitter, in which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the signal currents. by substituting a mechanism for the hand in sending the message, he was able to telegraph about words a minute, or five times the ordinary rate. in the postal telegraph service this apparatus is employed for sending press telegrams, and it has recently been so much improved, that messages are now sent from london to bristol at a speed of words a minute, and even of words a minute between london and aberdeen. on the night of april , , when mr. gladstone introduced his bill for home rule in ireland, no fewer than , , words were despatched from the central station at st. martin's-le-grand by wheatstone transmitters. were mr. gladstone himself to speak for a whole week, night and day, and with his usual facility, he could hardly surpass this achievement. the plan of sending messages by a running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented by bain in ; but wheatstone, aided by mr. augustus stroh, an accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to bring the idea into successful operation. in wheatstone was appointed by the board of trade to report on the subject of the atlantic cables, and in he was one of the experts who advised the atlantic telegraph company on the construction of the successful lines of and . on february , , he published the principle of reaction in the dynamo-electric machine by a paper to the royal society; but mr. c. w. siemens had communicated the identical discovery ten days earlier, and both papers were read on the same day. it afterwards appeared that herr werner siemens, mr. samuel alfred varley, and professor wheatstone had independently arrived at the principle within a few months of each other. varley patented it on december , ; siemens called attention to it on january , ; and wheatstone exhibited it in action at the royal society on the above date. but it will be seen from our life of william siemens that soren hjorth, a danish inventor, had forestalled them. in the electric telegraph lines of the united kingdom, worked by different companies, were transferred to the post office, and placed under government control. wheatstone was knighted in , after his completion of the automatic telegraph. he had previously been made a chevalier of the legion of honour. some thirty-four distinctions and diplomas of home or foreign societies bore witness to his scientific reputation. since he had been a fellow of the royal society, and in he was appointed a foreign associate of the french academy of sciences. the same year he was awarded the ampere medal by the french society for the encouragement of national industry. in he was created an honorary member of the institution of civil engineers. he was a d.c.l. of oxford and an ll.d. of cambridge. while on a visit to paris during the autumn of , and engaged in perfecting his receiving instrument for submarine cables, he caught a cold, which produced inflammation of the lungs, an illness from which he died in paris, on october , . a memorial service was held in the anglican chapel, paris, and attended by a deputation of the academy. his remains were taken to his home in park crescent, london, and buried in kensal green. chapter iii. samuel morse. cooke and wheatstone were the first to introduce a public telegraph worked by electro-magnetism; but it had the disadvantage of not marking down the message. there was still room for an instrument which would leave a permanent record that might be read at leisure, and this was the invention of samuel finley breeze morse. he was born at the foot of breed's hill, in charlestown, massachusetts, on the th of april, . the place was a little over a mile from where benjamin franklin was born, and the date was a little over a year after he died. his family was of british origin. anthony morse, of marlborough, in wiltshire, had emigrated to america in , and settled in newbury, massachusetts, he and his descendants prospered. the grandfather of morse was a member of the colonial and state legislatures, and his father, jedediah morse, d.d., was a well-known divine of his day, and the author of morse's american geography, as well as a compiler of a universal gazetteer. his mother was elizabeth ann breeze, apparently of welsh extraction, and the grand-daughter of samuel finley, a distinguished president of the princeton college. jedediah morse is reputed a man of talent, industry, and vigour, with high aims for the good of his fellow-men, ingenious to conceive, resolute in action, and sanguine of success. his wife is described as a woman of calm, reflective mind, animated conversation, and engaging manners. they had two other sons besides samuel, the second of whom, sidney e. morse, was founder of the new york observer, an able mathematician, author of the art of cerography, or engraving upon wax, to stereotype from, and inventor of a barometer for sounding the deep-sea. sidney was the trusted friend and companion of his elder brother. at the age of four samuel was sent to an infant school kept by an old lady, who being lame, was unable to leave her chair, but carried her authority to the remotest parts of her dominion by the help of a long rattan. samuel, like the rest, had felt the sudden apparition of this monitor. having scratched a portrait of the dame upon a chest of drawers with the point of a pin, he was called out and summarily punished. years later, when he became notable, the drawers were treasured by one of his admirers. he entered a preparatory school at andover, mass., when he was seven years old, and showed himself an eager pupil. among other books, he was delighted with plutarch's lives, and at thirteen he composed a biography of demosthenes, long preserved by his family. a year later he entered yale college as a freshman. during his curriculum he attended the lectures of professor jeremiah day on natural philosophy and professor benjamin sieliman on chemistry, and it was then he imbibed his earliest knowledge of electricity. in - dr. day was teaching from enfield's text-book on philosophy, that 'if the (electric) circuit be interrupted, the fluid will become visible, and when: it passes it will leave an impression upon any intermediate body,' and he illustrated this by sending the spark through a metal chain, so that it became visible between the links, and by causing it to perforate paper. morse afterwards declared this experiment to have been the seed which rooted in his mind and grew into the 'invention of the telegraph.' it is not evident that morse had any distinct idea of the electric telegraph in these days; but amidst his lessons in literature and philosophy he took a special interest in the sciences of electricity and chemistry. he became acquainted with the voltaic battery through the lectures of his friend, professor sieliman; and we are told that during one of his vacations at yale he made a series of electrical experiments with dr. dwight. some years later he resumed these studies under his friend professor james freeman dana, of the university of new york, who exhibited the electro-magnet to his class in , and also under professor renwick, of columbia college. art seems to have had an equal if not a greater charm than science for morse at this period. a boy of fifteen, he made a water-colour sketch of his family sitting round the table; and while a student at yale he relieved his father, who was far from rich, of a part of his education by painting miniatures on ivory, and selling them to his companions at five dollars a-piece. before he was nineteen he completed a painting of the 'landing of the pilgrims at plymouth,' which formerly hung in the office of the mayor, at charlestown, massachusetts. on graduating at yale, in , he devoted himself to art, and became a pupil of washington allston, the well-known american painter. he accompanied allston to europe in , and entered the studio of benjamin west, who was then at the zenith of his reputation. the friendship of west, with his own introductions and agreeable personality, enabled him to move in good society, to which he was always partial. william wilberforce, zachary macaulay, father of the historian, coleridge, and copley, were among his acquaintances. leslie, the artist, then a struggling genius like himself, was his fellow-lodger. his heart was evidently in the profession of his choice. 'my passion for my art,' he wrote to his mother, in , 'is so firmly rooted that i am confident no human power could destroy it. the more i study the greater i think is its claim to the appellation of divine. i am now going to begin a picture of the death of hercules the figure to be as large as life.' after he had perfected this work to his own eyes, he showed it, with not a little pride, to mr. west, who after scanning it awhile said, 'very good, very good. go on and finish it.' morse ventured to say that it was finished. 'no! no! no!' answered west; 'see there, and there, and there. there is much to be done yet. go on and finish it.' each time the pupil showed it the master said, 'go on and finish it.' [the telegraph in america, by james d. reid] this was a lesson in thoroughness of work and attention to detail which was not lost on the student. the picture was exhibited at the royal academy, in somerset house, during the summer of , and west declared that if morse were to live to his own age he would never make a better composition. the remark is equivocal, but was doubtless intended as a compliment to the precocity of the young painter. in order to be correct in the anatomy he had first modelled the figure of his hercules in clay, and this cast, by the advice of west, was entered in competition for a prize in sculpture given by the society of arts. it proved successful, and on may the sculptor was presented with the prize and a gold medal by the duke of norfolk before a distinguished gathering in the adelphi. flushed with his triumph, morse determined to compete for the prize of fifty guineas and a gold medal offered by the royal academy for the best historical painting, and took for his subject, 'the judgment of jupiter in the case of apollo, marpessa, and idas.' the work was finished to the satisfaction of west, but the painter was summoned home. he was still, in part at least, depending on his father, and had been abroad a year longer than the three at first intended. during this time he had been obliged to pinch himself in a thousand ways in order to eke out his modest allowance. 'my drink is water, porter being too expensive,' he wrote to his parents. 'i have had no new clothes for nearly a year. my best are threadbare, and my shoes are out at the toes. my stockings all want to see my mother, and my hat is hoary with age.' mr. west recommended him to stay, since the rules of the competition required the winner to receive the prize in person. but after trying in vain to get this regulation waived, he left for america with his picture, having, a few days prior to his departure, dined with mr. wilberforce as the guns of hyde park were signalling the victory of waterloo. arriving in boston on october , he lost no time in renting a studio. his fame had preceded him, and he became the lion of society. his 'judgment of jupiter' was exhibited in the town, and people flocked to see it. but no one offered to buy it. if the line of high art he had chosen had not supported him in england, it was tantamount to starvation in the rawer atmosphere of america. even in boston, mellowed though it was by culture, the classical was at a discount. almost penniless, and fretting under his disappointment, he went to concord, new hampshire, and contrived to earn a living by painting cabinet portraits. was this the end of his ambitious dreams? money was needful to extricate him from this drudgery and let him follow up his aspirations. love may have been a still stronger motive for its acquisition. so he tried his hand at invention, and, in conjunction with his brother sidney, produced what was playfully described as 'morse's patent metallic double-headed ocean-drinker and deluge-spouter pump-box.' the pump was quite as much admired as the 'jupiter,' and it proved as great a failure. succeeding as a portrait painter, he went, in , on the invitation of his uncle, dr. finley, to charleston, in south carolina, and opened a studio there. after a single season he found himself in a position to marry, and on october , , was united to lucretia p. walker, of concord, new hampshire, a beautiful and accomplished lady. he thrived so well in the south that he once received as many as one hundred and fifty orders in a few weeks; and his reputation was such that he was honoured with a commission from the common council of charleston to execute a portrait of james monroe, then president of the united states. it was regarded as a masterpiece. in january, , he instituted the south carolina academy of fine arts, which is now extinct. after four years of life in charleston he returned to the north with savings to the amount of l , and settled in new york. he devoted eighteen months to the execution of a large painting of the house of representatives in the capitol at washington; but its exhibition proved a loss, and in helping his brothers to pay his father's debts the remains of his little fortune were swept away. he stood next to allston as an american historical painter, but all his productions in that line proved a disappointment. the public would not buy them. on the other hand, he received an order from the corporation of new york for a portrait of general lafayette, the hero of the hour. while engaged on this work he lost his wife in february, , and then his parents. in he visited europe, and spent his time among the artists and art galleries of england, france, and italy. in paris he undertook a picture of the interior of the louvre, showing some of the masterpieces in miniature, but it seems that nobody purchased it. he expected to be chosen to illustrate one of the vacant panels in the rotunda of the capitol at washington; but in this too he was mistaken. however, some fellow-artists in america, thinking he had deserved the honour, collected a sum of money to assist him in painting the composition he had fixed upon: 'the signing of the first compact on board the mayflower.' in a far from hopeful mood after his three years' residence abroad he embarked on the packet sully, captain pell, and sailed from havre for new york on october , . among the passengers was dr. charles t. jackson, of boston, who had attended some lectures on electricity in paris, and carried an electro-magnet in his trunk. one day while morse and dr. jackson, with a few more, sat round the luncheon table in the cabin, he began to talk of the experiments he had witnessed. some one asked if the speed of the electricity was lessened by its passage through a long wire, and dr. jackson, referring to a trial of faraday, replied that the current was apparently instantaneous. morse, who probably remembered his old lessons in the subject, now remarked that if the presence of the electricity could be rendered visible at any point of the circuit he saw no reason why intelligence might not be sent by this means. the idea became rooted in his mind, and engrossed his thoughts. until far into the night he paced the deck discussing the matter with dr. jackson, and pondering it in solitude. ways of rendering the electricity sensible at the far end of the line were considered. the spark might pierce a band of travelling paper, as professor day had mentioned years before; it might decompose a chemical solution, and leave a stain to mark its passage, as tried by mr. dyar in ; or it could excite an electro-magnet, which, by attracting a piece of soft iron, would inscribe the passage with a pen or pencil. the signals could be made by very short currents or jets of electricity, according to a settled code. thus a certain number of jets could represent a corresponding numeral, and the numeral would, in its turn, represent a word in the language. to decipher the message, a special code-book or dictionary would be required. in order to transmit the currents through the line, he devised a mechanical sender, in which the circuit would be interrupted by a series of types carried on a port-rule or composing-stick, which travelled at a uniform speed. each type would have a certain number of teeth or projections on its upper face, and as it was passed through a gap in the circuit the teeth would make or break the current. at the other end of the line the currents thus transmitted would excite the electro-magnet, actuate the pencil, and draw a zig-zag line on the paper, every angle being a distinct signal, and the groups of signals representing a word in the code. during the voyage of six weeks the artist jotted his crude ideas in his sketch-book, which afterwards became a testimony to their date. that he cherished hopes of his invention may be gathered from his words on landing, 'well, captain pell, should you ever hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was made on the good ship sully.' soon after his return his brothers gave him a room on the fifth floor of a house at the corner of nassau and beekman streets, new york. for a long time it was his studio and kitchen, his laboratory and bedroom. with his livelihood to earn by his brush, and his invention to work out, morse was now fully occupied. his diet was simple; he denied himself the pleasures of society, and employed his leisure in making models of his types. the studio was an image of his mind at this epoch. rejected pictures looked down upon his clumsy apparatus, type-moulds lay among plaster-casts, the paint-pot jostled the galvanic battery, and the easel shared his attention with the lathe. by degrees the telegraph allured him from the canvas, and he only painted enough to keep the wolf from the door. his national picture, 'the signing of the first compact on board the mayflower,' was never finished, and the dollars which had been subscribed for it were finally returned with interest. for morse by nature was proud and independent, with a sensitive horror of incurring debt. he would rather endure privation than solicit help or lie under a humiliating obligation. his mother seems to have been animated with a like spirit, for the hon. amos kendall informs us that she had suffered much through the kindness of her husband in becoming surety for his friends, and that when she was dying she exacted a promise from her son that he would never endanger his peace of mind and the comfort of his home by doing likewise. during the two and a half years from november, , to the summer of he was obliged to change his residence three times, and want of money prevented him from combining the several parts of his invention into a working whole. in , however, his reputation as an historical painter, and the esteem in which he was held as a man of culture and refinement, led to his appointment as the first professor of the literature of the arts of design in the newly founded university of the city of new york. in the month of july he took up his quarters in the new buildings of the university at washington square, and was henceforth able to devote more time to his apparatus. the same year professor daniell, of king's college, london, brought out his constant-current battery, which befriended morse in his experiments, as it afterwards did cooke and wheatstone, hitherto the voltaic battery had been a source of trouble, owing to the current becoming weak as the battery was kept in action. the length of line through which morse could work his apparatus was an important point to be determined, for it was known that the current grows feebler in proportion to the resistance of the wire it traverses. morse saw a way out of the difficulty, as davy, cooke, and wheatstone did, by the device known as the relay. were the current too weak to effect the marking of a message, it might nevertheless be sufficiently strong to open and close the circuit of a local battery which would print the signals. such relays and local batteries, fixed at intervals along the line, as post-horses on a turnpike, would convey the message to an immense distance. 'if i can succeed in working a magnet ten miles,' said morse,'i can go round the globe. it matters not how delicate the movement may be.' according to his own statement, he devised the relay in or earlier; but it was not until the beginning of that he explained the device, and showed the working of his apparatus to his friend, mr. leonard d. gale, professor of chemistry in the university. this gentleman took a lively interest in the apparatus, and proved a generous ally of the inventor. until then morse had only tried his recorder on a few yards of wire, the battery was a single pair of plates, and the electro-magnet was of the elementary sort employed by moll, and illustrated in the older books. the artist, indeed, was very ignorant of what had been done by other electricians; and professor gale was able to enlighten him. when gale acquainted him with some results in telegraphing obtained by mr. barlow, he said he was not aware that anyone had even conceived the notion of using the magnet for such a purpose. the researches of professor joseph henry on the electro-magnet, in , were equally unknown to morse, until professor gale drew his attention to them, and in accordance with the results, suggested that the simple electro-magnet, with a few turns of thick wire which he employed, should be replaced by one having a coil of long thin wire. by this change a much feebler current would be able to excite the magnet, and the recorder would mark through a greater length of line. henry himself, in , had devised a telegraph similar to that of morse, and signalled through a mile of wire, by causing the armature of his electro-magnet to strike a bell. this was virtually the first electro-magnetic acoustic telegraph.[american journal of science.] the year of the telegraph-- --was an important one for morse, as it was for cooke and wheatstone. in the privacy of his rooms he had constructed, with his own hands, a model of his apparatus, and fortune began to favour him. thanks to professor gale, he improved the electro-magnet, employed a more powerful battery, and was thus able to work through a much longer line. in february, , the american house of representatives passed a resolution asking the secretary of the treasury to report on the propriety of establishing a system of telegraphs for the united states, and on march issued a circular of inquiry, which fell into the hands of the inventor, and probably urged him to complete his apparatus, and bring it under the notice of the government. lack of mechanical skill, ignorance of electrical science, as well as want of money, had so far kept it back. but the friend in need whom he required was nearer than he anticipated. on saturday, september , , while morse was exhibiting the model to professor daubeny, of oxford, then visiting the states, and others, a young man named alfred vail became one of the spectators, and was deeply impressed with the results. vail was born in , a son of judge stephen vail, master of the speedwell ironworks at morristown, new jersey. after leaving the village school his father took him and his brother george into the works; but though alfred inherited a mechanical turn of mind, he longed for a higher sphere, and on attaining to his majority he resolved to enter the presbyterian church. in he went to the university of the city of new york, where he graduated in october, . near the close of the term, however, his health failed, and he was constrained to relinquish his clerical aims. while in doubts as to his future he chanced to see the telegraph, and that decided him. he says: 'i accidentally and without invitation called upon professor morse at the university, and found him with professors torrey and daubeny in the mineralogical cabinet and lecture-room of professor gale, where professor morse was exhibiting to these gentlemen an apparatus which he called his electro-magnetic telegraph. there were wires suspended in the room running from one end of it to the other, and returning many times, making a length of seventeen hundred feet. the two ends of the wire were connected with an electro-magnet fastened to a vertical wooden frame. in front of the magnet was its armature, and also a wooden lever or arm fitted at its extremity to hold a lead-pencil.... i saw this instrument work, and became thoroughly acquainted with the principle of its operation, and, i may say, struck with the rude machine, containing, as i believed, the germ of what was destined to produce great changes in the conditions and relations of mankind. i well recollect the impression which was then made upon my mind. i rejoiced to think that i lived in such a day, and my mind contemplated the future in which so grand and mighty an agent was about to be introduced for the benefit of the world. before leaving the room in which i beheld for the first time this magnificent invention, i asked professor morse if he intended to make an experiment on a more extended line of conductors. he replied that he did, but that he desired pecuniary assistance to carry out his plans. i promised him assistance provided he would admit me into a share of the invention, to which proposition he assented. i then returned to my boarding-house, locked the door of my room, threw myself upon the bed, and gave myself up to reflection upon the mighty results which were certain to follow the introduction of this new agent in meeting and serving the wants of the world. with the atlas in my hand i traced the most important lines which would most certainly be erected in the united states, and calculated their length. the question then rose in my mind, whether the electro-magnet could be made to work through the necessary lengths of line, and after much reflection i came to the conclusion that, provided the magnet would work even at a distance of eight or ten miles, there could be no risk in embarking in the enterprise. and upon this i decided in my own mind to sink or swim with it.' young vail applied to his father, who was a man of enterprise and intelligence. he it was who forged the shaft of the savannah, the first steamship which crossed the atlantic. morse was invited to speedwell with his apparatus, that the judge might see it for himself, and the question of a partnership was mooted. two thousand dollars were required to procure the patents and construct an instrument to bring before the congress. in spite of a financial depression, the judge was brave enough to lend his assistance, and on september , , an agreement was signed between the inventor and alfred vail, by which the latter was to construct, at his own expense, a model for exhibition to a committee of congress, and to secure the necessary patents for the united states. in return vail was to receive one-fourth of the patent rights in that country. provision was made also to give vail an interest in any foreign patents he might furnish means to obtain. the american patent was obtained by morse on october , . he had returned to new york, and was engaged in the preparation of his dictionary. for many months alfred vail worked in a secret room at the iron factory making the new model, his only assistant being an apprentice of fifteen, william baxter, who subsequently designed the baxter engine, and died in . when the workshop was rebuilt this room was preserved as a memorial of the telegraph, for it was here that the true morse instrument, such as we know it, was constructed. it must be remembered that in those days almost everything they wanted had either to be made by themselves or appropriated to their purpose. their first battery was set up in a box of cherry-wood, parted into cells, and lined with bees-wax; their insulated wire was that used by milliners for giving outline to the 'sky-scraper' bonnets of that day. the first machine made at speedwell was a copy of that devised by morse, but as vail grew more intimate with the subject his own ingenuity came into play, and he soon improved on the original. the pencil was discarded for a fountain pen, and the zig-zag signals for the short and long lines now termed 'dots' and 'dashes.' this important alteration led him to the 'morse alphabet,' or code of signals, by which a letter is transmitted as a group of short and long jets, indicated as 'dots' and 'dashes' on the paper. thus the letter e, which is so common in english words, is now transmitted by a short jet which makes a dot; t, another common letter, by a long jet, making a dash; and q, a rare letter, by the group dash, dash, dot, dash. vail tried to compute the relative frequency of all the letters in order to arrange his alphabet; but a happy idea enabled him to save his time. he went to the office of the local newspaper, and found the result he wanted in the type-cases of the compositors. the morse, or rather vail code, is at present the universal telegraphic code of symbols, and its use is extending to other modes of signalling-for example, by flags, lights, or trumpets. the hard-fisted farmers of new jersey, like many more at that date, had no faith in the 'telegraph machine,' and openly declared that the judge had been a fool for once to put his money in it. the judge, on his part, wearied with the delay, and irritated by the sarcasm of his neighbours, grew dispirited and moody. alfred, and morse, who had come to assist, were careful to avoid meeting him. at length, on january , , alfred told the apprentice to go up to the house and invite his father to come down to see the telegraph at work. it was a cold day, but the boy was so eager that he ran off without putting on his coat. in the sitting-room he found the judge with his hat on as if about to go out, but seated before the fire leaning his head on his hand, and absorbed in gloomy reflection. 'well, william?' he said, looking up, as the boy entered; and when the message was delivered he started to his feet. in a few minutes he was standing in the experimental-room, and the apparatus was explained. calling for a piece of paper he wrote upon it the words, 'a patient waiter is no loser,' and handed it to alfred, with the remark, 'if you can send this, and mr. morse can read it at the other end, i shall be convinced.' the message was transmitted, and for a moment the judge was fairly mastered by his feelings. the apparatus was then exhibited in new york, in philadelphia, and subsequently before the committee of congress at washington. at first the members of this body were somewhat incredulous about the merits of the uncouth machine; but the chairman, the hon. francis o. j. smith, of maine, took an interest in it, and secured a full attendance of the others to see it tried through ten miles of wire one day in february. the demonstration convinced them, and many were the expressions of amazement from their lips. some said, 'the world is coming to an end,' as people will when it is really budding, and putting forth symptoms of a larger life. others exclaimed, 'where will improvements and discoveries stop?' and 'what would jefferson think should he rise up and witness what we have just seen?' one gentleman declared that, 'time and space are now annihilated.' the practical outcome of the trial was that the chairman reported a bill appropriating , dollars for the erection of an experimental line between washington and baltimore. mr. smith was admitted to a fourth share in the invention, and resigned his seat in congress to become legal adviser to the inventors. claimants to the invention of the telegraph now began to spring up, and it was deemed advisable for mr. smith and morse to proceed to europe and secure the foreign patents. alfred vail undertook to provide an instrument for exhibition in europe. among these claimants was dr. jackson, chemist and geologist, of boston, who had been instrumental in evoking the idea of the telegraph in the mind of morse on board the sully. in a letter to the new york observer he went further than this, and claimed to be a joint inventor; but morse indignantly repudiated the suggestion. he declared that his instrument was not mentioned either by him or dr. jackson at the time, and that they had made no experiments together. 'it is to professor gale that i am most of all indebted for substantial and effective aid in many of my experiments,' he said; 'but he prefers no claim of any kind.' morse and smith arrived in london during the month of june. application was immediately made for a british patent, but cooke and wheatstone and edward davy, it seems, opposed it; and although morse demonstrated that his was different from theirs, the patent was refused, owing to a prior publication in the london mechanics' magazine for february , , in the form of an article quoted from silliman's american journal of science for october, . morse did not attempt to get this legal disqualification set aside. in france he was equally unfortunate. his instrument was exhibited by arago at a meeting of the institute, and praised by humboldt and gay-lussac; but the french patent law requires the invention to be at work in france within two years, and when morse arranged to erect a telegraph line on the st. germain railway, the government declined to sanction it, on the plea that the telegraph must become a state monopoly. all his efforts to introduce the invention into europe were futile, and he returned disheartened to the united states on april , . while in paris, he had met m. daguerre, who, with m. niepce, had just discovered the art of photography. the process was communicated to morse, who, with dr. draper, fitted up a studio on the roof of the university, and took the first daguerreotypes in america. the american congress now seemed as indifferent to his inventions as the european governments. an exciting campaign for the presidency was at hand, and the proposed grant for the telegraph was forgotten. mr. smith had returned to the political arena, and the vails were under a financial cloud, so that morse could expect no further aid from them. the next two years were the darkest he had ever known. 'porte crayon' tells us that he had little patronage as a professor, and at one time only three pupils besides himself. crayon's fee of fifty dollars for the second quarter were overdue, owing to his remittance from home not arriving; and one day the professor said, 'well, strother, my boy, how are we off for money?' strother explained how he was situated, and stated that he hoped to have the money next week. 'next week!' repeated morse. 'i shall be dead by that time... dead of starvation.' 'would ten dollars be of any service?' inquired the student, both astonished and distressed. 'ten dollars would save my life,' replied morse; and strother paid the money, which was all he owned. they dined together, and afterwards the professor remarked, 'this is my first meal for twenty-four hours. strother, don't be an artist. it means beggary. a house-dog lives better. the very sensitiveness that stimulates an artist to work keeps him alive to suffering.' towards the close of he wrote to alfred vail: 'i have not a cent in the world;' and to mr. smith about the same time he wrote: 'i find myself without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me, whose interests, one would think, would impell them at least to inquire if they could render some assistance. for nearly two years past i have devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying myself all pleasures, and even necessary food, that i might have a sum to put my telegraph into such a position before congress as to insure success to the common enterprise. i am crushed for want of means, and means of so trifling a character too, that they who know how to ask (which i do not) could obtain in a few hours.... as it is, although everything is favourable, although i have no competition and no opposition--on the contrary, although every member of congress, so far as i can learn, is favourable--yet i fear all will fail because i am too poor to risk the trifling expense which my journey and residence in washington will occasion me. i will not run into debt, if i lose the whole matter. so unless i have the means from some source, i shall be compelled, however reluctantly, to leave it. no one call tell the days and months of anxiety and labour i have had in perfecting my telegraphic apparatus. for want of means i have been compelled to make with my own hands (and to labour for weeks) a piece of mechanism which could be made much better, and in a tenth part of the time, by a good mechanician, thus wasting time--time which i cannot recall, and which seems double-winged to me. '"hope deferred maketh the heart sick." it is true, and i have known the full meaning of it. nothing but the consciousness that i have an invention which is to mark an era in human civilisation, and which is to contribute to the happiness of millions, would have sustained me through so many and such lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it.' morse did not invent for money or scientific reputation; he believed himself the instrument of a great purpose. during the summer of he insulated a wire two miles long with hempen threads saturated with pitch-tar and surrounded with india-rubber. on october , during bright moonlight, he submerged this wire in new york harbour, between castle garden and governor's island, by unreeling it from a small boat rowed by a man. after signals had been sent through it, the wire was cut by an anchor, and a portion of it carried off by sailors. this appears to be the first experiment in signalling on a subaqueous wire. it was repeated on a canal at washington the following december, and both are described in a letter to the secretary of the treasury, december , , in which morse states his belief that 'telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the atlantic ocean. startling as this may now seem, i am confident the time will come when the project will be realised.' in december, , the inventor made another effort to obtain the help of congress, and the committee on commerce again recommended an appropriation of , dollars in aid of the telegraph. morse had come to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the congressmen, and they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or any other 'ism' might have a claim on the treasury. the bill passed the house by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, some of the representatives fearing that their support of the measure would alienate their constituents. its fate in the senate was even more dubious; and when it came up for consideration late one night before the adjournment, a senator, the hon. fernando wood, went to morse, who watched in the gallery, and said,'there is no use in your staying here. the senate is not in sympathy with your project. i advise you to give it up, return home, and think no more about it.' morse retired to his rooms, and after paying his bill for board, including his breakfast the next morning, he found himself with only thirty-seven cents and a half in the world. kneeling by his bed-side he opened his heart to god, leaving the issue in his hands, and then, comforted in spirit, fell asleep. while eating his breakfast next morning, miss annie g. ellsworth, daughter of his friend the hon. henry l. ellsworth, commissioner of patents, came up with a beaming countenance, and holding out her hand, said-- 'professor, i have come to congratulate you.' 'congratulate me!' replied morse; 'on what?' 'why,' she exclaimed,' on the passage of your bill by the senate!' it had been voted without debate at the very close of the session. years afterwards morse declared that this was the turning-point in the history of the telegraph. 'my personal funds,' he wrote,' were reduced to the fraction of a dollar; and had the passage of the bill failed from any cause, there would have been little prospect of another attempt on my part to introduce to the world my new invention.' grateful to miss ellsworth for bringing the good news, he declared that when the washington to baltimore line was complete hers should be the first despatch. the government now paid him a salary of , dollars a month to superintend the laying of the underground line which he had decided upon. professors gale and fisher became his assistants. vail was put in charge, and mr. ezra cornell, who founded the cornell university on the site of the cotton mill where he had worked as a mechanic, and who had invented a machine for laying pipes, was chosen to supervise the running of the line. the conductor was a five-wire cable laid in pipes; but after several miles had been run from baltimore to the house intended for the relay, the insulation broke down. cornell, it is stated, injured his machine to furnish an excuse for the stoppage of the work. the leaders consulted in secret, for failure was staring them in the face. some , dollars of the government grant were spent, and mr. smith, who had lost his faith in the undertaking, claimed of the remaining dollars under his contract for laying the line. a bitter quarrel arose between him and morse, which only ended in the grave. he opposed an additional grant from government, and morse, in his dejection, proposed to let the patent expire, and if the government would use his apparatus and remunerate him, he would reward alfred vail, while smith would be deprived of his portion. happily, it was decided to abandon the subterranean line, and erect the conductor on poles above the ground. a start was made from the capitol, washington, on april , , and the line was carried to the mount clare depot, baltimore, on may , . next morning miss ellsworth fulfilled her promise by inditing the first message. she chose the words, 'what hath god wrought?' and they were transmitted by morse from the capitol at . a.m., and received at mount clare by alfred vail. this was the first message of a public character sent by the electric telegraph in the western world, and it is preserved by the connecticut historical society. the dots and dashes representing the words were not drawn with pen and ink, but embossed on the paper with a metal stylus. the machine itself was kept in the national museum at washington, and on removing it, in , to exhibit it at the morse memorial celebration at new york, a member of the vail family discovered a folded paper attached to its base. a corner of the writing was torn away before its importance was recognised; but it proved to be a signed statement by alfred vail, to the effect that the method of embossing was invented by him in the sixth storey of the new york observer office during , prior to the erection of the washington to baltimore line, without any hint from morse. 'i have not asserted publicly my right as first and sole inventor,' he says, 'because i wished to preserve the peaceful unity of the invention, and because i could not, according to my contract with professor morse, have got a patent for it.' the powers of the telegraph having been demonstrated, enthusiasm took the place of apathy, and morse, who had been neglected before, was in some danger of being over-praised. a political incident spread the fame of the telegraph far and wide. the democratic convention, sitting in baltimore, nominated mr. james k. polk as candidate for the presidency, and mr. silas wright for the vice-presidency. alfred vail telegraphed the news to morse in washington, and he at once told mr. wright. the result was that a few minutes later the convention was dumbfounded to receive a message from wright declining to be nominated. they would not believe it, and appointed a committee to inquire into the matter; but the telegram was found to be genuine. on april , , the baltimore to washington line was formally opened for public business. the tariff adopted by the postmaster-general was one cent for every four characters, and the receipts of the first four days were a single cent. at the end of a week they had risen to about a dollar. morse offered the invention to the government for , dollars, but the postmaster-general declined it on the plea that its working 'had not satisfied him that under any rate of postage that could be adopted its revenues could be made equal to its expenditures.' thus through the narrow views and purblindness of its official the nation lost an excellent opportunity of keeping the telegraph system in its own hands. morse was disappointed at this refusal, but it proved a blessing in disguise. he and his agent, the hon. amos kendall, determined to rely on private enterprise. a line between new york and philadelphia was projected, and the apparatus was exhibited in broadway at a charge of twenty-five cents a head. but the door-money did not pay the expenses. there was an air of poverty about the show. one of the exhibitors slept on a couple of chairs, and the princely founder of cornell university was grateful to providence for a shilling picked up on the side-walk, which enabled him to enjoy a hearty breakfast. sleek men of capital, looking with suspicion on the meagre furniture and miserable apparatus, withheld their patronage; but humbler citizens invested their hard-won earnings, the magnetic telegraph company was incorporated, and the line was built. the following year, , another line was run from philadelphia to baltimore by mr. henry o'reilly, of rochester, n.y., an acute pioneer of the telegraph. in the course of ten years the atlantic states were covered by a straggling web of lines under the control of thirty or forty rival companies working different apparatus, such as that of morse, bain, house, and hughes, but owing to various causes only one or two were paying a dividend. it was a fit moment for amalgamation, and this was accomplished in by mr. hiram sibley. 'this western union,' says one in speaking of the united corporation, 'seems to me very like collecting all the paupers in the state and arranging them into a union so as to make rich men of them.' but 'sibley's crazy scheme' proved the salvation of the competing companies. in , after the first stage coach had crossed the plains to california, mr. henry o'reilly proposed to build a line of telegraph, and mr. sibley urged the western union to undertake it. he encountered a strong opposition. the explorations of fremont were still fresh in the public mind, and the country was regarded as a howling wilderness. it was objected that no poles could be obtained on the prairies, that the indians or the buffaloes would destroy the line, and that the traffic would not pay. 'well, gentlemen,' said sibley, 'if you won't join hands with me in the thing, i'll go it alone.' he procured a subsidy from the government, who realised the value of the line from a national point of view, the money was raised under the auspices of the western union, and the route by omaha, fort laramie, and salt lake city to san francisco was fixed upon. the work began on july , , and though it was expected to occupy two years, it was completed in four months and eleven days. the traffic soon became lucrative, and the indians, except in time of war, protected the line out of friendship for mr. sibley. a black-tailed buck, the gift of white cloud, spent its last years in the park of his home at rochester. the success of the overland wire induced the company to embark on a still greater scheme, the project of mr. perry macdonough collins, for a trunk line between america and europe by way of british columbia, alaska, the aleutian islands, and siberia. a line already existed between european russia and irkutsk, in siberia, and it was to be extended to the mouth of the amoor, where the american lines were to join it. two cables, one across behring sea and another across the bay of anadyr, were to link the two continents. the expedition started in the summer of with a fleet of about thirty vessels, carrying telegraph and other stores. in spite of severe hardships, a considerable part of the line had been erected when the successful completion of the trans-atlantic cable, in , caused the enterprise to be abandoned after an expenditure of , , dollars. a trace cut for the line through the forests of british columbia is still known as the 'telegraph trail.' in spite of this misfortune the western union telegraph company has continued to flourish. in its capital amounted to , , dollars, and it now possesses a virtual monopoly of telegraphic communication in the united states. morse did not limit his connections to land telegraphy. in , when mr. cyrus field brought out the atlantic telegraph company, to lay a cable between europe and america, he became its electrician, and went to england for the purpose of consulting with the english engineers on the execution of the project. but his instrument was never used on the ocean lines, and, indeed, it was not adapted for them. during this time alfred vail continued to improve the morse apparatus, until it was past recognition. the porte-rule and type of the transmitter were discarded for a simple 'key' or rocking lever, worked up and down by the hand, so as to make and break the circuit. the clumsy framework of the receiver was reduced to a neat and portable size. the inking pen was replaced by a metal wheel or disc, smeared with ink, and rolling on the paper at every dot or dash. vail, as we have seen, also invented the plan of embossing the message. but he did still more. when the recording instrument was introduced, it was found that the clerks persisted in 'reading' the signals by the clicking of the marking lever, and not from the paper. threats of instant dismissal did not stop the practice when nobody was looking on. morse, who regarded the record as the distinctive feature of his invention, was very hostile to the practice; but nature was too many for him. the mode of interpreting by sound was the easier and more economical of the two; and vail, with his mechanical instinct, adopted it. he produced an instrument in which there is no paper or marking device, and the message is simply sounded by the lever of the armature striking on its metal stops. at present the morse recorder is rarely used in comparison with the 'sounder.' the original telegraph of morse, exhibited in , has become an archaic form. apart from the central idea of employing an electro-magnet to signal--an idea applied by henry in , when morse had only thought of it--the development of the apparatus is mainly due to vail. his working devices made it a success, and are in use to-day, while those of morse are all extinct. morse has been highly honoured and rewarded, not only by his countrymen, but by the european powers. the queen of spain sent him a cross of the order of isabella, the king of prussia presented him with a jewelled snuff-box, the sultan of turkey decorated him with the order of glory, the emperor of the french admitted him into the legion of honour. moreover, the ten european powers in special congress awarded him , francs (some , dollars), as an expression of their gratitude: honorary banquets were a common thing to the man who had almost starved through his fidelity to an idea. but beyond his emoluments as a partner in the invention, alfred vail had no recompense. morse, perhaps, was somewhat jealous of acknowledging the services of his 'mechanical assistant,' as he at one time chose to regard vail. when personal friends, knowing his services, urged vail to insist upon their recognition, he replied, 'i am confident that professor morse will do me justice.' but even ten years after the death of vail, on the occasion of a banquet given in his honour by the leading citizens of new york, morse, alluding to his invention, said: 'in , according to the concurrent testimony of many witnesses, it lisped its first accents, and automatically recorded them a few blocks only distant from the spot from which i now address you. it was a feeble child indeed, ungainly in its dress, stammering in its speech; but it had then all the distinctive features and characteristics of its present manhood. it found a friend, an efficient friend, in mr. alfred vail, of new jersey, who, with his father and brother, furnished the means to give the child a decent dress, preparatory to its' visit to the seat of government.' when we remember that even by this time vail had entirely altered the system of signals, and introduced the dot-dash code, we cannot but regard this as a stinted acknowledgment of his colleague's work. but the man who conceives the central idea, and cherishes it, is apt to be niggardly in allowing merit to the assistant whose mechanical skill is able to shape and put it in practice; while, on the other hand, the assistant is sometimes inclined to attach more importance to the working out than it deserves. alfred vail cannot be charged with that, however, and it would have been the more graceful on the part of morse had he avowed his indebtedness to vail with a greater liberality. nor would this have detracted from his own merit as the originator and preserver of the idea, without which the improvements of vail would have had no existence. in the words of the hon. amos kendall, a friend of both: 'if justice be done, the name of alfred vail will for ever stand associated with that of samuel f. b. morse in the history and introduction into public use of the electro-magnetic telegraph.' professor morse spent his declining years at locust grove, a charming retreat on the banks of the river hudson. in private life he was a fine example of the christian gentleman. in the summer of , the telegraphic brotherhood of the world erected a statue to his honour in the central park, new york. delegates from different parts of america were present at the unveiling; and in the evening there was a reception at the academy of music, where the first recording telegraph used on the washington to baltimore line was exhibited. the inventor himself appeared, and sent a message at a small table, which was flashed by the connected wires to the remotest parts of the union, it ran: 'greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity throughout the world. glory to god in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill towards men.' it was deemed fitting that morse should unveil the statue of benjamin franklin, which had been erected in printing house square, new york. when his venerable figure appeared on the platform, and the long white hair was blown about his handsome face by the winter wind, a great cheer went up from the assembled multitude. but the day was bitterly cold, and the exposure cost him his life. some months later, as he lay on his sick bed, he observed to the doctor, 'the best is yet to come.' in tapping his chest one day, the physician said,' this is the way we doctors telegraph, professor,' and morse replied with a smile, 'very good--very good.' these were his last words. he died at new york on april , , at the age of eighty-one years, and was buried in the greenwood cemetery. chapter iv. sir william thomson. sir william thomson, the greatest physicist of the age, and the highest authority on electrical science, theoretical and applied, was born at belfast on june , . his father, dr. james thomson, the son of a scots-irish farmer, showed a bent for scholarship when a boy, and became a pupil teacher in a small school near ballynahinch, in county down. with his summer earnings he educated himself at glasgow university during winter. appointed head master of a school in connection with the royal academical institute, he subsequently obtained the professorship of mathematics in that academy. in he was called to the chair of mathematics in the university of glasgow, where he achieved a reputation by his text-books on arithmetic and mathematics. william began his course at the same college in his eleventh year, and was petted by the older students for his extraordinary quickness in solving the problems of his father's class. it was quite plain that his genius lay in the direction of mathematics; and on finishing at glasgow he was sent to the higher mathematical school of st. peter's college, cambridge. in he graduated as second wrangler, but won the smith prize. this 'consolation stakes' is regarded as a better test of originality than the tripos. the first, or senior, wrangler probably beat him by a facility in applying well-known rules, and a readiness in writing. one of the examiners is said to have declared that he was unworthy to cut thomson's pencils. it is certain that while the victor has been forgotten, the vanquished has created a world-wide renown. while at cambridge he took an active part in the field sports and athletics of the university. he won the silver sculls, and rowed in the winning boat of the oxford and cambridge race. he also took a lively interest in the classics, in music, and in general literature; but the real love, the central passion of his intellectual life, was the pursuit of science. the study of mathematics, physics, and in particular, of electricity, had captivated his imagination, and soon engrossed all the teeming faculties of his mind. at the age of seventeen, when ordinary lads are fond of games, and the cleverer sort are content to learn without attempting to originate, young thomson had begun to make investigations. the cambridge mathematical journal of contains a paper by him--'on the uniform motion of heat in homogeneous solid bodies, and its connection with the mathematical theory of electricity.' in this he demonstrated the identity of the laws governing the distribution of electric or magnetic force in general, with the laws governing the distribution of the lines of the motion of heat in certain special cases. the paper was followed by others on the mathematical theory of electricity; and in he gave the first mathematical development of faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' he also devised an hypothesis of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces of electricity at rest. on gaining a fellowship at his college, he spent some time in the laboratory of the celebrated regnault, at paris; but in he was appointed to the chair of natural philosophy in the university of glasgow. it was due to the brilliant promise he displayed, as much as to the influence of his father, that at the age of twenty-two he found himself wearing the gown of a learned professor in one of the oldest universities in the country, and lecturing to the class of which he was a freshman but a few years before. thomson became a man of public note in connection with the laying of the first atlantic cable. after cooke and wheatstone had introduced their working telegraph in ; the idea of a submarine line across the atlantic ocean began to dawn on the minds of men as a possible triumph of the future. morse proclaimed his faith in it as early as the year , and in he submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and india-rubber, in the water of new york harbour, and telegraphed through it. the following autumn wheatstone performed a similar experiment in the bay of swansea. a good insulator to cover the wire and prevent the electricity from leaking into the water was requisite for the success of a long submarine line. india-rubber had been tried by jacobi, the russian electrician, as far back as . he laid a wire insulated with rubber across the neva at st. petersburg, and succeeded in firing a mine by an electric spark sent through it; but india-rubber, although it is now used to a considerable extent, was not easy to manipulate in those days. luckily another gum which could be melted by heat, and readily applied to the wire, made its appearance. gutta-percha, the adhesive juice of the isonandra gutta tree, was introduced to europe in by dr. montgomerie, a scotch surveyor in the service of the east india company. twenty years before he had seen whips made of it in singapore, and believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical apparatus. faraday and wheatstone soon discovered its merits as an insulator, and in the latter suggested that it should be employed to cover the wire which it was proposed to lay from dover to calais. it was tried on a wire laid across the rhine between deutz and cologne. in mr. c. v. walker, electrician to the south eastern railway company, submerged a wire coated with it, or, as it is technically called, a gutta-percha core, along the coast off dover. the following year mr. john watkins brett laid the first line across the channel. it was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without any other protection. the core was payed out from a reel mounted behind the funnel of a steam tug, the goliath, and sunk by means of lead weights attached to it every sixteenth of a mile. she left dover about ten o'clock on the morning of august , , with some thirty men on board and a day's provisions. the route she was to follow was marked by a line of buoys and flags. by eight o'clock in the evening she arrived at cape grisnez, and came to anchor near the shore. mr. brett watched the operations through a glass at dover. 'the declining sun,' he says, 'enabled me to discern the moving shadow of the steamer's smoke on the white cliff; thus indicating her progress. at length the shadow ceased to move. the vessel had evidently come to an anchor. we gave them half an hour to convey the end of the wire to shore and attach the type-printing instrument, and then i sent the first electrical message across the channel. this was reserved for louis napoleon.' according to mr. f. c. webb, however, the first of the signals were a mere jumble of letters, which were torn up. he saved a specimen of the slip on which they were printed, and it was afterwards presented to the duke of wellington. next morning this pioneer line was broken down at a point about yards from cape grisnez, and it turned out that a boulogne fisherman had raised it on his trawl and cut a piece away, thinking he had found a rare species of tangle with gold in its heart. this misfortune suggested the propriety of arming the core against mechanical injury by sheathing it in a cable of hemp and iron wires. the experiment served to keep alive the concession, and the next year, on november , , a protected core or true cable was laid from a government hulk, the blazer, which was towed across the channel. next year great britain and ireland were linked together. in may, , england was joined to holland by a cable across the north sea, from orfordness to the hague. it was laid by the monarch, a paddle steamer which had been fitted for the work. during the night she met with such heavy weather that the engineer was lashed near the brakes; and the electrician, mr. latimer clark, sent the continuity signals by jerking a needle instrument with a string. these and other efforts in the mediterranean and elsewhere were the harbingers of the memorable enterprise which bound the old world and the new. bishop mullock, head of the roman catholic church in newfoundland, was lying becalmed in his yacht one day in sight of cape breton island, and began to dream of a plan for uniting his savage diocese to the mainland by a line of telegraph through the forest from st. john's to cape ray, and cables across the mouth of the st. lawrence from cape ray to nova scotia. st. john's was an atlantic port, and it seemed to him that the passage of news between america and europe could thus be shortened by forty-eight hours. on returning to st. john's he published his idea in the courier by a letter dated november , . about the same time a similar plan occurred to mr. f. n. gisborne, a telegraph engineer in nova scotia. in the spring of he procured a grant from the legislature of newfoundland, resigned his situation in nova scotia, and having formed a company, began the construction of the land line. but in his bills were dishonoured by the company, he was arrested for debt, and stripped of all his fortune. the following year, however, he was introduced to mr. cyrus field, of new york, a wealthy merchant, who had just returned from a six months' tour in south america. mr. field invited mr. gisborne to his house in order to discuss the project. when his visitor was gone, mr. field began to turn over a terrestrial globe which stood in his library, and it flashed upon him that the telegraph to newfoundland might be extended across the atlantic ocean. the idea fired him with enthusiasm. it seemed worthy of a man's ambition, and although he had retired from business to spend his days in peace, he resolved to dedicate his time, his energies, and fortune to the accomplishment of this grand enterprise. a presentiment of success may have inspired him; but he was ignorant alike of submarine cables and the deep sea. was it possible to submerge the cable in the atlantic, and would it be safe at the bottom? again, would the messages travel through the line fast enough to make it pay! on the first question he consulted lieutenant maury, the great authority on mareography. maury told him that according to recent soundings by lieutenant berryman, of the united states brig dolphin, the bottom between ireland and newfoundland was a plateau covered with microscopic shells at a depth not over fathoms, and seemed to have been made for the very purpose of receiving the cable. he left the question of finding a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough, and a ship big enough,' to lay a line some sixteen hundred miles in length to other minds. as to the line itself, mr. field consulted professor morse, who assured him that it was quite possible to make and lay a cable of that length. he at once adopted the scheme of gisborne as a preliminary step to the vaster undertaking, and promoted the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, to establish a line of telegraph between america and europe. professor morse was appointed electrician to the company. the first thing to be done was to finish the line between st. john's and nova scotia, and in an attempt was made to lay a cable across the gulf of the st. lawrence, it was payed out from a barque in tow of a steamer; but when half was laid a gale rose, and to keep the barque from sinking the line was cut away. next summer a steamboat was fitted out for the purpose, and the cable was submerged. st. john's was now connected with new york by a thousand miles of land and submarine telegraph. mr. field then directed his efforts to the completion of the trans-oceanic section. he induced the american government to despatch lieutenant berryman, in the arctic, and the british admiralty to send lieutenant: dayman, in the cyclops, to make a special survey along the proposed route of the cable. these soundings revealed the existence of a submarine hill dividing the 'telegraph plateau' from the shoal water on the coast of ireland, but its slope was gradual and easy. till now the enterprise had been purely american, and the funds provided by american capitalists, with the exception of a few shares held by mr. j. w. brett. but seeing that the cable was to land on british soil, it was fitting that the work should be international, and that the british people should be asked to contribute towards the manufacture and submersion of the cable. mr. field therefore proceeded to london, and with the assistance of mr. brett the atlantic telegraph company was floated. mr. field himself supplied a quarter of the needed capital; and we may add that lady byron, and mr. thackeray, the novelist, were among the shareholders. the design of the cable was a subject of experiment by professor morse and others. it was known that the conductor should be of copper, possessing a high conductivity for the electric current, and that its insulating jacket of gutta-percha should offer a great resistance to the leakage of the current. moreover, experience had shown that the protecting sheath or armour of the core should be light and flexible as well as strong, in order to resist external violence and allow it to be lifted for repair. there was another consideration, however, which at this time was rather a puzzle. as early as mr. (afterwards sir) francis ronalds had observed that electric signals were retarded in passing through an insulated wire or core laid under ground, and the same effect was noticeable on cores immersed in water, and particularly on the lengthy cable between england and the hague. faraday showed that it was caused by induction between the electricity in the wire and the earth or water surrounding it. a core, in fact, is an attenuated leyden jar; the wire of the core, its insulating jacket, and the soil or water around it stand respectively for the inner tinfoil, the glass, and the outer tinfoil of the jar. when the wire is charged from a battery, the electricity induces an opposite charge in the water as it travels along, and as the two charges attract each other, the exciting charge is restrained. the speed of a signal through the conductor of a submarine cable is thus diminished by a drag of its own making. the nature of the phenomenon was clear, but the laws which governed it were still a mystery. it became a serious question whether, on a long cable such as that required for the atlantic, the signals might not be so sluggish that the work would hardly pay. faraday had said to mr. field that a signal would take 'about a second,' and the american was satisfied; but professor thomson enunciated the law of retardation, and cleared up the whole matter. he showed that the velocity of a signal through a given core was inversely proportional to the square of the length of the core. that is to say, in any particular cable the speed of a signal is diminished to one-fourth if the length is doubled, to one-ninth if it is trebled, to one-sixteenth if it is quadrupled, and so on. it was now possible to calculate the time taken by a signal in traversing the proposed atlantic line to a minute fraction of a second, and to design the proper core for a cable of any given length. the accuracy of thomson's law was disputed in by dr. edward o. wildman whitehouse, the electrician of the atlantic telegraph company, who had misinterpreted the results of his own experiments. thomson disposed of his contention in a letter to the athenaeum, and the directors of the company saw that he was a man to enlist in their adventure. it is not enough to say the young glasgow professor threw himself heart and soul into their work. he descended in their midst like the very genius of electricity, and helped them out of all their difficulties. in he published in the engineer the whole theory of the mechanical forces involved in the laying of a submarine cable, and showed that when the line is running out of the ship at a constant speed in a uniform depth of water, it sinks in a slant or straight incline from the point where it enters the water to that where it touches the bottom. to these gifts of theory, electrical and mechanical, thomson added a practical boon in the shape of the reflecting galvanometer, or mirror instrument. this measurer of the current was infinitely more sensitive than any which preceded it, and enables the electrician to detect the slightest flaw in the core of a cable during its manufacture and submersion. moreover, it proved the best apparatus for receiving the messages through a long cable. the morse and other instruments, however suitable for land lines and short cables, were all but useless on the atlantic line, owing to the retardation of the signals; but the mirror instrument sprang out of thomson's study of this phenomenon, and was designed to match it. hence this instrument, through being the fittest for the purpose, drove the others from the field, and allowed the first atlantic cables to be worked on a profitable basis. the cable consisted of a strand of seven copper wires, one weighing pounds a nautical mile or knot, covered with three coats of gutta-percha, weighing pounds a knot, and wound with tarred hemp, over which a sheath of eighteen strands, each of seven iron wires, was laid in a close spiral. it weighed nearly a ton to the mile, was flexible as a rope, and able to withstand a pull of several tons. it was made conjointly by messrs. glass, elliot & co., of greenwich, and messrs. r. s. newall & co., of liverpool. the british government promised mr. field a subsidy of l , a year, and the loan of ships to lay the cable. he solicited an equal help from congress, but a large number of the senators, actuated by a national jealousy of england, and looking to the fact that both ends of the line were to lie in british territory, opposed the grant. it appeared to these far-sighted politicians that england, the hereditary foe, was 'literally crawling under the sea to get some advantage over the united states.' the bill was only passed by a majority of a single vote. in the house of representatives it encountered a similar hostility, but was ultimately signed by president pierce. the agamemnon, a british man-of-war fitted out for the purpose, took in the section made at greenwich, and the niagara, an american warship, that made at liverpool. the vessels and their consorts met in the bay of valentia island, on the south-west coast of ireland, where on august , , the shore end of the cable was landed from the niagara. it was a memorable scene. the ships in the bay were dressed in bunting, and the lord lieutenant of ireland stood on the beach, attended by his following, to receive the end from the american sailors. visitors in holiday attire collected in groups to watch the operations, and eagerly joined with his excellency in helping to pull the wire ashore. when it was landed, the reverend mr. day, of kenmore, offered up a prayer, asking the almighty to prosper the undertaking, next day the expedition sailed; but ere the niagara had proceeded five miles on her way the shore-end parted, and the repairing of it delayed the start for another day. at first the niagara went slowly ahead to avoid a mishap, but as the cable ran out easily she increased her speed. the night fell, but hardly a soul slept. the utmost vigilance was maintained throughout the vessel. apart from the noise of the paying-out machinery, there was an awful stillness on board. men walked about with a muffled step, or spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid the sound of their voices would break the slender line. it seemed as though a great and valued friend lay at the point of death. the submarine hill, with its dangerous slope, was passed in safety, and the 'telegraph plateau,' nearly two miles deep, was reached, when suddenly the signals from ireland, which told that the conductor was intact, stopped altogether. professor morse and de sauty, the electricians, failed to restore the communication, and the engineers were preparing to cut the cable, when quite as suddenly the signals returned, and every face grew bright. a weather-beaten old sailor said, 'i have watched nearly every mile of it as it came over the side, and i would have given fifty dollars, poor man as i am, to have saved it, although i don't expect to make anything by it when it is laid down.' but the joy was short-lived. the line was running out at the rate of six miles an hour, while the vessel was only making four. to check this waste of cable the engineer tightened the brakes; but as the stern of the ship rose on the swell, the cable parted under the heavy strain, and the end was lost in the sea. the bad news ran like a flash of lightning through all the ships, and produced a feeling of sorrow and dismay. no attempt was made to grapple the line in such deep water, and the expedition returned to england. it was too late to try again that year, but the following summer the agamemnon and niagara, after an experimental trip to the bay of biscay, sailed from plymouth on june with a full supply of cable, better gear than before, and a riper experience of the work. they were to meet in the middle of the atlantic, where the two halves of the cable on board of each were to be spliced together, and while the agamemnon payed out eastwards to valentia island the niagara was to pay out westward to newfoundland. on her way to the rendezvous the agamemnon encountered a terrific gale, which lasted for a week, and nearly proved her destruction. on saturday, the th, the middle splice was effected and the bight dropped into the deep. the two ships got under weigh, but had not proceeded three miles when the cable broke in the paying-out machinery of the niagara. another splice, followed by a fresh start, was made during the same afternoon; but when some fifty miles were payed out of each vessel, the current which kept up communication between them suddenly failed owing to the cable having snapped in the sea. once more the middle splice was made and lowered, and the ships parted company a third time. for a day or two all went well; over two hundred miles of cable ran smoothly out of each vessel, and the anxious chiefs began to indulge in hopes of ultimate success, when the cable broke about twenty feet behind the stern of the agamemnon. the expedition returned to queenstown, and a consultation took place. mr. field, and professor thomson, who was on board the agamemnon, were in favour of another trial, and it was decided to make one without delay. the vessels left the cove of cork on july ; but on this occasion there was no public enthusiasm, and even those on board felt as if they were going on another wild goose chase. the agamemnon was now almost becalmed on her way to the rendezvous; but the middle splice was finished by . p.m. on july , , and immediately dropped into the sea. the ships thereupon started, and increased their distance, while the cable ran easily out of them. some alarm was caused by the stoppage of the continuity signals, but after a time they reappeared. the niagara deviated from the great arc of a circle on which the cable was to be laid, and the error was traced to the iron of the cable influencing her compass. hence the gorgon, one of her consorts, was ordered to go ahead and lead the way. the niagara passed several icebergs, but none injured the cable, and on august she arrived in trinity bay, newfoundland. at . a.m. next morning the shore end was landed into the telegraph-house which had been built for its reception. captain hudson, of the niagara, then read prayers, and at one p.m. h.m.s. gorgon fired a salute of twenty-one guns. the agamemnon made an equally successful run. about six o'clock on the first evening a huge whale was seen approaching on the starboard bow, and as he sported in the waves, rolling and lashing them into foam, the onlookers began to fear that he might endanger the line. their excitement became intense as the monster heaved astern, nearer and nearer to the cable, until his body grazed it where it sank into the water; but happily no harm was done. damaged portions of the cable had to be removed in paying-out, and the stoppage of the continuity signals raised other alarms on board. strong head winds kept the agamemnon back, and two american ships which got into her course had to be warned off by firing guns. the signals from the niagara became very weak, but on professor thomson asking the electricians on board of her to increase their battery power, they improved at once. at length, on thursday, august, , the agamemnon, with her consort, the valorous, arrived at valentia island, and the shore end was landed into the cable-house at knightstown by p.m., and a royal salute announced the completion of the work. the news was received at first with some incredulity, but on being confirmed it caused a universal joy. on august queen victoria sent a telegram of congratulation to president buchanan through the line, and expressed a hope that it would prove 'an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem.' the president responded that, 'it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. may the atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by divine providence to diffuse religion, civilisation, liberty, and law throughout the world.' these messages were the signal for a fresh outburst of enthusiasm. next morning a grand salute of guns resounded in new york, the streets were decorated with flags, the bells of the churches rung, and at night the city was illuminated. the atlantic cable was a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons and a prodigious quantity of doggerel. among the happier lines were these:-- ''tis done! the angry sea consents, the nations stand no more apart; with clasped hands the continents feel throbbings of each other's heart. speed! speed the cable! let it run a loving girdle round the earth, till all the nations 'neath the sun shall be as brothers of one hearth. as brothers pledging, hand in hand, one freedom for the world abroad, one commerce over every land, one language, and one god.' the rejoicing reached a climax in september, when a public service was held in trinity church, and mr. field, the hero of the hour, as head and mainspring of the expedition, received an ovation in the crystal palace at new york. the mayor presented him with a golden casket as a souvenir of 'the grandest enterprise of our day and generation.' the band played 'god save the queen,' and the whole audience rose to their feet. in the evening there was a magnificent torchlight procession of the city firemen. that very day the cable breathed its last. its insulation had been failing for some days, and the only signals which could be read were those given by the mirror galvanometer.[it is said to have broken down while newfoundland was vainly attempting to inform valentia that it was sending with three hundred and twelve cells!] the reaction at this news was tremendous. some writers even hinted that the line was a mere hoax, and others pronounced it a stock exchange speculation. sensible men doubted whether the cable had ever 'spoken;' but in addition to the royal despatch, items of daily news had passed through the wire; for instance, the announcement of a collision between two ships, the arabia and the europa, off cape race, newfoundland, and an order from london, countermanding the departure of a regiment in canada for the seat of the indian mutiny, which had come to an end. mr. field was by no means daunted at the failure. he was even more eager to renew the work, since he had come so near to success. but the public had lost confidence in the scheme, and all his efforts to revive the company were futile. it was not until that with the assistance of mr. thomas (afterwards lord) brassey, and mr. (now sir) john fender, that he succeeded in raising the necessary capital. the glass, elliot, and gutta-percha companies were united to form the well-known telegraph construction and maintenance company, which undertook to manufacture and lay the new cable. much experience had been gained in the meanwhile. long cables had been submerged in the mediterranean and the red sea. the board of trade in had appointed a committee of experts, including professor wheatstone, to investigate the whole subject, and the results were published in a blue-book. profiting by these aids, an improved type of cable was designed. the core consisted of a strand of seven very pure copper wires weighing lbs. a knot, coated with chatterton's compound, which is impervious to water, then covered with four layers of gutta-percha alternating with four thin layers of the compound cementing the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to lbs. per knot. this core was served with hemp saturated in a preservative solution, and on the hemp as a padding were spirally wound eighteen single wires of soft steel, each covered with fine strands of manilla yam steeped in the preservative. the weight of the new cable was . cwt. per knot, or nearly twice the weight of the old, and it was stronger in proportion. ten years before, mr. marc isambard brunel, the architect of the great eastern, had taken mr. field to blackwall, where the leviathan was lying, and said to him, 'there is the ship to lay the atlantic cable.' she was now purchased to fulfil the mission. her immense hull was fitted with three iron tanks for the reception of , miles of cable, and her decks furnished with the paying-out gear. captain (now sir) james anderson, of the cunard steamer china, a thorough seaman, was appointed to the command, with captain moriarty, r.n., as chief navigating officer. mr. (afterwards sir) samuel canning was engineer for the contractors, the telegraph construction and maintenance company, and mr. de sauty their electrician; professor thomson and mr. cromwell fleetwood varley were the electricians for the atlantic telegraph company. the press was ably represented by dr. w. h. russell, correspondent of the times. the great eastern took on board seven or eight thousand tons of coal to feed her fires, a prodigious quantity of stores, and a multitude of live stock which turned her decks into a farmyard. her crew all told numbered men. at noon on saturday, july , , the great eastern left the nore for foilhommerum bay, valentia island, where the shore end was laid by the caroline. at . p.m. on sunday, july , amidst the firing of cannon and the cheers of the telegraph fleet, she started on her voyage at a speed of about four knots an hour. the weather was fine, and all went well until next morning early, when the boom of a gun signalled that a fault had broken out in the cable. it turned out that a splinter of iron wire had penetrated the core. more faults of the kind were discovered, and as they always happened in the same watch, there was a suspicion of foul play. in repairing one of these on july , after , miles had been payed out, the cable snapped near the stern of the ship, and the end was lost. 'all is over,' quietly observed mr. canning; and though spirited attempts were made to grapple the sunken line in two miles of water, they failed to recover it. the great eastern steamed back to england, where the indomitable mr. field issued another prospectus, and formed the anglo-american telegraph company, with a capital of l , , to lay a new cable and complete the broken one. on july , , the william cory laid the shore end at valentia, and on friday, july , about p.m., the great eastern started paying-out once more. [friday is regarded as an unlucky, and sunday as a lucky day by sailors. the great eastern started on sunday before and failed; she succeeded now. columbus sailed on a friday, and discovered america on a friday.] a private service of prayer was held at valentia by invitation of two directors of the company, but otherwise there was no celebration of the event. professor thomson was on board; but dr. w. h. russell had gone to the seat of the austro-prussian war, from which telegrams were received through the cable. the 'big ship' was attended by three consorts, the terrible, to act as a spy on the starboard how, and warn other vessels off the course, the medway on the port, and the albany on the starboard quarter, to drop or pick up buoys, and make themselves generally useful. despite the fickleness of the weather, and a 'foul flake,' or clogging of the line as it ran out of the tank, there was no interruption of the work. the 'old coffee mill,' as the sailors dubbed the paying-out gear, kept grinding away. 'i believe we shall do it this time, jack,' said one of the crew to his mate. on the evening of friday, july , the expedition made the entrance of trinity bay, newfoundland, in a thick fog, and next morning the great eastern cast her anchor at heart's content. flags were flying from the little church and the telegraph station on shore. the great eastern was dressed, three cheers were given, and a salute was fired. at a.m. a message from england cited these words from a leading article in the current times: 'it is a great work, a glory to our age and nation, and the men who have achieved it deserve to be honoured among the benefactors of their race.' 'treaty of peace signed between prussia and austria.' the shore end was landed during the day by the medway; and captain anderson, with the officers of the telegraph fleet, went in a body to the church to return thanks for the success of the expedition. congratulations poured in, and friendly telegrams were again exchanged between her majesty and the united states. the great work had been finally accomplished, and the two worlds were lastingly united. on august the great eastern put to sea again in order to grapple the lost cable of , and complete it to newfoundland. arriving in mid-ocean she proceeded to fish for the submerged line in two thousand fathoms of water, and after repeated failures, involving thirty casts of the grapnel, she hooked and raised it to surface, then spliced it to the fresh cable in her hold, and payed out to heart's content, where she arrived on saturday, september . there were now two fibres of intelligence between the two hemispheres. on his return home, professor thomson was among those who received the honour of knighthood for their services in connection with the enterprise. he deserved it. by his theory and apparatus he probably did more than any other man, with the exception of mr. field, to further the atlantic telegraph. we owe it to his admirable inventions, the mirror instrument of and the siphon recorder of , that messages through long cables are so cheap and fast, and, as a consequence, that ocean telegraphy is now so common. hence some account of these two instruments will not be out of place. sir william thomson's siphon recorder, in all its present completeness, must take rank as a masterpiece of invention. as used in the recording or writing in permanent characters of the messages sent through long submarine cables, it is the acknowledged chief of 'receiving instruments,' as those apparatus are called which interpret the electrical condition of the telegraph wire into intelligible signals. like other mechanical creations, no doubt its growth in idea and translation into material fact was a step-by-step process of evolution, culminating at last in its great fitness and beauty. the marvellous development of telegraphy within the last generation has called into existence a great variety of receiving instruments, each admirable in its way. the hughes, or the stock exchange instruments, for instance, print the message in roman characters; the sounders strike it out on stops or bells of different tone; the needle instruments indicate it by oscillations of their needles; the morse daubs it in ink on paper, or embosses it by a hard style; while bain's electro-chemical receiver stains it on chemically prepared paper. the meyer-baudot and the quadruple receive four messages at once and record them separately; while the harmonic telegraph of elisha gray can receive as many as eight simultaneously, by means of notes excited by the current in eight separate tuning forks. but all these instruments have one great drawback for delicate work, and, however suitable they may be for land lines, they are next to useless for long cables. they require a certain definite strength of current to work them, whatever it may be, and in general it is very considerable. most of the moving parts of the mechanism are comparatively heavy, and unless the current is of the proper strength to move them, the instrument is dumb, while in bain's the solution requires a certain power of current to decompose it and leave the stain. in overland lines the current traverses the wire suddenly, like a bullet, and at its full strength, so that if the current be sufficiently strong these instruments will be worked at once, and no time will be lost. but it is quite different on submarine cables. there the current is slow and varying. it travels along the copper wire in the form of a wave or undulation, and is received feebly at first, then gradually rising to its maximum strength, and finally dying away again as slowly as it rose. in the french atlantic cable no current can be detected by the most delicate galvanoscope at america for the first tenth of a second after it has been put on at brest; and it takes about half a second for the received current to reach its maximum value. this is owing to the phenomenon of induction, very important in submarine cables, but almost entirely absent in land lines. in submarine cables, as is well known, the copper wire which conveys the current is insulated from the sea-water by an envelope, usually of gutta-percha. now the electricity sent into this wire induces electricity of an opposite kind to itself in the sea-water outside, and the attraction set up between these two kinds 'holds back' the current in the wire, and retards its passage to the receiving station. it follows, that with a receiving instrument set to indicate a particular strength of current, the rate of signalling would be very slow on long cables compared to land lines; and that a different form of instrument is required for cable work. this fact stood greatly in the way of early cable enterprise. sir william (then professor) thomson first solved the difficulty by his invention of the 'mirror galvanometer,' and rendered at the same time the first atlantic cable company a commercial success. the merit of this receiving instrument is, that it indicates with extreme sensibility all the variations of the current in the cable, so that, instead of having to wait until each signal wave sent into the cable has travelled to the receiving end before sending another, a series of waves may be sent after each other in rapid succession. these waves, encroaching upon each other, will coalesce at their bases; but if the crests remain separate, the delicate decipherer at the other end will take cognisance of them and make them known to the eye as the distinct signals of the message. the mirror galvanometer is at once beautifully simple and exquisitely scientific. it consists of a very long fine coil of silk-covered copper wire, and in the heart of the coil, within a little air-chamber, a small round mirror, having four tiny magnets cemented to its back, is hung, by a single fibre of floss silk no thicker than a spider's line. the mirror is of film glass silvered, the magnets of hair-spring, and both together sometimes weigh only one-tenth of a grain. a beam of light is thrown from a lamp upon the mirror, and reflected by it upon a white screen or scale a few feet distant, where it forms a bright spot of light. when there is no current on the instrument, the spot of light remains stationary at the zero position on the screen; but the instant a current traverses the long wire of the coil, the suspended magnets twist themselves horizontally out of their former position, the mirror is of course inclined with them, and the beam of light is deflected along the screen to one side or the other, according to the nature of the current. if a positive current--that is to say, a current from the copper pole of the battery--gives a deflection to the right of zero, a negative current, or a current from the zinc pole of the battery, will give a deflection to the left of zero, and vice versa. the air in the little chamber surrounding the mirror is compressed at will, so as to act like a cushion, and 'deaden' the movements of the mirror. the needle is thus prevented from idly swinging about at each deflection, and the separate signals are rendered abrupt and 'dead beat,' as it is called. at a receiving station the current coming in from the cable has simply to be passed through the coil of the 'speaker' before it is sent into the ground, and the wandering light spot on the screen faithfully represents all its variations to the clerk, who, looking on, interprets these, and cries out the message word by word. the small weight of the mirror and magnets which form the moving part of this instrument, and the range to which the minute motions of the mirror can be magnified on the screen by the reflected beam of light, which acts as a long impalpable hand or pointer, render the mirror galvanometer marvellously sensitive to the current, especially when compared with other forms of receiving instruments. messages have been sent from england to america through one atlantic cable and back again to england through another, and there received on the mirror galvanometer, the electric current used being that from a toy battery made out of a lady's silver thimble, a grain of zinc, and a drop of acidulated water. the practical advantage of this extreme delicacy is, that the signal waves of the current may follow each other so closely as almost entirely to coalesce, leaving only a very slight rise and fall of their crests, like ripples on the surface of a flowing stream, and yet the light spot will respond to each. the main flow of the current will of course shift the zero of the spot, but over and above this change of place the spot will follow the momentary fluctuations of the current which form the individual signals of the message. what with this shifting of the zero and the very slight rise and fall in the current produced by rapid signalling, the ordinary land line instruments are quite unserviceable for work upon long cables. the mirror instrument has this drawback, however--it does not 'record' the message. there is a great practical advantage in a receiving instrument which records its messages; errors are avoided and time saved. it was to supply such a desideratum for cable work that sir william thomson invented the siphon recorder, his second important contribution to the province of practical telegraphy. he aimed at giving a graphic representation of the varying strength of the current, just as the mirror galvanometer gives a visual one. the difficulty of producing such a recorder was, as he himself says, due to a difficulty in obtaining marks from a very light body in rapid motion, without impeding that motion. the moving body must be quite free to follow the undulations of the current, and at the same time must record its motions by some indelible mark. as early as , sir william sent out to the red sea cable a piece of apparatus with this intent. the marker consisted of a light platinum wire, constantly emitting sparks from a rhumkorff coil, so as to perforate a line on a strip of moving paper; and it was so connected to the movable needle of a species of galvanometer as to imitate the motions of the needle. but before it reached the red sea the cable had broken down, and the instrument was returned dismantled, to be superseded at length by the siphon recorder, in which the marking point is a fine glass siphon emitting ink, and the moving body a light coil of wire hung between the poles of a magnet. the principle of the siphon recorder is exactly the inverse of the mirror galvanometer. in the latter we have a small magnet suspended in the centre of a large coil of wire--the wire enclosing the magnet, which is free to rotate round its own axis. in the former we have a small coil suspended between the poles of a large magnet--the magnet enclosing the coil, which is also free to rotate round its own axis. when a current passes through this coil, so suspended in the highly magnetic space between the poles of the magnet, the coil itself experiences a mechanical force, causing it to take up a particular position, which varies with the nature of the current, and the siphon which is attached to it faithfully figures its motion on the running paper. the point of the siphon does not touch the paper, although it is very close. it would impede the motion of the coil if it did. but the 'capillary attraction' of so fine a tube will not permit the ink to flow freely of itself, so the inventor, true to his instincts, again called in the aid of electricity, and electrified the ink. the siphon and reservoir are together supported by an ebonite bracket, separate from the rest of the instrument, and insulated from it; that is to say, electricity cannot escape from them to the instrument. the ink may, therefore, be electrified to an exalted state, or high potential as it is called, while the body of the instrument, including the paper and metal writing-tablet, are in connection with the earth, and at low potential, or none at all, for the potential of the earth is in general taken as zero. the ink, for example, is like a highly-charged thunder-cloud supported over the earth's surface. now the tendency of a charged body is to move from a place of higher to a place of lower potential, and consequently the ink tends to flow downwards to the writing-tablet. the only avenue of escape for it is by the fine glass siphon, and through this it rushes accordingly and discharges itself in a rain upon the paper. the natural repulsion between its like electrified particles causes the shower to issue in spray. as the paper moves over the pulleys a delicate hair line is marked, straight when the siphon is stationary, but curved when the siphon is pulled from side to side by the oscillations of the signal coil. it is to the mouse-mill that me must look both for the electricity which is used to electrify the ink and for the motive power which drives the paper. this unique and interesting little motor owes its somewhat epigrammatic title to the resemblance of the drum to one of those sparred wheels turned by white mice, and to the amusing fact of its capacity for performing work having been originally computed in terms of a 'mouse-power.' the mill is turned by a stream of electricity flowing from the battery above described, and is, in fact, an electro-magnetic engine worked by the current. the alphabet of signals employed is the 'morse code,' so generally in vogue throughout the world. in the morse code the letters of the alphabet are represented by combinations of two distinct elementary signals, technically called 'dots' and 'dashes,' from the fact that the morse recorder actually marks the message in long and short lines, or dots and dashes. in the siphon recorder script dots and dashes are represented by curves of opposite flexure. the condensers are merely used to sharpen the action of the current, and render the signals more concise and distinct on long cables. on short cables, say under three hundred miles long, they are rarely, if ever, used. the speed of signalling by the siphon recorder is of course regulated by the length of cable through which it is worked. the instrument itself is capable of a wide range of speed. the best operators cannot send over thirty-five words per minute by hand, but a hundred and twenty words or more per minute can be transmitted by an automatic sender, and the recorder has been found on land lines and short cables to write off the message at this incredible speed. when we consider that every word is, on the average, composed of fifteen separate waves, we may better appreciate the rapidity with which the siphon can move. on an ordinary cable of about a thousand miles long, the working speed is about twenty words per minute. on the french atlantic it is usually about thirteen, although as many as seventeen have sometimes been sent. the 'duplex' system, or method of telegraphing in opposite directions at once through the same wire, has of late years been applied, in connection with the recorder, to all the long cables of that most enterprising of telegraph companies--the eastern--so that both stations may 'speak' to each other simultaneously. thus the carrying capacity of the wire is in practice nearly doubled, and recorders are busy writing at both ends of the cable at once, as if the messages came up out of the sea itself. we have thus far followed out the recorder in its practical application to submarine telegraphy. let us now regard it for a moment in its more philosophic aspect. we are at once struck with its self-dependence as a machine, and even its resemblance in some respects to a living creature. all its activity depends on the galvanic current. from three separate sources invisible currents are led to its principal parts, and are at once physically changed. that entering the mouse-mill becomes transmuted in part into the mechanical motion of the revolving drum, and part into electricity of a more intense nature--into mimic lightning, in fact, with its accompaniments of heat and sound. that entering the signal magnet expends part of its force in the magnetism of the core. that entering the signal coil, which may be taken as the brain of the instrument, appears to us as intelligence. the recorder is now in use in all four quarters of the globe, from northern europe to southern brazil, from china to new england. many and complete are the adjustments for rendering it serviceable under a wide range of electrical conditions and climatic changes. the siphon is, of course, in a mechanical sense, the most delicate part, but, in an electrical sense, the mouse-mill proves the most susceptible. it is essential for the fine marking of the siphon that the ink should neither be too strongly nor too feebly electrified. when the atmosphere is moderately humid, a proper supply of electricity is generated by the mouse-mill, the paper is sufficiently moist, and the ink flows freely. but an excess of moisture in the air diminishes the available supply of exalted electricity. in fact, the damp depositing on the parts leads the electricity away, and the ink tends to clog in the siphon. on the other hand, drought not only supercharges the ink, but dries the paper so much that it insulates the siphon point from the metal tablet and the earth. there is then an insufficient escape for the electricity of the ink to earth; the ink ceases to flow down the siphon; the siphon itself becomes highly electrified and agitated with vibrations of its own; the line becomes spluttered and uncertain. various devices are employed at different stations to cure these local complaints. the electrician soon learns to diagnose and prescribe for this, his most valuable charge. at aden, where they suffer much from humidity, the mouse-mill is or has been surrounded with burning carbon. at malta a gas flame was used for the same purpose. at suez, where they suffer from drought, a cloud of steam was kept rising round the instrument, saturating the air and paper. at more temperate places the ordinary means of drying the air by taking advantage of the absorbing power of sulphuric acid for moisture prevailed. at marseilles the recorder acted in some respects like a barometer. marseilles is subject to sudden incursions of dry northerly winds, termed the mistral. the recorder never failed to indicate the mistral when it blew, and sometimes even to predict it by many hours. before the storm was itself felt, the delicate glass pen became agitated and disturbed, the frail blue line broken and irregular. the electrician knew that the mistral would blow before long, and, as it rarely blows for less than three days at a time, that rather rude wind, so dreaded by the marseillaise, was doubly dreaded by him. the recorder was first used experimentally at st. pierre, on the french atlantic cable, in . this was numbered , as we were told by mr. white of glasgow, the maker, whose skill has contributed not a little to the success of the recorder. no. was first used practically on the falmouth and gibraltar cable of the eastern telegraph company in july, . no. was also exhibited at mr. (now sir john) pender's telegraph soiree in . on that occasion, memorable even beyond telegraphic circles, 'three hundred of the notabilities of rank and fashion gathered together at mr. pender's house in arlington street, piccadilly, to celebrate the completion of submarine communication between london and bombay by the successful laying of the falmouth, gibraltar and malta and the british indian cable lines.' mr. pender's house was literally turned outside in; the front door was removed, the courtyard temporarily covered with an iron roof and the whole decorated in the grandest style. over the gateway was a gallery filled with the band of the scots fusilier guards; and over the portico of the house door hung the grapnel which brought up the cable, made resplendent to the eye by a coating of gold leaf. a handsome staircase, newly erected, permitted the guests to pass from the reception-room to the drawing-room. in the grounds at the back of the house stood the royal tent, where the prince of wales and a select party, including the duke of cambridge and lady mayo, wife of the viceroy of india at that time, were entertained at supper. into this tent were brought wires from india, america, egypt, and other places, and lady mayo sent off a message to india about half-past eleven, and had received a reply before twelve, telling her that her husband and sons were quite well at five o'clock the next morning. the recorder, which was shown in operation, naturally stood in the place of honour, and attracted great attention. the minor features of the recorder have been simplified by other inventors of late; for example, magnets of steel have been substituted for the electro-magnets which influence the swinging coil; and the ink, instead of being electrified by the mouse-mill, is shed on the paper by a rapid vibration of the siphon point. to introduce his apparatus for signalling on long submarine cables, sir william thomson entered into a partnership with mr. c. f. varley, who first applied condensers to sharpen the signals, and professor fleeming jenkin, of edinburgh university. in conjunction with the latter, he also devised an 'automatic curb sender,' or key, for sending messages on a cable, as the well-known wheatstone transmitter sends them on a land line. in both instruments the signals are sent by means of a perforated ribbon of paper; but the cable sender was the more complicated, because the cable signals are formed by both positive and negative currents, and not merely by a single current, whether positive or negative. moreover, to curb the prolongation of the signals due to induction, each signal was made by two opposite currents in succession--a positive followed by a negative, or a negative followed by a positive, as the case might be. the after-current had the effect of curbing its precursor. this self-acting cable key was brought out in , and tried on the lines of the eastern telegraph company. sir william thomson took part in the laying of the french atlantic cable of , and with professor jenkin was engineer of the western and brazilian and platino-brazilian cables. he was present at the laying of the para to pernambuco section of the brazilian coast cables in , and introduced his method of deep-sea sounding, in which a steel pianoforte wire replaces the ordinary land line. the wire glides so easily to the bottom that 'flying soundings' can be taken while the ship is going at full speed. a pressure-gauge to register the depth of the sinker has been added by sir william. about the same time he revived the sumner method of finding a ship's place at sea, and calculated a set of tables for its ready application. his most important aid to the mariner is, however, the adjustable compass, which he brought out soon afterwards. it is a great improvement on the older instrument, being steadier, less hampered by friction, and the deviation due to the ship's own magnetism can be corrected by movable masses of iron at the binnacle. sir william is himself a skilful navigator, and delights to cruise in his fine yacht, the lalla rookh, among the western islands, or up the mediterranean, or across the atlantic to madeira and america. his interest in all things relating to the sea perhaps arose, or at any rate was fostered, by his experiences on the agamemnon and the great eastern. babbage was among the first to suggest that a lighthouse might be made to signal a distinctive number by occultations of its light; but sir william pointed out the merits of the morse telegraphic code for the purpose, and urged that the signals should consist of short and long flashes of the light to represent the dots and dashes. sir william has done more than any other electrician to introduce accurate methods and apparatus for measuring electricity. as early as his mind was attracted to this subject. he pointed out that the experimental results of william snow harris were in accordance with the laws of coulomb. in the memoirs of the roman academy of sciences for he published a description of his new divided ring electrometer, which is based on the old electroscope of bohnenberger and since then he has introduced a chain or series of beautiful and effective instruments, including the quadrant electrometer, which cover the entire field of electrostatic measurement. his delicate mirror galvanometer has also been the forerunner of a later circle of equally precise apparatus for the measurement of current or dynamic electricity. to give even a brief account of all his physical researches would require a separate volume; and many of them are too abstruse or mathematical for the general reader. his varied services have been acknowledged by numerous distinctions, including the highest honour a british man of science can obtain--the presidency of the royal society of london, to which he was elected at the end of last year. sir william thomson has been all his life a firm believer in the truth of christianity, and his great scientific attainments add weight to the following words, spoken by him when in the chair at the annual meeting of the christian evidence society, may , :--'i have long felt that there was a general impression in the non-scientific world, that the scientific world believes science has discovered ways of explaining all the facts of nature without adopting any definite belief in a creator. i have never doubted that that impression was utterly groundless. it seems to me that when a scientific man says--as it has been said from time to time--that there is no god, he does not express his own ideas clearly. he is, perhaps, struggling with difficulties; but when he says he does not believe in a creative power, i am convinced he does not faithfully express what is in his own mind, he does not fully express his own ideas. he is out of his depth. 'we are all out of our depth when we approach the subject of life. the scientific man, in looking at a piece of dead matter, thinking over the results of certain combinations which he can impose upon it, is himself a living miracle, proving that there is something beyond that mass of dead matter of which he is thinking. his very thought is in itself a contradiction to the idea that there is nothing in existence but dead matter. science can do little positively towards the objects of this society. but it can do something, and that something is vital and fundamental. it is to show that what we see in the world of dead matter and of life around us is not a result of the fortuitous concourse of atoms. 'i may refer to that old, but never uninteresting subject of the miracles of geology. physical science does something for us here. st. peter speaks of scoffers who said that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation;" but the apostle affirms himself that "all these things shall be dissolved." it seems to me that even physical science absolutely demonstrates the scientific truth of these words. we feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever as they have done for the last six thousand years. in science, as in morals and politics, there is absolutely no periodicity. one thing we may prophesy of the future for certain--it will be unlike the past. everything is in a state of evolution and progress. the science of dead matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my life, is, i may say, strenuous on this point, that the age of the earth is definite. we do not say whether it is twenty million years or more, or less, but me say it is not indefinite. and we can say very definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years. here, then, we are brought face to face with the most wonderful of all miracles, the commencement of life on this earth. this earth, certainly a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot globe; all scientific men of the present day agree that life came upon this earth somehow. if some form or some part of the life at present existing came to this earth, carried on some moss-grown stone perhaps broken away from mountains in other worlds; even if some part of the life had come in that way--for there is nothing too far-fetched in the idea, and probably some such action as that did take place, since meteors do come every day to the earth from other parts of the universe;--still, that does not in the slightest degree diminish the wonder, the tremendous miracle, we have in the commencement of life in this world.' chapter v. charles william siemens. charles william siemens was born on april , , at the little village of lenthe, about eight miles from hanover, where his father, mr. christian ferdinand siemens, was 'domanen-pachter,' and farmed an estate belonging to the crown. his mother was eleonore deichmann, a lady of noble disposition, and william, or carl wilhelm, was the fourth son of a family of fourteen children, several of whom have distinguished themselves in scientific pursuits. of these, ernst werner siemens, the fourth child, and now the famous electrician of berlin, was associated with william in many of his inventions; fritz, the ninth child, is the head of the well-known dresden glass works; and carl, the tenth child, is chief of the equally well-known electrical works at st. petersburg. several of the family died young; others remained in germany; but the enterprising spirit, natural to them, led most of the sons abroad--walter, the twelfth child, dying at tiflis as the german consul there, and otto, the fourteenth child, also dying at the same place. it would be difficult to find a more remarkable family in any age or country. soon after the birth of william, mr. siemens removed to a larger estate which he had leased at menzendorf, near lubeck. as a child william was sensitive and affectionate, the baby of the family, liking to roam the woods and fields by himself, and curious to observe, but not otherwise giving any signs of the engineer. he received his education at a commercial academy in lubeck, the industrial school at magdeburg (city of the memorable burgomaster, otto von guericke), and at the university of gottingen, which he entered in , while in his eighteenth year. were he attended the chemical lectures of woehler, the discoverer of organic synthesis, and of professor himly, the well-known physicist, who was married to siemens's eldest sister, mathilde. with a year at gottingen, during which he laid the basis of his theoretical knowledge, the academical training of siemens came to an end, and he entered practical life in the engineering works of count stolberg, at magdeburg. at the university he had been instructed in mechanical laws and designs; here he learned the nature and use of tools and the construction of machines. but as his university career at gottingen lasted only about a year, so did his apprenticeship at the stolberg works. in this short time, however, he probably reaped as much advantage as a duller pupil during a far longer term. young siemens appears to have been determined to push his way forward. in his brother werner obtained a patent in prussia for electro-silvering and gilding; and in charles william came to england to try and introduce the process here. in his address on 'science and industry,' delivered before the birmingham and midland institute in , while the paris electrical exhibition was running, sir william gave a most interesting account of his experiences during that first visit to the country of his adoption. 'when,' said he, 'the electrotype process first became known, it excited a very general interest; and although i was only a young student at gottingen, under twenty years of age, who had just entered upon his practical career with a mechanical engineer, i joined my brother, werner siemens, then a young lieutenant of artillery in the prussian service, in his endeavours to accomplish electro-gilding; the first impulse in this direction having been given by professor c. himly, then of gottingen. after attaining some promising results, a spirit of enterprise came over me, so strong that i tore myself away from the narrow circumstances surrounding me, and landed at the east end of london with only a few pounds in my pocket and without friends, but with an ardent confidence of ultimate success within my breast. 'i expected to find some office in which inventions were examined into, and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one could direct me to such a place. in walking along finsbury pavement, i saw written up in large letters, "so-and-so" (i forget the name), "undertaker," and the thought struck me that this must be the place i was in quest of; at any rate, i thought that a person advertising himself as an "undertaker" would not refuse to look into my invention with a view of obtaining for me the sought-for recognition or reward. on entering the place i soon convinced myself, however, that i came decidedly too soon for the kind of enterprise here contemplated, and, finding myself confronted with the proprietor of the establishment, i covered my retreat by what he must have thought a very lame excuse. by dint of perseverance i found my way to the patent office of messrs. poole and carpmael, who received me kindly, and provided me with a letter of introduction to mr. elkington. armed with this letter, i proceeded to birmingham, to plead my cause before your townsman. 'in looking back to that time, i wonder at the patience with which mr. elkington listened to what i had to say, being very young, and scarcely able to find english words to convey my meaning. after showing me what he was doing already in the way of electro-plating, mr. elkington sent me back to london in order to read some patents of his own, asking me to return if, after perusal, i still thought i could teach him anything. to my great disappointment, i found that the chemical solutions i had been using were actually mentioned in one of his patents, although in a manner that would hardly have sufficed to enable a third person to obtain practical results. on my return to birmingham i frankly stated what i had found, and with this frankness i evidently gained the favour of another townsman of yours, mr. josiah mason, who had just joined mr. elkington in business, and whose name, as sir josiah mason, will ever be remembered for his munificent endowment of education. it was agreed that i should not be judged by the novelty of my invention, but by the results which i promised, namely, of being able to deposit with a smooth surface dwt. of silver upon a dish-cover, the crystalline structure of the deposit having theretofore been a source of difficulty. in this i succeeded, and i was able to return to my native country and my mechanical engineering a comparative croesus. 'but it was not for long, as in the following year ( ) i again landed in the thames with another invention, worked out also with my brother, namely, the chronometric governor, which, though less successful, commercially speaking, than the first, obtained for me the advantage of bringing me into contact with the engineering world, and of fixing me permanently in this country. this invention was in course of time applied by sir george airy, the then astronomer-royal, for regulating the motion of his great transit and touch-recording instrument at the royal observatory, where it still continues to be employed. 'another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process, found favour with faraday, "the great and the good," who made it the subject of a friday evening lecture at the royal institution. these two circumstances, combined, obtained for me an entry into scientific circles, and helped to sustain me in difficulty, until, by dint of a certain determination to win, i was able to advance step by step up to this place of honour, situated within a gunshot of the scene of my earliest success in life, but separated from it by the time of a generation. but notwithstanding the lapse of time, my heart still beats quick each time i come back to the scene of this, the determining incident of my life.' the 'anastatic' process, described by faraday in , and partly due to werner siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc. caustic baryta was applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of the ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with sulphuric acid. the letters were then transferred to the zinc by pressure, so as to be printed from. the process, though ingenious and of much interest at the time, has long ago been superseded by photographic methods. even at this time siemens had several irons in the fire. besides the printing process and the chronometric governor, which operated by the differential movement between the engine and a chronometer, he was occupied with some minor improvements at hoyle's calico printing works. he also engaged in railway works from time to time; and in he brought out a double cylinder air-pump, in which the two cylinders are so combined, that the compressing side of the first and larger cylinder communicated with the suction side of the second and smaller cylinder, and the limit of exhaustion was thereby much extended. the invention was well received at the time, but is now almost forgotten. siemens had been trained as a mechanical engineer, and, although he became an eminent electrician in later life, his most important work at this early stage was non-electrical; indeed, the greatest achievement of his life was non-electrical, for we must regard the regenerative furnace as his magnum opus. though in he published a paper in liebig's annalen der chemie on the 'mercaptan of selenium,' his mind was busy with the new ideas upon the nature of heat which were promulgated by carnot, clayperon, joule, clausius, mayer, thomson, and rankine. he discarded the older notions of heat as a substance, and accepted it as a form of energy. working on this new line of thought, which gave him an advantage over other inventors of his time, he made his first attempt to economise heat, by constructing, in , at the factory of mr. john hick, of bolton, an engine of four horse-power, having a condenser provided with regenerators, and utilising superheated steam. two years later he continued his experiments at the works of messrs. fox, henderson, and co., of smethwick, near birmingham, who had taken the matter in hand. the use of superheated steam was, however, attended with many practical difficulties, and the invention was not entirely successful, but it embraced the elements of success; and the society of arts, in , acknowledged the value of the principle, by awarding mr. siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser. various papers read before the institution of mechanical engineers, the institution of civil engineers, or appearing in dingler's journal and the journal of the franklin institute about this time, illustrate the workings of his mind upon the subject. that read in , before the institution of civil engineers, 'on the conversion of heat into mechanical effect,' was the first of a long series of communications to that learned body, and gained for its author the telford premium and medal. in it he contended that a perfect engine would be one in which all the heat applied to the steam was used up in its expansion behind a working piston, leaving none to be sent into a condenser or the atmosphere, and that the best results in any actual engine would be attained by carrying expansion to the furthest possible limit, or, in practice, by the application of a regenerator. anxious to realise his theories further, he constructed a twenty horse-power engine on the regenerative plan, and exhibited it at the paris universal exhibition of ; but, not realising his expectations, he substituted for it another of seven-horse power, made by m. farcot, of paris, which was found to work with considerable economy. the use of superheated steam, however, still proved a drawback, and the siemens engine has not been extensively used. on the other hand, the siemens water-meter, which he introduced in , has been very widely used, not only in this country, but abroad. it acts equally well under all variations of pressure, and with a constant or an intermittent supply. meanwhile his brother werner had been turning his attention to telegraphy, and the correspondence which never ceased between the brothers kept william acquainted with his doings. in , werner, then an officer in the prussian army, was appointed to a berth in the artillery workshops of berlin, where he began to take an interest in the new art of telegraphy. in werner patented his dial and printing telegraph instruments, which came into use all over germany, and introduced an automatic alarm on the same principle. these inventions led to his being made, in , a member of a commission in berlin for the introduction of electric telegraphs instead of semaphores. he advocated the use of gutta-percha, then a new material, for the insulation of underground wires, and in designed a screw-press for coating the wires with the gum rendered plastic by heat. the following year he laid the first great underground telegraph line from berlin to frankfort-on-the-main, and soon afterwards left the army to engage with mr. halske in the management of a telegraph factory which they had conjointly established in . in william took an office in john street, adelphi, with a view to practise as a civil engineer. eleven years later, mr. halske and william siemens founded in london the house of siemens, halske & co., which began with a small factory at millbank, and developed in course of time into the well-known firm of messrs. siemens brothers, and was recently transformed into a limited liability company. in william siemens became a naturalised englishman, and from this time forward took an active part in the progress of english engineering and telegraphy. he devoted a great part of his time to electrical invention and research; and the number of telegraph apparatus of all sorts--telegraph cables, land lines, and their accessories--which have emanated from the siemens telegraph works has been remarkable. the engineers of this firm have been pioneers of the electric telegraph in every quarter of the globe, both by land and sea. the most important aerial line erected by the firm was the indo-european telegraph line, through prussia, russia, and persia, to india. the north china cable, the platino-brazileira, and the direct united states cable, were laid by the firm, the latter in - so also was the french atlantic cable, and the two jay could atlantic cables. at the time of his death the manufacture and laying of the bennett-mackay atlantic cables was in progress at the company's works, charlton. some idea of the extent of this manufactory may be gathered from the fact that it gives employment to some , men. all branches of electrical work are followed out in its various departments, including the construction of dynamos and electric lamps. on july , , siemens was married at st. james's, paddington, to anne, the youngest daughter of mr. joseph gordon, writer to the signet, edinburgh, and brother to mr. lewis gordon, professor of engineering in the university of glasgow, he used to say that on march of that year he took oath and allegiance to two ladies in one day--to the queen and his betrothed. the marriage was a thoroughly happy one. although much engaged in the advancement of telegraphy, he was also occupied with his favourite idea of regeneration. the regenerative gas furnace, originally invented in by his brother friedrich, was perfected and introduced by him during many succeeding years. the difficulties overcome in the development of this invention were enormous, but the final triumph was complete. the principle of this furnace consists in utilising the heat of the products of combustion to warm up the gaseous fuel and air which enters the furnace. this is done by making these products pass through brickwork chambers which absorb their heat and communicate it to the gas and air currents going to the flame. an extremely high temperature is thus obtained, and the furnace has, in consequence, been largely used in the manufacture of glass and steel. before the introduction of this furnace, attempts had been made to produce cast-steel without the use of a crucible--that is to say, on the 'open hearth' of the furnace. reaumur was probably the first to show that steel could be made by fusing malleable iron with cast-iron. heath patented the process in ; and a quantity of cast-steel was actually prepared in this way, on the bed of a reverberatory furnace, by sudre, in france, during the year . but the furnace was destroyed in the act; and it remained for siemens, with his regenerative furnace, to realise the object. in mr. charles atwood, of tow law, agreed to erect such a furnace, and give the process a fair trial; but although successful in producing the steel, he was afraid its temper was not satisfactory, and discontinued the experiment. next year, however, siemens, who was not to be disheartened, made another attempt with a large furnace erected at the montlucon works, in france, where he was assisted by the late m. le chatellier, inspecteur-general des mines. some charges of steel were produced; but here again the roof of the furnace melted down, and the company which had undertaken the trials gave them up. the temperature required for the manufacture of the steel was higher than the melting point of most fire-bricks. further endeavours also led to disappointments; but in the end the inventor was successful. he erected experimental works at birmingham, and gradually matured his process until it was so far advanced that it could be trusted to the hands of others. siemens used a mixture of cast-steel and iron ore to make the steel; but another manufacturer, m. martin, of sireuil, in france, developed the older plan of mixing the cast-iron with wrought-iron scrap. while siemens was improving his means at birmingham, martin was obtaining satisfactory results with a regenerative furnace of his own design; and at the paris exhibition of samples of good open-hearth steel were shown by both manufacturers. in england the process is now generally known as the 'siemens-martin,' and on the continent as the 'martin-siemens' process. the regenerative furnace is the greatest single invention of charles william siemens. owing to the large demand for steel for engineering operations, both at home and abroad, it proved exceedingly remunerative. extensive works for the application of the process were erected at landore, where siemens prosecuted his experiments on the subject with unfailing ardour, and, among other things, succeeded in making a basic brick for the lining of his furnaces which withstood the intense heat fairly well. the process in detail consists in freeing the bath of melted pig-iron from excess of carbon by adding broken lumps of pure hematite or magnetite iron ore. this causes a violent boiling, which is kept up until the metal becomes soft enough, when it is allowed to stand to let the metal clear from the slag which floats in scum upon the top. the separation of the slag and iron is facilitated by throwing in some lime from time to time. spiegel, or specular iron, is then added; about per cent. more than in the scrap process. from to cwt. of ore are used in a -ton charge, and about half the metal is reduced and turned into steel, so that the yield in ingots is from to per cent. more than the weight of pig and spiegel iron in the charge. the consumption of coal is rather larger than in the scrap process, and is from to cwt. per ton of steel. the two processes of siemens and martin are often combined, both scrap and ore being used in the same charge, the latter being valuable as a tempering material. at present there are several large works engaged in manufacturing the siemens-martin steel in england, namely, the landore, the parkhead forge, those of the steel company of scotland, of messrs. vickers & co., sheffield, and others. these produced no less than , tons of steel during the year , and two years later the total output had risen to half a million tons. in the british admiralty built two iron-clads, the mercury and iris, of siemens-martin steel, and the experiment proved so satisfactory, that this material only is now used in the royal dockyards for the construction of hulls and boilers. moreover, the use of it is gradually extending in the mercantile marine. contemporaneous with his development of the open-hearth process, william siemens introduced the rotary furnace for producing wrought-iron direct from the ore without the need of puddling. the fervent heat of the siemens furnace led the inventor to devise a novel means of measuring high temperatures, which illustrates the value of a broad scientific training to the inventor, and the happy manner in which william siemens, above all others, turned his varied knowledge to account, and brought the facts and resources of one science to bear upon another. as early as , while engaged in testing the conductor of the malta to alexandria telegraph cable, then in course of manufacture, he was struck by the increase of resistance in metallic wires occasioned by a rise of temperature, and the following year he devised a thermometer based on the fact which he exhibited before the british association at manchester. mathiessen and others have since enunciated the law according to which this rise of resistance varies with rise of temperature; and siemens has further perfected his apparatus, and applied it as a pyrometer to the measurement of furnace fires. it forms in reality an electric thermometer, which will indicate the temperature of an inaccessible spot. a coil of platinum or platinum-alloy wire is enclosed in a suitable fire-proof case and put into the furnace of which the temperature is wanted. connecting wires, properly protected, lend from the coil to a differential voltameter, so that, by means of the current from a battery circulating in the system, the electric resistance of the coil in the furnace can be determined at any moment. since this resistance depends on the temperature of the furnace, the temperature call be found from the resistance observed. the instrument formed the subject of the bakerian lecture for the year . siemens's researches on this subject, as published in the journal of the society of telegraph engineers (vol. i., p. , and vol. iii., p. ), included a set of curves graphically representing the relation between temperature and electrical resistance in the case of various metals. the electric pyrometer, which is perhaps the most elegant and original of all william siemens's inventions, is also the link which connects his electrical with his metallurgical researches. his invention ran in two great grooves, one based upon the science of heat, the other based upon the science of electricity; and the electric thermometer was, as it were, a delicate cross-coupling which connected both. siemens might have been two men, if we are to judge by the work he did; and either half of the twin-career he led would of itself suffice to make an eminent reputation. the success of his metallurgical enterprise no doubt reacted on his telegraphic business. the making and laying of the malta to alexandria cable gave rise to researches on the resistance and electrification of insulating materials under pressure, which formed the subject of a paper read before the british association in . the effect of pressure up to atmospheres was observed, and the fact elicited that the inductive capacity of gutta-percha is not affected by increased pressure, whereas that of india-rubber is diminished. the electrical tests employed during the construction of the malta and alexandria cable, and the insulation and protection of submarine cables, also formed the subject of a paper which was read before the institution of civil engineers in . it is always interesting to trace the necessity which directly or indirectly was the parent of a particular invention; and in the great importance of an accurate record of the sea-depth in which a cable is being laid, together with the tedious and troublesome character of ordinary sounding by the lead-line, especially when a ship is actually paying out cable, we may find the requirements which led to the invention of the 'bathometer,' an instrument designed to indicate the depth of water over which a vessel is passing without submerging a line. the instrument was based on the ingenious idea that the attractive power of the earth on a body in the ship must depend on the depth of water interposed between it and the sea bottom; being less as the layer of water was thicker, owing to the lighter character of water as compared with the denser land. siemens endeavoured to render this difference visible by means of mercury contained in a chamber having a bottom extremely sensitive to the pressure of the mercury upon it, and resembling in some respects the vacuous chamber of an aneroid barometer. just as the latter instrument indicates the pressure of the atmosphere above it, so the bathometer was intended to show the pull of the earth below it; and experiment proved, we believe, that for every , fathoms of sea-water below the ship, the total gravity of the mercury was reduced by / part. the bathometer, or attraction-meter, was brought out in , and exhibited at the loan exhibition in south kensington. the elastic bottom of the mercury chamber was supported by volute springs which, always having the same tension, caused a portion of the mercury to rise or fall in a spiral tube of glass, according to the variations of the earth's attraction. the whole was kept at an even temperature, and correction was made for barometric influence. though of high scientific interest, the apparatus appears to have failed at the time from its very sensitiveness; the waves on the surface of the sea having a greater disturbing action on its readings than the change of depth. siemens took a great interest in this very original machine, and also devised a form applicable to the measurement of heights. although he laid the subject aside for some years, he ultimately took it up again, in hopes of producing a practical apparatus which would be of immediate service in the cable expeditions of the s.s. faraday. this admirable cable steamer of , tons register was built for messrs. siemens brothers by messrs. mitchell & co., at newcastle. the designs were mainly inspired by siemens himself; and after the hooper, now the silvertown, she was the second ship expressly built for cable purposes. all the latest improvements that electric science and naval engineering could suggest were in her united. with a length of feet, a width of feet, and a depth of feet in the hold, she was fitted with a rudder at each end, either of which could be locked when desired, and the other brought into play. two screw propellers, actuated by a pair of compound engines, were the means of driving the vessel, and they were placed at a slight angle to each other, so that when the engines were worked in opposite directions the faraday could turn completely round in her own length. moreover, as the ship could steam forwards or backwards with equal ease, it became unnecessary to pass the cable forward before hauling it in, if a fault were discovered in the part submerged: the motion of the ship had only to be reversed, the stern rudder fixed, and the bow rudder turned, while a small engine was employed to haul the cable back over the stern drum, which had been used a few minutes before to pay it out. the first expedition of the faraday was the laying of the direct united states cable in the winter of a work which, though interrupted by stormy weather, was resumed and completed in the summer of . she has been engaged in laying several atlantic cables since, and has been fitted with the electric light, a resource which has proved of the utmost service, not only in facilitating the night operations of paying-out, but in guarding the ship from collision with icebergs in foggy weather off the north american coast. mention of the electric light brings us to an important act of the inventor, which, though done on behalf of his brother werner, was pregnant with great consequences. this was his announcement before a meeting of the royal society, held on february , , of the discovery of the principle of reinforcing the field magnetism of magneto-electric generators by part or the whole of the current generated in the revolving armature--a principle which has been applied in the dynamo-electric machines, now so much used for producing electric light and effecting the transmission of power to a distance by means of the electric current. by a curious coincidence the same principle was enunciated by sir charles wheatstone at the very same meeting; while a few months previously mr. s. a. varley had lodged an application for a british patent, in which the same idea was set forth. the claims of these three inventors to priority in the discovery were, however, anticipated by at least one other investigator, herr soren hjorth, believed to be a dane by birth, and still remembered by a few living electricians, though forgotten by the scientific world at large, until his neglected specification was unexpectedly dug out of the musty archives of the british patent office and brought into the light. the announcement of siemens and wheatstone came at an apter time than hjorth's, and was more conspicuously made. above all, in the affluent and enterprising hands of the brothers siemens, it was not suffered to lie sterile, and the siemens dynamo-electric machine was its offspring. this dynamo, as is well known, differs from those of gramme and paccinotti chiefly in the longitudinal winding of the armature, and it is unnecessary to describe it here. it has been adapted by its inventors to all kinds of electrical work, electrotyping, telegraphy, electric lighting, and the propulsion of vehicles. the first electric tramway run at berlin in was followed by another at dusseldorf in , and a third at paris in . with all of these the name of werner siemens was chiefly associated; but william siemens had also taken up the matter, and established at his country house of sherwood, near tunbridge wells, an arrangement of dynamos and water-wheel, by which the power of a neighbouring stream was made to light the house, cut chaff turn washing-machines, and perform other household duties. more recently the construction of the electric railway from portrush to bushmills, at the giant's causeway, engaged his attention; and this, the first work of its kind in the united kingdom, and to all appearance the pioneer of many similar lines, was one of his very last undertakings. in the recent development of electric lighting, william siemens, whose fame had been steadily growing, was a recognised leader, although he himself made no great discoveries therein. as a public man and a manufacturer of great resources his influence in assisting the introduction of the light has been immense. the number of siemens machines and siemens electric lamps, together with measuring instruments such as the siemens electro-dynamometer, which has been supplied to different parts of the world by the firm of which he was the head, is very considerable, and probably exceeds that of any other manufacturer, at least in this country. employing a staff of skilful assistants to develop many of his ideas, dr. siemens was able to produce a great variety of electrical instruments for measuring and other auxiliary purposes, all of which bear the name of his firm, and have proved exceedingly useful in a practical sense. among the most interesting of siemens's investigations were his experiments on the influence of the electric light in promoting the growth of plants, carried out during the winter of in the greenhouses of sherwood. these experiments showed that plants do not require a period of rest, but continue to grow if light and other necessaries are supplied to them. siemens enhanced the daylight, and, as it were, prolonged it through the night by means of arc lamps, with the result of forcing excellent fruit and flowers to their maturity before the natural time in this climate. while siemens was testing the chemical and life-promoting influence of the electric arc light, he was also occupied in trying its temperature and heating power with an 'electric furnace,' consisting of a plumbago crucible having two carbon electrodes entering it in such a manner that the voltaic arc could be produced within it. he succeeded in fusing a variety of refractory metals in a comparatively short time: thus, a pound of broken files was melted in a cold crucible in thirteen minutes, a result which is not surprising when we consider that the temperature of the voltaic arc, as measured by siemens and rosetti, is between , and , deg. centigrade, or about one-third that of the probable temperature of the sun. sir humphry davy was the first to observe the extraordinary fusing power of the voltaic arc, but siemens first applied it to a practical purpose in his electric furnace. always ready to turn his inventive genius in any direction, the introduction of the electric light, which had given an impetus to improvement in the methods of utilising gas, led him to design a regenerative gas lamp, which is now employed on a small scale in this country, either for street lighting or in class-rooms and public halls. in this burner, as in the regenerative furnace, the products of combustion are made to warm up the air and gas which go to feed the flame, and the effect is a full and brilliant light with some economy of fuel. the use of coal-gas for heating purposes was another subject which he took up with characteristic earnestness, and he advocated for a time the use of gas stoves and fires in preference to those which burn coal, not only on account of their cleanliness and convenience, but on the score of preventing fogs in great cities, by checking the discharge of smoke into the atmosphere. he designed a regenerative gas and coke fireplace, in which the ingoing air was warmed by heat conducted from the back part of the grate; and by practical trials in his own office, calculated the economy of the system. the interest in this question, however, died away after the close of the smoke abatement exhibition; and the experiments of mr. aiken, of edinburgh, showed how futile was the hope that gas fires would prevent fogs altogether. they might indeed ameliorate the noxious character of a fog by checking the discharge of soot into the atmosphere; but mr. aiken's experiments showed that particles of gas were in themselves capable of condensing the moisture of the air upon them. the great scheme of siemens for making london a smokeless city, by manufacturing gas at the coal-pit and leading it in pipes from street to street, would not have rendered it altogether a fogless one, though the coke and gas fires would certainly have reduced the quantity of soot launched into the air. siemens's scheme was rejected by a committee of the house of lords on the somewhat mistaken ground that if the plan were as profitable as siemens supposed, it would have been put in practice long ago by private enterprise. from the problem of heating a room, the mind of siemens also passed to the maintenance of solar fires, and occupied itself with the supply of fuel to the sun. some physicists have attributed the continuance of solar heat to the contraction of the solar mass, and others to the impact of cometary matter. imbued with the idea of regeneration, and seeking in nature for that thrift of power which he, as an inventor, had always aimed at, siemens suggested a hypothesis on which the sun conserves its heat by a circulation of its fuel in space. the elements dissociated in the intense heat of the glowing orb rush into the cooler regions of space, and recombine to stream again towards the sun, where the self-same process is renewed. the hypothesis was a daring one, and evoked a great deal of discussion, to which the author replied with interest, afterwards reprinting the controversy in a volume, on the conservation of solar energy. whether true or not--and time will probably decide--the solar hypothesis of siemens revealed its author in a new light. hitherto he had been the ingenious inventor, the enterprising man of business, the successful engineer; but now he took a prominent place in the ranks of pure science and speculative philosophy. the remarkable breadth of his mind and the abundance of his energies were also illustrated by the active part he played in public matters connected with the progress of science. his munificent gifts in the cause of education, as much as his achievements in science, had brought him a popular reputation of the best kind; and his public utterances in connection with smoke abatement, the electric light. electric railways, and other topics of current interest, had rapidly brought him into a foremost place among english scientific men. during the last years of his life, siemens advanced from the shade of mere professional celebrity into the strong light of public fame. president of the british association in , and knighted in , siemens was a member of numerous learned societies both at home and abroad. in he became a member of the institution of civil engineers; and in he was elected a fellow of the royal society. he was twice president of the society of telegraph engineers and the institution of mechanical engineers, besides being a member of council of the institution of civil engineers, and a vice-president of the royal institution. the society of arts, as we have already seen, was the first to honour him in the country of his adoption, by awarding him a gold medal for his regenerative condenser in ; and in he became its chairman. many honours were conferred upon him in the course of his career--the telford prize in , gold medals at the various great exhibitions, including that of paris in , and a grand prix at the earlier paris exhibition of for his regenerative furnace. in he received the royal albert medal for his researches on heat, and in the bessemer medal of the iron and steel institute. moreover, a few days before his death, the council of the institution of civil engineers awarded him the howard quinquennial prize for his improvements in the manufacture of iron and steel. at the request of his widow, it took the form of a bronze copy of the 'mourners,' a piece of statuary by j. g. lough, originally exhibited at the great exhibition of , in the crystal palace. in the university of oxford conferred upon him the high distinction of d.c.l. (doctor of civil law); and besides being a member of several foreign societies, he was a dignitario of the brazilian order of the rose, and chevalier of the legion of honour. rich in honours and the appreciation of his contemporaries, in the prime of his working power and influence for good, and at the very climax of his career, sir william siemens was called away. the news of his death came with a shock of surprise, for hardly any one knew he had been ill. he died on the evening of monday, november , , at nine o'clock. a fortnight before, while returning from a managers' meeting of the royal institution, in company with his friend sir frederick bramwell, he tripped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, after crossing hamilton place, piccadilly, and fell heavily to the ground, with his left arm under him. though a good deal shaken by the fall, he attended at his office in queen anne's gate, westminster, the next and for several following days; but the exertion proved too much for him, and almost for the first time in his busy life he was compelled to lay up. on his last visit to the office he was engaged most of the time in dictating to his private secretary a large portion of the address which he intended to deliver as chairman of the council of the society of arts. this was on thursday, november , and the following saturday he awoke early in the morning with an acute pain about the heart and a sense of coldness in the lower limbs. hot baths and friction removed the pain, from which he did not suffer much afterwards. a slight congestion of the left lung was also relieved; and sir william had so far recovered that he could leave his room. on saturday, the th, he was to have gone for a change of air to his country seat at sherwood; but on wednesday, the th, he appears to have caught a chill which affected his lungs, for that night he was seized with a shortness of breath and a difficulty in breathing. though not actually confined to bed, he never left his room again. on the last day, and within four hours of his death, we are told, his two medical attendants, after consultation, spoke so hopefully of the future, that no one was prepared for the sudden end which was then so near. in the evening, while he was sitting in an arm-chair, very quiet and calm, a change suddenly came over his face, and he died like one who falls asleep. heart disease of long standing, aggravated by the fall, was the immediate cause; but the opinion has been expressed by one who knew him well, that siemens 'literally immolated himself on the shrine of labour.' at any rate he did not spare himself, and his intense devotion to his work proved fatal. every day was a busy one with siemens. his secretary was with him in his residence by nine o'clock nearly every morning, except on sundays, assisting him in work for one society or another, the correction of proofs, or the dictation of letters giving official or scientific advice, and the preparation of lectures or patent specifications. later on, he hurried across the park 'almost at racing speed,' to his offices at westminster, where the business of the landore-siemens steel company and the electrical works of messrs. siemens brothers and company was transacted. as chairman of these large undertakings, and principal inventor of the processes and systems carried out by them, he had a hundred things to attend to in connection with them, visitors to see, and inquiries to answer. in the afternoon and evenings he was generally engaged at council meetings of the learned societies, or directory meetings of the companies in which he was interested. he was a man who took little or no leisure, and though he never appeared to over-exert himself, few men could have withstood the strain so long. siemens was buried on monday, november , in kensal green cemetery. the interment was preceded by a funeral service held in westminster abbey, and attended by representatives of the numerous learned societies of which he had been a conspicuous member, by many leading men in all branches of science, and also by a large body of other friends and admirers, who thus united in doing honour to his memory, and showing their sense of the loss which all classes had sustained by his death. siemens was above all things a 'labourer.' unhasting, unresting labour was the rule of his life; and the only relaxation, not to say recreation, which he seems to have allowed himself was a change of task or the calls of sleep. this natural activity was partly due to the spur of his genius, and partly to his energetic spirit. for a man of his temperament science is always holding out new problems to solve and fresh promises of triumph. all he did only revealed more work to be done; and many a scheme lies buried in his grave. though siemens was a man of varied powers, and occasionally gave himself to pure speculation in matters of science, his mind was essentially practical; and it was rather as an engineer than a discoverer that he was great. inventions are associated with his name, not laws or new phenomena. standing on the borderland between pure and applied science, his sympathies were yet with the latter; and as the outgoing president of the british association at southport, in , he expressed the opinion that 'in the great workshop of nature there are no lines of demarcation to be drawn between the most exalted speculation and common-place practice.' the truth of this is not to be gain-said, but it is the utterance of an engineer who judges the merit of a thing by its utility. he objected to the pursuit of science apart from its application, and held that the man of science does most for his kind who shows the world how to make use of scientific results. such a view was natural on the part of siemens, who was himself a living representative of the type in question; but it was not the view of such a man as faraday or newton, whose pure aim was to discover truth, well knowing that it would be turned to use thereafter. in faraday's eyes the new principle was a higher boon than the appliance which was founded upon it. tried by his own standard, however, siemens was a conspicuous benefactor of his fellow-men; and at the time of his decease he had become our leading authority upon applied science. in electricity he was a pioneer of the new advances, and happily lived to obtain at least a pisgah view of the great future which evidently lies before that pregnant force. if we look for the secret of siemens's remarkable success, we shall assuredly find it in an inventive mind, coupled with a strong commercial instinct, and supported by a physical energy which enabled him to labour long and incessantly. it is told that when a mechanical problem was brought to him for solution, he would suggest six ways of overcoming the difficulty, three of which would be impracticable, the others feasible, and one at least successful. from this we gather that his mind was fertile in expedients. the large works which he established are also a proof that, unlike most inventors, he did not lose his interest in an invention, or forsake it for another before it had been brought into the market. on the contrary, he was never satisfied with an invention until it was put into practical operation. to the ordinary observer, siemens did not betray any signs of the untiring energy that possessed him. his countenance was usually serene and tranquil, as that of a thinker rather than a man of action; his demeanour was cool and collected; his words few and well-chosen. in his manner, as well as in his works, there was no useless waste of power. to the young he was kind and sympathetic, hearing, encouraging, advising; a good master, a firm friend. his very presence had a calm and orderly influence on those about him, which when he presided at a public meeting insensibly introduced a gracious tone. the diffident took heart before him, and the presumptuous were checked. the virtues which accompanied him into public life did not desert him in private. in losing him, we have lost not only a powerful intellect, but a bright example, and an amiable man. chapter vi. fleeming jenkin. the late fleeming jenkin, professor of engineering in edinburgh university, was remarkable for the versatility of his talent. known to the world as the inventor of telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer of the first rank, a lucid lecturer, and a good linguist, a skilful critic, a writer and actor of plays, and a clever sketcher. in popular parlance, jenkin was a dab at everything. his father, captain charles jenkin, r.n., was the second son of mr. charles jenkin, of stowting court, himself a naval officer, who had taken part in the actions with de grasse. stowting court, a small estate some six miles north of hythe, had been in the family since the year , and was held of the crown by the feudal service of six men and a constable to defend the sea-way at sandgate. certain jenkins had settled in kent during the reign of henry viii., and claimed to have come from yorkshire. they bore the arms of jenkin ap phillip of st. melans, who traced his descent from 'guaith voeth,' lord of cardigan. while cruising in the west indies, carrying specie, or chasing buccaneers and slavers, charles jenkin, junior, was introduced to the family of a fellow midshipman, son of mr. jackson, custos rotulorum of kingston, jamaica, and fell in love with henrietta camilla, the youngest daughter. mr. jackson came of a yorkshire stock, said to be of scottish origin, and susan, his wife, was a daughter of [sir] colin campbell, a greenock merchant, who inherited but never assumed the baronetcy of auchinbreck. [according to burke's peerage ( ), the title went to another branch.] charles jenkin, senior, died in , leaving his estate so heavily encumbered, through extravagance and high living, that only the mill-farm was saved for john, the heir, an easy-going, unpractical man, with a turn for abortive devices. his brother charles married soon afterwards, and with the help of his wife's money bought in most of stowting court, which, however, yielded him no income until late in life. charles was a useful officer and an amiable gentleman; but lacking energy and talent, he never rose above the grade of commander, and was superseded after forty-five years of service. he is represented as a brave, single-minded, and affectionate sailor, who on one occasion saved several men from suffocation by a burning cargo at the risk of his own life. henrietta camilla jackson, his wife, was a woman of a strong and energetic character. without beauty of countenance, she possessed the art of pleasing, and in default of genius she was endowed with a variety of gifts. she played the harp, sang, and sketched with native art. at seventeen, on hearing pasta sing in paris, she sought out the artist and solicited lessons. pasta, on hearing her sing, encouraged her, and recommended a teacher. she wrote novels, which, however, failed to make their mark. at forty, on losing her voice, she took to playing the piano, practising eight hours a day; and when she was over sixty she began the study of hebrew. the only child of this union was henry charles fleeming jenkin, generally called fleeming jenkin, after admiral fleeming, one of his father's patrons. he was born on march , , in a building of the government near dungeness, his father at that time being on the coast-guard service. his versatility was evidently derived from his mother, who, owing to her husband's frequent absence at sea and his weaker character, had the principal share in the boy's earlier training. jenkin was fortunate in having an excellent education. his mother took him to the south of scotland, where, chiefly at barjarg, she taught him drawing among other things, and allowed him to ride his pony on the moors. he went to school at jedburgh, and afterwards to the edinburgh academy, where he carried off many prizes. among his schoolfellows were clerk maxwell and peter guthrie tait, the friends of his maturer life. on the retirement of his father the family removed to frankfort in , partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's instruction. here fleeming and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry. fleeming was precocious, and at thirteen had finished a romance of three hundred lines in heroic measure, a scotch novel, and innumerable poetical fragments, none of which are now extant. he learned german in frankfort; and on the family migrating to paris the following year, he studied french and mathematics under a certain m. deluc. while here, fleeming witnessed the outbreak of the revolution of , and heard the first shot. in a letter written to an old schoolfellow while the sound still rang in his ears, and his hand trembled with excitement, he gives a boyish account of the circumstances. the family were living in the rue caumartin, and on the evening of february he and his father were taking a walk along the boulevards, which were illuminated for joy at the resignation of m. guizot. they passed the residence of the foreign minister, which was guarded with troops, and further on encountered a band of rioters marching along the street with torches, and singing the marseillaise. after them came a rabble of men and women of all sorts, rich and poor, some of them armed with sticks and sabres. they turned back with these, the boy delighted with the spectacle, 'i remarked to papa' (he writes),'i would not have missed the scene for anything. i might never see such a splendid one; when pong went one shot. every face went pale: r--r--r--r--r went the whole detachment [of troops], and the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. such a scene!---ladies, gentlemen, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up, and those that went down could not rise--they were trampled over.... i ran a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards, and felt tolerably safe; looked for papa; did not see him; so walked on quickly, giving the news as i went.' next day, while with his father in the place de la concorde, which was filled with troops, the gates of the tuileries garden were suddenly flung open, and out galloped a troop of cuirassiers, in the midst of whom was an open carriage containing the king and queen, who had abdicated. then came the sacking of the tuileries, the people mounting a cannon on the roof, and firing blank cartridges to testify their joy. 'it was a sight to see a palace sacked' (wrote the boy), 'and armed vagabonds firing out of the windows, and throwing shirts, papers, and dresses of all kinds out.... they are not rogues, the french; they are not stealing, burning, or doing much harm.' [memoir of fleeming jenkin, by r. l. stevenson.] the revolution obliged the jenkins to leave paris, and they proceeded to genoa, where they experienced another, and mrs. jenkin, with her son and sister-in-law, had to seek the protection of a british vessel in the harbour, leaving their house stored with the property of their friends, and guarded by the union jack and captain jenkin. at genoa, fleeming attended the university, and was its first protestant student. professor bancalari was the professor of natural philosophy, and lectured on electro-magnetism, his physical laboratory being the best in italy. jenkin took the degree of m.a. with first-class honours, his special subject having been electro-magnetism. the questions in the examinations were put in latin, and answered in italian. fleeming also attended an art school in the city, and gained a silver medal for a drawing from one of raphael's cartoons. his holidays were spent in sketching, and his evenings in learning to play the piano; or, when permissible, at the theatre or opera-house; for ever since hearing rachel recite the marseillaise at the theatre francaise, he had conceived a taste for acting. in fleeming spent some time in a genoese locomotive shop under mr. philip taylor, of marseilles; but on the death of his aunt anna, who lived with them, captain jenkin took his family to england, and settled in manchester, where the lad, in , was apprenticed to mechanical engineering at the works of messrs. fairbairn, and from half-past eight in the morning till six at night had, as he says, 'to file and chip vigorously, in a moleskin suit, and infernally dirty.' at home he pursued his studies, and was for a time engaged with dr. bell in working out a geometrical method of arriving at the proportions of greek architecture. his stay amidst the smoke and bustle of manchester, though in striking contrast to his life in genoa, was on the whole agreeable. he liked his work, had the good spirits of youth, and made some pleasant friends, one of them the authoress, mrs. gaskell. even as a boy he was disputatious, and his mother tells of his having overcome a consul at genoa in a political discussion when he was only sixteen, 'simply from being well-informed on the subject, and honest. he is as true as steel,' she writes, 'and for no one will he bend right or left... do not fancy him a bobadil; he is only a very true, candid boy. i am so glad he remains in all respects but information a great child.' on leaving fairbairn's he was engaged for a time on a survey for the proposed lukmanier railway, in switzerland, and in he entered the engineering works of mr. penn, at greenwich, as a draughtsman, and was occupied on the plans of a vessel designed for the crimean war. he did not care for his berth, and complained of its late hours, his rough comrades, with whom he had to be 'as little like himself as possible,' and his humble lodgings, 'across a dirty green and through some half-built streets of two-storied houses.... luckily,' he adds, 'i am fond of my profession, or i could not stand this life.' there was probably no real hardship in his present situation, and thousands of young engineers go through the like experience at the outset of their career without a murmur,' and even with enjoyment; but jenkin had been his mother's pet until then, with a girl's delicate training, and probably felt the change from home more keenly on that account. at night he read engineering and mathematics, or carlyle and the poets, and cheered his drooping spirits with frequent trips to london to see his mother. another social pleasure was his visits to the house of mr. alfred austin, a barrister, who became permanent secretary to her majesty's office of works and public buildings, and retired in with the title of c.b. his wife, eliza barron, was the youngest daughter of mr. e. barron, a gentleman of norwich, the son of a rich saddler, or leather-seller, in the borough, who, when a child, had been patted on the head, in his father's shop, by dr. johnson, while canvassing for mr. thrale. jenkin had been introduced to the austins by a letter from mrs. gaskell, and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous manners, without any pretence or affectation. 'each of the austins,' says mr. stevenson, in his memoir of jenkin, to which we are much indebted, 'was full of high spirits; each practised something of the same repression; no sharp word was uttered in the house. the same point of honour ruled them: a guest was sacred, and stood within the pale from criticism.' in short, the austins were truly hospitable and cultured, not merely so in form and appearance. it was a rare privilege and preservative for a solitary young man in jenkin's position to have the entry into such elevating society, and he appreciated his good fortune. annie austin, their only child, had been highly educated, and knew greek among other things. though jenkin loved and admired her parents, he did not at first care for annie, who, on her part, thought him vain, and by no means good-looking. mr. stevenson hints that she vanquished his stubborn heart by correcting a 'false quantity' of his one day, for he was the man to reflect over a correction, and 'admire the castigator.' be this as it may, jenkin by degrees fell deeply in love with her. he was poor and nameless, and this made him diffident; but the liking of her parents for him gave him hope. moreover, he had entered the service of messrs. liddell and gordon, who were engaged in the new work of submarine telegraphy, which satisfied his aspirations, and promised him a successful career. with this new-born confidence in his future, he solicited the austins for leave to court their daughter, and it was not withheld. mrs. austin consented freely, and mr. austin only reserved the right to inquire into his character. neither of them mentioned his income or prospects, and jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness, exclaimed in one of his letters, 'are these people the same as other people?' thus permitted, he addressed himself to annie, and was nearly rejected for his pains. miss austin seems to have resented his courtship of her parents first; but the mother's favour, and his own spirited behaviour, saved him, and won her consent. then followed one of the happiest epochs in jenkin's life. after leaving penn's he worked at railway engineering for a time under messrs. liddell and gordon; and, in , became engineer to messrs. r. s. newall & co., of gateshead, who shared the work of making the first atlantic cable with messrs. glass, elliott & co., of greenwich. jenkin was busy designing and fitting up machinery for cableships, and making electrical experiments. 'i am half crazy with work,' he wrote to his betrothed; 'i like it though: it's like a good ball, the excitement carries you through.' again he wrote, 'my profession gives me all the excitement and interest i ever hope for.'... 'i am at the works till ten, and sometimes till eleven. but i have a nice office to sit in, with a fire to myself, and bright brass scientific instruments all round me, and books to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy myself amazingly. i find the study of electricity so entertaining that i am apt to neglect my other work.'... 'what shall i compare them to,' he writes of some electrical experiments, 'a new song? or a greek play?' in the spring of he was fitting out the s.s. elba, at birkenhead, for his first telegraph cruise. it appears that in mr. henry brett attempted to lay a cable across the mediterranean between cape spartivento, in the south of sardinia, and a point near bona, on the coast of algeria. it was a gutta-percha cable of six wires or conductors, and manufactured by messrs. glass & elliott, of greenwich--a firm which afterwards combined with the gutta-percha company, and became the existing telegraph construction and maintenance company. mr. brett laid the cable from the result, a sailing ship in tow, instead of a more manageable steamer; and, meeting with fathoms of water when twenty-five miles from land, the cable ran out so fast that a tangled skein came up out of the hold, and the line had to be severed. having only miles on board to span the whole distance of miles, he grappled the lost cable near the shore, raised it, and 'under-run' or passed it over the ship, for some twenty miles, then cut it, leaving the seaward end on the bottom. he then spliced the ship's cable to the shoreward end and resumed his paying-out; but after seventy miles in all were laid, another rapid rush of cable took place, and mr. brett was obliged to cut and abandon the line. another attempt was made the following year, but with no better success. mr. brett then tried to lay a three-wire cable from the steamer dutchman, but owing to the deep water--in some places fathoms--its egress was so rapid, that when he came to a few miles from galita, his destination on the algerian coast, he had not enough cable to reach the land. he therefore telegraphed to london for more cable to be made and sent out, while the ship remained there holding to the end. for five days he succeeded in doing so, sending and receiving messages; but heavy weather came on, and the cable parted, having, it is said, been chafed through by rubbing on the bottom. after that mr. brett went home. it was to recover the lost cable of these expeditions that the elba was got ready for sea. jenkin had fitted her out the year before for laying the cagliari to malta and corfu cables; but on this occasion she was better equipped. she had a new machine for picking up the cable, and a sheave or pulley at the bows for it to run over, both designed by jenkin, together with a variety of wooden buoys, ropes, and chains. mr. liddell, assisted by mr. f. c. webb and fleeming jenkin, were in charge of the expedition. the latter had nothing to do with the electrical work, his care being the deck machinery for raising the cable; but it entailed a good deal of responsibility, which was flattering and agreeable to a young man of his parts. 'i own i like responsibility,' he wrote to miss austin, while fitting up the vessel; 'it flatters one; and then, your father might say, i have more to gain than lose. moreover, i do like this bloodless, painless combat with wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to do my will, licking the clumsy cubs into an active shape, seeing the child of to-day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at his appointed task.' another letter, dated may , gives a picture of the start. 'not a sailor will join us till the last moment; and then, just as the ship forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the men, half tipsy, clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty little girls stand still and cry outright, regardless of all eyes.' the elba arrived at bona on june , and jenkin landed at fort genova, on cape hamrah, where some arabs were building a land line. 'it was a strange scene,' he writes, 'far more novel than i had imagined; the high, steep bank covered with rich, spicy vegetation, of which i hardly knew one plant. the dwarf palm, with fan-like leaves, growing about two feet high, forms the staple verdure.' after dining in fort genova, he had nothing to do but watch the sailors ordering the arabs about under the 'generic term "johnny."' he began to tire of the scene, although, as he confesses, he had willingly paid more money for less strange and lovely sights. jenkin was not a dreamer; he disliked being idle, and if he had had a pencil he would have amused himself in sketching what he saw. that his eyes were busy is evident from the particulars given in his letter, where he notes the yellow thistles and 'scotch-looking gowans' which grow there, along with the cistus and the fig-tree. they left bona on june , and, after calling at cagliari and chia, arrived at cape spartivento on the morning of june . the coast here is a low range of heathy hills, with brilliant green bushes and marshy pools. mr. webb remarks that its reputation for fever was so bad as to cause italian men-of-war to sheer off in passing by. jenkin suffered a little from malaria, but of a different origin. 'a number of the saturday review here,' he writes; 'it reads so hot and feverish, so tomb-like and unhealthy, in the midst of dear nature's hills and sea, with good wholesome work to do.' there were several pieces of submerged cable to lift, two with their ends on shore, and one or two lying out at sea. next day operations were begun on the shore end, which had become buried under the sand, and could not be raised without grappling. after attempts to free the cable from the sand in small boats, the elba came up to help, and anchored in shallow water about sunset. curiously enough, the anchor happened to hook, and so discover the cable, which was thereupon grappled, cut, and the sea end brought on board over the bow sheave. after being passed six times round the picking-up drum it was led into the hold, and the elba slowly forged ahead, hauling in the cable from the bottom as she proceeded. at half-past nine she anchored for the night some distance from the shore, and at three next morning resumed her picking up. 'with a small delay for one or two improvements i had seen to be necessary last night,' writes jenkin, 'the engine started, and since that time i do not think there has been half an hour's stoppage. a rope to splice, a block to change, a wheel to oil, an old rusted anchor to disengage from the cable, which brought it up--these have been our only obstructions. sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty revolutions at last my little engine tears away. the even black rope comes straight out of the blue, heaving water, passes slowly round an open-hearted, good-tempered-looking pulley, five feet in diameter, aft past a vicious nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong, through a gentle guide on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body, and says, "come you must," as plain as drum can speak; the chattering pauls say, "i've got him, i've got him; he can't come back," whilst black cable, much slacker and easier in mind and body, is taken by a slim v-pulley and passed down into the huge hold, where half a dozen men put him comfortably to bed after his exertion in rising from his long bath. 'i am very glad i am here, for my machines are my own children, and i look on their little failings with a parent's eye, and lead them into the path of duty with gentleness and firmness. i am naturally in good spirits, but keep very quiet, for misfortunes may arise at any instant; moreover, to-morrow my paying-out apparatus will be wanted should all go well, and that will be another nervous operation. fifteen miles are safely in, but no one knows better than i do that nothing is done till all is done.' june .--'it would amuse you to see how cool (in head) and jolly everybody is. a testy word now and then shows the nerves are strained a little, but every one laughs and makes his little jokes as if it were all in fun....i enjoy it very much.' june , sunday.--'it now (at . ) blows a pretty stiff gale, and the sea has also risen, and the elba's bows rise and fall about nine feet. we make twelve pitches to the minute, and the poor cable must feel very sea-sick by this time. we are quite unable to do anything, and continue riding at anchor in one thousand fathoms, the engines going constantly, so as to keep the ship's bows close up to the cable, which by this means hangs nearly vertical, and sustains no strain but that caused by its own weight and the pitching of the vessel. we were all up at four, but the weather entirely forbade work for to-day; so some went to bed, and most lay down, making up our lee-way, as we nautically term our loss of sleep. i must say liddell is a fine fellow, and keeps his patience and his temper wonderfully; and yet how he does fret and fume about trifles at home!' june .--'by some odd chance a times of june has found its way on board through the agency of a wretched old peasant who watches the end of the line here. a long account of breakages in the atlantic trial trip. to-night we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to the mile. i long to have a tug at him; he may puzzle me; and though misfortunes, or rather difficulties, are a bore at the time, life, when working with cables, is tame without them.-- p.m. hurrah! he is hooked--the big fellow--almost at the first cast. he hangs under our bows, looking so huge and imposing that i could find it in my heart to be afraid of him.' june .--'we went to a little bay called chia, where a fresh-water stream falls into the sea, and took in water. this is rather a long operation, so i went up the valley with mr. liddell. the coast here consists of rocky mountains to feet high, covered with shrubs of a brilliant green. on landing, our first amusement was watching the hundreds of large fish who lazily swam in shoals about the river. the big canes on the further side hold numberless tortoises, we are told, but see none, for just now they prefer taking a siesta. a little further on, and what is this with large pink flowers in such abundance?--the oleander in full flower! at first i fear to pluck them, thinking they must be cultivated and valuable; but soon the banks show a long line of thick tall shrubs, one mass of glorious pink and green, set there in a little valley, whose rocks gleam out blue and purple colours, such as pre-raphaelites only dare attempt, shining out hard and weird-like amongst the clumps of castor-oil plants, cistus, arbor-vitae, and many other evergreens, whose names, alas! i know not; the cistus is brown now, the rest all deep and brilliant green. large herds of cattle browse on the baked deposit at the foot of these large crags. one or two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, etc., ask for cigars; partridges whirr up on either side of us; pigeons coo and nightingales sing amongst the blooming oleander. we get six sheep, and many fowls too, from the priest of the small village, and then run back to spartivento and make preparations for the morning.' june .--'the short length (of the big-cable) we have picked up was covered at places with beautiful sprays of coral, twisted and twined with shells of those small fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at home. poor little things! they died at once, with their little bells and delicate bright tints.' june .--'hour after hour i stand on the fore-castle-head picking off little specimens of polypi and coral, or lie on the saloon deck reading back numbers of the times, till something hitches, and then all is hurly-burly once more. there are awnings all along the ship, and a most ancient and fish-like smell (from the decaying polypi) beneath.' june .--'yesterday the cable was often a lovely sight, coming out of the water one large incrustation of delicate net-like corals and long white curling shells. no portion of the dirty black wire was visible; instead we had a garland of soft pink, with little scarlet sprays and white enamel intermixed. all was fragile, however, and could hardly be secured in safety; and inexorable iron crushed the tender leaves to atoms.' june .--'the whole day spent in dredging, without success. this operation consists in allowing the ship to drift slowly across the line where you expect the cable to be, while at the end of a long rope, fast either to the bow or stern, a grapnel drags along the ground. the grapnel is a small anchor, made like four pot-hooks tied back to back. when the rope gets taut the ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on its prongs. i am much discontented with myself for idly lounging about and reading westward ho! for the second time instead of taking to electricity or picking up nautical information.' during the latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid, and two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the mast-head and fore-yard tackle. photographs of this ravelled cable were for a long time exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of messrs. newall & co's. shop in the strand, where we remember to have seen them. by july the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered, and a portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit for use, owing to its twisted condition. their work was over, but an unfortunate accident marred its conclusion. on the evening of the nd the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely injured that he lay for many weeks at cagliari. jenkin's knowledge of languages made him useful as an interpreter; but in mentioning this incident to miss austin, he writes, 'for no fortune would i be a doctor to witness these scenes continually. pain is a terrible thing.' in the beginning of he made the acquaintance of sir william thomson, his future friend and partner. mr. lewis gordon, of messrs. r. s. newall & co., afterwards the earliest professor of engineering in a british university, was then in glasgow seeing sir william's instruments for testing and signalling on the first atlantic cable during the six weeks of its working. mr. gordon said he should like to show them to 'a young man of remarkable ability,' engaged at their birkenhead works, and jenkin, being telegraphed for, arrived next morning, and spent a week in glasgow, mostly in sir william's class-room and laboratory at the old college. sir william tells us that he was struck not only with jenkin's brightness and ability, but with his resolution to understand everything spoken of; to see, if possible, thoroughly into every difficult question, and to slur over nothing. 'i soon found,' he remarks, 'that thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the moral side of his character.' their talk was chiefly on the electric telegraph; but jenkin was eager, too, on the subject of physics. after staying a week he returned to the factory; but he began experiments, and corresponded briskly with sir william about cable work. that great electrician, indeed, seems to have infected his visitor during their brief contact with the magnetic force of his personality and enthusiasm. the year was propitious, and, in addition to this friend, fortune about the same time bestowed a still better gift on jenkin. on saturday, february , during a four days' leave, he was married to miss austin at northiam, returning to his work the following tuesday. this was the great event of his life; he was strongly attached to his wife, and his letters reveal a warmth of affection, a chivalry of sentiment, and even a romance of expression, which a casual observer would never have suspected in him. jenkin seemed to the outside world a man without a heart, and yet we find him saying in the year , 'people may write novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of marriage.' five weeks before his death he wrote to her, 'your first letter from bournemouth gives me heavenly pleasure--for which i thank heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on earth.' during the summer he enjoyed another telegraph cruise in the mediterranean, a sea which for its classical memories, its lovely climate, and diversified scenes, is by far the most interesting in the world. this time the elba was to lay a cable from the greek islands of syra and candia to egypt. cable-laying is a pleasant mode of travel. many of those on board the ship are friends and comrades in former expeditions, and all are engaged in the same venture. some have seen a good deal of the world, both in and out of the beaten track; they have curious 'yarns to spin,' and useful hints or scraps of worldly wisdom to bestow. the voyage out is like a holiday excursion, for it is only the laying that is arduous, and even that is lightened by excitement. glimpses are got of hide-away spots, where the cable is landed, perhaps. on the verge of the primeval forest or near the port of a modern city, or by the site of some ruined monument of the past. the very magic of the craft and its benefit to the world are a source of pleasure to the engineer, who is generally made much of in the distant parts he has come to join. no doubt there are hardships to be borne, sea-sickness, broken rest, and anxiety about the work--for cables are apt suddenly to fail, and the ocean is treacherous; but with all its drawbacks this happy mixture of changing travel and profitable labour is very attractive, especially to a young man. the following extracts from letters to his wife will illustrate the nature of the work, and also give an idea of jenkin's clear and graphic style of correspondence:--may .--'syra is semi-eastern. the pavement, huge shapeless blocks sloping to a central gutter; from this base two-storeyed houses, sometimes plaster, many-coloured, sometimes rough-hewn marble, rise, dirty and ill-finished, to straight, plain, flat roofs; shops guiltless of windows, with signs in greek letters; dogs, greeks in blue, baggy, zouave breeches and a fez, a few narghilehs, and a sprinkling of the ordinary continental shop-boys. in the evening i tried one more walk in syra with a----, but in vain endeavoured to amuse myself or to spend money, the first effort resulting in singing doodah to a passing greek or two, the second in spending--no, in making a---- spend--threepence on coffee for three.' canea bay, in candia (or crete), which they reached on may , appeared to jenkin one of the loveliest sights that man could witness. may .--'i spent the day at the little station where the cable was landed, which has apparently been first a venetian monastery and then a turkish mosque. at any rate the big dome is very cool, and the little ones hold batteries capitally. a handsome young bashi-bazouk guards it, and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so i draw them and the monastery and the hill till i'm black in the face with heat, and come on board to hear the canea cable is still bad.' may .--'we arrived in the morning at the east end of candia, and had a glorious scramble over the mountains, which seem built of adamant. time has worn away the softer portions of the rock, only leaving sharp, jagged edges of steel; sea eagles soaring above our heads--old tanks, ruins, and desolation at our feet. the ancient arsinoe stood here: a few blocks of marble with the cross attest the presence of venetian christians; but now--the desolation of desolations. mr. liddell and i separated from the rest, and when we had found a sure bay for the cable, had a tremendous lively scramble back to the boat. these are the bits of our life which i enjoy; which have some poetry, some grandeur in them. may .-'yesterday we ran round to the new harbour (of alexandria), landed the shore end of the cable close to cleopatra's bath, and made a very satisfactory start about one in the afternoon. we had scarcely gone yards when i noticed that the cable ceased to run out, and i wondered why the ship had stopped.' the elba had run her nose on a sandbank. after trying to force her over it, an anchor was put out astern and the rope wound by a steam winch, while the engines were backed; but all in vain. at length a small turkish steamer, the consort of the elba, came to her assistance, and by means of a hawser helped to tug her off: the pilot again ran her aground soon after, but she was delivered by the same means without much damage. when two-thirds of this cable was laid the line snapped in deep water, and had to be recovered. on saturday, june , they arrived at syra, where they had to perform four days' quarantine, during which, however, they started repairing the canea cable. bad weather coming on, they took shelter in siphano, of which jenkin writes: 'these isles of greece are sad, interesting places. they are not really barren all over, but they are quite destitute of verdure; and tufts of thyme, wild mastic, or mint, though they sound well, are not nearly so pretty as grass. many little churches, glittering white, dot the islands; most of them, i believe, abandoned during the whole year with the exception of one day sacred to their patron saint. the villages are mean; but the inhabitants do not look wretched, and the men are capital sailors. there is something in this greek race yet; they will become a powerful levantine nation in the course of time.' in jenkin left the service of newall & co., and entered into partnership with mr. h. c. forde, who had acted as engineer under the british government for the malta-alexandria cable, and was now practising as a civil engineer. for several years after this business was bad, and with a young family coming, it was an anxious time for him; but he seems to have borne his troubles lightly. mr. stevenson says it was his principle 'to enjoy each day's happiness as it arises, like birds and children.' in his first son was born, and the family removed to a cottage at claygate, near esher. though ill and poor at this period, he kept up his self-confidence. 'the country,' he wrote to his wife, 'will give us, please god, health and strength. i will love and cherish you more than ever. you shall go where you wish, you shall receive whom you wish, and as for money, you shall have that too. i cannot be mistaken. i have now measured myself with many men. i do not feel weak. i do not feel that i shall fail. in many things i have succeeded, and i will in this.... and meanwhile, the time of waiting, which, please heaven, shall not be so long, shall also not be so bitter. well, well, i promise much, and do not know at this moment how you and the dear child are. if he is but better, courage, my girl, for i see light.' he took to gardening, without a natural liking for it, and soon became an ardent expert. he wrote reviews, and lectured, or amused himself in playing charades, and reading poetry. clerk maxwell, and mr. ricketts, who was lost in the la plata, were among his visitors. during october, , he superintended the repairs of the bona-spartivento cable, revisiting chia and cagliari, then full of garibaldi's troops. the cable, which had been broken by the anchors of coral fishers, was grapnelled with difficulty. 'what rocks we did hook!' writes jenkin. 'no sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then came such a business: ship's engines going, deck engine thundering, belt slipping, tear of breaking ropes; actually breaking grapnels. it was always an hour or more before we could get the grapnels down again.' in , on the birth of his second son, mrs. jenkin was very ill, and jenkin, after running two miles for a doctor, knelt by her bedside during the night in a draught, not wishing to withdraw his hand from hers. never robust, he suffered much from flying rheumatism and sciatica ever afterwards. it nearly disabled him while laying the lowestoft to norderney cable for mr. reuter, in . this line was designed by messrs. forde & jenkin, manufactured by messrs. w. t. henley & co., and laid by the caroline and william cory. miss clara volkman, a niece of mr. reuter, sent the first message, mr. c. f, varley holding her hand. in jenkin was appointed to the professorship of engineering in university college, london. two years later his prospects suddenly improved; the partnership began to pay, and he was selected to fill the chair of engineering, which had been newly established, in edinburgh university. what he thought of the change may be gathered from a letter to his wife: 'with you in the garden (at claygate), with austin in the coach-house, with pretty songs in the little low white room, with the moonlight in the dear room upstairs--ah! it was perfect; but the long walk, wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting railway, and the horrid fusty office, with its endless disappointments, they are well gone. it is well enough to fight, and scheme, and bustle about in the eager crowd here (in london) for awhile now and then; but not for a lifetime. what i have now is just perfect. study for winter, action for summer, lovely country for recreation, a pleasant town for talk.' the liberality of the scotch universities allowed him to continue his private enterprises, and the summer holiday was long enough to make a trip round the globe. the following june he was on board the great eastern while she laid the french atlantic cable from brest to st. pierre. among his shipmates were sir william thomson, sir james anderson, c. f. varley, mr. latimer clark, and willoughby smith. jenkin's sketches of clark and varley are particularly happy. at st. pierre, where they arrived in a fog, which lifted to show their consort, the william cory, straight ahead, and the gulnare signalling a welcome, jenkin made the curious observation that the whole island was electrified by the battery at the telegraph station. jenkin's position at edinburgh led to a partnership in cable work with sir william thomson, for whom he always had a love and admiration. jenkin's clear, practical, and business-like abilities were doubtless an advantage to sir william, relieving him of routine, and sparing his great abilities for higher work. in the siphon recorder, for tracing a cablegram in ink, instead of merely flashing it by the moving ray of the mirror galvanometer, was introduced on long cables, and became a source of profit to jenkin and varley as well as to sir william, its inventor. in thomson and jenkin were engineers for the western and brazilian cable. it was manufactured by messrs. hooper & co., of millwall, and the wire was coated with india-rubber, then a new insulator. the hooper left plymouth in june, and after touching at madeira, where sir william was up 'sounding with his special toy' (the pianoforte wire) 'at half-past three in the morning,' they reached pernambuco by the beginning of august, and laid a cable to para. during the next two years the brazilian system was connected to the west indies and the river plate; but jenkin was not present on the expeditions. while engaged in this work, the ill-fated la plata, bound with cable from messrs. siemens brothers to monte video, perished in a cyclone off cape ushant, with the loss of nearly all her crew. the mackay-bennett atlantic cables were also laid under their charge. as a professor jenkin's appearance was against him; but he was a clear, fluent speaker, and a successful teacher. of medium height, and very plain, his manner was youthful, and alert, but unimposing. nevertheless, his class was always in good order, for his eye instantly lighted on any unruly member, and his reproof was keen. his experimental work was not strikingly original. at birkenhead he made some accurate measurements of the electrical properties of materials used in submarine cables. sir william thomson says he was the first to apply the absolute methods of measurement introduced by gauss and weber. he also investigated there the laws of electric signals in submarine cables. as secretary to the british association committee on electrical standards he played a leading part in providing electricians with practical standards of measurement. his cantor lectures on submarine cables, and his treatise on electricity and magnetism, published in , were notable works at the time, and contained the latest development of their subjects. he was associated with sir william thomson in an ingenious 'curb-key' for sending signals automatically through a long cable; but although tried, it was not adopted. his most important invention was telpherage, a means of transporting goods and passengers to a distance by electric panniers supported on a wire or conductor, which supplied them with electricity. it was first patented in , and jenkin spent his last years on this work, expecting great results from it; but ere the first public line was opened for traffic at glynde, in sussex, he was dead. in mechanical engineering his graphical methods of calculating strains in bridges, and determining the efficiency of mechanism, are of much value. the latter, which is based on reulaux's prior work, procured him the honour of the keith gold medal from the royal society of edinburgh. another successful work of his was the founding of the sanitary protection association, for the supervision of houses with regard to health. in his leisure hours jenkin wrote papers on a wide variety of subjects. to the question, 'is one man's gain another man's loss?' he answered 'not in every case.' he attacked darwin's theory of development, and showed its inadequacy, especially in demanding more time than the physicist could grant for the age of the habitable world. darwin himself confessed that some of his arguments were convincing; and munro, the scholar, complimented him for his paper on lucretius and the atomic theory.' in he constructed a phonograph from the newspaper reports of this new invention, and lectured on it at a bazaar in edinburgh, then employed it to study the nature of vowel and consonantal sounds. an interesting paper on rhythm in english verse,' was also published by him in the saturday review for . he was clever with his pencil, and could seize a likeness with astonishing rapidity. he has been known while on a cable expedition to stop a peasant woman in a shop for a few minutes and sketch her on the spot. his artistic side also shows itself in a paper on 'artist and critic,' in which he defines the difference between the mechanical and fine arts. 'in mechanical arts,' he says, 'the craftsman uses his skill to produce something useful, but (except in the rare case when he is at liberty to choose what he shall produce) his sole merit lies in skill. in the fine arts the student uses skill to produce something beautiful. he is free to choose what that something shall be, and the layman claims that he may and must judge the artist chiefly by the value in beauty of the thing done. artistic skill contributes to beauty, or it would not be skill; but beauty is the result of many elements, and the nobler the art the lower is the rank which skill takes among them.' a clear and matter-of-fact thinker, jenkin was an equally clear and graphic writer. he read the best literature, preferring, among other things, the story of david, the odyssey, the arcadia, the saga of burnt njal, and the grand cyrus. aeschylus, sophocles, shakespeare, ariosto, boccaccio, scott, dumas, dickens, thackeray, and george eliot, were some of his favourite authors. he once began a review of george eliot's biography, but left it unfinished. latterly he had ceased to admire her work as much as before. he was a rapid, fluent talker, with excited utterance at times. some of his sayings were shrewd and sharp; but he was sometimes aggressive. 'people admire what is pretty in an ugly thing,' he used to say 'not the ugly thing.' a lady once said to him she would never be happy again. 'what does that signify?' cried jenkin; 'we are not here to be happy, but to be good.' on a friend remarking that salvini's acting in othello made him want to pray, jenkin answered, 'that is prayer.' though admired and liked by his intimates, jenkin was never popular with associates. his manner was hard, rasping, and unsympathetic. 'whatever virtues he possessed,' says mr. stevenson, 'he could never count on being civil.' he showed so much courtesy to his wife, however, that a styrian peasant who observed it spread a report in the village that mrs. jenkin, a great lady, had married beneath her. at the saville club, in london, he was known as the 'man who dines here and goes up to scotland.' jenkin was conscious of this churlishness, and latterly improved. 'all my life,' he wrote,'i have talked a good deal, with the almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of my tongue. it appeared to me that i had various things to say, and i had no malevolent feelings; but, nevertheless, the result was that expressed above. well, lately some change has happened. if i talk to a person one day they must have me the next. faces light up when they see me. "ah! i say, come here." "come and dine with me." it's the most preposterous thing i ever experienced. it is curiously pleasant.' jenkin was a good father, joining in his children's play as well as directing their studies. the boys used to wait outside his office for him at the close of business hours; and a story is told of little frewen, the second son, entering in to him one day, while he was at work, and holding out a toy crane he was making, with the request, 'papa you might finiss windin' this for me, i'm so very busy to-day.' he was fond of animals too, and his dog plate regularly accompanied him to the university. but, as he used to say, 'it's a cold home where a dog is the only representative of a child.' in summer his holidays were usually spent in the highlands, where jenkin learned to love the highland character and ways of life. he was a good shot, rode and swam well, and taught his boys athletic exercises, boating, salmon fishing, and such like. he learned to dance a highland reel, and began the study of gaelic; but that speech proved too stubborn, craggy, and impregnable even for jenkin. once he took his family to alt aussee, in the stiermark, styria, where he hunted chamois, won a prize for shooting at the schutzen-fest, learned the dialect of the country, sketched the neighbourhood, and danced the steierisch and landler with the peasants. he never seemed to be happy unless he was doing, and what he did was well done. above all, he was clear-headed and practical, mastering many things; no dreamer, but an active, business man. had he confined himself to engineering he might have adorned his profession more, for he liked and fitted it; but with his impulses on other lines repressed, he might have been less happy. moreover, he was one who believed, with the sage, that all good work is profitable, having its value, if only in exercise and skill. his own parents and those of his wife had come to live in edinburgh; but he lost them all within ten months of each other. jenkin had showed great devotion to them in their illnesses, and was worn out with grief and watching. his telpherage, too, had given him considerable anxiety to perfect; and his mother's illness, which affected her mind, had caused himself to fear. he was meditating a holiday to italy with his wife in order to recuperate, and had a trifling operation performed on his foot, which resulted, it is believed, in blood poisoning. there seemed to be no danger, and his wife was reading aloud to him as he lay in bed, when his intellect began to wander. it is doubtful whether he regained his senses before he died, on june , . at one period of his life jenkin was a freethinker, holding, as mr. stevenson says, all dogmas as 'mere blind struggles to express the inexpressible.' nevertheless, as time went on he came back to a belief in christianity. 'the longer i live,' he wrote, 'the more convinced i become of a direct care by god--which is reasonably impossible--but there it is.' in his last year he took the communion. chapter vii. johann philipp reis. johann philipp reis, the first inventor of an electric telephone, was born on january , , at the little town of gelnhausen, in cassel, where his father was a master baker and petty farmer. the boy lost his mother during his infancy, and was brought up by his paternal grandmother, a well-read, intelligent woman, of a religious turn. while his father taught him to observe the material world, his grandmother opened his mind to the unseen. at the age of six he was sent to the common school of the town, where his talents attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his father to extend his education at a higher college. mr. reis died before his son was ten years old; but his grandmother and guardians afterwards placed him at garnier's institute, in friedrichsdorf, where he showed a taste for languages, and acquired both french and english, as well as a stock of miscellaneous information from the library. at the end of his fourteenth year he passed to hassel's institute, at frankfort-on-the-main, where he picked up latin and italian. a love of science now began to show itself, and his guardians were recommended to send him to the polytechnic school of carlsruhe; but one of them, his uncle, wished him to become a merchant, and on march , , reis was apprenticed to the colour trade in the establishment of mr. j. f beyerbach, of frankfort, against his own will. he told his uncle that he would learn the business chosen for him, but should continue his proper studies by-and-by. by diligent service he won the esteem of mr. beyerbach, and devoted his leisure to self-improvement, taking private lessons in mathematics and physics, and attending the lectures of professor r. bottger on mechanics at the trade school. when his apprenticeship ended he attended the institute of dr. poppe, in frankfort, and as neither history nor geography was taught there, several of the students agreed to instruct each other in these subjects. reis undertook geography, and believed he had found his true vocation in the art of teaching. he also became a member of the physical society of frankfort. in he completed his year of military service at cassel, then returned to frankfort to qualify himself as a teacher of mathematics and science in the schools by means of private study and public lectures. his intention was to finish his training at the university of heidelberg, but in the spring of he visited his old friend and master, hofrath garnier, who offered him a post in garnier's institute. in the autumn of he removed to friedrichsdorf, to begin his new career, and in september following he took a wife and settled down. reis imagined that electricity could be propagated through space, as light can, without the aid of a material conductor, and he made some experiments on the subject. the results were described in a paper 'on the radiation of electricity,' which, in , he posted to professor poggendorff; for insertion in the well-known periodical, the annalen der physik. the memoir was declined, to the great disappointment of the sensitive young teacher. reis had studied the organs of hearing, and the idea of an apparatus for transmitting sound by means of electricity had been floating in his mind for years. incited by his lessons on physics, in the year he attacked the problem, and was rewarded with success. in he again tried poggendorff, with an account of his 'telephon,' as he called it;[the word 'telephone' occurs in timbs' repository of science and art for , in connection with a signal trumpet operated by compressed air.] but his second offering was rejected like the first. the learned professor, it seems, regarded the transmission of speech by electricity as a chimera; but reis, in the bitterness of wounded feeling, attributed the failure to his being 'only a poor schoolmaster.' since the invention of the telephone, attention has been called to the fact that, in , m. charles bourseul, a french telegraphist, [happily still alive ( ).] had conceived a plan for conveying sounds and even speech by electricity. 'suppose,' he explained, 'that a man speaks near a movable disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents from a battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... it is certain that, in a more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by electricity. i have made experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favourable result.'[see du moncel's expose des applications, etc.] bourseul deserves the credit of being perhaps the first to devise an electric telephone and try to make it; but to reis belongs the honour of first realising the idea. a writer may plot a story, or a painter invent a theme for a picture; but unless he execute the work, of what benefit is it to the world? true, a suggestion in mechanics may stimulate another to apply it in practice, and in that case the suggester is entitled to some share of the credit, as well as the distinction of being the first to think of the matter. but it is best when the original deviser also carries out the work; and if another should independently hit upon the same idea and bring it into practice, we are bound to honour him in full, though we may also recognise the merit of his predecessor. bourseul's idea seems to have attracted little notice at the time, and was soon forgotten. even the count du moncel, who was ever ready to welcome a promising invention, evidently regarded it as a fantastic notion. it is very doubtful if reis had ever heard of it. he was led to conceive a similar apparatus by a study of the mechanism of the human ear, which he knew to contain a membrane, or 'drum,' vibrating under the waves of sound, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone behind it to the auditory nerve. it therefore occurred to him, that if he made a diaphragm in imitation of the drum, and caused it by vibrating to make and break the circuit of an electric current, he would be able through the magnetic power of the interrupted current to reproduce the original sounds at a distance. in - professor page, of massachusetts, had discovered that' a needle or thin bar of iron, placed in the hollow of a coil or bobbin of insulated wire, would emit an audible 'tick' at each interruption of a current, flowing in the coil, and that if these separate ticks followed each other fast enough, by a rapid interruption of the current, they would run together into a continuous hum, to which he gave the name of 'galvanic music.' the pitch of this note would correspond to the rate of interruption of the current. from these and other discoveries which had been made by noad, wertheim, marrian, and others, reis knew that if the current which had been interrupted by his vibrating diaphragm were conveyed to a distance by a metallic circuit, and there passed through a coil like that of page, the iron needle would emit a note like that which had caused the oscillation of the transmitting diaphragm. acting on this knowledge, he constructed a rude telephone. dr. messel informs us that his first transmitter consisted of the bung of a beer barrel hollowed out in imitation of the external ear. the cup or mouth-piece thus formed was closed by the skin of a german sausage to serve as a drum or diaphragm. to the back of this he fixed, with a drop of sealing-wax, a little strip of platinum, representing the hammer-bone, which made and broke the metallic circuit of the current as the membrane oscillated under the sounds which impinged against it. the current thus interrupted was conveyed by wires to the receiver, which consisted of a knitting-needle loosely surrounded by a coil of wire fastened to the breast of a violin as a sounding-board. when a musical note was struck near the bung, the drum vibrated in harmony with the pitch of the note, the platinum lever interrupted the metallic circuit of the current, which, after traversing the conducting wire, passed through the coil of the receiver, and made the needle hum the original tone. this primitive arrangement, we are told, astonished all who heard it. [it is now in the museum of the reichs post-amt, berlin.] another of his early transmitters was a rough model of the human ear, carved in oak, and provided with a drum which actuated a bent and pivoted lever of platinum, making it open and close a springy contact of platinum foil in the metallic circuit of the current. he devised some ten or twelve different forms, each an improvement on its predecessors, which transmitted music fairly well, and even a word or two of speech with more or less perfection. but the apparatus failed as a practical means of talking to a distance. the discovery of the microphone by professor hughes has enabled us to understand the reason of this failure. the transmitter of reis was based on the plan of interrupting the current, and the spring was intended to close the contact after it had been opened by the shock of a vibration. so long as the sound was a musical tone it proved efficient, for a musical tone is a regular succession of vibrations. but the vibrations of speech are irregular and complicated, and in order to transmit them the current has to be varied in strength without being altogether broken. the waves excited in the air by the voice should merely produce corresponding waves in the current. in short, the current ought to undulate in sympathy with the oscillations of the air. it appears from the report of herr von legat, inspector of the royal prussian telegraphs, on the reis telephone, published in , that the inventor was quite aware of this principle, but his instrument was not well adapted to apply it. no doubt the platinum contacts he employed in the transmitter behaved to some extent as a crude metal microphone, and hence a few words, especially familiar or expected ones, could be transmitted and distinguished at the other end of the line. but reis does not seem to have realised the importance of not entirely breaking the circuit of the current; at all events, his metal spring is not in practice an effective provision against this, for it allows the metal contacts to jolt too far apart, and thus interrupt the current. had he lived to modify the spring and the form or material of his contacts so as to keep the current continuous--as he might have done, for example, by using carbon for platinum--he would have forestalled alike bell, edison, and hughes in the production of a good speaking telephone. reis in fact was trembling on the verge of a great discovery, which was, however, reserved for others. his experiments were made in a little workshop behind his home at friedrichsdorff; and wires were run from it to an upper chamber. another line was erected between the physical cabinet at garnier's institute across the playground to one of the class-rooms, and there was a tradition in the school that the boys were afraid of creating an uproar in the room for fear herr reis should hear them with his 'telephon.' the new invention was published to the world in a lecture before the physical society of frankfort on october , , and a description, written by himself for the jahresbericht, a month or two later. it excited a good deal of scientific notice in germany; models of it were sent abroad, to london, dublin, tiflis, and other places. it became a subject for popular lectures, and an article for scientific cabinets. reis obtained a brief renown, but the reaction soon set in. the physical society of frankfort turned its back on the apparatus which had given it lustre. reis resigned his membership in ; but the free german institute of frankfort, which elected him an honorary member, also slighted the instrument as a mere 'philosophical toy.' at first it was a dream, and now it is a plaything. have we not had enough of that superior wisdom which is another name for stupidity? the dreams of the imagination are apt to become realities, and the toy of to-day has a knack of growing into the mighty engine of to-morrow. reis believed in his invention, if no one else did; and had he been encouraged by his fellows from the beginning, he might have brought it into a practical shape. but rebuffs had preyed upon his sensitive heart, and he was already stricken with consumption. it is related that, after his lecture on the telephone at geissen, in , professor poggendorff, who was present, invited him to send a description of his instrument to the annalen. reis answered him,'ich danke ihnen recht sehr, herr professor; es ist zu spaty. jetzt will ich nicht ihn schickeny. mein apparat wird ohne beschreibung in den annalen bekannt werden.' ('thank you very much, professor, but it is too late. i shall not send it now. my apparatus will become known without any writing in the annalen.') latterly reis had confined his teaching and study to matters of science; but his bad health was a serious impediment. for several years it was only by the exercise of a strong will that he was able to carry on his duties. his voice began to fail as the disease gained upon his lungs, and in the summer of he was obliged to forsake tuition during several weeks. the autumn vacation strengthened his hopes of recovery, and he resumed his teaching with his wonted energy. but this was the last flicker of the expiring flame. it was announced that he would show his new gravity-machine at a meeting of the deutscher naturforscher of wiesbaden in september, but he was too ill to appear. in december he lay down, and, after a long and painful illness, breathed his last at five o'clock in the afternoon of january , . in his curriculum vitae he wrote these words: 'as i look back upon my life i call indeed say with the holy scriptures that it has been "labour and sorrow." but i have also to thank the lord that he has given me his blessing in my calling and in my family, and has bestowed more good upon me than i have known how to ask of him. the lord has helped hitherto; he will help yet further.' reis was buried in the cemetery of friedrichsdorff, and in , after the introduction of the speaking telephone, the members of the physical society of frankfort erected over his grave an obelisk of red sandstone bearing a medallion portrait. chapter viii. graham bell. the first to produce a practicable speaking telephone was alexander graham bell. he was born at edinburgh on march , , and comes of a family associated with the teaching of elocution. his grandfather in london, his uncle in dublin, and his father, mr. andrew melville bell, in edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. the latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on visible speech, which appeared in edinburgh in . in this he explains his ingenious method of instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips. graham bell, his distinguished son, was educated at the high school of edinburgh, and subsequently at warzburg, in germany, where he obtained the degree of ph.d. (doctor of philosophy). while still in scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother. in he accompanied his father to montreal, in canada, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. the elder bell was invited to introduce it into a large day-school for mutes at boston, but he declined the post in favour of his son, who soon became famous in the united states for his success in this important work. he published more than one treatise on the subject at washington, and it is, we believe, mainly through his efforts that thousands of deaf mutes in america are now able to speak almost, if not quite, as well as those who are able to hear. before he left scotland mr. graham bell had turned his attention to telephony, and in canada he designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. at boston he continued his researches in the same field, and endeavoured to produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech. if it be interesting to trace the evolution of an animal from its rudimentary germ through the lower phases to the perfect organism, it is almost as interesting to follow an invention from the original model through the faultier types to the finished apparatus. in philipp reis, as we have seen, produced a telephone which could transmit musical notes, and even a lisping word or two; and some ten years later mr. cromwell fleetwood varley, f.r.s., a well-known english electrician, patented a number of ingenious devices for applying the musical telephone to transmit messages by dividing the notes into short or long signals, after the morse code, which could be interpreted by the ear or by the eye in causing them to mark a moving paper. these inventions were not put in practice; but four years afterwards herr paul la cour, a danish inventor, experimented with a similar appliance on a line of telegraph between copenhagen and fredericia in jutland. in this a vibrating tuning-fork interrupted the current, which, after traversing the line, passed through an electro-magnet, and attracted the limbs of another fork, making it strike a note like the transmitting fork. by breaking up the note at the sending station with a signalling key, the message was heard as a series of long and short hums. moreover, the hums were made to record themselves on paper by turning the electro-magnetic receiver into a relay, which actuated a morse printer by means of a local battery. mr. elisha gray, of chicago, also devised a tone telegraph of this kind about the same time as herr la cour. in this apparatus a vibrating steel tongue interrupted the current, which at the other end of the line passed through the electro-magnet and vibrated a band or tongue of iron near its poles. gray's 'harmonic telegraph,' with the vibrating tongues or reeds, was afterwards introduced on the lines of the western union telegraph company in america. as more than one set of vibrations--that is to say, more than one note--can be sent over the same wire simultaneously, it is utilised as a 'multiplex' or many-ply telegraph, conveying several messages through the same wire at once; and these can either be interpreted by the sound, or the marks drawn on a ribbon of travelling paper by a morse recorder. gray also invented a 'physiological receiver,' which has a curious history. early in his nephew was playing with a small induction coil, and, having connected one end of the secondary circuit to the zinc lining of a bath, which was dry, he was holding the other end in his left hand. while he rubbed the zinc with his right hand gray noticed that a sound proceeded from it, which had the pitch and quality of the note emitted by the vibrating contact or electrotome of the coil. 'i immediately took the electrode in my hand,' he writes, 'and, repeating the operation, found to my astonishment that by rubbing hard and rapidly i could make a much louder sound than the electrotome. i then changed the pitch of the vibration, and found that the pitch of the sound under my hand was also changed, agreeing with that of the vibration.' gray lost no time in applying this chance discovery by designing the physiological receiver, which consists of a sounding-box having a zinc face and mounted on an axle, so that it can be revolved by a handle. one wire of the circuit is connected to the revolving zinc, and the other wire is connected to the finger which rubs on the zinc. the sounds are quite distinct, and would seem to be produced by a microphonic action between the skin and the metal. all these apparatus follow in the track of reis and bourseul--that is to say, the interruption of the current by a vibrating contact. it was fortunate for bell that in working with his musical telephone an accident drove him into a new path, which ultimately brought him to the invention of a speaking telephone. he began his researches in with a musical telephone, in which he employed the interrupted current to vibrate the receiver, which consisted of an electro-magnet causing an iron reed or tongue to vibrate; but, while trying it one day with his assistant, mr. thomas a. watson, it was found that a reed failed to respond to the intermittent current. mr. bell desired his assistant, who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to the pole of the magnet. mr. watson complied, and to his astonishment bell observed that the corresponding reed at his end of the line thereupon began to vibrate and emit the same note, although there was no interrupted current to make it. a few experiments soon showed that his reed had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents induced in the line by the mere motion of the distant reed in the neighbourhood of its magnet. this discovery led him to discard the battery current altogether and rely upon the magneto-induction currents of the reeds themselves. moreover, it occurred to him that, since the circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be converted into sympathetic currents, which in turn would reproduce the speech at a distance. reis had seen that an undulatory current was needed to transmit sounds in perfection, especially vocal sounds; but his mode of producing the undulations was defective from a mechanical and electrical point of view. by forming 'waves' of magnetic disturbance near a coil of wire, professor bell could generate corresponding waves of electricity in the line so delicate and continuous that all the modulations of sound could be reproduced at a distance. as professor of vocal physiology in the university of boston, he was engaged in training teachers in the art of instructing deaf mutes how to speak, and experimented with the leon scott phonautograph in recording the vibrations of speech. this apparatus consists essentially of a thin membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light stylus, which traces an undulatory line on a plate of smoked glass. the line is a graphic representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of sound in the air. on the suggestion of dr. clarence j. blake, an eminent boston aurist, professor bell abandoned the phonautograph for the human ear, which it resembled; and, having removed the stapes bone, moistened the drum with glycerine and water, attached a stylus of hay to the nicus or anvil, and obtained a beautiful series of curves in imitation of the vocal sounds. the disproportion between the slight mass of the drum and the bones it actuated, is said to have suggested to him the employment of goldbeater's skin as membrane in his speaking telephone. be this as it may, he devised a receiver, consisting of a stretched diaphragm or drum of this material having an armature of magnetised iron attached to its middle, and free to vibrate in front of the pole of an electro-magnet in circuit with the line. this apparatus was completed on june , , and the same day he succeeded in transmitting sounds and audible signals by magneto-electric currents and without the aid of a battery. on july , , he instructed his assistant to make a second membrane-receiver which could be used with the first, and a few days later they were tried together, one at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor's house at boston to the cellar underneath. bell, in the room, held one instrument in his hands, while watson in the cellar listened at the other. the inventor spoke into his instrument, 'do you understand what i say?' and we can imagine his delight when mr. watson rushed into the room, under the influence of his excitement, and answered,'yes.' a finished instrument was then made, having a transmitter formed of a double electro-magnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its middle. a mouthpiece before the diaphragm directed the sounds upon it, and as it vibrated with them, the soft iron 'armature' induced corresponding currents in the cells of the electro-magnet. these currents after traversing the line were passed through the receiver, which consisted of a tubular electro-magnet, having one end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron fixed at one point to the end of the tube. this receiver bore a resemblance to a cylindrical metal box with thick sides, having a thin iron lid fastened to its mouth by a single screw. when the undulatory current passed through the coil of this magnet, the disc, or armature-lid, was put into vibration and the sounds evolved from it. the apparatus was exhibited at the centennial exhibition, philadelphia, in , and at the meeting of the british association in glasgow, during the autumn of that year, sir william thomson revealed its existence to the european public. in describing his visit to the exhibition, he went on to say: 'in the canadian department i heard, "to be or not to be... there's the rub," through an electric wire; but, scorning monosyllables, the electric articulation rose to higher flights, and gave me passages taken at random from the new york newspapers: "s.s. cox has arrived" (i failed to make out the s.s. cox); "the city of new york," "senator morton," "the senate has resolved to print a thousand extra copies," "the americans in london have resolved to celebrate the coming fourth of july!" all this my own ears heard spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by the then circular disc armature of just such another little electro-magnet as this i hold in my hand.' to hear the immortal words of shakespeare uttered by the small inanimate voice which had been given to the world must indeed have been a rare delight to the ardent soul of the great electrician. the surprise created among the public at large by this unexpected communication will be readily remembered. except one or two inventors, nobody had ever dreamed of a telegraph that could actually speak, any more than they had ever fancied one that could see or feel; and imagination grew busy in picturing the outcome of it. since it was practically equivalent to a limitless extension of the vocal powers, the ingenious journalist soon conjured up an infinity of uses for the telephone, and hailed the approaching time when ocean-parted friends would be able to whisper to one another under the roaring billows of the atlantic. curiosity, however, was not fully satisfied until professor bell, the inventor of the instrument, himself showed it to british audiences, and received the enthusiastic applause of his admiring countrymen. the primitive telephone has been greatly improved, the double electro-magnet being replaced by a single bar magnet having a small coil or bobbin of fine wire surrounding one pole, in front of which a thin disc of ferrotype is fixed in a circular mouthpiece, and serves as a combined membrane and armature. on speaking into the mouthpiece, the iron diaphragm vibrates with the voice in the magnetic field of the pole, and thereby excites the undulatory currents in the coil, which, after travelling through the wire to the distant place, are received in an identical apparatus. [this form was patented january , .] in traversing the coil of the latter they reinforce or weaken the magnetism of the pole, and thus make the disc armature vibrate so as to give out a mimesis of the original voice. the sounds are small and elfin, a minim of speech, and only to be heard when the ear is close to the mouthpiece, but they are remarkably distinct, and, in spite of a disguising twang, due to the fundamental note of the disc itself, it is easy to recognise the speaker. this later form was publicly exhibited on may , at a lecture given by professor bell in the boston music hall. 'going to the small telephone box with its slender wire attachments,' says a report, 'mr. bell coolly asked, as though addressing some one in an adjoining room, "mr. watson, are you ready!" mr. watson, five miles away in somerville, promptly answered in the affirmative, and soon was heard a voice singing "america."....going to another instrument, connected by wire with providence, forty-three miles distant, mr. bell listened a moment, and said, "signor brignolli, who is assisting at a concert in providence music hall, will now sing for us." in a moment the cadence of the tenor's voice rose and fell, the sound being faint, sometimes lost, and then again audible. later, a cornet solo played in somerville was very distinctly heard. still later, a three-part song floated over the wire from the somerville terminus, and mr. bell amused his audience exceedingly by exclaiming, "i will switch off the song from one part of the room to another, so that all can hear." at a subsequent lecture in salem, massachusetts, communication was established with boston, eighteen miles distant, and mr. watson at the latter place sang "auld lang syne," the national anthem, and "hail columbia," while the audience at salem joined in the chorus.' bell had overcome the difficulty which baffled reis, and succeeded in making the undulations of the current fit the vibrations of the voice as a glove will fit the hand. but the articulation, though distinct, was feeble, and it remained for edison, by inventing the carbon transmitter, and hughes, by discovering the microphone, to render the telephone the useful and widespread apparatus which we see it now. bell patented his speaking telephone in the united states at the beginning of , and by a strange coincidence, mr. elisha gray applied on the same day for another patent of a similar kind. gray's transmitter is supposed to have been suggested by the very old device known as the 'lovers' telephone,' in which two diaphragms are joined by a taut string, and in speaking against one the voice is conveyed through the string, solely by mechanical vibration, to the other. gray employed electricity, and varied the strength of the current in conformity with the voice by causing the diaphragm in vibrating to dip a metal probe attached to its centre more or less deep into a well of conducting liquid in circuit with the line. as the current passed from the probe through the liquid to the line a greater or less thickness of liquid intervened as the probe vibrated up and down, and thus the strength of the current was regulated by the resistance offered to the passage of the current. his receiver was an electro-magnet having an iron plate as an armature capable of vibrating under the attractions of the varying current. but gray allowed his idea to slumber, whereas bell continued to perfect his apparatus. however, when bell achieved an unmistakable success, gray brought a suit against him, which resulted in a compromise, one public company acquiring both patents. bell's invention has been contested over and over again, and more than one claimant for the honour and reward of being the original inventor of the telephone have appeared. the most interesting case was that of signor antonio meucci, an italian emigrant, who produced a mass of evidence to show that in , while in havanna, cuba, he experimented with the view of transmitting speech by the electric current. he continued his researches in - , and subsequently at staten island, u.s.; and in deputed a friend visiting europe to interest people in his invention. in he filed a caveat in the united states patent office, and tried to get mr. grant, president of the new york district telegraph company, to give the apparatus a trial. ill-health and poverty, consequent on an injury due to an explosion on board the staten island ferry boat westfield, retarded his experiments, and prevented him from completing his patent. meucci's experimental apparatus was exhibited at the philadelphia exhibition of , and attracted much attention. but the evidence he adduces in support of his early claims is that of persons ignorant of electrical science, and the model shown was not complete. the caveat of is indeed a reliable document; but unfortunately for him it is not quite clear from it whether he employed a 'lovers' telephone,' with a wire instead of a string, and joined a battery to it in the hope of enhancing the effect. 'i employ,' he says, 'the well known conducting effect of continuous metallic conductors as a medium for sound, and increase the effect by electrically insulating both the conductor and the parties who are communicating. it forms a speaking telegraph without the necessity of any hollow tube.' in connection with the telephone he used an electric alarm. it is by no means evident from this description that meucci had devised a practicable speaking telephone; but he may have been the first to employ electricity in connection with the transmission of speech. [meucci is dead.] 'this crowning marvel of the electric telegraph,' as sir william thomson happily expressed it, was followed by another invention in some respects even more remarkable. during the winter of professor bell was in england, and while lecturing at the royal institution, london, he conceived the idea of the photophone. it was known that crystalline selenium is a substance peculiarly sensitive to light, for when a ray strikes it an electric current passes far more easily through it than if it were kept in the dark. it therefore occurred to professor bell that if a telephone were connected in circuit with the current, and the ray of light falling on the selenium was eclipsed by means of the vibrations of sound, the current would undulate in keeping with the light, and the telephone would emit a corresponding note. in this way it might be literally possible 'to hear a shadow fall athwart the stillness.' he was not the first to entertain the idea, for in the summer of , one 'l. f. w.,' writing from kew on june to the scientific journal nature describes an arrangement of the kind. to professor bell, in conjunction with mr. summer tainter, belongs the honour of having, by dint of patient thought and labour, brought the photophone into material existence. by constructing sensitive selenium cells through which the current passed, then directing a powerful beam of light upon them, and occulting it by a rotary screen, he was able to vary the strength of the current in such a manner as to elicit musical tones from the telephone in circuit with the cells. moreover, by reflecting the beam from a mirror upon the cells, and vibrating the mirror by the action of the voice, he was able to reproduce the spoken words in the telephone. in both cases the only connecting line between the transmitting screen or mirror and the receiving cells and telephone was the ray of light. with this apparatus, which reminds us of the invocation to apollo in the martyr of antioch-- 'lord of the speaking lyre, that with a touch of fire strik'st music which delays the charmed spheres.' professor bell has accomplished the curious feat of speaking along a beam of sunshine feet long. the apparatus consisted of a transmitter with a mouthpiece, conveying the sound of the voice to a silvered diaphragm or mirror, which reflected the vibratory beam through a lens towards the selenium receiver, which was simply a parabolic reflector, in the focus of which was placed the selenium cells connected in circuit with a battery and a pair of telephones, one for each ear. the transmitter was placed in the top of the franklin schoolhouse, at washington, and the receiver in the window of professor bell's laboratory in l street. 'it was impossible,' says the inventor, 'to converse by word of mouth across that distance; and while i was observing mr. tainter, on the top of the schoolhouse, almost blinded by the light which was coming in at the window of my laboratory, and vainly trying to understand the gestures he was making to me at that great distance, the thought occurred to me to listen to the telephones connected with the selenium receiver. mr. tainter saw me disappear from the window, and at once spoke to the transmitter. i heard him distinctly say, "mr. bell, if you hear what i say, come to the window and wave your hat!" it is needless to say with what gusto i obeyed.' the spectroscope has demonstrated the truth of the poet, who said that 'light is the voice of the stars,' and we have it on the authority of professor bell and m. janssen, the celebrated astronomer, that the changing brightness of the photosphere, as produced by solar hurricanes, has produced a feeble echo in the photophone. pursuing these researches, professor bell discovered that not only the selenium cell, but simple discs of wood, glass, metal, ivory, india-rubber, and so on, yielded a distinct note when the intermittent ray of light fell upon them. crystals of sulphate of copper, chips of pine, and even tobacco-smoke, in a test-tube held before the beam, emitted a musical tone. with a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the dark heat rays which pass through an opaque screen were found to yield a note. even the outer ear is itself a receiver, for when the intermittent beam is focussed in the cavity a faint musical tone is heard. another research of professor bell was that in which he undertook to localise the assassin's bullet in the body of the lamented president garfield. in professor hughes brought out his beautiful induction balance, and the following year professor bell, who had already worked in the same field, consulted him by telegraph as to the best mode of applying the balance to determining the place of the bullet, which had hitherto escaped the probes of the president's physicians. professor hughes advised him by telegraph, and with this and other assistance an apparatus was devised which indicated the locality of the ball. a full account of his experiments was given in a paper read before the american association for the advancement of science in august, . professor bell continues to reside in the united states, of which he is a naturalised citizen. he is married to a daughter of mr. gardiner g. hubbard, who in , when she was four years of age, lost her hearing by an illness, but has learned to converse by the horace-mann system of watching the lips. both he and his father-in-law (who had a pecuniary interest in his patents) have made princely fortunes by the introduction of the telephone. chapter ix. thomas alva edison. thomas alva edison, the most famous inventor of his time and country, was born at milan, erie county, ohio, in the united states, on february , . his pedigree has been traced for two centuries to a family of prosperous millers in holland, some of whom emigrated to america in . thomas, his great-grandfather, was an officer of a bank in manhattan island during the revolution, and his signature is extant on the old notes of the american currency. longevity seems a characteristic of the strain, for thomas lived to the patriarchal term of , his son to , and samuel, the father of the inventor, is, we understand, a brisk and hale old man of eighty-six. born at digby, in the county of annapolis, nova scotia, on august , , samuel was apprenticed to a tailor, but in his manhood he forsook the needle to engage in the lumber trade, and afterwards in grain. he resided for a time in canada, where, at vienna, he was married to miss nancy elliott, a popular teacher in the high school. she was of scotch descent, and born in chenango county, new york, on january , . after his marriage he removed, in , to detroit, michigan, and the following year settled in milan. in his younger days samuel edison was a man of fine appearance. he stood feet inches in his stockings, and even at the age of sixty-four he was known to outjump soldiers of a regiment quartered at fort gratiot, in michigan. his wife was a fine-looking woman, intelligent, well-educated, and a social favourite. the inventor probably draws his physical endurance from his father, and his intellect from his mother. milan is situated on the huron river, about ten miles from the lake, and was then a rising town of , inhabitants, mostly occupied with the grain and timber trade. mr. edison dwelt in a plain cottage with a low fence in front, which stood beside the roadway under the shade of one or two trees. the child was neither pale nor prematurely thoughtful; he was rosy-cheeked, laughing, and chubby. he liked to ramble in the woods, or play on the banks of the river, and could repeat the songs of the boatmen ere he was five years old. still he was fond of building little roads with planks, and scooping out canals or caverns in the sand. an amusing anecdote is imputed to his sister, mrs. homer page, of milan. having been told one day that a goose hatches her goslings by the warmth of her body, the child was missed, and subsequently found in the barn curled up in a nest beside a quantity of eggs! the lake shore railway having injured the trade of milan, the family removed to port huron, in michigan, when edison was about seven years old. here they lived in an old-fashioned white frame-house, surrounded by a grove, and commanding a fine view of the broad river, with the canadian hills beyond. his mother undertook his education, and with the exception of two months he never went to school. she directed his opening mind to the acquisition of knowledge, and often read aloud to the family in the evening. she and her son were a loving pair, and it is pleasant to know that although she died on april , , before he finally emerged from his difficulties, her end was brightened by the first rays of his coming glory. mr. edison tells us that his son never had any boyhood in the ordinary sense, his early playthings being steam-engines and the mechanical powers. but it is like enough that he trapped a wood-chuck now and then, or caught a white-fish with the rest. he was greedy of knowledge, and by the age of ten had read the penny encyclopaedia; hume's history of england; dubigne's history of the reformation; gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire, and sears' history of the world. his father, we are told, encouraged his love of study by making him a small present for every book he read. at the age of twelve he became a train-boy, or vendor of candy, fruit, and journals to the passengers on the grand trunk railway, between port huron and detroit. the post enabled him to sleep at home, and to extend his reading by the public library at detroit. like the boy ampere, he proposed, it is said, to master the whole collection, shelf by shelf, and worked his way through fifteen feet of the bottom one before he began to select his fare. even the principia of newton never daunted him; and if he did not understand the problems which have puzzled some of the greatest minds, he read them religiously, and pressed on. burton's anatomy of melancholy, ure's dictionary of chemistry, did not come amiss; but in victor hugo's les miserables and the toilers of the sea he found a treasure after his own heart. like ampere, too, he was noted for a memory which retained many of the facts thus impressed upon it, as the sounds are printed on a phonogram. the boy student was also a keen man of business, and his pursuit of knowledge in the evening did not sap his enterprises of the day. he soon acquired a virtual monopoly for the sale of newspapers on the line, and employed four boy assistants. his annual profits amounted to about dollars, which were a substantial aid to his parents. to increase the sale of his papers, he telegraphed the headings of the war news to the stations in advance of the trains, and placarded them to tempt the passengers. ere long he conceived the plan of publishing a newspaper of his own. having bought a quantity of old type at the office of the detroit free press, he installed it in a spingless car, or 'caboose' of the train meant for a smoking-room, but too uninviting to be much used by the passengers. here he set the type, and printed a smallsheet about a foot square by pressing it with his hand. the grand trunk herald, as he called it, was a weekly organ, price three cents, containing a variety of local news, and gossip of the line. it was probably the only journal ever published on a railway train; at all events with a boy for editor and staff, printer and 'devil,' publisher and hawker. mr. robert stephenson, then building the tubular bridge at montreal, was taken with the venture, and ordered an extra edition for his own use. the london times correspondent also noticed the paper as a curiosity of journalism. this was a foretaste of notoriety. unluckily, however, the boy did not keep his scientific and literary work apart, and the smoking-car was transformed into a laboratory as well as a printing house. having procured a copy of fresenius' qualitive analysis and some old chemical gear; he proceeded to improve his leisure by making experiments. one day, through an extra jolt of the car, a bottle of phosphorus broke on the floor, and the car took fire. the incensed conductor of the train, after boxing his ears, evicted him with all his chattels. finding an asylum in the basement of his father's house (where he took the precaution to label all his bottles 'poison'), he began the publication of a new and better journal, entitled the paul pry. it boasted of several contributors and a list of regular subscribers. one of these (mr. j.h.b.), while smarting under what he considered a malicious libel, met the editor one day on the brink of the st. clair, and taking the law into his own hands, soused him in the river. the editor avenged his insulted dignity by excluding the subscriber's name from the pages of the paul pry. youthful genius is apt to prove unlucky, and another story (we hope they are all true, though we cannot vouch for them), is told of his partiality for riding with the engine-driver on the locomotive. after he had gained an insight into the working of the locomotive he would run the train himself; but on one occasion he pumped so much water into the boiler that it was shot from the funnel, and deluged the engine with soot. by using his eyes and haunting the machine shops he was able to construct a model of a locomotive. but his employment of the telegraph seems to have diverted his thoughts in that direction, and with the help of a book on the telegraph he erected a makeshift line between his new laboratory and the house of james ward, one of his boy helpers. the conductor was run on trees, and insulated with bottles, and the apparatus was home-made, but it seems to have been of some use. mr. james d. reid, author of the telegraph in america, would have us believe that an attempt was made to utilise the electricity obtained by rubbing a cat connected up in lieu of a battery; but the spirit of artemus ward is by no means dead in the united states, and the anecdote may be taken with a grain of salt. such an experiment was at all events predestined to an ignominious failure. an act of heroism was the turning-point in his career. one day, at the risk of his life, he saved the child of the station-master at mount clemens, near port huron, from being run over by an approaching train, and the grateful father, mr. j. a. mackenzie, learning of his interest in the telegraph, offered to teach him the art of sending and receiving messages. after his daily service was over, edison returned to mount clemens on a luggage train and received his lesson. at the end of five months, while only sixteen years of age, he forsook the trains, and accepted an offer of twenty-five dollars a month, with extra pay for overtime, as operator in the telegraph office at port huron, a small installation in a jewelry store. he worked hard to acquire more skill; and after six months, finding his extra pay withheld, he obtained an engagement as night operator at stratford, in canada. to keep him awake the operator was required to report the word 'six,' an office call, every half-hour to the manager of the circuit. edison fulfilled the regulation by inventing a simple device which transmitted the required signals. it consisted of a wheel with the characters cut on the rim, and connected with the circuit in such a way that the night watchman, by turning the wheel, could transmit the signals while edison slept or studied. his employment at stratford came to a grievous end. one night he received a service message ordering a certain train to stop, and before showing it to the conductor he, perhaps for greater certainty, repeated it back again. when he rushed out of the office to deliver it the train was gone, and a collision seemed inevitable; but, fortunately, the opposing trains met on a straight portion of the track, and the accident was avoided. the superintendent of the railway threatened to prosecute edison, who was thoroughly frightened, and returned home without his baggage. during this vacation at port huron his ingenuity showed itself in a more creditable guise. an 'ice-jam' occurred on the st. clair, and broke the telegraph cable between port huron and sarnia, on the opposite shore. communication was therefore interrupted until edison mounted a locomotive and sounded the whistle in short and long calls according to the well-known 'morse,' or telegraphic code. after a time the reporter at sarnia caught the idea, and messages were exchanged by the new system. his next situation was at adrian, in michigan, where he fitted up a small shop, and employed his spare time in repairing telegraph apparatus and making crude experiments. one day he violated the rules of the office by monopolising the use of the line on the strength of having a message from the superintendent, and was discharged. he was next engaged at fort wayne, and behaved so well that he was promoted to a station at indianapolis. while there he invented an 'automatic repeater,' by which a message is received on one line and simultaneously transmitted on another without the assistance of an operator. like other young operators, he was ambitious to send or receive the night reports for the press, which demand the highest speed and accuracy of sending. but although he tried to overcome his faults by the device of employing an auxiliary receiver working at a slower rate than the direct one, he was found incompetent, and transferred to a day wire at cincinnati. determined to excel, however, he took shift for the night men as often as he could, and after several months, when a delegation of cleveland operators came to organise a branch of the telegraphers' union, and the night men were out on 'strike,' he received the press reports as well as he was able, working all the night. for this feat his salary was raised next day from sixty-five to one hundred and five dollars, and he was appointed to the louisville circuit, one of the most desirable in the office. the clerk at louisville was bob martin, one of the most expert telegraphists in america, and edison soon became a first-class operator. in , tempted by a better salary, he removed to memphis, where he found an opportunity of introducing his automatic repeater, thus enabling louisville to communicate with new orleans without an intermediary clerk. for this innovation he was complimented; but nothing more. he embraced the subject of duplex telegraphy, or the simultaneous transmission of two messages on the same wire, one from each end; but his efforts met with no encouragement. men of routine are apt to look with disfavour on men of originality; they do not wish to be disturbed from the official groove; and if they are not jealous of improvement, they have often a narrow-minded contempt or suspicion of the servant who is given to invention, thinking him an oddity who is wasting time which might be better employed in the usual way. a telegraph operator, in their eyes, has no business to invent. his place is to sit at his instrument and send or receive the messages as fast as he can, without troubling his mind with inventions or anything else. when his shift is over he can amuse himself as he likes, provided he is always fit for work. genius is not wanted. the clerks themselves, reckless of a culture which is not required, and having a good string to their bow in the matter of livelihood, namely, the mechanical art of signalling, are prone to lead a careless, gay, and superficial life, roving from town to town throughout: the length and breadth of the states. but for his genius and aspirations, edison might have yielded to the seductions of this happy-go-lucky, free, and frivolous existence. dissolute comrades at memphis won upon his good nature; but though he lent them money, he remained abstemious, working hard, and spending his leisure upon books and experiments. to them he appeared an extraordinary fellow; and so far from sympathising with his inventions, they dubbed him 'luny,' and regarded him as daft. what with the money he had lent, or spent on books or apparatus, when the memphis lines were transferred from the government to a private company and edison was discharged, he found himself without a dollar. transported to decatur, he walked to nashville, where he found another operator, william foley, in the like straits, and they went in company to louisville. foley's reputation as an operator was none of the best; but on his recommendation edison obtained a situation, and supported foley until he too got employment. the squalid office was infested with rats, and its discipline was lax, in all save speed and quality of work, and some of his companions were of a dissipated stamp. to add to his discomforts, the line he worked was old and defective; but he improved the signals by adjusting three sets of instruments, and utilising them for three different states of the line. during nearly two years of drudgery under these depressing circumstances, edison's prospects of becoming an inventor seemed further off than ever. perhaps he began to fear that stern necessity would grind him down, and keep him struggling for a livelihood. none of his improvements had brought him any advantage. his efforts to invent had been ridiculed and discountenanced. nobody had recognised his talent, at least as a thing of value and worthy of encouragement, let alone support. all his promotion had come from trying to excel in his routine work. perhaps he lost faith in himself, or it may be that the glowing accounts he received of south america induced him to seek his fortune there. at all events he caught the 'craze' for emigration that swept the southern states on the conclusion of the civil war, and resolved to emigrate with two companions, keen and warren. but on their arriving at new orleans the vessel had sailed. in this predicament edison fell in with a travelled spaniard, who depicted the inferiority of other countries, and especially of south america, in such vivid colours, that he changed his intention and returned home to michigan. after a pleasant holiday with his friends he resumed his occupation in the louisville office. contact with home seems to have charged him with fresh courage. he wrote a work on electricity, which for lack of means was never published, and improved his penmanship until he could write a fair round backhand at the rate of forty-five words a minute--that is to say, the utmost that an operator can send by the morse code. the style was chosen for its clearness, each letter being distinctly formed, with little or no shading. his comrades were no better than before. on returning from his work in the small hours, edison would sometimes find two or three of them asleep in his bed with their boots on, and have to shift them to the floor in order that he might 'turn in.' a new office was opened, but strict orders were issued that nobody was to interfere with the instruments and their connections. he could not resist the infringement of this rule, however, and continued his experiments. in drawing some vitriol one night, he upset the carboy, and the acid eating its way through the floor, played havoc with the furniture of a luxurious bank in the flat below. he was discharged for this, but soon obtained another engagement as a press operator in cincinnati. he spent his leisure in the mechanics' library, studying works on electricity and general science. he also developed his ideas on the duplex system; and if they were not carried out, they at least directed him to the quadruplex system with which his name was afterwards associated. these attempts to improve his time seem to have made him unpopular, for after a short term in cincinnati, he returned to port huron. a friend, mr. f. adams, operator in the boston office of the western union telegraph company, recommended edison to his manager, mr. g. f. milliken, as a good man to work the new york wire, and the berth was offered to edison by telegraph. he accepted, and left at once for boston by the grand trunk railway, but the train was snowed up for two days near the bluffs of the st. lawrence. the consequence might have been serious had provisions not been found by a party of foragers. mr. milliken was the first of edison's masters, and perhaps his fellows, who appreciated him. mediocrity had only seen the gawky stripling, with his moonstruck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new crotchet. himself an inventor, milliken recognised in his deep-set eye and musing brow the fire of a suppressed genius. he was then just twenty-one. the friendship of mr. milliken, and the opportunity for experiment, rendered the boston office a congenial one. his by-hours were spent in a little workshop he had opened. among his inventions at this period were a dial telegraph, and a 'printer' for use on private lines, and an electro-chemical vote recorder, which the legislature of massachusetts declined to adopt. with the assistance of mr. f. l. pope, patent adviser to the western union telegraph company, his duplex system was tried, with encouraging results. the ready ingenuity of edison is shown by his device for killing the cockroaches which overran the boston office. he arranged some strips of tinfoil on the wall, and connected these to the poles of a battery in such a way that when the insects ran towards the bait which he had provided, they stepped from one foil to the other, and completed the circuit of the current, thus receiving a smart shock, which dislodged them into a pail of water, standing below. in , after two years in boston, where he had spent all his earnings, chiefly on his books and workshop, he found himself in new york, tramping the streets on the outlook for a job, and all but destitute. after repeated failures he chanced to enter the office of the laws gold reporting telegraph company while the instrument which mr. laws had invented to report the fluctuations of the money market had broken down. no one could set it right; there was a fever in the market, and mr. laws, we are told, was in despair. edison volunteered to set it right, and though his appearance was unpromising, he was allowed to try. the insight of the born mechanic, the sleight of hand which marks the true experimenter, have in them something magical to the ignorant. in edison's hands the instrument seemed to rectify itself. this was his golden opportunity. he was engaged by the company, and henceforth his career as an inventor was secure. the gold indicator company afterwards gave him a responsible position. he improved their indicator, and invented the gold and stock quotation printer, an apparatus for a similar purpose. he entered into partnership with mr. pope and mr. ashley, and introduced the pope and edison printer. a private line which he established was taken over by the gold and stock telegraph company, and soon their system was worked almost exclusively with edison's invention. he was retained in their service, and that of the western union telegraph company, as a salaried inventor, they having the option of buying all his telegraphic inventions at a price to be agreed upon. at their expense a large electrical factory was established under his direction at newark, new jersey, where he was free to work out his ideas and manufacture his apparatus. now that he was emancipated from drudgery, and fairly started on the walk which nature had intended for him, he rejoiced in the prolific freedom of his mind, which literally teemed with projects. his brain was no longer a prey to itself from the 'local action,' or waste energy of restrained ideas and revolving thoughts. [the term 'local action' is applied by electricians to the waste which goes on in a voltaic battery, although its current is not flowing in the outer circuit and doing useful work.] if anything, he attempted too much. patents were taken out by the score, and at one time there were no less than forty-five distinct inventions in progress. the commissioner of patents described him as 'the young man who kept the path to the patent office hot with his footsteps.' his capacity for labouring without rest is very remarkable. on one occasion, after improving his gold and stock quotation printer, an order for the new instruments, to the extent of , dollars, arrived at the factory. the model had acted well, but the first instruments made after it proved a failure. edison thereupon retired to the upper floor of the factory with some of his best workmen, and intimated that they must all remain there until the defect was put right. after sixty hours of continuous toil, the fault was remedied, and edison went to bed, where he slept for thirty-six hours. mr. johnson, one of his assistants, informs us that for ten years he worked on an average eighteen hours a day, and that he has been known to continue an experiment for three months day and night, with the exception of a nap from six o'clock to nine of the morning. in the throes of invention, and under the inspiration of his ideas, he is apt to make no distinction between day and night, until he arrives at a result which he considers to be satisfactory one way or the other. his meals are brought to him in the laboratory, and hastily eaten, although his dwelling is quite near. long watchfulness and labour seem to heighten the activity of his mind, which under its 'second wind,' so to speak, becomes preternaturally keen and suggestive. he likes best to work at night in the silence and solitude of his laboratory when the noise of the benches or the rumble of the engines is stilled, and all the world about him is asleep. fortunately, he can work without stimulants, and, when the strain is over, rest without narcotics; otherwise his exhausted constitution, sound as it is, would probably break down. still, he appears to be ageing before his time, and some of his assistants, not so well endowed with vitality, have, we believe, overtaxed their strength in trying to keep up with him. at this period he devised his electric pen, an ingenious device for making copies of a document. it consists essentially of a needle, rapidly jogged up and down by means of an electro-magnet actuated by an intermittent current of electricity. the writing is traced with the needle, which perforates another sheet of paper underneath, thus forming a stencil-plate, which when placed on a clean paper, and evenly inked with a rolling brush, reproduces the original writing. in edison was married to miss mary stillwell, of newark, one of his employees. his eldest child, mary estelle, was playfully surnamed 'dot,' and his second, thomas alva, jun., 'dash,' after the signals of the morse code. mrs. edison died several years ago. while seeking to improve the method of duplex working introduced by mr. steams, edison invented the quadruplex, by which four messages are simultaneously sent through one wire, two from each end. brought out in association with mr. prescott, it was adopted by the western union telegraph company, and, later, by the british post office. the president of the western union reported that it had saved the company , dollars a year in the construction of new lines. edison also improved the bain chemical telegraph, until it attained an incredible speed. bain had left it capable of recording words a minute; but edison, by dint of searching a pile of books ordered from new york, paris, and london, making copious notes, and trying innumerable experiments, while eating at his desk and sleeping in his chair, ultimately prepared a solution which enabled it to register over words a minute. it was exhibited at the philadelphia centenial exhibition in , where it astonished sir william thomson. in , edison sold his factory at newark, and retired to menlo park, a sequestered spot near metuchin, on the pennsylvania railroad, and about twenty-four miles from new york. here on some rising ground he built a wooden tenement, two stories high, and furnished it as a workshop and laboratory. his own residence and the cottages of his servants completed the little colony. the basement of the main building was occupied by his office, a choice library, a cabinet replete with instruments of precision, and a large airy workshop, provided with lathes and steam power, where his workmen shaped his ideas into wood and metal. the books lying about, the designs and placards on the walls, the draught-board on the table, gave it the appearance of a mechanics' club-room. the free and lightsome behaviour of the men, the humming at the benches, recalled some school of handicraft. there were no rigid hours, no grinding toil under the jealous eye of the overseer. the spirit of competition and commercial rivalry was absent. it was not a question of wringing as much work as possible out of the men in the shortest time and at the lowest price. moreover, they were not mere mechanical drudges--they were interested in their jobs, which demanded thought as well as skill. upstairs was the laboratory proper--a long room containing an array of chemicals; for edison likes to have a sample of every kind, in case it might suddenly be requisite. on the tables and in the cupboards were lying all manner of telegraphic apparatus, lenses, crucibles, and pieces of his own inventions. a perfect tangle of telegraph wires coming from all parts of the union were focussed at one end of the room. an ash-covered forge, a cabinet organ, a rusty stove with an old pivot chair, a bench well stained with oils and acids, completed the equipment of this curious den, into which the sunlight filtered through the chemical jars and fell in coloured patches along the dusty floor. the moving spirit of this haunt by day and night is well described as an overgrown school-boy. he is a man of a slim, but wiry figure, about five feet ten inches in height. his face at this period was juvenile and beardless. the nose and chin were shapely and prominent, the mouth firm, the forehead wide and full above, but not very high. it was shaded by dark chestnut hair, just silvered with grey. his most remarkable features were his eyes, which are blue-grey and deeply set, with an intense and piercing expression. when his attention was not aroused, he seemed to retire into himself, as though his mind had drifted far away, and came back slowly to the present. he was pale with nightwork, and his thoughtful eyes had an old look in serious moments. but his smile was boyish and pleasant, and his manner a trifle shy. there was nothing of the dandy about edison, he boasted no jewelled fingers or superfine raiment. an easy coat soiled with chemicals, a battered wide-awake, and boots guiltless of polish, were good enough for this inspired workman. an old silver watch, sophisticated with magnetism, and keeping an eccentric time peculiar to it, was his only ornament. on social occasions, of course, he adopted a more conventional costume. visitors to the laboratory often found him in his shirt-sleeves, with dishevelled hair and grimy hands. the writer of 'a night with edison' has described him as bending like a wizard over the smoky fumes of some lurid lamps arranged on a brick furnace, as if he were summoning the powers of darkness. 'it is much after midnight now,' says this author. 'the machinery below has ceased to rumble, and the tired hands have gone to their homes. a hasty lunch has been sent up. we are at the thermoscope. suddenly a telegraph instrument begins to click. the inventor strikes a grotesque attitude, a herring in one hand and a biscuit in the other, and with a voice a little muffled with a mouthful of both, translates aloud, slowly, the sound intelligible to him alone: "london.--news of death of lord john russell premature." "john blanchard, whose failure was announced yesterday, has suicided (no, that was a bad one) succeeded! in adjusting his affairs, and will continue in business."' his tastes are simple and his habits are plain. on one occasion, when invited to a dinner at delmonico's restaurant, he contented himself with a slice of pie and a cup of tea. another time he is said to have declined a public dinner with the remark that , dollars would not tempt him to sit through two hours of 'personal glorification.' he dislikes notoriety, thinking that a man is to be 'measured by what he does, not by what is said about him.' but he likes to talk about his inventions and show them to visitors at menlo park. in disposition he is sociable, affectionate, and generous, giving himself no airs, and treating all alike. his humour is native, and peculiar to himself, so there is some excuse for the newspaper reporters who take his jokes about the capabilities of nature au serieux; and publish them for gospel. his assistants are selected for their skill and physical endurance. the chief at menlo park was mr. charles batchelor, a scotchman, who had a certain interest in the inventions, but the others, including mathematicians, chemists, electricians, secretary, bookkeeper, and mechanics, were paid a salary. they were devoted to edison, who, though he worked them hard at times, was an indulgent master, and sometimes joined them in a general holiday. all of them spoke in the highest terms of the inventor and the man. the menlo establishment was unique in the world. it was founded for the sole purpose of applying the properties of matter to the production of new inventions. for love of science or the hope of gain, men had experimented before, and worked out their inventions in the laboratories of colleges and manufactories. but edison seems to have been the first to organise a staff of trained assistants to hunt up useful facts in books, old and modern, and discover fresh ones by experiment, in order to develop his ideas or suggest new ones, together with skilled workmen to embody them in the fittest manner; and all with the avowed object of taking out patents, and introducing the novel apparatus as a commercial speculation. he did not manufacture his machines for sale; he simply created the models, and left their multiplication to other people. there are different ways of looking at nature: 'to some she is the goddess great; to some the milch-cow of the field; their business is to calculate the butter she will yield.' the institution has proved a remarkable success. from it has emanated a series of marvellous inventions which have carried the name of edison throughout the whole civilised world. expense was disregarded in making the laboratory as efficient as possible; the very best equipment was provided, the ablest assistants employed, and the profit has been immense. edison is a millionaire; the royalties from his patents alone are said to equal the salary of a prime minister. although edison was the master spirit of the band, it must not be forgotten that his assistants were sometimes co-inventors with himself. no doubt he often supplied the germinal ideas, while his assistants only carried them out. but occasionally the suggestion was nothing more than this: 'i want something that will do so-and-so. i believe it will be a good thing, and can be done.' the assistant was on his mettle, and either failed or triumphed. the results of the experiments and researches were all chronicled in a book, for the new facts, if not then required, might become serviceable at a future time. if a rare material was wanted, it was procured at any cost. with such facilities, an invention is rapidly matured. sometimes the idea was conceived in the morning, and a working model was constructed by the evening. one day, we are told, a discovery was made at p.m., and edison telegraphed it to his patent agent, who immediately drew up the specification, and at nine o'clock next morning cabled it to london. before the inventor was out of bed, he received an intimation that his patent had been already deposited in the british patent office. of course, the difference of time was in his favour. when edison arrived at the laboratory in the morning, he read his letters, and then overlooked his employees, witnessing their results and offering his suggestions; but it often happened that he became totally engrossed with one experiment or invention. his work was frequently interrupted by curious visitors, who wished to see the laboratory and the man. although he had chosen that out-of-the-way place to avoid disturbance, they were never denied: and he often took a pleasure in showing his models, or explaining the work on which he was engaged. there was no affectation of mystery, no attempt at keeping his experiments a secret. even the laboratory notes were open to inspection. menlo park became a kind of mecca to the scientific pilgrim; the newspapers and magazines despatched reporters to the scene; excursion parties came by rail, and country farmers in their buggies; till at last an enterprising yankee even opened a refreshment room. the first of edison's greater inventions in menlo park was the 'loud-speaking telephone.' professor graham bell had introduced his magneto-electric telephone, but its effect was feeble. it is, we believe, a maxim in biology that a similarity between the extremities of a creature is an infallible sign of its inferiority, and that in proportion as it rises in the scale of being, its head is found to differ from its tail. now, in the bell apparatus, the transmitter and the receiver were alike, and hence clerk maxwell hinted that it would never be good for much until they became differentiated from each other. consciously or unconsciously edison accomplished the feat. with the hardihood of genius, he attempted to devise a telephone which would speak out loud enough to be heard in any corner of a large hall. in the telephone of bell, the voice of the speaker is the motive power which generates the current in the line. the vibrations of the sound may be said to transform themselves into electrical undulations. hence the current is very weak, and the reproduction of the voice is relatively faint. edison adopted the principle of making the vibrations of the voice control the intensity of a current which was independently supplied to the line by a voltaic battery. the plan of bell, in short, may be compared to a man who employs his strength to pump a quantity of water into a pipe, and that of edison to one who uses his to open a sluice, through which a stream of water flows from a capacious dam into the pipe. edison was acquainted with two experimental facts on which to base the invention. in , or thereabout, he claimed to have observed, while constructing rheostats, or electrical resistances for making an artificial telegraph line, that powdered plumbago and carbon has the property of varying in its resistance to the passage of the current when under pressure. the variation seemed in a manner proportional to the pressure. as a matter of fact, powdered carbon and plumbago had been used in making small adjustable rheostats by m. clerac, in france, and probably also in germany, as early as or . clerac's device consisted of a small wooden tube containing the material, and fitted with contacts for the current, which appear to have adjusted the pressure. moreover, the count du moncel, as far back as , had clearly discovered that when powdered carbon was subjected to pressure, its electrical resistance altered, and had made a number of experiments on the phenomenon. edison may have independently observed the fact, but it is certain he was not the first, and his claim to priority has fallen to the ground. still he deserves the full credit of utilising it in ways which were highly ingenious and bold. the 'pressure-relay,' produced in , was the first relay in which the strength of the local current working the local telegraph instrument was caused to vary in proportion to the variation; of the current in the main line. it consisted of an electro-magnet with double poles and an armature which pressed upon a disc or discs of plumbago, through which the local current passed. the electro-magnet was excited by the main line current and the armature attracted to its poles at every signal, thus pressing on the plumbago, and by reducing its resistance varying the current in the local circuit. according as the main line current was strong or weak, the pressure on the plumbago was more or less, and the current in the local circuit strong or weak. hence the signals of the local receiver were in accordance with the currents in the main line. edison found that the same property might be applied to regulate the strength of a current in conformity with the vibrations of the voice, and after a great number of experiments produced his 'carbon transmitter.' plumbago in powder, in sticks, or rubbed on fibres and sheets of silk, were tried as the sensitive material, but finally abandoned in favour of a small cake or wafer of compressed lamp-black, obtained from the smoke of burning oil, such as benzolene or rigolene. this was the celebrated 'carbon button,' which on being placed between two platinum discs by way of contact, and traversed by the electric current, was found to vary in resistance under the pressure of the sound waves. the voice was concentrated upon it by means of a mouthpiece and a diaphragm. the property on which the receiver was based had been observed and applied by him some time before. when a current is passed from a metal contact through certain chemical salts, a lubricating effect was noticeable. thus if a metal stylus were rubbed or drawn over a prepared surface, the point of the stylus was found to slip or 'skid' every time a current passed between them, as though it had been oiled. if your pen were the stylus, and the paper on which you write the surface, each wave of electricity passing from the nib to the paper would make the pen start, and jerk your fingers with it. he applied the property to the recording of telegraph signals without the help of an electro-magnet, by causing the currents to alter the friction between the two rubbing surfaces, and so actuate a marker, which registered the message as in the morse system. this instrument was called the 'electromotograph,' and it occurred to edison that in a similar way the undulatory currents from his carbon transmitter might, by varying the friction between a metal stylus and the prepared surface, put a tympanum in vibration, and reproduce the original sounds. wonderful as it may appear, he succeeded in doing so by the aid of a piece of chalk, a brass pin, and a thin sheet or disc of mica. he attached the pin or stylus to the centre of the mica, and brought its point to bear on a cylindrical surface of prepared chalk. the undulatory current from the line was passed through the stylus and the chalk, while the latter was moved by turning a handle; and at every pulse of the electricity the friction between the pin and chalk was diminished, so that the stylus slipped upon its surface. the consequence was a vibration of the mica diaphragm to which the stylus was attached. thus the undulatory current was able to establish vibrations of the disc, which communicated themselves to the air and reproduced the original sounds. the replica was loud enough to be heard by a large audience, and by reducing the strength of the current it could be lowered to a feeble murmur. the combined transmitter and receiver took the form of a small case with a mouthpiece to speak into, an car-piece on a hinged bracket for listening to it, press-keys for manipulating the call-bell and battery, and a small handle by which to revolve the little chalk cylinder. this last feature was a practical drawback to the system, which was patented in . the edison telephone, when at its best, could transmit all kinds of noises, gentle or harsh; it could lift up its voice and cry aloud, or sink it to a confidential whisper. there was a slight punchinellian twang about its utterances, which, if it did not altogether disguise the individuality of the distant speaker, gave it the comicality of a clever parody, and to hear it singing a song, and quavering jauntily on the high notes, was irresistibly funny. instrumental notes were given in all their purity, and, after the phonograph, there was nothing more magical in the whole range of science than to hear that fragment of common chalk distilling to the air the liquid melody of sweet bells jingling in tune. it brought to mind that wonderful stone of memnon, which responded to the rays of sunrise. it seemed to the listener that if the age of miracles was past that of marvels had arrived, and considering the simplicity of the materials, and the obscurity of its action, the loud-speaking telephone was one of the most astonishing of recent inventions. after professor hughes had published his discovery of the microphone, edison, recognising, perhaps, that it and the carbon transmitter were based on the same principle, and having learnt his knowledge of the world in the hard school of adversity, hastily claimed the microphone as a variety of his invention, but imprudently charged professor hughes and his friend, mr. w. h. preece, who had visited edison at menlo park, with having 'stolen his thunder.' the imputation was indignantly denied, and it was obvious to all impartial electricians that professor hughes had arrived at his results by a path quite independent of the carbon transmitter, and discovered a great deal more than edison had done. for one thing, edison believed the action of his transmitter as due to a property of certain poor or 'semi-conductors,' whereby their electric resistance varied under pressure. hughes taught us to understand that it was owing to a property of loose electrical contact between any two conductors. the soft and springy button of lamp-black became no longer necessary, since it was not so much the resistance of the material which varied as the resistance at the contacts of its parts and the platinum electrodes. two metals, or two pieces of hard carbon, or a piece of metal and a piece of hard carbon, were found to regulate the current in accordance with the vibrations of the voice. edison therefore discarded the soft and fragile button, replacing it by contacts of hard carbon and metal, in short, by a form of microphone. the carbon, or microphone transmitter, was found superior to the magneto-electric transmitter of bell; but the latter was preferable as a receiver to the louder but less convenient chemical receiver of edison, and the most successful telephonic system of the day is a combination of the microphone, or new carbon transmitter, with the bell receiver. the 'micro-tasimeter,' a delicate thermoscope, was constructed in , and is the outcome of edison's experiments with the carbon button. knowing the latter to be extremely sensitive to minute changes of pressure, for example, those of sonorous vibrations, he conceived the idea of measuring radiant heat by causing it to elongate a thin bar or strip of metal or vulcanite, bearing at one end on the button. to indicate the effect, he included a galvanometer in the circuit of the battery and the button. the apparatus consisted of a telephone button placed between two discs of platinum and connected in circuit with the battery and a sensitive galvanometer. the strip was supported so that one end bore upon the button with a pressure which could be regulated by an adjustable screw at the other. the strip expanded or contracted when exposed to heat or cold, and thrust itself upon the button more or less, thereby varying the electric current and deflecting the needle of the galvanometer to one side or the other. the instrument was said to indicate a change of temperature equivalent to one-millionth of a degree fahrenheit. it was tested by edison on the sun's corona during the eclipse observations of july , , at rawlings, in the territory of wyoming. the trial was not satisfactory, however, for the apparatus was mounted on a hen-house, which trembled to the gale, and before he could get it properly adjusted the eclipse was over. it is reported that on another trial the light from the star arcturus, when focussed on the vulcanite, was capable of deflecting the needle of the galvanometer. when gelatine is substituted for vulcanite, the humidity of the atmosphere can also be measured in the same way. edison's crowning discovery at menlo park was the celebrated 'phonograph,' or talking machine. it was first announced by one of his assistants in the pages of the scientific american for . the startling news created a general feeling of astonishment, mingled with incredulity or faith. people had indeed heard of the talking heads of antiquity, and seen the articulating machines of de kempelen and faber, with their artificial vocal organs and complicated levers, manipulated by an operator. but the phonograph was automatic, and returned the words which had been spoken into it by a purely mechanical mimicry. it captured and imprisoned the sounds as the photograph retained the images of light. the colours of nature were lost in the photograph, but the phonograph was said to preserve the qualities even of the human voice. yet this wonderful appliance had neither tongue nor teeth, larynx nor pharynx. it appeared as simple as a coffee-mill. a vibrating diaphragm to collect the sounds, and a stylus to impress them on a sheet of tinfoil, were its essential parts. looking on the record of the sound, one could see only the scoring of the stylus on the yielding surface of the metal, like the track of an alpine traveller across the virgin snow. these puzzling scratches were the foot-prints of the voice. speech is the most perfect utterance of man; but its powers are limited both in time and space. the sounds of the voice are fleeting, and do not carry far; hence the invention of letters to record them, and of signals to extend their range. these twin lines of invention, continued through the ages, have in our own day reached their consummation. the smoke of the savage, the semaphore, and the telegraph have ended in the telephone, by which the actual voice can speak to a distance; and now at length the clay tablet of the assyrian, the wax of the ancient greek, the papyrus of the egyptian, and the modern printing-press have culminated in the phonograph, by which the living words can be preserved into the future. in the light of a new discovery, we are apt to wonder why our fathers were so blind as not to see it. when a new invention has been made, we ask ourselves, why was it not thought of before? the discovery seems obvious, and the invention simple, after we know them. now that speech itself can be sent a thousand miles away, or heard a thousand years after, we discern in these achievements two goals toward which we have been making, and at which we should arrive some day. we marvel that we had no prescience of these, and that we did not attain to them sooner. why has it taken so many generations to reach a foregone conclusion? alas! they neither knew the conclusion nor the means of attaining to it. man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. his little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward; yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in case he should be lost. to the infinite intelligence which knows all that is hidden in that darkness, and all that man will discover therein, how poor a thing is the telephone or phonograph, how insignificant are all his 'great discoveries'! this thought should imbue a man of science with humility rather than with pride. seen from another standpoint than his own, from without the circle of his labours, not from within, in looking back, not forward, even his most remarkable discovery is but the testimony of his own littleness. the veil of darkness only serves to keep these little powers at work. men have sometimes a foreshadowing of what will come to pass without distinctly seeing it. in mechanical affairs, the notion of a telegraph is very old, and probably immemorial. centuries ago the poet and philosopher entertained the idea of two persons far apart being able to correspond through the sympathetic property of the lodestone. the string or lovers' telephone was known to the chinese, and even the electric telephone was thought about some years before it was invented. bourseul, reis, and others preceded graham bell. the phonograph was more of a surprise; but still it was no exception to the rule. naturally, men and women had desired to preserve the accents as well as the lineaments of some beloved friend who had passed away. the chinese have a legend of a mother whose voice was so beautiful that her children tried to store it in a bamboo cane, which was carefully sealed up. long after she was dead the cane was opened, and her voice came out in all its sweetness, but was never heard again. a similar idea (which reminds us of munchausen's trumpet) is found in the natural magick of john baptista porta, the celebrated neapolitan philosopher, and published at london in . he proposes to confine the sound of the voice in leaden pipes, such as are used for speaking through; and he goes on to say that 'if any man, as the words are spoken, shall stop the end of the pipe, and he that is at the other end shall do the like, the voice may be intercepted in the middle, and be shut up as in a prison, and when the mouth is opened, the voice will come forth as out of his mouth that spake it.... i am now upon trial of it. if before my book be printed the business take effect, i will set it down; if not, if god please, i shall write of it elsewhere.' porta also refers to the speaking head of albertus magnus, whom, however, he discredits. he likewise mentions a colossal trumpeter of brass, stated to have been erected in some ancient cities, and describes a plan for making a kind of megaphone, 'wherewith we may hear many miles.' in the voyage a la lune of de cyrano bergerac, published at paris in , and subsequently translated into english, there is a long account of a 'mechanical book' which spoke its contents to the listener. 'it was a book, indeed,' says cyrano, 'but a strange and wonderful book, which had neither leaves nor letters,' and which instructed the youth in their walks, so that they knew more than the greybeards of cyrano's country, and need never lack the company of all the great men living or dead to entertain them with living voices. sir david brewster surmised that a talking machine mould be invented before the end of the century. mary somerville, in her connection of the physical sciences, wrote some fifty years ago: 'it may be presumed that ultimately the utterances or pronunciation of modern languages will be conveyed, not only to the eye, but also to the ear of posterity. had the ancients possessed the means of transmitting such definite sounds, the civilised world must have responded in sympathetic notes at the distance of many ages.' in the memoires du geant of m. nadar, published in , the author says: 'these last fifteen years i have amused myself in thinking there is nothing to prevent a man one of these days from finding a way to give us a daguerreotype of sound--the phonograph--something like a box in which melodies will be fixed and kept, as images are fixed in the dark chamber.' it is also on record that, before edison had published his discovery to the world, m. charles cros deposited a sealed packet at the academie des sciences, paris, giving an account of an invention similar to the phonograph. ignorance of the true nature of sound had prevented the introduction of such an instrument. but modern science, and in particular the invention of the telephone with its vibrating plate, had paved the way for it. the time was ripe, and edison was the first to do it. in spite of the unbridled fancies of the poets and the hints of ingenious writers, the announcement that a means of hoarding speech had been devised burst like a thunderclap upon the world. [in seeing his mother's picture byron wished that he might hear her voice. tennyson exclaims, 'oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!' shelley, in the witch of atlas, wrote: 'the deep recesses of her odorous dwelling were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air, which had the power all spirits of compelling, folded in cells of crystal silence there; such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling will never die--yet ere we are aware, the feeling and the sound are fled and gone, and the regret they leave remains alone.' again, in his spirit of solitude, we find: 'the fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, and silence too enamoured of that voice locks its mute music in her rugged cell,'] the phonograph lay under the very eyes of science, and yet she did not see it. the logograph had traced all the curves of speech with ink on paper; and it only remained to impress them on a solid surface in such a manner as to regulate the vibrations of an artificial tympanum or drum. yet no professor of acoustics thought of this, and it was left to edison, a telegraphic inventor, to show them what was lying at their feet. mere knowledge, uncombined in the imagination, does not bear fruit in new inventions. it is from the union of different facts that a new idea springs. a scholar is apt to be content with the acquisition of knowledge, which remains passive in his mind. an inventor seizes upon fresh facts, and combines them with the old, which thereby become nascent. through accident or premeditation he is able by uniting scattered thoughts to add a novel instrument to a domain of science with which he has little acquaintance. nay, the lessons of experience and the scruples of intimate knowledge sometimes deter a master from attempting what the tyro, with the audacity of genius and the hardihood of ignorance, achieves. theorists have been known to pronounce against a promising invention which has afterwards been carried to success, and it is not improbable that if edison had been an authority in acoustics he would never have invented the phonograph. it happened in this wise. during the spring of , he was trying a device for making a telegraph message, received on one line, automatically repeat itself along another line. this he did by embossing the morse signals on the travelling paper instead of merely inking them, and then causing the paper to pass under the point of a stylus, which, by rising and falling in the indentations, opened and closed a sending key included in the circuit of the second line. in this way the received message transmitted itself further, without the aid of a telegraphist. edison was running the cylinder which carried the embossed paper at a high speed one day, partly, as we are told, for amusement, and partly to test the rate at which a clerk could read a message. as the speed was raised, the paper gave out a humming rhythmic sound in passing under the stylus. the separate signals of the message could no longer be distinguished by the ear, and the instrument seemed to be speaking in a language of its own, resembling 'human talk heard indistinctly.' immediately it flashed on the inventor that if he could emboss the waves of speech upon the paper the words would be returned to him. to conceive was to execute, and it was but the work of an hour to provide a vibrating diaphragm or tympanum fitted with an indenting stylus, and adapt it to the apparatus. paraffined paper was selected to receive the indentations, and substituted for the morse paper on the cylinder of the machine. on speaking to the tympanum, as the cylinder was revolved, a record of the vibrations was indented on the paper, and by re-passing this under the indenting point an imperfect reproduction of the sounds was heard. edison 'saw at once that the problem of registering human speech, so that it could be repeated by mechanical means as often as might he desired, was solved.' [t. a. edison, north american review, june, ; new york electrical review, ,] the experiment shows that it was partly by accident, and not by reasoning on theoretical knowledge, that the phonograph was discovered. the sound resembling 'human talk heard indistinctly' seems to have suggested it to his mind. this was the germ which fell upon the soil prepared for it. edison's thoughts had been dwelling on the telephone; he knew that a metal tympanum was capable of vibrating with all the delicacies of speech, and it occurred to him that if these vibrations could be impressed on a yielding material, as the morse signals were embossed upon the paper, the indentations would reproduce the speech, just as the furrows of the paper reproduced the morse signals. the tympanum vibrating in the curves of speech was instantly united in his imagination with the embossing stylus and the long and short indentations on the morse paper; the idea of the phonograph flashed upon him. many a one versed in acoustics would probably have been restrained by the practical difficulty of impressing the vibrations on a yielding material, and making them react upon the reproducing tympanum. but edison, with that daring mastery over matter which is a characteristic of his mechanical genius, put it confidently to the test. soon after this experiment, a phonograph was constructed, in which a sheet of tinfoil was wrapped round a revolving barrel having a spiral groove cut in its surface to allow the point of the indenting stylus to sink into the yielding foil as it was thrust up and down by the vibrating tympanum. this apparatus--the first phonograph--was published to the world in , and created a universal sensation. [scientific american, march , ] it is now in the south kensington museum, to which it was presented by the inventor. the phonograph was first publicly exhibited in england at a meeting of the society of telegraph engineers, where its performances filled the audience with astonishment and delight. a greeting from edison to his electrical brethren across the atlantic had been impressed on the tinfoil, and was spoken by the machine. needless to say, the voice of the inventor, however imperfectly reproduced, was hailed with great enthusiasm, which those who witnessed will long remember. in this machine, the barrel was fitted with a crank, and rotated by handle. a heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. a sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. but articulation was sacrificed at the expense of loudness. it was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. clearly, if the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be much improved. nevertheless this apparatus sufficiently demonstrated the feasibility of storing up and reproducing speech, music, and other sounds. numbers of them were made, and exhibited to admiring audiences, by license, and never failed to elicit both amusement and applause. to show how striking were its effects, and how surprising, even to scientific men, it may be mentioned that a certain learned savant, on hearing it at a seance of the academie des sciences, paris, protested that it was a fraud, a piece of trickery or ventriloquism, and would not be convinced. after edison became too much engaged with the development of the electric light to give much attention to the phonograph, which, however, was not entirely overlooked. his laboratory at menlo park, new jersey, where the original experiments were made, was turned into a factory for making electric light machinery, and edison removed to new york until his new laboratory at orange, new jersey, was completed. of late he has occupied the latter premises, and improved the phonograph so far that it is now a serviceable instrument. in one of his patents, the use of wax to take the records in place of tinfoil is indicated, and it is chiefly to the adoption of this material that the success of the 'perfected phonograph' is due. wax is also employed in the 'graphophone' of mr. tainter and professor bell, which is merely a phonograph under another name. numerous experiments have been made by edison to find the bees-wax which is best adapted to receive the record, and he has recently discovered a new material or mixture which is stated to yield better results than white wax. the wax is moulded into the form of a tube or hollow cylinder, usually / inches long by inches in diameter, and / inch thick. such a size is capable of taking a thousand words on its surface along a delicate spiral trace; and by paring off one record after another can be used fifteen times. there are a hundred or more lines of the trace in the width of an inch, and they are hardly visible to the naked eye. only with a magnifying glass can the undulations caused by the vibrating stylus be distinguished. this tube of wax is filed upon a metal barrel like a sleeve, and the barrel, which forms part of a horizontal spindle, is rotated by means of a silent electro-motor, controlled by a very sensitive governor. a motion of translation is also given to the barrel as it revolves, so that the marking stylus held over it describes a spiral path upon its surface. in front of the wax two small metal tympanums are supported, each carrying a fine needle point or stylus on its under centre. one of these is the recording diaphragm, which prints the sounds in the first place; the other is the reproducing diaphragm, which emits the sounds recorded on the wax. they are used, one at a time, as the machine is required, to take down or to render back a phonographic message. the recording tympanum, which is about the size of a crown-piece, is fitted with a mouthpiece, and when it is desired to record a sentence the spindle is started, and you speak into the mouthpiece. the tympanum vibrates under your voice, and the stylus, partaking of its motion, digs into the yielding surface of the wax which moves beneath, and leaves a tiny furrow to mark its passage. this is the sonorous record which, on being passed under the stylus of the reproducing tympanum, will cause it to give out a faithful copy of the original speech. a flexible india-rubber tube, branching into two ear-pieces, conveys the sound emitted by the reproducing diaphragm to the ears. this trumpet is used for privacy and loudness; but it may be replaced by a conical funnel inserted by its small end over the diaphragm, which thereby utters its message aloud. it is on this plan that edison has now constructed a phonograph which delivers its reproduction to a roomful of people. keys and pedals are provided with which to stop the apparatus either in recording or receiving, and in the latter case to hark back and repeat a word or sentence if required. this is a convenient arrangement in using the phonograph for correspondence or dictation. each instrument, as we have seen, can be employed for receiving as well as recording; and as all are made to one pattern, a phonogram coming from any one, in any art of the world, can be reproduced in any other instrument. a little box with double walls has been introduced for transmitting the phonograms by post. a knife or cutter is attached to the instrument for the purpose of paring off an old message, and preparing a fresh surface of the wax for the reception of a new one. this can be done in advance while the new record is being made, so that no time is lost in the operation. a small voltaic battery, placed under the machine, serves to work the electric motor, and has to be replenished from time to time. a process has also been devised for making copies of the phonograms in metal by electro-deposition, so as to produce permanent records. but even the wax phonogram may be used over and over again, hundreds of times, without diminishing the fidelity of the reproduction. the entire phonograph is shown in our figure. [the figure is omitted from this e-text] it consists of a box, b, containing the silent electro-motor which drives the machine, and supporting the works for printing and reproducing the sounds. apart from the motive power, which might, as in the graphophone, be supplied by foot, the apparatus is purely mechanical, the parts acting with smoothness and precision. these are, chiefly, the barrel or cylinder, c, on which the hollow wax is placed; the spindle, s, which revolves the cylinder and wax; and the two tympana, t, t', which receive the sounds and impress them on the soft surface of the wax. a governor, g, regulates the movement of the spindle; and there are other ingenious devices for starting and stopping the apparatus. the tympanum t is that which is used for recording the sounds, and m is a mouthpiece, which is fixed to it for speaking purposes. the other tympanum, t', reproduces the sounds; and e e is a branched ear-piece, conveying them to the two ears of the listener. the separate wax tube, p, is a phonogram with the spiral trace of the sounds already printed on its surface, and ready for posting. the box below the table contains the voltaic battery which actuates the electro-motor. a machine which aims at recording and reproducing actual speech or music is, of course, capable of infinite refinement, and edison is still at work improving the instrument, but even now it is substantially perfected. phonographs have arrived in london, and through the kindness of mr. edison and his english representative, colonel g. e. gouraud, we have had an opportunity of testing one. a number of phonograms, taken in edison's laboratory, were sent over with the instruments, and several of them were caused to deliver in our hearing the sounds which were 'sealed in crystal silence there.' the first was a piece which had been played on the piano, quick time, and the fidelity and loudness with which it was delivered by the hearing tube was fairly astonishing, especially when one considered the frail and hair-like trace upon the wax which had excited it. there seemed to be something magical in the effect, which issued, as it were, from the machine itself. then followed a cornet solo, concert piece of cornet, violin, and piano, and a very beautiful duet of cornet and piano. the tones and cadences were admirably rendered, and the ear could also faintly distinguish the noises of the laboratory. speaking was represented by a phonogram containing a dialogue between mr. edison and colonel gouraud which had been imprinted some three weeks before in america. with this we could hear the inventor addressing his old friend, and telling him to correspond entirely with the phonograph. colonel gouraud answers that he will be delighted to do so, and be spared the trouble of writing; while edison rejoins that he also will be glad to escape the pains of reading the gallant colonel's letters. the sally is greeted with a laugh, which is also faithfully rendered. one day a workman in edison's laboratory caught up a crying child and held it over the phonograph. here is the phonogram it made, and here in england we can listen to its wailing, for the phonograph reproduces every kind of sound, high or low, whistling, coughing, sneezing, or groaning. it gives the accent, the expression, and the modulation, so that one has to be careful how one speaks, and probably its use will help us to improve our utterance. by speaking into the phonograph and reproducing the words, we are enabled for the first time to hear ourselves speak as others hear us; for the vibrations of the head are understood to mask the voice a little to our own ears. moreover, by altering the speed of the barrel the voice can be altered, music can be executed in slow or quick time, however it is played, inaudible notes can be raised or lowered, as the case may be, to audibility. the phonograph will register notes as low as ten vibrations a second, whereas it is well known the lowest note audible to the human ear is sixteen vibrations a second. the instrument is equally capable of service and entertainment. it can be used as a stenograph, or shorthand-writer. a business man, for instance, can dictate his letters or instructions into it, and they can be copied out by his secretary. callers can leave a verbal message in the phonograph instead of a note. an editor or journalist can dictate articles, which may be written out or composed by the printer, word by word, as they are spoken by the reproducer in his ears. correspondence can be carried on by phonograms, distant friends and lovers being able thus to hear each other's accents as though they were together, a result more conducive to harmony and good feeling than letter-writing. in matters of business and diplomacy the phonogram will teach its users to be brief, accurate, and honest in their speech; for the phonograph is a mechanical memory more faithful than the living one. its evidence may even be taken in a court of law in place of documents, and it is conceivable that some important action might be settled by the voice of this deus ex machina. will it therefore add a new terror to modern life? shall a visitor have to be careful what he says in a neighbour's house, in case his words are stored up in some concealed phonograph, just as his appearance may be registered by a detective camera? in ordinary life--no; for the phonograph has its limitations, like every other machine, and it is not sufficiently sensitive to record a conversation unless it is spoken close at hand. but there is here a chance for the sensational novelist to hang a tale upon. the 'interviewer' may make use of it to supply him with 'copy,' but this remains to be seen. there are practical difficulties in the way which need not be told over. perhaps in railway trains, steamers, and other unsteady vehicles, it will be-used for communications. the telephone may yet be adapted to work in conjunction with it, so that a phonogram can be telephoned, or a telephone message recorded in the phonograph. such a 'telephonograph' is, however, a thing of the future. wills and other private deeds may of course be executed by phonograph. moreover, the loud-speaking instrument which edison is engaged upon will probably be applied to advertising and communicating purposes. the hours of the day, for example, can be called out by a clock, the starting of a train announced, and the merits of a particular commodity descanted on. all these uses are possible; but it is in a literary sense that the phonograph is more interesting. books can now be spoken by their authors, or a good elocutionist, and published in phonograms, which will appeal to the ear of the 'reader' instead of to his eye. 'on, four cylinders inches long, with a diameter of ,' says edison, 'i can put the whole of nicholas nickleby.' to the invalid, especially, this use would come as a boon; and if the instrument were a loud speaker, a circle of listeners could be entertained. how interesting it would be to have nicholas nickleby read to us in the voice of dickens, or tam o' shanter in that of burns! if the idea is developed, we may perhaps have circulating libraries which issue phonograms, and there is already some talk of a phonographic newspaper which will prattle politics and scandal at the breakfast-table. addresses, sermons, and political speeches may be delivered by the phonograph; languages taught, and dialects preserved; while the study of words cannot fail to benefit by its performance. musicians will now be able to record their improvisations by a phonograph placed near the instrument they are playing. there need in fact be no more 'lost chords.' lovers of music, like the inventor himself, will be able to purchase songs and pieces, sung and played by eminent performers, and reproduce them in their own homes. music-sellers will perhaps let them out, like books, and customers can choose their piece in the shop by having it rehearsed to them. in preserving for us the words of friends who have passed away, the sound of voices which are stilled, the phonograph assumes its most beautiful and sacred character. the egyptians treasured in their homes the mummies of their dead. we are able to cherish the very accents of ours, and, as it were, defeat the course of time and break the silence of the grave. the voices of illustrious persons, heroes and statesmen, orators, actors, and singers, will go down to posterity and visit us in our homes. a new pleasure will be added to life. how pleasant it would be if we could listen to the cheery voice of gordon, the playing of liszt, or the singing of jenny lind! doubtless the rendering of the phonograph will be still further improved as time goes on; but even now it is remarkable; and the inventor must be considered to have redeemed his promises with regard to it. notwithstanding his deafness, the development of the instrument has been a labour of love to him; and those who knew his rare inventive skill believed that he would some time achieve success. it is his favourite, his most original, and novel work. for many triumphs of mind over matter edison has been called the 'napoleon of invention,' and the aptness of the title is enhanced by his personal resemblance to the great conqueror. but the phonograph is his victory of austerlitz; and, like the printing-press of gutenberg, it will assuredly immortalise his name. 'the phonograph,' said edison of his favourite, 'is my baby, and i expect it to grow up a big fellow and support me in my old age.' some people are still in doubt whether it will prove more than a curious plaything; but even now it seems to be coming into practical use in america, if not in europe. after the publication of the phonograph, edison, owing, it is stated, to an erroneous description of the instrument by a reporter, received letters from deaf people inquiring whether it would enable them to hear well. this, coupled with the fact that he is deaf himself, turned his thoughts to the invention of the 'megaphone,' a combination of one large speaking and two ear-trumpets, intended for carrying on a conversation beyond the ordinary range of the voice--in short, a mile or two. it is said to render a whisper audible at a distance of yards; but its very sensitiveness is a drawback, since it gathers up extraneous sounds. to the same category belongs the 'aerophone,' which may be described as a gigantic tympanum, vibrated by a piston working in a cylinder of compressed air, which is regulated by the vibrations of the sound to be magnified. it was designed to call out fog or other warnings in a loud and penetrating tone, but it has not been successful. the 'magnetic ore separator' is an application of magnetism to the extraction of iron particles from powdered ores and unmagnetic matter. the ground material is poured through a funnel or 'hopper,' and falls in a shower between the poles of a powerful electro-magnet, which draws the metal aside, thus removing it from the dress. among edison's toys and minor inventions may be mentioned a 'voice mill,' or wheel driven by the vibrations of the air set up in speaking. it consists of a tympanum or drum, having a stylus attached as in the phonograph. when the tympanum vibrates under the influence of the voice, the stylus acts as a pawl and turns a ratchet-wheel. an ingenious smith might apply it to the construction of a lock which would operate at the command of 'open, sesame!' another trifle perhaps worthy of note is his ink, which rises on the paper and solidifies, so that a blind person can read the writing by passing his fingers over the letters. edison's next important work was the adaptation of the electric light for domestic illumination. at the beginning of the century the cornish philosopher, humphrey davy, had discovered that the electric current produced a brilliant arch or 'arc' of light when passed between two charcoal points drawn a little apart, and that it heated a fine rod of charcoal or a metal wire to incandescence--that is to say, a glowing condition. a great variety of arc lamps were afterwards introduced; and mr. staite, on or about the year - , invented an incandescent lamp in which the current passed through a slender stick of carbon, enclosed in a vacuum bulb of glass. faraday discovered that electricity could be generated by the relative motion of a magnet and a coil of wire, and hence the dynamo-electric generator, or 'dynamo,' was ere long invented and improved. in the boulevards of paris were lit by the arc lamps of jablochkoff during the season of the exhibition, and the display excited a widespread interest in the new mode of illumination. it was too brilliant for domestic use, however, and, as the lamps were connected one after another in the same circuit like pearls upon a string, the breakage of one would interrupt the current and extinguish them all but for special precautions. in short, the electric light was not yet 'subdivided.' edison, in common with others, turned his attention to the subject, and took up the neglected incandescent lamp. he improved it by reducing the rod of carbon to a mere filament of charcoal, having a comparatively high resistance and resembling a wire in its elasticity, without being so liable to fuse under the intense heat of the current. this he moulded into a loop, and mounted inside a pear-shaped bulb of glass. the bulb was then exhausted of its air to prevent the oxidation of the carbon, and the whole hermetically sealed. when a sufficient current was passed through the filament, it glowed with a dazzling lustre. it was not too bright or powerful for a room; it produced little heat, and absolutely no fumes. moreover, it could be connected not in but across the main circuit of the current, and hence, if one should break, the others would continue glowing. edison, in short, had 'subdivided' the electric light. in october, , he telegraphed the news to london and paris, where, owing to his great reputation, it caused an immediate panic in the gas market. as time passed, and the new illuminant was backward in appearing, the shares recovered their old value. edison was severely blamed for causing the disturbance; but, nevertheless, his announcement had been verified in all but the question of cost. the introduction of a practical system of electric lighting employed his resources for several years. dynamos, types of lamps and conductors, electric meters, safety fuses, and other appliances had to be invented. in he returned to new york, to superintend the installation of his system in that city. his researches on the dynamo caused him to devise what he calls an 'harmonic engine.' it consists of a tuning-fork, kept in vibration by two small electro-magnets, excited with three or four battery cells. it is capable of working a small pump, but is little more than a scientific curiosity. with the object of transforming heat direct from the furnace into electricity, he also devised a 'pyro-electric generator,' but it never passed beyond the experimental stage. the same may be said for his pyro-electric motor. his dynamo-electric motors and system of electric railways are, however, a more promising invention. his method of telegraphing to and from a railway train in motion, by induction through the air to a telegraph wire running along the line, is very ingenious, and has been tried with a fair amount of success. at present he is working at the 'kinetograph,' a combination of the phonograph and the instantaneous photograph as exhibited in the zoetrope, by which he expects to produce an animated picture or simulacrum of a scene in real life or the drama, with its appropriate words and sounds. edison now resides at llewellyn park, orange, a picturesque suburb of new york. his laboratory there is a glorified edition of menlo park, and realises the inventor's dream. the main building is of brick, in three stories; but there are several annexes. each workshop and testing room is devoted to a particular purpose. the machine shops and dynamo rooms are equipped with the best engines and tools, the laboratories with the finest instruments that money can procure. there are drawing, photographic, and photometric chambers, physical, chemical, and metallurgical laboratories. there is a fine lecture-hall, and a splendid library and reading-room. he employs several hundred workmen and assistants, all chosen for their intelligence and skill. in this retreat edison is surrounded with everything that his heart desires. in the words of a reporter, the place is equally capable of turning out a 'chronometer or a cunard steamer.' it is probably the finest laboratory in the world. in , edison, accompanied by his second wife, paid a holiday visit to europe and the paris exhibition. he was received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm, and the king of italy created him a grand officer of the crown of italy, with the title of count. but the phonograph speaks more for his genius than the voice of the multitude, the electric light is a better illustration of his energy than the ribbon of an order, and the finest monument to his pluck, sagacity, and perseverance is the magnificent laboratory which has been built through his own efforts at llewellyn park. [one of his characteristic sayings may be quoted here: 'genius is an exhaustless capacity for work in detail, which, combined with grit and gumption and love of right, ensures to every man success and happiness in this world and the next.'] chapter x. david edwin hughes. there are some leading electricians who enjoy a reputation based partly on their own efforts and partly on those of their paid assistants. edison, for example, has a large following, who not only work out his ideas, but suggest, improve, and invent of themselves. the master in such a case is able to avail himself of their abilities and magnify his own genius, so to speak. he is not one mind, but the chief of many minds, and absorbs into himself the glory and the work of a hundred willing subjects. professor hughes is not one of these. his fame is entirely self-earned. all that he has accomplished, and he has done great things, has been the labour of his own hand and brain. he is an artist in invention; working out his own conceptions in silence and retirement, with the artist's love and self-absorption. this is but saying that he is a true inventor; for a mere manufacturer of inventions, who employs others to assist him in the work, is not an inventor in the old and truest sense. genius, they say, makes its own tools, and the adage is strikingly verified in the case of professor hughes, who actually discovered the microphone in his own drawing-room, and constructed it of toy boxes and sealing wax. he required neither lathe, laboratory, nor assistant to give the world this remarkable and priceless instrument. having first become known to fame in america, professor hughes is usually claimed by the americans as a countryman, and through some error, the very date and place of his birth there are often given in american publications; but we have the best authority for the accuracy of the following facts, namely that of the inventor himself. david edwin hughes was born in london in . his parents came from bala, at the foot of snowdon, in north wales, and in , when david was seven years old, his father, taking with him his family, emigrated to the united states, and became a planter in virginia. the elder mr. hughes and his children seem to have inherited the welsh musical gift, for they were all accomplished musicians. while a mere child, david could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this talent attracted the notice of herr hast, an eminent german pianist in america, who procured for him the professorship of music in the college of bardstown, kentucky. mr. hughes entered upon his academical career at bardstown in , when he was nineteen years of age. although very fond of music and endowered by nature with exceptional powers for its cultivation, professor hughes had, in addition, an inborn liking and fitness for physical science and mechanical invention. this duality of taste and genius may seem at first sight strange; but experience shows that there are many men of science and inventors who are also votaries of music and art. the source of this apparent anomaly is to be found in the imagination, which is the fountain-head of all kinds of creation. professor hughes now taught music by day for his livelihood, and studied science at night for his recreation, thus reversing the usual order of things. the college authorities, knowing his proficiency in the subject, also offered him the chair of natural philosophy, which became vacant; and he united the two seemingly incongruous professorships of music and physics in himself. he had long cherished the idea of inventing a new telegraph, and especially one which should print the message in roman characters as it is received. so it happened that one evening while he was under the excitement of a musical improvisation, a solution of the problem flashed into his ken. his music and his science had met at this nodal point. all his spare time was thenceforth devoted to the development of his design and the construction of a practical type-printer. as the work grew on his hands, the pale young student, beardless but careworn, became more and more engrossed with it, until his nights were almost entirely given to experiment. he begrudged the time which had to be spent in teaching his classes and the fatigue was telling upon his health, so in he removed to bowlingreen, in warren co., kentucky, where he acquired more freedom by taking pupils. the main principle of his type-printer was the printing of each letter by a single current; the morse instrument, then the principal receiver in america, required, on the other hand, an average of three currents for each signal. in order to carry out this principle it was necessary that the sending and receiving apparatus should keep in strict time with each other, or be synchronous in action; and to effect this was the prime difficulty which professor hughes had to overcome in his work. in estimating the hughes' type-printer as an invention we must not forget the state of science at that early period. he had to devise his own governors for the synchronous mechanism, and here his knowledge of acoustics helped him. centrifugal governors and pendulums would not do, and he tried vibrators, such as piano-strings and tuning-forks. he at last found what he wanted in two darning needles, borrowed from an old lady in the house where he lived. these steel rods fixed at one end vibrated with equal periods, and could be utilised in such a way that the printing wheel could be corrected into absolute synchronism by each signal current. in , professor hughes went to louisville to superintend the making of his first instrument; but it was unprotected by a patent in the united states until . in that form straight vibrators were used as governors, and a separate train of wheel-work was employed in correcting: but in later forms the spiral governor was adopted, and the printing and correcting is now done by the same action. in , the invention may be said to have become fit for employment, and no sooner was this the case, than professor hughes received a telegram from the editors of the new york associated press, summoning him to that city. the american telegraph company, then a leading one, was in possession of the morse instrument, and levied rates for transmission of news which the editors found oppressive. they took up the hughes' instrument in opposition to the morse, and introduced it on the lines of several companies. after a time, however, the separate companies amalgamated into one large corporation, the western union telegraph company of to-day. with the morse, hughes, and other apparatus in its power, the editors were again left in the lurch. in , professor hughes leaving his instrument in the hands of the western union telegraph company, came to england to effect its introduction here. he endeavoured to get the old electric telegraph company to adopt it, but after two years of indecision on their part, he went over to france in , where he met with a more encouraging reception. the french government telegraph administration became at once interested in the new receiver, and a commission of eminent electricians, consisting of du moncel, blavier, froment, gaugain, and other practical and theoretical specialists, was appointed to decide on its merits. the first trial of the type-printer took place on the paris to lyons circuit, and there is a little anecdote connected with it which is worthy of being told. the instrument was started, and for a while worked as well as could be desired; but suddenly it came to a stop, and to the utter discomfiture of the inventor he could neither find out what was wrong nor get the printer to go again. in the midst of his confusion, it seemed like satire to him to hear the commissioners say, as they smiled all round, and bowed themselves gracefully off, 'tres-bien, monsieur hughes--tres-bien, je vous felicite.' but the matter was explained next morning, when professor hughes learned that the transmitting clerk at lyons had been purposely instructed to earth the line at the time in question, to test whether there was no deception in the trial, a proceeding which would have seemed strange, had not the occurrence of a sham trial some months previous rendered it a prudent course. the result of this trial was that the french government agreed to give the printer a year of practical work on the french lines, and if found satisfactory, it was to be finally adopted. daily reports were furnished of its behaviour during that time, and at the expiration of the term it was adopted, and professor hughes was constituted by napoleon iii. a chevalier of the legion of honour. the patronage of france paved the way of the type-printer into almost all other european countries; and the french agreement as to its use became the model of those made by the other nations. on settling with france in , professor hughes went to italy. here a commission was likewise appointed, and a period of probation--only six months--was settled, before the instrument was taken over. from italy, professor hughes received the order of st. maurice and st. lazare. in , the united kingdom telegraph co., england, introduced the type-printer in their system. in , professor hughes proceeded to russia, and in that country his invention was adopted after six months' trial on the st. petersburg to moscow circuit. at st. petersburg he had the honour of being a guest of the emperor in the summer palace, czarskoizelo, the versailles of russia, where he was requested to explain his invention, and also to give a lecture on electricity to the czar and his court. he was there created a commander of the order of st. anne. in , professor hughes also went to berlin, and introduced his apparatus on the prussian lines. in , he went on a similar mission to austria, where he received the order of the iron crown; and to turkey, where the reigning sultan bestowed on him the grand cross of the medjidie. in this year, too he was awarded at the paris exhibition, a grand hors ligne gold medal, one out of ten supreme honours designed to mark the very highest achievements. on the same occasion another of these special medals was bestowed on cyrus field and the anglo-american telegraph company. in , he introduced it into holland; and in , into bavaria and wurtemburg, where he obtained the noble order of st. michael. in , he also installed it in switzerland and belgium. coming back to england, the submarine telegraph company adopted the type-printer in , when they had only two instruments at work. in they had twenty of them in constant use, of which number nine were working direct between london and paris, one between london and berlin, one between london and cologne, one between london and antwerp, and one between london and brussels. all the continental news for the times and the daily telegraph is received by the hughes' type-printer, and is set in type by a type-setting machine as it arrives. further, by the international telegraph congress it was settled that for all international telegrams only the hughes' instrument and the morse were to be employed. since the post office acquired the cables to the continent in , a room in st. martin's-le-grand has been provided for the printers working to paris, berlin, and rome. in , professor hughes introduced the type-printer into spain, where he was made a commander of the royal and distinguished order of carlos iii. in every country to which it was taken, the merits of the instrument were recognised, and professor hughes has none but pleasant souvenirs of his visits abroad. during all these years the inventor was not idle. he was constantly improving his invention; and in addition to that, he had to act as an instructor where-ever he went, and give courses of lectures explaining the principles and practice of his apparatus to the various employees into whose hands it was to be consigned. the years - will be distinguished in the history of our time for a triad of great inventions which, so to speak, were hanging together. we have already seen how the telephone and phonograph have originated; and to these two marvellous contrivances we have now to add a third, the microphone, which is even more marvellous, because, although in form it is the simplest of them all, in its action it is still a mystery. the telephone enables us to speak to distances far beyond the reach of eye or ear, 'to waft a sigh from indus to the pole; 'the phonograph enables us to seal the living speech on brazen tablets, and store it up for any length of time; while it is the peculiar function of the microphone to let us hear those minute sounds which are below the range of our unassisted powers of hearing. by these three instruments we have thus received a remarkable extension of the capacity of the human ear, and a growth of dominion over the sounds of nature. we have now a command over sound such as we have over light. for the telephone is to the ear what the telescope is to the eye, the phonograph is for sound what the photograph is for light, and the microphone finds its analogue in the microscope. as the microscope reveals to our wondering sight the rich meshes of creation, so the microphone can interpret to our ears the jarr of molecular vibrations for ever going on around us, perchance the clash of atoms as they shape themselves into crystals, the murmurous ripple of the sap in trees, which humboldt fancied to make a continuous music in the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting of a bellicose gnat, like the 'horns of elf-land faintly blowing.' the success of the hughes type-printer may be said to have covered its author with titles and scientific honours, and placed him above the necessity of regular employment. he left america, and travelled from place to place. for many years past, however, he has resided privately in london, an eminent example of that modesty and simplicity which is generally said to accompany true genius. mechanical invention is influenced to a very high degree by external circumstances. it may sound sensational, but it is nevertheless true, that we owe the microphone to an attack of bronchitis. during the thick foggy weather of november , professor hughes was confined to his home by a severe cold, and in order to divert his thoughts he began to amuse himself with a speaking telephone. then it occurred to him that there might be some means found of making the wire of the telephone circuit speak of itself without the need of telephones at all, or at least without the need of one telephone, namely, that used in transmitting the sounds. the distinguished physicist sir william thomson, had lately discovered the peculiar fact that when a current of electricity is passed through a wire, the current augments when the wire is extended, and diminishes when the wire is compressed, because in the former case the resistance of the material of the wire to the passage of the current is lessened, and in the latter case it becomes greater. now it occurred to professor hughes that, if this were so, it might be possible to cause the air-vibrations of sound to so act upon a wire conveying a current as to stretch and contract it in sympathy with themselves, so that the sound-waves would create corresponding electric waves in the current, and these electric waves, passed through a telephone connected to the wire, would cause the telephone to give forth the original sounds. he first set about trying the effect of vibrating a wire in which a current flowed, to see if the stretching and compressing thereby produced would affect the current so as to cause sounds in a telephone connected up in circuit with the wire--but without effect. he could hear no sound whatever in the telephone. then he stretched the wire till it broke altogether, and as the metal began to rupture he heard a distinct grating in the telephone, followed by a sharp 'click,' when the wire sundered, which indicated a 'rush' of electricity through the telephone. this pointed out to him that the wire might be sensitive to sound when in a state of fracture. acting on the hint, he placed the two broken ends of the wire together again, and kept them so by the application of a definite pressure. to his joy he found that he had discovered what he had been in search of. the imperfect contact between the broken ends of the wire proved itself to be a means of transmitting sounds, and in addition it was found to possess a faculty which he had not anticipated--it proved to be sensitive to very minute sounds, and was in fact a rude microphone. continuing his researches, he soon found that he had discovered a principle of wide application, and that it was not necessary to confine his experiments to wires, since any substance which conducted an electric current would answer the purpose. all that was necessary was that the materials employed should be in contact with each other under a slight but definite pressure, and, for the continuance of the effects, that the materials should not oxidise in air so as to foul the contact. for different materials a different degree of pressure gives the best results, and for different sounds to be transmitted a different degree of pressure is required. any loose, crazy unstable structure, of conducting bodies, inserted in a telephone circuit, will act as a microphone. such, for example, as a glass tube filled with lead-shot or black oxide of iron, or 'white bronze' powder under pressure; a metal watch-chain piled in a heap. surfaces of platinum, gold, or even iron, pressed lightly together give excellent results. three french nails, two parallel beneath and one laid across them, or better still a log-hut of french nails, make a perfect transmitter of audible sounds, and a good microphone. because of its cheapness, its conducting power, and its non-oxidisability, carbon is the most select material. a piece of charcoal no bigger than a pin's head is quite sufficient to produce articulate speech. gas-carbon operates admirably, but the best carbon is that known as willow-charcoal, used by artists in sketching, and when this is impregnated with minute globules of mercury by heating it white-hot and quenching it in liquid mercury, it is in a highly sensitive microphonic condition. the same kind of charcoal permeated by platinum, tin, zinc, or other unoxidisable metal is also very suitable; and it is a significant fact that the most resonant woods, such as pine, poplar, and willow, yield the charcoals best adapted for the microphone. professor hughes' experimental apparatus is of an amusingly simple description. he has no laboratory at home, and all his experiments were made in the drawing-room. his first microphones were formed of bits of carbon and scraps of metal, mounted on slips of match-boxes by means of sealing-wax; and the resonance pipes on which they were placed to reinforce the effect of minute sounds, were nothing more than children's toy money boxes, price one halfpenny, having one of the ends knocked out. with such childish and worthless materials he has conquered nature in her strongholds, and shown how great discoveries can be made. the microphone is a striking illustration of the truth that in science any phenomenon whatever may be rendered useful. the trouble of one generation of scientists may be turned to the honour and service of the next. electricians have long had sore reasons for regarding a 'bad contact' as an unmitigated nuisance, the instrument of the evil one, with no conceivable good in it, and no conceivable purpose except to annoy and tempt them into wickedness and an expression of hearty but ignominious emotion. professor hughes, however, has with a wizard's power transformed this electrician's bane into a professional glory and a public boon. verily there is a soul of virtue in things evil. the commonest and at the same time one of the most sensitive forms of the instrument is called the 'pencil microphone,' from the pencil or crayon of carbon which forms the principal part of it. this pencil may be of mercurialised charcoal, but the ordinary gas-carbon, which incrusts the interior of the retorts in gas-works, is usually employed. the crayon is supported in an upright position by two little brackets of carbon, hollowed out so as to receive the pointed ends in shallow cups. the weight of the crayon suffices to give the required pressure on the contacts, both upper and lower, for the upper end of the pencil should lean against the inner wall of the cup in the upper bracket. the brackets are fixed to an upright board of light, dry, resonant pine-wood, let into a solid base of the same timber. the baseboard is with advantage borne by four rounded india-rubber feet, which insulate it from the table on which it may be placed. to connect the microphone up for use, a small voltaic battery, say three cells (though a single cell will give surprising results), and a bell speaking telephone are necessary. a wire is led from one of the carbon brackets to one pole of the battery, and another wire is led from the other bracket to one terminal screw of the telephone, and the circuit is completed by a wire from the other terminal of the telephone to the other pole of the battery. if now the slightest mechanical jar be given to the wooden frame of the microphone, to the table, or even to the walls of the room in which the experiment takes place, a corresponding noise will be heard in the microphone. by this delicate arrangement we can play the eavesdropper on those insensible vibrations in the midst of which we exist. if a feather or a camel-hair pencil be stroked along the base-board, we hear a harsh grating sound; if a pin be laid upon it, we hear a blow like a blacksmith's hammer; and, more astonishing than all, if a fly walk across it we hear it tramping like a charger, and even its peculiar cry, which has been likened, with some allowance for imagination, to the snorting of an elephant. moreover it should not be forgotten that the wires connecting up the telephone may be lengthened to any desired extent, so that, in the words of professor hughes, 'the beating of a pulse, the tick of a watch, the tramp of a fly can then be heard at least a hundred miles from the source of sound.' if we whisper or speak distinctly in a monotone to the pencil, our words will be heard in the telephone; but with this defect, that the timbre or quality is, in this particular form of the instrument, apt to be lost, making it difficult to recognise the speaker's voice. but although a single pencil microphone will under favourable circumstances transmit these varied sounds, the best effect for each kind of sound is obtained by one specially adjusted. there is one pressure best adapted for minute sounds, another for speech, and a third for louder sounds. a simple spring arrangement for adjusting the pressure of the contacts is therefore an advantage, and it can easily be applied to a microphone formed of a small rod of carbon pivoted at its middle, with one end resting on a block or anvil of carbon underneath. the contact between the rod and the block in this 'hammer-and-anvil' form is, of course, the portion which is sensitive to sound. the microphone is a discovery as well as an invention, and the true explanation of its action is as yet merely an hypothesis. it is supposed that the vibrations put the carbons in a tremor and cause them to approach more or less nearly, thus closing or opening the breach between them, which is, as it were, the floodgate of the current. the applications of the microphone were soon of great importance. dr. b. w. richardson succeeded in fitting it for auscultation of the heart and lungs; while sir henry thompson has effectively used it in those surgical operations, such as probing wounds for bullets or fragments of bone, in which the surgeon has hitherto relied entirely on his delicacy of touch for detecting the jar of the probe on the foreign body. there can be no doubt that in the science of physiology, in the art of surgery, and in many other walks of life, the microphone has proved a valuable aid. professor hughes communicated his results to the royal society in the early part of , and generously gave the microphone to the world. for his own sake it would perhaps have been better had he patented and thus protected it, for mr. edison, recognising it as a rival to his carbon-transmitter, then a valuable property, claimed it as an infringement of his patents and charged him with plagiarism. a spirited controversy arose, and several bitter lawsuits were the consequence, in none of which, however, professor hughes took part, as they were only commercial trials. it was clearly shown that clerac, and not edison, had been the first to utilise the variable resistance of powdered carbon or plumbage under pressure, a property on which the edison transmitter was founded, and that hughes had discovered a much wider principle, which embraced not only the so-called 'semi-conducting' bodies, such as carbon; but even the best conductors, such as gold, silver, and other metals. this principle was not a mere variation of electrical conductivity in a mass of material brought about by compression, but a mysterious variation in some unknown way of the strength of an electric current in traversing a loose joint or contact between two conductors. this discovery of hughes really shed a light on the behaviour of edison's own transmitter, whose action he had until then misunderstood. it was now seen that the particles of carbon dust in contact which formed the button were a congeries of minute micro-phones. again it was proved that the diaphragm or tympanum to receive the impression of the sound and convey it to the carbon button, on which edison had laid considerable stress, was non-essential; for the microphone, pure and simple, was operated by the direct impact of the sonorous waves, and required no tympanum. moreover, the microphone, as its name implies, could magnify a feeble sound, and render audible the vibrations which would otherwise escape the ear. the discovery of these remarkable and subtle properties of a delicate contact had indeed confronted edison; he had held them in his grasp, they had stared him in the face, but not-withstanding all his matchless ingenuity and acumen, he, blinded perhaps by a false hypothesis, entirely failed to discern them. the significant proof of it lies in the fact that after the researches of professor hughes were published the carbon transmitter was promptly modified, and finally abandoned for practical work as a telephone, in favour of a variety of new transmitters, such as the blake, now employed in the united kingdom, in all of which the essential part is a microphone of hard carbon and metal. the button of soot has vanished into the limbo of superseded inventions. science appears to show that every physical process is reciprocal, and may be reversed. with this principle in our minds, we need not be surprised that the microphone should not only act as a transmitter of sounds, but that it should also act as a receiver. mr. james blyth, of edinburgh, was the first to announce that he had heard sounds and even speech given out by a microphone itself when substituted for the telephone. his transmitting microphone and his receiving one were simply jelly-cans filled with cinders from the grate. it then transpired that professor hughes had previously obtained the same remarkable effects from his ordinary 'pencil' microphones. the sounds were extremely feeble, however, but the transmitting microphones proved the best articulating ones. professor hughes at length constructed an adjustable hammer-and-anvil microphone of gas-carbon, fixed to the top of a resonating drum, which articulated fairly well, although not so perfectly as a bell telephone. perhaps a means of improving both the volume and distinctness of the articulation will yet be forthcoming and we may be able to speak solely by the microphone, if it is found desirable. the marvellous fact that a little piece of charcoal can, as it were, both listen and speak, that a person may talk to it so that his friend can hear him at a similar piece a hundred miles away, is a miracle of nineteenth century science which far transcends the oracles of antiquity. the articulating telephone was the forerunner of the phonograph and microphone, and led to their discovery. they in turn will doubtless lead to other new inventions, which it is now impossible to foresee. we ask in vain for an answer to the question which is upon the lips of every one-what next? the microphone has proved itself highly useful in strengthening the sounds given out by the telephone, and it is probable that we shall soon see those three inventions working unitedly; for the microphone might make the telephone sounds so powerful as to enable them to be printed by phonograph as they are received, and thus a durable record of telephonic messages would be obtained. we can now transmit sound by wire, but it may yet be possible to transmit light, and see by telegraph. we are apparently on the eve of other wonderful inventions, and there are symptoms that before many years a great fundamental discovery will be made, which will elucidate the connection of all the physical forces, and will illumine the very frame-work of nature. in , professor hughes endowed the scientific world with another beautiful apparatus, his 'induction balance.' briefly described, it is an arrangement of coils whereby the currents inducted by a primary circuit in the secondary are opposed to each other until they balance, so that a telephone connected in the secondary circuit is quite silent. any disturbance of this delicate balance, however, say by the movement of a coil or a metallic body in the neighbourhood of the apparatus, will be at once reported by the induction currents in the telephone. being sensitive to the presence of minute masses of metal, the apparatus was applied by professor graham bell to indicate the whereabouts of the missing bullet in the frame of president garfield, as already mentioned, and also by captain mcevoy to detect the position of submerged torpedoes or lost anchors. professor roberts-austen, the chemist to the mint, has also employed it with success in analysing the purity and temper of coins; for, strange to say, the induction is affected as well by the molecular quality as the quantity of the disturbing metal. professor hughes himself has modified it for the purpose of sonometry, and the measurement of the hearing powers. to the same year, , belong his laborious investigations on current induction, and some ingenious plans for eliminating its effects on telegraph and telephone circuits. soon after his discovery of the microphone he was invited to become a fellow of the royal society, and a few years later, in he received the royal medal of the society for his experiments, and especially those of the microphone. in he represented the united kingdom as a commissioner at the paris international exhibition of electricity, and was elected president of one of the sections of the international congress of electricians. in he filled the office of president of the society of telegraph engineers and of electricians. the hughes type-printer was a great mechanical invention, one of the greatest in telegraphic science, for every organ of it was new, and had to be fashioned out of chaos; an invention which stamped its author's name indelibly into the history of telegraphy, and procured for him a special fame; while the microphone is a discovery which places it on the roll of investigators, and at the same time brings it to the knowledge of the people. two such achievements might well satisfy any scientific ambition. professor hughes has enjoyed a most successful career. probably no inventor ever before received so many honours, or bore them with greater modesty. ***** appendix. i. charles ferdinand gauss. charles ferdinand gauss was born at braunschweig on april , . his father, george dietrich, was a mason, who employed himself otherwise in the hard winter months, and finally became cashier to a todtencasse, or burial fund. his mother dorothy was the daughter of christian benze of the village of velpke, near braunschweig, and a woman of talent, industry, and wit, which her son appears to have inherited. the father died in after his son had become distinguished. the mother lived to the age of ninety-seven, but became totally blind. she preserved her low saxon dialect, her blue linen dress and simple country manners, to the last, while living beside her son at the observatory of gottingen. frederic, her younger brother, was a damask weaver, but a man with a natural turn for mathematics and mechanics. when gauss was a boy, his parents lived in a small house in the wendengrahen, on a canal which joined the ocker, a stream flowing through braunschweig. the canal is now covered, and is the site of the wilhelmstrasse, but a tablet marks the house. when a child, gauss used to play on the bank of the canal, and falling in one day he was nearly drowned. he learned to read by asking the letters from his friends, and also by studying an old calendar which hung on a wall of his father's house, and when four years old he knew all the numbers on it, in spite of a shortness of sight which afflicted him to the end. on saturday nights his father paid his workmen their wages, and once the boy, who had been listening to his calculations, jumped up and told him that he was wrong. revision showed that his son was right. at the age of seven, gauss went to the catherine parish school at braunschweig, and remained at it for several years. the master's name was buttner, and from a raised seat in the middle of the room, he kept order by means of a whip suspended at his side. a bigger boy, bartels by name, used to cut quill pens, and assist the smaller boys in their lessons. he became a friend of gauss, and would procure mathematical books, which they read together. bartels subsequently rose to be a professor in the university of dorpat, where he died. at the parish school the boys of fourteen to fifteen years were being examined in arithmetic one day, when gauss stepped forward and, to the astonishment of buttner, requested to be examined at the same time. buttner, thinking to punish him for his audacity, put a 'poser' to him, and awaited the result. gauss solved the problem on his slate, and laid it face downward on the table, crying 'here it is,' according to the custom. at the end of an hour, during which the master paced up and down with an air of dignity, the slates were turned over, and the answer of gauss was found to be correct while many of the rest were erroneous. buttner praised him, and ordered a special book on arithmetic for him all the way from hamburg. from the parish school gauss went to the catherine gymnasium, although his father doubted whether he could afford the money. bartels had gone there before him, and they read the higher mathematics. gauss also devoted much of his time to acquiring the ancient and modern languages. from there he passed to the carolinean college in the spring of . shortly before this the duke charles william ferdinand of braunschweig among others had noticed his talents, and promised to further his career. in he published his first papers; and in the autumn of he entered the university of gottingen. at this time he was hesitating between the pursuit of philology or mathematics; but his studies became more and more of the latter order. he discovered the division of the circle, a problem published in his disquisitiones arithmeticae, and henceforth elected for mathematics. the method of least squares, was also discovered during his first term. on arriving home the duke received him in the friendliest manner, and he was promoted to helmstedt, where with the assistance of his patron he published his disquisitiones. on january , , piazzi, the astronomer of palermo, discovered a small planet, which he named ceres ferdinandia, and communicated the news by post to bode of berlin, and oriani of milan. the letter was seventy-two days in going, and the planet by that time was lost in the glory of the sun, by a method of his own, published in his theoria motus corporum coelestium, gauss calculated the orbit of this planet, and showed that it moved between mars and jupiter. the planet, after eluding the search of several astronomers, was ultimately found again by zach on december , , and on january , . the ellipse of gauss was found to coincide with its orbit. this feat drew the attention of the hanoverian government, and of dr. olbers, the astronomer, to the young mathematician. but some time elapsed before he was fitted with a suitable appointment. the battle of austerlitz had brought the country into danger, and the duke of braunschweig was entrusted with a mission from berlin to the court of st. petersburg. the fame of gauss had travelled there, but the duke resisted all attempts to bring or entice him to the university of that place. on his return home, however, he raised the salary of gauss. at the beginning of october , the armies of napoleon were moving towards the saale, and ere the middle of the month the battles of auerstadt and jena were fought and lost. duke charles ferdinand was mortally wounded, and taken back to braunschweig. a deputation waited on the offended emperor at halle, and begged him to allow the aged duke to die in his own house. they were brutally denied by the emperor, and returned to braunschweig to try and save the unhappy duke from imprisonment. one evening in the late autumn, gauss, who lived in the steinweg (or causeway), saw an invalid carriage drive slowly out of the castle garden towards the wendenthor. it contained the wounded duke on his way to altona, where he died on november , , in a small house at ottensen, 'you will take care,' wrote zach to gauss, in , 'that his great name shall also be written on the firmament.' for a year and a half after the death of the duke gauss continued in braunschweig, but his small allowance, and the absence of scientific company made a change desirable. through olbers and heeren he received a call to the directorate of gottingen university in , and at once accepted it. he took a house near the chemical laboratory, to which he brought his wife and family. the building of the observatory, delayed for want of funds, was finished in , and a year or two later it was fully equipped with instruments. in , gauss measured a degree of latitude between gottingen and altona. in geodesy he invented the heliotrope, by which the sunlight reflected from a mirror is used as a "sight" for the theodolite at a great distance. through professor william weber he was introduced to the science of electro-magnetism, and they devised an experimental telegraph, chiefly for sending time signals, between the observatory and the physical cabinet of the university. the mirror receiving instrument employed was the heavy prototype of the delicate reflecting galvanometer of sir william thomson. in messages were transmitted through the line in presence of h.r.h. the duke of cambridge; but it was hardly fitted for general use. in (?) he published an absolute system of magnetic measurements. on july , , the jubilee of gauss was celebrated at the university; the famous jacobi, miller of cambridge, and others, taking part in it. after this he completed several works already begun, read a great deal of german and foreign literature, and visited the museum daily between eleven and one o'clock. in the winters of - gauss complained of his declining health, and on the morning of february , , about five minutes past one o'clock, he breathed his last. he was laid on a bed of laurels, and buried by his friends. a granite pillar marks his resting-place at gottingen. ii. william edward weber. william edward weber was born on october , , at wittenberg, where his father, michael weber, was professor of theology. william was the second of three brothers, all of whom were distinguished by an aptitude for the study of science. after the dissolution of the university of wittenberg his father was transferred to halle in . william had received his first lessons from his father, but was now sent to the orphan asylum and grammar school at halle. after that he entered the university, and devoted himself to natural philosophy. he distinguished himself so much in his classes, and by original work, that after taking his degree of doctor and becoming a privat-docent he was appointed professor extraordinary of natural philosophy at halle. in , on the recommendation of gauss, he was called to gottingen as professor of physics, although but twenty-seven years of age. his lectures were interesting, instructive, and suggestive. weber thought that, in order to thoroughly understand physics and apply it to daily life, mere lectures, though illustrated by experiments, were insufficient, and he encouraged his students to experiment themselves, free of charge, in the college laboratory. as a student of twenty years he, with his brother, ernest henry weber, professor of anatomy at leipsic, had written a book on the 'wave theory and fluidity,' which brought its authors a considerable reputation. acoustics was a favourite science of his, and he published numerous papers upon it in poggendorff's annalen, schweigger's jahrbucher fur chemie und physic, and the musical journal caecilia. the 'mechanism of walking in mankind' was another study, undertaken in conjunction with his younger brother, edward weber. these important investigations were published between the years and . displaced by the hanoverian government for his liberal opinions in politics weber travelled for a time, visiting england, among other countries, and became professor of physics in leipsic from to , when he was reinstalled at gottingen. one of his most important works was the atlas des erdmagnetismus, a series of magnetic maps, and it was chiefly through his efforts that magnetic observatories were instituted. he studied magnetism with gauss, and in published his 'electrodynamic proportional measures' containing a system of absolute measurements for electric currents, which forms the basis of those in use. weber died at gottingen on june , . iii. sir william fothergill cooke. william fothergill cooke was born near ealing on may , , and was a son of dr. william cooke, a doctor of medicine, and professor of anatomy at the university of durham. the boy was educated at a school in durham, and at the university of edinburgh. in he joined the east india army, and held several staff appointments. while in the madras native infantry, he returned home on furlough, owing to ill-health, and afterwards relinquished this connection. in - he studied anatomy and physiology in paris, acquiring great skill at modelling dissections in coloured wax. in the summer of , while touring in switzerland with his parents, he visited heidelberg, and was induced by professor tiedeman, director of the anatomical institute, to return there and continue his wax modelling. he lodged at , stockstrasse, in the house of a brewer, and modelled in a room nearly opposite. some of his models have been preserved in the anatomical museum at heidelberg. in march , hearing accidentally from mr. j. w. r. hoppner, a son of lord byron's friend, that the professor of natural philosophy in the university, geheime hofrath moncke had a model of baron schilling's telegraph, cooke went to see it on march , in the professor's lecture room, an upper storey of an old convent of dominicans, where he also lived. struck by what he witnessed, he abandoned his medical studies, and resolved to apply all his energies to the introduction of the telegraph. within three weeks he had made, partly at heidelberg, and partly at frankfort, his first galvanometer, or needle telegraph. it consisted of three magnetic needles surrounded by multiplying coils, and actuated by three separate circuits of six wires. the movements of the needles under the action of the currents produced twenty-six different signals corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. 'whilst completing the model of my original plan,' he wrote to his mother on april , 'others on entirely fresh systems suggested themselves, and i have at length succeeded in combining the utile of each, but the mechanism requires a more delicate hand than mine to execute, or rather instruments which i do not possess. these i can readily have made for me in london, and by the aid of a lathe i shall be able to adapt the several parts, which i shall have made by different mechanicians for secrecy's sake. should i succeed, it may be the means of putting some hundreds of pounds in my pocket. as it is a subject on which i was profoundly ignorant, until my attention was casually attracted to it the other day, i do not know what others may have done in the same way; this can best be learned in london.' the 'fresh systems' referred to was his 'mechanical' telegraph, consisting of two letter dials, working synchronously, and on which particular letters of the message were indicated by means of an electro-magnet and detent. before the end of march he invented the clock-work alarm, in which an electro-magnet attracted an armature of soft iron, and thus withdrew a detent, allowing the works to strike the alarm. this idea was suggested to him on march , , while reading mrs. mary somerville's 'connexion of the physical sciences,' in travelling from heidelberg to frankfort. cooke arrived in london on april , and wrote a pamphlet setting forth his plans for the establishment of an electric telegraph; but it was never published. according to his own account he also gave considerable attention to the escapement principle, or step by step movement, afterwards perfected by wheatstone. while busy in preparing his apparatus for exhibition, part of which was made by a clock-maker in clerkenwell, he consulted faraday about the construction of electro-magnets, the philosopher saw his apparatus and expressed his opinion that the 'principle was perfectly correct,' and that the 'instrument appears perfectly adapted to its intended uses.' nevertheless he was not very sanguine of making it a commercial success. 'the electro-magnetic telegraph shall not ruin me,' he wrote to his mother, 'but will hardly make my fortune.' he was desirous of taking a partner in the work, and went to liverpool in order to meet some gentleman likely to forward his views, and endeavoured to get his instrument adopted on the incline of the tunnel at liverpool; but it gave sixty signals, and was deemed too complicated by the directors. soon after his return to london, by the end of april, he had two simpler instruments in working order. all these preparations had already cost him nearly four hundred pounds. on february , cooke, being dissatisfied with an experiment on a mile of wire, consulted faraday and dr. roget as to the action of a current on an electro-magnet in circuit with a long wire. dr. roget sent him to wheatstone, where to his dismay he learned that wheatstone had been employed for months on the construction of a telegraph for practical purposes. the end of their conferences was that a partnership in the undertaking was proposed by cooke, and ultimately accepted by wheatstone. the latter had given cooke fresh hopes of success when he was worn and discouraged. 'in truth,' he wrote in a letter, after his first interview with the professor, 'i had given the telegraph up since thursday evening, and only sought proofs of my being right to do so ere announcing it to you. this day's enquiries partly revives my hopes, but i am far from sanguine. the scientific men know little or nothing absolute on the subject: wheatstone is the only man near the mark.' it would appear that the current, reduced in strength by its passage through a long wire, had failed to excite his electro-magnet, and he was ignorant of the reason. wheatstone by his knowledge of ohm's law and the electro-magnet was probably able to enlighten him. it is clear that cooke had made considerable progress with his inventions before he met wheatstone; he possessed a needle telegraph like wheatstone, an alarm, and a chronometric dial telegraph, which at all events are a proof that he himself was an inventor, and that he doubtless bore a part in the production of the cooke and wheatstone apparatus. contrary to a statement of wheatstone, it appears from a letter of cooke dated march , , that wheatstone 'handsomely acknowledged the advantage' of cooke's apparatus had it worked;' his (wheatstone's) are ingenious, but not practicable.' but these conflicting accounts are reconciled by the fact that cooke's electro-magnetic telegraph would not work, and wheatstone told him so, because he knew the magnet was not strong enough when the current had to traverse a long circuit. wheatstone subsequently investigated the conditions necessary to obtain electro-magnetic effects at a long distance. had he studied the paper of professor henry in silliman's journal for january , he would have learned that in a long circuit the electro-magnet had to be wound with a long and fine wire in order to be effective. as the cooke and wheatstone apparatus became perfected, cooke was busy with schemes for its introduction. their joint patent is dated june , , and before the end of the month cooke was introduced to mr. robert stephenson, and by his address and energy got leave to try the invention from euston to camden town along the line of the london and birmingham railway. cooke suspended some thirteen miles of copper, in a shed at the euston terminus, and exhibited his needle and his chronometric telegraph in action to the directors one morning. but the official trial took place as we have already described in the life of wheatstone. the telegraph was soon adopted on the great western railway, and also on the blackwall railway in . three years later it was tried on a government line from london to portsmouth. in , the electric telegraph company, the pioneer association of its kind, was started, and mr. cooke became a director. wheatstone and he obtained a considerable sum for the use of their apparatus. in , her majesty conferred the honour of knighthood on the co-inventors; and in , cooke was granted a civil list pension of l a year. his latter years were spent in seclusion, and he died at farnham on june th, . outside of telegraphic circles his name had become well-nigh forgotten. iv. alexander bain. alexander bain was born of humble parents in the little town of thurso, at the extreme north of scotland, in the year . at the age of twelve he went to hear a penny lecture on science which, according to his own account, set him thinking and influenced his whole future. learning the art of clockmaking, he went to edinburgh, and subsequently removed to london, where he obtained work in clerkenwell, then famed for its clocks and watches. his first patent is dated january th, , and is in the name of john barwise, chronometer maker, and alexander bain, mechanist, wigmore street. it describes his electric clock in which there is an electro-magnetic pendulum, and the electric current is employed to keep it going instead of springs or weights. he improved on this idea in following patents, and also proposed to derive the motive electricity from an 'earth battery,' by burying plates of zinc and copper in the ground. gauss and steinheil had priority in this device which, owing to 'polarisation' of the plates and to drought, is not reliable. long afterwards mr. jones of chester succeeded in regulating timepieces from a standard astronomical clock by an improvement on the method of bain. on december , , bain, in conjunction with lieut. thomas wright, r.n., of percival street, clerkenwell, patented means of applying electricity to control railway engines by turning off the steam, marking time, giving signals, and printing intelligence at different places. he also proposed to utilise 'natural bodies of water' for a return wire, but the earlier experimenters had done so, particularly steinheil in . the most important idea in the patent is, perhaps, his plan for inverting the needle telegraph of ampere, wheatstone and others, and instead of making the signals by the movements of a pivoted magnetic needle under the influence of an electrified coil, obtaining them by suspending a movable coil traversed by the current, between the poles of a fixed magnet, as in the later siphon recorder of sir william thomson. bain also proposed to make the coil record the message by printing it in type; and he developed the idea in a subsequent patent. next year, on december st, , he projected a mode of measuring the speed of ships by vanes revolving in the water and indicating their speed on deck by means of the current. in the same specification he described a way of sounding the sea by an electric circuit of wires, and of giving an alarm when the temperature of a ship's hold reached a certain degree. the last device is the well-known fire-alarm in which the mercury of a thermometer completes an electric circuit, when it rises to a particular point of the tube, and thus actuates an electric bell or other alarm. on december , , bain, who was staying in edinburgh at that time, patented his greatest invention, the chemical telegraph, which bears his name. he recognised that the morse and other telegraph instruments in use were comparatively slow in speed, owing to the mechanical inertia of the parts; and he saw that if the signal currents were made to pass through a band of travelling paper soaked in a solution which would decompose under their action, and leave a legible mark, a very high speed could be obtained. the chemical he employed to saturate the paper was a solution of nitrate of ammonia and prussiate of potash, which left a blue stain on being decomposed by the current from an iron contact or stylus. the signals were the short and long, or 'dots' and 'dashes' of the morse code. the speed of marking was so great that hand signalling could not keep up with it, and bain devised a plan of automatic signalling by means of a running band of paper on which the signals of the message were represented by holes punched through it. obviously if this tape were passed between the contact of a signalling key the current would merely flow when the perforations allowed the contacts of the key to touch. this principle was afterwards applied by wheatstone in the construction of his automatic sender. the chemical telegraph was tried between paris and lille before a committee of the institute and the legislative assembly. the speed of signalling attained was words in fifty-two seconds, a marvellous advance on the morse electro-magnetic instrument, which only gave about forty words a minute. in the hands of edison the neglected method of bain was seen by sir william thomson in the centennial exhibition, philadelphia, recording at the rate of words in fifty-seven seconds. in england the telegraph of bain was used on the lines of the old electric telegraph company to a limited extent, and in america about the year it was taken up by the energetic mr. henry o'reilly, and widely introduced. but it incurred the hostility of morse, who obtained an injunction against it on the slender ground that the running paper and alphabet used were covered by his patent. by , as mr. shaffner tells us, there was only one line in america on which the bain system was in use, namely, that from boston to montreal. since those days of rivalry the apparatus has never become general, and it is not easy to understand why, considering its very high speed, the chemical telegraph has not become a greater favourite. in bain devised an automatic method of playing on wind instruments by moving a band of perforated paper which controlled the supply of air to the pipes; and likewise proposed to play a number of keyed instruments at a distance by means of the electric current. both of these plans are still in operation. these and other inventions in the space of six years are a striking testimony to the fertility of bain's imagination at this period. but after this extraordinary outburst he seems to have relapsed into sloth and the dissipation of his powers. we have been told, and indeed it is plain that he received a considerable sum for one or other of his inventions, probably the chemical telegraph. but while he could rise from the ranks, and brave adversity by dint of ingenuity and labour, it would seem that his sanguine temperament was ill-fitted for prosperity. he went to america, and what with litigation, unfortunate investment, and perhaps extravagance, the fortune he had made was rapidly diminished. whether his inventive genius was exhausted, or he became disheartened, it would be difficult to say, but he never flourished again. the rise in his condition may be inferred from the preamble to his patent for electric telegraphs and clocks, dated may , , wherein he describes himself as 'gentleman,' and living at beevor lodge, hammersmith. after an ephemeral appearance in this character he sank once more into poverty, if not even wretchedness. moved by his unhappy circumstances, sir william thomson, the late sir william siemens, mr. latimer clark and others, obtained from mr. gladstone, in the early part of , a pension for him under the civil list of l a year; but the beneficiary lived in such obscurity that it was a considerable time before his lodging could be discovered, and his better fortune take effect. the royal society had previously made him a gift of l . in his latter years, while he resided in glasgow, his health failed, and he was struck with paralysis in the legs. the massive forehead once pregnant with the fire of genius, grew dull and slow of thought, while the sturdy frame of iron hardihood became a tottering wreck. he was removed to the home for incurables at broomhill, kirkintilloch, where he died on january , , and was interred in the old aisle cemetery. he was a widower, and had two children, but they were said to be abroad at the time, the son in america and the daughter on the continent. several of bain's earlier patents are taken out in two names, but this was perhaps owing to his poverty compelling him to take a partner. if these and other inventions were substantially his own, and we have no reason to suppose that he received more help from others than is usual with inventors, we must allow that bain was a mechanical genius of the first order--a born inventor. considering the early date of his achievements, and his lack of education or pecuniary resource, we cannot but wonder at the strength, fecundity, and prescience of his creative faculty. it has been said that he came before his time; but had he been more fortunate in other respects, there is little doubt that he would have worked out and introduced all or nearly all his inventions, and probably some others. his misfortunes and sorrows are so typical of the 'disappointed inventor' that we would fain learn more about his life; but beyond a few facts in a little pamphlet (published by himself, we believe), there is little to be gathered; a veil of silence has fallen alike upon his triumphs, his errors and his miseries. v. dr. werner siemens. the leading electrician of germany is dr. ernst werner siemens, eldest brother of the same distinguished family of which our own sir william siemens was a member. ernst, like his brother william, was born at lenthe, near hanover, on december , . he was educated at the college of lubeck in maine, and entered the prussian artillery service as a volunteer. he pursued his scientific studies at the artillery and engineers' school in berlin, and in obtained an officer's commission. physics and chemistry were his favourite studies; and his original researches in electro-gilding resulted in a prussian patent in . the following year he, in conjunction with his brother william, took out another patent for a differential regulator. in he was appointed to a post in the artillery workshops in berlin, where he learned telegraphy, and in patented a dial and printing telegraph, which is still in use in germany. in , he was made a member of a commission organised in berlin to introduce electric telegraphs in place of the optical ones hitherto employed in prussia, and he succeeded in getting the commission to adopt underground telegraph lines. for the insulation of the wires he recommended gutta-percha, which was then becoming known as an insulator. in the following year he constructed a machine for covering copper wire with the melted gum by means of pressure; and this machine is substantially the same as that now used for the purpose in cable factories. in , when the war broke out with denmark, he was sent to kiel where, together with his brother-in-law, professor c. himly, he laid the first submarine mines, fired by electricity and thus protected the town of kiel from the advance of the enemies' fleet. of late years the german government has laid a great network of underground lines between the various towns and fortresses of the empire; preferring them to overhead lines as being less liable to interruption from mischief, accident, hostile soldiers, or stress of weather. the first of such lines was, however, laid as long ago as , by werner siemens, who, in the autumn of that year, deposited a subterranean cable between berlin and frankfort-on-the-main. next year a second cable was laid from the capital to cologne, aix-la-chapelle, and verviers. in the subject of our memoir had, along with mr. halske, founded a telegraph factory, and he now left the army to give himself up to scientific work and the development of his business. this factory prospered well, and is still the chief continental works of the kind. the new departure made by werner siemens was fortunate for electrical science; and from then till now a number of remarkable inventions have proceeded from his laboratory. the following are the more notable advances made:--in october , a machine for the measurement of small intervals of time, and the speed of electricity by means of electric sparks, and its application in for measuring the speed of the electric current in overland lines. in january , a paper on telegraph lines and apparatus, in which the theory of the electro-static charge in insulated wires, as well as methods and formula: for the localising of faults in underground wires were first established. in , the firm erected the first automatic fire telegraphs in berlin, and in the same year, werner siemens wrote a treatise on the experience gained with the underground lines of the prussian telegraph system. the difficulty of communicating through long underground lines led him to the invention of automatic translation, which was afterwards improved upon by steinheil, and, in , he furnished the warsaw-petersburg line with automatic fast-speed writers. the messages were punched in a paper band by means of the well-known siemens' lever punching apparatus, and then automatically transmitted in a clockwork instrument. in the discovery (contemporaneous with that of frischen) of simultaneous transmission of messages in opposite directions, and multiplex transmission of messages by means of electro-magnetic apparatus. the 'duplex' system which is now employed both on land lines and submarine cables had been suggested however, before this by dr. zetsche, gintl, and others. in he invented the siemens' magneto-electric dial instrument giving alternate currents. from this apparatus originated the well-known siemens' armature, and from the receiver was developed the siemens' polarised relay, with which the working of submarine and other lines could be effected with alternate currents; and in the same year, during the laying of the cagliari to bona cable, he constructed and first applied the dynamometer, which has become of such importance in the operations of cable laying. in , he investigated the electro-static induction and retardation of currents in insulated wires, a phenomenon which he had observed in , and communicated an account of it to the french academy of sciences. 'in these researches he developed mathematically faraday's theory of molecular induction, and thereby paved the way in great measure for its general acceptance.' his ozone apparatus, his telegraph instrument working with alternate currents, and his instrument for translating on and automatically discharging submarine cables also belong to the year . the latter instruments were applied to the sardinia, malta, and corfu cable. in , he constructed an electric log; he discovered that a dielectric is heated by induction; he introduced the well known siemens' mercury unit, and many improvements in the manufacture of resistance coils. he also investigated the law of change of resistance in wires by heating; and published several formulae and methods for testing resistances and determining 'faults' by measuring resistances. these methods were adopted by the electricians of the government service in prussia, and by messrs. siemens brothers in london, during the manufacture of the malta to alexandria cable, which, was, we believe, the first long cable subjected to a system of continuous tests. 'in , he showed that the electrical resistance of molten alloys is equal to the sum of the resistances of the separate metals, and that latent heat increases the specific resistance of metals in a greater degree than free heat.' in he made researches on the heating of the sides of a leyden jar by the electrical discharge. in he published the general theory of dynamo-electric machines, and the principle of accumulating the magnetic effect, a principle which, however, had been contemporaneously discovered by mr. s. a. varley, and described in a patent some years before by mr. soren hjorth, a danish inventor. hjorth's patent is to be found in the british patent office library, and until lately it was thought that he was the first and true inventor of the 'dynamo' proper, but we understand there is a prior inventor still, though we have not seen the evidence in support of the statement. the reversibility of the dynamo was enunciated by werner siemens in ; but it was not experimentally demonstrated on any practical scale until , when m. hippolite fontaine succeeded in pumping water at the vienna international exhibition by the aid of two dynamos connected in circuit; one, the generator, deriving motion from a hydraulic engine, and in turn setting in motion the receiving dynamo which worked the pump. professor clerk maxwell thought this discovery the greatest of the century; and the remark has been repeated more than once. but it is a remark which derives its chief importance from the man who made it, and its credentials from the paradoxical surprise it causes. the discovery in question is certainly fraught with very great consequences to the mechanical world; but in itself it is no discovery of importance, and naturally follows from faraday's far greater and more original discovery of magneto-electric generation. in , dr. siemens published a treatise on the laying and testing of submarine cables. in , and , he investigated the action of light on crystalline selenium, and in he studied the action of the telephone. the recent work of dr. siemens has been to improve the pneumatic railway, railway signalling, electric lamps, dynamos, electro-plating and electric railways. the electric railway at berlin in , and paris in , was the beginning of electric locomotion, a subject of great importance and destined in all probability, to very wide extension in the immediate future. dr. siemens has received many honours from learned societies at home and abroad; and a title equivalent to knighthood from the german government. vi. latimer clark. mr. clark was born at great marlow in , and probably acquired his scientific bent while engaged at a manufacturing chemist's business in dublin. on the outbreak of the railway mania in he took to surveying, and through his brother, mr. edwin clark, became assistant engineer to the late robert stephenson on the britannia bridge. while thus employed, he made the acquaintance of mr. ricardo, founder of the electric telegraph company, and joined that company as an engineer in . he rose to be chief engineer in , and held the post till , when he entered into a partnership with mr. charles t. bright. prior to this, he had made several original researches; in , he found that the retardation of current on insulated wires was independent of the strength of current, and his experiments formed the subject of a friday evening lecture by faraday at the royal institution--a sufficient mark of their importance. in he introduced the pneumatic dispatch into london, and, in , he patented his well-known double-cup insulator. in , he and mr. bright produced the material known as 'clark's compound,' which is so valuable for protecting submarine cables from rusting in the sea-water. in , mr. clark was appointed engineer to the atlantic telegraph company which tried to lay an anglo-american cable in . in partnership with sir c. t. bright, who had taken part in the first atlantic cable expedition, mr. clark laid a cable for the indian government in the red sea, in order to establish a telegraph to india. in , the partnership ceased; but, in , mr clark went out to the persian gulf to lay a second cable there. here he was nearly lost in the shipwreck of the carnatic on the island of shadwan in the red sea. subsequently mr. clark became the head of a firm of consulting electricians, well known under the title of clark, forde and company, and latterly including the late mr. c. hockin and mr. herbert taylor. the mediterranean cable to india, the east indian archipelago cable to australia, the brazilian atlantic cables were all laid under the supervision of this firm. mr. clark is now in partnership with mr. stanfield, and is the joint-inventor of clark and stanfield's circular floating dock. he is also head of the well-known firm of electrical manufacturers, messrs. latimer clark, muirhead and co., of regency street, westminster. the foregoing sketch is but an imperfect outline of a very successful life. `but enough has been given to show that we have here an engineer of various and even brilliant gifts. mr. clark has applied himself in divers directions, and never applied himself in vain. there is always some practical result to show which will be useful to others. in technical literature he published a description of the conway and britannia tubular bridges as long ago as . there is a valuable communication of his in the board of trade blue rook on submarine cables. in , he issued a useful work on electrical measurements, and in joined with mr. robert sabine in producing the well-known electrical tables and formulae, a work which was for a long time the electrician's vade-mecum. in , he communicated a lengthy paper on the new standard of electromotive power now known as clark's standard cell; and quite recently he published a treatise on the use of the transit instrument. mr. clark is a fellow of the royal society of london, as well as a member of the institution of civil engineers, the royal astronomical society, the physical society, etc., and was elected fourth president of the society of telegraph engineers and of electricians, now the institution of electrical engineers. he is a great lover of books and gardening--two antithetical hobbies--which are charming in themselves, and healthily counteractive. the rich and splendid library of electrical works which he is forming, has been munificently presented to the institution of electrical engineers. vii. count du moncel. theodose-achille-louis, comte du moncel, was born at paris on march , . his father was a peer of france, one of the old nobility, and a general of engineers. he possessed a model farm near cherbourg, and had set his heart on training his son to carry on this pet project; but young du moncel, under the combined influence of a desire for travel, a love of archaeology, and a rare talent for drawing, went off to greece, and filled his portfolio with views of the parthenon and many other pictures of that classic region. his father avenged himself by declining to send him any money; but the artist sold his sketches and relied solely on his pencil. on returning to paris he supported himself by his art, but at the same time gratified his taste for science in a discursive manner. a beautiful and accomplished lady of the court, mademoiselle camille clementine adelaide bachasson de montalivet, belonging to a noble and distinguished family, had plighted her troth with him, and, as we have been told, descended one day from her carriage, and wedded the man of her heart, in the humble room of a flat not far from the grand opera house. they were a devoted pair, and madame du moncel played the double part of a faithful help-meet, and inspiring genius. heart and soul she encouraged her husband to distinguish himself by his talents and energy, and even assisted him in his labours. about he began to occupy himself almost exclusively with electrical science. his most conspicuous discovery is that pressure diminishes the resistance of contact between two conductors, a fact which clerac in utilised in the construction of a variable resistance from carbon, such as plumbage, by compressing it with an adjustable screw. it is also the foundation of the carbon transmitter of edison, and the more delicate microphone of professor hughes. but du moncel is best known as an author and journalist. his 'expose des applications de l'electricite' published in et seq., and his 'traite pratique de telegraphie,' not to mention his later books on recent marvels, such as the telephone, microphone, phonograph, and electric light, are standard works of reference. in the compilation of these his admirable wife assisted him as a literary amanuensis, for she had acquired a considerable knowledge of electricity. in he was created an officer of the legion of honour, and he became a member of numerous learned societies. for some time he was an adviser of the french telegraph administration, but resigned the post in . the following year he was elected a member of the academy of sciences, paris. in , he became editor of a new electrical journal established at paris under the title of 'la lumiere electrique,' and held the position until his death, which happened at paris after a few days' illness on february , . his devoted wife was recovering from a long illness which had caused her affectionate husband much anxiety, and probably affected his health. she did not long survive him, but died on february , , at mentone in her fifty-fifth year. count du moncel was an indefatigable worker, who, instead of abandoning himself to idleness and pleasure like many of his order, believed it his duty to be active and useful in his own day, as his ancestors had been in the past. viii. elisha gray. this distinguished american electrician was born at barnesville in belmont county, ohio, on august , . his family were quakers, and in early life he was apprenticed to a carpenter, but showed a taste for chemistry, and at the age of twenty-one he went to oberlin college, where he studied for five years. at the age of thirty he turned his attention to electricity, and invented a relay which adapted itself to the varying insulation of the telegraph line. he was then led to devise several forms of automatic repeaters, but they are not much employed. in - , he brought out a needle annunciator for hotels, and another for elevators, which had a large sale. his 'private telegraph line printer' was also a success. from - he was engaged in perfecting his 'electro-harmonic telegraph.' his speaking telegraph was likewise the outcome of these researches. the 'telautograph,' or telegraph which writes the messages as a fac-simile of the sender's penmanship by an ingenious application of intermittent currents, is the latest of his more important works. mr. gray is a member of the firm of messrs. gray and barton, and electrician to the western electric manufacturing company of chicago. his home is at highland park near that city. big dummy's guide to the internet (c) , by the electronic frontier foundation [eff] ***************************************************************************** copyright , electronic frontier foundation, all rights reserved. redistribution, excerpting, republication, copying, archiving, and reposting are permitted, provided that the work is not sold for profit, that eff contact information, copyright notice, and distribution information remains intact, and that the work is not qualitatively modified (translation, reformatting, and excerpting expressly permitted however - feel free to produce versions of the guide for use with typesetting, hypertext, display, etc. applications, but please do not change the text other than to translate it to another language. excerpts should be credited and follow standard fair use doctrine.) electronic frontier foundation, g st. nw, suite e, washington dc usa, + (voice) (fax.) basic info: info@eff.org; general and guide related queries: ask@eff.org. ***************************************************************************** big dummy's guide to the internet, v. . copyright electronic frontier foundation , table of contents foreword by mitchell kapor, co-founder, electronic frontier foundation. preface by adam gaffin, senior writer, network world. chapter : setting up and jacking in . ready, set... . go! . public-access internet providers . if your town doesn't have direct access . net origins . how it works . when things go wrong . fyi chapter : e-mail . . the basics . elm -- a better way . pine -- even better than elm . smileys . sending e-mail to other networks . seven unix commands you can't live without chapter : usenet i . the global watering hole . navigating usenet with nn . nn commands . using rn . rn commands . essential newsgroups . speaking up . cross-posting chapter : usenet ii . flame, blather and spew . killfiles, the cure for what ails you . some usenet hints . the brain-tumor boy, the modem tax and the chain letter . big sig . the first amendment as local ordinance . usenet history . when things go wrong . fyi chapter : mailing lists and bitnet . internet mailing lists . bitnet chapter : telnet . mining the net . library catalogs . some interesting telnet sites . telnet bulletin-board systems . putting the finger on someone . finding someone on the net . when things go wrong . fyi chapter : ftp . tons of files . your friend archie . getting the files . odd letters -- decoding file endings . the keyboard cabal . some interesting ftp sites . ncftp -- now you tell me! . project gutenberg -- electronic books . when things go wrong . fyi chapter : gophers, waiss and the world-wide web . gophers . burrowing deeper . gopher commands . some interesting gophers . wide-area information servers . the world-wide web . clients, or how to snare more on the web . when things go wrong . fyi chapter : advanced e-mail . the file's in the mail . receiving files . sending files to non-internet sites . getting ftp files via e-mail . the all knowing oracle chapter : news of the world . clarinet: upi, dave barry and dilbert . reuters . usa today . national public radio . the world today: from belarus to brazil . e-mailing news organizations . fyi chapter : irc, muds and other things that are more fun than they sound . talk . internet relay chat . irc commands . irc in times of crisis . muds . go, go, go (and chess, too)! . the other side of the coin . fyi chapter : education and the net . the net in the classroom . some specific resources for students and teachers . usenet and bitnet in the classroom chapter : business on the net . setting up shop . fyi chapter : conclusion -- the end? appendix a: lingo appendix b: electronic frontier foundation information foreword by mitchell kapor, co-founder, electronic frontier foundation. welcome to the world of the internet the electronic frontier foundation (eff) is proud to have sponsored the production of the big dummy's guide to the internet. eff is a nonprofit organization based in washington, d.c., dedicated to ensuring that everyone has access to the newly emerging communications technologies vital to active participation in the events of our world. as more and more information is available online, new doors open up for those who have access to that information. unfortunately, unless access is broadly encouraged, individuals can be disenfranchised and doors can close, as well. the big dummy's guide to the internet was written to help open some doors to the vast amounts of information available on the world's largest network, the internet. the spark for the big dummy's guide to the internet was ignited in a few informal conversations that included myself and steve cisler of apple computer, inc., in june of . with the support of apple computer, eff engaged adam gaffin to write the book and actually took on the project in september of . the idea was to write a guide to the internet for people who had little or no experience with network communications. we intended to post this guide to the net in ascii and hypercard formats and to give it away on disk, as well as have a print edition available. we have more than realized our goal. individuals from as geographically far away as germany, italy, canada, south africa, japan, scotland, norway, and antarctica have all sent electronic mail to say that they downloaded the big dummy's guide to the internet. the guide is now available in a wide array of formats, including acscii text, hypercard, world wide web, postscript and amigaguide. and the guide will be published in a printed format by mit press in june of . eff would like to thank author adam gaffin for doing a terrific job of explaining the net in such a nonthreatening way. we'd also like to thank the folks at apple, especially steve cisler of the apple library, for their support of our efforts to bring this guide to you. we invite you to join with eff in our fight to ensure that equal access to the networks and free speech are protected in newly emerging technologies. we are a membership organization, and through donations like yours, we can continue to sponsor important projects to make communications easier. information about the electronic frontier foundation and some of the work that we do can be found at the end of this book. we hope that the big dummy's guide to the internet helps you learn about whole new worlds, where new friends and experiences are sure to be yours. enjoy! mitch kapor chairman of the board electronic frontier foundation mkapor@eff.org for comments, questions, or requests regarding eff or the big dummy's guide to the internet, send a note to ask@eff.org. preface by adam gaffin, senior writer, network world, framingham, mass. welcome to the internet! you're about to start a journey through a unique land without frontiers, a place that is everywhere at once -- even though it exists physically only as a series of electrical impulses. you'll be joining a growing community of millions of people around the world who use this global resource on a daily basis. with this book, you will be able to use the internet to: = stay in touch with friends, relatives and colleagues around the world, at a fraction of the cost of phone calls or even air mail. = discuss everything from archaeology to zoology with people in several different languages. = tap into thousands of information databases and libraries worldwide. = retrieve any of thousands of documents, journals, books and computer programs. = stay up to date with wire-service news and sports and with official weather reports. = play live, "real time" games with dozens of other people at once. connecting to "the net" today, takes something of a sense of adventure, a willingness to learn and an ability to take a deep breath every once in awhile. visiting the net today is a lot like journeying to a foreign country. there are so many things to see and do, but everything at first will seem so, well, foreign. when you first arrive, you won't be able to read the street signs. you'll get lost. if you're unlucky, you may even run into some locals who'd just as soon you went back to where you came from. if this weren't enough, the entire country is constantly under construction; every day, it seems like there's something new for you to figure out. fortunately, most of the locals are actually friendly. in fact, the net actually has a rich tradition of helping out visitors and newcomers. until very recently, there were few written guides for ordinary people, and the net grew largely through an "oral" tradition in which the old- timers helped the newcomers. so when you connect, don't be afraid to ask for help. you'll be surprised at how many people will lend a hand! without such folks, in fact, this guide would not be possible. my thanks to all the people who have written with suggestion, additions and corrections since the big dummy's guide first appeared on the internet in . special thanks go to my loving wife nancy. i would also like to thank the following people, who, whether they know it or not, provided particular help. rhonda chapman, jim cocks, tom czarnik, christopher davis, david desimone, jeanne devoto, phil eschallier, nico garcia, joe granrose, joerg heitkoetter, joe ilacqua, jonathan kamens, peter kaminski, thomas a. kreeger, stanton mccandlish, leanne phillips, nancy reynolds, helen trillian rose, barry shein, jennifer "moira" smith, gerard van der leun and scott yanoff. if you have any suggestions or comments on how to make this guide better, i'd love to hear them. you can reach me via e-mail at adamg@world.std.com. boston, mass., february, . chapter : setting up and jacking in . ready, set ... the world is just a phone call away. with a computer and modem, you'll be able to connect to the internet, the world's largest computer network (and if you're lucky, you won't even need the modem; many colleges and companies now give their students or employees direct access to the internet). the phone line can be your existing voice line -- just remember that if you have any extensions, you (and everybody else in the house or office) won't be able to use them for voice calls while you are connected to the net. a modem is a sort of translator between computers and the phone system. it's needed because computers and the phone system process and transmit data, or information, in two different, and incompatible ways. computers "talk" digitally; that is, they store and process information as a series of discrete numbers. the phone network relies on analog signals, which on an oscilloscope would look like a series of waves. when your computer is ready to transmit data to another computer over a phone line, your modem converts the computer numbers into these waves (which sound like a lot of screeching) -- it "modulates" them. in turn, when information waves come into your modem, it converts them into numbers your computer can process, by "demodulating" them. increasingly, computers come with modems already installed. if yours didn't, you'll have to decide what speed modem to get. modem speeds are judged in "bps rate" or bits per second. one bps means the modem can transfer roughly one bit per second; the greater the bps rate, the more quickly a modem can send and receive information. a letter or character is made up of eight bits. you can now buy a -bps modem for well under $ -- and most now come with the ability to handle fax messages as well. at prices that now start around $ , you can buy a modem that can transfer data at , bps (and often even faster, using special compression techniques). if you think you might be using the net to transfer large numbers of files, a faster modem is always worth the price. it will dramatically reduce the amount of time your modem or computer is tied up transferring files and, if you are paying for net access by the hour, will save you quite a bit in online charges. like the computer to which it attaches, a modem is useless without software to tell it how to work. most modems today come with easy-to-install software. try the program out. if you find it difficult to use or understand, consider a trip to the local software store to find a better program. you can spend several hundred dollars on a communications program, but unless you have very specialized needs, this will be a waste of money, as there are a host of excellent programs available for around $ or less. among the basic features you want to look for are a choice of different "protocols" (more on them in a bit) for transferring files to and from the net and the ability to write "script" or "command" files that let you automate such steps as logging into a host system. when you buy a modem and the software, ask the dealer how to install and use them. try out the software if you can. if the dealer can't help you, find another dealer. you'll not only save yourself a lot of frustration, you'll also have practiced the prime internet directive: "ask. people know." to fully take advantage of the net, you must spend a few minutes going over the manuals or documentation that comes with your software. there are a few things you should pay special attention to: uploading and downloading; screen capturing (sometimes called "screen dumping"); logging; how to change protocols; and terminal emulation. it is also essential to know how to convert a file created with your word processing program into "ascii" or "text" format, which will let you share your thoughts with others across the net. uploading is the process of sending a file from your computer to a system on the net. downloading is retrieving a file from somewhere on the net to your computer. in general, things in cyberspace go "up" to the net and come "down" to you. chances are your software will come with a choice of several "protocols" to use for these transfers. these protocols are systems designed to ensure that line noise or static does not cause errors that could ruin whatever information you are trying to transfer. essentially, when using a protocol, you are transferring a file in a series of pieces. after each piece is sent or received, your computer and the net system compare it. if the two pieces don't match exactly, they transfer it again, until they agree that the information they both have is identical. if, after several tries, the information just doesn't make it across, you'll either get an error message or your screen will freeze. in that case, try it again. if, after five tries, you are still stymied, something is wrong with a) the file; b) the telephone line; c) the system you're connected to; or d) your own computer. from time to time, you will likely see messages on the net that you want to save for later viewing -- a recipe, a particularly witty remark, something you want to write your congressman about, whatever. this is where screen capturing and logging come in. when you tell your communications software to capture a screen, it opens a file in your computer (usually in the same directory or folder used by the software) and "dumps" an image of whatever happens to be on your screen at the time. logging works a bit differently. when you issue a logging command, you tell the software to open a file (again, usually in the same directory or folder as used by the software) and then give it a name. then, until you turn off the logging command, everything that scrolls on your screen is copied into that file, sort of like recording on videotape. this is useful for capturing long documents that scroll for several pages -- using screen capture, you would have to repeat the same command for each new screen. terminal emulation is a way for your computer to mimic, or emulate, the way other computers put information on the screen and accept commands from a keyboard. in general, most systems on the net use a system called vt . fortunately, almost all communications programs now on the market support this system as well -- make sure yours does. you'll also have to know about protocols. there are several different ways for computers to transmit characters. fortunately, there are only two protocols that you're likely to run across: - -n (which stands for " bits, stop bit, no parity" -- yikes!) and - -e ( bits, stop bit, even parity). in general, unix-based systems use - -e, while ms-dos-based systems use - -n. what if you don't know what kind of system you're connecting to? try one of the settings. if you get what looks like gobbledygook when you connect, you may need the other setting. if so, you can either change the setting while connected, and then hit enter, or hang up and try again with the other setting. it's also possible your modem and the modem at the other end can't agree on the right bps rate. if changing the protocols doesn't work, try using another bps rate (but no faster than the one listed for your modem). don't worry, remember, you can't break anything! if something looks wrong, it probably is wrong. change your settings and try again. nothing is learned without trial, error and effort. there are the basics. now on to the net! . go! once, only people who studied or worked at an institution directly tied to the net could connect to the world. today, though, an ever-growing number of "public-access" systems provide access for everybody. these systems can now be found in several states, and there are a couple of sites that can provide access across the country. there are two basic kinds of these host systems. the more common one is known as a uucp site (uucp being a common way to transfer information among computers using the unix operating system) and offers access to international electronic mail and conferences. however, recent years have seen the growth of more powerful sites that let you tap into the full power of the net. these internet sites not only give you access to electronic mail and conferences but to such services as databases, libraries and huge file and program collections around the world. they are also fast -- as soon as you finish writing a message, it gets zapped out to its destination. some sites are run by for-profit companies; others by non-profit organizations. some of these public-access, or host, systems, are free of charge. others charge a monthly or yearly fee for unlimited access. and a few charge by the hour. systems that charge for access will usually let you sign up online with a credit card. some also let you set up a billing system. but cost should be only one consideration in choosing a host system, especially if you live in an area with more than one provider. most systems let you look around before you sign up. what is the range of each of their services? how easy is each to use? what kind of support or help can you get from the system administrators? the last two questions are particularly important because many systems provide no user interface at all; when you connect, you are dumped right into the unix operating system. if you're already familiar with unix, or you want to learn how to use it, these systems offer phenomenal power -- in addition to net access, most also let you tap into the power of unix to do everything from compiling your own programs to playing online games. but if you don't want to have to learn unix, there are other public-access systems that work through menus (just like the ones in restaurants; you are shown a list of choices and then you make your selection of what you want), or which provide a "user interface" that is easier to figure out than the ever cryptic unix. if you don't want or need access to the full range of internet services, a uucp site makes good financial sense. they tend to charge less than commercial internet providers, although their messages may not go out as quickly. some systems also have their own unique local services, which can range from extensive conferences to large file libraries. . public-access internet providers when you have your communications program dial one of these host systems, one of two things will happen when you connect. you'll either see a lot of gibberish on your screen, or you'll be asked to log in. if you see gibberish, chances are you have to change your software's parameters (to - -e or - -n as the case may be). hang up, make the change and then dial in again. when you've connected, chances are you'll see something like this: welcome to the world public access unix for the ' s login as 'new' if you do not have an account login: that last line is a prompt asking you to do something. since this is your first call, type new and hit enter. often, when you're asked to type something by a host system, you'll be told what to type in quotation marks (for example, 'new'). don't include the quotation marks. repeat: don't include the quotation marks. what you see next depends on the system, but will generally consist of information about its costs and services (you might want to turn on your communication software's logging function, to save this information). you'll likely be asked if you want to establish an account now or just look around the system. you'll also likely be asked for your "user name." this is not your full name, but a one-word name you want to use while online. it can be any combination of letters or numbers, all in lower case. many people use their first initial and last name (for example, "jdoe"); their first name and the first letter of their last name (for example, "johnd"); or their initials ("jxd"). others use a nickname. you might want to think about this for a second, because this user name will become part of your electronic-mail address (see chapter for more on that). the one exception are the various free-net systems, all of which assign you a user name consisting of an arbitrary sequence of letters and numbers. you are now on the net. look around the system. see if there are any help files for you to read. if it's a menu-based host system, choose different options just to see what happens. remember: you can't break anything. the more you play, the more comfortable you'll be. what follows is a list of public-access internet sites, which are computer systems that offer access to the net. all offer international e-mail and usenet (international conferences). in addition, they offer: ftp: file-transfer protocol -- access to hundreds of file libraries (everything from computer software to historical documents to song lyrics). you'll be able to transfer these files from the net to your own computer. telnet: access to databases, computerized library card catalogs, weather reports and other information services, as well as live, online games that let you compete with players from around the world. additional services that may be offered include: wais: wide-area information server; a program that can search dozens of databases in one search. gopher: a program that gives you easy access to dozens of other online databases and services by making selections on a menu. you'll also be able to use these to copy text files and some programs to your mailbox. irc: internet relay chat, a cb simulator that lets you have live keyboard chats with people around the world. however, even on systems that do not provide these services directly, you will be able to use a number of them through telnet (see chapter ). in the list that follows, systems that let you access services through menus are noted; otherwise assume that when you connect, you'll be dumped right into unix (a.k.a. ms-dos with a college degree). several of these sites are available nationwide through national data networks such as the compuserve packet network and sprintnet. please note that all listed charges are subject to change. many sites require new or prospective users to log on a particular way on their first call; this list provides the name you'll use in such cases. alabama huntsville. nuance. call voice number for modem number. $ setup; $ a month. voice: ( ) - . alaska anchorage. university of alaska southeast, tundra services, ( ) - ; has local dial-in service in several other cities. $ a month. voice: ( ) - . alberta edmonton. pucnet computer connections, ( ) - . log on as: guest. $ setup fee; $ for hours a month plus $ . an hour for access to ftp and telnet. voice: ( ) - . arizona tucson. data basics, ( ) - . $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . phoenix/tucson. internet direct, ( ) - (phoenix); ( ) - (tucson). log on as: guest. $ a month. voice: ( ) - (phoenix); ( ) - (tucson). british columbia victoria victoria free-net, ( ) - . menus. access to all features requires completion of a written form. users can "link" to other free-net systems in canada and the united states. free. log on as: guest voice: ( ) - . california berkeley. holonet. menus. for free trial, modem number is ( ) - . for information or local numbers, call the voice number. $ a year for local access, $ an hour during offpeak hours. voice: ( ) - . cupertino. portal. both unix and menus. ( ) - ( bps); ( ) - ( / , bps). $ . setup fee, $ . a month. voice: ( ) - . irvine. dial n' cerf. see under san diego. los angeles/orange county. kaiwan public access internet, ( ) - ; ( ) - . $ signup; $ a month (credit card). voice: ( ) - . los angeles. dial n' cerf. see under san diego. oakland. dial n' cerf. see under san diego. pasadena. dial n' cerf see under san diego. palo alto. institute for global communications., ( ) - . unix. local conferences on environmental/peace issues. log on as: new. $ a month and $ an hour after first hour. voice: ( ) - . san diego. dial n' cerf usa, run by the california education and research federation. provides local dial-up numbers in san diego, los angeles, oakland, pasadena and irvine. for more information, call voice ( ) -cerf or ( ) - . $ setup fee; $ a month plus $ an hour ($ on weekends). voice: ( ) - . san diego. cts network services, ( ) - . log on as: help. $ set-up fee, monthly fee of $ to $ depending on services used. voice: ( ) - . san diego. cyberspace station, ( ) - . unix. log on as: guest. charges: $ sign-up fee; $ a month or $ for six months. san francisco. pathways, call voice number for number. menus. $ setup fee; $ a month and $ an hour. voice: ( ) - . san jose. netcom, ( ) - or - ; ( ) - ; ( ) - , up to bps. unix. maintains archives of usenet postings. log on as: guest. $ startup fee and then $ . a month for unlimited use if you agree to automatic billing of your credit-card account (otherwise $ . a month for a monthly invoice). voice: ( ) -unix. san jose. a i, ( ) - . log on as: guest. $ a month; $ for three months; $ for six months. sausalito. the whole earth 'lectronic link (well), ( ) - . uses moderately difficult picospan software, which is sort of a cross between unix and a menu system. new users get a written manual. more than well-only conferences. log on as: newuser. $ a month plus $ an hour. access through the nationwide compuserve packet network available for another $ . an hour. voice: ( ) - . recorded message about the system's current status: ( ) - (continental u.s. only). colorado colorado springs/denver. cns, ( ) - (colorado springs); ( ) - (denver). local calendar listings and ski and stock reports. users can choose between menus or unix. log on as: new. $ setup fee; $ . an hour (minimum fee of $ a month). voice: ( ) - . colorado springs. old colorado city communications, ( ) - . log on as: newuser. $ a month. voice: ( ) - . denver. denver free-net, ( ) - . menus. access to all services requires completion of a written form. users can "link" to other free-net systems across the country. free. log on as: guest. golden. colorado supernet. e-mail to fax service. available only to colorado residents. local dial-in numbers available in several colorado cities. for dial-in numbers, call the number below. $ an hour ($ an hour between midnight and a.m.); one-time $ sign-up fee. voice: ( ) - . delaware middletown. systems solutions, ( ) - . $ setup fee; $ a month for full internet access. voice: ( ) - florida talahassee. talahassee free-net, ( ) - . menus. full access requires completion of a registration form. can "link" to other free-net systems around the country. voice: ( ) - . georgia atlanta. netcom, ( ) - . see under los angeles, california, for information on rates. illinois champaign. prarienet free-net, ( ) - . menus. log on as: visitor. free for illinois residents; $ a year for others. voice: ( ) - . chicago. mcsnet, ( ) - . $ /month or $ for three months of unlimited access; $ for three months of access at hours a month. voice: ( ) -unix. peoria. peoria free-net, ( ) - . similar to cleveland free-net (see ohio, below). users can "link" to the larger cleveland system for access to usenet and other services. there are also peoria free-net public-access terminals in numerous area libraries, other government buildings and senior-citizen centers. contact the number below for specific locations. full access (including access to e-mail) requires completion of a written application. free. voice: ( ) - . maryland baltimore. express access, ( ) - ; ( ) - ; ( ) - . log on as: new. $ setup fee; $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( - . baltimore. clarknet, ( ) - ; ( ) - ; ( ) - ; ( ) - . log on as: guest. $ a month, $ for six months or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . massachusetts bedford. the internet access company, ( ) - . to log on, follow on-line prompts. $ setup fee; $ . a month. voice: ( ) - . brookline. the world, ( ) - . "online book initiative" collection of electronic books, poetry and other text files. log on as: new. $ a month plus $ an hour or $ for hours a month. available nationwide through the compuserve packet network for another $ . an hour. voice: ( ) - . lynn. north shore access, ( ) - . log on as: new. $ for hours a month; $ an hour after that. voice: ( ) - . worcester. novalink, ( ) - . log on as: info. $ . sign-up (includes first two hours); $ . a month (includes five daytime hours), $ . an hour after that. voice: ( ) - . michigan ann arbor. msen. call voice number for dial-in number. unix. charges: $ setup; $ a month. voice: ( ) - . ann arbor. michnet. has local dial-in numbers in several michigan numbers. for local numbers, call voice number below. $ a month plus one-time $ sign-up fee. additional network fees for access through non-michnet numbers. voice: ( ) - . new hampshire manchester. mv communications, inc. for local dial-up numbers call voice line below. $ a month mininum plus variable hourly rates depending on services used. voice: ( ) - . new jersey new brunswick. digital express, ( ) - . log on as: new. $ setup fee; $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . new york new york. panix, ( ) - . unix or menus. log on as: newuser. $ setup fee; $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . new york. echo, ( ) - . unix, but with local conferencing software. log on as: newuser. $ . ($ . students and seniors) a month. voice: ( ) - . new york. mindvox, ( ) - . local conferences. log on as: guest. $ setup fee for non-credit-card accounts; $ a month. voice: ( ) - . new york. pipeline, ( ) - ( bps and higher); ( ) - ( bps). offers graphical interface for windows for $ . log on as: guest. $ a month and $ an hour after first hours or $ a month unlimited hours. voice: ( ) - . new york. maestro, ( ) - . log on as: newuser. $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . north carolina charlotte. vnet internet access, ( ) - ; ( ) - . log on as: new. $ a month. voice: ( ) - . triangle research park. rock concert net. call number below for local modem numbers in various north carolina cities. $ a month; one- time $ sign-up fee. voice: ( ) - . ohio cleveland. cleveland free-net, ( ) - . ohio and us supreme court decisions, historical documents, many local conferences. full access (including access to e-mail) requires completion of a written application. free. voice: ( ) - . cincinnati. tri-state free-net, ( ) - . similar to cleveland free-net. full access (including access to e-mail) requires completion of a written application. free. cleveland. wariat, ( ) - . unix or menus. $ setup fee; $ a month. voice: ( ) - . dayton. freelance systems programming, ( ) - . $ setup fee; $ an hour. voice: ( ) - . lorain. lorain county free-net, ( ) - or - . similar to cleveland free-net. users can "link" to the larger cleveland system for additional services. full access (including access to e-mail) requires completion of a written application. free. voice: ( ) - . medina. medina free-net, ( ) - , - or - . users can "link" to the larger cleveland free-net for additional services. full access (including access to e-mail) requires completion of a written application. free. youngstown. youngstown free-net, ( ) - . users can "link" to the cleveland system for services not found locally. full access (including access to e-mail) requires completion of a written application. free. ontario ottawa. national capital freenet, ( ) - or ( ) - . free, but requires completion of a written form for access to all services. toronto. uunorth. call voice number below for local dial-in numbers. $ startup fee; $ for hours a month of offpeak use. voice: ( ) - . toronto. internex online, ( ) - . both unix and menus. $ a year for one hour a day. voice: ( ) - . oregon portland. agora, ( ) - ( bps), ( ) - ( bps or higher). log on as: apply. $ a month for one hour per day. portland. teleport, ( ) - ( bps); ( ) - ( and higher). log on as: new. $ a month for one hour per day. voice: ( ) - . pennsylvania pittsburgh. telerama, ( ) - . $ for hours a month, cents for each additional hour. voice: ( ) - . quebec montreal. communications accessibles montreal, ( ) - ( bps); ( ) - ( bps). $ a month. voice: ( ) - . rhode island east greenwich. ids world network, ( ) - . in addition to usenet, has conferences from the fidonet and rime networks. $ a month; $ for six months; $ for a year. providence/seekonk. anomaly, ( ) - . $ for six months or $ a year. educational rate of $ for six months or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . texas austin. realtime communications, ( ) - . log on as: new. $ a year. voice: ( ) - . dallas. texas metronet, ( ) - ; ( ) - . log on as: info or signup. $ to $ setup fee, depending on service; $ to $ a month, depending on service. voice: ( ) - or ( ) - . houston. the black box, ( ) - . $ . a month. voice: ( ) - . virginia norfolk/peninsula. wyvern technologies, ( ) - (norfolk); ( ) - (peninsula). $ startup fee; $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . washington, dc the meta network. call voice number below for local dial-in numbers. caucus conferencing, menus. $ setup fee; $ a month. voice: ( ) - . capaccess, ( ), - . log on as guest with a password of visitor. a free-net system (see under cleveland, ohio, for information). free. voice: ( ) - . see also: listing under baltimore, md for express access and clarknet. washington state seattle. halcyon, ( ) - . users can choose between menus and unix. log on as: new. $ setup fee; $ a quarter or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . seattle. eskimo north, ( ) - (all speeds), ( ) - ( / . k bps). $ a month or $ a year. voice: ( ) - . united kingdom london. demon internet systems, ( ) . . setup fee; a month or . a year. voice: ( ) . if your town has no direct access if you don't live in an area with a public-access site, you'll still be able to connect to the net. several services offer access through national data networks such as the compuserve packet network and sprintnet, which have dozens, even hundreds of local dial-in numbers across the country. these include holonet in berkeley, calf., portal in cupertino, calf., the well in sausalito, calf., dial 'n cerf in san diego, calf., the world in brookline, mass., and michnet in ann arbor, mich. dial 'n cerf offers access through an number. expect to pay from $ to $ an hour to use these networks, above each provider's basic charges. the exact amount depends on the network, time of day and type of modem you use. for more information, contact the above services. four other providers deliver net access to users across the country: delphi, based in cambridge, mass., is a consumer-oriented network much like compuserve or america online -- only it now offers subscribers access to internet services. delphi charges: $ a month for internet access, in addition to standard charges. these are $ a month for four hours of off-peak (non-working hours) access a month and $ an hour for each additional hour or $ for hours of access a month and $ . an hour for each additional hour. for more information, call ( ) - . bix (the byte information exchange) offers ftp, telnet and e-mail access to the internet as part of their basic service. owned by the same company as delphi, it also offers hours of access a month for $ . for more information, call ( ) - . psi, based in reston, va., provides nationwide access to internet services through scores of local dial-in numbers to owners of ibm and compatible computers. psilink. which includes access to e-mail, usenet and ftp, costs $ a month, plus a one-time $ registration fee. special software is required, but is available free from psi. psi's global dialup service provides access to telnet for $ a month plus a one-time $ set-up fee. for more information, call ( ) psi or ( ) - . novx systems integration, based in seattle, washington, offers full internet access through an number reachable across the united states. there is a $ . setup fee, in addition to a monthly fee of $ . and a $ . hourly charge. for more information, call ( ) - . . net origins in the s, researchers began experimenting with linking computers to each other and to people through telephone hook-ups, using funds from the u.s defense department's advanced research projects agency (arpa). arpa wanted to see if computers in different locations could be linked using a new technology known as packet switching. this technology, in which data meant for another location is broken up into little pieces, each with its own "forwarding address" had the promise of letting several users share just one communications line. just as important, from arpa's viewpoint, was that this allowed for creation of networks that could automatically route data around downed circuits or computers. arpa's goal was not the creation of today's international computer-using community, but development of a data network that could survive a nuclear attack. previous computer networking efforts had required a line between each computer on the network, sort of like a one-track train route. the packet system allowed for creation of a data highway, in which large numbers of vehicles could essentially share the same lane. each packet was given the computer equivalent of a map and a time stamp, so that it could be sent to the right destination, where it would then be reassembled into a message the computer or a human could use. this system allowed computers to share data and the researchers to exchange electronic mail, or e-mail. in itself, e-mail was something of a revolution, offering the ability to send detailed letters at the speed of a phone call. as this system, known as arpanet, grew, some enterprising college students (and one in high school) developed a way to use it to conduct online conferences. these started as science-oriented discussions, but they soon branched out into virtually every other field, as people recognized the power of being able to "talk" to hundreds, or even thousands, of people around the country. in the s, arpa helped support the development of rules, or protocols, for transferring data between different types of computer networks. these "internet" (from "internetworking") protocols made it possible to develop the worldwide net we have today that links all sorts of computers across national boundaries. by the close of the s, links developed between arpanet and counterparts in other countries. the world was now tied together in a computer web. in the s, this network of networks, which became known collectively as the internet, expanded at a phenomenal rate. hundreds, then thousands, of colleges, research companies and government agencies began to connect their computers to this worldwide net. some enterprising hobbyists and companies unwilling to pay the high costs of internet access (or unable to meet stringent government regulations for access) learned how to link their own systems to the internet, even if "only" for e-mail and conferences. some of these systems began offering access to the public. now anybody with a computer and modem -- and persistence -- could tap into the world. in the s, the net continues to grow at exponential rates. some estimates are that the volume of messages transferred through the net grows percent a month. in response, government and other users have tried in recent years to expand the net itself. once, the main net "backbone" in the u.s. moved data at , bits per second. that proved too slow for the ever increasing amounts of data being sent over it, and in recent years the maximum speed was increased to . million and then million bits per second. even before the net was able to reach that latter speed, however, net experts were already figuring out ways to pump data at speeds of up to billion bits per second -- fast enough to send the entire encyclopedia britannica across the country in just one or two seconds. another major change has been the development of commercial services that provide internetworking services at speeds comparable to those of the government system. in fact, by mid- , the u.s. government will remove itself from any day-to-day control over the workings of the net, as regional and national providers continue to expand. . how it works the worldwide net is actually a complex web of smaller regional networks. to understand it, picture a modern road network of trans- continental superhighways connecting large cities. from these large cities come smaller freeways and parkways to link together small towns, whose residents travel on slower, narrow residential ways. the net superhighway is the high-speed internet. connected to this are computers that use a particular system of transferring data at high speeds. in the u.s., the major internet "backbone" theoretically can move data at rates of million bits per second (compare this to the average home modem, which has a top speed of roughly , to , bits per second). connected to the backbone computers are smaller networks serving particular geographic regions, which generally move data at speeds around . million bits per second. feeding off these in turn are even smaller networks or individual computers. unlike with commercial networks such as compuserve or prodigy, there is no one central computer or computers running the internet -- its resources are to be found among thousands of individual computers. this is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. the approach means it is virtually impossible for the entire net to crash at once -- even if one computer shuts down, the rest of the network stays up. the design also reduces the costs for an individual or organization to get onto the network. but thousands of connected computers can also make it difficult to navigate the net and find what you want -- especially as different computers may have different commands for plumbing their resources. it is only recently that net users have begun to develop the sorts of navigational tools and "maps" that will let neophytes get around without getting lost. nobody really knows how many computers and networks actually make up this net. some estimates say there are now as many as , networks connecting nearly million computers and more than million people around the world. whatever the actual numbers, however, it is clear they are only increasing. the net is more than just a technological marvel. it is human communication at its most fundamental level. the pace may be a little quicker when the messages race around the world in a few seconds, but it's not much different from a large and interesting party. you'll see things in cyberspace that will make you laugh; you'll see things that will anger you. you'll read silly little snippets and new ideas that make you think. you'll make new friends and meet people you wish would just go away. major network providers continue to work on ways to make it easier for users of one network to communicate with those of another. work is underway on a system for providing a universal "white pages" in which you could look up somebody's electronic-mail address, for example. this connectivity trend will likely speed up in coming years as users begin to demand seamless network access, much as telephone users can now dial almost anywhere in the world without worrying about how many phone companies actually have to connect their calls. and today, the links grow ever closer between the internet and such commercial networks as compuserve and prodigy, whose users can now exchange electronic mail with their internet friends. some commercial providers, such as delphi and america online, are working to bring their subscribers direct access to internet services. and as it becomes easier to use, more and more people will join this worldwide community we call the net. being connected to the net takes more than just reading conferences and logging messages to your computer; it takes asking and answering questions, exchanging opinions -- getting involved. if you choose to go forward, to use and contribute, you will become a citizen of cyberspace. if you're reading these words for the first time, this may seem like an amusing but unlikely notion -- that one could "inhabit" a place without physical space. but put a mark beside these words. join the net and actively participate for a year. then re-read this passage. it will no longer seem so strange to be a "citizen of cyberspace." it will seem like the most natural thing in the world. and that leads to another fundamental thing to remember: you can't break the net! as you travel the net, your computer may freeze, your screen may erupt into a mass of gibberish. you may think you've just disabled a million-dollar computer somewhere -- or even your own personal computer. sooner or later, this feeling happens to everyone -- and likely more than once. but the net and your computer are hardier than you think, so relax. you can no more break the net than you can the phone system. if something goes wrong, try again. if nothing at all happens, you can always disconnect. if worse comes to worse, you can turn off your computer. then take a deep breath. and dial right back in. leave a note for the person who runs the computer to which you've connected to ask for advice. try it again. persistence pays. stay and contribute. the net will be richer for it -- and so will you. . when things go wrong * your computer connects with a public-access site and get gibberish on your screen. if you are using parameters of - -n, try - -e (or vice-versa). if that doesn't work, try another modem speed. * you have your computer dial a public-access site, but nothing happens. check the phone number you typed in. if correct, turn on your modem's speaker (on hayes-compatible modems, you can usually do this by typing atm in your communications software's "terminal mode"). if the phone just rings and rings, the public-access site could be down for maintenance or due to a crash or some other problem. if you get a "connect" message, but nothing else, try hitting enter or escape a couple of times. * you try to log in, but after you type your password, nothing happens, or you get a "timed out" message followed by a disconnect. re-dial the number and try it again. * always remember, if you have a problem that just doesn't go away, ask! ask your system administrator, ask a friend, but ask. somebody will know what to do. . fyi the net grows so fast that even the best guide to its resources would be somewhat outdated the day it was printed. at the end of each chapter, however, you'll find fyi pointers to places on the net where you can go for more information or to keep updated on new resources and services. peter kaminski maintains a list of systems that provide public access to internet services. it's availble on the network itself, which obviously does you little good if you currently have no access, but which can prove invaluable should you move or want to find a new system. look for his "pdial" file in the alt.bbs.lists or news.answers newsgroups in usenet (for information on accessing usenet, see chapter ). steven levy's book, "hackers: heroes of the computer revolution," (anchor press/doubleday, ). describes the early culture and ethos that ultimately resulted in the internet and usenet. john quarterman's "the matrix: computer networks and conferencing systems worldwide" (digital press, ) is an exhaustive look at computer networks and how they connect with each other. you'll find numerous documents about the internet, its history and its resources in the pub/net_info directory on the electronic frontier foundation's ftp server (see chapter to decipher this). chapter : e-mail . the basics electronic mail, or e-mail, is your personal connection to the world of the net. all of the millions of people around the world who use the net have their own e-mail addresses. a growing number of "gateways" tie more and more people to the net every day. when you logged onto the host system you are now using, it automatically generated an address for you, as well. the basic concepts behind e-mail parallel those of regular mail. you send mail to people at their particular addresses. in turn, they write to you at your e-mail address. you can subscribe to the electronic equivalent of magazines and newspapers. you might even get electronic junk mail. e-mail has two distinct advantages over regular mail. the most obvious is speed. instead of several days, your message can reach the other side of the world in hours, minutes or even seconds (depending on where you drop off your mail and the state of the connections between there and your recipient). the other advantage is that once you master the basics, you'll be able to use e-mail to access databases and file libraries. you'll see how to do this later, along with learning how to transfer program and data files through e-mail. e-mail also has advantages over the telephone. you send your message when it's convenient for you. your recipients respond at their convenience. no more telephone tag. and while a phone call across the country or around the world can quickly result in huge phone bills, e-mail lets you exchange vast amounts of mail for only a few pennies -- even if the other person is in new zealand. e-mail is your connection to help -- your net lifeline. the net can sometimes seem a frustrating place! no matter how hard you try, no matter where you look, you just might not be able to find the answer to whatever is causing you problems. but when you know how to use e-mail, help is often just a few keystrokes away: you can ask your system administrator or a friend for help in an e-mail message. the quickest way to start learning e-mail is to send yourself a message. most public-access sites actually have several different types of mail systems, all of which let you both send and receive mail. we'll start with the simplest one, known, appropriately enough, as "mail," and then look at a couple of other interfaces. at your host system's command prompt, type: mail username where username is the name you gave yourself when you first logged on. hit enter. the computer might respond with subject: type test or, actually, anything at all (but you'll have to hit enter before you get to the end of the screen). hit enter. the cursor will drop down a line. you can now begin writing the actual message. type a sentence, again, anything at all. and here's where you hit your first unix frustration, one that will bug you repeatedly: you have to hit enter before you get to the very end of the line. just like typewriters, many unix programs have no word-wrapping (although there are ways to get some unix text processors, such as emacs, to word-wrap). when done with your message, hit return. now hit control-d (the control and the d keys at the same time). this is a unix command that tells the computer you're done writing and that it should close your "envelope" and mail it off (you could also hit enter once and then, on a blank line, type a period at the beginning of the line and hit enter again). you've just sent your first e-mail message. and because you're sending mail to yourself, rather than to someone somewhere else on the net, your message has already arrived, as we'll see in a moment. if you had wanted, you could have even written your message on your own computer and then uploaded it into this electronic "envelope." there are a couple of good reasons to do this with long or involved messages. one is that once you hit enter at the end of a line in "mail" you can't readily fix any mistakes on that line (unless you use some special commands to call up a unix text processor). also, if you are paying for access by the hour, uploading a prepared message can save you money. remember to save the document in ascii or text format. uploading a document you've created in a word processor that uses special formatting commands (which these days means many programs) will cause strange effects. when you get that blank line after the subject line, upload the message using the ascii protocol. or you can copy and paste the text, if your software allows that. when done, hit control-d as above. now you have mail waiting for you. normally, when you log on, your public-access site will tell you whether you have new mail waiting. to open your mailbox and see your waiting mail, type mail and hit enter. when the host system sees "mail" without a name after it, it knows you want to look in your mailbox rather than send a message. your screen, on a plain-vanilla unix system will display: mail version smi . mon apr : : pdt type ? for help. "/usr/spool/mail/adamg": message new unread >n adamg sat jan : / test ignore the first line; it's just computerese of value only to the people who run your system. you can type a question mark and hit return, but unless you're familiar with unix, most of what you'll see won't make much sense at this point. the second line tells you the directory on the host system where your mail messages are put, which again, is not something you'll likely need to know. the second line also tells you how many messages are in your mailbox, how many have come in since the last time you looked and how many messages you haven't read yet. it's the third line that is of real interest -- it tells you who the message is from, when it arrived, how many lines and characters it takes up, and what the subject is. the "n" means it is a new message -- it arrived after the last time you looked in your mailbox. hit enter. and there's your message -- only now it's a lot longer than what you wrote! message : from adamg jan : : received: by eff.org id aa ( . c/ida- . . /pen-ident for adamg); sat, jan : : - (ident-sender: adamg@eff.org) date: sat, jan : : - from: adam gaffin <adamg> message-id: < .aa @eff.org> to: adamg subject: test status: r this is only a test! whoa! what is all that stuff? it's your message with a postmark gone mad. just as the postal service puts its marks on every piece of mail it handles, so do net postal systems. only it's called a "header" instead of a postmark. each system that handles or routes your mail puts its stamp on it. since many messages go through a number of systems on their way to you, you will often get messages with headers that seem to go on forever. among other things, a header will tell you exactly when a message was sent and received (even the difference between your local time and greenwich mean time -- as at the end of line above). if this had been a long message, it would just keep scrolling across and down your screen -- unless the people who run your public- access site have set it up to pause every lines. one way to deal with a message that doesn't stop is to use your telecommunication software's logging or text-buffer function. start it before you hit the number of the message you want to see. your computer will ask you what you want to call the file you're about to create. after you name the file and hit enter, type the number of the message you want to see and hit enter. when the message finishes scrolling, turn off the text-buffer function. the message is now saved in your computer. this way, you can read the message while not connected to the net (which can save you money if you're paying by the hour) and write a reply offline. but in the meantime, now what? you can respond to the message, delete it or save it. to respond, type a lowercase r and hit enter. you'll get something like this: to: adamg subject: re: test note that this time, you don't have to enter a user name. the computer takes it from the message you're replying to and automatically addresses your message to its sender. the computer also automatically inserts a subject line, by adding "re:" to the original subject. from here, it's just like writing a new message. but say you change your mind and decide not to reply after all. how do you get out of the message? hit control-c once. you'll get this: (interrupt -- one more to kill letter) if you hit control-c once more, the message will disappear and you'll get back to your mail's command line. now, if you type a lowercase d and then hit enter, you'll delete the original message. type a lowercase q to exit your mailbox. if you type a q without first hitting d, your message is transferred to a file called mbox. this file is where all read, but un-deleted messages go. if you want to leave it in your mailbox for now, type a lowercase x and hit enter. this gets you out of mail without making any changes. the mbox file works a lot like your mailbox. to access it, type mail -f mbox at your host system's command line and hit enter. you'll get a menu identical to the one in your mailbox from which you can read these old messages, delete them or respond to them. it's probably a good idea to clear out your mailbox and mbox file from time to time, if only to keep them uncluttered. are there any drawbacks to e-mail? there are a few. one is that people seem more willing to fly off the handle electronically than in person, or over the phone. maybe it's because it's so easy to hit r and reply to a message without pausing and reflecting a moment. that's why we have smileys (see section . )! there's no online equivalent yet of a return receipt: chances are your message got to where it's going, but there's no absolute way for you to know for sure unless you get a reply from the other person. so now you're ready to send e-mail to other people on the net. of course, you need somebody's address to send them mail. how do you get it? alas, the simplest answer is not what you'd call the most elegant: you call them up on the phone or write them a letter on paper and ask them. residents of the electronic frontier are only beginning to develop the equivalent of phone books, and the ones that exist today are far from complete (still, later on, in chapter , we'll show you how to use some of these directories). eventually, you'll start corresponding with people, which means you'll want to know how to address mail to them. it's vital to know how to do this, because the smallest mistake -- using a comma when you should have used a period, for instance, can bounce the message back to you, undelivered. in this sense, net addresses are like phone numbers: one wrong digit and you get the wrong person. fortunately, most net addresses now adhere to a relatively easy-to-understand system. earlier, you sent yourself a mail message using just your user- name. this was sort of like making a local phone call -- you didn't have to dial a or an area code. this also works for mail to anybody else who has an account on the same system as you. sending mail outside of your system, though, will require the use of the net equivalent of area codes, called "domains." a basic net address will look something like this: tomg@world.std.com tomg is somebody's user id, and he is at (hence the @ sign) a site (or in internetese, a "domain") known as std.com. large organizations often have more than one computer linked to the internet; in this case, the name of the particular machine is world (you will quickly notice that, like boat owners, internet computer owners always name their machines). domains tell you the name of the organization that runs a given e-mail site and what kind of site it is or, if it's not in the u.s., what country it's located in. large organizations may have more than one computer or gateway tied to the internet, so you'll often see a two-part domain name; and sometimes even three- or four-part domain names. in general, american addresses end in an organizational suffix, such as ".edu," which means the site is at a college or university. other american suffixes include: .com for businesses .org for non-profit organizations .gov and .mil for government and military agencies .net for companies or organizations that run large networks. sites in the rest of the world tend to use a two-letter code that represents their country. most make sense, such as .ca for canadian sites, but there are a couple of seemingly odd ones. swiss sites end in .ch, while south african ones end in .za. some u.s. sites have followed this international convention (such as well.sf.ca.us). you'll notice that the above addresses are all in lower-case. unlike almost everything else having anything at all to do with unix, most net mailing systems don't care about case, so you generally don't have to worry about capitalizing e-mail addresses. alas, there are a few exceptions -- some public-access sites do allow for capital letters in user names. when in doubt, ask the person you want to write to, or let her send you a message first (recall how a person's e-mail address is usually found on the top of her message). the domain name, the part of the address after the @ sign, never has to be capitalized. it's all a fairly simple system that works very well, except, again, it's vital to get the address exactly right -- just as you have to dial a phone number exactly right. send a message to tomg@unm.edu (which is the university of new mexico) when you meant to send it to tomg@umn.edu (the university of minnesota), and your letter will either bounce back to you undelivered, or go to the wrong person. if your message is bounced back to you as undeliverable, you'll get an ominous looking-message from mailer-daemon (actually a rather benign unix program that exists to handle mail), with an evil-looking header followed by the text of your message. sometimes, you can tell what went wrong by looking at the first few lines of the bounced message. besides an incorrect address, it's possible your host system does not have the other site in the "map" it maintains of other host systems. or you could be trying to send mail to another network, such as bitnet or compuserve, that has special addressing requirements. sometimes, figuring all this out can prove highly frustrating. but remember the prime net commandment: ask. send a message to your system administrator. he or she might be able to help decipher the problem. there is one kind of address that may give your host system particular problems. there are two main ways that unix systems exchange mail. one is known as uucp and started out with a different addressing system than the rest of the net. most uucp systems have since switched over to the standard net addressing system, but a few traditional sites still cling to their original type, which tends to have lots of exclamation points in it, like this: uunet!somesite!othersite!mybuddy the problem for many host sites is that exclamation points (also known as "bangs") now mean something special in the more common systems or "shells" used to operate many unix computers. this means that addressing mail to such a site (or even responding to a message you received from one) could confuse the poor computer to no end and your message never gets sent out. if that happens, try putting backslashes in front of each exclamation point, so that you get an address that looks like this: uunet\!somesite\!othersite\!mybuddy note that this means you may not be able to respond to such a message by typing a lowercase r -- you may get an error message and you'll have to create a brand-new message. if you want to get a taste of what's possible through e-mail, start an e-mail message to almanac@oes.orst.edu leave the "subject:" line blank. as a message, write this: send quote or, if you're feeling a little down, write this instead: send moral-support in either case, you will get back a message within a few seconds to a few hours (depending on the state of your host system's internet connection). if you simply asked for a quote, you'll get back a fortune-cookie-like saying. if you asked for moral support, you'll also get back a fortune-cookie-like saying, only supposedly more uplifting. this particular "mail server" is run by oregon state university. its main purpose is actually to provide a way to distribute agricultural information via e-mail. if you'd like to find out how to use the server's full range of services, send a message to its address with this line in it: send help you'll quickly get back a lengthy document detailing just what's available and how to get it. feeling opinionated? want to give the president of the united states a piece of your mind? send a message to president@whitehouse.gov. or if the vice president will do, write vice-president@whitehouse.gov. the "mail" program is actually a very powerful one and a netwide standard, at least on unix computers. but it can be hard to figure out -- you can type a question mark to get a list of commands, but these may be of limited use unless you're already familiar with unix. fortunately, there are a couple of other mail programs that are easier to use. . elm -- a better way elm is a combination mailbox and letter-writing system that uses menus to help you navigate through mail. most unix-based host systems now have it online. to use it, type elm and hit enter. you'll get a menu of your waiting mail, along with a list of commands you can execute, that will look something like this: mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/adamg' with messages [elm . pl ] sep christopher davis ( ) here's another message. sep christopher davis ( ) this is a message from eudora aug rita marie rouvali ( ) first internet hunt !!! (fwd) aug peter scott/manage ( ) new file <uk > university of londo aug peter scott/manage ( ) new file <dir > x. service at a aug peter scott/manage ( ) new file <net > datapac informatio aug peter scott/manage ( ) proposed usenet group for hytelnet n aug peter scott/manage ( ) new file <dir > janet public acces aug helen trillian ros ( ) tuesday aug peter scott/manage ( ) update <cwk > oxford university ou you can use any of the following commands by pressing the first character; d)elete or u)ndelete mail, m)ail a message, r)eply or f)orward mail, q)uit to read a message, press <return>. j = move down, k = move up, ? = help each line shows the date you received the message, who sent it, how many lines long the message is, and the message's subject. if you are using vt emulation, you can move up and down the menu with your up and down arrow keys. otherwise, type the line number of the message you want to read or delete and hit enter. when you read a message, it pauses every lines, instead of scrolling until it's done. hit the space bar to read the next page. you can type a lowercase r to reply or a lower-case q or i to get back to the menu (the i stands for "index"). at the main menu, hitting a lowercase m followed by enter will let you start a message. to delete a message, type a lower-case d. you can do this while reading the message. or, if you are in the menu, move the cursor to the message's line and then hit d. when you're done with elm, type a lower-case q. the program will ask if you really want to delete the messages you marked. then, it will ask you if you want to move any messages you've read but haven't marked for deletion to a "received" file. for now, hit your n key. elm has a major disadvantage for the beginner. the default text editor it generally calls up when you hit your r or m key is often a program called emacs. unixoids swear by emacs, but everybody else almost always finds it impossible. unfortunately, you can't always get away from it (or vi, another text editor often found on unix systems), so later on we'll talk about some basic commands that will keep you from going totally nuts. if you want to save a message to your own computer, hit s, either within the message or with your cursor on the message entry in the elm menu. a filename will pop up. if you do not like it, type a new name (you won't have to backspace). hit enter, and the message will be saved with that file name in your "home directory" on your host system. after you exit elm, you can now download it (ask your system administrator for specifics on how to download -- and upload -- such files). . pine -- an even better way pine is based on elm but includes a number of improvements that make it an ideal mail system for beginners. like elm, pine starts you with a menu. it also has an "address book" feature that is handy for people with long or complex e-mail addresses. hitting a at the main menu puts you in the address book, where you can type in the person's first name (or nickname) followed by her address. then, when you want to send that person a message, you only have to type in her first name or nickname, and pine automatically inserts her actual address. the address book also lets you set up a mailing list. this feature allows you to send the same message to a number of people at once. what really sets pine apart is its built-in text editor, which looks and feels a lot more like word-processing programs available for ms-dos and macintosh users. not only does it have word wrap (a revolutionary concept if ever there was one), it also has a spell-checker and a search command. best of all, all of the commands you need are listed in a two-line mini-menu at the bottom of each screen. the commands look like this: ^w where is the little caret is a synonym for the key marked "control" on your keyboard. to find where a particular word is in your document, you'd hit your control key and your w key at the same time, which would bring up a prompt asking you for the word to look for. some of pine's commands are a tad peculiar (control-v for "page down" for example), which comes from being based on a variant of emacs (which is utterly peculiar). but again, all of the commands you need are listed on that two-line mini-menu, so it shouldn't take you more than a couple of seconds to find the right one. to use pine, type pine at the command line and hit enter. it's a relatively new program, so some systems may not yet have it online. but it's so easy to use, you should probably send e-mail to your system administrator urging him to get it! . smileys when you're involved in an online discussion, you can't see the smiles or shrugs that the other person might make in a live conversation to show he's only kidding. but online, there's no body language. so what you might think is funny, somebody else might take as an insult. to try to keep such misunderstandings from erupting into bitter disputes, we have smileys. tilt your head to the left and look at the following sideways. :-). or simply :). this is your basic "smiley." use it to indicate people should not take that comment you just made as seriously as they might otherwise. you make a smiley by typing a colon, a hyphen and a right parenthetical bracket. some people prefer using the word "grin," usually in this form: <grin> sometimes, though, you'll see it as *grin* or even just <g> for short. some other smileys include: ;-) wink; :-( frown; :-o surprise; -) wearing glasses; =|:-)= abe lincoln. ok, so maybe the last two are a little bogus :-). . sending e-mail to other networks there are a number of computer networks that are not directly part of the net, but which are now connected through "gateways" that allow the passing of e-mail. here's a list of some of the larger networks, how to send mail to them and how their users can send mail to you: america online remove any spaces from a user's name and append "aol.com," to get user@aol.com america online users who want to send mail to you need only put your net address in the "to:" field before composing a message. attmail address your message to user@attmail.com. from attmail, a user would send mail to you in this form: internet!domain!user so if your address were nancyr@world.std.com, your correspondent would send a message to you at internet!world.std.com!nancyr bitnet users of bitnet (and netnorth in canada and earn in europe) often have addresses in this form: izzy@indvms. if you're lucky, all you'll have to do to mail to that address is add "bitnet" at the end, to get izzy@indvms.bitnet. sometimes, however, mail to such an address will bounce back to you, because bitnet addresses do not always translate well into an internet form. if this happens, you can send mail through one of two internet/bitnet gateways. first, change the @ in the address to a %, so that you get username%site.bitnet. then add either @vm.marist.edu or @cunyvm.cuny.edu, so that, with the above example, you would get izzy%indyvms.bitnet@vm.marist.edu or izzy%indvyvms.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu bitnet users have it a little easier: they can usually send mail directly to your e-mail address without fooling around with it at all. so send them your address and they should be ok. compuserve compuserve users have numerical addresses in this form: , . to send mail to a compuserve user, change the comma to a period and add "@compuserve.com"; for example: . @compuserve.com. note that some compuserve users must pay extra to receive mail from the internet. if you know compuserve users who want to send you mail, tell them to go mail and create a mail message. in the address area, instead of typing in a compuserve number, have them type your address in this form: >internet:yourid@youraddress. for example, >internet:adamg@world.std.com. note that both the ">" and the ":" are required. delphi to send mail to a delphi user, the form is username@delphi.com. fidonet to send mail to people using a fidonet bbs, you need the name they use to log onto that system and its "node number.'' fidonet node numbers or addresses consist of three numbers, in this form: : / . the first number tells which of several broad geographic zones the bbs is in ( represents the u.s. and canada, europe and israel, pacific asia, south america). the second number represents the bbs's network, while the final number is the bbs's "fidonode'' number in that network. if your correspondent only gives you two numbers (for example, / ), it means the system is in zone . now comes the tricky part. you have to reverse the numbers and add to them the letters f, n and z (which stand for "fidonode,''"network,'' and "zone'). for example, the address above would become f .n .z . now add "fidonet.org'' at the end, to get f .n .z .fidonet.org. then add "firstname.lastname@', to get firstname.lastname@f .n .z .fidonet.org note the period between the first and last names. also, some countries now have their own fidonet "backbone" systems, which might affect addressing. for example, were the above address in germany, you would end it with "fido.de" instead of "fidonet.org." whew! the reverse process is totally different. first, the person has to have access to his or her bbs's "net mail" area and know the fidonet address of his or her local fidonet/uucp gateway (often their system operator will know it). your fidonet correspondent should address a net-mail message to uucp (not your name) in the "to:" field. in the node-number field, they should type in the node number of the fidonet/uucp gateway (if the gateway system is in the same regional network as their system, they need only type the last number, for example, instead of / ). then, the first line of the message has to be your internet address, followed by a blank line. after that, the person can write the message and send it. because of the way fidonet moves mail, it could take a day or two for a message to be delivered in either direction. also, because many fidonet systems are run as hobbies, it is considered good form to ask the gateway sysop's permission if you intend to pass large amounts of mail back and forth. messages of a commercial nature are strictly forbidden (even if it's something the other person asked for). also, consider it very likely that somebody other than the recipient will read your messages. genie to send mail to a genie user, add "@genie.com" to the end of the genie user name, for example: walt@genie.com. mcimail to send mail to somebody with an mcimail account, add "@mcimail.com to the end of their name or numerical address. for example: - @mcimail.com or jsmith@mcimail.com note that if there is more than one mcimail subscriber with that name, you will get a mail message back from mci giving you their names and numerical addresses. you'll then have to figure out which one you want and re-send the message. from mci, a user would type your name (ems) at the "to:" prompt. at the ems prompt, he or she would type internet followed by your net address at the "mbx:" prompt. peacenet to send mail to a peacenet user, use this form: username@igc.org peacenet subscribers can use your regular address to send you mail. prodigy userid@prodigy.com. note that prodigy users must pay extra for internet e-mail. . seven unix commands you can't live without: if you connect to the net through a unix system, eventually you'll have to come to terms with unix. for better or worse, most unix systems do not shield you from their inner workings -- if you want to copy a usenet posting to a file, for example, you'll have to use some unix commands if you ever want to do anything with that file. like ms-dos, unix is an operating system - it tells the computer how to do things. now while unix may have a reputation as being even more complex than ms-dos, in most cases, a few basic, and simple, commands should be all you'll ever need. if your own computer uses ms-dos or pc-dos, the basic concepts will seem very familiar -- but watch out for the cd command, which works differently enough from the similarly named dos command that it will drive you crazy. also, unlike ms-dos, unix is case sensitive -- if you type commands or directory names in the wrong case, you'll get an error message. if you're used to working on a mac, you'll have to remember that unix stores files in "directories" rather than "folders." unix directories are organized like branches on a tree. at the bottom is the "root" directory, with sub-directories branching off that (and sub-directories in turn can have sub-directories). the mac equivalent of a unix sub-directory is a folder within another folder. cat equivalent to the ms-dos "type" command. to pause a file every screen, type cat file |more where "file" is the name of the file you want to see. hitting control-c will stop the display. alternately, you could type more file to achieve the same result. you can also use cat for writing or uploading text files to your name or home directory (similar to the ms-dos "copy con" command). if you type cat>test you start a file called "test." you can either write something simple (no editing once you've finished a line and you have to hit return at the end of each line) or upload something into that file using your communications software's ascii protocol). to close the file, hit control-d. cd the "change directory" command. to change from your present directory to another, type cd directory and hit enter. unlike ms-dos, which uses a \ to denote sub- directories (for example: \stuff\text), unix uses a / (for example: /stuff/text). so to change from your present directory to the stuff/text sub-directory, you would type cd stuff/text and then hit enter. as in ms-dos, you do not need the first backslash if the subdirectory comes off the directory you're already in. to move back up a directory tree, you would type cd .. followed by enter. note the space between the cd and the two periods -- this is where ms-dos users will really go nuts. cp copies a file. the syntax is cp file file which would copy file to file (or overwrite file with file ). ls this command, when followed by enter, tells you what's in the directory, similar to the dos dir command, except in alphabetical order. ls | more will stop the listing every lines -- handy if there are a lot of things in the directory. the basic ls command does not list "hidden" files, such as the .login file that controls how your system interacts with unix. to see these files, type ls -a or ls -a | more ls -l will tell you the size of each file in bytes and tell you when each was created or modified. mv similar to the ms-dos rename command. mv file file will rename file as file , the command can also be used to move files between directories. mv file news would move file to your news directory. rm deletes a file. type rm filename and hit enter (but beware: when you hit enter, it's gone for good). wildcards: when searching for, copying or deleting files, you can use "wildcards" if you are not sure of the file's exact name. ls man* would find the following files: manual, manual.txt, man-o-man. use a question mark when you're sure about all but one or two characters. for example, ls man? would find a file called mane, but not one called manual. . when things go wrong * you send a message but get back an ominous looking message from mailer-daemon containing up to several dozen lines of computerese followed by your message. somewhere in those lines you can often find a clue to what went wrong. you might have made a mistake in spelling the e-mail address. the site to which you're sending mail might have been down for maintenance or a problem. you may have used the wrong "translation" for mail to a non-internet network. * you call up your host system's text editor to write a message or reply to one and can't seem to get out. if it's emacs, try control-x, control-c (in other words, hit your control key and your x key at the same time, followed by control and c). if worse comes to worse, you can hang up. * in elm, you accidentally hit the d key for a message you want to save. type the number of the message, hit enter and then u, which will "un-delete" the message. this works only before you exit elm; once you quit, the message is gone. * you try to upload an ascii message you've written on your own computer into a message you're preparing in elm or pine and you get a lot of left brackets, capital ms, ks and ls and some funny-looking characters. believe it or not, your message will actually wind up looking fine; all that garbage is temporary and reflects the problems some unix text processors have with ascii uploads. but it will take much longer for your upload to finish. one way to deal with this is to call up the simple mail program, which will not produce any weird characters when you upload a text file into a message. another way (which is better if your prepared message is a response to somebody's mail), is to create a text file on your host system with cat, for example, cat>file and then upload your text into that. then, in elm or pine, you can insert the message with a simple command (control-r in pine, for example); only this time you won't see all that extraneous stuff. * you haven't cleared out your elm mailbox in awhile, and you accidentally hit "y" when you meant to hit "n" (or vice-versa) when exiting and now all your messages have disappeared. look in your news directory (at the command line, type: cd news) for a file called recieved. those are all your messages. unfortunately, there's no way to get them back into your elm mailbox -- you'll have to download the file or read it online. chapter : usenet i . the global watering hole imagine a conversation carried out over a period of hours and days, as if people were leaving messages and responses on a bulletin board. or imagine the electronic equivalent of a radio talk show where everybody can put their two cents in and no one is ever on hold. unlike e-mail, which is usually "one-to-one," usenet is "many-to- many." usenet is the international meeting place, where people gather to meet their friends, discuss the day's events, keep up with computer trends or talk about whatever's on their mind. jumping into a usenet discussion can be a liberating experience. nobody knows what you look or sound like, how old you are, what your background is. you're judged solely on your words, your ability to make a point. to many people, usenet is the net. in fact, it is often confused with internet. but it is a totally separate system. all internet sites can carry usenet, but so do many non-internet sites, from sophisticated unix machines to old xt clones and apple iis. technically, usenet messages are shipped around the world, from host system to host system, using one of several specific net protocols. your host system stores all of its usenet messages in one place, which everybody with an account on the system can access. that way, no matter how many people actually read a given message, each host system has to store only one copy of it. many host systems "talk" with several others regularly in case one or another of their links goes down for some reason. when two host systems connect, they basically compare notes on which usenet messages they already have. any that one is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa. because they are computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of these comparisons every day. yes, millions. for usenet is huge. every day, usenet users pump upwards of million characters a day into the system -- roughly the equivalent of volumes a-g of the encyclopedia britannica. obviously, nobody could possibly keep up with this immense flow of messages. let's look at how to find conferences and discussions of interest to you. the basic building block of usenet is the newsgroup, which is a collection of messages with a related theme (on other networks, these would be called conferences, forums, bboards or special-interest groups). there are now more than , of these newsgroups, in several diferent languages, covering everything from art to zoology, from science fiction to south africa. some public-access systems, typically the ones that work through menus, try to make it easier by dividing usenet into several broad categories. choose one of those and you're given a list of newsgroups in that category. then select the newsgroup you're interested in and start reading. other systems let you compile your own "reading list" so that you only see messages in conferences you want. in both cases, conferences are arranged in a particular hierarchy devised in the early s. newsgroup names start with one of a series of broad topic names. for example, newsgroups beginning with "comp." are about particular computer- related topics. these broad topics are followed by a series of more focused topics (so that "comp.unix" groups are limited to discussion about unix). the main hierarchies are: bionet research biology bit.listserv conferences originating as bitnet mailing lists biz business comp computers and related subjects misc discussions that don't fit anywhere else news news about usenet itself rec hobbies, games and recreation sci science other than research biology soc "social" groups, often ethnically related talk politics and related topics alt controversial or unusual topics; not carried by all sites in addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular city, state or region. for example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where new englanders look for apartments. a growing number also carry k newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and students. and a number of sites carry clari newsgroups, which is actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and a unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter ). . navigating usenet with nn how do you dive right in? as mentioned, on some systems, it's all done through menus -- you just keep choosing from a list of choices until you get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command. on unix systems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program. two of the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no news" -- because it's supposed to be simpler to use). for beginners, nn may be the better choice because it works with menus -- you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you choose which ones you want to see. to try it out, connect to your host system and, at the command line, type nn news.announce.newusers and hit enter. after a few seconds, you should see something like this: newsgroup: news.announce.newusers articles: of / new a gene spafford answers to frequently asked questions b gene spafford a primer on how to work with the usenet community c gene spafford emily postnews answers your questions on netiquette d gene spafford hints on writing style for usenet e gene spafford introduction to news.announce f gene spafford usenet software: history and sources g gene spafford what is usenet? h taylor a guide to social newsgroups and mailing lists i gene spafford alternative newsgroup hierarchies, part i j gene spafford >alternative newsgroup hierarchies, part ii k david c lawrenc how to create a new newsgroup l gene spafford how to get information about networks m gene spafford list of active newsgroups n gene spafford list of moderators o gene spafford publicly accessible mailing lists, part i p gene spafford publicly accessible mailing lists, part ii q gene spafford >publicly accessible mailing lists, part iii r jonathan kamens how to become a usenet site s jonathan kamen list of periodic informational postings, part i -- : -- select -- help:? -----top %----- explanatory postings for new users. (moderated) obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of usenet! here's what all this means: the first letter on each line is the letter you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense that a "newsgroup" would have "articles"). next comes the name of the person who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and what the article is about. at the bottom, you see the local time at your access site, what you're doing right now (i.e., selecting articles), which key to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles in the newsgroup you can see on this screen. the "(moderated)" means the newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post messages to it. this is generally limited to groups such as this, which contain articles of basic information, or for digests, which are basically online magazines (more on them in a bit). say you're particularly interested in what "emily postnews" has to say about proper etiquette on usenet. hit your c key (lower case!), and the line will light up. if you want to read something else, hit the key that corresponds to it. and if you want to see what's on the next page of articles, hit return or your space bar. but you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that article now. the command for that in nn is a capital z. hit it and you'll see something like this: gene spafford: emily postnews answers your questions on netiquettesep : original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (brad templeton) archive-name: emily-postnews/part last-change: nov by brad@looking.on.ca (brad templeton) **note: this is intended to be satirical. if you do not recognize it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian. the recommendations in this article should recognized for what they are -- admonitions about what not to do. "dear emily postnews" emily postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour, gives her advice on how to act on the net. ============================================================================ dear miss postnews: how long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy a: dear verbose: please try and make your signature as long as you -- : --.announce.newusers-- last --help:?--top %-- the first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header you get in e-mail messages. then comes the beginning of the message. the last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of it, anyway), the position in your message stack that this message occupies, how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen. if you want to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your enter key!) for the next screen and so on until done. when done, you'll be returned to the newsgroup menu. for now hit q (upper case this time), which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command line. to get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type nn comp.risks and hit enter. this newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people who run and use them can go wrong. again, you read articles by selecting their letters. if you're in the middle of an article and decide you want to go onto the next one, hit your n key. now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of particular interest to you. unix host systems that have nn use a program called nngrep (ever get the feeling unix was not entirely written in english?) that lets you scan newsgroups. exit nn and at your host system's command line, type nngrep word where word is the subject you're interested in. if you use a macintosh computer, you might try nngrep mac you'll get something that looks like this: alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace alt.religion.emacs comp.binaries.mac comp.emacs comp.lang.forth.mac comp.os.mach comp.sources.mac comp.sys.mac.announce comp.sys.mac.apps comp.sys.mac.comm comp.sys.mac.databases comp.sys.mac.digest comp.sys.mac.games comp.sys.mac.hardware comp.sys.mac.hypercard comp.sys.mac.misc comp.sys.mac.programmer comp.sys.mac.system comp.sys.mac.wanted gnu.emacs.announce gnu.emacs.bug gnu.emacs.gnews gnu.emacs.gnus gnu.emacs.help gnu.emacs.lisp.manual gnu.emacs.sources gnu.emacs.vm.bug gnu.emacs.vm.info gnu.emacs.vms note that some of these obviously have something to do with macintoshes while some obviously do not; nngrep is not a perfect system. if you want to get a list of all the newsgroups available on your host system, type nngrep -a |more or nngrep -a |pg and hit enter (which one to use depends on the unix used on your host system; if one doesn't do anything, try the other). you don't absolutely need the |more or |pg, but if you don't include it, the list will keep scrolling, rather than pausing every lines. if you are in nn, hitting a capital y will bring up a similar list. typing "nn newsgroup" for every newsgroup can get awfully tiring after awhile. when you use nn, your host system looks in a file called .newsrc. this is basically a list of every newsgroup on the host system along with notations on which groups and articles you have read (all maintained by the computer). you can also use this file to create a "reading list" that brings up each newsgroup to which you want to "subscribe." to try it out, type nn without any newsgroup name, and hit enter. unfortunately, you will start out with a .newsrc file that has you "subscribed" to every single newsgroup on your host system! to delete a newsgroup from your reading list, type a capital u while its menu is on the screen. the computer will ask you if you're sure you want to "unsubscribe." if you then hit a y, you'll be unsubscribed and put in the next group. with many host systems carrying thousands of newsgroups, this will take you forever. fortunately, there are a couple of easier ways to do this. both involve calling up your .newsrc file in a word or text processor. in a .newsrc file, each newsgroup takes up one line, consisting of the group's name, an exclamation point or a colon and a range of numbers. newsgroups with a colon are ones to which you are subscribed; those followed by an exclamation point are "un-subscribed." to start with a clean slate, then, you have to change all those colons to exclamation points. if you know how to use emacs or vi, call up the .newsrc file (you might want to make a copy of .newsrc first, just in case), and use the search-and-replace function to make the change. if you're not comfortable with these text processor, you can download the .newsrc file, make the changes on your own computer and then upload the revised file. before you download the file, however, you should do a couple of things. one is to type cp .newsrc temprc and hit enter. you will actually download this temprc file (note the name does not start with a period -- some computers, such as those using ms-dos, do not allow file names starting with periods). after you download the file, open it in your favorite word processor and use its search-and-replace function to change the exclamation points to colons. be careful not to change anything else! save the document in ascii or text format. dial back into your host system. at the command line, type cp temprc temprc and hit enter. this new file will serve as your backup .newsrc file just in case something goes wrong. upload the temprc file from your computer. this will overwrite the unix system's old temprc file. now type cp temprc .newsrc and hit enter. you now have a clean slate to start creating a reading list. . nn commands to mark a specific article for reading, type the letter next to it (in lower case). to mark a specific article and all of its responses, type the letter and an asterisk, for example: a* to un-select an article, type the letter next to it (again, in lower case). c cancels an article (around the world) that you wrote. every article posted on usenet has a unique id number. hitting a capital c sends out a new message that tells host systems that receive it to find earlier message and delete it. f to post a public response, or follow-up. if selected while still on a newsgroup "page", asks you which article to follow up. if selected while in a specific article, will follow up that article. in either case, you'll be asked if you want to include the original article in yours. caution: puts you in whatever text editor is your default. n goes to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles. p goes to the previous subscribed newsgroup with unread articles. g news.group goes to a specific newsgroup. can be used to subscribe to new newsgroups. hitting g brings up a sub-menu: u goes to the group and shows only un-read articles. a goes to the group and shows all articles, even ones you've already read. s will show you only articles with a specific subject. n will show you only articles from a specific person. m mails a copy of the current article to somebody. you'll be asked for the recipient's e-mail address and whether you want to add any comments to the article before sending it off. as with f, puts you in the default editor. :post post an article. you'll be asked for the name of the group. q quit, or exit, nn. u un-subscribe from the current newsgroup. r responds to an article via e-mail. space hitting the space bar brings up the next page of articles. x if you have selected articles, this will show them to you and then take you to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles. if you don't have any selected articles, it marks all articles as read and takes you to the next unread subscribed newsgroup. =word finds and marks all articles in the newsgroup with a specific word in the "subject:" line, for example: =modem z shows you selected articles immediately and then returns you to the current newsgroup. ? brings up a help screen. < goes to the previous page in the newsgroup. > goes to the next page in the newsgroup. $ goes to the last page in an article. ^ goes to the first page in an article. . using rn some folks prefer this older newsreader. if you type rn news.announce.newusers at your host system's command line, you'll see something like this: ******** unread articles in news.announce.newusers--read now? [ynq] if you hit your y key, the first article will appear on your screen. if you want to see what articles are available first, though, hit your computer's = key and you'll get something like this: introduction to news.announce a primer on how to work with the usenet community what is usenet? answers to frequently asked questions hints on writing style for usenet alternative newsgroup hierarchies, part i alternative newsgroup hierarchies, part ii emily postnews answers your questions on netiquette usenet software: history and sources a guide to social newsgroups and mailing lists how to get information about networks how to create a new newsgroup list of active newsgroups list of moderators publicly accessible mailing lists, part i publicly accessible mailing lists, part ii publicly accessible mailing lists, part iii how to become a usenet site list of periodic informational postings, part i list of periodic informational postings, part ii list of periodic informational postings, part iii end of article (of )--what next? [npq] notice how the messages are in numerical order this time, and don't tell you who sent them. article looks interesting. to read it, type in and hit enter. you'll see something like this: article ( more) in news.announce.newusers (moderated): from: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (gene spafford) newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answers subject: what is usenet? date: sep : : gmt followup-to: news.newusers.questions organization: dept. of computer sciences, purdue univ. lines: supersedes: <spaf-whatis_ @cs.purdue.edu> archive-name: what-is-usenet/part original from: chip@tct.com (chip salzenberg) last-change: july by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (gene spafford) the first thing to understand about usenet is that it is widely misunderstood. every day on usenet, the "blind men and the elephant" phenomenon is evident, in spades. in my opinion, more flame wars arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of usenet than from any other source. and consider that such flame wars arise, of necessity, among people who are on usenet. imagine, then, how poorly understood usenet must be by those outside! --more--( %) this time, the header looks much more like the gobbledygook you get in e-mail messages. to keep reading, hit your space bar. if you hit your n key (lower case), you'll go to the next message in the numerical order. to escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until you get back to the command line. now let's set up your reading list. because rn uses the same .newsrc file as nn, you can use one of the search-and-replace methods described above. or you can do this: type rn and hit enter. when the first newsgroup comes up on your screen, hit your u key (in lower case). hit it again, and again, and again. or just keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a couple of seconds). eventually, you'll be told you're at the end of the newsgroups, and asked what you want to do next. here's where you begin entering newsgroups. type g newsgroup (for example, g comp.sys.mac.announce) and hit enter. you'll be asked if you want to "subscribe." hit your y key. then type g next newsgroup (for example, g comp.announce.newusers) and hit enter. repeat until done. this process will also set up your reading list for nn, if you prefer that newsreader. but how do you know which newsgroups to subscribe? typing a lowercase l and then hitting enter will show you a list of all available newsgroups. again, since there could be more than , newsgroups on your system, this might not be something you want to do. fortunately, you can search for groups with particular words in their names, using the l command. typing l mac followed by enter, will bring up a list of newsgroups with those letters in them (and as in nn, you will also see groups dealing with emacs and the like, in addition to groups related to macintosh computers). because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over usenet, most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks. so if there's a message you want to keep, you should either turn on your computer's screen capture or save it to a file which you can later download). to save a message as a file in rn, type s filename where filename is what you want to call the file. hit enter. you'll be asked if you want to save it in "mailbox format." in most cases, you can answer with an n (which will strip off the header). the message will now be saved to a file in your news directory (which you can access by typing cd news and then hitting enter). also, some newsgroups fill up particularly quickly -- go away for a couple of days and you'll come back to find hundreds of articles! one way to deal with that is to mark them as "read" so that they no longer appear on your screen. in nn, hit a capital j; in rn, a small c. . rn commands different commands are available to you in rn depending on whether you are already in a newsgroup or reading a specific article. at any point, typing a lowercase h will bring up a list of available commands and some terse instructions for using them. here are some of them: after you've just called up rn, or within a newsgroup: c marks every article in a newsgroup as read (or "caught up") so that you don't have to see them again. the system will ask you if you are sure. can be done either when asked if you want to read a particular newsgroup or once in the newsgroup. g goes to a newsgroup, in this form: g news.group use this both for going to groups to which you're already subscribed and subscribing to new groups. h provides a list of available commands with terse instructions. l gives a list of all available newsgroups. p goes to the first previous subscribed newsgroup with un-read articles. q quits, or exits, rn if you have not yet gone into a newsgroup. if you are in a newsgroup, it quits that one and brings you to the next subscribed newsgroup. only within a newsgroup: = gives a list of all available articles in the newsgroup. m marks a specific article or series of articles as "un-read" again so that you can come back to them later. typing m and hitting enter would mark just that article as un-read. typing - m and hitting enter would mark all of those articles as un- read. space brings up the next page of article listings. if already on the last page, displays the first article in the newsgroup. u un-subscribe from the newsgroup. /text/ searches through the newsgroup for articles with a specific word or phrase in the "subject:" line, from the current article to the end of the newsgroup. for example, /eff/ would bring you to the first article with "eff" in the "subject:" line. ?text? the same as /text/ except it searches in reverse order from the current article. only within a specific article: e some newsgroups consist of articles that are binary files, typically programs or graphics images. hitting e will convert the ascii characters within such an article into a file you can then download and use or view (assuming you have the proper computer and software). many times, such files will be split into several articles; just keep calling up the articles and hitting e until done. you'll find the resulting file in your news subdirectory. c if you post an article and then decide it was a mistake, call it up on your host system and hit this. the message will soon begin disappearing on systems around the world. f post a public response in the newsgroup to the current article. includes a copy of her posting, which you can then edit down using your host system's text editor. f the same as above except it does not include a copy of the original message in yours. m marks the current article as "un-read" so that you can come back to it later. you do not have to type the article number. control-n brings up the first response to the article. if there is no follow-up article, this returns you to the first unread article in the newsgroup). control-p goes to the message to which the current article is a reply. n goes to the next unread article in the newsgroup. n takes you to the next article in the newsgroup even if you've already read it. q quits, or exits, the current article. leaves you in the current newsgroup. r reply, via e-mail only, to the author of the current article. includes a copy of his message in yours. r the same as above, except it does not include a copy of his article. s file copies the current article to a file in your news directory, where "file" is the name of the file you want to save it to. you'll be asked if you want to use "mailbox" format when saving. if you answer by hitting your n key, most of the header will not be saved. s|mail user mails a copy of the article to somebody. for "user" substitute an e-mail address. does not let you add comments to the message first, however. space hitting the space bar shows the next page of the article, or, if at the end, goes to the next un-read article. . essential newsgroups with so much to choose from, everybody will likely have their own unique usenet reading list. but there are a few newsgroups that are particularly of interest to newcomers. among them: news.announce.newusers this group consists of a series of articles that explain various facets of usenet. news.newusers.questions this is where you can ask questions (we'll see how in a bit) about how usenet works. news.announce.newsgroups look here for information about new or proposed newsgroups. news.answers contains lists of "frequently asked questions" (faqs) and their answers from many different newsgroups. learn how to fight jet lag in the faq from rec.travel.air; look up answers to common questions about microsoft windows in an faq from comp.os.ms-windows; etc. alt.internet.services looking for something in particular on the internet? ask here. alt.infosystems.announce people adding new information services to the internet will post details here. . speaking up "threads" are an integral part of usenet. when somebody posts a message, often somebody else will respond. soon, a thread of conversation begins. following these threads is relatively easy. in nn, related messages are grouped together. in rn, when you're done with a message, you can hit control-n to read the next related message, or followup. as you explore usenet, it's probably a good idea to read discussions for awhile before you jump in. this way, you can get a feel for the particular newsgroup -- each has its own rhythms. eventually, though, you'll want to speak up. there are two main ways to do this. you join an existing conversation, or you can start a whole new thread. if you want to join a discussion, you have to decide if you want to include portions of the message you are responding to in your message. the reason to do this is so people can see what you're responding to, just in case the original message has disappeared from their system (remember that most usenet messages have a short life span on the average host system) or they can't find it. if you're using a unix host system, joining an existing conversation is similar in both nn and rn: hit your f key when done with a given article in the thread. in rn, type a small f if you don't want to include portions of the message you're responding to; an uppercase f if you do. in nn, type a capital f. you'll then be asked if you want to include portions of the original message. and here's where you hit another unix wall. when you hit your f key, your host system calls up its basic unix text editor. if you're lucky, that'll be pico, a very easy system. more likely, however, you'll get dumped into emacs (or possibly vi), which you've already met in the chapter on e-mail. the single most important emacs command is control-x control-c this means, depress your control key and hit x. then depress the control key and hit c. memorize this. in fact, it's so important, it bears repeating: control-x control-c these keystrokes are how you get out of emacs. if they work well, you'll be asked if you want to send, edit, abort or list the message you were working on. if they don't work well (say you accidentally hit some other weird key combination that means something special to emacs) and nothing seems to happen, or you just get more weird-looking emacs prompts on the bottom of your screen, try hitting control-g. this should stop whatever emacs was trying to do (you should see the word "quit" on the bottom of your screen), after which you can hit control-x control-c. but if this still doesn't work, remember that you can always disconnect and dial back in! if you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions of the original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire thing at the top of your message. use the arrow keys to move down to the lines you want to delete and hit control-k, which will delete one line at a time. you can then write your message. remember that you have to hit enter before your cursor gets to the end of the line, because emacs does not have word wrapping. when done, hit control-x control-c. you'll be asked the question about sending, editing, aborting, etc. choose one. if you hit y, your host system will start the process to sending your message across the net. the nn and rn programs work differently when it comes to posting entirely new messages. in nn, type :post and hit enter in any newsgroup. you'll be asked which newsgroup to post a message to. type in its name and hit enter. then you'll be asked for "keywords." these are words you'd use to attract somebody scanning a newsgroup. say you're selling your car. you might type the type of car here. next comes a "summary" line, which is somewhat similar. finally, you'll be asked for the message's "distribution." this is where you put how widely you want your message disseminated. think about this one for a second. if you are selling your car, it makes little sense to send a message about it all over the world. but if you want to talk about the environment, it might make a lot of sense. each host system has its own set of distribution classifications, but there's generally a local one (just for users of that system), one for the city, state or region it's in, another for the country (for example, usa), one for the continent (for americans and canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world (usually: world). which one to use? generally, a couple of seconds' thought will help you decide. if you're selling your car, use your city or regional distribution -- people in australia won't much care and may even get annoyed. if you want to discuss presidential politics, using a usa distribution makes more sense. if you want to talk about events in the middle east, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly acceptable. then you can type your message. if you've composed your message offline (generally a good idea if you and emacs don't get along), you can upload it now. you may see a lot of weird looking characters as it uploads into emacs, but those will disappear when you hit control-x and then control-c. alternately: "save" the message (for example, by hitting m in rn), log out, compose your message offline, log back on and upload your message into a file on your host system. then call up usenet, find the article you "saved." start a reply, and you'll be asked if you want to include a prepared message. type in the name of the file you just created and hit enter. in rn, you have to wait until you get to the end of a newsgroup to hit f, which will bring up a message-composing system. alternately, at your host system's command line, you can type pnews and hit enter. you'll be prompted somewhat similarly to the nn system, except that you'll be given a list of possible distributions. if you chose "world," you'll get this message: this program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. please be sure you know what you are doing. are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny] don't worry -- your message won't really cost the net untold amounts, although, again, it's a good idea to think for a second whether your message really should go everywhere. if you want to respond to a given post through e-mail, instead of publicly, hit r in nn or r or r in rn. in rn, as with follow-up articles, the upper-case key includes the original message in yours. most newsgroups are unmoderated, which means that every message you post will eventually wind up on every host system within the geographic region you specified that carries that newsgroup. some newsgroups, however, are moderated, as you saw earlier with comp.risks. in these groups, messages are shipped to a single location where a moderator, acting much like a magazine editor, decides what actually gets posted. in some cases, groups are moderated like scholarly journals. in other cases, it's to try to cut down on the massive number of messages that might otherwise be posted. you'll notice that many articles in usenet end with a fancy "signature" that often contains some witty saying, a clever drawing and, almost incidentally, the poster's name and e-mail address. you too can have your own "signature" automatically appended to everything you post. on your own computer, create a signature file. try to keep it to four lines or less, lest you annoy others on the net. then, while connected to your host system, type cat>.signature and hit enter (note the period before the s). upload your signature file into this using your communications software's ascii upload protocol. when done, hit control-d, the unix command for closing a file. now, every time you post a message, this will be appended to it. there are a few caveats to posting. usenet is no different from a town meeting or publication: you're not supposed to break the law, whether that's posting copyrighted material or engaging in illegal activities. it is also not a place to try to sell products (except in certain biz. and for-sale newsgroups). . cross-posting sometimes, you'll have an issue you think should be discussed in more than one usenet newsgroup. rather than posting individual messages in each group, you can post the same message in several groups at once, through a process known as cross-posting. say you want to start a discussion about the political ramifications of importing rare tropical fish from brazil. people who read rec.aquaria might have something to say. so might people who read alt.politics.animals and talk.politics.misc. cross-posting is easy. it also should mean that people on other systems who subscribe to several newsgroups will see your message only once, rather than several times -- news-reading software can cancel out the other copies once a person has read the message. when you get ready to post a message (whether through pnews for rn or the :post command in nn), you'll be asked in which newsgroups. type the names of the various groups, separated by a comma, but no space, for example: rec.aquaria,alt.politics.animals,talk.politics.misc and hit enter. after answering the other questions (geographic distribution, etc.), the message will be posted in the various groups (unless one of the groups is moderated, in which case the message goes to the moderator, who decides whether to make it public). it's considered bad form to post to an excessive number of newsgroups, or inappropriate newsgroups. probably, you don't really have to post something in different places. and while you may think your particular political issue is vitally important to the fate of the world, chances are the readers of rec.arts.comics will not, or at least not important enough to impose on them. you'll get a lot of nasty e-mail messages demanding you restrict your messages to the "appropriate" newsgroups. chapter : usenet ii . flame, blather and spew something about online communications seems to make some people particularly irritable. perhaps it's the immediacy and semi-anonymity of it all. whatever it is, there are whole classes of people you will soon think seem to exist to make you miserable. rather than pausing and reflecting on a message as one might do with a letter received on paper, it's just so easy to hit your r key and tell somebody you don't really know what you really think of them. even otherwise calm people sometimes find themselves turning into raving lunatics. when this happens, flames erupt. a flame is a particularly nasty, personal attack on somebody for something he or she has written. periodically, an exchange of flames erupts into a flame war that begin to take up all the space in a given newsgroup (and sometimes several; flamers like cross-posting to let the world know how they feel). these can go on for weeks (sometimes they go on for years, in which case they become "holy wars," usually on such topics as the relative merits of macintoshes and ibms). often, just when they're dying down, somebody new to the flame war reads all the messages, gets upset and issues an urgent plea that the flame war be taken to e- mail so everybody else can get back to whatever the newsgroup's business is. all this usually does, though, is start a brand new flame war, in which this poor person comes under attack for daring to question the first amendment, prompting others to jump on the attackers for impugning this poor soul... you get the idea. every so often, a discussion gets so out of hand that somebody predicts that either the government will catch on and shut the whole thing down or somebody will sue to close down the network, or maybe even the wrath of god will smote everybody involved. this brings what has become an inevitable rejoinder from others who realize that the network is, in fact, a resilient creature that will not die easily: "imminent death of usenet predicted. film at .'' flame wars can be tremendously fun to watch at first. they quickly grow boring, though. and wait until the first time you're attacked! flamers are not the only net.characters to watch out for. spewers assume that whatever they are particularly concerned about either really is of universal interest or should be rammed down the throats of people who don't seem to care -- as frequently as possible. you can usually tell a spewer's work by the number of articles he posts in a day on the same subject and the number of newsgroups to which he then sends these articles -- both can reach well into double digits. often, these messages relate to various ethnic conflicts around the world. frequently, there is no conceivable connection between the issue at hand and most of the newsgroups to which he posts. no matter. if you try to point this out in a response to one of these messages, you will be inundated with angry messages that either accuse you of being an insensitive racist/american/whatever or ignore your point entirely to bring up several hundred more lines of commentary on the perfidy of whoever it is the spewer thinks is out to destroy his people. closely related to these folks are the holocaust revisionists, who periodically inundate certain groups (such as soc.history) with long rants about how the holocaust never really happened. some people attempt to refute these people with facts, but others realize this only encourages them. blatherers tend to be more benign. their problem is that they just can't get to the point -- they can wring three or four screenfuls out of a thought that others might sum up in a sentence or two. a related condition is excessive quoting. people afflicted with this will include an entire message in their reply rather than excising the portions not relevant to whatever point they're trying to make. the worst quote a long message and then add a single line: "i agree!" or some such, often followed by a monster .signature (see section . ) there are a number of other usenet denizens you'll soon come to recognize. among them: net.weenies. these are the kind of people who enjoy insulting others, the kind of people who post nasty messages in a sewing newsgroup just for the hell of it. net.geeks. people to whom the net is life, who worry about what happens when they graduate and they lose their free, -hour access. net.gods. the old-timers; the true titans of the net and the keepers of its collective history. they were around when the net consisted of a couple of computers tied together with baling wire. lurkers. actually, you can't tell these people are there, but they are. they're the folks who read a newsgroup but never post or respond. wizards. people who know a particular net-related topic inside and out. unix wizards can perform amazing tricks with that operating system, for example. net.saints. always willing to help a newcomer, eager to share their knowledge with those not born with an innate ability to navigate the net, they are not as rare as you might think. post a question about something and you'll often be surprised how many responses you get. the last group brings us back to the net's oral tradition. with few written guides, people have traditionally learned their way around the net by asking somebody, whether at the terminal next to them or on the net itself. that tradition continues: if you have a question, ask. today, one of the places you can look for help is in the news.newusers.questions newsgroup, which, as its name suggests, is a place to learn more about usenet. but be careful what you post. some of the usenet wizards there get cranky sometimes when they have to answer the same question over and over again. oh, they'll eventually answer your question, but not before they tell you should have asked your host system administrator first or looked at the postings in news.announce.newusers. . killfiles, the cure for what ails you as you keep reading usenet, you are going to run across things or people that really drive you nuts -- or that you just get tired of seeing. killfiles are just the thing for you. when you start your newsreader, it checks to see if you have any lists of words, phrases or names you don't want to see. if you do, then it blanks out any messages containing those words. such as cascades. as you saw earlier, when you post a reply to a message and include parts of that message, the original lines show up with a > in front of them. well, what if you reply to a reply? then you get a >> in front of the line. and if you reply to that reply? you get >>>. keep this up, and soon you get a triangle of >'s building up in your message. there are people who like building up these triangles, or cascades. they'll "respond" to your message by deleting everything you've said, leaving only the "in message , you said:" part and the last line of your message, to which they add a nonsensical retort. on and on they go until the triangle has reached the right end of the page. then they try to expand the triangle by deleting one > with each new line. whoever gets to finish this mega-triangle wins. there is even a newsgroup just for such folks: alt.cascade. unfortunately, cascaders would generally rather cascade in other newsgroups. because it takes a lot of messages to build up a completed cascade, the targeted newsgroup soon fills up with these messages. of course, if you complain, you'll be bombarded with messages about the first amendment and artistic expression -- or worse, with another cascade. the only thing you can do is ignore them, by setting up a killfile. there are also certain newsgroups where killfiles will come in handy because of the way the newsgroups are organized. for example, readers of rec.arts.tv.soaps always use an acronym in their subject: line for the show they're writing about (amc, for example, for "all my children"). this way, people who only want to read about "one life to live" can blank out all the messages about "the young and the restless" and all the others (to keep people from accidentally screening out messages that might contain the letters "gh" in them, "general hospital" viewers always use "gh:" in their subject lines). both nn and rn let you create killfiles, but in different ways. to create a killfile in nn, go into the newsgroup with the offending messages and type a capital k. you'll see this at the bottom of your screen: auto (k)ill or (s)elect (cr => kill subject days) if you hit return, nn will ask you which article's subject you're tired of. choose one and the article and any follow-ups will disappear, and you won't see them again for days. if you type a lower-case k instead, you'll get this: auto kill on (s)ubject or (n)ame (s) if you hit your s key or just enter, you'll see this: kill subject: (=/) type in the name of the offending word or phrase and hit enter. you'll then be prompted: kill in (g)roup 'eff.test' or in (a)ll groups (g) except that the name of the group you see will be the one you're actually in at the moment. because cascaders and other annoying people often cross-post their messages to a wide range of newsgroups, you might consider hitting a instead of g. next comes: lifetime of entry in days (p)ermanent ( ) the p key will screen out the offending articles forever, while hitting enter will do it for days. you can also type in a number of days for the blocking. creating killfiles in rn works differently -- its default killfile generator only works for messages in specific groups, rather than globally for your entire newsgroup list. to create a global killfile, you'll have to write one yourself. to create a killfile in rn, go into the newsgroup where the offending messages are and type in its number so you get it on your screen. type a capital k. from now on, any message with that subject line will disappear before you read the group. you should probably choose a reply, rather than the original message, so that you will get all of the followups (the original message won't have a "re: " in its subject line). the next time you call up that newsgroup, rn will tell you it's killing messages. when it's done, hit the space bar to go back into reading mode. to create a "global" kill file that will automatically wipe out articles in all groups you read, start rn and type control-k. this will start your whatever text editor you have as your default on your host system and create a file (called kill, in your news subdirectory). on the first line, you'll type in the word, phrase or name you don't want to see, followed by commands that tell rn whether to search an entire message for the word or name and then what to do when it finds it. each line must be in this form /pattern/modifier:j "pattern" is the word or phrase you want rn to look for. it's case-insensitive: both "test" and "test" will be knocked out. the modifier tells rn whether to limit its search to message headers (which can be useful when the object is to never see messages from a particular person): a: looks through an entire message h: looks just at the header you can leave out the modifier command, in which case rn will look only at the subject line of messages. the "j" at the end tells rn to screen out all articles with the offending word. so if you never want to see the word "foo" in any header, ever again, type this: /foo/h:j this is particularly useful for getting rid of articles from people who post in more than one newsgroup, such as cascaders, since an article's newsgroup name is always in the header. if you just want to block messages with a subject line about cascades, you could try: /foo/:j to kill anything that is a followup to any article, use this pattern: /subject: *re:/:j when done writing lines for each phrase to screen, exit the text editor as you normally would, and you'll be put back in rn. one word of caution: go easy on the global killfile. an extensive global killfile, or one that makes frequent use of the a: modifier can dramatically slow down rn, since the system will now have to look at every single word in every single message in all the newsgroups you want to read. if there's a particular person whose posts you never want to see again, first find his or her address (which will be in the "from:" line of his postings) and then write a line in your killfile like this: /from: *name@address\.all/h:j . some usenet hints case counts in unix -- most of the time. many unix commands, including many of those used for reading usenet articles, are case sensitive. hit a d when you meant a d and either nothing will happen, or something completely different from what you expected will happen. so watch that case! in nn, you can get help most of the time by typing a question mark (the exception is when you are writing your own message, because then you are inside the text-processing program). in rn, type a lower-case h at any prompt to get some online help. when you're searching for a particular newsgroup, whether through the l command in rn or with nngrep for nn, you sometimes may have to try several keywords. for example, there is a newsgroup dedicated to the grateful dead, but you'd never find it if you tried, say, l grateful dead, because the name is rec.music.gdead. in general, try the smallest possible part of the word or discussion you're looking for, for example, use "trek" to find newsgroups about "star trek." if one word doesn't produce anything, try another. . the brain-tumor boy, the modem tax and the chain letter like the rest of the world, usenet has its share of urban legends and questionable activities. there are three in particular that plague the network. spend more than, oh, minutes within usenet and you're sure to run into the brain tumor boy, the plot by the evil fcc to tax your modem and dave rhode's miracle cure for poverty. for the record, here's the story on all of them: there once was a seven-year-old boy in england named craig shergold who was diagnosed with a seemingly incurable brain tumor. as he lay dying, he wished only to have friends send him postcards. the local newspapers got a hold of the tear-jerking story. soon, the boy's wish had changed: he now wanted to get into the guinness book of world records for the largest postcard collection. word spread around the world. people by the millions sent him postcards. miraculously, the boy lived. an american billionaire even flew him to the u.s. for surgery to remove what remained of the tumor. and his wish succeeded beyond his wildest dreams -- he made the guinness book of world records. but with craig now well into his teens, his dream has turned into a nightmare for the post office in the small town outside london where he lives. like craig himself, his request for cards just refuses to die, inundating the post office with millions of cards every year. just when it seems like the flow is slowing, along comes somebody else who starts up a whole new slew of requests for people to send craig post cards (or greeting cards or business cards -- craig letters have truly taken on a life of their own and begun to mutate). even dear abby has been powerless to make it stop! what does any of this have to do with the net? the craig letter seems to pop up on usenet as often as it does on cork boards at major corporations. no matter how many times somebody like gene spafford posts periodic messages to ignore them or spend your money on something more sensible (a donation to the local red cross, say), somebody manages to post a letter asking readers to send cards to poor little craig. don't send any cards to the federal communications commission, either. in , the fcc considered removing a tax break it had granted compuserve and other large commercial computer networks for use of the national phone system. the fcc quickly reconsidered after alarmed users of bulletin-board systems bombarded it with complaints about this "modem tax." now, every couple of months, somebody posts an "urgent" message warning net users that the fcc is about to impose a modem tax. this is not true. the way you can tell if you're dealing with the hoax story is simple: it always mentions an incident in which a talk-show host on kgo radio in san francisco becomes outraged on the air when he reads a story about the tax in the new york times. another way to tell it's not true is that it never mentions a specific fcc docket number or closing date for comments. save that letter to your congressman for something else. sooner or later, you're going to run into a message titled "make money fast." it's your basic chain letter. the usenet version is always about some guy named dave rhodes who was on the verge of death, or something, when he discovered a perfectly legal way to make tons of money -- by posting a chain letter on computer systems around the world. yeah, right. . big sig there are .sigs and there are .sigs. many people put only bare-bones information in their .sig files -- their names and e-mail addresses, perhaps their phone numbers. others add a quotation they think is funny or profound and a disclaimer that their views are not those of their employer. still others add some ascii-art graphics. and then there are those who go totally berserk, posting huge creations with multiple quotes, hideous ascii "barfics" and more e-mail addresses than anybody could humanly need. college freshmen unleashed on the net seem to excel at these. you can see the best of the worst in the alt.fan.warlord newsgroup, which exists solely to critique .sigs that go too far, such as: ___________________________________________________________________________ |#########################################################################| |#| |#| |#| ***** * * ***** * * ***** ***** ***** |#| |#| * * * * ** ** * * * * |#| |#| * ****** *** * * * *** * ** ***** ***** |#| |#| * * * * * * * * * * * |#| |#| * * * ***** * * ***** ***** * * |#| |#| |#| |#| **** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** |#| |#| * ** * * * * * * * * |#| |#| **** * * ** ***** * * ** * * * |#| |#| * ** * * * ** * * * * * * * |#| |#| **** ***** ***** ** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** |#| |#| |#| |#| t-h-e m-e-g-a b-i-g .s-i-g c-o-m-p-a-n-y |#| |#| ~-----------------------------~ |#| |#| "annoying people with huge net.signatures for over years..." |#| |#| |#| |#|---------------------------------------------------------------------|#| |#| "the difference between a net.idiot and a bucket of shit is that at |#| |#| least a bucket can be emptied. let me further illustrate my point |#| |#| by comparing these charts here. (pulls out charts) here we have a |#| |#| user who not only flames people who don't agree with his narrow- |#| |#| minded drivel, but he has this huge signature that takes up many |#| |#| pages with useless quotes. this also makes reading his frequented |#| |#| newsgroups a torture akin to having at baud modem on a vax. i |#| |#| might also add that his contribution to society rivals only toxic |#| |#| dump sites." |#| |#| -- robert a. dumpstik, jr |#| |#| president of the mega big sig company |#| |#| september th, at : pm |#| |#| during his speech at the "net.abusers |#| |#| society luncheon" during the |#| |#| " net.idiots annual convention" |#| |#|_____________________________________________________________________|#| |#| |#| |#| thomas babbit, iii: th assistant to the vice president of sales |#| |#| __ |#| |#| ========== ______ digital widget manufacturing co. |#| |#| \\ / complex incorporated drive |#| |#| )-======= suite |#| |#| nostromo, va - |#| |#| #nc- enterpoop ship :) phone # - - |#| |#| ---------------- fax # - - |#| |#| "shut up, wesley!" online service # - - |#| |#| -- me at - , and now baud! |#| |#| punet: tbabb!digwig!nostromo |#| |#| home address: internet: dvader@imperial.emp.com |#| |#| thomas babbit, iii prodigy: still awaiting author- |#| |#| luzyer way ization |#| |#| sulaco, va "manufacturing educational widget |#| |#| phone # - - design for over years..." |#| |#|=====================================================================|#| |#| |#| |#| introducing: |#| |#| ______ |#| |#| the |\ /| / |#| |#| | \/ | / |#| |#| | | / |#| |#| | | / |#| |#| | | etelhed /_____ one |#| |#|'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'|#| |#| megs online! the k l bbs for rad teens! lots of games and many |#| |#| bases for kul topix! call now and be validated to the metelhed zone|#| |#| -- - - -- |#| |#|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\v/////////////////////////////////////|#| |#| "this is the end, my friend..." -- the doors |#| |#########################################################################| --------------------------------------------------------------------------- hit "b" to continue hahahha... fooled u! . the first amendment as local ordinance usenet's international reach raises interesting legal questions that have yet to be fully resolved. can a discussion or posting that is legal in one country be transmitted to a country where it is against the law? does the posting even become illegal when it reaches the border? and what if that country is the only path to a third country where the message is legal as well? several foreign colleges and other institutions have cut off feeds of certain newsgroups where americans post what is, in the u.s., perfectly legal discussions of drugs or alternative sexual practices. even in the u.s., some universities have discontinued certain newsgroups their administrators find offensive, again, usually in the alt. hierarchy. an interesting example of this sort of question happened in , when a canadian court issued a gag order on canadian reporters covering a particularly controversial murder case. americans, not bound by the gag order, began posting accounts of the trial -- which any canadian with a net account could promptly read. . usenet history in the late s, unix developers came up with a new feature: a system to allow unix computers to exchange data over phone lines. in , two graduate students at duke university in north carolina, tom truscott and jim ellis, came up with the idea of using this system, known as uucp (for unix-to-unix copy), to distribute information of interest to people in the unix community. along with steve bellovin, a graduate student at the university of north carolina and steve daniel, they wrote conferencing software and linked together computers at duke and unc. word quickly spread and by , a graduate student at berkeley, mark horton and a nearby high school student, matt glickman, had released a new version that added more features and was able to handle larger volumes of postings -- the original north carolina program was meant for only a few articles in a newsgroup each day. today, usenet connects tens of thousands of sites around the world, from mainframes to amigas. with more than , newsgroups and untold thousands of readers, it is perhaps the world's largest computer network. . when things go wrong * when you start up rn, you get a "warning" that "bogus newsgroups" are present. within a couple of minutes, you'll be asked whether to keep these or delete them. delete them. bogus newsgroups are newsgroups that your system administrator or somebody else has determined are no longer needed. * while in a newsgroup in rn, you get a message: "skipping unavailable article." this is usually an article that somebody posted and then decided to cancel. * you upload a text file to your unix host system for use in a usenet message or e-mail, and when you or your recipient reads the file, every line ends with a ^m. this happens because unix handles line endings differently than ms- dos or macintosh computers. most unix systems have programs to convert incoming files from other computers. to use it, upload your file and then, at your command line, type dos unix filename filename or mac unix filename filename depending on which kind of computer you are using and where filename is the name of the file you've just uploaded. a similar program can prepare text files for downloading to your computer, for example: unix dos filename filename or unix mac filename filename will ensure that a text file you are about to get will not come out looking odd on your computer. . fyi leanne phillips periodically posts a list of frequently asked questions (and answers) about use of the rn killfile function in the news.newusers.questions and news.answers newsgroups on usenet. bill wohler posts a guide to using the nn newsreader in the news.answers and news.software newsgroups. look in the news.announce.newusers and news.groups newsgroups on usenet for "a guide to social newsgroups and mailing lists,'' which gives brief summaries of the various soc. newsgroups. "managing uucp and usenet,' by tim o'reilly and grace todino (o'reilly & associates, ) is a good guide for setting up your own usenet system. chapter : mailing lists and bitnet . internet mailing lists usenet is not the only forum on the net. scores of "mailing lists" represent another way to interact with other net users. unlike usenet messages, which are stored in one central location on your host system's computer, mailing-list messages are delivered right to your e-mail box, unlike usenet messages. you have to ask for permission to join a mailing list. unlike usenet, where your message is distributed to the world, on a mailing list, you send your messages to a central moderator, who either re-mails it to the other people on the list or uses it to compile a periodic "digest" mailed to subscribers. given the number of newsgroups, why would anybody bother with a mailing list? even on usenet, there are some topics that just might not generate enough interest for a newsgroup; for example, the queen list, which is all about the late freddie mercury's band. and because a moderator decides who can participate, a mailing list can offer a degree of freedom to speak one's mind (or not worry about net.weenies) that is not necessarily possible on usenet. several groups offer anonymous postings -- only the moderator knows the real names of people who contribute. examples include step, where people enrolled in such programs as alcoholics anonymous can discuss their experiences, and sappho, a list limited to gay and bisexual women. you can find mailing addresses and descriptions of these lists in the news.announce.newusers newsgroup with the subject of "publicly accessible mailing lists." mailing lists now number in the hundreds, so this posting is divided into three parts. if you find a list to which you want to subscribe, send an e- mail message to list-request@address where "list" is the name of the mailing list and "address" is the moderator's e-mail address, asking to be added to the list. include your full e-mail address just in case something happens to your message's header along the way, and ask, if you're accepted, for the address to mail messages to the list. . bitnet as if usenet and mailing lists were not enough, there are bitnet "discussion groups" or "lists." bitnet is an international network linking colleges and universities, but it uses a different set of technical protocols for distributing information from the internet or usenet. it offers hundreds of discussion groups, comparable in scope to usenet newsgroups. one of the major differences is the way messages are distributed. bitnet messages are sent to your mailbox, just as with a mailing list. however, where mailing lists are often maintained by a person, all bitnet discussion groups are automated -- you subscribe to them through messages to a "listserver" computer. this is a kind of robot moderator that controls distribution of messages on the list. in many cases, it also maintains indexes and archives of past postings in a given discussion group, which can be handy if you want to get up to speed with a discussion or just search for some information related to it. many bitnet discussion groups are now "translated" into usenet form and carried through usenet in the bit.listserv hierarchy. in general, it's probably better to read messages through usenet if you can. it saves some storage space on your host system's hard drives. if people subscribe to the same bitnet list, that means copies of each message get stored on the system; whereas if people read a usenet message, that's still only one message that needs storage on the system. it can also save your sanity if the discussion group generates large numbers of messages. think of opening your e-mailbox one day to find messages in it -- of them from a discussion group and one of them a "real" e-mail message that's important to you. subscribing and canceling subscriptions is done through an e- mail message to the listserver computer. for addressing, all listservers are known as "listserv" (yep) at some bitnet address. this means you will have to add ".bitnet" to the end of the address, if it's in a form like this: listserv@miamiu. for example, if you have an interest in environmental issues, you might want to subscribe to the econet discussion group. to subscribe, send an e-mail message to listserv@miamiu.bitnet some bitnet listservers are also connected to the internet, so if you see a listserver address ending in ".edu", you can e-mail the listserver without adding ".bitnet" to the end. always leave the "subject:" line blank in a message to a listserver. inside the message, you tell the listserver what you want, with a series of simple commands: subscribe group your name to subscribe to a list, where "group" is the list name and "your name" is your full name, for example: subscribe econet henry fielding unsubscribe group your name to discontinue a group, for example: unsubscribe econet henry fielding list global this sends you a list of all available bitnet discussion groups. but be careful -- the list is very long! get refcard sends you a list of other commands you can use with a listserver, such as commands for retrieving past postings from a discussion group. each of these commands goes on a separate line in your message (and you can use one or all of them). if you want to get a list of all bitnet discussion groups, send e-mail to listserv@bitnic.educom.edu leave the "subject:" line blank and use the list global command. when you subscribe to a bitnet group, there are two important differences from usenet. first, when you want to post a message for others to read in the discussion group, you send a message to the group name at its bitnet address. using econet as an example, you would mail the message to: econet@miamiu.bitnet note that this is different from the listserv address you used to subscribe to the group to begin with. use the listserv address only to subscribe to or unsubscribe from a discussion group. if you use the discussion-group address to try to subscribe or unsubscribe, your message will go out to every other subscriber, many of whom will think unkind thoughts, which they may share with you in an e-mail message). the second difference relates to sending an e-mail message to the author of a particular posting. usenet newsreaders such as rn and nn let you do this with one key. but if you hit your r key to respond to a discussion-group message, your message will go to the listserver, and from there to everybody else on the list! this can prove embarrassing to you and annoying to others. to make sure your message goes just to the person who wrote the posting, take down his e-mail address from the posting and then compose a brand-new message. remember, also, that if you see an e-mail address like izzy@indyvms, it's a bitnet address. two bitnet lists will prove helpful for delving further into the network. new-list tells you the names of new discussion groups. to subscribe, send a message to listserv@ndsuvm .bitnet: sub new-list your name infonets is the place to go when you have questions about bitnet. it is also first rate for help on questions about all major computer networks and how to reach them. to subscribe, send e-mail to info-nets- request@think.com: sub infonets your name both of these lists are also available on usenet, the former as bit.listserv.new-list; the latter as bit.listserv.infonets (sometimes bit.listserv.info-nets). chapter : telnet . mining the net like any large community, cyberspace has its libraries, places you can go to look up information or take out a good book. telnet is one of your keys to these libraries. telnet is a program that lets you use the power of the internet to connect you to databases, library catalogs, and other information resources around the world. want to see what the weather's like in vermont? check on crop conditions in azerbaijan? get more information about somebody whose name you've seen online? telnet lets you do this, and more. alas, there's a big "but!'' unlike the phone system, internet is not yet universal; not everybody can use all of its services. almost all colleges and universities on the internet provide telnet access. so do all of the for-fee public-access systems listed in chapter . but the free-net systems do not give you access to every telnet system. and if you are using a public-access uucp or usenet site, you will not have access to telnet. the main reason for this is cost. connecting to the internet can easily cost $ , or more for a leased, high-speed phone line. some databases and file libraries can be queried by e-mail, however; we'll show you how to do that later on. in the meantime, the rest of this chapter assumes you are connected to a site with at least partial internet access. most telnet sites are fairly easy to use and have online help systems. most also work best (and in some cases, only) with vt emulation. let's dive right in and try one. at your host system's command line, type telnet access.usask.ca and hit enter. that's all you have to do to connect to a telnet site! in this case, you'll be connecting to a service known as hytelnet, which is a database of computerized library catalogs and other databases available through telnet. you should see something like this: trying . . . ... connected to access.usask.ca. escape character is '^]'. ultrix unix (access.usask.ca) login: every telnet site has two addresses -- one composed of words that are easier for people to remember; the other a numerical address better suited for computers. the "escape character" is good to remember. when all else fails, hitting your control key and the ] key at the same time will disconnect you and return you to your host system. at the login prompt, type hytelnet and hit enter. you'll see something like this: welcome to hytelnet version . ................... what is hytelnet? <whatis> . up/down arrows move library catalogs <sites > . left/right arrows select other resources <sites > . ? for help anytime help files for catalogs <op > . catalog interfaces <sys > . m returns here internet glossary <glossary> . q quits telnet tips <telnet> . telnet/tn escape keys <escape.key> . key-stroke commands <help.txt> . ........................ hytelnet . was written by peter scott, u of saskatchewan libraries, saskatoon, sask, canada. unix and vms software by earl fogel, computing services, u of s the first choice, "<whatis>" will be highlighted. use your down and up arrows to move the cursor among the choices. hit enter when you decide on one. you'll get another menu, which in turn will bring up text files telling you how to connect to sites and giving any special commands or instructions you might need. hytelnet does have one quirk. to move back to where you started (for example, from a sub-menu to a main menu), hit the left-arrow key on your computer. play with the system. you might want to turn on your computer's screen-capture, or at the very least, get out a pen and paper. you're bound to run across some interesting telnet services that you'll want to try -- and you'll need their telnet "addresses.'' as you move around hytelnet, it may seem as if you haven't left your host system -- telnet can work that quickly. occasionally, when network loads are heavy, however, you will notice a delay between the time you type a command or enter a request and the time the remote service responds. to disconnect from hytelnet and return to your system, hit your q key and enter. some telnet computers are set up so that you can only access them through a specific "port." in those cases, you'll always see a number after their name, for example: india.colorado.edu . it's important to include that number, because otherwise, you may not get in. in fact, try the above address. type telnet india.colorado.edu and hit enter. you should see something like this: trying . . . ... followed very quickly by this: telnet india.colorado.edu escape character is '^]'. sun jan : : connection closed by foreign host. what we want is the middle line, which tells you the exact mountain standard time, as determined by a government-run atomic clock in boulder, colo. . library catalogs several hundred libraries around the world, from the snohomish public library in washington state to the library of congress are now available to you through telnet. you can use hytelnet to find their names, telnet addresses and use instructions. why would you want to browse a library you can't physically get to? many libraries share books, so if yours doesn't have what you're looking for, you can tell the librarian where he or she can get it. or if you live in an area where the libraries are not yet online, you can use telnet to do some basic bibliographic research before you head down to the local branch. there are several different database programs in use by online libraries. harvard's is one of the easier ones to use, so let's try it. telnet to hollis.harvard.edu. when you connect, you'll see: ***************** h a r v a r d u n i v e r s i t y ***************** office for information technology *** *** *** *** ve *** ri *** *** *** *** hollis (harvard online library system) ***** ***** **** tas **** hubs (harvard university basic services) *** *** ***** iu (information utility) *** cms (vm/cms timesharing service) ** hollis is available without access restrictions ** access to other applications is limited to individuals who have been granted specific permission by an authorized person. to select one of the applications above, type its name on the command line followed by your user id, and press return. ** hollis does not require a userid ** examples: hollis (press return) or hubs userid (press return) ===> type hollis and hit enter. you'll see several screens flash by quickly until finally the system stops and you'll get this: welcome to hollis (harvard online library information system) to begin, type one of the -character database codes listed below: hu union catalog of the harvard libraries ow catalog of older widener materials lg guide to harvard libraries and computing resources ai expanded academic index (selective - , full - ) lr legal resource index ( - ) pa pais international ( - ) to change databases from any place in hollis, type choose followed by a -character database code, as in: choose hu for general help in using hollis, type help. for hollis news, type help news. for hollis hours of operation, type help hours. always press the enter or return key after typing your command the first thing to notice is the name of the system: hollis. librarians around the world seem to be inordinately found of cutesy, anthropomorphized acronyms for their machines (not far from harvard, the librarians at brandeis university came up with library on-line user information service, or louis; mit has barton). if you want to do some general browsing, probably the best bet on the harvard system is to choose hu, which gets you access to their main holdings, including those of its medical libraries. choose that, and you'll see this: the harvard university library union catalog to begin a search, select a search option from the list below and type its code on the command line. use either upper or lower case. au author search ti title search su subject search me medical subject search keyword keyword search options call call number search options other other search options for information on the contents of the union catalog, type help. to exit the union catalog, type quit. a search can be entered on the command line of any screen. always press the enter or return key after typing your command. say you want to see if harvard has shed the starchy legacy of the puritans, who founded the school. why not see if they have "the joy of sex" somewhere in their stacks? type ti joy of sex and hit enter. this comes up: hu: your search retrieved no items. enter new command or help. you typed: ti joy of sex ******************************************************************************* always press the enter or return key after typing your command. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- options: find start - search options help quit - exit database command? oh, well! do they have anything that mentions "sex" in the title? try another ti search, but this time just: ti sex. you get: hu guide: summary of search results items retrieved by your search: find ti sex ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ sex sex a sexa sexbo sexce sexdr sexe sexie sexja sexle sexo sexpi sext sexua sexwa sexy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- options: index (or i etc) to see list of items help start - search options redo - edit search quit - exit database command? if you want to get more information on the first line, type and hit enter: hu index: list of items retrieved items retrieved by your search: find ti sex ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ sex geddes patrick sir / bks sex a z goldenson robert m/ bks sex abuse hysteria salem witch trials revisited gardner richard a/ bks sex aetates mundi english and irish irish sex aetates mundi/ bks sex after sixty a guide for men and women for their later years butler robert n / bks ------------------------------------------------------ (continues) ------------ options: display (or d etc) to see a record help guide more - next page start - search options redo - edit search quit - exit database command? most library systems give you a way to log off and return to your host system. on hollis, hit escape followed by xx one particularly interesting system is the one run by the colorado alliance of research libraries, which maintains databases for libraries throughout colorado, the west and even in boston. telnet pac.carl.org. follow the simple log-in instructions. when you get a menu, type (even though that is not listed), which takes you to the pikes peak library district, which serves the city of colorado springs. several years ago, its librarians realized they could use their database program not just for books but for cataloging city records and community information, as well. today, if you want to look up municipal ordinances or city records, you only have to type in the word you're looking for and you'll get back cites of the relevant laws or decisions. carl will also connect you to the university of hawaii library, which, like the one in colorado springs, has more than just bibliographic material online. one of its features is an online hawaiian almanac that can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about hawaiians, including the number injured in boogie-board accidents each year (seven). . some interesting telnet sites agriculture penpages, run by pennsylvania state university's college of agricultural sciences, provides weekly world weather and crop reports from the u.s. department of agriculture. these reports detail everything from the effect of the weather on palm trees in malaysia to the state of the ukrainian wheat crop. reports from pennsylvania country extension officers offer tips for improving farm life. one database lists pennsylvania hay distributors by county -- and rates the quality of their hay! the service lets you search for information two different ways. a menu system gives you quick access to reports that change frequently, such as the weekly crop/weather reports. an index system lets you search through several thousand online documents by keyword. at the main menu, you can either browse through an online manual or choose "penpages,'' which puts you into the agriculture system. telnet: psupen.psu.edu user name: your -letter state code or world california state university's advanced technology information network provides similar information as penpages, only focusing on california crops. it also maintains lists of upcoming california trade shows and carries updates on biotechnology. telnet: caticsuf.cati.csufresno.edu log in: public you will then be asked to register and will be given a user name and password. hit "a'' at the main menu for agricultural information. hit "d'' to call up a menu that includes a biweekly biotechnology report. aids the university of miami maintains a database of aids health providers in southern florida. telnet: callcat.med.miami.edu log in: library at the main menu, select p (for "aids providers" and you'll be able to search for doctors, hospitals and other providers that care for patients with aids. you can also search by speciality. see also under conversation and health. amateur radio: the national ham radio call-sign callbook lets you search for american amateur operators by callsign, city, last name or zip code. a successful search will give you the ham's name, address, callsign, age, type of license and when he or she got it. telnet: callsign.cs.buffalo.edu or ham.njit.edu . when you connect, you tell the system how you want to search and what you're looking for. for example, if you want to search for hams by city, you would type city city name and hit enter (for example: city kankakee). other search choices are "call" (after which you would type a ham's name), "name," and "zip" (which you would follow with a zip code). be careful when searching for hams in a large city; there doesn't seem to be anyway to shut off the list once it starts except by using control-]. otherwise, when done, type quit and hit enter to disconnect. animals see under health. calculators hewlett-packard maintains a free service on which you can seek advice about their line of calculators. telnet: hpcvbbs.cv.hp.com no log-in is needed. chemistry the electronic periodic table of the elements draws the table on your screen and then lets you look up various properties of individual elements. telnet: camms .caos.kun.nl no password needed. congress the library of congress information service lets you search current and past legislation (dating to ). telnet: locis.loc.gov password: none needed. when you connect, you'll get a main menu that lets you select from several databases, including the library of congress card catalog (with book entries dating to ) and a database of information on copyright laws. for the congressional database, select the number next to its entry and hit enter. you'll then be asked to choose which legislative year to search. after that, a menu similar to this will come up: ***c - the legislative information file for the rd congress, which was updated on / / and contains , records, is now available for your search. currency: all information is not current through the above date, which is machine generated when any information is added to the file. bill numbers, official titles, sponsors, and status (step) added within hours. indexing terms and digests added later, in some cases several weeks after the bill is added to the file. to start retrieve to find: examples: search: member name --------------> retrieve rep gingrich retrieve sen kennedy bill number --------------> retrieve h.r. subject keywords ---------> retrieve day care for help: type the word help and press the enter key. ready for new command: conversation communications canada, a canadian government agency is developing conversational hypertext access technology (chat) is a system being developed by communications canada to provide easy database access to people with little or no computer experience, using what are known as hypertext links. instead of cryptic computer commands, users type questions in english. telnet: debra.doc.ca log in: chat you choose one of the three databases now online, one on aids, and then ask questions in english. ask the aids database, "when was aids first discovered?'' and it answers: "the first case of aids in north america was diagnosed in . before that, it existed in africa, probably beginning in the 's. aids was discovered in north america when a number of young men with a history of homosexuality developed a rare type of cancer called kaposi's sarcoma.'' sometimes, you do have to rephrase your question. for example, when asked "what is the link between aids and drug use?'' the computer responds: "i know two things about drugs: the drugs that are used to treat people with aids, and the risks that drug users have in getting aids. please ask about treatments or drug users.'' copyright law see under congress. current events every year, the cia publishes a fact book that is essentially an almanac of all the world's countries and international organizations, including such information as major products, type of government and names of its leaders. it's available for searching through the university of maryland info database. telnet: info.umd.edu choose a terminal type and hit enter (or just hit enter if you are using vt ). at the main menu, choose the number next to "educational resources." then select the number next to "international," followed by "factbook." you can then search by country or agency. this site also maintains copies of the u.s. budget, documents related to the north american free trade agreement and other government initiatives. at the "educational resources" menu, select the number next to "united states" and then the one next to "government." the access legislative information service lets you browse through and look up bills before the hawaiian legislature. telnet: access.uhcc.hawaii.edu environment envirolink is a large database and conference system about the environment, based in pittsburgh. telnet: envirolink.org log on: gopher the u.s. environmental protection agency maintains online databases of materials related to hazardous waste, the clean lakes program and cleanup efforts in new england. the agency plans to eventually include cleanup work in other regions, as well. the database is actually a computerized card catalog of epa documents -- you can look the documents up, but you'll still have to visit your regional epa office to see them. telnet: epaibm.rtpnc.epa.gov no password or user name is needed. at the main menu, type public and hit enter (there are other listed choices, but they are only for use by epa employees). you'll then see a one-line menu. type ols and hit enter, and you'll see something like this: net- logon to tso in progress. databases: n national catalog ch chemical coll. system h hazardous waste region i l clean lakes other options: ? help q quit enter selection --> choose one and you'll get a menu that lets you search by document title, keyword, year of publication or corporation. after you enter the search word and hit enter, you'll be told how many matches were found. hit and then enter to see a list of the entries. to view the bibliographic record for a specific entry, hit v and enter and then type the number of the record. the university of michigan maintains a database of newspaper and magazine articles related to the environment, with the emphasis on michigan, dating back to . telnet: hermes.merit.edu host: mirlyn log in: meem geography the university of michigan geographic name server can provide basic information, such as population, latitude and longitude of u.s. cities and many mountains, rivers and other geographic features. telnet: martini.eecs.umich.edu no password or user name is needed. type in the name of a city, a zip code or a geographic feature and hit enter. the system doesn't like names with abbreviations in them (for example, mt. mckinley), so spell them out (for example, mount mckinley). by typing in a town's name or zip code, you can find out a community's county, zip code and longitude and latitude. not all geographic features are yet included in the database. government the national technical information service runs a system that not only provides huge numbers of federal documents of all sorts -- from environmental factsheets to patent abstract -- but serves as a gateway to dozens of other federal information systems. telnet: fedworld.gov log on as: new see also under congress and current events. health the u.s. food and drug administration runs a database of health- related information. telnet: fdabbs.fda.gov log in: bbs you'll then be asked for your name and a password you want to use in the future. after that, type topics and hit enter. you'll see this: topics description * news news releases * enforce enforcement report * approvals drug and device product approvals list * cdrh centers for devices and radiological health bulletins * bulletin text from drug bulletin * aids current information on aids * consumer fda consumer magazine index and selected articles * subj-reg fda federal register summaries by subject * answers summaries of fda information * index index of news releases and answers * date-reg fda federal register summaries by publication date * congress text of testimony at fda congressional hearings * speech speeches given by fda commissioner and deputy * vetnews veterinary medicine news * meetings upcoming fda meetings * import import alerts * manual on-line user's manual you'll be able to search these topics by key word or chronologically. it's probably a good idea, however, to capture a copy of the manual, first, because the way searching works on the system is a little odd. to capture a copy, type manual and hit enter. then type scan and hit enter. you'll see this: for list of available topics type topics or enter the topic you desire ==> manual bbsuser -oct- bbs user manual at this point, turn on your own computer's screen-capture or logging function and hit your key and then enter. the manual will begin to scroll on your screen, pausing every lines. hiring and college program information the federal information exchange in gaithersburg, md, runs two systems at the same address: fedix and molis. fedix offers research, scholarship and service information for several federal agencies, including nasa, the department of energy and the federal aviation administration. several more federal agencies provide minority hiring and scholarship information. molis provides information about minority colleges, their programs and professors. telnet: fedix.fie.com user name: fedix (for the federal hiring database) or molis (for the minority-college system) both use easy menus to get you to information. history stanford university maintains a database of documents related to martin luthor king. telnet: forsythetn.stanford.edu account: socrates at the main menu, type select mlk and hit enter. ski reports see under weather. space nasa spacelink in huntsville, ala., provides all sorts of reports and data about nasa, its history and its various missions, past and present. you'll find detailed reports on every single probe, satellite and mission nasa has ever launched along with daily updates and lesson plans for teachers. the system maintains a large file library of gif-format space graphics, but you can't download these through telnet. if you want them, you have to dial the system directly, at ( ) - . telnet: spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov when you connect, you'll be given an overview of the system and asked to register and choose a password. the ned-nasa/ipac extragalactic database lists data on more than , galaxies, quasars and other objects outside the milky way. telnet: ipac.caltech.edu. log in: ned you can learn more than you ever wanted to about quasars, novae and related objects on a system run by the smithsonian astrophysical observatory in cambridge, mass. telnet: cfa .harvard.edu log in: einline the physics department at the university of massachusetts at amherst runs a bulletin-board system that provides extensive conferences and document libraries related to space. telnet: spacemet.phast.umass.edu log on with your name and a password. supreme court decisions the university of maryland info database maintains u.s. supreme court decisions from on. telnet: info.umd.edu choose a terminal type and hit enter (or just hit enter if you are using vt ). at the main menu, choose the number next to "educational resources" and hit enter. one of your options will then be for "united states." select that number and then, at the next menu, choose the one next to "supreme court." telnet hytelnet, at the university of saskatchewan, is an online guide to hundreds of telnet sites around the world. telnet: access.usask.ca log in: hytelnet time to find out the exact time: telnet: india.colorado.edu you'll see something like this: escape character is '^]'. sun apr : : connection closed by foreign host. the middle line tells you the date and exact mountain standard time, as determined by a federal atomic clock. transportation the subway navigator in paris can help you learn how long it will take to get from point a to point b on subway systems around the world. telnet: metro.jussieu.fr no log-in is needed. when you connect, you'll be asked to choose a language in which to search (you can choose english or french) and then a city to search. you'll be asked for the station you plan to leave from and the station you want to get to. weather the university of michigan's department of atmospheric, oceanographic and space sciences supplies weather forecasts for u.s. and foreign cities, along with skiing and hurricane reports. telnet: madlab.sprl.umich.edu (note the ). no log-in name is needed. also see under weather in the ftp list for information on downloading satellite and radar weather images. . telnet bulletin-board systems you might think that usenet, with its hundreds of newsgroups, would be enough to satisfy the most dedicated of online communicators. but there are a number of "bulletin-board" and other systems that provide even more conferences or other services, many not found directly on the net. some are free; others charge for access. they include: bookstacks unlimited is a cleveland bookstore that uses the internet to advertise its services. its online system features not only a catalog, however, but conferences on books and literature. telnet: books.com log in with your own name and select a password for future connections. cimarron. run by the instituto technical in monterey, mexico, this system has spanish conferences, but english commands, as you can see from this menu of available conferences: list of boards name title general board general dudas dudas de cimarron comentarios comentarios al sysop musica para los afinados........ libros el sano arte de leer..... sistemas sistemas operativos en general. virus su peor enemigo...... cultural espacio cultural de cimarron next el mundo de next ciencias solo apto para nerds. inspiracion para los romanticos e inspirados. deportes discusiones deportivas to be able to write messages and gain access to files, you have to leave a note to sysop with your name, address, occupation and phone number. to do this, at any prompt, hit your m key and then enter, which will bring up the mail system. hitting h brings up a list of commands and how to use them. telnet: bugs.mty.itesm.mx ( p.m. to a.m., eastern time, only). at the "login:" prompt, type bbs and hit enter. cleveland free-net. the first of a series of free-nets, this represents an ambitious attempt to bring the net to the public. originally an in-hospital help network, it is now sponsored by case western reserve university, the city of cleveland, the state of ohio and ibm. it uses simple menus, similar to those found on compuserve, but organized like a city: <<< cleveland free-net directory >>> the administration building the post office public square the courthouse & government center the arts building science and technology center the medical arts building the schoolhouse (academy one) the community center & recreation area the business and industrial park the library university circle the teleport the communications center nptn/usa today headline news ------------------------------------------------ h=help, x=exit free-net, "go help"=extended help your choice ==> the system has a vast and growing collection of public documents, from copies of u.s. and ohio supreme court decisions to the magna carta and the u.s. constitution. it links residents to various government agencies and has daily stories from usa today. beyond usenet (found in the teleport area), it has a large collection of local conferences on everything from pets to politics. and yes, it's free! telnet: freenet-in-a.cwru.edu or freenet-in-b.cwru.edu or freenet-in-c.cwru.edu when you connect to free-net, you can look around the system. however, if you want to be able to post messages in its conferences or use e-mail, you will have to apply in writing for an account. information on this is available when you connect. dubbs. this is a bulletin-board system in delft in the netherlands. the conferences and files are mostly in dutch, but the help files and the system commands themselves are in english. telnet: tudrwa.tudelft.nl isca bbs. run by the iowa student computer association, it has more than conferences, including several in foreign languages. after you register, hit k for a list of available conferences and then j to join a particular conference (you have to type in the name of the conference, not the number next to it). hitting h brings up information about commands. telnet bbs.isca.uiowa.edu at the "login:" prompt, type bbs and hit enter. youngstown free-net. the people who created cleveland free-net sell their software for $ to anybody willing to set up a similar system. a number of cities now have their own free-nets, including youngstown, ohio. telnet: yfn.ysu.edu at the "login:" prompt, type visitor and hit enter. . putting the finger on someone finger is a handy little program which lets you find out more about people on the net -- and lets you tell others on the net more about yourself. finger uses the same concept as telnet or ftp. but it works with only one file, called .plan (yes, with a period in front). this is a text file an internet user creates with a text editor in his home directory. you can put your phone number in there, tell a little bit about yourself, or write almost anything at all. to finger somebody else's .plan file, type this at the command line: finger email-address where email-address is the person's e-mail address. you'll get back a display that shows the last time the person was online, whether they've gotten any new mail since that time and what, if anything, is in their .plan file. some people and institutions have come up with creative uses for these .plan files, letting you do everything from checking the weather in massachusetts to getting the latest baseball standings. try fingering these e-mail addresses: weather@cirrus.mit.edu latest national weather service weather forecasts for regions in massachusetts. quake@geophys.washington.edu locations and magnitudes of recent earthquakes around the world. jtchern@ocf.berkeley.edu current major-league baseball standings and results of the previous day's games. nasanews@space.mit.edu the day's events at nasa. coke@cs.cmu.edu see how many cans of each type of soda are left in a particular soda machine in the computer-science department of carnegie-mellon university. . finding someone on the net so you have a friend and you want to find out if he has an internet account to which you can write? the quickest way may be to just pick up the phone, call him and ask him. although there are a variety of "white pages" services available on the internet, they are far from complete -- college students, users of commercial services such as compuserve and many internet public-access sites, and many others simply won't be listed. major e-mail providers are working on a universal directory system, but that could be some time away. in the meantime, a couple of "white pages" services might give you some leads, or even just entertain you as you look up famous people or long-lost acquaintances. the whois directory provides names, e-mail and postal mail address and often phone numbers for people listed in it. to use it, telnet to internic.net no log-on is needed. the quickest way to use it is to type whois name at the prompt, where "name" is the last name or organization name you're looking for. another service worth trying, especially since it seems to give beginners fewer problems, is the knowbot information service reachable by telnet at info.cnri.reston.va.us again, no log-on is needed. this service actually searches through a variety of other "white pages" systems, including the user directory for mcimail. to look for somebody, type query name where "name" is the last name of the person you're looking for. you can get details of other commands by hitting a question mark at the prompt. you can also use the knowbot system by e-mail. start a message to netaddress@info.cnri.reston.va.us you can leave the "subject:" line blank. as your message, type query name for the simplest type of search. if you want details on more complex searches, add another line: man another way to search is via the usenet name server. this is a system at mit that keeps track of the e-mail addresses of everybody who posts a usenet message that appears at mit. it works by e-mail. send a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu leave the "subject:" line blank. as your message, write send usenet-addresses/lastname where "lastname" is the last name of the person you're looking for. . when things go wrong * nothing happens when you try to connect to a telnet site. the site could be down for maintenance or problems. * you get a "host unavailable" message. the telnet site is down for some reason. try again later. * you get a "host unknown" message. check your spelling of the site name. * you type in a password on a telnet site that requires one, and you get a "login incorrect" message. try logging in again. if you get the message again, hit your control and ] keys at the same time to disengage and return to your host system. * you can't seem to disconnect from a telnet site. use control-] to disengage and return to your host system. . fyi the usenet newsgroups alt.internet.services and alt.bbs.internet can provide pointers to new telnet systems. scott yanoff periodically posts his "updated internet services list" in the former. the alt.bbs.internet newsgroup is also where you'll find aydin edguer's compendium of faqs related to internet bulletin-board systems. peter scott, who maintains the hytelnet database, runs a mailing list about new telnet services and changes in existing ones. to get on the list, send him a note at scott@sklib.usask.ca. gleason sackman maintains another mailing list dedicated to new internet services and news about the new uses to which the net is being put. to subscribe, send a message to listserv@internic.net. leave the "subject:" line blank, and as your message, write: sub net-happenings your name. chapter : ftp . tons of files hundreds of systems connected to internet have file libraries, or archives, accessible to the public. much of this consists of free or low- cost shareware programs for virtually every make of computer. if you want a different communications program for your ibm, or feel like playing a new game on your amiga, you'll be able to get it from the net. but there are also libraries of documents as well. if you want a copy of a recent u.s. supreme court decision, you can find it on the net. copies of historical documents, from the magna carta to the declaration of independence are also yours for the asking, along with a translation of a telegram from lenin ordering the execution of rebellious peasants. you can also find song lyrics, poems, even summaries of every "lost in space" episode ever made. you can also find extensive files detailing everything you could ever possibly want to know about the net itself. first you'll see how to get these files; then we'll show you where they're kept. the commonest way to get these files is through the file transfer protocol, or ftp. as with telnet, not all systems that connect to the net have access to ftp. however, if your system is one of these, you'll be able to get many of these files through e-mail (see the next chapter). starting ftp is as easy as using telnet. at your host system's command line, type ftp site.name and hit enter, where "site.name" is the address of the ftp site you want to reach. one major difference between telnet and ftp is that it is considered bad form to connect to most ftp sites during their business hours (generally a.m. to p.m. local time). this is because transferring files across the network takes up considerable computing power, which during the day is likely to be needed for whatever the computer's main function is. there are some ftp sites that are accessible to the public hours a day, though. you'll find these noted in the list of ftp sites in section . . your friend archie how do you find a file you want, though? until a few years ago, this could be quite the pain -- there was no master directory to tell you where a given file might be stored on the net. who'd want to slog through hundreds of file libraries looking for something? alan emtage, bill heelan and peter deutsch, students at mcgill university in montreal, asked the same question. unlike the weather, though, they did something about it. they created a database system, called archie, that would periodically call up file libraries and basically find out what they had available. in turn, anybody could dial into archie, type in a file name, and see where on the net it was available. archie currently catalogs close to , file libraries around the world. today, there are three ways to ask archie to find a file for you: through telnet, "client" archie program on your own host system or e- mail. all three methods let you type in a full or partial file name and will tell you where on the net it's stored. if you have access to telnet, you can telnet to one of the following addresses: archie.mcgill.ca; archie.sura.net; archie.unl.edu; archie.ans.net; or archie.rutgers.edu. if asked for a log-in name, type archie and hit enter. when you connect, the key command is prog, which you use in this form: prog filename followed by enter, where "filename" is the program or file you're looking for. if you're unsure of a file's complete name, try typing in part of the name. for example, "pkzip" will work as well as "pkzip .exe." the system does not support dos or unix wildcards. if you ask archie to look for "pkzip*," it will tell you it couldn't find anything by that name. one thing to keep in mind is that a file is not necessarily the same as a program -- it could also be a document. this means you can use archie to search for, say, everything online related to the beetles, as well as computer programs and graphics files. a number of net sites now have their own archie programs that take your request for information and pass it onto the nearest archie database -- ask your system administrator if she has it online. these "client" programs seem to provide information a lot more quickly than the actual archie itself! if it is available, at your host system's command line, type archie -s filename where filename is the program or document you're looking for, and hit enter. the -s tells the program to ignore case in a file name and lets you search for partial matches. you might actually want to type it this way: archie -s filename|more which will stop the output every screen (handy if there are many sites that carry the file you want). or you could open a file on your computer with your text-logging function. the third way, for people without access to either of the above, is e- mail. send a message to archie@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca. you can leave the subject line blank. inside the message, type prog filename where filename is the file you're looking for. you can ask archie to look up several programs by putting their names on the same "prog" line, like this: prog file file file within a few hours, archie will write back with a list of the appropriate sites. in all three cases, if there is a system that has your file, you'll get a response that looks something like this: host sumex-aim.stanford.edu location: /info-mac/comm file -rw-r--r-- feb : zterm- .hqx location: /info-mac/misc file -rw-r--r-- sep zterm-sys -color-icons.hqx chances are, you will get a number of similar looking responses for each program. the "host" is the system that has the file. the "location" tells you which directory to look in when you connect to that system. ignore the funny-looking collections of r's and hyphens for now. after them, come the size of the file or directory listing in bytes, the date it was uploaded, and the name of the file. . getting the files now you want to get that file. assuming your host site does have ftp, you connect in a similar fashion to telnet, by typing: ftp sumex-aim.stanford.edu (or the name of whichever site you want to reach). hit enter. if the connection works, you'll see this: connected to sumex-aim.stanford.edu. sumex-aim ftp server (version . mon jan : : pst ) ready. name (sumex-aim.stanford.edu:adamg): if nothing happens after a minute or so, hit control-c to return to your host system's command line. but if it has worked, type anonymous and hit enter. you'll see a lot of references on the net to "anonymous ftp." this is how it gets its name -- you don't really have to tell the library site what your name is. the reason is that these sites are set up so that anybody can gain access to certain public files, while letting people with accounts on the sites to log on and access their own personal files. next, you'll be asked for your password. as a password, use your e-mail address. this will then come up: guest connection accepted. restrictions apply. remote system type is unix. using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> now type ls and hit enter. you'll see something awful like this: port command successful. opening ascii mode data connection for /bin/ls. total -rw-rw-r-- mar : readme.posting dr-xr-xr-x nov : bin -rw-r--r-- apr : core dr--r--r-- nov : etc drwxrwsr-x mar : imap drwxr-xr-x apr : info-mac drwxr-x--- apr : pid drwxrwsr-x mar : pub drwxr-xr-x feb tmycin transfer complete. ftp> ack! let's decipher this rosetta stone. first, ls is the ftp command for displaying a directory (you can actually use dir as well, but if you're used to ms-dos, this could lead to confusion when you try to use dir on your host system, where it won't work, so it's probably better to just remember to always use ls for a directory while online). the very first letter on each line tells you whether the listing is for a directory or a file. if the first letter is a ``d,'' or an "l", it's a directory. otherwise, it's a file. the rest of that weird set of letters and dashes consist of "flags" that tell the ftp site who can look at, change or delete the file. you can safely ignore it. you can also ignore the rest of the line until you get to the second number, the one just before the date. this tells you how large the file is, in bytes. if the line is for a directory, the number gives you a rough indication of how many items are in that directory -- a directory listing of bytes is relatively small. next comes the date the file or directory was uploaded, followed (finally!) by its name. notice the readme.posting file up at the top of the directory. most archive sites have a "read me" document, which usually contains some basic information about the site, its resources and how to use them. let's get this file, both for the information in it and to see how to transfer files from there to here. at the ftp> prompt, type get readme and hit enter. note that ftp sites are no different from unix sites in general: they are case-sensitive. you'll see something like this: port command successful. opening binary mode data connection for readme ( bytes). transfer complete. bytes received in . seconds ( . kbytes/s) and that's it! the file is now located in your home directory on your host system, from which you can now download it to your own computer. the simple "get" command is the key to transferring a file from an archive site to your host system. if you want to download more than one file at a time (say a series of documents, use mget instead of get; for example: mget *.txt this will transfer copies of every file ending with .txt in the given directory. before each file is copied, you'll be asked if you're sure you want it. despite this, mget could still save you considerable time -- you won't have to type in every single file name. if you want to save even more time, and are sure you really want all of the given files, type prompt before you do the mget command. this will turn off the prompt, and all the files will be zapped right into your home directory. there is one other command to keep in mind. if you want to get a copy of a computer program, type bin and hit enter. this tells the ftp site and your host site that you are sending a binary file, i.e., a program. most ftp sites now use binary format as a default, but it's a good idea to do this in case you've connected to one of the few that doesn't. to switch to a directory, type cd directory-name (substituting the name of the directory you want to access) and hit enter. type ls and hit enter to get the file listing for that particular directory. to move back up the directory tree, type cd .. (note the space between the d and the first period) and hit enter. or you could type cdup and hit enter. keep doing this until you get to the directory of interest. alternately, if you already know the directory path of the file you want (from our friend archie), after you connect, you could simply type get directory/subdirectory/filename on many sites, files meant for public consumption are in the pub or public directory; sometimes you'll see an info directory. almost every site has a bin directory, which at first glance sounds like a bin in which interesting stuff might be dumped. but it actually stands for "binary" and is simply a place for the system administrator to store the programs that run the ftp system. lost+found is another directory that looks interesting but actually never has anything of public interest in them. before, you saw how to use archie. from our example, you can see that some system administrators go a little berserk when naming files. fortunately, there's a way for you to rename the file as it's being transferred. using our archie example, you'd type get zterm-sys -color-icons.hqx zterm.hqx and hit enter. instead of having to deal constantly with a file called zterm-sys -color-icons.hqx, you'll now have one called, simply, zterm.hqx. those last three letters bring up something else: many program files are compressed to save on space and transmission time. in order to actually use them, you'll have to use an un-compress program on them first. . odd letters -- decoding file endings there are a wide variety of compression methods in use. you can tell which method was used by the last one to three letters at the end of a file. here are some of the more common ones and what you'll need to un- compress the files they create (most of these decompression programs can be located through archie). .txt or .txt by itself, this means the file is a document, rather than a program. .ps or .ps a postscript document (in adobe's page description language). you can print this file on any postscript capable printer, or use a previewer, like gnu project's ghostscript. .doc or .doc another common "extension" for documents. no decompression is needed, unless it is followed by: .z this indicates a unix compression method. to uncompress, type uncompress filename.z and hit enter at your host system's command line. if the file is a compressed text file, you can read it online by instead typing zcat filename.txt.z |more u .zip is an ms-dos program that will let you download such a file and uncompress it on your own computer. the macintosh equivalent program is called maccompress (use archie to find these). .zip or .zip these indicate the file has been compressed with a common ms-dos compression program, known as pkzip (use archie to find pkzip .exe). many unix systems will let you un-zip a file with a program called, well, unzip. .gz a unix version of zip. to uncompress, type gunzip filename.gz at your host system's command line. .zoo or .zoo a unix and ms-dos compression format. use a program called zoo to uncompress .hqx or .hqx mactintosh compression format. requires the binhex program. .shar or another unix format. use unshar to uncompress. .shar .tar another unix format, often used to compress several related files into one large file. most unix systems will have a program called tar for "un-tarring" such files. often, a "tarred" file will also be compressed with the gz method, so you first have to use uncompress and then tar. .sit or .sit a mactinosh format that requires the stuffit program. .arc another ms-dos format, which requires the use of the arc or arce programs. .lhz another ms-dos format; requires the use of lharc. a few last words of caution: check the size of a file before you get it. the net moves data at phenomenal rates of speed. but that , - byte file that gets transferred to your host system in a few seconds could take more than an hour or two to download to your computer if you're using a -baud modem. your host system may also have limits on the amount of bytes you can store online at any one time. also, although it is really extremely unlikely you will ever get a file infected with a virus, if you plan to do much downloading over the net, you'd be wise to invest in a good anti-viral program, just in case. . the keyboard cabal system administrators are like everybody else -- they try to make things easier for themselves. and when you sit in front of a keyboard all day, that can mean trying everything possible to reduce the number of keys you actually have to hit each day. unfortunately, that can make it difficult for the rest of us. you've already read about bin and lost+found directories. etc is another seemingly interesting directory that turns out to be another place to store files used by the ftp site itself. again, nothing of any real interest. then, once you get into the actual file libraries, you'll find that in many cases, files will have such non-descriptive names as v . - ak.txt. the best known example is probably a set of several hundred files known as rfcs, which provide the basic technical and organizational information on which much of the internet is built. these files can be found on many ftp sites, but always in a form such as rfc .txt, rfc .txt and so on, with no clue whatsoever as to what information they contain. fortunately, almost all ftp sites have a "rosetta stone" to help you decipher these names. most will have a file named readme (or some variant) that gives basic information about the system. then, most directories will either have a similar readme file or will have an index that does give brief descriptions of each file. these are usually the first file in a directory and often are in the form index.txt. use the ftp command to get this file. you can then scan it online or download it to see which files you might be interested in. another file you will frequently see is called ls-lr.z. this contains a listing of every file on the system, but without any descriptions (the name comes from the unix command ls -lr, which gives you a listing of all the files in all your directories). the z at the end means the file has been compressed, which means you will have to use a unix un-compress command before you can read the file. and finally, we have those system administrators who almost seem to delight in making things difficult -- the ones who take full advantage of unix's ability to create absurdly long file names. on some ftp sites, you will see file names as long as characters or so, full of capital letters, underscores and every other orthographic device that will make it almost impossible for you to type the file name correctly when you try to get it. your secret weapon here is the mget command. just type mget, a space, and the first five or six letters of the file name, followed by an asterisk, for example: mget this_f* the ftp site will ask you if you want to get the file that begins with that name. if there are several files that start that way, you might have to answer 'n' a few times, but it's still easier than trying to recreate a ludicrously long file name. . some interesting ftp sites what follows is a list of some interesting ftp sites, arranged by category. with hundreds of ftp sites now on the net, however, this list barely scratches the surface of what is available. liberal use of archie will help you find specific files. the times listed for each site are in eastern time and represent the periods during which it is considered acceptable to connect. amiga ftp.uu.net has amiga programs in the systems/amiga directory. available hours. wuarchive.wustl.edu. look in the pub/aminet directory. available hours. atari atari.archive.umich.edu find almost all the atari files you'll ever need, in the atari directory. p.m. - a.m. books rtfm.mit.edu the pub/usenet/rec.arts.books directories has reading lists for various authors as well as lists of recommended bookstores in different cities. unfortunately, this site uses incredibly long file names -- so long they may scroll off the end of your screen if you are using an ms-dos or certain other computers. even if you want just one of the files, it probably makes more sense to use mget than get. this way, you will be asked on each file whether you want to get it; otherwise you may wind up frustrated because the system will keep telling you the file you want doesn't exist (since you may miss the end of its name due to the scrolling problem). p.m. - a.m. mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu project gutenberg is an effort to translate paper texts into electronic form. already available are more than titles, from works by lewis carrol to mark twain; from "a tale of two cities" to "son of tarzan." look in the /etext/etext and /etext/etext directories. p.m. - a.m. computer ethics ftp.eff.org the home of the electronic frontier foundation. use cd to get to the pub directory and then look in the eff, sjg and cpsr directories for documents on the eff itself and various issues related to the net, ethics and the law. available hours. consumer rtfm.mit.edu the pub/usenet/misc.consumers directory has documents related to credit. the pub/usenet/rec.travel.air directory will tell you how to deal with airline reservation clerks, find the best prices on seats, etc. see under books for a caveat in using this ftp site. p.m. - a.m. cooking wuarchive.wustl.edu look for recipes and recipe directories in the usenet/rec.food.cooking/recipes directory. gatekeeper.dec.com recipes are in the pub/recipes directory. economics neeedc.umesbs.maine.edu the federal reserve bank of boston uses this site (yes, there are three 'e's in "neeedc") to house all sorts of data on the new england economy. many files contain years or more of information, usually in forms that are easily adaptable to spreadsheet or database files. look in the frbb directory. p.m. - a.m. town.hall.org. look in the edgar directory for the beginnings of a system to distribute annual reports and other data publicly held companies are required to file with the securities and exchange commission. the other/fed directory holds various statistical files from the federal reserve board. ftp iraun .ira.uka.de run by the computer-science department of the university of karlsruhe in germany, this site offers lists of anonymous- ftp sites both internationally (in the anon.ftp.sites directory) and in germany (in anon.ftp.sites.de). p.m. to a.m. ftp.netcom.com the pub/profiles directory has lists of ftp sites. government ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu the senate directory contains bibliographic records of u.s. senate hearings and documents for the past several congresses. get the file readme.dos , which will explain the cryptic file names. p.m. - a.m. nptn.org the general accounting office is the investigative wing of congress. the pub/e.texts/gao.reports directory represents an experiment by the agency to use ftp to distribute its reports. available hours. info.umd.edu the info/government/us/whitehouse directory has copies of press releases and other documents from the clinton administration. p.m. - a.m. leginfo.public.ca.gov this is a repository of legislative calendars, bills and other information related to state government in california. available hours. whitehouse.gov look for copies of presidential position papers, transcripts of press conferences and related information here. available hours. see also under law. history nptn.org this site has a large, growing collecting of text files. in the pub/e.texts/freedom.shrine directory, you'll find copies of important historical documents, from the magna carta to the declaration of independence and the emancipation proclamation. available hours. ra.msstate.edu mississippi state maintains an eclectic database of historical documents, detailing everything from attilla's battle strategy to songs of soldiers in vietnam, in the docs/history directory. p.m. - a.m. seq .loc.gov the library of congress has acquired numerous documents from the former soviet government and has translated many of them into english. in the pub/soviet.archive/text.english directory, you'll find everything from telegrams from lenin ordering the death of peasants to khrushchev's response to kennedy during the cuban missile crisis. the readme file in the pub/soviet.archive directory provides an index to the documents. p.m. - a.m. hong kong nok.lcs.mit.edu gif pictures of hong kong pop stars, buildings and vistas are available in the pub/hongkong/hkpa directory. p.m. - a.m. internet ftp.eff.org the pub/net_info directory has a number of sub- directories containing various internet resources guides and information files, including the latest online version of the big dummy's guide. available hours. nic.ddn.mil the internet-drafts directory contains information about internet, while the scc directory holds network security bulletins. p.m. - a.m. law info.umd.edu u.s. supreme court decisions from to the present are stored in the info/government/us/supremect directory. each term has a separate directory (for example, term ). get the readme and index files to help decipher the case numbers. p.m. - a.m. ftp.uu.net supreme court decisions are in the court-opinions directory. you'll want to get the index file, which tells you which file numbers go with which file names. the decisions come in wordperfect and atex format only. available hours a day. libraries ftp.unt.edu the library directory contains numerous lists of libraries with computerized card catalogs accessible through the net. literature nptn.org in the pub/e.texts/gutenberg/etext and etext directories, you can get copies of aesop's fables, works by lewis carroll and other works of literature, as well as the book of mormon. available hours. world.std.com the obi directory has everything from online fables to accounts of hiroshima survivors. p.m. - a.m. macintosh sumex-aim.stanford.edu this is the premier site for macintosh software. after you log in, switch to the info-mac directory, which will bring up a long series of sub-directories of virtually every free and shareware mac program you could ever want. p.m. - a.m. ftp.uu.net you'll find lots of macintosh programs in the systems/mac/simtel directory. available hours a day. movie reviews lcs.mit.edu look in the movie-reviews directory. p.m. - a.m. ms-dos wuarchive.wustl.edu this carries one of the world's largest collections of ms-dos software. the files are actually copied, or "mirrored" from a computer at the u.s. army's white sands missile range (which uses ftp software that is totally incomprehensible). it also carries large collections of macintosh, windows, atari, amiga, unix, os , cp/m and apple ii software. look in the mirrors and systems directories. the gif directory contains a large number of gif graphics images. accessible hours. ftp.uu.net look for ms-dos programs and files in the systems/msdos/simtel directory. available hours a day. music cs.uwp.edu the pub/music directory has everything from lyrics of contemporary songs to recommended cds of baroque music. it's a little different - and easier to navigate - than other ftp sites. file and directory names are on the left, while on the right, you'll find a brief description of the file or directory, like this: sites other music-related ftp archive sites classical/ - (dir) classical buying guide database/ - (dir) music database program discog/ = (dir) discographies faqs/ = (dir) music frequently asked questions files folk/ - (dir) folk music files and pointers guitar/ = (dir) guitar tab files from ftp.nevada.edu info/ = (dir) rec.music.info archives interviews/ - (dir) interviews with musicians/groups lists/ = (dir) mailing lists archives lyrics/ = (dir) lyrics archives misc/ - (dir) misc files that don't fit anywhere else pictures/ = (dir) gifs, jpegs, pbms and more. press/ - (dir) press releases and misc articles programs/ - (dir) misc music-related programs for various machines releases/ = (dir) upcoming usa release listings sounds/ = (dir) short sound samples transfer complete. ftp> when you switch to a directory, don't include the /. p.m. - a.m. potemkin.cs.pdx.edu the bob dylan archive. interviews, notes, year-by-year accounts of his life and more, in the pub/dylan directory. p.m. - a.m. ftp.nevada.edu guitar chords for contemporary songs are in the pub/guitar directory, in subdirectories organized by group or artist. native americans pines.hsu.edu home of indiannet, this site contains a variety of directories and files related to indians and eskimos, including federal census data, research reports and a tribal profiles database. look in the pub and indian directories. pets rtfm.mit.edu the pub/usenet/rec.pets.dogs and pub/usenet.rec.pets.cats directories have documents on the respective animals. see under books for a caveat in using this ftp site. p.m. - a.m. pictures wuarchiv.wustl.edu the graphics/gif directory contains hundreds of gif photographic and drawing images, from cartoons to cars, space images to pop stars. these are arranged in a long series of subdirectories. photography ftp.nevada.edu photolog is an online digest of photography news, in the pub/photo directory. religion nptn.org in the pub/e.texts/religion directory, you'll find subdirectories for chapters and books of both the bible and the koran. available hours. science fiction elbereth.rutgers.edu in the pub/sfl directory, you'll find plot summaries for various science-fiction tv shows, including star trek (not only the original and next generation shows, but the cartoon version as well), lost in space, battlestar galactica, the twilight zone, the prisoner and doctor who. there are also lists of various things related to science fiction and an online science-fiction fanzine. p.m. - a.m. sex rtfm.mit.edu look in the pub/usenet/alt.sex and pub/usenet/alt.sex.wizards directories for documents related to all facets of sex. see under books for a caveat in using this ftp site. p.m. - a.m. shakespeare atari.archive.umich.edu the shakespeare directory contains most of the bard's works. a number of other sites have his works as well, but generally as one huge mega-file. this site breaks them down into various categories (comedies, poetry, histories, etc.) so that you can download individual plays or sonnets. space ames.arc.nasa.gov stores text files about space and the history of the nasa space program in the pub/space subdirectory. in the pub/gif and pub/space/gif directories, you'll find astronomy- and nasa-related gif files, including pictures of planets, satellites and other celestial objects. p.m. - a.m. tv coe.montana.edu the pub/tv/guides directory has histories and other information about dozens of tv shows. only two anonymous-ftp log-ins are allowed at a time, so you might have to try more than once to get in. p.m. - a.m. ftp.cs.widener.edu the pub/simpsons directory has more files than anybody could possibly need about bart and family. the pub/strek directory has files about the original and next generation shows as well as the movies. see also under science fiction. travel nic.stolaf.edu before you take that next overseas trip, you might want to see whether the state department has issued any kind of advisory for the countries on your itinerary. the advisories, which cover everything from hurricane damage to civil war, are in the pub/travel- advisories/advisories directory, arranged by country. p.m. - a.m. usenet ftp.uu.net in the usenet directory, you'll find "frequently asked questions" files, copied from rtfm.mit.edu. the communications directory holds programs that let ms-dos users connect directly with uucp sites. in the info directory, you'll find information about ftp and ftp sites. the inet directory contains information about internet. available hours. rtfm.mit.edu this site contains all available "frequently asked questions" files for usenet newsgroups in the pub/usenet directory. see under books for a caveat in using this ftp site. p.m. - a.m. viruses ftp.unt.edu the antivirus directory has anti-virus programs for ms- dos and macintosh computers. p.m. - a.m. weather wuarchive.wustl.edu the /multimedia/images/wx directory contains gif weather images of north america. files are updated hourly and take this general form: cv . the first two letters tell the type of file: cv means it is a visible-light photo taken by a weather satellite. ci images are similar, but use infrared light. both these are in black and white. files that begin with sa are color radar maps of the u.s. that show severe weather patterns but also fronts and temperatures in major cities. the numbers indicate the date and time (in gmt - five hours ahead of est) of the image: the first two numbers represent the month, the next two the date, the last two the hour. the file wxkey.gif explains the various symbols in sa files. . ncftp -- now you tell me! if you're lucky, the people who run your host system or public- access site have installed a program called ncftp, which takes some of the edges off the ftp process. for starters, when you use ncftp instead of plain old ftp, you no longer have to worry about misspelling "anonymous" when you connect. the program does it for you. and once you're in, instead of getting line after line filled with dashes, x's, r's and d's, you only get listings of the files or directories themselves (if you're used to ms-dos, the display you get will be very similar to that produced by the dir/w command). the program even creates a list of the ftp sites you've used most recently, so you can pick from that list, instead of trying to remember some incredibly complex ftp site name. launching the program, assuming your site has it, is easy. at the command prompt, type ncftp sitename where "sitename" is the site you want to reach (alternately, you could type just ncftp and then use its open command). once connected, you can use the same ftp commands you've become used to, such as ls, get and mget. entries that end in a / are directories to which you can switch with cd; others are files you can get. a couple of useful ncftp commands include type, which lets you change the type of file transfer (from ascii to binary for example) and size, which lets you see how large a file is before you get it, for example size declaration.txt would tell you how large the declaration.txt file is before you get it. when you say "bye" to disconnect from a site, ncftp remembers the last directory you were in, so that the next time you connect to the site, you are put back into that directory automatically. if you type help you'll get a list of files you can read to extend the power of the program even further. . project gutenberg -- electronic books project gutenberg, coordinated by michael hart, has a fairly ambitious goal: to make more than , books and other documents available electronically by the year . in , the project uploaded an average of four books a month to its ftp sites; in , they hope to double the pace. begun in , the project already maintains a "library" of hundreds of books and stories, from aesop's fables to "through the looking glass" available for the taking. it also has a growing number of current- affairs documents, such as the cia's annual "world factbook" almanac. besides nptn.org, project gutenberg texts can be retrieved from mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu in the etext directory. . when things go wrong * you get a "host unavailable" message. the ftp site is down for some reason. try again later. * you get a "host unknown" message. check your spelling of the site name. * you misspell "anonymous" when logging in and get a message telling you a password is required for whatever you typed in. type something in, hit enter, type bye, hit enter, and try again. alternately, try typing "ftp" instead of "anonymous." it will work on a surprising number of sites. or just use ncftp, if your site has it, and never worry about this again. . fyi liberal use of archie will help you find specific files or documents. for information on new or interesting ftp sites, try the comp.archives newsgroup on usenet. you can also look in the comp.misc, comp.sources.wanted or news.answers newsgroups on usenet for lists of ftp sites posted every month by tom czarnik and jon granrose. the comp.archives newsgroup carries news of new ftp sites and interesting new files on existing sites. in the comp.virus newsgroup on usenet, look for postings that list ftp sites carrying anti-viral software for amiga, ms-dos, macintosh, atari and other computers. the comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest and comp.sys.mac.digest newsgroups provide information about new ms-dos and macintosh programs as well as answers to questions from users of those computers. chapter : gophers, waiss and the world-wide web . . gophers even with tools like hytelnet and archie, telnet and ftp can still be frustrating. there are all those telnet and ftp addresses to remember. telnet services often have their own unique commands. and, oh, those weird directory and file names! but now that the net has become a rich repository of information, people are developing ways to make it far easier to find and retrieve information and files. gophers and wide-area information servers (waiss) are two services that could ultimately make the internet as easy to navigate as commercial networks such as compuserve or prodigy. both gophers and waiss essentially take a request for information and then scan the net for it, so you don't have to. both also work through menus -- instead of typing in some long sequence of characters, you just move a cursor to your choice and hit enter. gophers even let you select files and programs from ftp sites this way. let's first look at gophers (named for the official mascot of the university of minnesota, where the system was developed). many public-access sites now have gophers online. to use one, type gopher at the command prompt and hit enter. if you know your site does not have a gopher, or if nothing happens when you type that, telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu at the log-in prompt, type gopher and hit enter. you'll be asked what type of terminal emulation you're using, after which you'll see something like this: internet gopher information client v . root gopher server: gopher.micro.umn.edu --> . information about gopher/ . computer information/ . discussion groups/ . fun & games/ . internet file server (ftp) sites/ . libraries/ . news/ . other gopher and information servers/ . phone books/ . search lots of places at the u of m <?> . university of minnesota campus information/ press ? for help, q to quit, u to go up a menu page: / assuming you're using vt or some other vt emulation, you'll be able to move among the choices with your up and down arrow keys. when you have your cursor on an entry that looks interesting, just hit enter, and you'll either get a new menu of choices, a database entry form, or a text file, depending on what the menu entry is linked to (more on how to tell which you'll get in a moment). gophers are great for exploring the resources of the net. just keep making choices to see what pops up. play with it; see where it takes you. some choices will be documents. when you read one of these and either come to the end or hit a lower-case q to quit reading it, you'll be given the choice of saving a copy to your home directory or e-mailing it to yourself. other choices are simple databases that let you enter a word to look for in a particular database. to get back to where you started on a gopher, hit your u key at a menu prompt, which will move you back "up" through the gopher menu structure (much like "cd .." in ftp). notice that one of your choices above is "internet file server (ftp) sites." choose this, and you'll be connected to a modified archie program -- an archie with a difference. when you search for a file through a gopher archie, you'll get a menu of sites that have the file you're looking for, just as with the old archie. only now, instead of having to write down or remember an ftp address and directory, all you have to do is position the cursor next to one of the numbers in the menu and hit enter. you'll be connected to the ftp site, from which you can then choose the file you want. this time, move the cursor to the file you want and hit a lower-case s. you'll be asked for a name in your home directory to use for the file, after which the file will be copied to your home system. unfortunately, this file-transfer process does not yet work with all public-access sites for computer programs and compressed files. if it doesn't work with yours, you'll have to get the file the old-fashioned way, via anonymous ftp. in addition to ftp sites, there are hundreds of databases and libraries around the world accessible through gophers. there is not yet a common gopher interface for library catalogs, so be prepared to follow the online directions more closely when you use gopher to connect to one. gopher menu entries that end in a / are gateways to another menu of options. entries that end in a period are text, graphics or program files, which you can retrieve to your home directory (or e-mail to yourself or to somebody else). a line that ends in <?> or <cso> represents a request you can make to a database for information. the difference is that <?> entries call up one-line interfaces in which you can search for a keyword or words, while <cso> brings up an electronic form with several fields for you to fill out (you might see this in online "white pages" directories at colleges). gophers actually let you perform some relatively sophisticated boolean searches. for example, if you want to search only for files that contain the words "ms-dos" and "macintosh," you'd type ms-dos and macintosh (gophers are not case-sensitive) in the keyword field. alternately, if you want to get a list of files that mention either "ms-dos" or "macintosh," you'd type ms-dos or macintosh . burrowing deeper as fascinating as it can be to explore "gopherspace," you might one day want to quickly retrieve some information or a file. or you might grow tired of calling up endless menus to get to the one you want. fortunately, there are ways to make even gophers easier to use. one is with archie's friend, veronica (it allegedly is an acronym, but don't believe that for a second), who does for gopherspace what archie does for ftp sites. in most gophers, you'll find veronica by selecting "other gopher and information services" at the main menu and then "searching through gopherspace using veronica." select this and you'll get something like this: internet gopher information client v . search titles in gopherspace using veronica --> . . . faq: frequently-asked questions about veronica ( / / ). . how to compose veronica queries (new june ) read me!!. . search gopher directory titles at psinet <?> . search gopher directory titles at sunet <?> . search gopher directory titles at u. of manitoba <?> . search gopher directory titles at university of cologne <?> . search gopherspace at psinet <?> . search gopherspace at sunet <?> . search gopherspace at u. of manitoba <?> . search gopherspace at university of cologne <?> press ? for help, q to quit, u to go up a menu page: / a few choices there! first, the difference between searching directory titles and just plain ol' gopherspace. if you already know the sort of directory you're looking for (say a directory containing ms-dos programs), do a directory-title search. but if you're not sure what kind of directory your information might be in, then do a general gopherspace search. in general, it doesn't matter which of the particular veronicas you use -- they should all be able to produce the same results. the reason there is more than one is because the internet has become so popular that only one veronica (or one gopher or one of almost anything) would quickly be overwhelmed by all the information requests from around the world. you can use veronica to search for almost anything. want to find museums that might have online displays from their exhibits? try searching for "museum." looking for a copy of the declaration of independence? try "declaration." in many cases, your search will bring up a new gopher menu of choices to try. say you want to impress those guests coming over for dinner on friday by cooking cherries flambe. if you were to call up veronica and type in "flambe" after calling up veronica, you would soon get a menu listing several flambe recipes, including one called "dessert flambe." put your cursor on that line of the menu and hit enter, and you'll find it's a menu for cherries flambe. then hit your q key to quit, and gopher will ask you if you want to save the file in your home directory on your public-access site or whether you want to e-mail it somewhere. as you can see, you can use veronica as an alternative to archie, which, because of the internet's growing popularity, seems to take longer and longer to work. in addition to archie and veronica, we now also have jugheads (no bettys yet, though). these work the same as veronicas, but their searches are limited to the specific gopher systems on which they reside. if there are particular gopher resources you use frequently, there are a couple of ways to get to them even more directly. one is to use gopher in a manner similar to the way you can use telnet. if you know a particular gopher's internet address (often the same as its telnet or ftp address), you can connect to it directly, rather than going through menus. for example, say you want to use the gopher at info.umd.edu. if your public-access site has a gopher system installed, type this gopher info.umd.edu at your command prompt and you'll be connected. but even that can get tedious if there are several gophers you use frequently. that's where bookmarks come in. gophers let you create a list of your favorite gopher sites and even database queries. then, instead of digging ever deeper into the gopher directory structure, you just call up your bookmark list and select the service you want. to create a bookmark for a particular gopher site, first call up gopher. then go through all the gopher menus until you get to the menu you want. type a capital a. you'll be given a suggested name for the bookmark enty, which you can change if you want by backspacing over the suggestion and typing in your own. when done, hit enter. now, whenever you're in gopherspace and want to zip back to that particular gopher service, just hit your v key (upper- or lower-case; in this instance, gopher doesn't care) anywhere within gopher. this will bring up a list of your bookmarks. move to the one you want and hit enter, and you'll be connected. using a capital a is also good for saving particular database or veronica queries that you use frequently (for example, searching for news stories on a particular topic if your public-access site maintains an indexed archive of wire-service news). instead of a capital a, you can also hit a lower-case a. this will bring you to the particular line within a menu, rather than show you the entire menu. if you ever want to delete a bookmark, hit v within gopher, select the item you want to get rid of, and then hit your d key. one more hint: if you want to find the address of a particular gopher service, hit your = key after you've highlighted its entry in a gopher menu. you'll get back a couple of lines, most of which will be technicalese of no immediate value to most folks, but some of which will consist of the site's address. . . gopher commands a add a line in a gopher menu to your bookmark list. a add an entire gopher menu or a database query to your bookmark list. d delete an entry from your bookmark list (you have to hit v first). q quit, or exit, a gopher. you'll be asked if you really want to. q quit, or exit, a gopher without being asked if you're sure. s save a highlighted file to your home directory. u move back up a gopher menu structure v view your bookmark list. = get information on the originating site of a gopher entry. > move ahead one screen in a gopher menu. < move back one screen in a gopher menu. . . some interesting gophers there are now hundreds of gopher sites around the world. what follows is a list of some of them. assuming your site has a gopher "client" installed, you can reach them by typing gopher sitename at your command prompt. can't find what you're looking for? remember to use veronica to look up categories and topics! agriculture cyfer.esusda.gov more agricultural statistics and regulations most people will ever need. usda.mannlib.cornell.edu more than different types of agricultural data, most in lotus - - spreadsheet format. animals saimiri.primate.wisc.edu information on primates and animal-welfare laws. architecture libra.arch.umich.edu maintains online exhibits of a variety of architectural images. art marvel.loc.gov the library of congress runs several online "galleries" of images from exhibits at the library. many of these pictures, in gif or jpeg format, are huge, so be careful what you get first. exhibits include works of art from the vatican, copies of once secret soviet documents and pictures of artifacts related to columbus's voyage. at the main menu, select and then "exhibits." galaxy.ucr.edu the california museum of photography maintains its own online galery here. at the main menu, select "campus events," then "california museum of photography," then "network ex- hibitions." astronomy cast .ast.cam.ac.uk a gopher devoted to astronomy, run by the institute of astronomy and the royal greenwich observatory, cambridge, england. census bigcat.missouri.edu you'll find detailed federal census data for communities of more than , people, as well as for states and counties here. at the main menu, select "reference and information center," then "united states and missouri census information" and "united states census." computers wuarchive.wustl.edu dozens of directories with software for all sorts of computers. most programs have to be "un-compressed" before you can use them. sumex-aim.stanford.edu a similar type of system, with the emphasis on macintosh programs and files. disability val-dor.cc.buffalo.edu the cornucopia of disability information carries numerous information resources on disability issues and links to other disability-related services. environment ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu copies of environmental protection agency factsheets on hundreds of chemicals, searchable by keyword. select "education" and then "environmental fact sheets." envirolink.org dozens of documents and files related to environmental activism around the world. entomology spider.ento.csiro.au all about creepy-crawly things, both the good and the bad ones. geology gopher.stolaf.edu select "internet resources" and then "weather and geography" for information on recent earthquakes. government marvel.loc.gov run by the library of congress, this site provides numerous resources, including access to the library card catalog and all manner of information about the u.s. congress. gopher.lib.umich.edu wide variety of government information, from congressional committee assignments to economic statistics and nafta information. ecix.doc.gov information on conversion of military installations to private uses. sunsite.unc.edu copies of current and past federal budgets can be found by selecting "sunsite archives," then "politics," then "sunsite politcal science archives." wiretap.spies.com documents related to canadian government can be found in the "government docs" menu. stis.nih.gov select the "other u.s. government gopher servers" for access to numerous other federal gophers. health odie.niaid.nih.gov national institutes of health databases on aids, in the "aids related information" menu. helix.nih.gov for national cancer institute factsheets on different cancers, select "health and clinical information" and then "cancernet information." nysernet.org look for information on breast cancer in the "special collections: breast cancer" menu. welchlink.welch.jhu.edu this is johns hopkins university's medical gopher. history see under art. internet gopher.lib.umich.edu home to several guides to internet resources in specific fields, for example, social sciences. select "what's new & featured resources" and then "clearinghouse." israel jerusalem .datasrv.co.il this israeli system offers numerous documents on israel and jewish life. japan gopher.ncc.go.jp look in the "japan information" menu for documents related to japanese life and culture. music mtv.com run by adam curry, an mtv video jock, this site has music news and curry's daily "cybersleaze" celebrity report. nature ucmp .berkeley.edu the university of california at berkeley's museum of paleontology runs several online exhibits here. you can obtain gif images of plants and animals from the "remote nature" menu. the "origin of the species" menu lets you read darwin's work or search it by keyword. sports culine.colorado.edu look up schedules for teams in various professional sports leagues here, under "professional sports schedules." weather wx.atmos.uiuc.edu look up weather forecasts for north america or bone up on your weather facts. . . wide-area information servers now you know there are hundreds of databases and library catalogs you can search through. but as you look, you begin to realize that each seems to have its own unique method for searching. if you connect to several, this can become a pain. gophers reduce this problem somewhat. wide-area information servers promise another way to zero in on information hidden on the net. in a wais, the user sees only one interface -- the program worries about how to access information on dozens, even hundreds, of different databases. you tell give a wais a word and it scours the net looking for places where it's mentioned. you get a menu of documents, each ranked according to how relevant to your search the wais thinks it is. like gophers, wais "client" programs can already be found on many public-access internet sites. if your system has a wais client, type swais at the command prompt and hit enter (the "s" stands for "simple"). if it doesn't, telnet to bbs.oit.unc.edu, which is run by the university of north carolina at the "login:" prompt, type bbs and hit enter. you'll be asked to register and will then get a list of "bulletins,'' which are various files explaining how the system works. when done with those, hit your q key and you'll get another menu. hit for the "simple wais client," and you'll see something like this: swais source selection sources: # server source cost : [ archie.au] aarnet-resource-guide free : [ archive.orst.edu] aeronautics free : [nostromo.oes.orst.ed] agricultural-market-news free : [sun-wais.oit.unc.edu] alt-sys-sun free : [ archive.orst.edu] alt.drugs free : [ wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.gopher free : [sun-wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.sys.sun free : [ wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.wais free : [ archive.orst.edu] archie-orst.edu free : [ archie.au] archie.au-amiga-readmes free : [ archie.au] archie.au-ls-lrt free : [ archie.au] archie.au-mac-readmes free : [ archie.au] archie.au-pc-readmes free : [ pc .pc.maricopa.edu] ascd-education free : [ archie.au] au-directory-of-servers free : [ cirm .univ-mrs.fr] bib-cirm free : [ cmns-sun.think.com] bible free : [ zenon.inria.fr] bibs-zenon-inria-fr free keywords: <space> selects, w for keywords, arrows move, <return> searches, q quits, or ? each line represents a different database (the .au at the end of some of them means they are in australia; the .fr on the last line represents a database in france). and this is just the first page! if you type a capital k, you'll go to the next page (there are several pages). hitting a capital j will move you back a page. the first thing you want to do is tell the wais program which databases you want searched. to select a database, move the cursor bar over the line you want (using your down and up arrow keys) and hit your space bar. an asterisk will appear next to the line number. repeat this until you've selected all of the databases you want searched. then hit your w key, after which you'll be prompted for the key words you're looking for. you can type in an entire line of these words -- separate each with a space, not a comma. hit return, and the search begins. let's say you're utterly fascinated with wheat. so you might select agricultural-market-news to find its current world price. but you also want to see if it has any religious implications, so you choose the bible and the book of mormon. what do you do with the stuff? select recipes and usenet-cookbook. are there any recent supreme court decisions involving the plant? choose supreme-court. how about synonyms? try roget-thesaurus and just plain thesaurus. now hit w and type in wheat. hit enter, and the wais program begins its search. as it looks, it tells you whether any of the databases are offline, and if so, when they might be ready for a search. in about a minute, the program tells you how many hits it's found. then you get a new menu, that looks something like this: keywords: # score sourcetitlelines : [ ] (roget-thesaurus) # . [results of comparison. ] di : [ ] (roget-thesaurus) # . choice. -- n. choice, option; : [ ] (roget-thesaurus) # . [results of comparison. ] di : [ ] (roget-thesaurus) # . choice. -- n. choice, option; : [ ] (recipes) aem@mthvax re: monthly: rec.food.recipes : [ ] ( book_of_mormon) mosiah : : [ ] ( book_of_mormon) nephi : : [ ] (agricultural-ma) re: jo gr , weekly grain : [ ] (agricultural-ma) re: wa cb prospective plantings : [ ] ( recipes) kms@apss.a re: request: wheat-free, suga : [ ] (agricultural-ma) re: wa cb crop production : [ ] (agricultural-ma) re: sj gr daily nat grn sum : [ ] ( recipes) pat@jaamer re: vegan: honey granola : [ ] ( recipes) jrtrint@pa re: ovo-lacto: sourdough/trit each of these represents an article or citing that contains the word wheat, or some related word. move the cursor bar (with the down and up arrow keys) to the one you want to see, hit enter, and it will begin to appear on your screen. the "score" is a wais attempt to gauge how closely the citing matches your request. doesn't look like the supreme court has had anything to say about the plant of late! now think of how much time you would have spent logging onto various databases just to find these relatively trivial examples. . the world-wide web developed by researchers at the european particle physics laboratory in geneva, the world-wide web is somewhat similar to a wais. but it's designed on a system known as hypertext. words in one document are "linked" to other documents. it's sort of like sitting with an encyclopedia -- you're reading an article, see a reference that intrigues you and so flip the pages to look up that reference. to try the worldwide web, telnet to ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu log on as: www. when you connect, you'll see something like: welcome to cern the world-wide web: cern entry point cern is the european particle physics laboratory in geneva, switzerland. select by number information here, or elsewhere. help[ ] about this program world-wide web[ ] about the w global information initiative. cern information[ ] information from and about this site particle physics[ ] other hep sites with information servers other subjects[ ] catalogue of all online information by subject. also: by server type[ ] . ** check out x browser "violawww": anon ftp to info.cern.ch in /pub/www/src *** still beta, so keep bug reports calm :-) if you use this service frequently, please install this or any w browser on your own machine (see instructions[ ] ). you can configure it to start - , <return> for more, quit, or help: you navigate the web by typing the number next to a given reference. so if you want to know more about the web, hit . this is another system that bears playing with. . . clients, or how to snare more on the web if you are used to plain-vanilla unix or ms-dos, then the way these gophers and waiss work seems quite straightforward. but if you're used to a computer with a graphical interface, such as a macintosh, an ibm compatible with windows or a next, you'll probably regard their interfaces as somewhat primitive. and even to a veteran ms-dos user, the world-wide web interface is rather clunky (and some of the documents and files on the web now use special formatting that would confuse your poor computer). there are, however, ways to integrate these services into your graphical user interface. in fact, there are now ways to tie into the internet directly, rather than relying on whatever interface your public-access system uses, through what are known as "client" programs. these programs provide graphical interfaces for everything from ftp to the world-wide web. there is now a growing number of these "client" programs for everything from ftp to gopher. psi of reston, va., which offers nationwide internet access, in fact, requires its customers to use these programs. using protocols known as slip and ppp, these programs communicate with the net using the same basic data packets as much larger computers online. beyond integration with your own computer's "desktop,'' client programs let you do more than one thing at once on the net -- while you're downloading a large file in one window, you can be chatting with a friend through an internet chat program in another. unfortunately, using a client program can cost a lot of money. some require you to be connected directly to the internet through an ethernet network for example. others work through modem protocols, such as slip, but public-access sites that allow such access may charge anywhere from $ to $ a month extra for the service. your system administrator can give you more information on setting up one of these connections. . . when things go wrong as the internet grows ever more popular, its resources come under more of a strain. if you try to use gopher in the middle of the day, at least on the east coast of the u.s., you'll sometimes notice that it takes a very long time for particular menus or database searches to come up. sometimes, you'll even get a message that there are too many people connected to whichever service you're trying to use and so you can't get in. the only alternative is to either try again in minutes or so, or wait until later in the day, when the load might be lower. when this happens in veronica, try one of the other veronica entries. when you retrieve a file through gopher, you'll sometimes be asked if you want to store it under some ludicrously long name (there go our friends the system administrators again, using characters just because unix lets them). with certain ms-dos communications programs, if that name is longer than one line, you won't be able to backspace all the way back to the first line if you want to give it a simpler name. backspace as far as you can. then, when you get ready to download it to your home computer, remember that the file name will be truncated on your end, because of ms-dos's file-naming limitations. worse, your computer might even reject the whole thing. what to do? instead of saving it to your home directory, mail it to yourself. it should show up in your mail by the time you exit gopher. then, use your mail command for saving it to your home directory -- at which point you can name it anything you want. now you can download it. . fyi david riggins maintains a list of gophers by type and category. you can find the most recent one at the ftp site ftp.einet.net, in the pub directory. look for a file with a name like "gopher-jewels.txt." alternately, you can get on a mailing list to get the latest version sent to your e-mailbox automatically. send a mail message to gopherjewelslist- request@tpis.cactus.org (yep, that first part is all one word). leave the "subject:" line blank, and as a message, write subscribe. blake gumprecht maintains a list of gopher and telnet sites related to, or run by, the government. he posts it every three weeks to the news.answers and soc.answers newsgroups on usenet. it can also be obtained via anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu, as /pub/usenet/news.answers/us-govt-net-pointers. students at the university of michigan's school of information and library studies, recently compiled separate lists of internet resources in specific areas, from aeronautics to theater. they can be obtained via gopher at gopher.lib.umich.edu, in the "what's new and featured resources" menu. the usenet newsgroups comp.infosystems.gopher and comp.infosystems.wais are places to go for technical discussions about gophers and waiss respectively. the interpedia project is an attempt to take gopher one step further, by creating an online repository of all of the interesting and useful information availble on the net and from its users. to get on the mailing list for the project, send an e-mail message, with a "subject:" of "subscribe" to interpedia-request@telerama.lm.com. you can get supporting documentation for the project via anonymous ftp at ftp.lm.com in the pub/interpedia directory. chapter : advanced e-mail . the file's in the mail e-mail by itself is a powerful tool, and by now you may be sending e-mail messages all over the place. you might even be on a mailing list or two. but there is a lot more to e-mail than just sending messages. if your host system does not have access to ftp, or it doesn't have access to every ftp site on the net, you can have programs and files sent right to your mailbox. and using some simple techniques, you can use e-mail to send data files such as spreadsheets, or even whole programs, to friends and colleagues around the world. a key to both is a set of programs known as encoders and decoders. for all its basic power, net e-mail has a big problem: it can't handle graphics characters or the control codes found in even the simplest of computer programs. encoders however, can translate these into forms usable in e-mail, while decoders turn them back into a form that you can actually use. if you are using a unix-based host system, chances are it already has an encoder and decoder online that you can use. these programs will also let you use programs posted in several usenet newsgroups, such as comp.binaries.ibm.pc. if both you and the person with whom you want to exchange files use unix host systems, you're in luck because virtually all unix host systems have encoder/decoder programs online. for now, let's assume that's the case. first, upload the file you want to send to your friend to your host site (ask your system administrator how to upload a file to your name or "home" directory if you don't already know how). then type uuencode file file > file.uu and hit enter. "file" is the name of the file you want to prepare for mailing, and yes, you have to type the name twice! the > is a unix command that tells the system to call the "encoded" file "file.uu" (you could actually call it anything you want). now to get it into a mail message. the quick and dirty way is to type mail friend where "friend" is your friend's address. at the subject line, tell her the name of the enclosed file. when you get the blank line, type ~r file.uu or whatever you called the file, and hit enter. (on some systems, the ~ may not work; if so, ask your system administrator what to use). this inserts the file into your mail message. hit control-d, and your file is on its way! on the other end, when your friend goes into her mailbox, she should transfer it to her home directory. then she should type uudecode file.name and hit enter. this creates a new file in her name directory with whatever name you originally gave it. she can then download it to her own computer. before she can actually use it, though, she'll have to open it up with a text processor and delete the mail header that has been "stamped" on it. if you use a mailer program that automatically appends a "signature," tell her about that so she can delete that as well. . receiving files if somebody sends you a file through the mail, you'll have to go through a couple of steps to get it into a form you can actually use. if you are using the simple mail program, go into mail and type w # file.name where # is the number of the message you want to transfer and file.name is what you want to call the resulting file. in pine, call up the message and hit your o key and then e. you'll then be asked for a file name. in elm, call up the message and hit your s key. you'll get something that looks like this: =file.request type a new file name and hit enter (if you hit enter without typing a file name, the message will be saved to another mail folder, not your home directory). in all three cases, exit the mail program to return to your host system's command line. because the file has been encoded for mail delivery, you now have to run a decoder. at the command line, type uudecode file.name where file.name is the file you created while in mail. uudecode will create a new, uncompressed binary file. in some cases, you may have to run it through some other programs (for example, if it is in "tar" form), but generally it should now be ready for you to download to your own computer (on which you might then have to run a de-compressor program such as pkxzip). . files to non-internet sites what if your friend only connects with a non-unix system, such as compuserve or mcimail? there are programs available for ms-dos, apple and amiga computers that will encode and decode files. of course, since you can't send one of these programs to your friend via e-mail (how would she un-encode it?), you'll have to mail (the old-fashioned way) or give her a diskette with the program on it first. then, she can get the file by e-mail and go through the above process (only on her own computer) to get a usable file. remember to give her an encoder program as well, if she wants to send you files in return. for ms-dos machines, you'll want to get uunecode.com and uudecode.com. both can be found through anonymous ftp at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the /mirrors/msdos/starter directory. the ms- dos version is as easy to use as the unix one: just type uudecode filename.ext and hit enter. mac users should get a program called uutool, which can be found in the info-mac/util directory on sumex-aim.stanford.edu. think twice before sending somebody a giant file. although large sites connected directly to the internet can probably handle mega-files, many smaller systems cannot. some commercial systems, such as compuserve and mcimail, limit the size of mail messages their users can receive. fidonet doesn't even allow encoded messages. in general, a file size of , or so bytes is a safe upper limit for non-internet systems. . getting ftp files via e-mail to help people without ftp access, a number of ftp sites have set up mail servers (also known as archive servers) that allow you to get files via e-mail. you send a request to one of these machines and they send back the file you want. as with ftp, you'll be able to find everything from historical documents to software (but please note that if you do have access to ftp, that method is always quicker and ties up fewer resources than using e-mail). some interesting or useful mail servers include: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu files of "frequently asked questions" related to usenet; state-by-state lists of u.s. representatives and senators and their addresses and office phone numbers. archive-server@eff.org information about the electronic frontier foundation; documents about legal issues on the net. archive-server@cs.widener.edu back copies of the computer underground digest and every possible fact you could want to know about "the simpsons." netlib@uunet.uu.net programs for many types of personal computers; archives of past postings from many usenet newsgroups. archive-server@ames.arc.nasa.gov space-related text and graphics (gif-format) files. service@nic.ddn.mil detailed information about internet. most mail servers work pretty much the same -- you send an e-mail message that tells them what file you want and how you want it sent to you. the most important command is "send," which tells the computer you want it to send you a particular file. first, though, you'll need to know where the mail server stores that file, because you have to tell it which directory or sub- directory it's in. there are a couple of ways to do this. you can send an e-mail message to the archive-server that consists of one line: index the server will then send you a directory listing of its main, or root directory. you'll then have to send a second message to the archive server with one line: index directory/subdirectory where that is the directory or directory path for which you want a listing. an alternative is to send an e-mail message to our old friend archie, which should send you back the file's exact location on the archive-server (along with similar listings for all the other sites that may have the file, however) once you have the file name and its directory path, compose a message to the archive server like this: send directory/subdirectory/file send off the message and, anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days later, you'll find a new message in your mailbox: a copy of the file you requested. the exact time it will take a file to get to you depends on a variety of factors, including how many requests are in line before yours (mail servers can only process so many requests at a time) and the state of the connections between the server and you. seems simple enough. it gets a little more complicated when you request a program rather than a document. programs or other files that contain unusual characters or lines longer than characters (graphics files, for example) require special processing by both the mail server to ensure they are transmitted via e-mail. then you'll have to run them through at least one converter program to put them in a form you can actually use. to ensure that a program or other "non-mailable" file actually gets to you, include another line in your e-mail message to the server: encoder this converts the file into an encoded form. to decode it, you'll first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home directory. one further complication comes when you request a particularly long file. many net sites can only handle so much mail at a time. to make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like this: size this gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each file segment. this particular size is good for uucp sites. internet and bitnet sites can generally go up to . when you get all of these files in mail, transfer them to your home directory. exit mail and call up each file in your host system's text processor and delete each one's entire header and footer (or "signature" at the end). when done with this, at your host system's command line, type cat file file > bigfile where file is the first file, file the second file, and so on. the > tells your host system to combine them into a new megafile called bigfile (or whatever you want to call it). after you save the file to your home directory (see section . above), you can then run uudecode, tar, etc. one word of caution, though: if the file you want is long enough that it has to be broken into pieces, think of how much time it's going to take you to download the whole thing -- especially if you're using a -baud modem! there are a number of other mail servers. to get a list, send an e-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu: send usenet/comp.sources.wanted/how_to_find_sources_(read_this_before_posting) you'll have to spell it exactly as listed above. some mail servers use different software, which will require slightly different commands than the ones listed here. in general, if you send a message to a mail server that says only help you should get back a file detailing all of its commands. but what if the file you want is not on one of these mail servers? that's where ftpmail comes in. run by digital equipment corp. in california, this service can connect to almost any ftp site in the world, get the file you want and then mail it to you. using it is fairly simple -- you send an e-mail message to ftpmail that includes a series of commands telling the system where to find the file you want and how to format it to mail to you. compose an e-mail message to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com leave the "subject:" line blank. inside the message, there are several commands you can give. the first line should be reply address where "address" is your e-mail address. the next line should be connect host where "host" is the system that has the file you want (for example: wuarchive.wustl.edu). other commands you should consider using are "binary" (required for program files); "compress" (reduces the file size for quicker transmission) and "uuencode" (which encodes the file so you can do something with it when it arrives). the last line of your message should be the word "quit". let's say you want a copy of the u.s. constitution. using archie, you've found a file called, surprise, constitution, at the ftp site archive.cis.ohio-state.edu, in the /pub/firearms/politics/rkba directory. you'd send a message to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com that looks like this: reply adamg@world.std.com connect archive.cis.ohio-state.edu binary compress uuencode get pub/firearms/politics/rkba/constitution quit when you get the file in your mailbox, use the above procedure for copying it to a file. run it through uudecode. then type uncompress file.name to make it usable. since this was a text file, you could have changed the "binary" to "ascii" and then eliminated the "uuencode" file. for programs, though, you'll want to keep these lines. one caveat with ftpmail: it has become such a popular service that it could take a week or more for your requested files to arrive. . the all knowing oracle one other thing you can do through e-mail is consult with the usenet oracle. you can ask the oracle anything at all and get back an answer (whether you like the answer is another question). first, you'll want to get instructions on how to address the oracle (he, or she, or it, is very particular about such things and likes being addressed in august, solemn and particularly sycophantic tones). start an e-mail message to oracle@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu in the "subject:" line, type help and hit enter. you don't actually have to say anything in the message itself -- at least not yet. hit control-d to send off your request for help. within a few hours, the oracle will mail you back detailed instructions. it's a fairly long file, so before you start reading it, turn on your communications software's logging function, to save it to your computer (or save the message to a file on your host system's home directory and then download the file). after you've digested it, you can compose your question to the oracle. mail it to the above address, only this time with a subject line that describes your question. expect an answer within a couple of days. and don't be surprised if you also find a question in your mailbox -- the oracle extracts payment by making seekers of knowledge answer questions as well! chapter : news of the world . clarinet: upi, dave barry and dilbert. usenet "newsgroups" can be something of a misnomer. they may be interesting, informative and educational, but they are often not news, at least, not the way most people would think of them. but there are several sources of news and sports on the net. one of the largest is clarinet, a company in cupertino, calf., that distributes wire-service news and columns, along with a news service devoted to computers and even the dilbert comic strip, in usenet form. distributed in usenet form, clarinet stories and columns are organized into more than newsgroups (in this case, a truly appropriate name), some of them with an extremely narrow focus, for example, clari.news.gov.taxes. the general news and sports come from united press international; the computer news from the newsbytes service; the features from several syndicates. because clarinet charges for its service, not all host systems carry its articles. those that do carry them as usenet groups starting with "clari." as with other usenet hierarchies, these are named starting with broad area and ending with more specific categories. some of these include business news (clari.biz); general national and foreign news, politics and the like (clari.news), sports (clari.sports); columns by mike royko, miss manners, dave barry and others (clari.feature); and newsbytes computer and telecommunications reports (clari.nb). because clarinet started in canada, there is a separate set of clari.canada newsgroups. the clari.nb newsgroups are divided into specific computer types (clari.nb.apple, for example). clari news groups feature stories updated around the clock. there are even a couple of "bulletin" newsgroups for breaking stories: clari.news.bulletin and clari.news.urgent. clarinet also sets up new newsgroups for breaking stories that become ongoing ones (such as major natural disasters, coups in large countries and the like). occasionally, you will see stories in clari newsgroups that just don't seem to belong there. stories about former washington, d.c. mayor marion barry, for example, often wind interspersed among columns by dave barry. this happens because of the way wire services work. upi uses three-letter codes to route its stories to the newspapers and radio stations that make up most of its clientele, and harried editors on deadline sometimes punch in the wrong code. . reuters this is roughly the british equivalent of upi or associated press. msen, a public-access site in michigan, currently feeds reuters dispatches into a series of usenet-style conferences. if your site subscribes to this service, look for newsgroups with names that begin in msen.reuters. . usa today if your host system doesn't carry the clari or msen.reuters newsgroups, you might be able to keep up with the news a different way over the net. usa today has been something of an online newspaper pioneer, selling its stories to bulletin-board and online systems across the country for several years. cleveland free-net provides the online version of usa today (along with all its other services) for free. currently, the paper only publishes five days a week, so you'll have to get your weekend news fix elsewhere. telnet: freenet-in-a.cwru.edu or freenet-in-b.cwru.edu after you connect and log in, look for this menu entry: nptn/usa today headline news. type the number next to it and hit enter. you'll then get a menu listing a series of broad categories, such as sports and telecommunications. choose one, and you'll get a yet another menu, listing the ten most recent dates of publication. each of these contains one-paragraph summaries of the day's news in that particular subject. . the world today, from belarus to brazil radio free europe and radio liberty are american radio stations that broadcast to the former communist countries of eastern europe. every day, their news departments prepare a summary of news in those countries, which is then disseminated via the net, through a bitnet mailing list and a usenet newsgroup. to have the daily digests sent directly to your e-mailbox, send a message to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu leave the subject line blank, and as a message, write: subscribe rferl-l your name alternately, look for the bulletins in the usenet newsgroup misc.news- east-europe.rferl. daily brazilian news updates are available (in portuguese) from the university of sao paulo. use anonymous ftp to connect to uspif.if.usp.br use cd to switch to the whois directory. the news summaries are stored in files with this form: news. oct ; . but to get them, leave off the semicolon and the , and don't capitalize anything, for example: get news. oct daily summaries of news reports from france (in french) are availble on the national capital freenet in ottawa, ont. telnet to freenet.carleton.ca and log on as: guest. at the main menu, select the number for "the newsstand" and then "la presse de france." . e-mailing news organizations a number of newspapers, television stations and networks and other news organizations now encourage readers and viewers to communicate with them electronically, via internet e-mail addresses. they include: the middlesex news, framingham, mass. sysop@news.ci.net the boston globe voxbox@globe.com wcvb-tv, boston, mass. wcvb@aol.com nbc news, new york, n.y. nightly@nbc.com the ottawa citizen, ottawa, ont. ottawa-citizen@freenet.carleton.ca cjoh-tv, ottawa, ont. ab @freenet.carleton.ca st. petersburg (fla.) times . @compuserve.com illinois issues, springfield, ill. gherardi@sangamon.edu wtvf-tv, nashville, tenn. craig.ownsby@nashville.com . fyi the clari.net.newusers newsgroup on usenet provides a number of articles about clarinet and ways of finding news stories of interest to you. to discuss the future of newspapers and newsrooms in the new electronic medium, subscribe to the computer assisted reporting and research mailing list on bitnet. send a mail message of subscribe carr-l your name to listserv@ulkyvm.bitnet. chapter : advanced e-mail . the file's in the mail e-mail by itself is a powerful tool, and by now you may be sending e-mail messages all over the place. you might even be on a mailing list or two. but there is a lot more to e-mail than just sending messages. if your host system does not have access to ftp, or it doesn't have access to every ftp site on the net, you can have programs and files sent right to your mailbox. and using some simple techniques, you can use e-mail to send data files such as spreadsheets, or even whole programs, to friends and colleagues around the world. a key to both is a set of programs known as encoders and decoders. for all its basic power, net e-mail has a big problem: it can't handle graphics characters or the control codes found in even the simplest of computer programs. encoders however, can translate these into forms usable in e-mail, while decoders turn them back into a form that you can actually use. if you are using a unix-based host system, chances are it already has an encoder and decoder online that you can use. these programs will also let you use programs posted in several usenet newsgroups, such as comp.binaries.ibm.pc. if both you and the person with whom you want to exchange files use unix host systems, you're in luck because virtually all unix host systems have encoder/decoder programs online. for now, let's assume that's the case. first, upload the file you want to send to your friend to your host site (ask your system administrator how to upload a file to your name or "home" directory if you don't already know how). then type uuencode file file > file.uu and hit enter. "file" is the name of the file you want to prepare for mailing, and yes, you have to type the name twice! the > is a unix command that tells the system to call the "encoded" file "file.uu" (you could actually call it anything you want). now to get it into a mail message. the quick and dirty way is to type mail friend where "friend" is your friend's address. at the subject line, type the name of the enclosed file. when you get the blank line, type ~r file.uu or whatever you called the file, and hit enter. (on some systems, the ~ may not work; if so, ask your system administrator what to use). this inserts the file into your mail message. hit control-d, and your file is on its way! on the other end, when your friend goes into her mailbox, she should transfer it to her home directory. then she should type uudecode file.name and hit enter. this creates a new file in her name directory with whatever name you originally gave it. she can then download it to her own computer. before she can actually use it, though, she'll have to open it up with a text processor and delete the mail header that has been "stamped" on it. if you use a mailer program that automatically appends a "signature," tell her about that so she can delete that as well. . receiving files if somebody sends you a file through the mail, you'll have to go through a couple of steps to get it into a form you can actually use. if you are using the simple mail program, go into mail and type w # file.name where # is the number of the message you want to transfer and file.name is what you want to call the resulting file. in pine, call up the message and hit your o key and then e. you'll then be asked for a file name. in elm, call up the message and hit your s key. you'll get something that looks like this: =file.request type a new file name and hit enter (if you hit enter without typing a file name, the message will be saved to another mail folder, not your home directory). in all three cases, exit the mail program to return to your host system's command line. because the file has been encoded for mail delivery, you now have to run a decoder. at the command line, type uudecode file.name where file.name is the file you created while in mail. uudecode will create a new, uncompressed binary file. in some cases, you may have to run it through some other programs (for example, if it is in "tar" form), but generally it should now be ready for you to download to your own computer (on which you might then have to run a de-compressor program such as pkxzip). . sending files to non-internet sites what if your friend only connects with a non-unix system, such as compuserve or mcimail? there are programs available for ms-dos, apple and amiga computers that will encode and decode files. of course, since you can't send one of these programs to your friend via e-mail (how would she un-encode it?), you'll have to mail (the old-fashioned way) or give her a diskette with the program on it first. then, she can get the file by e-mail and go through the above process (only on her own computer) to get a usable file. remember to give her an encoder program as well, if she wants to send you files in return. for ms-dos machines, you'll want to get uunecode.com and uudecode.com. both can be found through anonymous ftp at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the /mirrors/msdos/starter directory. the ms- dos version is as easy to use as the unix one: just type uudecode filename.ext and hit enter. mac users should get a program called uutool, which can be found in the info-mac/util directory on sumex-aim.stanford.edu. think twice before sending somebody a giant file. although large sites connected directly to the internet can probably handle mega-files, many smaller systems cannot. some commercial systems, such as compuserve and mcimail, limit the size of mail messages their users can receive. fidonet doesn't even allow encoded messages. in general, a file size of , or so bytes is a safe upper limit for non-internet systems. . getting ftp files via e-mail to help people without ftp access, a number of ftp sites have set up mail servers (also known as archive servers) that allow you to get files via e-mail. you send a request to one of these machines and they send back the file you want. as with ftp, you'll be able to find everything from historical documents to software (but please note that if you do have access to ftp, that method is always quicker and ties up fewer resources than using e-mail). some interesting or useful mail servers include: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu files of "frequently asked questions" related to usenet; state-by-state lists of u.s. representatives and senators and their addresses and office phone numbers. archive-server@eff.org information about the electronic frontier foundation; documents about legal issues on the net. archive-server@cs.widener.edu back copies of the computer underground digest and every possible fact you could want to know about "the simpsons." netlib@uunet.uu.net programs for many types of personal computers; archives of past postings from many usenet newsgroups. archive-server@ames.arc.nasa.gov space-related text and graphics (gif-format) files. service@nic.ddn.mil detailed information about internet. most mail servers work pretty much the same -- you send an e-mail message that tells them what file you want and how you want it sent to you. the most important command is "send," which tells the computer you want it to send you a particular file. first, though, you'll need to know where the mail server stores that file, because you have to tell it which directory or sub- directory it's in. there are a couple of ways to do this. you can send an e-mail message to the archive-server that consists of one line: index the server will then send you a directory listing of its main, or root directory. you'll then have to send a second message to the archive server with one line: index directory/subdirectory where directory/subdirectory is the directory path for which you want a listing. an alternative is to send an e-mail message to our old friend archie, which should send you back the file's exact location on the archive-server (along with similar listings for all the other sites that may have the file, however) once you have the file name and its directory path, compose a message to the archive server like this: send directory/subdirectory/file send off the message and, anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days later, you'll find a new message in your mailbox: a copy of the file you requested. the exact time it will take a file to get to you depends on a variety of factors, including how many requests are in line before yours (mail servers can only process so many requests at a time) and the state of the connections between the server and you. seems simple enough. it gets a little more complicated when you request a program rather than a document. programs or other files that contain unusual characters or lines longer than characters (graphics files, for example) require special processing by the mail server to ensure they are transmitted via e-mail. then you'll have to run them through at least one converter program to put them in a form you can actually use. to ensure that a program or other "non-mailable" file actually gets to you, include another line in your e-mail message to the server: encoder this converts the file into an encoded form. to decode it, you'll first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home directory. one further complication comes when you request a particularly long file. many net sites can only handle so much mail at a time. to make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like this: size this gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each file segment. this particular size is good for uucp sites. internet and bitnet sites can generally go up to . when you get all of these files in mail, transfer them to your home directory. exit mail and call up each file in your host system's text processor and delete each one's entire header and footer (or "signature" at the end). when done with this, at your host system's command line, type cat file file > bigfile where file is the first file, file the second file, and so on. the > tells your host system to combine them into a new megafile called bigfile (or whatever you want to call it). after you save the file to your home directory (see section . above), you can then run uudecode, tar, etc. one word of caution, though: if the file you want is long enough that it has to be broken into pieces, think of how much time it's going to take you to download the whole thing -- especially if you're using a -baud modem! there are a number of other mail servers. to get a list, send an e-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu: send usenet/comp.sources.wanted/how_to_find_sources_(read_this_before_posting) you'll have to spell it exactly as listed above. some mail servers use different software, which will require slightly different commands than the ones listed here. in general, if you send a message to a mail server that says only help you should get back a file detailing all of its commands. but what if the file you want is not on one of these mail servers? that's where ftpmail comes in. run by digital equipment corp. in california, this service can connect to almost any ftp site in the world, get the file you want and then mail it to you. using it is fairly simple -- you send an e-mail message to ftpmail that includes a series of commands telling the system where to find the file you want and how to format it to mail to you. compose an e-mail message to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com leave the "subject:" line blank. inside the message, there are several commands you can give. the first line should be reply address where "address" is your e-mail address. the next line should be connect host where "host" is the system that has the file you want (for example: wuarchive.wustl.edu). other commands you should consider using are "binary" (required for program files); "compress" (reduces the file size for quicker transmission) and "uuencode" (which encodes the file so you can do something with it when it arrives). the last line of your message should be the word "quit". let's say you want a copy of the u.s. constitution. using archie, you've found a file called, surprise, constitution, at the ftp site archive.cis.ohio-state.edu, in the /pub/firearms/politics/rkba directory. you'd send a message to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com that looks like this: reply adamg@world.std.com connect archive.cis.ohio-state.edu binary compress uuencode get pub/firearms/politics/rkba/constitution quit when you get the file in your mailbox, use the above procedure for copying it to a file. run it through uudecode. then type uncompress file.name to make it usable. since this was a text file, you could have changed the "binary" to "ascii" and then eliminated the "uuencode" file. for programs, though, you'll want to keep these lines. one caveat with ftpmail: it has become such a popular service that it could take a week or more for your requested files to arrive. . the all knowing oracle one other thing you can do through e-mail is consult with the usenet oracle. you can ask the oracle anything at all and get back an answer (whether you'll like the answer is another question). first, you'll want to get instructions on how to address the oracle (he, or she, or it, is very particular about such things and likes being addressed in august, solemn and particularly sycophantic tones). start an e-mail message to oracle@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu in the "subject:" line, type help and hit enter. you don't actually have to say anything in the message itself -- at least not yet. hit control-d to send off your request for help. within a few hours, the oracle will mail you back detailed instructions. it's a fairly long file, so before you start reading it, turn on your communications software's logging function, to save it to your computer (or save the message to a file on your host system's home directory and then download the file). after you've digested it, you can compose your question to the oracle. mail it to the above address, only this time with a subject line that describes your question. expect an answer within a couple of days. and don't be surprised if you also find a question in your mailbox -- the oracle extracts payment by making seekers of knowledge answer questions as well! chapter : news of the world . clarinet: upi, dave barry and dilbert. usenet "newsgroups" can be something of a misnomer. they may be interesting, informative and educational, but they are often not news, at least, not the way most people would think of them. but there are several sources of news and sports on the net. one of the largest is clarinet, a company in cupertino, calf., that distributes wire-service news and columns, along with a news service devoted to computers and even the dilbert comic strip, in usenet form. distributed in usenet form, clarinet stories and columns are organized into more than newsgroups (in this case, a truly appropriate name), some of them with an extremely narrow focus, for example, clari.news.gov.taxes. the general news and sports come from united press international; the computer news from the newsbytes service; the features from several syndicates. because clarinet charges for its service, not all host systems carry its articles. those that do carry them as usenet groups starting with "clari." as with other usenet hierarchies, these are named starting with broad area and ending with more specific categories. some of these include business news (clari.biz); general national and foreign news, politics and the like (clari.news), sports (clari.sports); columns by mike royko, miss manners, dave barry and others (clari.feature); and newsbytes computer and telecommunications reports (clari.nb). because clarinet started in canada, there is a separate set of clari.canada newsgroups. the clari.nb newsgroups are divided into specific computer types (clari.nb.apple, for example). clari news groups feature stories updated around the clock. there are even a couple of "bulletin" newsgroups for breaking stories: clari.news.bulletin and clari.news.urgent. clarinet also sets up new newsgroups for breaking stories that become ongoing ones (such as major natural disasters, coups in large countries and the like). occasionally, you will see stories in clari newsgroups that just don't seem to belong there. stories about former washington, d.c. mayor marion barry, for example, often wind interspersed among columns by dave barry. this happens because of the way wire services work. upi uses three-letter codes to route its stories to the newspapers and radio stations that make up most of its clientele, and harried editors on deadline sometimes punch in the wrong code. . reuters this is roughly the british equivalent of upi or associated press. msen, a public-access site in michigan, currently feeds reuters dispatches into a series of usenet-style conferences. if your site subscribes to this service, look for newsgroups with names that begin in msen.reuters. . usa today if your host system doesn't carry the clari or msen.reuters newsgroups, you might be able to keep up with the news a different way over the net. usa today has been something of an online newspaper pioneer, selling its stories to bulletin-board and online systems across the country for several years. cleveland free-net provides the online version of usa today (along with all its other services) for free. currently, the paper publishes only five days a week, so you'll have to get your weekend news fix elsewhere. telnet: freenet-in-a.cwru.edu or freenet-in-b.cwru.edu or freenet-in-c.cwru.edu after you connect and log in, look for this menu entry: nptn/usa today headline news. type the number next to it and hit enter. you'll then get a menu listing a series of broad categories, such as sports and telecommunications. choose one, and you'll get a yet another menu, listing the ten most recent dates of publication. each of these contains one-paragraph summaries of the day's news in that particular subject. . national public radio look in the alt.radio.networks.npr newsgroup in usenet for summaries of npr news shows such as "all things considered." this newsgroup is also a place to discuss the network and its shows, personalities and policies. . the world today, from belarus to brazil radio free europe and radio liberty are american radio stations that broadcast to the former communist countries of eastern europe. every day, their news departments prepare a summary of news in those countries, which is then disseminated via the net, through a bitnet mailing list and a usenet newsgroup. to have the daily digests sent directly to your e-mailbox, send a message to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu leave the subject line blank, and as a message, write: subscribe rferl-l your name alternately, look for the bulletins in the usenet newsgroup misc.news- east-europe.rferl. the voice of america, a government broadcasting service aimed at other countries, provides transcripts of its english-language news reports through both gopher and anonymous ftp. for the former, use gopher to connect to this address: gopher.voa.gov and for the latter, to this address: ftp.voa.gov daily brazilian news updates are available (in portuguese) from the university of sao paulo. use anonymous ftp to connect to uspif.if.usp.br use cd to switch to the whois directory. the news summaries are stored in files with this form: news. oct ; . but to get them, leave off the semicolon and the , and don't capitalize anything, for example: get news. oct daily summaries of news reports from france (in french) are availble on the national capital freenet in ottawa, ont. telnet to freenet.carleton.ca and log on as: guest. at the main menu, select the number for "the newsstand" and then "la presse de france." . e-mailing news organizations a number of newspapers, television stations and networks and other news organizations now encourage readers and viewers to communicate with them electronically, via internet e-mail addresses. they include: the middlesex news, framingham, mass. sysop@news.ci.net the boston globe voxbox@globe.com wcvb-tv, boston, mass. wcvb@aol.com nbc news, new york, n.y. nightly@nbc.com the ottawa citizen, ottawa, ont. ottawa-citizen@freenet.carleton.ca cjoh-tv, ottawa, ont. ab @freenet.carleton.ca st. petersburg (fla.) times . @compuserve.com illinois issues, springfield, ill. gherardi@sangamon.edu wtvf-tv, nashville, tenn. craig.ownsby@nashville.com santa cruz county (calif.) sentinel sented@cruzio.com morning journal, lorain, ohio mamjornl@freenet.lorain.oberlin.edu wcco-tv, minneapolis, minn. wccotv@mr.net tico times, costa rica ttimes@huracon.cr . fyi the clari.net.newusers newsgroup on usenet provides a number of articles about clarinet and ways of finding news stories of interest to you. to discuss the future of newspapers and newsrooms in the new electronic medium, subscribe to the computer assisted reporting and research mailing list on bitnet. send a mail message of subscribe carr-l your name to listserv@ulkyvm.bitnet. chapter : irc, muds and other things that are more fun than they sound many net systems provide access to a series of interactive services that let you hold live "chats" or play online games with people around the world. to find out if your host system offers these, you can ask your system administrator or just try them -- if nothing happens, then your system does not provide them. in general, if you can use telnet and ftp, chances are good you can use these services as well. . talk this is the net equivalent of a telephone conversation and requires that both you and the person you want to talk to have access to this function and are online at the same time. to use it, type talk user@site.name where user@site.name is the e-mail address of the other person. she will see something like this on her screen: talk: connection requested by yourname@site.name talk: respond with: talk yourname@site.name to start the conversation, she should then type (at her host system's command line): talk yourname@site.name where that is your e-mail address. both of you will then get a top and bottom window on your screen. she will see everything you type in one window; you'll see everything she types in the other. to disconnect, hit control-c. one note: public-access sites that use sun computers sometimes have trouble with the talk program. if talk does not work, try typing otalk or ntalk instead. however, the party at the other end will have to have the same program online for the connection to work. . internet relay chat irc is a program that lets you hold live keyboard conversations with people around the world. it's a lot like an international cb radio - it even uses "channels." type something on your computer and it's instantly echoed around the world to whoever happens to be on the same channel with you. you can join in existing public group chats or set up your own. you can even create a private channel for yourself and as few as one or two other people. and just like on a cb radio, you can give yourself a unique "handle" or nickname. irc currently links host systems in different countries, from australia to hong kong to israel. unfortunately, it's like telnet -- either your site has it or it doesn't. if your host system does have it, just type irc and hit enter. you'll get something like this: *** connecting to port of server world.std.com *** welcome to the internet relay network, adamg *** your host is world.std.com, running version . . e+ *** you have new mail. *** if you have not already done so, please read the new user information with +/help newuser *** this server was created sat apr at : : edt *** there are users on servers *** users have connection to the twilight zone *** there are channels. *** i have clients and servers motd - world.std.com message of the day - motd - be careful out there... motd - motd - ->spike * end of /motd command. : [ ] adamg [mail: ] * type /help for help ---------------------------------------------------------------------- you are now in channel , the "null" channel, in which you can look up various help files, but not much else. as you can see, irc takes over your entire screen. the top of the screen is where messages will appear. the last line is where you type irc commands and messages. all irc commands begin with a /. the slash tells the computer you are about to enter a command, rather than a message. to see what channels are available, type /list and hit enter. you'll get something like this: *** channel users topic *** #money school ca$h (/msg sos_aid help) *** #gone ----->> gone with the wind!!! ------>>>>> *** #mee *** #eclipse *** #hiya *** #saigon *** #screwed *** #z *** #comix let's talk 'bout comix!!!!! *** #drama *** #raytrace rendering to reality and back *** #next *** #wicca mr. potato head, r. i. p. *** #dde^mhe` no'ng chay? mo*? ...ba` con o*iiii *** #jgm *** #ucd *** #maine *** #snuffland *** #p/g! *** #dragonsrv because irc allows for a large number of channels, the list might scroll off your screen, so you might want to turn on your computer's screen capture to capture the entire list. note that the channels always have names, instead of numbers. each line in the listing tells you the channel name, the number of people currently in it, and whether there's a specific topic for it. to switch to a particular channel, type /join #channel where "#channel" is the channel name and hit enter. some "public" channels actually require an invitation from somebody already on it. to request an invitation, type /who #channel-name where channel-name is the name of the channel, and hit enter. then ask someone with an @ next to their name if you can join in. note that whenever you enter a channel, you have to include the #. choose one with a number of users, so you can see irc in action. if it's a busy channel, as soon as you join it, the top of your screen will quickly be filled with messages. each will start with a person's irc nickname, followed by his message. it may seem awfully confusing at first. there could be two or three conversations going on at the same time and sometimes the messages will come in so fast you'll wonder how you can read them all. eventually, though, you'll get into the rhythm of the channel and things will begin to make more sense. you might even want to add your two cents (in fact, don't be surprised if a message to you shows up on your screen right away; on some channels, newcomers are welcomed immediately). to enter a public message, simply type it on that bottom line (the computer knows it's a message because you haven't started the line with a slash) and hit enter. public messages have a user's nickname in brackets, like this: <tomg> if you receive a private message from somebody, his name will be between asterisks, like this: *tomg* . irc commands note: hit enter after each command. /away when you're called away to put out a grease fire in the kitchen, issue this command to let others know you're still connected but just away from your terminal or computer for awhile. /help brings up a list of commands for which there is a help file. you will get a "topic:" prompt. type in the subject for which you want information and hit enter. hit enter by itself to exit help. /invite asks another irc to join you in a conversation. /invite fleepo #hottub would send a message to fleepo asking him to join you on the #hottub channel. the channel name is optional. /join use this to switch to or create a particular channel, like this: /join #hottub if one of these channels exists and is not a private one, you will enter it. otherwise, you have just created it. note you have to use a # as the first character. /list this will give you a list of all available public channels, their topics (if any) and the number of users currently on them. hidden and private channels are not shown. /m name send a private message to that user. /mode this lets you determine who can join a channel you've created. /mode #channel +s creates a secret channel. /mode #channel +p makes the channel private /nick this lets you change the name by which others see you. /nick fleepo would change your name for the present session to fleepo. people can still use /whois to find your e-mail address. if you try to enter a channel where somebody else is already using that nickname, irc will ask you to select another name. /query this sets up a private conversation between you and another irc user. to do this, type /query nickname every message you type after that will go only to that person. if she then types /query nickname where nickname is yours, then you have established a private conversation. to exit this mode, type /query by itself. while in query mode, you and the other person can continue to "listen" to the discussion on whatever public channels you were on, although neither of you will be able to respond to any of the messages there. /quit exit irc. /signoff exit irc. /summon asks somebody connected to a host system with irc to join you on irc. you must use the person's entire e-mail address. /summon fleepo@foo.bar.com would send a message to fleepo asking him to start irc. usually not a good idea to just summon people unless you know they're already amenable to the idea; otherwise you may wind up annoying them no end. this command does not work on all sites. /topic when you've started a new channel, use this command to let others know what it's about. /topic #amiga would tell people who use /list that your channel is meant for discussing amiga computers. /who <chan> shows you the e-mail address of people on a particular channel. /who #foo would show you the addresses of everybody on channel foo. /who by itself shows you every e-mail address for every person on irc at the time, although be careful: on a busy night you might get a list of names! /whois use this to get some information about a specific irc user or to see who is online. /whois nickname will give you the e-mail address for the person using that nickname. /whois * will list everybody on every channel. /whowas similar to /whois; gives information for people who recently signed off irc. . irc in times of crisis irc has become a new medium for staying on top of really big breaking news. in , when russian lawmakers barricaded themselves inside the parliament building, some enterprising muscovites and a couple of americans set up a "news channel" on irc to relay first-person accounts direct from moscow. the channel was set up to provide a continuous loop of information, much like all-news radio stations that cycle through the day's news every minutes. in , los angeles residents set up a similar channel to relay information related to the northridge earthquake. in both cases, logs of the channels were archived somewhere on the net, for those unable to "tune in" live. how would you find such channels in the future? use the /list command to scroll through the available channels. if one has been set up to discuss a particular breaking event, chances are you'll see a brief description next to the channel name that will tell you that's the place to tune. . muds multiple-user dimensions or dungeons (muds) take irc into the realm of fantasy. muds are live, role-playing games in which you enter assume a new identity and enter an alternate reality through your keyboard. as you explore this other world, through a series of simple commands (such as "look," "go" and "take"), you'll run across other users, who may engage you in a friendly discussion, enlist your aid in some quest or try to kill you for no apparent reason. each mud has its own personality and creator (or god) who was willing to put in the long hours required to establish the particular mud's rules, laws of nature and information databases. some muds stress the social aspects of online communications -- users frequently gather online to chat and join together to build new structures or even entire realms. others are closer to "dungeons and dragons" and are filled with sorcerers, dragons and evil people out to keep you from completing your quest -- through murder if necessary. many muds (there are also related games known as mucks and muses) require you to apply in advance, through e-mail, for a character name and password. one that lets you look around first, though, is holomuck at mcgill university in montreal. the premise of this game is that you arrive in the middle of tanstaafl, a city on the planet holo. you have to find a place to live (else you get thrown into the homeless shelter) and then you can begin exploring. magic is allowed on this world, but only outside the city limits. get bored with the city and you can roam the rest of the world or even take a trip into orbit (of course, all this takes money; you can either wait for your weekly salary or take a trip to the city casino). once you become familiar with the city and get your own character, you can even begin erecting your own building (or subway line, or almost anything else). to connect, telnet to collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu when you connect, type connect guest guest and hit enter. this connects you to the "guest" account, which has a password of "guest." you'll see this: the homeless shelter(# rna) you wake up in the town's homeless shelter, where vagrants are put for protective holding. please don't sleep in public places-- there are plenty of open apartments available. type 'apartments' to see how to get to an apartment building with open vacancies. there is a small sign on the wall here, with helpful information. type 'look sign' to read it. the door is standing open for your return to respectable society. simply walk 'out' to the center. of course, you want to join respectable society, but first you want to see what that sign says. so you type look sign and hit enter, which brings up a list of some basic commands. then you type out followed by enter, which brings up this: you slip out the door, and head southeast... tanstaafl center this is the center of the beautiful town of tanstaafl. high street runs north and south into residential areas, while main street runs east and west into business districts. sw: is tanstaafl towers. please claim an apartment... no sleeping in public! se: the public library offers both information and entertainment. nw: is the homeless shelter, formerly the town jail. ne: is town hall, site of several important services, including: public message board, bureau of land management (with maps and regulations), and other governmental/ bureaucratic help. down: below a sign marked with both red and blue large letter 'u's, a staircase leads into an underground subway passage. (feel free to 'look' in any direction for more information.) [obvious exits: launch, d, nw, se, w, e, n, s, ne, sw] contents: instructions for newcomers directional signpost founders' statue to see "instructions for newcomers", type look instructions for newcomers and hit enter. you could do the same for "directional signpost" and "founders' statue." then type sw and enter to get to tanstaafl towers, the city housing complex, where you have to claim an apartment (you may have to look around; many will already) be occupied. and now it's off to explore holo! one command you'll want to keep in mind is "take." periodically, you'll come across items that, when you take them will confer certain abilities or powers on you. if you type help and enter, you'll get a list of files you can read to learn more about the mud's commands. the "say" command lets you talk to other players publicly. for example, say hey, i'm here! would be broadcast to everybody else in the room with you. if you want to talk to just one particular person, use "whisper" instead of "say." whisper agora=hey, i'm here! would be heard only by agora. another way to communicate with somebody regardless of where on the world they are is through your pager. if you suddenly see yours go off while visiting, chances are it's a wizard checking to see if you need any help. to read his message, type page to send him a message, type page name=message where name is the wizard's name (it'll be in the original message). other muds and mucks may have different commands, but generally use the same basic idea of letting you navigate through relatively simple english commands. when you connect to a mud, choose your password as carefully as you would one for your host system; alas, there are mud crackers who enjoy trying to break into other people's mud accounts. and never, never use the same password as the one you use on your host system! muds can prove highly addicting. "the jury is still out on whether mudding is 'just a game' or 'an extension of real life with gamelike qualities'," says jennifer smith, an active mud player who wrote an faq on the subject. she adds one caution: "you shouldn't do anything that you wouldn't do in real life, even if the world is a fantasy world. the important thing to remember is that it's the fantasy world of possibly hundreds of people, and not just yours in particular. there's a human being on the other side of each and every wire! always remember that you may meet these other people some day, and they may break your nose. people who treat others badly gradually build up bad reputations and eventually receive the no fun stamp of disapproval." . go, go, go (and chess, too)! fancy a good game of go or chess? you no longer have to head for the nearest park with a board in hand. the internet has a couple of machines that let you engage people from around the world in your favorite board games. or, if you prefer, you can watch matches in progress. to play go, telnet hellspark.wharton.upenn.edu log on as: guest you'll find prompts to various online help files to get you started. for a chess match, telnet news.panix.com log on as: guest you'll find prompts for online help files on the system, which lets you choose your skill level. . the other side of the coin all is not fun and games on the net. like any community, the net has its share of obnoxious characters who seem to exist only to make your life miserable (you've already met some of them in chapter ). there are people who seem to spend a bit more time on the net than many would find healthy. it also has its criminals. clifford stoll writes in "the cuckoo's egg" how he tracked a team of german hackers who were breaking into u.s. computers and selling the information they found to the soviets. robert morris, a cornell university student, was convicted of unleashing a "worm" program that effectively disabled several thousand computers connected to the internet. of more immediate concern to the average net user are crackers who seek to find other's passwords to break into net systems and people who infect programs on ftp sites with viruses. there is a widely available program known as "crack" that can decipher user passwords composed of words that might be found in a dictionary (this is why you shouldn't use such passwords). short of that, there are the annoying types who take a special thrill in trying to make you miserable. the best advice in dealing with them is to count to and then ignore them -- like juveniles everywhere, most of their fun comes in seeing how upset you can get. meanwhile, two cornell university students pleaded guilty in to uploading virus-infected macintosh programs to ftp sites. if you plan to try out large amounts of software from ftp sites, it might be wise to download or buy a good anti-viral program. but can law enforcement go too far in seeking out the criminals? the electronic frontier foundation was founded in large part in response to a series of government raids against an alleged gang of hackers. the raids resulted in the near bankruptcy of one game company never alleged to have had anything to do with the hackers, when the government seized its computers and refused to give them back. the case against another alleged participant collapsed in court when his attorney showed the "proprietary" and supposedly hacked information he printed in an electronic newsletter was actually available via an number for about $ -- from the phone company from which that data was taken. . fyi you can find discussions about irc in the alt.irc newsgroup. "a discussion on computer network conferencing," by darren reed (may, ), provides a theoretical background on why conferencing systems such as irc are a good thing. it's available through ftp at nic.ddn.mil in the rfc directory as rfc .txt. every friday, scott goehring posts a new list of muds and related games and their telnet addresses in the newsgroup rec.games.mud.announce. there are several other mud newsgroups related to specific types of muds, including rec.games.mud.social, rec.games.mud.adventure, rec.games.mud.tiny, rec.games.mud.diku and rec.games.mud.lp. for a good overview of the impact on the internet of the morris worm, read "virus highlights need for improved internet management," by the u.s. general accounting office (june, ). you can get a copy via ftp from cert.sei.cmu.edu in the pub/virus-l/docs directory. it's listed as gao_rpt. clifford stoll describes how the internet works and how he tracked a group of kgb-paid german hackers through it, in "the cuckoo's egg: tracking a spy through the maze of computer espionage," doubleday ( ). chapter : education and the net . the net in the classroom if you're a teacher, you've probably already begun to see the potential the net has for use in the class. usenet, ftp and telnet have tremendous educational potential, from keeping up with world events to arranging international science experiments. because the net now reaches so many countries and often stays online even when the phones go down, you and your students can "tune in" to first-hand accounts during international conflicts. look at your system's list of usenet soc.culture groups to see if there is one about the country or region you're interested in. even in peacetime, these newsgroups can be great places to find people from countries you might be studying. the biggest problem may be getting accounts for your students, if you're not lucky enough to live within the local calling area of a free-net system. many colleges and universities, however, are willing to discuss providing accounts for secondary students at little or no cost. several states, including california and texas, have internet- linked networks for teachers and students. . some specific resources for students and teachers in addition, there are a number of resources on the internet aimed specifically at elementary and secondary students and teachers. you can use these to set up science experiments with classes in another country, learn how to use computers in the classroom or keep up with the latest advances in teaching everything from physics to physical education. among them: askeric run by the educational resource and information center, askeric provides a way for educators, librarians and others interested in k- education to get more information about virtually everything. the center maintains an e-mail address (askeric@ericir.syr.edu) for questions and promises answers within hours. it also maintains a gopher site that contains digests of questions and answers, lesson plans in a variety of fields and other educationally related information. the gopher address is ericir.syr.edu. health-ed: a mailing list for health educators. send a request to health-ed-request@stjhmc.fidonet.org k net: begun on the fidonet hobbyist network, k net is now also carried on many usenet systems and provides a host of interesting and valuable services. these include international chat for students, foreign-language discussions (for example, there are french and german- only conference where american students can practice those languages with students from quebec and german). there are also conferences aimed at teachers of specific subjects, from physical education to physics. the k network still has limited distribution, so ask your system administrator if your system carries it. kidsphere: kidsphere is a mailing list for elementary and secondary teachers, who use it to arrange joint projects and discuss educational telecommunications. you will find news of new software, lists of sites from which you can get computer-graphics pictures from various nasa satellites and probes and other news of interest to modem-using teachers. to subscribe, send a request by e-mail to kidsphere- request@vms.cis.pitt.edu or joinkids@vms.cis.pitt.edu and you will start receiving messages within a couple of days. to contribute to the discussion, send messages to kidsphere@vms.cis.pitt.edu. kids is a spin-off of kidsphere just for students who want to contact students. to subscribe, send a request to joinkids@vms.cis.pitt.edu, as above. to contribute, send messages to kids@vms.cist.pitt.edu. knoxville using the newspaper in the electronic classroom. this news- gopher site lets students and teachers connect to sentinel the newspaper, and provides resources for them derived online from the newsroom. use gopher to connect to gopher.opup.org micromuse this is an online, futuristic city, built entirely by participants (see chapter for information on muses and muds in general). hundreds of students from all over have participated in this educational exercise, coordinated by mit. telnet to michael.ai.mit.edu. log on as guest and then follow the prompts for more information. nasa spacelink: this system, run by nasa in huntsville, ala., provides all sorts of reports and data about nasa, its history and its various missions, past and present. telnet spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov or . . . . when you connect, you'll be given an overview of the system and asked to register. the system maintains a large file library of gif-format space graphics, but note that you can't download these through telnet. if you want to, you have to dial the system directly, at ( ) - . many can be obtained through ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov, however. newton: run by the argonne national laboratory, it offers conferences for teachers and students, including one called "ask a scientist." telnet: newton.dep.anl.gov. log in as: cocotext you'll be asked to provide your name and address. when you get the main menu, hit for the various conferences. the "ask a scientist" category lets you ask questions of scientists in fields from biology to earth science. other categories let you discuss teaching, sports and computer networks. oeri: the u.s. department of education's office of educational resources and improvement runs a gopher system that provides numerous educational resources, information and statistics for teachers. use gopher to connect to gopher.ed.gov. spacemet forum: if your system doesn't carry the k conferences, but does provide you with telnet, you can reach the conferences through spacemet forum, a bulletin-board system aimed at teachers and students that is run by the physics and astronomy department at the university of massachusetts at amherst. telnet: spacemet.phast.umass.edu. when you connect, hit escape once, after which you'll be asked to log on. like k net, spacemet forum began as a fidonet system, but has since grown much larger. mort and helen sternheim, professors at the university, started spacemet as a one-line bulletin-board system several years ago to help bolster middle-school science education in nearby towns. in addition to the k conferences, spacemet carries numerous educationally oriented conferences. it also has a large file library of interest to educators and students, but be aware that getting files to your site could be difficult and maybe even impossible. unlike most other internet sites, spacemet does not use an ftp interface. the sternheims say zmodem sometimes works over the network, but don't count on it. . usenet and bitnet in the classroom there are numerous usenet newsgroups of potential interest to teachers and students. as you might expect, many are of a scientific bent. you can find these by typing l sci. in rn or using nngrep sci. for nn. there are now close to , with subjects ranging from archaeology to economics (the "dismal science," remember?) to astronomy to nanotechnology (the construction of microscopically small machines). one thing students will quickly learn from many of these groups: science is not just dull, boring facts. science is argument and standing your ground and making your case. the usenet sci. groups encourage critical thinking. beyond science, social-studies and history classes can keep busy learning about other countries, through the soc.culture newsgroups. most of these newsgroups originated as ways for expatriates of a given country to keep in touch with their homeland and its culture. in times of crisis, however, these groups often become places to disseminate information from or into the country and to discuss what is happening. from afghanistan to yugoslavia, close to countries are now represented on usenet. to see which groups are available, use l soc.culture. in rn or nngrep soc.culture. for nn. several "talk" newsgroups provide additional topical discussions, but teachers should screen them first before recommending them to students. they range from talk.abortion and talk.politics.guns to talk.politics.space and talk.environment. one caveat: teachers might want to peruse particular newsgroups before setting their students loose in them. some have higher levels of flaming and blather than others. there are also a number of bitnet discussion groups of potential interest to students and teachers. see chapter for information on finding and subscribing to bitnet discussion groups. some with an educational orientation include: biopi-l ksuvm.bitnet secondary biology education chemed-l uwf.bitnet chemistry education dts-l iubvm.bitnet the dead teacher's society list phys-l uwf.bitnet discussions for physics teachers physhare psuvm.bitnet where physics teachers share resources scimath-l psuvm.bitnet science and math education to get a list of ftp sites that carry astronomical images in the gif graphics format, use ftp to connect to nic.funet.fi. switch to the /pub/astro/general directory and get the file astroftp.txt. among the sites listed is ames.arc.nasa.gov, which carries images taken by the voyager and galileo probes, among other pictures. chapter : business on the net . setting up shop back in olden days, oh, before or so, there were no markets in the virtual community -- if you wanted to buy a book, you still had to jump in your car and drive to the nearest bookstore. this was because in those days, the net consisted mainly of a series of government-funded networks on which explicit commercial activity was forbidden. today, much of the net is run by private companies, which generally have no such restrictions, and a number of companies have begun experimenting with online "shops" or other services. many of these shops are run by booksellers, while the services range from delivery of indexed copies of federal documents to an online newsstand that hopes to entice you to subscribe to any of several publications (of the printed on paper variety). a number of companies also use usenet newsgroups (in the biz hierarchy) to distribute press releases and product information. still, commercial activity on the remains far below that found on other networks, such as compuserve, with its electronic mall, or prodigy, with its advertisements on almost every screen. in part that's because of the newness and complexity of the internet as a commercial medium. in part, however, that is because of security concerns. companies worry about such issues as crackers getting into their system over the network, and many people do not like the idea of sending a credit-card number via the internet (an e-mail message could be routed through several sites to get to its destination). these concerns could disappear as net users turn to such means as message encryption and "digital signatures." in the meantime, however, businesses on the net can still consider themselves something of internet pioneers. a couple of public-access sites and a regional network have set up "marketplaces" for online businesses. the world in brookline, mass., currently rents "space" to several bookstores and computer-programming firms, as well as an "adult toy shop." to browse their offerings, use gopher to connect to world.std.com at the main menu, select "shops on the world." msen in ann arbor provides its "msen marketplace," where you'll find a travel agency and an "online career center" offering help-wanted ads from across the country. msen also provides an "internet business pages," an online directory of companies seeking to reach the internet community. you can reach msen through gopher at gopher.msen.com at the main menu, select "msen marketplace." the nova scotia technology network runs a "cybermarket" on its gopher service at nstn.ns.ca there, you'll find an online bookstore that lets you order books through e-mail (to which you'll have to trust your credit-card number) and a similar "virtual record store.'' both let you search their wares by keyword or by browsing through catalogs. other online businesses include: anyware associates this boston company runs an internet-to-fax gateway that lets you send fax message anywhere in the world via the internet (for a fee, of course). for more information, write sales@awa.com bookstacks unlimited this cleveland bookstore offers a keyword- searchable database of thousands of books for sale. telnet: books.com counterpoint publishing based in cambridge, mass., this company's main internet product is indexed versions of federal journals, including the federal register (a daily compendium of government contracts, proposed regulations and the like). internet users can browse through recent copies, but complete access will run several thousand dollars a year. use gopher to connect to enews.com and select "counterpoint publishing" dialog the national database company can be reached through telnet at dialog.com to log on, however, you will have first had to set up a dialog account. dow jones news a wire service run by the information company retrieval that owns the wall street journal. available via telnet at djnr.dowjones.com as with dialog, you need an account to log on. infinity link browse book, music, software, video-cassette and laser-disk catalogs through this system based in malvern, penn. use gopher to connect to columbia.ilc.com log on as: cas the internet company sort of a service bureau, this company, based in cambridge, mass., is working with several publishers on internet-related products. its electronic newsstand offers snippets and special subscription rates to a number of national magazines, from the new republic to the new yorker. use gopher to connect to enews.com marketbase you can try the classified-ads system developed by this company in santa barbara, calif., by gopher to connect to mb.com o'reilly and associates best known for its "nutshell" books on unix, o'reilly runs three internet services. the gopher server, at ora.com provides information about the company and its books. it posts similar information in the biz.oreilly.announce usenet newsgroup. its global network navigator, accessible through the world-wide web, is a sort of online magazine that lets users browse through interesting services and catalogs. . fyi the com-priv mailing list is the place to discuss issues surrounding the commercialization and the privatization of the internet. to subscribe (or un-subscribe), send an e-mail request to com-priv- request@psi.com. mary cronin's book, "doing business on the internet" ( , van nostrand reinhold), takes a more in-depth look at the subject. kent state university in ohio maintains a repository of "business sources on the net." use gopher to connect to refmac.kent.edu. chapter : conclusion -- the end? the revolution is just beginning. new communications systems and digital technologies have already meant dramatic changes in the way we live. think of what is already routine that would have been considered impossible just ten years ago. you can browse through the holdings of your local library -- or of libraries halfway around the world -- do your banking and see if your neighbor has gone bankrupt, all through a computer and modem. imploding costs coupled with exploding power are bringing ever more powerful computer and digital systems to ever growing numbers of people. the net, with its rapidly expanding collection of databases and other information sources, is no longer limited to the industrialized nations of the west; today the web extends from siberia to zimbabwe. the cost of computers and modems used to plug into the net, meanwhile, continue to plummet, making them ever more affordable. cyberspace has become a vital part of millions of people's daily lives. people form relationships online, they fall in love, they get married, all because of initial contacts in cyberspace, that ephemeral ``place'' that transcends national and state boundaries. business deals are transacted entirely in ascii. political and social movements begin online, coordinated by people who could be thousands of miles apart. yet this is only the beginning. we live in an age of communication, yet the various media we use to talk to one another remain largely separate systems. one day, however, your telephone, tv, fax machine and personal computer will be replaced by a single ``information processor'' linked to the worldwide net by strands of optical fiber. beyond databases and file libraries, power will be at your fingertips. linked to thousands, even millions of like-minded people, you'll be able to participate in social and political movements across the country and around the world. how does this happen? in part, it will come about through new technologies. high-definition television will require the development of inexpensive computers that can process as much information as today's workstations. telephone and cable companies will cooperate, or in some cases compete, to bring those fiber-optic cables into your home. the clinton administration, arguably the first led by people who know how to use not only computer networks but computers, is pushing for creation of a series of "information superhighways" comparable in scope to the interstate highway system of the s (one of whose champions in the senate has a son elected vice president in ). right now, we are in the network equivalent of the early s, just before the creation of that massive highway network. sure, there are plenty of interesting things out there, but you have to meander along two-lane roads, and have a good map, to get to them. creation of this new net will require more than just high-speed channels and routing equipment; it will require a new communications paradigm: the net as information utility. the net remains a somewhat complicated and mysterious place. to get something out of the net today, you have to spend a fair amount of time with a net veteran or a manual like this. you have to learn such arcana as the vagaries of the unix cd command. contrast this with the telephone, which now also provides access to large amounts of information through push buttons, or a computer network such as prodigy, which one navigates through simple commands and mouse clicks. internet system administrators have begun to realize that not all people want to learn the intricacies of unix, and that that fact does not make them bad people. we are already seeing the development of simple interfaces that will put the net's power to use by millions of people. you can already see their influence in the menus of gophers and the world-wide web, which require no complex computing skills but which open the gates to thousands of information resources. mail programs and text editors such as pico and pine promise much of the power of older programs such as emacs at a fraction of the complexity. some software engineers are taking this even further, by creating graphical interfaces that will let somebody navigate the internet just by clicking on the screen with a mouse or by calling up an easy text editor, sort of the way one can now navigate a macintosh computer -- or a commercial online service such as prodigy. then there are the internet services themselves. for every database now available through the internet, there are probably three or four that are not. government agencies are only now beginning to connect their storehouses of information to the net. several commercial vendors, from database services to booksellers, have made their services available through the net. few people now use one of the net's more interesting applications. a standard known as mime lets one send audio and graphics files in a message. imagine opening your e-mail one day to hear your granddaughter's first words, or a "photo" of your friend's new house. eventually, this standard could allow for distribution of even small video displays over the net. all of this will require vast new amounts of net power, to handle both the millions of new people who will jump onto the net and the new applications they want. replicating a moving image on a computer screen alone takes a phenomenal amount of computer bits, and computing power to arrange them. all of this combines into a national information infrastructure able to move billions of bits of information in one second -- the kind of power needed to hook information "hoses" into every business and house. as these "superhighways" grow, so will the "on ramps," for a high- speed road does you little good if you can't get to it. the costs of modems seem to fall as fast as those of computers. high-speed modems ( baud and up) are becoming increasingly affordable. at baud, you can download a satellite weather image of north america in less than two minutes, a file that, with a slower modem could take up to minutes to download. eventually, homes could be connected directly to a national digital network. most long-distance phone traffic is already carried in digital form, through high-volume optical fibers. phone companies are ever so slowly working to extend these fibers the "final mile" to the home. the electronic frontier foundation is working to ensure these links are affordable. beyond the technical questions are increasingly thorny social, political and economic issues. who is to have access to these services, and at what cost? if we live in an information age, are we laying the seeds for a new information under class, unable to compete with those fortunate enough to have the money and skills needed to manipulate new communications channels? who, in fact, decides who has access to what? as more companies realize the potential profits to be made in the new information infrastructure, what happens to such systems as usenet, possibly the world's first successful anarchistic system, where everybody can say whatever they want? what are the laws of the electronic frontier? when national and state boundaries lose their meaning in cyberspace, the question might even be: who is the law? what if a practice that is legal in one country is "committed" in another country where it is illegal, over a computer network that crosses through a third country? who goes after computer crackers? what role will you play in the revolution? appendix a: the lingo like any community, the net has developed its own language. what follows is a glossary of some of the more common phrases you'll likely run into. but it's only a small subset of net.speak. you an find a more complete listing in "the new hacker's dictionary," compiled by eric raymond (mit press). raymond's work is based on an online reference known as "the jargon file," which you can get through anonymous ftp from ftp.gnu.mit.ai.mit as jarg .txt.gz in the pub/gnu directory (see chapter for information on how to un-compress a .gz file). ascii has two meanings. ascii is a universal computer code for english letters and characters. computers store all information as binary numbers. in ascii, the letter "a" is stored as , whether the computer is made by ibm, apple or commodore. ascii also refers to a method, or protocol, for copying files from one computer to another over a network, in which neither computer checks for any errors that might have been caused by static or other problems. ansi computers use several different methods for deciding how to put information on your screen and how your keyboard interacts with the screen. ansi is one of these "terminal emulation" methods. although most popular on pc-based bulletin-board systems, it can also be found on some net sites. to use it properly, you will first have to turn it on, or enable it, in your communications software. arpanet a predecessor of the internet. started in with funds from the defense department's advanced projects research agency. backbone a high-speed network that connects several powerful computers. in the u.s., the backbone of the internet is often considered the nsfnet, a government funded link between a handful of supercomputer sites across the country. baud the speed at which modems transfer data. one baud is roughly equal to one bit per second. it takes eight bits to make up one letter or character. modems rarely transfer data at exactly the same speed as their listed baud rate because of static or computer problems. more expensive modems use systems, such as microcom network protocol (mnp), which can correct for these errors or which "compress" data to speed up transmission. bitnet another, academically oriented, international computer network, which uses a different set of computer instructions to move data. it is easily accessible to internet users through e-mail, and provides a large number of conferences and databases. its name comes from "because it's time." " bounce what your e-mail does when it cannot get to its recipient -- it bounces back to you -- unless it goes off into the ether, never to be found again. command line on unix host systems, this is where you tell the machine what you want it to do, by entering commands. communications a program that tells a modem how to work. software daemon an otherwise harmless unix program that normally works out of sight of the user. on the internet, you'll most likely encounter it only when your e-mail is not delivered to your recipient -- you'll get back your original message plus an ugly message from a "mailer daemon. distribution a way to limit where your usenet postings go. handy for such things as "for sale" messages or discussions of regional politics. domain the last part of an internet address, such as "news.com." dot when you want to impress the net veterans you meet at parties, say "dot" instead of "period," for example: "my address is john at site dot domain dot com." dot file a file on a unix public-access system that alters the way you or your messages interact with that system. for example, your .login file contains various parameters for such things as the text editor you get when you send a message. when you do an ls command, these files do not appear in the directory listing; do ls -a to list them. down when a public-access site runs into technical trouble, and you can no longer gain access to it, it's down. download copy a file from a host system to your computer. there are several different methods, or protocols, for downloading files, most of which periodically check the file as it is being copied to ensure no information is inadvertently destroyed or damaged during the process. some, such as xmodem, only let you download one file at a time. others, such as batch-ymodem and zmodem, let you type in the names of several files at once, which are then automatically downloaded. emacs a standard unix text editor preferred by unix types that beginners tend to hate. e-mail electronic mail -- a way to send a private message to somebody else on the net. used as both noun and verb. emoticon see smiley. f f face to face. when you actually meet those people you been corresponding with/flaming. faq frequently asked questions. a compilation of answers to these. many usenet newsgroups have these files, which are posted once a month or so for beginners. film at one reaction to an overwrought argument: "imminent death of the net predicted. film at ." finger an internet program that lets you get some bit of information about another user, provided they have first created a .plan file. flame online yelling and/or ranting directed at somebody else. often results in flame wars, which occasionally turn into holy wars (see). followup a usenet posting that is a response to an earlier message. foo/foobar a sort of online algebraic place holder, for example: "if you want to know when another site is run by a for- profit company, look for an address in the form of foo@foobar.com." fortune cookie an inane/witty/profund comment that can be found around the net. freeware software that doesn't cost anything. ftp file-transfer protocol. a system for transferring files across the net. get a life what to say to somebody who has, perhaps, been spending a wee bit too much time in front of a computer. gif graphic interchange format. a format developed in the mid- s by compuserve for use in photo-quality graphics images. now commonly used everywhere online. gnu gnu's not unix. a project of the free software foundation to write a free version of the unix operating system. hacker on the net, unlike among the general public, this is not a bad person; it is simply somebody who enjoys stretching hardware and software to their limits, seeing just what they can get their computers to do. what many people call hackers, net.denizens refer to as crackers. handshake two modems trying to connect first do this to agree on how to transfer data. hang when a modem fails to hang up. holy war arguments that involve certain basic tenets of faith, about which one cannot disagree without setting one of these off. for example: ibm pcs are inherently superior to macintoshes. host system a public-access site; provides net access to people outside the research and government community. imho in my humble opinion. internet a worldwide system for linking smaller computer networks together. networks connected through the internet use a particular set of communications standards to communicate, known as tcp/ip. killfile a file that lets you filter usenet postings to some extent, by excluding messages on certain topics or from certain people. log on/log in connect to a host system or public-access site. log off disconnect from a host system. lurk read messages in a usenet newsgroup without ever saying anything. mailing list essentially a conference in which messages are delivered right to your mailbox, instead of to a usenet newsgroup. you get on these by sending a message to a specific e- mail address, which is often that of a computer that automates the process. motss members of the same sex. gays and lesbians online. originally an acronym used in the federal census. net.god one who has been online since the beginning, who knows all and who has done it all. net.personality somebody sufficiently opinionated/flaky/with plenty of time on his hands to regularly post in dozens of different usenet newsgroups, whose presence is known to thousands of people. net.police derogatory term for those who would impose their standards on other users of the net. often used in vigorous flame wars (in which it occasionally mutates to net.nazis). netiquette a set of common-sense guidelines for not annoying others. network a communications system that links two or more computers. it can be as simple as a cable strung between two computers a few feet apart or as complex as hundreds of thousands of computers around the world linked through fiber optic cables, phone lines and satellites. newbie somebody new to the net. sometimes used derogatorily by net.veterans who have forgotten that, they, too, were once newbies who did not innately know the answer to everything. "clueless newbie" is always derogatory. newsgroup a usenet conference. nic network information center. as close as an internet- style network gets to a hub; it's usually where you'll find information about that particular network. nsa line eater the more aware/paranoid net users believe that the national security agency has a super-powerful computer assigned to reading everything posted on the net. they will jokingly (?) refer to this line eater in their postings. goes back to the early days of the net when the bottom lines of messages would sometimes disappear for no apparent reason. nsf national science foundation. funds the nsfnet, a high-speed network that once formed the backbone of the internet in the u.s. offline when your computer is not connected to a host system or the net, you are offline. online when your computer is connected to an online service, bulletin-board system or public-access site. ping a program that can trace the route a message takes from your site to another site. .plan file a file that lists anything you want others on the net to know about you. you place it in your home directory on your public-access site. then, anybody who fingers (see) you, will get to see this file. post to compose a message for a usenet newsgroup and then send it out for others to see. postmaster the person to contact at a particular site to ask for information about the site or complain about one of his/her user's behavior. protocol the method used to transfer a file between a host system and your computer. there are several types, such as kermit, ymodem and zmodem. prompt when the host system asks you to do something and waits for you to respond. for example, if you see "login:" it means type your user name. readme files files found on ftp sites that explain what is in a given ftp directory or which provide other useful information (such as how to use ftp). real soon now a vague term used to describe when something will actually happen. rfc request for comments. a series of documents that describe various technical aspects of the internet. rotfl rolling on the floor laughing. how to respond to a particularly funny comment. rot a simple way to encode bad jokes, movie reviews that give away the ending, pornography, etc. essentially, each letter in a message is replace by the letter spaces away from it in the alphabet. there are online decoders to read these; nn and rn have them built in. rtfm read the, uh, you know, manual. often used in flames against people who ask computer-related questions that could be easily answered with a few minutes with a manual. more politely: rtm. screen capture a part of your communications software that opens a file on your computer and saves to it whatever scrolls past on the screen while connected to a host system. server a computer that can distribute information or files automatically in response to specifically worded e-mail requests. shareware software that is freely available on the net. if you like and use the software, you should send in the fee requested by the author, whose name and address will be found in a file distributed with the software. .sig file sometimes, .signature file. a file that, when placed in your home directory on your public-access site, will automatically be appended to every usenet posting you write. .sig quote a profound/witty/quizzical/whatever quote that you include in your .sig file. signal-to-noise the amount of useful information to be found in a given ratio usenet newsgroup. often used derogatorily, for example: "the signal-to-noise ratio in this newsgroup is pretty low." simtel the white sands missile range used to maintain a giant collection of free and low-cost software of all kinds, which was "mirrored" to numerous other ftp sites on the net. in the fall of , the air force decided it had better things to do than maintain a free software library and shut it down. but you'll still see references to the collection, known as simtel , around the net. smiley a way to describe emotion online. look at this with your head tilted to the left :-). there are scores of these smileys, from grumpy to quizzical. snail mail mail that comes through a slot in your front door or a box mounted outside your house. sysadmin the system administrator; the person who runs a host system or public-access site. sysop a system operator. somebody who runs a bulletin-board system. tanstaafl there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. tcp/ip transmission control protocol/internet protocol. the particular system for transferring information over a computer network that is at the heart of the internet. telnet a program that lets you connect to other computers on the internet. terminal there are several methods for determining how your emulation keystrokes and screen interact with a public-access site's operating system. most communications programs offer a choice of "emulations" that let you mimic the keyboard that would normally be attached directly to the host-system computer. uucp unix-to-unix copy. a method for transferring usenet postings and e-mail that requires far fewer net resources than tcp/ip, but which can result in considerably slower transfer times. upload copy a file from your computer to a host system. user name on most host systems, the first time you connect you are asked to supply a one-word user name. this can be any combination of letters and numbers. vt another terminal-emulation system. supported by many communications program, it is the most common one in use on the net. vt is a newer version. appendix b: general information about the electronic frontier foundation the electronic frontier foundation (eff) is a membership organization that was founded in july of to ensure that the principles embodied in the constitution and the bill of rights are protected as new communications technologies emerge. from the beginning, eff has worked to shape our nation's communications infrastructure and the policies that govern it in order to maintain and enhance first amendment, privacy and other democratic values. we believe that our overriding public goal must be the creation of electronic democracy, so our work focuses on the establishment of: o new laws that protect citizens' basic constitutional rights as they use new communications technologies, o a policy of common carriage requirements for all network providers so that all speech, no matter how controversial, will be carried without discrimination, o a national public network where voice, data and video services are accessible to all citizens on an equitable and affordable basis, and o a diversity of communities that enable all citizens to have a voice in the information age. join us! i wish to become a member of the electronic frontier foundation. i enclose: $__________ regular membership -- $ $__________ student membership -- $ special contribution i wish to make a tax-deductible donation in the amount of $__________ to further support the activities of eff and to broaden participation in the organization. documents available in hard copy form the following documents are available free of charge from the electronic frontier foundation. please indicate any of the documents you wish to receive. ___ open platform proposal - eff's proposal for a national telecommunications infrastructure. pages. july, ___ an analysis of the fbi digital telephony proposal - response of eff-organized coalition to the fbi's digital telephony proposal of fall, . pages. september, . ___ building the open road: the nren and the national public network - a discussion of the national research and education network as a prototype for a national public network. pages. may, . ___ innovative services delivered now: isdn applications at home, school, the workplace and beyond - a compilation of isdn applications currently in use. pages. january, . ___ decrypting the puzzle palace - john perry barlow's argument for strong encryption and the need for an end to u.s. policies preventing its development and use. pages. may, . ___ crime and puzzlement - john perry barlow's piece on the founding of the electronic frontier foundation and the world of hackers, crackers and those accused of computer crimes. pages. june, . ___ networks & policy - a quarterly newsletter detailing eff's activities and achievements. your contact information: name: __________________________________________________________ organization: ____________________________________________________ address: ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ phone: (____) _______________ fax: (____) _______________ (optional) e-mail address: ___________________________________________________ payment method ___ enclosed is a check payable to the electronic frontier foundation. ___ please charge my: ___ mastercard ___ visa ___ american express card number: ___________________________________________ expiration date: _________________________________________ signature: ______________________________________________ privacy policy eff occasionally shares our mailing list with other organizations promoting similar goals. however, we respect an individual's right to privacy and will not distribute your name without explicit permission. ___ i grant permission for the eff to distribute my name and contact information to organizations sharing similar goals. print out and mail to: membership coordinator electronic frontier foundation g street, n.w. suite east washington, dc / - voice / - fax the electronic frontier foundation is a nonprofit, (c)( ) organization supported by contributions from individual members, corporations and private foundations. donations are tax-deductible. a brief history of the internet the bright side: the dark side by michael hart with max fuller (c) , released on march th, chapter preface the internet conquers space, time, and mass production... michael hart called it neomass production [tm] in ... and published the u.s. declaration of independence on the and no one was listening...or were they? ???careful!!!! if the governments, universities or colleges of the world wanted people to be educated, they certainly could have a copy of things like the declaration of independence where everyone could get an electronic copy. after all, it has been over years since the internet began as government funded projects among our universities, and only years since the declaration was posted, followed by the bill of rights, constitution, the bible, shakespeare, etc. why do more people get their electronic books from others than these institutions when they spend a trillion dollar budget every year pretending their goal is some universal form of education. this is the story of the bright side and dark side of the internet. . .bright side first. the facts: the internet is a primitive version of the "star trek communicator," the "star trek transporter," and, also a primitive version of the "star trek replicator." communicator the internet "let's" you talk to anyone on the earth, as long as they, too, are on the internet. transporter the internet "let's" you transport anything you would be able to get into your computer to any netter. replicator the internet "let's" you replicate anything anyone is able to get into their computer, from "the mona lisa" to "the klein bottle" if you use the right "printer," and the library never closes, the books are always on the shelves, never checked out, lost, in for binding, and there is never an overdue fine because you never, ever, have to take them back. the bright side and the dark side for the first time in the entire history of the earth, we have the ability for everyone to get copies of everything as long as it can be digitized and communicated to all of the people on the earth, via computers [and the devices a person might need to make a physical, rather than virtual copy of whatever it might be. . . think about what you have just read for a moment, please, everything for everyone. . . as long as the information superhighway is not taken over by the information rich and denied access to others other than for a fee they may not be able to pay, and shouldn't have to pay. . .since the information rich have had rides for free for the first years of the internet.] from to , most of the traffic on the information superhighway was generated by individuals who did not pay tolls to get on the ramps to the information superhighway . . .in fact, all of the early users were paid to get on, except one. . .they were paid. . .by you! michael hart may have been the first person who got on as a private individual, not paid by any of the nodes, or the internet/arpanet system, for his work; but who at the time of this publication might have given away billion worth of etexts in return for his free network access. [i.e. mr. hart was the first "normal" person to have this access to the internet, a first non-computer-professional for social responsibility; "we should provide information to all persons, without delay. . .simply because we can!" just like climbing mount everest or going into space, and this is so much cheaper and less dangerous. [for those of you considering asking that his accesses be revoked, he has received permission from ccso management, previously cso as indicated in his email address, for the posting of this document and has also received permission from several other colleges and/or universities, at which he has computer accounts and/or is affiliated.] in the beginning, all the messages on the net were either hardware or software crash messages, people looking for a helping hand in keeping their mainframes up and running-- and that was about it for the first - years of cyber- space. . .cyber-space. . .mostly just space. . .there was nothing really in it for anyone, but mainframe operators, programmers, and a few computer consultants who worked in multi-state regions because there weren't enough computer installations in any single state, not even california or illinois, to keep a computer consultant in business. the bright side mr. hart had a vision in that the greatest purpose a computer network would ever provide would be the storage, transmission, and copying of the library of information a whole planet of human beings would generate. these ideas were remarkably ahead of their time, as attested to by an independent plans of study degree in the subject of human machine interfaces from the university of illinois, . this degree, and the publications of the first few etexts [electronic texts] on the internet, began the process the internet now knows as project gutenberg, which has caught fire and spread to all areas of the internet, and spawned several generations of "information providers," as we now have come to call them. it is hard to log in to the internet without finding many references to project gutenberg and information providers these days, but you might be surprised just how much of a plethora of information stored on the internet is only on line for limited distribution even though the information is actually in the public domain and has been paid for in money paid by your taxes, and by grants, which supposedly are given for the betterments of the human race, not just a favored few at the very top % of the information rich. many of you have seen the publicity announcements of such grants in the news media, and an information professional sees them all the time. you may have seen grants totalling one billion dollars to create "electronic libraries;" what you haven't seen is a single "electronic book" released into the public domain, in any form for you to use, from any one of these. the dark side why don't you see huge electronic libraries available for download from the internet? why are the most famous universities in the world working on electronic libraries and you can't read the books? if it costs $ , to create an electronic book through a government or foundation grant, then $ , , , funds for electronic libraries should easily create a , , volume electronic library in no time at all. after all, if someone paid you $ , to type, scan or to otherwise get a public domain book onto the internet, you could do that in no time at all, and so could one million other people, and they could probably do it in a week, if they tried really hard, maybe in a month if they only did it in their spare time. for $ , per book, i am sure a few people would be turning out a book a week for as long as it took to get all million books into electronic text. there has been perhaps one billion dollars granted for an electronic library in a variety of places, manners, types and all other diversities; if the cost is one thousand of those dollars to create a single electronic book, then we should have one million books online for everyone to use. how has this process been stopped? anyone who wants to stop this process for a public domain library of information is probably suffering from several of the seven deadly sins: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, greed, envy, and sloth. merriam webster third international unabridged dictionary [above: greed = gluttony, and moved back one place] [below: my simple descriptions of the seven deadly sins] . pride: i have one and you don't. . covetousness: mine is worth more if you don't have a copy or something similar. i want yours. i want the one you have, even if i already have one or many. . lust: i have to have it. . anger: i will hurt you to ensure that i have it, and and to ensure that you do not have one. . envy: i hate that you have one. . greed: there is no end to how much i want, or to how little i want you to have in comparison. . sloth: i am opposed to you moving up the ladder: it means that i will have to move up the ladder, to keep my position of lordship over you. if i have twice as much as you do, and you gain a rung, that means i can only regain my previous lordship by moving up two; it is far easier to knock you back a rung, or to prevent you from climbing at all. destruction is easier than construction. this becomes even more obvious for the person who has a goal of being or times further up the ladder of success. . .given the old, and hopefully obsolete, or soon to be obsolete, definitions of success. "if i worked like a fiend all my life to ensure i had a thousand dollars for every dollar you had, and then someone came along and wanted to give everyone $ , then i would be forced to work like a fiend again, to get another million dollars to retain my position." think about it: someone spends a lifetime achieving, creating, or otherwise investing their life, building a talent, an idea, or a physical manifestation of the life they have led. . .the destruction of this is far easier than the construction. . .just as the building of a house is much more difficult, requires training, discipline, knowledge of the laws of physics to get a temperature and light balance suitable for latitudes, etc., etc., etc. but nearly anyone can burn down a building, or a pile of books without a fraction of this kind of training. people are used to lording it over others by building and writing certain items that reflect their lordship over themselves, their environments, and, last/least, over other people. if they were not engaged in power over themselves [self-discipline, education, etc,] or over their environments [food, clothing and shelter], then they have only other people to have control over and that is the problem. they don't want other people to have it easier than they did. "if _i_ did it with the hard ways and tools of the past, then _you_ would threaten me if you use some easier ways and tools the present has to offer, and _i_ don't want to learn the new tools, since i have invested my whole life to the mastery of the old tools." i have literally met very highly placed souls in the system of higher education who have told me they will quit the system on the day they have to use email because it removes the control they used to have over physical meetings, phone calls and the paper mails. it is just too obvious if a big wig is not answering your email, since email programs can actually tell you the second it was delivered and also the second the person "opened" it. this is why some people fear the new internet: other people fear it not because they lose the kind of lord position that comes with ownership; rather they fear, in a similar manner, they will lose the control which they have used to achieve their position of lordship, such as one kind of professor mentioned below. *****as hart's dos prompt sometimes states:***** "money is how people with no talent keep score!" "control is how others with no money keep score!" these seven deadly sins, while named by various names and by most civilizations, have nonetheless often been actual laws; in that certain people were required, by law, to be victims of the rest of their populations in that a person might be legally denied ownership of any property, due to racism or sexism, or denied the right to a contract, even legally denied the ability to read and write, not just an assortment of rights to vote, contract and own property-- there have even been laws that forbade any but the "upper crust" to wear certain types of clothing, a "statement of fashion" of a slightly different order than we see today, but with similar ends. you might want to look up laws that once divided this and other countries by making it illegal to teach any persons of certain races or genders reading, writing, arithmetic, and others of the ways human beings learn to have a power over their environments. power over oneself is the first kind of power...if you do not control yourself, you will find difficulty in control of anything. power over the environment is the second kind of power... if you do not control food, clothing and shelter, you are going to have a hard time controlling anything else. power over other human being is the third kind of power-- described above in the seven deadly sins, a third raters' kind of power. those who cannot control anything else... must, by definition, have others control things for them. if they don't want to depend on the voluntary cooperation of others, then they must find some way to control them. we are now seeing the efforts by those who couldn't build the internet to control it, and the million people who are on it; people from the goverment to big business, who feel "freedom is slavery" or at least dangerous; and, who feel the internet is the "next commercial frontier" where customers are all ready to be inundated with advertising, more cheaply than with junkmail. fortunately some of the other internet pioneers have developed ways of preventing this sort of thing from happening but i am sure we aren't far from lawsuits by the cash rich and information rich, complaining that they can't get their junkemail into "my" emailbox. we will probably all be forced to join into an assortment of "protectives" in which we subscribe to such "killbots" as are required to let in the mail we want and keep out the junkemail. these same sorts of protectives were forming a century or so before the internet, in a similar response to the hard monopolistic pricing policies of the railroads which went transcontinental just years before this internet did. i suggest you look up grange in your encyclopedias, where one of them says: "the national grange is the popular name of the order of the patrons of husbandry, the oldest general farm organization in the united states. . .formed largely through the efforts of oliver hudson kelley, a minnesota farmer who was deeply affected by the poverty and isolation of the farmers he saw will inspecting farm areas in the south for the u.s. department of agriculture in . in the 's the grange was prominent in the broader granger movement, which campaigned against extortionate charges by monopolistic railroads and warehouses and helped bring about laws regulating these charges. . . . although challenged, the constitutionality of such laws was upheld by the u.s. supreme court in munn v. illinois ( ). [ grolier electronic enyclcopedia] *** the internet conquers space, time and mass production the internet is a primitive version of the "star trek communicator," the "star trek transporter," and, also a primitive version of the "star trek replicator." the internet "let's" you talk to anyone on the earth, as long as they, too, are on the internet. the internet "let's" you transport anything you would be able to get into your computer to any netter. the internet "let's" you replicate anything anyone is able to get into their computer, from "the mona lisa" to "the klein bottle" if you use the right "printer." don't forget the "sneakernet" is part of the internet and let's you get information to or from those who do not have direct internet connections. sneakernet was a term developed to describe the concept of sending a file to someone nearby the person you wanted, and the person would then put on his/her sneakers and run the disk down the street for you. from my experience, it was incredibly obvious that sneakernet traversed from east to west and west to east around the world before the internet did, as i received letters from the east and west as the project gutenberg alice in wonderland etext circled the globe long before the internet did. this is very important to know if you consider that a possible future development might keep you from using the internet for this, due to socio-political motions to turn the internet into a "world wide mall" [wwm] a term coined specifically to describe that moneymaking philosophy that says "even if it has been given away, free of charge, to % of the users for years, our goal is to make sure we change it from an information superhighway to an information supertollway. i said "let's" you do the star trek communicator, and transporter, and replicator functions because it will soon be obvious that those "information rich" who had free access to the internet for so long want to do an internet monopoly thing to ensure that what was free, to the information rich, will no longer be free for a class of the information poor. this is serious business, and if you consider that it would cost the million netters about $ per month to "subscribe" to the information rich version of the internet, that means one thousand million dollars per month going into the hands of the information rich at the expense of the information poor; we would shortly be up to our virtual ears in a monopoly that would be on the order of the one recently broken up in a major anti-trust and anti-monopoly actions against the hand of the telephone company. hopefully, if we see it coming we can prevent it now, but it will take far more power than _i_ have. people will tell you "no one can own the internet!"-- but the fact is that while you may own your computer, you do not "own the internet" any more than owning my own telephones or pbx exchanges means i own telephone networks that belong to the telephone companies. the corporations that own the physical wires and cabling, they are the ones who own the internet, and right now that system is being sold to the telephone companies, and your "rights" to the information superhighway are being sold with them. the goal of giving , books to everyone on earth, which we at project gutenberg have been trying to do, virtually since the start of the internet, is in huge danger of becoming just another tool for those we are becoming enslaved by on the internet, and these books might never get into the high schools: much less the middle schools and grade schools because the trillion dollars we spend on educations with the rise and fall of every congress of the united states isn't meant to educate, it is meant for something else. after all-- if a trillion dollars were really being spent on this process of education every two years, should literacy rates have plummeted to % and college level testing scores fallen for many straight years? [oh yes, i heard yesterday's report the tests were up for the first time in decades. . .but what i did not! hear was any reference to the fact that the score was "inflated" not only by the "normal" free points a person gets for just being able to sign their names-- but by an additional points for math, verbal.] [written february th, ] this kind of "grade inflation" has been going on in a similar, though less official manner, in our schools, for decades. there are schools in which the averages indicate more "a"s are given out than all other grade points combined, not just more "a"s than "b"s or "b"s than "c"s. some of the most importanted studies were never published, even though they were tax funded. watch out, the term "grade inflation" is "politically incorrect" to such a degree that it does not appear a single time in any of the encyclopedias i have tried, although it does appear in my random house unabridged and college dictionaries, but not the merriam-webster ninth new college dictionary, american heritage or in any other references i have searched. please tell me if you find it in any. "the awarding of higher grades than students deserve either to maintain a school's academic reputation or as a result of diminished teacher expectations." [ - ] i can personally tell you this was a huge concern in - when the average grade at some colleges in question had already passed the point mentioned just above, yielding averages including all undergraduate courses, including the grades of "flunk-outs," still higher than a "b" which means more "a"s were given a whole undergraduate student body than "b"s and "c"s. [actually it means worse than that, but point made.] so, we reached the point at which large numbers of a nation's high school graduates couldn't even read or fill out a minimum wage job application form, while, on paper, we were doing better than ever, excepting, thank god, the fact that testing scores showed there was something incredibly wrong, and businesses would notice they were having to interview more people for a job before they could find someone to fill it. this is what happens when we separate a country into the "information rich" and the "information poor." don't let it happen to the entire world. for the first time in all history, we have the chance to ensure that every person can put huge amounts of "public domain" and other information into computers that should be as inexpensive as calculators in a few more years. i would like to ensure these people actually have material to put in those computers when they get them. example: some shakespeare professors believe that the way to be a great shakespeare professor is to know something about a shakespeare play or poem that no one else knows. therefore they never tell anyone, and that knowledge can quite possibly die with them if it is never published in a wide manner. example: damascus steel was famous, for hundreds of years, but the knowledge of how to make this steel was so narrowly known that all those who knew that technique died without passing it on, and it was a truly long time before computer simulations finally managed to recreate damascus steel after all those centuries when a person had to buy an antique to get any. some other shakespeare professors believe that the way a person should act to be a great shakespeare professor is to teach as many people as possible about shakespeare in as complete a manner as they want to learn. the internet is balancing on this same dichotomy now.... do we want unlimited distribution... or do we want to continue with limited distribution? the french have just given us one of the great examples: a month or so ago [i am writing this in early february.] they found a cave containing the oldest known paintings, twice as old as any previously discovered, and after the initial month of photographing them in secret, placed an electronic set of photographs on the internet for all of us to have. . .all! this is in great contradistinction to the way things had been done around the time i was born, when the "dead sea scrolls" were discovered, and none of you ever saw them, or any real description of them, until a few years ago-- in case you are wondering when, i was born in ; this is being published on my th birthday when i officially become "old." [as a mathematician, i don't cheat, and i admit that if you divide a year lifespan into equals, you only get years to be young, years to be middle aged, and years to be old. . .after that you have the odds beaten. if you divide the us into young and old, a person has to be considered "old" at , since is the median age [meaning half the people are younger than , and half the people are older. the median internet age? . median web age . some predictions indicate these will decrease until the median internet age is . who will rule the internet? will it be the internet aristocrats... or an internet everyman? the difference is whether the teacher or scholar lording it over others is our example, or the teacher or scholar who teaches as well and as many as possible. we say our people should have and must have universal education yet with test scores and literacy rates in a tailspin it can obvious that we have anything but a widest universalness of primary and secondary education program in mind. not to leave out college education, which has been known for the graduation of people who were totally illiterate. for the first time we actually have an opportunity for a whole world's population to share not only air or water, but also to share the world of ideas, of art or of music and other sounds. . .anything that can be digitized. do you remember what the first protohumans did in " " [the movie by stanley kubrick and arthur c. clark] ? they chased their neighbors away from the water hole. will let the thought police chase us away from this huge watering hole, just so they can charge us admission, for something our tax dollars have already paid for? the internet conquers space, time and mass production... think of the time and effort people save simply by being able to consult a dictionary, an encyclopedia, thesaurus or other reference book, a newspaper or magazine library of vast proportions, or a library of a thousand books of the greatest works of all history without even having to get up and go to the bookcase. think of the simple increase in education just because a person can and will look up more information, judgements become sharper and more informed.... unless someone believes that good judgement, an informed population, and their effects are their enemies, it is a difficult stretch to understand why certain institutions and people want to limit this flow of information. yet a great number of our institutions, and even some of the people who run them, are against this kind of easily available information...they either want to control it-- or they want to maintain their "leadership" in fields of endeavor by making sure we "have to do it the hard way," simply because they did it the hard way. there is no longer any reason to "do it the hard way" as you will see below, and on the internet. end of the preface to "a brief history of the internet." chapter introduction michael hart is trying to change human nature. he says human nature is all that is stopping the internet from saving the world. the internet, he says, is a primitive combination of star trek communicators, transporters and replicators; and can and will bring nearly everything to nearly everyone. "i type in shakespeare and everyone, everywhere, and from now until the end of history as we know it--everyone will have a copy instantaneously, on request. not only books, but the pictures, paintings, music. . .anything that will be digitized. . .which will eventually include it all. a few years ago i wrote some articles about -d replication [stereographic lithography] in which i told of processes, in use today, that videotaped and played back fastforward on a vcr, look just like something appearing in star trek replicators. last month i saw an article about a stove a person could program from anyhere on the internet. . .you could literally `fax someone a pizza' or other meals, the `faxing a pizza' being a standard joke among internetters for years, describing one way to tell when the future can be said to have arrived." for a billion or so people who own or borrow computers it might be said "the future is now" because they can get at project gutenberg electronic library items, including shakespeare, beethoven, and neil armstrong landing on the moon in the same year the internet was born. this is item # , and we hope it will save the internet, and the world. . .and not be a futile, quixotic effort. let's face it, a country with an adult illiteracy rate of % is not nearly as likely to develop a cure for aids as a country with an adult literacy rate of %. however, michael hart says the internet has changed a lot in the last year, and not in the direction that will take the project gutenberg etexts into the homes of the % of the adult population of the united states that is said to be functionally illiterate by the us report on adult literacy. he has been trying to ensure that there is not going to be an "information rich" and "information poor," as a result of a feudal dark ages approach to this coming "age of information". . .he has been trying since , a virtual "first citizen" of the internet since he might be the first person on the internet who was not paid to work on the internet/arpanet or its member computers. flashback in either case, he was probably one of the first on a fledgling net and certainly the first to post information of a general nature for others on the net to download; it was the united states' declaration of independence. this was followed by the u.s. bill of rights, and then a whole etext of the u.s. constitution, etc. you might consider, just for the ten minutes the first two might require, the reading of the first two of these documents that were put on the internet starting years ago: and maybe reading the beginning of the third. the people who provided his internet account thought this whole concept was nuts, but the files didn't take a whole lot of space, and the th anniversary of the revolution [of the united states against england] was coming up, and parchment replicas of all the revolution's documents were found nearly everywhere at the time. the idea of putting the complete works of shakespeare, the bible, the q'uran, and more on the net was still pure science fiction to any but mr. hart at the time. for the first years of this project, the only responses received were of the order of "you want to put shakespeare on a computer!? you must be nuts!" and that's where it stayed until the "great growth spurt" hit the internet in - . all of a sudden, the internet hit "critical mass" and there were enough people to start a conversation on nearly any subject, including, of all things, electronic books, and, for the first time, project gutenberg received a message saying the etext for everyone concept was a good idea. that watershed event caused a ripple effect. with others finally interested in etext, a "mass marketing approach," and such it was, was finally appropriate, and the release of alice in wonderland and peter pan signalled beginnings of a widespread production and consumption of etexts. in appendix a you will find a listing of these , in order of their release. volunteers began popping up, right on schedule, to assist in the creation or distribution of what project gutenberg hoped would be , items by the end of , only just years after the first etext was posted on the net. flash forward today there are about volunteers at project gutenberg and they are spread all over the globe, from people doing their favorite book then never being heard from again, to phd's, department heads, vice-presidents, and lawyers who do reams of copyright research, and some who have done in excess of etexts pretty much by themselves; appreciate is too small a word for how michael feel about these, and tears would be the only appropriate gesture. there are approximately million computers today, with the traditional % of them being on the internet, and the traditional ratio of about users per internet node has continued, too, as there are about million people on a vast series of internet gateways. ratios like these have been a virtual constant through internet development. if there is only an average of . people on each of m computers, that is a billion people, just in . there will probably be a billion computers in the world by when project gutenberg hopes to have , items online. if only % of those computers contain the average etexts from project gutenberg that will mean project gutenberg's goal of giving away one trillion etexts will be completed at that time, not counting that more than one person will be able to use any of these copies. if the average would still be . people per computer, then only % of all the computers would be required to have reached one trillion. [ , etexts to , , people equals one trillion] hart's dream as adequately expressed by "grolier's" cdrom electronic encyclopedia has been his signature block with permission, for years, but this idea is now threatened by those who feel threatened by unlimited distribution: ===================================================== | the trend of library policy is clearly toward | the ideal of making all information available | without delay to all people. | |the software toolworks illustrated encyclopedia (tm) |(c) , grolier electronic publishing, inc. ============================================= michael s. hart, professor of electronic text executive director of project gutenberg etext illinois benedictine college, lisle, il no official connection to u of illinois--uiuc hart@uiucvmd.bitnet and hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu internet user number [approximately] [tm] break down the bars of ignorance & illiteracy on the carnegie libraries' th anniversary! human nature such as it is, has presented a great deal of resistance to the free distribution of anything, even air and water, over the millennia. hart hopes the third millennium a.d. can be different. but it will require an evolution in human nature and even perhaps a revolution in human nature. so far, the history of humankind has been a history of an ideal of monopoly: one tribe gets the lever, or a wheel, or copper, iron or steel, and uses it to command, control or otherwise lord it over another tribe. when there is a big surplus, trade routes begin to open up, civilizations begin to expand, and good times are had by all. when the huge surplus is not present, the first three estates lord it over the rest in virtually the same manner as historic figures have done through the ages: "i have got this and you don't." [nyah nyah naa naa naa!] *** *** now that ownership of the basic library of human thoughts is potentially available to every human being on earth--i have been watching the various attempts to keep this from actually being available to everyone on the planet: this is what i have seen: . ridicule those who would prefer to think their worlds would be destroyed by infinite availability of books such as: alice in wonderland, peter pan, aesop's fables or the complete works of shakespeare, milton or others, have ridiculed the efforts of those who would give them to all free of charge by arguing about whether it should be: "to be or not to be" or "to be [,] or not to be" or "to be [;] or not to be"/"to be [:] or not to be" or whatever; and that whatever their choices are, for this earthshaking matter, that no other choice should be possible to anyone else. my choice of editions is final because _i_ have a scholarly opinion. a. my response has been to refuse to discuss: "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin," [or many other matters of similar importance]. i know this was once considered of utmost importance, but in a country where half the adults could not even read shakespeare if it were given to them, i feel the general literacy and literary requirements overtake a decision such as theirs. if they honestly wanted the best version of shakespeare [in their estimations] to be the default version on the internet, they wouldn't have refused to create just such an edition, wouldn't have shot down my suggested plan to help them make it . . .for so many years. . .nor, when they finally did agree, they wouldn't have let an offer from a largest wannabee etext provider to provide them with discount prices, and undermine their resolve to create a super quality public domain edition of shakespeare. it was an incredible commentary on the educational system in that the shakespeare edition we finally did use for a standard internet etext was donated by a commercial-- yes--commercial vendor, who sells it for a living. in fact, i must state for the record, that education, as an institution, has had very little to do with the creation and distribution of public domain etexts for the public, and that contributions by the commercial, capitalistic corporations has been the primary force, by a large margin, that funds project gutenberg. the volunteers we have come exclusively from smaller, less renowned institutions of education, without any, not one that i can think of, from any of the major or near major educational institutions of the world. it would appear that those seven deadly sins listed a few paragraphs previously have gone a long way to the proof of the saying that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." power certainly accrues to those who covet it and the proof of the pudding is that all of the powerful club we have approached have refused to assist in the very new concept of truly universal education. members of those top educational institutions managed to subscribe to our free newsletter often enough, but not one of them ever volunteered to do a book or even to donate a dollar for what they have received: even send in lists of errors they say they have noticed. not one. [there is a word for the act of complaining about something without [literally] lifting a finger] the entire body of freely available etexts has been a product of the "little people." . cost inflation when etexts were first coming it, estimates were sent around the internet that it took $ , to create an etexts, and that therefore it would take $ , , to create the proposed project gutenberg library. $ , , was supposedly donated to create etexts, by one famous foundation, duly reported by the media, but these etexts have not found their way into hands, or minds, of the public, nor will they very soon i am afraid, though i would love to be put out of business [so to say] by the act of these institutions' release of the thousands of etexts some of them already have, and that others have been talking about for years. my response was, has been, and will be, simply to get the etexts out there, on time, and with no budget. a simple proof that the problem does not exist. if the team of project gutenberg volunteers can produce this number of etexts and provide it to the entire world's computerized population, then the zillions of dollars you hear being donated to the creations of electronic libraries by various government and private donations should be used to keep the information superhighway a free and productive place for all, not just for those % of computers that have already found a home there. . graphics and markup versus plain vanilla ascii the one thing you will see in common with all of such graphics and markup proposals is limited distribution as a way of life. the purpose of each one of these is and always has been to keep knowledge in the hands of the few and away from the minds of the many. i predict that in the not-too-distant-future that all materials will either be circulating on the internet, or that they will be jealously guarded by owners whom i described with the seven deadly sins. if there is ever such a thing as the "tri-corder," of star trek fame, i am sure there simultaneously has to be developed a "safe" in which those who don't want a whole population to have what they have will "lock" a valuable object to ensure its uniqueness; the concept of which i am speaking is illustrated by this story: "a butler announces a delivery, by very distinguished members of a very famous auction house. the master-- for he is master--beckons him to his study desk where the butler deposits his silver tray, containing a big triangular stamp, then turns to go. what some of these projects with tens of millions for their "electronic libraries" are doing to ensure this is for them and not for everyone is to prepare etexts in a manner in which no normal person would either be willing or able to read them. shakespeare's hamlet is a tiny file in pvascii, small enough for half a dozen copies to fit [uncompressed!] on a $. floppy disk that fits in your pocket. but, if it is preserved as a picture of each page, then it will take so much space that it would be difficult to carry around even a single copy in that pocket unless it were on a floppy sized optical disk, and even then i don't think it would fit. another way to ensure no normal person would read it, to mark it up so blatantly that the human eyes should have difficulty in scansion, stuttering around pages, rather than sliding easily over them; the information contained in this "markup" is deemed crucial by those esoteric scholars who think it is of vital importance that a coffee cup stain appears at the lower right of a certain page, and that "act i" be followed by [<act one>] to ensure everyone knows this is actually where this is where an act or scene or whatever starts. you probably would not believe how much money has had the honor of being spent on these kinds of projects a normal person is intentionlly deprived of through the mixture is just plain hiding the files, to making the files so big you can't download them, to making them so weird you wouldn't read them if you got them. the concept of requiring all documents to be formatted in a certain manner such that only a certain program can read them has been proposed more often then you might ever want to imagine, for the twin purposes of profit and limited distribution in a medium which requires a virtue of unlimited distribution to keep it growing. every day i read articles, proposals, proceedings for various conferences that promote limited distribution on the nets. . .simply to raise the prestige or money to keep some small oligarchy in power. this is truly a time of power to the people as people say in the united states. what we have here is a conflict between the concepts that everything should be in limited distribution, and that of the opposing concept of unlimited distribution. if you look over the table of contents on the next pages, you will see that each of these item stresses the greater and greater differences between an history which has been dedicated to the preservation of limited distribution and something so new it has no history longer than years-- *** contents chapter preface chapter introduction saving time and effort the new scholarship chapter general comments plain vanilla ascii versus proprietary markups chapter copyright chapter luddites chapter internet as chandelier [the famous chandelier diatribe of ] chapter the rush to the top chapter those who would be king gopher, www, mosaic, netscape chapter listowners vs list moderators those who would be king, part i chapter lurkers those who would be king, part ii chapter "lurking is good. . .remember. . .lurking is good" those who would be king, part iii the netiquetters chapter tpc, the phone company those who would be king, part iv ****** chapter plain vanilla ascii versus proprietary markups chapter copyright chapter luddites chapter internet as chandelier [the infamous chandelier diatribe of ] [chandel /wp] -------------------original message-------------------------- hart undoubtedly saw academia as a series of dark brown dream shapes, disorganized, nightmarish, each with its set of rules for nearly everything: style of writing, footnoting, limited subject matter, and each with little reference to each other. -------------------------reply---------------------------------- what he wanted to see was knowledge in the form of a chandelier, with each subject area powered by the full intensity of the flow of information, and each sending sparks of light to other areas, which would then incorporate and reflect them to others, a never ending flexion and reflection, an illumination of the mind, soul and heart of wo/mankind as could not be rivalled by a diamond of the brightest and purest clarity. instead, he saw petty feudal tyrants, living in dark poorly lit, poorly heated, well defended castles: living on a limited diet, a diet of old food, stored away for long periods of time, salted or pickled or rotted or fermented. light from the outside isn't allowed in, for with it could come the spears and arrows of life and the purpose of the castle was to keep the noble life in, and all other forms of life out. thus the nobility would continue a program of inbreeding which would inevitably be outclassed by an entirely random reflexion of the world's gene pool. a chandelier sends light in every direction, light of all colors and intensities. no matter where you stand, there are sparkles, some of which are aimed at you, and you alone, some of which are also seen by others: yet, there is no spot of darkness, neither are there spots of overwhelming intensity, as one might expect a sparkling source of lights to give off. instead, the area is an evenly lit paradise, with direct and indirect light for all, and at least a few sparkles for everyone, some of which arrive, pass and stand still as we watch. but the system is designed to eliminate sparkles, reflections or any but the most general lighting. scholars are encouraged to a style and location of writing which guarantee that and one hundredths of the people who read their work will be colleagues, already a part of that inbred nobility of their fields. we are already aware that most of our great innovations are made from leaps from field to field, that the great thinkers apply an item here in this field which was gleaned from that field: thus are created the leaps which create new fields which widen fields of human endeavor in general. yet, our petty nobles, cased away in their casements, encased in their tradition, always reject the founding of these new fields, fearing their own fields can only be dimmed by comparison. this is true, but only by their own self-design. if their field were open to light from the outside, then the new field would be part of their field, but by walling up the space around themselves, a once new and shining group of enterprising revolutionaries could only condemn themselves to awaiting the ravages of time, tarnish and ignorance as they become ignorant of the outside world while the outside world becomes ignorant of them. so, i plead with you, for your sake, my sake, for everyone's, to open windows in your mind, in your field, in your writing and in your thinking; to let illumination both in and out, to come from underneath and from behind the bastions of your defenses, and to embrace the light and the air, to see and to breathe, to be seen and to be breathed by the rest of wo/mankind. let your light reflect and be reflected by the other jewels in a crown of achievement more radiant than anything we have ever had the chance to see or to be before. join the world! [chandel .txt] a re-visitation to the chandelier by michael s. hart every so often i get a note from a scholar with questions and comments about the project gutenberg edition of this or that. most of the time this appears to be either idle speculation-- since there is never any further feedback about passages this or that edition does better in the eye of particular scholars or the feedback is of the "holier than thou" variety in which the scholar claims to have found errors in our edition, which the scholar then refuses to enumerate. as for the first, there can certainly be little interest in a note that appears, even after follow-up queries, of that idle brand of inquiry. as to the second, we are always glad to receive a correction, that is one of the great powers of etext, that corrections be made easily and quickly when compared to paper editions, with the corrections being made available to those who already had the previous editions, at no extra charge. however, when someone is an expert scholar in a field they do have a certain responsibility to have their inquiries be some reasonable variety, with a reasonable input, in order to have a reasonable output. to complain that there is a problem w/o pointing out the problem has a rich and powerful vocabulary i do not feel is appropriate for this occasion. we have put an entirely out-of-proportion cash reward on these errors at one time or another and still have not received any indications a scholar has actually ever found them, which would not be more difficult than finding errors in any other etexts, especially ones not claiming an beginning accuracy of only . %. however, if these corrections were forthcoming, then the . would soon approach . , which is the reference error level referred to several times in the library of congress workshop on electronic text proceedings. on the other hand, just as the project gutenberg's efficiency would drop dramatically if we insisted our first edition of a book were over . % accurate, so too, should efficiency drop dramatically if we were ever to involve ourselves in any type of discussion resembling "how many angels can dance on a pin- head." the fact is, that our editions are not targeted to an audience specifically interested in whether shakespeare would have said: "to be or not to be" "to be, or not to be" "to be; or not to be" "to be: or not to be" "to be--or not to be" this kind of conversation is and should be limited to the few dozen to few hundred scholars who are properly interested. a book designed for access by hundreds of millions cannot spend that amount of time on an issue that is of minimal relevance, at least minimal to . % of the potential readers. however, we do intend to distribute a wide variety of shakespeare, and the contributions of such scholars would be much appreciated, were it ever given, just as we have released several editions of the bible, paradise lost and even aesop's fables. in the end, when we have different editions of shakespeare on line simulateously, this will probably not even be worthy, as it hardly is today, of a footnote. . .i only answer out of respect for the process of creating these editions as soon as possible, to improve the literacy and education of the masses as soon as possible. for those who would prefer to see that literacy and education continue to wallow in the mire, i can only say that a silence on your part creates its just reward. your expertise dies an awful death when it is smothered by hiding your light under a bushel, as someone whom is celebrated today once said: matthew : neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. mark : and he said unto them, is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick? luke : no man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. luke : no man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. chapter the rush to the top chapter those who would be king gopher, www, mosaic, netscape this chapter discusses why urls aren't u, why universal resource locators are not universal when i first tried the experimental gopher sites, i asked the inventors of gopher if their system could be oriented to also support ftp, should a person be more inclined for going after something one already had researched: rather than the "browsing" that was being done so often on those gopher servers. the answer was technically "yes," but realistically "no," in that while gophers could be configured such that every file would be accessible by both gopher and ftp, the real intent of gopher was to bypass ftp and eventually replace it as the primary method of surfing the internet. i tried to explain to them that "surfing" the internet is much more time consuming as well as wasteful of bandwidth [this at a time when all bandwidth was still free, and we were only trying to make things run faster, as opposed to actually saving money. chapter listowners vs list moderators those who would be king, part i chapter lurkers those who would be king, part ii chapter "lurking is good. . .remember. . .lurking is good" those who would be king, part iii the netiquetters "we are surrounded by an insurmountable opportunity." "it is like drinking from a firehose." "be sure to have your messages `netiquette approved.'" these sentiments reflect a portion of the internet who have terrified thoughts and feelings about a wonderful set of opportunties made available by the internet and other networks. they are afraid of too much opportunity and would like to make sure no one else takes advantage of such great opportunities because it will make themselves look and feel very small by comparison. they want to make sure you don't cross the boundaries, simply because they are afraid to cross them. their thinking is sociological rather than logical, as follows: : they are obviously afraid of so much opportunity. : they want to reduce the pressure of so much highly available opportunity. . this is because they are afraid someone else would make good use of this opportunity and leave them a footnote in their own fields as opportunity shifts into hyper-drive and nothing will ever be quite as sedate, staid, prim, proper, stiff and reserved as it was previous in a paper dominated room, full of stuffed shirts and robert's rules of order: which they used to keep you from upsetting apple and ibm carts with more horsepower than they were willing, and able, to use. history is full of examples of those in position of an older variety of power using their power to deny, defy and otherwise stultify anything new, and therefore out of their own immediate forms of control. it is also full of examples of the "powers-that-be" so vaingloriously squashing any potential rival powers in much the same manner as a queen bee stings other queen bees to death before they are even born. in such a manner are the ideas of the new refused in a world dominated by the old. of course what comes to mind is napoleon iii's "salon- des-refuses" in which works of the [now!] greatest and most famous painters in the world finally had a day to have their works shown to the public after years of an autocratic denial by the academic francaise's official salon, originally begun in the louvre, and where great examples of these works hang today, in defiance of the greatest "powers-that-be" that ever were, who failed-- as all such attempts should fail. "the academie francaise (french academy) is the most renouned and oldest of the five learned socities that make up the insititue de france, established by cardinal richelieu. [grolier's electronic encyclopedia] the encyclopedia goes on to state that "`unification, and purification'" were among the prime "`development'" goals. the most famous recounting of cardinal richelieu's attempts to take over france and to remold it in a reflection of his own conservative power structure are detailed in alexandre dumas' three musketeers. please...take time to "read more about it." the encyclopedia article continues on to describe the intense conservatism these institutes maintain even a few centuries later even though at least this "oldest and most powerful" of them, "the salon gradually lost its position as the sole official exibition of french painting," sculpture, etc., which also stood against the eiffel tower, as well as everything else new. just say no when they come to your electronic door, enlisting your support for their views of how to run the internet you can "just say no" and feel no obligation to make their rules of order be your rules of order: . don't bother with their requests for "conservation of bandwidth" because their idea of bandwidth is a sociological "inversion, diversion and perversion" of the term "bandwidth." they would have you believe that a dozen short message files sent through their listservers are a "bandwidth- preserver" rather than one message containing what you had to say all at once. a. this is just so much sociological barnyard matter. they just want to keep you from having your say in an uninterrupted manner. . .it is only this manner in which anyone can be interrupted on the internet and it requires you to interrupt yourself, because they can't do interrupt you themselves: they have to talk you into the cutting your own throat. b. the logical rather than sociological truth is that short messages are % made up of header materials that are not part of the message you are sending-- but rather header and packet identifiers for these messages. thus your series of a dozen messages of the short variety is going to be % wasteful of a bandwidth it uses, in comparison to sending the thoughts you might want to express as one, single, uninterrupted message. *** insert header here here is an example of the kind of header attached to a normal internet message. some very wasteful emailers, netiquetters included, have much longer headers due to their refusal to take the time to delete the addresses when they send the same message to hundreds of people. i have received messages in which the header literally contained hundreds of extra lines beyond this. **header starts below** [margins were shortened. this header contains characters, which would take byte packets, each packet of which has to have its own header normal users never see. a mailer can be set not to show most of the header, but it is all there, and taking up bandwidth.] received: from ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu (ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu [ . . . ]) by mtshasta.snowcrest.net ( . . / . . ) with smtp id faa ; thu, feb : : - message-id: < .faa @ mtshasta.snowcrest.net> received: from ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu by ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu (ibm vm smtp v r ) with bsmtp id ; thu, feb : : est received: from uicbit.uic.edu (nje origin vmmail@pplcats) by ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu (lmail v . a/ . a) with bsmtp id ; wed, feb : : - received: from uicbit.bitnet (nje origin listserv@uicbit) by uicbit.uic.edu (lmail v . a/ . a) with bsmtp id ; wed, feb : : - date: wed, feb : : cst reply-to: project gutenberg email list <gutnberg%uiucvmd.bitnet@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu> sender: project gutenberg email list <gutnberg%uiucvmd.bitnet@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu> from: "michael s. hart" <hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu> subject: march gutenberg etexts to: multiple recipients of list gutnberg <gutnberg%uiucvmd.bitnet@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu> **header ends here** another demonstration of socio-logical argumentation i have a signature block that contains the usual in a name, position, and disclaimer along with information of how long you should wait for a reply to a message, who to contact for further information and it has one line about how long i have been on the internet. it takes up about this much space: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx which is about characters and receives complaints from those who accept signature blocks that look like: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x x x x x x x your message here x x x x x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx which takes over characters because all the blank spaces are real spaces. i have pointed out this discrepancy in logic, but the people readily reply the space they are talking about is in the human mind, and not in the computers. to which _i_ reply "barnyard material!" these people are not out to save "buzzword bandwidth". . . they are out to control you. . .don't let them. "netiquette" is something they have invented to control you! all you have to do is remind them that each individual has a most powerful protection against anything they don't want to see. . .the delete key! you will probably also have to remind them, sometimes in the manner of using a different platform to speak from, if their response is not to post your messages, that: "since everyone has their own delete key, there is no need to delete this for them! chapter tpc, the phone company those who would be king, part iv my apologies for using the united states as an example so many times, but...most of my experience has been in the us. asychnronous availability of information one of the major advantages of electronic information is that you don't have to schedule yourself to match others in their schedules. this is very important. just this very week i have been waiting for a power supply for one of my computers, just because the schedule of the person who has it was not in sync with the schedule of the person picking it up. the waste has been enormous, and trips all the way across an entire town are wasted, while the computer lies unused. the same things happens with libraries and stores of all kinds around the world. how many times have you tried a phone call, a meeting, a purchase, a repair, a return or a variety of other things, and ended up not making these connections? no longer, with things that are available electronically over the nets. you don't have to wait until the door of the library swings open to get that book you want for an urgent piece of research; you don't have to wait until a person is available to send them an instant message; you don't have to wait for the evening news on tv.... this is called asyncronous communication...meaning those schedules don't have to match exactly any more to have a meaningful and quick conversation. a minute here, there or wherever can be saved instead of wasted and the whole communication still travels at near instantaneous speed, without the cost of ten telegrams, ten phone calls, etc. you can be watching television and jump up and put a few minutes into sending, or answering, your email and would not miss anything but the commercials. "commercials" bring to mind another form of asynchronous communication...taping a tv or radio show and watching a show in minutes instead of an hour because you do not have to sit through minute of "not-show" per minutes of show. no only to you not have to be home on thursday night to watch your favorite tv show any more, but those pesky commercials can be edited out, allowing you to see three shows in the time it used to take to watch two. this kind of efficiency can have a huge effect on you or your children. . .unless you want them to see ads per hour on television, or spend hours copying notes from an assortment of library books carried miles from, and back to, the libraries. gone are the piles of x cards past students and scholars have heaped before time in efforts to organize mid-term papers for , , or years of institutionalized education. whole rainforests of trees can be saved, not to mention the billions of hours of an entire population's educated scribbling that should have been spent between the ears instead of between paper and hand, cramping the thought and style of generations upon generations of those of us without photographic memories to take the place of the written word. now we all can have photographic memories, we can quote, with total accuracy, millions of x cards worth of huge encyclopedias of information, all without getting up for any reason other than eating, drinking and stretching. research in this area indicates that % of the time the previous generations spent for research papers was spent traipsing through the halls, stairways and bookstacks of libraries; searching through to books for each of the ones selected for further research; and searching on - pages for each quote worthy of making it into the sacred piles of x cards; then searching the card piles for those fit for the even more sacred sheets of paper a first draft was written on. even counting the fanatical dedication of those who go through several drafts before a presentation draft is finally achieved the researchers agree that % of this kind of work is spent in "hunting and gathering" the information and only % of this time is spent "digesting" the information. if you understand that civilization was based on the new invention called "the plow," which changed the habits of "hunting and gathering" peoples into civilized cities... then you might be able to understand the the changes the computer and computer networks are making to those using them instead of the primitive hunting and gathering jobs we used to spend % of our time on. in mid- th century the united states was over % in an agrarian economy, spending nearly all of its efforts for raising food to feed an empty belly. mid- th century's advances reversed that ratio, so that only % was being used for the belly, % for civilization. the same thing will be said for feeding the mind, if our civilization ever gets around deciding that spending the majority of our research time in a physical, rather than mental, portion of the educational process. think of it this way, if it takes only % as long to do the work to write a research paper, we are likely to get either times as many research papers, or papers which are times as good, or some combination...just like we ended up with times as much food for the body when we turned from hunting and gathering food to agriculture at the beginnings of civilization...then we would excpect a similar transition to a civilization of the future. *** if mankind is defined as the animal who thinks; thinking more and better increases the degree to which we are the human species. decreasing our ability to think is going to decrease our humanity...and yet i am living in what a large number of people define as the prime example of an advanced country...where half the adult population can't read at a functional level. [from the us adult literacy report of ] *** "now that cloning geniuses, along with all other humans, has been outlawed, only outlaws will clone geniuses, and the rest of mankind will be `unarmed' in a battle of the mind between themselves and the geniuses." "have you ever noticed that the only workers in history, all of history; never to have a guild or a union are the inventors who live by the effort of the mind?" we have workers who live by the efforts of their bodies, whether dock workers or professional athletes who have a set of established unions, pay dues, have gone on strike from time to time, and all the related works of unions-- but we have never had a union of those who change worlds from old world to new world**** appendix the growth of the internet date hosts ----- --------- / / / / / / / / / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , / , , / , , / , , / , , / , , / , , / ~ , , [multiply hosts by to get approximate numbers of computers in the world at the time. for instance we should be approaching about million computers in the world at the time of this first edition.] [multiply hosts by to get an approximation of the total number of people. early on, this was probably a smaller multiplier, as there were only people on the uiuc login list at the time: half of these were not logging in on a regular basis. thus my estimate that i was about the th person on the internet as i presume our site was not the first nor the last of the new sites in , so approximating th, plus the already there, we were probably around th or so, though they tell me we were actually earlier, to facilitate transcontinental traffic. sticking with the conservative estimate of th, and with the same numbers of people on each of the other nodes, that would have made me the th user.] television versus education: who is winning? [as if you had to ask] basketball, football, baseball, hockey and golf [live and video games] versus shakespeare, milton, chaucer, verne and hugo you would think that some operation that spends a hundred times more than another would not fear much competition-- especially when the deck is stacked in their favor as the following examples demonstrate: . there is always great battle between macbeth and macduff; macbeth never gets blown out in the first quarter and the author never jacks you up for higher royalties. . shakespeare was designed to be entertaining, so you don't have to change the rules every season to make things more exciting. of course, if you want to, you can always turn romeo and juliet into a story about new york city warfare between street gangs instead of noble families of verona. if the us actually spends a trillion dollars on education every year or two, and major sports franchising spends in the neighborhood of / th of that amount, and the video game businesses spend even less, then why is it that your exposure to michael jordan was a given, and his paychecks were higher than any other college graduate in his class? ten to fifteen year old basketball shoes are nearly all a forgotten item, rotting away in landfills while computers the same age are still available for studying shakespeare more efficiently than any paper copy can ever provide and less expensively. those computers are more than fast enough for the kind of studying most kids do in school, and they cost no more on today's market than a pair of basketball shoes. why is the centuries old blackboard still the default for classrooms around the world, when they cost much more and do much less than computers one tenth their age? why do we have physical olympics and no mental olympics? why do trivia games shows thrive on the market, and shows featuring our brightest students die on the vine and then get relegated to local programming on sunday morning? outfitting a kid with a decade old computer costs no more than outfitting that kid with basketball shows, much less a basketball and a hoop, and the kid doesn't outgrow that computer every year or wear it out, and regulation height of the monitor doesn't change and make all the older ones obsolete just due to some rule change. throwing billions of etexts out there into cyberspace can not guarantee anyone will actually learn to read any more than throwing a billion basketballs out there should be a guarantee that there will be another michael jordan: nor will it guarantee a new einstein, edison, shakespeare, or any other great person. . . . . .but. . .it will increase the odds. someone still has to pick up the books, just as there has to be someone to pick up the basketballs, for both remain dead until someone brings them to life. television, on the other hand, natters on into the night, long after you have fallen asleep. education has all the advantages in competition with ball games and video games, not only those listed above, but a whole world insists on education, forces edcuation, which just might have caused some of the problem. perhaps education has too many advantages. . .so many, in fact, that education has never realized it is competition bound with other messages. a hundred years ago there were no industries vying for an audience of kids, life outside the schoolhouse was boring and there was very little to bring to class to compete in some manner with the teacher, other than a bullfrog. the massive variety of things kids have competing for them is something educational systems have not taken into account and they still rely on the threat of truant officers, not on earning the attention of the students. the competition is not nearly so sound asleep. . . . tv shows spend billions of their dollars figuring out how to get you to stay tuned in for that last few seconds and billions more watching overnight ratings results to check their performances and those of their competitors. when tv ratings go down, the shows are changed, sometimes so drastically you wouldn't recognize them, and are often cancelled altogether, sometimes only two weeks into a new season. i once saw a show featured on one of the morning talk shows to promote that evening's performance, but the show was cancelled during the intervening hours. when school ratings go down, the ratings are changed; the show remains essentially the same, and it is often a best teacher award winner who gets cancelled while more boring teachers go on year after year to bore the children of an assortment of former students. the preservation of errors with the advent of electronic text there is no longer any reason but the seven deadly sins [enumerated above] for a person not to share information. . .except. . .some value added work to make the texts better than what passed into their hands from previous editions. however, with a kind of infinitely reverse logic, most of the scholars dipping their toes into cyberspace, have the espoused idea that no etexts should vary by one character from some exact paper predecessor, and that these etexts, new that they are, should be absolutely identified with a particular paper edition which cannot be improved upon. somehow this reminds me of the dark ages, that years during which no weighty tome of the past could be updated because that would be the same thing as challenging those revered authorities of the golden age of greece, which we all know can never be improved upon. their tomes were copied, over, and over, and over again-- with the inevitable degradation that comes with telephone games [in which you whisper a secret message through ears after ears in a circle, until completely distorted babble returns from the other side]. even xeroxing has this bad result if you do it over and over. therefore scholars developed a habit of searching for any differences between editions, and referring back to older editions to resolve differences, because the more copying the more chances for the addition of errors, comments and other possibly spurious information. this was probably ok for the environment they lived in... but a serious failing caused the dark ages which lasted a very long time by anyone's standards, and served to warn, in a manner we should not ignore, that this should not be the way things should be done in the future. [the most minimized estimates of the length of the period approximate about years from the latest possible date of the fall of the roman empire sometime in the 's ad, to charlemagne in the 's. of course, most believe the fall of the roman empire was much earlier, as the empire, such as it was, was "neither holy, nor roman, nor empire" for a long time before ad and things tended to return to the way they had been before charlemagne after he died with estimates of the end of dark ages ranging as late as the renaissance in the 's. thus the longest estimate would be no more than years from the birth of caesar until the renaissance was truly underway, with a shortest possible estimate being somewhat under years. thus a medium estimate of years would be sure to antagonize both end of the spectrum, and is therefore certainly more accurate than either.] it would appear that the effort to reproduce books with a perfection that refuses the corrections of errors because of a misplaced loyalty to previous editions, looms again, this time over the electronic libraries of the future, in that a significant number of etext creators are insisting on continuing the practices, policies and precepts of the dark ages in that they insist on the following: . copies must be exact, no corrections can be made. . any differences between copies must be decided in an ethic that honors the oldest over the newest. . the authoritative copies must be held in sacred trust in the sepulchres of the oldest institutions, and not let out into the hands of the public. of course, these are totally belied by the facts: . digitial ascii reproductions are exact by nature, and thus no errors can creep in. . any differences that do creep in can be found in just a single second with programs such as comp, diff, cf, and the like. even a change as unnoticeable as blank space added to the end of a sentence or file is found and precisely located without effort. . holding books in sacred trust in this manner does not allow them to do their work. a book that is not read is a book that is dead. books are written for people to read, to hear, to see performed on stage, not so a sort of intellectual gestapo/geheimnis stadt polizei/ home state police could come to power by holding book power in secret. *** on march , , project gutenberg completed its th offering to the internet public library, as many have come to call it. a great number of changes have come to the internet since we got the complete works of shakespeare out as out th publication-- some of them extraordinarily good, some of the of more moderated goodness, and some on the other end of the spectrum probably the most exciting two recent events are the , year old cave paintings discovered in france in january, released for the news media in february, and posted as # on march th with several versions of each painting having been collected, in both .gif and .jpg formats. this is particularly exciting when you realize that the dead sea scrolls were discovered in and that no one outside a select few ever even saw them or pictures of them until just a few were smuggled out on macintosh disks a couple years ago; four decades went by without the public getting any view of them. the french ministry of culture has been very swift in getting an extraordinary event such as this covered by the general media on a worldwide basis only one month after their discovery, and also has taken only a week or two to grant project gutenberg a permit to post these wonderful paintings on the internet. on the other hand, the future of the internet public library may be in serious danger if we do not ensure that information may be continually forthcoming to the public. as many of you know, the project gutenberg etexts are % from the public domain with % reproduced by permission. however, there is a movement to cease the introduction of materials into the public domain in congress [of the united states] which would effectively stop the entry of this kind of information into general internet circulation. years ago the us copyright was established at years according to the speeches of senator orrin hatch, sponsoring one bill, and then extended another , then another , then extended to life of the author plus another years after, and years for that kind of copyright which is created by a corporation. this means that if you took your year old kid to see "the lion king" when it came out, the kid would have to be years old to have lived long enough to have a copy that was not licensed by a commercial venture. the fact that the average person will never reach the age of effectively creates a permanent copyright to deny public access during the expected lifetimes of any of us. however, this is not enough. . .the new bill is designed to kill off any chance that even % of the youngest of us will ever have our own rights to an unlicensed copy of any material produced in our lifetimes because if these bills are passed, our young kid a paragraph above will have to reach the age of to have rights to the materials published today, while the rights of inventors, protected by patent law, will still expire in years. why is it more important that we all can buy public domain legal copies of the latest supersonic toaster less than two decades of production after the original, but it is not as important for us to be well read, well informed and well educated? *** free winnie-the-pooh we hope with your assistance we can mount a successful effort to free winnie-the pooh, imprisoned by various copyright laws since his birth in . at the beginning of project gutenberg, one of our first projects was going to be the children's classic winnie-the-pooh: written in , and therefore up for copyright renewal in , and the copyright renewal would have then expired in , and thus been a perfect candidate for project gutenberg's children's library. however, this was not allowed to happen. instead, the copyright on winnie-the-pooh was extended, for a year total, meaning we would have to wait until for the new copyright term to expire, effectively keeping winnie-the-pooh in jail for another two decades or so. however, two new bills have been introduced into the senate, and the house of representatives of the united states to extend this term of imprisonment yet again, for an additional years. the last copyright extension in the united states was in as i recall. if we extend the copyright years every years we will destroy the very concept of public domain, as we have known it since the beginning of copyright. copyright only began when people other than those extremely rich few who could afford a price of a family farm for every book had their places as the only owners of books destroyed by gutenberg, the inventor of the moveable type printing press. mass availability of books was just something that should not be tolerated. . .therefore the printers' guilds lobbied for a right to decide not only who could print any book but whether the book would be printed at all. this was a very strong monopoly put on an industry that had been a free-for-all since gutenberg. this copyright remained virtually the same length, years, for quite a while, and the first united states copyright was for two year periods, the second automatically given on request. when books once again became too popular at the turn of the last century, and many publishers began selling inexpensive sets of a variety of extensive subjects, the copyrights were doubled again so that the years plus year extension became years with a year extension, which was done around . then, in the last half of this century, books once again were to become too widely spread, this time with the advent of the xerox machine. not only were new laws made to curb copying, but those old laws were extended from that + = years to years, and this was done in or so. now with the advent of truly unlimited distribution available to the world via computer files, books are once again getting to be too widely spread, and further restriction is in the works, this time only years after the last extension, which was for about years. work is already underway for a permanent copyright to keep us from putting "the library of congress" on our disks. i have said for years that by the time computers get as far into the future as they have come from the past, that we will be able to hold all of the library of congress in one hand, but i added, "they probably won't let us do it." let me explain that for a minute; back in project gutenberg bought its first hard drive for about $ dollars, for apple's new personal computer. not counting inflation we can buy drives that will hold , times as much data for the same price. the true cost, counting inflation, would be that our $ would buy closer to , times as much space because our $ from is equivalent to about $ , today, if we get the new "magneto- resistive" drive from ibm. this is not counting zip compression or other compression programs. if you count them, you would get about , times as much data for your money today as in . million bytes = $ in = one copy of shakespeare billion bytes = $ in [inflation has tripled plus] billion bytes . . .with compression programs. this is , copies of the complete shakespeare on one disk, or less then $ per copy. this upsets those who think there should not be unlimited numbers of books in the world, so definition of copyright and consequently the definition of public domain is in danger of being changed, as they have been every time in history that the public got too much information. if the trend listed above continues for only more years, will see drives containing million copies of shakespeare, for the same price as the drive that could only hold one copy thirty years earlier, and the price per copy will be so low that it may take more money to run the calculation to figure the prices than the prices actually are. this is the real reason copyright gets extended, history repeats itself, over and over again, and "those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it." what they want is to ensure you do not study history, so they can do the same things over and over, because that is the easiest way for them to make money. change, especially the kinds that are happening in the computers' world, is what scares them. when changes comes along, they try as hard as they can to keep things the way they were, and nowhere is it more obvious than now. most copyrighted materials are gone, out of print forever, in only five years, maybe % in ten years, in years probably % are out of print, years at that rate is %, years is %, years is % and years would be well over %. . .and that doesn't even take into account the shorter term runs of newspapers, magazines, tv show, movies, records and all those things that most people don't even expect to last more than year in the public eye. the fact is that probably only . % or less of anything published in the s is still in print for the original edition. . .that is only one item out of , , and that estimate is probably quite high. the point is that can our copyright laws support the withholding of , books for that is actually available. . .we don't make our driving laws for the out of , that could be race car drivers, that would be one of the silliest laws on record. we have to make our laws so the law applies well to everyone, not just to make the rich richer-- or in this case the information rich richer. much of this new effort not to let anything out of copyright was made by the music industry, which just had the best year of all, ever, shipping over a billion cd's, tapes, records and videos. why, with all this success, they want to keep copyrights on items that are % out of print. . .is a question worth asking-- the answer is the copyright has always been extended when books, or other forms of information, have become too plentiful; we say we want everyone to be well read and well informed, and then the law makes it more difficult. just look as what has happened for literacy in the united states during the period that a copyright law demanded that nothing become public domain coming up to . . .is keeping hemingway or winnie-the-pooh from becoming parts of the public domain going to improve the us literacy rate? we hope with your assistance we can mount a successful effort to free winnie-the pooh, imprisoned by various copyright laws since his birth in . . .all copyright laws referred to were united states copyright laws in effect at various times winnie-the-pooh has been incarcerated. other countries have different copyright laws, and winnie-the-pooh was written in england, so a variation in the us laws cannot be said to have affects other copyrights. however, the above example is pretty valid for any book that was published in the us during the s or 's. *** ladies and gentlemen. . .start your engines! the race to the information age has begun. it began in a much more quiet manner than the golden spike which joined the two halves of a transcontinental railroad exactly years earlier. . .so much more quietly that we never knew it was happening, and we were all left standing there at the starting gate, gawking at men on the moon. it all happened about years ago, in , but the media never put the word "internet" on the front page of a major newspaper until the wall street journal did it, on october , . . .yet even so, most of you probably never heard or saw the word internet in the media until , with the th anniversay hardly ever mentioned, as the idea was for everyone to think the internet is the newest thing around, and to get us all to buy tickets for $ -$ a month. what is the "first rule of reporting a story?". . .oh yes: follow the money right now there are - million people on the internet-- and if someone could figure out how to make them all pay a $ -$ fee. . .that would be $ million a month or over a billion dollars a year. wow. . .if they can do that to an information superhighway that had been running free of charge since the 's, might be they will figure out how to do it with those interstate superhighways made of concrete, too, most of them have not been running any longer than that. the nsfnet [national science foundation network] was being cussed and discussed by the powers that be in the hopes it could be dismantled at the same time most of us were first hearing about the internet, and none of us would notice it when we were all asked to pay that billion dollars a year, for something that had been as free as the highway systems to the information rich/etite for all those years. let's follow the money some more the first hard drives anyone used on the internet were not very big in terms of how much information they would hold, but they were huge compared to any other hard drives every computer has used for over years. . .they were the size of washing machines, and could not hold information as big as the bible or shakespeare. today, for % of the price you can get , times as much storage space. . . , times as much, if you use a modern compression program when storing your information. the point i am trying to make here is that the price of an electronic storage device has fallen literally closer to than to % of the price it was when the internet started-- and this is scheduled to continue for the next few decades, which means we will all be able to affort drives that will be able to hold the entire library of congress. . . .if it is allowed. but it won't be. there's the rub. the point i am trying to make is that just because we will finally have the box capable of storing the entire library of congress. . .they will make sure we don't get to, ever, for we will be dead by the time anything we see today gets old enough for the copyright to expire. let's follow the money some more just a few months ago, the music industry completed record sales figures for any year in history, moving billion of a combination of cds, tapes, records and music videos, for a staggering $ billion dollars. the response to this success, a few weeks ago, was for the music industry to propose, not a rebate to their customers but just the opposite, an additional years during which the music industry could have a continued monopoly on that music, and. . .purely incidentally. . .this monopoly would also be extended to books, television, movies, video games and everything else that could be copyrighted. i think the only way to understand this is to put it in an elementary perspective such as this: right now, you take your kid to see a movie, any movie the producers are releasing right now. let's say your kid has been alive years, under current law, that kid has to get to years old before s/he can own a copy of that movie-- without the permission of the copyright holder. . .and the average age such kids can be expected to live is less than years. . .thus making the copyright permanent for us or the kids we take to the movies. the same is true for all current copyrighted materials and the music industry is trying to add another years to an already "life sentence". . .and this when their sales have just broken all records in history, if you will pardon the pun. . . . since the founding of the united states when copyrights or patents were proposed by thomas jefferson for years the period was lengthened to years, plus another years-- and most recently to years for corporate copyrights and "life plus years" for individual copyrights. that means that "zen and the art of the internet," written by a year old, who will be expected to live for another years or so, will still be under copyright sentencing a century from now, and will be totally out of date and will be totally useless other than as a historical footnote. if this is the response of an industry that has just had a huge record bashing year of sales, a response not to lower prices but to raise them, then we are doing something in a backwards manner in the case of copyright. when car makers have really good years, or really bad ones for that matter, they work very hard to attract customers, with new innovations, more car for the money, financing on better terms, or whatever, and when they have record years they give their workers huge bonuses, which i am sure most of you have heard about recently, and they also compete in an aggressive manner to keep sales up. copyright and patents are what allow people not to compete in the marketplace, as least for the first decade or two a new item is in the marketplace. . .only now copyrights are being extended to include the entire lifetime, not only of the copyright holder, but of the audience as well. something is wrong. the information age is being ruled by the information rich as surely as the transcontinental railroads were ruled for decades by the robber barons. the information rich had a free ride on the superhighways, about years worth of free ride, and now the information poor want a ride so the information rich are shutting down the free rides and are selling tickets. . .selling tickets to something which until this year was so inexpensive that it it hardly paid to figure out what to charge any person, much less any institution. proofreaders. this file was produced from images generously made available by the bibliotheque nationale de france (bnf/gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. samuel f.b. morse his letters and journals in two volumes volume i [illustration: samuel f.b. morse] samuel f.b. morse his letters and journals edited and supplemented by his son edward lind morse illustrated with reproductions of his paintings and with notes and diagrams bearing on the invention of the telegraph volume i to my wife whose loving interest and apt criticism have been to me of great value i dedicate this work "it is the hour of fate, and those who follow me reach every state mortals desire, and conquer every foe save death. but they who doubt or hesitate-- condemned to failure, penury and woe-- seek me in vain and uselessly implore. i hear them not, and i return no more." ingalls, _opportunity_. preface arthur christopher benson, in the introduction to his studies in biography entitled "the leaves of the tree," says:-- "but when it comes to dealing with men who have played upon the whole a noble part in life, whose vision has been clear and whose heart has been wide, who have not merely followed their own personal ambitions, but have really desired to leave the world better and happier than they found it,--in such cases, indiscriminate praise is not only foolish and untruthful, it is positively harmful and noxious. what one desires to see in the lives of others is some sort of transformation, some evidence of patient struggling with faults, some hint of failings triumphed over, some gain of generosity and endurance and courage. to slur over the faults and failings of the great is not only inartistic: it is also faint-hearted and unjust. it alienates sympathy. it substitutes unreal adoration for wholesome admiration; it afflicts the reader, conscious of frailty and struggle, with a sense of hopeless despair in the presence of anything so supremely high-minded and flawless." the judgment of a son may, perhaps, be biased in favor of a beloved father; he may unconsciously "slur over the faults and failings," and lay emphasis only on the virtues. in selecting and putting together the letters, diaries, etc., of my father, samuel f.b. morse, i have tried to avoid that fault; my desire has been to present a true portrait of the man, with both lights and shadows duly emphasized; but i can say with perfect truth that i have found but little to deplore. he was human, he had his faults, and he made mistakes. while honestly differing from him on certain questions, i am yet convinced that, in all his beliefs, he was absolutely sincere, and the deeper i have delved into his correspondence, the more i have been impressed by the true nobility and greatness of the man. his fame is now secure, but, like all great men, he made enemies who pursued him with their calumnies even after his death; and others, perfectly honest and sincere, have questioned his right to be called the inventor of the telegraph. i have tried to give credit where credit is due with regard to certain points in the invention, but i have also given the documentary evidence, which i am confident will prove that he never claimed more than was his right. for many years after his invention was a proved success, almost to the day of his death, he was compelled to fight for his rights; but he was a good fighter, a skilled controversialist, and he has won out in the end. he was born and brought up in a deeply religious atmosphere, in a faith which seems to us of the present day as narrow; but, as will appear from his correspondence, he was perfectly sincere in his beliefs, and unfalteringly held himself to be an instrument divinely appointed to bestow a great blessing upon humanity. it seems not to be generally known that he was an artist of great ability, that for more than half his life he devoted himself to painting, and that he is ranked with the best of our earlier painters. in my selection of letters to be published i have tried to place much emphasis on this phase of his career, a most interesting one. i have found so many letters, diaries, and sketch-books of those earlier years, never before published, that seemed to me of great human interest, that i have ventured to let a large number of these documents chronicle the history of morse the artist. many of the letters here published have already appeared in mr. s. irenaeus prime's biography of morse, but others are now printed for the first time, and i have omitted many which mr. prime included. i must acknowledge my indebtedness to mr. prime for the possibility of filling in certain gaps in the correspondence; and for much interesting material not now otherwise obtainable. before the telegraph had demonstrated its practical utility, its inventor was subjected to ridicule most galling to a sensitive nature, and after it was a proved success he was vilified by the enemies he was obliged to make on account of his own probity, and by the unscrupulous men who tried to rob him of the fruits of his genius; but in this he was only paying the penalty of greatness, and, as the perspective of time enables us to render a more impartial verdict, his character will be found to emerge triumphant. his versatility and abounding vitality were astounding. he would have been an eminent man in his day had he never invented the telegraph; but it is of absorbing interest, in following his career, to note how he was forced to give up one ambition after another, to suffer blow after blow which would have overwhelmed a man of less indomitable perseverance, until all his great energies were impelled into the one channel which ultimately led to undying fame. in every great achievement in the history of progress one man must stand preëminent, one name must symbolize to future generations the thing accomplished, whether it be the founding of an empire, the discovery of a new world, or the invention of a new and useful art; and this one man must be so endowed by nature as to be capable of carrying to a successful issue the great enterprise, be it what it may. he must, in short, be a man of destiny. that he should call to his assistance other men, that he should legitimately make use of the labors of others, in no wise detracts from his claims to greatness. it is futile to say that without this one or that one the enterprise would have been a failure; that without his officers and his men the general could not have waged a successful campaign. we must, in every great accomplishment which has influenced the history of the world, search out the master mind to whom, under heaven, the epoch-making result is due, and him must we crown with the laurel wreath. of nothing is this more true than of invention, for i venture to assert that no great invention has ever sprung minerva-like from the brain of one man. it has been the culmination of the discoveries, the researches, yes, and the failures, of others, until the time was ripe and the destined man appeared. while due credit and all honor must be given to the other laborers in the field, the niche in the temple of fame must be reserved for the one man whose genius has combined all the known elements and added the connecting link to produce the great result. as an invention the telegraph was truly epoch-making. it came at a time when steam navigation on land and water was yet in its infancy, and it is idle to speculate on the slow progress which this would have made had it not been for the assistance of the electric spark. the science of electricity itself was but an academic curiosity, and it was not until the telegraph had demonstrated that this mysterious force could be harnessed to the use of man, that other men of genius arose to extend its usefulness in other directions; and this, in turn, stimulated invention in many other fields, and the end is not yet. it has been necessary, in selecting letters, to omit many fully as interesting as those which have been included; barely to touch on subjects of research, or of political and religious discussion, which are worthy of being pursued further, and to omit some subjects entirely. very probably another more experienced hand would have made a better selection, but my aim has been to give, through characteristic letters and contemporary opinions, an accurate portrait of the man, and a succinct history of his life and labors. if i have succeeded in throwing a new light on some points which are still the subject of discussion, if i have been able to call attention to any facts which until now have been overlooked or unknown, i shall be satisfied. if i have been compelled to use very plain language with regard to some of those who were his open or secret enemies, or who have been posthumously glorified by others, i have done so with regret. such as it is i send the book forth in the hope that it may add to the knowledge and appreciation of the character of one of the world's great men, and that it may, perhaps, be an inspiration to others who are striving, against great odds, to benefit their fellow men, or to those who are championing the cause of justice and truth. edward lind morse. contents chapter i april . --september , birth of s.f.b. morse.--his parents.--letters of dr. belknap and rev. mr. wells.--phillips, andover.--first letter.--letter from his father.-- religious letter from morse to his brothers.--letters from the mother to her sons.--morse enters yale.--his journey there.--difficulty in keeping up with his class.--letter of warning from his mother.--letters of jedediah morse to bishop of london and lindley murray.--morse becomes more studious.--bill of expenses.--longing to travel and interest in electricity.--philadelphia and new york.--graduates from college.--wishes to accompany allston to england, but submits to parents' desires chapter ii october , --august , enters bookshop as clerk.--devotes leisure to painting.--leaves shop.-- letter to his brothers on appointments at yale.--letters from joseph p. rossiter.--morse's first love affair.--paints "landing of the pilgrims." --prepares to sail with allstons for england.--letters of introduction from his father.--disagreeable stage-ride to new york.--sails on the lydia.--prosperous voyage.--liverpool.--trip to london.--observations on people and customs.--frequently cheated.--critical time in england.--dr. lettsom.--sheridan's verse.--longing for a telegraph.--a ghost chapter iii august , --december , benjamin west.--george iii.--morse begins his studies.--introduced to west.--enthusiasms.--smuggling and lotteries.--english appreciation of art.--copley.--friendliness of west.--elgin marbles.--cries of london.-- custom in knocking.--witnesses balloon ascension.--crowds.--vauxhall gardens.--st. bartholomew's fair.--efforts to be economical.--signs of war.--mails delayed.--admitted to royal academy.--disturbances, riots, and murders chapter iv january , --august , political opinions.--charles r. leslie's reminiscences of morse, allston, king, and coleridge.--c.b. king's letter.--sidney e. morse's letter.-- benjamin west's kindness.--sir william beechy.--murders, robberies, etc. --morse and leslie paint each other's portraits.--the elder morse's financial difficulties.--he deprecates the war talk.--the son differs from his father.--the prince regent.--orders in council.--estimate of west.--alarming state of affairs in england.--assassination of perceval, prime minister.--execution of assassin.--morse's love for his art.-- stephen van rensselaer.--leslie the friend and allston the master.-- afternoon tea.--the elder morse well known in europe.--lord castlereagh. --the queen's drawing-room.--kemble and mrs. siddons.--zachary macaulay. --warning letter from his parents.--war declared.--morse approves.-- gratitude to his parents, and to allston chapter v september , --june , models the "dying hercules."--dreams of greatness.--again expresses gratitude to his parents.--begins painting of "dying hercules."--letter from jeremiah evarts.--morse upholds righteousness of the war.--henry thornton.--political discussions.--gilbert stuart.--william wilberforce. --james wynne's reminiscences of morse, coleridge, leslie, allston, and dr. abernethy.--letters from his mother and brother.--letters from friends on the state of the fine arts in america.--"the dying hercules" exhibited at the royal academy.--expenses of painting.--receives adelphi gold medal for statuette of hercules.--mr. dunlap's reminiscences.-- critics praise "dying hercules" chapter vi july , --april , letter from the father on economies and political views.--morse deprecates lack of spirit in new england and rejoices at wellington's victories.--allston's poems.--morse coat-of-arms.--letter of joseph hillhouse.--letter of exhortation from his mother.--morse wishes to stay longer in europe.--amused at mother's political views.--the father sends more money for a longer stay.--sidney exalts poetry above painting.--his mother warns him against infidels and actors.--bristol.--optimism.-- letter on infidels and his own religious observances.--future of american art.--he is in good health, but thin.--letter from mr. visger.--benjamin burritt, american prisoner.--efforts in his behalf unsuccessful.--capture of paris by the allies.--again expresses gratitude to parents.--writes a play for charles mathews.--not produced chapter vii may , --october , allston writes encouragingly to the parents.--morse unwilling to be mere portrait-painter.--ambitious to stand at the head of his profession.-- desires patronage, from wealthy friends.--delay in the mails.--account of _entrée_ of louis xviii into london.--the prince regent.--indignation at acts of english.--his parents relieved at hearing from him after seven months' silence.--no hope of patronage from america.--his brothers.-- account of fêtes.--emperor alexander, king of prussia, blücher, platoff. --wishes to go to paris.--letter from m. van schaick about battle of lake erie.--disgusted with england chapter viii november , --april , does not go to paris.--letter of admonition from his mother.--his parents' early economies.--letter from leslie.--letter from rev. s.f. jarvis on politics.--the mother tells of the economies of another young american, dr. parkman.--the son resents constant exhortations to economize, and tells of meanness of dr. parkman.--writes of his own economies and industry.--disgusted with bristol.--prophesies peace between england and america.--estimates of morse's character by dr. romeyn and mr. van schaick.--the father regrets reproof of son for political views.--death of mrs. allston.--disagreeable experience in bristol.--more economies.--napoleon i.--peace chapter ix may , --october , decides to return home in the fall.--hopes to return to europe in a year.--ambitions.--paints "judgment of jupiter."--not allowed to compete for premium.--mr. russell's portrait.--reproof of his parents.--battle of waterloo.--wilberforce.--painting of "dying hercules" received by parents.--much admired.--sails for home.--dreadful voyage lasting fifty-eight days.--extracts from his journal.--home at last chapter x april , --october , very little success at home.--portrait of ex-president john adams.-- letter to allston on sale of his "dead man restored to life."--also apologizes for hasty temper.--reassured by allston.--humorous letter from leslie.--goes to new hampshire to paint portraits.--concord.--meets miss lucretia walker.--letters to his parents concerning her.--his parents reply.--engaged to miss walker.--his parents approve.--many portraits painted.--miss walker's parents consent.--success in portsmouth.--morse and his brother invent a pump.--highly endorsed by president day and eli whitney.--miss walker visits charlestown.--morse's religious convictions.--more success in new hampshire.--winter in charleston, south carolina.--john a. alston.--success.--returns north.--letter from his uncle dr. finley.--marriage chapter xi november , --march , morse and his wife go to charleston, south carolina.--hospitably entertained and many portraits painted.--congratulates allston on his election to the royal academy.--receives commission to paint president monroe.--trouble in the parish at charlestown.--morse urges his parents to leave and come to charleston.--letters of john a. alston.--return to the north.--birth of his first child.--dr. morse and his family decide to move to new haven.--morse goes to washington.--paints the president under difficulties.--hospitalities.--death of his grandfather.--dr. morse appointed indian commissioner.--marriage of morse's future mother-in-law. --charleston again.--continued success.--letters to mrs. ball.-- liberality of mr. alston.--spends the summer in new haven.--returns to charleston, but meets with poor success.--assists in founding academy of arts, which has but a short life.--goes north again chapter xii may , --december , accompanies mr. silliman to the berkshires.--takes his wife and daughter to concord, new hampshire.--writes to his wife from boston about a bonnet.--goes to washington, d.c.--paints large picture of house of representatives.--artistic but not financial success.--donates five hundred dollars to yale.--letter from mr. de forest.--new york "observer."--discouragements.--first son born.--invents marble-carving machine.--goes to albany.--stephen van rensselaer.--slight encouragement in albany.--longing for a home.--goes to new york.--portrait of chancellor kent.--appointed attaché to legation to mexico.--high hopes.-- takes affecting leave of his family.--rough journey to washington.-- expedition to mexico indefinitely postponed.--returns north.--settles in new york.--fairly prosperous chapter xiii january , --november , success in new york.--chosen to paint portrait of lafayette.--hope of a permanent home with his family.--meets lafayette in washington.--mutually attracted.--attends president's levee.--begins portrait of lafayette.-- death of his wife.--crushed by the news.--his attachment to her.--epitaph composed by benjamin silliman.--bravely takes up his work again.-- finishes portrait of lafayette.--describes it in letter of a later date. --sonnet on death of lafayette's dog.--rents a house in canal street, new york.--one of the founders of national academy of design.--tactful resolutions on organization.--first thirty members.--morse elected first president.--reëlected every year until .--again made president in .--lectures on art.--popularity chapter xiv january , --december , success of his lectures, the first of the kind in the united states.-- difficulties of his position as leader.--still longing for a home.--very busy but in good health.--death of his father.--estimates of dr. morse.-- letters to his mother.--wishes to go to europe again.--delivers address at first anniversary of national academy of design.--professor dana lectures on electricity.--morse's study of the subject.--moves to no. murray street.--too busy to visit his family.--death of his mother.--a remarkable woman.--goes to central new york.--a serious accident.--moral reflections.--prepares to go to europe.--letter of john a. dix.--sails for liverpool.--rough voyage.--liverpool chapter xv december . --february , journey from liverpool to london by coach.--neatness of the cottages.-- trentham hall.--stratford-on-avon.--oxford.--london.--charles r. leslie. --samuel rogers.--seated with academicians at royal academy lecture.-- washington irving.--turner.--leaves london for dover.--canterbury cathedral.--detained at dover by bad weather.--incident of a former visit.--channel steamer.--boulogne-sur-mer.--first impressions of france.--paris.--the louvre.--lafayette.--cold in paris.--continental sunday.--leaves paris for marseilles in diligence.--intense cold.-- dijon.--french funeral.--lyons.--the hôtel dieu.--avignon.--catholic church services.--marseilles.--toulon.--the navy yard and the galley slaves.--disagreeable experience at an inn.--the riviera.--genoa chapter xvi february , --june , serra palace in genoa.--starts for rome.--rain in the mountains.--a brigand.--carrara.--first mention of a railroad.--pisa.--the leaning tower.--rome at last.--begins copying at once.--notebooks.--ceremonies at the vatican.--pope pius viii.--academy of st. luke's.--st. peter's.-- chiesa nuova.--painting at the vatican.--beggar monks.--_festa_ of the annunciation.--soirée at palazzo sunbaldi.--passion sunday.--horace vernet.--lying in state of a cardinal.--_miserere_ at sistine chapel.-- holy thursday at st. peter's.--third cardinal dies.--meets thorwaldsen at signor persianis's.--manners of english, french, and americans.--landi's pictures.--funeral of a young girl.--trip to tivoli, subiaco.--procession of the _corpus domini_.--disagreeable experience chapter xvii june , --february , working hard.--trip to genzano.--lake of nemi.--beggars.--curious festival of flowers at genzano.--night on the campagna.--heat in rome.-- illumination of st. peter's.--st. peter's day.--vaults of the church.-- feebleness of pope.--morse and companions visit naples, capri, and amalfi.--charms of amalfi.--terrible accident.--flippancy at funerals.-- campo santo at naples.--gruesome conditions.--ubiquity of beggars.-- convent of st. martino.--masterpiece of spagnoletto.--returns to rome.-- paints portrait of thorwaldsen.--presented to him in after years by john taylor johnston.--given to king of denmark.--reflections on the social evil and the theatre.--death of the pope.--an assassination.--the honorable mr. spencer and catholicism.--election of pope gregory xvi chapter xviii february , --september , historic events witnessed by morse.--rumors of revolution.--danger to foreigners.--coronation of the new pope.--pleasant experience.--cause of the revolution a mystery.--bloody plot foiled.--plans to leave for florence.--sends casts, etc., to national academy of design.--leaves rome.--dangers of the journey.--florence.--description of meeting prince radziwill in coliseum at rome.--copies portraits of rubens and titian in florence.--leaves florence for venice.--disagreeable voyage on the po.-- venice, beautiful but smelly.--copies tintoret's "miracle of the slave." --thunderstorms.--reflections on the fourth of july.--leaves venice.-- recoaro.--milan.--reflections on catholicism and art.--como and maggiore.--the rigi.--schaffhausen and heidelberg.--evades the quarantine on french border.--thrilling experience.--paris chapter xix september , --september , takes rooms with horatio greenough.--political talk with lafayette.-- riots in paris.--letters from greenough.--bunker hill monument.--letters from fenimore cooper.--cooper's portrait by verboeckhoven.--european criticisms.--reminiscences of r.w. habersham.--hints of an electric telegraph.--not remembered by morse.--early experiments in photography.-- painting of the louvre.--cholera in paris.--baron von humboldt.--morse presides at fourth of july dinner.--proposes toast to lafayette.--letter to new york "observer" on fenimore cooper.--also on pride in american citizenship.--works with lafayette in behalf of poles.--letter from lafayette.--morse visits london before sailing for home.--sits to leslie for head of sterne chapter xx morse's life almost equally divided into two periods, artistic and scientific.--estimate of his artistic ability by daniel huntington.--also by samuel isham.--his character as revealed by his letters, notes, etc.-- end of volume i illustrations morse the artist (photogravure) painted by himself in london about . house in which morse was born, in charlestown, mass. rev. jedediah morse and s. f. b. morse--elizabeth ann morse and sidney e. morse from portraits by a mr. sargent, who also painted portraits of the washington family. the dying hercules painted by morse in . letter of morse to his parents, october , . mr. d. c. de forest--mrs. d. c. de forest from paintings by morse now in the gallery of the yale school of the fine arts. lucretia pickering walker, wife or s. f. b. morse, and two children painted by morse. study for portrait of lafayette now in new york public library. elizabeth a. morse painted by morse. jeremiah evarts from a portrait painted by morse and owned by sherman evarts, esq. de witt clinton painted by morse. owned by the metropolitan museum, new york. henry clay painted by morse. owned by the metropolitan museum, new york. susan w. morse. eldest daughter of the artist samuel f.b. morse his letters and journals chapter i april . --september , birth of s.f.b. morse.--his parents.--letters of dr. belknap and rev. mr. wells.--phillips, andover.--first letter.--letter from his father.-- religious letter from morse to his brothers.--letters from the mother to her sons.--morse enters yale.--his journey there.--difficulty in keeping up with his class.--letter of warning from his mother.--letters of jedediah morse to bishop of london and lindley murray.--morse becomes more studious.--bill of expenses.--longing to travel and interest in electricity.--philadelphia and new york.--graduates from college.--wishes to accompany allston to england, but submits to parents' desires. samuel finley breese morse was born in charlestown, massachusetts, on the th day of april, a.d. . he came of good puritan stock, his father, jedediah morse, being a militant clergyman of the congregational church, a fighter for orthodoxy at a time when unitarianism was beginning to undermine the foundations of the old, austere, childlike faith. these battles of the churches seem far away to us of the twentieth century, but they were very real to the warriors of those days, and, while many of the tenets of their faith may seem narrow to us, they were gospel to the godly of that tune, and reverence, obedience, filial piety, and courtesy were the rule and not the exception that they are to-day. jedediah morse was a man of note in his day, known and respected at home and abroad; the friend of general washington and other founders of the republic; the author of the first american geography and gazetteer. his wife, elizabeth ann breese, granddaughter of samuel finley, president of princeton college, was a woman of great strength and yet sweetness of character; adored by her family and friends, a veritable mother in israel. into this serene home atmosphere came young finley morse, the eldest of eleven children, only three of whom survived their infancy. the other two were sidney edwards and richard carey, both eminent men in their day. dr. belknap, of boston, in a letter to a friend in new york says:-- "congratulate the monmouth judge [mr. breese] on the birth of a grandson.... as to the child, i saw him asleep, so can say nothing of his eye or his genius peeing through it. he may have the sagacity of a jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a calvin, or the sublimity of a homer for aught i know. but time will show forth all things." this sounds almost prophetic in the light of future days. [illustration: house in which morse was born, in charlestown, mass.] the following letter from the reverend mr. wells is quaint and characteristic of the times:-- my dear little boy,--as a small testimony of my respect and obligation to your excellent parents and of my love to you, i send you with this six ( ) english guineas. they are pretty playthings enough, and in the country i came from many people are fond of them. your papa will let you look at them and shew them to edward, and then he will take care of them, and, by the time you grow up to be a man, they will under papa's wise management increase to double their present number. with wishing you may never be in want of such playthings and yet never too fond of them, i remain your affectionate friend, wm. wells. medford, july , . young morse was sent away early to boarding-school, as was the custom at that time. he was taken by his father to phillips academy at andover, and i believe he ran away once, being overcome by homesickness before he made up his mind to remain and study hard. the following letter is the first one written by him of which i have any knowledge:-- andover, d august, . dear papa,--i hope you are well i will thank you if you will send me up some quils give my love to mama and nancy and my little brothers pleas to kis them for me and send me up some very good paper to write to you i have as many blackberries as i want i go and pick them myself. samuel finley breese morse your son . this from his father is characteristic of many written to him and to his brothers while they were at school and college:-- charlestown, february , . my dear son,--you do not write me as often as you ought. in your next you must assign some reason for this neglect. possibly i have not received all your letters. nothing will improve you so much in epistolary writing as practice. take great pains with your letters. avoid vulgar phrases. study to have your ideas pertinent and correct and clothe them in an easy and grammatical dress. pay attention to your spelling, pointing, the use of capitals, and to your handwriting. after a little practice these things will become natural and you will thus acquire a habit of writing correctly and well. general washington was a remarkable instance of what i have now recommended to you. his letters are a perfect model for epistolary writers. they are written with great uniformity in respect to the handwriting and disposition of the several parts of the letter. i will show you some of his letters when i have the pleasure of seeing you next vacation, and when i shall expect to find you much improved. your natural disposition, my dear son, renders it proper for me earnestly to recommend to you to _attend to one thing at a time_. it is impossible that you can do two things well at the same time, and i would, therefore, never have you attempt it. never undertake to do what ought not to be done, and then, whatever you undertake, endeavor to do it in the best manner. it is said of de witt, a celebrated statesman in holland, who was torn to pieces in the year , that he did the whole business of the republic and yet had time left to go to assemblies in the evening and sup in company. being asked how he could possibly find time to go through so much business and yet amuse himself in the evenings as he did, he answered there was nothing so easy, for that it was only doing one thing at a time, and never putting off anything till to-morrow that could be done to-day. this steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius, as hurry, bustle, and agitation are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind. i expect you will read this letter over several times that you may retain its contents in your memory, and give me your own opinion on the advice i have given you. if you improve this well, i shall be encouraged to give you more as you may need it. your affectionate parent, j. morse. this was written to a boy ten years old. i wonder if he was really able to assimilate it. i shall pass rapidly over the next few years, for, while there are many letters which make interesting reading, there are so many more of the later years of greater historical value that i must not yield to the temptation to linger. the three brothers were all sent to phillips academy to prepare for yale, from which college their father was also graduated. the following letter from finley to his brothers was written while he was temporarily at home, and shows the deep religious bent of his mind which he kept through life:-- charlestown, march , . my dear brothers,--i now write you again to inform you that mama had a baby, but it was born dead and has just been buried. now you have three brothers and three sisters in heaven and i hope you and i will meet them there at our death. it is uncertain when we shall die, but we ought to be prepared for it, and i hope you and i shall. i read a question in davie's "sermons" the last sunday which was this:-- suppose a bird should take one dust of this earth and carry it away once in a thousand years, and you was to take your choice either to be miserable in that time and happy hereafter, or happy in that time and miserable hereafter, which would you choose? write me an answer to this in your next letter.... i enclose you a little book called the "christian pilgrim." it is for both of you. we are all tolerable well except mama, though she is more comfortable now than she was. we all send a great deal of love to you. i must now bid you adieu. i remain your affectionate brother, s.f.b. morse. i am tempted to include the following extracts from letters of the good mother of the three boys as characteristic of the times and people:-- charlestown, june , . my dear son,--we have the pleasure of a letter from you which has gratified us very much. it is the only intelligence we have had from you since mr. brown left you. i began to think that something was the matter with respect to your health that occasioned your long silence.... we are very desirous, my son, that you should excel in everything that will make you truly happy and useful to your fellow men. in particular by no means neglect your duty to your heavenly father. remember, what has been said with great truth, that he can never be faithful to others who is not so to his god and his conscience. i wish you constantly to keep in mind the first question and answer in that excellent form of sound words, the assembly catechism, viz:--"what is the chief end of man?" the answer you will readily recollect is "to glorify god and enjoy him forever." let it be evident, my dear son, that this be your chief aim in all that you do, and may you be so happy as to enjoy him forever is the sincere prayer of your affectionate parent.... the fourth of july is to be celebrated here with a good deal of parade both by federalists and jacobins. the former are to meet in our meeting-house, there to hear an oration which is to be delivered by mr. aaron putnam, a prayer by your papa also. and on the hill close by the monument [bunker hill] a standard is to be presented to a new company called the warren phalanx, all federalists, by dr. putnam who is the president of the day, and all the gentlemen are to dine at seton's hall, otherwise called massachusetts hall, and the ladies are to take tea at the same place. the jacobins are to have an oration at the baptist meeting-house from mr. gleson. i know nothing more about them. the boys are forming themselves into companies also; they have two or three companies and drums which at some times are enough to craze one. i can't help thinking when i see them how glad i am that my sons are better employed at andover than beating the streets or drums; that they are laying in a good store of useful knowledge against the time to come, while these poor boys, many of them, at least, are learning what they will be glad by and by to unlearn. july , . my dear sons,--have you heard of the death of young willard at cambridge, the late president willard's son? he died of a violent fever occasioned by going into water when he was very hot in the middle of the day. he also pumped a great deal of cold water on his head. let this be a warning to you all not to be guilty of the like indiscretion which may cost you your life. dreadful, indeed, would this be to all of us. i wish you would not go into water oftener than once a week, and then either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, and not go in when hot nor stay long in the water. remember these cautions of your mama and obey them strictly. a young lady twenty years old died in boston yesterday very suddenly. she eat her dinner perfectly well and was dead in five minutes after. her name was ann hinkley. you see, my dear boys, the great uncertainty of life and, of course, the importance of being always prepared for _death_, even a _sudden death_, as we know not what an hour may bring forth. this we are sensible of, we cannot be _too soon or too well_ prepared for that all-important moment, as this is what we are sent into this world for. the main business of life is to prepare for death. let us not, then, put off these most important concerns to an uncertain to-morrow, but let us in earnest attend to the concerns of our precious, never-dying souls while we feel ourselves alive. in october, , finley morse went to new haven to enter college, and the next letter describes the journey from charlestown, and it was, indeed, a journey in those days. new haven, october , . my dear parents,--i arrived here yesterday safe and well. the first day i rode as far as williams' tavern, and put up there for the night. the next day i rode as far as dwight's tavern in western, and in the morning, it being rainy, mr. backus did not set out to ride till late, and, the stage coming to the door, mr. b. thought it a good opportunity to send me to hartford, which he did, and i arrived at hartford that night and lodged at ripley's inn opposite the state house. he treated me very kindly, indeed, wholly on account of my being your son. i was treated more like his own son than a stranger, for which i shall and ought to be very much obliged to him. the next morning i hired a horse and chaise of him to carry me to weathersfield and arrived at mr. marsh's, who was very glad to see me and begged me to stay till s. barrell went, which was the next monday, for his mother would not let him go so soon, she was so glad to see him. i was sorry to trouble them so much, but, as they desired it, and, as samuel b. was not to go till then, i agreed to stay and hope you will not disapprove it, and am sorry i could not write you sooner to relieve your minds from your anxiety on my account, and am sorry for giving my good parents so much trouble and expense. you expend and have expended a great deal more money upon me than i deserve, and granted me a great many of my requests, and i am sure i can certainly grant you one, that of being _economical_, which i shall certainly be and not get money to buy trifling things. i begin to think _money_ of some importance and too great value to be thrown away. yesterday morning about ten o'clock i set out for new haven with s. barrell and arrived well a little before dark. i went directly to dr. dwight's, which i easily found, and delivered the letter to him, drank tea at his house, and then mr. sereno dwight carried me to mr. davis's who had agreed to take me. while i was at dr. dwight's there was a woman there whom the dr. recommended to sam. b. and me to have our mending done, and mrs. davis or a washerwoman across the way will do my washing, so i am very agreeably situated. i also gave the letter to mr. beers and he has agreed to let me have what you desired. i have got homer's iliad in two volumes, with latin translation of him, for $ . . i need no other books at present. s. barrell has a room in the north college and, as he says, a very agreeable chum. next spring i hope you will come on and fix matters. i long to get into the college, for it appears to me now as though i was not a member of college but fitting for college. i hope next spring will soon come. my whole journey from charlestown here cost me £ _s._, and _d._, a great deal more than either you or i had calculated on. i am sorry to be of so much trouble to you and the cause of so much anxiety in you and especially in mama. i wish you to give my very affectionate love to my dear brothers, and tell them they must write me and not be homesick, but consider that i am farther from home than they are, miles from home. i remain your ever affectionate son, s.f.b. morse. it would seem, from other letters which follow, that he had difficulty in keeping up with his class, and that he eventually dropped a class, for he did not graduate until . he also seems to have been rooming outside of college and to have been eager to go in. it is curious, in the light of future events, to note that young morse's parents were fearful lest his volatile nature and lack of steadfastness of purpose should mar his future career. his dominating characteristic in later life was a bulldog tenacity, which led him to stick to one idea through discouragements and disappointments which would have overwhelmed a weaker nature. the following extracts are from a long letter from his mother dated november , :-- "i am fearful, my son, that you think a great deal more of your amusements than your studies, and there lies the difficulty, and the same difficulty would exist were you in college. "you have filled your letter with requests to go into college and an account of a gunning party, both of which have given us pain. i am truly sorry that you appear so unsteady as by _your own account_ you are.... "you mention in the letter you wrote first that, if you went into college, you and your chum would want brandy and wine and segars in your room. pray is that the custom among the students? we think it a very improper one, indeed, and hope the government of college will not permit it. there is no propriety at all in such young boys as you having anything to do with anything of the kind, and your papa and myself positively prohibit you the use of these things till we think them more necessary than we do at present.... "you will remember that you have promised in your first letter to be an economist. in your last letter you seem to have forgotten all about it. pray, what do your gunning parties cost you for powder and shot? i beg you to consider and not go driving on from one foolish whim to another till you provoke us to withdraw from you the means of gratifying you in anything that may be even less objectionable than gunning." these exhortations seem to have had, temporarily, at least, the desired effect, for in a letter to his parents dated december , , young morse says: "i shall not go out to gun any more, for i know it makes you anxious about me." the letters of the parents to the son are full of pious exhortations, and good advice, and reproaches to the boy for not writing oftener and more at length, and for not answering every question asked by the parents. it is comforting to the present-day parent to learn that human nature was much the same in those pious days of old, differing only in degree, and that there is hope for the most wayward son and careless correspondent. the following letters from the elder morse i shall include as being of rather more than ordinary interest, and as showing the breadth of his activity. charlestown, december , . to the bishop op london, rev'd and respected sir,--i presume that it might be agreeable to you to know the precise state of the property which originally belonged to the protestant episcopal church in virginia. i have with some pains obtained the law of that state respecting this singular business. i find that it destroys _the establishment_ and asserts that "all property belonging to the said (protestant episcopal) church devolved on the good people of this commonwealth (i.e., virginia) on the dissolution of the british government here, in the same degree in which the right and interest of the said church was therein derived from them," and authorizes the overseers of the poor of any county "in which any glebe land is vacant, or shall become so by the death or removal of any incumbent, to sell all such land and appurtenances and every other species of property incident thereto to the highest bidder"--"provided that nothing herein contained shall authorize an appropriation to _any religious purpose whatever_." i make no comments on the above. i believe no other state in the union has, in this respect, imitated the example of virginia. i take the liberty to send you a few small tracts for your acceptance in token of my high respect for your character and services. believe me, sir, unfeignedly, your obedient servant, j. morse. december , . lindley murray esq., dear sir,--your polite note and the valuable books accompanying it, forwarded by our friend perkins, of new york, have been duly and gratefully received. you will perceive, by the number of the "panoplist" enclosed, that we are strangers neither to your works nor your character. it has given me much pleasure as an american to make both more extensively known among my countrymen. i have purchased several hundred of your spelling books for a charitable society to which i belong, and they have been dispersed in the new settlements in our country, where i hope they will do immediate good, besides creating a desire and demand for more. it will ever give me pleasure to hear from you when convenient. letters left at mr. taylor's will find me. i herewith send you two or three pamphlets and a copy of the last edition of my "american gazetteer" which i pray you to accept as a small token of the high respect and esteem with which i am your friend, j. morse. young morse now settled down to serious work as the following extracts will show, which i set down without further comment, passing rapidly over the next few years. he was, however, not entirely absorbed in his books but still longed for the pleasures of the chase:-- "may , . just now i asked mr. twining to let me go a-gunning for this afternoon. he told me you had expressly forbidden it and he therefore could not. now i should wish to go once in a while, for i always intend to be careful. i have no amusement now in the vacation, and it would gratify me very much if you would consent to let me go once in a while. i suppose you would tell me that my books ought to be my amusement. i cannot study all the time and i need some exercise. if i walk, that is no amusement, and if i wish to play ball or anything else, i have no one to play with. please to write me an answer as soon as" possible. june , . my dear parents,--i hope you will excuse my not writing you sooner when i inform you that my time is entirely taken up with my studies. in the morning i must rise at five o'clock to attend prayers and, immediately after, recitation; then i must breakfast and begin to study from eight o'clock till eleven; then recite my forenoon's lesson which takes me an hour. at twelve i must study french till one, which is dinner-time. directly after dinner i must recite french to monsieur value till two o'clock, then begin to study my afternoon lesson and recite it at five. immediately after recitation i must study another french lesson to recite at seven in the evening; come home at nine o'clock and study my morning's lesson until ten, eleven, and sometimes twelve o'clock, and by that tine i am prepared to sleep.... you see now i have enough to do, my hands as full as can be, not five minutes' time to take recreation. i am determined to study and, thus far, have not missed a single word. the students call me by the nickname of "geography." "_june , ._ last week i went to mr. beers and saw a set of montaigne's 'essays' in french in eight volumes, duodecimo, handsomely bound in calf and gilt, for two dollars. the reason they are so cheap is because they are wicked and bad books for me or anybody else to read. i got them because they were cheap, and have exchanged them for a handsome english edition of 'gil blas'; price, $ . ." in the fall of finley morse returned to college accompanied by his next younger brother, sidney edwards. in a letter of march , , he says: "edwards and myself are very well and i believe we are doing well, but you will learn more of that from our instructors." in this same letter he says:-- "i find it impossible to live in college without spending money. at one time a letter is to be paid for, then comes up a great tax from the class or society, which keeps me constantly running after money. when i have money in my hand i feel as though i had stolen it, and it is with the greatest pain that i part with it. i think every minute i shall receive a letter from home blaming me for not being more economical, and thus i am kept in distress all the time. "the amount of my expenses for the last term was fifteen dollars, expended in the following manner:-- dols. cts. "postage $ . oil . taxes, fines, etc. . oysters . washbowl . - / skillet . axe $ . catalogues . . powder and shot . - / cakes, etc. etc. etc. . wine, thanks. day . toll on bridge . grinding axe . museum . poor man . carriage for trunk . pitcher . . - / sharpening skates . - / paid for circ. library . cutting wood . post papers . lent never to be returned . $ . - / . - / "in my expenses i do not include my wood, tuition bills, board or washing bills." how characteristic of all boys of all times the "etc., etc., etc.," tacked on to the "cakes" item, and how many boys of the present day would bewail the extravagance of fifteen dollars spent in one term on extras? in a postscript in this same letter he says: "the students are very fond of raising balloons at present. i will (with your leave) when i return home make one. they are pleasant sights." college terms were very different in those days from what they are at present, for september finds the boys still in new haven, and finley says, "there is but three and a half weeks to commencement." in this same letter he gives utterance to these filial sentiments: "i now make those only my companions who are the most religious and moral, and i hope sincerely that it will have a good effect in changing that thoughtless disposition which has ever been a striking trait in my character. as i grow older, i begin to think better of what you have always told me when i was small. i begin to know by experience that man is born to trouble, and that temptations to do evil are as countless as the stars, but i hope i shall be enabled to shun them." this is from a letter of january , :-- "i have been reading the first volume of professor silliman's 'journal' which he kept during his passage to and residence in europe. i am very much pleased with it. i long for the time when i shall be able to travel with improvement to myself and society, and hope it will be in your power to assist me. "i have a very ardent desire of travelling, but i consider that an education is indispensable to me and i mean to apply myself with all diligence for that purpose. _diligentia vinrit omnia_ is my maxim and i shall endeavor to follow it.... i shall be employed in the vacation in the philosophical chamber with mr. dwight, who is going to perform a number of experiments in _electricity_." it is, of course, only a curious coincidence that these two sentences should have occurred in the same letter, but it was when travelling, many years afterwards, that the first idea of the electric telegraph found lodgment in his brain, and this certainly resulted in improvement to himself and society. in february, , he writes: "my studies are at present optics in philosophy, dialling, homer, beside disputing, composing, attending lectures etc. etc., all which i find very interesting and especially mr. day's lectures who is now lecturing on _electricity_." young morse's thoughts seem to have been gradually focusing on the two subjects to which he afterwards devoted his life, for in a letter of march , , he says: "mr. day's lectures are very interesting. they are upon electricity. he has given us some very fine experiments. the whole class taking hold of hands formed the circuit of communication and we all received the shock apparently at the same moment. i never took an electric shock before. it felt as if some person had struck me a slight blow across the arms.... i think with pleasure that two thirds of this term only remain. as soon as that is passed away, i hope i shall again see home. i really long to see charlestown again; i have almost forgotten how it looks. i have some thoughts of taking a view of boston from bunker's hill when i go home again. it will be some pleasure to me to have some picture of my native place to look upon when i am from home." and in august, , he writes to his parents: "i employ all my leisure time in painting. i have a great number of persons engaged already to be drawn on ivory, no less than seven. they obtain the ivories for themselves. i have taken professor kingsley's profile for him. it is a good likeness of him and he is pleased with it. i think i shall take his likeness on ivory and present it to him as my present at the end of the year.... i have finished miss leffingwell's miniature. it is a good likeness and she is very much pleased with it." new haven, may , . my dear parents,--i arrived in this place on sabbath evening by packet from new york. i left philadelphia on thursday morning at eight o'clock and arrived in new york on friday at ten.... i stayed in new york but one night. i found it quite insipid after seeing philadelphia. [the character of the two cities seems to have changed a trifle in a hundred years, for, with all her faults, no one could nowadays accuse new york of being insipid.] i went on board the packet on saturday at twelve o'clock and arrived, as i before stated, on sabbath evening. we had, on the whole, a very good set of passengers from new york to this place. on sunday we had two sermons read to us by one of them, dr. hawley, of this place, and in the evening we sang five psalms, and during the whole of the exercises the passengers conducted themselves with perfect decorum, although one of the sermons was one hour in length.... june , . my dear parents,--i received yours of the d this day and receive with humility your reproof. i am extremely sorry it should have occasioned so many disagreeable feelings. i felt it my duty to tell you of my debts, and, indeed, i could not feel easy without. the amount of my buttery bill is forty-two or forty-three dollars. mr. nettleton is butler and is willing i should take his likeness as part pay. i shall take it on ivory, and he has engaged to allow me seven dollars for it. my price is five dollars for a miniature on ivory, and. i have engaged three or four at that price. my price for profiles is one dollar, and everybody is ready to engage me at that price.... though i have been much to blame in the present case, yet i think it but just that mr. twining should bear his part. i had begun with a determination to pay for everything as i got it, but was stopped in this in the very beginning, for, in going to mr. t. to get money, i have five times out of six found him absent, sometimes for the whole day, sometimes for a week or two weeks, and once he was absent six weeks and made no sort of provision for us. mrs. t. is never trusted with money for us. now in such case i am obliged by necessity to get a thing charged, and i have found by sad experience that a bill increases faster than i had in the least imagined.... "_july , ._ i am now released from college and am attending to painting. all my class were accepted as candidates for degrees. edwards is admitted a member of [greek: phi][greek: beta][greek: kappa] society, and is appointed as monitor to the next freshman class. richard is chosen as one of the speakers the evening before commencement. "edwards and richard are both of them very steady and good scholars, and are much esteemed by the authority of college as well as their fellow students. "as to my choice of a profession, i still think that i was made for a painter, and i would be obliged to you to make such arrangement with mr. allston for my studying with him as you shall think expedient. i should desire to study with him during the winter, and, as he expects to return to england in the spring, i should admire to be able to go with him." in answer to this letter his father wrote:-- charlestown, july , . dear finley,--i received your letter of the d to-day by mail. on the subject of your future pursuits we will converse when i see you and when you get home. it will be best for you to form no plans. your mama and i have been thinking and planning for you. i shall disclose to you our plan when i see you. till then suspend your mind. it gives us great pleasure to have you speak so well of your brothers. others do the same and we hear well of you also. it is a great comfort to us that our sons are all likely to do so well and are in good reputation among their acquaintances. could we have reason to believe you were all pious and had chosen the "good part," our joy concerning you all would be full. i hope the lord in due time will grant us this pleasure. "seek the lord," my dear son, "while he may be found." your affectionate father, j. morse. [illustration: elizabeth ann morse and sidney e. morse illustration: rev. jedediah morse and s.f.b. morse from portraits by a mr. sargent, who also painted portraits of the washington family] september , . dear mama,--papa arrived here safely this evening and i need not tell you we were glad to see him. he has mentioned to me the plan which he proposed for my future business in life, and i am pleased with it, for i was determined beforehand to conform to his and your will in everything, and, when i come home, i shall endeavor to make amends for the trouble and anxiety which you have been at on my account, by assisting papa in his labors and pursuing with ardor my own business.... i have been extremely low-spirited for some days past, and it still continues. i hope it will wear off by commencement day.... i am so low in spirits that i could almost cry. it was no wonder that he was down-hearted, for he was ambitious and longed to carve out a great career for himself, while his good parents were conservative and wished him to become independent as soon as possible. their plan was to apprentice him to a bookseller, and he dutifully conformed to their wishes for a time, but his ambition could not be curbed, and it was not long before he broke away. chapter ii october , --august . enters bookshop as clerk.--devotes leisure to painting.--leaves shop.-- letter to his brothers on appointments at yale.--letters from joseph p. rossiter.--morse's first love affair.--paints "landing of the pilgrims." --prepares to sail with allstons for england.--letters of introduction from his father.--disagreeable stage-ride to new york.--sails on the lydia.--prosperous voyage.--liverpool.--trip to london.--observations on people and customs.--frequently cheated.--critical time in england.--dr. lettsom.--sheridan's verse.--longing for a telegraph.--a ghost after his graduation from yale college in the fall of , finley morse returned to his home in charlestown, mass., and cheerfully submitted himself to his parents' wishes by entering the bookshop of a certain mr. mallory. he writes under date of october , , to his brothers who are still at college: "i am in an excellent situation and on excellent terms. i have four hundred dollars per year, but this you must not mention out. i have the choice of my hours; they are from nine till one-half past twelve, and from three till sunset." but he still clings to the idea of becoming a painter, for he adds: "my evenings i employ in painting. i have every convenience; the room over the kitchen is fitted up for me; i have a fire there every evening, and can spend it alone or otherwise as i please. i have bought me one of the new patent lamps, those with glass chimneys, which gives an excellent light. it cost me about six dollars. send on as soon as possible anything and everything which pertains to my painting apparatus." the following letter was written at some time in or . it was addressed to mr. sereno e. dwight:-- "mr. mallory a few days since handed me a letter from you requesting me, if possible, to sketch a likeness of young mr. daggett. accordingly i have made the attempt and take the present opportunity of forwarding you the results. the task was hard but pleasurable. it is one of the most difficult undertakings to endeavor to take a portrait from recollection of one whose countenance has not been examined particularly for the purpose. when i made the first attempt, not a single feature could i recall distinctly to my memory and i almost despaired of a likeness, but the thought of lessening the affliction of such a distressed family determined me to attempt it a second time. the result is on the ivory. i then showed it to my brothers, to mr. evarts, to mr. hillhouse, to mr. mallory, and to mr. read, all of whom had not the least suspicion of anything of the kind, and they have severally and separately pronounced it a likeness of young mr. daggett. this encouraged me, and i made the two other sketches which are thought likewise to be resemblances of him. "if these or any one of them can be recognized by the afflicted family as a resemblance of him they have lost, it will be an ample compensation to me to think that i have in any degree been the means of alleviating their suffering...." on december , , he writes to his brother: "i have almost completed my landscape. it is 'proper handsome,' so they say, and they want to make me believe it is so, but i shan't yet awhile." this shows the right frame of mind for an artist, and yet, like most youthful painters, he attempted more than his proficiency warranted, for in this same letter he adds: "i am going to begin, as soon as i have finished it [the landscape], a piece, the subject of which will be 'marius on the ruins of carthage.'" on december , , he writes: "i shall leave mr. mallory's next week and study painting exclusively till summer." he had at last burst his bonds, and his wise parents, seeing that his heart was only in his painting, decided to throw no further obstacles in his way, but, at the cost of much self-sacrifice on their part, to further in every way his ambition. january , . my dear brothers,--we have just received richard's letter of the th inst., and i can have a pretty correct idea of your feelings at the beginning of a vacation. you must not be melancholy and hang yourself. if you do you will have a terrible scolding when you get home again. as for richard's getting an appointment so low, if i was in his situation, i should not trouble myself one fig concerning _appointments_. they cost more than they are worth. i shall not esteem him the less for not getting a higher, and not more than one millionth part of the world knows what an appointment is. you will both of you have a different opinion of appointments after you have been out of college a short time. i had rather be richard with a dialogue than sanford with a dispute. if appointments at college decided your fate forever, you might possibly groan and wail. but then consider where poor i should come. [he got no appointment whatever.] think of this, richard, and _don't_ hang _yourself_. [it may, perhaps, be well to explain that "appointments" were given at yale to those who excelled in scholarship. "philosophical oration" was the highest, then came "high oration," "oration," etc., etc.] i have left mr. mallory's store and am helping papa in the geography. shall remain at home till the latter part of next summer and then shall go to london with mr. allston. the following extracts from two letters of a college friend i have introduced as throwing some light on morse's character at that time and also as curious examples of the epistolary style of those days:-- new haven, february , . dear finley,--yours of the th ult. i received, together with the books enclosed, which i delivered personally according to your request. did i not know the nature of your disorder and the state of your _gizzard_, i should really be surprised at the commencement, and, indeed, the whole tenor of your letter, but as it is i can excuse and feel for you. had i commenced a letter with the french _hélas! hélas!_ it would have been no more than might reasonably have been expected considering the desolate situation of new haven and the gloomy prospects before me. but for you, who are in the very vortex of fashionable life and surrounded by the amusements and bustle of the metropolis of new england, for you to exclaim, "how lonely i am!" is unpardonable, or at most admits of but one excuse, to wit, that you can plead the feelings of the youth who exclaimed, "gods annihilate both time and space and make two lovers happy!" you suppose i am so much taken up with the ladies and other good things in new haven that i have not time to think of one of my old friends. alas! morse, there are no ladies or anything else to occupy my attention. they are all gone and we have no amusements. even old value has deserted us, whose music, though an assemblage of "unharmonious sounds," is infinitely preferable to the harsh grating thunder of his brother. new haven is, indeed, this winter a dreary place. i wrote you about a month since and did then what you wish me now to do,--i mentioned all that is worth mentioning, which, by the way, is very little, about new haven and its inhabitants. since then i have been to new york and saw the miss radcliffs, and, in passing through stamford, the miss davenports. the mention of the name of davenport would at one time have excited in your breast emotions unutterable, but now, though ann is as lovely as ever, your heart requires the influence of another hart to quicken its pulsations.... last but not least comes the all-conquering, the angelic queen of harts. i have not seen her since she left new haven, but have heard from her sister eliza that she is in good health and is going in april to new york with mrs. jarvis (her sister) to spend the summer and perhaps a longer time, where she will probably break many a proud heart and bend many a stubborn knee. i fear, morse, unless you have her firmly in your toils, i fear she may not be able to withstand every attack, for new york abounds with elegant and accomplished young men. you mention that you have again changed your mind as to the business which you intend to pursue. i really thought that the plan of becoming a bookseller would be permanent because sanctioned by parental authority, but i am now convinced that your mind is so much bent upon painting that you will do nothing else effectually. it is indeed a noble art and if pursued effectually leads to the highest eminence, for painters rank with poets, and to be placed in the scale with milton and homer is an honor that few of mortal mould attain unto.... i wish, finley, that you would paint me a handsome piece for a keepsake as you are going to europe and may not be back in a hurry. present my respects to mr. hillhouse. his father's family are well. adieu. your affectionate friend, jos. p. rossiter. from this letter and from others we learn that young morse's youthful affections were fixed on a certain charming miss jannette hart, but, alas! he proved a faithless lover, for his friend rossiter thus reproves him in a letter of may , :-- "oh! most amazing change! can it be possible? oh! love, and all ye cordial powers of passion, forbid it! still, still the dreadful words glare on my sight. alas! alas! and is it, then, a fact? if so 't is pitiful, 't is wondrous pitiful. cupid, tear off your bandage, new string your bow and tip your arrows with harder adamant. oh! shame upon you, only hear the words of your exultant votarist--'even love, which according to the proverb conquers all things, when put in competition with painting, must yield the palm and be a willing captive.' oh! fie, fie, good master cupid, you shoot but poorly if a victim so often wounded can talk in terms like these. "poor luckless jannette! the epithets 'divine' and 'heavenly' which have so often been applied to thee are now transferred to miserable daubings with oil and clay. dame nature, your triumph has been short. poor foolish beldam, you thought, indeed, when you had formed your masterpiece and named her jannette, that unqualified admiration would be extorted from the lips of prejudice itself, and that, at least, till age had worn off the first dazzling lustre from your favorite, your sway would have been unlimited and your exultation immeasurable. my good old dame, hear for your comfort what a foolish, fickle youth has dared to say of your darling jannette, and that while she is yet in the first blush and bloom of virgin loveliness--'_next_ to painting i love jannette the best.' insufferable blasphemy! hear, o heavens, and be amazed! tremble, o earth, and be horribly afraid!" in spite of this impassioned arraignment, morse devoted himself exclusively to his art for the next few years, and we have only occasional references in the letters that follow to his first serious love affair. we also hear nothing further of "marius on the ruins of carthage"; but in february, , he writes to his brothers: "i am painting my large piece, the landing of our forefathers at plymouth. perhaps i shall have it finished by the time you come home in the spring. my landscape i finished sometime since, and it is framed and hung up in the front parlor." at last in july, , the great ambition of the young man was about to be realized and he prepared to set sail for england with his friend and master, washington allston. his father, having once made up his mind to allow his son to follow his bent, did everything possible to further his ambition and assist him in his student years. he gave him many letters of introduction to well-known persons in england and france, one of which, to his excellency c.m. talleyrand, i shall quote in full. sir,--i had the honor to introduce to you, some years since, a young friend of mine, mr. wilder, who has since resided in your country. your civility to him induces me to take the liberty to introduce to you my eldest son, who visits europe for the purpose of perfecting himself in the art of painting under the auspices of some of your eminent artists. should he visit france, as he intends, i shall direct him to pay his respects to you, sir, assured that he will receive your protection and patronage so far as you can with convenience afford them. in thus doing you will much oblige, sir, with high consideration your most ob'd't. serv't, jed. morse. in another letter of introduction, to whom i cannot say, as the address on the copy is lacking, the father says:-- "his parents had designed him for a different profession, but his inclination for the one he has chosen was so strong, and his talents for it, in the opinion of some good judges, so promising, that we thought it not proper to attempt to control his choice. "in this country, young in the arts, there are few means of improvement. these are to be found in their perfection only in older countries, and in none, perhaps, greater than in yours. in compliance, therefore, with his earnest wishes and those of his friend and patron, mr. allston (with whom he goes to london), we have consented to make the sacrifice of feeling (not a small one), and a pecuniary exertion to the utmost of our ability, for the purpose of placing him under the best advantage of becoming eminent in his profession, in hope that he will consecrate his acquisitions to the glory of god and the best good of his fellow men." morse arrived in new york on july , , after a several days' journey from charlestown which he describes as very terrible on account of the heat and dust. people were dying from the heat in new york where the thermometer reached ° in the shade. he says:-- "my ride to new haven was beyond everything disagreeable; the sun beating down upon the stage (the sides of which we were obliged to shut up on account of the sun) which was like an oven, and the wind, instead of being in our faces as papa supposed, was at our back and brought into our faces such columns of dust as to hinder us from seeing the other side of the stage. "i never was so completely covered with dust in my life before. mama, perhaps, will think that i experienced some inconvenience from such a fatiguing journey, but i never felt better in my life than now." the optimism of youth when it is doing what it wants to do. he had taken passage on the good ship lydia with mr. and mrs. allston and some eleven other passengers, and the sailing of the ship was delayed for several days on account of contrary winds, but at last, on july , the voyage was begun. on board the lydia, off sandy hook, july , . my dear parents,--after waiting a great length of time i have got under way. we left new york harbor on saturday, th, about twelve o'clock and went as far as the quarantine ground on staten island, where, on account of the wind, we waited over sunday. we are now under sail with the pilot on board. we have a fair wind from s.s.w. and shall soon be out of sight of land. we have fourteen very agreeable passengers, an experienced and remarkably pleasant captain, and a strong, large, fast-sailing ship. we expect from twenty-five to thirty days' passage.... we have a piano-forte on board and two gentlemen who play elegantly, so we shall have fine times. i am in good spirits, though i feel rather singularly to see my native shores disappearing so fast and for so long a time. i am not yet seasick, but expect to be a little so in a few days. we shall probably be boarded by a british vessel of war soon; there are a number off the coast, but they treat american vessels very civilly. he kept a careful diary of the voyage to england and again resumed it when he returned to america in . the voyage out was most propitious and lasted but twenty-two days in all: a very short one for that time. as the diary contains nothing of importance relating to the eastern voyage, being simply a record of good weather, fair winds, and pleasant companions, i shall not quote from it at present. it was all pleasure to the young man, who had never before been away from home, and he sees no reason why people should dread a sea voyage. the journal of the return trip tells a different story, as we shall see later on, for the passage lasted fifty-seven days, and head winds, gales, and even hurricanes were encountered all the way across, and he wonders why any one should go to sea who can remain safely on land. liverpool, august , . my dear parents,--you see from the date that i have at length arrived in england. i have had a most delightful passage of twenty days from land to land and two in coming up the channel. as this is a letter merely to inform you of my safe arrival i shall not enter into the particulars of our voyage until i get to london, to which place i shall proceed as soon as possible. suffice it to say that i have not been sick a moment of the passage, but, on the contrary, have never enjoyed my health better. i have not as yet got my trunks from the custom-house, but presume i shall meet with no difficulty. i am now at the liverpool arms inn. it is the same inn that mr. silliman put up at; it is, however, very expensive; they charge the enormous sum, i believe, of a guinea or a guinea and a half a day. if i should be detained a day or two in this place i shall endeavor to find out other lodgings; at present, however, it is unavoidable, as all the other passengers are at the same place with me. you may rest assured i shall do everything in my power to be economical, but to avoid imposition of some kind or other cannot be expected, since every one who has been in england and spoken of the subject to me has been imposed upon in some way or other. you cannot think how many times i have expressed a wish that you knew exactly how i was situated. my passage has been so perfectly agreeable, i know not of a single circumstance that has interfered to render it otherwise, through the whole passage. there has been but one day in which we have not had fair winds. mr. and mrs. allston are perfectly well. she has been seasick, but has been greatly benefited by it. she is growing quite healthy. i have grown about three shades darker in consequence of my voyage. i have a great deal to tell you which i must defer till i arrive in london.... oh! how i wish you knew at this moment that i am safe and well in england. good-bye. do write soon and often as i shall. your very affectionate son, saml. f.b. morse. everything was new and interesting to the young artist, and his critical observations on people and places, on manners and customs, are naïve and often very keen. the following are extracts from his diary:-- "as to the manners of the people it cannot be expected that i should form a correct opinion of them since my intercourse with them has been so short, but, from what little i have seen, i am induced to entertain a very favorable opinion of their hospitality. the appearance of the women as i met them in the streets struck me on account of the beauty of their complexions. their faces may be said to be handsome, but their figures are very indifferent and their gait, in walking, is very bad. "on friday, the th of august, i went to the mayor to get leave to go to london. he gave me ten days to get there, and told me, if he found me in liverpool after that time, he should put me in prison, at which i could not help smiling. his name is drinkwater, but from the appearance of his face i should judge it might be drinkbrandy. "on account of his limiting us to ten days we prepared to set out for london immediately as we should be obliged to travel slowly.... mr. and mrs. allston and myself ordered a post-chaise, and at twelve o'clock we set out for manchester, intending to stay there the first night.... the people, great numbers of whom we passed, had cheerful, healthy countenances; they were neat in their dress and appeared perfectly happy.... "much has been said concerning the miserable state in which the lower class of people live in england but especially in large manufacturing cities. that they are so unhappy as some would think i conceive to be erroneous. we are apt to suppose people are unhappy for the reason that, were we taken from our present situation of independence and placed in their situation of dependence, we should be unhappy; not considering that contentment is the foundation of happiness. as far as my own observation extends, and from what i can learn on inquiry, the lower class of people generally are contented. n.b. i have altered my opinion since writing this.... "thus far on our journey we have had a very pleasant time. there is great difference i find in the treatment of travellers. they are treated according to the style in which they travel. if a man arrives at the door of an inn in a stage-coach, he is suffered to alight without notice, and it is taken for granted that common fare will answer for him. but if he comes in a post-chaise, the whole inn is in an uproar; the whole house come to the door, from the landlord down to boots. one holds his hand to help you to alight, another is very officious in showing you to the parlor, and another gets in the baggage, whilst the landlord and landlady are quite in a bustle to know what the gentleman will please to have. this attention, however, is very pleasant, you are sure to be waited upon well and can have everything you will call for, and that of the nicest kind. it is the custom in this country to hire no servants at inns. they, on the contrary, pay for their places and the only wages they get is from the generosity of travellers. "this circumstance at first would strike a person unacquainted with the customs of england as a very great imposition. i thought so, but, since i have considered the subject better, i believe that there could not be a wiser plan formed. it makes servants civil and obliging and always ready to do anything; for, knowing that they depend altogether on the bounty of travellers, they would fear to do anything which would in the least offend them; and, as there is a customary price for each grade of servants, a person who is travelling can as well calculate the expense of his journey as though they were nothing of the kind." "_london, august , ._ you see from the date that i have at length arrived at the place of my destination. i have been in the city about three hours, so you see what is my first object.... mr. and mrs. allston with myself took a post-chaise which, indeed, is much more expensive than a stage-coach, but, on account of mrs. allston's health, which you know was not very good when in boston (although she is much benefited by her voyage), we were obliged to travel slowly, and in this manner it has cost us perhaps double the sum which it would have done had we come in a stage-coach. but necessity obliged me to act as i have done. i found myself in a land of strangers, liable to be cheated out of my teeth almost, and, if i had gone to london without mr. allston, by waiting at a boarding-house, totally unacquainted with any living creature, i should probably have expended the difference by the time he had arrived.... i trust you will not think it extravagant in me for doing as i have done, for i assure you i shall endeavor to be as economical as possible. "i also mentioned in my letter that i could scarcely expect to steer free from imposition since none of my predecessors have been able to do it. since writing that letter i have found (in spite of all my care to the contrary) my observation true. in going from the liverpool arms to mr. woolsey's, which is over a mile, i was under the necessity of getting into a hackney-coach. upon asking what was to pay he told me a shilling. i offered him half a guinea to change, which i knew to be good, having taken it at the hank in new york. "he tossed it into the air and caught it in his mouth very dexterously, and, handing it to me back again, told me it was a bad one. i looked at it and told him i was sure it was good, but, appealing to a gentleman who was passing, i found it was bad. of course i was obliged to give him other money. when i got to my lodgings i related the circumstance to some of my friends and they told me he had cheated me in this way: that it was common for them to carry bad money about them in their mouths, and, when this fellow had caught the good half-guinea in his mouth, he changed it for a bad one. this is one of the thousand tricks they play every day. i have likewise received eleven bad shillings on the road between liverpool and this place, and it is hardly to be wondered at, for the shilling pieces here are just like old buttons without eyes, without the sign of an impression on them, and one who is not accustomed to this sort of money will never know the difference. "i find, as mama used to tell me, that i must watch my very teeth or they will cheat me out of them." "_friday, th, ._ this morning i called on mr. bromfield and delivered my letters. he received me very cordially, enquired after you particularly, and invited me to dine with him at o'clock, which invitation i accepted.... i find i have arrived in england at a very critical state of affairs. if such a state continues much longer, england must fall. american measures affect this country more than you can have any idea of. the embargo, if it had continued six weeks longer, it is said would have forced this country into any measures." "_saturday, th._ i have been unwell to-day in some degree, so that i have not been able to go out all day. it was a return of the colic. i sent my letter of introduction to dr. lettsom with a request that he would call on me, which he did and prescribed a medicine which cured me in an hour or two, and this evening i feel well enough to resume my letter. "dr. lettsom is a very singular man. he looks considerably like the print you have of him. he is a moderate quaker, but not precise and stiff like the quakers of philadelphia. he is a very pleasant and sociable man and withal very blunt in his address. he is a man of excellent information and is considered among the greatest literary characters here. there is one peculiarity, however, which he has in conversation, that of using the verb in the third person singular with the pronoun in the first person singular and plural, as instead of 'i show' or 'we show,' he says 'i shows,' 'we shows,' etc., upon which peculiarity the famous mr. sheridan made the following lines in ridicule of him:-- "if patients call, both one and all i bleeds 'em and i sweats 'em, and if they die, why what care i-- "i. lettsom. "this is a liberty i suppose great men take with each other.... "perhaps you may have been struck at the lateness of the hour set by mr. bromfield for dinner [ o'clock!], but that is considered quite early in london. i will tell you the fashionable hours. a person to be genteel must rise at twelve o'clock, breakfast at two, dine at six, and sup at the same time, and go to bed about three o'clock the next morning. this may appear extravagant, but it is actually practised by the greatest of the fashionables of london.... "i think you will not complain of the shortness of this letter. i only wish you now had it to relieve your minds from anxiety, for, while i am writing, i can imagine mama wishing that she could hear of my arrival, and thinking of thousands of accidents that may have befallen me, and _i wish that in an instant i could communicate the information;_ but three thousand miles are not passed over in an instant and we must wait four long weeks before we can hear from each other." (the italics are mine, for on the outside of this letter written by morse in pencil are the words:-- "a longing for the telegraph even in this letter.") "there has a ghost made its appearance a few streets only from me which has alarmed the whole city. it appears every night in the form of shriekings and groanings. there are crowds at the house every night, and, although they all hear the noises, none can discover from whence they come. the family have quitted the house. i suppose 'tis only a hoax by some rogue which will be brought out in time." chapter iii august , --december . benjamin west.--george iii.--morse begins his studies.--introduced to west.--enthusiasms.--smuggling and lotteries.--english appreciation of art.--copley.--friendliness of west.--elgin marbles.--cries of london.-- custom in knocking.--witnesses balloon ascension.--crowds.--vauxhall gardens.--st. bartholomew's fair.--efforts to be economical.--signs of war.--mails delayed.--admitted to royal academy.--disturbances, riots, and murders. at this time benjamin west the american was president of the royal academy and at the zenith of his power and fame. young morse, admitted at once into the great man's intimacy through his connection with washington allston and by letters of introduction, was dazzled and filled with enthusiasm for the works of the master. he considered him one of the greatest of painters, if not the greatest, of all times. the verdict of posterity does not grant him quite so exalted a niche in the temple of fame, but his paintings have many solid merits and his friendship and favor were a source of great inspiration to the young artist. mr. prime in his biography of morse relates this interesting anecdote:-- "during the war of american independence, west, remaining true to his native country, enjoyed the continued confidence of the king, and was actually engaged upon his portrait when the declaration of independence was handed to him. mr. morse received the facts from the lips of west himself, and communicated them to me in these words:-- "'i called upon mr. west at his house in newman street one morning, and in conformity with the order given to his servant, robert, always to admit mr. leslie and myself, even if he was engaged in his private studies, i was shown into his studio. "'as i entered, a half-length portrait of george iii stood before me upon an easel, and mr. west was sitting with back toward me copying from it upon canvas. my name having been mentioned to him, he did not turn, but, pointing with the pencil he had in his hand to the portrait from which he was copying, he said:-- "'"do you see that picture, mr. morse?" "'"yes sir!" i said; "i perceive it is the portrait of the king." "'"well," said mr. west, "the king was sitting to me for that portrait when the box containing the american declaration of independence was handed to him." "'"indeed," i answered; "what appeared to be the emotions of the king? what did he say?" "'"well, sir," said mr. west, "he made a reply characteristic of the goodness of his heart," or words to that effect. "'well, if they can be happier under the government they have chosen than under mine, i shall be happy.'"'" on august , , morse writes to his parents:-- "i have begun my studies, the first part of which is drawing. i am drawing from the head of demosthenes at present, to get accustomed to handling black and white chalk. i shall then commence a drawing for the purpose of trying to enter the royal academy. it is a much harder task to enter now than when mr. allston was here, as they now require a pretty accurate knowledge of anatomy before they suffer them to enter, and i shall find the advantage of my anatomical lectures. i feel rather encouraged from this circumstance, since the harder it is to gain admittance, the greater honor it will be should i enter. i have likewise begun a large landscape which, at a bold push, i intend for the exhibition, though i run the risk of being refused.... "i was introduced to mr. west by mr. allston and likewise gave him your letter. he was very glad to see me, and said he would render me every assistance in his power." "at the british institution i saw his famous piece of christ healing the sick. he said to me: 'this is the piece i intended for america, but the british would have it themselves; but i shall give america the better one.' he has begun a copy, which i likewise saw, and there are several alterations for the better, if it is possible to be better. a sight of that piece is worth a voyage to england of itself. when it goes to america, if you don't go to see it, i shall think you have not the least taste for paintings." "the encomiums which mr. west has received on account of that piece have given him new life, and some say he is at least ten years younger. he is now likewise about another piece which will probably be superior to the other. he favored me with a sight of the sketch, which he said he granted to me because i was an american. he had not shown it to anybody else. mr. allston was with me and told me afterwards that, however superior his last piece was, this would far exceed it. the subject is christ before pilate. it will contain about fifty or sixty figures the size of life." "mr. west is in his seventy-sixth year (i think), but, to see him, you would suppose him only about five-and-forty. he is very active; a flight of steps at the british gallery he ran up as nimbly as i could.... i walked through his gallery of paintings of his own productions; there were upward of two hundred, consisting principally of the original sketches of his large pieces. he has painted in all upwards of six hundred pictures, which is more than any artist ever did with the exception of rubens the celebrated dutch painter.... "i was surprised on entering the gallery of paintings in the british institution, at seeing eight or ten _ladies_ as well as gentlemen, with their easels and palettes and oil colors, employed in copying some of the pictures. you can see from this circumstance in what estimation the art is held here, since ladies of distinction, without hesitation or reserve, are willing to draw in public.... "by the way, i digress a little to inform you how i got my segars on shore. when we first went ashore i filled my pockets and hat as full as i could and left the rest in the top of my trunk intending to come and get them immediately. i came back and took another pocket load and left about eight or nine dozen on the top of my clothes. i went up into the city again and forgot the remainder until it was too late either to take them out or hide them under the clothes. so i waited trembling (for contraband goods subject the whole trunk to seizure), but the custom-house officer, being very good-natured and clever, saw them and took them up. i told him they were only for my own smoking and there were so few that they were not worth seizing. 'oh,' says he, 'i shan't touch them; i won't know they are here,' and then shut down the trunk again. as he smoked, i gave him a couple of dozen for his kindness." what a curious commentary on human nature it is that even the most pious, up to our own time, can see no harm in smuggling and bribery. and, as another instance of how the standards of right and wrong change with the changing years, further on in this same letter to his strict and pious parents young morse says:-- "i have just received letters and papers from you by the galen which has arrived. i was glad to see american papers again. i see by them that the lottery is done drawing. how has my ticket turned out? if the weight will not be too great for one shipload, i wish you would send the money by the next vessel." the lottery was for the benefit of harvard college. "_september , ._ i have finished a drawing which i intended to offer at the academy for admission. mr. allston told me it would undoubtedly admit me, as it was better than two thirds of those generally offered, but advised me to draw another and remedy some defects in handling the chalks (to which i am not at all accustomed), and he says i shall enter with some éclat. i showed it to mr. west and he told me it was an extraordinary production, that i had talent, and only wanted knowledge of the art to make a great painter." in a letter to his friends, mr. and mrs. jarvis, dated september , , he says:-- "i was astonished to find such a difference in the encouragement of art between this country and america. in america it seemed to lie neglected, and only thought to be an employment suited to a lower class of people; but here it is the constant subject of conversation, and the exhibitions of the several painters are fashionable resorts. no person is esteemed accomplished or well educated unless he possesses almost an enthusiastic love for paintings. to possess a gallery of pictures is the pride of every nobleman, and they seem to vie with each other in possessing the most choice and most numerous collection.... i visited mr. copley a few days since. he is very old and infirm. i think his age is upward of seventy, nearly the age of mr. west. his powers of mind have almost entirely left him; his late paintings are miserable; it is really a lamentable thing that a man should outlive his faculties. he has been a first-rate painter, as you well know. i saw at his room some exquisite pieces which he painted twenty or thirty years ago, but his paintings of the last four or five years are very bad. he was very pleasant, however, and agreeable in his manners. "mr. west i visit now and then. he is very liberal to me and gives me every encouragement. he is a very friendly man; he talked with me like a father and wished me to call and see him often and be intimate with him. age, instead of impairing his faculties, seems rather to have strengthened them, as his last great piece testifies. he is soon coming out with another which mr. allston thinks will far surpass even this last. the subject is christ before pilate. "i went last week to burlington house in piccadilly, about forty-five minutes' walk, the residence of lord elgin, to see some of the ruins of athens. lord elgin has been at an immense expense in transporting the great collection of splendid ruins, among them some of the original statues of phidias, the celebrated ancient sculptor. they are very much mutilated, however, and impaired by time; still there was enough remaining to show the inferiority of all subsequent sculpture. even those celebrated works, the apollo belvedere, venus di medicis, and the rest of those noble statues, must yield to them.... "the cries of london, of which you have doubtless heard, are very annoying to me, as indeed they are to all strangers. the noise of them is constantly in one's ears from morning till midnight, and, with the exception of one or two, they all appear to be the cries of distress. i don't know how many times i have run to the window expecting to see some poor creature in the agonies of death, but found, to my surprise, that it was only an old woman crying 'fardin' apples,' or something of the kind. hogarth's picture of the enraged musician will give you an excellent idea of the noise i hear every day under my windows.... "there is a singular custom with respect to knocking at the doors of houses here which is strictly adhered to. a servant belonging to the house rings the bell only; a strange servant knocks once; a market man or woman knocks once and rings; the penny post knocks twice; and a gentleman or lady half a dozen quick knocks, or any number over two. a nobleman generally knocks eight or ten tunes very loud. "the accounts lately received from america look rather gloomy. they are thought here to wear a more threatening aspect than they have heretofore done. from my own observation and opportunity of hearing the opinion of the people generally, they are extremely desirous of an amicable adjustment of differences, and seem as much opposed to the idea of war as the better part of the american people.... "in this letter you will perceive all the variety of feeling which i have had for a fortnight past; sometimes in very low, sometimes in very high spirits, and sometimes a balance of each; which latter, though very desirable, i seldom have, but generally am at one extreme or the other. i wrote this in the evenings of the last two weeks, and this will account, and i hope apologize, for its great want of connection." in a long letter to a friend, dated september , , he thus describes some of the sights of london:-- "a few days since i walked about four miles out of town to a village of the name of hackney to witness the ascension of a mr. sadler and another gentleman in a balloon. it was a very grand sight, and the next day the aeronauts returned to hackney, having gone nearly fifty miles in about an hour and a half. the number of people who attended on this occasion might be fairly estimated at , , such a concourse as i never before witnessed. "when the balloon was out of sight the crowd began to return home, and such a confusion it is almost impossible for me to describe. a gang of pickpockets had contrived to block up the way, which was across a bridge, with carriages and carts, etc., and as soon as the people began to move it created such an obstruction that, in a few moments, this great crowd, in the midst of which i had unfortunately got, was stopped. this gave the pickpockets an opportunity and the people were plundered to a great amount. "i was detained in this manner, almost suffocated, in a great shower of rain, for about an hour, and, what added to the misery of the scene, there were a great many women and children crying and screaming in all directions, and no one able to assist them, not even having a finger at liberty, they were wedged in in such a manner. i had often heard of the danger of a london crowd, but never before experienced it, and i think once is amply sufficient and shall rest satisfied with it. "a few evenings since i visited the celebrated vauxhall gardens, of which you have doubtless often heard. i must say they far exceeded my expectations; i never before had an idea of such splendor. the moment i went in i was almost struck blind with the blaze of light proceeding from thousands of lamps and those of every color. "in the midst of the gardens stands the orchestra box in the form of a large temple and most beautifully illuminated. in this the principal band of music is placed. at a little distance is another smaller temple in which is placed the turkish band. on one side of the gardens you enter two splendid saloons illuminated in the same brilliant manner. in one of them the pandean band is placed, and in the other the scotch band. all around the gardens is a walk with a covered top, but opening on the sides under curtains in festoons, and these form the most splendid illuminated part of the whole gardens. the amusements of the evening are music, waterworks, fireworks, and dancing. "the principal band plays till about ten o'clock, when a little bell is rung, and the whole concourse of people (the greater part of which are females) run to a dark part of the gardens where there is an admirable deception of waterworks. a bridge is seen over which stages and wagons, men and horses, are seen passing; birds flying across and the water in great cataracts falling down from the mountains and passing over smaller falls under the bridges; men are seen rowing a boat across, and, indeed, everything which could be devised in such an exhibition was performed. "this continues for about fifteen minutes, when they all return into the illuminated part of the gardens and are amused by music from the same orchestra till eleven o'clock. they then are called away again to the dark part of the gardens, where is an exhibition of the most splendid fireworks; sky-rockets, serpents, wheels, and fountains of fire in the greatest abundance, occupying twenty minutes more of the time. "after this exhibition is closed, they again return into the illuminated parts of the gardens, where the music strikes up from the chief orchestra, and hundreds of groups are immediately formed for dancing. respectable ladies, however, seldom join in this dance, although gentlemen of the first distinction sometimes for amusement lend a hand, or rather a foot, to the general cheerfulness. "all now is gayety throughout the gardens; every one is in motion, and care, that bane of human happiness, for a time seems to have lost her dominion over the human heart. had the eastern sage, who was in search of the land of happiness, at this moment been introduced into vauxhall, i think his most exalted conceptions of happiness would have been surpassed, and he would rest contented in having at last found the object of his wishes. "in a few minutes the chief orchestra ceases and is relieved in turn by the other bands, the company following the music. the scotch band principally plays scotch reels and dances. the music and this course of dancing continue till about four o'clock in the morning, when the lights are extinguished and the company disperses. on this evening, which was by no means considered as a full night, the company consisted of perhaps three thousand persons. "i had the pleasure a few days since of witnessing one of the oddest exhibitions, perhaps, in the world. it was no other than _st. bartholomew's fair_. it is held here in london once a year and continues three days. there is a ceremony in opening it by the lord mayor, which i did not see. at this fair the lower orders of society are let loose and allowed to amuse themselves in any lawful way they please. the fair is held in smithfield market, about the centre of the city. the principal amusement appeared to be swinging. there were large boxes capable of holding five or six suspended in large frames in such manner as to vibrate nearly through a semicircle. there were, to speak within bounds, three hundred of these. they were placed all round the square, and it almost made me giddy only to see them all in motion. they were so much pressed for room that one of these swings would clear another but about two inches, and it seemed almost miraculous to me that they did not meet with more accidents than they did. "another amusement were large wheels, about thirty or forty feet in diameter, on the circumference of which were four and sometimes six boxes capable of holding four persons. these are set in slow motion, and they gradually rise to the top of the wheel and as gradually descend and so on in succession. there were various other machines on the same principle which i have not time to describe. "in the centre of the square was an assemblage of everything in the world; theatres, wild beasts, _lusus naturoe_, mountebanks, buffoons, dancers on the slack wire, fighting and swearing, pocket-picking and stealing, music and dancing, and hubbub and confusion in every confused shape. "the theatres are worth describing; they are temporary buildings put up and ornamented very richly on the exteriors to attract attention, while the interiors, like many persons' heads, are but very poorly furnished. strolling companies of players occupy these, and between the plays the actors and actresses exhibit themselves on a stage before the theatre in all their spangled robes and false jewels, and strut and flourish about till the theatre is filled. "then they go in and turn, perhaps, a very serious tragedy into one of the most ridiculous farces. they occupy about fifteen minutes in reciting a play and then a fresh audience is collected, and so they proceed through the three days and nights, so that the poor actors and actresses are killed about fifty times in the course of a day. "a person who goes into one of these theatres must not expect to hear a syllable of the tragedy. if he can look upon the stage it is as much as he can expect, for there is such a confused noise without of drums and fifes, clarionets, bassoons, hautboys, triangles, fiddles, bass-viols, and, in short, every possible instrument that can make a noise, that if a person gets safe from the fair without the total loss of his hearing for three weeks he may consider himself fortunate. contiguous to the theatres are the exhibition rooms of the jugglers and buffoons, who also between their exhibitions display their tricks on stages before the populace, and show as many antics as so many monkeys. but were i to attempt a description of everything i saw at bartholomew fair my letter, instead of being a few sheets, would swell to as many quires; so i must close it. "i shall probably soon witness an exhibition of a more interesting nature; i mean a coronation. the king is now so very low that he cannot survive more than a week or two longer, and immediately on his death the ceremony of the coronation takes place. if i should see it i shall certainly describe it to you." the king, george iii, did not, however, die until . in a letter of september to his parents he says: "i endeavor to be as economical as possible and am getting into the habit very fast. it must be learned by degrees. i shall not say, as salmagundi says,--'i shall spare no expense in discovering the most economical way of spending money,' but shall endeavor to practise it immediately." "_september , ._ you will see by the papers which accompany this what a report respecting the capture of the u.s. frigate president by melampus frigate prevails here. it is sufficient to say it is not in the least credited. "in case of war i shall be ordered out of the country. if so, instead of returning home, had i not better go to paris, as it is cheaper living there even than in london, and there are great advantages there? i only ask the question in case of war.... i am going on swimmingly. next week on monday the royal academy opens and i shall present my drawing." "_october , ._ i wrote you by the galen about three weeks ago and have this moment heard she was still in the downs. i was really provoked. there is great deception about vessels; they advertise for a certain day and perhaps do not sail under a month after. the galen has been going and going till i am sick of hearing she hasn't gone." "_november , ._ after leaving this letter so long, as you see by the different dates, i again resume it. perhaps you will be surprised when i tell you that but yesterday i heard that the galen is still wind-bound. it makes my letters which are on board of her about five or six weeks old, besides the prospect of a long voyage. however it is not her fault. there are three or four hundred vessels in the same predicament. the wind has been such that it has been impossible for any of them to get under weigh; but i must confess i feel considerably anxious on your account.... "i mentioned in one of my other letters that i had drawn a figure (the gladiator) to admit me into the academy. after i had finished it i was displeased with it, and concluded not to offer it, but to attempt another. i have accordingly drawn another from the laocoon statue, the most difficult of all the statues; have shown it to, the keeper of the academy and _am admitted for a year_ without the least difficulty. mr. allston was pleased to compliment me upon it by saying that it was better than two thirds of the drawings of those who had been drawing at the academy for two years." "_november , ._ i mentioned in my last letter that i had entered the royal academy, which information i hope will give you pleasure. i now employ my days in painting at home and in the evenings in drawing at the academy as is customary. i have finished a landscape and almost finished a copy of a portrait which mr. west lent me. mr. allston has seen it and complimented me by saying it was just a hundred tunes better than he had any idea i could do, and that i should astonish mr. west very much. i have also begun a landscape, a morning scene at sunrise, which mr. allston is very much pleased with. all these things encourage me, and, as every day passes away, i feel increased enthusiasm.... "distresses are increasing in this country, and disturbances, riots, etc., have commenced as you will see by the papers which accompany this. they are considered very alarming." "_december , ._ i am pursuing my studies with increased enthusiasm, and hope, before the three years are out, to relieve you from further expense on my account. mr. allston encourages me to think thus from the rapid improvement he says i have made. you may rest assured i shall use all my endeavors to do it as soon as may be.... "this country appears to me to be in a very bad state. i judge from the increasing disturbances at nottingham, and more especially from the startling murders lately committed in this city. "a few mornings since was published an account of the murder of a family consisting of four persons, and this moment there is another account of the murder of one consisting of three persons, making the twelfth murder committed in that part of the city within three months, and not one of the murderers as yet has been discovered, although a reward of more than seven hundred pounds has been offered for the discovery. "the inhabitants are very much alarmed, and hereafter i shall sleep with pistols at the head of my bed, although there is little to apprehend in this part of the city. still, as i find many of my acquaintance adopting that plan, i choose rather to be on the safe side and join with them." chapter iv january , --august . political opinions.--charles e. leslie's reminiscences of morse, allston, king, and coleridge.--c. b. king's letter.--sidney e. morse's letter.-- benjamin west's kindness.--sir william beechy.--murders, robberies, etc. --morse and leslie paint each other's portraits.--the elder morse's financial difficulties.--he deprecates the war talk.--the son differs with his father.--the prince regent.--orders in council.--estimate of west.--alarming state of affairs in england.--assassination of perceval, prime minister.--execution of assassin.--morse's love for his art.-- stephen van rensselaer.--leslie the friend and allston the master.-- afternoon tea.--the elder morse well known in europe.--lord castlereagh. --the queen's drawing-room.--kemble and mrs. siddons.--zachary macaulay. --warning letter from his parents.--war declared.--morse approves.-- gratitude to his parents, and to allston. the years from to which were passed by morse in the study of his art in london are full of historical interest, for england and america were at war from to , and the campaign of the allied european powers against napoleon bonaparte culminated in waterloo and the treaty of paris in . the young man took a deep interest in these affairs and expressed his opinions freely and forcibly in his letters to his parents. his father was a strong federalist and bitterly deprecated the declaration of war by the united states. the son, on the contrary, from his point of vantage in the enemy's country saw things from a different point of view and stoutly upheld the wisdom, nay, the necessity, of the war. his parents and friends urged him to keep out of politics and to be discreet, and he seems, at any rate, to have followed their advice in the latter respect, for he was not in any way molested by the authorities. at the same time he was making steady progress in his studies and making friends, both among the americans who were his fellow students or artists of established reputation, and among distinguished englishmen who were friends of his father. among the former was charles r. leslie, his room-mate and devoted friend, who afterwards became one of the best of the american painters of those days. in his autobiography leslie says:-- "my new acquaintances allston, king, and morse were very kind, but still they were _new_ acquaintances. i thought of the happy circle round my mother's fireside, and there were moments in which, but for my obligations to mr. bradford and my other kind patrons, i could have been content to forfeit all the advantages i expected from my visit to england and return immediately to america. the two years i was to remain in london seemed, in prospect, an age. "mr. morse, who was but a year or two older than myself, and who had been in london but six months when i arrived, felt very much as i did and we agreed to take apartments together. for some time we painted in one room, he at one window and i at the other. we drew at the royal academy in the evening and worked at home in the day. our mentors were allston and king, nor could we have been better provided; allston, a most amiable and polished gentleman, and a painter of the purest taste; and king, warm-hearted, sincere, sensible, prudent, and the strictest of economists. "when allston was suffering extreme depression of spirits after the loss of his wife, he was haunted during sleepless nights by horrid thoughts, and he told me that diabolical imprecations forced themselves into his mind. the distress of this to a man so sincerely religious as allston may be imagined. he wished to consult coleridge, but could not summon resolution. he desired, therefore, that i should do it, and i went to highgate where coleridge was at that time living with mr. gillman. i found him walking in the garden, his hat in his hand (as it generally was in the open air), for he told me that, having been one of the bluecoat boys, among whom it is the fashion to go bareheaded, he had acquired a dislike to any covering of the head. "i explained the cause of my visit and he said: 'allston should say to himself, "_nothing is me but my will._ these thoughts, therefore, that force themselves on my mind are no part of _me_ and there can be no guilt in them." if he will make a strong effort to become indifferent to their recurrence, they will either cease or cease to trouble him.' "he said much more, but this was the substance, and, after it was repeated to allston, i did not hear him again complain of the same kind of disturbance." mr. c.b. king, the other friend mentioned by leslie, returned to america in , and writes from philadelphia, january , :-- my dear friends, this will be handed you by mr. payne, of boston, who intends passing some time in england.... i have not been here sufficiently long to forget the delightful time when we could meet in the evening with novels, coffee, and _music by morse_, with the conversation of that dear fellow allston. the reflection that it will not again take place, comes across my mind accompanied with the same painful sensation as the thought that i must die. that morse was not forgotten by the good people at home is evidenced by a letter from his brother, sidney edwards, of january , , part of which i transcribe:-- dear brother,--i am sitting in the parlor in the armchair on the right of the fireplace, and, as i hold my paper in my hand, with my feet sprawled out before the fire, and with my body reclining in an oblique position against the back of the chair, i am penning you a letter such as it is, and for the inverted position of the letters of which i beg to apologize. as i turn my eyes upward and opposite i behold the family picture painted by an ingenious artist who, i understand, is at present residing in london. if you are acquainted with him, give my love to him and my best wishes for his prosperity and success in the art to which, if report says true, he has devoted himself with much diligence. richard sits before me writing to you, and mama says (for i have just asked her the question) that she is engaged in the same business. papa is upstairs very much engaged in the selfsame employment. four right hands are at this instant writing to give you, at some future moment, the pleasure of perusing the products of their present labor. four imaginations are now employed in conceiving of a son or a brother in a distant land. therefore we may draw the conclusion that you are not universally forgotten, and consequently all do not forget you. i have written you this long letter because i knew that you would be anxious for the information it contains; because papa told me i must write; because mama said i had better write; because i had nothing else to do, and because i hadn't time to write a shorter. i trust for these special reasons you will excuse me for this once, especially when you consider that you asked me to write you long letters; when you consider that it is my natural disposition to express my sentiments fully; that i commonly say most when i have least to say; that i promise reformation in future, and that you shall hereafter hear from me on this subject. as to news, i am sorry to say we are entirely out. we sent you the last we had by the sally ann. we hope to get some ready by the time the next ship sails, and then we will furnish you with the best the country affords. from a letter of january , , to his parents i select the following passages:-- "on tuesday last i dined at mr. west's, who requested to be particularly remembered to you. he is extremely attentive and polite to me. he called on me a few days ago, which i consider a very marked attention as he keeps so confined that he seldom pays any visits.... "i have changed my lodgings to no. in the same street [great titchfield street], and have rooms with young leslie of philadelphia who has just arrived. he is very promising and a very agreeable room-mate. we are in the same stage of advancement in art. "i have painted five pieces since i have been here, two landscapes and three portraits; one of myself, one a copy from mr. west's copy from vandyke, and the other a portrait of mr. leslie, who is also taking mine.... i called a day or two since on sir william beechy, an artist of great eminence, to see his paintings. they are beautiful beyond anything i ever imagined. his principal excellence is in coloring, which, to the many, is the most attractive part of art. sir william is considered the best colorist now living. "you may be apt to ask, 'if sir william is so great and even the best, what is mr. west's great excellence?' mr. west is a bad colorist in general, but he excels in the grandeur of his thought. mr. west is to painting what milton is to poetry, and sir william beechy to mr. west as pope to milton, so that by comparing, or rather illustrating the one art by the other, i can give you a better idea of the art of painting than in any other way. for as some poets excel in the different species of poetry and stand at the head of their different kinds, in the same manner do painters have their particular branch of their art; and as epic poetry excels all other kinds of poetry, because it addresses itself to the sublimer feelings of our nature, so does historical painting stand preëminent in our art, because it calls forth the same feelings. for poets' and painters' minds are the same, and i infer that painting is superior to poetry from this:--that the painter possesses with the poet a vigorous imagination, where the poet stops, while the painter exceeds him in the mechanical and very difficult part of the art, that of handling the pencil." "i gave you a hint in letter number and a particular account in number of the horrid murders committed in this city. it has been pretty well ascertained from a variety of evidence that all of them have been committed by one man, who was apprehended and put an end to his life in prison. very horrid attempts at robbery and murder have been very frequent of late in all parts of the city, and even so near as within two doors of me in the same street, but do not be alarmed, you have nothing to fear on my account. leslie and myself sleep in the same room and sleep armed with a pair of pistols and a sword and alarms at our doors and windows, so we are safe on that score.... "in my next i shall give you some account of politics here and as it respects america. the federalists are certainly wrong in very many things.... "p.s. i wish you would keep my letter in which i enumerate all my friends, and when i say, 'give my love to my friends,' imagine i write them all over, and distribute it out to all as you think i ought, always particularizing miss russell, my patroness, my brothers, relations, and mr. brown and nancy [his old nurse]. this will save me time, ink, trouble, and paper." concerning the portraits which morse and leslie were painting of each other, the following letter to morse's mother, from a friend in philadelphia and signed "r.w. snow," will be found interesting:-- my dear friend,--i have this moment received a letter from miss vaughan in london, dated february , , and, knowing the passage below would be interesting to you, i transcribe it with pleasure, and add my very sincere wish that all your hopes may be realized. "dr. morse's son is considered a young man of very promising talents by mr. allston and mr. west and by those who have seen his paintings. we have seen him and think his modesty and apparent amiableness promise as much happiness to his friends as his talents may procure distinction for himself. he is peculiarly fortunate, not only in having mr. allston for an adviser and friend, but in his companion in painting, mr. leslie, a young man from philadelphia highly recommended by my uncle there, and whose extreme diffidence adds to the most promising talents the patient industry and desire of improvement which are necessary to bring them to perfection. they have been drawing each other's pictures. mr. leslie is in the spanish costume and mr. morse in highland dress. they are in an unfinished state, but striking resemblances." this highland lad, i hope, my dear friend, you will see, and in due time be again blessed with the interesting original. at this time the good father was sore distressed financially. he was generous to a fault and had, by endorsing notes and giving to others, crippled his own means. he says in a letter to his son dated march , :-- "the parkman case remains yet undecided and i know not that it ever will be. there is a strange mystery surrounding the business which i am not able to unravel. the court is now in session in boston which is expected to decide the case. in a few days we shall be able to determine what we have to expect from this case. if we lose it, your mother and i have made up our minds to sit down contented with the loss. i trust we shall be enabled to pay our honest debts without it and to support ourselves. "as to you and your brothers, i trust, with your education, you will be able to maintain yourselves, and your parents, too, should they need it in their old age. probably this necessity laid on you for exertion, industry, and economy in early life will be better for you in the end than to be supported by your parents. in nine cases out of ten those who begin the world with nothing are richer and more useful men in life than those who inherit a large estate.... "we have just heard from your brothers, who are well and in fine spirits. edwards writes that he thinks of staying in new haven another year and of pursuing _general science_, and afterwards of purchasing a plantation and becoming a planter in some one of the southern states!! perhaps he intends to marry some rich planter's daughter and to get his plantation and negroes in that way. this, i imagine, will be his only way to do it. "the newspapers which i shall send with this will inform you of the state of our public affairs. we have high hopes that governor strong will be our governor next year. i have no belief that our _war hawks_ will be able to involve the country in a war with great britain, nor do i believe that the president really wishes it. it is thought that all the war talk and preparations are intended to effect the reëlection of mr. madison. the _henry plot_ is a farce intended for the same purpose, but it can never be got up. it will operate against its promoters." while the father was thus writing, on march , of the political conditions in america from his point of view, almost at the same moment the son in england was expressing himself as follows:-- "_march , ._ with respect to politics i know very little, my time being occupied with much pleasanter subjects. i, however, can answer your question whether party spirit is conducted with such virulence here as in america. it is by no means the case, for, although it is in some few instances very violent, still, for the most part, their debates are conducted with great coolness. "as to the prince regent, you have, perhaps, heard how unpopular he has made himself. he has disappointed the expectations of very many. among the most unpopular of his measures may be placed the retention of the orders in council, which orders, notwithstanding the declarations of mr. perceval [the prime minister] and others in the ministry to the contrary, are fast, very fast reducing this country to ruin; and it is the opinion of some of the best politicians in this country that, should the united states either persist in the non-intercourse law or declare war, this country would be reduced to the lowest extremity.[ ] [footnote : orders in council were issued by the sovereign, with the advice of the privy council, in periods of emergency, trusting to their future ratification by parliament. in this case, while promulgated as a retaliatory measure against bonaparte's continental system, they bore heavily upon the commerce of the united states.] "bankruptcies are daily increasing and petitions from all parts of the kingdom, praying for the repeal of the orders in council, have been presented to the prince, but he has declined hearing any of them. also the catholic cause remains undecided, and he refuses hearing anything on that subject. but no more of politics. i am sure you must have more than sufficient at home. "i will turn to a more pleasant subject and give you a slight history of the american artists now in london. "at the head stands mr. west. he stands and has stood so long preëminent that i could relate but little of his history that would be new to you, so that i shall confine myself only to what has fallen under my own observation, and, of course, my remarks will be few. "as a painter mr. west can be accused of as few faults as any artist of ancient or modern times. in his studies he has been indefatigable, and the result of those studies is a perfect knowledge of the philosophy of his art. there is not a line or a touch in his pictures which he cannot account for on philosophical principles. they are not the productions of accident, but of study. "his principal excellence is considered composition, design, and elegant grouping; and his faults were said to be a hard and harsh outline and bad coloring. these faults he has of late in a great degree amended. his outline is softer and his coloring, in some pictures in which he has attempted truth of color, is not surpassed by any artist now living, and some have even said that titian himself did not surpass it. however that may be, his pictures of a late date are admirable even in this particular, and it evinces that, if in general he neglected that fascinating branch of art in some of his paintings, he still possesses a perfect knowledge of all its artifices. he has just completed a picture, an historical landscape, which, for clearness of coloring combined with grandeur of composition, has never been excelled. "in his private character he is unimpeachable. he is a man of tender feelings, but of a mind so noble that it soars above the slanders of his enemies, and he expresses pity rather than revenge towards those who, through wantonness or malice, plan to undermine his character. no man, perhaps, ever passed through so much abuse, and none, i am confident, ever bore up against its virulence with more nobleness of spirit, with a steady perseverance in the pursuit of the sublimest of human professions. he has travelled on heedless of the sneers, the ridicule, or the detraction of his enemies, and he has arrived at that point where the lustre of his works will not fail to illuminate the dark regions of barbarism and distaste long after their bright author has ceased to exist. "excuse my fervor in the praise of this man. he is not a common man, not such a one as can be met with in every age. he is one of those geniuses who are doomed in their lifetime to endure the malice, the ridicule, and neglect of the world, and at their death to receive the praise and adoration of this same inconsistent world. i think there cannot be a stronger proof that human nature is always the same than that men of genius in all ages have been compelled to undergo the same disappointments and to pass through the same routine of calumny and abuse." the rest of this letter is missing, which is a great pity, as it would be interesting to read what morse had to say of allston, leslie, and the others. was it a presentiment of the calumnies and abuse to which he himself was to be subjected in after life which led him to express himself so heartily in sympathy with his master west? and was it the inspiring remembrance of his master's calm bearing under these afflictions which heartened him to maintain a noble serenity under even greater provocation? "_april , ._ i mentioned in my last letter that i should probably exceed my allowance this year by a few pounds, but i now begin to think that i shall not. i am trying every method to be economical and hope it will not be long before i shall relieve you from further expense on my account.... "with respect to politics they appear gloomy on both sides.... you may depend on it. england has injured us sorely and our non-intercourse is a just retaliation for those wrongs. perhaps you will believe what is said in some of the federal papers that that measure has no effect on this country. you may be assured the effects are great and severe; i am myself an eye-witness of the effects. the country is in a state of rebellion from literal starvation. accounts are daily received which grow more and more alarming from the great manufacturing towns. troops are in motion all over the country, and but last week measures were adopted by parliament to prevent this metropolis from rising to rebellion, by ordering troops to be stationed round the city to be ready at a moment's warning. this i call an alarming period. everybody thinks so and mr. perceval himself is frightened, and a committee is appointed to take into consideration the orders in council. now, when you consider that i came to this country prejudiced against our government and its measures, and that i can have no bad motive in telling you these facts, you will not think hard of me when i say that i hope that our non-intercourse law will be enforced with all its rigor, as i firmly believe it is the only way to bring this country to terms, and that, if persisted in, it will certainly bring them to terms. i know it must make some misery at home, but it will be followed by a corresponding happiness after it. some of you at home, i suppose, will call me a democrat, but facts are stubborn things, and i can't deny the truth of what i see every day before my eyes. a man to judge properly of his country must, like judging of a picture, view it at a distance." "_may , ._ i write in great haste to inform you of a dreadful event which happened here last evening, and rumors of which will probably reach you before this. not to keep you in suspense it is no less than the _assassination of mr. perceval,_ the prime minister of great britain. as he was entering the house of commons last evening a little past five o'clock, he was shot directly through the heart by a man from behind the door. he staggered forward and fell, and expired in about ten minutes.... "i have just returned from the house of commons; there was an immense crowd assembled and very riotous. in the hall was written in large letters, 'peace or the head of the regent.' this country is in a very alarming state and there is no doubt but great quantities of blood will be spilled before it is restored to order. even while i am writing a party of life guards is patrolling the streets. london must soon be the scene of dreadful events. "last night i had an opportunity of studying the public mind. it was at the theatre; the play was 'venice preserved; or, the plot discovered.' if you will take the trouble just to read the first act you will see what relation it has to the present state of affairs. when pierre says to jaffier, 'cans't thou kill a senator?' there were three cheers, and so through the whole, whenever anything was said concerning conspiracy and in favor of it, the audience applauded, and when anything was said against it they hissed. when pierre asked the conspirators if brutus was not a good man, the audience was in a great uproar, applauding so as to prevent for some minutes the progress of the performance. this i think shows the public mind to be in great agitation. the play of 'venice preserved' is not a moral play, and i should not ask you to read any part of it if i could better explain to you the feelings of the public." a few days later, on may , he says in a letter to his brothers:-- "the assassin bellingham was immediately taken into custody. he was tried on friday and condemned to be executed to-morrow morning (monday, th). i shall go to the place to see the concourse of people, for to see him executed i know i could not bear." in a postscript written the day after he says:-- "i went this morning to the execution. a very violent rain prevented so great a crowd as was expected. a few minutes before eight o'clock bellingham ascended the scaffold. he was very genteelly dressed; he bowed to the crowd, who cried out, 'god bless you,' repeatedly. i saw him draw the cap over his face and shake hands with the clergyman. i stayed no longer, but immediately turned my back and was returning home. i had taken but a few steps when the clock struck eight, and, on turning back, i saw the crowd beginning to disperse. i have felt the effects of this sight all day, and shall probably not get over it for weeks. it was a dreadful sight. there were no accidents." in spite of all these momentous occurrences, the young artist was faithfully pursuing his studies, for in this same letter to his brothers he says:-- "but enough of this; you will probably hear the whole account before this reaches you. i am wholly absorbed in the studies of my profession; it is a slow and arduous undertaking. i never knew till now the difficulties of art, and no one can duly appreciate it unless he has tried it. difficulties, however, only increase my ardor and make me more determined than ever to conquer them. "mr. west is very kind to me; i visit him occasionally of a morning to hear him converse on art. he appears quite attached to me, as he is, indeed, to all young american artists. it seems to give him the greatest pleasure to think that one day the arts will flourish in america. he says that philadelphia will be the athens of the world. that city certainly gives the greatest encouragement of any place in the united states. boston is most backward, so, if ever i should return to america, philadelphia or new york would probably be my place of abode. "i have just seen mr. stephen van rensselaer, who you know was at college with us, and with whom i was intimate. he was very glad to see me and calls on me every day while i am painting. he keeps his carriage and horses and is in the first circles here. i ride out occasionally with him; shall begin his portrait next week." like a breath of fresh air, in all the heat and dust of these troublous times, comes this request from his gentle mother in a letter of may , :-- "miss c. dexter requests the favor of you to take a sketch of the face of mr. southey and send it her. he is a favorite writer with her and she has a great desire to see the style of his countenance. if you can get it, enclose it in a genteel note to her with a brief account of him, his age and character, etc." the next letter of may , , is from morse to his parents. "i have told you in former letters that my lodgings are at great titchfield street and that my room-mate is leslie, the young man who is so much talked of in philadelphia. we have lived together since december and have not, as yet, had a falling out. i find his thoughts of art agree perfectly with my own. he is enthusiastic and so am i, and we have not time, scarcely, to think of anything else; everything we do has a reference to art, and all our plans are for our mutual advancement in it. our amusements are walking, _occasionally_ attending the theatres, and the company of mr. allston and a few other gentlemen, consisting of three or four painters and poets. we meet by turn at each other's rooms and converse and laugh. "mr. allston is our most intimate friend and companion. i can't feel too grateful to him for his attentions to me; he calls every day and superintends all we are doing. when i am at a stand and perplexed in some parts of the picture, he puts me right and encourages me to proceed by praising those parts which he thinks good, but he is faithful and always tells me when anything is bad. "it is a mortifying thing sometimes to me, when i have been painting all day very hard and begin to be pleased with what i have done, on showing it to mr. allston, with the expectation of praise, and not only of praise but a score of 'excellents,' 'well dones,' and 'admirables'; i say it is mortifying to hear him after a long silence say: 'very bad, sir; that is not flesh, it is mud, sir; it is painted with brick dust and clay.' "i have felt sometimes ready to dash my palette knife through it and to feel at the moment quite angry with him; but a little reflection restores me; i see that mr. allston is not a flatterer but a friend, and that really to improve i must see my faults. what he says after this always puts me in good humor again. he tells me to put a few flesh tints here, a few gray ones there, and to clear up such and such a part by such and such colors. and not only that, but takes the palette and brushes and shows me how, and in this way he assists me. i think it one of the greatest blessings that i am under his eye. i don't know how many errors i might have fallen into if it had not been for his attentions.... "i am painting portraits alone at present. our sitters are among our acquaintances. we paint them if they defray the expense of canvas and colors...." "mama wished me to send some specimens of my painting home that you might see my improvement. the pictures that i now paint would be uninteresting to you; they consist merely of studies and drawings from plaster figures, hands and feet and such things. the portraits are taken by those for whom they are painted. i shall soon begin a portrait of myself and will try and send that to you." "_june , ._ mama asks in one of her letters if we make our own tea. we do. the tea-kettle is brought to us boiling in the morning and evening and we make our own coffee (which, by the way, is very cheap here) and tea. we live quite in the old bachelor style. i don't know but it will be best for me to live in this style through life; my profession seems to require all my time. "mr. hurd will take a diploma to you, with others to different persons near boston. i suppose it confers some title on you of consequence, as i saw at his house a great number to be sent to all parts of the world to distinguished men. i find papa is known here pretty extensively. some one, hearing my name and that i am an american, immediately asks if i am related to you.... "the administration is at length formed, and, to the great sorrow of everybody, the old ministers are reelected. the orders in council are the subject of debate at the house of commons this evening. it is an important crisis, though there is scarcely any hope of their repeal. if not, i sincerely hope that america will declare war. "what lord castlereagh said at a public meeting a few days ago ought to be known in america. respecting the orders in council, when some one said unless they were repealed war with america must be the consequence, he replied that, '_if the people would but support the ministry in those measures for a short time, america would be compelled to submit, for she was not able to go to war_.' but i say, and so does every american here who sees how things are going with this country, that, should america but declare war, before hostilities commenced great britain would sue for peace on any terms. great britain is jealous of us and would trample on us if she could, and i feel ashamed when i see her supported through everything by some of the federal editors. i wish they could be here a few months and they would be ashamed of themselves. they are injuring their country, for it is _their_ violence that induces this government to persist in their measures by holding out hope that the parties will change, and that then they can compel america to do anything. if america loses in this contest and softens her measures towards this country, she never need expect to hold up her head again." "_june , ._ the queen held a drawing-room a short time since and i went to st. james's palace to see those who attended. it was a singular sight to see the ladies and gentlemen in their court dresses. the gentlemen were dressed in buckram skirted coats without capes, long waistcoats, cocked hats, bag-wigs, swords, and large buckles on their shoes. the ladies in monstrous hoops, so that in getting into their carriages they were obliged to go edgewise. their dresses were very rich; some ladies, i suppose, had about them to adorn them £ , or £ , worth of diamonds." "i had a sight of the prince regent as he passed in his splendid state carriage drawn by six horses. he is very corpulent, his features are good, but he is very red and considerably bloated. i likewise saw the princess charlotte of wales, who is handsome, the dukes of kent, cambridge, clarence, and cumberland, admiral duckworth, and many others. the prince held a levee a few days since at which mr. van rensselaer was presented." "i occasionally attend the theatres. at covent garden there is the best acting in the world; mr. kemble is the first tragic actor now in england; cook was a rival and excelled him in some characters. mrs. siddons is the first tragic actress, perhaps, that ever lived. she is now advanced in life and is about to retire from the stage; on the th of this month she makes her last appearance. i must say i admire her acting very much; she is rather corpulent, but has a remarkably fine face; the grecian character is finely portrayed in it; she excels to admiration in deep tragedy. in mrs. beverly, in the play of the 'gamesters' a few nights ago, she so arrested the attention of the house that you might hear your watch tick in your fob, and, at the close of the play, when she utters an hysteric laugh for joy that her husband was not a murderer, there were different ladies in the boxes who actually went into hysterics and were obliged to be carried out of the theatre. this i think is proof of good acting. mrs. siddons is a woman of irreproachable character and moves in the first circles; the stage will never again see her equal. "you mustn't think because i praise the acting that i am partial to theatres. i think in a certain degree they are harmless, but, too much attended, they dissipate the mind. there is no danger of my loving them too much; i like to go once in awhile after studying hard all day. "last night, as i was passing through tottenham court road, i saw a large collection of people of the lower class making a most terrible noise by beating on something of the sounding genus. upon going nearer and enquiring the cause, i found that a butcher had just been married, and that it is always the custom on such occasions for his brethren by trade to serenade the couple with _marrow-bones_ and _cleavers_. perhaps you have heard of the phrase 'musical as marrow-bones and cleavers'; this is the origin of it. if you wish to experience the sound let each one in the family take a pair of tongs and a shovel, and then, standing all together, let each one try to outdo the other in noise, and this will give you some idea of it. how this custom originated i don't know. i hope it is not symbolical of the _harmony_ which is to exist between the parties married." among those eminent englishmen to whom young morse had letters of introduction was zachary macaulay, editor of the "christian observer," and father of the historian. the following note from him will be found of a delightful old-time flavor:-- mr. macaulay presents his compliments to mr. morse and begs to express his regret at not having yet been so fortunate as to meet with him. mr. macaulay will be particularly happy if it should suit mr. morse to dine with him at his house at clapham on saturday next at five o'clock. mr. m.'s house is five doors beyond the plough at the entrance of clapham common. a coach goes daily to clapham from the ship at charing cross at a quarter past three, and several leave grace church street in the city every day at four. the distance from london bridge to mr. macaulay's house is about four miles. d june, . in a letter from his mother of june , , the anxious parent says:-- "although we long to see you, yet we rejoice that you are so happily situated at so great a distance from our, at present, wretched, miserably distracted country, whose mad rulers are plunging us into an unnecessary war with a country that i shall always revere as doing more to spread the glorious gospel of jesus christ to the benighted heathen, and those that are famishing from lack of knowledge, than any other nation on the globe. our hearts bleed at every pore to think of again being at war. we have not yet forgotten the wormwood and gall of the last revolution. "we hope you will steer clear of any of the difficulties of the contest that is about to take place. we wish you to be very prudent and guarded in all your conversation and actions and not to make yourself a party man on either side. have your opinions, but have them to yourself, and be sure you do not commit them to paper. it may do you great injury either on one side or the other, and you are not in your present situation as a politician but as an artist." in this same letter his father adds:-- "the die is cast and our country plunged in war.... there is great opposition to it in the country. the papers, which you will have opportunity to see, will inform you of the state of parties. your mother has given you sound advice as respects the course you should pursue. be the _artist_ wholly and let _politics_ alone. i rejoice that you are where you are at the present time. you will do what you can without delay to support yourself, as i know not how we shall be able to procure funds to transmit to you, and, if we had them, how we could transmit them should the war continue." to this the son answers in a letter of august , :-- "i am improving, perhaps, the last opportunity i shall have for some time to write you. mr. wheeler, an american, who has been here some time studying portrait painting, has kindly offered to deliver this to you. "our political affairs, it seems, have come to a crisis, which i sincerely hope will turn to the advantage of america; it certainly will not to this country. war is an evil which no man ought to think lightly of, but, if ever it was just, it now is. the english acknowledge it, and what can be more convincing proof than the confession of an enemy? i was sorry to hear of the riotous proceedings in boston. if they knew what an injury they were doing their country in the opinion of foreign nations, they certainly would refrain from them. i assert (because i have proof) that the federalists in the northern states have done more injury to their country by their violent opposition measures than even a french alliance could. their proceedings are copied into the english papers, read before parliament, and circulated through the country, and what do they say of them? do they say the federalists are patriots and are firm in asserting the rights of their country? no; they call them _cowards,_ a _base set;_ say they are traitors to their country and ought to be hanged like traitors. these things i have heard and read, and therefore must believe them. "i wish i could have a talk with you, papa; i am sure i could convince you that neither federalists nor democrats are americans; that war with this country is just, and that the present administration of our country has acted with perfect justice in all their proceedings against this country.... "to observe the contempt with which america is spoken of, and the epithets of a _'nation of cheats,' 'sprung from convicts,' 'pusillanimous,' 'cowardly,'_ and such like,--these i think are sufficient to make any true american's blood boil. these are not used by individuals only, but on the floor of the house of commons. the good effects of our declaration of war begin to be perceived already. the tone of their public prints here is a little softer and more submissive. not one has called in question the justice of the declaration of war; all say, 'we are in the wrong and we shall do well to get out of it as soon as possible.' "i could tell you volumes, but i have not time, and it would, perhaps, be impolitic in the present state of affairs. i only wish that among the infatuated party men i may not find my father, and i hope that he will be _neutral_ rather than oppose the war measure, for (if he will believe a son who loves him and his country better the longer and farther he is away from them) this war will reestablish that character for honor and spirit which our country has lost through the proceedings of _federalists_. "but i will turn from this subject. my health and spirits are excellent and my love for my profession increases. i am painting a small historical piece; the subject is 'marius in prison,' and the soldier sent to kill him who drops his sword as marius says, '_durst thou kill caius marius?_' the historical fact you must be familiar with. i am taking great pains with it, and may possibly exhibit it in february at the british gallery. "i never think of my situation in this country but with gratitude to you for suffering me to pursue the profession of my choice, and for making so many sacrifices to gratify me. i hope i shall always feel grateful to the best of parents and be able soon to show them i am so. in the mean time, if industry and application on my part can make them happy, be assured i shall use my best endeavors to be industrious, and in any other way to give them comfort. one of my greatest blessings here is mr. allston. he is like a brother to me, and not only is a most agreeable and entertaining companion, but he has been the means of giving me more knowledge (practical as well as theoretical) in my art than i could have acquired by myself in three years. "in whatever circumstance i am, mr. allston i shall esteem as one of my best and most intimate friends, and in whatever i can assist him or his i shall feel proud in being able to do it. "mr. and mrs. allston are well. i dined with them yesterday at captain visscher's, whom i have mentioned to you before as one of our passengers. he is very attentive to us, visits us constantly, and is making us presents of various kinds every day, such as half a dozen best madeira, etc. he came out here with his lady to take possession of a fortune of £ , and was immensely rich before, having married miss van rensselaer of albany." chapter v september , --june , models the "dying hercules."--dreams of greatness.--again expresses gratitude to his parents.--begins painting of "dying hercules."--letter from jeremiah evarts.--morse upholds righteousness of the war.--henry thornton.--political discussions.-- gilbert stuart.--william wilberforce.--james wynne's reminiscences of morse, coleridge, leslie, allston, and dr. abernethy.--letters from his mother and brother.--letters from friends on the state of the fine arts in america.--"the dying hercules" exhibited at the royal academy.-- expenses of painting.--receives adelphi gold medal for statuette of hercules.--mr. dunlap's reminiscences.--critics praise "dying hercules." the young artist's letters to his parents at this period are filled with patriotic sentiments, and he writes many pages descriptive of the state of affairs in england and of the effects of the war on that country. he strongly upholds the justice of that war and pleads with his parents and brothers to take his view of the matter. they, on the other hand, strongly disapprove of the american administration's position and of the war, and are inclined to censure and to laugh at the enthusiastic young man's heroics. as we are more concerned with morse's career as an artist than with his political sentiments, and as these latter, i fear, had no influence on the course of international events, i shall quote but sparingly from that portion of the correspondence, just enough to show that, whatever cause he espoused, then, and at all times during his long life, he threw himself into it heart and soul, and thoroughly believed in its righteousness. he was absolutely sincere, although he may sometimes have been mistaken. in a letter dated september , , he says:-- "i have just finished a model in clay of a figure (the 'dying hercules'), my first attempt at sculpture. mr. allston is extremely pleased with it; he says it is better than all the things i have done since i have been in england put together, and says i must send a cast of it home to you, and that it will convince you that i shall make a painter. he says also that he will write to his friends in boston to call on you and see it when i send it. "mr. west also was extremely delighted with it. he said it was not merely an academical figure, but displayed mind and thought. he could not have made me a higher compliment. "mr. west would write you, but he has been disabled from painting or writing for a long time with the gout in his right hand. this is a great trial to him. "i am anxious to send you something to show you that i have not been idle since i have been here. my passion for my art is so firmly rooted that i am confident no human power could destroy it. [and yet, as we shall see later on, human injustice so discouraged him that he dropped the brush forever.] "the more i study it, the greater i think is its claim to the appellation of '_divine_' and i never shall be able sufficiently to show my gratitude to my parents for their indulgence in so greatly enabling me to pursue that profession, without which i am sure i would be miserable. if ever it is my destiny to become great and worthy of a biographical memoir, my biographer will never be able to charge upon my parents that bigoted attachment to any individual profession, the exercise of which spirit by parents toward their children has been the ruin of some of the greatest geniuses; and the biography of men of genius has too often contained that reflection on their parents. if ever the contrary spirit was evident, it has certainly been shown by my parents towards me. indeed, they have been almost too indulgent; they have watched every change of my capricious inclinations, and seem to have made it an object to study them with the greatest fondness. but i think they will say that, when my desire for change did cease, it always settled on painting. "i hope that one day my success in my profession will reward you, in some measure, for the trouble and inconvenience i have so long put you to. "i am now going to begin a picture of the death of hercules from this figure, as large as life. the figure i shall send to you as soon as it is practicable, and also one of the same to philadelphia, if possible in time for the next exhibition in may. "i have enjoyed excellent health and spirits and am perfectly contented. the war between the two countries has not been productive of any measures against resident american citizens. i hope it will produce a good effect towards both countries." he adds in a postscript that he has removed from great titchfield street to no. buckingham place, fitzroy square. the following extract from a letter to morse written by his friend, mr. jeremiah evarts, father of william m. evarts, dated charlestown, october , , is interesting:-- "i am happy that you are so industriously and prosperously engaged in the prosecution of your profession. i hope you will let politics entirely alone for many reasons, not the least of which is a regard to the internal tranquillity of your own mind. i never yet knew a man made happy by studying politics; nor useful, unless he has great duties to perform as a citizen. you will receive this advice, i know, with your accustomed good nature." the next letter, dated november , , is a very long one, over eighteen large pages, and is an impassioned appeal to his father to look at the war from the son's point of view. i shall quote only a few sentences. "your last letter was of october , via halifax, accompanying your sermon on fast day. the letter gave me great pleasure, but i must confess that the sentiments in the sermon appeared very _strange_ to me, knowing what i, as well as every american here does, respecting the causes of the present war.... 'tis the character of englishmen to be haughty, proud, and overbearing. if this conduct meets with no resistance, their treatment becomes more imperious, and the more submissive and conciliating is the object of their imperiousness, the more tyrannical are they towards it. this has been their uniform treatment towards us, and this character pervades all ranks of society, whether in public or private life. "the only way to please john bull is to give him a good beating, and, such is the singularity of his character that, the more you beat him, the greater is his respect for you, and the more he will esteem you.... "if, after all i have now written, you still think that this war is unjust, and think it worth the trouble in order to ascertain the truth, i wish papa would take a trip across the atlantic. if he is not convinced of the truth of what i have written in less than two months, i will agree to support myself all the time i am in england after this date, and never be a farthing's more expense to you.... i was glad to hear that cousin samuel breese is in the navy. i really envy him very much. i hope one day, as a painter, i may be able to hand him down to posterity as an american nelson.... as to my letters of introduction, i find that a painter and a visitor cannot be united. were i to deliver my letters the acquaintance could not be kept up, and the bare thought of encountering the english reserve is enough to deter any one.... this objection, however, might be got over did it not take up so much time. every moment is precious to me now. i don't know how soon i may be obliged to return home for want of means to support me; for the difficulties which are increasing in this country take off the attention of the people from the fine arts, and they withhold that patronage from young artists which they would, from their liberality, in other circumstances freely bestow.... "you mention that some of the ralston family are in boston on a visit, and that mr. codman is attached to eliza. once in my life, you know, if you had told me this and i had been a very bloody-minded young man, who knows but mr. codman might have been challenged. but i suppose he takes advantage of my being in england. if it is as you say, i am very happy to hear it, for elizabeth is a girl whom i very much esteem, and there is no doubt that she will make an excellent wife." in a letter from his mother of july , , she thus reassures him: "mr. codman is married. he married a miss wheeler, of newburyport, so you will have no need of challenging him on account of eliza ralston." in a postscript to the letter of november , morse adds:-- "i have just read the political parts of this letter to my good friend mr. a----n, and he not only approves of the sentiments in it, but pays me a compliment by saying that i have expressed the truth and nothing but the truth in a very clear and proper manner, and hopes it may do good." among young morse's friends in england at that time was henry thornton, philanthropist and member of parliament. in a letter to his parents of january , , he says:-- "last thursday week i received a very polite invitation from henry thornton, esq., to dine with him, which i accepted. i had no introduction to him, but, hearing that your son was in the country, he found me out and has shown me every attention. he is a very pleasant, sensible man, but his character is too well known to you to need any eulogium from me. "at his table was a son of mr. stephen, who was the author of the odious orders in council. mr. thornton asked me at table if i thought that, if the orders in council had been repealed a month or two sooner, it would not have prevented the war. i told him i thought it would, at which he was much pleased, and, turning to mr. stephen, he said: 'do you hear that, mr. stephen? i always told you so.' "last wednesday i dined at mr. wilberforce's. i was extremely pleased with him. at his house i met mr. grant and mr. thornton, members of parliament. in the course of conversation they introduced america, and mr. wilberforce regretted the war extremely; he said it was like two of the same family quarrelling; that he thought it a judgment on this country for its wickedness, and that they had been justly punished for their arrogance and insolence at sea, as well as the americans for their vaunting on land. "as mr. thornton was going he invited me to spend a day or two at his seat at clapham, a few miles out of town. i accordingly went and was very civilly treated. the _reserve_ which i mentioned in a former letter was evident, however, here, and i felt a degree of embarrassment arising from it which i never felt in america. the second day i was a little more at my ease. "at dinner were the two sons of the mr. grant i mentioned above. they are, perhaps, the most promising young men in the country, and you may possibly one day hear of them as at the head of the nation. [one of these young men was afterwards raised to the peerage as lord glenelg.] "after dinner i got into conversation with them and with mr. thornton, when america again became the topic. they asked me a great many questions respecting america which i answered to the best of my ability. they at length asked me if i did not think that the ruling party in america was very much under french influence. i replied 'no'; that i believed on the contrary that nine tenths of the american people were prepossessed strongly in favor of this country. as a proof i urged the universal prevalence of english fashions in preference to french, and english manners and customs; the universal rejoicings on the success of the english over the french; the marked attention shown to english travellers and visitors; the neglect with which they treated their own literary productions on account of the strong prejudice in favor of english works; that everything, in short, was enhanced in its value by having attached to it the name english. "on the other hand, i told them that the french were a people almost universally despised in america, and by at least one half hated. as in england, they were esteemed the common enemies of mankind; that french fashions were discountenanced and loathed; that a frenchman was considered as a man always to be suspected; that young men were forbidden by their parents, in many instances, to associate with them, they considering their company and habits as tending to subvert their morals, and to render them frivolous and insincere. i added that in america as well as everywhere else there were bad men, men of no principles, whose consciences never stand in the way of their ambition or avarice; but that i firmly believed that, as a body, the american congress was as pure from corruption and foreign influence as any body of men in the world. they were much pleased with what i told them, and acknowledged that america and american visitors generally had been treated with too much contempt and neglect. "in the course of the day i asked mr. thornton what were the objects that the english government had in view when they laid the orders in council. he told me in direct terms, '_the universal monopoly of commerce_'; that they had long desired an excuse for such measures as the orders in council, and that the french decrees were exactly what they wished, and the opportunity was seized with avidity the moment it was offered. they knew that the orders in council bore hard upon the americans, but they considered that as merely _incidental_. "to this i replied that, if such was the case as he represented it, what blame could be attached to the american government for declaring war? he said that it was urged that america ought to have considered the circumstances of the case, and that great britain was fighting for the liberties of the world; that america was, in a great degree, interested in the decision of the contest, and that she ought to be content to suffer a little. "i told him that england had no right whatever to infringe on the neutrality of america, or to expect because she (england) supposed herself to have justice on her side in the contest with france, that, of course, the americans should think the same. the moment america declared this opinion her neutrality ceased. 'besides,' said i, 'how can they have the face to make such a declaration when you just now said that their object was universal monopoly, and they longed for an excuse to adopt measures to that end?' i told him that it showed that all the noise about england's fighting for the liberties of mankind proved to be but a thirst, a selfish desire for _universal monopoly_. "this he said seemed to be the case; he could not deny it. he was going on to observe something respecting the french decrees when we were interrupted, and i have not been able again to resume the conversation. i returned to town with him shortly after in his carriage, where, as there were strangers, i could not introduce it again." after this follow two long pages giving further reasons for the stand he has taken, which i shall not include, only quoting the following sentences towards the end of the letter:-- "you will have heard before this arrives of the glorious news from russia. bonaparte is for once _defeated_, and will probably never again recover from it. "my regards to mr. stuart [gilbert stuart]. i feel quite flattered at his remembrance of me. tell him that, by coming to england, i know how more justly to appreciate his great merits. there is really no one in england who equals him. "accompanying this are some newspapers, some of cobbett's, a man of no principle and a great rascal, yet a man of sense and says many good things." i have quoted at length from this letter in order that we may gain a clearer insight into the character of the man. while in no wise neglecting his main objects in life, he yet could not help taking a deep interest in public affairs. he was frank and outspoken in his opinions, but courteous withal. he abhorred hypocrisy and vice and was unsparing in his condemnation of both. he enjoyed a controversy and was quick to discover the weak points in his opponent's arguments and to make the most of them. these characteristics he carried with him through life, becoming, however, broader-minded and more tolerant as he grew in years and experience. morse's father had given him many letters of introduction to eminent men in england. most of these he neglected to deliver, pleading in extenuation of his apparent carelessness that he could not spare the time from his artistic studies to fulfill all the duties that would be expected of him in society, and that he also could not afford the expenses necessary to a well-dressed man. the following note from william wilberforce explains itself, but there seems to be some confusion of dates, for morse had just said in his letter of january st that he dined at mr. wilberforce's over a week before. kensington gore, january , . sir,--i cannot help entertaining some apprehension of my not having received some letter or some card which you may have done me the favor of leaving at my house. be this, however, as it may, i gladly avail myself of the sanction of a letter from your father for introducing myself to you; and, as many calls are mere matters of form, i take the liberty of begging the favor of your company at dinner on wednesday next, at a quarter before five o'clock, at kensington gore (one mile from hyde park corner), and of thereby securing the pleasure of an acquaintance with you. the high respect which i have always entertained for your father, in addition to the many obliging marks of attention which i have received from him, render me desirous of becoming personally known to you, and enable me with truth to assure you i am, with good will, sir, your faithful servant, w. wilberforce. among morse's friends in london during the period of his student years, were coleridge, rogers, lamb, and others whose names are familiar ones in the literary world. while the letters of those days give only hints of the delightful intercourse between these congenial souls, the recollection of them was enshrined in the memory of some of their contemporaries, and the following reminiscences, preserved by mr. james wynne and recorded by mr. prune in his biography, will be found interesting:-- "coleridge, who was a visitor at the rooms of leslie and morse, frequently made his appearance under the influence of those fits of despondency to which he was subject. on these occasions, by a preconcerted plan, they often drew him from this state to one of brilliant imagination. "'i was just wishing to see you,' said morse on one of these occasions when coleridge entered with a hesitating step, and replied to their frank salutations with a gloomy aspect and deep-drawn sighs. 'leslie and myself have had a dispute about certain lines of beauty; which is right?' and then each argued with the other for a few moments until coleridge became interested, and, rousing from his fit of despondency, spoke with an eloquence and depth of metaphysical reasoning on the subject far beyond the comprehension of his auditors. their point, however, was gained, and coleridge was again the eloquent, the profound, the gifted being which his remarkable productions show him to be. "'on one occasion,' said morse, 'i heard him improvise for half an hour in blank verse what he stated to be a strange dream, which was full of those wonderful creations that glitter like diamonds in his poetical productions.' 'all of which,' remarked i, 'is undoubtedly lost to the world.' 'not all,' replied mr. morse, 'for i recognize in the "ancient mariner" some of the thoughts of that evening; but doubtless the greater part, which would have made the reputation of any other man, perished with the moment of inspiration, never again to be recalled.' "when his tragedy of 'remorse,' which had a run of twenty-one nights, was first brought out, washington allston, charles king, leslie, lamb, morse, and coleridge went together to witness the performance. they occupied a box near the stage, and each of the party was as much interested in its success as coleridge himself. "the effect of the frequent applause upon coleridge was very manifest, but when, at the end of the piece, he was called for by the audience, the intensity of his emotions was such as none but one gifted with the fine sensibilities of a poet could experience. fortunately the audience was satisfied with a mere presentation of himself. his emotions would have precluded the idea of his speaking on such an occasion. "allston soon after this became so much out of health that he thought a change of air and a short residence in the country might relieve him. he accordingly set out on his journey accompanied by leslie and morse. "when he reached salt hill, near oxford, he became so ill as to be unable to proceed, and requested morse to return to town for his medical attendant, dr. tuthill, and coleridge, to whom he was ardently attached. "morse accordingly returned, and, procuring a post-chaise, immediately set out for salt hill, a distance of twenty-two miles, accompanied by coleridge and dr. tuthill. "they arrived late in the evening and were busied with allston until midnight, when he became easier, and morse and coleridge left him for the night. "upon repairing to the sitting-room of the hotel morse opened knickerbocker's 'history of new york,' which he had thrown into the carriage before leaving town. coleridge asked him what work he had. "'oh,' replied he, 'it is only an american book.' "'let me see it,' said coleridge. "he accordingly handed it to him, and coleridge was soon buried in its pages. mr. morse, overcome by the fatigues of the day, soon after retired to his chamber and fell asleep. "on awakening next morning he repaired to the sitting-room, when what was his astonishment to find it still closed, with the lights burning, and coleridge busy with the book he had lent him the previous night. "'why, coleridge,' said he, approaching him, 'have you been reading the whole night?' "'why,' remarked coleridge abstractedly, 'it is not late.' "morse replied by throwing open the blinds and permitting the broad daylight, for it was now ten o'clock, to stream in upon them. "'indeed,' said coleridge, 'i had no conception of this; but the work has pleased me exceedingly. it is admirably written; pray, who is its author?' "he was informed that it was the production of washington irving. it is needless to say that, during the long residence of irving in london, they became warm friends. "at this period mr. abernethy was in the full tide of his popularity as a surgeon, and allston, who had for some little time had a grumbling pain in his thigh, proposed to morse to accompany him to the house of the distinguished surgeon to consult him on the cause of the ailment. "as allston had his hand on the bell-pull, the door was opened and a visitor passed out, immediately followed by a coarse-looking person with a large, shaggy head of hair, whom allston at once took for a domestic. he accordingly enquired if mr. abernethy was in. "'what do you want of mr. abernethy?' demanded this uncouth-looking person with the harshest possible scotch accent. "'i wished to see him,' gently replied allston, somewhat shocked by the coarseness of his reception. 'is he at home?' "'come in, come in, mon,' said the same uncouth personage. "'but he may be engaged,' responded allston. 'perhaps i had better call another time.' "'come in, mon, i say,' replied the person addressed; and, partly by persuasion and partly by force, allston, followed by morse, was induced to enter the hall, which they had no sooner done than the person who admitted them closed the street door, and, placing his back against it, said:-- "'now, tell me what is your business with mr. abernethy. i am mr. abernethy.' "'i have come to consult you,' replied allston, 'about an affection--' "'what the de'il hae i to do with your affections?' bluntly interposed abernethy. "'perhaps, mr. abernethy,' said allston, by this time so completely overcome by the apparent rudeness of the eminent surgeon as to regret calling on him at all, 'you are engaged at present, and i had better call again.' "'de'il the bit, de'il the bit, mon,' said abernethy. 'come in, come in.' and he preceded them to his office, and examined his case, which proved to be a slight one, with such gentleness as almost to lead them to doubt whether abernethy within his consulting-room, and abernethy whom they had encountered in the passage, was really the same personage." while morse was enjoying all these new experiences in england, the good people at home were jogging along in their accustomed ruts, but were deeply interested in the doings of the absent son and brother. his mother writes on january , :-- "your letters are read with great pleasure by your acquaintance. i do not show those in which you say anything on _politics,_ as i do not approve your _change_, and think it would only prejudice others. for that reason i do not wish you to write on that subject, as i love to read all your observations to your friends. "we cannot get edwards to be a ladies' man at all. he will not visit among the young ladies; he is as old as fifty, at least." this same youthful misogynist and philosopher also writes to his brother on january : "i intend soon writing another letter in which i shall prove to your satisfaction that poetry is much superior to painting. you asserted the contrary in one of your letters, and brought an argument to prove it. i shall show the fallacy of that argument, and bring those to support my doctrine which are incontrovertible." a letter from his friend, mrs. jarvis, the sister of his erstwhile flame, miss jannette hart, informs him of the marriage of another sister to captain hull of the navy, commander of the constitution. in this letter, written on march , , at bloomingdale, new york city, mrs. jarvis says:-- "i am in general proud of the spirit of my countrymen, but there is too little attention paid to the fine arts, to men of taste and science. man here is weighed by his purse, not by his mind, and, according to the preponderance of that, he rises or sinks in the scale of individual opinion. a fine painting or marble statue is very rare in the houses of the rich of this city, and those individuals who would not pay fifty pounds for either, expend double that sum to vie with a neighbor in a piece of furniture. "but do not tell tales. i would not say this to an englishman, and i trust you have not yet become one. this, however, is poor encouragement for you to return to your native country. i hope better things of that country before you may return." a friend in philadelphia writes to him on may , :-- "your favor i received from the hands of mr. king, and have been very much gratified with the introduction it afforded me to this worthy gentleman. you have doubtless heard of his safe arrival in our city, and of his having commenced his career in america, where, i am sorry to say, the arts are not, as yet, so much patronized as i hope to see them. those of us who love them are too poor, and those who are wealthy regard them but little. i think, however, i have already witnessed an improvement in this respect, and the rich merchants and professional men are becoming more and more liberal in their patronage of genius, when they find it among native americans. "from the favorable circumstances under which your studies are progressing; from the unrivalled talents of the gentleman who conducts them; and, without flattery, suffer me to add, from the early proofs of your own genius, i anticipate, in common with many of our fellow citizens, the addition of one artist to our present roll whose name shall stand high among those of american painters. "in your companion leslie we also calculate on a very distinguished character. "our academy of fine arts has begun the all-important study of the live figure. mr. sully, mr. peale, mr. fainnan, mr. king, and several others have devoted much attention to this branch of the school, and i hope to see it in their hands highly useful and improving. "the last annual exhibition was very splendid _for us_. some very capital landscapes were produced, many admirable portraits and one or two historical pictures. "the most conspicuous paintings were mr. peale's picture of the 'roman charity' (or, if you please, the 'grecian daughter,' for murphy has it so), and mr. sully's 'lady of the lake.'" in a letter of may , , to a friend, morse says:-- "you ask in your letter what books i read and what i am painting. the little time that i can spare from painting i employ in reading and studying the old poets, spenser, chaucer, dante, tasso, etc. these are necessary to a painter. "as to painting, i have just finished a large picture, eight feet by six feet six inches, the subject, the 'death of hercules,' which is now in the royal academy exhibition at somerset house. i have been flattered by the newspapers which seldom praise young artists, and they do me the honor to say that my picture, with that of another young man by the name of monroe, form a distinguishing trait in this year's exhibition.... "this praise i consider much exaggerated. mr. west, however, who saw it as soon as i had finished it, paid me many compliments, and told me that, were i to live to his age, i should never make a better composition. this i consider but a compliment and as meant only to encourage me, and as such i receive it. "i mention these circumstances merely to show that i am getting along as well as can be expected, and, if any credit attaches to me, i willingly resign it to my country, and feel happy that i can contribute a mite to her honor. "the american character stands high in this country as to the production of artists, but in nothing else (except, indeed, i may now say _bravery_). mr. west now stands at the head, and has stood ever since the arts began to flourish in this country, which is only about fifty years. mr. copley next, then colonel trumbull. stuart in america has no rival here. as these are now old men and going off the stage, mr. allston succeeds in the prime of life, and will, in the opinion of the greatest connoisseurs in this country, carry the art to greater perfection than it ever has been carried either in ancient or modern times.... after him is a young man from philadelphia by the name of leslie, who is my room-mate." how fallible is contemporary judgment on the claims of so-called genius to immortality. "for many are called, but few are chosen." in another letter to his parents written about this time, after telling of his economies in order to make the money, advanced so cheerfully but at the cost of so much self-sacrifice on their part, last as long as possible, he adds: "my greatest expense, next to _living_, is for canvas, frames, colors, etc., and visiting galleries. the frame of my large picture, which i have just finished, cost nearly twenty pounds, besides the canvas and colors, which cost nearly eight pounds more, and the frame was the cheapest i could possibly get. mr. allston's frame cost him sixty guineas. "frames are very expensive things, and, on that account, i shall not attempt another large picture for some time, although mr. west advises me to paint _large_ as much as possible. "the picture which i have finished is 'the death of hercules'; the size is eight feet by six feet six inches. this picture i showed to mr. west a few weeks ago, and he was extremely pleased with it and paid me very many high compliments; but as praise comes better from another than from one's self, i shall send you a complimentary note which mr. west has promised to send me on the occasion. "i sent the picture to the exhibition at somerset house which opens on the d of may, and have the satisfaction not only of having it received, but of having the praises of the council who decide on the admission of pictures. six hundred were refused admission this year, so you may suppose that a picture (of the size of mine, too) must possess some merit to be received in preference to six hundred. a small picture may be received even if it is not very good, because it will serve to fill up some little space which would otherwise be empty, but a large one, from its excluding many smaller ones, must possess a great deal in its favor in order to be received. "if you recollect i told you i had completed a model of a single figure of the same subject. this i sent to the society of arts at the adelphi, to stand for the prize (which is offered every year for the best performance in painting, sculpture, and architecture and is a _gold medal_). "yesterday i received the note accompanying this, by which you will see that it is adjudged to me in sculpture this year. it will be delivered to me in public on the th of may or june, i don't know which, but i shall give you a particular account of the whole process as soon as i have received it.... i cannot close this letter without telling you how much i am indebted to that excellent man mr. allston. he is extremely partial to me and has often told me that he is proud of calling me his pupil. he visits me every evening and our conversation is generally upon the inexhaustible subject of our divine art, and upon _home_ which is next in our thoughts. "i know not in what terms to speak of mr. allston. i can truly say i do not know the slightest imperfection in him. he is amiable, affectionate, learned, possessed of the greatest powers of mind and genius, modest, unassuming, and, above all, a religious man.... i could write a quire of paper in his praise, but all i could say of him would give you but a very imperfect idea of him.... "you must recollect, when you tell friends that i am studying in england, that i am a pupil of allston and not mr. west. they will not long ask who mr. allston is; he will very soon astonish the world. he claims me as his pupil, and told me a day or two since, in a jocose manner, that he should have a battle with mr. west unless he gave up all pretension to me." we gain further information concerning morse's first triumphs, his painting and his statuette from the following reminiscences of a friend, mr. dunlap:-- "it was about the year that allston commenced his celebrated picture of the 'dead man restored to life by touching the bones of elisha,' which is now in the pennsylvania academy of arts. in the study of this picture he made a model in clay of the head of the dead man to assist him in painting the expression. this was the practice of the most eminent old masters. morse had begun a large picture to come out before the british public at the royal academy exhibition. the subject was the 'dying hercules,' and, in order to paint it with the more effect, he followed the example of allston and determined to model the figure in clay. it was his first attempt at modelling. "his original intention was simply to complete such parts of the figure as were useful in the single view necessary for the purpose of painting; but, having done this, he was encouraged, by the approbation of allston and other artists, to finish the entire figure. "after completing it, he had it cast in plaster of paris and carried it to show to west, who seemed more than pleased with it. after surveying it all round critically, with many exclamations of surprise, he sent his servant to call his son raphael. as soon as raphael made his appearance west pointed to the figure and said: 'look there, sir; i have always told you any painter can make a sculptor.' "from this model morse painted his picture of the 'dying hercules,' of colossal size, and sent it, in may, , to the royal academy exhibition at somerset house." the picture was well received. a critic of one of the journals of that day in speaking of the royal academy thus notices morse:-- "of the academicians two or three have distinguished themselves in a preëminent degree; besides, few have added much to their fame, perhaps they have hardly sustained it. but the great feature in this exhibition is that it presents several works of very high merit by artists with whose performances, and even with whose names, we were hitherto unacquainted. at the head of this class are messrs. monroe and morse. the prize of history may be contended for by mr. northcote and mr. stothard. we should award it to the former. after these gentlemen messrs. hilton, turner, lane, monroe, and morse follow in the same class." (london "globe," may , .) [illustration: the dying hercules painted by morse in ] in commemorating the "preëminent works of this exhibition," out of nearly two thousand pictures, this critic places the "dying hercules" among the first twelve. on june , , morse thus writes to his parents:-- "i send by this opportunity (mr. elisha goddard) the little cast of the hercules which obtained the prize this year at the adelphi, and also the gold medal, which was the premium presented to me, before a large assembly of the nobility and gentry of the country, by the duke of norfolk, who also paid me a handsome compliment at the same time. "there were present lord percy, the margravine of anspach, the turkish, sardinian, and russian ambassadors, who were pointed out to me, and many noblemen whom i do not now recollect. "my great picture also has not only been received at the royal academy, but has one of the finest places in the rooms. it has been spoken of in the papers, which you must know is considered a great compliment; for a young artist, unless extraordinary, is seldom or never mentioned till he has exhibited several times. they not only praise me, but place my picture among the most attractive in the exhibition. this i know will give you pleasure." chapter vi july , --april , letter from the father on economies and political views.--morse deprecates lack of spirit in new england and rejoices at wellington's victories.--allston's poems.--morse coat-of-arms.--letter of joseph hillhouse.--letter of exhortation from his mother.--morse wishes to stay longer in europe.--amused at mother's political views.--the father sends more money for a longer stay.--sidney exalts poetry above painting.--his mother warns him against infidels and actors.--bristol.--optimism.-- letter on infidels and his own religious observances.--future of american art.--he is in good health, but thin.--letter from mr. visger.--benjamin burritt, american prisoner.--efforts in his behalf unsuccessful.--capture of paris by the allies.--again expresses gratitude to parents.--writes a play for charles mathews.--not produced. the detailed accounts of his economies which the young man sent home to his parents seem to have deeply touched them, for on july , , his father writes to him: "your economy, industry, and success in pursuing your professional studies give your affectionate parents the highest gratification and reward. we wish you to avoid carrying your economy to an _extreme_. let your appearance be suited to the respectable company you keep, and your living such as will conduce most effectually to preserve health of body and vigor of mind. we shall all be willing to make sacrifices at home so far as may be necessary to the above purposes." farther on in this same letter the father says: "the character you give of mr. allston is, indeed, an exalted one, and we believe it correctly drawn. your ardor has given it a high coloring, but the excess is that of an affectionate and grateful heart." referring to his son's political views, he answers in these broad-minded words:-- "i approve your love of your country and concern for its honor. your errors, as we think them, appear to be the errors of a fair and honest mind, and are of a kind to be effectually cured by correct information of facts on both sides. "probably we may err because we are ignorant of many things which have fallen under your notice. we shall no doubt agree when we shall have opportunity to compare notes, and each is made acquainted with all that the other knows. i confidently expect an honorable peace in the course of six months, but may be deceived, as the future course of things cannot be foreseen. "the present is one of the finest and most promising seasons i ever knew; the harvest to appearance will be very abundant. heaven appears to be rewarding this part of the country for their conduct in opposing the present war." perhaps the good father did not mean to be malicious, but this is rather a wicked little thrust at the son's vehemently expressed political views. on this very same date, july , , morse writes to his parents:-- "i have just heard of the unfortunate capture of the chesapeake. is our infant hercules to be strangled at his birth? where is the spirit of former times which kindled in the hearts of the bostonians? will they still be unmoved, or must they learn from more bitter experience that britain is not for peace, and that the only way to procure it is to join heart and hand in a vigorous prosecution of the war? "it is not the time now to think of party; the country is in danger; but i hope to hear soon that the honor of our navy is retrieved. the brave captain lawrence will never, i am sure, be forgotten; his career of glory has been short but brilliant. "all is rejoicing here; illuminations and fireworks and _feux de joie_ for the capture of the chesapeake and a victory in spain. "imagine yourself, if possible, in my situation in an enemy's country and hearing songs of triumph and exultation on the misfortunes of my countrymen, and this, too, on the th of july. a less ardent spirit than mine might perhaps tolerate it, but i cannot. i do long to be at home, to be in the navy, and teach these insolent englishmen how to respect us.... "the marquis wellington has achieved a great victory in spain, and bids fair to drive the french out very soon. at this i rejoice as ought every man who abhors tyranny and loves liberty. i wish the british success against everything but _my country_. i often say with cowper: 'england, with all thy faults, i love thee still.' "i am longing for edwards' comparison between poetry and painting, and to know how he will prove the former superior to the latter. a painter _must_ be a poet, but a poet need not be a painter. how will he get over this argument? "by the way, mr. allston has just published a volume of poems, a copy of which i will endeavor to send you. they are but just published, so that the opinion of the public is not yet ascertained, but there is no doubt they will forever put at rest the calumny that america has never produced a poet. "i have lately been enquiring for the coat-of-arms which belongs to the morse family. for this purpose i wish to know from what part of this kingdom the morses emigrated, and if you can recollect anything that belongs to the arms. if you will answer these questions minutely, i can, for half a crown, ascertain the arms and crest which belong to the family, which (as there is a degree of importance attached to heraldry in this country) may be well to know. i have seen the arms of one morse which have been in the family three hundred years. so we can trace our antiquity as far as any family." a letter from a college-mate, mr. joseph hillhouse, written in boston on july , , gives a pretty picture of morse's home, and contains some quaint gossip which i shall transcribe:-- "on saturday afternoon the beauty of the weather invited my cousin catherine borland, my sister mary (who is here on a visit), and myself to take a walk over to charlestown for the purpose of paying a visit to your good parents. we found them just preparing tea, and at once concluded to join the family party. "present to the eye of your fancy the closing-in of a fine, blue-skied, sunny american saturday evening, whose tranquillity and repose rendered it the fit precursor of the sabbath. imagine the tea-table placed in your sitting-parlor, all the windows open, and round it, first, the housekeeper pouring out tea; next her, miss c. borland; next her, your mother, whose looks spoke love as often as you were mentioned, and that was not infrequently, i assure you. on your mother's right sat my sister, next whom was your father in his long green-striped study gown, his apostolic smile responding to the eye of your mother when his dear son was his theme. i was placed (and an honorable post i considered it) at his right hand. "there the scene for you. can you paint it? neither of your brothers was at home.... "in home news we have little variety. the sister of your quondam flame, miss ann hart, bestowed her hand last winter on victory as personified in our little fat captain, isaac hull, who is now reposing in the shade of his laurels, and amusing himself in directing the construction of a seventy-four at portsmouth. where the fair excellence, miss jannette herself, is at present, i am unable to say. the sunshine of her eyes has not beamed upon me since i beheld you delightedly and gallantly figuring at her side at daddy value's ball, where i exhibited sundry feats of the same sort myself. "by the way, mons. v. is still in fiddling condition, and the immaculate ann jane caroline gibbs, madame, has bestowed a subject on the state!! "a fortnight since your friend nancy goodrich was married to william ellsworth. emily webster is soon to plight her faith to his brother henry. miss mary ann woolsey thinks of consummating the blessedness of a mr. scarborough before the expiration of the summer. he is a widower of thirty or thirty-five with one child, a little girl four or five years old. "thus, you see, my dear friend, all here seem to be setting their faces heavenward; all seem ambitious of repairing the ravages of war.... "p.s. oh! horrid mistake i made on the preceding page! nancy and emily, on my knees i deprecate your wrath!! i have substituted william for henry and henry for william. no, henry is nancy's and william emily's. they are twins, and i, forsooth, must make them changelings!" in a letter of july , , his mother thus exhorts him:-- "i hope, my dear son, your success in your profession will not have a tendency to make you vain, or embolden you to look down on any in your profession whom providence may have been less favorable to in point of talents for this particular business; and that you will observe a modesty in the reception of premiums and praises on account of your talents, that shall show to those who bestow them that you are worthy of them in more senses than merely as an artist. it will likewise convince those who are less favored that you are far from exulting in their disappointments,--as i hope is truly the case,--and prevent that jealousy and envy that too often discovers itself in those of the same profession.... "we exceedingly rejoice in all your success, and hope you will persevere. remember, my son, it is easier to get a reputation than to keep it unspotted in the midst of so much pollution as we are surrounded by.... "c. dexter thanks you for your attention to her request as it respects southey's likeness. she does not wish you to take too much pains and trouble to get it, but she, i know, would be greatly pleased if you should send her one of him. if you should get acquainted with him, inform him that a very sensible, fine young lady in america requested it (but don't tell him her name) from having read his works." in a long letter of august and , , after again giving free rein to his political feelings, he returns to the subject of his art:-- "mr. west promised me a note to you, but he is an old man and very forgetful, and i suppose he has forgotten it. i don't wish to remind him of it directly, but, if in the course of conversation i can contrive to mention it, i will.... "with respect to returning home next summer, mr. allston and mr. west think it would be an injury to me. mr. allston says i ought not to return till i am a _painter_. i long to return as much as you can wish to have me, but, if you can spare me a little longer, i should wish it. i abide your decision, however, completely. mr. allston will write you fully on this subject, and i will endeavor to persuade mr. west also to do it. "france i could not, at present, visit with advantage; that is to say for, perhaps, a year. mr. allston thinks i ought to be previously well grounded in the principles of the english school to resist the corruptions of the french school; for they are corrupt in the principles of painting, as in religion and everything else; but, when well grounded in the good principles of this school, i could study and select the few beauties of the french without being in danger of following their many errors. the louvre also would, in about a year, be of the greatest advantage to me, and also the fine works in italy.... "mama has amused me very much in her letter where she writes on politics. she says that, next to changing one's religion, she would dislike a man for changing his politics. mama, perhaps, is not aware that she would in this way shut the door completely to conviction in anything. it would imply that, because a man is educated in error, he must forever live in error. i know exactly how mama feels; she thinks, as i did when at home, that it was impossible for the federalists to be in the wrong; but, as all men are fallible, i think they may stand a chance of being wrong as well as any other class of people.... "mama thinks my '_error_' arises from wrong information. i will ask mama which of us is likely to get at the truth; i, who am in england and can see and hear all their motives for acting as they have done; or mama, who gets her information from the federal papers, second-hand, with numerous additions and improvements made to answer party purposes, distorted and misrepresented? "but to give you an instance. in the massachusetts remonstrance they attribute the repeal of the orders in council to the kind disposition of the english government, and a wish on their part to do justice, whereas it is notorious in this country that they repealed them on account of the injury it was doing themselves, and took america into consideration about as much as they did the inhabitants of kamschatka. the conditional repeal of the berlin and milan decrees was a back door for them, and they availed themselves of it to sneak out of it. this necessity, this act of dire necessity, the federal papers cry up as evincing a most forbearing spirit towards us, and really astonish the english themselves who never dreamt that it could be twisted in that way. "mama assigns as a reason for my thinking well of the english that they have been very polite to me, and that it is ingratitude in me if i do otherwise. a few individuals have treated me politely, and i do feel thankful and gratified for it; but a little politeness from an individual of one nation to an individual of another is certainly not a reason that the former's government should be esteemed incapable of wrong by the latter. i esteem the english as a nation; i rejoice in their conquests on the continent, and would love them heartily, if they would let me; but i am afraid to tell them this, they are already too proud. "their treatment of america is the worse for it. they are like a poor man who has got a lottery ticket and draws a great prize, and when his poor neighbor comes sincerely to congratulate him on his success, he holds up his head, and, turning up his nose, tells him that now he is his superior and then kicks him out of doors. "papa says he expects peace in six months. it may be in the disposition of america to make peace, but not in the will of the english. it is in the power of the federalists to force her to peace, but they will not do it, so she will force us to do it." as in most discussions, political or otherwise, neither party seems to have been convinced by the arguments of the other, for the parents continue to urge him to leave politics alone; indeed, they insist on his doing so. they also urge him to make every effort to support himself, if he should decide to spend another year abroad, for they fear that they will be unable to send him any more money. however, the father, when he became convinced that it was really to his son's interest to spend another year abroad, contrived to send him another thousand dollars. this was done at the cost of great self-sacrifice on the part of himself and his family, and was all the more praiseworthy on that account. in a letter from his brother edwards, written also on the th of november, is this passage: "i must defer giving my reasons for thinking poetry superior to painting; i will mention only a few of the principles upon which i found my judgment. genius in both these arts is the power of making impressions. the question then is: which is capable of making the strongest impression; which can impress upon the mind most strongly a sublime or a beautiful idea? does the sublimest passage in milton excite a stronger sensation in the mind of a man of taste than the sublimest painting of michael angelo? or, to make the parallel more complete, does michael angelo convey to you a stronger impression of the last judgment, by his painting, than milton could by his poetry? could michael angelo convey a more sublime idea of death by his painting than milton has in his 'paradise lost'? these are the principles upon which your 'divine art' is to be degraded below poetry." this was rather acute reasoning for a boy of twenty who had spent his life in the boston and new haven of those early days. the fact that he had never seen a great painting, whereas he had greedily read the poets, will probably account for his strong partisanship. the pious mother writes on november , :-- "with regard to the americans being despised and hated in england, you were apprised by your uncle salisbury and others before you left this country that that was the case, and you ought not to be surprised when you realized it. the reason given was that a large portion of those who visit europe are _dissipated infidels_, which has justly given the english a bad opinion of us as a nation. but we are happy to find that there are many exceptions to these, who do honor to the country which gave them birth, such as a west, an allston, and many others, among whom, i am happy to say, we hope that you, my son, will be enrolled at no very distant day.... "you mention being acquainted with young payne, the play actor. i would guard you against any acquaintance with that description of people, as it will, sooner or later, have a most corrupting effect on the morals, and, as a man is known by the company he keeps, i should be very sorry to have you enrolled with such society, however pure you may believe his morals to be. "your father and myself were eleven days in company with him in coming from charleston, south carolina. his behavior was quite unexceptionable then, but he is in a situation to ruin the best morals. i hope you do not attend the theatre, as i have ever considered it a most bewitching amusement, and ruinous both to soul and body. i would therefore guard you against it." his brother richard joined the rest of the family in urging the young and impulsive artist to leave politics alone, as we learn from the following words which begin a letter of november , :-- my dear brother,--your letters by the neptune, and also the medal, gave us great pleasure. the politics, however, were very disagreeable and occupied no inconsiderable part of your letters. your kind wishes for _our_ reformation we must beg leave to retort by hoping for _your_ speedy amendment. there are gaps in the correspondence of this period. many of the letters from both sides of the atlantic seem never to have reached their destination, owing to the disturbed state of affairs arising from the war between the two countries. the young artist had gone in october, , to bristol, at the earnest solicitation of friends in that city, and seems to have spent a pleasant and profitable five months there, painting a number of portraits. he refers to letters written from bristol, but they were either never received or not preserved. of other letters i have only fragments, and some that are quoted by mr. prime in his biography have vanished utterly. still, from what remains, we can glean a fairly good idea of the life of the young man at that period. his parents continually begged him to leave politics alone and to tell them more of his artistic life, of his visits to interesting places, and of his intercourse with the literary and artistic celebrities of the day. we, too, must regret that he did not write more fully on these subjects, for there must have been a mine of interesting material at his disposal. we also learn that there seems to have been a strange fatality attached to the little statuette of the "dying hercules," for, although he packed it carefully and sent it to liverpool on june , , to be forwarded to his parents, it never reached them until over two years later. the superstitious will say that the date of sending may have had something to do with this. up to this time everything, except the attitude of england towards america, had been _couleur de rose_ to the enthusiastic young artist. he was making rapid progress in his studies and was receiving the encomiums of his fellow artists and of the critics. his parents were denying themselves in order to provide the means for his support, and, while he was duly appreciative of their goodness, he could not help taking it more or less as a matter of course. he was optimistic with regard to the future, falling into the common error of gifted young artists that, because of their artistic success, financial success must of necessity follow. he had yet to be proved in the school of adversity, and he had not long to wait. but i shall let the letters tell the story better than i can. the last letter from him to his parents from which i have quoted was written on august and , . on march , , he writes from london after his return from bristol:-- "there is a great drawback to my writing long letters to you; i mean the uncertainty of their reaching you. "mama's long letter gave me particular pleasure. some of her observations, however, made me smile, especially the reasons she assigns for the contempt and hatred of england for america. first, i am inclined to doubt the fact of there being so many _infidel_ americans in the country; second, if there were, there are not so many _religious_ people here who would take the pains to enquire whether they had religion or not; and third, it is not by seeing the individual americans that an opinion unfavorable to us is prevalent in england.... "with respect to my religious sentiments, they are unshaken; their influence, i hope, will always guide me through life. i hear various preachings on sundays, sometimes mr. burder, but most commonly the church of england clergy, as a church is in my neighborhood and mr. b.'s three miles distant. i most commonly heard dr. biddulph, of st. james's church, a most excellent, orthodox, evangelical man. i was on the point many times of going to hear mr. lowell, who is one of the dissenting clergymen of bristol, but, as the weather proved very unfavorable, uncommonly so every sunday i was there, and i was at a great distance from his church, i was disappointed. i shall endeavor to hear him preach when i go back to bristol again." this was in reply to many long exhortations in his parents' letters, and especially in his mother's, couched in the extravagant language of the very pious of those days, to seek first the welfare of his "never-dying soul." "i have returned from bristol to attend the exhibitions and to endeavor to get a picture into somerset house. my stay in bristol was very pleasant, indeed, as well as profitable. i was there five months and, in may, shall probably go again and stay all summer. i was getting into good business in the portrait way there, and, if i return, shall be enabled, probably, to support myself as long as i stay in england. "the attention shown me by mr. harman visger and family, whom i have mentioned in a former letter, i shall never forget. he is a rich merchant, an american (cousin to captain visscher, my fellow passenger, by whom i was introduced to him). he has a family of seven children. i lived within a few doors of him, and was in and out of his house ever day...." four pages of this letter are, unfortunately, missing. it begins again abruptly:-- "... prevented by illness from writing you before. "i shall endeavor to support myself, if not, necessity will compel me to return home an unfinished painter; it depends altogether on circumstances. i may get a good run of portraits or i may not; it depends so much on the whim of the public; if they should happen to fancy my pictures, i shall succeed; if not, why, i shall not succeed. i am, however, encouraged to hope.... "if i am prohibited from writing or thinking of politics, i hope my brothers will not be so ungenerous as to give me any.... "mr. allston's large picture is now exhibiting in the british gallery. it has excited a great deal of curiosity and he has obtained a wonderful share of praise for it.... the picture is very deservedly ranked among the highest productions of art, either in ancient or modern times. it is really a pleasant consideration that the palm of painting still rests with america, and is, in all probability, destined to remain with us. all we wish is a taste in the country and a little more wealth.... in order to create a taste, however, pictures, first-rate pictures, must be introduced into the country, for taste is only acquired by a close study of the merits of the old masters. in philadelphia i am happy to find they have successfully begun. i wish americans would unite in the thing, throw aside local prejudices and give their support to _one_ institution. let it be in philadelphia, since it is so happily begun there, and let every american feel a pride in supporting that institution; let it be a national not a city institution. then might the arts be so encouraged that americans might remain at home and not, as at present, be under the painful necessity of exiling themselves from their country and their friends. "this will come to pass in the course of time, but not in my day, i fear, unless there is more exertion made to forward the arts than at present...." in this he proved a true prophet, and, as we shall see later, his exertions were a potent factor in establishing the fine arts on a firm basis in new york. "i am in very good health and i hope i feel grateful for it. i have not been ill for two days together since i have been in england. i am, however, of the _walking-stick_ order, and think i am thinner than i was at home. they all tell me so. i'm not so good-looking either, i am told; i have lost my color, grown more sallow, and have a face approaching to the hatchet class; but none of these things concern me; if i can paint good-looking, plump ladies and gentlemen, i shall feel satisfied.... "we have had a dreadfully severe winter here in england, such as has not been known for twenty-two years. when i came from bristol the snow was up on each side of the road as high as the top of the coach in many places, especially on marlborough down and hounslow heath." his friend mr. visger thus writes to him from bristol on april , :-- "it gave me pleasure to learn that mr. leslie sold his picture of saul, etc., at so good a price. i hope it will stimulate a friend of his to use his best exertions and time to endeavor even to excel the 'witch of endor.' i think i perceive a few symptoms of amendment in him, and the request of his father that he must support himself is, in the opinion of his friends here, the best thing that could have befallen him. he will now have the pleasure to taste the sweets of his own labor, and i hope will, in reality, know what true independence is. let him not despair and he will certainly succeed. "excuse my having taken up so much of your time in reading what i have written about mr. leslie's friend; i hope it will not make the pencil work less smoothly. "it gave us all great pleasure to hear that mr. allston's 'dead and alive man' got the prize. it would be a great addition to our pleasure to hear that those encouragers of the fine arts have offered him fifteen hundred or two thousand guineas for it.... "there is an old lady waiting your return to have her portrait painted. bangley says one or two more are enquiring for mr. morse. "you seem to have forgotten your friend in stapleton prison. did you not succeed in obtaining his release?" this refers to a certain mr. benjamin burritt, an american prisoner of war. morse used every effort, through his friend henry thornton, to secure the release of mr. burritt. on december , , he wrote to mr. thornton from bristol:-- respected sir,--i take the liberty of addressing you in behalf of an american prisoner of war now in the stapleton depot, and i address you, sir, under the conviction that a petition in the cause of humanity will not be considered by you as obtrusive. the prisoner i allude to is a gentleman of the name of burritt, a native of new haven, in the state of connecticut; his connections are of the highest respectability in that city, which is notorious for its adherence to federal principles. his friends and relatives are among my father's friends, and, although i was not, until now, personally acquainted with him, yet his face is familiar to me, and many of his relatives were my particular friends while i was receiving my education at yale college in new haven. from that college he was graduated in the year ----. a classmate of his was the reverend mr. stuart, who is one of the professors of the andover theological institution, and of whom, i think, my father has spoken in some of his letters to mr. wilberforce. mr. burritt, after he left college, applied himself to study, so much so as to injure his health, and, by the advice of his physicians, he took to the sea as the only remedy left for him. this had the desired effect, and he was restored to health in a considerable degree. upon the breaking out of the war with this country, all the american coasting trade being destroyed, he took a situation as second mate in the schooner revenge, bound to france, and was captured on the th of may, . since that time he has been a prisoner, and, from the enclosed certificates, you will ascertain what has been his conduct. he is a man of excellent religious principles, and, i firmly believe, of the strictest integrity. so well assured am i of this that, in case it should be required, _i will hold myself bound to answer for him in my own person_. his health is suffering by his confinement, and the unprincipled society, which he is obliged to endure, is peculiarly disagreeable to a man of his education. my object in stating these particulars to you, sir, is (if possible and consistent with the laws of the country), to obtain for him, through your influence, his liberty on his parole of honor. by so doing you will probably be the means of preserving the life of a good man, and will lay his friends, my father, and myself under the greatest obligations. trusting to your goodness to pardon this intrusion upon your time, i am, sir, with the highest consideration, your most humble, obedient servant, samuel f.b. morse. to this mr. thornton replied:-- dear sir,--you will perceive by the enclosed that there is, unhappily, no prospect of our effecting our wishes in respect to your poor friend at bristol. i shall be glad to know whether you have had any success in obtaining a passport for dr. cushing. i am, dear sir, yours, etc. h. thornton. the enclosure referred to by mr. thornton was the following letter addressed to him by lord melville:-- sir,--mr. hay having communicated to me a letter which he received from you on the subject of benjamin burritt, an american prisoner of war in the depot at stapleton, i regret much that, after consulting on this case with sir rupert george, and ascertaining the usual course of procedure in similar instances, i cannot discover any circumstances that would justify a departure from the rules observed toward other prisoners of the same description. there can be no question that his case is a hard one, but i am afraid that it is inseparable from a state of war. it is not only not a solitary instance among the french and american prisoners, but, unless we were prepared to adopt the system of releasing all others of the same description, we should find that the number who might justly complain of undue partiality to this man would be very considerable. i have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient and very humble servant, melville. this was a great disappointment to morse, who had set his heart on being the means of securing the liberty of this unfortunate man. he was compelled to bow to the inevitable, however, and after this he did what he could to make the unhappy situation of the prisoner more bearable by extending to him financial assistance, although he had but little to spare at that time himself, and could but ill afford the luxury of giving. great events were occurring on the continent at this time, and it is interesting to note how the intelligence of them was received in england by an enthusiastic student, not only of the fine arts, but of the humanities, who felt that, in this case, his sympathies and those of his family were in accord:-- april , . my dear parents,--i write in much haste, but it is to inform you of a most glorious event, no less than the capture of paris, by the allies. they entered it last thursday, and you may conceive the sensations of the people of england on the occasion. as the cartel is the first vessel which will arrive in america to carry the news, i hope i shall have the great satisfaction of hearing that i am the first who shall inform you of this great event; the particulars you will see nearly as soon as this. i congratulate you and the rest of the good people of the world on the occasion. _despotism_ and _usurpation_ are fallen, never, i hope, to rise again. but what gives me the greatest pleasure in the contemplation of this occurrence is the spirit of religion and, consequently, of humanity which has constantly marked the conduct of the allies. their moderation through all their unparallelled successes cannot be too much extolled; they merit the grateful remembrance of posterity, who will bless them as the restorers of a blessing but little enjoyed by the greater part of mankind for centuries. i mean the inestimable blessing of _peace_. but i must cut short my feelings on the subject; were i to give them scope they would fill quires; they are as ardent as yours possibly can be. suffice it to say that i see the hand of providence so strongly in it that i think an infidel must be converted by it, and i hope i feel as a christian should on such an occasion. i am well, in excellent spirits and shall use my utmost endeavors to support myself, for now more than ever is it necessary for me to stay in europe. peace is inevitable, and the easy access to the continent and the fine works of art there render it doubly important that i should improve them to my utmost. i cannot ask more of my parents than they have done for me, but the struggle will be hard for me to get along and improve myself at the same time. portraits are the only things which can support me at present, but it is insipid, indeed, for one who wishes to be at the head of the first branch of the art, to be stopped halfway, and be obliged to struggle with the difficulty of maintaining himself, in addition to the other difficulties attendant on the profession. but it is impossible to place this in a clear light in a letter. i wish i could talk with you on the subject, and i could in a short time make it clear to you. i cannot ask it of you and i do not till i try what i can do. you have already done more than i deserved and it would be ingratitude in me to request more of you, and i do not; only i say these things that you may not expect so much from me in the way of improvement as you may have been led to suppose. morse seems to have made an excursion into dramatic literature at about this time, as the following draft of a letter, without date, but evidently written to the celebrated actor charles mathews, will testify:-- not having the honor of a personal acquaintance with you, i have taken the liberty of enclosing to you a farce which, if, on perusal, you should think worthy of the stage, i beg you to accept, to be performed, if consistent with your plans, on the night appointed for your benefit. if i should be so much favored as to obtain your good opinion of it, the approbation alone of mr. mathews will be a sufficient reward for the task of writing it. the pleasure which i have so often received from you in the exercise of your comic powers would alone prompt me to make some return which might show you, at least, that i can be grateful to those who have at any time afforded me pleasure. with respect to your accepting or not accepting it, i wish you to act your pleasure entirely. if you think it will be of benefit to you by drawing a full house, or in any other way, it is perfectly at your service. if you think it will not succeed, will you have the goodness to enclose it under cover and direct to mr. t.g.s., artist, great titchfield street; and i assure you beforehand that you need be under no apprehension of giving me mortification by refusing it. it would only convince me that i had not dramatic talents, and would serve, perhaps, to increase my ardor in the pursuit of my professional studies. if, however, it should meet with your approbation and you should wish to see me on the subject, a line directed as above enclosing your address shall receive immediate attention. i am as yet undecided what shall be its name. the character of oxyd i had designed for you. the farce is a first attempt and has received the approbation, not only of my theatrical friends generally, but of some confessed critics by whom it has been commended. with sentiments of respect and esteem i remain, your most obedient humble servant, t.g.s. as no further mention of this play is made i fear that the great charles mathews did not find it available. there is also no trace of the play itself among the papers, which is rather to be regretted. we can only surmise that morse came to the conclusion (very wisely) that he had no "dramatic talents," and that he turned to the pursuit of his professional studies with increased ardor. chapter vii may , --october , allston writes encouragingly to the parents.--morse unwilling to be mere portrait-painter.--ambitious to stand at the head of his profession.-- desires patronage from wealthy friends.--delay in the mails.--account of _entrée_ of louis xviii into london.--the prince regent.--indignation at acts of english.--his parents relieved at hearing from him after seven months' silence.--no hope of patronage from america.--his brothers.-- account of fêtes.--emperor alexander, king of prussia, blücher, platoff. --wishes to go to paris.--letter from m. van schaick about battle of lake erie.--disgusted with england. morse had now spent nearly three years in england. he was maturing rapidly in every way, and what his master thought of him is shown in this extract from a letter of washington allston to the anxious parent at home:-- "with regard to the progress which your son has made, i have the pleasure to say that it is unusually great for the time he has been studying, and indeed such as to make me proud of him as a pupil and to give every promise of future eminence.... "should he be obliged to return _now_ to america, i much fear that all which he has acquired would be rendered abortive. it is true he could there paint very good portraits, but i should grieve to hear at any future period that, on the foundation now laid, he shall have been able to raise no higher superstructure than the fame of a portrait-painter. i do not intend here any disrespect to portrait-painting; i know it requires no common talent to excel in it.... "in addition to this _professional report_ i have the sincere satisfaction to give my testimony to his conduct as a man, which is such as to render him still worthy of being affectionately remembered by his moral and religious friends in america. this is saying a great deal for a young man of two-and-twenty in london, but is not more than justice requires me to say of him." on may , , morse writes home:-- "you ask if you are to expect me the next summer. this leads me to a little enlargement on the peculiar circumstances in which i am now placed. mr. allston's letter by the same cartel will convince you that industry and application have not been wanting on my part, that i have made greater progress than young men generally, etc., etc., and of how great importance it is to me to remain in europe for some time yet to come. indeed i feel it so much so myself that i shall endeavor to stay at all risks. if i find that i cannot support myself, that i am contracting debts which i have no prospect of paying, i shall then return home and settle down into a mere portrait-painter for some time, till i can obtain sufficient to return to europe again; for i cannot be happy unless i am pursuing the intellectual branch of the art. portraits have none of it; landscape has some of it, but history has it wholly. i am certain you would not be satisfied to see me sit down quietly, spending my time in painting portraits, throwing away the talents which heaven has given me for the higher branches of art, and devoting my time only to the inferior. "i need not tell you what a difficult profession i have undertaken. it has difficulties in itself which are sufficient to deter any man who has not firmness enough to go through with it at all hazards, without meeting with any obstacles aside from it. the more i study it, the more i am enchanted with it; and the greater my progress, the more am i struck with its beauties, and the perseverance of those who have dared to pursue it through the thousands of natural hindrances with which the art abounds. "i never can feel too grateful to my parents for having assisted me thus far in my profession. they have done more than i had any right to expect; they have conducted themselves with a liberality towards me, both in respect to money and to countenancing me in the pursuit of one of the noblest of professions, which has not many equals in this country. i cannot ask of them more; it would be ingratitude. "i am now in the midst of my studies when the great works of ancient art are of the utmost service to me. political events have just thrown open the whole continent; the whole world will now leave war and bend their attention to the cultivation of the arts of peace. a golden age is in prospect, and art is probably destined to again revive as in the fifteenth century. "the americans at present stand unrivalled, and it is my great ambition (and it is certainly a commendable one) to stand among the first. my country has the most prominent place in my thoughts. how shall i raise her name, how can i be of service in refuting the calumny, so industriously spread against her, that she has produced no men of genius? it is this more than anything (aside from painting) that inspires me with a desire to excel in my art. it arouses my indignation and gives me tenfold energy in the pursuit of my studies. i should like to be the greatest painter _purely out of revenge_. "but what a damper is thrown upon my enthusiasm when i find that, the moment when all the treasures of art are before me, just within my reach; that advantages to the artist were never greater than now; paris with all its splendid depository of the greatest works but a day or two's journey from me, and open to my free inspection,--what a damper, i say, is it to find that my three years' allowance is just expired; that while all my contemporary students and companions are revelling in these enjoyments, and rapidly advancing in their noble studies, they are leaving me behind, either to return to my country, or, by painting portraits in bristol, just to be able to live through the year. the thought makes me melancholy, and, for the first time since i left home, have i had one of my desponding fits. i have got over it now, for i would not write to you in that mood for the world. my object in stating this is to request patronage from some rich individual or individuals for a year or two longer at the rate of £ per year. this to be advanced to me, and, if required, to be returned in money as soon as i shall be able, or by pictures to the amount when i have completed my studies.... if uncle salisbury or miss russell could do it, it would be much more grateful to me than from any others.... "the box containing my plaster cast i found, on enquiry, is still at liverpool where it has been, to my great disappointment, now nearly a year. i have given orders to have it sent by the first opportunity. mr. wilder will tell you that he came near taking out my great picture of the hercules to you. it seems as though it is destined that nothing of mine shall reach you. i packed it up at a moment's warning and sent it to liverpool to go by the cartel, and i found it arrived the day after she had sailed. i hope it will not be long before both the boxes will have an opportunity of reaching you. "i am exceedingly sorry you have forgotten a passage in one of my letters where i wished you not to feel anxious if you did not hear from me as often as you had done. i stated the reason, that opportunities were less frequent, more circuitous, and attended with greater interruptions. i told you that i should write at least once in three weeks, and that you must attribute it to anything but neglect on my part. "your last letter has hurt me considerably, for, owing to some accident or other, my letters have miscarried, and you upbraid me with neglect, and fear that i am not as industrious or correct as formerly. i know you don't wish to hurt me, but i cannot help feeling hurt when i think that my parents have not the confidence which i thought they had in me; that some interruptions, which all complain of and which are natural to a state of warfare, having prevented letters, which i have written, from being received; instead of making allowances for these things, to have them attribute it to a falling-off in industry and attention wounds me a great deal. mrs. allston, to her great surprise, received just such a letter from her friends, and it hurt her so that she was ill in consequence.... "i dine at mr. macaulay's at five o'clock to-day, and shall attend the house of commons to-morrow evening, where i expect to hear mr. wilberforce speak on the slave trade, with reference to the propriety of making the universal abolition of it an article in the pending negotiations. if i have time in this letter i will give you some account of it. in the mean time i will give you a slight account of some scenes of which i have been a happy witness in the great drama now acting in the theatre of europe. "you will probably, before this reaches you, hear of the splendid _entrée_ of louis xviii into london. i was a spectator of this scene. on the morning of the day, about ten o'clock, i went into piccadilly through which the procession was to pass. i did not find any great concourse of people at that hour except before the pultney hotel, where the sister of emperor alexander resides on a visit to this country, the grand duchess of oldenburg. i thought it probable that, as the procession would pass this place, there would be some uncommon occurrence taking place before it, so i took my situation directly opposite, determined, at any rate, to secure a good view of what happened. "i waited four or five hours, during which time the people began to collect from all quarters; the carriages began to thicken, the windows and fronts of the houses began to be decorated with the white flag, white ribbons, and laurel. temporary seats were fitted up on all sides, which began to be filled, and all seemed to be in preparation. about this time the king's splendid band of music made its appearance, consisting, i suppose, of more than fifty musicians, and, to my great gratification, placed themselves directly before the hotel. they began to play, and soon after the grand duchess, attended by several russian noblemen, made her appearance on the balcony, followed by the queen of england, the princess charlotte of wales, the princess mary, princess elizabeth, and all the female part of the royal family. from this fortunate circumstance you will see that i had an excellent opportunity of observing their persons and countenances. "the duchess of oldenburg is a common-sized woman of about four or five and twenty; she has rather a pleasant countenance, blue eyes, pale complexion, regular features, her cheek-bones high, but not disagreeably so. she resembles very much her brother the emperor, judging from his portrait. she had with her her little nephew, prince alexander, a boy of about three or four years old. he was a lively little fellow, playing about, and was the principal object of the attention of the royal family. "the queen, if i was truly directed to her, is an old woman of very sallow complexion, and nothing agreeable either in her countenance or deportment; and, if she was not called a queen, she might as well be any ugly old woman. the princess charlotte of wales i thought pretty; she has small features, regular, pale complexion, great amiability of expression and condescension of manners; the princess elizabeth is extremely corpulent, and, from what i could see of her face, was agreeable though nothing remarkable. "one of the others, i think it was the princess mary, appeared to have considerable vivacity in her manners; she was without any covering to her head, her hair was sandy, which she wore cropped; her complexion was probably fair originally, but was rather red now; her features were agreeable. "it now began to grow late, the people were beginning to be tired, wanting their dinners, and the crowd to thicken, when a universal commotion and murmur through the crowd and from the housetops indicated that the procession was at hand. this was followed by the thunder of artillery and the huzzas of the people toward the head of the street, where the houses seemed to be alive with the twirling of hats and shaking of handkerchiefs. this seemed to mark the progress of the king; for, as he came opposite each house, these actions became most violent, with cries of _'vivent les bourbons!' 'vive le roi!' 'vive louis!'_ etc. "i now grew several inches taller; i stretched my neck and opened my eyes. one carriage appeared, drawn by six horses, decorated with ribbons, and containing some of the french _noblesse;_ another, of the same description, with some of the french royal family. at length came a carriage drawn by eight beautiful arabian cream-colored horses. in this were seated louis xviii, king of france, the prince regent of england, the duchesse d'angoulême, daughter of louis xvi, and the prince of condé. they passed rather quickly, so that i had but a glance at them, though a distinct one. the prince regent i had often seen before; the king of france i had a better sight of afterwards, as i will presently relate. the duchesse d'angoulême had a fine expression of countenance, owing probably to the occasion, but a melancholy cast was also visible through it; she was pale. the prince of condé i have no recollection of. "after this part of the procession had passed, the crowd became exceedingly oppressive, rushing down the street to keep pace with the king's carriage. as the king passed the royal family he bowed, which they returned by kissing their hands to him and shaking their handkerchiefs with great enthusiasm. after they had gone by, the royal family left the balcony, where they had been between two and three hours. "my only object now was to get clear of the crowd. i waited nearly three quarters of an hour, and at length, by main strength, worked myself edgewise across the street, where i pushed down through stables and houses and by-lanes to get thoroughly clear, not caring where i went, as i knew i could easily find my way when i got into a street. this i at last gained, and, to my no small astonishment, found myself by mere chance directly opposite the hotel where louis and his suite were. "the prince regent had just left the place, and with his carriage went a great part of the mob, which left the space before the house comparatively clear. it soon filled again; i took advantage, however, and got directly before the windows of the hotel, as i expected the king would show himself, for the people were calling for him very clamorously. "i was not disappointed, for, in less than half a minute he came to the window, which was open, before which i was. i was so near him i could have touched him. he stayed nearly ten minutes, during which time i observed him carefully. he is very corpulent, a round face, dark eyes, prominent features; the character of countenance much like the portraits of the other louises; a pleasant face, but, above all, such an expression of the moment as, i shall never forget, and in vain attempt to describe. "his eyes were suffused with tears, his mouth slightly open with an unaffected smile full of gratitude, and seemed to say to every one, 'bless you.' his hands were a little extended sometimes as if in adoration to heaven, at others as if blessing the people. i entered into his feelings. i saw a monarch who, for five-and-twenty years, had been an exile from his country, deprived of his throne, and, until within a few months, not a shadow of a hope remaining of ever returning to it again. i saw him raised, as if by magic, from a private station in an instant to his throne, to reign over a nation which has made itself the most conspicuous of any nation on the globe. i tried to think as he did, and, in the heat of my enthusiasm, i joined with heart and soul in the cries of _'vive le roi!' 'vive louis!'_ which rent the air from the mouths of thousands. as soon as he left the window, i returned home much fatigued, but well satisfied that my labor had not been for naught.... "mr. wilberforce is an excellent man; his whole soul is bent on doing good to his fellow men. not a moment of his time is lost. he is always planning some benevolent scheme or other, and not only planning but executing; he is made up altogether of affectionate feeling. what i saw of him in private gave me the most exalted opinion of him as a christian. oh, that such men as mr. wilberforce were more common in this world. so much human blood would not then be shed to gratify the malice and revenge of a few wicked, interested men. "i hope cousin samuel breese will distinguish himself under so gallant a commander as captain perry. i shall look with anxiety for the sailing of the guerrière. there will be plenty of opportunity for him, for peace with us is deprecated by the people here, and it only remains for us to fight it out gallantly, as we are able to do, or submit slavishly to any terms which they please to offer us. a number of _humane_ schemes are under contemplation, such as burning new london for the sake of the frigates there; arming the blacks in the southern states; burning all of our principal cities, and such like plans, which, from the supineness of the new england people, may be easily carried into effect. but no, the _humane, generous_ english cannot do such base things--i hope not; let the event show it. it is perhaps well i am here, for, with my present opinions, if i were at home, i should most certainly be in the army or navy. my mite is small, but, when my country's honor demands it, it might help to sustain it. "there can now be no french party. i wish very much to know what effect this series of good news will have at home. i congratulate you as well as all other good people on the providential events which have lately happened; they must produce great changes with us; i hope it will be for the best. "i am in excellent health, and am painting away; i am making studies for the large picture i contemplate for next year. it will be as large, i think, as mr. allston's famous one, which was ten feet by fourteen." it can hardly be wondered at that the parents should have been somewhat anxious, when we learn from letters of june, , that they had not heard from their son for _seven months_. they were greatly relieved when letters did finally arrive, and they rejoiced in his success and in the hope of a universal peace, which should enable their sons "to act their part on the stage of life in a calmer period of the world." his mother keeps urging him to send some of his paintings home, as they wish to judge of his improvement, having, as yet, received nothing but the small pen-and-ink portrait of himself, which they do not think a very good likeness. she also emphatically discourages any idea of patronage from america, owing to the hard times brought on by the war, and the father tells his son that he will endeavor to send him one thousand dollars more, which must suffice for the additional year's study and the expenses of the journey home. it is small wonder that the three sons always manifested the deepest veneration and affection for their parents, for seldom has there been seen as great devotion and self-sacrifice, and seldom were three sons more worthy of it. sidney was at this time studying law at litchfield, connecticut, and richard was attending the theological seminary at andover, massachusetts. both became eminent in after life, though, curiously enough, neither in the law nor in the ministry. but we shall have occasion to treat more specifically of this later on. the three brothers were devotedly attached to each other to the very end of their long lives, and were mutually helpful as their lives now diverged and now came together again. the next letter from morse to his parents, written on june , , gives a further account of the great people who were at that time in london:-- "i expected at this time to have been in bristol with mr. and mrs. allston, who are now there, but the great fêtes in honor of the peace, and the visit of the allied sovereigns, have kept me in london till all is over. there are now in london upward of twenty foreign princes; also the great emperor alexander and the king of prussia. a week ago yesterday they arrived in town, and, contrary to expectation, came in a very private manner. i went to see their _entrée_, but was disappointed with the rest of the people, for the emperor alexander, disliking all show and parade, came in a private carriage and took an indirect route here. "the next and following day i spent in endeavoring to get a sight of them. i have been very fortunate, having seen the emperor alexander no less than fourteen times, so that i am quite familiar with his face; the king of prussia i have seen once; marshal blücher, five or six times; count platoff, three or four times; besides generals de yorck, bülow, etc., all whose names must be perfectly familiar to you, and the distinguished parts they have all acted in the great scenes just past. "the emperor alexander i am quite in love with; he has every mark of a great mind. his countenance is an uncommonly fine one; he has a fair complexion, hair rather light, and a stout, well-made figure; he has a very cheerful, benevolent expression, and his conduct has everywhere evinced that his face is the index of his mind. when i first saw him he was dressed in a green uniform with two epaulets and stars of different orders; he was conversing at the window of his hotel with his sister, the duchess of oldenburg. i saw him again soon after in the superb coach of the prince regent, with the duchess, his sister, going to the court of the queen. in a few hours after i saw him again on the balcony of the pultney hotel; he came forward and bowed to the people. he was then dressed in a red uniform, with a broad blue sash over the right shoulder; he appeared to great advantage; he stayed about five minutes. i saw him again five or six times through the day, but got only indifferent views of him. the following day, however, i was determined to get a better and nearer view of him than before. i went down to his hotel about ten o'clock, the time when i supposed he would leave it; i saw one of the prince's carriages drawn up, which opened at the top and was thrown back before and behind. in a few minutes the emperor with his sister made their appearance and got into it. as the carriage started, i pressed forward and got hold of the ring of the coach door and kept pace with it for about a quarter of a mile. i was so near that i could have touched him; he was in a plain dress, a brown coat, and altogether like any other gentleman. his sister, the duchess, also was dressed in a very plain, unattractive manner, and, if it had not been for the crowd which followed, they would have been taken for any lady and gentleman taking an airing. "in this unostentatious manner does he conduct himself, despising all pomp, and seems rather more intent upon inspecting the charitable, useful, and ornamental establishments of this country, with a view, probably, of benefiting his own dominions by his observations, than of displaying his rank by the splendor of dress and equipage. "his condescension also is no less remarkable. an instance or two will exemplify it. on the morning after his arrival he was up at six o'clock, and, while the lazy inhabitants of this great city were fast asleep in their beds, he was walking with his sister, the duchess, in kensington gardens. as he came across hyde park he observed a corporal drilling some recruits, upon which he went up to him and entered into familiar conversation with him, asking him a variety of questions, and, when he had seen the end of the exercise, shook him heartily by the hand and left him. when he was riding on horseback, he shook hands with all who came round him. "a few days ago, as he was coming out of the gate of the london docks on foot, after having inspected them, a great crowd was waiting to see him, among whom was an old woman of about seventy years of age, who seemed very anxious to get near him, but, the crowd pressing very much, she exclaimed, 'oh, if i could but touch his clothes!' the emperor overheard her, and, turning round, advanced to her, and, pulling off his glove, gave her his hand, and, at the same time dropping a guinea into hers, said to her, 'perhaps this will do as well.' the old woman was quite overcome, and cried, 'god bless your majesty,' till he was out of sight. "an old woman in her ninetieth year sent a pair of warm woolen stockings to the emperor, and with them a letter stating that she had knit them with her own hands expressly for him, and, as she could not afford to send him silk, she thought that woolen would be much more acceptable, and would also be more useful in his climate. the emperor was very much pleased, and determined on giving her his miniature set in gold and diamonds, but, upon learning that her situation in life was such that money would be more acceptable, he wrote her an answer, and, thanking her heartily for her present, enclosed her one hundred pounds. "these anecdotes speak more than volumes in praise of the emperor alexander. he is truly a great man. he is a great conqueror, for he has subdued the greatest country in the world, and overthrown the most alarming despotism that ever threatened mankind. he is great also because he is good; his whole time seems spent in distributing good to all around him; and where-ever he goes he makes every heart rejoice. he is very active and is all the time on the alert in viewing everything that is worth seeing. the emperor is also extremely partial to the united states; everything american pleases him, and he seems uncommonly interested in the welfare of our country. "i was introduced to-day to mr. harris, our _chargé d'affaires_ to the court of russia. he is a very intelligent, fine man, and is a great favorite with alexander. from a conversation with him i have a scheme in view which, when i have matured, i will submit to you for your approbation. "the king of prussia i have seen but once, and then had but an imperfect view of him. he came to the window with the prince regent and bowed to the people (at st. james's palace). he is tall and thin, has an agreeable countenance, but rather dejected in consequence of the late loss of his queen, to whom he was very much attached. "general blücher, now prince blücher, i have seen five or six times. i saw him on his entrance into london, all covered with dust, and in a very ordinary kind of vehicle. on the day after i saw him several times in his carriage, drawn about wherever he wished by the _mob_. he is john's greatest favorite, and they have almost pulled the brave general and his companion, count platoff, to pieces out of pure affection. platoff had his coat actually torn off him and divided into a thousand pieces as _relics_ by the good people--their kindness knows no bounds, and, i think, in all the battles which they have fought, they never have run so much risk of losing their limbs as in encountering their friends in england. "blücher is a veteran-looking soldier, a very fine head, monstrous mustaches. his head is bald, like papa's, his hair gray, and he wears powder. understanding that he was to be at covent garden theatre, i went, as the best place to see him, and i was not disappointed. he was in the prince's box, and i had a good view of him during the whole entertainment, being directly before him for three or four hours. a few nights since i also went to the theatre to see platoff, the _hetman_ (chief) of the cossacks. he has also a very fine countenance, a high and broad forehead, dark complexion, and dark hair. he is tall and well-made, as i think the cossacks are generally. he was very much applauded by a crowded house, the most part collected to see him." the following letter is from washington allston written in bristol, on july , :-- my dear sir,--i received your last on saturday and should have answered your first letter but for two reasons. first, that i had nothing to say; which, i think, metaphysicians allow to be the most natural as well as the most powerful cause of silence. second, that, if i had had anything to say, the daily expectation which i entertained of seeing you allowed no confidence in the hope that you would hear what i had to say should i have said it. i thank you for your solicitude, and can assure you that both mrs. allston and myself are in every respect better than when we left london. mr. king received me, as i wished, with undiminished kindness, and was greatly pleased with the pictures. he has not, however, seen the large one, which, to my agreeable surprise, i have been solicited from various quarters to exhibit, and that, too, without my having given the least intimation of such a design. i have taken merchant tailors' hall (a very large room) for this purpose, and shall probably open it in the course of next week. perhaps you will be surprised to hear that i have been retouching it. i have just concluded a fortnight's hard work upon it, and have the satisfaction to add that i have been seldom better satisfied than with my present labor. i have repainted the greater part of the draperies-- indeed, those of all the principal figures, excepting the dead man--with powerful and positive colors, and added double strength to the shadows of every figure, so that for force and distinctness you would hardly know it for the same picture. the "morning chronicle" would have no reason now to complain of its "wan red."... i am sorry that parliament has been so impolite to you in procrastinating the fireworks. but they are an unpolished set and will still be in the dark age of incivility notwithstanding their late illuminations. however i am in great hopes that the good people of england will derive no small degree of moral embellishment from their pure admiration of the illustrious general b----, who, it is said, for drinking and gaming has no equal. bristol, september , . my dear parents,--your kind letters of june last i have received, and return you a thousand thanks for them. they have relieved me from a painful state of anxiety with respect to my future prospects. i cannot feel too thankful for such kind parents who have universally shown so much indulgence to me. accept my gratitude and love; they are all i can give. you allow me to stay in europe another year. your letters are not in answer to some i have subsequently sent requesting leave to reside in paris. mr. allston, as well as all my friends, think it by all means necessary i should lose no time in getting to france to improve myself for a year in drawing (a branch of art in which i am very deficient). i shall therefore set out for paris in about two weeks, unless your letters in answer to those sent by drs. heyward and gushing should arrive and say otherwise. since coming to bristol i have not found my prospects so good as i before had reason to expect (owing in a great degree to political irritation). i have, however, contrived to make sufficient to pay off _all_ my _debts_, which have given me some considerable uneasiness. i can live much more reasonably in paris (indeed, some say for half what i can in london); i can improve myself more; and, therefore, all things taken into consideration, i believe it would be agreeable to my parents. as to the political state of paris, there is nothing to fear from that. it appears perfectly tranquil, and should at any time any difficulties arise, it is but three days' journey back to england again. besides this, i hope my parents will not feel any solicitude for me lest i should fall into any bad way, when they consider that i am now between twenty-three and twenty-four years of age, and that this is an age when the habits are generally fixed. as for expense, i must also request your confidence. feeling as i do the great obligations i am under to my parents, they must think me destitute of gratitude if they thought me capable, after all that has been said to me, of being prodigal. the past i trust you will find to be an example for the future. in a letter from a friend, m. van schaick, written from dartmouth, october , , after speaking in detail of the fortifications of new york harbor, which he considers "impregnable," we find the following interesting information:-- "but what satisfies my mind more than anything else is that all the heights of brooklyn on long island are occupied by strong chains of forts; the captain calls it an iron-work; and that the steamboat frigate, carrying forty-four -pounders, must by this time be finished. her sides are eight feet thick of solid timber. no ball can penetrate her.... the steamboat frigate is feet long, wide, carries her wheels in the centre like the ferry-boats, and will move six miles an hour against a common wind and tide. she is the wonder and admiration of all beholders." from this same gentleman is the following letter, dated october , :-- my dear friend,--my heart is so full that i do not know how to utter its emotions. thanks, all thanks to heaven and our glorious heroes! my satisfaction is full; it is perfect. it partakes of the character of the victory and wants nothing to make it complete. i return your felicitations upon this happy and heart-cheering occasion, and hope it may serve to suppress every sigh and to enliven every hope that animates the bosoms of my friends at bristol. give mr. allston a hearty squeeze of the hand for me in token of my gratification at this event and my remembrance of him. i enter into your feelings; i enjoy your triumph as much as if i was with you. may it do you good and lengthen your lives. really i think it is much more worth my regard to live now than ever it was before. this gives a tone to one's nerves, a zest to one's appetite, and a reality to existence that pervades all nature and exhibits its effects in every word and action. among the heroes whose names shall be inscribed upon the broad base of american independence and glory, the names of the heroes of lake erie and lake champlain will be recognized as brilliant and every way worthy; and it will hereafter be said that the example and exertions of new york have saved the nation.... what becomes of massachusetts now and its sage politicians? oh! shut the picture; i cannot bear the contrast. like a dead carcass she hangs upon the living spirit which animates the heart, and she impedes its motions. her consequence is gone, and i am sorry for it, because i have been accustomed to admire the noble spirit she once displayed, and the virtues which adorned her brighter days.... we sail on sunday or monday. i have received the box. everything is right. heaven bless you. going back a few days in point of time, the following letter was written to his parents:-- bristol, october , . your letters to the st of august have been received, and i have again to express to you my thanks for the sacrifices you are making for me. one day i hope it will be in my power to repay you for the many acts of indulgence to me.... your last letters mention nothing about my going to france. i perceive you have got my letters requesting leave, but you are altogether silent on the subject. everything is in favor of my going, my improvement, my expenses, and, last though not least, _the state of my feelings_. i shall be ruined in my feelings if i stay longer in england. i cannot endure the continued and daily insults to my feelings as an american. but on this head i promised not to write anything more; still allow me to say but a few words--on second thoughts, however, i will refer you entirely to dr. romeyn. if it is possible, as you value my comfort, see him as speedily as possible. he will give you my sentiments exactly, and i fully trust that, after you have heard him converse for a short time, you will completely liberate me from the imputation of error.... mr. bromfield [the merchant through whom he received his allowance] thinks i had better wait until i receive positive leave from you to go to france. do write me soon and do give me leave. i long to bury myself in the louvre in a country at least not hostile to mine, and where guns are not firing and bells ringing for victory over my countrymen.... where is american patriotism,--how long shall england, already too proud, glory in the blood of my countrymen? oh! for the genius of washington! had i but his talents with what alacrity would i return to the relief of that country which (without affectation, my dear parents) is dearer to me than my life. willingly (i speak with truth and deliberation), willingly would i sacrifice my life for her honor. do not think ill of me for speaking thus strongly. you cannot judge impartially of my feelings until you are placed in my situation. do not say i suffer myself to be carried away by my feelings; your feelings could never have been tried as mine have; you cannot see with the eyes i do; you cannot have the means of ascertaining facts on this side of the water that i have. but i will leave this subject and only say see _dr. romeyn_.... i find no encouragement whatever in bristol in the way of my art. national feeling is mingled with everything here; it is sufficient that i am an american, a title i would not change with the greatest king in europe. i find it more reasonable, living in bristol, or i should go to london immediately. mr. and mrs. allston are well and send you their respects. they set out for london in a few days after some months' _unsuccessful_ (between ourselves) residence here. all public feeling is absorbed in one object, the _conquest of the united states;_ no time to encourage an artist, especially an american artist. i am well, extremely well, but not in good spirits, as you may imagine from this letter. i am painting a little landscape and am studying in my mind a great historical picture, to be painted, by your leave, in paris. chapter viii november , --april . does not go to paris.--letter of admonition from his mother.--his parents' early economies.--letter from leslie.--letter from rev. s.f. jarvis on politics.--the mother tells of the economies of another young american, dr. parkman.--the son resents constant exhortations to economize, and tells of meanness of dr. parkman.--writes of his own economies and industry.--disgusted with bristol.--prophesies peace between england and america.--estimates of morse's character by dr. romeyn and mr. van schaick.--the father regrets reproof of son for political views.--death of mrs. allston.--disagreeable experience in bristol.--more economies.--napoleon i.--peace. morse did not go to paris at this time. the permission from his parents was so long delayed, owing to their not having received certain letters of his, and his mentor, mr. bromfield, advising against it, he gave up the plan, with what philosophy he could bring to bear on the situation. his mother continued to give him careful advice, covering many pages, in every letter. on november , , she says:-- "we wish to know what the plan was that you said you were maturing in regard to the emperor of russia. you must not be a schemer, but determine on a steady, uniform course. it is an old adage that 'a rolling stone never gathers any moss'; so a person that is driving about from pillar to post very seldom lays up anything against a rainy day. you must be wise, my son, and endeavor to get into such steady business as will, with the divine blessing, give you a support. secure that first, and then you will be authorized to indulge your taste and exercise your genius in other ways that may not be immediately connected with a living. "you mention patronage from this country, but such a thing is not known here unless you were on the spot, and not then, indeed, but for value received. you must therefore make up your mind to labor for yourself without leaning on any one, and look up to god for his blessing upon your endeavors. this is the way your parents set out in life about twenty-five years ago. they had nothing to look to for a support but their salary, which was a house, twenty cords of wood, and $ a year. the reception and circulation of the geography was an experiment not then made. with the blessing of heaven on these resources we have maintained an expensive family, kept open doors for almost all who chose to come and partake of our hospitality. enemies, as well as friends, have been welcomed. we have given you and your brothers a liberal education, have allowed you $ , are allowing your brothers about $ a year apiece, and are supporting our remaining family at the rate of $ a year. this is a pretty correct statement, and i make it to show you what can be done by industry and economy, with the blessing of heaven." while morse was in bristol, his friend c. r. leslie thus writes to him in lead pencil from london, on november , :-- most potent, grave and reverend doctor,--i take up my pencil to make ten thousand apologies for addressing you in humble black lead. deeply impressed as i am with the full conviction that you deserve the very best japan ink, the only excuse i can make to you is the following. it is, perhaps, needless to remind you that the tools with which ink is applied to paper, in order to produce writing, are made from goose quills, which quills i am goose enough not to keep a supply of; and not having so much money at present in my breeches pocket as will purchase one, i am forced to betake myself to my pencil; an instrument which, without paying myself any compliment, i am sure i can wield better than a pen. i am glad to hear that you are so industrious, and that mr. allston is succeeding so well with portraits. i hope he will bring all he has painted to london. i am looking out for you every day. i think we form a kind of family here, and i feel in an absence from mr. and mrs. allston and yourself as i used to do when away from my mother and sisters. by the bye, i have not had any letters from home for more than a month. it seems the americans are all united and we shall now have war in earnest. i am glad of it for many reasons; i think it will not only get us a more speedy and permanent peace, but may tend to crush the demon of party spirit and strengthen our government. i am done painting the gallery, and have finished my drawings for the frieze. thank you for your good wishes. i thought mr. allston knew how proud i am of being considered his student. tell him, if he thinks it worth while to mention me at all in his letter to delaplaine, i shall consider it a great honor to be called his student. the father, in a letter of december , , after again urging him to leave politics alone, adds this postscript: "p.s. if you can make up your mind to remain in london and finish your great picture for the exhibition; to suppress your political feelings, and resolutely turn a deaf ear to everything which does not concern your professional studies; not to talk on politics and preserve a conciliating course of conduct and conversation; make as many friends as you can, and behave as a good man ought to in your situation, and put off going to france till after your exhibition,--this plan would suit us best. but with the observations and advice now before you, we leave you to judge for yourself. let us early know your determination and intended plans. you must rely on your own resources after this year." the following letter is from his warm friend, the reverend samuel f. jarvis, written in new york, december , :-- "i am not surprised at the feelings you express with regard to england or america. the english in general have so contemptuous an opinion of us and one so exalted of themselves, that every american must feel a virtuous indignation when he hears his country traduced and belied. but, my dear sir, it is natural, on the other hand, for an exile from his native land to turn with fond remembrance to its excellences and forget its defects. you will be able some years hence to speak with more impartiality on this subject than you do at present. "the men who have involved the country in this war are wicked and corrupt. a systematic exclusion of all federalists from any office of trust is the leading feature of this administration, yet the federalists comprehend the majority of the wealth, virtue, and intelligence of the community. it is the power of the ignorant multitude by which they are supported, and i conceive that america will never be a respectable nation in the eyes of the world, till the extreme democracy of our constitution is done away with, and there is a representation of the property rather than of the population of the country. you feel nothing of the oppressive, despotic sway of the _soi-disant_ republicans, but we feel it in all its bitterness, and know that it is far worse than that of the most despotic sovereigns in europe. with such men there can be no union. "the repulsion of british invasion is the duty, and will be the pride, of every american; but, while prepared to bare his arm in defence of his much-wronged country against a proud and arrogant, and, in some instances, a cruel, foe, he cannot be blind to the unprincipled conduct of her internal enemies, and such he must conceive the present ruling party to be." on december , , his mother writes:-- "i was not a little astonished to hear you say, in one of your letters from bristol, that you had earned money enough there to pay off your debts. i cannot help asking what debts you could have to discharge with your own earnings after receiving one thousand dollars a year from us, which we are very sure must have afforded you, even by your own account of your expenses, ample means for the payment of all just, fair, and honorable debts, and i hope you contract no others. we are informed by others that they made six hundred dollars a year not only pay all their expenses of clothing, board, travelling, learning the french language, etc., etc., but they were able out of it to purchase books to send home, and actually sent a large trunk full of elegant books. now the person who told us that he did this has a father who is said to be worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars; therefore the young man was not pinched for means, but was thus economical out of consideration to his parents, and to show his gratitude to them, as i suppose. now think, my dear son, how much more your poor parents are doing for you, how good your dear brothers are to be satisfied with so little done for them in comparison with what we are doing for you, and let the thought stimulate you to more economy and industry. i greatly fear you have been falling off in both these since the éclat you received for your first performances. it has always been a failing of yours, as soon as you found you could excel in what you undertook, to be tired of it and not trouble yourself any further about it. i was in hopes that you had got over this fickleness ere this... "you must not expect to paint anything in this country, for which you will receive any money to support you, but portraits; therefore do everything in your power to qualify you for painting and taking them in the best style. that is all your hope here, and to be very obliging and condescending to those who are disposed to employ you.... "i think young leslie is a very estimable young man to be, as i am told he is, supporting himself and assisting his widowed mother by his industry." i shall anticipate a little in order to give at once the son's answer to this reproof. he writes on april , :-- "i wish i could persuade my parents that they might place some little confidence in my judgment at the age i now am (nearly twenty-four), an age when, in ordinary people, the judgment has reached a certain degree of maturity. it is a singular and, i think, an unfortunate fact that i have not, that i recollect, since i have been in england, had a turn of low spirits except when i have received letters from home. it is true i find a great deal of affectionate solicitude in them, but with it i also find so much complaint and distrust, so much fear that i am doing wrong, so much doubt as to my morals and principles, and fear lest i should be led away by bad company and the like, that, after i have read them, i am miserable for a week. i feel as though i had been guilty of every crime, and i have passed many sleepless nights after receiving letters from you. i shall not sleep to-night in consequence of passages in your letters just received." here he quotes from his mother's letter and answers: "now as to the young man's living for six hundred dollars, i know who it is of whom you speak. it is dr. parkman, who made it his boast that he would live for that sum, but you did not enquire _how_ he lived. i can tell you. he never refused an invitation to dine, breakfast, or tea, which he used to obtain often by pushing himself into everybody's company. when he did not succeed in getting invitations, he invited himself to breakfast, dine, or sup with some of his friends. he has often walked up to breakfast with us, a distance of three or four miles. if he failed in getting a dinner or meal at any of these places, he either used to go without, or a bit of bread answered the purpose till next meal. in his dress he was so shabby and uncouth that any decent person would be ashamed to walk with him in the street. above all, his notorious meanness in his money matters, his stickling with his poor washerwoman for a halfpenny and with others for a farthing, and his uniform stinginess on all occasions rendered him notoriously disgusting to all his acquaintances, and affords, i should imagine, but a poor example for imitation.... "the fact is i could live for _fifty_ pounds a year if my only object was to live cheap, and, on the other hand, if i was allowed one thousand pounds a year, i could spend it all without the least extravagance in obtaining greater advantages in my art. but as your goodness has allowed me but two hundred pounds (and i wish you again to receive my sincere thanks for this allowance), should not my sole endeavor be to spend all this to the utmost advantage; to keep as closely within the bounds of that allowance as possible, and would not _economy_ in this instance consist in rigidly keeping up to this rule? if this is a true statement of the case, then have i been perfectly economical, for i have not yet overrun my allowance, and i think i shall be able to return home without having exceeded it a single shilling. if i have done this, and still continue to do it, why, in every letter i receive from home, is the injunction repeated of _being economical?_ it makes me exceedingly unhappy, especially when i am conscious of having used my utmost endeavors, ever since i have been in england, to be rigidly so. "as to _industry_, in which mama fears i am falling off, i gave you an account in my last letter (by mr. ralston) of the method i use in parcelling out my time. since writing that letter the spring and summer are approaching fast, and the days increasing. of course i can employ more of the time than in the winter. mr. leslie and myself rise at five o'clock in the morning and walk about a mile and a half to burlington, where are the famous elgin marbles, the works of phidias and praxiteles, brought by lord elgin from athens. from these we draw three hours every morning, wet or dry, before breakfast, and return home just as the bustle begins in london, for they are late risers in london. when we go out of a morning we meet no one but the watchman, who goes his rounds for an hour and a half after we are up. last summer mr. leslie and i used to paint in the open air in the fields three hours before breakfast, and often before sunrise, to study the morning effect on the landscape. "now, being conscious of employing my time in the most industrious manner possible, you can but faintly conceive the mortification and sorrow with which i read that part of mama's letter. i was so much hurt that i read it to mr. allston, and requested he would write to you and give you an account of my spending my time. he seemed very much astonished when i read it to him, and _authorized me to tell you from him that it was impossible for any one to be more indefatigable in his studies than i am_. "mama mentions in her letter that she hears that mr. leslie supports his mother and sisters by his labors. this is not the case. leslie was supported by three or four individuals in philadelphia till within a few months past. about a year ago he sold a large picture which he painted (whilst i was on my fruitless trip to bristol for money) for a hundred guineas. since that he has had a number of commissions in portraits and is barely able to support himself; indeed, he tells me this evening that he has but £ left. he is a very economical and a most excellent young man. his expenses in a year are, on an average, from £ to £ ; mr. allston's (single) expenses not less than £ per annum, and i know of no artist among all my acquaintance whose expenses in a year are less than £ ." returning now to the former chronological order, i shall include the following vehement letter written from london on december , :-- my dear parents,--i arrived yesterday from bristol, where i have been for several months past endeavoring to make a little in the way of my profession, but have completely failed, owing to several causes. first, the total want of anything like partiality for the fine arts in that place; the people there are but a remove from brutes. a "bristol hog" is as proverbial in this country as a "charlestown gentleman" is in boston. their whole minds are absorbed in trade; barter and gain and interest are all they understand. if i could have painted a picture for half a guinea by which they could have made twenty whilst i starved, _i could have starved_. secondly, the virulence of national prejudice which rages now with tenfold acrimony. they no longer despise, they hate, the americans. the battle on champlain and before flattsburgh has decided the business; the moans and bewailings for this business are really, to an american, quite comforting after their arrogant boasting of reducing us to unconditional submission. is it strange that i should feel a little the effects of this universal hatred? i have felt it, and i have left bristol after six months' perfect neglect. after having been invited there with promises of success, i have had the mortification to leave it without having, from bristol, a single commission. more than that, and by far the worst, if i have not gone back in my art these six months, i have at least stood still, and to me this is the most trying reflection of all. i have been immured in the paralyzing atmosphere of trade till my mind was near partaking the infection. i have been listening to the grovelling, avaricious devotees of mammon, whose souls are narrowed to the studious contemplation of a hard-earned shilling, whose leaden imaginations never soared above the prospect of a good bargain, and whose _summum bonum_ is the inspiring idea of counting a hundred thousand: i say i have been listening to these miserly beings till the idea did not seem so repugnant of lowering my noble art to a trade, of painting for money, of degrading myself and the soul-enlarging art which i possess, to the narrow idea of merely getting money. fie on myself! i am ashamed of myself; no, never will i degrade myself by making a trade of a profession. if i cannot live a gentleman, i will starve a gentleman. but i will dismiss this unpleasant subject, the particulars of which i can better relate to you than write. suffice it to say that my ill-treatment does not prey upon my spirits; i am in excellent health and spirits and have great reason to be thankful to heaven for thousands of blessings which one or two reverses shall not make me forget. reverses do i call them? how trifling are my troubles to the millions of my fellow creatures who are afflicted with all the dreadful calamities incident to this life. reverses do i call them? no, they are blessings compared with the miseries of thousands. indeed, i am too ungrateful. if a thing does not result just as i wish, i begin to repine; i forget the load of blessings which i enjoy: life, health, parents whose kindness exceeds the kindest; brothers, relatives, and friends; advantages which no one else enjoys for the pursuit of a favorite art, besides numerous others; all which are forgotten the moment an unpleasant disappointment occurs. i am very ungrateful. with respect to peace, i can only say i should not be surprised if the preliminaries were signed before january. my reasons are that great britain cannot carry on the war any longer. she may talk of her inexhaustible resources, but she well knows that the great resource, the property tax, must fail next april. the people will not submit any longer; they are taking strong measures to prevent its continuance, and without it they cannot continue the war. another great reason why i think there will be peace is the absolute _fear_ which they express of us. they fear the increase of our navy; they fear the increase of the army; they fear for canada, and they are in dread of the further disgrace of their national character. mr. monroe's plan for raising , men went like a shock through the country. they saw the united states assume an attitude which they did not expect, and the same men who cried for "war, war," "thrash the americans," now cry most lustily for peace. the union of the parties also has convinced them that we are determined to resist their most arrogant pretensions. love to all, brothers, miss russell, etc. yours very affectionately, saml. f. b. morse. he ends the letter thus abruptly, probably realizing that he was beginning to tread on forbidden ground, but being unable to resist the temptation. while from this letter and others we can form a just estimate of the character and temperament of the man, it is also well to learn the opinion of his contemporaries; i shall, therefore, quote from a letter to the elder morse of the dr. romeyn, whom the son was so anxious to have his father see, also from a letter of mr. van schaick to dr. romeyn. the former was written in new york, on december , . "the enclosed letter of my friend mr. van schaick will give you the information concerning your son which you desire. he has been intimately acquainted with your son for a considerable time. you may rely on his account, as he is not only a gentleman of unquestionable integrity, but also a professor of the lord christ. what i saw and heard of your son pleased me, and i cannot but hope he will repay all your anxieties and realize your reasonable expectations by his conduct and the standing which he must and will acquire in society by that conduct." mr. van schaick's letter was written also in new york, on december , :-- "to those passages of dr. morse's letter respecting his son, to which you have directed my attention, i hasten to reply without any form, because it will gratify me to relieve the anxiety of the parents of my friend. his religious and moral character is unexceptionally good. he feels strongly for his country and expresses those feelings among his american friends with great sensibility. i do not know that he ever indulges in any observations in the company of englishmen which are calculated to injure his standing among them. but, my dear sir, you fully know that an american cannot escape the sting of illiberal and false charges against his country and even its moral character, unless he almost entirely withholds himself from society. it cannot be expected that any human being should be so unfeeling as to suffer indignity in total silence. "but i do not think that any political collisions, which may incidentally and very infrequently arise, can injure him as an artist; for it is well known to you that the simple fact of his being an american is sufficient to prevent his rising rapidly into notice, since the possession of that character clogs the efforts, or, at least, somewhat clouds the fame of men of superior genius and established talent.... i advised samuel to go to france and bury himself for six months in the louvre; from thence to italy, the seat of the arts. he inclined to the first part of the plan, and then to return home, but deferred putting it into execution till he heard from his father. mr. allston intended to winter in london. morse has a fine taste and colors well. his drawing is capable of much improvement, but he is anxious to place himself at the head of his profession, and, with a little judicious encouragement, will probably succeed. that patient industry which has in all ages characterized the masters of the art, he will find it to his interest to apply to his studies the farther he advances in them. his success has been moderately good. if he could sell the pictures he has on hand, the avails would probably pay his way into france." referring to these letters the father, writing on january , , says:-- "we have had letters from dr. romeyn and mr. van schaick concerning you which have comforted us much. since receiving them we don't know but we have expressed ourselves, in our letters in answer to your last, a little stronger than we ought in regard to your _political_ feelings and conduct. i find others who have returned feel pretty much as you do. but it should be remembered that your situation as an artist is different from theirs. it is your wisdom to leave politics to politicians and be solely the artist. but if you are in france these cautions will probably not be necessary, as you will have no temptation to enter into any political discussions." on the d of february, , morse, in writing to his parents, has a very sad piece of news to communicate to them:-- "i write in great haste and much agitation. mrs. allston, the wife of our beloved friend, died last evening, and the event overwhelmed us all in the utmost sorrow. as for mr. allston, for several hours after the death of his wife he was almost bereft of reason. mr. leslie and i are applying our whole attention to him, and we have so far succeeded as to see him more composed." this was a terrible grief to all the little coterie of friends, for whom the allston house had been a home. one of them, mr. j.j. morgan, in a long letter to morse written from wiltshire, thus expresses himself:-- "gracious god! unsearchable, indeed, are thy ways! the insensible, the brutish, the wicked are powerful and everywhere, in everything successful; while allston, who is everything that is amiable, kind, and good, has been bruised, blow after blow, and now, indeed, his cup is full. i am too unwell, too little recovered from the effect of your letter, to write much. coleridge intends writing to-day; i hope he will. allston may derive some little relief from knowing how much his friends partake of his grief." this was a time of great discouragement to the young artist. through the failure of some of his letters to reach his parents in time, he had not received their permission to go to france until it was too late for him to go. the death of mrs. allston cast a gloom over all the little circle, and, to cap the climax, he was receiving no encouragement in his profession. on march , , he writes:-- "my jaunt to bristol in quest of money completely failed. when i was first there i expected, from the little connection i got into, i should be able to support myself. i was obliged to come to town on account of the exhibitions, and stayed longer than i expected, intending to return to bristol. during this time i received two pressing letters from. mr. visscher (which i will show you), inviting me to come down, saying that i should have plenty of business. i accordingly hurried off. a gentleman, for whom i had before painted two portraits, had promised, if i would let him have them for ten guineas apiece, twelve being my price, that he would procure me five sitters. this i acceded to. i received twenty guineas and have heard nothing from the man since, though i particularly requested mr. visscher to enquire and remind him of his promise. yet he never did anything more on the subject. i was there three months, gaining nothing in my art and without a single commission. mr. breed, of liverpool, then came to bristol. he took two landscapes which i had been amusing myself with (for i can say nothing more of them) at ten guineas each. i painted two more landscapes which are unsold. "mr. visscher, a man worth about a hundred thousand pounds, and whose annual expenses, with a large family of seven children, are not one thousand, had a little frame for which he repeatedly desired me to paint a picture. i told him i would as soon as i had finished one of my landscapes. i began it immediately, without his knowing it, and determined to surprise him with it. i also had two frames which fitted mr. breed's pictures, and which i was going to give to mr. breed with his pictures. but mr. visscher was particularly pleased with the frames, as they were a pair, and told me not to send them to mr. breed as he should like to have them himself, and wished i would paint him pictures to fit them (the two other landscapes before mentioned). i accordingly was employed three months longer in painting these three pictures. i finished them; he was very much pleased with them; all his family were very much pleased with them; all who saw them were pleased with them. but he _declined taking them_ without even asking my price, and said that he had more pictures than he knew what to do with. "mr. and mrs. allston heard him say twenty times he wished i would paint him a picture for the frame. mr. allston, who knew what i was about, told him, no doubt, i would do it for him, and in a week after i had completed it. i had told mr. visscher also that i was considerably in debt, and that, when he had paid me for these pictures, i should be something in pocket; and, by his not objecting to what i said, i took it for granted (and from his requesting me to paint the picture) that the thing was certain. but thus it was, without giving any reason in the world, except that he had pictures enough, he declined taking them, making me spend three months longer in bristol than i otherwise should have done; standing still in my art, if not actually going back; and forcing me to run in debt for some necessary expenses of clothing in bristol, and my passage from and back to london. during all this time not a single commission for a portrait, _many_ of which were promised me, nor a single call from any one to look at my pictures. thus ended my jaunt in quest of money. "do not think that this disappointment is in consequence of any misconduct of mine. mr. allston, who was with me, experienced the same treatment, and had it not been for his uncle, the american consul, he might have starved for the bristol people. his uncle was the only one who purchased any of his pictures. since i have been in london i have been endeavoring to regain what i lost in bristol, and i hope i have so far succeeded as to say: '_i have not gone back in my art_.' "in order to retrench my expenses i have taken a painting-room out of the house, at about half of the expense of my former room. though inconvenient in many respects, yet my circumstances require it and i willingly put up with it. as for _economy_, do not be at any more pains in introducing that personage to me. we have long been friends and necessary companions. if you could look in on me and see me through a day i think you would not tell me in every letter to _economize more_. it is impossible; i cannot economize more. i live on as plain food and as little as is for my health; less and plainer would make me ill, for i have given it a fair experiment. as for clothes, i have been decent and that is all. if i visited a great deal this would be a heavy expense, but, the less i go out, the less need i care for clothes, except for cleanliness. my only heavy expenses are colors, canvas, frames, etc., and these are heavy." a number of pages of this letter are missing, much to my regret. he must have been telling of some of the great events which were happening on the continent, probably of the return from elba, for it begins again abruptly. "--when he might have avoided it by quietness; by undertaking so bold an attempt as he has done without being completely sure of success, and having laid his plans deeply; and, thirdly, i knew the feelings of the french people were decidedly in his favor, more especially the military. they feel as though louis xviii was forced upon them by their conquerors; they feel themselves a conquered nation, and they look to bonaparte as the only man who can retrieve their character for them. "all these reasons rushing into my mind at the time, i gave it as my opinion that napoleon would again be emperor of the french, and again set the world by the ears, unless he may have learned a lesson from his adversity. but this cannot be expected. i fear we are apt yet to see a darker and more dreadful storm than any we have yet seen. this is, indeed, an age of wonders. "let what will happen in europe, let us have peace at home, among ourselves more particularly. but the character we have acquired among the nations of europe in our late contest with england, has placed us on such high ground that none of them, england least of all, will wish to embroil themselves with us." this was written just after peace had been established between england and america, and in a letter from his mother, written about the same time in march, , she thus comments on the joyful news: "we have now the heartfelt pleasure of congratulating you on the return of peace between our country and great britain. may it never again be interrupted, but may both countries study the things that make for peace, and love as brethren." it never has been interrupted up to the present day, for, as i am pursuing my pleasant task of bringing these letters together for publication, in the year of our lord , the newspapers are agitating the question of a fitting commemoration of a hundred years of peace between great britain and the united states. further on in this same letter the mother makes this request of her son: "when you return we wish you to bring some excellent black or corbeau cloth to make your good father and brothers each a suit of clothes. your papa also wishes you to get made a handsome black cloth cloak for him; one that will fit you he thinks will fit him. be sure and attend to this. your mama would like some grave colored silk for a gown, if it can be had but for little. don't forget that your mother is no dwarf, and that a large pattern suits her better than a small one." the letter of april , from which i have already quoted, has this sentence at the beginning: "your letters suppose me in paris, _but i am not there_; you hope that i went in october last; i intended going and wished it at that time exceedingly, but i had not leave from you to go and mr. bromfield advised me by no means to go until i heard from you. you must perceive from this case how impossible it is for me to form plans, and transmit them across the atlantic for approbation, thus letting an opportunity slip which is irrecoverable." chapter ix may . --october , decides to return home in the fall.--hopes to return to europe in a year.--ambitions.--paints "judgment of jupiter."--not allowed to compete for premium.--mr. russell's portrait.--reproof of his parents.--battle of waterloo.--wilberforce.--painting of "dying hercules" received by parents.--much admired.--sails for home.--dreadful voyage lasting fifty-eight days.--extracts from his journal.--home at last. it was with great reluctance that morse made his preparations to return home. he thought that, could he but remain a year or two longer in an atmosphere much more congenial to an artist than that which prevailed in america at that time, he would surely attain to greater eminence in his profession. he, in common with many others, imagined that, with the return of peace, an era of great prosperity would at once set in. but in this he was mistaken, for history records that just the opposite occurred. the war had made demands on manufacturers, farmers, and provision dealers which were met by an increase in inventions and in production, and this meant wealth and prosperity to many. when the war ceased, this demand suddenly fell off; the soldiers returning to their country swelled the army of the unemployed, and there resulted increased misery among the lower classes, and a check to the prosperity of the middle and upper classes. it would seem, therefore, that fate dealt more kindly with the young man than he, at that time, realized; for, had he remained, his discouragements would undoubtedly have increased; whereas, by his return to his native land, although meeting with many disappointments and suffering many hardships, he was gradually turned into a path which ultimately led to fame and fortune. on may , , he writes to his parents:-- "with respect to returning home, i shall make my arrangements to be with you (should my life be spared) by the end of september next, or the beginning of october; but it will be necessary that i should be in england again (provided always providence permits) by september following, as arrangements which i have made will require my presence. this i will fully explain when i meet you. "the moment i get home i wish to begin work, so that i should like to have some portraits bespoken in season. i shall charge forty dollars less than stuart for my portraits, so that, if any of my good friends are ready, i will begin the moment i have said 'how do ye do' to them. "i wish to do as much as possible in the year i am with you. if i could get a commission or two for some large pictures for a church or public hall, to the amount of two or three thousand dollars, i should feel much gratified. i do not despair of such an event, for, through your influence with the clergy and their influence with their people, i think some commission for a scripture subject for a church might be obtained; a crucifixion, for instance. "it may, perhaps, be said that the country is not rich enough to purchase large pictures; yes, but two or three thousand dollars can be paid for an entertainment which is gone in a day, and whose effects are to demoralize and debilitate, whilst the same sum expended on a fine picture would be adding an ornament to the country which would be lasting. it would tend to elevate and refine the public feeling by turning their thoughts from sensuality and luxury to intellectual pleasures, and it would encourage and support a class of citizens who have always been reckoned among the brightest stars in the constellation of american worthies, and who are, to this day, compelled to exile themselves from their country and all that is dear to them, in order to obtain a bare subsistence. "i do not speak of _portrait-painters;_ had i no higher thoughts than being a first-rate portrait-painter, i would have chosen a far different profession. my ambition is to be among those who shall revive the splendor of the fifteenth century; to rival the genius of a raphael, a michael angelo, or a titian; my ambition is to be enlisted in the constellation of genius now rising in this country; i wish to shine, not by a light borrowed from them, but to strive to shine the brightest. "if i could return home and stay a year visiting my friends in various parts of the union, and, by painting portraits, make sufficient to bring me to england again at the end of the year, whilst i obtained commissions enough to employ me and support me while in england, i think, in the course of a year or two, i shall have obtained sufficient credit to enable me to return home, if not for the remainder of my life, at least to pay a good long visit. "in all these plans i wish you to understand me as always taking into consideration _the will of providence;_ and, in every plan for future operation, i hope i am not forgetful of the uncertainty of human life, and i wish always to say _should i live_ i will do this or that.... "i perceive by your late letters that you suppose i am painting a large picture. i did think of it some time ago and was only deterred on account of the expenses attending it. all this i will explain to your entire satisfaction when i see you, and why i do not think it expedient to make an exhibition when i return. "i perceive also that you are a little too sanguine with respect to me and expect a little too much from me. you must recollect i am yet but a student and that a picture of any merit is not painted in a day. experienced as mr. west is (and he also paints quicker than any other artist), his last large picture cost him between three and four years' constant attention. mr. allston was nearly two years in painting his large picture. young haydon was three years painting his large picture, is now painting another on which he has been at work one year and expects to be two years more on it. leslie was ten months painting his picture, and my 'hercules' cost me nearly a year's study. so you see that large pictures are not the work of a moment. "all these matters we will talk over one of these days, and all will be set right. i had better paint miss russell's, aunt salisbury's, and dr. bartlett's pictures at home for a very good reason i will give you." he did, however, complete a large historical, or rather mythological, painting before leaving england. whether it was begun before or after writing the foregoing letter, i do not know, but mr. dunlap (whom i have already quoted) has this to say about it:-- "encouraged by the flattering reception of his first works in painting and in sculpture, the young artist redoubled his energies in his studies and determined to contend for the highest premium in historical composition offered by the royal academy at the beginning of the year . the subject was 'the judgment of jupiter in the case of apollo, marpessa and idas.' the premium offered was a gold medal and fifty guineas. the decision was to take place in december of . the composition containing four figures required much study, but, by the exercise of great diligence, the picture was completed by the middle of july. "our young painter had now been in england four years, one year longer than the time allowed him by his parents, and he had to return immediately home; but he had finished his picture under the conviction, strengthened by the opinion of west, that it would be allowed to remain and compete with those of the other candidates. to his regret the petition to the council of the royal academy for this favor, handed in to them by west and advocated strongly by him and fuseli, was not granted. he was told that it was necessary, according to the rules of the academy, that the artist should be present to receive the premium; it could not be received by proxy. fuseli expressed himself in very indignant terms at the narrowness of this decision. "thus disappointed, the artist had but one mode of consolation. he invited west to see his picture before he packed it up, at the same time requesting mr. west to inform him through mr. leslie, after the premium should be adjudged in december, what chance he would have had if he had remained. mr. west, after sitting before the picture for a long time, promised to comply with the request, but added: 'you had better remain, sir.'" in a letter quoted, without a date, by mr. prime, which was written from bristol, but which seems to have been lost, i find the following:-- "james russell, esq., has been extremely attentive to me. he has a very fine family consisting of four daughters and, i think, a son who is absent in the east indies. the daughters are very beautiful, accomplished, and amiable, especially the youngest, lucy. i came very near being at my old game of falling in love, but i find that love and painting are quarrelsome companions, and that the house of my heart is too small for both of them; so i have turned mrs. love out-of-doors. time enough, thought i (with true old bachelor complacency), time enough for you these ten years to come. mr. russell's portrait i have painted as a present to miss russell, and will send it to her as soon as i can get an opportunity. it is an excellent likeness of him." he must either have said more in this letter, or have written another after the family verdict (that terrible family verdict) had been pronounced, for in the letter of april , , from which i have already quoted, he refers to this portrait as follows:-- "as to the portrait which i painted of mr. russell, i am sorry you mentioned it to miss russell, as i particularly requested that you would not, because, in case of failure, it would be a disappointment to her; but as you have told her, i must now explain. in the first place it is not a picture that will do me any credit. i was unfortunate in the light which i chose to paint him in; i wished to make it my best picture and so made it my worst, for i worked too timidly on it. it is a likeness, indeed, a very strong likeness, but the family are not pleased with it, and they say that i have not flattered him, that i have made him too old. so i determined i would not send it, indeed, i promised them i would not send it; but, notwithstanding, as i know miss russell will be good enough to comply with my conditions, i will send it directly; for, as it is a good likeness, every one except the family knowing it instantly, and mr. allston saying that it is a _very strong likeness_, it will on that account be a gratification to her. but i _particularly_ and _expressly request_ that it be kept in a private room to be shown _only_ to friends and relations, and that i _may never be mentioned as the painter;_ and, moreover, that no _artist_ or _miniature painter_ be allowed to see it. on these conditions i send it, taking for granted they will be complied with, and without waiting for an answer." the parents of that generation were not frugal of counsel and advice, even when their children had reached years of discretion and had flown far away from the family nest. the father, in a letter of may , , thus gently reproves his son:-- "to-day we have received your letters to march .... you evidently misconceived our views in the letters to which you allude, and felt much too strongly our advice and remarks in respect to your writing us so much on politics. what we said was the affectionate advice of your parents, who loved you very tenderly, and who were not unwilling you should judge for yourself though you might differ from them. we have ever made a very candid allowance for you, and so have all your friends, and we have never for a moment believed we should differ a fortnight after you should come home and converse with us. you have, in the ardor of feeling, construed many observations in our letters as censuring you and designed to wound your feelings, which were not intended in the remotest degree by us for any such purpose.... "i am sorry to hear of the death of mr. thornton. he was a good man." his mother was much less gentle in her reproof. i cull the following sentences from a long letter of june , :-- "in perfect consistency with the feelings towards you all, above described, we may and ought to tell you, and that with the greatest plainness, of anything that we deem improper in any part of your conduct, either in a civil, social, or religious view. this we feel it our duty to do and shall continue to do as long as we live; and it will ever be your duty to receive from us the advice, counsel, and reproof, which we may, from time to time, favor you with, with the most perfect respect and dutiful observance; and, when you differ from us on any point whatever, let that difference be conveyed to us in the most delicate and gentlemanly manner. let this be done not only while you are under age and dependent on your parents for your support, but when you are independent, and when you are head of a family, and even of a profession, if you ever should be either.... i have dwelt longer on this subject, as i think you have, in some of your last letters, been somewhat deficient in that respect which your own good sense will at once convince you was, on all accounts, due, and which i know you feel the propriety of without any further observations." on june , , the father writes:-- "we have just received a letter from your uncle, james e.b. finley, of carolina. he fears you will remain in europe, but hopes you have so much _amor patrice_ as to return and display your talents in raising the military and naval glory of the nation, by exhibiting on canvas some of her late naval and land actions, and also promote the fine arts among us. he is, you know, an enthusiastic republican and patriot and a warm approver of the late war, but an amiable, excellent man. i am by no means certain that it would not be best for you to come home this fall and spend a year or two in this country in painting some portraits, but especially historical pieces and landscapes. you might, i think, in this way succeed in getting something to support you afterwards in europe for a few years. "i hope the time is not distant when artists in your profession, and of the first class, will be honorably patronized and supported in this country. in this case you can come and live with us, which would give us much satisfaction." the young man still took a deep interest in affairs political, and speculated rather keenly on the outcome of the tremendous happenings on the continent. on june , , he writes:-- "you will have heard of the dreadful battle in flanders before this reaches you. the loss of the english is immense, indeed almost all their finest officers and the flower of their army; not less than officers and upwards of , men, some say , . but it has been decisive if the news of to-day be true, that napoleon has abdicated. what the event of these unparalleled times will be no mortal can pretend to foresee. i have much to tell you when i see you. perhaps you had better not write after the receipt of this, as it may be more than two months before an answer could be received. "p.s. the papers of to-night confirm the news of this morning. bonaparte is no longer a dangerous man; he has abdicated, and, in all probability, a republican form of government will be the future government of france, if they are capable of enjoying such a government. but no one can foresee events; there may be a long peace, or the world may be torn worse than it yet has been. revolution seems to succeed revolution so rapidly that, in looking back on our lives, we seem to have lived a thousand years, and wonders of late seem to scorn to come alone; they come in clusters." the battle in flanders was the battle of waterloo, which was fought on the th day of june, and on the th of july the allied armies again entered paris. referring to these events many years later, morse said:-- "it was on one of my visits, in the year , that an incident occurred which well illustrates the character of the great philanthropist [mr. wilberforce]. as i passed through hyde park on my way to kensington gore, i observed that great crowds had gathered, and rumors were rife that the allied armies had entered paris, that napoleon was a prisoner, and that the war was virtually at an end; and it was momentarily expected that the park guns would announce the good news to the people. "on entering the drawing-room at mr. wilberforce's i found the company, consisting of mr. thornton [his memory must have played him false in this particular as mr. thornton died some time before], mr. macaulay, mr. grant, the father, and his two sons robert and charles, and robert owen of lanark, in quite excited conversation respecting the rumors that prevailed. mr. wilberforce expatiated largely on the prospects of a universal peace in consequence of the probable overthrow of napoleon, whom naturally he considered the great disturber of the nations. at every period, however, he exclaimed: 'it is too good to be true, it cannot be true.' he was altogether skeptical in regard to the rumors. "the general subject, however, was the absorbing topic at the dinner-table. after dinner the company joined the ladies in the drawing-room. i sat near a window which looked put in the direction of the distant park. presently a flash and a distant dull report of a gun attracted my attention, but was unnoticed by the rest of the company. another flash and report assured me that the park guns were firing, and at once i called mr. wilberforce's attention to the fact. running to the window he threw it up in time to see the next flash and hear the report. clasping his hands in silence, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, he stood for a few moments perfectly absorbed in thought, and, before uttering a word, embraced his wife and daughters, and shook hands with every one in the room. the scene was one not to be forgotten." we learn from a letter of his mother's dated june , , that the painting of the "dying hercules" had at last been received, but that the plaster cast of the same subject was still mysteriously missing. the painting was much admired, and the mother says:-- "your friend mr. tisdale says the picture of the hercules ought to be in boston as the beginning of a gallery of paintings, and that the bostonians ought not to permit it to go from here. whether they will or not, i know not. i place no confidence in them, but they may take a fit into their heads to patronize the fine arts, and, in that case, they have it in their power undoubtedly to do as much as any city in this country towards their support." morse had now made up his mind to return home, although his parents, in their letters of that time, had given him leave to stay longer if he thought it would be for his best interest, but his father had made it clear that he must, from this time forth, depend on his own exertions. he hoped that (providence permitting) he need only spend a year at home in earning enough money to warrant his returning to europe. providence, however, willed otherwise, and he did not return to europe until fourteen years later. the next letter is dated from liverpool, august , , and is but a short one. i shall quote the first few sentences:-- "i have arrived thus far on my way home. i left london the th and arrived in this place yesterday the th, at which time, within an hour, four years ago, i landed in england. i have not yet determined by what vessel to return; i have a choice of a great many. the ceres is the first that sails, but i do not like her accommodations. the liverpool packet sails about the th, and, as she has always been a favorite ship with me, it is not improbable i may return in her." he decided to sail in the ceres, however, to his sorrow, for the voyage home was a long and dreadful one. the record of those terrible fifty-eight days, carefully set down in his journal, reads like an odyssey of misfortune and almost of disaster. to us of the present day, who cross the ocean in a floating hotel, in a few days, arriving almost on the hour, the detailed account of the dangers, discomforts, and privations suffered by the travellers of an earlier period seems almost incredible. brave, indeed, were our fathers who went down to the sea in ships, for they never knew when, if ever, they would reach the other shore, and there could be no c.q.d. or s.o.s. flashed by wireless in the morse code to summon assistance in case of disaster. in this case storm succeeded storm; head winds were encountered almost all the way across; fine weather and fair winds were the exception, and provisions and fresh water were almost exhausted. the following quotations from the journal will give some idea of the terrors experienced by the young man, whose appointed time had not yet arrived. he still had work to do in the world which could be done by no other. "_monday, august , ._ after waiting fourteen days in liverpool for a fair wind, we set sail at three o'clock in the afternoon with the wind at southeast, in company with upwards of two hundred sail of vessels, which formed a delightful prospect. we gradually lost sight of different vessels as it approached night, and at sunset they were dispersed all over the horizon. in the night the wind sprung up strong and fair, and in the morning we were past holyhead. "_tuesday, d august._ wind directly ahead; beating all day; thick weather and gales of wind; passengers all sick and i not altogether well. little progress to-day. "_wednesday, d august._ a very disagreeable day, boisterous, head winds and rainy. beating across the channel from the irish to the welsh coast. * * * * * "_friday, th august._ dreadful still; blowing harder and harder; quite a storm and a lee shore; breakers in sight, tacked and stood over again to the irish shore under close-reefed topsails. at night saw waterford light again. * * * * * "_monday, th august._ a fair wind springing up (ten o'clock). going at the rate of seven knots on our true course. we have had just a week of the most disagreeable weather possible. i hope this is the beginning of better winds, and that, in reasonable time, we shall see our native shore. "_tuesday, th august._ still disappointed in fair winds.... since, then, i can find nothing consoling on deck, let us see what is in the cabin. all of us make six, four gentlemen and two ladies. mrs. phillips, mrs. drake, captain chamberlain, mr. bancroft, mr. lancaster, and myself. our amusements are eating and drinking, sleeping and backgammon. seasickness we have thrown overboard, and, all things considered, we try to enjoy ourselves and sometimes succeed. * * * * * "_thursday, st august._ wind as directly ahead as it can blow; squally all night and tremendous sea. what a contrast does this voyage make with my first. this day makes the tenth day out and we have advanced towards home about three hundred miles. in my last voyage, on the tenth day, we had accomplished one half our voyage, sixteen hundred miles. "_friday, st september._ dreadful weather; wind still ahead; foggy, rainy, and heavy swell; patience almost exhausted, but the will of heaven be done. if this weather is to continue i hope we shall have fortitude to bear it. all is for the best. "_saturday, th september._ nineteenth day out and not yet more than one third of our way to boston. oh! when shall we end this tedious passage? "_sunday, th september._ calm with dreadful sea. early this morning discovered a large ship to the southward, dismasted, probably in the late gale. discovered an unpleasant trait in our captain's character which i shall merely allude to. i am sorry to say he did not demonstrate that promptitude to assist a fellow creature in distress which i expected to find inherent in a seaman's breast, and especially in an american seaman's. it was not till after three or four hours' delay, and until the entreaties of his passengers and some threatening murmurs on my part of a public exposure in boston of his conduct, that he ordered the ship to bear down upon the wreck, and then with slackened sail and much grumbling. a ship and a brig were astern of us, and, though farther by some miles from the distressed ship than we were, they instantly bore down for her, and rendered her this evening the assistance we might have done at noon. we are now standing on our way with a fair wind springing up at southeast, which i suppose will last a few hours. spent the day in religious exercises, and was happy to observe on the part of the rest of the passengers a due regard for the solemnity of the day. "_monday, th september._ wind still ahead and the sky threatening.--ten o'clock. beginning to blow hard; taking in sails one after another.-- three o'clock. a perfect storm; the gale a few days ago but a gentle breeze to it.... i never witnessed so tremendous a gale; the wind blowing so that it can scarcely be faced; the sea like ink excepting the whiteness of the surge, which is carried into the air like clouds of dust, or like the driving of snow. the wind piping through our bare rigging sounds most terrific; indeed, it is a most awful sight. the sea in mountains breaking over our bows, and a single wave dispersing in mist through the violence of the storm; ship rolling to such a degree that we are compelled to keep our berths; cabin dark with the deadlights in. oh! who would go to sea when he can stay on shore! the wind in southwest driving us back again, so that we are losing all the advantages of our fair wind of yesterday, which lasted, as i supposed, two or three hours. * * * * * "_tuesday, th september._ gale abated, but head wind still.... "_wednesday, th september._ all last night a tremendous storm from northwest. "_thursday, th september._ the storm increased to a tremendous height last night. the clouds at sunset were terrific in the extreme, and, in the evening, still more so with lightning. the sea has risen frightfully and everything wears a most alarming aspect. at a.m. a squall struck us and laid us almost wholly under water; we came near losing our foremast.... none of us able to sleep from the dreadful noises; creakings and howlings and thousands of indescribable sounds. lord! who can endure the terror of thy storm!... yesterday's sea was as molehills to mountains compared with the sea to-day.... "_friday, th september._ the storm somewhat abated this morning, but still blowing hard from southwest.... twenty-four days out to-day. "_saturday, th september._ blowing a gale of wind from southwest. noon almost calm for half an hour, when, on a sudden, the wind shifted to the northeast, when it blew such a hurricane that every one on board declared they never saw its equal. for four hours it blew so hard that all the sea was in a perfect foam, and resembled a severe snowstorm more than a dry blow. if the wind roared before, it now shrilly whistled through our rigging." after some days of calm with winds sometimes favorable but light, and, when fresh, ahead, the journal continues:-- "_monday, th september._ another gale of wind last night, ahead, dreadful sea; took in sail and lay to all night.... beginning to think of our provisions; bread mouldy and little left; sugar, little left; fresh provisions, little left; beans, none left; salt pork, little left; salt beef, a plenty; water, plenty; stores of passengers, some gone and the rest drawing to a conclusion; patience drawing to a conclusion; in short all is falling short and drawing to a conclusion except _our voyage and my journal_.... "_tuesday, th september._... find our captain to be a complete old woman; takes in sail at night and never knows when to set it again; the longer we know him, the more surly he grows; he is not even civil.... several large turtles passed within a few feet of us yesterday and to-day, and, considering we are near the end of our provisions, one would have thought our captain would be anxious to take them; but no, it was too much trouble to lower the boat from the stern. * * * * * "_friday, th september._ last night another dreadful gale, as severe as any since we have been out. * * * * * "_monday, d october._ last night another gale of wind from northwest and is this morning still blowing hard and cold from the same quarter. what a dreadful passage is ours; we seem destined to have no fair wind, and to have a gale of wind every other day. "_saturday, th october._ wind still ahead and blowing hard; very cold and dismal. oh! when shall we see home!... i thought i could observe a kind of warfare between the different winds since we have been at sea. the west wind seems to be the tyrant at present, as it were the bonaparte of the air. he has been blowing his gales very lavishly, and no other wind has been able to check him with any success. "i recollect on one day, while it was calm, a thick bank of clouds began to rise in the northeast; no other clouds were in the sky. they rose gently in the calm as if fearful of rousing their deadly foe in the west. now they had gained one third of the heavens when, behold, in the southwest another bank of thick black clouds came rolling up, and, reddening in the rays of the setting sun, marched on, teeming with fury. they soon gained the middle of the heavens where the frightened northeast had not yet reached. they met, they mixed, the routed northeast skulked back, while the thick column of the southwest, having driven back its enemy, slowly returned to its repose, proudly displaying a thousand various colors, as if for victory. "at another time success seemed to be more in favor of the northeast; for, shortly after this great defeat, the southwest came forth and, like a petty tyrant intoxicated with success, began to oppress the subject ocean. it blew its gales and filled the air with clouds and rain and fog. suddenly the northeast, as under cover of the darkness, and as one driven to desperation, burst forth on its too confident enemy with redoubled fury. old ocean groans at the dreadful conflict; for, as in the warring of two hostile armies on the domains of a neutral, the neutral suffers most severely, so the neutral ocean seemed doomed to bear the weight of all their rancor. the southwest flies affrighted. and now the northeast, vaunting forth, stalks with the rage of an angry demon over the waters; the ocean foams beneath his breath, it steams and smokes and heaves in agony its troubled bosom. "but, alas! how few can bear prosperity; how few, when victory crowns their efforts, can rule with moderation; how often, does it happen that we reënact the same scenes for which we punished our enemy. for now has the northeast become the tyrant and rules with tenfold rigor; he pours forth all his strength and, drunk with success as soldiers after a victory, at length sinks away into an inglorious calm. "now does the southwest collect his routed forces, checked but not conquered; he again advances on his recreant foe and seizes the vacant throne without a struggle. ill-fated northeast! hadst thou but ruled with moderation when thou hadst gained, with masterly manoeuvre, the throne of the air; hadst thou reserved thy forces against surprise, and not, with prodigal profuseness, lavished them on thy harmless subjects, thou hadst still been monarch of the sea and air; all would have blessed thee as the restorer of peace, and as the deliverer of the ocean from western despotism. but alas! how art thou fallen an everlasting example of overreaching oppression. "this evening there is a fine fair wind from northeast carrying us on at the rate of five or six knots. this is the cause of the foregoing rhapsody. had it been otherwise than a fair wind i should never have been in spirits to have written so much stuff." still tantalized by baffling head winds and alternating calms and gales, they were, however, gradually approaching the coast. omitting the entries of the next eleven days, i shall quote the final pages of the journal. "_wednesday, th october._ last night was a sleepless night to us all. everything wore the appearance of a hard storm; all was dull in the cabin; scarce a word was spoken; every one wore a serious aspect and, as any one came from the deck into the cabin, the rest put up an inquisitive and apprehensive look, with now and then a faint, 'well, how does it look now?' our captain, as well as the passenger captain, were both alarmed, and were poring over the chart in deep deliberation. a syllable was now and then caught from them, but all seemed despairing. "at ten o'clock we lay to till twelve; at four again till five. rainy, thick, and hazy, but not blowing very hard. all is dull and dismal; a dreadful state of suspense, between feelings of exquisite joy in the hope of soon seeing home, and feelings of gloomy apprehension that a few hours may doom us to destruction. "_half-past seven._... heaven be praised! the joyful tidings are just announced of _land!!_ oh! who can conceive our feelings now? the wretch condemned to the scaffold, who receives, at the moment he expects to die, the joyful reprieve, he can best conceive the state of our minds. "the land is cape cod, distant about ten miles. joyful, joyful is the thought. to-night we shall, in all probability, be in boston. we are going at the rate of seven knots. "_half-past ._ manomet land in sight. "_ten o'clock._ cape ann in sight. "_eleven o'clock._ boston light in sight. "_one o'clock._ home!!!" [illustration: on board the ship ceres boston harbour my dear parents, thanks to a kind providence who has preserved me through all dangers, i have at length arrived in my native land. i send this just to prepare you, i shall be with you as soon as i can possibly get on shore. we have had days passage long, boisterous, and dangerous, but more when i see you. pray tell me by the bearer if i shall find all well. your very affectionate son, samuel b. morse october , ] chapter x april , --october , very little success at home.--portrait of ex-president john adams.-- letter to allston on sale of his "dead man restored to life."--also apologizes for hasty temper.--reassured by allston.--humorous letter from leslie.--goes to new hampshire to paint portraits.--concord.--meets miss lucretia walker.--letters to his parents concerning her.--his parents reply.--engaged to miss walker.--his parents approve.--many portraits painted.--miss walker's parents consent.--success in portsmouth.--morse and his brother invent a pump.--highly endorsed by president day and eli whitney.--miss walker visits charlestown.--morse's religious convictions.--more success in new hampshire.--winter in charleston, south carolina.--john a. alston.--success.--returns north.--letter from his uncle dr. finley.--marriage. there is no record of the meeting of the parents and the long-absent son, but it is easy to picture the joy of that occasion, and to imagine the many heart-to-heart conversations when all differences, political and otherwise, were smoothed over. he remained at home that winter, but seems to have met with but slight success in his profession. his "judgment of jupiter" was much admired, but found no purchaser, nor did he receive any commissions for such large historical paintings as it was his ambition to produce. he was asked by a certain mr. joseph delaplaine, of philadelphia, to paint a portrait of ex-president john adams for _half_ price, the portrait to be engraved and included in "delaplaine's repository of the lives and portraits of distinguished american characters," and, from letters of a later date, i believe that morse consented to this. it appears that he must also have received but few, if any, orders for portraits, for, in the following summer, he started on a painting tour through new hampshire, which proved to be of great moment to him in more ways than one. before we follow him on that tour, however, i shall quote from a letter written by him to his friend washington allston:-- boston, april , . my dear sir,--i have but one moment to write you by a vessel which sails to-morrow morning. i wrote leslie by new packet some months since and am hourly expecting an answer. i congratulate you, my dear sir, on the sale of your picture of the "dead man." i suppose you will have received notice, before this reaches you, that the philadelphia academy of arts have purchased it for the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars. bravo for our country! i am sincerely rejoiced for you and for the disposition which it shows of future encouragement. i really think the time is not far distant when we shall be able to settle in our native land with profit as well as pleasure. boston seems struggling in labor to bring forth an institution for the arts, but it will miscarry; i find it is all forced. they can talk, and talk, and say what a fine thing it would be, but nothing is done. i find by experience that what you have often observed to me with respect to settling in boston is well founded. i think it will be the last in the arts, though, without doubt, it is capable of being the first, if the fit would only take them. oh! how i miss you, my dear sir. i long to spend my evenings again with you and leslie. i shall certainly visit italy (should i live and no unforeseen event take place) in the course of a year or eighteen months. could there not be some arrangement made to meet you and leslie there? he lived, but the "unforeseen event" occurred to make him alter all his plans. further on in this same letter he says:-- "my conscience accuses me, and hardly too, of many instances of pettishness and ill-humor towards you, which make me almost hate myself that i could offend a temper like yours. i need not ask you to forgive it; i know you cannot harbor anger a minute, and perhaps have forgotten the instances; but i cannot forget them. if you had failings of the same kind and i could recollect any instances where you had spoken pettishly or ill-natured to me, our accounts would then have been balanced, they would have called for mutual forgetfulness and forgiveness; but when, on reflection, i find nothing of the kind to charge you with, my conscience severely upbraids me with ingratitude to you, to whom (under heaven) i owe all the little knowledge of my art which i possess. but i hope still i shall prove grateful to you; at any rate, i feel my errors and must mend them." mr. allston thus answers this frank appeal for forgiveness:-- my dear sir,--i will not apologize for having so long delayed answering your kind letter, being, as you well know, privileged by my friends to be a lazy correspondent. i was sorry to find that you should have suffered the recollection of any hasty expressions you might have uttered to give you uneasiness. be assured that they never were remembered by me a moment after, nor did they ever in the slightest degree diminish my regard or weaken my confidence in the sincerity of your friendship or the goodness of your heart. besides, the consciousness of warmth in my own temper would have made me inexcusable had i suffered myself to dwell on an inadvertent word from another. i therefore beg you will no longer suffer any such unpleasant reflections to disturb your mind, but that you will rest assured of my unaltered and sincere esteem. your letter and one i had about the same time from my sister mary brought the first intelligence of the sale of my picture, it being near three weeks later when i received the account from philadelphia. when you recollect that i considered the "dead man" (from the untoward fate he had hitherto experienced) almost literally as a _caput mortuum_, you may easily believe that i was most agreeably surprised to hear of the sale. but, pleased as i was on account of the very seasonable pecuniary supply it would soon afford me, i must say that i was still more gratified at the encouragement it seemed to hold out for my return to america. his friend leslie, in a letter from london of may , , writes: "mr. west said your picture would have been more likely than any of them to obtain the prize had you remained." in another letter from leslie of september , , occurs this amusing passage:-- "the _catalogue raisonné_ appeared according to promise, but is not near so good as the one last year. at the conclusion the author says that mr. payne knight told the directors it was the custom of the greek nobility to strip and exhibit themselves naked to the artists in various attitudes, that they might have an opportunity of studying fine form. accordingly those public-spirited men, the directors, have determined to adopt the plan, and are all practising like mad to prepare themselves for the ensuing exhibition, when they are to be placed on pedestals. "it is supposed that sir g. beaumont, mr. long, mr. knight, etc., will occupy the principal lights. the marquis of stafford, unfortunately, could not recollect the attitude of any one antique figure, but was found practising having the head of the dying gladiator, the body of the hercules, one leg of the apollo, and the other of the dancing faun, turned the wrong way. lord mulgrave, having a small head, thought of representing the torso, but he did not know what to do with his legs, and was afraid that, as master of the ordnance, he could not dispense with his _arms_." in the beginning of august, , the young man started out on his quest for money. this was frankly the object of his journey, but it was characteristic of his buoyant and yet conscientious nature that, having once made up his mind to give up, for the present, all thoughts of pursuing the higher branches of his art, he took up with zest the painting of portraits. so far from degrading his art by pursuing a branch of it which he held to be inferior, he still, by conscientious work, by putting the best of himself into it, raised it to a very high plane; for many of his portraits are now held by competent critics to rank high in the annals of art, by some being placed on a level with those of gilbert stuart. on august , , he writes to his parents from concord, new hampshire:-- "i have been in this place since monday evening. i arrived safely.... massabesek pond is very beautiful, though seen on a dull day. i think that one or two elegant views might be made from it, and i think i must sketch it at some future period. "i have as yet met with no success in portraits, but hope, by perseverance, i shall be able to find some. my stay in this place depends on that circumstance. if none offer, i shall go for hanover on saturday morning. "the scenery is very fine on the merrimack; many fine pictures could be made here alone. i made a little sketch near contoocook falls yesterday. i go this morning with dr. mcfarland to see some views. colonel kent's family are very polite to me, and i never felt in better spirits; the weather is now fine and i feel as though i was growing fat." concord, august , . i am still here and am passing my time very agreeably. i have painted five portraits at fifteen dollars each and have two more engaged and many more talked of. i think i shall get along well. i believe i could make an independent fortune in a few years if i devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the desire for good portraits in the different country towns. he must have been a very rapid worker to have painted five portraits in eight days; but, perhaps, on account of the very modest price he received, these were more in the nature of quick sketches. the next letter is rather startling when we recall his recent assertions concerning "mrs. love" and the joys of a bachelor existence. concord, august , . my dear parents,--i write you a few lines just to say i am well and very industrious. next day after to-morrow i shall have received one hundred dollars, which i think is pretty well for three weeks. i shall probably stay here a fortnight from yesterday. i have other attractions besides money in this place. do you know the walkers of this place? charles walker esq., son of judge walker, has two daughters, the elder, very beautiful, amiable, and of an excellent disposition. this is her character in town. i have enquired particularly of dr. mcfarland respecting the family, and his answer is every way satisfactory, except that they are not professors of religion. he is a man of family and great wealth. this last, you know, i never made a principal object, but it is somewhat satisfactory to know that in my profession. i may flatter myself, but i think i might be a successful suitor. you will, perhaps, think me a terrible harum-scarum fellow to be continually falling in love in this way, but i have a dread of being an old bachelor, and i am now twenty-five years of age. there is still no need of hurry; the young lady is but sixteen. but all this is thinking aloud to you; i make you my confidants; i wish your advice; nothing shall be done precipitately. of course all that i say is between you and me, for it all may come to nothing; i have _some experience_ that way. what i have done i have done prayerfully. i have prayed to the giver of every good gift that he will direct me in this business; that, if it will not be to his glory and the good of his kingdom, he will frustrate all; that, if he grants me prosperity, he will grant me a heart to use it aright; and, if adversity, that he will teach me submission to his will; and that, whatever may be my lot here, i may not fall short of eternal happiness hereafter. i hope you will remember me in your prayers, and especially in reference to a connection in life. i do not think that his parents took this matter very seriously at first. his was an intensely affectionate nature, and they had often heard these same raptures before. however, like wise parents, they did not scoff. his mother wrote on august , , in answer: "with respect to the other confidential matter, i hope the lord will direct you to a proper choice. we know nothing of the family, good or bad. we do not wish you to be an old bachelor, nor do we wish you to precipitate yourself and others into difficulties which you cannot get rid of." in the same letter his father says: "in regard to the subject on which you ask our advice, we refer it, after the experience you have had, and with the advice you have often had from us, to your own judgment. be not hasty in entering into any engagement; enquire with caution and delicacy; do everything that is honorable and gentlemanly respecting yourself and those concerned. 'pause, ponder, sift.--judge before friendship--then confide till death.' (young.) above all, commit the subject to god in prayer and ask his guidance and blessing. i am glad to find you are doing this." how well he obeyed his father's injunctions may be gathered from the following letter, which speaks for itself:-- concord, september , . my dear parents,--i have just received yours of august . i leave town to-morrow morning, probably for hanover, as there is no conveyance direct to walpole. i have had no more portraits since i wrote you, so that i have received just one hundred dollars in concord. the last i took for ten dollars, as the person i painted obtained four of my sitters for me.... with respect to the confidential affair, everything is successful beyond my most sanguine expectations. the more i know of her the more amiable she appears. she is very beautiful and yet no coquetry; she is modest, quite to diffidence, and yet frank and open-hearted. wherever i have enquired concerning her i have invariably heard the same character of--"remarkably amiable, modest, and of a sweet disposition." when you learn that this is the case i think you will not accuse me of being hasty in bringing the affair to a crisis. i ventured to tell her my whole heart, and instead of obscure and ambiguous answers, which some would have given to tantalize and pain one, she frankly, but modestly and timidly, told me it was mutual. suffice it to say we are _engaged_. if i know my parents i know they will be pleased with this amiable girl. unless i was confident of it, i should never have been so hasty. i have not yet mentioned it to her parents; she requested me to defer it till next summer, or till i see her again, lest she should be thought hasty. she is but sixteen and is willing to wait two or three years if it is for our mutual interest. never, never was a human being so blest as i am, and yet what an ungrateful wretch i have been. pray for me that i may have a grateful heart, for i deserve nothing but adversity, and yet have the most unbounded prosperity. the father replies to this characteristic letter on september , :-- "i have just received yours of the d inst. its contents were deeply interesting to us, as you will readily suppose. it accounts to us why you have made so long a stay at concord.... so far as we can judge from your representations (which are all we have to judge from), we cannot refuse you our approbation, and we hope that the course, on which you have entered with your characteristic rapidity and decision, will be pursued and issue in a manner which will conduce to the happiness of all concerned.... "we think _her_ parents should be made acquainted with the state of the business, as she is so young and the thing so important to them." the son answers this letter, from walpole, new hampshire, on september , , thus naively: "you think the parents of the young lady should be made acquainted with the state of the business. i feel some degree of awkwardness as it respects that part of the affair; i don't know the manner in which it ought to be done. i wish you would have the goodness to write me immediately (at walpole, to care of thomas bellows, esq.) and inform me what i should say. might i communicate the information by writing?" here he gives a detailed account of the family, and, for the first time, mentions the young lady's name--lucretia pickering walker--and continues:-- "you ask how the family have treated me. they are all aware of the attachment between us, for i have made my attention so open and so marked that they all must have perceived it. i know that lucretia must have had some conversation with her mother on the subject, for she told me one day, when i asked her what her mother thought of my constant visits, that her mother said she 'didn't think i cared much about her,' in a pleasant way. all the family have been extremely polite and attentive to me; i received constant invitations to dinner and tea, indeed every encouragement was given me.... "i painted two hasty sketches of scenery in concord. i meet with no success in walpole. _quacks_ have been before me." there is always a touch of quaint, dry humor in his mother's letters in spite of their great seriousness, as witness the following extracts from a letter of september , :-- "we hope you will feel more than ever the absolute necessity laid upon you to procure for yourself and those you love a maintenance, as neither of you can subsist long upon air.... remember it takes a great many hundred dollars to _make_ and to _keep_ the pot a-boiling. "i wish to see the young lady who has captivated you so much. i hope she loves religion, and that, if you and she form a connection for life, some _five or six years hence_, you may go hand in hand to that better world where they neither marry nor are given in marriage.... "you have not given us any satisfaction in respect to many things about the young lady which you ought to suppose we should be anxious to know. all you have told us is that she is handsome and amiable. these are good as far as they go, but there are a great many etcs., etcs., that we want to know. "is she acquainted with domestic affairs? does she respect and love religion? how many brothers and sisters has she? how old are they? is she healthy? how old are her parents? what will they be likely to do for her some years hence, say when she is twenty years old? "in your next answer at least some of these questions. you see your mother has not lived twenty-seven years in new england without learning to ask questions." these questions he had already answered in a letter which must have crossed his mother's. on september , , he writes from windsor, vermont:-- "i am still here but shall probably leave in a week or two. i long to get home, or, at least, as far on my way as _concord_. i think i shall be tempted to stay a week or two there.... i do not like windsor very much. it is a very dissipated place, and dissipation, too, of the lowest sort. there is very little gentleman's society." windsor, vermont, september , . i am still in this place.... i have written lucretia on the subject of acquainting her parents, and i have no doubt she will assent.... i hear her spoken of in this part of the country as very celebrated, both for her beauty and, particularly, for her disposition; and this i have heard without there being the slightest suspicion of any attachment, or even acquaintance, between us. this augurs well most certainly. i know she is considered in concord as the first girl in the place. (you know i always aimed highest.) the more i think of this attachment the more i think i shall not regret the _haste_ (if it may be so called) of this proposed connection.... i am doing pretty well in this place, better than i expected; i have one more portrait to do before i leave it.... i should have business, i presume, to last me some weeks if i could stay, but i long to get home _through concord_.... mama's scheme of painting a large landscape and selling it to general bradley for two hundred dollars, must give place to another which has just come into my head: that of sending to you for my great canvas and painting the quarrel at dartmouth college, as large as life, with all the portraits of the trustees, overseers, officers of college, and students; and, if i finish it next week, to ask five thousand dollars for it and then come home in a coach and six and put ned to the blush with his nineteen subscribers a day. only think, $ a week is $ , a year, and, if i live ten years, i shall be worth $ , , ; a very pretty fortune for this time of day. is it not a grand scheme? the remark concerning his brother sidney edwards's subscribers refers to a religious newspaper, the "boston recorder," founded and edited by him. it was one of the first of the many religious journals which, since that time, have multiplied all over the country. continuing his modestly successful progress, he writes next from hanover, on october , :-- "i arrived in this place on tuesday evening and am painting away with all my might. i am painting judge woodward and lady, and think i shall have many more engaged than i can do. i painted seven portraits at windsor, one for my board and lodging at the inn, and one for ten dollars, very small, to be sent in a letter to a great distance; so that in all i received eighty-five dollars in money. i have five more engaged at windsor for next summer. so you see i have not been idle. "i _must_ spend a fortnight at concord, so that i shall not probably be at home till early in november. "i think, with proper management, that i have but little to fear as to this world. i think i can, with industry, average from two to three thousand dollars a year, which is a tolerable income, though _not equal to_ $ , , !" concord, october , . i arrived here on friday evening in good health and spirits from hanover. i painted four portraits altogether in hanover, and have many engaged for next summer. i presume i shall paint some here, though i am uncertain. i found lucretia in good health, very glad to see me. she improves on acquaintance; she is, indeed, a most amiable, affectionate girl; i know you will love her. she has consented that i should inform her parents of our attachment. i have, accordingly, just sent a letter to her father (twelve o'clock), and am now in a state of suspense anxiously waiting his answer. before i close this, i hope to give you the result. _five o'clock._ i have just called and had a conversation (by request) with mr. walker, and i have the satisfaction to say: "i have lucretia's parents' entire approbation." everything successful! praise be to the giver of every good gift! what, indeed, shall i render to him for all his unmerited and continually increasing mercies and blessings? in a letter to miss walker from a girl friend we find the following:-- "you appear to think, dear lucretia, that i am possessed of quite an insensible _heart_; pardon me if i say the same of you, for i have heard that several have become candidates for your affections, but that you remained unmoved until mr. m., of charlestown, made his appearance, when, i understand, you did hope that his sentiments in your favor were reciprocal. "i rejoice to hear this, for, though i am unacquainted with that gentleman, yet, when i heard he was likely to become a successful suitor, i have made some enquiries concerning him, and find he is possessed of every excellent and amiable quality that i should wish the person to have who was to become the husband of so dear a friend as yourself." morse must have returned home about the end of october, for we find no more letters until the th of december, when he writes from portsmouth, new hampshire:-- "i should have written you sooner but i have been employed in settling myself. i thought it best not to be precipitate in fixing on a place to board and lodge, but first to sound the public as to my success. every one thinks i shall meet with encouragement, and, on the strength of this, i have taken lodgings and a room at mrs. hinge's in jaffrey street; a very excellent and central situation.... i shall commence on monday morning with governor langdon's portrait. he is very kind and attentive to me, as, indeed, are all here, and will do everything to aid me. i wish not to raise high expectations, but i think i shall succeed tolerably well." about this time finley morse and his brother edwards had jointly devised and patented a new "flexible piston-pump," from which they hoped great things. edwards, always more or less of a wag, proposed to call it "morse's patent metallic double-headed ocean-drinker and deluge-spouter valve pump-boxes." it was to be used in connection with fire-engines, and seems really to have been an excellent invention, for president jeremiah day, of yale college, gave the young inventors his written endorsement, and eli whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, thus recommends it: "having examined the model of a fire-engine invented by mr. morse, with pistons of a new construction, i am of opinion that an engine may be made on that principle (being more simple and much less expensive), which would have a preference to those in common use." in the letters of the year and of several following years, even in the letters of the young man to his _fiancée,_ many long references are made to this pump and to the varying success in introducing it into general use. i shall not, however, refer to it again, and only mention it to show the bent of morse's mind towards invention. he spent some time in the early part of in portsmouth, new hampshire, meeting with success in his profession. miss walker was also there visiting friends, so we may presume that his stay was pleasant as well as profitable. in february of that year he accompanied his _fiancée_ to charlestown, his parents, naturally, wishing to make the acquaintance of the young lady, and then returned to portsmouth to finish his work there. the visit of miss walker to charlestown gave great satisfaction to all concerned. on march , , morse writes to his parents from portsmouth: "i am under the agreeable necessity (shall i say) of postponing my return ... in consequence of a _press of business_. i shall have three begun to-night; one sat yesterday (a large one), and two will sit to-day (small), and three more have it in serious contemplation. this unexpected occurrence will deprive me of the pleasure of seeing you this week at least." and on the next day, march , he writes: "the unexpected application of three sitters at a time completely stopped me. since i wrote i have taken a first sitting of a fourth (large), and a fifth (large) sits on friday morning; so you see i am over head and ears in business." as it is necessary to a clear understanding of morse's character to realize the depth of his religious convictions, i shall quote the following from this same letter of march :-- "i wish much to know the progress of the revival, how many are admitted next communion, and any religious news. "i have been in the house almost ever since i came from home sifting the scheme of universal salvation to the bottom. what occasioned this was an occurrence on the evening of sunday before last. i heard the bell ring for lecture and concluded it was at mr. putnam's; i accordingly sallied out to go to it, when i found that it was in the universalist meeting-house. "as i was out and never in a universalist meeting, i thought, for mere curiosity, i would go in. i went into a very large meeting-house; the meeting was overflowing with people of both sexes, and the singing the finest i have heard in portsmouth. i was struck with the contrast it made to mr. putnam's sacramental lecture; fifteen or sixteen persons thinly scattered over the house, and the choir consisting of four or five whose united voice could scarcely be heard in the farthest corner of the church, and, when heard, so out of harmony as to set one's teeth on edge. "the reflections which this melancholy contrast caused i could not help communicating to mr. putnam in the words of mr. spring's sermon, '_something must be done_.' he agreed it was a dreadful state of society here but almost gave up as hopeless. i told him he never should yield a post like this to the devil without a struggle; and, at any rate, i told him that the few christians that there were (and, indeed, they are but as one to one thousand) could pray, and i thought it was high time. i told him i would do all in my power to assist him in any scheme where i could be of use." the year was spent by the young man in executing the commissions which had been promised him the year before in new hampshire. in all his journeyings back and forth the road invariably led through concord, and the pure love of the young people for each other increased as the months rolled by. i shall not profane the sacredness of this love by introducing any of the more intimate passages of their letters of this and of later years. the young girl responded readily to the religious exhortations of her _fiancé_ and became a sincere and devout christian. it will not be necessary to follow him in this journey, as the experiences were but a repetition of those of the year before. he painted many portraits in concord, hanover, and other places, and finally concluded to venture on a trip to charleston, south carolina, where his kinsman, dr. finley, and mr. john a. alston had urged him to come, assuring him good business. on january , , he arrived in that beautiful southern city and thus announced his arrival to his parents: "i find myself in a new climate, the weather warm as our may. i have been introduced to a number of friends. i think my prospects are favorable." at first, however, the promised success did not materialize, and it was not until after many weeks of waiting that the tide turned. but it did turn, for an excellent portrait of dr. finley, one of the best ever painted by morse, aroused the enthusiasm of the charlestonians, and orders began to pour in, so that in a few weeks he was engaged to paint one hundred and fifty portraits at sixty dollars each. quite an advance over the meagre fifteen dollars he had received in new england. but for some of his more elaborate productions he received even more, as the following extract from a letter of mr. john a. alston, dated april , , will prove:-- "i have just received your favor of the th ultimo, and thank you very cordially for your goodness in consenting to take my daughter's full-length likeness in the manner i described, say twenty-four inches in length. i will pay you most willingly the two hundred dollars you require for it, and will consider myself a gainer by the bargain. i shall expect you to decorate this picture with the most superb landscape you are capable of designing, and that you will produce a masterpiece of painting. i agree to your taking it with you to the northward to finish it. be pleased to represent my daughter in the finest attitude you can conceive." mr. alston was a generous patron and paid the young artist liberally for the portraits of his children. in recognition of this morse presented him with his most ambitious painting, "the judgment of jupiter." mr. alston prized this picture highly during his lifetime, but after his death it was sold and for many years was lost sight of. it was purchased long afterwards in england by an american gentleman, who, not knowing who the painter was, gave it to a niece of morse's, mrs. parmalee, and it is still, i believe, in the possession of the family. while he was in charleston his father wrote to him of the dangerous illness of his mother with what he called a "peripneumony," which, from the description, must have been the term used in those days for pneumonia. her life was spared, however, and she lived for many years after this. in june of the year , morse returned to the north and spent the summer in completing such portraits as he had carried with him in an unfinished state, and in painting such others as he could procure commissions for. he planned to return to charleston in the following year, but this time with a young wife to accompany him. his uncle, dr. finley, writing to him on june , says:-- "your letter of d instant, conveying the pleasing intelligence of your safe and very short passage and happy meeting with your affectionate parents at your own home, came safe to hand in due time.... and so lucretia was expected and you intended to surprise her by your unlooked-for presence. "finley, i am afraid you will be too happy. you ought to meet a little rub or two or you will be too much in the clouds and forget that you are among mortals. let me see if i cannot give you a friendly twist downwards. "your pictures--aye--suppose i should speak of them and what is said of them during your absence. i will perform the office of him who was placed near the triumphal car of the conqueror to abuse him lest he should be too elated. "well--'his pictures,' say people, 'are undoubtedly good likenesses, but he paints carelessly and in too much haste and his draperies are not well done. he must be more attentive or he will lose his reputation.' 'see,' say others, 'how he flatters.' 'oh!' says another, 'he has not flattered me'; etc., etc. "by the bye, i saw old general c.c. pinckney yesterday, and he told me, in his laughing, humorous way, that he had requested you to draw his brother thomas twenty years younger than he really was, so as to be a companion to his own when he was twenty years younger than at this time, and to flatter him as he had directed stuart to do so to him." morse had now abandoned his idea of soon returning to europe; he renounced, for the present, his ambition to devote himself to the painting of great historical pictures, and threw himself with enthusiasm into the painting of portraits. he had an added incentive, for he wished to marry at once, and his parents and those of his _fiancée_ agreed that it would be wise for the young people to make the venture. everything seemed to presage success in life, at least in a modest way, to the young couple. on the th of october, , the following notice appeared in the new hampshire "patriot," of concord: "married in this town, october st, by rev. dr. mcfarland, mr. samuel f.b. morse (the celebrated painter) to miss lucretia walker, daughter of charles walker, esq." on the th of october the young man writes to his parents:-- "i was married, as i wrote you i should be, on tuesday morning last. we set out at nine o'clock and reached amherst over bad roads at night. the next day we continued our journey through wilton to new ipswich, eighteen miles over one of the worst roads i ever travelled, all uphill and down and very rocky, and no tavern on the road. we enquired at new ipswich our best route to northampton, where we intended to go to meet mr. and mrs. cornelius, but we found on enquiry that there were nothing but cross-roads and these very bad, and no taverns where we could be comfortably accommodated. our horse also was tired, so we thought our best way was to return. accordingly the next day we started for concord, and arrived on friday evening safe home again. "lucretia wishes to spend this week with her friends, so that i shall return (providence permitting) on this day week, and reach home by tuesday noon, probably to dinner. we are both well and send a great deal of love to you all. mr. and mrs. walker wish me to present their best respects to you. we had delightful weather for travelling, and got home just in season to escape saturday's rain." chapter xi november , --march , . morse and his wife go to charleston, south carolina.--hospitably entertained and many portraits painted.--congratulates allston on his election to the royal academy.--receives commission to paint president monroe.--trouble in the parish at charlestown.--morse urges his parents to leave and come to charleston.--letters of john a. alston.--return to the north.--birth of his first child.--dr. morse and his family decide to move to new haven.--morse goes to washington.--paints the president under difficulties.--hospitalities.--death of his grandfather.--dr. morse appointed indian commissioner.--marriage of morse's future mother-in-law. --charleston again.--continued success.--letters to mrs. ball.-- liberality of mr. alston.--spends the summer in new haven.--returns to charleston, but meets with poor success.--assists in founding academy of arts, which has but a short life.--goes north again. the young couple decided to spend the winter in charleston, south carolina, where morse had won a reputation the previous winter as an excellent portrait-painter, and where much good business awaited him. the following letter was written to his parents:-- schooner tontine, at anchor off charleston lighthouse, thursday, november , , o'clock p.m. we have arrived thus far on our voyage safely through the kind protection of providence. we have had a very rough passage attended with many dangers and more fears, but have graciously been delivered from them all. it is seven days since we left new york. if you recollect that was the time of my last passage in this same vessel. she is an excellent vessel and has the best captain and accommodations in the trade. lucretia was a little seasick in the roughest times, but, on the whole, bore the voyage extremely well. she seems a little downcast this afternoon in consequence of feeling as if she was going among strangers, but i tell her she will overcome it in ten minutes' interview with uncle and aunt finley and family. she is otherwise very well and sends a great deal of love to you all. please let mr. and mrs. walker know of our arrival as soon as may be. i will leave the remainder of this until i get up to town. we hope to go up when the tide changes in about an hour. friday morning, th, at uncle finley's. we are safely housed under the hospitable roof of uncle finley, where they received us, as you might expect, with open arms. he has provided lodgings for us at ten dollars per week. i have not yet seen them; shall go directly. i received a letter from richard at savannah; he writes in fine spirits and feels quite delighted with the hospitable people of the south. this refers to his brother richard carey morse, who was still pursuing his theological studies. the visit of the young couple to charleston was a most enjoyable one, and the artist found many patrons eager to be immortalized by his brush. on december , , he writes to his parents:-- "lucretia is well and contented. she makes many friends and we receive as much attention from the hospitable carolinians as we can possibly attend to. she is esteemed quite handsome here; she has grown quite fleshy and healthy, and we are as happy in each other as you can possibly wish us. "there are several painters arrived from new york, but i fear no competition; i have as much as i can do." as a chronicle of fair weather, favorable winds, and blue skies is apt to grow monotonous, i shall pass rapidly over the next few years, only selecting from the voluminous correspondence of that period a few extracts which have more than a passing interest. on february , , he writes to his friend and master, washington allston, who had now returned to boston:-- "excuse my neglect in not having written you before this according to my promise before i left boston. i can only plead as apology (what i know will gratify you) a multiplicity of business. i am painting from morning till night and have continual applications. i have added to my list, this season only, to the amount of three thousand dollars; that is since i left you. among them are three full lengths to be finished at the north, i hope in boston, where i shall once more enjoy your criticisms. "i am exerting my utmost to improve; every picture i try to make my best, and in the evening i draw two hours from the antique as i did in london; for i ought to inform you that i fortunately found a fine 'venus de medicis' without a blemish, imported from paris sometime since by a gentleman of this city who wished to dispose of it; also a young apollo which was so broken that he gave it to me, saying it was useless. i have, however, after a great deal of trouble, put it together entirely, and these two figures, with some fragments,--hands, feet, etc.,--make a good academy. mr. fraser, mr. cogdell, mr. fisher, of boston, and myself meet here of an evening to improve ourselves. i feel as much enthusiasm as ever in my art and love it more than ever. a few years, at the rate i am now going on, will place me independent of public patronage. "thus much for myself, for you told me in one of your letters from london that i must be more of an egotist or you should be less of one in your letters to me, which i should greatly regret. "and now, permit me, my dear sir, to congratulate you on your election to the royal academy. i know you will believe me when i say i jumped for joy when i heard it. though it cannot add to your merit, yet it will extend the knowledge of it, especially in our own country, where we are still influenced by foreign opinion, and more justly, perhaps, in regard to taste in the fine arts than in any other thing." on march , , the common council of charleston passed the following resolution:-- "resolved unanimously that his honor the intendant be requested to solicit james monroe, president of the united states, to permit a full-length likeness to be taken for the city of charleston, and that mr. morse be requested to take all necessary measures for executing the said likeness on the visit of the president to this city. "resolved unanimously that the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars be appropriated for this purpose. "extract from the minutes. "william roach, jr., "clerk of council." this portrait of president monroe was completed later on and still hangs in the city hall of charleston. i shall have occasion to refer to it again. morse, in a letter to his parents of march , , says:-- "two of your letters have been lately received detailing the state of the parish and church. i cannot say i was surprised, for it is what might be expected from charlestown people.... as to returning home in the way i mentioned mama need not be at all uneasy on that score. it is necessary i should visit washington, as the president will stay so short a time here that i cannot complete the head unless i see him in washington.... now as to the parish and church business, i hope all things will turn out right yet, and i can't help wishing that nothing may occur to keep you any longer in that nest of vipers and conspirators. i think with edwards decidedly that, on mama's account alone, you should leave a place which is full of the most unpleasant associations to all the family, and retire to some place of quiet to enjoy your old age. "why not come to charleston? here is a fine place for usefulness, a pleasant climate especially for persons advanced in life, and your children here; for i think seriously of settling in charleston. lucretia is willing, and i think it will be much for my advantage to remain through the year. richard can find a place here if he will, and edwards can come on and be _bishop_ or _president_ or _professor_ in some of the colleges (for i can't think of him in a less character) after he has graduated. "i wish seriously you would think of this. your friends here would greatly rejoice and an opening could be found, i have no doubt. christians want their hands strengthened, and a veteran soldier, like papa, might be of great service here in the infancy of the _unitarian hydra_, who finds a population too well adapted to receive and cherish its easy and fascinating tenets." all this refers to a movement organized by the enemies of dr. morse to oust him from his parish in charlestown. he was a militant fighter for orthodoxy and an uncompromising foe to unitarianism, which was gradually obtaining the ascendancy in and near boston. the movement was finally successful, as we shall see later, but they did not go as far from their old haunts as charleston. i shall not attempt to argue the rights and wrongs of the case, which seem to have been rather complicated, for dr. morse, more than a year after this, in writing to a friend says: "the events of the last fifteen months are still involved in impenetrable mystery, which i doubt not will be unravelled in due time." the winter and spring of were spent by the young couple both pleasantly and profitably in charleston. the best society of that charming city opened its arms to them and orders flowed in in a steady stream. mr. john a. alston was a most generous patron, ordering many portraits of his children and friends, and sometimes insisting on paying the young man even more than the price agreed upon. in a letter to morse he says: "which of my friends was it who lately observed to you that i had a picture mania? you made, i understand, a most excellent reply, 'you wished i would come to town, then, and bite a dozen.' indeed, my very good sir, was it in my power to excite in them a just admiration of your talents, i would readily come to town and bite the whole community." and in another letter of april , , mr. alston says: "your portrait of my daughter was left in georgetown [south carolina], at the house of a friend; nearly all of the citizens have seen it, and i really think it will occasion you some applications.... every one thought himself at liberty to make remarks. some declared it to be a good likeness, while others insisted it was not so, and several who made such remarks, i _knew_ had _never_ seen my daughter. at last a rich jew gentleman observed, 'it was the _richest_ piece of painting he had ever seen.' this being so much in character that i assure you, sir, i could contain myself no longer, which, spreading among the audience, occasioned not an unpleasant moment." morse and his young wife returned to the north in the early summer of , and spent the summer and fall with his parents in charlestown. the young man occupied himself with the completion of the portraits which he had brought with him from the south, and his wife was busied with preparations for the event which is thus recorded in a letter of dr. morse's to his son sidney edwards at andover: "since i have been writing the above, lucretia has presented us with a fine granddaughter and is doing well. the event has filled us with joy and gratitude." the child was christened susan walker morse. in the mean time the distressing news had come from charleston of the sudden death of dr. finley, to whose kindly affection and influence morse owed much of the pleasure and success of his several visits to charleston. affairs had come to a crisis in the parish at charlestown, and dr. morse decided to resign and planned to move to new haven, connecticut, with his family in the following spring. the necessity for pursuing his profession in the most profitable field compelled morse to return to charleston by way of washington in november, and this time he had to go alone, much against his inclinations. he writes to his mother from new york on november , : "i miss lucretia and little susan more than you can think, and i shall long to have us all together at new haven in the spring." his object in going to washington was to paint the portrait of the president, and of this he says in a letter: "i began on monday to paint the president and have almost completed the head. i am thus far pleased with it, but i find it very perplexing, for he cannot sit more than ten or twenty minutes at a time, so that the moment i feel engaged he is called away again. i set my palette to-day at ten o'clock and waited until four o'clock this afternoon before he came in. he then sat ten minutes and we were called to dinner. is not this trying to one's patience?" "_december , ._ i have been here nearly a fortnight. i commenced the president's portrait on monday and shall finish it to-morrow. i have succeeded to my satisfaction, and, what is better, to the satisfaction of himself and family; so much so that one of his daughters wishes me to copy the head for her. they all say that mine is the best that has been taken of him. the daughter told me (she said as a secret) that her father was delighted with it, and said it was the only one that in his opinion looked like him; and this, too, with stuart's in the room. "the president has been very kind and hospitable to me; i have dined with him three times and taken tea as often; he and his family have been very sociable and unreserved. i have painted him at his house, next room to his cabinet, so that when he had a moment to spare he would come in to me. "wednesday evening mrs. monroe held a drawing-room. i attended and made my bow. she was splendidly and tastily dressed. the drawing-room and suite of rooms at the president's are furnished and decorated in the most splendid manner; some think too much so, but i do not. something of splendor is certainly proper about the chief magistrate for the credit of the nation. plainness can be carried to an extreme, and in national buildings and establishments it will, with good reason, be styled meanness." "_december , ._ it is obviously for my interest to hasten to charleston, as i shall there be immediately at work, and this is the more necessary as there is a fresh gang of adventurers in the brush line gone to charleston before me." a short while after this he received the news of the death of his grandfather, jedediah morse, at woodstock, connecticut, on december , aged ninety-four years. mr. prime says of him: "he was a strong man in body and mind, an able and upright magistrate, for eighteen years one of the selectmen of the town, twenty-seven years town clerk and treasurer, fifteen years a member of the colonial and state legislature, and a prominent, honored, and useful member and officer of the church." in january of the year , dr. morse, realizing that it would be for the best interests of all concerned to relinquish his pastorate at charlestown, turned his active brain in another direction, and resolved to carry out a plan which he had long contemplated. this was to secure from the government at washington an appointment as commissioner to the indians on the borders of the united states of those early days, in order to enquire into their condition with a view to their moral and physical betterment. to this end he journeyed to washington and laid his project before the president and the secretary of war, john c. calhoun. he was most courteously entertained by these gentlemen and received the appointment. in the following spring with his son richard he travelled through the northwestern frontiers of the united states, and gained much valuable information which he laid before the government. as he was a man of delicate constitution, we cannot but admire his indomitable spirit in ever devising new projects of usefulness to his fellow men. it was impossible for him to remain idle. but it is not within the scope of this work to follow him on his journeys, although his letters of that period make interesting reading. while he was in washington his wife, writing to him on january , , says: "mrs. salisbury and abby drank tea with us day before yesterday. they told us that catherine breese was married to a lieutenant in the army. this must have been a very sudden thing, and i should suppose very grievous to arthur." little did the good lady think as she penned these words that, many years afterwards, her beloved eldest son would take as his second wife a daughter of this union. why this marriage should have been "grievous" to the father, arthur breese, i do not know, unless all army officers were classed among the ungodly by the very pious of those days. as a matter of fact, lieutenant, afterwards captain, griswold was a most gallant gentleman. in the mean time finley morse had reached charleston in safety after a tedious journey of many days by stage from washington, and was busily employed in painting. on february , , he writes to his mother:-- "i received your good letter of the th and d ult., and thank you for it. i wish i had time to give you a narrative of my journey as you wish, but you know '_time is money_,' and we must '_make hay while the sun shines_,' and '_a penny saved is a penny got_," and '_least said soonest mended_,' and a good many other wise sayings which would be quite pat, but i can't think of them. "the fact is i have scarcely time to say or write a word. i am busily employed in getting the cash, or else ned's almanac for march will foretell falsely. "i am doing well, although the city fairly swarms with painters. i am the only one that has as much as he can do; all the rest are complaining. i wish i could divide with some of them, very clever men who have families to support, and can get nothing to do.... i feel rejoiced that things have come to such a crisis in charlestown that our family will be released from that region of trouble so soon. "keep up your spirits, mother, the lord will show you good days according to those in which you have seen evil.... "i am glad lucretia and the dear little susan intend meeting me at new haven. i think this by far the best plan; it will save me a great deal of time, which, as i said before, is money. "i shall have to spend some time in new haven getting settled, and i wish to commence painting as soon as possible, for i have more than a summer's work before me in the president's portrait and mrs. ball's. "as soon as the cash comes in, mother, it shall all be remitted except what i immediately want. you may depend upon it that nothing shall be left undone on my part to help you and the rest of us from that hole of vipers. "i think it very probable i shall return by the middle of may; it will depend much on circumstances, however. i wish very much to be with my dear wife and daughter. i must contrive to bring them with me next season to charleston, though it may be more expensive, yet i do not think that should be a consideration. i think that a man should be separated from his family but very seldom, and then under cases of absolute necessity, as i consider the case to be at present with me: that is, i think they should not be separated for any length of time. if i know my own disposition i am of a domestic habit, formed to this habit, probably, by the circumstances that have been so peculiar to our family in charlestown. i by no means regret having such a habit if it can be properly regulated; i think it may be carried to excess, and shut us from the opportunities of doing good by mixing with our fellow men." this pronouncement was very characteristic of the man. he was always, all through his long life, happiest when at home surrounded by all his family, and yet he never shirked the duty of absenting himself from home, even for a prolonged period, when by so doing he could accomplish some great or good work. that a portrait-painter's lot is not always a happy one may be illustrated by the following extracts from letters of morse to the mrs. ball whom he mentions in the foregoing letter to his mother, and who seems to have been a most capricious person, insisting on continual alterations, and one day pleased and the next almost insulting in her censure:-- madam,--supposing that i was dealing not only with a woman of honor, but, from her professions, with a christian, i ventured in my note of the th inst., to make an appeal to your conscience in support of the justness of my demand of the four hundred dollars still due from you for your portrait. by your last note i find you are disposed to take an advantage of that circumstance of which i did not suppose you capable. my sense of the justness of my demand was so strong, as will appear from the whole tenor of that note, that i venture this appeal, not imagining that any person of honor, of the least spark of generous feeling, and more especially of christian principle, could understand anything more than the enforcing my claim by an appeal to that principle which i knew should be the strongest in a real christian. whilst, however, you have chosen to put a different construction on this part of the note, and supposed that i left you to say whether you would pay me anything or nothing, you have (doubtless unconsciously) shown that your conscience has decided in favor of the whole amount which is my due, and which i can never voluntarily relinquish. you affirm in the first part of your note that, after due consideration, you think the real value of the picture is four hundred dollars (without the frame), yet, had your crop been good, your conscience would have adjudged me the remaining four hundred dollars without hesitation; and again (if your crop should be good) you could pay me the four hundred dollars next season. must i understand from this, madam, that the goodness or badness of your crop is the scale on which your conscience measures your obligation to pay a just debt, and that it contracts or expands as your crop increases or diminishes? pardon me, madam, if i say that this appears to be the case from your letter. my wish throughout this whole business has been to accommodate the time and terms of payment as much to your convenience as i could consistently with my duty to my family and myself. as a proof of this you need only advert to my note of yesterday, in which i inform you that i am paying interest on money borrowed for the use of my family which your debt, if it had been promptly paid, would have prevented. and in another letter he says:-- "i completed your picture in the summer with two others which have given, as far as i can learn, entire satisfaction. yours was painted with the same attention and with the same ability as the others, and admired as a picture, after it was finished, as much by some as the others, and more by many. "among these latter were the celebrated colonel trumbull and vanderlyn, painters of new york.... you cannot but recollect, madam, that when you yourself with your children visited it, not withstanding you expressed yourself before them in terms so strong against it and so wounding to my feelings, yet all your children dissented from you, the youngest saying it was 'mama,' and the eldest, 'i am sure, mother, it is very like you.'... "your picture, from the day i commenced it, has been the source of one of my greatest trials, and, if it has taught me in any degree patience and forbearance, i shall have abundant reason to be thankful for the affliction." in the end he consented to take less than had been agreed upon in order to close the incident. as a happy contrast to this episode we have the following quotation from a letter to his wife written on february , :-- "did i tell you in my last that colonel alston insisted on giving me _two hundred dollars_ more than i asked for the picture of little sally, and a commission to paint her again full length next season, smaller than the last and larger than the first portrait, for which i shall receive four hundred dollars? he intimates also that i am to paint a picture annually for him. is not he a strange man? (as people say here). i wish some more of the great fortunes in this part of the country would be as strange and encourage other artists who are men of genius and starving for want of employment." morse returned to the north in the spring of and joined his mother and his wife and daughter in new haven, where they had preceded him and where they were comfortably and agreeably settled, as will appear from the following sentence in a letter to his good friend and mentor, henry bromfield, of london, dated august, : "you will perceive by the heading of this letter that i am in new haven. my father and his family have left charlestown, massachusetts, and are settled in this place. my own family also, consisting of wife and daughter, are pleasantly settled in this delightful spot. i have built me a fine painting-room attached to my house in which i paint my large pictures in the summer, and in the winter i migrate to charleston, south carolina, where i have commissions sufficient to employ me for some years to come." he returned to charleston in the fall of and was again compelled to go alone. he writes to his wife on december : "i feel the separation this time more than ever, and i felt the other day, when i saw the steamship start for new york, that i had almost a mind to return in her." from this sentence we learn that the slow schooner of the preceding years had been supplanted by the more rapid steamship, but that is, unfortunately, all he has to say of this great step forward in human progress. further on in this same letter he says: "i am occupied fully so that i have no reason to complain. i have not a _press_ like the first season or like the last, but still i can say i am all the time employed.... my president pleases very much; i have heard no dissatisfaction expressed. it is placed in the great hall in a fine light and place.... mrs. ball wants some alterations, that is to say every five minutes she would like it to be different. she is the most unreasonable of all mortals; derangement is her only apology. i can't tell you all in a letter, must wait till i see you. i shall get the rest of the cash from her shortly." just at this time the wave of prosperity on which the young man had so long floated, began to subside, for he writes to his wife on january , :-- "i wish i could write encouragingly as to my professional pursuits, but i cannot. notwithstanding the diminished price and the increase of exertion to please, and although i am conscious of painting much better portraits than formerly (which, indeed, stands to reason if i make continual exertion to improve), yet with all i receive no new commissions, cold and procrastinating answers from those to whom i write and who had put their names on my list. i give less satisfaction to those whom i have painted; i receive less attention also from some of those who formerly paid me much attention, and none at all from most." but with his usual hopefulness he says later on in this letter:-- "why should i expect my sky to be perpetually unclouded, my sun to be never obscured? i have thus far enjoyed more of the sunshine of prosperity than most of my fellow men. 'shall i receive good at the hands of the lord and shall i not also receive evil?'" in this letter, a very long one, he suggests the establishment of an academy or school of painting in new haven, so that he may be enabled to live at home with his family, and find time to paint some of the great historical works which he still longed to do. he also tells of the formation of such an academy in charleston:-- "since writing this there has been formed here an academy of arts to be erected immediately. j.r. poinsett, esq., is president, and six others with myself are chosen directors. what this is going to lead to i don't know. i heard mr. cogdell say that it was intended to have lectures read, among other things. i feel not very sanguine as to its success, still i shall do all in my power to help it on as long as i am here." his forebodings seem to have been justified, for mr. john s. cogdell, a sculptor, thus writes of it in later years to mr. dunlap:-- "the legislature granted a charter, but, my good sir, as they possessed no powers under the constitution to confer taste or talent, and possessed none of those feelings which prompt to patronage, they gave none to the infant academy.... the institution was allowed from apathy and opposition to die; but mr. poinsett and myself with a few others have purchased, with a hope of reviving, the establishment." referring to this academy the wife in new haven, in a letter of february , , says: "mr. silliman says he is not much pleased to hear that they have an academy for painting in charleston. he is afraid they will decoy you there." on march , , morse answers thus: "tell mr. silliman i have stronger _magnets_ at new haven than any academy can have, and, while that is the case, i cannot be decoyed permanently from home." i wonder if he used the word "magnets" advisedly, for it was with professor silliman that he at that time pursued the studies in physics, including electricity, which had so interested him while in college, and it was largely due to the familiarity with the subject which he then acquired that he was, in later years, enabled successfully to perfect his invention. on the th of march, , another daughter was born to the young couple, and was named elizabeth ann after her paternal grandmother. the child lived but a few days, however, much to the grief of her parents and grandparents. charleston had now given all she had to give to the young painter, and he packed his belongings to return home with feelings both of joy and of regret. he was overjoyed at the prospect of so soon seeing his dearly loved wife and daughter, and his parents and brothers; at the same time he had met with great hospitality in charleston; had made many firm friends; had impressed himself strongly on the life of the city, as he always did wherever he went, and had met with most gratifying success in his profession. a partial list of the portraits painted while he was there gives the names of fifty-five persons, and, as the prices received are appended, we learn that he received over four thousand dollars from his patrons for these portraits alone. on march , , he joyfully announces his homecoming: "i just drop you a hasty line to say that, in all probability, your husband will be with you as soon, if not sooner than this letter. i am entirely clear of all sitters, having outstayed my last application; have been engaged in finishing off and packing up for two days past and contemplate embarking by the middle or end of the coming week in the steamship for new york. you must not be surprised, therefore, to see me soon after this reaches you; still don't be disappointed if i am a little longer, as the winds most prevalent at this season are head winds in going to the north. i am busy in collecting my dues and paying my debts." chapter xii may , --december , accompanies mr. silliman to the berkshires.--takes his wife and daughter to concord, new hampshire.--writes to his wife from boston about a bonnet.--goes to washington, d.c.--paints large picture of house of representatives.--artistic but not financial success.--donates five hundred dollars to yale.--letter from mr. deforest.--new york "observer."--discouragements.--first son born.--invents marble-carving machine.--goes to albany.--stephen van rensselaer.--slight encouragement in albany.--longing for a home.--goes to new york.--portrait of chancellor kent.--appointed attaché to legation to mexico.--high hopes.-- takes affecting leave of his family.--rough journey to washington.-- expedition to mexico indefinitely postponed.--returns north.--settles in new york.--fairly prosperous. much as morse longed for a permanent home, where he could find continuous employment while surrounded by those he loved, it was not until many years afterwards and under totally different circumstances that his dream was realized. for the present the necessity of earning money for the support of his young family and for the assistance of his ageing father and mother drove him continually forth to new fields, and on may , , which must have been only a few weeks after his return from the south, he writes to his wife from pittsfield, massachusetts:-- "we are thus far on our tour safe and sound. mr. silliman's health is very perceptibly better already. last night we lodged at litchfield; mr. silliman had an excellent night and is in fine spirits. "at litchfield i called on judge reeves and sat a little while.... i called at mr. beecher's with mr. silliman and judge gould; no one at home. called with mr. silliman at dr. shelden's, and stayed a few moments; sat a few moments also at judge gould's. "i was much pleased with the exterior appearance of litchfield; saw at a distance edwards's pickerel pond. "we left at five this morning, breakfasted at norfolk, dined at stockbridge. we there left the stage and have hired a wagon to go on to middlebury, vermont, at our leisure. we lodge here to-night and shall probably reach bennington, vermont, to-morrow night. "i have made one slight pencil sketch of the hoosac mountain. at stockbridge we visited the marble quarries, and to-morrow at lanesborough shall visit the quarries of fine white marble there. "i am much delighted with my excursion thus far. to travel with such a companion as mr. silliman i consider as highly advantageous as well as gratifying." this is all the record i have of this particular trip. the mr. beecher referred to was the father of henry ward beecher. later in the summer he accompanied his wife and little daughter to concord, new hampshire, and left them there with her father and mother. writing to her from boston on his way back to new haven, he says in characteristically masculine fashion:-- "i have talked with aunt bartlett about getting you a bonnet. she says that it is no time to get a fashionable winter bonnet in boston now, and that it would be much better if you could get it in new york, as the bostonians get their fashions from new york and, of course, much later than we should in new haven. she thinks that white is better than blue, etc., etc., etc., which she can explain to you much better than i can. she is willing, however, to get you any you wish if you still request it. she thinks, if you cannot wait for the new fashion, that your black bonnet put into proper shape with black plumes would be as _tasty_ and fashionable as any you could procure. i think so, too. you had better write aunt particularly about it." while morse had conscientiously tried to put the best of himself into the painting of portraits, and had succeeded better than he himself knew, he still longed for wider fields, and in november, , he went to washington, d.c., to begin a work which he for some time had had in contemplation, and which he now felt justified in undertaking. this was to be a large painting of the house of representatives with many portraits of the members. the idea was well received at washington and he obtained the use of one of the rooms at the capitol for a studio, making it easy for the members to sit for him. it could not have been all plain sailing, however, for his wife says to him in a letter of december , : "knowing that perseverance is a trait in your character, we do not any of us feel surprised to hear you have overcome so many obstacles. you have undertaken a great work.... every one thinks it must be a very popular subject and that you will make a splendid picture of it." writing to his wife he says:-- "i am up at daylight, have my breakfast and prayers over and commence the labors of the day long before the workmen are called to work on the capitol by the bell. this i continue unremittingly till one o'clock, when i dine in about fifteen minutes and then pursue my labors until tea, which scarcely interrupts me, as i often have my cup of tea in one hand and my pencil in the other. between ten and eleven o'clock i retire to rest. this has been my course every day (sundays, of course, excepted) since i have been here, making about fourteen hours' study out of the twenty-four. "this you will say is too hard, and that i shall injure my health. i can say that i never enjoyed better health, and my body, by the simple fare i live on, is disciplined to this course. as it will not be necessary to continue long so assiduously i shall not fail to pursue it till the work is done. "i receive every possible facility from all about the capitol. the doorkeeper, a venerable man, has offered to light the great chandelier expressly for me to take my sketches in the evening for two hours together, for i shall have it a candlelight effect, when the room, already very splendid, will appear ten times more so." on the d of january, , he writes: "i have commenced to-day taking the likenesses of the members. i find them not only willing to sit, but apparently esteeming it an honor. i shall take seventy of them and perhaps more; all if possible. i find the picture is becoming the subject of conversation, and every day gives me greater encouragement. i shall paint it on part of the great canvas when i return home. it will be eleven feet by seven and a half feet.... it will take me until october next to complete it." the room which he painted was then the hall of representatives, but is now statuary hall. as a work of art the painting is excellent and is highly esteemed by artists of the present day. it contains eighty portraits. his high expectations of gaining much profit from its exhibition and of selling it for a large sum were, however, doomed to disappointment. it did not attract the public attention which he had anticipated and it proved a financial loss to him. it was finally sold to an englishman, who took it across the ocean, and it was lost sight of until, after twenty-five years, it was found by an artist friend, mr. f.w. edmonds, in new york, where it had been sent from london. it was in a more or less damaged condition, but was restored by morse. it eventually became the property of the late daniel huntington, who loaned it to the corcoran gallery of art in washington, where it now hangs.[ ] [footnote : this painting has recently been purchased by the trustees of the corcoran gallery.] i find no more letters of special interest of the year , but mr. prime has this to record: "in the winter of , notwithstanding the great expenses to which mr. morse had been subjected in producing this picture, and before he had realized anything from its exhibition, he made a donation of five hundred dollars to the library fund of yale college; probably the largest donation in proportion to the means of the giver which that institution ever received." the corporation, by vote, presented the thanks of the board in the following letter:-- yale college, december th, . dear sir,--i am directed by the corporation of this college to present to you the thanks of the board for your subscription of five hundred dollars for the enlargement of the library. should this example of liberality be generally imitated by the friends of the institution, we should soon have a library creditable to the college and invaluable to men of literary and philosophic research. with respectful and grateful acknowledgment, your obedient servant, jeremaiah day. while he was at home in new haven in the early part of he sought orders for portraits, and that he was successful in at least one instance is evidenced by the following letter:-- mr. d.c. deforest's compliments to mr. morse. mr. deforest desires to have his portrait taken such as it would have been six or eight years ago, making the necessary calculation for it, and at the same time making it a good likeness in all other respects. this reason is not to make himself younger, but to appear to children and grandchildren more suitably matched as to age with their mother and grandmother. if mr. morse is at leisure and disposed to undertake this work, he will please prepare his canvas and let me know when he is ready for my attendance. new haven, th march, . whether morse succeeded to the satisfaction of mr. deforest does not appear from the correspondence, but both this portrait and that of mrs. deforest now hang in the galleries of the yale school of the fine arts, and are here reproduced so that the reader may judge for himself. [illustration: mr. d.c. de forest mrs. d.c. de forest from "thistle prints." copyright detroit publishing co. from a painting by morse now in the gallery of the yale school of the fine arts] on the th of may, , the first number of the new york "observer" was published. while being a religious newspaper the prospectus says it "contains also miscellaneous articles and summaries of news and information on every subject in which the community is interested." this paper was founded and edited by the two brothers sidney e. and richard c. morse, who had abandoned respectively the law and the ministry. it was very successful, and became at one time a power in the community and is still in existence. the editorial offices were first established at wall street, but later the brothers bought a lot and erected a building at the corner of nassau and beekman streets, and that edifice had an important connection with the invention of the telegraph. on the same site now stands the morse building, a pioneer sky-scraper now sadly dwarfed by its gigantic neighbors. the year was one of mingled discouragement and hope. compelled to absent himself from home for long periods in search of work, always hoping that in some place he would find enough to do to warrant his bringing his family and making for them a permanent home, his letters reflect his varying moods, but always with the underlying conviction that providence will yet order all things for the best. the letters of the young wife are pathetic in their expressions of loneliness during the absence of her husband, and yet of forced cheerfulness and submission to the will of god. on the th of march, , another child was born, a son, who was named for his maternal grandfather, charles walker. the child was at first very delicate, and this added to the anxieties of the fond mother and father, but he soon outgrew his childish ailments. morse's active mind was ever bent on invention, and in this year he devised and sought to patent a machine for carving marble statues, "perfect copies of any model." he had great hopes of pecuniary profit from this invention and it is mentioned many times in the letters of this and the following year, but he found, on enquiry, that it was not patentable, as it would have been an infringement on the machine of thomas blanchard which was patented in . so once more were his hopes of independence blasted, as they had been in the case of the pump and fire-engine. he longed, like all artists, to be free from the petty cares and humiliations of the struggle for existence, free to give full rein to his lofty aspirations, secure in the confidence that those he loved were well provided for; but, like most other geniuses, he was compelled to drink still deeper of the bitter cup, to drain it to the very dregs. in the month of august, , he went to albany, hoping through his acquaintance with the patroon, stephen van rensselaer, to establish himself there. he painted the portrait of the patroon, confident that, by its exhibition, he would secure other orders. in a letter to his wife he says:-- "i have found lodgings--a large front room on the second story, twenty-five by eighteen feet, and twelve feet high--a fine room for painting, with a neat little bedroom, and every convenience, and board, all for six dollars a week, which i think is very reasonable. my landlord is an elderly irish gentleman with three daughters, once in independent circumstances but now reduced. everything bears the appearance of old-fashioned gentility which you know i always liked. everything is neat and clean and genteel.... bishop hobart and a great many acquaintances were on board of the boat upon which i came up to this city. "i can form no idea as yet of the prospect of success in my profession here. if i get enough to employ me i shall go no farther; if not, i may visit some of the smaller towns in the interior of the state. i await with some anxiety the result of experiments with my machine. i hope the invention may enable me to remain at home." "_ th of august._ i have not as yet received any application for a portrait. many tell me i have come at the wrong time--the same tune that has been rung in my ears so long. i hope the right tune will come by and by. the winter, it is said, is the proper season, but, as it is better in the south at that season and it will be more profitable to be there, i shall give albany a thorough trial and do my best. if i should not find enough to employ me here, i think i shall return to new york and settle there. this i had rather not do at present, but it may be the best that i can do. roaming becomes more and more irksome. imperious necessity alone drives me to this course. don't think by this i am faint-hearted; i shall persevere in this course, painful as is the separation from my family, until providence clearly points out my duty to return." "_august ._ i have something to do. i have one portrait in progress and the promise of more. one hundred dollars will pay all my expenses here for three months, so that the two i am now painting will clear me in that respect and all that comes after will be clear gain. i am, therefore, easier in my mind as to this. the portrait i am now painting is judge moss kent, brother of the chancellor. he says that i shall paint the chancellor when he returns to albany, and his niece also, and from these particulars you may infer that i shall be here for some little time longer, just so long as my good prospects continue; but, should they fail, i am determined to try new york city, and sit down there in my profession permanently. i believe i have now attained sufficient proficiency to venture there. my progress may be slow at first, but i believe it will be sure. i do not like going south and i have given up the idea of new orleans or any southern city, at least for the present. circumstances may vary this determination, but i think a settlement in new york is more feasible now than ever before. i shall be near you and home in cases of emergency, and in the summer and sickly season can visit you at new haven, while you can do the same to me in new york until we live again at new haven altogether. i leave out of this calculation the _machine for sculpture_. if that should entirely succeed, my plans would be materially varied, but i speak of my present plan as if that had failed." "_august ._ i finished mr. kent's picture yesterday and received the money for it.... mr. kent is very polite to me, and has introduced me to a number of persons and families, among others to the kanes--very wealthy people--to governor yates, etc. mr. clinton's son called on me and invited me to their house.... i have been introduced to señor rocafuerto, the spaniard who made so excellent a speech before the bible society last may. he is a very handsome man, very intelligent, full of wit and vivacity. he is a great favorite with the ladies and is a man of wealth and a zealous patriot, studying our manners, customs, and improvements, with a view of benefiting his own countrymen in peru.... i long to be with you again and to see you all at _home_. i fear i dote on _home_ too much, but mine is such an uncommon home, such a delightful home, that i cannot but feel strongly my privation of its pleasures." "_august ._ my last two letters have held out to you some encouraging prospects of success here, but now they seem darkened again. i have had nothing to do this week thus far but to wait patiently. i have advertised in both of the city papers that i should remain one week to receive applications, but as yet it has produced no effect.... "chancellor kent is out of town and i was told yesterday would not be in until the end of next month. if i should have nothing to do in the mean time it is hardly worth while to stay solely for that. many have been talking of having their portraits painted, but there it has thus far ended. i feel a little perplexed to know what to do. i find nothing in albany which can profitably employ my leisure hours. if there were any pictures or statuary where i could sketch and draw, it would be different.... i have visited several families who have been very kind to me, for which i am thankful.... "i shall leave albany and return to new york a week from to-day if there is no change in my prospects.... the more i think of making a push at new york as a permanent place of residence in my profession, the more proper it seems that it should be pretty soon. there is now no rival that i should fear; a few more years may produce one that would be hard to overcome. new york does not yet feel the influx of wealth from the western canal but in a year or two she will feel it, and it will be advantageous to me to be previously identified among her citizens as a painter. "it requires some little time to become known in such a city as new york. colonel t---- is growing old, too, and there is no artist of education sufficiently prominent to take his place as president of the academy of arts. by becoming more known to the new york public, and exerting my talents to discover the best methods of promoting the arts and writing about them, i may possibly be promoted to his place, where i could have a better opportunity of doing _something for the arts in our country_, the object at which i aim." "_september ._ i have nothing to do and shall pack up on the morrow for new york unless appearances change again. i have not had full employment since i have been in albany and i feel miserable in doing nothing. i shall set out on friday, and perhaps may go to new haven for a day or two to look at you all." he did manage to pay a short visit to his home, and then he started for new york by boat, but was driven by a storm into black rock harbor and continued his journey from there by land. writing home the day after his arrival he says: "i have obtained a place to board at friend coolidge's at two dollars and twenty-five cents a week, and have taken for my studio a fine room in broadway opposite trinity churchyard, for which i am to pay six dollars and fifty cents a week, being fifty cents less than i expected to pay." there has been some increase in the rental price of rooms on broadway opposite trinity churchyard since that day. further on he says:-- "i shall go to work in a few days vigorously. it is a half mile from my room to the place where i board, so that i am obliged to walk more than three miles every day. it is good exercise for me and i feel better for it. i sleep in my room on the floor and put my bed out of sight during the day, as at washington. i feel in the spirit of 'buckling down to it,' and am determined to paint and study with all my might this winter." the loving wife is distressed at the idea of his sleeping on the floor, and thus expresses herself in a letter which is dated, curiously enough, november : "you know, dear finley, i have always set my face as a flint and have borne my testimony against your sleeping on the floor. indeed, it makes my heart ache, when i go to bed in my comfortable chamber, to think of my dear husband sleeping without a bedstead. your mother says she sent one to richard, which he has since told her was unnecessary as he used a settee, and which you can get of him. but, if it is in use, do get one or i shall take no comfort." soon after his arrival in new york he began the portrait of chancellor kent, and writing of him he says:-- "he is not a good sitter; he scarcely presents the same view twice; he is very impatient and you well know that i cannot paint an impatient person; i must have my mind at ease or i cannot paint. "i have no more applications as yet, but it is not time to expect them. all the artists are complaining, and there are many of them, and they are all poor. the arts are as low as they can be. it is no better at the south, and all the accounts of the arts or artists are of the most discouraging nature." the portrait of the chancellor seems not to have brought him more orders, for a little later he writes to his wife: "i waited many days in the hope of some application in my profession, but have been disappointed until last evening i called and spent the evening with my friend mr. van schaick, and told him i had thought of painting some little design from the 'sketch book,' so as not to be idle, and mentioned the subject of ichabod crane discovering the headless horseman. "he said: 'paint it for me and another picture of the same size, and i will take them of you.' so i am now employed.... "_my secret scheme_ is not yet disclosable, but i shall let you know as soon as i hear anything definite." still later he says:-- "i have seen many of the artists; they all agree that little is doing in the city of new york. it seems wholly given to commerce. every man is driving at one object--the making of money--not the spending of it.... "my _secret scheme_ looks promising, but i am still in suspense; you shall know the moment it is decided one way or the other." his brother, sidney edwards, in a letter to his parents of december , , says: "finley is in good spirits again; not because he has any prospect of business here, but he is dreaming of the gold mines of mexico." as his _secret_ was now out, he explains it fully in the following letter to his wife, dated december , :-- "my cash is almost gone and i begin to feel some anxiety and perplexity to know what to do. i have advertised, and visited, and hinted, and pleaded, and even asked one man to sit, but all to no purpose.... my expenses, with the most rigid economy, too, are necessarily great; my rent to-morrow will amount to thirty-three dollars, and i have nothing to pay it with. "what can i do? i have been here five weeks and there is not the smallest prospect _now_ of any difference as to business. i am willing to stay and wish to stay if there is anything to do. the pictures that i am painting for mr. van schaick will not pay my expenses if painted here; my rent and board would eat it all up. "i have thought of various plans, but what to decide upon i am completely at a loss, nor can i decide until i hear definitely from washington in regard to my mexico expedition. since brother sidney has hinted it to you i will tell you the state of it. i wrote to general van rensselaer, mr. poinsett, and colonel hayne, of the senate, applying for some situation in the legation to mexico soon to be sent thither. i stated my object in going and my wish to go free of expense and under government protection. "i received a letter a few days ago from general van rensselaer in which he says: 'i immediately laid your request before the president and seconded it with my warmest recommendations. it is impossible to predict the result at present. if our friend mr. poinsett is appointed minister, which his friends are pressing, he will no doubt be happy to have you in his suite.' "thus the case rests at present. if mr. poinsett is appointed i shall probably go to mexico, if not, it will be more doubtful.... if i go i should take my picture of the house of representatives, which, in the present state of favorable feeling towards our country, i should probably dispose of to advantage. "all accounts that i hear from mexico are in the highest degree favorable to my enterprise, and i hear much from various quarters." as can well be imagined, his wife did not look with unalloyed pleasure on this plan. she says in a letter of december , : "i have felt much for you, my dearest finley, in all your trials and perplexities. i was sorry to hear you had been unsuccessful in obtaining portraits. i hope you will, ere long, experience a change for the better.... as to the mexico plan, i know not what to think of it. how can i consent to have you be at such a distance?" however, convinced by her husband that it would be for his best interests to go, she reluctantly gave her consent and he used every legitimate effort to secure the appointment. he was finally successful. mr. poinsett was not appointed as minister; this honor was bestowed on the honorable ninian edwards, of illinois, but morse was named as one of his suite. in a note from the honorable robert young hayne, who, it will be remembered, was the opponent of daniel webster in the great debates on states' rights in the senate, morse was thus apprised of his appointment: "governor edwards's suite consists of mr. mason, of georgetown, d.c., secretary of the legation; mr. hodgson, of virginia, private secretary; and yourself, attaché." morse had great hopes of increasing his reputation as a painter and of earning much money in mexico. he was perfectly frank in stating that his principal object in seeking an appointment as attaché was that he might pursue his profession, and, in a letter to mr. edwards of april , , he thus explains why he considers this not incompatible with his duties as attaché: "that the pursuit of my profession will not be derogatory to the situation i may hold i infer from the fact that many of the ancient painters were ambassadors to different european courts, and pursued their professions constantly while abroad. rubens, while ambassador to the english court, executed some of his finest portraits and decorated the ceiling of the chapel of white hall with some of his best historical productions." when it was finally decided that he should go, he made all his preparations, including a bed and bedding among his impedimenta, being assured that this was necessary in mexico, and bade farewell to his family. his father, his wife and children, and his sister-in-law accompanied him as far as new york. writing of the parting he says: "a thousand affecting incidents of separation from my beloved family crowded upon my recollection. the unconscious gayety of my dear children as they frolicked in all their wonted playfulness, too young to sympathize in the pangs that agitated their distressed parents; their artless request to bring home some trifling toy; the parting kiss, not understood as meaning more than usual; the tears and sad farewells of father, mother, wife, sister, family, friends; the desolateness of every room as the parting glance is thrown on each familiar object, and 'farewell, farewell' seemed written on the very walls,--all these things bear upon my memory, and i realize the declaration that 'the places which now know us shall know us no more.'" [illustration: lucretia pickering walker, wife of s.f.b. morse, and two children painted by morse] it must be borne in mind that a journey in those days, even one from new york to washington, was not a few hours' ride in a luxurious pullman, but was fraught with many discomforts, delays, and even dangers. as an example of this i shall quote the first part of a letter written by morse from washington to his wife on april , :-- "i lose not a moment in informing you of my safe arrival, with all my baggage, in good order last evening. i was much fatigued, went to bed early, and this morning feel perfectly refreshed and much better for my journey. "after leaving you on wednesday morning i had but just time to reach the boat before she started. in the land carriage we occupied three stages over a very rough road. in crossing a small creek in a ferry-boat the stage ahead of ours left the boat a little too soon and came near upsetting in the water, which would have put the passengers into a dangerous situation. as it was the water came into the carriage and wet some of the baggage. it was about an hour before they could get the stage out of the water. "next came our turn. after travelling a few miles the springs on one side gave way and let us down, almost upsetting us. we got out without difficulty and, in a few minutes, by putting a rail under one side, we proceeded on again, jocosely telling the passengers in the third stage that it was their turn next. "when we arrived at the boat in the delaware to our surprise the third stage came in with a rail under one side, having met with a similar accident a few miles after we left them. so we all had our turn, but no injury to any of us." his high hopes of success in this enterprise were soon doomed to be shattered, and once again he was made to suffer a bitter disappointment. on april he writes: "i am at this moment put into a very embarrassing state of suspense by a political occurrence which has caused a great excitement here, and will cause considerable interest, no doubt, throughout the country. this morning a remonstrance was read in the house of representatives from the honorable ninian edwards against mr. crawford, which contains such charges and of so serious a nature as has led to the appointment of a select committee, with power to send for persons and papers in order to a full investigation; and i am told by many members of congress that mr. edwards will undoubtedly be sent for, which will occasion, of course, a great delay in his journey to mexico, if not cause a suspension of his going until the next season." the mr. crawford alluded to was william harris crawford, at that time a prominent candidate for the presidency in the coming election. with his customary faith in an overruling providence, morse says later in the same letter: "this delay and suspense tries me more than distance or even absence from my dear family. if i could be on my way and pursuing my profession i should feel much better. but all will be for the best; though things look dark i can and will trust him who will make my path of duty plain before me. this satisfies my mind and does not allow a single desponding thought." the sending of the legation was indefinitely postponed, and morse, much disappointed but resolved not to be overwhelmed by this crushing of his high hopes, returned to new haven. he spent the summer partly at home and partly in concord, new hampshire (where his wife and children had gone to visit her father), and in portsmouth, portland, and hartford, having been summoned to those cities by patrons who wished him to paint their portraits. we can imagine that the young wife did not grieve over the failure of the mexican trip. her letters to her husband at that period are filled with expressions of the deepest affection, but with an undertone of melancholy, due, no doubt, to the increasing delicacy of her health, never very robust. in the fall of morse resolved to make another assault on the purses of the solid men of new york, and he established himself at broadway, where, for a time, he had the satisfaction of having his wife and children with him. they, however, returned later to new haven, and on december , , he writes to his wife:-- "i am fully employed and in excellent spirits. i am engaged in painting the full-length portrait of mr. hone's little daughter, a pretty little girl just as old as susan. i have made a sketch of the composition with which i am pleased, and so are the father and mother. i shall paint her with a cat set up in her lap like a baby, with a towel under its chin and a cap on its head, and she employed in feeding it with a spoon.... "i am as happy and contented as i can be without my dear lucrece and our dear children, but i hope it will not be long before we shall be able to live together without these separations." "_december , ._ i have everything very comfortable at my rooms. my two pupils, mr. agate and mr. field, are very tractable and very useful. i have everything 'in pimlico,' as mother would say. "i have begun, and thus far carried on, a system of neatness in my painting-room which i never could have with henry. everything has its place, and every morning the room is swept and all things put in order.... "i have as much as i can do in painting. i do not mean by this that i have the overflow that i had in charleston, nor do i wish it. a hard shower is soon over; i wish rather the gentle, steady, continuing rain. i feel that i have a character to obtain and maintain, and therefore my pictures must be carefully studied. i shall not by this method paint so fast nor acquire property so fast, but i shall do what is better, secure a continuance of patronage and success. "i have no disposition to be a nine days' wonder, all the rage for a moment and then forgotten forever; compelled on this very account to wander from city to city, to shine a moment in one and then pass on to another." in a letter of a later date he says:-- "i am going on prosperously through the kindness of providence in raising up many friends who are exerting themselves in my favor. my storms are partly over, and a clear and pleasant day is dawning upon me." chapter xiii january , --november , success in new york.--chosen to paint portrait of lafayette.--hope of a permanent home with his family.--meets lafayette in washington.--mutually attracted.--attends president's levee.--begins portrait of lafayette.-- death of his wife.--crushed by the news.--his attachment to her.--epitaph composed by benjamin silliman.--bravely takes up his work again.-- finishes portrait of lafayette.--describes it in letter of a later date. --sonnet on death of lafayette's dog.--rents a house in canal street, new york.--one of the founders of national academy of design.--tactful resolutions on organization.--first thirty members.--morse elected first president.--reëlected every year until .--again made president in .--lectures on art.--popularity. it is a commonly accepted belief that a particularly fine, clear day is apt to be followed by a storm. meteorologists can probably give satisfactory scientific reasons for this phenomenon, but, be that as it may, how often do we find a parallel in human affairs. a period of prosperity and happiness in the life of a man or of a nation is almost invariably followed by calamities, small or great; but, fortunately for individuals and for nations, the converse is also true. the creeping pendulum of fate, pausing for an instant at its highest point, dips down again to gather impetus for a higher swing. and so it was with morse. fate was preparing for him a heavy blow, one of the tragedies of his eventful life, and, in order to hearten him for the trial, to give him strength to bear up under it, she cheered his professional path with the sun of prosperity. writing to his wife from new york on january , , he says:-- "you will rejoice with me, i know, in my continued and increasing success. i have just learned in confidence, from one of the members of the committee of the corporation appointed to procure a full-length portrait of lafayette, that they have designated me as the painter of it, and that a subcommittee was appointed to wait on me with the information. they will probably call to-morrow, but, until it is thus officially announced to me, i wish the thing kept secret, except to the family, until i write you more definitely on the subject, which i will do the moment the terms, etc., are settled with the committee. "i shall probably be under the necessity of going to washington to take it immediately (the corporation, of course, paying my expenses). but of this in my next." "_january , ._ i have been officially notified of my appointment to paint the full-length portrait of lafayette for the city of new york, so that you may make it as public as you please. "the terms are not definitely settled; the committee is disposed to be very liberal. i shall have at least seven hundred dollars--probably one thousand. i have to wait until an answer can be received from washington, from lafayette to know when he can see me. the answer will arrive probably on wednesday morning; after that i can determine what to do about going on. "the only thing i fear is that it is going to deprive me of my dear lucretia. recollect the old lady's saying, often quoted by mother, 'there is never a convenience but there ain't one'; i long to see you." it was well for the young man that he did not realize how dreadfully his jesting fears were to be realized. further on he says: "i have made an arrangement with mr. durand to have an engraving of lafayette's portrait. i receive half the profits. vanderlyn, sully, peale, jarvis, waldo, inman, ingham, and some others were my competitors in the application for this picture." "_january ._ your letter of the th i have just received, and one from the committee of medical students engaging me to paint dr. smith's portrait for them when i come to new haven. they are to give me one hundred dollars. i have written them that i should be in new haven by the st of february, or, at farthest, by the th; so that it is only prolonging for a little longer, my dear wife, the happy meeting which i anticipated for the th of this month. events are not under our own control. "when i consider how wonderfully things are working for the promotion of the great and _long-desired_ event--that of being constantly with my dear family--all unpleasant feelings are absorbed in this joyful anticipation, and i look forward to the spring of the year with delightful prospects of seeing my dear family permanently settled with me in our own hired house here. there are more encouraging prospects than i can trust to paper at present which must be left for your private ear, and which in magnitude are far more valuable than any encouragement yet made known to me. let us look with thankful hearts to the giver of all these blessings." "_washington, february , ._ i arrived safely in this city last evening. i find i have no time to lose, as the marquis will leave here the d. i have seen him and am to breakfast with him to-morrow, and to commence his portrait. if he allows me time sufficient i have no fear as to the result. he has a noble face. in this i am disappointed, for i had heard that his features were not good. on the contrary, if there is any truth in expression of character, there never was a more perfect example of accordance between the face and the character. he has all that noble firmness and consistency, for which he has been so distinguished, strongly indicated in his whole face. "while he was reading my letters i could not but call to mind the leading events of his truly eventful life. 'this is the man now before me, the very man,' thought i, 'who suffered in the dungeon of olmütz; the very man who took the oaths of the new constitution for so many millions, while the eyes of thousands were fixed upon him (and which is so admirably described in the life which i read to you just before i left home); the very man who spent his youth, and his fortune, and his time, to bring about (under providence) our happy revolution; the friend and companion of washington, the terror of tyrants, the firm and consistent supporter of liberty, the man whose beloved name has rung from one end of this continent to the other, whom all flock to see, whom all delight to honor; this is the man, the very identical man!' my feelings were almost too powerful for me as i shook him by the hand and received the greeting of--'sir, i am exceedingly happy in your acquaintance, and especially on such an occasion.'" thus began an acquaintance which ripened into warm friendship between morse and lafayette, and which remained unbroken until the death of the latter. "_february , ._ i went last night to the president's levee, the last which mr. monroe will hold as president of the united states. there was a great crowd and a great number of distinguished characters, among whom were general lafayette; the president-elect, j.q. adams; mr. calhoun, the vice-president elect; general jackson, etc. i paid my respects to mr. adams and congratulated him on his election. he seemed in some degree to shake off his habitual reserve, and, although he endeavored to suppress his feelings of gratification at his success, it was not difficult to perceive that he felt in high spirits on the occasion. general jackson went up to him and, shaking him by the hand, congratulated him cordially on his election. the general bears his defeat like a man, and has shown, i think, by this act a nobleness of mind which will command the respect of those who have been most opposed to him. "the excitement (if it may be called such) on this great question in washington is over, and everything is moving on in its accustomed channel again. all seem to speak in the highest terms of the order and decorum preserved through the whole of this imposing ceremony, and the good feeling which seems to prevail, with but trivial exceptions, is thought to augur well in behalf of the new administration." (there was no choice by the people in the election of that year, and john quincy adams had been chosen president by a vote of the house of representatives.) "i went last night in a carriage with four others--captain chauncey of the navy; mr. cooper, the celebrated author of the popular american novels; mr. causici (pronounced cau-see-chee), the sculptor; and mr. owen, of lanark, the celebrated philanthropist. "mr. cooper remarked that we had on board a more singularly selected company, he believed, than any carriage at the door of the president, namely, a _misanthropist_ (such he called captain chauncey, brother of the commodore), a _philanthropist_ (mr. owen), a _painter_ (myself), a _sculptor_ (mr. causici), and an _author_ (himself). "the mr. owen mentioned above is the very man i sometimes met at mr. wilberforce's in london, and who was present at the interesting scene i have often related that occurred at mr. wilberforce's. he recollected the circumstance and recognized me, as i did him, instantly, although it is twelve years ago. "i am making progress with the general, but am much perplexed for want of time; i mean _his time_. he is so harassed by visitors and has so many letters to write that i find it exceedingly difficult to do the subject justice. i give him the last sitting in washington to-morrow, reserving another sitting or two when he visits new york in july next. i have gone on thus far to my satisfaction and do not doubt but i shall succeed entirely, if i am allowed the requisite number of sittings. the general is very agreeable. he introduced me to his son by saying: 'this is mr. morse, the painter, the son of the geographer; he has come to washington to take the topography of my face.' he thinks of visiting new haven again when he returns from boston. he regretted not having seen more of it when he was there, as he was much pleased with the place. he remembers professor silliman and others with great affection. "i have left but little room in this letter to express my affection for my dearly loved wife and children; but of that i need not assure them. i long to hear from you, but direct your letters next to new york, as i shall probably be there by the end of next week, or the beginning of the succeeding one. "love to all the family and friends and neighbors. your affectionate husband, as ever." alas! that there should have been no telegraph then to warn the loving husband of the blow which fate had dealt him. as he was light-heartedly attending the festivities at the white house, and as he was penning these two interesting letters to his wife, letters which she never read, and anticipating with keenest pleasure a speedy reunion, she lay dead at their home in new haven. his father thus conveys to him the melancholy intelligence:-- "_february th, ._ my affectionately beloved son,--mysterious are the ways of providence. my heart is in pain and deeply sorrowful while i announce to you the sudden and unexpected death of your dear and deservedly loved wife. her disease proved to be an _affection of the heart_--incurable, had it been known. dr. smith's letter, accompanying this, will explain all you will desire to know on this subject. "i wrote you yesterday that she was convalescent. so she then appeared and so the doctor pronounced. she was up about five o'clock yesterday p.m. to have her bed made as usual; was unusually cheerful and social; spoke of the pleasure of being with her dear husband in new york ere long; stepped into bed herself, fell back with a momentary struggle on her pillow, her eyes were immediately fixed, the paleness of death overspread her countenance, and in five minutes more, without the slightest motion, her mortal life terminated. "it happened that just at this moment i was entering her chamber door with charles in my arms, to pay her my usual visit and to pray with her. the nurse met me affrighted, calling for help. your mother, the family, our neighbors, full of the tenderest sympathy and kindness, and the doctors thronged the house in a few minutes. everything was done that could be done to save her life, but her 'appointed time' had come, and no earthly power or skill could stay the hand of death. "it was the lord who gave her to you, the chiefest of all your earthly blessings, and it is he that has taken her away, and may you be enabled, my son, from the heart to say: 'blessed be the name of the lord.'... the shock to the whole family is far beyond, in point of severity, that of any we have ever before felt, but we are becoming composed, we hope on grounds which will prove solid and lasting. "i expect this will reach you on saturday, the day after the one we have appointed for the funeral, when you will have been in washington a week and i hope will have made such progress in your business as that you will soon be able to return.... "you need not hurry home. nothing here requires it. we are all well and everything will be taken good care of. give yourself no concern on that account. finish your business as well as you will be able to do it after receiving this sad news." this blow was an overwhelming one. he could not, of course, compose himself sufficiently to continue his work on the portrait of lafayette, and, having apprised the general of the reason for this, he received from the following sympathetic letter:-- i have feared to intrude upon you, my dear sir, but want to tell you how deeply i sympathize in your grief--a grief of which nobody can better than me appreciate the cruel feelings. you will hear from me, as soon as i find myself again near you, to finish the work you have so well begun. accept my affectionate and mournful sentiment. lafayette. the day after he received his father's letter he left washington and wrote from baltimore, where he stopped over sunday with a friend, on february :-- my dear father,--the heart-rending tidings which you communicated reached me in washington on friday evening. i left yesterday morning, spend this day here at mr. cushing's, and set out on my return home to-morrow. i shall reach philadelphia on monday night, new york on tuesday night, and new haven on wednesday night. oh! is it possible, is it possible? shall i never see my dear wife again? but i cannot trust myself to write on this subject. i need your prayers and those of christian friends to god for support. i fear i shall sink under it. oh! take good care of her dear children. your agonized son, finley. another son had been born to him on january , , and he was now left with three motherless children to provide for, and without the sustaining hope of a speedy and permanent reunion with them and with his beloved wife. writing to a friend more than a month after the death of his wife, he says:-- "though late in performing the promise i made you of writing you when i arrived home, i hope you will attribute it to anything but forgetfulness of that promise. the confusion and derangement consequent on such an afflicting bereavement as i have suffered have rendered it necessary for me to devote the first moments of composure to looking about me, and to collecting and arranging the fragments of the ruin which has spread such desolation over all my earthly prospects. "oh! what a blow! i dare not yet give myself up to the full survey of its desolating effects. every day brings to my mind a thousand new and fond connections with dear lucretia, all now ruptured. i feel a dreadful void, a heart-sickness, which time does not seem to heal but rather to aggravate. "you know the intensity of the attachment which existed between dear lucretia and me, never for a moment interrupted by the smallest cloud; an attachment founded, i trust, in the purest love, and daily strengthening by all the motives which the ties of nature and, more especially, of religion, furnish. "i found in dear lucretia everything i could wish. such ardor of affection, so uniform, so unaffected, i never saw nor read of but in her. my fear with regard to the measure of my affection toward her was not that i might fail of 'loving her as my own flesh,' but that i should put her in the place of him who has said, 'thou shalt have no other gods but me.' i felt this to be my greatest danger, and to be saved from this _idolatry_ was often the subject of my earnest prayers. "if i had desired anything in my dear lucretia different from what she was, it would have been that she had been _less lovely_. my whole soul seemed wrapped up in her; with her was connected all that i expected of happiness on earth. is it strange, then, that i now feel this void, this desolateness, this loneliness, this heart-sickness; that i should feel as if my very heart itself had been torn from me? "to any one but those who knew dear lucretia what i have said might seem to be but the extravagance of an excited imagination; but to you, who knew the dear object i lament, all that i have said must but feebly shadow her to your memory." [illustration: study for portrait of lafayette now in new york public library] it was well for him that he found constant occupation for his hand and brain at this critical period of his life. the fates had dealt him this cruel blow for some good reason best known to themselves. he was being prepared for a great mission, and it was meet that his soul, like gold, should be purified by fire; but, at the same time, that the blow might not utterly overwhelm him, success in his chosen profession seemed again to be within his grasp. writing to his parents from new york, on april , , he says:-- "i have as much as i can do, but after being fatigued at night and having my thoughts turned to my irreparable loss, i am ready almost to give up. the thought of seeing my dear lucretia, and returning home to her, served always to give me fresh courage and spirits whenever i felt worn down by the labors of the day, and now i hardly know what to substitute in her place. "to my friends here i know i seem to be cheerful and happy, but a cheerful countenance with me covers an aching heart, and often have i feigned a more than ordinary cheerfulness to hide a more than ordinary anguish. "i am blessed with prosperity in my profession. i have just received another commission from the corporation of the city to paint a common-sized portrait of rev. mr. stanford for them, to be placed in the almshouse." the loss of his young wife was the great tragedy of morse's life. time, with her soothing touch, healed the wound, but the scar remained. hers must have been, indeed, a lovely character. professor benjamin silliman, sr., one of her warmest friends, composed the epitaph which still remains inscribed upon her tombstone in the cemetery at new haven. (see opposite page.) in memory of lucretia pickering wife of samuel f.b. morse who died th of february a.d. , aged years. she combined, in her character and person, a rare assemblage of excellences: beautiful in form, features and expression peculiarly bland in her manners, highly cultivated in mind, she irresistibly drew attention, love, and respect; dignified without haughtiness, amiable without tameness, firm without severity, and cheerful without levity, her uniform sweetness of temper spread perpetual sunshine around every circle in which she moved. "when the ear heard her it blessed her, when the eye saw her it gave witness to her." in sufferings the most keen, her serenity of mind never failed her; death to her had no terrors, the grave no gloom. though suddenly called from earth, eternity was no stranger to her thoughts, but a welcome theme of contemplation. religion was the sun that illumined every virtue, and united all in one bow of beauty. hers was the religion of the gospel; jesus christ her foundation, the author and finisher of her faith. in him she rests, in sure expectation of a glorious resurrection. with a heavy heart, but bravely determining not to be overwhelmed by this crushing blow, morse took up his work again. he finished the portrait of lafayette, and it now hangs in the city hall in new york. writing of it many years later to a gentleman who had made some enquiries concerning it, he says:-- "in answer to yours of the th instant, just received, i can only say it is so long since i have seen the portrait i painted of general lafayette for the city of new york, that, strange to say, i find it difficult to recall even its general characteristics. "that portrait has a melancholy interest for me, for it was just as i had commenced the second sitting of the general at washington that i received the stunning intelligence of mrs. morse's death, and was compelled abruptly to suspend the work. i preserve, as a gratifying memorial, the letter of condolence and sympathy sent in to me at the time by the general, and in which he speaks in flattering terms of the promise of the portrait as a likeness. "i must be frank, however, in my judgment of my own works of that day. this portrait was begun under the sad auspices to which i have alluded, and, up to the close of the work, i had a series of constant interruptions of the same sad character. a picture painted under such circumstances can scarcely be expected to do the artist justice, and as a work of art i cannot praise it. still, it is a good likeness, was very satisfactory to the general, and he several times alluded to it in my presence in after years (when i was a frequent visitor to him in paris) in terms of praise. "it is a full-length, standing figure, the size of life. he is represented as standing at the top of a flight of steps, which he has just ascended upon a terrace, the figure coming against a glowing sunset sky, indicative of the glory of his own evening of life. upon his right, if i remember, are three pedestals, one of which is vacant as if waiting for his bust, while the two others are surmounted by the busts of washington and franklin--the two associated eminent historical characters of his own time. in a vase on the other side is a flower-the helianthus--with its face toward the sun, in allusion to the characteristic stern, uncompromising consistency of lafayette-a trait of character which i then considered, and still consider, the great prominent trait of that distinguished man." morse, like many men who have excelled in one branch of the fine arts, often made excursions into one of the others. i find among his papers many scraps of poetry and some more ambitious efforts, and while they do not, perhaps, entitle him to claim a poet's crown, some of them are worthy of being rescued from oblivion. the following sonnet was sent to lafayette under the circumstances which morse himself thus describes:-- "written on the loss of a faithful dog of lafayette's on board the steamboat which sank in the mississippi. the dog, supposing his master still on board, could not be persuaded to leave the cabin, but perished with the vessel. "lost, from thy care to know thy master free can we thy self-devotion e'er forget? 'twas kindred feeling in a less degree to that which thrilled the soul of lafayette. he freely braved our storms, our dangers met, nor left the ship till we had 'scaped the sea. thine was a spark of noble feeling bright caught from the fire that warms thy master's heart. his was of heaven's kindling, and no small part of that pure fire is his. we hail the light where'er it shines, in heaven, in man, in brute; we hail that sacred light howe'er minute, whether its glimmering in thy bosom rest or blaze full orb'd within thy master's breast." this was sent to general lafayette on the th of july, , accompanied by the following note:-- "in asking your acceptance of the enclosed poetic trifle, i have not the vanity to suppose it can contribute much to your gratification; but if it shall be considered as an endeavor to show to you some slight return of gratitude for the kind sympathy you evinced towards me at a time of deep affliction, i shall have attained my aim. gladly would i offer to you any service, but, while a whole nation stands waiting to answer the expression of your smallest wish, my individual desire to serve you can only be considered as contending for a portion of that high honor which all feel in serving you." concealing from the world his great sorrow, and bravely striving always to maintain a cheerful countenance, morse threw himself with energy into his work in new york, endeavoring to keep every minute occupied. he seems to have had his little daughter with him for a while, for in a letter of march , , occurs this sentence: "little susan has had the toothache once or twice, and i have promised her a doll if she would have it out to-day--i am this moment stopped by her coming in and showing me the _tooth out_, so i shall give her the doll." but he soon found that it would be impossible for him to do justice to his work and at same time fulfil his duties as a parent, and for many years afterwards his motherless children found homes with different relatives, but the expense of their keep and education was always borne by their father. on the st of may, , he moved into new quarters, having rented an entire house at no. canal street for the sum of four hundred dollars a year, and he says, "my new establishment will be very commodious for my professional studies, and i do not think its being so far '_up town_' will, on the whole, be any disadvantage to me." "may , . i have at length become comfortably settled and begin to feel at home in my new establishment. all things at present go smoothly. brother charles walker and mr. agate join with me in breakfast and tea, and we find it best for convenience, economy, and time to dine from home,--it saves the perplexity of providing marketing and the care of stores, and, besides, we think it will be more economical and the walk will be beneficial." while success in his profession seemed now assured, and while orders poured in so fast that he gladly assisted some of his less fortunate brother artists by referring his would-be patrons to them, he also took a deep interest in the general artistic movement of the time. he was, by nature, intensely enthusiastic, and his strong personality ever impressed itself on individuals and communities with which he came in contact. he was a born leader of men, and, like so many other leaders, often so forgetful of self in his eager desire for the general good as to seriously interfere with his material prosperity. this is what happened to him now, for he gave so liberally of himself in the formation of a new artistic body in new york, and in the preparation of lectures, that he encroached seriously on time which might have been more lucratively employed. his brother sidney comments on this in a letter to the other brother richard: "finley is well and in good spirits, though not advancing very rapidly in his business. he is full of the academy and of his lectures-- can hardly talk on any other subject. i despair of ever seeing him rich or even at ease in his pecuniary circumstances from efforts of his own, though able to do it with so little effort. but he may be in a better way, perhaps, of getting a fortune in his present course than he would be in the laborious path which we are too apt to think is the only road to wealth and ultimate ease." we have seen that morse was one of the founders of an academy of art in charleston, south carolina, and we have seen that, after his departure from that city, this academy languished and died. is it an unfair inference that, if he had remained permanently in charleston, so sad a fate would not have overtaken the infant academy? in support of this inference we shall now see that he was largely instrumental in bringing into being an artistic association, over which he presided for many years, and which has continued to prosper until, at the present day, it is the leading artistic body in this country. when morse settled in new york in there existed an american academy of arts, of which colonel trumbull, the celebrated painter, was the president. while eminent as a painter, trumbull seems to have lacked executive ability and to have been rather haughty and overbearing in his manner, for morse found great dissatisfaction existing among the professional artists and students. at first it was thought that, by bringing their grievances before the board of directors of the academy, conditions might be changed, and on the th of november, , a meeting was called in the rooms of the historical society, and the "new york drawing association" was formed, and morse was chosen to preside over its meetings. it was not intended, at first, that this association should be a rival of the old academy, but that it should give to its members facilities which were difficult of attainment in the academy, and should, perhaps, force that institution to become more liberal. it was not successful in the latter effort, for at a meeting of the drawing association on the evening of the th of january, , morse, the president, proposed certain resolutions which he introduced by the following remarks:-- "we have this evening assumed a new attitude in the community; our negotiations with the academy are at an end; our union with it has been frustrated after every proper effort on our part to accomplish it. the two who were elected as directors from our ticket have signified their non-acceptance of the office. we are therefore left to organize ourselves on a plan that shall meet the wishes of us all. "a plan of an institution which shall be truly liberal, which shall be mutually beneficial, which shall really encourage our respective arts, cannot be devised in a moment; it ought to be the work of great caution and deliberation and as simple as possible in its machinery. time will be required for the purpose. we must hear from distant countries to obtain their experience, and it must necessarily be, perhaps, many months before it can be matured. "in the mean time, however, a preparatory, simple organization can be made, and should be made as soon as possible, to prevent dismemberment, which may be attempted by outdoor influence. on this subject let us all be on our guard; let us point to our public documents to any who ask what we have done and why we have done it, while we go forward minding only our own concerns, leaving the academy of fine arts as much of our thoughts as they will permit us, and, bending our attention to our own affairs, act as if no such institution existed. "one of our dangers at present is division and anarchy from a want of organization suited to the present exigency. we are now composed of artists in the four arts of design, namely, painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving. some of us are professional artists, others amateurs, others students. to the professed and practical artist belongs the management of all things relating to schools, premiums, and lectures, so that amateur and student may be most profited. the amateurs and students are those alone who can contend for the premiums, while the body of professional artists exclusively judge of their rights to premiums and award them. "how shall we first make the separation has been a question which is a little perplexing. there are none of us who can assume to be the body of artists without giving offence to others, and still every one must perceive that, to organize an academy, there must be the distinction between professional artists, amateurs who are students, and professional students. the first great division should be the body of professional artists from the amateurs and students, constituting the body who are to manage the entire concerns of the institution, who shall be its officers, etc. "there is a method which strikes me as obviating the difficulty; place it on the broad principle of the formation of any society--universal suffrage. we are now a mixed body; it is necessary for the benefit of all that a separation into classes be made. who shall make it? "why, obviously the body itself. let every member of this association take home with him a list of all the members of it. let each one select for himself from the whole list _fifteen_, whom he would call professional artists, to be the ticket which he will give in at the next meeting. "these fifteen thus chosen shall elect not less than _ten_, nor more than _fifteen_, professional artists, in or out of the association, who shall (with the previously elected fifteen) constitute the body to be called the national academy of the arts of design. to these shall be delegated the power to regulate its entire concerns, choose its members, select its students, etc. "thus will the germ be formed to grow up into an institution which we trust will be put on such principles as to encourage--not to depress--the arts. when this is done our body will no longer be the drawing association, but the national academy of the arts of design, still including all the present association, but in different capacities. "one word as to the name 'national academy of the arts of design.' any less name than 'national' would be taking one below the american academy, and therefore is not desirable. if we were simply the 'associated artists,' their name would swallow us up; therefore 'national' seems a proper one as to the arts of design. these are painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving, while the fine arts include poetry, music, landscape gardening, and the histrionic arts. our name, therefore, expresses the entire character of our institution and that only." from this we see that morse's enthusiasm was tempered with tact and common sense. his proposals were received with unanimous approval, and on the th of january, , the following fifteen were chosen:--s.f.b. morse, henry inman, a.b. durand, john frazee, william wall, charles c. ingham, william dunlap, peter maverick, ithiel town, thomas s. cummings, edward potter, charles c. wright, mosely j. danforth, hugh reinagle, gerlando marsiglia. these fifteen professional artists added by ballot to their number the following fifteen:--samuel waldo, william jewett, john w. paradise, frederick s. agate, rembrandt peale, james coyle, nathaniel rogers, j. parisen, william main, john evers, martin e. thompson, thomas cole, john vanderlyn (who declined), alexander anderson, d.w. wilson. thus was organized the national academy of design. morse was elected its first president and was annually reëlected to that office until the year , when, the telegraph having now become an assured success, he felt that he could not devote the necessary time and thought to the interests of the academy, and he insisted on retiring. in the year he was prevailed upon by thomas s. cummings, one of the original academicians, but now a general, to become again the president, and he served in that office for a year. the general, in a letter to mr. prime in , says, "and, i may add, was beloved by all." i shall not attempt to give a detailed account of the early struggles of the academy, closely interwoven though they be with morse's life. those who may be interested in the matter will find them all detailed in general cummings' "records of the national academy of design." morse prepared and delivered a number of lectures on various subjects pertaining to the fine arts, and most of these have been preserved in pamphlet form. in this connection i shall quote again from the letter of general cummings before alluded to:-- "mr. morse's connection with the academy was doubtless unfavorable in a pecuniary point of view; his interest in it interfering with professional practice, and the time taken to enable him to prepare his course of lectures materially contributed to favor a distribution of his labors in art to other hands, and it never fully returned to him. his 'discourse on academies of art,' delivered in the chapel of columbia college, may, , will long stand as a monument of his ability in the line of art literature. "as an historical painter mr. morse, after allston, was probably the best prepared and most fully educated artist of his day, and should have received the attention of the government and a share of the distributions in art commissions." that his efforts were appreciated by his fellow artists and by the cultivated people of new york is thus modestly described in a letter to his parents of november , :-- "i mentioned that reputation was flowing in upon me. the younger artists have formed a drawing association at the academy and elected me their president. we meet in the evenings of three days in a week to draw, and it has been conducted thus far with such success as to have trebled the number of our association and excited the attention and applause of the community. there is a spirit of harmony among the artists, every one says, which never before existed in new york, and which augurs well for the success of the arts. "the artists are pleased to attribute it to my exertions, and i find in them in consequence expressions and feelings of respect which have been very gratifying to me. whatever influence i have had, however, in producing this pleasant state of things, i think there was the preparation in the state of mind of the artists themselves. i find a liberal feeling in the younger part of them, and a refinement of manners, which will redeem the character of art from the degradation to which a few dissipated interlopers have, temporarily, reduced it. "a literary society, admission to which must be by unanimous vote, and into which many respectable literary characters of the city have been denied admission, has chosen me a member, together with mr. hillhouse and mr. bryant, poets. this indicates good feelings towards me, to say the least, and, in the end, will be of advantage, i have no doubt." chapter xiv january , --december , success of his lectures, the first of the kind in the united states.-- difficulties of his position as leader.--still longing for a home.--very busy but in good health.--death of his father.--estimates of dr. morse.-- letters to his mother.--wishes to go to europe again.--delivers address at first anniversary of national academy of design.--professor dana lectures on electricity.--morse's study of the subject.--moves to no. murray street.--too busy to visit his family.--death of his mother.--a remarkable woman.--goes to central new york.--a serious accident.--moral reflections.--prepares to go to europe.--letter of john a. dix.--sails for liverpool.--rough voyage.--liverpool. january , my dear parents,--i wish you all a happy new year! kiss my little ones as a new year's present from me, which must answer until i visit them, when i shall bring them each a present if i hear good accounts from them.... the new year brings with it many painful reflections to me. when i consider what a difference a year has accomplished in my situation; that one on whom i depended so much for domestic happiness at this time last year gave me the salutations of the season, and now is gone where years are unknown; and when i think how mysteriously i am separated from my little family, and that duty may keep me i know not how much longer in this solitary state, i have much that makes the present season far from being a happy new year to me. but, mysterious as things seem in regard to the future, i know that all will be ordered right, and i have a great deal to say of mercy in the midst of judgment, and a thousand unmerited blessings with all my troubles. but why do i talk of troubles? my cup is overflowing with blessings. as far as outward circumstances are concerned, providence seems to be opening an honorable and useful course to me. oh! that i may be able to bear prosperity, if it is his will to bestow it, or be denied it if not accompanied with his blessing.... i am much engaged in my lectures, have completed two, nearly, and hope to get through the four in season for my turn at the athenæum. these lectures are of great importance to me, for, if well done, they place me alone among the artists; i being the only one who has as yet written a course of lectures in our country. time bestowed on them is not, therefore, misspent, for they will acquire me reputation which will yield wealth, as mother, i hope, will live to see. "_january , ._ on this day i seem to have the only moment in the week in which i can write you, for i am almost overwhelmed by the multitude of cares that crowd upon me.... i find that the path of duty, though plain, is not without its roughness. i can say but in one word that the association of artists, of whom i am president, after negotiations of some weeks with the academy of fine arts to come into it on terms of mutual benefit, find their efforts unavailing, and have separated and formed a new academy to be called, probably, the national academy of the arts of design. i am at its head, but the cares and responsibility which devolve on me in consequence are more than a balance for the honor. the battle is yet to be fought for the need of public favor, and were it not that the entire and perfect justness of our cause is clear to me in every point of view, i should retire from a contest which would merely serve to rouse up all the 'old adam' to no profit; but the cause of the artists seems, under providence, to be, in some degree, confided to me, and i cannot shrink from the cares and troubles at present put upon me. i have gone forward thus far, asking direction from above, and, in looking around me, i feel that i am in the path of duty. may i be kept in it and be preserved from the temptations, the various and multiplied and complicated temptations, to which i know i shall be exposed. in every step thus far i feel an approving conscience; there is none i could wish to retrace.... "i fear you will think i have but few thoughts for you all at home, and my dear little ones in particular. i do think of them, though, very often, with many a longing to have a home for them under a parent's roof, and all my efforts now are tending distantly to that end; but when i shall ever have a home of my own, or whether it will ever be, i know not. the necessity for a second connection on their account seems pressing, but i cannot find my heart ready for it. i am occasionally rallied on the subject, but the suggestion only reminds me of her i have lost, and a tear is quite as ready to appear as a smile; or, if i can disguise it, i feel a pang within that shows me the wound is not yet healed. it is eleven months since she has gone, but it seems but yesterday." "_april , ._ i don't know but you will think i have forgotten how to write letters, and i believe this is the first i have written for six weeks. "the pressure of my lectures became very great towards the close of them, and i was compelled to bend my whole attention to their completion. i did not expect, when i delivered my first, that i should be able to give more than two, but the importance of going through seemed greater as i advanced, and i was strengthened to accomplish the whole number, and, if i can judge from various indications, i think i have been successful. my audience, consisting of the most fashionable and literary society in the city, regularly increased at each successive lecture, and at the last it was said that i had the largest audience ever assembled in the room. "i am now engaged on lafayette in expectation of completing it for our exhibition in may, after which time i hope i shall be able to see you for a day or two in new haven. i long to see you all, and those dear children often make me feel anxious, and i am often tempted to break away and have a short look at them, but i am tied down here and cannot move at present. all that i am doing has some reference to their interest; they are constantly on my mind. "... my health was never better with all my intense application, sitting in my chair from seven in the morning until twelve or one o'clock the next morning, with only about an hour's intermission. i have felt no permanent inconvenience. on saturday night, generally, i have felt exceedingly nervous, so that my whole body and limbs would shake, but resting on the sabbath seemed to give me strength for the next week. since my mind is relieved from my lectures i have felt new life and spirits, and feel strong to accomplish anything." "_may , s ._ i have just heard from mother and feel anxious about father. nothing but the most imperious necessity prevents my coming immediately to new haven; indeed, as it is, i will try and break away sometime next week, if possible, and pass one day with you, but how to do it without detriment to my business i don't know.... "i have longed for some time for a little respite, but, like our good father, all his sons seem destined for most busy stations in society, and constant exertions, not for themselves alone, but for the public benefit." whether this promised visit to new haven was paid or not is not recorded, but it is to be hoped that it was made possible, for the good husband and father, the faithful worker for the betterment of mankind, was called to his well-earned rest on the th of june, . of him dr. john todd said, "dr. morse lived before his time and was in advance of his generation." president dwight of yale found him "as full of resources as an egg is of meat"; and daniel webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting." mr. prime thus sums up his character: "he was a man of genius, not content with what had been and was, but originating and with vast executive ability combining the elements to produce great results. to him more than to any other one man may be attributed the impulses given in his day to religion and learning in the united states. a polished gentleman in his manners; the companion, correspondent, and friend of the most eminent men in church and state; honored at the early age of thirty-four with the degree of doctor of divinity by the university of edinburgh, scotland; sought by scholars and statesmen from abroad as one of the foremost men of his country and time." the son must have felt keenly the loss of his father so soon after the death of his wife. the whole family was a singularly united one, each member depending on the others for counsel and advice, and the father, who was but sixty-five when he died, was still vigorous in mind, although of delicate constitution. later in this year morse managed to spend some time in new haven, and he persuaded his mother to seek rest and recuperation in travel, accompanying her as far as boston and writing to her there on his return to new haven. "_september , ._ i arrived safely home after leaving you yesterday and found that neither the house nor the folks had run away.... persevere in your travels, mother, as long as you think it does you good, and tell dick to brush up his best bows and bring home some lady to grace the now desolate mansion." on november , , he writes to his mother from new york:-- "don't think i have forgotten you all at home because i have been so remiss in writing you lately. i feel guilty, however, in not stealing some little time just to write you one line. i acknowledge my fault, so please forgive me and i will be a _better boy_ in future. "the fact is i have been engaged for the last three days during all my leisure moments in something unusual with me,--i mean _electioneering_. 'oh! what a sad boy!' mother will say. 'there he is leaving everything at sixes and sevens, and driving through the streets, and busying himself about those _poison politics_.' not quite so fast, however. "i have not neglected my own affairs, as you will learn one of these days. i have an historical picture to paint, which will occupy me for some time, for a proprietor of a steamboat which is building in philadelphia to be the most splendid ever built. he has engaged historical pictures of allston, vanderlyn, sully, and myself, and landscapes of the principal landscape painters, for a gallery on board the boat. i consider this as a new and noble channel for the encouragement of painting, and in such an enterprise and in such company i shall do my best. "what do you think of sparing me for about one year to visit paris and rome to finish what i began when in europe before? my education as a painter is incomplete without it, and the time is rapidly going away when my age will render it impossible to profit by such studies, even if i should be able, at a future time, to visit europe again.... i can, perhaps, leave my dear little ones at their age better than if they were more advanced, and, as my views are ultimately to benefit them, i think no one will accuse me of neglecting them. if they do, they know but little of my feelings towards them." the mother's answer to this letter has not been preserved, but whether she dissuaded him from going at that time, or whether other reasons prevented him, the fact is that he did not start on the voyage to europe (the return trip proving so momentous to himself and to the world) until exactly three years later. i shall pass rapidly over these intervening three years. they were years of hard work, but of work rewarded by material success and increasing honor in the community. on may , , on the occasion of the first anniversary of the national academy of design, morse, its president, delivered an address before a brilliant audience in the chapel of columbia college. this address was considered so remarkable that, at the request of the academy, it was published in pamphlet form. it called forth a sharp review in the "north american," which voiced the opinions of those who were hostile to the new academy, and who considered the term "national" little short of arrogant. morse replied to this attack in a masterly manner in the "journal of commerce," and this also was published in pamphlet form and ended the controversy. in the year , professor james freeman dana, of columbia college, delivered a series of lectures on the subject of electricity at the new york athenæum. professor dana was an enthusiast in the study of that science, which, at that time, was but in its infancy, and he foresaw great and beneficial results to mankind from this mysterious force when it should become more fully understood. morse, already familiar with the subject from his experiments with professor silliman in new haven, took a deep interest in these lectures, and he and professor dana became warm friends. the latter, on his side a great admirer of the fine arts, spent many hours in the studio of the artist, discussing with him the two subjects which were of absorbing interest to them both, art and electricity. in this way morse became perfectly familiar with the latest discoveries in electrical science, so that when, a few years later, his grand conception of a simple and practicable means of harnessing this mystic agent to the uses of mankind took form in his brain, it found a field already prepared to receive it. i wish to lay particular emphasis on this point because, in later years, when his claims as an inventor were bitterly assailed in the courts and in scientific circles, it was asserted that he knew nothing whatever of the science of electricity at the time of his invention, and that all its essential features were suggested to him by others. in the year , morse again changed his quarters, moving to a suite of rooms at no. murray street, close to broadway, for which he paid a "great rent," $ , and on may of that year he writes to his mother: "ever since i left you at new haven i have been over head and ears in arrangements of every kind. it is the busiest time of the whole year as it regards the national academy. we have got through the arrangement of our exhibition and yesterday opened it to the guests of the academy. we had the first people in the city, ladies and gentlemen, thronging the room all day, and the voice of all seemed to be--'it is the best exhibition of the kind that has been seen in the city.' "i am now arranging my rooms; they are very fine ones. i shall be through in a few days, and then i hope to be able to come up and see you, for i feel very anxious about you, my dear mother. i do most sincerely sympathize with you in your troubles and long to come up and take some of the care and burden from you, and will do it as soon as my affairs here can be arranged so that i can leave them without serious detriment to them.... what a siege you must have had with your _help_, as it is most strangely called in new haven. i am too aristocratic for such doings as _help_ would make those who live in new haven endure. ardently as i am attached to new haven the plague of _help_ will probably always prevent my living there again, for i would not put up with 'the world turned upside down,' and therefore should give offense to their _helpinesses_, and so lead a very uncomfortable life." from this our suspicion is strengthened that the servant question belongs to no time or country, but is and always has been a perennial and ubiquitous problem. "_may , ._ i feel very anxious about you, dear mother. i heard through mr. van rensselaer that you were better, and i hope that you will yet see many good days on earth and be happy in the affection of your children and friends here, before you go, a little before them, to join those in heaven." while expressing anxiety about his mother's health, he could not have considered her condition critical, for on the th of may he writes again:-- "i did hope so to make my arrangements as to have been with you in new haven yesterday and to-day, but i am so situated as to be unable to leave the city without great detriment to my business.... unless, therefore, there is something of pressing necessity, prudence would dictate to me to take advantage of this season, which has generally been the most profitable to others in the profession, and see if i cannot get my share of something to do. it is a great struggle with me to know what i ought to do. your situation and that of the family draw me to new haven; the state of my finances keeps me here. i will come, however, if, on the whole, you think it best." again are the records silent as to whether the visit was paid or not, but his anxiety was well founded, for his mother's appointed time had come, and just ten days later, on the th of may, , she died at the age of sixty-two. thus within the space of three years the hand of death had removed the three beings whom morse loved best. his mother, while, as we have seen, stern and uncompromising in her puritan principles, yet possessed the faculty of winning the love as well as the respect of her family and friends. dr. todd said of her home: "an orphan myself and never having a home, i have gone away from dr. morse's house in tears, feeling that such a home must be more like heaven than anything of which i could conceive." mr. prime, in his biography of morse, thus pays tribute to her:-- "two persons more unlike in temperament, it is said, could not have been united in love and marriage than the parents of morse. the husband was sanguine, impulsive, resolute, regardless of difficulties and danger. she was calm, judicious, cautious, and reflecting. and she, too, had a will of her own. one day she was expressing to one of the parish her intense displeasure with the treatment her husband had received, when dr. morse gently laid his hand upon her shoulder and said, 'my dear, you know we must throw the mantle of charity over the imperfections of others.' and she replied with becoming spirit, 'mr. morse, charity is not a fool.'" in the summer of , morse spent some time in central new york, visiting relatives and painting portraits when the occasion offered. he thus describes a narrow escape from serious injury, or even death, in a letter to his brother sidney, dated utica, august , :-- "in coming from whitesboro on friday i met with an accident and a most narrow escape with my life. the horse, which had been tackled into the wagon, was a vicious horse and had several times run away, to the danger of mr. dexter's life and others of the family. i was not aware of this or i should not have consented to go with him, much less to drive him myself. "i was alone in the wagon with my baggage, and the horse went very well for about a mile, when he gradually quickened his pace and then set out, in spite of all check, on the full run. i kept him in the road, determined to let him run himself tired as the only safe alternative; but just as i came in sight of a piece of the road which had been concealed by an angle, there was a heavy wagon which i must meet so soon that, in order to avoid it, i must give it the whole road. "this being very narrow, and the ditches and banks on each side very rough, i instantly made up my mind to a serious accident. as well as the velocity of the horse would allow me, however, i kept him on the side, rough as it was, for about a quarter of a mile pretty steadily, expecting, however, to upset every minute; when all at once i saw before me an abrupt, narrow, deep gully into which the wheels on one side were just upon the point of going down. it flashed across me in an instant that, if i could throw the horse down into the ditch, the wheels of the wagon might, perhaps, rest equipoised on each side, and, perhaps, break the horse loose from the wagon. "i pulled the rein and accomplished the object in part. the sudden plunge of the horse into the gully broke him loose from the wagon, but it at the same time turned one of the fore wheels into the gully, which upset the wagon and threw me forwards at the moment when the horse threw up his heels, just taking off my hat and leaving me in the bottom of the gully. i fell on my left shoulder, and, although muddied from head to foot, i escaped without any injury whatever; i was not even jarred painfully. i found my shoulder a little bruised, my wrist very slightly scratched, and yesterday was a little, and but very little, stiffened in my limbs, and to-day have not the slightest feeling of bruise about me, but think i feel better than i have for a long time. indeed, my health is entirely restored; the riding and country air have been the means of restoring me. i have great cause of thankfulness for so much mercy and for such special preserving care." [illustration: elizabeth a. morse painted by morse] the historian or the biographer who is earnestly desirous of presenting an absolutely truthful picture of men and of events is aided in his task by taking into account the character of the men who have made history. he must ask the question: "is it conceivable that this man could have acted thus and so under such and such circumstances when his character, as ultimately revealed through the perspective of time, has been established? could washington and lincoln, for example, have been actuated by the motives attributed to them by their enemies?" like all men who have become shining marks in the annals of history, morse could not hope to escape calumny, and in later years he was accused of actions, and motives were imputed to him, which it becomes the duty of his biographer to disprove on the broad ground of moral impossibility. among his letters and papers are many rough drafts of thoughts and observations on many subjects, interlined and annotated. some were afterwards elaborated into letters, articles, or lectures; others seem to have been the thought of the moment, which he yet deemed worth writing down, and which, perhaps better than anything else, reveal the true character of the man. the following was written by him in pencil on sunday, september , , at cooperstown, new york:-- "that temptations surround us at every moment is too evident to require proof. if they cease from without they still act upon us from within ourselves, and our most secret thoughts may as surely be drawn from the path of duty by secret temptation, by the admission of evil suggestions, and they will affect our characters as injuriously as those more palpable and tangible temptations that attack our sense. "this life is a state of discipline; a school in which to form character. there is not an event that comes to our knowledge, not a sentence that we read, not a person with whom we converse, not an act of our lives, in short, not a thought which we conceive, but is acting upon and moulding that character into a shape of good or evil; and, however unconscious we may be of the fact, a thought, casually conceived in the solitariness and silence and darkness of midnight, may so modify and change the current of our future conduct that a blessing or a curse to millions may flow from it. "all our thoughts are mysteriously connected with good or evil. their very habits, too, like the habits of our actions, are strengthened by indulgence, and, according as we indulge the evil or the good, our characters will partake of the moral character of each. but actions proceed from thoughts; we act as we think. why should we, then, so cautiously guard our actions from impropriety while we give a loose rein to our thoughts, which so certainly, sooner or later, produce their fruits in our actions? "god in his wisdom has separated at various distances sin and the consequence of sin. in some instances we see a sin instantly followed by its fruits, as of revenge by murder. in others we see weeks and months and years, aye, and ages, too, elapse before the fruits of a single act, the result, perhaps, of a single thought, are seen in all their varieties of evil. "how long ere the fruits of one sin in paradise will cease to be visible in the moral universe? "if this reasoning is correct, i shall but cheat myself in preserving a good moral outward appearance to others if every thought of the heart, in the most secret retirement, is not carefully watched and checked and guarded from evil; since the casual indulgence of a single evil thought in secret may be followed, long after that thought is forgotten by me, and when, perhaps, least expected, by overt acts of evil. "who, then, shall say that in those pleasures in which we indulge, and which by many are called, and apparently are, innocent, there are not laid the seeds of many a corrupt affection? who shall say that my innocent indulgence at the card table or at the theatre, were i inclined to visit them, may not produce, if not in me a passion for gaming or for low indulgence, yet in others may encourage these views to their ruin? "besides, 'evil communications corrupt good manners,' and even places less objectionable are studiously to be avoided. the soul is too precious to be thus exposed. "where then is our remedy? in christ alone. 'cleanse thou me from secret faults. search me, o god, and know my thoughts; try me and know my ways and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way which is everlasting.'" this is but one of many expressions of a similar character which are to be found in the letters and notes, and which are illuminating. morse was now making ready for another trip to europe. he had hoped, when he returned home in , to stay but a year or two on this side and then to go back and continue his artistic education, which he by no means considered complete, in france and italy. we have seen how one circumstance after another interfered to prevent the realization of this plan, until now, after the lapse of fourteen years, he found it possible. his wife and his parents were dead; his children were being carefully cared for by relatives, the daughter susan by her mother's sister, mrs. pickering, in concord, new hampshire, and the boys by their uncle, richard c. morse, who was then happily married and living in the family home in new haven. the national academy of design was now established on a firm footing and could spare his guiding hand for a few years. he had saved enough money to defray his expenses on a strictly economical basis, but, to make assurance doubly sure, he sought and received commissions from his friends and patrons in america for copies of famous paintings, or for original works of his own, so that he could sail with a clear conscience as regarded his finances. his friends were uniformly encouraging in furthering his plan, and he received many letters of cordial good wishes and of introduction to prominent men abroad. i shall include the following from john a. dix, at that time a captain in the army, but afterwards a general, and governor of new york, who, although he had been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of miss walker, morse's wife, bore no ill-will towards his rival, but remained his firm friend to the end:-- cooperstown, th october, . my dear sir,--i have only time to say that i have been absent in an adjacent county and fear there is not time to procure a letter for you to mr. rives before the st. i have written to mr. van buren and he will doubtless send you a letter before the th. therefore make arrangements to have it sent after you if you sail on the st. i need not say i shall be very happy to hear from you during your sojournment abroad. especially tell me what your impressions are when you turn from david's picture with romulus and tatius in the foreground, and paul veronese's marriage at cana directly opposite, at the entrance of the picture gallery in the louvre. we are all well and all desire to be remembered. i have only time to add my best wishes for your happiness and prosperity. yours truly and constantly, john a. dix. the mr. rives mentioned in the letter was at that time our minister to france, and the mr. van buren was martin van buren, then secretary of state in president jackson's cabinet, and afterwards himself president of the united states. the following is from the pencilled draft of a letter or the beginning of a diary which was not finished, but ends abruptly:-- "on the th november, , i embarked from new york in the ship napoleon, captain smith, for liverpool. the napoleon is one of those splendid packets, which have been provided by the enterprise of our merchants, for the accommodation of persons whose business or pleasure requires a visit to europe or america. "precisely at the appointed hour, ten o'clock, the steamboat with the passengers and their baggage left the whitehall dock for our gallant ship, which was lying to above the city, heading up the north river, careening to the brisk northwest gale, and waiting with apparent impatience for us, like a spirited horse curvetting under the rein of his master, and waiting but his signal to bound away. a few moments brought us to her side, and a few more saw the steamboat leave us, and the sad farewells to relatives and friends, who had thus far accompanied us, were mutually exchanged by the waving of hands and of handkerchiefs. the 'ready about,' and soon after the 'mainsail haul' of the pilot were answered by the cheering 'ho, heave, ho' of the sailors, and, with the fairest wind that ever blew, we fast left the spires and shores of the great city behind us. in two hours we discharged our pilot to the south of sandy hook, with his pocket full of farewell letters to our friends, and then stood on our course for england. "four days brought us to the banks of newfoundland, one third of our passage. many of our passengers were sanguine in their anticipations of our making the shortest passage ever known, and, had our subsequent progress been as great as at first, we should doubtless have accomplished the voyage in thirteen days, but calms and head winds for three days on the banks have frustrated our expectations. "there is little that is interesting in the incidents of a voyage. the indescribable listlessness of seasickness, the varied state of feeling which changes with the wind and weather, have often been described. these i experienced in all their force. from the time we left the banks of newfoundland we had a continued succession of head winds, and when within one fair day's sail of land, we were kept off by severe gales directly ahead for five successive days and nights, during which time the uneasy motion of the ship deprived us all of sleep, except in broken intervals of an half-hour at a time. we neither saw nor spoke any vessel until the evening of the ----, when we descried through the darkness a large vessel on an opposite course from ourselves; we first saw her cabin lights. it was blowing a gale of wind before which we were going on our own course at the rate of eleven miles an hour. it was, of course, impossible to speak her, but, to let her know that she had company on the wide ocean, we threw up a rocket which for splendor of effect surpassed any that i had ever seen on shore. it was thrown from behind the mizzenmast, over which it shot arching its way over the main and foremasts, illuminating every sail and rope, and then diving into the water, piercing the wave, it again shot upwards and vanished in a loud report. to our companion ship the effect must have been very fine. "the sea is often complained of for its monotony, and yet there is great variety in the appearance of the sea." here it ends, but we learn a little more of the voyage and the landing in england from a letter to a cousin in america, written in liverpool, on december , :-- "i arrived safely in england yesterday after a long, but, on the whole, pleasant, passage of twenty-six days. i write you from the inn (the king's arms hotel) at which i put up eighteen years ago. this inn is the one at which professor silliman stayed when he travelled in england, and which he mentions in his travels. the old frenchman whom he mentions i well remember when i was here before. i enquired for him and am told he is still living, but i have not seen him. "there is a large black man, a waiter in the house, who is quite a polished man in his manners, and an elderly white man, with white hair, who looks so respectable and dignified that one feels a little awkward at first in ordering him to do this or that service; and the chambermaids look so venerable and matronly that to ask them for a pitcher of water seems almost rude to them. but i am in a land where domestic servants are the best in the world. no servant aspires to a higher station, but feels a pride in making himself the first in that station. i notice this, for our own country presents a melancholy contrast in this particular." here follows a description of the voyage, and he continues:-- "yesterday we anchored off the floating light, sixteen miles from the city, unable to reach the dock on account of the wind, but the post-office steamboat (or steamer, as they call them here) came to us from liverpool to take the letter-bags, and i with other passengers got on board, and at twelve o'clock i once more placed my foot on english ground. "the weather is true english weather, thick, smoky, and damp. i can see nothing of the general appearance of the city. the splendid docks, which were building when i was here before, are now completed and extend along the river. they are really splendid; everything about them is solid and substantial, of stone and iron, and on so large a scale. "i have passed my baggage through the custom-house, and on monday i proceed on my journey to london through birmingham and oxford. miss leslie, a sister of my friend leslie of london, is my _compagnon de voyage_. she is a woman of fine talents and makes my journey less tedious and irksome than it would otherwise be.... i have a long journey before me yet ere i reach rome, where i intended to be by christmas day, but my long voyage will probably defeat my intention." chapter xv december , --february , journey from liverpool to london by coach.--neatness of the cottages.-- trentham hall.--stratford-on-avon.--oxford.--london.--charles r. leslie. --samuel rogers.--seated with academicians at royal academy lecture.-- washington irving.--turner.--leaves london for dover.--canterbury cathedral.--detained at dover by bad weather.--incident of a former visit.--channel steamer.--boulogne-sur-mer.--first impressions of france.--paris.--the louvre.--lafayette.--cold in paris.--continental sunday.--leaves paris for marseilles in diligence.--intense cold.-- dijon.--french funeral.--lyons.--the hôtel dieu.--avignon.--catholic church services.--marseilles.--toulon.--the navy yard and the galley slaves.--disagreeable experience at an inn.--the riviera.--genoa. morse was now thirty-eight years old, in the full vigor of manhood, of a spare but well-knit frame and of a strong constitution. while all his life, and especially in his younger years, he was a sufferer from occasional severe headaches, he never let these interfere with the work on hand, and, by leading a sane and rational life, he escaped all serious illnesses. he was not a total abstainer as regards either wine or tobacco, but was moderate in the use of both; a temperance advocate in the true sense of the word. his character had now been moulded both by prosperity and adversity. he had known the love of wife and children, and of father and mother, and the cup of domestic happiness had been dashed from his lips. he had experienced the joy of the artist in successful creation, and the bitterness of the sensitive soul irritated by the ignorant, and all but overwhelmed by the struggle for existence. he had felt the supreme joy of swaying an audience by his eloquence, and he had endured with fortitude the carping criticism of the envious. through it all, through prosperity and through adversity, his hopeful, buoyant nature had triumphed. prosperity had not spoiled him, and adversity had but served to refine. he felt that he had been given talents which he must utilize to the utmost, that he must be true to himself, and that, above all, he must strive in every way to benefit his fellow men. this motive we find recurring again and again in his correspondence and in his ultimate notes. not, "what can i do for myself?" but "what can i do for mankind?" never falsely humble, but, on the contrary, properly proud of his achievements, jealous of his own good name and fame and eager _honestly_ to acquire wealth, he yet ever put the public good above his private gain. he was now again in europe, the goal of his desires for many years, and he was about to visit the continent, where he had never been. paris, with her treasures of art, italy, the promised land of every artist, lay before him. we shall miss the many intimate letters to his wife and to his parents, but we shall find others to his brothers and to his friends, perhaps a shade less unreserved, but still giving a clear account of his wanderings, and, from a mass of little notebooks and sketch-books, we can follow him on his pilgrimage and glean some keen observations on the peoples and places visited by him. it must be remembered that this was still the era of the stage-coach and the diligence, and that it took many days to accomplish a journey which is now made in almost the same number of hours. on christmas day, , he begins a letter from dover to a favorite cousin, mrs. margaret roby, of utica, new york:-- "when i left liverpool i took my seat upon the outside of the coach, in order to see as much as possible of the country through which i was to pass. unfortunately the fog and smoke were so dense that i could see objects but a few yards from the road. occasionally, indeed, the fog would become less dense, and we could see the fine lawns of the seats of the nobility and gentry, which were scattered on our route, and which still retained their verdure. now and then the spire and towers of some ancient village church rose out of the leafless trees, beautifully simple in their forms, and sometimes clothed to the very tops with the evergreen ivy. it was severely cold; my eyebrows, hair, cap, and the fur of my cloak were soon coated with frost, but i determined to keep my seat though i suffered some from the cold. "their fine natural health, or the frosty weather, gave to the complexions of the peasantry, particularly the females and children, a beautiful rosy bloom. through all the villages there was the appearance of great comfort and neatness,--a neatness, however, very different from ours. their nicely thatched cottages bore all the marks of great antiquity, covered with brilliant green moss like velvet, and round the doors and windows were trained some of the many kinds of evergreen vines which abound here. most of them also had a trim courtyard before their doors, planted with laurel and holly and box, and sometimes a yew cut into some fantastic shape. the whole appearance of the villages was neat and venerable; like some aged matron who, with all her wrinkles, her stooping form, and grey locks, preserves the dignity of cleanliness in her ancient but becoming costume. "at trentham we passed one of the seats of the marquis of stafford, trentham hall. here the marquis has a fine gallery of pictures, and among them allston's famous picture of 'uriel in the sun.' "i slept the first night in birmingham, which i had no time to see on account of darkness, smoke, and fog: three most inveterate enemies to the seekers of the picturesque and of antiquities. in the morning, before daylight, i resumed my journey towards london. at stratford-on-avon i breakfasted, but in such haste as not to be able to visit again the house of shakespeare's birth, or his tomb. this house, however, i visited when in england before. at oxford, the city of so many classical recollections, i stopped but a few moments to dine. i was here also when before in england. it is a most splendid city; its spires and domes and towers and pinnacles, rising from amid the trees, give it a magnificent appearance as you approach it. "before we reached oxford we passed through woodstock and blenheim, the seat of the duke of marlborough, whose splendid estates are at present suffering from the embarrassment of the present duke, who has ruined his fortunes by his fondness for play. "darkness came on after leaving oxford; i saw nothing until arriving in the vicinity of the great metropolis, which has, for many miles before you enter it, the appearance of a continuous village. we saw the brilliant gas-lights of its streets, and our coach soon joined the throng of vehicles that rattled over its pavements. i could scarcely realize that i was once more in london after fourteen years' absence. "my first visit was to my old friend and fellow pupil, leslie, who seemed overjoyed to see me and has been unremitting in his attentions during my stay in london. leslie i found, as i expected, in high favor with the highest classes of england's noblemen and literary characters. his reputation is well deserved and will not be ephemeral. "i received an invitation to breakfast from samuel rogers, esq., the celebrated poet, which i accepted with my friend leslie. mr. rogers is the author of 'pleasures of memory,' of 'italy,' and other poems. he has not the proverbial lot of the poet,--that of being poor,--for he is one of the wealthiest bankers and lives in splendid style. his collection of pictures is very select, chosen by himself with great taste. "i attended, a few evenings since, the lecture on anatomy at the royal academy, where i was introduced to some of the most distinguished artists; to mr. shee, the poet and author as well as painter; to mr. howard, the secretary of the academy; to mr. hilton, the keeper; to mr. stothard, the librarian; and several others. i expected to have met and been introduced to sir thomas lawrence, the president, but he was absent, and i have not had the pleasure of seeing him. i was invited to a seat with the academicians, as was also mr. cole, a member of our academy in new york. i was gratified in seeing america so well represented in the painters leslie and newton. the lecturer also paid, in his lecture, a high compliment to allston by a deserved panegyric, and by several quotations from his poems, illustrative of principles which he advanced. "after the lecture i went home to tea with newton, accompanied by leslie, where i found our distinguished countryman, washington irving, our secretary of legation, and w.e. west, another american painter, whose portrait of lord byron gave him much celebrity. i passed a very pleasant evening, of course. "the next day i visited the national gallery of pictures, as yet but small, but containing some of the finest pictures in england. among them is the celebrated 'raising of lazarus' by sebastian del piombo, for which a nobleman of this country offered to the late proprietor sixteen thousand pounds sterling, which sum was refused. i visited also mr. turner, the best landscape painter living, and was introduced to him.... "i did not see so much of london or its curiosities as i should have done at another season of the year. the greater part of the time was night-- literally night; for, besides being the shortest days of the year (it not being light until eight o'clock and dark again at four), the smoke and fog have been most of the time so dense that darkness has for many days occupied the hours of daylight.... "on the d inst., tuesday, i left london, after having obtained in due form my passports, for the continent, in company with j. town, esq., and n. jocelyn, esq., american friends, intending to pass the night at canterbury, thirty-six miles from london. the day was very unpleasant, very cold, and snowing most of the time. at blackheath we saw the palace in which the late unfortunate queen of george iv resided. on the heath among the bushes is a low furze with which it is in part covered. there were encamped in their miserable blanket huts a gang of gypsies. no wigwams of the oneidas ever looked so comfortless. on the road we overtook a gypsy girl with a child in her arms, both having the stamp of that singular race strongly marked upon their features; black hair and sparkling black eyes, with a nut-brown complexion and cheeks of russet red, and not without a shrewd intelligence in their expression. "at about nine o'clock we arrived at the guildhall tavern in the celebrated and ancient city of canterbury. early in the morning, as soon as we had breakfasted, we visited the superb cathedral. this stupendous pile is one of the most distinguished gothic structures in the world. it is not only interesting from its imposing style of architecture, but from its numerous historical associations. the first glimpse we caught of it was through and over a rich, decayed gateway to the enclosure of the cathedral grounds. after passing the gate the vast pile--with its three great towers and innumerable turrets, and pinnacles, and buttresses, and arches, and painted windows--rose in majesty before us. the grand centre tower, covered with a grey moss, seemed like an immense mass of the palisades, struck out with all its regular irregularity, and placed above the surrounding masses of the same grey rocks. the bell of the great tower was tolling for morning service, and yet so distant, from its height, that it was scarcely heard upon the pavement below. "we entered the door of one of the towers and came immediately into the nave of the church. the effect of the long aisles and towering, clustered pillars and richly carved screens of a gothic church upon the imagination can scarcely be described--the emotion is that of awe. "a short procession was quickly passing up the steps of the choir, consisting of the beadle, or some such officer, with his wand of office, followed by ten boys in white surplices. behind these were the prebendaries and other officers of the church; one thin and pale, another portly and round, with powdered hair and sleepy, dull, heavy expression of face, much like the face that hogarth has chosen for the 'preacher to his sleepy congregation.' this personage we afterward heard was lord nelson, the brother of the celebrated nelson and the heir to his title. "the service was read in a hurried and commonplace manner to about thirty individuals, most of whom seemed to be the necessary assistants at the ceremonies. the effect of the voices in the responses and the chanting of the boys, reverberating through the aisles and arches and recesses of the church, was peculiarly imposing, but, when the great organ struck in, the emotion of grandeur was carried to its height,--i say nothing of devotion. i did not pretend on this occasion to join in it; i own that my thoughts as well as my eyes were roaming to other objects, and gathering around me the thousand recollections of scenic splendor, of terror, of bigotry, and superstition which were acted in sight of the very walls by which i was surrounded. here the murder of thomas à becket was perpetrated; there was his miracle-working shrine, visited by pilgrims from all parts of christendom, and enriched with the most costly jewels that the wealth of princes could purchase and lavish upon it; the very steps, worn into deep cavities by the knees of the devotees as they approached the shrine, were ascended by us. there stood the tomb of henry iv and his queen; and here was the tomb of edward, the black prince, with a bronze figure of the prince, richly embossed and enamelled, reclining upon the top, and over the canopy were suspended the surcoat and casque, the gloves of mail and shield, with which he was accoutred when he fought the famous battle of crécy. there also stood the marble chair in which the saxon kings were crowned, and in which, with the natural desire that all seemed to have in such cases, i could not avoid seating myself. from this chair, placed at one end of the nave, is seen to best advantage the length of the church, five hundred feet in extent. "after the service i visited more at leisure the tombs and other curiosities of the church. the precise spot on which archbishop becket was murdered is shown, but the spot on which his head fell on the pavement was cut out as a relic and sent to rome, and the place filled in with a fresh piece of stone, about five inches square.... "in the afternoon we left canterbury and proceeded to dover, intending to embark the next morning (thursday, december ) for calais or boulogne in the steamer. the weather, however, was very unpromising in the morning, being thick and foggy and apparently preparing for a storm. we therefore made up our minds to stay, hoping the next day would be more favorable; but friday, christmas day, came with a most violent northeast gale and snowstorm. saturday the th, sunday the th, and, at this moment, monday the th, the storm is more violent than ever, the streets are clogged with snow, and we are thus embargoed completely for we know not how long a time to come. "notwithstanding the severity of the weather on thursday, we all ventured out through the wind and snow to visit dover castle, situated upon the bleak cliffs to the north of the town.... "the castle, with its various towers and walls and outworks, has been the constant care of the government for ages. here are the remains of every age from the time of the romans to the present. about the centre of the enclosure stand two ancient ruins, the one a tower built by the romans, thirty-six years after christ, and the other a rude church built by the saxons in the sixth century. other remains of towers and walls indicate the various kinds of defensive and offensive war in different ages, from the time when the round or square tower, with its loopholes for the archers and crossbowmen, and gates secured by heavy portcullis, were a substantial defence, down to the present time, when the bastion of regular sides advances from the glacis, mounted with modern ordnance, keeping at a greater distance the hostile besiegers. "through the glacis in various parts are sally-ports, from one of which, opening towards the road to ramsgate, i well remember seeing a corporal's guard issue, about fifteen years ago, to take possession of me and my sketch-book, as i sat under a hedge at some distance to sketch the picturesque towers of this castle. somewhat suspicious of their intentions, i left my retreat, and, by a circuitous route into the town, made my escape; not, however, without ascertaining from behind a distant hedge that i was actually the object of their expedition. they went to the spot where i had been sitting, made a short search, and then returned to the castle through the same sally-port. "at that time (a time of war not only with france but america also) the strictest watch was kept, and to have been caught making the slightest sketch of a fortification would have subjected me to much trouble. times are now changed, and had jack frost (the only commander of rigor now at the castle) permitted, i might have sketched any part of the interior or exterior." "_boulogne-sur-mer, france, december , ._ this morning at ten o'clock, after our tedious detention, we embarked from dover in a steamer for this place instead of calais. i mentioned the steamer, but, cousin, if you have formed any idea of elegance, or comfort, or speed in connection with the name of steamer from seeing our fine steamboats, and have imagined that english or french boats are superior to ours, you may as well be undeceived. i know of no description of packet-boats in our waters bad enough to convey the idea. they are small, black, dirty, confined things, which would be suffered to rot at the wharves for want of the least custom from the lowest in our country. you may judge of the extent of the accommodations when i tell you that there is in them but one cabin, six feet six inches high, fourteen feet long, eleven feet wide, containing eight berths. "our passage was, fortunately, short, and we arrived in the dominions of 'his most christian majesty' charles x at five o'clock. the transition from a country where one's own language is spoken to one where the accents are strange; from a country where the manners and habits are somewhat allied to our own to one where everything is different, even to the most trifling article of dress, is very striking on landing after so short an interval from england to france. "the pier-head at our landing was filled with human beings in strange costume, from the grey _surtout_ and belt of the _gendarmes_ to the broad twilled and curiously plaited caps of the masculine women; which latter beings, by the way, are the licensed porters of baggage to the custom-house." "_paris, january , ._ here have i been in this great capital of the continent since the first day of the year. i shall remember my first visit to paris from the circumstance that, at the dawn of the day of the new year, we passed the porte saint-denis into the narrow and dirty streets of the great metropolis. "the louvre was the first object we visited. our passports obtained us ready admittance, and, although our fingers and feet were almost frozen, we yet lingered three hours in the grand gallery of pictures. indeed, it is a long walk simply to pass up and down the long hall, the end of which from the opposite end is scarcely visible, but is lost in the mist of distance. on the walls are twelve hundred and fifty of some of the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of painting. here i have marked out several which i shall copy on my return from italy. "i have my residence at present at the hôtel de lille, which is situated very conveniently in the midst of all the most interesting objects of curiosity to a stranger in paris,--the palace of the tuileries, the palais royal, the bibliothèque royale, or royal library, and numerous other places, all within a few paces of us. on new year's day the equipages of the nobility and foreign ambassadors, etc., who paid their respects to the king and the duke of orléans, made considerable display in the place du carrousel and in the court of the tuileries. "at an exhibition of manufactures of porcelain, tapestry, etc., in the louvre, where were some of the most superb specimens of art in the world in these articles, we also saw the duchesse de berri. she is the mother of the little duc de bordeaux, who, you know, is the heir apparent to the crown of france. she was simply habited in a blue pelisse and blue bonnet, and would not be distinguished in her appearance from the crowd except by her attendants in livery. "i cannot close, however, without telling you what a delightful evening i passed evening before last at general lafayette's. he had a soirée on that night at which there were a number of americans. when i went in he instantly recognized me; took me by both hands; said he was expecting to see me in france, having read in the american papers that i had embarked. he met me apparently with great cordiality, then introduced me to each of his family, to his daughters, to madame lasterie and her two daughters (very pretty girls) and to madame rémusat,[ ] and two daughters of his son, g.w. lafayette, also very accomplished and beautiful girls. the general inquired how long i intended to stay in france, and pressed me to come and pass some time at la grange when i returned from italy. general lafayette looks very well and seems to have the respect of all the best men in france. at his soirée i saw the celebrated benjamin constant, one of the most distinguished of the liberal party in france. he is tall and thin with a very fair, white complexion, and long white, silken hair, moving with all the vigor of a young man." [footnote : this was not, of course, the famous madame de rémusat; probably her daughter-in-law.] in a letter to his brothers written on the same day, january th, he says:-- "if i went no farther and should now return, what i have already seen and studied would be worth to me all the trouble and expense thus far incurred. i am more and more satisfied that my expedition was wisely planned. "you cannot conceive how the cold is felt in paris, and, indeed, in all france. not that their climate is so intensely cold as ours, but their provision against the cold is so bad. fuel is excessively high; their fireplaces constructed on the worst possible plan, looking like great ovens dug four or five feet into the wall, wasting a vast deal of heat; and then the doors and windows are far from tight; so that, altogether, paris in winter is not the most comfortable place in the world. "mr. town and i, and probably mr. jocelyn, set out for italy on monday by the way of chalons-sur-saone, lyons, avignon, and nice. i long to get to rome and naples that i may commence to paint in a warm climate, and so keep warm weather with me to france again.... "i don't know what to do about writing letters for the 'journal of commerce.' i fear it will consume more of my time than the thing is worth, and will be such a hindrance to my professional studies that i must, on the whole, give up the thought of it. my time here is worth a guinea a minute in the way of my profession. i could undoubtedly write some interesting letters for them, but i do not feel the same ease in writing for the public that i do in writing to a friend, and, in correcting my language for the press, i feel that it is going to consume more of my time than i can spare. i will write if i can, but they must not expect it, for i find my pen and pencil are enemies to each other. i must write less and paint more. my advantages for study never appeared so great, and i never felt so ardent a desire to improve them." morse spent about two weeks in paris visiting churches, picture galleries, palaces, and other show places. he finds the giraffe or camelopard the most interesting animal at the jardin des plantes, and he dislikes a ceiling painted by gros: "it is allegorical, which is a class of painting i detest." he deplores the continental sunday: "oh! that we appreciated in america the value of our sabbath; a sabbath of rest from labor; a sabbath of moral and religious instruction; a sabbath the greatest barrier to those floods of immorality which have in times past deluged this devoted country in blood, and will again do it unless the sabbath gains its ascendancy once more." from an undated and unfinished draft of a letter to his cousin, mrs. roby, we learn something of his journey from paris to rome, or rather of the first part of it:-- "i wrote you from paris giving you an account of my travels to that city, and i now improve the first moments of leisure since to continue my journal. after getting our passports signed by at least half a dozen ambassadors preparatory to our long journey, we left paris on wednesday, january , at eight o'clock, for dijon, in the diligence. the weather was very cold, and we travelled through a very uninteresting country. it seemed like a frozen ocean, the road being over an immense plain unbroken by trees or fences. "we stopped a few moments at melun, at joigny and tonnerre, which latter place was quite pretty with a fine-looking gothic church. we found the villages from paris thus far much neater and in better style than those on the road from boulogne. "our company consisted of mr. town, of new york, mr. jocelyn, of new haven, a very pretty frenchwoman, and myself. the frenchwoman was quite a character; she could not talk english nor could we talk french, and yet we were talking all the time, and were able to understand and be understood. "at four o'clock the next morning we _dined!!_ at montbar, which place we entered after much detention by the snow. it was so deep that we were repeatedly stopped for some time. at a picturesque little village, called val de luzon, where we changed horses, the country began to assume a different character. it now became mountainous, and, had the season been propitious, many beautiful scenes for the pencil would have presented themselves. as it was, the forms of the mountains and the deep valleys, with villages snugly situated at the bottom, were grateful to the eye amidst the white shroud which everywhere covered the landscape. we could but now and then catch a glimpse of the scenery through our coach window by thawing a place in the thickly covered glass, which was so plated with the arborescent frost as not to yield to the warmth of the sun at midday. "we arrived at dijon at nine o'clock on saturday evening, after three days and two nights of fatiguing riding. the diligence is, on the whole, a comfortable carriage for travelling. i can scarcely give you any idea of its construction; it is so unlike in many respects to our stage-coach. it is three carriage-bodies together upon one set of wheels. the forward part is called the _coupé_, which holds but three persons, and, from having windows in front so that the country is seen as you travel, is the most expensive. the middle carriage is the largest, capable of holding six persons, and is called the _intérieur_. the other, called the _derrière_, is the cheapest, but is generally filled with low people. the _intérieur_ is so large and so well cushioned that it is easy to sleep in it ordinarily, and, had it not been for the sudden stops occasioned by the clogging of the wheels in the snow, we should have had very good rest; but the discordant music made by the wheels as they ground the frozen snow, sounding like innumerable instruments, mostly discordant, but now and then concordant, prevented our sound sleep. "the cold we found as severe as any i have usually experienced in america. the snow is as deep upon the hills, being piled up on each side of the road five or six feet high. the water in our pitchers froze by the fireside, and the glass on the windows, even in rooms comfortably warmed, was encrusted with arborescent frost. the floors, too, of all the rooms are paved with bricks or tiles, and, although comfortable in summer, are far from desirable in such a winter. "at dijon we stopped over the sabbath, for the double purpose of avoiding travelling on that day and from really needing a day of rest. on sunday morning we enquired of our landlord, mons. ripart, of the hôtel du parc, for a protestant church, and were informed that there was not any in the place. we learned, however, afterwards that there was one, but too late to profit by the information. we walked out in the cold to find some church, and, entering a large, irregular gothic structure, much out of repair, we pressed towards the altar where the funeral service of the catholic church was performing over a corpse which lay before it. the priests, seven or eight in number, were in the midst of their ceremonies. they had their hair shorn close in front, but left long behind and at the sides, and powdered, and, while walking, covered partially with a small, black, pyramidal velvet cap with a tuft at the top. while singing the service they held long, lighted wax tapers in their hands. there was much ceremony, but scarcely anything that was imposing; its heartlessness was so apparent, especially in the conduct of some of the assistants, that it seemed a solemn mockery. one in particular, who seemed to pride himself on the manner in which he vociferated 'amen,' was casting his eyes among the crowd, winking and laughing at various persons, and, from the extravagance of his manners, bawling out most irreverently and closing by laughing, i wondered that he was not perceived and rebuked by the priests. "as the procession left the church it was headed by an officer bearing a pontoon;[ ] then one bearing the silver crucifix; then eight or ten boys with lighted wax tapers by the side of the corpse; then followed the priests, six or eight in number, and then the relatives and friends of the deceased. at the grave the priests and assistants chanted a moment, the coffin was lowered, the earth thrown upon it, and then an elder priest muttered something over the grave, and, with an instrument consisting of a silver ball with a small handle, made the sign of the cross over the body, which ceremony was repeated by each one in the procession, to whom in succession the instrument was handed. [footnote : this must be a mistake.] "there were, indeed, two or three real mourners. one young man in particular, to whom the female might have been related as wife or sister, showed all the signs of heartfelt grief. it did not break out into extravagant gesture or loud cries, but the tears, as they flowed down his manly face, seemed to be forced out by the agony within, which he in vain endeavored to suppress. the struggle to restrain them was manifest, and, as he made the sign of the cross at the grave in his turn, the feebleness with which he performed the ceremony showed that the anguish of his heart had almost overcome his physical strength. i longed to speak to him and to sympathize with him, but my ignorance of the language of his country locked me out from any such purpose.... "accustomed to the proper and orderly manner of keeping the sabbath so universal in our country, there are many things that will strike an american not only as singular but disgusting. while in paris we found it to be customary, not only on week days but also on the sabbath, to have musicians introduced towards the close of dinner, who play and sing all kinds of songs. we supposed that this custom was a peculiarity of the capital, but this day after dinner a hand-organ played waltzes and songs, and, as if this were not enough, a performer on the guitar succeeded, playing songs, while two or three persons with long cards filled with specimens of natural history--lobsters, crabs, and shells of various kinds--were busy in displaying their handiwork to us, and each concluded his part of the ceremony by presenting a little cup for a contribution." the letter ends here, and, as i have found but few more of that year, we must depend on his hurriedly written notebooks for a further record of his wanderings. leaving dijon on january , morse and his companions continued their journey through châlons-sur-saone, to macon and lyons, which they reached late at night. the next two days were spent in viewing the sights of lyons, which are described at length in his journal. most of these notes i shall omit. descriptions of places and of scenery are generally tiresome, except to the authors of them, and i shall transcribe only such portions as have a more than ordinary personal or historic interest. for instance the following entry is characteristic of morse's simple religious faith:-- "from the musee we went to the hôtel dieu, a hospital on a magnificent and liberal scale. the apartments for the sick were commodiously and neatly arranged. in one of them were two hundred and twelve cots, all of which showed a pale or fevered face upon the pillow. the attendants were women called 'sisters of charity,' who have a peculiar costume. these are benevolent women who (some of them of rank and wealth) devote themselves to ministering to the comfort and necessities of the wretched. "benevolence is a trait peculiarly feminine. it is seen among women in all countries and all religions, and although true religion sets out this jewel in the greatest beauty, yet superstition and false religions cannot entirely destroy its lustre. it seems to be one of those virtues permitted in a special manner by the father of all good to survive the ruins of sin on earth, and to withstand the attacks of satan in his attempts on the happiness of man; and to woman in a marked manner he has confided the keeping of this virtue. she was first in the transgression but last at the cross." leaving lyons at four o'clock on the morning of the d, they journeyed slowly towards avignon, delayed by the condition of the roads covered by an unusual fall of snow which was now melting under the breath of a warm breeze from the south. on the way they pass "between the two hills a telegraph making signals." this was, of course, a semaphore by means of which visual signals were made. reaching avignon on the night of the d, they went the next day, which was sunday, in search of a protestant church, but none was to be found in this ancient city of the popes, so they followed a fine military band to the church of st. agricola and attended the services there, the band participating and making most glorious music. morse, with his puritan background and training, was not much edified by the ritual of the catholic church, and, after describing it, he adds:-- "i looked around the church to ascertain what was the effect upon the multitude assembled. the females, kneeling in their chairs, many with their prayer-books reading during the whole ceremony, seemed part of the time engaged in devotional exercises. far be it from me to say there were not some who were actually devout, hard as it is to conceive of such a thing; but this i will say, that everything around them, instead of aiding devotion, was calculated entirely to destroy it. the imagination was addressed by every avenue; music and painting pressed into the service of--not religion but the contrary--led the mind away from the contemplation of all that is practical in religion to the charms of mere sense. no instruction was imparted; none seems ever to be intended. what but ignorance can be expected when such a system prevails?... "last evening we were delighted with some exquisite sacred music, sung apparently by men's voices only, and slowly passing under our windows. the whole effect was enchanting; the various parts were so harmoniously adapted and the taste with which these unknown minstrels strengthened and softened their tones gave us, with the recollection of the music at the church, which we had heard in the morning, a high idea of the musical talent of this part of the world. we have observed more beautiful faces among the women in a single day in avignon than during the two weeks we were in paris." after a three days' rest in avignon, visiting the palace of the popes and other objects of interest, and being quite charmed with the city as a whole and with the hôtel de l'europe in particular, the little party left for marseilles by way of aix. the air grows balmier as they near the mediterranean, and they are delighted with the vineyards and the olive groves. the first sight of the blue sea and of the beautiful harbor of marseilles rouses the enthusiasm of the artist, and some days are spent in exploring the city. the journal continues:-- "_thursday, january ._ took our seats in the malle poste for toulon and experienced one of those vexations in delay which travellers must expect sometimes to find. we had been told by the officer that we must be ready to go at one o'clock. we were, of course, ready at that time, but not only were we not called at one, but we waited in suspense until six o'clock in the evening before we were called, and before we left the city it was seven o'clock; thus consuming a half-day of daylight which we had promised ourselves to see the scenery, and bringing all our travelling in the night, which we wished specially to avoid. besides this, we found ourselves in a little, miserable, jolting vehicle that did not, like the diligence, suffer us to sleep. "thus we left marseilles, pursuing our way through what seemed to us a wild country, with many a dark ravine on our roadside and impending cliffs above us; a safe resort for bandits to annoy the traveller if they felt disposed." at toulon they visited the arsenal and navy yard. "we saw many ships of all classes in various states of equipment, and every indication, from the activity which pervaded every department, that great attention is paying by the french to their marine. their ships have not the neatness of ours; there seems to be a great deal of ornament, and such as i should suppose was worse than useless in a ship of war. "we noticed the galley slaves at work; they had a peculiar dress to mark them. they were dressed in red frocks with the letters 'g a l' stamped on each side of the back, as they were also on their pantaloons. the worst sort, those who had committed murder, had been shipped lately to brest. those who had been convicted twice had on a green cap; those who were ordinary criminals had on a red cap; and those who were least criminal, a blue cap. "a great mortality was prevailing among them. there are about five hundred at this place, and i was told by the sentinel that twenty-two had been buried yesterday. three bodies were carried out whilst we were in the yard. we, of course, did not linger in the vicinity of the hospitals.... "on saturday, january , we left toulon in a _voiture_ or private carriage, the public conveyances towards italy being now uncertain, inconvenient, and expensive. there were five of us and we made an agreement in writing with a _vetturino_ to carry us to nice, the first city in italy, for twenty-seven francs each, the same as the fare in the diligence, to which place he agreed to take us in two days and a half. of course necessity obliges us in this instance to travel on the sabbath, which we tried every means in our power to avoid. "at twelve we stopped at the village of cuers, an obscure, dirty place, and stopped at an inn called 'la croix d'or' for breakfast. we here met with the first gross imposition in charges that occurred to us in france. our _déjeuner_ for five consisted of three cups of miserable coffee, without milk or butter; a piece of beef stewed with olives for two; mutton chops for five; eggs for five; some cheese, and a meagre dessert of raisins, hazel nuts, and olives, with a bottle of sour _vin ordinaire;_ and for this we were charged fifteen francs, or three francs each, while at the best hotels in paris, and in all the cities through which we passed, we had double the quantity of fare, and of the best kind, for two francs and sometimes for one and one half francs. all parleying with the extortionate landlord had only the effect of making him more positive and even insolent; and when we at last threw him the money to avoid further detention, he told us to mark his house, and, with the face of a demon, told us we should never enter his house again. we can easily bear our punishment. as we resumed our journey we were saluted with a shower of stones." the journal continues and tells of the slow progress along the riviera, through cannes, which was then but an unimportant village; nice, at that time belonging to italy, and where they saw in the cathedral charles felix, king of sardinia. it took them many days to climb up and down the rugged road over the mountains, while now the traveller is whisked under and around the same mountains in a few hours. "at eleven we had attained a height of at least two thousand feet and the precipices became frightful, sweeping down into long ravines to the very edge of the sea; and then the road would wind at the edge of the precipice two or three thousand feet deep. such scenes pass so rapidly it is impossible to make note of them. "from the heights on which la turbia stands, with its dilapidated walls, we see the beautiful city of monaco, on a tongue of land extending into the sea." the great gambling establishment of monte carlo did not invade this beautiful spot until many years later, in . the travellers stopped for a few hours at mentone,--"a beautiful place for an artist,"--passed the night at san remo, and, sauntering thus leisurely along the beautiful riviera, arrived in genoa on the th of february. [illustration: jeremiah evarts from a portrait painted by morse owned by sherman evarts, esq.] chapter xvi february , --june , serra palace in genoa.--starts for rome.--rain in the mountains.--a brigand.--carrara.--first mention of a railroad.--pisa.--the leaning tower.--rome at last.--begins copying at once.--notebooks.--ceremonies at the vatican.--pope pius viii.--academy of st. luke's.--st peter's.-- chiesa nuova.--painting at the vatican.--beggar monks.--fata of the annunciation.--soirée at palazzo simbaldi.--passion sunday.--horace vernet.--lying in state of a cardinal.--_miserere_ at sistine chapel.-- holy thursday at st peter's.--third cardinal dies.--meets thorwaldsen at signor persianis's.--manners of english, french, and americans.--landi's pictures.--funeral of a young girl.--trip to tivoli, subiaco.--procession of the _corpus domini._--disagreeable experience. the enthusiastic artist was now in italy, the land of his dreams, and his notebooks are filled with short comments or longer descriptions of churches, palaces, and pictures in genoa and in the other towns through which he passed on his way to rome, or with pen-pictures of the wild country through which he and his fellow travellers journeyed. in genoa, where he stopped several days, he was delighted with the palaces and churches, and yet he found material for criticism:-- "the next place of interest was the serra palace, now inhabited by one of that family, who, we understood, was insane. after stopping a moment in the anteroom, the ceiling of which is painted in fresco by somnio, we were ushered into the room called the most splendid in europe, and, if carving and gilding and mirrors and chandeliers and costly colors can make a splendid room, this is certainly that room. the chandeliers and mirrored sides are so arranged as to create the illusion that the room is of indefinite extent. to me it appeared, on the whole, tawdry, seeing it in broad daylight. in the evening, when the chandeliers are lighted, i have no doubt of its being a most gorgeous exhibition, but, like some showy belle dressed and painted for evening effect, the daylight turns her gold into tinsel and her bloom into rouge. "after having stayed nearly four days in genoa, and after having made arrangements with our honest _vetturino_, dominique, to take us to rome, stopping at various places on the way long enough to see them, we retired late to bed to prepare for our journey in the morning. "on wednesday morning, february , we rose at five o'clock, and, after breakfast of coffee, etc., we set out at six on our journey towards rome." i shall not follow them every step of the way, but shall select only the more personal entries in the diary. "a little after eleven o'clock we stopped at a single house upon a high hill overlooking the sea, to breakfast. it has the imposing title of 'locanda della gran bretagna.' we expected little and got less, and had a specimen of the bad faith of these people. we enquired the price of our _déjeuner_ before we ordered it, which is always necessary. we were told one franc each, but after our breakfast, we were told one and a half each, and no talking with the landlord would alter his determination to demand his price. there is no remedy for travellers; they must pay or be delayed. "at one o'clock we left this hole of a place, where we were more beset with beggars and spongers than at any place since we had been in italy." stopping overnight at sestri, they set out again on the th at five o'clock in the morning:-- "it was as dark as the moon, obscured by thick clouds, would allow it to be, and, as we left the courtyard of the inn, it began to rain violently. our road lay over precipitous mountains away from the shore, and the scenery became wild and grand. as the day dawned we found ourselves in the midst of stupendous mountains rising in cones from the valleys below. deep basins were formed at the bottom by the meeting of the long slopes; clouds were seen far below us, some wasting away as they sailed over the steeps, and some gathering denseness as they were detained by the cold, snowy peaks which shot up beyond. now and then a winding stream glittered at the bottom of some deep ravine amidst the darkness around it, and occasionally a light from the cottage of some peasant glimmered like a star through the clouds. "as we labored up the steep ascent little brawling cascades without number, from the heights far above us, in milky streams, gathering power from innumerable rills, dashed at our feet, and, passing down through the artificial passages beneath the road, swept down into the valleys in torrents, and swelling the rivers, whose broad beds were seen through the openings, rushed with irresistible power to the sea. "we found, from the violence of the storm, that the road was heavy and much injured in some parts by the washing down of rocks from the heights. some of great size lay at the sides recently thrown down, and now and then one of some hundred pounds' weight was found in the middle of the road. "we continued to ascend about four hours until we came again from a region of summer into the region of snow, and the height from the sea was greater than we had at any time previously attained. the scenery around us, too, was wilder and more sterile. the apennines here are very grand, assuming every variety of shape and color. long slopes of clay color were interlocked with dark browns sprinkled with golden yellow; slate blue and grey, mixed with greens and purples, and the pure, deep ultramarine blue of distant peaks finished the background." after breakfasting at borghetto at a miserable inn, where they were much annoyed by beggars of all descriptions, they continued their journey through much the same character of country for the rest of the day, and towards dark they met with a slight adventure:-- "our road was down a steep declivity winding much in the same way as at finale. precipices were at the side without a protecting barrier, and we felt some uneasiness at our situation, which was not decreased by suddenly finding our coach stopped and a man on horseback (or rather muleback) stopping by the side of the coach. it was but for a moment; our _vetturino_ authoritatively ordered him to pass on, which he did with a _'buona sera_,' and we never parted with a companion more gladly. from all the circumstances attending it we were inclined to believe that he had some design upon us, but, finding us so numerous, thought it best not to run the risk." spezia was their resting-place for that night, and, after an early start the next morning, they reached the banks of the vara at nine o'clock. "we had a singular time in passing the river in a boat. many women of the lower orders crossed at the same time. the boat being unable to approach the shore, we were obliged to ride papoose-back upon the shoulders of the brawny watermen for some little distance; but what amused us much was the perfect _sang-froid_ with which the women, with their bare legs, held up their clothes above the knees and waded to the boat before us.... "at half-past twelve we came in sight of carrara. this place we went out of our course to see, and at one o'clock entered the celebrated village, prettily situated in a valley at the base of stupendous mountains. a deep ravine above the village contains the principal quarries of most exquisite marbles for which this place has for so many ages been famous. the clouds obscuring the highest peaks, and ascending from the valleys like smoke from the craters of many volcanoes, gave additional grandeur to a scene by nature so grand in itself. "after stopping at the hôtel de nouvelle paros, which we found a miserable inn with bad wine, scanty fare and high charges, we took a hasty breakfast, and procuring a guide we walked out to see the curiosities of the place. it rained hard and the road was excessively bad, sometimes almost ankle-deep in mud. notwithstanding the forbidding weather and bad road, we labored up the deep ravine on the sides of which the excavations are made. dark peaks frowned above us capped with clouds and snow; white patches midway the sides showed the veins of the marble, and immense heaps of detritus, the accumulation of ages, mountains themselves, sloped down on each side like masses of piled ice to the very edge of the road. the road itself, white with the material of which it is made, was composed of loose pieces of the white marble of every size.... continuing the ascent by the side of a milky stream, which rushed down its rocky bed, and which here and there was diverted off into aqueducts to the various mills, we were pointed to the top of a high hill by the roadside where was the entrance to a celebrated grotto, and at the base close by, a cavern protected a beautiful, clear, crystal fountain, which gushed from up the bottom forming a liquid, transparent floor, and then glided to mingle its pure, unsullied waters with the cloudy stream that rushed by it. "climbing over piles of rock like refined sugar and passing several wagons carrying heavy blocks down the road, we arrived at the mouth of the principal quarry where the purest statuary marble is obtained. i could not but think how many exquisite statues here lay entombed for ages, till genius, at various times, called them from their slumbers and bid them live.... "on our return we again passed the wagons laden with blocks, and mules with slabs on each side sometimes like the roof of a house over the mule.... the wagons and oxen deserve notice. the former are very badly constructed; they are strong, but the wheels are small, in diameter about two feet and but about three inches wide, so sharp that the roads must suffer from them. the oxen are small and, without exception, mouse-colored. the driver, and there is usually one to each pair, sits on the yoke between them, and, like the oarsman of a boat, with his back towards the point towards which he is going. two huge blocks were chained upon one of these wagons, and behind, dragging upon the ground by a chain, was another. three yoke of these small oxen, apparently without fatigue, drew the load thus constructed over this wretched road. an enterprising company of americans or english, by the construction of a railroad, which is more practicable than a canal, but which latter might be constructed, would, i should think, give great activity to the operations here and make it very profitable to themselves." it is rather curious to note that this is the first mention of a railroad made by morse in his notes or letters, although he was evidently aware of the experiments which were being made at that time both in europe and america, and these must have been of great interest to him. it is also well to bear in mind that the great development of transportation by rail could not occur until the invention of the telegraph had made it possible to send signals ahead, and, in other ways, to control the movement of traffic. at the present day the railroad at carrara, which morse saw in his visions of the future, has been built, but the ox teams are also still used, and linger as a reminder of more primitive days. continuing their journey, the travellers spent the night at lucca, and in the morning explored the town, which they found most interesting as well as neat and clean. leaving lucca, "with much reluctance," on the th, the journal continues:-- "at half-past five, at sunset, pisa with its leaning tower (the _duomo_ of the cathedral and that of the baptistery being the principal objects in the view), was seen across the plain before us. towards the west was a long line of horizon, unbroken, except here and there by a low-roofed tower or the little pyramidal spire of a village church. to the southeast the plain stretched away to the base of distant blue mountains, and to the east and the north the rude peaks through which we had travelled, their cold tops tinged with a warmer glow, glittered beyond the deep brown slopes, which were more advanced and confining the plain to narrower limits." they found the hôtel royal de l'hussar an excellent inn, and, the next day being sunday, they attended an english service and heard an excellent sermon by the reverend mr. ford, an englishman. "in the evening we walked to the famous leaning tower, the cathedral, the baptistery, and campo santo, which are clustered together in the northern part of the city. in going there we went some distance along the quay, which was filled with carriages and pedestrians, among whom were many masques and fancy dresses of the most grotesque kind. it is the season of carnival, and all these fooleries are permitted at this time. we merely glanced at the exterior of the celebrated buildings, leaving till to-morrow a more thorough examination." "_monday, february ._ we rose early and went again to the leaning tower and its associated buildings. the tower, which is the _campanile_ of the cathedral and is about one hundred and ninety feet high, leans from its perpendicular thirteen feet. we ascended to the top by a winding staircase. one ascending feels the inclination every step he takes, and, when he reaches the top and perceives that that which should be horizontal is an inclined plane, the sensation is truly startling. it is difficult to persuade one's self that the tower is not actually falling, and i could not but imagine at intervals that it moved, reasoning myself momentarily into security from the fact that it had thus stood for ages. i could not but recur also to the fact that once it stood upright; that, although ages had been passed in assuming its present inclination to the earth, the time would probably come when it would actually fall, and the idea would suggest itself with appalling force that that time might be now. the reflection suggested by one of our company that it would be a glorious death, for one thus perishing would be sure of an imperishable name, however pleasing in romantic speculation, had no great power to dispel the shrinking fear produced by the vivid thought of the possibility when on the top of the tower.... the _campanile_ is not the only leaning tower in pisa. we observed that several varied from the perpendicular, and the sides of many of the buildings, even parts of the cathedral and the baptistery, inclined at a considerable angle. the soil is evidently unfavorable to the erection of high, heavy buildings." after a side trip to leghorn and further loitering along the way, stopping but a short time in florence, which he purposed to visit and study at his leisure later on, he saw, at nine o'clock on the morning of february , the dome of st. peter's in the distance, and, at two o'clock he and his companions entered rome through the porta del popolo. taking lodgings at no. via de prefetti, he spent the first few days in a cursory examination of the treasures by which he was surrounded, but he was eager to begin at once the work for which he had received commissions, and on march he writes home:-- "i have begun to copy the 'school of athens' from raphael for mr. r. donaldson. the original is on the walls of one of the celebrated camera of raphael in the vatican. it is in fresco and occupies one entire side of the room. it is a difficult picture to copy and will occupy five or six weeks certainly. every moment of my time, from early in the morning until late at night, when not in the vatican, is occupied in seeing the exhaustless stores of curiosities in art and antiquities with which this wonderful city abounds. "i find i can endure great fatigue, and my spirits are good, and i feel strong for the pleasant duties of my profession. i feel particularly anxious that every gentleman who has given me a commission shall be more than satisfied that he has received an equivalent for the sum generously advanced to me. but i find that, to accomplish this, i shall need all my strength and time for more than a year to come, and that will be little enough to do myself and them justice. i am delighted with my situation and more than ever convinced of the wisdom of my course in coming to italy." morse's little notebooks and sketch-books are filled with short, abrupt notes on the paintings, religious ceremonies, and other objects of interest by which he is surrounded, but sometimes he goes more into detail. i shall select from these voluminous notes only those which seem to me to be of the greatest interest. "_march ._ mr. fenimore cooper and family are here. i have passed many pleasant hours with them, particularly one beautiful moonlight evening visiting the coliseum. after the holy week i shall visit naples, probably with mr. theodore woolsey, who is now in rome. "_march ._ ceremonies at the consistory; delivery of the cardinals' hats. at nine o'clock went to the vatican; two large fantails with ostrich feathers; ladies penned up; pope; cardinals kiss his hand in rotation; address in latin, tinkling, like water gurgling from a bottle. the english cardinal first appeared, went up and was embraced and kissed on each cheek by the pope; then followed the others in the same manner; then each new cardinal embraced in succession all the other cardinals; after this, beginning with the english cardinal, each went to the pope, and he, putting on their heads the cardinal's hat, blessed them in the name of the trinity. they then kissed the ring on his hand and his toe and retired from the throne. the pope then rose, blessed the assembly by making the sign of the cross three times in the air with his two fingers, and left the room. his dress was a plain mitre of gold tissue, a rich, garment of gold and crimson, embroidered, a splendid clasp of gold, about six inches long by four wide, set with precious stones, upon his breast. he is very decrepit, limping or tottering along, has a defect in one eye, and his countenance has an expression of pain, especially as the new cardinals approached his toe.[ ] [footnote : this was pope pius viii.] "the cardinals followed the pope two and two with their train-bearers. after a few minutes the doors opened again and a procession, headed by singers, entered chanting as they went. the cardinals followed them with their train-bearers; they passed through the consistory, and thus closed the ceremony of presenting the cardinals' hats. "a multitude of attendants, in various costumes, surrounded the pontiff's throne during the ceremony, among whom was bishop dubois of new york.... "academy of st. luke's: raphael's skull; harlow's picture of the making of a cardinal; said to have been painted in twelve days; i don't believe it. 'the angels appearing to the shepherds,' by bassan--good for color; much trash in the way of portraits. lower rooms contain the pictures for the premiums; some good; all badly colored. third room: bas-reliefs for the premiums. fourth room: smaller premium pictures; bad. fifth room: drawings; the oldest best, modern bad. "_friday, march ._ we went to st. peter's to see the procession of cardinals singing in the capella. cardinals walked two and two through st. peter's, knelt on purple velvet cushions before the capella in prayer, then successively kissed the toe of the bronze image of st. peter as they walked past it. "this statue of st. peter, as a work of art, is as execrable as possible. part of the toe and foot is worn away and polished, not by the kisses, but by the wiping of the foot after the kisses by the next comer preparatory to kissing it; sometimes with the coat-sleeve by a beggar; with the corner of the cloak by the gentlemen; the shawl by the females; and with a nice cambric handkerchief by the attendant at the ceremony, who wiped the toe after each cardinal's performance. this ceremony is variously performed. some give it a single kiss and go away; others kiss the toe and then touch the forehead to it and kiss the toe again, repeating the operation three times." the ceremonies and ritual of the roman catholic church, while appealing to the eye of the artist, were repugnant to his puritan upbringing, and we find many scornful remarks among his notes. in fact he was, all his life, bitterly opposed to the doctrines of rome, and in later years, as we shall see, he entered into a heated controversy with a prominent ecclesiastic of that faith in america. "_march ._ chiesa nuova at seven o'clock in the evening; a sacred opera called 'the death of aaron.' church dark; women not admitted; bell rings and a priest before the altar chants a prayer, after which a boy, about twelve years old apparently, addresses the assembly from the pulpit. i know not the drift of his discourse, but his utterance was like the same gurgling process which i noticed in the orator who addressed the pope. it was precisely like the fitful tone of the oneida interpreter. "_tuesday, march ._ at the vatican all the morning. while preparing my palette a monk, decently habited for a monk, who seemed to have come to the vatican for the purpose of viewing the pictures, after a little time approached me and, with a very polite bow, offered me a pinch of snuff, which, of course, i took, bowing in return, when he instantly asked me alms. i gave him a _bajocco_ for which he seemed very grateful. truly this is a nation of beggars. "_wednesday, march ._ vatican all the morning. saw in returning a great number of priests with a white bag over the left shoulder and begging of the persons they met. this is another instance of begging and robbing confined to one class. "_thursday, march ._ _festa_ of the annunciation; vatican shut. doors open at eight of the chiesa di minerva; obtained a good place for seeing the ceremony. at half-past nine the cardinals began to assemble; cardinal barberini officiated in robes, white embroidered with gold; singing; taking off and putting on mitres, etc.; jumping up and bowing; kissing the ring on the finger of the cardinal; putting incense into censers; monotonous reading, or rather whining, of a few lines of prayer in latin; flirting censers at each cardinal in succession; cardinals bowing to one another; many attendants at the altar; cardinals embrace one another; after mass a contribution among the cardinals in rich silver plate. enter the virgins in white, with crowns, two and two, and candles; they kiss the hem of the garment of one of the cardinals; they are accompanied by three officers and exit. cardinals' dresses exquisitely plaited; sixty-two cardinals in attendance.... "palazzo simbaldi: at half-past eight the company began to assemble in the splendid saloon of this palace, to which i was invited. the singers, about forty in number, were upon a stage erected at the end of the room; white drapery hung behind festoons with laurel wreaths (the walls were painted in fresco). four female statues standing on globes upheld seven long wax-lights; the instrumental musicians, about forty, were arranged at the foot of these statues; _sala_ was lighted principally by six glass chandeliers; much female beauty in the room; dresses very various. "signora luigia tardi sang with much judgment and was received with great applause. a little girl, apparently about twelve years old, played upon the harp in a most exquisite manner, and called forth _bravas_ of the italians and of the foreigners bountifully. "the manners of the audience were the same as those of fashionable society in our own country, and indeed in any other country; the display in dress, however, less tasteful than i have seen in new york. but, in truth, i have not seen more beauty and taste in any country, combined with cultivation of mind and delicacy of manner, than in our own. at one o'clock in the morning, or half-past six italian time, the concert was over. "_saturday, march ._ on returning to dinner i found at the post-office, to my great joy, the first letter from america since i left it. "_sunday, march ._ passion sunday. kept awake nearly all last night by a severe toothache; sent for a dentist and had the tooth extracted, for which he had the conscience to ask me three dollars--he took two. was prevented by this circumstance from going to church this morning; went in the afternoon, and, after church, to st. peter's; found all the crosses covered with black and all the pictures veiled. there were a great many in the church to hear the music which is considered very fine; some of it i was well pleased with, but it is by no means so impressive as the singing of the nuns at the trinita di monti, to which church we repaired at vespers. "in st. peter's we found a procession of about forty nuns; some of them were very pretty and their neat white headdresses, and kerchiefs, and hair dressed plain, gave a pleasing simplicity to their countenances. some, looked arch enough and far from serious. "_monday, march ._ early this morning was introduced to the chevalier horace vernet, principal of the french academy; found him in the beautiful gardens of the academy. he came in a _négligé_ dress, a cap, or rather turban, of various colors, a parti-colored belt, and a cloak. he received me kindly, walked through the antique gallery of casts, a long room and a splendid collection selected with great judgment. "_wednesday, march ._ early this morning was waked by the roar of a cannon; learned that it was the anniversary of the present pope's election. went to the vatican; the colonnade was filled with the carriages of the cardinals; that of the new english cardinal, weld, was the most showy. "_thursday, april ._ went in the evening to the soirée of the chevalier vernet, director of the french academy. he is a gentleman of elegant manners and sees at his soirées the first society in rome. his wife is highly accomplished and his daughter is a beautiful girl, full of vivacity, and speaks english fluently.... during the evening there was music; his daughter played on the piano and others sang. there was chess, and, at a sideboard, a few played cards. the style was simple, every one at ease like our soirées in america. several noblemen and dignitaries of the church were present." on april , palm sunday, he attended the services at the sistine chapel, which he found rather tedious, with much mummery. going from there to the cancellerie he describes the following scene:-- "cardinal giulio maria della somaglia in state on an elevated bed of cloth-of-gold and black embroidered with gold, his head on a black velvet cushion embroidered with gold, dressed in his robes as when alive. he officiated, i was told, on ash wednesday. four wax-lights, two on each side of the bed; great throng of people of all grades through the suite of apartments--the cancellerie--in which he lived; they were very splendid, chiefly of crimson and gold. the cardinal has died unpopular, for he has left nothing to his servants by his will; he directed, however, that no expense should be spared in his funeral, wishing that it might be splendid, but, unfortunately for him, he has died precisely at that season of the year (the holy week) when alone it is impossible, according to the church customs, to give him a splendid burial." "_wednesday, april ._ went to the piazza navone, being market-day, in search of prints. the scene here is very amusing; the variety of wares exposed, and the confusion of noises and tongues, and now and then a jackass swelling the chorus with his most exquisite tones. "at three o'clock went to st. peter's to see ceremonies at the sistine chapel. cardinals asleep; monotonous bawling, long and tedious; candles put out one by one, fifteen in number; no ceremonies at the altar; cardinals present nineteen in number; seven yawns from the cardinals; tiresome and monotonous beyond description. "after three hours of this most tiresome chant, all the candles having been extinguished, the celebrated _miserere_ commenced. it is, indeed, sublime, but i think loses much of its effect from the fatigue of body, and mind, too, in which it is heard by the auditors. the _miserere_ is the composition of the celebrated allegri, and for giving the effect of wailing and lamentation, without injury to harmony, it is one of the most perfect of compositions. the manner of sustaining a strain of concord by new voices, now swelling high, now gradually dying away, now sliding imperceptibly into discord and suddenly breaking into harmony, is admirable. the imagination is alive and fancies thousands of people in the deepest contrition. it closed by the cardinals clapping their hands for the earthquake." on april (holy thursday), morse went early with mr. fenimore cooper and other americans to st. peter's. after describing some of the preliminary ceremonies he continues:-- "having examined the splendid chair in which he was to be borne, and while he was robing in another apartment, we found that, although we might have a complete view of the pope and the ceremonies before and after the benediction, yet the principal effect was to be seen below. we therefore left our place at the balcony, where we could see nothing but the crowd, and hastened below. on passing into the hall we were so fortunate as to be just in season for the procession from the sistine chapel to the pauline. the cardinals walked in procession, two and two, and one bore the host, while eight bearers held over him a rich canopy of silver tissue embroidered with gold. "thence we hastened to the front of st. peter's, where, in the centre upon the highest step, we had an excellent view of the balcony, and, turning round, could see the immense crowd which had assembled in the piazza and the splendid square of troops which were drawn up before the steps of the church. here i had scarcely time to make a hasty sketch, in the broiling sun, of the window and its decorations, before the precursors of the pope, the two large feather fans, made their appearance on each side of the balcony, which was decorated with crimson and gold, and immediately after the pope, with his mitre of gold tissue and his splendid robes of gold and jewels, was borne forward, relieving finely from the deep crimson darkness behind him. he made the usual sign of blessing, with his two fingers raised. a book was then held before him in which he read, with much motion of his head, for a minute. he then rose, extending both his arms--this was the benediction--while at the same moment the soldiers and crowd all knelt; the cannon from the castle of st. angelo was discharged, and the bells in all the churches rang a simultaneous peal. "the effect was exceedingly grand, the most imposing of all the ceremonies i have witnessed. the pope was then borne back again. two papers were thrown from the balcony for which there was a great scramble among the crowd." on friday, april (good friday), many of the ceremonies so familiar to visitors to rome during holy week are described at length in the notebooks, but i shall omit most of these. the following note, however, seems worthy of being recorded:-- "on our way to st. peter's i ought to have noticed our visit to a palace in which another cardinal (the third who has died within a few days) was lying in state--cardinal bertazzoli. "it is a singular fact, of which i was informed, that about the same time last year three cardinals died, and that it was a common remark that when one died two more soon followed, and the pope always created three cardinals at a time." "_friday, april ._ at the vatican all day. i went to the soirée of the signor persianis in the evening. here i had the pleasure of meeting for the first line with the chevalier thorwaldsen, the great danish sculptor, the first now living. he is an old man in appearance having a profusion of grey hair, wildly hanging over his forehead and ears. his face has a strong northern character, his eyes are light grey, and his complexion sandy; he is a large man of perfectly unassuming manners and of most amiable deportment. daily receiving homage from all the potentates of europe, he is still without the least appearance of ostentation. he readily assented to a request to sit for his portrait which i hope soon to take. "_tuesday, april ._ my birthday. how time flies and to how little purpose have i lived!! "_wednesday, april ._ i have noticed a difference in manners between the english, french, and americans. if you are at the house of a friend and should happen to meet englishmen who are strangers to you, no introduction takes place unless specially requested. the most perfect indifference is shown towards you by these strangers, quite as much as towards a chair or table. should you venture a word in the general conversation, they might or might not, as the case may be, take notice of it casually, but coldly and distantly, and even if they should so far relax as to hold a conversation with you through the evening, the moment they rise to go all recognition ceases; they will take leave of every one else, but as soon think of bowing to the chair they had left as to you. "a frenchman, on the contrary, respectfully salutes all in the room, friends and strangers alike. he seems to take it for granted that the friends of his friend are at least entitled to respect if not to confidence, and without reserve he freely enters into conversation with you, and, when he goes, he salutes all alike, but no acquaintance ensues. "an american carries his civility one step further; if he meets you afterwards, in other company, the fact that he has seen you at this friend's and had an agreeable chit-chat is introduction enough, and, unless there is something _peculiar_ in your case, he will ever after know you and be your friend. this is not the case with the two former. "the american is in this, perhaps, too unsuspicious and the others may have good reasons for their mode, but that of the americans has more of generous sincerity and frankness and kindness in it. "_friday, april ._ painting all day except two hours at the colonna palace--landi's pictures--horrible!! how i was disappointed. i had heard landi, the chevalier landi, lauded to the skies by the italians as the greatest modern colorist. he was made a chevalier, elected a member of the academy at florence and of the academy of st. luke in rome, and there were his pictures which i was told i must by all means see. they are not merely bad, they are execrable. there is not a redeeming point in a single picture that i saw, not one that would have placed him on a level with the commonest sign-painter in america. his largest work in his rooms at present is the 'departure of mary queen of scots from paris.' the story is not told; the figures are not grouped but huddled together; they are not well-drawn individually; the character is vulgar and tame; there is no taste in the disposal of the drapery and ornaments, no effect of _chiaroscuro._ it is flimsy and misty, and, as to color, the quality to which i was specially directed, if total disregard of arrangement, if the scattering of tawdry reds and blues and yellows over the picture, all quarrelling for the precedence; if leather complexions varied by those of chalk, without truth or depth or tone, constitute good color, then are they finely colored. but, if landi is a colorist, then are titian and veronese never more to be admired. in short, i have never met with the works of an artist who had a name like landi's so utterly destitute of even the shadow of merit. there is but one word which can express their character, they are _execrable!_ "it is astonishing that with such works of the old masters before them as the italians have, they should not perceive the defects of their own painters in this particular. cammuccini is the only one among them who possesses genius in the higher departments, and he only in drawing; his color is very bad. "a funeral procession passed the house to-day. on the bier, exposed as is customary here, was a beautiful young girl, apparently of fifteen, dressed in rich laces and satins embroidered with gold and silver and flowers tastefully arranged, and sprinkled also with real flowers, and at her head was placed a coronet of flowers. she had more the appearance of sleep than of death. no relative appeared near her; the whole seemed to be conducted by the priests and monks and those hideous objects in white hoods, with faces covered except two holes for the eyes." in early may, morse, in company with other artists, went on a sketching trip to tivoli, subiaco, vico, and vara. this must have been one of the happiest periods of his life. he was in italy, the cradle of the art he loved; he was surrounded by beauty, both natural and that wrought by the hand of man; he had daily intercourse with congenial souls, and home, with its cares and struggles, seemed far away. his notebooks are largely filled with simple descriptions of the places visited, but now and then he indulges in rhapsody. at subiaco he comes upon this scene:-- "upon a solitary seat (a fit place for meditation and study), by a gate which shut the part of the terrace near the convent from that which goes round the hill, sat a monk with his book. he seemed no further disturbed by my passing than to give me the usual salutation. "i stopped at a little distance from him to look around and down into the chasm below. it was enchanting in spite of the atmosphere of the sirocco. the hills covered with woods, at a distance, reminded me of my own country, fresh and variegated; the high peaks beyond were grey from distance, and the sides of the nearer mountains were marked with many a winding track, down one of which a shepherd and his sheep were descending, looking like a moving pathway. no noise disturbed the silence but the distant barking of the shepherd's dog (as he, like a busy marshal, kept the order of his procession unbroken) mixing with the faint murmuring of the waterfall and the song of the birds that inhabited the ilex grove. it was altogether a place suited to meditation, and, were it consistent with those duties which man owes his fellow man, here would be the spot to which one, fond of study and averse to the noise and bustle of the world, would love to retire." returning to rome on june , after enjoying to the full this excursion, from which he brought back many sketches, he found the city given over to ceremony after ceremony connected with the church. saint's day followed saint's day, each with its appropriate (or, from the point of view of the new englander, inappropriate) pageant; or some new church was dedicated and the nights made brilliant with wonderful pyrotechnical displays. he went often with pleasure to the trinita di monti, where the beautiful singing of the nuns gave him special pleasure. commenting sarcastically on a display of fireworks in honor of st. francesco caracciolo, he says:-- "as far as whizzing serpents, wheels, port-fires, rockets, and other varieties of pyrotechnic art could set forth the humility of the saint, it was this night brilliantly displayed." and again, in describing the procession of the _corpus domini_, "the most splendid of all the church ceremonies," it is this which particularly impresses him:-- "next came monks of the franciscan and capuchin orders, with their brown dresses and heads shaved and such a set of human faces i never beheld. they seemed, many of them, like disinterred corpses, for a moment reanimated to go through this ceremony, and then to sink back again into their profound sleep. pale and haggard and unearthly, the wild eye of the visionary and the stupid stare of the idiot were seen among them, and it needed no stretch of the imagination to find in most the expression of the worst passions of our nature. they chanted as they went, their sepulchral voices echoing through the vaulted piazza, while the bell of st. peter's, tolling a deep bass drone, seemed a fitting accompaniment for their hymns." later, on this same day, while watching a part of the ceremonies on the gorso, he has this rather disagreeable experience:-- "i was standing close to the side of the house when, in an instant, without the slightest notice, my hat was struck off to the distance of several yards by a soldier, or rather a poltroon in a soldier's costume, and this courteous manoeuvre was performed with his gun and bayonet, accompanied with curses and taunts and the expression of a demon in his countenance. "in cases like this there is no redress. the soldier receives his orders to see that all hats are off in this religion of force, and the manner is left to his discretion. if he is a brute, as was the case in this instance, he may strike it off; or, as in some other instances, if the soldier be a gentleman, he may ask to have it taken off. there was no excuse for this outrage on all decency, to which every foreigner is liable and which is not of infrequent occurrence. the blame lies after all, not so much with the pitiful wretch who perpetrates this outrage, as it does with those who gave him such base and indiscriminate orders." chapter xvii june , --february , working hard.--trip to genzano.--lake of nemi.--beggars.--curious festival of flowers at genzano.--night on the campagna.--heat in rome.-- illumination of st. peter's.--st. peter's day.--vaults of the church.-- feebleness of pope.--morse and companions visit naples, capri, and amalfi.--charms of amalfi.--terrible accident.--flippancy at funerals.-- campo santo at naples.--gruesome conditions.--ubiquity of beggars.-- convent of st. martino.--masterpiece of spagnoletto.--returns to rome.-- faints portrait of thorwaldsen.--presented to him in after years by john taylor johnston.--given to king of denmark.--reflections on the social evil and the theatre.--death of the pope.--an assassination.--the honorable mr. spencer and catholicism.--election of pope gregory xvi. during all these months morse was diligently at work in the various galleries, making the copies for which he had received commissions, and the day's record almost invariably begins with "at the colonna palace all day"; or, "at the vatican all day"; or wherever else he may have been working at the time. the heat of the roman summer seems not yet to have inconvenienced him, for he does not complain, but simply remarks: "sun almost vertical,... houses and shops shut at noon." he has this to say of an italian institution: "lotteries in rome make for the government eight thousand scudi per week; common people venture in them; are superstitious and consult _cabaliste_ or lucky numbers; these tolerated as they help sell the tickets." while working hard, he occasionally indulged himself in a holiday, and on june he, in company with three other artists, engaged a carriage for an excursion to albano, aricia, and genzano, "to witness at the latter place the celebrated _festa infiorata_, which occurs every year on the th of june." after spending the night at albano, which they found crowded with artists of various nationalities and with other sight-seers, "we set out for genzano, a pleasant walk of a little more than a mile through a winding carriage-road, thickly shaded with fine trees of elm and chestnut and ilex. a little fountain by the wayside delayed us for a moment to sketch it, and we then continued our way through a straight, level, paved road, shaded on each side with trees, into the pretty village of genzano." finding that the principal display was not until the afternoon, they strolled to the lake of nemi, "situated in a deep basin, the crater of a volcano." those italian lakes which he had so far seen, while lovely and especially interesting from their historical or legendary associations and the picturesque buildings on their shores, seemed to the artist (ever faithful to his native land) less naturally attractive than the lakes with which he was familiar at home--lake george, otsego lake, etc. he had not yet seen como or maggiore. then he touches upon the great drawback to all travelling in italy:-- "throughout the day, wherever we went, beggars in every shape annoyed us, nor could we scarcely hear ourselves talk when on the borders of the lake for the swarms which importuned us. a foolish italian, in the hope probably of getting rid of them, commenced giving a _mezzo biochi_ to each, and such a clamor, such devouring eyes, such pushing and bawling, such teasing importunity for more, and from some who had received and concealed their gift, i could not have conceived, nor do i ever wish again to see so disgusting a sight. the foolish fellow who invented this plan of satisfying an italian beggar's appetite found to his sorrow that, instead of thanks, he obtained curses and an increase of importunity.... "after dinner we again walked to genzano, whither we found were going great multitudes of every class; elegant equipages and _vetture_ racing with each other; donkeys and horses and foot travellers; and not among the least striking were the numbers of women, some of whom were splendidly dressed, all riding on horseback, a foot in each stirrup, and riding with as much ease and fine horsemanship as the men. "when we arrived at genzano the decoration of the streets had commenced. two of the principal and wide streets ascend a little, diverging from each other, from the left side of the common street which goes through the village. the middle of these streets was the principal scene of decoration. on each side of the centre of the street, leaving a good-sized sidewalk, were pillars at a distance of eight or nine feet from each other composed of the evergreen box and tufted at the top with every variety of flowers. they were in many places also connected by festoons of box. the pavement of the street between the pillars in both streets, and for a distance of at least one half a mile, was most exquisitely figured with flowers of various colors, looking like an immense and gorgeously figured carpet. "the devices were in the following order which i took note of on the spot: first, a temple with four columns of yellow flowers (the flower of the broom) containing an altar on which was the holy sacrament. in the pediment of the temple a column surmounted by a halfmoon, which is the arms of the colonna family. second was a large crown. third, the holy sacrament again with various rich ornaments. fourth, stars and circles. fifth, a splendid coat-of-arms as accurate and rich as if emblazoned in permanent colors, with a cardinal's hat and a shield with the words _'prudens'_ and _'fidelis'_ upon it." there were twenty of these wonderful floral decorations on the pavement of one street and fourteen on that of the other and all are described in the notes, but i have particularized enough to show their character. the journal continues:-- "all these figures were as elegantly executed as if made for permanency, some with a minuteness truly astonishing. among other decorations of the day was the free-will offering of one of the people who had it displayed at the side of his shop on a rude pedestal. it was called the 'flight into egypt,' and represented joseph and mary and the infant on an ass, and all composed of shrubs and flowers. it was, indeed, a most ludicrous-looking affair; joseph with a face (if such it might be called) of purple flowers and a flaxen wig, dressed in a coarse pilgrim's cape studded over with yellow flowers, was leading by a hay band a green donkey, made of a kind of heath grass, with a tail of lavender and hoofs of cabbage leaves. of this latter composition were also the sandals of mary, whose face, as well as that of the _bambino_, was also of purple flowers and shapeless. the frock of the infant was of the gaudiest red poppy. it excited the laughter of almost all who saw it, except now and then some of the ignorant lower classes would touch their hats, cross themselves, and mumble a prayer." after describing some of the picturesque costumes of the _contadini_, he continues:-- "it was nearly dark before the procession, to which all these preparations had reference, began to move. at length the band of music was heard at the lower end of one of the streets, and a man, in ample robes of scarlet and blue, with a staff, was seen leading the procession, which need be no further described than to say it consisted of the usual quantity of monks chanting, with wax-tapers in their hands, crosses, and heavy, unwieldy banners which endanger the heads of the multitude as they pass; of a fine band of music playing beautiful waltzes and other compositions, and a _quantum suff._ of men dressed in the garb of soldiers to keep the good people uncovered and on their knees. "the head of the procession had arrived at the top of the street when-- crack! pop!--went forty or fifty crackers, which had been placed against the walls of a house near us, and which added wonderfully to the solemnity of the scene, and, accordingly, were repeated every few seconds, forming a fine accompaniment to the waltzes and the chanting of the monks. in a few minutes all the beauty of the flower-carpeted street was trodden out, and the last of the procession had hardly passed before all the flowers disappeared from the pillars, and all was ruin and disorder. "the procession halted at a temporary altar at the top of the street, and we set out on our return at the same moment down the street, facing the immense multitude which filled the whole street. we had scarcely proceeded a third of the distance down when we suddenly saw all before us uncovered and upon their knees. we alone formed an exception, and we continued our course with various hints from those around us to stop and kneel, which we answered by talking english to each other in a louder tone, and so passed for unchristian _forestieri_, and escaped unmolested, especially as the soldiers were all at the head of the street. "the effect, however, was exceedingly grand of such a multitude upon their knees, and, could i have divested myself of the thought of the compulsory measures which produced it and the object to which they knelt, the picture of the virgin, i should have felt the solemnity of a scene which seemed in the outward act to indicate such a universal reverence for him who alone rightfully claims the homage and devotion of the heart." whether this curious custom still persists in genzano i know not; baedeker is silent on the subject. it was nearly dark before they started on the drive back to rome, and quite dark after they had gone a short distance. "we passed the tombs of the horatii and curiatii, which looked much grander in the light of the torches than in the day, and, driving hastily through albano, came upon the campagna once more. it was still more like a desert in the night than in the day, for it was an interminable ocean, and the masses of ruins, coming darker than the rest, seemed like deserted wrecks upon its bosom. "it is considered dangerous in the summer to sleep while crossing the campagna; indeed, in certain parts of it, over the pontine marshes in july and august, it is said to be certain, death, but, if the traveller can keep awake, there is no danger. in spite of the fears which we naturally entertained lest it might be already dangerous, most of us could not avoid sleeping, nor could i, with every effort made for that purpose." the days following his return to rome were employed chiefly in copying at the colonna palace. the heat was now beginning to grow more oppressive, and we find this note on june :-- "in the cool of the morning you see the doors of the cafes thronged with people taking their coffee and sitting on chairs in the streets for some distance round. at _mezzo giorno_ the streets are deserted, the shop-doors are closed, and all is still; they have all gone to their _siesta_, their midday sleep. at four o'clock all is bustle again; it seems a fresh morning; the streets and cafés are thronged and the corso is filled with the equipages of the wealthy, enjoying till quite dark the cool of the evening air. "the sun is now oppressively warm; the heat is unlike anything i have felt in america. there is a scorching character about it which is indescribable, and the glare of the light is exceedingly painful to the eyes. the evenings are delightful, cool and clear, showing the lustre of the stars gloriously. "_june ._ in the evening went to the piazza of st. peter's to witness the illumination of its magnificent dome and the piazza. the change from the smaller to the larger illumination is one of the grandest spectacles i ever beheld. "the lanterns which are profusely scattered over it, showing its whole form in lines of fire, glow brighter and brighter as the evening advances from twilight to dark, till it seems impossible for its brilliance to increase. the crowds below, on foot and in carriages, are in breathless expectation. the great bell of st. peter's at length strikes the hour of nine, and, at the first stroke, a great ball of light is seen ascending the cross to its pinnacle. this is the signal for thousands of assistants, who are concealed over its vast extent, to light the great lamps, and in an instant all is motion, the whole mass is like a living thing, fire whirling and flashing over it in all directions, till the vast pile blazes as if lighted with a thousand suns. the effect is truly magical, for the agents by whom this change is wrought are invisible." after the illumination of st. peter's he went to the castle of st. angelo where he witnessed what he describes as the grandest display of fireworks he had ever seen. "_tuesday, june ._ this day is st. peter's day, the grandest _festa_ of the romish church. i went with mr. b. early to st. peter's to see the ceremonies. the streets were filled with equipages, among which the splendid scarlet-and-gold equipages of the cardinals made the most conspicuous figure. cardinal weld's carriage was the richest, and next in magnificence was that of cardinal barberini. "on entering st. peter's we found it hung throughout with crimson damask and gold and filled with people, except a wide space in the centre with soldiers on each side to keep it open for the procession. we passed up near the statue of st. peter, who was to-day dressed out in his papal robes, his black face (for it is of bronze) looking rather frightful from beneath the splendid tiara which crowned his head, and the scarlet-and-gold tissue of his robes. "having a little time to spare, we followed a portion of the crowd down the steps beside the pedestal of the statue of st. veronica into the vaults beneath the church, which are illuminated on this festival. mass was performing in several of the splendid chapels, whose rich decorations of paintings and sculpture are but once a year revealed to the light, save from the obscure glimmering of the wax-taper, which is carried by the guide, to occasional visitors. it is astonishing what a vast amount of expense is here literally buried. "the ornamented parts are beneath the dome; the other parts are plain, heavy arches and low, almost numberless, and containing the sarcophagi of the popes and other distinguished characters. the illumination here was confined to a single lamp over each arch, which rather made darkness visible and gave an awful effect to some of the gloomier passages. "in one part we saw, through a long avenue of arches, an iron-grated door; within was a dim light which just sent its feeble rays upon some objects in its neighborhood, not strong enough to show what they were. it required no great effort of the imagination to fancy an emaciated, spectral figure of a monk poring over a large book which lay before him. it might have been as we imagined; we had not time to examine, for the sound of music far above us summoned us into the regions of day again, and we arrived in the body of the church just as the trumpets were sounding from the balcony within the church over the great door of entrance. the effect of the sound was very grand, reverberating through the lofty arches and aisles of the church. "we got sight of the head of the procession coming in at the great door, and soon after the pope, borne in his crimson chair of state, and with the triple crown upon his head and a crimson, gold-embroidered mantilla over his shoulders, was seen entering accompanied by his fan-bearers and other usual attendants, and after him the cardinals and bishops. the pope, as usual, made the sign of the cross as he went. "the procession passing up the great aisle went round to the back of the great altar, where was the canopy for the pope and seats for the cardinals and bishops. the pope is too feeble to go through the ceremony of high mass; it was, therefore, performed before him by one of the cardinals. there was nothing in this ceremony that was novel or interesting; it was the same monotonous chant from the choir, the same numberless bowings, and genuflections, and puffings of incense, and change of garments, and fussing about the altar. all that was new was the constant bustle about the pope, kissing of his toe and his hand, helping him to rise and to sit again, bringing and taking away of cushions and robes and tiaras and mitres, and a thousand other little matters that would have enraged any man of weak nerves, if it did not kill him. after two hours of this tedious work (the people in the mean time perfectly inattentive), the ceremony ended, and the pope was again borne through the church and the crowd returned." on july , morse, with four friends, left rome at four o'clock in the morning for naples, where they arrived on the th after the usual experiences; beggars continually marring the peaceful beauty of every scene by their importunities; good inns, with courteous landlords and servants, alternating with wretched taverns and insolent attendants. the little notebook detailing the first ten days' experiences in naples is missing, and the next one takes up the narrative on july , when he and his friends are in sorrento. i shall not transcribe his impressions of that beautiful town or those of the island of capri. these places are too familiar to the visitor to italy and have changed but little in the last eighty years. prom capri they were rowed over to amalfi, and narrowly escaped being dashed on the rocks by the sudden rising of a violent gale. at amalfi they found lodgings in the franciscan monastery, which is still used as an inn, and here i shall again quote from the journal:-- "the place is in decay and is an excellent specimen of their monastic buildings. it is now in as romantic a state as the most poetic imagination could desire. here are gloomy halls and dark and decayed rooms; long corridors of chambers, uninhabited except by the lizard and the bat; terraces upon the brow of stupendous precipices; gloomy cells with grated windows, and subterranean apartments and caverns. remains of rude frescoes stain the crumbling ceiling, and ivy and various wild plants hang down from the opening crevices and cover the tops of the broken walls. "a rude sundial, without a gnomon, is almost obliterated from the wall of the cloisters, but its motto, '_dies nostri quasi umbra super terram et nulli est mora_', still resists the effects of decay, as if to serve the appropriate purpose of the convent's epitaph. at the foot of the long stairs in the great hall is the ruined chapel, its altar broken up and despoiled of its pictures and ornaments. "we were called to dinner by our host, who was accompanied by his wife, a very pretty woman, two children, the elder carried by the mother, the younger by the old grandparent, an old man of upwards of eighty, who seemed quite pleased with his burden and delighted to show us his charge. the whole family quite prepossessed us in their favor; there seemed to be an unusual degree of affection displayed by the members towards each other which we could not but remark at the time. our dining apartment was the old _domus refectionis_ of the convent, as its name, written over the door which led into the choir, manifested. after an excellent dinner we retired to our chambers for the night. "_tuesday, july ._ we all rested but badly last night. the heat was excessive, the insects, especially mosquitoes, exceedingly troublesome, and the sound of the waves, as they beat against the rocks and chafed the beach in the gusty night, and the howling of the wind, which for a time moaned through the deserted chambers of the convent, all made us restless. i rose several times in the night and, opening my window, looked out on the dark waters of the bay, till the dawn over the mountains warned me that the time for sleep was passing away, and i again threw myself on the bed to rest. but scarcely had i lost myself in sleep before the sound of loud voices below and wailings again waked me. i looked out of my window on the balcony below; it was filled with armed men; soldiers and others like brigands with muskets were in hurried commotion, calling to each other from the balcony and from the terraced steps below. "while perplexed in conjecturing the meaning of what i saw, mr. c. called at my door requesting me to rise, as the whole house was in agitation at a terrible accident which had occurred in the night. dressing in great haste, i went into the contiguous room and, looking out of the window down upon a terrace some thirty feet below, saw the lifeless body of a man, with spots of blood upon his clothes, lying across the font of water. a police officer with a band of men appeared, taking down in writing the particulars for a report. on enquiry i found that the body was that of the old man, the father of our host, whom we had seen the evening before in perfect health. he had the dangerous habit of walking in his sleep and had jumped, it is supposed, in that state out of his chamber window which was directly beneath us; at what time in the night was uncertain. his body must have been beneath me while i was looking from my window in the night. "our host, but particularly his brother, seemed for a time almost inconsolable. the lamentations of the latter over the bloody body (as they were laying it out in the room where we had the evening before dined), calling upon his father and mingling his cries with a chant to the virgin and to the saints, were peculiarly plaintive, and, sounding through the vacant halls of the convent, made a melancholy impression upon us all.... soon after breakfast we went downstairs; several priests and funeral attendants had arrived; the poor old man was laid upon a bed, the room darkened, and four wax-lights burned, two each side of the bed. a short time was taken in preparation, and then upon a bier borne by four bearers, a few preceding it with wax-lights, the body, with the face exposed, as is usual in italy, was taken down the steep pathway to its long home. "i could not help remarking the total want of that decent deportment in all those officiating which marks the conduct of those that attend the interment of the dead in our own country. even the priests 'seemed to be in high glee, talking and heartily laughing with each other; at what it perplexed me to conjecture. "i went into the room in which the old man had slept; all was as he had left it. over the head of the bed were the rude prints of the virgin and saints, which are so common in all the houses of italy, and which are supposed to act as charms by these superstitious people. the lamp was on the window ledge where he had placed it, and his scanty wardrobe upon a chair by the bedside. over the door was a sprig of laurel, placed there since his death. "the accident of the morning threw a gloom over the whole day; we, however, commenced our sketches from different parts of the convent, and i commenced a picture, a view of amalfi from the interior of the grotto." several of the notebooks are here missing, and from the next in order we find that the travellers must have lingered in or near sorrento until august , when they returned to naples. the next entry of interest, while rather gruesome, seems to be worth recording. "_wednesday, september ._ morning painting. in the afternoon took a ride round the suburbs and visited the campo santo. the campo santo is the public burial-place. it is a large square enclosure having high walls at the sides and open at the top. it contains three hundred and sixty vaults, one of which is opened every day to receive the dead of that day, and is not again opened until all the others in rotation have been opened. "as we entered the desolate enclosure the only living beings were three miserable-looking old women gathered together upon the stone of one of the vaults. they sat as if performing some incantation, mumbling their prayers and counting their beads; and one other of the same fraternity, who had been kneeling before a picture, left her position as we entered and knelt upon another of the vaults, where she remained all the time we were present, telling her beads. "at the farther end of the enclosure was a large portable lever to raise the stones which covered the vaults. upon the promise of a few _grains_ the stone of the vault for the day was raised, and, with the precaution of holding our kerchiefs to our noses, we looked down into the dark vault. death is sufficiently terrible in itself, and the grave in its best form has enough of horror to make the stoutest heart quail at the thought, but nothing i have seen or read of can equal the campo santo for the most loathsome and disgusting mode of burial. the human, carcasses of all ages and sexes are here thrown in together to a depth of, perhaps, twenty feet, without coffins, in heaps, most of them perfectly naked, and left to corrupt in a mass, like the offal from a slaughter house. so disgusting a spectacle i never witnessed. there were in sight about twenty bodies, men, women, and children. a child of about six years, with beautiful fair hair, had fallen across the body of a man and lay in the attitude of sleeping. "but i cannot describe the positions of all without offence, so i forbear. we were glad to turn away and retrace our steps to our carriage. never, i believe, in any country, christian or pagan, is there an instance of such total want of respect for the remains of the dead." [illustration: de witt clinton painted by morse. property of the metropolitan museum of art] on september , he again reverts to the universal plague of beggars in italy:-- "in passing through the country you may not take notice of a pretty child or seem pleased with it; so soon as you do the mother will instantly importune you for '_qualche cosa_' for the child. neither can you ask for a cup of cold water at a cottage door, nor ask the way to the next village, nor even make the slightest inquiry of a peasant on any subject, but the result will be '_qualche cosa, signore_.' the first act which a child is taught in italy is to hold out its hand to beg. children too young to speak i have seen holding out their little hands for that purpose, and so mechanical is this action that i have seen, in one instance, a boy of nine years nodding in his sleep and yet at regular intervals extending his hand to beg. begging is here no disgrace; on the contrary, it is made respectable by the customs of the church." on september , after visiting the catacombs, he goes to the convent of st. martino, and indulges in this rhapsody:-- "from a terrace and balcony two views of the beautiful scenery of the city and bay are obtained. from the latter place especially you look down upon the city which is spread like a model far beneath you. there is a great deal of the sublime in thus looking down upon a populous city; one feels for the time separated from the concerns of the world. "we forget, while we consider the insignificance of that individual man, moving in yonder street and who is scarcely visible to us, that we ourselves are equally insignificant. it is in such a situation that the superiority of the mind over the body is felt. paradoxical as it may at first seem, its greatness is evinced in the feeling of its own littleness.... after gazing here for a while we were shown into the chapel through the choir.... in the sacristy is a picture of a dead christ with the three marys and joseph, by spagnoletto, not only the finest picture by that master, but i am quite inclined to say that it is the finest picture i have yet seen. there is in it a more perfect union of the great qualities of art,--fine conception, just design, admirable disposition of _chiaroscuro_, exquisite color,--whether truth is considered or choice of tone in congruity with the subject's most masterly execution and just character and expression. if any objection were to be made it would, perhaps, be in the particular of character, which, in elevation, in ideality, falls far short of raphael. in other points it has not its superior." returning to rome on september , the only entries i find in the journal for the first few days are, "painting all day at home," and a short account of a soirée at the persianis'. "_monday, september ._ began the portrait of the celebrated sculptor thorwaldsen. he is a most amiable man and is universally respected. he was never married. in early life he had two children by a mistress; one, a daughter, is now in a convent. it was said that a noble lady of england, of great fortune, became attached to him, and he no less to her, but that the circumstance of his having two illegitimate children prevented a marriage. he is the greatest sculptor of the age. i have studied his works; they are distinguished for simple dignity, just expression, and truth in character and design. the composition is also characterized by simplicity. these qualities combined endow them with that beauty which we so much admire in the works of greece, whether in literature or art. thorwaldsen cannot be said to imitate the antique; he rather seems to be one born in the best age of grecian art; imbued with the spirit of that age, and producing from his own resources kindred works." the following letter was written by morse before he left rome for naples, but can be more appropriately introduced at this point:-- to the cavalier thorwaldsen, my dear sir,--i had hoped to have the pleasure of painting your portrait, for which you were so good as to promise to sit, before i left rome for naples; but the weather is becoming so oppressive, and there being a party of friends about to travel the same road, i have consented to join them. i shall return to rome in september or october, and i therefore beg you will allow me then to claim the fulfilment of your kind promise. what a barrier, my dear sir, is difference of language to social intercourse! i never felt the curse that befell the architects of babel so sensibly as now, since, as one of the effects of their folly, i am debarred from the gratification and profit which i had promised myself in being known to you. with highest respect, etc. curiously enough, morse never learned to speak a foreign language fluently, although he could read quite easily french and, i believe, german and italian, and from certain passages in his journal we infer that he could make himself understood by the italians. the portrait of thorwaldsen was completed and became the property of philip hone, esq., who had given morse a commission to paint a picture for one hundred dollars, the subject to be left to the discretion of the artist. mr. hone valued the portrait highly, and it remained in his gallery until his death. it was then sold and morse lost track of it for many years. in , being particularly desirous of gaining possession of it again, for a purpose which is explained in a letter quoted a little farther on, he instituted a search for it, and finally learned that it had been purchased by mr. john taylor johnston for four hundred dollars. before he could enter into negotiations for its purchase, mr. johnston heard of his desire to possess it, and of his reasons for this wish, and he generously insisted on presenting it to morse. i shall now quote the following extracts from a letter written in dresden, on january , , to mr. johnston:-- my dear sir,--your letter of the th inst. is this moment received, in which i have been startled by your most generous offer presenting me with my portrait of the renowned thorwaldsen, for which he sat to me in rome in . i know not in what terms, my dear sir, to express to you my thanks for this most acceptable gift. i made an excursion to copenhagen in the summer of , as a sort of devout pilgrimage to the tombs of two renowned danes, whose labors in their respective departments--the one, oersted, of science, the other, thorwaldsen, of art--have so greatly enriched the world. the personal kindness of the late king frederick vii, who courteously received me at his castle of fredericksborg, through the special presentation of colonel raslof (more recently the danish minister at washington); the hospitalities of many of the principal citizens of copenhagen; the visits to the tomb and museum of the works of thorwaldsen, and to the room in which the immortal oersted made his brilliant electro-magnetic discovery; the casual and accidental introduction and interview with a daughter of oersted,--all created a train of reflection which prompted me to devise some suitable mode of showing to these hospitable people my appreciation of their friendly attentions, and i proposed to myself the presentation to his majesty the king of denmark of this portrait of thorwaldsen, for which he sat to me in rome, and with which i knew he was specially pleased. my desire to accomplish this purpose was further strengthened by the additional attention of the king at a later period in sending me the decoration of his order of the danebrog. from the moment this purpose was formed, twelve years ago, i have been desirous of obtaining this portrait, and watching for the opportunity of possessing it again. here follows a detailed account of the circumstances of the painting of the portrait and of its disappearance, with which we are familiar, and he closes by saying:-- "this brief history will show you, my dear sir, what a boon you have conferred upon me. indeed, it seems like a dream, and if my most cordial thanks, not merely for the _gift_, but for the graceful and generous manner in which it has been offered, is any compensation, you may be sure they are yours. "these are no conventional words, but they come from a heart that can gratefully appreciate the noble sentiments which have prompted your generous act." returning from this little excursion into later years, i shall take up the narrative again as revealed in the notebooks. while occasionally visiting the opera and the theatre, morse does not altogether approve of them, and, on september , he indulges in the following reflections on them and on the social evil:-- "no females of openly dissolute character were seen, such as occupy particular parts of the theatre in england and america. indeed, they never appear on the streets of rome in that unblushing manner as in london, and even in new york and philadelphia. it must not from hence be inferred that vice is less frequent here than elsewhere; there is enough of it, but it is carried on in secret; it is deeper and preys more on the vitals of society than with us. this vice with us, like a humor on the skin, deforms the surface, but here it infects the very heart; the whole system is affected; it is rotten to the core. "theatres here and with us are different institutions. here, where thousands for want of thought, or rather matter for thought, would die of ennui, where it is an object to escape from home and even from one's self, the theatre serves the purpose of a momentary excitement. a new piece, a new performer, furnishes matter for conversation and turns off the mind from the discussion of points of theology or politics. the theatre is therefore encouraged by the government and is guarded against the abuses of popular assemblage by strong military guards. "but what have we to do with theatres in america? have we not the whole world of topics for discussion or conversation open to us? is not truth in religion, politics, and science suffered to be assailed by enemies freely, and does it not, therefore, require the time of all intelligent men to study, and understand, and defend, and fortify themselves in truth? have we time to throw away? "more than this, have we not homes where domestic endearments charm us, where domestic duties require our attention, where the relations of wife, of husband, of children have the ties of mutual affection and mutual confidence to attach us to our firesides? need we go abroad for amusement? can the theatre, with all its tinsel finery, attract away from home the man who has once tasted the bliss of a happy family circle? is there no pleasure in seeing that romping group of children, in the heyday of youth, amuse themselves ere they go to rest; is there no pleasure in studying the characters of your little family as they thus undisguisedly display themselves, and so give you the opportunity of directing their minds to the best advantage? is there no amusement in watching the development of the infant mind and in assisting its feeble efforts? "he must be of most unsocial mould who can leave the thousand charms of home to pass those precious hours in the noxious atmosphere of a theatre, there to be excited, to return at midnight, to rise from a late bed, to pass the best hours of the day in a feverish reverie succeeded by the natural depression which is sure to follow, and to crave a renewed indulgence. repeated renewal causes indifference and ennui to succeed, till excitement is no longer produced, but gives place to a habit of listless indifference, or a spirit of captious criticism. "_monday, november , ._ a year to-day since i left home. "_tuesday, november ._ ignorance at post-office. sent letters for united states to england, because the united states belong to england! "_wednesday, december ._ many reports for some days past prepared us for the announcement of the death of the pope, pius viii, who died last evening at nine o'clock at the quirinal palace." the ceremonies connected with the funeral of the dead pope and with the choice of his successor are described at great length, and the eye of the artist was fascinated by the wealth of color and the pomp, while his protestant soul was wearied and disgusted by the tediousness and mummery of the ceremonials. "_december ._ much excitement has been created by fear of revolution, but from what cause i cannot learn. many arrests and banishments have occurred, among whom are some of the bonaparte family. artists are suspected of being liberals. "an assassination occurred at one of the altars in st. john lateran a few weeks ago. a young man, jealous of a girl, whom he thought to be more partial to another, stabbed her to the heart while at mass. "_saturday, january , ._ at the beginning of the year, as with us, you hear the salutation of '_felicissimo capo d'anno_,' and the custom of calling and felicitating friends is nearly the same as in new york, with this difference, indeed, that there is no cheer in rome as with our good people at home. "_friday, january ._ in the afternoon count grice and the honorable mr. spencer, son of earl spencer, who has within a few years been converted to the catholic faith, called. had an interesting conversation with him on religious topics, in which the differences of the protestant and catholic faiths were discussed; found him a candid, fair-minded man, but evidently led away by a too easy assent to the sophistry and fable which have been dealt out to him. he gave me a slight history of his change; i shall see him again. "_tuesday, january ._ called with count grice on the honorable mr. spencer at the english college and was introduced to the rector, dr. wiseman. after a few moments went into the library with mr. spencer and commenced the argument, in which being interrupted we retired to his room, where for three hours we discussed various points of difference in our faith. many things i urged were not answered, such as the fruits of the catholic religion in the various countries where it prevails; the objection concerning forbidding to marry; idolatry of the virgin mary, etc., etc.; yet there is a gentleness, an amiability in the man which makes me think him sincere but deceived. "_wednesday, february ._ went this morning at ten o'clock to hear a sermon by mr. spencer in the chapel of the english college. it was on the occasion of the _festa_ of the purification of the virgin. many parts were good, and i could agree with him in the general scope of his discourse. "while we were in the chapel the cannon of st. angelo announced the election of the new pope. i hurried to the quirinal palace to see the ceremony of announcing him to the people, but was too late. the ceremony was over, the walled window was broken down and the cardinals had presented the new pope on the balcony. he is cardinal cappellari who has taken the title of gregorio xvi. to-morrow he will go to st. peter's." chapter xviii february , --september , . historic events witnessed by morse.--rumors of revolution.--danger to foreigners.--coronation of the new pope.--pleasant experience.--cause of the revolution a mystery.--bloody plot foiled.--plans to leave for florence.--sends casts, etc., to national academy of design.--leaves rome.--dangers of the journey.--florence.--description of meeting with prince radziwill in coliseum at rome.--copies portraits of rubens and titian in florence.--leaves florence for venice.--disagreeable voyage on the po.--venice, beautiful but smelly.--copies tintoret's "miracle of the slave."--thunderstorms.--reflections on the fourth of july.--leaves venice.--recoaro.--milan.--reflections on catholicism and art.--como and maggiore.--the rigi.--schaffhausen and heidelberg.--evades the quarantine on french border.--thrilling experience.--paris. it was morse's good fortune to have been a spectator, at various times and in different places, of events of more or less historical moment. we have seen that he was in england during the war of ; that he witnessed the execution of the assassin of a prime minister; that he was a keen and interested observer of the festivities in honor of a czar of russia, a king of france, and a famous general (blücher); and although not mentioned in his correspondence, he was fond of telling how he had seen the ship sailing away to distant st. helena bearing the conquered napoleon bonaparte into captivity. now, while he was diligently pursuing his art in rome, he was privileged to witness the funeral obsequies of one pope and the ceremonies attendant upon the installation of his successor. in future years the same good fortune followed him. his presence on these occasions was not always unattended by danger to himself. his discretion during the years of war between england and america saved him from possible annoyance or worse, and now again in rome he was called upon to exercise the same virtue, for the church had entered upon troublous times, and soon the lives of foreigners were in danger, and many of them left the city. on thursday, february , there is this entry in the journal: "the revolutions in the papal states to the north at bologna and ancona, and in the duchy of modena, have been made known at rome. great consternation prevails." we learn further that, on february , "rumors of conspiracy are numerous. the time, the places of rendezvous, and even the numbers are openly talked of. the streets are filled with the people who gaze at each other inquisitively, and apprehension seems marked on every face. the shops are shutting, troops are stationed in the piazzas, and everything wears a gloomy aspect. at half-past seven a discharge of musketry is heard. among the reports of the day is one that the trasteverini have plotted to massacre the _forestieri_ in case of a revolt." while the festivities of the carnival were, on account of these disturbances, ordered by the pope to be discontinued, the religious ceremonies were still observed, and, going to st. peter's one day--"to witness the ceremonies of consecration as a bishop and coronation as a king of the pope"--morse had this pleasant experience:-- "the immense area seemed already filled; a double line of soldiers enclosed a wide space, from the great door through the middle of the church, on each side of the altar, and around the richly enclosed space where were erected the two papal thrones and the seats for the cardinals. into this soldier-invested space none but the privileged were permitted to enter; ambassadors, princes, dukes, and nobles of every degree were seen, in all their splendor of costume, promenading. "i was with the crowd without, making up my mind to see nothing of the ceremonies, but, being in full dress, and remembering that, on former occasions, i had been admitted as a stranger within the space, i determined to make the effort again. i therefore edged myself through the mass of people until i reached the line of soldiers, and, catching the eye of the commanding officer as he passed by, i beckoned to him, and, as he came to me, i said, '_sono un americano, un forestiero, signore_,' which i had no sooner said than, taking me by the hand, he drew me in, and, politely bowing, gave me leave to go where i pleased." from this point of vantage he had an excellent view of all the ceremonies, which were much like the others he had witnessed and do not need to be described. he wanted very much to go to florence at this time to fulfil some of the commissions he had received for copies of famous paintings in that city, but his departure was delayed, for, as he notes on february :-- "there are many alarming rumors, one in particular that the trasteverini and galleotti, or galley slaves, have been secretly armed by the government, and that the former are particularly incensed against the _forestieri_ as the supposed instigators of the revolution.... these facts have thrown us all into alarm, for we know not what excesses such men may be guilty of when excited by religious enthusiasm to revenge themselves on those they call heretics. we are compelled, too, to remain in rome from the state of the country, it being not safe to travel on account of brigands who now infest the roads. "_february ._ i have never been in a place where it was so difficult to ascertain the truth as in this city. i have enquired the reason of this movement hostile to the government, but cannot ascertain precisely its object. some say it is to deprive the pope of his temporal power,--and some catholics seem to think that their religion would flourish the better for it; others that it is a plan, long digested, for bringing all italy under one government, having it divided into so many federative states, like the united states.... "the trasteverini seem to be a peculiar class, proud, as believing themselves to be the only true descendants from the ancient romans, and, therefore, hating the other romans. poor from that very pride; ignorant and attached to their faith, they are the class of all others to be dreaded in a season of anarchy. it is easy by flattery, by a little distribution of money, and by a cry of danger to their religion, to rouse them to any degree of enthusiasm, and no one can set bounds to the excesses of such a set of fiends when let loose upon society. "the government at present have them in their interest, and, while that is the case, no danger is to be dreaded. it is in that state of anarchy which, for a longer or shorter period, intervenes in the changes of government, between the established rule of the one and of the other, that such a class of men is to be feared. "_february ._ the plan said to have been determined on by the conspirators was this: the last night of the carnival was fixed for the execution of the plan. this was tuesday night when it is customary to have the _moccoletti_, or small wax-candles, lighted by the crowd. the conspirators were each to be placed, as it were by accident, by the side of a soldier (which in so great a crowd could be done without suspicion), and, when the cannon fired which gave the signal for closing the course, it was also to serve as a signal for each one to turn upon the soldier and, by killing him, to seize his arms. this would, indeed, have been a bloody scene, and for humanity's sake it is well that it was discovered and prevented. "_february ._ i learn that the pope is desirous of yielding to the spirit of the times, and is disposed to grant a constitution to the people, but that the cardinals oppose it. he is said also to be prepared to fly from rome, and even has declared his intention of resigning the dignity of pope and retiring again to the solitude of the convent. "_february ._ it seems to be no longer doubtful that a revolutionary army is approaching rome from the revolted provinces, and that they advance rapidly.... the city is tranquil enough; no troops are seen, except at night a sentinel at some corner cries as you pass, '_chi viva?_' and you are obliged to cry, '_il papa_'; which one may surely do with a good conscience, for he is entitled to great respect for his personal character. "_february ._ went to-day to get my passport viséed for florence, whither i intended to go on tuesday next, but am advised by the consul and others not to risk the journey at present, as it is unsafe." i break the continuity of the narrative for a moment to note that while morse was making copies of famous paintings in rome, and studying intelligently the works of the old masters, he was not forgetful of the young academy at home, which he had helped to found and of which he was still president. on march he writes jubilantly to the secretary, j.l. morton, that he has succeeded in obtaining by gift a number of casts of ancient and modern sculpture which he will send home by the first opportunity. among the generous donors he mentions thorwaldsen, daniel coit, esq., richard wyatt, esq., signor trentanove, and george washington lee, esq. he adds at the end of the letter:-- "i leave rome immediately and know not when i shall be allowed to rest, the revolution here having turned everything into confusion, rendering the movements of travellers uncertain and unsafe, and embarrassing my studies and those of other artists exceedingly. i shall try to go to florence, but must pass through the two hostile armies and through a country which, in a season of confusion like the present, is sure to be infested with brigands. if i reach florence in safety and am allowed to remain, which is somewhat doubtful, you shall hear of me again, either directly or through my brothers." mr. morton, answering this letter on may , informs morse of his reëlection as president of the national academy of design, and adds: "by the by, talking of coming back, do try and make your arrangements as soon as possible. we want you very much, if it is only to set us all right again. we begin to feel the want of our _head man_." reverting to the journal again, we find this note: "march . for some days past i have been engaged in packing up and taking leave, and yesterday was introduced by the count le grice to cardinal weld, who received me very politely, presented me with a book, and sent me two letters of introduction to london." on march , morse, with four companions, started from rome on the seemingly perilous journey to florence. they passed through the lines of both armies, but, contrary to their expectations, they were most courteously treated by the officers on both sides. it is true that they learned afterwards that they came near being arrested at civita castellana, where the papal army was assembled in force, for--"when we took leave of the marquis at terni he told us that it was well we left civita castellana as we did, for an order for our arrest was making out, and in a few minutes more we should not have been allowed to leave the place. indeed, when i think of the case, it was a surprising thing that we were allowed to go into all parts of the place, to see their position, to count their men and know their strength, and then to immediately pass over to their enemy and to give him, if we chose, all the information that any spy could have given." it is not within the province of this work to deal at length with the political movements of the times. as we have seen, morse was fortunate in avoiding danger, and we learn from history that this revolt, which threatened at one time to become very serious, was eventually suppressed by the papal arms aided by the austrians. having passed safely through the zone of danger, they travelled on, and, on march :-- "at half-past three the _beautiful city_ was seen to our left reposing in sunshine in the wide vale of the arno. the duomo and the campanile were the most conspicuous objects. at half-past four we entered florence and obtained rooms at the leone bianco in the via vigna nuova. "_march ._ we found to-day, to our great discomfiture, that we are allowed by the police to stay but three days in the city. no entreaties through our consul, nor offers of guaranty on his part, availed to soften towards us the rigor of the decree, which they say applies to all foreigners. i have written to our consul at leghorn to petition the government for our stay, as mr. ombrosi, the united states consul here, is not accredited by the government." he must have succeeded in obtaining permission to remain, although the fact is not noted in the journal, for the next entry is on april , and finds him still in florence. it begins: "various engagements preventing my entering regularly in my journal every day's events as they occurred, i have been compelled to make a gap, which i fill up from recollection." before following him further, however, i shall quote from a letter written to his brothers on april , but referring to events which happened some time before:-- "we have recently heard of the disasters of the poles. what noble people; how deserving of their freedom. i must tell you of an interesting circumstance that occurred to me in relation to poland. it was in the latter part of june of last year, just as i was completing my arrangements for my journey to naples, that i was tempted by one of those splendid moonlight evenings, so common in italy, to visit once more the ruins of the coliseum. i had frequently been to the coliseum in company, but now i had the curiosity to go alone--i wished to enjoy, if possible, its solitude and its solemn grandeur unannoyed by the presence of any one. "it was eleven o'clock when i left my lodgings and no one was walking at that hour in the solitary streets of rome. from the corso to the forum all was as still as in a deserted city. the ruins of the forum, the temples and pillars, the arch of titus and the gigantic arcade of the temple of peace, seemed to sleep in the gravelike stillness of the air. the only sound that reached my ears was that of my own footsteps. i slowly proceeded, stopping occasionally, and listening and enjoying the profound repose and the solemn, pure light, so suited to the ruined magnificence around me. as i approached the coliseum the shriek of an owl and the answering echo broke the stillness for a moment, and all was still again. "i reached the entrance, before which paced a lonely sentinel, his arms flashing in the moonbeams. he abruptly stopped me and told me i could not enter. i asked him why. he replied that his orders were to let no one pass. i told him i knew better, that he had no such orders, that he was placed there to protect visitors, and not to prevent their entrance, and that i should pass. finding me resolute (for i knew by experience his motive was merely to extort money), he softened in his tone, and wished me to wait until he could speak to the sergeant of the guard. to this i assented, and, while he was gone, a party of gentlemen approached also to the entrance. one of them, having heard the discourse between the sentinel and myself, addressed me. perceiving that he was a foreigner, i asked him if he spoke english. he replied with a slight accent, 'yes, a little. you are an englishman, sir?' 'no,' i replied, 'i am an american from the united states.' 'indeed,' said he, 'that is much better'; and, extending his hand, he shook me cordially by the hand, adding, 'i have a great respect for your country and i know many of your countrymen.' he then mentioned dr. jarvis and mr. cooper, the novelist, the latter of whom he said was held in the greatest estimation in europe, and nowhere more so than in his country, poland, where his works were more sought after than those of scott, and his mind was esteemed of an equal if not of a superior cast. "this casual introduction of literary topics furnished us with ample matter for conversation while we were not engaged in contemplating the sublime ruins over which, when the sentinel returned, we climbed. i asked him respecting the literature of poland, and particularly if there were now any living poets of eminence. he observed: 'yes, sir, i am happily travelling in company with the most celebrated of our poets, meinenvitch'; and who, as i understood him, was one of the party walking in another part of the ruins. "engaged in conversation we left the coliseum together and slowly proceeded into the city. i told him of the deep interest with which poland was regarded in the united states, and that her heroes were spoken of with the same veneration as our own. as some evidence of this estimation i informed him of the monument erected by the cadets of west point to the memory of kosciusko. with this intelligence he was evidently much affected; he took my hand and exclaimed with great enthusiasm and emphatically: 'we, too, sir, shall be free; the time is coming; we too shall be free; my unhappy country will be free.' (this was before the revolution in france.) "as i came to the street where we were to part he took out his notebook, and, going under the lamp of a madonna, near the piazza colonna, he wished me to write my name for him among the other names of americans which he had treasured in his book. i complied with his request. in bidding me adieu he said: 'it will be one of my happiest recollections of rome that the last night which i passed in this city was passed in the coliseum, and with an american, a citizen of a free country. if you should ever visit warsaw, pray enquire for prince----; i shall be exceedingly glad to see you.' "thus i parted with this interesting pole. that i should have forgotten a polish name, pronounced but once, you will not think extraordinary. the sequel remains to be told. when the polish revolution broke out, what was my surprise to find the poet meinenvitch and a prince, whose name seemed like that which he pronounced to me, and to which was added--'just returned from italy'--among the first members of the provisional government." morse assured himself afterwards, and so noted it in his journal, that this chance acquaintance was prince michael jerome radziwill, who had served as lieutenant in the war of independence under kosciusko; fought under napoleon in russia (by whom he was made a brigadier-general); and, shortly after the meeting in the coliseum, was made general-in-chief of the polish army. after the defeat of this army he was banished to central russia until , when he retired to dresden. reverting again to the notebooks, we find that florence, with her wealth of beauty in architecture, sculpture, and painting, appealed strongly to the artist, and the notes are chiefly descriptions of what he sees, and which it will not be necessary to transcribe. he had, during all the time he was in italy, been completing, one after another, the copies for which he had received commissions, and had been sending them home. he thus describes to his friend, mr. van schaick, the paintings made for him:-- "_florence, may , ._ i have at length completed the two pictures which you were so kind as to commission me to execute for you, and they are packed in a case, ready to send to you from leghorn by the first opportunity, through messrs. bell, de yongh & co. of that city. "as your request was that these pictures should be heads, i have chosen two of the most celebrated in the gallery of portraits in the florence gallery. these are the heads of rubens and titian from the portraits by themselves. as the portraits of the two great masters of color they will alone be interesting, but they are more so from giving a fair specimen of their two opposite styles of color. that of rubens, from its gaiety, will doubtless be more popular, but that of titian, from its sobriety and dignity, pleases me better. in hanging the pictures they should be placed apart. the styles are so opposed that, were they placed near to each other, they would mutually affect each other unfavorably. rubens may be placed in more obscurity, but titian demands to be more in the light. "i have no time to add, as i am preparing to leave florence on monday for bologna and venice." travelling in italy in those days was fraught with many annoyances, for, in addition to the slow progress made in the _vetture_, there seems to have been (judging from the journal) a _dogana_, or custom-house, every few miles, where the luggage and clothing of travellers were examined, sometimes hastily and courteously, sometimes with more rigor. and yet this leisurely rate of progress, the travellers walking up most of the hills, must have had a charm unknown to the present-day tourist, who is whisked unseeing through the most characteristic parts of a foreign country. the beautiful scenery of the apennines was in this way enjoyed to the full by the artist, but i shall not linger over the journey nor shall i include any notes concerning bologna. he found the city most interesting--"a piece of porphyry set in verd antique"--and those to whom he had letters of introduction more hospitable than in any other city in italy. from bologna the route lay through ferrara and then to pontelagoscuro on the river po, where he was to take the courier boat for venice, down the po and through a canal. to add to the discomforts of this part of the trip it rained steadily for several days, and, on may , morse paints this dreary picture:-- "when we waked this morning we found it still raining and, apparently, so to continue all day. the rainy day at a country inn, so exquisitely described by irving in all its disagreeable features, is now before us. a solitary inn with nothing indoors to attract; cold and damp and dark. the prospect from the windows is a low muddy foreground, the north bank of the muddy po; a pile of brushwood, a heap of offal, a melancholy group of cattle, who show no other signs of life than the occasional sly attack by one of them upon a poor, dripping, half-starved dog, who, with tail between his legs, now and then ventures near them to search for his miserable meal. beyond, on the river, a few barks silently lying upon the stream, and on the opposite bank some buildings with a church and a campanile dimly seen through the mist. after coffee we were obliged to go to the _dogana_ to see to the searching of all our trunks and luggage. the principals were present and we were not severely searched. a frenchman, however, who had come on a little before us, was stripped to his skin, some papers were found upon him, and i understand he has made his escape and they are now searching for him.... "at . , after having dined, we waded through the mud in a pelting rain to the _dogana_ for our luggage, and, after getting completely wet, we embarked on board the courier boat, with a cabin seven feet long, six feet wide, and six high, into which six of us, having a gentleman from trieste and his mother added to our number, were crowded, with no beds.... rain, rain, rain!!! in torrents, cold and dreary through a perfectly flat country.... at ten o 'clock we arrived at a place called cavanella, where is a _locanda_ upon the canal which should have been open to receive us, but they were all asleep and no calling would rouse them. so we were obliged to go supperless to bed, and such abed! there being no room to spread mattresses for six in the cabin, three dirty mattresses, without sheets or blankets, were laid on the floor of the forward cabin (if it might so be called). this cabin was a hole down into which two or three steps led. we could not stand upright,--indeed, kneeling, our heads touched the top,--and when stretched at full length the tallest of us could touch with his head and feet from side to side. but, it being dreary and damp without and we being sleepy, we considered not the place, nor its inconveniences, nor its little pests which annoyed us all night, nor its vicinity to a magazine of cheese, with which the boat was laden and the odors from which assailed us. we lay down in our clothes and slept; the rain pattering above our heads only causing us to sleep the sounder." continuing their leisurely journey in this primitive manner, the rain finally ceasing, but the sky remaining overcast and the weather cold and wintry, they reached chioggia, and "at . , the towers and spires of venice were seen at a distance before us rising from the sea." venice, of course, was a delight to morse's eye, but his nose was affected quite differently, for he says: "those that have resided in venice a long time say it is not an unhealthy place. i cannot believe it, for the odors from the canals cannot but produce illness of some kind. that which is constantly offensive to any of our organs of sense must affect them injuriously." several severe thunderstorms broke over the city while he was there, and one was said to be the worst which had been known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. after describing it he adds: "i was at the academy. the rain penetrated through the ceiling at the corner of the picture i was copying--'the miracle of the slave,' by tintoret--and threatened injury to it, but happily it escaped." on june , he thus moralizes: "the piazza of st. mark is the great place of resort, and on every evening, but especially on sundays or _festas_, the arcades and cafés are crowded with elegantly dressed females and their gallants. chairs are placed in great numbers under the awnings before the cafés. a people that have no homes, who are deprived from policy of that domestic and social intercourse which we enjoy, must have recourse to this empty, heartless enjoyment; an indolent enjoyment, when all their intercourse, too, is in public, surrounded by police agents and soldiers to prevent excess. hallam, in his 'middle ages,' has this just reflection on the condition of this same city when under the council of ten: 'but how much more honorable are the wildest excesses of faction than the stillness and moral degradation of servitude.' quiet is, indeed, obtained here, but at what immense expense! expense of wealth, although excessive, is nothing compared with the expense of morality and of all intellectual exercise." on june , he witnessed another thunderstorm from the piazza of st. mark:-- "the lightning, flashing in the dark clouds that were gathering from the tyrolese alps, portended another storm which soon burst over us and hastened the conclusion of the music. the lightning was incessant. i stood at the corner of the piazza and watched the splendid effects of lights and darks, in a moment coming and in a moment gone, on the campanile and church of st. mark's. it was most sublime. the gilt statue of the angel on the top of the campanile never looked so sublime, seeming to be enveloped in the glory of the vivid light, and, as the electric fluid flashed behind it from cloud to cloud incessantly, it seemed to go and come at the bidding of the angel." this sounds almost like a prophetic vision, written by the pencil of the man who, in a few years from then, was to make the lightning go and come at his bidding. "_july ._ this anniversary of the day of our national birth found but two americans in venice. we met in the evening over a cup of coffee and thought and talked of the happiest of countries. we had no patriotic toasts, but the sentiments of our hearts were--'peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces.' never on any anniversary of our independence have i felt so strongly the great reason i have for gratitude in having been born in such a country. when i think of the innumerable blessings we enjoy over every other country in the world, i am constrained to praise god who hath made us to differ, for 'he hath not dealt so with any nation, and as for his judgments, we have not known them.' while pestilence and famine and war surround me here in these devoted countries, i fix my thoughts on one bright spot on earth; truly (if our too ungrateful countrymen would but see it), truly a terrestrial paradise." this attack of nostalgia was probably largely due to atmospheric conditions, for at least one thunderstorm seems to have been a matter of daily occurrence. this, added to the noisome odors arising from the canals, affected his health, for he complains of feeling more unwell than at any time since he left home. it must, therefore, have been with no feelings of great regret that he packed his belongings and prepared to leave venice with a companion, mr. ferguson, of natchez, on the th of july. his objective point was paris, but he planned to linger by the way and take a leisurely course through the italian lake region, switzerland, and germany. the notebooks give a detailed but rather dry account of the daily happenings. it was, presumably, morse's intention to elaborate these, at some future day, into a more entertaining record of his wanderings; but this was never done. i shall, therefore, pass on rapidly, touching but lightly on the incidents of the journey, which were, in the main, without special interest. the route lay through padua, vicenza, verona, and brescia to milan. from vicenza a side trip was made to the watering-place of recoaro, where a few days were most delightfully spent in the company of the english consul at venice, mr. money, and his family. "recoaro, like all watering-places, is beginning to be the resort of the fashionable world. the grand duchess of tuscany is now here, and on saturday the vice-queen of italy is expected from milan to visit her aunt, the grand duchess.... towards evening parties of ladies and gentlemen are seen promenading or riding on donkeys along the brows of the mountains and among the trees, and many priests are seen disfiguring the landscape with their tasteless, uncouth dresses; most of them coming, i was informed on the best authority, for the purpose of gambling and dissipating that time of which, from the trifling nature of their duties and the almost countless increase of their numbers, they have so much to spare. cards have the most fascination for them." another incident of the stay at recoaro is worth recording. referring to the family of mr. money, he says:-- "in the afternoon took an excursion on donkeys with the whole family among the wild and romantic scenery. in returning, while riding by the side of mr. money and in conversation with him, my donkey stumbled upon his knees and threw me over his head, without injury to me, but mrs. money, who was just before me, seeing the accident, was near fainting and, during the rest of the day, was invisible. i was somewhat surprised at the effect produced on her until i learned that the news of the loss of her son in india by a fall from his horse, which had recently reached her, had rendered her nerves peculiarly sensitive." two days later, however, he joined them in another excursion. "on returning we stopped to take tea at mrs. ireland's lodgings, an english lady who is here with her two daughters, accomplished and highly agreeable people. i was told by them that after i left rome a most diabolical attempt was made to poison the english artists who had made a party to grotto ferrata. they were mistaken by the persons who attempted the deed for germans. they all became exceedingly ill immediately after dinner, and, as the wine was the only thing they had taken there, having brought their food with them, it was suspected and a strong solution of copper was proved to be in it. i was told that messrs. gibson and desoulavy suffered a great deal, the latter being confined to his bed for three weeks. had i been in rome it is more than probable i should have been of their party, for i had never visited grotto ferrata, and the company of those with whom i had associated would have induced me to join them without a doubt." morse enjoyed his stay at recoaro so much that he was persuaded by his hospitable friends to prolong his visit for a few days longer than he had planned, but, on july , he and his friend mr. ferguson bade adieu and proceeded on their journey. verona and brescia were visited and on july they came to milan. the cathedral he finds "a most gorgeous building, far exceeding my conception of it"; and of the beautiful street of the corso porta orientale he says: "it is wider than broadway and as superior as white marble palaces are to red brick houses. there is an opinion prevalent among some of our good citizens that broadway is not only the longest and widest, but the most superbly built, street in the world. the sooner they are undeceived the better. broadway is a beautiful street, a very beautiful street, but it is absurd to think that our brick houses of twenty-five feet front, with plain doors and windows, built by contract in two or three months, and holding together long enough to be let, can rival the spacious stone palaces of hundreds of feet in length, with lofty gates and balconied windows, and their foundations deeply laid and slowly constructed to last for ages." this was, of course, when broadway even below fourteenth street, was a residence street. attending service in the cathedral on sunday, and being, as usual, wearied by the monotony and apparent insincerity of it all, he again gives vent to his feelings:-- "how admirably contrived is every part of the structure of this system to take captive the imagination. it is a religion of the imagination; all the arts of the imagination are pressed into its service; architecture, painting, sculpture, music, have lent all their charm to enchant the senses and impose on the understanding by substituting for the solemn truths of god's word, which are addressed to the understanding, the fictions of poetry and the delusions of feeling. the theatre is a daughter of this prolific mother of abominations, and a child worthy of its dam. the lessons of morality are pretended to be taught by both, and much in the same way, by scenic effect and pantomime, and the fruits are much the same. "i am sometimes even constrained to doubt the lawfulness of my own art when i perceive its prostitution, were i not fully persuaded that the art itself, when used for its legitimate purposes, is one of the greatest correcters of grossness and promoters of refinement. i have been led, since i have been in italy, to think much of the propriety of introducing pictures into churches in aid of devotion. i have certainly every inducement to decide in favor of the practice did i consult alone the seeming interest of art. that pictures may and do have the effect upon some rightly to raise the affections, i have no doubt, and, abstractly considered, the practice would not merely be harmless but useful; but, knowing that man is led astray by his imagination more than by any of his other faculties, i consider it so dangerous to his best interests that i had rather sacrifice the interests of the arts, if there is any collision, than run the risk of endangering those compared with which all others are not for a moment to be considered. but more of this another time." i have introduced here and at other times morse's strictures on the roman catholic religion, and on other subjects, without comment on my part, even when these strictures seem to verge on illiberality. my desire is to present a true portrait of the man, with the shadows as well as the lights duly emphasized, fully realizing that what may appear faults to some, to others will shine out as virtues, and _vice versa_. from milan, morse and his companion planned to cross the mountains to geneva, but, having a day or two to spare, they visited the lake of como, which, as was to be expected, satisfied the eye of the artist: "it is shut in by mountains on either side, reminding me of the scenery of lake george, to which its shores are very similar. in the transparency of the water, however, lake george is its superior, and in islands also, but in all things else the lake of como must claim the precedence. the palaces and villas and villages which skirt its shores, the mountains, vine-clad and cultivated to their summits, all give a charm for which we look in vain as yet in our country. the luxuries of art have combined with those of nature in a wonderful degree in this enchanting spot." on august , they left milan in the diligence for lago maggiore, and we learn that: "our coach is accompanied by _gendarmes_. we enquired the reason of the conductor, who was in the coach with us. he told us that the road is an unsafe one; that every day there are instances of robbery perpetrated upon those who travel alone." [illustration: henry clay painted by morse. now in the metropolitan museum, new york] it would be pleasant to follow the travellers through beautiful maggiore and up the rugged passes from italy to switzerland and thence to germany and paris, and to see through the unspoiled eyes of an enthusiast the beauties of that playground of the nations, but it would be but the repetition of an oft-told tale, and i must hasten on, making but a few extracts from the diary. no thrilling adventures were met with, except towards the end, but they enjoyed to the full the grand scenery, the picturesque costumes of the peasants and the curious customs of the different countries through which they passed. the weather was sometimes fine, but more often overcast or rainy, and we find this note on august : "how much do a traveller's impressions depend upon the weather, and even on the time of day in which he sees objects. he sees most of the country through which he travels but once, and it is the face which any point assumes at that one moment which is brought to his recollection. if it is under a gloomy atmosphere, it is not possible that he should remember it under other form or aspect." on sunday, august , he watched the sunrise from the summit of the rigi under ideal conditions, and, after describing the scene and saying that the rest of the company had gone back to bed, he adds:-- "i had found too little comfort in the wretched thing that had been provided for me in the shape of a bed to desire to return thither, and i also felt too strongly the emotions which the scene i had just witnessed had excited, to wish for their dissipation in troubled dreams. "if there is a feeling allied to devotion, it is that which such a scene of sublimity as this we have just witnessed inspires, and yet that feeling is not devotion. i am aware that it is but the emotion of taste. it may exist without a particle of true religious feeling, or it may coexist and add strength to it. there are thousands, probably, who have here had their emotion of taste excited without one thought of that being by whom these wonders were created, one thought of their relation to him, of their duty to him, or of admiration at that unmerited goodness which allows them to be witnesses of his majesty and power as exhibited in these wonders of nature. shut out as i am by circumstances from the privileges of this day in public worship, i have yet on the top of this mountain a place of private worship such as i have not had for some time past. i am alone on the mountain with such a scene spread before me that i must adore, and weak, indeed, must be that faith which, on this day, in such a scene, does not lift the heart from nature up to nature's god." on august , on the road to zurich, he makes this rather interesting observation: "we noticed in a great many instances that wires were attached to the electric rods and conducted to posts near the houses, when a chime of bells was so arranged as to ring in a highly charged state of the atmosphere (franklin's experiment)." journeying on past schaffhausen, where the beautiful falls of the rhine filled him with admiration, he and his companion came to heidelberg and explored the ruins of the stupendous castle. here he parted with his travelling companion, mr. ferguson, who went on to frankfort, which city morse avoided because the french government had established a strict quarantine against it on account of some epidemic, the nature of which is not disclosed in the notes. he was eager to get to paris now and wished to avoid all delays. "_september ._ i engaged my passage in the diligence for mannheim, and, for the first time since i have been in europe, set out alone.... i learn from the gentleman in the coach that the _cordon sanitaire_ in france is to be enforced with great rigor from the th of september; i hope, therefore, to get into france before that date. "_september , saarbruck._ we last night took our places for metz, not knowing, however, or even thinking it probable that we should be able to get there. it was hinted by some that a small _douceur_ would enable us to pass the _cordon_, but how to be applied i knew not. "among our passengers who joined me yesterday was a young german officer who was the only one who could speak french. with him i contrived to converse during the day. we had beds in the same room and, as we were about retiring, he told me, as i understood him, that by giving the keys of my luggage to the coachman in the morning, the business of passing at the _douane_ on the frontier would be facilitated. i assented and told him, as he understood the language better than i, i left it to him to make any arrangements and i would share the expense with him. "we were called sometime before day and i left my bed very reluctantly. the morning was cloudy and dark and so far favorable to the enterprise we were about to undertake, and of the nature and plan of which i had not the slightest suspicion. we were soon settled in the diligence and left saarbruck for the frontier. i composed myself to sleep and had just got into a doze when suddenly the coach stopped, and, the door opening, a man touching me said in a low voice--'_descendez, monsieur, descendez._' i asked the reason but got no answer. my companion and i alighted. there was no house near; a bright streak in the east under the heavy black clouds showed that it was just daybreak, and ahead of us in the road a great light from the windows of a long building showed us the place of the hospital of the _cordon_. "our guide, for so he proved to be, taking the knapsack of my companion and a basket of mine, in which i carry my portfolio and maps, struck off to the left into a newly ploughed field, while our carriage proceeded at a quick pace onward again. i asked where we were going, but got no other reply than '_doucement, monsieur_.' it then for the first time flashed across my mind that we had undertaken an unlawful and very hazardous enterprise, that of running by the _cordon_. i had now, however, no alternative; i must follow, for i knew not what other course to take. "after passing through ploughed fields and wet grass and grain for some time a small by-path crossed from the main road. our guide beckoned us back, while he went forward each way to see that all was clear, and then we crossed and proceeded again over ploughed fields and through the clover. it now began to rain which, disagreeable as it was, i did not regret, all things considered. we soon came to another and wider cross-path; we stopped and our guide went forward again in the same cautious manner, stooping down and listening, like an indian, near the ground. he beckoned us to cross over and again we traversed the fields, passing by the base of a small hill, when, as we softly crept up the side, we saw the form of a sentinel against the light of the sky. our guide whispered, '_doucement_' again, and we gently retreated, my companion whispering to me, '_très dangèreux, monsieur, très désagréable_.' "we took a wider circuit behind some small buildings, and at length came into one of the smaller streets in the outskirts of forbach. here were what appeared to me barracks. the caution was given to walk softly and separately (we were all, fortunately, in dark clothes), our guide passing first round the corners, and, having passed the sentry-boxes, in which, with one exception, we saw no person, and in this instance the sentinel did not hail us (but this was in the city), we came to a house at the window of which our guide tapped. a man opened it, and, after some explanation, ascertaining who we were, opened the door and, striking a light, set some wine and bread before us. "here we remained for some time to recover breath after our perilous adventure, for, if one of the sentinels had seen us, we should in all probability have been instantly shot. i knew not that we were now entirely free from the danger of being arrested, until we heard our carriage in the street and had ascertained that all our luggage had passed the _douane_ without suspicion. we paid our guide eight francs each, and, taking our seats again in the carriage, drove forward toward metz." there were no further adventures, although they trembled with anxiety every time their passports were called for. morse regretted having been innocently led into this escapade, and would have made a clean breast of it to the police, as he had not been near frankfort, but he feared to compromise his travelling companion who had come from that city. on september they finally arrived in paris. "how changed are the circumstances of this city since i was last here nearly two years ago. a traitor king has been driven into exile; blood has flowed in its streets, the price of its liberty; our friend, the nation's guest, whom i then saw at his house, with apparently little influence and out of favor with the court, the great lafayette, is now second only to the king in honor and influence as the head of a powerful party. these and a thousand other kindred reflections, relating also to my own circumstances, crowd upon me at the moment of again entering this famous city." chapter xix september , --september , takes rooms with horatio greenough.--political talk with lafayette.-- riots in paris.--letters from greenough.--bunker hill monument.--letters from fenimore cooper.--cooper's portrait by verboeckhoven.--european criticisms.--reminiscences of r.w. habersham.--hints of an electric telegraph.--not remembered by morse.--early experiments in photography.-- painting of the louvre.--cholera in paris.--baron von humboldt.--morse presides at th of july dinner.--proposes toast to lafayette.--letter to new york "observer" on fenimore cooper.--also on pride in american citizenship.--works with lafayette in behalf of poles.--letter from lafayette.--morse visits london before sailing for home.--sits to leslie for head of sterne. the diary was not continued beyond this time and was never seriously resumed, so that we must now depend on letters to and from morse, on fugitive notes, or on the reminiscences of others for a record of his life. the first letter which i shall introduce was written from paris to his brothers on september , :-- "i arrived safely in this city on monday noon in excellent health and spirits. my last letter to you was from venice just as i was about to leave it, quite debilitated and unwell from application to my painting, but more, i believe, from the climate, from the perpetual sirocco which reigned uninterrupted for weeks. i have not time now to give you an account of my most interesting journey through lombardy, switzerland, part of germany, and through the eastern part of france. i found, on my arrival here, my friend mr. greenough, the sculptor, who had come from florence to model the bust of general lafayette, and we are in excellent, convenient rooms together, within a few doors of the good general. "i called yesterday on general lafayette early in the morning. the servant told me that he was obliged to meet the polish committee at an early hour, and feared he could not see me. i sent in my card, however, and the servant returned immediately saying that the general wished to see me in his chamber. i followed him through several rooms and entered the chamber. the general was in dishabille, but, with his characteristic kindness, he ran forward, and, seizing both my hands, expressed with great warmth how glad he was to see me safely returned from italy, and appearing in such good health. he then told me to be seated, and without any ceremony began familiarly to question me about my travels, etc. the conversation, however, soon turned upon the absorbing topic of the day, the fate of poland, the news of the fall of warsaw having just been received by telegraphic dispatch. i asked him if there was now any hope for poland. he replied: 'oh, yes! their cause is not yet desperate; their army is safe; but the conduct of france, and more especially of england, has been most pusillanimous and culpable. had the english government shown the least disposition to coalesce in vigorous measures with france for the assistance of the poles, they would have achieved their independence.' "the general looks better and younger than ever. there is a healthy freshness of complexion, like that of a young man in full vigor, and his frame and step (allowing for his lameness) are as firm and strong as when he was our nation's guest. i sat with him ten or fifteen minutes and then took my leave, for i felt it a sin to consume any more of the time of a man engaged as he is in great plans of benevolence, and whose every moment is, therefore, invaluable. "the news of the fall of warsaw is now agitating paris to a degree not known since the trial of the ex-ministers. about three o'clock our servant told us that there was fighting at the palais royal, and we determined to go as far as we prudently could to see the tumult. we proceeded down the rue saint-honoré. there was evident agitation in the multitudes that filled the sidewalks--an apprehension of something to be dreaded. there were groups at the corners; the windows were filled, persons looking out as if in expectation of a procession or of some fête. the shops began to be shut, and every now and then the drum was heard beating to arms. the troops were assembling and bodies of infantry and cavalry were moving through the various streets. during this time no noise was heard from the people--a mysterious silence was observed, but they were moved by the slightest breath. if one walked quicker than the rest, or suddenly stopped, thither the enquiring look and step were directed, and a group instantly assembled. at the palais royal a larger crowd had collected and a greater body of troops were marching and countermarching in the place du palais royal. the palais royal itself had the interior cleared and all the courts. everything in this place of perpetual gayety was now desolate; even the fountains had ceased to play, and the seared autumnal leaves of the trees, some already fallen, seemed congruous with the sentiment of the hour. most of the shops were also shut and the stalls deserted. still there was no outcry and no disturbance. "passing through the rue vivienne the same collections of crowds and of troops were seen. some were reading a police notice just posted on the walls, designed to prevent the riotous assembling of the people, and advising them to retire when the riot act should be read. the notice was read with murmurs and groans, and i had scarcely ascertained its contents before it was torn from the walls with acclamations. as night approached we struck into the boulevard de la madeleine. at the corner of this boulevard and the rue des capucines is the hotel of general sebastiani. we found before the gates a great and increasing crowd. "we took a position on the opposite corner, in such a place as secured a safe retreat in case of need, but allowed us to observe all that passed. here there was an evident intention in the crowd of doing some violence, nor was it at all doubtful what would be the object of their attack. they seemed to wait only for the darkness and for a leader. "the sight of such a crowd is fearful, and its movements, as it was swayed by the incidents of the moment, were in the highest degree exciting. a body of troops of the line would pass; the crowd would silently open for their passage and close immediately behind them. a body of the national guard would succeed, and these would be received with loud cheers and gratulations. a soldier on guard would exercise a little more severity than was, perhaps, necessary for the occasion; yells, and execrations, and hisses would be his reward. "night had now set in; heavy, dark clouds, with a misty rain, had made the heavens above more dark and gloomy. a man rushed forward toward the gate, hurling his hat in the air, and followed by the crowd, which suddenly formed into long lines behind him. i now looked for something serious. a body of troops was in line before the gate. at this moment two police officers, on horseback, in citizens' dress, but with a tricolored belt around their bodies, rode through the crowd and up to the gate, and in a moment after i perceived the multitude from one of the streets rushing in wild confusion into the boulevard, and the current of the people setting back in all directions. "while wondering at the cause of this sudden movement, i heard the trampling of horses, and a large band of carabiniers, with their bright helmets glittering in the light of the lamps, dashed down the street and drew up before the gate. the police officers put themselves at their head and harangued the people. the address was received with groans. the _carabiniers_ drew their swords, orders were given for the charge, and in an instant they dashed down the street, the people dispersing like the mist before the wind. the charge was made down the opposite sidewalk from that where we had placed ourselves, so i kept my station, and, when they returned up the middle of the street to charge on the other side, i crossed over behind them and avoided them." i have given enough of this letter to show that morse was still surrounded by dangers of various sorts, and it is also a good pen-picture of the irresponsible actions of a cowardly mob, especially of a parisian mob. the letters which passed between morse and his friends, james fenimore cooper, the novelist, and horatio greenough, the sculptor, are most interesting, and would of themselves fill a volume. both cooper and greenough wrote fluently and entertainingly, and i shall select a few characteristic sentences from the letters of each, resisting the strong temptation to include the whole correspondence. greenough returned to florence after having roomed with morse in paris, and wrote as follows from there:-- as for the commission from government, i don't speak of it yet. after about a fortnight i shall be calm, i think. morse, i have made up my mind on one score, namely, that this order shall not be fruitless to the greater men who are now in our rear. they are sucking now and rocking in cradles, but i can hear the pung! pung! puffetty! of their hammers, and i am prophetic, too. we'll see if yankee land can't muster some ten or a dozen of them in the course of as many years... you were right, i had heard of the resolution submitted to congress, etc. mr. cooper wrote me about it. i have not much faith in congress, however. i will confess that, when the spectre debt has leaned over my pillow of late, and, smiling ghastlily, has asked if she and i were not intended as companions through life, i snap my fingers at her and tell her that brother jonathan talks of adopting me, and that he won't have her of his household. "go to london, you hag," says i, "where they say you're handsome and wholesome; don't grind your long teeth at me, or i'll read the declaration of independence to ye." so you see i make uncertain hopes fight certain fears, and borrow from the generous, good-natured future the motives for content which are denied me by the stinted present... what shall i say in answer to your remarks on my opinions? shall i go all over the ground again? it were useless. that my heart is wrong in a thousand ways i daily feel, but 't is my stubborn head which refuses to comprehend the creation as you comprehend it. that we should be grateful for all we have, i feel--for all we have is given us; nor do i think we have little. for my part i would be blest in mere existence were i not goaded by a wish to make my one talent two; and we have scripture for the rectitude of such a wish. i don't think the stubborn resistance of the tide of ill-fortune can be called rebellion against providence. "help yourself and heaven will help you," says the proverb.... there hangs before me a print of the bunker hill monument. pray be judge between me and the building committee of that monument. there you observe that my model was founded solidly, and on each of its square plinths were trophies, or groups, or cannon, as might be thought fit. (no. i.) well, they have taken away the foundation, made the shaft start sheer from the dirt like a spear of asparagus, and, instead of an acute angle, by which i hoped to show the work was done and lead off the eye, they have made an obtuse one, producing the broken-chimney-like effect which your eye will not fail to condemn in no. ii. then they have enclosed theirs with a light, elegant fence, _à la parigina_, as though the austere forms of egypt were compatible with the decorative flummery of the boulevards. let 'em go for dunderheads as they are.... i congratulate you on your sound conscience with regard to the affair that you wot of. as for your remaining free, that's all very well to think during the interregnum, but a man without a true love is a ship without ballast, a one-tined fork, half a pair of scissors, an utter flash in the pan.... so you are going home, my dear morse, and god knows if ever i shall see you again. pardon, i pray you, anything of levity which you may have been offended at in me. believe me it arose from my so rarely finding one to whom i could be natural and give loose without fear of good faith or good nature ever failing. wherever i am your approbation will be dearer to me than the hurrah of a world. i shall write to glorious fenimore in a few days. my love to allston and dana. god bless you, h. greenough. these extracts are from different letters, but they show, i think, the charming character of the man and reflect his admiration for morse. from the letters of james fenimore cooper, written while they were both in europe, i select the two following as characteristic: july , . my dear morse,--here we are at spa--the famous hard-drinking, dissipated, gambling, intriguing spa--where so much folly has been committed, so many fortunes squandered, and so many women ruined! how are the mighty fallen! we have just returned from a ramble in the environs, among deserted reception-houses and along silent roads. the country is not unlike ballston, though less wooded, more cultivated, and perhaps a little more varied.... i have had a great compliment paid me, master samuel, and, as it is nearly the only compliment i have received in travelling over europe, i am the more proud of it. here are the facts. you must know there is a great painter in brussels of the name of verboeckhoven (which, translated into the vernacular, means a _bull and a book baked in an oven!_), who is another paul potter. he outdoes all other men in drawing cattle, etc., with a suitable landscape. in his way he is truly admirable. well, sir, this artist did me the favor to call at brussels with the request that i would let him sketch my face. he came after the horses were ordered, and, knowing the difficulty of the task, i thanked him, but was compelled to refuse. on our arrival at liège we were told that a messenger from the governor had been to enquire for us, and i began to bethink me of my sins. there was no great cause for fear, however, for it proved that mr. bull-and-book-baked had placed himself in the diligence, come down to liège (sixty-three miles), and got the governor to give him notice, by means of my passport, when we came. of course i sat. i cannot say the likeness is good, but it has a vastly life-like look and is like all the other pictures you have seen of my chameleon face. let that be as it will, the compliment is none the less, and, provided the artist does not mean to serve me up as a specimen of american wild beasts, i shall thank him for it. to be followed twelve posts by a first-rate artist, who is in favor with the king, is so unusual that i was curious to know how far our minds were in unison, and so i probed him a little. i found him well skilled in his art, of course, but ignorant on most subjects. as respects our general views of men and things there was scarcely a point in common, for he has few salient qualities, though he is liberal; but his gusto for natural subjects is strong, and his favorite among all my books is "the prairie," which, you know, is filled with wild beasts. here the secret was out. that picture of animal nature had so caught his fancy that he followed me sixty miles to paint a sketch. while this letter of cooper's was written in lighter vein, the following extracts from one written on august show another side of his character:-- the criticisms of which you speak give me no concern.... the "heidenmauer" is not equal to the "bravo," but it is a good book and better than two thirds of scott's. they may say it is like his if they please; they have said so of every book i have written, even the "pilot." but the "heidenmauer" is like and was intended to be like, in order to show how differently a democrat and an aristocrat saw the same thing. as for french criticisms they have never been able to exalt me in my own opinion nor to stir my bile, for they are written with such evident ignorance (i mean of english books) as to be beneath notice. what the deuce do i care whether my books are on their shelves or not? what did i ever get from france or continental europe? neither personal favors nor money. but this they cannot understand, for so conceited is a frenchman that many of them think that i came to paris to be paid. now i never got the difference in the boiling of the pot between new york and paris in my life. the "journal des débats" was snappish with "water witch," merve [?] i believe with "bravo," and let it bark at "heidenmauer" and be hanged. no, no more. the humiliation comes from home. it is biting to find that accident has given me a country which has not manliness and pride to maintain its own opinions, while it is overflowing with conceit. but never mind all this. see that you do not decamp before my departure and i'll promise not to throw myself into the rhine.... i hope the fourth of july is not breaking out in habersham's noddle, for i can tell him that was the place most affected during the dinner. adieu, yours as ever, j. fenimore cooper. the mr. habersham here jokingly referred to was r.w. habersham, of augusta, georgia, who in the year was an art student in the _atelier_ of baron gros, and between whom and morse a friendship sprang up. they roomed together at a time when the cholera was raging in paris, but, owing to mr. habersham's wise insistence that all the occupants of the house should take a teaspoonful of charcoal every morning, all escaped the disease. mr. habersham in after years wrote and sent to morse some of his reminiscences of that period, and from these i shall quote the following as being of more than ordinary interest:-- "the louvre was always closed on monday to clean up the gallery after the popular exhibition of the paintings on sunday, so that monday was our day for visits, excursions, etc. on one occasion i was left alone, and two or three times during the week he was absent. this was unusual, but i asked no questions and made no remarks. but on saturday evening, sitting by our evening lamp, he seemed lost in thought, till suddenly he remarked: 'the mails in our country are too slow; this french telegraph is better, and would do even better in our clear atmosphere than here, where half the time fogs obscure the skies. but this will not be fast enough--_the lightning would serve us better_.' "these may not be the exact words, but they convey the sense, and i, laughing, said: 'aha! i see what you have been after, you have been examining the french system of telegraphing.' he admitted that he had taken advantage of the kind offer of one in authority to do so.... "there was, on one occasion, another reference made to the conveyance of sound under water, and to the length of time taken to communicate the letting in of the water into the erie canal by cannon shots to new york, and other means, during which the suggestion of using keys and wires, like the piano, was rejected as requiring too many wires, if other things were available. i recollect also that in our frequent visits to mr. j. fenimore cooper's, in the rue st. dominique, these subjects, so interesting to americans, were often introduced, and that morse seemed to harp on them, constantly referring to franklin and lord bacon. now i, while recognizing the intellectual grandeur of both these men, had contracted a small opinion of their moral strength; but morse would uphold and excuse, or rather deny, the faults attributed. lord bacon, especially, he held to have _sacrificed himself to serve the queen in her aberrations_; while of franklin, 'the great american,' recognized by the french, he was particularly proud." cooper also remembered some such hints of a telegraph made by morse at that time, for in "the sea lions,"[ ] on page , he says:-- [footnote : the riverside press, .] "we pretend to no knowledge on the subject of the dates of discoveries in the arts and sciences, but well do we remember the earnestness, and single-minded devotion to a laudable purpose, with which our worthy friend first communicated to us his ideas on the subject of using the electric spark by way of a telegraph. it was in paris and during the winter of - and the succeeding spring, and we have a satisfaction in recording this date that others may prove better claims if they can." curiously enough, morse himself could, in after years, never remember having suggested at that time the possibility of using electricity to convey intelligence. he always insisted that the idea first came to him a few months later on his return voyage to america, and in he wrote to mr. cooper saying that he must be mistaken, to which the latter replied, under date of may :-- "for the time i still stick to paris, so does my wife, so does my eldest daughter. you did no more than to throw out the general idea, but i feel quite confident this occurred in paris. i confess i thought the notion evidently chimerical, and as such spoke of it in my family. i always set you down as a sober-minded, common-sense sort of a fellow, and thought it a high flight for a painter to make to go off on the wings of the lightning. we may be mistaken, but you will remember that the priority of the invention was a question early started, and my impressions were the same much nearer to the time than it is to-day." that the recollections of his friends were probably clearer than his own on this point is admitted by morse in the following letter:-- irving house, new york, september , . my dear sir,--i was agreeably surprised this morning in conversing with professor renwick to find that he corroborates the fact you have mentioned in your "sea lions" respecting the earlier conception of my telegraph by me, than the date i had given, and which goes only so far back in my own recollection as . professor renwick insists that immediately after professor dana's lectures at the new york athenaeum, i consulted with him on the subject of the velocity of electricity and in such a way as to indicate to him that i was contriving an electric telegraph. the consultation i remember, but i did not recollect the time. he will depose that it was before i went to europe, after those lectures; now i went in ; this makes it almost certain that the impression you and mrs. cooper and your daughter had that i conversed with you on the subject in after my return from italy is correct. if you are still persuaded that this is so, your deposition before the commission in this city to that fact will render me an incalculable service. i will cheerfully defray your expenses to and from the city if you will meet me here this week or beginning of next. in haste, but with best respects to mrs. cooper and family, i am, dear sir, as ever your friend and servant, saml. f. b. morse. j. fenimore cooper, esq. all this is interesting, but, of course, has no direct bearing on the actual date of invention. it is more than probable that morse did, while he was studying the french semaphores, and at an even earlier date, dream vaguely of the possibility of using electricity for conveying intelligence, and that he gave utterance among his intimates to these dreams; but the practical means of so utilizing this mysterious agent did not take shape in his mind until . an inchoate vision of the possibility of using electricity is far different from an actual plan eventually elaborated into a commercial success. another extract from mr. habersham's reminiscences, on a totally different subject, will be found interesting: "i have forgot to mention that one day, while in the rue surenne, i was studying from my own face reflected in a glass, as is often done by young artists, when i remarked how grand it would be if we could invent a method of fixing the image on the mirror. professor morse replied that he had thought of it while a pupil at yale, and that professor silliman (i think) and himself had tried it with a wash of nitrate of silver on a piece of paper, but that, unfortunately, it made the lights _dark_ and the shadows _light_, but that if they could be reversed, we should have a facsimile like india-ink drawings. had they thought of using glass, as is now done, the daguerreotype would have been perhaps anticipated--certainly the photograph." this is particularly interesting because, as i shall note later on, morse was one of the pioneers in experimenting with the daguerreotype in america. among the paintings which morse executed while he was in paris was a very ambitious one. this was an interior of one of the galleries in the louvre with carefully executed miniature copies of some of the most celebrated canvases. writing of it, and of the dreadful epidemic of cholera, to his brothers on may , , he says:-- "my anxiety to finish my picture and to return drives me, i fear, to too great application and too little exercise, and my health has in consequence been so deranged that i have been prevented from the speedy completion of my picture. from nine o'clock until four daily i paint uninterruptedly at the louvre, and, with the closest application, i shall not be able to finish it before the close of the gallery on the th of august. the time each morning before going to the gallery is wholly employed in preparation for the day, and, after the gallery closes at four, dinner and exercise are necessary, so that i have no time for anything else. "the cholera is raging here, and i can compare the state of mind in each man of us only to that of soldiers in the heat of battle; all the usual securities of life seem to be gone. apprehension and anxiety make the stoutest hearts quail. any one feels, when he lays himself down at night, that he will in all probability be attacked before daybreak; for the disease is a pestilence that walketh in darkness, and seizes the greatest number of its victims at the most helpless hour of the night. fifteen hundred were seized in a day, and fifteen thousand at least have already perished, although the official accounts will not give so many. "_may ._ my picture makes progress and i am sanguine of success if nothing interferes to prevent its completion. i shall take no more commissions here and shall only complete my large picture and a few unfinished works. "general lafayette told me a few weeks ago, when i was returning with him in his carriage, that the financial condition of the united states was a subject of great importance, and he wished that i would write you and others, who were known as statistical men, and get your views on the subject. there never was a better time for demonstrating the principles of our free institutions by showing a result favorable to our country." among the men of note whom morse met while he was in paris was baron alexander von humboldt, the famous traveller and naturalist, who was much attracted towards the artist, and often went to the louvre to watch him while he was at work, or to wander through the galleries with him, deep in conversation. he was afterwards one of the first to congratulate morse on the successful exhibition of his telegraph before the french academy of science. as we have already seen, morse was intensely patriotic. he followed with keen interest the developments in our national progress as they unrolled themselves before his eyes, and when the occasion offered he took active part in furthering what he considered the right and in vigorously denouncing the wrong. he was never blind to our national or party failings, but held the mirror up before his countrymen's eyes with steady hand, and yet he was prouder of being an american than of anything else, and, as i have had occasion to remark before, his ruling passion was an intense desire to accomplish some great good for his beloved country, to raise her in the estimation of the rest of the world. on the th of july, , he was called on to preside at the banquet given by the americans resident in paris, with mr. cooper as vice-president. general lafayette was the guest of honor, and the american minister hon. william c. rives, g.w. haven, and many others were present. morse, in proposing the toast to general lafayette, spoke as follows:-- "i cannot propose the next toast, gentlemen, so intimately connected with the last, without adverting to the distinguished honor and pleasure we this day enjoy above the thousands, and i may say hundreds of thousands, of our countrymen who are at this moment celebrating this great national festival--the honor and pleasure of having at our board our venerable guest on my right hand, the hero whom two worlds claim as their own. yes, gentlemen, he belongs to america as well as to europe. he is our fellow citizen, and the universal voice of our country would cry out against us did we not manifest our nation's interest in his person and character. "with the mazes of european politics we have nothing to do; to changing schemes of good or bad government we cannot make ourselves a party; with the success or defeat of this or that faction we can have no sympathy; but with the great principles of rational liberty, of civil and religious liberty, those principles for which our guest fought by the side of our fathers, and which he has steadily maintained for a long life, 'through good report and evil report,' we do sympathize. we should not be americans if we did not sympathize with them, nor can we compromise one of these principles and preserve our self-respect as loyal american citizens. they are the principles of order and good government, of obedience to law; the principles which, under providence, have made our country unparalleled in prosperity; principles which rest, not in visionary theory, but are made palpable by the sure test of experiment and time. "but, gentlemen, we honor our guest as the stanch, undeviating defender of these principles, of our principles, of american principles. has he ever deserted them? has he ever been known to waver? gentlemen, there are some men, some, too, who would wish to direct public opinion, who are like the buoys upon tide-water. they float up and down as the current sets this way or that. if you ask at an emergency where they are, we cannot tell you; we must first consult the almanac; we must know the quarter of the moon, the way of the wind, the time of the tide, and then we may guess where you will find them. "but, gentlemen, our guest is not of this fickle class. he is a tower amid the waters, his foundation is upon a rock, he moves not with the ebb and flow of the stream. the storm may gather, the waters may rise and even dash above his head, or they may subside at his feet, still he stands unmoved. we know his site and his bearings, and with the fullest confidence we point to where he stood six-and-fifty years ago. he stands there now. the winds have swept by him, the waves have dashed around him, the snows of winter have lighted upon him, but still he is there. "i ask you, therefore, gentlemen, to drink with me in honor of general lafayette." portions of many of morse's letters to his brothers were published in the new york "observer," owned and edited by them. part of the following letter was so published, i believe, but, at mr. cooper's request, the sentences referring to his personal sentiments were omitted. there can be no harm, however, in giving them publicity at this late day. the letter was written on july , , and begins by gently chiding his brothers for not having written to him for nearly four months, and he concludes this part by saying, "but what is past can't be helped. i am glad, exceedingly glad, to hear of your prosperity and hope it may be continued to you." and then he says:-- "i am diligently occupied every moment of my time at the louvre finishing the great labor which i have there undertaken. i say 'finishing,' i mean that part of it which can only be completed there, namely, the copies of the pictures. all the rest i hope to do at home in new york, such as the frames of the pictures, the figures, etc. it is a great labor, but it will be a splendid and valuable work. it excites a great deal of attention from strangers and the french artists. i have many compliments upon it, and i am sure it is the most correct one of its kind ever painted, for every one says i have caught the style of each of the masters. cooper is delighted with it and i think he will own it. he is with me two or three hours at the gallery (the hours of his relaxation) every day as regularly as the day comes. i spend almost every evening at his house in his fine family. "cooper is very little understood, i believe, by our good people. he has a bold, original, independent mind, thoroughly american. he loves his country and her principles most ardently; he knows the hollowness of all the despotic systems of europe, and especially is he thoroughly conversant with the heartless, false, selfish system of great britain; the perfect antipodes of our own. he fearlessly supports american principles in the face of all europe, and braves the obloquy and intrigues against him of all the european powers. i say all the european powers, for cooper is more read, and, therefore, more feared, than any american,--yes, more than any european with the exception, possibly, of scott. his works are translated into all the languages of the continent; editions of every work he publishes are printed in, i think, more than thirty different cities, and all this without any pains on his part. he deals, i believe, with only one publisher in paris and one in london. he never asks what effect any of his sentiments will have upon the sale of his works; the only question he asks is--'are they just and true?' "i know of no man, short of a true christian, who is so truly guided by high principles as cooper. he is not a religious man (i wish from my heart he was), yet he is theoretically orthodox, a great respecter of religion and religious men, a man of unblemished moral character. he is courted by the greatest and the most aristocratic, yet he never compromises the dignity of an american citizen, which he contends is the highest distinction a man can have in europe, and there is not a doubt but he commands the respect of the exclusives here in a tenfold degree more than those who truckle and cringe to european opinions and customs. they love an independent man and know enough of their own heartless system to respect a real freeman. i admire exceedingly his proud assertion of the rank of an american (i speak from a political point of view), for i know no reason why an american should not take rank, and assert it, too, above any of the artificial distinctions that europe has made. we have no aristocratic grades, no titles of nobility, no ribbons, and garters, and crosses, and other gewgaws that please the great babies of europe; are we, therefore, to take rank below or above them? i say above them, and i hope that every american who comes abroad will feel that he is bound, for his country's sake, to take that stand. i don't mean ostentatiously, or offensively, or obtrusively, but he ought to have an american self-respect. "there can be no _condescension_ to an american. an american gentleman is equal to any title or rank in europe, kings and emperors not excepted. why is he not? by what law are we bound to consider ourselves inferior because we have stamped _folly_ upon the artificial and unjust grades of european systems, upon these antiquated remnants of feudal barbarism? "cooper sees and feels the absurdity of these distinctions, and he asserts his american rank and maintains it, too, i believe, from a pure patriotism. such a man deserves the support and respect of his countrymen, and i have no doubt he has them.... it is high time we should assume a more american tone while europe is leaving no stone unturned to vilify and traduce us, because the rotten despotisms of europe fear our example and hate us. you are not aware, perhaps, that the _trollope_ system is political altogether. you think that, because we know the grossness of her libels and despise her abuse, england and europe do the same. you are mistaken; they wish to know no good of us. mrs. trollope's book is more popular in england (and that, too, among a class who you fain would think know better) than any book of travels ever published in america.[ ] it is also translating into french, and will be puffed and extolled by france, who is just entering upon the system of vilification of america and her institutions, that england has been pursuing ever since we as colonies resisted her oppressive measures. tory england, aristocratic england, is the same now towards us as she was then, and tory france, aristocratic france, follows in her steps. we may deceive ourselves on this point by knowing the kindly feeling manifested by religious and benevolent men towards each other in both countries, but we shall be wanting in our usual yankee penetration if the good feeling of these excellent and pious men shall lead us to think that their governments, or even the mass of their population, are actuated by the same kindly regard. no, they hate us, cordially hate us. we should not disguise the truth, and i will venture to say that no genuine american, one who loves his country and her distinctive principles, can live abroad in any of the countries of europe, and not be thoroughly convinced that europe, as it is, and america, as it is, can have no feeling of cordiality for each other. [footnote : this refers to mrs. frances trollope's book _domestic manners of the americans_, which created quite a stir in its day.] "america is the stronghold of the popular principle, europe of the despotic. these cannot unite; there can be, at present, no sympathy.... we need not quarrel with europe, but we must keep ourselves aloof and suspect all her manoeuvres. she has no good will towards us and we must not be duped by her soft speeches and fair words, on the one side, nor by her contemptible detraction on the other." morse found time, in spite of his absorption in his artistic work, to interest himself and others in behalf of the poles who had unsuccessfully struggled to maintain their independence as a nation. he was an active member of a committee organized to extend help to them, and this committee was instrumental in obtaining the release from imprisonment in berlin of dr. s.g. howe, who "had been entrusted with twenty thousand francs for the relief of the distressed poles." in this work he was closely associated with general lafayette, already his friend, and their high regard for each other was further strengthened and resulted in an interchange of many letters. some of these were given away by morse to friends desirous of possessing autographs of the illustrious lafayette; others are still among his papers, and some of these i shall introduce in their proper chronological order. the following one was written on september , , from la grange:-- my dear sir,--i am sorry to see you will not take paris and la grange in your way to havre, unless you were to wait for the packet of the th in company with general cadwalader, commodore biddle, and those young, amiable philadelphians who contemplate sailing on that day. but if you persist to go by the next packet, i beg you here to receive my best wishes and those of my family for your happy voyage. upon you, my dear sir, i much depend to give our friends in the united states a proper explanation of the state of things in europe. you have been very attentive to what has passed since the revolution of . much has been obtained here and in other parts of europe in this whirlwind of a week. further consequences here and in other countries--great britain and ireland included--will be the certain result, though they have been mauled and betrayed where they ought to have received encouragement. but it will not be so short and so cheap as we had a right to anticipate it might be. i think it useful, on both sides of the water, to dispel the cloud which ignorance or design may throw over the real state of european and french politics. in the mean while i believe it to be the duty of every american returned home to let his fellow citizens know what wretched handle is made of the violent collisions, threats of a separation, and reciprocal abuse, to injure the character and question the stability of republican institutions. i too much depend upon the patriotism and good sense of the several parties in the united states to be afraid that those dissensions may terminate in a final dissolution of the union; and should such an event be destined in future to take place, deprecated as it has been by the best wishes of the departed founders of the revolution,--washington at their head,--it ought at least, in charity, not to take place before the not remote period when every one of those who have fought and bled in the cause shall have joined their contemporaries. what is to be said of poland and the situation of her heroic, unhappy sons, you well know, having been a constant and zealous member of our committee. you know what sort of mental perturbation, among the ignorant part of every european nation, has accompanied the visit of the cholera in russia, germany, hungary, and several parts of great britain and france-- suspicions of poison, prejudices against the politicians, and so forth. i would tike to know whether the population of the united states has been quite free of these aberrations, as it would be an additional argument in behalf of republican institutions and superior civilization resulting from them. most truly and affectionately, your friend, lafayette as we see from the beginning of this letter, morse had now determined to return home. he had executed all the commissions for copies which had been given to him, and his ambitious painting of the interior of the louvre was so far finished that he could complete it at home. he sailed from havre on the st of october in the packetship sully. the name of this ship has now become historic, and a chance conversation in mid-ocean was destined to mark an epoch in human evolution. before sailing, however, he made a flying trip to england, and he writes to his brothers from london on september :-- "here i am once more in england and on the wing _home_. i shall probably sail from havre in the packet of october (the sully), and i shall leave london for southampton and havre on the th inst., to be prepared for sailing. "i am visiting old friends and renewing old associations in london. twenty years make a vast difference as well in the aspect of this great city as in the faces of old acquaintances. london may be said literally to have gone into the country. where i once was accustomed to walk in the fields, so far out of town as even to shoot at a target against the trees with impunity, now there are spacious streets and splendid houses and gardens. "i spend a good deal of my spare time with leslie. he is the same amiable, intelligent, unassuming gentleman that i left in . he is painting a little picture--'sterne recovering his manuscripts from the curls of his hostess at lyons.' i have been sitting to him for the head of sterne, whom he thinks i resemble very strongly. at any rate, he has made no alteration in the character of the face from the one he had drawn from sterne's portrait, and has simply attended to the expression. "when i left paris i was feeble in health, so much so that i was fearful of the effects of the journey to london, especially as i passed through villages suffering severely from the cholera. but i proceeded moderately, lodged the first night at boulogne-sur-mer, crossed to dover in a severe southwest gale, and passed the next night at canterbury, and the next day came to london. i think the ride did me good, and i have been exercising a great deal, riding and walking, since, and my general health is certainly improving. i am in hopes that the voyage will completely set me up again." chapter xx morse's life almost equally divided into two periods, artistic and scientific.--estimate of his artistic ability by daniel huntington.--also by samuel isham.--his character as revealed by his letters, notes, etc.-- end of volume i. morse's long life (he was eighty-one when he died) was almost exactly divided, by the nature of his occupations, into two equal periods. during the first, up to his forty-first year, he was wholly the artist, enthusiastic, filled with a laudable ambition to excel, not only for personal reasons, but, as appears from his correspondence, largely from patriotic motives, from a wish to rescue his country from the stigma of pure commercialism which it had incurred in the eyes of the rest of the world. it is true that his active brain and warm heart spurred him on to interest himself in many other things, in inventions of more or less utility, in religion, politics, and humanitarian projects; but next to his sincere religious faith, his art held chiefest sway, and everything else was made subservient to that. during the latter half of his life, however, a new goddess was enshrined in his heart, a goddess whose cult entailed even greater self-sacrifice; keener suffering, both mental and physical; more humiliation to a proud and sensitive soul, shrinking alike from the jeers of the incredulous and the libels and plots of the envious and the unscrupulous. while he plied his brush for many years after the conception of his epoch-making invention, it was with an ever lessening enthusiasm, with a divided interest. art no longer reigned supreme; invention shared the throne with her and eventually dispossessed her. it seems, therefore, fitting that, in closing the chronicle of morse the artist, his rank in the annals of american art should be estimated as viewed by a contemporary and by the more impartial historian of the present day. from a long article prepared by the late daniel huntington for mr. prime, i shall select the following passages:-- "my acquaintance with professor morse began in the spring of , when i was placed under his care by my father as a pupil. he then lived in greenwich lane (now greenwich avenue), and several young men were studying art under his instruction.... he gave a short time every day to each pupil, carefully pointing out our errors and explaining the principles of art. after drawing for some time from casts with the crayon, he allowed us to begin the use of the brush, and we practised painting our studies from the casts, using black, white, and raw umber. "i believe this method was of great use in enabling us early to acquire a good habit of painting. i only regret that he did not insist on our sticking to this kind of study a longer time and drill us more severely in it; but he indulged our hankering for color too soon, and, when once we had tasted the luxury of a full palette of colors, it was a dry business to go back to plain black and white. "in the autumn of that year, , he removed to spacious rooms in the new york university on washington square. in the large studio in the north wing he painted several fine portraits, among them the beautiful full-length of his daughter, mrs. lind. he also lectured before the students and a general audience, illustrating his subject by painted diagrams.... "professor morse's love of scientific experiments was shown in his artist life. he formed theories of color, tried experiments with various vehicles, oils, varnishes, and pigments. his studio was a kind of laboratory. a beautiful picture of his wife and two children was painted, he told me, with colors ground in milk, and the effect was juicy, creamy, and pearly to a degree. another picture was commenced with colors mixed with beer; afterwards solidly impasted and glazed with rich, transparent tints in varnish. his theory of color is fully explained in the account of his life in dunlap's 'arts of design.' he proved its truth by boxes and balls of various colors. he had an honest, solid, vigorous _impasto_, which he strongly insisted on in his instructions--a method which was like the great masters of the venetian school. this method was modified in his practice by his studies under west in england, and by his intimacy with allston, for whose genius he had a great reverence, and by whose way of painting he was strongly influenced. "he was a lover of simple, unaffected truth, and this trait is shown in his works as an artist. he had a passion for color, and rich, harmonious tints run through his pictures, which are glowing and mellow, and yet pearly and delicate. "he had a true painter's eye, but he was hindered from reaching the fame his genius promised as a painter by various distractions, such as the early battles of the academy of design in its struggles for life, domestic afflictions, and, more than all, the engrossing cares of his invention. [illustration: susan morse eldest daughter of the artist.] "the 'hercules,' with its colossal proportions and daring attitude, is evidence of the zeal and courage of his early studies.... it is worthy of being carefully preserved in a public gallery, not only as an instance of successful study in a young artist (morse was in his twenty-first year), but as possessing high artistic merit, and a force and richness which plainly show that, if his energies had not been diverted, he might have achieved a name in art equal to the greatest of his contemporaries.... "professor morse's world-wide fame rests, of course, on his invention of the electric telegraph; but it should be remembered that the qualities of mind which led to it were developed in the progress of his art studies, and if his paintings, in the various fields of history, portrait, and landscape, could be brought together, it would be found that he deserved an honored place among the foremost american artists." this was an estimate of morse's ability as a painter by a man of his own day, a friend and pupil. as this would, naturally, be somewhat biased, it will be more to the point to see what a competent critic of the present day has to say. mr. samuel isham, in his authoritative "history of american painting," published in , after giving a brief biographical sketch of morse and telling why he came to abandon the brush, thus sums up:-- "it was a serious loss, for morse, without being a genius, was yet, perhaps, better calculated than another to give in pictures the spirit of the difficult times from to . he was a man sound in mind and body, well born, well educated, and both by birth and education in sympathy with his time. he had been abroad, had seen good work, and received sound training. his ideals were not too far ahead of his public. working as he did under widely varying conditions, his paintings are dissimilar, not only in merit but in method of execution; even his portraits vary from thin, free handling to solid _impasto_. yet in the best of them there is a real painter's feeling for his material; the heads have a soundness of construction and a freshness in the carnations that recall raeburn rather than west; the poses are graceful or interesting, the costumes are skilfully arranged, and in addition he understands perfectly the character of his sitters, the men and women of the transition period, shrewd, capable, but rather commonplace, without the ponderous dignity of copley's subjects or the cosmopolitan graces of a later day. "the struggles incident to the invention and development of telegraphy turned morse from the practice of art, but up to the end of his life he was interested in it and aggressive in any scheme for its advancement." i think that from the letters, notes, etc., which i have in the preceding pages brought together, a clear conception of morse's character can be formed. the dominant note was an almost childlike religious faith; a triumphant trust in the goodness of god even when his hand was wielding the rod; a sincere belief in the literal truth of the bible, which may seem strange to us of the twentieth century; a conviction that he was destined in some way to accomplish a great good for his fellow men. next to love of god came love of country. he was patriotic in the best sense of the word. while abroad he stoutly upheld the honor of his native land, and at home he threw himself with vigor into the political discussions of the day, fighting stoutly for what he considered the right. while sometimes, in the light of future events, he seems to have erred in allowing his religious beliefs to tinge too much his political views, he was always perfectly sincere and never permitted expediency to brush aside conviction. we have seen that wherever he went he had the faculty of inspiring respect and affection, and that an ever widening circle of friends admitted him to their intimacy, sought his advice, and confided in him with the perfect assurance of his ready sympathy. a favorite bible quotation of his was "woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." he deeply deplored the necessity of making enemies, but he early in his career became convinced that no man could accomplish anything of value in this world without running counter either to the opinions of honest men, who were as sincere as he, or to the self-seeking of the dishonest and the unscrupulous. up to this time he had had mainly to deal with the former class, as in his successful efforts to establish the national academy of design on a firm footing; but in the future he was destined to make many and bitter enemies of both classes. in the controversies which ensued he always strove to be courteous and just, even when vigorously defending his rights or taking the offensive. that he sometimes erred in his judgment cannot be denied, but the errors were honest, and in many cases were kindled and fanned into a flame by the crafty malice of third parties for their own pecuniary advantage. so now, having followed him in his career as an artist, which, discouraging and troubled as it may often have seemed to him, was as the calm which precedes the storm to the years of privation and heroic struggle which followed, i shall bring this first volume to a close. end of volume i nren for all: insurmountable opportunity c. jean armour polly manager of network development and user training nysernet, inc. jpolly@nysernet.org this was originally published in the february , issue of library journal (volume , n. , pp - ). it may be freely reprinted for educational use, please let me know if you are redistributing it, i like to know if it's useful and where it's been. please do not sell it, and keep this message intact. when senator al gore was evangelizing support for his visionary national research and education network bill, he often pointed to the many benefits of a high-speed, multi-lane, multi-level data superhighway. some of these included: -- collaborating research teams, physically distant from each other, working on shared projects via high speed computer networks. some of these "grand challenges" might model global environmental change, or new therapeutic drug research, or the design of a new airplane for inexpensive consumer air travel. -- a scientist or engineer might design a product, which could be instantly communicated to a manufacturing plant, whose robotic machine could turn the drawing-board product into reality. one example of this is the capability to digitally measure a new recruit for an army uniform, transmit the information to a clothing manufacturer, and take delivery of a custom-tailored uniform the next day. -- access to digital libraries of information, both textual and graphic. besides hundreds of online public access catalogs, and full text documents, color illustrations of photographic quality, full motion videos and digital audio will also be available over the network. in his many articles and speeches touting the bill, gore often used an example of a little girl, living in a rural area, at work on a school project. was she information-poor due to her physical location, far from the resources of large cities? no-- the national research and education network would give her the capability to dial into the library of congress-- to collect information on dinosaurs. now that the nren bill has been signed into law ( / ), and committees are being formed, and policies are being made, i'm still thinking about that little girl, and her parents, for that matter. in fact i've got some "grand questions" to pose. - how will we get access? the internet has been called the "interim nren", since it's what we have in place now. i'm wondering how the family is going to get to the internet "dial tone", let alone the nren, especially since they live in a rural area. the information superhighway may be miles from their home, and it may be an expensive long-distance call to the "entrance ramp". or, the superhighway may run right through their front yard, but they can't make use of it because they have no computer, no modem, and no phone line to make the connection. what good is a superhighway if all you've got is a tricycle? - what will they be able to gain access to, and will their privacy be protected? beyond the infrastructure issues, i'm concerned about what kind of things will be available for them once they do get connected, how the resources will be arranged, and how they will learn to use these tools to advantage. beyond that, how authoritative is the information in the digital collection, and how do we know for sure it came from a legitimate source? how confidential will their information searches be, and how will it be safeguarded? - who will get access? i'm concerned that even if the infrastructure and resource problems are resolved, that little girl still won't be allowed access, because a lot of folks don't think the internet is a safe place for unaccompanied minors. - does the family have any electronic rights? electronic responsibilities? are dinosaurs and a grade-school project too trivial for nren? some people think the nren should be reserved for scientists working on "grand challenges", not ordinary ones. who will decide what constitutes "acceptable use"? - what is the future of the local public library? worse yet, i'm worried that the reason they are phoning the library of congress in the first place is that their local public library has shut its doors, sold off the book stock, and dismissed the librarian. what can public libraries do to avoid that future? brief background: the internet today computers all over the world are linked by high speed telecommunications lines. on the other side of their screens are people of all races and nationalities who are able to exchange ideas quickly through this network. this "brain to brain" interface brings both delight and despair, as evidenced by the following true tales from the internet: -- children all over the world participate in class collaborations, sharing holiday customs, local food prices, proverbs, acid rain measurements, and surveys such as a recent one from a fifth grade class in argentina who wanted to know (among other things) "can you wear jeans to school?". -- during the soviet coup in the summer of , hundreds read eyewitness accounts of developments posted to the net by computer users in moscow and other soviet cities with network connectivity. a literal hush fell over this side of the network after a plea came across from the soviet side. we appreciate your messages of encouragement and offers of help, it said, but please save the bandwidth for our outgoing reports! - proliferation of discussion groups on the internet means one can find a niche to discuss everything from cats to camelot, from library administration to lovers of mysteries, from monty python to medieval history. -- predictably, elvis has been sighted on the internet. besides electronic mail, full text resources may be downloaded from many internet host computers. some of these are religious materials, such as the bible, and the koran, others are the complete works of shakespeare, peter pan, and far from the madding crowd. searchable resources include lyrics from popular songs, chord tablature for guitar, recipes, news articles, government information, supreme court opinions, census data, current and historical weather information, dictionaries, thesauri, the cia world fact book, and much more. hundreds of library opacs may be searched, and those with accounts set up at carl may use uncover to find articles of interest, which then may be faxed on demand. the richness of the internet changes on a daily basis as more data resources, computer resources, and human resources join those already active on the net. but, back to that little girl. how will she get access? she'll need a plain old telephone line, a modem, a computer, and some communications software. will her family be able to afford it? if not, will she be able to dial in from her school? her post office? the local feed store? a kiosk at k-mart? at the american library association's convention in san francisco, gloria steinem said "the public library is the last refuge of those without modems." i'm sure she meant that the library will act as information provider for those unable to get their information using a home computer's telecommunications connections. but it could be taken another way. couldn't the public library act as electronic information access centers, providing public modems and telecommunications alongside the books and videos? why the public library is a good place for nren access the public library is an institution based on long-standing beliefs in intellectual freedom and the individual's right to know. let's revisit ala's library bill of rights, adopted june , ; amended february , , and january , , by the ala council. the american library association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services. . books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation. no problem here. the internet's resources are as diverse as their creators, from nations all over the world. every community can find something of interest on the internet. . libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. . libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. . libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas. again, global electronic communication allows discussion and debate in an instant electronic forum. there is no better "reality check" than this. . a person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views. in a public library, the little girl won't be barred from using the internet because of her age. the ala interpretation of the above right states: "librarians and governing bodies should not resort to age restrictions on access to library resources in an effort to avoid actual or anticipated objections from parents or anyone else. the mission, goals, and objectives of libraries do not authorize librarians or governing bodies to assume, abrogate, or overrule the rights and responsibilities of parents or legal guardians. librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents - and only parents - have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children - and only their children - to library resources. parents or legal guardians who do not want their children to have access to certain library services, materials or facilities, should so advise their children. librarians and governing bodies cannot assume the role of parents or the functions of parental authority in the private relationship between parent and child. librarians and governing bodies have a public and professional obligation to provide equal access to all library resources for all library users." . libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use." the internet provides the equivalent of electronic meeting rooms and virtual exhibit spaces. public libraries will offer access to all comers, regardless of their status. further, as part of the interpretation of the library bill of rights, this statement appears: "the u.s. supreme court has recognized that `the right to receive ideas follows ineluctably from the sender's first amendment right to send them. . . . more importantly, the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient's meaningful exercise of his own rights such as speech, press, and political freedom' board of education, island trees union free school district no. v. pico, u.s. , - ( ) (plurality opinion)." clearly, reception and sending of ideas is a first amendment issue. oral, written, and electronic speech must be equally protected so that democracy may flourish. public libraries also provide "free" services, though in fact the costs are just deferred. taxes, state aid derived from taxes, federal aid derived from taxes, and private funds all pay for the "free" services at public libraries. public libraries may be thought of as information management organizations (imo's), similar to health management organizations, where patrons/patients contribute before they need information/health care, so that when they do need it, librarians/doctors are available to render aid. why nren in the public library is a bad idea on the surface, the public library looks like an excellent place to drop internet/nren connectivity. libraries are veritable temples of learning, intellectual freedom, and confidentiality. however, most public libraries lack what computer experts call infrastructure. if there are computers, they may be out of date. staff may not have had time to learn to operate them, and the computers may literally be collecting dust. there may be no modems, no phone line to share, no staff with time to learn about the internet and its many resources. money to update equipment, hire staff, and buy training is out of the question. public libraries face slashed budgets, staff layoffs, reduced hours, and cutbacks in services. many of these drawbacks are noted in the recent study by dr. charles r. mcclure, called public libraries and the internet/nren: new challenges, new opportunities. public librarians were surveyed about their attitudes toward nren in interviews and focus groups. according to the study, public librarians thought that the public had a "right" to the internet, and its availability in their libraries would provide a safety net for the electronic-poor. on the other hand they felt that they could not commit resources to this initiative until they knew better what the costs were and the benefits might be. they longed for someone else to create a pilot project to demonstrate the internet's usefulness, or lack thereof, for public library users. the study describes several scenarios for public libraries as the nren evolves. some may simply choose to ignore the sweeping technological changes in information transfer. they may continue to exist by purveying high-demand items and traditional services, but they may find it increasingly difficult to maintain funding levels as the rest of the world looks elsewhere for their information and reference needs. the public library may find itself servicing only the information disenfranchised, while the rest of the community finds, and pays for, other solutions. as the study explains: "while embracing and exploiting networked information and services, [successfully transitioned libraries] also maintain high visibility and high demand traditional services. but resources will be reallocated from collections and less-visible services to support their involvement in the network. all services will be more client-centered and demand-based, and the library will consciously seek opportunities to deliver new types of information resources and services electronically." "in this scenario, the public library will develop and mount services over the nren, provide for public access to the nren, and will compete successfully against other information providers. in its networked role, the library can serve as a central point of contact as an electronic navigator and intermediary in linking individuals to electronic information resources- regardless of type or physical location. the public library in this second scenario will define a future for itself in the nren and develop a strategic plan to insure its successful participation as an information provider in the networked environment." what should happen senator gore has proposed what has been variously called son of nren or gore ii, which should help address many of these infrastructure problems. unfortunately, the bill was not passed and the closing of the last congress. there is hope, however, that it will be reintroduced this spring. specifically, gore's bill would have ensured that the technology developed by the high-performance computing act of is applied widely in k- education, libraries, health care and industry, particularly manufacturing. it would have authorized a total of $ . billion over the next five years. according to a press release from senator gore's office, "the information infrastructure and technology act charges the white house office of science and technology policy (ostp) with coordinating efforts to develop applications for high-performance computing networking and assigns specific responsibilities to the national science foundation, the national aeronautics and space agency, the national institute of standards and technology, and the national institutes of health. it would expand the role of ostp in overseeing federal efforts to disseminate scientific and technical information." "the bill provides funding to both nsf and nasa to develop technology for 'digital libraries'-- huge data bases that store text, imagery, video, and sound and are accessible over computer networks like nsfnet. the bill also funds development of prototype 'digital libraries' around the country." the public needs nren because baud used to be fast and low- resolution graphics used to be pretty. now we get impatient waiting for fax machines to print out a document from half a continent away, when a few years ago we would have been content to wait days or weeks for the same article to arrive by mail. we are satisfied with technology until it starts to impede our lives in some way. we wait impatiently, sure that we spend half our lives waiting for printers, and the other half waiting for disk drives. time is a commodity. i can envision that little girl walking into the public library with the following request: "i'm doing a school report on the challenger disaster. i need a video clip of the explosion, a sound bite of richard feynman explaining the o-ring problem, some neat graphics from nasa, oh, and maybe some virtual reality mock-ups of the shuttle interior. can you put it all on this floppy disk for me, i know it's only minutes before you close but, gee, i had band practice." this is why public libraries need nren. we would do well to remember the words of ranganathan, whose basic tenets of good librarianship need just a little updating from : "[information] is for use." "every [bit of information], its user." "every user, [his/her bit of information]." "save the time of the [user]." "a [network] is a growing organism." and so is the public library. a promising future awaits the public library that can be proactive rather than reactive to technology. information technology is driving the future, librarians should be at the wheel. it is hoped that the new administration in washington will provide the fuel to get us going. _______________________________ sidebar ------------------------------------------------------- excerpts from s. as introduced july , nd congress nd session in the senate of the united states mr. gore (for himself, rockefeller (d-wv), kerry (d-ma), prestler (r-sd), riegle (d-mi), robb (d-va), lieberman (d-ct), kerrey (d-ne) and burns (r-mt)) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the committee on commerce, science and transportation. a bill to expand federal efforts to develop technologies for applications of high-performance computing and high-speed networking, to provide for a coordinated federal program to accelerate development and deployment of an advanced information infrastructure, and for other purposes. be it enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the united states of america in congress assembled, section . short title. this act may be cited as the "information infrastructure and technology act of ". sec. . applications for libraries. (a) digital libraries.--in accordance with the plan developed under section of the national science and technology policy, organization and priorities act of ( u.s.c. et seq.), as added by section of this act, the national science foundation, the national aeronautics and space administration, the defense advanced research projects agency, and other appropriate agencies shall develop technologies for "digital libraries" of electronic information. development of digital libraries shall include the following: ( ) development of advanced data storage systems capable of storing hundreds of trillions of bits of data and giving thousands of users nearly instantaneous access to that information. ( ) development of high-speed, highly accurate systems for converting printed text, page images, graphics, and photographic images into electronic form. ( ) development of database software capable of quickly searching, filtering, and summarizing large volumes of text, imagery, data, and sound. ( ) encouragement of development and adoption of standards for electronic data. ( ) development of computer technology to categorize and organize electronic information in a variety of formats. ( ) training of database users and librarians in the use of and development of electronic databases. ( ) development of technology for simplifying the utilization of networked databases distributed around the nation and around the world. ( ) development of visualization technology for quickly browsing large volumes of imagery. (b) development of prototypes.--the national science foundation, working with the supercomputer centers it supports, shall develop prototype digital libraries of scientific data available over the internet and the national research and education network. (c) development of databases of remote- sensing images.--the national aeronautics and space administration shall develop databases of software and remote-sensing images to be made available over computer networks like the internet. (d) authorization of appropriations.-- ( ) there are authorized to be appropriated to the national science foundation for the purposes of this section, $ , , for fiscal year , $ , , for fiscal year , $ , , for fiscal year , $ , , for fiscal year , and $ , , for fiscal year . ( ) there are authorized to be appropriated to the national aeronautics and space administration for the purposes of this section, $ , , for fiscal year , $ , , for fiscal year , $ , , for fiscal year , $ , , for fiscal year , and $ , , for fiscal year . ________________________ sidebar resources ___________________________ mcclure, charles r., joe ryan, diana lauterbach and william e. moen public libraries and the internet/nren: new challenges, new opportunities. . copies of this -page study may be ordered at $ each from the publication office, school of information studies, syracuse university, syracuse, ny - / - . the u.s. national commission on libraries and information science (nclis) has issued a report to the office of science and technology policy on library and information services' roles in the national research and education network. the -page document, released in late november, , summarizes the results of an open forum held in washington during the previous summer. topics addressed include funding nren, charging for use, commercial access, protection of intellectual property, and security and privacy. the report "focuses on fulfilling the potential for extending the services and effectiveness of libraries and information services for all americans through high-speed networks and electronic databases." a limited number of copies are available from nclis at th st., nw, suite , washington, d.c. / - . grand challenges : high performance computing and communications. the "teal book" (because of its color) "provides a far-sighted vision for investment in technology but also recognizes the importance of human resources and applications that serve major national needs. this Ã� investment will bring both economic and social dividends, including advances in education, productivity, basic science, and technological innovation." requests for copies of this -page document should go to: federal coordinating council for science, engineering and technology, committee on physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences c/o national science foundation, computer and information science and engineering directorate, g st. nw, washington, d.c. carl kadie operates an excellent electronic resource of documents pertaining to academic freedom, the library bill of rights, and similar policy statements. those with internet access may use file transfer protocol (ftp) to ftp.eff.org ( . . . ) login as anonymous, use your network address as the password. the documents are in the /pub/academic directory. further reading kehoe, brendan. ( ). zen and the art of the internet: a beginner's guide ( nd ed.). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. the first edition is available for free from many ftp sites. (see below) this version has about pages of new material and corrects various minor errors in the first edition. includes the story of the coke machine on the internet. for much of late and the first half of , this was the document of choice for learning about the internet. isbn - - - . index. $ . to ftp zen: ftp.uu.net [ . . . ] in /inet/doc ftp.cs.toronto.edu [ . . . ] in pub/zen ftp.cs.widener.edu [ . . . ] in pub/zen as zen- . .tar.z, zen- . .dvi, and zen- . .ps ftp.sura.net [ . . . ] in pub/nic as zen- . .ps krol, ed. ( ). the whole internet user's guide & catalog. sebastopol, ca: o'reilly & associates. comprehensive guide to how the network works, the domain name system, acceptable use, security, and other issues. chapters on telnet/remote login, file transfer protocol, and electronic mail explain error messages, special situations, and other arcana. archie, gopher, netnews, wais, www, and troubleshooting each enjoy a chapter in this well-written book. appendices contain info on how to get connected in addition to a glossary. isbn - - - . $ . laquey, tracy, & ryer, j. c. ( ). the internet companion: a beginner's guide to global networking. reading, ma: addison-wesley. beginning with a foreword by vice-president elect al gore, this book provides an often- humorous explanation of the origins of the internet, acceptable use, basics of electronic mail, netiquette, online resources, transferring information, and finding email addresses. the in the know guide provides background on internet legends (elvis sightings is one), organizations, security issues, and how to get connected. bibliography. index. isbn - - - $ . polly, jean armour. surfing the internet . . an enthusiastic tour of selected internet resources, electronic serials, listserv discussion groups, service providers, manuals and guides and more. available via anonymous ftp from nysernet.org ( . . . ) in the directory /pub/resources/guides surfing. . .txt. tennant, roy, ober, j., & lipow, a. g. ( ). crossing the internet threshold: an instructional handbook. berkeley, ca: library solutions press. a cookbook to run your own internet training sessions. real-world examples. foreword by cliff lynch. library solutions institute and press oregon street berkeley, ca phone:( ) - fax: ( ) - isbn: - - - $ . proofreaders. this file was produced from images generously made available by the bibliotheque nationale de france (bnf/gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. samuel f.b. morse his letters and journals in two volumes volume ii [illustration: sam'l. f.b. morse] samuel f.b. morse his letters and journals edited and supplemented by his son edward lind morse illustrated with reproductions of his paintings and with notes and diagrams bearing on the invention of the telegraph volume ii _published november _ "th' invention all admir'd, and each how he to be th' inventor miss'd, so easy it seem'd once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible." milton. contents chapter xxi october , --february , packet-ship sully.--dinner-table conversation.--dr. charles t. jackson.-- first conception of telegraph.--sketch-book.--idea of basic principle of telegraph of to-day.--thoughts on priority.--testimony of passengers and captain pell.--difference between "discovery" and "invention."--professor e.n. hereford's paper.--arrival in new york.-- testimony of his brothers.--first steps toward perfection of the invention.--letters to fenimore cooper chapter xxii -- still painting.--thoughts on art.--picture of the louvre.--rejection as painter of one of the pictures in the capitol.--john quincy adams.--james fenimore cooper's article.--death blow to his artistic ambition.-- washington allston's letter.--commission by fellow artists.--definite abandonment of art.--repayment of money advanced.--death of lafayette.-- religious controversies.--appointed professor in university of city of new york.--description of first telegraphic instrument.--successful experiments.--relay.--address in chapter xxiii -- first exhibitions of the telegraph.--testimony of robert g. rankin and rev. henry b. tappan.--cooke and wheatstone.--joseph henry, leonard d. gale, and alfred vail.--professor gale's testimony.--professor henry's discoveries.--regrettable controversy of later years.--professor charles t. jackson's claims.--alfred vail.--contract of september , .--work at morristown, new jersey.--the "morse alphabet."--reading by sound.-- first and second forms of alphabet chapter xxiv october , --may , the caveat.--work at morristown.--judge vail.--first success.--resolution in congress regarding telegraphs.--morse's reply.--illness.--heaviness of first instruments.--successful exhibition in morristown.--exhibition in new york university.--first use of morse alphabet.--change from first form of alphabet to present form.--trials of an inventor.--dr. jackson.-- slight friction between morse and vail.--exhibition at franklin institute, philadelphia.--exhibitions in washington.--skepticism of public.--f.o.j. smith.--f.l. pope's estimate of smith.--proposal for government telegraph.--smith's report.--departure for europe chapter xxv june, --january . arrival in england.--application for letters patent.--cooke and wheatstone's telegraph.--patent refused.--departure for paris.--patent secured in france.--earl of elgin.--earl of lincoln.--baron de meyendorff.--russian contract.--return to london.--exhibition at the earl of lincoln's.--letter from secretary of lord campbell, attorney-general. --coronation of queen victoria.--letters to daughter.--birth of the count of paris.--exhibition before the institute of france.--arago; baron humboldt.--negotiations with the government and saint-germain railway.-- reminiscences of dr. kirk.--letter of the honorable h. l. ellsworth.-- letter to f.o.j. smith.--dilatoriness of the french chapter xxvi january , --march , despondent letter to his brother sidney.--longing for a home.--letter to smith.--more delays.--change of ministry.--proposal to form private company.--impossible under the laws of france.--telegraphs a government monopoly.--refusal of czar to sign russian contract.--dr. jackson.--m. amyot.--failure to gain audience of king.--lord elgin.--earl of lincoln. --robert walsh prophesies success.--meeting with earl of lincoln in later years.--daguerre.--letter to mrs. cass on lotteries.--railway and military telegraphs.--skepticism of a marshal of france chapter xxvii april , --september , arrival in new york.--disappointment at finding nothing done by congress or his associates.--letter to professor henry.--henry's reply.-- correspondence with daguerre.--experiments with daguerreotypes.-- professor draper.--first group photograph of a college class.--failure of russian contract.--mr. chamberlain.--discouragement through lack of funds.--no help from his associates.--improvements in telegraph made by morse.--humorous letter chapter xxviii june , --august , first patent issued.--proposal of cooke and wheatstone to join forces rejected.--letter to rev. e.s. salisbury.--money advanced by brother artists repaid.--poverty.--reminiscences of general strother, "porte crayon."--other reminiscences.--inaction in congress.--flattering letter of f.o.j. smith.--letter to smith urging action.--gonon and wheatstone.-- temptation to abandon enterprise.--partners all financially crippled.-- morse alone doing any work.--encouraging letter from professor henry.-- renewed enthusiasm.--letter to hon. w.w. boardman urging appropriation of $ by congress.--not even considered.--despair of inventor chapter xxix july , --march , continued discouragements.--working on improvements.--first submarine cable from battery to governor's island.--the vails refuse to give financial assistance.--goes to washington.--experiments conducted at the capitol.--first to discover duplex and wireless telegraphy.--dr. fisher. --friends in congress.--finds his statuette of dying hercules in basement of capitol.--alternately hopes and despairs of bill passing congress.-- bill favorably reported from committee.--clouds breaking.--ridicule in congress.--bill passes house by narrow majority.--long delay in senate.-- last day of session.--despair.--bill passes.--victory at last chapter xxx march , --june , work on first telegraph line begun.--gale, fisher, and vail appointed assistants.--f.o.j. smith to secure contract for trenching.--morse not satisfied with contract.--death of washington allston.--reports to secretary of the treasury.--prophesies atlantic cable.--failure of underground wires.--carelessness of fisher.--f.o.j. smith shows cloven hoof.--ezra cornell solves a difficult problem.--cornell's plan for insulation endorsed by professor henry.--many discouragements.--work finally progresses favorably.--frelinghuysen's nomination as vice-president reported by telegraph.--line to baltimore completed.-- first message.--triumph.--reports of democratic convention.--first long-distance conversation.--utility of telegraph established.--offer to sell to government chapter xxxi june , --october , fame and fortune now assured.--government declines purchase of telegraph.--accident to leg gives needed rest.--reflections on ways of providence.--consideration of financial propositions.--f.o.j. smith's fulsome praise.--morse's reply.--extension of telegraph proceeds slowly. --letter to russian minister.--letter to london "mechanics' magazine" claiming priority and first experiments in wireless telegraphy.--hopes that government may yet purchase.--longing for a home.--dinner at russian minister's.--congress again fails him.--amos kendall chosen as business agent.--first telegraph company.--fourth voyage to europe.--london, broek, hamburg.--letter of charles t. fleischmann.--paris.--nothing definite accomplished chapter xxxii december , --april , return to america.--telegraph affairs in bad shape.--degree of ll.d. from yale.--letter from cambridge livingston.--henry o'reilly.--grief at unfaithfulness of friends.--estrangement from professor henry.--morse's "defense."--his regret at feeling compelled to publish it.--hopes to resume his brush.--capitol panel.--again disappointed.--another accident.--first money earned from telegraph devoted to religious purposes.--letters to his brother sidney.--telegraph matters.--mexican war.--faith in the future.--desire to be lenient to opponents.--dr. jackson.--edward warren.--alfred vail remains loyal.--troubles in virginia.--henry j. rogers.--letter to j.d. reid about o'reilly.--f.o.j. smith again.--purchases a home at last.--"locust grove," on the hudson, near poughkeepsie.--enthusiastic description.--more troubles without, but peace in his new home chapter xxxiii january , --december , preparation for lawsuits.--letter from colonel shaffner.--morse's reply deprecating bloodshed.--shaffner allays his fears.--morse attends his son's wedding at utica.--his own second marriage.--first of great lawsuits.--almost all suits in morse's favor.--decision of supreme court of united states.--extract from an earlier opinion.--alfred vail leaves the telegraph business.--remarks on this by james d. reid.--morse receives decoration from sultan of turkey.--letter to organizers of printers' festival.--letter concerning aviation.--optimistic letter from mr. kendall.--humorous letter from george wood.--thomas r. walker.-- letter to fenimore cooper.--dr. jackson again.--unfairness of the press. --letter from charles c. ingham on art matters.--letter from george vail.--f.o.j. smith continues to embarrass.--letter from morse to smith chapter xxxiv march , --november , precarious financial condition.--regret at not being able to make loan.-- false impression of great wealth.--fears he may have to sell home.-- f.o.j. smith continues to give trouble.--morse system extending throughout the world.--death of fenimore cooper.--subscriptions to charities, etc.--first use of word "telegram."--mysterious fire in supreme court clerk's room.--letter of commodore perry.--disinclination to antagonize henry.--temporary triumph of f.o.j. smith.--order gradually emerging.--expenses of the law.--triumph in australia.--gift to yale college.--supreme court decision and extension of patent.--social diversions in washington.--letters of george wood and p. h. watson on extension of patent.--loyalty to mr. kendall; also to alfred vail.-- decides to publish "defense."--controversy with bishop spaulding.--creed on slavery.--political views.--defeated for congress chapter xxxv january , --august , payment of dividends delayed.--concern for welfare of his country.-- indignation at corrupt proposal from california.--kendall hampered by the vails.--proposition by capitalists to purchase patent rights.--cyrus w. field.--newfoundland electric telegraph company.--suggestion of atlantic cable.--hopes thereby to eliminate war.--trip to newfoundland.--temporary failure.--f.o.j. smith continues to give trouble.--financial conditions improve.--morse and his wife sail for europe.--fêted in london.-- experiments with dr. whitehouse.--mr. brett.--dr. o'shaughnessy and the telegraph in india.--mr. cooke.--charles r. leslie.--paris.--hamburg.-- copenhagen.--presentation to king.--thorwaldsen museum.--oersted's daughter.--st. petersburg.--presentation to czar at peterhoff chapter xxxvi august , --september , berlin.--baron von humboldt.--london, successful cable experiments with whitehouse and bright.--banquet at albion tavern.--flattering speech of w. f. cooke.--returns to america.--troubles multiply.--letter to the honorable john y. mason on political matters.--kendall urges severing of connection with cable company.--morse, nevertheless, decides to continue.--appointed electrician of company.--sails on u.s.s. niagara.-- letter from paris on the crinoline.--expedition sails from liverpool.-- queenstown harbor.--accident to his leg.--valencia.--laying of cable begun.--anxieties.--three successful days.--cable breaks.--failure.-- returns to america.--retires from cable enterprise.--predicts in failure of apparently successful laying of cable.--sidney e. morse.--the hare and the tortoise.--european testimonial: considered niggardly by kendall.--decorations, medals, etc., from european nations.--letter of thanks to count walewski chapter xxxvii september . --september , visits europe again with a large family party.--regrets this.--sails for porto rico with wife and two children.--first impressions of the tropics.--hospitalities.--his son-in-law's plantation.--death of alfred vail.--smithsonian exonerates henry.--european honors to morse.--first line of telegraph in porto rico.--banquet.--returns home.--reception at poughkeepsie.--refuses to become candidate for the presidency.--purchases new york house.--f.o.j. smith claims part of european gratuity.--succeeds through legal technicality.--visit of prince of wales.--duke of newcastle.--war clouds.--letters on slavery, etc.--matthew vassar.-- efforts as peacemaker.--foresees northern victory.--gloomy forebodings.-- monument to his father.--divides part of european gratuity with widow of vail.--continued efforts in behalf of peace.--bible arguments in favor of slavery chapter xxxviii february , --november , sanitary commission.--letter to dr. bellows.--letter on "loyalty."--his brother richard upholds lincoln.--letters of brotherly reproof.-- introduces mcclellan at preëlection parade.--lincoln reelected.--anxiety as to future of country.--unsuccessful effort to take up art again.-- letter to his sons.--gratification at rapid progress of telegraph.-- letter to george wood on two great mysteries of life.--presents portrait of allston to the national academy of design.--endows lectureship in union theological seminary.--refuses to attend fifty-fifth reunion of his class.--statue to him proposed.--ezra cornell's benefaction.--american asiatic society.--amalgamation of telegraph companies.--protest against stock manipulations.--approves of president andrew johnson.--sails with family for europe.--paris exposition of .--descriptions of festivities.--cyrus w. field.--incident in early life of napoleon iii.-- made honorary commissioner to exposition.--attempt on life of czar.--ball at hotel de ville.--isle of wight.--england and scotland.--the "sounder."--returns to paris chapter xxxix november , --june . goes to dresden.--trials financial and personal.--humorous letter to e.s. sanford.--berlin.--the telegraph in the war of .--paris.--returns to america.--death of his brother richard.--banquet in new york.--addresses of chief justice chase, morse, and daniel huntington.--report as commissioner finished.--professor w.p. blake's letter urging recognition of professor henry.--morse complies.--henry refuses to be reconciled.-- reading by sound.--morse breaks his leg.--deaths of amos kendall and george wood.--statue in central park.--addresses of governor hoffman and william cullen bryant.--ceremonies at academy of music.--morse bids farewell to his children of the telegraph chapter xl june , --april , nearing the end.--estimate of the reverend f.b. wheeler.--early poem.-- leaves "locust grove" for last time.--death of his brother sidney.-- letter to cyrus field on neutrality of telegraph.--letter of f.o.j. smith to h.j. rogers.--reply by professor gale.--vicious attack by f.o.j. smith.--death prevents reply by morse.--unveils statue of franklin in last public appearance.--last hours.--death.--tributes of james d. reid, new york "evening post," new york "herald," and louisville "courier-journal."--funeral.--monument in greenwood cemetery.--memorial services in house of representatives, washington.--address of james g. blaine.--other memorial services.--mr. prime's review of morse's character.--epilogue illustrations morse the inventor (photogravure) from a photograph. drawings from sketch-book, showing first conception of telegraph morse's first telegraph instrument now in the national museum, washington. rough drawing by morse showing the first form of the alphabet and the changes to the present form quantities of the type found in the type-cases of a printing-office. calculation made by morse to aid him in simplifying alphabet "attention universe, by kingdoms right wheel." facsimile of first morse alphabet message given to general thomas s. cummings at time of transmission by professor s.f.b. morse, new york university, wednesday, january , . presented to the national museum at washington by the family of general thomas s. cummings of new york, february , . drawing by morse of railway telegraph, patented by him in france in , and embodying principle of police and fire alarm telegraph first form of key.--improved form of key.--early relay.--first washington-baltimore instrument the two keys and the relay are in the national museum, washington. the washington-baltimore instrument is owned by cornell university. s. f. b. morse from a portrait by daniel huntington. house at locust grove, poughkeepsie, new york sarah elizabeth griswold, second wife of s. f. b. morse from a daguerreotype. morse and his youngest son from an ambrotype. house and library at west d street, new york telegram showing morse's characteristic deadhead, which he always used to frank his messages morse in old age from a photograph by sarony. samuel f. b. morse his letters and journals chapter xxi october , --february , packet-ship sully.--dinner-table conversation.--dr. charles t. jackson.-- first conception of telegraph.--sketch-book.--idea of basic principle of telegraph of to-day.--thoughts on priority.--testimony of passengers and captain pell.--difference between "discovery" and "invention."--professor e.n. horsford's paper.--arrival in new york.-- testimony of his brothers.--first steps toward perfection of the invention.--letters to fenimore cooper. the history of every great invention is a record of struggle, sometimes heart-breaking, on the part of the inventor to secure and maintain his rights. no sooner has the new step in progress proved itself to be an upward one than claimants arise on every side; some honestly believing themselves to have solved the problem first; others striving by dishonest means to appropriate to themselves the honor and the rewards, and these sometimes succeeding; and still others, indifferent to fame, thinking only of their own pecuniary gain and dishonorable in their methods. the electric telegraph was no exception to this rule; on the contrary, its history perhaps leads all the rest as a chronicle of "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness." on the other hand, it brings out in strong relief the opposing virtues of steadfastness, perseverance, integrity, and loyalty. many were the wordy battles waged in the scientific world over the questions of priority, exclusive discovery or invention, indebtedness to others, and conscious or unconscious plagiarism. some of these questions are, in many minds, not yet settled. acrimonious were the legal struggles fought over infringements and rights of way, and, in the first years of the building of the lines to all parts of this country, real warfare was waged by the workers of competing companies. it is not my purpose to treat exhaustively of any of these battles, scientific, legal, or physical. all this has already been written down by abler pens than mine, and has now become history. my aim in following the career of morse the inventor is to shed a light (to some a new light) on his personality, self-revealed by his correspondence, tried first by hardships, poverty, and deep discouragement, and then by success, calumny, and fame. like other men who have achieved greatness, he was made the target for all manner of abuse, accused of misappropriating the ideas of others, of lying, deceit, and treachery, and of unbounded conceit and vaingloriousness. but a careful study of his notes and correspondence, and the testimony of others, proves him to have been a pure-hearted christian gentleman, earnestly desirous of giving to every one his just due, but jealous of his own good name and fame, and fighting valiantly, when needs must be, to maintain his rights; guilty sometimes of mistakes and errors of judgment; occasionally quick-tempered and testy under the stress of discouragement and the pressure of poverty, but frank to acknowledge his error and to make amends when convinced of his fault; and the calm verdict of posterity has awarded him the crown of greatness. morse was now forty-one years old; he had spent three delightful years in france and italy; had matured his art by the intelligent study of the best of the old masters; had made new friends and cemented more strongly the ties that bound him to old ones; and he was returning to his dearly loved native land and to his family with high hopes of gaining for himself and his three motherless children at least a competence, and of continuing his efforts in behalf of the fine arts. from mr. cooper's and mr. habersham's reminiscences we must conclude that, in the background of his mind, there existed a plan, unformed as yet, for utilizing electricity to convey intelligence. he was familiar with much that had been discovered with regard to that mysterious force, through his studies under professors day and silliman at yale, and through the lectures and conversation of professors dana and renwick in new york, so that the charge which was brought against him that he knew absolutely nothing of the subject, can be dismissed as simply proving the ignorance of his critics. thus prepared, unconsciously to himself, to receive the inspiration which was to come to him like a flash of the subtle fluid which afterwards became his servant, he went on board the good ship sully, captain pell commanding, on the st of october, . among the other passengers were the honorable william c. rives, of virginia, our minister to france, with his family; mr. j.f. fisher, of philadelphia; dr. charles t. jackson, of boston, who was destined to play a malign rôle in the subsequent history of the telegraph, and others. the following letter was written to his friend fenimore cooper from havre, on the d of october:-- "i have but a moment to write you one line, as in a few hours i shall be under way for dear america. i arrived from england by way of southampton a day or two since, and have had every moment till now occupied in preparations for embarking. i received yours from vevay yesterday and thank you for it. yes, mr. rives and family, mr. fisher, mr. rogers, mr. palmer and family, and a full cabin beside accompany me. what shall i do with such an _antistatistical_ set? i wish you were of the party to shut their mouths on some points. i shall have good opportunity to talk with mr. rives, whom i like notwithstanding. i think he has good american feeling in the main and means well, although i cannot account for his permitting you to suffer in the chambers (of the general). i will find out _that_ if i can. "my journey to england, change of scene and air, have restored me wonderfully. i knew they would. i like john's country; it is a garden beautifully in contrast with france, and john's people have excellent qualities, and he has many good people; but i hate his aristocratic system, and am more confirmed in my views than ever of its oppressive and unjust character. i saw a great deal of leslie; he is the same good fellow that he always was. be tender of him, my dear sir; i could mention some things which would soften your judgment of his political feelings. one thing only i can now say,--remember he has married an english wife, whom he loves, and who has never known america. he keeps entirely aloof from politics and is wholly absorbed in his art. newton is married to a miss sullivan, daughter of general sullivan, of boston, an accomplished woman and a belle. he is expected in england soon. "i found almost everybody out of town in london. i called and left a card at rogers's, but he was in the country, so were most of the artists of my acquaintance. the fine engraver who has executed so many of leslie's works, danforth, is a stanch american; he would be a man after your heart; he admires you for that very quality.--i must close in great haste." the transatlantic traveller did not depart on schedule time in , as we find from another letter written to mr. cooper on october :-- "here i am yet, wind-bound, with a tremendous southwester directly in our teeth. yesterday the formosa arrived and brought papers, etc., to the th september. i have been looking them over. matters look serious at the south; they are mad there; great decision and prudence will be required to restore them to reason again, but they are so hot-headed, and are so far committed, i know not what will be the issue. yet i think our institutions are equal to any crisis.... "_october , o'clock._ we are getting under way. good-bye." it is greatly to be regretted that morse did not, on this voyage as on previous ones, keep a careful diary. had he done so, many points relating to the first conception of his invention would, from the beginning, have been made much clearer. as it is, however, from his own accounts at a later date, and from the depositions of the captain of the ship and some of the passengers, the story can be told. the voyage was, on the whole, i believe, a pleasant one and the company in the cabin congenial. one night at the dinner-table the conversation chanced upon the subject of electro-magnetism, and dr. jackson described some of the more recent discoveries of european scientists--the length of wire in the coil of a magnet, the fact that electricity passed instantaneously through any known length of wire, and that its presence could be observed at any part of the line by breaking the circuit. morse was, naturally, much interested and it was then that the inspiration, which had lain dormant in his brain for many years, suddenly came to him, and he said: "if the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, i see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity." the company was not startled by this remark; they soon turned to other subjects and thought no more of it. little did they realize that this exclamation of morse's was to mark an epoch in civilization; that it was the germ of one of the greatest inventions of any age, an invention which not only revolutionized the methods by which intelligence was conveyed from place to place, but paved the way for the subjugation, to the uses of man in many other ways, of that mysterious fluid, electricity, which up to this time had remained but a plaything of the laboratory. in short, it ushered in the age of electricity. least of all, perhaps, did that dr. jackson, who afterwards claimed to have given morse all his ideas, apprehend the tremendous importance of that chance remark. the fixed idea had, however, taken root in morse's brain and obsessed him. he withdrew from the cabin and paced the deck, revolving in his mind the various means by which the object sought could be attained. soon his ideas were so far focused that he sought to give them expression on paper, and he drew from his pocket one of the little sketch-books which he always carried with him, and rapidly jotted down in sketches and words the ideas as they rushed from his brain. this original sketch-book was burned in a mysterious fire which, some years later, during one of the many telegraph suits, destroyed many valuable papers. fortunately, however, a certified copy had wisely been made, and this certified copy is now in the national museum in washington, and the reproduction here given of some of its pages will show that morse's first conception of a recording electric magnetic telegraph is practically the telegraph in universal use to-day. [illustration: drawings from sketch book, showing first conception of telegraph] his first thought was evidently of some system of signs which could be used to transmit intelligence, and he at once realized that nothing could be simpler than a point or a dot, a line or dash, and a space, and a combination of the three. thus the first sketch shows the embryo of the dot-and-dash alphabet, applied only to numbers at first, but afterwards elaborated by morse to represent all the letters of the alphabet. next he suggests a method by which these signs may be recorded permanently, evidently by chemical decomposition on a strip of paper passed along over two rollers. he then shows a message which could be sent by this means, interspersed with ideas for insulating the wires in tubes or pipes. and here i want to call attention to a point which has never, to my knowledge, been noticed before. in the message, which, in pursuance of his first idea, adhered to by him for several years, was to be sent by means of numbers, every word is numbered conventionally except the proper name "cuvier," and for this he put a number for each letter. how this was to be indicated was not made clear, but it is evident that he saw at once that all proper names could not be numbered; that some other means must be employed to indicate them; in other words that each letter of the alphabet must have its own sign. whether at that early period he had actually devised any form of alphabet does not appear, although some of the depositions of his fellow passengers would indicate that he had. he himself put its invention at a date a few years after this, and it has been bitterly contested that he did not invent it at all. i shall prove, in the proper place, that he did, but i think it is proved that it must have been thought of even at the early date of , and, at all events, the dot-and-dash as the basis of a conventional code were original with morse and were quite different from any other form of code devised by others. the next drawing of a magnet lifting sixty pounds shows that morse was familiar with the discoveries of arago, davy, and sturgeon in electro-magnetism, but what application of them was to be made is not explained. the last sketch is to me the most important of all, for it embodies the principle of the receiving magnet which is universally used at the present day. the weak permanent magnet has been replaced by a spring, but the electro-magnet still attracts the lever and produces the dots and dashes of the alphabet; and this, simple as it seems to us "once found," was original with morse, was absolutely different from any other form of telegraph devised by others, and, improved and elaborated by him through years of struggle, is now recognized throughout the world as the telegraph. it was not yet in a shape to prove to a skeptical world its practical utility; much had still to be done to bring it to perfection; new discoveries had still to be made by morse and by others which were essential to its success; the skill, the means, and the faith of others had to be enlisted in its behalf, but the actual invention was there and morse was the inventor. how simple it all seems to us now, and yet its very simplicity is its sublimest feature, for it was this which compelled the admiration of scientists and practical men of affairs alike, and which gradually forced into desuetude all other systems of telegraphy until to-day the morse telegraph still stands unrivalled. that many other minds had been occupied with the same problem was a fact unknown to the inventor at the time, although a few years later he was rudely awakened. a fugitive note, written many years later, in his handwriting, although speaking of himself in the third person, bears witness to this. it is entitled "good thought":-- "a circumstance which tends to confuse, in fairly ascertaining priority of invention, is that a subsequent state of knowledge is confounded in the general mind with the state of knowledge when the invention is first announced as successful. this is certainly very unfair. when morse announced his invention, what was the general state of knowledge in regard to the telegraph? it should be borne in mind that a knowledge of the futile attempts at electric telegraphs previous to his successful one has been brought out from the lumber garret of science by the research of eighteen years. nothing was known of such telegraphs to many scientific men of the highest attainments in the centres of civilization. professor morse says himself (and certainly he has not given in any single instance a statement which has been falsified) that, at the time he devised his system, he supposed himself to be the first person that ever put the words 'electric telegraph' together. he supposed himself at the time the originator of the phrase as well as the thing. but, aside from his positive assertion, the truth of this statement is not only possible but very probable. the comparatively few (very few as compared with the mass who now are learned in the facts) who were in the habit of reading the scientific journals may have read of the thought of an electric telegraph about the year , and even of ronald's, and betancourt's, and salva's, and lomond's impracticable schemes previously, and have forgotten them again, with thousands of other dreams, as the ingenious ideas of visionary men; ideas so visionary as to be considered palpably impracticable, declared to be so, indeed, by barlow, a scientific man of high standing and character; yet the mass of the scientific as well as the general public were ignorant even of the attempts that had been made. the fact of any of them having been published in some magazine at the time, whose circulation may be two or three thousand, and which was soon virtually lost amid the shelves of immense libraries, does not militate against the assertion that the world was ignorant of the fact. we can show conclusively the existence of this ignorance respecting telegraphs at the time of the invention of morse's telegraph." the rest of this note (evidently written for publication) is missing, but enough remains to prove the point. thus we have seen that the idea of his telegraph came to morse as a sudden inspiration and that he was quite ignorant of the fact that others had thought of using electricity to convey intelligence to a distance. mr. prime in his biography says: "of all the great inventions that have made their authors immortal and conferred enduring benefit upon mankind, no one was so completely grasped at its inception as this." one of his fellow passengers, j. francis fisher, esq., counsellor-at-law of philadelphia, gave the following testimony at morse's request:-- "in the fall of the year i returned from europe as a passenger with mr. morse in the ship sully, captain pell master. during the voyage the subject of an electric telegraph was one of frequent conversation. mr. morse was most constant in pursuing it, and _alone_ the one who seemed disposed to reduce it to a practical test, and i recollect that, for this purpose, he devised a _system of signs for letters_ to be indicated and marked by a quick succession of strokes or shocks of the galvanic current, and i am sure of the fact that it was deemed by mr. morse perfectly competent to effect the result stated. i did not suppose that any other person on board the ship claimed any merit in the invention, or was, in fact, interested to pursue it to maturity as mr. morse then seemed to be, nor have i been able since that time to recall any fact or circumstance to justify the claim of any person other than mr. morse to the invention." this clear statement of mr. fisher's was cheerfully given in answer to a request for his recollections of the circumstances, in order to combat the claim of dr. charles t. jackson that he had given morse all the ideas of the telegraph, and that he should be considered at least its joint inventor. this was the first of the many claims which the inventor was forced to meet. it resulted in a lawsuit which settled conclusively that morse was the sole inventor, and that jackson was the victim of a mania which impelled him to claim the discoveries and achievements of others as his own. i shall have occasion to refer to this matter again. it is to be noted that mr. fisher refers to "signs for letters." whether morse actually had devised or spoken of a conventional alphabet at that time cannot be proved conclusively, but that it must have been in his mind the "cuvier" referred to before indicates. others of his fellow-passengers gave testimony to the same effect, and captain pell stated under oath that, when he saw the completed instrument in , he recognized it as embodying the principles which morse had explained to him on the sully; and he added: "before the vessel was in port, mr. morse addressed me in these words: 'well, captain, should you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was made on board the good ship sully.'" morse always clung tenaciously to the date of as that of his invention, and, i claim, with perfect justice. while it required much thought and elaboration to bring it to perfection; while he used the published discoveries of others in order to make it operate over long distances; while others labored with him in order to produce a practical working apparatus, and to force its recognition on a skeptical world, the basic idea on which everything else depended was his; it was original with him, and he pursued it to a successful issue, himself making certain new and essential discoveries and inventions. while, as i have said, he made use of the discoveries of others, these men in turn were dependent on the earlier investigations of scientists who preceded them, and so the chain lengthens out. there will always be a difference of opinion as to the comparative value of a new discovery and a new invention, and the difference between these terms should be clearly apprehended. while they are to a certain extent interchangeable, the word "discovery" in science is usually applied to the first enunciation of some property of nature till then unrecognized; "invention," on the other hand, is the application of this property to the uses of mankind. sometimes discovery and invention are combined in the same individual, but often the discoverer is satisfied with the fame arising from having called attention to something new, and leaves to others the practical application of his discovery. scientists will always claim that a new discovery, which marks an advance in knowledge in their chosen field, is of paramount importance; while the world at large is more grateful to the man who, by combining the discoveries of others and adding the culminating link, confers a tangible blessing upon humanity. morse was completely possessed by this new idea. he worked over it that day and far into the night. his vivid imagination leaped into the future, brushing aside all obstacles, and he realized that here in his hands was an instrument capable of working inconceivable good. he recalled the days and weeks of anxiety when he was hungry for news of his loved ones; he foresaw that in affairs of state and of commerce rapid communication might mean the avoidance of war or the saving of a fortune; that, in affairs nearer to the heart of the people, it might bring a husband to the bedside of a dying wife, or save the life of a beloved child; apprehend the fleeing criminal, or commute the sentence of an innocent man. his great ambition had always been to work some good for his fellow-men, and here was a means of bestowing upon them an inestimable boon. after several days of intense application he disclosed his plan to mr. rives and to others. objections were raised, but he was ready with a solution. while the idea appeared to his fellow-passengers as chimerical, yet, as we have seen, his earnestness made so deep an impression that when, several years afterwards, he exhibited to some of them a completed model, they, like captain pell, instantly recognized it as embodying the principles explained to them on the ship. without going deeply into the scientific history of the successive steps which led up to the invention of the telegraph, i shall quote a few sentences from a long paper written by the late professor e.n. horsford, of cambridge, massachusetts, and included in mr. prime's biography:-- "what was needed to the _original conception_ of the morse recording telegraph? " . a knowledge that soft wire, bent in the form of a horseshoe, could be magnetized by sending a galvanic current through a coil wound round the iron, and that it would lose its magnetism when the current was suspended. " . a knowledge that such a magnet had been made to lift and drop masses of iron of considerable weight. " . a knowledge, or a belief, that the galvanic current could be transmitted through wires of great length. "these were all. now comes the conception of devices for employing an agent which could produce reciprocal motion to effect registration, and the invention of an alphabet. in order to this invention it must be seen how up and down--reciprocal--motion could be produced by the opening and closing of the circuit. into this simple band of vertical tracery of paths in space must be thrown the shuttle of time and a ribbon of paper. it must be seen how a lever-pen, alternately dropping upon and rising at defined intervals from a fillet of paper moved by independent clock-work, would produce the fabric of the alphabet and writing and printing. "was there anything required to produce these results which was not known to morse?... "he knew, for he had witnessed it years before, that, by means of a battery and an electro-magnet, reciprocal motion could be produced. he knew that the force which produced it could be transmitted along a wire. he _believed_ that the battery current could be made, through an electro-magnet, to produce physical results at a _distance_. he saw in his mind's eye the existence of an agent and a medium by which reciprocal motion could be not only produced but controlled at a distance. the question that addressed itself to him at the outset was, naturally, this: 'how can i make use of the simple up-and-down motion of opening and closing a circuit to write an intelligible message at one end of a wire, and at the same time print it at the other?'... like many a kindred work of genius it was in nothing more wonderful than in its simplicity.... not one of the brilliant scientific men who have attached their names to the history of electro-magnetism had brought the means to produce the practical registering telegraph. some of them had ascended the tower that looked out on the field of conquest. some of them brought keener vision than others. some of them stood higher than others. but the genius of invention had not recognized them. there was needed an inventor. now what sort of a want is this? "there was required a rare combination of qualities and conditions. there must be ingenuity in the adaptation of available means to desired ends; there must be the genius to see through non-essentials to the fundamental principle on which success depends; there must be a kind of skill in manipulation; great patience and pertinacity; a certain measure of culture, and the inventor of a recording telegraph must be capable of being inspired by the grandeur of the thought of writing, figuratively speaking, with a pen a thousand miles long--with the thought of a postal system without the element of time. moreover the person who is to be the inventor must be free from the exactions of well-compensated, everyday, absorbing duties--perhaps he must have had the final baptism of poverty. "now the inventor of the registering telegraph did not rise from the perusal of any brilliant paper; he happened to be at leisure on shipboard, ready to contribute and share in the after-dinner conversation of a ship's cabin, when the occasion arose. morse's electro-magnetic telegraph was mainly an invention employing powers and agencies through mechanical devices to produce a given end. it involved the combination of the results of the labors of others with a succession of special contrivances and some discoveries of the inventor himself. there was an ideal whole almost at the outset, but involving great thought, and labor, and patience, and invention to produce an art harmonious in its organization and action." after a voyage of over a month morse reached home and landed at the foot of rector street on november , . his two brothers, sidney and richard, met him on his arrival, and were told at once of his invention. his brother richard thus described their meeting:-- "hardly had the usual greetings passed between us three brothers, and while on our way to my house, before he informed us that he had made, during his voyage, an important invention, which had occupied almost all his attention on shipboard--one that would astonish the world and of the success of which he was perfectly sanguine; that this invention was a means of communicating intelligence by electricity, so that a message could be written down in a permanent manner by characters at a distance from the writer. he took from his pocket and showed from his sketch-book, in which he had drawn them, the kind of characters he proposed to use. these characters were dots and spaces representing the ten digits or numerals, and in the book were sketched other parts of his electro-magnetic machinery and apparatus, actually drawn out in his sketch-book." the other brother, sidney, also bore testimony:-- "he was full of the subject of the telegraph during the walk from the ship, and for some days afterwards could scarcely speak about anything else. he expressed himself anxious to make apparatus and try experiments for which he had no materials or facilities on shipboard. in the course of a few days after his arrival he made a kind of cogged or saw-toothed type, the object of which i understood was to regulate the interruptions of the electric current, so as to enable him to make dots, and regulate the length of marks or spaces on the paper upon which the information transmitted by his telegraph was to be recorded. "he proposed at that time a single circuit of wire, and only a single circuit, and letters, words, and phrases were to be indicated by numerals, and these numerals were to be indicated by dots and other marks and spaces on paper. it seemed to me that, as wire was cheap, it would be better to have twenty-four wires, each wire representing a letter of the alphabet, but my brother always insisted upon the superior advantages of his single circuit." thus we see that morse, from the very beginning, and from intuition, or inspiration, or whatever you please, was insistent on one of the points which differentiated his invention from all others in the same field, namely, its simplicity, and it was this feature which eventually won for it a universal adoption. but, simple as it was, it still required much elaboration in order to bring it to perfection, for as yet it was but an idea roughly sketched on paper; the appliances to put this idea to a practical test had yet to be devised and made, and morse now entered upon the most trying period of his career. his three years in europe, while they had been enjoyed to the full and had enabled him to perfect himself in his art, had not yielded him large financial returns; he had not expected that they would, but based his hopes on increased patronage after his return. he was entirely dependent on his brush for the support of himself and his three motherless children, and now this new inspiration had come as a disturbing element. he was on the horns of a dilemma. if he devoted himself to his art, as he must in order to keep the wolf from the door, he would not have the leisure to perfect his invention, and others might grasp the prize before him. if he allowed thoughts of electric currents, and magnets, and batteries to monopolize his attention, he could not give to his art, notoriously a jealous mistress, that worship which alone leads to success. an added bar to the rapid development of his invention was the total lack (hard to realize at the present day) of the simplest essentials. there were no manufacturers of electrical appliances; everything, even to the winding of the wires around the magnets, had to be done laboriously by hand. even had they existed morse had but scant means with which to purchase them. this was his situation when he returned from europe in the fall of , and it is small wonder that twelve years elapsed before he could prove to the world that his revolutionizing invention was a success, and the wonder is great that he succeeded at all, that he did not sink under the manifold discouragements and hardships, and let fame and fortune elude him. unknown to him many men in different lands were working over the same problem, some of them of assured scientific position and with good financial backing; is it then remarkable that morse in later years held himself to be but an instrument in the hands of god to carry out his will? he never ceased to marvel at the amazing fact that he, poor, scoffed at or pitied, surrounded by difficulties of every sort, should have been chosen to wrest the palm from the hands of trained scientists of two continents. to us the wonder is not so great, for we, if we have read his character aright as revealed by his correspondence, can see that in him, more than in any other man of his time, were combined the qualities necessary to a great inventor as specified by professor horsford earlier in this chapter. in following morse's career at this critical period it will be necessary to record his experiences both as painter and inventor, for there was no thought of abandoning his profession in his mind at first; on the contrary, he still had hopes of ultimate success, and it was his sole means of livelihood. it is true that he at times gave way to fits of depression. in a letter to his brother richard before leaving europe he had thus given expression to his fears:-- "i have frequently felt melancholy in thinking of my prospects for encouragement when i return, and your letter found me in one of those moments. you cannot, therefore, conceive with what feelings i read your offer of a room in your new house. give me a resting-place and i will yet move the country in favor of the arts. i return with some hopes but many fears. will my country employ me on works which may do it honor? i want a commission from government to execute two pictures from the life of columbus, and i want eight thousand dollars for each, and on these two i will stake my reputation as an artist." it was in his brother richard's house that he took the first step towards the construction of the apparatus which was to put his invention to a practical test. this was the manufacture of the saw-toothed type by which he proposed to open and close the circuit and produce his conventional signs. he did not choose the most appropriate place for this operation, for his sister-in-law rather pathetically remarked: "he melted the lead which he used over the fire in the grate of my front parlor, and, in his operation of casting the type, he spilled some of the heated metal upon the drugget, or loose carpeting, before the fireplace, and upon a flagbottomed chair upon which his mould was placed." he was also handicapped by illness just after his return, as we learn from the following letter to his friend fenimore cooper. in this letter he also makes some interesting comments on new york and american affairs, but, curiously enough, he says nothing of his invention: "_february , ._ don't scold at me. i don't deserve a scolding if you knew all, and i do if you don't know all, for i have not written to you since i landed in november. what with severe illness for several weeks after my arrival, and the accumulation of cares consequent on so long an absence from home, i have been overwhelmed and distracted by calls upon my time for a thousand things that pressed upon me for immediate attention; and so i have put off and put off what i have been longing (i am ashamed to say for weeks if not months) to do, i mean to write to you. "the truth is, my dear sir, i have so much to say that i know not where to commence. i throw myself on your indulgence, and, believing you will forgive me, i commence without further apology. "first, as to things at home. new york is _improved_, as the word goes, wonderfully. you will return to a strange city; you will not recognize many of your acquaintances among the old buildings; brand-new buildings, stores, and houses are taking the place of the good, staid, modest houses of the early settlers. _improvement_ is all the rage, and houses and churchyards must be overthrown and upturned whenever the corporation plough is set to work for the widening of a narrow, or the making of a new, street. "i believe you sometimes have a fit of the blues. it is singular if you do not with your temperament. i confess to many fits of this disagreeable disorder, and i know nothing so likely to induce one as the finding, after an absence of some years from home, the great hour-hand of life sensibly advanced on all your former friends. what will be your sensations after six or seven years if mine are acute after three years' absence? "i have not been much in society as yet. i have many visitations, but, until i clear off the accumulated rubbish of three years which lies upon my table, i must decline seeing much of my friends. i have seen twice your sisters the misses delancy, and was prevented from being at their house last friday evening by the severest snow-storm we have had this season. our friends the jays i have met several times, and have had much conversation with them about you and your delightful family. mr. p.a. jay is a member of the club, so i see him every friday evening. chancellor kent also is a member, and both warm friends of yours.... "my time for ten or twelve days past has been occupied in answering a pamphlet of colonel trumbull, who came out for the purpose of justifying his opposition to measures which had been devised for uniting the two academies. i send you the first copy hot from the press. there is a great deal to dishearten in the state of feeling, or rather state of no feeling, on the arts in this city. the only way i can keep up my spirits is by resolutely resisting all disposition to repine, and by fighting perseveringly against all the obstacles that hinder the progress of art. "i have been told several times since my return that i was born one hundred years too soon for the arts in our country. i have replied that, if that be the case, i will try and make it but fifty. i am more and more persuaded that i have quite as much to do with the pen for the arts as the pencil, and if i can in my day so enlighten the public mind as to make the way easier for those that come after me, i don't know that i shall not have served the cause of the fine arts as effectively as by painting pictures which might be appreciated one hundred years after i am gone. if i am to be the pioneer and am fitted for it, why should i not glory as much in felling trees and clearing away the rubbish as in showing the decorations suited to a more advanced state of cultivation?... "you will certainly have the blues when you first arrive, but the longer you stay abroad the more severe will be the disease. excuse my predictions.... the georgia affair is settled after a fashion; not so the nullifiers; they are infatuated. disagreeable as it will be, they will be put down with disgrace to them." in another letter to mr. cooper, dated february , , he writes in the same vein:-- "the south carolina business is probably settled by this time by mr. clay's compromise bill, so that the legitimates of europe may stop blowing their twopenny trumpets in triumph at our _disunion_. the same clashing of interests in europe would have caused twenty years of war and torrents of bloodshed; with us it has caused three or four years of wordy war and some hundreds of gallons of ink; but no necks are broken, nor heads; all will be in _statu ante bello_ in a few days.... "my dear sir, you are wanted at home. i want you to encourage me by your presence. i find the pioneer business has less of romance in the reality than in the description, and i find some tough stumps to pry up and heavy stones to roll out of the way, and i get exhausted and desponding, and i should like a little of your sinew to come to my aid at such times, as it was wont to come at the louvre.... "there is nothing new in new york; everybody is driving after money, as usual, and there is an alarm of fire every half-hour, as usual, and the pigs have the freedom of the city, as usual; so that, in these respects at least, you will find new york as you left it, except that they are not the same people that are driving after money, nor the same houses burnt, nor the same pigs at large in the street.... you will all be welcomed home, but come prepared to find many, very many things in taste and manners different from your own good taste and manners. good taste and good manners would not be conspicuous if all around possessed the same manners." chapter xxii -- still painting.--thoughts on art.--picture of the louvre.--rejection as painter of one of the pictures in the capitol.--john quincy adams.--james fenimore cooper's article.--death blow to his artistic ambition.-- washington allston's letter.--commission by fellow artists.--definite abandonment of art.--repayment of money advanced.--death of lafayette.-- religious controversies.--appointed professor in university of city of new york.--description of first telegraphic instrument.--successful experiments.--relay.--address in . it was impossible for the inventor during the next few years to devote himself entirely to the construction of a machine to test his theories, impatient though he must have been to put his ideas into practical form. his two brothers came nobly to his assistance, and did what lay in their power and according to their means to help him; but it was always repugnant to him to be under pecuniary obligations to any one, and, while gratefully accepting his brothers' help, he strained every nerve to earn the money to pay them back. we, therefore, find little or no reference in the letters of those years to his invention, and it was not until the year that he was able to make any appreciable progress towards the perfection of his telegraphic apparatus. the intervening years were spent in efforts to rouse an interest in the fine arts in this country; in hard work in behalf of the still young academy of design; and in trying to earn a living by the practice of his profession. "during this time," he says, "i never lost faith in the practicability of the invention, nor abandoned the intention of testing it as soon as i could command the means." but in order to command the means, he was obliged to devote himself to his art, and in this he did not meet with the encouragement which he had expected and which he deserved. his ideals were always high, perhaps too high for the materialistic age in which he found himself. the following fugitive note will illustrate the trend of his thoughts, and is not inapplicable to conditions at the present day:-- "are not the refining influences of the fine arts needed, doubly needed, in our country? is there not a tendency in the democracy of our country to low and vulgar pleasures and pursuits? does not the contact of those more cultivated in mind and elevated in purpose with those who are less so, and to whom the former look for political favor and power, necessarily debase that cultivated mind and that elevation of purpose? when those are exalted to office who best can flatter the low appetites of the vulgar; when boorishness and ill manners are preferred to polish and refinement, and when, indeed, the latter, if not avowedly, are in reality made an objection, is there not danger that those who would otherwise encourage refinement will fear to show their favorable inclination lest those to whom they look for favor shall be displeased; and will not habit fix it, and another generation bear it as its own inherent, native character?" that he was naturally optimistic is shown by a footnote which he added to this thought, dated october, :-- "these were once my fears. there is doubtless danger, but i believe in the possibility, by the diffusion of the highest moral and intellectual cultivation through every class, of raising the lower classes in refinement." but while in his leisure moments he could indulge in such hopeful dreams, his chief care at that time, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, was to earn money by the exercise of his profession. his important painting of the louvre, from which he had hoped so much, was placed on exhibition, and, while it received high praise from the artists, its exhibition barely paid expenses, and it was finally sold to mr. george clarke, of hyde hall, on otsego lake, for thirteen hundred dollars, although the artist had expected to get at least twenty-five hundred dollars for it. in a letter to mr. clarke, of june , , he says:-- "the picture of the louvre was intended originally for an exhibition picture, and i painted it in the expectation of disposing of it to some person for that purpose who could amply remunerate himself from the receipts of a well-managed exhibition. the time occupied upon this picture was fourteen months, and at much expense and inconvenience, so that that sum [$ ] for it, if sold under such circumstances, would not be more than a fair compensation. "i was aware that but few, if any, gentlemen in our country would be willing to expend so large a sum on a single picture, although in fact they would, in this case, purchase seven-and-thirty in one. "i have lately changed my plans in relation to this picture and to my art generally, and consequently i am able to dispose of it at a much less price. i have need of funds to prosecute my new plans, and, if this picture could now realize the sum of twelve hundred dollars it would at this moment be to me equivalent in value to the sum first set upon it." the change of plans no doubt referred to his desire to pursue his electrical experiments, and for this ready money was most necessary, and so he gladly, and even gratefully, accepted mr. clarke's offer of twelve hundred dollars for the painting and one hundred dollars for the frame. even this was not cash, but was in the form of a note payable in a year! his enthusiasm for his art seems at this period to have been gradually waning, although he still strove to command success; but it needed a decisive stroke to wean him entirely from his first love, and fate did not long delay the blow. his great ambition had always been to paint historical pictures which should commemorate the glorious events in the history of his beloved country. in the early part of the year his great opportunity had, apparently, come, and he was ready and eager to grasp it. there were four huge panels in the rotunda of the capitol at washington, which were still to be filled by historical paintings, and a committee in congress was appointed to select the artists to execute them. morse, president of the national academy of design, and enthusiastically supported by the best artists in the country, had every reason to suppose that he would be chosen to execute at least one of these paintings. confident that he had but to make his wishes known to secure the commission, he addressed the following circular letter to various members of congress, among whom were such famous men as daniel webster, john c. calhoun, henry clay, and john quincy adams, all personally known to him:-- march , . my dear sir,--i perceive that the library committee have before them the consideration of a resolution on the expediency of employing four artists to paint the remaining four pictures in the rotunda of the capitol. if congress should pass a resolution in favor of the measure, i should esteem it a great honor to be selected as one of the artists. i have devoted twenty years of my life, of which seven were passed in england, france, and italy, studying with special reference to the execution of works of the kind proposed, and i must refer to my professional life and character in proof of my ability to do honor to the commission and to the country. may i take the liberty to ask for myself your favorable recommendation to those in congress who have the disposal of the commissions? with great respect, sir, your most obedient servant, s.f.b. morse. while this letter was written in , the final decision of the committee was not made until , but i shall anticipate a little and give the result which had such a momentous effect on morse's career. there was every reason to believe that his request would be granted, and he and his friends, many of whom endorsed by letter his candidacy, had no fear as to the result; but here again fate intervened and ordered differently. among the committee men in congress to whom this matter was referred was john quincy adams, ex-president of the united states. in discussing the subject, mr. adams submitted a resolution opening the competition to foreign artists as well as to american, giving it as his opinion that there were no artists in this country of sufficient talent properly to execute such monumental works. the artists and their friends were, naturally, greatly incensed at this slur cast upon them, and an indignant and remarkably able reply appeared anonymously in the new york "evening post." the authorship of this article was at once saddled on morse, who was known to wield a facile and fearless pen. mr. adams took great offense, and, as a result, morse's name was rejected and his great opportunity passed him by. there can be no reasonable doubt that, had he received this commission, he would have deferred the perfecting of his telegraphic device until others had so far distanced him in the race that he could never have overtaken them. instead of his having been the author of the "evening post" article, it transpired that he had not even heard of mr. adams's resolution until his friend fenimore cooper, the real author of the answer, told him of both attack and reply. this was the second great tragedy of morse's life; the first was the untimely death of his young wife, and this other marked the death of his hopes and ambitions as an artist. he was stunned. the blow was as unexpected as it was overwhelming, and what added to its bitterness was that it had been innocently dealt by the hand of one of his dearest friends, who had sought to render him a favor. the truth came out too late to influence the decision of the committee; the die was cast, and his whole future was changed in the twinkling of an eye; for what had been to him a joy and an inspiration, he now turned from in despair. he could not, of course, realize at the time that fate, in dealing him this cruel blow, was dedicating him to a higher destiny. it is doubtful if he ever fully realized this, for in after years he could never speak of it unmoved. in a letter to this same friend, fenimore cooper, written on november , , he thus laments:-- "alas! my dear sir, the very name of _pictures_ produces a sadness of heart i cannot describe. painting has been a smiling mistress to many, but she has been a cruel jilt to me. i did not abandon her, she abandoned me. i have taken scarcely any interest in painting for many years. will you believe it? when last in paris, in , i did not go into the louvre, nor did i visit a single picture gallery. "i sometimes indulge a vague dream that i may paint again. it is rather the memory of past pleasures, when hope was enticing me onward only to deceive me at last. except some family portraits, valuable to me from their likenesses only, i could wish that every picture i ever painted was destroyed. i have no wish to be remembered as a painter, for i never was a painter. my ideal of that profession was, perhaps, too exalted--i may say is too exalted. i leave it to others more worthy to fill the niches of art." of course his self-condemnation was too severe, for we have seen that present-day critics assign him an honorable place in the annals of art, and while, at the time of writing that letter, he had definitely abandoned the brush, he continued to paint for some years after his rejection by the committee of congress. he had to, for it was his only means of earning a livelihood, but the old enthusiasm was gone never to return. fortunately for himself and for the world, however, he transferred it to the perfecting of his invention, and devoted all the time he could steal from the daily routine of his duties to that end. his friends sympathized with him most heartily and were indignant at his rejection. washington allston wrote to him:-- i have learned the disposition of the pictures. i had hoped to find your name among the commissioned artists, but i was grieved to find that all my efforts in your behalf have proved fruitless. i know what your disappointment must have been at this result, and most sincerely do i sympathize with you. that my efforts were both sincere and conscientious i hope will be some consolation to you. but let not this disappointment cast you down, my friend. you have it still in your power to let the world know what you can do. dismiss it, then, from your mind, and determine to paint all the better for it. god bless you. your affectionate friend washington allston. the following sentences from a letter written on march , , by thomas cole, one of the most celebrated of the early american painters, will show in what estimation morse was held by his brother artists:-- "i have learned with mortification and disappointment that your name was not among the _chosen_, and i have feared that you would carry into effect your resolution of abandoning the art and resigning the presidency of our academy. i sincerely hope you will have reason to cast aside that resolution. to you our academy owes its existence and present prosperity, and if, in after times, it should become a great institution, your name will always be coupled with its greatness. but, if you leave us, i very much fear that the fabric will crumble to pieces. you are the keystone of the arch; if you remain with us time may furnish the academy with another block for the place. i hope my fears may be vain, and that circumstances will conspire to induce you to remain our president." other friends were equally sympathetic and morse did retain the presidency of the academy until . to emphasize further their regard for him, a number of artists, headed by thomas s. cummings, unknown to morse, raised by subscription three thousand dollars, to be given to him for the painting of some historical subject. general cummings, in his "annals of the academy," thus describes the receipt of the news by the discouraged artist:-- "the effect was electrical; it roused him from his depression and he exclaimed that never had he read or known of such an act of professional generosity, and that he was fully determined to paint the picture--his favorite subject, 'the signing of the first compact on board the mayflower,'--not of small size, as requested, but of the size of the panels in the rotunda. that was immediately assented to by the committee, thinking it possible that one or the other of the pictures so ordered might fail in execution, in which case it would afford favorable inducements to its substitution, and, of course, much to mr. morse's profit; as the artists from the first never contemplated taking possession of the picture so executed. it was to remain with mr. morse, and for his use and benefit." the enthusiasm thus roused was but a flash in the pan, however; the wound he had received was too deep to be thus healed. some of the money was raised and paid to him, and he made studies and sketches for the painting, but his mind was now on his invention, and the painting of the picture was deferred from year to year and finally abandoned. it was characteristic of him that, when he did finally decide to give up the execution of this work, he paid back the sums which had been advanced to him, with interest. another grief which came to him in the summer of (to return to that year) was the death of his illustrious friend general lafayette. the last letter received from him was written by his amanuensis and unsigned, and simply said:-- "general lafayette, being detained by sickness, has sent to the reporter of the committee the following note, which the said reporter has read to the house." the note referred to is, unfortunately, missing. this letter was written on april and the general died on may . morse sent a letter of sympathy to the son, george washington lafayette, a member of the chamber of deputies, in which the following sentiments occur:-- "in common with this whole country, now clad in mourning, with the lovers of true liberty and of exalted philanthropy throughout the world, i bemoan the departure from earth of your immortal parent. yet i may be permitted to indulge in additional feelings of more private sorrow at the loss of one who honored me with his friendship, and had not ceased, till within a few days of his death, to send to me occasional marks of his affectionate remembrance. be assured, my dear sir, that the memory of your father will be especially endeared to me and mine." morse's admiration of lafayette was most sincere, and he was greatly influenced in his political feelings by his intercourse with that famous man. among other opinions which he shared with lafayette and other thoughtful men, was the fear of a roman catholic plot to gain control of the government of the united states. he defended his views fearlessly and vigorously in the public press and by means of pamphlets, and later entered into a heated controversy with bishop spaulding of kentucky. i shall not attempt to treat exhaustively of these controversies, but think it only right to refer to them from time to time, not only that the clearest possible light may be shed upon morse's character and convictions, but to show the extraordinary activity of his brain, which, while he was struggling against obstacles of all kinds, not only to make his invention a success, but for the very means of existence, could yet busy itself with the championing of what he conceived to be the right. to illustrate his point of view i shall quote a few extracts from a letter to r.s. willington, esq., who was the editor of a journal which is referred to as the "courier." this letter was written on may , , when morse's mind, we should think, would have been wholly absorbed in the details of the infant telegraph:-- "with regard to the more important matter of the conspiracy, i perceive with regret that the evidence which has been convincing to so many minds of the first order, and which continues daily to spread conviction of the truth of the charge i have made, is still viewed by the editors of the 'courier' as inconclusive. my situation in regard to those who dissent from me is somewhat singular. i have brought against the absolute governments of europe a charge of conspiracy against the liberties of the united states. i support the charge by facts, and by reasonings from those facts, which produce conviction on most of those who examine the matter.... but those that dissent simply say, 'i don't think there is a conspiracy'; yet give no reasons for dissent. the catholic journals very artfully make no defense themselves, but adroitly make use of the protestant defense kindly prepared for them.... "no catholic journal has attempted any refutation of the charge. it cannot be refuted, for it is true. and be assured, my dear sir, it is no extravagant prediction when i say that the question of popery and protestantism, or absolutism and republicanism, which in these two opposite categories are convertible terms, is fast becoming and will shortly be the _great absorbing question_, not only of this country but of the whole civilized world. i speak not at random; i speak from long and diligent observation in europe, and from comparison of the state of affairs in this country with the state of public opinion in europe. "we are asleep, sir, when every freeman should be awake and look to his arms.... surely, if the danger is groundless, there can be no harm in endeavoring to ascertain its groundlessness. if you were told your house was on fire you would hardly think of calling the man a maniac for informing you of it, even if he should use a tone of voice and gestures somewhat earnest and impassioned. the course of some of our journals on the subject of popery has led to the belief that they are covertly under the control of the jesuits. and let me say, sir, that the modes of control in the resources of this insidious society, notorious for its political arts and intrigues, are more numerous, more powerful, and more various than an unsuspicious people are at all conscious of.... "mr. y. falls into the common error and deprecates what he calls a _religious_ controversy, as if the subject of popery was altogether religious. history, it appears to me, must have been read to very little purpose by any one who can entertain such an error in regard to the cunningest political despotism that ever cursed mankind. i must refer you to the preface of the second edition, which i send you, for my reasonings on that point. if they are not conclusive, i should be glad to be shown wherein they are defective. if they are conclusive, is it not time for every patriot to open his eyes to the truth of the fact that we are politically attacked under guise of a religious system, and is it not a serious question whether our political press should advocate the cause of foreign enemies to our government, or help to expose and repel them?" it was in the year that morse was appointed professor of the literature of the arts of design in the university of the city of new york, and here again we can mark the guiding hand of fate. a few years earlier he had been tentatively offered the position of instructor of drawing at the united states military academy at west point, but this offer he had promptly but courteously declined. had he accepted it he would have missed the opportunity of meeting certain men who gave him valuable assistance. as an instructor in the university he not only received a small salary which relieved him, in a measure, from the grinding necessity of painting pot-boilers, but he had assigned to him spacious rooms in the building on washington square, which he could utilize not only as studio and living apartments, but as a workshop. for these rooms, however, he paid a rent, at first of $ a year, afterwards of $ . three years had clasped since his first conception of the invention, and, although burning to devote himself to its perfecting, he had been compelled to hold himself in check and to devote all his time to painting. now, however, an opportunity came to him, for he moved into the university building before it was entirely finished, and the stairways were in such an embryonic state that he could not expect sitters to attempt their perilous ascent. this enforced leisure gave him the chance he had long desired and he threw himself heart and soul into his electrical experiments. writing of this period in later years he thus records his struggles:-- [illustration: first telegraph instrument, now in the national museum, washington] "there i immediately commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon my invention. my first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other two; a wooden pendulum, suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching-frame, and vibrating across the paper as it passes over the centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum; a type rule and type, for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band composed of carpet-binding; which passed over two wooden rollers, moved by a wooden crank, and carried forward by points projecting from the bottom of the rule downward into the carpet-binding; a lever, with a small weight on the upper side, and a tooth projecting downward at one end, operated on by the type, and a metallic fork, also projecting downward, over two mercury cups; and a short circuit of wire embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery and terminating in the mercury cups." this first rude instrument was carefully preserved by the inventor, and is now in the morse case in the national museum at washington. a reproduction of it is here given. i shall omit certain technical details in the inventor's account of this first instrument, but i wish to call attention to his ingenuity in adapting the means at his disposal to the end desired. much capital has been made, by those who opposed his claims, out of the fact that this primitive apparatus could only produce a v-shaped mark, thus-- __ __ _ \/|__| |/\/ |/\/|__/ --and not a dot and a dash, which they insist was of later introduction and by another hand. but a reference to the sketches made on board the sully will show that the original system of signs consisted of dots and lines, and that the first conception of the means to produce these signs was by an up-and-down motion of a lever controlled by an electro-magnet. it is easy to befog an issue by misstating facts, but the facts are here to speak for themselves, and that morse temporarily abandoned his first idea, because he had not the means at his disposal to embody it in workable form and had recourse to another method for producing practically the same result, only shows wonderful ingenuity on his part. it can easily be seen that the waving line traced by the first instrument--thus, __ __ _ \/|__| |/\/ |/\/|__/ --can be translated by reading the lower part into a i u . - . . . . - of the final morse alphabet. the beginnings of every great invention have been clumsy and uncouth compared with the results attained by years of study and elaboration participated in by many clever brains. contrast the clermont of fulton with the floating palaces of the present day, the rocket of stephenson with the powerful locomotives of our mile-a-minute fliers, and the hand-press of gutenberg with the marvellous and intricate hoe presses of modern times. and yet the names of those who first conceived and wrought these primitive contrivances stand highest in the roll of fame; and with justice, for it is infinitely easier to improve on the suggestion of another than to originate a practical advance in human endeavor. returning again to morse's own account of his early experiments i shall quote the following sentences:-- "with this apparatus, rude as it was, and completed before the first of the year , i was enabled to and did mark down telegraphic, intelligible signs, and to make and did make distinguishable sounds for telegraphing; and, having arrived at that point, i exhibited it to some of my friends early in that year, and among others to professor leonard d. gale, who was a college professor in the university. i also experimented with the chemical power of the electric current in , and succeeded, in marking my telegraphic signs upon paper dipped in turmeric and solution of the sulphate of soda (as well as other salts) by passing the current through it. i was soon satisfied, however, that the electro-_magnetic_ power was more available for telegraphic purposes and possessed many advantages over any other, and i turned my thoughts in that direction. "early in i procured forty feet of wire, and, putting it in the circuit, i found that my battery of one cup was not sufficient to work my instrument. this result suggested to me the probability that the magnetism to be obtained from the electric current would diminish in proportion as the circuit was lengthened, so as to be insufficient for any practical purposes at great distances; and, to remove that probable obstacle to my success, i conceived the idea of combining two or more circuits together in the manner described in my first patent, each with an independent battery, making use of the magnetism of the current on the first to close and break the second; the second the third; and so on." thus modestly does he refer to what was, in fact, a wonderful discovery, the more wonderful because of its simplicity. professor horsford thus comments on it:-- "in morse made the discovery of the _relay_, the most brilliant of all the achievements to which his name must be forever attached. it was a discovery of a means by which the current, which through distance from its source had become feeble, could be reënforced or renewed. this discovery, according to the different objects for which it is employed, is variously known as the registering magnet, the local circuit, the marginal circuit, the repeater, etc." professor horsford places the date of this discovery in the year , but morse himself, in the statement quoted above, assigned it to the early part of . it is only fair to note that the discovery of the principle of the relay was made independently by other scientists, notably by davy, wheatstone, and henry, but morse apparently antedated them by a year or two, and could not possibly have been indebted to any of them for the idea. this point has given rise to much discussion among scientists which it will not be necessary to enter into here, for all authorities agree in according to morse independent invention of the relay. "up to the autumn of ," again to quote morse's own words, "my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that i felt a reluctance to have it seen. my means were very limited--so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. i had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought. "prior to the summer of , at which time mr. alfred vail's attention became attracted to my telegraph, i depended upon my pencil for subsistence. indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that, in order to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, i had for months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small quantities from some grocery, and preparing it myself. to conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which i lived, i was in the habit of bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of life for many years." nearly twenty years later, in , morse referred to this trying period in his career at a meeting of the association of the alumni of the university:-- "yesternight, on once more entering your chapel, i saw the same marble staircase and marble floors i once so often trod, and so often with a heart and head overburdened with almost crushing anxieties. separated from the chapel by but a thin partition was that room i occupied, now your philomathean hall, whose walls--had thoughts and mental struggles, with the alternations of joys and sorrows, the power of being daguerreotyped upon them--would show a thickly studded gallery of evidence that there the briarean infant was born who has stretched forth his arms with the intent to encircle the world. yes, that room of the university was the birthplace of the recording telegraph. attempts, indeed, have been made to assign to it other parentage, and to its birthplace other localities. personally i have very little anxiety on this point, except that the truth should not suffer; for i have a consciousness, which neither sophistry nor ignorance can shake, that that room is the place of its birth, and a confidence, too, that its cradle is in hands that will sustain its rightful claim." the old building of the university of the city of new york on washington square has been torn down to be replaced by a mercantile structure; the university has moved to more spacious quarters in the upper part of the great city; but one of its notable buildings is the hall of fame, and among the first names to be immortalized in bronze in the stately colonnade was that of samuel f.b. morse. chapter xxiii -- first exhibitions of the telegraph.--testimony of robert g. rankin and rev. henry b. tappan.--cooke and wheatstone.--joseph henry, leonard d. gale, and alfred vail.--professor gale's testimony.--professor henry's discoveries.--regrettable controversy of later years.--professor charles t. jackson's claims.--alfred vail.--contract of september , .--work at morristown. new jersey.--the "morse alphabet."--reading by sound.-- first and second forms of alphabet. in after years the question of the time when the telegraph was first exhibited to others was a disputed one; it will, therefore, be well to give the testimony of a few men of undoubted integrity who personally witnessed the first experiments. robert g. rankin, esq., gave his reminiscences to mr. prime, from which i shall select the following passages:-- "professor morse was one of the purest and noblest men of any age. i believe i was among the earliest, outside of his family circle, to whom he communicated his design to encircle the globe with wire.... "some time in the fall of i was passing along the easterly walk of washington parade-ground, leading from waverly place to fourth street, when i heard my name called. on turning round i saw, over the picketfence, an outstretched arm from a person standing in the middle or main entrance door of the unfinished university building of new york, and immediately recognized the professor, who beckoned me toward him. on meeting and exchanging salutations,--and you know how genial his were,-- he took me by the arm and said: "'i wish you to go up in my sanctum and examine a piece of mechanism, which, if you may not believe in, _you_, at least, will not laugh at, as i fear some others will. i want you to give me your frank opinion as a friend, for i know your interest in and love of the applied sciences.'" here follow a description of what he saw and morse's explanation, and, then he continues:-- "a long silence on the part of each ensued, which was at length broken by my exclamation: 'well, professor, you have a pretty play!--theoretically true but practically useful only as a mantel ornament, or for a mistress in the parlor to direct the maid in the cellar! but, professor, _cui bono?_ in imagination one can make a new earth and improve all the land communications of our old one, but my unfortunate practicality stands in the way of my comprehension as yet.' "we then had a long conversation on the subject of magnetism and its modifications, and if i do not recollect the very words which clothed his thoughts, they were substantially as follows. "he had been long impressed with the belief that god had created the great forces of nature, not only as manifestations of his own infinite power, but as expressions of good-will to man, to do him good, and that every one of god's great forces could yet be utilized for man's welfare; that modern science was constantly evolving from the hitherto hidden secrets of nature some new development promotive of human welfare; and that, at no distant day, magnetism would do more for the advancement of human sociology than any of the material forces yet known; that he would scarcely dare to compare spiritual with material forces, yet that, analogically, magnetism would do in the advancement of human welfare what the spirit of god would do in the moral renovation of man's nature; that it would educate and enlarge the forces of the world.... he said he had felt as if he was doing a great work for god's glory as well as for man's welfare; that such had been his long cherished thought. his whole soul and heart appeared filled with a glow of love and good-will, and his sensitive and impassioned nature seemed almost to transform him in my eyes into a prophet." it required, indeed, the inspirational vision of a prophet to foresee, in those narrow, skeptical days, the tremendous part which electricity was to play in the civilization of a future age, and i wish again to lay stress on the fact that it was the telegraph which first harnessed this mysterious force, and opened the eyes of the world to the availability of a power which had lain dormant through all the ages, but which was now, for the first time, to be brought under the control of man, and which was destined to rival, and eventually to displace, in many ways, its elder brother steam. was not morse's ambition to confer a lasting good on his fellowmen more fully realized than even he himself at that time comprehended? the reverend henry b. tappan, who in was a colleague of morse's in the new york university and afterwards president of the university of michigan, gave his testimony in reply to a request from morse, and, among other things, he said:-- "in you had advanced so far that you were prepared to give, on a small scale, a practical demonstration of the possibility of transmitting and recording words through distance by means of an electro-magnetic arrangement. i was one of the limited circle whom you invited to witness the first experiments. in a long room of the university you had wires extended from end to end, where the magnetic apparatus was arranged. "it is not necessary for me to describe particulars which have now become familiar to every one. the fact which i recall with the liveliest interest, and which i mentioned in conversation at mr. bancroft's as one of the choicest recollections of my life, was that of the first transmission and recording of a telegraphic dispatch. "i suppose, of course, that you had already made these experiments before the company arrived whom you had invited. but i claim to have witnessed _the first transmission and recording of words_ by lightning ever made public.... the arrangement which you exhibited on the above mentioned occasion, as well as the mode of receiving the dispatches, were substantially the same as those you now employ. i feel certain that you had then already grasped the whole invention, however you may have since perfected the details." others bore testimony in similar words, so that we may regard it as proved that, both in and , demonstrations were made which, uncouth though they were, compared to present-day perfection, proved that the electric telegraph was about to emerge from the realms of fruitless experiment. among these witnesses were daniel huntington, hon. hamilton fish, and commodore shubrick; and several of these gentlemen asserted that, at that early period, morse confidently predicted that europe and america would eventually be united by an electric wire. the letters written by morse during these critical years have become hopelessly dispersed, and but few have come into my possession. his brothers were both in new york, so that there was no necessity of writing to them, and the letters written to others cannot, at this late day, be traced. as he also, unfortunately, did not keep a journal, i must depend on the testimony of others, and on his own recollections in later years for a chronicle of his struggles. the pencil copy of a letter written to a friend in albany, on august , , has, however, survived, and the following sentences will, i think, be found interesting:-- "thanks to you, my dear c----, for the concern you express in regard to my health. it has been perfectly good and is now, with the exception of a little anxiety in relation to the telegraph and to my great pictorial undertaking, which wears the furrows of my face a little deeper. my telegraph, in all its essential points, is tested to my own satisfaction and that of the scientific gentlemen who have seen it; but the machinery (all which, from its peculiar character, i have been compelled to make myself) is imperfect, and before it can be perfected i have reason to fear that other nations will take the hint and rob me both of the credit and the profit. there are indications of this in the foreign journals lately received. i have a defender in the 'journal of commerce' (which i send you that you may know what is the progress of the matter), and doubtless other journals of our country will not allow foreign nations to take the credit of an invention of such vast importance as they assign to it, when they learn that it certainly belongs to america. "there is not a thought in any one of the foreign journals relative to the telegraph which i had not expressed nearly five years ago, on my passage from france, to scientific friends; and when it is considered how quick a hint flies from mind to mind and is soon past all tracing back to the original suggester of the hint, it is certainly by no means improbable that the excitement on the subject in england has its origin from my giving the details of the plan of my telegraph to some of the englishmen or other fellow-passengers on board the ship, or to some of the many i have since made acquainted with it during the five years past." in this he was mistaken, for the english telegraph of cooke and wheatstone was quite different in principle, using the deflection, by a current of electricity, of a delicately adjusted needle to point to the letters of the alphabet. while this was in use in england for a number of years, it was gradually superseded by the morse telegraph which proved its decided superiority. it is also worthy of note that in this letter, and in all future letters and articles, he, with pardonable pride, uses a capital t in speaking of his telegraph. one of the most difficult of the problems which confront the historian who sincerely wishes to deal dispassionately with his subject is justly to apportion the credit which must be given to different workers in the same field of endeavor, and especially in that of invention; for every invention is but an improvement on something which has gone before. the sail-boat was an advance on the rude dugout propelled by paddles. the first clumsy steamboat seemed a marvel to those who had known no other propulsive power than that of the wind or the oar. the horse-drawn vehicle succeeded the litter and the palanquin, to be in turn followed by the locomotive; and so the telegraph, as a means of rapidly communicating intelligence between distant points, was the logical successor of the signal fire and the semaphore. in all of these improvements by man upon what man had before accomplished, the pioneer was not only dependent upon what his predecessors had achieved, but, in almost every case, was compelled to call to his assistance other workers to whom could be confided some of the minutiæ which were essential to the successful launching of the new enterprise. i have shown conclusively that the idea of transmitting intelligence by electricity was original with morse in that he was unaware, until some years after his first conception, that anyone else had ever thought of it. i have also shown that he, unaided by others, invented and made with his own hands a machine, rude though it may have been, which actually did transmit and record intelligence by means of the electric current, and in a manner entirely different from the method employed by others. but he had now come to a point where knowledge of what others had accomplished along the same line would greatly facilitate his labors, and when the assistance of one more skilled in mechanical construction was a great desideratum, and both of these essentials were at hand. it is quite possible that he might have succeeded in working out the problem absolutely unaided, just as a man might become a great painter without instruction, without a knowledge of the accumulated wisdom of those who preceded him, and without the assistance of the color-maker and the manufacturer of brushes and canvas. but the artist is none the less a genius because he listens to the counsels of his master, profits by the experience of others, and purchases his supplies instead of grinding his own colors and laboriously manufacturing his own canvas and brushes. the three men to whom morse was most indebted for material assistance in his labors at this critical period were professor joseph henry, professor leonard d. gale, and alfred vail, and it is my earnest desire to do full justice to all of them. unfortunately after the telegraph had become an assured success, and even down to the present day, the claims of morse have been bitterly assailed, both by well-meaning persons and by the unscrupulous who sought to break down his patent rights; and the names of these three men were freely used in the effort to prove that to one or all of them more credit was due than to morse. now, after the lapse of nearly three quarters of a century, the verdict has been given in favor of morse, his name alone is accepted as that of the inventor of the telegraph, and in this work it is my aim to prove that the judgment of posterity has not erred, but also to give full credit to those who aided him when he was most in need of assistance. my task in some instances will be a delicate one; i shall have to prick some bubbles, for the friends of some of these men have claimed too much for them, and, on that account, have been bitter in their accusations against morse. i shall also have to acknowledge some errors of judgment on the part of morse, for the malice of others fomented a dispute between him and one of these three men, which caused a permanent estrangement and was greatly to be regretted. the first of the three to enter into the history of the telegraph was leonard d. gale, who, in , was a professor in the university of the city of new york, and he has given his recollections of those early days. avoiding a repetition of facts already recorded i shall quote some sentences from professor gale's statement. after describing the first instrument, which he saw in january of , he continues:-- "during the years and beginning of the studies of professor morse on his telegraph i found much interrupted by his attention to his professional duties. i understood that want of pecuniary means prevented him from procuring to be made such mechanical improvements, and such substantial workmanship, as would make the operation of his invention more exact. "in the months of march and april, , the announcement of an extraordinary telegraph on the visual plan (as it afterwards proved to be), the invention of two french gentlemen of the names of gonon and servell, was going the rounds of the papers. the thought occurred to me, as well as to professor morse and some others of his friends, that the invention of his electro-magnetic telegraph had somehow become known, and was the origin of the new telegraph thus conspicuously announced. this announcement at once aroused professor morse to renewed exertions to bring the new invention creditably before the public, and to consent to a public announcement of the existence of his invention. from april to september, , professor morse and myself were engaged together in the work of preparing magnets, winding wire, constructing batteries, etc., in the university for an experiment on a larger, but still very limited scale, in the little leisure that each had to spare, and being at the same time much cramped for funds.... "the latter part of august, , the operation of the instruments was shown to numerous visitors at the university.... "on saturday, the d of september, , professor daubeny, of the english oxford university, being on a visit to this country, was invited with a few friends to see the operation of the telegraph, in its then rude form, in the cabinet of the new york university, where it had then been put up with a circuit of seventeen hundred feet of copper wire stretched back and forth in that long room. professor daubeny, professor torrey, and mr. alfred vail were present among others. this exhibition of the telegraph, although of very rude and imperfectly constructed machinery, demonstrated to all present the practicability of the invention, and it resulted in enlisting the means, the skill, and the zeal of mr. alfred vail, who, early the next week, called at the rooms and had a more perfect explanation from professor morse of the character of the invention." it was professor gale who first called morse's attention to the discoveries of professor joseph henry, especially to that of the intensity magnet, and he thus describes the interesting event:-- "morse's machine was complete in all its parts and operated perfectly through a circuit of some forty feet, but there was not sufficient force to send messages to a distance. at this time i was a lecturer on chemistry, and from necessity was acquainted with all kinds of galvanic batteries, and knew that a battery of one or a few cups generates a large quantity of electricity capable of producing heat, etc., but not of projecting electricity to a great distance, and that, to accomplish this, a battery of many cups is necessary. it was, therefore, evident to me that the one large cup-battery of morse should be made into ten or fifteen smaller ones to make it a battery of intensity so as to project the electric fluid.... accordingly i substituted the battery of many cups for the battery of one cup. the remaining defect in the morse machine, as first seen by me, was that the coil of wire around the poles of the electro-magnet consisted of but a few turns only, while, to give the greatest projectile power, the number of turns should be increased from tens to hundreds, as shown by professor henry in his paper published in the 'american journal of science,' .... after substituting the battery of twenty cups for that of a single cup, we added some hundred or more turns to the coil of wire around the poles of the magnet and sent a message through two hundred feet of conductors, then through one thousand feet, and then through ten miles of wire arranged on reels in my own lecture-room in the new york university in the presence of friends." this was a most important step in hastening the reduction of the invention to a practical, workable basis and i wish here to bear testimony to the great services of professor henry in making this possible. his valuable discoveries were freely given to the world with no attempt on his part to patent them, which is, perhaps, to be regretted, but much more is it to be deplored that, in, the litigation which ensued a few years later, morse and henry were drawn into a controversy, fostered and fomented by others for their own pecuniary benefit, which involved the honor and veracity of both of these distinguished men. both were men of the greatest sensitiveness, proud and jealous of their own integrity, and the breach once made was never healed. of the rights and wrongs of this controversy i may have occasion later on to treat more in detail, although i should much prefer to dismiss it with the acknowledgment that there was much to deplore in what was said and written by morse, although he sincerely believed himself to be in the right, and much to regret in some of the statements and actions of henry. at this late day, when the mists which enveloped the questions have rolled away, it seems but simple justice to admit that the wonderful discoveries of henry were essential to the successful working over long distances of morse's discoveries and inventions; just as the discoveries and inventions of earlier and contemporary scientists were essential to henry's improvements. but it is also just to place emphasis on the fact that henry's experiments were purely scientific. he never attempted to put them in concrete form for the use of mankind in general; they led up to the telegraph; they were not a practical telegraph in themselves. it was morse who added the final link in the long chain, and, by combining the discoveries of others with those which he had himself made, gave to the world this wonderful new agent. a recent writer in the "scientific american" gave utterance to the following sentiment, which, it seems to me, most aptly describes this difference: "we need physical discoveries and revere those who seek truth for its own sake. but mankind with keen instinct saves its warmest acclaim for those who also make discoveries of some avail in adding to the length of life, its joys, its possibilities, its conveniences." we must also remember that, while the baby telegraph had, in , been recognized as a promising infant by a very few scientists and personal friends of the inventor, it was still regarded with suspicion, if not with scorn, by the general public and even by many men of scholarly attainments, and a long and heart-breaking struggle for existence was ahead of it before it should reach maturity and develop into the lusty giant of the present day. here again morse proved that he was the one man of his generation most eminently fitted to fight for the child of his brain, to endure and to persevere until the victor's crown was grasped. it is always idle to speculate on what might have happened if certain events had not taken place; if certain men had not met certain other men. a telegraph would undoubtedly have been invented if morse had never been born; or he might have perfected his invention without the aid and advice of others, or with the assistance of different men from those who appeared at the psychological moment. but we are dealing with facts and not with suppositions, and the facts are that through professor gale he was made acquainted with the discoveries of joseph henry, which had been published to the world several years before, and could have been used by others if they had had the wit or genius to grasp their significance and hit upon the right means to make them of practical utility. morse was ever ready cheerfully to acknowledge the assistance which had been given to him by others, but, at the same time, he always took the firm stand that this did not give them a claim to an equal share with himself in the honor of the invention. in a long letter to professor charles t. jackson, written on september , , he vigorously but courteously repudiates the claim of the latter to have been a co-inventor on board the sully, and he proves his point, for jackson not only knew nothing of the plan adopted by morse, and carried by him to a successful issue, but had never suggested anything of a practical nature. at the same time morse freely acknowledges that the conversation between them on the ship suggested to him the train of thought which culminated in the invention, for he adds:-- "you say, 'i trust you will take care that the proper share of credit shall be given to me when you make public your doings.' this i always have done and with pleasure. i have always given you credit for great genius and acquirements, and have always said, in giving any account of my telegraph, that it was during a scientific conversation with you on board the ship that i first conceived the thought of an electric telegraph. is there really any more that you will claim or that i could in truth and justice give? "i have acknowledgments of a similar kind to make to professor silliman and to professor gale; to the former of whom i am under precisely similar obligations with yourself for several useful hints; and to the latter i am most of all indebted for substantial and effective aid in many of my experiments. if any one has a claim to be considered as a mutual inventor on the score of aid by hints, it is professor gale, but he prefers no claim of the kind." and he never did prefer such a claim (although it was made for him by others), but remained always loyal to morse. jackson, on the other hand, insisted on pressing his demand, although it was an absurd one, and he was a thorn in the flesh to morse for many years. it will not be necessary to go into the matter in detail, as jackson was, through his wild claims to other inventions and discoveries, thoroughly discredited, and his views have now no weight in the scientific world. the third person who came to the assistance of morse at this critical period was alfred vail, son of judge stephen vail, of morristown, new jersey. in he was a young man of thirty and had graduated from the university of the city of new york in . he was present at the exhibition of morse's invention on the d of september, , and he at once grasped its great possibilities. after becoming satisfied that morse's device of the relay would permit of operation over great distances, he expressed a desire to become associated with the inventor in the perfecting and exploitation of the invention. his father was the proprietor of the speedwell iron works in morristown, and young vail had had some experience in the manufacture of mechanical appliances in the factory, although he had taken the theological course at the university with the intention of entering the presbyterian ministry. he had abandoned the idea of becoming a clergyman, however, on account of ill-health, and was, for a time, uncertain as to his future career, when the interest aroused by the sight of morse's machine settled the matter, and, after consulting with his father and brother, he entered into an agreement with morse on the d day of september, . in the contract drawn up between them vail bound himself to construct, at his own expense, a complete set of instruments; to defray the costs of securing patents in this country and abroad; and to devote his time to both these purposes. it was also agreed that each should at once communicate to the other any improvement or new invention bearing on the simplification or perfecting of the telegraph, and that such improvements or inventions should be held to be the property of each in the proportion in which they were to share in any pecuniary benefits which might accrue. as the only way in which morse could, at that time, pay vail for his services and for money advanced, he gave him a one-fourth interest in the invention in this country, and one half in what might be obtained from europe. this was, in the following march, changed to three sixteenths in the united states and one fourth in europe. morse had now secured two essentials most necessary to the rapid perfection of his invention, the means to purchase materials and an assistant more skilled than he in mechanical construction, and who was imbued with faith in the ultimate success of the enterprise. now began the serious work of putting the invention into such a form that it could demonstrate to the skeptical its capability of performing what was then considered a miracle. it is hard for us at the present time, when new marvels of science and invention are of everyday occurrence, to realize the hidebound incredulousness which prevailed during the first half of the nineteenth century. men tapped their foreheads and shook their heads in speaking of morse and his visionary schemes, and deeply regretted that here was the case of a brilliant man and excellent artist evidently gone wrong. but he was not to be turned from his great purpose by the jeers of the ignorant and the anxious solicitations of his friends, and he was greatly heartened by the encouragement of such men as gale and vail. they all three worked over the problems yet to be solved, morse going backwards and forwards between new york and morristown. that both gale and vail suggested improvements which were adopted by morse, can be taken for granted, but, as i have said before, to modify or elaborate something originated by another is a comparatively easy matter, and the basic idea, first conceived by morse on the sully, was retained throughout. all the details of these experiments have not been recorded, but i believe that at first an attempt was made to put into a more finished form the principle of the machine made by morse, with its swinging pendulum tracing a waving line, but this was soon abandoned in favor of an instrument using the up-and-down motion of a lever, as drawn in the sketch-book. in other words, it was a return to first principles as thought out by morse, and not, as some would have us believe, something entirely new suggested and invented independently by vail. it was rather unfortunate and curious, in view of morse's love of simplicity, that he at first insisted on using the dots and dashes to indicate numbers only, the numbers to correspond to words in a specially prepared dictionary. his arguments in favor of this plan were specious, but the event has proved that his reasoning was faulty. his first idea was that the telegraph should belong to the government; that intelligence sent should be secret by means of a kind of cipher; that it would take less time to send a number than each letter of each word, especially in the case of the longer words; and, finally, that although the labor in preparing a dictionary of all the most important words in the language and giving to each its number would be great, once done it would be done for all time. i say that this was unfortunate because the fact that the telegraphic alphabet of dots and dashes was not used until after his association with vail has lent strength to the claims on the part of vail's family and friends that he was the inventor of it and not morse. this claim has been so insistently, and even bitterly, made, especially after morse's death, that it gained wide credence and has even been incorporated in some encyclopedias and histories. fortunately it can be easily disproved, and i am desirous of finally settling this vexed question because i consider the conception of this simplest of all conventional alphabets one of the grandest of morse's inventions, and one which has conferred great good upon mankind. it is used to convey intelligence not only by electricity, but in many other ways. its cabalistic characters can be read by the eye, the ear, and the touch. just as the names of ampère, volta, and watt have been used to designate certain properties or things discovered by them, so the name of morse is immortalized in the alphabet invented by him. the telegraph operators all over the world send "morse" when they tick off the dots and dashes of the alphabet, and happily i can prove that this is not an honor filched from another. it is a matter of record that vail himself never claimed in any of his letters or diaries (and these are voluminous) that he had anything to do with the devising of this conventional alphabet, even with the modification of the first form. on the other hand, in several letters to morse he refers to it as being morse's. for instance, in a letter of april , , he uses the words "your system of marking, _lines_ and _dots_, which you have patented." all the evidence brought forward by the advocates of vail is purely hearsay; he is said to have said that he invented the alphabet. morse, however, always, in every one of his many written references to the matter, speaks of it as "my conventional alphabet." in an article which i contributed to the "century magazine" of march, , i treated this question at length and proved by documentary evidence that morse alone devised the dot-and-dash alphabet. it will not be necessary for me to repeat all this evidence here; i shall simply give enough to prove conclusively that the morse alphabet has not been misnamed. the following is a fugitive note which was reproduced photographically in the "century" article:-- "mr. vail, in his work on the telegraph, at p. , intimates that the saw-teeth type for letters, as he has described them in the diagram ( ), were devised by me as early as the year . two of the elements of these letters, indeed, were then devised, the dot and space, and used in constructing the type for numerals, but, so far as my recollection now serves me, it was not until i experimented with the first instrument in that i added the -- dash, which supplied me with the three elements for combinations for letters. it was on noticing the fact that, when the circuit was closed a longer time than was necessary to make a dot, there was produced a line or dash, that, if i rightly remember, the broken parts of a continuous line as the means of imprinting at a distance were suggested to me; since the inequalities of long and short lines, separated by long and short spaces, gave me all the variations or combinations of long and short lines necessary to form the alphabet. the date of the code complete must, therefore, be put at , and not , although at the date of the principle of the code was _evolved_." in addition to this being a definite claim in writing on the part of morse that he had devised an alphabetic code in , two years before vail had ever heard of the telegraph, it is well to note his scrupulous insistence on historical accuracy. in a letter to professor gale, referring to reading by sound as well as by sight, occur the following sentences. (let me remark, by the way, that it is interesting to note that morse thus early recognized the possibility of reading by sound, an honor which has been claimed for many others.) "exactly at what time i recognized the adaptation of the difference in the intervals in reading the _letters_ as well as the numerals, i have now no means of fixing except in a general manner. it was, however, almost immediately on the construction of the letters by dots and lines, and this was some little time previous to your seeing the instrument. "soon after the first operation of the instrument in , in which the type for writing numbers were used, i not only conceived the letter type, but made them from some leads used in the printing-office. i have still quite a quantity of these type. they were used in washington as well as the type for numerals in the winter of - . "in the earlier period of the invention it was a matter which experience alone could determine whether the _numerical_ system, by means of a numbered dictionary, or the alphabetic mode, by spelling of the words, was the better. while i perceived some advantages in the alphabetic system, especially in the writing of proper names, i at that time leaned rather towards the _numerical_ mode under the impression that it would, on the whole, be the more rapid. a very short experience, however, showed the superiority of the alphabetic mode, and the big leaves of the numbered dictionary, which cost me a world of labor, and which you, perhaps, remember, were discarded and the alphabetic installed in its stead." perhaps the most conclusive evidence that vail did not invent this alphabet is contained in his own book on the "american electro-magnetic telegraph," published in , in which he lays claim to certain improvements. after describing the dot-and-dash alphabet, he says:-- "this conventional alphabet was originated on board the packet sully by professor morse, the very first elements of the invention, and arose from the necessity of the case; the motion produced by the magnet being limited to a single action. during the period of the thirteen years _many plans have been devised by the inventor_ to bring the telegraphic alphabet to its simplest form." the italics are mine, for the advocates of vail have always quoted the first sentence only, and have said that the word "originated" implies that, while vail admitted that the embryo of the alphabet--the dots and dashes to represent numbers only--was conceived on the sully, he did not admit that the alphabetical code was morse's. but when we read the second sentence with the words "devised by the inventor," the meaning is so plain that it is astonishing that any one at all familiar with the facts could have been misled. the first form of the alphabet which was attached to morse's caveat of october , , is shown in the drawing of the type in the accompanying figure. [illustration: rough drawing of alphabet by morse showing the first form of the alphabet and the changes to the present form] it has been stated by some historians that the system of signs for letters was not attached to the caveat, but a careful reading of the text, in which reference is made to the drawing, will prove conclusively that it was. moreover, in this caveat under section , "the dictionary or vocabulary," the very first sentence reads: "the dictionary is a complete vocabulary of words alphabetically arranged and regularly numbered, _beginning with the letters of the alphabet_." the italics are mine. the mistake arose because the drawing was detached from the caveat and affixed to the various patents which were issued, even after the first form of the alphabet had been superseded by a better one, the principle, however, remaining the same, so that it was not necessary to patent the new form. as soon as it was proved that it would be simpler to use the letters of the alphabet in sending intelligence, the first form of the alphabet was changed in the manner shown in the preceding figure. exactly when this was done has not been recorded, but it was after vail's association with morse, and it is quite possible that they worked over the problem together, but there is no written proof of this, whereas the accompanying reproduction of calculations in morse's handwriting will prove that he gave himself seriously to its consideration. the large numbers represent the quantities of type found in the type-cases of a printing-office; for, after puzzling over the question of the relative frequency of the occurrence of the different letters in the written language, a visit to the printing-office easily settled the matter. this dispute, concerning the paternity of the alphabet, lasting for many years after the death of both principals, and regrettably creating much bad feeling, is typical of many which arose in the case of the telegraph, as well as in that of every other great invention, and it may not be amiss at this point to introduce the following fugitive note of morse's, which, though evidently written many years later, is applicable to this as well as to other cases:-- "it is quite common to misapprehend the nature and extent of an improvement without a thorough knowledge of an original invention. a casual observer is apt to confound the new and the old, and, in noting a new arrangement, is often led to consider the whole as new. it is, therefore, necessary to exercise a proper discrimination lest injustice be done to the various laborers in the same field of invention. i trust it will not be deemed egotistical on my part if, while conscious of the unfeigned desire to concede to all who are attempting improvements in the art of telegraphy that which belongs to them, i should now and then recognize the familiar features of my own offspring and claim their paternity." [illustration: quantities of the type found in a printing-office calculation made by morse to aid him in simplifying alphabet] chapter xxiv october , --may , the caveat.--work at morristown.--judge vail.--first success.--resolution in congress regarding telegraphs.--morse's reply.--illness.--heaviness of first instruments.--successful exhibition in morristown.--exhibition in new york university.--first use of morse alphabet.--change from first form of alphabet to present form.--trials of an inventor.--dr. jackson.-- slight friction between morse and vail.--exhibition at franklin institute, philadelphia.--exhibitions in washington.--skepticism of public.--f.o.j. smith,--f.l. pope's estimate of smith.--proposal for government telegraph.--smith's report.--departure for europe. i have incidentally mentioned the caveat in the preceding chapter, but a more detailed account of this important step in bringing the invention into the light of day should, perhaps, be given. the reports in the newspapers of the activities of others, especially of scientists in europe, led morse to decide that he must at once take steps legally to protect himself if he did not wish to be distanced in the race. he accordingly wrote to the commissioner of patents, henry l. ellsworth, who had been a classmate of his at yale, for information as to the form to be used in applying for a caveat, and, after receiving a cordial reply enclosing the required form, he immediately set to work to prepare his caveat. this was in the early part of september, , before he had met vail. the rough draft, which is still among his papers, was completed on september , and the finished copy was sent to washington on october , and the receipt acknowledged by commissioner ellsworth on october . the drawing containing the signs for both numbers and letters was attached to this caveat. having now safeguarded himself, he was able to give his whole mind to the perfecting of the mechanical parts of his invention, and in this he was ably assisted by his new partner, alfred vail, and by professor gale. the next few months were trying ones to both morse and vail. it must not be supposed that the work went along smoothly without a hitch. many were the discouragements, and many experiments were tried and then discarded. to add to the difficulties, judge vail, who, of course, was supplying the cash, piqued by the sneers of his neighbors and noting the feverish anxiety of his son and of morse, lost faith, and would have willingly abandoned the whole enterprise. the two enthusiasts worked steadily on, however, avoiding the judge as much as possible, and finally, on the th of january, , they proudly invited him to come to the workshop and witness the telegraph in operation. his hopes renewed by their confident demeanor, he hastened down from his house. after a few words of explanation he handed a slip of paper to his son on which he had written the words--"a patient waiter is no loser." he knew that morse could not possibly know what he had written, and he said: "if you can send this and mr. morse can read it at the other end, i shall be convinced." slowly the message was ticked off, and when morse handed him the duplicate of his message, his enthusiasm knew no bounds, and he proposed to go at once to washington and urge upon congress the establishment of a government line. but the instrument was not yet in a shape to be seen of all men, and many years were yet to elapse before the legislators of the country awoke to their opportunity. morse and vail were, of course, greatly encouraged by this first triumph, and worked on with increased enthusiasm. many years after their early struggles, when the telegraph was an established success and morse had been honored both at home and abroad, he thus spoke of his friend:-- "alfred vail, then a student in the university, and a young man of great ingenuity, having heard of my invention, came to my rooms and i explained it to him, and from that moment he has taken the deepest interest in the telegraph. finding that i was unable to command the means to bring my invention properly before the public, and believing that he could command those means through his father and brother, he expressed the belief to me, and i at once made such an arrangement with him as to procure the pecuniary means and the skill of these gentlemen. it is to their joint liberality, but especially to the attention, and skill, and faith in the final success of the enterprise maintained by alfred vail, that is due the success of my endeavors to bring the telegraph at that time creditably before the public." the idea of telegraphs seems to have been in the air in the year , for the house of representatives had passed a resolution on the d of february, , requesting the secretary of the treasury, hon. levi woodbury, to report to the house upon the propriety of establishing a system of telegraphs for the united states. the term "telegraph" in those days included semaphores and other visual appliances, and, in fact, anything by which intelligence could be transmitted to a distance. the secretary issued a circular to "collectors of customs, commanders of revenue cutters, and other persons," requesting information. morse received one of these circulars, and in reply sent a long account of his invention. but so hard to convince were the good people of that day, and so skeptical and even flippant were most of the members of congress that six long years were to elapse, years filled with struggles, discouragements, and heart-breaking disappointments, before the victory was won. morse had still to contend with occasional fits of illness, for he writes to his brother sidney from morristown on november , :-- "you will perhaps be surprised to learn that i came out here to be sick. i caught a severe cold the day i left new york from the sudden change of temperature, and was taken down the next morning with one of my bilious attacks, which, under other treatment and circumstances, might have resulted seriously. but, through a kind providence, i have been thrown among most attentive, and kind, and skilful friends, who have treated me more like one of their own children than like a stranger. mrs. vail has been a perfect mother to me; our good nancy shepard can alone compare with her. through her nursing and constant attention i am now able to leave my room and have been downstairs to-day, and hope to be out in a few days. this sickness will, of course, detain me a while longer than i intended, for i must finish the portraits before i return." this refers to portraits of various members of the vail family which he had undertaken to execute while he was in morristown. farther on in the letter he says:-- "the machinery for the telegraph goes forward daily; slowly but well and thorough. you will be surprised at the strength and quantity of machinery, greater, doubtless, than will eventually be necessary, yet it gives the main points, certainty and accuracy." it may be well to note here that morse evidently foresaw that the machinery constructed by alfred vail was too heavy and cumbersome; that more delicate workmanship would later be called for, and this proved to be the case. the iron works at morristown were only adapted to the manufacture of heavy machinery for ships, etc., and alfred vail had had experience in that class of work only, so that he naturally made the telegraphic instruments much heavier and more unwieldy than was necessary. while these answered the purpose for the time being, they were soon superseded by instruments of greater delicacy and infinitely smaller bulk made by more skilful hands. the future looked bright to the sanguine inventor in the early days of the year , as we learn from the following letter to his brother sidney, written on the th of january:-- "mr. alfred vail is just going in to new york and will return on monday morning. the machinery is at length completed and we have shown it to the morristown people with great _éclat_. it is the talk of all the people round, and the principal inhabitants of newark made a special excursion on friday to see it. the success is complete. we have tried the experiment of sending a pretty full letter, which i set up from the numbers given me, transmitting through two miles of wire and deciphered with but a single unimportant error. "i am staying out to perfect a modification of my portrule and hope to see you on tuesday, or, at the farthest, on wednesday, when i shall tell you all about it. the matter looks well now, and i desire to feel grateful to him who gives success, and be always prepared for any disappointment which he in infinite wisdom may have in store." we see from this letter, and from an account which appeared in the morristown "journal," that in these exhibitions the messages were sent by numbers with the aid of the cumbersome dictionary which morse had been at such pains to compile. very soon after this, however, as will appear from what follows, the dictionary was discarded forever, and the morse alphabet came into practical use. the following invitation was sent from the new york university on january , :-- "professor morse requests the honor of thomas s. cummings, esq., and family's company in the geological cabinet of the university, washington square, to witness the operation of the electro-magnetic telegraph at a private exhibition of it to a few friends, previous to its leaving the city for washington. "the apparatus will be prepared at precisely twelve o'clock on wednesday, th instant. the time being limited punctuality is specially requested." similar invitations were sent to other prominent persons and a very select company gathered at the appointed hour. that the exhibition was a success we learn from the following account in the "journal of commerce" of january , :-- "the telegraph.--we did not witness the operation of professor morse's electro-magnetic telegraph on wednesday last, but we learn that the numerous company of scientific persons who were present pronounced it entirely successful. intelligence was instantaneously transmitted through a circuit of ten miles, and legibly written on a cylinder at the extremity of the circuit. the great advantages which must result to the public from this invention will warrant an outlay on the part of the government sufficient to test its practicability as a general means of transmitting intelligence. "professor morse has recently improved on his mode of marking by which he can dispense altogether with the telegraphic dictionary, using letters instead of numbers, and he can transmit ten words per minute, which is more than double the number which can be transmitted by means of the dictionary." a charming and rather dramatic incident occurred at this exhibition which was never forgotten by those who witnessed it. general cummings had just been appointed to a military command, and one of his friends, with this fact evidently in mind, wrote a message on a piece of paper and, without showing it to any one else, handed it to morse. the assembled company was silent and only the monotonous clicking of the strange instrument was heard as the message was ticked off in the dots and dashes, and then from the other end of the ten miles of wire was read out this sentence pregnant with meaning:-- "attention, the universe, by kingdoms right wheel." the name of the man who indited that message seems not to have been preserved, but, whoever he was, he must have been gifted with prophetic vision, and he must have realized that he was assisting at an occasion which was destined to mark the beginning of a new era in civilization. the attention of the universe was, indeed, before long attracted to this child of morse's brain, and kingdom after kingdom wheeled into line, vying with each other in admiration and acceptance. the message was recorded fourfold by means of a newly invented fountain pen, and was given to general cummings and preserved by him. it is here reproduced. [illustration: "attention the unniverse! by kingdoms right wheel!" facsimile of the first morse alphabet message, now in the national museum, washington] it will be noticed that the signs for the letters are those, not of the first form of the alphabet as embodied in the drawing attached to the caveat, but of the finally adopted code. this has led some historians, notably mr. franklin leonard pope, to infer that some mistake has been made in giving out this as a facsimile of this early message; that the letters should have been those of the earlier alphabet. i think, however, that this is but an added proof that morse devised the first form of the code long before he met vail, and that the changes to the final form, a description of which i have given, were made by morse in , or early in , as soon as he became convinced of the superiority of the alphabetic mode, in plenty of time to have been used in this exhibition. the month of january, , was a busy one at morristown, for morse and vail were bending all their energies toward the perfecting and completion of the instruments, so that a demonstration of the telegraph could be given in washington at as early a date as possible. morse refers feelingly to the trials and anxieties of an inventor in a letter to a friend, dated january , :-- "i have just returned from nearly six weeks' absence at morristown, new jersey, where i have been engaged in the superintendence of the making of my telegraph for washington. "be thankful, c----, that you are not an inventor. invention may seem an easy way to _fame_, or, what is the same thing to many, _notoriety_, different as are in reality the two objects. but it is far otherwise. i, indeed, desire the first, for true fame implies well-deserving, but i have no wish for the latter, which yet seems inseparable from it. "the condition of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable. i know of but one condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries. in the outset, if he has really made a _discovery_, which very word implies that it was before unknown to the world, he encounters the incredulity, the opposition, and even the sneers of many, who look upon him with a kind of pity, as a little beside himself if not quite mad. and, while maturing his invention, he has the comfort of reflection, in all the various discouragements he meets with from petty failures, that, should he by any means fail in the grand result, he subjects himself rather to the ridicule than the sympathy of his acquaintances, who will not be slow in attributing his failure to a want of that common sense in which, by implication, they so much abound, and which preserves them from the consequences of any such delusions. "but you will, perhaps, think that there is an offset in the honors and emoluments that await the successful inventor, one who has really demonstrated that he has made an important discovery. this is not so. trials of another kind are ready for him after the appropriate difficulties of his task are over. many stand ready to snatch the prize, or at least to claim a share, so soon as the success of an invention seems certain, and honor and profit alone remain to be obtained. "this long prelude, c----, brings me at the same time to the point of my argument and to my excuse for my long silence. my argument goes to prove that, unless there is a benevolent consideration in our discoveries, one which enables us to rejoice that others are benefited even though we should suffer loss, our happiness from any honor awarded to a successful invention is exposed to constant danger from the designs of the unprincipled. my excuse is that, ever since the receipt of your most welcome letter, i have been engaged in preparing to repel a threatened invasion of my rights to the invention of the telegraph by a fellow-passenger from france, one from whom i least expected any such insidious design. the attempt startled me and put me on my guard, and set me to the preparation for any attack. i have been compelled for some weeks to use my pen only for this purpose, and have written much in the hope of preventing the public exposure of my antagonist; but i fear my labor will be vain on this point, from what i hear and the tone in which he writes. i have no fear for myself, being now amply prepared with evidence to repel any attempt which may be made to sustain any claim he may prefer to a share with me in the invention of the telegraph." i have already shown that this claim of dr. jackson's was proved to be but the hallucination of a disordered brain, and it will not be necessary to go into the details of the controversy. these were anxious and nerve-racking days for both morse and vail, and it is small wonder that there should have been some slight friction. vail in his private correspondence makes some mention of this. for instance, in a letter to his brother george, of january , , he says:-- "we received the machine on thursday morning, and in an hour we made the first trial, which did not succeed, nor did it with perfect success until saturday--all which time professor m. was rather _unwell_. to-morrow we shall make our first exhibition, and continue it until wednesday, when we must again box up. professor m. has received a letter from mr. patterson inviting us to exhibit at philadelphia, and has answered it, but has said nothing to me about his intentions. he is altogether inclined to operate in his own name, so much so that he has had printed five hundred blank invitations in his own name at your expense." on the other hand, this same george vail, writing to morse on january , , asks him to "bear with a., which i have no doubt you will. he is easily vexed. trusting to your universal coolness, however, there is nothing to fear. keep him from running ahead too fast." again writing to his brother george from washington, on february , , alfred says: "in regard to professor m. calling me his '_assistant_,' this is also settled, and he has said as much as to apologize for using the term." why vail should have objected to being called morse's assistant, i cannot quite understand, for he was so designated in the contract later made with the government; but morse was evidently willing to humor him in this. i have thought it best to refer to these little incidents partly in the interest of absolute candor, partly to emphasize the nervous tension under which both were working at that time. that there was no lasting resentment in the mind of vail is amply proved by the following extract from a long letter written by him on march , :-- "the great expectations i had on my return home of going into partnership with george, founded, or semi-founded, on the promises made by my father, have burst. i am again on vague promises for three months, and they resting upon the success of the printing machine. "i feel, professor morse, that, if i am ever worth anything, it will be wholly attributable to your kindness. i now should have no _earthly_ prospect of happiness and domestic bliss had it not been for what you have done. for which i shall ever remember [you] with the liveliest emotions of gratitude, whether it is eventually successful or not." aside from the slight friction to which i have referred, and which was most excusable under the circumstances, the joint work on the telegraph proceeded harmoniously. the invitation from mr. patterson, to exhibit the instrument before the committee of science and arts of the franklin institute of philadelphia, was accepted. the exhibition took place on february , and was a pronounced success, and the committee, in expressing their gratification, voiced the hope that the government would provide the funds for an experiment on an adequate scale. from philadelphia morse proceeded to washington accompanied by vail, confidently believing that it would only be necessary to demonstrate the practicability of his invention to the country's legislators assembled in congress, in order to obtain a generous appropriation to enable him properly to test it. but he had not taken into account that trait of human nature which i shall dignify by calling it "conservatism," in order not to give it a harder name. the room of the committee on commerce was placed at his disposal, and there he hopefully strung his ten miles of wire and connected them with his instruments. outwardly calm but inwardly nervous and excited, as he realized that he was facing a supreme moment in his career, he patiently explained to all who came, congressmen, men of science, representatives of foreign governments, and hard-headed men of business, the workings of the instrument and proved its feasibility. the majority saw and wondered, but went away unconvinced. on february , president martin van buren and his entire cabinet, at their own special request, visited the room and saw the telegraph in operation. but no action was taken by congress; the time was not yet ripe for the general acceptance of such a revolutionary departure from the slow-going methods of that early period. while individuals here and there grasped the full significance of what the mysterious ticking of that curious instrument foretold, they were vastly in the minority. the world, through its representatives in the capital city of the united states, remained incredulous. among those who at once recognized the possibilities of the invention was francis o.j. smith, member of congress from portland, maine, and chairman of the committee on commerce. he was a lawyer of much shrewdness and a man of great energy, and he very soon offered to become pecuniarily interested in the invention. morse was, unfortunately, not a keen judge of men. scrupulously honest and honorable himself, he had an almost childlike faith in the integrity of others, and all through his life he fell an easy victim to the schemes of self-seekers. in this case a man of more acute intuition would have hesitated, and would have made some enquiries before allying himself with one whose ideas of honor proved eventually to be so at variance with his own. smith did so much in later years to injure morse, and to besmirch his fame and good name, that i think it only just to give the following estimate of his character, made by the late franklin leonard pope in an article contributed to the "electrical world" in :-- "a sense of justice compels me to say that the uncorroborated statements of f.o.j. smith, in any matter affecting the credit or honor due to professor morse, should be allowed but little weight.... for no better reason than that morse in - courteously but firmly refused to be a party to a questionable scheme devised by smith for the irregular diversion into his own pocket of a portion of the governmental appropriation of $ , for the construction of the experimental line, he ever after cherished toward the inventor the bitterest animosity; a feeling which he took no pains to conceal. many of his letters to him at that time, and for many years afterward, were couched in studiously insulting language, which must have been in the highest degree irritating to a sensitive artistic temperament like that of morse. "it probably by no means tended to mollify the disposition of such a man as smith to find that morse, in reply to these covert sneers and open insinuations, never once lost his self-control, nor permitted himself to depart from the dignified tone of rejoinder which becomes a gentleman in his dealings with one who, in his inmost nature, was essentially a blackguard." however, it is an old saying that we must "give the devil his due," and the cloven foot did not appear at first. on the other hand, a man of business acumen and legal knowledge was greatly needed at this stage of the enterprise, and smith possessed them both. morse was so grateful to find any one with faith enough to be willing to invest money in the invention; and to devote his time and energy to its furtherance, that he at once accepted smith's offer, and he was made a partner and given a one-fourth interest, morse retaining nine sixteenths, vail two sixteenths, and professor gale, also admitted as a partner, being allotted one sixteenth. it was characteristic of morse that he insisted, before signing the contract, that smith should obtain leave of absence from congress for the remainder of the term, and should not stand for reelection. it was agreed that smith should accompany morse to europe as soon as possible and endeavor to secure patents in foreign countries, and, if successful, the profits were to be divided differently, morse receiving eight sixteenths, smith five, vail two, and gale one. in spite of the incredulity of the many, morse could not help feeling encouraged, and in a long letter to smith, written on february , , proposing an experiment of one hundred miles, he thus forecasts the future and proposes an intelligent plan of government control:-- "if no insurmountable obstacles present themselves in a distance of one hundred miles, none may be expected in one thousand or in ten thousand miles; and then will be presented for the consideration of the government the propriety of completely organizing this _new telegraphic system as a part of the government_, attaching it to some department already existing, or creating a new one which may be called for by the accumulating duties of the present departments. "it is obvious, at the slightest glance, that this mode of instantaneous communication must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or for evil, as it shall be properly or improperly directed. in the hands of a company of speculators, who should monopolize it for themselves, it might be the means of enriching the corporation at the expense of the bankruptcy of thousands; and even in the hands of government alone it might become the means of working vast mischief to the republic. "in considering these prospective evils, i would respectfully suggest a remedy which offers itself to my mind. let the sole right of using the telegraph belong, in the first place, to the government, who should grant, for a specified sum or bonus, to any individual or company of individuals who may apply for it, and under such restrictions and regulations as the government may think proper, the right to lay down a communication between any two points for the purpose of transmitting intelligence, and thus would be promoted a general competition. the government would have a telegraph of its own, and have its modes of communicating with its own officers and agents, independent of private permission or interference with and interruption to the ordinary transmissions on the private telegraphs. thus there would be a system of checks and preventives of abuse operating to restrain the action of this otherwise dangerous power within those bounds which will permit only the good and neutralize the evil. should the government thus take the telegraph solely under its own control, the revenue derived from the bonuses alone, it must be plain, will be of vast amount. "from the enterprising character of our countrymen, shown in the manner in which they carry forward any new project which promises private or public advantage, it is not visionary to suppose that it would not be long ere the whole surface of this country would be channelled for those _nerves_ which are to diffuse, with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout the land, making, in fact, one neighborhood of the whole country. "if the government is disposed to test this mode of telegraphic communication by enabling me to give it a fair trial for one hundred miles, i will engage to enter into no arrangement to dispose of my rights, as the inventor and patentee for the united states, to any individual or company of individuals, previous to offering it to the government for such a just and reasonable compensation as shall be mutually agreed upon." we have seen that morse was said to be a hundred years ahead of his time as an artist. from the sentences above quoted it would appear that he was far in advance of his contemporaries in some questions of national policy, for the plan outlined by him for the proper governmental control of a great public utility, like the telegraph, it seems to me, should appeal to those who, at the present time, are agitating for that very thing. had the legislators and the people of been as wise and clear-headed as the poor artist-inventor, a great leap forward in enlightened statecraft would have been undertaken at a cost inconceivably less than would now be the case. competent authorities estimate that to purchase the present telegraph lines in this country at their market valuation would cost the government in the neighborhood of $ , , ; to parallel them would cost some $ , , . the enormous difference in these two sums represents what was foretold by morse would happen if the telegraph should become a monopoly in the hands of speculators. the history of the telegraph monopoly is too well known to be more than alluded to here, but it is only fair to morse to state that he had sold all his telegraph stock, and had retired from active participation in the management of the different companies, long before the system of stock-watering began which has been carried on to the present day. and for what sum could the government have kept this great invention under its own control? it is on record that morse offered, in , after the experimental line between washington and baltimore had demonstrated that the telegraph was a success, to sell all the rights in his invention to the government for $ , , and would have considered himself amply remunerated. but the legislators and the people of , and even those of , were not wise and far-sighted; they failed utterly to realize what a magnificent opportunity had been offered to them for a mere song; and this in spite of the fact that the few who did glimpse the great future of the telegraph painted it in glowing terms. it is true that the house of representatives had passed the resolution referred to earlier in this chapter, but that is as far as they went for several years. on the th of april, , mr. f.o.j. smith made a long report on the petition of morse asking for an appropriation sufficient to enable him to test his invention adequately. in the course of this report mr. smith indulged in the following eulogistic words:-- "it is obvious, however, that the influence of this invention over the political, commercial, and social relations of the people of this widely extended country, looking to nothing beyond, will, in the event of success, of itself amount to a revolution unsurpassed in moral grandeur by any discovery that has been made in the arts and sciences, from the most distant period to which authentic history extends to the present day. with the means of almost instantaneous communication of intelligence between the most distant points of the country, and simultaneously between any given number of intermediate points which this invention contemplates, space will be, to all practical purposes of information, completely annihilated between the states of the union, as also between the individual citizens thereof. the citizen will be invested with, and reduce to daily and familiar use, an approach to the high attribute op ubiquity in a degree that the human mind, until recently, has hardly dared to contemplate seriously as belonging to human agency, from an instinctive feeling of religious reverence and reserve on a power of such awful grandeur." in the face of these enthusiastic, if somewhat stilted, periods the majority of his colleagues remained cold, and no appropriation was voted. morse, however, was prepared to meet with discouragements, for he wrote to vail on march :-- "everything looks encouraging, but i need not say to you that in this world a continued course of prosperity is not a rational expectation. we shall, doubtless, find troubles and difficulties in store for us, and it is the part of true wisdom to be prepared for whatever may await us. if our hearts are right we shall not be taken by surprise. i see nothing now but an unclouded prospect, for which let us pay to him who shows it to us the homage of grateful and obedient hearts, with most earnest prayers for grace to use prosperity aright." this was written while there was still hope that congress might take some action at that session, and morse was optimistic. on march , he thus reports progress to vail:-- "i write you a hasty line to say, in the first place, that i have overcome all difficulties in regard to a portrule, and have invented one which will be perfect. it is very simple, and will not take much time or expense to make it. mr. s. has incorporated it into the specification for the patent. please, therefore, not to proceed with the type or portrule as now constructed: i will see you on my return and explain it in season for you to get one ready for us. "i find it a most arduous and tedious process to adjust the specification. i have been engaged steadily for three days with mr. s., and have not yet got half through, but there is one consolation, when done it will be well done. the drawings, i find on enquiry, would cost you from forty to fifty dollars if procured from the draughtsman about the patent office. i have, therefore, determined to do them myself and save you that sum." the portrule, referred to above, was a device for sending automatically messages which were recorded permanently on the tape at the other end of the line. it worked well enough, but it was soon superseded by the key manipulated by hand, as this was much simpler and the dots and dashes could be sent more rapidly. it is curious to note, however, that down to the present day inventors have been busy in an effort to devise some mechanism by which messages could be sent automatically, and consequently more rapidly than by hand, which was morse's original idea, but, to the best of my knowledge, no satisfactory solution of the problem has yet been found. morse was now preparing to go to europe with smith to endeavor to secure patents abroad, and, while he had put in his application for a patent in this country, he requested that the issuing of it should be held back until his return, so that a publication on this side should not injure his chances abroad. all the partners were working under high pressure along their several lines to get everything in readiness for a successful exhibition of the telegraph in europe. vail sent a long letter to morse on april , detailing some of the difficulties which he was encountering, and morse answered on the th:-- "i write in greatest haste, just to say that the boxes have safely arrived, and we shall proceed immediately to examine into the difficulties which have troubled you, but about which we apprehend no serious issue.... "if you can possibly get the circular portrule completed before we go it will be a great convenience, not to say an indispensable matter, for i have just learned so much of wheatstone's telegraph as to be pretty well persuaded that my superiority over him will be made evident more by the rapidity with which i can make the portrule work than in almost any other particular." at last every detail had been attended to, and in a postscript to a letter of april he says: "we sail on the th of may for liverpool in the ship europe, so i think you will have time to complete circular portrule. try, won't you?" chapter xxv june, --january , arrival in england.--application for letters patent.--cooke and wheatstone's telegraph.--patent refused.--departure for paris.--patent secured in france.--earl of elgin.--earl of lincoln.--baron de meyendorff.--russian contract.--return to london.--exhibition at the earl of lincoln's.--letter from secretary of lord campbell, attorney-general. --coronation of queen victoria.--letters to daughter.--birth of the count of paris.--exhibition before the institute of france.--arago; baron humboldt.--negotiations with the government and saint-germain railway.-- reminiscences of dr. kirk.--letter of the honorable h.l. ellsworth.-- letter to f.o.j. smith.--dilatoriness of the french. it seems almost incredible to us, who have come to look upon marvel after marvel of science and invention as a matter of course, that it should have taken so many years to convince the world that the telegraph was a possibility and not an iridescent dream. while men of science and a few far-sighted laymen saw that the time was ripe for this much-needed advance in the means of conveying intelligence, governments and capitalists had held shyly aloof, and, even now, weighed carefully the advantages of different systems before deciding which, if any, was the best. for there were at this time several different systems in the field, and morse soon found that he would have to compete with the trained scientists of the old world, backed, at last, by their respective governments, in his effort to prove that his invention was the simplest and the best of them all. that he should have persisted in spite of discouragement after discouragement, struggling to overcome obstacles which to the faint-hearted would have seemed insuperable, constitutes one of his greatest claims to undying fame. he left on record an account of his experiences in europe on this voyage, memorable in more ways than one, and extracts from this, and from letters written to his daughter and brothers, will best tell the story:-- "on may , , i left the united states and arrived in london in june, for the purpose of obtaining letters patent for my electro-magnetic telegraph system. i learned before i left the united states that professor wheatstone and mr. cooke, of london, had obtained letters patent in england for a '_magnetic-needle telegraph_,' based, as the name implies, on the _deflection of the magnetic needle_. their telegraph, at that time, required _six conductors_ between the two points of intercommunication _for a single instrument_ at each of the two termini. their mode of indicating signs for communicating intelligence was by deflecting _five magnetic needles_ in various directions, in such a way as to point to the required letters upon a diamond-shaped dial-plate. it was necessary that the signal should be _observed at the instant_, or it was lost and vanished forever. "i applied for letters patent for my system of communicating intelligence at a distance by electricity, differing in all respects from messrs. wheatstone and cooke's system, invented five years before theirs, and having nothing in common in the whole system but the use of _electricity_ on _metallic conductors_, for which use no one could obtain an exclusive privilege, since this much had been used for nearly one hundred years. my system is peculiar in the employment of _electro-magnetism_, or the _motive_ power of electricity, _to imprint permanent signs at a distance_. "i made no use of the deflections of the magnetic needle as _signs_. i required but _one conductor_ between the two termini, or any number of intermediate points of intercommunication. i used _paper moved by clockwork_ upon which i caused a _lever_ moved by _magnetism_ to _imprint the letters_ and _words_ of any required dispatch, having also invented and adapted to telegraph writing a _new and peculiar alphabetic character_ for that purpose, a _conventional alphabet_, easily acquired and easily made and used by the operator. it is obvious at once, from a simple statement of these facts, that the system of messrs. wheatstone and cooke and my system were wholly unlike each other. as i have just observed, there was _nothing in common in the two systems_ but the use of electricity upon metallic conductors, for which no one could obtain an exclusive privilege. "the various steps required by the english law were taken by me to procure a patent for my mode, and the fees were paid at the clerk's office, june , and at the home department, june , ; also, june , caveats were entered at the attorney and solicitor-general's, and i had reached that part of the process which required the sanction of the attorney-general. at this point i met the opposition of messrs. wheatstone and cooke, and also of mr. davy, and a hearing was ordered before the attorney-general, sir john campbell, on july , . i attended at the attorney-general's residence on the morning of that day, carrying with me my telegraphic apparatus for the purpose of explaining to him the total dissimilarity between my system and those of my opponents. but, contrary to my expectation, the similarity or dissimilarity of my mode from that of my opponents was not considered by the attorney-general. he neither examined my instrument, which i had brought for that purpose, nor did he ask any questions bearing upon its resemblance to my opponents' system. i was met by the single declaration that my '_invention had been published_,' and in proof a copy of the london 'mechanics' magazine,' no. , for february , , was produced, and i was told that 'in consequence of said publication i could not proceed.' "at this summary decision i was certainly surprised, being conscious that there had been no such publication of my method as the law required to invalidate a patent; and, even if there had been, i ventured to hint to the attorney-general that, if i was rightly informed in regard to the british law, it was the province of a court and jury, and not of the attorney-general, to try, and to decide that point." the publication to which the attorney-general referred had merely stated results, with no description whatever of the means by which these results were to be obtained and it was manifestly unfair to morse on the part of this official to have refused his sanction; but he remained obdurate. morse then wrote him a long letter, after consultation with mr. smith, setting forth all these points and begging for another interview. "in consequence of my request in this letter i was allowed a second hearing. i attended accordingly, but, to my chagrin, the attorney-general remarked that he had not had time to examine the letter. he carelessly took it up and turned over the leaves without reading it, and then asked me if i had not taken measures for a patent in my own country. and, upon my reply in the affirmative, he remarked that: 'america was a large country and i ought to be satisfied with a patent there.' i replied that, with all due deference, i did not consider that as a point submitted for the attorney-general's decision; that the question submitted was whether there was any legal obstacle in the way of my obtaining letters patent for my telegraph in england. he observed that he considered my invention as having been _published_, and that he must _therefore_ forbid me to proceed. "thus forbidden to proceed by an authority from which there was no appeal, as i afterward learned, but to parliament, and this at great cost of time and money, i immediately left england for france, where i found no difficulty in securing a patent. my invention there not only attracted the regards of the distinguished savants of paris, but, in a marked degree, the admiration of many of the english nobility and gentry at that time in the french capital. to several of these, while explaining the operation of my telegraphic system, i related the history of my treatment by the english attorney-general. the celebrated earl of elgin took a deep interest in the matter and was intent on my obtaining a special act of parliament to secure to me my just rights as the inventor of the electro-magnetic telegraph. he repeatedly visited me, bringing with him many of his distinguished friends, and on one occasion the noble earl of lincoln, since one of her majesty's privy council. the honorable henry drummond also interested himself for me, and through his kindness and lord elgin's i received letters of introduction to lord brougham and to the marquis of northampton, the president of the royal society, and several other distinguished persons in england. the earl of lincoln showed me special kindness. in taking leave of me in paris he gave me his card, and, requesting me to bring my telegraphic instruments with me to london, pressed me to give him the earliest notice of my arrival in london. "i must here say that for weeks in paris i had been engaged in negotiation with the russian counselor of state, the baron alexander de meyendorff, arranging measures for putting the telegraph in operation in russia. the terms of a contract had been mutually agreed upon, and all was concluded but the signature of the emperor to legalize it. in order to take advantage of the ensuing summer season for my operations in russia, i determined to proceed immediately to the united states to make some necessary preparations for the enterprise, without waiting for the formal completion of the contract papers, being led to believe that the signature of the emperor was sure, a matter of mere form. "under these circumstances i left paris on the th of march, , and arrived in london on the th of the same month. the next day i sent my card to the earl of lincoln and my letter and card to the marquis of northampton, and in two or three days received a visit from both. by earl lincoln i was at once invited to send my telegraph to his house in park lane, and on the th of march i exhibited its operation to members of both houses of parliament, of the royal society, and the lords of the admiralty, invited to meet me by the earl of lincoln. from the circumstances mentioned my time in london was necessarily short, my passage having been secured in the great western to sail on the d of march. although solicited to remain a while in london, both by the earl of lincoln and the honorable henry drummond, with a view to obtaining a special act of parliament for a patent, i was compelled by the circumstances of the case to defer till some more favorable opportunity, on my expected return to england, any attempt of the kind. the emperor of russia, however, refused to ratify the contract made with me by the counselor of state, and my design of returning to europe was frustrated, and i have not to this hour [april , ] had the means to prosecute this enterprise to a result in england. all my exertions were needed to establish my telegraphic system in my own country. "time has shown conclusively the essential difference of my telegraphic system from those of my opponents; time has also shown that my system _was not published_ in england, as alleged by the attorney-general, for, to this day, no work in england has published anything that does not show that, as yet, it is perfectly misunderstood.... "the refusal to grant me a patent was, at that period, very disastrous. it was especially discouraging to have made a long voyage across the atlantic in vain, incurring great expenditure and loss of time, which in their consequences also produced years of delay in the prosecution of my enterprise in the united states." the long statement, from which i have taken the above extracts, was written, as i have noted, on april , , but the following interesting addition was made to it on december , :-- "at the time of preparing this statement i lacked one item of evidence, which it was desirable to have aside from my own assertion, viz., evidence that the refusal of the attorney-general was on the ground '_that a publication of the invention had been made_.' i deemed it advisable rather to suffer from the delay and endure the taunts, which my unscrupulous opponents have not been slow to lavish upon me in consequence, if i could but obtain this evidence in proper shape. i accordingly wrote to my brother, then in london, to procure, if possible, from lord campbell or his secretary an acknowledgment of the ground on which he refused my application for a patent in , since no public report or record in such cases is made. "my brother, in connection with mr. carpmael, one of the most distinguished patent agents in england, addressed a note to mr. h. cooper, the attorney-general's secretary at the time, and the only official person besides lord campbell connected with the matter. the following is mr. cooper's reply:-- "'wilmington square, may d, . "'gentlemen,--in answer to yours of the th inst., i beg to state that i have a distinct recollection of professor morse's application for a patent, strengthened by the fact of his not having paid the fees for the hearing, etc., and these being now owing. i understood at the time that the patent was stopped on the ground that a publication of the invention had been made, but i cannot procure lord campbell's certificate of that fact. "'i am, gentlemen "'your obedient servant "'h. cooper.' "i thus have obtained the evidence i desired in the most authentic form, but accompanied with as gross an insult as could well be conceived. on the receipt of this letter i immediately wrote to f.o.j. smith, esq., at portland, who accompanied me to england, and at whose sole expense, according to agreement, all proceedings in taking out patents in europe were to be borne, to know if this charge of the attorney-general's secretary could possibly be true; not knowing but through some inadvertence on his (mr. smith's) part, this bill might have been overlooked. "mr. smith writes me in answer, sending me a copy _verbatim_ of the following receipt, which he holds and which speaks for itself:-- "'mr. morse to the attorney-general, dr. £ s. d. hearing on a patent . . . . giving notice on the same . ------ settled the th of august, . "'(signed) h. cooper.' "this receipt is signed, as will be perceived, by the same individual, h. cooper, who, nearly ten years after his acknowledgment of the money, has the impudence to charge me with leaving my fees unpaid. i now leave the public to make their own comments both on the character of the whole transaction in england, and on the character and motives of those in this country who have espoused lord campbell's course, making it an occasion to charge me with having _invented nothing_. "samuel f.b. morse." i have, in these extracts from an account of his european experiences, written by morse at a later date, given but a brief summary of certain events; it will now be necessary to record more in detail some of the happenings on that memorable trip. attention has been called before to the fact that it was morse's good fortune to have been an eye-witness of many events of historic interest. still another was now to be added to the list, for, while he was in london striving unsuccessfully to secure a patent for his invention, he was privileged to witness the coronation of queen victoria; our minister, the honorable andrew stevenson, having procured for him a ticket of admission to westminster abbey. writing to his daughter susan on june , , before he had met with his rebuff from the attorney-general, he comments briefly on the festivities incident to the occasion:-- "london is filling fast with crowds of all characters, from ambassadors and princes to pickpockets and beggars, all brought together by the coronation of the queen, which takes place in a few days (the th of june). everything in london now is colored by the coming pageant. in the shop windows are the robes of the nobility, the crimson and ermine dresses, coronets, etc. preparations for illuminations are making all over the city. "i have scarcely entered upon the business of the telegraph, but have examined (tell dr. gale) the specification of wheatstone at the patent office, and except the alarum part, he has nothing which interferes with mine. his invention is ingenious and beautiful, but very complicated, and he must use twelve wires where i use but four. i have also seen a telegraph exhibiting at exeter hall invented by davy, something like wheatstone's but still complicated. i find mine is yet the simplest and hope to accomplish something, but always keep myself prepared for disappointment." at a later date he recounted the following pretty incident, showing the kindly character of the young queen, which may not be generally known:-- "i was in london in , and was present with my excellent friend, the late charles r. leslie, r.a., at the imposing ceremonies of the coronation of the queen in westminster abbey. he then related to me the following incident which, i think, may truly be said to have been the first act of her majesty's reign. "when her predecessor, william iv, died, a messenger was immediately dispatched by his queen (then become by his death queen dowager) to victoria, apprising her of the event. she immediately called for paper and indited a letter of condolence to the widow. folding it, she directed it 'to the queen of england.' her maid of honor in attendance, noting the inscription, said: 'your majesty, you are queen of england.' 'yes,' she replied, 'but the widowed queen is not to be reminded of that fact first by me.'" writing to his daughter from havre, on july , , while on his way to paris, after telling her of the unjust decision of the attorney-general, he adds:-- "professor wheatstone and mr. davy were my opponents. they have each very ingenious inventions of their own, particularly the former, who is a man of genius and one with whom i was personally much pleased. he has invented his, i believe, without knowing that i was engaged in an invention to produce a similar result; for, although he dates back into , yet, as no publication of our thoughts was made by either, we are evidently independent of each other. my time has not been lost, however, for i have ascertained with certainty that the _telegraph of a single circuit_ and a _recording apparatus_ is mine.... "i found also that both mr. wheatstone and mr. davy were endeavoring to simplify theirs by adding a recording apparatus and reducing theirs to a single circuit. the latter showed to the attorney-general a drawing, which i obtained sight of, of a method by which he proposed a bungling imitation of my first characters, those that were printed in our journals, and one, however plausible on paper, and sufficiently so to deceive the attorney-general, was perfectly impracticable. partiality, from national or other motives, aside from the justice of the case, i am persuaded, influenced the decision against me. "we are now on our way to paris to try what we can do with the french government. i confess i am not sanguine as to any favorable pecuniary result in europe, but we shall try, and, at any rate, we have seen enough to know that the matter is viewed with great interest here, and the plan of such telegraphs will be adopted, and, of course, the united states is secured to us, and i do hope something from that. "be economical, my dear child, and keep your wants within bounds, for i am preparing myself for an unsuccessful result here, yet every proper effort will be made. i am in excellent health and spirits and leave to-morrow morning for paris." "_paris, august , ._ i have obtained a patent here and it is exciting some attention. the prospects of future benefit from the invention are good, but i shall not probably realize much, or even anything, immediately. "i saw by the papers, before i got your letter, that congress had not passed the appropriation bill for the telegraph. on some accounts i regret it, but it is only delayed, and it will probably be passed early in the winter." little did he think, in his cheerful optimism, that nearly five long years must elapse before congress should awaken to its great opportunity. "you will be glad to learn, my dear daughter, that your father's health was never so good, and probably before this reaches you he will be on the ocean on his return. i think of leaving paris in a very few days. i am only waiting to show the telegraph to the king, from whom i expect a message hourly. the birth of a prince occupies the whole attention just how of the royal family and the court. he was born on the th inst., the son of the duke and duchess of orleans. my rooms are as delightfully situated, perhaps, as any in paris; they are close to the palace of the tuileries and overlook the gardens, and are within half a stone's throw of the rooms of the duke and duchess of orleans. from my balcony i look directly into their rooms. i saw the company that was there assembled on the birthday of the little prince, and saw him in his nurse's arms at the window the next day after his birth. he looked very much like any other baby, and not half so handsome as little hugh peters. "i received from the minister of war, general bernard, who has been very polite to me, a ticket to be present at the _te deum_ performed yesterday in the great cathedral of paris, notre dame, on account of the birth of the prince. the king and all the royal family and the court, with all the officers of state, were present. the cathedral was crowded with all the fashion of paris. along the ways and around the church were soldiers without number, almost; a proof that some danger was apprehended to the king, and yet he ought to be popular for he is the best ruler they have had for years. the ceremonies were imposing, appealing to the senses and the imagination, and not at all to the reason or the heart." the king was louis philippe; the little prince, his grandson, was the count of paris. "_paris, september , ._ since my last matters have assumed a totally different aspect. at the request of monsieur arago, the most distinguished astronomer of the day, i submitted the telegraph to the institute at one of their meetings, at which some of the most celebrated philosophers of france and of germany and of other countries were present. its reception was in the highest degree flattering, and the interest which they manifested, by the questions they asked and the exclamations they used, showed to me then that the invention had obtained their favorable regard. the papers of paris immediately announced the telegraph in the most favorable terms, and it has literally been the topic of the day ever since. the baron humboldt, the celebrated traveller, a member of the institute and who saw its operation before that body, told mr. wheaton, our minister to prussia, that my telegraph was the best of all the plans that had been devised. "i received a call from the administrator-in-chief of all the telegraphs of france, monsieur alphonse foy. i explained it to him; he was highly delighted with it, and told me that the government was about to try an experiment with the view of testing the practicability of the electric telegraph, and that he had been requested to see mine and report upon it; that he should report that '_mine was the best that had been submitted to him_'; and he added that i had better forthwith get an introduction to the minister of the interior, mons. the count montalivet. i procured a letter from our minister, and am now waiting the decision of the government. "everything looks promising thus far, as much so as i could expect, but it involves the possibility, not to say the probability, of my remaining in paris during the winter. "if i should be delayed till december it would be prudent to remain until april. if it be possible, without detriment to my affairs, to make such arrangements that i may return this autumn, i shall certainly do it; but, if i should not, you must console yourselves that it is in consequence of meeting with success that i am detained, and that i shall be more likely to return with advantage to you all on account of the delay. "i ought to say that the directors of the saint-germain railroad have seen my telegraph, and that there is some talk (as yet vague) of establishing a line of my telegraph upon that road. i mention these, my dear child, to show you that i cannot at this moment leave paris without detriment to my principal object." "_paris, october , ._ you are at an age when a parent's care, and particularly a mother's care, is most needed. you cannot know the depth of the wound that was inflicted when i was deprived of your dear mother, nor in how many ways that wound was kept open. yet i know it is all well; i look to god to take care of you; it is his will that you should be almost truly an orphan, for, with all my efforts to have a home for you and to be near you, i have met hitherto only with disappointment. but there are now indications of a change, and, while i prepare for disappointment and wish you to prepare for disappointment, we ought to acknowledge the kind hand of our heavenly father in so far prospering me as to put me in the honorable light before the world which is now my lot. with the eminence is connected the prospect of pecuniary prosperity, yet this is not consummated, but only in prospect; it may be a long time before anything is realized. study, therefore, prudence and economy in all things; make your wants as few as possible, for the habit thus acquired will be of advantage to you whether you have much or little." thus did hope alternate with despondency as the days and weeks wore away and nothing tangible was accomplished. all who saw the working of the telegraph were loud in their expressions of wonder and admiration, but, for reasons which shall presently be explained, nothing else was gained by the inventor at that time. an old friend of morse's, the reverend dr. kirk, was then living in paris, and the two friends not only roomed together but dr. kirk, speaking french fluently, which morse did not, acted as interpreter in the many exhibitions given. writing of this in later years, dr. kirk says:-- "i remember rallying my friend frequently about the experience of great inventors, who are generally permitted to starve while living and are canonized after death. "when the model telegraph had been set up in our rooms, mr. morse desired to exhibit it to the savants of paris, but, as he had less of the talking propensity than myself, i was made the grand exhibitor. "our levee-day was tuesday, and for weeks we received the visits of distinguished citizens and strangers, to whom i explained the principles and operation of the telegraph. the visitors would agree upon a word among themselves which i was not to hear; then the professor would receive it at the writing end of the wires, while it devolved upon me to interpret the characters which recorded it at the other end. as i explained the hieroglyphics the announcement of the word, which they saw could have come to me only through the wire, would often create a deep sensation of delighted wonder; and much do i now regret that i did not take notes of these interviews, for it would be an interesting record of distinguished names and of valuable remarks." on the th of september, , morse enjoyed the greatest triumph of all, for it was on that day that, by invitation of m. arago, the exhibition of his invention before the institute of france, casually mentioned in one of his letters to his daughter, took place. writing of the occasion to alfred vail, he says:-- "i exhibited the telegraph to the institute and the sensation produced was as striking as at washington. it was evident that hitherto the assembled science of europe had considered the plan of an electric telegraph as ingenious but visionary, and, like aëronautic navigation, practicable in little more than theory and destined to be useless. "i cannot describe to you the scene at the institute when your box with the registering-machine, just as it left speedwell, was placed upon the table and surrounded by the most distinguished men of all europe, celebrated in the various arts and sciences--arago, baron humboldt, gay-lussac, and a host of others whose names are stars that shine in both hemispheres. arago described it to them, and i showed its action. a buzz of admiration and approbation filled the whole hall and the exclamations '_extraordinaire!' 'très bien!' 'très admirable!_' i heard on all sides. the sentiment was universal." another american at that time in paris, the honorable h.l. ellsworth, also wrote home about the impression which was produced by the exhibition of this new wonder:-- "i am sure you will be glad to learn that our american friend, professor morse, is producing a very great sensation among the learned men of this kingdom by his ingenious and wonderful magnetic telegraph. he submitted it to the examination of the academy of sciences of the royal institute of france, at their sitting on monday last, and the deepest interest was excited among the members of that learned body on the subject. its novelty, beauty, simplicity, and power were highly commended.... "other projects for the establishment of a magnetic telegraph have been broached here, especially from professor wheatstone, of london, and professor steinheil, of munich. it is said, however, to be very manifest that our yankee professor is ahead of them all in the essential requisitions of such an invention, and that he is in the way to bear off the palm. in simplicity of design, cheapness of construction and efficiency, professor morse's telegraph transcends all yet made known. in each of these qualities it is admitted, by those who have inspected it closely, there seems to be little else to desire. it is certain, moreover, that in priority of discovery he antedates all others." encouraged by the universal praise which was showered upon him, the hopeful inventor redoubled his efforts to secure in some way, either through the government or through private parties, the means to make a practical test of his invention. mr. f.o.j. smith had, in the mean time, returned to america, and morse kept him informed by letter of the progress of affairs in paris. avoiding, as far as possible, repetitions and irrelevant details, i shall let extracts from these letters tell the story:-- "_september , ._ on monday i received a very flattering letter from our excellent minister, governor cass, introducing me to the count montalivet, and i accordingly called the next day. i did not see him, but had an interview with his secretary, who told me that the administrator of the telegraphs had not yet reported to the minister, but that he would see him the next day, and that, if i would call on friday, he would inform me of the result. i called on friday. the secretary informed me that he had seen m. foy, and that he had more than confirmed the flattering accounts in the american minister's letter respecting the telegraph, but was not yet prepared with his report to the minister--he wished to make a detailed account of the _differences in favor of mine over all others that had been presented to him_, or words to that effect; and the secretary assured me that the report would be all i could wish. this is certainly flattering and i am to call on monday to learn further." "_october ._ i can only add, in a few words, that everything here is as encouraging as could be expected. the report of the administrator of telegraphs has been made to the minister of the interior, and i have been told that i should be notified of the intentions of the government in a few days. i have also shown the railroad telegraph to the saint-germain directors, who are delighted with it, and from them i expect a proposition within a few days." "_november ._ i intend sending this letter by the packet of the th inst., and am in hopes of sending with it some intelligence from those from whom i have been so long expecting something. everything moves at a snail's pace here. i find delay in all things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the american organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. a frenchman ought to have as many lives as a cat to bring to pass, on his dilatory plan of procedure, the same results that a yankee would accomplish in his single life." "_afternoon, november ._ called on the ministre de l'intérieur; no one at home; left card and will call again to-morrow, and hope to be in time yet for the packet." "_november ._ i have again called, but do not find at home the chief secretary, m. merlin.... i shall miss the packet of the th, but i am told she is a slow ship and that i shall probably find the letters reach home quite as soon by the next. i will leave this open to add if anything occurs between this and next packet day." "_november ._ i have been called off from this letter until the last moment by stirring about and endeavoring to expedite matters with the government. i have been to see general cass since my last date. i talked over matters with him. he complains much of their dilatoriness, but sees no way of quickening them.... i called again this morning at the minister's and, as usual, the secretary was absent; at the palace they said. if i could once get them to look at it i should be sure of them, for i have never shown it to any one who did not seem in raptures. i showed it a few days ago to m. fremel, the director of light-houses, who came with mr. vail and captain perry. he was cautious at first, but afterwards became as enthusiastic as any. "the railroad directors are as dilatory as the government, but i know they are discussing the matter seriously at their meetings, and i was told that the most influential man among them said they 'must have it.' there is nothing in the least discouraging that has occurred, but, on the contrary, everything to confirm the practicability of the plan, both on the score of science and expense." "_january , ._ i learn that the telegraph is much talked of in all society, and i learn that the _théâtre des variétés_, which is a sort of mirror of the popular topics, has a piece in which persons are made to converse by means of this telegraph some hundreds of miles off. "this is a straw which shows the way of the wind, and although matters move too slow for my impatient spirit, yet the telegraph is evidently gaining on the popular notice, and in time will demand the attention of governments. "i have the promise of a visit from the count boudy, chief of the household of the king, and who, i understand, has great influence with the king and can induce him to adopt the telegraph between some of his palaces. "hopes, you perceive, continue bright, but they are somewhat unsubstantial to an empty purse. i look for the first fruits in america. my confidence increases every day in the certainty of the eventual adoption of this means of communication throughout the civilized world. its practicability, hitherto doubted by savants here, is completely established, and they do not hesitate to give me the credit of having established it. i rejoice quite as much for my country's sake as for my own that both priority and superiority are awarded to my invention." chapter xxvi january , --march , despondent letter to his brother sidney.--longing for a home.--letter to smith.--more delays.--change of ministry.--proposal to form private company.--impossible under the laws of france.--telegraphs a government monopoly.--refusal of czar to sign russian contract.--dr. jackson.--m. amyot.--failure to gain audience of king.--lord elgin.--earl of lincoln. --robert walsh prophesies success.--meeting with earl of lincoln in later years.--daguerre.--letter to mrs. cass on lotteries.--railway and military telegraphs.--skepticism of a marshal of france. thus hopefully the inventor kept writing home, always maintaining that soon all obstacles would be overcome, and that he would then have a chance to demonstrate in a really practical way the great usefulness of his invention. but, instead of melting away, new obstacles kept arising at every turn. the dilatoriness of the french government seems past all belief, and yet, in spite of his faith in the more expeditious methods of his own country, he was fated to encounter the same exasperating slowness at home. it was, therefore, only natural that in spite of the courageous optimism of his nature, he should at times have given way to fits of depression, as is instanced by the following extracts from a letter written to his brother sidney on january , :-- "i know not that i feel right to indulge in the despondency which, in spite of all reason to the contrary, creeps over me when i think of returning. i know the feelings of tantalus perfectly. all my prospects in regard to the telegraph are bright and encouraging, and so they have been for months, and they still continue to be so; but the sober _now_ is that i am expending and not acquiring; it has, as yet, been all _outgo_ and no income. at the rate business is done here, the slow, dilatory manner in which the most favorable projects are carried forward, i have no reason to believe that anything will be realized before i must leave france, which will probably be in about six weeks. if so, then i return penniless, and, worse than penniless, i return to find debts and no home; to find homeless children with all hope extinguished of ever seeing them again in a family. indeed, i may say that, in this latter respect, the last ray is departed; i think no more of it. "i now feel anxious to see my children educated with the means they have of their own, and in a way of usefulness, and for myself i desire to live secluded, without being burdensome to my friends. i should be glad to exchange my rooms in the university for one or two in your new building. i shall probably resign both professorship and presidency on my return. the first has become merely nominal, and the latter is connected with duties which properly confine to the city, and, as i wish to be free to go to other places, i think it will be best to resign. "if our government should take the telegraph, or companies should be formed for that purpose, so that a sum is realized from it when i get home, this will, of course, change the face of things; but i dare not expect it and ought not to build any plans on such a contingency. so far as praise goes i have every reason to be satisfied at the state of things here in regard to the telegraph. all the savants, committees of learned societies, members of the chamber of deputies, and officers of government have, without exception, been as enthusiastic in its reception as any in the united states. both the priority and superiority of my invention are established, and thus the credit, be it more or less, is secured to our country. the prefect of the seine expressed a desire to see it and called by appointment yesterday. he was perfectly satisfied, and said of his own accord that he should see the king last evening and should mention the telegraph to him. i shall probably soon be requested, therefore, to show the telegraph to the king. "all these are most encouraging prospects; there is, indeed, nothing that has arisen to throw any insurmountable obstacle in the way of its adoption with complete success; and for all this i ought to feel gratitude, and i wish to acknowledge it before him to whom gratitude is due. is it right or is it wrong, in view of all this, to feel despondency? "in spite of all i do feel sad. i am no longer young; i have children, but they are orphans, and orphans they are likely to be. i have a country, but _no home_. it is this _no home_ that perpetually haunts me. i feel as if it were duty, duty most urgent, for me to settle in a family state at all hazards on account of these children. i know they suffer in this forming period of their lives for the want of a home, of the care of a father and a mother, and that no care and attention from friends, be they ever so kind, can supply the place of parents. but all efforts, direct and indirect, to bring this about have been frustrated. "my dear brother, may you never feel, as i have felt, _the loss of a wife_. that wound bleeds afresh daily, as if it were inflicted but yesterday. there is a meaning in all these acute mental trials, and they are at times so severe as almost to deprive me of reason, though few around me would suspect the state of my mind." these last few lines are eminently characteristic of the man. while called upon to endure much, both mentally and physically, he possessed such remarkable self-control that few, if any, of those around him were aware of his suffering. only to his intimates did he ever reveal the pain which sometimes gnawed at his heart, and then only occasionally and under great stress. it was this self-control, united to a lofty purpose and a natural repugnance to wearing his heart on his sleeve, which enabled him to accomplish what he did. endowed also with a saving sense of humor, he made light of his trials to others and was a welcome guest in every social gathering. the want of a place which he could really call home was an ever-present grief. it is the dominant note in almost all the letters to his brothers and his children, and it is rather quaintly expressed in a letter, of november , , to his daughter:-- "tell uncle sidney to take good care of you, and to have a little snug room in the upper corner of his new building, where a bed can be placed, a chair, and a table, and let me have it as my own, that there may be one little particular spot which i can call _home_. i will there make three wooden stools, one for you, one for charles, and one for finley, and invite you to your father's house." in spite of the enthusiasm which the exhibition of his invention aroused among the learned men and others in paris, he met with obstructions of the most vexatious kind at every turn, in his effort to bring it into practical use. just as the way seemed clear for its adoption by the french government, something happened which is thus described in a letter to mr. smith, of january , : "i wrote by the great western a few days ago. the event then anticipated in regard to the ministry has occurred. the ministers have resigned, and it is expected that the new cabinet will be formed this day with marshal soult at its head. thus you perceive new causes of delay in obtaining any answer from the government. as soon as i can learn the name of the new minister of the interior i will address a note to him, or see him, as i may be advised, and see if i can possibly obtain an answer, or at least a report of the administration of the telegraphs. nothing has occurred in other respects but what is agreeable.... "all my leisure (if that may be called leisure which employs nearly all my time) is devoted to perfecting the whole matter. the invention of the correspondent, i think you will say, is a more essential improvement. it has been my winter's labor, and, to avoid expense, i have been compelled to make it entirely with my own hands. i can now give you its exact dimensions--twelve and a half inches long, six and a half wide, and six and a half deep. it dispenses entirely with boxes of type (one set alone being necessary) and dispenses also with the rules, and with all machinery for moving the rules. there is no winding up and it is ready at all times. you touch the letter and the letter is written immediately at the other extremity.... in my next i hope to send you reports of my further progress. one thing seems certain, my telegraph has driven out of the field all the other plans on the magnetic principle. i hear nothing of them in public or private. no society notices them." "_february ._ i can compare the state of things here to an april day, at one moment sunshine, at the next cloudy. the telegraph is evidently growing in favor; testimonials of approbation and compliments multiply, and yesterday i was advised by the secretary of the _academie industrielle_ to interest moneyed men in the matter if i intended to profit by it; and he observed that now was the precise time to do it in the interval of the chambers. "i am at a loss how to act. i am not a business man and fear every movement which suggests itself to me. i am thinking of proposing a company on the same plan you last proposed in your letter from liverpool, and which you intend to create in case the government shall choose to do nothing; that is to say, a company taking the right at one thousand francs per mile, paying the proprietors fifty per cent in stocks and fifty per cent in cash, raising about fifty thousand francs for a trial some distance. i shall take advice and let you know the result. "i wish you were here; i am sure something could be done by an energetic business man like yourself. as for poor me i feel that i am a child in business matters. i can invent and perfect the invention, and demonstrate its uses and practicability, but 'further the deponent saith not.' perhaps i underrate myself in this case, but that is not a usual fault in human nature." it was natural that a keen business man like f.o.j. smith should have leaned rather toward a private corporation, with its possibilities of great pecuniary gain, than toward government ownership. morse, on the contrary, would have preferred, both at home and abroad, to place the great power which he knew his invention was destined to wield in the hands of a responsible government. however, so eager was he to make a practical test of the telegraph that, governments apparently not appreciating their great opportunity, he was willing to entrust the enterprise to capitalists. here again he was balked, however, for, writing of his trials later, he says:-- "an unforeseen obstacle was interposed which has rendered my patent in france of no avail to me. by the french patent law at the time one who obtained a patent was obliged to put into operation his invention within two years from the issue of his patent, under the penalty of forfeiture if he does not comply with the law. in pursuance of this requisition of the law i negotiated with the president (turneysen) of the saint-germain railroad company to construct a line of my telegraph on their road from paris to saint-germain, a distance of about seven english miles. the company was favorably disposed toward the project, but, upon application (as was necessary) to the government for permission to have the telegraph on their road, they received for answer that telegraphs were a government monopoly, and could not, therefore, be used for private purposes. i thus found myself crushed between the conflicting forces of two opposing laws." this was, indeed, a crushing blow, and ended all hope of accomplishing anything in france, unless the government should, in the short time still left to him, decide to take it up. the letters home, during the remainder of his stay in europe, are voluminous, but as they are, in the main, a repetition of experiences similar to those already recorded, it will not be necessary to give them in full. he tells of the enthusiastic reception accorded to his invention by the savants, the high officials of the government and the englishmen of note then stopping in paris. he tells also of the exasperating delays to which he was subjected, and which finally compelled him to return home without having accomplished anything tangible. he goes at length into his negotiations with the representative of the czar, baron meyendorf, from which he entertained so many hopes, hopes which were destined in the end to be blasted, because the czar refused to put his signature to the contract, his objection being that "malevolence can easily interrupt the communication." this was a terrible disappointment to the inventor, for he had made all his plans to return to europe in the spring of to carry out the russian contract, which he was led to believe was perfectly certain, and the czar's signature simply a matter of form. while at the time, and probably for all his life, morse considered his failure in europe as a cruel stroke of fate, we cannot but conclude, in the light of future developments, that here again fate was cruel in order to be kind. the invention, while it had been pronounced a scientific success, and had been awarded the palm over all other systems by the foremost scientists of the world, had yet to undergo the baptism of fire on the field of battle. it had never been tried over long distances in the open air, and many practical modifications had yet to be made, the necessity for which could only be ascertained during the actual construction of a commercial line. morse's first idea, adhered to by him until found by experience, in the building of the first line between washington and baltimore, to be impracticable, had been to bury the wires in a trench in the ground. i say it was found to be impracticable, but that is true only of the conditions at that early date. the inventor was here again ahead of his time, for the underground system is now used in many cities, and may in time become universal. however, we shall see, when the story of the building of that first historic line is told, that in this respect, and in many others, great difficulties were encountered and failure was averted only by the ingenuity, the resourcefulness, and the quick-wittedness of the inventor himself and his able assistants. is it too much to suppose that, had the russian, or even the french, contract gone through, and had morse been compelled to recruit his assistants from the people of an alien land, whose language he could neither speak nor thoroughly understand, the result would have been a dismal failure, calling down only ridicule on the head of the luckless inventor, and perhaps causing him to abandon the whole enterprise, discouraged and disheartened? be this as it may, the european trip was considered a failure in a practical sense, while having resulted in a personal triumph in so far as the scientific elements of the invention were concerned. i shall, therefore, give only occasional extracts from the letters, some of them dealing with matters not in any way related to the telegraph. he writes to mr. smith on february , :-- "i have been wholly occupied for the last week in copying out the correspondence and other documents to defend myself against the infamous attack of dr. jackson, notice of which my brother sent me.... i have sent a letter to dr. jackson calling on him to save his character by a total disclaimer of his presumptuous claim within one week from the receipt of the letter, and giving him the plea of a 'mistake' and 'misconception of my invention' by which he may retreat. if he fails to do this, i have requested my brother to publish immediately my defense, in which i give a history of the invention, the correspondence between dr. jackson and myself, and close with the letters of hon. mr. rives, mr. fisher, of philadelphia, and captain pell. "i cannot conceive of such infatuation as has possessed this man. he can scarcely be deceived. it must be his consummate self-conceit that deceives him, if he is deceived. but this cannot be; he knows he has no title whatever to a single hint of any kind in the matter." i have already alluded to the claim of dr. jackson, and have shown that it was proved to be utterly without foundation, and have only introduced this reference to it as an instance of the attacks which were made upon morse, attacks which compelled him to consume much valuable time, in the midst of his other labors, in order to repel them, which he always succeeded in doing. in writing of his negotiations with the russian government he mentions m. amyot, "who has proposed also an electric telegraph, but upon seeing mine he could not restrain his gratification, and with his whole soul he is at work to forward it with all who have influence. he is the right-hand man of the baron meyendorf, and he is exerting all his power to have the russian government adopt my telegraph.... he is really a noble-minded man. the baron told me he had a _large soul_, and i find he has. i have no claim on him and yet he seems to take as much interest in my invention as if it were his own. how different a conduct from jackson's!... every day is clearing away all the difficulties that prevent its adoption; the only difficulty that remains, it is universally said, is the protection of the wires from malevolent attack, and this can be prevented by proper police and secret and deep interment. i have no doubt of its universal adoption; it may take time but it is certain." "_paris, march , ._ by my last letter i informed you of the more favorable prospects of the telegraphic enterprise. these prospects still continue, and i shall return with the gratifying reflection that, after all my anxieties, and labors, and privations, and your and my other associates' expenditures and risks, we are all in a fair way of reaping the fruits of our toil. the political troubles of france have been a hindrance hitherto to the attention of the government to the telegraph, but in the mean time i have gradually pushed forward the invention into the notice of the most influential individuals of france. i had colonel lasalle, aide-de-camp to the king, and his lady to see the telegraph a few days ago. he promised that, without fail, it should be mentioned to the king. you will be surprised to learn, after all the promises hitherto made by the prefect of the seine, count remberteau, and by various other officers of the government, and after general cass's letter to the aide on service, four or five months since, requesting it might be brought to the notice of the king, that the king has not yet heard of it. but so things go here. "such dereliction would destroy a man with us in a moment, but here there is a different standard (this, of course, _entre nous_).... among the numerous visitors that have thronged to see the telegraph, there have been a great many of the principal english nobility. among them the lord and lady aylmer, former governor of canada, lord elgin and son, the celebrated preserver, not depredator (as he has been most slanderously called) of the phidian marbles. lord elgin has been twice and expressed a great interest in the invention. he brought with him yesterday the earl of lincoln, a young man of unassuming manners; he was delighted and gave me his card with a pressing invitation to call on him when i came to london. "i have not failed to let the english know how i was treated in regard to my application for a patent in england, and contrasted the conduct of the french in this respect to theirs. i believe they felt it, and i think it was lord aylmer, but am not quite sure, who advised that the subject be brought up in parliament by some member and made the object of special legislation, which he said might be done, the attorney-general to the contrary notwithstanding. i really believe, if matters were rightly managed in england, something yet might be done there, if not by patent, yet by a parliamentary grant of a proper compensation. it is remarkable that they have not yet made anything like mine in england. it is evident that neither wheatstone nor davy comprehended my mode, after all their assertions that mine had been published. "if matters move slower here than with us, yet they gain surely. i am told every hour that the two great wonders of paris just now, about which everybody is conversing, are daguerre's wonderful results in fixing permanently the image of the _camera obscura_, and morse's electro-magnetic telegraph, and they do not hesitate to add that, beautiful as are the results of daguerre's experiments, the invention of the electro-magnetic telegraph is that which will surpass, in the greatness of the revolution to be effected, all other inventions. robert walsh, esq., who has just left me, is beyond measure delighted. i was writing a word from one room to another; he came to me and said:--'the next word you may write is immortality, for the sublimity of this invention is of surpassing grandeur. _i see now that all physical obstacles, which may for a while hinder, will inevitably be overcome; the problem is solved;_ man may instantly converse with his fellow-men in any part of the world.'" this prophecy of the celebrated american author, who was afterwards consul-general to france for six years, is noteworthy considering the date at which it was made. there were indeed many "physical obstacles which for a while hindered" the practical adoption of the invention, but they were eventually overcome, and the problem was solved. five years of heart-breaking struggle, discouragement and actual poverty had still to be endured by the brave inventor before the tide should turn in his favor, but robert walsh shared with morse the clear conviction that the victory would finally be won. reference having been made to lord elgin, the following letter from him will be found interesting:-- paris, th march, . dear sir,--i cannot help expressing a very strong desire that, instead of delaying till your return from america your wish to take out a patent in england for your highly scientific and simple mode of communicating intelligence by an electric telegraph, you would take measures to that effect at this moment, and for that purpose take your model now with you to london. your discovery is now much known as well as appreciated, and the ingenuity now afloat is too extensive for one not to apprehend that individuals, even in good faith, may make some addition to qualify them to take out a _first patent_ for the principle; whereas, if you brought it at once, now, before the competent authorities, especially under the advantage of an introduction such as mr. drummond can give you to lord brougham, a short delay in your proceeding to america may secure you this desirable object immediately. with every sincere good wish for your success and the credit you so richly deserve, i am, dear sir, yours faithfully elgin. while it is futile to speculate on what might have been, it does seem as if morse made a serious mistake in not taking lord elgin's advice, for there is no doubt that, with the influential backing which he had now secured, he could have overcome the churlish objections of the attorney-general, and have secured a patent in england much to his financial benefit. but with the glamour of the russian contract in his eyes, he decided to return home at once, and the opportunity was lost. we must also marvel at the strange fact that the fear expressed by lord elgin, that another might easily appropriate to himself the glory which was rightly due to morse, was not realized. is it to be wondered at that morse should have always held that he, and he alone, was the humble instrument chosen by an all-wise providence to carry to a successful issue this great enterprise? regarding one of his other visitors, the earl of lincoln, it is interesting to learn that there was another meeting between the two men under rather dramatic circumstances, in later years. this was on the occasion of the visit of the prince of wales, afterward edward vii, to america, accompanied by a suite which included, among others, the duke of newcastle. morse was invited to address the prince at a meeting given in his honor at the university of the city of new york, and in the course of his address he said:-- "an allusion in most flattering terms to me, rendered doubly so in such presence, has been made by our respected chancellor, which seems to call for at least the expression of my thanks. at the same time it suggests the relation of an incident in the early history of the telegraph which may not be inappropriate to this occasion. the infant telegraph, born and nursed within these walls, had scarcely attained a feeble existence ere it essayed to make its voice heard on the other side of the atlantic. i carried it to paris in . it attracted the warm interest, not only of the continental philosophers, but also of the intelligent and appreciative among the eminent nobles of britain then on a visit to the french capital. foremost among these was the late marquis of northampton, then president of the royal society, the late distinguished earl of elgin, and, in a marked degree, the noble earl of lincoln. the last-named nobleman in a special manner gave it his favor. he comprehended its important future, and, in the midst of the skepticism that clouded its cradle, he risked his character for sound judgment in venturing to stand godfather to the friendless child. he took it under his roof in london, invited the statesmen and the philosophers of britain to see it, and urged forward with kindly words and generous attentions those who had the infant in charge. it is with no ordinary feelings, therefore, that, after the lapse of twenty years, i have the singular honor this morning of greeting with hearty welcome, in such presence, before such an assemblage, and in the cradle of the telegraph, this noble earl of lincoln in the person of the present duke of newcastle." reference was made by morse, in the letter to mr. smith of march , to daguerre and his wonderful discovery. having himself experimented along the same lines many years before, he was, naturally, much interested and sought the acquaintance of daguerre, which was easily brought about. the two inventors became warm friends, and each disclosed to the other the minutiae of his discoveries. daguerre invited morse to his workshop, selecting a sunday as a day convenient to him, and morse replied in the following characteristic note:-- "professor morse asks the indulgence of m. daguerre. the _time_ m. daguerre, in his great kindness, has fixed to show his most interesting experiments is, unfortunately, one that will deprive mr. m. of the pleasure he anticipated, as mr. m. has an engagement for the entire sunday of a nature that cannot be broken. will monday, or any other day, be agreeable to m. daguerre? "mr. m. again asks pardon for giving m. daguerre so much trouble." having thus satisfied his puritan conscience, another day was cheerfully appointed by daguerre, who generously imparted the secret of this new art to the american, by whom it was carried across the ocean and successfully introduced into the united states, as will be shown further on. writing of this experience to his brothers on march , , he says:-- "you have, perhaps, heard of the daguerreotype, so called from the discoverer, m. daguerre. it is one of the most beautiful discoveries of the age. i don't know if you recollect some experiments of mine in new haven, many years ago, when i had my painting-room next to professor silliman's,--experiments to ascertain if it were possible to fix the image of the _camera obscura_. i was able to produce different degrees of shade on paper, dipped into a solution of nitrate of silver, by means of different degrees of light, but finding that light produced dark, and dark light, i presumed the production of a true image to be impracticable, and gave up the attempt. m. daguerre has realized in the most exquisite manner this idea." here follows the account of his visit to daguerre and an enthusiastic description of the wonders seen in his workshop, and he closes by saying:-- "but i am near the end of my paper, and i have, unhappily, to give a melancholy close to my account of this ingenious discovery. m. daguerre appointed yesterday at noon to see my telegraph. he came and passed more than an hour with me, expressing himself highly gratified at its operation. but, while he was thus employed, the great building of the diorama, with his own house, all his beautiful works, his valuable notes and papers, the labor of years of experiment, were, unknown to him, at that moment the prey of the flames. his secret, indeed, is still safe with him, but the steps of his progress in the discovery and his valuable researches in science, are lost to the scientific world. i learn that his diorama was insured, but to what extent i know not. "i am sure all friends of science and improvement will unite in expressing the deepest sympathy in m. daguerre's loss, and the sincere hope that such a liberal sum will be awarded him by his government as shall enable him, in some degree at least, to recover from his loss." it is pleasant to record that the french government did act most generously toward daguerre. the reader may remember that, when morse was a young man in london, lotteries were considered such legitimate ways of raising money, that not only did he openly purchase tickets in the hope of winning a money prize, but his pious father advised him to dispose of his surplus paintings and sketches in that way. as he grew older, however, his views on this question changed, as will be seen by the following letter addressed to mrs. cass, wife of the american minister, who was trying to raise money to help a worthy couple, suddenly reduced from wealth to poverty:-- january , . i am sure i need make no apology to you, my dear madam, for returning the three lottery tickets enclosed in the interesting note i have just had the honor to receive from you, because i know you can fully appreciate the motive which prompts me. in the measures taken some years since for opposing the lottery system in the state of new york, and which issued in its entire suppression, i took a very prominent part under the conviction that the principle on which the lottery system was founded was wrong. but while, on this account, i cannot, my dear madam, consistently take the tickets, i must beg of you to put the price of them, which i enclose, into such a channel as shall, in your judgment, best promote the benevolent object in which you have interested yourself. poverty is a bitter lot, even when the habit of long endurance has reconciled the mind and body to its severities, but how much more bitter must it be when it comes in sudden contrast to a life of affluence and ease. i thank you for giving me the opportunity of contributing my mite to the relief of such affliction, hoping sincerely that all their earthly wants may lead the sufferers to the inexhaustible fountain of true riches. with sincere respect and christian regard i remain, my dear madam your most obedient servant s.f.b. morse. before closing the record of this european trip, so disappointing in many ways and yet so encouraging in others, it may be well to note that, while he was in paris, morse in not only took out a patent on his recording telegraph, but also on a system to be used on railways to report automatically the presence of a train at any point on the line. a reproduction of his own drawing of the apparatus to be used is here given, and the mechanism is so simple that an explanation is hardly necessary. from it can be seen not only that he did, at this early date, realize the possibilities of his invention along various lines, but that it embodies the principle of the police and fire-alarm systems now in general use. it is not recorded that he ever realized anything financially from this ingenious modification of his main invention. commenting on it, and on his plans for a military telegraph, he gives this amusing sketch:-- "on september , , a telegraph instrument constructed in the united states on the same principles, but slightly modified to make it portable, was exhibited to the academy of sciences in paris, and explained by m. arago at the session of that date. an account of this exhibition is recorded in the _comptes rendus_. "a week or two after i exhibited at my lodgings, in connection with this instrument, my railroad telegraph, an application of signals by sound, for which i took out letters patent in paris, and at the same time i communicated to the minister of war, general bernard, my plans for a military telegraph with which he was much pleased. [illustration: railway telegraph drawing by morse patented by him in france in , and embodying principles of police and fire alarm telegraph] "i dined with him by invitation, and in the evening, repairing with him to his billiard-room, while the rest of the guests were amusing themselves with the game, i gave him a general description of my plan. he listened with deep attention while i advocated its use on the battle-field, and gave him my reasons for believing that the army first using the facilities of the electric telegraph for military purposes would be sure of victory. he replied to me, after my answering many of his questions:-- "'be reticent,' said he, 'on this subject for the present. i will send an officer of high rank to see and converse with you on the matter to-morrow.' "the next day i was visited by an old marshal of france, whose name has escaped my memory. conversing by an interpreter, the reverend e.n. kirk, of boston, i found it difficult to make the marshal understand its practicability or its importance. the dominant idea in the marshal's mind, which he opposed to the project, was that it involved an increase of the material of the army, for i proposed the addition of two or more light wagons, each containing in a small box the telegraph instruments and a reel of fine insulated wire to be kept in readiness at the headquarters on the field. i proposed that, when required, the wagons with the corps of operators, two or three persons, at a rapid rate should reel off the wire to the right, the centre and the left of the army, as near to these parts of the army as practicable or convenient, and thus instantaneous notice of the condition of the whole army, and of the enemy's movements, would be given at headquarters. "to all this explanation of my plan was opposed the constant objection that it increased the material of the army. the hon. marshal seemed to consider that the great object to be gained by an improvement was a decrease of this material; an example of this economy which he illustrated by the case of the substitution of the leather drinking cup for the tin cup hung to the soldier's knapsack, an improvement which enabled the soldier to put his cup in his vest pocket. for this improvement, if i remember right, he said the inventor, who was a common soldier, received at the hands of the emperor napoleon i the cross of the legion of honor. "so set was the good marshal in his repugnance to any increase to the material of the army that, after a few moments' thought, i rebutted his position by putting to him the following case:-- "'m. marshal,' i said, 'you are investing a fortress on the capture of which depends the success of your campaign; you have , men; on making your calculations of the chances of taking it by assault, you find that with the addition of more troops you could accomplish its capture. you have it in your power, by a simple order, to obtain from the government these men. in this case what would you do?' "he replied without hesitation: 'i should order the , of course.' "'but,' i rejoined, 'the material of the army would be greatly increased by such an order.' "he comprehended the case, and, laughing heartily, abandoned the objection, but took refuge in the general skepticism of that day on the practicability of an electric telegraph. he did not believe it could ever be put in practise. this was an argument i could not then repel. time alone could vindicate my opinion, and time has shown both its practicability and its utility." chapter xxvii april , --september , arrival in new york.--disappointment at finding nothing done by congress or his associates.--letter to professor henry.--henry's reply.-- correspondence with daguerre.--experiments with daguerreotypes.-professor draper.--first group photograph of a college class.--failure of russian contract.--mr. chamberlain.--discouragement through lack of funds.--no help from his associates.--improvements in telegraph made by morse.-- humorous letter. morse sailed from europe on the great western on the d of march, , and reached new york, after a stormy passage, on the th of april. discouraged by his lack of success in establishing a line of telegraph in europe on a paying basis, and yet encouraged by the enthusiasm shown by the scientists of the old world, he hoped much from what he considered the superior enterprise of his own countrymen. however, on this point he was doomed to bitter disappointment, and the next few years were destined to be the darkest through which he was to pass. on the day after his arrival in new york he wrote to mr. f.o.j. smith:-- "i take the first moment of rest from the fatigues of my boisterous voyage to apprise you of my arrival yesterday in the great western.... i am quite disappointed in finding nothing done by congress, and nothing accomplished in the way of company. i had hoped to find on my return some funds ready for prosecuting with vigor the enterprise, which i fear will suffer for the want. "think a moment of my situation. i left new york for europe to be gone three months, but have been gone eleven months. my only means of support are in my profession, which i have been compelled to abandon entirely for the present, giving my undivided time and efforts to this enterprise. i return with not a farthing in my pocket, and have to borrow even for my meals, and even worse than this, i have incurred a debt of rent by my absence which i should have avoided if i had been at home, or rather if i had been aware that i should have been obliged to stay so long abroad. i do not mention this in the way of complaint, but merely to show that i also have been compelled to make great sacrifices for the common good, and am willing to make more yet if necessary. if the enterprise is to be pursued, we must all in our various ways put the shoulder to the wheel. "i wish much to see you and talk over all matters, for it seems to me that the present state of the enterprise in regard to russia affects vitally the whole concern." thus gently did he chide one of his partners, who should have been exerting himself to forward their joint interests in america while he himself was doing what he could in europe. the other partners, alfred vail and dr. leonard gale, were equally lax and seem to have lost interest in the enterprise, as we learn from the following letter to mr. smith, of may , :-- "you will think it strange, perhaps, that i have not answered yours of the th ult. sooner, but various causes have prevented an earlier attention to it. my affairs, in consequence of my protracted absence and the stagnant state of the telegraph here at home, have caused me great embarrassment, and my whole energies have been called upon to extricate myself from the confusion in which i have been unhappily placed. you may judge a little of this when i tell you that my absence has deprived me of my usual source of income by my profession; that the state of the university is such that i shall probably leave, and shall have to move into new quarters; that my family is dispersed, requiring my care and anxieties under every disadvantage; that my engagements were such with russia that every moment of my time was necessary to complete my arrangements to fulfill the contract in season; and, instead of finding my associates ready to sustain me with counsel and means, i find them all dispersed, leaving me without either the opportunity to consult or a cent of means, and consequently bringing everything in relation to the telegraph to a dead stand. "in the midst of this i am called on by the state of public opinion to defend myself against the outrageous attempt of dr. jackson to pirate from me my invention. the words would be harsh that are properly applicable to this man's conduct.... "you see, therefore, in what a condition i found myself when i returned. i was delayed several days beyond the computed time of my arrival by the long passage of the steamer. instead of finding any funds by a vote of congress, or by a company, and my associates ready to back me, i find not a cent for the purpose, and my associates scattered to the four winds. "you can easily conceive that i gave up all as it regarded russia, and considered the whole enterprise as seriously injured if not completely destroyed. in this state of things i was hourly dreading to hear from the russian minister, and devising how i should save myself and the enterprise without implicating my associates in a charge of neglect; and as it has most fortunately happened for us all, the th of may has passed without the receipt of the promised advices, and i took advantage of this, and by the liverpool steamer of the th wrote to the baron meyendorff, and to m. amyot, that it was impossible to fulfill the engagement this season, since i had not received the promised advices in time to prepare." this was, of course, before he had heard of the czar's refusal to sign the contract, and he goes on to make plans for carrying out the russian enterprise the next year, and concludes by saying:-- "do think of this matter and see if means cannot be raised to keep ahead with the american telegraph. i sometimes am astonished when i reflect how i have been able to take the stand with my telegraph in competition with my european rivals, backed as they are with the purses of the kings and wealthy of their countries, while our own government leaves me to fight their battles for the honor of this invention fettered hand and foot. thanks will be due to you, not to them, if i am able to maintain the ground occupied by the american telegraph." shortly after his return from abroad, on april , morse wrote the following letter to professor henry at princeton:-- my dear sir,--on my return a few days since from europe, i found directed to me, through your politeness, a copy of your valuable "contributions," for which i beg you to accept my warmest thanks. the various cares consequent upon so long an absence from home, and which have demanded my more immediate attention, have prevented me from more than a cursory perusal of its interesting contents, yet i perceive many things of great interest to me in my telegraphic enterprise. i was glad to learn, by a letter received in paris from dr. gale, that a spool of five miles of my wire was loaned to you, and i perceive that you have already made some interesting experiments with it. in the absence of dr. gale, who has gone south, i feel a great desire to consult some scientific gentleman on points of importance bearing upon my telegraph, which i am about to establish in russia, being under an engagement with the russian government agent in paris to return to europe for that purpose in a few weeks. i should be exceedingly happy to see you and am tempted to break away from my absorbing engagements here to find you at princeton. in case i should be able to visit princeton for a few days a week or two hence, how should i find you engaged? i should come as a learner and could bring no "contributions" to your stock of experiments of any value, nor any means of furthering your experiments except, perhaps, the loan of an additional five miles of wire which it may be desirable for you to have. i have many questions to ask, but should be happy, in your reply to this letter, of an answer to this general one: have you met with any facts in your experiments thus far that would lead you to think that my mode of telegraphic communication will prove impracticable? so far as i have consulted the savants of paris, they have suggested no insurmountable difficulties; i have, however, quite as much confidence in your judgment, from your valuable experience, as in that of any one i have met abroad. i think that you have pursued an original course of experiments, and discovered facts of more value to me than any that have been published abroad. morse was too modest in saying that he could bring nothing of value to henry in his experiments, for, as we shall see from henry's reply, the latter had no knowledge at that time of the "relay," for bringing into use a secondary battery when the line was to stretch over long distances. this important discovery morse had made several years before. princeton; may , . dear sir,--your favor of the th ult. came to princeton during my absence, which will account for the long delay of my answer. i am pleased to learn that you fully sanction the loan which i obtained from dr. gale of your wire, and i shall be happy if any of the results are found to have a practical bearing on the electrical telegraph. it will give me much pleasure to see you in princeton after this week. my engagements will not then interfere with our communications on the subject of electricity. during this week i shall be almost constantly engaged with a friend in some scientific labors which we are prosecuting together. i am acquainted with no fact which would lead me to suppose that the project of the electro-magnetic telegraph is unpractical; on the contrary, i believe that science is now ripe for the application, and that there are no difficulties in the way but such as ingenuity and enterprise may obviate. but what form of the apparatus, or what application of the power will prove best, can, i believe, be only determined by careful experiment. i can say, however, that, so far as i am acquainted with the minutiae of your plan, i see no practical difficulty in the way of its application for comparatively short distances; but, if the length of the wire between the stations is great, i think that some other modification will be found necessary in order to develop a sufficient power at the farther end of the line. i shall, however, be happy to converse freely with you on these points when we meet. in the meantime i remain, with much respect yours, etc., joseph henry. i consider this letter alone a sufficient answer to those who claim that henry was the real inventor of the telegraph. he makes no such claim himself. in spite of the cares of various kinds which overwhelmed him during the whole of his eventful life, morse always found time to stretch out a helping hand to others, or to do a courteous act. so now we find him writing to daguerre on may , :-- my dear sir,--i have the honor to enclose you the note of the secretary of our academy informing you of your election, at our last annual meeting, into the board of honorary members of our national academy of design. when i proposed your name it was received with enthusiasm, and the vote was _unanimous_. i hope, my dear sir, you will receive this as a testimonial, not merely of my personal esteem and deep sympathy in your late losses, but also as a proof that your genius is, in some degree, estimated on this side of the water. notwithstanding the efforts made in england to give to another the credit which is your due, i think i may with confidence assure you that throughout the united states your name alone will be associated with the brilliant discovery which justly bears your name. the letter i wrote from paris, the day after your sad loss, has been published throughout this whole country in hundreds of journals, and has excited great interest. should any attempts be made here to give to any other than yourself the honor of this discovery, my pen is ever ready for your defense. i hope, before this reaches you, that the french government, long and deservedly celebrated for its generosity to men of genius, will have amply supplied all your losses by a liberal sum. if, when the proper remuneration shall be secured to you in france, you should think it may be for your advantage to make an arrangement with the government to hold back the secret for six months or a year, and would consent to an exhibition of your _results_ in this country for a short time, the exhibition might be managed, i think, to your pecuniary advantage. if you should think favorably of the plan, i offer you my services _gratuitously_. to this letter daguerre replied on july :-- my dear sir,--i have received with great pleasure your kind letter by which you announce to me my election as an honorary member of the national academy of design. i beg you will be so good as to express my thanks to the academy, and to say that i am very proud of the honor which has been conferred upon me. i shall seize all opportunities of proving my gratitude for it. i am particularly indebted to you in this circumstance, and i feel very thankful for this and all other marks of interest you bestowed upon me. the transaction with the french government being nearly at an end, my discovery shall soon be made public. this cause, added to the immense distance between us, hinders me from taking the advantage of your good offer to get up at new york an exhibition of my results. believe me, my dear sir, your very devoted servant, daguerre. a prophecy, shrewd in some particulars but rather faulty in others, of the influence of this new art upon painting, is contained in the following extracts from a letter of morse's to his friend and master washington allston:-- "i had hoped to have seen you long ere this, but my many avocations have kept me constantly employed from morning till night. when i say morning i mean _half past four_ in the morning! i am afraid you will think me a goth, but really the hours from that time till twelve at noon are the richest i ever enjoy. "you have heard of the daguerreotype. i have the instruments on the point of completion, and if it be possible i will yet bring them with me to boston, and show you the beautiful results of this brilliant discovery. art is to be wonderfully enriched by this discovery. how narrow and foolish the idea which some express that it will be the ruin of art, or rather artists, for every one will be his own painter. one effect, i think, will undoubtedly be to banish the sketchy, slovenly daubs that pass for spirited and learned; those works which possess mere general effect without detail, because, forsooth, detail destroys general effect. nature, in the results of daguerre's process, has taken the pencil into her own hands, and she shows that the minutest detail disturbs not the general repose. artists will learn how to paint, and amateurs, or rather connoisseurs, how to criticise, how to look at nature, and, therefore, how to estimate the value of true art. our studies will now be enriched with sketches from nature which we can store up during the summer, as the bee gathers her sweets for winter, and we shall thus have rich materials for composition and an exhaustless store for the imagination to feed upon." an interesting account of his experiences with this wonderful new discovery is contained in a letter written many years later, on the th of february, :-- "as soon as the necessary apparatus was made i commenced experimenting with it. the greatest obstacle i had to encounter was in the quality of the plates. i obtained the common, plated copper in coils at the hardware shops, which, of course, was very thinly coated with silver, and that impure. still i was able to verify the truth of daguerre's revelations. the first experiment crowned with any success was a view of the unitarian church from the window on the staircase from the third story of the new york city university. this, of course, was before the building of the new york hotel. it was in september, . the time, if i recollect, in which the plate was exposed to the action of light in the camera was about fifteen minutes. the instruments, chemicals, etc., were strictly in accordance with the directions in daguerre's first book. "an english gentleman, whose name at present escapes me, obtained a copy of daguerre's book about the same time with myself. he commenced experimenting also. but an american of the name of walcott was very successful with a modification of daguerre's apparatus, substituting a metallic reflector for the lens. previous, however, to walcott's experiments, or rather results, my friend and colleague, professor john w. draper, of the new york city university, was very successful in his investigations, and with him i was engaged for a time in attempting portraits. "in my intercourse with daguerre i specially conversed with him in regard to the practicability of taking portraits of living persons. he expressed himself somewhat skeptical as to its practicability, only in consequence of the time necessary for the person to remain immovable. the time for taking an outdoor view was from fifteen to twenty minutes, and this he considered too long a time for any one to remain sufficiently still for a successful result. no sooner, however, had i mastered the process of daguerre than i commenced to experiment with a view to accomplish this desirable result. i have now the results of these experiments taken in september, or beginning of october, . they are full-length portraits of my daughter, single, and also in group with some of her young friends. they were taken out of doors, on the roof of a building, in the full sunlight and with the eyes closed. the time was from ten to twenty minutes. "about the same time professor draper was successful in taking portraits, though whether he or myself took the first portrait successfully, i cannot say." it was afterwards established that to professor draper must be accorded this honor, but i understand that it was a question of hours only between the two enthusiasts. "soon after we commenced together to take portraits, causing a glass building to be constructed for that purpose on the roof of the university. as our experiments had caused us considerable expense, we made a charge to those who sat for us to defray this expense. professor draper's other duties calling him away from the experiments, except as to their bearing on some philosophical investigations which he pursued with great ingenuity and success, i was left to pursue the artistic results of the process, as more in accordance with my profession. my expenses had been great, and for some time, five or six months, i pursued the taking of portraits by the daguerreotype as a means of reimbursing these expenses. after this object had been attained, i abandoned the practice to give my exclusive attention to the telegraph, which required all my time." before leaving the subject of the daguerreotype, in which, as i have shown, morse was a pioneer in this country, it will be interesting to note that he took the first group photograph of a college class. this was of the surviving members of his own class of , who returned to new haven for their thirtieth reunion in . it was not until august of the year that definite news of the failure of the russian agreement was received, and morse, in a letter to smith, of august , comments on this and on another serious blow to his hopes:-- "i received yours of the d inst., and the paper accompanying it containing the notice of mr. chamberlain. i had previously been apprised that my forebodings were true in regard to his fate.... our enterprise abroad is destined to give us anxiety, if not to end in disappointment. "i have just received a letter from m. amyot, who was to have been my companion to russia, and learn from him the unwelcome news that the emperor has decided against the telegraph.... the emperor's objections are, it seems, that 'malevolence can easily interrupt the communication.' m. amyot scouts the idea, and writes that he refuted the objection to the satisfaction of the baron, who, indeed, did not need the refutation for himself, for the whole matter was fully discussed between us when in paris. the baron, i should judge from the tone of m. amyot's letter, was much disappointed, yet, as a faithful and obedient subject of one whose nay is nay, he will be cautious in so expressing himself as to be self-committed. "thus, my dear sir, prospects abroad look dark. i turn with some faint hope to my own country again. will congress do anything, or is my time and your generous zeal and pecuniary sacrifice to end only in disappointment? if so, i can bear it for myself, but i feel it most keenly for those who have been engaged with me; for you, for the messrs. vail and dr. gale. but i will yet hope. i don't know that our enterprise looks darker than fulton's once appeared. there is no intrinsic difficulty; the depressing causes are extrinsic. i hope to see you soon and talk over all our affairs." mr. smith, in sending a copy of the above letter to mr. prime, thus explains the reference to mr. chamberlain:-- "the allusion made in the letter just given to the fate of mr. chamberlain, was another depressing disappointment which occurred to the professor contemporaneously with those of the russian contract. before i left paris we had closed a contract with mr. chamberlain to carry the telegraph to austria, prussia, the principal cities of greece and of egypt, and put it upon exhibition with a view to its utilization there. he was an american gentleman (from vermont, i think) of large wealth, of eminent business capacities, of pleasing personal address and sustaining a character for strict integrity. he parted with professor morse in paris to enter upon his expedition, with high expectations of both pleasure and profit, shortly after my own departure from paris in october, . he had subsequently apprised professor morse of very interesting exhibitions of the telegraph which he had made, and under date of athens, january , , wrote as follows: 'we exhibited your telegraph to the learned of florence, much to their gratification. yesterday evening the king and queen of greece were highly delighted with its performance. we have shown it also to the principal inhabitants of athens, by all of whom it was much admired. fame is all you will get for it in these poor countries. we think of starting in a few days for alexandria, and hope to get something worth having from mehemet ali. it is, however, doubtful. nations appear as poor as individuals, and as unwilling to risk their money upon such matters. i hope the french will avail themselves of the benefits you offer them. it is truly strange that it is not grasped at with more avidity. if i can do anything in egypt, i will try turkey and st. petersburg.'" morse himself writes: "in another letter from mr. chamberlain to mr. levering, dated syra, january , he says: 'the pretty little queen of greece was delighted with morse's telegraph. the string which carried the cannon-ball used for a weight broke, and came near falling on her majesty's toes, but happily missed, and we, perhaps, escaped a prison. my best respects to mr. morse, and say i shall ask mehemet ali for a purse, a beauty from his seraglio, and something else.'" and morse concludes: "i will add that, if he will bring me the purse just now, i can dispense with the beauty and the something else." tragedy too often treads on the heels of comedy, and it is sad to have to relate that mr. chamberlain and six other gentlemen were drowned while on an excursion of pleasure on the danube in july of . that all these disappointments, added to the necessity for making money in some way for his bare subsistence, should have weighed on the inventor's spirits, is hardly to be wondered at; the wonder is rather that he did not sink under his manifold trials. far from this, however, he only touches on his needs in the following letter to alfred vail, written on november , :-- "as to the telegraph, i have been compelled from necessity to apply myself to those duties which yield immediate pecuniary relief. i feel the pressure as well as others, and, having several pupils at the university, i must attend to them. nevertheless, i shall hold myself ready in case of need to go to washington during the next session with it. the one i was constructing is completed except the rotary batteries and the pen-and-ink apparatus, which i shall soon find time to add if required. "mr. smith expects me in portland, but i have not the means to visit him. the telegraph of wheatstone is going ahead in england, even with all its complications; so, i presume, is the one of steinheil in bavaria. whether ours is to be adopted depends on the government or on a company, and the times are not favorable for the formation of a company. perhaps it is the part of wisdom to let the matter rest and watch for an opportunity when times look better, and which i hope will be soon." he gives freer vent to his disappointment in a letter to mr. smith, of november , :-- "i feel the want of that sum which congress ought to have appropriated two years ago to enable me to compete with my european rivals. wheatstone and steinheil have money for their projects; the former by a company, and the latter by the king of bavaria. is there any national feeling with us on the subject? i will not say there is not until after the next session of congress. but, if there is any cause for national exultation in being not merely _first_ in the invention as to time, but _best_ too, as decided by a foreign tribunal, ought the inventor to be suffered to work with his hands tied? is it honorable to the nation to boast of its inventors, to contend for the credit of their inventions as national property, and not lift a finger to assist them to perfect that of which they boast? "but i will not complain for myself. i can bear it, because i made up my mind from the very first for this issue, the common fate of all inventors. but i do not feel so agreeable in seeing those who have interested themselves in it, especially yourself, suffer also. perhaps i look too much on the unfavorable side. i often thus look, not to discourage others or myself, but to check those too sanguine expectations which, with me, would rise to an inordinate height unless thus reined in and disciplined. "shall you not be in new york soon? i wish much to see you and to concoct plans for future operations. i am at present much straitened in means, or i should yet endeavor to see you in portland; but i must yield to necessity and hope another season to be in different and more prosperous circumstances." thus the inventor, who had hoped so much from the energy and business acumen of his own countrymen, found that the conditions at home differed not much from those which he had found so exasperating abroad. praise in plenty for the beauty and simplicity of his invention, but no money, either public or private, to enable him to put it to a practical test. his associates had left him to battle alone for his interests and theirs. f.o.j. smith was in portland, maine, attending to his own affairs; professor gale was in the south filling a professorship; and alfred vail was in philadelphia. no one of them, as far as i can ascertain, was doing anything to help in this critical period of the enterprise which was to benefit them all. when credit is to be awarded to those who have accomplished something great, many factors must be taken into consideration. not only must the aspirant for undying fame in the field of invention, for instance, have discovered something new, which, when properly applied, will benefit mankind, but he must prove its practical value to a world constitutionally skeptical, and he must persevere through trials and discouragements of every kind, with a sublime faith in the ultimate success of his efforts, until the fight be won. otherwise, if he retires beaten from the field of battle, another will snatch up his sword and hew his way to victory. it must never be forgotten that morse won his place in the hall of fame, not only because of his invention of the simplest and best method of conveying intelligence by electricity, but because he, alone and unaided, carried forward the enterprise when, but for him, it would have been allowed to fail. with no thought of disparaging the others, who can hardly be blamed for their loss of faith, and who were of great assistance to him later on when the battle was nearly won, i feel that it is only just to lay emphasis on this factor in the claim of morse to greatness. it will not be necessary to record in detail the events of the year . the inventor, always confident that success would eventually crown his efforts, lived a life of privation and constant labor in the two fields of art and science. he was still president of the national academy of design, and in september he was elected an honorary member of the mercantile library association. he strove to keep the wolf from the door by giving lessons in painting and by practising the new art of daguerreotypy, and, in the mean time, he employed every spare moment in improving and still further simplifying his invention. he heard occasionally from his associates. the following sentences are from a letter of alfred vail's, dated philadelphia, january , :-- friend s.f.b. morse, dear sir, it is many a day since i last had the pleasure of seeing and conversing with you, and, if i am not mistaken, it is as long since any communications have been exchanged. however i trust it will not long be so. when i last had the pleasure of seeing you it was when on my way to philadelphia, at which time you had the kindness to show me specimens of the greatest discovery ever made, with the exception of the electro-magnetic telegraph. by the by, i have been thinking that it is time money in some way was made out of the telegraph, and i am almost ready to order an instrument made, and to make the proposition to you to exhibit it here. what do you think of the plan? if mr. prosch will make me a first-rate, most perfect machine, and as speedily as possible, and will wait six or nine months for his pay, you may order one for me. morse's reply to this letter has not been preserved, but he probably agreed to vail's proposition,--anything honorable to keep the telegraph in the public eye,--for, as we shall see, in a later letter he refers to the machines which prosch was to make. before quoting from that letter, however, i shall give the following sentences from one to baron meyendorff, of march , : "i have, since i returned to the united states, made several important improvements, which i regret my limited time will not permit me to describe or send you.... i have so changed the _form_ of the apparatus, and condensed it into so small a compass, that you would scarcely know it for the same instrument which you saw in paris." this and many other allusions, in the correspondence of those years, to morse's work in simplifying and perfecting his invention, some of which i have already noted, answer conclusively the claims of those who have said that all improvements were the work of other brains and hands. on september , , he writes again to vail:-- "your letter of th ult. was received several days ago, but i have not had a moment's time to give you a word in return. i am tied hand and foot during the day endeavoring to realize something from the daguerreotype portraits.... as to the telegraph, i know not what to say. the delay in finishing the apparatus on the part of prosch is exceedingly tantalizing and vexatious. he was to have finished them more than six months ago, and i have borne with his procrastination until i utterly despair of their being completed.... i suppose something might be done in washington next session if i, or some of you, could go on, but i have expended so much time in vain, there and in europe, that i feel almost discouraged from pressing it any further; only, however, from want of funds. i have none myself, and i dislike to ask it of the rest of you. you are all so scattered that there is no consultation, and i am under the necessity of attending to duties which will give me the means of living. "the reason of its not being in operation is not _the fault of the invention_, nor is it _my neglect_. my faith is not only unshaken in its _eventual adoption throughout the world_, but it is confirmed by every new discovery in the science of electricity." while the future looked dark and the present was darker still, morse maintained a cheerful exterior, and was still able to write to his friends in a light and airy vein. the following letter, dated september , , was to a mr. levering in paris:-- "some time since (i believe nearly a year ago) i wrote you to procure for me two lenses and some plates for the daguerreotype process, but have never heard from you nor had any intimation that my letter was ever received. after waiting some months, i procured both lenses and plates here. now, if i knew how to scold at you, wouldn't i scold. "well, i recollect a story of a captain who was overloaded by a great many ladies of his acquaintance with orders to procure them various articles in india, just as he was about to sail thither, all which he promised to fulfill. but, on his return, when they flocked round him for their various articles, to their surprise he had only answered the order of one of them. upon their expressing their disappointment he addressed them thus: 'ladies,' said he, 'i have to inform you of a most unlucky accident that occurred to your orders. i was not unmindful of them, i assure you; so one fine day i took your orders all out of my pocketbook and arranged them on the top of the companionway, but, just as they were all arranged, a sudden gust of wind took them all overboard.' 'aye, a very good excuse,' they exclaimed. 'how happens it that mrs. ----'s did not go overboard, too?' 'oh!' said the captain, 'mrs. ---- had fortunately enclosed in her order some dozen doubloons which kept the wind from blowing hers away with the rest.' "now, friend lovering, i have no idea of having my new order blown overboard, so i herewith send by the hands of my young friend and pupil, mr. r. hubbard, whom i also commend to your kind notice, ten golden half-eagles to keep my order down." chapter xxviii june , --august , first patent issued.--proposal of cooke and wheatstone to join forces rejected.--letter to rev. e.s. salisbury.--money advanced by brother artists repaid.--poverty.--reminiscences of general strother, "porte crayon."--other reminiscences.--inaction in congress.--flattering letter of f.o.j. smith.--letter to smith urging action.--gonon and wheatstone.-- temptation to abandon enterprise.--partners all financially crippled.-- morse alone doing any work.--encouraging letter from professor henry.-- renewed enthusiasm.--letter to hon. w.w. boardman urging appropriation of $ by congress.--not even considered.--despair of inventor. it is only necessary to remember that the year , and the years immediately preceding and following it, were seasons of great financial depression, and that in the political unrest, which always precedes a presidential election, was greatly intensified, to realize why but little encouragement was given to an enterprise so fantastic as that of an electric telegraph. capitalists were disinclined to embark on new and untried ventures, and the members of congress were too much absorbed in the political game to give heed to the pleadings of a mad inventor. the election of harrison, followed by his untimely death only a month after his inauguration and the elevation of tyler to the presidency, prolonged the period of political uncertainty, so that morse and his telegraph received but scant attention on capitol hill. however, the year marked some progress, for on the th of june the first patent was issued to morse. it may be remembered that, while his caveat and petition were filed in , he had requested that action on them be deferred until after his return from europe. he had also during the year been gradually perfecting his invention as time and means permitted. it was during the year , too, that messrs. wheatstone and cooke proposed to join forces with the morse patentees in america, but this proposition was rejected, although morse seems to have been almost tempted, for in a letter to smith he says:-- "i send you copies of two letters just received from england. what shall i say in answer? can we make any arrangements with them? need we do it? does not our patent secure us against foreign interference, or are we to be defeated, not only in england but in our own country, by the subsequent inventions of wheatstone? "i feel my hands tied; i know not what to say. do advise immediately so that i can send by the british queen, which sails on the first prox." fortunately smith advised against a combination, and the matter was dropped. it will not be necessary to dwell at length on the events of the year . the situation and aims of the inventor are best summed up in a beautiful and characteristic letter, written on february of that year, to his cousin, the reverend edward s. salisbury:-- "your letter containing a draft for three hundred dollars i have received, for which accept my sincere thanks. i have hesitated about receiving it because i had begun to despair of ever being able to touch the pencil again. the blow i received from congress, when the decision was made concerning the pictures for the rotunda, has seriously and vitally affected my enthusiasm in my art. when that event was announced to me i was tempted to yield up all in despair, but i roused myself to resist the temptation, and, determining still to fix my mind upon the work, cast about for the means of accomplishing it in such ways as my heavenly father should make plain. my telegraphic enterprise was one of those means. induced to prosecute it by the secretary of the treasury, and encouraged by success in every part of its progress, urged forward to complete it by the advice of the most judicious friends, i have carried the invention on my part to perfection. that is to say, so far as the invention itself is concerned. i _have done my part_. it is approved in the highest quarters--in england, france, and at home--by scientific societies and by governments, and waits only the action of the latter, or of capitalists, to carry it into operation. "thus after several years' expenditure of time and money in the expectation (of my friends, _never of my own_ except as i yielded my own judgment to theirs) of so much at least as to leave me free to pursue my art again, i am left, humanly speaking, farther from my object than ever. i am reminded, too, that my prime is past; the snows are on my temples, the half-century of years will this year be marked against me; my eyes begin to fail, and what can i now expect to do with declining powers and habits in my art broken up by repeated disappointments? "that prize which, through the best part of my life, animated me to sacrifice all that most men consider precious--prospects of wealth, domestic enjoyments, and, not least, the enjoyment of country--was snatched from me at the moment when it appeared to be mine beyond a doubt. "i do not state these things to you, my dear cousin, in the spirit of complaint of the dealings of god's providence, for i am perfectly satisfied that, mysterious as it may seem to me, it has all been ordered in its minutest particulars in infinite wisdom, so satisfied that i can truly say i rejoice in the midst of all these trials, and in view of my heavenly father's hand guiding all, i have a joy of spirit which i can only express by the word 'singing.' it is not in man to direct his steps. i know i am so short-sighted that i dare not trust myself in the very next step; how then could i presume to plan for my whole life, and expect that my own wisdom had guided me into that way best for me and the universe of god's creatures? "i have not painted a picture since that decision in congress, and i presume that the mechanical skill i once possessed in the art has suffered by the unavoidable neglect. i may possibly recover this skill, and if anything will tend to this end, if anything can tune again an instrument so long unstrung, it is the kindness and liberality of my cousin edward. i would wish, therefore, the matter put on this ground that my mind may be at ease. i am at present engaged in taking portraits by the daguerreotype. i have been at considerable expense in perfecting apparatus and the necessary fixtures, and am just reaping a little profit from it. my ultimate aim is the application of the daguerreotype to accumulate for my studio models for my canvas. its first application will be to the study of your picture. yet if any accident, any unforeseen circumstances should prevent, i have made arrangements with my brother sidney to hold the sum you have advanced subject to your order. on these conditions i accept it, and will yet indulge the hope of giving you a picture acceptable to you." the picture was never painted, for the discouraged artist found neither time nor inclination ever to pick up his brush again; but we may be sure that the money, so generously advanced by his cousin, was repaid. it was in the year also that, in spite of the difficulty he found in earning enough to keep him from actual starvation, he began to pay back the sums which had been advanced to him by his friends for the painting of a historical picture, which should, in a measure, atone to him for the undeserved slight of congress. in a circular addressed to each of the subscribers he gives the history of the matter and explains why he had hoped that the telegraph would supply him with the means to paint the picture, and then he adds:-- "i have, as yet, not realized one cent, and thus i find myself farther from my object than ever. upon deliberately considering the matter the last winter and spring, i came to the determination, in the first place, to free myself from the pecuniary obligation under which i had so long lain to my friends of the association, and i commenced a system of economy and retrenchment by which i hoped gradually to amass the necessary sum for that purpose, which sum, it will be seen, amounts in the aggregate to $ . three hundred dollars of this sum i had already laid aside, when an article in the new york 'mirror,' of the th october, determined me at once to commence the refunding of the sums received." what the substance of the article in the "mirror" was, i do not know, but it was probably one of those scurrilous and defamatory attacks, from many of which he suffered in common with other persons of prominence, and which was called forth, perhaps, by his activity in the politics of the day. that i have not exaggerated in saying that he was almost on the verge of starvation during these dark years is evidenced by the following word picture from the pen of general strother, of virginia, known in the world of literature under the pen name of "porte crayon":-- "i engaged to become morse's pupil, and subsequently went to new york and found him in a room in university place. he had three other pupils, and i soon found that our professor had very little patronage. i paid my fifty dollars that settled for one quarter's instruction. morse was a faithful teacher, and took as much interest in our progress--more indeed than--we did ourselves. but he was very poor. i remember that when my second quarter's pay was due my remittance from home did not come as expected, and one day the professor came in and said, courteously:-- "'well, strother my boy, how are we off for money?' "'why, professor,' i answered, 'i am sorry to say i have been disappointed; but i expect a remittance next week.' "'next week!' he repeated sadly. 'i shall be dead by that time.' "'dead, sir?' "'yes, dead by starvation.' "i was distressed and astonished. i said hurriedly:-- "'would ten dollars be of any service?' "'ten dollars would save my life; that is all it would do.' "i paid the money, all that i had, and we dined together. it was a modest meal but good, and, after he had finished, he said:-- "'this is my first meal for twenty-four hours. strother, don't be an artist. it means beggary. your life depends upon people who know nothing of your art and care nothing for you. a house-dog lives better, and the very sensitiveness that stimulates an artist to work keeps him alive to suffering.'" another artist describes the conditions in in the following words:-- "in the spring of was searching for a studio in which to set up my easel. my 'house-hunting' ended at the new york university, where i found what i wanted in one of the turrets of that stately edifice. when i had fixed my choice, the janitor, who accompanied me in my examination of the rooms, threw open a door on the opposite side of the hall and invited me to enter. i found myself in what was evidently an artist's studio, but every object in it bore indubitable signs of unthrift and neglect. the statuettes, busts, and models of various kinds were covered with dust and cobwebs; dusty canvases were faced to the wall, and stumps of brushes and scraps of paper littered the floor. the only signs of industry consisted of a few masterly crayon drawings, and little luscious studies of color pinned to the wall. "'you will have an artist for a neighbor,' said the janitor, 'though he is not here much of late; he seems to be getting rather shiftless; he is wasting his time over some silly invention, a machine by which he expects to send messages from one place to another. he is a very good painter, and might do well if he would only stick to his business; but, lord!' he added with a sneer of contempt, 'the idea of telling by a little streak of lightning what a body is saying at the other end of it.' "judge of my astonishment when he informed me that the 'shiftless individual' whose foolish waste of time so much excited his commiseration, was none other than the president of the national academy of design--the most exalted position, in my youthful artistic fancy, it was possible for mortal to attain--s.f.b. morse, since better known as the inventor of the electric telegraph. but a little while after this his fame was flashing through the world, and the unbelievers who voted him insane were forced to confess that there was, at least, 'method in his madness.'" the spring and summer of wore away and nothing was accomplished. on august morse writes to smith:-- "our telegraph matters are in a situation to do none of us any good, unless some understanding can be entered into among the proprietors. i have recently received a letter from mr. isaac n. coffin, from washington, with a commendatory letter from hon. r. mcclellan, of the house. mr. coffin proposes to take upon himself the labor of urging through the two houses the bill relating to my telegraph, which you know has long been before congress. he will press it and let his compensation depend on his success." this mr. coffin wrote many long letters telling, in vivid language, of the great difficulties which beset the passage of a bill through both houses of congress, and of how skilled he was in all the diplomatic moves necessary to success, and finally, after a long delay, occasioned by the difficulty of getting powers of attorney from all the proprietors, he was authorized to go ahead. the sanguine inventor hoped much from this unsolicited offer of assistance, but he was again doomed to disappointment, for mr. coffin's glowing promises amounted to nothing at all, and the session of - ended with no action taken on the bill. in view of the fact, alluded to in a former chapter, that francis o.j. smith later became a bitter enemy of morse's, and was responsible for many of the virulent attacks upon him, going so far as to say that most, if not all, of the essentials of the telegraph had been invented by others, it may be well to quote the following sentences from a letter of august , , in reply to morse's of august :-- "i shall be in washington more next winter, and will lend all aid in my power, of course, to any agent we may have there. my expenditures in the affair, as you know, have been large and liberal, and have somewhat embarrassed me. hence i cannot incur more outlay. i am, however, extremely solicitous for the double purpose of having you witness with your own eyes and in your own lifetime the consummation in actual, practical, national utility [of] this beautiful and wonderful offspring of your mechanical and philosophical genius, and know that you have not overestimated the service you have been ambitious of rendering to your country and the world." on december , , morse again urges smith to action:-- "indeed, my dear sir, something ought to be done to carry forward this enterprise that we may all receive what i think we all deserve. the whole labor and expense of moving at all devolve on me, and i have nothing in the world. completely crippled in means i have scarcely (indeed, i have not at all) the means even to pay the postage of letters on the subject. i feel it most tantalizing to find that there is a movement in washington on the subject; to know that telegraphs will be before congress this session, and from the means possessed by gonon and wheatstone!! (yes, wheatstone who successfully headed us off in england), one or the other of their two plans will probably be adopted. wheatstone, i suppose you know, has a patent here, and has expended $ to get everything prepared for a campaign to carry his project into operation, and more than that, his patent is dated _before mine!_ "my dear sir, to speak as i feel, i am sick at heart to perceive how easily others, _foreigners_, can manage our congress, and can contrive to cheat our country out of the honor of a discovery of which the country boasts, and our countrymen out of the profits which are our due; to perceive how easily they can find men and means to help them in their plans, and how difficult, nay, impossible, for us to find either. is it really so, or am i deceived? what can be done? do write immediately and propose something. will you not be in washington this winter? will you not call on me as you pass through new york, if you do go? "gonon has his telegraph on the capitol, and a committee of the senate reported in favor of trying his for a short distance, and will pass a bill this session if we are not doing something. some means, somehow, must be raised. i have been compelled to stop my machine just at the moment of completion. i cannot move a step without running in debt, and that i cannot do. "as to the company that was thought of to carry the telegraph into operation here, it is another of those _ignes fatui_ that have just led me on to waste a little more time, money, and patience, and then vanished. the gentleman who proposed the matter was, doubtless, friendly disposed, but he lacks judgment and perseverance in a matter of this sort. "if congress would but pass the bill of $ , before them, there would be no difficulty. there is no difficulty in the scientific or mechanical part of the matter; that is a problem solved. the only difficulty that remains is obtaining funds, which congress can furnish, to carry it into execution. i have a great deal to say, but must stop for want of time to write more." but he does not stop. he is so full of his subject that he continues at some length:-- "everything done by me in regard to the telegraph is at arm's length. i can do nothing without consultation, and when i wish to consult on the most trivial thing i have three letters to write, and a week or ten days to wait before i can receive an answer. "i feel at times almost ready to cast the whole matter to the winds, and turn my attention forever from the subject. indeed, i feel almost inclined, at tunes, to destroy the evidences of priority of invention in my possession and let wheatstone and england take the credit of it. for it is tantalizing in the highest degree to find the papers and the lecturers boasting of the invention as one of the greatest of the age, and as an honor to america, and yet to have the nation by its representatives leave the inventor without the means either to put his invention fairly before his countrymen, or to defend himself against foreign attack. "if i had the means in any way of support in washington this winter, i would go on in the middle of january and push the matter, but i cannot run the risk. i would write a detailed history of the invention, which would be an interesting document to have printed in the congressional documents, and establish beyond contradiction both priority and superiority of my invention. has not the postmaster-general, or secretary of war or treasury, the power to pay a few hundred dollars from a contingent fund for such purposes? "whatever becomes of the invention through the neglect of those who could but would not lend a helping hand, _you_, my dear sir, will have the reflection that you did all in your power to aid me, and i am deterred from giving up the matter as desperate most of all for the consideration that those who kindly lent their aid when the invention was in its infancy would suffer, and that, therefore, i should not be dealing right by them. if this is a little _blue_, forgive it." it appears from this letter that morse bore no ill-will towards his partners for not coming to his assistance at this critical stage of the enterprise, so that it behooves us not to be too harsh in our judgment. perhaps i have not sufficiently emphasized the fact that, owing to the great financial depression which prevailed at that time, mr. smith and the vails were seriously crippled in their means, and were not able to advance any more money, and professor gale had never been called upon to contribute money. this does not alter my main contention, however, for it still remains true that, if it had not been for morse's dogged persistence during these dark years, the enterprise would, in all probability, have failed. with the others it was merely an incident, with him it had become his whole life. the same refrain runs through all the letters of and ; discouragement at the slow progress which is being made, and yet a sincere conviction that eventually the cause will triumph. on december , , he says in a letter to vail:-- "we are all somewhat crippled, and i most of all, being obliged to superintend the getting up of a set of machinery complete, and to make the greater part myself, and without a cent of money.... all the burden now rests on my shoulders after years of time devoted to the enterprise, and i am willing, as far as i am able, to bear my share if the other proprietors will lend a helping hand, and give me facilities to act and a reasonable recompense for my services in case of success." vail, replying to this letter on december , says: "i have recently given considerable thought to the subject of the telegraph, and was intending to get permission of you, if there is anything to the contrary in our articles of agreement, to build for myself and my private use a telegraph upon your plan." in answering this letter, on december , morse again urges vail to give him a power of attorney, and adds:-- "you can see in a moment that, if i have to write to all the scattered proprietors of the telegraph every time any movement is made, what a burden falls upon me both of expense of time and money which i cannot afford. in acting for my own interest in this matter i, of course, act for the interest of all. if we can get that thirty thousand dollars bill through congress, the experiment (if it can any longer be called such) can then be tried on such a scale as to insure its success. "you ask permission to make a telegraph for your own use. i have no objection, but, before you commence one, you had better see me and the improvements which i have made, and i can suggest a few more, rather of an ornamental character, and some economical arrangements which may be of use to you. "i thank you for your kind invitation, and, when i come to philadelphia, shall _a. vail_ myself of your politeness. i suppose by this time you have a brood of chickens around you. well, go on and prosper. as for me, i am not well; am much depressed at times, and have many cares, anxieties, and disappointments, in which i am aware i am not alone. but all will work for the best if we only look through the cloud and see a kind parent directing all. this reflection alone cheers me and gives me renewed strength." conditions remained practically unchanged during the early part of the year . if it had not been for occasional bits of encouragement from different quarters the inventor would probably have yielded to the temptation to abandon all and depend on his brush again for a living. perhaps the ray of greatest encouragement which lightened the gloom of this depressing period was the following letter from professor henry, dated february , :-- my dear sir--i am pleased to learn that you have again petitioned congress in reference to your telegraph, and i most sincerely hope you will succeed in convincing our representatives of the importance of the invention. in this you may, perhaps, find some difficulty, since, in the minds of many, the electro-magnetic telegraph is associated with the various chimerical projects constantly presented to the public, and particularly with the schemes so popular a year or two ago for the application of electricity as a moving power in the arts. i have asserted, from the first, that all attempts of this kind are premature and made without a proper knowledge of scientific principles. the case is, however, entirely different in regard to the electro-magnetic telegraph. science is now fully ripe for this application, and i have not the least doubt, if proper means be afforded, of the perfect success of the invention. the idea of transmitting intelligence to a distance by means of electrical action, has been suggested by various persons, from the time of franklin to the present; but, until the last few years, or since the principal discoveries in electro-magnetism, all attempts to reduce it to practice were, necessarily, unsuccessful. the mere suggestion however, of a scheme of this kind is a matter for which little credit can be claimed, since it is one which would naturally arise in the mind of almost any person familiar with the phenomena of electricity; but the bringing it forward at the proper moment, when the developments of science are able to furnish the means of certain success, and the devising a plan for carrying it into practical operation, are the grounds of a just claim to scientific reputation, as well as to public patronage. about the same time with yourself professor wheatstone, of london, and dr. steinheil, of germany, proposed plans of the electro-magnetic telegraph, but these differ as much from yours as the nature of the common principle would well permit; and, unless some essential improvements have lately been made in these european plans, _i should 'prefer the one invented by yourself_. with my best wishes for your success i remain, with much esteem yours truly joseph henry. i consider this one of the most important bits of contemporary evidence that has come down to us. professor henry, perfectly conversant with, all the minutiae of science and invention, practically gives to morse all the credit which the inventor himself at any time claimed. he dismisses the claims of those who merely suggested a telegraph, or even made unsuccessful attempts to reduce one to practice, unsuccessful because the time was not yet ripe; and he awards morse scientific as well as popular reputation. furthermore professor henry, with the clear vision of a trained mind, points out that advances in discovery and invention are necessarily slow and dependent upon the labors of many in the same field. his cordial endorsement of the invention, in this letter and later, so pleased and encouraged morse that he refers to it several times in his correspondence. to mr. smith, on july , , he writes:-- "professor henry visited me a day or two ago; he knew the principles of the telegraph, but had never before seen it. he told a gentleman, who mentioned it again to me, that without exception it was the most beautiful and ingenious instrument he had ever seen. he says mine is the only truly practicable plan. he has been experimenting and making discoveries on celestial electricity, and he says that wheatstone's and steinheil's telegraphs must be so influenced in a highly electrical state of the atmosphere as at times to be useless, they using the deflection of the needle, while mine, from the use of the magnet, is not subject to this disturbing influence. i believe, if the truth were known, some such cause is operating to prevent our hearing more of these telegraphs." in this same letter he tells of the application of a certain mr. john p. manrow for permission to form a company, but, as nothing came of it, it will not be necessary to particularize. mr. manrow, however, was a successful contractor on the new york and erie railroad, and it was a most encouraging sign to have practical business men begin to take notice of the invention. so cheered was the ever-hopeful inventor by the praise of professor henry, that he redoubled his efforts to get the matter properly before congress; and in this he worked alone, for, in the letter to smith just quoted from, he says: "i have not heard a word from mr. coffin at washington since i saw you. i presume he has abandoned the idea of doing anything on the terms we proposed, and so has given it up. well, so be it; i am content." taking advantage of the fact that he was personally acquainted with many members of congress, he wrote to several of them on the subject. in some of the letters he treats exhaustively of the history and scientific principles of his telegraph, but i have selected the following, addressed to the honorable w.w. boardman, as containing the most essential facts in the most concise form:-- august , . my dear sir,--i enclose you a copy of the "tribune" in which you will see a notice of my telegraph. i have showed its operation to a few friends occasionally within a few weeks, among others to professor henry, of princeton (a copy of whose letter to me on this subject i sent you some time since). he had never seen it in operation, but had only learned from description the principle on which it is founded. he is not of an enthusiastic temperament, but exceedingly cautious in giving an opinion on scientific inventions, yet in this case he expressed himself in the warmest terms, and told my friend dr. chilton (who informed me of it) that he had just been witnessing "the operation of the most beautiful and ingenious instrument he had ever seen." indeed, since i last wrote you, i have been wholly occupied in perfecting its details and making myself familiar with the whole system. there is not a shadow of a doubt as to its performing all that i have promised in regard to it, and, indeed, all that has been conceived of it. few can understand the obstacles arising from want of pecuniary means that i have had to encounter the past winter. to avoid debt (which i will never incur) i have been compelled to make with my own hands a great part of my machinery, but at an expense of time of very serious consideration to me. i have executed in six months what a good machinist, if i had the means to employ him, would have performed in as many weeks, and performed much better. i had hoped to be able to show my perfected instrument in washington long before this, and was (until this morning) contemplating its transportation thither next week. the news, just arrived, of the proposed adjournment of congress has stopped my preparations, and interposes, i fear, another year of anxious suspense. now, my dear sir, as your time is precious, i will state in few words what i desire. the government will eventually, without doubt, become possessed of this invention, for it will be necessary from many considerations; not merely as a direct advantage to the government and public at large if regulated by the government, but as a preventive of the evil effects which must result if it be a monopoly of a company. to this latter mode of remunerating myself i shall be compelled to resort if the government should not eventually act upon it. you were so good as to call the attention of the house to the subject by a resolution of inquiry early in the session. i wrote you some time after requesting a stay of action on the part of the committee, in the hope that, long before this, i could show them the telegraph in washington; but, just as i am ready, i find that congress will adjourn before i can reach washington and put the instrument in order for their inspection. will it be possible, before congress rises, to appropriate a small sum, say $ , under the direction of the secretary of the treasury, to put my telegraph in operation for the inspection of congress the next session? if congress will grant this sum, i will engage to have a complete telegraph on my electro-magnetic plan between the president's house, or one of the departments, and the capitol and the navy yard, so that instantaneous communication can be held between these three points at pleasure, at any time of day or night, at any season, in clear or rainy weather, and ready for their examination during the next session of congress, so that the whole subject may be fairly understood. i believe that, did the great majority of congress but consider seriously the results of this invention of the electric telegraph on all the interests of society; did they suffer themselves to dwell but for a moment on the vast consequences of the instantaneous communication of intelligence from one part to the other of the land in a commercial point of view, and as facilitating the defenses of the country, which my invention renders certain; they would not hesitate to pass all the acts necessary to secure its control to the government. i ask not this until they have thoroughly examined its merits, but will they not assist me in placing the matter fairly before them? surely so small a sum to the government for so great an object cannot reasonably be denied. i hardly know in what form this request of mine should be made. should it be by petition to congress, or will this letter handed in to the committee be sufficient? if a petition is required, for form's sake, to be referred to the committee to report, shall i ask the favor of you to make such petition in proper form? you know, my dear sir, just what i wish, and i know, from the kind and friendly feeling you have shown toward my invention, i may count on your aid. if, on your return, you stop a day or two in new york, i shall be glad to show you the operation of the telegraph as it is. this modest request of the inventor was doomed, like so many of his hopes, to be shattered, as we learn from the courteous reply of mr. boardman, dated august :-- dear sir,--yours of the th is received. i had already seen the notice of your telegraph in the "tribune," and was prepared for such a report. this is not the time to commence any new project before congress. we are, i trust, within ten days of adjournment. there is no prospect of a tariff at this session, and, as that matter appears settled, the sooner congress adjourns the better. the subject of your telegraph was some months ago, as you know, referred to the committee on commerce, and by that committee it was referred to mr. ferris, one of the members of that committee, from the city of new york, and who, by-the-way, is now at home in the city and will be glad to see you on the subject. i cannot give you his address, but you can easily find him. the treasury and the government are both bankrupt, and that foolish tyler has vetoed the tariff bill; the house is in bad humor and nothing of the kind you propose could be done. the only chance would be for the committee on commerce to report such a plan, but there would be little or no chance of getting such an appropriation through this session. i have much faith in your plan, and hope you will continue to push it toward congress. this was almost the last straw, and it is not strange that the long-suffering inventor should have been on the point of giving up in despair, nor that he should have given vent to his despondency in the following letter to smith:-- "while, so far as the invention itself is concerned, everything is favorable, i find myself without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me, whose interest, one would think, would impel them at least to inquire if they could render some assistance. for two years past i have devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying myself all pleasures and even necessary food, that i might have a sum to put my telegraph into such a position before congress as to insure success to the common enterprise. "i am, crushed for want of means, and means of so trivial a character, too, that they who know how to ask (which i do not) could obtain in a few hours. one more year has gone for want of these means. i have now ascertained that, however unpromising were the times last session, if i could but have gone to washington, i could have got some aid to enable me to insure success at the next session." the other projects for telegraphs must have been abandoned, for he goes on to say:-- "as it is, although everything is favorable, although i have no competition and no opposition--on the contrary, although every member of congress, as far as i can learn, is favorable--yet i fear all will fail because i am too poor to risk the trifling expense which my journey and residence in washington will occasion me. i will not run in debt if i lose the whole matter. so, unless i have the means from some source, i shall be compelled, however reluctantly, to leave it, and, if i get once engaged in my proper profession again, the telegraph and its proprietors will urge me from it in vain. "no one can tell the days and months of anxiety and labor i have had in perfecting my telegraphic apparatus. for want of means i have been compelled to make with my own hands (and to labor for weeks) a piece of mechanism which could be made much better, and in a tenth part of the time, by a good mechanician, thus wasting _time_--time which i cannot recall and which seems double-winged to me. "'hope deferred maketh the heart sick.' it is true and i have known the full meaning of it. nothing but the consciousness that i have an invention which is to mark an era in human civilization, and which is to contribute to the happiness of millions, would have sustained me through so many and such lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it." chapter xxix july . --march , continued discouragements.--working on improvements.--first submarine cable from battery to governor's island.--the vails refuse to give financial assistance.--goes to washington.--experiments conducted at the capitol.--first to discover duplex and wireless telegraphy.--dr. fisher. --friends in congress.--finds his statuette of dying hercules in basement of capitol.--alternately hopes and despairs of bill passing congress.-- bill favorably reported from committee.--clouds breaking.--ridicule in congress.--bill passes house by narrow majority.--long delay in senate.-- last day of session.--despair.--bill passes.--victory at last. slowly the mills of the gods had been grinding, so slowly that one marvels at their leaden pace, and wonders why the dream of the man so eager to benefit his fellowmen could not have been realized sooner. we are forced to echo the words of the inventor himself in a previously quoted letter: "i am perfectly satisfied that, mysterious as it may seem to me, it has all been ordered in its minutest particulars in infinite wisdom." he enlarges on this point in the letter to smith of july , . referring to the difficulties he has encountered through lack of means, he says:-- "i have oftentimes risen in the morning not knowing where the means were to come from for the common expenses of the day. reflect one moment on my situation in regard to the invention. compelled from the first, from my want of the means to carry out the invention to a practical result, to ask assistance from those who had means, i associated with me the messrs. vail and dr. gale, by making over to them, on certain conditions, a portion of the patent right. these means enabled me to carry it successfully forward to a certain point. at this point you were also admitted into a share of the patent on certain conditions, which carried the enterprise forward successfully still further. since then disappointments have occurred and disasters to the property of every one concerned in the enterprise, but of a character not touching the intrinsic merits of the invention in the least, yet bearing on its progress so fatally as for several years to paralyze all attempts to proceed. "the depressed situation of all my associates in the invention has thrown the whole burden of again attempting a movement entirely on me. with the trifling sum of five hundred dollars i could have had my instruments perfected and before congress six months ago, but i was unable to run the risk, and i therefore chose to go forward more slowly, but at a great waste of time. "in all these remarks understand me as not throwing the least blame on any individual. i believe that the situation in which you all are thrown is altogether providential--that human foresight could not avert it, and i firmly believe, too, that the delays, tantalizing and trying as they have been, will, in the end, turn out to be beneficial." i have hazarded the opinion that it was a kindly fate which frustrated the consummation of the russian contract, and here again i venture to say that the fates were kind, that morse was right in saying that the "delays" would "turn out to be beneficial." and why? because it needed all these years of careful thought and experiment on the part of the inventor to bring his instruments to the perfection necessary to complete success, and because the period of financial depression, through which the country was then passing, was unfavorable to an enterprise of this character. the history of all inventions proves that, no matter how clear a vision of the future some enthusiasts may have had, the dream was never actually realized until all the conditions were favorable and the psychological moment had arrived. professor henry showed, in his letter of february , that he realized that some day electricity would be used as a motive power, but that much remained yet to be discovered and invented before this could be actually and practically accomplished. so, too, the conquest of the air remained a dream for centuries until, to use professor henry's words, "science" was "ripe for its application." therefore i think we can conclude that, however confident morse may have been that his invention could have stood the test of actual commercial use during those years of discouragement, it heeded the perfection which he himself gave it during those same years to enable it to prove its superiority over other methods. among the other improvements made by morse at this time, the following is mentioned in the letter to smith of july , , just quoted from: "i have invented a battery which will delight you; it is the most powerful of its size ever invented, and this part of my telegraphic apparatus the results of experiments have enabled me to simplify and truly to perfect." another most important development of the invention was made in the year . the problem of crossing wide bodies of water had, naturally, presented itself to the mind of the inventor at an early date, and during the most of this year he had devoted himself seriously to its solution. he laboriously insulated about two miles of copper wire with pitch, tar, and rubber, and, on the evening of october , , he carried it, wound on a reel, to the battery in new york and hired a row-boat with a man to row him while he paid out his "cable." tradition says that it was a beautiful moonlight night and that the strollers on the battery were mystified, and wondered what kind of fish were being trolled for. the next day the following editorial notice appeared in the new york "herald":-- morse's electro-magnetic telegraph this important invention is to be exhibited in operation at castle garden between the hours of twelve and one o'clock to-day. one telegraph will be erected on governor's island, and one at the castle, and messages will be interchanged and orders transmitted during the day. many have been incredulous as to the powers of this wonderful triumph of science and art. all such may now have an opportunity of fairly testing it. _it is destined to work a complete revolution in the mode of transmitting intelligence throughout the civilized world._ before the appointed hour on the morning of the th, morse hastened to the battery, and found a curious crowd already assembled to witness this new marvel. with confidence he seated himself at the instrument and had succeeded in exchanging a few signals between himself and professor gale at the other end on governor's island, when suddenly the receiving instrument was dumb. looking out across the waters of the bay, he soon saw the cause of the interruption. six or seven vessels were anchored along the line of his cable, and one of them, in raising her anchor, had fouled the cable and pulled it up. not knowing what it was, the sailors hauled in about two hundred feet of it; then, finding no end, they cut the cable and sailed away, ignorant of the blow they had inflicted on the mortified inventor. the crowd, thinking they had been hoaxed, turned away with jeers, and morse was left alone to bear his disappointment as philosophically as he could. later, in december, the experiment was repeated across the canal at washington, and this time with perfect success. still cramped for means, chafing under the delay which this necessitated, he turned to his good friends the vails, hoping that they might be able to help him. while he shrank from borrowing money he considered that, as they were financially interested in the success of the invention, he could with propriety ask for an advance to enable him to go to washington. to his request he received the following answer from the honorable george vail:-- speedwell iron works, december , . s.f.b. morse, esq., dear sir,--your favor is at hand. i had expected that my father would visit you, but he could not go out in the snow-storm of wednesday, and, if he had, i do not think anything could induce him to raise the needful for the prosecution of our object. he says: "tell mr. morse that there is no one i would sooner assist than him if i could, but, in the present posture of my affairs, i am not warranted in undertaking anything more than to make my payments as they become due, of which there are not a few." he thinks that mr. s---- might soon learn how to manage it, and, as he is there, it would save a great expense. i do not myself know that he could learn; but, as my means are nothing at the present time, i can only wish you success, if you go on. of course mr. vail meant "if you go on to washington," but to the sensitive mind of the inventor the words must have seemed to imply a doubt of the advisability of going on with the enterprise. however, he was not daunted, but in some way he procured the means to defray his expenses, perhaps from his good brother sidney, for the next letter to mr. vail is from washington, on december , :-- "i have not written you since my arrival as i had nothing special to say, nor have i now anything very decided to communicate in relation to my enterprise, except that it is in a very favorable train. the telegraph, as you will see by thursday or friday's 'intelligencer,' is established between two of the committee rooms in the capitol, and excites universal admiration. i am told from all quarters that there is but one sentiment in congress respecting it, and that the appropriation will unquestionably pass. "the discovery i made with dr. fisher, just before leaving new york, of the fact that two or more currents will pass, without interference, at the same time, on the same wire, excites the wonder of all the scientific in and out of congress here, and when i show them the certainty of it, in the practical application of it to simplify my telegraph, their admiration is loudly expressed, and it has created a feeling highly advantageous to me. "i believe i drew for you a method by which i thought i could pass rivers, _without any wires_, through the water. i tried the experiment across the canal here on friday afternoon _with perfect success_. this also has added a fresh interest in my favor, and i begin to hope that i am on the eve of realizing something in the shape of compensation for my time and means expended in bringing my invention to its present state. i dare not be sanguine, however, for i have had too much experience of delusive hopes to indulge in any premature exultation. now there is no opposition, but it may spring up unexpectedly and defeat all.... "i find dr. fisher a great help. he is acquainted with a great many of the members, and he is round among them and creating an interest for the telegraph. mr. smith has not yet made his appearance, and, if he does not come soon, everything will be accomplished without him. my associate proprietors, indeed, are at present broken reeds, yet i am aware they are disabled in various ways from helping me, and i ought to remember that their help in the commencement of the enterprise was essential in putting the telegraph into the position it now is [in]; therefore, although they give me now no aid, it is not from unwillingness but from inability, and i shall not grudge them their proportion of its profits, nor do i believe they will be unwilling to reimburse me my expenses, should the telegraph eventually be purchased by the government. "mr. ferris, our representative, is very much interested in understanding the scientific principles on which my telegraph is based, and has exerted himself very strongly in my behalf; so has mr. boardman, and, in a special manner, dr. aycrigg, of new jersey, the latter of whom is determined the bill shall pass by acclamation. mr. huntington, of the senate, mr. woodbury and mr. wright are also very strongly friendly to the telegraph." this letter, to the best of my knowledge, has never before been published, and yet it contains statements of the utmost interest. the discovery of duplex telegraphy, or the possibility of sending two or more messages over the same wire at the same time has been credited by various authorities to different persons; by some to moses g. farmer in , by others to gintl, of vienna, in , or to frischen or siemens and halske in . yet we see from this letter that morse and his assistant dr. fisher not only made the discovery ten years earlier, in , but demonstrated its practicability to the scientists and others in washington at that date. why this fact should have been lost sight of i cannot tell, but i am glad to be able to bring forward the proof of the paternity of this brilliant discovery even at this late day. still another scientific principle was established by morse at this early period, as we learn from this letter, and that is the possibility of wireless telegraphy; but, as he has been generally credited with the first suggestion of what has now become one of the greatest boons to humanity, it will not be necessary to enlarge on it. a brighter day seemed at last to be dawning, and a most curious happening, just at this time, came to the inventor as an auspicious omen. in stringing his wires between the two committee rooms he had to descend into a vault beneath them which had been long unused. a workman, who was helping him, went ahead and carried a lamp, and, as he glanced around the chamber, morse noticed something white on a shelf at one side. curious to see what this could be, he went up to it, when what was his amazement to find that it was a plaster cast of that little statuette of the dying hercules which had won for him the adelphi gold medal so many years before in london. there was the token of his first artistic success appearing to him out of the gloom as the harbinger of another success which he hoped would also soon emerge from behind the lowering clouds. the apparently mysterious presence of the little demigod in such an out-of-the-way place was easily explained. six casts of the clay model had been made before the original was broken up. one of these morse had kept for himself, four had been given to various institutions, and one to his friend charles bulfinch, who succeeded latrobe as the architect of the capitol. a sinister fate seemed to pursue these little effigies, for his own, and the four he had presented to different institutions, were all destroyed in one way and another. after tracing each one of these five to its untimely end, he came to the conclusion that this evidence of his youthful genius had perished from the earth; but here, at last, the only remaining copy was providentially revealed to the eyes of its creator, having undoubtedly been placed in the vault for safe-keeping and overlooked. it was cheerfully returned to him. by him it was given to his friend, the reverend e. goodrich smith, and by the latter presented to yale university, where it now rests in the fine arts building. so ended the year , a decade since the first conception of the telegraph on board the sully, and it found the inventor making his last stand for recognition from that government to which he had been so loyal, and upon which he wished to bestow a priceless gift. with the dawn of the new year, a year destined to mark an epoch in the history of civilization, his flagging spirits were revived, and he entered with zest on what proved to be his final and successful struggle. it passes belief that with so many ocular demonstrations of the practicability of the morse telegraph, and with the reports of the success of other telegraphs abroad, the popular mind, as reflected in its representatives in congress, should have remained so incredulous. morse had been led to hope that his bill was going to pass by acclamation, but in this he was rudely disappointed. still he had many warm friends who believed in him and his invention. first and foremost should be mentioned his classmate, henry l. ellsworth, the commissioner of patents, at whose hospitable home the inventor stayed during some of these anxious days, and who, with his family, cheered him with encouraging words and help. among the members of congress who were energetic in support of the bill especially worthy of mention are--kennedy, of maryland; mason, of ohio; wallace, of indiana; ferris and boardman, of new york; holmes, of south carolina; and aycrigg, of new jersey. the alternating moods of hope and despair, through which the inventor passed during the next few weeks, are best pictured forth by himself in brief extracts from letters to his brother sidney:-- "_january , ._ i sent you a copy of the report on the telegraph a day or two since. i was in hopes of having it called up to-day, but the house refused to go into committee of the whole on the state of the union, so it is deferred. the first time they go into committee of the whole on the state of the union it will probably be called up and be decided upon. "everything looks favorable, but i do not suffer myself to be sanguine, for i do not know what may be doing secretly against it. i shall believe it passed when the signature of the president is affixed to it, and not before." "_january ._ i snatch the moments of waiting for company in the committee room of commerce to write a few lines. patience is a virtue much needed and much tried here. so far as opinion goes everything is favorable to my bill. i hear of no opposition, but should not be surprised if it met with some. the great difficulty is to get it up before the house; there are so many who must '_define their position_,' as the term is, so many who must say something to 'bunkum,' that a great deal of the people's time is wasted in mere idle, unprofitable speechifying. i hope something may be done this week that shall be decisive, so that i may know what to do.... this waiting at so much risk makes me question myself: am i in the path of duty? when i think that the little money i brought with me is nearly gone, that, if nothing should be done by congress, i shall be in a destitute state; that perhaps i shall have again to be a burden to friends until i know to what to turn my hands, i feel low-spirited. i am only relieved by naked trust in god, and it is right that this should be so." "_january ._ my patience is still tried in waiting for the action of congress on my bill. with so much at stake you may easily conceive how tantalizing is this state of suspense. i wish to feel right on this subject; not to be impatient, nor distrustful, nor fretful, and yet to be prepared for the worst. i find my funds exhausting, my clothing wearing out, my time, especially, rapidly waning, and my affairs at home requiring some little looking after; and then, if i should after all be disappointed, the alternative looks dark, and to human eyes disastrous in the extreme. "i hardly dare contemplate this side of the matter, and yet i ought so far to consider it as to provide, if possible, against being struck down by such a blow. at times, after waiting all day and day after day, in the hope that my bill may be called up, and in vain, i feel heart-sick, and finding nothing accomplished, that no progress is made, that _precious time_ flies, i am depressed and begin to question whether i am in the way of duty. but when i feel that i have done all in my power, and that this delay may be designed by the wise disposer of all events for a trial of patience, i find relief and a disposition quietly to wait such issue as he shall direct, knowing that, if i sincerely have put my trust in him, he will not lead me astray, and my way will, in any event, be made plain." "_january ._ i am still _waiting, waiting_. i know not what the issue will be and wish to be prepared, and have you all prepared, for the worst in regard to the bill. although i learn of no opposition yet i have seen enough of the modes of business in the house to know that everything there is more than in ordinary matters uncertain. it will be the end of the session, probably, before i return. i will not have to reproach myself, or be reproached by others, for any neglect, but under all circumstances i am exceedingly tried. i am too foreboding probably, and ought not so to look ahead as to be distrustful. i fear that i have no right feelings in this state of suspense. it is easier to say 'thy will be done' than at all tunes to feel it, yet i can pray that god's will may be done whatever becomes of me and mine." "_january ._ i am still kept in suspense which is becoming more and more tantalizing and painful. but i endeavor to exercise patience." "_february ._ i think the clouds begin to break away and a little sunlight begins to cheer me. the house in committee of the whole on the state of the union have just passed my bill through committee to report to the house. there was an attempt made to cast ridicule upon it by a very few headed by mr. cave johnson, who proposed an amendment that half the sum should be appropriated to mesmeric experiments. only supported him and it was laid aside to be reported to the house without amendment and without division. "i was immediately surrounded by my friends in the house, congratulating me and telling me that the crisis is passed, and that the bill will pass the house by a large majority. mr. kennedy, chairman of the committee on commerce, has put the bill on the speaker's calendar for thursday morning, when the final vote in the house will be taken. it then has to go to the senate, where i have reason to believe it will meet with a favorable reception. then to the president, and, if signed by him, i shall return with renovated spirits, for i assure you i have for some time been at the lowest ebb, and can now scarcely realize that a turn has occurred in my favor. i don't know when i have been so much tried as in the tedious delays of the last two months, but i see a reason for it in the providence of god. he has been pleased to try my patience, and not until my impatience had yielded unreservedly to submission has he relieved me by granting light upon my path. praised be his name, for to him alone belongs all the glory. "i write with a dreadful headache caused by over excitement in the house, but hope to be better after a night's rest, i have written in haste just to inform you of the first symptoms of success." on the same date as that of the preceding letter, february , the following appeared in the "congressional globe," and its very curtness and flippancy is indicative of the indifference of the public in general to this great invention, and the proceedings which are summarized cast discredit on the intelligence of our national lawmakers:-- electro and animal magnetism on motion of mr. kennedy of maryland, the committee took up the bill to authorize a series of experiments to be made in order to test the merits of morse's electro-magnetic telegraph. the bill appropriates $ , , to be expended under the direction of the postmaster-general. on motion of mr. kennedy, the words "postmaster-general" were stricken out and "secretary of the treasury" inserted. mr. cave johnson wished to have a word to say upon the bill. as the present congress had done much to encourage science, he did not wish to see the science of mesmerism neglected and overlooked. he therefore proposed that one half of the appropriation be given to mr. fisk, to enable him to carry on experiments, as well as professor morse. mr. houston thought that millerism should also be included in the benefits of the appropriation. mr. stanly said he should have no objection to the appropriation for mesmeric experiments, provided the gentleman from tennessee [mr. cave johnson] was the subject. [a laugh.] mr. cave johnson said he should have no objection provided the gentleman from north carolina [mr. stanly] was the operator. [great laughter.] several gentlemen called for the reading of the amendment, and it was read by the clerk, as follows:-- "_provided_, that one half of the said sum shall be appropriated for trying mesmeric experiments under the direction of the secretary of the treasury." mr. s. mason rose to a question of order. he maintained that the amendment was not _bona fide_, and that such amendments were calculated to injure the character of the house. he appealed to the chair to rule the amendment out of order. the chairman said it was not for him to judge of the motives of members in offering amendments, and he could not, therefore, undertake to pronounce the amendment not _bona fide_. objections might be raised to it on the ground that it was not sufficiently analogous in character to the bill under consideration, but, in the opinion of the chair, it would require a scientific analysis to determine how far the magnetism of mesmerism was analogous to that to be employed in telegraphs. [laughter.] he therefore ruled the amendment in order. on taking the vote, the amendment was rejected--ayes , noes not counted. the bill was then laid aside to be reported. on february , the once more hopeful inventor sent off the following hurriedly written letter to his brother:-- "you will perceive by the proceedings of the house to-day that _my bill has passed the house by a vote of to _. a close vote after the expectations raised by some of my friends in the early part of the session, but enough is as good as a feast, and it is safe so far as the house is concerned. i will advise you of the progress of it through the senate. all my anxieties are now centred there. i write in great haste." a revised record of the voting showed that the margin of victory was even slighter, for in a letter to smith, morse says:-- "the long agony (truly agony to me) is over, for you will perceive by the papers of to-morrow that, so far as the house is concerned, the matter is decided. _my bill has passed by a vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three._ a close vote, you will say, but explained upon several grounds not affecting the disposition of many individual members, who voted against it, to the invention. in this matter six votes are as good as a thousand, so far as the appropriation is concerned. "the yeas and nays will tell you who were friendly and who adverse to the bill. i shall now bend all my attention to the senate. there is a good disposition there and i am now strongly encouraged to think that my invention will be placed before the country in such a position as to be properly appreciated, and to yield to all its proprietors a proper compensation. "i have no desire to vaunt my exertions, but i can truly say that i have never passed so trying a period as the last two months. professor fisher (who has been of the greatest service to me) and i have been busy from morning till night every day since we have been here. i have brought him on with me at my expense, and he will be one of the first assistants in the first experimental line, if the bill passes.... my feelings at the prospect of success are of a joyous character, as you may well believe, and one of the principal elements of my joy is that i shall be enabled to contribute to the happiness of all who formerly assisted me, some of whom are, at present, specially depressed." writing to alfred vail on the same day, he says after telling of the passage of the bill:-- "you can have but a faint idea of the sacrifices and trials i have had in getting the telegraph thus far before the country and the world. i cannot detail them here; i can only say that, for two years, i have labored all my time and at my own expense, without assistance from the other proprietors (except in obtaining the iron of the magnets for the last instruments obtained of you) to forward our enterprise. my means to defray my expenses, to meet which every cent i owned in the world was collected, are nearly all gone, and if, by any means, the bill should fail in the senate, i shall return to new york with the _fraction of a dollar_ in my pocket." and now the final struggle which meant success or failure was on. only eight days of the session remained and the calendar was, as usual, crowded. the inventor, his nerves stretched to the breaking point, hoped and yet feared. he had every reason to believe that the senate would show more broad-minded enlightenment than the house, and yet he had been told that his bill would pass the house by acclamation, while the event proved that it had barely squeezed through by a beggarly majority of six. he heard disquieting rumors of a determination on the part of some of the house members to procure the defeat of the bill in the senate. would they succeed, would the victory, almost won, be snatched from him at the last moment, or would his faith in an overruling providence, and in his own mission as an instrument of that providence, be justified at last? every day of that fateful week saw him in his place in the gallery of the senate chamber, and all day long he sat there, listening, as we can well imagine, with growing impatience to the senatorial oratory on the merits or demerits of bills which to him were of such minor importance, however heavily freighted with the destinies of the nation they may have been. and every night he returned to his room with the sad reflection that one more of the precious days had passed and his bill had not been reached. and then came the last day, march , that day when the session of the senate is prolonged till midnight, when the president, leaving the white house, sits in the room provided for him at the capitol, ready to sign the bills which are passed in these last few hurried hours, if they meet with his approval, or to consign them to oblivion if they do not. the now despairing inventor clung to his post in the gallery almost to the end, but, being assured by his senatorial friends that there was no possibility of the bill being reached, and unable to bear the final blow of hearing the gavel fall which should signalize his defeat, shrinking from the well-meant condolences of his friends, he returned almost broken-hearted to his room. the future must have looked black indeed. he had staked his all and lost, and he was resolved to abandon all further efforts to press his invention on an unfeeling and a thankless world. he must pick up his brush again; he must again woo the fickle goddess of art, who had deserted him before, and who would, in all probability, be chary of her favors now. in that dark hour it would not have been strange if his trust in god had wavered, if he had doubted the goodness of that providence to whose mysterious workings he had always submissively bowed. but his faith seems to have risen triumphant even under this crushing stroke, for he thus describes the events of that fateful night, and of the next morning, in a letter to bishop stevens, of pennsylvania, written many years later:-- "the last days of the last session of that congress were about to close. a bill appropriating thirty thousand dollars for my purpose had passed the house, and was before the senate for concurrence. on the last day of the session [ d of march, ] i had spent the whole day and part of the evening in the senate chamber, anxiously watching, the progress of the passing of the various bills, of which there were, in the morning of that day, over one hundred and forty to be acted upon before the one in which i was interested would be reached; and a resolution had a few days before been passed to proceed with the bills on the calendar in their regular order, forbidding any bill to be taken up out of its regular place. "as evening approached there seemed to be but little chance that the telegraph bill would be reached before the adjournment, and consequently i had the prospect of the delay of another year, with the loss of time, and all my means already expended. in my anxiety i consulted with two of my senatorial friends--senator huntington, of connecticut, and senator wright, of new york--asking their opinion of the probability of reaching the bill before the close of the session. their answers were discouraging, and their advice was to prepare myself for disappointment. in this state of mind i retired to my chamber and made all my arrangements for leaving washington the next day. painful as was this prospect of renewed disappointment, you, my dear sir, will understand me when i say that, knowing from experience whence my help must come in any difficulty, i soon disposed of my cares, and slept as quietly as a child. "in the morning, as i had just gone into the breakfast-room, the servant called me out, announcing that a young lady was in the parlor wishing to speak with me. i was at once greeted with the smiling face of my young friend, the daughter of my old and valued friend and classmate, the honorable h.l. ellsworth, the commissioner of patents. on my expressing surprise at so early a call, she said:-- "'i have come to congratulate you.' "'indeed, for what?' "'on the passage of your bill.' "'oh! no, my young friend, you are mistaken; i was in the senate chamber till after the lamps were lighted, and my senatorial friends assured me there was no chance for me.' "'but,' she replied, 'it is you that are mistaken. father was there at the adjournment at midnight, and saw the president put his name to your bill, and i asked father if i might come and tell you, and he gave me leave. am i the first to tell you?' "the news was so unexpected that for some moments i could not speak. at length i replied:-- "'yes, annie, you are the first to inform me, and now i am going to make you a promise; the first dispatch on the completed line from washington to baltimore shall be yours.' "'well,' said she, 'i shall hold you to your promise.'" this was the second great moment in the history of the morse telegraph. the first was when the inspiration came to him on board the sully, more than a decade before, and now, after years of heart-breaking struggles with poverty and discouragements of all kinds, the faith in god and in himself, which had upheld him through all, was justified, and he saw the dawning of a brighter day. on what slight threads do hang our destinies! the change of a few votes in the house, the delay of a few minutes in the senate, would have doomed morse to failure, for it is doubtful whether he would have had the heart, the means, or the encouragement to prosecute the enterprise further. he lost no time in informing his associates of the happy turn in their affairs, and, in the excitement of the moment, he not only dated his letter to smith march , instead of march , but he seems not to have understood that the bill had already been signed by the president, and had become a law:-- "well, my dear sir, the matter is decided. _the senate has just passed my bill without division and without opposition_, and it will probably be signed by the president in a few hours. this, i think, is news enough for you at present, and, as i have other letters that i must write before the mail closes, i must say good-bye until i see you or hear from you. write to me in new york, where i hope to be by the latter part of next week." and to vail he wrote on the same day:-- "you will be glad to learn, doubtless, that my bill has passed the senate without a division and without opposition, so that now the telegraphic enterprise begins to look bright. i shall want to see you in new york after my return, which will probably be the latter part of next week. i have other letters to write, so excuse the shortness of this, which, if short, is sweet, at least. my kind regards to your father, mother, brothers, sisters, and wife. the whole delegation of your state, without exception, deserve the highest gratitude of us all." the representatives from the state of new jersey in the house voted unanimously for the bill, those of every other state were divided between the yeas and the nays and those not voting. congratulations now poured in on him from all sides; and the one he, perhaps, prized the most was from his friend and master, washington allston, then living in boston:-- "_march , ._ all your friends here join me in rejoicing at the passing of the act of congress appropriating thirty thousand dollars toward carrying out your electro-magnetic telegraph. i congratulate you with all my heart. shakespeare says: 'there is a tide in the affairs of men that, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.' you are now fairly launched on what i hope will prove to you another pactolus. _i pede fausto!_ "this has been but a melancholy year to me. i have been ill with one complaint or another nearly the whole time; the last disorder the erysipelas, but this has now nearly disappeared. i hope this letter will meet you as well in health as i take it you are now in spirits." morse lost no time in replying:-- "i thank you, my dear sir, for your congratulations in regard to my telegraphic enterprise. i hope i shall not disappoint the expectations of my friends. i shall exert all my energies to show a complete and satisfactory result. when i last wrote you from washington, i wrote under the apprehension that my bill would not be acted upon, and consequently i wrote in very low spirits. "'what has become of painting?' i think i hear you ask. ah, my dear sir, when i have diligently and perseveringly wooed the coquettish jade for twenty years, and she then jilts me, what can i do? but i do her injustice, she is not to blame, but her guardian for the time being. i shall not give her up yet in despair, but pursue her even with lightning, and so overtake her at last. "i am now absorbed in my arrangements for fulfilling my designs with the telegraph in accordance with the act of congress. i know not that i shall be able to complete my experiment before congress meets again, but i shall endeavor to show it to them at their next session." chapter xxx march , --june , work on first telegraph line begun.--gale, fisher, and vail appointed assistants.--f.o.j. smith to secure contract for trenching.--morse not satisfied with contract.--death of washington allston.--reports to secretary of the treasury.--prophesies atlantic cable.--failure of underground wires.--carelessness of fisher.--f.o.j. smith shows cloven hoof.--ezra cornell solves a difficult problem.--cornell's plan for insulation endorsed by professor henry.--many discouragements.--work finally progresses favorably.--frelinghuysen's nomination as vice-president reported by telegraph.--line to baltimore completed.-- first message.--triumph.--reports of democratic convention.--first long-distance conversation.--utility of telegraph established.--offer to sell to government. out of the darkness of despair into which he had been plunged, morse had at last emerged into the sunlight of success. for a little while he basked in its rays with no cloud to obscure the horizon, but his respite was short, for new difficulties soon arose, and new trials and sorrows soon darkened his path. immediately after the telegraph bill had become a law he set to work with energy to carry out its provisions. he decided, after consultation with the secretary of the treasury, hon. j.c. spencer, to erect the experimental line between washington and baltimore, along the line of railway, and all the preliminaries and details were carefully planned. with the sanction of the secretary he appointed professors gale and fisher as his assistants, and soon after added mr. alfred vail to their number. he returned to new york, and from there wrote to vail on march :-- "you will not fail, with your brother and, if possible, your father, to be in new york on tuesday the st, to meet the proprietors of the telegraph. i was on the point of coming out this afternoon with young mr. serrell, the patentee of the lead-pipe machine, which i think promises to be the best for our purposes of all that have been invented, as to it can be applied '_a mode of filling lead-pipe with wire_,' for which professor fisher and myself have entered a caveat at the patent office." vail gladly agreed to serve as assistant in the construction of the line, and, on march signed the following agreement:-- professor morse,--as an assistant in the telegraphic experiment contemplated by the act of congress lately passed, i can superintend and procure the making of the _instruments complete_ according to your direction, namely: the registers, the correspondents with their magnets, the batteries, the reels, and the paper, and will attend to the procuring of the acids, the ink, and the preparation of the various stations. i will assist in filling the tubes with wire, and the resinous coating, and i will devote my whole time and attention to the business so as to secure a favorable result, and should you wish to devolve upon me any other business connected with the telegraph, i will cheerfully undertake it. three dollars per diem, with travelling expenses, i shall deem a satisfactory salary. very respectfully, your ob't ser't, alfred vail. professor fisher was detailed to superintend the manufacture of the wire, its insulation and its insertion in the lead tubes, and professor gale's scientific knowledge was to be placed at the disposal of the patentees wherever and whenever it should be necessary. f.o.j. smith undertook to secure a favorable contract for the trenching, which was necessary to carry out the first idea of placing the wires underground, and morse himself was, of course, to be general superintendent of the whole enterprise. in advertising for lead pipe the following quaint answer was received from morris, tasker & morris, of philadelphia:-- "thy advertisements for about one hundred and twenty miles of / in. lead tube, for electro magnetic telegraphic purposes, has induced us to forward thee some samples of iron tube for thy inspection. the quantity required and the terms of payment are the inducement to offer it to thee at the exceeding low price here stated, which thou wilt please keep _to thyself undivulged to other person_, etc., etc." as iron tubing would not have answered morse's purpose, this decorous solicitation was declined with thanks. during the first few months everything worked smoothly, and the prospect of an early completion of the line was bright. morse kept all his accounts in the most businesslike manner, and his monthly accounts to the secretary of the treasury were models of accuracy and a conscientious regard for the public interest. one small cloud appeared above the horizon, so small that the unsuspecting inventor hardly noticed it, and yet it was destined to develop into a storm of portentous dimensions. on may , he wrote to f.o.j. smith from new york:-- "yours of the th april i have this morning received enclosing the contracts for trenching. i have examined the contract and i must say i am not exactly pleased with the terms. if i understood you right, before you left for boston, you were confident a contract could be made far within the estimates given in to the government, and i had hoped that something could be saved from that estimate as from the others, so as to present the experiment before the country in as cheap a form as possible. "i have taken a pride in showing to government how cheaply the telegraph could be laid, since the main objection, and the one most likely to defeat our ulterior plans, is its great expense. i have in my other contracts been able to be far within my estimates to government, and i had hoped to be able to present to the secretary the contract for trenching likewise reduced. there are plenty of applicants here who will do it for much less, and one even said he thought for one half. i shall do nothing in regard to the matter until i see you." a great personal sorrow came to him also, a short time after this, to dim the brilliance of success. on july , , his dearly loved friend and master, washington allston, died in boston after months of suffering. morse immediately dropped everything and hastened to boston to pay the last tributes of respect to him whom he regarded as his best friend. he obtained as a memento one of the brushes, still wet with paint, which allston was using on his last unfinished work, "the feast of belshazzar," when he was suddenly stricken. this brush he afterwards presented to the national academy of design, where it is, i believe, still preserved. sorrowfully he returned to his work in washington, but with the comforting thought that his friend had lived to see his triumph, the justification for his deserting that art which had been the bond to first bring them together. on july , in his report to the secretary of the treasury, he says:-- "i have also the gratification to report that the contract for the wire has been faithfully fulfilled on the part of aaron benedict, the contractor; that the first covering with cotton and two varnishings of the whole one hundred and sixty miles is also completed; that experiments made upon forty-three miles have resulted in the most satisfactory manner, and that the whole work is proceeding with every prospect of a successful issue." it was at first thought necessary to insulate the whole length of the wire, and it was not until some time afterwards that it was discovered that naked wires could be successfully employed. on august , in his report to the secretary, he indulges in a prophecy which must have seemed in the highest degree visionary in those early days:-- "some careful experiments on the decomposing power at various distances were made from which the law of propulsion has been deduced, verifying the results of ohm and those which i made in the summer of , and alluded to in my letter to the honorable c.g. ferris, published in the house report, no. , of the last congress. "the practical inference from this law is that a telegraphic communication on my plan may with certainty be established across the atlantic! "startling as this may seem now, the time will come when this project will be realized." on september , he reports an item of saving to the government which illustrates his characteristic honesty in all business dealings:-- "i would also direct the attention of the honorable secretary to the payment in full of mr. chase, (voucher ), for covering the wire according to the contract with him. the sum of $ was to be paid him. in the course of the preparation of the wire several improvements occurred to me of an economical character, in which mr. chase cheerfully concurred, although at a considerable loss to him of labor contracted for; so that my wire has been prepared at a cost of $ . , which is receipted in full, instead of $ , producing an economy of $ . ." the work of trenching was commenced on saturday, october , at a.m., and then his troubles began. describing them at a later date he says:-- "much time and expense were lost in consequence of my following the plan adopted in england of laying the conductors beneath the ground. at the time the telegraph bill was passed there had been about thirteen miles of telegraph conductors, for professor wheatstone's telegraph system in england, put into tubes and interred in the earth, and there was no hint publicly given that that mode was not perfectly successful. i did not feel, therefore, at liberty to expend the public moneys in useless experiments on a plan which seemed to be already settled as effective in england. hence i fixed upon this mode as one supposed to be the best. it prosecuted till the winter of - . it was abandoned, among other reasons, in consequence of ascertaining that, in the process of inserting the wire into the leaden tubes (which was at the moment of forming the tube from the lead at melting heat), the insulating covering of the wires had become charred, at various and numerous points of the line, to such an extent that greater delay and expense would be necessary to repair the damage than to put the wire on posts. "in my letter to the secretary of the treasury, of september , , one of the modes of laying the conductors for the telegraph was the present almost universal one of extending them on posts set about two hundred feet apart. this mode was adopted with success." the sentence in the letter of september , , just referred to, reads as follows: "if the circuit is laid through the air, the first cost would, doubtless, be much lessened. stout spars, of some thirty feet in height, well planted in the ground and placed about three hundred and fifty feet apart, would in this case be required, along the tops of which the circuit might be stretched." a rough drawing of this plan also appears in the sketch-book. it would seem, from a voluminous correspondence, that professor fisher was responsible for the failure of the underground system, inasmuch as he did not properly test the wires after they had been inserted in the lead pipe. carelessness of this sort morse could never brook, and he was reluctantly compelled to dispense with the services of one who had been of great use to him previously. he refers to this in a letter to his brother sidney of december , :-- "the season is against all my operations, and i expect to resume in the spring. i have difficulties and trouble in my work, but none of a nature as yet to discourage; they arise from neglect and unfaithfulness (_inter nos_) on the part of fisher, whom i shall probably dismiss, although on many accounts i shall do it reluctantly. i shall give him an opportunity to excuse himself, if he ever gets here. i have been expecting both him and gale for three weeks, and written, but without bringing either of them. they may have a good excuse. we shall see." the few months of sunshine were now past, and the clouds began again to gather:-- december , . dear sidney,--i have made every effort to try and visit new york. twice i have been ready with my baggage in hand, but am prevented by a pressure of difficulties which you cannot conceive. i was never so tried and never needed more your prayers and those of christians for me. troubles cluster in such various shapes that i am almost overwhelmed. and then the storm of which the little cloud was the forerunner burst in fury:-- december , . dear sidney,--i have no heart to give you the details of the troubles which almost crush me, and which have unexpectedly arisen to throw a cloud over all my prospects. it must suffice at present to say that the unfaithfulness of dr. fisher in his inspection of the wires, and connected with serrell's bad pipe, is the main origin of my difficulties. the trenching is stopped in consequence of this among other reasons, and has brought the contractor upon me for damages (that is, upon the government). mr. smith is the contractor, and where i expected to find a _friend_ i find a fiend. the word is not too strong, as i may one day show you. i have been compelled to dismiss fisher, and have received a very insolent letter from him in reply. the lead-pipe contract will be litigated, and smith has written a letter full of the bitterest malignity against me to the secretary of the treasury. he seems perfectly reckless and acts like a madman, and all for what? because the condition of my pipe and the imperfect insulation of my wires were such that it became necessary to stop trenching on this account alone, but, taken in connection with the advanced state of the season, when it was impossible to carry on my operations out of doors, i was compelled to stop any further trenching. this causes him to lose his profit on the contract. _hinc illæ lachrymæ._ and because i refused to accede to terms which, as a public officer, i could not do without dishonor and violation of trust, he pursues me thus malignantly. blessed be god, i have escaped snares set for me by this arch-fiend, one of which a simple inquiry from you was the means of detecting. you remember i told you that mr. smith had made an advantageous contract with tatham & brothers for pipe, and had divided the profits with me by which i should gain five hundred dollars. you asked if it was all right and, if it should be made public, it would be considered so. i replied, 'oh! yes; mr. smith says it is all perfectly fair' (for i had the utmost confidence in his fair dealing and uprightness). but your remark led me to think of the matter, and i determined at once that, since there was a doubt, i would not touch it for myself, but credit it to the government, and i accordingly credited it as so much saved to the government from the contract. and now, will you believe it! the man who would have persuaded me that all was right in that matter, turns upon me and accuses me to the secretary as dealing in bad faith to the government, citing this very transaction in proof. but, providentially, my friend ellsworth, and also a clerk in the treasury department, are witnesses that that sum was credited to the government before any difficulties arose on the part of smith. but i leave this unpleasant matter. the enterprise yet looks lowering, but i know who can bring light out of darkness, and in him i trust as a sure refuge till these calamities be overpast.... oh! how these troubles drive all thought of children and brothers and all relatives out of my mind except in the wakeful hours of the night, and then i think of you all with sadness, that i cannot add to your enjoyment but only to your anxiety. ... love to all. specially remember me in your prayers that i may have wisdom from above to act wisely and justly and calmly in this sore trial. while thus some of those on whom he had relied failed him at a critical moment, new helpers were at hand to assist him in carrying on the work. on december , he writes to the secretary of the treasury: "i have the honor to report that i have dismissed professor james c. fisher, one of my assistants, whose salary was $ per annum.... my present labors require the services of an efficient mechanical assistant whom i believe i have found in mr. ezra cornell, and whom i present for the approval of the honorable secretary, with a compensation at the rate of, $ per annum from december , ." cornell proved himself, indeed, an efficient assistant, and much of the success of the enterprise, from that time forward, was due to his energy, quick-wittedness, and faithfulness. mr. prime, in his biography of morse, thus describes a dramatic episode of those trying days:-- "when the pipe had been laid as far as the relay house, professor morse came to mr. cornell and expressed a desire to have the work arrested until he could try further experiments, but he was very anxious that nothing should be said or done to give to the public the impression that the enterprise had failed. mr. cornell said he could easily manage it, and, stepping up to the machine, which was drawn by a team of eight mules, he cried out: 'hurrah, boys! we must lay another length of pipe before we quit.' the teamsters cracked their whips over the mules and they started on a lively pace. mr. cornell grasped the handles of the plough, and, watching an opportunity, canted it so as to catch the point of a rock, and broke it to pieces while professor morse stood looking on. "consultations long and painful followed. the anxiety of professor morse at this period was greater than at any previous hour known in the history of the invention. some that were around him had serious apprehensions that he would not stand up under the pressure." cornell having thus cleverly cut the gordian knot, it was decided to string wires on poles, and cornell himself thus describes the solution of the insulation problem:-- "in the latter part of march professor morse gave me the order to put the wires on poles, and the question at once arose as to the mode of _fastening the wires to the poles_, and the insulation of them at the point of fastening. i submitted a plan to the professor which i was confident would be successful as an insulating medium, and which was easily available then and inexpensive. mr. vail also submitted a plan for the same purpose, which involved the necessity of going to new york or new jersey to get it executed. professor morse gave preference to mr. vail's plan, and started for new york to get the fixtures, directing me to get the wire ready for use and arrange for setting the poles. "at the end of a week professor morse returned from new york and came to the shop where i was at work, and said he wanted to provide the insulators for putting the wires on the poles upon the plan i had suggested; to which i responded: 'how is that, professor; i thought you had decided to use mr. vail's plan?' professor morse replied: 'yes, i did so decide, and on my way to new york, where i went to order the fixtures, i stopped at princeton and called on my old friend, professor henry, who inquired how i was getting along with my telegraph. "'i explained to him the failure of the insulation in the pipes, and stated that i had decided to place the wires on poles in the air. he then inquired how i proposed to insulate the wires when they were attached to the poles. i showed him the model i had of mr. vail's plan, and he said, "it will not do; you will meet the same difficulty you had in the pipes." i then explained to him your plan which he said would answer.'" however, before the enterprise had reached this point in march, , many dark and discouraging days and weeks had to be passed, which we can partially follow by the following extracts from letters to his brother sidney and others. to his brother he writes on january , :-- "i thank you for your kind and sympathizing letter, which, i assure you, helped to mitigate the acuteness of my mental sufferings from the then disastrous aspect of my whole enterprise. god works by instrumentalities, and he has wonderfully thus far interposed in keeping evils that i feared in abeyance. all, i trust, will yet be well, but i have great difficulties to encounter and overcome, with the details of which i need not now trouble you. i think i see light ahead, and the great result of these difficulties, i am persuaded, will be a great economy in laying the telegraphic conductors.... i am well in health but have sleepless nights from the great anxieties and cares which weigh me down." "_january ._ i am working to retrieve myself under every disadvantage and amidst accumulated and most diversified trials, but i have strength from the source of strength, and courage to go forward. fisher i have dismissed for unfaithfulness; dr. gale has resigned from ill-health; smith has become a malignant enemy, and vail only remains true at his post. all my pipe is useless as the wires are all injured by the _hot process_ of manufacture. i am preparing (as i said before, under every disadvantage) a short distance between the patent office and capitol, which i am desirous of having completed as soon as possible, and by means of it relieving the enterprise from the heavy weight which now threatens it." to his good friend, commissioner ellsworth, he writes from baltimore on february :-- "in complying with your kind request that i would write you, i cannot refrain from expressing my warm thanks for the words of sympathy and the promise of a welcome on my return, which you gave me as i was leaving the door. i find that, brace myself as i will against trouble, the spirit so sympathises with the body that its moods are in sad bondage to the physical health; the latter vanquishing the former. for the spirit is often willing and submits, while the flesh is weak and rebels. "i am fully aware that of late i have evinced an unusual sensitiveness, and exposed myself to the charge of great weakness, which would give me the more distress were i not persuaded that i have been among real friends who will make every allowance. my temperament, naturally sensitive, has lately been made more so by the combination of attacks from deceitful associates without and bodily illness within, so that even the kind attentions of the dear friends at your house, and who have so warmly rallied around me, have scarcely been able to restore me to my usual buoyancy of spirit, and i feel, amidst other oppressive thoughts, that i have not been grateful enough for your friendship. but i hope yet to make amends for the past.... i have no time to add more than that i desire sincere love to dear annie, to whom please present for me the accompanying piece from my favorite bellini, and the book on etiquette, after it shall have passed the ordeal of a mother's examination, as i have not had time to read it myself." on march , he writes to his brother:-- "i have nothing new. smith continues to annoy me, but i think i have got him in check by a demand for compensation for my services for seven months, for doing that for him in paris which he was bound to do. the agreement stipulates that i give my services for '_three months and no longer_,' but, at his earnest solicitation, i remained seven months longer and was his agent in 'negotiating the sale of rights,' which by the articles he was obliged to do; consequently i have a right to compensation, and mr. e. and others think my claim a valid one. if it is sustained the tables are completely turned on him, and he is debtor to me to the amount of six or seven hundred dollars. i have commenced my operations with posts which promise well at present." "_march ._ my telegraph labors go on well at present. the whole matter is now critical, or, as our good father used to say, 'a crisis is at hand.' i hope for the best while i endeavor to prepare my mind for the worst. smith, if he goes forward with his claim, is a ruined man in reputation, but he may sink the telegraph also in his passion; but, when he returns from the east, where he fortunately is now, we hope through his friends to persuade him to withdraw it, which he may do from fear of the consequences. as to his claims privately on me, i think i have him in check, but he is a man of consummate art and unprincipled; he will, therefore, doubtless give me trouble." "_april ._ a brighter day is dawning upon me. i send you the intelligencer of to-day, in which you will see that the telegraph is successfully under way. through six miles the experiment has been most gratifying. in a few days i hope to advise you of more respecting it. i have preferred reserve until i could state something positive. i have my posts set to beltsville, twelve miles, and you will see by the intelligencer that i am prepared to go directly on to baltimore and hope to reach there by the middle of may." "_may ._ let me know when susan and the two charles arrive [his son and his grandson] for, if they come within the next fortnight, i think i can contrive to run on and pay a visit of two or three days, unless my marplot smith should prevent again, as he is likely to do if he comes on here. as yet there is no settlement of that matter, and he seems determined (_inter nos_) to be as ugly as he can and defeat all application for an appropriation if i am to have the management of it. he chafes like a wild boar, but, when he finds that he can effect nothing by such a temper, self-interest may soften him into terms. "you will see by the papers that the telegraph is in successful operation for twenty-two miles, to the junction of the annapolis road with the baltimore and washington road. the nomination of mr. frelinghuysen as vice-president was written, sent on, and the receipt acknowledged back in two minutes and one second, a distance of forty-four miles. the news was spread all over washington one hour and four minutes before the cars containing the news by express arrived. in about a fortnight i hope to be in baltimore, and a communication will be established between the two cities. good-bye. i am almost asleep from exhaustion, so excuse abrupt closing." this was the first great triumph of the telegraph. morse and vail and cornell had worked day and night to get the line in readiness as far as the junction so that the proceedings of the whig convention could be reported from that point. many difficulties were encountered--crossing of wires, breaks, injury from thunder storms, and the natural errors incidental to writing and reading what was virtually a new language. but all obstacles were overcome in time, and the day before the convention met, morse wrote to vail:-- "get everything ready in the morning for the day, and do not be out of hearing of your bell. when you learn the name of the candidate nominated, see if you cannot give it to me and receive an acknowledgment of its receipt before the cars leave you. if you can it will do more to excite the wonder of those in the cars than the mere announcement that the news is gone to washington." the next day's report was most encouraging:-- "things went well to-day. your last writing was good. you did not correct your error of running your letters together until some time. better be deliberate; we have time to spare, since we do not spend upon our stock. get ready to-morrow (thursday) as to-day. there is great excitement about the telegraph and my room is thronged, therefore it is important to have it in action during the hours named. i may have some of the cabinet to-morrow.... get from the passengers in the cars from baltimore, or elsewhere, all the news you can and transmit. a good way of exciting wonder will be to tell the passengers to give you some short sentence to send me; let them note time and call at the capitol to verify the time i received it. before transmitting notify me with ( ). your message to-day that 'the passengers in the cars gave three cheers for henry clay,' excited the highest wonder in the passenger who gave it to you to send when he found it verified at the capitol." in a letter to his friend, dr. aycrigg of new jersey, written on may , and telling of these successful demonstrations, this interesting sentence occurs: "i find that the ground, in conformity with the results of experiments of dr. franklin, can be made a part of the circuit, and i have used one wire and the ground with better effect for one circuit than two wires." on the th of may he again cautions vail about his writing: "everything worked well yesterday, but there is one defect in your writing. make a _longer_ space between each letter and a still longer space between each word. i shall have a great crowd to-day and wish all things to go off well. many m.c.s will be present, perhaps mr. clay. give me news by the cars. when the cars come along, try and get a newspaper from philadelphia or new york and give items of intelligence. the arrival of the cars at the junction begins to excite here the greatest interest, and both morning and evening i have had my room thronged." and now at last the supreme moment had arrived. the line from washington to baltimore was completed, and on the th day of may, , the company invited by the inventor assembled in the chamber of the united states supreme court to witness his triumph. true to his promise to miss annie ellsworth, he had asked her to indite the first public message which should be flashed over the completed line, and she, in consultation with her good mother, chose the now historic words from the d verse of the d chapter of numbers--"what hath god wrought!" the whole verse reads: "surely there is no enchantment against jacob, neither is there any divination, against israel: according to this time it shall be said of jacob and of israel, what hath god wrought!" to morse, with his strong religious bent and his belief that he was but a chosen vessel, every word in this verse seemed singularly appropriate. calmly he seated himself at the instrument and ticked off the inspired words in the dots and dashes of the morse alphabet. alfred vail, at the other end of the line in baltimore, received the message without an error, and immediately flashed it back again, and the electro-magnetic telegraph was no longer the wild dream of a visionary, but an accomplished fact. mr. prime's comments, after describing this historic occasion, are so excellent that i shall give them in full:-- "again the triumph of the inventor was sublime. his confidence had been so unshaken that the surprise of his friends in the result was not shared by him. he knew what the instrument would do, and the fact accomplished was but the confirmation to others of what to him was a certainty on the packet-ship sully in . but the result was not the less gratifying and sufficient. had his labors ceased at that moment, he would have cheerfully exclaimed in the words of simeon: 'lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.' [illustration: first form of key] [illustration: improved form of key] [illustration: early relay the two keys and the relay are in the national museum, washington] [illustration: first washington-baltimore instrument the washington-baltimore instrument is owned by cornell university] "the congratulations of his friends followed. he received them with modesty, in perfect harmony with the simplicity of his character. neither then nor at any subsequent period of his life did his language or manner indicate exultation. he believed himself an instrument employed by heaven to achieve a great result, and, having accomplished it, he claimed simply to be the original and only instrument by which that result had been reached. with the same steadiness of purpose, tenacity and perseverance, with which he had pursued the idea by which he was inspired in , he adhered to his claim to the paternity of that idea, and to the merit of bringing it to a successful issue. denied, he asserted it; assailed, he defended it. through long years of controversy, discussion and litigation, he maintained his right. equable alike in success and discouragement, calm in the midst of victories, and undismayed by the number, the violence, and the power of those who sought to deprive him of the honor and the reward of his work, he manfully maintained his ground, until, by the verdict of the highest courts of his country, and of academies of science, and the practical adoption and indorsement of his system by his own and foreign nations, those wires, which were now speaking only forty miles from washington to baltimore, were stretched over continents and under oceans making a network to encompass and unite, in instantaneous intercourse, for business and enjoyment, all parts of the civilized world." it was with well-earned but modest satisfaction that he wrote to his brother sidney on may :-- "you will see by the papers how great success has attended the first efforts of the telegraph. that sentence of annie ellsworth's was divinely indited, for it is in my thoughts day and night. 'what hath god wrought!' it is his work, and he alone could have carried me thus far through all my trials and enabled me to triumph over the obstacles, physical and moral, which opposed me. "'not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name, o lord, be all the praise.' "i begin to fear now the effects of public favor, lest it should kindle that pride of heart and self-sufficiency which dwells in my own as well as in others' breasts, and which, alas! is so ready to be inflamed by the slightest spark of praise. i do indeed feel gratified, and it is right i should rejoice, but i rejoice with fear, and i desire that a sense of dependence upon and increased obligation to the giver of every good and perfect gift may keep me humble and circumspect. "the conventions at baltimore happened most opportunely for the display of the powers of the telegraph, especially as it was the means of correspondence, in one instance, between the democratic convention and the first candidate elect for the vice-presidency. the enthusiasm of the crowd before the window of the telegraph room in the capitol was excited to the highest pitch at the announcement of the nomination of the presidential candidate, and the whole of it afterwards seemed turned upon the telegraph. they gave the telegraph three cheers, and i was called to make my appearance at the window when three cheers were given to me by some hundreds present, composed mainly of members of congress. "such is the feeling in congress that many tell me they are ready to grant anything. even the most inveterate opposers have changed to admirers, and one of them, hon. cave johnson, who ridiculed my system last session by associating it with the tricks of animal magnetism, came to me and said: 'sir, i give in. it is an astonishing invention.' "when i see all this and such enthusiasm everywhere manifested, and contrast the present with the past season of darkness and almost despair, have i not occasion to exclaim 'what hath god wrought'? surely none but he who has all hearts in his hands, and turns them as the rivers of waters are turned could so have brought light out of darkness. 'sorrow may continue for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' pray for me then, my dear brother, that i may have a heart to praise the great deliverer, and in future, when discouraged or despairing, be enabled to remember his past mercy, and in full faith rest all my cares on him who careth for us. "mr. s. still embarrasses the progress of the invention by his stubbornness, but there are indications of giving way; mainly, i fear, because he sees his pecuniary interest in doing so, and not from any sense of the gross injury he has done me. i pray god for a right spirit in dealing with him." the incident referred to in this letter with regard to the nomination for the vice-presidency by the democratic convention is worthy of more extended notice. the convention met in baltimore on the th of may, and it was then that the two-thirds rule was first adopted. van buren had a majority of the votes, but could not secure the necessary two thirds, and finally james k. polk was unanimously nominated. this news was instantly flashed to washington by the telegraph and was received with mingled feelings of enthusiasm, disappointment, and wonder, and not believed by many until confirmed by the arrival of the mail. the convention then nominated van buren's friend, senator silas wright, of new york, for the vice-presidency. this news, too, was immediately sent by wire to washington. morse at once informed mr. wright, who was in the capitol at the time, of his nomination, but he refused to accept it, and morse wired his refusal to vail in baltimore, and it was read to the convention only a few moments after the nomination had been made. this was too much for the credulity of the assembly, and they adjourned till the following day and sent a committee to washington to verify the dispatch. upon the return of the committee, with the report that the telegraph had indeed performed this wonder, this new instrumentality received such an advertisement as could not fail to please the most exacting. then a scene was enacted new in the annals of civilization. in baltimore the committee of conference surrounded vail at his instrument, and in washington senator wright sat beside morse, all others being excluded. the committee urged wright to accept the nomination, giving him good reasons for doing so. he replied, giving as good reasons for refusing. this first long-distance conversation was carried on until the committee was finally convinced that wright was determined to refuse, and they so reported to the convention. mr. dallas was then nominated, and in november of that year polk and dallas were elected. on june , morse made his report to the honorable mcclintock young, who was then secretary of the treasury _ad interim_. it was with great satisfaction that he was able to say: "of the appropriation made there will remain in the treasury, after the settlement of outstanding accounts, about $ , which may be needed for contingent liabilities and for sustaining the line already constructed, until provision by law shall be made for such an organization of a telegraphic department or bureau as shall enable the telegraph at least to support itself, if not to become a profitable source of revenue to the government." in the course of this report mention is also made of the following interesting incidents:-- "in regard to the _utility_ of the telegraph, time alone can determine and develop the whole capacity for good of so perfect a system. in the few days of its infancy it has already casually shown its usefulness in the relief, in various ways, of the anxieties of thousands; and, when such a sure means of relief is available to the public at large, the amount of its usefulness becomes incalculable. an instance or two will best illustrate this quality of the telegraph. "a family in washington was thrown into great distress by a rumor that one of its members had met with a violent death in baltimore the evening before. several hours must have elapsed ere their state of suspense could be relieved by the ordinary means of conveyance. a note was dispatched to the telegraph rooms at the capitol requesting to have inquiry made at baltimore. the messenger had occasion to wait but _ten minutes_ when the proper inquiry was made at baltimore, and the answer returned that the rumor was without foundation. thus was a worthy family relieved immediately from a state of distressing suspense. "an inquiry from a person in baltimore, holding the check of a gentleman in washington upon the bank of washington, was sent by telegraph to ascertain if the gentleman in question had funds in that bank. a messenger was instantly dispatched from the capitol who returned in a few minutes with an affirmative answer, which was returned to baltimore instantly, thus establishing a confidence in a money arrangement which might have affected unfavorably (for many hours, at least) the business transactions of a man of good credit. "other cases might be given, but these are deemed sufficient to illustrate the point of utility, and to suggest to those who will reflect upon them thousands of cases in the public business, in commercial operations, and in private and social transactions, which establish beyond a doubt the immense advantages of such a speedy mode of conveying intelligence." while such instances of the use of the telegraph are but the commonplaces of to-day, we can imagine with what wonder they were regarded in . morse then addressed a memorial to congress, on the same day, referring to the report just quoted from, and then saying:-- "the proprietors respectfully suggest that it is an engine of power, for good or for evil, which all opinions seem to concur in desiring to have subject to the control of the government, rather than have it in the hands of private individuals and associations; and to this end the proprietors respectfully submit their willingness to transfer the exclusive use and control of it, from washington city to the city of new york, to the united states, together with such improvements as shall be made by the proprietors, or either of them, if congress shall proceed to cause its construction, and upon either of the following terms." here follow the details of the two plans: either outright purchase by the government of the existing line and construction by the government of the line from baltimore to new york, or construction of the latter by the proprietors under contract to the government; but no specific sum was mentioned in either case. this offer was not accepted, as will appear further on, but $ was appropriated for the support of the line already built, and that was all that congress would do. it was while this matter was pending that morse wrote to his brother sidney, on june :-- "i am in the crisis of matters, so far as this session of congress is concerned, in relation to the telegraph, which absorbs all my time. perfect enthusiasm seems to pervade all classes in regard to it, but there is still the thorn in the flesh which is permitted by a wise father to keep me humble, doubtless. may his strength be sufficient for me and i shall fear nothing, and will bear it till he sees fit to remove it. pray for me, as i do for you, that, if prosperity is allotted to us, we may have hearts to use it to the glory of god." chapter xxxi june , --october , fame and fortune now assured.--government declines purchase of telegraph.--accident to leg gives needed rest.--reflections on ways of providence.--consideration of financial propositions.--f.o.j. smith's fulsome praise.--morse's reply.--extension of telegraph proceeds slowly. --letter to russian minister.--letter to london "mechanics' magazine" claiming priority and first experiments in wireless telegraphy.--hopes that government may yet purchase.--longing for a home.--dinner at russian minister's.--congress again fails him.--amos kendall chosen as business agent.--first telegraph company.--fourth voyage to europe.--london, broek, hamburg.--letter of charles t. fleischmann.--paris.--nothing definite accomplished. morse's fame was now secure, and fortune was soon to follow. tried as he had been in the school of adversity, he was now destined to undergo new trials, trials incident to success, to prosperity, and to world-wide eminence. that he foresaw the new dangers which would beset him on every hand is clearly evidenced in the letters to his brother, but, heartened by the success which had at last crowned his efforts, he buckled on his armor ready to do battle to such foes, both within and without, as should in the future assail him. fatalist as we must regard him, he believed in his star; or rather he went forward with sublime faith in that god who had thus far guarded him from evil, and in his own good time had given him the victory, and such a victory! for twelve years he had fought on through trials and privations, hampered by bodily ailments and the deep discouragements of those who should have aided him. pitted against the trained minds and the wealth of other nations, he had gone forth a very david to battle, and, like david, the simplicity of his missile had given him the victory. other telegraphs had been devised by other men; some had actually been put into operation, but it would seem as if all the nations had held their breath until his appeared, and, sweeping all the others from the field, demonstrated and maintained its supremacy. from this time forward his life became more complex. honors were showered upon him; fame carried his name to the uttermost parts of the earth; his counsel was sought by eminent scientists and by other inventors, both practical and visionary. on the other hand, detractors innumerable arose; his rights to the invention were challenged, in all sincerity and in insincerity; infringements of his patent rights necessitated long and acrimonious lawsuits, and, like other men of mark, he was traduced and vilified. in addition to all this he took an active interest in the seething politics of the day and in religious questions which, to his mind and that of many others, affected the very foundations of the nation. to follow him through all these labyrinthine ways would require volumes, and i shall content myself with selecting only such letters as may give a fair idea of how he bore himself in the face of these new and manifold trials, of how he sometimes erred in judgment and in action, but how through all he was sincere and firm in his faith, and how, at last, he was to find that home and that domestic bliss which he had all his life so earnestly desired, but which had until the evening of his days been denied to him. having won his great victory, retirement from the field of battle would have best suited him. he was now fifty-three years of age, and he felt that he had earned repose. to this end he sought to carry out his long-cherished idea that the telegraph should become the property of the government, and he was willing to accept a very modest remuneration. as i have said before, he and the other proprietors joined in offering the telegraph to the government for the paltry sum of $ , . but the administration of that day seems to have been stricken with unaccountable blindness, for the postmaster-general, that same wise and sapient cave johnson who had sought to kill the telegraph bill by ridicule in the house, and in despite of his acknowledgment to morse, reported: "that the operation of the telegraph between washington and baltimore had not satisfied him that, under any rate of postage that could be adopted, its revenues could be made equal to its expenditures." congress was equally lax, and so the government lost its great opportunity, for when, in after years, the question of government ownership again came up, it was found that either to purchase outright or to parallel existing lines would cost many more millions than it would have taken thousands in . the failure of the government to appreciate the value of what was offered to them was always a source of deep regret to morse. for, while he himself gained much more by the operation of private companies, the evils which he had foretold were more than realized. but to return to the days of ' , it would seem that in the spring of that year he met with a painful accident. its exact nature is not specified, but it must have been severe, and yet we learn from the following letter to his brother sidney, dated june , that he saw in it only another blessing:-- "i am still in bed, and from appearances i am likely to be held here for many days, perhaps weeks. the wound on the leg was worse than i at first supposed. it seems slow in healing and has been much inflamed, although now yielding to remedies. my hope was to have spent some weeks in new york, but it will now depend on the time of the healing of my leg. "the ways of god are mysterious, and i find prayer answered in a way not at all anticipated. this accident, as we are apt to call it, i can plainly see is calculated to effect many salutary objects. i needed rest of body and mind after my intense anxieties and exertions, and i might have neglected it, and so, perhaps, brought on premature disease of both; but i am involuntarily laid up so that i must keep quiet, and, although the fall that caused my wound was painful at first, yet i have no severe pain with it now. but the principal effect is, doubtless, intended to be of a spiritual character, and i am afforded an opportunity of quiet reflection on the wonderful dealings of god with me. "i cannot but constantly exclaim, 'what hath god wrought!' when i look back upon the darkness of last winter and reflect how, at one time everything seemed hopeless; when i remember that all my associates in the enterprise of the telegraph had either deserted me or were discouraged, and one had even turned my enemy, reviler and accuser (and even mr. vail, who has held fast to me from the beginning, felt like giving up just in the deepest darkness of all); when i remember that, giving up all hope myself from any other source than his right arm which brings salvation, his salvation did come in answer to prayer, faith is strengthened, and did i not know by too sad experience the deceitfulness of the heart, i should say that it was impossible for me again to distrust or feel anxiety, undue anxiety, for the future. but he who knows the heart knows its disease, and, as the good physician, if we give ourselves unreservedly into his hands to be cured, he will give that medicine which his perfect knowledge of our case prescribes. "i am well aware that just now my praises ring from one end of the country to the other. i cannot take up a paper in which i do not find something to flatter the natural pride of the heart. i have prayed, indeed, against it; i have asked for a right spirit under a trial of a new character, for prosperity is a trial, and our saviour has denounced a woe on us 'when all men speak well of us.' may it not then be in answer to this prayer that he shuts me up, to strengthen me against the temptations which the praises of the world present, and so, by meditation on his dealings with me and reviewing the way in which he has led me, showing me my perfect helplessness without him, he is preparing to bless me with stronger faith and more unreserved faith in him? "to him, indeed, belongs all the glory. i have had evidence enough that without christ i could do nothing. all my strength is there and i fervently desire to ascribe to him all the praise. if i am to have influence, increased influence, i desire to have it for christ, to use it for his cause; if wealth, for christ; if more knowledge, for christ. i speak sincerely when i say i fear prosperity lest i should be proud and forget whence it comes." having at length recovered from the accident which had given him, in spite of himself, the rest which he so much needed, morse again devoted himself to his affairs with his accustomed vigor. the government still delaying to take action, he was compelled, much to his regret, to consider the offers of private parties to extend the lines of the telegraph to important points in the union. he had received propositions from various persons who were eager to push the enterprise, but in all negotiations he was hampered by the dilatoriness of smith, who seemed bent on putting as many obstacles in the way of an amicable settlement as possible, and some of whose propositions had to be rejected for obvious reasons. before congress had finally put the quietus on his hopes in that direction, he considered the advisability of parting with his interest to some individual, and, on july , , he wrote to mr. david burbank from baltimore:-- "in reply to your query for what sum i would sell my share of the patent right in the telegraph, which amounts to one half, i frankly say that, if _one hundred and ten thousand dollars_ shall be secured to me in cash, current funds in the united states, or stocks at cash value, such as i may be disposed to accept if presented, so that in six months from this date i shall realize that sum, i will assign over all my rights and privileges in the telegraph in the united states. "i offer it at this price, not that i estimate the value of the invention so low, for it is perfectly demonstrable that the sum above mentioned is not half its value, but that i may have my own mind free to be occupied in perfecting the system, and in a general superintendence of it, unembarrassed by the business arrangements necessary to secure its utmost usefulness and value." a mr. fry of philadelphia had also made an offer, and, referring to this, he wrote to smith from new york, on july : "a letter from mr. fry, of philadelphia, in answer to the proposals which you sent, i have just received. i wish much to see you, as i cannot move in this matter until i know your views. i am here for about a fortnight and wish some arrangements made by which our business can be transacted without the necessity of so much waiting and so much writing." all these negotiations seem to have come to nothing, and i have only mentioned them as showing morse's willingness to part with his interest for much less than he knew it was worth, in order that he might not prove an obstacle in the expansion of the system by being too mercenary, and so that he might obtain some measure of freedom from care. mr. f.o.j. smith, while still proving himself a thorn in the flesh to morse in many ways, had compiled a telegraph dictionary which he called: "the secret corresponding vocabulary, adapted for use to morse's electro-magnetic telegraph, and also in conducting written correspondence transmitted by the mails, or otherwise." the dedication reads as follows: _to professor samuel f.b. morse, inventor of the electro-magnetic telegraph_ sir,--the homage of the world during the last half-century has been, and will ever continue to be, accorded to the name and genius of the illustrious american philosopher, benjamin franklin, for having first taught mankind that the wild and terrific ways and forces of the electric fluid, as it flies and flashes through the rent atmosphere, or descends to the surface of the earth, are guided by positive and fixed laws, as much as the movements of more sluggish matter in the physical creation, and that its terrible death-strokes may be rendered harmless by proper scientific precautions. to another name of another generation, yet of the same proud national nativity, the glory has been reserved of having first taught mankind to reach even beyond the results of franklin, and to subdue in a modified state, into the familiar and practical uses of a household servant who runs at his master's bidding, this same once frightful and tremendous element. indeed the great work of science which franklin commenced for the protection of man, you have most triumphantly subdued to his convenience. and it needs not the gift of prophecy to foresee, nor the spirit of personal flattery to declare, that the names of franklin and morse are destined to glide down the declivity of time together, the equals in the renown of inventive achievements, until the hand of history shall become palsied, and whatever pertains to humanity shall be lost in the general dissolution of matter. of one thus rich in the present applause of his countrymen, and in the prospect of their future gratitude, it affords the author of the following compilation, which is designed to contribute in a degree to the practical usefulness of your invention, a high gratification to speak in the presence of an enlightened public feeling. that you may live to witness the full consummation of the vast revolution in the social and business relations of your countrymen, which your genius has proved to be feasible, under the liberal encouragement of our national councils, and that you may, with this great gratification, also realize from it the substantial reward, which inventive merit too seldom acquires, in the shape of pecuniary independence, is the sincere wish of your most respectful and obedient servant the author. this florid and fulsome eulogy was written by that singular being who could thus flatter, and almost apotheosize, the inventor in public, while in secret he was doing everything to thwart him, and who never, as long as he lived, ceased to antagonize him, and later accused him of having claimed the credit of an invention all the essentials of which were invented by others. no wonder that morse was embarrassed and at a loss how to reply to the letter of smith's enclosing this eulogy and, at the same time, bringing up one of the subjects in dispute:-- new york, november , . dear sir,--i have received yours of the th and th inst., and reply in relation to the several subjects you mention in their order. i like very well the suggestion in regard to the presentation of a set of the telegraph dictionary you are publishing to each member of congress, and, when i return to washington, will see the secretary of the treasury and see if he will assent to it. as to the dedication to me, since you have asked my opinion, i must say i should prefer to have it much curtailed and less laudatory. i must refer it entirely to you, however, as it is not for me to say what others should write and think of me. in regard to the bartlett claim against the government and your plan for settling it, i cannot admit that, as proprietors of the telegraph, we have anything to do with it. i regret that there has been any mention of it, and i had hoped that you yourself had come to the determination to leave the matter altogether, or at least until the telegraph bill had been definitely settled in congress. however much i may deprecate agitation of the subject in the senate, to mar and probably to defeat all our prospects, it is a matter over which i have no control in the aspect that has been given to it, and therefore--"the suppression of details which had better not be pushed to a decision"--does not rest with me. in regard, however, to such a division of the property of the telegraph as shall enable each of us to labor for the general benefit without embarrassment from each other, i think it worthy of consideration, and the principle on which such a division is proposed to be made might be extended to embrace the entire property. the subject, however, requires mature deliberation, and i am not now prepared to present the plan, but will think it over and consult with vail and gale and arrange it, perhaps definitely, when i see you again in washington. i have letters from vail at washington and rogers at baltimore stating the fact that complete success has attended all the transmission of results by telegraph, there not having been a failure in a single instance, and to the entire satisfaction of both political parties in the perfect impartiality of the directors of the telegraph. while the success of the telegraph had now been fully demonstrated, and while congratulations and honors were showered on the inventor from all quarters, negotiations for its extension proceeded but slowly. morse still kept hoping that the government would eventually purchase all the rights, and it was not until well into that he was compelled to abandon this dream. in the mean time he was kept busy replying to enquiries from the representatives of russia, france, and other european countries, and in repelling attacks which had already been launched against him in scientific circles. as an example of the former i shall quote from a letter to his excellency alexander de bodisco, the russian minister, written in december, :-- "in complying with your request to write you respecting my invention of the electro-magnetic telegraph, i find there are but few points of interest not embraced in the printed documents already in your possession. the principle on which, my whole invention rests is the power of the electro-magnet commanded at pleasure at any distance. the application of this power to the telegraph is original with me. if the electro-magnet is now used in europe for telegraphic purposes, it has been subsequently introduced. all the systems of electric telegraphs in europe from to are based on the _deflection of the magnetic needle_, while my system, invented in , is based, as i have just observed, on the electro-magnet.... "should the emperor be desirous of the superintendence of an experienced person to put the telegraph in operation in russia, i will either engage myself to visit russia for that purpose; or, if my own or another government shall, previous to receiving an answer from russia, engage my personal attendance, i will send an experienced person in my stead." as a specimen of the vigorous style in which he repelled attacks on his merits as an inventor, i shall give the following:-- messrs. editors,--the london "mechanics' magazine," for october, , copies an article from the baltimore "american" in which my discovery in relation to causing electricity to cross rivers without wires is announced, and then in a note to his readers the editor of the magazine makes the following assertion: "the english reader need scarcely be informed that mr. morse has in this, as in other matters relating to magneto telegraphs, only _re_discovered what was previously well known in this country." more illiberality and deliberate injustice has been seldom condensed within so small a compass. from the experience, however, that i, in common with many american scientific gentlemen, have already had of the piratical conjoined with the abusive propensity of a certain class of english _savans_ and writers, i can scarcely expect either liberality or justice from the quarter whence this falsehood has issued. but there is, fortunately, an appeal to my own countrymen, to the impartial and liberal-minded of continental europe, and the truly noble of england herself. i claim to be the original inventor of the electro-magnetic telegraph; to be the first who planned and operated a really practicable electric telegraph. this is the broad claim i make in behalf of my country and myself before the world. if i cannot substantiate this claim, if any other, to whatever country he belongs, can make out a previous or better claim, i will cheerfully yield him the palm. although i had planned and completed my telegraph unconscious, until after my telegraph was in operation, that even the words "electric telegraph" had ever been combined until i had combined them, i have now made myself familiar with, i believe, all the plans, abortive and otherwise, which have been given to the world since the time of franklin, who was the first to suggest the possibility of using electricity as a means of transmitting intelligence. with this knowledge, both of the various plans devised and the time when they were severally devised, i claim to be the first inventor of a really practicable telegraph on the electric principle. when this shall be seriously called in question by any responsible name, i have the proof in readiness. as to english electric telegraphs, the telegraph of wheatstone and cooke, called the magnetic needle telegraph, inefficient as it is, was invented five years after mine, and the printing telegraph, so-called (the title to the invention of which is litigated by wheatstone and bain) was invented seven years after mine. so much for my _re_discovering what was previously known in england. as to the discovery that electricity may be made to cross the water without wire conductors, above, through, or beneath the water, the very reference by the editor to another number of the magazine, and to the experiments of cooke, or rather steinheil, and of bain, shows that the editor is wholly ignorant of the nature of my experiment. i have in detail the experiments of bain and wheatstone. they were merely in effect repetitions of the experiments of steinheil. their object was to show that the earth or water can be made one half of the circuit in conducting electricity, a fact proved by franklin with ordinary electricity in the last century, and by professor steinheil, of munich, with magnetic electricity in . mr. bain, and after him mr. wheatstone, in england repeated, or (to use the english editor's phrase) rediscovered the same fact in . but what have these experiments, in which _one wire_ is carried across the river, to do with mine _which dispenses with wires altogether_ across the river? i challenge the proof that such an experiment has ever been tried in europe, unless it be since the publication of my results. the year was drawing to a close and congress still was dilatory. morse hated to abandon his cherished dream of government ownership, and, while carrying on negotiations with private parties in order to protect himself, he still hoped that congress would at last see the light. he writes to his brother from washington on december :-- "telegraph matters look exceedingly encouraging, not only for the united states but for europe. i have just got a letter from a special agent of the french government, sent to boston by the minister of foreign affairs, in which he says that he has seen mine and 'is convinced of its superiority,' and wishes all information concerning it, adding: 'i consider it my duty to make a special report on your admirable invention.'" and on january , , he writes:-- "i am well, but anxiously waiting the action of congress on the bill for extension of telegraph. texas drives everything else into a corner. i have not many fears if they will only get it up. i had to-day the russian, spanish, and belgian ministers to see the operation of the telegraph; they were astonished and delighted. the russian minister particularly takes the deepest interest in it, and will write to his government by next steamer. the french minister also came day before yesterday, and will write in its favor to his government.... senator woodbury gave a discourse before the institute a few nights ago, in the hall of the house of representatives, in which he lauded the telegraph in the highest terms, and thought i had gone a step beyond franklin! the popularity of the telegraph increases rather than declines." the mention of texas in this letter refers to the fact that polk was elected to the presidency on a platform which favored the annexation of that republic to the united states, and this question was, naturally, paramount in the halls of congress. texas was admitted to the union in december, . writing to his daughter, mrs. lind, in porto rico on february , he says:-- "the telegraph operates to the perfect satisfaction of the public, as you perhaps see by the laudatory notices of the papers in all parts of the country. i am now in a state of unpleasant suspense waiting the passage of the bill for the extension of the telegraph to new york. "i am in hopes they will take it up and pass it next week; if they should not, i shall at once enter into arrangements with private companies to take it and extend it. "i do long for the time, if it shall be permitted, to have you with your husband and little charles around me. i feel my loneliness more and more keenly every day. fame and money are in themselves a poor substitute for domestic happiness; as means to that end i value them. yesterday was the sad anniversary (the twentieth) of your dear mother's death, and i spent the most of it in thinking of her...." "_thursday, february ._ i dined at the russian ambassador's tuesday. it was the most gorgeous dinner-party i ever attended in any country. thirty-six sat down to table; there were eleven senators, nearly half the senate.... the table, some twenty or twenty-five feet long, was decorated with immense gilt vases of flowers on a splendid plateau of richly chased gilt ornaments, and candelabra with about a hundred and fifty lights. we were ushered into the house through eight liveried servants, who afterward waited on us at table. "i go to-morrow evening to mr. wickliffe's, postmaster general, and, probably, on wednesday evening next to the president's. the new president, polk, arrived this evening amid the roar of cannon. he will be inaugurated on the th of march, and i presume i shall be there. "i am most anxiously waiting the action of congress on the telegraph. it is exceedingly tantalizing to suffer so much loss of precious time that cannot be recalled." this time there was no eleventh-hour passage of the bill, for congress adjourned without reaching it, and while this, in the light of future events, was undoubtedly a tactical error on the part of the government, it inured to the financial benefit of the inventor himself. the question now arose of the best means of extending the business of the telegraph through private companies, and morse keenly felt the need of a better business head than he possessed to guide the enterprise through the shoals and quicksands of commerce. he was fortunate in choosing as his business and legal adviser the honorable amos kendall. mr. james d. reid, one of the early telegraphers and a staunch and faithful friend of morse's, thus speaks of mr. kendall in his valuable book "the telegraph in america":-- "mr. kendall is too well known in american history to require description. he was general jackson's postmaster general, incorruptible, able, an educated lawyer, clear-headed, methodical, and ingenious. but he was somewhat rigid in his manners and methods, and lacked the dash and _bonhomie_ which would have carried him successfully into the business centres of the seaboard cities, and brought capital largely and cheerfully to his feet. of personal magnetism, indeed, except in private intercourse, where he was eminently delightful, he had, at this period of his life, none. this made his work difficult, especially with railroad men. yet the telegraph could not have been entrusted to more genuinely honest and able hands. on the part of those he represented this confidence was so complete that their interests were committed to him without reserve." professor gale and alfred vail joined with morse in entrusting their interests to mr. kendall's care, but f.o.j. smith preferred to act for himself. this caused much trouble in the future, for it was a foregone conclusion that the honest, upright kendall and the shifty smith were bound to come into conflict with each other. the latter, as one of the original patentees, had to be consulted in every sale of patent rights, and kendall soon found it almost impossible to deal with him. at first kendall had great difficulty in inducing capitalists to subscribe to what was still looked upon as a very risky venture. mr. corcoran, of washington, was the first man wise in his generation, and others then followed his lead, so that a cash capital of $ , was raised. mr. reid says: "it was provided, in this original subscription, that the payment of $ should entitle the subscriber to two shares of $ each. a payment of $ , , therefore, required an issue of $ , stock. to the patentees were issued an additional $ , stock, or half of the capital, as the consideration of the patent. the capital was thus $ , for the first link. w.w. corcoran and b.b. french were made trustees to hold the patent rights and property until organization was effected. meanwhile an act of incorporation was granted by the legislature of the state of maryland, the first telegraphic charter issued in the united states." the company was called "the magnetic telegraph company," and was the first telegraph company in the united states. under the able, if conservative, management of mr. kendall the business of the telegraph progressed slowly but surely. many difficulties were encountered, many obstacles had to be overcome, and the efforts of unprincipled men to pirate the invention, or to infringe on the patent, were the cause of numerous lawsuits. but it is not my purpose to write a history of the telegraph. mr. reid has accomplished this task much better than i possibly could, and, in following the personal history of morse, the now famous inventor, i shall but touch, incidentally on all these matters. on the th of july, , the following letter of introduction was sent to morse from the department of state:-- to the respective diplomatic and consular agents of the united states in europe. sir,--the bearer hereof, professor samuel f.b. morse, of new york, superintendent of electro magnetic telegraphs for the united states, is about to visit europe for the purpose of exhibiting to the various governments his own system, and its superiority over others now in use. from a personal knowledge of professor morse i can speak confidently of his amiability of disposition and high respectability. the merits of his discoveries and inventions in this particular branch of science are, i believe, universally conceded in this country. i take pleasure in introducing him to your acquaintance and in bespeaking for him, during his stay in your neighborhood, such attentions and good offices in aid of his object as you may find it convenient to extend to him. i am, sir, with great respect, your obedient servant, james buchanan, _secretary of state._ [illustration: s.f.b. morse from a portrait by daniel huntington] with the assurance that he had left his business affairs in capable hands, morse sailed from new york on august , , and arrived in liverpool on the th. for the fourth time he was crossing from america to europe, but under what totally different circumstances. on previous occasions, practically unknown, he had voyaged forth to win his spurs in the field of art, or to achieve higher honors in this same field, or as a humble petitioner at the courts of europe. forced by circumstances to practise the most rigid economy, he had yet looked confidently to the future for his reward in material as well as spiritual gifts. now, having abandoned his art, he had won such fame in a totally different realm that his name was becoming well-known in all the centres of civilization, and he was assured of a respectful hearing wherever he might present himself. freed already from pecuniary embarrassment, he need no longer take heed for the morrow, but could with a light heart give himself up to the enjoyment of new scenes, and the business of proving to other nations the superiority of his system, secure in the knowledge that, whatever might betide him in europe, he was assured of a competence at home. his brother sidney, with his family, had preceded him to europe, and writing to vail from london on september , morse says:-- "i have just taken lodgings with my brother and his family preparatory to looking about for a week, when i shall continue my journey to stockholm and st. petersburg, by the way of hamburg, direct from london. "on my way from liverpool i saw at rugby the telegraph wires of wheatstone, which extend, i understood, as far as northampton. i went into the office as the train stopped a moment, and had a glimpse of the instrument as we have seen it in the 'illustrated times.' the place was the ticket-office and the man very uncommunicative, but he told me it was not in operation and that they did not use it much. this is easily accounted for from the fact that the two termini are inconsiderable places, and wheatstone's system clumsy and complicated. the advantage of recording is incalculable, and in this i have the undisputed superiority. as soon as i can visit the telegraph-office here i will give you the result of my observation. i shall probably do nothing until my return from the north." nothing definite was accomplished during his short stay in london, and on the th of september he left for the continent with mr. henry ellsworth and his wife. mr. ellsworth, the son of his old friend, had been appointed attaché to the american legation at stockholm. morse's letters to his daughter give a detailed account of his journey, but i shall give only a few extracts from them:-- "_hamburg, september , ._ everything being ready on the morning of the th instant, we left brompton square in very rainy and stormy weather, and drove down to the custom-house wharf and went on board our destined steamer, the william joliffe, a dirty, black-looking, tub-like thing, about as large but not half so neat as a north river wood-sloop. the wind was full from the southwest, blowing a gale with rain, and i confess i did not much fancy leaving land in so unpromising a craft and in such weather; yet our vessel proved an excellent seaboat, and, although all were sick on board but mr. ellsworth and myself, we had a safe but rough passage across the boisterous north sea." stopping but a short time in rotterdam, the party proceeded through the hague and haarlem to amsterdam, and from the latter place they visited the village of broek:-- "the inn at broek was another example of the same neatness. here we took a little refreshment before going into the village. we walked of course, for no carriage, not even a wheelbarrow, appeared to be allowed any more than in a gentleman's parlor. everything about the exterior of the houses and gardens was as carefully cared for as the furniture and embellishments of the interior. the streets (or rather alleys, like those of a garden) were narrow and paved with small variously colored bricks forming every variety of ornamental figures. the houses, from the highest to the lowest class, exhibited not merely comfort but luxury, yet it was a selfish sort of luxury. the perpetually closed door and shut-up rooms of ceremony, the largest and most conspicuous of all in the house, gave an air of inhospitableness which, i should hope, was not indicative of the real character of the inhabitants. yet it seemed to be a deserted village, a place of the dead rather than of the living, an ornamental graveyard. the liveliness of social beings was absent and was even inconsistent with the superlative neatness of all around us. it was a best parlor out-of-doors, where the gayety of frolicking children would derange the set order of the furniture, or an accidental touch of a sacrilegious foot might scratch the polish of a fresh-varnished fence, or flatten down the nap of the green carpet of grass, every blade of which is trained to grow exactly so. "the grounds and gardens of a mr. vander beck were, indeed, a curiosity from the strange mixture of the useful with the ridiculously ornamental. here were the beautiful banks of a lake and nature's embellishment of reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. in another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while a most sheep-like dog is made to open his mouth and to bark--a dog which is, doubtless, the progenitor of all the barking, toy-shop dogs of the world. directly in the vicinity is a beautiful grapery, with the richest clusters of grapes literally covering the top, sides and walls of the greenhouse, which stands in the midst of a garden, gay with dahlias and amaranths and every variety of flowers, with delicious fruits thickly studding the well-trained trees. everything, however, was cut up into miniature landscapes; little bridges and little temples adorned little canals and little mounds, miniature representations of streams and bills. "we visited the residence of the burgomaster. he was away and his servants permitted us to see the house. it was cleaning-day. everything in the house was in keeping with the character of the village. but the kitchen! how shall i describe it? the polished marble floor, the dressers with glass doors like a bookcase, to keep the least particle of dust from the bright-polished utensils of brass and copper. the varnished mahogany handle of the brass spigot, lest the moisture of the hand in turning it should soil its polish, and, will you believe it, the very pothooks as well as the cranes (for there were two), in the fireplace were as bright as your scissors! "broek is certainly a curiosity. it is unique, but the impression left upon me is not, on the whole, agreeable. i should not be contented to live there. it is too ridiculously and uncomfortably nice. fancy a lady always dressed throughout the day in her best evening-party dress, and say if she could move about with that ease which she would like. such, however, must be the feeling of the inhabitants of broek; they must be in perpetual fear, not only of soiling or deranging their clothes merely, but their very streets every step they take. but good-bye to broek. i would not have missed seeing it but do not care to see it again." holland, which he had never visited before, interested him greatly, but he could not help saying: "one feels in holland like being in a ship, constantly liable to spring a leak." hamburg he found more to his taste:-- "_september ._ hamburg, you may remember, was nearly destroyed by fire in . it is now almost rebuilt and in a most splendid style of architecture. i am much prepossessed in its favor. we have taken up our quarters at the victoria hotel, one of the splendid new hotels of the city. i find the season so far advanced in these northern regions that i am thinking of giving up my journey farther north. my matters in london will demand all my spare time." "_september ._ the windows of my hotel look out upon the alster basin, a beautiful sheet of water, three sides of which are surrounded with splendid houses. boats and swans are gliding over the glassy surface, giving, with the well-dressed promenaders along the shores, an air of gayety and liveliness to the scene." it will not be necessary to follow the traveller step by step during this visit to europe. he did not go to sweden and russia, as he had at first planned, for he learned that the emperor of russia was in the south, and that nothing could be accomplished in his absence. he, therefore, returned to london from hamburg. he was respectfully received everywhere and his invention was recognized as being one of great merit and simplicity, but it takes time for anything new to make its way. this is, perhaps, best summed up in the words of charles t. fleischmann, who at that time was agent of the united states patent office, and was travelling through europe collecting information on agriculture, education, and the arts. he was a good friend of morse's and an enthusiastic advocate of his invention. he carried with him a complete telegraphic outfit and lost no opportunity to bring it to the notice of the different governments visited by him, and his official position gave him the entree everywhere. writing from vienna on october , he says:-- "there is no doubt morse's telegraph is the best of that description i have yet seen, but the difficulty of introducing it is in this circumstance, that every scientific man invents a similar thing and, without having the practical experience and practical arrangement which make morse's so preferable, they will experiment a few miles' distance only, and no doubt it works; but, when they come to put it up at a great distance, then they will find that their experience is not sufficient, and must come back ultimately to morse's plan. the austrian government is much occupied selecting out of many plans (of telegraphs) one for her railroads. i have offered morse's and proposed experiments. i am determined to stay for some time, to give them a chance of making up their minds." two other young americans, charles robinson and charles l. chapin, were also travelling around europe at this time for the purpose of introducing morse's invention, but, while all these efforts resulted in the ultimate adoption by all the nations of europe, and then of the world, of this system, the superiority of which all were compelled, sometimes reluctantly, to admit, no arrangement was made by which morse and his co-proprietors benefited financially. the gain in fame was great, in money nil. it was, therefore, with mixed feelings that morse wrote to his brother from paris on november :-- "i am still gratified in verifying the fact that my telegraph is ahead of all the other systems proposed. wheatstone's is not adopted here. the line from paris to rouen is not on his plan, but is an experimental line of the governmental commission. i went to see it yesterday with my old friend the administrator-in-chief of the telegraphs of france, mr. poy, who is one of the committee to decide on the best mode for france. the system on this line is his modification.... i have had a long interview with m. arago. he is the same affable and polite man as in . he is a warm friend of mine and contends for priority in my favor, and is also partial to my telegraphic system as the best. he is president of the commission and is going to write the history of electric telegraphs. i shall give him the facts concerning mine. the day after to-morrow i exhibit my telegraphic system again to the academy of sciences, and am in the midst of preparations for a day important to me. i have strong hopes that mine will be the system adopted, but there may be obstacles i do not see. wheatstone, at any rate, is not in favor here.... "i like the french. every nation has its defects and i could wish many changes here, but the french are a fine people. i receive a welcome here to which i was a perfect stranger in england. how deep this welcome may be i cannot say, but if one must be cheated i like to have it done in a civil and polite way." he sums up the result of his european trip in a letter to his daughter, written from london on october , as he was on his way to liverpool from where he sailed on november , :-- "i know not what to say of my telegraphic matters here yet. there is nothing decided upon and i have many obstacles to contend against, particularly the opposition of the proprietors of existing telegraphs; but that mine is the best system i have now no doubt. all that i have seen, while they are ingenious, are more complicated, more expensive, less efficient and easier deranged. it may take some time to establish the superiority of mine over the others, for there is the usual array of prejudice and interest against a system which throws others out of use." chapter xxxii december , --april , return to america.--telegraph affairs in bad shape.--degree of ll.d. from yale.--letter from cambridge livingston.--henry o'reilly.--grief at unfaithfulness of friends.--estrangement from professor henry.--morse's "defense."--his regret at feeling compelled to publish it.--hopes to resume his brush.--capitol panel.--again disappointed.--another accident.--first money earned from telegraph devoted to religious purposes.--letters to his brother sidney.--telegraph matters.--mexican war.--faith in the future.--desire to be lenient to opponents.--dr. jackson.--edward warren.--alfred vail remains loyal.--troubles in virginia.--henry j. rogers.--letter to j.d. reid about o'reilly.--f.o.j. smith again.--purchases a home at last.--"locust grove," on the hudson, near poughkeepsie.--enthusiastic description.--more troubles without, but peace in his new home. having established to his satisfaction the fact that his system was better than any of the european plans, which was the main object of his trip abroad, morse returned to his native land, but not to the rest and quiet which he had so long desired. telegraph lines were being pushed forward in all directions, but the more the utility of this wonderful new agent was realized, the greater became the efforts to break down the lawful rights of the patentees, and competing lines were, hurriedly built on the plea of fighting a baleful monopoly by the use of the inventions of others, said to be superior. internal dissensions also arose in the ranks of the workers on the morse lines, and some on whom he had relied proved faithless, or caused trouble in other ways. but, while these clouds arose to darken his sky, there was yet much sunshine to gladden his heart. his health was good, his children and the families of his brothers were well and prosperous. in the year his patent rights were extended for another period of years, and he was gradually accumulating a competence as the various lines in which he held stock began to declare dividends. in addition to all this his fame had so increased that he was often alluded to in the papers as "the idol of the nation," and honorary degrees were conferred on him by various institutions both at home and abroad. of these the one that, perhaps, pleased him the most was the degree of ll.d. bestowed by his _alma mater_, yale. he alludes to it with pride in many of his letters to his brother sidney, and once playfully suggests that it must mean "lightning line doctor." one of the first letters which he received on his return to america was from cambridge livingston, dated december , , and reads as follows:-- "the trustees of the new york and boston magnetic telegraph association are getting up a certificate of stock, and are desirous of making it neat and appropriate. it has seemed to me very desirable that one of its decorations should be your coat of arms, and if you will do me the favor to transmit a copy, or a wax impression of the same, i shall be much obliged." to this morse replied:-- "i send you a sketch of the morse coat of arms, according to your request, to do as you please with it. i am no advocate of heraldic devices, but the _motto_ in this case sanctions it with me. i wish to live and die in its spirit:-- "'_deo non armis fido._'" i have said that many on whom morse relied proved faithless, and, while i do not intend to go into the details of all these troubles, it is only right that, in the interest of historical truth, some mention should be made of some of these men. the one who, next to f.o.j. smith, caused the most trouble to morse and his associates, was henry o'reilly. mr. reid, in his "telegraph in america," thus describes him:-- "henry o'reilly was in many respects a wonderful man. his tastes were cultivated. his instincts were fine. he was intelligent and genial. his energy was untiring, his hopefulness shining. his mental activity and power of continuous labor were marvellous. he was liberal, generous, profuse, full of the best instincts of his nation. but he lacked prudence in money matters, was loose in the use of it, had little veneration for contracts, was more anxious for personal fame than wealth. he formed and broke friendships with equal rapidity, was bitter in his hates, was impatient of restraint. my personal attachment to him was great and sincere. we were friends for many years until he became the agent of f.o.j. smith, and my duties threw me in collision with him." it was not until some years after his first connection with the telegraph, in , that o'reilly turned against morse and his associates. this will be referred to at the proper time, but i have introduced him now to give point to the following extract from a letter of his to morse, dated december , :-- "do you recollect a person who, while under your hands for a daguerreotype in - , broke accidentally an eight-dollar lens? tho' many tho't you 'visionary' in your ideas of telegraphic communication, that person, you may recollect, took a lively interest in the matter, and made some suggestions about the propriety of pressing the matter energetically upon congress and upon public attention. you seemed then to feel pleased to find a person who took so lively an interest in your invention, and you will see by the enclosed circular that that person (your humble servant) has not lost any of his early confidence in its value. may you reap an adequate reward for the glorious thought!" it was one of life's little ironies that the man who could thus call down good fortune on the head of the inventor should soon after become one of the chief instruments in the effort to rob him of his "adequate reward," and his good name as well. morse had such bitter experiences with several persons, who turned from friends to enemies, that it is no wonder he wrote as follows to vail some time after this date:-- "i am grieved to say that many things have lately come to my knowledge in regard to ---- that show double-dealing. be on your guard. i hope it is but appearance, and that his course may be cleared up by subsequent events. "i declare to you that i have seen so much duplicity in those in whom i had confided as friends, that i feel in danger of entertaining suspicions of everybody. i have hitherto thought you were too much inclined to be suspicious of people, but i no longer think so. "keep this to yourself. it may be that appearances are deceptive, and i would not wrong one whom i had esteemed as a real friend without the clearest evidence of unfaithfulness. yet when appearances are against, it is right to be cautious." the name of the person referred to is left blank in the copy of this letter which i have, so i do not know who it was, but the sentiments would apply to several of the early workers in the establishment of the telegraph. i have said that morse, being only human, was sometimes guilty of errors of judgment, but, in a careful study of the facts, the wonder is great that he committed so few. it is an ungracious task for a son to call attention to anything but the virtues of his father, especially when any lapses were the result of great provocation, and were made under the firm conviction that he was in the right. yet in the interest of truth it is best to state the facts fairly and dispassionately, and let posterity judge whether the virtues do not far outweigh the faults. such an error was committed, in my judgment, by morse in the bitter controversy which arose between him and professor joseph henry, and i shall briefly sketch the origin and progress of this regrettable incident. in , alfred vail compiled and published a "history of the american electro-magnetic telegraph." in this work hardly any mention was made of the important discoveries of professor henry, and this caused that gentleman to take great offense, as he believed that morse was the real author of the work, or had, at least, given vail all the materials. as a matter of fact he had given vail only his notes on european telegraphs and had not seen the proofs of the work, which was published while he was absent in europe. as soon as morse was made aware of henry's feelings, he wrote to him regretting the omission and explaining his innocence in the matter, and he also draughted a letter, at vail's request, which the latter copied and sent to henry, stating that he, vail, had been unable to obtain the particulars of henry's discoveries, and that, if he had offended, he had done so innocently. henry was an extremely sensitive man and he paid no attention to vail's letter, and sent only a curt acknowledgment of the receipt of morse's. however, at a meeting somewhat later, the misunderstanding seemed to be smoothed over, on the assurance that, in a second edition of vail's work, due credit should be given to henry, and that whenever morse had the opportunity he would gladly accord to that eminent man the discoveries which were his. there never was a true second edition of vail's book, but in a few more copies were struck off from the old plates and the date was, unfortunately, changed from to . henry, naturally, looked upon this as a second edition and his resentment grew. morse's opportunity to do public honor to henry came in , when professor sears c. walker, of the coast survey, published a report containing some remarks on the "theory of morse's electro-magnetic telegraph." when professor walker submitted this report to morse the latter said: "i have now the long-wished-for opportunity to do justice publicly to henry's discovery bearing upon the telegraph. i should like to see him, however, previously, and learn definitely what he claims to have discovered. i will then prepare a paper to be appended and published as a note, if you see fit, to your report." this paper was written by morse and sent to professor walker with the request that it be submitted to professor henry for his revision, which was done, but it was not included in professor walker's report, and this naturally nettled morse, who also had sensitive nerves, and so the breach was widened. in this paper, after giving a brief history of electric discoveries bearing on the telegraph, and of his own inventions, morse sums up:-- "while, therefore, i claim to be the first to propose the use of the _electro-magnet for telegraphic purposes_, and the _first_ to _construct a telegraph on the basis of the electro-magnet_, yet to professor henry is unquestionably due the honor of the _discovery of a fact in science_ which proves the practicability of exciting magnetism through a long coil or at a distance, either to _deflect a needle_ or _to magnetize soft iron_." i wish he had never revised this opinion, although he was sincere in thinking that a more careful study of the subject justified him in doing so. a few years afterwards morse and his associates became involved in a series of bitterly contested litigations with parties interested in breaking down the original patent rights, and henry was called as a witness for the opponents of morse. he gave his testimony with great reluctance, but it was tinged with the bitterness caused by the failure of vail to do him justice and his apparent conviction that morse was disingenuous. he denied to the latter any scientific discoveries, and gave the impression (at least, to others) that henry, and not morse, was the real inventor of the telegraph. his testimony was used by the enemies of morse, both at home and abroad, to invalidate the claims of the latter, and, stung by these aspersions on his character and attainments, and urged thereto by injudicious friends, morse published a lengthy pamphlet entitled: "a defense against the injurious deductions drawn from the deposition of professor joseph henry." in this pamphlet he not only attempted to prove that he owed nothing to the discoveries of henry, but he called in question the truthfulness of that distinguished man. the breach between these two honorable, highly sensitive men was now complete, and it was never healed. the consensus of scientific opinion gives to henry's discoveries great value in the invention of the telegraph. while they did not constitute a true telegraph in themselves; while they needed the inventions and discoveries, and, i might add, the sublime faith and indomitable perseverance of morse to make the telegraph a commercial success; they were, in my opinion, essential to it, and morse, i think, erred in denying this. but, from a thorough study of his character, we must give him the credit of being sincere in his denial. henry, too, erred in ignoring the advances of morse and vail and in his proud sensitiveness. professor leonard d. gale, the friend of both men, makes the following comment in a letter to morse of february , : "i fear henry and i shall never again be on good terms. he is as cold as a polar berg, and, i am informed, very sensitive. it has been said by some busybody that his testimony was incompatible with mine, and so a sort of feeling is manifested as if it were so. i have said nothing about it yet." it would have been more dignified on the part of morse to have disregarded the imputations contained in henry's testimony, or to have replied much more briefly and dispassionately. on the other hand, the provocation was great and he was egged on by others, partly from motives of self-interest and partly from a sincere desire on the part of his friends that he should justify himself. in a long letter to vail, of january , , in which he details the whole unfortunate affair, he says: "if there was a man in the world, not related to me, for whom i had conceived not merely admiration but affection, it was for professor joseph henry. i think you will remember, and can bear me witness, that i often expressed the wish that i was able to put several thousand dollars at his service for scientific investigation.... the whole case has saddened me more than i can express. i have to fight hard against misanthropy, friend vail, and i have found the best antidote to be, when the fit is coming on me, to seek out a case of suffering and to relieve it, that the act in the one case may neutralize the feeling in the other, and thus restore the balance in the heart." in taking leave for the present of this unfortunate controversy i shall quote from the "defense," to show that morse sincerely believed it his duty to act as he did, but that he acted with reluctance:-- "that i have been slow to complain of the injurious character of his testimony; that i have so long allowed, almost entirely uncontradicted, its distortions to have all their legal weight against me in four separate trials, without public exposure and for a space of four years of time, will at least show, i humbly contend, my reluctance to appear opposed to him, even when self-defence is combined with the defence of the interests of a large body of assignees.... painful, therefore, as is the task imposed upon me, i cannot shrink from it, but shall endeavor so to perform it as rather to parry the blows that have been aimed at me than to inflict any in return. if what i say shall wound, it shall be from the severity of the simple truth itself rather than from the manner of setting it forth." in the year there still remained one panel in the rotunda of the capitol at washington to be filled by an historical painting. it had been assigned to inman, but, that artist having recently died, morse's friends, artists and others, sent a petition to congress urging the appointment of morse in his place. referring to this in a letter to his brother sidney, dated march , he says:-- "in regard to the rotunda picture i learn that my friends are quite zealous, and it is not improbable that it may be given me to execute. if so, what should you say to seeing me in paris? "however, this is but castle-building. i am quite indifferent as to the result except that, in case it is given me, i shall be restored to my position as an artist by the same power that prostrated me, and then shall i not more than ever have cause to exclaim: 'surely thou hast led me in away which i knew not'? i have already, in looking back, seen enough of the dealings of providence with me to excite my wonder and gratitude. how singularly has my way been hedged up in my profession at the very moment when, to human appearance, everything seemed prosperously tending to the accomplishment of my desire in painting a national picture. the language of providence in all his dealings with me has been almost like that to abraham: 'take now thy son, thine only son isaac whom thou lovest, and offer him for a burnt offering,' etc. "it has always seemed a mystery to me how i should have been led on to the acquirement of the knowledge i possess of painting, with so much sacrifice of time and money, and through so many anxieties and perplexities, and then suddenly be stopped as if a wall were built across my path, so that i could pursue my profession no longer. but, i believe, i had grace to trust in god in the darkest hour of trial, persuaded that he could and would clear up in his own time and manner all the mystery that surrounded me. "and now, if not greatly deceived, i have a glimpse of his wonderful, truly wonderful, mercy towards me. he has chosen thus to order events that my mind might be concentrated upon that invention which he has permitted to be born for the blessing, i trust, of the world. and he has chosen me as the instrument, and given me the honor, and at the moment when all has been accomplished which is essential to its success, he so orders events as again to turn my thoughts to my almost sacrificed isaac." in this, however, he did not read the fates aright, for a letter from his friend, reverend e. goodrich smith, dated march , , conveys the following intelligence: "i have just learned to-day that, with their usual discrimination and justice, congress have voted $ to have the panel filled by young powell. he enlisted all ohio, and they all electioneered with all their might, and no one knew that the question would come up. new york, i understand, went for you. i hope, however, you may yet yourself resume the pencil, and furnish the public the most striking commentary on their utter disregard of justice, by placing somewhere 'the germ of the republic' in such colors that shall make them blush and hang their heads to think themselves such men." but, while he was to be blessed in the fulfilment, of a long cherished dream, it was not the dream of painting a great historic picture. he never seriously touched a brush again, for all his energies were needed in the defence of himself and his invention from defamation and attack. in the summer of he met with another accident giving him a slight period of rest which he would not otherwise have taken. he writes of it to his brother on july : "on monday last i had the misfortune to fall, into one of those mantraps on broadway, set principally to break people's legs and maim them, and _incidentally_ for the deposit of the coal of the household." vail refers jestingly to this mishap in a letter of august : "i trust your unfortunate and unsuccessful attempt to get down cellar has not been a serious affair." and morse replies in the same vein: "my _cellar experiment_ was not so unsuccessful as you imagine. i succeeded to my entire satisfaction in taking three inches of skin, a little of the flesh and a trifle of bone from the front of my left leg, and, as the result, got one week's entire leisure with my leg in a chair. the experiment was so satisfactory that i deem it needless to try it again, having established beyond a doubt that skin, flesh and bone are no match against wood, iron and stone. i am entirely well of it and enjoyed my visit to the western lines very much." it was characteristic of morse that the first money which he received from the actual sale of his patent rights ($ for the right to use his patent on a short line from the post-office to the national observatory in washington) was devoted by him to a religious purpose. from a letter of october , , we learn that, adding $ to this sum, he presented $ to a sunday school, and $ to the fund for repairs. the attachment of the three morse brothers to each other was intense, and lasted to the end of their lives. the letters of finley morse to his brother sidney, in particular, would alone fill a volume and are of great interest. most of them have never before been published and i shall quote from them freely in following morse's career. sidney and his family were still in europe, and the two following extracts are from letters to him:-- "_october , ._ i don't know where this will find you, but, as the steamer caledonia goes in a day or two, and as i did not write you by the last steamer, i thought i would occupy a few moments (not exactly of leisure) to write you.... charles has little to do, but does all he can. he is desirous of a farm and i have made up my mind to indulge him.... i shall go up the river in a day or two and look in the vicinity of po'keepsie.... "telegraph matters are every day assuming a more and more interesting aspect. all physical and scientific difficulties are vanquished. if conductors are well put up there is nothing more to wish for in the facilities of intercourse. my operators can easily talk with each other as fast as persons usually write, and faster than this would be faster than is necessary. the canadians are alive on the subject, and lines are projected from toronto to montreal, from montreal to quebec and to halifax. lines are also in contemplation from toronto to detroit, on the canada side, and from buffalo to chicago on this side, so that it may not be visionary to say that our first news from england may reach new york via halifax, detroit, buffalo and albany.... "the papers will inform you of the events of the war. our people are united on this point so far as to pursue it with vigor to a speedy termination. however john bull may sneer and endeavor to detract from the valor of our troops, his own annals do not furnish proofs of greater skill and more fearless daring and successful result. the mexican race is a worn-out race, and god in his providence is taking this mode to regenerate them. whatever may be the opinions of some in relation to the justness or unjustness of our quarrel, there ought to be but one opinion among all good men, and that should be that the moment should be improved to throw a light into that darkened nation, and to raise a standard there which, whatever may become of the stars and stripes, or eagle and prickly pear, shall be never taken down till all nations have flocked to it. our bible and tract societies and missionaries ought to be in the wake of our armies." "_january , ._ telegraph matters are becoming more and more interesting. the people of the country everywhere are desirous of availing themselves of its facilities, and the lines are being extended in all directions. as might be expected then, i have my plans interfered with by mercenary speculators who threaten to put up rival telegraphs and contest my patent. _i am ready for them._ we have had to apply for an injunction on the philadelphia and pittsburg line. the case is an aggravated one and will be decided on monday or tuesday at philadelphia in circuit court of united states. i have no uneasiness as to the result. [it was decided against him, however, but this proved only a temporary check.] "there are more f.o.js. than one, yet not one quite so bad. i think amid all the scramble i shall probably have enough come to my share, and it does not matter by what means our heavenly father chooses to curtail my receipts, for i shall have just what he pleases, none can hinder it, and more i do not want.... house and his associates are making most strenuous efforts to interfere and embarrass me by playing on the ignorance of the public and the natural timidity of capitalists. i shall probably have to lay the law on him and make an example before my patent is confirmed in the minds of the public. it is the course, i am told, of every substantial patent. it has to undergo the ordeal of one trial in the courts.... "although i thus write, you need have no fears that my operations will be seriously affected by any schemes of common letter printing telegraphs. i have just filed a caveat for one which i have invented, which as far transcends in simplicity and efficiency any previous plan for the purpose, as my telegraph system is superior to the old visual telegraphs. i will have it in operation by the time you return." apropos of the attacks made upon him by would-be infringers, the following from a letter of his legal counsel, daniel lord, esq., dated january , , may not come amiss: "it ought to be a source of great satisfaction to you to have your invention stolen and counterfeited. think what an acknowledgment it is, and what a tribute to its merits." referring to this in a letter to mr. lord of a later date, morse answers: "the plot thickens all around me; i think a _dénouement_ not far off. i remember your consoling me under these attacks with bidding me think that i had invented something worth contending for. alas! my dear sir, what encouragement is there to an inventor if, after years of toil and anxiety, he has only purchased for himself the pleasure of being a target for every vile fellow to shoot at, and, in proportion as his invention is of public utility, so much the greater effort is to be made to defame, that the robbery may excite the less sympathy? i know, however, that beyond all this is a clear sky, but the clouds may not break away until i am no longer personally interested whether it be foul or fair. i wish not to complain, but i have feelings and cannot play the stoic if i would." it was a new experience for morse to become involved in the intricacies of the law, and, in a letter to a friend, henry i. williams, esq., dated february , , he naively remarks: "a student all my life, mostly in a profession which is adverse in its habits and tastes from those of the business world, and never before engaged in a lawsuit, i confess to great ignorance even of the ordinary, commonplace details of a court." his desire to be both just and merciful is shown in a letter to mr. kendall, written on february , just before the decision was rendered against him: "i have been in court all day, and have been much pleased with the clearness and, i think, conclusiveness of mr. miles's argument. i think he has produced an evident change in the views of the judge. yet it is best to be prepared for the worst, and, even if we succeed in getting the injunction, i wish as much leniency as possible to be shown to the opposing parties. indeed, in this i know my views are seconded by you. however we may have 'spoken daggers,' let us use none, and let us make every allowance for honest mistake, even where appearances are at first against such a supposition. o'reilly may have acted hastily, under excitement, under bad advisement, and in that mood have taken wrong steps. yet i still believe he may be recovered, and, while i would use every precaution to protect our just rights, i wish not to take a single step that can be misconstrued into vindictiveness or triumph." it was well that it was his invariable rule to be prepared for the worst, for, writing to his brother sidney on february , he says: "we have just had a lawsuit in philadelphia before judge kane. we applied for an injunction to stay irregular and injurious proceedings on the part of western (pittsburg and cincinnati) company, and our application has been _refused_ on technical grounds. i know not what will be the issue. i am trying to have matters compromised, but do not know if it can be done, and we may have to contest it in _law_. our application was in court of equity. a movement of smith was the cause of all." another sidelight is thrown on morse's character by the following extract from a letter to one of his lieutenants, t.s. faxton, written on march : "we must raise the salaries of our operators or they will all be taken from us, that is, all that are good for anything. you will recollect that, at the first meeting of the board of directors, i took the ground that 'it was our policy to make the office of operator desirable, to pay operators well and make their situation so agreeable that intelligent men and men of character will seek the place and dread to lose it.' i still think so, and, depend upon it, it is the soundest economy to act on this principle." just about this time, to add to morse's other perplexities, doctor charles t. jackson began to renew his claims to the invention of the telegraph, while also disputing with morton the discovery of ether as an anaesthetic, then called "letheon," and claiming the invention of gun-cotton and the discovery of the circulation of the blood. morse found a willing and able champion in edward warren, esq., of boston, and many letters passed between them. as jackson's wild claims were effectually disposed of, i shall not dwell upon this source of annoyance, but shall content myself with one extract from a letter to mr. warren of march : "i wish not to attack dr. jackson nor even to defend myself in _public_ from his _private_ attacks. if in any of his publications he renews his claim, which i consider as long since settled by default, then it will be time and proper for me to notice him.... the most charitable construction of the dr's. conduct is to attribute it to a monomania induced by excessive vanity." while many of those upon whom he had looked as friends turned against him in the mad scramble for power and wealth engendered by the extension of the telegraph lines, it is gratifying to turn to those who remained true to him through all, and among these none was more loyal than alfred vail. their correspondence, which was voluminous, is always characterized by the deepest confidence and affection. in a long letter of march , vail shows his solicitude for morse's peace of mind: "i think i would not be bothered with a directorship in the new york and buffalo line, nor in any other. i should wish to keep clear of them. it will only tend to harass and vex when you should be left quiet and undisturbed to pursue your improvements and the enjoyment of what is most gratifying to you." and morse, writing to vail somewhat later in this same year, exclaims: "you say you hope i shall not forget that we have spent many hours together. you might have added 'happy hours.' i have tried you, dear vail, as a friend, and think i know you as a zealous and honest one." still earlier, on march , , in one of his reports to the postmaster-general, cave johnson, he adds: "in regard to the salary of the 'one clerk at washington--$ ,' mr. vail, who would from the necessity of the case take that post, is my right-hand man in the whole enterprise. he has been with me from the year , and is as familiar with all the mechanism and scientific arrangements of the telegraph as i am myself.... his time and talent are more essential to the success of the telegraph than [those of] any two persons that could be named." returning now to the letters to his brother sidney, i shall give the following extracts:-- "_march , ._ i am now in new york permanently; that is i have no longer any official connection with washington, and am thinking of _fixing_ somewhere so soon as i can get my telegraphic matters into such a state as to warrant it; but my patience is still much tried. although the enterprise looks well and is prospering, yet somehow i do not command the cash as some business men would if they were in the same situation. the property is doubtless good and is increasing, but i cannot use it as i could the money, for, while everybody seems to think i have the wealth of john jacob, the only sum i have actually realized is my first dividend on one line, about fourteen hundred dollars, and with this i cannot purchase a house. but time will, perhaps, enable me to do so, if it is well that i should have one.... i have had some pretty threatening obstacles, but they as yet are summer clouds which seem to be dissipating through the smiles of our heavenly father. house's affair i think is dead. i believe it has been held up by speculators to drive a better bargain with me, thinking to scare me; but they don't find me so easily frightened. in virginia i had to oppose a most bigoted, narrow, illiberal clique in a railroad company, which had the address to get a bill through the house of delegates giving them actually the monopoly of telegraphs, and ventured to halloo before they were out of the woods. mr. kendall went post-haste to richmond, met the bill and its supporters before the committee of the senate, and, after a sharp contest, procured its rejection in the senate, and the adoption, by a vote of to , of a substitute granting me _right of way_ and _corporate powers_, which bill, after violent opposition in the house, was finally passed, to . so a mean intrigue was defeated most signally, and i came off triumphant." "_april ._ this you will recognize by the date is my birthday; years old. only think, i shall never be again. don't you wish you were as young as i am? well, if _feelings_ determined age i should be in reality what i have above stated, but that leaf in the family bible, those boys and that daughter, those nieces and nephews of younger brothers, and especially that _grandson_, they all concur in putting twenty years more to those . i cannot get them off; there they are !... "there is an underhand intrigue against my telegraph interests in virginia, fostered by a friend turned enemy in the hope to better his own interests, a man whom i have ever treated as a friend while i had the governmental patronage to bestow, and gave him office in baltimore. having no more of patronage to give i have no more friendship from him. mr. r. has proved himself false, notwithstanding his naming his son after me as a proof of friendship." the mr. r. referred to was henry j. rogers, and, writing of him to vail on april , morse says: "i am truly grieved at rogers's conduct. he must be conscious of doing great injustice; for a man that has wronged another is sure to invent some cause for his act if there has been none given. in this case he endeavors to excuse his selfish and injurious acts by the false assertion that 'i had cast him overboard.' why, what does he mean? was i not overboard myself? does he or anyone else suppose i have nothing else to do than to find them places, and not only intercede for them, which in rogers's case and zantziger's i have constantly and perseveringly done to the present hour, but i am bound to force the companies, over which i have no control, to take them at any rate, on the penalty of being traduced and injured by them if they do not get the office they seek? as to rogers, you know my feelings towards him and his. i had received him as a _friend_, not as a mere employee, and let no opportunity pass without urging forward his interests. i recollected his naming his son for me, and had determined, if the wealth actually came which has been predicted to me, that that child should be remembered." always desirous of being just and merciful, morse writes to vail on may : "rogers is here. i have had a good deal of conversation with him, and the result is that i think that some circumstances which seemed to inculpate him are explicable on other grounds than intention to injure us." but he was finally forced to give him up, for on august he writes: "you cannot tell how pained i am at being compelled to change my opinion of r. your feelings correspond entirely with my own. i was hoping to do something gratifying to him and his family, and soon should have done it if he would permit it; but no! the mask of friendship covered a deep selfishness that scrupled not to sacrifice a real friendship to a shortsighted and overreaching ambition. let him go. i wished to befriend him and his, and would have done so from the heart, but as he cannot trust me i have enough who can and do." the case of rogers was typical, and i have, therefore, given it in some detail. it was always a source of grief to morse when men, whom in his large-hearted way he had admitted to his intimacy, turned against him; and he was called upon to suffer many such blows. he has been accused of having quarrelled with all his associates. this, of course, is not true, for we have only to name vail, and gale, and kendall, and reid, and a host of others to prove the contrary. but, like all men who have achieved great things, he made bitter enemies, some of whom at first professed sincere friendship for him and were implicitly trusted by him. however, a dispassionate study of all the circumstances leading up to the rupture of these friendly ties will prove that, in practically every case he was sinned against, not sinning. a letter to james d. reid, written on december , will show that the quality of his mercy was not strained: "you may recollect when i met you in philadelphia, on the unpleasant business of attending in a court to witness the contest of two parties for their rights, you informed me of the destitute condition of o'reilly's family. at that moment i was led to believe, from consultation with the counsel for the patentees, that the case would undoubtedly go in their (the patentees') favor. your statement touched me, and i could not bear to think that an innocent wife and inoffensive children should suffer, even from the wrong-doing of their proper protector, should this prove to be the case. you remember i authorized you to draw on me for twenty dollars to be remitted to mr. o'reilly's family, and to keep the source from whence it was derived secret. my object in writing is to ask if this was done, and, in case it was, to request you to draw on me for that amount." in an earlier letter to his brother he remarks philosophically: "smith is smith yet and so likely to be, but i have become used to him and you would be surprised to find how well oil and water appear to agree. there must be crosses and the aim should be rather to bear them gracefully, graciously, and patiently, than to have them removed." while thus harassed on all sides by those who would filch from him his good name as well as his purse, his reward was coming to him for the patience and equanimity with which he was bearing his crosses. the longing for a home of his own had been intense all through his life and now, in the evening of his years, this dream was to be realized. he thus announces to his brother the glorious news:-- poughkeepsie, north river, july , . in my last i wrote you that i had been looking out for a farm in this region, and gave you a diagram of a place which i fancied. since then i was informed of a place for sale south of this village miles, on the bank of the river, part of the old livingston manor, and far superior. _i have this day concluded a bargain for it._ there are about one hundred acres. i pay for it $ , . i am almost afraid to tell you of its beauties and advantages. it is just such a place as in england could not be purchased for double the number of pounds sterling. its "capabilities," as the landscape gardeners would say, are unequalled. there is every variety of surface, plain, hill, dale, glens, running streams and fine forest, and every variety of different prospect; the fishkill mountains towards the south and the catskills towards the north; the hudson with its varieties of river craft, steamboats of all kinds, sloops, etc., constantly showing a varied scene. [illustration: house at locust grove, poughkeepsie, n.y.] i will not enlarge. i am congratulated by all in having made an excellent purchase, and i find a most delightful neighborhood. within a few miles around, approached by excellent roads, are mr. lenox, general talmadge, philip van rensselaer, etc., on one side; on the other, harry livingston, mrs. smith thomson (judge thomson's widow, and sister to the first mrs. arthur breese), mr. crosby, mr. boorman, etc., etc. the new railroad will run at the foot of the grounds (probably) on the river, and bring new york within two hours of us. there is every faculty for residence--good markets, churches, schools. take it all in all i think it just the place _for us all_. if you should fancy a spot on it for building, i can accommodate you, and richard wants twenty acres reserved for him. singularly enough this was the very spot where uncle arthur found his wife. the old trees are pointed out where he and she used to ramble during their courtship. on september , after again expatiating on the beauties and advantages of his home, he adds: "i have some clouds and mutterings of thunder on the horizon (the necessary attendants, i suppose, of a lightning project) which i trust will give no more of storm than will suffice, under him who directs the elements, to clear the air and make a serener and calmer sunset." on october , he announces the name which he has given to his country place, and a singular coincidence:-- "_locust grove._ you see by the date where i am. locust grove, it seems, was the original name given to this place by judge livingston, and, without knowing this fact, i had given the same name to it, so that there is a natural appropriateness in the designation of my home. the wind is howling mournfully this evening, a second edition, i fear, of the late destructive equinoctial, but, dreary as it is out-of-doors, i have comfortable quarters within." in the world of affairs the wind was howling, too, and the storm was gathering which culminated in the series of lawsuits brought by morse and his associates against the infringers on his patents. the letters to his brother are full of the details of these piratical attacks, but throughout all the turmoil he maintained his poise and his faith in the triumph of justice and truth. in the letter just quoted from he says: "these matters do not annoy me as formerly. i have seen so many dark storms which threatened, and particularly in relation to the telegraph, and i have seen them so often hushed at the 'peace, be still' of our covenant god, that now the fears and anxieties on any fresh gathering soon subside into perfect calm." and on november , he writes: "the most annoying part of the matter to me is that, notwithstanding my matters are all in the hands of agents and i have nothing to do with any of the arrangements, i am held up by name to the odium of the public. lawsuits are commenced against them at cincinnati and will be in indiana and illinois as well as here, and so, notwithstanding all my efforts to get along peaceably, i find the fate of whitney before me. i think i may be able to secure my farm, and so have a place to retire to for the evening of my days, but even this may be denied me. a few months will decide.... you have before you the fate of an inventor, and, take as much pains as you will to secure to yourself your valuable invention, make up your mind from my experience now, in addition to others, that you will be robbed of it and abused into the bargain. this is the lot of a successful inventor or discoverer, and no precaution, i believe, will save him from it. he will meet with a mixed estimate; the enlightened, the liberal, the good, will applaud him and respect him; the sordid, the unprincipled will hate him and detract from his reputation to compass their own contemptible and selfish ends." while events in the business world were rapidly converging towards the great lawsuits which should either confirm the inventor's rights to the offspring of his brain, or deprive him of all the benefits to which he was justly and morally entitled, he continued to find solace from all his cares and anxieties in his new home, with his children and friends around him. he touches on the lights and shadows in a letter to his brother, who was still in england, dated new york, april , :-- "i snatch a moment by the washington, which goes to-morrow, to redeem my character in not having written of late so often as i could wish. i have been so constantly under the necessity of watching the movements of the most unprincipled set of pirates i have ever known, that all my time has been occupied in defense, in putting evidence into something like legal shape that i am the inventor of the electro-magnetic telegraph!! would you have believed it ten years ago that a question could be raised on that subject? yet this very morning in the 'journal of commerce' is an article from a new orleans paper giving an account of a public meeting convened by o'reilly, at which he boldly stated that i had '_pirated my invention from a german invention_' a great deal better than mine. and the 'journal of commerce' has a sort of halfway defense of me which implies there is some doubt on the subject. i have written a note which may appear in to-morrow's 'journal,' quite short, but which i think, will stop that game here. "a trial in court is the only event now which will put public opinion right, so indefatigable have these unprincipled men been in manufacturing a spurious public opinion. "although these events embarrass me, and i do not receive, and may not receive, my rightful dues, yet i have been so favored by a kind providence as to have sufficient collected to free my farm from mortgage on the st of may, and so find a home, a beautiful home, for me and mine, unencumbered, and sufficient over to make some improvements.... "i do not wish to raise too many expectations, but every day i am more and more charmed with my purchase. i can truly say i have never before so completely realized my wishes in regard to situation, never before found so many pleasant circumstances associated together to make a home agreeable, and, so far as earth is concerned, i only wish now to have you and the rest of the family participate in the advantages with which a kind god has been pleased to indulge me. "strange, indeed, would it be if clouds were not in the sky, but the sun of righteousness will dissipate as many and as much of them as shall be right and good, and this is all that should be required. i look not for freedom from trials; they must needs be; but the number, the kind, the form, the degree of them, i can safely leave to him who has ordered and will still order all things well." chapter xxxiii january , --december , preparation for lawsuits.--letter from colonel shaffner.--morse's reply deprecating bloodshed.--shaffner allays his fears.--morse attends his son's wedding at utica.--his own second marriage.--first of great lawsuits.--almost all suits in morse's favor.--decision of supreme court of united states.--extract from an earlier opinion.--alfred vail leaves the telegraph business.--remarks on this by james d. reid.--morse receives decoration from sultan of turkey.--letter to organizers of printers' festival.--letter concerning aviation.--optimistic letter from mr. kendall.--humorous letter from george wood.--thomas r. walker.-- letter to fenimore cooper.--dr. jackson again.--unfairness of the press. --letter from charles c. ingham on art matters.--letter from george vail.--f.o.j. smith continues to embarrass.--letter from morse to smith. the year was a momentous one to morse in more ways than one. the first of the historic lawsuits was to be begun at frankfort, kentucky,-- lawsuits which were not only to establish this inventor's claims, but were to be used as a precedent in all future patent litigation. in his peaceful retreat on the banks of the hudson he carefully and systematically prepared the evidence which should confound his enemies, and calmly awaited the verdict, firm in his faith that, however lowering the clouds, the sun would yet break through. finding relaxation from his cares and worries in the problems of his farm, he devoted every spare moment to the life out-of-doors, and drank in new strength and inspiration with every breath of the pure country air. although soon to pass the fifty-seventh milestone, his sane, temperate habits had kept him young in heart and vigorous in body, and in this same year he was to be rewarded for his long and lonely vigil during the dark decades of his middle life, and to enter upon an indian summer of happy family life. while spending as much time as possible at his beloved locust grove, he was yet compelled, in the interests of his approaching legal contests, to consult with his lawyers in new york and washington, and it was while in the latter city that he received a letter from colonel tal. p. shaffner, one of the most energetic of the telegraph pioneers, and a devoted, if sometimes injudicious, friend. it was he who, more than any one else, was responsible for the publication of morse's "defense" against professor henry. the letter was written from louisville on january , , and contains the following sentences: "we are going ahead with the line to new orleans. i have twenty-five hands on the road to nashville, and will put on more next week. i have ten on the road to frankfort, and my associate has gangs at other parts. o'reilly has fifteen hands on the nashville route and i confidently expect a few fights. my men are well armed and i think they can do their duty. i shall be with them when the parties get together, and, if anything does occur, the use of dupont's best will be appreciated by me. this is to be lamented, but, if it comes, we shall not back out." deeply exercised, morse answers him post-haste: "it gives me real pain to learn that there is any prospect of physical collision between the o'reilly party and ours, and i trust that this may arrive in time to prevent any movement of those friendly to me which shall provoke so sad a result. i emphatically say that, if _the law_ cannot protect me and my rights in your region, i shall never sanction the appeal to force to sustain myself, however conscious of being in the right. i infinitely prefer to suffer still more from the gross injustice of unprincipled men than to gain my rights by a single illegal step.... i hope you will do all in your power to prevent collision. if the parties meet in putting up posts or wires, let our opponents have their way unmolested. i have no patent for putting up posts or wires. they as well as we have a right to put them up. it is the use made of them afterwards which may require legal adjustment. the men employed by each party are not to blame. let no ill-feeling be fomented between the two, no rivalry but that of doing their work the best; let friendly feeling as between them be cherished, and teach them to refer all disputes to the principals. i wish no one to fight for me physically. he may 'speak daggers but use none.' however much i might appreciate his friendship and his motive, it would give me the deepest sorrow if i should learn that a single individual, friend or foe, has been injured in life or limb by any professing friendship for me." he was reassured by the following from colonel shaffner:-- _"january ._ your favor of the st was received yesterday. i was sorry that you allowed your feelings to be so much aroused in the case of contemplated difficulties between our hands and those of o'reilly. they held out the threats that we should not pass them, and we were determined to do it. i had them notified that we were prepared to meet them under any circumstances. we were prepared to have a real 'hug,' but, when our hands overtook them, they only 'yelled' a little and mine followed, and for fifteen miles they were side by side, and when a man finished his hole, he ran with all his might to get ahead. but finally, on the th, we passed them about eighty miles from here, and now we are about twenty-five miles ahead of them without the loss of a drop of blood, and we shall be able to beat them to nashville, if we can get the wire in time, which is doubtful." there were many such stirring incidents in the early history of the telegraph, and the half of them has not been told, thus leaving much material for the future historian. but, while so much that was exciting was taking place in the outside world, the cause of it all was turning his thoughts towards matters more domestic. on june , he writes to his brother: "charles left me for utica last evening, and finley and i go this evening to be present at his marriage on thursday the th." it was at his son's wedding that he was again strongly attracted to his young second cousin (or, to be more exact, his first cousin once removed), the first cousin of his son's bride, and the result is announced to his brother in a letter of august : "before your return i shall be again married. i leave to-morrow for utica where cousin (second cousin) sarah elizabeth griswold now is. on thursday morning the th we shall (god willing) be married, and i shall immediately proceed to louisville and frankfort in kentucky to be present at my first suit against o'reilly, the pirate of my invention. it comes off on the d inst. so far as the justice of the case is concerned i am confident of final success, but there are so many crooks in the law that i ought to be prepared for disappointment." continuing, he tells his brother that he has been secretly in love with his future wife for some years: "but, reflecting on it, i found i was in no situation to indulge in any plans of marrying. she had nothing, i had nothing, and the more i loved her the more i was determined to stifle my feelings without hinting to her anything of the matter, or letting her know that i was at all interested in her." but now, with increasing wealth, the conditions were changed, and so they were married, and in their case it can with perfect truth be said, "they lived happy ever after," and failed by but a year of being able to celebrate their silver wedding. soon a young family grew up around him, to whom he was always a patient and loving father. we his children undoubtedly gave him many an anxious moment, as children have a habit of doing, but through all his trials, domestic as well as extraneous, he was calm, wise, and judicious. [illustration: sarah elizabeth griswold second wife of s.f.b. morse] but now the first of the great lawsuits, which were to confirm morse's patent rights or to throw his invention open to the world, was begun, and, with his young bride, he hastened to frankfort to be present at the trial. to follow these suits through all their legal intricacies would make dry reading and consume reams of paper. mr. prime in a footnote remarks: "mr. henry o'reilly has deposited in the library of the new york historical society more than one hundred volumes containing a complete history of telegraphic litigation in the united states. these records are at all times accessible to any persons who wish to investigate the claims and rights of individuals or companies. the _testimony_ alone in the various suits fills several volumes, each as large as this." it will, therefore, only be necessary to say that almost all of these suits, including the final one before the supreme court of the united states, were decided in morse's favor. every legal device was used against him; his claims and those of others were sifted to the uttermost, and then as now expert opinion was found to uphold both sides of the case. to quote mr. prime: "the decision of the supreme court was unanimous on all the points involving the right of professor morse to the claim of being the original inventor of the electro-magnetic recording telegraph. a minority of the court went still further, and gave him the right to the motive power of magnetism as a means of operating machinery to imprint signals or to produce sounds for telegraphic purposes. the testimony of experts in science and art is not introduced because it was thoroughly weighed and sifted by intelligent and impartial men, whose judgment must be accepted as final and sufficient. the justice of the decision has never been impugned. each succeeding year has confirmed it with accumulating evidence. "one point was decided against the morse patent, and it is worthy of being noticed that this decision, which denied to morse the exclusive use of electromagnetism for recording telegraphs, has never been of injury to his instrument, because no other inventor has devised an instrument to supersede his. "the court decided that the electro-magnetic telegraph was the sole and exclusive invention of samuel f.b. morse. if others could make better instruments for the same purpose, they were at liberty to use electromagnetism. twenty years have elapsed since this decision was rendered; the morse patent has expired by limitation of time, but it is still without a rival in any part of the world." this was written in , but i think that i am safe in saying that the same is true now after the lapse of forty more years. while, of course, there have been both elaboration and simplification, the basic principle of the universal telegraph of to-day is embodied in the drawings of the sketch-book of , and it was the invention of morse, and was entirely different from any form of telegraph devised by others. i shall make but one quotation from the long opinion handed down by the supreme court and delivered by chief justice taney:-- "neither can the inquiries he made, nor the information or advice he received from men of science, in the course of his researches, impair his right to the character of an inventor. no invention can possibly be made, consisting of a combination of different elements of power, without a thorough knowledge of the properties of each of them, and the mode in which they operate on each other. and it can make no difference in this respect whether he derives his information from books, or from men skilled in the science. if it were otherwise, no patent in which a combination of different elements is used could ever be obtained. for no man ever made such an invention without having first obtained this information, unless it was discovered by some fortunate accident. and it is evident that such an invention as the electro-magnetic telegraph could never have been brought into action without it. for a very high degree of scientific knowledge, and the nicest skill in the mechanic arts, are combined in it, and were both necessary to bring it into successful operation. _and the fact that morse sought and, obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best sources, and acted upon it, neither impairs his rights as an inventor, nor detracts from his merits._" the italics are mine, for it has over and over been claimed for everybody who had a part in the early history of the telegraph, either by hint, help, or discovery, that more credit should be given to him than to morse himself--to henry, to gale, to vail, to doctor page, and even to f.o.j. smith. in fact morse used often to say that some people thought he had no right to claim his invention because he had not discovered electricity, nor the copper from which his wires were made, nor the brass of his instruments, nor the glass of his insulators. i shall make one other quotation from the opinion of judge kane and judge grier at one of the earlier trials, in philadelphia, in :-- "that he, mr. morse, was the first to devise and practise the art of recording language, at telegraphic distances, by the dynamic force of the electro-magnet, or, indeed, by any agency whatever, is, to our minds, plain upon all the evidence. it is unnecessary to review the testimony for the purpose of showing this. his application for a patent, in april, , was preceded by a series of experiments, results, illustrations and proofs of final success, which leave no doubt whatever but that his great invention was consummated before the early spring of . there is no one person, whose invention has been spoken of by any witness, or referred to in any book as involving the principle of mr. morse's discovery, but must yield precedence of date to this. neither steinheil, nor cooke and wheatstone, nor davy, nor dyar, nor henry, had at this time made a recording telegraph of any sort. the devices then known were merely _semaphores_, that spoke to the eye for a moment--bearing about the same relation to the great discovery before us as the abbé sicard's invention of a visual alphabet for the purposes of conversation bore to the art of printing with movable types. mr. dyar's had no recording apparatus, as he expressly tells us, and professor henry had contented himself with the abundant honors of his laboratory and lecture-rooms." one case was decided against him, but this decision was afterwards overruled by the supreme court, so that it caused no lasting injury to his claims. as decision after decision was rendered in his favor he received the news calmly, always attributing to divine providence every favor bestowed upon him. letters of congratulation poured in on him from his friends, and, among others, the following from alfred vail must have aroused mingled feelings of pleasure and regret. it is dated september , :-- i congratulate you in your success at frankfort in arresting thus far that pirate o'reilly. i have received many a hearty shake from our friends, congratulating me upon the glorious issue of the application for an injunction. the pirate dies hard, and well he may. it is his privilege to kick awhile in this last death struggle. these pirates must be followed up and each in his turn nailed to the wall. the wash. & n.o. co. is at last organized, and for the last three weeks we have received daily communications from n.o. our prospects are flattering. and what do you think they have done with me? superintendent of washington & n.o. line all the way from washington to columbia at $ !!!!! this game will not be played long. i have made up my mind to leave the telegraph to take care of itself, since it cannot take care of me. i shall, in a few months, leave washington for new jersey, family, kit and all, and bid adieu to the subject of the telegraph for some more profitable business.... i have just finished a most beautiful register with a _pen lever key_ and an expanding reel. have orders for six of the same kind to be made at once; three for the south and three for the west. i regret you could not, on your return from the west, have made us at least a flying visit with your charming lady. i am happy to learn that your cup of happiness is so full in the society of one who, i learn from mr. k., is well calculated to cheer you and relieve the otherwise solitude of your life.... my kindest wishes for yourself and mrs. morse, and believe me to be, now as ever, yours, etc., alfred vail. mr. james d. reid in an article in the "electrical world," october , , after quoting from this letter; adds:-- "the truth is mr. vail had no natural aptitude for executive work, and he had a temper somewhat variable and unhappy. he and i got along very well together until i determined to order my own instruments, his being too heavy and too difficult, as i thought, for an operator to handle while receiving. we had our instruments made by the same maker--clark & co., philadelphia. yet even that did not greatly separate us, and we were always friends. about some things his notions were very crude. it was under his guidance that david brooks, henry c. hepburn and i, in , undertook to insulate the line from lancaster to harrisburg, pennsylvania, by saturating bits of cotton cloth in beeswax and wrapping them round projecting arms. the bees enjoyed it greatly, but it spoiled our work. "but i have no desire to criticize him. he seemed to me to have great opportunities which he did not use. he might have had, i thought, the register work of the country and secured a large business. but it went from him to others, and so he left the field." this eventful year of closed with the great telegraph suits in full swing, but with the inventor calm under all his trials. in a letter, of december , to his brother sidney, who had now returned to america, he says: "my affairs (telegraphically) are only under a slight mist, hardly a cloud; i see through the mist already." and in another part of this letter he says: "i may see you at the end of the week. if i can bring sarah down with me, i will, to spend christmas, but the weather may change and prevent. what weather! i am working on the lawn as if it were spring. you have no idea how lovely this spot is. not a day passes that i do not feel it. if i have trouble abroad, i have peace, and love, and happiness at home. my sweet wife i find, indeed, a rich treasure. uniformly cheerful and most affectionate, she makes sunshine all the day. god's gifts are worthy of the giver." it was in the early days of that a gift of another kind was received by him which could not fail to gratify him. this was a decoration, the "nichan iftikar" or "order of glory," presented to him by the sultan of turkey, the first and only decoration which the sultan of the ottoman empire had conferred upon a citizen of the united states. it was a beautiful specimen of the jeweller's art, the monogram of the sultan in gold, surrounded by diamonds in a graceful design. it was accompanied by a diploma (or _berait_) in turkish, which being translated reads:-- in the name of him sultan abdul hamid khan son of mahmoud khan, son of abdul hamid khan--may he ever be victorious! the object of the present sovereign decoration of noble exalted glory, of elevated place, and of this illustrious world conquering monogram is as follows: the bearer of this imperial monogram of exalted character, mr. morse, an american, a man of science and of talents, and who is a model of the chiefs of the nation of the messiah--may his grade be increased--having invented an electrical telegraph, a specimen of which has been exhibited in my imperial presence; and it being proper to patronize knowledge and to express my sense of the value of the attainments of the inventor, as well as to distinguish those persons who are the inventors of such objects as serve to extend and facilitate the relations of mankind, i have conferred upon him, on my exalted part, an honorable decoration in diamonds, and issued also this present diploma, as a token of my benevolence for him. written in the middle of the moon sefer, the fortunate, the year of the flight one thousand two hundred and sixty-four, in constantinople the well-guarded. the person who was instrumental in gaining for the inventor this mark of recognition from the sultan was dr. james lawrence smith, a young geologist at that time in the employ of the sultan. he, aided by the reverend c. hamlin, of the armenian seminary at bebek, gave an exhibition of the working of the telegraph before the sultan and all the officers of his government, and when it was proposed to decorate him for his trouble and lucid explanation, he modestly and generously disclaimed any honor, and begged that any such recognition should be given to the inventor himself. other decorations and degrees were bestowed upon the inventor from time to time, but these will be summarized in a future chapter. i have enlarged upon this one as being the first to be received from a foreign monarch. as his fame increased, requests of all sorts poured in on him, and it is amazing to find how courteously he answered even the most fantastic, overwhelmed as he was by his duties in connection with the attacks on his purse and his reputation. two of his answers to correspondents are here given as examples:-- january , . gentlemen,--i have received your polite invitation to the printers' festival in honor of franklin, on his birthday the th of the present month, and regret that my engagements in the city put it out of my power to be present. i thank you kindly for the flattering notice you are pleased to take of me in connection with the telegraph, and made peculiarly grateful at the present time as coming from a class of society with whom are my earliest pleasurable associations. i may be allowed, perhaps, to say that in my boyhood it was my delight, during my vacations, to seek my pastime in the operations of the printing-office. i solicited of my father to take the corrected proofs of his geography to the printing-office, and there, through the day for weeks, i made myself practically acquainted with all the operations of the printer. at years of age i compiled a small volume of stories, called it the 'youth's friend,' and then set it up, locked the matter in its form, prepared the paper and worked it off; going through the entire process till it was ready for the binder. i think i have some claim, therefore, to belong to the fraternity. the other letter was in answer to one from a certain solomon andrews, president of the inventors' institute of perth amboy, who was making experiments in aviation, and i shall give but a few extracts:-- "i know by experience the language of the world in regard to an untried invention. he who will accomplish anything useful and new must steel himself against the sneers of the ignorant, and often against the unimaginative sophistries of the learned.... "in regard to the subject on which you desire an opinion, i will say that the idea of navigating the air has been a favorite one with the inventive in all ages; it is naturally suggested by the flight of a bird. i have watched for hours together in early life, in my walks across the bridge from boston to charlestown, the motions of the sea-gulls.... often have i attempted to unravel the mystery of their motion so as to bring the principle of it to bear upon this very subject, but i never experimented upon it. many ingenious men, however, have experimented on air navigation, and have so far succeeded as to travel in the air many miles, but always with the current of wind in their favor. by _navigating_ the atmosphere is meant something more than dropping down with the tide in a boat, without sails, or oars or other means of propulsion.... birds not only rise in the air, but they can also propel themselves against the ordinary currents. a study, then, of the conditions that enable a bird thus to defy the ordinary currents of the atmosphere seems to furnish the most likely mode of solving the problem. whilst a bird flies, whilst i see a mass of matter overcoming, by its structure and a power within it, the natural forces of gravitation and a current of air, i dare not say that air navigation is absurd or impossible. "i consider the difficulties to be overcome are the combining of strength with lightness in the machine sufficient to allow of the exercise of a force without the machine from a source of power within. a difficulty will occur in the right adaptation of propellers, and, should this difficulty be overcome, the risks of derangement of the machinery from the necessary lightness of its parts would be great, and consequently the risks to life would be greater than in any other mode of travelling. from a wreck at sea or on shore a man may be rescued with his life, and so by the running off the track by the railroad car, the majority of passengers will be saved; but from a fall some thousands, or only hundreds, of feet through the air, not one would escape death.... "i have no time to add more than my best wishes for the success of those who are struggling with these difficulties." these observations, made nearly sixty-five years ago, are most pertinent to present-day conditions, when the conquest of the air has been accomplished, and along the very lines suggested by morse, but at what a terrible cost in human life. that the inventor, harassed on all sides by pirates, unscrupulous men, and false friends, should, in spite of his christian philosophy, have suffered from occasional fits of despondency, is but natural, and he must have given vent to his feelings in a letter to his true friend and able business agent, mr. kendall, for the latter thus strives to hearten him in a letter of april , :-- "you say, 'mrs. morse and elizabeth are both sitting by me.' how is it possible, in the midst of so much that is charming and lovely, that you _could_ sink into the gloomy spirit which your letter indicates? can there be a paradise without devils in it--blue devils, i mean? and how is it that now, instead of addressing themselves first to the woman, they march boldly up to the man? "faith in our maker is a most important christian virtue, but man has no right to rely on faith alone until he has exhausted his own power. when we have done all we can with pure hands and honest hearts, then may we rely with confidence on the aid of him who governs worlds and atoms, controls, when he chooses, the will of man, restrains his passions and makes his bad designs subservient to the best of ends. "now for a short application of a short sermon. we must do our best to have the depositions and affidavits prepared and forwarded in due time. this done we may have _faith_ that we will gain our cause. or, if with our utmost exertions, we fail in our preparations, we shall be warranted in having faith that no harm will come of it. "but if, like the jews in the maccabees, we rely upon the lord to fight our battles, without lifting a weapon in our defence, or, like the wagoner in the fable, we content ourselves with calling on hercules, we shall find in the end that 'faith without works is dead.' ... the world, as you say, is '_the world_'--a quarrelling, vicious, fighting, plundering world--yet it is a very good world for good men. why should man torment himself about that which he cannot help? if we but enjoy the good things of earth and endure the evil things with a cheerful resignation, bad spirits--blue devils and all--will fly from our bosoms to their appropriate abode." another true and loyal friend was george wood, associated with mr. kendall in washington, from whom are many affectionate and witty letters which it would be a pleasure to reproduce, but for the present i shall content myself with extracts from one dated may , :-- "it does seem to me that satan has, from the jump, been at war with this invention of yours. at first he strove to cover you up with a f.o.g. of egyptian hue; then he ran your wires through leaden pipe, constructed by his 'pipe-laying' agents, into the ground and 'all aground.' and when these were hoisted up, like the brazen serpent, on poles for all to gaze at and admire, then who so devout a worshipper as the devil in the person of one of his children of darkness, who came forward at once to contract for a line reaching to st. louis--_and round the world_--upon that principle of the true construction of _constitutions_, and such like _contracts_, first promulgated by that 'old roman' the 'hero of two wars,' and approved by the 'whole hog' democracy of the 'first republic of the world,' and which, like the moral law is summarily comprehended in a few words--'the constitution (or contract) is what i understand it to be.' "now without stopping to show you that o'reilly was a true disciple of o'hickory, i think you will not question his being a son of satan, whose brazen instruments (one of whom gave his first born the name of morse) instigated by the gent in black, not content with inflicting us with the irish potato rot, has recently brought over the scotch itch, if, perhaps, by plagues job was never called upon to suffer (for there were no courts of equity and chancery in those early days) the american inventor might be tempted to curse god and die. but, ah! you have such a sweet wife, and job's was such a vinegar cruet." it is, perhaps, hardly necessary to explain that f.o.j. smith was nicknamed "fog" smith, and that the "scotch itch" referred to the telegraph of alexander bain, which, for a time, was used by the enemies of morse in the effort to break down his patent rights. the other allusions were to the politics of the day. another good friend and business associate was thomas r. walker, who in was mayor of utica, new york. mr. walker's wife was the half-sister of mrs. griswold, morse's mother-in-law, so there were ties of relationship as well as of friendship between the two men, and morse thought so highly of mr. walker that he made him one of the executors of his will. in a letter of july , , mr. walker says: "the course pursued by the press is simply mercenary. were it otherwise you would receive justice at their hands, and your fame and merits would be vindicated instead of being tarnished by the editorials of selfish and ungenerous men. but-- _'magna est veritas et prevalebit_.' there is comfort in that at any rate." it would seem that not only was the inventor forced to uphold his rights through a long series of lawsuits, but a great part of the press of the country was hostile to him on the specious plea that they were attempting to overthrow a baleful monopoly. in this connection the following extract from a letter to j. fenimore cooper, written about this time, is peculiarly apt:-- "it is not because i have not thought of you and your excellent family that i have not long since written to you to know your personal welfare. i hear of you often, it is true, through the papers. they praise you, as usual, for it is praise to have the abuse of such as abuse you. in all your libel suits against these degraded wretches i sympathize entirely with you, and there are thousands who now thank you in their hearts for the moral courage you display in bringing these licentious scamps to a knowledge of their duty. be assured the good sense, the intelligence, the right feeling of the community at large are with you. the licentiousness of the press needed the rebuke which you have given it, and it feels it too despite its awkward attempts to brave it out. "i will say nothing of your 'home as found.' i will use the frankness to say that i wish you had not written it.... when in paris last i several times passed rue st. dominique. the gate stood invitingly open and i looked in, but did not see my old friends although everything else was present. i felt as one might suppose another to feel on rising from his grave after a lapse of a century." an attack from another and an old quarter is referred to in a letter to his brother sidney of july , also another instance of the unfairness of the press:-- "dr. jackson had the audacity to appear at louisville by _affidavit_ against me. my _counter-affidavit_, with his original letters, contradicting _in toto_ his statement, put him _hors de combat_. mr. kendall says he was 'completely used up.' ... i have got a copy of jackson's affidavit which i should like to show you. there never was a more finished specimen of wholesale lying than is contained in it. he is certainly a monomaniac; no other conclusion could save him from an indictment for perjury. "by the frankfort paper sent you last week, and the extract i now send you, you can give a very effective shot to the 'tribune.' it is, perhaps, worthy of remark that, while all the papers in new york were so forward in publishing a _false_ account of o'reilly's success in the frankfort case, not one that i have seen has noticed the decision just given at louisville _against_ him in every particular. this shows the animus of the press towards me. nor have they taken any pains to correct the false account given of the previous decision." although no longer president of the national academy of design, having refused reëlection in in order to devote his whole time to the telegraph, morse still took a deep interest in its welfare, and his counsel was sought by its active members. on october , , mr. charles c. ingham sent him a long letter detailing the trials and triumphs of the institution, from which i shall quote a few sentences: "'lang syne,' when you fought the good fight for the cause of art, your prospects in life were not brighter than they are now, and in bodily and mental vigor you are just the same, therefore do not, at this most critical moment, desert the cause. it is the same and our enemies are the same old insolent quacks and impostors, who wish to make a footstool of the profession on which to stand and show themselves to the public.... now, with this prospect before you, rouse up a little of your old enthusiasm, put your shoulder to the wheel, and place the only school of art on all this side of the world on a firm foundation." unfortunately the answer to this letter is not in my possession, but we may be sure that it came from the heart, while it must have expressed the writer's deep regret that the multiplicity of his other cares would prevent him from undertaking what would have been to him a labor of love. although alfred vail had severed his active connection with the telegraph, he and his brother george still owned stock in the various lines, and morse did all in his power to safeguard and further their interests. they, on their part, were always zealous in championing the rights of the inventor, as the following letter from george vail, dated december , , will show:-- "enclosed i hand you a paragraph cut from the 'newark daily' of th inst. it was evidently drawn out by a letter which i addressed to the editor some months ago, stating that i could not see what consistency there was in his course; that, while he was assuming the championship of american manufactures, ingenuity, enterprise, etc., etc., he was at the same time holding up an english inventor to praise, while he held all the better claims of morse in the dark,--alluding to his bespattering mr. bain and o'reilly with compliments at our expense, etc. "i would now suggest that, if you are willing, we give _mr. daily_ a temperate article on the rise and progress of telegraphs, asserting claims for yourself, and, as i must father the article, give the vails and new jersey all the 'sodder' they are entitled to, and a little more, if you can spare it. "will you write something adapted to the case and forward it to me as early as possible, that it may go in on the heels of this paragraph enclosed?" f.o.j. smith continued to embarrass and thwart the other proprietors by his various wild schemes for self-aggrandizement. as mr. kendall said in a letter of august : "there is much _fog_ in smith's letter, but it is nothing else." and on december , he writes in a more serious vein: "mr. smith peremptorily refuses an arbitration which shall embrace a separation of all our interests, and i think it inexpedient to have any other. he is so utterly unprincipled and selfish that we can expect nothing but renewed impositions as long as we have any connection with him. he asks me to make a proposition to buy or sell, which i have delayed doing, because i know that nothing good can come of it; but i have informed him that i will consider any proposition he may make, if not too absurd to deserve it. i do not expect any that we can accede to without sacrifices to this worse than patent pirate which i am not prepared to make." mr. kendall then concludes that the only recourse will be to the law, but morse, always averse to war, and preferring to exhaust every effort to bring about an amicable adjustment of difficulties, sent the following courteous letter to smith on december , which, however, failed of the desired result:-- "i deeply regret to learn from my agent, mr. kendall, that an unpleasant collision is likely to take place between your interest in the telegraph and the rest of your coproprietors in the patent. i had hoped that an amicable arbitrament might arrange all our mutual interests to our mutual advantage and satisfaction; but i learn that his proposition to that effect has been rejected by you. "you must be aware that the rest of your coproprietors have been great sufferers in their property, for some time past, from the frequent disagreements between their agent and yourself, and that, for the sake of peace, they have endured much and long. it is impossible for me to say where the fault lies, for, from the very fact that i put my affairs into the hands of an agent to manage for me, it is evident i cannot have that minute, full and clear view of the matters at issue between him and yourself that he has, or, under other circumstances, that i might have. but this i can see, that mutual disadvantage must be the consequence of litigation between us, and this we both ought to be desirous to avoid. "between fair-minded men i cannot see why there should be a difference, or at least such a difference as cannot be adjusted by uninterested parties chosen to settle it by each of the disagreeing parties. "i write this in the hope that, on second thought, you will meet my agent mr. kendall in the mode of arbitration proposed. i have repeatedly advised my agent to refrain from extreme measures until none others are left us; and if such are now deemed by him necessary to secure a large amount of our property, hazarded by perpetual delays, while i shall most sincerely regret the necessity, there are interests which i am bound to protect, connected with the secure possession of what is rightfully mine, which will compel me to oppose no further obstacle to his proceeding to obtain my due, in such manner as, in his judgment, he may deem best." chapter xxxiv march , --november , precarious financial condition.--regret at not being able to make loan.-- false impression of great wealth.--fears he may have to sell home.-- f.o.j. smith continues to give trouble.--morse system extending throughout the world.--death of fenimore cooper.--subscriptions to charities, etc.--first use of word "telegram."--mysterious fire in supreme court clerk's room.--letter of commodore perry.--disinclination to antagonize henry.--temporary triumph of f.o.j. smith.--order gradually emerging.--expenses of the law.--triumph in australia.--gift to yale college.--supreme court decision and extension of patent.--social diversions in washington.--letters of george wood and p.h. watson on extension of patent.--loyalty to mr. kendall; also to alfred vail.-- decides to publish "defense."--controversy with bishop spaulding.--creed on slavery.--political views.--defeated for congress. while i have anticipated in giving the results of the various lawsuits, it must be borne in mind that these dragged along for years, and that the final decision of the supreme court was not handed down until january , . during all this time the inventor was kept in suspense as to the final outcome, and often the future looked very dark indeed, and he was hard pressed to provide for the present. on march , , he writes to a friend who had requested a loan of a few hundred dollars:-- "it truly pains me to be obliged to tell you of my inability to make you a loan, however small in amount or amply secured. in the present embarrassed state of my affairs, consequent upon these never-ending and vexatious suits, i know not how soon all my property may be taken from me. the newspapers, among their other innumerable falsehoods, circulate one in regard to my 'enormous wealth.' the object is obvious. it is to destroy any feeling of sympathy in the public mind from the gross robberies committed upon me. 'he is rich enough; he can afford to give something to the public from his extortionate monopoly,' etc., etc. "now no man likes to proclaim his poverty, for there is a sort of satisfaction to some minds in being esteemed rich, even if they are not. the evil of this is that from a rich man more is expected in the way of pecuniary favors (and justly too), and consequently applications of all kinds are daily, i might say for the last few months almost hourly, made to me, and the fabled wealth attributed to me, or to croesus, would not suffice to satisfy the requests made." and, after stating that, of the , miles of telegraph at that time in operation, only one company of miles was then paying a dividend, he adds: "if this fails i have nothing. on this i solely depend, for i have now no profession, and at my age, with impaired eyesight, i cannot resume it. "i have indeed a farm out of which a farmer might obtain his living, but to me it is a source of expense, and i have not actually, though you may think it strange, the means to make my family comfortable." in a letter to mr. kendall of january , , he enlarges on this subject:-- "i have been taking in sail for some time past to prepare for the storm which has so long continued and still threatens destruction, but with every economy my family must suffer for the want of many comforts which the low state of my means prevents me from procuring. i contrived to get through the last month without incurring debt, but i see no prospect now of being able to do so the present month.... i wish much to know, and, indeed, it is indispensably necessary i should be informed of the precise condition of things; for, if my property is but nominal in the stocks of the companies, and is to be soon rendered valueless from the operations of pirates, i desire to know it, that i may sell my home and seek another of less pretension, one of humbler character and suited to my change of circumstances. it will, indeed, be like cutting off a right hand to leave my country home, but, if i cannot retain it without incurring debt, it must go, and before debt is incurred and not after. i have made it a rule from my childhood to live always within my means, to have no debts; for if there is a terror which would unman me more than any other in this world, it is the sight of a man to whom i owed money, however inconsiderable in amount, without my being in a condition to pay him. on this point i am nervously sensitive, to a degree which some might think ridiculous. but so it is and i cannot help it.... "please tell me how matters stand in relation to f.o.g. i wish nothing short of entire separation from that unprincipled man if it can possibly be accomplished....i can suffer his frauds upon myself with comparative forbearance, but my indignation boils when i am made, _nolens volens_, a _particeps criminis_ in his frauds on others. i will not endure it if i must suffer the loss of all the property i hold in the world." the beloved country place was not sacrificed, and a way out of all his difficulties was found, but his faith and christian forbearance were severely tested before his path was smoothed. among all his trials none was so hard to bear as the conduct of f.o.j. smith, whose strange tergiversations were almost inconceivable. like the old man of the sea, he could not be shaken off, much as morse and his partners desired to part company with him forever. the propositions made by him were so absurd that they could not for a moment be seriously considered, and the reasonable terms submitted by mr. kendall were unconditionally rejected by him. it will be necessary to refer to him and his strange conduct from time to time, but to go into the matter in detail would consume too much valuable space. it seems only right, however, to emphasize the fact that his animosity and unscrupulous self-seeking constituted the greatest cross which morse was called upon to bear, even to the end of his life, and that many of the aspersions which have been cast upon the inventor's fame and good name, before and after his death, can be traced to the fertile brain of this same f.o.j. smith. while the inventor was fighting for his rights in his own country, his invention, by the sheer force of its superiority, was gradually displacing all other systems abroad. even in england it was superseding the cooke and wheatstone needle telegraph, and on the continent it had been adopted by prussia, austria, bavaria, hanover, and turkey. it is worthy of note that that broad-minded scientist, professor steinheil, of bavaria, who had himself invented an ingenious plan of telegraph when he was made acquainted with the morse system, at once acknowledged its superiority and urged its adoption by the bavarian government. in france, too, it was making its way, and morse, in answer to a letter of inquiry as to terms, etc., by m. brequet, thus characteristically avows his motives, after finishing the business part of the letter, which is dated april , :-- "to be frank with you, my dear sir (and i feel that i can be frank with you), while i am not indifferent to the pecuniary rewards of my invention (which will be amply satisfactory if my own countrymen will but do me justice), yet as these were not the stimulus to my efforts in perfecting and establishing my invention, so they now hold but a subordinate position when i attempt to comprehend the full results of the telegraph upon the welfare of my fellow men. i am more solicitous to see its benefits extended world-wide during my lifetime than to turn the stream of wealth, which it is generating to millions of persons, into my own pocket. a few drops from the sea, which may not be missed, will suffice for me." in the early days of death took from him one of his dearest friends, and the following letter, written in february, , to rufus griswold, esq., expresses his sentiments:-- "i sincerely regret that circumstances over which i have no control prevent my participation in the services commemorative of the character, literary and moral, of my lamented friend the late james fenimore cooper, esq. "i can scarcely yet realize that he is no longer with us, for the announcement of his death came upon me most unexpectedly. the pleasure of years of close intimacy with mr. cooper was never for a moment clouded by the slightest coolness. we were in daily, i can truly say, almost hourly, intercourse in the year in paris. i never met with a more sincere, warm-hearted, constant friend. no man came nearer to the ideal i had formed of a truly high-minded man. if he was at times severe or caustic in his remarks on others, it was when excited by the exhibition of the little arts of little minds. his own frank, open, generous nature instinctively recoiled from contact with them. his liberalities, obedient to his generous sympathies, were scarcely bounded by prudence; he was always ready to help a friend, and many such there are who will learn of his departure with the most poignant sorrow. although unable to be with you, i trust the committee will not overlook me when they are collecting the funds for the monument to his genius." it might have been said of morse, too, that "his liberalities were scarcely bounded by prudence," for he gave away or lost through investments, urged upon him by men whom he regarded as friends but who were actuated by selfish motives, much more than he retained. he gave largely to the various religious organizations and charities in which he was interested, and it was characteristic of him that he could not wait until he had the actual cash in hand, but, even while his own future was uncertain, he made donations of large blocks of stocks, which, while of problematical value while the litigation was proceeding, eventually rose to much above par. while he strove to keep his charities secret, they were bruited abroad, much to his sorrow, for, although at the time he was hard pressed to make both ends meet, they created a false impression of great wealth, and the importunities increased in volume. it is always interesting to note the genesis of familiar words, and the following is written in pencil by morse on a little slip of paper:-- "_telegram_ was first proposed by the albany 'evening journal,' april , , and has been universally adopted as a legitimate word into the english language." on april , , mr. kendall reports a mysterious occurrence:-- "our case in the supreme court will very certainly be reached by the middle of next week. a most singular incident has occurred. the papers brought up from the court below, not entered in the records, were on a table in the clerk's room. there was no fire in the room. one of the clerks after dark lighted a lamp, looked up some papers, blew out the lamp and locked the door. some time afterwards, wishing to obtain a book, he entered the room without a light and got the book in the dark. in. the morning our papers were burnt up, and _nothing else_. "the papers burnt are all the drawings, all the books filed, dana's lectures, chester's pamphlet, your sketchbook (if the original was there), your tag of type, etc., etc. but we shall replace them as far as possible and go on with the case. _was_ your original sketch-book there? if so, has any copy been taken?" the original sketch-book was in this collection of papers so mysteriously destroyed, but most fortunately a certified copy had been made, and this is now in the national museum in washington. also, most fortunately, this effort on the part of some enemy to undermine the foundations of the case proved abortive, if, indeed, it was not a boomerang, for, as we have seen, the decision of the supreme court was in morse's favor. in the year , commodore perry sailed on his memorable trip to japan, which, as is well known, opened that wonderful country to the outside world and started it on its upward path towards its present powerful position among the nations. the following letter from commodore perry, dated july , , will, therefore, be found of unusual interest:-- i shall take with me, on my cruise to the east indias, specimens of the most remarkable inventions of the age, among which stands preëminent your telegraph, and i write a line by lieutenant budd, united states navy, not only to introduce him to your acquaintance, but to ask as a particular favour that you would give him some information and instruction as to the most practicable means of exhibiting the telegraph, as well as a daguerreotype apparatus, which i am also authorized to purchase, also other articles connected with drawing. i have directed lieutenant budd to visit poughkeepsie in order to confer with you. he will have lists, furnished by mr. norton and a daguerreotype artist, which i shall not act upon until i learn the result of his consultation with you. i hope you will pardon this intrusion upon your time. i feel almost assured, however, that you will take a lively interest in having your wonderful invention exhibited to a people so little known to the world, and there is no one better qualified than yourself to instruct lieutenant budd in the duties i have entrusted to his charge, and who will fully explain to you the object i have in view. i leave this evening for washington and should be much obliged if you would address me a line to that place. most truly and respectfully yours m.c. perry. it was about this time that the testimony of professor joseph henry was being increasingly used by morse's opponents to discredit him in the scientific world and to injure his cause in the courts. i shall, therefore, revert for a moment to the matter for the purpose of emphasizing morse's reluctance to do or say anything against his erstwhile friend. in a letter to h.j. raymond, editor of the new york "times," he requests space in that journal for a fair exposition of his side of the controversy in reply to an article attacking him. to this mr. raymond courteously replies on november , : "the columns of the 'times' are entirely at your service for the purpose you mention, or, indeed, for almost any other. the writer of the article you allude to was dr. bettner, of philadelphia." morse answers on november :-- "i regret finding you absent; i wished to have had a few moments' conversation with you in relation to the allusion i made to professor henry. if possible i wish to avoid any course which might weaken the influence for good of such a man as henry. i will forbear exposure to the last moment, and, in view of my duty as a christian at least, i will give him an opportunity to explain to me in private. if he refuses, then i shall feel it my duty to show how unfairly he has conducted himself in allowing his testimony to be used to my detriment. "i write in haste, and will merely add that, to consummate these views, i shall for the present delay the article i had requested you to insert in your columns, and allow the various misrepresentations to remain yet a little longer unexposed, at the same time thanking you cordially for your courteous accordance of my request." a slight set-back was encountered by morse and his associates at this time by the denial of an injunction against f.o.j. smith, and, in a letter to mr. kendall of december , the long-suffering inventor exclaims:-- "f.o.j. crows at the top of his voice, and i learned that he and his man friday, foss, had a regular spree in consequence, and that the latter was noticed in broadway drunk and boisterously huzzaing for f.o.j. and cursing me and my telegraph. "i read in my bible: 'the triumph of the wicked is short.' this may have a practical application, in this case at any rate. i have full confidence in that power that, for wise purposes, allows wickedness temporarily to triumph that his own designs of bringing good out of evil may be the more apparent." another of morse's fixed principles in life is referred to in a letter to judge e. fitch smith of february , : "yours of the st ulto. is this moment received. your request has given me some trouble of spirit on this account, to wit: my father lost a large property, the earnings of his whole life of literary labor, by simply endorsing. my mother was ever after so affected by this fact that it was the constant theme of her disapprobation, and on her deathbed i gave her my promise, in accordance with her request, that _i never would endorse a note_. i have never done such a thing, and, of course, have never requested the endorsement of another. i cannot, therefore, in that mode accommodate you, but i can probably aid you as effectually in another way." it will not be necessary to dwell at length on further happenings in the year . order was gradually emerging from chaos in the various lines of telegraph, which, under the wise guidance of amos kendall, were tending towards a consolidation into one great company. the decision of the supreme court had not yet been given, causing temporary embarrassment to the patentees by allowing the pirates to continue their depredations unchecked. f.o.j. smith continued to give trouble. to quote from a letter of morse's to mr. kendall of january , : "the good book says that 'one sinner destroyeth much good,' and f.o.j. being (as will be admitted by all, perhaps, except himself) a sinner of that class bent upon destroying as much good as he can, i am desirous, even at much sacrifice (a desire, of course, _inter nos_) to get rid of controversy with him." further on in this letter, referring to another cause for anxiety, he says: "law is expensive, and we must look it in the face and expect to pay roundly for it.... it is a delicate task to dispute a professional man's charges, and, though it may be an evil to find ourselves bled so freely by lawyers, it is, perhaps, the least of evils to submit to it as gracefully as we can." but, while he could not escape the common lot of man in having to bear many and severe trials, there were compensatory blessings which he appreciated to the full. his home life was happy and, in the main, serene; his farm was a source of never-ending pleasure to him; he was honored at home and abroad by those whose opinion he most valued; and he was almost daily in receipt of the news of the extension of the "morse system" throughout the world. even from far-off australia came the news of his triumph. a letter was sent to him, written from melbourne on december , , by a mr. samuel mcgowan to a friend in new york, which contains the following gratifying intelligence:-- "since the date of my last to you matters with me have undergone a material change. i have come off conqueror in my hard fought battle. the contract has been awarded to me in the faces of the representatives of messrs. wheatstone and cooke, brett and other telegraphic luminaries, much to their chagrin, as i afterwards ascertained; several of them, it appears, having been leagued together in order, as they stated, to thwart a speculating yankee. however, matters were not so ordained, and i am as well satisfied. i hope they will all live to be the same." in spite of his financial difficulties, caused by bad management of some of the lines in which he was interested, he could not resist the temptation to give liberally where his heart inclined him, and in a letter of january , , to president woolsey of yale, he says:-- "enclosed, therefore, you have my check for one thousand dollars, which please hand to the treasurer of the college as my subscription towards the fund which is being raised for the benefit of my dearly loved _alma mater_. "i wish i could make it a larger sum, and, without promising what i may do at some future time, yet i will say that the prosperity of yale college is so near my heart that, should my affairs (now embarrassed by litigations in self-defence yet undecided) assume a more prosperous aspect, i have it in mind to add something more to the sum now sent." the year was memorable in the history of the telegraph because of two important events--the decision of the supreme court in morse's favor, already referred to, and the extension of his patent for another period of seven years. the first established for all time his legal right to be called the "inventor of the telegraph," and the second enabled him to reap some adequate reward for his years of privation, of struggle, and of heroic faith. it was for a long time doubtful whether his application for an extension of his patent would be granted, and much of his time in the early part of was consumed in putting in proper form all the data necessary to substantiate his claim, and in visiting washington to urge the justice of an extension. from that city he wrote often to his wife in poughkeepsie, and i shall quote from some of these letters. "_february ._ i am at the national hotel, which is now quite crowded, but i have an endurable room with furniture hardly endurable, for it is hard to find, in this hotel at least, a table or a bureau that can stand on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger's washing-pan, unless the lame leg is propped up with an old shoe, or a stray newspaper fifty times folded, or a magazine of due thickness (i am using 'harper's magazine' at this moment, which is somewhat a desecration, as it is too good to be trampled under foot, even the foot of a table), or a coal cinder, or a towel. well, it is but for a moment and so let it pass. "where do you think i was last evening? read the invitation on the enclosed card, which, although forbidden to be _transferable_, may without breach of honor be transferred to my other and better half. i felt no inclination to go, but, as no refusal would be accepted, i put on my best and at nine o'clock, in company with mr. and mrs. shaffner (the latter of whom, by the by, is quite a pleasant and pretty woman, with a boy one year older than arthur and about as mischievous) and mr. and mrs. john kendall. "i went to the ladies' parlor and was presented to the ladies, six in number, who did the honors (if that is the expression) of the evening. there was a great crowd, i think not less than three hundred people, and from all parts of the country--senators and their wives, members of the house and their wives and daughters, and there was a great number of fine looking men and women. i was constantly introduced to a great many, who uniformly showered their compliments on your _modest_ husband." the card of invitation has been lost, but it was, perhaps, to a president's reception, and the "great" crowd of three hundred would not tax the energies of the president's aides at the present day. the next letter is written in a more serious vein:-- "_february ._ i am very busily engaged in the preparation of my papers for an extension of my patents. this object is of vital importance to me; it is, in fact, the moment to reap the harvest of so many years of labor, and expense, and toil, and neglected would lose me the fruits of all.... f.o.j. smith is here, the same ugly, fiendlike, dog-in-the-manger being he has ever been, the 'thorn in the flesh' which i pray to be able to support by the sufficient grace promised. it is difficult to know how to feel and act towards such a man, so unprincipled, so vengeful, so bent on injury, yet the command to bless those that curse, to pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us, to love our enemies, to forgive our enemies, is in full force, and i feel more anxious to comply with this injunction of our blessed saviour than to have the thorn removed, however strongly this latter must be desired." "_march ._ you have little idea of the trouble and expense to which i am put in this 'extension' matter.... i shall have to pay hundreds of dollars more before i get through here, besides being harassed in all sorts of ways from now till the th of june next. if i get my extension then i may expect some respite, or, at least, opposition in another shape. i hope eventually to derive some benefit from the late decision, but the reckless and desperate character of my opponents may defeat all the good i expect from it. such is the reward i have purchased for myself by my invention.... "mr. wood is here also. he is the same firm, consistent and indefatigable friend as ever. i know not what i should do in the present crisis without him. i could not possibly put my accounts into proper shape without his aid, and he exerts himself for me as strongly as if i were his brother.... mr. kendall has been ill almost all the time that i have been here, which has caused me much delay and consumption of time." it was not until the latter part of june that the extension of his patents was granted, and his good friend, alluded to in the preceding letter, mr. george wood, tells, in a letter of june st, something of the narrow escape it had:-- "your patent extension is another instance of god's wonder working providence towards you as expressed in the history of this great discovery. of that history, of all the various shapes and incidents you may never know, not having been on the spot to watch all its moments of peril, and the way in which, like many a good christian, it was 'scarcely saved.' "in this you must see god's hand in giving you a man of remarkable skill, energy, talent, and power as your agent. i refer to p.h. watson, to whom mainly and mostly, i think, this extension is due. god works by means, and, though he designed to do this for you, he selected the proper person and gave him the skill, perseverance and power to accomplish this result. i hope now you have got it you will make it do for you all it can accomplish pecuniarily. but as for the money, i don't think so much as i do the effect of this upon your reputation. this is the apex of the pyramid." and mr. watson, in a letter of june , says: "we had many difficulties to contend with, even to-day, for at one time the commissioner intended to withhold his decision for reasons which i shall explain at length when we meet. it seemed to give the commissioner much pleasure to think that, in extending the patent, he was doing an act of justice to you as a great public benefactor, and a somewhat unfortunate man of genius. dr. gale and myself had to assure him that the extension would legally inure to your benefit, and not to that of your agents and associates before he could reconcile it with his duty to the public to grant the extension." morse himself, in a letter to mr. kendall, also of june , thus characteristically expresses himself:-- "a memorable day. i never had my anxieties so tried as in this case of extension, and after weeks of suspense, this suspense was prolonged to the last moment of endurance. i have just returned with the intelligence from the telegraph office from mr. watson--'patent extended. all right.' "well, what is now to be done? i am for taking time by the forelock and placing ourselves above the contingencies of the next expiration of the patent. while keeping our vantage ground with the pirates i wish to meet them in a spirit of compromise and of magnanimity. i hope we may now be able to consolidate on advantageous terms." it appears that at this time he was advised by many of his friends, including dr. gale, to sever his business connection with mr. kendall, both on account of the increasing feebleness of that gentleman, and because, while admittedly the soul of honor, mr. kendall had kept their joint accounts in a very careless and slipshod manner, thereby causing considerable financial loss to the inventor. but, true to his friends, as he always was, he replies to dr. gale on june :-- "let me thank you specially personally for your solicitude for my interests. this i may say without disparagement to mr. kendall, that, were the contract with an agent to be made anew, i might desire to have a younger and more healthy man, and better acquainted with regular book-keeping, but i could not desire a more upright and more honorable man. if he has committed errors, (as who has not?) they have been of the head and not of the heart. i have had many years experience of his conduct, think i have seen him under strong temptation to do injustice with prospects of personal benefit, and with little chance of detection, and yet firmly resisting." among the calumnies which were spread broadcast, both during the life of the inventor and after his death, even down to the present day, was the accusation of great ingratitude towards those who had helped him in his early struggles, and especially towards alfred vail. the more the true history of his connection with his associates is studied, the more baseless do these accusations appear, and in this connection the following extracts from letters to alfred vail and to his brother george are most illuminating. the first letter is dated july , :-- "the legal title to my patent for the american electro-magnetic telegraph of june th, , is, by the late extension of said patent for seven years from the said date, now vested in me alone; but i have intended that the pecuniary interest which was guaranteed to you in my invention as it existed in , and in my patent of , should still inure to your benefit (yet in a different shape) under the second patent and the late extension of the first. "for the simplification of my business transactions i prefer to let the articles of agreement, which expired on the th june, , remain cancelled and not to renew them, retaining in my sole possession the _legal title;_ but i hereby guarantee to you two sixteenths of such sums as may be paid over to me in the sale of patent rights, after the proportionate deductions of such necessary expenses as may be required in the business of the agency for conducting the sales of said patent rights, subject also to the terms of your agreement with mr. kendall. "mr. kendall informs me that no assignment of an interest in my second patent (the patent of ) was ever made to you. this was news to me. i presumed it was done and that the assignment was duly recorded at the patent office. the examination of the records in the progress of obtaining my extension has, doubtless, led to the discovery of the omission." after going over much the same ground in the letter to george vail, also of july th, he gives as one of the reasons why the new arrangement is better: "the annoyances of smith are at an end, so far as the necessity of consulting him is concerned." and then he adds:-- "i presume it can be no matter of regret with alfred that, by the position he now takes, strengthening our defensive position against the annoyances of smith, he can receive _more pecuniarily_ than he could before. please consult with mr. kendall on the form of any agreement by which you and alfred may be properly secured in the pecuniary benefits which you would have were he to stand in the same legal relation to the patent that he did before the expiration of its original term, so as to give me the position in regard to smith that i must take in self-defense, and i shall cheerfully accede to it. "poor alfred, i regret to know, torments himself needlessly. i had hoped that i was sufficiently known to him to have his confidence. i have never had other than kind feelings towards him, and, while planning for his benefit and guarding his interests at great and almost ruinous expense to myself, i have had to contend with difficulties which his imprudence, arising from morbid suspicions, has often created. my wish has ever been to act towards him not merely justly but generously." in a letter to mr. kendall of july , , morse declares his intention of publishing that "defense" which he had held in reserve for several years, hoping that the necessity for its publication might be avoided by a personal understanding with professor henry, which, however, that gentleman refused:-- "you will perceive what injury i have suffered from the machinations of the sordid pirates against whom i have had to contend, and it will also be noticed how history has been falsified in order to detract from me, and how the conduct of henry, on his deposition, has tended to strengthen the ready prejudice of the english against the american claim to priority. an increasing necessity, on this account, arises for my 'defense,' and so soon as i can get it into proper shape by revision, i intend to publish it. "this i consider a duty i owe the country more than myself, for, so far as i am personally concerned, i am conscious of a position that history will give me when the facts now suppressed by interested pirates and their abettors shall be known, which the verdict of posterity, no less than that of the judicial tribunals already given, is sure to award." while involved in apparently endless litigation which necessitated much correspondence, and while the compilation and revision of his "defense" must have consumed not only days but weeks and months, he yet found time to write a prodigious number of letters and newspaper articles on other subjects, especially on those relating to religion and politics. although more tolerant as he grew older, he was still bitterly opposed to the methods of the roman catholic church, and to the jesuits in particular. he, in common with many other prominent men of his day, was fearful lest the church of rome, through her emissaries the jesuits, should gain political ascendancy in this country and overthrow the liberty of the people. he took part in a long and heated newspaper controversy with bishop spaulding of kentucky concerning the authenticity of a saying attributed to lafayette--"if ever the liberty of the united states is destroyed it will be by romish priests." it was claimed by the roman catholics that this statement of lafayette's was ingeniously extracted from a sentence in a letter of his to a friend in which he assures this friend that such a fear is groundless. morse followed the matter up with the patience and keenness of a detective, and proved that no such letter had ever been written by lafayette, that it was a clumsy forgery, but that he really had made use of the sentiment quoted above, not only to morse himself, but to others of the greatest credibility who were still living. in the field of politics he came near playing a more active part than that of a mere looker-on and humble voter, for in the fall of he was nominated for congress on the democratic ticket. it would be difficult and, perhaps, invidious to attempt to state exactly his political faith in those heated years which preceded the civil war. in the light of future events he and his brothers and many other prominent men of the day were on the wrong side. he deprecated the war and did his best to prevent it. "sectional division" was abhorrent to him, but on the question of slavery his sympathies were rather with the south, for i find among his papers the following:-- "my creed on the subject of slavery is short. slavery _per se_ is not sin. it is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by divine wisdom. the mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having _per se_ nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler, but is moral or unmoral as the duties of the relation of master, parent, employer or ruler are rightly used or abused. the subject in a national view belongs not, therefore, to the department of morals, and is transferred to that of politics to be politically regulated. "the accidents of the relation of master and slave, like the accidents of other social relations, are to be praised or condemned as such individually and in accordance with the circumstances of every case, and, whether adjudged good or bad, do not affect the character of the relation itself." on the subject of foreign immigration he was most outspoken, and replying to an enquiry of one of his political friends concerning his attitude towards the so-called "know nothings," he says:-- "so far as i can gather from the public papers, the object of this society would seem to be to resist the aggression of foreign influence and its insidious and dangerous assaults upon all that americans hold dear, politically and religiously. it appears to be to prevent injury to the republic from the ill-timed and, i may say, unbecoming tamperings with the laws, and habits, and deeply sacred sentiments of americans by those whose position, alike dictated by modesty and safety, to them as well as to us, is that of minors in training for american, not european, liberty. "i have not, at this late day, to make up an opinion on this subject. my sentiments 'on the dangers to the free institutions of the united states from foreign immigration' are the same now that i have ever entertained, and these same have been promulgated from maine to louisiana for more than twenty years. "this subject involves questions which, in my estimation, make all others insignificant in the comparison, for they affect all others. to the disturbing influence of foreign action in our midst upon the political and religious questions of the day may be attributed in a great degree the present disorganization in all parts of the land. "so far as the society you speak of is acting against this great evil it, of course, meets with my hearty concurrence. i am content to stand on the platform, in this regard, occupied by washington in his warnings against foreign influence, by lafayette, in his personal conversation and instructions to me, and by jefferson in his condemnation of the encouragement given, even in his day, to foreign immigration. if this society has ulterior objects of which i know nothing, of these i can be expected to speak only when i know something." as his opinions on important matters, political and religious, appear in the course of his correspondence, i shall make note of them. it is more than probable that, as he differed radically from his father and the other federalists on the question of men and measures during the war of , so i should have taken other ground than his had i been born and old enough to have opinions in the stirring _ante-bellum_ days of the fifties. and yet, as hindsight makes our vision clearer than foresight, it is impossible to say definitely what our opinions would have been under other conditions, and there can, at any rate, be no question of the absolute sincerity of the man who, from his youth up, had placed the welfare of his beloved country above every other consideration except his duty to his god. it would take a keen student of the political history of this country to determine how far the opinions and activities of those who were in opposition on questions of such prime importance as slavery, secession, and unrestricted immigration, served as a wholesome check on the radical views of those who finally gained the ascendancy. the aftermath of two of these questions is still with us, for the negro question is by no means a problem solved, and the subject of proper restrictions on foreign immigration is just now occupying the attention of our solons. that morse should make enemies on account of the outspoken stand he took on all these questions was to be expected, but i shall not attempt to sit in judgment, but shall simply give his views as they appear in his correspondence. at any rate he was not called upon to state and maintain his opinions in the halls of congress, for, in a letter of november , , to a friend, he says at the end: "i came near being in congress at the late election, but had _not quite votes enough_, which is the usual cause of failure on such occasions." chapter xxxv january , --august , payment of dividends delayed.--concern for welfare of his country.-- indignation at corrupt proposal from california.--kendall hampered by the vails.--proposition by capitalists to purchase patent rights.--cyrus w. field.--newfoundland electric telegraph company.--suggestion of atlantic cable.--hopes thereby to eliminate war.--trip to newfoundland.--temporary failure.--f.o.j. smith continues to give trouble.--financial conditions improve.--morse and his wife sail for europe.--fêted in london.-- experiments with dr. whitehouse.--mr. brett.--dr. o'shaughnessy and the telegraph in india.--mr. cooke.--charles h. leslie.--paris.--hamburg.-- copenhagen.--presentation to king.--thorwaldsen museum.--oersted's daughter.--st. petersburg.--presentation to czar at peterhoff. i have said in the preceding chapter that order was gradually emerging from chaos in telegraphic matters, but the progress towards that goal was indeed gradual, and a perusal of the voluminous correspondence between morse and kendall, and others connected with the different lines, leaves the reader in a state of confused bewilderment and wonder that all the conflicting interests, and plots and counterplots, could ever have been brought into even seeming harmony. too much praise cannot be given to mr. kendall for the patience and skill with which he disentangled this apparently hopeless snarl, while at the same time battling against physical ills which would have caused most men to give up in despair. that morse fully appreciated the sterling qualities of this faithful friend is evidenced by the letter to dr. gale in the preceding chapter, and by many others. he always refused to consider for a moment the substitution of a younger man on the plea of mr. kendall's failing health, and his carelessness in the keeping of their personal accounts. it is true that, because of this laxity on mr. kendall's part, morse was for a long time deprived of the full income to which he was entitled, but he never held this up against his friend, always making excuses for him. affairs seem to have been going from bad to worse in the matter of dividends, for, while in he had said that only miles out of were paying him personally anything, he says in a letter to mr. kendall of january , :-- "i perceive the magnetic telegraph company meet in washington on thursday the th. please inform me by telegraph the amount of dividend they declare and the time payable. this is the only source on which i can calculate for the means of subsistence from day to day with any degree of certainty. "it is a singular reflection that occurs frequently to my mind that out of , miles of telegraph, all of which should pay me something, only miles is all that i can depend upon with certainty; and the case is a little aggravated when i think that throughout all europe, which is now meshed with telegraph wires from the southern point of corsica to st. petersburg, on which my telegraph is universally used, not a mile contributes to my support or has paid me a farthing. "well, it is all well. i am not in absolute want, for i have some credit, and painful as is the state of debt to me from the apprehension that creditors may suffer from my delay in paying them, yet i hope on." mr. kendall was not so sensitive on the subject of debt as was morse, and he was also much more optimistic and often rebuked his friend for his gloomy anticipations, assuring him that the clouds were not nearly so dark as they appeared. always imbued with a spirit of lofty patriotism, morse never failed, even in the midst of overwhelming cares, to give voice to warnings which he considered necessary. replying to an invitation to be present at a public dinner he writes:-- gentlemen,--i have received your polite invitation to join with you in the celebration of the birthday of washington. although unable to be present in person, i shall still be with you in heart. every year, indeed every day, is demonstrating the necessity of our being wide awake to the insidious sapping of our institutions by foreign emissaries in the guise of friends, who, taking advantage of the very liberality and unparalleled national generosity which we have extended to them, are undermining the foundations of our political fabric, substituting (as far as they are able to effect their purpose) on the one hand a dark, cold and heartless atheism, or, on the other, a disgusting, puerile, degrading superstition in place of the god of our fathers and the glorious elevating religion of love preached by his son. the american mind, i trust, is now in earnest waking up, and no one more rejoices at the signs of the times than myself. twenty years ago i hoped to have seen it awake, but, alas! it proved to be but a spasmodic yawn preparatory to another nap. if it shall now have waked in earnest, and with renewed strength shall gird itself to the battle which is assuredly before it, i shall feel not a little in the spirit of good old simeon-- "now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." go forward, my friends, in your patriotic work, and may god bless you in your labors with eminent success. it has been shown, i think, in the course of this work, that morse, while long-suffering and patient under trials and afflictions, was by no means poor-spirited, but could fight and use forceful language when roused by acts of injustice towards himself, his country, or his sense of right. nothing made him more righteously angry than dishonesty in whatever form it was manifested, and the following incident is characteristic. on june , , mr. kendall forwarded a letter which he had received from a certain milton s. latham, member of congress from california, making a proposition to purchase the morse patent rights for lines in california. in this letter occur the following sentences: "for the use of professor morse's patent for the state of california in perpetuity, with the reservations named in yours of the d march, , addressed to me, they are willing to give you $ , in their stock. this is all they will do. it is proper i should state that the capital stock of the california state telegraph in cash was $ , , which they raised to $ , , and subsequently to $ , . the surplus stock over the cash stock was used among members of the legislature to procure the passage of the act incorporating the company, and securing for it certain privileges." mr. kendall in his letter enclosing this naïve business proposition, remarks: "it is an impressive commentary on the principles which govern business in california that this company doubled their stock to bribe members of the state legislature, and are now willing to add but ten per cent to be relieved from the position of patent pirates and placed henceforth on an honest footing." morse more impulsively exclaims in his reply:-- "is it possible that there are men who hold up their heads in civilized society who can unblushingly take the position which the so-called california state telegraph company has deliberately taken? "accept the proposition? yes, i will accept it when i can consent to the housebreaker who has entered my house, packed up my silver and plated ware, and then coolly says to me--'allow me to take what i have packed up and i will select out that which is worthless and give it to you, after i have used it for a few years, provided any of it remain!' "a more unprincipled set of swindlers never existed. who is this mr. latham that he could recommend our accepting such terms?" in addition to the opposition of open enemies and unprincipled pirates, morse and kendall were sometimes hampered by the unjust suspicions of some of those whose interests they were striving to safeguard. referring to one such case in a letter of june , , mr. kendall says:-- "if there should be opposition i count on the vails against me. alfred has for some time been hostile because i could not if i would, and would not if i could, find him a snug sinecure in some of the companies. i fear george has in some degree given way to the same spirit. i have heard of his complaining of me, and when, before my departure for the west, i tendered my services to negotiate a connection of himself and brother with the lessees of the n.o. & o. line, he declined my offer, protesting against the entire arrangements touching that line. "having done all i could and much more than i was bound to do for the benefit of those gentlemen, i shall not permit their jealousy to disturb me, but i am anxious to have them understand the exact position i am to occupy in relation to them. i understood your purpose to be that they should share in the benefits of the extension, whether legally entitled to them or not, yet nothing has been paid over to them for sales since made. all the receipts, except a portion of my commissions, have been paid out on account of expenses, and to secure an interest for you in the n.o. & o. line." it is easy to understand that the vails should have been somewhat suspicious when little or nothing in the way of cash was coming in to them, but they seem not to have realized that morse and kendall were in the same boat, and living more on hope than cash. mr. kendall enlarges somewhat on this point in a letter of june , :-- "most heartily will i concur in a sale of all my interests in the telegraph at any reasonable rate to such a company as you describe. i fully appreciate your reasons for desiring such a consummation, and, in addition to them, have others peculiar to my own position. any one who has a valuable patent can profit by it only by a constant fight with some of the most profligate and, at the same time, most shrewd members of society. i have found myself not only the agent of yourself and the messrs. vail to sell your patent rights, but the soldier to fight your battles, as well in the country as in the courts of justice. almost single-handed, with the deadly enmity of one of the patentees, and the annoying jealousies of another, i have encountered surrounding hosts, and, i trust, been instrumental in saving something for the proprietors of this great invention, and done something to maintain the rights and vindicate the fame of its true author. nothing but your generous confidence has rendered my position tolerable, and enabled me to meet the countless difficulties with which my path has been beset with any degree of success. and now, at the end of a ten years' war, i am prepared to retire from the field and leave the future to other hands, if i can but see your interests, secured beyond contingency, and a moderate competency provided for my family and myself." the company referred to in this letter was one proposed by cyrus w. field and other capitalists of new york. the plan was to purchase the patent rights of morse, kendall, vail, and f.o.j. smith, and, by means of the large capital which would be at their command, fight the pirates who had infringed on the patent, and gradually unite the different warring companies into one harmonious concern. a monopoly, if you will, but a monopoly which had for its object better, cheaper, and quicker service to the people. this object was achieved in time, but, unfortunately for the peace of mind of morse and kendall, not just then. the name of cyrus field naturally suggests the atlantic cable, and it was just at this time that steps were being seriously taken to realize the prophecy made by morse in in his letter to the secretary of the treasury: "the practical inference from this law is that a telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the atlantic ocean! startling as this may now seem i am confident the time will come when this project will be realized." in a company had been formed and incorporated by the legislature of newfoundland, called the "newfoundland electric telegraph company." the object of this company was to connect the island by means of a cable with the mainland, but this was not accomplished at that time, and no suggestion was made of the possibility of crossing the ocean. one of the officers of that company, however, mr. f.n. gisborne, came to new york in and tried to revive the interest of capitalists and engineers in the scheme. among others he consulted matthew d. field, and through him met his brother cyrus w. field, and the question of a through line from newfoundland to new york was seriously discussed. cyrus field, a man of great energy and already interested financially and otherwise in the terrestrial telegraph, was fascinated by the idea of stretching long lines under the waters also. he examined a globe, which was in his study at home and, suddenly realizing that newfoundland and ireland were comparatively near neighbors, he said to himself: "why not cross the ocean and connect the new world with the old?" he had heard that morse long ago had prophesied that this link would some day be welded, and he became possessed with the idea that he was the person to accomplish this marvel, just as morse had received the inspiration of the telegraph in . a letter to morse, who was just then in washington, received an enthusiastic and encouraging reply, coupled with the information that lieutenant maury of the navy had, by a series of careful soundings, established the existence of a plateau between ireland and newfoundland, at no very great depth, which seemed expressly designed by nature to receive and carefully guard a telegraphic cable. mr. field lost no time in organizing a company composed originally of himself, his brother the honorable david dudley field, peter cooper, moses taylor, marshall o. roberts, and chandler white. after a liberal charter had been secured from the legislature of newfoundland the following names were added to the list of incorporators: s.f.b. morse, robert w. lowber, wilson g. hunt, and john w. brett. mr. field then went to england and with characteristic energy soon enlisted the interest and capital of influential men, and the atlantic telegraph company was organized to cooperate with the american company, and liberal pledges of assistance from the british government were secured. similar pledges were obtained from the congress of the united states, but, quite in line with former precedents, by a majority of only _one_ in the senate. morse was appointed electrician of the american company and faraday of the english company, and much technical correspondence followed between these two eminent scientists. in the spring of , morse, in a letter to his friend and relative by marriage, thomas r. walker, of utica, writes enthusiastically of the future: "our _atlantic line_ is in a fair way. we have the governments and capitalists of europe zealously and warmly engaged to carry it through. _three years_ will not pass before a _submarine telegraph communication will be had with europe_, and i do not despair of sitting in my office and, by a touch of the telegraph-key, asking a question simultaneously to persons in london, paris, cairo, calcutta, and canton, and getting the answer from all of them in _five minutes_ after the question is asked. does this seem strange? i presume if i had even suggested the thought some twenty years ago, i might have had a quiet residence in a big building in your vicinity." the first part of this prophecy was actually realized, for in , just three years after the date of this letter, communication was established between the two continents and was maintained for twenty days. then it suddenly and mysteriously ceased, and not till was the indomitable perseverance of cyrus field crowned with permanent success. more of the details of this stupendous undertaking will be told in the proper chronological order, but before leaving the letter to mr. walker, just quoted from, i wish to note that when morse speaks of sitting in his office and communicating by a touch of the key with the outside world, he refers to the fact that the telegraph companies with which he was connected had obligingly run a short line from the main line (which at that time was erected along the highway from new york to albany) into his office at locust grove, poughkeepsie, so that he was literally in touch with every place of any importance in the united states. always solicitous for the welfare of mankind in general, he says in a letter to norvin green, in july, , after discussing the proposed cable: "the effects of the telegraph on the interests of the world, political, social and commercial have, as yet, scarcely begun to be apprehended, even by the most speculative minds. i trust that one of its effects will be to bind man to his fellow-man in such bonds of amity as to put an end to war. i think i can predict this effect as in a not distant future." alas! in this he did not prove himself a true prophet, although it must be conceded that many wars have been averted or shortened by means of the telegraph, and there are some who hope that a warless age is even now being conceived in the womb of time. on july , , he writes to his good friend dr. gale: "i have no time to add, as every moment is needed to prepare for my newfoundland expedition, to be present at laying down the first submarine cable _of any considerable length_ on this side the water, although the first for telegraph purposes, you well remember, we laid between castle garden and governor's island in ." on the th of august, morse, with his wife and their eldest son, a lad of six, joined a large company of friends on board the steamer james adger which sailed for newfoundland. there they were to meet the sarah l. bryant, from england, with the cable which was to be laid across the gulf of st. lawrence. the main object of the trip was a failure, like so many of the first attempts in telegraphic communication, for a terrific storm compelled them to cut the cable and postpone the attempt, which, however, was successfully accomplished the next year. the party seems to have had a delightful time otherwise, for they were fêted wherever they stopped, notably at halifax, nova scotia, and st. johns, newfoundland. at the latter place a return banquet was given on board the james adger, and the toastmaster, in calling on morse for a speech, recited the following lines:-- "the steed called lightning (say the fates) was tamed in the united states. 't was franklin's hand that caught the horse, 't was harnessed by professor morse." to turn again for a moment to the darker side of the picture of those days, it must be kept in mind that annoying litigation was almost constant, and in the latter part of a decision had been rendered in favor of f.o.j. smith, who insisted on sharing in the benefits of the extension of the patent, although, instead of doing anything to deserve it, he had done all in his power to thwart the other patentees. commenting on this in a letter to mr. kendall of november , , morse, pathetically and yet philosophically, says:-- "is there any mode of arrangement with smith by which matters in partnership can be conducted with any degree of harmony? i wish him to have his legal rights in full, however unjustly awarded to him. i must suffer for my ignorance of legal technicalities. mortifying as this is it is better, perhaps, to suffer it with a good grace and even with cheerfulness, if possible, rather than endure the wear and tear of the spirits which a brooding over the gross fraud occasions. an opportunity of setting ourselves right in regard to him may be not far off in the future. till then let us stifle at least all outward expressions of disgust or indignation at the legal swindle." and, with the keen sense of justice which always actuated him, he adds in a postscript: "by the by, if judge curtis's decision holds good in regard to smith's _inchoate_ right, does it not equally hold good in regard to vail, and is he not entitled to a proportionate right in the extension?" during the early months of the financial affairs of the inventor had so far been straightened out that he felt at liberty to leave the country for a few months' visit to europe. the objects of this trip were threefold. he wished, as electrician of the cable company, to try some experiments over long lines with certain english scientists, with a view to determining beyond peradventure the practicability of an ocean telegraph. he also wished to visit the different countries on the continent where his telegraph was being used, to see whether their governments could not be induced to make him some pecuniary return for the use of his invention. last, but not least, he felt that he had earned a short vacation from the hard work and the many trials to which he had been subjected for so many years, and a trip abroad with his wife, who had never been out of her own country, offered the best means of relaxation and enjoyment. on the th of june, , he sailed from new york on the baltic, accompanied by his wife and his niece louisa, daughter of his brother richard. the trip proved a delightful one in every way; he was acclaimed as one of the most noted men of his day wherever he went, and emperors, kings, and scientists vied with each other in showering attentions upon him. his letters contain minute descriptions of many of his experiences and i shall quote liberally from them. to cyrus field he writes, on july , of the results of some of his experiments with dr. whitehouse:-- "i intended to have written you long before this and have you receive my letter previous to your departure from home, but every moment of my time has been occupied, as you can well conceive, since my arrival. i have especially been occupied in experiments with dr. whitehouse of the utmost importance. their results, except in a general way, i am not at present at liberty to divulge; besides they are not, as yet, by any means completed so as to assure commercial men that they may enter upon the great project of uniting europe to america with a certainty of success." and then, after dwelling upon the importance of dr. whitehouse's services, and expressing the wish that he should be liberally rewarded for his labors, he continues:-- "i can say on this subject generally that the experiments dr. whitehouse has made favorably affect the project so far as its _practicability_ is concerned, but to certainly assure its _practicality_ further experiments are essential. to enable dr. whitehouse to make these, and that he may derive the benefit of them, i conceive it to be a wise outlay to furnish him with adequate means for his purpose. "i wish i had time to give you in detail the kind receptions i have everywhere met with. to mr. statham and his family in a special manner are we indebted for the most indefatigable and constant attentions. were we relatives they could not have been more assiduous in doing everything to make our stay in london agreeable. to mr. brett also i am under great obligations. he has manifested (as have, indeed, all the gentlemen connected with the telegraph here) the utmost liberality and the most ample concession to the excellence of my telegraphic system. i have been assured now from the _highest sources_ that my system is not only the most practical for general use, but that it is fast becoming the _world's telegraph_." his brother sidney was at this time also in europe with his wife and some other members of his family, and the brothers occasionally met in their wanderings to and fro. finley writes to sidney from fenton's hotel, london, on july :-- "yours from edinburgh of the th ulto. is just received. i regret we did not see you when you called the evening before you left london. we all wished to see you and all yours before we separated so widely apart, but you know in what a whirl one is kept on a first arrival in london and can make allowances for any seeming neglect. from morning till night we have been overwhelmed with calls and the kindest and most flattering attentions. "on the day before you called i dined at greenwich with a party invited by mr. brett, representing the great telegraph interests of europe and india. i was most flatteringly received, and mr. brett, in the only toast given, gave my name as the inventor of the telegraph and of the system which has spread over the whole world and is superseding all others. dr. o'shaughnessy, who sat opposite to me, made some remarks warmly seconding mr. brett, and stating that he had come from india where he had constructed more than four thousand miles of telegraph; that he had tried many systems upon his lines, and that a few days before i arrived he had reported, in his official capacity as the director of the east india lines, to the east india company that my system was the best, and recommended to them its adoption, which i am told will undoubtedly be the case. "this was an unexpected triumph to me, since i had heard from one of our passengers in the baltic that in the east indies they were reluctant to give any credit to america for the telegraph, claiming it exclusively for wheatstone. it was, therefore, a surprise to me to hear from the gentleman who controls all the eastern lines so warm, and even enthusiastic, acknowledgment of the superiority of mine. "but i have an additional cause for gratitude for an acknowledgment from a quarter whence i least expected any favor to my system. mr. cooke, formerly associated with wheatstone, told one of the gentlemen, who informed me of it, that he had just recommended to the british government the substitution of my system for their present system, and had no doubt his recommendation would be entertained. he also said that he had heard i was about to visit europe, and that he should take the earliest opportunity to pay his respects to me. under these circumstances i called and left my card on mr. cooke, and i have now a note from him stating he shall call on me on thursday. thus the way seems to be made for the adoption of my telegraph throughout _the whole world_. "i visited one of the offices with dr. whitehouse and mr. brett where (in the city) i found my instruments in full activity, sending and receiving messages from and to paris and vienna and other places on the continent. i asked if all the lines on the continent were now using my system, that i had understood that some of the lines in france were still worked by another system. the answer was--'no, _all the lines on the continent_ are now _morse lines_.' you will undoubtedly be pleased to learn these facts." while he was thus being wined, and dined, and praised by those who were interested in his scientific achievements, he harked back for a few hours to memories of his student days in london, for his old friend and room-mate, charles r. leslie, now a prosperous and successful painter, gave him a cordial invitation to visit him at petworth, near london. morse joyfully accepted, and several happy hours were spent by the two old friends as they wandered through the beautiful grounds of the earl of egremont, where leslie was then making studies for the background of a picture. the next letter to his brother sidney is dated copenhagen, july :-- "here we are in copenhagen where we arrived yesterday morning, having travelled from hamburg to kiel, and thence by steamboat to corsoer all night, and thence by railroad here, much fatigued owing to the miserable _dis_commodations on board the boat. i have delivered my letters here and am awaiting their effect, expecting calls, and i therefore improve a few moments to apprise you of our whereabouts.... in paris i was most courteously received by the count de vouchy, now at the head of the telegraphs of france, who, with many compliments, told me that my system was the one in universal use, the simplest and the best, and desired me to visit the rooms in the great building where i should find my instruments at work. sure enough, i went into the telegraph rooms where some twenty of my own children (beautifully made) were chatting and chattering as in american offices. i could not but think of the contrast in that same building, even as late as , when the clumsy semaphore was still in use, and but a single line of electric wire, an experimental one to rouen, was in existence in france.... when we left paris we took a courier, william carter, an englishman, whom thus far we find to be everything we could wish, active, vigilant, intelligent, honest and obliging. as soon as he learned who i was he made diligent use of his information, and wherever i travelled it was along the lines of the telegraph. the telegraph posts seemed to be posted to present arms (shall i say?) as i passed, and the lines of conductors were constantly stooping and curtsying to me. at all the stations the officials received me with marked respect; everywhere the same remark met me--'your system, sir, is the only one recognized here. it is the best; we have tried others but have settled down upon yours as the best.' but yesterday, in travelling from corsoer to copenhagen, the chief director of the railroads told me, upon my asking if the telegraph was yet in operation in denmark, that it was and was in process of construction along this road. 'at first,' said he, 'in using the needle system we found it so difficult to have employees skilled in its operation that we were about to abandon the idea, but now, having adopted yours, we find no difficulty and are constructing telegraphs on all our roads.' "at all the custom-houses and in all the railroad depots i found my name a passport. my luggage was passed with only the form of an examination, and although i had taken second-class tickets for my party of four, yet the inspectors put us into first-class carriages and gave orders to the conductors to put no one in with us without our permission. i cannot enumerate all the attentions we have received. "at hamburg we were delighted, not only with its splendor and cleanliness, but having made known to mrs. lind (widow of edward's brother henry) that we were in hamburg, we received the most hearty welcome, passed the day at her house and rode out in the environs. at dinner a few friends were invited to meet us. mr. overman, a distant connection of the linds, was very anxious for me to stay a few days, hinting that, if i would consent, the authorities and dignitaries of hamburg would show me some mark of respect, for my name was well known to them. i was obliged to decline as i am anxious to be in st. petersburg before the emperor is engaged in his coronation preparations." while in denmark morse was granted a private interview with the king at his castle of frederiksborg, whither he was accompanied by captain raasloff:-- "after a few minutes the captain was called into the presence of the king, and in a few minutes more i was requested to go into the audience-chamber and was introduced by the captain to frederick vii, king of denmark. the king received me standing and very courteously. he is a man of middle stature, thick-set, and resembles more in the features of his face the busts and pictures of christian iv than those of any of his predecessors, judging as i did from the numerous busts and portraits of the kings of denmark which adorn the city palace and the castle of frederiksborg. the king expressed his pleasure at seeing the inventor of the telegraph, and regretted he could not speak english as he wished to ask me many questions. he thanked me, he said, for the beautiful instrument i had sent him; told me that a telegraph line was now in progress from the castle to his royal residence in copenhagen; that when it was completed he had decided on using my instrument, which i had given him, in his own private apartments. he then spoke of the invention as a most wonderful achievement, and wished me to inform him how i came to invent it. i accordingly in a few words gave him the early history of it, to which he listened most attentively and thanked me, expressing himself highly gratified. after a few minutes more of conversation of the same character, the king shook me warmly by the hand and we took our leave.... "we arrived in the afternoon at copenhagen. mrs. f. called in her carriage. we drove to the thorwaldsen museum or depository where are all the works of this great man. this collection of the greatest sculptor since the best period of greek art is attractive enough in itself to call travellers of taste to copenhagen. after spending some hours in thorwaldsen's museum i went to see the study of oersted, where his most important discovery of the _deflection of the needle_ by a galvanic current was made, which laid the foundation of the science of electro-magnetism, and without which my invention could not have been made. it is now a drawing school. i sat at the table where he made his discovery. "we went to the porcelain manufactory, and, singularly enough, met there the daughter of oersted, to whom i had the pleasure of an introduction. oersted was a most amiable man and universally beloved. the daughter is said to resemble her father in her features, and i traced a resemblance to him in the small porcelain bust which i came to the manufactory to purchase." "_st. petersburg, august , ._ up to this date we have been in one constant round of visits to the truly wonderful objects of curiosity in this magnificent city. i have seen, as you know, most of the great and marvellous cities of europe, but i can truly say none of them can at all compare in splendor and beauty to st. petersburg. it is a city of palaces, and palaces of the most gorgeous character. the display of wealth in the palaces and churches is so great that the simple truth told about them would incur to the narrator the suspicion of romancing. england boasts of her regalia in the tower, her crown jewels, her kohinoor diamond, etc. i can assure you that they fade into insignificance, as a rush-light before the sun, when brought before the wealth in jewels and gold seen here in such profusion. what think you of nosegays, as large as those our young ladies take to parties, composed entirely of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones, chosen to represent accurately the colors of various flowers?-- the imperial crown, globular in shape, composed of diamonds, and containing in the centre of the greek cross which surmounts it an unwrought ruby at least two inches in diameter? the sceptre has a diamond very nearly as large as the kohinoor. at the arsenal at tsarskoye selo we saw the trappings of a horse, bridle, saddle and all the harness, with an immense saddle-cloth, set with tens of thousands of diamonds. on those parts of the harness where we have rosettes, or knobs, or buckles, were rosettes of diamonds an inch and a half to two inches in diameter, with a diamond in the centre as large as the first joint of your thumb, or say three quarters of an inch in diameter. other trappings were as rich. indeed there seemed to be no end to the diamonds. all the churches are decorated in the most costly manner with diamonds and pearls and precious stones." the following account of his reception by the czar is written in pencil: "on the paper found in my room in peterhoff." it differs somewhat from the letter written to his children and introduced by mr. prime in his book, but is, to my mind, rather more interesting. "_august , ._ this day is one to be remembered by me. yesterday i received notice from the russian minister of foreign affairs, through our minister mr. seymour, that his imperial majesty, the emperor alexander ii, had appointed the hour of . this day to see me at his palace at peterhoff. i accordingly waited upon our minister to know the etiquette to be observed on such an occasion. it was necessary, he said, to be at the boat by eight o'clock in the morning, which would arrive at peterhoff about . . i must dress in black coat, vest and pantaloons and white cravat, and appear with my turkish nishan [or decoration]. so this morning i was up early and, upon taking the boat, found our minister mr. seymour, colonel colt and mr. jarvis, attachés to the legation, with mrs. colt and miss jarvis coming on board. i learned also that there were to be many presentations of various nations' attachés to the various special deputations sent to represent their different courts at the approaching coronation at moscow. "the day is most beautiful, rendered doubly so by its contrast with so many previous disagreeable ones. on our arrival at the quay at peterhoff we found, somewhat to my surprise, the imperial carriages in waiting for us, with coachmen and footmen in the imperial livery, which, as in england and france, is scarlet, and splendid black horses, ready to take us to our quarters in the portion of the palace buildings assigned to the americans. we were attended by four or five servants in livery loaded with gold lace, and shown to our apartments upon the doors of which we found our names already written. "after throwing off our coats the servants inquired if we would have breakfast, to which, of course, we had no objection, and an excellent breakfast of coffee and sandwiches was set upon the table, served up in silver with the imperial arms upon the silver waiter and tea set. everything about our rooms, which consisted of parlor and bedroom, was plain but exceedingly clean and neat. after seeing us well housed our attendant chamberlain left us to prepare ourselves for the presentation, saying he would call for us at the proper time. as there were two or three hours to spare i took occasion to improve the time by commencing this brief notice of the events of the day. "about two o'clock our attendant, an officer named thörner, under the principal chamberlain who is, i believe, count borsch, called to say our carriages were ready. we found three carriages in waiting with three servants each, the coachman and two footmen, in splendid liveries; some in the imperial red and gold lace, and others in blue and broad gold lace emblazoned throughout with the double headed eagle. we seated ourselves in the carriages which were then driven at a rapid rate to the great palace, the entrance to which directly overlooked the numerous and celebrated grand fountains. hundreds of well-dressed people thronged on each side of the carriageway as we drove up to the door. after alighting we were ushered through a long hall and through a double row of servants of various grades, loaded with gold lace and with _chapeaux bras_. ascending the broad staircase, on each side of which we found more liveried servants, we entered an anteroom between two africans dressed in the costume of turkey, and servants of a higher grade, and then onward into a large and magnificent room where were assembled those who were to be presented. here we found ourselves among princes and nobles and distinguished persons of all nations. among the english ladies were lady granville and lady emily peel, the wife of sir robert peel, the latter a beautiful woman and dressed with great taste, having on her head a diana coronet of diamonds.... among the gentlemen were officers attached to the various deputations from england, austria, france and sardinia. several princes were among them, and conspicuous for splendor of dress was prince esterhazy; parts of his dress and the handle and scabbard of his sword blazed with diamonds. "here we remained for some time. from the windows of the hall we looked out upon the magnificent fountains and the terrace crowned with gorgeous vases of blue and gold and gilded statues. at length the master of ceremonies appeared and led the way to the southern veranda that overlooked the garden, ranging us in line and reading our names from a list, to see if we were truly mustered, after which a side door opened and the emperor alexander entered. his majesty was dressed in military costume, a blue sash was across his breast passing over the right shoulder; on his left breast were stars and orders. he commenced at the head of the column, which consisted of some fourteen or fifteen persons, and, on the mention of the name by the master of ceremonies, he addressed a few words to each. to mr. colt he said: 'ah! i have seen you before. when did you arrive? i am glad to see you.' when he came to me the master of ceremonies miscalled my name as mr. more. i instantly corrected him and said, 'no, mr. morse.' the emperor at once said: 'ah! that name is well known here; your system of telegraph is in use in russia. how long have you been in st. petersburg? i hope you have enjoyed yourself.' to which i appropriately replied. after a few more unimportant questions and answers the emperor addressed himself to the other gentlemen and retired. "after remaining a few moments, the master of ceremonies, who, by the by, apologized to me for miscalling my name, opened the door from the veranda into the empress' drawing-room, where we were again put in line to await the appearance of the empress. the doors of an adjoining room were suddenly thrown open and the empress, gorgeously but appropriately attired, advanced towards us. she was dressed in a beautiful blue silk terminating in a long flowing train of many flounces of the richest lace; upon her head a crown of diamonds, upon her neck a superb necklace of diamonds, some twenty of which were as large as the first joint of the finger. the upper part of her dress was embroidered with diamonds in a broad band, and the dress in front buttoned to the floor with rosettes of diamonds, the central diamond of each button being at least a half inch in diameter. a splendid bouquet of diamonds and precious stones of every variety of color, arranged to imitate flowers, was upon her bosom. she addressed a few words gracefully to each, necessarily commonplace, for what could she say to strangers but the common words of enquiry--when we came and whether we had been pleased with st. petersburg. "gratifying as it was to us to see her, i could not but think it was hardly possible for her to have any other gratification in seeing us than that which i have no doubt she felt, that she was giving pleasure to others. to me she appeared to be amiable and truly feminine. her manner was timid yet dignified without the least particle of hauteur. the impression left on my mind by both the emperor and empress is that they are most truly amiable and kind. "after speaking to each of us she gracefully bowed to us, we, of course, returning the salutation, and she retired followed by her maids of honor, her long train sweeping the floor for a distance of several yards behind her. we were then accompanied by the master of ceremonies back to the large reception-room, and soon after we left the palace, descending the staircase through the same lines of liveried servants to the royal carriages drawn up at the door, and returned to our rooms. on descending to our parlor we found a beautiful collation with tropical fruits and confectionery provided for us. our polite attendant, who partook with us, said that the carriages were at our service and waiting for us to take a drive in the gardens previous to dinner, which was to be served at five o'clock in the english palace and to which we were invited. "two carriages called charabancs, somewhat like the irish vehicle of the same name, with four servants in the imperial livery to each, we found at the door, and we drove for several miles through the splendid gardens and grounds laid out with all the taste of the most beautiful english grounds, with lakes, and islands, and villas, and statues, and fountains, and the most perfect neatness marked every step of our way. "the most attractive object in our ride was the italian villa, a favorite resort of the emperor, a perfect gem of its kind. we alighted here and visited all the apartments and the grounds around it. no description could do it justice; a series of pictures alone could give an idea of its beauties. while here several other royal carriages with the various deputations to the coronation ceremonies, soon to occur at moscow, arrived, and the cortège of carriages with the gorgeous costumes of the visitors alone furnished an exciting scene, heightened by the proud bearing of the richly caparisoned horses, chiefly black, and the showy trappings of the liveried attendants. "on our return to our rooms we dressed for dinner and proceeded in the same manner to the palace in the gardens called the english palace. here we found assembled in the great reception hall the distinguished company, in number forty-seven, of many nations, who were to sit down to the table together. when dinner was announced we entered the grand dining-hall and found a table most gorgeously prepared with gold and silver service and flowers. at table i found myself opposite three princes, an austrian, a hungarian, and one from some other german state, and near me on my left lord ward, one of the most wealthy nobles of england, with whom i had a good deal of conversation. opposite and farther to my right was prince esterhazy, seated between lady granville and the beautiful lady emily peel. on the other side of lady peel was lord granville and near him sir robert peel. among the guests, a list of whom i regret i did not obtain, was the young earl of lincoln and several other noblemen in the suite of lord granville.... some twenty servants in the imperial livery served the table which was furnished with truly royal profusion and costliness. the rarest dishes and the costliest wines in every variety were put before us. i need not say that in such a party everything was conducted with the highest decorum. no noise, no boisterous mirth, no loud talking, but a quiet cheerfulness and perfect ease characterized the whole entertainment. "after dinner all arose, both ladies and gentlemen, and left the room together, not after the english fashion of the gentlemen allowing the ladies to retire and then seating themselves again by themselves to drink, etc. we retired for a moment to the great reception-hall for coffee, but, being fearful that we should be too late for the last steamer from peterhoff to st. petersburg, we were hurrying to get through and to leave, but the moment our fears had come to the knowledge of lord granville, he most kindly came to us and told us to feel at ease as his steam-yacht was lying off the quay to take them up to the city, and he was but too proud to have the opportunity of offering us a place on board; an offer which we, of course, accepted with thanks. "having thus been entertained with truly imperial hospitality for the entire day, ending with this sumptuous entertainment, we descended once more to the carriages and drove to the quay, where a large barge belonging to the jean d'acre, english man-of-war (which is the ship put in commission for the service of lord granville), manned by stalwart man-of-war's-men, was waiting to take the english party of nobles, etc., on board the steam-yacht. when all were collected we left peterhoff and were soon on board. the weather was fine and the moon soon rose over the palace of peterhoff, looking for a moment like one of the splendid gilded domes of the palace. "on board the yacht i had much conversation with lord granville, who brought the various members of his suite and introduced them to me,--sir robert peel; the young earl of lincoln, the son of the duke of newcastle, who, when himself the earl of lincoln in , showed me such courtesy and kindness in london; mr. acton, a nephew of lord granville, with whom i had some conversation in which, while i was speaking of the greek religion as compared with the romish, he informed me he was a roman catholic. i wished much to have had more conversation with him, but the time was not suitable, and the steamer was now near the end of the voyage. "we landed at the quay in st. petersburg about eleven o'clock, and i reached my lodgings in the hotel de russie about twelve, thus ending a day of incidents which i shall long remember with great gratification, having only one unpleasant reflection connected with it, to wit that my dear wife, my niece and our friend miss l. were not with me to participate in the pleasure and novelty of the scenes." chapter xxxvi august , --september , berlin.--baron von humboldt.--london, successful cable experiments with whitehouse and bright.--banquet at albion tavern.--flattering speech of w.f. cooke.--returns to america.--troubles multiply.--letter to the honorable john y. mason on political matters.--kendall urges severing of connection with cable company.--morse, nevertheless, decides to continue.--appointed electrician of company.--sails on u.s.s. niagara.-- letter from paris on the crinoline.--expedition sails from liverpool.-- queenstown harbor.--accident to his leg.--valencia.--laying of cable begun.--anxieties.--three successful days.--cable breaks.--failure.-- returns to america.--retires from cable enterprise.--predicts in failure of apparently successful laying of cable.--sidney e. morse.--the hare and the tortoise.--european testimonial: considered niggardly by kendall.--decorations, medals, etc., from european nations.--letter of thanks to count walewski. his good democratic eyes a trifle dazzled by all this imperial magnificence, morse left st. petersburg and, with his party, journeyed to berlin. what was to him the most interesting incident of his visit to that city is thus described:-- "_august ._ to-day i went to potsdam to see baron humboldt, and had a delightful interview with this wonderful man. although i had met with him at the soirées of baron gerard, the distinguished painter, in paris in , and afterward at the academy of sciences, when my telegraph was exhibited to the assembled academicians in , i took letters of introduction to him from baron gerolt, the prussian minister. but they were unnecessary, for the moment i entered his room, which is in the royal palace, he called me by name and greeted me most kindly, saying, as i presented my letters: 'oh! sir, you need no letters, your name is a sufficient introduction'; and so, seating myself, he rapidly touched upon various topics relating to america." on the margin of a photograph of himself, presented to morse by the baron, is an inscription in french of which the following is a translation:-- to mr. s.f.b. morse, whose philosophic and useful labors have rendered his name illustrious in two worlds, the homage of the high and affectionate esteem of alexander humboldt. potsdam, august . the next thirty days were spent in showing the beauties of cologne, aix-la-chapelle, brussels and paris to his wife and niece, and in the latter part of september the little party returned to london. here morse resumed his experiments with dr. whitehouse and mr. bright, and on october , he reports to mr. field:-- "as the electrician of the new york, newfoundland and london telegraph company, it is with the highest gratification that i have to apprise you of the result of our experiments of this morning upon a single continuous conductor of more than two thousand miles in extent, a distance, you will perceive, sufficient to cross the atlantic ocean from newfoundland to ireland. "the admirable arrangements made at the magnetic telegraph office in old broad street for connecting ten subterranean gutta-percha insulated conductors of over two hundred miles each, so as to give one continuous length of more than two thousand miles, during the hours of the night when the telegraph is not commercially employed, furnished us the means of conclusively settling by actual experiment the question of the practicability as well as the practicality of telegraphing through our proposed atlantic cable.... i am most happy to inform you that, as a crowning result of a long series of experimental investigation and inductive reasoning upon this subject, the experiments under the direction of dr. whitehouse and mr. bright which i witnessed this morning--in which the induction-coils and receiving-magnets, as modified by these gentlemen, were made to actuate one of my recording instruments --have most satisfactorily resolved all doubts of the practicability as well as practicality of operating the telegraph from newfoundland to ireland." in , morse had been curtly and almost insultingly refused a patent for his invention in england, a humiliation for which he never quite forgave the english. now, eighteen years after this mortifying experience, the most eminent scientists of this same england vied with each other in doing him honor. thus was his scientific fame vindicated, but, let it be remarked parenthetically, this kind of honor was all that he ever received from the land of his ancestors. while other nations of europe united, two years later, in granting him a pecuniary gratuity, and while some of their sovereigns bestowed upon him decorations or medals, england did neither. however, it was always a source of the keenest gratification that two of those who had invented rival telegraphs proved themselves broad-minded and liberal enough to acknowledge the superiority of his system, and to urge its adoption by their respective governments. the first of these was dr. steinheil, of munich, to whom i have already referred, and to whom is due the valuable discovery that the earth can be used as a return circuit. the second was the englishman, w.f. cooke, who, with wheatstone, devised the needle telegraph. on october , a banquet was tendered to morse by the telegraph companies of england. it was given at the albion tavern. mr. cooke presided and introduced the guest of the evening in the following charming speech:-- "i was consulted only a few months ago on the subject of a telegraph for a country in which no telegraph at present exists. i recommended the system of professor morse. i believe that system to be one of the simplest in the world, and in that lies its permanency and certainty. [cheers.] there are others which may be as good in other circumstances, but for a wide country i hesitate not to say professor morse's is the best adapted. it is a great thing to say, and i do so after twenty years' experience, that professor morse's system is one of the simplest that ever has been and, i think, ever will be conceived. [cheers.] "it was a great thing for me, after having been so long connected with the electric telegraph, to be invited to preside at this interesting meeting, and i have travelled upward of one hundred miles in order to be present to-day, having, when asked to preside, replied by electric telegraph 'i will.' [cheers.] but i may lower your idea of the sacrifice i made in so doing when i tell you that i knew the talents of professor morse, and was only too glad to accept an invitation to do honor to a man i really honored in my heart. [cheers.] "i have been thinking during the last few days on what professor morse has done. he stands alone in america as the originator and carrier out of a grand conception. we know that america is an enormous country, and we know the value of the telegraph, but i think we have a right to quarrel with professor morse for not being content with giving the benefit of it to his own country, but that he extended it to canada and newfoundland, and, even beyond that, his system has been adopted all over europe [cheers]--and the nuisance is that we in england are obliged to communicate by means of his system. [cheers and laughter.] "i as a director of an electric telegraph company, however, should be ashamed of myself if i did not acknowledge what we owe him. but he threatens to go further still, and promises that, if we do not, he will carry out a communication between england and newfoundland across the atlantic. i am nearly pledged to pay him a visit on the other side of the atlantic to see what he is about, and, if he perseveres in his obstinate attempt to reach england, i believe i must join him in his endeavors. [cheers.] "to think that he has united all the stripes and stars of america, which are increasing day by day--and i hope they will increase until they are too numerous to mention--that he has extended his system to canada and is about to unite those portions of the world to europe, is a glorious thing for any man; and, although i have done something in the same cause myself, i confess i almost envy professor morse for having forced from an unwilling rival a willing acknowledgment of his services. [cheers.] "i am proud to see professor morse this side of the water. i beg to give you 'the health of professor morse,' and may he long live to enjoy the high reputation he has attained throughout the world!" soon after this, with these flattering words still ringing in his ears, he and his party sailed for new york and, once arrived at home, the truth of the trite saying that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country" was soon to be brought to his attention. while he had been fêted and honored abroad, while he had every reason to believe that his petition to the european governments for some pecuniary compensation would, in time, be granted, he returned to be plunged anew into vexatious litigation, intrigues and attacks upon his purse, his fame, and his good name. on november , , he refers to his greatest cross in a letter to mr. kendall:-- "i have just returned from boston, having accomplished the important duty for which i alone went there, to wit, to say 'yes' before a gentleman having u.s. commissioner after his name, instead of 'yes' before one who had only s. commissioner after his name; and this at a cost of exactly twenty dollars, or, if the one dollar thrown away in new york upon the s. commissioner be added, twenty-one dollars and three days of time, to say nothing of sundry risks of accidents by land and water travel. "well, if it will lead to a thorough separation of all interests and all intercourse with f.o.j., i shall not consider the time and money lost, yet, in conversation with mr. curtis, i have little hope of a change in judge curtis's views of the point in which he decides that smith has an inchoate right, and our only chance of success is in the reversal of that decision by the supreme bench, and that after another year's suspense.... "i wish there was some way of stopping this harassing, paralyzing litigation. i find my mind wholly unfit for the studies which the present state of the telegraph requires from me, being distracted and irritated by the constant necessity for standing on the defensive. smith will be smith i know, and, therefore, as he is the appointed thorn to keep a proper ballast of humility in s.f.b.m. with his load of honors, why, be it so, if i can only have the proper strength and disposition to use the trial aright.... write me some encouraging news if you can. how will the present calm in political affairs affect our california matters?" the calm to which he referred was the apparent one which had settled down on the country after the election of buchanan, and which, as everybody knows, was but the calm before the storm of our civil war. he has this to say about the election in a letter to the honorable john y. mason, our minister to france:-- "i may congratulate you, my dear sir, on the issue of the late election. my predictions have been verified. the country is quiet, and, as usual after the excitement of an election, has settled down into orderly acquiescence to the will of the majority, and into general good feeling. europeans can hardly understand this truly anomalous phase of our american institutions; they do not understand that it is characteristic that 'we speak daggers but use none'; that we fight with ballots and not with bullets; that we have abundance of inkshed and little bloodshed, and that all that is explosive is blown off through newspaper safety-valves." the events of the next few years were destined to shatter the peaceful visions of this lover of his country, for many daggers were drawn, the bullets flew thick and fast, and the bloodshed was appalling. it is difficult to follow the history of the telegraph, in its relation to its inventor, through all the intricacies involved in the conflicting interests of various companies and men in this its formative period. morse himself was often at a loss to determine on the course which he should pursue, a course which would at the same time inure to his financial benefit and be in accordance with his high sense of right. absolutely straightforward and honest himself, it was difficult for him to believe that others who spoke him fair were not equally sincere, and he was often imposed upon, and was frequently forced, in the exigencies of business, to be intimately associated with those whose ideas of right and wrong were far different from his own. the one person in whose absolute integrity he had faith was amos kendall, and yet he must sometimes have thought that his friend was too severe in his judgment of others, for i find in a letter of mr. kendall's of january , , the following warning:-- "i earnestly beseech you to give up all idea of going out again on the cable-laying expedition. your true friends do not comprehend how it is that you give your time, your labor, and your fame to build up an interest deliberately and unscrupulously hostile to all their interests and your own.... i believe that peter cooper is the only man among them who is sincerely your friend. as to field, i have as little faith in him as i have in f.o.j. smith. if you could get cooper to take a stand in favor of the faithful observance of the contract for connection with the n.e. union line at boston, he can put an end to all trouble, if, at the same time, he will refuse to concur in a further extension of their lines south." in spite of this warning, or, perhaps, because peter cooper succeeded in overcoming mr. kendall's objections, morse did go out on the next cable-laying expedition, and yet he found in the end that mr. kendall's suspicions were by no means unjustified. but of this in its proper place. the united states government had placed the steam frigate niagara at the disposal of the cable company, and on her morse, as the electrician of the american company, sailed from new york on april , . arriving in london, he was again honored by many attentions and entertainments, including a dinner at the lord mayor's. the loading of the cable on board the ships designated for that purpose consumed, necessarily, some time, and morse took advantage of this delay to visit paris, at the suggestion of our minister, mr. mason, in order to confer with the premier, count walewski, with regard to the pecuniary indemnity which all agreed was due to him from the nations using his invention. this conference bore fruit, as we shall see later on. in a letter to his wife from paris he makes this amusing comment on the fashions of the day, after remarking on the dearth of female beauty in france:-- "you must consider me now as speaking of features only, for as to form, alas, that is under such a total crinoline eclipse that this season of total darkness in fashion's firmament forbids any speculation on that subject. the reign of crinoline amplitude is not only not removed, but is more dominant than ever. who could have predicted that, because an heir to the french throne was in expectancy, all womankind, old and young, would so far sympathize with the amiable consort of napoleon iii as to be, in appearance at least, likely to flood the earth with heirs; that grave parliaments would be in solemn debate upon the pressing necessity of enlarging the entrances of royal palaces in order to meet the exigencies of enlarged crinolines; that the new carriages were all of increased dimensions to accommodate the crinoline? but so it is; it is the age of crinoline.... talk no longer of chairs, they are no longer visible. talk no longer of tête-à-têtes; two crinolines might get in sight of each other, at least by the use of the lorgnette, but as for conversation, that is out of the question except by speaking trumpets, by signs, and who knows but in this age of telegraphs crinoline may not follow the world's fashion and be a patroness of the morse system." all the preparations for the great enterprise of the laying of the cable proceeded slowly, and it was not until the latter part of july that the little fleet sailed from liverpool on its way to the cove of cork and then to valencia, on the west coast of ireland, which was chosen as the european terminus of the cable. morse wrote many pages of minute details to his wife, and from them i shall select the most important and interesting:-- "_july ._ here we are steaming our way towards cork harbor, with most beautiful weather, along the irish coast, which is in full view, and expecting to be in the cove of cork in the morning of to-morrow.... we left liverpool yesterday morning, as i wrote you we should, and as we passed the ships of war in the harbor we were cheered from the rigging by the tars of the various vessels, and the flags of others were dipped as a salute, all of which were returned by us in kind. the landing stage and quays of liverpool were densely crowded with people who waved their handkerchiefs as we slowly sailed by them. "two steamers accompanied us down to the bar filled with people, and then, after mutual cheering and firing of cannon from one of the steamers, they returned to port.... we shall be in cork the remainder of the week, possibly sailing on saturday, go round to valencia and be ready to commence on monday. then, if all things are prosperous, we hope to reach newfoundland in twenty days, and dear home again the first week in september. and yet there may be delays in this great work, for it is a vast and new one, so don't be impatient if i do not return quite so soon. the work must be thoroughly and well done before we leave it.... "_evening, ten o'clock._ we have had a beautiful day and have been going slowly along and expect to be in the cove of cork by daylight in the morning. the deck of our ship presents a curious appearance just now; between the main and mizzen masts is an immense coil of one hundred and thirty miles of the cable, the rest is in larger coils below decks. abaft the mizzen mast is a ponderous mass of machinery for regulating the paying out of the cable, a steam-engine and boiler complete, and they have just been testing it to see if all is right, and it is found right. we have the prospect of a fine moon for our expedition. "i send you the copy of a prayer that has been read in the churches. i am rejoiced at the manner in which the christian community views our enterprise. it is calculated to inspire my confidence of success. what the first message will be i cannot say, but if i send it it shall be, 'glory to god in the highest, on earth peace and good will to men.' 'not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name be all the glory.'" "_july , four o'clock afternoon._ on awaking this morning at five o'clock with the noise of coming to anchor, i found myself safely ensconced in one of the most beautiful harbors in the world, with queenstown picturesquely rising upon the green hills from the foot of the bay...." "_august ._ when i wrote the finishing sentence of my last letter i was suffering a little from a slight accident to my leg. we were laying out the cable from the two ships, the agamemnon and niagara, to connect the two halves of the cable together to experiment through the whole length of twenty-five hundred miles for the first time. in going down the side of the agamemnon i had to cross over several small boats to reach the outer one, which was to take me on board the tug which had the connecting cable on board. in stepping from one to the other of the small boats, the water being very rough and the boats having a good deal of motion, i made a misstep, my right leg being on board the outer boat, and my left leg went down between the two boats scraping the skin from the upper part of the leg near the knee for some two or three inches. it pained me a little, but not much, still i knew from experience that, however slight and comparatively painless at the time, i should be laid up the next day and possibly for several days. "my warm-hearted, generous friend, sir william o'shaughnessy, was on board, and, being a surgeon, he at once took it in hand and dressed it, tell susan, in good hydropathic style with cold water. i felt so little inconvenience from it at the time that i assisted throughout the day in laying the cable, and operating through it after it was joined, and had the satisfaction of witnessing the successful result of passing the electricity through twenty-five hundred miles at the rate of one signal in one and a quarter second. since then dr. whitehouse has succeeded in telegraphing a message through it at the rate of a single signal in three quarters of a second. if the cable, therefore, is successfully laid so as to preserve continuity throughout, there is no doubt of our being able to telegraph through, and at a good commercial speed. "i have been on my back for two days and am still confined to the ship. to-morrow i hope to be well enough to hobble on board the agamemnon and assist in some experiments." the accident to his leg was more serious than he at first imagined, and conditions were not improved by his using his leg more than was prudent. "_august , eleven o'clock a.m._ i am still confined, most of the time on my back in my berth, quite to my annoyance in one respect, to wit, that i am unable to be on board the agamemnon with dr. whitehouse to assist at the experiments. yet i have so much to be thankful for that gratitude is the prevailing feeling. "_seven o'clock._ all the ships are under way from the cove of cork. the leopard left first, then the agamemnon, then the susquehanna and the niagara last; and at this moment we are off the head of kinsale in the following order: niagara, leopard, agamemnon, susquehanna. the cyclops and another vessel, the advice, left for valencia on saturday evening, and, with a beautiful night before us, we hope to be there also by noon to-morrow. "this day three hundred and sixty-five years ago columbus sailed on his first voyage of discovery and discovered america." "_august ._ off the skelligs light, of which i send you a sketch. a beautiful morning with head wind and heavy sea, making many seasick. we are about fifteen miles from our point of destination. our companion ships are out of sight astern, except the susquehanna, which is behind us only about a mile. in a few hours we hope to reach our expectant friends in valencia and to commence the great work in earnest. "our ship is crowded with engineers, and operators, and delegates from the governments of russia and france, and the deck is a bewildering mass of machinery, steam-engines, cog-wheels, breaks, boilers, ropes of hemp and ropes of wire, buoys and boys, pulleys and sheaves of wood and iron, cylinders of wood and cylinders of iron, meters of all kinds,-- anemometers, thermometers, barometers, electrometers,--steam-gauges, ships' logs--from the common log to massey's log and friend's log, to our friend whitehouse's electro-magnetic log, which i think will prove to be the best of all, with a modification i have suggested. thus freighted we expect to disgorge most of our solid cargo before reaching mid-ocean. "i am keeping ready to close this at a moment's warning, so give all manner of love to all friends, kisses to whom kisses are due. i am getting almost impatient at the delays we necessarily encounter, but our great work must not be neglected. i have seen enough to know now that the atlantic telegraph is sure to be established, _for it is practicable_." was it a foreboding of what was to happen that caused him to add:-- "_we may not succeed in our first attempt_; some little neglect or accident may foil our present efforts, but the present enterprise will result in gathering stores of experience which will make the next effort certain. not that i do not expect success now, but accidental failure now will not be the evidence of its impracticability. "our principal electrical difficulty is the slowness with which we must manipulate in order to be intelligible; twenty words in sixteen minutes is now the rate. i am confident we can get more after awhile, but the atlantic telegraph has its own rate of talking and cannot be urged to speak faster, any more than any other orator, without danger of becoming unintelligible. "_three o'clock p.m._ we are in valencia harbor. we shall soon come to anchor. a pilot who has just come to show us our anchorage ground says: 'there are a power of people ashore.'" "_august ._ yesterday, at half past six p.m., all being right, we commenced again paying out the heavy shore-end, of which we had about eight miles to be left on the rocky bottom of the coast, to bear the attrition of the waves and to prevent injury to the delicate nerve which it incloses in its iron mail, and which is the living principle of the whole work. a critical time was approaching, it was when the end of the massive cable should pass overboard at the point where it joins the main and smaller cable. i was in my berth, by order of the surgeon, lest my injured limb, which was somewhat inflamed by the excitement of the day and too much walking about, should become worse. "above my head the heavy rumbling of the great wheels, over which the cable was passing and was being regulated, every now and then giving a tremendous thump like the discharge of artillery, kept me from sleep, and i knew they were approaching the critical point. presently it came. the machinery stopped, and soon amid the voices i heard the unwelcome intelligence--'the cable is broke.' sure enough the smaller cable at this point had parted, but, owing to the prudent precautions of those superintending, the end of the great cable had been buoyed and the hawsers which had been attached secured it. the sea was moderate, the moonlight gave a clear sight of all, and in half an hour the joyous sound of 'all right' was heard, the machinery commenced a low and regular rumbling, like the purring of a great cat, which has continued from that moment (midnight) till the present moment uninterrupted. "the coil on deck is most beautifully uncoiling at the rate of three nautical miles an hour. the day is magnificent, the land has almost disappeared and our companion ships are leisurely sailing with us at equal pace, and we are all, of course, in fine spirits. i sent you a telegraph dispatch this morning, thirty miles out, which you will duly receive with others that i shall send if all continues to go on without interruption. if you do receive any, preserve them with the greatest care, for they will be great curiosities." "_august ._ thus far we have had most delightful weather, and everything goes on regularly and satisfactorily. you are aware we cannot stop night nor day in paying out. on saturday we made our calculations that the first great coil, which is upon the main deck, would be completely paid out, and one of our critical movements, to wit, the change from this coil to the next, which is far forward, would be made by seven or eight o'clock yesterday morning (sunday). so we were up and watching the last flake of the first coil gradually diminishing. everything had been well prepared; the men were at their posts; it was an anxious moment lest a kink might occur. but, as the last round came up, the motion of the ship was slightly slackened, the men handled the slack cable handsomely, and in two minutes the change was made with perfect order, and the paying out from the second coil was as regularly commenced and at this moment continues, and at an increased rate to-day of five miles per hour. "last night, however, was another critical moment. on examining our chart of soundings we found the depth of the ocean gradually increasing up to about four hundred fathoms, and then the chart showed a sudden and great increase to seventeen hundred fathoms, and then a further increase to two thousand and fifty, nearly the greatest depth with which we should meet in the whole distance. we had, therefore, to watch the effect of this additional depth upon the straining of the cable. at two in the morning the effect showed itself in a greater strain and a more rapid tendency to run fast. we could check its speed, but it is a dangerous process. _too sudden a check would inevitably snap the cable_. too slack a rein would allow of its egress at such a wasting rate and at such a violent speed that we should lose too great a portion of the cable, and its future stopping within controllable limits be almost impossible. hence our anxiety. all were on the alert; our expert engineers applied the brakes most judiciously, and at the moment i write--latitude ° '--the cable is being laid at the depth of two miles in its ocean bed as regularly and with as much facility as it was in the depth of a few fathoms.... "_six p.m._ we have just had a fearful alarm. 'stop her! stop her!' was reiterated from many voices on deck. on going up i perceived the cable had got out of its sheaves and was running out at great speed. all was confusion for a few moments. mr. canning, our friend, who was the engineer of the newfoundland cable, showed great presence of mind, and to his coolness and skill, i think, is due the remedying of the evil. by rope stoppers the cable was at length brought to a standstill, and it strained most ominously, perspiring at every part great tar drops. but it held together long enough to put the cable on the sheaves again." "_tuesday, august ._ abruptly indeed am i stopped in my letter. this morning at . the cable parted, and we shall soon be on our way back to england." thus ended the first attempt to unite the old world with the new by means of an electric nerve. authorities differ as to who was responsible for the disaster, but the cause was proved to be what morse had foreseen when he wrote: "too sudden a check would inevitably snap the cable." while, of course, disappointed, he was not discouraged, for under date of august , he writes:-- "our accident will delay the enterprise but will not defeat it. i consider it a settled fact, from all i have seen, that it is perfectly practicable. it will surely be accomplished. there is no insurmountable difficulty that has for a moment appeared, none that has shaken my faith in it in the slightest degree. my report to the company as co-electrician will show everything right in that department. we got an electric current through till the moment of parting, so that electric connection was perfect, and yet the farther we paid out the feebler were the currents, indicating a difficulty which, however, i do not consider serious, while it is of a nature to require attentive investigation." "_plymouth, august ._ here i am still held by the leg and lying in my berth from which i have not moved for six days. i suffer but little pain unless i attempt to sit up, and the healing process is going on most favorably but slowly.... i have been here three days and have not yet had a glimpse of the beautiful country that surrounds us, and if we should be ordered to another port before i can be out i shall have as good an idea of plymouth as i should have at home looking at a map." while the wounded leg healed slowly, the plans of the company moved more deliberately still. a movement was on foot for the east india company to purchase what remained of the cable for use in the red sea or the persian gulf, so that the atlantic company could start afresh with an entirely new cable, and morse hoped that this plan might be consummated at an early date so that he could return to america in the niagara; but the negotiations halted from day to day and week to week. the burden of his letters to his wife is always that a decision is promised by "to-morrow," and finally he says in desperation: "to-day was to-morrow yesterday, but to-day has to-day another to-morrow, on which day, as usual, we are to know something. but as to-day has not yet gone, i wait with some anxiety to learn what it is to bring forth." his letters are filled with affectionate longing to be at home again and with loving messages to all his dear ones, and at last he is able to say that his wound has completely healed, and that he has decided to leave the niagara and sail from liverpool on the arabia, on september , and in due time he arrived at his beloved home on the hudson. while still intensely interested in the great cable enterprise, he begins to question the advisability of continuing his connection with the men against whom mr. kendall had warned him, for in a letter to his brother richard, of october , , he says: "i intend to withdraw altogether from the atlantic telegraph enterprise, as they who are prominent on this side of the water in its interests are using it with all then: efforts and influence against my invention, and my interests, and those of my assignees, to whom i feel bound in honor to attach myself, even if some of them have been deceived into coalition with the hostile party." it was, however, a great disappointment to him that he was not connected with future attempts to lay the cable. his withdrawal was not altogether voluntary in spite of what he said in the letter from which i have just quoted. while he had been made an honorary director of the company in , although not a stockholder, a law was subsequently passed declaring that only stockholders could be directors, even honorary directors. he had not felt financially able to purchase stock, but it was a source of astonishment to him and to others that a few shares, at least, had not been allotted to him for his valuable services in connection with the enterprise. he had, nevertheless, cheerfully given of his time and talents in the first attempt, although cautioned by mr. kendall. he goes fully into the whole matter in a very long letter to mr. john w. brett, of december , , in which he details his connection with the cable company, his regret and surprise at being excluded on the ground of his not being a stockholder, especially as, on a subsequent visit to europe, he found that two other men had been made honorary directors, although they were not stockholders. he says that he learned also that "mr. field had represented to the directors that i was hostile to the company, and was using my exertions to defeat the measures for aid from the united states government to the enterprise, and that it was in consequence of these misrepresentations that i was not elected." he says farther on: "i sincerely rejoiced in the consummation of the great enterprise, although prevented in the way i have shown from being present. i ought to have been with the cable squadron last summer. it was no fault of mine, that i was not there. i hope mr. field can exculpate himself in the eyes of the board, before the world, and before his own conscience, in the course he has taken." on the margin of the letter-press copy of a letter written to mr. kendall on december , , is a note in pencil written, evidently, at a later date: "mr. field has since manifested by his conduct a different temper. i have long since forgiven what, after all, may have been error of ignorance on his part." the fact remains, however, that his connection with the cable company was severed, and that his relations with messrs. field, cooper, etc., were decidedly strained. it is more than possible that, had he continued as electrician of the company, the second attempt might have been successful, for he foresaw the difficulty which resulted in failure, and, had he been the guiding mind, it would, naturally, have been avoided. the proof of this is in the following incident, which was related by a friend of his, mr. jacob s. jewett, to mr. prime:-- "i thought it might interest you to know when and how professor morse received the first tidings of the success of the atlantic cable. i accompanied him to europe on the steamer fulton, which sailed from new york july , . we were nearing southampton when a sail boat was noticed approaching, and soon our vessel was boarded by a young man who sought an interview with professor morse, and announced to him that a message from america had just been received, the first that had passed along the wire lying upon the bed of the ocean. "professor morse was, of course, greatly delighted, but, turning to me, said: '_this is very gratifying, but it is doubtful whether many more messages will be received_'; and gave as his reason that--'the cable had been so long stored in an improper place that much of the coating had been destroyed, and the cable was in other respects injured.' his prediction proved to be true." and mr. prime adds: "had he been in the board of direction, had his judgment and experience as electrician been employed, that great calamity, which cost millions of money and eight years of delay in the use of the ocean telegraph, would, in all human probability, have been averted." but it is idle to speculate on what might have been. his letters show that the action of the directors amazed and hurt him, and that it was with deep regret that he ceased to take an active part in the great enterprise the success of which he had been the first to prophesy. many other matters claimed his attention at this time, for, as usual upon returning from a prolonged absence, he found his affairs in more or less confusion, and his time for some months after his return was spent mainly in straightening them out. the winter was spent in new york with his family, but business calling him to washington, he gives utterance, in a letter to his wife of december , to sentiments which will appeal to all who have had to do with the powers that be in the government service:-- "as yet i have not had the least success in getting a proper position for charles. a more thankless, repulsive business than asking for a situation under government i cannot conceive. i would myself starve rather than ask such a favor if i were alone concerned. the modes of obtaining even a hearing are such as to drive a man of any sensitiveness to wish himself in the depths of the forest away from the vicinity of men, rather than encounter the airs of those on their temporary thrones of power. i cannot say what i feel. i shall do all i can, but anticipate no success.... i called to see secretary toucey for the purpose of asking him to put me in the way of finding some place for charles, but, after sending in my card and waiting in the anteroom for half to three fourths of an hour, he took no notice of my card, just left his room, passed by deliberately the open door of the anteroom without speaking to me, and left the building. this may be all explained and i will charitably hope there was no intention of rudeness to me, but, unexplained, a ruder slight could not well be conceived." the affection of the three morse brothers for each other was unusually strong, and it is from the unreserved correspondence between finley and sidney that some of the most interesting material for this work has been gathered. both of these brothers possessed a keen sense of humor and delighted in playful banter. the following is written in pencil on an odd scrap of paper and has no date:-- "when my brother and i were children my father one day took us each on his knee and said: 'now i am going to tell you the character of each of you.' he then told us the fable of the hare and the tortoise. 'now,' said he, 'finley' (that is me), 'you are the hare and sidney, your brother, is the tortoise. see if i am not correct in prophesying your future careers.' so ever since it has been a topic of banter between sidney and me. sometimes sidney seemed to be more prosperous than i; then he would say, 'the old tortoise is ahead.' then i would take a vigorous run and cry out to him,' the hare is ahead.' for i am naturally quick and impulsive, and he sluggish and phlegmatic. so i am now going to give him the hare riding the tortoise as a piece of fun. sidney will say: 'ah! you see the hare is obliged to ride on the tortoise in order to get to the goal!' but i shall say: 'yes, but the tortoise could not get there unless the hare spurred him up and guided him.'" both of these brothers achieved success, but, unfortunately for the moral of the old fable, the hare quite outdistanced the tortoise, without, however, kindling any spark of jealousy in that faithful heart. while sidney was still in europe his brother writes to him on december , :-- "i don't know what you must think of me for not having written to you since my return. it has not been for want of will but truly from the impossibility of withdrawing myself from an unprecedented pressure of more important duties, on which to _write_ so that you could form any clear idea of them would be impossible. these duties arise from the state of my affairs thrown into confusion by the conduct of parties intent on controlling all my property. but, i am happy to state, my affairs are in a way of adjustment through the active exertions of my faithful agent and friend, mr. kendall, so far as his declining strength permits.... i wish you were near me so that we could exchange views on many subjects, particularly on the one which so largely occupies public attention everywhere. i have been collecting works pro and con on the slavery question with a view of writing upon it. we are in perfect accord, i think, on that subject. i believe that you and i would be considered in new england as rank heretics, for, i confess, the more i study the subject the more i feel compelled to declare myself on the southern side of the question. "i care not for the judgment of men, however; i feel on sure ground while standing on bible doctrine, and i have arrived at the conclusion that a fearful hallucination, not less absurd than that which beclouded some of the most pious and otherwise intelligent minds of the days of salem witchcraft, has for a time darkened the moral atmosphere of the north." the event has seemed to prove that it was the southern sympathizers at the north, those "most pious and otherwise intelligent minds," whose moral atmosphere was darkened by a "fearful hallucination," for no one now claims that slavery is a divine institution because the bible says, "slaves, obey your masters." i have stated that one of the purposes of morse's visit to europe in was to seek to persuade the various governments which were using his telegraph to grant him some pecuniary remuneration. the idea was received favorably at the different courts, and resulted in a concerted movement initiated by the count walewski, representing france, and participated in by ten of the european nations. the sittings of this convention, or congress, were held in paris from april, , to the latter part of august, and the result is announced in a letter of count walewski to morse of september :-- sir,--it is with lively satisfaction that i have the honor to announce to you that a sum of four hundred thousand francs will be remitted to you, in four annuities, in the name of france, of austria, of belgium, of the netherlands, of piedmont, of russia, of the holy see, of sweden, of tuscany and of turkey, as an honorary gratuity, and as a reward, altogether personal, of your useful labors. nothing can better mark than this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which your invention has so justly excited. the emperor has already given you a testimonial of his high esteem when he conferred upon you, more than a year ago, the decoration of a chevalier of his order of the legion of honor. you will find a new mark of it in the initiative which his majesty wished that his government should take in this conjuncture; and the decision that i charge myself to bring to your knowledge is a brilliant proof of the eager and sympathetic adhesion that his proposition has met with from the states i have just enumerated. i pray you to accept on this occasion, sir, my personal congratulations, as well as the assurance of my sentiments of the most distinguished consideration. while this letter is dated september , the amount of the gratuity agreed upon seems to have been made known soon after the first meeting of the convention, for on april , the following letter was written to morse by m. van den broek, his agent in all the preliminaries leading up to the convention, and who, by the way, was to receive as his commission one third of the amount of the award, whatever it might be: "i have this morning seen the secretary of the minister, and from him learned that the sum definitely fixed is , francs, payable in four years. this does not by any means answer our expectations, and i am afraid you will be much disappointed, yet i used every exertion in my power, but without avail, to procure a grant of a larger sum." it certainly was a pitiful return for the millions of dollars which morse's invention had saved or earned for those nations which used it as a government monopoly, and while i find no note of complaint in his own letters, his friends were more outspoken. mr. kendall, in a letter of may , exclaims: "i know not how to express my contempt of the meanness of the european governments in the award they propose to make you as _the_ inventor of the telegraph. i had set the sum at half a million dollars as the least that they could feel to be at all compatible with their dignity. i hope you will acknowledge it more as a tribute to the merits of your invention than as an adequate reward for it." and in a letter of june , answering one of morse's which must have contained some expressions of gratitude, mr. kendall says further: "in reference to the second subject of your letter, i have to say that it is only as a tribute to the superiority of your invention that the european grant can, in my opinion, be considered either 'generous' or 'magnanimous.' as an indemnity it is niggardly and mean." it will be in place to record here the testimonials of the different nations of europe to the inventor of the telegraph, manifested in various forms:-- _france._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity, and the decoration of the legion of honor. _prussia._ the scientific gold medal of prussia set in the lid of a gold snuff-box. _austria._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity, and the scientific gold medal of austria. _russia._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity. _spain._ the cross of knight commander de numero of the order of isabella the catholic. _portugal._ the cross of a knight of the tower and sword. _italy._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity, and the cross of a knight of saints lazaro and mauritio. _württemberg._ the scientific gold medal of württemberg. _turkey._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity, and the decoration in diamonds of the nishan iftichar, or order of glory. _denmark._ the cross of knight commander of the dannebrog. _holy see._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity. _belgium._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity. _holland._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity. _sweden._ a contributor to the honorary gratuity. _great britain._ nationally nothing. _switzerland._ nationally nothing. _saxony._ nationally nothing. the decorations and medals enumerated above, with the exception of the danish cross, which had to be returned at the death of the recipient, and one of the medals, which mysteriously disappeared many years ago, are now in the morse case at the national museum in washington, having been presented to that institution by the children and grandchildren of the inventor. it should be added that, in addition to the honors bestowed on him by foreign governments, he was made a member of the royal academy of sciences of sweden, a member of the institute of france and of the principal scientific societies of the united states. it has been already noted in these pages that his _alma mater_, yale, conferred on him the degree of ll.d. i have said that i find no note of complaint in morse's letters. whatever his feelings of disappointment may have been, he felt it his duty to send the following letter to count walewski on september , . perhaps a slight note of irony may be read into the sentence accepting the gratuity, but, if intended, i fear it was too feeble to have reached its mark, and the letter is, as a whole and under the circumstances, almost too fulsome, conforming, however, to the stilted style of the time:-- on my return to paris from switzerland i have this day received, from the minister of the united states, the most gratifying information which your excellency did me the honor to send to me through him, respecting the decision of the congress of the distinguished diplomatic representatives of ten of the august governments of europe, held in special reference to myself. you have had the considerate kindness to communicate to me a proceeding which reflects the highest honor upon the imperial government and its noble associates, and i am at a loss for language adequately to express to them my feelings of profound gratitude. but especially, your excellency, do i want words to express towards the august head of the imperial government, and to your excellency, the thankful sentiments of my heart for the part so prominently taken by his imperial majesty, and by your excellency, in so generously initiating this measure for my honor in inviting the governments of europe to a conference on the subject, and for so zealously and warmly advocating and perseveringly conducting to a successful termination, the measure in which the imperial government so magnanimously took the initiative. i accept the gratuity thus tendered, on the basis of an honorary testimonial and a personal reward, with tenfold more gratification than could have been produced by a sum of money, however large, offered on the basis of a commercial negotiation. i beg your excellency to receive my thanks, however inadequately expressed, and to believe that i appreciate your excellency's kind and generous services performed in the midst of your high official duties, consummating a proceeding so unique, and in a manner so graceful, that personal kindness has been beautifully blended with official dignity. i will address respectively to the honorable ministers who were your excellency's colleagues a letter of thanks for their participation in this act of high honor to me. i beg your excellency to accept the assurances of my lasting gratitude and highest consideration in subscribing myself your excellency's most obedient humble servant, samuel f.b. morse. chapter xxxvii september , --september , visits europe again with a large family party.--regrets this.--sails for porto rico with wife and two children.--first impressions of the tropics.--hospitalities.--his son-in-law's plantation.--death of alfred vail.--smithsonian exonerates henry.--european honors to morse.--first line of telegraph in porto rico.--banquet.--returns home.--reception at poughkeepsie.--refuses to become candidate for the presidency.--purchases new york house.--f.o.j. smith claims part of european gratuity.--succeeds through legal technicality.--visit of prince of wales.--duke of newcastle.--war clouds.--letters on slavery, etc.--matthew vassar.-- efforts as peacemaker.--foresees northern victory.--gloomy forebodings.-- monument to his father.--divides part of european gratuity with widow of vail.--continued efforts in behalf of peace.--bible arguments in favor of slavery. many letters of this period, including a whole letterpress copy-book, are missing, many of the letters in other copy-books are quite illegible through the fading of the ink, and others have been torn out (by whom i do not know) and have entirely disappeared. it will, therefore, be necessary to summarize the events of the remainder of the year , and of some of the following years. we find that, on july , , morse sailed with his family, including his three young boys, his mother-in-law and other relatives, a party of fifteen all told, for havre on the steamer fulton; that he was tendered a banquet by his fellow-countrymen in paris, and that he was received with honor wherever he went. travelling with a large family was a different proposition from the independence which he had enjoyed on his previous visits to europe, when he was either alone or accompanied only by his wife and niece, and he pathetically remarks to his brother sidney, in a letter of september , written from interlaken: "it was a great mistake i committed in bringing my family. i have scarcely had one moment's pleasure, and am almost worn out with anxieties and cares. if i get back safe with them to paris i hope, after arranging my affairs there, to go as direct as possible to southampton, and settle them there till i sail in november. i am tired of travelling and long for the repose of locust grove, if it shall please our heavenly father to permit us to meet there again." [illustration: morse and his youngest son] before returning to the quiet of his home on the hudson, however, he paid a visit which he had long had in contemplation. on november , , he and his wife and their two younger sons sailed from southampton for porto rico, where his elder daughter, mrs. edward land, had for many years lived, and where his younger daughter had been visiting while he was in europe. he describes his first impressions of a tropical country in a letter to his mother-in-law, mrs. griswold, who had decided to spend the winter in geneva to superintend the education of his son arthur, a lad of nine:-- "in st. thomas we received every possible attention. the governor called on us and invited edward and myself to breakfast (at . o'clock) the day we left. he lives in a fine mansion on one of the lesser hills that enclose the harbor, having directly beneath him on the slope, and only separated by a wall, the residence of santa anna. he was invited to be present, but he was ill (so he said) and excused himself. i presume his illness was occasioned by the thought of meeting an american from the states, for he holds the citizens of the states in perfect hatred, so much so as to refuse to receive united states money in change from his servants on their return from market. "a few days in change of latitude make wonderful changes in feelings and clothing. when we left england the air was wintry, and thick woolen clothing and fires were necessary. the first night at sea blankets were in great demand. with two extra and my great-coat over all i was comfortably warm. in twenty-four hours the great-coat was dispensed with, then one blanket, then another, until a sheet alone began to be enough, and the last two or three nights on board this slight covering was too much. when we got into the harbor of st. thomas the temperature was oppressive; our slightest summer clothing was in demand. surrounded by pomegranate trees, magnificent oleanders, cocoa-nut trees with their large fruit some thirty feet from the ground, the aloe and innumerable, and to me strange, tropical plants, i could scarcely believe it was december.... "we arrived on thursday morning and remained until monday morning, edward having engaged a long island schooner, which happened to be in port, to take us to arroyo. at four o'clock the governor sent his official barge, under the charge of the captain of the port, a most excellent, intelligent, scientific gentleman, who had breakfasted with us at the governor's in the morning, and in a few minutes we were rowed alongside of the schooner estelle, and before dark were under way and out of the harbor. our quarters were very small and close, but not so uncomfortable. "at daylight in the morning of tuesday we were sailing along the shores of porto rico, and at sunrise we found we were in sight of guyama and arroyo, and with our glasses we saw at a distance the buildings on edward's estate. susan had been advised of our coming and a flag was flying on the house in answer to the signal we made from the vessel. in two or three hours we got to the shore, as near as was safe for the vessel, and then in the doctor's boat, which had paid us an official visit to see that we did not bring yellow fever or other infectious disease, the kind doctor, an irishman educated in america, took us ashore at a little temporary landing-place to avoid the surf. on the shore there were some handkerchiefs shaking, and in a crowd we saw susan and leila, and charlie [his grandson] who were waiting for us in carriages, and in a few moments we embraced them all. the sun was hot upon us, but, after a ride of two or three miles, we came to the henrietta, my dear edward and susan's residence, and were soon under the roof of a spacious, elegant and most commodious mansion. and here we are with midsummer temperature and vegetation, but a tropical vegetation, all around us. "well, we always knew that edward was a prince of a man, but we did not know, or rather appreciate, that he has a princely estate and in as fine order as any in the island. when i say 'fine order,' i do not mean that it is laid out like the bois de boulogne, nor is there quite as much picturesqueness in a level plain of sugar canes as in the trees and shrubbery of the gardens of versailles; but it is a rich and well-cultivated estate of some fourteen hundred acres, gradually rising for two or three miles from the sea-shore to the mountains, including some of them, and stretching into the valleys between them." his visit to porto rico was a most delightful one to him in many ways, and i shall have more to say of it further on, but i digress for a moment to speak of two events which occurred just at this time, and which showed him that, even in this land of _dolce far niente_, he could not escape the griefs and cares which are common to all mankind. mr. kendall, in a letter of february , announces the death of one of his early associates: "i presume you will have heard before this reaches you of the death of alfred vail. he had sold most of his telegraph stocks and told me when i last saw him that it was with difficulty he could procure the means of comfort for his family." morse had heard of this melancholy event, for, in a letter to mr. shaffner of february , he says: "poor vail! alas, he is gone. i only heard of the event on saturday last. this death, and the death of many friends besides, has made me feel sad. vail ought to have a proper notice. he was an upright man, and, although some ways of his made him unpopular with those with whom he came in contact, yet i believe his intentions were good, and his faults were the result more of ill-health, a dyspeptic habit, than of his heart." he refers to this also in a letter to his brother sidney of february : "poor vail is gone. he was the innocent cause of the original difficulty with the sensitive henry, he all the time earnestly desirous of doing him honor." and on march , he answers mr. kendall's letter: "i regret to learn that poor vail was so straitened in his circumstances at his death. i intend paying a visit to his father and family on my return. i may be able to relieve them in some degree." this intention he fulfilled, as we shall see later on, and i wish to call special attention to the tone of these letters because, as i have said before, morse has been accused of gross ingratitude and injustice towards alfred vail, whereas a careful and impartial study of all the circumstances of their connection proves quite the contrary. vail's advocates, in loudly claiming for him much more than the evidence shows he was entitled to, have not hesitated to employ gross personal abuse of morse in their newspaper articles, letters, etc., even down to the present day. this has made my task rather difficult, for, while earnestly desirous of giving every possible credit to vail, i have been compelled to introduce much evidence, which i should have preferred to omit, to show the essential weakness of his character; he seems to have been foredoomed to failure. he undoubtedly was of great assistance in the early stages of the invention, and for this morse always cheerfully gave him full credit, but i have proved that he did not invent the dot-and-dash alphabet, which has been so insistently claimed for him, and that his services as a mechanician were soon dispensed with in favor of more skilful men. i have also shown that he practically left morse to his fate in the darkest years of the struggle to bring the telegraph into public use, and that, by his morbid suspicions, he hampered the efforts of mr. kendall to harmonize conflicting interests. for all this morse never bore him any ill-will, but endeavored in every way to foster and safeguard his interests. that he did not succeed was no fault of his. another reminder that he was but human, and that he could not expect to sail serenely along on the calm, seas of popular favor without an occasional squall, was given to him just at this time. professor joseph henry had requested the regents of the smithsonian institute to enquire into the rights and wrongs of the controversy between himself and morse, which had its origin in henry's testimony in the telegraph suits, tinged as this testimony was with bitterness on account of the omissions in vail's book, and which was fanned into a flame by morse's "defense." the latter resented the fact that all these proceedings had taken place while he was out of the country, and without giving him an opportunity to present his side of the case. however, he shows his willingness to do what is right in the letter to colonel shaffner of february , from which i have already quoted:-- "well, it has taken him four years to fire off his gun, and perhaps i am killed. when i return i shall examine my wounds and see if they are mortal, and, if so, shall endeavor to die becomingly. seriously, however, if there are any new facts which go to exculpate henry for his attack upon me before the courts at a moment when i was struggling against those who, from whatever motive, wished to deprive me of my rights, and even of my character, i shall be most happy to learn them, and, if i have unwittingly done him injustice, shall also be most happy to make proper amends. but as all this is for the future, as i know of no facts which alter the case, and as i am wholly unconscious of having done any injustice, i must wait to see what he has put forth." in a letter to his brother sidney, of february , he philosophizes as follows:-- "i cannot avoid noticing a singular coincidence of events in my experience of life, especially in that part of it devoted to the invention of the telegraph, to wit, that, when any special and marked honor has been conferred upon me, there has immediately succeeded some event of the envious or sordid character seemingly as a set-off, the tendency of which has been invariably to prevent any excess of exultation on my part. can this be accident? is it not rather the wise ordering of events by infinite wisdom and goodness to draw me away from repose in earthly honor to the more substantial and enduring honor that comes only from god? ... i pray for wisdom to direct in such trials, and in any answer i may find it necessary to give to henry or others, i desire most of all to be mindful of that charity which 'suffereth long, which vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, hopeth all things, thinketh no evil.'" this check to self-laudation came at an appropriate moment, as he said, for just at this time honors were being plentifully showered upon him. it was then that he was first notified of the bestowal of the spanish decoration, and of the probability of portugal's following suit. perhaps even more gratifying still was his election as a member of the royal academy of sciences of sweden, for this was a recognition of his merits as a scientist, and not as a mere promoter, as he had been contemptuously called. on the island of porto rico too he was being honored and fêted. on march , he writes:-- "i have just completed with success the construction and organization of the short telegraph line, the first on this island, initiating the great enterprise of the southern telegraph route to europe from our shores, so far as to interest the porto ricans in the value of the invention. "yesterday was a day of great excitement here for this small place. the principal inhabitants of this place and guayama determined to celebrate the completion of this little line, in which they take a great pride as being the first in the island, and so they complimented me with a public breakfast which was presided over by the lieutenant-colonel commandant of guayama. "the commandant and alcalde, the collector and captain of the port, with all the officials of the place, and the clergy of guayama and arroyo, and gentlemen planters and merchants of the two towns, numbering in all about forty, were present. we sat down at one o'clock to a very handsome breakfast, and the greatest enthusiasm and kind and generous feeling were manifested. my portrait was behind me upon the wall draped with the spanish and american flags. i gave them a short address of thanks, and took the opportunity to interest them in the great telegraph line which will give them communication with the whole world. i presume accounts will be published in the united states from the porto rico papers. thus step by step (shall i not rather say _stride by stride_?) the telegraph is compassing the world. "my accounts from madrid assure me that the government will soon have all the papers prepared for granting the concession to mr. perry, our former secretary of legation at madrid, in connection with sir james carmichael, mr. john w. brett, the new york, newfoundland and london telegraph company, and others. the recent consolidation plan in the united states has removed the only hesitation i had in sustaining this new enterprise, for i feared that i might unwittingly injure, by a counter plan, those it was my duty to support. being now in harmony with the american company and the newfoundland company, i presume all my other companies will derive benefit rather than injury from the success of this new and grand enterprise. at any rate i feel impelled to support all plans that manifestly tend to the complete circumvention of the globe, and the bringing into telegraphic connection all the nations of the earth, and this when i am not fully assured that present personal interests may not temporarily suffer. i am glad to know that harmonious arrangements are made between the various companies in the united states, although i have been so ill-used. i will have no litigation if i can avoid it. even henry may have the field in quiet, unless he has presented a case too flagrantly unjust to leave unanswered." the short line of telegraph was from his son-in-law's house to his place of business on the bay, about two miles, and the building of it gave rise to the legend on the island that morse conducted some of his first electrical experiments in porto rico, which, of course, is not true. there is much correspondence concerning the proposed cable from spain or portugal by various routes to the west indies and thence to the united states, but nothing came of it. the rest of their stay in porto rico was greatly enjoyed by all in spite of certain drawbacks incidental to the tropics, to one of which he alludes in a letter to his sister-in-law, mrs. goodrich, who was then in europe. speaking of his wife he says: "she is dreadfully troubled with a plague which, if you have been in italy, i am sure you are no stranger to. '_pulci, pulci._' if you have not had a colony of them settled upon you, and quartered, and giving you no quarter, you have been an exception to travellers in italy. well, i will pit any two _pulci_ of porto rico against any ten you can bring from italy, and i should be sure to see them bite the dust before the bites of our porto rico breed." his letters are filled with apothegms and reflections on life in general and his own in particular, and they alone would almost fill a book. in a letter to mr. kendall, of march , we find the following:-- "i had hoped to return from honors abroad to enjoy a little rest from litigation at home, but, if i must take up arms, i hope to be able to use them efficiently in self-defense, and in a chivalrous manner as becometh a '_knight_.' i have no reason to complain of my position abroad, but i suppose, as i am not yet under the ground, honors to a living inventor must have their offset in the attacks of envy and avarice. "'wrath is cruel, but who can stand before envy?' says the wise man. the contest with the envious is indeed an annoyance, but, if one's spirit is under the right guidance and revenge does not actuate the strife, victory is very certain. my position is now such before the world that i shall use it rather to correct my own temper than to make it a means of arrogant exultation." he and his family left the island in the middle of april, , and in due time reached their poughkeepsie home. the "daily press" of that city gave the following account of the homecoming:-- "for some time previous to the hour at which the train was to arrive hundreds of people were seen flocking from all directions to the railroad depot, both in carriages and on foot, and when the train did arrive, and the familiar and loved form of professor morse was recognized on the platform of the car, the air was rent with the cheers of the assembled multitude. as soon as the cheers subsided professor morse was approached by the committee of reception and welcomed to the country of his birth and to the home of his adoption. "a great procession was then formed composed of the carriages of citizens. the sidewalks were crowded with people on foot, the children of the public schools, which had been dismissed for the occasion, being quite conspicuous among them. amid the ringing of bells, the waving of flags, and the gratulations of the people, the procession proceeded through a few of the principal streets, and then drove to the beautiful residence of professor morse, the band playing, as they entered the grounds, 'sweet home' and then 'auld lang syne.' "the gateways at the entrance had been arched with evergreens and wreathed with flowers. as the carriage containing their loved proprietor drove along the gravelled roads we noticed that several of the domestics, unable to restrain their welcomes, ran to his carriage and gave and received salutations. after a free interchange of salutations and a general 'shake-hands,' the people withdrew and left their honored guest to the retirement of his own beautiful home. "so the world reverences its great men, and so it ought. in professor morse we find those simple elements of greatness which elevate him infinitely above the hero of any of the world's sanguinary conflicts, or any of the most successful aspirants after political power. he has benefited not only america and the world, but has dignified and benefited the whole race." his friends and neighbors desired to honor him still further by a public reception, but this he felt obliged to decline, and in his letter of regret he expresses the following sentiments: "if, during my late absence abroad, i have received unprecedented honors from european nations, convened in special congress for the purpose, and have also received marks of honor from individual sovereigns and from scientific bodies, all which have gratified me quite as much for the honor reflected by them upon my country as upon myself, there are none of these testimonials, be assured, which have so strongly touched my heart as this your beautiful tribute of kindly feeling from esteemed neighbors and fellow-citizens." among the letters which had accumulated during his absence, morse found one, written some time previously, from a mr. reibart, who had published his name as a candidate for the presidency of the united states. in courteously declining this honor morse drily adds: "there are hundreds, nay thousands, more able (not to say millions more willing) to take any office they can obtain, and perform its functions more faithfully and with more benefit to the country. while this is the case i do not feel that the country will suffer should one like myself, wearied with the struggles and litigations of half a century, desire to be excused from encountering the annoyances and misapprehensions inseparable from political life." thanks to the successful efforts of his good friend, mr. kendall, he was now financially independent, so much so that he felt justified in purchasing, in the fall of the year , the property at west twenty-second street, new york, where the winters of the remaining years of his life were passed, except when he was abroad. this house has now been replaced by a commercial structure, but a bronze tablet marks the spot where once stood the old-fashioned brown stone mansion. while his mind was comparatively at rest regarding money matters, he was not yet free from vexatious litigation, and his opinion of lawyers is tersely expressed in a letter to mr. kendall of december , : "i have not lost my respect for law but i have for its administrators; not so much for any premeditated dishonesty as for their stupidity and want of just insight into a case." it was not long before he had a practical proof of the truth of this aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could descend. on june , , morse writes to his legal adviser, mr. george ticknor curtis, of boston: "you may remember that smith, just before i sailed for europe in , intimated that he should demand of me a portion of the honorary gratuity voted to me by the congress of ten powers at paris. i procured your opinion, as you know, and i had hoped that he would not insist on so preposterous a claim. i am, however, disappointed; he has recently renewed it. i have had some correspondence with him on the subject utterly denying any claim on his part. he proposes a reference, but i have not yet encouraged him to think i would assent. i wish your advice before i answer him." it is difficult to conceive of a meaner case of extortion than this. as morse says in a letter to mr. kendall, of august , , after he had consented to a reference of the matter to three persons: "i have no apprehensions of the result except that i may be entrapped by some legal technicalities. look at the case in an equitable point of view and, it appears to me, no intelligent, just men could give a judgment against me or in his favor. smith's purchase into the telegraph, the consideration he gave, was his efforts to obtain a property in the invention abroad by letters patent or otherwise. in _such_ property he was to share. no such property was created there. what can he then claim? the monies that he hazarded (taking his own estimate) were to the amount of some seven thousand dollars; and this was an advance, virtually a loan, to be paid back to him if he had created the property abroad. but his efforts being fruitless for that purpose, and of no value whatever to me, yet procured him one fourth patent interest in the united states, for which we know he has obtained at least $ , . is he not paid amply without claiming a portion of honorary gifts to me? well, we shall see how legal men look at the matter." [illustration: house and library at west 'd st., new york] one legal man of great brilliance gave his opinion without hesitation, as we learn from a letter of morse's to mr. curtis, of july : "i had, a day or two since, my cousin judge breese, late senator of the united states from illinois, on a visit to me. i made him acquainted with the points, after which he scouted the idea that any court of legal character could for a moment sustain smith's claim. he thought my argument unanswerable, and playfully said: 'i will insure you against any claim from smith for a bottle of champagne.'" it is a pity that morse did not close with the offer of the learned judge, for, in spite of his opinion, in spite of the opinion of most men of intelligence, in defiance of the perfectly obvious and proven fact that smith had utterly failed in fulfilling his part of the contract, and that the award had been made to morse "as a reward altogether personal" (_toute personelle_), the referees decided in smith's favor. and on what did they base this remarkable decision? on the ground that in the contract of with smith the word "otherwise" occurs. property in europe was to be obtained by "letters patent" or "otherwise." of course no actual property had been obtained, and smith had had no hand in securing the honorary gratuity, and it is difficult to follow the reasoning of these sapient referees. they were, on smith's part, judge upham of new hampshire; on morse's, mr. hilliard, of boston; and judge sprague, of the circuit court, boston, chairman. however, the decision was made, and morse, with characteristic large-heartedness, submitted gracefully. on october , he writes to mr. curtis: "i ought, perhaps, with my experience to learn for the first time that _law_ and _justice_ are not synonyms, but, with all deference to the opinion of the excellent referees, for each of whom i have the highest personal respect, i still think that they have not given a decision in strict conformity with law.... i submit, however, to law with kindly feelings to all, and now bend my attention to repair my losses as best i may." as remarked before, earlier in this volume, morse, in his correspondence with smith, always wrote in that courteous manner which becomes a gentleman, and he expresses his dissent from the verdict in this manner in a letter of november , in answer to one of smith's, quibbling over the allowance to morse by the referees of certain expenses: "throwing aside as of no avail any discussion in regard to the equity of the decision of the referees, especially in the view of a conscientious and high-minded man, i now deal with the decision as it has been made, since, according to the technicalities of the law, it has been pronounced by honorable and honest men in accordance with their construction of the language of the deed in your favor. but 'he that's convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,' and in regard to the intrinsic injustice of being compelled, by the strict construction of a general word, to pay over to you any portion of that which was expressly given to me as a personal and honorary _gratuity_ by the european governments, my opinion is always as it has been, an opinion sustained by the sympathy of every intelligent and honorable man who has studied the merits of the case." he was hard hit for a time by this unjust decision, and his correspondence shows that he regretted it most because it prevented him from bestowing as much in good works as he desired. he was obliged to refuse many requests which strongly appealed to him. his daily mail contained numerous requests for assistance in sums "from twenty thousand dollars to fifty cents," and it was always with great reluctance that he refused anybody anything. however, as is usual in this life, the gay was mingled with the grave, and we find that he was one of the committee of prominent men to arrange for the entertainment of the prince of wales, afterward edward vii, on his visit to this country. i have already referred to one incident of this visit when morse, in an address to the prince at the university of the city of new york, referred to the kindness shown him in london by the earl of lincoln, who was now the duke of newcastle and was in the suite of the prince. morse had hoped that he might have the privilege of entertaining h.r.h. at his country place on the hudson, but the duke of newcastle, in a letter of october , , regrets that this cannot be managed:-- i assure you i have not forgotten the circumstances which gave me the pleasure of your acquaintance in , and i am very desirous of seeing you again during my short visit to this continent. i fear however that a visit by the prince of wales to your home, however i might wish it, is quite impracticable, although on our journey up the hudson we shall pass so near you. every hour of our time is fully engaged. is there any chance of seeing you in new york, or, if not, is there any better hope in boston? if you should be in either during our stay, i hope you will be kind enough to call upon me. pray let me have a line on thursday at new york. i have lately been much interested in some electro-telegraphic inventions of yours which are new to me. i am yours very truly, newcastle. referring to another function in honor of the prince, morse says, in a letter to mr. kendall: "i did not see you after the so-styled ball in new york, which was not a _ball_ but a _levee_ and a great jam. i hope you and yours suffered no inconvenience from it." the war clouds in his beloved country were now lowering most ominously, and, true to his convictions, he exclaims in a letter to a friend of january , :-- "our politicians are playing with edged tools. it is easy to raise a storm by those who cannot control it. if i trusted at all in them i should despair of the country, but an almighty arm makes the wrath of man to praise him, and he will restrain the rest. there is something so unnatural and abhorrent in this outcry of _arms_ in one great family that i cannot believe it will come to a decision by the sword. such counsels of force are in the court of passion, not of reason. imagine such a conflict, imagine a victory, no matter by which side. can the victors rejoice in the blood of brethren shed in a family brawl? whose heart will thrill with pride at such success? no, no. i should as soon think of rejoicing that one of my sons had killed the other in a brawl. "but i have not time to add. i hope for the best, and even can see beyond the clouds of the hour a brighter day. god bless the whole family, north, south, east and west. i will never divide them in my heart however they may be politically or geographically divided." his hopes of a peaceful solution of the questions at issue between the north and the south were, of course, destined to be cruelly dashed, and he suffered much during the next few years, both in his feelings and in his purse, on account of the war. i have already shown that he, with many other pious men, believed that slavery was a divine institution and that, therefore, the abolitionists were entirely in the wrong; but that, at the same time, he was unalterably opposed to secession. holding these views, he was misjudged in both sections of the country. those at the north accused him of being a secessionist because he was not an abolitionist, and many at the south held that he must be an abolitionist because he lived at the north and did not believe in the doctrine of secession. many pages of his letter-books are filled with vehement arguments upholding his point of view, and he, together with many other eminent men at the north, strove without success to avert the war. his former pastor at poughkeepsie, the reverend h.g. ludlow, in long letters, with many bible quotations, called upon him to repent him of his sins and join the cause of righteousness. he, in still longer letters, indignantly repelled the accusation of error, and quoted chapter and verse in support of his views. he was made the president of the american society for promoting national unity, and in one of his letters to mr. ludlow he uses forceful language:-- "the tone of your letter calls for extraordinary drafts on christian charity. your criticism upon and denunciation of a society planned in the interests of peace and good will to all, inaugurated by such men as bishops mcilvaine and hopkins, drs. krebs and hutton, and winslow, and bliss, and van dyke, and hawks, and seabury, and lord and adams of boston, and wilson the missionary, and styles and boorman, and professor owen, and president woods, and dr. parker, and my brothers, and many others as warm-hearted, praying, conscientious christians as ever assembled to devise means for promoting peace--denunciations of these and such as these cannot but be painful in the highest degree.... i lay no stress upon these names other than to show that conscience in this matter has moved some christians quite as strongly to view _abolitionism_ as a sin of the deepest dye, as it has other christian minds to view slavery as a sin, and so to condemn slaveholders to excommunication, and simply for being slaveholders. "who is to decide in a conflict of consciences? if the bible be the umpire, as i hold it to be, then it is the abolitionist that is denounced as worthy of excommunication; it is the abolitionist from whom we are commanded to withdraw ourselves, while not a syllable of reproof do i find in the sacred volume administered to those who maintain, in the spirit of the gospel, the relation of _masters and slaves_. if you have been more successful, please point out chapter and verse.... i have no justification to offer for southern _secession_; i have always considered it a remedy for nothing. it is, indeed, an expression of a sense of wrong, but, in turn, is itself a wrong, and two wrongs do not make a right." i have quoted thus at some length from one of his many polemics to show the absolute and fearless sincerity of the man, mistaken though he may have been in his major premise. i shall quote from other letters on this subject as they appear in chronological order, but as no person of any mental caliber thinks and acts continuously along one line of endeavor, so will it be necessary in a truthful biography to change from one subject of activity to another, and then back again, in order to portray in their proper sequence the thoughts and actions of a man which go to make up his personality. for instance, while the outspoken views which morse held on the subjects of slavery and secession made him many enemies, he was still held in high esteem, for it was in the year that the members of the national academy of design urged him so strongly to become their president again that he yielded, but on condition that it should be for one year only. and the following letter to matthew vassar, of poughkeepsie, dated february , , shows that he was actively interested in the foundation of the first college for women in this country: "your favor of the th ulto. is received, and so far as i can further your magnificent and most generous enterprise, i will do so. i will endeavor to attend the meeting at the gregory house on the th of the present month. may you long live to see your noble design in successful operation." in spite of his deep anxiety for the welfare of his country, and in spite of the other cares which weighed him down, he could not resist the temptation to indulge in humor when the occasion offered. this humor is tinged with sarcasm in a letter of july , , to mr. a.b. griswold, his wife's brother, a prominent citizen of new orleans. after assuring him of his undiminished affection, he adds:-- "and now see what a risk i have run by saying thus much, for, according to modern application of the definition of _treason_, it would not be difficult to prove me a traitor, and therefore amenable to the halter. "for instance--treason is giving aid and comfort to the enemy; everybody south of a certain geographical line is an enemy; you live south of that line, ergo you are an enemy; i send you my love, you being an enemy; this gives you _comfort_; ergo, i have given comfort to the enemy; ergo, i am a traitor; ergo, i must be hanged." as the war progressed he continued to express himself in forcible language against what he called the "twin heresies"--abolitionism and secession. he had done his best to avert the war. he describes his efforts in a letter of april , , to mr. george l. douglas, of louisville, kentucky, who at that time was prominently connected with the southern lines of the telegraph, and who had loyally done all in his power to safeguard morse's interests in those lines:-- "you are correct in saying, in your answer as garnishee, that i have been an active and decided friend of peace. in the early stages of the troubles, when the southern commissioners were in washington, i devoted my time and influence and property, subscribing and paying in the outset five hundred dollars, to set on foot measures for preserving peace honorable to all parties. the attack on fort sumter struck down all these efforts (so far as my associates were concerned), but i was not personally discouraged, and i again addressed myself to the work of the peacemaker, determining to visit _personally_ both sections of the country, the government at washington, and the government of the confederates at richmond, to ascertain if there were, by possibility, any means of averting war. and when, from physical inability and age, i was unable to undertake the duty personally, i defrayed from my own pocket the expenses of a friend in his performance of the same duties for me, who actually visited both washington and richmond and conferred with the presidents and chiefs of each section on the subject. true his efforts were unsuccessful, and so nothing remained for me but to retire to the quiet of my own study and watch the vicissitudes of the awful storm which i was powerless to avert, and descry the first signs of any clearing up, ready to take advantage of the earliest glimmerings of light through the clouds." he had no doubts as to the ultimate issue of the conflict, for, in a letter to his wife's sister, mrs. goodrich, of may , , he reduces it to mathematics:-- "sober men could calculate, and did calculate, the _military_ issue, for it was a problem of mathematics and not at all of individual or comparative courage. a force of equal quality is to be divided and the two parts to be set in opposition to each other. if equally divided, they will be at rest; if one part equals and the other , it does not require much knowledge of mathematics to decide which part will overcome the force of the other. "now this is the case here just now. two thirds of the physical and material force of the country are at the north, and on this account _military_ success, other things being equal, must be on the side of the north. courage, justness of the cause, right, have nothing to do with it. war in our days is a game of chess. two players being equal, if one begins the game with dispensing with a third of his best pieces, the other wins as a matter of course." he was firmly of the opinion that england and other european nations had fomented, if they had not originated, the bad feeling between the north and the south, and at times he gave way to the most gloomy forebodings, as in a letter of july , , to mr. kendall, who shared his views on the main questions at issue:-- "i am much depressed. there is no light in the political skies. rabid abolitionism, with its intense, infernal hate, intensified by the same hate from secession quarters, is fast gaining the ascendancy. our country is dead. god only can resuscitate it from its tomb. i see no hope of union. we are two countries, and, what is most deplorable, two hostile countries. oh! how the nations, with england at their head, crow over us. it is the hour of her triumph; she has conquered by her arts that which she failed to do by her arms. if there was a corner of the world where i could hide myself, and i could consult the welfare of my family, i would sacrifice all my interests here and go at once. may god save us with his salvation. i have no heart to write or to do anything. without a country! without a country!" he went even further, in one respect, in a letter to mr. walker, of utica, of october , but his ordinarily keen prophetic vision was at fault: "have you made up your mind to be under a future monarch, english or french, or some scion of a european stock of kings? i shall not live to see it, i hope, but you may and your children will. i leave you this prophecy in black and white." in spite of his occasional fits of pessimism he still strove with all his might, by letters and published pamphlets, to rescue his beloved country from what he believed were the machinations of foreign enemies. at the same time he did not neglect his more immediate concerns, and his letter-books are filled with loving admonitions to his children, instructions to his farmer, answers to inventors seeking his advice, or to those asking for money for various causes, etc. he and his two brothers had united in causing a monument to be erected to the memory of their father and mother in the cemetery at new haven, and he insisted on bearing the lion's share of the expense, as we learn from a letter written to his nephew, sidney e. morse, jr., on october , :-- "above you have my check on broadway bank, new york, for five hundred dollars towards mr. ritter's bill. "tell your dear father and uncle sidney that this is the portion of the bill for the monument which i choose to assume. tell them i have still a good memory of past years, when i was poor and received from them the kind attentions of affectionate brothers. i am now, through the loving kindness and bounty of our heavenly father, in such circumstances that i can afford this small testimonial to their former fraternal kindness, and i know no better occasion to manifest the long pent-up feelings of my heart towards them than by lightening, under the embarrassments of the times, the pecuniary burden of our united testimonial to the best of fathers and mothers." this monument, a tall column surmounted by a terrestrial globe, symbolical of the fact that the elder morse was the first american geographer, is still to be seen in the new haven cemetery. another instance of the inventor's desire to show his gratitude towards those who had befriended him in his days of poverty and struggle is shown in a letter of november , , to the widow of alfred vail:-- "you are aware that a sum of money was voted me by a special congress, convened at paris for the purpose, as a personal, honorary gratuity as the inventor of the telegraph.... notwithstanding, however, that the congress had put the sum voted me on the ground of a personal, honorary gratuity, i made up my mind in the very outset that i would divide to your good husband just that proportion of what i might receive (after due allowance and deduction of my heavy expenses in carrying through the transaction) as would have been his if the money so voted by the congress had been the purchase money of patent rights. this design i early intimated to mr. vail, and i am happy in having already fulfilled in part my promise to him, when i had received the gratuity only in part. it was only the last spring that the whole sum, promised in four annual instalments (after the various deductions in europe) has been remitted to me.... i wrote to mr. cobb [one of alfred vail's executors] some months ago, while he was in washington, requesting an early interview to pay over the balance for you, but have never received an answer.... could you not come to town this week, either with or without mr. cobb, as is most agreeable to you, prepared to settle this matter in full? if so, please drop me a line stating the day and hour you will come, and i will make it a point to be at home at the time." in this connection i shall quote from a letter to mr. george vail, written much earlier in the year, on may :-- "it will give me much pleasure to aid you in your project of disposing of the _'original wire'_ of the telegraph, and if my certificate to its genuineness will be of service, you shall cheerfully have it. i am not at this moment aware that there is any quantity of this wire anywhere else, except it may be in the helices of the big magnets which i have at poughkeepsie. these shall not interfere with your design. "i make only one modification of your proposal, and that is, if any profits are realized, please substitute for my name the name of your brother alfred's amiable widow." although the malign animosity of f.o.j. smith followed him to his grave, and even afterwards, he was, in this year of , relieved from one source of annoyance from him, as we learn from a letter of may to mr. kendall: "i have had a settlement with smith in full on the award of the referees in regard to the 'honorary gratuity,' and with less difficulty than i expected." morse had now passed the scriptural age allotted to man; he was seventy-one years old, and, in a letter of august , he remarks rather sorrowfully: "i feel that i am no longer young, that my career, whether for good or evil, is near its end, but i wish to give the energy and influence that remain to me to my country, to save it, if possible, to those who come after me." all through the year he labored to this end, with alternations of hope and despair. on february , , he writes to his cousin, judge sidney breese: "a movement is commenced in the formation of a society here which promises good. it is for the purpose of diffusing useful political knowledge. it is backed up by millionaires, so far as funds go, who have assured us that funds shall not be wanting for this object. they have made me its president." through the agency of this society he worked to bring about "peace with honor," but, as one of their cardinal principles was the abandonment of abolitionism, he worked in vain. he bitterly denounced the emancipation proclamation, and president lincoln came in for many hard words from his pen, being considered by him weak and vacillating. mistaken though i think his attitude was in this, his opinions were shared by many prominent men of the day, and we must admit that for those who believed in a literal interpretation of the bible there was much excuse. for instance, in a letter of september , , to martin hauser, esq., of newbern, indiana, he goes rather deeply into the subject:-- "your letter of the d of last month i have just received, and i was gratified to see the evidences of an upright, honest dependence upon the only standard of right to which man can appeal pervading your whole letter. there is no other standard than the bible, but our translation, though so excellent, is defective sometimes in giving the true meaning of the original languages in which the two testaments are written; the old testament in hebrew, the new testament in greek. therefore it is that in words in the english translation about which there is a variety of opinion, it is necessary to examine the original hebrew or greek to know what was the meaning attached to these words by the writers of the original bible.... i make these observations to introduce a remark of yours that the bible does not contain anything like slavery in it because the words 'slave' and 'slavery' are not used in it (except the former twice) but that the word 'servant' is used. "now the words translated 'servant' in hundreds of instances are, in the original, 'slave,' and the very passage you quote, noah's words--'cursed be canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren'--in the original hebrew means exactly this--'cursed be canaan, a _slave_ of _slaves_ shall he be.' the hebrew, word is _'ebed'_ which means a bond slave, and the words _'ebed ebadim'_ translated 'slave of slaves,' means strictly _the most abject of slaves_. "in the new testament too the word translated 'servant' from the greek is _'doulas,'_ which is the same as _'ebed'_ in the hebrew, and always means a bond slave. our word 'servant' formerly meant the same, but time and custom have changed its meaning with us, but the bible word _'doulos'_ remains the same, 'a slave.'" it seems strange that a man of such a gentle, kindly disposition should have upheld the outworn institution of slavery, but he honestly believed, not only that it was ordained of god, but that it was calculated to benefit the enslaved race. to professor christy, of cincinnati, he gives, on september , his reasons for this belief:-- "you have exposed in a masterly manner the fallacies of abolitionism. there is a complete coincidence of views between us. my 'argument,' which is nearly ready for the press, supports the same view of the necessity of slavery to the christianization and civilization of a barbarous race. my argument for the benevolence of the relation of master and slave, drawn from the four relations ordained of god for the organization of the social system (the fourth being the servile relation, or the relation of master and slave) leads conclusively to the recognition of some great benevolent design in its establishment. "but you have demonstrated in an unanswerable manner by your statistics this benevolent design, bringing out clearly, from the workings of his providence, the absolute necessity of this relation in accomplishing his gracious designs towards even the lowest type of humanity." chapter xxxviii february , --november , sanitary commission.--letter to dr. bellows.--letter on "loyalty."--his brother richard upholds lincoln.--letters of brotherly reproof.-- introduces mcclellan at preëlection parade.--lincoln reëlected.--anxiety as to future of country.--unsuccessful effort to take up art again.-- letter to his sons.--gratification at rapid progress of telegraph.-- letter to george wood on two great mysteries of life.--presents portrait of allston to the national academy of design.--endows lectureship in union theological seminary.--refuses to attend fifty-fifth reunion of his class.--statue to him proposed.--ezra cornell's benefaction.--american asiatic society.--amalgamation of telegraph companies.--protest against stock manipulations.--approves of president andrew johnson.--sails with family for europe.--paris exposition of .--descriptions of festivities.--cyrus w. field.--incident in early life of napoleon iii-- made honorary commissioner to exposition.--attempt on life of czar.--ball at hôtel de ville.--isle of wight.--england and scotland.--the "sounder."--returns to paris. all the differences of those terrible years of fratricidal strife, all the heart-burnings, the bitter animosities, the family divisions, have been smoothed over by the soothing hand of time. i have neither the wish nor the ability to enter into a discussion of the rights and the wrongs of the causes underlying that now historic conflict, nor is it germane to such a work as this. while morse took a prominent part in the political movements of the time, while he was fearless and outspoken in his views, his name is not now associated historically with those epoch-making events. it has seemed necessary, however, to make some mention of his convictions in order to make the portrait a true one. he continued to oppose the measures of the administration; he did all in his power to hasten the coming of peace; he worked and voted for the election of mcclellan to the presidency, and when he and the other eminent men who believed as he did were outvoted, he bowed to the will of the majority with many misgivings as to the future. although he was opposed to the war his heart bled for the wounded on both sides, and he took a prominent part in the national sanitary commission. he expresses himself warmly in a letter of february , , to its president, rev. dr. bellows:-- "there are some who are sufferers, great sufferers, whom we can reach and relieve without endangering political or military plans, and in the spirit of him who ignored the petty political distinctions of jew and samaritan, and regarded both as entitled to his sympathy and relief, i cannot but think it is within the scope and interest of the great sanitary commission to extend a portion of their christian regard to the unfortunate sufferers from this dreadful war, the prisoners in our fortresses, and to those who dwell upon the borders of the contending sections." in a letter of march , to william l. ransom, esq., of litchfield, connecticut, he, perhaps unconsciously, enunciates one of the fundamental beliefs of that great president whom he so bitterly opposed:-- "i hardly know how to comply with your request to have a 'short, pithy, democratic sentiment.' in glancing at the thousand mystifications which have befogged so many in our presumed intelligent community, i note one in relation to the new-fangled application of a common foreign word imported from the monarchies of europe. i mean the word '_loyalty_,' upon which the changes are daily and hourly sung _ad nauseam_. "i have no objection, however, to the word if it be rightly applied. it signifies 'fidelity to a prince or sovereign.' now if _loyalty_ is required of us, it should be to the _sovereign_. where is this sovereign? he is not the president, nor his cabinet, nor congress, nor the judiciary, nor any nor all of the administration together. our sovereign is on a throne above all these. he is the _people_, or _peoples_ of the states. he has issued his decree, not to private individuals only, but to president and to all his subordinate servants, and this sovereign decree his servant the is the constitution. he who adheres faithfully to this written will of the sovereign is _loyal_. he who violates the embodiment of the will of the sovereign, is _disloyal_, whether he be a constitution, this president, a secretary, a member of congress or of the judiciary, or a simple citizen." as a firm believer in the democratic doctrine of states' rights morse, with many others, held that lincoln had overridden the constitution in his emancipation proclamation. it was a source of grief to him just at this time that his brother richard had changed his political faith, and had announced his intention of voting for the reelection of president lincoln. in a long letter of september , , gently chiding him for thus going over to the abolitionists, the elder brother again states his reasons for remaining firm in his faith:-- "i supposed, dear brother, that on that subject you were on the same platform with sidney and myself. have there been any new lights, any new aspects of it, which have rendered it less odious, less the 'child of satan' than when you and sidney edited the new york observer before lincoln was president? i have seen no reason to change my views respecting abolition. you well know i have ever considered it the logical progeny of unitarianism and infidelity. it is characterized by subtlety, hypocrisy and pharisaism, and one of the most melancholy marks of its speciousness is its influence in benumbing the gracious sensibilities of many christian hearts, and blinding their eyes to their sad defection from the truths of the bible. "i know, indeed, the influences by which you are surrounded, but they are neither stronger nor more artful than those which our brave father manfully withstood in combating the monster in the cradle. i hope there is enough of father's firmness and courage in battling with error, however specious, to keep you, through god's grace, from falling into the embrace of the body-and-soul-destroying heresy of abolitionism." in another long letter to his brother richard, of november , he firmly but gently upholds his view that the constitution has been violated by lincoln's action, and that the manner of amending the constitution was provided for in that instrument itself, and that: "if that change is made in accordance with its provisions, no one will complain"; and then he adds:-- "but it is too late to give you the reasons of the political faith that i hold. when the excitement of the election is over, let it result as it may, i may be able to show you that my opinions are formed from deep study and observation. now i can only announce them comparatively unsustained by the reasons for forming them. "i am interrupted by a call from the committee requesting me to conduct general mcclellan to the balcony of the fifth avenue hotel this evening, to review the mcclellan legion and the procession. after my return i will continue my letter. "_ o'clock, midnight._ i have just returned, and never have i witnessed in any gathering of the people, either in europe or in this country, such a magnificent and enthusiastic display. i conducted the general to the front of the balcony and presented him to the assemblage (a dense mass of heads as far as the eye could reach in every direction), and such a shout, which continued for many minutes, i never heard before, except it may have been at the reception in london of blücher and platoff after the battle of waterloo. i leave the papers to give you the details. the procession was passing from nine o'clock to a quarter to twelve midnight, and such was the denseness of the crowd within the hotel, every entry and passageway jammed with people, that we were near being crushed. three policemen before me could scarcely open a way for the general, who held my arm, to pass only a few yards to our room. "after taking my leave i succeeded with difficulty in pressing my way through the crowd within and without the hotel, and have just got into my quiet library and must now retire, for i am too fatigued to do anything but sleep. good-night." a short time after this the election was held, and this enthusiastic advocate of what he considered the right learned the bitter lesson that crowds, and shouting, and surface enthusiasm do not carry an election. the voice of that sovereign to whom he had sworn loyalty spoke in no uncertain tones, and lincoln was overwhelmingly chosen by the votes of the people. morse was outvoted but not convinced, and i shall make but one quotation from a letter of november , to his brother richard, who had also remained firm in spite of his brother's pleading: "my consolation is in looking up, and i pray you may be so enlightened that you may be delivered from the delusions which have ensnared you, and from the judgments which i cannot but feel are in store for this section of the country. when i can believe that my bible reads 'cursed' instead of 'blessed' are the 'peacemakers,' i also shall cease to be a peace man. but while they remain, as they do, in the category of those that are blessed, i cannot be frightened at the names of 'copperhead' and 'traitor' so lavishly bestowed, with threats of hanging etc., by those whom you have assisted into power." in a letter of mr. george wood's, of june , , i find the following sentences: "i have to acknowledge your very carefully written letter on the divine origin of slavery.... i hope you have kept a copy of this letter, for the time will come when you will have a biography written, and the defense you have made of your position, taken in your pamphlet, is unquestionably far better than he (your biographer) will make for you." the letter to which mr. wood refers was begun on march , , but finished some time afterwards. it is very long, too long to be included here, but in justice to myself, that future biographer, i wish to state that i have already given the main arguments brought forward in that letter, in quotations from previous letters, and that i have attempted no defense further than to emphasize the fact that, right or wrong, morse was intensely sincere, and that he had the courage of his opinions. returning to an earlier date, and turning from matters political to the gentler arts of peace, we find that the one-time artist had always hoped that some day he could resume his brush, which the labors incident to the invention of the telegraph had compelled him to drop. but it seems that his hand, through long disuse, had lost its cunning. he bewails the fact in a letter of january , , to n. jocelyn, esq.:-- "i have many yearnings towards painting and sculpture, but that rigid faculty called reason, so opposed often to imagination, reads me a lecture to which i am compelled to bow. to explain: i made the attempt to draw a short time ago; everything in the drawing seemed properly proportioned, but, upon putting it in another light, i perceived that every perpendicular line was awry. in other words i found that i could place no confidence in my eyes. "no, i have made the sacrifice of my profession to establish an invention which is doing mankind a great service. i pursued it long enough to found an institution which, i trust, is to flourish long after i am gone, and be the means of educating a noble class of men in art, to be an honor and praise to our beloved country when peace shall once more bless us throughout all our borders in one grand brotherhood of states." the many letters to his children are models of patient exhortation and cheerful optimism, when sometimes the temptation to indulge in pessimism was strong. i shall give, as an example, one written on may , , to two of his sons who had returned to school at newport:-- "now we hope to have good reports of your progress in your studies. in spring, you know, the farmers sow their seed which is to give them their harvest at the close of the summer. if they were not careful to put the seed in the ground, thinking it would do just as well about august or september, or if they put in very little seed, you can see that they cannot expect to reap a good or abundant crop. "now it is just so in regard to your life. you are in the springtime of life. it is seed time. you must sow now or you will reap nothing by-and-by, or, if anything, only weeds. your teachers are giving you the seed in your various studies. you cannot at present understand the use of them, but you must take them on trust; you must believe that your parents and teachers have had experience, and they know what will be for your good hereafter, what studies will be most useful to you in after life. therefore buckle down to your studies diligently and very soon you will get to love your studies, and then it will be a pleasure and not a task to learn your lessons. "we miss your _noise_, but, although agreeable quiet has come in place of it, we should be willing to have the noise if we could have our dear boys near us. you are, indeed, troublesome pleasures, but, after all, pleasant troubles. when you are settled in life and have a family around you, you will better understand what i mean." in spite of the disorganization of business caused by the war, the value of telegraphic property was rapidly increasing, and new lines were being constantly built or proposed. morse refers to this in a letter of june , , to his old friend george wood:-- "to you, as well as to myself, the rapid progress of the telegraph throughout the world must seem wonderful, and with me you will, doubtless, often recur to our friend annie's inspired message--'what hath god wrought.' it is, indeed, his marvellous work, and to him be the glory. "early in the history of the invention, in forecasting its future, i was accustomed to predict with confidence, 'it is destined to go round the world,' but i confess i did not expect to live to see the prediction fulfilled. it is quite as wonderful to me also that, with the thousand attempts to improve my system, with the mechanical skill of the world concentrated upon improving the mechanism, the result has been beautiful complications and great ingenuity, but no improvement. i have the gratification of knowing that my system, everywhere known as the 'morse system,' is universally adopted throughout the world, because of its simplicity and its adaptedness to universality." this remains true to the present day, and is one of the remarkable features of this great invention. the germ of the "morse system," as jotted down in the sketch-book, is the basic principle of the universal telegraph of to-day. in another letter to mr. wood, of september , , referring to the sad death of the son of a mutual friend, he touches on two of the great enigmas of life which have puzzled many other minds:-- "it is one of those mysteries of providence, one of those deep things of god to be unfolded in eternity, with the perfect vindication of god's wisdom and justice, that children of pious parents, children of daily anxiety and prayer, dedicated to god from their birth and trained to all human appearance 'in the way they should go,' should yet seem to falsify the promise that 'they should not depart from it.' it is a subject too deep to fathom. "... it is my daily, i may say hourly, thought, certainly my constant wakeful thought at night, how to resolve the question: 'why has god seen fit so abundantly to shower his earthly blessings upon me in my latter days, to bless me with every desirable comfort, while so many so much more deserving (in human eyes at least) are deprived of all comfort and have heaped upon them sufferings and troubles in every shape?'" the memory of his student days in london was always dear to him, and on january , , he writes to william cullen bryant:-- "i have this moment received a printed circular respecting the proposed purchase of the portrait of allston by leslie to be presented to the national academy of design. "there are associations in my mind with those two eminent and beloved names which appeal too strongly to me to be resisted. now i have a favor to ask which i hope will not be denied. it is that i may be allowed to present to the academy that portrait in my own name. you can appreciate the arguments which have influenced my wishes in this respect. allston was more than any other person my master in art. leslie was my life-long cherished friend and fellow pupil, whom i loved as a brother. we all lived together for years in the closest intimacy and in the same house. is there not then a fitness that the portrait of the master by one distinguished pupil should be presented by the surviving pupil to the academy over which he presided in its infancy, as well as assisted in its birth, and, although divorced from art, cannot so easily be divorced from the memories of an intercourse with these distinguished friends, an intercourse which never for one moment suffered interruption, even from a shadow of estrangement?" it is needless to say that this generous offer was accepted, and morse at the same time presented to the academy the brush which allston was using when stricken with his fatal illness. as his means permitted he made generous donations to charities and to educational institutions, and on may , , he endowed by the gift of $ , a lectureship in the union theological seminary, making the following request in the letter which accompanied it:-- "if it be thought advisable that the name of the lectureship, as was suggested, should be the morse lectureship, i wish it to be distinctly understood that it is so named in honor of my venerated and distinguished father, whose zealous labors in the cause of theological education, and in various benevolent enterprises, as well as of geographical science, entitle his memory to preservation in connection with the efforts to diffuse the knowledge of our lord and saviour, jesus christ, and his gospel throughout the world." curiously enough i find no reference in the letters of the year to the assassination of president lincoln, but i well remember being taken, a boy of eight, to our stable on the corner of fifth avenue and twenty-first street, from the second-floor windows of which we watched the imposing funeral cortège pass up the avenue. the fifty-fifth reunion of his class of took place in this year, and morse reluctantly decided to absent himself. the reasons why he felt that he could not go are given in a long letter of august to his cousin, professor e.s. salisbury, and it is such a clear statement of his convictions that i am tempted to give it almost in its entirety:-- "i should have been most happy on many personal accounts to have been at the periodical meeting of my surviving classmates of , and also to have renewed my social intercourse with many esteemed friends and relations in new haven. but as i could not conscientiously take part in the proposed martial sectional glorification of those of the family who fell in the late lamentable family strife, and could not in any brief way or time explain the discriminations that were necessary between that which i approve and that which i most unqualifiedly condemn, without the risk of misapprehension, i preferred the only alternative left me, to absent myself altogether. "you well know i never approved of the late war. i have ever believed, and still believe, if the warnings of far-seeing statesmen (washington, clay, and webster among them) had been heeded, if, during the last thirty years of persistent stirring up of strife by angry words, the calm and christian counsels of intelligent patriots had been followed at the north, and a strict observance of the letter and spirit of the constitution had been sustained as the supreme law, instead of the insidious violations of its provisions, especially by new england, we should have had no war. "as i contributed nothing to the war, so now i see no reason specially to exult in the display of brave qualities in an isolated portion of the family, qualities which no true american ever doubted were possessed by both sections of our country in an equal degree. why then discriminate between alumni from the north and alumni from the south at a gathering in which alumni from both sections are expected to meet?... no, my dear cousin, the whole era of the war is one i wish not to remember. i would have no other memorial than a black cross, like those over the graves of murdered travellers, to cause a shudder whenever it is seen. it would be well if history could blot from its pages all record of the past four years. there is no glory in them for victors or vanquished. the only event in which i rejoice is the restoration of peace, which never should have been interrupted.... "i have no doubt that they who originated the recent demonstration honestly believed it to be _patriotic_, for every movement nowadays must take that shape to satisfy the morbid appetite of the popular mind. i cannot think it either in good taste or in conformity with sound policy for our collegiate institutions to foster this depraved appetite. surely there is enough of this in the political harangues of the day for those who require such aids to patriotism without its being administered to by our colleges. that patriotism is of rather a suspicious character which needs such props. i love to see my children well clad and taking a proper pride in their attire, but i should not think them well instructed if i found them everywhere boasting of their fine clothes. a true nobleman is not forever boasting of his nobility for fear that his rank may not be recognized. the loudest boasts of patriotism do not come from the true possessors of the genuine spirit. patriotism is not sectional nor local, it comprehends in its grasp the whole country.... "i have said the demonstration at commencement was in bad taste. why? you will say. because commencement day brings together the alumni of the college from all parts of the union, from the south as well as the north. they are to meet on some common ground, and that common ground is the love that all are supposed to bear to the old alma mater, cherished by memories of past friendships in their college associations. the late commencement was one of peculiar note. it was the first after the return of peace. the country had been sundered; the ties of friendship and of kindred had been broken; the bonds of college affection were weakened if not destroyed. what an opportunity for inaugurating the healing process! what an occasion for the display of magnanimity, of mollifying the pain of humiliation, of throwing a veil of oblivion over the past, of watering the perishing roots of fraternal affection and fostering the spirit of genuine union! but no. the southern alumnus may come, but he comes to be humiliated still further. can he join in the plaudits of those by whom he has been humbled? you may applaud, but do not ask him to join in your acclamations. he may be mourning the death of father, brother, yes, of mother and sister, by the very hands of those you are glorifying. do not aggravate his sorrow by requiring him to join you in such a demonstration. "no, my dear cousin, it was in _bad taste_ to say the least of it, and it was equally _impolitic_ to intercalate such a demonstration into the usual and appropriate exercises of the week. you expect, i presume, to have pupils from the south as heretofore; will such a sectional display be likely to attract them or to repel them? if they can go elsewhere they will not come to you. they will not be attracted by a perpetual memento before their eyes of your triumph over them. it was not politic. it is no improvement for christian america to show less humanity than heathen rome. the romans never made demonstrations of triumph over the defeat of their countrymen in a civil war. it is no proof of superior civilization that we refuse to follow roman example in such cases. "my dear cousin, i have written you very frankly, but i trust you will not misunderstand me as having any personal reproaches to make for the part you have taken in the matter. we undoubtedly view the field from different standpoints. i concede to you conscientious motives in what you do. you are sustained by those around you, men of intellect, men of character. i respect them while i differ from them. i appeal, however, to a higher law, and that, i think, sustains me." his strong and outspoken stand for what he believed to be the right made him many enemies, and he was called hard names by the majority of those by whom he was surrounded at the north; and yet the very fearlessness with which he advocated an unpopular point of view undoubtedly compelled increased respect for him. a proof of this is given in a letter to his daughter, mrs. lind, of december , :-- "i also send you some clippings from the papers giving you an account of some of the doings respecting a statue proposed to me by the common council. the mayor, who is a personal friend of mine, you see has vetoed the resolutions, not from a disapproval of their character, but because he did not like the locality proposed. he proposes the central park, and in this opinion all my friends concur. "i doubt if they will carry the project through while i am alive, and it would really seem most proper to wait until i was gone before they put up my monument. i have nothing, however, to say on the subject. i am gratified, of course, to see the manifestation of kindly feeling, but, as the tinder of vainglory is in every human heart, i rather shrink from such a proposed demonstration lest a spark of flattery should kindle that tinder to an unseemly and destructive flame. i am not blind to the popularity, world-wide, of the telegraph, and a sober forecast of the future foreshadows such a statue in some place. if ever erected i hope the prominent mottoes upon the pedestal will be: '_not unto us, not unto us, but to god be the glory_,' and the first message or telegram: '_what hath god wrought._'" he says very much the same thing in a letter to his friend george wood, of january , , and he also says in this letter, referring to some instance of benevolent generosity by mr. kendall:-- "is it not a noticeable fact that the wealth acquired by the telegraph has in so many conspicuous instances been devoted to benevolent purposes? mr. kendall is prominent in his expenditures for great christian enterprises, and think of cornell, always esteemed by me as an ingenious and shrewd man, when employed by me to set the posts and put up the wire for the first line of telegraphs between washington and baltimore, yet thought to be rather close and narrow-minded by those around him. but see, when his wealth had increased by his acquisition of telegraph stock to millions (it is said), what enlarged and noble plans of public benefit were conceived and brought forth by him. i have viewed his course with great gratification as the evidence of god's blessing on _what he hath wrought_." it has been made plain, i think, that morse was essentially a leader in every movement in which he took an interest, whether it was artistic, scientific, religious, or political. this is emphasized by the number of requests made to him to assume the presidency of all sorts of organizations, and these requests multiplied as he advanced in years. most of them he felt compelled to decline, for, as he says in a letter of march , , declining the presidency of the geographical and statistical society: "i am at an age when i find it necessary rather to be relieved from the cares and responsibilities already resting upon me, than to take upon me additional ones." in many other cases he allowed his name to be used as vice-president or member, when he considered the object of the organization a worthy one, and his benefactions were only limited by his means. he did, however, accept the presidency of one association just at this time, the american asiatic society, in which were interested such men as gorham abbott, dr. forsyth, e.h. champlin, thomas harrison, and morse's brother-in-law, william m. goodrich. the aims of this society were rather vast, including an international congress to be called by the emperor napoleon iii, for the purpose of opening up and controlling the great highways from the east to the west through the isthmus of suez and that of panama; also the colonization of palestine by the jews, and other commercial and philanthropic schemes. i cannot find that anything of lasting importance was accomplished by this society, so i shall make no further mention of it, although there is much correspondence about it. the following, from a letter to mr. kendall of march , , explains itself: "if i understand the position of our telegraph interests, they are now very much as you and i wished them to be in the outset, not cut up in o'reilly fashion into irresponsible parts, but making one grand whole like the post-office system. it is becoming, doubtless, a _monopoly_, but no more so than the post-office system, and its unity is in reality a public advantage if properly and uprightly managed, and this, of course, will depend on the character of the managers. confidence must be reposed somewhere, and why not in upright and responsible men who are impelled as well by their own interest to have their matters conducted with fairness and with liberality." as a curious commentary on his misplaced faith in the integrity of others, i shall quote from a letter of january , , to e.s. sanford, esq., which also shows his abhorrence of anything like crooked dealing in financial matters:-- "i wish when you again write me you would give me, _in confidence_, the names of those in the board of the western union who are acting in so dishonorable and tricky a manner. i think i ought to know them in order to avoid them, and resist them in the public interest. it is a shame that an enterprise which, honestly conducted, is more than usually profitable, should be conducted on the principles of sharpers and tricksters. [illustration: telegram showing morse's characteristic deadhead, which he always used to frank his messages] "so far as the russian extension is concerned, i should judge from your representation that, as a stockholder in that enterprise to the amount of $ , , the plan would conduce to my immediate pecuniary benefit. but so would the _robbery of the safe of a bank_. if wealth can be obtained only by such swindles, i prefer poverty. you have my proxy and i have the utmost confidence in your management. do by me as you would do for yourself, and i shall be satisfied.... in regard to any honorable propositions made in the board be conciliatory and compromising, but any scheme to oppress the smaller stockholders for the benefit of the larger resist to the death. i prefer to sacrifice all my stock rather than have such a stigma on my character as such mean, and i will add villainous, conduct would be sure to bring upon all who engaged in it." in this connection i shall also quote from another letter to mr. sanford, of february , : "if government thinks seriously of purchasing the telegraph, and at this late day adopting my early suggestion that it ought to belong to the post-office department, be it so if they will now pay for it. they must now pay millions for that which i offered to them for one hundred thousand dollars, and gave them a year for consideration ere they adopted it." there are but few references to politics in the letters of this period, but i find the following in a letter of march , , to a cousin: "you ask my opinion of our president. i did not vote for him, but i am agreeably surprised at his masterly statesmanship, and hope, by his firmness in resisting the extreme radicals, he will preserve the union against now the greatest enemies we have to contend against. i mean those who call themselves abolitionists.... president johnson deserves the support of all true patriots, and he will have it against all the 'traitors' in the country, by whatever soft names of loyalty they endeavor to shield themselves." appeals of all kinds kept pouring in on him, and, in courteously refusing one, on april , he uses the following language: "i am unable to aid you. i cannot, indeed, answer a fiftieth part of the hundreds of applications made to me from every section of the country _daily_--i might say _hourly_--for yours is the third this morning and it is not yet o'clock." after settling his affairs at home in his usual methodical manner, morse sailed with his wife and his four young children, and colonel john r. leslie their tutor, for europe on the d of june, , prepared for an extended stay. he wished to give his children the advantages of travel and study in europe, and he was very desirous of being in paris during the universal exposition of . there is a gap in the letter-books until october, , but from the few letters to members of the family which have been preserved, and from my own recollections, we know that the summer of was most delightfully spent in journeying through france, germany, and switzerland. the children were now old enough not to be the nuisances they seem to have been in , for we find no note of complaint on that account. in september he returned with his wife, his daughter, and his youngest son to paris, leaving his two older sons with their tutor in geneva. as he wished to make paris his headquarters for nearly a year, he sought and found a furnished apartment at no. avenue du roi de rome (now the avenue du trocadero), and he writes to his mother-in-law on september : "we are fortunate in having apartments in a new building, or rather one newly and completely repaired throughout. all the apartments are newly furnished with elegant furniture, we having the first use of it. we have ample rooms, not large, but promising more comfort for winter residence than if they were larger. the situation is on a wide avenue and central for many purposes; close to the champs elysées, near also to the bois de boulogne, and within a few minutes walk of the champ de mars, so that we shall be most eligibly situated to visit the great exposition when it opens in april." his wife's sister, mrs. goodrich, with her husband and daughters, occupied an apartment in the same building; his grandson charles lind was also in paris studying painting, and before the summer of the next year other members of his family came to paris, so that at one time eighteen of those related to him by blood or marriage were around him. to a man of morse's affectionate nature and loyalty to family this was a source of peculiar joy, and those parisian days were some of the happiest of his life. the rest of the autumn and early winter were spent in sight-seeing and in settling his children in their various studies. the brilliance of the court of napoleon iii just before the _débâcle_ of is a matter of history, and it reached its high-water mark during the exposition year of , when emperors, kings, and princes journeyed to paris to do homage to the man of the hour. court balls, receptions, gala performances at opera and theatre, and military reviews followed each other in bewildering but well-ordered confusion, and morse, as a man of worldwide celebrity, took part in all of them. he and his wife and his young daughter, a girl of sixteen, were presented at court, and were fêted everywhere. in a letter to his mother-in-law he gives a description of his court costume on the occasion of his first presentation, when he was accompanied only by his brother-in-law, mr. goodrich:-- "we received our cards inviting us to the soirée and to pass the evening with their majesties on the th of january (wednesday evening). '_en uniforme_' was stamped upon the card, so we had to procure court dresses. mr. goodrich, as is the custom in most cases, hired his; i had a full suit made for me. a _chapeau bras_, with gold lace loop, a blue coat, with standing collar, single breasted, richly embroidered with gold lace, the american eagle button, white silk lining, vest light cashmere with gilt buttons, pantaloons with a broad stripe of gold lace on the outside seams, a small sword, and patent-leather shoes or boots completed the dress of ordinary mortals like brother goodrich, but for _extra_ordinary mortals, like my humble republican self, i was bedizened with all my orders, seven decorations, covering my left breast. if thus accoutred i should be seen on broadway, i should undoubtedly have a numerous escort of a character not the most agreeable, but, as it was, i found myself in very good and numerous company, none of whom could consistently laugh at his neighbors." after describing the ceremony of presentation he continues:-- "occasionally both the emperor and empress said a few words to particular individuals. when my name was mentioned the emperor said to me, 'your name, sir, is well known here,' for which i thanked him; and the empress afterwards said to me, when my name was mentioned, 'we are greatly indebted to you, sir, for the telegraph,' or to that effect. afterwards mr. bennett, the winner of the yacht race, engaged for a moment their particular regards.... [i wonder if the modest inventor appreciated the irony of this juxtaposition.] after the dancers were fully engaged, the refreshment-room, the salon of diana, was opened, and, as in our less aristocratic country, the tables attracted a great crowd, so that the doors were guarded so as to admit the company by instalments. i had in vain for some time endeavored to gain admittance, and was waiting patiently quite at a distance from the door, which was thronged with ladies and high dignitaries, when a gentleman who guarded the door, and who had his breast covered with orders, addressed me by name, asking me if i was not professor morse. upon replying in the affirmative, quite to my surprise, he made way for me to the door and, opening it, admitted me before all the rest. i cannot yet divine why this special favor was shown to me. "the tables were richly furnished. i looked for bonbons to carry home to the children, but when i saw some tempting looking almonds and candies and mottoes, to my surprise i found they were all composed of fish put up in this form, and the mottoes were of salad." it is good to know that morse, ever willing to forgive and forget, was again on terms of friendly intercourse with cyrus w. field, who was then in london, as the following letter to him, dated march , , will show:-- "singular as it may seem, i was in the midst of your speech before the chamber of commerce reception to you in new york, perusing it with deep interest, when my valet handed me your letter of the th ulto. "i regret exceedingly that i shall not have the great pleasure i had anticipated, with other friends here, who were prepared to receive you in paris with the welcome you so richly deserve. you invite me to london. i have the matter under consideration. march winds and that boisterous channel have some weight in my decision, but i so long to take you by the hand and to get posted upon telegraph matters at home, that i feel disposed to make the attempt. but without positively saying 'yes,' i will see if in a few days i can so arrange my affairs as to have a few hours with you before you sail on the th. [illustration: morse in old age] "i send you by book post the proceedings of the banquet given to our late minister, bigelow, in which you will see my remarks on the great enterprise with which your name will forever be so honorably associated and justly immortalized." it will be remembered, that the atlantic cable was finally successfully laid on july , , and that to cyrus field, more than to any other man, was this wonderful achievement due. in a letter of march , , to john s.c. abbott, esq., morse gives the following interesting incident in the life of napoleon iii:-- "in , i was one of a club of gentlemen in new york who were associated for social and informal intellectual converse, which held weekly meetings at each other's houses in rotation. most of these distinguished men are now deceased. the club consisted of such men as chancellor kent, albert gallatin, peter augustus jay, reporter johnson, dr. (afterwards bishop) wainwright, the president and professors of columbia college, the chancellor and professors of the new york city university, dr. augustus smith, messrs. goodhue and de rham of the mercantile class, and john c. hamilton, esq. and ex-governor w.b. lawrence from the literary ranks. "among the rules of the club was one permitting any member to introduce to the meetings distinguished strangers visiting the city. at one of the reunions of the club the place of meeting was at chancellor kent's. on assembling the chancellor introduced to us louis napoleon, a son of the ex-king of holland, a young man pale and contemplative, somewhat reserved. this reserve we generally attributed to a supposed imperfect acquaintance with our language. at supper he sat on the right of the chancellor at the head of the table. mr. gallatin was opposite the chancellor at the foot of the table, and i was on his right. "in the course of the evening, while the conversation was general, i drew the attention of mr. gallatin to the stranger, observing that i did not trace any resemblance in his features to his world-renowned uncle, yet that his forehead indicated great intellect. 'yes,' replied mr. gallatin, 'there is a great deal in that head of his, but he has a strange fancy. can you believe it, he has the impression that he will one day be the emperor of the french; can you conceive of anything more ridiculous?' "certainly at that period, even to the sagacious eye of mr. gallatin, such an idea would naturally seem too improbable to be entertained for a moment, but, in the light of later events, and the actual state of things at present, does not the fact show that, even in his darkest hours, there was in this extraordinary man that unabated faith in his future which was a harbinger of success; a faith which pierced the dark clouds which surrounded him, and realized to him in marvellous prophetic vision that which we see at this day and hour fully accomplished?" morse must have penned these words with peculiar satisfaction, for they epitomized his own sublime faith in his future. in he also was passing through some of his darkest hours, but he too had had faith, and now, thirty years afterwards, his dreams of glory had been triumphantly realized, he was an honored guest of that other man of destiny, and his name was forever immortalized. the spring and early summer of were enjoyed to the full by the now venerable inventor and his family. the exposition was a source of never-ending joy to him, and he says of it in a letter to his son-in-law, edward lind:-- "you will hear all sorts of stories about the exposition. the english papers (some of them), in john bull style, call it a humbug. let me tell you that, imperfect as it is in its present condition, going on rapidly to completion, it may without exaggeration be pronounced the eighth wonder of the world. it is the world in epitome. i came over with my children to give them the advantage of thus studying the world in anticipation of what i now see, and i can say that the two days only in which i have been able to glance through parts of its vast extent, have amply repaid me for my voyage here. i believe my children will learn more of the condition of the arts, agriculture, customs, manufactures and mineral and vegetable products of the world in five weeks than they could by books at home in five years, and as many years' travel." he was made an honorary commissioner of the united states to the exposition, and he prepared an elaborate and careful report on the electrical department, for which he received a bronze medal from the french government. writing of this report to his brother sidney, he says: "this keeps me so busy that i have no time to write, and i have so many irons in the fire that i fear some must burn. but father's motto was--'better wear out than rust out,'--so i keep at work." in a letter to his friend, the honorable john thompson, of poughkeepsie, he describes one of his dissipations:-- "paris now is the great centre of the world. such an assemblage of sovereigns was never before gathered, and i and mine are in the midst of the great scenes and fêtes. we were honored, a few evenings ago, with cards to a very select fête given by the emperor and empress at the tuilleries to the king and queen of the belgians, the prince of wales and prince alfred, to the queen of portugal, the grand duchess marie of russia, sister of the late emperor nicholas, a noble looking woman, the princess metternich of austria, and many others. "the display was gorgeous, and as the number of guests was limited (only one thousand!) there was more space for locomotion than at the former gatherings at the palace, where we were wedged in with some four thousand. there was dancing and my daughter was solicited by one of the gentlemen for a set in which prince alfred and the turkish ambassador danced, the latter with an american belle, one of the miss beckwiths. i allowed her to dance in this set once. the empress is truly a beautiful woman and of unaffected manners." in a long letter to his brother sidney, of june , he describes some of their doings. at the grand review of sixty thousand troops he and his wife and eldest son were given seats in the imperial tribune, a little way behind the emperor and the king of prussia, who were so soon to wage a deadly war with each other. on the way back from the review the following incident occurred:-- "after the review was over we took our carriage to return home. the carriages and cortège of the imperial personages took the right of the cascade (which you know is in full view from the hippodrome of longchamps). we took the left side and were attracted by the report of firearms on our left, which proceeded from persons shooting at pigeons from a trap. soon after we heard a loud report on our right from a pistol, which attracted no further attention from us than the remark which i made that i did not know that persons were allowed to use firearms in the bois. we passed on to our home, and in the evening were informed of the atrocious attempt upon the emperor of russia's life. the pistol report which i heard was that of the pistol of the assassin." farther on in this letter he describes the grand fête given by the city of paris to the visiting sovereigns at the hotel de ville. there were thirty-five thousand applications for tickets, but only eight thousand could be granted. of these morse was gratified to receive three:-- "well, the great fête of saturday the th is over. i despair of any attempt properly to describe its magnificence. i send you the papers.... such a blaze of splendor cannot be conceived or described but in the descriptions of the arabian nights. we did not see half the display, for the immense series of gorgeous halls, lighted by seventy thousand candles, with fountains and flowers at every turn, made one giddy to see even for a moment. we had a good opportunity to scan the features of the emperors, the king of prussia and the renowned bismarck, with those of the beautiful empress and the princesses and princes and other distinguished persons of their suite. "i must tell you (for family use only) that the emperor napoleon made to me a marked recognition as he passed along. sarah and i were standing upon two chairs overlooking the front rank of those ranged on each side. the emperor gave his usual bow on each side, but, as he came near us, he gave an unusual and special bow to me, which i returned, and he then, with a smile, gave me a second bow so marked as to draw the attention of those around, who at once turned to see to whom this courtesy was shown. i should not mention this but that sarah and others observed it as an unusual mark of courtesy." feeling the need of rest after all the gayety and excitement of paris, morse and part of his family retired to shanklin, on the isle of wight, where in a neat little furnished cottage--florence villa--they spent part of two happy months. then with his wife and daughter and youngest son he journeyed in leisurely fashion through england and scotland, returning to paris in october. here he spent some time in working on his report to the. united states government as commissioner to the exposition. among his notes i find the following, which seems to me worthy of record:-- "_the sounder._ mr. prescott, i perceive, is quoted as an authority. he is not reliable on many points and his work should be used with caution. his work was originally written in the interest of those opposing my patents, and his statements are, many of them, grossly unjust and strongly colored with prejudice. were he now to reprint his work i am convinced he would find it necessary, for the sake of his reputation, to expunge a great deal, and to correct much that he has misstated and misapprehended. "he manifests the most unpardonable ignorance or wilful prejudice in regard to the _sounder_, now so-called. the possibility of reading by sound was among the earliest modes noticed in the first instrument of , and it was in consequence of observing this fact that, in my first patent specifications drawn up in - , i distinctly specify these _sounds_ of the signs, and they were secured in my letters patent. yet mr. prescott makes it an accidental discovery, and in (the date of his publication) he wholly ignores my agency in this mode. the sounder is but the pen-lever deprived of the pen. in everything else it is the same. the sound of the letter is given with and without the pen." on november , , he writes from paris to his friend, the honorable john thompson:-- "i am still held in paris for the completion of my labors, but hope in a few days to be relieved so that we may leave for dresden, where my boys are pursuing their studies in the german language.... i am yet doubtful how long a sojourn we may make in dresden, and whether i shall winter there or in paris, but i am inclined to the latter. we wish to visit italy, but i am not satisfied that it will be pleasant or even safe to be there just now. the garibaldian inroad upon the pontifical states is, indeed, for the moment suppressed, but the end is not yet. "alas for poor italy! how hard to rid herself of evils that have become chronic. why cannot statesmen of the old world learn the great truth that most of their perplexities in settling the questions of international peace arise from the unnatural union of church and state? he who said 'my kingdom is not of this world' uttered a truth pregnant with consequences. the attempt to rule the state by the church or the church by the state is equally at war with his teachings, and until these are made the rule of conduct, whether for political bodies or religious bodies, there will be the sword and not peace. "i see by the papers that the reaction i have long expected and hoped for has commenced in our country. it is hailed here by intelligent and cool-headed citizens as a good omen for the future. the radicals have had their way, and the people, disgusted, have at length given their command --'thus far and no farther.'" chapter xxxix november , --june , goes to dresden.--trials financial and personal.--humorous letter to e.s. sanford.--berlin.--the telegraph in the war of .--paris.--returns to america.--death of his brother richard.--banquet in new york.--addresses of chief justice chase, morse, and daniel huntington,--report as commissioner finished.--professor w.p. blake's letter urging recognition of professor henry.--morse complies.--henry refuses to be reconciled.-- reading by sound.--morse breaks his leg.--deaths of amos kendall and george wood.--statue in central park.--addresses of governor hoffman and william cullen bryant.--ceremonies at academy of music.--morse bids farewell to his children of the telegraph. it will not be necessary to record in detail the happenings of the remainder of this last visit to europe. three months were spent in dresden, with his children and his sister-in-law's family around him. the same honors were paid to him here as elsewhere on the continent. he was received in special audience by the king and queen of saxony, and men of note in the scientific world eagerly sought his counsel and advice. but, apart from so much that was gratifying to him, he was just then called upon to bear many trials and afflictions of various kinds and degrees, and it is marvellous, in reading his letters, to note with what great serenity and christian fortitude, yet withal, with what solicitude, he endeavored to bear his cross and solve his problems. as he advanced in years an increasing number of those near and dear to him were taken from him by death, and his letters of christian sympathy fill many pages of the letter books. there were trials of a domestic nature, too intimate to be revealed, which caused him deep sorrow, but which he bravely and optimistically strove to meet. clouds, too, obscured his financial horizon; investments in certain mining ventures, entered into with high hopes, turned out a dead loss; the repayment of loans, cheerfully made to friends and relatives, was either delayed or entirely defaulted; and, to cap the climax, the western union telegraph company, in which most of his fortune was invested, passed one dividend and threatened to pass another. he had provided for this contingency by a deposit of surplus funds before his departure for europe, but he was fearful of the future. in spite of all this he could not refrain from treating the matter lightly and humorously in a letter to mr. e.s. sanford of november , , written from dresden: "your letter gave me both pleasure and pain. i was glad to hear some particulars of the condition of my '_basket_,' but was pained to learn that the _hens'_ eggs instead of swelling to _goose_ eggs, and even to _ostrich_ eggs (as some that laid them so enthusiastically anticipated when they were so closely packed), have shrunk to _pigeons'_ eggs, if not to the diminutive _sparrows'_. to keep up the figure, i am thankful there are any left not addled." he was all the time absorbed in the preparation of his report as commissioner to the paris exposition, and it was, of course, a source of great gratification to him to learn from the answers to his questions sent to the telegraph officers of the whole world, that the morse system was practically the only one in general use. as one of his correspondents put it--"the cry is, 'give us the morse.'" the necessity for the completion of this work, and his desire to give his children every advantage of study, kept him longer in europe than he had expected, and he writes to his brother sidney on december , : "i long to return, for age creeps on apace, and i wish to put my house in order for a longer and better journey to a better home." in the early part of february, , he and his wife and daughter and youngest son left dresden for paris, stopping, however, a few days in berlin. mr. george bancroft was our minister at the prussian court, and he did all that courtesy could suggest to make the stay of his distinguished countryman a pleasant one. he urged him to stay longer, so that he might have the pleasure of presenting him at court, but this honor morse felt obliged to decline. the inventor did, however, find time to visit the government telegraph office, of which colonel (afterwards general) von chauvin was the head, and here he received an ovation from all the operators, several hundred in number, who were seated at their instruments in what was then the largest operating-room in the world. another incident of his visit to berlin i shall give in the words of mr. prime:-- "not to recount the many tributes of esteem and respect paid him by dr. siemens, and other gentlemen eminent in the specialty of telegraphy, one other unexpected compliment may be mentioned. the professor was presented to the accomplished general director of the posts of the north german bund, privy councillor von phillipsborn, in whose department the telegraph had been comprised before prussia became so great and the centre of a powerful confederation. "at the time of their visit the director was so engaged, and that, too, in another part of the post-amt, that the porter said it was useless to trouble him with the cards. the names had not been long sent up, however, before the director himself came hurriedly down the corridor into the antechamber, and, scarcely waiting for the hastiest of introductions, enthusiastically grasped both the professor's hands in his own, asking whether he had 'the honor of speaking to dr. morse,' or, as he pronounced it 'morzey.' "when, after a brief conversation, mr. morse rose to go, the director said that he had just left a conference over a new post and telegraph treaty in negotiation between belgium and the bund, and that it would afford him great pleasure to be permitted to present his guest to the assembled gentlemen, including the belgian envoy and the belgian postmaster-general. there followed, accordingly, a formal presentation with an introductory address by the director, who, in excellent english, thanked mr. morse in the name of prussia and of all germany for his great services, and speeches by the principal persons present--the belgian envoy, baron de nothomb, very felicitously complimenting the professor in french. "succeeding the hand-shaking the director spoke again, and, in reply, mr. morse gratefully acknowledged the courtesy shown to him, adding: 'it is very gratifying to me to hear you say that the telegraph has been and is a means of promoting peace among men. believe me, gentlemen, my remaining days shall be devoted to this great object.'... "the director then led his visitors into a small, cosily furnished room, saying as they entered: 'here i have so often thought of you, mr. morse, but i never thought i should have the honor of receiving you in my own private room.' "after they were seated the host, tapping upon a small table, continued: 'over this passed the important telegrams of the war of .' then, approaching a large telegraph map on the wall, he added: 'upon this you can see how invaluable was the telegraph in the war. here,'--pointing with the forefinger of his right hand,--'here the crown prince came down through silesia. this,' indicating with the other forefinger a passage through bohemia, 'was the line of march of prince friedrich carl. from this station the crown prince telegraphed prince friedrich carl, always over berlin, "where are you?" the answer from this station reached him, also over berlin. the austrians were here,' placing the thumb on the map below and between the two fingers. 'the next day prince friedrich carl comes here,'--the left forefinger joined the thumb,--' and telegraphs the fact, always over berlin, to the crown prince, who hurries forward here.' the forefinger of the right hand slipped quickly under the thumb as if to pinch something, and the narrator looked up significantly. "perhaps the patriotic director thought of the july afternoon when, eagerly listening at the little mahogany-topped table, over which passed so many momentous messages, he learned that the royal cousins had effected a junction at königgrätz, a junction that decided the fate of germany and secured prussia its present proud position, a junction which but for his modest visitor's invention, the telegraph, 'always over berlin,' would have been impossible." returning to paris with his family, he spent some months at the hôtel de la place du palais royal, principally in collecting all the data necessary to the completion of his report, which had been much delayed owing to the dilatoriness of those to whom he had applied for facts and statistics. on april , , he says in a letter to the honorable john thompson: "pleasant as has been our european visit, with its advantages in certain branches of education, our hearts yearn for our american home. we can appreciate, i hope, the good in european countries, be grateful for european hospitality, and yet be thorough americans, as we all profess to be notwithstanding the display of so many defects which tend to disgrace us in the eyes of the world." on may he writes to senator michel chevalier: "and now, my dear sir, farewell. i leave beautiful paris the day after to-morrow for my home on the other side of the atlantic, more deeply impressed than ever with the grandeur of france, and the liberality and hospitality of her courteous people, so kindly manifested to me and mine. i leave paris with many regrets, for my age admonishes me that, in all probability, i shall never again visit europe." sailing from havre on the st. laurent, on may , he and his family reached, without untoward incident, the home on the hudson, and on june he writes to his son arthur, who had remained abroad with his tutor:-- "you see by the date where we all are. once more i am seated at my table in the half octagon study under the south verandah. never did the grove look more charming. its general features the same, but the growth of the trees and shrubbery greatly increased. faithful thomas devoy has proved himself to be a truly honest and efficient overseer. the whole farm is in fine condition.... "on thursday last i was much gratified with mr. leslie's letter from copenhagen, with his account of your reception by the king of denmark. how gratifying to me that the portrait of thorwaldsen has given such pleasure to the king, and that he regards it as the best likeness of the great sculptor." the story of morse's presentation to the king of denmark of the portrait, painted in rome in , has already been told in the first volume of this work. the king, as we learn from the above quotation, was greatly pleased with it, and in token of his gratification raised morse to the rank of knight commander of the dannebrog, the rank of knight having been already conferred on the inventor by the king's predecessor on the throne. in another letter to colonel leslie, of november , , brief reference is made to matters political:-- "to-morrow is the important day for deciding our next four years' rulers. i am glad our continental brethren cannot read our newspapers of the present day, otherwise they must infer that our choice of rulers is made from a class more fitted for the state's prison than the state thrones, and elevation to a scaffold were more suited to the characters of the individual candidates than elevation to office. but in a few days matters will calm down, and the business of the nation will assume its wonted aspect. "i have not engaged in this warfare. as a citizen i have my own views, and give my vote on general principles, but am prepared to learn that my vote is on the defeated side. i presume that grant will be the president, and i shall defer to the decision like a peaceable citizen. the day after to-morrow you will know as well as we shall the probable result. the telegraph is telling upon the world, and its effect upon human affairs is yet but faintly appreciated." in this letter he also speaks of the death of his youngest brother, richard c. morse, who died at kissingen on september , , and in a letter to his son arthur, of october , he again refers to it, and adds: "it is a sad blow to all of us but particularly to the large circle of his children. your two uncles and your father were a three-fold cord, strongly united in affection. it is now sundered. the youngest is taken first, and we that remain must soon follow him in the natural course of things." farther on in this letter he says: "i attended the funeral of mr. l---- a few weeks ago. i am told that he died of a broken heart from the conduct of his graceless son frank, and i can easily understand that the course he has pursued, and his drunken habits, may have killed his father with as much certainty as if he had shot him. children have little conception of the effect of their conduct upon their parents. they never know fully these anxieties until they are parents themselves." but his skies were not all grey, for in addition to his satisfaction in being once more at home in his own beloved country, and in his quiet retreat on the hudson, he was soon to be the recipient of a signal mark of respect and esteem by his own countrymen, which proved that this prophet was not without honor even in his own country. new york, november th, . professor s.f.b. morse, ll.d. sir,--many of your countrymen and numerous personal friends desire to give definite expression to the fact that this country is in full accord with european nations in acknowledging your title to the position of father of modern telegraphy, and at the same time in a fitting manner to welcome you to your home. they, therefore, request that you will name a day on which you will favor them with your company at a public banquet. with great respect we remain, very truly your friends. here follow the names of practically every man of prominence in new york at that time. morse replied on december :-- to the hon. hamilton fish, hon. john t. hoffman, hon. wm. dennison, hon. a.g. curtin, hon. wm. e. dodge, peter cooper, esq., daniel huntington, esq., wm. orton, esq., a.a. low, esq., james brown, esq., cyrus w. field, esq., john j. cisco, esq., and others. gentlemen,--i have received your flattering request of the th november, proposing the compliment of a public banquet to me, and asking me to appoint a day on which it would be convenient for me to meet you. did your proposal intend simply a personal compliment i should feel no hesitation in thanking you cordially for this evidence of your personal regard, while i declined your proffered honor; but i cannot fail to perceive that there is a paramount patriotic duty connected with your proposal which forbids me to decline your invitation. in accepting it, therefore, i would name (in view of some personal arrangements) wednesday the th inst. as the day which would be most agreeable to me. accept, gentlemen, the assurance of the respect of your obedient servant, samuel f.b. morse. the banquet was given at delmonico's, which was then on the corner of fifth avenue and fourteenth street, and was presided over by chief justice salmon p. chase, who had been the leading counsel _against_ morse in his first great lawsuit, but who now cheerfully acknowledged that to morse and america the great invention of the telegraph was due. about two hundred men sat down at the tables, among them some of the most eminent in the country. morse sat at the right of chief justice chase, and sir edward thornton, british ambassador, on his left. when the time for speechmaking came, cyrus field read letters from president andrew johnson; from general grant, president-elect; from speaker colfax, admiral farragut, and many others. he also read a telegram from governor alexander h. bullock of massachusetts: "massachusetts honors her two sons--franklin and morse. the one conducted the lightning safely from the sky; the other conducts it beneath the ocean from continent to continent. the one tamed the lightning; the other makes it minister to human wants and human progress." from london came another message:-- "cyrus w. field, new york. the members of the joint committee of the anglo-american and atlantic telegraph companies hear with pleasure of the banquet to be given this evening to professor morse, and desire to greet that distinguished telegraphist, and wish him all the compliments of the season." mr. field added: "this telegram was sent from london at four o'clock this afternoon, and was delivered into the hands of your committee at . ." this, naturally, elicited much applause and laughter. speeches then followed by other men prominent in various walks of life. sir edward thornton said that he "had great satisfaction in being able to contribute his mite of that admiration and esteem for professor morse which must be felt by all for so great a benefactor of his fellow creatures and of posterity." chief justice chase introduced the guest of the evening in the following graceful words:-- "many shining names will at once occur to any one at all familiar with the history of the telegraph. among them i can pause to mention only those of volta, the italian, to whose discoveries the battery is due; oersted, the dane, who first discovered the magnetic properties of the electric current; ampere and arago, the frenchmen, who prosecuted still further and most successfully similar researches; then sturgeon, the englishman, who may be said to have made the first electro-magnet; next, and not least illustrious among these illustrious men, our countryman henry, who first showed the practicability of producing electro-magnetic effects by means of the galvanic current at distances infinitely great; and finally steinheil, the german, who, after the invention of the telegraph in all its material parts was complete, taught, in , the use of the ground as part of the circuit. these are some of those searchers for truth whose names will be long held in grateful memory, and not among the least of their titles to gratitude and remembrance will be the discoveries which contributed to the possibility of the modern telegraph. "but these discoveries only made the telegraph possible. they offered the brilliant opportunity. there was needed a man to bring into being the new art and the new interest to which they pointed, and it is the providential distinction and splendid honor of the eminent american, who is our guest to-night, that, happily prepared by previous acquirements and pursuits, he was quick to seize the opportunity and give to the world the first recording telegraph. "fortunate man! thus to link his name forever with the greatest wonder and the greatest benefit of the age! [great applause]... i give you 'our guest, professor s.f.b. morse, the man of science who explored the laws of nature, wrested electricity from her embrace, and made it a missionary in the cause of human progress.'" as the venerable inventor rose from his chair, overcome with profound emotion which was almost too great to be controlled, the whole assembly rose with him, and cheer after cheer resounded through the hall for many minutes. when at last quiet was restored, he addressed the company at length, giving a resumé of his struggles and paying tribute to those who had befriended and assisted him in his time of need--to amos kendall, who sat at the board with him and whose name called forth more cheers, to alfred vail, to leonard gale, and, in the largeness of his heart, to f.o.j. smith. it will not be necessary to give his remarks in full, as the history of the invention has already been given in detail in the course of this work, but his concluding remarks are worthy of record:-- "in casting my eyes around i am most agreeably greeted by faces that carry me back in memory to the days of my art struggles in this city, the early days of the national academy of design. "brothers (for you are yet brothers), if i left your ranks you well know it cost me a pang. i did not leave you until i saw you well established and entering on that career of prosperity due to your own just appreciation of the important duties belonging to your profession. you have an institution which now holds and, if true to yourselves, will continue to hold a high position in the estimation of this appreciative community. if i have stepped aside from art to tread what seems another path, there is a good precedent for it in the lives of artists. science and art are not opposed. leonardo da vinci could find congenial relaxation in scientific researches and invention, and our own fulton was a painter whose scientific studies resulted in steam navigation. it may not be generally known that the important invention of the _percussion cap_ is due to the scientific recreations of the english painter shaw. "but i must not detain you from more instructive speech. one word only in closing. i have claimed for america the origination of the modern telegraph system of the world. impartial history, i think, will support that claim. do not misunderstand me as disparaging or disregarding the labors and ingenious modifications of others in various countries employed in the same field of invention. gladly, did time permit, would i descant upon their great and varied merits. yet in tracing the birth and pedigree of the modern telegraph, 'american' is not the highest term of the series that connects the past with the present; there is at least one higher term, the highest of all, which cannot and must not be ignored. if not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of infinite wisdom, can the creation of an instrumentality so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the father of every good and perfect gift? "i am sure i have the sympathy of such an assembly as is here gathered if, in all humility and in the sincerity of a grateful heart, i use the words of inspiration in ascribing honor and praise to him to whom first of all and most of all it is preëminently due. 'not unto us, not unto us, but to god be all the glory.' not what hath man, but 'what hath god wrought?'" more applause followed as morse took his seat, and other speeches were made by such men as professor goldwin smith, the honorable william m. evarts, a.a. low, william cullen bryant, william orton, david dudley field, the honorable william e. dodge, sir hugh allan, daniel huntington, and governor curtin of pennsylvania. while many of these speeches were most eloquent and appropriate, i shall quote from only one, giving as an excuse the words of james d. reid in his excellent work "the telegraph in america": "as mr. huntington's address contains some special thoughts showing the relationship of the painter to invention, and is, besides, a most affectionate and interesting tribute to his beloved master, mr. morse, it is deemed no discourtesy to the other distinguished speakers to give it nearly entire." i shall, however, omit some portions which mr. reid included. "in fact, however, every studio is more or less a laboratory. the painter is a chemist delving into the secrets of pigments, varnishes, mixtures of tints and mysterious preparations of grounds and overlaying of colors; occult arts by which the inward light is made to gleam from the canvas, and the warm flesh to glow and palpitate. "the studio of my beloved master, in whose honor we have met to-night, was indeed a laboratory. vigorous, life-like portraits, poetic and historic groups, occasionally grew upon his easel; but there were many hours--yes, days--when absorbed in study among galvanic batteries and mysterious lines of wires, he seemed to us like an alchemist of the middle ages in search of the philosopher's stone. "i can never forget the occasion when he called his pupils together to witness one of the first, if not the first, successful experiment with the electric telegraph. it was in the winter of - . i can see now that rude instrument, constructed with an old stretching-frame, a wooden clock, a home-made battery and the wire stretched many times around the walls of the studio. with eager interest we gathered about it as our master explained its operation while, with a click, click, the pencil, by a succession of dots and lines, recorded the message in cypher. the idea was born. the words circled that upper chamber as they do now the globe. "but we had little faith. to us it seemed the dream of enthusiasm. we grieved to see the sketch upon the canvas untouched. we longed to see him again calling into life events in our country's history. but it was not to be; god's purposes were being accomplished, and now the world is witness to his triumph. yet the love of art still lives in some inner corner of his heart, and i know he can never enter the studio of a painter and see the artist silently bringing from the canvas forms of life and beauty, but he feels a tender twinge, as one who catches a glimpse of the beautiful girl he loved in his youth whom another has snatched away. "finally, my dear master and father in art, allow me in this moment of your triumph in the field of discovery, to greet you in the name of your brother artists with 'all hail.' as an artist you might have spent life worthily in turning god's blessed daylight into sweet hues of rainbow colors, and into breathing forms for the delight and consolation of men, but it has been his will that you should train the lightnings, the sharp arrows of his anger, into the swift yet gentle messengers of peace and love." morse's wife and his daughter and other ladies had been present during the speeches, but they began to take their leave after mr. huntington's address, although the toastmaster arose to announce the last toast, which was "the ladies." so he said: "this is the most inspiring theme of all, but the theme itself seems to be vanishing from us. indeed [after a pause], has already vanished. [after another pause and a glance around the room.] and the gentleman who was to have responded seems also to have vanished with his theme. i may assume, therefore, that the duties of the evening are performed, and its enjoyments are at an end." the unsought honor of this public banquet, in his own country, organized by the most eminent men of the day, calling forth eulogies of him in the public press of the whole world, was justly esteemed by morse as one of the crowning events of his long career; but an even greater honor was still in store for him, which will be described in due season. the early months of were almost entirely devoted to his report as commissioner, which was finally completed and sent to the department of state in the latter part of march. in this work he received great assistance from professor w.p. blake, who was "in charge of publication," and who writes to him on march : "i have had only a short time to glance at it as it was delivered towards the close of the day, but i am most impressed by the amount of labor and care you have so evidently bestowed upon it." professor blake wrote another letter on august , which i am tempted to give almost in its entirety:-- "i feel it to be my duty to write to you upon another point regarding your report, upon which i know that you are sensitive, but, as i think you will see that my motives are good, and that i sincerely express them, i believe you will not be offended with me although my views and opinions may not coincide exactly with yours. i allude to the mention which you make of some of the eminent physicists who have contributed by their discoveries and experiments to our knowledge of the phenomena of electro-magnetism. "on page of the manuscript you observe: 'the application of the electro-magnet, the invention of arago and sturgeon (first combined and employed by morse in the construction of the generic telegraph) to the purposes also of the semaphore, etc.' "frankly, i am pained not to see the name of henry there associated with those of arago and sturgeon, for it is known and generally conceded among men of science that his researches and experiments and the results which he reached were of radical importance and value, and that they deservedly rank with those of ampere, arago and sturgeon. "i am aware that, by some unfortunate combination of circumstances, the personal relations of yourself and professor henry are not pleasant. i deplore this, and it would be an intense satisfaction to me if i could be the humble means of bringing about a harmonious and honorable adjustment of the differences which separate you. i write this without conference with professor henry or his friends. i do it impartially, first, in the line of my duty as editor (but not now officially); second, as a lover of science; third, with a patriotic desire to secure as much as justly can be for the scientific reputation of the country; and fourth, with a desire to promote harmony between all who are concerned in increasing and disseminating knowledge, and particularly between such sincere lovers of truth and justice as i believe both yourself and professor henry to be. "i do not find that professor henry anywhere makes a claim which trenches upon your claim of first using the electro-magnet for writing or printing at a distance--the telegraph as distinguished from the semaphore. this he cannot claim, for he acknowledges it to be yours. you, on the other hand, do not claim the semaphoric use of electricity. i therefore do not see any obstacle to an honorable adjustment of the differences which separate you, and which, perhaps, make you disinclined to freely associate professor henry's name with those of other promoters of electrical science. "your report presents a fitting opportunity to effect this result. a magnanimous recognition by you of professor henry's important contributions to the science of electro-magnetism appears to me to be all that is necessary. they can be most appropriately and gracefully acknowledged in your report, and you will gain rather than lose by so doing. such action on your part would do more than anything else could to secure for you the good will of all men of science, and to hasten a universal and generous accord of all the credit for your great gift to civilization that you can properly desire. "now, my dear sir, with this frank statement of my views on this point, i accept your invitation, and will go to see you at your house to talk with you upon this point and others, perhaps more agreeable, but if, after this expression of my inclinations, you will not deem me a welcome guest, telegraph me not to come--i will not take it unkindly." to this morse replied on august : "your most acceptable letter, with the tone and spirit of which i am most gratified, is just received, for which accept my thanks. i shall be most happy to see you and freely to communicate with you on the subject mentioned, and with the sincere desire of a satisfactory result." the visit was paid, but the details of the conversation have not been preserved. however, we find in morse's report, on page , the following: "in , mr. sturgeon, of england, made the first electro-magnet in the horseshoe form by loosely winding a piece of iron wire with a spiral of copper wire. in the united states, as early as , the experimental researches of professor joseph henry were of great importance in advancing the science of electro-magnetism. he may be said to have carried the electro-magnet, in its lifting powers, to its greatest perfection. reflecting upon the principle of professor schweigger's galvanometer, he constructed magnets in which great power could be developed by a very small galvanic element. his published paper in shows that he experimented with wires of different lengths, and he noted the amount of magnetism which could be induced through them at various lengths by means of batteries composed of a single element, and also of many elements. he states that the magnetic action of 'a current from a trough composed of many pairs is at least not sensibly diminished by passing through a long wire,' and he incidentally noted the bearing of this fact upon the project of an electro-magnetic telegraph [semaphore?]. "in more recent papers, first published in , it appears that professor henry demonstrated before his pupils the practicability of ringing a bell, by means of electro-magnetism, at a distance." whether professor blake was satisfied with this change from the original manuscript is not recorded. morse evidently thought that he had made the _amende honorable_, but henry, coldly proud man that he was, still held aloof from a reconciliation, for i have been informed that he even refused to be present at the memorial services held in washington after the death of morse. in a letter of may , , to dr. leonard gale, some interesting facts concerning the reading by sound are given:-- "the fact that the lever action of the earliest instrument of by its click gave the sound of the numerals, as embodied in the original type, is well known, nor is there anything so remarkable in that result.... when you first saw the instrument in this was so obvious that it scarcely excited more than a passing remark, but, after the adaptation of the dot and space, with the addition of the line or dash, in forming the alphabetic signs (which, as well as i can remember, was about the same date, late in or early in ) then i noticed that the different letters had each their own individual sounds, and could also be distinguished from each other by the sound. the fact did not then appear to me to be of any great importance, seeming to be more curious than useful, yet, in reflecting upon it, it seemed desirable to secure this result by specifying it in my letters patent, lest it might be used as an _evasion_ in indicating my novel alphabet without recording it. hence the _sounds_ as well as the imprinted signs were specified in my letters patent. "as to the time when these sounds were _practically_ used, i am unable to give a precise date. i have a distinct recollection of one case, and proximately the date of it. the time of the incident was soon after the line was extended from philadelphia to washington, having a way station at wilmington, delaware. the washington office was in the old post-office, in the room above it. i was in the operating room. the instruments were for a moment silent. i was standing at some distance near the fireplace conversing with mr. washington, the operator, who was by my side. presently one of the instruments commenced writing and mr. washington listened and smiled. i asked him why he smiled. 'oh!' said he, 'that is zantzinger of the philadelphia office, but he is operating from wilmington.' 'how do you know that?' 'oh! i know his touch, but i must ask him why he is in wilmington.' he then went to the instrument and telegraphed to zantzinger at wilmington, and the reply was that he had been sent from philadelphia to regulate the relay magnet for the wilmington operator, who was inexperienced in operating.... "i give this instance, not because it was the _first_, but because it is one which i had specially treasured in my memory and frequently related as illustrative of the practicality of reading by _sound_ as well as by the written record. this must have occurred about the year ." a serious accident befell the aged inventor, now seventy-nine years old, in july, . he slipped on the stairs of his country house and fell with all his weight on his left leg, which was broken in two places. this mishap confined him to his bed for three months, and many feared that, owing to his advanced age, it would be fatal. but, thanks to his vigorous constitution and his temperate life, he recovered completely. he bore this affliction with christian fortitude. in a letter to his brother sidney, of august , he says: "the healing process in my leg is very slow. the doctor, who has just left me, condemns me to a fortnight more of close confinement. i have other troubles, for they come not singly, but all is for the best." troubles, indeed, came not singly, for, in addition to sorrows of a domestic nature, his friends one by one were taken from him by death, and on november , , he writes to william stickney, esq., son-in-law of amos kendall:-- "although prepared by recent notices in the papers to expect the sad news, which a telegram this moment received announces to me, of the death of my excellent, long-tried friend mr. kendall, i confess that the intelligence has come with a shock which has quite unnerved me. i feel the loss as of a _father_ rather than of a brother in age, for he was one in whom i confided as a father, so sure was i of affectionate and sound advice.... "i need not tell you how deeply i feel this sad bereavement. i am truly and severely bereaved in the loss of such a friend, a friend, indeed, upon whose faithfulness and unswerving integrity i have ever reposed with perfect confidence, a confidence which has never been betrayed, and a friend to whose energy and skill, in the conduct of the agency which i had confided to him, i owe (under god) the comparative comfort which a kind providence has permitted me to enjoy in my advanced age." in the following year he was called upon to mourn the death of still another of his good friends, for, on august , , george wood died very suddenly at saratoga. while much of sadness and sorrow clouded the evening of the life of this truly great man, the sun, ere it sank to rest, tinged the clouds with a glory seldom vouchsafed to a mortal, for he was to see a statue erected to him while he was yet living. of many men it has been said that-- "wanting bread they receive only a stone, and not even that until long after they have been starved to death." it was morse's good fortune not only to see the child of his brain grow to a sturdy manhood, but to be honored during his lifetime to a truly remarkable degree. the project of a memorial of some sort to the inventor of the telegraph was first broached by robert b. hoover, manager of the western union telegraph office, allegheny city, pennsylvania. the idea once started spread with the rapidity of the electric fluid itself, and, under the able management of james d. reid, a fund was raised, partly by dollar subscriptions largely made by telegraph operators all over the country, including canada, and it was decided that the testimonial should take the form of a bronze statue to be erected in central park, new york. byron m. pickett was chosen as the sculptor, and the park commission readily granted permission to place the statue in the park. it was at first hoped that the unveiling might take place on the th of april, , morse's eightieth birthday; but unavoidable delays arose, and it was not until the th of june that everything was in readiness. it was a perfect june day and the hundreds of telegraphers from all parts of the country, with their families, spent the forenoon in a steamboat excursion around the city. in the afternoon crowds flocked to the park where, near what is now called the "inventor's gate," the statue stood in the angle between two platforms for the invited guests. morse himself refused to attend the ceremonies of the unveiling of his counterfeit presentment, as being too great a strain on his innate modesty. some persons and some papers said that he was present, but, as mr. james d. reid says in his "telegraph in america," "mr. morse was incapable of such an indelicacy.... men of refinement and modesty would justly have marvelled had they seen him in such a place." at about four o'clock the governor of new york, john t. hoffman, delivered the opening address, saying, in the course of his speech: "in our day a new era has dawned. again, for the second time in the history of the world, the power of language is increased by human agency. thanks to samuel f.b. morse men speak to one another now, though separated by the width of the earth, with the lightning's speed and as if standing face to face. if the inventor of the alphabet be deserving of the highest honors, so is he whose great achievement marks this epoch in the history of language--the inventor of the electric telegraph. we intend, so far as in us lies, that the men who come after us shall be at no loss to discover his name for want of recorded testimony." governor claflin, of massachusetts, and william orton, president of the western union telegraph company, then drew aside the drapery amidst the cheers and applause of the multitude, while the governor's island band played the "star-spangled banner." william cullen bryant, who was an early friend of the inventor, then presented the statue to the city in an eloquent address, from which i shall quote the following words:-- "it may be said, i know, that the civilized world is already full of memorials which speak the merit of our friend and the grandeur and utility of his invention. every telegraphic station is such a memorial. every message sent from one of these stations to another may be counted among the honors paid to his name. every telegraphic wire strung from post to post, as it hums in the wind, murmurs his eulogy. every sheaf of wires laid down in the deep sea, occupying the bottom of soundless abysses to which human sight has never penetrated, and carrying the electric pulse, charged with the burden of human thought, from continent to continent, from the old world to the new, is a testimonial to his greatness.... the latin inscription in the church of st. paul's in london, referring to sir christopher wren, its architect,--'if you would behold his monument, look around you,'--may be applied in a far more comprehensive sense to our friend, since the great globe itself has become his monument." the mayor of new york, a. oakey hall, accepted the statue in a short speech, and, after a prayer by the reverend stephen h. tyng, d.d., the assembled multitude joined in singing the doxology, and the ceremonies at the park were ended. but other honors still awaited the venerable inventor, for, on the evening of that day, the old academy of music on fourteenth street was packed with a dense throng gathered together to listen to eulogies on this benefactor of his race, and to hear him bid farewell to his children of the telegraph. a table was placed in the centre of the stage on which was the original instrument used on the first line from washington to baltimore. this was connected with all the lines of telegraph extending to all parts of the world. the honorable william orton presided, and, after the reverend howard crosby had opened the ceremonies with prayer, speeches were delivered by mr. orton, dr. george b. loring, of salem, and the reverend dr. george w. samson. at nine o'clock mr. orton announced that all lines were clear for the farewell message of the inventor to his children; that this message would be flashed to thousands of waiting operators all over the world, and that answers would be received during the course of the evening. the pleasant task of sending the message had been delegated to miss sadie e. cornwell, a skilful young operator of attractive personality, and morse himself was to manipulate the key which sent his name, in the dots and dashes of his own alphabet, over the wires. the vast audience was hushed into absolute silence as miss cornwell clicked off the message which morse had composed for the occasion: "greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity throughout the world. glory to god in the highest, on earth peace, good will to men." as mr. orton escorted morse to the table a tremendous burst of applause broke out, but was silenced by a gesture from the presiding officer, and again the great audience was still. slowly the inventor spelled out the letters of his name, the click of the instrument being clearly heard in every part of the house, and as clearly understood by the hundreds of telegraphers present, so that without waiting for the final dot, which typified the letter e, the whole vast assembly rose amid deafening cheers and the waving of handkerchiefs. it was an inspiring moment, and the venerable man was almost overcome by his emotions, and sat for some time with his head buried in his hands, striving to regain his self-control. when the excitement had somewhat subsided, mr. orton said: "thus the father of the telegraph bids farewell to his children." the current was then switched to an instrument behind the scenes, and answers came pouring in, first from near-by towns and cities, and then from new orleans, quebec, san francisco, halifax, havana, and finally from hongkong, bombay, and singapore. mr. reid has given a detailed account of these messages in his "telegraph in america," but i shall not pause to reproduce them here; neither shall i quote from the eloquent speeches which followed, delivered by general n.p. banks, the reverend h.m. gallagher, g.k. walcott, and james d. reid. after miss antoinette sterling had sung "auld lang syne," to the great delight of the audience, who recalled her several times, chief justice charles p. daly introduced professor morse in an appropriate address. as the white-haired inventor, in whose honor this great demonstration had been organized, stepped forward to deliver his, valedictory, he was greeted with another round of cheering and applause. at first almost overcome by emotion, he soon recovered his self-control, and he read his address in a clear, resonant voice which carried to every part of the house. the address was a long one, and as most of it is but a recapitulation of what has been already given, i shall only quote from it in part:-- "friends and children of the telegraph,--when i was solicited to be present this evening, in compliance with the wishes of those who, with such zeal and success, responded to the suggestion of one of your number that a commemorative statue should be erected in our unrivaled park, and which has this day been placed in position and unveiled, i hesitated to comply. not that i did not feel a wish in person to return to you my heartfelt thanks for this unique proof of your personal regard, but truly from a fear that i could use no terms which would adequately express my appreciation of your kindness. whatever i say must fall short of expressing the grateful feelings or conflicting emotions which agitate me on an occasion so unexampled in the history of invention. gladly would i have shrunk from this public demonstration were it not that my absence to-night, under the circumstances, might be construed into an apathy which i do not feel, and which your overpowering kindness would justly rebuke.... "you have chosen to impersonate in my humble effigy an invention which, cradled upon the ocean, had its birth in an american ship. it was nursed and cherished not so much from personal as from patriotic motives. forecasting its future, even at its birth, my most powerful stimulus to perseverance through all the perils and trials of its early days--and they were neither few nor insignificant--was the thought that it must inevitably be world-wide in its application, and, moreover, that it would everywhere be hailed as a grateful american gift to the nations. it is in this aspect of the present occasion that i look upon your proceedings as intended, not so much as homage to an individual, as to the invention, 'whose lines [from america] have gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.' "in the carrying-out of any plan of improvement, however grand or feasible, no single individual could possibly accomplish it without the aid of others. we are none of us so powerful that we can dispense with the assistance, in various departments of the work, of those whose experience and knowledge must supply the needed aid of their expertness. it is not sufficient that a brilliant project be proposed, that its modes of accomplishment are foreseen and properly devised; there are, in every part of the enterprise, other minds and other agencies to be consulted for information and counsel to perfect the whole plan. the chief justice, in delivering the decision of the supreme court, says: 'it can make no difference whether he [the inventor] derives his information from books or from conversation with men skilled in the science.' and: 'the fact that morse sought and obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best sources, and acted upon it, neither impairs his rights as an inventor nor detracts from his merits.' "the inventor must seek and employ the skilled mechanician in his workshop to put the invention into practical form, and for this purpose some pecuniary means are required as well as mechanical skill. both these were at hand. alfred vail, of morristown, new jersey, with his father and brother, came to the help of the unclothed infant, and with their funds and mechanical skill put it into a condition to appear before the congress of the nation. to these new jersey friends is due the first important aid in the progress of the invention. aided also by the talent and scientific skill of professor gale, my esteemed colleague in the university, the telegraph appeared in washington in , a suppliant for the means to demonstrate its power. to the honorable f.o.j. smith, then chairman of the house committee of commerce, belongs the credit of a just appreciation of the new invention, and of a zealous advocacy of an experimental essay, and the inditing of an admirably written report in its favor, signed by every member of the committee.... to ezra cornell, whose noble benefactions to his state and the country have placed his name by the side of cooper and peabody high on the roll of public benefactors, is due the credit of early and effective aid in the superintendence and erection of the first public line of telegraph ever established." after paying tribute to the names of amos kendall, cyrus field, volta, oersted, arago, schweigger, gauss and weber, steinheil, daniell, grove, cooke, dana, henry, and others, he continued:-- "there is not a name i have mentioned, and many whom i have not mentioned, whose career in science or experience in mechanical and engineering and nautical tactics, or in financial practice, might not be the theme of volumes rather than of brief mention in an ephemeral address. "to-night you have before you a sublime proof of the grand progress of the telegraph in its march round the globe. it is but a few days since that our veritable antipodes became telegraphically united to us. we can speak to and receive an answer in a few seconds of time from hongkong in china, where ten o'clock to-night here is ten o'clock in the day there, and it is, perhaps, a debatable question whether their ten o'clock is ten to-day or ten to-morrow. china and new york are in interlocutory communication. we know the fact, but can imagination realize the fact? "but i must not further trespass on your patience at this late hour. i cannot close without the expression of my cordial thanks to my long-known, long-tried and honored friend reid, whose unwearied labors early contributed so effectively to the establishment of telegraph lines, and who, in a special manner as chairman of your memorial fund, has so faithfully, and successfully, and admirably carried to completion your flattering design. to the eminent governors of this state and the state of massachusetts, who have given to this demonstration their honored presence; to my excellent friend the distinguished orator of the day; to the mayor and city authorities of new york; to the park commissioners; to the officers and managers of the various, and even rival, telegraph companies, who have so cordially united on this occasion; to the numerous citizens, ladies and gentlemen; and, though last not least, to every one of my large and increasing family of telegraph children who have honored me with the proud title of father, i tender my cordial thanks." chapter xl june , --april , nearing the end.--estimate of the reverend f.b. wheeler.--early poem.-- leaves "locust grove" for last time.--death of his brother sidney.-- letter to cyrus field on neutrality of telegraph.--letter of f.o.j. smith to h.j. rogers.--reply by professor gale.--vicious attack by f.o.j. smith.--death prevents reply by morse.--unveils statue of franklin in last public appearance.--last hours.--death.--tributes of james d. reid, new york "evening post," new york "herald," and louisville "courier-journal."--funeral.--monument in greenwood cemetery.--memorial services in house of representatives, washington.--address of james g. blaine.--other memorial services.--mr. prime's review of morse's character.--epilogue. the excitement caused by all these enthusiastic demonstrations in his honor told upon the inventor both physically and mentally, as we learn from a letter of june , , to his daughter mrs. lind and her husband:-- "so fatigued that i can scarcely keep my eyes open, i nevertheless, before retiring to my bed, must drop you a line of enquiry to know what is your condition. we have only heard of your arrival and of your first unfavorable impressions. i hope these latter are removed, and that you are both benefiting by change of air and the waters of the clifton springs. "you know how, in the last few days, we have all been overwhelmed with unusual cares. the grand ceremonies of the park and the academy of music are over, but have left me in a good-for-nothing condition. everything went off splendidly, indeed, as you will learn from the papers.... i find it more difficult to bear up with the overwhelming praise that is poured out without measure, than with the trials of my former life. there is something so remarkable in this universal laudation that the effect on me, strange as it may seem, is rather depressing than exhilarating. "when i review my past life and see the way in which i have been led, i am so convinced of the faithfulness of god in answer to the prayers of faith, which i have been enabled in times of trial to offer to him, that i find the temper of my mind is to constant praise: 'bless the lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits!' is ever recurring to me. it is doubtless this continued referring all to him that prevents this universal demonstration of kindly feeling from puffing me up with the false notion that i am anything but the feeblest of instruments. i cannot give you any idea of the peculiar feelings which gratify and yet oppress me." he had planned to cross the ocean once more, partly as a delegate to russia from the evangelical alliance, and partly to see whether it would not be possible to induce prussia and switzerland and other european nations, from whom he had as yet received no pecuniary remuneration, to do him simple justice. but, for various reasons, this trip was abandoned, and from those nations he never received anything but medals and praise. so the last summer of the aged inventor's life was spent at his beloved locust grove, not free from care and anxiety, as he so well deserved, but nevertheless, thanks to his christian philosophy, in comparative serenity and happiness. his pastor in poughkeepsie, the reverend f.b. wheeler, says of him in a letter to mr. prune: "in his whole character and in all his relations he was one of the most remarkable men of his age. he was one who drew all who came in contact with him to his heart, disarming all prejudices, silencing all cavil. in his family he was light, life, and love; with those in his employ he was ever considerate and kind, never exacting and harsh, but honorable and just, seeking the good of every dependent; in the community he was a pillar of strength and beauty, commanding the homage of universal respect; in the church he walked with god and men." that he was a man of great versatility has been shown, in the recital of his activities as artist, inventor, and writer; that he had no mean ability as a poet is also on record. on january , , he says in a letter to his cousin, mrs. thomas r. walker: "some years ago, when both of us were younger, i remember addressing to you a trifle entitled 'the serenade,' which, on being shown to mr. verplanck, was requested for publication in the 'talisman,' edited and conducted by him and mr. sands. i have not seen a copy of that work for many years, and have preserved no copy of 'the serenade.' if you have a copy i should be pleased to have it." he was delicately discreet in saying "some years ago," for this poem was written in as the result of a wager between morse and his young cousin, he having asserted that he could write poetry as well as paint pictures, and requesting her to give him a theme. it seems that the young lady had been paid the compliment of a serenade a few nights previously, but she had, most unromantically, slept through it all, so she gave as her theme "the serenade," and the next day morse produced the following poem:-- the serenade haste! 't is the stillest hour of night, the moon sheds down her palest light, and sleep has chained the lake and hill, the wood, the plain, the babbling rill; and where yon ivied lattice shows my fair one slumbers in repose. come, ye that know the lovely maid, and help prepare the serenade. hither, before the night is flown, bring instruments of every tone. but lest with noise ye wake, not lull, her dreaming fancy, ye must cull such only as shall soothe the mind and leave the harshest all behind. bring not the thundering drum, nor yet the harshly-shrieking clarionet, nor screaming hautboy, trumpet shrill, nor clanging cymbals; but, with skill, exclude each one that would disturb the fairy architects, or curb the wild creations of their mirth, all that would wake the soul to earth. choose ye the softly-breathing-flute, the mellow horn, the loving lute; the viol you must not forget, and take the sprightly flageolet and grave bassoon; choose too the fife, whose warblings in the tuneful strife, mingling in mystery with the words, may seem like notes of blithest birds. are ye prepared? now lightly tread as if by elfin minstrels led, and fling no sound upon the air shall rudely wake my slumbering fair. softly! now breathe the symphony, so gently breathe the tones may vie in softness with the magic notes in visions heard; music that floats so buoyant that it well may seem, with strains ethereal in her dream, one song of such mysterious birth she doubts it comes from heaven or earth. play on! my loved one slumbers still. play on! she wakes not with the thrill of joy produced by strains so mild, but fancy moulds them gay and wild. now, as the music low declines, 't is sighing of the forest pines; or 't is the fitful, varied war of distant falls or troubled shore. now, as the tone grows full or sharp, 't is whispering of the Æolian harp. the viol swells, now low, now loud, 't is spirits chanting on a cloud that passes by. it dies away; so gently dies she scarce can say 't is gone; listens; 't is lost she fears; listens, and thinks again she hears. as dew drops mingling in a stream to her 't is all one blissful dream, a song of angels throned in light. softly! away! fair one, good-night. in the autumn of morse returned with his family to new york, and it is recorded that, with an apparent premonition that he should never see his beloved locust grove again, he ordered the carriage to stop as he drove out of the gate, and, standing up, looked long and lovingly at the familiar scene before telling the coachman to drive on. and as he passed the rural cemetery on the way to the station he exclaimed: "beautiful! beautiful! but i shall not lie there. i have prepared a place elsewhere." not long after his return to the city death once more laid its heavy hand upon him in the loss of his sole surviving brother, sidney. while this was a crushing blow, for these two brothers had been peculiarly attached to each other, he bore it with christian resignation, confident that the separation would be for a short time only--"we must soon follow, i also am over eighty years, and am waiting till my change comes." but his mind was active to the very end, and he never ceased to do all in his power for the welfare of mankind. one of the last letters written by him on a subject of public importance was sent on december , , to cyrus field, who was then attending an important telegraphic convention in rome:-- "excuse my delay in writing you. the excitement occasioned by the visit of the grand duke alexis has but just ceased, and i have been wholly engrossed by the various duties connected with his presence. i have wished for a few calm moments to put on paper some thoughts respecting the doings of the great telegraphic convention to which you are a delegate. "the telegraph has now assumed such a marvellous position in human affairs throughout the world, its influences are so great and important in all the varied concerns of nations, that its efficient protection from injury has become a necessity. it is a powerful advocate for universal peace. not that of itself it can command a 'peace, be still!' to the angry waves of human passions, but that, by its rapid interchange of thought and opinion, it gives the opportunity of explanations to acts and to laws which, in their ordinary wording, often create doubt and suspicion. were there no means of quick explanation it is readily seen that doubt and suspicion, working on the susceptibilities of the public mind, would engender misconception, hatred and strife. how important then that, in the intercourse of nations, there should be the ready means at hand for prompt correction and explanation. "could there not be passed in the great international convention some resolution to the effect that, in whatever condition, whether of peace or war between the nations, the telegraph should be deemed a sacred thing, to be by common consent effectually protected both on the land and beneath the waters? "in the interest of human happiness, of that 'peace on earth' which, in announcing the advent of the saviour, the angels proclaimed with 'good will to men,' i hope that the convention will not adjourn without adopting a resolution asking of the nations their united, effective protection to this great agent of civilization." richly as he deserved that his sun should set in an unclouded sky, this was not to be. sorrows of a most intimate nature crowded upon him. he was also made the victim of a conscienceless swindler who fleeced him of many thousand dollars, and, to crown all, his old and indefatigable enemy, f.o.j. smith, administered a cowardly thrust in the back when his weakening powers prevented him from defending himself with his oldtime vigor. from a very long letter written by smith on december , , to henry j. rogers in washington, i shall quote only the first sentences:-- dear sir,--in my absence your letter of the th ult. was received here, with the printed circular of the national monumental society, in reply to which i feel constrained to say if that highly laudable association resolves "to erect at the national capital of the united states a memorial monument" to symbolize in statuary of colossal proportions the "history of the electromagnetic telegraph," before that history has been authentically written, it is my conviction: that the statue most worthy to stand upon the pedestal of such monument would be that of the man of true science, who explored the laws of nature ahead of all other men, and was "the first to wrest electron-magnetism from nature's embrace and make it a missionary to, the cause of human progress," and that man is professor joseph henry, of the smithsonian institution. professor morse and his early coadjutors would more appropriately occupy, in groups of high relief, the sides of that pedestal, symbolizing, by their established merits and cooperative works, the grandeur of the researches and resulting discoveries of their leader and chief, who was the first to announce and to demonstrate to a despairing world, by actual mechanical agencies, the practicability of; an electro-magnetic telegraph through any distances. much more of the same flatulent bombast follows which it will not be necessary to introduce here. while morse himself naturally felt some delicacy in noticing such an attack as this, he found a willing, and efficient champion in his old friend (and the friend of henry as well) professor leonard d. gale, who writes to him on january , :-- "i have lately seen a mean, unfair, and villainous letter of f.o.j. smith, addressed to h.j. rogers (officer of the morse monumental association), alleging that the place on the monument designed to be occupied by the statue of morse, should be awarded to henry; that morse was not a scientific man, etc., etc. it was written in his own peculiar style. the allegations were so outrageous that i felt it my duty to reply to it without delay. as smith's letter was to rogers, as an officer of the association, i sent my reply to the same person. i enclose a copy herewith. "mrs. gale suggests an additional figure to the group on the monument--a serpent with the face of f.o.j.s., biting the heel of morse, but with the fangs extracted." professor gale's letter to henry j. rogers is worthy of being quoted in full:-- "i have just read a letter from f.o.j. smith, dated december , , addressed to you, and designed to throw discredit on morse's invention of the telegraph, the burden of which seems to be rebuke to the designer of the monument, for elevating morse to the apex of the monument and claiming for professor j. henry, of the smithsonian institution, that high distinction. "the first question of an impartial inquirer is: 'to which of these gentlemen is the honor due?' to ascertain this we will ask a second question: 'was the subject of the invention a _machine_, or was it _a new fact in science_?' the answer is: 'it was a _machine_.' the first was morse's, the latter was henry's. henry stated that electric currents might be sent through long distances applicable to telegraphic purposes. morse took the facts as they then existed, invented a machine, harnessed the steed therein, and set the creature to work. there is honor due to henry for his great discovery of the scientific principle; there is honor also due to morse for his invention of the ingenious machine which accomplishes the work. "men of science regard the discovery of a new fact in science as a higher attainment than the application of it to useful purposes, while the world at large regards the _application_ of the principle or fact in science to the useful arts as of paramount importance. all honor to the discoverer of a new fact in science; equal honor to him who utilizes that fact for the benefit of mankind. "has the world forgotten what robert fulton did for the navigation of the waters by steamboats? it was he who first applied steam to propel a vessel and navigated the hudson for the first time with steam and paddle-wheels and vessel in . do not we honor him as the father of steamboats? yet fulton did not invent steam, nor the steam-engine, nor paddle-wheels, nor the vessel. he merely adapted a steam-engine to a vessel armed with paddle-wheels. the combination was his invention. "there is another example on record. cyrus h. mccormick, the father of the reaping and mowing machine, took out the first successful patent in , and is justly acknowledged the world over as the inventor of this great machine. although one hundred and forty-six patents were granted in england previous to mccormick's time, they are but so many unsuccessful efforts to perfect a practical machine. the cutting apparatus, the device to raise and lower the cutters, the levers, the platform, the wheels, the framework, had all been used before mccormick's time. but mccormick was the first genius able to put these separate devices together in a practical, harmonious operation. the combination was his invention. "morse did more. he invented the form of the various parts of his machine as well as their combination; he was the first to put such a machine into practical operation; and for such a purpose who can question his title as the inventor of the electric telegraph?" to the letter of professor gale, morse replied on january :-- "thank you sincerely for your effective interference in my favor in the recent, but not unexpected, attack of f.o.j.s. i will, so soon as i can free myself from some very pressing matters, write you more fully on the subject. yet i can add nothing to your perfectly clear exposition of the difference between a discovery of a principle in science and its application to a useful purpose. as for smith's suggestion of putting henry on the top of the proposed monument, i can hardly suppose professor h. would feel much gratification on learning the character of his zealous advocate. it is simply a matter of spite; carrying out his intense and smothered antipathy to me, and not for any particular regard for professor h. "as i have had nothing to do with the proposed monument, i have no feeling on the subject. if they who have the direction of that monument think the putting of professor h. on the apex will meet the applause of the public, including the expressed opinion of the entire world, by all means put him there. i certainly shall make no complaint." the monument was never erected, and this effort of smith's to humiliate morse proved abortive. but his spite did not end there, as we learn from the following letter written by morse on february , , to the reverend aspinwall hodge, of hartford, connecticut, the husband of one of his nieces:-- "some unknown person has sent me the advance sheets of a work (the pages between and ) publishing in hartford, the title of which is not given, but i think is something like 'the great industries of the united states.' the pages sent me are entitled 'the american magnetic telegraph.' they contain the most atrocious and vile attack upon me which has ever appeared in print. i shall be glad to learn who are the publishers of this work, what are the characters of the publishers, and whether they will give me the name or names of the author or authors of this diatribe, and whether they vouch for the character of those who furnished the article for their work. "i know well enough, indeed, who the libellers are and their motives, which arise from pure spite and revenge for having been legally defeated parties in cases relating to the telegraph before the courts. to you i can say the concocters of this tirade are f.o.j. smith, of bad notoriety, and henry o'reilly. "are the publishers responsible men, and are they aware of the character of those who have given them that article, particularly the moral character of smith, notorious for his debaucheries and condemned in court for subornation of perjury, and one of the most revengeful men, who has artfully got up this tirade because my agent, the late honorable amos kendall, was compelled to resist his unrighteous claim upon me for some $ , which, after repeated trials lasting some twelve years, was at length, by a decision of the supreme court of the united states, decided against him, and he was adjudged to owe me some $ , ? "mr. kendall, previous to his decease, managed the case which has thus resulted. the necessity of seizing some property of his in the city of williamsburg, through the course of the legal proceedings, has aroused his revengeful feelings, and he has openly threatened that he would be revenged upon me for it, and he has for two or three years past with o'reilly been concocting this mode of revenge. "if the publishers are respectable men, i think they will regret that they have been the dupes of these arch conspirators. if not too late to suppress that article i should be glad of an interview with them, in which i will satisfy them that they have been most egregiously imposed upon." this was the last flash of that old fire which, when he was sufficiently aroused by righteous indignation at unjust attacks, had enabled him to strike out vigorously in self-defense, and had won him many a victory. he was now nearing the end of his physical resources. he had fought the good fight and he had no misgivings as to the verdict of posterity on his achievements. he could fight no more, willing and mentally able though he was to confound his enemies again. he must leave it to others to defend his fame and good name in the future. the last letter which was copied into his letter-press book was written on march , not three weeks before the last summons came to him, and it refers to his old enemy who thus pursued him even to the brink of the grave. it is addressed to f.j. mead, esq.:-- "although forbidden to read or write by my physician, who finds me prostrate with a severe attack of neuralgia in the head, i yet must thank you for your kind letter of the th inst. "i should be much gratified to know what part professor henry has taken, if any, in this atrocious and absurd attack of f.o.j.s. i have no fears of the result, but no desire either to suspect any agency on the part of professor henry. it is difficult for me to conceive that a man in his position should not see the true position of the matter." this vicious attack had no effect upon his fame. dying as soon as it was born, choked by its own venom, it was overwhelmed by the wave of sorrow and sympathy which swept over the earth at the announcement of the death of the great inventor. his last public appearance was on january , , when he, in company with horace greeley, unveiled the statue of benjamin franklin in printing house square, new york. it was a very cold day, but, against the advice of his physician and his family, he insisted on being present. as he drove up in his carriage and, escorted by the committee, ascended to the platform, he was loudly cheered by the multitude which had assembled. standing uncovered in the biting air, he delivered the following short address:-- "mr. de groot and fellow-citizens,--i esteem it one of my highest honors that i should have been designated to perform the office of unveiling this day the fine statue of our illustrious and immortal franklin. when requested to accept this duty i was confined to my bed, but i could not refuse, and i said: 'yes, if i have to be lifted to the spot!' "franklin needs no eulogy from me. no one has more reason to venerate his name than myself. may his illustrious example of devotion to the interest of universal humanity be the seed of further fruit for the good of the world." morse was to have been an honored guest at the banquet in the evening, where in the speeches his name was coupled with that of franklin as one of the great benefactors of mankind; but, yielding to the wishes of his family, he remained at home. he had all his life been a sufferer from severe headaches, and now these neuralgic pains increased in severity, no doubt aggravated by his exposure at the unveiling. when the paroxysms were upon him he walked the floor in agony, pressing his hands to his temples; but these seizures were, mercifully, not continuous, and he still wrote voluminous letters, and tried to solve the problems which were thrust upon him, even to the end. one of the last acts of his life was to go down town with his youngest son, whose birthday was the th of march, to purchase for him his first gold watch, and that watch the son still carries, a precious memento of his father. gradually the pains in the head grew less severe, but great weakness followed, and he was compelled to keep to his bed, sinking into a peaceful, painless unconsciousness relieved by an occasional flash of his old vigor. to his pastor, reverend dr. william adams, he expressed his gratitude for the goodness of god to him, but added: "the best is yet to come." he roused himself on the th of march, the birthday of his son, kissing him and gazing with pleasure on a drawing sent to the boy by his cousin, mary goodrich, pronouncing it excellent. shortly before the end pneumonia set in, and one of the attending physicians, tapping on his chest, said "this is the way we doctors telegraph"; and the dying man, with a momentary gleam of the old humor lighting up his fading eyes, whispered, "very good." these were the last words spoken by him. from a letter written by one who was present at his bedside to another member of the family i shall quote a few words: "he is fast passing away. it is touching to see him so still, so unconscious of all that is passing, waiting for death. he has suffered much with neuralgia of the head, increased of late by a miserable pamphlet by f.o.j.s. poor dear man! strange that they could not leave him in peace in his old age. but now all sorrow is forgotten. he lies quiet infant. heaven is opening to him with its peace and perfect rest. the doctor calls his sickness 'exhaustion of the brain.' he looks very handsome; the light of heaven seems shining on his beautiful eyes." on april , consciousness returned for a few moments and he recognized his wife and those around him with a smile, but without being able to speak. then he gradually sank to sleep and on the next day he gently breathed his last. his faithful and loving friend, james d. reid, in the journal of the telegraph, of which he was editor, paid tribute to his memory in the following touching words:-- "in the ripeness and mellow sunshine of the end of an honored and protracted life professor morse, the father of the american telegraph system, our own beloved friend and father, has gone to his rest. the telegraph, the child of his own brain, has long since whispered to every home in all the civilized world that the great inventor has passed away. men, as they pass each other on the street, say, with the subdued voice of personal sorrow, 'morse is dead.' yet to us he lives. if he is dead it is only to those who did not know him. "it is not the habit of ardent affection to be garrulous in the excitement of such an occasion as this. it would fain gaze on the dead face in silence. the pen, conscious of its weakness, hesitates in its work of endeavoring to reveal that which the heart can alone interpret in a language sacred to itself, and by tears no eye may ever see. for such reason we, who have so much enjoyed the sweetness of the presence of this venerable man, now so calm in his last sacred sleep, to whom he often came, with his cheerful and gentle ways, as to a son, so confiding of his heart's tenderest thoughts, so free in the expression of his hopes of the life beyond, find difficulty in making the necessary record of his decease. we can only tell what the world has already known by the everywhere present wires, that, on the evening of tuesday, april , professor morse, in the beautiful serenity of christian hope, after a life extended beyond fourscore years, folded his hands upon his breast and bade the earth, and generation, and nation he had honored, farewell." in the "evening post," probably from the pen of his old friend william cullen bryant, was the following:-- "the name of morse will always stand in the foremost rank of the great inventors, each of whom has changed the face of society and given a new direction to the growth of civilization by the application to the arts of one great thought. it will always be read side by side with those of gutenberg and schoeffer, or watt and fulton. this eminence he fairly earned by one splendid invention. but none who knew the man will be satisfied to let this world-wide and forever growing monument be the sole record of his greatness. "had he never thought of the telegraph he would still receive, in death, the highest honors friendship and admiration can offer to distinguished and varied abilities, associated with a noble character. in early life he showed the genius of a truly great artist. in after years he exercised all the powers of a masterly scientific investigator. throughout his career he was eminent for the loftiness of his aims, for his resolute faith in the strength of truth, for his capacity to endure and to wait; and for his fidelity alike to his convictions and to his friends. "his intellectual eminence was limited to no one branch of human effort, but, in the judgment of men who knew him best, he had endowments which might have made him, had he not been the chief of inventors, the most powerful of advocates, the boldest and most effective of artists, the most discerning of scientific physicians, or an administrative officer worthy of the highest place and of the best days in american history." the new york "herald" said:-- "morse was, perhaps, the most illustrious american of his age. looking over the expanse of the ages, we think more earnestly and lovingly of cadmus, who gave us the alphabet; of archimedes, who invented the lever; of euclid, with his demonstrations in geometry; of faust, who taught us how to print; of watt, with his development of steam, than of the resonant orators who inflamed the passions of mankind, and the gallant chieftains who led mankind to war. we decorate history with our napoleons and wellingtons, but it was better for the world that steam was demonstrated to be an active, manageable force, than that a french emperor and his army should win the battle of austerlitz. and when a napoleon of peace, like the dead morse, has passed away, and we come to sum up his life, we gladly see that the world is better, society more generous and enlarged, and mankind nearer the ultimate fulfillment of its earthly mission because he lived; and did the work that was in him." the louisville "courier-journal" went even higher in its praise:-- "if it is legitimate to measure a man by the magnitude of his achievements, the greatest man of the nineteenth century is dead. some days ago the electric current brought us the intelligence that s.f.b. morse was smitten with, paralysis. since then it has brought us the bulletins of his condition as promptly as if we had been living in the same square, entertaining us with hopes which the mournful sequel has proven to be delusive, for the magic wires have just thrilled with the tidings to all nations that the father of telegraphy has passed to the eternal world. almost as quietly as the all-seeing eye saw the soul depart from that venerable form, mortal men, thousands of miles distant, are apprised of the same fact by the swift messenger which he won from the unknown--speaking, as it goes around its world-wide circuit, in all the languages of earth. "professor morse took no royal road to this discovery. indeed it is never a characteristic of genius to seek such roads. he was dependent, necessarily, upon facts and principles brought to light by similar diligent, patient minds which had gone before him. volta, galvani, morcel, grove, faraday, franklin, and a host of others had laid a basis of laws and theories upon which he humbly and reverently mounted and arranged his great problem for the hoped-for solution. but to him was reserved the sole, undivided glory of discovering the priceless gem, 'richer than all its tribe,' which lay just beneath the surface, and around which so many _savans_ had blindly groped. "he is dead, but his mission was fully completed. it has been no man's fortune to leave behind him a more magnificent legacy to earth, or a more absolute title to a glorious immortality. to the honor of being one of the most distinguished benefactors of the human race, he added the personal and social graces and virtues of a true gentleman and a christian philosopher; the memory of his private worth will be kept green amid the immortals of sorrowing friendship for a lifetime only, but his life monument will endure among men as long as the human race exists upon earth." the funeral services were held on friday, april , at the madison square presbyterian church. at eleven o'clock the long procession entered the church in the following order:-- rev. wm. adams, d.d., rev. f.b. wheeler, d.d. coffin. pall-bearers. william orton, cyrus w. field, daniel huntington, charles butler, peter cooper, john a. dix, cambridge livingston, ezra cornell. the family. governor hoffman and staff. members of the legislature. directors of the new york, newfoundland and london telegraph company. directors of the western union telegraph company and officers and operators. members of the national academy of design. members of the evangelical alliance. members of the chamber of commerce. members of the association for the advancement of science and art. members of the new york stock exchange. delegations from the common councils of new york, brooklyn and poughkeepsie and many of the yale alumni. the legislative committee: messrs. james w. husted, l. bradford prince, samuel j. tilden, severn d. moulton and john simpson. the funeral address, delivered by dr. adams, was long and eloquent, and near the conclusion he said:-- "to-day we part forever with all that is mortal of that man who has done so much in the cause of christian civilization. less than one year ago his fellow-citizens, chiefly telegraphic operators, who loved him as children love a father, raised his statue in central park. to-day all we can give him is a grave. that venerable form, that face so saintly in its purity and refinement, we shall see no more. how much we shall miss him in our homes, our churches, in public gatherings, in the streets and in society which he adorned and blessed. but his life has been so useful, so happy and so complete that, for him, nothing remains to be wished. congratulate the man who, leaving to his family, friends and country a name spotless, untarnished, beloved of nations, to be repeated in foreign tongues and by sparkling seas, has died in the bright and blessed hope of everlasting life. "farewell, beloved friend, honored citizen, public benefactor, good and faithful servant!" the three morse brothers were united in death as they had been in life. in greenwood cemetery a little hill had been purchased by the brothers and divided into three equal portions. on the summit of the hill there now stands a beautiful three-sided monument, and at its base reposes all that is mortal of these three upright men, each surrounded by those whom they had loved on earth, and who have now joined them in their last resting place. resolutions of sympathy came to the family from all over the world, and from bodies political, scientific, artistic, and mercantile, and letters of condolence from friends and from strangers. in the house of representatives, in washington, the honorable s.s. cox offered a concurrent resolution, declaring that congress has heard--"with profound regret of the death of professor morse, whose distinguished and varied abilities have contributed more than those of any other person to the development and progress of the practical arts, and that his purity of private life, his loftiness of scientific aims, and his resolute faith in truth, render it highly proper that the representatives and senators should solemnly testify to his worth and greatness." this was unanimously agreed to. the honorable fernando wood, after a brief history of the legislation which resulted in the grant of $ , to enable morse to test his invention, added that he was proud to say that his name had been recorded in the affirmative on that historic occasion, and that he was then the only living member of either house who had so voted. similar resolutions were passed in the senate, and a committee was appointed by both houses to arrange for a suitable memorial service, and, on april , the following letter was sent to mrs. morse by a.s. solomons, chairman of the committee of arrangements:-- dear madam,--congress and the citizens of washington purpose holding memorial services in honor of your late respected husband in the hall of the house of representatives, on tuesday evening next, the th of april, and have directed me to request that yourself and family become the guests of the nation on that truly solemn occasion. if agreeable, be good enough to inform me when you will likely be here. the widow was not able to accept this graceful invitation, but members of the family were present. the hall was crowded with a representative audience. james g. blaine, speaker of the house, presided, assisted by vice-president colfax. president grant and his cabinet, judges of the supreme court, governors of states, and other dignitaries were present in person or by proxy. in front of the main gallery an oil portrait of morse had been placed, and around the frame was inscribed the historic first message: "what hath god wrought." after the opening prayer by dr. william adams, speaker blaine said:-- "less than thirty years ago a man of genius and learning was an earnest petitioner before congress for a small pecuniary aid that enabled him to test certain occult theories of science which he had laboriously evolved. to-night the representatives of forty million people assemble in their legislative hall to do homage and honor to the name of 'morse.' great discoverers and inventors rarely live to witness the full development and perfection of their mighty conceptions, but to him whose death we now mourn, and whose fame we celebrate, it was, in god's good providence, vouchsafed otherwise. the little thread of wire, placed as a timid experiment between the national capital and a neighboring city, grew and lengthened and multiplied with almost the rapidity of the electric current that darted along its iron nerves, until, within his own lifetime, continent was bound unto continent, hemisphere answered through ocean's depths unto hemisphere, and an encircled globe flashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched elements of a grand achievement. "charged by the house of representatives with the agreeable and honorable duty of presiding here, and of announcing the various participants in the exercises of the evening, i welcome to this hall those who join with us in this expressive tribute to the memory and to the merit of a great man." after mr. blaine had concluded his remarks the exercises were conducted as follows:-- resolutions by the honorable c.c. cox, m.d., of washington, d.c. address by the honorable j.w. patterson, of new hampshire. address by the honorable fernando wood, of new york. vocal music by the choral society of washington. address by the honorable j.a. garfield, of ohio. address by the honorable s.s. cox, of new york. address by the honorable n.p. banks, of massachusetts. vocal music by the choral society of washington. benediction by the reverend dr. wheeler of poughkeepsie. once again the invention which made him famous paid marvellous tribute to the man of science. while less than a year before, joyous messages of congratulation had flashed over the wires from the four quarters of the globe, to greet the living inventor, now came words of sorrow and condolence from europe, asia, africa, and america mourning that inventor dead, and again were they read to a wondering audience by that other man of indomitable perseverance, cyrus w. field. on the same evening memorial services were held in faneuil hall, boston, at which the mayor of the city presided, and addresses were made by josiah quincy, professor e.n. horsford, the honorable richard h. dana, and others. other cities all over the country, and in foreign lands, held commemorative services, and every telegraph office in the country was draped in mourning, in sad remembrance of him whom all delighted to call "father." mr. prime, in his closing review of morse's character, uses the following words:-- "it is not given to mortals to leave a perfect example for the admiration and imitation of posterity, but it is safe to say that the life and character of few men, whose history is left on record, afford less opportunity for criticism than is found in the conspicuous career of the inventor of the telegraph. "having followed him step by step from the birth to the grave, in public, social and private relations; in struggles with poverty, enemies and wrongs; in courts of law, the press and halls of science; having seen him tempted, assailed, defeated, and again in victory, honor and renown; having read thousands of his private letters, his essays and pamphlets, and volumes in which his claims are canvassed, his merits discussed and his character reviewed; having had access to his most private papers and confidential correspondence, in which all that is most secret and sacred in the life of man is hid--it is right to say that, in this mass of testimony by friends and foes, there is not a line that requires to be erased or changed to preserve the lustre of his name.... "it was the device and purpose of those who sought to rob him of his honors and his rights to depreciate his intellectual ability and his scientific attainments. but among all the men of science and of learning in the law, there was not one who was a match for him when he gave his mind to a subject which required his perfect mastery.... "he drew up the brief with his own hand for one of the distinguished counsel in a great lawsuit involving his patent rights, and his lawyer said it was the argument that carried conviction to every unprejudiced mind. "such was the versatility and variety of his mental endowments that he would have been great in any department of human pursuits. his wonderful rapidity of thought was associated with patient, plodding perseverance, a combination rare but mightily effective. he leaped to a possible conclusion, and then slowly developed the successive steps by which the end was gained and the result made secure. he covered thousands of pages with his pencil notes, annotated large and numerous volumes, filled huge folios with valuable excerpts from newspapers, illustrated processes of thought with diagrams, and was thus fortified and enriched with stores of knowledge and masses of facts, so digested, combined and arranged, that he had them at his easy command to defend the past or to help him onward to fresh conquests in the fields of truth. yet such was his modesty and reticence in regard to himself that none outside of his household were aware of his resources, and his attainments were only known when displayed in self-defense. then they never failed to be ample for the occasion, as every opponent had reason to remember. "yet he was gentle as he was great. many thought him weak because he was simple, childlike and unworldly. often he suffered wrong rather than resist, and this disposition to yield was frequently his loss. the firmness, tenacity and perseverance with which he fought his foes were the fruits of his integrity, principle and profound convictions of right and duty.... his nature was a rare combination of solid intellect and delicate sensibility. thoughtful, sober and quiet, he readily entered into the enjoyments of domestic and social life, indulging in sallies of humor, and readily appreciating and greatly enjoying the wit of others. dignified in his intercourse with men, courteous and affable with the gentler sex, he was a good husband, a judicious father, a generous and faithful friend. "he had the misfortune to incur the hostility of men who would deprive him of his merit and the reward of his labors. but this is the common fate of great inventors. he lived until his rights were vindicated by every tribunal to which they could be referred, and acknowledged by all civilized nations, and he died leaving to his children a spotless and illustrious name, and to his country the honor of having given birth to the only electro-magnetic recording telegraph whose line is gone out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world." and now my pleasant task is ended. after the lapse of so many years it has been possible for me to introduce much more evidence of a personal nature, to reveal the character of those with whom morse had to contend, than would have been discreet or judicious during the lifetime of some of the actors in the drama. many attempts have been made since the death of the inventor to minimize his fame, and to exalt others at his expense, but, while these attempts have seemed to triumph for a time, while they may have influenced a few minds and caused erroneous attributions to be made in some publications, their effect is ephemeral, for "truth is mighty and will prevail," and the more carefully and exhaustively this complicated subject is studied, the more apparent will it be that morse never claimed more than was his due; that his upright, truthloving character, as revealed in his intimate correspondence and in the testimony of his contemporaries, forbade his ever stooping to deceit or wilful appropriation of the ideas of others. a summary, in as few words as possible, of what morse actually invented or discovered may be, at this point, appropriate. in , he conceived the idea of a true electric telegraph--a writing at a distance by means of the electromagnet. the use of the electro-magnet for this purpose was original with him; it was entirely different from any form of telegraph devised by others, and he was not aware, at the time, that any other person had even combined the words "electric" and "telegraph." the mechanism to produce the desired result, roughly drawn in the sketch-book, was elaborated and made by morse alone, and produced actual results in , , and . still further perfected by him, with the legitimate assistance of others, it became the universal telegraph of to-day, holding its own and successfully contending with all other plans of telegraphs devised by others. he devised and perfected the dot-and-dash alphabet. in , he discovered the principle of the relay. in , he received a french patent for a system of railway telegraph, which also embodies the principle of the police and fire-alarm telegraph. at the same time he suggested a practical form of military telegraph. in , he laid the first subaqueous cable. in , he discovered, with dr. fisher, the principle of duplex telegraphy, and he was also the first to experiment with wireless telegraphy. in addition to his electrical inventions and discoveries he was the first to experiment with the daguerreotype in america, and, with professor draper, was the first in the world to take portraits by this means, daguerre himself not thinking it possible. the verdict of the world, as pronounced at the time of his death, has been strengthened with the lapse of years. he was one of the first to be immortalized in the hall of fame. his name, like those of volta, galvani, ampere, and others, has been incorporated into everyday speech, and is now used to symbolize the language of that simple but marvellous invention which brings the whole world into intimate touch. the end index abbott, gorham, american asiatic society, ~ ~, abbott, j.s.c., from m. ( ) on louis napoleon in new york. ~ ~, abdul mejid, decorates m., ~ ~, abernethy, john, personality, ~ ~, , abolitionism, m.'s antagonism, ~ ~, , , , , , , accidents to m., runaway ( ), ~ ~, - in , ~ ~, fall ( ), during laying of atlantic cable ( ), , , breaks leg ( ), acton, ----. and m. at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, adams, j.q., and election to presidency, jackson's congratulations, ~ ~, and m.'s failure to get commission for painting for capitol, ~ ~, - adams, john, portrait by m., ~ ~, adams, nehemiah, and civil war, ~ ~, adams, william, and m.'s last illness, ~ ~, at m.'s funeral, address, , at memorial services, _agamemnon_, and laying of first atlantic cable, ~ ~, agate. f.s., pupil of m., ~ ~, , and origin of academy of design, albany, m. as portrait painter at ( ), ~ ~, - alexander i of russia, in london ( ), appearance, anecdotes, ~ ~, - alexander ii of russia. m. on presentation to ( ), ~ ~, - attempt on life at paris ( ), allan, sir hugh, at banquet to m., ~ ~, allegorical painting, m. on, ~ ~, allegri, gregorio, m. on _miserere_, ~ ~, allston, washington, m. desires to study under, ~ ~, m. accompanies to england ( ), , journey to london, , on m. as artist, , , , and leslie, , and death of wife, coleridge's prescription, , and m., interest, influence and criticism, , , , , , , - , and war of , at premier of coleridge's _remorse_, illness, and dr. abernethy, , m. on, as artist, , m. on character. , dead man restored to life, , , , , , poems, on french school of art, at bristol ( ), , , , painting for steamer, uriel in the sun, compliment to, m. and death, ~ ~, , brush of, m. presents portrait and brush to academy of design, , _letters:_ to m. ( ) on dead man, blücher, ~ ~, with m. ( ) on sale of dead man, personal relations, , from m. ( ) on work at charleston, albton as r.a., to m. ( ) on rejection for government painting, ~ ~, from m. ( ) on daguerreotype and art, with m. ( ) on telegraph act, illness, painting, allston, mrs. washington, journey to england, ~ ~, , in england, health, death, alphabet. _see_ dot-and-dash. alston, j.a., and m., ~ ~, , , , to m. ( - ) on portraits, , , amalfi, m. at ( ), ~ ~, - american academy of art, condition ( ), ~ ~, , and union with academy of design, ~ ~, american asiatic society, ~ ~, american society for promoting national unity, ~ ~, americans, m. on cooper's patriotism ( ), ~ ~, - on european criticism, , amyot, ----, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , anderson, alexander, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, andrews, solomon, from m. ( ) on aviation, ~ ~, angoulême, duchesse d', in london ( ), ~ ~, annunciation, m. on feast at rome ( ), ~ ~, _arabia_, transatlantic steamer ( ), ~ ~, arago, d.f., and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , , , art, conditions in america ( ), ~ ~, , boston and ( ), _see also_ painting. atlantic cable, m. prophesies ( ), ~ ~, , organisation of company, - m. as electrician, , m.'s enthusiasm, attempt to lay cable across gulf of st. lawrence ( ), experiments of m. and whitehouse, , kendall's caution to m. on company, m.'s account of laying of first, - parting of first, delay, offer to purchase remainder of first, m.'s forced resignation from company, m. on first message over completed ( ), his prediction of cessation, , proposed, between spain and west indies, - m. on final success, greeting of company to m. ( ), "attention the universe" message, ~ ~, australia, m.'s telegraph in, ~ ~, austria, testimonials to m., ~ ~, austro-prussian war, influence of telegraph, ~ ~, aviation, m. on ( ), ~ ~, , avignon, m. at ( ), ~ ~, , aycrigg, j.b., and telegraph, ~ ~, , from m. ( ) on ground circuit, aylmer, lord, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, bain, alexander, and telegraph, ~ ~, , o and ground circuit, ball, mrs.----, m.'s portrait and trouble with, letters from m. ( ), ~ ~, - balloon ascension at london ( ), ~ ~, _baltic_, transatlantic steamer ( ), ~ ~, baltimore, construction of first telegraph line, ~ ~, - bancroft, ----, transatlantic voyage ( ), ~ ~, bancroft, george, and m. at berlin, ~ ~, banks, n.p., at m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, at memorial services, banquets to m., at london ( ), ~ ~, , at paris ( ), at new york ( ), - barberini, cardinal, ~ ~, barrell, samuel, at yale, ~ ~, . battery, gale's improvement of telegraph, ~ ~, m.'s improvement, _see also_ relay. beecher, lyman, and m., ~ ~, beechy, sir william, m. on, ~ ~, beggars, m. on italian, ~ ~, , , , , , belgium, interest in m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, and gratuity to m., belknap, jeremy, on birth of m., ~ ~, bellingham, john, assassinates perceval, ~ ~, execution, bellows, h.w. from m. ( ) on sanitary commission, ~ ~, benedict, aaron, and wire for experimental line, ~ ~, benevolence, as female virtue, ~ ~, bennett, j.g., at french court ( ), ~ ~, berkshire, mass., m.'s trip ( ), ~ ~, , berlin, m. at ( ), ~ ~, ( ), bernard, simon, and m., ~ ~, and telegraph, bern, duchesse de, appearance ( ), ~ ~, bertassoli, cardinal, death, ~ ~, bettner, dr. ----, and henry-morse controversy, ~ ~, biddle, james, return to america ( ), ~ ~, biddulph, t.t., as minister, ~ ~, bigelow, john, farewell banquet to ( ), ~ ~, blaine. j.g., address at memorial services to m., ~ ~, , blake, w.p., to m. ( ) on m.'s report, ~ ~, on henry controversy, from m. on same, blanchard, thomas, machine for carving marble, ~ ~, blenheim estates, reduced condition ( ), ~ ~, bliss, seth, and civil war, ~ ~, blücher, g.l. von, at london ( ), appearance, ~ ~, , boardman, w.w., and telegraph, letters with m. ( ), ~ ~, - , , . bodisco, alexander de, from m. ( ) on telegraph, ~ ~, state dinner, bologna, m. on, ~ ~, boorman, james, and civil war, ~ ~, borland, catherine, ~ ~, boston, and art ( ), ~ ~, boston _recorder_, founding, ~ ~, boudy, comte, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , breese, arthur, and marriage of daughter, ~ ~, breese, catherine, marriage, ~ ~, _see also_ griswold. breese, elisabeth a. (mrs. jedediah morse), ~ ~, breese, samuel, in navy, ~ ~, under perry, breese, sidney, and m., ~ ~, breguet, louis, from m. ( ) on rewards for invention, ~ ~, brett, j.w., and atlantic cable, ~ ~ and m. in england ( ), , , from m. ( ) on withdrawal from cable company, and proposed spanish cable, bristol, england, m. at ( , ), ~ ~, . , , , - broek, m. van der, and gratuity to m., ~ ~, broek, holland, m. on unnatural neatness, ~ ~, - bromfield, henry, and m. in england, ~ ~, , from m. ( ) on family at new haven, brooklyn, n.y., defences ( ), ~ ~, brooks, david, and telegraph, ~ ~, brougham, lord, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , brown, james, banquet to m., ~ ~, bryant, w. c., and the club, ~ ~, from m. ( ) on allston's portrait, ~ ~, at banquet to m., address at unveiling of statue to m., tribute to m., buchanan, james, official letter introducing m. ( ), ~ ~, m. on election ( ), budd, t.a., and perry's japanese expedition, ~ ~, bulfinch, charles, and m., ~ ~, bullock, a.h., sentiment for banquet to m., ~ ~, bunker hill monument, greenough on plans, ~ ~, burbank, david, from m. ( ) on price for invention, ~ ~, burder, george, minister at london ( ), ~ ~, burritt, benjamin, prisoner of war, m.'s efforts for release, ~ ~, - butler, charles, at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, cadwalader, thomas, return to america ( ), ~ ~, _caledonia_, transatlantic steamer ( ), ~ ~, calhoun, j.c., and m.'s effort for commission for painting for capitol, ~ ~, california, graft in telegraph organisation, ~ ~, , campagna, roman, dangers at night, ~ ~, campbell, sir john, and m.'s application for patent, ~ ~, , campo santo at naples, ~ ~, - camucoini, vincenso, m. on, as artist, ~ ~, canterbury, m. on cathedral and service, ~ ~, - cardinals, lying in state, ~ ~, carmichael, james, and proposed spanish cable, ~ ~, caroline, queen, palace, ~ ~, carrara, m. on quarries ( ), ~ ~, - carter, william, courier, ~ ~, cass, lewis, and m. at paris ( ), ~ ~, , cass, mrs. lewis, from m. ( ) on lotteries, ~ ~ castlereagh, lord, and orders in council ( ), ~ ~, _catalogue raisonné_, ~ ~, , causici, enrico, at washington ( ), ~ ~, _ceres_, transatlantic voyage ( ), ~ ~, - chamberlain, capt. ----, transatlantic voyage ( ), ~ ~, chamberlain, ----, exhibition of telegraph in european centers, ~ ~, , drowned, champlin, e.h., american asiatic society, ~ ~, chapin, c.l., and m.'s telegraph in europe, ~ ~, charivari, m. on, ~ ~, charles x of france, new year ( ), ~ ~, charleston, m. as portrait painter at ( - ), ~ ~, - , - , - portrait of president monroe, m. and art academy, , charlestown, mass., dual celebration of fourth ( ), ~ ~, jedediah morse's church troubles, - , charlotte augusta, princess, appearance ( ), ~ ~, charlotte sophia, queen, appearance ( ), ~ ~, chase, ----, and experimental line, ~ ~, chase, s.p., presides at banquet to m., speeches, ~ ~, - , chauncey, isaac, cooper on, ~ ~, chauvin, ---- von, and m. at berlin, ~ ~, _chesapeake_, u.s.s., defeat, ~ ~, , chevalier, michael, from m. ( ) on leaving paris, ~ ~, cholera, in paris ( ), ~ ~, , political effect, christ before pilate, west's painting, ~ ~, , christ healing the side, west's painting, ~ ~, christian ix of denmark, and m., ~ ~, christy, david, from m. ( ) on slavery, ~ ~, church and state, m. on union, ~ ~, church of england, disestablishment in virginia, ~ ~, m. on service, circuit, single, of m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , ground, , , cisco, j.j., banquet to m., ~ ~, civil war, m.'s hope of prevention, ~ ~, , his attitude during, , , his belief in foreign machinations, m. and mcclellan's candidacy, , - m. and sanitary commission, m.'s denunciation of rejoicing over success, - claflin, william, and statue to m., ~ ~, clarke, george, buys m.'s painting of louvre, m.'s letter on this ( ), ~ ~, , clay, henry, and m.'s effort for commission for painting for capitol, ~ ~, clinton, ----, of albany, and m. ( ), ~ ~, club, the, of new york, ~ ~, , coat of arms, morse, ~ ~, , ~ ~, coffin, i.n., and lobbying for telegraph grant, ~ ~, , cogdell, j.s., artist at charleston ( ), ~ ~, and art academy there, colt, daniel, gift to academy of design, ~ ~, cole, thomas, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, at royal academy ( ), to m. ( ) on presidency of academy of design, ~ ~, coleridge, s.t., mental prescription for allston, ~ ~, and hat-wearing, and m., traits, , premier of _remorse_, and _knickerbocker's history of new york_, colfax, schuyler, and banquet to m., ~ ~, at memorial services, color, m.'s theory and experiments, ~ ~, colt, ----, with m. at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, como, lake of, m. at ( ), ~ ~, concentration of effort, jedediah morse on, ~ ~, concord, n.h., m. at and on ( ), ~ ~, , congregational church, jedediah morse and orthodoxy, ~ ~, congress, m.'s painting of house ( ), ~ ~, - , conduct of presidential election ( ), resolution to investigate telegraph ( ), ~ ~, skeptical of m.'s invention, exhibition of telegraph before ( ) but no grant, , , , , , smith's report on telegraph, renewal of effort for telegraph grant without result ( - ), , , - second exhibition of telegraph ( ), workers for telegraph grant, , bill for experimental line in house ( ), - passage of bill in house, no action expected in senate, - passage of act, - refuses to purchase telegraph, , , , , memorial services to m., - consolidation of telegraph lines, ~ ~, , , , m. on beneficent monopoly, _see also_ public ownership. constant, benjamin, appearance ( ), ~ ~, constitution, m. on loyalty, ~ ~, cooke, o.f., rival of kemble, ~ ~, cooke, sir w.f., telegraph, ~ ~, m. on telegraph and his own, , , opposes patent to m., proposition to m. rejected, telegraph displaced by m.'s, personal relations with m., advocates use of m.'s telegraph, presides at banquet to m., speech, , cooper, h., and m.'s application for british patent, ~ ~, , cooper, j.f., characteristic remark, ~ ~, at rome ( ), read in poland, to m. ( ) on verboeckhoven and portrait of c., on criticisms, bitterness against america, statement of m.'s hints on telegraph ( ), , from m. ( ) on this, at fourth dinner at paris ( ), m. on principles and patriotism, - from m. ( ) on departure for america, leslie's politics, ~ ~, - from m. ( ) on illness, cares, conditions in new york, cooper's friends, art future, nullification, - and rejection of m. for painting for capitol, from m. ( ) on failure as painter, from m. ( ) on newspaper libels, _home as found_, m. on death and character, cooper, peter, and atlantic cable, ~ ~, , banquet to m., at m.'s funeral, copenhagen. m. at ( ), ~ ~, , copley, j.s., m. on, in old age. ~ ~, , corcoran, w.w., telegraph company, ~ ~, corcoran gallery, m.'s house of representatives, ~ ~, cornell, ezra, and construction of experimental line, ~ ~, - , m. on benevolences, , at m.'s funeral, cornell university, m. on founding, ~ ~, cornwell, sadie e., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, _corpus domini_, procession at rome ( ), ~ ~, cox, s.s., resolutions on death of m., ~ ~, at memorial services, coyle, james, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, crawford, w.h., edwards' charges against ( ), ~ ~, cries of london, ~ ~, crinoline, m. on, ~ ~, crosby, howard, and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, cummings, t.s., and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, and m. as president of academy, on m.'s connection with academy, and commission to m. for historical painting, ~ ~, and telegraph, , curtin, a.g., banquet to m., ~ ~, , curtis, b.r., telegraph decision, ~ ~, , curtis, g.t., m.'s attorney, ~ ~, from m. ( ) on smith's claim to gratuity, - and on law, daggett, ----, of new haven, m.'s portrait ( ), ~ ~, daguerre, l.j.m., and m. at paris ( ), ~ ~, - from m. on sabbath, burning of diorama, french subsidy, from m. ( ) on honorary membership in academy of design, exhibition of daguerreotype in new york, reply, and portraits, daguerreotype, inventor imparts secret to m., ~ ~, discovery made public, m. on effect on art, , experiments of m. and draper, portraits first taken, - m.'s gallery, , first group picture, daly, c.p., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, dana, j.f., m. and lectures on electricity ( ), ~ ~, friendship and discussions with m., dana, r.h., at memorial services to m., ~ ~, danforth, m.l. and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, m. on, ~ ~, dartmouth college, quarrel ( ), ~ ~, date of invention of telegraph, ~ ~, , daubeny, c.g.b., inspects early telegraph, ~ ~, davenport, ann, ~ ~, davis, ----, of new haven, m. rooms at house ( ), ~ ~, davy, edward, and relay, ~ ~, m. on telegraph, , day, jeremiah, and m.'s pump, ~ ~, to m. ( ) on gift to yale, dead man restored to life, allston's painting, ~ ~, , , , , , deadhead, m.'s characteristic telegraphic, ~ ~, declaration of independence, anecdote of george iii and, ~ ~, , decorations, foreign, for m., ~ ~, , , , , deforest, d.c., to m. ( ) on portrait, ~ ~, delaplaine, joseph, and m., ~ ~, democratic convention, reports by telegraph ( ), ~ ~, - denmark, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, decoration for m., , dennison, william, banquet to m., ~ ~, de rham, h.c., informal club, ~ ~, desoulavy, ----, artist at rome, escapes poisoning ( ), ~ ~, de witt, jan, concentration of effort, ~ ~, dexter, miss c., and sketch of southey, ~ ~, , dijon, m. at ( ), ~ ~, diligence, described, ~ ~, dining hour, english ( ), ~ ~, discovery and invention, ~ ~, dividends, m. on lack, , , . dix, j.a., to m. ( ) on letters of introduction, ~ ~, at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, dodge, w.e., banquet to m., ~ ~, , donaldson, r., m.'s painting for, ~ ~, dot-and-dash code, conception for numbers with hint of alphabet, ~ ~, , , , , as recorded by first receiver, numbers principle, dictionary, , paternity of alphabet, - substitution of alphabet for numbers, - peculiar to m.'s telegraph, m. on reading by sound, , , douglas, g.l., from m. ( ) on effort to prevent civil war, ~ ~, dover castle, m. on, ~ ~, drake, mrs. ----, transatlantic voyage ( ), ~ ~, draper, j.w., and daguerreotypes, ~ ~, , drawing-room, m. on queen charlotte's ( ), ~ ~, ; on mrs. monroe's ( ), dresden, m. at ( ), ~ ~, drummond, henry, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , dubois, john, at rome ( ), ~ ~, dunlap, william, on m.'s dying hercules, ~ ~, , on m.'s judgment of jupiter, , and origin of academy of design, duplex telegraphy, fisher's discovery ( ), ~ ~, , durand, a. b., engraving of m.'s lafayette, ~ ~, and origin of academy of design, dwight, s.e., and m., ~ ~, from m. ( ) on daggett portrait, dwight, timothy, and m., ~ ~, on jedediah morse, dwight's tavern, western, mass., ~ ~, dying hercules, m.'s sculpture and painting, ~ ~, , , - , , , , , , edwards, ninian, proposed mexican mission ( ), and charges against crawford, ~ ~, , from m. on mission, electricity, m.'s interest at college, ~ ~, and in dana's lectures ( ), henry on electric power, ~ ~, _see also_ morse (s.f.b.), telegraph. elgin, earl of, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , , to m. ( ) on patent, elgin marbles, m. on, ~ ~, , , elisabeth, princess, appearance ( ), ~ ~, ellsworth, annie, and telegraph, ~ ~, , , , ellsworth, henry, and m. abroad, ~ ~, ellsworth, h.l., marriage, ~ ~, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , on telegraph in france, , from m. ( ) on construction of experimental line, ellsworth, nancy (goodrich), ~ ~, ellsworth, william, engagement, ~ ~, emancipation proclamation, m. on, ~ ~, , embargo, effect in england, ~ ~, emotion of taste, m. on, ~ ~, england, appearance of women, ~ ~, ; wartime travel regulations ( ), condition of laboring classes, treatment of travellers, - critical condition ( ), effect of american embargo, , , , dining hour, attitude toward art, unpopularity of regent, crisis ( ), , , assassination of perceval, spanish victories ( ), severe winter ( ), economic depression ( ), liverpool ( ), , stage-coach journey to london, - peasantry, villages, canterbury cathedral, church service, - dover, m. on social manners, refusal of patent to m., ~ ~, - , , coronation of victoria, , use of m.'s telegraph, no share in gratuity to m., m. on, and civil war, _see also_ london, napoleonic wars, neutral trade, war of . english channel, steamers ( ), ~ ~, ( ), ~ ~, erie, lake, battle, ~ ~, esterhasy, prince, m. on, at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, evarts, jeremiah, to m. ( ) on avoiding politics, ~ ~, evarts, w.m., at banquet to m., ~ ~, evers, john, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, experimental line, bill for, in congress, ~ ~, - route, m.'s assistants, - , , wires, failure of underground, substitution of overhead, , - , - trouble with smith, , , , , progress, operation during construction, - completion, "what hath god wrought" message, - reports of democratic convention, - cost of construction, incidents of utility, , fairman, gideon, and study of live figure, ~ ~, faraday, michael, and atlantic cable, ~ ~, farewell message to telegraph, ceremony of sending m.'s, ~ ~, - farmer, m.g., and duplex telegraph, ~ ~, farragut, d.g., and banquet to m., ~ ~, faxton, t.s., from m. ( ) on salaries, ~ ~, federalists, celebration of fourth at charlestown ( ), ~ ~, british opinion ( ), _see also_ war of . ferguson, ----, travel with m. ( ), ~ ~, , ferris, c.g., and telegraph, ~ ~, , , field, ----, pupil of m., ~ ~, field, c.w., and consolidation of telegraph companies, ~ ~, organisation of atlantic cable company, - from m. ( ) on experiments for cable, , kendall's distrust, and m.'s retirement from cable company, , from m. ( ) on a visit, success of cable, , banquet to m., , from m. ( ) on neutralizing telegraph, at m.'s funeral, at memorial service, field, d.d., and atlantic cable, ~ ~, at banquet to m., field, m.d., and telegraph, ~ ~, finley, j.e.b., and war of , ~ ~, and m. at charleston, , to m. ( ) on portraits, death, finley, samuel, ~ ~, fire-alarm, m.'s invention embodying principle, ~ ~, fish, hamilton, at early exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, banquet to m., fisher, ----, artist at charleston ( ), ~ ~, fisher, j.c., and duplex telegraphy, ~ ~, , m.'s assistant at washington, , and construction of experimental line, dismissed, , , - , fisher, j.f., return to america ( ), ~ ~, on conception of telegraph, fleas, m. on porto rican, ~ ~, fleischmann, c.t., on europe and m.'s telegraph ( ), ~ ~, florence, m.'s journey to, during revolt ( ), ~ ~, m. at, , flower feast at genzano, ~ ~, - forsyth, dr. ----, american asiatic company, ~ ~, foss, ----, and f.o.j. smith, ~ ~, fourth of july, dual celebration at charlestown ( ), ~ ~, dinner at paris ( ), - foy, alphonse, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , , france, m. on attitude of americans ( ), ~ ~, , m. on first landing in ( ), on sunday in, , cold ( ), , winter journey across, by diligence, - funeral, , m. on social manners, quarantine ( ), m. avoids it, - lafayette on results of revolution of , patent to m., ~ ~, m.'s exhibitions and projects ( ), - renewed interest in m.'s telegraph, , , , , , , m. on people, testimonials to m., _see also_ napoleonic wars, paris. francesco caracoiolo, st., m. on feast, ~ ~, franklin, benjamin, name coupled with m.'s, ~ ~, , , , m. unveils statue, franklin institute, exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, fraser, charles, artist at charleston ( ), ~ ~, frasee, john, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, frederick vii of denmark, and m., ~ ~, , ~ ~, frederick iii of germany, battle of königgrätz, ~ ~, frederick william iii of prussia, at london ( ), ~ ~, fredrick carl, prince, battle of königgrätz, ~ ~, frelinghuysen, theodore, nomination for vice-presidency announced over telegraph, ~ ~, fremel, ----, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, french, b.b., telegraph company, ~ ~, french academy of science. _see_ institute of france. frischen ,----, and duplex telegraphy, ~ ~, fry, ----, and telegraph company ( ), ~ ~, fulton, robert, and art, ~ ~, _fulton_, transatlantic steamer ( ), ~ ~, funeral, m. on french, ~ ~, , on lying in state of cardinal, on roman, on italian, , of m., ~ ~, , fuseli, j.h., and m., ~ ~, gale, l.d., first view of telegraph, ~ ~, aid to m. in telegraph, - , , , partnership in telegraph, loses interest, , , and subaqueous experiment, and construction of experimental line, , , kendall as agent, , and estrangement with henry, and extension of m.'s patent, from m. ( ) on kendall, ( ) on trip to newfoundland, m.'s tribute, from m. ( ) on receiving by sound, to m. ( ) on smith's last attack, to rogers on invention of telegraph, from m. on smith, _galen_, transatlantic ship ( ), ~ ~, gallagher, h.m., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, gallatin, albert, informal club, ~ ~, and louis napoleon at new york, galley slaves, at toulon ( ), ~ ~, , garfield, j.a., at memorial services to m., ~ ~, gay-lussac, j.l., and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, genoa, serra palace, ~ ~, genzano, _festa infiorala_ ( ), ~ ~, - george iii, anecdote of declaration of independence, ~ ~, , expected death ( ), george iv, unpopularity as regent ( ), ~ ~, , appearance, george, sir rupert, and american prisoner of war, ~ ~, georgia, and nullification, ~ ~, ghost, scare at london ( ), ~ ~, gibbs. mrs. a.j.c., child, ~ ~, gibson, ----, artist at rome, escape from poisoning ( ), ~ ~, gintl, j.w., and duplex telegraph, ~ ~, gisborne, f.n., and telegraph, ~ ~, glenelg, lord, and war of , ~ ~, gleson, ----, oration at charlestown ( ), ~ ~, goddard, elisha, return to america ( ), ~ ~, gonon, ----, visual telegraph, ~ ~, , goodhue, jonathan, informal club, ~ ~, goodrich, mary, drawing, ~ ~, goodrich, nancy, marriage, ~ ~, goodrich, w.h., american asiatic society, ~ ~, presented at french court, - goodrich, mrs. w.h. (griswold), from m. ( ) on prospect of northern success, ~ ~, at paris ( ), gould, james, and m., ~ ~, grant, charles. _see_ glenelg. grant, u.s., m. on candidacy ( ), ~ ~, , and banquet to m., at memorial services, granville, countess, m. on, at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, granville, earl, m. on, at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, , gratuity, proposed foreign, to m., ~ ~, award, nations participating, , commission to broek, niggardly, m.'s acknowledgment, , smith's claim to share, - , share for vail's widow, greeley, horace, unveils statue of franklin, ~ ~, green, norvin, from m. ( ) on effect of telegraph, ~ ~, greenough, horatio, and m. at paris ( ), ~ ~, to m. ( ) on art future of america, poverty, religion, bunker hill monument, m.'s. domestic affairs, gregory xvi, election, ~ ~, coronation, , policy, grier, r.c., telegraph decision, ~ ~, griswold, a.b., from m. ( ) on being a traitor, ~ ~, griswold, catherine (breese), marriage, ~ ~, in europe with m. ( ), ~ ~, from m. ( ) on experiences in west indies, , ( ) on paris quarters, ( ) on presentation at court, griswold, h.w., marriage, ~ ~, griswold, r.w., from m. ( ) on cooper, ~ ~, griswold, sarah e., marries m., ~ ~, , gros, a.j., m. on allegorical painting, ~ ~, gypsies, m. on, ~ ~, habersham, r.w., and m. at paris ( ), on hints of telegraph, ~ ~, , on m.'s experiments with photography, halske, j.g., and duplex telegraph, ~ ~, hamburg, m. at and on ( ), ~ ~, , ( ), hamilton, j.c., informal club, ~ ~, hamlin, cyrus, and telegraph in turkey, ~ ~, hanover, n.h., m. at ( ), ~ ~, hare and tortoise fable applied to m. and brother, ~ ~, , harris, levitt, m. on, ~ ~, harrison, thomas, american asiatic society, ~ ~, hart, ann, marries isaac hull, ~ ~, hart, eliza, ~ ~, hart, jannette, and m., ~ ~, - , hartford, inn ( ), ~ ~, harvard college, lottery ( ), ~ ~, hauser, martin, from m. ( ) on slavery, ~ ~, haven, g.w., at fourth dinner at paris ( ), ~ ~, hawks, f.l., and civil war, ~ ~, hawley, dr. -----, of new haven, sermon ( ), ~ ~, hayne, r.y., and m., ~ ~, , henry, joseph, and relay, ~ ~, , , share in m.'s telegraph controversy, - , - , , , , , - , , letters with m. ( ) on consultation, - to m. ( ) in praise of telegraph, - on electric power, and construction of experimental line, smith on, as inventor of telegraph, , hepburn, h.c., and telegraph, ~ ~, hillhouse, joseph, to m. ( ) on m.'s family, social gossip, ~ ~, hillhouse, mary, ~ ~, hilliard, francis, referee on smith's claim, ~ ~, hilton, william, meets m., ~ ~, hinkley, ann, death, ~ ~, hodge, aspinwall, from m. ( ) on smith's last attack, ~ ~, hodgson, ----, proposed mexican mission ( ), ~ ~, hoffman, j.t., banquet to m., ~ ~, ; at unveiling of statue to m., ; at m.'s funeral, holland, m. on broek ( ), ~ ~, - and gratuity to m., holmes, i.e., and telegraph, ~ ~, holy thursday at st. peter's ( ), ~ ~, , holy see, and gratuity to m., ~ ~, _see also_ rome. holy week in rome ( ), ~ ~, - hone, philip, owns m.'s thorwaldsen, ~ ~, hoover, r.b., and statue to m., ~ ~, hopkins, j.h., and civil war, ~ ~, horsford, e.n., on invention of telegraph, ~ ~, - on discovery of relay, , at memorial services to m., house, r.e., and telegraph, ~ ~, . house of representatives, m.'s painting, ~ ~, - , houston, g.s., and telegraph, ~ ~, howard, henry, meets m., ~ ~, howe, s.g., imprisonment at berlin, ~ ~, hubbard, r., pupil of m., ~ ~, hull, ann (hart), ~ ~, hull, isaac, marriage, ~ ~, humboldt, alexander von, and m., ~ ~, , ~ ~, , , inscription on photograph, hunt, w.g., and atlantic cable, ~ ~, huntington, daniel, and m.'s house of representatives, ~ ~, ; estimate of m. as artist, - early view of telegraph, ~ ~, banquet to m., speech, , at m.'s funeral, huntington, j.w., and telegraph, ~ ~, , husted, j.w., at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, hutton, m.s., and civil war, ~ ~, immigration, m.'s attitude, ~ ~, - india, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, indians, jedediah morse as special commissioner, ~ ~, ingham, c.c., and portrait of lafayette, ~ ~, and origin of academy of design, to m. ( ) on academy, ~ ~, inman, henry, and portrait of lafayette, ~ ~, and origin of academy of design, to m. ( ) on academy, ~ ~, institute of france, m.'s exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, , , , m.'s membership, invention, horsford on necessary elements, ~ ~, _see also_ morse, s.f.b. (_scientific career._) ireland, mrs. ----, at recoaro ( ), ~ ~, irving, washington, and coleridge, ~ ~, and m. at london ( ), isham, samuel, estimate of m. as artist, ~ ~, , isle of wight, m. on ( ), ~ ~, italy, travel from nice to rome ( ), ~ ~, - beggars, , , , , , perils of travel, , flower festival at genzano, - m. at naples and amalfi, - condition of travel ( ), to venice by boat on po, - m. at venice, - testimonials to m., , m. on conditions ( ), _see also_ rome. jackson, andrew, congratulates adams on election ( ), ~ ~, jackson. c.t., voyage with m. ( ), ~ ~, talks on electrical progress, later claim of giving m. idea of telegraph, , , , , , , , , , jacobins, federalist name for republicans ( ), ~ ~, jarvis, ----, with m. at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, jarvis, s.f., to m. ( ) on war from federalist point of view, ~ ~, jarvis, mrs. s.f. (hart), , ; from m. ( ) on attitude toward art, copley, west, elgin marbles, london cries, knocking, american crisis, ~ ~, to m. ( ) on art in america, jay, p.a., and cooper, ~ ~, informal club, jewett, j.s., on m. and atlantic cable, ~ ~, jewett, william, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, jocelyn, n., travel with m. on continent ( - ), ~ ~, , from m. ( ) on attempt to paint, ~ ~, johnson, andrew, m. on, ~ ~, and banquet to m., johnson, cave, and telegraph, ~ ~, , , , from m. ( ) on vail, johnson, william, informal club, ~ ~, johnston, j.t., and m.'s thorwaldsen, from m. ( ) on it, ~ ~, - judgment of jupiter, m.'s painting, ~ ~, , , , , kane, j.k., telegraph decision, ~ ~, , kane, james, and m., ~ ~, kemble, j.p., m. on, as actor, ~ ~, kendall, amos, character as m.'s business agent, m.'s confidence, ~ ~, , , , , , , , first telegraph company, progress, and rival companies, on jackson's claim, and smith, , , and consolidation of lines, and extension of patent, benevolences, m. on death, _letters to m:_ ( ) on despondency, litigation, ~ ~, ( ) on destruction of evidence, ( ) on california telegraph graft, on suspicion of the vails, on sale of interests, trials of management, ( ) on distrust of cable company, ( ) on foreign gratuity, ( ) on death of vail, _from m:_ ( ) on mercy to infringers, ( ) on preparation against loss of suits, smith, ( ) on smith's triumph, law expenses, , ( ) on lack of dividends, on smith and extension of patent, ( ) on same, ( ) on honors and enmity, on lawyers, ( ) on smith and gratuity, on ball to prince of wales, ( ) on foreign machinations in civil war, ( ) on telegraph monopoly, kendall, john, and m., ~ ~, kennedy, j.p., and telegraph, ~ ~, , , kent, james, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, , , and cooper, ~ ~, informal club, and louis napoleon at new york, kent, moss, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, key. _see_ sender. king, c.b., leslie on, ~ ~, to m. ( ) on personal relations, at premier of coleridge's _remorse_, ; return to america, , king's (liverpool) arms hotel, ~ ~, , kingsley, j.l., m.'s profile, ~ ~, kirk, e.n., and m.'s exhibition of telegraph at paris, ~ ~, , knocking, m. on custom at london, ~ ~, know-nothing party, m.'s attitude, ~ ~, , königgrätz, battle of, influence of telegraph, ~ ~, krebs, j.m., and civil war, ~ ~, laboring classes, condition of english ( ), ~ ~, lafayette, marquis de, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, - , , , , m.'s friendship, to m. ( ) on bereavement, from m. ( ) with sonnet, and m. at paris ( ), and revolution of , and polish revolt, , in , on american finances ( ), m.'s toast to, at fourth dinner at paris ( ), , to m. ( ) on state of europe, nullification, poles, political effect of cholera, m. and death, ~ ~, on catholic church and american liberties, lafayette, g.w., meets m., ~ ~, m.'s letter of sympathy ( ), ~ ~, lamb, charles, and m., ~ ~, at premier of coleridge's _remorse_, lancaster, ----, transatlantic voyage ( ), ~ ~, . landi, gasparo, m. on paintings, ~ ~, , langdon, john, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, languages, m. and foreign, ~ ~, lasalle, ----, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, latham, m.s., and telegraph in california, m.'s scorn of methods, ~ ~, , law and lawyers, m.'s opinion, ~ ~, , , , , lawrence, james, m. on defeat and death, ~ ~, lawrence, w.b., informal club, ~ ~, lectures, m.'s, on fine arts, ~ ~, , , lee, g. w., gift to academy of design, ~ ~, leffingwell, miss ----, miniature by m., ~ ~, legion of honor, bestowed on m., ~ ~, le grice, comte, and m., ~ ~, , _leopard_, and laying of first atlantic cable, ~ ~, leslie, c.r., and m. at london ( - ), ~ ~, , , , on allston, king, coleridge, , as art student, and coleridge, , saul, to m. ( ) on being hard up, allston, war, and allston, , life and economies as student, , , to m. ( ) on _catalogue raisonné_, reunions with m. ( ), ( ), ( ), ~ ~, m. sits for sterne, ~ ~, m. on politics, ~ ~, anecdote of victoria, portrait of allston, leslie, eliza, travel with m. ( ), ~ ~, leslie, j.r., tutor to m.'s children, ~ ~, from m. ( ) on presidential election, letter-writing, jedediah morse on, ~ ~, lettsom, j.c., character, sheridan's ridicule, ~ ~, lincoln, earl of. _see_ newcastle. lincoln, abraham, m.'s attitude, ~ ~, , m. leaves no reference to assassination, lind, charles, m.'s grandson, ~ ~, art study at paris, lind, edward, porto rican estate, ~ ~, from m. ( ) on paris exposition, lind, mrs. henry, and m. at hamburg, ~ ~, lind, susan w. (morse), m.'s portrait, ~ ~, at new york ( ), ~ ~, from m. ( ) on congress and purchase of telegraph, domestic happiness, on dinner at russian minister's, ( ) on experiences on continent, - , m.'s visit to ( ), - , from m. ( ) on proposed statue, ( ) on unveiling of statue, _see also_ morse, susan w. liverpool, m. at ( ), ~ ~, - ( ), docks, liverpool (king's) arms inn, ~ ~, , livingston, cambridge, letters with m. ( ) on coat of arms and motto, ~ ~, at m.'s funeral, locust grove, m.'s home at poughkeepsie, ~ ~, , , , , , m.'s farewell, london, m. on cries ( ), ~ ~, on custom of knocking, on crowds, on vauxhall, - on st. bartholomew's fair, entrée of louis xviii ( ), - fête of allies, - approach ( ), m. at ( ), , ( ), ~ ~, ( ), - , , , ( ), m. on growth ( ), ~ ~, london _globe_, on m.'s dying hercules, ~ ~, lord, daniel, to m. ( ) on infringements, ~ ~, lord, nathan, and civil war, ~ ~, loring, g.b., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, lottery, m.'s attitude, ~ ~, , , roman, louis xviii of france, entrée into london ( ), ~ ~, - appearance, louis philippe, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , , louisville _courier-journal_, tribute to m., ~ ~, louvre, m. on, ~ ~, m.'s painting of interior, , , , ~ ~, lovering, ----, from m. ( ) on daguerreotype material, anecdote, ~ ~, low, a.a., banquet to m., ~ ~, , lowber, r.w., and atlantic cable, ~ ~, lowell, ----, minister at bristol, eng. ( ), ~ ~, loyalty, m. on meaning in america, ~ ~, ludlow, h.g., from m. (c. ) on civil war, ~ ~, _lydia_, transatlantic ship ( ), ~ ~, lyons, m. at ( ), ~ ~, macaulay, zachary, invitation to m. ( ), ~ ~, and m., mcclellan, g.b., m. and presidential candidacy, ~ ~, , - mcclelland, robert, and coffin, ~ ~, mccormick, c.h., and reaper, ~ ~, mcfarland, asa, and m., ~ ~, , , mcgowan, samuel, on telegraph in australia, ~ ~, mcilvaine, c.p., and civil war, ~ ~, madison, james, and war of , ~ ~, maggiore, lago, m. at ( ), ~ ~, magnet, henry and, of m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, - _see also_ henry. magnetic telegraph company, ~ ~, main, william, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, mallory, ----, bookseller at boston, m. apprenticed to, ~ ~, manrow, j.p., and company to operate telegraph, ~ ~, marius in prison, m.'s painting, ~ ~, marlborough, duke of, gambler ( ), ~ ~, marseilles, m. at ( ), ~ ~, marsh, ----, of wethersfield ( ), ~ ~, marsiglia, gerlando, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, mary, princess, appearance ( ), ~ ~, mason, ----, proposed mexican mission ( ), ~ ~, mason, j.y., from m. ( ) on presidential election, ~ ~, and gratuity to m., mason, samson, and telegraph, ~ ~, , mathews, charles, from m. ( ) offering a faroe, ~ ~, maury, m.f., soundings of atlantic plateau, ~ ~, maverick, peter, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, mead, f.j., from m. ( ) on smith's last attack, ~ ~, melville, lord, and american prisoner of war, ~ ~, mexican war, m. on, ~ ~, mexico, m. and proposed mission ( ), ~ ~, - meyendorf, baron de, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , from m. ( ) on improvement, milan, m.'s impressions ( ), ~ ~, military telegraph, m.'s plan, ~ ~, - _miserere_, m. on allegri's, ~ ~, money, w.t., british consul at venice, and m. at recoaro ( ), ~ ~, , monks, m. on, ~ ~, monopoly, m. on beneficent telegraph, ~ ~, _see also_ consolidation. monroe, james, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, , and m., last levee, monroe, mrs. james, drawing-room, ~ ~, montaigne, m.e. de, m. on _essays_, ~ ~, montalivet, comte m.c.b. de, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , morgan, j.j., to m. ( ) on death of mrs. allston, ~ ~, morris, tasker, & morris, and experimental telegraph line, ~ ~, morse, arthur, from m. ( ) on return home, thorwaldsen portrait, ~ ~, on death of brother, morse, c.w., birth, ~ ~, childhood home, at new york ( ), ~ ~, and farm, marriage, m. seeks official position for, morse, elisabeth a., m.'s daughter, birth and death, ~ ~, morse, elisabeth a. (breese), character, ~ ~, , from r.w. snow ( ) on m. as artist, and war of , , illness ( ), travel ( ), decline and death, _letters to m:_ ( ) on religious duty, celebration of fourth, ~ ~, on uncertainty of life, on college extravagances, ( ) on sketch of southey, on war, ( ) on war, on dangers of success, on infidelity of americans in england, avoidance of actors and theatres, ( ) good advice, patron, his parents' early economies and success, reproof on debts, ( ) on peace, purchase for clothes, on right of parental reproofs, on dying hercules, ( ) on m.'s love affair, , _from m:_ (_see also_ his letters to jedediah morse) ( ) on work in charleston, provisions and plans for family, ( ) on travel, brother, own work, proposed trip abroad, ( ) on exhibition, servants, her health, , morse, finley, birth, ~ ~, attends brother's wedding, ~ ~, morse, jedediah [ ], death, career, ~ ~, morse, jedediah [ ], orthodoxy, ~ ~, prominence, children, to bishop of london ( ) on church property in virginia, to lindley murray ( ) on works, and m.'s desire for art career, , , , to talleyrand ( ) introducing m., and war of , , , , reputation in england, home scene ( ), domestic relations, , , from romeyn and van schaick ( ) on m.'s character, war views, and progress, church trouble at charlestown, - , , indian commissioner, moves to new haven, from s.e. morse ( ) on m. at new york, death, character and attainments, , monument, ~ ~, , _letters to m:_ ( ) on letter-writing, concentration of effort, ~ ~, ( ) on profession, ( ) on financial straits, brothers, war, , ( ) on economy, war, , ( ) on m.'s plans, ( ) on m.'s war views, , on m.'s plans, ( ) on love affair, , ( ) on death of m.'s wife, _from m:_ ( ) earliest letter, ( ) on journey to new haven, start at yale, ( ) on desire for relaxation, on routine, on montaigne's _essays_, ( ) on new york and philadelphia, ; on debts, ; on brother at college, profession, , ( ) on voyage to england, , ( ) on west as artist, war, on england and american crisis, west as artist, assassination of perceval, - on leslie, allston, own work, on tea-making, on diploma for father, orders in council, on drawing room, theatres, charivari, on war, gratitude to parents, allston, on war friends, - ( ) on expenses, work, allston, on dying hercules, on war, spanish victories, poet and painter, allston's poems, coat of arms, on progress, study at paris, war views, ( ) on british treatment of americans, religious sentiments, success at bristol, politics, allston, art in america, health, severe winter, on overthrow of napoleon, further study, on further study, ambition, parents' complaint of neglect, wilberforce and slave-trade, entrée of louis xviii, war views, on london fête of allies, on study at paris, on war views, study at paris, failure at bristol, on failure at bristol, english hatred of americans, ( ) on mother's reproof for extravagance and other failings, study at paris, russell portrait, , , on death of mrs. allston, on failure at bristol, economy and expenses, napoleon's return, on preparation for temporary return home, ambition, toil of painting, on napoleon's abdication, ( ) on painting tour in new hampshire, love affair and engagement, - ( ) on success at portsmouth, ( ) on voyage to charleston, on lodgings there, brother, on success there, ( ) on church trouble at charlestown, ( ) on death of m.'s wife, , on academy of design, literary society, ( ) on trials and blessings, lectures, on academy, question of second marriage, lectures, lafayette portrait, health, on anxiety about father's health, morse, louisa, goes abroad with m. ( ), ~ ~, morse, lucretia p. (walker), engagement to m., ~ ~, - , marriage, honeymoon, , goes to charleston with m. ( ), , children, , , , and m.'s plans ( ), , at concord ( ), and m.'s absence, with m. at new york, death, effect on m., - epitaph, , _letters to m:_ ( ) on academy at charleston, ~ ~, on perseverance, ( ) on sleeping on the floor, on mexican mission, _from m:_ ( ) on alston as patron, on work at charleston, on subsidence of work there, academy, on return, on a bonnet, on painting of house of representatives, , ( ) on experiences at albany, on failure at new york, mexican mission, ( ) on journey to washington, on failure of mission, success at new york, ( ) on same, lafayette portrait, washington experiences, - morse, r.c., birth, ~ ~, at phillips andover, at yale, , , to m. ( ) on war views, studies theology, different career, and brothers, , ~ ~, , at savannah ( ), ~ ~, , goes to frontier with father ( ), new york _observer_, from s.e. morse ( ) on m. at new york, marriage, , on m.'s talk on telegraph ( ), ~ ~, assists m. financially, and poughkeepsie place, from m. ( ) on withdrawal from cable company, and civil war, monument to father, , from m. ( ) on supporting lincoln, - m. on death, for other letters from m. _see_ morse, s.e. morse, s.e., birth, ~ ~, at phillips andover, at yale, , , plans for career, as misogynist, studies law, , different career, and brothers, , ~ ~, , boston _recorder_, ~ ~, invention of pump, new york _observer_, to father ( ) on m. at new york, to r.c. morse ( ) on same, on m.'s talk on telegraph ( ), ~ ~, , assists m. financially, , in europe ( ), , ( ), as tortoise to m.'s hare, , and civil war, monument to father, , m. and death, _letters to m:_ ( ) on family interest, ~ ~, ( ) on poet and painter, , _from m:_ ( ) on religion, ( ) on an execution, progress, west, van rensselaer, ( ) on near accident, ( ) on paris, letters for newspaper, ( ) on meeting with prince radziwill, on greenough, lafayette, polish revolt, paris mob, on painting of louvre, cholera in paris, lafayette on american finances, on louvre painting, cooper's character, american principles and european criticism, ( ) on illness, vail portraits, telegraph, ~ ~, on exhibition of telegraph, ( ) on projects in france, discouragement, on daguerreotype, ( ) on telegraph bill in congress, - , ( - ) on construction of experimental line, trials, fisher, smith, - , , ( ) on success, reports of democratic convention, smith, , , on foreign inquiries, congress and purchase, , ( ) on france and telegraph, ( ) on painting for capitol, on accident, on progress of telegraph, mexican war, infringements, printing telegraph, ( ) on rivals, litigation, , , on smith, on poughkeepsie home, - ( ) on litigation, home, , on engagement, ( ) on jackson's claim, newspaper hostility, ( ) on social and telegraph affairs in england, on experiences and honors on continent, ( ) on telegraphic affairs, slavery, ( ) on family party in europe, ( ) on death of vail, on workings of providence in his case, on telegraph in porto rico, proposed spanish cable, ( ) on report of electrical exhibition at paris, , , , on fêtes, on plans for winter, italy, church and state, american politics, on old age, ( ) on breaking leg, morse, s.e., jr., from m. ( ) on monument to father, ~ ~, morse, s.f.b., _early years, domestic life, and characteristics:_ birth, ~ ~, parents, schooling, - religious and moral attitude, , , , , , - , , , ~ ~, , parental solicitude as to character, ~ ~, - , , , , , , - , , attitude toward parents, , , , , , travel to new haven ( ), , start at yale, room, expenses and debts at college, , , , drops a class, parental admonitions against college extravagances, , tenacity, desire for relaxation at college, routine there, on montaigne's _essays_, desire to travel, interest in electrical experiments at college, portraits painted at college, , question of career, desires to become artist, apprenticed to bookseller, - , continued interest in art, - , art career decided upon, attitude and sacrifices of parents, , , , , , , , college love affair, - , on smuggling cigars, , on lotteries, , ~ ~, , and theatres, ~ ~, , , , - , sincerity, interest in public affairs, frankness, enjoyment of controversy, reading, and coat of arms, , ~ ~, appearance ( ), ~ ~, writes a farce ( ), , and brothers, , ~ ~, , industry, ~ ~, , and lucy russell, buoyancy, , , , love affair and engagement, - and fiancée, , on universalists, marriage, honeymoon, , and father's church troubles, , children by first wife, , , , marriage of future mother-in-law, domesticity, , , , , , ~ ~, , , family at new haven ( ), ~ ~, perseverance, on saying farewell, and death of wife, on her character, - , , ~ ~, sonnet on lafayette, ~ ~, homes for children, , leadership, altruism, , , ~ ~, thoughts on second marriage, ~ ~, , , ~ ~, and decline and death of father, ~ ~, , on servants, , and decline of mother, narrow escape ( ), - constitution, temperance, moulding of character, and foreign languages, patriotism, , , - , , ~ ~, , , on devotion and emotion of taste, ~ ~, capacity for friendship, , ~ ~, maintenance of his rights, ~ ~, , ~ ~, , necessary qualities of an inventor, , , , , , belief in divine ordination of his invention, and divine plan in trials and successes, , - , , , , , , - , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , controversies over catholic church, - , , self-control, , sense of humor, , horror of debt, , , liberality, donations, , - , , , , , and poughkeepsie home, , , , , , , on being fifty-six, second marriage and family, , , and printing when a boy, despondency under strain of litigation, attitude toward rewards for invention, refuses to endorse notes, ; defence of slavery, , , , , , , , , - , , , on crinoline, as hare to brother's tortoise, , buys house in new york, monument to father, , on unitarianism, exhortation of his children, , on wayward sons, , on enigma of wealth, trials and afflictions of old age, , , , on old age, , and death of brothers, , pastor on character, poem ( ), , versatility, , prime's review of character, - sensibility, _art student in england, - :_ voyage to england with allston, ~ ~, - on english ladies, journey to london, on treatment of travelers, tips, impositions, - on english laboring class, on england and embargo, on dr. lettsom, on english dining hour, on a ghost, west's interest in, , , , , , , , , , , anecdote of west and george iii., , preparation to enter royal academy, , , on west as artist and man, , , , , on female artists, on attitude toward art in england and america, , , on copley in old age, on elgin marbles, , ~ ~, on cries of london, ~ ~, on custom of knocking, on balloon ascension and london crowd, on vauxhall gardens, - on st. bartholomew's fair, - economy, expenses, debts, , , , , , - , allston's interest and criticism, , , , , , , , , , , - work, , , on conditions in england ( - ), , , , , unfederalistic views on war of , , , , , , , , , - , , , - , , , , , , , , not molested during the war, , and leslie, , , , family interest in progress, , commendations and criticisms, , , , on assassination of perceval, , on difficulties and toil of painting, , and van rensselaer, , on life as student, on charivari, marius in prison, devotion to art, ambition, , , , . dying hercules, sculpture and painting, exhibition and awards, , , - , , , , , ~ ~, rooms at london, ~ ~, and wilberforce, , on american attitude toward french ( ), , on orders in council, , on retreat from moscow, on gilbert stuart, letters of introduction, london friends, and coleridge, , on contemporary american artists ( ), , on allston as artist and man, , , and study at paris, , , , - , , funds for longer stay abroad, , at bristol as portrait painter, lack of success, , , , , , . - question of self-support and further study, , , , , - , , efforts for release of burritt ( ), - and overthrow of napoleon, , seeks a patron, , , and london's celebration of overthrow of napoleon, - , - and death of mrs. allston, on napoleon's return and waterloo, , prepares for temporary return home, , , hope for employment in america, judgment of jupiter, not allowed to compete by royal academy, , , , , russell portrait, journal of dreadful voyage home, - experience at dover ( ), see ship carrying napoleon to st. helena, _art career in america:_ lack of demand, ~ ~, adams portrait, portrait painting in new hampshire ( - ), , - , settles down to portrait painting, , as portrait painter, , , , on painting quacks, portrait painting at portsmouth, - langdon portrait, at charleston ( - ), - , - , - and j.a. alston, , , , voyage to charleston ( ), on r.a. for allston, monroe portrait, , , thinks of settling at charleston, at washington ( ), , ( ), ; ( ), ( ), trouble over mrs. ball's portrait, - and academy at charleston, , trip through berkshires ( ), , painting of house of representatives, - , gift to yale ( ), deforest portrait, search for work, absence from home ( ), ( ), at albany, lack of success there, - moss kent portrait, plans for settling at new york, - james kent portrait, , and advancement of arts, studios at new york, , , , initial failure there ( ), - and mexican mission, - journey from new york to washington ( ), successful establishment at new york ( - ), - , , pupils, , ~ ~, , , lafayette portrait, ~ ~, - , , , , dr. smith portrait, on election of adams ( ), stanford portrait, and founding of national academy of design, - , as president of academy, , ~ ~, lectures and addresses on fine arts, ~ ~, , , pecuniary effect of connection with academy, as historical painter, informal literary club, , ~ ~, electioneering ( ), ~ ~, painting for steamer, annual address before academy ( ), review and rejoinder, and annual exhibition ( ), casts for the academy, divisions of life, art ambition and trials, huntington's estimate of, as artist, - color theory and experiments, influence of allston, results of distractions, isham's estimate, , hopes on return from abroad ( ), ~ ~, , on new york ( ), , on art instruction as his future, , on nullification, , efforts to resume profession, , on need of refining arts in america, enthusiasm wanes, , , fails to get commission for painting for capitol, - commission from fellow artists, never painted, fund returned, , , professor in university of city of new york, , , on effect of daguerreotype on art, , , and question of resuming painting in later years, , , and death of allston, , renewed effort for capitol painting ( ), - continued interest in academy, , again president of academy ( ), attempts to paint ( ), presents allston's portrait to academy, , _in europe, - :_ plans and preparation, commissions, ~ ~ , - , , , outbound voyage, diary of it, - at liverpool, docks, , materials on tour, journey to london, - on english villages, at london, royal academy, leslie, visits, , traveling companions, , on gypsies, on canterbury cathedral and service, - at dover, on dover castle, on channel passage, on landing in france, , at paris, louvre, lafayette, weather, - on letters for newspaper, on continental sabbath, , on allegorical painting, winter journey across france, - on diligence, on continental funerals, , , , , on sisters of charity and benevolence, at avignon, on catholic ritual and music, , , , , , , , - , ~ ~, on toulon navy yard and galley slaves, ~ ~, , travel by private carriage from toulon to rome, - imposition at inns, , on serra palace, genoa, on italian beggars, , , , , , on ligurian apennines, , on carrara marble quarries, - on pisa and leaning tower, - on carnival fooleries, arrival at rome, lodgings there ( ), on induction of cardinals, , on pius viii, on st. luke's academy, on kissing st. peter's toe, on sacred opera, on feast of annunciation, on roman society, - on passion sunday, on horace vernet, , on palm sunday, on lying in state of cardinal, on roman market, on allegri's _miserere_, on holy thursday, papal blessing, , on thorwaldsen, paints his portrait, , - , ~ ~, and later history, of portrait, ~ ~, - , ~ ~, on english, french, and american manners, ~ ~, , on landi's pictures, , on camuccini, sketching tour, happy life, rhapsody on subiaco, on monks, on rudeness of roman soldiers, on roman lotteries, on _festa inflorata_ at genzano, - on campagna at night, on summer day at rome, on illumination of st. peter's, on st. peter's day, - at naples ( ), at amalfi, on accident there, - on campo santo at naples, - on convent of st. martino, rhapsody on view, , on spagnoletto's dead christ, on roman revolt and danger to foreigners, , - , on roman new year, discussion with catholic convert, on election and coronation of pope, , , spectator at historic events, journey to florence during revolt ( ), - getting permission to remain there, on encounter with radziwill at rome, - work at florence, on travel in italy, on bologna, on journey to venice by po, - on venetian sights and smells, moralising on venetian society, homesick, travel to milan, at recoaro, - on gambling priests, on milan, on sacred pictures, at italian lakes, in switzerland, on rigi, , avoids french quarantine, - on paris after the revolution, and greenough at paris, , on lafayette and polish revolt, on lafayette's health ( ), on paris mob, - and r.w. habersham, and cholera, , painting of interior of louvre, , , ~ ~, , meets humboldt, ~ ~, presides at fourth dinner ( ), toast to lafayette, - letters published in brothers' paper, on cooper's patriotism, - on european criticism of america, , active interest in poles, at london ( ), on growth of london, sits to leslie, recovers health, , ~ ~, voyage home, , , on england, _scientific career to :_ early interest in electricity, ~ ~, invention of pump, early longing for telegraph, studies with silliman, machine for carving marble, , and dana's lectures on electricity ( ), discussions with dana, familiarity with electrical science, thoughts ( - ) connected with future invention of telegraph, , , , , , first conception of idea of telegraph ( ), - , ~ ~, experiments with photography, ~ ~, , ~ ~, divisions of life, trials of scientific life, ~ ~, , ~ ~, , , , jackson's conversations on electrical progress on board ship ( ), his later claim to invention, , , , , , , , , , , basis of telegraph worked out on voyage, dot-and-dash code, sketches, - , , simplicity of invention, , , , , thoughts on priority, , testimony of fellow passengers, , , date of invention, , scientific knowledge necessary for invention, - necessary combination of personal qualities and conditions, , , , , testimony of brothers on talk upon landing, , insistence on single circuit, , bars to progress, lack of funds and essentials, , first steps toward apparatus, saw-tooth type, cares ( ), forced to put invention aside, and death of lafayette, workshop in university building, resumes experiments ( ), , first instruments, - electro-chemical experiments, discovery of relay, , , shuns publicity of invention, poverty, in hall of fame, first exhibitions of telegraph ( - ), - , , - , , confidence of universal use, belief in aid to humanity, , , , , , , , , , , fears forestalling and rival claims, , , , , , , difference in principle of foreign inventions, , , , , - , , writes it "telegraph", originality of invention, share of others in it, - , , , , , , , , gale's and henry's connections, batteries, intensifying magnet, - , , - public and congressional suspicion, , , , , , , , , , acknowledgment of indebtedness, , , , , vail's association, contract, , , reversion to first plan for receiver, number code, dictionary, paternity of alphabet code, - patent in america, , , continuation of experiments, improvements, , , , , cumbersome instruments, alphabet supersedes number code, - portrule, , , "attention, the universe" message, friction with vail, , exhibition at washington ( ), no grant results, , , , connection of f.o.j. smith, cause of his later antagonism, , arrangement of partnership with gale, vail, and smith, desire and plan for government control, - , , , , , , , no share in later stock-watering, smith's report to congress, expects disappointments, , , european trip ( ), rivals in europe, , application for british patent, refused, - interest of english gentlemen, effort for special act of parliament, , exhibitions in england, russian contract, refusal of czar to sign it, , , , - , witnesses coronation of victoria, , french patents, , , on birth and baptism of comte de paris, , exhibition at institute of france, , , public and private projects in france, obstacles and failure, , - french enthusiasm over telegraph, , , , , , , , discouraged, dark years and poverty ( - ), - , , , - , , - , , - correspondent for sender, better part of failures, , protection of wires from malevolent attack, , , and underground wires, and daguerre, - invention for reporting railroad trains, and principle of fire-alarm, and military telegraph, - return to america ( ), and lack of effort by partners, - , , , , - , , , , , experiments with daguerreotype, takes portraits, - makes a business of it, , , takes first group picture ( ), chamberlain's exhibition of telegraph in european centers, - rejects proposition from wheatstone, renewed effort for congressional grant without result ( - ), , , - proposals for private companies, , threatens to abandon invention, , henry's praise of telegraph ( ), - obliged to make instruments himself, , experiment with submarine wires, , search for funds ( ), second exhibition before congress ( ), consideration and passage of act to build experimental line, - and fisher, , , , , - wireless experiment, , , , friends in congress, , omen in finding statuette of dying hercules, congratulations, construction of experimental line, route, assistants, - , wires, insulation, change from underground to overhead, , - , - trouble with smith, , , , , , , , prophesies atlantic cable ( ), , on strain of construction, progress of line, messages during construction, - ground circuit, completion of line, "what hath god wrought" message, - reports of democratic convention, - report on experimental line, , and on sounder and reading by sound, , , _career from :_ price of offer of telegraph to congress, ~ ~, , , , defence of rights and priority, , - , trials of success, , congress refuses to purchase invention, , , accidents ( ), ( ), ( ), , , ( ), abortive plans for private company, , smith's fulsome dedication, smith's antagonism and opposition, , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , - , , - , - , foreign inquiries, , , woodbury's address ( ), kendall as agent, , , , , , first company, letter of introduction from department of state, fourth voyage to europe ( ), on crossing channel, on broek, - on hamburg, , attitude of european countries toward telegraph ( ), - on the french, litigation with infringers and rival companies, , - , , , - , - , , extensions of patent, share of partners, , - , , , , honors and decorations, , , - , , , and faithless associates, , , , - , and o'reilly, , , , , , - , , , , henry controversy, - , , , , , - , , progress of telegraph, displacement of other systems, , , , , , , , on mexican war, printing telegraph, and lawsuits, , , and salaries of operators, and vail, , , , , , financial stress, , , , , and rogers, , on aviation, , hostility of newspapers, - and death of cooper, on origin of "telegram", destruction of papers and evidence, and instruments for perry's japanese expedition, and consolidation of lines and monopoly, , , , , defeated for congress ( ), , and know-nothingism, - and dishonesty in telegraph organisation, , , - and sale of interests, , and organisation of atlantic cable company, private connection with telegraph line, trip to newfoundland ( ), , verse on invention, trip to europe ( ), and pecuniary reward from foreign nations, their honorary gratuity, , , - , - , , , experiments for atlantic cable, , attentions in england, banquet, cooke's toast, , - , and cooke, visit to leslie, attentions on continent, private interview with king of denmark, at copenhagen, , on oersted, on st. petersburg, on presentation to czar at peterhoff, - and humboldt, on buchanan's election, kendall's caution against cable company, on laying of first atlantic cable ( ), - and whitehouse's log, doubts success of first and second cables, , , forced withdrawal from cable company, - on office-seeking, family party to europe ( ), visit to daughter in porto rico, - , on st. thomas, , on change of climate and clothes, on son-in-law's estate, on death of vail, constructs first line in porto rico, public breakfast, and proposed spanish cable, - on porto rican fleas, greeting at poughkeepsie ( ), , on proposed candidacy for presidency, financially independent, , and visit of prince of wales, , and secession and compromise, , , attitude during civil war, - , , president of society for national unity, and founding of vassar, expects success of north, belief in foreign machinations, and sale of original wire of telegraph, president of a peace society, attitude toward lincoln, , supports mcclellan's candidacy, , - and help for southern prisoners of war, on loyalty to constitution, , and brother's support of lincoln, , endows lectureship in union theological seminary, refused to attend class reunion ( ), rebukes sectional rejoicing, - statue proposed, on benevolent use of telegraph wealth, demands on, for leadership and aid, , and american asiatic society, characteristic deadhead, on president johnson, final trip to europe ( ), paris headquarters, family gathering there, , presentation at court, court costume, - on field and success of cable, , on incident of louis napoleon's stay at now york, - on paris exposition, fêtes, - report on electrical display, , , , , on isle of wight, winter plans ( ), on italy and union of church and state, on reaction of _reconstruction_ ( ), at dresden, at berlin, von phillipsborn's courtesy, - return to america, and presidential election ( ), , new york banquet ( ), speeches, - on science and art, on death of kendall, unveiling of statue, - farewell message over the world by telegraph, , replies, address, - abandons plan for trip abroad ( ), last summer, on neutralisation of telegraph, , last public appearance, unveils statue of franklin, address, last illness, death, tributes to, - funeral, , grave, memorial services in congress, - and at boston, summary of inventions, fame, _letters: see_ j.s.c. abbott, allston, alston, andrews, aycrigg, ball, bellows, blake, boardman, bodisco, breguet, brett, bromfield, bryant, burbank, mrs. cass, chevalier, christy, clarke, cole, cooper, g.t. curtis, daguerre, day, de forest, dix, douglas, edwards, elgin, b.l. ellsworth, j. evarts, faxton, c.w. field, j.e.b. finley, gale, mrs. w.h. goodrich, green, greenough, a.b. griswold, c.b. griswold, r.w. griswold, bauser, henry, jos. hillhouse, hodge, ingham, s.f. jarvis, mrs. s.f. jarvis, c. johnson, johnston, a. kendall, king, lafayette, q.w. lafayette, c.r. leslie, j.r. leslie, e. lind. s.w.m. lind, livingston, d. lord, lovering, ludlow, macaulay, j.y. mason, mathews, mead, morgan, a. morse, e.a.b. morse, j. morse, l.p.w. morse, r.c. morse, s.e. morse, s.e. morse, jr., s.e.g. morse, s.w. morse, morton, newcastle, o'reilly, m.c. perry, ransom, raymond, reibart, roby, rossiter, salisbury, e.s. sanford, shaffner, e.f. smith, e.g. smith, f.o.j. smith, stevens, stickney, j. thompson, h. thornton, thorwaldsen, a. vail, mrs. a. vail, g. vail, van schaick, vassar, viager, walewaki, t.r. walker, mrs. t.r. walker, warren, watson, wells, williams, wood, t.d. woolsey. morse, sarah e. (griswold) marries m., ~ ~, , domestic life, from m. ( ) on diversions at washington, extension of patent, newfoundland trip ( ), goes abroad with m. ( ), ( ), ( ), from m. ( ) on crinoline, on laying of first atlantic cable, in porto rico ( ), and memorial services to m., morse, susan w., birth, ~ ~, with m. in new york ( ), childhood home, from m. ( ) on coronation of victoria, rival telegraphs, refusal of british patent, ~ ~, , on french patent, birth of comte de paris, on exhibitions and projects of telegraph in france, on need of economy, ( ) on "home," _see also_ lind, susan w. (morse). morse code. _see_ dot-and-dash. morton, j.l., letters with m. ( ) on academy of design, ~ ~, motto of morse coat of arms, ~ ~, moulton, s.d., at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, murray, lindley, complimentary letter from jedediah morse ( ), ~ ~, music, m. on continental, ~ ~, , sacred opera at rome, allegri's _miserere_, naples, m. at ( ), ~ ~, , campo santo, - convent of san martino, , napoleon iii, and m., ~ ~, , m. on, in new york, belief in his star, _napoleon_, transatlantic ship ( ), ~ ~, napoleonic wars, retreat from moscow, ~ ~, english success in spain, overthrow of napoleon, , louis xviii's entrée into london ( ), - london fete of allies, - napoleon's return from elba, news in london of his abdication, - m. sees ship bearing napoleon to st. helena, national academy of design, inception, m.'s plan of membership and control, ~ ~, - , organisers, m. as president, m.'s annual address, review, and rejoinder ( ), exhibition ( ), m. secures casts for, needs m.'s guiding hand ( ), trumbull's opposition to union of art academy, ~ ~, fear lest m. should resign presidency ( ), m. expects to resign presidency ( ), daguerre elected an honorary member, continuation of m.'s interest, m. again president ( ), m. presents portrait and brush of allston, , m. on progress ( ), national gallery, m. on ( ), ~ ~, _neptune_, transatlantic ship ( ), ~ ~, nettleton, ----, butler at yale ( ), ~ ~, neutral trade, search ( ), ~ ~, england and embargo, orders in council and nonintercourse, , , objects of orders, , repeal of orders, _see also_ war of . neutralization of telegraph, m. on ( ), ~ ~, , newcastle, fifth duke of (earl of lincoln), and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , , , to m. ( ) on visit of prince of wales, newcastle, sixth duke of (earl of lincoln), at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, new haven, morse family at, ~ ~, newspapers, hostility to m.'s claims as monopolistic, ~ ~, - newton, g.s., and m., ~ ~, , marriage, ~ ~, new year at rome, ~ ~, new york city, called insipid ( ), ~ ~, defences in war of , m.'s plans for settling at ( ), future, - m.'s studios, rentals, , , , m.'s initial failure at, - his establishment at ( - ), - m.'s portrait of lafayette for, - , , literary club, , ~ ~, m. on improvement and conditions ( ), , m.'s home, banquet to m. ( ), - statue to m., unveiling ( ), - m.'s farewell message to the telegraph, - m.'s funeral, , _see also_ national academy of design. new york _herald_, on m.'s submarine experiment ( ), ~ ~, , tribute to m., new york _journal of commerce_, m. and travel letters for ( ), ~ ~, on exhibition of telegraph ( ), ~ ~, on m.'s rivals, new york _observer_, founded, success, ~ ~, new york, university of city of, m. as professor, and his telegraph, ~ ~, , , , _niagara_, u.s.s., and laying of first atlantic cable, ~ ~, - nicholas i of russia, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, nonintercourse, effect in england ( ), ~ ~, , northampton, marquis of, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , notes, m. refuses to endorse, ~ ~, nothomb, baron de, and m. at berlin, ~ ~, nullification, lafayette on, ~ ~, m. on compromise, ~ ~, , oberman, ----, and m. at hamburg ( ), ~ ~, oersted, h.c., m. on, ~ ~, office, m. on seeking at washington ( ), ~ ~, oldenburg, duchess of, appearance ( ), ~ ~, ombroai, ----, consul at florence ( ), ~ ~, orders in council, british attitude ( ), ~ ~, , repeal and war, , objects, , o'reilly, henry, character, ~ ~, to m. ( ) congratulations, infringements on m.'s patent, rival company, , , , - , , , last attack on m., orton, william, banquet to m., ~ ~, , and statue to m., and m.'s farewell message to the telegraph, , at m.'s funeral, o'shaughnessy, sir william, and m., ~ ~, , otho of greece, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, owen, j.j., and civil war, ~ ~, owen, robert, and wilberforce, ~ ~, at washington ( ), and m., painting, leslie on allston and king, ~ ~, comparison with poetry, , allston on french school, _see also_ allston, morse, s. f. b., national academy of design. palm sunday at rome ( ), ~ ~, palmer, ----, return to america ( ), ~ ~, paradise, j.w., and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, paris, comte de, birth, ~ ~, christening, paris, m. at ( ), ~ ~, - after revolution of , mob and polish revolt ( ), - cholera ( ), , m.'s exhibition of telegraph at ( ), projects, ~ ~, - m. at ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), his presentation at court, - paris exposition ( ), m.'s enthusiasm, ~ ~, his report on electrical exhibit, , , , , fêtes, - attempt on czar's life, parisen, j., and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, parker, joel, and civil war, ~ ~, parkman, dr. george, m. on meanness, ~ ~, passion sunday at rome ( ), ~ ~, patent of telegraph, caveat, ~ ~, specification, application in england, refusal, - proposal of special act of parliament, , , french, , issued in united states, for printing telegraph, infringements, , - , , , - , , extension of m.'s, , - , , , patron, m. seeks ( ), ~ ~, , , patterson, j.w., at memorial services to m., ~ ~, patterson, r.m., and exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, , payne, j.h., mrs. morse on character, ~ ~, peace, m. on telegraph and promotion, ~ ~, , , peale, rembrandt, and study of live figure, ~ ~, and portrait of lafayette, and origin of academy of design, peel, lady emily, at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, peel, sir robert, at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, pell, capt. ----, of the _sully_ ( ), ~ ~, on conception of telegraph, perceval, spencer, and american crisis ( ), ~ ~, , assassination, perry, h.j., and proposed spanish cable, ~ ~, perry, m.c., to m. ( ) on telegraph instruments for japanese expedition, ~ ~, persiani, ----, soirée, ~ ~, peter, saint, image in st. peter's at rome, ~ ~, feast day at rome, peterhoff, m. on presentation to czar at, ~ ~, - philadelphia, west on, as future art centre, ~ ~, exhibition of telegraph ( ), ~ ~, phillips, mrs. ----, transatlantic voyage ( ), ~ ~, phillips andover academy, m. at, ~ ~, phillipsborn, ---- von, and m. at berlin, ~ ~, , on telegraph and battle of königgrätz, photography, m.'s early experiments, ~ ~, , ~ ~, _see also_ daguerreotype. pickett, b.m., morse statue, ~ ~, pisa, m. at ( ), ~ ~, leaning tower, pius viii, at ceremonies in old age, ~ ~, , , death, platoff, ----, at london ( ), ~ ~, , plattsburg, battle, ~ ~, , poems by m. ~ ~, , ~ ~, - poet, and painter, ~ ~, , poinsett, j.r., and art academy at charleston, ~ ~, , and proposed mexican minion ( ), , poland, revolt ( ), ~ ~, - lafayette on revolt, , paris and revolt, mob ( ), - m.'s active interest, polk, j.k., presidential nomination reported by telegraph, ~ ~, , pope, f.l., on morse alphabet, ~ ~, popes. _see_ gregory, pius. porteus, beilby, from jedediah morse ( ) on disestablishment in virginia, ~ ~, porto rico, m.'s visit ( ), ~ ~, - , , first telegraph line, portraits by m., john adams, ~ ~, mrs. ball, - de forest, james kent, moss kent, lafayette, - , , , , john langdon, mrs. lind, james monroe, , , james russell, dr. smith, stanford, thorwaldsen, - , ~ ~, portrule, ~ ~, , , superseded, portsmouth, n.h., m. at ( - ), ~ ~, , , portugal, testimonials to m., ~ ~, , potter, edward, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, poughkeepsie, m.'s home at, ~ ~, , , , , , , greeting to m. ( ), , powell, w.h., commission for capitol painting, ~ ~, prescott, g.b., m. on work, ~ ~, _president_, u.s.s., reported capture ( ), ~ ~, presidential election, conduct in congress ( ), ~ ~, report over telegraph of conventions ( ), ~ ~, , - m. on buchanan's election, m. supports mcclellan's candidacy, , - m. on ( ), , prime, s.i., on m.'s anecdote of west, ~ ~, on m.'s grandfather, on jedediah morse and wife, , on incident in construction of experimental line, ~ ~, on success of line, on sustainment of m.'s patent, on m. and phillipsborn at berlin, - review of m.'s character, prince, l.b., at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, printing, m. on, ~ ~, printing telegraph, ~ ~, _see also_ house. prosch, ----, and instruments for telegraph, ~ ~, , prussia, testimonials to m., ~ ~, telegraph in austrian war, public ownership, m.'s plan for telegraph, ~ ~, - , , , price of offer, congress declines to purchase, , , , , pump, m.'s invention, ~ ~, putnam, aaron, oration at charlestown ( ), ~ ~, . putnam, i.w., as minister, ~ ~, quarantine, m. evades french ( ), ~ ~, - quincy, josiah, at memorial services to m., ~ ~, raasloff, capt. ----, and m., ~ ~, radziwill, prince m.j., m.'s encounter with, at rome ( ), ~ ~, - and polish revolt, railroads, first mention by m., ~ ~, m.'s invention for reporting trains, ~ ~, ralston, eliza, and m., ~ ~, , rankin, r.g., on first view of telegraph and m.'s attitude, ~ ~, - ransom, w.l., from m. ( ) on loyalty, ~ ~, raymond, h.j., and henry-morse controversy, letters with m. ( ), ~ ~, reading, m. and old poets, ~ ~, receiver, m.'s original conception, ~ ~, , , , first form, - reversion to first plan of up-and-down motion, multiple record, m. on receiving by sound, , , recoaro, m. at ( ), ~ ~, - reconstruction, m. on reaction ( ), ~ ~, reeves, tapping, and m., ~ ~, reibart, ----, from m. ( ) on candidacy for president, ~ ~, reid, j.d., on kendall as m.'s agent, ~ ~, on o'reilly, on vail's incapacity, , on huntington's address at banquet to m., and statue to m., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, m.'s thanks to, tribute to m., reinagle, hugh, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, relay, m.'s discovery, ~ ~, other discoverers, henry and, , religion, m.'s early bent, ~ ~, , , parental admonitions, - m.'s attitude, , , , , , - m. on canterbury cathedral and service, - on continental sunday, , on devotion and emotion of taste, m.'s observance of sabbath, ~ ~, m. on union of church and state, _see also_ morse, s.f.b. (_early years_), roman catholic church. remberteau, comte, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, rents at new york, ~ ~, , , renwick, james, on m.'s conception of telegraph, ~ ~, republicans, called jacobins ( ), ~ ~, celebration of fourth at charlestown, _see also_ war of . revolution of , paris after, ~ ~, lafayette on european results, ribera, jusepe. _see_ spagnoletto. rigi, m. on, ~ ~, ripley's inn, hartford, ~ ~, rives, w.c., m.'s letter of introduction. ~ ~, at fourth dinner at paris ( ), return to america, ~ ~, m. on, and invention of telegraph, roberts, m.o., and atlantic cable, ~ ~, robinson, charles, and m.'s telegraph in europe, ~ ~, roby, mrs. margaret, from m. ( ) on ocean voyage, liverpool, ~ ~, ( ) on journey to london, experiences there, canterbury, dover, channel passage, paris, on journey to dijon, diligence, funeral, continental sunday, rocafuerto, vicente, m. on, ~ ~, rogers, h.j., and telegraph, ~ ~, break with m., , from smith ( ) on henry's invention of telegraph, rogers, lewis, return to america ( ), ~ ~, rogers, nathaniel, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, rogers, samuel, and m., ~ ~, , roman catholic church, emancipation question in england ( ), ~ ~, ; m. on french funeral, , on sisters of charity, on ritual, , , _festa infionta_ at genzano, - m.'s discussion with converts, , ~ ~, gambling priests, ~ ~, m. on sacred pictures, m.'s antagonism and controversies, ~ ~, - , - , _see also_ rome. rome, m.'s arrival and lodgings ( ), ~ ~, his work, , induction of cardinals, , plus viii in old age, kissing of st. peter's toe, st. luke's academy, beggars, feast of annunciation, society, - , passion sunday, palm sunday, lying in state of cardinal, market, allegri's _miserere_, holy thursday, papal benediction, , funeral, feast of st. francesco caracoiolo, procession of _corpus domini_, m. on monks, rudeness of soldiers, lotteries, campagna at night, a summer day, illuminations of st. peter's, st. peter's day, - vaults of st. peter's, social evil, death of pius vii, revolt in provinces ( ), danger to foreigners, , - , new year, election and coronation of gregory xvi, , , trasteverini, romeyn, dr. nicholas, and m., ~ ~, to jedediah morse ( ) on m., rossiter, j.p., to m. ( ) on social gossip, ~ ~, - royal academy, m.'s preparation for entrance, ~ ~, , , allston elected, m. at lecture ( ), royal society, m.'s exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, russell, james, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, russell, lucy, and m., ~ ~, russia, and m.'s telegraph ( ), ~ ~, , , , - , renewed interest in telegraph ( ), , m. at st. petersburg and peterhoff ( ), - and gratuity to m., russian extension, m. and manipulation, ~ ~, st. bartholomew's fair, london, m. on ( ), ~ ~, - saint-germain railroad, and m.'s telegraph, ~ ~, , , _st. laurent_, transatlantic steamer ( ), ~ ~, st. luke's academy, rome, m. on, ~ ~, st. martino convent at naples, m. on, ~ ~, , st. peter's church. _see_ rome. st. petersburg, m. on display of wealth ( ), ~ ~, st. thomas island, m. at ( ), ~ ~, , salisbury, e.s., from m. ( ) on order for portrait, discouraging conditions, ~ ~, ( ) on yale's celebration of sectional victory, samson, g.w., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, sanford, ahas, "appointment" at yale, ~ ~, sanford, e.s., from m. ( ) on crooked telegraph manipulations, ~ ~, on government purchase, on financial stress, sanitary commission, m. on aid for confederate prisoners of war, ~ ~, santa anna, a.l. de, at st. thomas ( ), ~ ~, saul, leslie's painting, ~ ~, sculpture, m.'s carving machine, ~ ~, , seabury, samuel, and civil war, ~ ~, search, british, of american ships, ~ ~, sebastiani, comte f.h.b., mob attack ( ), ~ ~, , secession, m.'s attitude, ~ ~, , , sender, saw-tooth type, ~ ~, , ; first form, improvement in portrait, , , correspondent or key substituted, "serenade," m.'s poem, ~ ~, , serra palace, m. on, ~ ~, . serrell, ----, and experimental telegraph line, ~ ~, , , servants, m. on problem, ~ ~, , on english, servell, ----, visual telegraph, ~ ~, seymour, t.h., with m. at peterhoff ( ), ~ ~, , shaffner, t.p. letters with m. ( ) on clash with rival company, ~ ~, - and m. at washington, from m. ( ) on death of vail, on henry controversy, shaw, ----, invention of percussion cap, ~ ~, shee, sir m.a., meets m., ~ ~, shepard, nancy, m.'s nurse, ~ ~, , ~ ~, sheridan, r.b., lines on lettsom, ~ ~, shubrick, w.b., at early exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, siddons, mrs., m. on, ~ ~, siemens, werner, and duplex telegraph, ~ ~, and m. at berlin, silliman, benjamin, m. on "journal," ~ ~, m.'s scientific studies under, in berkshires with m., , epitaph for mrs. morse, , experiments in photography, m.'s indebtedness, ~ ~, simbaldi, palazzo, musical soirée at ( ), ~ ~, simpson, john, at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, sisters of charity, m. on, ~ ~, slave-trade, wilberforce and abolition, ~ ~, slavery, m.'s defence, ~ ~, , , , , , , - , smith, capt. ----, of _napoleon_ ( ), ~ ~, smith, e.f., from m. ( ) on endorsing notes, ~ ~, smith, e.g., and m. ~ ~, to m. ( ) on painting for capitol, smith, f.o.j., offer to help m., ~ ~, character, cause of later antagonism, , conditions of partnership, report to congress on telegraph, and patent specification, goes to europe with m., returns, on chamberlain, abandons efforts for telegraph, , , , , , and construction of experimental line, and beginning of hostility to m., , , , , , , and formation of companies, , telegraph dictionary, dedication to m., - life-long continuation of antagonism, , , , , , , , , and management of partnership, separation of interests, , , denial of injunction against, and extension of patent, demand of share, , , , claim to share foreign gratuity, - , m.'s acknowledgment to, , on henry as inventor of telegraph, - last attack on m., - , _letters to m.:_ ( ) on m.'s service to humanity, ~ ~, . _from m:_ ( ) on public control of telegraph, ( - ) on french and russian projects, key, - , , on jackson's claim, on english affairs, ( ) on discouraging conditions, abandonment by partners, , ( ) on wheatstone's proposition, ( ) on lobbyist, on making further effort, progress of rivals, aid from congress, ( ) on henry's praise, private company, , on abandoning invention, congress, on discouraging conditions, ( ) on bill in congress, on passage of act, on trenching contract, ( ) on company, on smith's dedication to m., disputed division of partnership, ( ) on separation of interests, ( ) on claim to share of gratuity, smith, goldwin, at banquet to m., ~ ~, smith, j.a., informal club ( ), ~ ~, smith, j.l., and telegraph in turkey, ~ ~, smith, nathan, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, smithsonian institution, and henry-morse controversy, ~ ~, smuggling, m.'s experience, ~ ~, , snow, r.w., to mrs. morse ( ) on m. as artist, ~ ~, social evil, m. on, at rome, ~ ~, society, m. on roman ( ), ~ ~, - on english, french, and american manners, , on venetian. society for diffusing useful political knowledge, ~ ~, solomons, a.s., and memorial services to m., ~ ~, somaglia, cardinal, lying in state, ~ ~, sorrento, m. at ( ), ~ ~, soult, marshal, ministry, ~ ~, sounder. _see_ receiver. south carolina, nullification, ~ ~, , ~ ~, , _see also_ charleston. southey, robert, sketch for admirer, ~ ~, , spagnoletto, m. on dead christ, spain, m. on wellington's victories, ~ ~, interest in m.'s telegraph, testimonials to m., proposed cable to west indies ( ), - spaulding, m.j., m.'s religious controversy, ~ ~, , spencer, george, discussion with m. on catholicism, ~ ~, spencer, j.c., and telegraph, ~ ~, sprague, peleg, referee on smith's claim, ~ ~, stafford, marquis of, seat and gallery, ~ ~, stanford, ----, of new york, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, stanly, edward, and telegraph, ~ ~, statham, samuel, and m. in ( ), ~ ~, statue to m., proposed ( ), , unveiling, - steinheil, k.a., telegraph, ~ ~, , , , and ground circuit, , , recommends m.'s telegraph, , stephen, ----, son of james, and war of , ~ ~, sterling, antoinette, and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, stevens, w.b., from m. on telegraph in congress, ~ ~, stickney, william, from m. ( ) on death of kendall, ~ ~, stiles, j.c., and civil war, ~ ~, stock-watering, m. not responsible, ~ ~, stothard, thomas, meets m., ~ ~, strong, caleb, expected election ( ), ~ ~, strother, d.h., on m.'s poverty ( ), ~ ~, , stuart, gilbert, m. on, ~ ~, , sturgeon, william, and electro-magnet, ~ ~, subiaco, m.'s rhapsody, ~ ~, sullivan, sarah w., marriage, ~ ~, sully, thomas, and study of life figure, ~ ~, and portrait of lafayette, painting for steamer, _sully_, transatlantic ship ( ), ~ ~, sunday, m. on continental, ~ ~, , supreme court, on m.'s patent, ~ ~, - , _susquehanna_, and laying of first atlantic cable, ~ ~, swedish royal academy of science, m.'s membership, ~ ~, , switzerland, m. in ( ), ~ ~, - talleyrand, c.m. de, from jedediah morse ( ) introducing m. ~ ~, taney, r.b., telegraph decision, ~ ~, tappan, h.b., on first view of telegraph, ~ ~, tardi, luigia, singer, ~ ~, tatham & brothers, and experimental telegraph line, ~ ~, taylor, moses, and atlantic cable, ~ ~, "telegram," origin, ~ ~, telegraph. _see_ atlantic cable, battery, circuit, consolidation, dot-and-dash, duplex, experimental line, morse (s.f.b.), patent, public ownership, relay, receiver, sender, wire, wireless. theatre, at st. bartholomew's fair ( ), ~ ~, m.'s attitude, , , - m. on kemble, cooke, mrs. siddons, premier of coleridge's _remorse_, maternal warnings against, m.'s farce, , thompson, john, from m. ( ) on fêtes of paris exposition, ~ ~, ( ) on desire to return home, thompson, m.e., and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, thornton, sir edward, at banquet to m., ~ ~, , thornton, henry, and m., ~ ~, , and war of , on orders in council, , letters with m. ( - ) on prisoner of war, - thorwaldsen, a.b., m. on, at rome and as artist, ~ ~, , ~ ~, m.'s portrait, ~ ~, , from m. ( ) on portrait, later history of portrait, - , ~ ~, gift to academy of design, ~ ~, thunder storms in venice, ~ ~, , tilden, s.j., at m.'s funeral, ~ ~, tips, m. on, in england, ~ ~, tisdale, ----, on dying hercules, ~ ~, todd, john, on jedediah morse, ~ ~, on mrs. morse, torrey, john, at exhibition of telegraph, ~ ~, toucey, isaac, and m. as office-seeker for son, ~ ~, toulon, m. on navy yard and galley slaves ( ), ~ ~, , town, ithiel, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, travel with m. ( - ), , trasteverini, character, ~ ~, travel, english war-time regulations ( ), ~ ~, treatment of travellers, tips, impositions, - delay in sailing of ships, m.'s journal of dreadful voyage ( ), - from new york to washington ( ), transatlantic ( ), - stage coach to london ( ), - channel steamers ( ), ( ), ~ ~, winter journey across france by diligence ( ), ~ ~, - diligence described, from toulon to geneva, , imposition of innkeepers, , from genoa to rome, - conditions and perils of italian, , , to venice by boat on po, - trentanove, raymond, gift to academy of design, ~ ~, trentham hall, ~ ~, trollope, mrs. francos, m. on _domestic manners_, ~ ~, trumbull, john, m. on, as artist, ~ ~, and m.'s portrait of mrs. ball, and academy of arts, , , ~ ~, turkey, testimonials to m., ~ ~, , turner, j.m.w., m. meets, ~ ~, twining, stephen, and m. at yale, ~ ~, , tyng, s.h., and statue to m., ~ ~, union theological seminary, m. endows lectureship, ~ ~, unitarianism, jedediah morse's opposition, ~ ~, m. on, ~ ~, universalists, m. on, ~ ~, upham, n.g., referee on smith's claim, ~ ~, uriel in the sun, allston's painting, ~ ~, vail, alfred, first view of telegraph, ~ ~, association with it, contract, , and dot-and-dash alphabet, - work with m., , , m.'s acknowledgment of indebtedness to, , , friction, , new arrangement of partnership, ceases effort for telegraph, , , , , , , and construction and operation of experimental line, agreement, , , , , and operation of telegraph, kendall, as agent, , , and henry controversy, relations with m. after , , , - , , incapacity for telegraph work, m. and death, , _letters to m:_ ( ) proposing exhibition at philadelphia, ~ ~, ( ) on private line, ( ) on accident, ( ) on avoiding active interest in companies, ( ) on suits, severing connection with telegraph, ( ) on newspaper hostility, _from m:_ ( ) on prospects, portrule, , on exhibition before institute of france, ( ) on discouraging conditions, ( ) on same, ( ) on scattered partners, hope, ( ) on duplex and wireless experiments, action in congress, ( ) on bill, on passage of act, on preparation for experimental line, ( ) on operating, , ( ) on faithless associates, on accident, ( ) on personal relations, ( ) on faithlessness of rogers, , ( ) on share under extension of patent, vail, mrs. alfred, from m. ( ) on share in gratuity, ~ ~, vail, george, and brother's connection with telegraph, ~ ~, to m. ( ) refusing assistance, from m. ( ) on brother's share in extension of patent, suspicion of m., from m. ( ) on original wire of telegraph, vail, stephen, and telegraph, ~ ~, , van buren, martin, and letters of introduction for m. ( ), ~ ~, and exhibition of telegraph ( ), ~ ~, vanderlyn, john, and m.'s portrait of mrs. ball, ~ ~, and portrait of lafayette, and origin of academy of design, painting for steamer, van dyke, h.j., and civil war, ~ ~, van rensselaer, stephen, and m. at london ( ), ~ ~, presented at court, and m. as artist, , van shalek, ----, to m. ( ) on new york's defenses, ~ ~, on victories, new england federalism, to jedediah morse on m.'s character, war views, and progress, orders painting from m., from m. ( ) on copies of paintings, vassar, matthew, from m. ( ) on vassar college, ~ ~, vassar college. m. and founding, ~ ~, vauxhall gardens, m. on ( ), ~ ~, - venice, m.'s journey to, by po ( ), ~ ~, - sights and smells, thunder storms, , society, _venice preserved_, m. on, ~ ~, vernet, horace, m. on, at rome, ~ ~, , victoria of england, coronation, ~ ~, anecdote of kindness, villages, aspect of english ( ), ~ ~, vinci, leonardo da, and science, ~ ~, virginia, disestablishment, church property, ~ ~, visger, harman, and m., ~ ~, to m. ( ) on self-support, allston, visscher, ----, in england ( ), and m., ~ ~, , - vouchy, comte de, and m., ~ ~, wainwright, j.m., informal club ( ), ~ ~, walcott, ----, and daguerreotypes, ~ ~, walcott, g.k., and m.'s farewell message to telegraph, ~ ~, waldo, s.l., and portrait of lafayette, ~ ~, and origin of academy of design, wales, prince of, m. and visit to america, ~ ~, new york ball, walewski, comte, and gratuity to m., ~ ~, to m. ( ) announcing award, m.'s reply, walker, charles [ ], m. on family, ~ ~, walker, charles [ ], with m. at new york ( ), ~ ~, walker, lucretia p., love and engagement to m., ~ ~, - visits his parents, and fiancé, converted, marriage, _see also_ morse, lucretia p. walker, s.c., and henry-morse controversy, ~ ~, walker, t.r., to m. ( ) on animosity of newspapers, ~ ~, from m. ( ) on atlantic cable, ( ) on monarchy in america, walker, mrs. t.r., from m. ( ) on poem, ~ ~, wall, william, and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, walpole, n.h., m. at ( ), ~ ~, walsh, robert, and m.'s telegraph, prophecy, ~ ~, war of , m. on british attitude ( ), ~ ~, ; m.'s republican attitude, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , federalistic attitude of m.'s family, , , , , , , , , , americans in england not disturbed, , question of orders in council, , , english opinion of federalists, allston's attitude, and french influence in america, , repeal of orders in council, hatred of americans in england, , , , m.'s efforts for release of a prisoner of war, - new york defences, lake erie and plattsburg, , new england's opposition, american effort ( ), federalistic view ( ), , england and peace overtures, mrs. morse on peace, warren, edward, and jackson's claim, letter from m. ( ), ~ ~, warren, mass. _see_ western. warren phalanx of charlestown ( ), ~ ~, washington, ----, telegraph operator, ~ ~, washington, george, as letter-writer, ~ ~, washington, d.c., m. at ( ), ~ ~, ( ), ( ), mrs. monroe's drawing-room, monroe's last levee, adams and jackson at it, m.'s effort for commission for painting for capitol, ~ ~, - , - first exhibition of telegraph, second exhibition, construction of telegraph line to baltimore, - _washington_, transatlantic steamer ( ), ~ ~, watson, p.h., and extension of m.'s patent, ~ ~, wealth, m. on divine enigma, ~ ~, webster, daniel, on jedediah morse, ~ ~, and m.'s effort for commission for painting for capitol, ~ ~, webster, emily, engagement, ~ ~, weld, thomas, induction as cardinal, ~ ~, meets m., wellington, duke of, spanish victories, ~ ~, wells, william, to m. ( ) on money, ~ ~, west, benjamin, interest in m., ~ ~, , , , , , , , , , , anecdote of george iii and declaration of independence, , christ healing the sick, christ before pilate, , activity and powers in old age, m. on, as artist, , , on philadelphia as art centre, gout, west. w.e., and m., ~ ~, western, mass., tavern ( ), ~ ~, western union telegraph company, passes a dividend ( ), ~ ~, "what hath god wrought" message, ~ ~, wheatstone, sir charles, and relay, ~ ~, telegraph, m. on telegraph and his own, , , , - , opposes patent to m., progress of telegraph, proposition to m. rejected. gets american patent, henry on telegraph, , and ground circuit, , telegraph displaced by m.'s, , wheeler, ----, return to america ( ), ~ ~, wheeler, f.b., on m.'s character, ~ ~, at m.'s funeral, at memorial services, whig convention ( ), report by telegraph, ~ ~, white, chandler, and atlantic cable, ~ ~, whitehouse, e.o.w., experiments for atlantic cable, ~ ~, , and laying of first cable, log, whitney. eli, and m.'s pump, ~ ~, wilberforce, william, and m., ~ ~, , and war of , and slave-trade, character, and final overthrow of napoleon, willard, j.s., death, ~ ~, _william joliffe_, channel steamer ( ), ~ ~, williams, h.i., from m. ( ) on law suits, ~ ~, willington, r.s., from m. ( ) on catholic plot, ~ ~, wilson, d.w., and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, wilson, j.l., and civil war, ~ ~, windsor, vt., m. at and on ( ), ~ ~, , winslow, hubbard, and civil war, ~ ~, wire, m. and underground, ~ ~, experiment with submarine, duplex telegraphy, , failure of underground, for experimental line, , - , , insulation for experimental line, , , use of naked, overhead, for experimental line, , use of ground circuit, , , wireless telegraphy, m.'s experiment, ~ ~, , , , wiseman, n.p.s., meets m., ~ ~, women, m. on appearance of english, ~ ~, wood, fernando, and memorial services for m., ~ ~, , wood, george, to m. ( ) on harassments, , ; and extension of patent, letter to m. ( ), , to m. ( ) on slavery argument, from m. ( ) on divine hand in progress of telegraph, on wayward sons, enigma of wealth, ( ) on benevolent uses of wealth from telegraph, death, woodbury, levi, and telegraph, ~ ~, , , woods, leonard, and civil war, ~ ~, woolsey, mary a., engagement, ~ ~, woolsey. t.d., and m. in italy ( ), ~ ~, from m. ( ) on contribution to yale, ~ ~, wright, c.c., and origin of academy of design, ~ ~, wright, silas, and telegraph, ~ ~, , refuses vice-presidential nomination over telegraph, württemberg, medal for m., ~ ~, wyatt, richard, gift to academy of design, ~ ~, wynne, james, anecdotes of coleridge and abernethy, ~ ~, - yale college, m. at, ~ ~, - student's routine ( ), m.'s incidental expenses, "appointments," m.'s gift ( ), ( ), ~ ~, daguerreotype of th anniversary of class of , ll.d. for m., m. refuses to attend class reunion ( ), - yates, j.c., and m., ~ ~, young, mcclintock, and telegraph, ~ ~, zantzinger, l.f., telegraph operator, ~ ~, [transcriber's note: the illustrations have been included with the ebook version of this work. the image files have been named in a straightforward manner that corresponds to the numbering in the text; thus, illustration is included as file "fig .png", while illustration (a) is included as file "fig a.png".] the radio amateur's hand book [illustration: a. frederick collins, inventor of the wireless telephone, . awarded gold medal for same, alaska yukon pacific exposition, .] the radio amateur's hand book a complete, authentic and informative work on wireless telegraphy and telephony by a. frederick collins inventor of the wireless telephone ; historian of wireless - ; author of "wireless telegraphy" to william marconi inventor of the wireless telegraph introduction before delving into the mysteries of receiving and sending messages without wires, a word as to the history of the art and its present day applications may be of service. while popular interest in the subject has gone forward by leaps and bounds within the last two or three years, it has been a matter of scientific experiment for more than a quarter of a century. the wireless telegraph was invented by william marconi, at bologna, italy, in , and in his first experiments he sent dot and dash signals to a distance of or feet. the wireless telephone was invented by the author of this book at narberth, penn., in , and in his first experiments the human voice was transmitted to a distance of three blocks. the first vital experiments that led up to the invention of the wireless telegraph were made by heinrich hertz, of germany, in when he showed that the spark of an induction coil set up electric oscillations in an open circuit, and that the energy of these waves was, in turn, sent out in the form of electric waves. he also showed how they could be received at a distance by means of a ring detector, which he called a _resonator_ in , edward branly, of france, showed that metal filings in a tube cohered when electric waves acted on them, and this device he termed a _radio conductor_; this was improved upon by sir oliver lodge, who called it a coherer. in , alexander popoff, of russia, constructed a receiving set for the study of atmospheric electricity, and this arrangement was the earliest on record of the use of a detector connected with an aerial and the earth. marconi was the first to connect an aerial to one side of a spark gap and a ground to the other side of it. he used an induction coil to energize the spark gap, and a telegraph key in the primary circuit to break up the current into signals. adding a morse register, which printed the dot and dash messages on a tape, to the popoff receptor he produced the first system for sending and receiving wireless telegraph messages. [illustration: collins' wireless telephone exhibited at the madison square garden, october .] after marconi had shown the world how to telegraph without connecting wires it would seem, on first thought, to be an easy matter to telephone without wires, but not so, for the electric spark sets up damped and periodic oscillations and these cannot be used for transmitting speech. instead, the oscillations must be of constant amplitude and continuous. that a direct current arc light transforms a part of its energy into electric oscillations was shown by firth and rogers, of england, in . the author was the first to connect an arc lamp with an aerial and a ground, and to use a microphone transmitter to modulate the sustained oscillations so set up. the receiving apparatus consisted of a variable contact, known as a _pill-box_ detector, which sir oliver lodge had devised, and to this was connected an ericsson telephone receiver, then the most sensitive made. a later improvement for setting up sustained oscillations was the author's _rotating oscillation arc_. since those memorable days of more than two decades ago, wonderful advances have been made in both of these methods of transmitting intelligence, and the end is as yet nowhere in sight. twelve or fifteen years ago the boys began to get fun out of listening-in to what the ship and shore stations were sending and, further, they began to do a little sending on their own account. these youngsters, who caused the professional operators many a pang, were the first wireless amateurs, and among them experts were developed who are foremost in the practice of the art today. away back there, the spark coil and the arc lamp were the only known means for setting up oscillations at the sending end, while the electrolytic and crystal detectors were the only available means for the amateur to receive them. as it was next to impossible for a boy to get a current having a high enough voltage for operating an oscillation arc lamp, wireless telephony was out of the question for him, so he had to stick to the spark coil transmitter which needed only a battery current to energize it, and this, of course, limited him to sending morse signals. as the electrolytic detector was cumbersome and required a liquid, the crystal detector which came into being shortly after was just as sensitive and soon displaced the former, even as this had displaced the coherer. a few years ahead of these amateurs, that is to say in , j. a. fleming, of england, invented the vacuum tube detector, but ten more years elapsed before it was perfected to a point where it could compete with the crystal detector. then its use became general and workers everywhere sought to, and did improve it. further, they found that the vacuum tube would not only act as a detector, but that if energized by a direct current of high voltage it would set up sustained oscillations like the arc lamp, and the value of sustained oscillations for wireless telegraphy as well as wireless telephony had already been discovered. the fact that the vacuum tube oscillator requires no adjustment of its elements, that its initial cost is much less than the oscillation arc, besides other considerations, is the reason that it popularized wireless telephony; and because continuous waves have many advantages over periodic oscillations is the reason the vacuum tube oscillator is replacing the spark coil as a wireless telegraph transmitter. moreover, by using a number of large tubes in parallel, powerful oscillations can be set up and, hence, the waves sent out are radiated to enormous distances. while oscillator tubes were being experimented with in the research laboratories of the general electric, the westinghouse, the radio corporation of america, and other big companies, all the youthful amateurs in the country had learned that by using a vacuum tube as a detector they could easily get messages miles away. the use of these tubes as amplifiers also made it possible to employ a loud speaker, so that a room, a hall, or an out-of-door audience could hear clearly and distinctly everything that was being sent out. the boy amateur had only to let father or mother listen-in, and they were duly impressed when he told them they were getting it from kdka (the pittsburgh station of the westinghouse co.), for was not pittsburgh miles away! and so they, too, became enthusiastic wireless amateurs. this new interest of the grown-ups was at once met not only by the manufacturers of apparatus with complete receiving and sending sets, but also by the big companies which began broadcasting regular programs consisting of music and talks on all sorts of interesting subjects. this is the wireless, or radio, as the average amateur knows it today. but it is by no means the limit of its possibilities. on the contrary, we are just beginning to realize what it may mean to the human race. the government is now utilizing it to send out weather, crop and market reports. foreign trade conditions are being reported. the naval observatory at arlington is wirelessing time signals. department stores are beginning to issue programs and advertise by radio! cities are also taking up such programs, and they will doubtless be included soon among the regular privileges of the tax-payers. politicians address their constituents. preachers reach the stay-at-homes. great singers thrill thousands instead of hundreds. soon it will be possible to hear the finest musical programs, entertainers, and orators, without budging from one's easy chair. in the world war wireless proved of inestimable value. airplanes, instead of flying aimlessly, kept in constant touch with headquarters. bodies of troops moved alertly and intelligently. ships at sea talked freely, over hundreds of miles. scouts reported. everywhere its invisible aid was invoked. in time of peace, however, it has proved and will prove the greatest servant of mankind. wireless messages now go daily from continent to continent, and soon will go around the world with the same facility. ships in distress at sea can summon aid. vessels everywhere get the day's news, even to baseball scores. daily new tasks are being assigned this tireless, wireless messenger. messages have been sent and received by moving trains, the lackawanna and the rock island railroads being pioneers in this field. messages have also been received by automobiles, and one inventor has successfully demonstrated a motor car controlled entirely by wireless. this method of communication is being employed more and more by newspapers. it is also of great service in reporting forest fires. colleges are beginning to take up the subject, some of the first being tufts college, hunter college, princeton, yale, harvard, and columbia, which have regularly organized departments for students in wireless. instead of the unwieldy and formidable looking apparatus of a short time ago, experimenters are now vying with each other in making small or novel equipment. portable sets of all sorts are being fashioned, from one which will go into an ordinary suitcase, to one so small it will easily slip into a brownie camera. one receiver depicted in a newspaper was one inch square! another was a ring for the finger, with a setting one inch by five-eighths of an inch, and an umbrella as a "ground." walking sets with receivers fastened to one's belt are also common. daily new novelties and marvels are announced. meanwhile, the radio amateur to whom this book is addressed may have his share in the joys of wireless. to get all of these good things out of the ether one does not need a rod or a gun--only a copper wire made fast at either end and a receiving set of some kind. if you are a sheer beginner, then you must be very careful in buying your apparatus, for since the great wave of popularity has washed wireless into the hearts of the people, numerous companies have sprung up and some of these are selling the veriest kinds of junk. and how, you may ask, are you going to be able to know the good from the indifferent and bad sets? by buying a make of a firm with an established reputation. i have given a few offhand at the end of this book. obviously there are many others of merit--so many, indeed, that it would be quite impossible to get them all in such a list, but these will serve as a guide until you can choose intelligently for yourself. a. f. c. contents chapter i. how to begin wireless kinds of wireless systems--parts of a wireless system--the easiest way to start--about aerial wire systems--about the receiving apparatus--about transmitting stations--kinds of transmitters--the spark gap wireless telegraph transmitter--the vacuum table telegraph transmitter--the wireless telephone transmitter. ii. putting up your aerial kinds of aerial wire systems--how to put up a cheap receiving aerial--a two-wire aerial--connecting in the ground--how to put up a good aerial--an inexpensive good aerial--the best aerial that can be made--assembling the aerial--making a good ground. iii. simple telegraph and telephone receiving sets assembled wireless receiving sets--assembling your own receiving set--the crystal detector--the tuning coil--the loose coupled tuning coil--fixed and variable condensers--about telephone receivers-- connecting up the parts--receiving set no. --adjusting the no. set--the tuning coil--adjusting the no. set. iv. simple telegraph sending sets a cheap transmitting set (no. )--the spark coil--the battery--the telegraph key--the spark gap--the tuning coil--the high-tension condenser--a better transmitting set (no. )--the alternating current transformer--the wireless key--the spark gap--the high-tension condenser--the oscillation transformer--connecting up the apparatus--for direct current--how to adjust your transmitter. turning with a hot wire ammeter--to send out a -meter wave length--the use of the aerial switch--aerial switch for a complete sending and receiving set--connecting in the lightning switch. v. electricity simply explained electricity at rest and in motion--the electric current and its circuit--current and the ampere--resistance and the ohm--what ohm's law is--what the watt and kilowatt are--electromagnetic induction--mutual induction--high-frequency currents--constants of an oscillation circuit--what capacitance is--what inductance is--what resistance is--the effect of capacitance. vi. how the transmitting and receiving sets work how transmitting set no. works--the battery and spark coil circuit--changing the primary spark coil current into secondary currents--what ratio of transformation means--the secondary spark coil circuit--the closed oscillation circuit--how transmitting set no. works-with alternating current--with direct current--the rotary spark gap--the quenched spark gap--the oscillation transformer--how receiving set no. works--how receiving set no. works. vii. mechanical and electrical tuning damped and sustained mechanical vibrations--damped and sustained oscillations--about mechanical tuning--about electric tuning. viii. a simple vacuum tube detector receiving set assembled vacuum tube receiving set--a simple vacuum tube receiving set--the vacuum tube detector--three electrode vacuum tube detector--the dry cell and storage batteries--the filament rheostat--assembling the parts--connecting up the parts--adjusting the vacuum tube detector receiving set. ix. vacuum tube amplifier receiving sets a grid leak amplifier receiving set. with crystal detector--the fixed resistance unit, or grid leak--assembling the parts for a crystal detector set--connecting up the parts for a crystal detector--a grid leak amplifying receiving set with vacuum tube detector--a radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set--an audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set--a six step amplifier receiving set with a loop aerial--how to prevent howling. x. regenerative amplification receiving sets the simplest type of regenerative receiving set--with loose coupled tuning coil--connecting up the parts--an efficient regenerative receiving set. with three coil loose coupler--the a battery potentiometer--the parts and how to connect them up--a regenerative audio frequency amplifier--the parts and how to connect them up. xi. short wave regenerative receiving sets a short wave regenerative receiver, with one variometer and three variable condensers--the variocoupler--the variometer--connecting up the parts--short wave regenerative receiver with two variometers and two variable condensers--the parts and how to connect them up. xii. intermediate and long wave regenerative receiving sets intermediate wave receiving sets--intermediate wave set with loading coils--the parts and how to connect them up--an intermediate wave set with variocoupler inductance coils--the parts and how to connect them up--a long wave receiving set--the parts and how to connect them up. xiii. heterodyne or beat long wave telegraph receiving set what the heterodyne or beat method is--the autodyne or self-heterodyne long wave receiving set--the parts and connections of an autodyne or self-heterodyne, receiving set--the separate heterodyne long wave receiving set--the parts and connections of a separate heterodyne long wave receiving set. xiv. headphones and loud speakers wireless headphones--how a bell telephone receiver is made--how a wireless headphone is made--about resistance, turns of wire and sensitivity of headphones--the impedance of headphones--how the headphones work--about loud speakers--the simplest type of loud speaker--another simple kind of loud speaker--a third kind of simple loud speaker--a super loud speaker. xv. operation of vacuum tube receptors what is meant by ionization--how electrons are separated from atoms--action of the two electrode vacuum tube--how the two electrode tube acts as a detector--how the three electrode tube acts as a detector--how the vacuum tube acts as an amplifier--the operation of a simple vacuum tube receiving set--operation of a regenerative vacuum tube receiving set--operation of autodyne and heterodyne receiving sets--the autodyne, or self-heterodyne receiving set--the separate heterodyne receiving set. xvi. continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with direct current sources of current for telegraph transmitting sets--an experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter--the apparatus you need--the tuning coil--the condensers--the aerial ammeter--the buzzer and dry cell--the telegraph key--the vacuum tube oscillator--the storage battery--the battery rheostat--the oscillation choke coil--transmitter connectors--the panel cutout--connecting up the transmitting apparatus--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter--the apparatus you need--the tuning coil--the aerial condenser--the aerial ammeter--the grid and blocking condensers--the key circuit apparatus--the watt oscillator vacuum tube--the storage battery and rheostat--the filament voltmeter--the oscillation choke coil--the motor-generator set--the panel cut-out--the protective condenser--connecting up the transmitting apparatus--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter--the apparatus and connections-- the -watt vacuum tube oscillator--the aerial ammeter--the grid leak resistance--the oscillation choke coil--the filament rheostat--the filament storage battery--the protective condenser--the motor-generator--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter. xvii. continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with alternating current a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set--the apparatus required--the choke coils--the milli-ammeter--the a. c. power transformer--connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set-a - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set--the apparatus required--the alternating current power transformer-connecting up the apparatus. xviii. wireless telephone transmitting sets with direct and alternating currents a short distance wireless telephone transmitting set--with -volt direct lighting current--the apparatus you need--the microphone transmitter--connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator--the apparatus you need--the telephone induction coil--the microphone transformer--the magnetic modulator--how the apparatus is connected up--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator--the oscillation choke coil--the plate and grid circuit reactance coils--connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with -volt alternating current--the apparatus you need--the vacuum tube rectifier--the filter condensers--the filter reactance coil-- connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with -volt alternating current--apparatus required. xix. the operation of vacuum tube transmitters the operation of the vacuum tube oscillator--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with direct current--short distance c. w. transmitter--the operation of the key circuit--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitting with direct current--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current--with a single oscillator tube--heating the filament with alternating current--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current-- with two oscillator tubes--the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--short distance transmitter--the microphone transmitter--the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--long distance transmitters--the operation of microphone modulators--the induction coil--the microphone transformer--the magnetic modulator--operation of the vacuum tube as a modulator--the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with alternating current--the operation of rectifier vacuum tubes--the operation of reactors and condensers. xx. how to make a receiving set for $ . or less. the crystal detector--the tuning coil--the headphone--how to mount the parts--the condenser--how to connect up the receptor. appendix useful information--glossary--wireless don'ts. list of figures fig. .--simple receiving set fig. .--simple transmitting set (a) fig. .--flat top, or horizontal aerial (b) fig. .--inclined aerial (a) fig. .--inverted l aerial (b) fig. --t aerial fig. .--material for a simple aerial wire system (a) fig. .--single wire aerial for receiving (b) fig. .--receiving aerial with spark gap lightning arrester (c) fig. .--aerial with lightning switch fig. .--two-wire aerial (a) fig. .--part of a good aerial (b) fig. .--the spreaders (a) fig. .--the middle spreader (b) fig. .--one end of aerial complete (c) fig. .--the leading in spreader (a) fig. .--cross section of crystal detector (b) fig. .--the crystal detector complete (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of a double slide tuning coil (b) fig. .--double slide tuning coil complete (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of a loose coupler (b) fig. .--loose coupler complete (a) fig. .--how a fixed receiving condenser is built up (b) fig. .--the fixed condenser complete (c) and (d) fig. .--variable rotary condenser fig. .--pair of wireless headphones (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. fig. .--adjusting the receiving set (a) and (b) fig. .--types of spark coils for set no. (c) fig. .--wiring diagram of spark coil fig. .--other parts for transmitting set no. (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. (b) fig. .--wiring of diagram for sending set no. fig. .--parts for transmitting set no. (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for sending set no. fig. .--using a -volt direct current with an alternating current transformer fig. .--principle of the hot wire ammeter fig. .--kinds of aerial switches fig. .--wiring diagram for a complete sending and receiving set no. fig. .--wiring diagram for complete sending and receiving set no. fig. .--water analogue for electric pressure fig. .--water analogues for direct and alternating currents fig. .--how the ammeter and voltmeter are used fig. .--water valve analogue of electric resistance (a) and (b) fig. .--how an electric current is changed into magnetic lines of force and these into an electric current (c) and (d) fig. .--how an electric current sets up a magnetic field fig. .--the effect of resistance on the discharge of an electric current fig. .--damped and sustained mechanical vibrations fig. .--damped and sustained electric oscillations fig. .--sound wave and electric wave tuned senders and receptors fig. .--two electrode vacuum tube detectors fig. .--three electrode vacuum tube detector and battery connections fig. .--a and b batteries for vacuum tube detectors fig. .--rheostat for the a or storage-battery current (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for vacuum tube detector receiving set (b) fig. .--wiring diagram of a simple vacuum tube receiving set fig. .--grid leaks and how to connect them up fig. .--crystal detector receiving set with vacuum tube amplifier (resistance coupled) (a) fig. .--vacuum tube detector receiving set with one step amplifier (resistance coupled) (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for using one a or storage battery with an amplifier and a detector tube (a) fig. .--wiring diagram for radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set (b) fig. .--radio frequency transformer (a) fig. .--audio frequency transformer (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set. (with vacuum tube detector and two step amplifier tubes) (a) fig. .--six step amplifier with loop aerial (b) fig. .--efficient regenerative receiving set (with three coil loose coupler tuner) fig. .--simple regenerative receiving set (with loose coupler tuner) (a) fig. .--diagram of three coil loose coupler (b) fig. .--three coil loose coupler tuner fig. .--honeycomb inductance coil fig. .--the use of the potentiometer fig. .--regenerative audio frequency amplifier receiving set fig. .--how the vario coupler is made and works fig. .--how the variometer is made and works fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (one variometer and three variable condensers) fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (two variometer and two variable condensers) fig. .--wiring diagram showing fixed loading coils for intermediate wave set fig. .--wiring digram of intermediate wave receptor with one vario coupler and section bank-wound inductance coil fig. .--wiring diagram showing long wave receptor with vario couplers and bank-wound inductance coils fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave autodyne, or self-heterodyne receptor (compare with fig. ) fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave separate heterodyne receiving set fig. .--cross section of bell telephone receiver fig. .--cross section of wireless headphone fig. .--the wireless headphone fig. .--arkay loud speaker fig. .--amplitone loud speaker fig. .--amplitron loud speaker fig. .--magnavox loud speaker fig. .--schematic diagram of an atom fig. .--action of two-electrode vacuum tube (a) and (b) fig. .--how a two-electrode tube acts as relay or a detector (c) fig. --only the positive part of oscillations goes through the tube (a) and (b) fig. .--how the positive and negative voltages of the oscillations act on the electrons (c) fig. .--how the three-electrode tube acts as detector and amplifier (d) fig. .--how the oscillations control the flow of the battery current through the tube fig. .--how the heterodyne receptor works fig. .--separate heterodyne oscillator (a) fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter. (b) fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter. fig. .--experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter fig. --apparatus of -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter fig. .-- - to -watt c. w. telegraph transmitter (with a single oscillation tube) fig. .-- -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter (with two tubes in parallel) fig. .-- -watt oscillator vacuum tube fig. .--alternating current power transformer (for c. w. telegraphy and wireless telephony) fig. .--wiring diagram for - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set. (with alternating current.) fig. --wiring diagram for - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter fig. .--standard microphone transmitter fig. .--wiring diagram of short distance wireless telephone set. (microphone in aerial wire.) fig. .--telephone induction coil (used with microphone transmitter). fig. .--microphone transformer used with microphone transmitter fig. .--magnetic modulator used with microphone transmitter (a) fig. .--wiring diagram of --to -mile wireless telephone. (microphone modulator shunted around grid-leak condenser) (b) fig. .--microphone modulator connected in aerial wire fig. .--wiring diagram of - to -mile wireless telephone transmitting set fig. .--plate and grid circuit reactor fig. .--filter reactor for smoothing out rectified currents fig. .-- - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter (a) and (b) fig. .--operation of vacuum tube oscillators (c) fig. .--how a direct current sets up oscillations fig. .--positive voltage only sets up oscillations fig. .--rasco baby crystal detector fig. .--how the tuning coil is made fig. .--mesco loop-ohm head set fig. .--schematic layout of the $ . receiving set fig. .--wiring diagram for the $ . receiving set list of illustrations a. frederick collins, inventor of the wireless telephone, . awarded gold medal for same, alaska yukon pacific exposition, collins' wireless telephone exhibited at the madison square garden, october, general pershing "listening-in" the world's largest radio receiving station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near port jefferson, l. i. first wireless college in the world, at tufts college, mass alexander graham bell, inventor of the telephone, now an ardent radio enthusiast world's largest loud speaker ever made. installed in lytle park, cincinnati, ohio, to permit president harding's address at point pleasant, ohio, during the grant centenary celebration to be heard within a radius of one square united states naval high power station, arlington, va. general view of power room. at the left can be seen the control switchboards, and overhead, the great k.w. arc transmitter with accessories the transformer and tuner of the world's largest radio station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near port jefferson, l. i. broadcasting government reports by wireless from washington. this shows mr. gale at work with his set in the post office department wireless receptor, the size of a safety match box. a youthful genius in the person of kenneth r. hinman, who is only twelve years old, has made a wireless receiving set that fits neatly into a safety match box. with this instrument and a pair of ordinary receivers, he is able to catch not only code messages but the regular broadcasting programs from stations twenty and thirty miles distant wireless set made into a ring, designed by alfred g. rinehart, of elizabeth, new jersey. this little receptor is a practical set; it will receive messages, concerts, etc., measures " by / " by / ". an ordinary umbrella is used as an aerial chapter i how to begin wireless in writing this book it is taken for granted that you are: _first_, one of the several hundred thousand persons in the united states who are interested in wireless telegraphy and telephony; _second_, that you would like to install an apparatus in your home, and _third_, that it is all new to you. now if you live in a city or town large enough to support an electrical supply store, there you will find the necessary apparatus on sale, and someone who can tell you what you want to know about it and how it works. if you live away from the marts and hives of industry you can send to various makers of wireless apparatus [footnote: a list of makers of wireless apparatus will be found in the _appendix_.] for their catalogues and price-lists and these will give you much useful information. but in either case it is the better plan for you to know before you start in to buy an outfit exactly what apparatus you need to produce the result you have in mind, and this you can gain in easy steps by reading this book. kinds of wireless systems.--there are two distinct kinds of wireless systems and these are: the _wireless telegraph_ system, and the _wireless telephone_ system. the difference between the wireless telegraph and the wireless telephone is that the former transmits messages by means of a _telegraph key_, and the latter transmits conversation and music by means of a _microphone transmitter_. in other words, the same difference exists between them in this respect as between the morse telegraph and the bell telephone. parts of a wireless system.--every complete wireless station, whether telegraph or telephone, consists of three chief separate and distinct parts and these are: (a) the _aerial wire system_, or _antenna_ as it is often called, (b) the _transmitter_, or _sender_, and (c) the _receiver_, or, more properly, the _receptor_. the aerial wire is precisely the same for either wireless telegraphy or wireless telephony. the transmitter of a wireless telegraph set generally uses a _spark gap_ for setting up the electric oscillations, while usually for wireless telephony a _vacuum tube_ is employed for this purpose. the receptor for wireless telegraphy and telephony is the same and may include either a _crystal detector_ or a _vacuum tube detector_, as will be explained presently. the easiest way to start.--first of all you must obtain a government license to operate a sending set, but you do not need a license to put up and use a receiving set, though you are required by law to keep secret any messages which you may overhear. since no license is needed for a receiving set the easiest way to break into the wireless game is to put up an aerial and hook up a receiving set to it; you can then listen-in and hear what is going on in the all-pervading ether around you, and you will soon find enough to make things highly entertaining. nearly all the big wireless companies have great stations fitted with powerful telephone transmitters and at given hours of the day and night they send out songs by popular singers, dance music by jazz orchestras, fashion talks by and for the ladies, agricultural reports, government weather forecasts and other interesting features. then by simply shifting the slide on your tuning coil you can often tune-in someone who is sending _morse_, that is, messages in the dot and dash code, or, perhaps a friend who has a wireless telephone transmitter and is talking. of course, if you want to _talk back_ you must have a wireless transmitter, either telegraphic or telephonic, and this is a much more expensive part of the apparatus than the receptor, both in its initial cost and in its operation. a wireless telegraph transmitter is less costly than a wireless telephone transmitter and it is a very good scheme for you to learn to send and receive telegraphic messages. at the present time, however, there are fifteen amateur receiving stations in the united states to every sending station, so you can see that the majority of wireless folks care more for listening in to the broadcasting of news and music than to sending out messages on their own account. the easiest way to begin wireless, then, is to put up an aerial and hook up a receiving set to it. about aerial wire systems.--to the beginner who wants to install a wireless station the aerial wire system usually looms up as the biggest obstacle of all, and especially is this true if his house is without a flag pole, or other elevation from which the aerial wire can be conveniently suspended. if you live in the congested part of a big city where there are no yards and, particularly, if you live in a flat building or an apartment house, you will have to string your aerial wire on the roof, and to do this you should get the owner's, or agent's, permission. this is usually an easy thing to do where you only intend to receive messages, for one or two thin wires supported at either end of the building are all that are needed. if for any reason you cannot put your aerial on the roof then run a wire along the building outside of your apartment, and, finally, if this is not feasible, connect your receiver to a wire strung up in your room, or even to an iron or a brass bed, and you can still get the near-by stations. an important part of the aerial wire system is the _ground_, that is, your receiving set must not only be connected with the aerial wire, but with a wire that leads to and makes good contact with the moist earth of the ground. where a house or a building is piped for gas, water or steam, it is easy to make a ground connection, for all you have to do is to fasten the wire to one of the pipes with a clamp. [footnote: pipes are often insulated from the ground, which makes them useless for this purpose.] where the house is isolated then a lot of wires or a sheet of copper or of zinc must be buried in the ground at a sufficient depth to insure their being kept moist. about the receiving apparatus.--you can either buy the parts of the receiving apparatus separate and hook them up yourself, or you can buy the apparatus already assembled in a set which is, in the beginning, perhaps, the better way. the simplest receiving set consists of ( ) a _detector_, ( ) a _tuning coil_, and ( ) a _telephone receiver_ and these three pieces of apparatus are, of course, connected together and are also connected to the aerial and ground as the diagram in fig. clearly shows. there are two chief kinds of detectors used at the present time and these are: (a) the _crystal detector_, and (b) the _vacuum tube detector_. the crystal detector is the cheapest and simplest, but it is not as sensitive as the vacuum tube detector and it requires frequent adjustment. a crystal detector can be used with or without a battery while the vacuum tube detector requires two small batteries. [illustration: fig. .--simple receiving set.] a tuning coil of the simplest kind consists of a single layer of copper wire wound on a cylinder with an adjustable, or sliding, contact, but for sharp tuning you need a _loose coupled tuning coil_. where a single coil tuner is used a _fixed_ condenser should be connected around the telephone receivers. where a loose coupled tuner is employed you should have a variable condenser connected across the _closed oscillation circuit_ and a _fixed condenser_ across the telephone receivers. when listening-in to distant stations the energy of the received wireless waves is often so very feeble that in order to hear distinctly an _amplifier_ must be used. to amplify the incoming sounds a vacuum tube made like a detector is used and sometimes as many as half-a-dozen of these tubes are connected in the receiving circuit, or in _cascade_, as it is called, when the sounds are _amplified_, that is magnified, many hundreds of times. the telephone receiver of a receiving set is equally as important as the detector. a single receiver can be used but a pair of receivers connected with a head-band gives far better results. then again the higher the resistance of the receivers the more sensitive they often are and those wound to as high a resistance as , ohms are made for use with the best sets. to make the incoming signals, conversation or music, audible to a room full of people instead of to just yourself you must use what is called a _loud speaker_. in its simplest form this consists of a metal cone like a megaphone to which is fitted a telephone receiver. about transmitting stations--getting your license.--if you are going to install a wireless sending apparatus, either telegraphic or telephonic, you will have to secure a government license for which no fee or charge of any kind is made. there are three classes of licenses issued to amateurs who want to operate transmitting stations and these are: ( ) the _restricted amateur license_, ( ) the _general amateur license_, and ( ) the _special amateur license_. if you are going to set up a transmitter within five nautical miles of any naval wireless station then you will have to get a _restricted amateur license_ which limits the current you use to half a _kilowatt_ [footnote: a _kilowatt_ is , _watts_. there are watts in a horsepower.] and the wave length you send out to _meters_. should you live outside of the five-mile range of a navy station then you can get a general amateur license and this permits you to use a current of kilowatt, but you are likewise limited to a wave length of meters. but if you can show that you are doing some special kind of wireless work and not using your sending station for the mere pleasure you are getting out of it you may be able to get a _special amateur license_ which gives you the right to send out wave lengths up to meters. when you are ready to apply for your license write to the _radio inspector_ of whichever one of the following districts you live in: first district..............boston, mass. second " ..............new york city third " ..............baltimore, md. fourth " ..............norfolk, va. fifth " ..............new orleans, la. sixth " ............. san francisco, cal. seventh " ............. seattle, wash. eighth " ............. detroit, mich. ninth " ..............chicago, ill. kinds of transmitters.--there are two general types of transmitters used for sending out wireless messages and these are: ( ) _wireless telegraph_ transmitters, and ( ) _wireless telephone_ transmitters. telegraph transmitters may use either: (a) a _jump-spark_, (b) an _electric arc_, or (c) a _vacuum tube_ apparatus for sending out dot and dash messages, while telephone transmitters may use either, (a) an _electric arc_, or (b) a _vacuum tube_ for sending out vocal and musical sounds. amateurs generally use a _jump-spark_ for sending wireless telegraph messages and the _vacuum tube_ for sending wireless telephone messages. the spark gap wireless telegraph transmitter.--the simplest kind of a wireless telegraph transmitter consists of: ( ) a _source of direct or alternating current_, ( ) a _telegraph key_, ( ) a _spark-coil_ or a _transformer_, ( ) a _spark gap_, ( ) an _adjustable condenser_ and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. where _dry cells_ or a _storage battery_ must be used to supply the current for energizing the transmitter a spark-coil can be employed and these may be had in various sizes from a little fellow which gives / -inch spark up to a larger one which gives a -inch spark. where more energy is needed it is better practice to use a transformer and this can be worked on an alternating current of volts, or if only a volt direct current is available then an _electrolytic interrupter_ must be used to make and break the current. a simple transmitting set with an induction coil is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig .--simple transmitting set.] a wireless key is made like an ordinary telegraph key except that where large currents are to be used it is somewhat heavier and is provided with large silver contact points. spark gaps for amateur work are usually of: ( ) the _plain_ or _stationary type_, ( ) the _rotating type_, and ( ) the _quenched gap_ type. the plain spark-gap is more suitable for small spark-coil sets, and it is not so apt to break down the transformer and condenser of the larger sets as the rotary gap. the rotary gap on the other hand tends to prevent _arcing_ and so the break is quicker and there is less dragging of the spark. the quenched gap is more efficient than either the plain or rotary gap and moreover it is noiseless. condensers for spark telegraph transmitters can be ordinary leyden jars or glass plates coated with tin or copper foil and set into a frame, or they can be built up of mica and sheet metal embedded in an insulating composition. the glass plate condensers are the cheapest and will serve your purpose well, especially if they are immersed in oil. tuning coils, sometimes called _transmitting inductances_ and _oscillation transformers_, are of various types. the simplest kind is a transmitting inductance which consists of or turns of copper wire wound on an insulating tube or frame. an oscillation transformer is a loose coupled tuning coil and it consists of a primary coil formed of a number of turns of copper wire wound on a fixed insulating support, and a secondary coil of about twice the number of turns of copper wire which is likewise fixed in an insulating support, but the coils are relatively movable. an _oscillation transformer_ (instead of a _tuning coil_), is required by government regulations unless _inductively coupled_. the vacuum tube telegraph transmitter.--this consists of: ( ) a _source of direct or alternating current_, ( ) a _telegraph key_, ( ) a _vacuum tube oscillator_, ( ) a _tuning coil_, and ( ) a _condenser_. this kind of a transmitter sets up _sustained_ oscillations instead of _periodic_ oscillations which are produced by a spark gap set. the advantages of this kind of a system will be found explained in chapter xvi. the wireless telephone transmitter.--because a jump-spark sets up _periodic oscillations_, that is, the oscillations are discontinuous, it cannot be used for wireless telephony. an electric arc or a vacuum tube sets up _sustained_ oscillations, that is, oscillations which are continuous. as it is far easier to keep the oscillations going with a vacuum tube than it is with an arc the former means has all but supplanted the latter for wireless telephone transmitters. the apparatus required and the connections used for wireless telephone sets will be described in later chapters. useful information.--it would be wise for the reader to turn to the appendix, beginning with page of this book, and familiarize himself with the information there set down in tabular and graphic form. for example, the first table gives abbreviations of electrical terms which are in general use in all works dealing with the subject. you will also find there brief definitions of electric and magnetic units, which it would be well to commit to memory; or, at least, to make so thoroughly your own that when any of these terms is mentioned, you will know instantly what is being talked about. chapter ii putting up your aerial as inferred in the first chapter, an aerial for receiving does not have to be nearly as well made or put up as one for sending. but this does not mean that you can slipshod the construction and installation of it, for however simple it is, the job must be done right and in this case it is as easy to do it right as wrong. to send wireless telegraph and telephone messages to the greatest distances and to receive them as distinctly as possible from the greatest distances you must use for your aerial ( ) copper or aluminum wire, ( ) two or more wires, ( ) have them the proper length, ( ) have them as high in the air as you can, ( ) have them well apart from each other, and ( ) have them well insulated from their supports. if you live in a flat building or an apartment house you can string your aerial wires from one edge of the roof to the other and support them by wooden stays as high above it as may be convenient. should you live in a detached house in the city you can usually get your next-door neighbor to let you fasten one end of the aerial to his house and this will give you a good stretch and a fairly high aerial. in the country you can stretch your wires between the house and barn or the windmill. from this you will see that no matter where you live you can nearly always find ways and means of putting up an aerial that will serve your needs without going to the expense of erecting a mast. kinds of aerial wire systems.--an amateur wireless aerial can be anywhere from feet to feet long and if you can get a stretch of the latter length and a height of from to feet you will have one with which you can receive a thousand miles or more and send out as much energy as the government will allow you to send. the kind of an aerial that gives the best results is one whose wire, or wires, are _horizontal_, that is, parallel with the earth under it as shown at a in fig. . if only one end can be fixed to some elevated support then you can secure the other end to a post in the ground, but the slope of the aerial should not be more than or degrees from the horizontal at most as shown at b. [illustration: (a) fig. .--flat top, or horizontal aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--inclined aerial.] the _leading-in wire_, that is, the wire that leads from and joins the aerial wire with your sending and receiving set, can be connected to the aerial anywhere it is most convenient to do so, but the best results are had when it is connected to one end as shown at a in fig. , in which case it is called an _inverted l aerial_, or when it is connected to it at the middle as shown at b, when it is called a _t aerial_. the leading-in wire must be carefully insulated from the outside of the building and also where it passes through it to the inside. this is done by means of an insulating tube known as a _leading-in insulator_, or _bulkhead insulator_ as it is sometimes called. [illustration: (a) fig. .--inverted l aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--t aerial.] as a protection against lightning burning out your instruments you can use either: ( ) an _air-gap lightning arrester,_ ( ) a _vacuum tube protector_, or ( ) a _lightning switch_, which is better. whichever of these devices is used it is connected in between the aerial and an outside ground wire so that a direct circuit to the earth will be provided at all times except when you are sending or receiving. so your aerial instead of being a menace really acts during an electrical storm like a lightning rod and it is therefore a real protection. the air-gap and vacuum tube lightning arresters are little devices that can be used only where you are going to receive, while the lightning switch must be used where you are going to send; indeed, in some localities the _fire underwriters_ require a large lightning switch to be used for receiving sets as well as sending sets. how to put up a cheap receiving aerial.--the kind of an aerial wire system you put up will depend, chiefly, on two things, and these are: ( ) your pocketbook, and ( ) the place where you live. a single wire aerial.--this is the simplest and cheapest kind of a receiving aerial that can be put up. the first thing to do is to find out the length of wire you need by measuring the span between the two points of support; then add a sufficient length for the leading-in wire and enough more to connect your receiving set with the radiator or water pipe. you can use any size of copper or aluminum wire that is not smaller than _no. brown and sharpe gauge._ when you buy the wire get also the following material: ( ) two _porcelain insulators_ as shown at a in fig. ; ( ) three or four _porcelain knob insulators_, see b; ( ) either (a) an _air gap lightning arrester,_ see c, or (b) a _lightning switch_ see d; ( ) a _leading-in porcelain tube insulator,_ see e, and ( ) a _ground clamp_, see f. [illustration: fig. .--material for a simple aerial wire system.] to make the aerial slip each end of the wire through a hole in each insulator and twist it fast; next cut off and slip two more pieces of wire through the other holes in the insulators and twist them fast and then secure these to the supports at the ends of the building. take the piece you are going to use for the leading-in wire, twist it around the aerial wire and solder it there when it will look like a in fig. . now if you intend to use the _air gap lightning arrester_ fasten it to the wall of the building outside of your window, and bring the leading-in wire from the aerial to the top binding post of your arrester and keep it clear of everything as shown at b. if your aerial is on the roof and you have to bring the leading-in wire over the cornice or around a corner fix a porcelain knob insulator to the one or the other and fasten the wire to it. [illustration: (a) fig. .--single wire aerial for receiving.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--receiving aerial with air gap lightning arrester.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--aerial with lightning switch.] next bore a hole through the frame of the window at a point nearest your receiving set and push a porcelain tube / inch in diameter and or inches long, through it. connect a length of wire to the top post of the arrester or just above it to the wire, run this through the leading-in insulator and connect it to the slider of your tuning coil. screw the end of a piece of heavy copper wire to the lower post of the arrester and run it to the ground, on porcelain knobs if necessary, and solder it to an iron rod or pipe which you have driven into the earth. finally connect the fixed terminal of your tuning coil with the water pipe or radiator inside of the house by means of the ground clamp as shown in the diagrammatic sketch at b in fig. and you are ready to tune in. if you want to use a lightning switch instead of the air-gap arrester then fasten it to the outside wall instead of the latter and screw the free end of the leading-in wire from the aerial to the middle post of it as shown at c in fig. . run a wire from the top post through the leading-in insulator and connect it with the slider of your tuning coil. next screw one end of a length of heavy copper wire to the lower post of the aerial switch and run it to an iron pipe in the ground as described above in connection with the spark-gap lightning arrester; then connect the fixed terminal of your tuning coil with the radiator or water pipe and your aerial wire system will be complete as shown at c in fig. . a two-wire aerial.--an aerial with two wires will give better results than a single wire and three wires are better than two, but you must keep them well apart. to put up a two-wire aerial get ( ) enough _no. _, or preferably _no. _, solid or stranded copper or aluminum wire, ( ) four porcelain insulators, see b in fig. , and ( ) two sticks about inch thick, inches wide and or feet long, for the _spreaders_, and bore / -inch hole through each end of each one. now twist the ends of the wires to the insulators and then cut off four pieces of wire about feet long and run them through the holes in the wood spreaders. finally twist the ends of each pair of short wires to the free ends of the insulators and then twist the free ends of the wires together. for the leading-in wire that goes to the lightning switch take two lengths of wire and twist one end of each one around the aerial wires and solder them there. twist the short wire around the long wire and solder this joint also when the aerial will look like fig. . bring the free end of the leading-in wire down to the middle post of the lightning switch and fasten it there and connect up the receiver to it and the ground as described under the caption of _a single wire aerial_. [illustration: fig. .--two wire aerial.] connecting in the ground.--if there is a gas or water system or a steam-heating plant in your house you can make your ground connection by clamping a ground clamp to the nearest pipe as has been previously described. connect a length of bare or insulated copper wire with it and bring this up to the table on which you have your receiving set. if there are no grounded pipes available then you will have to make a good ground which we shall describe presently and lead the ground wire from your receiving set out of the window and down to it. how to put up a good aerial.--while you can use the cheap aerial already described for a small spark-coil sending set you should have a better insulated one for a / or a kilowatt transformer set. the cost for the materials for a good aerial is small and when properly made and well insulated it will give results that are all out of proportion to the cost of it. an inexpensive good aerial.--a far better aerial, because it is more highly insulated, can be made by using _midget insulators_ instead of the porcelain insulators described under the caption of _a single wire aerial_ and using a small _electrose leading-in insulator_ instead of the porcelain bushing. this makes a good sending aerial for small sets as well as a good receiving aerial. the best aerial that can be made.--to make this aerial get the following material together: ( ) enough _stranded or braided wire_ for three or four lengths of parallel wires, according to the number you want to use ( ) six or eight _electrose ball insulators_, see b, fig. ; ( ) two -inch or -inch _electrose strain insulators_, see c; ( ) six or eight _s-hooks_, see d; one large _withe_ with one eye for middle of end spreader, see e; ( ) two smaller _withes_ with one eye each for end spreader, see e; ( ) two still smaller _withes_, with two eyes each for the ends of the end spreaders, see e ( ) two _thimbles_, see f, for / -inch wire cable; ( ) six or eight _hard rubber tubes_ or _bushings_ as shown at g; and ( ) two _end spreaders_, see h; one _middle spreader_, see i; and one _leading-in spreader_, see j. [illustration: (a) fig. --part of a good aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--the spreaders.] for this aerial any one of a number of kinds of wire can be used and among these are (a) _stranded copper wire;_ (b) _braided copper wire;_ (c) _stranded silicon bronze wire,_ and (d) _stranded phosphor bronze wire_. stranded and braided copper wire is very flexible as it is formed of seven strands of fine wire twisted or braided together and it is very good for short and light aerials. silicon bronze wire is stronger than copper wire and should be used where aerials are more than feet long, while phosphor bronze wire is the strongest aerial wire made and is used for high grade aerials by the commercial companies and the government for their high-power stations. the spreaders should be made of spruce, and should be feet inches long for a three-wire aerial and feet inch long for a four-wire aerial as the distance between the wires should be about inches. the end spreaders can be turned cylindrically but it makes a better looking job if they taper from the middle to the ends. they should be - / inches in diameter at the middle and - / inches at the ends. the middle spreader can be cylindrical and inches in diameter. it must have holes bored through it at equidistant points for the hard rubber tubes; each of these should be / inch in diameter and have a hole / inch in diameter through it for the aerial wire. the leading-in spreader is also made of spruce and is - / inches square and inches long. bore three or four / -inch holes at equidistant points through this spreader and insert hard rubber tubes in them as with the middle spreader. assembling the aerial.--begin by measuring off the length of each wire to be used and see to it that all of them are of exactly the same length. now push the hard rubber insulators through the holes in the middle spreader and thread the wires through the holes in the insulators as shown at a in fig . next twist the ends of each wire to the rings of the ball insulators and then put the large withes on the middle of each of the end spreaders; fix the other withes on the spreaders so that they will be inches apart and fasten the ball insulators to the eyes in the withes with the s-hooks. now slip a thimble through the eye of one of the long strain insulators, thread a length of stranded steel wire / inch in diameter through it and fasten the ends of it to the eyes in the withes on the ends of the spreaders. [illustration: (a) fig. .--middle spreader.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--one end of aerial complete.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--leading in spreader.] finally fasten a -inch length of steel stranded wire to each of the eyes of the withes on the middle of each of the spreaders, loop the other end over the thimble and then wrap the end around the wires that are fixed to the ends of the spreaders. one end of the aerial is shown complete at b in fig. , and from this you can see exactly how it is assembled. now cut off three or four pieces of wire or feet long and twist and solder each one to one of the aerial wires; then slip them through the hard rubber tubes in the leading-in spreader, bring their free ends together as at c and twist and solder them to a length of wire long enough to reach to your lightning switch or instruments. making a good ground.--where you have to make a _ground_ you can do so either by ( ) burying sheets of zinc or copper in the moist earth; ( ) burying a number of wires in the moist earth, or ( ) using a _counterpoise_. to make a ground of the first kind take half a dozen large sheets of copper or zinc, cut them into strips a foot wide, solder them all together with other strips and bury them deeply in the ground. it is easier to make a wire ground, say of as many or more wires as you have in your aerial and connect them together with cross wires. to put such a ground in the earth you will have to use a plow to make the furrows deep enough to insure them always being moist. in the counterpoise ground you make up a system of wires exactly like your aerial, that is, you insulate them just as carefully; then you support them so that they will be as close to the ground as possible and yet not touch it or anything else. this and the other two grounds just described should be placed directly under the aerial wire if the best results are to be had. in using a counterpoise you must bring the wire from it up to and through another leading-in insulator to your instruments. chapter iii simple telegraph and telephone receiving sets with a crystal detector receiving set you can receive either telegraphic dots and dashes or telephonic speech and music. you can buy a receiving set already assembled or you can buy the different parts and assemble them yourself. an assembled set is less bother in the beginning but if you like to experiment you can _hook up_, that is, connect the separate parts together yourself and it is perhaps a little cheaper to do it this way. then again, by so doing you get a lot of valuable experience in wireless work and an understanding of the workings of wireless that you cannot get in any other way. assembled wireless receiving sets.--the cheapest assembled receiving set [footnote: the marvel, made by the radio mfg. co., new york city.] advertised is one in which the detector and tuning coil is mounted in a box. it costs $ . , and can be bought of dealers in electric supplies generally. this price also includes a crystal detector, an adjustable tuning coil, a single telephone receiver with head-band and the wire, porcelain insulators, lightning switch and ground clamp for the aerial wire system. it will receive wireless telegraph and telephone messages over a range of from to miles. another cheap unit receptor, that is, a complete wireless receiving set already mounted which can be used with a single aerial is sold for $ . . [footnote: the aeriola jr., made by the westinghouse company, pittsburgh, pa.] this set includes a crystal detector, a variable tuning coil, a fixed condenser and a pair of head telephone receivers. it can also be used to receive either telegraph or telephone messages from distances up to miles. the aerial equipment is not included in this price, but it can be bought for about $ . extra. assembling your own receiving set.--in this chapter we shall go only into the apparatus used for two simple receiving sets, both of which have a _crystal detector_. the first set includes a _double-slide tuning coil_ and the second set employs a _loose-coupled tuning coil_, or _loose coupler_, as it is called for short. for either set you can use a pair of , - or , -ohm head phones. [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. general pershing listening in.] the crystal detector.--a crystal detector consists of: ( ) _the frame_, ( ) _the crystal_, and ( ) _the wire point_. there are any number of different designs for frames, the idea being to provide a device that will (a) hold the sensitive crystal firmly in place, and yet permit of its removal, (b) to permit the _wire point_, or _electrode_, to be moved in any direction so that the free point of it can make contact with the most sensitive spot on the crystal and (c) to vary the pressure of the wire on the crystal. a simple detector frame is shown in the cross-section at a in fig. ; the crystal, which may be _galena_, _silicon_ or _iron pyrites_, is held securely in a holder while the _phosphor-bronze wire point_ which makes contact with it, is fixed to one end of a threaded rod on the other end of which is a knob. this rod screws into and through a sleeve fixed to a ball that sets between two brass standards and this permits an up and down or a side to side adjustment of the metal point while the pressure of it on the crystal is regulated by the screw. [illustration: (a) fig. .--cross section of crystal detector.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--the crystal detector complete.] a crystal of this kind is often enclosed in a glass cylinder and this makes it retain its sensitiveness for a much longer time than if it were exposed to dust and moisture. an upright type of this detector can be bought for $ . , while a horizontal type, as shown at b, can be bought for $ . . galena is the crystal that is generally used, for, while it is not quite as sensitive as silicon and iron pyrites, it is easier to obtain a sensitive piece. the tuning coil.--it is with the tuning coil that you _tune in_ and _tune out_ different stations and this you do by sliding the contacts to and fro over the turns of wire; in this way you vary the _inductance_ and _capacitance_, that is, the _constants_ of the receiving circuits and so make them receive _electric waves_, that is, wireless waves, of different lengths. the double slide tuning coil.--with this tuning coil you can receive waves from any station up to , meters in length. one of the ends of the coil of wire connects with the binding post marked _a_ in fig. , and the other end connects with the other binding post marked _b_, while one of the sliding contacts is connected to the binding post _c_, and the _other sliding contact_ is connected with the binding post _d_. [illustration: (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of double slide tuning coil.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--double slide tuning coil complete.] when connecting in the tuning coil, only the post _a_ or the post _b_ is used as may be most convenient, but the other end of the wire which is connected to a post is left free; just bear this point in mind when you come to connect the tuning coil up with the other parts of your receiving set. the tuning coil is shown complete at b and it costs $ . or $ . . a _triple slide_ tuning coil constructed like the double slide tuner just described, only with more turns of wire on it, makes it possible to receive wave lengths up to , meters. it costs about $ . . the loose coupled tuning coil.--with a _loose coupler_, as this kind of a tuning coil is called for short, very _selective tuning_ is possible, which means that you can tune in a station very sharply, and it will receive any wave lengths according to size of coils. the primary coil is wound on a fixed cylinder and its inductance is varied by means of a sliding contact like the double slide tuning coil described above. the secondary coil is wound on a cylinder that slides in and out of the primary coil. the inductance of this coil is varied by means of a switch that makes contact with the fixed points, each of which is connected with every twentieth turn of wire as shown in the diagram a in fig. . the loose coupler, which is shown complete at b, costs in the neighborhood of $ . or $ . . [illustration: (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of loose coupler.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--loose coupler complete.] fixed and variable condensers.--you do not require a condenser for a simple receiving set, but if you will connect a _fixed condenser_ across your headphones you will get better results, while a _variable condenser_ connected in the _closed circuit of a direct coupled receiving set_, that is, one where a double slide tuning coil is used, makes it easy to tune very much more sharply; a variable condenser is absolutely necessary where the circuits are _inductively coupled_, that is, where a loose coupled tuner is used. a fixed condenser consists of a number of sheets of paper with leaves of tin-foil in between them and so built up that one end of every other leaf of tin-foil projects from the opposite end of the paper as shown at a in fig. . the paper and tin-foil are then pressed together and impregnated with an insulating compound. a fixed condenser of the exact capacitance required for connecting across the head phones is mounted in a base fitted with binding posts, as shown at b, and costs cents. (paper ones cents.) [illustration: (a) fig. .--how a fixed receiving condenser is built up.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--the fixed condenser complete.] [illustration: (c) and (d) fig. .--the variable rotary condenser.] a variable condenser, see c, of the rotating type is formed of a set of fixed semi-circular metal plates which are slightly separated from each other and between these a similar set of movable semi-circular metal plates is made to interleave; the latter are secured to a shaft on the top end of which is a knob and by turning it the capacitance of the condenser, and, hence, of the circuit in which it is connected, is varied. this condenser, which is shown at d, is made in two sizes, the smaller one being large enough for all ordinary wave lengths while the larger one is for proportionately longer wave lengths. these condensers cost $ . and $ . respectively. about telephone receivers.--there are a number of makes of head telephone receivers on the market that are designed especially for wireless work. these phones are wound to _resistances_ of from _ohms_ to , _ohms_, and cost from $ . for a receiver without a cord or headband to $ . for a pair of phones with a cord and head band. you can get a receiver wound to any resistance in between the above values but for either of the simple receiving sets such as described in this chapter you ought to have a pair wound to at least , ohms and these will cost you about $ . . a pair of head phones of this type is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--pair of wireless head phones.] connecting up the parts--receiving set no. .--for this set get ( ) a _crystal detector_, ( ) a _two-slide tuning coil_, ( ) a _fixed condenser_, and ( ) a pair of , ohm head phones. mount the detector on the right-hand side of a board and the tuning coil on the left-hand side. screw in two binding posts for the cord ends of the telephone receivers at _a_ and _b_ as shown at a in fig. . this done connect one of the end binding posts of the tuning coil with the ground wire and a post of one of the contact slides with the lightning arrester or switch which leads to the aerial wire. [illustration: fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. .] now connect the post of the other contact slide to one of the posts of the detector and the other post of the latter with the binding post _a_, then connect the binding post _b_ to the ground wire and solder the joint. next connect the ends of the telephone receiver cord to the posts _a_ and _b_ and connect a fixed condenser also with these posts, all of which are shown in the wiring diagram at b, and you are ready to adjust the set for receiving. receiving set no. .--use the same kind of a detector and pair of head phones as for _set no. _, but get ( ) a _loose coupled tuning coil_, and ( ) a _variable condenser_. mount the loose coupler at the back of a board on the left-hand side and the variable condenser on the right-hand side. then mount the detector in front of the variable condenser and screw two binding posts, _a_ and _b_, in front of the tuning coil as shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. .] now connect the post of the sliding contact of the loose coupler with the wire that runs to the lightning switch and thence to the aerial; connect the post of the primary coil, which is the outside coil, with the ground wire; then connect the binding post leading to the switch of the secondary coil, which is the inside coil, with one of the posts of the variable condenser, and finally, connect the post that is joined to one end of the secondary coil with the other post of the variable condenser. this done, connect one of the posts of the condenser with one of the posts of the detector, the other post of the detector with the binding post _a_, and the post _b_ to the other post of the variable condenser. next connect a fixed condenser to the binding posts _a_ and _b_ and then connect the telephone receivers to these same posts, all of which is shown in the wiring diagram at b. you are now ready to adjust the instruments. in making the connections use no. or insulated copper wire and scrape the ends clean where they go into the binding posts. see, also, that all of the connections are tight and where you have to cross the wires keep them apart by an inch or so and always cross them at right angles. adjusting the no. set--the detector.--the first thing to do is to test the detector in order to find out if the point of the contact wire is on a sensitive spot of the crystal. to do this you need a _buzzer_, a _switch_ and a _dry cell_. an electric bell from which the gong has been removed will do for the buzzer, but you can get one that is made specially for the purpose, for cents, which gives out a clear, high-pitched note that sounds like a high-power station. connect one of the binding posts of the buzzer with one post of the switch, the other post of the latter with the zinc post of the dry cell and the carbon post of this to the other post of the buzzer. then connect the post of the buzzer that is joined to the vibrator, to the ground wire as shown in the wiring diagram, fig. . now close the switch of the buzzer circuit, put on your head phones, and move the wire point of the detector to various spots on the crystal until you hear the sparks made by the buzzer in your phones. [illustration: fig. .--adjusting the receiving set.] then vary the pressure of the point on the crystal until you hear the sparks as loud as possible. after you have made the adjustment open the switch and disconnect the buzzer wire from the ground wire of your set. this done, be very careful not to jar the detector or you will throw it out of adjustment and then you will have to do it all over again. you are now ready to tune the set with the tuning coil and listen in. the tuning coil.--to tune this set move the slide a of the double-slide tuner, see b in fig. , over to the end of the coil that is connected with the ground wire and the slide b near the opposite end of the coil, that is, the one that has the free end. now move the slide a toward the b slide and when you hear the dots and dashes, or speech or music, that is coming in as loud as you can move the b slide toward the a slide until you hear still more loudly. a very few trials on your part and you will be able to tune in or tune out any station you can hear, if not too close or powerful. [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. the world's largest radio receiving station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near point jefferson, l.i.] adjusting the no. set.--first adjust the crystal detector with the buzzer set as described above with _set no. ,_ then turn the knob of your variable condenser so that the movable plates are just half-way in, pull the secondary coil of your loose-coupled tuner half way out; turn the switch lever on it until it makes a contact with the middle contact point and set the slider of the primary coil half way between the ends. now listen in for telegraphic signals or telephonic speech or music; when you hear one or the other slide the secondary coil in and out of the primary coil until the sounds are loudest; now move the contact switch over the points forth and back until the sounds are still louder, then move the slider to and fro until the sounds are yet louder and, finally, turn the knob of the condenser until the sounds are clear and crisp. when you have done all of these things you have, in the parlance of the wireless operator, _tuned in_ and you are ready to receive whatever is being sent. chapter iv simple telegraph sending sets a wireless telegraph transmitting set can be installed for a very small amount of money provided you are content with one that has a limited range. larger and better instruments can, of course, be had for more money, but however much you are willing to spend still you are limited in your sending radius by the government's rules and regulations. the best way, and the cheapest in the end, to install a telegraph set is to buy the separate parts and hook them up yourself. the usual type of wireless telegraph transmitter employs a _disruptive discharge,_ or _spark,_ as it is called, for setting up the oscillating currents in the aerial wire system and this is the type of apparatus described in this chapter. there are two ways to set up the sparks and these are: ( ) with an _induction coil,_ or _spark-coil,_ as it is commonly called, and ( ) with an _alternating current transformer_, or _power transformer_, as it is sometimes called. where you have to generate the current with a battery you must use a spark coil, but if you have a -volt direct or alternating lighting current in your home you can use a transformer which will give you more power. a cheap transmitting set (no. ).--for this set you will need: ( ) a _spark-coil_, ( ) a _battery_ of dry cells, ( ) a _telegraph key_, ( ) a _spark gap_, ( ) a _high-tension condenser_, and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. there are many different makes and styles of these parts but in the last analysis all of them are built on the same underlying bases and work on the same fundamental principles. the spark-coil.--spark coils for wireless work are made to give sparks from / inch in length up to inches in length, but as a spark coil that gives less than a -inch spark has a very limited output it is best to get a coil that gives at least a -inch spark, as this only costs about $ . , and if you can get a - or a -inch spark coil so much the better. there are two general styles of spark coils used for wireless and these are shown at a and b in fig. . [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--types of spark coils for set. no. .] [illustration: (c) fig. .--wiring diagram of spark coil] a spark coil of either style consists of (_a_) a soft _iron core_ on which is wound (_b_) a couple of layers of heavy insulated wire and this is called the _primary coil_, (_c_) while over this, but insulated from it, is wound a large number of turns of very fine insulated copper wire called the _secondary coil_; (d) an _interrupter_, or _vibrator_, as it is commonly called, and, finally, (e) a _condenser_. the core, primary and secondary coils form a unit and these are set in a box or mounted on top of a hollow wooden base. the condenser is placed in the bottom of the box, or on the base, while the vibrator is mounted on one end of the box or on top of the base, and it is the only part of the coil that needs adjusting. the vibrator consists of a stiff, flat spring fixed at one end to the box or base while it carries a piece of soft iron called an _armature_ on its free end and this sets close to one end of the soft iron core. insulated from this spring is a standard that carries an adjusting screw on the small end of which is a platinum point and this makes contact with a small platinum disk fixed to the spring. the condenser is formed of alternate sheets of paper and tinfoil built up in the same fashion as the receiving condenser described under the caption of _fixed and variable condensers_, in chapter iii. the wiring diagram c shows how the spark coil is wired up. one of the battery binding posts is connected with one end of the primary coil while the other end of the latter which is wound on the soft iron core connects with the spring of the vibrator. the other battery binding post connects with the standard that supports the adjusting screw. the condenser is shunted across the vibrator, that is, one end of the condenser is connected with the spring and the other end of the condenser is connected with the adjusting screw standard. the ends of the secondary coil lead to two binding posts, which are usually placed on top of the spark coil and it is to these that the spark gap is connected. the battery.--this can be formed of dry cells or you can use a storage battery to energize your coil. for all coils that give less than a -inch spark you should use dry cells; for -and -inch spark coils use or dry cells, and for to -inch spark coils use to dry cells. the way the dry cells are connected together to form a battery will be shown presently. a dry cell is shown at a in fig, . [illustration: fig. .--other parts for transmitting set no. ] the telegraph key.--you can use an ordinary morse telegraph key for the sending set and you can get one with a japanned iron base for $ . (or better, one made of brass and which has / -inch silver contact points for $ . . a key of the latter kind is shown at b). the spark gap.--it is in the _spark gap_ that the high tension spark takes place. the apparatus in which the spark takes place is also called the _spark gap_. it consists of a pair of zinc plugs, called _electrodes_, fixed to the ends of a pair of threaded rods, with knobs on the other ends, and these screw into and through a pair of standards as shown at _c_. this is called a _fixed_, or _stationary spark gap_ and costs about $ . . the tuning coil.--the _transmitting inductance_, or _sending tuning coil_, consists of to turns of _no. or _ hard drawn copper wire wound on a slotted insulated form and mounted on a wooden base. it is provided with _clips_ so that you can cut in and cut out as many turns of wire as you wish and so tune the sending circuits to send out whatever wave length you desire. it is shown at _d_, and costs about $ . . see also _oscillation transformer_, page [chapter iv]. the high tension condenser.--high tension condensers, that is, condensers which will stand up under _high potentials_, or electric pressures, can be bought in units or sections. these condensers are made up of thin brass plates insulated with a special compound and pressed into a compact form. the _capacitance_ [footnote: this is the capacity of the condenser.] of one section is enough for a transmitting set using a spark coil that gives a inch spark or less and two sections connected together should be used for coils giving from to inch sparks. it is shown at _e_. connecting up the apparatus.--your sending set should be mounted on a table, or a bench, where it need not be moved. place the key in about the middle of the table and down in front, and the spark coil to the left and well to the back but so that the vibrator end will be to the right, as this will enable you to adjust it easily. place the battery back of the spark coil and the tuning coil (oscillation transformer) to the right of the spark coil and back of the key, all of which is shown in the layout at a in fig. . [illustration: (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring of diagram for sending set no. .] for the _low voltage circuit_, that is the battery circuit, use _no. _ or _ _ insulated copper wire. connect all of the dry cells together in _series_, that is, connect the zinc of one cell with the carbon of the next and so on until all of them are connected up. then connect the carbon of the end cell with one of the posts of the key, the zinc of the other end cell with one of the primary posts of the spark coil and the other primary post of the spark coil with the other post of the key, when the primary circuit will be complete. for the _high tension circuits_, that is, the _oscillation circuits_, you may use either bare or insulated copper wire but you must be careful that they do not touch the table, each other, or any part of the apparatus, except, of course, the posts they are connected with. connect one of the posts of the secondary coil of the spark coil with one of the posts of the spark gap, and the other post with one of the posts of the condenser; then connect the other post of the condenser with the lower spring clip of the tuning coil and also connect this clip with the ground. this done, connect the middle spring clip with one of the posts of the spark gap, and, finally, connect the top clip with the aerial wire and your transmitting set is ready to be tuned. a wiring diagram of the connections is shown at b. as this set is tuned in the same way as _set no. _ which follows, you are referred to the end of this chapter. a better transmitting set (no. ).--the apparatus for this set includes: ( ) an _alternating current transformer_, ( ) a _wireless telegraph key_, ( ) a _fixed_, a _rotary_, or a _quenched spark gap_, ( ) a _condenser_, and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. if you have a volt direct lighting current in your home instead of volt alternating current, then you will also need ( ) an _electrolytic interrupter_, for in this case the primary circuit of the transformer must be made and broken rapidly in order to set up alternating currents in the secondary coil. the alternating current transformer.--an alternating current, or power, transformer is made on the same principle as a spark coil, that is, it has a soft iron core, a primary coil formed of a couple of layers of heavy wire, and a secondary coil wound up of a large number of turns of very fine wire. unlike the spark coil, however, which has an _open magnetic core_ and whose secondary coil is wound on the primary coil, the transformer has a _closed magnetic core_, with the primary coil wound on one of the legs of the core and the secondary wound on the other leg. it has neither a vibrator nor a condenser. a plain transformer is shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--parts for transmitting set no. .] a transformer of this kind can be bought either (a) _unmounted_, that is, just the bare transformer, or (b) _fully mounted_, that is, fitted with an iron stand, mounted on an insulating base on which are a pair of primary binding posts, while the secondary is provided with a _safety spark gap_. there are three sizes of transformers of this kind made and they are rated at / , / and kilowatt, respectively, they deliver a secondary current of , , , and , volts, according to size, and cost $ . , $ . and $ . when fully mounted; a reduction of $ . , $ . and $ . is made when they are unmounted. all of these transformers operate on volt, cycle current and can be connected directly to the source of alternating current. the wireless key.--for this transmitting set a standard wireless key should be used as shown at b. it is made about the same as a regular telegraph key but it is much heavier, the contact points are larger and instead of the current being led through the bearings as in an ordinary key, it is carried by heavy conductors directly to the contact points. this key is made in three sizes and the first will carry a current of _amperes_[footnote: see _appendix_ for definition.] and costs $ . , the second will carry a current of amperes and costs $ . , while the third will carry a current of amperes and costs $ . . the spark gap.--either a fixed, a rotary, or a quenched spark gap can be used with this set, but the former is seldom used except with spark-coil sets, as it is very hard to keep the sparks from arcing when large currents are used. a rotary spark gap comprises a wheel, driven by a small electric motor, with projecting plugs, or electrodes, on it and a pair of stationary plugs on each side of the wheel as shown at c. the number of sparks per second can be varied by changing the speed of the wheel and when it is rotated rapidly it sends out signals of a high pitch which are easy to read at the receiving end. a rotary gap with a -volt motor costs about $ . . a quenched spark gap not only eliminates the noise of the ordinary gap but, when properly designed, it increases the range of an induction coil set some per cent. a / kilowatt quenched gap costs $ . . [footnote: see appendix for definition.] the high tension condenser.--since, if you are an amateur, you can only send out waves that are meters in length, you can only use a condenser that has a capacitance of . _microfarad_. [footnote: see appendix for definition.] a sectional high tension condenser like the one described in connection with _set no. _ can be used with this set but it must have a capacitance of not more than . microfarad. a condenser of this value for a / -kilowatt transformer costs $ . ; for a / -kilowatt transformer $ . , and for a -kilowatt transformer $ . . see e, fig. . the oscillation transformer.--with an oscillation transformer you can tune much more sharply than with a single inductance coil tuner. the primary coil is formed of turns of copper strip, or no. copper wire, and the secondary is formed of turns of strip, or wire. the primary coil, which is the outside coil, is hinged to the base and can be raised or lowered like the lid of a box. when it is lowered the primary and secondary coils are in the same plane and when it is raised the coils set at an angle to each other. it is shown at d and costs $ . . connecting up the apparatus. for alternating current.--screw the key to the table about the middle of it and near the front edge; place the high tension condenser back of it and the oscillation transformer back of the latter; set the alternating current transformer to the left of the oscillation transformer and place the rotary or quenched spark gap in front of it. now bring a pair of _no. _ or _ _ insulated wires from the volt lighting leads and connect them with a single-throw, double-pole switch; connect one pole of the switch with one of the posts of the primary coil of the alternating power transformer and connect the other post of the latter with one of the posts of your key, and the other post of this with the other pole of the switch. now connect the motor of the rotary spark gap to the power circuit and put a single-pole, single-throw switch in the motor circuit, all of which is shown at a in fig. . [illustration: (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for sending set no. .] next connect the posts of the secondary coil to the posts of the rotary or quenched spark gap and connect one post of the latter to one post of the condenser, the other post of this to the post of the primary coil of the oscillation transformer, which is the inside coil, and the clip of the primary coil to the other spark gap post. this completes the closed oscillation circuit. finally connect the post of the secondary coil of the oscillation transformer to the ground and the clip of it to the wire leading to the aerial when you are ready to tune the set. a wiring diagram of the connections is shown at b. for direct current.--where you have volt direct current you must connect in an electrolytic interrupter. this interrupter, which is shown at a and b in fig. , consists of ( ) a jar filled with a solution of part of sulphuric acid and parts of water, ( ) a lead electrode having a large surface fastened to the cover of surface that sets in a porcelain sleeve and whose end rests on the bottom of the jar. [illustration: fig. .--using volt direct current with an alternating current transformer.] when these electrodes are connected in series with the primary of a large spark coil or an alternating current transformer, see c, and a direct current of from to volts is made to pass through it, the current is made and broken from , to , times a minute. by raising or lowering the sleeve, thus exposing more or less of the platinum, or alloy point, the number of interruptions per minute can be varied at will. as the electrolytic interrupter will only operate in one direction, you must connect it with its platinum, or alloy anode, to the + or _positive_ power lead and the lead cathode to the - or _negative_ power lead. you can find out which is which by connecting in the interrupter and trying it, or you can use a polarity indicator. an electrolytic interrupter can be bought for as little as $ . . how to adjust your transmitter. tuning with a hot wire ammeter.--a transmitter can be tuned in two different ways and these are: ( ) by adjusting the length of the spark gap and the tuning coil so that the greatest amount of energy is set up in the oscillating circuits, and ( ) by adjusting the apparatus so that it will send out waves of a given length. to adjust the transmitter so that the circuits will be in tune you should have a _hot wire ammeter_, or radiation ammeter, as it is called, which is shown in fig. . it consists of a thin platinum wire through which the high-frequency currents surge and these heat it; the expansion and contraction of the wire moves a needle over a scale marked off into fractions of an ampere. when the spark gap and tuning coil of your set are properly adjusted, the needle will swing farthest to the right over the scale and you will then know that the aerial wire system, or open oscillation circuit, and the closed oscillation circuit are in tune and radiating the greatest amount of energy. [illustration: fig. .--principle of the hot wire ammeter.] to send out a meter wave length.--if you are using a condenser having a capacitance of . microfarad, which is the largest capacity value that the government will allow an amateur to use, then if you have a hot wire ammeter in your aerial and tune the inductance coil or coils until the ammeter shows the largest amount of energy flowing through it you will know that your transmitter is tuned and that the aerial is sending out waves whose length is meters. to tune to different wave lengths you must have a _wave-meter_. the use of the aerial switch.--where you intend to install both a transmitter and a receptor you will need a throwover switch, or _aerial switch_, as it is called. an ordinary double-pole, double-throw switch, as shown at a in fig. , can be used, or a switch made especially for the purpose as at b is handier because the arc of the throw is much less. [illustration: fig. .--kinds of aerial switches.] aerial switch for a complete sending and receiving set.--you can buy a double-pole, double-throw switch mounted on a porcelain base for about cents and this will serve for _set no. _. screw this switch on your table between the sending and receiving sets and then connect one of the middle posts of it with the ground wire and the other middle post with the lightning switch which connects with the aerial. connect the post of the tuning coil with one of the end posts of the switch and the clip of the tuning coil with the other and complementary post of the switch. this done, connect one of the opposite end posts of the switch to the post of the receiving tuning coil and connect the sliding contact of the latter with the other and complementary post of the switch as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for complete sending and receiving set no. .] connecting in the lightning switch.--the aerial wire connects with the middle post of the lightning switch, while one of the end posts lead to one of the middle posts of the aerial switch. the other end post of the lightning switch leads to a separate ground outside the building, as the wiring diagrams figs. and show. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for complete sending and receiving set no. .] chapter v electricity simply explained it is easy to understand how electricity behaves and what it does if you get the right idea of it at the start. in the first place, if you will think of electricity as being a fluid like water its fundamental actions will be greatly simplified. both water and electricity may be at rest or in motion. when at rest, under certain conditions, either one will develop pressure, and this pressure when released will cause them to flow through their respective conductors and thus produce a current. electricity at rest and in motion.--any wire or a conductor of any kind can be charged with electricity, but a leyden jar, or other condenser, is generally used to hold an electric charge because it has a much larger _capacitance_, as its capacity is called, than a wire. as a simple analogue of a condenser, suppose you have a tank of water raised above a second tank and that these are connected together by means of a pipe with a valve in it, as shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--water analogue for electric pressure.] [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. first wireless college in the world, at tufts college, mass.] now if you fill the upper tank with water and the valve is turned off, no water can flow into the lower tank but there is a difference of pressure between them, and the moment you turn the valve on a current of water will flow through the pipe. in very much the same way when you have a condenser charged with electricity the latter will be under _pressure,_ that is, a _difference of potential_ will be set up, for one of the sheets of metal will be charged positively and the other one, which is insulated from it, will be charged negatively, as shown at b. on closing the switch the opposite charges rush together and form a current which flows to and fro between the metal plates. [footnote: strictly speaking it is the difference of potential that sets up the electromotive force.] the electric current and its circuit.--just as water flowing through a pipe has _quantity_ and _pressure_ back of it and the pipe offers friction to it which tends to hold back the water, so, likewise, does electricity flowing in a circuit have: ( ) _quantity_, or _current strength_, or just _current_, as it is called for short, or _amperage_, and ( ) _pressure_, or _potential difference_, or _electromotive force_, or _voltage_, as it is variously called, and the wire, or circuit, in which the current is flowing has ( ) _resistance_ which tends to hold back the current. a definite relation exists between the current and its electromotive force and also between the current, electromotive force and the resistance of the circuit; and if you will get this relationship clearly in your mind you will have a very good insight into how direct and alternating currents act. to keep a quantity of water flowing in a loop of pipe, which we will call the circuit, pressure must be applied to it and this may be done by a rotary pump as shown at a in fig. ; in the same way, to keep a quantity of electricity flowing in a loop of wire, or circuit, a battery, or other means for generating electric pressure must be used, as shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--water analogues for direct and alternating currents.] if you have a closed pipe connected with a piston pump, as at c, as the piston moves to and fro the water in the pipe will move first one way and then the other. so also when an alternating current generator is connected to a wire circuit, as at d, the current will flow first in one direction and then in the other, and this is what is called an _alternating current_. current and the ampere.--the amount of water flowing in a closed pipe is the same at all parts of it and this is also true of an electric current, in that there is exactly the same quantity of electricity at one point of the circuit as there is at any other. the amount of electricity, or current, flowing in a circuit in a second is measured by a unit called the _ampere_, [footnote: for definition of _ampere_ see _appendix._] and it is expressed by the symbol i. [footnote: this is because the letter c is used for the symbol of _capacitance_] just to give you an idea of the quantity of current an _ampere_ is we will say that a dry cell when fresh gives a current of about amperes. to measure the current in amperes an instrument called an _ammeter_ is used, as shown at a in fig. , and this is always connected in _series_ with the line, as shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--how the ammeter and voltmeter are used.] electromotive force and the volt.--when you have a pipe filled with water or a circuit charged with electricity and you want to make them flow you must use a pump in the first case and a battery or a dynamo in the second case. it is the battery or dynamo that sets up the electric pressure as the circuit itself is always charged with electricity. the more cells you connect together in _series_ the greater will be the electric pressure developed and the more current it will move along just as the amount of water flowing in a pipe can be increased by increasing the pressure of the pump. the unit of electromotive force is the _volt_, and this is the electric pressure which will force a current of _ ampere_ through a resistance of _ ohm_; it is expressed by the symbol _e_. a fresh dry cell will deliver a current of about . volts. to measure the pressure of a current in volts an instrument called a _voltmeter_ is used, as shown at c in fig. , and this is always connected across the circuit, as shown at d. resistance and the ohm.--just as a water pipe offers a certain amount of resistance to the flow of water through it, so a circuit opposes the flow of electricity in it and this is called _resistance_. further, in the same way that a small pipe will not allow a large amount of water to flow through it, so, too, a thin wire limits the flow of the current in it. if you connect a _resistance coil_ in a circuit it acts in the same way as partly closing the valve in a pipe, as shown at a and b in fig. . the resistance of a circuit is measured by a unit called the _ohm_, and it is expressed by the symbol _r_. a no. , brown and sharpe gauge soft copper wire, , feet long, has a resistance of about ohm. to measure the resistance of a circuit an apparatus called a _resistance bridge is used_. the resistance of a circuit can, however, be easily calculated, as the following shows. [illustration: fig. .--water valve analogue of electric resistance. a- a valve limits the flow of water. b- a resistance limits the flow of current.] what ohm's law is.--if, now, ( ) you know what the current flowing in a circuit is in _amperes_, and the electromotive force, or pressure, is in _volts_, you can then easily find what the resistance is in _ohms_ of the circuit in which the current is flowing by this formula: volts e --------- = ohms, or --- = r amperes i that is, if you divide the current in amperes by the electromotive force in volts the quotient will give you the resistance in ohms. or ( ) if you know what the electromotive force of the current is in _volts_ and the resistance of the circuit is in _ohms_ then you can find what the current flowing in the circuit is in _amperes_, thus: volts e ----- = amperes, or --- = i ohms r that is, by dividing the resistance of the circuit in ohms, by the electromotive force of the current you will get the amperes flowing in the circuit. finally ( ) if you know what the resistance of the circuit is in _ohms_ and the current is in _amperes_ then you can find what the electromotive force is in _volts_ since: ohms x amperes = volts, or r x i = e that is, if you multiply the resistance of the circuit in ohms by the current in amperes the result will give you the electromotive force in volts. from this you will see that if you know the value of any two of the constants you can find the value of the unknown constant by a simple arithmetical process. this relation between these three constants is known as _ohm's law_ and as they are very important you should memorize them. what the watt and kilowatt are.--just as _horsepower_ or _h.p._, is the unit of work that steam has done or can do, so the _watt_ is the unit of work that an electric current has done or can do. to find the _watts_ a current develops you need only to multiply the _amperes_ by the _volts_. there are _ watts_ to _ horsepower, and , watts are equal to kilowatt_. electromagnetic induction.--to show that a current of electricity sets up a magnetic field around it you have only to hold a compass over a wire whose ends are connected with a battery when the needle will swing at right angles to the length of the wire. by winding an insulated wire into a coil and connecting the ends of the latter with a battery you will find, if you test it with a compass, that the coil is magnetic. this is due to the fact that the energy of an electric current flowing in the wire is partly changed into magnetic lines of force which rotate at right angles about it as shown at a in fig. . the magnetic field produced by the current flowing in the coil is precisely the same as that set up by a permanent steel magnet. conversely, when a magnetic line of force is set up a part of its energy goes to make up electric currents which whirl about in a like manner, as shown at b. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--how an electric current is changed into magnetic lines of force and these into an electric current.] [illustration: (c) and (d) fig. .--how an electric current sets up a magnetic field.] self-induction or inductance.--when a current is made to flow in a coil of wire the magnetic lines of force produced are concentrated, as at c, just as a lens concentrates rays of light, and this forms an intense _magnetic field_, as it is called. now if a bar of soft iron is brought close to one end of the coil of wire, or, better still, if it is pushed into the coil, it will be magnetized by _electromagnetic induction,_ see d, and it will remain a magnet until the current is cut off. mutual induction.--when two loops of wire, or better, two coils of wire, are placed close together the electromagnetic induction between them is reactive, that is, when a current is made to flow through one of the coils closed magnetic lines of force are set up and when these cut the other loop or turns of wire of the other coil, they in turn produce electric currents in it. it is the mutual induction that takes place between two coils of wire which makes it possible to transform _low voltage currents_ from a battery or a volt source of current into high pressure currents, or _high potential currents_, as they are called, by means of a spark coil or a transformer, as well as to _step up_ and _step down_ the potential of the high frequency currents that are set up in sending and receiving oscillation transformers. soft iron cores are not used in oscillation inductance coils and oscillation transformers for the reason that the frequency of the current is so high the iron would not have time to magnetize and demagnetize and so would not help along the mutual induction to any appreciable extent. high-frequency currents.--high frequency currents, or electric oscillations as they are called, are currents of electricity that surge to and fro in a circuit a million times, more or less, per second. currents of such high frequencies will _oscillate_, that is, surge to and fro, in an _open circuit_, such as an aerial wire system, as well as in a _closed circuit_. now there is only one method by which currents of high frequency, or _radio-frequency_, as they are termed, can be set up by spark transmitters, and this is by discharging a charged condenser through a circuit having a small resistance. to charge a condenser a spark coil or a transformer is used and the ends of the secondary coil, which delivers the high potential alternating current, are connected with the condenser. to discharge the condenser automatically a _spark,_ or an _arc,_ or the _flow of electrons_ in a vacuum tube, is employed. constants of an oscillation circuit.--an oscillation circuit, as pointed out before, is one in which high frequency currents surge or oscillate. now the number of times a high frequency current will surge forth and back in a circuit depends upon three factors of the latter and these are called the constants of the circuit, namely: ( ) its _capacitance,_ ( ) its _inductance_ and ( ) its _resistance._ what capacitance is.--the word _capacitance_ means the _electrostatic capacity_ of a condenser or a circuit. the capacitance of a condenser or a circuit is the quantity of electricity which will raise its pressure, or potential, to a given amount. the capacitance of a condenser or a circuit depends on its size and form and the voltage of the current that is charging it. the capacitance of a condenser or a circuit is directly proportional to the quantity of electricity that will keep the charge at a given potential. the _farad,_ whose symbol is _m,_ is the unit of capacitance and a condenser or a circuit to have a capacitance of one farad must be of such size that one _coulomb,_ which is the unit of electrical quantity, will raise its charge to a potential of one volt. since the farad is far too large for practical purposes a millionth of a farad, or _microfarad_, whose symbol is _mfd._, is used. what inductance is.--under the sub-caption of _self-induction_ and _inductance_ in the beginning of this chapter it was shown that it was the inductance of a coil that makes a current flowing through it produce a strong magnetic field, and here, as one of the constants of an oscillation circuit, it makes a high-frequency current act as though it possessed _inertia_. inertia is that property of a material body that requires time and energy to set in motion, or stop. inductance is that property of an oscillation circuit that makes an electric current take time to start and time to stop. because of the inductance, when a current flows through a circuit it causes the electric energy to be absorbed and changes a large part of it into magnetic lines of force. where high frequency currents surge in a circuit the inductance of it becomes a powerful factor. the practical unit of inductance is the _henry_ and it is represented by the symbol _l_. what resistance is.--the resistance of a circuit to high-frequency currents is different from that for low voltage direct or alternating currents, as the former do not sink into the conductor to nearly so great an extent; in fact, they stick practically to the surface of it, and hence their flow is opposed to a very much greater extent. the resistance of a circuit to high frequency currents is generally found in the spark gap, arc gap, or the space between the electrodes of a vacuum tube. the unit of resistance is, as stated, the _ohm_, and its symbol is _r_. the effect of capacitance, inductance and resistance on electric oscillations.--if an oscillation circuit in which high frequency currents surge has a large resistance, it will so oppose the flow of the currents that they will be damped out and reach zero gradually, as shown at a in fig. . but if the resistance of the circuit is small, and in wireless circuits it is usually so small as to be negligible, the currents will oscillate, until their energy is damped out by radiation and other losses, as shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--the effect of resistance on the discharge of an electric current.] as the capacitance and the inductance of the circuit, which may be made of any value, that is amount, you wish, determines the _time period_, that is, the length of time for a current to make one complete oscillation, it must be clear that by varying the values of the condenser and the inductance coil you can make the high frequency current oscillate as fast or as slow as you wish within certain limits. where the electric oscillations that are set up are very fast, the waves sent out by the aerial will be short, and, conversely, where the oscillations are slow the waves emitted will be long. chapter vi how the transmitting and receiving sets work the easiest way to get a clear conception of how a wireless transmitter sends out electric waves and how a wireless receptor receives them is to take each one separately and follow: ( ) in the case of the transmitter, the transformation of the low voltage direct, or alternating current into high potential alternating currents; then find out how these charge the condenser, how this is discharged by the spark gap and sets up high-frequency currents in the oscillation circuits; then ( ) in the case of the receptor, to follow the high frequency currents that are set up in the aerial wire and learn how they are transformed into oscillations of lower potential when they have a larger current strength, how these are converted into intermittent direct currents by the detector and which then flow into and operate the telephone receiver. how transmitting set no. works. the battery and spark coil circuit.--when you press down on the knob of the key the silver points of it make contact and this closes the circuit; the low voltage direct current from the battery now flows through the primary coil of the spark coil and this magnetizes the soft iron core. the instant it becomes magnetic it pulls the spring of the vibrator over to it and this breaks the circuit; when this takes place the current stops flowing through the primary coil; this causes the core to lose its magnetism when the vibrator spring flies back and again makes contact with the adjusting screw; then the cycle of operations is repeated. a condenser is connected across the contact points of the vibrator since this gives a much higher voltage at the ends of the secondary coil than where the coil is used without it; this is because: ( ) the self-induction of the primary coil makes the pressure of the current rise and when the contact points close the circuit again it discharges through the primary coil, and ( ) when the break takes place the current flows into the condenser instead of arcing across the contact points. changing the primary spark coil current into secondary currents.--now every time the vibrator contact points close the primary circuit the electric current in the primary coil is changed into closed magnetic lines of force and as these cut through the secondary coil they set up in it a _momentary current_ in one direction. then the instant the vibrator points break apart the primary circuit is opened and the closed magnetic lines of force contract and as they do so they cut the turns of wire in the secondary coil in the opposite direction and this sets up another momentary current in the secondary coil in the other direction. the result is that the low voltage direct current of the battery is changed into alternating currents whose frequency is precisely that of the spring vibrator, but while the frequency of the currents is low their potential, or voltage, is enormously increased. what ratio of transformation means.--to make a spark coil step up the low voltage direct current into high potential alternating current the primary coil is wound with a couple of layers of thick insulated copper wire and the secondary is wound with a thousand, more or less, number of turns with very fine insulated copper wire. if the primary and secondary coils were wound with the same number of turns of wire then the pressure, or voltage, of the secondary coil at its terminals would be the same as that of the current which flowed through the primary coil. under these conditions the _ratio of transformation_, as it is called, would be unity. the ratio of transformation is directly proportional to the number of turns of wire on the primary and secondary coils and, since this is the case, if you wind turns of wire on the primary coil and , turns of wire on the secondary coil then you will get times as high a pressure, or voltage, at the terminals of the secondary as that which you caused to flow through the primary coil, but, naturally, the current strength, or amperage, will be proportionately decreased. the secondary spark coil circuit.--this includes the secondary coil and the spark gap which are connected together. when the alternating, but high potential, currents which are developed by the secondary coil, reach the balls, or _electrodes_, of the spark gap the latter are alternately charged positively and negatively. now take a given instant when one electrode is charged positively and the other one is charged negatively, then when they are charged to a high enough potential the electric strain breaks down the air gap between them and the two charges rush together as described in the chapter before this one in connection with the discharge of a condenser. when the charges rush together they form a current which burns out the air in the gap and this gives rise to the spark, and as the heated gap between the two electrodes is a very good conductor the electric current surges forth and back with high frequency, perhaps a dozen times, before the air replaces that which has burned out. it is the inrushing air to fill the vacuum of the gap that makes the crackling noise which accompanies the discharge of the electric spark. in this way then electric oscillations of the order of a million, more or less, are produced and if an aerial and a ground wire are connected to the spark balls, or electrodes, the oscillations will surge up and down it and the energy of these in turn, are changed into electric waves which travel out into space. an open circuit transmitter of this kind will send out waves that are four times as long as the aerial itself, but as the waves it sends out are strongly damped the government will not permit it to be used. the closed oscillation circuit.--by using a closed oscillation circuit the transmitter can be tuned to send out waves of a given length and while the waves are not so strongly damped more current can be sent into the aerial wire system. the closed oscillation circuit consists of: ( ) a _spark gap_, ( ) a _condenser_ and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. the high potential alternating current delivered by the secondary coil not only charges the spark gap electrodes which necessarily have a very small capacitance, but it charges the condenser which has a large capacitance and the value of which can be changed at will. now when the condenser is fully charged it discharges through the spark gap and then the electric oscillations set up surge to and fro through the closed circuit. as a closed circuit is a very poor radiator of energy, that is, the electric oscillations are not freely converted into electric waves by it, they surge up to, and through the aerial wire; now as the aerial wire is a good radiator nearly all of the energy of the electric oscillations which surge through it are converted into electric waves. how transmitting set no. works. with alternating current. the operation of a transmitting set that uses an alternating current transformer, or _power transformer,_ as it is sometimes called, is even more simple than one using a spark coil. the transformer needs no vibrator when used with alternating current. the current from a generator flows through the primary coil of the transformer and the alternations of the usual lighting current is cycles per second. this current sets up an alternating magnetic field in the core of the transformer and as these magnetic lines of force expand and contract they set up alternating currents of the same frequency but of much higher voltage at the terminals of the secondary coil according to the ratio of the primary and secondary turns of wire as explained under the sub-caption of _ratio of transformation_. with direct current.--when a volt direct current is used to energize the power transformer an _electrolytic_ interruptor is needed to make and break the primary circuit, just as a vibrator is needed for the same purpose with a spark coil. when the electrodes are connected in series with the primary coil of a transformer and a source of direct current having a potential of to volts, bubbles of gas are formed on the end of the platinum, or alloy anode, which prevent the current from flowing until the bubbles break and then the current flows again, in this way the current is rapidly made and broken and the break is very sharp. where this type of interrupter is employed the condenser that is usually shunted around the break is not necessary as the interrupter itself has a certain inherent capacitance, due to electrolytic action, and which is called its _electrolytic capacitance_, and this is large enough to balance the self-induction of the circuit since the greater the number of breaks per minute the smaller the capacitance required. the rotary spark gap.--in this type of spark gap the two fixed electrodes are connected with the terminals of the secondary coil of the power transformer and also with the condenser and primary of the oscillation transformer. now whenever any pair of electrodes on the rotating disk are in a line with the pair of fixed electrodes a spark will take place, hence the pitch of the note depends on the speed of the motor driving the disk. this kind of a rotary spark-gap is called _non-synchronous_ and it is generally used where a cycle alternating current is available but it will work with other higher frequencies. the quenched spark gap.--if you strike a piano string a single quick blow it will continue to vibrate according to its natural period. this is very much the way in which a quenched spark gap sets up oscillations in a coupled closed and open circuit. the oscillations set up in the primary circuit by a quenched spark make only three or four sharp swings and in so doing transfer all of their energy over to the secondary circuit, where it will oscillate some fifty times or more before it is damped out, because the high frequency currents are not forced, but simply oscillate to the natural frequency of the circuit. for this reason the radiated waves approach somewhat the condition of continuous waves, and so sharper tuning is possible. the oscillation transformer.--in this set the condenser in the closed circuit is charged and discharged and sets up oscillations that surge through the closed circuit as in _set no. _. in this set, however, an oscillation transformer is used and as the primary coil of it is included in the closed circuit the oscillations set up in it produce strong oscillating magnetic lines of force. the magnetic field thus produced sets up in turn electric oscillations in the secondary coil of the oscillation transformer and these surge through the aerial wire system where their energy is radiated in the form of electric waves. the great advantage of using an oscillation transformer instead of a simple inductance coil is that the capacitance of the closed circuit can be very much larger than that of the aerial wire system. this permits more energy to be stored up by the condenser and this is impressed on the aerial when it is radiated as electric waves. how receiving set no. i works.--when the electric waves from a distant sending station impinge on the wire of a receiving aerial their energy is changed into electric oscillations that are of exactly the same frequency (assuming the receptor is tuned to the transmitter) but whose current strength (amperage) and potential (voltage) are very small. these electric waves surge through the closed circuit but when they reach the crystal detector the contact of the metal point on the crystal permits more current to flow through it in one direction than it will allow to pass in the other direction. for this reason a crystal detector is sometimes called a _rectifier_, which it really is. thus the high frequency currents which the steel magnet cores of the telephone receiver would choke off are changed by the detector into intermittent direct currents which can flow through the magnet coils of the telephone receiver. since the telephone receiver chokes off the oscillations, a small condenser can be shunted around it so that a complete closed oscillation circuit is formed and this gives better results. when the intermittent rectified current flows through the coils of the telephone receiver it energizes the magnet as long as it lasts, when it is de-energized; this causes the soft iron disk, or _diaphragm_ as it is called, which sets close to the ends of the poles of the magnet, to vibrate; and this in turn gives forth sounds such as dots and dashes, speech or music, according to the nature of the electric waves that sent them out at the distant station. how receiving set no. works.--when the electric oscillations that are set up by the incoming electric waves on the aerial wire surge through the primary coil of the oscillation transformer they produce a magnetic field and as the lines of force of the latter cut the secondary coil, oscillations of the same frequency are set up in it. the potential (voltage) of these oscillations are, however, _stepped down_ in the secondary coil and, hence, their current strength (amperes) is increased. the oscillations then flow through the closed circuit where they are rectified by the crystal detector and transformed into sound waves by the telephone receiver as described in connection with _set no. _. the variable condenser shunted across the closed circuit permits finer secondary tuning to be done than is possible without it. where you are receiving continuous waves from a wireless telephone transmitter (speech or music) you have to tune sharper than is possible with the tuning coil alone and to do this a variable condenser connected in parallel with the secondary coil is necessary. chapter vii mechanical and electrical tuning there is a strikingly close resemblance between _sound waves_ and the way they are set up in _the air_ by a mechanically vibrating body, such as a steel spring or a tuning fork, and _electric waves_ and the way they are set up in _the ether_ by a current oscillating in a circuit. as it is easy to grasp the way that sound waves are produced and behave something will be told about them in this chapter and also an explanation of how electric waves are produced and behave and thus you will be able to get a clear understanding of them and of tuning in general. damped and sustained mechanical vibrations.--if you will place one end of a flat steel spring in a vice and screw it up tight as shown at a in fig. , and then pull the free end over and let it go it will vibrate to and fro with decreasing amplitude until it comes to rest as shown at b. when you pull the spring over you store up energy in it and when you let it go the stored up energy is changed into energy of motion and the spring moves forth and back, or _vibrates_ as we call it, until all of its stored up energy is spent. [illustration: fig. .--damped and sustained mechanical vibrations.] if it were not for the air surrounding it and other frictional losses, the spring would vibrate for a very long time as the stored up energy and the energy of motion would practically offset each other and so the energy would not be used up. but as the spring beats the air the latter is sent out in impulses and the conversion of the vibrations of the spring into waves in the air soon uses up the energy you have imparted to it and it comes to rest. in order to send out _continuous waves_ in the air instead of _damped waves_ as with a flat steel spring you can use an _electric driven tuning fork_, see c, in which an electromagnet is fixed on the inside of the prongs and when this is energized by a battery current the vibrations of the prongs of the fork are kept going, or are _sustained_, as shown in the diagram at d. damped and sustained electric oscillations.--the vibrating steel spring described above is a very good analogue of the way that damped electric oscillations which surge in a circuit set up and send out periodic electric waves in the ether while the electric driven tuning fork just described is likewise a good analogue of how sustained oscillations surge in a circuit and set up and send out continuous electric waves in the ether as the following shows. now the inductance and resistance of a circuit such as is shown at a in fig. , slows down, and finally damps out entirely, the electric oscillations of the high frequency currents, see b, where these are set up by the periodic discharge of a condenser, precisely as the vibrations of the spring are damped out by the friction of the air and other resistances that act upon it. as the electric oscillations surge to and fro in the circuit it is opposed by the action of the ether which surrounds it and electric waves are set up in and sent out through it and this transformation soon uses up the energy of the current that flows in the circuit. [illustration: fig. .--damped and sustained electric oscillations.] to send out _continuous waves_ in the ether such as are needed for wireless telephony instead of _damped waves_ which are, at the present writing, generally used for wireless telegraphy, an _electric oscillation arc_ or a _vacuum tube oscillator_ must be used, see c, instead of a spark gap. where a spark gap is used the condenser in the circuit is charged periodically and with considerable lapses of time between each of the charging processes, when, of course, the condenser discharges periodically and with the same time element between them. where an oscillation arc or a vacuum tube is used the condenser is charged as rapidly as it is discharged and the result is the oscillations are sustained as shown at d. about mechanical tuning.--a tuning fork is better than a spring or a straight steel bar for setting up mechanical vibrations. as a matter of fact a tuning fork is simply a steel bar bent in the middle so that the two ends are parallel. a handle is attached to middle point of the fork so that it can be held easily and which also allows it to vibrate freely, when the ends of the prongs alternately approach and recede from one another. when the prongs vibrate the handle vibrates up and down in unison with it, and imparts its motion to the _sounding box_, or _resonance case_ as it is sometimes called, where one is used. if, now, you will mount the fork on a sounding box which is tuned so that it will be in resonance with the vibrations of the fork there will be a direct reinforcement of the vibrations when the note emitted by it will be augmented in strength and quality. this is called _simple resonance_. further, if you mount a pair of forks, each on a separate sounding box, and have the forks of the same size, tone and pitch, and the boxes synchronized, that is, tuned to the same frequency of vibration, then set the two boxes a foot or so apart, as shown at a in fig. , when you strike one of the forks with a rubber hammer it will vibrate with a definite frequency and, hence, send out sound waves of a given length. when the latter strike the second fork the impact of the molecules of air of which the sound waves are formed will set its prongs to vibrating and it will, in turn, emit sound waves of the same length and this is called _sympathetic resonance_, or as we would say in wireless the forks are _in tune_. [illustration: fig. .--sound wave and electric wave tuned senders and receptors. a - variable tuning forks for showing sound wave tuning. b - variable oscillation circuits for showing electric wave tuning.] tuning forks are made with adjustable weights on their prongs and by fixing these to different parts of them the frequency with which the forks vibrate can be changed since the frequency varies inversely with the square of the length and directly with the thickness [footnote: this law is for forks having a rectangular cross-section. those having a round cross-section vary as the radius.] of the prongs. now by adjusting one of the forks so that it vibrates at a frequency of, say, per second and adjusting the other fork so that it vibrates at a frequency of, say, or per second, then the forks will not be in tune with each other and, hence, if you strike one of them the other will not respond. but if you make the forks vibrate at the same frequency, say , or per second, when you strike one of them the other will vibrate in unison with it. about electric tuning.--electric resonance and electric tuning are very like those of acoustic resonance and acoustic tuning which i have just described. just as acoustic resonance may be simple or sympathetic so electric resonance may be simple or sympathetic. simple acoustic resonance is the direct reinforcement of a simple vibration and this condition is had when a tuning fork is mounted on a sounding box. in simple electric resonance an oscillating current of a given frequency flowing in a circuit having the proper inductance and capacitance may increase the voltage until it is several times greater than its normal value. tuning the receptor circuits to the transmitter circuits are examples of sympathetic electric resonance. as a demonstration if you have two leyden jars (capacitance) connected in circuit with two loops of wire (inductance) whose inductance can be varied as shown at b in fig. , when you make a spark pass between the knobs of one of them by means of a spark coil then a spark will pass in the gap of the other one provided the inductance of the two loops of wire is the same. but if you vary the inductance of the one loop so that it is larger or smaller than that of the other loop no spark will take place in the second circuit. when a tuning fork is made to vibrate it sends out waves in the air, or sound waves, in all directions and just so when high frequency currents surge in an oscillation circuit they send out waves in the ether, or electric waves, that travel in all directions. for this reason electric waves from a transmitting station cannot be sent to one particular station, though they do go further in one direction than in another, according to the way your aerial wire points. since the electric waves travel out in all directions any receiving set properly tuned to the wave length of the sending station will receive the waves and the only limit on your ability to receive from high-power stations throughout the world depends entirely on the wave length and sensitivity of your receiving set. as for tuning, just as changing the length and the thickness of the prongs of a tuning fork varies the frequency with which it vibrates and, hence, the length of the waves it sends out, so, too, by varying the capacitance of the condenser and the inductance of the tuning coil of the transmitter the frequency of the electric oscillations set up in the circuit may be changed and, consequently, the length of the electric waves they send out. likewise, by varying the capacitance and the inductance of the receptor the circuits can be tuned to receive incoming electric waves of whatever length within the limitation of the apparatus. chapter viii a simple vacuum tube detector receiving set while you can receive dots and dashes from spark wireless telegraph stations and hear spoken words and music from wireless telephone stations with a crystal detector receiving set such as described in chapter iii, you can get stations that are much farther away and hear them better with a _vacuum tube detector_ receiving set. though the vacuum tube detector requires two batteries to operate it and the receiving circuits are somewhat more complicated than where a crystal detector is used still the former does not have to be constantly adjusted as does the latter and this is another very great advantage. taken all in all the vacuum tube detector is the most sensitive and the most satisfactory of the detectors that are in use at the present time. not only is the vacuum tube a detector of electric wave signals and speech and music but it can also be used to _amplify_ them, that is, to make them stronger and, hence, louder in the telephone receiver and further its powers of amplification are so great that it will reproduce them by means of a _loud speaker_, just as a horn amplifies the sounds of a phonograph reproducer, until they can be heard by a room or an auditorium full of people. there are two general types of loud speakers, though both use the principle of the telephone receiver. the construction of these loud speakers will be fully described in a later chapter. assembled vacuum tube receiving sets.--you can buy a receiving set with a vacuum tube detector from the very simplest type, which is described in this chapter, to those that are provided with _regenerative circuits_ and _amplifying_ tubes or both, which we shall describe in later chapters, from dealers in electrical apparatus generally. while one of these sets costs more than you can assemble a set for yourself, still, especially in the beginning, it is a good plan to buy an assembled one for it is fitted with a _panel_ on which the adjusting knobs of the rheostat, tuning coil and condenser are mounted and this makes it possible to operate it as soon as you get it home and without the slightest trouble on your part. you can, however, buy all the various parts separately and mount them yourself. if you want the receptor simply for receiving then it is a good scheme to have all of the parts mounted in a box or enclosed case, but if you want it for experimental purposes then the parts should be mounted on a base or a panel so that all of the connections are in sight and accessible. a simple vacuum tube receiving set.--for this set you should use: ( ) a _loose coupled tuning coil,_ ( ) a _variable condenser,_ ( ) a _vacuum tube detector,_ ( ) an a or _storage battery_ giving volts, ( ) a b or _dry cell battery_ giving - / volts, ( ) a _rheostat_ for varying the storage battery current, and ( ) a pair of , -ohm _head telephone receivers_. the loose coupled tuning coil, the variable condenser and the telephone receivers are the same as those described in chapter iii. the vacuum tube detector. with two electrodes.--a vacuum tube in its simplest form consists of a glass bulb like an incandescent lamp in which a _wire filament_ and a _metal plate_ are sealed as shown in fig. , the air is then pumped out of the tube and a vacuum left or after it is exhausted it is filled with nitrogen, which cannot burn. [illustration: fig. .--two electrode vacuum tube detectors.] when the vacuum tube is used as a detector, the wire filament is heated red-hot and the metal plate is charged with positive electricity though it remains cold. the wire filament is formed into a loop like that of an incandescent lamp and its outside ends are connected with a -volt storage battery, which is called the a battery; then the + or _positive_ terminal of a - / volt dry cell battery, called the b battery, is connected to the metal plate while the - or _negative_ terminal of the battery is connected to one of the terminals of the wire filament. the diagram, fig. , simply shows how the two electrode vacuum tube, the a or dry battery, and the b or storage battery are connected up. three electrode vacuum tube detector.--the three electrode vacuum tube detector shown at a in fig. , is much more sensitive than the two electrode tube and has, in consequence, all but supplanted it. in this more recent type of vacuum tube the third electrode, or _grid_, as it is called, is placed between the wire filament and the metal plate and this allows the current to be increased or decreased at will to a very considerable extent. [illustration: fig. .--three electrode vacuum tube detector and battery connections.] the way the three electrode vacuum tube detector is connected with the batteries is shown at b. the plate, the a or dry cell battery and one terminal of the filament are connected in _series_--that is, one after the other, and the ends of the filament are connected to the b or storage battery. in assembling a receiving set you must, of course, have a socket for the vacuum tube. a vacuum tube detector costs from $ . to $ . . the dry cell and storage batteries.--the reason that a storage battery is used for heating the filament of the vacuum tube detector is because the current delivered is constant, whereas when a dry cell battery is used the current soon falls off and, hence, the heat of the filament gradually grows less. the smallest a or volt storage battery on the market has a capacity of to ampere hours, weighs pounds and costs about $ . . it is shown at a in fig. . the b or dry cell battery for the vacuum tube plate circuit that gives - / volts can be bought already assembled in sealed boxes. the small size is fitted with a pair of terminals while the larger size is provided with _taps_ so that the voltage required by the plate can be adjusted as the proper operation of the tube requires careful regulation of the plate voltage. a dry cell battery for a plate circuit is shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--a and b batteries for vacuum tube detectors.] the filament rheostat.--an adjustable resistance, called a _rheostat_, must be used in the filament and storage battery circuit so that the current flowing through the filament can be controlled to a nicety. the rheostat consists of an insulating and a heat resisting form on which is wound a number of turns of resistance wire. a movable contact arm that slides over and presses on the turns of wire is fixed to the knob on top of the rheostat. a rheostat that has a resistance of ohms and a current carrying capacity of . amperes which can be mounted on a panel board is the right kind to use. it is shown at a and b in fig. and costs $ . . [illustration: fig. .--rheostat for the a or storage battery current.] assembling the parts.--begin by placing all of the separate parts of the receiving set on a board or a base of other material and set the tuning coil on the left hand side with the adjustable switch end toward the right hand side so that you can reach it easily. then set the variable condenser in front of it, set the vacuum tube detector at the right hand end of the tuning coil and the rheostat in front of the detector. place the two sets of batteries back of the instruments and screw a couple of binding posts _a_ and _b_ to the right hand lower edge of the base for connecting in the head phones all of which is shown at a in fig. . [illustration: (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for a vacuum tube detector receiving set.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram of a simple vacuum tube receiving set.] connecting up the parts.--to wire up the different parts begin by connecting the sliding contact of the primary coil of the loose coupled tuning coil (this you will remember is the outside one that is wound with fine wire) to the upper post of the lightning switch and connect one terminal of this coil with the water pipe. now connect the free end of the secondary coil of the tuning coil (this is the inside coil that is wound with heavy wire) to one of the binding posts of the variable condenser and connect the movable contact arm of the adjustable switch of the primary of the tuning coil with the other post of the variable condenser. next connect the grid of the vacuum tube to one of the posts of the condenser and then connect the plate of the tube to the _carbon terminal_ of the b or dry cell battery which is the + or _positive pole_ and connect the _zinc terminal_ of the - or _negative_ pole to the binding post _a_, connect the post _b_ to the other side of the variable condenser and then connect the terminals of the head phones to the binding posts _a_ and _b_. whatever you do be careful not to get the plate connections of the battery reversed. now connect one of the posts of the rheostat to one terminal of the filament and the other terminal of the filament to the - or _negative_ terminal of the a or storage battery and the + or _positive_ terminal of the a or storage battery to the other post of the rheostat. finally connect the + or positive terminal of the a or storage battery with the wire that runs from the head phones to the variable condenser, all of which is shown in the wiring diagram at b in fig. . adjusting the vacuum tube detector receiving set.--a vacuum tube detector is tuned exactly in the same way as the _crystal detector set no. _ described in chapter iii, in-so-far as the tuning coil and variable condenser are concerned. the sensitivity of the vacuum tube detector receiving set and, hence, the distance over which signals and other sounds can be heard depends very largely on the sensitivity of the vacuum tube itself and this in turn depends on: ( ) the right amount of heat developed by the filament, or _filament brilliancy_ as it is called, ( ) the right amount of voltage applied to the plate, and ( ) the extent to which the tube is exhausted where this kind of a tube is used. to vary the current flowing from the a or storage battery through the filament so that it will be heated to the right degree you adjust the rheostat while you are listening in to the signals or other sounds. by carefully adjusting the rheostat you can easily find the point at which it makes the tube the most sensitive. a rheostat is also useful in that it keeps the filament from burning out when the current from the battery first flows through it. you can very often increase the sensitiveness of a vacuum tube after you have used it for a while by recharging the a or storage battery. the degree to which a vacuum tube has been exhausted has a very pronounced effect on its sensitivity. the longer the tube is used the lower its vacuum gets and generally the less sensitive it becomes. when this takes place (and you can only guess at it) you can very often make it more sensitive by warming it over the flame of a candle. vacuum tubes having a gas content (in which case they are, of course, no longer vacuum tubes in the strict sense) make better detectors than tubes from which the air has been exhausted and which are sealed off in this evacuated condition because their sensitiveness is not dependent on the degree of vacuum as in the latter tubes. moreover, a tube that is completely exhausted costs more than one that is filled with gas. chapter ix vacuum tube amplifier receiving sets the reason a vacuum tube detector is more sensitive than a crystal detector is because while the latter merely _rectifies_ the oscillating current that surges in the receiving circuits, the former acts as an _amplifier_ at the same time. the vacuum tube can be used as a separate amplifier in connection with either: ( ) a _crystal detector_ or ( ) a _vacuum tube detector_, and (_a_) it will amplify either the _radio frequency currents_, that is the high frequency oscillating currents which are set up in the oscillation circuits or (_b_) it will amplify the _audio frequency currents_, that is, the _low frequency alternating_ currents that flow through the head phone circuit. to use the amplified radio frequency oscillating currents or amplified audio frequency alternating currents that are set up by an amplifier tube either a high resistance, called a _grid leak_, or an _amplifying transformer_, with or without an iron core, must be connected with the plate circuit of the first amplifier tube and the grid circuit of the next amplifier tube or detector tube, or with the wire point of a crystal detector. where two or more amplifier tubes are coupled together in this way the scheme is known as _cascade amplification._ where either a _radio frequency transformer_, that is one without the iron core, or an _audio frequency transformer_, that is one with the iron core, is used to couple the amplifier tube circuits together better results are obtained than where a high resistance grid leak is used, but the amplifying tubes have to be more carefully shielded from each other or they will react and set up a _howling_ noise in the head phones. on the other hand grid leaks cost less but they are more troublesome to use as you have to find out for yourself the exact resistance value they must have and this you can do only by testing them out. a grid leak amplifier receiving set. with crystal detector.--the apparatus you need for this set includes: ( ) a _loose coupled tuning coil_, ( ) a _variable condenser_, ( ) _two fixed condensers_, ( ) a _crystal detector_, or better a _vacuum tube detector_, ( ) an a or _ volt storage battery_, ( ) a _rheostat_, ( ) a b or - / _volt dry cell battery_, ( ) a fixed resistance unit, or _leak grid_ as it is called, and ( ) a pair of _head-phones_. the tuning coil, variable condenser, fixed condensers, crystal detectors and head-phones are exactly the same as those described in _set no. _ in chapter iii. the a and b batteries are exactly the same as those described in chapter viii. the _vacuum tube amplifier_ and the _grid leak_ are the only new pieces of apparatus you need and not described before. the vacuum tube amplifier.--this consists of a three electrode vacuum tube exactly like the vacuum tube detector described in chapter viii and pictured in fig. , except that instead of being filled with a non-combustible gas it is evacuated, that is, the air has been completely pumped out of it. the gas filled tube, however, can be used as an amplifier and either kind of tube can be used for either radio frequency or audio frequency amplification, though with the exhausted tube it is easier to obtain the right plate and filament voltages for good working. the fixed resistance unit, or grid leak.--grid leaks are made in different ways but all of them have an enormously high resistance. one way of making them consists of depositing a thin film of gold on a sheet of mica and placing another sheet of mica on top to protect it the whole being enclosed in a glass tube as shown at a in fig. . these grid leaks are made in units of from , ohms (. megohm) to , , ohms ( megohms) and cost from $ to $ . [illustration: fig. .--grid leaks and how to connect them up.] as the _value_ of the grid leak you will need depends very largely upon the construction of the different parts of your receiving set and on the kind of aerial wire system you use with it you will have to try out various resistances until you hit the right one. the resistance that will give the best results, however, lies somewhere between , ohms ( / a megohm) and , , ohms ( megohms) and the only way for you to find this out is to buy / , and megohm grid leak resistances and connect them up in different ways, as shown at b, until you find the right value. assembling the parts for a crystal detector set.--begin by laying the various parts out on a base or a panel with the loose coupled tuning coil on the left hand side, but with the adjustable switch of the secondary coil on the right hand end or in front according to the way it is made. then place the variable condenser, the rheostat, the crystal detector and the binding posts for the head phones in front of and in a line with each other. set the vacuum tube amplifier back of the rheostat and the a and b batteries back of the parts or in any other place that may be convenient. the fixed condensers and the grid leak can be placed anywhere so that it will be easy to connect them in and you are ready to wire up the set. connecting up the parts for a crystal detector.--first connect the sliding contact of the primary of the tuning coil to the leading-in wire and one of the end wires of the primary to the water pipe, as shown in fig. . now connect the adjustable arm that makes contact with one end of the secondary of the tuning coil to one of the posts of the variable condenser; then connect the other post of the latter with a post of the fixed condenser and the other post of this with the grid of the amplifying tube. [illustration: fig. .--crystal detector receiving set with vacuum tube amplifier (resistance coupled).] connect the first post of the variable condenser to the + or _positive electrode_ of the a battery and its - or _negative electrode_ with the rotating contact arm of the rheostat. next connect one end of the resistance coil of the rheostat to one of the posts of the amplifier tube that leads to the filament and the other filament post to the + or _positive electrode_ of the a battery. this done connect the _negative_, that is, the _zinc pole_ of the b battery to the positive electrode of the a battery and connect the _positive_, or _carbon pole_ of the former with one end of the grid leak and connect the other end of this to the plate of the amplifier tube. to the end of the grid leak connected with the plate of the amplifier tube connect the metal point of your crystal detector, the crystal of the latter with one post of the head phones and the other post of them with the other end of the grid leak and, finally, connect a fixed condenser in _parallel_ with--that is across the ends of the grid leak, all of which is shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . a grid leak amplifying receiving set with vacuum tube detector.--a better amplifying receiving set can be made than the one just described by using a vacuum tube detector instead of the crystal detector. this set is built up exactly like the crystal detector described above and shown in fig. up to and including the grid leak resistance, but shunted across the latter is a vacuum tube detector, which is made and wired up precisely like the one shown at a in fig. in the chapter ahead of this one. the way a grid leak and vacuum tube detector with a one-step amplifier are connected up is shown at a in fig. . where you have a vacuum tube detector and one or more amplifying tubes connected up, or in _cascade_ as it is called, you can use an a, or storage battery of volts for all of them as shown at b in fig. , but for every vacuum tube you use you must have a b or - / volt dry battery to charge the plate with. [illustration: (a) fig. --vacuum tube detector set with one step amplifier (resistance coupled).] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for using one a or storage battery with an amplifier and a detector tube.] a radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set.--instead of using a grid leak resistance to couple up the amplifier and detector tube circuits you can use a _radio frequency transformer_, that is, a transformer made like a loose coupled tuning coil, and without an iron core, as shown in the wiring diagram at a in fig. . in this set, which gives better results than where a grid leak is used, the amplifier tube is placed in the first oscillation circuit and the detector tube in the second circuit. [illustration: (a) fig. .--wiring diagram for a radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--radio frequency transformer.] since the radio frequency transformer has no iron core the high frequency, or _radio frequency_ oscillating currents, as they are called, surge through it and are not changed into low frequency, or _audio frequency_ pulsating currents, until they flow through the detector. since the diagram shows only one amplifier and one radio frequency transformer, it is consequently a _one step amplifier_; however, two, three or more, amplifying tubes can be connected up by means of an equal number of radio frequency transformers when you will get wonderful results. where a six step amplifier, that is, where six amplifying tubes are connected together, or in _cascade_, the first three are usually coupled up with radio frequency transformers and the last three with audio frequency transformers. a radio frequency transformer is shown at b and costs $ to $ . an audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set.--where audio frequency transformers are used for stepping up the voltage of the current of the detector and amplifier tubes, the radio frequency current does not get into the plate circuit of the detector at all for the reason that the iron core of the transformer chokes them off, hence, the succeeding amplifiers operate at audio frequencies. an audio frequency transformer is shown at a in fig. and a wiring diagram showing how the tubes are connected in _cascade_ with the transformers is shown at b; it is therefore a two-step audio frequency receiving set. [illustration: (a) fig. .--audio frequency transformer.] [illustration: (b) fig. --wiring diagram for an audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set. (with vacuum tube detector and two step amplifier tubes.)] a six step amplifier receiving set with a loop aerial.--by using a receiving set having a three step radio frequency and a three step audio frequency, that is, a set in which there are coupled three amplifying tubes with radio frequency transformers and three amplifying tubes with audio frequency transformers as described under the caption _a radio frequency transformer receiving set_, you can use a _loop aerial_ in your room thus getting around the difficulties--if such there be--in erecting an out-door aerial. you can easily make a loop aerial by winding turns of _no. _ or _ _ copper wire about / inch apart on a wooden frame two feet on the side as shown in fig. . with this six step amplifier set and loop aerial you can receive wave lengths of to meters from various high power stations which are at considerable distances away. [illustration: (a) fig. .--six step amplifier with loop aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--efficient regenerative receiving set. (with three coil loose coupler tuner.)] how to prevent howling.--where radio frequency or audio frequency amplifiers are used to couple your amplifier tubes in cascade you must take particular pains to shield them from one another in order to prevent the _feed back_ of the currents through them, which makes the head phones or loud speaker _howl_. to shield them from each other the tubes should be enclosed in metal boxes and placed at least inches apart while the transformers should be set so that their cores are at right angles to each other and these also should be not less than six inches apart. chapter x regenerative amplification receiving sets while a vacuum tube detector has an amplifying action of its own, and this accounts for its great sensitiveness, its amplifying action can be further increased to an enormous extent by making the radio frequency currents that are set up in the oscillation circuits react on the detector. such currents are called _feed-back_ or _regenerative_ currents and when circuits are so arranged as to cause the currents to flow back through the detector tube the amplification keeps on increasing until the capacity of the tube itself is reached. it is like using steam over and over again in a steam turbine until there is no more energy left in it. a system of circuits which will cause this regenerative action to take place is known as the _armstrong circuits_ and is so called after the young man who discovered it. since the regenerative action of the radio frequency currents is produced by the detector tube itself and which sets up an amplifying effect without the addition of an amplifying tube, this type of receiving set has found great favor with amateurs, while in combination with amplifying tubes it multiplies their power proportionately and it is in consequence used in one form or another in all the better sets. there are many different kinds of circuits which can be used to produce the regenerative amplification effect while the various kinds of tuning coils will serve for coupling them; for instance a two or three slide single tuning coil will answer the purpose but as it does not give good results it is not advisable to spend either time or money on it. a better scheme is to use a loose coupler formed of two or three honeycomb or other compact coils, while a _variocoupler_ or a _variometer_ or two will produce the maximum regenerative action. the simplest type of regenerative receiving set. with loose coupled tuning coil.--while this regenerative set is the simplest that will give anything like fair results it is here described not on account of its desirability, but because it will serve to give you the fundamental idea of how the _feed-back_ circuit is formed. for this set you need: ( ) a _loose-coupled tuning coil_ such as described in chapter iii, ( ) a _variable condenser_ of _. mfd._ (microfarad) capacitance; ( ) one _fixed condenser_ of _. mfd._; ( ) one _fixed condenser_ for the grid leak circuit of _. mfd._; ( ) a _grid leak_ of / to megohms resistance; ( ) a _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) an _a volt battery_; ( ) a _rheostat_; ( ) a _b / volt battery_; and ( ) a pair of _ ohm head phones_. connecting up the parts.--begin by connecting the leading-in wire of the aerial with the binding post end of the primary coil of the loose coupler as shown in the wiring diagram fig. and then connect the sliding contact with the water pipe or other ground. connect the binding post end of the primary coil with one post of the variable condenser, connect the other post of this with one of the posts of the _. mfd._ condenser and the other end of this with the grid of the detector tube; then around this condenser shunt the grid leak resistance. [illustration: fig. .--simple regenerative receiving set. (with loose coupler tuner.)] next connect the sliding contact of the primary coil with the other post of the variable condenser and from this lead a wire on over to one of the terminals of the filament of the vacuum tube; to the other terminal of the filament connect one of the posts of the rheostat and connect the other post to the - or negative electrode of the a battery and then connect the + or positive electrode of it to the other terminal of the filament. connect the + or positive electrode of the a battery with one post of the . mfd. fixed condenser and connect the other post of this to one of the ends of the secondary coil of the tuning coil and which is now known as the _tickler coil_; then connect the other end of the secondary, or tickler coil to the plate of the vacuum tube. in the wiring diagram the secondary, or tickler coil is shown above and in a line with the primary coil but this is only for the sake of making the connections clear; in reality the secondary, or tickler coil slides to and fro in the primary coil as shown and described in chapter iii. finally connect the _negative_, or zinc pole of the _b battery_ to one side of the fixed condenser, the _positive_, or carbon, pole to one of the terminals of the head phones and the other terminal of this to the other post of the fixed condenser when your regenerative set is complete. an efficient regenerative receiving set. with three coil loose coupler.--to construct a really good regenerative set you must use a loose coupled tuner that has three coils, namely a _primary_, a _secondary_ and a _tickler coil_. a tuner of this kind is made like an ordinary loose coupled tuning coil but it has a _third_ coil as shown at a and b in fig. . the middle coil, which is the _secondary_, is fixed to the base, and the large outside coil, which is the _primary_, is movable, that is it slides to and fro over the middle coil, while the small inside coil, which is the _tickler_, is also movable and can slide in or out of the middle _coil_. none of these coils is variable; all are wound to receive waves up to meters in length when used with a variable condenser of _. mfd_. capacitance. in other words you slide the coils in and out to get the right amount of coupling and you tune by adjusting the variable condenser to get the exact wave length you want. [illustration: (a) fig. .--diagram of a three coil coupler.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--three coil loose coupler tuner.] with compact coils.--compact coil tuners are formed of three fixed inductances wound in flat coils, and these are pivoted in a mounting so that the distance between them and, therefore, the coupling, can be varied, as shown at a in fig. . these coils are wound up by the makers for various wave lengths ranging from a small one that will receive waves of any length up to meters to a large one that has a maximum of , meters. for an amateur set get three of the smallest coils when you can not only hear amateur stations that send on a meter wave but broadcasting stations that send on a meter wave. [illustration: fig. .--honeycomb inductance coil.] these three coils are mounted with panel plugs which latter fit into a stand, or mounting, so that the middle coil is fixed, that is, stationary, while the two outside coils can be swung to and fro like a door; this scheme permits small variations of coupling to be had between the coils and this can be done either by handles or by means of knobs on a panel board. while i have suggested the use of the smallest size coils, you can get and use those wound for any wave length you want to receive and when those are connected with variometers and variable condensers, and with a proper aerial, you will have a highly efficient receptor that will work over all ranges of wave lengths. the smallest size coils cost about $ . apiece and the mounting costs about $ or $ each. the a battery potentiometer.--this device is simply a resistance like the rheostat described in connection with the preceding vacuum tube receiving sets but it is wound to or ohms resistance as against - / to ohms of the rheostat. it is, however, used as well as the rheostat. with a vacuum tube detector, and especially with one having a gas-content, a potentiometer is very necessary as it is only by means of it that the potential of the plate of the detector can be accurately regulated. the result of proper regulation is that when the critical potential value is reached there is a marked increase in the loudness of the sounds that are emitted by the head phones. as you will see from a in fig. it has three taps. the two taps which are connected with the ends of the resistance coil are shunted around the a battery and the third tap, which is attached to the movable contact arm, is connected with the b battery tap, see b, at which this battery gives volts. since the a battery gives volts you can vary the potential of the plate from to volts. the potentiometer must never be shunted around the b battery or the latter will soon run down. a potentiometer costs a couple of dollars. [illustration: (a) fig. .--the use of the potentiometer.] the parts and how to connect them up.--for this regenerative set you will need: ( ) a _honeycomb_ or other compact _three-coil tuner_, ( ) two _variable_ (_. _ and _. mfd_.) _condensers_; ( ) a _. mfd. fixed condenser_; ( ) a _ / to megohm grid leak_; ( ) a _tube detector_; ( ) a _ volt a battery_; ( ) _a rheostat_; ( ) a _potentiometer_; ( ) an _ _ or _ volt b battery_; ( ) a _fixed condenser_ of _. mfd. fixed condenser_; and ( ) a _pair of ohm head phones_. to wire up the parts connect the leading-in wire of the aerial with the primary coil, which is the middle one of the tuner, and connect the other terminal with the ground. connect the ends of the secondary coil, which is the middle one, with the posts of the variable condenser and connect one of the posts of the latter with one post of the fixed . mfd. condenser and the other post of this with the grid; then shunt the grid leak around it. next connect the other post of the variable condenser to the - or _negative_ electrode of the _a battery_; the + or _positive_ electrode of this to one terminal of the detector filament and the other end of the latter to the electrode of the a battery. now connect one end of the tickler coil with the detector plate and the other post to the fixed . mfd. condenser, then the other end of this to the positive or carbon pole of the b battery. this done shunt the potentiometer around the a battery and run a wire from the movable contact of it (the potentiometer) over to the volt tap, (see b, fig. ), of the b battery. finally, shunt the head phones and the . mfd. fixed condenser and you are ready to try out conclusions. a regenerative audio frequency amplifier receiving set.--the use of amateur regenerative cascade audio frequency receiving sets is getting to be quite common. to get the greatest amplification possible with amplifying tubes you have to keep a negative potential on the grids. you can, however, get very good results without any special charging arrangement by simply connecting one post of the rheostat with the negative terminal of the filament and connecting the _low potential_ end of the secondary of the tuning coil with the - or negative electrode of the a battery. this scheme will give the grids a negative bias of about volt. you do not need to bother about these added factors that make for high efficiency until after you have got your receiving set in working order and understand all about it. the parts and how to connect them up.--exactly the same parts are needed for this set as the one described above, but in addition you will want: ( ) two more _rheostats_; ( ) _two_ more sets of b - / _volt batteries_; ( ) _two amplifier tubes_, and ( ) _two audio frequency transformers_ as described in chapter ix and pictured at a in fig. . to wire up the parts begin by connecting the leading-in wire to one end of the primary of the tuning coil and then connect the other end of the coil with the ground. a variable condenser of . mfd. capacitance can be connected in the ground wire, as shown in fig. , to good advantage although it is not absolutely needed. now connect one end of the secondary coil to one post of a _. mfd._ variable condenser and the other end of the secondary to the other post of the condenser. [illustration: fig. .--regenerative audio frequency amplifier receiving set.] next bring a lead (wire) from the first post of the variable condenser over to the post of the first fixed condenser and connect the other post of the latter with the grid of the detector tube. shunt / to megohm grid leak resistance around the fixed condenser and then connect the second post of the variable condenser to one terminal of the detector tube filament. run this wire on over and connect it with the first post of the second rheostat, the second post of which is connected with one terminal of the filament of the first amplifying tube; then connect the first post of the rheostat with one end of the secondary coil of the first audio frequency transformer, and the other end of this coil with the grid of the first amplifier tube. connect the lead that runs from the second post of variable condenser to the first post of the third rheostat, the second post of which is connected with one terminal of the second amplifying tube; then connect the first post of the rheostat with one end of the secondary coil of the second audio frequency transformer and the other end of this coil with the grid of the second amplifier tube. this done connect the - or negative electrode of the a battery with the second post of the variable condenser and connect the + or positive electrode with the free post of the first rheostat, the other post of which connects with the free terminal of the filament of the detector. from this lead tap off a wire and connect it to the free terminal of the filament of the first amplifier tube, and finally connect the end of the lead with the free terminal of the filament of the second amplifier tube. next shunt a potentiometer around the a battery and connect the third post, which connects with the sliding contact, to the negative or zinc pole of a b battery, then connect the positive or carbon pole of it to the negative or zinc pole of a second b battery and the positive or carbon pole of the latter with one end of the primary coil of the second audio frequency transformer and the other end of it to the plate of the first amplifying tube. run the lead on over and connect it to one of the terminals of the second fixed condenser and the other terminal of this with the plate of the second amplifying tube. then shunt the headphones around the condenser. finally connect one end of the tickler coil of the tuner with the plate of the detector tube and connect the other end of the tickler to one end of the primary coil of the first audio frequency transformer and the other end of it to the wire that connects the two b batteries together. chapter xi short wave regenerative receiving sets a _short wave receiving set_ is one that will receive a range of wave lengths of from to meters while the distance over which the waves can be received as well as the intensity of the sounds reproduced by the headphones depends on: ( ) whether it is a regenerative set and ( ) whether it is provided with amplifying tubes. high-grade regenerative sets designed especially for receiving amateur sending stations that must use a short wave length are built on the regenerative principle just like those described in the last chapter and further amplification can be had by the use of amplifier tubes as explained in chapter ix, but the new feature of these sets is the use of the _variocoupler_ and one or more _variometers_. these tuning devices can be connected up in different ways and are very popular with amateurs at the present time. differing from the ordinary loose coupler the variometer has no movable contacts while the variometer is provided with taps so that you can connect it up for the wave length you want to receive. all you have to do is to tune the oscillation circuits to each other is to turn the _rotor_, which is the secondary coil, around in the _stator_, as the primary coil is called in order to get a very fine variation of the wave length. it is this construction that makes _sharp tuning_ with these sets possible, by which is meant that all wave lengths are tuned out except the one which the receiving set is tuned for. a short wave regenerative receiver--with one variometer and three variable condensers.--this set also includes a variocoupler and a _grid coil_. the way that the parts are connected together makes it a simple and at the same time a very efficient regenerative receiver for short waves. while this set can be used without shielding the parts from each other the best results are had when shields are used. the parts you need for this set include: ( ) one _variocoupler_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) _one megohm grid leak_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _ volt a battery_; ( ) one _ ohm_, - / _ampere rheostat_; ( ) one _ ohm potentiometer_; ( ) one - / _volt b battery_; ( ) one _. microfarad fixed condenser_, ( ) one pair of _ , ohm headphones_, and ( ) a _variometer_. the variocoupler.--a variocoupler consists of a primary coil wound on the outside of a tube of insulating material and to certain turns of this taps are connected so that you can fix the wave length which your aerial system is to receive from the shortest wave; i.e., meters on up by steps to the longest wave, i.e., meters, which is the range of most amateur variocouplers that are sold in the open market. this is the part of the variocoupler that is called the _stator_. the secondary coil is wound on the section of a ball mounted on a shaft and this is swung in bearings on the stator so that it can turn in it. this part of the variocoupler is called the _rotor_ and is arranged so that it can be mounted on a panel and adjusted by means of a knob or a dial. a diagram of a variocoupler is shown at a in fig. , and the coupler itself at b. there are various makes and modifications of variocouplers on the market but all of them are about the same price which is $ . or $ . . [illustration: fig. .--how the variocoupler is made and works.] the variometer.--this device is quite like the variocoupler, but with these differences: ( ) the rotor turns in the stator, which is also the section of a ball, and ( ) one end of the primary is connected with one end of the secondary coil. to be really efficient a variometer must have a small resistance and a large inductance as well as a small dielectric loss. to secure the first two of these factors the wire should be formed of a number of fine, pure copper wires each of which is insulated and the whole strand then covered with silk. this kind of wire is the best that has yet been devised for the purpose and is sold under the trade name of _litzendraht_. a new type of variometer has what is known as a _basket weave_, or _wavy wound_ stator and rotor. there is no wood, insulating compound or other dielectric materials in large enough quantities to absorb the weak currents that flow between them, hence weaker sounds can be heard when this kind of a variometer is used. with it you can tune sharply to waves under meters in length and up to and including wave lengths of meters. when amateur stations of small power are sending on these short waves this style of variometer keeps the electric oscillations at their greatest strength and, hence, the reproduced sounds will be of maximum intensity. a wiring diagram of a variometer is shown at a in fig. and a _basketball_ variometer is shown complete at b. [illustration: fig. .--how the variometer is made and works.] connecting up the parts.--to hook-up the set connect the leading-in wire to one end of the primary coil, or stator, of the variocoupler and solder a wire to one of the taps that gives the longest wave length you want to receive. connect the other end of this wire with one post of a . microfarad variable condenser and connect the other post with the ground as shown in fig. . now connect one end of the secondary coil, or rotor, to one post of a . mfd. variable condenser, the other post of this to one end of the grid coil and the other end of this with the remaining end of the rotor of the variocoupler. [illustration: fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (one variometer and three variable condensers.)] next connect one post of the . mfd. condenser with one of the terminals of the detector filament; then connect the other post of this condenser with one post of the . mfd. variable condenser and the other post of this with the grid of the detector, then shunt the megohm grid leak around the latter condenser. this done connect the other terminal of the filament to one post of the rheostat, the other post of this to the - or negative electrode of the volt a battery and the + or positive electrode of the latter to the other terminal of the filament. shunt the potentiometer around the a battery and connect the sliding contact with the - or zinc pole of the b battery and the + or carbon pole with one terminal of the headphone; connect the other terminal to one of the posts of the variometer and the other post of the variometer to the plate of the detector. finally shunt a . mfd. fixed condenser around the headphones. if you want to amplify the current with a vacuum tube amplifier connect in the terminals of the amplifier circuit shown at a in figs. or at the point where they are connected with the secondary coil of the loose coupled tuning coil, in those diagrams with the binding posts of fig. where the phones are usually connected in. short wave regenerative receiver. with two variometers and two variable condensers.--this type of regenerative receptor is very popular with amateurs who are using high-grade short-wave sets. when you connect up this receptor you must keep the various parts well separated. screw the variocoupler to the middle of the base board or panel, and secure the variometers on either side of it so that the distance between them will be or inches. by so placing them the coupling will be the same on both sides and besides you can shield them from each other easier. for the shield use a sheet of copper on the back of the panel and place a sheet of copper between the parts, or better, enclose the variometers and detector and amplifying tubes if you use the latter in sheet copper boxes. when you set up the variometers place them so that their stators are at right angles to each other for otherwise the magnetic lines of force set up by the coils of each one will be mutually inductive and this will make the headphones or loud speaker _howl_. whatever tendency the receptor has to howl with this arrangement can be overcome by putting in a grid leak of the right resistance and adjusting the condenser. the parts and how to connect them up.--for this set you require: ( ) one _variocoupler_; ( ) two _variometers_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _ megohm grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _ volt a battery_; ( ) one _ ohm potentiometer_; ( ) one _ - / volt b battery_; ( ) one _. microfarad fixed condenser_, and ( ) one pair of _ , ohm headphones_. to wire up the set begin by connecting the leading-in wire to the fixed end of the primary coil, or _stator_, of the variocoupler, as shown in fig. , and connect one post of the . mfd. variable condenser to the stator by soldering a short length of wire to the tap of the latter that gives the longest wave you want to receive. now connect one end of the secondary coil, or _rotor_, of the variocoupler with one post of the . mfd. variable condenser and the other part to the grid of the detector tube. connect the other end of the rotor of the variocoupler to one of the posts of the first variometer and the other post of this to one of the terminals of the detector filament. [illustration: fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (two variometers and two variable condensers.)] connect this filament terminal with the - or negative electrode of the a battery and the + or positive electrode of this with one post of the rheostat and lead a wire from the other post to the free terminal of the filament. this done shunt the potential around the a battery and connect the sliding contact to the - or zinc pole of the b battery and the + or carbon pole of this to one terminal of the headphones, while the other terminal of this leads to one of the posts of the second variometer, the other post of which is connected to the plate of the detector tube. if you want to add an amplifier tube then connect it to the posts instead of the headphones as described in the foregoing set. chapter xii intermediate and long wave regenerative receiving sets all receiving sets that receive over a range of wave lengths of from meters to , meters are called _intermediate wave sets_ and all sets that receive wave lengths over a range of anything more than , meters are called _long wave sets_. the range of intermediate wave receptors is such that they will receive amateur, broadcasting, ship and shore navy, commercial, arlington's time and all other stations using _spark telegraph damped waves_ or _arc_ or _vacuum tube telephone continuous waves_ but not _continuous wave telegraph signals_, unless these have been broken up into groups at the transmitting station. to receive continuous wave telegraph signals requires receiving sets of special kind and these will be described in the next chapter. intermediate wave receiving sets.--there are two chief schemes employed to increase the range of wave lengths that a set can receive and these are by using: ( ) _loading coils_ and _shunt condensers_, and ( ) _bank-wound coils_ and _variable condensers_. if you have a short-wave set and plan to receive intermediate waves with it then loading coils and fixed condensers shunted around them affords you the way to do it, but if you prefer to buy a new receptor then the better way is to get one with bank-wound coils and variable condensers; this latter way preserves the electrical balance of the oscillation circuits better, the electrical losses are less and the tuning easier and sharper. intermediate wave set with loading coils.--for this intermediate wave set you can use either of the short-wave sets described in the foregoing chapter. for the loading coils use _honeycomb coils_, or other good compact inductance coils, as shown in chapter x and having a range of whatever wave length you wish to receive. the following table shows the range of wave length of the various sized coils when used with a variable condenser having a . microfarad _capacitance_, the approximate _inductance_ of each coil in _millihenries_ and prices at the present writing: table of characteristics of honeycomb coils approximate wave length in meters in millihenries inductance . mfd. variable mounted appx. air condenser. on plug . -- $ . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . these and other kinds of compact coils can be bought at electrical supply houses that sell wireless goods. if your aerial is not very high or long you can use loading coils, but to get anything like efficient results with them you must have an aerial of large capacitance and the only way to get this is to put up a high and long one with two or more parallel wires spaced a goodly distance apart. the parts and how to connect them up.--get ( ) _two honeycomb or other coils_ of the greatest wave length you want to receive, for in order to properly balance the aerial, or primary oscillation circuit, and the closed, or secondary oscillation circuit, you have to tune them to the same wave length; ( ) two _. mfd. variable condensers_, though fixed condensers will do, and ( ) two small _single-throw double-pole knife switches_ mounted on porcelain bases. to use the loading coils all you have to do is to connect one of them in the aerial above the primary coil of the loose coupler, or variocoupler as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. , then shunt one of the condensers around it and connect one of the switches around this; this switch enables you to cut in or out the loading coil at will. likewise connect the other loading coil in one side of the closed, or secondary circuit between the variable . mfd. condenser and the secondary coil of the loose coupler or variocoupler as shown in fig. . the other connections are exactly the same as shown in figs. and . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram showing fixed loading coils for intermediate wave set.] an intermediate wave set with variocoupler inductance coils.--by using the coil wound on the rotor of the variocoupler as the tickler the coupling between the detector tube circuits and the aerial wire system increases as the set is tuned for greater wave lengths. this scheme makes the control of the regenerative circuit far more stable than it is where an ordinary loose coupled tuning coil is used. when the variocoupler is adjusted for receiving very long waves the rotor sets at right angles to the stator and, since when it is in this position there is no mutual induction between them, the tickler coil serves as a loading coil for the detector plate oscillation circuit. inductance coils for short wave lengths are usually wound in single layers but _bank-wound coils_, as they are called are necessary to get compactness where long wave lengths are to be received. by winding inductance coils with two or more layers the highest inductance values can be obtained with the least resistance. a wiring diagram of a multipoint inductance coil is shown in fig. . you can buy this intermediate wave set assembled and ready to use or get the parts and connect them up yourself. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for intermediate wave receptor with one variocoupler and section bank-wound inductance coil.] the parts and how to connect them up.--for this regenerative intermediate wave set get: ( ) one _ section triple bank-wound inductance coil_, ( ) one _variometer_, and ( ) all the other parts shown in the diagram fig. except the variocoupler. first connect the free end of the condenser in the aerial to one of the terminals of the stator of the variocoupler; then connect the other terminal of the stator with one of the ends of the bank-wound inductance coil and connect the movable contact of this with the ground. next connect a wire to the aerial between the variable condenser and the stator and connect this to one post of a . microfarad fixed condenser, then connect the other post of this with the grid of the detector and shunt a megohm grid leak around it. connect a wire to the ground wire between the bank-wound inductance coil and the ground proper, i.e., the radiator or water pipe, connect the other end of this to the + electrode of the a battery and connect this end also to one of the terminals of the filament. this done connect the other terminal of the filament to one post of the rheostat and the other post of this to the - or negative side of the a battery. to the + electrode of the a battery connect the - or zinc pole of the b battery and connect the + or carbon pole of the latter with one post of the fixed . microfarad condenser. this done connect one terminal of the tickler coil which is on the rotor of the variometer to the plate of the detector and the other terminal of the tickler to the other post of the . condenser and around this shunt your headphones. or if you want to use one or more amplifying tubes connect the circuit of the first one, see fig. , to the posts on either side of the fixed condenser instead of the headphones. a long wave receiving set.--the vivid imagination of jules verne never conceived anything so fascinating as the reception of messages without wires sent out by stations half way round the world; and in these days of high power cableless stations on the five continents you can listen-in to the messages and hear what is being sent out by the lyons, paris and other french stations, by great britain, italy, germany and even far off russia and japan. a long wave set for receiving these stations must be able to tune to wave lengths up to , meters. differing from the way in which the regenerative action of the short wave sets described in the preceding chapter is secured and which depends on a tickler coil and the coupling action of the detector in this long wave set, [footnote: all of the short wave and intermediate wave receivers described, are connected up according to the wiring diagram used by the a. h. grebe company, richmond hill, long island, n. y.] this action is obtained by the use of a tickler coil in the plate circuit which is inductively coupled to the grid circuit and this feeds back the necessary amount of current. this is a very good way to connect up the circuits for the reason that: ( ) the wiring is simplified, and ( ) it gives a single variable adjustment for the entire range of wave lengths the receptor is intended to cover. the parts and how to connect them up.--the two chief features as far as the parts are concerned of this long wave length receiving set are ( ) the _variable condensers_, and ( ) the _tuning inductance coils_. the variable condenser used in series with the aerial wire system has plates and is equal to a capacitance of _. mfd._ which is the normal aerial capacitance. the condenser used in the secondary coil circuit has plates and this is equal to a capacitance of _. mfd_. there are a number of inductance coils and these are arranged so that they can be connected in or cut out and combinations are thus formed which give a high efficiency and yet allow them to be compactly mounted. the inductance coils of the aerial wire system and those of the secondary coil circuit are practically alike. for wave lengths up to , meters _bank litz-wound coils_ are used and these are wound up in , and banks in order to give the proper degree of coupling and inductance values. where wave lengths of more than , meters are to be received _coto-coils_ are used as these are the "last word" in inductance coil design, and are especially adapted for medium as well as long wave lengths. [footnote: can be had of the coto coil co., providence, r. i.] these various coils are cut in and out by means of two five-point switches which are provided with auxiliary levers and contactors for _dead-ending_ the right amount of the coils. in cutting in coils for increased wave lengths, that is from , to , meters, all of the coils of the aerial are connected in series as well as all of the coils of the secondary circuit. the connections for a long wave receptor are shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram showing long wave receptor with variocouplers and bank-wound inductance coils] chapter xiii heterodyne or beat long wave telegraph receiving set any of the receiving sets described in the foregoing chapters will respond to either: ( ) a wireless telegraph transmitter that uses a spark gap and which sends out periodic electric waves, or to ( ) a wireless telephone transmitter that uses an arc or a vacuum tube oscillator and which sends out continuous electric waves. to receive wireless _telegraph_ signals, however, from a transmitter that uses an arc or a vacuum tube oscillator and which sends out continuous waves, either the transmitter or the receptor must be so constructed that the continuous waves will be broken up into groups of audio frequency and this is done in several different ways. there are four different ways employed at the present time to break up the continuous waves of a wireless telegraph transmitter into groups and these are: (_a_) the _heterodyne_, or _beat_, method, in which waves of different lengths are impressed on the received waves and so produces beats; (_b_) the _tikker_, or _chopper_ method, in which the high frequency currents are rapidly broken up; (_c_) the variable condenser method, in which the movable plates are made to rapidly rotate; (_d_) the _tone wheel_, or _frequency transformer_, as it is often called, and which is really a modified form of and an improvement on the tikker. the heterodyne method will be described in this chapter. what the heterodyne or beat method is.--the word _heterodyne_ was coined from the greek words _heteros_ which means _other_, or _different_, and _dyne_ which means _power_; in other words it means when used in connection with a wireless receptor that another and different high frequency current is used besides the one that is received from the sending station. in music a _beat_ means a regularly recurrent swelling caused by the reinforcement of a sound and this is set up by the interference of sound waves which have slightly different periods of vibration as, for instance, when two tones take place that are not quite in tune with each other. this, then, is the principle of the heterodyne, or beat, receptor. in the heterodyne, or beat method, separate sustained oscillations, that are just about as strong as those of the incoming waves, are set up in the receiving circuits and their frequency is just a little higher or a little lower than those that are set up by the waves received from the distant transmitter. the result is that these oscillations of different frequencies interfere and reinforce each other when _beats_ are produced, the period of which is slow enough to be heard in the headphones, hence the incoming signals can be heard only when waves from the sending station are being received. a fuller explanation of how this is done will be found in chapter xv. the autodyne or self-heterodyne long-wave receiving set.--this is the simplest type of heterodyne receptor and it will receive periodic waves from spark telegraph transmitters or continuous waves from an arc or vacuum tube telegraph transmitter. in this type of receptor the detector tube itself is made to set up the _heterodyne oscillations_ which interfere with those that are produced by the incoming waves that are a little out of tune with it. with a long wave _autodyne_, or _self-heterodyne_ receptor, as this type is called, and a two-step audio-frequency amplifier you can clearly hear many of the cableless stations of europe and others that send out long waves. for receiving long wave stations, however, you must have a long aerial--a single wire or more feet in length will do--and the higher it is the louder will be the signals. where it is not possible to put the aerial up a hundred feet or more above the ground, you can use a lower one and still get messages in _international morse_ fairly strong. the parts and connections of an autodyne, or self-heterodyne, receiving set.--for this long wave receiving set you will need: ( ) one _variocoupler_ with the primary coil wound on the stator and the secondary coil and tickler coil wound on the rotor, or you can use three honeycomb or other good compact coils of the longest wave you want to receive, a table of which is given in chapter xii; ( ) two _. mfd. variable condensers_; ( ) one _. mfd. variable condenser_; ( ) one _. to megohm grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _a battery_; ( ) one _rheostat_; ( ) one _b battery_; ( ) one _potentiometer_; ( ) one _. mfd. fixed condenser_ and ( ) one pair of _headphones_. for the two-step amplifier you must, of course, have besides the above parts the amplifier tubes, variable condensers, batteries rheostats, potentiometers and fixed condensers as explained in chapter ix. the connections for the autodyne, or self-heterodyne, receiving set are shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave antodyne, or self-heterodyne receptor.] the separate heterodyne long wave receiving set.--this is a better long wave receptor than the self heterodyne set described above for receiving wireless telegraph signals sent out by a continuous long wave transmitter. the great advantage of using a separate vacuum tube to generate the heterodyne oscillations is that you can make the frequency of the oscillations just what you want it to be and hence you can make it a little higher or a little lower than the oscillations set up by the received waves. the parts and connections of a separate heterodyne long wave receiving set.--the parts required for this long wave receiving set are: ( ) four honeycomb or other good _compact inductance_ coils of the longest wave length that you want to receive; ( ) three _. mfd. variable condensers_; ( ) one _. mfd. variable condenser_; ( ) one _ megohm grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _a battery_; ( ) two rheostats; ( ) two _b batteries_, one of which is supplied with taps; ( ) one _potentiometer_; ( ) one _vacuum tube amplifier_, for setting up the heterodyne oscillations; ( ) a pair of _headphones_ and ( ) all of the parts for a _two-step amplifier_ as detailed in chapter ix, that is if you are going to use amplifiers. the connections are shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave separate heterodyne receiving set.] in using either of these heterodyne receivers be sure to carefully adjust the b battery by means of the potentiometer. [footnote: the amplifier tube in this case is used as a generator of oscillations.] chapter xiv headphones and loud speakers wireless headphones.--a telephone receiver for a wireless receiving set is made exactly on the same principle as an ordinary bell telephone receiver. the only difference between them is that the former is made flat and compact so that a pair of them can be fastened together with a band and worn on the head (when it is called a _headset_), while the latter is long and cylindrical so that it can be held to the ear. a further difference between them is that the wireless headphone is made as sensitive as possible so that it will respond to very feeble currents, while the ordinary telephone receiver is far from being sensitive and will respond only to comparatively large currents. how a bell telephone receiver is made.--an ordinary telephone receiver consists of three chief parts and these are: ( ) a hard-rubber, or composition, shell and cap, ( ) a permanent steel bar magnet on one end of which is wound a coil of fine insulated copper wire, and ( ) a soft iron disk, or _diaphragm_, all of which are shown in the cross-section in fig. . the bar magnet is securely fixed inside of the handle so that the outside end comes to within about / of an inch of the diaphragm when this is laid on top of the shell and the cap is screwed on. [illustration: fig. .--cross-section of bell telephone receiver.] [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. alexander graham bell, inventor of the telephone, now an ardent radio enthusiast.] the ends of the coil of wire are connected with two binding posts which are in the end of the shell, but are shown in the picture at the sides for the sake of clearness. this coil usually has a resistance of about ohms and the meaning of the _ohmic resistance_ of a receiver and its bearing on the sensitiveness of it will be explained a little farther along. after the disk, or diaphragm, which is generally made of thin, soft sheet iron that has been tinned or japanned, [footnote: a disk of photographic tin-type plate is generally used.] is placed over the end of the magnet, the cap, which has a small opening in it, is screwed on and the receiver is ready to use. how a wireless headphone is made.--for wireless work a receiver of the watch-case type is used and nearly always two such receivers are connected with a headband. it consists of a permanent bar magnet bent so that it will fit into the shell of the receiver as shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wireless headphone.] the ends of this magnet, which are called _poles_, are bent up, and hence this type is called a _bipolar_ receiver. the magnets are wound with fine insulated wire as before and the diaphragm is held securely in place over them by screwing on the cap. about resistance, turns of wire and sensitivity of headphones.--if you are a beginner in wireless you will hear those who are experienced speak of a telephone receiver as having a resistance of ohms, , ohms, , or , ohms, as the case may be; from this you will gather that the higher the resistance of the wire on the magnets the more sensitive the receiver is. in a sense this is true, but it is not the resistance of the magnet coils that makes it sensitive, in fact, it cuts down the current, but it is the _number of turns_ of wire on them that determines its sensitiveness; it is easy to see that this is so, for the larger the number of turns the more often will the same current flow round the cores of the magnet and so magnetize them to a greater extent. but to wind a large number of turns of wire close enough to the cores to be effective the wire must be very small and so, of course, the higher the resistance will be. now the wire used for winding good receivers is usually no. , and this has a diameter of . inch; consequently, when you know the ohmic resistance you get an idea of the number of turns of wire and from this you gather in a general way what the sensitivity of the receiver is. a receiver that is sensitive enough for wireless work should be wound to not less than , ohms (this means each ear phone), while those of a better grade are wound to as high as , ohms for each one. a high-grade headset is shown in fig. . each phone of a headset should be wound to the same resistance, and these are connected in series as shown. where two or more headsets are used with one wireless receiving set they must all be of the same resistance and connected in series, that is, the coils of one head set are connected with the coils of the next head set and so on to form a continuous circuit. [illustration: fig. .--wireless headphone.] the impedance of headphones.--when a current is flowing through a circuit the material of which the wire is made not only opposes its passage--this is called its _ohmic resistance_--but a _counter-electromotive force_ to the current is set up due to the inductive effects of the current on itself and this is called _impedance_. where a wire is wound in a coil the impedance of the circuit is increased and where an alternating current is used the impedance grows greater as the frequency gets higher. the impedance of the magnet coils of a receiver is so great for high frequency oscillations that the latter cannot pass through them; in other words, they are choked off. how the headphones work.--as you will see from the cross-sections in figs. and there is no connection, electrical or mechanical, between the diaphragm and the other parts of the receiver. now when either feeble oscillations, which have been rectified by a detector, or small currents from a b battery, flow through the magnet coils the permanent steel magnet is energized to a greater extent than when no current is flowing through it. this added magnetic energy makes the magnet attract the diaphragm more than it would do by its own force. if, on the other hand, the current is cut off the pull of the magnet is lessened and as its attraction for the diaphragm is decreased the latter springs back to its original position. when varying currents flow through the coils the diaphragm vibrates accordingly and sends out sound waves. about loud speakers.--the simplest acoustic instrument ever invented is the _megaphone_, which latter is a greek word meaning _great sound_. it is a very primitive device and our indians made it out of birch-bark before columbus discovered america. in its simplest form it consists of a cone-shaped horn and as the speaker talks into the small end the concentrated sound waves pass out of the large end in whatever direction it is held. now a loud speaker of whatever kind consists of two chief parts and these are: ( ) a _telephone receiver_, and ( ) a _megaphone_, or _horn_ as it is called. a loud speaker when connected with a wireless receiving set makes it possible for a room, or an auditorium, full of people, or an outdoor crowd, to hear what is being sent out by a distant station instead of being limited to a few persons listening-in with headphones. to use a loud speaker you should have a vacuum tube detector receiving set and this must be provided with a one-step amplifier at least. to get really good results you need a two-step amplifier and then energize the plate of the second vacuum tube amplifier with a volt b battery; or if you have a three-step amplifier then use the high voltage on the plate of the third amplifier tube. amplifying tubes are made to stand a plate potential of volts and this is the kind you must use. now it may seem curious, but when the current flows through the coils of the telephone receiver in one direction it gives better results than when it flows through in the other direction; to find out the way the current gives the best results try it out both ways and this you can do by simply reversing the connections. the simplest type of loud speaker.--this loud speaker, which is called, the arkay, [footnote: made by the riley-klotz mfg. co., newark, n. j.] will work on a one- or two-step amplifier. it consists of a brass horn with a curve in it and in the bottom there is an adapter, or frame, with a set screw in it so that you can fit in one of your headphones and this is all there is to it. the construction is rigid enough to prevent overtones, or distortion of speech or music. it is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--arkay loud speaker.] another simple kind of loud speaker.--another loud speaker, see fig. , is known as the _amplitone_ [footnote: made by the american pattern, foundry and machine co., church street, n. y. c.] and it likewise makes use of the headphones as the sound producer. this device has a cast metal horn which improves the quality of the sound, and all you have to do is to slip the headphones on the inlet tubes of the horn and it is ready for use. the two headphones not only give a longer volume of sound than where a single one is used but there is a certain blended quality which results from one phone smoothing out the imperfections of the other. [illustration: fig. .--amplitone loud speaker.] a third kind of simple loud speaker.--the operation of the _amplitron_, [footnote: made by the radio service co., w. th street, n. y.] as this loud speaker is called, is slightly different from others used for the same purpose. the sounds set up by the headphone are conveyed to the apex of an inverted copper cone which is inches long and inches in diameter. here it is reflected by a parabolic mirror which greatly amplifies the sounds. the amplification takes place without distortion, the sounds remaining as clear and crisp as when projected by the transmitting station. by removing the cap from the receiver the shell is screwed into a receptacle on the end of the loud speaker and the instrument is ready for use. it is pictured in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--amplitron loud speaker.] a super loud speaker.--this loud speaker, which is known as the _magnavox telemegafone_, was the instrument used by lt. herbert e. metcalf, , feet in the air, and which startled the city of washington on april , , by repeating president wilson's _victory loan message_ from an airplane in flight so that it was distinctly heard by , people below. this wonderful achievement was accomplished through the installation of the _magnavox_ and amplifiers in front of the treasury building. every word lt. metcalf spoke into his wireless telephone transmitter was caught and swelled in volume by the _telemegafones_ below and persons blocks away could hear the message plainly. two kinds of these loud speakers are made and these are: ( ) a small loud speaker for the use of operators so that headphones need not be worn, and ( ) a large loud speaker for auditorium and out-door audiences. [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. world's largest loud speaker ever made. installed in lytle park, cincinnati, ohio, to permit president harding's address at point pleasant, ohio, during the grant centenary celebration to be heard within a radius of one square.] either kind may be used with a one- or two-step amplifier or with a cascade of half a dozen amplifiers, according to the degree of loudness desired. the _telemegafone_ itself is not an amplifier in the true sense inasmuch as it contains no elements which will locally increase the incoming current. it does, however, transform the variable electric currents of the wireless receiving set into sound vibrations in a most wonderful manner. a _telemegafone_ of either kind is formed of: ( ) a telephone receiver of large proportions, ( ) a step-down induction coil, and ( ) a volt storage battery that energizes a powerful electromagnet which works the diaphragm. an electromagnet is used instead of a permanent magnet and this is energized by a -volt storage battery as shown in the wiring diagram at a in fig. . one end of the core of this magnet is fixed to the iron case of the speaker and together these form the equivalent of a horseshoe magnet. a movable coil of wire is supported from the center of the diaphragm the edge of which is rigidly held between the case and the small end of the horn. this coil is placed over the upper end of the magnet and its terminals are connected to the secondary of the induction coil. now when the coil is energized by the current from the amplifiers it and the core act like a solenoid in that the coil tends to suck the core into it; but since the core is fixed and the coil is movable the core draws the coil down instead. the result is that with every variation of the current that flows through the coil it moves up and down and pulls and pushes the diaphragm down and up with it. the large amplitude of the vibrations of the latter set up powerful sound waves which can be heard several blocks away from the horn. in this way then are the faint incoming signals, speech and music which are received by the amplifying receiving set reproduced and magnified enormously. the _telemegafone_ is shown complete at b. [illustration: fig. .--magnavox loud speaker.] chapter xv operation of vacuum tube receptors from the foregoing chapters you have seen that the vacuum tube can be used either as a _detector_ or an _amplifier_ or as a _generator_ of electric oscillations, as in the case of the heterodyne receiving set. to understand how a vacuum tube acts as a detector and as an amplifier you must first know what _electrons_ are. the way in which the vacuum tube sets up sustained oscillations will be explained in chapter xviii in connection with the _operation of vacuum tube transmitters_. what electrons are.--science teaches us that masses of matter are made up of _molecules_, that each of these is made up of _atoms_, and each of these, in turn, is made up of a central core of positive particles of electricity surrounded by negative particles of electricity as shown in the schematic diagram, fig. . the little black circles inside the large circle represent _positive particles of electricity_ and the little white circles outside of the large circle represent _negative particles of electricity_, or _electrons_ as they are called. [illustration: fig. .--schematic diagram of an atom.] it is the number of positive particles of electricity an atom has that determines the kind of an element that is formed when enough atoms of the same kind are joined together to build it up. thus hydrogen, which is the lightest known element, has one positive particle for its nucleus, while uranium, the heaviest element now known, has positive particles. now before leaving the atom please note that it is as much smaller than the diagram as the latter is smaller than our solar system. what is meant by ionization.--a hydrogen atom is not only lighter but it is smaller than the atom of any other element while an electron is more than a thousand times smaller than the atom of which it is a part. now as long as all of the electrons remain attached to the surface of an atom its positive and negative charges are equalized and it will, therefore, be neither positive nor negative, that is, it will be perfectly neutral. when, however, one or more of its electrons are separated from it, and there are several ways by which this can be done, the atom will show a positive charge and it is then called a _positive ion_. in other words a _positive ion_ is an atom that has lost some of its negative electrons while a _negative ion_ is one that has acquired some additional negative _electrons_. when a number of electrons are being constantly given by the atoms of an element, which let us suppose is a metal, and are being attracted to atoms of another element, which we will say is also a metal, a flow of electrons takes place between the two oppositely charged elements and form a current of negative electricity as represented by the arrows at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--action of two-electrode vacuum tube.] when a stream of electrons is flowing between two metal elements, as a filament and a plate in a vacuum tube detector, or an amplifier, they act as _carriers_ for more negative electrons and these are supplied by a battery as we shall presently explain. it has always been customary for us to think of a current of electricity as flowing from the positive pole of a battery to the negative pole of it and hence we have called this the _direction of the current_. since the electronic theory has been evolved it has been shown that the electrons, or negative charges of electricity, flow from the negative to the positive pole and that the ionized atoms, which are more positive than negative, flow in the opposite direction as shown at b. how electrons are separated from atoms.--the next question that arises is how to make a metal throw off some of the electrons of the atoms of which it is formed. there are several ways that this can be done but in any event each atom must be given a good, hard blow. a simple way to do this is to heat a metal to incandescence when the atoms will bombard each other with terrific force and many of the electrons will be knocked off and thrown out into the surrounding space. but all, or nearly all, of them will return to the atoms from whence they came unless a means of some kind is employed to attract them to the atoms of some other element. this can be done by giving the latter piece of metal a positive charge. if now these two pieces of metal are placed in a bulb from which the air has been exhausted and the first piece of metal is heated to brilliancy while the second piece of metal is kept positively electrified then a stream of electrons will flow between them. action of the two electrode vacuum tube.--now in a vacuum tube detector a wire filament, like that of an incandescent lamp, is connected with a battery and this forms the hot element from which the electrons are thrown off, and a metal plate with a terminal wire secured to it is connected to the positive or carbon tap of a dry battery; now connect the negative or zinc tap of this with one end of a telephone receiver and the other end of this with the terminals of the filament as shown at a in fig. . if now you heat the filament and hold the phone to your ear you can hear the current from the b battery flowing through the circuit. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--how a two electrode tube acts as a relay or a detector.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--only the positive part of oscillations goes through the tube.] since the electrons are negative charges of electricity they are not only thrown off by the hot wire but they are attracted by the positive charged metal plate and when enough electrons pass, or flow, from the hot wire to the plate they form a conducting path and so complete the circuit which includes the filament, the plate and the b or plate battery, when the current can then flow through it. as the number of electrons that are thrown off by the filament is not great and the voltage of the plate is not high the current that flows between the filament and the plate is always quite small. how the two electrode tube acts as a detector.--as the action of a two electrode tube as a detector [footnote: the three electrode vacuum tube has entirely taken the place of the two electrode type.] is simpler than that of the three electrode vacuum tube we shall describe it first. the two electrode vacuum tube was first made by mr. edison when he was working on the incandescent lamp but that it would serve as a detector of electric waves was discovered by prof. fleming, of oxford university, london. as a matter of fact, it is not really a detector of electric waves, but it acts as: ( ) a _rectifier_ of the oscillations that are set up in the receiving circuits, that is, it changes them into pulsating direct currents so that they will flow through and affect a telephone receiver, and ( ) it acts as a _relay_ and the feeble received oscillating current controls the larger direct current from the b battery in very much the same way that a telegraph relay does. this latter relay action will be explained when we come to its operation as an amplifier. we have just learned that when the stream of electrons flow from the hot wire to the cold positive plate in the tube they form a conducting path through which the battery current can flow. now when the electric oscillations surge through the closed oscillation circuit, which includes the secondary of the tuning coil, the variable condenser, the filament and the plate as shown at b in fig. the positive part of them passes through the tube easily while the negative part cannot get through, that is, the top, or positive, part of the wave-form remains intact while the lower, or negative, part is cut off as shown in the diagram at c. as the received oscillations are either broken up into wave trains of audio frequency by the telegraph transmitter or are modulated by a telephone transmitter they carry the larger impulses of the direct current from the b battery along with them and these flow through the headphones. this is the reason the vacuum tube amplifies as well as detects. how the three electrode tube acts as a detector.--the vacuum tube as a detector has been made very much more sensitive by the use of a third electrode shown in fig. . in this type of vacuum tube the third electrode, or _grid_, is placed between the filament and the plate and this controls the number of electrons flowing from the filament to the plate; in passing between these two electrodes they have to go through the holes formed by the grid wires. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--how the positive and negative voltages of oscillations act on the electrons.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--how the three electrode tube acts as a detector and amplifier.] [illustration: (d) fig. .--how the oscillations control the flow of the battery current through the tube.] if now the grid is charged to a higher _negative_ voltage than the filament the electrons will be stopped by the latter, see a, though some of them will go through to the plate because they travel at a high rate of speed. the higher the negative charge on the grid the smaller will be the number of electrons that will reach the plate and, of course, the smaller will be the amount of current that will flow through the tube and the headphones from the b battery. on the other hand if the grid is charged _positively_, see b, then more electrons will strike the plate than when the grid is not used or when it is negatively charged. but when the three electrode tube is used as a detector the oscillations set up in the circuits change the grid alternately from negative to positive as shown at c and hence the voltage of the b battery current that is allowed to flow through the detector from the plate to the filament rises and falls in unison with the voltage of the oscillating currents. the way the positive and negative voltages of the oscillations which are set up by the incoming waves, energize the grid; how the oscillator tube clips off the negative parts of them, and, finally, how these carry the battery current through the tube are shown graphically by the curves at d. how the vacuum tube acts as an amplifier.--if you connect up the filament and the plate of a three electrode tube with the batteries and do not connect in the grid, you will find that the electrons which are thrown off by the filament will not get farther than the grid regardless of how high the voltage is that you apply to the plate. this is due to the fact that a large number of electrons which are thrown off by the filament strike the grid and give it a negative charge, and consequently, they cannot get any farther. since the electrons do not reach the plate the current from the b battery cannot flow between it and the filament. now with a properly designed amplifier tube a very small negative voltage on the grid will keep a very large positive voltage on the plate from sending a current through the tube, and oppositely, a very small positive voltage on the grid will let a very large plate current flow through the tube; this being true it follows that any small variation of the voltage from positive to negative on the grid and the other way about will vary a large current flowing from the plate to the filament. in the morse telegraph the relay permits the small current that is received from the distant sending station to energize a pair of magnets, and these draw an armature toward them and close a second circuit when a large current from a local battery is available for working the sounder. the amplifier tube is a variable relay in that the feeble currents set up by the incoming waves constantly and proportionately vary a large current that flows through the headphones. this then is the principle on which the amplifying tube works. the operation of a simple vacuum tube receiving set.--the way a simple vacuum tube detector receiving set works is like this: when the filament is heated to brilliancy it gives off electrons as previously described. now when the electric waves impinge on the aerial wire they set up oscillations in it and these surge through the primary coil of the loose coupled tuning coil, a diagram of which is shown at b in fig. . the energy of these oscillations sets up oscillations of the same frequency in the secondary coil and these high frequency currents whose voltage is first positive and then negative, surge in the closed circuit which includes the secondary coil and the variable condenser. at the same time the alternating positive and negative voltage of the oscillating currents is impressed on the grid; at each change from + to - and back again it allows the electrons to strike the plate and then shuts them off; as the electrons form the conducting path between the filament and the plate the larger direct current from the b battery is permitted to flow through the detector tube and the headphones. operation of a regenerative vacuum tube receiving set.--by feeding back the pulsating direct current from the b battery through the tickler coil it sets up other and stronger oscillations in the secondary of the tuning coil when these act on the detector tube and increase its sensitiveness to a remarkable extent. the regenerative, or _feed back_, action of the receiving circuits used will be easily understood by referring back to b in fig. . when the waves set up oscillations in the primary of the tuning coil the energy of them produces like oscillations in the closed circuit which includes the secondary coil and the condenser; the alternating positive and negative voltages of these are impressed on the grid and these, as we have seen before, cause similar variations of the direct current from the b battery which acts on the plate and which flows between the latter and the filament. this varying direct current, however, is made to flow back through the third, or tickler coil of the tuning coil and sets up in the secondary coil and circuits other and larger oscillating currents and these augment the action of the oscillations produced by the incoming waves. these extra and larger currents which are the result of the feedback then act on the grid and cause still larger variations of the current in the plate voltage and hence of the current of the b battery that flows through the detector and the headphones. at the same time the tube keeps on responding to the feeble electric oscillations set up in the circuits by the incoming waves. this regenerative action of the battery current augments the original oscillations many times and hence produce sounds in the headphones that are many times greater than where the vacuum tube detector alone is used. operation of autodyne and heterodyne receiving sets.--on page [chapter vii] we discussed and at a in fig. is shown a picture of two tuning forks mounted on sounding boxes to illustrate the principle of electrical tuning. when a pair of these forks are made to vibrate exactly the same number of times per second there will be a condensation of the air between them and the sound waves that are sent out will be augmented. but if you adjust one of the forks so that it will vibrate times a second and the other fork so that it will vibrate times a second then there will be a phase difference between the two sets of waves and the latter will augment each other times every second and you will hear these rising and falling sounds as _beats_. now electric oscillations set up in two circuits that are coupled together act in exactly the same way as sound waves produced by two tuning forks that are close to each other. since this is true if you tune one of the closed circuits so that the oscillations in it will have a frequency of a , , and tune the other circuit so that the oscillations in it have a frequency of , , a second then the oscillations will augment each other , times every second. as these rising and falling currents act on the pulsating currents from the b battery which flow through the detector tube and the headphones you will hear them as beats. a graphic representation of the oscillating currents set up by the incoming waves, those produced by the heterodyne oscillator and the beats they form is shown in fig. . to produce these beats a receptor can use: ( ) a single vacuum tube for setting up oscillations of both frequencies when it is called an _autodyne_, or _self-heterodyne_ receptor, or ( ) a separate vacuum tube for setting up the oscillations for the second circuit when it is called a _heterodyne_ receptor. [illustration: fig. .--how the heterodyne receptor works.] the autodyne, or self-heterodyne receiving set.--where only one vacuum tube is used for producing both frequencies you need only a regenerative, or feed-back receptor; then you can tune the aerial wire system to the incoming waves and tune the closed circuit of the secondary coil so that it will be out of step with the former by , oscillations per second, more or less, the exact number does not matter in the least. from this you will see that any regenerative set can be used for autodyne, or self-heterodyne, reception. the separate heterodyne receiving set.--the better way, however, is to use a separate vacuum tube for setting up the heterodyne oscillations. the latter then act on the oscillations that are produced by the incoming waves and which energize the grid of the detector tube. note that the vacuum tube used for producing the heterodyne oscillations is a _generator_ of electric oscillations; the latter are impressed on the detector circuits through the variable coupling, the secondary of which is in series with the aerial wire as shown in fig. . the way in which the tube acts as a generator of oscillations will be told in chapter xviii. [illustration: fig. .--separate heterodyne oscillator.] chapter xvi continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with direct current in the first part of this book we learned about spark-gap telegraph sets and how the oscillations they set up are _damped_ and the waves they send out are _periodic_. in this and the next chapter we shall find out how vacuum tube telegraph transmitters are made and how they set up oscillations that are _sustained_ and radiate waves that are _continuous_. sending wireless telegraph messages by continuous waves has many features to recommend it as against sending them by periodic waves and among the most important of these are that the transmitter can be: ( ) more sharply tuned, ( ) it will send signals farther with the same amount of power, and ( ) it is noiseless in operation. the disadvantageous features are that: ( ) a battery current is not satisfactory, ( ) its circuits are somewhat more complicated, and ( ) the oscillator tubes burn out occasionally. there is, however, a growing tendency among amateurs to use continuous wave transmitters and they are certainly more up-to-date and interesting than spark gap sets. now there are two practical ways by which continuous waves can be set up for sending either telegraphic signals or telephonic speech and music and these are with: (a) an _oscillation arc lamp_, and (b) a _vacuum tube oscillator_. the oscillation arc was the earliest known way of setting up sustained oscillations, and it is now largely used for commercial high power, long distance work. but since the vacuum tube has been developed to a high degree of efficiency and is the scheme that is now in vogue for amateur stations we shall confine our efforts here to explaining the apparatus necessary and how to wire the various parts together to produce several sizes of vacuum tube telegraph transmitters. sources of current for telegraph transmitting sets.--differing from a spark-gap transmitter you cannot get any appreciable results with a low voltage battery current to start with. for a purely experimental vacuum tube telegraph transmitter you can use enough b batteries to operate it but the current strength of these drops so fact when they are in use, that they are not at all satisfactory for the work. you can, however, use volt direct current from a lighting circuit as your initial source of power to energize the plate of the vacuum tube oscillator of your experimental transmitter. where you have a volt _direct current_ lighting service in your home and you want a higher voltage for your plate, you will then have to use a motor-generator set and this costs money. if you have volt _alternating current_ lighting service at hand your troubles are over so far as cost is concerned for you can step it up to any voltage you want with a power transformer. in this chapter will be shown how to use a direct current for your source of initial power and in the next chapter how to use an alternating current for the initial power. an experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter.--you will remember that in chapter xv we learned how the heterodyne receiver works and that in the separate heterodyne receiving set the second vacuum tube is used solely to set up oscillations. now while this extra tube is used as a generator of oscillations these are, of course, very weak and hence a detector tube cannot be used to generate oscillations that are useful for other purposes than heterodyne receptors and measurements. there is a vacuum tube amplifier [footnote: this is the _radiation_ uv- , made by the radio corporation of america, woolworth bldg., new york city.] made that will stand a plate potential of volts, and this can be used as a generator of oscillations by energizing it with a volt direct current from your lighting service. or in a pinch you can use five standard b batteries to develop the plate voltage, but these will soon run down. but whatever you do, never use a current from a lighting circuit on a tube of any kind that has a rated plate potential of less than volts. the apparatus you need.--for this experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter get the following pieces of apparatus: ( ) one _single coil tuner with three clips_; ( ) one _. mfd. fixed condenser_; ( ) three _. mfd. condensers_; ( ) one _adjustable grid leak_; ( ) one _hot-wire ammeter_; ( ) one _buzzer_; ( ) one _dry cell_; ( ) one _telegraph key_; ( ) one _ volt plate vacuum tube amplifier_; ( ) one _ volt storage battery_; ( ) one _rheostat_; ( ) one _oscillation choke coil_; ( ) one _panel cut-out_ with a _single-throw, double-pole switch_, and a pair of _fuse sockets_ on it. the tuning coil.--you can either make this tuning coil or buy one. to make it get two disks of wood / -inch thick and inches in diameter and four strips of hard wood, or better, hard rubber or composition strips, such as _bakelite_, / -inch thick, inch wide and - / inches long, and screw them to the disks as shown at a in fig. . now wrap on this form about turns of no. or , brown and sharpe gauge, bare copper wire with a space of / -inch between each turn. get three of the smallest size terminal clips, see b, and clip them on to the different turns, when your tuning coil is ready for use. you can buy a coil of this kind for $ . or $ . . the condensers.--for the aerial series condenser get one that has a capacitance of . mfd. and that will stand a potential of , volts. [footnote: the u c- _faradon_ condenser made by the radio corporation of america will serve the purpose.] it is shown at c. the other three condensers, see d, are also of the fixed type and may have a capacitance of . mfd.; [footnote: list no. ; fixed receiving condenser, sold by the manhattan electrical supply co.] the blocking condenser should preferably have a capacitance of / a mfd. in these condensers the leaves of the sheet metal are embedded in composition. the aerial condenser will cost you $ . and the others cents each. [illustration: (a) fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter.] [illustration: fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter.] the aerial ammeter.--this instrument is also called a _hot-wire_ ammeter because the oscillating currents flowing through a piece of wire heat it according to their current strength and as the wire contracts and expands it moves a needle over a scale. the ammeter is connected in the aerial wire system, either in the aerial side or the ground side--the latter place is usually the most convenient. when you tune the transmitter so that the ammeter shows the largest amount of current surging in the aerial wire system you can consider that the oscillation circuits are in tune. a hot-wire ammeter reading to . amperes will serve your needs, it costs $ . and is shown at e in fig. . [illustration: united states naval high power station, arlington va. general view of power room. at the left can be seen the control switchboards, and overhead, the great k.w. arc transmitter with accessories.] the buzzer and dry cell.--while a heterodyne, or beat, receptor can receive continuous wave telegraph signals an ordinary crystal or vacuum tube detector receiving set cannot receive them unless they are broken up into trains either at the sending station or at the receiving station, and it is considered the better practice to do this at the former rather than at the latter station. for this small transmitter you can use an ordinary buzzer as shown at f. a dry cell or two must be used to energize the buzzer. you can get one for about cents. the telegraph key.--any kind of a telegraph key will serve to break up the trains of sustained oscillations into dots and dashes. the key shown at g is mounted on a composition base and is the cheapest key made, costing $ . . the vacuum tube oscillator.--as explained before you can use any amplifying tube that is made for a plate potential of volts. the current required for heating the filament is about ampere at volts. a porcelain socket should be used for this tube as it is the best insulating material for the purpose. an amplifier tube of this type is shown at h and costs $ . . the storage battery.--a storage battery is used to heat the filament of the tube, just as it is with a detector tube, and it can be of any make or capacity as long as it will develop volts. the cheapest volt storage battery on the market has a to ampere-hour capacity and sells for $ . . the battery rheostat.--as with the receptors a rheostat is needed to regulate the current that heats the filament. a rheostat of this kind is shown at i and is listed at $ . . the oscillation choke coil.--this coil is connected in between the oscillation circuits and the source of current which feeds the oscillator tube to keep the oscillations set up by the latter from surging back into the service wires where they would break down the insulation. you can make an oscillation choke coil by winding say turns of no. brown and sharpe gauge double cotton covered magnet wire on a cardboard cylinder inches in diameter and - / inches long. transmitter connectors.--for connecting up the different pieces of apparatus of the transmitter it is a good scheme to use _copper braid_; this is made of braided copper wire in three sizes and sells for , and cents a foot respectively. a piece of it is pictured at j. the panel cut-out.--this is used to connect the cord of the -volt lamp socket with the transmitter. it consists of a pair of _plug cutouts and a single-throw, double-pole_ switch mounted on a porcelain base as shown at k. in some localities it is necessary to place these in an iron box to conform to the requirements of the fire underwriters. connecting up the transmitting apparatus.--the way the various pieces of apparatus are connected together is shown in the wiring diagram. fig. . begin by connecting one post of the ammeter with the wire that leads to the aerial and the other post of it to one end of the tuning coil; connect clip _ _ to one terminal of the . mfd. , volt aerial condenser and the other post of this with the ground. [illustration: fig. --experimental c.w. telegraph transmitter] now connect the end of the tuning coil that leads to the ammeter with one end of the . mfd. grid condenser and the other end of this with the grid of the vacuum tube. connect the telegraph key, the buzzer and the dry cell in series and then shunt them around the grid condenser. next connect the plate of the tube with one end of the . mfd. blocking condenser and the other end of this with the clip _ _ on the tuning coil. connect one end of the filament with the + or positive electrode of the storage battery, the - or negative electrode of this with one post of the rheostat and the other post of the latter with the other end of the filament; then connect clip _ _ with the + or positive side of the storage battery. this done connect one end of the choke coil to the conductor that leads to the plate and connect the other end of the choke coil to one of the taps of the switch on the panel cut-out. connect the + or positive electrode of the storage battery to the other switch tap and between the switch and the choke coil connect the protective condenser across the volt feed wires. finally connect the lamp cord from the socket to the plug fuse taps when your experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter is ready to use. a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--here is a continuous wave telegraph transmitter that will cover distances up to miles that you can rely on. it is built on exactly the same lines as the experimental transmitter just described, but instead of using a volt plate amplifier as a makeshift generator of oscillations it employs a vacuum tube made especially for setting up oscillations and instead of having a low plate voltage it is energized with volts. the apparatus you need.--for this transmitter you require: ( ) one _oscillation transformer_; ( ) one _hot-wire ammeter_; ( ) one _aerial series condenser_; ( ) one _grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _chopper_; ( ) one _key circuit choke coil_; ( ) one _ watt vacuum tube oscillator_; ( ) one _ volt storage battery_; ( ) one _battery rheostat_; ( ) one _battery voltmeter_; ( ) one _blocking condenser_; ( ) one _power circuit choke coil_, and ( ) one _motor-generator_. the oscillation transformer.--the tuning coil, or _oscillation transformer_ as this one is called, is a conductively coupled tuner--that is, the primary and secondary coils form one continuous coil instead of two separate coils. this tuner is made up of turns of thin copper strip, / inch wide and with its edges rounded, and this is secured to a wood base as shown at a in fig. . it is fitted with one fixed tap and three clips to each of which a length of copper braid is attached. it has a diameter of - / inches, a height of - / inches and a length of - / inches, and it costs $ . . [illustration: fig. .--apparatus of mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.] the aerial condenser.--this condenser is made up of three fixed condensers of different capacitances, namely . , . and . mfd., and these are made to stand a potential of volts. the condenser is therefore adjustable and, as you will see from the picture b, it has one terminal wire at one end and three terminal wires at the other end so that one, two or three condensers can be used in series with the aerial. a condenser of this kind costs $ . . the aerial ammeter.--this is the same kind of a hot-wire ammeter already described in connection with the experimental set, but it reads to amperes. the grid and blocking condensers.--each of these is a fixed condenser of . mfd. capacitance and is rated to stand , volts. it is made like the aerial condenser but has only two terminals. it costs $ . . the key circuit apparatus.--this consists of: ( ) the _grid leak_; ( ) the _chopper_; ( ) the _choke coil_, and ( ) the _key_. the grid leak is connected in the lead from the grid to the aerial to keep the voltage on the grid at the right potential. it has a resistance of ohms with a mid-tap at ohms as shown at c. it costs $ . . the chopper is simply a rotary interrupter driven by a small motor. it comprises a wheel of insulating material in which or more metal segments are set in an insulating disk as shown at d. a metal contact called a brush is fixed on either side of the wheel. it costs about $ . and the motor to drive it is extra. the choke coil is wound up of about turns of no. brown and sharpe gauge cotton covered magnet wire on a spool which has a diameter of inches and a length of - / inches. the watt oscillator vacuum tube.--this tube is made like the amplifier tube described for use with the preceding experimental transmitter, but it is larger, has a more perfect vacuum, and will stand a plate potential of volts while the plate current is . ampere. the filament takes a current of a little more than amperes at . volts. a standard -tap base is used with it. the tube costs $ . and the porcelain base is $ . extra. it is shown at e. the storage battery and rheostat.--this must be a -cell battery so that it will develop volts. a storage battery of any capacity can be used but the lowest priced one costs about $ . . the rheostat for regulating the battery current is the same as that used in the preceding experimental transmitter. the filament voltmeter.--to get the best results it is necessary that the voltage of the current which heats the filament be kept at the same value all of the time. for this transmitter a direct current voltmeter reading from to volts is used. it is shown at f and costs $ . . the oscillation choke coil.--this is made exactly like the one described in connection with the experimental transmitter. the motor-generator set.--where you have only a or a volt direct current available as a source of power you need a _motor-generator_ to change it to volts, and this is an expensive piece of apparatus. it consists of a single armature core with a motor winding and a generator winding on it and each of these has its own commutator. where the low voltage current flows into one of the windings it drives its as a motor and this in turn generates the higher voltage current in the other winding. get a watt volt motor-generator; it is shown at f and costs about $ . . the panel cut-out.--this switch and fuse block is the same as that used in the experimental set. the protective condenser.--this is a fixed condenser having a capacitance of mfd. and will stand volts. it costs $ . . connecting up the transmitting apparatus.--from all that has gone before you have seen that each piece of apparatus is fitted with terminal, wires, taps or binding posts. to connect up the parts of this transmitter it is only necessary to make the connections as shown in the wiring diagram fig. . [illustration: fig. .-- to watt c. w. telegraph transmitter. (with single oscillation tube.)] a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--to make a continuous wave telegraph transmitter that will cover distances up to miles all you have to do is to use two watt vacuum tubes in _parallel_, all of the rest of the apparatus being exactly the same. connecting the oscillator tubes up in parallel means that the two filaments are connected across the leads of the storage battery, the two grids on the same lead that goes to the aerial and the two plates on the same lead that goes to the positive pole of the generator. where two or more oscillator tubes are used only one storage battery is needed, but each filament must have its own rheostat. the wiring diagram fig. shows how the two tubes are connected up in parallel. [illustration: fig. .-- mile c.w. telegraph transmitter (with two tubes in parallel.)] a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--for sending to distances of over miles and up to miles you can use either: ( ) three or four watt oscillator tubes in parallel as described above, or ( ) one watt oscillator tube. much of the apparatus for a watt tube set is exactly the same as that used for the watt sets. some of the parts, however, must be proportionately larger though the design all the way through remains the same. the apparatus and connections.--the aerial series condenser, the blocking condenser, the grid condenser, the telegraph key, the chopper, the choke coil in the key circuit, the filament voltmeter and the protective condenser in the power circuit are identical with those described for the watt transmitting set. the watt vacuum tube oscillator.--this is the size of tube generally used by amateurs for long distance continuous wave telegraphy. a single tube will develop to amperes in your aerial. the filament takes a volt current and a plate potential of , volts is needed. one of these tubes is shown in fig. and the cost is $ . . a tube socket to fit it costs $ . extra. [illustration: fig. .-- watt oscillator vacuum tube.] the aerial ammeter.--this should read to amperes and the cost is $ . . the grid leak resistance.--it has the same resistance, namely , ohms as the one used with the watt tube transmitter, but it is a little larger. it is listed at $ . . the oscillation choke coil.--the choke coil in the power circuit is made of about turns of no. b. & s. cotton covered magnet wire wound on a spool - / inches in diameter and - / inches long. the filament rheostat.--this is made to take care of a volt current and it costs $ . . the filament storage battery.--this must develop volts and one having an output of ampere-hours costs about $ . . the protective condenser.--this condenser has a capacitance of mfd. and costs $ . . the motor-generator.--where you use one watt oscillator tube you will need a motor-generator that develops a plate potential of volts and has an output of watts. this machine will stand you about $ . . the different pieces of apparatus for this set are connected up exactly the same as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--all of the parts of this transmitting set are the same as for the mile transmitter just described except the motor generator and while this develops the same plate potential, i.e., , volts, it must have an output of watts; it will cost you in the neighborhood of $ . . for this long distance transmitter you use two watt oscillator tubes in parallel and all of the parts are connected together exactly the same as for the mile transmitter shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . chapter xvii continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with alternating current within the last few years alternating current has largely taken the place of direct current for light, heat and power purposes in and around towns and cities and if you have alternating current service in your home you can install a long distance continuous wave telegraph transmitter with very little trouble and at a comparatively small expense. a mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set.--the principal pieces of apparatus for this transmitter are the same as those used for the _ mile continuous wave telegraph transmitting set_ described and pictured in the preceding chapter which used direct current, except that an _alternating current power transformer_ is employed instead of the more costly _motor-generator_. the apparatus required.--the various pieces of apparatus you will need for this transmitting set are: ( ) one _hot-wire ammeter_ for the aerial as shown at e in fig. , but which reads to amperes instead of to . amperes; ( ) one _tuning coil_ as shown at a in fig. ; ( ) one aerial condenser as shown at b in fig. ; ( ) one _grid leak_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _telegraph key_ as shown at g in fig. ; ( ) one _grid condenser_, made like the aerial condenser but having only two terminals; ( ) one _ watt oscillator tube_ as shown at e in fig. ; ( ) one _. mfd. , volt by-pass condenser_, made like the aerial and grid condensers; ( ) one pair of _choke coils_ for the high voltage secondary circuit; ( ) one _milli-ammeter_; ( ) one a. c. _power transformer_; ( ) one _rheostat_ as shown at i in fig. , and ( ) one _panel cut-out_ as shown at k in fig. . the choke coils.--each of these is made by winding about turns of no. , brown and sharpe gauge, cotton covered magnet wire on a spool inches in diameter and - / inches long, when it will have an inductance of about . _millihenry_ [footnote: a millihenry is / th part of a henry.] at , cycles. the milli-ammeter.--this is an alternating current ammeter and reads from to _milliamperes_; [footnote: a _milliampere_ is the / th part of an ampere.] and is used for measuring the secondary current that energizes the plate of the oscillator tube. it looks like the aerial ammeter and costs about $ . . the a. c. power transformer.--differing from the motor generator set the power transformer has no moving parts. for this transmitting set you need a transformer that has an input of volts. it is made to work on a to cycle current at . to volts, which is the range of voltage of the ordinary alternating lighting current. this adjustment for voltage is made by means of taps brought out from the primary coil to a rotary switch. the high voltage secondary coil which energizes the plate has an output of watts and develops a potential of from to , volts. the low voltage secondary coil which heats the filament has an output of watts and develops . volts. this transformer, which is shown in fig. , is large enough to take care of from one to four watt oscillator tubes. it weighs about pounds and sells for $ . . [illustration: fig. .--alternation current power transformer. (for c. w. telegraphy and wireless telephony.)] [illustration: the transformer and tuner of the world's largest radio station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near port jefferson l.i.] connecting up the apparatus.--the wiring diagram fig. shows clearly how all of the connections are made. it will be observed that a storage battery is not needed as the secondary coil of the transformer supplies the current to heat the filament of the oscillator. the filament voltmeter is connected across the filament secondary coil terminals, while the plate milli-ammeter is connected to the mid-taps of the plate secondary coil and the filament secondary coil. [illustration: fig. . wiring diagram for to mile c.w. telegraph transmitting set. (with alternating current)] a to mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set.--distances of from to miles can be successfully covered with a telegraph transmitter using two, three or four watt oscillator tubes in parallel. the apparatus needed is identical with that used for the mile transmitter just described. the tubes are connected in parallel as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for to mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.] a to , mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set.--with the apparatus described for the above set and a single watt oscillator tube a distance of upwards of miles can be covered, while with two watt oscillator tubes in parallel you can cover a distance of , miles without difficulty, and nearly , miles have been covered with this set. the apparatus required.--all of the apparatus for this c. w. telegraph transmitting set is the same as that described for the and mile sets but you will need: ( ) one or two _ watt oscillator tubes with sockets;_ ( ) one _key condenser_ that has a capacitance of mfd., and a rated potential of , volts; ( ) one _ to milli-ammeter_; ( ) one _aerial ammeter_ reading to amperes, and ( ) an _a. c. power transformer_ for one or two watt tubes. [illustration: broadcasting government reports by wireless from washington. this shows mr. gale at work with his set in the post office department.] the alternating current power transformer.--this power transformer is made exactly like the one described in connection with the preceding mile transmitter and pictured in fig. , but it is considerably larger. like the smaller one, however, it is made to work with a to cycle current at . to volts and, hence, can be used with any a. c. lighting current. it has an input of volts and the high voltage secondary coil which energizes the plate has an output of watts and develops , to , volts. the low voltage secondary coil which heats the filament develops . volts. this transformer will supply current for one or two -watt oscillator tubes and it costs about $ . . connecting up the apparatus.--where a single oscillator tube is used the parts are connected as shown in fig. , and where two tubes are connected in parallel the various pieces of apparatus are wired together as shown in fig. . the only difference between the watt tube transmitter and the watt tube transmitter is in the size of the apparatus with one exception; where one or two watt tubes are used a second condenser of large capacitance ( mfd.) is placed in the grid circuit and the telegraph key is shunted around it as shown in the diagram fig. . chapter xviii wireless telephone transmitting sets with direct and alternating currents in time past the most difficult of all electrical apparatus for the amateur to make, install and work was the wireless telephone. this was because it required a _direct current_ of not less than volts to set up the sustained oscillations and all ordinary direct current for lighting purposes is usually generated at a potential of volts. now as you know it is easy to _step-up_ a volt alternating current to any voltage you wish with a power transformer but until within comparatively recent years an alternating current could not be used for the production of sustained oscillations for the very good reason that the state of the art had not advanced that far. in the new order of things these difficulties have all but vanished and while a wireless telephone transmitter still requires a high voltage direct current to operate it this is easily obtained from volt source of alternating current by means of _vacuum tube rectifiers_. the pulsating direct currents are then passed through a filtering reactance coil, called a _reactor_, and one or more condensers, and these smooth them out until they approximate a continuous direct current. the latter is then made to flow through a vacuum tube oscillator when it is converted into high frequency oscillations and these are _varied_, or _modulated_, as it is called, by a _microphone transmitter_ such as is used for ordinary wire telephony. the energy of these sustained modulated oscillations is then radiated into space from the aerial in the form of electric waves. the distance that can be covered with a wireless telephone transmitter is about one-fourth as great as that of a wireless telegraph transmitter having the same input of initial current, but it is long enough to satisfy the most enthusiastic amateur. for instance with a wireless telephone transmitter where an amplifier tube is used to set up the oscillations and which is made for a plate potential of volts, distances up to or miles can be covered. with a single watt oscillator tube energized by a direct current of volts from either a motor-generator or from a power transformer (after it has been rectified and smoothed out) speech and music can be transmitted to upwards of miles. where two watt tubes connected in parallel are used wireless telephone messages can be transmitted to distances of or miles. further, a single watt oscillator tube will send to distances of to miles while two of these tubes in parallel will send from to miles. finally, where four or five oscillator tubes are connected in parallel proportionately greater distances can be covered. a short distance wireless telephone transmitting set-with volt direct lighting current.--for this very simple, short distance wireless telephone transmitting set you need the same apparatus as that described and pictured in the beginning of chapter xvi for a _short distance c. w. telegraph transmitter_, except that you use a _microphone transmitter_ instead of a _telegraph key_. if you have a volt direct lighting current in your home you can put up this short distance set for very little money and it will be well worth your while to do so. the apparatus you need.--for this set you require: ( ) one _tuning coil_ as shown at a and b in fig. ; ( ) one _aerial ammeter_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _aerial condenser_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _grid, blocking and protective condenser_ as shown at d in fig. ; ( ) one _grid leak_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _vacuum tube amplifier_ which is used as an _oscillator_; ( ) one _ volt storage battery_; ( ) one _rheostat_ as shown at i in fig. ; ( ) one _oscillation choke coil_; ( ) one _panel cut-out_ as shown at k in fig. and an ordinary _microphone transmitter_. the microphone transmitter.--the best kind of a microphone to use with this and other telephone transmitting sets is a _western electric no. -w_. [footnote: made by the western electric company, chicago, ill.] this is known as a solid back transmitter and is the standard commercial type used on all long distance bell telephone lines. it articulates sharply and distinctly and there are no current variations to distort the wave form of the voice and it will not buzz or sizzle. it is shown in fig. and costs $ . . any other good microphone transmitter can be used if desired. [illustration: fig. .--standard microphone transmitter.] connecting up the apparatus.--begin by connecting the leading-in wire with one of the terminals of the microphone transmitter, as shown in the wiring diagram fig. , and the other terminal of this to one end of the tuning coil. now connect _clip _ of the tuning coil to one of the posts of the hot-wire ammeter, the other post of this to one end of aerial condenser and, finally, the other end of the latter with the water pipe or other ground. the microphone can be connected in the ground wire and the ammeter in the aerial wire and the results will be practically the same. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of short distance wireless telephone set. (microphone in aerial wire.)] next connect one end of the grid condenser to the post of the tuning coil that makes connection with the microphone and the other end to the grid of the tube, and then shunt the grid leak around the condenser. connect the + or _positive_ electrode of the storage battery with one terminal of the filament of the vacuum tube, the other terminal of the filament with one post of the rheostat and the other post of this with the - or _negative_ electrode of the battery. this done, connect _clip _ of the tuning coil to the + or _positive_ electrode of the battery and bring a lead from it to one of the switch taps of the panel cut-out. now connect _clip _ of the tuning coil with one end of the blocking condenser, the other end of this with one terminal of the choke coil and the other terminal of the latter with the other switch tap of the cut-out. connect the protective condenser across the direct current feed wires between the panel cut-out and the choke coil. finally connect the ends of a lamp cord to the fuse socket taps of the cut-out, and connect the other ends to a lamp plug and screw it into the lamp socket of the feed wires. screw in a pair of ampere _fuse plugs_, close the switch and you are ready to tune the transmitter and talk to your friends. a to mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator.--where you have to start with or volt direct current and you want to transmit to a distance of miles or more you will have to install a _motor-generator_. to make this transmitter you will need exactly the same apparatus as that described and pictured for the _ mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set_ in chapter xvi, except that you must substitute a _microphone transmitter_ and a _telephone induction coil_, or a _microphone transformer_, or still better, a _magnetic modulator_, for the telegraph key and chopper. the apparatus you need.--to reiterate; the pieces of apparatus you need are: ( ) one _aerial ammeter_ as shown at e in fig. ; ( ) one _tuning coil_ as shown at a in fig. ; ( ) one _aerial condenser_ as shown at b in fig. ; ( ) one _grid leak_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _grid, blocking_ and _protective condenser_; ( ) one _ watt oscillator tube_ as shown at e in fig. ; ( ) one _rheostat_ as shown at i in fig. ; ( ) one _ volt ( cell) storage battery_; ( ) one _choke coil_; ( ) one _panel cut-out_ as shown at k in fig. , and ( ) a _motor-generator_ having an input of or volts and an output of volts. in addition to the above apparatus you will need: ( ) a _microphone transmitter_ as shown in fig. ; ( ) a battery of four dry cells or a volt storage battery, and either ( ) a _telephone induction coil_ as shown in fig. ; ( ) a _microphone transformer_ as shown in fig. ; or a _magnetic modulator_ as shown in fig. . all of these parts have been described, as said above, in chapter xvi, except the microphone modulators. [illustration: fig. .--telephone induction coil. (used with microphone transmitter.)] [illustration: fig. .--microphone transformer. (used with microphone transmitter.)] [illustration: fig. .--magnetic modulator. (used with microphone transmitter.)] the telephone induction coil.--this is a little induction coil that transforms the -volt battery current after it has flowed through and been modulated by the microphone transmitter into alternating currents that have a potential of , volts of more. it consists of a primary coil of _no. b. and s._ gauge cotton covered magnet wire wound on a core of soft iron wires while around the primary coil is wound a secondary coil of _no. _ magnet wire. get a _standard telephone induction coil_ that has a resistance of or ohms and this will cost you a couple of dollars. the microphone transformer.--this device is built on exactly the same principle as the telephone induction coil just described but it is more effective because it is designed especially for modulating the oscillations set up by vacuum tube transmitters. as with the telephone induction coil, the microphone transmitter is connected in series with the primary coil and a volt dry or storage battery. in the better makes of microphone transformer, there is a third winding, called a _side tone_ coil, to which a headphone can be connected so that the operator who is speaking into the microphone can listen-in and so learn if his transmitter is working up to standard. the magnetic modulator.--this is a small closed iron core transformer of peculiar design and having a primary and a secondary coil wound on it. this device is used to control the variations of the oscillating currents that are set up by the oscillator tube. it is made in three sizes and for the transmitter here described you want the smallest size, which has an output of / to - / amperes. it costs about $ . . how the apparatus is connected up.--the different pieces of apparatus are connected together in exactly the same way as the _ mile c. w. telegraph set_ in chapter xvi except that the microphone transmitter and microphone modulator (whichever kind you use) is substituted for the telegraph key and chopper. now there are three different ways that the microphone and its modulator can be connected in circuit. two of the best ways are shown at a and b in fig. . in the first way the secondary terminals of the modulator are shunted around the grid leak in the grid circuit as at a, and in the second the secondary terminals are connected in the aerial as at b. where an induction coil or a microphone transformer is used they are shunted around a condenser, but this is not necessary with the magnetic modulator. where a second tube is used as in fig. then the microphone and its modulator are connected with the grid circuit and _clip _ of the tuning coil. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of to mile wireless telephone. (microphone modulator shunted around grid-leak condenser.)] [illustration: (b) fig. .--microphone modulator connected in aerial wire.] [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of to mile wireless telephone transmitting set.] a to mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator.--as the initial source of current available is taken to be a or volt direct current a motor-generator having an output of volts must be used as before. the only difference between this transmitter and the preceding one is that: ( ) two watt tubes are used, the first serving as an _oscillator_ and the second as a _modulator_; ( ) an _oscillation choke coil_ is used in the plate circuit; ( ) a _reactance coil_ or _reactor_, is used in the plate circuit; and ( ) a _reactor_ is used in the grid circuit. the oscillation choke coil.--you can make this choke coil by winding about turns of _no. b. and s. gauge_ cotton covered magnet wire on a spool inches in diameter and inches long. give it a good coat of shellac varnish and let it dry thoroughly. the plate and grid circuit reactance coils.--where a single tube is used as an oscillator and a second tube is employed as a modulator, a _reactor_, which is a coil of wire wound on an iron core, is used in the plate circuit to keep the high voltage direct current of the motor-generator the same at all times. likewise the grid circuit reactor is used to keep the voltage of the grid at a constant value. these reactors are made alike and a picture of one of them is shown in fig. and each one will cost you $ . . [illustration: fig. .--plate and grid circuit reactor.] connecting up the apparatus.--all of the different pieces of apparatus are connected up as shown in fig. . one of the ends of the secondary of the induction coil, or the microphone transformer, or the magnetic modulator is connected to the grid circuit and the other end to _clip _ of the tuning coil. a to mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator.--by using the same connections shown in the wiring diagrams in fig. and a single watt oscillator tube your transmitter will then have a range of miles or so, while if you connect up the apparatus as shown in fig. and use two watt tubes you can work up to miles. much of the apparatus for a watt oscillator set where either one or two tubes are used is of the same size and design as that just described for the watt oscillator sets, but, as in the c. w. telegraph sets, some of the parts must be proportionately larger. the required parts are ( ) the _ watt tube_; ( ) the _grid leak resistance_; ( ) the _filament rheostat_; ( ) the _filament storage battery_; and ( ) the _magnetic modulator_. all of these parts, except the latter, are described in detail under the heading of a _ mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set_ in chapter xvi, and are also pictured in that chapter. it is not advisable to use an induction coil for the modulator for this set, but use, instead, either a telephone transformer, or better, a magnetic modulator of the second size which has an output of from - / to - / amperes. the magnetic modulator is described and pictured in this chapter. a to mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with volt alternating current.--if you have a volt [footnote: alternating current for lighting purposes ranges from . volts to volts, so we take the median and call it volts.] alternating current available you can use it for the initial source of energy for your wireless telephone transmitter. the chief difference between a wireless telephone transmitting set that uses an alternating current and one that uses a direct current is that: ( ) a _power transformer_ is used for stepping up the voltage instead of a motor-generator, and ( ) a _vacuum tube rectifier_ must be used to convert the alternating current into direct current. the apparatus you need.--for this telephone transmitting set you need: ( ) one _aerial ammeter_; ( ) one _tuning coil_; ( ) one _telephone modulator_; ( ) one _aerial series condenser_; ( ) one _ cell dry battery_ or a volt storage battery; ( ) one _microphone transmitter_; ( ) one _battery switch_; ( ) one _grid condenser_; ( ) one _grid leak_; ( ) two _ watt oscillator tubes with sockets_; ( ) one _blocking condenser_; ( ) one _oscillation choke coil_; ( ) two _filter condensers_; ( ) one _filter reactance coil_; ( ) an _alternating current power transformer_, and ( ) two _ watt rectifier vacuum tubes_. all of the above pieces of apparatus are the same as those described for the _ mile c. w. telegraph transmitter_ in chapter xvii, except: (a) the _microphone modulator_; (b) the _microphone transmitter_ and (c) the _dry_ or _storage battery_, all of which are described in this chapter; and the new parts which are: (d) the _rectifier vacuum tubes_; (e) the _filter condensers_; and (f) the _filter reactance coil_; further and finally, the power transformer has a _third_ secondary coil on it and it is this that feeds the alternating current to the rectifier tubes, which in turn converts it into a pulsating direct current. the vacuum tube rectifier.--this rectifier has two electrodes, that is, it has a filament and a plate like the original vacuum tube detector, the smallest size rectifier tube requires a plate potential of volts which is developed by one of the secondary coils of the power transformer. the filament terminal takes a current of . volts and this is supplied by another secondary coil of the transformer. this rectifier tube delivers a direct current of watts at volts. it looks exactly like the watt oscillator tube which is pictured at e in fig. . the price is $ . . the filter condensers.--these condensers are used in connection with the reactance coil to smooth out the pulsating direct current after it has passed through the rectifier tube. they have a capacitance of mfd. and will stand volts. these condensers cost about $ . each. the filter reactance coil.--this reactor which is shown in fig. , has about the same appearance as the power transformer but it is somewhat smaller. it consists of a coil of wire wound on a soft iron core and has a large inductance, hence the capacitance of the filter condensers are proportionately smaller than where a small inductance is used which has been the general practice. the size you require for this set has an output of milliamperes and it will supply current for one to four watt oscillator tubes. this size of reactor costs $ . . [illustration: fig. .--filter reactor for smoothing out rectified currents.] connecting up the apparatus.--the wiring diagram in fig. shows how the various pieces of apparatus for this telephone transmitter are connected up. you will observe: ( ) that the terminals of the power transformer secondary coil which develops volts are connected to the filaments of the oscillator tubes; ( ) that the terminals of the other secondary coil which develops volts are connected with the filaments of the rectifier tubes; ( ) that the terminals of the third secondary coil which develops volts are connected with the plates of the rectifier tubes; ( ) that the pair of filter condensers are connected in parallel and these are connected to the mid-taps of the two filament secondary coils; ( ) that the reactance coil and the third filter condenser are connected together in series and these are shunted across the filter condensers, which are in parallel; and, finally, ( ) a lead connects the mid-tap of the -volt secondary coil of the power transformer with the connection between the reactor and the third filter condenser. [illustration: fig .-- to mile wireless telephone transmitter.] a to mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with volt alternating current.--this telephone transmitter is built up of exactly the same pieces of apparatus and connected up in precisely the same way as the one just described and shown in fig. . apparatus required.--the only differences between this and the preceding transmitter are: ( ) the _magnetic modulator_, if you use one, should have an output of - / to amperes; ( ) you will need two _ watt oscillator tubes with sockets_; ( ) two _ watt rectifier tubes with sockets_; ( ) an _aerial ammeter_ that reads to _ amperes_; ( ) three _ mfd. filter condensers_ in parallel; ( ) _two filter condensers of mfd. capacitance_ that will stand _ volts_; and ( ) a _ milliampere filter reactor_. the apparatus is wired up as shown in fig. . chapter xix the operation of vacuum tube transmitters the three foregoing chapters explained in detail the design and construction of ( ) two kinds of c. w. telegraph transmitters, and ( ) two kinds of wireless telephone transmitters, the difference between them being whether they used (a) a direct current, or (b) an alternating current as the initial source of energy. of course there are other differences between those of like types as, for instance, the apparatus and connections used (_a_) in the key circuits, and (_b_) in the microphone circuits. but in all of the transmitters described of whatever type or kind the same fundamental device is used for setting up sustained oscillations and this is the _vacuum tube_. the operation of the vacuum tube oscillator.--the operation of the vacuum tube in producing sustained oscillations depends on ( ) the action of the tube as a valve in setting up the oscillations in the first place and ( ) the action of the grid in amplifying the oscillations thus set up, both of which we explained in chapter xiv. in that chapter it was also pointed out that a very small change in the grid potential causes a corresponding and larger change in the amount of current flowing from the plate to the filament; and that if a vacuum tube is used for the production of oscillations the initial source of current must have a high voltage, in fact the higher the plate voltage the more powerful will be the oscillations. to understand how oscillations are set up by a vacuum tube when a direct current is applied to it, take a look at the simple circuits shown in fig. . now when you close the switch the voltage from the battery charges the condenser and keeps it charged until you open it again; the instant you do this the condenser discharges through the circuit which includes it and the inductance coil, and the discharge of a condenser is always oscillatory. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. . operation of vacuum tube oscillators.] where an oscillator tube is included in the circuits as shown at a and b in fig. , the grid takes the place of the switch and any slight change in the voltage of either the grid or the plate is sufficient to start a train of oscillations going. as these oscillations surge through the tube the positive parts of them flow from the plate to the filament and these carry more of the direct current with them. to make a tube set up powerful oscillations then, it is only necessary that an oscillation circuit shall be provided which will feed part of the oscillations set up by the tube back to the grid circuit and when this is done the oscillations will keep on being amplified until the tube reaches the limit of its output. [illustration: (c) fig. .--how a direct current sets up oscillations.] the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with direct current--short distance c. w. transmitter.--in the transmitter shown in the wiring diagram in fig. the positive part of the volt direct current is carried down from the lamp socket through one side of the panel cut-out, thence through the choke coil and to the plate of the oscillator tube, when the latter is charged to the positive sign. the negative part of the volt direct current then flows down the other wire to the filament so that there is a difference of potential between the plate and the filament of volts. now when the -volt battery current is switched on the filament is heated to brilliancy, and the electrons thrown off by it form a conducting path between it and the plate; the volt current then flows from the latter to the former. now follow the wiring from the plate over to the blocking condenser, thence to _clip _ of the tuning coil, through the turns of the latter to _clip _ and over to the filament and, when the latter is heated, you have a _closed oscillation circuit_. the oscillations surging in the latter set up other and like oscillations in the tuning coil between the end of which is connected with the grid, the aerial and the _clip _, and these surge through the circuit formed by this portion of the coil, the grid condenser and the filament; this is the amplifying circuit and it corresponds to the regenerative circuit of a receiving set. when oscillations are set up in it the grid is alternately charged to the positive and negative signs. these reversals of voltage set up stronger and ever stronger oscillations in the plate circuit as before explained. not only do the oscillations surge in the closed circuits but they run to and fro on the aerial wire when their energy is radiated in the form of electric waves. the oscillations are varied by means of the telegraph key which is placed in the grid circuit as shown in fig. . the operation of the key circuit.--the effect in a c. w. transmitter when a telegraph key is connected in series with a buzzer and a battery and these are shunted around the condenser in the grid circuit, is to rapidly change the wave form of the sustained oscillations, and hence, the length of the waves that are sent out. while no sound can be heard in the headphones at the receiving station so long as the points of the key are not in contact, when they are in contact the oscillations are modulated and sounds are heard in the headphones that correspond to the frequency of the buzzer in the key circuit. the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with direct current.--the chief differences between the long distance sets which use a direct current, i.e., those described in chapter xvi, and the short distance transmitting sets are that the former use: ( ) a motor-generator set for changing the low voltage direct current into high voltage direct current, and ( ) a chopper in the key circuit. the way the motor-generator changes the low- into high-voltage current has been explained in chapter xvi. the chopper interrupts the oscillations surging through the grid circuit at a frequency that the ear can hear, that is to say, about to , times per second. when the key is open, of course, the sustained oscillations set up in the circuits will send out continuous waves but when the key is closed these oscillations are broken up and then they send out discontinuous waves. if a heterodyne receiving set, see chapter xv, is being used at the other end you can dispense with the chopper and the key circuit needed is very much simplified. the operation of key circuits of the latter kind will be described presently. the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current--with a single oscillator tube.--where an oscillator tube telegraph transmitter is operated by a volt alternating current as the initial source of energy, a buzzer, chopper or other interruptor is not needed in the key circuit. this is because oscillations are set up only when the plate is energized with the positive part of the alternating current and this produces an intermittent musical tone in the headphones. hence this kind of a sending set is called a _tone transmitter_. since oscillations are set up only by the positive part or voltage of an alternating current it is clear that, as a matter of fact, this kind of a transmitter does not send out continuous waves and therefore it is not a c. w. transmitter. this is graphically shown by the curve of the wave form of the alternating current and the oscillations that are set up by the positive part of it in fig. . whenever the positive half of the alternating current energizes the plate then oscillations are set up by the tube and, conversely, when the negative half of the current charges the plate no oscillations are produced. [illustration: fig. .--positive voltage only sets up oscillations.] you will also observe that the oscillations set up by the positive part of the current are not of constant amplitude but start at zero the instant the positive part begins to energize the plate and they keep on increasing in amplitude as the current rises in voltage until the latter reaches its maximum; then as it gradually drops again to zero the oscillations decrease proportionately in amplitude with it. heating the filament with alternating current.--where an alternating current power transformer is used to develop the necessary plate voltage a second secondary coil is generally provided for heating the filament of the oscillation tube. this is better than a direct current for it adds to the life of the filament. when you use an alternating current to heat the filament keep it at the same voltage rather than at the same amperage (current strength). to do this you need only to use a voltmeter across the filament terminals instead of an ammeter in series with it; then regulate the voltage of the filament with a rheostat. the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current--with two oscillator tubes.--by using two oscillator tubes and connecting them up with the power transformer and oscillating circuits as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. the plates are positively energized alternately with every reversal of the current and, consequently, there is no time period between the ending of the oscillations set up by one tube and the beginning of the oscillations set up by the other tube. in other words these oscillations are sustained but as in the case of those of a single tube, their amplitude rises and falls. this kind of a set is called a _full wave rectification transmitter_. the waves radiated by this transmitter can be received by either a crystal detector or a plain vacuum-tube detector but the heterodyne receptor will give you better results than either of the foregoing types. the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--short distance transmitter.--the operation of this short distance wireless telephone transmitter, a wiring diagram of which is shown in fig. is exactly the same as that of the _direct current short distance c. w. telegraph transmitter_ already explained in this chapter. the only difference in the operation of these sets is the substitution of the _microphone transmitter_ for the telegraph key. the microphone transmitter.--the microphone transmitter that is used to vary, or modulate, the sustained oscillations set up by the oscillator tube and circuits is shown in fig. . by referring to the diagram at a in this figure you will readily understand how it operates. when you speak into the mouthpiece the _sound waves_, which are waves in the air, impinge upon the diaphragm and these set it into vibration--that is, they make it move to and fro. when the diaphragm moves toward the back of the transmitter it forces the carbon granules that are in the cup closer together; this lowers their resistance and allows more current from the battery to flow through them; when the pressure of the air waves is removed from the diaphragm it springs back toward the mouth-piece and the carbon granules loosen up when the resistance offered by them is increased and less current can flow through them. where the oscillation current in the aerial wire is small the transmitter can be connected directly in series with the latter when the former will surge through it. as you speak into the microphone transmitter its resistance is varied and the current strength of the oscillations is varied accordingly. the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--long distance transmitters.--in the wireless telephone transmitters for long distance work which were shown and described in the preceding chapter a battery is used to energize the microphone transmitter, and these two elements are connected in series with a _microphone modulator_. this latter device may be either ( ) a _telephone induction coil_, ( ) a _microphone transformer_, or ( ) a _magnetic modulator_; the first two of these devices step-up the voltage of the battery current and the amplified voltage thus developed is impressed on the oscillations that surge through the closed oscillation circuit or the aerial wire system according to the place where you connect it. the third device works on a different principle and this will be described a little farther along. the operation of microphone modulators--the induction coil.--this device is really a miniature transformer, see a in fig. , and its purpose is to change the volt direct current that flows through the microphone into volts alternating current; in turn, this is impressed on the oscillations that are surging in either ( ) the grid circuit as shown at a in fig. , and in fig. , ( ) the aerial wire system, as shown at b in fig. and fig. . when the current from the battery flows through the primary coil it magnetizes the soft iron core and as the microphone varies the strength of the current the high voltage alternating currents set up in the secondary coil of the induction coil are likewise varied, when they are impressed upon and modulate the oscillating currents. the microphone transformer.--this is an induction coil that is designed especially for wireless telephone modulation. the iron core of this transformer is also of the open magnetic circuit type, see a in fig. , and the _ratio_ of the turns [footnote: see chapter vi] of the primary and the secondary coil is such that when the secondary current is impressed upon either the grid circuit or the aerial wire system it controls the oscillations flowing through it with the greatest efficiency. the magnetic modulator.--this piece of apparatus is also called a _magnetic amplifier_. the iron core is formed of very thin plates, or _laminations_ as they are called, and this permits high-frequency oscillations to surge in a coil wound on it. in this transformer, see a in fig. , the current flowing through the microphone varies the magnetic permeability of the soft iron core by the magnetic saturation of the latter. since the microphone current is absolutely distinct from the oscillating currents surging through the coil of the transformer a very small direct current flowing through a coil on the latter will vary or modulate very large oscillating currents surging through the former. it is shown connected in the aerial wire system at a in fig. , and in fig. . operation of the vacuum tube as a modulator.--where a microphone modulator of the induction coil or microphone transformer type is connected in the grid circuit or aerial wire system the modulation is not very effective, but by using a second tube as a _modulator_, as shown in fig. , an efficient degree of modulation can be had. now there are two methods by which a vacuum tube can be used as a modulator and these are: ( ) by the _absorption_ of the energy of the current set up by the oscillator tube, and ( ) by _varying_ the direct current that energizes the plate of the oscillator tube. the first of these two methods is not used because it absorbs the energy of the oscillating current produced by the tube and it is therefore wasteful. the second method is an efficient one, as the direct current is varied before it passes into the oscillator tube. this is sufficient reason for describing only the second method. the voltage of the grid of the modulator tube is varied by the secondary coil of the induction coil or microphone transformer, above described. in this way the modulator tube acts like a variable resistance but it amplifies the variations impressed on the oscillations set up by the oscillator tube. as the magnetic modulator does the same thing a vacuum tube used as a modulator is not needed where the former is employed. for this reason a magnetic modulator is the cheapest in the long run. the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with alternating current.--where an initial alternating current is used for wireless telephony, the current must be rectified first and then smoothed out before passing into the oscillator tube to be converted into oscillations. further so that the oscillations will be sustained, two oscillator tubes must be used, and, finally, in order that the oscillations may not vary in amplitude the alternating current must be first changed into direct current by a pair of rectifier vacuum tubes, as shown in fig. . when this is done the plates will be positively charged alternately with every reversal of the current in which case there will be no break in the continuity of the oscillations set up and therefore in the waves that are sent out. the operation of rectifier vacuum tubes.--the vacuum tube rectifier is simply a two electrode vacuum tube. the way in which it changes a commercial alternating current into pulsating direct current is the same as that in which a two electrode vacuum tube detector changes an oscillating current into pulsating direct currents and this has been explained in detail under the heading of _the operation of a two electrode vacuum tube detector_ in chapter xii. in the _c. w. telegraph transmitting sets_ described in chapter xvii, the oscillator tubes act as rectifiers as well as oscillators but for wireless telephony the alternating current must be rectified first so that a continuous direct current will result. the operation of reactors and condensers.--a reactor is a single coil of wire wound on an iron core, see fig. and a in fig. , and it should preferably have a large inductance. the reactor for the plate and grid circuit of a wireless telephone transmitter where one or more tubes are used as modulators as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. , and the filter reactor shown in fig. , operate in the same way. when an alternating current flows through a coil of wire the reversals of the current set up a _counter electromotive force_ in it which opposes, that is _reacts_, on the current, and the _higher_ the frequency of the current the _greater_ will be the _reactance_. when the positive half of an alternating current is made to flow through a large resistance the current is smoothed out but at the same time a large amount of its energy is used up in producing heat. but when the positive half of an alternating current is made to flow through a large inductance it acts like a large resistance as before and likewise smooths out the current, but none of its energy is wasted in heat and so a coil having a large inductance, which is called an _inductive reactance_, or just _reactor_ for short, is used to smooth out, or filter, the alternating current after it has been changed into a pulsating direct current by the rectifier tubes. a condenser also has a reactance effect on an alternating current but different from an induction coil the _lower_ the frequency the _greater_ will be the reactance. for this reason both a filter reactor and _filter condensers_ are used to smooth out the pulsating direct currents. chapter xx how to make a receiving set for $ . or less in the chapters on _receptors_ you have been told how to build up high-grade sets. but there are thousands of boys, and, probably, not a few men, who cannot afford to invest $ . , more or less, in a receiving set and would like to experiment in a small way. the following set is inexpensive, and with this cheap, little portable receptor you can get the morse code from stations a hundred miles distant and messages and music from broadcasting stations if you do not live too far away from them. all you need for this set are: ( ) a _crystal detector_, ( ) a _tuning coil_ and ( ) an _earphone_. you can make a crystal detector out of a couple of binding posts, a bit of galena and a piece of brass wire, or, better, you can buy one all ready to use for cents. [illustration: wireless receptor, the size of a safety match box. a youthful genius in the person of kenneth r. hinman, who is only twelve years old, has made a wireless receiving set that fits neatly into a safety match box. with this instrument and a pair of ordinary receivers, he is able to catch not only code messages but the regular broadcasting programs from stations twenty and thirty miles distant.] the crystal detector.--this is known as the _rasco baby_ detector and it is made and sold by the _radio specialty company_, park place, new york city. it is shown in fig. . the base is made of black composition and on it is mounted a standard in which a rod slides and on one end of this there is fixed a hard rubber adjusting knob while the other end carries a thin piece of _phosphor-bronze wire_, called a _cat-whisker_. to secure the galena crystal in the cup you simply unscrew the knurled cap, place it in the cavity of the post and screw the cap back on again. the free end of the cat-whisker wire is then adjusted so that it will rest lightly on the exposed part of the galena. [illustration: fig. .--rasco baby crystal detector.] the tuning coil.--you will have to make this tuning coil, which you can do at a cost of less than $ . , as the cheapest tuning coil you can buy costs at least $ . , and we need the rest of our $ . to invest in the earphone. get a cardboard tube, such as is used for mailing purposes, inches in diameter and inches long, see a in fig. . now wind on turns of _no. brown and sharpe gauge plain enameled magnet wire_. you can use _no. double cotton covered magnet wire_, in which case you will have to shellac the tube and the wire after you get it on. [illustration: fig. .--how the tuning coil is made.] as you wind on the wire take off a tap at every th turn, that is, scrape the wire and solder on a piece about inches long, as shown in fig. ; and do this until you have taps taken off. instead of leaving the wires outside of the tube bring them to the inside of it and then out through one of the open ends. now buy a _round wood-base switch_ with contact points on it as shown at b in fig. . this will cost you or cents. the headphone.--an ordinary bell telephone receiver is of small use for wireless work as it is wound to too low a resistance and the diaphragm is much too thick. if you happen to have a bell phone you can rewind it with _no. _ single covered silk magnet wire, or enameled wire of the same size, when its sensitivity will be very greatly improved. then you must get a thin diaphragm and this should _not_ be enameled, as this tends to dampen the vibrations of it. you can get a diaphragm of the right kind for cents. the better way, though, is to buy an earphone made especially for wireless work. you can get one wound to ohms resistance for $ . and this price includes a cord. [footnote: this is mesco, no. wireless phone. sold by the manhattan electrical supply co., park place, n.y.c.] for $ . extra you can get a head-band for it, and then your phone will look like the one pictured in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--mesco ohm head set.] how to mount the parts.--now mount the coil on a wood base, / or inch thick, - / inches wide and - / inches long, and then connect one end of the coil to one of the end points on the switch, and connect each succeeding tap to one of the switch points, as shown schematically in fig. and diagrammatically in fig. . this done, screw the switch down to the base. finally screw the detector to the base and screw two binding posts in front of the coil. these are for the earphone. [illustration: fig. .--schematic layout of $ . receiving set.] [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for $ . receiving set.] the condenser.--you do not have to connect a condenser across the earphone but if you do you will improve the receiving qualities of the receptor. how to connect up the receptor.--now connect up all the parts as shown in figs. and , then connect the leading-in wire of the aerial with the lever of the switch; and connect the free end of the tuning coil with the _ground_. if you have no aerial wire try hooking it up to a rain pipe that is _not grounded_ or the steel frame of an umbrella. for a _ground_ you can use a water pipe, an iron pipe driven into the ground, or a hydrant. put on your headphone, adjust the detector and move the lever over the switch contacts until it is in adjustment and then, if all your connections are properly made, you should be able to pick up messages. [illustration: wireless set made into a ring, designed by alfred g. rinehart, of elizabeth, new jersey. this little receptor is a practical set; it will receive messages, concerts, etc., measures " by / " by / ". an ordinary umbrella is used as an aerial.] appendix useful information abbreviations of units unit abbreviation ampere amp. ampere-hours amp.-hr. centimeter cm. centimeter-gram-second c.g.s. cubic centimeters cm.^ cubic inches cu. in. cycles per second ~ degrees centigrade °c. degrees fahrenheit °f. feet ft. foot-pounds ft.-lb. grams g. henries h. inches in. kilograms kg. kilometers km. kilowatts kw. kilowatt-hours kw.-hr. kilovolt-amperes kv.-a. meters m. microfarads [greek: mu]f. micromicrofarads [greek: mu mu]f. millihenries mh. millimeters mm. pounds lb. seconds sec. square centimeters cm.^ square inches sq. in. volts v. watts w. prefixes used with metric system units prefix abbreviation meaning micro [greek: mu]. millionth milli m. thousandth centi c. hundredth deci d. tenth deka dk. hekto h. hundred kilo k. thousand mega m. million symbols used for various quantities quantity symbol capacitance c conductance g coupling co-efficient k current, instantaneous i current, effective value i decrement [greek: delta] dielectric constant [greek: alpha] electric field intensity [greek: epsilon] electromotive force, instantaneous value e electromotive force, effective value f energy w force f frequency f frequency x [greek: pi] [greek: omega] impedance z inductance, self l inductance, mutual m magnetic field intensity a magnetic flux [greek: phi] magnetic induction b period of a complete oscillation t potential difference v quantity of electricity q ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter = . [greek: pi] reactance x resistance r time t velocity v velocity of light c wave length [greek: lambda] wave length in meters [greek: lambda]m work w permeability [greek: mu] square root [math: square root] table of enameled wire no. of turns turns ohms per wire, per per cubic inch b.& s. linear square of gauge inch inch winding . . . . . . , . , . , . , . , . table of frequency and wave lengths w. l.--wave lengths in meters. f.--number of oscillations per second. o. or square root l. c. is called oscillation constant. c.--capacity in microfarads. l.--inductance in centimeters. centimeters = microhenry. w.l. f o l.c. , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . pronunciation of greek letters many of the physical quantities use greek letters for symbols. the following is the greek alphabet with the way the letters are pronounced: a alpha b beta g gamma d delta e epsilon z zeta ae eta th theta i iota k kappa l lambda m mu n nu x xi(zi) o omicron p pi r rho s sigma t tau u upsilon ph phi ch chi ps psi o omega table of sparking distances in air for various voltages between needle points volts distance 	 inches centimeter , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . feet per pound of insulated magnet wire no. of single double single double b.& s. cotton, cotton, silk, silk, enamel gauge -mils -mils - / -mils -mils , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , international morse code and conventional signals to be used for all general public service radio communication . a dash is equal to three dots. . the space between parts of the same letter is equal to one dot. . the space between two letters is equal to three dots. . the space between two words is equal to five dots. [note: period denotes morse dot, hyphen denotes morse dash] a .- b -... c -.-. d -.. e . f ..-. g --. h .... i .. j .--- k -.- l .-.. m -- n -. o --- p .--. q --.- r .-. s ... t - u ..- v ...- w .-- x -..- y -.-- z --.. Ã� (german) .-.- Ã� or Ã� (spanish-scandinavian) .--.- ch (german-spanish) ---- Ã� (french) ..-.. Ã� (spanish) --.-- Ã� (german) ---. Ã� (german) ..-- .---- ..--- ...-- ....- ..... -.... --... ---.. ----. ----- period .. .. .. semicolon -.-.-. comma -.-.-. colon ---... interrogation ..--.. exclamation point --..-- apostrophe .----. hyphen -....- bar indicating fraction -..-. parenthesis -.--.- inverted commas .-..-. underline ..--.- double dash -...- distress call ...---... attention call to precede every transmission -.-.- general inquiry call -.-. --.- from (de) -.. . invitation to transmit (go ahead) -.- warning--high power --..-- question (please repeat after ...)--interrupting long messages ..--.. wait .-... break (bk.) (double dash) -...- understand ...-. error ........ received (o.k.) .-. position report (to precede all position messages) - .-. end of each message (cross) .-.-. transmission finished (end of work) (conclusion of correspondence) ...-.- international radiotelegraphic convention list of abbreviations to be used in radio communication abbreviation question answer or reply prb do you wish to communicate i wish to communicate by means by means of the international of the international signal code. signal code? qra what ship or coast station is this is.... that? qrb what is your distance? my distance is.... qrc what is your true bearing? my true bearing is.... qrd where are you bound for? i am bound for.... qrf where are you bound from? i am bound from.... qrg what line do you belong to? i belong to the ... line. qrh what is your wave length in my wave length is ... meters. meters? qrj how many words have you to send? i have ... words to send. qrk how do you receive me? i am receiving well. qrl are you receiving badly? i am receiving badly. please shall i send ? send . ...-. ...-. for adjustment? for adjustment. qrm are you being interfered with? i am being interfered with. qrn are the atmospherics strong? atmospherics are very strong. qro shall i increase power? increase power. qrp shall i decrease power? decrease power. qrq shall i send faster? send faster. qrs shall i send slower? send slower. qrt shall i stop sending? stop sending. qru have you anything for me? i have nothing for you. qrv are you ready? i am ready. all right now. qrw are you busy? i am busy (or: i am busy with...). please do not interfere. qrx shall i stand by? stand by. i will call you when required. qry when will be my turn? your turn will be no.... qrz are my signals weak? you signals are weak. qsa are my signals strong? you signals are strong. qsb is my tone bad? the tone is bad. is my spark bad? the spark is bad. qsc is my spacing bad? your spacing is bad. qsd what is your time? my time is.... qsf is transmission to be in transmission will be in alternate order or in series? alternate order. qsg transmission will be in a series of messages. qsh transmission will be in a series of messages. qsj what rate shall i collect for...? collect.... qsk is the last radiogram canceled? the last radiogram is canceled. qsl did you get my receipt? please acknowledge. qsm what is your true course? my true course is...degrees. qsn are you in communication with land? i am not in communication with land. qso are you in communication with i am in communication with... any ship or station (through...). (or: with...)? qsp shall i inform...that you are inform...that i am calling him. calling him? qsq is...calling me? you are being called by.... qsr will you forward the radiogram? i will forward the radiogram. qst have you received the general general call to all stations. call? qsu please call me when you have will call when i have finished. finished (or: at...o'clock)? qsv is public correspondence being public correspondence is being handled? handled. please do not interfere. [footnote: public correspondence is any radio work, official or private, handled on commercial wave lengths.] qsw shall i increase my spark increase your spark frequency. frequency? qsx shall i decrease my spark decrease your spark frequency. frequency? qsy shall i send on a wavelength let us change to the wave length of ... meters? of ... meters. qsz send each word twice. i have difficulty in receiving you. qta repeat the last radiogram. when an abbreviation is followed by a mark of interrogation, it refers to the question indicated for that abbreviation. useful information symbols used for apparatus alternator ammeter aerial arc battery buzzer condenser variable condenser connection of wires no connection coupled coils variable coupling detector gap, plain gap, quenched ground hot wire ammeter inductor variable inductor key resistor variable resistor switch s.p.s.t. " s.p.d.t. " d.p.s.t. " d.p.d.t. " reversing phone receiver " transmitter thermoelement transformer vacuum tube voltmeter choke coil definitions of electric and magnetic units the _ohm_ is the resistance of a thread of mercury at the temperature of melting ice, . grams in mass, of uniform cross-section and a length of . centimeters. the _ampere_ is the current which when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water according to certain specifications, deposits silver at the rate of . of a gram per second. the _volt_ is the electromotive force which produces a current of ampere when steadily applied to a conductor the resistance of which is ohm. the _coulomb_ is the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in second. the _ampere-hour_ is the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in hour and is, therefore, equal to coulombs. the _farad_ is the capacitance of a condenser in which a potential difference of volt causes it to have a charge of coulomb of electricity. the _henry_ is the inductance in a circuit in which the electromotive force induced is volt when the inducing current varies at the rate of ampere per second. the _watt_ is the power spent by a current of ampere in a resistance of ohm. the _joule_ is the energy spent in i second by a flow of ampere in ohm. the _horse-power_ is used in rating steam machinery. it is equal to watts. the _kilowatt_ is , watts. the units of capacitance actually used in wireless work are the _microfarad_, which is the millionth part of a farad, because the farad is too large a unit; and the _c. g. s. electrostatic unit of capacitance_, which is often called the _centimeter of capacitance_, which is about equal to . microfarads. the units of inductance commonly used in radio work are the _millihenry_, which is the thousandth part of a henry; and the _centimeter of inductance_, which is one one-thousandth part of a microhenry. note.--for further information about electric and magnetic units get the _bureau of standards circular no. _, called _electric units and standards_, the price of which is cents; also get _scientific paper no. _, called _international system of electric and magnetic units_, price cents. these and other informative papers can be had from the _superintendent of documents, government printing office_, washington, d. c. wireless books the admiralty manual of wireless telegraphy. . published by his majesty's stationery office, london. ralph e. batcher.--prepared radio measurements. . wireless press, inc., new york city. elmer e. bucher.--practical wireless telegraphy. . wireless press, inc., new york city. elmer e. bucher.--vacuum tubes in wireless communication. . wireless press, inc., new york city. elmer e. bucher.--the wireless experimenter's manual. . wireless press, inc., new york city. a. frederick collins.--wireless telegraphy, its history, theory, and practice. . mcgraw pub. co., new york city. j. h. dellinger.--principles underlying radio communication. . signal corps, u. s. army, washington, d. c. h. m. dorsett.--wireless telegraphy and telephony. . wireless press, ltd., london. j. a. fleming.--principles of electric wave telegraphy. . longmans, green and co., london. charles b. hayward.--how to become a wireless operator. . american technical society, chicago, ill. g. d. robinson.--manual of radio telegraphy and telephony. . united states naval institute, annapolis, md. rupert stanley.--textbook of wireless telegraphy. . longmans, green and co., london. e. w. stone.--elements of radio telegraphy. . d, van nostrand co., new york city. l. b. turner.--wireless telegraphy and telephony. . cambridge university press. cambridge, england. send to the _superintendent of documents, government printing office_, washington, d. c., for a copy of _price list no. _ which lists the government's books and pamphlets on wireless. it will be sent to you free of charge. the government publishes; ( ) _a list of commercial government and special wireless stations_, every year, price cents; ( ) _a list of amateur wireless stations_, yearly, price cents; ( ) _a wireless service bulletin_ is published monthly, price cents a copy, or cents yearly; and ( ) _wireless communication laws of the united states_, the _international wireless telegraphic convention and regulations governing wireless operators and the use of wireless on ships and land stations_, price cents a copy. orders for the above publications should be addressed to the _superintendent of documents, government printing office, washington, d. c._ manufacturers and dealers in wireless apparatus and supplies: adams-morgan co., upper montclair, n. j. american hard rubber co., mercer street, new york city. american radio and research corporation, medford hillside, mass. brach (l. s.) mfg. co., sussex ave., newark, n. j. brandes (c.) inc., lafayette st., new york city. bunnell (j. h.) company, park place, new york city. burgess battery company, harris trust co. bldg., chicago, ill. clapp-eastman co., main st., cambridge, mass. connecticut telephone and telegraph co., meriden, conn. continental fiber co., newark, del. coto-coil co., providence, r. i. crosley mfg. co., cincinnati, ohio. doolittle (f. m.), chapel st., new haven, conn. edelman (philip e.), cortlandt st., new york city. edison storage battery co., orange, n. j. electric specialty co., stamford, conn. electrose mfg. co., washington st., brooklyn, n. y. general electric co., schenectady, n. y. grebe (a. h.) and co., inc., richmond hill, n. y. c. international brass and electric co., beekman st., new york city. international insulating co., west th st., new york city. king amplitone co., church st., new york city. kennedy (colin b.) co., rialto bldg., san francisco, cal. magnavox co., oakland, cal. manhattan electrical supply co., park place, n. y. marshall-gerken co., toledo, ohio. michigan paper tube and can co., grand river ave., detroit, mich. murdock (wm. j.) co., chelsea, mass. national carbon co., inc., long island city, n. y. pittsburgh radio and appliance co., diamond st., pittsburgh, pa, radio corporation of america, broadway, new york city. riley-klotz mfg. co., - mulberry st., newark, n. j. radio specialty co., park place, new york city. roller-smith co., barclay st., new york city. tuska (c. d.) co., hartford, conn. western electric co., chicago, ill. westinghouse electric co., pittsburgh, pa. weston electrical instrument co., weston ave., newark, n. j. westfield machine co., westfield, mass. abbreviations of common terms a. ..............aerial a.c. ............alternating current a.f. ............audio frequency b. and s. .......brown & sharpe wire gauge c. ..............capacity or capacitance c.g.s. ..........centimeter-grain-second cond. ...........condenser coup. ...........coupler c.w. ............continuous waves d.c. ............direct current d.p.d.t. ........double point double throw d.p.s.t. ........double point single throw d.x. ............distance e. ..............short for electromotive force (volt) e.m.f. ..........electromotive force f. ..............filament or frequency g. ..............grid gnd. ............ground i. ..............current strength (ampere) i.c.w. ..........interrupted continuous waves kw. .............kilowatt l. ..............inductance l.c. ............loose coupler litz. ...........litzendraht mfd. ............microfarad neg. ............negative o.t. ............oscillation transformer p. ..............plate prim. ...........primary pos. ............positive r. ..............resistance r.f. ............radio frequency sec. ............secondary s.p.d.t. ........single point double throw s.p.s.t. ........single point single throw s.r. ............self rectifying t. ..............telephone or period (time) of complete oscillation tick. ...........tickler v. ..............potential difference var. ............variometer var. cond. ......variable condenser v.t. ............vacuum tube w.l. ............wave length x. ..............reactance glossary a battery.--see battery a. abbreviations, code.--abbreviations of questions and answers used in wireless communication. the abbreviation _of a question_ is usually in three letters of which the first is q. thus q r b is the code abbreviation of "_what is your distance?_" and the answer "_my distance is_..." see page [appendix: list of abbreviations]. abbreviations, units.--abbreviations of various units used in wireless electricity. these abbreviations are usually lower case letters of the roman alphabet, but occasionally greek letters are used and other signs. thus _amperes_ is abbreviated _amp., micro_, which means _one millionth_, [greek: mu], etc. see page [appendix: useful abbreviations]. abbreviations of words and terms.--letters used instead of words and terms for shortening them up where there is a constant repetition of them, as _a.c._ for _alternating current; c.w._ for _continuous waves; v.t._ for _vacuum tube_, etc. see page [appendix: abbreviations of common terms]. aerial.--also called _antenna_. an aerial wire. one or more wires suspended in the air and insulated from its supports. it is the aerial that sends out the waves and receives them. aerial, amateur.--an aerial suitable for sending out meter wave lengths. such an aerial wire system must not exceed feet in length from the ground up to the aerial switch and from this through the leading-in wire to the end of the aerial. aerial ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. aerial, bed-springs.--where an outdoor aerial is not practicable _bed-springs_ are often made to serve the purpose. aerial capacity.--see _capacity, aerial._ aerial counterpoise.--where it is not possible to get a good ground an _aerial counterpoise_ or _earth capacity_ can be used to advantage. the counterpoise is made like the aerial and is supported directly under it close to the ground but insulated from it. aerial, directional.--a flat-top or other aerial that will transmit and receive over greater distances to and from one direction than to and from another. aerial, ground.--signals can be received on a single long wire when it is placed on or buried in the earth or immersed in water. it is also called a _ground antenna_ and an _underground aerial._ aerial, loop.--also called a _coil aerial, coil antenna, loop aerial, loop antenna_ and when used for the purpose a _direction finder_. a coil of wire wound on a vertical frame. aerial resistance.--see _resistance, aerial._ aerial switch.--see _switch aerial._ aerial wire.--( ) a wire or wires that form the aerial. ( ) wire that is used for aerials; this is usually copper or copper alloy. aerial wire system.--an aerial and ground wire and that part of the inductance coil which connects them. the open oscillation circuit of a sending or a receiving station. air core transformer.--see _transformer, air core._ amateur aerial or antenna.--see _aerial, amateur._ alternator.--an electric machine that generates alternating current. alphabet, international code.--a modified morse alphabet of dots and dashes originally used in continental europe and, hence, called the _continental code_. it is now used for all general public service wireless communication all over the world and, hence, it is called the _international code_. see page [appendix: international morse code]. alternating current (_a.c._)--see _current._ alternating current transformer.--see _transformer_. amateur ground.--see _ground, amateur_. ammeter.--an instrument used for measuring the current strength, in terms of amperes, that flows in a circuit. ammeters used for measuring direct and alternating currents make use of the _magnetic effects_ of the currents. high frequency currents make use of the _heating effects_ of the currents. ammeter, hot-wire.--high frequency currents are usually measured by means of an instrument which depends on heating a wire or metal strip by the oscillations. such an instrument is often called a _thermal ammeter_, _radio ammeter_ and _aerial ammeter_. ammeter, aerial.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. ammeter, radio.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. ampere.--the current which when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water according to certain specifications, deposits silver at the rate of . of a gram per second. ampere-hour.--the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in hour and is, therefore, equal to coulombs. ampere-turns.--when a coil is wound up with a number of turns of wire and a current is made to flow through it, it behaves like a magnet. b the strength of the magnetic field inside of the coil depends on ( ) the strength of the current and ( ) the number of turns of wire on the coil. thus a feeble current flowing through a large number of turns will produce as strong a magnetic field as a strong current flowing through a few turns of wire. this product of the current in amperes times the number of turns of wire on the coil is called the _ampere-turns_. amplification, audio frequency.--a current of audio frequency that is amplified by an amplifier tube or other means. amplification, cascade.--see _cascade amplification_. amplification, radio frequency.--a current of radio frequency that is amplified by an amplifier tube or other means before it reaches the detector. amplification, regenerative.--a scheme that uses a third circuit to feed back part of the oscillations through a vacuum tube and which increases its sensitiveness when used as a detector and multiplies its action as an amplifier and an oscillator. amplifier, audio frequency.--a vacuum tube or other device that amplifies the signals after passing through the detector. amplifier, magnetic.--a device used for controlling radio frequency currents either by means of a telegraph key or a microphone transmitter. the controlling current flows through a separate circuit from that of the radio current and a fraction of an ampere will control several amperes in the aerial wire. amplifiers, multi-stage.--a receiving set using two or more amplifiers. also called _cascade amplification_. amplifier, vacuum tube.--a vacuum tube that is used either to amplify the radio frequency currents or the audio frequency currents. amplitude of wave.--the greatest distance that a point moves from its position of rest. amplifying transformer, audio.--see _transformer, audio amplifying_. amplifying modulator vacuum tube.--see _vacuum tube, amplifying modulator_. amplifying transformer radio.--see _transformer, radio amplifying_. antenna, amateur.--see _aerial, amateur_. antenna switch.--see _switch, aerial_. apparatus symbols.--see _symbols, apparatus_. armstrong circuit.--see _circuit, armstrong_. atmospherics.--same as _static_, which see. attenuation.--in sending wireless telegraph and telephone messages the amplitude of the electric waves is damped out as the distance increases. this is called _attenuation_ and it increases as the frequency is increased. this is the reason why short wave lengths will not carry as far as long wave lengths. audio frequency amplifier.--see _amplifier, audio frequency_. audio frequency amplification.--see _amplification, audio frequency_. audibility meter.--see _meter, audibility_. audio frequency.--see _frequency, audio_. audio frequency current.--see _current, audio frequency_. audion.--an early trade name given to the vacuum tube detector. autodyne receptor.--see _receptor, autodyne_. auto transformer.--see _transformer, auto_. bakelite.--a manufactured insulating compound. b battery.--see _battery b_. band, wave length.--see _wave length band_. basket wound coils.--see _coils, inductance_. battery, a.--the -volt storage battery used to heat the filament of a vacuum tube, detector or amplifier. battery, b.--the - / -volt dry cell battery used to energize the plate of a vacuum tube detector or amplifier. battery, booster.--this is the battery that is connected in series with the crystal detector. battery, c.--a small dry cell battery sometimes used to give the grid of a vacuum tube detector a bias potential. battery, edison storage.--a storage battery in which the elements are made of nickel and iron and immersed in an alkaline _electrolyte_. battery, lead storage.--a storage battery in which the elements are made of lead and immersed in an acid electrolyte. battery poles.--see _poles, battery_. battery, primary.--a battery that generates current by chemical action. battery, storage.--a battery that develops a current after it has been charged. beat reception.--see _heterodyne reception_. bed springs aerial.--see _aerial, bed springs_. blub blub.--over modulation in wireless telephony. broad wave.--see _wave, broad_. brush discharge.--see _discharge_. buzzer modulation.--see _modulation, buzzer_. blue glow discharge.--see _discharge_. booster battery.--see _battery, booster_. broadcasting.--sending out intelligence and music from a central station for the benefit of all who live within range of it and who have receiving sets. capacitance.--also called by the older name of _capacity_. the capacity of a condenser, inductance coil or other device capable of retaining a charge of electricity. capacitance is measured in terms of the _microfarad_. capacitive coupling.--see _coupling, capacitive_. capacity.--any object that will retain a charge of electricity; hence an aerial wire, a condenser or a metal plate is sometimes called a _capacity_. capacity, aerial.--the amount to which an aerial wire system can be charged. the _capacitance_ of a small amateur aerial is from . to . microfarad. capacity, distributed.--a coil of wire not only has inductance, but also a certain small capacitance. coils wound with their turns parallel and having a number of layers have a _bunched capacitance_ which produces untoward effects in oscillation circuits. in honeycomb and other stagger wound coils the capacitance is more evenly distributed. capacity reactance.--see _reactance, capacity_. capacity unit.--see _farad_. carbon rheostats.--see _rheostat, carbon_. carborundum detector.--see _detector_. carrier current telephony.--see _wired-wireless_. carrier frequency.--see _frequency, carrier_. carrier frequency telephony.--see _wired-wireless_. cascade amplification.--two or more amplifying tubes hooked up in a receiving set. cat whisker contact.--a long, thin wire which makes contact with the crystal of a detector. centimeter of capacitance.--equal to . _microfarads_. centimeter of inductance.--equal to one one-thousandth part of a _microhenry_. cellular coils.--see _coils, inductance_. c.g.s. electrostatic unit of capacitance.--see _centimeter of capacitance_. characteristics.--the special behavior of a device, such as an aerial, a detector tube, etc. characteristics, grid.--see _grid characteristics_. choke coils.--coils that prevent the high voltage oscillations from surging back into the transformer and breaking down the insulation. chopper modulation.--see _modulation, chopper_. circuit.--any electrical conductor through which a current can flow. a low voltage current requires a loop of wire or other conductor both ends of which are connected to the source of current before it can flow. a high frequency current will surge in a wire which is open at both ends like the aerial. closed circuit.--a circuit that is continuous. open circuit.--a conductor that is not continuous. coupled circuits.--open and closed circuits connected together by inductance coils, condensers or resistances. see _coupling_. close coupled circuits.--open and closed circuits connected directly together with a single inductance coil. loose coupled circuits.--opened and closed currents connected together inductively by means of a transformer. stand-by circuits.--also called _pick-up_ circuits. when listening-in for possible calls from a number of stations, a receiver is used which will respond to a wide band of wave lengths. armstrong circuits.--the regenerative circuit invented by major e. h. armstrong. close coupled circuits.--see _currents, close coupled_. closed circuit.--see _circuit, closed_. closed core transformer.--see _transformer, closed core_. code.-- continental.--same as _international_. international.--on the continent of europe land lines use the _continental morse_ alphabetic code. this code has come to be used throughout the world for wireless telegraphy and hence it is now called the _international code_. it is given on page . [appendix: international morse code]. morse.--the code devised by samuel f. b. morse and which is used on the land lines in the u. s. national electric.--a set of rules and requirements devised by the _national board of fire underwriters_ for the electrical installations in buildings on which insurance companies carry risks. this code also covers the requirements for wireless installations. a copy may be had from the _national board of fire underwriters_, new york city, or from your insurance agent. national electric safety.--the bureau of standards, washington, d. c., have investigated the precautions which should be taken for the safe operation of all electric equipment. a copy of the _bureau of standards handbook no. _ can be had for cents from the _superintendent of documents_. coefficient of coupling.--see _coupling, coefficient of_. coil aerial.--see _aerial, loop_. coil antenna.--see _aerial, loop_. coil, induction.--an apparatus for changing low voltage direct currents into high voltage, low frequency alternating currents. when fitted with a spark gap the high voltage, low frequency currents are converted into high voltage, high frequency currents. it is then also called a _spark coil_ and a _ruhmkorff coil_. coil, loading.--a coil connected in the aerial or closed oscillation circuit so that longer wave lengths can be received. coil, repeating.--see _repeating coil_. coil, rotating.--one which rotates on a shaft instead of sliding as in a _loose coupler_. the rotor of a _variometer_ or _variocoupler_ is a _rotating coil_. coils, inductance.--these are the tuning coils used for sending and receiving sets. for sending sets they are formed of one and two coils, a single sending coil is generally called a _tuning inductance coil_, while a two-coil tuner is called an _oscillation transformer_. receiving tuning coils are made with a single layer, single coil, or a pair of coils, when it is called an oscillation _transformer_. some tuning inductance coils have more than one layer, they are then called _lattice wound_, _cellular_, _basket wound_, _honeycomb_, _duo-lateral_, _stagger wound_, _spider-web_ and _slab_ coils. commercial frequency.--see _frequency, commercial_. condenser, aerial series.--a condenser placed in the aerial wire system to cut down the wave length. condenser, vernier.--a small variable condenser used for receiving continuous waves where very sharp tuning is desired. condenser.--all conducting objects with their insulation form capacities, but a _condenser_ is understood to mean two sheets or plates of metal placed closely together but separated by some insulating material. adjustable condenser.--where two or more condensers can be coupled together by means of plugs, switches or other devices. aerial condenser.--a condenser connected in the aerial. air condenser.--where air only separates the sheets of metal. by-pass condenser.--a condenser connected in the transmitting currents so that the high frequency currents cannot flow back through the power circuit. filter condenser.--a condenser of large capacitance used in combination with a filter reactor for smoothing out the pulsating direct currents as they come from the rectifier. fixed condenser.--where the plates are fixed relatively to one another. grid condenser.--a condenser connected in series with the grid lead. leyden jar condenser.--where glass jars are used. mica condenser.--where mica is used. oil condenser.--where the plates are immersed in oil. paper condenser.--where paper is used as the insulating material. protective.--a condenser of large capacity connected across the low voltage supply circuit of a transmitter to form a by-path of kick-back oscillations. variable condenser.--where alternate plates can be moved and so made to interleave more or less with a set of fixed plates. vernier.--a small condenser with a vernier on it so that it can be very accurately varied. it is connected in parallel with the variable condenser used in the primary circuit and is used for the reception of continuous waves where sharp tuning is essential. condensite.--a manufactured insulating compound. conductivity.--the conductance of a given length of wire of uniform cross section. the reciprocal of _resistivity_. contact detectors.--see _detectors, contact_. continental code.--see _code, continental_. coulomb.--the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in second. convective discharge.--see _discharge_. conventional signals.--see _signals, conventional_. counter electromotive force.--see _electromotive force, counter_. counterpoise. a duplicate of the aerial wire that is raised a few feet above the earth and insulated from it. usually no connection is made with the earth itself. coupled circuits.--see _circuit, coupled_. coupling.--when two oscillation circuits are connected together either by the magnetic field of an inductance coil, or by the electrostatic field of a condenser. coupling, capacitive.--oscillation circuits when connected together by condensers instead of inductance coils. coupling, coefficient of.--the measure of the closeness of the coupling between two coils. coupling, inductive.--oscillation circuits when connected together by inductance coils. coupling, resistance.--oscillation circuits connected together by a resistance. crystal rectifier.--a crystal detector. current, alternating (a.c.).--a low frequency current that surges to and fro in a circuit. current, audio frequency.--a current whose frequency is low enough to be heard in a telephone receiver. such a current usually has a frequency of between and , cycles per second. current, plate.--the current which flows between the filament and the plate of a vacuum tube. current, pulsating.--a direct current whose voltage varies from moment to moment. current, radio frequency.--a current whose frequency is so high it cannot be heard in a telephone receiver. such a current may have a frequency of from , to , , per second. currents, high frequency.--( ) currents that oscillate from , to , , times per second. ( ) electric oscillations. currents, high potential.--( ) currents that have a potential of more than , volts. ( ) high voltage currents. cycle.--( ) a series of changes which when completed are again at the starting point. ( ) a period of time at the end of which an alternating or oscillating current repeats its original direction of flow. damping.--the degree to which the energy of an electric oscillation is reduced. in an open circuit the energy of an oscillation set up by a spark gap is damped out in a few swings, while in a closed circuit it is greatly prolonged, the current oscillating times or more before the energy is dissipated by the sum of the resistances of the circuit. decrement.--the act or process of gradually becoming less. detector.--any device that will ( ) change the oscillations set up by the incoming waves into direct current, that is which will rectify them, or ( ) that will act as a relay. carborundum.--one that uses a _carborundum_ crystal for the sensitive element. carborundum is a crystalline silicon carbide formed in the electric furnace. cat whisker contact.--see _cat whisker contact_. chalcopyrite.--copper pyrites. a brass colored mineral used as a crystal for detectors. see _zincite_. contact.--a crystal detector. any kind of a detector in which two dissimilar but suitable solids make contact. ferron.--a detector in which iron pyrites are used as the sensitive element. galena.--a detector that uses a galena crystal for the rectifying element. iron pyrites.--a detector that uses a crystal of iron pyrites for its sensitive element. molybdenite.--a detector that uses a crystal of _sulphide of molybdenum_ for the sensitive element. perikon.--a detector in which a _bornite_ crystal makes contact with a _zincite_ crystal. silicon.--a detector that uses a crystal of silicon for its sensitive element. vacuum tube.--a vacuum tube (which see) used as a detector. zincite.--a detector in which a crystal of _zincite_ is used as the sensitive element. de tuning.--a method of signaling by sustained oscillations in which the key when pressed down cuts out either some of the inductance or some of the capacity and hence greatly changes the wave length. dielectric.--an insulating material between two electrically charged plates in which there is set up an _electric strain_, or displacement. dielectric strain.--the electric displacement in a dielectric. directional aerial.--see _aerial, directional_. direction finder.--see _aerial, loop_. discharge.--( ) a faintly luminous discharge that takes place from the positive pointed terminal of an induction coil, or other high potential apparatus; is termed a _brush discharge_. ( ) a continuous discharge between the terminals of a high potential apparatus is termed a _convective discharge_. ( ) the sudden breaking-down of the air between the balls forming the spark gap is termed a _disruptive discharge_; also called an _electric spark_, or just _spark_ for short. ( ) when a tube has a poor vacuum, or too large a battery voltage, it glows with a blue light and this is called a _blue glow discharge_. disruptive discharge.--see _discharge_. distress call. [morse code:] ...---... (sos). distributed capacity.--see _capacity, distributed_. double hump resonance curve.--a resonance curve that has two peaks or humps which show that the oscillating currents which are set up when the primary and secondary of a tuning coil are closely coupled have two frequencies. duo-lateral coils.--see _coils, inductance_. duplex communication.--a wireless telephone system with which it is possible to talk between both stations in either direction without the use of switches. this is known as the _duplex system_. earth capacity.--an aerial counterpoise. earth connection.--metal plates or wires buried in the ground or immersed in water. any kind of means by which the sending and receiving apparatus can be connected with the earth. edison storage battery.--see _storage battery, edison_. electric energy.--the power of an electric current. electric oscillations.--see _oscillations, electric_. electric spark.--see _discharge, spark_. electricity, negative.--the opposite of _positive electricity_. negative electricity is formed of negative electrons which make up the outside particles of an atom. electricity, positive.--the opposite of _negative electricity_. positive electricity is formed of positive electrons which make up the inside particles of an atom. electrodes.--usually the parts of an apparatus which dip into a liquid and carry a current. the electrodes of a dry battery are the zinc and carbon elements. the electrodes of an edison storage battery are the iron and nickel elements, and the electrodes of a lead storage battery are the lead elements. electrolytes.--the acid or alkaline solutions used in batteries. electromagnetic waves.--see _waves, electric_. electromotive force.--abbreviated _emf_. the force that drives an electric current along a conductor. also loosely called _voltage_. electromotive force, counter.--the emf. that is set up in a direction opposite to that in which the current is flowing in a conductor. electron.--( ) a negative particle of electricity that is detached from an atom. ( ) a negative particle of electricity thrown off from the incandescent filament of a vacuum tube. electron flow.--the passage of electrons between the incandescent filament and the cold positively charged plate of a vacuum tube. electron relay.--see _relay, electron_. electron tube.--a vacuum tube or a gas-content tube used for any purpose in wireless work. see _vacuum tube_. electrose insulators.--insulators made of a composition material the trade name of which is _electrose_. energy, electric.--see _electric energy_. energy unit.--the _joule_, which see, page [appendix: definitions of electric and magnetic units]. fading.--the sudden variation in strength of signals received from a transmitting station when all the adjustments of both sending and receiving apparatus remain the same. also called _swinging_. farad.--the capacitance of a condenser in which a potential difference of volt causes it to have a charge of coulomb of electricity. feed-back action.--feeding back the oscillating currents in a vacuum tube to amplify its power. also called _regenerative action_. ferromagnetic control.--see _magnetic amplifier_. filament.--the wire in a vacuum tube that is heated to incandescence and which throws off electrons. filament rheostat.--see _rheostat, filament_. filter.--inductance coils or condensers or both which ( ) prevent troublesome voltages from acting on the different circuits, and ( ) smooth out alternating currents after they have been rectified. filter reactor.--see _reactor, filter_. fire underwriters.--see _code, national electric_. fixed gap.--see _gap_. fleming valve.--a two-electrode vacuum tube. forced oscillations.--see _oscillations, forced_. free oscillations.--see _oscillations, free_. frequency, audio.--( ) an alternating current whose frequency is low enough to operate a telephone receiver and, hence, which can be heard by the ear. ( ) audio frequencies are usually around or , cycles per second, but may be as low as and as high as , cycles per second. carrier.--a radio frequency wave modulated by an audio frequency wave which results in setting of _three_ radio frequency waves. the principal radio frequency is called the carrier frequency, since it carries or transmits the audio frequency wave. commercial.--( ) alternating current that is used for commercial purposes, namely, light, heat and power. ( ) commercial frequencies now in general use are from to cycles per second. natural.--the pendulum and vibrating spring have a _natural frequency_ which depends on the size, material of which it is made, and the friction which it has to overcome. likewise an oscillation circuit has a natural frequency which depends upon its _inductance_, _capacitance_ and _resistance_. radio.--( ) an oscillating current whose frequency is too high to affect a telephone receiver and, hence, cannot be heard by the ear. ( ) radio frequencies are usually between , and , , cycles per second but may be as low as , and as high as , , cycles per second. spark.--the number of sparks per second produced by the discharge of a condenser. gap, fixed.--one with fixed electrodes. gap, non-synchronous.--a rotary spark gap run by a separate motor which may be widely different from that of the speed of the alternator. gap, quenched.--( ) a spark gap for the impulse production of oscillating currents. ( ) this method can be likened to one where a spring is struck a single sharp blow and then continues to set up vibrations. gap, rotary.--one having fixed and rotating electrodes. gap, synchronous.--a rotary spark gap run at the same speed as the alternator which supplies the power transformer. such a gap usually has as many teeth as there are poles on the generator. hence one spark occurs per half cycle. gas-content tube.--see _vacuum tube._ generator tube.--a vacuum tube used to set up oscillations. as a matter of fact it does not _generate_ oscillations, but changes the initial low voltage current that flows through it into oscillations. also called an _oscillator tube_ and a _power tube._ grid battery.--see _battery c._ grid characteristics.--the various relations that could exist between the voltages and currents of the grid of a vacuum tube, and the values which do exist between them when the tube is in operation. these characteristics are generally shown by curves. grid condenser.--see _condenser, grid._ grid leak.--a high resistance unit connected in the grid lead of both sending and receiving sets. in a sending set it keeps the voltage of the grid at a constant value and so controls the output of the aerial. in a receiving set it controls the current flowing between the plate and filament. grid modulation.--see _modulation, grid._ grid potential.--the negative or positive voltage of the grid of a vacuum tube. grid voltage.--see _grid potential._ grinders.--the most common form of _static,_ which see. they make a grinding noise in the headphones. ground.--see _earth connection._ ground, amateur.--a water-pipe ground. ground, waterpipe.--a common method of grounding by amateurs is to use the waterpipe, gaspipe or radiator. guided wave telephony.--see _wired wireless._ hard tube.--a vacuum tube in which the vacuum is _high,_ that is, exhausted to a high degree. helix.--( ) any coil of wire. ( ) specifically a transmitter tuning inductance coil. henry.--the inductance in a circuit in which the electromotive force induced is volt when the inducing current varies at the rate of ampere per second. heterodyne reception.--( ) receiving by the _beat_ method. ( ) receiving by means of superposing oscillations generated at the receiving station on the oscillations set up in the aerial by the incoming waves. heterodyne receptor.--see _receptor, heterodyne._ high frequency currents.--see _currents, high frequency._ high frequency resistance.--see _resistance, high frequency._ high potential currents.--see _currents, high potential._ high voltage currents.--see _currents, high potential._ honeycomb coils.--see _coils, inductance._ horse-power.--used in rating steam machinery. it is equal to watts. hot wire ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire._ howling.--where more than three stages of radio amplification, or more than two stages of audio amplification, are used howling noises are apt to occur in the telephone receivers. impedance.--an oscillation circuit has _reactance_ and also _resistance,_ and when these are combined the total opposition to the current is called _impedance._ inductance coils.--see _coils, inductance._ inductance coil, loading.--see _coil, loading inductance._ inductive coupling.--see _coupling, inductive._ inductive reactance.--see _reactance, inductive._ induction coil.--see _coil, induction._ induction, mutual.--induction produced between two circuits or coils close to each other by the mutual interaction of their magnetic fields. insulation.--materials used on and around wires and other conductors to keep the current from leaking away. inspector, radio.--a u. s. inspector whose business it is to issue both station and operators' licenses in the district of which he is in charge. interference.--the crossing or superposing of two sets of electric waves of the same or slightly different lengths which tend to oppose each other. it is the untoward interference between electric waves from different stations that makes selective signaling so difficult a problem. intermediate waves.--see _waves._ ionic tubes.--see _vacuum tubes._ international code.--see code, international. jamming.--waves that are of such length and strength that when they interfere with incoming waves they drown them out. joule.--the energy spent in second by a flow of ampere in ohm. joule's law.--the relation between the heat produced in seconds to the resistance of the circuit, to the current flowing in it. kenotron.--the trade name of a vacuum tube rectifier made by the _radio corporation of america._ kick-back.--oscillating currents that rise in voltage and tend to flow back through the circuit that is supplying the transmitter with low voltage current. kick-back prevention.--see _prevention, kick-back._ kilowatt.-- , watts. lambda.--see pages , . [appendix: useful abbreviations]. lattice wound coils.--see _coils, inductance._ lightning switch.--see _switch, lightning._ line radio communication.--see _wired wireless._ line radio telephony.--see _telephony, line radio._ litzendraht.--a conductor formed of a number of fine copper wires either twisted or braided together. it is used to reduce the _skin effect._ see _resistance, high frequency._ load flicker.--the flickering of electric lights on lines that supply wireless transmitting sets due to variations of the voltage on opening and closing the key. loading coil.--see _coil, loading._ long waves.--see _waves._ loop aerial.--see _aerial, loop._ loose coupled circuits.--see _circuits, loose coupled._ loud speaker.--a telephone receiver connected to a horn, or a specially made one, that reproduces the incoming signals, words or music loud enough to be heard by a room or an auditorium full of people, or by large crowds out-doors. magnetic poles.--see _poles, magnetic._ megohm.--one million ohms. meter, audibility.--an instrument for measuring the loudness of a signal by comparison with another signal. it consists of a pair of headphones and a variable resistance which have been calibrated. mho.--the unit of conductance. as conductance is the reciprocal of resistance it is measured by the _reciprocal ohm_ or _mho._ mica.--a transparent mineral having a high insulating value and which can be split into very thin sheets. it is largely used in making condensers both for transmitting and receiving sets. microfarad.--the millionth part of a _farad._ microhenry.--the millionth part of a _farad._ micromicrofarad.--the millionth part of a _microfarad._ microhm.--the millionth part of an _ohm._ microphone transformer.--see _transformer, microphone._ microphone transmitter.--see _transmitter, microphone._ milli-ammeter.--an ammeter that measures a current by the one-thousandth of an ampere. modulation.--( ) inflection or varying the voice. ( ) varying the amplitude of oscillations by means of the voice. modulation, buzzer.--the modulation of radio frequency oscillations by a buzzer which breaks up the sustained oscillations of a transmitter into audio frequency impulses. millihenry.--the thousandth part of a _henry._ modulation, chopper.--the modulation of radio frequency oscillations by a chopper which breaks up the sustained oscillations of a transmitter into audio frequency impulses. modulation, grid.--the scheme of modulating an oscillator tube by connecting the secondary of a transformer, the primary of which is connected with a battery and a microphone transmitter, in the grid lead. modulation, over.--see _blub blub._ modulation, plate.--modulating the oscillations set up by a vacuum tube by varying the current impressed on the plate. modulator tube.--a vacuum tube used as a modulator. motion, wave.--( ) the to and fro motion of water at sea. ( ) waves transmitted by, in and through the air, or sound waves. ( ) waves transmitted by, in and through the _ether,_ or _electromagnetic waves,_ or _electric waves_ for short. motor-generator.--a motor and a dynamo built to run at the same speed and mounted on a common base, the shafts being coupled together. in wireless it is used for changing commercial direct current into direct current of higher voltages for energizing the plate of a vacuum tube oscillator. multi-stage amplifiers.--see _amplifiers, multi-stage._ mutual induction.--see _induction, mutual._ mush.--irregular intermediate frequencies set up by arc transmitters which interfere with the fundamental wave lengths. mushy note.--a note that is not clear cut, and hence hard to read, which is received by the _heterodyne method_ when damped waves or modulated continuous waves are being received. national electric code.--see _code, national electric._ national electric safety code.--see _code, national electric safety._ negative electricity.--see _electricity, negative._ non-synchronous gap.--see _gap, non-synchronous._ ohm.--the resistance of a thread of mercury at the temperature of melting ice, . grams in mass, of uniform cross-section and a length of . centimeters. ohm's law.--the important fixed relation between the electric current, its electromotive force and the resistance of the conductor in which it flows. open circuit.--see _circuit, open._ open core transformer.--see _transformer, open core._ oscillation transformer.--see _transformer, oscillation._ oscillations, electric.--a current of high frequency that surges through an open or a closed circuit. ( ) electric oscillations may be set up by a spark gap, electric arc or a vacuum tube, when they have not only a high frequency but a high potential, or voltage. ( ) when electric waves impinge on an aerial wire they are transformed into electric oscillations of a frequency equal to those which emitted the waves, but since a very small amount of energy is received their potential or voltage is likewise very small. sustained.--oscillations in which the damping factor is small. damped.--oscillations in which the damping factor is large. free.--when a condenser discharges through an oscillation circuit, where there is no outside electromotive force acting on it, the oscillations are said to be _free._ forced.--oscillations that are made to surge in a circuit whose natural period is different from that of the oscillations set up in it. oscillation transformer.--see _transformer._ oscillation valve.--see _vacuum tube._ oscillator tube.--a vacuum tube which is used to produce electric oscillations. over modulation.--see _blub blub._ pancake oscillation transformer.--disk-shaped coils that are used for receiving tuning inductances. permeability, magnetic.--the degree to which a substance can be magnetized. iron has a greater magnetic permeability than air. phase.--a characteristic aspect or appearance that takes place at the same point or part of a cycle. pick-up circuits.--see _circuits, stand-by._ plate circuit reactor.--see _reactor, plate circuit._ plate current.--see _current, plate._ plate modulation.--see _modulation, plate._ plate voltage.--see _foliage, plate._ poles, battery.--the positive and negative terminals of the elements of a battery. on a storage battery these poles are marked + and - respectively. poles, magnetic.--the ends of a magnet. positive electricity.--see _electricity, positive._ potential difference.--the electric pressure between two charged conductors or surfaces. potentiometer.--a variable resistance used for subdividing the voltage of a current. a _voltage divider._ power transformer.--see _transformer, power._ power tube.--see _generator tube._ primary battery.--see _battery, primary._ prevention, kick-back.--a choke coil placed in the power circuit to prevent the high frequency currents from getting into the transformer and breaking down the insulation. q s t.--an abbreviation used in wireless communication for ( ) the question "have you received the general call?" and ( ) the notice, "general call to all stations." quenched gap.--see _gap, quenched._ radiation.--the emission, or throwing off, of electric waves by an aerial wire system. radio ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire._ radio frequency.--see _frequency, radio._ radio frequency amplification.--see _amplification, radio frequency._ radio frequency current.--see _current, radio frequency._ radio inspector.--see _inspector, radio_. radiotron.--the trade name of vacuum tube detectors, amplifiers, oscillators and modulators made by the _radio corporation of america_. radio waves.--see _waves, radio_. reactance.--when a circuit has inductance and the current changes in value, it is opposed by the voltage induced by the variation of the current. reactance, capacity.--the capacity reactance is the opposition offered to a current by a capacity. it is measured as a resistance, that is, in _ohms_. receiving tuning coils.--see _coils, inductance_. receiver, loud speaking.--see _loud speakers_. receiver, watch case.--a compact telephone receiver used for wireless reception. reactance, inductive.--the inductive reactance is the opposition offered to the current by an inductance coil. it is measured as a resistance, that is, in _ohms_. reactor, filter.--a reactance coil for smoothing out the pulsating direct currents as they come from the rectifier. reactor, plate circuit.--a reactance coil used in the plate circuit of a wireless telephone to keep the direct current supply at a constant voltage. receiver.--( ) a telephone receiver. ( ) an apparatus for receiving signals, speech or music. ( ) better called a _receptor_ to distinguish it from a telephone receiver. rectifier.--( ) an apparatus for changing alternating current into pulsating direct current. ( ) specifically in wireless (_a_) a crystal or vacuum tube detector, and (_b_) a two-electrode vacuum tube used for changing commercial alternating current into direct current for wireless telephony. regenerative amplification.--see _amplification, regenerative_. receptor.--a receiving set. receptor, autodyne.--a receptor that has a regenerative circuit and the same tube is used as a detector and as a generator of local oscillations. receptor, beat.--a heterodyne receptor. receptor, heterodyne.--a receiving set that uses a separate vacuum tube to set up the second series of waves for beat reception. regenerative action.--see _feed-back action._ regenerative amplification.--see _amplification, regenerative._ relay, electron.--a vacuum tube when used as a detector or an amplifier. repeating coil.--a transformer used in connecting up a wireless receiver with a wire transmitter. resistance.--the opposition offered by a wire or other conductor to the passage of a current. resistance, aerial.--the resistance of the aerial wire to oscillating currents. this is greater than its ordinary ohmic resistance due to the skin effect. see _resistance, high frequency._ resistance box.--see _resistor._ resistance coupling.--see _coupling, resistance._ resistance, high frequency.--when a high frequency current oscillates on a wire two things take place that are different than when a direct or alternating current flows through it, and these are ( ) the current inside of the wire lags behind that of the current on the surface, and ( ) the amplitude of the current is largest on the surface and grows smaller as the center of the wire is reached. this uneven distribution of the current is known as the _skin effect_ and it amounts to the same thing as reducing the size of the wire, hence the resistance is increased. resistivity.--the resistance of a given length of wire of uniform cross section. the reciprocal of _conductivity._ resistor.--a fixed or variable resistance unit or a group of such units. variable resistors are also called _resistance boxes_ and more often _rheostats._ resonance.--( ) simple resonance of sound is its increase set up by one body by the sympathetic vibration of a second body. ( ) by extension the increase in the amplitude of electric oscillations when the circuit in which they surge has a _natural_ period that is the same, or nearly the same, as the period of the first oscillation circuit. rheostat.--a variable resistance unit. see _resistor._ rheostat, carbon.--a carbon rod, or carbon plates or blocks, when used as variable resistances. rheostat, filament.--a variable resistance used for keeping the current of the storage battery which heats the filament of a vacuum tube at a constant voltage. rotating coil.--see _coil._ rotary gap.--see _gap._ rotor.--the rotating coil of a variometer or a variocoupler. ruhmkorff coil.--see _coil, induction._ saturation.--the maximum plate current that a vacuum tube will take. sensitive spots.--spots on detector crystals that are sensitive to the action of electric oscillations. short waves.--see _waves._ side waves.--see _wave length band._ signals, conventional.--( ) the international morse alphabet and numeral code, punctuation marks, and a few important abbreviations used in wireless telegraphy. ( ) dot and dash signals for distress call, invitation to transmit, etc. now used for all general public service wireless communication. skin effect.--see _resistance, high frequency._ soft tube.--a vacuum tube in which the vacuum is low, that is, it is not highly exhausted. space charge effect.--the electric field intensity due to the pressure of the negative electrons in the space between the filament and plate which at last equals and neutralizes that due to the positive potential of the plate so that there is no force acting on the electrons near the filament. spark.--see _discharge._ spark coil.--see _coil, induction._ spark discharge.--see _spark, electric._ spark frequency.--see _frequency, spark._ spark gap.--( ) a _spark gap,_ without the hyphen, means the apparatus in which sparks take place; it is also called a _spark discharger._ ( ) _spark-gap,_ with the hyphen, means the air-gap between the opposed faces of the electrodes in which sparks are produced. plain.--a spark gap with fixed electrodes. rotary.--a spark gap with a pair of fixed electrodes and a number of electrodes mounted on a rotating element. quenched.--a spark gap formed of a number of metal plates placed closely together and insulated from each other. spider web inductance coil.--see _coil, spider web inductance._ spreader.--a stick of wood, or spar, that holds the wires of the aerial apart. stagger wound coils.--see _coils, inductance._ stand-by circuits.--see _circuits, stand-by._ static.--also called _atmospherics, grinders, strays, x's,_ and, when bad enough, by other names. it is an electrical disturbance in the atmosphere which makes noises in the telephone receiver. stator.--the fixed or stationary coil of a variometer or a variocoupler. storage battery.--see _battery, storage._ stray elimination.--a method for increasing the strength of the signals as against the strength of the strays. see _static._ strays.--see _static_. stranded wire.--see _wire, stranded_. super-heterodyne receptor.--see _heterodyne, super_. swinging.--see _fading_. switch, aerial.--a switch used to change over from the sending to the receiving set, and the other way about, and connect them with the aerial. switch, lightning.--the switch that connects the aerial with the outside ground when the apparatus is not in use. symbols, apparatus.--also called _conventional symbols_. these are diagrammatic lines representing various parts of apparatus so that when a wiring diagram of a transmitter or a receptor is to be made it is only necessary to connect them together. they are easy to make and easy to read. see page [appendix: symbols used for apparatus]. synchronous gap.--see _gap, synchronous_. telephony, line radio.--see _wired wireless_. thermal ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. three electrode vacuum tube.--_see vacuum tube, three electrode_. tikker.--a slipping contact device that breaks up the sustained oscillations at the receiving end into groups so that the signals can be heard in the head phones. the device usually consists of a fine steel or gold wire slipping in the smooth groove of a rotating brass wheel. transformer.--a primary and a secondary coil for stepping up or down a primary alternating or oscillating current. a. c.--see _power transformer_. air cooled.--a transformer in which the coils are exposed to the air. air core.--with high frequency currents it is the general practice not to use iron cores as these tend to choke off the oscillations. hence the core consists of the air inside of the coils. auto.--a single coil of wire in which one part forms the primary and the other part the secondary by bringing out an intermediate tap. audio amplifying.--this is a transformer with an iron core and is used for frequencies up to say , . closed core.--a transformer in which the path of the magnetic flux is entirely through iron. power transformers have closed cores. microphone.--a small transformer for modulating the oscillations set up by an arc or a vacuum tube oscillator. oil cooled.--a transformer in which the coils are immersed in oil. open core.--a transformer in which the path of the magnetic flux is partly through iron and partly through air. induction coils have open cores. oscillation.--a coil or coils for transforming or stepping down or up oscillating currents. oscillation transformers usually have no iron cores when they are also called _air core transformers._ power.--a transformer for stepping down a commercial alternating current for lighting and heating the filament and for stepping up the commercial a.c., for charging the plate of a vacuum tube oscillator. radio amplifying.--this is a transformer with an air core. it does not in itself amplify but is so called because it is used in connection with an amplifying tube. transmitter, microphone.--a telephone transmitter of the kind that is used in the bell telephone system. transmitting tuning coils.--see _coils, inductance._ tuning.--when the open and closed oscillation circuits of a transmitter or a receptor are adjusted so that both of the former will permit electric oscillations to surge through them with the same frequency, they are said to be tuned. likewise, when the sending and receiving stations are adjusted to the same wave length they are said to be _tuned._ coarse tuning.--the first adjustment in the tuning oscillation circuits of a receptor is made with the inductance coil and this tunes them coarse, or roughly. fine tuning.--after the oscillation circuits have been roughly tuned with the inductance coil the exact adjustment is obtained with the variable condenser and this is _fine tuning._ sharp.--when a sending set will transmit or a receiving set will receive a wave of given length only it is said to be sharply tuned. the smaller the decrement the sharper the tuning. tuning coils.--see _coils, inductance._ two electrode vacuum tube.--see _vacuum tube, two electrode._ vacuum tube.--a tube with two or three electrodes from which the air has been exhausted, or which is filled with an inert gas, and used as a detector, an amplifier, an oscillator or a modulator in wireless telegraphy and telephony. amplifier.--see _amplifier, vacuum tube._ amplifying modulator.--a vacuum tube used for modulating and amplifying the oscillations set up by the sending set. gas content.--a tube made like a vacuum tube and used as a detector but which contains an inert gas instead of being exhausted. hard.--see _hard tube._ rectifier.--( ) a vacuum tube detector. ( ) a two-electrode vacuum tube used for changing commercial alternating current into direct current for wireless telephony. soft.--see _soft tube._ three electrode.--a vacuum tube with three electrodes, namely a filament, a grid and a plate. two electrode.--a vacuum tube with two electrodes, namely the filament and the plate. valve.--see _vacuum tube._ valve, fleming.--see _fleming valve._ variable condenser.--see _condenser, variable._ variable inductance.--see _inductance, variable._ variable resistance.--see _resistance, variable._ variocoupler.--a tuning device for varying the inductance of the receiving oscillation circuits. it consists of a fixed and a rotatable coil whose windings are not connected with each other. variometer.--a tuning device for varying the inductance of the receiving oscillation currents. it consists of a fixed and a rotatable coil with the coils connected in series. vernier condenser.--see _condenser, vernier._ volt.--the electromotive force which produces a current of ampere when steadily applied to a conductor the resistance of which is one ohm. voltage divider.--see _potentiometer._ voltage, plate.--the voltage of the current that is used to energize the plate of a vacuum tube. voltmeter.--an instrument for measuring the voltage of an electric current. watch case receiver.--see _receiver, watch case._ water-pipe ground.--see _ground, water-pipe._ watt.--the power spent by a current of ampere in a resistance of ohm. wave, broad.--a wave having a high decrement, when the strength of the signals is nearly the same over a wide range of wave lengths. wave length.--every wave of whatever kind has a length. the wave length is usually taken to mean the distance between the crests of two successive waves. wave length band.--in wireless reception when continuous waves are being sent out and these are modulated by a microphone transmitter the different audio frequencies set up corresponding radio frequencies and the energy of these are emitted by the aerial; this results in waves of different lengths, or a band of waves as it is called. wave meter.--an apparatus for measuring the lengths of electric waves set up in the oscillation circuits of sending and receiving sets. wave motion.--disturbances set up in the surrounding medium as water waves in and on the water, sound waves in the air and electric waves in the ether. waves.--see _wave motion_. waves, electric.--electromagnetic waves set up in and transmitted by and through the ether. continuous. abbreviated c.w.--waves that are emitted without a break from the aerial. also called _undamped waves_. discontinuous.--waves that are emitted periodically from the aerial. also called _damped waves_. damped.--see _discontinuous waves_. intermediate.--waves from to , meters in length. long.--waves over , meters in length. radio.--electric waves used in wireless telegraphy and telephony. short.--waves up to meters in length. wireless.--electric waves used in wireless telegraphy and telephony. undamped.--see _continuous waves_. wireless telegraph code.--see _code, international_. wire, enamelled.--wire that is given a thin coat of enamel which insulates it. wire, phosphor bronze.--a very strong wire made of an alloy of copper and containing a trace of phosphorus. wired wireless.--continuous waves of high frequency that are sent over telephone wires instead of through space. also called _line radio communication; carrier frequency telephony, carrier current telephony; guided wave telephony_ and _wired wireless._ x's.--see _static._ zincite.--see _detector._ wireless don'ts aerial wire don'ts _don't_ use iron wire for your aerial. _don't_ fail to insulate it well at both ends. _don't_ have it longer than feet for sending out a -meter wave. _don't_ fail to use a lightning arrester, or better, a lightning switch, for your receiving set. _don't_ fail to use a lightning switch with your transmitting set. _don't_ forget you must have an outside ground. _don't_ fail to have the resistance of your aerial as small as possible. use stranded wire. _don't_ fail to solder the leading-in wire to the aerial. _don't_ fail to properly insulate the leading-in wire where it goes through the window or wall. _don't_ let your aerial or leading-in wire touch trees or other objects. _don't_ let your aerial come too close to overhead wires of any kind. _don't_ run your aerial directly under, or over, or parallel with electric light or other wires. _don't_ fail to make a good ground connection with the water pipe inside. transmitting don'ts _don't_ attempt to send until you get your license. _don't_ fail to live up to every rule and regulation. _don't_ use an input of more than / a kilowatt if you live within nautical miles of a naval station. _don't_ send on more than a -meter wave if you have a restricted or general amateur license. _don't_ use spark gap electrodes that are too small or they will get hot. _don't_ use too long or too short a spark gap. the right length can be found by trying it out. _don't_ fail to use a safety spark gap between the grid and the filament terminals where the plate potential is above , volts. _don't_ buy a motor-generator set if you have commercial alternating current in your home. _don't_ overload an oscillation vacuum tube as it will greatly shorten its life. use two in parallel. _don't_ operate a transmitting set without a hot-wire ammeter in the aerial. _don't_ use solid wire for connecting up the parts of transmitters. use stranded or braided wire. _don't_ fail to solder each connection. _don't_ use soldering fluid, use rosin. _don't_ think that all of the energy of an oscillation tube cannot be used for wave lengths of meters and under. it can be if the transmitting set and aerial are properly designed. _don't_ run the wires of oscillation circuits too close together. _don't_ cross the wires of oscillation circuits except at right angles. _don't_ set the transformer of a transmitting set nearer than feet to the condenser and tuning coil. _don't_ use a rotary gap in which the wheel runs out of true. receiving don'ts _don't_ expect to get as good results with a crystal detector as with a vacuum tube detector. _don't_ be discouraged if you fail to hit the sensitive spot of a crystal detector the first time--or several times thereafter. _don't_ use a wire larger than _no. _ for the wire electrode of a crystal detector. _don't_ try to use a loud speaker with a crystal detector receiving set. _don't_ expect a loop aerial to give worthwhile results with a crystal detector. _don't_ handle crystals with your fingers as this destroys their sensitivity. use tweezers or a cloth. _don't_ imbed the crystal in solder as the heat destroys its sensitivity. use _wood's metal,_ or some other alloy which melts at or near the temperature of boiling water. _don't_ forget that strong static and strong signals sometimes destroy the sensitivity of crystals. _don't_ heat the filament of a vacuum tube to greater brilliancy than is necessary to secure the sensitiveness required. _don't_ use a plate voltage that is less or more than it is rated for. _don't_ connect the filament to a lighting circuit. _don't_ use dry cells for heating the filament except in a pinch. _don't_ use a constant current to heat the filament, use a constant voltage. _don't_ use a vacuum tube in a horizontal position unless it is made to be so used. _don't_ fail to properly insulate the grid and plate leads. _don't_ use more than / of the rated voltage on the filament and on the plate when trying it out for the first time. _don't_ fail to use alternating current for heating the filament where this is possible. _don't_ fail to use a voltmeter to find the proper temperature of the filament. _don't_ expect to get results with a loud speaker when using a single vacuum tube. _don't_ fail to protect your vacuum tubes from mechanical shocks and vibration. _don't_ fail to cut off the a battery entirely from the filament when you are through receiving. _don't_ switch on the a battery current all at once through the filament when you start to receive. _don't_ expect to get the best results with a gas-content detector tube without using a potentiometer. _don't_ connect a potentiometer across the b battery or it will speedily run down. _don't_ expect to get as good results with a single coil tuner as you would with a loose coupler. _don't_ expect to get as good results with a two-coil tuner as with one having a third, or _tickler_, coil. _don't_ think you have to use a regenerative circuit, that is, one with a tickler coil, to receive with a vacuum tube detector. _don't_ think you are the only amateur who is troubled with static. _don't_ expect to eliminate interference if the amateurs around you are sending with spark sets. _don't_ lay out or assemble your set on a panel first. connect it up on a board and find out if everything is right. _don't_ try to connect up your set without a wiring diagram in front of you. _don't_ fail to shield radio frequency amplifiers. _don't_ set the axes of the cores of radio frequency transformers in a line. set them at right angles to each other. _don't_ use wire smaller than _no. _ for connecting up the various parts. _don't_ fail to adjust the b battery after putting in a fresh vacuum tube, as its sensitivity depends largely on the voltage. _don't_ fail to properly space the parts where you use variometers. _don't_ fail to put a copper shield between the variometer and the variocoupler. _don't_ fail to keep the leads to the vacuum tube as short as possible. _don't_ throw your receiving set out of the window if it _howls_. try placing the audio-frequency transformers farther apart and the cores of them at right angles to each other. _don't_ use condensers with paper dielectrics for an amplifier receiving set or it will be noisy. _don't_ expect as good results with a loop aerial, or when using the bed springs, as an out-door aerial will give you. _don't_ use an amplifier having a plate potential of less than volts for the last step where a loud speaker is to be used. _don't_ try to assemble a set if you don't know the difference between a binding post and a blue print. buy a set ready to use. _don't_ expect to get arlington time signals and the big cableless stations if your receiver is made for short wave lengths. _don't_ take your headphones apart. you are just as apt to spoil them as you would a watch. _don't_ expect to get results with a bell telephone receiver. _don't_ forget that there are other operators using the ether besides yourself. _don't_ let your b battery get damp and don't let it freeze. _don't_ try to recharge your b battery unless it is constructed for the purpose. storage battery don'ts _don't_ connect a source of alternating current direct to your storage battery. you have to use a rectifier. _don't_ connect the positive lead of the charging circuit with the negative terminal of your storage battery. _don't_ let the electrolyte get lower than the tops of the plates of your storage battery. _don't_ fail to look after the condition of your storage battery once in a while. _don't_ buy a storage battery that gives less than volts for heating the filament. _don't_ fail to keep the specific gravity of the electrolyte of your storage battery between . and . baume. this you can do with a hydrometer. _don't_ fail to recharge your storage battery when the hydrometer shows that the specific gravity of the electrolyte is close to . . _don't_ keep charging the battery after the hydrometer shows that the specific gravity is . . _don't_ let the storage battery freeze. _don't_ let it stand for longer than a month without using unless you charge it. _don't_ monkey with the storage battery except to add a little sulphuric acid to the electrolyte from time to time. if anything goes wrong with it better take it to a service station and let the expert do it. extra don'ts _don't_ think you have an up-to-date transmitting station unless you are using c.w. _don't_ use a wire from your lightning switch down to the outside ground that is smaller than no. _ _. _don't_ try to operate your spark coil with -volt direct lighting current without connecting in a rheostat. _don't_ try to operate your spark coil with -volt alternating lighting current without connecting in an electrolytic interrupter. _don't_ try to operate an alternating current power transformer with -volt direct current without connecting in an electrolytic interruptor. _don't_--no never--connect one side of the spark gap to the aerial wire and the other side of the spark gap to the ground. the government won't have it--that's all. _don't_ try to tune your transmitter to send out waves of given length by guesswork. use a wavemeter. _don't_ use _hard fiber_ for panels. it is a very poor insulator where high frequency currents are used. _don't_ think you are the only one who doesn't know all about wireless. wireless is a very complex art and there are many things that those experienced have still to learn. the end. [illustration: samuel finley breese morse inventor of the telegraph] masters of space morse _and the telegraph_ thompson _and the cable_ bell _and the telephone_ marconi _and the wireless telegraph_ carty _and the wireless telephone_ by walter kellogg towers illustrated to my co-laborer and companion berenice laura towers whose encouragement and assistance were constant in the gathering and preparation of material for this volume. contents chap. preface i. communication among the ancients ii. signals past and present iii. forerunners of the telegraph iv. inventions of sir charles wheatstone v. the achievement of morse vi. "what hath god wrought?" vii. development of the telegraph system viii. telegraphing beneath the sea ix. the pioneer atlantic cable x. a successful cable attained xi. alexander graham bell, the youth xii. the birth of the telephone xiii. the telephone at the centennial xiv. improvement and expansion xv. telegraphing without wires xvi. an italian boy's work xvii. wireless telegraphy established xviii. the wireless serves the world xix. speaking across the continent xx. telephoning through space appendix a appendix b index illustrations samuel finley breese morse morse's first telegraph instrument cyrus w. field william thomson (lord kelvin) the "great eastern" laying the atlantic cable, alexander graham bell thomas a. watson professor bell's vibrating reed professor bell's first telephone the first telephone switchboard used in new haven, conn., for eight subscribers early new york exchange professor bell in salem, mass., and mr. watson in boston, demonstrating the telephone before audiences in doctor bell at the telephone opening the new york-chicago line, october , guglielmo marconi a remarkable photograph taken outside of the clifden station while messages were being sent across to cape race marconi station at clifden, ireland preface this is the story of talking at a distance, of sending messages through space. it is the story of great men--morse, thomson, bell, marconi, and others--and how, with the aid of men like field, vail, catty, pupin, the scientist, and others in both the technical and commercial fields, they succeeded in flashing both messages and speech around the world, with wires and without wires. it is the story of how the thought of the world has been linked together by those modern wonders of science and of industry--the telegraph, the submarine cable, the telephone, the wireless telegraph, and, most recently, the wireless telephone. the story opens with the primitive methods of message-sending by fire or smoke or other signals. the life and experiments of morse are then pictured and the dramatic story of the invention and development of the telegraph is set forth. the submarine cable followed with the struggles of field, the business executive, and thomson, the inventor and scientific expert, which finally culminated in success when the _great eastern_ landed a practical cable on the american coast. the early life of alexander graham bell was full of color, and i have told the story of his patient investigations of human speech and hearing, which, finally culminated in a practical telephone. there follows the fascinating story of marconi and the wireless telegraph. last comes the story of the wireless telephone, that newest wonder which has come among us so recently that we can scarcely realize that it is here. an inner view of the marvelous development of the telephone is added in an appendix. the part played by the great business leaders who have developed and extended the new inventions, placing them at the service of all, has not been forgotten. not only have means of communication been discovered, but they have been improved and put to the widest practical use with remarkable efficiency and celerity. the stories of these developments, in both the personal and executive sides, embody the true romance of the modern business world. the great scientists and engineers who have wrought these wonders which have had so profound an influence upon the life of the world lived, and are living, lives filled with patient effort, discouragement, accomplishment, and real romance. they are interesting men who have done interesting things. better still, they have done important, useful things. this book relates their life stories in a connected form, for they have all worked for a similar end. the story of these men, who, starting in early youth in the pursuit of a great idea, have achieved fame and success and have benefited civilization, cannot but be inspiring. they did not stumble upon their discoveries by any lucky accident. they knew what they sought, and they labored toward the goal with unflagging zeal. had they been easily discouraged we might still be dependent upon the semaphore and the pony express for the transmission of news. but they persevered until success was attained, and in the account of their struggle to success every one may find encouragement in facing his own tasks. one can scarce overestimate the value of modern methods of communication to the world. so much of our development has been more or less directly dependent upon it that it is difficult to fancy our situation without the telegraph and telephone. the diligence with which the ancients sought speedy methods for the sending of messages demonstrates the human need for them. the solution of this great problem, though long delayed, came swiftly, once it was begun. even the simple facts regarding "masters of space" and their lives of struggle and accomplishment in sending messages between distant points form an inspiring story of great achievement. w.k.t. #masters of space# i communication among the ancients signaling the fall of troy--marine signaling among the argonauts--couriers of the greeks, romans, and aztecs--sound-signaling--stentorophonic tube--the shouting sentinels--the clepsydra--signal columns--indian fire and smoke signals. it was very early in the history of the world that man began to feel the urgent need of communicating with man at a distance. when village came into friendly contact with village, when nations began to form and expand, the necessity of sending intelligence rapidly and effectively was clearly realized. and yet many centuries passed without the discovery of an effective system. those discoveries were to be reserved for the thinkers of our age. we can understand the difficulties that beset king agamemnon as he stood at the head of his armies before the walls of troy. many were the messages he would want to send to his native kingdom in greece during the progress of the siege. those at home would be eager for news of the great enterprise. many contingencies might arise which would make the need for aid urgent. certainly queen clytemnestra eagerly awaited word of the fall of the city. yet the slow progress of couriers must be depended upon. one device the king hit upon which was such as any boy might devise to meet the simplest need. "if i can go skating tonight," says johnny jones to his chum, "i'll put a light in my window." such is the simple device which has been used to bear the simplest message for ages. so king agamemnon ordered beacon fires laid on the tops of mount ida, mount athos, mount cithæron, and on intervening eminences. beside them he placed watchers who were always to have their faces toward troy. when troy fell a near-by fire was kindled, and beacon after beacon sprang into flame on the route toward greece. thus was the message of the fall of troy quickly borne to the waiting queen by this preconceived arrangement. yet neither king agamemnon nor his sagest counselors could devise an effective system for expediting their messages. prearranged signals were used to convey news in even earlier times. fire, smoke, and flags were used by the egyptians and the assyrians previous to the trojan war. the towers along the chinese wall were more than watch-towers; they were signal-towers. a flag or a light exhibited from tower to tower would quickly convey a certain message agreed upon in advance. human thought required a system which could convey more than one idea, and yet skill in conveying news grew slowly. perhaps the earliest example of marine signaling of which we know is recorded of the argonautic expedition. theseus devised the use of colored sails to convey messages from ship to ship of the fleet, and caused the death of his father by his failure to handle the signals properly. theseus sailed into conflict with the enemy with black sails set, a signal of battle and of death. with the battle over and himself the victor, he forgot to lower the black flag and set the red flag of victory. his father, the aged Ægeus, seeing the black flag, believed it reported his son's death, and, flinging himself into the sea, was drowned. in time it occurred to the great monarchs as their domains extended to establish relays of couriers to bear the messages which must be carried. such systems were established by the greeks, the romans, and the aztecs. each courier would run the length of his own route and would then shout or pass the message to the next runner, who would speed it away in turn. such was the method employed by our own pony-express riders. an ancient persian king thought of having the messages shouted from sentinel to sentinel, instead of being carried more slowly by relays of couriers. so he established sentinels at regular intervals within hearing of one another, and messages were shouted from one to the other. just fancy the number of sentinels required to establish a line between distant cities, and the opportunities for misunderstanding and mistake! the ancient gauls also employed this method of communication. cæsar records that the news of the massacre of the romans at orleans was sent to auvergne, a distance of nearly one hundred and fifty miles, by the same evening. though signaling by flashes of light occurred to the ancients, we have no knowledge that they devised a way of using the light-flashes for any but the simplest prearranged messages. the mirrors of the pharaohs were probably used to flash light for signal purposes. we know that the persians applied them to signaling in time of war. it is reported that flashes from the shields were used to convey news at the battle of marathon. these seem to be the forerunners of the heliograph. but the heliograph using the dot-and-dash system of the morse code can be used to transmit any message whatever. the ancients had evolved systems by which any word could be spelled, but they did not seem to be able to apply them practically to their primitive heliographs. an application of sound-signaling was worked out for alexander the great, which was considered one of the scientific wonders of antiquity. this was called a stentorophonic tube, and seems to have been a sort of gigantic megaphone or speaking-trumpet. it is recorded that it sent the voice for a dozen miles. a drawing of this strange instrument is preserved in the vatican. another queer signaling device, built and operated upon a novel principle, was an even greater wonder among the early peoples. this was known as a clepsydra. fancy a tall glass tube with an opening at the bottom in which a sort of faucet was fixed. at varying heights sentences were inscribed about the tube. the tube, being filled with water, with, a float at the top, all was ready for signaling any of the messages inscribed on the tube to a station within sight and similarly equipped. the other station could be located as far away as a light could be seen. the station desiring to send a message to another exhibited its light. when the receiving station showed its light in answer, the tap was opened at the bottom of the tube in each station. when the float dropped until it was opposite the sentence which it was desired to transmit, the sending station withdrew its light and closed the tap. this was a signal for the receiving station to stop the flow of water from its tube. as the tubes were just alike, and the water had flowed out during the same period at equal speed, the float at the receiving station then rested opposite the message to be conveyed. many crude systems of using lights for signaling were employed. lines of watch-towers were arranged which served as signal-stations. the ruins of the old roman and gallic towers may still be found in france. hannibal erected them in africa and spain. colored tunics and spears were also used for military signals in the daytime. for instance, a red tunic displayed meant prepare for battle; while a red spear conveyed the order to sack and devastate. an ancient system of camp signals from columns is especially interesting as showing a development away from the prearranged signals of limited application. for these camp signals the alphabet was divided into five or six parts, and a like number of columns erected at each signal-station. each column represented one group of letters. suppose that we should agree to get along without the q and the z and reduce our own alphabet to twenty-four letters for use in such a system. with six columns we would then have four letters for each column. the first column would be used to signal a, b, c, and d. one light or flag shown from column one would represent a, two flags or lights b, and so on. thus any word could be spelled out and any message sent. without doubt the system was slow and cumbersome, but it was a step in the right direction. the american indians developed methods of transmitting news which compare very favorably with the means employed by the ancients. smoke-rings and puffs for the daytime, and fire-arrows at night, were used by them for the sending of messages. smoke signals are obtained by building a fire of moist materials. the indian obtains his smoke-puffs by placing a blanket or robe over the fire, withdrawing it for an instant, and then replacing it quickly. in this way puffs of smoke may be sent aloft as frequently as desired. a column of smoke-puffs was used as a warning signal, its meaning being: look out, the enemy is near. one smoke-puff was a signal for attention; two puffs indicated that the sender would camp at that place. three puffs showed that the sender was in danger, as the enemy was near. fire-arrows shot across the sky at night had a similar meaning. the head of the arrow was dipped in some highly inflammable substance and then set on fire at the instant before it was discharged from the bow. one fire-arrow shot into the sky meant that the enemy were near; two signaled danger, and three great danger. when the indian shot many fire-arrows up in rapid succession he was signaling to his friends that his enemies were too many for him. two arrows discharged into the air at the same time indicated that the party sending them was about to attack. three indicated an immediate attack. a fire-arrow discharged diagonally across the sky indicated the direction in which the sender would travel. such were the methods which the indians used, working out different meanings for the signals in the various tribes. very slight progress was made in message-sending in medieval times, and it was the middle of the seventeenth century before even signal systems were attained which were in any sense an improvement. for many centuries the people of the world existed, devising nothing better than the primitive methods outlined above. ii signals past and present marine and military signals--code flags--wig-wag--semaphore telegraphs--heliographs--ardois signals--submarine signals. in naval affairs some kind of an effective signal system is imperative. even in the ordinary evolutions of a fleet the commander needs some better way of communicating with the ship captains than despatching a messenger in a small boat. the necessity of quick and sure signals in time of battle is obvious. yet for many centuries naval signals were of the crudest. the first distinct advance over the primitive methods by which the commander of one roman galley communicated with another came with the introduction of cannon as a naval arm. the use of signal-guns was soon thought of, and war-ships used their guns for signal purposes as early as the sixteenth century. not long after came the square-rigged ship, and it soon occurred to some one that signals could be made by dropping a sail from the yard-arm a certain number of times. up to the middle of the seventeenth century the possibilities of the naval signal systems were limited indeed. only a few prearranged orders and messages could be conveyed. unlimited communication at a distance was still impossible, and there were no means of sending a message to meet an unforeseen emergency. so cumbersome were the signal systems in use that even though they would convey the intelligence desired, the speaking-trumpet or a courier was employed wherever possible. to the officers of the british navy of the seventeenth century belongs the credit for the first serious attempt to create a system of communication which would convey any and all messages. it is not clear whether admiral sir william penn or james ii. established the code. it was while he was duke of york and the commander of britain's navy, that the james who was later to be king took this part in the advancement of means of communication. messages were sent by varying the position of a single signal flag. in admiral kempenfeldt thought of adding other signal flags instead of depending upon the varied positions of a single signal. from his plan the flag signals now in use by the navies of the world were developed. the basis of his system was the combining of distinct flags in pairs. the work of admiral philip colomb marked another long step forward in signaling between ships. while a young officer he developed a night-signal system of flashing lights, still in use to some extent, and which bears his name. colomb's most important contribution to the art of signaling was his realization of the utility of the code which morse had developed in connection with the telegraph. code flags, which are largely used between ships, have not been entirely displaced by the wireless. the usual naval code set consists of a set of alphabet flags and pennants, ten numeral flags, and additional special flags. this of course provides for spelling out any conceivable message by simply hoisting letter after letter. so slow a method is seldom used, however. various combinations of letters and figures are used to indicate set terms or sentences set forth in the code-book. thus the flags representing a and e, hoisted together, may be found on reference to the code-book to mean, "weigh anchor." each navy has its own secret code, which is carefully guarded lest it be discovered by a possible enemy. naval code-books are bound with metal covers so that they may be thrown overboard in case a ship is forced to surrender. the international code is used by ships of all nations. it is the universal language of the sea, and by it sailors of different tongues may communicate through this common medium. any message may be conveyed by a very few of the flags in combination. the wig-wag system, a favorite and familiar method of communication with every boy scout troop, is in use by both army and navy. the various letters of the alphabet are indicated by the positions in which the signaler holds his arms. keeping the arms always forty-five degrees apart, it is possible to read the signals at a considerable distance. navy signalers have become very efficient with this form of communication, attaining a speed of over fifteen words a minute. a semaphore is frequently substituted for the wig-wag flags both on land and on sea. navy semaphores on big war-ships consist of arms ten or twelve feet long mounted at the masthead. the semaphore as a means of communication was extensively used on land commercially as well as by the army. a regular semaphore telegraph system, working in relays over considerable distances was in operation in france a century ago. other semaphore telegraphs were developed in england. the introduction of the morse code and its adaptation to signaling by sight and sound did much to simplify these means of communication. the development of signaling after the adoption of the morse code, though it occurred subsequent to the introduction of the telegraph, may properly be spoken of here, since the systems dependent upon sight and sound grow from origins more primitive than those which depend upon electricity. up to the middle of the nineteenth century armies had made slight progress in perfecting means of communication. the british army had no regular signal service until after the recommendations of colomb proved their worth in naval affairs. the german army, whose systems of communication have now reached such perfection, did not establish an army signal service until . the simplicity of the dot and dash of the morse code makes it readily available for almost any form of signaling under all possible conditions. two persons within sight of each other, who understand the code, may establish communication by waving the most conspicuous object at hand, using a short swing for a dot and a long swing for a dash. two different shapes may also be exhibited, one representing a dot and the other a dash. the dot-and-dash system is also admirably adapted for night signaling. a search-light beam may be swung across the sky through short and long arcs, a light may be exhibited and hidden for short and long periods, and so on. where the search-light may be played upon a cloud it may be seen for very considerable distances, messages having been sent forty miles by this means. fog-horns, whistles, etc., may be similarly employed during fogs or amid thick smoke. a short blast represents a dot, and a long one a dash. the heliograph, which established communication by means of short and long light-flashes, is another important means of signaling to which the morse code has been applied. this instrument catches the rays of the sun upon a mirror, and thence casts them to a distant receiving station. a small key which throws the mirror out of alignment serves to obscure the flashes for a space at the will of the sender, and so produces short or long flashes. the british army has made wide use of the heliograph in india and africa. during the british-boer war it formed the sole means of communication between besieged garrisons and the relief forces. where no mountain ranges intervene and a bright sun is available, heliographic messages may be read at a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. while the british navy used flashing lights for night signals, the united states and most other navies adopted a system of fixed colored lights. the system in use in the united states navy is known as the ardois system. in this system the messages are sent by four lights, usually electric, which are suspended from a mast or yard-arm. the lights are manipulated by a keyboard situated at a convenient point on the deck. a red lamp is flashed to indicate a dot in the morse code, while a white lamp indicates a dash. the ardois system is also used by the army. the perfection of wireless telegraphy has caused the ardois and other signal systems depending upon sight or sound to be discarded in all but exceptional cases. the wig-wag and similar systems will probably never be entirely displaced by even such superior systems as wireless telegraphy. the advantage of the wig-wag lies in the fact that no apparatus is necessary and communication may thus be established for short distances almost instantly. its disadvantages are lack of speed, impenetrability to dust, smoke, and fog, and the short ranges over which it may be operated. there is another form of sound-signaling which, though it has been developed in recent years, may properly be mentioned in connection with earlier signal systems of similar nature. this is the submarine signal. we have noted that much attention was paid to communication by sound-waves through the medium of the air from the earliest times. it was not until the closing years of the past century, however, that the superior possibilities of water as a conveyer of sound were recognized. arthur j. mundy, of boston, happened to be on an american steamer on the mississippi river in the vicinity of new orleans. it was rumored that a spanish torpedo-boat had evaded the united states war vessels and made its way up the great river. the general alarm and the impossibility of detecting the approach of another vessel set mundy thinking. it seemed to him that there should be some way of communicating through the water and of listening for sounds underwater. he recalled his boyhood experiments in the old swimming-hole. he remembered how distinctly the sound of stones cracked together carried to one whose ears were beneath the surface. thus the idea of underwater signaling was born. mundy communicated this idea to elisha gray, and the two, working together, evolved a successful submarine signal system. it was on the last day of the nineteenth century that they were able to put their experiments into practical working form. through a well in the center of the ship they suspended an eight-hundred-pound bell twenty feet beneath the surface of the sea. a receiving apparatus was located three miles distant, which consisted simply of an ear-trumpet connected to a gas-pipe lowered into the sea. the lower end of the pipe was sealed with a diaphragm of tin. when submerged six feet beneath the surface the strokes of the bell could be heard. then a special electrical receiver of extreme sensitiveness, known as a microphone, was substituted and connected at the receiving station with an ordinary telephone receiver. with this receiving apparatus the strokes of the bell could be heard at a distance of over ten miles. this system has had a wide practical application for communication both between ship and ship and between ship and shore. most transatlantic ships are now equipped with such a system. the transmitter consists of a large bell which is actuated either by compressed air or by an electro-magnetic system. this is so arranged that it may be suspended over the side of the ship and lowered well beneath the surface of the water. the receivers consist of microphones, one on each side of the ship. the telephone receivers connected to the two microphones are mounted close together on an instrument board on the bridge of the ship. the two instruments are used when it is desired to determine the direction from which the signals come. if the sound is stronger in the 'phone on the right-hand side of the ship the commander knows that the signals are coming from that direction. if the signals are from a ship in distress he may proceed toward it by turning his vessel until the sound of the signal-bell is equal in the two receivers. the ability to determine the direction from which the signal comes is especially valuable in navigating difficult channels in foggy weather. signal-bells are located near lighthouses and dangerous reefs. each calls its own number, and the vessel's commander may thus avoid obstructions and guide the ship safely into the harbor. the submarine signal is equally useful in enabling vessels to avoid collision in fogs. because water conducts sound much better than air, submarine signals are far better than the fog-horn or whistles. the submarine signal system has also been applied to submarine war-ships. by this means alone may a submarine communicate with another, with a vessel on the surface, or with a shore station. an important and interesting adaptation of the marine signal was made to meet the submarine warfare of the great european conflict. at first it seemed that battle-ship and merchantman could find no way to locate the approach of an enemy submarine. but it was found that by means of the receiving apparatus of the submarine telephone an approaching submarine could be heard and located. while the sounds of the submarine's machinery are not audible above the water, the delicate microphone located beneath the water can detect them. hearing a submarine approaching beneath the surface, the merchantman may avoid her and the destroyers and patrol-boats may take means to effect her capture. iii forerunners of the telegraph from lodestone to leyden jar--the mysterious "c.m."--spark and frictional telegraphs--the electro-magnet--davy and the relay system. the thought and effort directed toward improving the means of communication brought but small results until man discovered and harnessed for himself a new servant--electricity. the story of the growth of modern means of communication is the story of the application of electricity to this particular one of man's needs. the stories of the masters of space are the stories of the men who so applied electricity that man might communicate with man. some manifestations of electricity had been known since long before the christian era. a greek legend relates how a shepherd named magnes found that his crook was attracted by a strange rock. thus was the lodestone, the natural magnetic iron ore, discovered, and the legend would lead us to believe that the words magnet and magnetism were derived from the name of the shepherd who chanced upon this natural magnet and the strange property of magnetism. the ability of amber, when rubbed, to attract straws, was also known to the early peoples. how early this property was found, or how, we do not know. the name electricity is derived from _elektron_, the greek name for amber. the early chinese and persians knew of the lodestone, and of the magnetic properties of amber after it has been rubbed briskly. the romans were familiar with these and other electrical effects. the romans had discovered that the lodestone would attract iron, though a stone wall intervened. they were fond of mounting a bit of iron on a cork floating in a basin of water and watch it follow the lodestone held in the hand. it is related that the early magicians used it as a means of transmitting intelligence. if a needle were placed upon a bit of cork and the whole floated in a circular vessel with the alphabet inscribed about the circle, one outside the room could cause the needle to point toward any desired letters in turn by stepping to the proper position with the lodestone. thus a message could be sent to the magician inside and various feats of magic performed. our own modern magicians are reported as availing themselves of the more modern applications of electricity in somewhat similar fashion and using small, easily concealed wireless telegraph or telephone sets for communication with their confederates off the stage. the idea of encircling a floating needle with the alphabet was developed into the sympathetic telegraph of the sixteenth century, which was based on a curious error. it was supposed that needles which had been touched by the same lodestone were sympathetic, and that if both were free to move one would imitate the movements of another, though they were at a distance. thus, if one needle were attracted toward one letter after the other, and the second similarly mounted should follow its movements, a message might readily be spelled out. of course the second needle would not follow the movements of the first, and so the sympathetic telegraph never worked, but much effort was expended upon it. in the mean time others had learned that many substances besides amber, on being rubbed, possessed magnetic properties. machines by which electricity could be produced in greater quantities by friction were produced and something was learned of conductors. benjamin franklin sent aloft his historic kite and found that electricity came down the silken cord. he demonstrated that frictional and atmospheric electricity are the same. franklin and others sent the electric charge along a wire, but it did not occur to them to endeavor to apply this to sending messages. credit for the first suggestion of an electric telegraph must be given to an unknown writer of the middle eighteenth century. in the _scots magazine_ for february , , there appeared an article signed simply, "c.m.," which suggested an electric telegraph. the writer's idea was to lay an insulated wire for each letter of the alphabet. the wires could be charged from an electrical machine in any desired order, and at the receiving end would attract disks of paper marked with the letter which that wire represented, and so any message could be spelled out. the identity of "c.m." has never been established, but he was probably charles morrison, a scotch surgeon with a reputation for electrical experimentation, who later emigrated to virginia. of course "c.m.'s" telegraph was not practical, because of the many wires required, but it proved to be a fertile suggestion which was followed by many other thinkers. one experimenter after another added an improvement or devised a new application. a french scientist devised a telegraph which it is suspected might have been practical, but he kept his device secret, and, as napoleon refused to consider it, it never was put to a test. an englishman devised a frictional telegraph early in the last century and endeavored to interest the admiralty. he was told that the semaphore was all that was required for communication. another submitted a similar system to the same authorities in , and was told that "telegraphs of any kind are now wholly unnecessary." an american inventor fared no better, for one harrison gray dyar, of new york, was compelled to abandon his experiments on long island and flee because he was accused of conspiracy to carry on secret communication, which sounded very like witchcraft to our forefathers. his telegraph sent signals by having the electric spark transmitted by the wire decompose nitric acid and so record the signals on moist litmus paper. it seems altogether probable that had not the discovery of electro-magnetism offered improved facilities to those seeking a practical telegraph, this very chemical telegraph might have been put to practical use. in the early days of the nineteenth century the battery had come into being, and thus a new source of electric current was available for the experimenters. coupled with this important discovery in its effect upon the development of the telegraph was the discovery of electro-magnetism. this was the work of hans christian oersted, a native of denmark. he first noticed that a current flowing through a wire would deflect a compass, and thus discovered the magnetic properties of the electric current. a frenchman named ampère, experimenting further, discovered that when the electric current is sent through coils of wire the magnetism is increased. the possibility of using the deflection of a magnetic needle by an electric current passing through a wire as a means of conveying intelligence was quickly grasped by those who were striving for a telegraph. experiments with spark and chemical telegraphs were superseded by efforts with this new discovery. ampère, acting upon the suggestion of la place, an eminent mathematician, published a plan for a feasible telegraph. this was later improved upon by others, and it was still early in the nineteenth century that a model telegraph was exhibited in london. about this time two professors at the university of göttingen were experimenting with telegraphy. they established an experimental line between their laboratories, using at first a battery. then faraday discovered that an electric current could be generated in a wire by the motion of a magnet, thus laying the basis for the modern dynamo. professors gauss and weber, who were operating the telegraph line at göttingen, adapted this new discovery to their needs. they sent the message by moving a magnetic key. a current was thus generated in the line, and, passing over the wire and through a coil at the farther end, moved a magnet suspended there. the magnet moved to the right or left, depending on the direction of the current sent through the wire. a tiny mirror was mounted on the receiving magnet to magnify its movement and so render it more readily visible. one steinheil, of munich, simplified it and added a call-bell. he also devised a recording telegraph in which the moving needle at the receiving station marked down its message in dots and dashes on a ribbon of paper. he was the first to utilize the earth for the return circuit, using a single wire for despatching the electric current used in signaling and allowing it to return through the ground. in , the same year in which wheatstone and morse were busy perfecting their telegraphs, as we shall see, edward davy exhibited a needle telegraph in london. davy also realized that the discoveries of arago could be used in improving the telegraph and making it practical. arago discovered that the current passing through a coil of wire served to magnetize temporarily a piece of soft iron within it. it was this principle upon which morse was working at this time. davy did not carry his suggestions into effect, however. he emigrated to australia, and the interruption in his experiments left the field open for those who were finally to bring the telegraph into usable form. davy's greatest contribution to telegraphy was the relay system by which very weak currents could call into play strong currents from a local battery, and so make the signals apparent at the receiving station. iv inventions of sir charles wheatstone wheatstone and his enchanted lyre--wheatstone and cooke--first electric telegraph line installed--the capture of the "kwaker"--the automatic transmitter. before we come to the story of samuel f.b. morse and the telegraph which actually proved a commercial success as the first practical carrier of intelligence which had been created for the service of man, we should pause to consider the achievements of charles wheatstone. together with william fothergill cooke, another englishman, he developed a telegraph line that, while it did not attain commercial success, was the first working telegraph placed at the service of the public. charles wheatstone was born near gloucester in . having completed his primary schooling, charles was apprenticed to his uncle, who was a maker and seller of musical instruments. he showed little aptitude either in the workshop or in the store, and much preferred to continue the study of books. his father eventually took him from his uncle's charge and allowed him to follow his bent. he translated poetry from the french at the age of fifteen, and wrote some verse of his own. he spent all the money he could secure on books. becoming interested in a book on volta's experiments with electricity, he saved up his coppers until he could purchase it. it was in french, and he found the technical descriptions rather too difficult for his comprehension, so that he was forced to save again to buy a french-english dictionary. with the aid of this he mastered the volume. immediately his attention was turned toward the wonders of the infant science of electricity, and he eagerly endeavored to perform the experiments described. aided by his older brother, he set to work on a battery as a source of current. running short of funds with which to purchase copper plates, he again began to save his pennies. then the idea occurred to him to use the pennies themselves, and his first battery was soon complete. he continued his experiments in various fields until, at the age of nineteen, he first brought himself to public notice with his enchanted lyre. this he placed on exhibition in music-shops in london. it consisted of a small lyre suspended from the ceiling which gave forth, in turn, the sounds of various musical instruments. really the lyre was merely a sounding-box, and the vibrations of the music were conveyed from instruments, played in the next room, to the lyre through a steel rod. the young man spent much time experimenting with the transmission of sound. having conveyed music through the steel rod to his enchanted lyre, much to the mystification of the londoners, he proposed to transmit sounds over a considerable distance by this method. he estimated that sound could be sent through steel rods at the rate of two hundred miles a second and suggested the use of such a rod as a telegraph between london and edinburgh. he called his arrangement a telephone. a scientific writer of the day, commenting in a scientific journal on the enchanted lyre which wheatstone had devised, suggested that it might be used to render musical concerts audible at a distance. thus an opera performed in a theater might be conveyed through rods to other buildings in the vicinity and there reproduced. this was never accomplished, and it remained for our own times to accomplish this and even greater wonders. wheatstone also devised an instrument for increasing feeble sound, which he called a microphone. this consisted of a pair of rods to convey the sound vibrations to the ears, and does not at all resemble the modern electrical microphone. other inventions in the transmission and reproduction of sound followed, and he devoted no little attention to the construction of improved musical instruments. he even made some efforts to produce a practical talking-machine, and was convinced that one would be attained. at thirty-two he was widely famed as a scientist and had been made a professor of experimental physics in king's college, london. his most notable work at this time was measuring the speed of the electric current, which up to that time had been supposed to be instantaneous. by wheatstone had abandoned his plans for transmitting sounds through long rods of metal and was studying the telegraph. he experimented with instruments of his own and proposed a line across the thames. it was in that mr. cooke, an army officer home on leave, became interested in the telegraph and devoted himself to putting it on a working basis. he had already exhibited a crude set when he came to wheatstone, realizing his own lack of scientific knowledge. the two men finally entered into partnership, wheatstone contributing the scientific and cooke the business ability to the new enterprise. the partnership was arranged late in , and a patent taken out on wheatstone's five-needle telegraph. in this telegraph a magnetic needle was located within a loop formed by the telegraph circuit at the receiving end. when the circuit was closed the needle was deflected to one side or the other, according to the direction of the current. five separate circuits and needles were used, and a variety of signals could thus be sent. five wires, with a sixth return wire, were used in the first experimental line erected in london in . so in the year when morse was constructing his models wheatstone and cooke were operating an experimental line, crude and impracticable though it was, and enjoying the sensations of communicating with each other at a distance. in the telegraph was placed on public exhibition at so much a head, but it was viewed as an entertaining novelty without utility by the public at large. after many disappointments the inventors secured the cooperation of the great western railroad, and a line was erected for a distance of thirteen miles. but the public would not patronise the line until its utility was strikingly demonstrated by the capture of the "kwaker." early one morning a woman was found dead in her home in the suburbs of london. a man had been observed leaving the house, and his appearance had been noted. inquiries revealed that a man answering his description had left on the slow train for london. without the telegraph he could not have been apprehended. but the telegraph was available at this point, and his description was telegraphed ahead and the police in london were instructed to arrest him upon his arrival. "he is dressed as a quaker," ran the message. there was no q in the alphabet of-the five-needle instrument, and so the sender spelled quaker, kwaker. the clerk at the receiving end could not-understand the strange word, and asked to have it repeated again and again. finally some one suggested that the message be completed and the whole was then deciphered. when the man dressed as a quaker stepped from the slow train on his arrival at london the police were awaiting him; he was arrested and eventually confessed the murder. the news of this capture and the part the telegraph played gave striking proof of the utility of the new invention, and public skepticism and indifference were overcome. by wheatstone had so improved his apparatus that but one wire was required. the single-needle instrument pointed out the letters on the dial around it by successive deflections in which it was arranged to move, step by step, at the will of the sending station. the single-needle instrument, though generally displaced by morse's telegraph, remained in use for a long time on some english lines. wheatstone had also invented a type-printing telegraph, which he patented in . this required two circuits. with a working telegraph attained, the partners became involved in an altercation as to which deserved the honor of inventing the same. the quarrel was finally submitted to two famous scientists for arbitration. they reported that the telegraph was the result of their joint labors. to wheatstone belongs the credit for devising the apparatus; to cooke for introducing it and placing it before the public in working form. here we see the combination of the man of science and the man of business, each contributing needed talents for the establishment of a great invention on a working basis. wheatstone's researches in the field of electricity were constant. in he devised a magnetic clock and proposed a plan by which many clocks, located at different points, could be set at regular intervals with the aid of electricity. such a system was the forerunner of the electrically wound and regulated clocks with which we are now so familiar. he also devised a method for measuring the resistance which wires offer to the passage of an electric current. this is known as wheatstone's bridge and is still in use in every electrical and physical laboratory. he also invented a sound telegraph by which signals were transmitted by the strokes of a bell operated by the current at the receiving end of the circuit. the invention of wheatstone's which proved to be of greatest lasting importance in connection with the telegraph was the automatic transmitter. by this system the message is first punched in a strip of paper which, when passed through the sending instrument, transmits the message. by this means he was able to send messages at the rate of one hundred words a minute. this automatic transmitter is much used for press telegrams where duplicate messages are to be sent to various points. the automatic transmitter brought knighthood to its inventor, wheatstone receiving this honor in . wheatstone took an active part in the development of the telegraph and the submarine cable up to the time of his death in . wheatstone's telegraph would have served the purposes of humanity and probably have been universally adopted, had not a better one been invented almost before it was established. and it is because morse, taking up the work where others had left off, was able to invent an instrument which so fully satisfied the requirements of man for so long a period that he is known to all of us as the inventor of the telegraph. and yet, without belittling the part played by morse, we must recognize the important work accomplished by sir charles wheatstone. v the achievement of morse morse's early life--artistic aspirations--studies in paris--his paintings--beginnings of his invention--the first instrument--the morse code--the first written message. when we consider the youth and immaturity of america in the first half of the nineteenth century, it seems the more remarkable that the honor of making the first great practical application of electricity should have been reserved for an american. with the exception of the isolated work of franklin, the development of the new science of electrical learning was the work of europeans. this was natural, for it was europe which was possessed of the accumulated wealth and learning which are usually attained only by older civilizations. yet, with all these advantages, electricity remained largely a scientific plaything. it was an american who fully recognized the possibilities of this new force as a servant of man, and who was possessed of the practical genius and the business ability to devise and introduce a thoroughly workable system of rapid and certain communication. we have seen that wheatstone was early trained as a musician. samuel morse began life as an artist. but while wheatstone early indicated his lack of interest in music and devoted himself to scientific studies while yet a youth, morse's artistic career was of his own choosing, and he devoted himself to it for many years. this explains the fact that wheatstone attained much scientific success before morse, though he was eleven years his junior. it was in that samuel morse was born. samuel finley breese morse was the entire name with which he was endowed by his parents. he came from the sturdiest of puritan stock, his father being of english and his mother of scotch descent. his father was an eminent divine, and also notable as a geographer, being the author of the first american geography of importance. his mother also was possessed of unusual talent and force. it is interesting to note that samuel morse first saw the light in charlestown, massachusetts, at the foot of breed's hill, but little more than a mile from the birthplace of benjamin franklin. he came into the world about a year after franklin died. it is interesting to believe that some of the practical talent of america's first great electrician in some way descended to samuel morse. he received an unusual education. at the age of seven he was sent to a school at andover, massachusetts, to prepare him for phillips academy. at the academy he was prepared for yale college, which he entered when fifteen years of age. with the knowledge of science so small at the time, collegiate instruction in such subjects was naturally meager in the extreme. jeremiah day was then professor of natural philosophy at yale, and was probably america's ablest teacher of the subject. his lectures upon electricity and the experiments with which he illustrated them aroused the interest of morse, as we learn from the letters he wrote to his parents at this time. one principle in particular impressed morse. this was that "if the electric circuit be interrupted at any place the fluid will become visible, and when it passes it will leave an impression upon any intermediate body." thus was it stated in the text-book in use at yale at that time. more than a score of years after the telegraph had been achieved morse wrote: the fact that the presence of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit was the crude seed which took root in my mind, and grew into form, and ripened into the invention of the telegraph. we shall later hear of the occasion which recalled this bit of information to morse's mind. but though yale college was at that time a center of scientific activity, and morse showed more than a little interest in electricity and chemistry, his major interest remained art. he eagerly looked forward to graduation that he might devote his entire time to the study of painting. it is significant of the tolerance and breadth of vision of his parents that they apparently put no bars in the path of this ambition, though they had sacrificed to give him the best of collegiate trainings that he might fit himself for the ministry, medicine, or the law. as a boy of fifteen samuel morse had painted water-colors that attracted attention, and he was possessed of enough talent to paint miniatures while at yale which were salable at five dollars apiece, and so aided in defraying his college expenses. after his graduation from yale in , morse devoted himself entirely to the study of art, still being dependent upon his parents for support. he secured the friendship and became the pupil of washington allston, then a foremost american painter. in the summer of allston sailed for england, and morse accompanied him. in london he came to the attention of benjamin west, then at the height of his career, and benefited by his advice and encouragement. that he had no ambition other than his art at this period we may learn from a letter he wrote to his mother in . my passion for my art [he wrote] is so firmly rooted that i am confident no human power could destroy it. the more i study the greater i think is its claim to the appellation divine. i am now going to begin a picture of the death of hercules, the figure to be large as life. when he had completed this picture to his own satisfaction, he showed it to west. "go on and finish it," was west's comment. "but it is finished," said morse. "no, no. see here, and here, and here are places you can improve it." morse went to work upon his painting again, only to meet the same comment when he again showed it to west. this happened again and again. when the youth had finally brought it to a point where west was convinced it was the very best morse could do he had learned a lesson in thoroughness and painstaking attention to detail that he never forgot. that he might have a model for his painting morse had molded a figure of hercules in clay. at the advice of west he entered the cast in a competition for a prize in sculpture, with the result that he received the prize and a gold medal for his work. he then plunged into the competition for a prize and medal offered by the royal academy for the best historical painting. his subject was, "the judgment of jupiter in the case of apollo, marpessa, and idas." though he completed the picture to the satisfaction of west, morse was not able to remain in london and enter it in the competition. the rules required that the artist be present in person if he was to receive the prize, but morse was forced to return to america. he had been in england for four years--a year longer than had originally been planned for him--and he was out of funds, and his parents could support him no longer. morse lived in london during the war of , but seems to have suffered no annoyance other than that of poverty, which the war intensified by raising the prices of food as well as his necessary artist's materials to an almost prohibitive figure. the last of the napoleonic wars was also in progress. news of the battle of waterloo reached london but a short time before morse sailed for america. it required two days for the news to reach the english capital. the young american, whose inability to sell his paintings was driving him from london, was destined to devise a system which would have carried the great news to its destination within a few seconds. but while he gained fame in america and secured praise and attention as he had in london, he found art no more profitable. he contrived to eke out an existence by painting an occasional portrait, going from town to town in new england for this purpose. he turned from art to invention for a time, joining with his brother in devising a fire-engine pump of an improved pattern. they secured a patent upon it, but could not sell it. he turned again to the life of a wandering painter of portraits. in he went to charleston, south carolina, at the invitation of his uncle. his portraits proved very popular and he was soon occupied with work at good prices. this prosperity enabled him to take unto himself a wife, and the same year he married lucretia walker, of concord, new hampshire. after four years in the south morse returned to the north, hoping that larger opportunities would now be ready for him. the result was again failure. he devoted his time to huge historical paintings, and the public would neither buy them nor pay to see them when they were exhibited. another blow fell upon him in when his wife died. at last he began to secure more sitters for his portraits, though his larger works still failed. he assisted in the organization of the national academy of design and became its first president. in he again sailed for europe to spend three years in study in the galleries of paris and rome. still he failed to attain any real success in his chosen work. he had made many friends and done much worthy work, yet there is little probability that he would have attained lasting fame as an artist even though his energies had not been turned to other interests. it was on the packet ship _sully_, crossing the atlantic from france, that morse conceived the telegraph which was to prove the first great practical application of electricity. one noon as the passengers were gathered about the luncheon-table, a dr. charles t. jackson, of boston, exhibited an electro-magnet he had secured in europe, and described certain electrical experiments he had seen while in paris. he was asked concerning the speed of electricity through a wire, and replied that, according to faraday, it was practically instantaneous. the discussion recalled to morse his own collegiate studies in electricity, and he remarked that if the circuit were interrupted the current became visible, and that it occurred to him that these flashes might be used as a means of communication. the idea of using the current to carry messages became fixed in his mind, and he pondered, over it during the remaining weeks of the long, slow voyage. doctor jackson claimed, after morse had perfected and established his telegraph, that the idea had been his own, and that morse had secured it from him on board the _sully_. but doctor jackson was not a practical man who either could or did put any ideas he may have had to practical use. at the most he seems to have simply started morse's mind along a new train of thought. the idea of using the current as a carrier of messages, though it was new to morse, had occurred to others earlier, as we have seen. but at the very outset morse set himself to find a means by which he might make the current not only signal the message, but actually record it. before he landed from the _sully_ he had worked out sketches of a printing telegraph. in this the current actuated an electro-magnet on the end of which was a rod. this rod was to mark down dots and dashes on a moving tape of paper. thus was the idea born. of course the telegraph was still far from an accomplished fact. without the improved electro-magnets and the relay of professor henry, morse had not yet even the basic ideas upon which a telegraph to operate over considerable distances could be constructed. but morse was possessed of yankee imagination and practical ability. he was possessed of a fair technical education for that day, and he eagerly set himself to attaining the means to accomplish his end. that he realized just what he sought is shown by his remark to the captain of the _sully_ when he landed at new york. "well, captain," he remarked, "should you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship _sully_." with the notion of using an electro-magnet as a receiver, an alphabet consisting of dots and dashes, and a complete faith in the practical possibilities of the whole, morse went to work in deadly earnest. but poverty still beset him and it was necessary for him to devote most of his time to his paintings, that he might have food, shelter, and the means to buy materials with which to experiment. from to he was able to make but small progress. in the latter year he secured an appointment as professor of the literature of the arts of design in the newly established university of the city of new york. he soon had his crude apparatus set up in a room at the college and in was able to transmit messages. he now had a little more leisure and a little more money, but his opportunities were still far from what he would have desired. the principal aid which came to him at the university was from professor gale, a teacher of chemistry. gale became greatly interested in morse's apparatus, and was able to give him much practical assistance, becoming a partner in the enterprise. morse knew little of the work of other experimenters in the field of electricity and gale was able to tell morse what had been learned by others. particularly he brought to morse's attention the discoveries of another american, prof. joseph henry. the electro-magnet which actuated the receiving instrument in the crude set in use by morse in had but a few turns of thick wire. professor henry, by his experiments five years earlier, had demonstrated that many turns of small wire made the electro-magnet far more sensitive. morse made this improvement in his own apparatus. in henry had devised a telegraph very similar to that of morse by which he signaled through a mile of wire. his receiving apparatus was an electro-magnet, the armature of which struck a bell. thus the messages were read by sound, instead of being recorded on a moving strip of paper as by morse's system. while henry was possibly the ablest of american electricians at that time, he devoted himself entirely to science and made no effort to put his devices to practical use. neither did he endeavor to profit by his inventions, for he secured no patents upon them. professor henry realized, in common with morse and others, that if the current were to be conducted over long wires for considerable distances it would become so weak that it would not operate a receiver. henry avoided this difficulty by the invention of what is known as the relay. at a distance where the current has become weak because of the resistance of the wire and losses due to faulty insulation, it will still operate a delicate electro-magnet with a very light armature so arranged as to open and close a local circuit provided with suitable batteries. thus the recording instrument may be placed on the local circuit and as the local circuit an opened and closed in unison with the main circuit, the receiver can be operated. it was the relay which made it possible to extend telegraph lines to a considerable distance. it is not altogether clear whether morse adopted henry's relay or devised it for himself. it is believed, however, that professor henry explained the relay to professor gale, who in turn placed it before his partner, morse. by morse had completed a model, had improved his apparatus, had secured stronger batteries and longer wires, and mastered the use of the relay. it was in this year that the house of representatives ordered the secretary of the treasury to investigate the feasibility of establishing a system of telegraphs. this action urged morse to complete his apparatus and place it before the government. he was still handicapped by lack of money, lack of scientific knowledge, and the difficulty of securing necessary materials and devices. to-day the experimenter may buy wire, springs, insulators, batteries, and almost anything that might be useful. morse, with scanty funds and limited time, had to search for his materials and puzzle out the way to make each part for himself with such crude tools as he had available. need we wonder that his progress was slow? instead we should wonder that, despite all discouragements and handicaps, he clung to his great idea and labored on. but assistance was to come to him in this same eventful year of , and that quite unexpectedly. on a saturday in september a young man named alfred vail wandered into professor gale's laboratory. morse was there engaged in exhibiting his model to an english professor then visiting in new york. the youth was deeply impressed with what he saw. he realized that here were possibilities of an instrument that would be of untold service to mankind. asking professor morse whether he intended to experiment with a longer line, he was informed that such was his intention as soon as he could secure the means. young vail replied that he thought he could secure the money if morse would admit him as a partner. to this morse assented. vail plunged into the enterprise with all the enthusiasm of youth. that very evening he studied over the commercial possibilities, and before he retired had marked out on the maps in his atlas the routes for the most needed lines of communication. the young man applied to his father for support. the senior vail was the head of the speedwell iron works at morristown, new jersey, and was a man of unusual enterprise and ability. he determined to back his son in the enterprise, and morse was invited to come and exhibit his model. two thousand dollars was needed to make the necessary instruments and secure the patents. on september , , the agreement was drawn up by the terms of which alfred vail was, at his own expense, to construct apparatus suitable for exhibition to congress and to secure a patent. in return he was to receive a one-fourth interest. very shortly afterward they filed a caveat in the patent office, which is a notice serving to protect an impending invention. alfred vail immediately set to work on the apparatus, his only helper being a fifteen-year-old apprentice boy named william baxter. the two worked early and late for many months in a secret room in the iron-works, being forced to fashion every part for themselves. the first machine was a copy of morse's model, but vail's native ability as a mechanic and his own ingenuity enabled him to make many improvements. the pencil fastened to the armature which had marked zigzag lines on the moving paper was replaced by a fountain-pen which inscribed long and short lines, and thus the dashes and dots of the morse code were put into their present form. morse had worked out an elaborate telegraphic code or dictionary, but a simpler code by which combinations of dots and dashes were used to represent letters instead of numbers in a code was now devised. vail recognized the importance of having the simplest combinations of dots and dashes stand for the most used letters, as this would increase the speed of sending. he began to figure out for himself the frequency with which the various letters occur in the english language. then he thought of the combination of types in a type-case, and, going to a local newspaper office, found the result all worked out for him. in each case of type such common letters as _e_ and _t_ have many more types than little used letters such as _q_ and _z_. by observing the number of types of each letter provided, vail was enabled to arrange them in the order of their importance in assigning them symbols in the code. thus the morse code was arranged as it stands to-day. alfred vail played a very important part in the arrangement of the code as well as in the construction of the apparatus, and there are many who believe that the code should have been called the vail code instead of the morse code. [illustration: morse's first telegraph instrument a pen was attached to the pendulum and drawn across the strip of paper by the action of the electro-magnet. the lead type shown in the lower right-hand corner was used in making electrical contact when sending a message. the modern instrument shown in the lower left-hand corner is the one that sent a message around the world in .] morse came down to speedwell when he could to assist vail with the work, and yet it progressed slowly. but at last, early in january of they had the telegraph at work, and william baxter, the apprentice boy, was sent to call the senior vail. within a few moments he was in the work-room studying the apparatus. alfred vail was at the sending key, and morse was at the receiver. the father wrote on a piece of paper these words: "a patient waiter is no loser." handing it to his son, he stated that if he could transmit the message to morse by the telegraph he would be convinced. the message was sent and recorded and instantly read by morse. the first test had been completed successfully. vi "what hath god wrought?" congress becomes interested--washington to baltimore line proposed--failure to secure foreign patents--later indifference of congress--lean years--success at last--the line is built--the first public message--popularity. morse and his associates now had a telegraph which they were confident would prove a genuine success. but the great work of introducing this new wonder to the public, of overcoming indifference and skepticism, of securing financial support sufficient to erect a real line, still remained to be done. we shall see that this burden remained very largely upon morse himself. had morse not been a forceful and able man of affairs as well as an inventor, the introduction of the telegraph might have been even longer delayed. the new telegraph was exhibited in new york and philadelphia without arousing popular appreciation. it was viewed as a scientific toy; few saw in it practical possibilities. morse then took it to washington and set up his instruments in the room of the committee on commerce of the house of representatives in the capitol. here, as in earlier exhibitions, a majority of those who saw the apparatus in operation remained unconvinced of its ability to serve mankind. but morse finally made a convert of the hon. francis o.j. smith, chairman of the committee on commerce. smith had previously been in correspondence with the inventor, and morse had explained to him at length his belief that the government should own the telegraph and control and operate it for the public good. he believed that the government should be sufficiently interested to provide funds for an experimental line a hundred miles long. in return he was willing to promise the government the first rights to purchase the invention at a reasonable price. later he changed his request to a line of fifty miles, and estimated the cost of erection at $ , . smith aided in educating the other members of his committee, and one day in february of he secured the attendance of the entire body at a test of the telegraph over ten miles of wire. the demonstration convinced them, and many were their expressions of wonder and amazement. one member remarked, "time and space are now annihilated." as a result the committee reported a bill appropriating $ , for the erection of an experimental line between washington and baltimore. smith's report was most enthusiastic in his praise of the invention. in fact, the congressman became so much interested that he sought a share in the enterprise, and, securing it, resigned from congress that he might devote his efforts to securing the passage of the bill and to acting as legal adviser. at this time the enterprise was divided into sixteen shares: morse held nine; smith, four; alfred vail, two; and professor gale, one. we see that morse was a good enough business man to retain the control. wheatstone and others were developing their telegraphs in europe, and morse felt that it was high time to endeavor to secure foreign patents on his invention. accompanied by smith, he sailed for england in may, taking with him a new instrument provided by vail. arriving in london, they made application for a patent. they were opposed by wheatstone and his associates, and could not secure even a hearing from the patent authorities. morse strenuously insisted that his telegraph was radically different from wheatstone's, laying especial emphasis on the fact that his recording instrument printed the message in permanent form, while wheatstone's did not. morse always placed great emphasis on the recording features of his apparatus, yet these features were destined to be discarded in america when his telegraph at last came into use. with no recourse open to him but an appeal to parliament, a long and expensive proceeding with little apparent possibility of success, morse went to france, hoping for a more favorable reception. he found the french cordial and appreciative. french experts watched his tests and examined his apparatus, pronouncing his telegraph the best of all that had been devised. he received a patent, only to learn that to be effective the invention must be put in operation in france within two years, under the french patent law. morse sought to establish his line in connection with a railway, as wheatstone had established his in england, but was told that the telegraph must be a government monopoly, and that no private parties could construct or operate. the government would not act, and morse found himself again defeated. faring no better with other european governments, morse decided to return to america to push the bill for an appropriation before congress. while morse was in europe gaining publicity for the telegraph, but no patents, his former fellow-passenger on the _sully_, dr. charles jackson, had laid claim to a share in the invention. he insisted that the idea had been his and that he had given it to morse on the trip across the atlantic. this morse indignantly denied. congress would now take no action upon the invention. a heated political campaign was in progress, and no interest could be aroused in an invention, no matter what were its possibilities in the advancement of the work and development of the nation. smith was in politics, the vails were suffering from a financial depression, professor gale was a man of very limited means, and so morse found himself without funds or support. in paris he had met m. daguerre, who had just discovered photography. morse had learned the process and, in connection with doctor draper, he fitted up a studio on the roof of the university. here they took the first daguerreotypes made in america. morse's work in art had been so much interrupted that he had but few pupils. the fees that these brought to him were small and irregular, and he was brought to the very verge of starvation. we are told of the call morse made upon one pupil whose tuition was overdue because of a delay in the arrival of funds from his home. "well, my boy," said the professor, "how are we off for money?" the student explained the situation, adding that he hoped to have the money the following week. "next week!" exclaimed morse. "i shall be dead by next week--dead of starvation." "would ten dollars be of any service?" asked the student, astonished and distressed. "ten dollars would save my life," was morse's reply. the student paid the money--all he had--and they dined together, morse remarking that it was his first meal for twenty-four hours. morse's situation and feelings at this time are also illustrated by a letter he wrote to smith late in . i find myself [he wrote] without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me, whose interests, one would think, would impell them to at least inquire if they could render me some assistance. for nearly two years past i have devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying myself all pleasures and even necessary food, that i might have a sum, to put my telegraph into such a position before congress as to insure success to the common enterprise. i am crushed for want of means, and means of so trifling a character, too, that they who know how to ask (which i do not) could obtain in a few hours.... as it is, although everything is favorable, although i have no competition and no opposition--on the contrary, although every member of congress, so far as i can learn, is favorable--yet i fear all will fail because i am too poor to risk the trifling expense which my journey and residence in washington will occasion me. i will not run in debt, if i lose the whole matter. no one can tell the days and months of anxiety and labor i have had in perfecting my telegraphic apparatus. for want of means i have been compelled to make with my own hands (and to labor for weeks) a piece of mechanism which could be made much better, and in a tenth the time, by a good mechanician, thus wasting time--time which i cannot recall and which seems double-winged to me. "hope deferred maketh the heart sick." it is true, and i have known the full meaning of it. nothing but the consciousness that i have an invention which is to mark an era in human civilization, and which is to contribute to the happiness of millions, would have sustained me through so many and such lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it. a patent on the telegraph had been issued to morse in . the issuance had been delayed at morse's request, as he desired to first secure foreign patents, his own american rights being protected by the caveat he had filed. although the commercial possibilities, and hence the money value of the telegraph had not been established, morse was already troubled with the rival claims of those who sought to secure a share in his invention. while working and waiting and saving, morse conceived the idea of laying telegraph wires beneath the water. he prepared a wire by wrapping it in hemp soaked in tar, and then covering the whole with rubber. choosing a moonlight night in the fall of , he submerged his cable in new york harbor between castle garden and governors island. a few signals were transmitted and then the wire was carried away by a dragging anchor. truly, misfortune seemed to dog morse's footsteps. this seems to have been the first submarine cable, and in writing of it not long after morse hazarded the then astonishing prediction that europe and america would be linked by telegraphic cable. failing to secure effective aid from his associates, morse hung on grimly, fighting alone, and putting all of his strength and energy into the task of establishing an experimental line. it was during these years that he demonstrated his greatness to the full. his letters to the members of the congressional committee on commerce show marked ability. they outline the practical possibilities very clearly. morse realized not only the financial possibilities of his invention, but its benefit to humanity as well. he also presented very practical estimates of the cost of establishing the line under consideration. the committee again recommended that $ , be appropriated for the construction of a washington-baltimore line. the politicians had come to look upon morse as a crank, and it was extremely difficult for his adherents to secure favorable action in the house. many a congressman compared morse and his experiments to mesmerism and similar "isms," and insisted that if the government gave funds for this experiment it would be called upon to supply funds for senseless trials of weird schemes. the bill finally passed the house by the narrow margin of six votes, the vote being taken orally because so many congressmen feared to go on record as favoring an appropriation for such a purpose. the bill had still to pass the senate, and here there seemed little hope. morse, who had come to washington to press his plan, anxiously waited in the galleries. the bill came up for consideration late one evening just before the adjournment. a senator who noticed morse went up to him and said: "there is no use in your staying here. the senate is not in sympathy with your project. i advise you to give it up, return home, and think no more about it." the inventor went back to his room, with how heavy a heart we may well imagine. he paid his board bill, and found himself with but thirty-seven cents in the world. after many moments of earnest prayer he retired. early next morning there came to him miss annie ellsworth, daughter of his friend the commissioner of patents, and said, "professor, i have come to congratulate you." "congratulate me!" replied morse. "on what?" "why," she exclaimed, "on the passage of your bill by the senate!" the bill had been passed without debate in the closing moments of the session. as morse afterward stated, this was the turning-point in the history of the telegraph. his resources were reduced to the minimum, and there was little likelihood that he would have again been able to bring the matter to the attention of congress. so pleased was morse over the news of the appropriation, and so grateful to miss ellsworth for her interest in bringing him the good news, that he promised her that she should send the first message when the line was complete. with the government appropriation at his disposal, morse immediately set to work upon the washington-baltimore line. professors gale and fisher served as his assistants, and mr. vail was in direct charge of the construction work. another person active in the enterprise was ezra cornell, who was later to found cornell university. cornell had invented a machine for laying wires underground in a pipe. it was originally planned to place the wires underground, as this was thought necessary or their protection. after running the line some five miles out from baltimore it was found that this method of installing the line was to be a failure. the insulation was not adequate, and the line could not be operated to the first relay station. a large portion of the $ , voted by congress had been spent and the line was still far from completion. disaster seemed imminent. smith lost all faith in the enterprise, demanded most of the remaining money under a contract he had taken to lay the line, and a quarrel broke out between him and morse which further jeopardized the undertaking. morse and such of his lieutenants as remained faithful in this hour of trial, after a long consultation, decided to string the wire on poles. the method of attaching the wire to the poles was yet to be determined. they finally decided to simply bore a hole through each pole near the top and push the wire through it. stringing the wire in such fashion was no small task, but it was finally accomplished. it was later found necessary to insulate the wire with bottle necks where it passed through the poles. on may , , the line was complete. remembering his promise to miss ellsworth, morse called upon her next morning to give him the first message. she chose, "what hath god wrought?" and early on the morning of the th morse sat at the transmitter in the supreme court room in the capitol and telegraphed these immortal words to vail at baltimore. the message was received without difficulty and repeated back to morse at washington. the magnetic telegraph was a reality. still the general public remained unconvinced. as in the case of wheatstone's needle telegraph a dramatic incident was needed to demonstrate the utility of this new servant. fortunately for morse, the telegraph's opportunity came quickly. the democratic national convention was in session at baltimore. after an exciting struggle they dropped van buren, then president, and nominated james k. polk. silas wright was named for the vice-presidency. at that time mr. wright was in washington. hearing of the nomination, alfred vail telegraphed it to morse in washington. morse communicated with wright, who stated that he could not accept the honor. the telegraph was ready to carry his message declining the nomination, and within a very few minutes vail had presented it to the convention at baltimore, to the intense surprise of the delegates there assembled. they refused to believe that wright had been communicated with, and sent a committee to washington to see wright and make inquiries. they found that the message was genuine, and the utility of the telegraph had been strikingly established. vii development of the telegraph system the magnetic telegraph company--the western union--crossing the continent--the improvements of alfred vail--honors awarded to morse--duplex telegraphy--edison's improvements. for some time the telegraph line between washington and baltimore remained on exhibition as a curiosity, no charge being made for demonstrating it. congress made an appropriation to keep the line in operation, vail acting as operator at the washington end. on april , , the line was put in operation on a commercial basis, service being offered to the public at the rate of one cent for four characters. it was operated as a branch of the post-office department. on the th of april a visitor from virginia came into the washington office wishing to see a demonstration. up to this time not a paid message had been sent. the visitor, having no permit from the postmaster-general, was told that he could only see the telegraph in operation by sending a message. one cent being all the money he had other than twenty-dollar bills, he asked for one cent's worth. the washington operator asked of baltimore, "what time is it?" which in the code required but one character. the reply came, "one o'clock," another single character. thus but two characters had been used, or one-half cent's worth of telegraphy. the visitor expressed himself as satisfied, and waived the "change." this penny was the line's first earnings. under the terms of the agreement by which congress had made the appropriation for the experimental line, morse was bound to give the government the first right to purchase his invention. he accordingly offered it to the united states for the sum of $ , . there followed a distressing example of official stupidity and lack of foresight. with the opportunity to own and control the nation's telegraph lines before it the government declined the offer. this action was taken at the recommendation of the hon. cave johnson, then postmaster-general, under whose direction the line had been operated. he had been a member of congress at the time the original appropriation was voted, and had ridiculed the project. the nation was now so unfortunate as to have him as its postmaster-general, and he reported "that the operation of the telegraph between washington and baltimore had not satisfied him that, under any rate of postage that could be adopted, its revenues could be made equal to its expenditures." and yet the telegraph, here offered to the government for $ , , was developed under private management until it paid a profit on a capitalization of $ , , . morse seems to have had a really patriotic motive, as well as a desire for immediate return and the freedom from further worries, in his offer to the government. he was greatly disappointed at its refusal to purchase, a refusal that was destined to make morse a wealthy man. amos kendall, who had been postmaster-general under jackson, was now acting as morse's agent, and they decided to depend upon private capital. plans were made for a line between new york and philadelphia, and to arouse interest and secure capital the apparatus was exhibited in new york city at a charge of twenty-five cents a head. the public refused to patronize in sufficient numbers to even pay expenses, and the entire exhibition was so shabby, and the exhibitors so poverty-stricken, that the sleek capitalists who came departed without investing. some of the exhibitors slept on chairs or on the floor in the bare room, and it is related that the man who was later to give his name and a share of his fortune to cornell university was overjoyed at finding a quarter on the sidewalk, as it enabled him to buy a hearty breakfast. though men of larger means refused to take shares, some in humbler circumstances could recognize the great idea and the wonderful vision which morse had struggled so long to establish--a vision of a nation linked together by telegraphy. the magnetic telegraph company was formed and work started on the line. in august of morse sailed for europe in an endeavor to enlist foreign capital. the investors of europe proved no keener than those of america, and the inventor returned without funds, but imbued with increased patriotism. he had become convinced that the telegraph could and would succeed on american capital alone. in the next year a line was constructed from philadelphia to washington, thus extending the new york-philadelphia line to the capital. henry o'reilly, of rochester, new york, took an active part in this construction work and now took the contract to construct a line from philadelphia to st. louis. this line was finished by december of . the path having been blazed, others sought to establish lines of their own without regard to morse's patents. one of these was o reilly, who, on the completion of the line to st. louis, began one to now orleans, without authority from morse or his company. o'reilly called his telegraph "the people's line," and when called to account in the courts insisted not only that his instruments were different from morse's, and so no infringement of his patents, but also that the morse system was a harmful monopoly and that "the people's line" should be encouraged. it was further urged that wheatstone in england and steinheil in germany had invented telegraphs before morse, and that professor henry had invented the relay which made it possible to operate the telegraph over long distances. the suits resulted in a legal victory for morse, and his patents were maintained. but still other rival companies built lines, using various forms of apparatus, and though the courts repeatedly upheld morse's patent rights, the pirating was not effectively checked. the telegraph had come to be a necessity and the original company lacked the capital to construct lines with sufficient rapidity to meet the need. within ten years after the first line had been put into operation the more thickly settled portions of the united states were served by scores of telegraph lines owned by a dozen different companies. hardly any of these were making any money, though the service was poor and the rates were high. they were all operating on too small a scale and business uses of the telegraph had not yet developed sufficiently. an amalgamation of the scattered, competing lines was needed, both to secure better service for the public and proper dividends for the investors. this amalgamation was effected by mr. hiram sibley, who organized the western union in . the plan was ridiculed at the time, some one stating that "the western union seems very like collecting all the paupers in the state and arranging them into a union so as to make rich men of them." but these pauper companies did become rich once they were united under efficient management. the nation was just then stretching herself across to the pacific. the commercial importance of california was growing rapidly. by stage-coaches were crossing the plains and the pony-express riders were carrying the mail. the pioneers of the telegraph felt that a line should span the continent. this was then a tremendous undertaking, and when mr. sibley proposed that the western union should undertake the construction of such a line he was met with the strongest opposition. the explorations of frémont were not far in the past, and the vast extent of country west of the mississippi was regarded as a wilderness peopled with savages and almost impossible of development. but sibley had faith; he was possessed of morse's vision and morse's courage. the western union refusing to undertake the enterprise, he began it himself. the government, realizing the military and administrative value of a telegraph line to california, subsidized the work. additional funds were raised and a route selected was through omaha and salt lake city to san francisco. the undertaking proved less formidable than had been anticipated, for, instead of two years, less than five months were occupied in completing the line. sibley's tact and ability did much to avoid opposition by the indians. he made the red men his friends and impressed upon them the wonder of the telegraph. when the line was in operation between fort kearney and fort laramie he invited the chief of the arapahoes at fort kearney to communicate by telegraph with his friend the chief of the sioux at fort laramie. the two chiefs exchanged telegrams and were deeply impressed. they were told that the telegraph was the voice of the manitou or great spirit. to convince them it was suggested that they meet half-way and compare their experiences. though they were five hundred miles apart, they started out on horseback, and on meeting each other found that the line had carried their words truly. the story spread among the tribes, and so the telegraph line became almost sacred to the indians. they might raid the stations and kill the operators, but they seldom molested the wires. among many ignorant peoples the establishment of the telegraph has been attained with no small difficulty. the chinese showed a dread of the telegraph, frequently breaking down the early lines because they believed that they would take away the good luck of their district. the arabs, on the other hand, did not oppose the telegraph. this is partly because the name is one which they can understand, _tel_ meaning wire to them, and _araph_, to know. thus in arabic _tele-agraph_ means to know by wire. just as the indians of our own plains had difficulty in understanding the telegraph, so the primitive peoples in other parts of the world could scarce believe it possible. a story is told of the construction of an early line in british india. the natives inquired the purpose of the wire from the head man. "the wire is to carry messages to calcutta," he replied. "but how can words run along a wire?" they asked. the head man puzzled for a moment. "if there were a dog," he replied, "with a tail long enough to reach from here to calcutta, and you pinched his tail here, wouldn't he howl in calcutta?" once sibley and the other american telegraph pioneers had spanned the continent, they began plans for spanning the globe. their idea was to unite america and europe by a line stretched through british columbia, alaska, the aleutian islands, and siberia. siberia had been connected with european russia, and thus practically the entire line could be stretched on land, only short submarine cables being necessary. it was then seriously doubted that cables long enough to cross the atlantic were practicable. the expedition started in , a fleet of thirty vessels carrying the men and supplies. tremendous difficulties had been overcome and a considerable part of the work accomplished when the successful completion of the atlantic cable made the work useless. nearly three million dollars had been expended by the western union in this attempt. yet, despite this loss, its affairs were so generally successful and the need for the telegraph so real that it continued to thrive until it reached its present remarkable development. while the line-builders were busy stretching telegraph wires into almost every city and town in the nation, others were perfecting the apparatus. alfred vail was a leading figure in this work. already he had played a large part in designing and constructing the apparatus to carry out morse's ideas, and he continued to improve and perfect until practically nothing remained of morse's original apparatus. the original morse transmitter had consisted of a porte-rule and movable type. this was cumbersome, and vail substituted a simple key to make and break the circuit. vail had also constructed the apparatus to emboss the message upon the moving strip of paper, but this he now improved upon. the receiving apparatus was simplified and the pen was replaced by a disk smeared with ink which marked the dots and dashes upon the paper. as we have noticed, morse took particular pride in the fact that the receiving apparatus in his telegraph was self-recording, and considered this as one of the most important parts of his system. but when the telegraph began to come into commercial use the operators at the receiving end noticed that they could read the messages from the long and short periods between the clicks of the receiving mechanism. thus they were taking the message by ear and the recording mechanism was superfluous. rules and fines failed to break them of the habit, and vail, recognizing the utility of the development, constructed a receiver which had no recording device, but from which the messages were read by listening to the clicks as the armature struck against the frame in which it was set. thus the telegraph returned in its elements to the form of professor henry's original bell telegraph. with his bell telegraph and his relay henry had the elements of a successful system. he failed, however, to develop them practically or to introduce them to the attention of the public. he was the man of science rather than the practical inventor. alfred vail, joining with morse after the latter had conceived the telegraph, but before his apparatus was in practical form, was a tireless and invaluable mechanical assistant. his inventions of apparatus were of the utmost practical value, and he played a very large part in bringing the telegraph to a form where it could serve man effectively. after success had been won morse did not extend to vail the credit which it seems was his due. yet, though morse made free use of the ideas and assistance of others, he was richly deserving of a major portion of the fame and the rewards that came to him as inventor of the telegraph. morse was the directing genius; he contributed the idea and the leadership, and bore the brunt of the burdens when all was most discouraging. honors were heaped upon morse both at home and abroad as his telegraph established itself in all parts of the world. orders of knighthood, medals, and decorations were conferred upon him. though he had failed to secure foreign patents, many of the foreign governments recognized the value of his invention, and france, austria, belgium, netherlands, russia, sweden, turkey, and some smaller nations joined in paying him a testimonial of four hundred thousand francs. it is to be noticed that great britain did not join in this testimonial, though morse's system had been adopted there in preference to the one developed by wheatstone. in a statue of morse was erected in central park, new york city. it was in the spring of the next year that another statue was unveiled, this time one of benjamin franklin, and morse presided at the ceremonies. the venerable man received a tremendous ovation on this occasion, but the cold of the day proved too great a strain upon him. he contracted a cold which eventually resulted in his death on april , . while extended consideration cannot be given here to the telegraphic inventions of thomas a. edison, no discussion of the telegraph should close without at least some mention of his work in this field. edison started his career as a telegrapher, and his first inventions were improvements in the telegraph. his more recent and more wonderful inventions have thrown his telegraphic inventions into the shadow. on the telegraph as invented by morse but one message could be sent over a single wire at one time. it was later discovered that two messages' could be sent over the single wire in opposite directions at the same time. this was called duplex telegraphy. edison invented duplex telegraphy by which two messages could be sent over the same wire in the same direction at the same time. later he succeeded in combining the two, which resulted in the quadruplex, by which four messages may be sent over one wire at one time. though edison received comparatively little for this invention, its commercial value may be estimated from the statement by the president of the western union that it saved that company half a million dollars in a single year. edison's quadruplex system was also adopted by the british lines. before this he had perfected an automatic telegraph, work on which had been begun by george little, an englishman. little could make the apparatus effective only over a short line and attained no very great speed. edison improved the apparatus until it transmitted thirty-five hundred words a minute between new york and philadelphia. such is the perfection to which morse's marvel has been brought in the hands of the most able of modern inventors. viii telegraphing beneath the sea early efforts at underwater telegraphy--cable construction and experimentation--the first cables--the atlantic cable projected--cyrus w. field becomes interested--organizes atlantic telegraph company--professor thomson as scientific adviser--his early life and attainments. the idea of laying telegraph wires beneath the sea was discussed long before a practical telegraph for use on land had been attained. it is recorded that a spaniard suggested submarine telegraphy in . experiments were conducted early in the nineteenth century with various materials in an effort to find a covering for the wires which would be both a non-conductor of electricity and impervious to water. an employee of the east india company made an effort to lay a cable across the river hugli as early as . his method was to coat the wire with pitch inclose it in split rattan, and then wrap the whole with tarred yarn. wheatstone discussed a calais-dover cable in , but it remained for morse to actually lay an experimental cable. we have already heard of his experiments in new york harbor in . his insulation was tarred hemp and india rubber. wheatstone performed a similar experiment in the bay of swansea a few months later. perhaps the first practical submarine cable was laid by ezra cornell, one of morse's associates, in . he laid twelve miles of cable in the hudson river, connecting fort lee with new york city. the cable consisted of two cotton-covered wires inclosed in rubber, and the whole incased in a lead pipe. this cable was in use for several months until it was carried away by the ice in the winter of . these early experimenters found the greatest difficulty in incasing their wires in rubber, practical methods of working that substance being then unknown. the discovery of gutta-percha by a scotch surveyor of the east india company in , and the invention of a machine for applying it to a wire, by dr. werner siemens, proved a great aid to the cable-makers. these gutta-percha-covered wires were used for underground telegraphy both in england and on the continent. tests were made with such a cable for submarine work off dover in , and, proving successful, the first cable across the english channel was laid the next year by john watkins brett. the cable was weighted with pieces of lead fastened on every hundred yards. a few incoherent signals were exchanged and the communication ceased. a boulogne fisherman had caught the new cable in his trawl, and, raising it, had cut a section away. this he had borne to port as a great treasure, believing the copper to be gold in some new form of deposit. this experience taught the need of greater protection for a cable, and the next year another was laid across the channel, which was protected by hemp and wire wrappings. this proved successful. in england and ireland were joined by cable, and the next year a cable was laid across the north sea to holland. the success of these short cables might have promised success in an attempt to cross the atlantic had not failures in the deep water of the mediterranean made it seem an impossibility. we have noted that morse suggested the possibility of uniting europe and america by cable. the same thought had occurred to others, but the undertaking was so vast and the problems so little understood that for many years none were bold enough to undertake the project. a telegraph from new york to st. john's, newfoundland, was planned, however, which was to lessen the time of communication between the continents. news brought by boats from england could be landed at st. john's and telegraphed to new york, thus saving two days. f.n. gisborne secured the concession for such a line in , and began the construction. cables were required to connect newfoundland with the continent, and to cross the gulf of st. lawrence, but the rest of the line was to be strung through the forests. before much had been accomplished, gisborne had run out of funds, and work was suspended. in gisborne met cyrus west field, of new york, a retired merchant of means. field became interested in gisborne's project, and as he examined the globe in his library the thought occurred to him that the line to st. john's was but a start on the way to england. the idea aroused his enthusiasm, and he determined to embark upon the gigantic enterprise. he knew nothing of telegraph cables or of the sea-bottom, and so sought expert information on the subject. one important question was as to the condition of the sea-bottom on which the cable must rest. lieutenant berryman of the united states navy had taken a series of soundings and stated that the sea-bottom between newfoundland and ireland was a comparatively level plateau covered with soft ooze, and at a depth of about two thousand fathoms. this seemed to the investigators to have been provided for the especial purpose of receiving a submarine cable, so admirably was it suited to this purpose. morse was consulted, and assured field that the project was entirely feasible, and that a submarine cable once laid between the continents could be operated successfully. field thereupon adopted the plans of gisborne as the first step in the larger undertaking. in an attempt was made to lay a cable across the gulf of st. lawrence, but a storm arose, and the cable had to be cut to save the ship from which it was being laid. another attempt was made the following summer with better equipment, and the cable was successfully completed. other parts of the line had been finished, the telegraph now stretched a thousand miles toward england, and new york was connected with st. john's. desiring more detailed information of the ocean-bed along the proposed route, field secured the assistance of the united states and british governments. lieutenant berryman, u.s.n., in the _arctic_, and lieutenant dayman, r.n., in the _cyclops_, made a careful survey. their soundings revealed a ridge near the irish coast, but the slope was gradual and the general conditions seemed especially favorable. the preliminary work had been done by an american company with field at the head and morse as electrician. now field went to england to secure capital sufficient for the larger enterprise. with the assistance of mr. j.w. brett he organized the atlantic telegraph company, field himself supplying a quarter of the capital. associated with field and brett in the leadership of the enterprise was charles tiltson bright, a young englishman who became engineer for the new company. besides the enormous engineering difficulties of producing a cable long enough and strong enough, and laying it at the bottom of the atlantic, there were electrical problems involved far greater than morse seems to have realized. it had been discovered that the passage of a current through a submarine cable is seriously retarded. the retarding of the current as it passes through the water is a difficulty that does not exist with the land telegraph stretched on poles. faraday had demonstrated that this retarding was caused by induction between the electricity in the wire and the water about the cable. the passage of the current through the wire induces currents in the water, and these moving in the opposite direction act as a drag on the passage of the message through the wire. what the effect of this phenomenon would be on a cable long enough to cross the atlantic wan a serious problem that required deep study by the company's engineers. it seemed entirely possible that the messages would move so slowly that the operation of the cable, once it was laid, would not pay. faraday failed to give any definite information on the subject, but professor william thomson worked out the law of retardation accurately and furnished to the cable-builders the accurate information which was required. doctor whitehouse, electrician for the atlantic company, conducted some experiments of his own and questioned the accuracy of thomson's statements. thomson maintained his position so ably, and proved himself so thoroughly a master of the subject that field and his associates decided to enlist him in the enterprise. this addition to the forces was one of the utmost importance. william thomson, later to become lord kelvin, was probably the ablest scientist of his generation, and was destined to prove his great abilities in his early work with the atlantic cable. william thomson was born in belfast, ireland, in . his father was a teacher and took an especially keen interest in the affairs of his boys because their mother had died while william was very young. when william was eight years of age his father removed to glasgow, scotland, where he had secured the chair of mathematics in glasgow university. his early education he secured from his father, and this training, coupled with his natural brilliancy, enabled him to develop genuine precocity. at the age of eight he attended his father's university lectures as a visitor, and it is reported that on one occasion he answered his father's questions when all of the class had failed. at the age of ten he entered the university, together with his brother james, who was but two years older. the brothers displayed marked interest in science and invention, eagerly pursued their studies in these branches, and performed many electrical experiments together. [illustration: cyrus w. field] [illustration: william thomson (lord kelvin)] james took the degrees b.a. and m.a. in successive years. though william also passed the examinations, he did not take the degrees, because he had decided to go to cambridge, and it was thought best that he take all his degrees from that great school. in writing to his older brother at this time, william was accustomed to sign himself "b.a.t.a.i.a.p.," which signified "b.a. to all intents and purposes." after finishing their work at glasgow the boys traveled extensively on the continent. at seventeen william entered st. peter's college, cambridge university, taking courses in advanced mathematics and continuing to distinguish himself. he took an active part in the life of the university, making something of a record us an athlete, winning the silver sculls, and rowing on a 'varsity crew which took the measure of oxford in the great annual boat-race. he also interested himself in literature and music, but his real passion was science. already he had written many learned essays on mathematical electricity and was accomplishing valuable research work. on the completion of his work at cambridge he secured a fellowship which brought him an income of a thousand dollars a year and enabled him to pursue his studies in paris. when he was but twenty-two years of age he was made professor of natural philosophy at the university of glasgow. though young, he proved entirely successful, and wan immensely popular with his students. at that time the university had no experimental laboratory, and professor thomson and his pupils performed their experiments in the professor's room and in an abandoned coal-cellar, slowly developing a laboratory for themselves. his development continued until, when at the age of thirty-three he was called upon to assist with the work of laying an atlantic cable, he was possessed of scientific attainments which made him invaluable among the cable pioneers. ix the pioneer atlantic cable making the cable--the first attempt at laying--another effort checked by storm--the cable laid at last--messages cross the ocean--the cable fails--professor thomson's inventions and discoveries--their part in designing and constructing an improved cable and apparatus. field and his business associates were extremely anxious that the cable be laid with all possible speed, and little time was allowed the engineers and electricians for experimentation. the work of building the cable was begun early in by two english firms. it consisted of seven copper wires covered with gutta-percha and wound with tarred hemp. over this were wound heavy iron wires to give protection and added strength. the whole weighed about a ton to the mile, and was both strong and flexible. the distance from the west coast of ireland to newfoundland being , nautical miles, it was decided to supply , miles of cable, an extra length being, of course, necessary to allow for the inequalities at the bottom of the sea, and the possibility of accident. the british and american governments had already provided subsidies, and they now supplied war-ships for use in the work of laying the cable. the _agamemnon_, one of the largest of england's war-ships, and the _niagara_, giant of the united states navy, were to do the actual work of cable-laying, the cable being divided between them. they were accompanied by the united states frigate _susquehanna_ and the british war-ships _leopard_ and _cyclops_. in august of the fleet assembled on the irish coast for the start, and the american sailors landed the end of the cable amid great ceremony. the work of cable-laying was begun by the _niagara_, which steamed slowly away, accompanied by the fleet. the great cable payed out smoothly as the irish coast was left behind and the frigate increased her speed. the submarine hill with its dangerous slopes was safely passed, and it was felt that the greatest danger was past. the paying-out machinery seemed to be working perfectly. telegraphic communication was constantly maintained with the shore end. for six days all went well and nearly four hundred miles of cable had been laid. with the cable dropping to the bottom two miles down it was found that it was flowing out at the rate of six miles an hour while the _niagara_ was steaming but four. it was evident that the cable was being wasted, and to prevent its running out too fast at this great depth the brake controlling the flow of the cable was tightened. the stern of the vessel rising suddenly on a wave, the strain proved too great and the cable parted and was lost. instant grief swept over the ship and squadron, for the heart of every one was in the great enterprise. it was felt that it would be useless to attempt to grapple the cable at this great depth, and there seemed nothing to do but abandon it and return. the loss of the cable and of a year's time--since another attempt could not be made until the next season--resulted in a total loss to the company of half a million dollars. public realization of the magnitude of the task had been awakened by the failure of the first expedition and field found it far from easy to raise additional capital. it was finally accomplished, however, and a new supply of cable was constructed. professor thomson had been studying the problems of submarine telegraphy with growing enthusiasm, and had now arrived at the conclusion that the conductivity of the cable depended very largely upon the purity of the copper employed. he accordingly saw to it that in the construction of the new section all the wires were carefully tested and such as did not prove perfect were discarded. in the mean time the engineers were busy improving the paying-out machinery. they designed an automatic brake which would release the cable instantly upon the strain becoming too great. it was thus hoped to avoid a recurrence of the former accident. chief-engineer bright also arranged a trial trip for the purpose of drilling the staff in their various duties. the same vessels were provided to lay the cable on the second attempt and the fleet sailed in june of , this time without celebration or public ceremony. on this occasion the recommendation of chief-engineer bright was followed, and it was arranged that the _niagara_ and _agamemnon_ should meet in mid-ocean, there splice the cable together and proceed in opposite directions, laying the cable simultaneously. on this expedition professor thomson was to assume the real scientific leadership, professor morse, though he retained his position with the company, taking no active part. the ships had not proceeded any great distance before they ran into a terrible gale. the _agamemnon_ had an especially difficult time of it, her great load of cable overbalancing the ship and threatening to break loose again and again and carry the great vessel and her precious cargo to the bottom. the storm continued for over a week, and when at last it had blown itself out the _agamemnon_ resembled a wreck and many of her crew had been seriously injured. but the cable had been saved and the expedition was enabled to proceed to the rendezvous. the _niagara_, a larger ship, had weathered the storm without mishap. the splice was effected on saturday, the th, but before three miles had been laid the cable caught in the paying-out machinery on the _niagara_ and was broken off. another splice was made that evening and the ships started again. the two vessels kept in communication with each other by telegraph as they proceeded, and anxious inquiries and many tests marked the progress of the work. when fifty miles were out, the cable parted again at some point between the vessels and they again sought the rendezvous in mid-atlantic. sufficient cable still remained and a third start was made. for a few days all went well and some four hundred miles of cable had been laid with success as the messages passing from ship to ship clearly demonstrated. field, thomson, and bright began to believe that their great enterprise was to be crowned with success when the cable broke again, this time about twenty feet astern of the _agamemnon_. this time there was no apparent reason for the mishap, the cable having parted without warning when under no unusual strain. the vessels returned to queenstown, and field and thomson went to london, where the directors of the company were assembled. many were in favor of abandoning the enterprise, selling the remaining cable for what it would bring, and saving as much of their investment as possible. but field and thomson were not of the sort who are easily discouraged, and they managed to rouse fresh courage in their associates. yet another attempt was decided upon, and with replenished stores the _agamemnon_ and _niagara_ once again proceeded to the rendezvous. the fourth start was made on the th of july. on several occasions as the work progressed communication failed, and professor thomson on the _agamemnon_ and the other electricians on the _niagara_ spent many anxious moments fearing that the line had again been severed. on each occasion, however, the current resumed. it was afterward determined that the difficulties were because of faulty batteries rather than leaks in the cable. on both ships bad spots were found in the cable as it was uncoiled and some quick work was necessary to repair them before they dropped into the sea, since it was practically impossible to stop the flow of the cable without breaking it. the _niagara_ had some narrow escapes from icebergs, and the _agamemnon_ had difficulties with ships which passed too close and a whale which swam close to the ship and grazed the precious cable. but this time there was no break and the ships approached their respective destinations with the cable still carrying messages between them. the _niagara_ reached the newfoundland coast on august th, and early the next morning landed the cable in the cable-house at trinity bay. the _agamemnon_ reached the irish coast but a few hours later, and her end of the cable was landed on the afternoon of the same day. the public, because of the repeated failures, had come to look upon the cable project as a sort of gigantic wild-goose chase. the news that a cable had at last been laid across the ocean was received with incredulity. becoming convinced at last, there was great rejoicing in england and america. queen victoria sent to president buchanan a congratulatory message in which she expressed the hope "that the electric cable which now connects great britain with the united states will prove an additional link between the two nations, whose friendship is founded upon their mutual interest and reciprocal esteem." the president responded in similar vein, and expressed the hope that the neutrality of the cable might be established. honors were showered upon the leaders in the enterprise. charles bright, the chief engineer, was knighted, though he was then but twenty-six years of age. banquet after banquet was held in england at which bright and thomson were the guests of honor. new york celebrated in similar fashion. a grand salute of one hundred guns was fired, the streets were decorated, and the city was illuminated at night. the festivities rose to the highest pitch in september with field receiving the plaudits of all new york. special services were held in trinity church, and a great celebration was held in crystal palace. the mayor presented to field a golden casket, and the ceremony was followed by a torchlight parade. that very day the last message went over the wire. the shock to the public was tremendous. many insisted that the cable had never been operated and that the entire affair was a hoax. this was quickly disproved. aside from the messages between queen and president many news messages had gone over the cable and it had proved of great value to the british government. the indian mutiny had been in progress and regiments in canada had received orders by mail to sail for india. news reached england that the mutiny was at an end, and the cable enabled the government to countermand the orders, thus saving a quarter of a million dollars that would have been expended in transporting the troops. the engineers to whom the operations of the cable had been intrusted had decided that very high voltages were necessary to its successful operation. they had accordingly installed huge induction coils and sent currents of two thousand volts over the line. even this voltage had failed to operate the morse instruments, the drag by induction proving too great. the strain of this high voltage had a very serious effect upon the insulation. abandoning the morse instruments and the high voltage, recourse was then had to professor thomson's instruments, which proved entirely effective with ordinary battery current. because of the effect of induction the current is much delayed in traveling through a long submarine cable and arrives in waves. professor thomson devised his mirror galvanometer to meet this difficulty. this device consists of a large coil of very fine wire, in the center of which, in a small air-chamber, is a tiny mirror. mounted on the back of the mirror are very small magnets. the mirror is suspended by a fiber of the finest silk. thus the weakest of currents coming in over the wire serve to deflect the mirror, and a beam of light being directed upon the mirror and reflected by it upon a screen, the slightest movement of the mirror is made visible. if the mirror swings too far its action is deadened by compressing the air in the chamber. the instrument is one of the greatest delicacy. such was the greatest contribution of professor thomson to submarine telegraphy. without it the cable could not have been operated even for a short period. had it been used from the first the line would not have been ruined and might have been used for a considerable period. professor thomson together with engineer bright made a careful investigation of the causes of failure. the professor pointed out that had the mirror galvanometer been used with a moderate current the cable could have been continued in successful operation. ha continued to improve this apparatus and at the same time busied himself with a recording instrument to be used for cable work. both thomson and bright had recommended a larger and stronger cable, and other failures in cable-laying in the red sea and elsewhere in the next few years bore out their contentions. but with each failure new experience was gained and methods were perfected. professor thomson continued his work with the utmost diligence and continued to add to the fund of scientific knowledge on the subject. so it was that he was prepared to take his place as scientific leader of the next great effort. x a successful cable attained field raises new capital--the _great eastern_ secured and equipped--staff organized with professor thomson as scientific director--cable parts and is lost--field perseveres--the cable recovered--the continents linked at last--a commercial success--public jubilation--modern cables. the early 'sixties were trying years for the cable pioneers. it required all of field's splendid genius and energy to keep the project alive. in the face of repeated failures, and doubt as to whether messages could be sent rapidly enough to make any cable a commercial success, it was extremely difficult to raise fresh capital. america continued to evince interest in the cable, but with, the civil war in progress it was not easy to raise funds. but no discouragement could deter field. though he suffered severely from seasickness, he crossed the atlantic sixty-four times in behalf of the great enterprise which he had begun. it was necessary to raise three million dollars to provide a cable of the improved type decided upon and to install it properly. the english firm of glass, eliot & company, which was to manufacture the cable, took a very large part of the stock. the new cable was designed in accordance with the principles enunciated by professor thomson. the conductor consisted of seven wires of pure copper, weighing three hundred pounds to the mile. this copper core was covered with chatterton's compound, which served as water-proofing. this was surrounded by four layers of gutta-percha, cemented together by the compound, and about this hemp was wound. the outer layer consisted of eighteen steel wires wound spirally, each being covered with a wrapping of hemp impregnated with a preservative solution. the new cable was twice as heavy as the old and more than twice as strong, a great advance having been made in the methods of manufacturing steel wire. it was decided that the cable should, be laid by one vessel, instead of endeavoring to work from two as in the past. happily, a boat was available which was fitted to carry this enormous burden. this was the _great eastern_, a mammoth vessel far in advance of her time. this great ship of , tons had been completed in , but had not proved a commercial success. the docks of that day were not adequate, the harbors were not deep enough, and the cargoes were insufficient. she had long lain idle when she was secured by the cable company and fitted out for the purpose of laying the cable, which was the first useful work which had been found for the great ship. the , miles of heavy cable was coiled into the hull and paying-out machinery was installed upon the decks. huge quantities of coal and other supplies were added. capt. james anderson of the cunard line was placed in command of the ship for the expedition, with captain moriarty, r.n., as navigating officer. professor thomson and mr. c.f. varley represented the atlantic telegraph company as electricians and scientific advisers. mr. samuel canning was engineer in charge for the contractors. mr. field was also on board. it was on july , , that the expedition started from the irish coast, where the eastern end of the cable had been landed. less than a hundred miles of cable had been laid when the electricians discovered a fault in the cable. the _great eastern_ was stopped, the course was retraced, and the cable picked up until the fault was reached. it was found that a piece of iron wire had in some way pierced the cable so that the insulation was ruined. this was repaired and the work of laying was again commenced. five days later, when some seven hundred miles of cable had been laid, communication was again interrupted, and once again they turned back, laboriously lifting the heavy cable from the depths, searching for the break. again a wire was found thrust through the cable, and this occasioned no little worry, as it was feared that this was being done maliciously. it was on august d that the next fault was discovered. nearly two-thirds of the cable was now in place and the depth was here over one mile. raising the cable was particularly difficult, and just at this juncture the _great eastern's_ machinery broke down, leaving her without power and at the mercy of the waves. subjected to an enormous strain, the precious cable parted and was lost. despite the great depth, efforts were made to grapple the lost cable. twice the cable was hooked, but on both occasions the rope parted and after days of tedious work the supply of rope was exhausted and it was necessary to return to england. still another cable expedition had ended in failure. field, the indomitable, began all over again, raising additional funds for a new start. the _great eastern_ had proved entirely satisfactory, and it was hoped that with improvements in the grappling-gear the cable might be recovered. the old company gave way before a new organization known as the anglo-american telegraph company. it was decided to lay an entirely new cable, and then to endeavor to complete the one partially laid in . with no services other than private prayers at the station on the irish shore, the _great eastern_ steamed away for the new effort on july , . this time the principal difficulties arose within the ship. twice the cable became tangled in the tanks and it was necessary to stop the ship while the mass was straightened out. most of the time the "coffee-mill," as the seamen called the paying-out machinery, ground steadily away and the cable sank into the sea. as the work progressed field and thomson, who had suffered so many failures in their great enterprise, watched with increasing anxiety. they were almost afraid to hope that the good fortune would continue. just two weeks after the irish coast had been left behind the _great eastern_ approached newfoundland just as the shadows of night were added to those of a thick fog. on the next morning, july th, she steamed into trinity bay, where flags were flying in the little town in honor of the great accomplishment. amid salutes and cheers the cable was landed and communication between the continents was established. almost the first news that came over the wire was that of the signing of the treaty of peace which ended the war between prussia and austria. early in august the _great eastern_ again steamed away to search for the cable broken the year before. arriving on the spot, the grapples were thrown out and the tedious work of dragging the sea-bottom was begun. after many efforts the cable was finally secured and raised to the surface. a new section was spliced on and the ship again turned toward america. on september th the second cable was successfully landed, and two wires were now in operation between the continents. thus was the great task doubly fulfilled. once again there were public celebrations in england and america. field received the deserved plaudits of his countrymen and thomson was knighted in recognition of his achievements. [illustration: the "great eastern" laying the atlantic cable. ] the new cables proved a success and were kept in operation for many years. thomson's mirror receiver had been improved until it displayed remarkable sensitiveness. using the current from a battery placed in a lady's thimble, a message was sent across the atlantic through one cable and back through the other. professor thomson was to give to submarine telegraphy an even more remarkable instrument. the mirror instrument did not give a permanent record of the messages. the problem of devising a means of recording the messages delicate enough so that it could be operated with rapidity by the faint currents coming over a long cable was extremely difficult. but thomson solved it with his siphon recorder. in this a small coil is suspended between the poles of a large magnet; the coil being free to turn upon its axis. when the current from the cable passes through the coil it moves, and so varies the position of the ink-siphon which is attached to it. the friction of a pen on paper would have proved too great a drag on so delicate an instrument, and so a tiny jet of ink from the siphon was substituted. the ink is made to pass through the siphon with sufficient force to mark down the message by a delightfully ingenious method. thomson simply arranged to electrify the ink, and it rushes through the tiny opening on to the paper just as lightning leaps from cloud to earth. professor, now sir, thomson continued to take an active part in the work of designing and laying new cables. not only did he contribute the apparatus and the scientific information which made cables possible, but he attained renown as a physicist and a scientist in many other fields. in he was given the title of lord kelvin, and it was by this name that he was known as the leading physicist of his day. he survived until . to cyrus w. field must be assigned a very large share of the credit for the establishment of telegraphic communication between the continents. he gave his fortune and all of his tremendous energy and ability to the enterprise and kept it alive through failure after failure. he was a promoter of the highest type, the business man who recognized a great human need and a great opportunity for service. without his efforts the scientific discoveries of thomson could scarcely have been put to practical use. the success of the first cable inspired others. in a cable from france to the united states was laid from the _great eastern_. in the direct united states cable company laid another cable to england, which was followed by another cable to france. one cable after another was laid until there are now a score. this second great development in communication served to bring the two continents much closer together in business and in thought and has proved of untold benefit. xi alexander graham bell, the youth the family's interest in speech improvement--early life-influence of sir charles wheatstone--he comes to america--visible speech and the mohawks--the boston school for deaf mutes--the personality of bell. the men of the bell family, for three generations, have interested themselves in human speech. the grandfather, the father, and the uncle of alexander graham bell were all elocutionists of note. the grandfather achieved fame in london; the uncle, in dublin; and the father, in edinburgh. the father applied himself particularly to devising means of instructing the deaf in speech. his book on _visible speech_ explained his method of instructing deaf mutes in speech by the aid of their sight, and of teaching them to understand the speech of others by watching their lips as the words are spoken. alexander graham bell was born in edinburgh in , and received his early education in the schools of that city. he later studied at warzburg, germany, where he received the degree of doctor of philosophy. he followed very naturally in the footsteps of his father, taking an early interest in the study of speech. he was especially anxious to aid his mother, who was deaf. as a boy he exhibited a genius for invention, as well as for acoustics. much of this was duo to the wise encouragement of his father. he himself has told of a boyhood invention. my father once asked my brother melville and myself to try to make a speaking-machine, i don't suppose he thought we could produce anything of value, in itself. but he knew we could not even experiment and manufacture anything which even tried to speak, without learning something of the voice and the throat; and the mouth--all that wonderful mechanism of sound production in which he was so interested. so my brother and i went to work. we divided the task--he was to make the lungs and the vocal cords, i was to make the mouth and the tongue. he made a bellows for the lungs and a very good vocal apparatus out of rubber. i procured a skull and molded a tongue with rubber stuffed with cotton wool, and supplied the soft parts of the throat with the same material then i arranged joints, so the jaw and the tongue could move. it was a great day for us when we fitted the two parts of the device together. did it speak? it squeaked and squawked a good deal, but it made a very passable imitation of "mam-ma--mam-ma." it sounded very much like a baby. my father wanted us to go on and try to get other sounds, but we were so interested in what we had done we wanted to try it out. so we proceeded to use it to make people think there was a baby in the house, and when we made it cry "mam-ma," and heard doors opening and people coming, we were quite happy. what has become of it? well, that was across the ocean, in scotland, but i believe the mouth and tongue part that i made is in georgetown somewhere; i saw it not long ago. the inventor tells of another boyhood invention that, though it had no connection with sound or speech, shows his native ingenuity. again we will tell it in his own words. i remember my first invention very well. there were several of us boys, and we were fond of playing around a mill where they ground wheat into flour. the miller's son was one of the boys, and i am afraid he showed us how to be a good deal of a nuisance to his father. one day the miller called us into the mill and said, "why don't you do something useful instead of just playing all the time?" i wasn't afraid of the miller as much as his son was, so i said, "well, what can we do that is useful?" he took up a handful of wheat, ran it over in his hand and said: "look at that! if you could manage to get the husks off that wheat, that would be doing something useful!" so i took some wheat home with me and experimented. i found the husks came off without much difficulty. i tried brushing them off and they came off beautifully. then it occurred to me that brushing was nothing but applying friction to them. if i could brush the husks off, why couldn't the husks be rubbed off? there was in the mill a machine--i don't know what it was for--but it whirled its contents, whatever it was, around in a drum. i thought, "why wouldn't the husks come off if the raw wheat was whirled around in that drum?" so back i went to the miller and suggested the idea to him. "why," he said, "that's a good idea." so he called his foreman and they tried it, and the husks came off beautifully, and they've been taking husks off that way ever since. that was my very first invention, and it led me to thinking for myself, and really had quite an influence on my way and methods of thought. up to his sixteenth year young bell's reading consisted largely of novels, poetry, and romantic tales of scotch heroes. but in addition he was picking up some knowledge of anatomy, music, electricity, and telegraphy. when he was but sixteen years of age his father secured for him a position as teacher of elocution and this necessarily turned his thought into more serious channels. he now spent his leisure studying sound. during this period he made several discoveries in sound which were of some small importance. when he was twenty-one years of age he went to london and there had the good fortune to come to the attention of charles wheatstone and alex j. ellis. ellis was at that time president of the london philological society, and had translated helmholtz's _the sensation of tone_ into english. he had made no little progress with sound, and demonstrated to bell the methods by which german scientists had caused tuning-forks to vibrate by means of electro-magnets and had combined the tones of several tuning-forks in an effort to reproduce the sound of the human voice. helmholtz had performed this experiment simply to demonstrate the physical basis of sound, and seems to have had no idea of its possible use in telephony. that an electro-magnet could vibrate a tuning-fork and so produce sound was an entirely new and fascinating idea to the youth. it appealed to his imagination, quickened by his knowledge of speech. "why not an electrical telegraph?" he asked himself. his idea seems to have been that the electric current could carry different notes over the wire and reproduce them by means of the electro-magnet. although bell did not know it, many others were struggling with the same problem, the answer to which proved most elusive. it gave bell a starting-point, and the search for the telephone began. sir charles wheatstone was then england's leading man of science, and so bell sought his counsel. wheatstone received the young man and listened to his statement of his ideas and ambitions and gave him every encouragement. he showed him a talking-machine which had recently been invented by baron de kempelin, and gave him the opportunity to study it closely. thus bell, the eager student, the unknown youth of twenty-two, came under the influence of wheatstone, the famous scientist and inventor of sixty-seven. this influence played a great part in shaping bell's career, arousing as it did his passion for science. this decided him to devote himself to the problem of reproducing sounds by mechanical means. thus a new improvement in the means of human communication was being sought and another pioneer of science was at work. the death of the two brothers of the young scientist from tuberculosis, and the physician's report that he himself was threatened by the dread malady, forced a change in his plans and withdrew him from an atmosphere which was so favorable to the development of his great ideas. he was told that he must seek a new climate and lead a more vigorous life in the open. accompanied by his father, he removed to america and at the age of twenty-six took up the struggle for health in the little canadian town of brantford. he occupied himself by teaching his father's system of visible speech among the mohawk indians. in this work he met with no little success. at the same time he was gaining in bodily vigor and throwing off the tendency to consumption which had threatened his life. he did not forget the great idea which filled his imagination and eagerly sought the telephone with such crude means as were at hand. he succeeded in designing a piano which, with the aid of the electric current, could transmit its music over a wire and reproduce it. while lecturing in boston on his system of teaching visible speech, the elder bell received a request to locate in that city and take up his work in its schools. he declined the offer, but recommended his son as one entirely competent for the position. alexander graham bell received the offer, which he accepted, and he was soon at work teaching the deaf mutes in the school which boston had opened for those thus afflicted. he met with the greatest success in his work, and ere long achieved a national reputation. during the first year of his work, , he was the sensation of the educational world. boston university offered him a professorship, in which position he taught others his system of teaching, with increased success. the demand for his services led him to open a school of vocal physiology. he had made some improvements in his father's system for teaching the deaf and dumb to speak and to understand spoken words, and displayed great ability as a teacher. his experiments with telegraphy and telephony had been laid aside, and there seemed little chance that he would turn from the work in which he was accomplishing so much for so many sufferers, and which was bringing a comfortable financial return, and again undertake the tedious work in search for a telephone. fortunately, bell was to establish close relationships with those who understood and appreciated his abilities and gave him encouragement in his search for a new means of communication. thomas sanders, a resident of salem, had a five-year-old son named georgie who was a deaf mute. mr. sanders sought bell's tutelage for his son, and it was agreed that bell should give georgie private lessons for the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars a year. it was also arranged that bell was to reside at the sanders home in salem. he made arrangements to conduct his future experiments there. another pupil who came to him about this time was mabel hubbard, a fifteen-year-old girl who had lost her hearing and consequently her powers of speech, through an attack of scarlet fever when an infant. she was a gentle and lovable girl, and bell fell completely in love with his pupil. four years later he was to marry her and she was to prove a large influence in helping him to success. she took the liveliest interest in all of his experiments and encouraged him to new endeavor after each failure. she kept his records and notes and wrote his letters. through her bell secured the support of her father, gardiner g. hubbard, who was widely known as one of boston's ablest lawyers. he was destined to become bell's chief spokesman and defender. hubbard first became aware of bell's inventive genius when the latter was calling one evening at the hubbard home in cambridge. bell was illustrating some mysteries of acoustics with the aid of the piano. "do you know," he remarked, "that if i sing the note g close to the strings of the piano, the g string will answer me?" this did not impress the lawyer, who asked its significance. "it is a fact of tremendous importance," answered bell. "it is evidence that we may some day have a musical telegraph which will enable us to send as many messages simultaneously over one wire as there are notes on that piano." from that time forward hubbard took every occasion to encourage bell to carry forward his experiments in musical telegraphy. as a young man bell was tall and slender, with jet-black eyes and hair, the latter being pushed back into a curly tangle. he was sensitive and high-strung, very much the artist and the man of science. his enthusiasms were intense, and, once his mind was filled with an idea, he followed it devotedly. he was very little the practical business man and paid scant attention to the small, practical details of life. he was so interested in visible speech, and so keenly alert to the pathos of the lives of the deaf mutes, that he many times seriously considered giving over all experiments with the musical telegraph and devoting his entire life and energies to the amelioration of their condition. xii the birth of the telephone the cellar at sanderses'--experimental beginnings--magic revived in salem town--the dead man's ear--the right path--trouble and discouragement--the trip to washington--professor joseph henry--the boston workshop--the first faint twang of the telephone--early development. alexander graham bell had not resided at the sanderses' home very long before he had fitted the basement up as a workshop. for three years he haunted it, spending all of his leisure time in his experiments. here he had his apparatus, and the basement was littered with a curious combination of electrical and acoustical devices--magnets, batteries, coils of wire, tuning-forks, speaking-trumpets, etc. bell had a great horror that his ideas might be stolen and was very nervous over any possible intrusion into his precious workshop. only the members of the sanders family were allowed to enter the basement. he was equally cautious in purchasing supplies and equipment lest his very purchases reveal the nature of his experiments. he would go to a half-dozen different stores for as many articles. he usually selected the night for his experiments, and pounded and scraped away indefatigably, oblivious of the fact that the family, as well as himself, was sorely in need of rest. "bell would often awaken me in the middle of the night," says mr. sanders, "his black eyes blazing with excitement. leaving me to go down to the cellar, he would rush wildly to the barn and begin to send me signals along his experimental wires. if i noticed any improvement in his apparatus he would be delighted. he would leap and whirl around in one of his 'war-dances,' and then go contentedly to bed. but if the experiment was a failure he would go back to his work-bench to try some different plan." in common with other experimenters who were searching for the telephone, bell was experimenting with a sort of musical telegraph. eagerly and persistently he sought the means that would replace the telegraph with its cumbersome signals by a new device which would enable the human voice itself to be transmitted. the longer he worked the greater did the difficulties appear. his work with the deaf and dumb was alluring, and on many occasions he seriously considered giving over his other experiments and devoting himself entirely to the instruction of the deaf and dumb and to the development of his system of making speech visible by making the sound-vibrations visible to the eye. but as he mused over the difficulties in enabling a deaf mute to achieve speech nothing else seemed impossible. "if i can make a deaf mute talk," said bell, "i can make iron talk." one of his early ideas was to install a harp at one end of the wire and a speaking-trumpet at the other. his plan was to transmit the vibrations over the wire and have the voice reproduced by the vibrations of the strings of the harp. by attaching a light pencil or marker to a cord or membrane and causing the latter to vibrate by talking against it, he could secure tracings of the sound-vibrations. different tracings were secured from different sounds. he thus sought to teach the deaf to speak by sight. at this time bell enjoyed the friendship of dr. clarence j. blake, an eminent boston aurist, who suggested that the experiments be conducted with a human ear instead of with a mechanical apparatus in imitation of the ear. bell eagerly accepted the idea, and doctor blake provided him with an ear and connecting organs cut from a dead man's head. bell soon had the ghastly specimen set up in his workshop. he moistened the drum with glycerine and water and, substituting a stylus of hay for the stapes bone, he obtained a wonderful series of curves which showed the vibrations of the human voice as recorded by the ear. one can scarce imagine a stranger picture than bell must have presented in the conduct of those experiments. we can almost see him with his face the paler in contrast with his black hair and flashing black eyes as he shouted and whispered by turns into the ghastly ear. surely he must have looked the madman, and it is perhaps fortunate that he was not observed by impressionable members of the public else they would have been convinced that the witches had again visited old salem town to ply their magic anew. but it was a new and very real and practical sort of magic which was being worked there. his experiments with the dead man's ear brought to bell at least one important idea. he noted that, though the ear-drum was thin and light, it was capable of sending vibrations through the heavy bones that lay back of it. and so he thought of using iron disks or membranes to serve the purpose of the drum in the ear and arrange them so that they would vibrate an iron rod. he thought of connecting two such instruments with an electrified wire, one of which would receive the sound-vibrations and the other of which would reproduce them after they had been transmitted along the wire. at last the experimenter was on the right track, with a conception of a practicable method of transmitting sound. he now possessed a theoretical knowledge of what the telephone he sought should be, but there yet remained before him the enormous task of devising and constructing the apparatus which would carry out the idea, and find the best way of utilizing the electrical current for this work. bell was now at a critical point in his career and was confronted by the same difficulty which assails so many inventors. in his constant efforts to achieve a telephone he had entirely neglected his school of vocal physiology, which was now abandoned. georgie sanders and mabel hubbard were his only pupils. though sanders and hubbard were genuinely interested in bell and his work, they felt that he was impractical, and were especially convinced that his experiments with the ear and its imitations were entirely useless. they believed that the electrical telegraph alone presented possibilities, and they told bell that unless he would devote himself entirely to the improvement of this instrument and cease wasting time and money over ear toys that had no commercial value they would no longer give him financial support. hubbard went even further, and insisted that if bell did not abandon his foolish notions he could not marry his daughter. bell was almost without funds, his closest friends now seemed to turn upon him, and altogether he was in a sorry plight. of course sanders and hubbard meant the best, yet in reality they were seeking to drive their protégé in exactly the wrong direction. as far back as a german scientist named philipp reis produced a musical telephone that even transmitted a few imperfect words. but it would not talk successfully. others had followed in his footsteps, using the musical telephone to transmit messages with the morse code by means of long and short hums. elisha gray, of chicago, also experimented with the musical telegraph. at the transmitting end a vibrating steel tongue served to interrupt the electric current which passed over the wire in waves, and, passing through the coils of an electro-magnet at the receiving end, caused another strip of steel located near the magnet to vibrate and so produce a tone which varied with the current. all of these developments depended upon the interruption of the current by some kind of a vibrating contact. the limitations which sanders and hubbard sought to impose upon bell, had they been obeyed to the letter, must have prevented his ultimate success. in a letter to his mother at this time, he said: i am now beginning to realize the cares and anxieties of being an inventor. i have had to put off all pupils and classes, for flesh and blood could not stand much longer such a strain as i have had upon me. but good fortune was destined to come to bell along with the bad. on an enforced trip to washington to consult his patent attorney--a trip he could scarce raise funds to make--bell met prof. joseph henry. we have seen the part which this eminent scientist had played in the development of the telegraph. now he was destined to aid bell, as he had aided morse a generation earlier. the two men spent a day over the apparatus which bell had with him. though professor henry was fifty years his senior and the leading scientist in america, the youth was able to demonstrate that he had made a real discovery. "you are in possession of the germ of a great invention," said henry, "and i would advise you to work at it until you have made it complete." "but," replied bell, "i have not got the electrical knowledge that is necessary." "get it," was henry's reply. this proved just the stimulus bell needed, and he returned to boston with a new determination to perfect his great idea. bell was no longer experimenting in the sanderses' cellar, having rented a room in boston in which to carry on his work. he had also secured the services of an assistant, one thomas watson, who received nine dollars a week for his services in bell's behalf. the funds for this work were supplied by sanders and hubbard jointly, but they insisted that bell should continue his experiments with the musical telegraph. though he was convinced that the opportunities lay in the field of telephony, bell labored faithfully for regular periods with the devices in which his patrons were interested. the remainder of his time and energy he put upon the telephone. the basis of his telephone was still the disk or diaphragm which would vibrate when the sound-waves of the voice were thrown against it. behind this were mounted various kinds of electro-magnets in series with the electrified wire over which the inventor hoped to send his messages. for three years they labored with this apparatus, trying every conceivable sort of disk. it is easy to pass over those three years, filled as they were with unceasing toil and patient effort, because they were drab years when little of interest occurred. but these were the years when bell and watson were "going to school," learning how to apply electricity to this new use, striving to make their apparatus talk. how dreary and trying these years must have been for the experimenters we may well imagine. it requires no slight force of will to hold oneself to such a task in the face of failure after failure. by june of bell had completed a new instrument. in this the diaphragm was a piece of gold-beater's skin, which bell had selected as most closely resembling the drum in the human ear. this was stretched tight to form a sort of drum, and an armature of magnetized iron was fastened to its middle. thus the bit of iron was free to vibrate, and opposite it was an electro-magnet through which flowed the current that passed over the line. this acted as the receiver. at the other end of the wire was a sort of crude harmonica with a clock spring, reed, and magnet. bell and watson had been working upon their crude apparatus for months, and finally, on june d, sounds were actually transmitted. bell was afire with enthusiasm; the first great step had been taken. the electric current had carried sound-vibrations along the wire and had reproduced them. if this could be done a telephone which would reproduce whole words and sentences could be attained. [illustration: alexander graham bell] [illustration: thomas a. watson] so great was bell's enthusiasm over this achievement that he succeeded in convincing sanders and hubbard that his idea was practical, and they at last agreed to finance him in his further experiments with the telephone. a second membrane receiver was constructed, and for many more weeks the experiments continued. it was found that sounds were carried from instrument to instrument, but as a telephone they were still far from perfection. it was not until march of that bell, speaking into the instrument in the workroom, was heard and understood by watson at the other instrument in the basement. the telephone had carried and delivered an intelligible message. the telephone which bell had invented, and on which he received a patent on his twenty-ninth birthday, consisted of two instruments similar in principle to what we would now call receivers. if you will experiment with the receiver of a modern telephone you will find that it will transmit as well as receive sound. the heart of the transmitter was an electro-magnet in front of which was a drum-like membrane with a piece of iron cemented to its center opposite the magnet. a mouthpiece was arranged to throw the sounds of the voice against the diaphragm, and as the membrane vibrated the bit of iron upon it--acting as an armature--induced currents corresponding to the sound-waves, in the coils of the electro-magnet. passing over the line the current entered the coils of the tubular electro-magnet in the receiver. a thin disk of soft iron was fastened at the end of this. when the current-waves passed through the coils of the magnet the iron disk was thrown into vibration, thus producing sound. as it vibrated with the current produced by the iron on the vibrating membrane in the transmitter acting as an armature, transmitter and receiver vibrated in unison and so the same sound was given off by the receiver and made audible to the human ear as was thrown against the membrane of the transmitter by the voice. the patent issued to bell has been described as "the most valuable single patent ever issued." certainly it was destined to be of tremendous service to civilization. it was so entirely new and original that bell found difficulty in finding terms in which to describe his invention to the patent officials. he called it "an improvement on the telegraph," in order that it might be identified as an improvement in transmitting intelligence by electricity. in reality the telephone was very far from being a telegraph or anything in the nature of a telegraph. as bell himself stated, his success was in large part due to the fact that he had approached the problem from the viewpoint of an expert in sound rather than as an electrician. "had i known more about electricity and less about sound," he said, "i would never have invented the telephone." as we have seen, those electricians who worked from the viewpoint of the telegraph never got beyond the limitations of the instrument and found that with it they could transmit signals but not sounds. bell, with his knowledge of the laws of speech and sound, started with the principles of the transmission of sound as a basis and set electricity to carrying the sound-vibrations. xiii the telephone at the centennial boll's impromptu trip to the exposition--the table under the stairs--indifference of the judges--enter don pedro, emperor of brazil--attention and amazement--skepticism of the public--the aid of gardiner hubbard--publicity campaign. the philadelphia centennial exposition--america's first great exposition--opened within a month after the completion of the first telephone. the public knew nothing of the telephone, and before it could be made a commercial success and placed in general service the interest of investors and possible users had to be aroused. the centennial seemed to offer an unusual opportunity to place the telephone before the public. but bell, like morse, had no money with which to push his invention. hubbard was one of the commissioners of the exposition, and exerted his influence sufficiently so that a small table was placed in an odd corner in the department of education for the exhibition of the apparatus. the space assigned was a narrow strip between the stairway and the wall. but no provision was made to allow bell himself to be present. the young inventor was almost entirely without funds. sanders and hubbard had paid nothing but his room rent and the cost of his experiments. he had devoted himself to his inventions so entirely that he had lost all of his professional income. so it was that he was forced to face the prospect of staying in boston and allowing this opportunity of opportunities to pass unimproved. his fiancée, miss hubbard, expected to attend the exposition, and had heard nothing of bell's inability to go. he went with her to the station, and as the train was leaving she learned for the first time that he was not to accompany her. she burst into tears at the disappointment. seeing this, bell dashed madly after the train and succeeded in boarding it. without money or baggage, he nevertheless succeeded in arriving in philadelphia. bell arrived at the exposition but a few days before the judges were to make their tour of inspection. with considerable difficulty hubbard had secured their promise that they would stop and examine the telephone. they seemed to regard it as a toy not worth their attention, and the public generally had displayed no interest in the device. when the day for the inspection arrived bell waited eagerly. as the day passed his hope began to fall, as there seemed little possibility that the judges would reach his exhibit. the western union's exhibit of recording telegraphs, the self-binding harvester, the first electric light, gray's musical telegraph, and other prominently displayed wonders had occupied the attention of the scientists. it was well past supper-time when they came to bell's table behind the stairs, and most of the judges were tired out and loudly announced their intention of quitting then and there. at this critical moment, while they were fingering bell's apparatus indifferently and preparing for their departure, a strange and fortunate thing occurred. followed by a group of brilliantly attired courtiers, the emperor of brazil appeared. he rushed up to bell and greeted him with a warmth of affection that electrified the indifferent judges. they watched the scene in astonishment, wondering who this young bell was that he could attract the attention and the friendship of the emperor. the emperor had attended bell's school for deaf mutes in boston when it was at the height of its success, and had conceived a warm admiration for the young man and taken a deep interest in his work. the emperor was ready to examine bell's invention, though the judges were not. bell showed him how to place his ear to the receiver, and he then went to the transmitter which had been placed at the other end of the wire strung along the room. the emperor waited expectantly, the judges watched curiously. bell, at a distance, spoke into the transmitter. in utter wonderment the emperor raised his head from the receiver. "my god," he cried, "it talks!" skepticism and indifference were at an end among the judges, and they eagerly followed the example of the emperor. joseph henry, the most venerable savant of them all, took his place at the receiver. though his previous talk with bell, when the telephone was no more than an idea, should perhaps have prepared him, he showed equal astonishment, and instantly expressed his admiration. next followed sir william thomson, the hero of the cable and england's greatest scientist. after his return to england thomson described his sensations. "i heard," he said, "'to be or not to be ... there's the rub,' through an electric wire; but, scorning monosyllables, the electric articulation rose to higher flights, and gave me passages from the new york newspapers. all this my own ears heard spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by the then circular-disk armature of just such another little electro-magnet as this i hold in my hand." thomson pronounced bell's telephone "the most wonderful thing he had seen in america." the judges had forgotten that they were hungry and tired, and remained grouped about the telephone, talking and listening in turn until far into the evening. with the coming of the next morning bell's exhibit was moved from its obscure corner and given the most prominent place that could be found. from that time forward it was the wonder of the centennial. [illustration: professor bell's vibrating reed] [illustration: professor bell's first telephone] [illustration: the first telephone switchboard used in new haven, conn, for eight subscribers] [illustration: early new york exchange boys were employed as operators at first, but they were not adapted to the work so well as girls.] [illustration: professor bell in salem, mass., and mr. watson in boston, demonstrating the telephone before audiences in ] [illustration: dr bell at the telephone opening the new york-chicago line, october , ] yet but a small part of the public could attend the exposition and actually test the telephone for themselves. many of these believed that it was a hoax, and general skepticism still prevailed. business men, though they were convinced that the telephone would carry spoken messages, nevertheless insisted that it presented no business possibilities. hubbard, however, had faith in the invention, and as bell was not a business man, he took upon himself the work of promotion--the necessary, valuable work which must be accomplished before any big idea or invention may be put at the service of the public. hubbard's first move was to plan a publicity campaign which should bring the new invention favorably to the attention of all, prove its claims, and silence the skeptics. they were too poor to set up an experimental line of their own, and so telegraph lines were borrowed for short periods wherever possible, demonstrations were given and tests made. the assistance of the newspapers was invoked and news stories of the tests did much to popularize the new idea. an opportunity then came to bell to lecture and demonstrate the telephone before a scientific body in essex. he secured the use of a telegraph line and connected the hall with the laboratory in boston. the equipment consisted of old-fashioned box 'phones over a foot long and eight inches square, built about an immense horseshoe magnet. watson was stationed in the boston laboratory. bell started his lecture, with watson constantly listening over the telephone. bell would stop from time to time and ask that the ability of the telephone to transmit certain kinds of sounds be illustrated. musical instruments were played in boston and heard in essex; then watson talked, and finally he was instructed to sing. he insisted that he was not a singer, but the voices of others less experienced in speaking over the crude instruments often failed to carry sufficiently well for demonstration purposes. so watson sang, as best he could, "yankee doodle," "auld lang syne," and other favorites. after the lecture had been completed members of the audience were invited to talk over the telephone. a few of them mustered confidence to talk with watson in boston, and the newspaper reporters carefully noted down all the details of the conversation. the lecture aroused so much interest that others were arranged. the first one had been free, but admission was charged for the later lectures and this income was the first revenue bell had received for his invention. the arrangements were generally the same for each of the lectures about boston. the names of longfellow, of holmes, and of other famous american men of letters are found among the patrons of some of the lectures in boston. bell desired to give lectures in new york city, but was not certain that his apparatus would operate at that distance over the lines available. the laboratory was on the third floor of a rooming-house, and watson shouted so loud in his efforts to make his voice carry that the roomers complained. so he took blankets and erected a sort of tent over the instruments to muffle the sound. when the signal came from bell that he was ready for the test, watson crawled into the tent and began his shoutings. the day was a hot one, and by the time that the test had been completed watson was completely wilted. but the complaints of the roomers had been avoided. for one of the new york demonstrations the services of a negro singer with a rich barytone voice had been secured. watson had no little difficulty in rehearsing him for the part, as he objected to placing his lips close to the transmitter. when the time for the test arrived he persisted in backing away from the mouthpiece when he sang, and, though watson endeavored to hold the transmitter closer to him, his efforts were of no avail. finally bell told watson that as the negro could not be heard he would have to sing himself. the girl operator in the laboratory had assembled a number of her girl friends to watch the test, and watson, who did not consider himself a vocalist, did not fancy the prospect. but there was no one else to sing, the demonstration must proceed, and finally watson struck up "yankee doodle" in a quavering voice. the negro looked on in disgust. "is that what you wanted me to do, boss?" "yes," replied the embarrassed watson. "well, boss, i couldn't sing like that." the telegraph wires which were borrowed to demonstrate the utility of the telephone proved far from perfect for the work at hand. many of the wires were rusted and the insulation was poor. the stations along the line were likely to cut in their relays when the test was in progress, and bell's instruments were not arranged to overcome this retardation. however, the lectures were a success from the popular viewpoint. the public flocked to them and the fame of the telephone grew. so many cities desired the lecture that it finally became necessary for bell to employ an assistant to give the lecture for him. frederick gower, a providence newspaper man, was selected for this task, and soon mastered bell's lecture. it was then possible to give two lectures on the same evening, bell delivering one, gower the other, and watson handling the laboratory end for both. gower secured a contract for the exclusive use of the telephone in new england, but failed to demonstrate much ability in establishing the new device on a business basis. how little the possibilities of the telephone were then appreciated we may understand from the fact that gower exchanged his immensely valuable new england rights for the exclusive right to lecture on the telephone throughout the country. the success of these lectures made it possible for bell to marry, and he started for england on a wedding-trip. the lectures also aroused the necessary interest and made it possible to secure capital for the establishment of telephone lines. it also determined hubbard in his plan of leasing the telephones instead of selling them. this was especially important, as it made possible the uniformity of the efficient bell system of the present day. xiv improvement and expansion the first telephone exchange--the bell telephone association--theodore n. vail--the fight with the western union--edison and blake invent transmitters--last effort of the western union--mushroom companies and would-be inventors--the controversy with gray--dolbear's claims--the drawbaugh case--on a firm footing. through public interest had been aroused in the telephone, it was still very far from being at the service of the nation. the telephone increases in usefulness just in proportion to the number of your acquaintances and business associates who have telephones in their homes or offices. instruments had to be manufactured on a commercial scale, telephone systems had to be built up. while the struggles of the inventor who seeks to apply a new idea are often romantic, the efforts of the business executives who place the invention, once it is achieved, at the service of people everywhere, are not less praiseworthy and interesting. a very few telephones had been leased to those who desired to establish private lines, but it was not until may of that the first telephone system was established with an exchange by means of which those having telephones might talk with one another. there was a burglar-alarm system in boston which had wires running from six banks to a central station. the owner of this suggested that telephones be installed in the banks using the burglar-alarm wires. hubbard gladly loaned the instruments for the purpose. instruments were installed in the banks without saying anything to the bankers, or making any charge for the service. one banker demanded that his telephone be removed, insisting that it was a foolish toy. but even with the crude little exchange the first system proved its worth. others were established in new york, philadelphia, and other cities on a commercial basis. a man from michigan appeared and secured the perpetual rights for his state, and for his foresight and enterprise he was later to be rewarded by the sale of these rights for a quarter of a million dollars. the free service to the boston bankers was withdrawn and a commercial system installed there. but these exchanges served but a few people, and were poorly equipped. there was, of course, no provision for communication between cities. with the telephone over a year old, less than a thousand instruments were in use. but hubbard, who was directing the destinies of the enterprise during bell's absence in europe, decided that the time had come to organize. accordingly the bell telephone association was formed, with bell, hubbard, sanders, and watson as the shareholders. sanders was the only one of the four with any considerable sum of money, and his resources were limited. he staked his entire credit in the enterprise, and managed to furnish funds with which the fight for existence could be carried on. but a business depression was upon the land and it was not easy to secure support for the telephone. the entrance of the western union telegraph company into the telephone field brought the affairs of the bell company to a crisis. as we have seen, the telegraph company had developed into a great and powerful corporation with wires stretching across the length and breadth of the land and agents and offices established in every city and town of importance. once the telephone began to be used as a substitute for the telegraph in conveying messages, the telegraph officials awoke to the fact that here, possibly, was a dangerous rival, and dropped the viewpoint that bell's telephone was a mere plaything. they acquired the inventions of edison, gray, and dolbear, and entered the telephone field, announcing that they were prepared to furnish the very best in telephonic communication. this sudden assault by the most powerful corporation in america, while it served to arouse public confidence in the telephone, made it necessary for hubbard to reorganize his forces and find a general capable of doing battle against such a foe. hubbard's political activities had brought to him a presidential appointment as head of a commission on mail transportation. in the course of the work for the government he had come much in contact with a young man named theodore n. vail, who was head of the government mail service. he had been impressed by vail's ability and had in turn introduced vail to the telephone and aroused his enthusiasm in its possibilities. this vail was a cousin of the alfred vail who was morse's co-worker, and who played so prominent a part in the development of the telegraph. his experience in the post-office department had given him an understanding of the problems of communication in the united states, and had developed his executive ability. realizing the possibilities of the telephone, he relinquished his governmental post and cast his fortunes with the telephone pioneers, becoming general manager of the bell company. the western union strengthened its position by the introduction of a new and improved transmitter. this was the work of thomas edison, and was so much better than bell's transmitter that it enabled the western union to offer much better telephonic equipment. as we have seen, bell's transmitter and receiver were very similar, being about the same as the receiver now in common use. in his transmitter edison placed tiny bits of carbon in contact with the diaphragm. as the diaphragm vibrated under the sound-impulses the pressure upon the carbon granules was varied. an electric current was passed through the carbon particles, whose electrical resistance was varied by the changing pressure from the diaphragm. thus the current was thrown into undulations corresponding to the sound-waves, and passed over the line and produced corresponding sounds in the receiver. much stronger currents could be utilized than those generated by bell's instrument, and thus the transmitter was much more effective for longer distances. bell returned from europe to find the affairs of his company in a sorry plight. only the courage and generalship of vail kept it in the field at all. bell was penniless, having failed to establish the telephone abroad, even as morse before him had failed to secure foreign revenue from his invention. bell's health failed him, and as he lay helpless in the hospital his affairs were indeed at a low ebb. at this juncture francis blake, of boston, came forward with an improved transmitter which he offered to the bell company in exchange for stock. the instrument proved a success and was gladly adopted, proving just what was needed to make possible successful competition with the western union. prolonged patent litigation followed, and after a bitter legal struggle the western union officials became convinced of two things: one, that the bell company, under vail's leadership, would not surrender; second, that bell was the original inventor of the telephone and that his patent was valid. the western union, however, seemed to have strong basis for its claim that the new transmitter of the bell people was an infringement of edison's patent. a compromise was arranged between the contestants by which the two companies divided the business of furnishing communication by wire in the united states. this agreement proved of the greatest benefit to both organizations, and did much to make possible the present development and universal service of both the telephone and telegraph. by the terms of the agreement the western union recognized bell's patent and agreed to withdraw from the telephone business. the bell company agreed not to engage in the telegraph business and to take over the western union telephone system and apparatus, paying a royalty on all telephone rentals. experience has demonstrated that the two businesses are not competitive, but supplement each other. it is therefore proper that they should work side by side with mutual understanding. success had come at last to the telephone pioneers. other battles were still to be fought before their position was to be made secure, but from the moment when the western union admitted defeat the bell company was the leader. the stock of the company advanced to a point where bell, hubbard, sanders, and watson found themselves in the possession of wealth as a reward for their pioneering. the western union had no sooner withdrawn as a competitor of the bell organization than scores of small, local companies sprang up, all ready to pirate the bell patent and push the claims of some rival inventor. a very few of them really tried to establish telephone systems, but the majority were organized simply to sell stock to a gullible public. they stirred up a continuous turmoil, and made much trouble for the larger company, though their patent claims were persistently defeated in the courts. most of the rival claimants who sprang up, once the telephone had become an established fact and had proved its value, were men of neither prominence nor scientific attainments. of a very different type was elisha gray, whose work we have before noticed, and who now came forward with the claim that he had invented a telephone in advance of bell. gray was a practical man of real scientific attainments, but, as we have noticed, his efforts in search of a telephone were from the viewpoint of a musical telegraph and so destined to failure. it has frequently been stated that gray filed his application for a patent on a telephone of his invention but a few minutes after bell, and so bell wrested the honor from him by the scantiest of margins. a careful reading of the testimony brought out in gray's suit against bell does not support such a statement. while bell filed an application for a patent on a completed, invention, gray filed, a few moments later, a caveat. this was a document, stating that he hoped to invent a telephone of a certain kind therein stated, and would serve to protect his rights until he should have time to perfect it. thus gray did not have a completed invention, and he later failed to perfect a telephone along the lines described in his caveat. the decision of the court supported bell's claims in full. another of the western union's telephone experts, professor dolbear, of tufts college, also sought to make capital of his knowledge of the telephone. he based his claims upon an improvement of the reis musical telegraph, which had formed the starting-point for so many experimenters. the case fell flat, however, for when the apparatus was brought into court no one could make it talk. none of the attacks upon bell's claim to be the original inventor of the telephone aroused more popular interest at the time than the famous drawbaugh case. daniel drawbaugh was a country mechanic with a habit of reading of the new inventions in the scientific journals. he would work out models of many of these for himself, and, showing them very proudly, often claim them as his own devices. drawbaugh was now put forward by the opponents of the bell organization as having invented a telephone before bell. it was claimed that he had been too poor to secure a patent or to bring his invention to popular notice. much sympathy was thus aroused for him and the legal battle was waged to interminable length, with the usual result. bell's patent was again sustained, and drawbaugh's claims were pronounced without merit. many other legal battles followed, but the dominance of the bell organization, resting upon the indisputable fact that bell was the first man to conceive and execute a practical telephone, could not be shaken. the telephone business was on a firm footing: it had demonstrated its real service to the public; it had become a necessity; and, under the able leadership of vail, was fast extending its field of usefulness. xv telegraphing without wires the first suggestion--morse sends messages through the water--trowbridge telegraphs through the earth--experiments of preece and heaviside in england--edison telegraphs from moving trains--researches of hertz disclose the hertzian waves. great as are the possibilities of the telegraph and the telephone in the service of man, these instruments are still limited to the wires over which they must operate. communication was not possible until wires had been strung; where wires could not be strung communication was impossible. much yet remained to be done before perfection in communication was attained, and, though the public generally considered the telegraph, and the telephone the final achievement, men of science were already searching for an even better way. the first suggestion that electric currents carrying messages might some day travel without wires seems to have come from k.a. steinheil, of munich. in he discovered that if the two ends of a single wire carrying the electric current be connected with the ground a complete circuit is formed, the earth acting as the return. thus he was able to dispense with one wire, and he suggested that some day it might be possible to eliminate the wire altogether. the fact that the current bearing messages could be sent through the water was demonstrated by morse as early as . he placed plates at the termini of a circuit and submerged them in water some distance apart on one side of a canal. other plates were placed on the opposite side of the waterway and were connected by a wire with a sensitive galvanometer in series to act as a receiver. currents sent from the opposite side were recorded by the galvanometer and the possibility of communication through the water was established. others carried these experiments further, it being even suggested that messages might be sent across the atlantic by this method. but bell's greatest contribution to the search for wireless telegraphy was not his direct work in this field, but the telephone itself. his telephone receiver provided the wireless experimenters with an instrument of extreme sensitiveness by which they were able to detect currents which the mirror galvanometer could not receive. while experimenting with a telephone along a telegraph line a curious phenomenon was noticed. the telephone experimenters heard music very clearly. they investigated and found that another telegraph wire, strung along the same poles, but at the usual distance and with the usual insulation, was being used for a test of edison's musical telephone. many other similar tests were made and the effect was always noted. in some way the message on one line had been conveyed across the air-gap and had been recorded by the telephones on the other line. it was decided that this had been caused by induction. prof. john trowbridge, of harvard university, might well be termed the grandfather of wireless telegraphy. he made the first extensive investigation of the subject, and his experiments in sending messages without wires and his discoveries furnished information and inspiration for those who were to follow. his early experiments tested the possibility of using the earth as a conductor. he demonstrated that when an electric current is sent into the earth it spreads from that point in waves in all directions, just as when a stone is cast into a pond the ripples widen out from that point, becoming fainter and fainter until they reach the shore. he further found that these currents could be detected by grounding the terminals of a telephone circuit. telegraphy through the earth was thus possible. however, the farther the receiving station was from the sending station the wider must be the distance between the telephone terminals and the smaller the current received. professor trowbridge did not find it possible to operate his system at a sufficient distance to make it of value, but he did demonstrate that the currents do travel through the earth and that they can be set to carrying messages. professor trowbridge also revived the idea of telegraphing across the atlantic by utilizing the conductivity of the sea-water to carry the currents. in working out the plan theoretically he discovered that the terminals on the american side would have to be widely separated--one in nova scotia and the other in florida--and that they would have to be connected by an insulated cable. two widely separated points on the coast of france were suggested for the other terminals. he also calculated that very high voltages would be necessary, and the practical difficulties involved made it seem certain that such a system would cost far too much to construct and to operate to be profitable. trowbridge suggested the possibility of using such a system for establishing communication between ships at sea. ship could communicate with ship, over short distances, during a fog. a trailing wire was to be used to increase the sending and receiving power, and trowbridge believed that with a dynamo capable of supplying current for a hundred lights, communication could be established at a distance of half a mile. not satisfied with the earth or the sea as a medium for carrying the current, trowbridge essayed to use the air. he believed that this was possible, and that it would be accomplished at no distant date. he believed, however, that such a system could not be operated over considerable distances because of the curvature of the earth. he endeavored to establish communication through the air by induction. he demonstrated that if one coil of wire be set up and a current sent through it, a similar coil facing it will have like currents induced within it, which may be detected with a telephone receiver. he also determined that the currents were strongest in the receiving coil when it was placed in a plane parallel with the sending coil. by turning the receiving coil about until the sound was strongest in the telephone receiver, it was thus possible to determine the direction from which the messages were coming. trowbridge recognized the great value of this feature to a ship at sea. but these induced currents could only be detected at a distance by the use of enormous coils. to receive at a half-mile a coil of eight hundred feet radius would have been necessary, and this was obviously impossible for use on shipboard. so these experiments also developed no practical improvement in the existing means of communication. but professor trowbridge had demonstrated new possibilities, and had set men thinking along new lines. he was the pioneer who pointed the way to a great invention, though he himself failed to attain it. bell followed up trowbridge's suggestions of using the water as a medium of communication, and in a series of experiments conducted on the potomac river established communication between moving ships. professor dolbear also turned from telephone experimentation to the search for the wireless. he grounded his wires and sent high currents into the earth, but improved his system and took another step toward the final achievement by adding a large induction coil to his sending equipment. he suggested that the spoken word might be sent as well as dots and dashes, and so sought the wireless telephone as well as the wireless telegraph. like his predecessors, his experiments were successful only at short distances. the next application of the induction telegraph was to establish communication with moving trains. several experimenters had suggested it, but it remained for thomas a. edison to actually accomplish it. he set up a plate of tin-foil on the engine or cars, opposite the telegraph wires. currents could be induced across the gap, no matter what the speed of the train, and, traveling along the wires to the station, communication was thus established. had edison continued his investigation further, instead of turning to other pursuits, he might have achieved the means of communicating through the air at considerable distances. these experiments by americans in the early 'eighties seemed to promise that america was to produce the wireless telegraph, as it had produced the telegraph and the telephone. but the greatest activity now shifted to europe and the american men of science failed to push their researches to a successful conclusion. sir w.h. preece, an englishman, brought himself to public notice by establishing communication with the isle of wight by morse's method. messages were sent and received during a period when the cable to the island was out of commission, and thus telegraphing without wires was put to practical use. preece carried his experiments much further. in he laid out two great squares of insulated wire, a quarter of a mile to the side, and at a distance of a quarter of a mile from each other. telephonic communication was established between them, and thus he had attained wireless telephony by induction. in , another englishman, a.w. heaviside, laid circuits over two miles long on the surface and other circuits in the galleries of a coal-mine three hundred and fifty feet below, and established communication between the circuits. working together, preece and heaviside extended the distances over which they could communicate. preece finally decided that a combination of conduction and induction was the best means of wireless communication. he grounded the wire of his circuit at two points and raised it to a considerable height between these points. preece's work was to put the theories of professor trowbridge to practical use and thus bring the final achievement a step nearer. but conduction and induction combined would not carry messages to a distance that would enable extensive communication. a new medium had yet to be found, and this was the work of heinrich hertz, a young german scientist. he was experimenting with two flat coils of wire, as had many others before him, but one of the coils had a small gap in it. passing the discharge from a condenser into this coil, hertz discovered that the spark caused when the current jumped the gap set up electrical vibrations that excited powerful currents in the other coil. these currents were noticeable, though the coils were a very considerable distance apart. thus hertz had found out how to send out electrical waves that would travel to a considerable distance. what was the medium that carried these waves? this was the question that hertz asked himself, and the answer was, the ether. we know that light will pass through a vacuum, and these electric waves would do likewise. it was evident that they did not pass through the air. the answer, as evolved by hertz and approved by other scientists, is that they travel through the ether, a strange substance which pervades all space. hertz discovered that light and his electrical waves traveled at the same speed, and so deduced that light consists of electrical vibrations in the ether. with the knowledge that this all-pervading ether would carry electric waves at the speed of light, that the waves could be set up by the discharge of a spark across a spark-gap in a coil, and that they could be received in another coil in resonance with the first, the establishment of a practical wireless telegraph was not far away. xvi an italian boy's work the italian youth who dreamed wonderful dreams--his studies--early detectors--marconi seeks an efficient detector--devises new sending methods--the wireless telegraph takes form--experimental success. with the nineteenth century approaching its close, man had discovered that the electric waves would travel through the ether; he had learned something of how to propagate those waves, and something of how to receive them. but no one had yet been able to combine these discoveries in practical form, to apply them to the task of carrying messages, to make the improvements necessary to make them available for use at considerable distances. though many mature scientists had devoted themselves to the problem, it remained for a youth to solve it. the youth was guglielmo marconi, an italian. we have noticed that the telegraph, the cable, and the telephone were the work of those of the anglo-saxon race--englishmen or americans--so it came as a distinct surprise that an italian youth should make the next great application of electricity to communication. but anglo-saxon blood flows in marconi's veins. though his father was an italian, his mother was an irishwoman. he was born at villa griffone near bologna, italy, on april , . he studied in the schools of bologna and of florence, and early showed his interest in scientific affairs. from his mother he learned english, which he speaks as fluently as he does his native tongue. as a boy he was allowed to attend english schools for short periods, spending some time at bedford and at rugby. one of his italian teachers was professor righi, who had made a close study of the hertzian waves, and who was himself making no small contributions to the advancement of the science. from him young marconi learned of the work which had been accomplished, and of the apparatus which was then available. marconi was a quiet boy--almost shy. he did not display the aggressive energy so common with many promising youths. but though he was quiet, he was not slothful. he entered into his studies with a determination and an application that brought to him great results. he was a student and a thinker. any scientific book or paper which came before him was eagerly devoured. it was this habit of careful and persistent study that made it possible for marconi to accomplish such wonderful things at an early age. marconi had learned of the hertzian waves. it occurred to him that by their aid wireless telegraphy might be accomplished. the boy saw the wonderful possibilities; he dreamed dreams of how these waves might carry messages from city to city, from ship to shore, and from continent to continent without wires. he realized his own youth and inexperience, and it seemed certain to him that many able scientists had had the same vision and must be struggling toward its attainment. for a year marconi dreamed those dreams, studying the books and papers which would tell him more of these wonderful waves. each week he expected the news that wireless telegraphy had been established, but the news never came. finally he concluded that others, despite their greater opportunities, had not been so far-seeing as he had thought. marconi attacked the problem himself with the dogged persistence and the studious care so characteristic of him. he began his experiments upon his father's farm, the elder marconi encouraging the youth and providing him with funds with which to purchase apparatus. he set up poles at the opposite sides of the garden and on them mounted the simple sending and receiving instruments which were then available, using plates of tin for his aerials. he set up a simple spark-gap, as had hertz, and used a receiving device little more elaborate. a morse telegraph-key was placed in circuit with the spark-gap. when the key was held down for a longer period a long spark passed between the brass knobs of the spark-gap and a dash was thus transmitted. when the key was depressed for a shorter period a dot in the morse code was sent forth. after much work and adjustment marconi was able to send a message across the garden. others had accomplished this for similar distances, but they lacked marconi's imagination and persistence, and failed to carry their experiments further. to the young irish-italian this was but a starting-point. [illustration: guglielmo marconi photographed in the uniform of an officer in the italian army] marconi quickly found that the receiver was the least effective part of the existing apparatus. the waves spread in all directions from the sending station and become feebler and feebler as the distance increases. to make wireless telegraphy effective over any considerable distance a highly efficient and extremely sensitive receiving device is necessary. some special means of detecting the feeble currents was necessary. the coherer was the solution. as early as a mr. s.a. varley, an englishman, had discovered that when he endeavored to send a current through a mass of carbon granules the tiny particles arranged themselves in order under the influence of the electric current, and offered a free path for the passage of the current. when shaken apart they again resisted the flow of current until it became powerful enough to cause them to again arrange themselves into a sort of bridge for its passage. thus was the principle of the coherer discovered. an italian scientist, professor calzecchi-onesti, carried these experiments still further. he used various substances in place of the carbon granules and showed that some of them will arrange themselves so as to allow the passage of a current under the influence of the spark setting up the hertzian waves. professor e. branly, of the catholic university of paris, took up this work in . he arranged metal filings in a small glass tube six inches long and arranged a tapper to disarrange the filings after they had been brought together under the influence of the spark. with the branly coherer as the basis marconi sought to make improvements which would result in the detector he was seeking. for his powder he used nickel, mixed with a small proportion of fine silver filings. this he placed between silver plugs in a small glass tube. platinum wires were connected to the silver plugs and brought out at the opposite ends of the tube. it required long study to determine just how to adjust the plugs between which the powder was loosely arranged. if the particles were pressed together too tightly they would not fall apart readily enough under the influence of the tapper. if too much space was allowed they would not cohere readily enough. marconi also discovered that a larger proportion of silver in the powder and a smaller amount between the plugs increased the sensitiveness of the receiver. yet he found it well not to have it too sensitive lest it cohere for every stray current and so give false signals. under the influence of the electric waves set up from the spark-gap those tiny particles so arranged themselves that they would readily carry a current between the plugs. by placing these plugs with their platinum terminals in circuit with a local battery the current from this local battery was given a passage through the coherer by the action of the electric waves coming through the ether. while these waves themselves were too feeble to operate a receiving mechanism, they were strong enough to arrange the particles of the sensitive metal in the tube in order, so that the current from the local battery could pass through them. this current operated a telegraph relay which in turn operated a morse receiving instrument. an electrical tapper was also arranged in this circuit so that it would strike the tube a light blow after each long or short wave representing a dot or a dash had been received. thus the particles were disarranged, ready to array themselves when the next wave came through the ether and so form the bridge over which the stronger local circuit could convey the signal. marconi further discovered that the most effective arrangement was to run a wire from one terminal of the coherer into the ground, and from the other to an elevated metal plate or wire. the waves coming through the ether were received by the elevated wire and were conducted down to the coherer. experimenting with his apparatus on the posts in the garden, he discovered that an increase in the height of the wire greatly increased the receiving distance. at his sending station he used the exciter of his teacher, professor righi. this, too, he modified and perfected for his practical purpose. as he used the device it consisted of two brass spheres a millimeter apart. an envelope was provided so that the sides of the spheres toward each other and the space between was occupied by vaseline oil which served to keep the faces of the spheres clean and produce a more uniform spark. outside the two spheres, but in line with them, were placed two smaller spheres at a distance of about two-fifths of a centimeter. the terminals of the sending circuit were attached to these. the secondary coil of a large induction coil was placed in series with them, and batteries were wired in series with the primary of the coil with a sending key to make and break the circuit. when the key was closed a series of sparks sprang across the spark-gap, and the waves were thus set up in the ether and carried the message to the receiving station. as in the case of his receiving station, marconi found that results were much improved when he wired his sending apparatus so that one terminal was grounded and the other connected with an elevated wire or aerial, which is now called the antenna. by marconi had brought this apparatus to a state of perfection where he could transmit messages to a distance of several miles. this irish-italian youth of twenty-two had mastered the problem which had baffled veteran scientists and was ready to place a new wonder at the service of the world. the devices which marconi thus assembled and put to practical use had been, in the hands of others, little more than scientific toys. others had studied the hertzian waves and the methods of sending and detecting them from a purely scientific viewpoint. marconi had the vision to realize the practical possibilities, and, though little more than a boy, had assembled the whole into a workable system of communication. he richly deserves the laurels and the rewards as the inventor of the wireless telegraph. xvii wireless telegraphy established marconi goes to england--he confounds the skeptics--a message to france without wires--the attempt to span the ocean--marconi in america receives the first message from europe--fame and recognition achieved. the time had now come for marconi to introduce himself and his discoveries to the attention of the world. he went to england, and on june , , applied for a patent on his system of wireless telegraphy. soon afterward his plans were submitted to the postal-telegraph authorities. fortunately for marconi and for the world, w.h. preece was then in authority in this department. he himself had experimented with some little success with wireless messages. he was able enough to see the merit in marconi's discoveries and generous enough to give him full recognition and every encouragement. the apparatus was first set up in the general post-office in london, another station being located on the roof but a hundred yards away. though several walls intervened, the hertzian waves traversed them without difficulty, and messages were sent and received. stations were then set up on salisbury plain, some two miles apart, and communication was established between them. though the postal-telegraph authorities received marconi's statements of his discoveries with open mind and put his apparatus to fair tests, the public at large was much less tolerant. the skepticism which met morse and bell faced marconi. men of science doubted his statements and scoffed at his claims. the hertzian waves might be all right to operate scientific playthings, they thought, but they were far too uncertain to furnish a medium for carrying messages in any practical way. then, as progress was made and marconi began to prove his system, the inevitable jealousies arose. experimenters who might have invented the wireless telegraph, but who did not, came forward to contest marconi's claims and to seek to snatch his laurels from him. the young inventor forged steadily ahead, studying and experimenting, devising improved apparatus, meeting the difficulties one by one as they arose. in most of his early experiments he had used a modification of the little tin boxes which had been set up in his father's garden as his original aerials. having discovered that the height of the aerials increased the range of the stations, he covered a large kite with tin-foil and, sending it up with a wire, used this as an aerial. balloons were similarly employed. he soon recognized, however, that a practical commercial system, which should be capable of sending and receiving messages day and night, regardless of the weather, could not be operated with kites or balloons. the height of masts was limited, so he sought to increase the range by increasing the electrical power of the current sending forth the sparks from the sending station. here he was on the right path, and another long step forward had been taken. in the fall of he set up a mast on the isle of wight, one hundred and twenty feet high. from the top of this was strung a single wire and a new series of experiments was begun. marconi had spent the summer in italy demonstrating his apparatus, and had established communication between a station on the shore and a war-ship of the italian navy equipped with his apparatus. he now secured a small steamer for his experiments from his station on the isle of wight and equipped it with a sixty-foot mast. communication was maintained with the boat day after day, regardless of weather conditions. the distance at which communication could be maintained was steadily increased until communication was established with the mainland. in july of the wireless demonstrated its utility as a conveyer of news. an enterprising dublin newspaper desired to cover the kingstown regatta with the aid of the wireless. in order to do this a land station was erected at kingstown, and another on board a steamer which followed the yachts. a telephone wire connected the kingstown station with the newspaper office, and as the messages came by wireless from the ship they were telephoned to dublin and published in successive editions of the evening papers. this feat attracted so much attention that queen victoria sought the aid of the wireless for her own necessities. her son, the prince of wales, lay ill on his yacht, and the aged queen desired to keep in constant communication with him. marconi accordingly placed one station on the prince's yacht and another at osborne house, the queen's residence. communication was readily maintained, and one hundred and fifty messages passed by wireless between the prince and the royal mother. while the electric waves bearing the messages were found to pass through wood, stone, or earth, it was soon noticed in practical operation that when many buildings, or a hill, or any other solid object of size intervened between the stations the waves were greatly retarded and the messages seriously interfered with. when the apparatus was placed on board steel vessels it was found that any part of the vessel coming between the stations checked the communication. marconi sought to avoid these difficulties by erecting high aerials at every point, so that the waves might pass through the clear air over solid obstructions. marconi's next effort was to connect france with england. he went to france to demonstrate his apparatus to the french government and set up a station near boulogne. the aerial was raised to a height of one hundred and fifty feet. another station was erected near folkestone on the english coast, across the channel. a group of french officials gathered in the little station near folkestone for the test, which was made on the th of march, . marconi sent the messages, which were received by the station on the french shore without difficulty. other messages were received from france, and wireless communication between the nations was an accomplished fact. the use of the wireless for ships and lighthouses sprang into favor, and wireless stations were established all around the british coasts so that ships equipped with wireless might keep in communication with the land. the british admiralty quickly recognized the value of wireless telegraphy to war vessels. while field telegraphs and telephones had served the armies, the navies were still dependent upon primitive signals, since a wire cannot be strung from ship to ship nor from ship to shore. so the british battle-ships were equipped with wireless apparatus and a thorough test was made. a sham battle was held in which all of the orders were sent by wireless, and communication was constantly maintained both between the flag-ships and the vessels of their fleets and between the flag-ships and the shore. marconi's invention had again proved itself. the wireless early demonstrated its great value as a means of saving life at sea. lightships off the english coast were equipped with the wireless and were thus enabled to warn ships of impending storms, and on several occasions the wireless was used to summon aid from the shore when ships were sinking because of accidents near the lightship. following the establishment of communication with france, marconi increased the range of his apparatus until he was able to cover most of eastern europe. in one of his demonstrations he sent messages to italy. his ambition, however, was to send messages across the atlantic, and he now attacked this stupendous task. on the coast of cornwall, england, he began the construction of a station which should have sufficient power to send a message to america. instead of using a single wire for his aerial, he erected many tall poles and strung a number of wires from pole to pole. the comparatively feeble batteries which had furnished the currents used in the earlier efforts were replaced with great power-driven dynamos, and converters were used instead of the induction coil. thus was the great poldhu station established. late in marconi crossed to america to superintend the preparations there, and that he himself might be ready to receive the first message, should it prove possible to span the ocean. signal hill, near st. john's, newfoundland was selected as the place for the american station. the expense of building a great aerial for the test was too great, and so dependence was had upon kites to send the wires aloft. for many days marconi's assistants struggled with the great kites in an effort to get them aloft. at last they flew, carrying the wire to a great height. the wire was carried into a small government building near by in which marconi stationed himself. at his ear was a telephone receiver, this having been substituted for the relay and the morse instrument because of its far greater sensitiveness. marconi had instructed his operator at poldhu to send simply the letter "s" at an hour corresponding to . a.m. in newfoundland. great was the excitement and suspense in cornwall when the hour for the test arrived. forgetting that they were sleepy, the staff crowded about the sending key, and the little building at the foot of the ring of great masts supporting the aerial shook with the crash of the blinding sparks as the three, dots which form the letter "s" were sent forth. even greater was the tension on the newfoundland coast, where marconi sat eagerly waiting for the signal. finally it came, three faint ticks in the telephone receiver. the wireless had crossed the atlantic. marconi had no sending apparatus, so that it was not until the cable had carried the news that those in england knew that the message had been received. because marconi had never made a statement or a claim he had not been able to prove, he had attained a reputation for veracity which made his statement that he had received a signal across the atlantic carry weight with the scientists. many, of course, were skeptical, and insisted that the simple signal had come by chance from some ship not far away. but the inventor pushed quietly and steadily ahead, making arrangements to perfect the system and establish it so that it would be of commercial use. marconi returned to england, but two months later set out for america again on the liner _philadelphia_ with improved apparatus. he kept in constant communication with his station at poldhu until the ship was a hundred and fifty miles from shore. beyond that point he could not send messages, as the sending apparatus on the ship lacked sufficient power. messages were received, however, until the sending station was over two thousand miles away. this seemed miraculous to those on shipboard, but marconi accepted it as a matter of course. he had equipped the poldhu station to send twenty-one hundred miles, and he knew that it should accomplish the feat. a large station was set up at cape breton, nova scotia, and regular communication was established between there and poldhu. with the establishment of regular transatlantic communication the utility of marconi's invention, even for work at great distances, was no longer open to question. by quiet, unassuming, conscientious work he had put another great carrier of messages at the service of the world, and he now reaped the fame and fortune which he so richly deserved. xviii the wireless serves the world marconi organized wireless telegraphy commercially--the new wonder at the service of the world--marine disasters prevented--the extension of the wireless on shipboard--improved apparatus--the wireless in the world war--the boy and the wireless. with his clear understanding of the possibilities of his invention, marconi was not long in establishing the wireless upon a commercial basis. he is a man of keen business judgment, and as he brought his invention forward and clearly demonstrated its worth at a time when commercial enterprise was alert he found no great difficulty in establishing his company. the first marconi company was organized as early as under the name of the wireless telegraph and signal company, limited. this was later displaced by the marconi telegraph company, which operates a regular system of stations on a commercial basis, carrying messages in competition with the cable and telegraph companies. it also erects stations for other companies which are operated under the marconi patents. with the telegraph and the telephone so well established and serving the needs of ordinary communication on land, it was natural that the wireless should make headway but slowly as a commercial proposition between points on land. for communication at sea, however, it had no competition, and merchant-ships as well as war vessels were rapidly equipped with wireless apparatus. when the great liner _republic_ was sinking as a result of a collision off the port of new york in her wireless brought aid. her passengers and crew were taken off in safety, and what otherwise would have been a terrible disaster was avoided by the use of the wireless. the utility of the wireless was again brought sharply to the attention of the world. it was realized that a wireless set on a passenger-ship was necessary if the lives of the passengers were to be safeguarded. the united states government by its laws now requires that passenger-ships shall be equipped with wireless apparatus in charge of a competent operator. one of the early objections made to the wireless was its apparent lack of secrecy, since any other receiving apparatus within range of the waves sent forth by the sending station can receive the signals. it was also realized that as soon as any considerable number of stations were established about the world, and began sending messages to and fro, there would be a perfect jumble of waves flying about in all directions through the ether, so that no messages could be sent or received. marconi's answer to these difficulties was the tuning apparatus. the electric waves carrying the messages may be sent out at widely varying lengths. marconi found that it was possible to adjust a receiving station so that it would receive only waves of a certain length. thus stations which desired to communicate could select a certain wave-length, and they could send and receive messages without interfering with others using different wave-lengths, or without the receiving station being confused by messages coming in from other stations using different wave-lengths. you know that when a tuning-fork is set in vibration another of the same pitch near it will vibrate with it, but others of different pitch will not be affected. the operation of wireless stations in tune with each other is similar. [illustration: a remarkable photograph taken outside of the clifden station while messages were being sent across to cape race the camera was exposed for two hours, and the white bars show the sparks leaving the wires for their journey through the air for seventeen hundred miles.] [illustration: marconi station at clifden, ireland these dynamos send a message straight across the ocean.] an example of the value of tuning is afforded by the manner in which press reports are sent from the great marconi station at poldhu. each night at a certain hour this station sends out news reports of the events of the day, using a certain set wave-length. each ship on the atlantic and every land station within range which is to receive the reports at that hour adjusts its receiving set to receive waves of that length. in this way they hear nothing but the poldhu news reports which they desire to receive, and are not troubled by messages from other stations within range. secrecy is also attained by the use of tuning. it is possible that another station may discover the wave-length being used for a secret message and "listen in," but there are so many possible wave-lengths that this is difficult. secrecy may also be secured by the use of code messages. many of the advantages of tuning were lost by the international agreement which provided that but two wave-lengths should be used for commercial work. this, however, enables ships to get in touch with other ships in time of need. with his telephone receivers the operator can hear the passage of the waves as they are brought to him by his aerial and the dots and dashes sound as buzzes of greater or less length. out of the confusion of currents passing through the air he can select the messages he wishes to read by sound. you may wonder how one wireless operator gets into communication with another. he first listens in to determine whether messages are coming through the ether within range in the wave-length he is to use. hearing nothing, he adjusts his sending apparatus to the desired wave-length and switches this in with the signal aerial which serves both his sending and his receiving set. this at the same time disconnects his receiving set. he sends out the call letters of the station to which he wishes to send a message, following them with his own call letters, as a signature to show who is calling. after repeating these signals several times he switches out his sending set and listens in with his receiving set. if he then gets an answer from the other station he can begin sending the message. marconi was not allowed to hold the wireless field unmolested. many others set up wireless stations, some of them infringing upon marconi's patents. others have devised wireless systems along more original lines. particularly we should mention two american experimenters, dr. de forest and professor fessenden. both have established wireless systems with no little promise. the system of professor fessenden is especially unique and original and may be destined to work a revolution in the methods of wireless telegraphy. with an increase in the number of wireless stations and varieties of apparatus came a wide increase in the uses to which wireless telegraphy was applied. we have already noticed the press service from poldhu. the british government makes use of this same station to furnish daily news to its representatives in all parts of the world. the wireless is also used to transmit the time from the great observatories. some of the railroads in the united states have equipped their trails as well as their stations with wireless sets. it has proved its worth in communicating between stations, taking the place in time of need of either the telegraph or the telephone. in equipping the trains with sets a difficulty was met in arranging the aerials. it is, of course, impossible to arrange the wires at any height above the cars, since they would be swept away in passing under bridges. even with very low aerials, however, communication has been successfully maintained at a distance of over a hundred miles. the speed of the fastest train affects the sending and receiving of messages not at all. it was also found that messages passed without hindrance, even though the train was passing through a tunnel. another interesting application of wireless telegraphy is to the needs of the fire-fighters. fire stations in new york city have been equipped with wireless telegraph sets, and they have proved so useful in spreading alarms and transmitting news of fires that they seem destined to come into universal use. the outbreak of the world war gave a tremendous impetus to the development of wireless telegraphy. the german cable to the united states was cut in the early days of the conflict. the sending power of wireless stations had been sufficiently increased, however, so that the great german stations could communicate with those in the united states. communication was readily maintained between the allies by means of wireless, the great stations at poldhu and at the eiffel tower in paris being in constant communication with each other and with the stations in italy and in russia. portable field sets had been used with some slight success even in the boer war, and had definitely proved their worth in the balkans. the outbreak of the greater war found all of the nations equipped with portable apparatus for the use of their armies. these proved of great use. the field sets of the united states army also proved their utility in the campaign into mexico in pursuit of villa. by their means it was possible for general pershing's forces to keep in constant touch with the headquarters in the united states. the wireless proved as valuable to the navies as had been anticipated. the germans in particular made great improvements in light wireless sets designed for use on aircraft. the problem of placing an aerial on an aeroplane is difficult, but no little headway has been made in this direction. it is the american boy who has done the most interesting work with the wireless in the united states. while the commercial development has been comparatively slow, the boys have set up stations by the thousands. most of these stations were constructed by the boys themselves, who have learned and are learning how best to apply this modern wonder to the service of man. so many amateurs set up stations that the government found it necessary to regulate them by law. the law now requires that amateur experimenters use only short wave-lengths in their sending, which will not interfere with messages from government or commercial stations. it also provides for the licensing of amateurs who prove competent. the stations owned and operated by boys have already proved of great use. in times of storm and flood when wire communication failed they have proved the only means of communicating with many districts. in time of war these amateur stations, scattered in all parts of the country, might prove immensely valuable. means have now been taken to so organize the amateurs that they can communicate with one another, and by this means messages may be sent to any part of the country. one young american, john hays hammond, jr., has applied the wireless in novel and interesting ways. by means of special apparatus mounted on a small boat he can by the means of a wireless station on shore start or stop the vessel, or steer it in any direction by his wireless control. he has applied the same system to the control of torpedoes. by this means a torpedo may be controlled after it has left the shore and may be directed in any direction as long as it is within sight. this invention may prove of incalculable benefit should america be attacked by a foreign power. what startling developments of wireless telegraphy lie still in the future we do not know. marconi has predicted that wireless messages will circle the globe. "i believe," he has said, "that in the near future a wireless message will be sent from new york completely around the world without relaying, and will be received by an instrument in the same office with the transmitter, in perhaps less time than shakespeare's forty minutes." not long ago the united states battle-ship _wyoming_, lying off cape henry on the atlantic coast, communicated with the _san diego_ at guaymas, on the pacific coast of mexico. this distance, twenty-five hundred miles across land, shows that marconi's prediction may be realized in the not distant future. xix speaking across the continent a new "hello boy" in boston--why the boy sought the job--the useful things the boy found to do--young carty and the multiple switchboard--called to new york city--he quiets the roaring wires--carty made engineer-in-chief--extending the range of the human voice--new york talks to san francisco over a wire. it seemed to many that the wireless telegraph was to be the final word in the development of communication, but two striking achievements coming in proved this to be far from the case. while one group of scientists had given themselves to experimentation with the hertzian waves which led to wireless telegraphy, other scientists and engineers were busily engaged in bringing the telephone to a perfection which would enable it to accomplish even more striking feats. these electrical pioneers did not work as individuals, but were grouped together as the engineering staff of the american telephone and telegraph company. at their head was john j. carty, and it was under his guiding genius that the great work was accomplished. john carty is the american son of irish parents. he was born in cambridge, massachusetts, on april , . his father was a gun-maker and an expert mechanic of marked intelligence and ingenuity who numbered among his friends howe, the creator of the sewing-machine. as a boy john carty displayed the liveliest interest in things electrical. when the time came for him to go to school, physics was his favorite study. he showed himself to be possessed of a keen mind and an infinite capacity for work. to these advantages was added a good elementary education. he was graduated from cambridge latin school, where he prepared for harvard university. before he could enter the university his eyesight failed, and the doctor forbade continuance of study. many a boy would have been discouraged by this physical handicap which denied him complete scholastic preparation. but this boy was not the kind that gives up. he had been supplementing his school work in physics with experimentations upon his own behalf. let us let mr. carty tell in his own words how he next occupied himself. i had often visited the shop of thomas hall, at bromfield street, and looked in the window. i went in from time to time, not to make large purchases, but mostly to make inquiries and to buy some blue vitriol, wire, or something of the kind. it was a store where apparatus was sold for experimentation in schools, and on saturdays a number of harvard and institute of technology professors could be found there. it was quite a rendezvous for the scientific men in those days, just the same as the old corner bookstore at the corner of school and washington streets was a place where the literary men used to congregate. don't think that i was an associate of these great scientists, but i was very much attracted to the atmosphere of that store. i wanted to get in and handle the apparatus. finally it occurred to me that i would like to get into the business, somehow. but i did not have the courage to go in and ask them for a job. one day i was going by and saw a sign hanging out, "boy wanted." i was about nineteen, and really thought i was something of a scientist, not exactly a boy. i was a boy, however. i walked by on one side of the street and then on the other, looking in, and finally the idea possessed me to go in and strike for that job. so i took down the sign, which was outside the window, put it under my arm, and went in and persuaded tom hall that i was the boy he wanted. he said, "when can you begin?" i said, "now." there was no talk of wages or duties. he said, "take this package around to earle & prew's express and hurry back, as i have another errand for you to do." so i had to take a great, heavy box around to the express-office and get a receipt for it. i found, when saturday night came around, that i had been engaged at the rate of fifty cents a day. i would have been glad to work for nothing. well, i did not get near that apparatus in a hurry, not until the time came for fixing up the window. my first talk in regard to it had no reference to services in a scientific capacity on my part. i had rather hoped that the boss would come around and consult with, me as to how to adjust the apparatus. but that was not it. he said: "john, clean out that window. everything is full of dust, and be careful and don't break anything!" so i cleaned it out. i swept out the place, cleaned about there, did errands, mixed battery solutions, and got a great deal of experience there in one way or another. i did whatever there was to do and got a good deal of fun out of it, while becoming acquainted with the state of the art of that day. i got to know intimately all the different sorts of philosophical apparatus there were, and how to mix the various battery solutions. in fact, i became really quite experienced for those times in such matters. it was not long before young carty lost his job. being a regular boy, he had been guilty of too much skylarking. this experience steadied him, and he forthwith sought a new job. he had met some of the employees of the telephone company and was naturally interested in their work. at that time "hello boys" held sway in the crude telephone exchanges, the "hello girl" having not yet appeared. so john carty at the age of nineteen went to work in the boston telephone exchange. the switchboard at which they placed him had been good enough for the other boys who had been called upon to operate it, and indeed it represented the best thought and effort of the leaders in the telephone world. but it did not satisfy carty, who, not content with simply-operating the board, studied its construction and began planning improvements. as mr. carty himself puts it: the little switchboards of that day were a good deal like the automobiles of some years ago--one was likely to spend more time under the switchboard than, sitting at it! in that way i learned a great deal about the arrangement and construction of switchboards. encountering the trouble first, i had an advantage over others in being able to suggest a remedy. so i have always thought it was a good thing to have troubles, as long as they are not too serious or too numerous. troubles are certainly a great advantage, if we manage them correctly. certainly carty made these switchboard troubles the first stepping-stone in his climb to the top in the field of telephone engineering. the improvements which the youngster suggested were so valuable that they were soon being made under his direction, and ere long he installed in the boston exchange the first multiple switchboard, the fundamental features of which are in the switchboards of to-day. in his work with the switchboards young carty early got in touch with charles e. scribner, another youngster who was doing notable work in this field. the young men became fast friends and worked much together. scribner devoted himself almost exclusively to switchboards and came to be known as the father of the modern switchboard. boston had her peculiar problems and an "express" service was needed. how to handle this in the exchange was another problem, and this, too, carty solved. for this purpose he designed and installed the first metallic circuit, multiple switchboard to go into service. the problems of the exchange were among the most serious of the many which troubled the early telephone companies. of course every telephone-user desired to be able to converse with any other who had a telephone in his office or residence. the development of the switchboards had been comparatively slow in the past, and the service rendered by the boys proved far from satisfactory. the average boy proved himself too little amenable to discipline, too inclined to "sass" the telephone-users, and too careless. but the early use of "hello boys" was at least a success for the telephone in that it brought to its service john j. carty. this boy pointed the way to the great improvements that made it possible to handle the constantly growing volume of calls expeditiously and effectively. the early telephones were operated with a single wire grounded at either end, the earth return being used to complete the circuit as with the telegraph. but while the currents used to operate the telegraph are fairly strong and so can dominate the earth currents, the tiny currents which represented the vibrations of the human voice were all too often drowned by the earth currents which strayed on to the lines. telephone engineers were not then agreed that this caused the difficulty; but they did know there was difficulty. many weird noises played over the lines and as often as not the spoken word was twisted into the strangest gibberish and rendered unintelligible. if the telephone was to satisfy its patrons and prove of real service to the world, the difficulty had to be overcome. some of the more progressive engineers insisted that a double-wire system without a ground was necessary. this, of course, involved tremendous expenses in rebuilding every line and duplicating every wire. the more conservative hesitated, but carty forged ahead. in he was engaged in operating a new line out of boston. he was convinced that the double-wire system alone could be successful, and he arranged to operate a line on this plan. taking two single lines, he instructed the operator at the other end to join them, forming a two-wire circuit. the results justified him. at last a line had been attained which could be depended upon to carry the conversation. no sooner was one problem solved than another presented itself. what to do with the constantly increasing number of wires was a pressing difficulty. all telephone circuits had been strung overhead, and with the demand for telephones for office and residence rapidly increasing, the streets of the great cities were becoming a perfect forest of telephone poles, with the sky obscured by a maze of wires. poles were constantly increased in height until a line was strung along wall street in new york city at a height of ninety feet. from the poles the wires overflowed to the housetops, increasing the difficulty of the engineers. how to protect the wires so that they could be placed underground was the problem. we have noticed that theodore vail had been brought to the head of the bell system in its infancy and had led the fight against the rival companies until it was thoroughly established. now he was directing his genius and executive ability to so improving the telephone that it should serve every need of communication. while the engineers discussed theories vail began actual tests. a trench five miles long was dug beside a railway track by the simple expedient of hitching a plow to a locomotive. in this trench were laid a number of wires, each with a different covering. the gutta-percha and the rubber coverings which had been used in cable construction predominated. it was found that these wires would carry the telephone currents, not as well as might be desired, but well enough to assure vail that he was on the right track. the companies began to place their wires underground, and vail saw to it that the experiments with coverings for telephone wires were continued. the result was the successful underground cables in use to-day. at the same time vail and his engineers were seeking to improve the wires themselves. iron and steel wires had been used, but they proved unsatisfactory, as they rusted and were poor conductors. copper was an excellent conductor, but the metal in the pure state is soft and no one then knew how to make a copper wire that would sustain its own weight. but vail kept his men at the problem and the hard-drawn copper wire was at length evolved. this proved just what was needed for the telephone circuits. the copper wire was four times as expensive as the iron, but as it was four times as good vail adopted it. john carty had rather more than kept pace with these improvements. he was but twenty-six years of age when union n. bethell, head of the new york company, picked carty to take charge of the telephone engineering work in the metropolis. bethell was vail's chief executive officer, and under him carty received an invaluable training in executive work. carty's largest task was putting the wires underground, and here again he was a tremendous success. he found ways to make cables cheaper and better, and devised means of laying them at half the former cost. having solved the most pressing problems in this field, his employers, who had come to recognize his marked genius, set him to work again on the switchboard. he was placed in charge of the switchboard department of the western electric company, the concern which manufactures the apparatus for the telephone company. the switchboard, as we have seen, was carty's first love, and again he pointed the way to great improvements. most of the large switchboards of that time were installed under his direction, and they were better switchboards than had ever been known before. up to this time it had been thought necessary to have individual batteries supplying current to each line. these were a constant source of difficulty, and carty directed his own attention, and that of his associate engineers, to finding a satisfactory solution. he sought a method of utilizing one common battery at the central station and the way was found and the improvement accomplished. though the telephone circuits were now protected from the earth, telephone-users, at times when the lines were busy, were still troubled with roarings and strange cross-talk. though busy with the many engineering problems which the telephone heads had assigned to him, carty found time for some original research. he showed that the roarings in the wires were largely caused by electro-static induction. in he read a paper before the electric club that startled the engineers of that day. he demonstrated that in every telephone circuit there is a particular point at which, if a telephone is inserted, no cross-talk can be heard. he had worked out the rules for determining this point. thus he had at once discovered the trouble and prescribed the cure. of course it could not be expected that the sage experts would all agree with young carty right away; but they were forced to in the end, for again he was proved right. by carty was ready with another invention which was to place the telephone in the homes of hundreds of thousands who, without it, could scarcely have afforded this modern necessity. this was the "bridging bell" which made possible the party line. by its use four telephones could be placed on a single line, each with its own signal, so that any one could be rung without ringing the others. its introduction inaugurated a new boom in the use of the telephone. theodore vail had resigned from his positions with the telephone companies in with the determination to retire from business. but when the panic of came the directors of the company went to him on his vermont farm and pleaded with him to return and again resume the leadership. other and younger men would not do in this business crisis. they also pointed out that the nation's telephones had not yet been molded into the national system which had been his dream--a system of universal service in which any one at any point in the country might talk by telephone with any other. so vail re-entered the telephone field and again took the presidency of the american telephone and telegraph company. one of his first official acts was to appoint john j. carty his chief engineer. vail had selected the right man to make his dreams come true; carty now had the executive who would make it possible for him to accomplish even larger things. he set about building up the engineering organization which was to accomplish the work, selecting the most brilliant graduates of american technical schools. he set this organization to work upon the extension and development of the long-distance telephone lines. as a "hello boy" carty had believed in the possibility of the long-distance telephone when others had scoffed. he has told of an early experience while in the boston exchange: one hot day an old lady toiled up the inevitable flights of stairs which led to the telephone-office of those times. out of breath, she sat down, and when she had recovered sufficiently to speak she said she wanted to talk to chicago. my colleagues of that time were all what the ethnologists would rank a little bit lower than the wild indian. these youngsters set up a great laugh; and, indeed, the absurdity of the old lady's project could hardly be overstated, because at that time salem was a long-distance line, lowell sometimes worked, and worcester was the limit--that is, in every sense of the word. the lowell line was so unreliable that we had a telegraph operator there, and when the talk was not possible, he pushed the message through by morse. it is no wonder that the absurdity of the old lady's proposal was the cause of poorly suppressed merriment. but i can remember that i explained to her that our wires had not yet been extended to chicago, and that, after she had departed, i turned to the other operators and said that the day would come when we could talk to chicago. my prophecy was received with what might be called--putting it mildly--vociferous discourtesy. nevertheless, i remember very well the impression which that old lady's request made upon me; and i really did believe that, some day or other, in some way, we would be able to talk to chicago. by it was possible to talk from new york to denver, a distance of , miles. no european engineers had achieved any such results, and this feat brought to carty and his wonderful staff the admiration of foreign experts. but for the american engineers this was only a starting-point. the next step was to link new york and california. this was more than a matter of setting poles and stringing wires, stupendous though this task was. the line crosses thirteen states, and is carried on , poles. three thousand tons of wire are used in the line. the panama canal took nine years to complete, and cost over three hundred million dollars; but within that time the telephone company spent twice that amount in engineering construction work alone, extending the scope of the telephone. the technical problems were even more difficult. carty and his engineers had to find a way to send something three thousand miles with the breath as its motive power. it was a problem of the conservation of the tiny electric current which carried the speech. the power could not be augmented or speech would not result at the destination. added to the efforts of these able engineers was the work of prof. michael i. pupin, of columbia university, whose brilliant invention of the loading coil some ten years before had startled the scientific world and had increased the range of telephonic transmission through underground cables and through overhead wires far beyond what had formerly been possible. professor pupin applied his masterful knowledge of physics and his profound mathematical attainments so successfully to the practical problems of the transmission of telephone speech that he has been called "the telephone scientist." it is impossible to talk over long-distance lines anywhere in america without speaking through pupin coils, which are distributed throughout the hundreds of thousands of miles of wire covering the north american continent. in the transcontinental telephone line pupin coils play a most important part, and they are distributed at eight-mile intervals throughout its entire length from the atlantic to the pacific. in speaking at a dinner of eminent scientists, mr. carty once said that on account of his distinguished scientific attainments and wonderful telephonic inventions, professor pupin would rank in history alongside of bell himself. we have seen how alexander graham bell, standing in the little room in boston, spoke through the crude telephone he had constructed the first words ever carried over a wire, and how these words were heard and understood by his associate, thomas watson. this was in , and it was in january of --less than forty years later--that these two men talked across the continent. the transcontinental line was complete. bell in the offices of the company in new york talked freely with watson in san francisco, and all in the most conversational tone, without a trace of the difficulty that had attended their first conversation over the short line. thus, within the span of a single life the telephone had been developed from a crude instrument which transmitted speech with difficulty over a wire a hundred feet long, until one could be heard perfectly, though over three thousand miles of wire intervened. the spoken word travels across the continent almost instantaneously, far faster than the speed of sound. if it were possible for one to be heard in san francisco as he shouted from new york through the air, four hours would be required before the sound would arrive. thus the telephone has been brought to a point of perfection where it carries sound by electricity and reproduces it again far more rapidly and efficiently than sound can be transmitted through its natural medium. xx telephoning through space the search for the wireless telephone--early successes--carty and his assistants seek the wireless telephone--the task before them--de forest's amplifier--experimental success achieved--the test--honolulu and paris hear arlington--the future. no sooner had marconi placed the wireless telegraph at the service of the world than men of science of all nations began the search for the wireless telephone. but the vibrations necessary to reproduce the sound of the human voice are so infinitely more complex than those which will suffice to carry signals representing the dots and dashes of the telegraph code that the problem long defied solution. scientists attacked the problem with vigor, and various means of wireless telephony were developed, without any being produced which were effective over sufficient ranges to make them really useful. probably the earliest medium chosen to carry wireless speech was light rays. a microphone transmitter was arranged so that the vibrations of the voice would affect the stream of gas flowing in a sensitive burner. the flame was thus thrown into vibrations corresponding to the vibrations of sound. the rays from this flame were then directed by mirrors to a distant receiving station and there concentrated on a photo-electric selenium cell, which has the strange property of varying its resistance according to the illumination. thus a telephone receiver arranged in series with it was made to reproduce the sounds. this strange, wireless telephone was so arranged that a search-light beam could be used for the light path, and distances up to three miles were covered. even with this limited range the search-light telephone had certain advantages. its message could be received only by those in the direct line of the light. neither did it require aerial masts or wires and a trained telegrapher who could send and receive the telegraph code. it was put to some use between battle-ships and smaller craft lying within a radius of a few miles. the sensitive selenium cell proved unreliable, however, and this means of communication was destined to failure. the experimenters realized that future success lay in making the ether carry telephonic currents as it carried telegraphic currents. they succeeded in establishing communication without wires, using the same antenna as in wireless telegraphy, and the principles determined are those used in the wireless telephone of to-day. the sending apparatus was so arranged that continuous oscillations are set up in the ether, either by a high-frequency machine or from an electric arc. where set up by spark discharges the spark frequency must be above twenty thousand per second. this unbroken wave train does not affect the telephone and is not audible in a telephone receiver inserted in the radio receiving circuit. but when a microphone transmitter is inserted in the sending circuit, instead of the make-and-break key used for telegraphy, the waves of the voice, thrown against the transmitter in speaking, break up the waves so that the telephone receiver in the receiving circuit will reproduce sound. here was and is the wireless telephone. marconi and many other scientists were able to operate it successfully over comparatively short distances, and were busily engaged in extending its range and improving the apparatus. one great difficulty involved was in increasing the power of the sending apparatus. greater range has been secured in wireless telegraphy by using stronger sending currents. but the delicate microphone would not carry these stronger currents. increased sensitiveness in the receiving apparatus was also necessary. not content with their accomplishments in increasing the scope of the wire telephone, the engineers of the bell organization, headed by john j. carty, turned their attention to the wireless transmission of speech. determined that the existing telephone system should be extended and supplemented in every useful way, they attacked the problem with vigor. it was a problem that had long baffled the keenest of european scientists, including marconi himself, but that did not deter carty and his associates. they were determined that the glory of spanning the atlantic by wireless telephone should come to america and american engineers. they wanted history to record the wireless telephone as an american achievement along with the telegraph and the telephone. the methods used in achieving the wireless telephone were widely different from those which brought forth the telegraph and the telephone. times had changed. men had found that it was more effective to work together through organizations than to struggle along as individuals. the very physical scope of the undertakings made the old methods impracticable. one cannot perfect a transcontinental telephone line nor a transatlantic wireless telephone in a garret. and with a powerful organization behind them it was not necessary for carty and his associates to starve and skimp through interminable years, handicapped by the inadequate equipment, while they slowly achieved results. this great organization, working with modern methods, produced the most wonderful results with startling rapidity. important work had already been done by marconi, fessenden, de forest, and others. but their results were still incomplete; they could not talk for any considerable distance. carty organized his staff with care, bancroft gerhardi, doctor jewett, h.d. arnold, and colpitts being prominent among the group of brilliant american scientists who joined with carty in his great undertaking. while much had been accomplished, much still remained to be done, and the various contributions had to be co-ordinated into a unified, workable whole. in large part it was carty's task to direct the work of this staff and to see that all moved smoothly and in the right direction. just as the telephone was more complex than the telegraph, and the wireless telegraph than the telephone, so the apparatus used in wireless telephony is even more complex and technical. working with the intricate mechanisms and delicate apparatus, one part after another was improved and adapted to the task at hand. to the devices of carty and his associates was added the extremely delicate detector that was needed. this was the invention of dr. lee de forest, an american inventor and a graduate of the sheffield technical school of yale university. de forest's contribution was a lamp instrument, a three-step audion amplifier. this is to the wireless telephone what the coherer is to the wireless telegraph. it is so delicate that the faintest currents coming through the ether will stimulate it and serve to set in motion local sources of electrical energy so that the waves received are magnified to a point where they will produce sound. by the spring of , but a few months after the transcontinental telephone line had been put in operation, carty had his wireless telephone apparatus ready for extended tests. a small experimental tower was set up at montauk point, long island, and another was borrowed at wilmington, delaware. the tests were successful, and the experimenters found that they could talk freely with each other. soon they talked over a thousand miles, from the tower at montauk point to another at st. simon's island, georgia. this in itself was a great achievement, but the world was not told of it. "do it first and then talk about it" is the maxim with theodore vail and his telephone men. this was but a beginning, and carty had far more wonderful things in mind. it was on the th of september, , that carty conducted the demonstrations which thrilled the world and showed that wireless telephony was an accomplished fact. sitting in his office in new york, president theodore vail spoke into his desk telephone of the familiar type. the wires carried his words to the towers of the navy wireless station at arlington, virginia, where they were delivered to the sending apparatus of the wireless telephone. leaping into space, they traveled in every direction through the ether. the antenna of the wireless station at mare island, california, caught part of the waves and they were amplified so that john carty, sitting with his ear to the receiver, could hear the voice of his chief. carty and his associates had not only developed a system which made it possible to talk across the continent without wires, but they had made it possible to combine wire and wireless telegraphy. he and vail talked with each other freely and easily, while the naval officers who verified the tests marveled. but even more wonderful things were to come. early in the morning of the next day other messages were sent from the arlington tower, and these messages were heard by lloyd espenschied, one of carty's engineers, who was stationed at the wireless station at pearl harbor, near honolulu, hawaii. the distance covered was nearly five thousand miles, and half of it was across land, which is the more remarkable as the wireless does not operate so readily over land as over water. the distance covered in this test was greater than the distance from washington to london, paris, berlin, vienna, or petrograd. the successful completion of this test meant that the capitals of the great nations of the world might communicate, might talk with one another, by wireless telephone. only a receiving set had been installed at hawaii, so that it was not possible for espenschied to reply to the message from arlington, and it was not until his message came by cable that those at arlington knew that the words they had spoken had traveled five thousand miles. other receiving sets had been located at san diego and at darien on the isthmus of panama, and at these points also the words were distinctly heard. by the latter part of october all was in readiness for a transatlantic test, and on the th of october american engineers, with american apparatus installed at the great french station at the eiffel tower, paris, heard the words spoken at arlington, virginia. carty and his engineers had bridged the atlantic for the spoken word. because of war-time conditions it was not possible to secure the use of the french station for an extended test, but the fact was established that once the apparatus is in place telephonic communication between europe and america may he carried on regularly. the apparatus used as developed by the engineers of the bell system was in a measure an outgrowth of their work with the long-distance telephone. wireless telephony, despite the wonders it has already accomplished, is still in its infancy. with more perfect apparatus and the knowledge that comes with experience we may expect that speech will girdle the earth. it is natural that one should wonder whether the wireless telephone is destined to displace our present apparatus. this does not seem at all probable. in the first place, wireless telephony is now, and probably always will be, very expensive. where the wire will do it is the more economical. there are many limitations to the use of the other for talking purposes, and it cannot be drawn upon too strongly by the man of science. it will accomplish miracles, but must not be overtaxed. millions of messages going in all directions, crossing and recrossing one another, as is done every day by wire, are probably an impossibility by wireless telephony. weird and little-understood conditions of the ether, static electricity, radio disturbances, make wireless work uncertain, and such a thing as twenty-four-hour service, seven days in the week, can probably never be guaranteed. in radio communication all must use a common medium, and as its use increases, so also do the difficulties. the privacy of the wire is also lacking with the wireless telephone. but because a way was found to couple the wireless telephone with the wire telephone, the new wonder has great possibilities as a supplement to our existing system. before so very long it may be possible for an american business man sitting in his office to call up and converse with a friend on a liner crossing the atlantic. the advantages of speaking between ship and ship as an improvement over wireless telegraphy in time of need are obvious. a demonstration of the part this great national telephone system would play in the country's defense in case of attack was held in may of . the navy department at washington was placed in communication with every navy-yard and post in the united states, so that the executive officers could instantly talk with those in charge of the posts throughout the country. the wireless telephone was used in addition to the long distance, and secretary of the navy daniels, sitting at his desk at washington, talked with captain chandler, who was at his station on the bridge of the u.s.s. _new hampshire_ at hampton roads. whatever the future limitations of wireless telephony, there is no doubt as to the place it will take among the scientific accomplishments of the age. merely as a scientific discovery or invention, it ranks among the wonders of civilization. much as the tremendous leap of human voice across the line from new york to san francisco appealed to the mind, there is something infinitely more fascinating in this new triumph of the engineer. the human mind can grasp the idea of the spoken word being carried along wires, though that is difficult enough, but when we try to understand its flight through space we are faced with something beyond the comprehension of the layman and almost past belief. we have seen how communication has developed, very slowly at first, and then, as electricity was discovered, with great rapidity until man may converse with man at a distance of five thousand miles. what the future will bring forth we do not know. the ether may be made to accomplish even more wonderful things as a bearer of intelligence. though we cannot now see how it would be possible, the day may come when every automobile and aeroplane will be equipped with its wireless telephone, and the motorist and aviator, wherever they go, may talk with anyone anywhere. the transmission of power by wireless is confidently predicted. pictures have been transmitted by telegraph. it may be possible to transmit them by wireless. then some one may find out how to transmit moving pictures through the ether. then one might sit and see before him on a screen a representation of what was then happening thousands of miles away, and, listening through a telephone, hear all the sounds at the same place. wonders that we cannot even now imagine may lie before us. appendix a new developments of the telegraph _by f.w. lienan, superintendent tariff bureau, western union telegraph company_ the invention of samuel f.b. morse is unique in this, that the methods and instruments of telegraph operation as he evolved them from his first experimental apparatus were so simple, and yet so completely met the requirements, that they have continued in use to the present day in practically their original form. but this does not mean that there has not been the same constant striving for betterment in this as in every other art. many minds have, since the birth of the telegraph, occupied themselves with the problem of devising improved means of telegraphic transmission. the results have varied according to the point of view from which the subject was approached, but all, directly or indirectly, sought the same goal (the obvious one, since speed is the essence of telegraphy), to find the best means of sending more messages over the wire in a given time. it will readily suggest itself that the solution of this problem lies either in an arrangement enabling the wire to carry more than one message at once, or in some apparatus capable of transmitting messages over the wire more rapidly than can be done by hand, or in a combination of both these principles. duplex and quadruples operations are perhaps the most generally known methods by which increased utilization of the capacity of the line has been achieved. duplex operation permits of the sending of two messages over one wire in opposite directions at the same time; and quadruples, the simultaneous transmission of four messages, two going in each direction. truly a remarkable accomplishment; but, like many other things that have found their permanent place in daily use, become so familiar that we no longer pause to marvel at it. these expedients constitute a direct and very effective attack on the problem how to get more work out of the wire with the existing means of operation, and on account of their fundamental character and the important place which by reason thereof they have taken in the telegraphic art, are entitled to first mention. the problem of increasing the rapidity of transmission has been met by various automatic systems of telegraphy, so called because they embody the idea of mechanical transmission with resulting gain in speed and other advantages. the number of these which have from time to time been devised is considerable. not all have proven to be practicable, but those which have failed to prove in under actual operating conditions none the less display evidence of ingenuity which may well excite our admiration. to mention one or two which may be interesting on account of the oddity of their method--there was, for instance, an early device, similar in principle to the calling apparatus of the automatic telephone, which involved the turning of a movable disk so that a projection on its circumference pointed successively to the letters to be transmitted. experiments were made with ordinary metal type set up in a composing-stick, a series of brushes passing over the type faces and producing similar characters on a tape at the other end of the line. in another more recent ingenious device a pivoted mirror at the receiving end was so manipulated by the electrical impulses that a ray of light reflected from the surface of the mirror actually wrote the message upon sensitized paper, like a pencil, in a fair handwriting. in another the receiving apparatus printed vertical, horizontal, and slanting lines in such manner that they combined to make letters, rather angular, it is true, but legible. these and other kindred devices are interesting as efforts to accomplish the direct production of legible messages. in experimental tests they performed their function successfully, and in some cases with considerable speed, but some of them required more than one line wire, some were too sensitive to disturbance by inductive currents and some developed other weaknesses which have prevented their incorporation in the actual operating machinery of to-day. in the general development of the so-called automatic telegraph devices which have been or now are in practical operation, two lines have been pursued. one involves direct keyboard transmission; the other, the use at the sending end of a perforated tape capable of being run through a transmitting machine at high speed. one type of the former is the so-called step-by-step process, in which a revolving body in the transmitting apparatus, as, for instance, a cylinder provided with pegs placed at intervals around its circumference in spiral fashion, is arrested by the depression of the keys of the keyboard in such a way that a type wheel in the receiving apparatus at the distant end of the line prints the corresponding letter. this method was employed in the house and phelps printing telegraphs operated by the western union telegraph company in its earlier days, and is to-day used in the operation of the familiar ticker. in another type of direct keyboard operation the manipulation of the keys transmits the impulses directly to the line and the receiving apparatus translates them by electrically controlled mechanical devices into printed characters in message form. the systems best adapted to rapid telegraph work are predicated on the use of a perforated tape on which, by means of a suitable perforating apparatus, little round holes are produced in various groupings, each group, when the tape is passed through the transmitter, causing a certain combination of electrical impulses to pass over the wire. the transmitter as a rule consists of a mechanically or motor driven mechanism which causes the telegraph impulses to be transmitted to the line, and the combination and character of the impulses are determined by the tape perforations. the rapidity with which the tape may be driven through the transmitter makes very high speed operation possible. of course it is necessary that there should be at the other end of the wire apparatus capable of receiving and recording the signals as speedily as they are sent. as early as alexander bain perfected a system involving the use of the perforated transmitting tape; at the receiving station the messages were recorded in dots and dashes upon a chemically prepared strip of paper by means of iron pens, the metal of which was, through the combined action of the electrical current and the chemical preparation, decomposed, producing black marks in the form of dots and dashes upon the paper. the bain apparatus was in actual operation in the younger days of the telegraph. various systems, based on similar principles, involving tape transmission and the production of dots and dashes on a receiving tape, have from time to time been devised, but have generally not succeeded in establishing any permanent usefulness in competition with more effective instrumentalities which have been perfected. the hardiest survivor of them is the wheatstone apparatus, which has been in successful operation for years. originally the perforating--or, to use the commonly current term, the punching--of the wheatstone sending tape was accomplished by a mechanism equipped with three keys--one for the dot, one for the dash, and one for the space. the keys were struck with rubber-tipped mallets held in the hands of the operator and brought down with considerable force. later this rather primitive perforator was supplanted by one equipped with a full keyboard on the order of a typewriter keyboard. at the receiving end of the line the messages are produced on a tape in dots and dashes of the morse alphabet, and hence a further process of translation is necessary. this system has proven very useful, particularly in times of wire trouble and scarcity of facilities, when it is essential to move as many messages as possible over the available lines. the schemes devised for combining automatic transmission by the perforated-tape method with direct production of the message at its destination in ordinary letters and figures, eliminating the intervening step of translation from morse characters, have been many. their individual enumeration is beyond the scope of the present discussion, and would in any event involve a wearisome exposition of their distinguishing technical features. several of these systems are at present in practical and very effective operation. one of the forerunners of the printing telegraph systems now in use was the buckingham system, for many years employed by the western union telegraph company, but now for some time obsolete. the receiving mechanism of this system printed the messages on telegraph blanks placed upon a cylinder of just the right circumference to accommodate two telegraph blanks. the blanks were arranged in pairs, rolled into the form of a tube and placed around the cylinder. when two messages had been written a new pair of blanks had to be substituted. this was a rather awkward arrangement, but at a time when more highly developed apparatus had not been perfected it served its purpose to good advantage. the printing telegraphs of to-day produce their messages by the direct operation of typewriting machines or mechanisms operating substantially in the same manner as the ordinary typewriting machine. the methods by which the electrical impulses coming over the line are transformed into mechanical operation of the typewriter keys, or what corresponds to the typewriter keys, vary. it would be difficult to describe how this function is performed without entering upon much detail of a highly technical character. suffice it to say that means have been devised by which each combination of electrical impulses coming over the line wire causes a channel to be opened for the motor operation of the typewriting key-bar operating the corresponding letter upon the typewriter apparatus. these machines write the messages with proper arrangement of the date line, address, text, and signature, operating not only the type, but also the carriage shift and the line spacing as required. a further step in advance has been made by feeding the blanks into the receiving typewriter from a continuous roll, an attendant tearing the messages off as they are completed. the entire operation is automatic from beginning to end and capable of considerable speed. there remained the problem of devising some means by which a number of automatic units could be operated over the same line at the same time. this is not by any means a new proposition. here again various solutions have been offered by the scientists both of europe and of this country, and different systems designed to accomplish the desired object have been placed in operation. one of the most recent, and we believe the most efficient so far developed, is the so-called multiplex printer system, devised by the engineers of the western union telegraph company and now being extensively used by that company. perhaps the best picture of what is accomplished by this system can be given by an illustration. let us assume a single wire between new york and chicago. at the new york end there are connected with this wire four combined perforators and transmitters, and four receiving machines operating on the typewriter principle. at the chicago end the wire is connected with a like number of sending and receiving machines. all these machines are in simultaneous operation; that is to say, four messages are being sent from new york to chicago, and four messages are being sent from chicago to new york, all at the same time and over a single wire, and the entire process is automatic. the method by which eight messages can be sent over a single wire at the same time without interfering with one another cannot readily be described in simple terms. it may give some comprehension of the underlying principle to say that the heart of the mechanism is in two disks at each end of the line, which are divided into groups of segments insulated from each other, each group being connected to one of the sending or receiving machines, respectively. a rotating contact brush connected to the line wire passes over the disk, so that, as it comes into contact with each segment, the line wire is connected in turn with the channel leading to the corresponding operating unit. the brushes revolve in absolute unison of time and position. to use the same illustration as before, the brush on the chicago disk and the brush on the new york disk not only move at exactly the same speed, but at any given moment the two brushes are in exactly the same position with regard to the respective group of segments of both disks. if we now conceive of these brushes passing over the successive segments of the disks at a very great rate of speed, it may be understood that the effect is that the electrical impulses are distributed, each receiving machine receiving only those produced by the corresponding sending machine at the other end. in other words, each of the sets of receiving and sending apparatus really gets the use of the line for a fraction of the time during each revolution of the brushes of the distributer or disk mechanism. the multiplex automatic circuits are being extended all over the country and are proving extremely valuable in handling the constantly growing volume of telegraph traffic. what has thus been achieved in developing the technical side of telegraph operation must be attributed in part to that impulse toward improvement which is constantly at work everywhere and is the most potent factor in the progress of all industries, but in large measure it is the reflex of the growing--and recently very rapidly growing--demands which are made upon the telegraph service. emphasis is placed on the larger ratio of growth in this demand in recent years because it is peculiarly symptomatic of a noticeably wider realization of the advantages which the telegraph offers as an effective medium for business and social correspondence than has heretofore been in evidence. it means that we have graduated from that state of mind which saw in the telegraph something to be resorted to only under the stress of emergency, which caused many good people to associate a telegram with trouble and bad news and sudden calamity. there are still some dear old ladies who, on receipt of a telegram, make a rapid mental survey of the entire roster of their near and distant relatives and wonder whose death or illness the message may announce before they open the fateful envelope, only to find that up-to-date cousin mary, who has learned that the telegraph is as readily used as the mail and many times more rapid and efficient, wants to know whether they can come out for the week-end. when cousin mary of to-day wants to know, she wants to know right away--not only that she has her arrangements to make, but also because she just does not propose to wait a day or two to get a simple answer to a simple question. therein she embodies the spirit of the times. our ancestors were content to jog along for days in a stuffy stage-coach; we complain that the train which accomplishes the same distance in a few hours is too slow. we act more quickly; we think more quickly. we have to if we want to keep within earshot of the band. this speeding up makes itself quite obviously most apparent in our business processes. no body of business men need be told how much keener competition is becoming daily, how much narrower the margin by which success must be won. familiar phrases, these. but behind them lies a wealth of tragedy. how many have fallen by the way? it is estimated that something less than ten per cent. of those who engage in business on their own account succeed. how terrible the percentage of those who fail! the race has become too swift for them. driven by the lash of competition, business must perforce move faster and faster. time is becoming ever more precious. negotiations must be rapidly conducted, decisions arrived at quickly, transactions closed on the moment. what wonder that all this makes for a vastly increased use of the quickest method of communication? that is but one of the conditions which accounts for the growing use of the telegraph. another is to be found in the recognition of the convenience of the night letter and day letter. this has brought about a considerable increase in the volume of family and social correspondence by telegraph, which will grow to very much greater proportions as experience demonstrates its value. in business life the night letter and day letter have likewise established a distinct place for themselves. here also the present development of this traffic can be regarded as only rudimentary in comparison with the possibilities of its future development, indications of which are already apparent. it has been discovered that the telegram, on account of its peculiar attention-compelling quality, is an effective medium not only for the individual appeal, but for placing business propositions before a number of people at once, the night letters and day letters being particularly adapted to this purpose by reason of the greater scope of expression which they offer. again, business men are developing the habit of using the telegram in keeping in touch with their field forces and their salesmen and encouraging their activities, in cultivating closer contact with their customers, in placing their orders, in replenishing their stocks, and in any number of other ways calculated to further the profitable conduct of their enterprises. all this means that the telegraph is increasingly being utilized as a means of correspondence of every conceivable sort. it means also that with the growing appreciation of its adaptability to the every-day needs of social and business communication a very much larger public demand upon it must be anticipated, and it is to meet this demand with prompt and satisfactory service that the telegraph company has been bending its efforts to the perfection of a highly developed organization and of operating appliances of the most modern and efficient type. appendix b through the courtesy of j.j. carty, esq., chief engineer of the american telephone and telegraph company, there follows the clean-cut survey of the evolution of the telephone presented in his address before the franklin institute in philadelphia, may , , when he received the gold medal of the institute. more than any other, the telephone art is a product of american institutions and reflects the genius of our people. the story of its wonderful development is a story of our own country. it is a story exclusively of american enterprise and american progress, for, although the most powerful governments of europe have devoted their energies to the development and operation of telephone systems, great contributions to the art have not been made by any of them. with very few exceptions, the best that is used in telephony everywhere in the world to-day has been contributed by workers here in america. it is of peculiar interest to recall the fact that the first words ever transmitted by the electric telephone were spoken in a building at boston, not far from where benjamin franklin first saw the light. the telephone, as well as franklin, was born at boston, and, like franklin, its first journey into the world brought it to philadelphia, where it was exhibited by its inventor, alexander graham bell, at the centennial exhibition in , held here to commemorate the first hundred years of our existence as a free and independent nation. it was a fitting contribution to american progress, representing the highest product of american inventive genius, and a worthy continuance of the labors of franklin, one of the founders of the science of electricity as well as of the republic. nothing could appeal more to the genius of franklin than the telephone, for not only have his countrymen built upon it an electrical system of communication of transcendent magnitude and usefulness, but they have made it into a powerful agency for the advancement of civilization, eliminating barriers to speech, binding together our people into one nation, and now reaching out to the uttermost limits of the earth, with the grand aim of some day bringing together the people of all the nations of the earth into one common brotherhood. on the tenth day of march, , the telephone art was born, when, over a wire extending between two rooms on the top floor of a building in boston, alexander graham bell spoke to his associate, thomas a. watson, saying: "mr. watson, please come here. i want you." these words, then heard by mr. watson in the instrument at his ear, constitute the first sentence ever received by the electric telephone. the instrument into which doctor bell spoke was a crude apparatus, and the current which it generated was so feeble that, although the line was about a hundred feet in length, the voice heard in the receiver was so faint as to be audible only to such a trained and sensitive ear as that of the young mr. watson, and then only when all surrounding noises were excluded. following the instructions given by doctor bell, mr. watson with his own hands had constructed the first telephone instruments and ran the first telephone wire. at that time all the knowledge of the telephone art was possessed exclusively by those two men. there was no experience to guide and no tradition to follow. the founders of the telephone, with remarkable foresight, recognized that success depended upon the highest scientific knowledge and technical skill, and at once organized an experimental and research department. they also sought the aid of university professors eminent for their scientific attainments, although at that time there was no university giving the degree of electrical engineer or teaching electrical engineering. from this small beginning there has been developed the present engineering, experimental and research department which is under my charge. from only two men in this staff has, in , grown to more than six hundred engineers and scientists, including former professors, post-graduate students, and scientific investigators, graduates of nearly a hundred american colleges and universities, thus emphasizing in a special way the american character of the art. the above number includes only those devoted to experimental and research work and engineering development and standardization, and does not include the very much larger body of engineers engaged in manufacturing and in practical field work throughout the united states. not even the largest and most powerful government telephone and telegraph administration of europe has a staff to be compared with this. it is in our great universities that anything like it is to be found, but even here we find that it exceeds in number the entire teaching staff of even our largest technical institutions. a good idea may spring up in the mind of man anywhere, but as applied to such a complex entity as a telephone system, the countless parts of which cover a continent, no individual unaided can bring the idea to a successful conclusion. a comprehensive and effective engineering and scientific and development organization such as this is necessary, and years of expensive work are required before the idea can be rendered useful to the public. but, vital as they are to its success, the, telephone art requires more than engineers and scientists. so we find that in the building and operation and maintenance of that vast continental telephone system which bears the name of bell, in honor of the great inventor, there are at work each day more than , employees, of which nearly , are engaged in the manufacture of telephones, switchboards, cables, and all of the thousands and tens of thousands of parts required for the operation of the telephone system of america. the remaining , are distributed throughout all of the states of the union. about , of these are women, largely telephone operators; , are linemen, installers, cable splicers, and the like, engaged in the building and maintaining of the continental plant. there are thousands of other employees in the accounting, legal, commercial and other departments. there are , engineers located in different parts of the country. the majority of these engineers have received technical training in american technical schools, colleges, and universities. this number does not include by any means all of those in the other departments who have received technical or college training. in view of the technical and scientific nature of the telephone art, an unusually high-grade personnel is required in all departments, and the amount of unskilled labor employed is relatively very small. no other art calls forth in a higher degree those qualities of initiative, judgment, skill, enterprise, and high character which have in all times distinguished the great achievements of america. in the telephone plant of the whole world could be carried away in the arms of one man. it consisted of two crude telephones like the one now before you, connected together by a wire of about one hundred feet in length. a piece cut from this wire by mr. watson himself is here in this little glass case. at this time there was no practical telephone transmitter, no hard-drawn copper wire, no transposed and balanced metallic circuits, no multiple telephone switchboard, or telephone switchboard of any kind, no telephone cable that would work satisfactorily; in fact, there were none of the multitude of parts which now constitute the telephone system. the first practical telephone line was a copy of the best telegraph line of the day. a line wire was strung on the poles and housetops, using the ground for the return circuit. electrical disturbances, coming from no one knows where, were picked up by this line. frequently the disturbances were so loud in the telephone as to destroy conversation. when a second telephone line was strung alongside the first, even though perfectly insulated, another surprise awaited the telephone pioneers. conversation carried on over one of these wires could plainly be heard on the other. another strange thing was discovered. iron wire was not so good a conductor for the telephone current as it was for the telegraph current. the talking distance, therefore, was limited by the imperfect carrying power of the conductor and by the confusing effect of all sorts of disturbing currents from the atmosphere and from neighboring telephone and telegraph wires. these and a multitude of other difficulties, constituting problems of the most intricate nature, impeded the progress of the telephone art, but american engineers, by persistent study, incessant experimentation, and the expenditure of immense sums of money, have overcome these difficulties. they have created a new art, inventing, developing, and perfecting, making improvements great and small in telephone, transmitter, line, cable, switchboard, and every other piece of apparatus and plant required for the transmission of speech. as the result of nearly forty years of this unceasing, organized effort, on the th of january, , there was dedicated to the service of the american public a transcontinental telephone line, , miles long, joining the atlantic and the pacific, and carrying the human voice instantly and distinctly between san francisco and new york and philadelphia and boston. on that day over this line doctor bell again talked to mr. watson, who was now , miles away. it was a day of romantic triumph for these two men and for their associates and their thousands of successors who have built up the great american telephone art. the th of february following was another day of triumph for the telephone art as a product of american institutions, for, in the presence of dignitaries of the city and state here at philadelphia and at san francisco, the sound of the liberty bell, which had not been heard since it tolled for the death of chief-justice marshall, was transmitted by telephone over the transcontinental line to san francisco, where it was plainly heard by all those there assembled. immediately after this the stirring tones of the "star-spangled banner" played on the bugle at san francisco were sent like lightning back across the continent to salute the old bell in philadelphia. it had often been pointed out that the words of the tenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of leviticus, added when the bell was recast in , were peculiarly applicable to the part played by the old bell in . but the words were still more prophetic. the old bell had been silent for nearly eighty years, and it was thought forever, but by the use of the telephone a gentle tap, which could be heard through the air only a few feet away, was enough to transmit the tones of the historic relic all the way across the continent from the atlantic to the pacific. thus, by the aid of the telephone art, the liberty bell was enabled literally to fulfil its destiny and "proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." the two telephone instruments of had become many millions by , and the first telephone line, a hundred feet long, had grown to one of more than three thousand miles in length. this line is but part of the american telephone system of twenty-one million miles of wire, connecting more than nine million telephone stations located everywhere throughout the united states, and giving telephone service to one hundred million people. universal telephone service throughout the length and breadth of our land, that grand objective of theodore n. vail, has been attained. while alexander graham bell was the first to transmit the tones of the human voice over a wire by electricity, he was also the first to transmit the tones of the human voice by the wireless telephone, for in he spoke along a beam of light to a point a considerable distance away. while the method then used is different from that now in vogue, the medium employed for the transmission is the same--the ether, that mysterious, invisible, imponderable wave-conductor which permeates all creation. while many great advances in the wireless art were made by marconi and many other scientists in america and elsewhere, it remained for that distinguished group of american scientists and engineers working under my charge to be the first to transmit the tones of the human voice in the form of intelligible speech across the atlantic ocean. this great event and those immediately preceding it are so fresh in the public mind that i will make but a brief reference to them here. on april , , we were successful in transmitting speech without the use of wires from our radio station at montauk point on long island to wilmington, delaware. on may th we talked by radio telephone from our station on long island to st. simon island in the atlantic ocean, off the coast of georgia. on the th of august, with our apparatus installed by permission of the navy department at the arlington, virginia, radio station, speech was successfully transmitted from that station to the navy wireless station equipped with our receiving apparatus at the isthmus of panama. on september th, speech was successfully transmitted by wire from new york city to the radio station at arlington, virginia, and thence by wireless telephone across the continent to the radio station at mare island navy-yard, california, where i heard and understood the words of mr. theodore n. vail speaking to me from the telephone on his desk at new york. on the next morning at about one o'clock, washington time, we established wireless telephone communication between arlington, virginia, and pearl harbor in the hawaiian islands, where an engineer of our staff, together with united states naval officers, distinctly heard words spoken into the telephone at arlington, virginia. on october d, from the arlington tower in virginia, we successfully transmitted speech across the atlantic ocean to the eiffel tower at paris, where two of our engineers, in company with french military officers, heard and understood the words spoken at arlington. on the same day when speech was being transmitted by the apparatus at arlington to our engineers and to the french military officers at the eiffel tower in paris, our telephone engineer at pearl harbor, hawaii, together with an officer of the united states navy, heard the words spoken from arlington to paris and recognized the voice of the speaker. as a result of exhaustive researches, too extensive to describe here, it has been ascertained that the function of the wireless telephone is not to do away with the use of wires, but rather to be employed in situations where wires are not available or practicable, such as between ship and ship, and ship and shore, and across large bodies of water. the ether is a universal conductor for wireless telephone and telegraph impulses and must be used in common by all who wish to employ those agencies of communication. in the case of the wireless telegraph the number of messages which may be sent simultaneously is much restricted. in the case of the wireless telephone, owing to the thousands of separate wave-lengths required for the transmission of speech, the number of telephone conversations which may be carried on at the same time is still further restricted and is so small that all who can employ wires will find it necessary to do so, leaving the ether available for those who have no other means of communication. this quality of the ether which thus restricts its use is really a characteristic of the greatest value to mankind, for it forms a universal party line, so to speak, connecting together all creation, so that anybody anywhere, who connects with it in the proper manner, may be heard by every one else so connected. thus, a sinking ship or a human being anywhere can send forth a cry for help which may be heard and answered. no one can tell how far away are the limits of the telephone art, i am certain that they are not to be found here upon the earth, for i firmly believe in the fulfilment of that prophetic aspiration expressed by theodore n. vail at a great gathering in washington, that some day we will build up a world telephone system, making necessary to all peoples the use of a common language or a common understanding of languages which will join all of the people of the earth into one brotherhood. i believe that the time will come when the historic bell which now rests in independence hall will again be sounded, and that by means of the telephone art, which to-day has received such distinguished recognition at your hands, it will proclaim liberty once more, but this time throughout the whole world unto all the inhabitants thereof. and, when this world is ready for the message, i believe the telephone art will provide the means for transmitting to all mankind a great voice saying, "peace on earth, good will toward men." index a ampere's telegraph, . anglo-american telegraph co., . ardois signal system, . atlantic cable projected, ; attempted, , , , ; completed, , . audion amplifier, . automatic telegraphy, , , . b baltimore-washington telegraph line, . bell, alexander graham, parentage, ; youth, ; teaches elocution, ; experiments with speech, , ; meets henry, ; invents telephone, ; at centennial exposition, ; demonstrates telephone, ; bell telephone association, ; bell-western union settlement; bell and wireless telegraphy, ; transcontinental telephone, . bethell, union n., . blake, clarence j., . blake, francis, invents telephone transmitter, . branly coherer, . brett, j.w., . bright, charles tiltson, , , , . c cable laid across channel, . carty, j.j., youth, ; enters telephone field, ; carty and the switchboard, , ; uses metallic circuit, ; in new york city, ; invents bridging bell, ; chief engineer, ; extends long-distance telephone, ; seeks wireless telephone, ; talks across continent by wireless, . clepsydra, . code flags at sea, . coherer, . colomb's flashing lights, . congress votes funds for telegraph, . cooke, william p., , . cornell, ezra, , , . d davy's needle telegraph, . de forest, dr. lee, , . dolbear and telephone, ; wireless telegraphy, . drawbaugh case, . duplex telegraphy, , . dyar, harrison gray, . e edison, and the telegraph, ; telephone transmitter ; wireless telegraphy, . ellsworth, annie, . f field, cyrus w., plans transatlantic cable, ; honors, , ; develops cable, , . g gale, professor, , . gauss and weber's telegraph, . gisborne, f.n., . gray, elisha, , . _great eastern_, , , . guns as marine signals, . h hammond, john hays, . heaviside, a.w., . heliograph, . henry, joseph, , , , . hertz and the hertzian waves, . hubbard, gardiner g., , , , . hubbard, mabel, , . i indian smoke signals, . j jackson, dr. charles t., , . k kelvin, lord (see thomson), . "kwaker" captured, . l long-distance telephone, . m magnetic telegraph co., . marconi, boyhood, ; accomplished wireless telegraphy, ; demonstration in england, ; transatlantic telegraphy, ; marconi telegraph company, . marine signals on argonautic expedition, . mirror galvanometer, . mirrors of pharaoh, . morse at university of new york, . morse, code in signals, ; parentage, ; at yale, ; art student, ; artist, ; conceives the telegraph, ; exhibits telegraph, ; offers telegraph to congress, , ; patents telegraph, ; submarine cable, , ; erects first line, ; dies, . multiplex printer telegraph, . mundy, arthur j., . o o'reilly, henry, . p preece, w.h., , . printing telegraph, . pupin, michael i., . q quadruplex telegraphy, , . r reis's musical telegraph, . s sanders, thomas, , , . scribner, charles e., . searchlight telephone, . semaphore signals, . shouting sentinels, . sibley, hiram, , . signal columns, . siphon recorder, . smith, francis o.j., . stentorophonic tube, . submarine signals, . t telegraph, first suggestion, ; patented, ; development, . telephone invented and patented, ; at centennial, ; exchange, . thomson, youth, ; cable adviser, ; invents mirror galvanometer, ; knighted, ; invents siphon recorder, ; connection with telephone, . transatlantic cable (see atlantic cable). transatlantic wireless telegraphy, . transatlantic wireless telephone, . transcontinental telegraph, . transcontinental telephone, . transcontinental wireless telephone, . trowbridge, john, . troy, signaling fall of, . tuning the wireless telegraph, . v vail, alfred, arranges morse code, joins morse, ; makes telephone apparatus, ; operates first line, ; improves telegraph, . vail, theodore, joins telephone forces, ; puts wires underground, ; adopts copper circuits, ; resumes telephone leadership, ; talks across continent without wires, . w watson, aids bell with telephone, ; telephone partner, ; helps demonstrate telephone, ; telephones across continent, . western union, organized, ; enters telephone field, . wheatstone, ; boyhood, ; five-needle telegraph, ; single-needle telegraph, ; wheatstone-cooke controversy, ; automatic transmitter, ; bridge, ; opposes morse, ; encourages bell, . wig-wag system, . wireless telegraphy suggested, ; invented, ; on shipboard, ; in the future, . wireless telephone, conceived, ; future, ; in navy, . [transcriber's note: the illustrations have been included with another version of this work. the image files have been named in a straightforward manner that corresponds to the numbering in the text; thus, illustration is included as file "fig .png", while illustration (a) is included as file "fig a.png".] the radio amateur's hand book [illustration: a. frederick collins, inventor of the wireless telephone, . awarded gold medal for same, alaska yukon pacific exposition, .] the radio amateur's hand book a complete, authentic and informative work on wireless telegraphy and telephony by a. frederick collins inventor of the wireless telephone ; historian of wireless - ; author of "wireless telegraphy" to william marconi inventor of the wireless telegraph introduction before delving into the mysteries of receiving and sending messages without wires, a word as to the history of the art and its present day applications may be of service. while popular interest in the subject has gone forward by leaps and bounds within the last two or three years, it has been a matter of scientific experiment for more than a quarter of a century. the wireless telegraph was invented by william marconi, at bologna, italy, in , and in his first experiments he sent dot and dash signals to a distance of or feet. the wireless telephone was invented by the author of this book at narberth, penn., in , and in his first experiments the human voice was transmitted to a distance of three blocks. the first vital experiments that led up to the invention of the wireless telegraph were made by heinrich hertz, of germany, in when he showed that the spark of an induction coil set up electric oscillations in an open circuit, and that the energy of these waves was, in turn, sent out in the form of electric waves. he also showed how they could be received at a distance by means of a ring detector, which he called a _resonator_ in , edward branly, of france, showed that metal filings in a tube cohered when electric waves acted on them, and this device he termed a _radio conductor_; this was improved upon by sir oliver lodge, who called it a coherer. in , alexander popoff, of russia, constructed a receiving set for the study of atmospheric electricity, and this arrangement was the earliest on record of the use of a detector connected with an aerial and the earth. marconi was the first to connect an aerial to one side of a spark gap and a ground to the other side of it. he used an induction coil to energize the spark gap, and a telegraph key in the primary circuit to break up the current into signals. adding a morse register, which printed the dot and dash messages on a tape, to the popoff receptor he produced the first system for sending and receiving wireless telegraph messages. [illustration: collins' wireless telephone exhibited at the madison square garden, october .] after marconi had shown the world how to telegraph without connecting wires it would seem, on first thought, to be an easy matter to telephone without wires, but not so, for the electric spark sets up damped and periodic oscillations and these cannot be used for transmitting speech. instead, the oscillations must be of constant amplitude and continuous. that a direct current arc light transforms a part of its energy into electric oscillations was shown by firth and rogers, of england, in . the author was the first to connect an arc lamp with an aerial and a ground, and to use a microphone transmitter to modulate the sustained oscillations so set up. the receiving apparatus consisted of a variable contact, known as a _pill-box_ detector, which sir oliver lodge had devised, and to this was connected an ericsson telephone receiver, then the most sensitive made. a later improvement for setting up sustained oscillations was the author's _rotating oscillation arc_. since those memorable days of more than two decades ago, wonderful advances have been made in both of these methods of transmitting intelligence, and the end is as yet nowhere in sight. twelve or fifteen years ago the boys began to get fun out of listening-in to what the ship and shore stations were sending and, further, they began to do a little sending on their own account. these youngsters, who caused the professional operators many a pang, were the first wireless amateurs, and among them experts were developed who are foremost in the practice of the art today. away back there, the spark coil and the arc lamp were the only known means for setting up oscillations at the sending end, while the electrolytic and crystal detectors were the only available means for the amateur to receive them. as it was next to impossible for a boy to get a current having a high enough voltage for operating an oscillation arc lamp, wireless telephony was out of the question for him, so he had to stick to the spark coil transmitter which needed only a battery current to energize it, and this, of course, limited him to sending morse signals. as the electrolytic detector was cumbersome and required a liquid, the crystal detector which came into being shortly after was just as sensitive and soon displaced the former, even as this had displaced the coherer. a few years ahead of these amateurs, that is to say in , j. a. fleming, of england, invented the vacuum tube detector, but ten more years elapsed before it was perfected to a point where it could compete with the crystal detector. then its use became general and workers everywhere sought to, and did improve it. further, they found that the vacuum tube would not only act as a detector, but that if energized by a direct current of high voltage it would set up sustained oscillations like the arc lamp, and the value of sustained oscillations for wireless telegraphy as well as wireless telephony had already been discovered. the fact that the vacuum tube oscillator requires no adjustment of its elements, that its initial cost is much less than the oscillation arc, besides other considerations, is the reason that it popularized wireless telephony; and because continuous waves have many advantages over periodic oscillations is the reason the vacuum tube oscillator is replacing the spark coil as a wireless telegraph transmitter. moreover, by using a number of large tubes in parallel, powerful oscillations can be set up and, hence, the waves sent out are radiated to enormous distances. while oscillator tubes were being experimented with in the research laboratories of the general electric, the westinghouse, the radio corporation of america, and other big companies, all the youthful amateurs in the country had learned that by using a vacuum tube as a detector they could easily get messages miles away. the use of these tubes as amplifiers also made it possible to employ a loud speaker, so that a room, a hall, or an out-of-door audience could hear clearly and distinctly everything that was being sent out. the boy amateur had only to let father or mother listen-in, and they were duly impressed when he told them they were getting it from kdka (the pittsburgh station of the westinghouse co.), for was not pittsburgh miles away! and so they, too, became enthusiastic wireless amateurs. this new interest of the grown-ups was at once met not only by the manufacturers of apparatus with complete receiving and sending sets, but also by the big companies which began broadcasting regular programs consisting of music and talks on all sorts of interesting subjects. this is the wireless, or radio, as the average amateur knows it today. but it is by no means the limit of its possibilities. on the contrary, we are just beginning to realize what it may mean to the human race. the government is now utilizing it to send out weather, crop and market reports. foreign trade conditions are being reported. the naval observatory at arlington is wirelessing time signals. department stores are beginning to issue programs and advertise by radio! cities are also taking up such programs, and they will doubtless be included soon among the regular privileges of the tax-payers. politicians address their constituents. preachers reach the stay-at-homes. great singers thrill thousands instead of hundreds. soon it will be possible to hear the finest musical programs, entertainers, and orators, without budging from one's easy chair. in the world war wireless proved of inestimable value. airplanes, instead of flying aimlessly, kept in constant touch with headquarters. bodies of troops moved alertly and intelligently. ships at sea talked freely, over hundreds of miles. scouts reported. everywhere its invisible aid was invoked. in time of peace, however, it has proved and will prove the greatest servant of mankind. wireless messages now go daily from continent to continent, and soon will go around the world with the same facility. ships in distress at sea can summon aid. vessels everywhere get the day's news, even to baseball scores. daily new tasks are being assigned this tireless, wireless messenger. messages have been sent and received by moving trains, the lackawanna and the rock island railroads being pioneers in this field. messages have also been received by automobiles, and one inventor has successfully demonstrated a motor car controlled entirely by wireless. this method of communication is being employed more and more by newspapers. it is also of great service in reporting forest fires. colleges are beginning to take up the subject, some of the first being tufts college, hunter college, princeton, yale, harvard, and columbia, which have regularly organized departments for students in wireless. instead of the unwieldy and formidable looking apparatus of a short time ago, experimenters are now vying with each other in making small or novel equipment. portable sets of all sorts are being fashioned, from one which will go into an ordinary suitcase, to one so small it will easily slip into a brownie camera. one receiver depicted in a newspaper was one inch square! another was a ring for the finger, with a setting one inch by five-eighths of an inch, and an umbrella as a "ground." walking sets with receivers fastened to one's belt are also common. daily new novelties and marvels are announced. meanwhile, the radio amateur to whom this book is addressed may have his share in the joys of wireless. to get all of these good things out of the ether one does not need a rod or a gun--only a copper wire made fast at either end and a receiving set of some kind. if you are a sheer beginner, then you must be very careful in buying your apparatus, for since the great wave of popularity has washed wireless into the hearts of the people, numerous companies have sprung up and some of these are selling the veriest kinds of junk. and how, you may ask, are you going to be able to know the good from the indifferent and bad sets? by buying a make of a firm with an established reputation. i have given a few offhand at the end of this book. obviously there are many others of merit--so many, indeed, that it would be quite impossible to get them all in such a list, but these will serve as a guide until you can choose intelligently for yourself. a. f. c. contents chapter i. how to begin wireless kinds of wireless systems--parts of a wireless system--the easiest way to start--about aerial wire systems--about the receiving apparatus--about transmitting stations--kinds of transmitters--the spark gap wireless telegraph transmitter--the vacuum table telegraph transmitter--the wireless telephone transmitter. ii. putting up your aerial kinds of aerial wire systems--how to put up a cheap receiving aerial--a two-wire aerial--connecting in the ground--how to put up a good aerial--an inexpensive good aerial--the best aerial that can be made--assembling the aerial--making a good ground. iii. simple telegraph and telephone receiving sets assembled wireless receiving sets--assembling your own receiving set--the crystal detector--the tuning coil--the loose coupled tuning coil--fixed and variable condensers--about telephone receivers-- connecting up the parts--receiving set no. --adjusting the no. set--the tuning coil--adjusting the no. set. iv. simple telegraph sending sets a cheap transmitting set (no. )--the spark coil--the battery--the telegraph key--the spark gap--the tuning coil--the high-tension condenser--a better transmitting set (no. )--the alternating current transformer--the wireless key--the spark gap--the high-tension condenser--the oscillation transformer--connecting up the apparatus--for direct current--how to adjust your transmitter. tuning with a hot wire ammeter--to send out a -meter wave length--the use of the aerial switch--aerial switch for a complete sending and receiving set--connecting in the lightning switch. v. electricity simply explained electricity at rest and in motion--the electric current and its circuit--current and the ampere--resistance and the ohm--what ohm's law is--what the watt and kilowatt are--electromagnetic induction--mutual induction--high-frequency currents--constants of an oscillation circuit--what capacitance is--what inductance is--what resistance is--the effect of capacitance. vi. how the transmitting and receiving sets work how transmitting set no. works--the battery and spark coil circuit--changing the primary spark coil current into secondary currents--what ratio of transformation means--the secondary spark coil circuit--the closed oscillation circuit--how transmitting set no. works--with alternating current--with direct current--the rotary spark gap--the quenched spark gap--the oscillation transformer--how receiving set no. works--how receiving set no. works. vii. mechanical and electrical tuning damped and sustained mechanical vibrations--damped and sustained oscillations--about mechanical tuning--about electric tuning. viii. a simple vacuum tube detector receiving set assembled vacuum tube receiving set--a simple vacuum tube receiving set--the vacuum tube detector--three electrode vacuum tube detector--the dry cell and storage batteries--the filament rheostat--assembling the parts--connecting up the parts--adjusting the vacuum tube detector receiving set. ix. vacuum tube amplifier receiving sets a grid leak amplifier receiving set. with crystal detector--the fixed resistance unit, or grid leak--assembling the parts for a crystal detector set--connecting up the parts for a crystal detector--a grid leak amplifying receiving set with vacuum tube detector--a radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set--an audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set--a six step amplifier receiving set with a loop aerial--how to prevent howling. x. regenerative amplification receiving sets the simplest type of regenerative receiving set--with loose coupled tuning coil--connecting up the parts--an efficient regenerative receiving set. with three coil loose coupler--the a battery potentiometer--the parts and how to connect them up--a regenerative audio frequency amplifier--the parts and how to connect them up. xi. short wave regenerative receiving sets a short wave regenerative receiver, with one variometer and three variable condensers--the variocoupler--the variometer--connecting up the parts--short wave regenerative receiver with two variometers and two variable condensers--the parts and how to connect them up. xii. intermediate and long wave regenerative receiving sets intermediate wave receiving sets--intermediate wave set with loading coils--the parts and how to connect them up--an intermediate wave set with variocoupler inductance coils--the parts and how to connect them up--a long wave receiving set--the parts and how to connect them up. xiii. heterodyne or beat long wave telegraph receiving set what the heterodyne or beat method is--the autodyne or self-heterodyne long wave receiving set--the parts and connections of an autodyne or self-heterodyne, receiving set--the separate heterodyne long wave receiving set--the parts and connections of a separate heterodyne long wave receiving set. xiv. headphones and loud speakers wireless headphones--how a bell telephone receiver is made--how a wireless headphone is made--about resistance, turns of wire and sensitivity of headphones--the impedance of headphones--how the headphones work--about loud speakers--the simplest type of loud speaker--another simple kind of loud speaker--a third kind of simple loud speaker--a super loud speaker. xv. operation of vacuum tube receptors what is meant by ionization--how electrons are separated from atoms--action of the two electrode vacuum tube--how the two electrode tube acts as a detector--how the three electrode tube acts as a detector--how the vacuum tube acts as an amplifier--the operation of a simple vacuum tube receiving set--operation of a regenerative vacuum tube receiving set--operation of autodyne and heterodyne receiving sets--the autodyne, or self-heterodyne receiving set--the separate heterodyne receiving set. xvi. continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with direct current sources of current for telegraph transmitting sets--an experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter--the apparatus you need--the tuning coil--the condensers--the aerial ammeter--the buzzer and dry cell--the telegraph key--the vacuum tube oscillator--the storage battery--the battery rheostat--the oscillation choke coil--transmitter connectors--the panel cutout--connecting up the transmitting apparatus--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter--the apparatus you need--the tuning coil--the aerial condenser--the aerial ammeter--the grid and blocking condensers--the key circuit apparatus--the watt oscillator vacuum tube--the storage battery and rheostat--the filament voltmeter--the oscillation choke coil--the motor-generator set--the panel cut-out--the protective condenser--connecting up the transmitting apparatus--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter--the apparatus and connections-- the -watt vacuum tube oscillator--the aerial ammeter--the grid leak resistance--the oscillation choke coil--the filament rheostat--the filament storage battery--the protective condenser--the motor-generator--a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter. xvii. continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with alternating current a -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set--the apparatus required--the choke coils--the milli-ammeter--the a. c. power transformer--connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set-a - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set--the apparatus required--the alternating current power transformer-connecting up the apparatus. xviii. wireless telephone transmitting sets with direct and alternating currents a short distance wireless telephone transmitting set--with -volt direct lighting current--the apparatus you need--the microphone transmitter--connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator--the apparatus you need--the telephone induction coil--the microphone transformer--the magnetic modulator--how the apparatus is connected up--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator--the oscillation choke coil--the plate and grid circuit reactance coils--connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with -volt alternating current--the apparatus you need--the vacuum tube rectifier--the filter condensers--the filter reactance coil-- connecting up the apparatus--a - to -mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with -volt alternating current--apparatus required. xix. the operation of vacuum tube transmitters the operation of the vacuum tube oscillator--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with direct current--short distance c. w. transmitter--the operation of the key circuit--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitting with direct current--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current--with a single oscillator tube--heating the filament with alternating current--the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current-- with two oscillator tubes--the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--short distance transmitter--the microphone transmitter--the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--long distance transmitters--the operation of microphone modulators--the induction coil--the microphone transformer--the magnetic modulator--operation of the vacuum tube as a modulator--the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with alternating current--the operation of rectifier vacuum tubes--the operation of reactors and condensers. xx. how to make a receiving set for $ . or less. the crystal detector--the tuning coil--the headphone--how to mount the parts--the condenser--how to connect up the receptor. appendix useful information--glossary--wireless don'ts. list of figures fig. .--simple receiving set fig. .--simple transmitting set (a) fig. .--flat top, or horizontal aerial (b) fig. .--inclined aerial (a) fig. .--inverted l aerial (b) fig. --t aerial fig. .--material for a simple aerial wire system (a) fig. .--single wire aerial for receiving (b) fig. .--receiving aerial with spark gap lightning arrester (c) fig. .--aerial with lightning switch fig. .--two-wire aerial (a) fig. .--part of a good aerial (b) fig. .--the spreaders (a) fig. .--the middle spreader (b) fig. .--one end of aerial complete (c) fig. .--the leading in spreader (a) fig. .--cross section of crystal detector (b) fig. .--the crystal detector complete (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of a double slide tuning coil (b) fig. .--double slide tuning coil complete (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of a loose coupler (b) fig. .--loose coupler complete (a) fig. .--how a fixed receiving condenser is built up (b) fig. .--the fixed condenser complete (c) and (d) fig. .--variable rotary condenser fig. .--pair of wireless headphones (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. fig. .--adjusting the receiving set (a) and (b) fig. .--types of spark coils for set no. (c) fig. .--wiring diagram of spark coil fig. .--other parts for transmitting set no. (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. (b) fig. .--wiring of diagram for sending set no. fig. .--parts for transmitting set no. (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for sending set no. fig. .--using a -volt direct current with an alternating current transformer fig. .--principle of the hot wire ammeter fig. .--kinds of aerial switches fig. .--wiring diagram for a complete sending and receiving set no. fig. .--wiring diagram for complete sending and receiving set no. fig. .--water analogue for electric pressure fig. .--water analogues for direct and alternating currents fig. .--how the ammeter and voltmeter are used fig. .--water valve analogue of electric resistance (a) and (b) fig. .--how an electric current is changed into magnetic lines of force and these into an electric current (c) and (d) fig. .--how an electric current sets up a magnetic field fig. .--the effect of resistance on the discharge of an electric current fig. .--damped and sustained mechanical vibrations fig. .--damped and sustained electric oscillations fig. .--sound wave and electric wave tuned senders and receptors fig. .--two electrode vacuum tube detectors fig. .--three electrode vacuum tube detector and battery connections fig. .--a and b batteries for vacuum tube detectors fig. .--rheostat for the a or storage-battery current (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for vacuum tube detector receiving set (b) fig. .--wiring diagram of a simple vacuum tube receiving set fig. .--grid leaks and how to connect them up fig. .--crystal detector receiving set with vacuum tube amplifier (resistance coupled) (a) fig. .--vacuum tube detector receiving set with one step amplifier (resistance coupled) (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for using one a or storage battery with an amplifier and a detector tube (a) fig. .--wiring diagram for radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set (b) fig. .--radio frequency transformer (a) fig. .--audio frequency transformer (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set. (with vacuum tube detector and two step amplifier tubes) (a) fig. .--six step amplifier with loop aerial (b) fig. .--efficient regenerative receiving set (with three coil loose coupler tuner) fig. .--simple regenerative receiving set (with loose coupler tuner) (a) fig. .--diagram of three coil loose coupler (b) fig. .--three coil loose coupler tuner fig. .--honeycomb inductance coil fig. .--the use of the potentiometer fig. .--regenerative audio frequency amplifier receiving set fig. .--how the vario coupler is made and works fig. .--how the variometer is made and works fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (one variometer and three variable condensers) fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (two variometer and two variable condensers) fig. .--wiring diagram showing fixed loading coils for intermediate wave set fig. .--wiring digram of intermediate wave receptor with one vario coupler and section bank-wound inductance coil fig. .--wiring diagram showing long wave receptor with vario couplers and bank-wound inductance coils fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave autodyne, or self-heterodyne receptor (compare with fig. ) fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave separate heterodyne receiving set fig. .--cross section of bell telephone receiver fig. .--cross section of wireless headphone fig. .--the wireless headphone fig. .--arkay loud speaker fig. .--amplitone loud speaker fig. .--amplitron loud speaker fig. .--magnavox loud speaker fig. .--schematic diagram of an atom fig. .--action of two-electrode vacuum tube (a) and (b) fig. .--how a two-electrode tube acts as relay or a detector (c) fig. --only the positive part of oscillations goes through the tube (a) and (b) fig. .--how the positive and negative voltages of the oscillations act on the electrons (c) fig. .--how the three-electrode tube acts as detector and amplifier (d) fig. .--how the oscillations control the flow of the battery current through the tube fig. .--how the heterodyne receptor works fig. .--separate heterodyne oscillator (a) fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter. (b) fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter. fig. .--experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter fig. --apparatus of -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter fig. .-- - to -watt c. w. telegraph transmitter (with a single oscillation tube) fig. .-- -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter (with two tubes in parallel) fig. .-- -watt oscillator vacuum tube fig. .--alternating current power transformer (for c. w. telegraphy and wireless telephony) fig. .--wiring diagram for - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set. (with alternating current.) fig. --wiring diagram for - to -mile c. w. telegraph transmitter fig. .--standard microphone transmitter fig. .--wiring diagram of short distance wireless telephone set. (microphone in aerial wire.) fig. .--telephone induction coil (used with microphone transmitter). fig. .--microphone transformer used with microphone transmitter fig. .--magnetic modulator used with microphone transmitter (a) fig. .--wiring diagram of --to -mile wireless telephone. (microphone modulator shunted around grid-leak condenser) (b) fig. .--microphone modulator connected in aerial wire fig. .--wiring diagram of - to -mile wireless telephone transmitting set fig. .--plate and grid circuit reactor fig. .--filter reactor for smoothing out rectified currents fig. .-- - to -mile wireless telephone transmitter (a) and (b) fig. .--operation of vacuum tube oscillators (c) fig. .--how a direct current sets up oscillations fig. .--positive voltage only sets up oscillations fig. .--rasco baby crystal detector fig. .--how the tuning coil is made fig. .--mesco loop-ohm head set fig. .--schematic layout of the $ . receiving set fig. .--wiring diagram for the $ . receiving set list of illustrations a. frederick collins, inventor of the wireless telephone, . awarded gold medal for same, alaska yukon pacific exposition, collins' wireless telephone exhibited at the madison square garden, october, general pershing "listening-in" the world's largest radio receiving station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near port jefferson, l. i. first wireless college in the world, at tufts college, mass alexander graham bell, inventor of the telephone, now an ardent radio enthusiast world's largest loud speaker ever made. installed in lytle park, cincinnati, ohio, to permit president harding's address at point pleasant, ohio, during the grant centenary celebration to be heard within a radius of one square united states naval high power station, arlington, va. general view of power room. at the left can be seen the control switchboards, and overhead, the great k.w. arc transmitter with accessories the transformer and tuner of the world's largest radio station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near port jefferson, l. i. broadcasting government reports by wireless from washington. this shows mr. gale at work with his set in the post office department wireless receptor, the size of a safety match box. a youthful genius in the person of kenneth r. hinman, who is only twelve years old, has made a wireless receiving set that fits neatly into a safety match box. with this instrument and a pair of ordinary receivers, he is able to catch not only code messages but the regular broadcasting programs from stations twenty and thirty miles distant wireless set made into a ring, designed by alfred g. rinehart, of elizabeth, new jersey. this little receptor is a practical set; it will receive messages, concerts, etc., measures " by / " by / ". an ordinary umbrella is used as an aerial chapter i how to begin wireless in writing this book it is taken for granted that you are: _first_, one of the several hundred thousand persons in the united states who are interested in wireless telegraphy and telephony; _second_, that you would like to install an apparatus in your home, and _third_, that it is all new to you. now if you live in a city or town large enough to support an electrical supply store, there you will find the necessary apparatus on sale, and someone who can tell you what you want to know about it and how it works. if you live away from the marts and hives of industry you can send to various makers of wireless apparatus [footnote: a list of makers of wireless apparatus will be found in the _appendix_.] for their catalogues and price-lists and these will give you much useful information. but in either case it is the better plan for you to know before you start in to buy an outfit exactly what apparatus you need to produce the result you have in mind, and this you can gain in easy steps by reading this book. kinds of wireless systems.--there are two distinct kinds of wireless systems and these are: the _wireless telegraph_ system, and the _wireless telephone_ system. the difference between the wireless telegraph and the wireless telephone is that the former transmits messages by means of a _telegraph key_, and the latter transmits conversation and music by means of a _microphone transmitter_. in other words, the same difference exists between them in this respect as between the morse telegraph and the bell telephone. parts of a wireless system.--every complete wireless station, whether telegraph or telephone, consists of three chief separate and distinct parts and these are: (a) the _aerial wire system_, or _antenna_ as it is often called, (b) the _transmitter_, or _sender_, and (c) the _receiver_, or, more properly, the _receptor_. the aerial wire is precisely the same for either wireless telegraphy or wireless telephony. the transmitter of a wireless telegraph set generally uses a _spark gap_ for setting up the electric oscillations, while usually for wireless telephony a _vacuum tube_ is employed for this purpose. the receptor for wireless telegraphy and telephony is the same and may include either a _crystal detector_ or a _vacuum tube detector_, as will be explained presently. the easiest way to start.--first of all you must obtain a government license to operate a sending set, but you do not need a license to put up and use a receiving set, though you are required by law to keep secret any messages which you may overhear. since no license is needed for a receiving set the easiest way to break into the wireless game is to put up an aerial and hook up a receiving set to it; you can then listen-in and hear what is going on in the all-pervading ether around you, and you will soon find enough to make things highly entertaining. nearly all the big wireless companies have great stations fitted with powerful telephone transmitters and at given hours of the day and night they send out songs by popular singers, dance music by jazz orchestras, fashion talks by and for the ladies, agricultural reports, government weather forecasts and other interesting features. then by simply shifting the slide on your tuning coil you can often tune-in someone who is sending _morse_, that is, messages in the dot and dash code, or, perhaps a friend who has a wireless telephone transmitter and is talking. of course, if you want to _talk back_ you must have a wireless transmitter, either telegraphic or telephonic, and this is a much more expensive part of the apparatus than the receptor, both in its initial cost and in its operation. a wireless telegraph transmitter is less costly than a wireless telephone transmitter and it is a very good scheme for you to learn to send and receive telegraphic messages. at the present time, however, there are fifteen amateur receiving stations in the united states to every sending station, so you can see that the majority of wireless folks care more for listening in to the broadcasting of news and music than to sending out messages on their own account. the easiest way to begin wireless, then, is to put up an aerial and hook up a receiving set to it. about aerial wire systems.--to the beginner who wants to install a wireless station the aerial wire system usually looms up as the biggest obstacle of all, and especially is this true if his house is without a flag pole, or other elevation from which the aerial wire can be conveniently suspended. if you live in the congested part of a big city where there are no yards and, particularly, if you live in a flat building or an apartment house, you will have to string your aerial wire on the roof, and to do this you should get the owner's, or agent's, permission. this is usually an easy thing to do where you only intend to receive messages, for one or two thin wires supported at either end of the building are all that are needed. if for any reason you cannot put your aerial on the roof then run a wire along the building outside of your apartment, and, finally, if this is not feasible, connect your receiver to a wire strung up in your room, or even to an iron or a brass bed, and you can still get the near-by stations. an important part of the aerial wire system is the _ground_, that is, your receiving set must not only be connected with the aerial wire, but with a wire that leads to and makes good contact with the moist earth of the ground. where a house or a building is piped for gas, water or steam, it is easy to make a ground connection, for all you have to do is to fasten the wire to one of the pipes with a clamp. [footnote: pipes are often insulated from the ground, which makes them useless for this purpose.] where the house is isolated then a lot of wires or a sheet of copper or of zinc must be buried in the ground at a sufficient depth to insure their being kept moist. about the receiving apparatus.--you can either buy the parts of the receiving apparatus separate and hook them up yourself, or you can buy the apparatus already assembled in a set which is, in the beginning, perhaps, the better way. the simplest receiving set consists of ( ) a _detector_, ( ) a _tuning coil_, and ( ) a _telephone receiver_ and these three pieces of apparatus are, of course, connected together and are also connected to the aerial and ground as the diagram in fig. clearly shows. there are two chief kinds of detectors used at the present time and these are: (a) the _crystal detector_, and (b) the _vacuum tube detector_. the crystal detector is the cheapest and simplest, but it is not as sensitive as the vacuum tube detector and it requires frequent adjustment. a crystal detector can be used with or without a battery while the vacuum tube detector requires two small batteries. [illustration: fig. .--simple receiving set.] a tuning coil of the simplest kind consists of a single layer of copper wire wound on a cylinder with an adjustable, or sliding, contact, but for sharp tuning you need a _loose coupled tuning coil_. where a single coil tuner is used a _fixed_ condenser should be connected around the telephone receivers. where a loose coupled tuner is employed you should have a variable condenser connected across the _closed oscillation circuit_ and a _fixed condenser_ across the telephone receivers. when listening-in to distant stations the energy of the received wireless waves is often so very feeble that in order to hear distinctly an _amplifier_ must be used. to amplify the incoming sounds a vacuum tube made like a detector is used and sometimes as many as half-a-dozen of these tubes are connected in the receiving circuit, or in _cascade_, as it is called, when the sounds are _amplified_, that is magnified, many hundreds of times. the telephone receiver of a receiving set is equally as important as the detector. a single receiver can be used but a pair of receivers connected with a head-band gives far better results. then again the higher the resistance of the receivers the more sensitive they often are and those wound to as high a resistance as , ohms are made for use with the best sets. to make the incoming signals, conversation or music, audible to a room full of people instead of to just yourself you must use what is called a _loud speaker_. in its simplest form this consists of a metal cone like a megaphone to which is fitted a telephone receiver. about transmitting stations--getting your license.--if you are going to install a wireless sending apparatus, either telegraphic or telephonic, you will have to secure a government license for which no fee or charge of any kind is made. there are three classes of licenses issued to amateurs who want to operate transmitting stations and these are: ( ) the _restricted amateur license_, ( ) the _general amateur license_, and ( ) the _special amateur license_. if you are going to set up a transmitter within five nautical miles of any naval wireless station then you will have to get a _restricted amateur license_ which limits the current you use to half a _kilowatt_ [footnote: a _kilowatt_ is , _watts_. there are watts in a horsepower.] and the wave length you send out to _meters_. should you live outside of the five-mile range of a navy station then you can get a general amateur license and this permits you to use a current of kilowatt, but you are likewise limited to a wave length of meters. but if you can show that you are doing some special kind of wireless work and not using your sending station for the mere pleasure you are getting out of it you may be able to get a _special amateur license_ which gives you the right to send out wave lengths up to meters. when you are ready to apply for your license write to the _radio inspector_ of whichever one of the following districts you live in: first district..............boston, mass. second " ..............new york city third " ..............baltimore, md. fourth " ..............norfolk, va. fifth " ..............new orleans, la. sixth " ............. san francisco, cal. seventh " ............. seattle, wash. eighth " ............. detroit, mich. ninth " ..............chicago, ill. kinds of transmitters.--there are two general types of transmitters used for sending out wireless messages and these are: ( ) _wireless telegraph_ transmitters, and ( ) _wireless telephone_ transmitters. telegraph transmitters may use either: (a) a _jump-spark_, (b) an _electric arc_, or (c) a _vacuum tube_ apparatus for sending out dot and dash messages, while telephone transmitters may use either, (a) an _electric arc_, or (b) a _vacuum tube_ for sending out vocal and musical sounds. amateurs generally use a _jump-spark_ for sending wireless telegraph messages and the _vacuum tube_ for sending wireless telephone messages. the spark gap wireless telegraph transmitter.--the simplest kind of a wireless telegraph transmitter consists of: ( ) a _source of direct or alternating current_, ( ) a _telegraph key_, ( ) a _spark-coil_ or a _transformer_, ( ) a _spark gap_, ( ) an _adjustable condenser_ and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. where _dry cells_ or a _storage battery_ must be used to supply the current for energizing the transmitter a spark-coil can be employed and these may be had in various sizes from a little fellow which gives / -inch spark up to a larger one which gives a -inch spark. where more energy is needed it is better practice to use a transformer and this can be worked on an alternating current of volts, or if only a volt direct current is available then an _electrolytic interrupter_ must be used to make and break the current. a simple transmitting set with an induction coil is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig .--simple transmitting set.] a wireless key is made like an ordinary telegraph key except that where large currents are to be used it is somewhat heavier and is provided with large silver contact points. spark gaps for amateur work are usually of: ( ) the _plain_ or _stationary type_, ( ) the _rotating type_, and ( ) the _quenched gap_ type. the plain spark-gap is more suitable for small spark-coil sets, and it is not so apt to break down the transformer and condenser of the larger sets as the rotary gap. the rotary gap on the other hand tends to prevent _arcing_ and so the break is quicker and there is less dragging of the spark. the quenched gap is more efficient than either the plain or rotary gap and moreover it is noiseless. condensers for spark telegraph transmitters can be ordinary leyden jars or glass plates coated with tin or copper foil and set into a frame, or they can be built up of mica and sheet metal embedded in an insulating composition. the glass plate condensers are the cheapest and will serve your purpose well, especially if they are immersed in oil. tuning coils, sometimes called _transmitting inductances_ and _oscillation transformers_, are of various types. the simplest kind is a transmitting inductance which consists of or turns of copper wire wound on an insulating tube or frame. an oscillation transformer is a loose coupled tuning coil and it consists of a primary coil formed of a number of turns of copper wire wound on a fixed insulating support, and a secondary coil of about twice the number of turns of copper wire which is likewise fixed in an insulating support, but the coils are relatively movable. an _oscillation transformer_ (instead of a _tuning coil_), is required by government regulations unless _inductively coupled_. the vacuum tube telegraph transmitter.--this consists of: ( ) a _source of direct or alternating current_, ( ) a _telegraph key_, ( ) a _vacuum tube oscillator_, ( ) a _tuning coil_, and ( ) a _condenser_. this kind of a transmitter sets up _sustained_ oscillations instead of _periodic_ oscillations which are produced by a spark gap set. the advantages of this kind of a system will be found explained in chapter xvi. the wireless telephone transmitter.--because a jump-spark sets up _periodic oscillations_, that is, the oscillations are discontinuous, it cannot be used for wireless telephony. an electric arc or a vacuum tube sets up _sustained_ oscillations, that is, oscillations which are continuous. as it is far easier to keep the oscillations going with a vacuum tube than it is with an arc the former means has all but supplanted the latter for wireless telephone transmitters. the apparatus required and the connections used for wireless telephone sets will be described in later chapters. useful information.--it would be wise for the reader to turn to the appendix, beginning with page of this book, and familiarize himself with the information there set down in tabular and graphic form. for example, the first table gives abbreviations of electrical terms which are in general use in all works dealing with the subject. you will also find there brief definitions of electric and magnetic units, which it would be well to commit to memory; or, at least, to make so thoroughly your own that when any of these terms is mentioned, you will know instantly what is being talked about. chapter ii putting up your aerial as inferred in the first chapter, an aerial for receiving does not have to be nearly as well made or put up as one for sending. but this does not mean that you can slipshod the construction and installation of it, for however simple it is, the job must be done right and in this case it is as easy to do it right as wrong. to send wireless telegraph and telephone messages to the greatest distances and to receive them as distinctly as possible from the greatest distances you must use for your aerial ( ) copper or aluminum wire, ( ) two or more wires, ( ) have them the proper length, ( ) have them as high in the air as you can, ( ) have them well apart from each other, and ( ) have them well insulated from their supports. if you live in a flat building or an apartment house you can string your aerial wires from one edge of the roof to the other and support them by wooden stays as high above it as may be convenient. should you live in a detached house in the city you can usually get your next-door neighbor to let you fasten one end of the aerial to his house and this will give you a good stretch and a fairly high aerial. in the country you can stretch your wires between the house and barn or the windmill. from this you will see that no matter where you live you can nearly always find ways and means of putting up an aerial that will serve your needs without going to the expense of erecting a mast. kinds of aerial wire systems.--an amateur wireless aerial can be anywhere from feet to feet long and if you can get a stretch of the latter length and a height of from to feet you will have one with which you can receive a thousand miles or more and send out as much energy as the government will allow you to send. the kind of an aerial that gives the best results is one whose wire, or wires, are _horizontal_, that is, parallel with the earth under it as shown at a in fig. . if only one end can be fixed to some elevated support then you can secure the other end to a post in the ground, but the slope of the aerial should not be more than or degrees from the horizontal at most as shown at b. [illustration: (a) fig. .--flat top, or horizontal aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--inclined aerial.] the _leading-in wire_, that is, the wire that leads from and joins the aerial wire with your sending and receiving set, can be connected to the aerial anywhere it is most convenient to do so, but the best results are had when it is connected to one end as shown at a in fig. , in which case it is called an _inverted l aerial_, or when it is connected to it at the middle as shown at b, when it is called a _t aerial_. the leading-in wire must be carefully insulated from the outside of the building and also where it passes through it to the inside. this is done by means of an insulating tube known as a _leading-in insulator_, or _bulkhead insulator_ as it is sometimes called. [illustration: (a) fig. .--inverted l aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--t aerial.] as a protection against lightning burning out your instruments you can use either: ( ) an _air-gap lightning arrester,_ ( ) a _vacuum tube protector_, or ( ) a _lightning switch_, which is better. whichever of these devices is used it is connected in between the aerial and an outside ground wire so that a direct circuit to the earth will be provided at all times except when you are sending or receiving. so your aerial instead of being a menace really acts during an electrical storm like a lightning rod and it is therefore a real protection. the air-gap and vacuum tube lightning arresters are little devices that can be used only where you are going to receive, while the lightning switch must be used where you are going to send; indeed, in some localities the _fire underwriters_ require a large lightning switch to be used for receiving sets as well as sending sets. how to put up a cheap receiving aerial.--the kind of an aerial wire system you put up will depend, chiefly, on two things, and these are: ( ) your pocketbook, and ( ) the place where you live. a single wire aerial.--this is the simplest and cheapest kind of a receiving aerial that can be put up. the first thing to do is to find out the length of wire you need by measuring the span between the two points of support; then add a sufficient length for the leading-in wire and enough more to connect your receiving set with the radiator or water pipe. you can use any size of copper or aluminum wire that is not smaller than _no. brown and sharpe gauge._ when you buy the wire get also the following material: ( ) two _porcelain insulators_ as shown at a in fig. ; ( ) three or four _porcelain knob insulators_, see b; ( ) either (a) an _air gap lightning arrester,_ see c, or (b) a _lightning switch_ see d; ( ) a _leading-in porcelain tube insulator,_ see e, and ( ) a _ground clamp_, see f. [illustration: fig. .--material for a simple aerial wire system.] to make the aerial slip each end of the wire through a hole in each insulator and twist it fast; next cut off and slip two more pieces of wire through the other holes in the insulators and twist them fast and then secure these to the supports at the ends of the building. take the piece you are going to use for the leading-in wire, twist it around the aerial wire and solder it there when it will look like a in fig. . now if you intend to use the _air gap lightning arrester_ fasten it to the wall of the building outside of your window, and bring the leading-in wire from the aerial to the top binding post of your arrester and keep it clear of everything as shown at b. if your aerial is on the roof and you have to bring the leading-in wire over the cornice or around a corner fix a porcelain knob insulator to the one or the other and fasten the wire to it. [illustration: (a) fig. .--single wire aerial for receiving.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--receiving aerial with air gap lightning arrester.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--aerial with lightning switch.] next bore a hole through the frame of the window at a point nearest your receiving set and push a porcelain tube / inch in diameter and or inches long, through it. connect a length of wire to the top post of the arrester or just above it to the wire, run this through the leading-in insulator and connect it to the slider of your tuning coil. screw the end of a piece of heavy copper wire to the lower post of the arrester and run it to the ground, on porcelain knobs if necessary, and solder it to an iron rod or pipe which you have driven into the earth. finally connect the fixed terminal of your tuning coil with the water pipe or radiator inside of the house by means of the ground clamp as shown in the diagrammatic sketch at b in fig. and you are ready to tune in. if you want to use a lightning switch instead of the air-gap arrester then fasten it to the outside wall instead of the latter and screw the free end of the leading-in wire from the aerial to the middle post of it as shown at c in fig. . run a wire from the top post through the leading-in insulator and connect it with the slider of your tuning coil. next screw one end of a length of heavy copper wire to the lower post of the aerial switch and run it to an iron pipe in the ground as described above in connection with the spark-gap lightning arrester; then connect the fixed terminal of your tuning coil with the radiator or water pipe and your aerial wire system will be complete as shown at c in fig. . a two-wire aerial.--an aerial with two wires will give better results than a single wire and three wires are better than two, but you must keep them well apart. to put up a two-wire aerial get ( ) enough _no. _, or preferably _no. _, solid or stranded copper or aluminum wire, ( ) four porcelain insulators, see b in fig. , and ( ) two sticks about inch thick, inches wide and or feet long, for the _spreaders_, and bore / -inch hole through each end of each one. now twist the ends of the wires to the insulators and then cut off four pieces of wire about feet long and run them through the holes in the wood spreaders. finally twist the ends of each pair of short wires to the free ends of the insulators and then twist the free ends of the wires together. for the leading-in wire that goes to the lightning switch take two lengths of wire and twist one end of each one around the aerial wires and solder them there. twist the short wire around the long wire and solder this joint also when the aerial will look like fig. . bring the free end of the leading-in wire down to the middle post of the lightning switch and fasten it there and connect up the receiver to it and the ground as described under the caption of _a single wire aerial_. [illustration: fig. .--two wire aerial.] connecting in the ground.--if there is a gas or water system or a steam-heating plant in your house you can make your ground connection by clamping a ground clamp to the nearest pipe as has been previously described. connect a length of bare or insulated copper wire with it and bring this up to the table on which you have your receiving set. if there are no grounded pipes available then you will have to make a good ground which we shall describe presently and lead the ground wire from your receiving set out of the window and down to it. how to put up a good aerial.--while you can use the cheap aerial already described for a small spark-coil sending set you should have a better insulated one for a / or a kilowatt transformer set. the cost for the materials for a good aerial is small and when properly made and well insulated it will give results that are all out of proportion to the cost of it. an inexpensive good aerial.--a far better aerial, because it is more highly insulated, can be made by using _midget insulators_ instead of the porcelain insulators described under the caption of _a single wire aerial_ and using a small _electrose leading-in insulator_ instead of the porcelain bushing. this makes a good sending aerial for small sets as well as a good receiving aerial. the best aerial that can be made.--to make this aerial get the following material together: ( ) enough _stranded or braided wire_ for three or four lengths of parallel wires, according to the number you want to use ( ) six or eight _electrose ball insulators_, see b, fig. ; ( ) two -inch or -inch _electrose strain insulators_, see c; ( ) six or eight _s-hooks_, see d; one large _withe_ with one eye for middle of end spreader, see e; ( ) two smaller _withes_ with one eye each for end spreader, see e; ( ) two still smaller _withes_, with two eyes each for the ends of the end spreaders, see e ( ) two _thimbles_, see f, for / -inch wire cable; ( ) six or eight _hard rubber tubes_ or _bushings_ as shown at g; and ( ) two _end spreaders_, see h; one _middle spreader_, see i; and one _leading-in spreader_, see j. [illustration: (a) fig. --part of a good aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--the spreaders.] for this aerial any one of a number of kinds of wire can be used and among these are (a) _stranded copper wire;_ (b) _braided copper wire;_ (c) _stranded silicon bronze wire,_ and (d) _stranded phosphor bronze wire_. stranded and braided copper wire is very flexible as it is formed of seven strands of fine wire twisted or braided together and it is very good for short and light aerials. silicon bronze wire is stronger than copper wire and should be used where aerials are more than feet long, while phosphor bronze wire is the strongest aerial wire made and is used for high grade aerials by the commercial companies and the government for their high-power stations. the spreaders should be made of spruce, and should be feet inches long for a three-wire aerial and feet inch long for a four-wire aerial as the distance between the wires should be about inches. the end spreaders can be turned cylindrically but it makes a better looking job if they taper from the middle to the ends. they should be - / inches in diameter at the middle and - / inches at the ends. the middle spreader can be cylindrical and inches in diameter. it must have holes bored through it at equidistant points for the hard rubber tubes; each of these should be / inch in diameter and have a hole / inch in diameter through it for the aerial wire. the leading-in spreader is also made of spruce and is - / inches square and inches long. bore three or four / -inch holes at equidistant points through this spreader and insert hard rubber tubes in them as with the middle spreader. assembling the aerial.--begin by measuring off the length of each wire to be used and see to it that all of them are of exactly the same length. now push the hard rubber insulators through the holes in the middle spreader and thread the wires through the holes in the insulators as shown at a in fig . next twist the ends of each wire to the rings of the ball insulators and then put the large withes on the middle of each of the end spreaders; fix the other withes on the spreaders so that they will be inches apart and fasten the ball insulators to the eyes in the withes with the s-hooks. now slip a thimble through the eye of one of the long strain insulators, thread a length of stranded steel wire / inch in diameter through it and fasten the ends of it to the eyes in the withes on the ends of the spreaders. [illustration: (a) fig. .--middle spreader.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--one end of aerial complete.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--leading in spreader.] finally fasten a -inch length of steel stranded wire to each of the eyes of the withes on the middle of each of the spreaders, loop the other end over the thimble and then wrap the end around the wires that are fixed to the ends of the spreaders. one end of the aerial is shown complete at b in fig. , and from this you can see exactly how it is assembled. now cut off three or four pieces of wire or feet long and twist and solder each one to one of the aerial wires; then slip them through the hard rubber tubes in the leading-in spreader, bring their free ends together as at c and twist and solder them to a length of wire long enough to reach to your lightning switch or instruments. making a good ground.--where you have to make a _ground_ you can do so either by ( ) burying sheets of zinc or copper in the moist earth; ( ) burying a number of wires in the moist earth, or ( ) using a _counterpoise_. to make a ground of the first kind take half a dozen large sheets of copper or zinc, cut them into strips a foot wide, solder them all together with other strips and bury them deeply in the ground. it is easier to make a wire ground, say of as many or more wires as you have in your aerial and connect them together with cross wires. to put such a ground in the earth you will have to use a plow to make the furrows deep enough to insure them always being moist. in the counterpoise ground you make up a system of wires exactly like your aerial, that is, you insulate them just as carefully; then you support them so that they will be as close to the ground as possible and yet not touch it or anything else. this and the other two grounds just described should be placed directly under the aerial wire if the best results are to be had. in using a counterpoise you must bring the wire from it up to and through another leading-in insulator to your instruments. chapter iii simple telegraph and telephone receiving sets with a crystal detector receiving set you can receive either telegraphic dots and dashes or telephonic speech and music. you can buy a receiving set already assembled or you can buy the different parts and assemble them yourself. an assembled set is less bother in the beginning but if you like to experiment you can _hook up_, that is, connect the separate parts together yourself and it is perhaps a little cheaper to do it this way. then again, by so doing you get a lot of valuable experience in wireless work and an understanding of the workings of wireless that you cannot get in any other way. assembled wireless receiving sets.--the cheapest assembled receiving set [footnote: the marvel, made by the radio mfg. co., new york city.] advertised is one in which the detector and tuning coil is mounted in a box. it costs $ . , and can be bought of dealers in electric supplies generally. this price also includes a crystal detector, an adjustable tuning coil, a single telephone receiver with head-band and the wire, porcelain insulators, lightning switch and ground clamp for the aerial wire system. it will receive wireless telegraph and telephone messages over a range of from to miles. another cheap unit receptor, that is, a complete wireless receiving set already mounted which can be used with a single aerial is sold for $ . . [footnote: the aeriola jr., made by the westinghouse company, pittsburgh, pa.] this set includes a crystal detector, a variable tuning coil, a fixed condenser and a pair of head telephone receivers. it can also be used to receive either telegraph or telephone messages from distances up to miles. the aerial equipment is not included in this price, but it can be bought for about $ . extra. assembling your own receiving set.--in this chapter we shall go only into the apparatus used for two simple receiving sets, both of which have a _crystal detector_. the first set includes a _double-slide tuning coil_ and the second set employs a _loose-coupled tuning coil_, or _loose coupler_, as it is called for short. for either set you can use a pair of , - or , -ohm head phones. [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. general pershing listening in.] the crystal detector.--a crystal detector consists of: ( ) _the frame_, ( ) _the crystal_, and ( ) _the wire point_. there are any number of different designs for frames, the idea being to provide a device that will (a) hold the sensitive crystal firmly in place, and yet permit of its removal, (b) to permit the _wire point_, or _electrode_, to be moved in any direction so that the free point of it can make contact with the most sensitive spot on the crystal and (c) to vary the pressure of the wire on the crystal. a simple detector frame is shown in the cross-section at a in fig. ; the crystal, which may be _galena_, _silicon_ or _iron pyrites_, is held securely in a holder while the _phosphor-bronze wire point_ which makes contact with it, is fixed to one end of a threaded rod on the other end of which is a knob. this rod screws into and through a sleeve fixed to a ball that sets between two brass standards and this permits an up and down or a side to side adjustment of the metal point while the pressure of it on the crystal is regulated by the screw. [illustration: (a) fig. .--cross section of crystal detector.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--the crystal detector complete.] a crystal of this kind is often enclosed in a glass cylinder and this makes it retain its sensitiveness for a much longer time than if it were exposed to dust and moisture. an upright type of this detector can be bought for $ . , while a horizontal type, as shown at b, can be bought for $ . . galena is the crystal that is generally used, for, while it is not quite as sensitive as silicon and iron pyrites, it is easier to obtain a sensitive piece. the tuning coil.--it is with the tuning coil that you _tune in_ and _tune out_ different stations and this you do by sliding the contacts to and fro over the turns of wire; in this way you vary the _inductance_ and _capacitance_, that is, the _constants_ of the receiving circuits and so make them receive _electric waves_, that is, wireless waves, of different lengths. the double slide tuning coil.--with this tuning coil you can receive waves from any station up to , meters in length. one of the ends of the coil of wire connects with the binding post marked _a_ in fig. , and the other end connects with the other binding post marked _b_, while one of the sliding contacts is connected to the binding post _c_, and the _other sliding contact_ is connected with the binding post _d_. [illustration: (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of double slide tuning coil.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--double slide tuning coil complete.] when connecting in the tuning coil, only the post _a_ or the post _b_ is used as may be most convenient, but the other end of the wire which is connected to a post is left free; just bear this point in mind when you come to connect the tuning coil up with the other parts of your receiving set. the tuning coil is shown complete at b and it costs $ . or $ . . a _triple slide_ tuning coil constructed like the double slide tuner just described, only with more turns of wire on it, makes it possible to receive wave lengths up to , meters. it costs about $ . . the loose coupled tuning coil.--with a _loose coupler_, as this kind of a tuning coil is called for short, very _selective tuning_ is possible, which means that you can tune in a station very sharply, and it will receive any wave lengths according to size of coils. the primary coil is wound on a fixed cylinder and its inductance is varied by means of a sliding contact like the double slide tuning coil described above. the secondary coil is wound on a cylinder that slides in and out of the primary coil. the inductance of this coil is varied by means of a switch that makes contact with the fixed points, each of which is connected with every twentieth turn of wire as shown in the diagram a in fig. . the loose coupler, which is shown complete at b, costs in the neighborhood of $ . or $ . . [illustration: (a) fig. .--schematic diagram of loose coupler.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--loose coupler complete.] fixed and variable condensers.--you do not require a condenser for a simple receiving set, but if you will connect a _fixed condenser_ across your headphones you will get better results, while a _variable condenser_ connected in the _closed circuit of a direct coupled receiving set_, that is, one where a double slide tuning coil is used, makes it easy to tune very much more sharply; a variable condenser is absolutely necessary where the circuits are _inductively coupled_, that is, where a loose coupled tuner is used. a fixed condenser consists of a number of sheets of paper with leaves of tin-foil in between them and so built up that one end of every other leaf of tin-foil projects from the opposite end of the paper as shown at a in fig. . the paper and tin-foil are then pressed together and impregnated with an insulating compound. a fixed condenser of the exact capacitance required for connecting across the head phones is mounted in a base fitted with binding posts, as shown at b, and costs cents. (paper ones cents.) [illustration: (a) fig. .--how a fixed receiving condenser is built up.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--the fixed condenser complete.] [illustration: (c) and (d) fig. .--the variable rotary condenser.] a variable condenser, see c, of the rotating type is formed of a set of fixed semi-circular metal plates which are slightly separated from each other and between these a similar set of movable semi-circular metal plates is made to interleave; the latter are secured to a shaft on the top end of which is a knob and by turning it the capacitance of the condenser, and, hence, of the circuit in which it is connected, is varied. this condenser, which is shown at d, is made in two sizes, the smaller one being large enough for all ordinary wave lengths while the larger one is for proportionately longer wave lengths. these condensers cost $ . and $ . respectively. about telephone receivers.--there are a number of makes of head telephone receivers on the market that are designed especially for wireless work. these phones are wound to _resistances_ of from _ohms_ to , _ohms_, and cost from $ . for a receiver without a cord or headband to $ . for a pair of phones with a cord and head band. you can get a receiver wound to any resistance in between the above values but for either of the simple receiving sets such as described in this chapter you ought to have a pair wound to at least , ohms and these will cost you about $ . . a pair of head phones of this type is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--pair of wireless head phones.] connecting up the parts--receiving set no. .--for this set get ( ) a _crystal detector_, ( ) a _two-slide tuning coil_, ( ) a _fixed condenser_, and ( ) a pair of , ohm head phones. mount the detector on the right-hand side of a board and the tuning coil on the left-hand side. screw in two binding posts for the cord ends of the telephone receivers at _a_ and _b_ as shown at a in fig. . this done connect one of the end binding posts of the tuning coil with the ground wire and a post of one of the contact slides with the lightning arrester or switch which leads to the aerial wire. [illustration: fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. .] now connect the post of the other contact slide to one of the posts of the detector and the other post of the latter with the binding post _a_, then connect the binding post _b_ to the ground wire and solder the joint. next connect the ends of the telephone receiver cord to the posts _a_ and _b_ and connect a fixed condenser also with these posts, all of which are shown in the wiring diagram at b, and you are ready to adjust the set for receiving. receiving set no. .--use the same kind of a detector and pair of head phones as for _set no. _, but get ( ) a _loose coupled tuning coil_, and ( ) a _variable condenser_. mount the loose coupler at the back of a board on the left-hand side and the variable condenser on the right-hand side. then mount the detector in front of the variable condenser and screw two binding posts, _a_ and _b_, in front of the tuning coil as shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for receiving set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for receiving set no. .] now connect the post of the sliding contact of the loose coupler with the wire that runs to the lightning switch and thence to the aerial; connect the post of the primary coil, which is the outside coil, with the ground wire; then connect the binding post leading to the switch of the secondary coil, which is the inside coil, with one of the posts of the variable condenser, and finally, connect the post that is joined to one end of the secondary coil with the other post of the variable condenser. this done, connect one of the posts of the condenser with one of the posts of the detector, the other post of the detector with the binding post _a_, and the post _b_ to the other post of the variable condenser. next connect a fixed condenser to the binding posts _a_ and _b_ and then connect the telephone receivers to these same posts, all of which is shown in the wiring diagram at b. you are now ready to adjust the instruments. in making the connections use no. or insulated copper wire and scrape the ends clean where they go into the binding posts. see, also, that all of the connections are tight and where you have to cross the wires keep them apart by an inch or so and always cross them at right angles. adjusting the no. set--the detector.--the first thing to do is to test the detector in order to find out if the point of the contact wire is on a sensitive spot of the crystal. to do this you need a _buzzer_, a _switch_ and a _dry cell_. an electric bell from which the gong has been removed will do for the buzzer, but you can get one that is made specially for the purpose, for cents, which gives out a clear, high-pitched note that sounds like a high-power station. connect one of the binding posts of the buzzer with one post of the switch, the other post of the latter with the zinc post of the dry cell and the carbon post of this to the other post of the buzzer. then connect the post of the buzzer that is joined to the vibrator, to the ground wire as shown in the wiring diagram, fig. . now close the switch of the buzzer circuit, put on your head phones, and move the wire point of the detector to various spots on the crystal until you hear the sparks made by the buzzer in your phones. [illustration: fig. .--adjusting the receiving set.] then vary the pressure of the point on the crystal until you hear the sparks as loud as possible. after you have made the adjustment open the switch and disconnect the buzzer wire from the ground wire of your set. this done, be very careful not to jar the detector or you will throw it out of adjustment and then you will have to do it all over again. you are now ready to tune the set with the tuning coil and listen in. the tuning coil.--to tune this set move the slide a of the double-slide tuner, see b in fig. , over to the end of the coil that is connected with the ground wire and the slide b near the opposite end of the coil, that is, the one that has the free end. now move the slide a toward the b slide and when you hear the dots and dashes, or speech or music, that is coming in as loud as you can move the b slide toward the a slide until you hear still more loudly. a very few trials on your part and you will be able to tune in or tune out any station you can hear, if not too close or powerful. [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. the world's largest radio receiving station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near point jefferson, l.i.] adjusting the no. set.--first adjust the crystal detector with the buzzer set as described above with _set no. ,_ then turn the knob of your variable condenser so that the movable plates are just half-way in, pull the secondary coil of your loose-coupled tuner half way out; turn the switch lever on it until it makes a contact with the middle contact point and set the slider of the primary coil half way between the ends. now listen in for telegraphic signals or telephonic speech or music; when you hear one or the other slide the secondary coil in and out of the primary coil until the sounds are loudest; now move the contact switch over the points forth and back until the sounds are still louder, then move the slider to and fro until the sounds are yet louder and, finally, turn the knob of the condenser until the sounds are clear and crisp. when you have done all of these things you have, in the parlance of the wireless operator, _tuned in_ and you are ready to receive whatever is being sent. chapter iv simple telegraph sending sets a wireless telegraph transmitting set can be installed for a very small amount of money provided you are content with one that has a limited range. larger and better instruments can, of course, be had for more money, but however much you are willing to spend still you are limited in your sending radius by the government's rules and regulations. the best way, and the cheapest in the end, to install a telegraph set is to buy the separate parts and hook them up yourself. the usual type of wireless telegraph transmitter employs a _disruptive discharge,_ or _spark,_ as it is called, for setting up the oscillating currents in the aerial wire system and this is the type of apparatus described in this chapter. there are two ways to set up the sparks and these are: ( ) with an _induction coil,_ or _spark-coil,_ as it is commonly called, and ( ) with an _alternating current transformer_, or _power transformer_, as it is sometimes called. where you have to generate the current with a battery you must use a spark coil, but if you have a -volt direct or alternating lighting current in your home you can use a transformer which will give you more power. a cheap transmitting set (no. ).--for this set you will need: ( ) a _spark-coil_, ( ) a _battery_ of dry cells, ( ) a _telegraph key_, ( ) a _spark gap_, ( ) a _high-tension condenser_, and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. there are many different makes and styles of these parts but in the last analysis all of them are built on the same underlying bases and work on the same fundamental principles. the spark-coil.--spark coils for wireless work are made to give sparks from / inch in length up to inches in length, but as a spark coil that gives less than a -inch spark has a very limited output it is best to get a coil that gives at least a -inch spark, as this only costs about $ . , and if you can get a - or a -inch spark coil so much the better. there are two general styles of spark coils used for wireless and these are shown at a and b in fig. . [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--types of spark coils for set. no. .] [illustration: (c) fig. .--wiring diagram of spark coil] a spark coil of either style consists of (_a_) a soft _iron core_ on which is wound (_b_) a couple of layers of heavy insulated wire and this is called the _primary coil_, (_c_) while over this, but insulated from it, is wound a large number of turns of very fine insulated copper wire called the _secondary coil_; (d) an _interrupter_, or _vibrator_, as it is commonly called, and, finally, (e) a _condenser_. the core, primary and secondary coils form a unit and these are set in a box or mounted on top of a hollow wooden base. the condenser is placed in the bottom of the box, or on the base, while the vibrator is mounted on one end of the box or on top of the base, and it is the only part of the coil that needs adjusting. the vibrator consists of a stiff, flat spring fixed at one end to the box or base while it carries a piece of soft iron called an _armature_ on its free end and this sets close to one end of the soft iron core. insulated from this spring is a standard that carries an adjusting screw on the small end of which is a platinum point and this makes contact with a small platinum disk fixed to the spring. the condenser is formed of alternate sheets of paper and tinfoil built up in the same fashion as the receiving condenser described under the caption of _fixed and variable condensers_, in chapter iii. the wiring diagram c shows how the spark coil is wired up. one of the battery binding posts is connected with one end of the primary coil while the other end of the latter which is wound on the soft iron core connects with the spring of the vibrator. the other battery binding post connects with the standard that supports the adjusting screw. the condenser is shunted across the vibrator, that is, one end of the condenser is connected with the spring and the other end of the condenser is connected with the adjusting screw standard. the ends of the secondary coil lead to two binding posts, which are usually placed on top of the spark coil and it is to these that the spark gap is connected. the battery.--this can be formed of dry cells or you can use a storage battery to energize your coil. for all coils that give less than a -inch spark you should use dry cells; for -and -inch spark coils use or dry cells, and for to -inch spark coils use to dry cells. the way the dry cells are connected together to form a battery will be shown presently. a dry cell is shown at a in fig, . [illustration: fig. .--other parts for transmitting set no. ] the telegraph key.--you can use an ordinary morse telegraph key for the sending set and you can get one with a japanned iron base for $ . (or better, one made of brass and which has / -inch silver contact points for $ . . a key of the latter kind is shown at b). the spark gap.--it is in the _spark gap_ that the high tension spark takes place. the apparatus in which the spark takes place is also called the _spark gap_. it consists of a pair of zinc plugs, called _electrodes_, fixed to the ends of a pair of threaded rods, with knobs on the other ends, and these screw into and through a pair of standards as shown at _c_. this is called a _fixed_, or _stationary spark gap_ and costs about $ . . the tuning coil.--the _transmitting inductance_, or _sending tuning coil_, consists of to turns of _no. or _ hard drawn copper wire wound on a slotted insulated form and mounted on a wooden base. it is provided with _clips_ so that you can cut in and cut out as many turns of wire as you wish and so tune the sending circuits to send out whatever wave length you desire. it is shown at _d_, and costs about $ . . see also _oscillation transformer_, page [chapter iv]. the high tension condenser.--high tension condensers, that is, condensers which will stand up under _high potentials_, or electric pressures, can be bought in units or sections. these condensers are made up of thin brass plates insulated with a special compound and pressed into a compact form. the _capacitance_ [footnote: this is the capacity of the condenser.] of one section is enough for a transmitting set using a spark coil that gives a inch spark or less and two sections connected together should be used for coils giving from to inch sparks. it is shown at _e_. connecting up the apparatus.--your sending set should be mounted on a table, or a bench, where it need not be moved. place the key in about the middle of the table and down in front, and the spark coil to the left and well to the back but so that the vibrator end will be to the right, as this will enable you to adjust it easily. place the battery back of the spark coil and the tuning coil (oscillation transformer) to the right of the spark coil and back of the key, all of which is shown in the layout at a in fig. . [illustration: (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring of diagram for sending set no. .] for the _low voltage circuit_, that is the battery circuit, use _no. _ or _ _ insulated copper wire. connect all of the dry cells together in _series_, that is, connect the zinc of one cell with the carbon of the next and so on until all of them are connected up. then connect the carbon of the end cell with one of the posts of the key, the zinc of the other end cell with one of the primary posts of the spark coil and the other primary post of the spark coil with the other post of the key, when the primary circuit will be complete. for the _high tension circuits_, that is, the _oscillation circuits_, you may use either bare or insulated copper wire but you must be careful that they do not touch the table, each other, or any part of the apparatus, except, of course, the posts they are connected with. connect one of the posts of the secondary coil of the spark coil with one of the posts of the spark gap, and the other post with one of the posts of the condenser; then connect the other post of the condenser with the lower spring clip of the tuning coil and also connect this clip with the ground. this done, connect the middle spring clip with one of the posts of the spark gap, and, finally, connect the top clip with the aerial wire and your transmitting set is ready to be tuned. a wiring diagram of the connections is shown at b. as this set is tuned in the same way as _set no. _ which follows, you are referred to the end of this chapter. a better transmitting set (no. ).--the apparatus for this set includes: ( ) an _alternating current transformer_, ( ) a _wireless telegraph key_, ( ) a _fixed_, a _rotary_, or a _quenched spark gap_, ( ) a _condenser_, and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. if you have a volt direct lighting current in your home instead of volt alternating current, then you will also need ( ) an _electrolytic interrupter_, for in this case the primary circuit of the transformer must be made and broken rapidly in order to set up alternating currents in the secondary coil. the alternating current transformer.--an alternating current, or power, transformer is made on the same principle as a spark coil, that is, it has a soft iron core, a primary coil formed of a couple of layers of heavy wire, and a secondary coil wound up of a large number of turns of very fine wire. unlike the spark coil, however, which has an _open magnetic core_ and whose secondary coil is wound on the primary coil, the transformer has a _closed magnetic core_, with the primary coil wound on one of the legs of the core and the secondary wound on the other leg. it has neither a vibrator nor a condenser. a plain transformer is shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--parts for transmitting set no. .] a transformer of this kind can be bought either (a) _unmounted_, that is, just the bare transformer, or (b) _fully mounted_, that is, fitted with an iron stand, mounted on an insulating base on which are a pair of primary binding posts, while the secondary is provided with a _safety spark gap_. there are three sizes of transformers of this kind made and they are rated at / , / and kilowatt, respectively, they deliver a secondary current of , , , and , volts, according to size, and cost $ . , $ . and $ . when fully mounted; a reduction of $ . , $ . and $ . is made when they are unmounted. all of these transformers operate on volt, cycle current and can be connected directly to the source of alternating current. the wireless key.--for this transmitting set a standard wireless key should be used as shown at b. it is made about the same as a regular telegraph key but it is much heavier, the contact points are larger and instead of the current being led through the bearings as in an ordinary key, it is carried by heavy conductors directly to the contact points. this key is made in three sizes and the first will carry a current of _amperes_[footnote: see _appendix_ for definition.] and costs $ . , the second will carry a current of amperes and costs $ . , while the third will carry a current of amperes and costs $ . . the spark gap.--either a fixed, a rotary, or a quenched spark gap can be used with this set, but the former is seldom used except with spark-coil sets, as it is very hard to keep the sparks from arcing when large currents are used. a rotary spark gap comprises a wheel, driven by a small electric motor, with projecting plugs, or electrodes, on it and a pair of stationary plugs on each side of the wheel as shown at c. the number of sparks per second can be varied by changing the speed of the wheel and when it is rotated rapidly it sends out signals of a high pitch which are easy to read at the receiving end. a rotary gap with a -volt motor costs about $ . . a quenched spark gap not only eliminates the noise of the ordinary gap but, when properly designed, it increases the range of an induction coil set some per cent. a / kilowatt quenched gap costs $ . . [footnote: see appendix for definition.] the high tension condenser.--since, if you are an amateur, you can only send out waves that are meters in length, you can only use a condenser that has a capacitance of . _microfarad_. [footnote: see appendix for definition.] a sectional high tension condenser like the one described in connection with _set no. _ can be used with this set but it must have a capacitance of not more than . microfarad. a condenser of this value for a / -kilowatt transformer costs $ . ; for a / -kilowatt transformer $ . , and for a -kilowatt transformer $ . . see e, fig. . the oscillation transformer.--with an oscillation transformer you can tune much more sharply than with a single inductance coil tuner. the primary coil is formed of turns of copper strip, or no. copper wire, and the secondary is formed of turns of strip, or wire. the primary coil, which is the outside coil, is hinged to the base and can be raised or lowered like the lid of a box. when it is lowered the primary and secondary coils are in the same plane and when it is raised the coils set at an angle to each other. it is shown at d and costs $ . . connecting up the apparatus. for alternating current.--screw the key to the table about the middle of it and near the front edge; place the high tension condenser back of it and the oscillation transformer back of the latter; set the alternating current transformer to the left of the oscillation transformer and place the rotary or quenched spark gap in front of it. now bring a pair of _no. _ or _ _ insulated wires from the volt lighting leads and connect them with a single-throw, double-pole switch; connect one pole of the switch with one of the posts of the primary coil of the alternating power transformer and connect the other post of the latter with one of the posts of your key, and the other post of this with the other pole of the switch. now connect the motor of the rotary spark gap to the power circuit and put a single-pole, single-throw switch in the motor circuit, all of which is shown at a in fig. . [illustration: (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for sending set no. .] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for sending set no. .] next connect the posts of the secondary coil to the posts of the rotary or quenched spark gap and connect one post of the latter to one post of the condenser, the other post of this to the post of the primary coil of the oscillation transformer, which is the inside coil, and the clip of the primary coil to the other spark gap post. this completes the closed oscillation circuit. finally connect the post of the secondary coil of the oscillation transformer to the ground and the clip of it to the wire leading to the aerial when you are ready to tune the set. a wiring diagram of the connections is shown at b. for direct current.--where you have volt direct current you must connect in an electrolytic interrupter. this interrupter, which is shown at a and b in fig. , consists of ( ) a jar filled with a solution of part of sulphuric acid and parts of water, ( ) a lead electrode having a large surface fastened to the cover of surface that sets in a porcelain sleeve and whose end rests on the bottom of the jar. [illustration: fig. .--using volt direct current with an alternating current transformer.] when these electrodes are connected in series with the primary of a large spark coil or an alternating current transformer, see c, and a direct current of from to volts is made to pass through it, the current is made and broken from , to , times a minute. by raising or lowering the sleeve, thus exposing more or less of the platinum, or alloy point, the number of interruptions per minute can be varied at will. as the electrolytic interrupter will only operate in one direction, you must connect it with its platinum, or alloy anode, to the + or _positive_ power lead and the lead cathode to the - or _negative_ power lead. you can find out which is which by connecting in the interrupter and trying it, or you can use a polarity indicator. an electrolytic interrupter can be bought for as little as $ . . how to adjust your transmitter. tuning with a hot wire ammeter.--a transmitter can be tuned in two different ways and these are: ( ) by adjusting the length of the spark gap and the tuning coil so that the greatest amount of energy is set up in the oscillating circuits, and ( ) by adjusting the apparatus so that it will send out waves of a given length. to adjust the transmitter so that the circuits will be in tune you should have a _hot wire ammeter_, or radiation ammeter, as it is called, which is shown in fig. . it consists of a thin platinum wire through which the high-frequency currents surge and these heat it; the expansion and contraction of the wire moves a needle over a scale marked off into fractions of an ampere. when the spark gap and tuning coil of your set are properly adjusted, the needle will swing farthest to the right over the scale and you will then know that the aerial wire system, or open oscillation circuit, and the closed oscillation circuit are in tune and radiating the greatest amount of energy. [illustration: fig. .--principle of the hot wire ammeter.] to send out a meter wave length.--if you are using a condenser having a capacitance of . microfarad, which is the largest capacity value that the government will allow an amateur to use, then if you have a hot wire ammeter in your aerial and tune the inductance coil or coils until the ammeter shows the largest amount of energy flowing through it you will know that your transmitter is tuned and that the aerial is sending out waves whose length is meters. to tune to different wave lengths you must have a _wave-meter_. the use of the aerial switch.--where you intend to install both a transmitter and a receptor you will need a throwover switch, or _aerial switch_, as it is called. an ordinary double-pole, double-throw switch, as shown at a in fig. , can be used, or a switch made especially for the purpose as at b is handier because the arc of the throw is much less. [illustration: fig. .--kinds of aerial switches.] aerial switch for a complete sending and receiving set.--you can buy a double-pole, double-throw switch mounted on a porcelain base for about cents and this will serve for _set no. _. screw this switch on your table between the sending and receiving sets and then connect one of the middle posts of it with the ground wire and the other middle post with the lightning switch which connects with the aerial. connect the post of the tuning coil with one of the end posts of the switch and the clip of the tuning coil with the other and complementary post of the switch. this done, connect one of the opposite end posts of the switch to the post of the receiving tuning coil and connect the sliding contact of the latter with the other and complementary post of the switch as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for complete sending and receiving set no. .] connecting in the lightning switch.--the aerial wire connects with the middle post of the lightning switch, while one of the end posts lead to one of the middle posts of the aerial switch. the other end post of the lightning switch leads to a separate ground outside the building, as the wiring diagrams figs. and show. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for complete sending and receiving set no. .] chapter v electricity simply explained it is easy to understand how electricity behaves and what it does if you get the right idea of it at the start. in the first place, if you will think of electricity as being a fluid like water its fundamental actions will be greatly simplified. both water and electricity may be at rest or in motion. when at rest, under certain conditions, either one will develop pressure, and this pressure when released will cause them to flow through their respective conductors and thus produce a current. electricity at rest and in motion.--any wire or a conductor of any kind can be charged with electricity, but a leyden jar, or other condenser, is generally used to hold an electric charge because it has a much larger _capacitance_, as its capacity is called, than a wire. as a simple analogue of a condenser, suppose you have a tank of water raised above a second tank and that these are connected together by means of a pipe with a valve in it, as shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--water analogue for electric pressure.] [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. first wireless college in the world, at tufts college, mass.] now if you fill the upper tank with water and the valve is turned off, no water can flow into the lower tank but there is a difference of pressure between them, and the moment you turn the valve on a current of water will flow through the pipe. in very much the same way when you have a condenser charged with electricity the latter will be under _pressure,_ that is, a _difference of potential_ will be set up, for one of the sheets of metal will be charged positively and the other one, which is insulated from it, will be charged negatively, as shown at b. on closing the switch the opposite charges rush together and form a current which flows to and fro between the metal plates. [footnote: strictly speaking it is the difference of potential that sets up the electromotive force.] the electric current and its circuit.--just as water flowing through a pipe has _quantity_ and _pressure_ back of it and the pipe offers friction to it which tends to hold back the water, so, likewise, does electricity flowing in a circuit have: ( ) _quantity_, or _current strength_, or just _current_, as it is called for short, or _amperage_, and ( ) _pressure_, or _potential difference_, or _electromotive force_, or _voltage_, as it is variously called, and the wire, or circuit, in which the current is flowing has ( ) _resistance_ which tends to hold back the current. a definite relation exists between the current and its electromotive force and also between the current, electromotive force and the resistance of the circuit; and if you will get this relationship clearly in your mind you will have a very good insight into how direct and alternating currents act. to keep a quantity of water flowing in a loop of pipe, which we will call the circuit, pressure must be applied to it and this may be done by a rotary pump as shown at a in fig. ; in the same way, to keep a quantity of electricity flowing in a loop of wire, or circuit, a battery, or other means for generating electric pressure must be used, as shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--water analogues for direct and alternating currents.] if you have a closed pipe connected with a piston pump, as at c, as the piston moves to and fro the water in the pipe will move first one way and then the other. so also when an alternating current generator is connected to a wire circuit, as at d, the current will flow first in one direction and then in the other, and this is what is called an _alternating current_. current and the ampere.--the amount of water flowing in a closed pipe is the same at all parts of it and this is also true of an electric current, in that there is exactly the same quantity of electricity at one point of the circuit as there is at any other. the amount of electricity, or current, flowing in a circuit in a second is measured by a unit called the _ampere_, [footnote: for definition of _ampere_ see _appendix._] and it is expressed by the symbol i. [footnote: this is because the letter c is used for the symbol of _capacitance_] just to give you an idea of the quantity of current an _ampere_ is we will say that a dry cell when fresh gives a current of about amperes. to measure the current in amperes an instrument called an _ammeter_ is used, as shown at a in fig. , and this is always connected in _series_ with the line, as shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--how the ammeter and voltmeter are used.] electromotive force and the volt.--when you have a pipe filled with water or a circuit charged with electricity and you want to make them flow you must use a pump in the first case and a battery or a dynamo in the second case. it is the battery or dynamo that sets up the electric pressure as the circuit itself is always charged with electricity. the more cells you connect together in _series_ the greater will be the electric pressure developed and the more current it will move along just as the amount of water flowing in a pipe can be increased by increasing the pressure of the pump. the unit of electromotive force is the _volt_, and this is the electric pressure which will force a current of _ ampere_ through a resistance of _ ohm_; it is expressed by the symbol _e_. a fresh dry cell will deliver a current of about . volts. to measure the pressure of a current in volts an instrument called a _voltmeter_ is used, as shown at c in fig. , and this is always connected across the circuit, as shown at d. resistance and the ohm.--just as a water pipe offers a certain amount of resistance to the flow of water through it, so a circuit opposes the flow of electricity in it and this is called _resistance_. further, in the same way that a small pipe will not allow a large amount of water to flow through it, so, too, a thin wire limits the flow of the current in it. if you connect a _resistance coil_ in a circuit it acts in the same way as partly closing the valve in a pipe, as shown at a and b in fig. . the resistance of a circuit is measured by a unit called the _ohm_, and it is expressed by the symbol _r_. a no. , brown and sharpe gauge soft copper wire, , feet long, has a resistance of about ohm. to measure the resistance of a circuit an apparatus called a _resistance bridge is used_. the resistance of a circuit can, however, be easily calculated, as the following shows. [illustration: fig. .--water valve analogue of electric resistance. a- a valve limits the flow of water. b- a resistance limits the flow of current.] what ohm's law is.--if, now, ( ) you know what the current flowing in a circuit is in _amperes_, and the electromotive force, or pressure, is in _volts_, you can then easily find what the resistance is in _ohms_ of the circuit in which the current is flowing by this formula: volts e --------- = ohms, or --- = r amperes i that is, if you divide the current in amperes by the electromotive force in volts the quotient will give you the resistance in ohms. or ( ) if you know what the electromotive force of the current is in _volts_ and the resistance of the circuit is in _ohms_ then you can find what the current flowing in the circuit is in _amperes_, thus: volts e ----- = amperes, or --- = i ohms r that is, by dividing the resistance of the circuit in ohms, by the electromotive force of the current you will get the amperes flowing in the circuit. finally ( ) if you know what the resistance of the circuit is in _ohms_ and the current is in _amperes_ then you can find what the electromotive force is in _volts_ since: ohms x amperes = volts, or r x i = e that is, if you multiply the resistance of the circuit in ohms by the current in amperes the result will give you the electromotive force in volts. from this you will see that if you know the value of any two of the constants you can find the value of the unknown constant by a simple arithmetical process. this relation between these three constants is known as _ohm's law_ and as they are very important you should memorize them. what the watt and kilowatt are.--just as _horsepower_ or _h.p._, is the unit of work that steam has done or can do, so the _watt_ is the unit of work that an electric current has done or can do. to find the _watts_ a current develops you need only to multiply the _amperes_ by the _volts_. there are _ watts_ to _ horsepower, and , watts are equal to kilowatt_. electromagnetic induction.--to show that a current of electricity sets up a magnetic field around it you have only to hold a compass over a wire whose ends are connected with a battery when the needle will swing at right angles to the length of the wire. by winding an insulated wire into a coil and connecting the ends of the latter with a battery you will find, if you test it with a compass, that the coil is magnetic. this is due to the fact that the energy of an electric current flowing in the wire is partly changed into magnetic lines of force which rotate at right angles about it as shown at a in fig. . the magnetic field produced by the current flowing in the coil is precisely the same as that set up by a permanent steel magnet. conversely, when a magnetic line of force is set up a part of its energy goes to make up electric currents which whirl about in a like manner, as shown at b. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--how an electric current is changed into magnetic lines of force and these into an electric current.] [illustration: (c) and (d) fig. .--how an electric current sets up a magnetic field.] self-induction or inductance.--when a current is made to flow in a coil of wire the magnetic lines of force produced are concentrated, as at c, just as a lens concentrates rays of light, and this forms an intense _magnetic field_, as it is called. now if a bar of soft iron is brought close to one end of the coil of wire, or, better still, if it is pushed into the coil, it will be magnetized by _electromagnetic induction,_ see d, and it will remain a magnet until the current is cut off. mutual induction.--when two loops of wire, or better, two coils of wire, are placed close together the electromagnetic induction between them is reactive, that is, when a current is made to flow through one of the coils closed magnetic lines of force are set up and when these cut the other loop or turns of wire of the other coil, they in turn produce electric currents in it. it is the mutual induction that takes place between two coils of wire which makes it possible to transform _low voltage currents_ from a battery or a volt source of current into high pressure currents, or _high potential currents_, as they are called, by means of a spark coil or a transformer, as well as to _step up_ and _step down_ the potential of the high frequency currents that are set up in sending and receiving oscillation transformers. soft iron cores are not used in oscillation inductance coils and oscillation transformers for the reason that the frequency of the current is so high the iron would not have time to magnetize and demagnetize and so would not help along the mutual induction to any appreciable extent. high-frequency currents.--high frequency currents, or electric oscillations as they are called, are currents of electricity that surge to and fro in a circuit a million times, more or less, per second. currents of such high frequencies will _oscillate_, that is, surge to and fro, in an _open circuit_, such as an aerial wire system, as well as in a _closed circuit_. now there is only one method by which currents of high frequency, or _radio-frequency_, as they are termed, can be set up by spark transmitters, and this is by discharging a charged condenser through a circuit having a small resistance. to charge a condenser a spark coil or a transformer is used and the ends of the secondary coil, which delivers the high potential alternating current, are connected with the condenser. to discharge the condenser automatically a _spark,_ or an _arc,_ or the _flow of electrons_ in a vacuum tube, is employed. constants of an oscillation circuit.--an oscillation circuit, as pointed out before, is one in which high frequency currents surge or oscillate. now the number of times a high frequency current will surge forth and back in a circuit depends upon three factors of the latter and these are called the constants of the circuit, namely: ( ) its _capacitance,_ ( ) its _inductance_ and ( ) its _resistance._ what capacitance is.--the word _capacitance_ means the _electrostatic capacity_ of a condenser or a circuit. the capacitance of a condenser or a circuit is the quantity of electricity which will raise its pressure, or potential, to a given amount. the capacitance of a condenser or a circuit depends on its size and form and the voltage of the current that is charging it. the capacitance of a condenser or a circuit is directly proportional to the quantity of electricity that will keep the charge at a given potential. the _farad,_ whose symbol is _m,_ is the unit of capacitance and a condenser or a circuit to have a capacitance of one farad must be of such size that one _coulomb,_ which is the unit of electrical quantity, will raise its charge to a potential of one volt. since the farad is far too large for practical purposes a millionth of a farad, or _microfarad_, whose symbol is _mfd._, is used. what inductance is.--under the sub-caption of _self-induction_ and _inductance_ in the beginning of this chapter it was shown that it was the inductance of a coil that makes a current flowing through it produce a strong magnetic field, and here, as one of the constants of an oscillation circuit, it makes a high-frequency current act as though it possessed _inertia_. inertia is that property of a material body that requires time and energy to set in motion, or stop. inductance is that property of an oscillation circuit that makes an electric current take time to start and time to stop. because of the inductance, when a current flows through a circuit it causes the electric energy to be absorbed and changes a large part of it into magnetic lines of force. where high frequency currents surge in a circuit the inductance of it becomes a powerful factor. the practical unit of inductance is the _henry_ and it is represented by the symbol _l_. what resistance is.--the resistance of a circuit to high-frequency currents is different from that for low voltage direct or alternating currents, as the former do not sink into the conductor to nearly so great an extent; in fact, they stick practically to the surface of it, and hence their flow is opposed to a very much greater extent. the resistance of a circuit to high frequency currents is generally found in the spark gap, arc gap, or the space between the electrodes of a vacuum tube. the unit of resistance is, as stated, the _ohm_, and its symbol is _r_. the effect of capacitance, inductance and resistance on electric oscillations.--if an oscillation circuit in which high frequency currents surge has a large resistance, it will so oppose the flow of the currents that they will be damped out and reach zero gradually, as shown at a in fig. . but if the resistance of the circuit is small, and in wireless circuits it is usually so small as to be negligible, the currents will oscillate, until their energy is damped out by radiation and other losses, as shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--the effect of resistance on the discharge of an electric current.] as the capacitance and the inductance of the circuit, which may be made of any value, that is amount, you wish, determines the _time period_, that is, the length of time for a current to make one complete oscillation, it must be clear that by varying the values of the condenser and the inductance coil you can make the high frequency current oscillate as fast or as slow as you wish within certain limits. where the electric oscillations that are set up are very fast, the waves sent out by the aerial will be short, and, conversely, where the oscillations are slow the waves emitted will be long. chapter vi how the transmitting and receiving sets work the easiest way to get a clear conception of how a wireless transmitter sends out electric waves and how a wireless receptor receives them is to take each one separately and follow: ( ) in the case of the transmitter, the transformation of the low voltage direct, or alternating current into high potential alternating currents; then find out how these charge the condenser, how this is discharged by the spark gap and sets up high-frequency currents in the oscillation circuits; then ( ) in the case of the receptor, to follow the high frequency currents that are set up in the aerial wire and learn how they are transformed into oscillations of lower potential when they have a larger current strength, how these are converted into intermittent direct currents by the detector and which then flow into and operate the telephone receiver. how transmitting set no. works. the battery and spark coil circuit.--when you press down on the knob of the key the silver points of it make contact and this closes the circuit; the low voltage direct current from the battery now flows through the primary coil of the spark coil and this magnetizes the soft iron core. the instant it becomes magnetic it pulls the spring of the vibrator over to it and this breaks the circuit; when this takes place the current stops flowing through the primary coil; this causes the core to lose its magnetism when the vibrator spring flies back and again makes contact with the adjusting screw; then the cycle of operations is repeated. a condenser is connected across the contact points of the vibrator since this gives a much higher voltage at the ends of the secondary coil than where the coil is used without it; this is because: ( ) the self-induction of the primary coil makes the pressure of the current rise and when the contact points close the circuit again it discharges through the primary coil, and ( ) when the break takes place the current flows into the condenser instead of arcing across the contact points. changing the primary spark coil current into secondary currents.--now every time the vibrator contact points close the primary circuit the electric current in the primary coil is changed into closed magnetic lines of force and as these cut through the secondary coil they set up in it a _momentary current_ in one direction. then the instant the vibrator points break apart the primary circuit is opened and the closed magnetic lines of force contract and as they do so they cut the turns of wire in the secondary coil in the opposite direction and this sets up another momentary current in the secondary coil in the other direction. the result is that the low voltage direct current of the battery is changed into alternating currents whose frequency is precisely that of the spring vibrator, but while the frequency of the currents is low their potential, or voltage, is enormously increased. what ratio of transformation means.--to make a spark coil step up the low voltage direct current into high potential alternating current the primary coil is wound with a couple of layers of thick insulated copper wire and the secondary is wound with a thousand, more or less, number of turns with very fine insulated copper wire. if the primary and secondary coils were wound with the same number of turns of wire then the pressure, or voltage, of the secondary coil at its terminals would be the same as that of the current which flowed through the primary coil. under these conditions the _ratio of transformation_, as it is called, would be unity. the ratio of transformation is directly proportional to the number of turns of wire on the primary and secondary coils and, since this is the case, if you wind turns of wire on the primary coil and , turns of wire on the secondary coil then you will get times as high a pressure, or voltage, at the terminals of the secondary as that which you caused to flow through the primary coil, but, naturally, the current strength, or amperage, will be proportionately decreased. the secondary spark coil circuit.--this includes the secondary coil and the spark gap which are connected together. when the alternating, but high potential, currents which are developed by the secondary coil, reach the balls, or _electrodes_, of the spark gap the latter are alternately charged positively and negatively. now take a given instant when one electrode is charged positively and the other one is charged negatively, then when they are charged to a high enough potential the electric strain breaks down the air gap between them and the two charges rush together as described in the chapter before this one in connection with the discharge of a condenser. when the charges rush together they form a current which burns out the air in the gap and this gives rise to the spark, and as the heated gap between the two electrodes is a very good conductor the electric current surges forth and back with high frequency, perhaps a dozen times, before the air replaces that which has burned out. it is the inrushing air to fill the vacuum of the gap that makes the crackling noise which accompanies the discharge of the electric spark. in this way then electric oscillations of the order of a million, more or less, are produced and if an aerial and a ground wire are connected to the spark balls, or electrodes, the oscillations will surge up and down it and the energy of these in turn, are changed into electric waves which travel out into space. an open circuit transmitter of this kind will send out waves that are four times as long as the aerial itself, but as the waves it sends out are strongly damped the government will not permit it to be used. the closed oscillation circuit.--by using a closed oscillation circuit the transmitter can be tuned to send out waves of a given length and while the waves are not so strongly damped more current can be sent into the aerial wire system. the closed oscillation circuit consists of: ( ) a _spark gap_, ( ) a _condenser_ and ( ) an _oscillation transformer_. the high potential alternating current delivered by the secondary coil not only charges the spark gap electrodes which necessarily have a very small capacitance, but it charges the condenser which has a large capacitance and the value of which can be changed at will. now when the condenser is fully charged it discharges through the spark gap and then the electric oscillations set up surge to and fro through the closed circuit. as a closed circuit is a very poor radiator of energy, that is, the electric oscillations are not freely converted into electric waves by it, they surge up to, and through the aerial wire; now as the aerial wire is a good radiator nearly all of the energy of the electric oscillations which surge through it are converted into electric waves. how transmitting set no. works. with alternating current. the operation of a transmitting set that uses an alternating current transformer, or _power transformer,_ as it is sometimes called, is even more simple than one using a spark coil. the transformer needs no vibrator when used with alternating current. the current from a generator flows through the primary coil of the transformer and the alternations of the usual lighting current is cycles per second. this current sets up an alternating magnetic field in the core of the transformer and as these magnetic lines of force expand and contract they set up alternating currents of the same frequency but of much higher voltage at the terminals of the secondary coil according to the ratio of the primary and secondary turns of wire as explained under the sub-caption of _ratio of transformation_. with direct current.--when a volt direct current is used to energize the power transformer an _electrolytic_ interruptor is needed to make and break the primary circuit, just as a vibrator is needed for the same purpose with a spark coil. when the electrodes are connected in series with the primary coil of a transformer and a source of direct current having a potential of to volts, bubbles of gas are formed on the end of the platinum, or alloy anode, which prevent the current from flowing until the bubbles break and then the current flows again, in this way the current is rapidly made and broken and the break is very sharp. where this type of interrupter is employed the condenser that is usually shunted around the break is not necessary as the interrupter itself has a certain inherent capacitance, due to electrolytic action, and which is called its _electrolytic capacitance_, and this is large enough to balance the self-induction of the circuit since the greater the number of breaks per minute the smaller the capacitance required. the rotary spark gap.--in this type of spark gap the two fixed electrodes are connected with the terminals of the secondary coil of the power transformer and also with the condenser and primary of the oscillation transformer. now whenever any pair of electrodes on the rotating disk are in a line with the pair of fixed electrodes a spark will take place, hence the pitch of the note depends on the speed of the motor driving the disk. this kind of a rotary spark-gap is called _non-synchronous_ and it is generally used where a cycle alternating current is available but it will work with other higher frequencies. the quenched spark gap.--if you strike a piano string a single quick blow it will continue to vibrate according to its natural period. this is very much the way in which a quenched spark gap sets up oscillations in a coupled closed and open circuit. the oscillations set up in the primary circuit by a quenched spark make only three or four sharp swings and in so doing transfer all of their energy over to the secondary circuit, where it will oscillate some fifty times or more before it is damped out, because the high frequency currents are not forced, but simply oscillate to the natural frequency of the circuit. for this reason the radiated waves approach somewhat the condition of continuous waves, and so sharper tuning is possible. the oscillation transformer.--in this set the condenser in the closed circuit is charged and discharged and sets up oscillations that surge through the closed circuit as in _set no. _. in this set, however, an oscillation transformer is used and as the primary coil of it is included in the closed circuit the oscillations set up in it produce strong oscillating magnetic lines of force. the magnetic field thus produced sets up in turn electric oscillations in the secondary coil of the oscillation transformer and these surge through the aerial wire system where their energy is radiated in the form of electric waves. the great advantage of using an oscillation transformer instead of a simple inductance coil is that the capacitance of the closed circuit can be very much larger than that of the aerial wire system. this permits more energy to be stored up by the condenser and this is impressed on the aerial when it is radiated as electric waves. how receiving set no. i works.--when the electric waves from a distant sending station impinge on the wire of a receiving aerial their energy is changed into electric oscillations that are of exactly the same frequency (assuming the receptor is tuned to the transmitter) but whose current strength (amperage) and potential (voltage) are very small. these electric waves surge through the closed circuit but when they reach the crystal detector the contact of the metal point on the crystal permits more current to flow through it in one direction than it will allow to pass in the other direction. for this reason a crystal detector is sometimes called a _rectifier_, which it really is. thus the high frequency currents which the steel magnet cores of the telephone receiver would choke off are changed by the detector into intermittent direct currents which can flow through the magnet coils of the telephone receiver. since the telephone receiver chokes off the oscillations, a small condenser can be shunted around it so that a complete closed oscillation circuit is formed and this gives better results. when the intermittent rectified current flows through the coils of the telephone receiver it energizes the magnet as long as it lasts, when it is de-energized; this causes the soft iron disk, or _diaphragm_ as it is called, which sets close to the ends of the poles of the magnet, to vibrate; and this in turn gives forth sounds such as dots and dashes, speech or music, according to the nature of the electric waves that sent them out at the distant station. how receiving set no. works.--when the electric oscillations that are set up by the incoming electric waves on the aerial wire surge through the primary coil of the oscillation transformer they produce a magnetic field and as the lines of force of the latter cut the secondary coil, oscillations of the same frequency are set up in it. the potential (voltage) of these oscillations are, however, _stepped down_ in the secondary coil and, hence, their current strength (amperes) is increased. the oscillations then flow through the closed circuit where they are rectified by the crystal detector and transformed into sound waves by the telephone receiver as described in connection with _set no. _. the variable condenser shunted across the closed circuit permits finer secondary tuning to be done than is possible without it. where you are receiving continuous waves from a wireless telephone transmitter (speech or music) you have to tune sharper than is possible with the tuning coil alone and to do this a variable condenser connected in parallel with the secondary coil is necessary. chapter vii mechanical and electrical tuning there is a strikingly close resemblance between _sound waves_ and the way they are set up in _the air_ by a mechanically vibrating body, such as a steel spring or a tuning fork, and _electric waves_ and the way they are set up in _the ether_ by a current oscillating in a circuit. as it is easy to grasp the way that sound waves are produced and behave something will be told about them in this chapter and also an explanation of how electric waves are produced and behave and thus you will be able to get a clear understanding of them and of tuning in general. damped and sustained mechanical vibrations.--if you will place one end of a flat steel spring in a vice and screw it up tight as shown at a in fig. , and then pull the free end over and let it go it will vibrate to and fro with decreasing amplitude until it comes to rest as shown at b. when you pull the spring over you store up energy in it and when you let it go the stored up energy is changed into energy of motion and the spring moves forth and back, or _vibrates_ as we call it, until all of its stored up energy is spent. [illustration: fig. .--damped and sustained mechanical vibrations.] if it were not for the air surrounding it and other frictional losses, the spring would vibrate for a very long time as the stored up energy and the energy of motion would practically offset each other and so the energy would not be used up. but as the spring beats the air the latter is sent out in impulses and the conversion of the vibrations of the spring into waves in the air soon uses up the energy you have imparted to it and it comes to rest. in order to send out _continuous waves_ in the air instead of _damped waves_ as with a flat steel spring you can use an _electric driven tuning fork_, see c, in which an electromagnet is fixed on the inside of the prongs and when this is energized by a battery current the vibrations of the prongs of the fork are kept going, or are _sustained_, as shown in the diagram at d. damped and sustained electric oscillations.--the vibrating steel spring described above is a very good analogue of the way that damped electric oscillations which surge in a circuit set up and send out periodic electric waves in the ether while the electric driven tuning fork just described is likewise a good analogue of how sustained oscillations surge in a circuit and set up and send out continuous electric waves in the ether as the following shows. now the inductance and resistance of a circuit such as is shown at a in fig. , slows down, and finally damps out entirely, the electric oscillations of the high frequency currents, see b, where these are set up by the periodic discharge of a condenser, precisely as the vibrations of the spring are damped out by the friction of the air and other resistances that act upon it. as the electric oscillations surge to and fro in the circuit it is opposed by the action of the ether which surrounds it and electric waves are set up in and sent out through it and this transformation soon uses up the energy of the current that flows in the circuit. [illustration: fig. .--damped and sustained electric oscillations.] to send out _continuous waves_ in the ether such as are needed for wireless telephony instead of _damped waves_ which are, at the present writing, generally used for wireless telegraphy, an _electric oscillation arc_ or a _vacuum tube oscillator_ must be used, see c, instead of a spark gap. where a spark gap is used the condenser in the circuit is charged periodically and with considerable lapses of time between each of the charging processes, when, of course, the condenser discharges periodically and with the same time element between them. where an oscillation arc or a vacuum tube is used the condenser is charged as rapidly as it is discharged and the result is the oscillations are sustained as shown at d. about mechanical tuning.--a tuning fork is better than a spring or a straight steel bar for setting up mechanical vibrations. as a matter of fact a tuning fork is simply a steel bar bent in the middle so that the two ends are parallel. a handle is attached to middle point of the fork so that it can be held easily and which also allows it to vibrate freely, when the ends of the prongs alternately approach and recede from one another. when the prongs vibrate the handle vibrates up and down in unison with it, and imparts its motion to the _sounding box_, or _resonance case_ as it is sometimes called, where one is used. if, now, you will mount the fork on a sounding box which is tuned so that it will be in resonance with the vibrations of the fork there will be a direct reinforcement of the vibrations when the note emitted by it will be augmented in strength and quality. this is called _simple resonance_. further, if you mount a pair of forks, each on a separate sounding box, and have the forks of the same size, tone and pitch, and the boxes synchronized, that is, tuned to the same frequency of vibration, then set the two boxes a foot or so apart, as shown at a in fig. , when you strike one of the forks with a rubber hammer it will vibrate with a definite frequency and, hence, send out sound waves of a given length. when the latter strike the second fork the impact of the molecules of air of which the sound waves are formed will set its prongs to vibrating and it will, in turn, emit sound waves of the same length and this is called _sympathetic resonance_, or as we would say in wireless the forks are _in tune_. [illustration: fig. .--sound wave and electric wave tuned senders and receptors. a - variable tuning forks for showing sound wave tuning. b - variable oscillation circuits for showing electric wave tuning.] tuning forks are made with adjustable weights on their prongs and by fixing these to different parts of them the frequency with which the forks vibrate can be changed since the frequency varies inversely with the square of the length and directly with the thickness [footnote: this law is for forks having a rectangular cross-section. those having a round cross-section vary as the radius.] of the prongs. now by adjusting one of the forks so that it vibrates at a frequency of, say, per second and adjusting the other fork so that it vibrates at a frequency of, say, or per second, then the forks will not be in tune with each other and, hence, if you strike one of them the other will not respond. but if you make the forks vibrate at the same frequency, say , or per second, when you strike one of them the other will vibrate in unison with it. about electric tuning.--electric resonance and electric tuning are very like those of acoustic resonance and acoustic tuning which i have just described. just as acoustic resonance may be simple or sympathetic so electric resonance may be simple or sympathetic. simple acoustic resonance is the direct reinforcement of a simple vibration and this condition is had when a tuning fork is mounted on a sounding box. in simple electric resonance an oscillating current of a given frequency flowing in a circuit having the proper inductance and capacitance may increase the voltage until it is several times greater than its normal value. tuning the receptor circuits to the transmitter circuits are examples of sympathetic electric resonance. as a demonstration if you have two leyden jars (capacitance) connected in circuit with two loops of wire (inductance) whose inductance can be varied as shown at b in fig. , when you make a spark pass between the knobs of one of them by means of a spark coil then a spark will pass in the gap of the other one provided the inductance of the two loops of wire is the same. but if you vary the inductance of the one loop so that it is larger or smaller than that of the other loop no spark will take place in the second circuit. when a tuning fork is made to vibrate it sends out waves in the air, or sound waves, in all directions and just so when high frequency currents surge in an oscillation circuit they send out waves in the ether, or electric waves, that travel in all directions. for this reason electric waves from a transmitting station cannot be sent to one particular station, though they do go further in one direction than in another, according to the way your aerial wire points. since the electric waves travel out in all directions any receiving set properly tuned to the wave length of the sending station will receive the waves and the only limit on your ability to receive from high-power stations throughout the world depends entirely on the wave length and sensitivity of your receiving set. as for tuning, just as changing the length and the thickness of the prongs of a tuning fork varies the frequency with which it vibrates and, hence, the length of the waves it sends out, so, too, by varying the capacitance of the condenser and the inductance of the tuning coil of the transmitter the frequency of the electric oscillations set up in the circuit may be changed and, consequently, the length of the electric waves they send out. likewise, by varying the capacitance and the inductance of the receptor the circuits can be tuned to receive incoming electric waves of whatever length within the limitation of the apparatus. chapter viii a simple vacuum tube detector receiving set while you can receive dots and dashes from spark wireless telegraph stations and hear spoken words and music from wireless telephone stations with a crystal detector receiving set such as described in chapter iii, you can get stations that are much farther away and hear them better with a _vacuum tube detector_ receiving set. though the vacuum tube detector requires two batteries to operate it and the receiving circuits are somewhat more complicated than where a crystal detector is used still the former does not have to be constantly adjusted as does the latter and this is another very great advantage. taken all in all the vacuum tube detector is the most sensitive and the most satisfactory of the detectors that are in use at the present time. not only is the vacuum tube a detector of electric wave signals and speech and music but it can also be used to _amplify_ them, that is, to make them stronger and, hence, louder in the telephone receiver and further its powers of amplification are so great that it will reproduce them by means of a _loud speaker_, just as a horn amplifies the sounds of a phonograph reproducer, until they can be heard by a room or an auditorium full of people. there are two general types of loud speakers, though both use the principle of the telephone receiver. the construction of these loud speakers will be fully described in a later chapter. assembled vacuum tube receiving sets.--you can buy a receiving set with a vacuum tube detector from the very simplest type, which is described in this chapter, to those that are provided with _regenerative circuits_ and _amplifying_ tubes or both, which we shall describe in later chapters, from dealers in electrical apparatus generally. while one of these sets costs more than you can assemble a set for yourself, still, especially in the beginning, it is a good plan to buy an assembled one for it is fitted with a _panel_ on which the adjusting knobs of the rheostat, tuning coil and condenser are mounted and this makes it possible to operate it as soon as you get it home and without the slightest trouble on your part. you can, however, buy all the various parts separately and mount them yourself. if you want the receptor simply for receiving then it is a good scheme to have all of the parts mounted in a box or enclosed case, but if you want it for experimental purposes then the parts should be mounted on a base or a panel so that all of the connections are in sight and accessible. a simple vacuum tube receiving set.--for this set you should use: ( ) a _loose coupled tuning coil,_ ( ) a _variable condenser,_ ( ) a _vacuum tube detector,_ ( ) an a or _storage battery_ giving volts, ( ) a b or _dry cell battery_ giving - / volts, ( ) a _rheostat_ for varying the storage battery current, and ( ) a pair of , -ohm _head telephone receivers_. the loose coupled tuning coil, the variable condenser and the telephone receivers are the same as those described in chapter iii. the vacuum tube detector. with two electrodes.--a vacuum tube in its simplest form consists of a glass bulb like an incandescent lamp in which a _wire filament_ and a _metal plate_ are sealed as shown in fig. , the air is then pumped out of the tube and a vacuum left or after it is exhausted it is filled with nitrogen, which cannot burn. [illustration: fig. .--two electrode vacuum tube detectors.] when the vacuum tube is used as a detector, the wire filament is heated red-hot and the metal plate is charged with positive electricity though it remains cold. the wire filament is formed into a loop like that of an incandescent lamp and its outside ends are connected with a -volt storage battery, which is called the a battery; then the + or _positive_ terminal of a - / volt dry cell battery, called the b battery, is connected to the metal plate while the - or _negative_ terminal of the battery is connected to one of the terminals of the wire filament. the diagram, fig. , simply shows how the two electrode vacuum tube, the a or dry battery, and the b or storage battery are connected up. three electrode vacuum tube detector.--the three electrode vacuum tube detector shown at a in fig. , is much more sensitive than the two electrode tube and has, in consequence, all but supplanted it. in this more recent type of vacuum tube the third electrode, or _grid_, as it is called, is placed between the wire filament and the metal plate and this allows the current to be increased or decreased at will to a very considerable extent. [illustration: fig. .--three electrode vacuum tube detector and battery connections.] the way the three electrode vacuum tube detector is connected with the batteries is shown at b. the plate, the a or dry cell battery and one terminal of the filament are connected in _series_--that is, one after the other, and the ends of the filament are connected to the b or storage battery. in assembling a receiving set you must, of course, have a socket for the vacuum tube. a vacuum tube detector costs from $ . to $ . . the dry cell and storage batteries.--the reason that a storage battery is used for heating the filament of the vacuum tube detector is because the current delivered is constant, whereas when a dry cell battery is used the current soon falls off and, hence, the heat of the filament gradually grows less. the smallest a or volt storage battery on the market has a capacity of to ampere hours, weighs pounds and costs about $ . . it is shown at a in fig. . the b or dry cell battery for the vacuum tube plate circuit that gives - / volts can be bought already assembled in sealed boxes. the small size is fitted with a pair of terminals while the larger size is provided with _taps_ so that the voltage required by the plate can be adjusted as the proper operation of the tube requires careful regulation of the plate voltage. a dry cell battery for a plate circuit is shown at b. [illustration: fig. .--a and b batteries for vacuum tube detectors.] the filament rheostat.--an adjustable resistance, called a _rheostat_, must be used in the filament and storage battery circuit so that the current flowing through the filament can be controlled to a nicety. the rheostat consists of an insulating and a heat resisting form on which is wound a number of turns of resistance wire. a movable contact arm that slides over and presses on the turns of wire is fixed to the knob on top of the rheostat. a rheostat that has a resistance of ohms and a current carrying capacity of . amperes which can be mounted on a panel board is the right kind to use. it is shown at a and b in fig. and costs $ . . [illustration: fig. .--rheostat for the a or storage battery current.] assembling the parts.--begin by placing all of the separate parts of the receiving set on a board or a base of other material and set the tuning coil on the left hand side with the adjustable switch end toward the right hand side so that you can reach it easily. then set the variable condenser in front of it, set the vacuum tube detector at the right hand end of the tuning coil and the rheostat in front of the detector. place the two sets of batteries back of the instruments and screw a couple of binding posts _a_ and _b_ to the right hand lower edge of the base for connecting in the head phones all of which is shown at a in fig. . [illustration: (a) fig. .--top view of apparatus layout for a vacuum tube detector receiving set.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram of a simple vacuum tube receiving set.] connecting up the parts.--to wire up the different parts begin by connecting the sliding contact of the primary coil of the loose coupled tuning coil (this you will remember is the outside one that is wound with fine wire) to the upper post of the lightning switch and connect one terminal of this coil with the water pipe. now connect the free end of the secondary coil of the tuning coil (this is the inside coil that is wound with heavy wire) to one of the binding posts of the variable condenser and connect the movable contact arm of the adjustable switch of the primary of the tuning coil with the other post of the variable condenser. next connect the grid of the vacuum tube to one of the posts of the condenser and then connect the plate of the tube to the _carbon terminal_ of the b or dry cell battery which is the + or _positive pole_ and connect the _zinc terminal_ of the - or _negative_ pole to the binding post _a_, connect the post _b_ to the other side of the variable condenser and then connect the terminals of the head phones to the binding posts _a_ and _b_. whatever you do be careful not to get the plate connections of the battery reversed. now connect one of the posts of the rheostat to one terminal of the filament and the other terminal of the filament to the - or _negative_ terminal of the a or storage battery and the + or _positive_ terminal of the a or storage battery to the other post of the rheostat. finally connect the + or positive terminal of the a or storage battery with the wire that runs from the head phones to the variable condenser, all of which is shown in the wiring diagram at b in fig. . adjusting the vacuum tube detector receiving set.--a vacuum tube detector is tuned exactly in the same way as the _crystal detector set no. _ described in chapter iii, in-so-far as the tuning coil and variable condenser are concerned. the sensitivity of the vacuum tube detector receiving set and, hence, the distance over which signals and other sounds can be heard depends very largely on the sensitivity of the vacuum tube itself and this in turn depends on: ( ) the right amount of heat developed by the filament, or _filament brilliancy_ as it is called, ( ) the right amount of voltage applied to the plate, and ( ) the extent to which the tube is exhausted where this kind of a tube is used. to vary the current flowing from the a or storage battery through the filament so that it will be heated to the right degree you adjust the rheostat while you are listening in to the signals or other sounds. by carefully adjusting the rheostat you can easily find the point at which it makes the tube the most sensitive. a rheostat is also useful in that it keeps the filament from burning out when the current from the battery first flows through it. you can very often increase the sensitiveness of a vacuum tube after you have used it for a while by recharging the a or storage battery. the degree to which a vacuum tube has been exhausted has a very pronounced effect on its sensitivity. the longer the tube is used the lower its vacuum gets and generally the less sensitive it becomes. when this takes place (and you can only guess at it) you can very often make it more sensitive by warming it over the flame of a candle. vacuum tubes having a gas content (in which case they are, of course, no longer vacuum tubes in the strict sense) make better detectors than tubes from which the air has been exhausted and which are sealed off in this evacuated condition because their sensitiveness is not dependent on the degree of vacuum as in the latter tubes. moreover, a tube that is completely exhausted costs more than one that is filled with gas. chapter ix vacuum tube amplifier receiving sets the reason a vacuum tube detector is more sensitive than a crystal detector is because while the latter merely _rectifies_ the oscillating current that surges in the receiving circuits, the former acts as an _amplifier_ at the same time. the vacuum tube can be used as a separate amplifier in connection with either: ( ) a _crystal detector_ or ( ) a _vacuum tube detector_, and (_a_) it will amplify either the _radio frequency currents_, that is the high frequency oscillating currents which are set up in the oscillation circuits or (_b_) it will amplify the _audio frequency currents_, that is, the _low frequency alternating_ currents that flow through the head phone circuit. to use the amplified radio frequency oscillating currents or amplified audio frequency alternating currents that are set up by an amplifier tube either a high resistance, called a _grid leak_, or an _amplifying transformer_, with or without an iron core, must be connected with the plate circuit of the first amplifier tube and the grid circuit of the next amplifier tube or detector tube, or with the wire point of a crystal detector. where two or more amplifier tubes are coupled together in this way the scheme is known as _cascade amplification._ where either a _radio frequency transformer_, that is one without the iron core, or an _audio frequency transformer_, that is one with the iron core, is used to couple the amplifier tube circuits together better results are obtained than where a high resistance grid leak is used, but the amplifying tubes have to be more carefully shielded from each other or they will react and set up a _howling_ noise in the head phones. on the other hand grid leaks cost less but they are more troublesome to use as you have to find out for yourself the exact resistance value they must have and this you can do only by testing them out. a grid leak amplifier receiving set. with crystal detector.--the apparatus you need for this set includes: ( ) a _loose coupled tuning coil_, ( ) a _variable condenser_, ( ) _two fixed condensers_, ( ) a _crystal detector_, or better a _vacuum tube detector_, ( ) an a or _ volt storage battery_, ( ) a _rheostat_, ( ) a b or - / _volt dry cell battery_, ( ) a fixed resistance unit, or _leak grid_ as it is called, and ( ) a pair of _head-phones_. the tuning coil, variable condenser, fixed condensers, crystal detectors and head-phones are exactly the same as those described in _set no. _ in chapter iii. the a and b batteries are exactly the same as those described in chapter viii. the _vacuum tube amplifier_ and the _grid leak_ are the only new pieces of apparatus you need and not described before. the vacuum tube amplifier.--this consists of a three electrode vacuum tube exactly like the vacuum tube detector described in chapter viii and pictured in fig. , except that instead of being filled with a non-combustible gas it is evacuated, that is, the air has been completely pumped out of it. the gas filled tube, however, can be used as an amplifier and either kind of tube can be used for either radio frequency or audio frequency amplification, though with the exhausted tube it is easier to obtain the right plate and filament voltages for good working. the fixed resistance unit, or grid leak.--grid leaks are made in different ways but all of them have an enormously high resistance. one way of making them consists of depositing a thin film of gold on a sheet of mica and placing another sheet of mica on top to protect it the whole being enclosed in a glass tube as shown at a in fig. . these grid leaks are made in units of from , ohms (. megohm) to , , ohms ( megohms) and cost from $ to $ . [illustration: fig. .--grid leaks and how to connect them up.] as the _value_ of the grid leak you will need depends very largely upon the construction of the different parts of your receiving set and on the kind of aerial wire system you use with it you will have to try out various resistances until you hit the right one. the resistance that will give the best results, however, lies somewhere between , ohms ( / a megohm) and , , ohms ( megohms) and the only way for you to find this out is to buy / , and megohm grid leak resistances and connect them up in different ways, as shown at b, until you find the right value. assembling the parts for a crystal detector set.--begin by laying the various parts out on a base or a panel with the loose coupled tuning coil on the left hand side, but with the adjustable switch of the secondary coil on the right hand end or in front according to the way it is made. then place the variable condenser, the rheostat, the crystal detector and the binding posts for the head phones in front of and in a line with each other. set the vacuum tube amplifier back of the rheostat and the a and b batteries back of the parts or in any other place that may be convenient. the fixed condensers and the grid leak can be placed anywhere so that it will be easy to connect them in and you are ready to wire up the set. connecting up the parts for a crystal detector.--first connect the sliding contact of the primary of the tuning coil to the leading-in wire and one of the end wires of the primary to the water pipe, as shown in fig. . now connect the adjustable arm that makes contact with one end of the secondary of the tuning coil to one of the posts of the variable condenser; then connect the other post of the latter with a post of the fixed condenser and the other post of this with the grid of the amplifying tube. [illustration: fig. .--crystal detector receiving set with vacuum tube amplifier (resistance coupled).] connect the first post of the variable condenser to the + or _positive electrode_ of the a battery and its - or _negative electrode_ with the rotating contact arm of the rheostat. next connect one end of the resistance coil of the rheostat to one of the posts of the amplifier tube that leads to the filament and the other filament post to the + or _positive electrode_ of the a battery. this done connect the _negative_, that is, the _zinc pole_ of the b battery to the positive electrode of the a battery and connect the _positive_, or _carbon pole_ of the former with one end of the grid leak and connect the other end of this to the plate of the amplifier tube. to the end of the grid leak connected with the plate of the amplifier tube connect the metal point of your crystal detector, the crystal of the latter with one post of the head phones and the other post of them with the other end of the grid leak and, finally, connect a fixed condenser in _parallel_ with--that is across the ends of the grid leak, all of which is shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . a grid leak amplifying receiving set with vacuum tube detector.--a better amplifying receiving set can be made than the one just described by using a vacuum tube detector instead of the crystal detector. this set is built up exactly like the crystal detector described above and shown in fig. up to and including the grid leak resistance, but shunted across the latter is a vacuum tube detector, which is made and wired up precisely like the one shown at a in fig. in the chapter ahead of this one. the way a grid leak and vacuum tube detector with a one-step amplifier are connected up is shown at a in fig. . where you have a vacuum tube detector and one or more amplifying tubes connected up, or in _cascade_ as it is called, you can use an a, or storage battery of volts for all of them as shown at b in fig. , but for every vacuum tube you use you must have a b or - / volt dry battery to charge the plate with. [illustration: (a) fig. --vacuum tube detector set with one step amplifier (resistance coupled).] [illustration: (b) fig. .--wiring diagram for using one a or storage battery with an amplifier and a detector tube.] a radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set.--instead of using a grid leak resistance to couple up the amplifier and detector tube circuits you can use a _radio frequency transformer_, that is, a transformer made like a loose coupled tuning coil, and without an iron core, as shown in the wiring diagram at a in fig. . in this set, which gives better results than where a grid leak is used, the amplifier tube is placed in the first oscillation circuit and the detector tube in the second circuit. [illustration: (a) fig. .--wiring diagram for a radio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--radio frequency transformer.] since the radio frequency transformer has no iron core the high frequency, or _radio frequency_ oscillating currents, as they are called, surge through it and are not changed into low frequency, or _audio frequency_ pulsating currents, until they flow through the detector. since the diagram shows only one amplifier and one radio frequency transformer, it is consequently a _one step amplifier_; however, two, three or more, amplifying tubes can be connected up by means of an equal number of radio frequency transformers when you will get wonderful results. where a six step amplifier, that is, where six amplifying tubes are connected together, or in _cascade_, the first three are usually coupled up with radio frequency transformers and the last three with audio frequency transformers. a radio frequency transformer is shown at b and costs $ to $ . an audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set.--where audio frequency transformers are used for stepping up the voltage of the current of the detector and amplifier tubes, the radio frequency current does not get into the plate circuit of the detector at all for the reason that the iron core of the transformer chokes them off, hence, the succeeding amplifiers operate at audio frequencies. an audio frequency transformer is shown at a in fig. and a wiring diagram showing how the tubes are connected in _cascade_ with the transformers is shown at b; it is therefore a two-step audio frequency receiving set. [illustration: (a) fig. .--audio frequency transformer.] [illustration: (b) fig. --wiring diagram for an audio frequency transformer amplifying receiving set. (with vacuum tube detector and two step amplifier tubes.)] a six step amplifier receiving set with a loop aerial.--by using a receiving set having a three step radio frequency and a three step audio frequency, that is, a set in which there are coupled three amplifying tubes with radio frequency transformers and three amplifying tubes with audio frequency transformers as described under the caption _a radio frequency transformer receiving set_, you can use a _loop aerial_ in your room thus getting around the difficulties--if such there be--in erecting an out-door aerial. you can easily make a loop aerial by winding turns of _no. _ or _ _ copper wire about / inch apart on a wooden frame two feet on the side as shown in fig. . with this six step amplifier set and loop aerial you can receive wave lengths of to meters from various high power stations which are at considerable distances away. [illustration: (a) fig. .--six step amplifier with loop aerial.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--efficient regenerative receiving set. (with three coil loose coupler tuner.)] how to prevent howling.--where radio frequency or audio frequency amplifiers are used to couple your amplifier tubes in cascade you must take particular pains to shield them from one another in order to prevent the _feed back_ of the currents through them, which makes the head phones or loud speaker _howl_. to shield them from each other the tubes should be enclosed in metal boxes and placed at least inches apart while the transformers should be set so that their cores are at right angles to each other and these also should be not less than six inches apart. chapter x regenerative amplification receiving sets while a vacuum tube detector has an amplifying action of its own, and this accounts for its great sensitiveness, its amplifying action can be further increased to an enormous extent by making the radio frequency currents that are set up in the oscillation circuits react on the detector. such currents are called _feed-back_ or _regenerative_ currents and when circuits are so arranged as to cause the currents to flow back through the detector tube the amplification keeps on increasing until the capacity of the tube itself is reached. it is like using steam over and over again in a steam turbine until there is no more energy left in it. a system of circuits which will cause this regenerative action to take place is known as the _armstrong circuits_ and is so called after the young man who discovered it. since the regenerative action of the radio frequency currents is produced by the detector tube itself and which sets up an amplifying effect without the addition of an amplifying tube, this type of receiving set has found great favor with amateurs, while in combination with amplifying tubes it multiplies their power proportionately and it is in consequence used in one form or another in all the better sets. there are many different kinds of circuits which can be used to produce the regenerative amplification effect while the various kinds of tuning coils will serve for coupling them; for instance a two or three slide single tuning coil will answer the purpose but as it does not give good results it is not advisable to spend either time or money on it. a better scheme is to use a loose coupler formed of two or three honeycomb or other compact coils, while a _variocoupler_ or a _variometer_ or two will produce the maximum regenerative action. the simplest type of regenerative receiving set. with loose coupled tuning coil.--while this regenerative set is the simplest that will give anything like fair results it is here described not on account of its desirability, but because it will serve to give you the fundamental idea of how the _feed-back_ circuit is formed. for this set you need: ( ) a _loose-coupled tuning coil_ such as described in chapter iii, ( ) a _variable condenser_ of _. mfd._ (microfarad) capacitance; ( ) one _fixed condenser_ of _. mfd._; ( ) one _fixed condenser_ for the grid leak circuit of _. mfd._; ( ) a _grid leak_ of / to megohms resistance; ( ) a _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) an _a volt battery_; ( ) a _rheostat_; ( ) a _b / volt battery_; and ( ) a pair of _ ohm head phones_. connecting up the parts.--begin by connecting the leading-in wire of the aerial with the binding post end of the primary coil of the loose coupler as shown in the wiring diagram fig. and then connect the sliding contact with the water pipe or other ground. connect the binding post end of the primary coil with one post of the variable condenser, connect the other post of this with one of the posts of the _. mfd._ condenser and the other end of this with the grid of the detector tube; then around this condenser shunt the grid leak resistance. [illustration: fig. .--simple regenerative receiving set. (with loose coupler tuner.)] next connect the sliding contact of the primary coil with the other post of the variable condenser and from this lead a wire on over to one of the terminals of the filament of the vacuum tube; to the other terminal of the filament connect one of the posts of the rheostat and connect the other post to the - or negative electrode of the a battery and then connect the + or positive electrode of it to the other terminal of the filament. connect the + or positive electrode of the a battery with one post of the . mfd. fixed condenser and connect the other post of this to one of the ends of the secondary coil of the tuning coil and which is now known as the _tickler coil_; then connect the other end of the secondary, or tickler coil to the plate of the vacuum tube. in the wiring diagram the secondary, or tickler coil is shown above and in a line with the primary coil but this is only for the sake of making the connections clear; in reality the secondary, or tickler coil slides to and fro in the primary coil as shown and described in chapter iii. finally connect the _negative_, or zinc pole of the _b battery_ to one side of the fixed condenser, the _positive_, or carbon, pole to one of the terminals of the head phones and the other terminal of this to the other post of the fixed condenser when your regenerative set is complete. an efficient regenerative receiving set. with three coil loose coupler.--to construct a really good regenerative set you must use a loose coupled tuner that has three coils, namely a _primary_, a _secondary_ and a _tickler coil_. a tuner of this kind is made like an ordinary loose coupled tuning coil but it has a _third_ coil as shown at a and b in fig. . the middle coil, which is the _secondary_, is fixed to the base, and the large outside coil, which is the _primary_, is movable, that is it slides to and fro over the middle coil, while the small inside coil, which is the _tickler_, is also movable and can slide in or out of the middle _coil_. none of these coils is variable; all are wound to receive waves up to meters in length when used with a variable condenser of _. mfd_. capacitance. in other words you slide the coils in and out to get the right amount of coupling and you tune by adjusting the variable condenser to get the exact wave length you want. [illustration: (a) fig. .--diagram of a three coil coupler.] [illustration: (b) fig. .--three coil loose coupler tuner.] with compact coils.--compact coil tuners are formed of three fixed inductances wound in flat coils, and these are pivoted in a mounting so that the distance between them and, therefore, the coupling, can be varied, as shown at a in fig. . these coils are wound up by the makers for various wave lengths ranging from a small one that will receive waves of any length up to meters to a large one that has a maximum of , meters. for an amateur set get three of the smallest coils when you can not only hear amateur stations that send on a meter wave but broadcasting stations that send on a meter wave. [illustration: fig. .--honeycomb inductance coil.] these three coils are mounted with panel plugs which latter fit into a stand, or mounting, so that the middle coil is fixed, that is, stationary, while the two outside coils can be swung to and fro like a door; this scheme permits small variations of coupling to be had between the coils and this can be done either by handles or by means of knobs on a panel board. while i have suggested the use of the smallest size coils, you can get and use those wound for any wave length you want to receive and when those are connected with variometers and variable condensers, and with a proper aerial, you will have a highly efficient receptor that will work over all ranges of wave lengths. the smallest size coils cost about $ . apiece and the mounting costs about $ or $ each. the a battery potentiometer.--this device is simply a resistance like the rheostat described in connection with the preceding vacuum tube receiving sets but it is wound to or ohms resistance as against - / to ohms of the rheostat. it is, however, used as well as the rheostat. with a vacuum tube detector, and especially with one having a gas-content, a potentiometer is very necessary as it is only by means of it that the potential of the plate of the detector can be accurately regulated. the result of proper regulation is that when the critical potential value is reached there is a marked increase in the loudness of the sounds that are emitted by the head phones. as you will see from a in fig. it has three taps. the two taps which are connected with the ends of the resistance coil are shunted around the a battery and the third tap, which is attached to the movable contact arm, is connected with the b battery tap, see b, at which this battery gives volts. since the a battery gives volts you can vary the potential of the plate from to volts. the potentiometer must never be shunted around the b battery or the latter will soon run down. a potentiometer costs a couple of dollars. [illustration: (a) fig. .--the use of the potentiometer.] the parts and how to connect them up.--for this regenerative set you will need: ( ) a _honeycomb_ or other compact _three-coil tuner_, ( ) two _variable_ (_. _ and _. mfd_.) _condensers_; ( ) a _. mfd. fixed condenser_; ( ) a _ / to megohm grid leak_; ( ) a _tube detector_; ( ) a _ volt a battery_; ( ) _a rheostat_; ( ) a _potentiometer_; ( ) an _ _ or _ volt b battery_; ( ) a _fixed condenser_ of _. mfd. fixed condenser_; and ( ) a _pair of ohm head phones_. to wire up the parts connect the leading-in wire of the aerial with the primary coil, which is the middle one of the tuner, and connect the other terminal with the ground. connect the ends of the secondary coil, which is the middle one, with the posts of the variable condenser and connect one of the posts of the latter with one post of the fixed . mfd. condenser and the other post of this with the grid; then shunt the grid leak around it. next connect the other post of the variable condenser to the - or _negative_ electrode of the _a battery_; the + or _positive_ electrode of this to one terminal of the detector filament and the other end of the latter to the electrode of the a battery. now connect one end of the tickler coil with the detector plate and the other post to the fixed . mfd. condenser, then the other end of this to the positive or carbon pole of the b battery. this done shunt the potentiometer around the a battery and run a wire from the movable contact of it (the potentiometer) over to the volt tap, (see b, fig. ), of the b battery. finally, shunt the head phones and the . mfd. fixed condenser and you are ready to try out conclusions. a regenerative audio frequency amplifier receiving set.--the use of amateur regenerative cascade audio frequency receiving sets is getting to be quite common. to get the greatest amplification possible with amplifying tubes you have to keep a negative potential on the grids. you can, however, get very good results without any special charging arrangement by simply connecting one post of the rheostat with the negative terminal of the filament and connecting the _low potential_ end of the secondary of the tuning coil with the - or negative electrode of the a battery. this scheme will give the grids a negative bias of about volt. you do not need to bother about these added factors that make for high efficiency until after you have got your receiving set in working order and understand all about it. the parts and how to connect them up.--exactly the same parts are needed for this set as the one described above, but in addition you will want: ( ) two more _rheostats_; ( ) _two_ more sets of b - / _volt batteries_; ( ) _two amplifier tubes_, and ( ) _two audio frequency transformers_ as described in chapter ix and pictured at a in fig. . to wire up the parts begin by connecting the leading-in wire to one end of the primary of the tuning coil and then connect the other end of the coil with the ground. a variable condenser of . mfd. capacitance can be connected in the ground wire, as shown in fig. , to good advantage although it is not absolutely needed. now connect one end of the secondary coil to one post of a _. mfd._ variable condenser and the other end of the secondary to the other post of the condenser. [illustration: fig. .--regenerative audio frequency amplifier receiving set.] next bring a lead (wire) from the first post of the variable condenser over to the post of the first fixed condenser and connect the other post of the latter with the grid of the detector tube. shunt / to megohm grid leak resistance around the fixed condenser and then connect the second post of the variable condenser to one terminal of the detector tube filament. run this wire on over and connect it with the first post of the second rheostat, the second post of which is connected with one terminal of the filament of the first amplifying tube; then connect the first post of the rheostat with one end of the secondary coil of the first audio frequency transformer, and the other end of this coil with the grid of the first amplifier tube. connect the lead that runs from the second post of variable condenser to the first post of the third rheostat, the second post of which is connected with one terminal of the second amplifying tube; then connect the first post of the rheostat with one end of the secondary coil of the second audio frequency transformer and the other end of this coil with the grid of the second amplifier tube. this done connect the - or negative electrode of the a battery with the second post of the variable condenser and connect the + or positive electrode with the free post of the first rheostat, the other post of which connects with the free terminal of the filament of the detector. from this lead tap off a wire and connect it to the free terminal of the filament of the first amplifier tube, and finally connect the end of the lead with the free terminal of the filament of the second amplifier tube. next shunt a potentiometer around the a battery and connect the third post, which connects with the sliding contact, to the negative or zinc pole of a b battery, then connect the positive or carbon pole of it to the negative or zinc pole of a second b battery and the positive or carbon pole of the latter with one end of the primary coil of the second audio frequency transformer and the other end of it to the plate of the first amplifying tube. run the lead on over and connect it to one of the terminals of the second fixed condenser and the other terminal of this with the plate of the second amplifying tube. then shunt the headphones around the condenser. finally connect one end of the tickler coil of the tuner with the plate of the detector tube and connect the other end of the tickler to one end of the primary coil of the first audio frequency transformer and the other end of it to the wire that connects the two b batteries together. chapter xi short wave regenerative receiving sets a _short wave receiving set_ is one that will receive a range of wave lengths of from to meters while the distance over which the waves can be received as well as the intensity of the sounds reproduced by the headphones depends on: ( ) whether it is a regenerative set and ( ) whether it is provided with amplifying tubes. high-grade regenerative sets designed especially for receiving amateur sending stations that must use a short wave length are built on the regenerative principle just like those described in the last chapter and further amplification can be had by the use of amplifier tubes as explained in chapter ix, but the new feature of these sets is the use of the _variocoupler_ and one or more _variometers_. these tuning devices can be connected up in different ways and are very popular with amateurs at the present time. differing from the ordinary loose coupler the variometer has no movable contacts while the variometer is provided with taps so that you can connect it up for the wave length you want to receive. all you have to do is to tune the oscillation circuits to each other is to turn the _rotor_, which is the secondary coil, around in the _stator_, as the primary coil is called in order to get a very fine variation of the wave length. it is this construction that makes _sharp tuning_ with these sets possible, by which is meant that all wave lengths are tuned out except the one which the receiving set is tuned for. a short wave regenerative receiver--with one variometer and three variable condensers.--this set also includes a variocoupler and a _grid coil_. the way that the parts are connected together makes it a simple and at the same time a very efficient regenerative receiver for short waves. while this set can be used without shielding the parts from each other the best results are had when shields are used. the parts you need for this set include: ( ) one _variocoupler_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) _one megohm grid leak_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _ volt a battery_; ( ) one _ ohm_, - / _ampere rheostat_; ( ) one _ ohm potentiometer_; ( ) one - / _volt b battery_; ( ) one _. microfarad fixed condenser_, ( ) one pair of _ , ohm headphones_, and ( ) a _variometer_. the variocoupler.--a variocoupler consists of a primary coil wound on the outside of a tube of insulating material and to certain turns of this taps are connected so that you can fix the wave length which your aerial system is to receive from the shortest wave; i.e., meters on up by steps to the longest wave, i.e., meters, which is the range of most amateur variocouplers that are sold in the open market. this is the part of the variocoupler that is called the _stator_. the secondary coil is wound on the section of a ball mounted on a shaft and this is swung in bearings on the stator so that it can turn in it. this part of the variocoupler is called the _rotor_ and is arranged so that it can be mounted on a panel and adjusted by means of a knob or a dial. a diagram of a variocoupler is shown at a in fig. , and the coupler itself at b. there are various makes and modifications of variocouplers on the market but all of them are about the same price which is $ . or $ . . [illustration: fig. .--how the variocoupler is made and works.] the variometer.--this device is quite like the variocoupler, but with these differences: ( ) the rotor turns in the stator, which is also the section of a ball, and ( ) one end of the primary is connected with one end of the secondary coil. to be really efficient a variometer must have a small resistance and a large inductance as well as a small dielectric loss. to secure the first two of these factors the wire should be formed of a number of fine, pure copper wires each of which is insulated and the whole strand then covered with silk. this kind of wire is the best that has yet been devised for the purpose and is sold under the trade name of _litzendraht_. a new type of variometer has what is known as a _basket weave_, or _wavy wound_ stator and rotor. there is no wood, insulating compound or other dielectric materials in large enough quantities to absorb the weak currents that flow between them, hence weaker sounds can be heard when this kind of a variometer is used. with it you can tune sharply to waves under meters in length and up to and including wave lengths of meters. when amateur stations of small power are sending on these short waves this style of variometer keeps the electric oscillations at their greatest strength and, hence, the reproduced sounds will be of maximum intensity. a wiring diagram of a variometer is shown at a in fig. and a _basketball_ variometer is shown complete at b. [illustration: fig. .--how the variometer is made and works.] connecting up the parts.--to hook-up the set connect the leading-in wire to one end of the primary coil, or stator, of the variocoupler and solder a wire to one of the taps that gives the longest wave length you want to receive. connect the other end of this wire with one post of a . microfarad variable condenser and connect the other post with the ground as shown in fig. . now connect one end of the secondary coil, or rotor, to one post of a . mfd. variable condenser, the other post of this to one end of the grid coil and the other end of this with the remaining end of the rotor of the variocoupler. [illustration: fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (one variometer and three variable condensers.)] next connect one post of the . mfd. condenser with one of the terminals of the detector filament; then connect the other post of this condenser with one post of the . mfd. variable condenser and the other post of this with the grid of the detector, then shunt the megohm grid leak around the latter condenser. this done connect the other terminal of the filament to one post of the rheostat, the other post of this to the - or negative electrode of the volt a battery and the + or positive electrode of the latter to the other terminal of the filament. shunt the potentiometer around the a battery and connect the sliding contact with the - or zinc pole of the b battery and the + or carbon pole with one terminal of the headphone; connect the other terminal to one of the posts of the variometer and the other post of the variometer to the plate of the detector. finally shunt a . mfd. fixed condenser around the headphones. if you want to amplify the current with a vacuum tube amplifier connect in the terminals of the amplifier circuit shown at a in figs. or at the point where they are connected with the secondary coil of the loose coupled tuning coil, in those diagrams with the binding posts of fig. where the phones are usually connected in. short wave regenerative receiver. with two variometers and two variable condensers.--this type of regenerative receptor is very popular with amateurs who are using high-grade short-wave sets. when you connect up this receptor you must keep the various parts well separated. screw the variocoupler to the middle of the base board or panel, and secure the variometers on either side of it so that the distance between them will be or inches. by so placing them the coupling will be the same on both sides and besides you can shield them from each other easier. for the shield use a sheet of copper on the back of the panel and place a sheet of copper between the parts, or better, enclose the variometers and detector and amplifying tubes if you use the latter in sheet copper boxes. when you set up the variometers place them so that their stators are at right angles to each other for otherwise the magnetic lines of force set up by the coils of each one will be mutually inductive and this will make the headphones or loud speaker _howl_. whatever tendency the receptor has to howl with this arrangement can be overcome by putting in a grid leak of the right resistance and adjusting the condenser. the parts and how to connect them up.--for this set you require: ( ) one _variocoupler_; ( ) two _variometers_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _. microfarad variable condenser_; ( ) one _ megohm grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _ volt a battery_; ( ) one _ ohm potentiometer_; ( ) one _ - / volt b battery_; ( ) one _. microfarad fixed condenser_, and ( ) one pair of _ , ohm headphones_. to wire up the set begin by connecting the leading-in wire to the fixed end of the primary coil, or _stator_, of the variocoupler, as shown in fig. , and connect one post of the . mfd. variable condenser to the stator by soldering a short length of wire to the tap of the latter that gives the longest wave you want to receive. now connect one end of the secondary coil, or _rotor_, of the variocoupler with one post of the . mfd. variable condenser and the other part to the grid of the detector tube. connect the other end of the rotor of the variocoupler to one of the posts of the first variometer and the other post of this to one of the terminals of the detector filament. [illustration: fig. .--short wave regenerative receiving set (two variometers and two variable condensers.)] connect this filament terminal with the - or negative electrode of the a battery and the + or positive electrode of this with one post of the rheostat and lead a wire from the other post to the free terminal of the filament. this done shunt the potential around the a battery and connect the sliding contact to the - or zinc pole of the b battery and the + or carbon pole of this to one terminal of the headphones, while the other terminal of this leads to one of the posts of the second variometer, the other post of which is connected to the plate of the detector tube. if you want to add an amplifier tube then connect it to the posts instead of the headphones as described in the foregoing set. chapter xii intermediate and long wave regenerative receiving sets all receiving sets that receive over a range of wave lengths of from meters to , meters are called _intermediate wave sets_ and all sets that receive wave lengths over a range of anything more than , meters are called _long wave sets_. the range of intermediate wave receptors is such that they will receive amateur, broadcasting, ship and shore navy, commercial, arlington's time and all other stations using _spark telegraph damped waves_ or _arc_ or _vacuum tube telephone continuous waves_ but not _continuous wave telegraph signals_, unless these have been broken up into groups at the transmitting station. to receive continuous wave telegraph signals requires receiving sets of special kind and these will be described in the next chapter. intermediate wave receiving sets.--there are two chief schemes employed to increase the range of wave lengths that a set can receive and these are by using: ( ) _loading coils_ and _shunt condensers_, and ( ) _bank-wound coils_ and _variable condensers_. if you have a short-wave set and plan to receive intermediate waves with it then loading coils and fixed condensers shunted around them affords you the way to do it, but if you prefer to buy a new receptor then the better way is to get one with bank-wound coils and variable condensers; this latter way preserves the electrical balance of the oscillation circuits better, the electrical losses are less and the tuning easier and sharper. intermediate wave set with loading coils.--for this intermediate wave set you can use either of the short-wave sets described in the foregoing chapter. for the loading coils use _honeycomb coils_, or other good compact inductance coils, as shown in chapter x and having a range of whatever wave length you wish to receive. the following table shows the range of wave length of the various sized coils when used with a variable condenser having a . microfarad _capacitance_, the approximate _inductance_ of each coil in _millihenries_ and prices at the present writing: table of characteristics of honeycomb coils approximate wave length in meters in millihenries inductance . mfd. variable mounted appx. air condenser. on plug . -- $ . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . . -- . these and other kinds of compact coils can be bought at electrical supply houses that sell wireless goods. if your aerial is not very high or long you can use loading coils, but to get anything like efficient results with them you must have an aerial of large capacitance and the only way to get this is to put up a high and long one with two or more parallel wires spaced a goodly distance apart. the parts and how to connect them up.--get ( ) _two honeycomb or other coils_ of the greatest wave length you want to receive, for in order to properly balance the aerial, or primary oscillation circuit, and the closed, or secondary oscillation circuit, you have to tune them to the same wave length; ( ) two _. mfd. variable condensers_, though fixed condensers will do, and ( ) two small _single-throw double-pole knife switches_ mounted on porcelain bases. to use the loading coils all you have to do is to connect one of them in the aerial above the primary coil of the loose coupler, or variocoupler as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. , then shunt one of the condensers around it and connect one of the switches around this; this switch enables you to cut in or out the loading coil at will. likewise connect the other loading coil in one side of the closed, or secondary circuit between the variable . mfd. condenser and the secondary coil of the loose coupler or variocoupler as shown in fig. . the other connections are exactly the same as shown in figs. and . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram showing fixed loading coils for intermediate wave set.] an intermediate wave set with variocoupler inductance coils.--by using the coil wound on the rotor of the variocoupler as the tickler the coupling between the detector tube circuits and the aerial wire system increases as the set is tuned for greater wave lengths. this scheme makes the control of the regenerative circuit far more stable than it is where an ordinary loose coupled tuning coil is used. when the variocoupler is adjusted for receiving very long waves the rotor sets at right angles to the stator and, since when it is in this position there is no mutual induction between them, the tickler coil serves as a loading coil for the detector plate oscillation circuit. inductance coils for short wave lengths are usually wound in single layers but _bank-wound coils_, as they are called are necessary to get compactness where long wave lengths are to be received. by winding inductance coils with two or more layers the highest inductance values can be obtained with the least resistance. a wiring diagram of a multipoint inductance coil is shown in fig. . you can buy this intermediate wave set assembled and ready to use or get the parts and connect them up yourself. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for intermediate wave receptor with one variocoupler and section bank-wound inductance coil.] the parts and how to connect them up.--for this regenerative intermediate wave set get: ( ) one _ section triple bank-wound inductance coil_, ( ) one _variometer_, and ( ) all the other parts shown in the diagram fig. except the variocoupler. first connect the free end of the condenser in the aerial to one of the terminals of the stator of the variocoupler; then connect the other terminal of the stator with one of the ends of the bank-wound inductance coil and connect the movable contact of this with the ground. next connect a wire to the aerial between the variable condenser and the stator and connect this to one post of a . microfarad fixed condenser, then connect the other post of this with the grid of the detector and shunt a megohm grid leak around it. connect a wire to the ground wire between the bank-wound inductance coil and the ground proper, i.e., the radiator or water pipe, connect the other end of this to the + electrode of the a battery and connect this end also to one of the terminals of the filament. this done connect the other terminal of the filament to one post of the rheostat and the other post of this to the - or negative side of the a battery. to the + electrode of the a battery connect the - or zinc pole of the b battery and connect the + or carbon pole of the latter with one post of the fixed . microfarad condenser. this done connect one terminal of the tickler coil which is on the rotor of the variometer to the plate of the detector and the other terminal of the tickler to the other post of the . condenser and around this shunt your headphones. or if you want to use one or more amplifying tubes connect the circuit of the first one, see fig. , to the posts on either side of the fixed condenser instead of the headphones. a long wave receiving set.--the vivid imagination of jules verne never conceived anything so fascinating as the reception of messages without wires sent out by stations half way round the world; and in these days of high power cableless stations on the five continents you can listen-in to the messages and hear what is being sent out by the lyons, paris and other french stations, by great britain, italy, germany and even far off russia and japan. a long wave set for receiving these stations must be able to tune to wave lengths up to , meters. differing from the way in which the regenerative action of the short wave sets described in the preceding chapter is secured and which depends on a tickler coil and the coupling action of the detector in this long wave set, [footnote: all of the short wave and intermediate wave receivers described, are connected up according to the wiring diagram used by the a. h. grebe company, richmond hill, long island, n. y.] this action is obtained by the use of a tickler coil in the plate circuit which is inductively coupled to the grid circuit and this feeds back the necessary amount of current. this is a very good way to connect up the circuits for the reason that: ( ) the wiring is simplified, and ( ) it gives a single variable adjustment for the entire range of wave lengths the receptor is intended to cover. the parts and how to connect them up.--the two chief features as far as the parts are concerned of this long wave length receiving set are ( ) the _variable condensers_, and ( ) the _tuning inductance coils_. the variable condenser used in series with the aerial wire system has plates and is equal to a capacitance of _. mfd._ which is the normal aerial capacitance. the condenser used in the secondary coil circuit has plates and this is equal to a capacitance of _. mfd_. there are a number of inductance coils and these are arranged so that they can be connected in or cut out and combinations are thus formed which give a high efficiency and yet allow them to be compactly mounted. the inductance coils of the aerial wire system and those of the secondary coil circuit are practically alike. for wave lengths up to , meters _bank litz-wound coils_ are used and these are wound up in , and banks in order to give the proper degree of coupling and inductance values. where wave lengths of more than , meters are to be received _coto-coils_ are used as these are the "last word" in inductance coil design, and are especially adapted for medium as well as long wave lengths. [footnote: can be had of the coto coil co., providence, r. i.] these various coils are cut in and out by means of two five-point switches which are provided with auxiliary levers and contactors for _dead-ending_ the right amount of the coils. in cutting in coils for increased wave lengths, that is from , to , meters, all of the coils of the aerial are connected in series as well as all of the coils of the secondary circuit. the connections for a long wave receptor are shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram showing long wave receptor with variocouplers and bank-wound inductance coils] chapter xiii heterodyne or beat long wave telegraph receiving set any of the receiving sets described in the foregoing chapters will respond to either: ( ) a wireless telegraph transmitter that uses a spark gap and which sends out periodic electric waves, or to ( ) a wireless telephone transmitter that uses an arc or a vacuum tube oscillator and which sends out continuous electric waves. to receive wireless _telegraph_ signals, however, from a transmitter that uses an arc or a vacuum tube oscillator and which sends out continuous waves, either the transmitter or the receptor must be so constructed that the continuous waves will be broken up into groups of audio frequency and this is done in several different ways. there are four different ways employed at the present time to break up the continuous waves of a wireless telegraph transmitter into groups and these are: (_a_) the _heterodyne_, or _beat_, method, in which waves of different lengths are impressed on the received waves and so produces beats; (_b_) the _tikker_, or _chopper_ method, in which the high frequency currents are rapidly broken up; (_c_) the variable condenser method, in which the movable plates are made to rapidly rotate; (_d_) the _tone wheel_, or _frequency transformer_, as it is often called, and which is really a modified form of and an improvement on the tikker. the heterodyne method will be described in this chapter. what the heterodyne or beat method is.--the word _heterodyne_ was coined from the greek words _heteros_ which means _other_, or _different_, and _dyne_ which means _power_; in other words it means when used in connection with a wireless receptor that another and different high frequency current is used besides the one that is received from the sending station. in music a _beat_ means a regularly recurrent swelling caused by the reinforcement of a sound and this is set up by the interference of sound waves which have slightly different periods of vibration as, for instance, when two tones take place that are not quite in tune with each other. this, then, is the principle of the heterodyne, or beat, receptor. in the heterodyne, or beat method, separate sustained oscillations, that are just about as strong as those of the incoming waves, are set up in the receiving circuits and their frequency is just a little higher or a little lower than those that are set up by the waves received from the distant transmitter. the result is that these oscillations of different frequencies interfere and reinforce each other when _beats_ are produced, the period of which is slow enough to be heard in the headphones, hence the incoming signals can be heard only when waves from the sending station are being received. a fuller explanation of how this is done will be found in chapter xv. the autodyne or self-heterodyne long-wave receiving set.--this is the simplest type of heterodyne receptor and it will receive periodic waves from spark telegraph transmitters or continuous waves from an arc or vacuum tube telegraph transmitter. in this type of receptor the detector tube itself is made to set up the _heterodyne oscillations_ which interfere with those that are produced by the incoming waves that are a little out of tune with it. with a long wave _autodyne_, or _self-heterodyne_ receptor, as this type is called, and a two-step audio-frequency amplifier you can clearly hear many of the cableless stations of europe and others that send out long waves. for receiving long wave stations, however, you must have a long aerial--a single wire or more feet in length will do--and the higher it is the louder will be the signals. where it is not possible to put the aerial up a hundred feet or more above the ground, you can use a lower one and still get messages in _international morse_ fairly strong. the parts and connections of an autodyne, or self-heterodyne, receiving set.--for this long wave receiving set you will need: ( ) one _variocoupler_ with the primary coil wound on the stator and the secondary coil and tickler coil wound on the rotor, or you can use three honeycomb or other good compact coils of the longest wave you want to receive, a table of which is given in chapter xii; ( ) two _. mfd. variable condensers_; ( ) one _. mfd. variable condenser_; ( ) one _. to megohm grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _a battery_; ( ) one _rheostat_; ( ) one _b battery_; ( ) one _potentiometer_; ( ) one _. mfd. fixed condenser_ and ( ) one pair of _headphones_. for the two-step amplifier you must, of course, have besides the above parts the amplifier tubes, variable condensers, batteries rheostats, potentiometers and fixed condensers as explained in chapter ix. the connections for the autodyne, or self-heterodyne, receiving set are shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave antodyne, or self-heterodyne receptor.] the separate heterodyne long wave receiving set.--this is a better long wave receptor than the self heterodyne set described above for receiving wireless telegraph signals sent out by a continuous long wave transmitter. the great advantage of using a separate vacuum tube to generate the heterodyne oscillations is that you can make the frequency of the oscillations just what you want it to be and hence you can make it a little higher or a little lower than the oscillations set up by the received waves. the parts and connections of a separate heterodyne long wave receiving set.--the parts required for this long wave receiving set are: ( ) four honeycomb or other good _compact inductance_ coils of the longest wave length that you want to receive; ( ) three _. mfd. variable condensers_; ( ) one _. mfd. variable condenser_; ( ) one _ megohm grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _vacuum tube detector_; ( ) one _a battery_; ( ) two rheostats; ( ) two _b batteries_, one of which is supplied with taps; ( ) one _potentiometer_; ( ) one _vacuum tube amplifier_, for setting up the heterodyne oscillations; ( ) a pair of _headphones_ and ( ) all of the parts for a _two-step amplifier_ as detailed in chapter ix, that is if you are going to use amplifiers. the connections are shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of long wave separate heterodyne receiving set.] in using either of these heterodyne receivers be sure to carefully adjust the b battery by means of the potentiometer. [footnote: the amplifier tube in this case is used as a generator of oscillations.] chapter xiv headphones and loud speakers wireless headphones.--a telephone receiver for a wireless receiving set is made exactly on the same principle as an ordinary bell telephone receiver. the only difference between them is that the former is made flat and compact so that a pair of them can be fastened together with a band and worn on the head (when it is called a _headset_), while the latter is long and cylindrical so that it can be held to the ear. a further difference between them is that the wireless headphone is made as sensitive as possible so that it will respond to very feeble currents, while the ordinary telephone receiver is far from being sensitive and will respond only to comparatively large currents. how a bell telephone receiver is made.--an ordinary telephone receiver consists of three chief parts and these are: ( ) a hard-rubber, or composition, shell and cap, ( ) a permanent steel bar magnet on one end of which is wound a coil of fine insulated copper wire, and ( ) a soft iron disk, or _diaphragm_, all of which are shown in the cross-section in fig. . the bar magnet is securely fixed inside of the handle so that the outside end comes to within about / of an inch of the diaphragm when this is laid on top of the shell and the cap is screwed on. [illustration: fig. .--cross-section of bell telephone receiver.] [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. alexander graham bell, inventor of the telephone, now an ardent radio enthusiast.] the ends of the coil of wire are connected with two binding posts which are in the end of the shell, but are shown in the picture at the sides for the sake of clearness. this coil usually has a resistance of about ohms and the meaning of the _ohmic resistance_ of a receiver and its bearing on the sensitiveness of it will be explained a little farther along. after the disk, or diaphragm, which is generally made of thin, soft sheet iron that has been tinned or japanned, [footnote: a disk of photographic tin-type plate is generally used.] is placed over the end of the magnet, the cap, which has a small opening in it, is screwed on and the receiver is ready to use. how a wireless headphone is made.--for wireless work a receiver of the watch-case type is used and nearly always two such receivers are connected with a headband. it consists of a permanent bar magnet bent so that it will fit into the shell of the receiver as shown at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wireless headphone.] the ends of this magnet, which are called _poles_, are bent up, and hence this type is called a _bipolar_ receiver. the magnets are wound with fine insulated wire as before and the diaphragm is held securely in place over them by screwing on the cap. about resistance, turns of wire and sensitivity of headphones.--if you are a beginner in wireless you will hear those who are experienced speak of a telephone receiver as having a resistance of ohms, , ohms, , or , ohms, as the case may be; from this you will gather that the higher the resistance of the wire on the magnets the more sensitive the receiver is. in a sense this is true, but it is not the resistance of the magnet coils that makes it sensitive, in fact, it cuts down the current, but it is the _number of turns_ of wire on them that determines its sensitiveness; it is easy to see that this is so, for the larger the number of turns the more often will the same current flow round the cores of the magnet and so magnetize them to a greater extent. but to wind a large number of turns of wire close enough to the cores to be effective the wire must be very small and so, of course, the higher the resistance will be. now the wire used for winding good receivers is usually no. , and this has a diameter of . inch; consequently, when you know the ohmic resistance you get an idea of the number of turns of wire and from this you gather in a general way what the sensitivity of the receiver is. a receiver that is sensitive enough for wireless work should be wound to not less than , ohms (this means each ear phone), while those of a better grade are wound to as high as , ohms for each one. a high-grade headset is shown in fig. . each phone of a headset should be wound to the same resistance, and these are connected in series as shown. where two or more headsets are used with one wireless receiving set they must all be of the same resistance and connected in series, that is, the coils of one head set are connected with the coils of the next head set and so on to form a continuous circuit. [illustration: fig. .--wireless headphone.] the impedance of headphones.--when a current is flowing through a circuit the material of which the wire is made not only opposes its passage--this is called its _ohmic resistance_--but a _counter-electromotive force_ to the current is set up due to the inductive effects of the current on itself and this is called _impedance_. where a wire is wound in a coil the impedance of the circuit is increased and where an alternating current is used the impedance grows greater as the frequency gets higher. the impedance of the magnet coils of a receiver is so great for high frequency oscillations that the latter cannot pass through them; in other words, they are choked off. how the headphones work.--as you will see from the cross-sections in figs. and there is no connection, electrical or mechanical, between the diaphragm and the other parts of the receiver. now when either feeble oscillations, which have been rectified by a detector, or small currents from a b battery, flow through the magnet coils the permanent steel magnet is energized to a greater extent than when no current is flowing through it. this added magnetic energy makes the magnet attract the diaphragm more than it would do by its own force. if, on the other hand, the current is cut off the pull of the magnet is lessened and as its attraction for the diaphragm is decreased the latter springs back to its original position. when varying currents flow through the coils the diaphragm vibrates accordingly and sends out sound waves. about loud speakers.--the simplest acoustic instrument ever invented is the _megaphone_, which latter is a greek word meaning _great sound_. it is a very primitive device and our indians made it out of birch-bark before columbus discovered america. in its simplest form it consists of a cone-shaped horn and as the speaker talks into the small end the concentrated sound waves pass out of the large end in whatever direction it is held. now a loud speaker of whatever kind consists of two chief parts and these are: ( ) a _telephone receiver_, and ( ) a _megaphone_, or _horn_ as it is called. a loud speaker when connected with a wireless receiving set makes it possible for a room, or an auditorium, full of people, or an outdoor crowd, to hear what is being sent out by a distant station instead of being limited to a few persons listening-in with headphones. to use a loud speaker you should have a vacuum tube detector receiving set and this must be provided with a one-step amplifier at least. to get really good results you need a two-step amplifier and then energize the plate of the second vacuum tube amplifier with a volt b battery; or if you have a three-step amplifier then use the high voltage on the plate of the third amplifier tube. amplifying tubes are made to stand a plate potential of volts and this is the kind you must use. now it may seem curious, but when the current flows through the coils of the telephone receiver in one direction it gives better results than when it flows through in the other direction; to find out the way the current gives the best results try it out both ways and this you can do by simply reversing the connections. the simplest type of loud speaker.--this loud speaker, which is called, the arkay, [footnote: made by the riley-klotz mfg. co., newark, n. j.] will work on a one- or two-step amplifier. it consists of a brass horn with a curve in it and in the bottom there is an adapter, or frame, with a set screw in it so that you can fit in one of your headphones and this is all there is to it. the construction is rigid enough to prevent overtones, or distortion of speech or music. it is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--arkay loud speaker.] another simple kind of loud speaker.--another loud speaker, see fig. , is known as the _amplitone_ [footnote: made by the american pattern, foundry and machine co., church street, n. y. c.] and it likewise makes use of the headphones as the sound producer. this device has a cast metal horn which improves the quality of the sound, and all you have to do is to slip the headphones on the inlet tubes of the horn and it is ready for use. the two headphones not only give a longer volume of sound than where a single one is used but there is a certain blended quality which results from one phone smoothing out the imperfections of the other. [illustration: fig. .--amplitone loud speaker.] a third kind of simple loud speaker.--the operation of the _amplitron_, [footnote: made by the radio service co., w. th street, n. y.] as this loud speaker is called, is slightly different from others used for the same purpose. the sounds set up by the headphone are conveyed to the apex of an inverted copper cone which is inches long and inches in diameter. here it is reflected by a parabolic mirror which greatly amplifies the sounds. the amplification takes place without distortion, the sounds remaining as clear and crisp as when projected by the transmitting station. by removing the cap from the receiver the shell is screwed into a receptacle on the end of the loud speaker and the instrument is ready for use. it is pictured in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--amplitron loud speaker.] a super loud speaker.--this loud speaker, which is known as the _magnavox telemegafone_, was the instrument used by lt. herbert e. metcalf, , feet in the air, and which startled the city of washington on april , , by repeating president wilson's _victory loan message_ from an airplane in flight so that it was distinctly heard by , people below. this wonderful achievement was accomplished through the installation of the _magnavox_ and amplifiers in front of the treasury building. every word lt. metcalf spoke into his wireless telephone transmitter was caught and swelled in volume by the _telemegafones_ below and persons blocks away could hear the message plainly. two kinds of these loud speakers are made and these are: ( ) a small loud speaker for the use of operators so that headphones need not be worn, and ( ) a large loud speaker for auditorium and out-door audiences. [illustration: original © underwood and underwood. world's largest loud speaker ever made. installed in lytle park, cincinnati, ohio, to permit president harding's address at point pleasant, ohio, during the grant centenary celebration to be heard within a radius of one square.] either kind may be used with a one- or two-step amplifier or with a cascade of half a dozen amplifiers, according to the degree of loudness desired. the _telemegafone_ itself is not an amplifier in the true sense inasmuch as it contains no elements which will locally increase the incoming current. it does, however, transform the variable electric currents of the wireless receiving set into sound vibrations in a most wonderful manner. a _telemegafone_ of either kind is formed of: ( ) a telephone receiver of large proportions, ( ) a step-down induction coil, and ( ) a volt storage battery that energizes a powerful electromagnet which works the diaphragm. an electromagnet is used instead of a permanent magnet and this is energized by a -volt storage battery as shown in the wiring diagram at a in fig. . one end of the core of this magnet is fixed to the iron case of the speaker and together these form the equivalent of a horseshoe magnet. a movable coil of wire is supported from the center of the diaphragm the edge of which is rigidly held between the case and the small end of the horn. this coil is placed over the upper end of the magnet and its terminals are connected to the secondary of the induction coil. now when the coil is energized by the current from the amplifiers it and the core act like a solenoid in that the coil tends to suck the core into it; but since the core is fixed and the coil is movable the core draws the coil down instead. the result is that with every variation of the current that flows through the coil it moves up and down and pulls and pushes the diaphragm down and up with it. the large amplitude of the vibrations of the latter set up powerful sound waves which can be heard several blocks away from the horn. in this way then are the faint incoming signals, speech and music which are received by the amplifying receiving set reproduced and magnified enormously. the _telemegafone_ is shown complete at b. [illustration: fig. .--magnavox loud speaker.] chapter xv operation of vacuum tube receptors from the foregoing chapters you have seen that the vacuum tube can be used either as a _detector_ or an _amplifier_ or as a _generator_ of electric oscillations, as in the case of the heterodyne receiving set. to understand how a vacuum tube acts as a detector and as an amplifier you must first know what _electrons_ are. the way in which the vacuum tube sets up sustained oscillations will be explained in chapter xviii in connection with the _operation of vacuum tube transmitters_. what electrons are.--science teaches us that masses of matter are made up of _molecules_, that each of these is made up of _atoms_, and each of these, in turn, is made up of a central core of positive particles of electricity surrounded by negative particles of electricity as shown in the schematic diagram, fig. . the little black circles inside the large circle represent _positive particles of electricity_ and the little white circles outside of the large circle represent _negative particles of electricity_, or _electrons_ as they are called. [illustration: fig. .--schematic diagram of an atom.] it is the number of positive particles of electricity an atom has that determines the kind of an element that is formed when enough atoms of the same kind are joined together to build it up. thus hydrogen, which is the lightest known element, has one positive particle for its nucleus, while uranium, the heaviest element now known, has positive particles. now before leaving the atom please note that it is as much smaller than the diagram as the latter is smaller than our solar system. what is meant by ionization.--a hydrogen atom is not only lighter but it is smaller than the atom of any other element while an electron is more than a thousand times smaller than the atom of which it is a part. now as long as all of the electrons remain attached to the surface of an atom its positive and negative charges are equalized and it will, therefore, be neither positive nor negative, that is, it will be perfectly neutral. when, however, one or more of its electrons are separated from it, and there are several ways by which this can be done, the atom will show a positive charge and it is then called a _positive ion_. in other words a _positive ion_ is an atom that has lost some of its negative electrons while a _negative ion_ is one that has acquired some additional negative _electrons_. when a number of electrons are being constantly given by the atoms of an element, which let us suppose is a metal, and are being attracted to atoms of another element, which we will say is also a metal, a flow of electrons takes place between the two oppositely charged elements and form a current of negative electricity as represented by the arrows at a in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--action of two-electrode vacuum tube.] when a stream of electrons is flowing between two metal elements, as a filament and a plate in a vacuum tube detector, or an amplifier, they act as _carriers_ for more negative electrons and these are supplied by a battery as we shall presently explain. it has always been customary for us to think of a current of electricity as flowing from the positive pole of a battery to the negative pole of it and hence we have called this the _direction of the current_. since the electronic theory has been evolved it has been shown that the electrons, or negative charges of electricity, flow from the negative to the positive pole and that the ionized atoms, which are more positive than negative, flow in the opposite direction as shown at b. how electrons are separated from atoms.--the next question that arises is how to make a metal throw off some of the electrons of the atoms of which it is formed. there are several ways that this can be done but in any event each atom must be given a good, hard blow. a simple way to do this is to heat a metal to incandescence when the atoms will bombard each other with terrific force and many of the electrons will be knocked off and thrown out into the surrounding space. but all, or nearly all, of them will return to the atoms from whence they came unless a means of some kind is employed to attract them to the atoms of some other element. this can be done by giving the latter piece of metal a positive charge. if now these two pieces of metal are placed in a bulb from which the air has been exhausted and the first piece of metal is heated to brilliancy while the second piece of metal is kept positively electrified then a stream of electrons will flow between them. action of the two electrode vacuum tube.--now in a vacuum tube detector a wire filament, like that of an incandescent lamp, is connected with a battery and this forms the hot element from which the electrons are thrown off, and a metal plate with a terminal wire secured to it is connected to the positive or carbon tap of a dry battery; now connect the negative or zinc tap of this with one end of a telephone receiver and the other end of this with the terminals of the filament as shown at a in fig. . if now you heat the filament and hold the phone to your ear you can hear the current from the b battery flowing through the circuit. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--how a two electrode tube acts as a relay or a detector.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--only the positive part of oscillations goes through the tube.] since the electrons are negative charges of electricity they are not only thrown off by the hot wire but they are attracted by the positive charged metal plate and when enough electrons pass, or flow, from the hot wire to the plate they form a conducting path and so complete the circuit which includes the filament, the plate and the b or plate battery, when the current can then flow through it. as the number of electrons that are thrown off by the filament is not great and the voltage of the plate is not high the current that flows between the filament and the plate is always quite small. how the two electrode tube acts as a detector.--as the action of a two electrode tube as a detector [footnote: the three electrode vacuum tube has entirely taken the place of the two electrode type.] is simpler than that of the three electrode vacuum tube we shall describe it first. the two electrode vacuum tube was first made by mr. edison when he was working on the incandescent lamp but that it would serve as a detector of electric waves was discovered by prof. fleming, of oxford university, london. as a matter of fact, it is not really a detector of electric waves, but it acts as: ( ) a _rectifier_ of the oscillations that are set up in the receiving circuits, that is, it changes them into pulsating direct currents so that they will flow through and affect a telephone receiver, and ( ) it acts as a _relay_ and the feeble received oscillating current controls the larger direct current from the b battery in very much the same way that a telegraph relay does. this latter relay action will be explained when we come to its operation as an amplifier. we have just learned that when the stream of electrons flow from the hot wire to the cold positive plate in the tube they form a conducting path through which the battery current can flow. now when the electric oscillations surge through the closed oscillation circuit, which includes the secondary of the tuning coil, the variable condenser, the filament and the plate as shown at b in fig. the positive part of them passes through the tube easily while the negative part cannot get through, that is, the top, or positive, part of the wave-form remains intact while the lower, or negative, part is cut off as shown in the diagram at c. as the received oscillations are either broken up into wave trains of audio frequency by the telegraph transmitter or are modulated by a telephone transmitter they carry the larger impulses of the direct current from the b battery along with them and these flow through the headphones. this is the reason the vacuum tube amplifies as well as detects. how the three electrode tube acts as a detector.--the vacuum tube as a detector has been made very much more sensitive by the use of a third electrode shown in fig. . in this type of vacuum tube the third electrode, or _grid_, is placed between the filament and the plate and this controls the number of electrons flowing from the filament to the plate; in passing between these two electrodes they have to go through the holes formed by the grid wires. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. .--how the positive and negative voltages of oscillations act on the electrons.] [illustration: (c) fig. .--how the three electrode tube acts as a detector and amplifier.] [illustration: (d) fig. .--how the oscillations control the flow of the battery current through the tube.] if now the grid is charged to a higher _negative_ voltage than the filament the electrons will be stopped by the latter, see a, though some of them will go through to the plate because they travel at a high rate of speed. the higher the negative charge on the grid the smaller will be the number of electrons that will reach the plate and, of course, the smaller will be the amount of current that will flow through the tube and the headphones from the b battery. on the other hand if the grid is charged _positively_, see b, then more electrons will strike the plate than when the grid is not used or when it is negatively charged. but when the three electrode tube is used as a detector the oscillations set up in the circuits change the grid alternately from negative to positive as shown at c and hence the voltage of the b battery current that is allowed to flow through the detector from the plate to the filament rises and falls in unison with the voltage of the oscillating currents. the way the positive and negative voltages of the oscillations which are set up by the incoming waves, energize the grid; how the oscillator tube clips off the negative parts of them, and, finally, how these carry the battery current through the tube are shown graphically by the curves at d. how the vacuum tube acts as an amplifier.--if you connect up the filament and the plate of a three electrode tube with the batteries and do not connect in the grid, you will find that the electrons which are thrown off by the filament will not get farther than the grid regardless of how high the voltage is that you apply to the plate. this is due to the fact that a large number of electrons which are thrown off by the filament strike the grid and give it a negative charge, and consequently, they cannot get any farther. since the electrons do not reach the plate the current from the b battery cannot flow between it and the filament. now with a properly designed amplifier tube a very small negative voltage on the grid will keep a very large positive voltage on the plate from sending a current through the tube, and oppositely, a very small positive voltage on the grid will let a very large plate current flow through the tube; this being true it follows that any small variation of the voltage from positive to negative on the grid and the other way about will vary a large current flowing from the plate to the filament. in the morse telegraph the relay permits the small current that is received from the distant sending station to energize a pair of magnets, and these draw an armature toward them and close a second circuit when a large current from a local battery is available for working the sounder. the amplifier tube is a variable relay in that the feeble currents set up by the incoming waves constantly and proportionately vary a large current that flows through the headphones. this then is the principle on which the amplifying tube works. the operation of a simple vacuum tube receiving set.--the way a simple vacuum tube detector receiving set works is like this: when the filament is heated to brilliancy it gives off electrons as previously described. now when the electric waves impinge on the aerial wire they set up oscillations in it and these surge through the primary coil of the loose coupled tuning coil, a diagram of which is shown at b in fig. . the energy of these oscillations sets up oscillations of the same frequency in the secondary coil and these high frequency currents whose voltage is first positive and then negative, surge in the closed circuit which includes the secondary coil and the variable condenser. at the same time the alternating positive and negative voltage of the oscillating currents is impressed on the grid; at each change from + to - and back again it allows the electrons to strike the plate and then shuts them off; as the electrons form the conducting path between the filament and the plate the larger direct current from the b battery is permitted to flow through the detector tube and the headphones. operation of a regenerative vacuum tube receiving set.--by feeding back the pulsating direct current from the b battery through the tickler coil it sets up other and stronger oscillations in the secondary of the tuning coil when these act on the detector tube and increase its sensitiveness to a remarkable extent. the regenerative, or _feed back_, action of the receiving circuits used will be easily understood by referring back to b in fig. . when the waves set up oscillations in the primary of the tuning coil the energy of them produces like oscillations in the closed circuit which includes the secondary coil and the condenser; the alternating positive and negative voltages of these are impressed on the grid and these, as we have seen before, cause similar variations of the direct current from the b battery which acts on the plate and which flows between the latter and the filament. this varying direct current, however, is made to flow back through the third, or tickler coil of the tuning coil and sets up in the secondary coil and circuits other and larger oscillating currents and these augment the action of the oscillations produced by the incoming waves. these extra and larger currents which are the result of the feedback then act on the grid and cause still larger variations of the current in the plate voltage and hence of the current of the b battery that flows through the detector and the headphones. at the same time the tube keeps on responding to the feeble electric oscillations set up in the circuits by the incoming waves. this regenerative action of the battery current augments the original oscillations many times and hence produce sounds in the headphones that are many times greater than where the vacuum tube detector alone is used. operation of autodyne and heterodyne receiving sets.--on page [chapter vii] we discussed and at a in fig. is shown a picture of two tuning forks mounted on sounding boxes to illustrate the principle of electrical tuning. when a pair of these forks are made to vibrate exactly the same number of times per second there will be a condensation of the air between them and the sound waves that are sent out will be augmented. but if you adjust one of the forks so that it will vibrate times a second and the other fork so that it will vibrate times a second then there will be a phase difference between the two sets of waves and the latter will augment each other times every second and you will hear these rising and falling sounds as _beats_. now electric oscillations set up in two circuits that are coupled together act in exactly the same way as sound waves produced by two tuning forks that are close to each other. since this is true if you tune one of the closed circuits so that the oscillations in it will have a frequency of a , , and tune the other circuit so that the oscillations in it have a frequency of , , a second then the oscillations will augment each other , times every second. as these rising and falling currents act on the pulsating currents from the b battery which flow through the detector tube and the headphones you will hear them as beats. a graphic representation of the oscillating currents set up by the incoming waves, those produced by the heterodyne oscillator and the beats they form is shown in fig. . to produce these beats a receptor can use: ( ) a single vacuum tube for setting up oscillations of both frequencies when it is called an _autodyne_, or _self-heterodyne_ receptor, or ( ) a separate vacuum tube for setting up the oscillations for the second circuit when it is called a _heterodyne_ receptor. [illustration: fig. .--how the heterodyne receptor works.] the autodyne, or self-heterodyne receiving set.--where only one vacuum tube is used for producing both frequencies you need only a regenerative, or feed-back receptor; then you can tune the aerial wire system to the incoming waves and tune the closed circuit of the secondary coil so that it will be out of step with the former by , oscillations per second, more or less, the exact number does not matter in the least. from this you will see that any regenerative set can be used for autodyne, or self-heterodyne, reception. the separate heterodyne receiving set.--the better way, however, is to use a separate vacuum tube for setting up the heterodyne oscillations. the latter then act on the oscillations that are produced by the incoming waves and which energize the grid of the detector tube. note that the vacuum tube used for producing the heterodyne oscillations is a _generator_ of electric oscillations; the latter are impressed on the detector circuits through the variable coupling, the secondary of which is in series with the aerial wire as shown in fig. . the way in which the tube acts as a generator of oscillations will be told in chapter xviii. [illustration: fig. .--separate heterodyne oscillator.] chapter xvi continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with direct current in the first part of this book we learned about spark-gap telegraph sets and how the oscillations they set up are _damped_ and the waves they send out are _periodic_. in this and the next chapter we shall find out how vacuum tube telegraph transmitters are made and how they set up oscillations that are _sustained_ and radiate waves that are _continuous_. sending wireless telegraph messages by continuous waves has many features to recommend it as against sending them by periodic waves and among the most important of these are that the transmitter can be: ( ) more sharply tuned, ( ) it will send signals farther with the same amount of power, and ( ) it is noiseless in operation. the disadvantageous features are that: ( ) a battery current is not satisfactory, ( ) its circuits are somewhat more complicated, and ( ) the oscillator tubes burn out occasionally. there is, however, a growing tendency among amateurs to use continuous wave transmitters and they are certainly more up-to-date and interesting than spark gap sets. now there are two practical ways by which continuous waves can be set up for sending either telegraphic signals or telephonic speech and music and these are with: (a) an _oscillation arc lamp_, and (b) a _vacuum tube oscillator_. the oscillation arc was the earliest known way of setting up sustained oscillations, and it is now largely used for commercial high power, long distance work. but since the vacuum tube has been developed to a high degree of efficiency and is the scheme that is now in vogue for amateur stations we shall confine our efforts here to explaining the apparatus necessary and how to wire the various parts together to produce several sizes of vacuum tube telegraph transmitters. sources of current for telegraph transmitting sets.--differing from a spark-gap transmitter you cannot get any appreciable results with a low voltage battery current to start with. for a purely experimental vacuum tube telegraph transmitter you can use enough b batteries to operate it but the current strength of these drops so fact when they are in use, that they are not at all satisfactory for the work. you can, however, use volt direct current from a lighting circuit as your initial source of power to energize the plate of the vacuum tube oscillator of your experimental transmitter. where you have a volt _direct current_ lighting service in your home and you want a higher voltage for your plate, you will then have to use a motor-generator set and this costs money. if you have volt _alternating current_ lighting service at hand your troubles are over so far as cost is concerned for you can step it up to any voltage you want with a power transformer. in this chapter will be shown how to use a direct current for your source of initial power and in the next chapter how to use an alternating current for the initial power. an experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter.--you will remember that in chapter xv we learned how the heterodyne receiver works and that in the separate heterodyne receiving set the second vacuum tube is used solely to set up oscillations. now while this extra tube is used as a generator of oscillations these are, of course, very weak and hence a detector tube cannot be used to generate oscillations that are useful for other purposes than heterodyne receptors and measurements. there is a vacuum tube amplifier [footnote: this is the _radiation_ uv- , made by the radio corporation of america, woolworth bldg., new york city.] made that will stand a plate potential of volts, and this can be used as a generator of oscillations by energizing it with a volt direct current from your lighting service. or in a pinch you can use five standard b batteries to develop the plate voltage, but these will soon run down. but whatever you do, never use a current from a lighting circuit on a tube of any kind that has a rated plate potential of less than volts. the apparatus you need.--for this experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter get the following pieces of apparatus: ( ) one _single coil tuner with three clips_; ( ) one _. mfd. fixed condenser_; ( ) three _. mfd. condensers_; ( ) one _adjustable grid leak_; ( ) one _hot-wire ammeter_; ( ) one _buzzer_; ( ) one _dry cell_; ( ) one _telegraph key_; ( ) one _ volt plate vacuum tube amplifier_; ( ) one _ volt storage battery_; ( ) one _rheostat_; ( ) one _oscillation choke coil_; ( ) one _panel cut-out_ with a _single-throw, double-pole switch_, and a pair of _fuse sockets_ on it. the tuning coil.--you can either make this tuning coil or buy one. to make it get two disks of wood / -inch thick and inches in diameter and four strips of hard wood, or better, hard rubber or composition strips, such as _bakelite_, / -inch thick, inch wide and - / inches long, and screw them to the disks as shown at a in fig. . now wrap on this form about turns of no. or , brown and sharpe gauge, bare copper wire with a space of / -inch between each turn. get three of the smallest size terminal clips, see b, and clip them on to the different turns, when your tuning coil is ready for use. you can buy a coil of this kind for $ . or $ . . the condensers.--for the aerial series condenser get one that has a capacitance of . mfd. and that will stand a potential of , volts. [footnote: the u c- _faradon_ condenser made by the radio corporation of america will serve the purpose.] it is shown at c. the other three condensers, see d, are also of the fixed type and may have a capacitance of . mfd.; [footnote: list no. ; fixed receiving condenser, sold by the manhattan electrical supply co.] the blocking condenser should preferably have a capacitance of / a mfd. in these condensers the leaves of the sheet metal are embedded in composition. the aerial condenser will cost you $ . and the others cents each. [illustration: (a) fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter.] [illustration: fig. .--apparatus for experimental c. w. telegraph transmitter.] the aerial ammeter.--this instrument is also called a _hot-wire_ ammeter because the oscillating currents flowing through a piece of wire heat it according to their current strength and as the wire contracts and expands it moves a needle over a scale. the ammeter is connected in the aerial wire system, either in the aerial side or the ground side--the latter place is usually the most convenient. when you tune the transmitter so that the ammeter shows the largest amount of current surging in the aerial wire system you can consider that the oscillation circuits are in tune. a hot-wire ammeter reading to . amperes will serve your needs, it costs $ . and is shown at e in fig. . [illustration: united states naval high power station, arlington va. general view of power room. at the left can be seen the control switchboards, and overhead, the great k.w. arc transmitter with accessories.] the buzzer and dry cell.--while a heterodyne, or beat, receptor can receive continuous wave telegraph signals an ordinary crystal or vacuum tube detector receiving set cannot receive them unless they are broken up into trains either at the sending station or at the receiving station, and it is considered the better practice to do this at the former rather than at the latter station. for this small transmitter you can use an ordinary buzzer as shown at f. a dry cell or two must be used to energize the buzzer. you can get one for about cents. the telegraph key.--any kind of a telegraph key will serve to break up the trains of sustained oscillations into dots and dashes. the key shown at g is mounted on a composition base and is the cheapest key made, costing $ . . the vacuum tube oscillator.--as explained before you can use any amplifying tube that is made for a plate potential of volts. the current required for heating the filament is about ampere at volts. a porcelain socket should be used for this tube as it is the best insulating material for the purpose. an amplifier tube of this type is shown at h and costs $ . . the storage battery.--a storage battery is used to heat the filament of the tube, just as it is with a detector tube, and it can be of any make or capacity as long as it will develop volts. the cheapest volt storage battery on the market has a to ampere-hour capacity and sells for $ . . the battery rheostat.--as with the receptors a rheostat is needed to regulate the current that heats the filament. a rheostat of this kind is shown at i and is listed at $ . . the oscillation choke coil.--this coil is connected in between the oscillation circuits and the source of current which feeds the oscillator tube to keep the oscillations set up by the latter from surging back into the service wires where they would break down the insulation. you can make an oscillation choke coil by winding say turns of no. brown and sharpe gauge double cotton covered magnet wire on a cardboard cylinder inches in diameter and - / inches long. transmitter connectors.--for connecting up the different pieces of apparatus of the transmitter it is a good scheme to use _copper braid_; this is made of braided copper wire in three sizes and sells for , and cents a foot respectively. a piece of it is pictured at j. the panel cut-out.--this is used to connect the cord of the -volt lamp socket with the transmitter. it consists of a pair of _plug cutouts and a single-throw, double-pole_ switch mounted on a porcelain base as shown at k. in some localities it is necessary to place these in an iron box to conform to the requirements of the fire underwriters. connecting up the transmitting apparatus.--the way the various pieces of apparatus are connected together is shown in the wiring diagram. fig. . begin by connecting one post of the ammeter with the wire that leads to the aerial and the other post of it to one end of the tuning coil; connect clip _ _ to one terminal of the . mfd. , volt aerial condenser and the other post of this with the ground. [illustration: fig. --experimental c.w. telegraph transmitter] now connect the end of the tuning coil that leads to the ammeter with one end of the . mfd. grid condenser and the other end of this with the grid of the vacuum tube. connect the telegraph key, the buzzer and the dry cell in series and then shunt them around the grid condenser. next connect the plate of the tube with one end of the . mfd. blocking condenser and the other end of this with the clip _ _ on the tuning coil. connect one end of the filament with the + or positive electrode of the storage battery, the - or negative electrode of this with one post of the rheostat and the other post of the latter with the other end of the filament; then connect clip _ _ with the + or positive side of the storage battery. this done connect one end of the choke coil to the conductor that leads to the plate and connect the other end of the choke coil to one of the taps of the switch on the panel cut-out. connect the + or positive electrode of the storage battery to the other switch tap and between the switch and the choke coil connect the protective condenser across the volt feed wires. finally connect the lamp cord from the socket to the plug fuse taps when your experimental continuous wave telegraph transmitter is ready to use. a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--here is a continuous wave telegraph transmitter that will cover distances up to miles that you can rely on. it is built on exactly the same lines as the experimental transmitter just described, but instead of using a volt plate amplifier as a makeshift generator of oscillations it employs a vacuum tube made especially for setting up oscillations and instead of having a low plate voltage it is energized with volts. the apparatus you need.--for this transmitter you require: ( ) one _oscillation transformer_; ( ) one _hot-wire ammeter_; ( ) one _aerial series condenser_; ( ) one _grid leak resistance_; ( ) one _chopper_; ( ) one _key circuit choke coil_; ( ) one _ watt vacuum tube oscillator_; ( ) one _ volt storage battery_; ( ) one _battery rheostat_; ( ) one _battery voltmeter_; ( ) one _blocking condenser_; ( ) one _power circuit choke coil_, and ( ) one _motor-generator_. the oscillation transformer.--the tuning coil, or _oscillation transformer_ as this one is called, is a conductively coupled tuner--that is, the primary and secondary coils form one continuous coil instead of two separate coils. this tuner is made up of turns of thin copper strip, / inch wide and with its edges rounded, and this is secured to a wood base as shown at a in fig. . it is fitted with one fixed tap and three clips to each of which a length of copper braid is attached. it has a diameter of - / inches, a height of - / inches and a length of - / inches, and it costs $ . . [illustration: fig. .--apparatus of mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.] the aerial condenser.--this condenser is made up of three fixed condensers of different capacitances, namely . , . and . mfd., and these are made to stand a potential of volts. the condenser is therefore adjustable and, as you will see from the picture b, it has one terminal wire at one end and three terminal wires at the other end so that one, two or three condensers can be used in series with the aerial. a condenser of this kind costs $ . . the aerial ammeter.--this is the same kind of a hot-wire ammeter already described in connection with the experimental set, but it reads to amperes. the grid and blocking condensers.--each of these is a fixed condenser of . mfd. capacitance and is rated to stand , volts. it is made like the aerial condenser but has only two terminals. it costs $ . . the key circuit apparatus.--this consists of: ( ) the _grid leak_; ( ) the _chopper_; ( ) the _choke coil_, and ( ) the _key_. the grid leak is connected in the lead from the grid to the aerial to keep the voltage on the grid at the right potential. it has a resistance of ohms with a mid-tap at ohms as shown at c. it costs $ . . the chopper is simply a rotary interrupter driven by a small motor. it comprises a wheel of insulating material in which or more metal segments are set in an insulating disk as shown at d. a metal contact called a brush is fixed on either side of the wheel. it costs about $ . and the motor to drive it is extra. the choke coil is wound up of about turns of no. brown and sharpe gauge cotton covered magnet wire on a spool which has a diameter of inches and a length of - / inches. the watt oscillator vacuum tube.--this tube is made like the amplifier tube described for use with the preceding experimental transmitter, but it is larger, has a more perfect vacuum, and will stand a plate potential of volts while the plate current is . ampere. the filament takes a current of a little more than amperes at . volts. a standard -tap base is used with it. the tube costs $ . and the porcelain base is $ . extra. it is shown at e. the storage battery and rheostat.--this must be a -cell battery so that it will develop volts. a storage battery of any capacity can be used but the lowest priced one costs about $ . . the rheostat for regulating the battery current is the same as that used in the preceding experimental transmitter. the filament voltmeter.--to get the best results it is necessary that the voltage of the current which heats the filament be kept at the same value all of the time. for this transmitter a direct current voltmeter reading from to volts is used. it is shown at f and costs $ . . the oscillation choke coil.--this is made exactly like the one described in connection with the experimental transmitter. the motor-generator set.--where you have only a or a volt direct current available as a source of power you need a _motor-generator_ to change it to volts, and this is an expensive piece of apparatus. it consists of a single armature core with a motor winding and a generator winding on it and each of these has its own commutator. where the low voltage current flows into one of the windings it drives its as a motor and this in turn generates the higher voltage current in the other winding. get a watt volt motor-generator; it is shown at f and costs about $ . . the panel cut-out.--this switch and fuse block is the same as that used in the experimental set. the protective condenser.--this is a fixed condenser having a capacitance of mfd. and will stand volts. it costs $ . . connecting up the transmitting apparatus.--from all that has gone before you have seen that each piece of apparatus is fitted with terminal, wires, taps or binding posts. to connect up the parts of this transmitter it is only necessary to make the connections as shown in the wiring diagram fig. . [illustration: fig. .-- to watt c. w. telegraph transmitter. (with single oscillation tube.)] a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--to make a continuous wave telegraph transmitter that will cover distances up to miles all you have to do is to use two watt vacuum tubes in _parallel_, all of the rest of the apparatus being exactly the same. connecting the oscillator tubes up in parallel means that the two filaments are connected across the leads of the storage battery, the two grids on the same lead that goes to the aerial and the two plates on the same lead that goes to the positive pole of the generator. where two or more oscillator tubes are used only one storage battery is needed, but each filament must have its own rheostat. the wiring diagram fig. shows how the two tubes are connected up in parallel. [illustration: fig. .-- mile c.w. telegraph transmitter (with two tubes in parallel.)] a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--for sending to distances of over miles and up to miles you can use either: ( ) three or four watt oscillator tubes in parallel as described above, or ( ) one watt oscillator tube. much of the apparatus for a watt tube set is exactly the same as that used for the watt sets. some of the parts, however, must be proportionately larger though the design all the way through remains the same. the apparatus and connections.--the aerial series condenser, the blocking condenser, the grid condenser, the telegraph key, the chopper, the choke coil in the key circuit, the filament voltmeter and the protective condenser in the power circuit are identical with those described for the watt transmitting set. the watt vacuum tube oscillator.--this is the size of tube generally used by amateurs for long distance continuous wave telegraphy. a single tube will develop to amperes in your aerial. the filament takes a volt current and a plate potential of , volts is needed. one of these tubes is shown in fig. and the cost is $ . . a tube socket to fit it costs $ . extra. [illustration: fig. .-- watt oscillator vacuum tube.] the aerial ammeter.--this should read to amperes and the cost is $ . . the grid leak resistance.--it has the same resistance, namely , ohms as the one used with the watt tube transmitter, but it is a little larger. it is listed at $ . . the oscillation choke coil.--the choke coil in the power circuit is made of about turns of no. b. & s. cotton covered magnet wire wound on a spool - / inches in diameter and - / inches long. the filament rheostat.--this is made to take care of a volt current and it costs $ . . the filament storage battery.--this must develop volts and one having an output of ampere-hours costs about $ . . the protective condenser.--this condenser has a capacitance of mfd. and costs $ . . the motor-generator.--where you use one watt oscillator tube you will need a motor-generator that develops a plate potential of volts and has an output of watts. this machine will stand you about $ . . the different pieces of apparatus for this set are connected up exactly the same as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . a mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.--all of the parts of this transmitting set are the same as for the mile transmitter just described except the motor generator and while this develops the same plate potential, i.e., , volts, it must have an output of watts; it will cost you in the neighborhood of $ . . for this long distance transmitter you use two watt oscillator tubes in parallel and all of the parts are connected together exactly the same as for the mile transmitter shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . chapter xvii continuous wave telegraph transmitting sets with alternating current within the last few years alternating current has largely taken the place of direct current for light, heat and power purposes in and around towns and cities and if you have alternating current service in your home you can install a long distance continuous wave telegraph transmitter with very little trouble and at a comparatively small expense. a mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set.--the principal pieces of apparatus for this transmitter are the same as those used for the _ mile continuous wave telegraph transmitting set_ described and pictured in the preceding chapter which used direct current, except that an _alternating current power transformer_ is employed instead of the more costly _motor-generator_. the apparatus required.--the various pieces of apparatus you will need for this transmitting set are: ( ) one _hot-wire ammeter_ for the aerial as shown at e in fig. , but which reads to amperes instead of to . amperes; ( ) one _tuning coil_ as shown at a in fig. ; ( ) one aerial condenser as shown at b in fig. ; ( ) one _grid leak_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _telegraph key_ as shown at g in fig. ; ( ) one _grid condenser_, made like the aerial condenser but having only two terminals; ( ) one _ watt oscillator tube_ as shown at e in fig. ; ( ) one _. mfd. , volt by-pass condenser_, made like the aerial and grid condensers; ( ) one pair of _choke coils_ for the high voltage secondary circuit; ( ) one _milli-ammeter_; ( ) one a. c. _power transformer_; ( ) one _rheostat_ as shown at i in fig. , and ( ) one _panel cut-out_ as shown at k in fig. . the choke coils.--each of these is made by winding about turns of no. , brown and sharpe gauge, cotton covered magnet wire on a spool inches in diameter and - / inches long, when it will have an inductance of about . _millihenry_ [footnote: a millihenry is / th part of a henry.] at , cycles. the milli-ammeter.--this is an alternating current ammeter and reads from to _milliamperes_; [footnote: a _milliampere_ is the / th part of an ampere.] and is used for measuring the secondary current that energizes the plate of the oscillator tube. it looks like the aerial ammeter and costs about $ . . the a. c. power transformer.--differing from the motor generator set the power transformer has no moving parts. for this transmitting set you need a transformer that has an input of volts. it is made to work on a to cycle current at . to volts, which is the range of voltage of the ordinary alternating lighting current. this adjustment for voltage is made by means of taps brought out from the primary coil to a rotary switch. the high voltage secondary coil which energizes the plate has an output of watts and develops a potential of from to , volts. the low voltage secondary coil which heats the filament has an output of watts and develops . volts. this transformer, which is shown in fig. , is large enough to take care of from one to four watt oscillator tubes. it weighs about pounds and sells for $ . . [illustration: fig. .--alternation current power transformer. (for c. w. telegraphy and wireless telephony.)] [illustration: the transformer and tuner of the world's largest radio station. owned by the radio corporation of america at rocky point near port jefferson l.i.] connecting up the apparatus.--the wiring diagram fig. shows clearly how all of the connections are made. it will be observed that a storage battery is not needed as the secondary coil of the transformer supplies the current to heat the filament of the oscillator. the filament voltmeter is connected across the filament secondary coil terminals, while the plate milli-ammeter is connected to the mid-taps of the plate secondary coil and the filament secondary coil. [illustration: fig. . wiring diagram for to mile c.w. telegraph transmitting set. (with alternating current)] a to mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set.--distances of from to miles can be successfully covered with a telegraph transmitter using two, three or four watt oscillator tubes in parallel. the apparatus needed is identical with that used for the mile transmitter just described. the tubes are connected in parallel as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for to mile c. w. telegraph transmitter.] a to , mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set.--with the apparatus described for the above set and a single watt oscillator tube a distance of upwards of miles can be covered, while with two watt oscillator tubes in parallel you can cover a distance of , miles without difficulty, and nearly , miles have been covered with this set. the apparatus required.--all of the apparatus for this c. w. telegraph transmitting set is the same as that described for the and mile sets but you will need: ( ) one or two _ watt oscillator tubes with sockets;_ ( ) one _key condenser_ that has a capacitance of mfd., and a rated potential of , volts; ( ) one _ to milli-ammeter_; ( ) one _aerial ammeter_ reading to amperes, and ( ) an _a. c. power transformer_ for one or two watt tubes. [illustration: broadcasting government reports by wireless from washington. this shows mr. gale at work with his set in the post office department.] the alternating current power transformer.--this power transformer is made exactly like the one described in connection with the preceding mile transmitter and pictured in fig. , but it is considerably larger. like the smaller one, however, it is made to work with a to cycle current at . to volts and, hence, can be used with any a. c. lighting current. it has an input of volts and the high voltage secondary coil which energizes the plate has an output of watts and develops , to , volts. the low voltage secondary coil which heats the filament develops . volts. this transformer will supply current for one or two -watt oscillator tubes and it costs about $ . . connecting up the apparatus.--where a single oscillator tube is used the parts are connected as shown in fig. , and where two tubes are connected in parallel the various pieces of apparatus are wired together as shown in fig. . the only difference between the watt tube transmitter and the watt tube transmitter is in the size of the apparatus with one exception; where one or two watt tubes are used a second condenser of large capacitance ( mfd.) is placed in the grid circuit and the telegraph key is shunted around it as shown in the diagram fig. . chapter xviii wireless telephone transmitting sets with direct and alternating currents in time past the most difficult of all electrical apparatus for the amateur to make, install and work was the wireless telephone. this was because it required a _direct current_ of not less than volts to set up the sustained oscillations and all ordinary direct current for lighting purposes is usually generated at a potential of volts. now as you know it is easy to _step-up_ a volt alternating current to any voltage you wish with a power transformer but until within comparatively recent years an alternating current could not be used for the production of sustained oscillations for the very good reason that the state of the art had not advanced that far. in the new order of things these difficulties have all but vanished and while a wireless telephone transmitter still requires a high voltage direct current to operate it this is easily obtained from volt source of alternating current by means of _vacuum tube rectifiers_. the pulsating direct currents are then passed through a filtering reactance coil, called a _reactor_, and one or more condensers, and these smooth them out until they approximate a continuous direct current. the latter is then made to flow through a vacuum tube oscillator when it is converted into high frequency oscillations and these are _varied_, or _modulated_, as it is called, by a _microphone transmitter_ such as is used for ordinary wire telephony. the energy of these sustained modulated oscillations is then radiated into space from the aerial in the form of electric waves. the distance that can be covered with a wireless telephone transmitter is about one-fourth as great as that of a wireless telegraph transmitter having the same input of initial current, but it is long enough to satisfy the most enthusiastic amateur. for instance with a wireless telephone transmitter where an amplifier tube is used to set up the oscillations and which is made for a plate potential of volts, distances up to or miles can be covered. with a single watt oscillator tube energized by a direct current of volts from either a motor-generator or from a power transformer (after it has been rectified and smoothed out) speech and music can be transmitted to upwards of miles. where two watt tubes connected in parallel are used wireless telephone messages can be transmitted to distances of or miles. further, a single watt oscillator tube will send to distances of to miles while two of these tubes in parallel will send from to miles. finally, where four or five oscillator tubes are connected in parallel proportionately greater distances can be covered. a short distance wireless telephone transmitting set-with volt direct lighting current.--for this very simple, short distance wireless telephone transmitting set you need the same apparatus as that described and pictured in the beginning of chapter xvi for a _short distance c. w. telegraph transmitter_, except that you use a _microphone transmitter_ instead of a _telegraph key_. if you have a volt direct lighting current in your home you can put up this short distance set for very little money and it will be well worth your while to do so. the apparatus you need.--for this set you require: ( ) one _tuning coil_ as shown at a and b in fig. ; ( ) one _aerial ammeter_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _aerial condenser_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _grid, blocking and protective condenser_ as shown at d in fig. ; ( ) one _grid leak_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _vacuum tube amplifier_ which is used as an _oscillator_; ( ) one _ volt storage battery_; ( ) one _rheostat_ as shown at i in fig. ; ( ) one _oscillation choke coil_; ( ) one _panel cut-out_ as shown at k in fig. and an ordinary _microphone transmitter_. the microphone transmitter.--the best kind of a microphone to use with this and other telephone transmitting sets is a _western electric no. -w_. [footnote: made by the western electric company, chicago, ill.] this is known as a solid back transmitter and is the standard commercial type used on all long distance bell telephone lines. it articulates sharply and distinctly and there are no current variations to distort the wave form of the voice and it will not buzz or sizzle. it is shown in fig. and costs $ . . any other good microphone transmitter can be used if desired. [illustration: fig. .--standard microphone transmitter.] connecting up the apparatus.--begin by connecting the leading-in wire with one of the terminals of the microphone transmitter, as shown in the wiring diagram fig. , and the other terminal of this to one end of the tuning coil. now connect _clip _ of the tuning coil to one of the posts of the hot-wire ammeter, the other post of this to one end of aerial condenser and, finally, the other end of the latter with the water pipe or other ground. the microphone can be connected in the ground wire and the ammeter in the aerial wire and the results will be practically the same. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of short distance wireless telephone set. (microphone in aerial wire.)] next connect one end of the grid condenser to the post of the tuning coil that makes connection with the microphone and the other end to the grid of the tube, and then shunt the grid leak around the condenser. connect the + or _positive_ electrode of the storage battery with one terminal of the filament of the vacuum tube, the other terminal of the filament with one post of the rheostat and the other post of this with the - or _negative_ electrode of the battery. this done, connect _clip _ of the tuning coil to the + or _positive_ electrode of the battery and bring a lead from it to one of the switch taps of the panel cut-out. now connect _clip _ of the tuning coil with one end of the blocking condenser, the other end of this with one terminal of the choke coil and the other terminal of the latter with the other switch tap of the cut-out. connect the protective condenser across the direct current feed wires between the panel cut-out and the choke coil. finally connect the ends of a lamp cord to the fuse socket taps of the cut-out, and connect the other ends to a lamp plug and screw it into the lamp socket of the feed wires. screw in a pair of ampere _fuse plugs_, close the switch and you are ready to tune the transmitter and talk to your friends. a to mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator.--where you have to start with or volt direct current and you want to transmit to a distance of miles or more you will have to install a _motor-generator_. to make this transmitter you will need exactly the same apparatus as that described and pictured for the _ mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set_ in chapter xvi, except that you must substitute a _microphone transmitter_ and a _telephone induction coil_, or a _microphone transformer_, or still better, a _magnetic modulator_, for the telegraph key and chopper. the apparatus you need.--to reiterate; the pieces of apparatus you need are: ( ) one _aerial ammeter_ as shown at e in fig. ; ( ) one _tuning coil_ as shown at a in fig. ; ( ) one _aerial condenser_ as shown at b in fig. ; ( ) one _grid leak_ as shown at c in fig. ; ( ) one _grid, blocking_ and _protective condenser_; ( ) one _ watt oscillator tube_ as shown at e in fig. ; ( ) one _rheostat_ as shown at i in fig. ; ( ) one _ volt ( cell) storage battery_; ( ) one _choke coil_; ( ) one _panel cut-out_ as shown at k in fig. , and ( ) a _motor-generator_ having an input of or volts and an output of volts. in addition to the above apparatus you will need: ( ) a _microphone transmitter_ as shown in fig. ; ( ) a battery of four dry cells or a volt storage battery, and either ( ) a _telephone induction coil_ as shown in fig. ; ( ) a _microphone transformer_ as shown in fig. ; or a _magnetic modulator_ as shown in fig. . all of these parts have been described, as said above, in chapter xvi, except the microphone modulators. [illustration: fig. .--telephone induction coil. (used with microphone transmitter.)] [illustration: fig. .--microphone transformer. (used with microphone transmitter.)] [illustration: fig. .--magnetic modulator. (used with microphone transmitter.)] the telephone induction coil.--this is a little induction coil that transforms the -volt battery current after it has flowed through and been modulated by the microphone transmitter into alternating currents that have a potential of , volts of more. it consists of a primary coil of _no. b. and s._ gauge cotton covered magnet wire wound on a core of soft iron wires while around the primary coil is wound a secondary coil of _no. _ magnet wire. get a _standard telephone induction coil_ that has a resistance of or ohms and this will cost you a couple of dollars. the microphone transformer.--this device is built on exactly the same principle as the telephone induction coil just described but it is more effective because it is designed especially for modulating the oscillations set up by vacuum tube transmitters. as with the telephone induction coil, the microphone transmitter is connected in series with the primary coil and a volt dry or storage battery. in the better makes of microphone transformer, there is a third winding, called a _side tone_ coil, to which a headphone can be connected so that the operator who is speaking into the microphone can listen-in and so learn if his transmitter is working up to standard. the magnetic modulator.--this is a small closed iron core transformer of peculiar design and having a primary and a secondary coil wound on it. this device is used to control the variations of the oscillating currents that are set up by the oscillator tube. it is made in three sizes and for the transmitter here described you want the smallest size, which has an output of / to - / amperes. it costs about $ . . how the apparatus is connected up.--the different pieces of apparatus are connected together in exactly the same way as the _ mile c. w. telegraph set_ in chapter xvi except that the microphone transmitter and microphone modulator (whichever kind you use) is substituted for the telegraph key and chopper. now there are three different ways that the microphone and its modulator can be connected in circuit. two of the best ways are shown at a and b in fig. . in the first way the secondary terminals of the modulator are shunted around the grid leak in the grid circuit as at a, and in the second the secondary terminals are connected in the aerial as at b. where an induction coil or a microphone transformer is used they are shunted around a condenser, but this is not necessary with the magnetic modulator. where a second tube is used as in fig. then the microphone and its modulator are connected with the grid circuit and _clip _ of the tuning coil. [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of to mile wireless telephone. (microphone modulator shunted around grid-leak condenser.)] [illustration: (b) fig. .--microphone modulator connected in aerial wire.] [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of to mile wireless telephone transmitting set.] a to mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator.--as the initial source of current available is taken to be a or volt direct current a motor-generator having an output of volts must be used as before. the only difference between this transmitter and the preceding one is that: ( ) two watt tubes are used, the first serving as an _oscillator_ and the second as a _modulator_; ( ) an _oscillation choke coil_ is used in the plate circuit; ( ) a _reactance coil_ or _reactor_, is used in the plate circuit; and ( ) a _reactor_ is used in the grid circuit. the oscillation choke coil.--you can make this choke coil by winding about turns of _no. b. and s. gauge_ cotton covered magnet wire on a spool inches in diameter and inches long. give it a good coat of shellac varnish and let it dry thoroughly. the plate and grid circuit reactance coils.--where a single tube is used as an oscillator and a second tube is employed as a modulator, a _reactor_, which is a coil of wire wound on an iron core, is used in the plate circuit to keep the high voltage direct current of the motor-generator the same at all times. likewise the grid circuit reactor is used to keep the voltage of the grid at a constant value. these reactors are made alike and a picture of one of them is shown in fig. and each one will cost you $ . . [illustration: fig. .--plate and grid circuit reactor.] connecting up the apparatus.--all of the different pieces of apparatus are connected up as shown in fig. . one of the ends of the secondary of the induction coil, or the microphone transformer, or the magnetic modulator is connected to the grid circuit and the other end to _clip _ of the tuning coil. a to mile wireless telephone transmitter--with direct current motor generator.--by using the same connections shown in the wiring diagrams in fig. and a single watt oscillator tube your transmitter will then have a range of miles or so, while if you connect up the apparatus as shown in fig. and use two watt tubes you can work up to miles. much of the apparatus for a watt oscillator set where either one or two tubes are used is of the same size and design as that just described for the watt oscillator sets, but, as in the c. w. telegraph sets, some of the parts must be proportionately larger. the required parts are ( ) the _ watt tube_; ( ) the _grid leak resistance_; ( ) the _filament rheostat_; ( ) the _filament storage battery_; and ( ) the _magnetic modulator_. all of these parts, except the latter, are described in detail under the heading of a _ mile c. w. telegraph transmitting set_ in chapter xvi, and are also pictured in that chapter. it is not advisable to use an induction coil for the modulator for this set, but use, instead, either a telephone transformer, or better, a magnetic modulator of the second size which has an output of from - / to - / amperes. the magnetic modulator is described and pictured in this chapter. a to mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with volt alternating current.--if you have a volt [footnote: alternating current for lighting purposes ranges from . volts to volts, so we take the median and call it volts.] alternating current available you can use it for the initial source of energy for your wireless telephone transmitter. the chief difference between a wireless telephone transmitting set that uses an alternating current and one that uses a direct current is that: ( ) a _power transformer_ is used for stepping up the voltage instead of a motor-generator, and ( ) a _vacuum tube rectifier_ must be used to convert the alternating current into direct current. the apparatus you need.--for this telephone transmitting set you need: ( ) one _aerial ammeter_; ( ) one _tuning coil_; ( ) one _telephone modulator_; ( ) one _aerial series condenser_; ( ) one _ cell dry battery_ or a volt storage battery; ( ) one _microphone transmitter_; ( ) one _battery switch_; ( ) one _grid condenser_; ( ) one _grid leak_; ( ) two _ watt oscillator tubes with sockets_; ( ) one _blocking condenser_; ( ) one _oscillation choke coil_; ( ) two _filter condensers_; ( ) one _filter reactance coil_; ( ) an _alternating current power transformer_, and ( ) two _ watt rectifier vacuum tubes_. all of the above pieces of apparatus are the same as those described for the _ mile c. w. telegraph transmitter_ in chapter xvii, except: (a) the _microphone modulator_; (b) the _microphone transmitter_ and (c) the _dry_ or _storage battery_, all of which are described in this chapter; and the new parts which are: (d) the _rectifier vacuum tubes_; (e) the _filter condensers_; and (f) the _filter reactance coil_; further and finally, the power transformer has a _third_ secondary coil on it and it is this that feeds the alternating current to the rectifier tubes, which in turn converts it into a pulsating direct current. the vacuum tube rectifier.--this rectifier has two electrodes, that is, it has a filament and a plate like the original vacuum tube detector, the smallest size rectifier tube requires a plate potential of volts which is developed by one of the secondary coils of the power transformer. the filament terminal takes a current of . volts and this is supplied by another secondary coil of the transformer. this rectifier tube delivers a direct current of watts at volts. it looks exactly like the watt oscillator tube which is pictured at e in fig. . the price is $ . . the filter condensers.--these condensers are used in connection with the reactance coil to smooth out the pulsating direct current after it has passed through the rectifier tube. they have a capacitance of mfd. and will stand volts. these condensers cost about $ . each. the filter reactance coil.--this reactor which is shown in fig. , has about the same appearance as the power transformer but it is somewhat smaller. it consists of a coil of wire wound on a soft iron core and has a large inductance, hence the capacitance of the filter condensers are proportionately smaller than where a small inductance is used which has been the general practice. the size you require for this set has an output of milliamperes and it will supply current for one to four watt oscillator tubes. this size of reactor costs $ . . [illustration: fig. .--filter reactor for smoothing out rectified currents.] connecting up the apparatus.--the wiring diagram in fig. shows how the various pieces of apparatus for this telephone transmitter are connected up. you will observe: ( ) that the terminals of the power transformer secondary coil which develops volts are connected to the filaments of the oscillator tubes; ( ) that the terminals of the other secondary coil which develops volts are connected with the filaments of the rectifier tubes; ( ) that the terminals of the third secondary coil which develops volts are connected with the plates of the rectifier tubes; ( ) that the pair of filter condensers are connected in parallel and these are connected to the mid-taps of the two filament secondary coils; ( ) that the reactance coil and the third filter condenser are connected together in series and these are shunted across the filter condensers, which are in parallel; and, finally, ( ) a lead connects the mid-tap of the -volt secondary coil of the power transformer with the connection between the reactor and the third filter condenser. [illustration: fig .-- to mile wireless telephone transmitter.] a to mile wireless telephone transmitting set--with volt alternating current.--this telephone transmitter is built up of exactly the same pieces of apparatus and connected up in precisely the same way as the one just described and shown in fig. . apparatus required.--the only differences between this and the preceding transmitter are: ( ) the _magnetic modulator_, if you use one, should have an output of - / to amperes; ( ) you will need two _ watt oscillator tubes with sockets_; ( ) two _ watt rectifier tubes with sockets_; ( ) an _aerial ammeter_ that reads to _ amperes_; ( ) three _ mfd. filter condensers_ in parallel; ( ) _two filter condensers of mfd. capacitance_ that will stand _ volts_; and ( ) a _ milliampere filter reactor_. the apparatus is wired up as shown in fig. . chapter xix the operation of vacuum tube transmitters the three foregoing chapters explained in detail the design and construction of ( ) two kinds of c. w. telegraph transmitters, and ( ) two kinds of wireless telephone transmitters, the difference between them being whether they used (a) a direct current, or (b) an alternating current as the initial source of energy. of course there are other differences between those of like types as, for instance, the apparatus and connections used (_a_) in the key circuits, and (_b_) in the microphone circuits. but in all of the transmitters described of whatever type or kind the same fundamental device is used for setting up sustained oscillations and this is the _vacuum tube_. the operation of the vacuum tube oscillator.--the operation of the vacuum tube in producing sustained oscillations depends on ( ) the action of the tube as a valve in setting up the oscillations in the first place and ( ) the action of the grid in amplifying the oscillations thus set up, both of which we explained in chapter xiv. in that chapter it was also pointed out that a very small change in the grid potential causes a corresponding and larger change in the amount of current flowing from the plate to the filament; and that if a vacuum tube is used for the production of oscillations the initial source of current must have a high voltage, in fact the higher the plate voltage the more powerful will be the oscillations. to understand how oscillations are set up by a vacuum tube when a direct current is applied to it, take a look at the simple circuits shown in fig. . now when you close the switch the voltage from the battery charges the condenser and keeps it charged until you open it again; the instant you do this the condenser discharges through the circuit which includes it and the inductance coil, and the discharge of a condenser is always oscillatory. [illustration: (a) and (b) fig. . operation of vacuum tube oscillators.] where an oscillator tube is included in the circuits as shown at a and b in fig. , the grid takes the place of the switch and any slight change in the voltage of either the grid or the plate is sufficient to start a train of oscillations going. as these oscillations surge through the tube the positive parts of them flow from the plate to the filament and these carry more of the direct current with them. to make a tube set up powerful oscillations then, it is only necessary that an oscillation circuit shall be provided which will feed part of the oscillations set up by the tube back to the grid circuit and when this is done the oscillations will keep on being amplified until the tube reaches the limit of its output. [illustration: (c) fig. .--how a direct current sets up oscillations.] the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with direct current--short distance c. w. transmitter.--in the transmitter shown in the wiring diagram in fig. the positive part of the volt direct current is carried down from the lamp socket through one side of the panel cut-out, thence through the choke coil and to the plate of the oscillator tube, when the latter is charged to the positive sign. the negative part of the volt direct current then flows down the other wire to the filament so that there is a difference of potential between the plate and the filament of volts. now when the -volt battery current is switched on the filament is heated to brilliancy, and the electrons thrown off by it form a conducting path between it and the plate; the volt current then flows from the latter to the former. now follow the wiring from the plate over to the blocking condenser, thence to _clip _ of the tuning coil, through the turns of the latter to _clip _ and over to the filament and, when the latter is heated, you have a _closed oscillation circuit_. the oscillations surging in the latter set up other and like oscillations in the tuning coil between the end of which is connected with the grid, the aerial and the _clip _, and these surge through the circuit formed by this portion of the coil, the grid condenser and the filament; this is the amplifying circuit and it corresponds to the regenerative circuit of a receiving set. when oscillations are set up in it the grid is alternately charged to the positive and negative signs. these reversals of voltage set up stronger and ever stronger oscillations in the plate circuit as before explained. not only do the oscillations surge in the closed circuits but they run to and fro on the aerial wire when their energy is radiated in the form of electric waves. the oscillations are varied by means of the telegraph key which is placed in the grid circuit as shown in fig. . the operation of the key circuit.--the effect in a c. w. transmitter when a telegraph key is connected in series with a buzzer and a battery and these are shunted around the condenser in the grid circuit, is to rapidly change the wave form of the sustained oscillations, and hence, the length of the waves that are sent out. while no sound can be heard in the headphones at the receiving station so long as the points of the key are not in contact, when they are in contact the oscillations are modulated and sounds are heard in the headphones that correspond to the frequency of the buzzer in the key circuit. the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with direct current.--the chief differences between the long distance sets which use a direct current, i.e., those described in chapter xvi, and the short distance transmitting sets are that the former use: ( ) a motor-generator set for changing the low voltage direct current into high voltage direct current, and ( ) a chopper in the key circuit. the way the motor-generator changes the low- into high-voltage current has been explained in chapter xvi. the chopper interrupts the oscillations surging through the grid circuit at a frequency that the ear can hear, that is to say, about to , times per second. when the key is open, of course, the sustained oscillations set up in the circuits will send out continuous waves but when the key is closed these oscillations are broken up and then they send out discontinuous waves. if a heterodyne receiving set, see chapter xv, is being used at the other end you can dispense with the chopper and the key circuit needed is very much simplified. the operation of key circuits of the latter kind will be described presently. the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current--with a single oscillator tube.--where an oscillator tube telegraph transmitter is operated by a volt alternating current as the initial source of energy, a buzzer, chopper or other interruptor is not needed in the key circuit. this is because oscillations are set up only when the plate is energized with the positive part of the alternating current and this produces an intermittent musical tone in the headphones. hence this kind of a sending set is called a _tone transmitter_. since oscillations are set up only by the positive part or voltage of an alternating current it is clear that, as a matter of fact, this kind of a transmitter does not send out continuous waves and therefore it is not a c. w. transmitter. this is graphically shown by the curve of the wave form of the alternating current and the oscillations that are set up by the positive part of it in fig. . whenever the positive half of the alternating current energizes the plate then oscillations are set up by the tube and, conversely, when the negative half of the current charges the plate no oscillations are produced. [illustration: fig. .--positive voltage only sets up oscillations.] you will also observe that the oscillations set up by the positive part of the current are not of constant amplitude but start at zero the instant the positive part begins to energize the plate and they keep on increasing in amplitude as the current rises in voltage until the latter reaches its maximum; then as it gradually drops again to zero the oscillations decrease proportionately in amplitude with it. heating the filament with alternating current.--where an alternating current power transformer is used to develop the necessary plate voltage a second secondary coil is generally provided for heating the filament of the oscillation tube. this is better than a direct current for it adds to the life of the filament. when you use an alternating current to heat the filament keep it at the same voltage rather than at the same amperage (current strength). to do this you need only to use a voltmeter across the filament terminals instead of an ammeter in series with it; then regulate the voltage of the filament with a rheostat. the operation of c. w. telegraph transmitters with alternating current--with two oscillator tubes.--by using two oscillator tubes and connecting them up with the power transformer and oscillating circuits as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. the plates are positively energized alternately with every reversal of the current and, consequently, there is no time period between the ending of the oscillations set up by one tube and the beginning of the oscillations set up by the other tube. in other words these oscillations are sustained but as in the case of those of a single tube, their amplitude rises and falls. this kind of a set is called a _full wave rectification transmitter_. the waves radiated by this transmitter can be received by either a crystal detector or a plain vacuum-tube detector but the heterodyne receptor will give you better results than either of the foregoing types. the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--short distance transmitter.--the operation of this short distance wireless telephone transmitter, a wiring diagram of which is shown in fig. is exactly the same as that of the _direct current short distance c. w. telegraph transmitter_ already explained in this chapter. the only difference in the operation of these sets is the substitution of the _microphone transmitter_ for the telegraph key. the microphone transmitter.--the microphone transmitter that is used to vary, or modulate, the sustained oscillations set up by the oscillator tube and circuits is shown in fig. . by referring to the diagram at a in this figure you will readily understand how it operates. when you speak into the mouthpiece the _sound waves_, which are waves in the air, impinge upon the diaphragm and these set it into vibration--that is, they make it move to and fro. when the diaphragm moves toward the back of the transmitter it forces the carbon granules that are in the cup closer together; this lowers their resistance and allows more current from the battery to flow through them; when the pressure of the air waves is removed from the diaphragm it springs back toward the mouth-piece and the carbon granules loosen up when the resistance offered by them is increased and less current can flow through them. where the oscillation current in the aerial wire is small the transmitter can be connected directly in series with the latter when the former will surge through it. as you speak into the microphone transmitter its resistance is varied and the current strength of the oscillations is varied accordingly. the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with direct current--long distance transmitters.--in the wireless telephone transmitters for long distance work which were shown and described in the preceding chapter a battery is used to energize the microphone transmitter, and these two elements are connected in series with a _microphone modulator_. this latter device may be either ( ) a _telephone induction coil_, ( ) a _microphone transformer_, or ( ) a _magnetic modulator_; the first two of these devices step-up the voltage of the battery current and the amplified voltage thus developed is impressed on the oscillations that surge through the closed oscillation circuit or the aerial wire system according to the place where you connect it. the third device works on a different principle and this will be described a little farther along. the operation of microphone modulators--the induction coil.--this device is really a miniature transformer, see a in fig. , and its purpose is to change the volt direct current that flows through the microphone into volts alternating current; in turn, this is impressed on the oscillations that are surging in either ( ) the grid circuit as shown at a in fig. , and in fig. , ( ) the aerial wire system, as shown at b in fig. and fig. . when the current from the battery flows through the primary coil it magnetizes the soft iron core and as the microphone varies the strength of the current the high voltage alternating currents set up in the secondary coil of the induction coil are likewise varied, when they are impressed upon and modulate the oscillating currents. the microphone transformer.--this is an induction coil that is designed especially for wireless telephone modulation. the iron core of this transformer is also of the open magnetic circuit type, see a in fig. , and the _ratio_ of the turns [footnote: see chapter vi] of the primary and the secondary coil is such that when the secondary current is impressed upon either the grid circuit or the aerial wire system it controls the oscillations flowing through it with the greatest efficiency. the magnetic modulator.--this piece of apparatus is also called a _magnetic amplifier_. the iron core is formed of very thin plates, or _laminations_ as they are called, and this permits high-frequency oscillations to surge in a coil wound on it. in this transformer, see a in fig. , the current flowing through the microphone varies the magnetic permeability of the soft iron core by the magnetic saturation of the latter. since the microphone current is absolutely distinct from the oscillating currents surging through the coil of the transformer a very small direct current flowing through a coil on the latter will vary or modulate very large oscillating currents surging through the former. it is shown connected in the aerial wire system at a in fig. , and in fig. . operation of the vacuum tube as a modulator.--where a microphone modulator of the induction coil or microphone transformer type is connected in the grid circuit or aerial wire system the modulation is not very effective, but by using a second tube as a _modulator_, as shown in fig. , an efficient degree of modulation can be had. now there are two methods by which a vacuum tube can be used as a modulator and these are: ( ) by the _absorption_ of the energy of the current set up by the oscillator tube, and ( ) by _varying_ the direct current that energizes the plate of the oscillator tube. the first of these two methods is not used because it absorbs the energy of the oscillating current produced by the tube and it is therefore wasteful. the second method is an efficient one, as the direct current is varied before it passes into the oscillator tube. this is sufficient reason for describing only the second method. the voltage of the grid of the modulator tube is varied by the secondary coil of the induction coil or microphone transformer, above described. in this way the modulator tube acts like a variable resistance but it amplifies the variations impressed on the oscillations set up by the oscillator tube. as the magnetic modulator does the same thing a vacuum tube used as a modulator is not needed where the former is employed. for this reason a magnetic modulator is the cheapest in the long run. the operation of wireless telephone transmitters with alternating current.--where an initial alternating current is used for wireless telephony, the current must be rectified first and then smoothed out before passing into the oscillator tube to be converted into oscillations. further so that the oscillations will be sustained, two oscillator tubes must be used, and, finally, in order that the oscillations may not vary in amplitude the alternating current must be first changed into direct current by a pair of rectifier vacuum tubes, as shown in fig. . when this is done the plates will be positively charged alternately with every reversal of the current in which case there will be no break in the continuity of the oscillations set up and therefore in the waves that are sent out. the operation of rectifier vacuum tubes.--the vacuum tube rectifier is simply a two electrode vacuum tube. the way in which it changes a commercial alternating current into pulsating direct current is the same as that in which a two electrode vacuum tube detector changes an oscillating current into pulsating direct currents and this has been explained in detail under the heading of _the operation of a two electrode vacuum tube detector_ in chapter xii. in the _c. w. telegraph transmitting sets_ described in chapter xvii, the oscillator tubes act as rectifiers as well as oscillators but for wireless telephony the alternating current must be rectified first so that a continuous direct current will result. the operation of reactors and condensers.--a reactor is a single coil of wire wound on an iron core, see fig. and a in fig. , and it should preferably have a large inductance. the reactor for the plate and grid circuit of a wireless telephone transmitter where one or more tubes are used as modulators as shown in the wiring diagram in fig. , and the filter reactor shown in fig. , operate in the same way. when an alternating current flows through a coil of wire the reversals of the current set up a _counter electromotive force_ in it which opposes, that is _reacts_, on the current, and the _higher_ the frequency of the current the _greater_ will be the _reactance_. when the positive half of an alternating current is made to flow through a large resistance the current is smoothed out but at the same time a large amount of its energy is used up in producing heat. but when the positive half of an alternating current is made to flow through a large inductance it acts like a large resistance as before and likewise smooths out the current, but none of its energy is wasted in heat and so a coil having a large inductance, which is called an _inductive reactance_, or just _reactor_ for short, is used to smooth out, or filter, the alternating current after it has been changed into a pulsating direct current by the rectifier tubes. a condenser also has a reactance effect on an alternating current but different from an induction coil the _lower_ the frequency the _greater_ will be the reactance. for this reason both a filter reactor and _filter condensers_ are used to smooth out the pulsating direct currents. chapter xx how to make a receiving set for $ . or less in the chapters on _receptors_ you have been told how to build up high-grade sets. but there are thousands of boys, and, probably, not a few men, who cannot afford to invest $ . , more or less, in a receiving set and would like to experiment in a small way. the following set is inexpensive, and with this cheap, little portable receptor you can get the morse code from stations a hundred miles distant and messages and music from broadcasting stations if you do not live too far away from them. all you need for this set are: ( ) a _crystal detector_, ( ) a _tuning coil_ and ( ) an _earphone_. you can make a crystal detector out of a couple of binding posts, a bit of galena and a piece of brass wire, or, better, you can buy one all ready to use for cents. [illustration: wireless receptor, the size of a safety match box. a youthful genius in the person of kenneth r. hinman, who is only twelve years old, has made a wireless receiving set that fits neatly into a safety match box. with this instrument and a pair of ordinary receivers, he is able to catch not only code messages but the regular broadcasting programs from stations twenty and thirty miles distant.] the crystal detector.--this is known as the _rasco baby_ detector and it is made and sold by the _radio specialty company_, park place, new york city. it is shown in fig. . the base is made of black composition and on it is mounted a standard in which a rod slides and on one end of this there is fixed a hard rubber adjusting knob while the other end carries a thin piece of _phosphor-bronze wire_, called a _cat-whisker_. to secure the galena crystal in the cup you simply unscrew the knurled cap, place it in the cavity of the post and screw the cap back on again. the free end of the cat-whisker wire is then adjusted so that it will rest lightly on the exposed part of the galena. [illustration: fig. .--rasco baby crystal detector.] the tuning coil.--you will have to make this tuning coil, which you can do at a cost of less than $ . , as the cheapest tuning coil you can buy costs at least $ . , and we need the rest of our $ . to invest in the earphone. get a cardboard tube, such as is used for mailing purposes, inches in diameter and inches long, see a in fig. . now wind on turns of _no. brown and sharpe gauge plain enameled magnet wire_. you can use _no. double cotton covered magnet wire_, in which case you will have to shellac the tube and the wire after you get it on. [illustration: fig. .--how the tuning coil is made.] as you wind on the wire take off a tap at every th turn, that is, scrape the wire and solder on a piece about inches long, as shown in fig. ; and do this until you have taps taken off. instead of leaving the wires outside of the tube bring them to the inside of it and then out through one of the open ends. now buy a _round wood-base switch_ with contact points on it as shown at b in fig. . this will cost you or cents. the headphone.--an ordinary bell telephone receiver is of small use for wireless work as it is wound to too low a resistance and the diaphragm is much too thick. if you happen to have a bell phone you can rewind it with _no. _ single covered silk magnet wire, or enameled wire of the same size, when its sensitivity will be very greatly improved. then you must get a thin diaphragm and this should _not_ be enameled, as this tends to dampen the vibrations of it. you can get a diaphragm of the right kind for cents. the better way, though, is to buy an earphone made especially for wireless work. you can get one wound to ohms resistance for $ . and this price includes a cord. [footnote: this is mesco, no. wireless phone. sold by the manhattan electrical supply co., park place, n.y.c.] for $ . extra you can get a head-band for it, and then your phone will look like the one pictured in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--mesco ohm head set.] how to mount the parts.--now mount the coil on a wood base, / or inch thick, - / inches wide and - / inches long, and then connect one end of the coil to one of the end points on the switch, and connect each succeeding tap to one of the switch points, as shown schematically in fig. and diagrammatically in fig. . this done, screw the switch down to the base. finally screw the detector to the base and screw two binding posts in front of the coil. these are for the earphone. [illustration: fig. .--schematic layout of $ . receiving set.] [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram for $ . receiving set.] the condenser.--you do not have to connect a condenser across the earphone but if you do you will improve the receiving qualities of the receptor. how to connect up the receptor.--now connect up all the parts as shown in figs. and , then connect the leading-in wire of the aerial with the lever of the switch; and connect the free end of the tuning coil with the _ground_. if you have no aerial wire try hooking it up to a rain pipe that is _not grounded_ or the steel frame of an umbrella. for a _ground_ you can use a water pipe, an iron pipe driven into the ground, or a hydrant. put on your headphone, adjust the detector and move the lever over the switch contacts until it is in adjustment and then, if all your connections are properly made, you should be able to pick up messages. [illustration: wireless set made into a ring, designed by alfred g. rinehart, of elizabeth, new jersey. this little receptor is a practical set; it will receive messages, concerts, etc., measures " by / " by / ". an ordinary umbrella is used as an aerial.] appendix useful information abbreviations of units unit abbreviation ampere amp. ampere-hours amp.-hr. centimeter cm. centimeter-gram-second c.g.s. cubic centimeters cm.^ cubic inches cu. in. cycles per second ~ degrees centigrade °c. degrees fahrenheit °f. feet ft. foot-pounds ft.-lb. grams g. henries h. inches in. kilograms kg. kilometers km. kilowatts kw. kilowatt-hours kw.-hr. kilovolt-amperes kv.-a. meters m. microfarads [greek: mu]f. micromicrofarads [greek: mu mu]f. millihenries mh. millimeters mm. pounds lb. seconds sec. square centimeters cm.^ square inches sq. in. volts v. watts w. prefixes used with metric system units prefix abbreviation meaning micro [greek: mu]. millionth milli m. thousandth centi c. hundredth deci d. tenth deka dk. hekto h. hundred kilo k. thousand mega m. million symbols used for various quantities quantity symbol capacitance c conductance g coupling co-efficient k current, instantaneous i current, effective value i decrement [greek: delta] dielectric constant [greek: alpha] electric field intensity [greek: epsilon] electromotive force, instantaneous value e electromotive force, effective value f energy w force f frequency f frequency x [greek: pi] [greek: omega] impedance z inductance, self l inductance, mutual m magnetic field intensity a magnetic flux [greek: phi] magnetic induction b period of a complete oscillation t potential difference v quantity of electricity q ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter = . [greek: pi] reactance x resistance r time t velocity v velocity of light c wave length [greek: lambda] wave length in meters [greek: lambda]m work w permeability [greek: mu] square root [math: square root] table of enameled wire no. of turns turns ohms per wire, per per cubic inch b.& s. linear square of gauge inch inch winding . . . . . . , . , . , . , . , . table of frequency and wave lengths w. l.--wave lengths in meters. f.--number of oscillations per second. o. or square root l. c. is called oscillation constant. c.--capacity in microfarads. l.--inductance in centimeters. centimeters = microhenry. w.l. f o l.c. , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . , , . , . pronunciation of greek letters many of the physical quantities use greek letters for symbols. the following is the greek alphabet with the way the letters are pronounced: a alpha b beta g gamma d delta e epsilon z zeta ae eta th theta i iota k kappa l lambda m mu n nu x xi(zi) o omicron p pi r rho s sigma t tau u upsilon ph phi ch chi ps psi o omega table of sparking distances in air for various voltages between needle points volts distance inches centimeter , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . , . . feet per pound of insulated magnet wire no. of single double single double b.& s. cotton, cotton, silk, silk, enamel gauge -mils -mils - / -mils -mils , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , international morse code and conventional signals to be used for all general public service radio communication . a dash is equal to three dots. . the space between parts of the same letter is equal to one dot. . the space between two letters is equal to three dots. . the space between two words is equal to five dots. [note: period denotes morse dot, hyphen denotes morse dash] a .- b -... c -.-. d -.. e . f ..-. g --. h .... i .. j .--- k -.- l .-.. m -- n -. o --- p .--. q --.- r .-. s ... t - u ..- v ...- w .-- x -..- y -.-- z --.. Ã� (german) .-.- Ã� or Ã� (spanish-scandinavian) .--.- ch (german-spanish) ---- Ã� (french) ..-.. Ã� (spanish) --.-- Ã� (german) ---. Ã� (german) ..-- .---- ..--- ...-- ....- ..... -.... --... ---.. ----. ----- period .. .. .. semicolon -.-.-. comma -.-.-. colon ---... interrogation ..--.. exclamation point --..-- apostrophe .----. hyphen -....- bar indicating fraction -..-. parenthesis -.--.- inverted commas .-..-. underline ..--.- double dash -...- distress call ...---... attention call to precede every transmission -.-.- general inquiry call -.-. --.- from (de) -.. . invitation to transmit (go ahead) -.- warning--high power --..-- question (please repeat after ...)--interrupting long messages ..--.. wait .-... break (bk.) (double dash) -...- understand ...-. error ........ received (o.k.) .-. position report (to precede all position messages) - .-. end of each message (cross) .-.-. transmission finished (end of work) (conclusion of correspondence) ...-.- international radiotelegraphic convention list of abbreviations to be used in radio communication abbreviation question answer or reply prb do you wish to communicate i wish to communicate by means by means of the international of the international signal code. signal code? qra what ship or coast station is this is.... that? qrb what is your distance? my distance is.... qrc what is your true bearing? my true bearing is.... qrd where are you bound for? i am bound for.... qrf where are you bound from? i am bound from.... qrg what line do you belong to? i belong to the ... line. qrh what is your wave length in my wave length is ... meters. meters? qrj how many words have you to send? i have ... words to send. qrk how do you receive me? i am receiving well. qrl are you receiving badly? i am receiving badly. please shall i send ? send . ...-. ...-. for adjustment? for adjustment. qrm are you being interfered with? i am being interfered with. qrn are the atmospherics strong? atmospherics are very strong. qro shall i increase power? increase power. qrp shall i decrease power? decrease power. qrq shall i send faster? send faster. qrs shall i send slower? send slower. qrt shall i stop sending? stop sending. qru have you anything for me? i have nothing for you. qrv are you ready? i am ready. all right now. qrw are you busy? i am busy (or: i am busy with...). please do not interfere. qrx shall i stand by? stand by. i will call you when required. qry when will be my turn? your turn will be no.... qrz are my signals weak? you signals are weak. qsa are my signals strong? you signals are strong. qsb is my tone bad? the tone is bad. is my spark bad? the spark is bad. qsc is my spacing bad? your spacing is bad. qsd what is your time? my time is.... qsf is transmission to be in transmission will be in alternate order or in series? alternate order. qsg transmission will be in a series of messages. qsh transmission will be in a series of messages. qsj what rate shall i collect for...? collect.... qsk is the last radiogram canceled? the last radiogram is canceled. qsl did you get my receipt? please acknowledge. qsm what is your true course? my true course is...degrees. qsn are you in communication with land? i am not in communication with land. qso are you in communication with i am in communication with... any ship or station (through...). (or: with...)? qsp shall i inform...that you are inform...that i am calling him. calling him? qsq is...calling me? you are being called by.... qsr will you forward the radiogram? i will forward the radiogram. qst have you received the general general call to all stations. call? qsu please call me when you have will call when i have finished. finished (or: at...o'clock)? qsv is public correspondence being public correspondence is being handled? handled. please do not interfere. [footnote: public correspondence is any radio work, official or private, handled on commercial wave lengths.] qsw shall i increase my spark increase your spark frequency. frequency? qsx shall i decrease my spark decrease your spark frequency. frequency? qsy shall i send on a wavelength let us change to the wave length of ... meters? of ... meters. qsz send each word twice. i have difficulty in receiving you. qta repeat the last radiogram. when an abbreviation is followed by a mark of interrogation, it refers to the question indicated for that abbreviation. useful information symbols used for apparatus alternator ammeter aerial arc battery buzzer condenser variable condenser connection of wires no connection coupled coils variable coupling detector gap, plain gap, quenched ground hot wire ammeter inductor variable inductor key resistor variable resistor switch s.p.s.t. " s.p.d.t. " d.p.s.t. " d.p.d.t. " reversing phone receiver " transmitter thermoelement transformer vacuum tube voltmeter choke coil definitions of electric and magnetic units the _ohm_ is the resistance of a thread of mercury at the temperature of melting ice, . grams in mass, of uniform cross-section and a length of . centimeters. the _ampere_ is the current which when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water according to certain specifications, deposits silver at the rate of . of a gram per second. the _volt_ is the electromotive force which produces a current of ampere when steadily applied to a conductor the resistance of which is ohm. the _coulomb_ is the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in second. the _ampere-hour_ is the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in hour and is, therefore, equal to coulombs. the _farad_ is the capacitance of a condenser in which a potential difference of volt causes it to have a charge of coulomb of electricity. the _henry_ is the inductance in a circuit in which the electromotive force induced is volt when the inducing current varies at the rate of ampere per second. the _watt_ is the power spent by a current of ampere in a resistance of ohm. the _joule_ is the energy spent in i second by a flow of ampere in ohm. the _horse-power_ is used in rating steam machinery. it is equal to watts. the _kilowatt_ is , watts. the units of capacitance actually used in wireless work are the _microfarad_, which is the millionth part of a farad, because the farad is too large a unit; and the _c. g. s. electrostatic unit of capacitance_, which is often called the _centimeter of capacitance_, which is about equal to . microfarads. the units of inductance commonly used in radio work are the _millihenry_, which is the thousandth part of a henry; and the _centimeter of inductance_, which is one one-thousandth part of a microhenry. note.--for further information about electric and magnetic units get the _bureau of standards circular no. _, called _electric units and standards_, the price of which is cents; also get _scientific paper no. _, called _international system of electric and magnetic units_, price cents. these and other informative papers can be had from the _superintendent of documents, government printing office_, washington, d. c. wireless books the admiralty manual of wireless telegraphy. . published by his majesty's stationery office, london. ralph e. batcher.--prepared radio measurements. . wireless press, inc., new york city. elmer e. bucher.--practical wireless telegraphy. . wireless press, inc., new york city. elmer e. bucher.--vacuum tubes in wireless communication. . wireless press, inc., new york city. elmer e. bucher.--the wireless experimenter's manual. . wireless press, inc., new york city. a. frederick collins.--wireless telegraphy, its history, theory, and practice. . mcgraw pub. co., new york city. j. h. dellinger.--principles underlying radio communication. . signal corps, u. s. army, washington, d. c. h. m. dorsett.--wireless telegraphy and telephony. . wireless press, ltd., london. j. a. fleming.--principles of electric wave telegraphy. . longmans, green and co., london. charles b. hayward.--how to become a wireless operator. . american technical society, chicago, ill. g. d. robinson.--manual of radio telegraphy and telephony. . united states naval institute, annapolis, md. rupert stanley.--textbook of wireless telegraphy. . longmans, green and co., london. e. w. stone.--elements of radio telegraphy. . d, van nostrand co., new york city. l. b. turner.--wireless telegraphy and telephony. . cambridge university press. cambridge, england. send to the _superintendent of documents, government printing office_, washington, d. c., for a copy of _price list no. _ which lists the government's books and pamphlets on wireless. it will be sent to you free of charge. the government publishes; ( ) _a list of commercial government and special wireless stations_, every year, price cents; ( ) _a list of amateur wireless stations_, yearly, price cents; ( ) _a wireless service bulletin_ is published monthly, price cents a copy, or cents yearly; and ( ) _wireless communication laws of the united states_, the _international wireless telegraphic convention and regulations governing wireless operators and the use of wireless on ships and land stations_, price cents a copy. orders for the above publications should be addressed to the _superintendent of documents, government printing office, washington, d. c._ manufacturers and dealers in wireless apparatus and supplies: adams-morgan co., upper montclair, n. j. american hard rubber co., mercer street, new york city. american radio and research corporation, medford hillside, mass. brach (l. s.) mfg. co., sussex ave., newark, n. j. brandes (c.) inc., lafayette st., new york city. bunnell (j. h.) company, park place, new york city. burgess battery company, harris trust co. bldg., chicago, ill. clapp-eastman co., main st., cambridge, mass. connecticut telephone and telegraph co., meriden, conn. continental fiber co., newark, del. coto-coil co., providence, r. i. crosley mfg. co., cincinnati, ohio. doolittle (f. m.), chapel st., new haven, conn. edelman (philip e.), cortlandt st., new york city. edison storage battery co., orange, n. j. electric specialty co., stamford, conn. electrose mfg. co., washington st., brooklyn, n. y. general electric co., schenectady, n. y. grebe (a. h.) and co., inc., richmond hill, n. y. c. international brass and electric co., beekman st., new york city. international insulating co., west th st., new york city. king amplitone co., church st., new york city. kennedy (colin b.) co., rialto bldg., san francisco, cal. magnavox co., oakland, cal. manhattan electrical supply co., park place, n. y. marshall-gerken co., toledo, ohio. michigan paper tube and can co., grand river ave., detroit, mich. murdock (wm. j.) co., chelsea, mass. national carbon co., inc., long island city, n. y. pittsburgh radio and appliance co., diamond st., pittsburgh, pa, radio corporation of america, broadway, new york city. riley-klotz mfg. co., - mulberry st., newark, n. j. radio specialty co., park place, new york city. roller-smith co., barclay st., new york city. tuska (c. d.) co., hartford, conn. western electric co., chicago, ill. westinghouse electric co., pittsburgh, pa. weston electrical instrument co., weston ave., newark, n. j. westfield machine co., westfield, mass. abbreviations of common terms a. ..............aerial a.c. ............alternating current a.f. ............audio frequency b. and s. .......brown & sharpe wire gauge c. ..............capacity or capacitance c.g.s. ..........centimeter-grain-second cond. ...........condenser coup. ...........coupler c.w. ............continuous waves d.c. ............direct current d.p.d.t. ........double point double throw d.p.s.t. ........double point single throw d.x. ............distance e. ..............short for electromotive force (volt) e.m.f. ..........electromotive force f. ..............filament or frequency g. ..............grid gnd. ............ground i. ..............current strength (ampere) i.c.w. ..........interrupted continuous waves kw. .............kilowatt l. ..............inductance l.c. ............loose coupler litz. ...........litzendraht mfd. ............microfarad neg. ............negative o.t. ............oscillation transformer p. ..............plate prim. ...........primary pos. ............positive r. ..............resistance r.f. ............radio frequency sec. ............secondary s.p.d.t. ........single point double throw s.p.s.t. ........single point single throw s.r. ............self rectifying t. ..............telephone or period (time) of complete oscillation tick. ...........tickler v. ..............potential difference var. ............variometer var. cond. ......variable condenser v.t. ............vacuum tube w.l. ............wave length x. ..............reactance glossary a battery.--see battery a. abbreviations, code.--abbreviations of questions and answers used in wireless communication. the abbreviation _of a question_ is usually in three letters of which the first is q. thus q r b is the code abbreviation of "_what is your distance?_" and the answer "_my distance is_..." see page [appendix: list of abbreviations]. abbreviations, units.--abbreviations of various units used in wireless electricity. these abbreviations are usually lower case letters of the roman alphabet, but occasionally greek letters are used and other signs. thus _amperes_ is abbreviated _amp., micro_, which means _one millionth_, [greek: mu], etc. see page [appendix: useful abbreviations]. abbreviations of words and terms.--letters used instead of words and terms for shortening them up where there is a constant repetition of them, as _a.c._ for _alternating current; c.w._ for _continuous waves; v.t._ for _vacuum tube_, etc. see page [appendix: abbreviations of common terms]. aerial.--also called _antenna_. an aerial wire. one or more wires suspended in the air and insulated from its supports. it is the aerial that sends out the waves and receives them. aerial, amateur.--an aerial suitable for sending out meter wave lengths. such an aerial wire system must not exceed feet in length from the ground up to the aerial switch and from this through the leading-in wire to the end of the aerial. aerial ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. aerial, bed-springs.--where an outdoor aerial is not practicable _bed-springs_ are often made to serve the purpose. aerial capacity.--see _capacity, aerial._ aerial counterpoise.--where it is not possible to get a good ground an _aerial counterpoise_ or _earth capacity_ can be used to advantage. the counterpoise is made like the aerial and is supported directly under it close to the ground but insulated from it. aerial, directional.--a flat-top or other aerial that will transmit and receive over greater distances to and from one direction than to and from another. aerial, ground.--signals can be received on a single long wire when it is placed on or buried in the earth or immersed in water. it is also called a _ground antenna_ and an _underground aerial._ aerial, loop.--also called a _coil aerial, coil antenna, loop aerial, loop antenna_ and when used for the purpose a _direction finder_. a coil of wire wound on a vertical frame. aerial resistance.--see _resistance, aerial._ aerial switch.--see _switch aerial._ aerial wire.--( ) a wire or wires that form the aerial. ( ) wire that is used for aerials; this is usually copper or copper alloy. aerial wire system.--an aerial and ground wire and that part of the inductance coil which connects them. the open oscillation circuit of a sending or a receiving station. air core transformer.--see _transformer, air core._ amateur aerial or antenna.--see _aerial, amateur._ alternator.--an electric machine that generates alternating current. alphabet, international code.--a modified morse alphabet of dots and dashes originally used in continental europe and, hence, called the _continental code_. it is now used for all general public service wireless communication all over the world and, hence, it is called the _international code_. see page [appendix: international morse code]. alternating current (_a.c._)--see _current._ alternating current transformer.--see _transformer_. amateur ground.--see _ground, amateur_. ammeter.--an instrument used for measuring the current strength, in terms of amperes, that flows in a circuit. ammeters used for measuring direct and alternating currents make use of the _magnetic effects_ of the currents. high frequency currents make use of the _heating effects_ of the currents. ammeter, hot-wire.--high frequency currents are usually measured by means of an instrument which depends on heating a wire or metal strip by the oscillations. such an instrument is often called a _thermal ammeter_, _radio ammeter_ and _aerial ammeter_. ammeter, aerial.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. ammeter, radio.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. ampere.--the current which when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water according to certain specifications, deposits silver at the rate of . of a gram per second. ampere-hour.--the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in hour and is, therefore, equal to coulombs. ampere-turns.--when a coil is wound up with a number of turns of wire and a current is made to flow through it, it behaves like a magnet. b the strength of the magnetic field inside of the coil depends on ( ) the strength of the current and ( ) the number of turns of wire on the coil. thus a feeble current flowing through a large number of turns will produce as strong a magnetic field as a strong current flowing through a few turns of wire. this product of the current in amperes times the number of turns of wire on the coil is called the _ampere-turns_. amplification, audio frequency.--a current of audio frequency that is amplified by an amplifier tube or other means. amplification, cascade.--see _cascade amplification_. amplification, radio frequency.--a current of radio frequency that is amplified by an amplifier tube or other means before it reaches the detector. amplification, regenerative.--a scheme that uses a third circuit to feed back part of the oscillations through a vacuum tube and which increases its sensitiveness when used as a detector and multiplies its action as an amplifier and an oscillator. amplifier, audio frequency.--a vacuum tube or other device that amplifies the signals after passing through the detector. amplifier, magnetic.--a device used for controlling radio frequency currents either by means of a telegraph key or a microphone transmitter. the controlling current flows through a separate circuit from that of the radio current and a fraction of an ampere will control several amperes in the aerial wire. amplifiers, multi-stage.--a receiving set using two or more amplifiers. also called _cascade amplification_. amplifier, vacuum tube.--a vacuum tube that is used either to amplify the radio frequency currents or the audio frequency currents. amplitude of wave.--the greatest distance that a point moves from its position of rest. amplifying transformer, audio.--see _transformer, audio amplifying_. amplifying modulator vacuum tube.--see _vacuum tube, amplifying modulator_. amplifying transformer radio.--see _transformer, radio amplifying_. antenna, amateur.--see _aerial, amateur_. antenna switch.--see _switch, aerial_. apparatus symbols.--see _symbols, apparatus_. armstrong circuit.--see _circuit, armstrong_. atmospherics.--same as _static_, which see. attenuation.--in sending wireless telegraph and telephone messages the amplitude of the electric waves is damped out as the distance increases. this is called _attenuation_ and it increases as the frequency is increased. this is the reason why short wave lengths will not carry as far as long wave lengths. audio frequency amplifier.--see _amplifier, audio frequency_. audio frequency amplification.--see _amplification, audio frequency_. audibility meter.--see _meter, audibility_. audio frequency.--see _frequency, audio_. audio frequency current.--see _current, audio frequency_. audion.--an early trade name given to the vacuum tube detector. autodyne receptor.--see _receptor, autodyne_. auto transformer.--see _transformer, auto_. bakelite.--a manufactured insulating compound. b battery.--see _battery b_. band, wave length.--see _wave length band_. basket wound coils.--see _coils, inductance_. battery, a.--the -volt storage battery used to heat the filament of a vacuum tube, detector or amplifier. battery, b.--the - / -volt dry cell battery used to energize the plate of a vacuum tube detector or amplifier. battery, booster.--this is the battery that is connected in series with the crystal detector. battery, c.--a small dry cell battery sometimes used to give the grid of a vacuum tube detector a bias potential. battery, edison storage.--a storage battery in which the elements are made of nickel and iron and immersed in an alkaline _electrolyte_. battery, lead storage.--a storage battery in which the elements are made of lead and immersed in an acid electrolyte. battery poles.--see _poles, battery_. battery, primary.--a battery that generates current by chemical action. battery, storage.--a battery that develops a current after it has been charged. beat reception.--see _heterodyne reception_. bed springs aerial.--see _aerial, bed springs_. blub blub.--over modulation in wireless telephony. broad wave.--see _wave, broad_. brush discharge.--see _discharge_. buzzer modulation.--see _modulation, buzzer_. blue glow discharge.--see _discharge_. booster battery.--see _battery, booster_. broadcasting.--sending out intelligence and music from a central station for the benefit of all who live within range of it and who have receiving sets. capacitance.--also called by the older name of _capacity_. the capacity of a condenser, inductance coil or other device capable of retaining a charge of electricity. capacitance is measured in terms of the _microfarad_. capacitive coupling.--see _coupling, capacitive_. capacity.--any object that will retain a charge of electricity; hence an aerial wire, a condenser or a metal plate is sometimes called a _capacity_. capacity, aerial.--the amount to which an aerial wire system can be charged. the _capacitance_ of a small amateur aerial is from . to . microfarad. capacity, distributed.--a coil of wire not only has inductance, but also a certain small capacitance. coils wound with their turns parallel and having a number of layers have a _bunched capacitance_ which produces untoward effects in oscillation circuits. in honeycomb and other stagger wound coils the capacitance is more evenly distributed. capacity reactance.--see _reactance, capacity_. capacity unit.--see _farad_. carbon rheostats.--see _rheostat, carbon_. carborundum detector.--see _detector_. carrier current telephony.--see _wired-wireless_. carrier frequency.--see _frequency, carrier_. carrier frequency telephony.--see _wired-wireless_. cascade amplification.--two or more amplifying tubes hooked up in a receiving set. cat whisker contact.--a long, thin wire which makes contact with the crystal of a detector. centimeter of capacitance.--equal to . _microfarads_. centimeter of inductance.--equal to one one-thousandth part of a _microhenry_. cellular coils.--see _coils, inductance_. c.g.s. electrostatic unit of capacitance.--see _centimeter of capacitance_. characteristics.--the special behavior of a device, such as an aerial, a detector tube, etc. characteristics, grid.--see _grid characteristics_. choke coils.--coils that prevent the high voltage oscillations from surging back into the transformer and breaking down the insulation. chopper modulation.--see _modulation, chopper_. circuit.--any electrical conductor through which a current can flow. a low voltage current requires a loop of wire or other conductor both ends of which are connected to the source of current before it can flow. a high frequency current will surge in a wire which is open at both ends like the aerial. closed circuit.--a circuit that is continuous. open circuit.--a conductor that is not continuous. coupled circuits.--open and closed circuits connected together by inductance coils, condensers or resistances. see _coupling_. close coupled circuits.--open and closed circuits connected directly together with a single inductance coil. loose coupled circuits.--opened and closed currents connected together inductively by means of a transformer. stand-by circuits.--also called _pick-up_ circuits. when listening-in for possible calls from a number of stations, a receiver is used which will respond to a wide band of wave lengths. armstrong circuits.--the regenerative circuit invented by major e. h. armstrong. close coupled circuits.--see _currents, close coupled_. closed circuit.--see _circuit, closed_. closed core transformer.--see _transformer, closed core_. code.-- continental.--same as _international_. international.--on the continent of europe land lines use the _continental morse_ alphabetic code. this code has come to be used throughout the world for wireless telegraphy and hence it is now called the _international code_. it is given on page . [appendix: international morse code]. morse.--the code devised by samuel f. b. morse and which is used on the land lines in the u. s. national electric.--a set of rules and requirements devised by the _national board of fire underwriters_ for the electrical installations in buildings on which insurance companies carry risks. this code also covers the requirements for wireless installations. a copy may be had from the _national board of fire underwriters_, new york city, or from your insurance agent. national electric safety.--the bureau of standards, washington, d. c., have investigated the precautions which should be taken for the safe operation of all electric equipment. a copy of the _bureau of standards handbook no. _ can be had for cents from the _superintendent of documents_. coefficient of coupling.--see _coupling, coefficient of_. coil aerial.--see _aerial, loop_. coil antenna.--see _aerial, loop_. coil, induction.--an apparatus for changing low voltage direct currents into high voltage, low frequency alternating currents. when fitted with a spark gap the high voltage, low frequency currents are converted into high voltage, high frequency currents. it is then also called a _spark coil_ and a _ruhmkorff coil_. coil, loading.--a coil connected in the aerial or closed oscillation circuit so that longer wave lengths can be received. coil, repeating.--see _repeating coil_. coil, rotating.--one which rotates on a shaft instead of sliding as in a _loose coupler_. the rotor of a _variometer_ or _variocoupler_ is a _rotating coil_. coils, inductance.--these are the tuning coils used for sending and receiving sets. for sending sets they are formed of one and two coils, a single sending coil is generally called a _tuning inductance coil_, while a two-coil tuner is called an _oscillation transformer_. receiving tuning coils are made with a single layer, single coil, or a pair of coils, when it is called an oscillation _transformer_. some tuning inductance coils have more than one layer, they are then called _lattice wound_, _cellular_, _basket wound_, _honeycomb_, _duo-lateral_, _stagger wound_, _spider-web_ and _slab_ coils. commercial frequency.--see _frequency, commercial_. condenser, aerial series.--a condenser placed in the aerial wire system to cut down the wave length. condenser, vernier.--a small variable condenser used for receiving continuous waves where very sharp tuning is desired. condenser.--all conducting objects with their insulation form capacities, but a _condenser_ is understood to mean two sheets or plates of metal placed closely together but separated by some insulating material. adjustable condenser.--where two or more condensers can be coupled together by means of plugs, switches or other devices. aerial condenser.--a condenser connected in the aerial. air condenser.--where air only separates the sheets of metal. by-pass condenser.--a condenser connected in the transmitting currents so that the high frequency currents cannot flow back through the power circuit. filter condenser.--a condenser of large capacitance used in combination with a filter reactor for smoothing out the pulsating direct currents as they come from the rectifier. fixed condenser.--where the plates are fixed relatively to one another. grid condenser.--a condenser connected in series with the grid lead. leyden jar condenser.--where glass jars are used. mica condenser.--where mica is used. oil condenser.--where the plates are immersed in oil. paper condenser.--where paper is used as the insulating material. protective.--a condenser of large capacity connected across the low voltage supply circuit of a transmitter to form a by-path of kick-back oscillations. variable condenser.--where alternate plates can be moved and so made to interleave more or less with a set of fixed plates. vernier.--a small condenser with a vernier on it so that it can be very accurately varied. it is connected in parallel with the variable condenser used in the primary circuit and is used for the reception of continuous waves where sharp tuning is essential. condensite.--a manufactured insulating compound. conductivity.--the conductance of a given length of wire of uniform cross section. the reciprocal of _resistivity_. contact detectors.--see _detectors, contact_. continental code.--see _code, continental_. coulomb.--the quantity of electricity transferred by a current of ampere in second. convective discharge.--see _discharge_. conventional signals.--see _signals, conventional_. counter electromotive force.--see _electromotive force, counter_. counterpoise. a duplicate of the aerial wire that is raised a few feet above the earth and insulated from it. usually no connection is made with the earth itself. coupled circuits.--see _circuit, coupled_. coupling.--when two oscillation circuits are connected together either by the magnetic field of an inductance coil, or by the electrostatic field of a condenser. coupling, capacitive.--oscillation circuits when connected together by condensers instead of inductance coils. coupling, coefficient of.--the measure of the closeness of the coupling between two coils. coupling, inductive.--oscillation circuits when connected together by inductance coils. coupling, resistance.--oscillation circuits connected together by a resistance. crystal rectifier.--a crystal detector. current, alternating (a.c.).--a low frequency current that surges to and fro in a circuit. current, audio frequency.--a current whose frequency is low enough to be heard in a telephone receiver. such a current usually has a frequency of between and , cycles per second. current, plate.--the current which flows between the filament and the plate of a vacuum tube. current, pulsating.--a direct current whose voltage varies from moment to moment. current, radio frequency.--a current whose frequency is so high it cannot be heard in a telephone receiver. such a current may have a frequency of from , to , , per second. currents, high frequency.--( ) currents that oscillate from , to , , times per second. ( ) electric oscillations. currents, high potential.--( ) currents that have a potential of more than , volts. ( ) high voltage currents. cycle.--( ) a series of changes which when completed are again at the starting point. ( ) a period of time at the end of which an alternating or oscillating current repeats its original direction of flow. damping.--the degree to which the energy of an electric oscillation is reduced. in an open circuit the energy of an oscillation set up by a spark gap is damped out in a few swings, while in a closed circuit it is greatly prolonged, the current oscillating times or more before the energy is dissipated by the sum of the resistances of the circuit. decrement.--the act or process of gradually becoming less. detector.--any device that will ( ) change the oscillations set up by the incoming waves into direct current, that is which will rectify them, or ( ) that will act as a relay. carborundum.--one that uses a _carborundum_ crystal for the sensitive element. carborundum is a crystalline silicon carbide formed in the electric furnace. cat whisker contact.--see _cat whisker contact_. chalcopyrite.--copper pyrites. a brass colored mineral used as a crystal for detectors. see _zincite_. contact.--a crystal detector. any kind of a detector in which two dissimilar but suitable solids make contact. ferron.--a detector in which iron pyrites are used as the sensitive element. galena.--a detector that uses a galena crystal for the rectifying element. iron pyrites.--a detector that uses a crystal of iron pyrites for its sensitive element. molybdenite.--a detector that uses a crystal of _sulphide of molybdenum_ for the sensitive element. perikon.--a detector in which a _bornite_ crystal makes contact with a _zincite_ crystal. silicon.--a detector that uses a crystal of silicon for its sensitive element. vacuum tube.--a vacuum tube (which see) used as a detector. zincite.--a detector in which a crystal of _zincite_ is used as the sensitive element. de tuning.--a method of signaling by sustained oscillations in which the key when pressed down cuts out either some of the inductance or some of the capacity and hence greatly changes the wave length. dielectric.--an insulating material between two electrically charged plates in which there is set up an _electric strain_, or displacement. dielectric strain.--the electric displacement in a dielectric. directional aerial.--see _aerial, directional_. direction finder.--see _aerial, loop_. discharge.--( ) a faintly luminous discharge that takes place from the positive pointed terminal of an induction coil, or other high potential apparatus; is termed a _brush discharge_. ( ) a continuous discharge between the terminals of a high potential apparatus is termed a _convective discharge_. ( ) the sudden breaking-down of the air between the balls forming the spark gap is termed a _disruptive discharge_; also called an _electric spark_, or just _spark_ for short. ( ) when a tube has a poor vacuum, or too large a battery voltage, it glows with a blue light and this is called a _blue glow discharge_. disruptive discharge.--see _discharge_. distress call. [morse code:] ...---... (sos). distributed capacity.--see _capacity, distributed_. double hump resonance curve.--a resonance curve that has two peaks or humps which show that the oscillating currents which are set up when the primary and secondary of a tuning coil are closely coupled have two frequencies. duo-lateral coils.--see _coils, inductance_. duplex communication.--a wireless telephone system with which it is possible to talk between both stations in either direction without the use of switches. this is known as the _duplex system_. earth capacity.--an aerial counterpoise. earth connection.--metal plates or wires buried in the ground or immersed in water. any kind of means by which the sending and receiving apparatus can be connected with the earth. edison storage battery.--see _storage battery, edison_. electric energy.--the power of an electric current. electric oscillations.--see _oscillations, electric_. electric spark.--see _discharge, spark_. electricity, negative.--the opposite of _positive electricity_. negative electricity is formed of negative electrons which make up the outside particles of an atom. electricity, positive.--the opposite of _negative electricity_. positive electricity is formed of positive electrons which make up the inside particles of an atom. electrodes.--usually the parts of an apparatus which dip into a liquid and carry a current. the electrodes of a dry battery are the zinc and carbon elements. the electrodes of an edison storage battery are the iron and nickel elements, and the electrodes of a lead storage battery are the lead elements. electrolytes.--the acid or alkaline solutions used in batteries. electromagnetic waves.--see _waves, electric_. electromotive force.--abbreviated _emf_. the force that drives an electric current along a conductor. also loosely called _voltage_. electromotive force, counter.--the emf. that is set up in a direction opposite to that in which the current is flowing in a conductor. electron.--( ) a negative particle of electricity that is detached from an atom. ( ) a negative particle of electricity thrown off from the incandescent filament of a vacuum tube. electron flow.--the passage of electrons between the incandescent filament and the cold positively charged plate of a vacuum tube. electron relay.--see _relay, electron_. electron tube.--a vacuum tube or a gas-content tube used for any purpose in wireless work. see _vacuum tube_. electrose insulators.--insulators made of a composition material the trade name of which is _electrose_. energy, electric.--see _electric energy_. energy unit.--the _joule_, which see, page [appendix: definitions of electric and magnetic units]. fading.--the sudden variation in strength of signals received from a transmitting station when all the adjustments of both sending and receiving apparatus remain the same. also called _swinging_. farad.--the capacitance of a condenser in which a potential difference of volt causes it to have a charge of coulomb of electricity. feed-back action.--feeding back the oscillating currents in a vacuum tube to amplify its power. also called _regenerative action_. ferromagnetic control.--see _magnetic amplifier_. filament.--the wire in a vacuum tube that is heated to incandescence and which throws off electrons. filament rheostat.--see _rheostat, filament_. filter.--inductance coils or condensers or both which ( ) prevent troublesome voltages from acting on the different circuits, and ( ) smooth out alternating currents after they have been rectified. filter reactor.--see _reactor, filter_. fire underwriters.--see _code, national electric_. fixed gap.--see _gap_. fleming valve.--a two-electrode vacuum tube. forced oscillations.--see _oscillations, forced_. free oscillations.--see _oscillations, free_. frequency, audio.--( ) an alternating current whose frequency is low enough to operate a telephone receiver and, hence, which can be heard by the ear. ( ) audio frequencies are usually around or , cycles per second, but may be as low as and as high as , cycles per second. carrier.--a radio frequency wave modulated by an audio frequency wave which results in setting of _three_ radio frequency waves. the principal radio frequency is called the carrier frequency, since it carries or transmits the audio frequency wave. commercial.--( ) alternating current that is used for commercial purposes, namely, light, heat and power. ( ) commercial frequencies now in general use are from to cycles per second. natural.--the pendulum and vibrating spring have a _natural frequency_ which depends on the size, material of which it is made, and the friction which it has to overcome. likewise an oscillation circuit has a natural frequency which depends upon its _inductance_, _capacitance_ and _resistance_. radio.--( ) an oscillating current whose frequency is too high to affect a telephone receiver and, hence, cannot be heard by the ear. ( ) radio frequencies are usually between , and , , cycles per second but may be as low as , and as high as , , cycles per second. spark.--the number of sparks per second produced by the discharge of a condenser. gap, fixed.--one with fixed electrodes. gap, non-synchronous.--a rotary spark gap run by a separate motor which may be widely different from that of the speed of the alternator. gap, quenched.--( ) a spark gap for the impulse production of oscillating currents. ( ) this method can be likened to one where a spring is struck a single sharp blow and then continues to set up vibrations. gap, rotary.--one having fixed and rotating electrodes. gap, synchronous.--a rotary spark gap run at the same speed as the alternator which supplies the power transformer. such a gap usually has as many teeth as there are poles on the generator. hence one spark occurs per half cycle. gas-content tube.--see _vacuum tube._ generator tube.--a vacuum tube used to set up oscillations. as a matter of fact it does not _generate_ oscillations, but changes the initial low voltage current that flows through it into oscillations. also called an _oscillator tube_ and a _power tube._ grid battery.--see _battery c._ grid characteristics.--the various relations that could exist between the voltages and currents of the grid of a vacuum tube, and the values which do exist between them when the tube is in operation. these characteristics are generally shown by curves. grid condenser.--see _condenser, grid._ grid leak.--a high resistance unit connected in the grid lead of both sending and receiving sets. in a sending set it keeps the voltage of the grid at a constant value and so controls the output of the aerial. in a receiving set it controls the current flowing between the plate and filament. grid modulation.--see _modulation, grid._ grid potential.--the negative or positive voltage of the grid of a vacuum tube. grid voltage.--see _grid potential._ grinders.--the most common form of _static,_ which see. they make a grinding noise in the headphones. ground.--see _earth connection._ ground, amateur.--a water-pipe ground. ground, waterpipe.--a common method of grounding by amateurs is to use the waterpipe, gaspipe or radiator. guided wave telephony.--see _wired wireless._ hard tube.--a vacuum tube in which the vacuum is _high,_ that is, exhausted to a high degree. helix.--( ) any coil of wire. ( ) specifically a transmitter tuning inductance coil. henry.--the inductance in a circuit in which the electromotive force induced is volt when the inducing current varies at the rate of ampere per second. heterodyne reception.--( ) receiving by the _beat_ method. ( ) receiving by means of superposing oscillations generated at the receiving station on the oscillations set up in the aerial by the incoming waves. heterodyne receptor.--see _receptor, heterodyne._ high frequency currents.--see _currents, high frequency._ high frequency resistance.--see _resistance, high frequency._ high potential currents.--see _currents, high potential._ high voltage currents.--see _currents, high potential._ honeycomb coils.--see _coils, inductance._ horse-power.--used in rating steam machinery. it is equal to watts. hot wire ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire._ howling.--where more than three stages of radio amplification, or more than two stages of audio amplification, are used howling noises are apt to occur in the telephone receivers. impedance.--an oscillation circuit has _reactance_ and also _resistance,_ and when these are combined the total opposition to the current is called _impedance._ inductance coils.--see _coils, inductance._ inductance coil, loading.--see _coil, loading inductance._ inductive coupling.--see _coupling, inductive._ inductive reactance.--see _reactance, inductive._ induction coil.--see _coil, induction._ induction, mutual.--induction produced between two circuits or coils close to each other by the mutual interaction of their magnetic fields. insulation.--materials used on and around wires and other conductors to keep the current from leaking away. inspector, radio.--a u. s. inspector whose business it is to issue both station and operators' licenses in the district of which he is in charge. interference.--the crossing or superposing of two sets of electric waves of the same or slightly different lengths which tend to oppose each other. it is the untoward interference between electric waves from different stations that makes selective signaling so difficult a problem. intermediate waves.--see _waves._ ionic tubes.--see _vacuum tubes._ international code.--see code, international. jamming.--waves that are of such length and strength that when they interfere with incoming waves they drown them out. joule.--the energy spent in second by a flow of ampere in ohm. joule's law.--the relation between the heat produced in seconds to the resistance of the circuit, to the current flowing in it. kenotron.--the trade name of a vacuum tube rectifier made by the _radio corporation of america._ kick-back.--oscillating currents that rise in voltage and tend to flow back through the circuit that is supplying the transmitter with low voltage current. kick-back prevention.--see _prevention, kick-back._ kilowatt.-- , watts. lambda.--see pages , . [appendix: useful abbreviations]. lattice wound coils.--see _coils, inductance._ lightning switch.--see _switch, lightning._ line radio communication.--see _wired wireless._ line radio telephony.--see _telephony, line radio._ litzendraht.--a conductor formed of a number of fine copper wires either twisted or braided together. it is used to reduce the _skin effect._ see _resistance, high frequency._ load flicker.--the flickering of electric lights on lines that supply wireless transmitting sets due to variations of the voltage on opening and closing the key. loading coil.--see _coil, loading._ long waves.--see _waves._ loop aerial.--see _aerial, loop._ loose coupled circuits.--see _circuits, loose coupled._ loud speaker.--a telephone receiver connected to a horn, or a specially made one, that reproduces the incoming signals, words or music loud enough to be heard by a room or an auditorium full of people, or by large crowds out-doors. magnetic poles.--see _poles, magnetic._ megohm.--one million ohms. meter, audibility.--an instrument for measuring the loudness of a signal by comparison with another signal. it consists of a pair of headphones and a variable resistance which have been calibrated. mho.--the unit of conductance. as conductance is the reciprocal of resistance it is measured by the _reciprocal ohm_ or _mho._ mica.--a transparent mineral having a high insulating value and which can be split into very thin sheets. it is largely used in making condensers both for transmitting and receiving sets. microfarad.--the millionth part of a _farad._ microhenry.--the millionth part of a _farad._ micromicrofarad.--the millionth part of a _microfarad._ microhm.--the millionth part of an _ohm._ microphone transformer.--see _transformer, microphone._ microphone transmitter.--see _transmitter, microphone._ milli-ammeter.--an ammeter that measures a current by the one-thousandth of an ampere. modulation.--( ) inflection or varying the voice. ( ) varying the amplitude of oscillations by means of the voice. modulation, buzzer.--the modulation of radio frequency oscillations by a buzzer which breaks up the sustained oscillations of a transmitter into audio frequency impulses. millihenry.--the thousandth part of a _henry._ modulation, chopper.--the modulation of radio frequency oscillations by a chopper which breaks up the sustained oscillations of a transmitter into audio frequency impulses. modulation, grid.--the scheme of modulating an oscillator tube by connecting the secondary of a transformer, the primary of which is connected with a battery and a microphone transmitter, in the grid lead. modulation, over.--see _blub blub._ modulation, plate.--modulating the oscillations set up by a vacuum tube by varying the current impressed on the plate. modulator tube.--a vacuum tube used as a modulator. motion, wave.--( ) the to and fro motion of water at sea. ( ) waves transmitted by, in and through the air, or sound waves. ( ) waves transmitted by, in and through the _ether,_ or _electromagnetic waves,_ or _electric waves_ for short. motor-generator.--a motor and a dynamo built to run at the same speed and mounted on a common base, the shafts being coupled together. in wireless it is used for changing commercial direct current into direct current of higher voltages for energizing the plate of a vacuum tube oscillator. multi-stage amplifiers.--see _amplifiers, multi-stage._ mutual induction.--see _induction, mutual._ mush.--irregular intermediate frequencies set up by arc transmitters which interfere with the fundamental wave lengths. mushy note.--a note that is not clear cut, and hence hard to read, which is received by the _heterodyne method_ when damped waves or modulated continuous waves are being received. national electric code.--see _code, national electric._ national electric safety code.--see _code, national electric safety._ negative electricity.--see _electricity, negative._ non-synchronous gap.--see _gap, non-synchronous._ ohm.--the resistance of a thread of mercury at the temperature of melting ice, . grams in mass, of uniform cross-section and a length of . centimeters. ohm's law.--the important fixed relation between the electric current, its electromotive force and the resistance of the conductor in which it flows. open circuit.--see _circuit, open._ open core transformer.--see _transformer, open core._ oscillation transformer.--see _transformer, oscillation._ oscillations, electric.--a current of high frequency that surges through an open or a closed circuit. ( ) electric oscillations may be set up by a spark gap, electric arc or a vacuum tube, when they have not only a high frequency but a high potential, or voltage. ( ) when electric waves impinge on an aerial wire they are transformed into electric oscillations of a frequency equal to those which emitted the waves, but since a very small amount of energy is received their potential or voltage is likewise very small. sustained.--oscillations in which the damping factor is small. damped.--oscillations in which the damping factor is large. free.--when a condenser discharges through an oscillation circuit, where there is no outside electromotive force acting on it, the oscillations are said to be _free._ forced.--oscillations that are made to surge in a circuit whose natural period is different from that of the oscillations set up in it. oscillation transformer.--see _transformer._ oscillation valve.--see _vacuum tube._ oscillator tube.--a vacuum tube which is used to produce electric oscillations. over modulation.--see _blub blub._ pancake oscillation transformer.--disk-shaped coils that are used for receiving tuning inductances. permeability, magnetic.--the degree to which a substance can be magnetized. iron has a greater magnetic permeability than air. phase.--a characteristic aspect or appearance that takes place at the same point or part of a cycle. pick-up circuits.--see _circuits, stand-by._ plate circuit reactor.--see _reactor, plate circuit._ plate current.--see _current, plate._ plate modulation.--see _modulation, plate._ plate voltage.--see _foliage, plate._ poles, battery.--the positive and negative terminals of the elements of a battery. on a storage battery these poles are marked + and - respectively. poles, magnetic.--the ends of a magnet. positive electricity.--see _electricity, positive._ potential difference.--the electric pressure between two charged conductors or surfaces. potentiometer.--a variable resistance used for subdividing the voltage of a current. a _voltage divider._ power transformer.--see _transformer, power._ power tube.--see _generator tube._ primary battery.--see _battery, primary._ prevention, kick-back.--a choke coil placed in the power circuit to prevent the high frequency currents from getting into the transformer and breaking down the insulation. q s t.--an abbreviation used in wireless communication for ( ) the question "have you received the general call?" and ( ) the notice, "general call to all stations." quenched gap.--see _gap, quenched._ radiation.--the emission, or throwing off, of electric waves by an aerial wire system. radio ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire._ radio frequency.--see _frequency, radio._ radio frequency amplification.--see _amplification, radio frequency._ radio frequency current.--see _current, radio frequency._ radio inspector.--see _inspector, radio_. radiotron.--the trade name of vacuum tube detectors, amplifiers, oscillators and modulators made by the _radio corporation of america_. radio waves.--see _waves, radio_. reactance.--when a circuit has inductance and the current changes in value, it is opposed by the voltage induced by the variation of the current. reactance, capacity.--the capacity reactance is the opposition offered to a current by a capacity. it is measured as a resistance, that is, in _ohms_. receiving tuning coils.--see _coils, inductance_. receiver, loud speaking.--see _loud speakers_. receiver, watch case.--a compact telephone receiver used for wireless reception. reactance, inductive.--the inductive reactance is the opposition offered to the current by an inductance coil. it is measured as a resistance, that is, in _ohms_. reactor, filter.--a reactance coil for smoothing out the pulsating direct currents as they come from the rectifier. reactor, plate circuit.--a reactance coil used in the plate circuit of a wireless telephone to keep the direct current supply at a constant voltage. receiver.--( ) a telephone receiver. ( ) an apparatus for receiving signals, speech or music. ( ) better called a _receptor_ to distinguish it from a telephone receiver. rectifier.--( ) an apparatus for changing alternating current into pulsating direct current. ( ) specifically in wireless (_a_) a crystal or vacuum tube detector, and (_b_) a two-electrode vacuum tube used for changing commercial alternating current into direct current for wireless telephony. regenerative amplification.--see _amplification, regenerative_. receptor.--a receiving set. receptor, autodyne.--a receptor that has a regenerative circuit and the same tube is used as a detector and as a generator of local oscillations. receptor, beat.--a heterodyne receptor. receptor, heterodyne.--a receiving set that uses a separate vacuum tube to set up the second series of waves for beat reception. regenerative action.--see _feed-back action._ regenerative amplification.--see _amplification, regenerative._ relay, electron.--a vacuum tube when used as a detector or an amplifier. repeating coil.--a transformer used in connecting up a wireless receiver with a wire transmitter. resistance.--the opposition offered by a wire or other conductor to the passage of a current. resistance, aerial.--the resistance of the aerial wire to oscillating currents. this is greater than its ordinary ohmic resistance due to the skin effect. see _resistance, high frequency._ resistance box.--see _resistor._ resistance coupling.--see _coupling, resistance._ resistance, high frequency.--when a high frequency current oscillates on a wire two things take place that are different than when a direct or alternating current flows through it, and these are ( ) the current inside of the wire lags behind that of the current on the surface, and ( ) the amplitude of the current is largest on the surface and grows smaller as the center of the wire is reached. this uneven distribution of the current is known as the _skin effect_ and it amounts to the same thing as reducing the size of the wire, hence the resistance is increased. resistivity.--the resistance of a given length of wire of uniform cross section. the reciprocal of _conductivity._ resistor.--a fixed or variable resistance unit or a group of such units. variable resistors are also called _resistance boxes_ and more often _rheostats._ resonance.--( ) simple resonance of sound is its increase set up by one body by the sympathetic vibration of a second body. ( ) by extension the increase in the amplitude of electric oscillations when the circuit in which they surge has a _natural_ period that is the same, or nearly the same, as the period of the first oscillation circuit. rheostat.--a variable resistance unit. see _resistor._ rheostat, carbon.--a carbon rod, or carbon plates or blocks, when used as variable resistances. rheostat, filament.--a variable resistance used for keeping the current of the storage battery which heats the filament of a vacuum tube at a constant voltage. rotating coil.--see _coil._ rotary gap.--see _gap._ rotor.--the rotating coil of a variometer or a variocoupler. ruhmkorff coil.--see _coil, induction._ saturation.--the maximum plate current that a vacuum tube will take. sensitive spots.--spots on detector crystals that are sensitive to the action of electric oscillations. short waves.--see _waves._ side waves.--see _wave length band._ signals, conventional.--( ) the international morse alphabet and numeral code, punctuation marks, and a few important abbreviations used in wireless telegraphy. ( ) dot and dash signals for distress call, invitation to transmit, etc. now used for all general public service wireless communication. skin effect.--see _resistance, high frequency._ soft tube.--a vacuum tube in which the vacuum is low, that is, it is not highly exhausted. space charge effect.--the electric field intensity due to the pressure of the negative electrons in the space between the filament and plate which at last equals and neutralizes that due to the positive potential of the plate so that there is no force acting on the electrons near the filament. spark.--see _discharge._ spark coil.--see _coil, induction._ spark discharge.--see _spark, electric._ spark frequency.--see _frequency, spark._ spark gap.--( ) a _spark gap,_ without the hyphen, means the apparatus in which sparks take place; it is also called a _spark discharger._ ( ) _spark-gap,_ with the hyphen, means the air-gap between the opposed faces of the electrodes in which sparks are produced. plain.--a spark gap with fixed electrodes. rotary.--a spark gap with a pair of fixed electrodes and a number of electrodes mounted on a rotating element. quenched.--a spark gap formed of a number of metal plates placed closely together and insulated from each other. spider web inductance coil.--see _coil, spider web inductance._ spreader.--a stick of wood, or spar, that holds the wires of the aerial apart. stagger wound coils.--see _coils, inductance._ stand-by circuits.--see _circuits, stand-by._ static.--also called _atmospherics, grinders, strays, x's,_ and, when bad enough, by other names. it is an electrical disturbance in the atmosphere which makes noises in the telephone receiver. stator.--the fixed or stationary coil of a variometer or a variocoupler. storage battery.--see _battery, storage._ stray elimination.--a method for increasing the strength of the signals as against the strength of the strays. see _static._ strays.--see _static_. stranded wire.--see _wire, stranded_. super-heterodyne receptor.--see _heterodyne, super_. swinging.--see _fading_. switch, aerial.--a switch used to change over from the sending to the receiving set, and the other way about, and connect them with the aerial. switch, lightning.--the switch that connects the aerial with the outside ground when the apparatus is not in use. symbols, apparatus.--also called _conventional symbols_. these are diagrammatic lines representing various parts of apparatus so that when a wiring diagram of a transmitter or a receptor is to be made it is only necessary to connect them together. they are easy to make and easy to read. see page [appendix: symbols used for apparatus]. synchronous gap.--see _gap, synchronous_. telephony, line radio.--see _wired wireless_. thermal ammeter.--see _ammeter, hot wire_. three electrode vacuum tube.--_see vacuum tube, three electrode_. tikker.--a slipping contact device that breaks up the sustained oscillations at the receiving end into groups so that the signals can be heard in the head phones. the device usually consists of a fine steel or gold wire slipping in the smooth groove of a rotating brass wheel. transformer.--a primary and a secondary coil for stepping up or down a primary alternating or oscillating current. a. c.--see _power transformer_. air cooled.--a transformer in which the coils are exposed to the air. air core.--with high frequency currents it is the general practice not to use iron cores as these tend to choke off the oscillations. hence the core consists of the air inside of the coils. auto.--a single coil of wire in which one part forms the primary and the other part the secondary by bringing out an intermediate tap. audio amplifying.--this is a transformer with an iron core and is used for frequencies up to say , . closed core.--a transformer in which the path of the magnetic flux is entirely through iron. power transformers have closed cores. microphone.--a small transformer for modulating the oscillations set up by an arc or a vacuum tube oscillator. oil cooled.--a transformer in which the coils are immersed in oil. open core.--a transformer in which the path of the magnetic flux is partly through iron and partly through air. induction coils have open cores. oscillation.--a coil or coils for transforming or stepping down or up oscillating currents. oscillation transformers usually have no iron cores when they are also called _air core transformers._ power.--a transformer for stepping down a commercial alternating current for lighting and heating the filament and for stepping up the commercial a.c., for charging the plate of a vacuum tube oscillator. radio amplifying.--this is a transformer with an air core. it does not in itself amplify but is so called because it is used in connection with an amplifying tube. transmitter, microphone.--a telephone transmitter of the kind that is used in the bell telephone system. transmitting tuning coils.--see _coils, inductance._ tuning.--when the open and closed oscillation circuits of a transmitter or a receptor are adjusted so that both of the former will permit electric oscillations to surge through them with the same frequency, they are said to be tuned. likewise, when the sending and receiving stations are adjusted to the same wave length they are said to be _tuned._ coarse tuning.--the first adjustment in the tuning oscillation circuits of a receptor is made with the inductance coil and this tunes them coarse, or roughly. fine tuning.--after the oscillation circuits have been roughly tuned with the inductance coil the exact adjustment is obtained with the variable condenser and this is _fine tuning._ sharp.--when a sending set will transmit or a receiving set will receive a wave of given length only it is said to be sharply tuned. the smaller the decrement the sharper the tuning. tuning coils.--see _coils, inductance._ two electrode vacuum tube.--see _vacuum tube, two electrode._ vacuum tube.--a tube with two or three electrodes from which the air has been exhausted, or which is filled with an inert gas, and used as a detector, an amplifier, an oscillator or a modulator in wireless telegraphy and telephony. amplifier.--see _amplifier, vacuum tube._ amplifying modulator.--a vacuum tube used for modulating and amplifying the oscillations set up by the sending set. gas content.--a tube made like a vacuum tube and used as a detector but which contains an inert gas instead of being exhausted. hard.--see _hard tube._ rectifier.--( ) a vacuum tube detector. ( ) a two-electrode vacuum tube used for changing commercial alternating current into direct current for wireless telephony. soft.--see _soft tube._ three electrode.--a vacuum tube with three electrodes, namely a filament, a grid and a plate. two electrode.--a vacuum tube with two electrodes, namely the filament and the plate. valve.--see _vacuum tube._ valve, fleming.--see _fleming valve._ variable condenser.--see _condenser, variable._ variable inductance.--see _inductance, variable._ variable resistance.--see _resistance, variable._ variocoupler.--a tuning device for varying the inductance of the receiving oscillation circuits. it consists of a fixed and a rotatable coil whose windings are not connected with each other. variometer.--a tuning device for varying the inductance of the receiving oscillation currents. it consists of a fixed and a rotatable coil with the coils connected in series. vernier condenser.--see _condenser, vernier._ volt.--the electromotive force which produces a current of ampere when steadily applied to a conductor the resistance of which is one ohm. voltage divider.--see _potentiometer._ voltage, plate.--the voltage of the current that is used to energize the plate of a vacuum tube. voltmeter.--an instrument for measuring the voltage of an electric current. watch case receiver.--see _receiver, watch case._ water-pipe ground.--see _ground, water-pipe._ watt.--the power spent by a current of ampere in a resistance of ohm. wave, broad.--a wave having a high decrement, when the strength of the signals is nearly the same over a wide range of wave lengths. wave length.--every wave of whatever kind has a length. the wave length is usually taken to mean the distance between the crests of two successive waves. wave length band.--in wireless reception when continuous waves are being sent out and these are modulated by a microphone transmitter the different audio frequencies set up corresponding radio frequencies and the energy of these are emitted by the aerial; this results in waves of different lengths, or a band of waves as it is called. wave meter.--an apparatus for measuring the lengths of electric waves set up in the oscillation circuits of sending and receiving sets. wave motion.--disturbances set up in the surrounding medium as water waves in and on the water, sound waves in the air and electric waves in the ether. waves.--see _wave motion_. waves, electric.--electromagnetic waves set up in and transmitted by and through the ether. continuous. abbreviated c.w.--waves that are emitted without a break from the aerial. also called _undamped waves_. discontinuous.--waves that are emitted periodically from the aerial. also called _damped waves_. damped.--see _discontinuous waves_. intermediate.--waves from to , meters in length. long.--waves over , meters in length. radio.--electric waves used in wireless telegraphy and telephony. short.--waves up to meters in length. wireless.--electric waves used in wireless telegraphy and telephony. undamped.--see _continuous waves_. wireless telegraph code.--see _code, international_. wire, enamelled.--wire that is given a thin coat of enamel which insulates it. wire, phosphor bronze.--a very strong wire made of an alloy of copper and containing a trace of phosphorus. wired wireless.--continuous waves of high frequency that are sent over telephone wires instead of through space. also called _line radio communication; carrier frequency telephony, carrier current telephony; guided wave telephony_ and _wired wireless._ x's.--see _static._ zincite.--see _detector._ wireless don'ts aerial wire don'ts _don't_ use iron wire for your aerial. _don't_ fail to insulate it well at both ends. _don't_ have it longer than feet for sending out a -meter wave. _don't_ fail to use a lightning arrester, or better, a lightning switch, for your receiving set. _don't_ fail to use a lightning switch with your transmitting set. _don't_ forget you must have an outside ground. _don't_ fail to have the resistance of your aerial as small as possible. use stranded wire. _don't_ fail to solder the leading-in wire to the aerial. _don't_ fail to properly insulate the leading-in wire where it goes through the window or wall. _don't_ let your aerial or leading-in wire touch trees or other objects. _don't_ let your aerial come too close to overhead wires of any kind. _don't_ run your aerial directly under, or over, or parallel with electric light or other wires. _don't_ fail to make a good ground connection with the water pipe inside. transmitting don'ts _don't_ attempt to send until you get your license. _don't_ fail to live up to every rule and regulation. _don't_ use an input of more than / a kilowatt if you live within nautical miles of a naval station. _don't_ send on more than a -meter wave if you have a restricted or general amateur license. _don't_ use spark gap electrodes that are too small or they will get hot. _don't_ use too long or too short a spark gap. the right length can be found by trying it out. _don't_ fail to use a safety spark gap between the grid and the filament terminals where the plate potential is above , volts. _don't_ buy a motor-generator set if you have commercial alternating current in your home. _don't_ overload an oscillation vacuum tube as it will greatly shorten its life. use two in parallel. _don't_ operate a transmitting set without a hot-wire ammeter in the aerial. _don't_ use solid wire for connecting up the parts of transmitters. use stranded or braided wire. _don't_ fail to solder each connection. _don't_ use soldering fluid, use rosin. _don't_ think that all of the energy of an oscillation tube cannot be used for wave lengths of meters and under. it can be if the transmitting set and aerial are properly designed. _don't_ run the wires of oscillation circuits too close together. _don't_ cross the wires of oscillation circuits except at right angles. _don't_ set the transformer of a transmitting set nearer than feet to the condenser and tuning coil. _don't_ use a rotary gap in which the wheel runs out of true. receiving don'ts _don't_ expect to get as good results with a crystal detector as with a vacuum tube detector. _don't_ be discouraged if you fail to hit the sensitive spot of a crystal detector the first time--or several times thereafter. _don't_ use a wire larger than _no. _ for the wire electrode of a crystal detector. _don't_ try to use a loud speaker with a crystal detector receiving set. _don't_ expect a loop aerial to give worthwhile results with a crystal detector. _don't_ handle crystals with your fingers as this destroys their sensitivity. use tweezers or a cloth. _don't_ imbed the crystal in solder as the heat destroys its sensitivity. use _wood's metal,_ or some other alloy which melts at or near the temperature of boiling water. _don't_ forget that strong static and strong signals sometimes destroy the sensitivity of crystals. _don't_ heat the filament of a vacuum tube to greater brilliancy than is necessary to secure the sensitiveness required. _don't_ use a plate voltage that is less or more than it is rated for. _don't_ connect the filament to a lighting circuit. _don't_ use dry cells for heating the filament except in a pinch. _don't_ use a constant current to heat the filament, use a constant voltage. _don't_ use a vacuum tube in a horizontal position unless it is made to be so used. _don't_ fail to properly insulate the grid and plate leads. _don't_ use more than / of the rated voltage on the filament and on the plate when trying it out for the first time. _don't_ fail to use alternating current for heating the filament where this is possible. _don't_ fail to use a voltmeter to find the proper temperature of the filament. _don't_ expect to get results with a loud speaker when using a single vacuum tube. _don't_ fail to protect your vacuum tubes from mechanical shocks and vibration. _don't_ fail to cut off the a battery entirely from the filament when you are through receiving. _don't_ switch on the a battery current all at once through the filament when you start to receive. _don't_ expect to get the best results with a gas-content detector tube without using a potentiometer. _don't_ connect a potentiometer across the b battery or it will speedily run down. _don't_ expect to get as good results with a single coil tuner as you would with a loose coupler. _don't_ expect to get as good results with a two-coil tuner as with one having a third, or _tickler_, coil. _don't_ think you have to use a regenerative circuit, that is, one with a tickler coil, to receive with a vacuum tube detector. _don't_ think you are the only amateur who is troubled with static. _don't_ expect to eliminate interference if the amateurs around you are sending with spark sets. _don't_ lay out or assemble your set on a panel first. connect it up on a board and find out if everything is right. _don't_ try to connect up your set without a wiring diagram in front of you. _don't_ fail to shield radio frequency amplifiers. _don't_ set the axes of the cores of radio frequency transformers in a line. set them at right angles to each other. _don't_ use wire smaller than _no. _ for connecting up the various parts. _don't_ fail to adjust the b battery after putting in a fresh vacuum tube, as its sensitivity depends largely on the voltage. _don't_ fail to properly space the parts where you use variometers. _don't_ fail to put a copper shield between the variometer and the variocoupler. _don't_ fail to keep the leads to the vacuum tube as short as possible. _don't_ throw your receiving set out of the window if it _howls_. try placing the audio-frequency transformers farther apart and the cores of them at right angles to each other. _don't_ use condensers with paper dielectrics for an amplifier receiving set or it will be noisy. _don't_ expect as good results with a loop aerial, or when using the bed springs, as an out-door aerial will give you. _don't_ use an amplifier having a plate potential of less than volts for the last step where a loud speaker is to be used. _don't_ try to assemble a set if you don't know the difference between a binding post and a blue print. buy a set ready to use. _don't_ expect to get arlington time signals and the big cableless stations if your receiver is made for short wave lengths. _don't_ take your headphones apart. you are just as apt to spoil them as you would a watch. _don't_ expect to get results with a bell telephone receiver. _don't_ forget that there are other operators using the ether besides yourself. _don't_ let your b battery get damp and don't let it freeze. _don't_ try to recharge your b battery unless it is constructed for the purpose. storage battery don'ts _don't_ connect a source of alternating current direct to your storage battery. you have to use a rectifier. _don't_ connect the positive lead of the charging circuit with the negative terminal of your storage battery. _don't_ let the electrolyte get lower than the tops of the plates of your storage battery. _don't_ fail to look after the condition of your storage battery once in a while. _don't_ buy a storage battery that gives less than volts for heating the filament. _don't_ fail to keep the specific gravity of the electrolyte of your storage battery between . and . baume. this you can do with a hydrometer. _don't_ fail to recharge your storage battery when the hydrometer shows that the specific gravity of the electrolyte is close to . . _don't_ keep charging the battery after the hydrometer shows that the specific gravity is . . _don't_ let the storage battery freeze. _don't_ let it stand for longer than a month without using unless you charge it. _don't_ monkey with the storage battery except to add a little sulphuric acid to the electrolyte from time to time. if anything goes wrong with it better take it to a service station and let the expert do it. extra don'ts _don't_ think you have an up-to-date transmitting station unless you are using c.w. _don't_ use a wire from your lightning switch down to the outside ground that is smaller than no. _ _. _don't_ try to operate your spark coil with -volt direct lighting current without connecting in a rheostat. _don't_ try to operate your spark coil with -volt alternating lighting current without connecting in an electrolytic interrupter. _don't_ try to operate an alternating current power transformer with -volt direct current without connecting in an electrolytic interruptor. _don't_--no never--connect one side of the spark gap to the aerial wire and the other side of the spark gap to the ground. the government won't have it--that's all. _don't_ try to tune your transmitter to send out waves of given length by guesswork. use a wavemeter. _don't_ use _hard fiber_ for panels. it is a very poor insulator where high frequency currents are used. _don't_ think you are the only one who doesn't know all about wireless. wireless is a very complex art and there are many things that those experienced have still to learn. the end. the telephone by professor a. e. dolbear _the telephone_ with directions for making a speaking telephone illustrated cents _the art of projecting_ a manual of experimentation in physics, chemistry, and natural history, with the porte lumière and magic lantern new edition revised illustrated $ . _matter, ether, and motion_ the factors and relations of physical science illustrated $ . lee and shepard publishers boston the telephone: an account of the _phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and sound,_ as involved in its action. with directions for making a speaking telephone. by prof. a. e. dolbear, tufts college, author of "the art of projecting," etc. boston: lee & shepard, publishers. copyright, , by a. e. dolbear. preface. the popular exhibitions of the speaking-telephone during the past six months, together with numerous newspaper articles, have created a widespread interest in the instrument; and it has been thought that a small book explanatory of its action would meet a public want. it has seemed to be necessary to call attention to the various phenomena and inter-actions of the forces involved; and hence the author has attempted to make plain and intelligible the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and sound. cuts have been inserted where they could be useful in making the mechanical conditions more intelligible; and a table of tone-composition has been devised, which shows at a glance the constituents of the sounds of various musical instruments. as the speaking-telephone, in which magneto-electric currents were utilized for the transmission of speech and other kinds of sounds, was invented by me, i have described at some length my first instrument, and have also given explicit directions for making a speaking-telephone which i know, by trial, to be as efficient as any hitherto made; but nothing in the book is to be taken as a dedication of the invention to the public, as steps have already been taken to secure letters-patent according to the laws of the united states. a. e. dolbear. college hill, mass. the telephone. electricity. some of the phenomena of electricity are manifested upon so large a scale as to be thrust upon the attention of everybody. thus lightning, which accompanies so many showers in warm weather in almost every latitude, has always excited in some individuals a superstitious awe, as being an exhibition of supernatural agency; and probably every one feels more or less dread of it during a thunder-shower, and this for the reason that it affects so many of the senses at the same time. the flash may be blinding to the eyes if near to us; the thunder may be deafening to the ears, and so powerful as to shake the foundations of the hills, and make the ground upon which we stand to sensibly move: these with the remembered destructive effects that have been witnessed, of buildings demolished and large trees torn to splinters in an instant, are quite sufficient to raise a feeling of dread in the strongest mind. in the polar regions, both north and south, where thunder-storms are less frequent, the atmospheric electricity assumes the form called the aurora borealis, or the aurora australis, according as it is seen north or south of the equator. more than two thousand years ago it was noticed by the greeks that a certain kind of a mineral which was thrown up on the shores of the mediterranean sea, when rubbed would attract light bodies, such as shreds of silk or linen and bits of paper. to this substance they gave the name of elektron, and the property developed thus by friction was afterwards called electricity. in dr. gilbert, physician to queen elizabeth, published a book in which he described numerous experiments demonstrating that electricity could be developed by friction upon a great variety of substances, such as stones, gems, and resins. the first machine for developing electricity was made by otto von guericke of magdeburg, about . his machine consisted of a ball of sulphur about six inches in diameter, which could be rotated. if the dry hand were held against the sulphur while it was being turned in a dark room, the sphere appeared to emit light: it also gave out a peculiar hissing or crackling sound. newton experimented a little with electricity, and noticed that the rubber was an important element in developing electricity. he does not seem to have given to the subject the same attention that he gave to some other departments of science. had he done so, it is probable that he would have advanced the study a hundred years; that is to say, he would probably have left it at the place where it actually was in . so great were his abilities that in one lifetime he made greater additions to human knowledge than all the rest of mankind had made during the preceding thousand years. in the month of june, , franklin made that memorable experiment which immortalized him. he flew his kite to the thunder-cloud, practically asking the question of the lightning whether or not it was identical with electricity. the lightning came down the wetted twine to his hand, and proclaimed its identity. for the next forty years the natural philosophers in both europe and america only rung the changes upon what was known. they flew kites to the clouds; they made and charged leyden jars, and discharged them through wires and chains and circuits of clasped hands, and studied the attractions and repulsions manifested by electrified bodies; but they added nothing of importance in the way of experiments. in galvani, a professor of anatomy at bologna, announced a manifestation of electricity that was new and of a remarkable character, having its origin in the muscles of animals, and so was called animal electricity. he had some frogs' legs prepared for eating; by chance they were placed near an electrical machine with which galvani was experimenting, so that a spark would occasionally pass to the legs, when they would contract as often as a spark passed to them. the motion was first observed by his wife, who called his attention to the phenomenon; and he very soon discovered that the thighs of a frog, skinned and suspended, made a very good electroscope. while experimenting in this way he made another and more important discovery; namely, that, when the muscles and nerves of the frog's leg were touched by pieces of two different metals, the leg would contract as before. alexander volta, another italian professor, who had invented the electrophorus, and was possessed of great experimental skill, now turned his attention to the experiment of galvani, and very soon discovered that the origin of the electricity that moved the frogs' legs was not in the legs themselves, but in the metals used. the first form of the galvanic battery was the result of volta's investigations, and was called the voltaic pile. this pile consisted of alternate disks of zinc, flannel, and copper, piled one on top of the other in constant succession in that order. the flannel was moistened with salt and water, or with diluted sulphuric acid. when the first zinc was connected with the last copper by means of a wire, a powerful current of electricity was obtained. this form of battery is not in use at all now, as much more efficient means are known for producing electricity; but this in , when it was first made known in england, was very startling, and was one of those surprises which have been so frequent since then in the history of electricity. surprising things were done by sir humphry davy, with a large voltaic battery. water was decomposed, and the metals potassium and sodium were first separated from their compounds with oxygen. bonaparte had offered a prize of sixty thousand francs "to the person who by his experiments and discoveries should advance the knowledge of electricity and galvanism as much as franklin and volta did," and of "three thousand francs for the best experiments which should be made in each year on the galvanic fluid." this latter prize was awarded to davy. after davy's successes in , there was nothing of importance in an experimental way added to the knowledge of electricity, until , when oersted of copenhagen announced that "the conducting wire of a voltaic circuit acts upon a magnetic needle," and that the needle tends to set itself at right angles to the wire. this was a kind of action altogether unexpected. this observation was of the utmost importance; and at once the philosophers in europe and america set themselves to inquire into the new phenomenon. the laws of the motion of the magnetic needle when acted upon by a current of electricity traversing a wire were successfully investigated by m. ampère of the french academy. he observed that whenever a wire through which a current of electricity was passing was held over and parallel with a magnetic needle which was free to move, and therefore pointed to the north, if the current was moving _towards_ the north, the north pole was deflected to the west; if the current was moving towards the south, the south pole of the magnet was deflected towards the west; and that in all cases the magnet tended to set itself at right angles to the current; also that this angular displacement depended upon the strength of the current. thus originated the _galvanometer_, an instrument that not only detects the existence of an electric current, but enables us to determine its direction and its strength. our present knowledge of electrical laws is due, in a very large measure, to observations made with this instrument. of course it has been very much modified, and made almost incredibly sensitive: yet, in all galvanometers, the fundamental principle involved in their structure is that of the action of a current of electricity upon a magnet, which was first noticed by oersted. magnets. it is related by nicander that among the shepherds who tended their flocks upon the sides of mount ida was one named magnes, who noticed, that, while taking his herds to pasture, his shepherd's crook adhered to some of the rocks. from this man's name some have supposed the name _magnet_ to have been derived. it is, however, generally believed to have received its name from the ancient city of magnesia in asia minor, near which the loadstone or magnetic substance was found. this rock, which possesses the remarkable property of attracting and holding to itself small pieces of iron or steel, is now known to be one of the ores of iron, and is called magnetite by mineralogists. the iron is chemically combined with oxygen, and forms . per cent of its weight. there is another ore of iron, known as hematite, which contains seventy per cent of iron; but the difference of two and a half per cent of iron in the ore is enough to make the difference between a magnetically inert substance, and one which may be able to lift a mass of iron equal to many times its own weight. sir isaac newton is said to have worn in a finger-ring a small loadstone weighing three grains, which would lift seven hundred and fifty grains, which is equal to two hundred and fifty times its own weight. the most powerful magnet now known is owned by m. obelliane of paris. it can lift forty times its own weight. large pieces, however, do not support proportionally greater weights, seldom more than one or two times their own weight. there are in many places in the world immense beds of magnetic iron-ore. such are to be found in the adirondack region in northern new york, and in chester county, pennsylvania. the celebrated iron-mines of sweden consist of it, and in lapland there are several large mountains of it. it must not be inferred, that, because the mineral is called magnetite, all specimens possess the property called magnetism. the large masses seldom manifest any such force, any more than ordinary pieces of iron or steel manifest it: yet any of it will be attracted by a magnet in the same way as iron will be. the most powerful native magnets are found in siberia, and in the hartz, a range of mountains in northern germany. when a piece of this magnetically endowed ore is placed in a mass of iron-filings, it will be seen that the filings adhere to it in greatest quantity upon two opposite ends or sides, and these are named the poles of the magnet. if the piece be suspended by a string so as to turn freely, it will invariably come to rest with the same pole turned towards the north; and this pole is therefore called the north pole of the magnet, and the action is called the directive action. this directive action was known to the chinese more than three thousand years ago. in traversing those vast steppes of tartary they employed magnetic cars, in which was the figure of a man, whose movable, outstretched arm always pointed to the south. dr. gilbert affirms that the compass was brought from china to italy in , by a traveller named paulus venetus. when a piece of hardened steel is rubbed upon a natural magnet, it acquires the same directive property; and, as the steel could be easily shaped into a convenient form for use, a steel needle has generally been used for the needle of a compass. the directive power of the magnet has been and still is of incalculable value to all civilized nations. ocean navigation would be impossible without it, and territorial boundaries are fixed by means of it; but there are other properties and relations of a magnet, which have been discovered within the last fifty years, which are destined to be as important to mankind as that of the compass has been. in william sturgeon of woolwich, eng., discovered that if a copper wire were wound around a piece of soft iron, and a current of electricity sent through the wire, the soft iron would become a magnet, but would retain its magnetism no longer than while the current of electricity was passing through the coil. the magnetism developed in this way was called electro-magnetism, and the iron so wound was called an electro-magnet. the first electro-magnet was made by winding bare wire upon the soft iron. this method will not produce very strong magnets. in prof. henry insulated the wire by covering it with silk, and was the first to produce powerful magnets. on a soft iron bar of fifty-nine pounds weight he used twenty-six coils of wire, thirteen on each leg, all joined to a common conductor by their opposite ends, and having an aggregate length of seven hundred and twenty-eight feet. this apparatus was found able to sustain a weight of twenty-five hundred pounds. this electro-magnet is now owned by yale college. the power of the electro-magnet is enormously greater than that of any permanent magnet. a permanent magnet made by jamin of paris, which is made up of many strips of thin steel bound together, and weighing four pounds, is able to support a weight of one hundred pounds; but dr. joule made an electro-magnet, by arranging the coils to advantage, that would support thirty-five hundred times its own weight, or one hundred and forty times the proportionate load of sir isaac newton's ring magnet. the galvanic battery. the original form of the galvanic battery as devised by volta, and modified but little during thirty years, consisted of a cell to contain a fluid, which was usually dilute sulphuric acid, in which two plates of different metals were immersed: the metals used were generally plates of zinc and copper, or zinc and silver. such plates, when first placed in the liquid, will give a very good current of electricity; but it will not last long. the reason of this is easy to understand. whenever a current of electricity is generated by chemical action of a liquid upon two different metals, there is always some decomposition of the liquid, and this decomposition takes place upon the plates themselves; and the liberated gases _adhere to the plates, and prevent further contact with the acid_; at the same time, the gases themselves act upon the plates, and generate a current of electricity in the opposite direction. this will of course interfere with the first current; and very soon the battery is useless until the plates have been withdrawn from the liquid. this physico-chemical process that takes place in such a battery is called the _polarization of the plates_. [illustration: fig. .] the accompanying figure will help one to understand the actions going on in a battery cell of the kind mentioned. let pt represent a plate of platinum, and zn a plate of zinc, both placed in a vessel containing hydrochloric acid, which is also represented by the symbols hcl. as such molecules are extremely minute, there will of course be an immense number of them between the plates. the plates are now to be connected by a wire running between them through the air. as soon as these conditions are fulfilled, a hissing sound will be heard coming from the cell, and bubbles of gas will be seen to rise from the platinum plate: these bubbles prove upon analysis to be bubbles of hydrogen. at the same time the zinc will begin to dissolve, forming what proves by analysis to be the chloride of zinc; and at the same time a current of electricity travels through the wire from the platinum to the zinc. the quantity of electricity that is thus generated is strictly proportionate to the quantity of hydrogen liberated, which is also proportionate to the weight of zinc dissolved; and this, in turn, is proportionate to the surface of the metals exposed to the action of the acid. now, it happens under such circumstances as the above, that the liberated hydrogen adheres very strongly to the platinum, as there is nothing for it to unite with chemically; and therefore the plate will very soon be visibly covered with bubbles, which may be scraped off with a feather or a swab, but only to have the same thing repeated. this coating of bubbles will prevent the acid from touching the plate, and so practically diminishes the surface of it; but the quantity of electricity generated being proportionate to the surface exposed to the chemical action, it will be understood at once how such polarization of the plates must soon bring the battery to a standstill. in prof. j. f. daniell of london contrived a battery, which has been called the daniell cell, in which the metal (copper) that had the hydrogen liberated upon it was separated by a porous cell from the zinc. the zinc was immersed in dilute sulphuric acid, and the copper in an acid solution of blue vitriol (copper sulphate). the porous cup did not prevent the electricity from passing, nor the decomposition from taking place; but the hydrogen, which in this case would have been liberated at the copper plate, at once united with oxygen there, which it got by decomposing the copper sulphate: hence water was formed, and copper was deposited upon the copper plate; and, being an excellent conductor, the battery would keep up a strong action for a long time. mr. grove, also of london, in invented a battery which still goes by his name, in which the hydrogen plate is of platinum immersed in strong nitric acid, enclosed also in a porous earthen cell; and this, in turn, is plunged into a vessel containing dilute sulphuric acid and the zinc. in this case the liberated hydrogen immediately decomposes the nitric acid, which readily parts with its oxygen; water is the product, as in the other case, and the nitric acid loses strength. strips of carbon have been substituted for the platinum, and this is called the bunsen battery. it is otherwise like the grove battery; it gives a very powerful and constant current and it is by the use of one or the other of these batteries, that most of the experiments in electricity are performed in institutions of learning, and, until lately, most in use for telegraphic purposes. other means for generating electricity. thermo-electricity. if two strips of different metals, such as silver and iron, be soldered together at one end, and the other ends be connected with a galvanometer, on heating the soldered junction of the metals it will be found that a current of electricity traverses the circuit from the iron to the silver. if other metals be used, having the same size, and the same degree of heat be applied, the current of electricity thus generated will give a greater or a less deflection, which will be constant for the metals employed. the two metals generally employed are bismuth and antimony, in bars about an inch long and an eighth of an inch square. these are soldered together in series so as to present for faces the ends of the bars, and these often number as many as fifty pairs. such a series is called a thermo-pile. this method of generating electricity was discovered by seebeck of berlin in , but the thermo-pile so much in use now in heat investigations was invented by nobili in . the strength of this current is not very great, a single daniell cell being equal to nine pairs of the strongest combination yet discovered, namely, the artificial sulphuret of copper with german silver. magneto-electricity. [illustration: fig. .] it has already been mentioned, that oersted found that a magnet when free to turn tended to set itself at right angles to a wire in which a current of electricity was passing, thus demonstrating some inter-action between electricity and magnetism; but it remained for faraday to discover the converse fact, namely, that a magnet moving across a wire, the ends of which were connected with a galvanometer or otherwise closed, originated a current of electricity in the wire, the direction of which depended upon the direction of the movement of the magnet. if the wire was coiled into a hollow helix, the magnet in moving through the helix moved across, that is, at right angles to all the turns of the helix; and each complete turn added to the intensity of the current. this will be understood by reference to the diagram, fig. . let g be a galvanometer connected with the wires from a helix; n s, a permanent bar magnet. if the magnet be thrust into the coil, a current of electricity will traverse the helix, wire, and galvanometer, and the needle will indicate its direction. if the magnet be now withdrawn, a current will move in the opposite direction through the whole circuit. the electricity that is thus originated is said to be induced. the quantity of electricity that can be induced thus is almost unlimited, depending upon the size and strength of the magnet, the size of the wire, and the length of wire in the coil. there are now many forms of machines for developing electricity from the motion of coils of wire in front of the poles of permanent magnets. they are generally called magneto-electric machines. the action involved in these machines is so important in its bearing upon telephony as to necessitate a fuller description of them. magnetic induction. [illustration: fig. .] let n s, fig. , be a bar of hardened steel rendered permanently magnetic. if now there be brought near to it a board-nail, the latter will become a magnet through the _inductive_ action of the first magnet. this induced magnetism may be demonstrated by bringing a tack or other bit of iron to the end that is farthest from the permanent magnet; the tack will adhere to the nail, but will fall off when the nail is removed from the neighborhood of the magnet. by testing the polarity of the nail, it will be found that the end nearest the magnet will be a south pole if the magnet has its north pole towards it, in all cases having a polarity opposite to that of the pole acting upon it. the strength of this induced magnetism thus developed depends upon the distance apart of the magnet and the iron, being at its maximum when the two touch. but the tack itself is also made a magnet, and will attract another tack, and that one still another, the number which can be thus supported being dependent upon the strength of the first or inducing magnet. suppose now that we should wind a few feet of wire about the nail, and fasten the two ends of the wire to an ordinary galvanometer, and then make the nail to approach the permanent magnet. the galvanometer needle would be seen to move as the nail approached; and, if the latter were allowed to touch the magnet, the movement of the needle would suddenly be much hastened, but would directly come to rest, showing that, so long as there is no motion of the nail towards or away from the magnet, no electricity is moving in the wire, although the nail is a strong magnet while it is in contact with the permanent magnet. if the nail be now withdrawn, the two phenomena happen as before: that is to say, as the nail recedes it loses its magnetism; and the giving-up of its magnetism induces a current of electricity through the wire in the opposite direction to that it had when the nail approached. the current of electricity in the opposite direction is indicated by the galvanometer needle, which moves according to ampère's law mentioned on a preceding page. it may be noted here that we have an effect quite analogous to that already mentioned on page as the experiment of faraday. in one case a permanent magnet is thrust into a coil of wire, and in the other a piece of iron is made a magnet while enclosed in a coil. in each case there is generated a current of electricity _which lasts no longer than the mechanical motion of the parts lasts_. magneto-electric machines. such transient currents are practically useless, and several devices have been invented to make the flow continuous. the common form of machine for doing this may be understood by reference to the diagram. [illustration: fig. .] n s, fig. , is the permanent magnet, which is bent into a u form in order to utilize both poles. n´ and s´ are short rods of soft iron fastened into a yoke-piece y, also of soft iron. coils of wire surround each of the rods as represented, the ends of the wires connecting with each other and with what is called a pole-changer. the whole of this part is capable of revolving upon an axis p y by a pulley at p. the action is as follows: from their position, the soft-iron rods n´ s´ must be magnets through the inductive action of the permanent magnet, just as the nail was made a magnet in like position. so long as the parts have the relative position shown in the figure, and there is no motion, no electricity can be developed; but, if the axis p y be turned, s´, which represents the polarity of the rod opposite n, will be losing its induced magnetism; and, when half a revolution has been made, that same pole will be where n´ now is; but it will then have n´ polarity instead of s´; that is, it has been losing south polarity as it receded from n, and gaining north polarity as it approached s: hence a current of electricity has steadily been flowing through the coil in one direction. at the same time, the other rod n´ has passed through similar phases; and its enveloping coil has had a current of electricity induced in it in the same direction as in the first coil. this doubles the intensity of the current; and the whole is conducted by the connecting-wires where the current is wanted. machines have been built upon this plan, that contained fifty or sixty powerful compound permanent magnets, and as many wire coils, needing a steam-engine of eight or ten horse-power to run them. a less cumbersome and much more efficient magneto-electric machine has been made by changing the form of the soft iron armature to something like a shuttle, and winding the wire inside of it. this is called the "siemen's armature." the latest pattern of such machines is known as the _gramme_; and its peculiarity consists in the substitution of a broad ring of soft iron for the armature. about this ring a good many coils, of equal lengths, of insulated copper wire are wound in such a manner that one-half of any turn in the wire goes through the inside of the ring, making the coils longitudinal. the whole of the armature thus prepared is fixed upon a shaft, so as to permit rotation, and fixed between the poles of a powerful jamin magnet. the ends of the coils are connected with conductors upon the axis; and, when the armature thus constructed is rotated, a very constant and powerful current of electricity flows in a single direction, unlike the other forms. it is stated, that, with one-horse power, a light can be obtained equal to that from a battery of fifty grove cells. secondary currents. so long ago as it was noticed by prof. page of salem, that, whenever a current of electricity was made to flow in a coil of wire, another current in the opposite direction was induced in a coil that was parallel with the first; and also, when the current in the first was broken, another current in the second coil would flow in the opposite direction to the former one. these currents, which are called secondary currents, are very transient. no current at all flows save at the instant of making or breaking the current. in this respect, we are reminded of the behavior of the soft iron within the coil, which gives origin to a current of electricity when it is made to approach a magnet or recede from it, but gives no current so long as it is still. these secondary currents were investigated by prof. henry, resulting in the discovery of many curious and interesting phenomena. it will be sufficient here for me to refer to what are called induction coils, which are developments of the principles involved in electro-magnetism and electro-induction. imagine a rod of soft iron of any size to be wound with a coil of wire, the ends of the wire to be so left that they may be connected with a galvanic battery. around this coil let another coil be wound of very fine and well-insulated wire; the terminal wires of it to be left adjustable to any distance from each other. now, upon making connection with a battery to the primary coil, there will be two results produced simultaneously. first, the soft iron will be rendered magnetic; and, second, a current of electricity will be generated in the secondary coil; and the strength of this secondary current is very much increased by the inductive action of the soft iron that has been made a magnet. when the battery current is broken, the iron loses its magnetism, and a current of electricity is again started in the secondary coil in the opposite direction. the energy of this derived current is so great that it will jump some distance through the air, and thus is apparently unlike the electricity that originates in a battery. an induction coil made by mr. ritchie for the stevens institute at hoboken, n.j., has a primary coil of feet of no. wire. the secondary coil is over fifty miles in length, and is made of no. wire, which is but . of an inch in diameter. this instrument has given a spark twenty-one inches in length, with three large cells of a bichromate battery. mr. spottiswood of london has just had completed for him the largest induction coil ever made. it has two primary coils, one containing sixty-seven pounds of wire, and the other eighty-four pounds, the wire being . inch in diameter. the secondary coil is two hundred and eighty miles long, and has , turns. this coil is made in three parts, the diameter of the wire in the first part being . inch; of the second part, . ; and the third part, . . with five grove cells this induction coil has given a spark forty-two inches long, and has perforated glass three inches thick. the electricity thus developed in secondary coils is of the same character as that developed by friction; and all of the experiments usually performed with the latter may be repeated with the former, many of them being greatly heightened in beauty and interest. such, for instance, are the discharges in vacuo in geisler tubes, exhibiting stratifications, fluorescence, phosphorescence, the production of ozone in great quantity, decomposition of chemical compounds, &c. the electricity developed by friction upon glass, wax, resin, and other so-called non-conductors, has heretofore been called static electricity, for the reason that when it was once originated upon a surface it would remain upon it for an indefinite time, or until some conducting body touched it, and thus gave it a way of escape. thus, a cake of wax if rubbed with a piece of flannel, or struck with a cat-skin or a fox-tail becomes highly electrified, and in a dry atmosphere will remain so for months. common air has, however, always a notable quantity of moisture in it; and, as water is a conductor of electricity, such damp air moving over the electrified surface will carry off very soon all the electricity. again, the electricity developed through chemical action in a battery and through the inter-action of magnets and coils of wire has been called dynamic electricity, inasmuch as it never appeared to exist save when it was in motion in a completed circuit. this, however, is not true; for if one of the wires from a galvanic battery be connected with the earth, and the other wire be attached to a delicate electrometer, it will be found that the latter gives evidence of electrical excitement in the same manner as it does for the electricity developed by friction in another body. this is sometimes called _tension_, and is very slight for a single cell; but in a series of cells it becomes noticeable in other ways. thus when the terminals of a single cell are taken in the hands, no effect is perceived: if, however, the terminals of a battery consisting of forty or fifty cells be thus taken, a decided shock is felt, not to be compared though with the shock that would be felt from the discharge of a very small leyden jar. the shock from several hundred cells would be very dangerous. it was formerly doubted that the electricity would pass between the terminals of a battery without actual contact of the terminals. gassiot first showed that the spark would jump between the wires of a battery of a large number of cells before actual contact was made. latterly mr. de la rue has been measuring the distance across which the spark would jump, using a battery of a large number of cells. i give his table as taken from the "proceedings of the royal society:"-- cells. striking distance. . inch. , . " , . " , . " this table shows that the striking distance is very nearly as the square of the number of cells. thus, with cells the spark jumped . inch; and with double the number of cells, , , the spark jumped . inch, or within . of an inch as far as four times the first distance. this leads one to ask how big a battery would be needed to give a spark of any given length, say like a flash of lightning. one cell would give a spark . inch long, and a hundred thousand would give a spark inches long. a million cells would give a spark feet long, a veritable flash of lightning. it is hardly probable that so many as a million cells will ever be made into one connected battery, but it is not improbable that a hundred thousand cells may be. de la rue has since completed , cells, and finds that the striking distance of that number is . inch, a little more than one-third of an inch. he also states that the striking distance increases faster than the above indicated ratio, as determined by experimenting with a still larger number of cells. these experiments and many others show that there is no essential difference between the so-called static and dynamic electricity. in the one case it is developed upon a surface which has such a molecular character that it cannot be conducted away, every surface molecule being practically a little battery cell with one terminal free in the air, so that when a proper conductor approaches the surface it receives the electricity from millions of cells, and therefore becomes strongly electrified so that a spark may at once be drawn from it. what is electricity? theories. numerous attempts have been made to explain the phenomena of electricity. as a general thing, these phenomena are so utterly unlike other phenomena that have been explained and are easily intelligible, that it has quite generally been taken for granted, until lately, that something very different from ordinary matter and the laws of forces applicable to it must be involved in the phenomena themselves. consequently the term _imponderable_ was applied to it,--something that was matter minus some of the essentials of matter; and as it was apparent that, whatever it was, it moved, apparently flowed, from one place to another, the term _fluid_ was applied to it, a term descriptive of a certain form of matter. imponderable fluid was the descriptive name applied to electricity. newton supposed that an excited body emitted such a fluid that could penetrate glass. when the two facts of electrical attraction and repulsion had to be accounted for, two theories were propounded,--one by benjamin franklin, the other by dufay. franklin supposed that electricity was a subtle, imponderable fluid, of which all bodies contained a certain normal quantity. by friction or otherwise this normal quantity was disturbed. if a body received more than its due share, it was said to be positively electrified: if it had less than its normal quantity, it was said to be negatively electrified. franklin supposed this electric fluid to be highly self-repulsive, and that it powerfully attracted the particles of matter. according to dufay, there are two electric fluids, opposite in tendency but equal in amount. when associated together in equal quantities, they neutralize each other completely. a portion of this neutral compound fluid pervades all matter in its unexcited state. by friction or otherwise this compound fluid is decomposed, the rubber and the body rubbed exchanging equal quantities of opposite kinds with each other, leaving one of them positively, the other negatively electrified. these two fluids were supposed to be self-repulsive, but to attract each other: so that, if two bodies be charged with either positive or negative electricity, such bodies would mutually repel each other; but if one was charged with positive, while the other was charged with negative electricity, the two bodies would mutually attract each other. either of these two theories may be used to illustrate the phenomena, and so have done good service in systematizing the facts. it is evident that both of them cannot be true, and it is in the highest degree probable that neither of them is true. some have supposed that there was a kind of electric atmosphere about every atom of matter; and still another theory, now advocated by edlund of stockholm, assumes that electricity is identical with the ether by which radiant energy, light and heat, is transmitted. before a correct judgment can be formed of the nature of any force, it is necessary to know what it can do, what kind of phenomena it can produce. let us, then, take a brief survey of what electricity can do. st, it can directly produce _motion_, through the attractions and repulsions of electrified bodies,--as indicated by electrometers, the rotation of the fly-wheel, the deflection of the galvanometer needle. it has been proved by the mathematical labors of clausius, and confirmed by experiment, that, when electricity performs any mechanical work, so much electricity is lost, annihilated as electricity. d, it can directly produce _heat_, as shown by passing a sufficient quantity of electricity through a fine platinum wire: the wire becomes heated, and glows, and it may even be fused by the intensity of the heat. the heat developed in the so-called electric arc is so great as to fuse the most refractory substances. if a current of electricity from a battery be sent through a thermo-pile, one of the faces of the pile will be heated. the heat of the spark from a leyden jar may be made to ignite gunpowder, and dissipate gold into vapor. the heat produced by lightning is seen when a live tree is struck by a powerful flash: the sap of the tree is instantly converted into steam of so high a tension as to explode the tree, scattering it in small fragments over a wide area. the tips of lightning-rods often exhibit this heating effect, being fused by the passage of too great a quantity of electricity. in the early part of the present century it was demonstrated by count rumford, and also by sir humphry davy, that heat was but a form of molecular motion. since then the exact relations between the motion of a mass of matter and the equivalent heat have been experimentally determined by joule, so that the unit of heat may be expressed in the motion of a mass of matter. this is deducible from a more general law, known as the conservation of energy. the application in this place is, that whenever heat appears through electric action, as in the above-mentioned places, we know that it still is only _motion_ that is the product, only that this motion is now among the molecules of the body, instead of the motion of the whole body in space, as when a pith-ball moves, or a galvanometer-needle turns. d, it can directly produce _light_. this is seen in every spark from an electric machine, in the flash of lightning, and in the electric light. it has been shown in numberless ways, that there is no essential difference between light and heat, and that what we call light is only the active relation which certain rays of radiant energy have to the eyes. in order to make this plain, suppose that a beam of light, say from the sun, be permitted to fall upon a triangular prism of glass: at once it is seen that the beam is deflected, and instead of appearing a spot of white light, as it did before it was deflected, it now appears as a brilliant band of colors, which is called the solar spectrum. if now this spectrum be examined as to the distribution of heat, by moving a thermo-pile through it from the blue end towards the red end, it will be noticed that the galvanometer-needle will be but slightly deflected at the blue end; but, as the thermo-pile is moved, the deflections are greater until it is past the red end, where the heat is greatest. on this account it has been customary to say that the red end of the spectrum was the heating end. with various pieces of mechanism the rays may be separated from each other, and measured; and then it appears that a red ray of light has a wave length of about / in., and the violet ray about / in. the rays beyond the red have also been measured, and found to be greater in length uniformly as one recedes from the visible part of the spectrum. in like manner, beyond the blue end the wave lengths become shorter and shorter; and in each of these directions the spectrum that is invisible is much longer than the visible one. now, it has also been found that where a prism of glass or other material is used to produce a spectrum, it distributes the rays very unevenly; that is, towards the red end of the spectrum they are very much crowded, while towards the blue end they are more dispersed. hence, if one were measuring the heating power of such a spectrum, many more rays would fall upon an equal surface of the thermo-pile at the red end than at the blue end; therefore the indications of the galvanometer would be fallacious. before any thing definite could be known about the matter, it would plainly be necessary to work with an equal dispersion of all the rays. this was effected a few years ago by dr. draper of new york. he took the spectrum produced by diffraction instead of refraction, and measured that. in that way it was found that the heating power of the spectrum is equal in every part of it; and hence the pictures in treatises on physics that represent the heating power of the spectrum to be concentrated at the red end is not true save where the spectrum is irregularly produced. as for vision, the mechanical structure of the eye is such that radiant vibrations having a wave length between / in. and / in. can affect it, while longer or shorter wave lengths can not. such waves we call light, but it is not at all improbable that some animals and insects have eyes adapted to either longer or shorter wave-lengths; in which case, what would be perfectly dark to us would be light to them. it is a familiar enough fact, that many animals, such as dogs, cats, rats, and mice, can see in the night. some horses may be trusted to keep in the road in a dark night, when the driver cannot see even the horse itself. this has usually been accounted for by saying that their eyes are constructed so as to collect a greater number of luminous rays. it is much better explained by supposing their eyes to be constructed to respond to wave-lengths either greater or less than those of mankind. a ray of light, then, consists of a single line of undulations of a definite wave length, such that if it falls upon the eye it will produce sight; if it falls upon a thermo-pile it heats it by just the same quantity that another wave-length would heat it; if it falls upon matter in unstable chemical relations, it will do chemical work, depending upon the kinds of matter. a red ray is as effective for some substances as a violet ray is for others. the statement, then, so often lately made to do certain analogical work, namely, that a ray of light consists of three distinct parts, which may be separated from each other, and are called heat, light, and chemical properties, is simply untrue. what a ray will do, depends upon what kind of a structure it falls on; and when it has done that work, of whatever kind it may be, it ceases to exist as a ray. if, therefore, electricity can directly produce light, it is simply producing _motion_, as in the case of heat, the motion being of such a sort that the eyes of men are affected by it. th, it can produce _magnetism_. a current of electricity passing through a coil of wire makes such a coil a magnet, which will set itself in the direction of the magnetic meridian of the earth; and, if a bar of soft iron be placed in the coil, it becomes the familiar electro-magnet; and, if hardened steel be put in it, it becomes a permanent magnet. this leads to the inquiry as to what magnetism is. we know that it can produce motion by its moving at a distance a piece of iron or another magnet. it will also sustain a mass of matter against gravity or some other contrary force. through such mechanism as magneto-electric machines it produces electricity in great abundance, which again can be used to produce any of the effects of electricity,--moving bodies by attraction or repulsion, generating heat or light, or again making a magnet. but as all of these are but varied forms of motion, either of a mass as a whole, or molecular, can it be doubted for an instant, that what we call magnetism is but some form of motion? must it not be either some form of matter, or some form of motion? if it were a form of matter, then a magnet would only be permanent so long as it was not used; for use implies consumption of the force; and, if this be matter in any form, then in a given mass of matter there can be but a definite quantity of such magnetic matter, and consumption must lessen that quantity. as a matter of fact, there is no perceptible lessening of the power of a magnet when it is properly used. it is also a matter of fact, that neither motion of a mass, nor electrical effects, nor any other, can be produced by the action of a magnet alone. it is only when some form of motion has been added to its own property, that we get any kind of an effect from it: hence all effects due to its action are _resultants_ of two forces, one of them being common motion of a mass of matter, and the other the energy of the magnet. hence we infer that a magnet is a mechanism of such a structure as to change the direction and character of the motion which acts upon it. when the wheel of a common electrical machine is turned, the product is electricity,--a force very different from that which originates it. ordinary mechanical motion _goes in_; electricity _comes out_, the latter being a modified motion due to the physical structure of the machine. in like manner, a magnet may be considered as a machine by means of which mechanical motion may be converted into some other form of motion. it is evident that molecular structure is chiefly concerned in this. if a bar of iron that exhibits no evidence of magnetism whatever be subjected to torsion, it will immediately become a magnet with poles dependent upon the direction of the twist. this developed magnetism will re-act upon a coil of wire, and so move a galvanometer needle. if the bar be permitted to recover its original condition, it will lose its magnetism, which will at once re-appear upon twisting the rod again. now, when the rod is twisted, it is evident that there is a molecular strain in certain directions throughout the mass. the converse experiment illustrates the same thing. it has been found, that when a rod of iron is made magnetic by the action of a current of electricity circulating about it, and at the same time passing longitudinally through it, the rod is slightly lengthened and twisted in a direction that depends upon the direction of the current. moreover, if a permanent magnet be heated to a red heat, its magnetism is destroyed; for such a heat allows the molecules to freely arrange themselves without any external constraint. also, if a permanent magnet be suspended so as to give out a musical sound when it is struck, the magnetism will be much weakened by making it thus to vibrate. in this case, as in the other, the vibrations affect every molecule, and so enable them to re-adjust themselves to the positions they held before being magnetized. the same thing happens when a bar of iron is made magnetic through the inductive action of the earth. when this bar is held in the direction of the magnetic dip, it becomes but very slightly magnetized; but, if it be so held that when it is struck with a hammer it will ring, that is, give out a musical sound, it will at once become decidedly magnetic. evidently the earth's action tends to set the molecules of the mass in a new position, but cohesion prevents them from assuming it. when the molecules are made to vibrate, they can assume such new positions more readily. the molecules of a magnet, then, are differently arranged from those in an unmagnetized piece of iron or steel; and, for every new arrangement of the molecules of a mass of any kind, we always have some new physical property developed. the same identical substance may appear as charcoal, coke, plumbago, anthracite coal, and diamond. hence a magnet is a machine in which other forces acting upon it are transformed in character, and re-appear as attractions and repulsions of other kinds of matter: this transformation cannot take place, and hence magnetism cannot become apparent, only upon the condition of another force acting in concert with it; and, if at any time it may seem to be acting without such external force, it is done at the expense of the heat it has absorbed, and therefore the magnet must at such time be losing temperature proportional to the work done. this i have discovered to be true by making a magnet to exert its force in front of a thermo-pile, which uniformly exhibits a cooled face under such conditions. what the particular form of the motion may be that we call magnetism, is not yet made out; but that it is some form of motion, is very evident. the following experiments may throw some light upon it. last august mr. kerr read a paper before the british association of science, in which was detailed the following experiment: the pole of an electro-magnet was nicely polished so as to reflect light like a mirror. a beam of sunlight was permitted to fall upon it, and be reflected to a convenient place for examination. a current of electricity was sent through the coil, which of course rendered the iron magnetic; and it was noticed that the light that was reflected from the pole was circularly polarized: that is, the motion of a ray, instead of being a simple undulatory movement, was now made to assume such a motion as the water from a garden-hose has when the nozzle is swung round in a circle while the water is escaping from it. after reading the account of it, it occurred to me that the converse experiment might be tried; that is to say, the effect of a circularly polarized beam of light upon a piece of steel. by concentrating a large beam of ordinary plane polarized light with a quartz lens, and passing it through a quarter wave-plate at the proper angle, a powerful beam of circularly polarized light was obtained. at the focus of this beam a fine cambric needle without magnetism was placed so that the light passed it longitudinally. ten minutes' exposure was sufficient to make it decidedly magnetic. hence i infer that the motions which we call magnetic attractions and repulsions may be quite analogous to such helical motions; also, that these motions exist in ether, and evidently may be either right-handed or left-handed. wind up on a pencil a piece of wire twelve or fifteen inches long, making a loose spiral. bring the two ends of the spiral together; and note first that one is twisted to the right, the other to the left. if they be twisted into each other, they will advance very easily; but if a right-handed spiral were to be interlocked with another like it, and both turned in the direction of their spiral, they would separate rapidly. applying this conception to a magnet, we might suppose that such spiral motions will be set up in the ether by the magnet, and that such motions re-acting upon ordinary matter affect it as attraction and repulsion; and thus we should have at least a conceivable mechanical explanation of the phenomenon. [illustration: fig. .] there are numberless experiments which might be given to further exhibit the relation of mass motion to magnetism, but a single one more must suffice. no rotation of a magnet upon its own axis can produce any effects upon a current that is exterior to it; but if a loop of wire be kept stationary adjacent to a magnet, as in fig. , while the magnet revolves, a current of electricity is produced; and if the magnet be kept stationary, and the loop revolves, a current will also be produced, but in the opposite direction. here, as in all the other cases, no electricity is originated, save when motion is imparted to one or other of the parts. this experiment is due to faraday. from all these cases we can come to but one conclusion, that both electricity and magnetism are but forms of motion; electricity being a form of motion in ordinary matter, for it cannot be made to pass through a vacuum, while magnetism must be a form of motion induced in the ether, for it is as effective in a vacuum as out of it; electricity always needing some material conductor, magnetism needing no more than do radiant heat and light. velocity. measurements have been made of the velocity of electricity; both that of high tension, such as the spark from a leyden jar, and also that from a battery. the former was found to have a velocity over , miles a second, while the electricity from a battery may move as slowly as , or , miles a second; but this is very largely a matter of conductors. its velocity is seldom above , miles a second on ordinary telegraphic lines. if the electricity be used to give signals, as in ordinary telegraphy, the time required varies nearly as the length of the line, and in any case is a much greater quantity. prescott in his work on the telegraph states that "the time required to produce a signal on the electro-magnet at the extremity of a line of miles of no. iron wire is about . seconds, and that this time increases in a greater proportion than the length of the line; for example, on a line miles in length it amounts to about . seconds." he also states that it varies much with the kind of magnet used, some forms of magnets being much more sensitive than others for this work. wheatstone proved a good many years ago that the duration of the electric spark was less than one millionth of a second. when a swiftly moving body can only be seen by an electric spark, or flash of lightning, it looks as if it were quiescent. thus a train of cars rushing along at the rate of forty or fifty miles per hour appears sharply defined,--even the driving-wheels of the locomotive can be seen in detail, which is impossible in continuous light,--and all seems to be standing still. in like manner will the sails of a windmill, which may be turning at a rapid rate, be seen apparently at rest. this is because in the short time during which they are illuminated they do not appreciably move. i am not aware that any attempt has been made to measure the velocity of magnetism. if, however, it be a form of motion in ether, it is probable that the velocity is comparable to the velocity of radiant energy, light, which is equal to about , miles a second. sound. before explaining the relation that sound has to telephony, it will be necessary to make quite plain what sound is, and how it affects the substance of the body through which it moves. if i strike my pencil upon the table, i hear a snap that appears to the ear to be simultaneous with the stroke: if, however, i see a man upon a somewhat distant hill strike a tree with an axe, the sound does not reach me until some appreciable time has passed; and it is noted, that, the farther away the place where a so-called sound originates, the longer time does it take to reach any listener. hence sound has in air a certain velocity which has been very accurately measured, and found to be , feet per second when the temperature of the air is at the freezing point of water. as the temperature increases, the velocity of sound will increase a little more than one foot for every fahrenheit degree; so that at ° the velocity is , feet per second. this is the velocity in air. in water the velocity is about four times greater, in steel sixteen times, in pine-wood about ten times. constitution of a single sound-wave. if a person stands at the distance of fifteen or twenty rods from a cannon that is fired, he will first see the flash, then the cloud of smoke that rushes from the cannon's mouth, then the ground will be felt to tremble, and lastly the sound will reach his ear at the same time that a strong puff of air will be felt. this puff of air is the sound-wave itself, travelling at the rate of eleven hundred feet or more per second. at the instant of explosion of the gunpowder, the air in front of the cannon is very much compressed; and this compression at once begins to move outwards in every direction, so as to be a kind of a spherical shell of air constantly increasing in diameter; and, whenever it reaches an ear, the sound is perceived. whenever such a sound-wave strikes upon a solid surface, as upon a cliff or a building, it is turned back, and the reflected wave may be heard; in which case we call it an echo. when a cannon is fired, we generally hear the sound repeated, so that it apparently lasts for a second or more; but when, as in the first case, we hear the sound of a pencil struck upon the table, but a single short report is noticed, and this, as may be supposed, consists of a single wave of condensed air. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] imagine a tuning-fork that is made to vibrate. each of the prongs beats the air in opposite directions at the same time. look at the physical condition of the air in front of one of these prongs. as the latter strikes outwards, the air in front of it will be driven outwards, condensed; and, on account of the elasticity of the air, the condensation will at once start to travel outwards in every direction,--a wave of denser air; but directly the prong recedes, beating the air back in the contrary direction, which will obviously rarefy the air on the first side. but the disturbance we call rarefaction moves in air with the same velocity as a condensation. we must therefore remember, that just behind the wave of condensation is the wave of rarefaction, both travelling with the same velocity, and therefore always maintaining the same relative position to each other. now, the fork vibrates a great many times in a second, and will consequently generate as many of these waves, all of them constituted alike, and having the same length; by length meaning the sum of the thicknesses of the condensation and the rarefaction. suppose a fork to make one hundred vibrations per second: at the end of the second, the wave generated by the vibration at the beginning of the second would have travelled, say, eleven hundred feet; and evenly distributed between the fork and the outer limit, would be ranged the intermediate waves occupying the whole distance: that is to say, in eleven hundred feet there would be one hundred sound-waves, each of them evidently being eleven feet long. if the fork made eleven hundred vibrations per second, each of these waves would be one foot long; for sound-waves of all lengths travel in air with the same rapidity. some late experiments seem to show that the actual amplitude of motion of the air, when moved by such a high sound as that from a small whistle, is less than the millionth of an inch. pitch. the pitch of a sound depends wholly upon the number of vibrations per second that produce it; and if one of two sounds consists of twice as many vibrations per second as the other one, they differ in pitch by the interval called in music an octave, this latter term merely signifying the number of intervals into which the larger interval is divided for the ordinary musical scale. the difference between a high and a low sound is simply in the number of vibrations of the air reaching the ear in a given time. the smaller intervals into which the octave is divided stand in mathematical relations to each other when they are properly produced, and are represented by the following fractions:-- c d e f g a b c / / / / / / [illustration] these numbers are to be interpreted thus: suppose that we have a tuning-fork giving vibrations per second: the sound will be that of the standard or concert pitch for the c on the added line as shown on the staff. now, d when properly tuned will make vibrations while c makes but ; but, as c in this case makes , d must make × / = . in like manner g is produced by × / = , and c above by × = , and so on for any of the others. if other sounds are used in the octave above or below this one, the number of vibrations of any given note may be found by either doubling or halving the number for the corresponding note in the given octave. thus g below will consist of / = , and g above of × = . during the past century there has been a quite steady rise in the standard pitch, and this has been brought about in a very curious and unsuspected way. the tuning-fork has been the instrument to preserve the pitch, as it is the best available instrument for such a purpose, it being convenient to use, and does not vary as most other musical instruments do. but a tuning-fork is brought to its pitch with a file, which warms it somewhat, so that at the moment when it is in tune with the standard that is being duplicated it is above its normal temperature; and when it cools its tone rises. when another is made of like pitch with this one, the same thing is repeated; and so it has continued until the standard pitch has risen nearly a tone higher than it was in händel's time. the common a and c tuning-forks to be had in music stores, often vary a great deal from the accepted concert pitch. such as the writer has measured have been generally too high; sometimes being ten or more vibrations per second beyond the proper number. the tuning-forks made by m. köenig of paris are accurate within the tenth of one vibration, the c making vibrations in one second. limits of audibility. numerous experiments have been made to determine the limits of audible sounds; and here it is found that there is a very great difference in individuals in their ability to perceive sounds. helmholtz states that about vibrations per second is the fewest in number that can be heard as continuous sound; if they are fewer in number than that, the vibrations are heard as separate distinct noises, as when one knocks upon a door four or five times a second. if one could knock evenly times per second, he would be making a continuous musical sound of a very low pitch. but this limit of is not the limit for all: some can hear a continuous sound with as few as or vibrations per second, while others are as far above the medium as this is below it. the limits of sound in musical instruments are about all included in the range of a -octave pianoforte from f to f, say from to , vibrations per second. but this high number is not anywhere near the upper limit of audible sounds for man. very many of the familiar sounds of insects, such as crickets and mosquitoes, have a much higher pitch. helmholtz puts this upper limit at , vibrations per second, and despraetz at , . the discrepancy of results is due solely to the marked difference in individuals as to acoustic perception. for the production of high musical tones, köenig of paris makes a set of steel rods. a steel rod of a certain length, diameter, and temper, will give a musical sound which may be determined. the proper length for other rods for giving higher tones may be determined by the rule that the number of vibrations is inversely proportional to the square of the length of the rod. the dimensions of these rods when made c. m. in diameter are as follows:-- length. vibrations. . m. m. , . " " , . " " , . " " , . " " , these rods need to be suspended upon loops of silk, and they are struck with a piece of steel so short as to be wholly beyond the ability of any ear to hear its ring. nothing but a short thud is to be heard from it when it strikes, while from the others comes a distinct ringing sound. in experimenting with such a set of steel rods i have not found any one yet who could hear as many as , per second, my own limit being about , . but it has been experimentally found that children and youth have a perceptive power for high sounds considerably above adults. dr. clarence blake of boston reports a case in his aural practice, of a woman whose hearing had been gradually diminishing for some years until she could not hear at all with one ear, and the ticking of a watch could only be heard with the other when the watch was held against the ear. after treatment it was discovered that the sensibility to high sounds was very great, and that she could hear the steel rod having a tone of , vibrations. last year mr. f. galton, f.r.s., exhibited before the science conference an instrument in the shape of a very small whistle, which he had devised for producing a very high sound. the whistle had a diameter less than the one twenty-fifth of an inch. the length could be varied by moving a plug at the end of the whistle. it was easy to make a sound upon such an instrument that was altogether out of hearing-range of any person. mr. galton tried some very interesting experiments upon animals, by using these whistles. he went through the zoölogical gardens, and produced such high sounds near the ears of all the animals. some of them would prick up their ears, showing that they heard the sound; while others apparently could not hear it. he declares that among all the animals the cat was found to hear the sharpest sound. small dogs can also hear very shrill notes, while larger ones can not. cattle were found to hear higher sounds than horses. the squeak of bats and of mice cannot be heard by many persons who can hear ordinary sounds as well as any; sharpness of hearing having nothing to do with the limits of hearing. effects of sound upon other bodies. if a vibrating tuning-fork be held close to a delicately suspended body, the latter will approach the fork, as if impelled by some attractive force. the experiment can be made by fastening a bit of paper about an inch square to a straw five or six inches long, and then suspending the straw to a thread, so that it is balanced horizontally. bring the vibrating tuning-fork within a quarter of an inch of the paper. in this case the motion of approach is due to the fact that the pressure of the air is less close to a vibrating body than at a distance from it; there is therefore a slightly greater pressure on the side of the paper away from the fork than on the side next to it. if a vibrating tuning-fork be held near to the ear, and turned around, there may be found four places in one rotation where the sound will be heard but very faintly, while in every other position it can be heard plainly enough. the extinction of the sound is due to what is called interference. each of the prongs of the fork is giving out a sound-wave at the same time, but in opposite directions, each wave advancing outwards in every direction. where the rarefied part of one wave exactly balances the condensed part of the other, there of course the sound will be extinguished; and these lines of interference are found to be hyperbolas, or, if considered with reference to both entire waves, two hyperbolic surfaces. sympathetic vibrations. when it is once understood that a musical sound is caused by the vibrations more or less frequent which only make the difference we call pitch, it might at once be inferred, that if we have a body that is capable of vibrating say a hundred times a second, and it receives a hundred pulses or pushes a second, it would in this way be made to vibrate. suppose, then, that we take two tuning-forks, each capable of vibrating times a second: if one be struck while the other is left free, the former one will be giving to the air impulses per second, which will reach the other fork, each pulse tending to move it a little, the cumulative result being to make it move perceptibly, that is, to give out a sound. the principle is just the same as that employed in the common swing. one push makes the swing to move a little, upon its return another is given, in like manner a third, and so on until a person may be swung many feet high. if a glass tumbler be struck, it gives out a musical sound of a certain pitch, which will set a piano-string sounding that is tuned to the same pitch, provided that the damper be raised. it is said that some persons' voices have broken tumblers by singing powerfully near them the same note which the tumblers could give out, the vibrations of the tumblers being so great as to overcome cohesion of the molecules. there are very many interesting effects due to sympathetic vibrations. large trees are sometimes uprooted by wind that comes in gusts timed to the rate of vibration of the tree. when troops of soldiers are to cross a bridge, the music ceases, and the ranks are broken, lest the accumulated strain of timed vibrations should break the structure; indeed, such accidents have several times occurred. there is not so much danger to a bridge when it is heavily loaded with men or with cattle, as when a few men go marching over it. "when the iron bridge at colebrooke dale was building, a fiddler came along, and said to the workmen that he could fiddle their bridge down. the builders thought this boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the musician to fiddle away to his heart's content. one note after another was struck upon the strings, until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy. when the bridge began to shake violently, the workmen were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop." some halls and churches are wretchedly adapted to hear either speaking or singing in. if wires be stretched across such halls, between the speaker's stand and the opposite end, they will absorb the passing sound-waves, and will be made to sympathetically vibrate, thus preventing in a good degree the interfering echoes. the wire should be rather fine piano-wire, and it should be stretched so tightly as to give out a low musical sound when plucked with the fingers. in a large hall there should be twenty or more such wires. resonance. when a tuning-fork is struck, and held out in the air, the vibrations can be felt for a time by the fingers; but the sound is hardly audible unless the fork be placed close to the ear. let the stem of the fork rest upon the table, a chair, or any solid body of considerable size, and the sound is so much increased in loudness as to be heard in every part of a large room. the reason appears to be, that in the first case the vibrations are so slight that the air is not much affected. most of the force of the vibration is absorbed by the hand that holds it; but when the stem rests upon a hard body of considerable extent, the vibrations are given up to it, and every part of its surface is giving off the vibrations to the air. in other words, it is a much larger body that is now vibrating, and consequently the air is receiving the amplified sound-waves. if the stem of the fork had been made to rest upon a bit of rubber, the sound would not only not have been re-enforced in such a way, but the fork would very soon have been brought to rest; for india rubber _absorbs_ sound vibrations, and converts them into heat vibrations, as is proved by placing such a combination upon the face of a thermo-pile. if one will but put his hand upon a table or a chair-back in any room where a piano or an organ is being played, or where voices are singing, especially in church, he cannot fail to feel the sound; and if he notices carefully he will perceive that some sounds make such table or seat to shake much more vigorously than others,--a genuine case of sympathetic vibrations. it is for this reason that special materials and shapes are given to parts of musical instruments, so that they may respond to the various vibrations of the strings or reeds. for instance, the piano has an extensive thin board of spruce underneath all the strings, which is called the sounding-board. this board takes up the vibrations of the strings; but, unlike the rubber, gives them all out to the air, greatly re-enforcing their strength, and changing somewhat their quality. but the air itself may act in like manner. in almost any room or hall not more than fifteen or twenty feet long, a person can find some tone of the voice that will seem to meet some response from the room. some short tunnels will from certain positions yield very powerful, responsive, resonant tones. there is certainly one such in central park, new york. it is forty or fifty feet long. to a person standing in the middle of this, and speaking or making any kind of a noise on a certain pitch, the resonance is almost deafening. it is easy to understand. when a column of air enclosed in a tube is made to vibrate by any sound whose wave-length is twice the length of the tube, we have such column of air now filled with the condensed part of the wave, and now with the rarefied part; and as these motions cannot be conducted laterally, but must move in the direction of the length of the tube, the air has a very great amplitude of motion, and the sound is very loud. if one end of the tube be closed, then the length must be but one-fourth of the wave-length of the sound. take a tuning-fork of any convenient pitch, say a c of vibrations per second: hold it while vibrating over a vertical test-tube about eight inches long. no response will be heard; but, if a little water be carefully poured into the tube to the depth of about two inches, the tube will respond loudly, so that it might be heard over a large hall. in this case the length of the air-column that was responding, being one-fourth the wave-length, would give twenty-four inches as the wave-length of that fork. it is easy in this way to measure approximately the number of vibrations made by a fork. letting _l_ = depth of tube, _d_ = diameter of tube, _v_ = velocity of sound reduced for temperature, _n_ = number of vibrations, then _n_ = _v_ ------------ ( (_l_+_d_)). when a vibrating tuning-fork is placed opposite the embouchure of an organ-pipe of the same pitch, the pipe will resound to it, giving quite a volume of sound. in it occurred to me, that the action of an organ-pipe might be quite like that of a vibrating reed in front of the embouchure. as the air is driven past it from the bellows, the form of the escaping air will evidently be like a thin, elastic strip; and, having considerable velocity, it will carry off by friction a little of the air in the tube: this will of course rarefy the air in the tube somewhat, and a wave of condensation will travel down the tube. at the bottom, being suddenly stopped, its re-action will be partly outwards, and so will drive the strip of air away from the tube. after this will follow, for a like reason, the other phase of the wave, the rarefaction, which will swing the strip of air towards the tube. this theory i verified by filling the bellows with smoke, and watching the motion of the escaping air and smoke with a stroboscope. this view is now advocated by an organ-builder in england, herman smith; but whether he discovered it before or after me, i do not know. when a membrane vibrates, its motion is generally perceptible to the eye; and it may have a very great amplitude of motion, as in the case of the drum; and various instruments have been devised for the study of vibrations, using membranes like rubber, gold-beater's skin, or even tissue paper, to receive the vibrations. one of the musical instruments of a former generation of boys was the comb. a strip of paper was placed in front of it, and placed at the mouth, and sung through, the paper responding to the pitch with a loose nasal sound. köenig fixed a membrane across a small capsule, one side of which was connected by a tube to any source of sound, and the other side to a gas-pipe and a small burner. a sound made in the tube would shake the flame, and a mirror moving in front of the flame would show a zigzag outline corresponding to the sound vibrations. in like manner if a thin rubber be stretched over the end of a tube one or two inches in diameter and four or five inches long, and a bit of looking-glass one-fourth of an inch square be made fast to the middle of the membrane, the motions of the latter can be seen by letting a beam of sunlight fall upon the mirror so as to be reflected upon a white wall or screen a few feet away. (fig. .) [illustration: fig. .] when a sound is made in this tube, the spot of light will at once assume some peculiar form,--either a straight line with some knots of light in it, or some curve simple or compound, and such as are known as lissajous curves. if, while some of these forms are upon the screen, the instrument be moved sideways, the forms will change to undulating lines with or without loops, varying with the pitch and intensity, but being alike for the same pitch and intensity. (fig. ) this instrument i called the opeidoscope. [illustration: fig. .] the vibration of a membrane and that of a solid differ chiefly in the amplitude of such vibration. the scratch of a pin at one end of a long log can be heard by an ear applied to the other end of the log; but every molecule in the log must move slightly; and there are all degrees of movement between that visible to the eye, which we call mass motion, and that called molecular simply because we cannot measure the amplitude of the motion. we may, then, roughly divide all bodies into two classes, as to their relations to sound,--such as re-enforce it, and such as distribute it: the first depending upon the form of the body, as related to a particular sound; the second independent of form, and responding to all orders of vibrations. air, wood, and metals belong in this latter class. the common toy-string telegraph, or _lovers' telegraph_, is an example of this class. two tin boxes are connected by a string passing through the middle of the bottom of each. when the string is stretched, and a person speaks in one box, what is said can be heard by an ear applied at the other. if the speaking-tubes be made about four inches in diameter, and about four inches deep, they are capable of doing much more service than is generally supposed to be possible. i know of two lines, one of five hundred feet and the other of a thousand feet in length, over which one can talk, and be heard with distinctness. in the line of a thousand feet, the end of the tube is made of sheepskin tightly stretched, and the line is made of no. cotton thread. the greater the tension, the better is the sound transmitted. the thread is supported at intervals by running through a loop on the ends of cords not less than three feet long, attached to supports. the thread pierces the membrane, and is attached to a small button which is in contact with the membrane. wind and rain affect this line disadvantageously. the other line of five hundred feet, between a passenger and a freight depot, has the tube end covered with stretched calfskin. instead of thread, a copper-relay wire is employed (any small uninsulated wire will do as well). this permits a good tension, and is unaffected by the weather. one may stand in front of it about three feet, and converse with ease, and in an ordinary tone. the wire is supported in loops of string, as in the other. musicians have in all times employed various instruments for the production of musical effects. whistles made of bone were used by pre-historic men, some of them having finger-holes so that different tones could be produced. a stag-horn that was blown like a flageolet, and having three finger-holes, has also been found; while on the old monuments of egypt are pictured harps, pipes with seven finger-holes, a kind of flute, drums, tambourines, cymbals, and trumpets. in later times these primeval forms have been modified into the various instruments in use in the modern orchestra. it seems as if no musician had ever been interested in the question as to why one instrument should give out a sound so different from another one, even though it was sounding upon the same pitch. no one can ever mistake the sound of a violin, or a horn, or a piano, for any other instrument; and no two persons have voices alike. this difference in tone, which enables us to identify an instrument by its sound or a friend by his voice, is called quality of tone, or _timbre_. about twenty years ago, that great german physicist helmholtz undertook the investigation of this subject, and succeeded in unravelling the whole mystery of the qualities of sound. he discovered first, that a musical sound is very rarely a simple tone, but is made up of several tones, sometimes as many as ten or fifteen, having different degrees of intensity and pitch. the lowest sound, which is also the strongest, is called the _fundamental_; and it is this tone we mean when we speak of the pitch of a sound, as the pitch of middle c upon a piano, or the pitch of the _a_ string on a violin. the higher sounds that accompany the fundamental are called sometimes harmonics, sometimes upper partial tones, but generally _overtones_. the character or quality of a sound depends altogether upon the number and intensity of these overtones associated with the fundamental. if a sound can be made upon a pipe and a violin, that consists wholly of the fundamental with no overtones, the two instruments sound absolutely alike. it is exceedingly difficult to do this; and such sound when produced is smooth, but without character, and unpleasing. second, helmholtz discovered that the overtones always stand in the simplest mathematical relation to the fundamental tone,--in fact, are simple multiples of that tone, being two, three, four, and so on, times the number of vibrations of it. this will be readily understood by considering the position of such related sounds when they are written upon the staff. [illustration] if we start with c in the bass as indicated in the staff, calling that the fundamental, then the notes that will represent the above ratios are those indicated by smaller notes, which are the overtones up to the ninth. the first overtone, being produced by twice the number of vibrations, must be the octave; the second, the fifth of the second octave; the third will be two octaves from the first, and so on: the number of vibrations of each of these notes being the number of the fundamental multiplied by its order in the series. taking c with vibrations, we have for this series:-- × = = c fundamental. × = = c´. × = = g´. × = = c´´. × = = e´´. × = = g´´. × = = b´´[flat]. × = , = c´´´. × = , = d´´´. × = , = e´´´. this series is continued up to the limits of hearing. now, it appears that all instruments do not give the complete series: indeed, it is not possible to obtain them all upon some instruments. each of them, however, when present helps in the general effect which we call quality. sometimes the overtones are more prominent than the fundamental, as when a piano-wire is struck with a nail. it has always been noticed that it does not give out the sound that is wanted when it is struck in this way. hence it is the art of an instrument-maker to so construct the instrument as to develop and re-enforce such tones as are pleasing, and to suppress the interfering and disagreeable overtones. piano-makers learned by trial where was the proper place to strike the stretched wire in order to develop the most musical sound upon it; but no reason could be given until it was observed that striking it at a point about one-seventh or one-ninth its length from either end prevented the development of the objectionable overtones, the seventh and the ninth. hence they can scarcely be heard in a properly constructed instrument. these overtones are very discordant with the lower sounds. organ-pipes have their specific qualities given to them by making them wide-mouthed, narrow-mouthed, conical, and so on; shapes which experience has determined give pleasing sounds with different qualities. the violin is an instrument that seems to puzzle makers more than almost any other. some of the old violins made two hundred years ago by the amati family at cremona are worth many times their weight in gold. recent makers have tried in vain to equal them; but, when their ingenuity and skill have failed, they declare that _age_ has much to do with such instruments, that age mellows the sounding quality of the violin. but the cremona violins were just as extraordinary instruments when they left the hands of the makers as they are now; and the fame of the amati family as violin-makers was over all europe while they were living. a good violin when well played gives an exquisite musical effect, and on account of its range and quality of tones it is the leading orchestral instrument, always pleasing and satisfying; but in unskilled hands even the best _cremona_ will give forth sounds that make one grieve that it was ever invented. overtones of all sorts and with all degrees of prominence may be easily developed upon it: therefore the skilful player draws the bow at such a place upon the strings as to develop the overtones he wants, and suppress the ones not wanted. the usual rule is to draw the bow about an inch below the bridge; but the place for the bow depends upon where the fingers are that stop the strings, and also the pressure upon it. it requires an almost incredible amount of practice to be able to play a violin very well. in the accompanying table will be found the component parts of tones upon a few instruments in common use. tone composition. the components of the tones are indicated by lines in the column underneath the figures representing the series. thus the narrow-stopped organ-pipe gives a sound composed of a fundamental, and overtones three, five, seven, and nine times the number of vibrations of it. tone composition. --------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- instruments. | | | | | | | | | | --------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- / wide stopped | / | | | | | | | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- | narrow " | / | | / | | / | | / | | / | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- | narrow cylinder | / | / | / | / | / | / | | | | organ < +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- pipes. | principal }| / | / | / | | | | | | | | (wood) }| | | | | | | | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- | conically }| / | | | | / | / | / | | | \ narrow at top. }| | | | | | | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- flute | / | / | / | / | | | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- violin | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- piano | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- bell | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- clarionet | / | | / | | / | | / | | / | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- bassoon | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | | | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- oboe | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | | | --------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--- it must not be inferred that all of the overtones are of equal strength: they are very far from that; but these differ in different instruments, and it is this that constitutes the difference between a good instrument and a poor one of the same name. in a few of the spaces very light lines are made for the purpose of indicating that such overtones are quite weak. for instance: the piano has the sixth, seventh, and eighth thus marked; these tones being suppressed by the mechanism, as described on a former page. only a few of the many forms of organ-pipes are given; but these are sufficient to show what a physical difference there is between the musical tones in such pipes. as for the human voice, it is very rich in overtones; but no two voices are alike, therefore it would be impossible to tabulate the components of it in the manner they are tabulated for musical instruments. in helmholtz's experiments in the analysis of sounds, use was made of the principle of resonance of a body of air enclosed in a vessel. in the experiment with the tuning-fork to determine the wave-length, p. , it is remarked that no response came until the volume of the air in the tube was reduced to a certain length, which depended upon the vibration number of the fork. if instead of a test-tube a bottle had been taken, the result would have been the same. every kind of a vessel can respond to some tone of a definite wave-length, and a sphere has been found to give the best results. these are made with a hole on one side for the sound-wave to enter, and a projection on the opposite side, through which a hole about the one-eighth of an inch is made, this to be placed in the ear. any sound that is made in front of the large orifice will not meet any response, unless it be that particular one which the globe can naturally re-enforce, when it will be plainly heard. suppose, then, one has a series of twenty or more of these, graduated to the proper size for re-enforcing sounds in the ratio of one, two, three, four, and so on. take any instrument, say a flute: have one to blow it upon the proper pitch to respond to the largest sphere, then take each of the spheres in their order, applying them to the ear while the flute is being sounded. when the overtones are present they will be heard plainly and distinct from the fundamental sound. in like manner any or all other sounds may be studied. but helmholtz did not stop after analyzing sounds of so many kinds: he invented a method of synthesis, by which the sounds of any kind of an instrument could be imitated. a tuning-fork, when made to vibrate by an electric current, gives out a tone without harmonics or overtones. so if a series of forks with vibration periods equal to the numbers of the series of overtones given on p. be so arranged that any of them may be made to vibrate at will, it is evident that the resulting compound tone would be comparable with that from an instrument having such overtones. thus, if with a tuning-fork giving a fundamental c, other forks giving two, three, and four times the number of the fundamental were associated, each one giving a simple tone, we should have for a resultant the tone of a flute, as shown on p. . if one, three, five, seven, and nine, were all sounded, the resulting tone would be that of the clarionet, and so on. this he actually accomplished, and now makers of physical apparatus advertise just such instruments. helmholtz also contrived a set of tuning-forks, which, when bowed, will give out the vowel sounds like the voice. it was remarked upon p. that it has generally been considered that age has a mellowing effect upon the sound of a violin. once in possession of the facts concerning sound that have been alluded to on the preceding pages, it is easy to see how such an opinion should arise, and also the fallacy of it. it is proved conclusively that the ability to hear high sounds decreases as one grows older. as the violin gives a very great number of overtones, even up to the limits of audibility, it is plain that if such an instrument should not change in its quality of tone in the least degree, yet to a man who played upon it for a number of years it would seem to change by subtracting some of the higher overtones from the sound; that is, it would seem to become mellower. there is no evidence that such a physical change takes place in the instrument. it is not here affirmed that no change does take place. it may be probable; but all the evidence we have is the opinions of individuals whose hearing we know does change; and this change is competent to modify the judgment as to the quality of the sound in the same direction. before it can be affirmed that such a physical change does take place in the violin as to make a perceptible difference in the quality of its tone, it will be needful to determine accurately the number and intensity of the overtones at intervals during many years, and then to compare them. this has not yet been done. form of a compound sound-wave in air. upon p. is given a picture of the form of a simple sound-wave in air, which, as described, consists of two parts, a condensation and a rarefaction. all simple sound-waves have such a form; but when two or more sound-waves that stand in some simple ratio to each other, as do the sounds of musical instruments, are formed in air, the resulting wave is more or less complex in structure; and where there are many components, as there are where a number of different kinds of instruments are all sounding at once, it is well-nigh impossible to figure even approximately the form of such wave-combinations. it is generally given in treatises upon sound with ordinates representing the factors with their relative intensities. when the extremities of the ordinates are connected, there is drawn a curved line with regularly recurring loops. this cannot give a correct idea of the form of the wave, because the motion of a particle of air is not up and down like a floating body upon waving water, but it is forward and back, in the direction of the motion of the wave. in fig. three simple sound-waves are thus represented at , , and , these having the wave-length , , and . in , the three are combined into one compound wave, and better show the form of a transverse section of such a sound-wave in the air. the organ-pipe called the principal gives out such a compound wave as is seen by referring to the table on p. . the second overtone, however, is quite weak in that pipe, which would so modify the form as to lessen somewhat the density at _b_, and increase it at _a_. [illustration: fig. .] in like manner the space in the length of the fundamental sound, whatever it may be, is divided up into a number of minor condensations and rarefactions, which may strengthen each other, or so interfere as to change the position of both; as is seen in the figure at _b_, where the condensation due to wave interferes with the rarefaction of . correlation. having treated at some length of the three factors involved in telephony,--namely, electricity, magnetism, and sound,--it remains to follow up the various steps that have led to the actual transmission of musical sounds and speech over an ordinary electric circuit. it is stated upon p. , that, when a current of electricity is passed through a coil of wire that surrounds a rod of soft iron, the latter is made a temporary magnet: it loses its magnetic property the instant that the current ceases. if the rod be of considerable size, say a foot or more in length, and half an inch or more in diameter, and the current be strong enough to make a powerful magnet of it, whenever the current from the battery is broken, the bar may be heard to give out a single _click_. this will happen as often as the current is broken. this is occasioned by a molecular movement which results in a _change_ of _length_ of the bar. when it is made a magnet, it elongates about / of its length; and, when it loses its magnetism, it _suddenly_ regains its original length; and this change is accompanied with the sound. this sound was first noticed by prof. c. g. page of salem, mass., in . if some means be devised for breaking such a circuit more than fifteen or sixteen times a second, we shall have a continuous sound with a pitch depending upon the number of clicks per second. such a device was first invented by the same man, and was accomplished by fixing the armature of an electro-magnet to a spring which was in the circuit when the spring was pressing against a metallic knob, at which time the current made the circuit in the coil of the electro-magnet. the magnet attracting the armature away from the button broke the circuit, which of course destroyed the magnetism of the magnet, and allowed the spring to fly back against the button, to complete the circuit and reproduce the same series of changes. the rapidity with which the current may be broken in this way is only limited by the strength of both spring and current. the greater the tension of the spring with a given current, the greater number of vibrations will it make. [illustration: fig. .] suppose such an intermittent current to pass through the coil surrounding the soft iron rod, times per second; then the rod would evidently give clicks per second, which would have the pitch of c. when these clicks are produced in the rod hold in the hand, the sound is hardly perceptible, being like that of a sounding tuning-fork when held thus. in order to strengthen it, it is necessary to place it on some resonant surface. it is customary to mount it upon an oblong box with one or two holes in its upper surface, inasmuch as such a form is found to give a louder response than any other, and is the shape usually given to Æolian harps. the accompanying cut shows the combination of battery b, the circuit-breaker, and the rod mounted upon the box. the wire w may evidently be of any length, the magnetized rod and box responding to the number of vibrations of the spring s, how long soever the circuit may be. helmholtz' electric interruptor. in some of helmholtz' experiments, it was essential to maintain the vibrations of a tuning-fork for a considerable time. he effected this by placing a short electro-magnet between the prongs of the fork, and affixing a platinum point at the end of one prong in such a manner, that, as the prong descended in its vibration, the platinum point dipped into a small cup of mercury that completed the circuit. when the prong receded, it was of course withdrawn from the mercury, and the current was broken. as it is not possible for a tuning-fork to vibrate in more than one period, such an arrangement would evidently make and break the current as many times per second as the fork vibrated. when, therefore, such an interruptor is inserted in the circuit with the click-rod on its resonant box, the latter must give out just such a sound as the fork is giving. with such a device, it is possible to reproduce at almost any distance in a telegraphic circuit, a sound of a given pitch. it is therefore a true telephone. reiss' telephone. the ease with which membranes are thrown into vibrations corresponding in period to that of the sounding body has already been alluded to on p. ; and several attempts have been made, at different times, to make membranes available in telephony. the first of these attempts was made by philip reiss of friedrichsdorf, germany, in . his apparatus consisted of a hollow box, with two apertures: one in front, in which was inserted a short tube for producing the sound in, and indicated by the arrow in the cut, fig. ; the other on the top. this was covered with the membrane _m_,--a piece of bladder stretched tight over it. upon the middle of the membrane, a thin piece of platinum was glued; and this piece of platinum was connected by a wire to a screw-cup from which another wire went to a battery. [illustration: fig. .] a platinum finger, s, rested upon the strip of platinum, but was made fast at one end to the screw-cup that connected with the other wire from the battery. now, when a sound is made in the box, the membrane is made to vibrate powerfully: this makes the platinum strip to strike as often upon the platinum finger, and as often to bound away from it, thus making and breaking the current the same number of times per second. if, then, a person sings into this box while it is in circuit with the afore-mentioned click-rod and box, the latter will evidently change its pitch as often as it is changed by the voice. in this apparatus we have a telephone with which a melody may be reproduced at a distance with distinctness. but the sounds are not loud, and they have a tin-trumpet quality. if one reflects upon the possibilities of such a mechanism, and upon the conditions necessary to produce a sound of any given quality, as that of the voice or of a musical instrument as described in preceding pages, he will understand that it can reproduce only pitch. it might here be inferred that something more than a single pitch is transmitted if the sound is like that of a tin trumpet as stated: but the reason of this is that, whenever a current is passing between two surfaces that can move only slightly on each other, there is always an irregularity in the conduction, so as to produce a kind of scratching sound; and it is this, combined with the other, the true pitch, that gives the character to the sound of this instrument. dr. wright found that a sound of considerable intensity could be obtained by passing the interrupted current through the primary wire of a small induction coil, and placing a conductor made of two sheets of silvered paper placed back to back in the secondary circuit. the silvered paper becomes rapidly charged and discharged, making a sound that can be heard over a large hall, and having the same pitch as the sending instrument. gray's telephones. in mr. elisha gray of chicago discovered that if an induction coil be made to operate by the current from any automatic circuit-breaker, and one of the wires from the secondary circuit be held in the hand while the dry finger of the same hand is rubbed upon a sonorous metallic plate, the other wire being in connection with the plate, a musical sound would be given out by the plate, appearing to come from the point of contact of the finger with the plate. he therefore contrived a musical instrument with a range of two octaves, in which the reeds were made to vibrate by electro magnets, the current entering any one by depressing the appropriate key. this circuit is sent through the primary wire of an induction coil while one of the terminals of the secondary coil is connected with the thin sheet metal that forms one head of a shallow wooden drum about eight inches in diameter, which is so fixed as to be rotated like a pulley. the other terminal is held in the hand while one finger of the same hand rests upon the metallic surface. while the drum is turned with the other hand, the sounds given out have considerable intensity. the faster the drum is turned, the louder do the sounds become, though the pitch remains the same. in this case, as in the case mentioned on p. , we have an electric current passing between two surfaces that are moving upon each other; the contact not being uniform, the current is varying as well as intermittent. mr. gray has also invented a musical telephone by means of which many musical sounds may be simultaneously transmitted and reproduced. the actual mechanism used is quite complex, and requires considerable familiarity with electrical science in order to understand it; but the fundamental principle involved is not difficult to one who has comprehended the preceding descriptions. suppose that we have a series of four steel reeds, each one fixed at one end to one pole of a short electro-magnet, while the other end is left free to vibrate over the other pole of the magnet and not quite touching it. each of the reeds is to be tuned to a different pitch, say the , , , and of the scale. these electro-magnets with their attached vibrators are to be attached each to a resonant box (see p. ), which can respond to that particular number of vibrations per second. this is the receiving instrument. the sender consists of a like set of reeds tuned to the same pitch, which can be made to vibrate at will by pressing a key which sends the current of electricity through its electro-magnet, which makes and breaks the current. imagine one of these keys to be pressed down so as to make the circuit complete: the sending instrument then has one of its reeds, let it be the of the scale, set in vibration; the intermittent current traverses the whole line, going through all four of the receiving instruments. now, we know from the study of the action of sounding bodies, that only one of the four receivers is competent to vibrate in consonance with this tone, and this one will respond; that is, the vibrations are truly sympathetic vibrations. if, instead of making the of the scale in the sending-instrument, the had been made, the current would have gone through all of the receiving instruments just the same as before, but only one of them could take up that vibratory movement: three of them would remain at rest, the responding loudly. in like manner, any number of vibrating reeds in the sending instrument can make a corresponding number of reeds in the receiving instrument to vibrate, provided the latter be exactly tuned with the former. each transmitter is connected with but a part of the battery, so that several tones may be transmitted at the same time. if the performer plays a piece of music in its various parts, every part will be reproduced: thus we have a compound or multiple telephone. this instrument has been used during the past winter to give concerts in cities when the performer was in a distant place. it has also been used as a multiple telegraph; as many as eight operators sending messages simultaneously over the same wire,--four in each direction,--without the slightest interference. bell's telephone. prof. a. graham bell of boston independently discovered the same means for producing multiple effects over the same wire; but it appears he did not practically work it out as completely as did mr. gray. but while the latter was chiefly employed in perfecting the method as a telegraphic system, prof. bell had set before himself the more difficult problem of transmitting speech. this he has actually accomplished, as we have so often been reminded during the past year. thoroughly conversant with the acoustic researches of helmholtz, and keeping in mind the complex form of the air vibrations produced by the human voice, he attempted to make these vibrations produce corresponding pulsations in an electric current in the manner analogous to the electric interrupter. observing that membranes when properly stretched can vibrate to any kind of a sound, he sought to utilize them for this purpose. so did reiss; but reiss inserted the vibrating membrane into the circuit, and it was quite evident that such a plan would not answer, therefore the current must not be broken; but could an electric current be interfered with without breaking the connections? the well-known re-actions of magnets upon electrical currents, first noted by oersted, and fully developed by faraday, gave the clew to the solution. a piece of iron should be made to vibrate by means of sound vibrations, so as to affect an electro-magnet and induce corresponding electrical pulsations. first form of speaking-telephone. a membrane of gold-beater's skin was tightly stretched over the end of a speaking-tube or funnel; on the middle of this membrane a piece of iron, n s, fig. , was glued. in front of this piece of iron an electro-magnet m is so situated that its poles are opposite to it, but not quite touching it. one of the terminal wires of the electro-magnet goes to the battery b; the other goes to the receiving instrument r, which consists of a tubular electro-magnet, the coil being enclosed in a short tube of soft iron; the wire thence goes to the plate e´, which is sunk in the earth. on the top of r, at p, is a rather loose, thin disk of iron, which acts as an armature to the electro-magnet below it. [illustration: fig. .] supposing that all the parts are thus properly connected, the current of electricity from the battery makes both m and r magnetic; the electro-magnet m will inductively make the piece of iron n s, a magnet, with its poles unlike those of the inducing electro-magnet; and the two will mutually attract each other. if now this piece of iron n s be made to move toward m, a current of electricity will be induced in the coils, which will traverse the whole circuit. this induced electricity will consist of a single wave or pulse, and its force will depend upon the velocity of the approach of n s to m. a like pulse of electricity will be induced in the coils when n s is made to move away from m; but this current will move through the circuit in the opposite direction, so that whether the pulsation goes from m to r, or from r to m, depends simply upon the direction of the motion of n s. the electricity thus generated in the wire by such vibratory movements varies in strength proportional to the movement of the armature; therefore the line wire between two places will be filled with electrical pulsation exactly like the aërial pulsations in structure. fig. , p. , may be used to illustrate the condition of the wire through which the currents pass. the dark part may represent the strongest part of the wave, while the lighter part would show the weaker part of the wave. the chief difference would be, that electricity travels so fast, that what is there represented as one wave in air with a length of two feet would, in an electric wave, be more than fifty miles long. these induced electric currents are but very transient (see p. ); and their effect upon the receiver r is to either increase or decrease the power of the magnet there, as they are in one direction or the other, and consequently to vary the attractive power exercised upon the iron plate armature. let a simple sound be now made in the tube, consisting of vibrations per second: the membrane carrying the iron will vibrate as many times, and so many pulses of induced electricity will be _imposed_ upon the constant current, which will each act upon the receiver, and cause so many vibrations of the armature upon it; and an ear held at p will hear the sound with the same pitch as that at the sending instrument. if two or more sound-waves act simultaneously upon the membrane, its motions must correspond with such combined motions; that is, its motions will be the resultant of all the sound-waves, and the corresponding pulsations in the current must reproduce at r the same effect. now, when a person speaks in the tube, the membrane is thrown into vibrations more complex in structure than those just mentioned, differing only in number and intensity. the magnet will cause responses from even the minutest motion; and therefore an ear at r will hear what is said at the tube. this was the instrument exhibited at the centennial exposition at philadelphia, and concerning which sir william thompson said on his return to england, "this is the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph." the popular impression has been, concerning the telephone, that the _sound_ was in some way conveyed over the wire. it will be obvious to every one who may read this, that such is very far from being the case. the fact is, it is a beautiful example of the convertibility of forces from one form to another. there is first the initial vibratory mechanical motion of the air, which is imparted to the membrane carrying the iron. this motion is converted into electricity in the coil of wire surrounding the electro-magnet, and at the receiving-end is first effective as magnetism, which is again converted into vibratory motion of the iron armature, which motion is imparted to the air, and so becomes again a sound-wave in air like the original one. this was the first speaking-telephone that was ever constructed, so far as the writer is aware, but it was not a practicable instrument. many sounds were not reproduced at all, and, according to the report of the judges at the philadelphia exposition, one needed to shout himself hoarse in order that he might be heard at all. the author's telephone. for several years past my regularly recurring duties have taken me over the various subjects treated of in this book, and each one has been extensively illustrated in an experimental way, and a considerable number of new pieces of apparatus and new experiments to exhibit their phenomena have been devised by me. among these, i would mention the following:-- . measurement of the elongation of a magnetized bar. . a magneto-electric telegraph. . an electro-magnetic instrument for demonstrating the rotation of the earth. . the permanent magnetism of the magnetic phantom. . the convertibility of sound into electricity. . the induction of a vibrating magnet upon an electric circuit. . the origination of electric waves in a circuit by a sounding magnet. . the discovery of the action of the air in a sounding organ-pipe. . two or three methods for studying the vibrations of membranes. . lissajous forks for enlarged projections of sound vibrations. as soon, therefore, as i gave attention to the subject of telephony, i was able, with a few preliminary experiments, to determine the proper conditions for the transmission of speech in an electric circuit; and, without the slightest knowledge of the mechanism which prof. bell had used, i devised the following arrangement for a speaking-telephone. [illustration: fig. .--my first speaking telephone.] [illustration: fig. .--end view.] my first speaking-telephone, fig. , consisted of a magnet made out of half-inch round steel bent into a u form, having the poles about two inches apart. over these were slipped two bobbins taken from an old telegraph register, and were already fitted to a half-inch core. these bobbins, two inches and a half long, were wound with cotton-covered copper wire, no. , each bobbin containing about feet. this magnet, with the bobbins slipped upon its poles, was made fast to a post two or three inches high. the steel was made as strongly magnetic as was possible, and would hold up three or four times its own weight. in front of the poles, a sheet of thin steel, one-fiftieth of an inch thick, was made fast to an upright board having a hole cut through it three and a half inches in diameter (fig. , end view); the plate was screwed tightly to this board, so as to cover the hole; and the middle of the hole was at the same height as the two poles of the magnet. the wires from the two bobbins were connected, as if to make an electro-magnet; while the two free terminals were to be connected with the line-wires. of course there were two of these instruments, both alike; and talking and singing were reproduced with these. a very great number of experiments have been made to determine the best conditions for each of the essential parts,--the size and strength of the magnet, the size of the bobbins, as to length and fineness of wire, the best thickness for the plate for absorbing the vibrations, &c.; and it is really surprising, how little is the difference between very wide limits. the following directions will enable any one to construct a speaking-telephone with which good results may be obtained. the specifications will be for only one instrument; though of course two instruments made alike will be necessary for any purposes of speaking or other signals. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] procure three common horse-shoe magnets about six inches long, all of the same size; these retail in the market at about a dollar apiece. they should be strong enough to hold up several times their own weight each. next, have turned out of good hard wood,--such as maple or boxwood,--two spools not over half an inch long and an inch and a half broad, the sides cut square both inside and out, as shown at s, fig. ; a hole the third of an inch in diameter is to be made through the spool. into this hole is to be fitted a short rod of soft iron, i, about an inch long, which should be a little rounded at the outer end. the bobbins may be wound with as much insulated copper wire as they will hold. the wire may be from the one-fortieth to the one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter, as is most convenient to obtain, the latter size being preferable. the resistance of such bobbins will probably be from two to three ohms each. the soft-iron core i must project backwards far enough to be clamped between the two outer magnets and , while the inner one, , is drawn back. when the bobbins are in their places, and are clamped between the upper and lower magnets, they will stand as shown in fig. , where the view is from above; the magnets being buttoned down to the block they rest on (see fig. ), which at the same time holds the soft-iron rods with the bobbins upon them. the wires on these coils must be connected in the same way they would be in order to make opposite poles of their outer ends, if a current of electricity were to be sent through the coils. an upright board b (fig. ) six or seven inches square, having a round hole four inches in diameter cut out from the middle of it, must be fixed near the end of the base-board; and over this hole is to be screwed _tightly_ a piece of thin sheet iron or steel; it may be from the one-twentieth to the one-fiftieth of an inch in thickness. it does not seem to make much difference about the thickness of this plate. i have generally got the best results from a plate one-fiftieth of an inch thick. the upright board carrying this plate must be very rigid, otherwise the plate will be kept tight to the magnets all the time; and one of the conditions of success in working is, that this plate shall be as close as possible to the magnet-ends, but not to touch: therefore fix the board tight, and adjust the magnets by means of the button shown on top of them in the perspective figure. [illustration: fig. .] the sounds to be transmitted, of whatever sort they may be, are to be made on the side p, fig. ; and likewise, when the instrument is used as a receiver, the ear is to be applied at the same place. a tube about two inches in diameter may be made fast to the front of the board, in a line with the centre of the plate; this will aid somewhat in hearing. when two or three persons are to sing, it will be best to have each one supplied with a tube to sing through; one end of the tube to be placed close to the front of the plate. the sound of musical instruments, such as the flute and the cornet, will be reproduced much louder, if the front of such instrument be allowed to rest upon the rim of the hole in the board, just in front of the plate. it is noticeable that low talking can be heard more distinctly than when a great effort is made; but the sounds though distinct are not strong at any time, and other sounds seriously interfere with hearing. it is probable that some way will hereafter be devised for increasing the usefulness of the invention by increasing the volume of sound. on account of the weakness of the sound it becomes necessary to provide a call to attract the attention of one in the room. this may be accomplished by having a small electric bell worked by a one or two cell battery. another way which i have found to be quite as efficient is to have a rod of iron or steel about a foot long, and half an inch in diameter, bent into a u form. when this is held by the bend, and struck upon the floor or with a stick, it vibrates powerfully; and if one of its prongs be permitted to strike against the plate p, fig. , the sound will be reproduced loud enough to hear over a large room. i have never failed to call with this when any one was in the same room with the telephone. wherever a telephone circuit has been made upon telegraph poles having other wires upon them, the inductive actions of the currents upon the other wires has been found to seriously interfere with the action of the telephones, inasmuch as the latter reproduce every other message. one skilled in reading by sound in the ordinary way can read through the telephone what message is travelling in a neighboring wire. messages may be thus read upon wires as far distant as ten feet from the telephone circuit. it there fore seems to be essential that each telephone circuit should be isolated from every other one, else there can be no secrecy in messages. a very interesting effect was noticed one night when there was a bright aurora display. there was a continuous current through the wires, accompanied with sounds which increased in intensity as the bright streamers passed by. this will probably lead to some important results in science. in all probability the telephone is as much in its infancy as was ordinary telegraphy in . since that time the sciences of electricity and magnetism have had the most of their growth, and telegraphy has kept pace with the advancing knowledge until its commercial importance is second to no other agency. very many important principles that are invaluable in telegraphy to-day were wholly unknown in ; but it may here be noted that in the telephone, as it now is, there is not a single principle that was not well enough known in . this will be apparent to one who follows out the phenomena from the sender to the receiver. first, the sound in air causing a corresponding movement in a solid body, iron. this iron, acting inductively upon a magnet, originates magneto-electric currents in a wire helix about it; and these travel to another helix, and, re-acting upon the magnet in it, have electro-magnetic effects, and increase and decrease the strength of the magnet; and this variable magnetism affects the plate of iron in front of that magnet, and makes it to vibrate in a corresponding manner, and thus to restore to the air in one place the vibrations absorbed from the air in another place. to some it may seem strange that a simple thing as the telephone is, involving nothing but principles familiar enough to every one interested in physical science, should have waited nearly forty years to be invented. the reason is probably this: men of science, as a rule, do not feel called upon to apply the principles which they may discover. they are content to be _discovering_, not _inventing_. now, the schools of the country ought to make the youth quite familiar with the general principles of physical science, that the inventive ones--and there are many such--may apply them intelligently. mechanism is all that stands between us and aërial navigation; all that is necessary to reproduce human speech in writing; and all that is needed to realize completely the prophetic picture of the "graphic," of the orator who shall at the same instant address an audience in every city in the world. * * * * * transcriber's notes: the musical flat symbol is represented in the text by [flat]. page , "propererties" changed to "properties" (there are other properties) page , "muturally" changed to "mutually" (bodies would mutually) page , "outby" changed to "out by" (given out by the) [illustration: thomas a. edison pioneer electrical investigator and inventor of numerous telegraph, telephone, lighting, and other electrical devices.] cyclopedia of telephony and telegraphy _a general reference work on_ telephony, substations, party line systems, protection, manual switchboards, automatic systems, power plants, special service features, construction, engineering, operation, maintenance, telegraphy, wireless telegraphy and telephony, etc. _prepared by a corps of_ telephone and telegraph experts, and electrical engineers of the highest professional standing _illustrated with over two thousand engravings_ four volumes chicago american school of correspondence copyright, , , by american school of correspondence copyright, , by american technical society entered at stationers' hall, london all rights reserved authors and collaborators * * * * * kempster b. miller, m.e. consulting engineer and telephone expert of the firm of mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts, chicago american institute of electrical engineers western society of engineers * * * * * george w. patterson, s.b., ph.d. head, department of electrical engineering, university of michigan * * * * * charles thom chief of quadruplex department, western union main office, new york city * * * * * robert andrews millikan, ph.d. associate professor of physics, university of chicago member, executive council, american physical society * * * * * samuel g. mcmeen consulting engineer and telephone expert of the firm of mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts, chicago american institute of electrical engineers western society of engineers * * * * * lawrence k. sager, s.b., m.p.l. patent attorney and electrical expert formerly assistant examiner, u.s. patent office * * * * * glenn m. hobbs, ph.d. secretary, american school of correspondence formerly instructor in physics, university of chicago american physical society * * * * * charles g. ashley electrical engineer and expert in wireless telegraphy and telephony * * * * * a. frederick collins editor, _collins wireless bulletin_ author of "wireless telegraphy, its history, theory, and practice" * * * * * francis b. crocker, e.m., ph.d. head, department of electrical engineering, columbia university past-president, american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * morton arendt, e.e. instructor in electrical engineering, columbia university, new york * * * * * edward b. waite head, instruction department, american school of correspondence american society of mechanical engineers western society of engineers * * * * * david p. moreton, b.s., e.e. associate professor of electrical engineering, armour institute of technology american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * leigh s. keith, b.s. managing engineer with mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts chicago associate member, american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * jessie m. shepherd, a.b. associate editor, textbook department, american school of correspondence * * * * * ernest l. wallace, b.s. assistant examiner, united states patent office, washington, d. c. * * * * * george r. metcalfe, m.e. editor, _american institute of electrical engineers_ formerly head of publication department, westinghouse elec. & mfg. co. * * * * * j. p. schroeter graduate, munich technical school instructor in electrical engineering, american school of correspondence * * * * * james dixon, e.e. american institute of electrical engineers * * * * * harris c. trow, s.b., _managing editor_ editor-in-chief, textbook department, american school of correspondence authorities consulted the editors have freely consulted the standard technical literature of america and europe in the preparation of these volumes. they desire to express their indebtedness particularly to the following eminent authorities, whose well-known works should be in the library of every telephone and telegraph engineer. grateful acknowledgment is here made also for the invaluable co-operation of the foremost engineering firms and manufacturers in making these volumes thoroughly representative of the very best and latest practice in the transmission of intelligence, also for the valuable drawings, data, suggestions, criticisms, and other courtesies. * * * * * arthur e. kennely, d.sc. professor of electrical engineering, harvard university. joint author of "the electric telephone," "the electric telegraph," "alternating currents," "arc lighting," "electric heating," "electric motors," "electric railways," "incandescent lighting," etc. * * * * * henry smith carhart, a.m., ll.d. professor of physics and director of the physical laboratory, university of michigan. author of "primary batteries," "elements of physics," "university physics," "electrical measurements," "high school physics," etc. * * * * * francis b. crocker, m.e., ph.d. head of department of electrical engineering, columbia university, new york; past-president, american institute of electrical engineers. author of "electric lighting;" joint author of "management of electrical machinery." * * * * * horatio a. foster consulting engineer; member of american institute of electrical engineers; member of american society of mechanical engineers. author of "electrical engineer's pocket-book." * * * * * william s. franklin, m.s., d.sc. professor of physics, lehigh university. joint author of "the elements of electrical engineering," "the elements of alternating currents." * * * * * lamar lyndon, b.e., m.e. consulting electrical engineer; associate member of american institute of electrical engineers; member, american electro-chemical society. author of "storage battery engineering." * * * * * robert andrews millikan, ph.d. professor of physics, university of chicago. joint author of "a first course in physics," "electricity, sound and light," etc. * * * * * kempster b. miller, m.e. consulting engineer and telephone expert; of the firm of mcmeen and miller, electrical engineers and patent experts, chicago. author of "american telephone practice." * * * * * william h. preece chief of the british postal telegraph. joint author of "telegraphy," "a manual of telephony," etc. * * * * * louis bell, ph.d. consulting electrical engineer; lecturer on power transmission, massachusetts institute of technology. author of "electric power transmission," "power distribution for electric railways," "the art of illumination," "wireless telephony," etc. * * * * * oliver heaviside, f.r.s. author of "electro-magnetic theory," "electrical papers," etc. * * * * * silvanus p. thompson, d.sc., b.a., f.r.s., f.r.a.s. principal and professor of physics in the city and guilds of london technical college. author of "electricity and magnetism," "dynamo-electric machinery," "polyphase electric currents and alternate-current motors," "the electromagnet," etc. * * * * * andrew gray, m.a., f.r.s.e. author of "absolute measurements in electricity and magnetism." * * * * * albert cushing crehore, a.b., ph.d. electrical engineer; assistant professor of physics, dartmouth college; formerly instructor in physics, cornell university. author of "synchronous and other multiple telegraphs;" joint author of "alternating currents." * * * * * j. j. thomson, d.sc., ll.d., ph.d., f.r.s. fellow of trinity college, cambridge university; cavendish professor of experimental physics, cambridge university. author of "the conduction of electricity through gases," "electricity and matter." * * * * * frederick bedell, ph.d. professor of applied electricity, cornell university. author of "the principles of the transformer;" joint author of "alternating currents." * * * * * dugald c. jackson, c.e. head of department of electrical engineering, massachusetts institute of technology; member, american institute of electrical engineers, etc. author of "a textbook on electromagnetism and the construction of dynamos;" joint author of "alternating currents and alternating-current machinery." * * * * * michael idvorsky pupin, a.b., sc.d., ph.d. professor of electro-mechanics, columbia university, new york. author of "propagation of long electric waves," and "wave-transmission over non-uniform cables and long-distance air lines." * * * * * frank baldwin jewett, a.b., ph.d. transmission and protection engineer, with american telephone & telegraph co. author of "modern telephone cable," "effect of pressure on insulation resistance." * * * * * arthur crotch formerly lecturer on telegraphy and telephony at the municipal technical schools, norwich, eng. author of "telegraphy and telephony." * * * * * james erskine-murray, d.sc. fellow of the royal society of edinburgh; member of the institution of electrical engineers. author of "a handbook of wireless telegraphy." * * * * * a. h. mcmillan, a.b., ll.b. author of "telephone law, a manual on the organization and operation of telephone companies." * * * * * william esty, s.b., m.a. head of department of electrical engineering, lehigh university. joint author of "the elements of electrical engineering." * * * * * george w. wilder, ph.d. formerly professor of telephone engineering, armour institute of technology. author of "telephone principles and practice," "simultaneous telegraphy and telephony," etc. * * * * * william l. hooper, ph.d. head of department of electrical engineering, tufts college. joint author of "electrical problems for engineering students." * * * * * david s. hulfish technical editor, _the nickelodeon_; telephone and motion-picture expert; solicitor of patents. author of "how to read telephone circuit diagrams." * * * * * j. a. fleming, m.a., d.sc. (lond.), f.r.s. professor of electrical engineering in university college, london; late fellow and scholar of st. john's college, cambridge; fellow of university college, london. author of "the alternate-current transformer," "radiotelegraphy and radiotelephony," "principles of electric wave telegraphy," "cantor lectures on electrical oscillations and electric waves," "hertzian wave wireless telegraphy," etc. * * * * * f. a. c. perrine, a.m., d.sc. consulting engineer; formerly president, stanley electric manufacturing company; formerly professor of electrical engineering, leland stanford, jr. university. author of "conductors for electrical distribution." * * * * * a. frederick collins editor, _college wireless bulletin_. author of "wireless telegraphy, its history, theory and practice," "manual of wireless telegraphy," "design and construction of induction coils," etc. * * * * * schuyler s. wheeler, d.sc. president, crocker-wheeler co.; past-president, american institute of electrical engineers. joint author of "management of electrical machinery." * * * * * charles proteus steinmetz consulting engineer, with the general electric co.; professor of electrical engineering, union college. author of "the theory and calculation of alternating-current phenomena," "theoretical elements of electrical engineering," etc. * * * * * george w. patterson, s.b., ph.d. head of department of electrical engineering, university of michigan. joint author of "electrical measurements." * * * * * william maver, jr. ex-electrician baltimore and ohio telegraph company; member of the american institute of electrical engineers. author of "american telegraphy and encyclopedia of the telegraph," "wireless telegraphy." * * * * * john price jackson, m.e. professor of electrical engineering, pennsylvania state college. joint author of "alternating currents and alternating-current machinery." * * * * * augustus treadwell, jr., e.e. associate member, american institute of electrical engineers. author of "the storage battery, a practical treatise on secondary batteries." * * * * * edwin j. houston, ph.d. professor of physics, franklin institute, pennsylvania; joint inventor of thomson-houston system of arc lighting; electrical expert and consulting engineer. joint author of "the electric telephone," "the electric telegraph," "alternating currents," "arc lighting," "electric heating," "electric motors," "electric railways," "incandescent lighting," etc. * * * * * william j. hopkins professor of physics in the drexel institute of art, science, and industry, philadelphia. author of "telephone lines and their properties." [illustration: grosse point exchange rack detroit home telephone company, detroit, mich. _the dean electric co._] [illustration: line side of large main distributing frame] foreword the present day development of the "talking wire" has annihilated both time and space, and has enabled men thousands of miles apart to get into almost instant communication. the user of the telephone and the telegraph forgets the tremendousness of the feat in the simplicity of its accomplishment; but the man who has made the feat possible knows that its very simplicity is due to the complexity of the principles and appliances involved; and he realizes his need of a practical, working understanding of each principle and its application. the cyclopedia of telephony and telegraphy presents a comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the whole art of the electrical transmission of intelligence. the communication engineer--if so he may be called--requires a knowledge both of the mechanism of his instruments and of the vagaries of the current that makes them talk. he requires as well a knowledge of plants and buildings, of office equipment, of poles and wires and conduits, of office system and time-saving methods, for the transmission of intelligence is a business as well as an art. and to each of these subjects, and to all others pertinent, the cyclopedia gives proper space and treatment. the sections on telephony cover the installation, maintenance, and operation of all standard types of telephone systems; they present without prejudice the respective merits of manual and automatic exchanges; and they give special attention to the prevention and handling of operating "troubles." the sections on telegraphy cover both commercial service and train dispatching. practical methods of wireless communication--both by telephone and by telegraph--are thoroughly treated. the drawings, diagrams, and photographs incorporated into the cyclopedia have been prepared especially for this work; and their instructive value is as great as that of the text itself. they have been used to illustrate and illuminate the text, and not as a medium around which to build the text. both drawings and diagrams have been simplified so far as is compatible with their correctness, with the result that they tell their own story and always in the same language. the cyclopedia is a compilation of many of the most valuable instruction papers of the american school of correspondence, and the method adopted in its preparation is that which this school has developed and employed so successfully for many years. this method is not an experiment, but has stood the severest of all tests--that of practical use--which has demonstrated it to be the best yet devised for the education of the busy, practical man. in conclusion, grateful acknowledgment is due to the staff of authors and collaborators, without whose hearty co-operation this work would have been impossible. table of contents volume ii manual switchboards _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_[a] page[b] common-battery switchboards--line signals--cord circuit--lamps--mechanical signals--relays--jacks--switchboard assembly--transfer switchboard--transfer lines--handling transfers--multiple switchboard--busy test--influence of traffic--magneto-multiple switchboard--multiple boards: series, branch-terminal, modern magneto, common-battery--western electric no. relay board--western electric no. board--types of multiple boards--apparatus--trunking--western electric and kellogg trunk circuits automatic systems _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ page automatic vs. manual--operation--selecting switch--line switch--trunking systems--two- and three-wire systems--subscriber's station apparatus--first and second selector operation--connector--release after conversation--multi-office system--automatic sub-offices--rotary connector--party lines--two-wire automatic system--lorimer system--central-office apparatus--operation--automanual system--operation--subscriber's apparatus--operator's equipment--switching equipment--distribution of calls--connection--speed power plants and buildings _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ page currents employed--types--operator's transmitter supply--ringing-current supply--auxiliary signaling current--primary sources--duplicate apparatus--storage batteries--power switchboards--circuits--central-office building--arrangement of apparatus--manual offices--automatic offices special service features _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ page private-branch exchanges--switchboards--supervision--with automatic offices--battery supply--ringing current--inter-communicating systems--magneto system--common-battery systems--types--long-distance switching--operator's orders--trunking--way stations--traffic--measured service--charging--rates--toll service--local service telegraph and railway work _by k. b. miller and s. g. mcmeen_ page phantom, simplex, and composite circuits--ringing--railway composite--telephone train dispatching--railroad conditions--transmitting orders--apparatus--telephone equipment--types of circuits--test boards--blocking sets--dispatching on electric railways review questions page index page [footnote a: for professional standing of authors, see list of authors and collaborators at front of volume.] [footnote b: for page numbers, see foot of pages.] [illustration: portion of terminal room of large common-battery office prospect office, new york telephone co.] chapter xxii the simple common-battery switchboard =advantages of common-battery operation.= the advantages of the common-battery system of operation, alluded to in chapter xiii, may be briefly summarized here. the main gain in the common-battery system of supply is the simplification of the subscribers' instruments, doing away with the local batteries and the magneto generators, and the concentration of all these many sources of current into one single source at the central office. a considerable saving is thus effected from the standpoint of maintenance, since the simpler common-battery instrument is not so likely to get out of order and, therefore, does not have to be visited so often for repairs, and the absence of local batteries, of course, makes the renewal of the battery parts by members of the maintenance department, unnecessary. another decided advantage in the common-battery system is the fact that the centralized battery stands ready always to send current over the line when the subscriber completes the circuit of the line at his station by removing his receiver from its hook. the common-battery system, therefore, lends itself naturally to the purposes of automatic signaling, since it is only necessary to place at the central office a device in the circuit of each line that will be responsive to the current which flows from the central battery when the subscriber removes his receiver from its hook. it is thus that the subscriber is enabled automatically to signal the central office when he desires a connection; and as will be shown, it is by the same sort of means, associated with the cord circuits used in connecting his line with some other line, that the operator is automatically notified when a disconnection is desired, the cessation of current through the subscriber's line when he hangs up his receiver being made to actuate certain responsive devices which are associated with the cord at that time connected with his line, and which convey the proper disconnect signal to the operator. concentration of sources of energy into a single large unit, the simplification of the subscriber's station equipment, and the ready adaptability to automatic signaling from the subscriber to the central office are, therefore, the reasons for the existence of the common-battery system. =common battery vs. magneto.= it must not be supposed, however, that the common-battery system always has advantages over the magneto system, and that it is superior to the magneto or local-battery system for all purposes. it is the outward attractiveness of the common-battery system and the arguments in its favor, so readily made by over-zealous salesmen, that has led, in many cases, to the adoption of this system when the magneto system would better have served the purpose of utility and economy. to say the least, the telephone transmission to be had from common-battery systems is no better than that to be had from local-battery systems, and as a rule, assuming equality in other respects, it is not as good. it is perhaps true, however, that under average conditions common-battery transmission is somewhat better, because whereas the local batteries at the subscribers' stations in the local-battery system are not likely to be in uniformly first-class condition, the battery in a common-battery system will be kept up to its full voltage except under the grossest neglect. the places in which the magneto, or local-battery, system is to be preferred to the common-battery system, in the opinion of the writers, are to be found in the small rural communities where the lines have a rather great average length; where a good many subscribers are likely to be found on some of the lines; where the sources of electrical power available for charging storage batteries are likely either not to exist, or to be of a very uncertain nature; and where it is not commercially feasible to employ a high-grade class of attendants, or, in fact, any attendant at all other than the operator at the central office. in large or medium-sized exchanges it is always possible to procure suitable current for charging the storage batteries required in common-battery systems, and it is frequently economical, on account of the considerable quantity of energy that is thus used, to establish a generating plant in connection with the central office for developing the necessary electrical energy. in very small rural places there are frequently no available sources of electrical energy, and the expense of establishing a power plant for the purpose cannot be justified. but even if there is an electric light or railway system in the small town, so that the problem of available current supply does not exist, the establishment of a common-battery system with its storage battery and the necessary charging machinery requires the daily attendance at the central office of some one to watch and care for this battery, and this, on account of the small gross revenue that may be derived from a small telephone system, often involves a serious financial burden. there is no royal road to a proper decision in the matter, and no sharp line of demarcation may be drawn between the places where common-battery systems are superior to magneto and _vice versâ_. it may be said, however, that in the building of all new telephone plants having over about local subscribers, the common-battery system is undoubtedly superior to the magneto. if the plant is an old one, however, and is to be re-equipped, the continuance of magneto apparatus might be justified for considerably larger exchanges than those having subscribers. telephone operating companies who have changed over the equipment of old plants from magneto to common battery have sometimes been led into rather serious difficulty, owing to the fact that their lines, while serving tolerably well for magneto work, were found inadequate to meet the more exacting demands of common-battery work. again in an old plant the change from magneto to common-battery equipment involves not only the change of switchboards, but also the change of subscribers' instruments that are otherwise good, and this consideration alone often, in our opinion, justifies the replacing of an old magneto board with a new magneto board, even if the exchange is of such size as to demand a small multiple board. where the plant to be established is of such size as to leave doubt as to whether a magneto or a common-battery switchboard should be employed, the questions of availability of the proper kind of power for charging the batteries, the proper kind of help for maintaining the batteries and the more elaborate central-office equipment, the demands and previous education of the public to be served, all are factors which must be considered in reaching the decision. it is not proper to say that anything like all exchanges having fewer than local lines, should be equipped with magneto service. where all the lines are short, where suitable power is available, and where a good grade of attendants is available--as, for instance, in the case of private telephone exchanges that serve some business establishment or other institution located in one building or a group of buildings--the common-battery system is to be recommended and is largely used, even though it may have but a dozen or so subscribers' lines. it is for such uses, and for use in those regular public-service exchange systems where the conditions are such as to warrant the common-battery system, and yet where the number of lines and the traffic are small enough to be handled by such a small group of operators that any one of them may reach over the entire face of the board, that the simple non-multiple common-battery system finds its proper field of usefulness. =line signals.= the principles and means by which the subscriber is enabled to call the central-office operator in a common-battery system have been referred to briefly in chapter iii. we will review these at this point and also consider briefly the way in which the line signals are associated with the connective devices in the subscribers' lines. _direct-line lamp._ the simplest possible way is to put the line signal directly in the circuit of the line in series with the central-office battery, and so to arrange the jack of the corresponding line that the circuit through the line signal will be open when the operator inserts a plug into that jack. this arrangement is shown in fig. where the subscriber's station at the left is indicated in the simplest of its forms. it is well to repeat here that in all common-battery manual systems, the subscriber's station equipment, regardless of the arrangement or type of its talking and signaling apparatus, must have these features: first, that the line shall be normally open to direct currents at the subscriber's station; second, that the line shall be closed to direct currents when the subscriber removes his receiver from its hook in making or in answering a call; third, that the line normally, although open to direct currents, shall afford a proper path for alternating or varying currents through the signal receiving device at the sub-station. the subscriber's station arrangement shown in fig. , and those immediately following, is the simplest arrangement that possesses these three necessary features for common-battery service. [illustration: fig. . direct-line lamp] considering the arrangement at the central office, fig. , the two limbs of the line are permanently connected to the tip and sleeve contacts of the jack. these two main contacts of the jack normally engage two anvils so connected that the tip of the jack is ordinarily connected through its anvil to ground, while the sleeve of the jack is normally connected through its anvil to a circuit leading through the line signal--in this case a lamp--and the common battery, and thence to ground. the operation is obvious. normally no current may flow from the common battery through the signal because the line is open at the subscriber's station. the removal of the subscriber's receiver from its hook closes the circuit of the line and allows the current to flow through the lamp, causing it to glow. when the operator inserts the plug into the jack, in response to the call, the circuit through the lamp is cut off at the jack and the lamp goes out. this arrangement, termed the direct-line lamp arrangement, is largely used in small common-battery telephone systems where the lines are very short, such as those found in factories or other places where the confines of the exchange are those of a building or a group of neighboring buildings. many of the so-called private-branch exchanges, which will be considered more in detail in a later chapter, employ this direct-line lamp arrangement. [illustration: fig. . direct-line lamp with ballast] _direct-line lamp with ballast._ obviously, however, this direct-line lamp arrangement is not a good one where the lines vary widely in length and resistance. an incandescent lamp, as is well known, must not be subjected to too great a variation in current. if the current that is just right in amount to bring it to its intended degree of illumination is increased by a comparatively small amount, the life of the lamp will be greatly shortened, and too great an increase will result in the lamp's burning out immediately. on the other hand, a current that is too small will not result in the proper illumination of the lamp, and a current of one-half the proper normal value will just suffice to bring the lamp to a dull red glow. with lines that are not approximately uniform in length and resistance the shorter lines would afford too great a flow of current to the lamps and the longer lines too little, and there is always the danger present, unless means are taken to prevent it, that if a line becomes short-circuited or grounded near the central office, the lamp will be subjected to practically the full battery potential and, therefore, to such a current as will burn it out. one of the very ingenious and, we believe, promising methods that has been proposed to overcome this difficulty is that of the iron-wire ballast, alluded to in chapter iii. this, it will be remembered, consists of an iron-wire resistance enclosed in a vacuum chamber and so proportioned with respect to the flow of current that it will be subjected to a considerable heating effect by the amount of current that is proper to illuminate the lamp. as has already been pointed out, carbon has a negative temperature coefficient, that is, its resistance decreases when heated. iron, on the other hand, has a positive temperature coefficient, its resistance increasing when heated. when such an iron-wire ballast is put in series with the incandescent lamp forming the line signal, as shown in fig. , it is seen that the resistance of the carbon in the lamp filament and of the iron in the ballast will act in opposite ways when the current increases or decreases. an increase of current will tend to heat up the iron wire of the ballast and, therefore, increase its resistance, and the ballast is so proportioned that it will hold the current that may flow through the lamp within the proper maximum and minimum limits, regardless of the resistance of the line in which the lamp is used. this arrangement has not gone into wide use up to the present time. _line lamp with relay._ by far the most common method of associating the line lamp with the line is to employ a relay, of which the actuating coil is in the line circuit, this relay serving to control a local circuit containing the battery and the lamp. this arrangement and the way in which these parts are associated with the jack are clearly indicated in fig. . here the relay may receive any amount of current, from the smallest which will cause it to pull up its armature, to the largest which will not injure its winding by overheat. relays may be made which will attract their armatures at a certain minimum current and which will not burn out when energized by currents about ten times as large, and it is thus seen that a very large range of current through the relay winding is permissible, and that, therefore, a very great latitude as to line resistance is secured. on the other hand, it is obvious that the lamp circuit, being entirely local, is of uniform resistance, the lamp always being subjected, in the arrangement shown, to practically the full battery potential, the lamp being selected to operate on that potential. [illustration: fig. . line lamp with relay] _pilot signals._ in the circuits of figs. , , and , but a single line and its associated apparatus is shown, and it may not be altogether clear to the uninitiated how it is that the battery shown in those figures may serve, without interference of any function, a larger number of lines than one. it is to be remembered that this battery is the one which serves not only to operate the line signals, but also to supply talking current to the subscribers and to supply current for the operation of the cord-circuit signals after the cord circuits are connected with the lines. in fig. this matter is made clear with respect to the association of this common battery with the lines for operating the line signals, and also another important feature of common-battery work is brought out, viz, the pilot lamp and its association with a group of line lamps. three subscribers' lines only are shown, but this serves clearly to illustrate the association of any larger number of lines with the common battery. ignoring at first the pilot relay and the pilot lamp, it will be seen that each of the tip-spring anvils of the jacks is connected to a common wire _ _ which is grounded. each of the sleeve-contact anvils is connected through the coil of the line relay to another common wire _ _, which connects with the live side of the common battery. obviously, therefore, this arrangement corresponds with that of fig. , since the battery may furnish current to energize any one of the line relays upon the closure of the circuit of the corresponding line. each of the relay armatures in fig. is connected to ground. here we wish to bring out an important thing about telephone circuit diagrams which is sometimes confusing to the beginner, but which really, when understood, tends to prevent confusion. the showing of a separate ground for each of the line-relay armatures does not mean that literally each one of these armatures is connected by a separate wire to earth, and it is to be understood that the three separate grounds shown in connection with these relay armatures is meant to indicate just such a set of affairs as is shown in connection with the tip-spring anvils of the jacks, all of which are connected to a common wire which, in turn, is grounded. obviously, the result is the same, but in the case of this particular diagram it is seen that a great deal of crossing of lines is prevented by showing a separate ground at each one of the relay armatures. the same practice is followed in connection with the common battery. sometimes it is very inconvenient in a complicated diagram to run all of the wires that are supposed to connect with one terminal of the battery across the diagram to represent this connection. it is permissible, therefore, and in fact desirable, that separate battery symbols be shown wherever by so doing the diagram will be simplified, the understanding being, in the absence of other information or of other indications, that the same battery is referred to, just as the same ground is referred to in connection with the relay armatures in the figure under discussion. each line lamp in fig. is shown connected on one hand to its corresponding line relay contact and on the other hand to a common wire which leads through the winding of the pilot relay to the live side of the battery. it is obvious here that whenever any one of the line relays attracts its armature the local circuit containing the corresponding lamp and the common battery will be closed and the lamp illuminated. whenever any line relay operates, the current, which is supplied to its lamp, must come through the pilot-relay winding, and if a number of line relays are energized, then the current flow of the corresponding lamps must flow through this relay winding. therefore, this relay winding must be of low resistance, so that the drop through its winding may not be sufficient to interfere with the proper burning of the lamps, even though a large number of lamps be fed simultaneously through it. the pilot relay must be so sensitive that the current, even through one lamp, will cause it to attract its armature. when it does attract its armature it causes illumination of the pilot lamp in the same way that the line relays cause the illumination of the line lamps. the pilot lamp, which is commonly associated with a group of line lamps that are placed on any one operator's position of the switchboard, is located in a conspicuous place in the switchboard cabinet and is provided with a larger lens so as to make a more striking signal. as a result, whenever any line lamp on a given position lights, the pilot lamp does also and serves to attract the attention, even of those located in distant portions of the room, to the fact that a call exists on that position of the board, the line lamp itself, which is simultaneously lighted, pointing out the particular line on which the call exists. pilot lamps, in effect, perform similar service to the night alarm in magneto boards, but, of course, they are silent and do not attract attention unless within the range of vision of the operator. they are used not only in connection with line lamps, but also in connection with the cord-circuit lamps or signals, as will be pointed out. [illustration: fig. . battery supply through impedance coils] [illustration: fig. . battery supply through repeating coils] [illustration: fig. . battery supply with impedance coils and condensers] =cord circuit.= _battery supply._ were it not for the necessity of providing for cord-circuit signals in common-battery switchboards, the common-battery cord circuit would be scarcely more complex than that for magneto working. stripped of all details, such as signals, ringing and listening keys, and operator's equipment, cord circuits of three different types are shown in figs. , , and . these merely illustrate the way in which the battery is associated with the cord circuits and through them with the line circuits for supplying current for talking purposes to the subscribers. it is thought that this matter will be clear in view of the discussion of the methods by which current is supplied to the subscribers' transmitters in common-battery systems as discussed in chapter xiii. while the arrangements in this respect of figs. , , and illustrate only three of the methods, these three are the ones that have been most widely and successfully used. _supervisory signals._ the signals that are associated with the cord circuits are termed supervisory signals because of the fact that by their means the operator is enabled to supervise the condition of the lines during times when they are connected for conversation. the operation of these supervisory signals may be best understood by considering the complete circuits of a simple switchboard and must be studied in conjunction with the circuits of the lines as well as those of the cords. [illustration: fig. . simple common-battery switchboard] _complete circuit._ such complete circuits are shown in fig. . the particular arrangement indicated is that employed by the kellogg company, and except for minor details may be considered as typical of other makes also. two subscribers' lines are shown extending from station a and station b, respectively, to the central office. the line wires are shown terminating in jacks in the same manner as indicated in figs. , , and , and their circuits are normally continued from these jacks to the ground on one side and to the line relay and battery on the other. the jack in this case has three contacts adapted to register with three corresponding contacts in each of the plugs. the thimble of the jack in this case forms no part of the talking circuit and is distinct from the two jack springs which form the line terminals. it and the auxiliary contact _ _ in each of the plugs with which it registers, are solely for the purpose of co-operating in the control of the supervisory signals. the tip and sleeve strands of the cord are continuous from one plug to the other except for the condensers. the two batteries indicated in connection with the cord circuit are separate batteries, a characteristic of the kellogg system. one of these batteries serves to supply current to the tip and sleeve strand of the cord circuit through the two windings _ _ and _ _, respectively, of the supervisory relay connected with the answering side of the cord circuit, while the other battery similarly supplies current through the windings _ _ and _ _ of the supervisory relay associated with the calling side of the cord circuit. the windings of these relays, therefore, act as impedance coils and the arrangement by which battery current is supplied to the cord circuits and, therefore, to the lines of the connected subscribers, is seen to be the combined impedance coil and condenser arrangement discussed in chapter xiii. as soon as a plug is inserted into the jack of a line, the line relay will be removed from the control of the line, and since the two strands of the cord circuit now form continuations of the two line conductors, the supervisory relay will be substituted for the line relay and will be under control of the line. since all of the current which passes to the line after a plug is inserted must pass through the cord-circuit connection and through the relay windings, and since current can only flow through the line when the subscriber's receiver is off its hook, it follows that the supervisory relays will only be energized after the corresponding plug has been inserted into a jack of the line and after the subscriber has removed his receiver. unlike the line relays, the supervisory relays open their contacts to break the local circuits of the supervisory lamps _ _ and _ _ when the relay coils are energized, and to close them when de-energized; but the armatures of the supervisory relays do alone control the circuits of the supervisory lamps. these circuits are normally held open in another place, that is, between the plug contacts _ _ and the jack thimbles. it is only, therefore, when a plug is inserted into a jack and when the supervisory relay is de-energized, that the supervisory lamp may be lighted. when a plug is inserted into a jack and when the corresponding supervisory relay is de-energized, the circuit may be traced from ground at the cord-circuit batteries through the left-hand battery, for instance, through lamp _ _, thence through the contacts of the supervisory relay to the contact _ _ of the plug, thence through the thimble of the jack to ground. when a plug is inserted into the jack, therefore, the necessary arrangements are completed for the supervisory lamp to be under the control of the subscriber. under this condition, whenever the subscriber's receiver is on its hook, the circuit of the line will be broken, the supervisory relay will be de-energized, and the supervisory lamp will be lighted. when, on the other hand, the subscriber's receiver is off its hook, the circuit of the line will be complete, the supervisory relay will be energized, and the supervisory lamp will be extinguished. _salient features of supervisory operation._ it will facilitate the student's understanding of the requirements and mode of operation of common-battery supervisory signals in manual systems, whether simple or multiple, if he will firmly fix the following facts in his mind. in order that the supervisory signal may become operative at all, some act must be performed by the operator--this being usually the act of plugging into a jack--and then, until the connection is taken down, the supervisory signal is under the control of the subscriber, and it is displayed only when the subscriber's receiver is placed on its hook. _cycle of operations._ we may now trace through the complete cycle of operations of the simple common-battery switchboard, the circuits of which are shown in fig. . assume all apparatus in its normal condition, and then assume that the subscriber at station a removes his receiver from its hook. this pulls up the line relay and lights the line lamp, the pilot relay also pulling up and lighting the common pilot lamp which is not shown. in response to this call, the operator inserts the answering plug and throws her listening key _l.k._ the operator's talking set is thus bridged across the cord circuit and she is enabled to converse with the calling subscriber. the answering supervisory lamp _ _ did not light when the operator inserted the answering plug into the jack, because, although the contacts in the lamp circuit were closed by the plug contact _ _ engaging the thimble of the jack, the lamp circuit was held open by the attraction of the supervisory relay armature, the subscriber's receiver being off its hook. learning that the called-for subscriber is the one at station b, the operator inserts the calling plug into the jack at that station and presses the ringing key _r.k._, in order to ring the bell. the act of plugging in, it will be remembered, cuts off the line-signaling apparatus from connection with that line. as the subscriber at station b was not at his telephone when called and his receiver was, therefore, on its hook, the insertion of the calling plug did not energize the supervisory relay coils _ _ and _ _, and, therefore, that relay did not attract its armature. the supervisory lamp _ _ was thus lighted, the circuit being from ground through the right-hand cord-circuit battery, lamp _ _, back contacts of the supervisory relay, third strand of the cord to contact _ _ of the calling plug, and thence to ground through the thimble of the jack. the lighting of this lamp is continued until the party at station b responds by removing his receiver from its hook, which completes the line circuit, energizes relay windings _ _ and _ _, causes that relay to attract its armature, and thus break the circuit of the lamp _ _. both supervisory lamps remain out as long as the two subscribers are conversing, but when either one of them hangs up his receiver the corresponding supervisory relay becomes de-energized and the corresponding lamp lights. when both of the lamps become illuminated, the operator knows that both subscribers are through talking and she takes down the connection. countless variations have been worked in the arrangement of the line and cord circuits, but the general mode of operation of this particular circuit chosen for illustration is standard and should be thoroughly mastered. the operation of other arrangements will be readily understood from an inspection of the circuits, once the fundamental mode of operation that is common to all of them is well in mind. =lamps.= the incandescent lamps used in connection with line and supervisory signals are specially manufactured, but differ in no sense from the larger lamps employed for general lighting purposes, save in the details of size, form, and method of mounting. usually these lamps are rated at about one-third candle-power, although they have a somewhat larger candle-power as a rule. they are manufactured to operate on various voltages, the most usual operating pressures being , , and volts. the -volt lamp consumes about one-tenth of an ampere when fully illuminated, the lamp thus consuming about . watts. the - and -volt lamps consume about the same amount of energy and corresponding amounts of current. [illustration: fig. . switchboard lamp] _lamp mounting._ the usual form of screw-threaded mounting employed in lamps for commercial lighting was at first applied to the miniature lamps used for switchboard work, but this was found unsatisfactory and these lamps are now practically always provided with two contact strips, one on each side of the glass bulb, these strips forming respectively the terminals for the two ends of the filament within. such a construction of a common form of lamp is shown in fig. , where these terminals are indicated by the numerals _ _ and _ _, _ _ being a dry wooden block arranged between the terminals at one end for securing greater rigidity between them. [illustration: fig. . line lamp mounting] the method of mounting these lamps is subject to a good deal of variation in detail, but the arrangement is always such that the lamp is slid in between two metallic contacts forming terminals of the circuit in which the lamp is to operate. such an arrangement of springs and the co-operating mounting forming a sort of socket for the reception of switchboard lamps is referred to as a _lamp jack_. these are sometimes individually mounted and sometimes mounted in strips in much the same way that jacks are mounted in strips. a strip of lamp jacks as manufactured by the kellogg company is shown in fig. . the opalescent lens is adapted to be fitted in front of the lamp after it has been inserted into the jack. fig. gives an excellent view of an individually-mounted lamp jack with its lamp and lens, this also being of kellogg manufacture. this figure shows a section of the plug shelf which is bored to receive a lamp. in order to protect the lamps and lenses from breakage, due to the striking of the plugs against them, a metal shield is placed over the lens, as shown in this figure, this being so cut away as to allow sufficient openings for the light to shine through. sometimes instead of employing lenses in front of the lamps, a flat piece of translucent material is used to cover the openings of the lamp, this being protected by suitable perforated strips of metal. a strip of lamp jacks employing this feature is shown in fig. , this being of dean manufacture. an advantage of this for certain types of work is that the flat translucent plate in front of the lamp may readily carry designating marks, such as the number of the line or something to indicate the character of the line, which marks may be readily changed as required. [illustration: fig. . supervisory lamp mounting] [illustration: fig. . line lamp mounting] [illustration: fig. . individual lamp jacks] in the types made by some manufacturers the only difference between the pilot lamp and the line lamp is in the size of the lens in front of it, the jack and the lamp itself being the same for each, while others use a larger lamp for the pilot. in fig. are shown two individual lamp jacks, the one at the top being for supervisory lamps and the one at the bottom being provided with a large lens for serving as a pilot lamp. [illustration: terminal room apparatus in process of installation installed by dean electric company at detroit, mich.] =mechanical signals.= as has been stated the so-called mechanical signals are sometimes used in small common-battery switchboards instead of lamps. where this is done the coil of the signal, if it is a line signal, is substituted in the line circuit in place of the relay coil. if the signals are used in connection with cord circuits for supervisory signals, their coils are put in the circuit in place of the supervisory relay coils. (these signals are referred to in chapter iii in connection with fig. .) they are so arranged that the attraction of the armature lifts a target on the end of a lever, and this causes a display of color or form. the release of the armature allows this target to drop back, thus obliterating the display. such signals, often called _visual signals_ and _electromagnet signals_, should be distinguished from the drops considered in connection with magneto switchboards in which the attraction of the armature causes the display of the signal by the falling of a drop, the signal remaining displayed until restored by some other means, the restoration depending in no wise on when the armature is released. _western electric._ the mechanical signal of the western electric company, shown in fig. , has a target similar to that shown in fig. but without a latch. it is turned to show a different color by the attraction of the armature and allowed to resume its normal position when the armature is released. [illustration: fig. . mechanical signal] _kellogg._ fig. gives a good idea of a strip of mechanical signals as manufactured by the kellogg company. this is known as the _gridiron_ signal on account of the cross-bar striping of its target. the white bars on the target normally lie just behind the cross-bars on the shield in front, but a slight raising of the target--about one-eighth of an inch--exposes these white bars to view, opposite the rectangular openings in the front shield. [illustration: fig. . strip of gridiron signals] _monarch._ in fig. is shown the visual signal manufactured by the monarch telephone company. [illustration: fig. . mechanical signal] =relays.= the line relays for common-battery switchboards likewise assume a great variety of forms. the well-known type of relay employed in telegraphy would answer the purpose well but for the amount of room that it occupies, as it is sometimes necessary to group a large number of relays in a very small space. nearly all present-day relays are of the single-coil type, and in nearly all cases the movement of the armature causes the movement of one or more switching springs, which are thus made to engage or disengage their associated spring or springs. one of the most widely used forms of relays has an l-shaped armature hung across the front of a forwardly projecting arm of iron, on the knife-edge corner of which it rocks as moved by the attraction of the magnet. the general form of this relay was illustrated in fig. . sometimes this relay is made up in single units and frequently a large number of such single units are mounted on a single mounting plate. this matter will be dealt with more in detail in the discussion of common-battery multiple switchboards. in other cases these relays are built _en bloc_, a rectangular strip of soft iron long enough to afford space for ten relays side by side being bored out with ten cylindrical holes to receive the electromagnets. the iron of the block affords a return path for the lines of force. the l-shaped armatures are hung over the front edge of this block, so that their free ends lie opposite the magnet cores within the block. this arrangement as employed by the kellogg company is shown in two views in figs. and . [illustration: fig. . strip of relays] [illustration: fig. . strip of relays] a bank of line relays especially adapted for small common-battery switchboards as made by the dean company, is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . bank of relays] =jacks.= the jacks in common-battery switchboards are almost always mounted in groups of ten or twenty, the arrangement being similar to that discussed in connection with lamp strips. ordinarily in common-battery work the jack is provided with two inner contacts so as to cut off both sides of the signaling circuit when the operator plugs in. a strip of such jacks is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . strip of cut-off jacks] ringing and listening keys for simple common-battery switchboards differ in no essential respect from those employed in magneto boards. [illustration: fig. . details of lamp, plug, and key mounting] =switchboard assembly.= the general assembly of the parts of a simple common-battery switchboard deserves some attention. the form of the switchboard need not differ essentially from that employed in magneto work, but ordinarily the cabinet is somewhat smaller on account of the smaller amount of room required by its lamps and jacks. an excellent idea of the line jacks and lamps, plugs, keys, and supervisory signals may be obtained from fig. , which is a detail view taken from a kellogg board. in the vertical panel of the board above the plug shelf are arranged the line jacks and the lamps in rows of twenty each, each lamp being immediately beneath its corresponding jack. such jacks are ordinarily mounted on / -inch centers both vertically and horizontally, so that a group of one hundred lamps and line jacks will occupy a space only slightly over by inches. such economy of space is not required in the simple magneto board, because the space might easily be made larger without in any way taxing the reach of the operator. the reason for this comparatively close mounting is a result, not of the requirements of the simple non-multiple common-battery board itself, but of the fact that the jack strips and lamp strips, which are required in very large numbers in multiple boards, have to be mounted extremely close together, and as the same lamp strips and jack strips are often available for simple switchboards, an economy in manufacture is effected by adherence to the same general dimensions. [illustration: fig. . simple common-battery switchboard with removable relay panel] a rear view of a common form of switchboard cabinet, known as the _upright type_ and manufactured by the dean company, is shown in fig. . in this all the relays are mounted on a hinged rack, which, when opened out as indicated, exposes the wiring to view for inspection or repairs. access to both sides of the relays is thus given to the repairman who may do all his work from the rear of the board without disturbing the operator. fig. shows a three-position cabinet of kellogg manufacture, this being about the limit in size of boards that could properly be called simple. obviously, where a switchboard cabinet must be made of greater length than this, _i. e._, than is required to accommodate three operators, it becomes too long for the operators to reach all over it without undue effort or without moving from their seats. the so-called _transfer board_ and the _multiple board_ (to be considered in subsequent chapters), constitute methods of relief from such a condition in larger exchanges. [illustration: fig. . three-position lamp board] chapter xxiii transfer switchboard when the traffic originating in a switchboard becomes so great as to require so many operators that the board must be made so long that any one of the operators cannot reach over its entire face, the simple switchboard does not suffice. either some form of transfer switchboard or of multiple switchboard must be used. in this chapter the transfer switchboard will be briefly discussed. the transfer switchboard is so named because its arrangement is such that some of the connections through it are handled by means of two operators, the operator who answers the call transferring it to another operator who completes the connection desired. =limitations of simple switchboard.= conceive a number of simple magneto switchboards, or a number of common-battery switchboards, arranged side by side, their number being so great as to form, by their combination, a board too long for the ordinary cords and plugs to reach between its extremities. on each of these simple switchboards, which we will say are each of the one-position type, there terminates a group of subscribers' lines so great in number, considering the traffic on them, that the efforts of one operator will just about be taxed to properly attend to their calls during the busiest hours of the day. if, now, these subscribers would be sufficiently accommodating to call for no other subscribers than those whose lines terminate on the same switchboard section or on one of the immediately adjacent switchboard sections, all would be well, but subscribers will not be so restricted. they demand universal service; that is, they demand the privilege of having their own lines connected with the line of any other person in the exchange. obviously, in the arrangement just conceived, any operator may answer any call originating at her own board and complete the connection with the desired subscriber if that subscriber's jack terminates on her own section or on one of the adjacent ones. beyond that she is powerless unless other means are provided. =transfer lines.= in the transfer board these other means consist in the provision of groups of local trunk lines or transfer lines extending from each switchboard position to each other non-adjacent switchboard position. when an operator receives a call for some line on a non-adjacent position, having answered this call with her answering plug, she inserts the calling plug into the jack of one of these transfer lines that leads to the proper other section. the operator at that section is notified either verbally or by signal, and she completes the connection between the other end of the transfer line and the line of the called subscriber; the connection between the two subscribers thus being effected through the cords of the two operators in question linked together by the transfer line. such a transfer line as just described, requiring the connection at each of its ends by one of the plugs of the operator's cord pair, is termed a _jack-ended trunk_ or a _jack-ended transfer line_ because each of its ends terminates in a jack. [illustration: fig. . jack-ended transfer circuit] there is another method of accomplishing the same general result by the employment of the so-called _plug-ended trunk_ or _plug-ended transfer line_. in this the trunk or transfer line terminates at one end, the answering end, in a jack as before, and the connection is made with it by the answering operator by means of the calling plug of the pair with which she answered the originating call. the other end of this trunk, instead of terminating in a jack, ends in a plug and the second operator involved in the connection, after being notified, picks up this plug and inserts it in the jack of the called subscriber, thus completing the connection without employing one of her regular cord pairs. _jack-ended trunk._ in fig. are shown the circuits of a commonly employed jack-ended trunk for transfer boards. the talking circuit, as usual, is shown in heavy lines and terminates in the tip and sleeve of the transfer jacks at each end. the auxiliary contacts in these jacks and the circuits connecting them are absolutely independent of the talking circuit and are for the purpose of signaling only, the arrangement of the jacks being such that when a plug is inserted, the spring _ _ will break from spring _ _ and make with spring _ _. obviously, the insertion of a plug in either of the jacks will establish such connections as to light both lamps, since the engagement of spring _ _ with spring _ _ in either of the jacks will connect both of the lamps in multiple across the battery, this connection including always the contacts _ _ and _ _ of the other jack. from this it follows that the insertion of a plug in the other end of the trunk will, by breaking contact between springs _ _ and _ _, put out both the lamps. one plug inserted will, therefore, light both lamps; two plugs inserted or two plugs withdrawn will extinguish both lamps. [illustration: fig. . jack-ended transfer circuit] if an operator located at one end of this trunk answers a call and finds that the called-for subscriber's line terminates within reach of the operator near the other end of this trunk, she will insert a calling plug, corresponding to the answering plug used in answering a call, into the jack of this trunk and thus light the lamp at both its ends. the operator at the other end upon seeing this transfer lamp illuminated inserts one of her answering plugs into the jack, and by means of her listening key ascertains the number of the subscriber desired, and immediately inserts her calling plug into the jack of the subscriber wanted and rings him in the usual manner. the act of this second operator in inserting her answering plug into the jack extinguishes the lamp at her own end and also at the end where the call originated, thus notifying the answering operator that the call has been attended to. as long as the lamps remain lighted, the operators know that there is an unattended connection on that transfer line. such a transfer line is called a _two-way_ line or a _single-track_ line, because traffic over it may be in either direction. in fig. is shown a trunk that operates in a similar way except that the two lamps, instead of being arranged in multiple, are arranged in series. [illustration: fig. . jack- and plug-ended transfer circuit] _plug-ended trunk._ in fig. is shown a plug-ended trunk, this particular arrangement of circuits being employed by the monarch company in its transfer boards. this is essentially a one-way trunk, and traffic over it can pass only in the direction of the arrow. traffic in the opposite direction between any two operators is handled by another trunk or group of trunks similar to this but "pointed" in the other direction. for this reason such a system is referred to as a _double-track_ system. the operation of signals is the same in this case as in fig. , except that the switching device at the left-hand end of the trunk instead of being associated with the jack is associated with the plug seat, which is a switch closely associated with the seat of a plug so as to be operated whenever the plug is withdrawn from or replaced in its seat. the operation of this arrangement is as follows: whenever an operator at the right-hand end of this trunk receives a call for a subscriber whose line terminates within the reach of the operator at the left-hand end of the trunk, she inserts the calling plug of the pair used in answering the calling subscriber into the jack of the trunk, and thus lights both of the trunk lamps. the operator at the other end of the trunk, seeing the trunk lamp lighted, raises the plug from its seat and, having learned the wishes of the calling subscriber, inserts this plug into the jack of the called subscriber without using one of her regular pairs. when she raised the trunk plug from its seat, she permitted the long spring _ _ of the plug seat switch to rise, thus extinguishing both lamps and giving the signal to the originating operator that the trunk connection has received attention. on taking down the connection, the withdrawal of the plug from the right hand of the trunk lights both lamps, and the restoring of the trunk plug to its normal seat again extinguishes both lamps. =plug-seat switch.= the plug-seat switch is a device that has received a good deal of attention not only for use with transfer systems, but also for use in a great variety of ways with other kinds of manual switching systems. the placing of a plug in its seat or withdrawing it therefrom offers a ready means of accomplishing some switching or signaling operation automatically. the plug-seat switch has, however, in spite of its possibilities, never come into wide use, and so far as we are aware the monarch telephone manufacturing company is the only company of prominence which incorporates it in its regular output. the monarch plug-switch mechanism is shown in fig. , and its operation is obvious. it may be stated at this point that one of the reasons why the plug-seat switch has not been more widely adopted for use, is the difficulty that has been experienced due to lint from the switchboard cords collecting on or about the contact points. in the construction given in the detailed cut, upper part, fig. , is shown the means adopted by the monarch company for obviating this difficulty. the contact points are carried in the upper portion of an inverted cup mounted on the under side of the switchboard shelf, and are thus protected, in large measure, from the damaging influence of dust and lint. [illustration: fig. . plug-seat switch] [illustration: fig. . order-wire arrangement] =methods of handling transfers.= one way of giving the number of the called subscriber to the second operator in a transfer system is to have that operator listen in on the circuit after it is continued to her position and receive the number either from the first operator or from the subscriber. receiving it from the first operator has the disadvantage of compelling the first operator to wait on the circuit until the second operator responds; receiving it from the subscriber has the disadvantage of sometimes being annoying to him. this, however, is to be preferred to the loss of time on the part of the originating operator that is entailed by the first method. a better way than either of these is to provide between the various operators working in a transfer system, a so-called _order-wire_ system. an order wire, as ordinarily arranged, is a circuit terminating at one end permanently in the head receiver of an operator, and terminating at the other end in a push button which, when depressed, will connect the telephone set of the operator at that end with the order wire. the operator at the push-button end of the order wire may, therefore, at will, communicate with the other operator in spite of anything that the other operator may do. an order-wire system suitable for transfer switchboards consists in an order wire leading from each operator's receiver to a push button at each of the other operator's positions, so that every operator has it within her power to depress a key or button and establish communication with a corresponding operator. when, therefore, an operator in a transfer system answers a call that must be completed through a transfer circuit, she establishes connection with that transfer circuit and then informs the operator at the other end of that circuit by order wire of the number of the trunk and the number of the subscriber with which that trunk is to be connected. fig. shows a system of order-wire buttons by means of which each operator may connect her telephone set with that of every other operator in the room, the number in this case being confined to three. assuming that each pair of wires leading from the lower portion of this figure terminates respectively in the operator's talking apparatus of the three respective operators, then it is obvious that operator no. , by depressing button no. , will connect her telephone set with that of operator no. ; likewise that any operator may communicate with any other operator by depressing the key bearing the corresponding number. =limitations of transfer system.= it may be stated that the transfer system at present has a limited place in the art of telephony. the multiple switchboard has outstripped it in the race for popular approval and has demonstrated its superiority in practically all large manual exchange work. this is not because of lack of effort on the part of telephone engineers to make the transfer system a success in a broad way. a great variety of different schemes, all embodying the fundamental idea of having one operator answer the call and another operator complete it through a trunk line, have been tried. in san francisco, the sabin-hampton system was in fairly successful service and served many thousands of lines for a number of years. it was, however, afterwards replaced by modern multiple switchboards. _examples of obsolete systems._ the sabin-hampton system was unique in many respects and involved three operators in each connection. it was one of the very first systems which employed automatic signaling throughout and did away with the subscribers' generators. it did not, however, dispense with the subscribers' local batteries. another large transfer system, used for years in an exchange serving at a time as many as , , was employed at grand rapids, michigan. this was later replaced by an automatic switchboard. [illustration: fig. . three-position transfer switchboard] =field of usefulness.= the real field of utility for the transfer system today is to provide for the growth of simple switchboards that have extended beyond their originally intended limits. by the adding of additional sections to the simple switchboard and the establishment of a comparatively cheap transfer system, the simple boards may be made to do continued service without wasting the investment in them by discarding them and establishing a completely new system. however, switchboards are sometimes manufactured in which the transfer system is included as a part of the original equipment. in fig. is shown a three-position transfer switchboard, manufactured by the monarch telephone company. at first glance the switchboard appears to be exactly like those described in chapter xxi, but on close observation, the transfer jacks and signals may be seen in the first and third positions, just below the line jacks and signals. there is no transfer equipment in the second position of this switchboard because the operator at that position is able to reach the jacks of all the lines and, therefore, is able to complete all calls originating on her position without the use of any transfer equipment. referring to fig. , which illustrates a two-position simple switchboard, it may readily be seen that if the demands for telephone service in the locality in which this switchboard is installed should increase so as to require the addition of more switchboard positions, this switchboard could readily be converted to a transfer switchboard by placing the necessary transfer jacks and signals in the vacant space between the line jacks and clearing-out drops. [illustration: cable turning sections, between a and b boards cortlandt office, new york telephone co.] chapter xxiv principles of the multiple switchboard =field of utility.= the multiple switchboard, unlike the transfer board, provides means for each operator to complete, without assistance, a connection with any subscriber's line terminating in the switchboard no matter how great the number of lines may be. it is used only where the simple switchboard will not suffice; that is, where the number of lines and the consequent traffic is so great as to require so many operators and, therefore, so great a length of board as to make it impossible for any one operator to reach all over the face of the board without moving from her position. =the multiple feature.= the fundamental feature of the multiple switchboard is the placing of a jack for every line served by the switchboard within the reach of every operator. this idea underlying the multiple switchboard may be best grasped by merely considering the mechanical arrangement and grouping of parts without regard to their details of operation. the idea is sometimes elusive, but it is really very simple. if the student at the outset will not be frightened by the very large number of parts that are sometimes involved in multiple switchboards, and by the great complexity which is apparent in the wiring and in the action of these parts; and will remember that this apparent complexity results from the great number of repetitions of the same comparatively simple group of apparatus and circuits, much will be done toward a mastery of the subject. the multiple switchboard is divided into sections, each section being about the width and height that will permit an ordinary operator to reach conveniently all over its face. the usual width of a section brought about by this limitation is from five and one-half to six feet. such a section affords room for three operators to sit side by side before it. now each line, instead of having a single jack as in the simple switchboard, is provided with a number of jacks and one of these is placed on each of the sections, so that each one of the operators may have within her reach a jack for each line. it is from the fact that each line has a multiplicity of jacks, that the term multiple switchboard arises. _number of sections._ since there is a jack for each line on each section of the switchboard, it follows that on each section there are as many jacks as there are lines; that is, if the board were serving , lines there would be , jacks. let us see now what it is that determines the number of sections in a multiple switchboard. in the final analysis, it is the amount of traffic that arises in the busiest period of the day. assume that in a particular office serving , lines, the subscribers call at such a very low rate that even at the busiest time of the day only enough calls are made to keep, say, three operators busy. in this case there would be no need for the multiple switchboard, for a single section would suffice. the three operators seated before that section would be able to answer and complete the connections for all of the calls that arose. but subscribers do not call at this exceedingly low rate. a great many more calls would arise on , lines during the busiest hour than could be handled by three operators and, therefore, a great many more operators would be required. space has to be provided for these operators to work in, and as each section accommodates three operators the total number of sections must be at least equal to the total number of required operators divided by three. let us assume, for instance, that each operator can handle calls during the busy hour. assume further that during the busy hour the average number of calls made by each subscriber is two. one hundred subscribers would, therefore, originate calls within this busy hour and this would be just sufficient to keep one operator busy. since one operator can handle only the calls of one hundred subscribers during the busy hour, it follows that as many operators must be employed as there are hundreds of subscribers whose lines are served in a switchboard, and this means that in an exchange of , subscribers, operators' positions would be required, or - / sections. each of these sections would be equipped with the full , jacks, so that each operator could have a connection terminal for each line. _the multiple._ these groups of , jacks, repeated on each of the sections are termed multiple jacks, and the entire equipment of these multiple jacks and their wiring is referred to as the multiple. it will be shown presently that the multiple jacks are only used for enabling the operator to connect with the called subscriber. in other words these jacks are for the purpose of enabling each operator to have within her reach any line that may be called for regardless of what line originates the call. we will now consider what arrangements are provided for enabling the operator to receive the signal indicating a call and what provisions are made for her to answer the call in response to such a signal. =line signals.= obviously it is not necessary to have the line signals repeated on each section of the board as are the multiple jacks. if a line has one definite place on the switchboard where its signal may be received and its call may be answered, that suffices. each line, therefore, in addition to having its multiple jacks distributed one on each section of the switchboard, has a line signal and an individual jack immediately associated with it, located on one only of the sections. this signal usually is in the form of a lamp and is termed the line signal, and this jack is termed the answering jack since it is by means of it that the operator always answers a call in response to the line signal. _distribution of line signals._ it is evident that it would not do to have all of these line signals and answering jacks located at one section of the board for then they would not be available to all of the operators. they are, therefore, distributed along the board in such a way that one group of them will be available to one operator, another group to another operator, and so on; the number of answering jacks and signals in any one group being so proportioned with respect to the number of calls that come in over them during the busy hour that it will afford just about enough calls to keep the operator at that position busy. we may summarize these conditions with respect to the jack and line-signal equipment of the multiple switchboard by saying that each line has a multiple jack on each section of the board and in addition to this has on one section of the board an answering jack and a line signal. these answering jacks and line signals are distributed in groups along the face of the board so that each operator will receive her proper quota of the originating calls which she will answer and, by virtue of the multiple jack, be able to complete the connections with the desired subscribers without moving from her position. =cord circuits.= each operator is also provided with a number of pairs of cords and plugs with proper supervisory or clearing-out signals and ringing and listening keys, the arrangement in this respect being similar to that already described in connection with the simple switchboard. =guarding against double connections.= from what has been said it is seen that a call originating on a given line may be answered at one place only, but an outgoing connection with that line may be made at any position. this fact that a line may be connected with when called for at any one of the sections of the switchboard makes necessary the provision that two or more connections will not be made with the same line at the same time. for instance, if a call came in over a line whose signal was located on the first position of the switchboard for a connection with line no. , , the operator at the first position would connect this calling line with no. , through the multiple jack on the first section of the switchboard. assume now that some line, whose signal was located on the th position of the switchboard, should call also for line no. , while that line was still connected with the first calling subscriber. obviously confusion would result if the operator at the th position, not knowing that line no. , was already busy, should connect this second line with it, thereby leaving both of the calling subscribers connected with line no. , , and as a result all of these three subscribers connected together. the provisions for suitable means for preventing the making of a connection with a line that is already switched at some other section of the switchboard, has offered one of the most fertile fields for invention in the whole telephone art. the ways that have been proposed for accomplishing this are legion. fortunately common practice has settled on one general plan of action and that is to so arrange the circuits that whenever a line is switched at one section, such an electrical condition will be established on the forward contacts of all of its multiple jacks that any operator at any other section in attempting to make a connection with that line will be notified of the fact that it is already switched by an audible signal, which she will receive in her head receiver. on the other hand the arrangement is such that when a line is not busy, _i. e._, it is not switched at any of the positions of the switchboard, the operator on attempting to make a connection with such a line will receive no such guarding signal and will, therefore, proceed with the connection. we may liken a line in a multiple switchboard to a lane having a number of gates giving access to it. one of these gates--the answering jack--is for the exclusive use of the proprietor of that lane. all of the other gates to the lane--the multiple jacks--are for affording means for the public to enter. but whenever any person enters one of these gates, a signal is automatically put up at all of the other gates forbidding any other person to enter the lane as long as the first person is still within. [illustration: fig. . principle of multiple switchboard] =diagram showing multiple board principle.= for those to whom the foregoing description of the multiple board is not altogether clear, the diagram of fig. may offer some assistance. five subscribers' lines are shown running through four sections of a switchboard. each of these lines is provided with a multiple jack on each section of the board. each line is also provided with an answering jack and a line signal on one of the sections of the board. thus the answering jacks and the line signals of lines _ _ and _ _ are shown in section i, that of line _ _ is shown in section ii, that of line _ _ in section iii, and that of line _ _ in section iv. at section i, line _ _ is shown in the condition of having made a call and having had this call answered by the operator inserting one of her plugs into its answering jack. in response to the instructions given by the subscriber, the operator has inserted the other plug of this same pair in the multiple jack of line _ _, thus connecting these two lines for conversation. at section iii, line _ _ is shown as having made a call, and the operator as having answered by inserting one of her plugs into the answering jack. it happens that the subscriber on line _ _ requests a connection with line _ _, and the condition at section iii is that where the operator is about to apply the tip of the calling plug to the jack of line _ _ to ascertain whether or not that line is busy. as before stated, when the contact is made between the tip of the calling plug and the forward contact of the multiple jack, the operator will receive a click in the ear (by means that will be more fully discussed in later chapters), this click indicating to her that line _ _ is not available for connection because it is already switched at some other section of the switchboard. =busy test.= the busy signal, by which an operator in attempting to make a connection is informed that the line is already busy, has assumed a great variety of forms and has brought forth many inventions. it has been proposed by some that the insertion of a plug into any one of the jacks of a line would automatically close a little door in front of each of the other jacks of the line, therefore making it impossible for any other operator to insert a plug as long as the line is in use. it has been proposed by others to ring bells or to operate buzzers whenever the attempt was made by an operator to plug into a line that was already in use. still others have proposed to so arrange the circuits that the operator would get an electric shock whenever she attempted to plug into a busy line. the scheme that has met with universal adoption, however, is that the operator shall, when the tip of her calling plug touches the forward contact of the jack of a line that is already switched, receive a click in her telephone which will forbid her to insert the plug. the absence of this click, or silence in her telephone, informs her that she may safely make the connection. _principle._ the means by which the operator receives or fails to receive this click, according to whether the line is busy or idle, vary widely, but so far as the writers are aware they all have one fundamental feature in common. the tip of the calling plug and the test contact of all of the multiple jacks of an idle line must be absolutely at the same potential before the test, so that no current will flow through the test circuit when the test is actually made. the test thimbles of all the jacks of a busy line must be at a different potential from the tip of the test plug so that a current will flow and a click result when the test is made. _potential of test thimbles._ it has been found an easy matter to so arrange the contacts in the jacks of a multiple switchboard that whenever the line is idle the test thimbles of that line will be a certain potential, the same as that of all the unused calling plug tips. it has also been easy to so arrange these contacts that the insertion of a plug into any one of the jacks will, by virtue of the contacts established, change the potential of all the test thimbles of that line so that they will be at a different potential from that of the tips of the calling plugs. it has not been so easy, however, to provide that these conditions shall exist under all conditions of practice. a great many busy tests that looked well on paper have been found faulty in practice. as is always the case in such instances, this has been true because the people who considered the scheme on paper did not foresee all of the conditions that would arise in practice. many busy-test systems will operate properly while everything connected with the switchboard and the lines served by it remains in proper order. but no such condition as this can be depended on in practice. switchboards, no matter how perfectly made and no matter with how great care they may be installed and maintained, will get out of order. telephone lines will become grounded or short-circuited or crossed or opened. such conditions, in a faulty busy-test system, may result in a line that is really idle presenting a busy test, and thus barring the subscriber on that line from receiving calls from other lines just as completely as if his line were broken. on the other hand, faulty conditions either in the switchboard or in the line may make a line that is really busy, test idle, and thus result in the confusion of having two or more subscribers connected to the same line at the same time. _busy-test faults._ to show how elusive some of the faults of a busy test may be, when considered on paper, it has come within the observation of the writers that a new busy-test system was thought well enough of by a group of experienced engineers to warrant its installation in a group of very large multiple switchboards, the cost of which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet when so installed it developed that a single short-circuited cord in a position would make the test inoperative on all the cords of that position--obviously an intolerable condition. luckily the remedy was simple and easily applied. in a well-designed busy-test system there should be complete silence when the test is made of an idle line, and always a well-defined click when the test is made of a busy line. the test on busy lines should result in a uniform click regardless of length of lines or the condition of the apparatus. it does not suffice to have a little click for an idle line and a big click for a busy line, as practice has shown that this results in frequent errors on the part of the operators. good operating requires that the tip of the calling plug be tapped against the test thimble several times in order to make sure of the state of the called line. in some multiple switchboards the arrangement has been such that the jacks of a line would test busy as soon as the subscriber on that line removed his receiver from its hook to make a call, as well as while any plug was in any jack of that line. the advocates of this added feature, in connection with the busy test, have claimed that the receiver, when removed from its hook in making a call, should make the line test busy and that a line should not be connected with when the subscriber's receiver was off its hook any more than it should be when it was already connected with at some other section of the switchboard. while it is true that a line may be properly termed busy when the subscriber has removed his receiver in order to make a call, it is not true that there is any real necessity for guarding against a connection with it while he is waiting for the operator to answer. leaving the line unguarded for this brief period may result in the subscriber, who intended to make the call, having to defer his call until he has conversed with the party who is trying to reach him. this cannot be said to be a detriment to the service, however, since the second party gets the connection he desires much sooner than he otherwise would, and the first party may still make his first intended call as soon as he has disposed of the party who reached him while he was waiting for his own operator to answer. it may be said, therefore, in connection with this matter of making the line test busy as soon as a subscriber has removed his receiver from the hook, that it is not considered an essential, and in case of those switchboard systems which naturally work out that way it is not considered a disadvantage. =field of each operator.= it was stated earlier in this chapter that as each section accommodated three operators, the total number of sections in a switchboard will be at least one-third the total number of required operators. this thought needs further development, for to stop at that statement is to arrive somewhat short of the truth. in order to do this it is necessary to consider the field in the multiple, reached by each operator. the section is of such size, or should be, that an operator seated in the center position of it may, without undue effort, reach all over the multiple. but the operator at the right-hand position cannot reach the extreme left portion of the multiple of that section, nor can the operator at the left reach the extreme right. how then may each operator reach a jack for every line? remembering that the multiple jacks are arranged exactly the same in each section, each jack always occupying the same relative position, it is easy to see that while the operator at a right-hand position of a section cannot reach the left-hand third of the multiple in her own section, she may reach the left-hand third of the multiple in the section at her right, and this, together with the center and right-hand thirds of her own section, represents the entire number of lines. so it is with the left-hand operator at any section, she reaches two-thirds of all the lines in the multiple of her own section and one-third in that of the section at her left. _end positions._ this makes it necessary to inquire about the operators at the end positions of the entire board. to provide for these the multiple is extended one-third of a section beyond them, so as to supply at the ends of the switchboard jacks for those lines which the end operators cannot reach on their own sections. sometimes instead of adding these end sections to the multiple for the end operators, the same result is accomplished by using only the full and regular sections of the multiple, and leaving the end positions without operators' equipment, as well as without answering jacks, line signals, and cords and plugs, so that in reality the end operator is at the middle position of the end section. this, in our opinion, is the better practice, since it leaves the sections standard, and makes it easier to extend the switchboard in length, as it grows, by the mere addition of new sections without disturbing any of the old multiple. =influence of traffic.= we wish again to emphasize the fact that it is the traffic during the busiest time of day and not the number of lines that determine the size of a multiple switchboard so far as its length is concerned. the number of lines determines the size of the multiple in any one section, but it is the amount of traffic, the number of calls that are made in the busiest period, that determines the number of operators required, and thus the number of positions. had this now very obvious fact been more fully realized in the past, some companies would be operating at less expense, and some manufacturers would have sold less expensive switchboards. the whole question as to the number of positions boils down to how many answering jacks and line signals may be placed at each operator's position without overburdening the operator with incoming traffic at the busy time of day. obviously, some lines will call more frequently than others, and hence the proper number of answering jacks at the different positions will vary. obviously, also, due to changes in the personnel of the subscribers, the rates of calling of different groups of lines will change from time to time, and this may necessitate a regrouping of the line signals and answering jacks on the positions; and changes in the personnel of the operators or in their skill also demand such regrouping. _intermediate frame._ the intermediate distributing frame is provided for this purpose, and will be more fully discussed in subsequent chapters. suffice it to say here that the intermediate distributing frame permits the answering jacks and line signals to be shifted about among the operators' positions, so that each position will have just enough originating traffic to keep each of the operators economically busy during the busiest time of the day. chapter xxv the magneto multiple switchboard =field of utility.= the principles of the multiple switchboard set forth in the last chapter were all developed long before the common-battery system came into existence, and consequently all of the first multiple switchboards were of the magneto type. although once very widely used, the magneto multiple switchboard has almost passed out of existence, since it has become almost universal practice to equip exchanges large enough to employ multiple boards with common-battery systems. nevertheless there is a field for magneto multiple switchboards, and in this field it has recently been coming into increasing favor. in those towns equipped with magneto systems employing simple switchboards or transfer switchboards, and which require new switchboards by virtue of having outgrown or worn out their old ones, the magneto multiple switchboard is frequently found to best fit the requirements of economy and good practice. the reason for this is that by its use the magneto telephones already in service may be continued, no change being required outside of the central office. furthermore, with the magneto multiple switchboard no provision need be made for a power plant, which, in towns of small size, is often an important consideration. again, many companies operate over a considerable area, involving a collection of towns and hamlets. it may be that all of these towns except one are clearly of a size to demand magneto equipment and that magneto equipment is the standard throughout the entire territory of the company. if, however, one of the towns, by virtue of growth, demands a multiple switchboard, this condition affords an additional argument for the employment of the magneto multiple switchboard, since the same standards of equipment and construction may be maintained throughout the entire territory of the operating company, a manifest advantage. on the other hand, it may be said that the magneto multiple switchboard has no proper place in modern exchanges of considerable size--say, having upward of one thousand subscribers--at least under conditions found in the united states. notwithstanding the obsolescence of the magneto multiple switchboard for large exchanges, a brief discussion of some of the early magneto multiple switchboards, and particularly of one of the large ones, is worth while, in that a consideration of the defects of those early efforts will give one a better understanding and appreciation of the modern multiple switchboard, and particularly of the modern multiple common-battery switchboard, the most highly organized of all the manual switching systems. brief reference will, therefore, be made to the so-called series multiple switchboard, and then to the branch terminal multiple switchboard, which latter was the highest type of switchboard development at the time of the advent of common-battery working. [illustration: fig. . series magneto multiple switchboard] =series-multiple board.= in fig. are shown the circuits of a series magneto multiple switchboard as developed by the engineers of the western electric company during the eighties. as is usual, two subscribers' lines and a single cord circuit are shown. one side of each line passes directly from the subscriber's station to one side of the drop, and also branches off to the sleeve contact of each of the jacks. the other side of the line passes first to the tip spring of the first jack, thence to the anvil of that jack and to the tip spring of the next jack, and so on in series through all of the jacks belonging in that line to the other terminal of the drop coil. normally, therefore, the drop is connected across the line ready to be responsive to the signal sent from the subscriber's generator. the cord circuit is of the two-conductor type, the plugs being provided with tip and sleeve contacts, the tips being connected by one of the flexible conductors through the proper ringing and listening key springs, and the sleeve being likewise connected through the other flexible conductor and the other springs of the ringing and listening keys. it is obvious that when any plug is inserted into a jack, the circuit of the line will be continued to the cord circuit and at the same time the line drop will be cut out of the circuit, because of the lifting of the tip spring of the jack from its anvil. permanently connected between the sleeve side of the cord circuit and ground is a retardation coil _ _ and a battery. another retardation coil _ _ is connected between the ground and a point on the operator's telephone circuit between the operator's head receiver and the secondary of her induction coil. these two retardation coils have to do with the busy test, the action of which is as follows: normally, or when a line is not switched at the central office, the test thimbles will all be at substantially ground potential, _i. e._, they are supposed to be. the point on the operator's receiver circuit which is grounded through the retardation coil _ _ will also be of ground potential because of that connection to ground. in order to test, the operator always has to throw her listening key _l.k._ into the listening position. she also has to touch the tip of the calling plug _p_c to a sleeve or jack of the line that is being tested. if, therefore, a test is made of an idle or non-busy line, the touching of the tip of the calling plug with the test thimble of that line will result in no flow of current through the operator's receiver, because there will be no difference of potential anywhere in the test circuit, which test circuit may be traced from the test thimble of the line under test to the tip of the calling plug, thence through the tip strand of the cord to the listening key, thence to the outer anvil of the listening key on that side, through the operator's receiver to ground through the impedance coil _ _. if, however, the line had already been switched at some other section by the insertion of either a calling or answering plug, all of the test thimbles of that line would have been raised to a potential above that of the ground, by virtue of the battery connected with the sleeve side of the cord circuit through the retardation coil _ _. if the operator had made a test of such a line, the tip of her testing plug would have found the thimble raised to the potential of the battery and, therefore, a flow of current would occur which would give her the busy click. the complete test circuit thus formed in testing a busy line would be from the ungrounded pole of the battery through the impedance coil _ _ associated with the cord that was already in connection with the line, thence to the sleeve strand of that cord to the sleeve of the jack at which the line was already switched, thence through that portion of the line circuit to which all of the sleeve contacts were connected, and therefore to the sleeve or test thimble of the jack at which the test is made, thence through the tip of the calling plug employed in making the test through the tip side of that cord circuit to the outer listening key contact of the operator making the test, and thence to ground through the operator's receiver and the impedance coil _ _. the resultant click would be an indication to the operator that the line was already in use and that, therefore, she must not make the connection. the condenser _ _ is associated with the operator's talking set and with the extra spring in the listening key _l.k._ in such a manner that when the listening key is thrown, the tip strand of the cord circuit is divided and the condenser included between them. this is for the purpose of preventing any potentials, which might exist on the line with which the answering plug _p_a was connected, from affecting the busy-test conditions. _operation._ the operation of the system aside from the busy-test feature is just like that described in connection with the simple magneto switchboard. assuming that the subscriber at station _a_ makes the call, he turns his hand generator, which throws the drop on his line at the central office. the operator, seeing the signal, inserts the answering plug of one of her idle pairs of cords into the answering jack and throws her listening key _l.k._ this enables the operator to talk with the calling subscriber, and having found that he desires a connection with the line extending to station _b_, she touches the tip of her calling plug to the multiple jack of that line that is within her reach, it being remembered that each one of the multiple jacks shown is on a different section. she leaves the listening key in the listening position when she does this. if the line is busy, the click will notify her that she must not make the connection, in which case she informs the calling subscriber that the line is busy and requests him to call again. if, however, she received no click, she would insert the calling plug into the jack, thus completing the connection between the two lines. she would then press the ringing key associated with the calling plug and that momentarily disconnects the calling plug from the answering plug and at the same time establishes connection between the ringing generator and the called line. the release of the ringing key again connects the calling and answering plugs and, therefore, connects the two subscribers' lines ready for conversation. all that is then necessary is that the called subscriber shall respond and remove his receiver from its hook, the calling subscriber already having done this. when the conversation is finished, both of the subscribers (if they remember it) will operate their ringing generators, which will throw the clearing-out drop as a signal to the operator for disconnection. if it should become necessary for the operator to ring back on the line of the calling subscriber, she may do so by pressing the ringing key associated with the calling plug. frequently this multiple switchboard arrangement was used with grounded lines, in which case the single line wire extending from the subscriber's station to the switchboard was connected with the tip spring of the first jack, the circuit being continued in series through the jack to the drop and thence to ground through a high non-inductive resistance. _defects._ this series multiple magneto system was used with a great many variations, and it had a good many defects. one of these defects was due to the necessary extending of one limb of the line through a large number of series contacts in the jacks. this is not to be desired in any case, but it was particularly objectionable in the early days before jacks had been developed to their present high state of perfection. a particle of dust or other insulating matter, lodging between the tip spring and its anvil in any one of the jacks, would leave the line open, thus disabling the line to incoming signals, and also for conversation in case the break happened to occur between the subscriber and the jack that was used in connecting with the line. another defect due to the same cause was that the line through the switchboard was always unbalanced by the insertion of a plug, one limb of the line always extending clear through the switchboard to the drop and the other, when the plug was inserted, extending only part way through the switchboard and being cut off at the jack where the connection was made. the objection will be apparent when it is remembered that the wires in the line circuit connecting the multiple jacks are necessarily very closely bunched together and, therefore, there is very likely to be cross-talk between two adjacent lines unless the two limbs of each line are exactly balanced throughout their entire length. again the busy-test conditions of this circuit were not ideal. the fact that the test rings of the line were connected permanently with the outside line circuit subjected these test rings to whatever potentials might exist on the outside lines, due to any causes whatever, such as a cross with some other wire; thus the test rings of an idle line might by some exterior cause be raised to such a potential that the line would test busy. it may be laid down as a fundamental principle in good multiple switchboard practice that the busy-test condition should be made independent of any conditions on the line circuit outside of the central office, and such is not the case in this circuit just described. [illustration: cable run from intermediate frame to multiple cortlandt office, new york telephone co.] =branch-terminal multiple board.= the next important step in the development of the magneto multiple switchboard was that which produced the so-called branch-terminal board. this came into wide use in the various bell operating companies before the advent of the common-battery systems. its circuits and the principles of operation may be understood in connection with fig. . in the branch-terminal system there are no series contacts in the jacks and no unbalancing of the line due to a cutting off of a portion of the line circuit when a connection was made with it. furthermore, the test circuits were entirely local to the central office and were not likely to be affected by outside conditions on the line. this switchboard also added the feature of the automatic restoration of the drops, thus relieving the operator of the burden of doing that manually, and also permitting the drops to be mounted on a portion of the switchboard that was not available for the mounting of jacks, and thus permitting a greater capacity in jack equipment. [illustration: fig. . branch-terminal magneto multiple switchboard] each jack has five contacts, and the answering and multiple jacks are alike, both in respect to their construction and their connection with the line. the drops are the electrically self-restoring type shown in fig. . the line circuits extended permanently from the subscriber's station to the line winding of the drop and the two limbs of the line branched off to the tip and sleeve contacts _ _ and _ _ respectively of each jack. another pair of wires extended through the multiple parallel to the line wires and these branched off respectively to the contact springs _ _ and _ _ of each of the jacks. this pair of wires formed portions of the drop-restoring circuit, including the restoring coil _ _ and the battery _ _, as indicated. the test thimble _ _ of each of the jacks is connected permanently with the spring _ _ of the corresponding jack and, therefore, with the wire which connects through the restoring coil _ _ of the corresponding drop to ground through the battery _ _. the plugs were each provided with three contacts. two of these were the usual tip and sleeve contacts connected with the two strands of the cord circuit. the third contact _ _ was not connected with any portion of the cord circuit, being merely an insulated contact on the plug adapted, when the plug was fully inserted, to connect together the springs _ _ and _ _. the cord circuit itself is readily understood from the drawing, having two features, however, which merit attention. one is the establishing of a grounded battery connection to the center portion of the winding of the receiver for the purposes of the busy test, and the other is the provision of a restoring coil and restoring circuit for the clearing-out drop, this circuit being closed by an additional contact on the listening key so as to restore the clearing-out drop whenever the listening key was operated. _operation._ an understanding of the operation of this system is easy. the turning of the subscriber's generator, when the line was in its normal condition, caused the display of the line signal. the insertion of the answering plug, in response to this call, did three things: ( ) it extended the line circuit to the tip and sleeve strand of the cord circuit. ( ) it energized the restoring coil _ _ of the drop by establishing the circuit from the contact spring _ _ through the plug contact _ _ to the other contact spring _ _, thus completing the circuit between the two normally open auxiliary wires. ( ) the connecting of the springs _ _ and _ _ established a connection from ground to the test thimbles of all the jacks on a line, the spring _ _ being always grounded and the spring _ _ being always connected to the test thimble _ _. it is to be noted that on idle lines the test rings are always at the same potential as the ungrounded pole of the battery _ _, being connected thereto through the winding _ _ of the restoring coil. on all busy lines, however, the test rings are dead grounded through the contact _ _ of the plug that is connected with the line. the tip of the testing plug at the time of making a test will also be at the same potential as that of the ungrounded pole of the battery _ _, since this pole of the battery _ _ is always connected to the center portion of the operator's receiver winding, and when the listening key is thrown the tip of the calling plug is connected therewith and is at the same potential. when, therefore, the operator touches the tip of the calling plug to the test thimble of an idle line, she will get no click, since the tip of the plug and the test thimble will be at the same potential. if, however, the line has already been switched at another section of the board, there will be a difference of potential, because the test thimble will be grounded, and the circuit, through which the current which causes the click flows, may be traced from the ungrounded pole of the battery _ _ to the center portion of the operator's receiver, thence through one-half of the winding to the tip of the calling plug, thence to the test thimble of the jack under test, thence to the spring _ _ of the jack on another section at which the connection exists, through the contact _ _ on the plug of that jack to the spring _ _, and thence to ground and back to the other terminal of the battery _ _. _magnet windings._ coils of the line and clearing-out drops by which these drops are thrown, are wound to such high resistance and impedance as to make it proper to leave them permanently bridged across the talking circuit. the necessity for cutting them out is, therefore, done away with, with a consequent avoidance, in the case of the line drops, of the provision of series contacts in the jacks. _arrangement of apparatus._ in boards of this type the line and clearing-out drops were mounted in the extreme upper portion of the switchboard face so as to be within the range of vision of the operator, but yet out of her reach. therefore, the whole face of the board that was within the limit of the operator's reach was available for the answering and multiple jacks. a front view of a little over one of the sections of the switchboard, involving three complete operator's positions, is shown in fig. , which is a portion of the switchboard installed by the western electric company in one of the large exchanges in paris, france. (this has recently been replaced by a common-battery multiple board.) in this the line drops may be seen at the extreme top of the face of the switchboard, and immediately beneath these the clearing-out drops. beneath these are the multiple jacks arranged in banks of one hundred, each hundred consisting of five strips of twenty. at the extreme lower portion of the jack space are shown the answering jacks and beneath these on the horizontal shelf, the plugs and keys. these jacks were mounted on / -inch centers, both vertically and horizontally and each section had in multiple banks of each, making , in all. subsequent practice has shown that this involves too large a reach for the operators and that, therefore, , is too large a number of jacks to place on one section if the jacks are not spaced closer than on / -inch centers. with the jack involving as many parts as that required by this branch terminal system, it was hardly feasible to make them smaller than this without sacrificing their durability, and one of the important features of the common-battery multiple system which has supplanted this branch-terminal magneto system is that the jacks are of such a simple nature as to lend themselves to mounting on / -inch centers, and in some cases on / -inch centers. [illustration: fig. . face of magneto multiple switchboard] =modern magneto multiple board.= coming now to a consideration of modern magneto multiple switchboards, and bearing in mind that such boards are to be found in modern practice only in comparatively small installations and then only under rather peculiar conditions, as already set forth, we will consider the switchboard of the monarch telephone manufacturing company as typical of good practice in this respect. [illustration: fig. . monarch magneto multiple switchboard circuits] _line circuit._ the line and cord circuits of the monarch system are shown in fig. . it will be seen that each jack has in all five contacts, numbered from _ _ to _ _ respectively, of which _ _ and _ _ are the springs which register with the tip and ring contacts of the plug and through which the talking circuit is continued, while _ _ and _ _ are series contacts for cutting off the line drop when a plug is inserted, and _ _ is the test contact or thimble adapted to register with the sleeve contact on the plug when the plug is fully inserted. the line circuit through the drop may be traced normally from one side of the line through the drop coil, thence through all of the pairs of springs _ _ and _ _ in the jacks of that line, and thence to spring _ _ of the last jack, this spring always being strapped to the spring _ _ in the last jack, and thence to the other side of the line. all the ring springs _ _ are permanently tapped on to one side of the line, and all of the tip springs _ _ are permanently tapped to the other side of the line. this system may, therefore, properly be called a branch-terminal system. it is seen that as soon as a plug is inserted into any of the jacks, the circuit through the drop will be broken by the opening of the springs _ _ and _ _ in that jack. the drop shown immediately above the answering jack is so associated mechanically with that jack as to be mechanically self-restored when the answering plug is inserted into the answering jack in response to a call. the arrangement in this respect is the same as that shown in fig. , illustrating the monarch combined drop and jack. _cord circuit._ the cord circuit needs little explanation. the tip and ring strands are the ones which carry the talking current and across these is bridged the double-wound clearing-out drop, a condenser being included in series in the tip strand between the two drop windings in the manner already explained in connection with fig. . the third or sleeve strand of the cord is continuous from plug to plug, and between it and the ground there is permanently connected a retardation coil. _test._ the test is dependent on the presence or absence of a path to ground from the test thimbles through some retardation coil associated with a cord circuit. obviously, in the case of an idle line there will be no path to ground from the test thimbles, since normally they are merely connected to each other and are insulated from everything else. when, however, a plug is inserted into a multiple or answering jack, the test thimbles of that line are connected to ground through the retardation coil associated with the third strand of the plug used in making the connection. when the operator applies the tip of the calling plug to a test contact of a multiple jack there will be no path to ground afforded if the line is idle, while if it is busy the potential of the tip of the test plug will cause a current to flow to ground through the impedance coil associated with the plug used in making the connection. this will be made clearer by tracing the test circuit. with the listening key thrown this may be traced from the live side of the battery through the retardation coil _ _, which is common to an operator's position, thence through the tip side of the listening key to the tip conductor of the calling cord, and thence to the tip of the calling plug and the thimble of the jack under test. if the line is idle there will be no path to ground from this point and no click will result, but if the line is busy, current will flow from the tip of the test plug to the thimble of the jack tested, thence by the test wire in the multiple to the thimble of the jack at which a connection already exists, and thence to ground through the third strand of the cord used in making that connection and the impedance coil associated therewith. the current which flows in this test circuit changes momentarily the potential of the tip side of the operator's telephone circuit, thus unbalancing her talking circuit and causing a click. [illustration: fig. . magneto multiple switchboard] if this test system were used in a very large board where the multiple would extend through a great many sections, there would be some liability of a false test due to the static capacity of the test contacts and the test wire running through the multiple. for small boards, however, where the multiple is short, this system has proven reliable. a multiple magneto switchboard employing the form of circuits just described is shown in fig. . this switchboard consists of three sections of two positions each. the combined answering jacks and drops may be seen at the lower part of the face of the switchboard and occupying somewhat over one-half of the jack and drop space. the multiple jacks are above the answering jacks and drops and it may be noted that the same arrangement and number of these jacks is repeated in each section. this switchboard may be extended by adding more sections and increasing the multiple in those already installed to serve , lines. _assembly._ in connection with the assembly of these magneto multiple switchboards, as installed by the monarch company, fig. shows the details of the cord rack at the back of the board. it shows how the ends of the switchboard cords opposite to the ends that are fastened to the plugs are connected permanently to terminals on the cord rack, at which point the flexible conductors are brought out to terminal clips or binding posts, to which the wires leading from the other portions of the cord circuit are led. in order to relieve the conductors in the cords from strain, the outer braiding of the cord at the rack end is usually extended to form what is called a _strain cord_, and this attached to an eyelet under the cord rack, so that the weight of the cord and the cord weights will be borne by the braiding rather than by the conductors. this leaves the insulated conductors extending from the ends of the cords free to hang loose without strain and be connected to the terminals as shown. this method of connecting cords, with variations in form and detail, is practically universal in all types of switchboards. [illustration: fig. . cord-rack connectors] a detail of the assembly of the drops and jacks in such a switchboard is shown in fig. . the single pair of clearing-out drops is mounted in the lower part of the vertical face of the switchboard just above the space occupied by the plug shelf. vertical stile strips extend above the clearing-out drop space for supporting the drops and jacks. a single row of answering jacks and the corresponding line drops are shown in place. above these there would be placed, in the completely assembled board, the other answering jacks and line signals that were to occupy this panel, and above these the strips of multiple jacks. the rearwardly projecting pins from the stile strips are for the support of the multiple jack strips, these pins supporting the strips horizontally by suitable multiple clips at the ends of the jack strips; the jack strips being fastened from the rear by means of nuts engaging the screw threads on these pins. this method of supporting drops and jacks is one that is equally adaptable for use in other forms of boards, such as the simple magneto switchboard. [illustration: fig. . drop and jack mounting] [illustration: fig. . keyboard wiring] in fig. is shown a detail photograph of the key shelf wiring in one of these monarch magneto switchboards. in this the under side of the keys is shown, the key shelf being raised on its hinge for that purpose. the cable, containing all of the insulated wires leading to these keys, enters the space under the key shelf at the extreme left and from the rear. it then passes to the right of this space where a "knee" is formed, after which the cable is securely strapped to the under side of the key shelf. by this construction sufficient flexibility is provided for in the cable to permit the raising and lowering of the key shelf, the long reach of the cable between the "knee" and the point of entry at the left serving as a torsion member, so that the raising of the shelf will give the cable a slight twist rather than bend it at a sharp angle. chapter xxvi the common-battery multiple switchboard =western electric no. relay board.= the common-battery multiple switchboard differs from the simple or non-multiple common-battery switchboard mainly in the provision of multiple jacks and in the added features which are involved in the provision for a busy test. the principles of signaling and of supplying current to the subscribers for talking are the same as in the non-multiple common-battery board. for purposes of illustrating the practical workings of the common-battery multiple switchboard, we will take the standard form of the western electric company, choosing this only because it is the standard with nearly all the bell operating companies throughout the united states. [illustration: fig. . line circuit western electric no. . board] _line circuit._ we will first consider the line circuit in simplified form, as shown in fig. . at the left in this figure the common-battery circuit is shown at the subscriber's station, and at the right the central-office apparatus is indicated so far as equipment of a single line is concerned. in this simplified diagram no attempt has been made to show the relative positions of the various parts, these having been grouped in this figure in such a way as to give as clear and simple an idea as possible of the circuit arrangements. it is seen at a glance that this is a branch terminal board, the three contacts of each jack being connected by separate taps or legs to three wires running throughout the length of the board, these three wires being individual to the jacks of one line. on this account this line circuit is commonly referred to as a three-wire circuit. by the same considerations it will be seen that the switchboard line circuit of the branch-terminal multiple magneto system, shown in fig. , would be called a four-wire circuit. it will be shown later that other multiple switchboards in wide use have a still further reduction in the number of wires running through the jacks, or through the multiple as it is called, such being referred to as two-wire switchboards. the two limbs of the line which extend from the subscriber's circuit, beside being connected by taps to the tip and sleeve contacts of the jack respectively, connect with the two back contacts of a cut-off relay, and when this relay is in its normal or unenergized condition, these two limbs of the line are continued through the windings of the line relay and thence one to the ungrounded or negative side of the common-battery and the other to the grounded side. the subscriber's station circuit being normally open, no current flows through the line, but when the subscriber removes his receiver for the purpose of making a call the line circuit is completed and current flows through the coil of the line relay, thus energizing that relay and causing it to complete the circuit of the line lamp. the cut-off relay plays no part in the operation of the subscriber's calling, but merely leaves the circuit of the line connected through to the calling relay and battery. the coil of the cut-off relay is connected to ground on one side and on the other side to the third wire running through the switchboard multiple and which is tapped off to each of the test rings on the jacks. as will be shown later, when the operator plugs into the jack of a line, such a connection is established that the test ring of that jack will be connected to the live or negative pole of the common battery, which will cause current to flow through the coil of the cut-off relay, which will then operate to _cut off_ both of the limbs of the line from their normal connection with ground and the battery and the line relay. hence the name _cut-off relay_. the use of the cut-off relay to sever the calling apparatus from the line at all times when the line is switched serves to make possible a very much simpler jack than would otherwise be required, as will be obvious to anyone who tries to design a common-battery multiple system without a cut-off relay. the additional complication introduced by the cut-off relay is more than offset by the saving in complexity of the jacks. it is desirable, on account of the great number of jacks necessarily employed in a multiple switchboard, that the jacks be of the simplest possible construction, thus reducing to a minimum their first cost and making them much less likely to get out of order. _cord circuit._ the cord circuit of the western electric standard multiple common-battery switchboard is shown in fig. . this cord circuit involves the use of three strands in the flexible cords of both the calling and the answering plugs. two of these are the ordinary tip and ring conductors over which speech is transmitted to the connected subscriber's wire. the third, the sleeve strand, carries the supervisory lamps and has associated with it other apparatus for the control of these lamps and of the test circuit. [illustration: fig. . cord circuit western electric no. board] the system of battery feed is the well-known split repeating-coil arrangement already discussed. the tip strand runs straight through to the repeating coil, while the ring strand contains, in each case, the winding of the supervisory relay corresponding to either the calling or the answering plug. in order that the presence in the talking circuit of a magnet winding possessing considerable impedance may not interfere with the talking efficiency, each of these supervisory relay windings is shunted by a non-inductive resistance. in practice the supervisory relay windings have each a resistance of about ohms and the shunt around them each a resistance of about ohms. in the third strand of each cord is placed a -volt supervisory lamp, and in series with it a resistance of about ohms. each supervisory relay is adapted, when energized, to close a -ohm shunt about its supervisory lamp. the arrangement and proportion of these resistances is such that when a plug is inserted into the jack of a line the lamp will receive current from a circuit traced from the negative pole of the battery in the center of the cord circuit through the lamp and the -ohm series resistance, through the third strand of the cord to the test thimble of the jack, and thence to the positive or grounded pole of the battery through the third conductor in the multiple and the winding of the cut-off relay. this current always flows as long as the plug is inserted, and it is just sufficient to illuminate the lamp when the supervisory relay armature is not attracted. when, however, the supervisory relay armature is attracted, the shunting of the lamp by the -ohm resistance cuts down the current to such a degree as to prevent the illumination of the lamp, although some current still flows through it. the usual ringing and listening key is associated with the calling plug, and in some cases a ring-back key is associated with the answering plug, but this is not standard practice. _operation._ the operation of this cord circuit in conjunction with the line circuit of fig. may best be understood by reference to fig. . this figure employs a little different arrangement of the line circuit in order more clearly to indicate how the two lines may be connected by a cord; a study of the two line circuits, however, will show that they are identical in actual connections. it is to be remembered that all of the battery symbols shown in this figure represent in reality the same battery, separate symbols being shown for greater simplicity in circuit connections. we will assume the subscriber at station _a_ calls for the subscriber at station _b_. the operation of the line relay and the consequent lighting of the line lamp, and also the operation of the pilot relay will be obvious from what has been stated. the response of the operator by inserting the answering plug into the answering jack, and the throwing of her listening key so as to bridge her talking circuit across the cord in order to place herself in communication with the subscriber, is also obvious. the insertion of the answering plug into the answering jack completed the circuit through the third strand of the cord and the winding of the cut-off relay of the calling line, and this accomplishes three desirable results. the circuit so completed may be traced from the negative or ungrounded side of the battery to the center portion of the cord circuit, thence through the supervisory lamp _ _, resistance _ _, to the third conductor on the plug, test thimble on the jack, thence through the winding of the cut-off relay to ground, which forms the other terminal of the battery. the results accomplished by the closing of this circuit are: first, the energizing of the cut-off relay to cut off the signaling portion of the line; second, the flowing of current through the lamp that is almost sufficient to illuminate it, but not quite so because of the closure of the shunt about it, for the reason that will be described; third, the raising of the potential of all the contact thimbles on the jacks from zero to a potential different from that of the ground and equal in amount to the fall of potential through the winding of the cut-off relay. a condition is thus established at the test rings such that some other operator at some other section in testing the line will find it busy and will not connect with it. [illustration: fig. . western electric no. board] the reason why the lamp _ _, connected with the answering plug, was not lighted was that the supervisory relay _ _, associated with the answering plug, became energized when the operator plugged in, due to the flow of current from the battery through the calling subscriber's talking apparatus, this flow of current being permitted by the removal of the calling subscriber's receiver from its hook. the energizing of this relay magnet by causing the attraction of its armature, closed the shunt about the lamp _ _, which shunt contains the -ohm resistance _ _, and thus prevents the lamp from receiving enough current to illuminate it. obviously, as soon as the calling subscriber replaces his receiver on its hook, the supervisory relay _ _ will be de-energized, the shunt around the lamp will be broken, and the lamp will be illuminated to indicate to the operator the fact that the subscriber with whose line her calling plug is connected has replaced his receiver on its hook. _testing--called line idle._ having now shown how the operator connects with the calling subscriber's line and how that line automatically becomes guarded as soon as it is connected with, so that no other operator will connect with it, we will discuss how the operator tests the called line and subsequently connects with that line, if it is found proper to do so. if, on making the test with one of the multiple jacks of the line leading to station _b_, that line is idle and free to be connected with, its test rings will all be at zero potential because of the fact that they are connected with ground through the cut-off relay winding with no source of current connected with them. the tip of the calling plug will also be at zero potential in making this test, because it is connected to ground through the tip side of the calling-plug circuit and one winding of the cord-circuit repeating coil. as a result no flow of current will occur, the operator will receive no click, and she will know that she is free to connect with the line. as soon as she does so, by inserting the plug, the third strand of the cord will be connected with the test thimble of the calling line and the resulting flow of current will bring about three results, two of which are the same, and one of which is slightly different from those described as resulting from the insertion of the answering plug into the jack of the calling line. first, the cut-off relay will be operated and cut off the line signaling apparatus from the called line; second, a flow of current will result through the calling supervisory lamp _ _, which in this case will be sufficient to illuminate that lamp for the reason that the called subscriber has not yet responded, the calling supervisory relay _ _ has, therefore, not yet been energized, and the lamp has not, therefore, been shunted by its associated resistance _ _; third, the test thimbles of the called line will be raised to a potential above that of the earth, and thus the line will be guarded against connection at another section of the switchboard. as soon as the called subscriber responds to the ringing current sent out by the operator, current will flow over the cord circuit and over his line through his transmitter. this will cause the calling supervisory relay to be energized and the calling lamp to be extinguished. both lamps _ _ and _ _ remain extinguished as long as the connected subscribers are in conversation, but as soon as either one of them hangs up his receiver the corresponding lamp will be lighted, due to the de-energization of the supervisory relay and the breaking of the shunt around the lamp. the lighting of both lamps associated with a cord circuit is a signal to the operator for disconnection. [illustration: terminal room in medium-sized manual office relay rack at right. this employs the kellogg parallel arrangement of frames.] _testing--called line busy._ if we now assume that the called line was already busy, by virtue of being connected with at another section, the test rings of that line would accordingly all be raised to a potential above that of the earth. as a result, when the operator applied the tip of her calling plug to a test thimble on that line, current would flow from this test thimble through the tip of the calling plug and tip strand of the cord and through one winding of the cord-circuit repeating coil to ground. this would cause a slight raising of potential of the entire tip side of the cord circuit and a consequent momentary flow of current through the secondary of the operator's circuit bridged across the cord circuit at that time. _operator's circuit details._ the details of the operator's talking circuit shown in fig. deserve some attention. the battery supply to the operator's transmitter is through an impedance coil _ _. the condenser _ _ is bridged around the transmitter and the two primary windings _ _ and _ _, which windings are in parallel so as to afford a local circuit for the passage of fluctuating currents set up by the transmitter. the two primary windings _ _ and _ _ are on separate induction coils, the secondary windings _ _ and _ _ being, therefore, on separate cores. the winding _ _, in circuit with the secondary winding _ _ and the receiver, is a non-inductive winding and is supposed to have a resistance about equal to the effective resistance to fluctuating currents of a subscriber's line of average length. owing to the respective directions of the primary and secondary windings _ _ and _ _, _ _ and _ _, the result is that the outgoing currents set up by the operator's transmitter are largely neutralized in the operator's receiver. incoming currents from either of the connected subscribers, however, pass, in the main, through the secondary coil _ _ and the operator's receiver, rather than through the shunt path formed by the secondary _ _, and the non-inductive resistance _ _. this is known as an "anti-side tone" arrangement, and its object is to prevent the operator from receiving her own voice transmission so loudly as to make her ear insensitive to the feebler voice currents coming in from the subscribers. _order-wire circuits._ the two keys _ _ and _ _, shown in connection with the operator's talking circuit in fig. , play no part in the regular operation of connecting two local lines, as described above. they are order-wire keys, and the circuits with which they connect lead to the telephone sets of other operators at distant central offices, and by pressing either one of these keys the operator is enabled to place herself in communication over these so-called order-wire circuits with such other operators. the function and mode of operation of these order-wire circuits will be described in the next chapter, wherein inter-office connections will be discussed. _wiring of line circuit._ the line circuits shown in figs. and are, as stated, simplified to facilitate understanding, although the connections shown are those which actually exist. the more complete wiring of a single line circuit is shown in fig. . the line wires are shown entering at the left. they pass immediately, upon entering the central office, through the main distributing frame, the functions and construction of which will be considered in detail in a subsequent chapter. the dotted portions of the circuit shown in connection with this main distributing frame indicate the path from the terminals on one side of the frame to those on the other through so-called jumper wires. the two limbs of the line then pass to terminals _ _ and _ _ on one side of the so-called intermediate distributing frame. here the circuit of each limb of the line divides, passing, on the one hand, to the tip and sleeve springs of all the multiple jacks belonging to that line; and, on the other hand, through the jumper wires indicated by dotted lines on the intermediate distributing frame, and thence to the tip and ring contacts of the answering jack. a consideration of this connection will show that the actual electrical connections so far as already described are exactly those of figs. and , although those figures omitted the main and intermediate distributing frames. only two limbs of the line are involved in the main frame. in the intermediate frame the test wire running through the multiple is also involved. this test wire, it will be seen, leads from the test thimbles of all the multiple jacks to the terminal _ _ on the intermediate frame, thence through the jumper wire to the terminal _ _ of this frame, and to the test thimble of the answering jack. here again the electrical connections are exactly those represented in figs. and , although those figures do not show the intermediate frame. the two terminals _ _ and _ _ of the intermediate frame, besides being connected to the tip and sleeve springs of the answering jack, are connected to the contacts of the cut-off relay, and thence through the coils of the line relay to ground on one side and to battery on the other. thus the line relay and battery are normally included in the circuit of the line. the contact _ _ on the intermediate distributing frame, besides being connected to the test thimble of all the jacks, is connected through the coil of the cut-off relay to ground, thus establishing a path by which current is supplied to the cut-off relay when connection is made to the line at any jack. there is another contact _ _ on the intermediate distributing frame which merely forms a terminal for joining one side of the line lamp to the back contact of the line relay. _functions of distributing frames._ since the line circuit thus far described in connection with fig. is exactly the same as that of fig. in its electrical connections, it becomes obvious that the main and intermediate distributing frames play no part in the operation of the circuit any more than a binding post of a telephone plays a part in its operation. these frames carry terminals for facilitating the connection of the various wires in the line circuit and, as will be shown later, for facilitating certain changes in the line connection. [illustration: fig. . line circuit no. board] remembering that the dotted lines in fig. indicate jumper wires of the main and intermediate distributing frames, and that these are in the nature of temporary or readily changeable connections, and that the full lines, whether heavy or light, are permanent connections not readily changeable, it will be seen that the wires leading through the multiple jacks of a certain line are permanently associated with each other, and with certain terminals on the main distributing frame and certain other terminals on the intermediate distributing frame. it will also be seen that the line lamp and the answering jack, together with the cut-off relay and line relay, are permanently associated with each other and with another group of terminals _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _ on the intermediate distributing frame. it will also be apparent that by changing the jumper wires on the main frame, any outside line may be connected with any different set of line switchboard equipment, and also that by making changes in the jumper wires on the intermediate frame, any given answering jack and line lamp with its associated line cut-off relay may be associated with any set of multiple jacks. _pilot signals._ in a portion of the circuit leading from the battery that is common to a group of line lamps is the winding of the pilot relay, which is common to this group of line lamps. this controls, as already described, the circuit of the pilot lamp common to the same group of line lamps. in addition, a night-bell circuit is sometimes provided, this usually being in the form of an ordinary polarized ringer, the circuit of which is controlled by a night-bell relay common to the entire office. normally, this relay is shunted out of the circuit of the common portion of the lead to the pilot relay contacts by the key _ _, but when the key _ _ is opened all current that is fed to the pilot lamps passes through the night-bell relay, and thus, whenever any pilot lamp is lighted, the night-bell relay will attract its armature and thus close the circuit of the calling generator through the night bell. a study of this figure will make clear to the student how the portions of the circuit that are individual to the line are associated with such things as the battery, that are common to the entire office, and such as the pilot relay and lamp, that are common to a group of lines terminating in one position. _modified relay windings._ in some cases, the line relay instead of being double wound, as shown, is made with a single winding, this winding being normally included between the ring side of the cut-off relay and the battery, the tip side of the cut-off relay being run direct to ground. the present practice of the western electric company is towards the double-wound relay, however, and that is considered standard in all of their large no. multiple boards, except where the customer, owing to special reasons, demands a single wound relay on the ring side of the line. the prime reason for the two-winding line relay is the lessened click in the calling-subscriber's receiver which occurs when the operator answers. all line relays prior to were single-wound, but after that they were made double and used some turns of resistance wire to limit the normal calling current. _relay mounting._ in the standard no. relay board of the western electric company and, in fact, in nearly all common-battery multiple boards that are manufactured by other companies, the line and cut-off relays are mounted on separate racks outside the switchboard room and adjacent to the main and intermediate distributing frames, the wiring being extended from the relays to the jacks and lamps on the switchboard proper by means of suitable cables. the western electric company has recently instituted a departure from this practice in the case of some of their smaller no. switchboard installations. where it is thought that the ultimate capacity required by the board will not be above , lines, the relay rack is dispensed with and all of the line and cut-off relays, as well as the supervisory relays, are mounted in the rear of the switchboard frame. for this purpose the line and cut-off relays are specially made with the view to securing the utmost compactness. in still other cases, in switchboards of relatively small ultimate capacity, they use this small line and cut-off relay mounted on a separate relay rack, in which case the board is the standard no. board except for the type of relays. in all of these modifications of the no. board adapted for the use of the smaller and cheaper relays, the line relay has but a single winding, the small size of the relay winding not lending itself readily to double winding with the added necessary coil terminals. _capacity range._ the no. western electric board is made in standard sizes up to an ultimate capacity of , lines. for all capacities above , lines, a / -inch jack, vertical and horizontal face dimensions, is employed. for this capacity the smaller types of cut-off and line relays are not employed. up to ultimate capacities of , lines, / -inch jacks are employed, and either the small or the large relays mounted on a separate rack are available. up to , lines ultimate capacity, the / -inch jack is employed, and either the small or the large cut-off and line relays are available, but in case the small type is used the purchaser has the option of mounting them on a separate relay rack, as in ordinary practice, or mounting them in the switchboard cabinet and dispensing with the relay rack. =western electric no. board.= the no. common-battery multiple switchboard, regardless of its size and type of arrangement of line and cut-off relays, involves two relays for each line, the line relay energized by the taking of the receiver off its hook, and the cut-off relay energized by the act of the operator on plugging in and serving to remove the line relay from the circuit whenever and as long as a plug is inserted into any jack of the line. this seems to involve a considerable expense in relays, but this, as has been stated, is warranted by the greater simplicity in jacks which the use of the cut-off relay makes possible. in addition to this expense of investment in the line and cut-off relays, the amount of current required to hold up the cut-off relays during conversations foots up to a considerable item of expense, particularly as the system of supervisory signals is one in which the supervisory lamp takes current not only while burning, but its circuit takes even more current when the lamp is extinguished during the time of a connection. for all of these reasons, and some other minor ones, it was deemed expedient by the engineers of the western electric company to design a common-battery multiple switchboard for small and medium-sized exchanges in which certain sacrifices might be made to the end of accomplishing certain savings. the result has been a type of switchboard, designated the no. , which may be found in a number of bell exchanges, it being considered particularly adaptable to installations of from to , lines. although this board has been subject to a good deal of adverse criticism, and although it seems probable that even for the cheaper boards the no. type with some of the modifications just described will eventually supersede this no. board, yet the present extent of use of the no. board and the instructive features which its type displays warrant its discussion here. _circuits._ the circuits of this switchboard are shown in fig. , this indicating two-line circuits and a connecting cord circuit, together with the auxiliary apparatus employed in connection with the operator's telephone circuit, the pilot and night alarm circuits. the most noticeable feature is that cut-off jacks are employed, the circuit of the line normally extending through the sets of jack springs in the multiple, and answering jacks to the line relay and battery on one side of the line, and to ground on the other side. obviously, the additional complexity of the jack saves the use of a cut-off relay and the relay equipment of each line consists, therefore, of but a single line relay, which controls the lamp in an obvious manner. [illustration: fig. . western electric no. board] the cord circuit is of the three-conductor type, the two talking strands extending to the usual split repeating-coil arrangement, and battery current for talking purposes being fed through these windings as in the standard no. board. the supervisory relay is included in the ring strand of the cord circuit and is shunted by a non-inductive resistance, so that its impedance will not interfere with the talking currents. the armature of the supervisory relay closes the lamp contact on its back stroke, so that the lamp is always held extinguished when the relay is energized. the supervisory lamp is included in a connection between the back contact of the supervisory relay and ground, this connection including the central-office battery. as a result, the illumination of the supervisory lamp is impossible until a plug has been inserted into a jack, in which case, assuming the supervisory relay to be de-energized, the lamp circuit is completed through the wire connecting all of the test thimbles and the resistance permanently bridged to ground from that wire. _test._ for purposes of the test it is evident that the test rings of an idle line are always at ground potential, due to their connection to ground through the resistance coil. it is also evident that the tip of an unused calling plug will always be at ground potential and, therefore, that the testing of an idle line will result in no click in the operator's receiver. when a line is switched, however, the potential of all the test rings will be raised due to their being connected with the live pole of the battery through the third strand of the cord. when the operator in testing touches the test contact of the jack of a busy line, a current will, therefore, flow from this test contact to the tip strand of the cord and thence to ground through one of the repeating coil windings. the potential of the tip side of the cord will, therefore, be momentarily altered, and this will result in a click in the operator's receiver bridged across the cord circuit at the time. the details of the operator's cord circuit and of the pilot lamp and night alarm circuits will be clear from the diagram. _operation._ a brief summary of the operation of this system is as follows: the subscriber removes his receiver from its hook, thus drawing up the armature of the line relay and lighting his line lamp. the operator answers. the line lamp is extinguished by the falling back of the line-relay armature, due to the breaking of the relay circuit at the jack contacts. the subscriber then receives current for his transmitter through the cord-circuit battery connections. the supervisory relay connected with the answering cord is not lighted, because, although the lamp-circuit connection is completed at the jack, the supervisory relay is operated to hold the lamp circuit open. conversation ensues between the operator and the subscriber, after which the operator tests the line called for with the tip of the calling plug of the pair used in answering. if the called line is not busy, no click will ensue, because both the tested ring and the calling plug are at the same potential. finding no click, the operator will insert the plug and ring by means of the ringing key. when the operator plugs in, the supervisory lamp, associated with the calling plug, becomes lighted because the circuit is completed at the jack and the supervisory relay remains de-energized, since the line circuit is open at the subscriber's station. when the called subscriber responds, the calling supervisory lamp goes out because of the energization of the supervisory relay. both lamps remain out during the conversation, but when either subscriber hangs up, the corresponding supervisory lamp will be lighted because of the falling back of the supervisory relay armature. if the called line is busy, a click will be heard, for the reason described, and the operator will so inform the calling subscriber. it goes without saying, that in any multiple-switchboard system a plug may be found in the actual multiple jack that is reached for, in which case, although no test will be made, the busy condition will be reported back to the calling subscriber. _economy._ it has been the belief of the western electric engineers that a real economy is accomplished in this type of board by the saving in relay equipment. it is, of course, apparent at a glance that with a switchboard long enough and of sections enough, the cost of extra jack springs and their platinum contacts must become great enough to offset the saving accomplished by omitting the cut-off relay. this makes it apparent that if there is any economy in this type of multiple switchboard, it must be found in the very small boards where there are but few jacks per line and where the extra cost of the cut-off jack is not enough to offset the extra cost of an added relay. it is the growing belief, however, among engineers, that the multiple switchboard must be very small indeed in order that the added complexity of the cut-off jacks and wiring may be able to save anything over the two-relay type of line; and it is believed that where economy is necessary in small boards, it may be best effected by employing cheaper and more compact forms of relays and mounting them, if necessary, directly in the switchboard cabinet. note. these two standard types of common-battery multiple switchboards of the western electric company represent the development through long years of careful work on the part of the western electric and bell engineers, credit being particularly due to scribner, mcberty, and mcquarrie of the western electric company, and hayes of the american telephone and telegraph company. =kellogg two-wire multiple board.= the simplicity in the jacks permitted by the use of the cut-off relay in the western electric common-battery multiple switchboard for larger exchanges was carried a step further by dunbar and miller in the development of the so-called two-wire common-battery multiple switchboard, which for many years has been the standard of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. the particular condition which led to the development of the two-wire system was the demand at that time on the kellogg company for certain very large multiple switchboards, involving as many as , lines in the multiple. obviously, this necessitated a small jack, and obviously a jack having only two contacts, a tip spring and a sleeve, could be made more easily and with greater durability of this very small size than a jack requiring three or more contacts. other reasons that were considered were, of course, cheapness in cost of construction and extreme simplicity, which, other things being equal, lends itself to low cost of maintenance. _line circuit._ like the standard western electric board for large offices, the kellogg two-wire board employs two relays for each line, the line relay under the control of the subscriber and in turn controlling the lamp, and a cut-off relay under the control of the operator and in turn controlling the connection of the line relay with the line. the line circuit as originally developed and as widely used by the kellogg company is shown in fig. . the extreme simplicity of the jacks is apparent, as is also the fact that but two wires lead through the multiple. another distinguishing feature is, that all of the multiple and answering jacks are normally cut off from the line at the cut-off relay, but when the cut-off relay operates it serves, in addition to cutting off the line relay, to attach the two limbs of the line to the two wires leading through the multiple and answering jacks. the control of the line relay by the subscriber's switch hook is clear from the figure. the control of the cut-off relay is secured by attaching one terminal of the cut-off relay winding permanently to that wire leading through the multiple which connects with the sleeve contacts of the jack, the other terminal of the cut-off relay being grounded. the way in which this relay is operated will be understood when it is stated that the sleeve contacts of both the answering and calling plugs always carry full battery potential and, therefore, whenever any plug is inserted into any jack, current flows from the sleeve of the jack through the sleeve contact of the jack to ground, through the winding of the cut-off relay, which relay becomes energized and performs the functions just stated. it is seen that the wire running through the multiple to which the sleeve jack contacts are attached, is thus made to serve the double purpose of answering as one side of the talking circuit, and also of performing the functions carried out by the separate or third wire in the three-wire system. it will be shown also that, in addition, this wire is made to lend itself to the purposes of the busy test without any of these functions interfering with each other in any way. [illustration: fig. . two-wire line circuit] _cord circuit._ the cord circuit in somewhat simplified form is shown in fig. . here again there are but two conductors to the plugs and two strands to the cords. this greater simplicity is in some measure offset by the fact that four relays are required, two for each plug. this so-called four-relay cord circuit may be most readily understood by considering half of it at a time, since the two relays associated with the answering plug act in exactly the same way as those connected with the calling plug. [illustration: fig. . two-wire cord circuit] associated with each plug of a pair are two relays _ _ and _ _, in the case of the answering cord, and _ _ and _ _ in the case of the calling cord. the coils of the relays _ _ and _ _ are connected in series and bridged across the answering cord, a battery being included between the coils in this circuit. the coils of the relays _ _ and _ _ are similarly connected across the calling cord. a peculiar feature of the kellogg system is that two batteries are used in connection with the cord circuit, one of them being common to all answering cords and the other to all calling cords. the operation of the system would, however, be exactly the same if a single battery were substituted for the two. _supervisory signals._ considering the relays associated with the answering cord, it is obvious that these two relays _ _ and _ _ together control the circuit of the supervisory lamp _ _, the circuit of this lamp being closed only when the relay _ _ is de-energized and the relay _ _ is energized. we will find in discussing the operation of these that the relay _ _ is wholly under the control of the operator, and that the relay _ _, after its plug has been connected with a line, is wholly under the control of the subscriber on that line. it is through the windings of these two relays that current is fed to the line of the subscriber connected with the corresponding cord. when a plug--the answering plug, for instance--is inserted into a jack, current at once flows from the positive pole of the left-hand battery through the winding of the relay _ _ to the sleeve of the plug, thence to the sleeve of the jack and through the cut-off relay to ground. this at once energizes the supervisory relay _ _ and the cut-off relay associated with the line. the cut-off relay acts, as stated, to continue the tip and sleeve wires associated with the jacks to the line leading to the subscriber, and also to cut off the line relay. the supervisory relay _ _ acts at the same time to attract its armature and thus complete its part in closing the circuit of the supervisory lamp. whether or not the lamp will be lighted at this time depends on whether the relay _ _ is energized or not, and this, it will be seen, depends on whether the subscriber's receiver is off or on its hook. if off its hook, current will flow through the metallic circuit of the line for energizing the subscriber's transmitter, and as whatever current goes to the subscriber's line must flow through the relay _ _, that relay will be energized and prevent the lighting of the supervisory lamp _ _. if, on the other hand, the subscriber's receiver is on its hook, no current will flow through the line, the supervisory relay will not be energized, and the lamp _ _ will be lighted. in a nutshell, the sleeve supervisory relay normally prevents the lighting of the corresponding supervisory lamp, but as soon as the operator inserts a plug into the jack of the line, the relay _ _ establishes such a condition as to make possible the lighting of the supervisory lamp, and the lighting of this lamp is then controlled entirely by the relay _ _, which is, in turn, controlled by the position of the subscriber's switch hook. _battery feed._ a -microfarad condenser is included in each strand of the cord, and battery is fed through the relay windings to the calling and called subscribers on opposite sides of these condensers, in accordance with the combined impedance coil and condenser method described in chapter xiii. here the relay windings do double duty, serving as magnets for operating the relays and as retardation coils in the system of battery supply. _complete cord and line circuits._ the complete cord and line circuits of the kellogg two-wire system are shown in fig. . in the more recent installations of the kellogg company the cord and line circuits have been slightly changed from those shown in figs. and , and these changes have been incorporated in fig. . the principles of operation described in connection with the simplified figures remain, however, exactly the same. one of the changes is, that the tip side of the lines is permanently connected to the tips of the jacks instead of being normally cut off by the cut-off relay, as was done in the system as originally developed. another change is, that the line relay is associated with the tip side of the line, rather than with the sleeve side, as was formerly done. the cord circuit shown in fig. shows exactly the same arrangement of supervisory relays and exactly the same method of battery feed as in the simplified cord circuit of fig. , but in addition to this the detailed connections of the operator's talking set and of her order-wire keys are indicated, and also the ringing equipment is indicated as being adapted for four-party harmonic work. [illustration: fig. . kellogg two-wire board] in connection with this ringing key it may be stated that the springs _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _ are individually operated by the pressure of one of the ringing key buttons, while the spring _ _, connected with the sleeve side of the calling plug, is always operated simultaneously with the operation of any one of the other springs. as a result the proper ringing circuit is established, it being understood that the upper contacts of the springs _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _ lead to the terminals of their respective ringing generators, the other terminals of which are grounded. the circuit is, therefore, from the generator, through the ringing key, out through the tip side of the line, back over the sleeve side of the line, and to ground through the spring _ _, resistance _ _, and the battery, which is one of the cord-circuit batteries. the object of this coil _ _ and the battery connection through it to the ringing-key spring is to prevent the falling back of the cut-off relay when the ringing key is operated. this will be clear when it is remembered that the cut-off relay is energized by battery current fed over the sleeve strand of the cord, and obviously, since it is necessary when the ringing key is operated to cut off the supply wire back of the key, this would de-energize the cut-off relay when the ringing key was depressed, and the falling back of the cut-off relay contacts would make it impossible to ring because the sleeve side of the line would be cut off. the battery supply through the resistance _ _ is, therefore, substituted on the sleeve strand of the cord for the battery supply through the normal connection. _busy test._ the busy test depends on all of the test rings being at zero potential on an idle line and at a higher potential on a busy line. obviously, when the line is not switched, the test rings are at zero potential on account of a ground through the cut-off relay. when, however, a plug is inserted in either the answering or multiple jacks, the test rings will all be raised in potential due to being connected with the live side of the battery through the sleeve strand of the cord. conditions on the line external to the central office cannot make an idle line test busy because, owing to the presence of the cut-off relay, the sleeve contacts of all the jacks are disconnected from the line when it is idle. the test circuit from the tip of the calling plug to ground at the operator's set passes through the tip strand of the cord, thence through a pair of normally closed extra contacts on the supervisory relay _ _, thence in series through all the ringing key springs _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _, thence through an extra pair of springs _ _ and _ _ on the listening key--closed only when the listening key is operated--and thence to ground through a retardation coil _ _. no battery or other source of potential exists in this circuit between ground and the tip of the calling plug and, therefore, the tip is normally at ground potential. the sleeve ring of the jack being at ground potential if the line is idle, no current will flow and no click will be produced in testing such a line. if, however, the line is busy, the test ring will be at a higher potential and, therefore, current will flow from the tip of the calling plug to ground over the path just traced, and this will cause a rise in potential at the terminal of the condenser _ _ and a momentary flow of current through the tertiary winding _ _ of the operator's induction coil; hence the click. [illustration: switch room of citizens' telephone company, grand rapids, mich. one of the earliest large automatic offices.] obviously the testing circuit from the tip of the calling plug to ground at the operator's set is only useful during the time when the calling plug is not in a jack, and as the tip strand of the calling plug has to do double duty in testing and in serving as a part of the talking circuit, the arrangement is made that the testing circuit will be automatically broken and the talking circuit through the tip strand automatically completed when the plug is inserted into a jack in establishing a connection. this is accomplished by means of the extra contact on the relay _ _, which relay, it will be remembered, is held energized when its corresponding plug is inserted in a jack. during the time when the plug is not inserted, this relay is not energized and the test circuit is completed through the back contact of its right-hand armature. when connection is made at the jack, this relay becomes energized and the tip strand of the cord circuit is made complete by the right-hand lever being pulled against the front contact of this relay. the keys shown to the right of the operator's set are order-wire keys. _summary of operation._ we may give a brief summary of the operation of this system as shown in fig. . the left-hand station calls and the line relay pulls up, lighting the lamp. the operator inserts an answering plug in the answering jack, thus energizing the cut-off relay which operates to cut off the line relay and to complete the connection between the jacks and the external line. the act of plugging in by the operator also raises the potential of all the test rings so as to guard the line against intrusion by other callers. the supervisory lamp _ _ remains unlighted because, although the relay _ _ is operated, the relay _ _ is also operated, due to the calling subscriber's receiver being off its hook. the operator throws her listening key, communicates with the subscriber, and, learning that the right-hand station is wanted, proceeds to test that line. if the line is idle, she will get no click, because the tip of her calling plug and the tested ring will be at the same ground potential. she then plugs in and presses the proper ringing-key button to send out the proper frequency to ring the particular subscriber on the line--if there be more than one--the current from the battery through the coil _ _ and spring _ _ serving during this operation to hold up the cut-off relay. as soon as the operator plugs in with the calling plug, the supervisory lamp _ _ lights, assuming that the called subscriber had not already removed his receiver from its hook, due to the fact that the relay _ _ is energized and the relay _ _ is not. as soon as the called subscriber responds, the relay _ _ becomes energized and the supervisory lamp goes out. if the line called for had been busy by virtue of being plugged at another section, the tip of the operator's plug in testing would have found the test ring raised to a potential above the ground, and, as a consequence, current would have flowed from the tip of this plug through the back contact of the right-hand lever of relay _ _, thence through the ringing key springs and the auxiliary listening-key springs to ground through the retardation coil _ _. this would have produced a click by causing a momentary flow of current through the tertiary winding _ _ of the operator's set. _wiring of line circuit._ the more complete wiring diagram of a single subscriber's line, fig. , shows the placing in the circuits of the terminals and jumper wires of the main distributing frame and of the intermediate distributing frame, and also shows how the pilot lamps and night-alarm circuits are associated with a group of lines. the main distributing frame occupies the same relative position in this line circuit as in the western electric, being located in the main line circuit outside of all the switchboard apparatus. the intermediate distributing frame occupies a different relative position from that in the western electric line. it will be recalled by reference to fig. that the line lamp and the answering jack were permanently associated with the line and cut-off relays, such mutations of arrangement as were possible at the intermediate distributing frame serving only to vary the connection between the multiple of a line and one of the various groups of apparatus consisting of an answering jack and line lamp and associated relays. in the kellogg arrangement, fig. , the line and cut-off relays, instead of being permanently associated with the answering jack and line lamp, are permanently associated with the multiple jacks, no changes, of which the intermediate or main frames are capable, being able to alter the relation between a group of multiple jacks and its associated line and cut-off relays. in this kellogg arrangement the intermediate distributing frame may only alter the connection of an answering jack and line lamp with the multiple and its permanently associated relays. the pilot and night alarm arrangements of fig. should be obvious from the description already given of other similar systems. [illustration: fig. . kellogg two-wire line circuit] =dean multiple board.= in fig. are shown the circuits of the multiple switchboard of the dean electric company. the subscriber's station equipment shown at station _a_ and station _b_ will be recognized as the wheatstone-bridge circuit of the dean company. _line circuit._ the line circuit is easily understood in view of what has been said concerning the western electric line circuit, the line relay _ _ being single wound and between the live side of the battery and the ring side of the line. the cut-off relay _ _ is operated whenever a plug is inserted in a jack and serves to sever the connection of the line with the normal line signaling apparatus. _cord circuit._ the cord circuit is of the four-relay type, but employs three conductors instead of two, as in the two-wire system. the relay _ _, being in series between the battery and the sleeve contact on the plug, is energized whenever a plug is inserted in the jack, its winding being placed in series with the cut-off relay of the line with which the plug is connected. this completes the circuit through the associated supervisory lamp unless the relay _ _ is energized, the local lamp circuit being controlled by the back contact of relay _ _ and the front contact of relay _ _. it is through the two windings of the relay _ _ that current is fed to the subscriber's station, and, therefore, the armature of this relay is responsive to the movements of the subscriber's hook. as the relay _ _ holds the supervisory lamp circuit closed as long as a plug is inserted in a jack of the line, it follows that during a connection the relay _ _ will have entire control of the supervisory lamp. _listening key._ the listening key, as usual, serves to connect the operator's set across the talking strands of the cord circuit, and the action of this in connection with the operator's set needs no further explanation. _ringing keys._ the ringing-key arrangement illustrated is adapted for use with harmonic ringing, the single springs _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _ each being controlled by a separate button and serving to select the particular frequency that is to be sent to line. the two springs _ _ and _ _ always act to open the cord circuit back of the ringing keys, whenever any one of the selective buttons is depressed, in order to prevent interference by ringing current with the other operations of the circuit. two views of these ringing keys are shown in figs. and . fig. is an end view of the entire set. in fig. the listening key is shown at the extreme right and the four selective buttons at the left. when a button is released it rises far enough to cause the disengagement of the contacts, but remains partially depressed to serve as an indication that it was last used. the group of springs at the extreme left of fig. are the ones represented at _ _ and _ _ in fig. and by the anvils with which those springs co-operate. [illustration: fig. . dean multiple board circuits] _test._ the test in this dean system is simple, and, like the western electric and kellogg systems, it depends on the raising of the potential of the test thimbles of all the line jacks of a line when a connection is made with that line by a plug at any position. when an operator makes a test by applying the tip of the calling plug to the test thimble of a busy line, current passes from the test thimble through the tip strand of the cord to ground through the left-hand winding of the calling supervisory relay _ _. the drop of potential through this winding causes the tip strand of the cord to be raised to a higher potential than it was before, and as a result the upper plate of the condenser _ _ is thus altered in potential and this change in potential across the condenser results in a click in the operator's ear. [illustration: fig. . dean party line ringing key] [illustration: fig. . dean party line ringing key] =stromberg-carlson multiple board.= _line circuit._ in fig. is shown the multiple common-battery switchboard circuits employed by the stromberg-carlson telephone manufacturing company. the subscriber's line circuits shown in this drawing are of the three-wire type and, with the exception of the subscriber's station, are the same as already described for the western electric company's system. _cord circuit._ the cord circuit employed is of the two-conductor type, the plugs being so constructed as to connect the ring and thimble contacts of the jack when inserted. this cord circuit is somewhat similar to that employed by the kellogg switchboard and supply company, shown in fig. , except that only one battery is employed, and that certain functions of this circuit are performed mechanically by the inter-action of the armatures of the relays. _supervisory signals._ when the answering plug is inserted in a jack, in response to a call, the current passing to the subscriber's station and also through the cut-off relay must flow through the relay _ _, thus energizing it. as the calling subscriber's receiver is at this time removed from the hook switch, the path for current will be completed through the tip of the jack, thence through the tip of the plug, through relay _ _ to ground, causing relay _ _ to be operated and to break the circuit of the answering supervisory lamp. the two relays _ _ and _ _ are so associated mechanically that the armature of _ _ controls the armature of _ _ in such a manner as to normally hold the circuit of the answering supervisory lamp open. but, however, when the plug is inserted in a jack, relay _ _ is operated and allows the operation of relay _ _ to be controlled by the hook switch at the subscriber's station. the supervisory relay _ _ associated with the calling cord is operated when the calling plug is placed in a jack, and this relay normally holds the armature of relay _ _ in an operated position in a similar manner as the armature of relay _ _ controlled that of relay _ _. supervisory relay _ _ is under the control of the hook switch at the called subscriber's station. _test._ in this circuit, as in several previously described, when a plug is inserted in a jack of a line, the thimble contacts of the jacks associated with that line are raised to a higher potential than that which they normally have. the operator in testing a busy line, of course having previously moved the listening key to the listening position, closes a path from the test thimble of the jack, through the tip of the calling plug, through the contacts of the relay _ _, the inside springs of the listening key, thence through a winding of the induction coil associated with her set to ground. the circuit thus established allows current to flow from the test thimble of the jack through the winding of her induction coil to ground, causing a click in her telephone receiver. the arrangement of the ringing circuit does not differ materially from that already described for other systems and, therefore, needs no further explanation. [illustration: fig. . stromberg-carlson multiple board circuits] =multiple switchboard apparatus.= coming now to a discussion of the details of apparatus employed in multiple switchboards, it may be stated that much of the apparatus used in the simpler types is capable of doing duty in multiple switchboards, although, of course, modification in detail is often necessary to make the apparatus fit the particular demands of the system in which it is to be used. _jacks._ probably the most important piece of apparatus in the multiple switchboard is the jack, its importance being increased by the fact that such very large numbers of them are sometimes necessary. switchboards having hundreds of thousands of jacks are not uncommon. the multiple jacks are nearly always mounted in strips of twenty and the answering jacks usually in strips of ten, the length of the jack strip being the same in each case in the same board and, therefore, giving twice as wide a spacing in the answering as in the multiple jacks. the distance between centers in the multiple jacks varies from a quarter of an inch--which is perhaps the extreme minimum--to half an inch, beyond which larger limit there seems to be no need of going in any case. it is customary that the jack strip shall be made of the same total thickness as the distance between the centers of two of its jacks, and from this it follows that the strips when piled one upon the other give the same vertical distance between jack centers as the horizontal distance. in fig. is shown a strip of multiple and a strip of answering jacks of western electric make, this being the type employed in the no. standard switchboards for large exchanges. in fig. are shown the multiple and answering jacks employed in the no. western electric switchboard. the multiple jacks in the no. switchboard are mounted on / -inch centers, the jacks having three branch terminal contacts. the multiple jacks of the no. switchboard indicated in fig. are mounted on / -inch centers, each jack having five contacts as indicated by the requirement of the circuits in fig. . in fig. are shown the answering and multiple jacks of the kellogg switchboard and supply company's two-wire system. the extreme simplicity of these is particularly well shown in the cut of the answering jack, and these figures also show clearly the customary method of numbering jacks. in very large multiple boards it has been the practice of the kellogg company to space the multiple jacks on / -inch centers, and in their smaller multiple work, they employ the / -inch spacing. with the / -inch spacing that company has been able to build boards having a capacity of , lines, that many jacks being placed within the reach of each operator. in all modern multiple switchboards the test thimble or sleeve contacts are drawn up from sheet brass or german silver into tubular form and inserted in properly spaced borings in strips of hard rubber forming the faces of the jacks. these strips sometimes are reinforced by brass strips on their under sides. the springs forming the other terminals of the jack are mounted in milled slots in another strip of hard rubber mounted in the rear of and parallel to the front strip and rigidly attached thereto by a suitable metal framework. in this way desired rigidity and high insulation between the various parts is secured. [illustration: fig. . answering and multiple jacks for no. board] _lamp jacks._ the lamp jacks employed in multiple work need no further description in view of what has been said in connection with lamp jacks for simple common-battery boards. the lamp jack spacing is always the same as the answering jack spacing, so that the lamps will come in the same vertical alignment as their corresponding answering jacks when the lamp strips and answering jack strips are mounted in alternate layers. [illustration: fig. . answering and multiple jacks for no. board] [illustration: fig. . answering and multiple jacks for kellogg two-wire board] _relays._ next in order of importance in the matter of individual parts for multiple switchboards is the relay. the necessity for reliability of action in these is apparent, and this means that they must not only be well constructed, but that they must be protected from dust and moisture and must have contact points of such a nature as not to corrode even in the presence of considerable sparking and of the most adverse atmospheric conditions. economy of space is also a factor and has led to the almost universal adoption of the single-magnet type of relay for line and cut-off as well as supervisory purposes. [illustration: fig. . type of line relay] [illustration: fig. . type of cut-off relay] the western electric company employs different types of relays for line, cut-off, and supervisory purposes. this is contrary to the practice of most of the other companies who make the same general type of relay serve for all of these purposes. a good idea of the type of western electric line relay, as employed in its no. board, may be had from fig. . as is seen this is of the tilting armature type, the armature rocking back and forth on a knife-edge contact at its base, the part on which it rests being of iron and of such form as to practically complete, with the armature and core, the magnetic circuit. the cut-off relay, fig. , is of an entirely different type. the armature in this is loosely suspended by means of a flexible spring underneath two l-shaped polar extensions, one extending up from the rear end of the core and the other from the front end. when energized this armature is pulled away from the core by these l-shaped pieces and imparts its motion through a hard-rubber pin to the upper pair of springs so as to effect the necessary changes in the circuit. [illustration: fig. . western electric combined line and cut-off relay] [illustration: fig. . western electric supervisory relay] [illustration: fig. . line relay no. board] much economy in space and in wiring is secured in the type of switchboards employing cut-off as well as line relays by mounting the two relays together and in making of them, in fact, a unitary piece of apparatus. since the line relay is always associated with the cut-off relay of the same line and with no other, it is obvious that this unitary arrangement effects a great saving in wiring and also secures a great advantage in the matter of convenience of inspection. such a combined cut-off and line relay, employed in the western electric no. relay board, is shown in fig. . these are mounted in banks of ten pairs, a common dust cap of sheet iron covering the entire group. the western electric supervisory relay, fig. , is of the tilting armature type and is copper clad. the dust cap in this case fits on with a bayonet joint as clearly indicated. in fig. is shown the line relay employed in the western electric no. board. [illustration: fig. . kellogg line and cut-off relays] [illustration: fig. . strip of kellogg line and cut-off relays] the kellogg company employs the type of relay of which the magnetic circuit was illustrated in fig. . in its multiple boards it commonly mounts the line and cut-off relays together, as shown in fig. . a single, soft iron shell is used to cover both of these, thus serving as a dust shield and also as a magnetic shield to prevent cross-talk between adjacent relays--an important feature, since it will be remembered the cut-off relays are left permanently connected with the talking circuit. fig. , which shows a strip of twenty such pairs of relays, from five of which the covers have been removed, is an excellent detail view of the general practice in this respect; obviously, a very large number of such relays may be mounted in a comparatively small space. the mounting strip shown in this cut is of heavy rolled iron and is provided with openings through which the connection terminals--shown more clearly in fig. --project. on the back of this mounting strip all the wiring is done and much of this wiring--that connecting adjacent terminals on the back of the relay strip--is made by means of thin copper wires without insulation, the wires being so short as to support themselves without danger of crossing with other wires. when these wires are adjacent to ground or battery wires they may be protected by sleeving, so as to prevent crosses. [illustration: fig. . monarch relay] an interesting feature in relay construction is found in the relay of the monarch telephone manufacturing company shown in figs. and . the assembled relay and its mounting strip and cap are shown in fig. . this relay is so constructed that by the lifting of a single latch not only the armature but the coil may be bodily removed, as shown in fig. , in which the latch is shown in its raised position. as seen, the armature has an l-shaped projection which serves to operate the contact springs lying on the iron plate above the coil. the simplicity of this device is attractive, and it is of convenience not only from the standpoint of easy repairs but also from the standpoint of factory assembly, since by manufacturing standard coils with different characters of windings and standard groups of springs, it is possible to produce without special manufacture almost any combination of relay. [illustration: fig. . monarch relay] =assembly.= the arrangement of the key and jack equipment in complete multiple switchboard sections is clearly shown in fig. , which shows a single three-position section of one of the small multiple switchboards of the kellogg switchboard and supply company. the arrangement of keys and plugs on the key shelf is substantially the same as in simple common-battery boards. as in the simple switchboards the supervisory lamps are usually mounted on the hinged key shelf immediately in the rear of the listening and ringing keys and with such spacing as to lie immediately in front of the plugs to which they correspond. the reason for mounting the supervisory lamps on the key shelf is to make them easy of access in case of the necessity of lamp renewals or repairs on the wiring. the space at the bottom of the vertical panels, containing the jacks, is left blank, as this space is obstructed by the standing plugs in front of it. above the plugs, however, are seen the alternate strips of line lamps and answering jacks, the lamps in each case being directly below the corresponding answering jacks. above the line lamps and answering jacks in the two positions at the right there are blank strips into which additional line lamps and jacks may be placed in case the future needs of the system demand it. the space above these is the multiple jack space, and it is evident from the small number of multiple jacks in this little switchboard that the present equipment of the board is small. it is also evident from the amount of blank space left for future installations of multiple jacks that a considerable growth is expected. thus, while there are but four banks of multiple jacks, or in all, there is room in the multiple for banks of multiple jacks, or , in all. the method of grouping the jacks in banks of and of providing for their future growth is clearly indicated in this figure. the next section at the right of the one shown would contain a duplicate set of multiple jacks and also an additional equipment of answering jacks and lamps. [illustration: a multiple manual switching board for toll connections in an automatic system multiple jacks are provided for each line through which toll connections are handled directly.] [illustration: fig. . small multiple board section] for ordinary local service no operator would sit at the left-hand position of the section shown, that being the end position, since the operator there would not be able easily to reach the extreme right-hand portion of the third position and would have nothing to reach at her left. this end position in this particular board illustrated is provided with toll-line equipment, a practice not uncommon in small multiple boards. to prevent confusion let us assume that the multiple jack space contains its full equipment of , jacks on each section. the operator in the center position of the section shown could easily reach any one of the jacks on that section. the operator at the third position could reach any jack on the second and third position of her section, but could not well reach multiple jacks in the first position. she would, however, have a duplicate of the multiple jacks in this first position in the section at her right, _i. e._, in the fourth position, and it makes no difference on what portion of the switchboard she plugs into the multiple so long as she plugs into a jack of the right line. chapter xxvii trunking in multi-office systems it has been stated that a single exchange may involve a number of offices, in which case it is termed a multi-office exchange. in a multi-office exchange, switchboards are necessary at each office in which the subscribers' lines of the corresponding office district terminate. means for intercommunication between the subscribers in one office and those in any other office are afforded by inter-office trunks extended between each office and each of the other offices. if the character of the community is such that each of the offices has so few lines as to make the simple switchboard suffice for its local connections, then the trunking between the offices may be carried out in exactly the same way as explained between the various simple switchboards in a transfer system, the only difference being that the trunks are long enough to reach from one office to another instead of being short and entirely local to a single office. such a condition of affairs would only be found in cases where several small communities were grouped closely enough together to make them operate as a single exchange district, and that is rather unusual. the subject of inter-office trunking so far as manual switchboards are concerned is, therefore, confined mainly to trunking between a number of offices each equipped with a manual multiple switchboard. =necessity for multi-office exchanges.= before taking up the details of the methods and circuits employed in trunking in multi-office systems, it may be well to discuss briefly why the multi-office exchange is a necessity, and why it would not be just as well to serve all of the subscribers in a large city from a single huge switchboard in which all of the subscribers' lines would terminate. it cannot be denied, when other things are equal, that it is better to have only one operator involved in any connection which means less labor and less liability of error. the reasons, however, why this is not feasible in really large exchanges are several. the main one is that of the larger investment required. considering the investment first from the standpoint of the subscriber's line, it is quite clear that the average length of subscriber's line will be very much greater in a given community if all of the lines are run to a single office, than will be the case if the exchange district is divided into smaller office districts and the lines run merely from the subscribers to the nearest office. there is a direct and very large gain in this respect, in the multi-office system over the single office system in large cities, but this is not a net gain, since there is an offsetting investment necessary in the trunk lines between the offices, which of course are separate from the subscribers' lines. approaching the matter from the standpoint of switchboard construction and operation, another strong reason becomes apparent for the employment of more than one office in large exchange districts. both the difficulties of operation and the expense of construction and maintenance increase very rapidly when switchboards grow beyond a certain rather well-defined limit. obviously, the limitation of the multiple switchboard as to size involves the number of multiple jacks that it is feasible to place on a section. multiple switchboards have been constructed in this country in which the sections had a capacity of , jacks. schemes have been proposed and put into effect with varying success, for doubling and quadrupling the capacity of multiple switchboards, one of these being the so-called divided multiple board devised by the late milo g. kellogg, and once used in cleveland, ohio, and st. louis, missouri. each of these boards had an ultimate capacity of , lines, and each has been replaced by a "straight" multiple board of smaller capacity. in general, the present practice in america does not sanction the building of multiple boards of more than about , lines capacity, and as an example of this it may be cited that the largest standard section manufactured for the bell companies has an ultimate capacity of , lines. european engineers have shown a tendency towards the opposite practice, and an example of the extreme in this case is the multiple switchboard manufactured by the ericsson company, and installed in stockholm, in which the jacks have been reduced to such small dimensions as to permit an ultimate capacity of , lines. the reasons governing the decision of american engineers in establishing the practice of employing no multiple switchboards of greater capacity than about , lines, briefly outlined, are as follows: the building of switchboards with larger capacity, while perfectly possible, makes necessary either a very small jack or some added complexity, such as that of the divided multiple switchboard, either of which is considered objectionable. extremely small jacks and large multiples introduce difficulties as to the durability of the jacks and the plugs, and also they tend to slow down the work of operators and to introduce errors. they also introduce the necessity of a smaller gauge of wire through the multiple than it has been found desirable to employ. considered from the standpoint of expense, it is evident that as a multiple switchboard increases in number of lines, its size increases in two dimensions, _i. e._, in length of board and height of section, and this element of expense, therefore, is a function of the square of the number of lines. the matter of insurance, both with respect to the risk as to property loss and the risk as to breakdown of the service, also points distinctly in the direction of a plurality of offices rather than one. both from the standpoint of risk against fire and other hazards, which might damage the physical property, and of risk against interruption to service due to a breakdown of the switchboard itself, or a failure of its sources of current, or an accident to the cable approaches, the single office practice is like putting all one's eggs in one basket. another factor that has contributed to the adoption of smaller switchboard capacities is the fact that in the very large cities even a , line multiple switchboard would still not remove the necessity of multi-office exchanges with the consequent certainty that a large proportion of the calls would have to be trunked anyway. undoubtedly, one of the reasons for the difference between american and european practice is the better results that american operating companies have been able to secure in the handling of calls at the incoming end of trunks. this is due, no doubt, in part to the differences in social and economic conditions under which exchanges are operated in this country and abroad, and also in part to the characteristics of the english tongue when compared to some of the other tongues in the matter of ease with which numbers may be spoken. in america it has been found possible to so perfect the operation of trunking under proper operating conditions and with good equipment as to relieve multi-office practice of many of the disadvantages which have been urged against it. =classification.= broadly speaking there are two general methods that may be employed in trunking between exchanges. the first and simplest of these methods is to employ so-called _two-way trunks_. these, as their name indicates, may be used for completing connections between offices in either direction, that is, whether the call originates at one end or the other. the other way is by the use of _one-way trunks_, wherein each trunk carries traffic in one direction only. where such is the case, one end of the trunk is always used for connecting with the calling subscriber's line and is termed the _outgoing_ end, and the other end is always used in completing the connection with the called subscriber's line, and is referred to as the _incoming_ end. traffic in the other direction is handled by another set of trunks differing from the first set only in that their outgoing and incoming ends are reversed. as has already been pointed out, a system of trunks employing two-way trunks is called a _single-track system_, and a system involving two sets of one-way trunks is called a _double-track system_. it is to be noted that the terms outgoing and incoming, as applied to the ends of trunks and also as applied to traffic, always refer to the direction in which the trunk handles traffic or the direction in which the traffic is flowing with respect to the particular office under consideration at the time. thus an _incoming trunk_ at one office is an _outgoing trunk_ at the other. _two-way trunks._ two-way trunks are nearly always employed where the traffic is very small and they are nearly always operated by having the _a_-operator plug directly into the jack at her end of the trunk and displaying a signal at the other end by ringing over the trunk as she would over an ordinary subscriber's line. the operator at the distant exchange answers as she would on an ordinary line, by plugging into the jack of that trunk, and receives her orders over the trunk either from the originating operator or from the subscriber, and then completes the connection with the called subscriber. such trunks are often referred to as "ring-down" trunks, and their equipment consists in a drop and jack at each end. in case there is a multiple board at either or both of the offices, then the equipment at each end of the trunk would consist of a drop and answering jack, together with the full quota of multiple jacks. it is readily seen that this mode of operation is slow, as the work that each operator has to do is the same as that in connecting two local subscribers, plus the time that it takes for the operators to communicate with each other over the trunk. _one-way trunks._ where one-way trunks are employed in the double-track system, the trunks, assuming that they connect multiple boards, are provided with multiple jacks only at their outgoing ends, so that any operator may reach them for an outgoing connection, and at their incoming ends they terminate each in a single plug and in suitable signals and ringing keys, the purpose of which will be explained later. over such trunks there is no verbal communication between the operators, the instructions passing between the operators over separate order-wire circuits. this is done in order that the trunk may be available as much as possible for actual conversation between the subscribers. it may be stated at this point that the duration of the period from the time when a trunk is appropriated by the operators for the making of a certain connection until the time when the trunk is finally released and made available for another connection is called the _holding time_, and this holding time includes not only the period while the subscribers are in actual conversation over it, but also the periods while the operators are making the connection and afterwards while they are taking it down. it may be said, therefore, that the purpose of employing separate order wires for communication between the operators is to make the holding time on the trunks as small as possible and, therefore, for the purpose of enabling a given trunk to take part in as many connections in a given time as possible. in outline the operation of a one-way trunk between common-battery, manual, multiple switchboards is, with modifications that will be pointed out afterwards, as follows: when a subscriber's line signal is displayed at one office, the operator in attendance at that position answers and finding that the call is for a subscriber in another office, she presses an order-wire key and thereby connects her telephone set directly with that of a _b_-operator at the proper other office. unless she finds that other operators are talking over the order wire, she merely states the number of the called subscriber, and the _b_-operator whose telephone set is permanently connected with that order wire merely repeats the number of the called subscriber and follows this by designating the number of the trunk which the _a_-operator is to employ in making the connection. the _a_-operator, thereupon, immediately and without testing, inserts the calling plug of the pair used in answering the call into the trunk jack designated by the _b_-operator; the _b_-operator simultaneously tests the multiple jack of the called subscriber and, if she finds it not busy, inserts the plug of the designated trunk into the multiple jack of the called subscriber and rings his bell by pressing the ringing key associated with the trunk cord used. the work on the part of the _a_-operator in connecting with the outgoing end of the trunk and on the part of the _b_-operator in connecting the incoming end of the trunk with the line goes on simultaneously, and it makes no difference which of these operators completes the connection first. it is the common practice of the bell operating companies in this country to employ what is called automatic or machine ringing in connection with the _b_-operator's work. when the _b_-operator presses the ringing key associated with the incoming trunk cord, she pays no further attention to it, and she has no supervisory lamp to inform her as to whether or not the subscriber has answered. the ringing key is held down, after its depression by the operator, either by an electromagnet or by a magnet-controlled latch, and the ringing of the subscriber's bell continues at periodic intervals as controlled by the ringing commutator associated with the ringing machine. when the subscriber answers, however, the closure of his line circuit results in such an operation of the magnet associated with the ringing key as to release the ringing key and thus to automatically discontinue the ringing current. when a connection is established between two subscribers through such a trunk the supervision of the connection falls entirely upon the _a_-operator who established it. this means that the calling supervisory lamp at the _a_-operator's position is controlled over the trunk from the station of the called subscriber, the answering supervisory lamp being, of course, under the control of the calling subscriber as in the case of a local connection. it is, therefore, the _a_-operator who always initiates the taking down of a trunk connection, and when, in response to the lighting of the two lamps, she withdraws her calling plug from the trunk jack, the supervisory lamp associated with the incoming end of the trunk at the other office is lighted, and the _b_-operator obeys it by pulling down the plug. if, upon testing the multiple jack of the called subscriber's line, the _b_-operator finds the line to be busy, she at once inserts the trunk plug into a so-called "busy-back" jack, which is merely a jack whose terminals are permanently connected to a circuit that is intermittently opened and closed, and which also has impressed upon it an alternating current of such a nature as to produce the familiar "buzz-buzz" in a telephone receiver. the opening and closing of this circuit causes the calling supervisory lamp of the _a_-operator to flash at periodic intervals just as if the called subscriber had raised and lowered his receiver, but more regularly. this is the indication to the _a_-operator that the line called for is busy. the buzzing sound is repeated back through the cord circuit of the _a_-operator to the calling subscriber and is a notification to him that the line is busy. sometimes, as is practiced in new york city, for instance, the buzzing feature is omitted, and the only indication that the calling subscriber receives that the called-for line is busy is being told so by the _a_-operator. this may be considered a special feature and it is employed in new york because there the custom exists of telling a calling subscriber, when the line he has called for has been found busy, that the party will be secured for him and that he, the calling subscriber, will be called, if he desires. a modification of this busy-back feature that has been employed in boston, and perhaps in other places, is to associate with the busy-back jack at the _b_-operator's position a phonograph which, like a parrot, keeps repeating "line busy--please call again." where this is done the calling subscriber, _if he understands what the phonograph says_, is supposed to hang up his receiver, at which time the _a_-operator takes down the connection and the _b_-operator follows in response to the notification of her supervisory lamp. the phonograph busy-back scheme, while ingenious, has not been a success and has generally been abandoned. as a rule the independent operating companies in this country have not employed automatic ringing, and in this case the _b_-operators have been required to operate their ringing keys and to watch for the response of the called subscriber. in order to arrange for this, another supervisory lamp, termed the _ringing lamp_, is associated with each incoming trunk plug, the going out of this lamp being a notification to the _b_-operator to discontinue ringing. =western electric trunk circuits.= the principles involved in inter-office trunking with automatic ringing, are well illustrated in the trunk circuit employed by the western electric company in connection with its no. relay boards. the dotted dividing line through the center of fig. represents the separating space between two offices. the calling subscriber's line in the first office is shown at the extreme left and the called subscriber's line in the second office is shown at the extreme right. both of these lines are standard multiple switchboard lines of the form already discussed. the equipment illustrated in the first office is that of an _a_-board, the cord circuit shown being that of the regular _a_-operator. the outgoing trunk jacks connecting with the trunk leading to the other office are, it will be understood, multipled through the _a_-sections of the board and contain no relay equipment, but the test rings are connected to ground through a resistance coil _ _, which takes the place of the cut-off relay winding of a regular line so far as test conditions and supervisory relay operation are concerned. the equipment illustrated in the second office is that of a _b_-board, it being understood that the called subscriber's line is multipled through both the _a_- and _b_-boards at that office. the part of the equipment that is at this point unfamiliar to the reader is, therefore, the cord circuit at the _b_-operator's board. this includes, broadly speaking, the means: ( ) for furnishing battery current to the called subscriber; ( ) for accomplishing the ringing of the called subscriber and for automatically stopping the ringing when he shall respond; ( ) for performing the ordinary switching functions in connection with the relays of the called subscriber's line in just the same way that an _a_-operator's cord carries out these functions; and ( ) for causing the operation of the calling supervisory relay of the _a_-operator's cord circuit in just the same manner, under control of the connected called subscriber, as if that subscriber's line had been connected directly to the _a_-operator's cord circuit. [illustration: fig. . inter-office connection--western electric system] the operation of these devices in the _b_-operator's cord circuit may be best understood by following the establishment of the connection. assuming that the calling subscriber in the first office desires a connection with the subscriber's line shown in the second office, and that the _a_-operator at the first office has answered the call, she will then communicate by order wire with the _b_-operator at the second office, stating the number of the called subscriber and receiving from that operator in return the number of the trunk to be employed. the two operators will then proceed simultaneously to establish the connection, the _a_-operator inserting the calling plug into the outgoing trunk jack, and the _b_-operator inserting the trunk plug into the multiple jack of the called subscriber's line after testing. we will assume at first that the called subscriber's line is found idle and that both of the operators complete their respective portions of the work at the same time and we will consider first the condition of the calling supervisory relay at the _a_-operator's position. the circuit of the calling supervisory lamp will have been closed through the resistance coil _ _ connected with the outgoing trunk jacks and the lamp will be lighted because, as will be shown, it is not yet shunted out by the operation of its associated supervisory relay. tracing the circuit of the calling supervisory relay of the _a_-operator's circuit, it will be found to pass from the live side of the battery to the ring side of the trunk circuit through one winding of the repeating coil of the _b_-operator's cord; beyond this the circuit is open, since no path exists through the condenser _ _ bridged across the trunk circuit or through the normally open contacts of the relay _ _ connected in the talking circuit of the trunk. the association of this relay _ _ with the repeating coil and the battery of the trunk is seen to be just the same as that of a supervisory relay in the _a_-operator's cord, and it is clear, therefore, that this relay _ _ will not be energized until the called subscriber has responded. when it is energized it will complete the path to ground through the _a_-operator's calling supervisory relay and operate to shunt out the _a_-operator's calling supervisory lamp in just the same manner as if the _a_-operator's calling plug had been connected directly with the line of the calling subscriber. in other words, the called subscriber in the second office controls the relay _ _, which, in turn, controls the calling supervisory relay of the _a_-operator, which, in turn, shunts out its lamp. the connection being completed between the two subscribers, the _b_-operator depresses one or the other of the ringing keys _ _ or _ _, according to which party on the line is called, assuming that it is a two-party line. it will be noticed that the springs of these ringing keys are not serially arranged in the talking circuit, but the cutting off of the trunk circuit back of the ringing keys is accomplished by the set of springs shown just at the left of the ringing keys, which set of springs _ _ is operated whenever either one of the ringing keys is depressed. an auxiliary pair of contacts, shown just below the group of springs _ _, is also operated mechanically whenever either one of the ringing keys is depressed, and this serves to close one of two normally open points in the circuit of the ringing-key holding magnet _ _. this holding magnet _ _ is so arranged with respect to the contacts of the ringing key that whenever any one of them is depressed by the operator, it will be held depressed as long as the magnet is energized just the same as if the operator kept her finger on the key. the other normally open point in the circuit of the holding magnet _ _ is at the lower pair of contacts of the test and holding relay _ _. this relay is operated whenever the trunk plug is inserted in the jack of a called line, regardless of the position of the subscriber's equipment on that line. the circuit may be traced from the live side of the battery through the trunk disconnect lamp _ _, coil _ _, sleeve strand of cord, and to ground through the cut-off relay of the line. the insertion of the trunk plug into the jack thus leaves the completion of the holding-magnet circuit dependent only upon the auxiliary contact on the ringing key, and, therefore, as soon as the operator presses either one of these keys, the clutch magnet is energized and the key is held down, so that ringing current continues to flow at regular intervals to the called subscriber's station. the ringing current issues from the generator _ _, but the supply circuit from it is periodically interrupted by the commutator _ _ geared to the ringing-machine shaft. this periodically interrupted ringing current passes to the ringing-key contacts through the coil of the ringing cut-off relay _ _, and thence to the subscriber's line. the ringing current is, however, insufficient to cause the operation of this relay _ _ as long as the high resistance and impedance of the subscriber's bell and condenser are in the circuit. it is, however, sufficiently sensitive to be operated by this ringing current when the subscriber responds and thus substitutes the comparatively low resistance and impedance path of his talking apparatus for the previous path through his bell. the pulling up of the ringing cut-off relay _ _ breaks a third normally closed contact in the circuit of the holding coil _ _, de-energizing that coil and releasing the ringing key, thus cutting off ringing current. there is a third brush on the commutator _ _ connected with the live side of the central battery, and this is merely for the purpose of assuring the energizing of the ringing cut-off relay _ _, should the subscriber respond during the interval while the commutator _ _ held the ringing current cut off. the relay _ _ may thus be energized either from the battery, if the subscriber responds during a period of silence of his ringer, or from the generator _ _, if the subscriber responds during a period while his bell is sounding; in either case the ringing current will be promptly cut off by the release of the ringing key. the trunk operator's "disconnect lamp" is shown at _ _, and it is to be remembered that this lamp is lighted only when the _a_-operator takes down the connection at her end, and also that this lamp is entirely out of the control of the subscribers, the conditions which determine its illumination being dependent on the positions of the operators' plugs at the two ends of the trunk. with both plugs up, the lamp _ _ will receive current, but will be shunted to prevent its illumination. the path over which it receives this current may be traced from battery through the lamp _ _, thence through the coil of the relay _ _ and the cut-off relay of the called subscriber's line. this current would be sufficient to illuminate the lamp, but the lamp is shunted by a circuit which may be traced from the live side of battery through the contact of the relay _ _, closed at the time, and through the coil of the trunk cut-off relay coil _ _. the resistance of this coil is so proportioned to the other parts of the circuit as to prevent the illumination of the lamp just exactly as in the case of the shunting resistances of the lamps in the _a_-operator's cord. it will be seen, therefore, that the supply of current to the trunk disconnect lamp is dependent on the trunk plug being inserted into the jack of the subscriber's line and that the shunting out of this lamp is dependent on the energization of the relay _ _. this relay _ _ is energized as long as the _a_-operator's plug is inserted into the outgoing trunk jack, the path of the energizing circuit being traced from the live side of the battery at the second office through the right-hand winding of this relay, thence over the tip side of the trunk to ground at the first office. from this it follows that as long as both plugs are up, the disconnect lamp will receive current but will be shunted out, and as soon as the _a_-operator pulls down the connection, the relay _ _ will be de-energized and will thus remove the shunt from about the lamp, allowing its illumination. the left-hand winding of the relay _ _ performs no operating function, but is merely to maintain the balance of the talking circuit, it being bridged during the connection from the ring side of the trunk to ground in order to balance the bridge connection of the right-hand coil from the live side of battery to the tip side of the trunk circuit. the relay _ _, already referred to as forming a shunt for the trunk disconnect lamp, has for its function the keeping of the talking circuit through the trunk open until such time as the relay _ _ operates, this being purely an insurance against unnecessary ringing of a subscriber in case the _a_-operator should by mistake plug into the wrong trunk. it is not, therefore, until the _a_-operator has plugged into the trunk and the relay _ _ has been operated to cause the energization of the relay _ _ that the ringing of the called subscriber can occur, regardless of what the _b_-operator may have done. the relay _ _ has an additional function to that of helping to control the circuit of the ringing-key holding magnet. this is the holding of the test circuit complete until the operator has tested and made a connection and then automatically opening it. the test circuit of the _b_-operator's trunk may be traced, at the time of testing, from the thimble of the multiple jack under test, through the tip of the cord, thence through the uppermost pair of contacts of the relay _ _ to ground through a winding of the _b_-operator's induction coil. after the test has been made and the plug inserted, the relay _ _, which is operated by the insertion of the plug, acts to open this test circuit and at the same time complete the tip side of the cord circuit. in the upper portion of fig. the order-wire connections, by which the _a_-operator and the _b_-operator communicate, are indicated. it must be remembered in connection with these that the _a_-operator only has control of this connection, the _b_-operator being compelled necessarily to hear whatever the _a_-operators have to say when the _a_-operators come in on the circuit. [illustration: fig. . incoming trunk circuit] the incoming trunk circuit employed by the western electric company for four-party line ringing is shown in fig. , it being necessarily somewhat modified from that shown in fig. , which is adapted for two-party line ringing only. in addition to the provision of the four-party line ringing keys, by which positive or negative pulsating current is received over either limb of the line, and to the provision of the regular alternating current ringing key for ringing on single party lines, it is necessary in the ringing cut-off relay to provide for keeping the alternating and the pulsating ringing currents entirely separate. for this reason, the ringing cut-off relay _ _ is provided with two windings, that at the right being in the path of the alternating ringing currents that are supplied to the alternating current key, and that at the left being in the ground return path for all of the pulsating ringing currents supplied to the pulsating keys. with this explanation it is believed that this circuit will be understood from what has been said in connection with fig. . the operation of the holding coil _ _ is the same in each case, the holding magnet in fig. serving to hold depressed any one of the five ringing keys that may have been used in calling the subscriber. [illustration: automatic equipment, main office, berkeley, california a feature of interest here is that the cement floor is treated with a filler and painted, with no other covering.] [illustration: fig. . western electric trunk ringing key] the standard four-party line, trunk ringing key of the western electric company is shown in fig. . in this the various keys operate not by pressure but rather by being pulled by the finger of the operator in such a way as to subject the key shaft to a twisting movement. the holding magnet lies on the side opposite to that shown in the figure and extends along the full length of the set of keys, each key shaft being provided with an armature which is held by this magnet until the magnet is de-energized by the action of the ringing cut-off relay. [illustration: fig. . trunk relay] [illustration: fig. . trunk relay] the standard trunk relays employed by the western electric company in connection with the circuits just described are shown in figs. and . in each case the dust-cap or shield is also shown. the relay of fig. is similar to the regular cut-off relay and is the one used for relays _ _ and _ _ of figs. and . the relay of fig. is somewhat similar to the subscriber's line relay in that it has a tilting armature, and is the one used at _ _ in figs. and . the trunk relay _ _ in figs. and is the same as the _a_-operator's supervisory relays already discussed. it has been stated that under certain circumstances _b_-operator's trunk circuits devoid of ringing keys, and consequently of all keys, may be employed. this, so far as the practice of the bell companies is concerned, is true only in offices where there are no party lines, or where, as in many of the chicago offices, the party lines are worked on the "jack per station" basis. in "jack per station" working, the selection of the station on a party line is determined by the jack on which the plug is put, rather than by a ringing key, and hence the keyless trunk may be employed. [illustration: fig. . keyless trunk] a keyless trunk as used in new york is shown in fig. . this has no manually operated keys whatever, and the relay _ _, when it is operated, establishes connection between the ringing generator and the conductors of the trunk plug. the relays _ _, _ _, and _ _ operate in a manner identical with those bearing corresponding numbers in fig. . as soon as the trunk operator plugs into the multiple jack of the called subscriber, the relay _ _ will operate for the same reason that the relay _ _ operated in connection with fig. . the trunk disconnect lamp will receive current, but if the operator has already established connection with the other end of the trunk, this lamp will not be lighted because shunted by the relay _ _, due to the pulling up of the armature of the relay _ _. the relay _ _ plays no part in the operation so far described, because of the fact that its winding is short-circuited by its own contacts and those of relay _ _, when the latter is not energized. as a result of the operation of the relay _ _, ringing current is sent to line, the supply circuit including the coil of the relay _ _. as soon as the subscriber responds to this ringing current, the armature of the relay _ _ is pulled up, thus breaking the shunt about the relay _ _, which, therefore, starts to operate in series with the relay _ _, but as its armatures assume their attracted position, the relay _ _ is cut out of the circuit, the coil of the relay _ _ being substituted for that of the relay _ _ in the shunt path around the lamp _ _. the relay _ _ falls back and cuts off the ringing current. the relay _ _ now occupies the place with respect to the shunt around the lamp _ _ that the relay _ _ formerly did, the continuity of this shunt being determined by the energization of the relay _ _. when the _a_-operator at the distant exchange withdraws the calling plug from the trunk jack, this relay _ _ becomes de-energized, breaking the shunt about the lamp _ _ and permitting the display of that lamp as a signal to the operator to take down the connection. it may be asked why the falling back of relay _ _ will not again energize relay _ _ and thus cause a false ring on the called subscriber. this will not occur because both the relays _ _ and _ _ depend for their energization on the closure of the contacts of the relay _ _, and when this falls back the relay _ _ cannot again be energized even though the relay _ _ assumes its normal position. =kellogg trunk circuits.= the provision for proper working of trunk circuits in connection with the two-wire multiple switchboards is not an altogether easy matter, owing particularly to the smaller number of wires available in the plug circuits. it has been worked out in a highly ingenious way, however, by the kellogg company, and a diagram of their incoming trunk circuit, together with the associated circuits involved in an inter-office connection, is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . inter-office connection--kellogg system] this figure illustrates a connection from a regular two-wire multiple subscriber's line in one office, through an _a_-operator's cord circuit there, to the outgoing trunk jacks at that office, thence through the incoming trunk circuit at the other office to the regular two-wire multiple subscriber's line at that second office. the portion of this diagram to be particularly considered is that of the _b_-operator's cord circuit. the trunk circuit terminates in the multipled outgoing trunk jacks at the first office, the trunk extending between offices consisting, of course, of but two wires. we will first consider the control of the calling supervisory lamp in the _a_-operator's cord circuit, it being remembered that this control must be from the called subscriber's station. it will be noticed that the left-hand armature of the relay _ _ serves normally to bridge the winding of relay _ _ across the cord circuit around the condenser _ _. when, however, the relay _ _ pulls up, the coil of relay _ _ is substituted in this bridge connection across the trunk. the relay _ _ has a very high resistance winding--about , ohms--and this resistance is so great that the tip supervisory relay of the _a_-operator's cord will not pull up through it. as a result, when this relay is bridged across the trunk circuit, the tip relay on the calling side of the _a_-operator's cord circuit is de-energized, just as if the trunk circuit were open, and this results in the lighting of the _a_-operator's calling supervisory lamp. the winding of the relay _ _, however, is of low resistance--about ohms--and when this is substituted for the high-resistance winding of the relay _ _, the tip relay on the calling side of the _a_-operator's cord is energized, resulting in the extinguishing of the calling supervisory lamp. the illumination of the _a_-operator's calling supervisory lamp depends, therefore, on whether the high-resistance relay _ _, or the low-resistance relay _ _, is bridged across the trunk, and this depends on whether the relay _ _ is energized or not. the relay _ _, being bridged from the tip side of the trunk circuit to ground and serving as the means of supply of battery current to the called subscriber, is operated whenever the called subscriber's receiver is removed from its hook. therefore, the called subscriber's hook controls the operation of this relay _ _, which, in turn, controls the conditions which cause the illumination or darkness of the calling supervisory lamp at the distant office. assuming that the _a_-operator has received and answered a call, and has communicated with the _b_-operator, telling her the number of the called subscriber, and has received, in turn, the number of the trunk to be used, and that both operators have put up the connection, then it will be clear from what has been said that the calling supervisory lamp of the _a_-operator will be lighted until the called subscriber removes his receiver from its hook, because the tip relay in the _a_-operator's cord circuit will not pull up through the , -ohm resistance winding of the relay _ _. as soon as the subscriber responds, however, the relay _ _ will be operated by the current which supplies his transmitter. this will substitute the low-resistance winding of the relay _ _ for the high-resistance winding of the relay _ _, and this will permit the energizing of the tip supervisory relay of the _a_-operator and put out the calling supervisory lamp at her position. as in the western electric circuit, therefore, the control of the _a_-operator's calling supervisory lamp is from the called subscriber's station and is relayed back over the trunk to the originating office. in this circuit, manual instead of automatic ringing is employed, therefore, unlike the western electric circuit, means must be provided for notifying the b-operator when the calling subscriber has answered. this is done by placing at the _b_-operator's position a ringing lamp associated with each trunk cord, which is illuminated when the _b_-operator places the plug of the incoming trunk into the multiple jack of the subscriber's line, and remains illuminated until the subscriber has answered. this is accomplished in the following manner: when the operator plugs into the jack of the line called, relay _ _ is energized but is immediately de-energized by the disconnecting of the circuit of this relay from the sleeve conductor of the cord when the ringing key is depressed, the selection of the ringing key being determined by the particular party on the line desired. these ringing keys have associated with them a set of springs _ _, which springs are operated when any one of the ringing keys is depressed. thus, with a ringing key depressed and the relay _ _ de-energized, the ringing lamp will be illuminated by means of a circuit as follows: from the live side of the battery, through the ringing lamp _ _, through the back contact and armature of the relay _ _, through the armature and contact of relay _ _, then through the armature and front contact of relay _ _--which at this time is the relay bridged across the trunk and, therefore, energized--and thence through the back contact and armature of relay _ _ to ground. when the subscriber removes his receiver from the hook, the relay _ _ will become energized as previously described, and will, therefore, operate relay _ _ to break the circuit of the ringing lamp. the circuit thus established by the operation of relay _ _ is as follows: from the live side of battery, through the winding of relay _ _, through the armature and contact of relay _ _, through the armature and contact of relay _ _, through the armature and front contact of relay _ _, thence through the armature and back contact of relay _ _ to ground. as soon as the _b_-operator notes that the ringing lamp has gone out, she knows that no further ringing is required on that line, thus allowing the operation of relay _ _ and accomplishing the locking out of the ringing lamp during the remainder of that connection. the relay _ _, after having once pulled up, remains locked up through the rear contact of the left-hand armature of relay _ _ and ground, until the plug is removed from the jack. at the end of the conversation, when the _a_-operator has disconnected her cord circuit on the illumination of the supervisory signals, both relays _ _ and _ _ will be in an unoperated condition and will provide a circuit for illuminating the disconnect lamp associated with the _b_-operator's cord. this circuit may be traced as follows: from battery through the disconnect lamp, through the armatures and contacts of relays _ _ and _ _, thence through the front contact and armature of relay _ _ to ground, thus illuminating the disconnect lamp. the ringing lamp will not be re-illuminated at this time, due to the fact that it has been previously locked out by relay _ _. the operator then removes the plug from the jack of the line called, and the apparatus in the trunk circuit is restored to normal condition. in the circuit shown only keys are provided for ringing two parties. this circuit, however, is not confined to the use of two-party lines, but may be extended to four parties by simply duplicating the ringing keys and by connecting them with the proper current for selectively ringing the other stations. the method of determining as to whether the called line is free or busy is similar to that previously described for the _a_-operator's cord circuit when making a local connection, and differs only in the fact that in the case of the trunk cord the test circuit is controlled through the contacts of a relay, whereas in the case of the _a_-operator's cord, the test circuit was controlled through the contacts of the listening key. the function of the resistance _ _ and the battery connected thereto is the same as has been previously described. the general make-up of trunking switchboard sections is not greatly different from that of the ordinary switchboard sections where no trunking is involved. in small exchanges where ring-down trunks are employed, the trunk line equipment is merely added to the regular jack and drop equipment of the switchboard. in common-battery multiple switchboards the _a_-boards differ in no respect from the standard single office multiple boards, except that immediately above the answering jacks and below the multiple there are arranged in suitable numbers the jacks of the outgoing trunks. where the offices are comparatively small, the incoming trunk portions of the _b_-boards are usually merely a continuance of the _a_-boards, the subscriber's multiple being continuous with and differing in no respect from that on the _a_-sections. instead of the usual pairs of _a_-operators' plugs, cords, and supervisory equipment, there are on the key and plug shelves of these _b_-sections the incoming trunk plugs and their associated equipment. in large offices it is customary to make the _b_-board entirely separate from the _a_-board, although the general characteristics of construction remain the same. the reason for separate _a_- and _b_-switchboards in large exchanges is to provide for independent growth of each without the growth of either interfering with the other. a portion of an incoming trunk, or _b_-board, is shown in fig. . the multiple is as usual, and, of course, there are no outgoing trunk jacks nor regular cord pairs. instead the key and plug shelves are provided with the incoming-trunk plug equipments, thirty of these being about the usual quota assigned to each operator's position. in multi-office exchanges, employing many central offices, such, for instance, as those in new york or chicago, it is frequently found that nearly all of the calls that originate in one office are for subscribers whose lines terminate in some other office. in other words, the number of calls that have to be trunked to other offices is greatly in excess of the number of calls that may be handled through the multiple of the _a_-board in which they originate. it is not infrequent to have the percentage of trunked calls run as high as per cent of the total number of calls originating in any one office, and in some of the offices in the larger cities this percentage runs higher than per cent. [illustration: fig. . section of trunk switchboard] [illustration: fig. . section of partial multiple switchboard] this fact has brought up for consideration the problem as to whether, when the nature of the traffic is such that only a very small portion of the calls can be handled in the office where they originate, it is worth while to employ the multiple terminals for the subscribers' lines on the _a_-boards. in other words, if so great a proportion as per cent of the calls have to be trunked any way, is it worth while to provide the great expense of a full multiple on all the sections of the _a_-board in order to make it possible to handle the remaining per cent of the calls directly by the _a_-operators? as a result of this consideration it has been generally conceded that where such a very great percentage of trunking was necessary, the full multiple of the subscribers' lines on each section was not warranted, and what is known as the partial multiple board has come into existence in large manual exchanges. in these the regular subscribers' multiple is entirely omitted from the _a_-board, all subscribers' calls being handled through outgoing trunk jacks connected by trunks to _b_-boards in the same as well as other offices. in these partial multiple _a_-boards, the answering jacks are multipled a few times, usually twice, so that calls on each line may be answered from more than one position. this multipling of answering jacks does not in any way take the place of the regular multipling in full multiple boards, since in no case are the calls completed through the multiple jacks. it is done merely for the purpose of contributing to team work between the operators. a portion of such a partial multiple _a_-board is shown in fig. . this view shows slightly more than one section, and the regular answering jacks and lamps may be seen at the bottom of the jack space just above the plugs. above these are placed the outgoing trunk jacks, those that are in use being indicated with white designation strips. above the outgoing trunk jacks are placed the multiples of the answering jacks, these not being provided with lamps. the partial multiple _a_-section of fig. is a portion of the switchboard equipment of the same office to which the trunking section shown in fig. belongs. that this is a large multiple board may be gathered from the number of multiple jacks in the trunking section, , being installed with room for , . that the board is a portion of an equipment belonging to an exchange of enormous proportions may be gathered from the number of outgoing trunk jacks shown in the _a_-board, and in the great number of order-wire keys shown between each of the sets of regular cord-circuit keys. the switchboards illustrated in these two figures are those of one of the large offices of the new york telephone company on manhattan island, and the photographs were taken especially for this work by the western electric company. =cable color code.= a great part of the wiring of switchboards requires to be done with insulated wires grouped into cables. in the wiring of manual switchboards as described in the seven preceding chapters, and of automatic and automanual systems and of private branch-exchange and intercommunicating systems described in succeeding chapters, cables formed as follows are widely used: tinned soft copper wires, usually of no. or no. b. & s. gauge, are insulated, first with two coverings of silk, then with one covering of cotton. the outer (cotton) insulation of each wire is made of white or of dyed threads. if dyed, the color either is solid red, black, blue, orange, green, brown, or slate, or it is striped, by combining one of those colors with white or a remaining color. the object of coloring the wires is to enable them to be identified by sight instead of by electrical testing. wires so insulated are twisted into pairs, choosing the colors of the "line" and "mate" according to a predetermined plan. an assortment of these pairs then is laid up spirally to form the cable core, over which are placed certain wrappings and an outer braid. a widely used form of switchboard cable has paper and lead foil wrappings over the core, and the outer cotton braid finally is treated with a fire-resisting paint. standard color code for cables +---------------+-------------------------------------------------+ | | mate | | line wire +-------+-------+-------+-----------+-------------+ | | white | red | black | red-white | black-white | +---------------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-------------+ | blue | | | | | | | orange | | | | | | | green | | | | | | | brown | | | | | | | slate | | | | | | | blue-white | | | | | | | blue-orange | | | | | | | blue-green | | | | | | | blue-brown | | | | | | | blue-slate | | | | | | | orange-white | | | | | | | orange-green | | | | | | | orange-brown | | | | | | | orange-slate | | | | | | | green-white | | | | | | | green-brown | | | | | | | green-slate | | | | | | | brown-white | | | | | | | brown-slate | | | | | | | slate-white | | | | | | +---------------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-------------+ the numerals represent the pair numbers in the cable. the wires of spare pairs usually are designated by solid red with white mate for first spare pair, and solid black with white mate for second spare pair. individual spare wires usually are colored red-white for first individual spare, and black-white for second individual spare. chapter xxviii fundamental considerations of automatic systems =definition.= the term automatic, as applied to telephone systems, has come to refer to those systems in which machines at the central office, under the guidance of the subscribers, do the work that is done by operators in manual systems. in all automatic telephone systems, the work of connecting and disconnecting the lines, of ringing the called subscriber, even though he must be selected from among those on a party line, of refusing to connect with a line that is already in use, and informing the calling subscriber that such line is busy, of making connections to trunk lines and through them to lines in other offices and doing the same sort of things there, of counting and recording the successful calls made by a subscriber, rejecting the unsuccessful, and nearly all the thousand and one other acts necessary in telephone service, are performed without the presence of any guiding intelligence at the central office. the fundamental object of the automatic system is to do away with the central-office operator. in order that each subscriber may control the making of his own connections there is added to his station equipment a call transmitting device by the manipulation of which he causes the central-office mechanisms to establish the connections he desires. we think that the automatic system is one of the most astonishing developments of human ingenuity. the workers in this development are worthy of particular notice. from occupying a position in popular regard in common with long-haired men and short-haired women they have recently appeared as sane, reasonable men with the courage of their convictions and, better yet, with the ability to make their convictions come true. the scoffers have remained to pray. =arguments against automatic idea.= naturally there has been a bitter fight against the automatic. those who have opposed it have contended: first: that it is too complicated and, therefore, could be neither reliable or economical. second: that it is too expensive, and that the necessary first cost could not be justified. third: that it is too inflexible and could not adapt itself to special kinds of service. fourth: that it is all wrong from the subscribers' point of view as the public will not tolerate "doing its own operating." _complexity._ this first objection as to complexity, and consequent alleged unreliability and lack of economy should be carefully analyzed. it too often happens that a new invention is cast into outer darkness by those whose opinions carry weight by such words as "it cannot work; it is too complicated." fortunately for the world, the patience and fortitude which men must possess before they can produce meritorious, though intricate inventions, are usually sufficient to prevent their being crushed by any such offhand condemnation, and the test of time and service is allowed to become the real criterion. it would be difficult to find an art that has gone forward as rapidly as telephony. within its short life of a little over thirty years it has grown from the phase of trifling with a mere toy to an affair of momentous importance to civilization. there has been a tendency, particularly marked during recent years, toward greater complexity; and probably every complicated new system or piece of apparatus has been roundly condemned, by those versed in the art as it was, as being unable to survive on account of its complication. to illustrate: a prominent telephone man, in arguing against the nickel-in-the-slot method of charging for telephone service once said, partly in jest, "the lord never intended telephone service to be given in that way." this, while a little off the point, is akin to the sweeping aside of new telephone systems on the sole ground that they are complicated. these are not real reasons, but rather convenient ways of disposing of vexing problems with a minimum amount of labor. important questions lying at the very root of the development of a great industry may not be put aside permanently in this offhand way. the lord has never, so far as we know, indicated just what his intentions were in the matter of nickel service; and no one has ever shown yet just what degree of complexity will prevent a telephone system from working. it is safe to say that, if other things are equal, the simpler a machine is, the better; but simplicity, though desirable, is not all-important. complexity is warranted if it can show enough advantages. if one takes a narrow view of the development of things mechanical and electrical, he will say that the trend is toward simplicity. the mechanic in designing a machine to perform certain functions tries to make it as simple as possible. he designs and re-designs, making one part do the work of two and contriving schemes for reducing the complexity of action and form of each remaining part. his whole trend is away from complication, and this is as it should be. other things being equal, the simpler the better. a broad view, however, will show that the arts are becoming more and more complicated. take the implements of the art of writing: the typewriter is vastly more complicated than the pen, whether of steel or quill, yet most of the writing of today is done on the typewriter, and is done better and more economically. the art of printing affords even more striking examples. in telephony, while every effort has been made to simplify the component parts of the system, the system itself has ever developed from the simple toward the complex. the adoption of the multiple switchboard, of automatic ringing, of selective ringing on party lines, of measured-service appliances, and of automatic systems have all constituted steps in this direction. the adoption of more complicated devices and systems in telephony has nearly always followed a demand for the performance by the machinery of the system of additional or different functions. as in animal and plant life, so in mechanics--the higher the organism functionally the more complex it becomes physically. greater intricacy in apparatus and in methods is warranted when it is found desirable to make the machine perform added functions. once the functions are determined upon, then the whole trend of the development of the machine for carrying them out should be toward simplicity. when the machine has reached its highest stage of development some one proposes that it be required to do something that has hitherto been done manually, or by a separate machine, or not at all. with this added function a vast added complication may come, after which, if it develops that the new function may with economy be performed by the machine, the process of simplification again begins, the whole design finally taking on an indefinable elegance which appears only when each part is so made as to be best adapted in composition, form, and strength to the work it is to perform. achievements in the past teach us that a machine may be made to do almost anything automatically if only the time, patience, skill, and money be brought to bear. this is also true of a telephone system. the primal question to decide is, what functions the system is to perform within itself, automatically, and what is to be done manually or with manual aid. sometimes great complications are brought into the system in an attempt to do something which may very easily and cheaply be done by hand. cases might be pointed out in which fortunes and life-works have been wasted in perfecting machines for which there was no real economic need. it is needless to cite cases where the reverse is true. the matter of wisely choosing the functions of the system is of fundamental importance. in choosing these the question of complication is only one of many factors to be considered. one of the strongest arguments against intricacy in telephone apparatus is its greater initial cost, its greater cost of maintenance, and its liability to get out of order. greater complexity of apparatus usually means greater first cost, but it does not necessarily mean greater cost of up-keep or lessened reliability. a dollar watch is more simple than an expensive one. the one, however, does its work passably and is thrown away in a year or so; the other does its work marvelously well and may last generations, being handed down from father to son. merely reducing the number of parts in a machine does not necessarily mean greater reliability. frequently the attempt to make one part do several diverse things results in such a sacrifice in the simplicity of action of that part as to cause undue strain, or wear, or unreliable action. better results may be attained by adding parts, so that each may have a comparatively simple thing to do. [illustration: western electric company typical charging outfit at dawson, georgia] the stage of development of an art is a factor in determining the degree of complexity that may be allowed in the machinery of that art. a linotype machine, if constructed by miracle several hundred years ago, would have been of no value to the printer's art then. the skill was not available to operate and maintain it, nor was the need of the public sufficiently developed to make it of use. similarly the automatic telephone exchange would have been of little value thirty years ago. the knowledge of telephone men was not sufficiently developed to maintain it, telephone users were not sufficiently numerous to warrant it, and the public was not sufficiently trained to use it. industries, like human beings, must learn to creep before they can walk. another factor which must be considered in determining the allowable degree of complexity in a telephone system is the character of the labor available to care for and manage it. usually the conditions which make for unskilled labor also lend themselves to the use of comparatively simple systems. thus, in a small village remote from large cities the complexity inherent in a common-battery multiple switchboard would be objectionable. the village would probably not afford a man adequately skilled to care for it, and the size of the exchange would not warrant the expense of keeping such a man. fortunately no such switchboard is needed. a far simpler device, the plain magneto switchboard--so simple that the girl who manipulates it may also often care for its troubles--is admirably adapted to the purpose. so it is with the automatic telephone system; even its most enthusiastic advocate would be foolish indeed to contend that for all places and purposes it was superior to the manual. these remarks are far from being intended as a plea for complex telephone apparatus and systems; every device, every machine, and every system should be of the simplest possible nature consistent with the functions it has to perform. they are rather a protest against the broadcast condemnation of complex apparatus and systems just because they are complicated, and without regard to other factors. such condemnation is detrimental to the progress of telephony. where would the printing art be today if the linotype, the cylinder press, and other modern printing machinery of marvelous intricacy had been put aside on account of the fact that they were more complicated than the printing machinery of our forefathers? that the automatic telephone system is complex, exceedingly complex, cannot be denied, but experience has amply proven that its complexity does not prevent it from giving reliable service, nor from being maintained at a reasonable cost. _expense._ the second argument against the automatic--that it is too expensive--is one that must be analyzed before it means anything. it is true that for small and medium-sized exchanges the total first cost of the central office and subscribers' station equipment, is greater than that for manual exchanges of corresponding sizes. the prices at which various sizes of automatic exchange equipments may be purchased vary, however, almost in direct proportion to the number of lines, whereas in manual equipment the price per line increases very rapidly as the number of lines increases. from this it follows that for very large exchanges the cost of automatic apparatus becomes as low, and may be even lower than for manual. roughly speaking the cost of telephones and central-office equipment for small exchanges is about twice as great for automatic as for manual, and for very large exchanges, of about , lines, the cost of the two for switchboards and telephones is about equal. for all except the largest exchanges, therefore, the greater first cost of automatic apparatus must be put down as one of the factors to be weighed in making the choice between automatic and manual, this factor being less and less objectionable as the size of the equipment increases and finally disappearing altogether for very large equipments. greater first cost is, of course, warranted if the fixed charges on the greater investment are more than offset by the economy resulting. the automatic screw machine, for instance, costs many times more than the hand screw machine, but it has largely displaced the hand machine nevertheless. _flexibility._ the third argument against the automatic telephone system--its flexibility--is one that only time and experience has been able to answer. enough time has elapsed and enough experience has been gained, however, to disprove the validity of this argument. in fact, the great flexibility of the automatic system has been one of its surprising developments. no sooner has the statement been made that the automatic system could not do a certain thing than forthwith it has done it. it was once quite clear that the automatic system was not practicable for party-line selective ringing; yet today many automatic systems are working successfully with this feature; the selection between the parties on a line being accomplished with just as great certainty as in manual systems. again it has seemed quite obvious that the automatic system could not hope to cope with the reverting call problem, _i. e._, enabling a subscriber on a party line to call back to reach another subscriber on the same line; yet today the automatic system may do this in a way that is perhaps even more satisfactory than the way in which it is done in multiple manual switchboards. it is true that the automatic system has not done away with the toll operator and it probably never will be advantageous to require it to do so for the simple reason that the work of the toll operator in recording the connections and in bringing together the subscribers is a matter that requires not only accuracy but judgment, and the latter, of course, no machine can supply. it is probable also that the private branch-exchange operator will survive in automatic systems. this is not because the automatic system cannot readily perform the switching duties, but the private branch-exchange operator has other duties than the mere building up and taking down of connections. she is, as it were, a door-keeper guarding the telephone door of a business establishment; like the toll operator she must be possessed of judgment and of courtesy in large degree, neither of which can be supplied by machinery. in respect to toll service and private branch-exchange service where, as just stated, operators are required on account of the nature of the service, the automatic system has again shown its adaptability and flexibility. it has shown its capability of working in harmony with manual switchboards, of whatever nature, and there is a growing tendency to apply automatic devices and automatic principles of operation to manual switchboards, whether toll or private branch or other kinds, even though the services of an operator are required, the idea being to do by machinery that portion of the work which a machine is able to do better or more economically than a human being. _attitude of public._ the attitude of the public toward the automatic is one that is still open to discussion; at least there is still much discussion on it. a few years ago it did seem reasonable to suppose that the general telephone user would prefer to get his connection by merely asking for it rather than to make it himself by "spelling" it out on the dial of his telephone instrument. we have studied this point carefully in a good many different communities and it is our opinion that the public finds no fault with being required to make its own connections. to our minds it is proven beyond question that either the method employed in the automatic or that in the manual system is satisfactory to the public as long as good service results, and it is beyond question that the public may get this with either. _subscriber's station equipment._ the added complexity of the mechanism at the subscriber's station is in our opinion the most valid objection that can be urged against the automatic system as it exists today. this objection has, however, been much reduced by the greater simplicity and greater excellence of material and workmanship that is employed in the controlling devices in modern automatic systems. however, the automatic system must always suffer in comparison with the manual in respect of simplicity of the subscriber's equipment. the simplest conceivable thing to meet all of the requirements of telephone service at a subscriber's station is the modern common-battery manual telephone. the automatic telephone differs from this only in the addition of the mechanism for enabling the subscriber to control the central-office apparatus in the making of calls. from the standpoint of maintenance, simplicity at the subscriber's station is, of course, to be striven for since the proper care of complex devices scattered all over a community is a much more serious matter than where the devices are centered at one point, as in the central office. nevertheless, as pointed out, complexity is not fatal, and it is possible, as has been proven, to so design and construct the required apparatus in connection with the subscribers' telephones as to make them subject to an amount of trouble that is not serious. =comparative costs.= a comparison of the total costs of owning, operating, and maintaining manual and automatic systems usually results in favor of the automatic, except in small exchanges. this seems to be the consensus of opinion among those who have studied the matter deeply. although the automatic usually requires a larger investment, and consequently a larger annual charge for interest and depreciation, assuming the same rates for each case, and although the automatic requires a somewhat higher degree of skill to maintain it and to keep it working properly than the manual, the elimination of operators or the reduction in their number and the consequent saving of salaries and contributory expenses together with other items of saving that will be mentioned serves to throw the balance in favor of the automatic. the ease with which the automatic system lends itself to inter-office trunking makes feasible a greater subdivision of exchange districts into office districts and particularly makes it economical, where such would not be warranted in manual working. all this tends toward a reduction in average length of subscribers' lines and it seems probable that this possibility will be worked upon in the future, more than it has been in the past, to effect a considerable saving in the cost of the wire plant, which is the part of a telephone plant that shows least and costs most. =automatic vs. manual.= taking it all in all the question of automatic versus manual may not and can not be disposed of by a consideration of any single one of the alleged features of superiority or inferiority of either. each must be looked at as a practical way of giving telephone service, and a decision can be reached only by a careful weighing of all the factors which contribute to economy, reliability, and general desirability from the standpoint of the public. public sentiment must neither be overlooked nor taken lightly, since, in the final analysis, it is the public that must be satisfied. =methods of operation.= in all of the automatic telephone systems that have achieved any success whatever, the selection of the desired subscriber's line by the calling subscriber is accomplished by means of step-by-step mechanism at the central office, controlled by impulses sent or caused to be sent by the acts of the subscriber. _strowger system._ in the so-called strowger system, manufactured by the automatic electric company of chicago, the subscriber, in calling, manipulates a dial by which the central-office switching mechanism is made to build up the connection he wants. the dial is moved as many times as there are digits in the called subscriber's number and each movement sends a series of impulses to the central office corresponding in number respectively to the digits in the called subscriber's number. during each pause, except the last one, between these series of impulses, the central-office mechanism operates to shift the control of the calling subscriber's line from one set of switching apparatus at the central office to another. in case a four-digit number is being selected first, the movement of the dial by the calling subscriber will correspond to the thousands digit of the number being called, and the resulting movement of the central-office apparatus will continue the calling subscriber's line through a trunk to a piece of apparatus capable of further extending his line toward the line terminals of the thousand subscribers whose numbers begin with the digit chosen. the next movement of the dial corresponding to the hundreds digit of the called number will operate this piece of apparatus to again extend the calling subscriber's line through another trunk to apparatus representing the particular hundred in which the called subscriber's number is. the third movement of the dial corresponding to the tens digit will pick out the group of ten containing the called subscriber's line, and the fourth movement corresponding to the units digit will pick out and connect with the particular line called. _lorimer system._ in the lorimer automatic system invented by the lorimer brothers, and now being manufactured by the canadian machine telephone company of toronto, canada, the subscriber sets up the number he desires complete by moving four levers on his telephone so that the desired number appears visibly before him. he then turns a handle and the central-office apparatus, under the control of the electrical conditions thus set up by the subscriber, establishes the connection. in this system, unlike the strowger system, the controlling impulses are not caused by the movement of the subscriber's apparatus in returning to its normal position after being set by the subscriber. instead, the conditions established at the subscriber's station by the subscriber in setting up the desired number, merely determine the point in the series of impulses corresponding to each digit at which the stepping impulses local to the central office shall cease, and in this way the proper number of impulses in the series corresponding to each digit is determined. _magnet- vs. power-driven switches._ these two systems differ radically in another respect. in the strowger system it is the electrical impulses initiated at the subscriber's apparatus that actually cause the movement of the switching parts at the central office, these impulses energizing electromagnets which move the central-office switching devices a step at a time the desired number of steps. in the lorimer system the switches are all power-driven and the impulses under the control of the subscriber's instrument merely serve to control the application of this power to the various switching mechanisms. these details will be more fully dealt with in subsequent chapters. _multiple vs. trunking._ it has been shown in the preceding portion of this work that the tendency in manual switchboard practice has been away from trunking between the various sections or positions of a board, and toward the multiple idea of operating, wherein each operator is able to complete the connection with any line in the same office without resorting to trunks or to the aid of other operators. strangely enough the reverse has been true in the development of the automatic system. as long as the inventors tried to follow the most successful practice in manual working, failure resulted. the automatic systems of today are essentially trunking systems and while they all involve multiple connections in greater or less degree, all of them depend fundamentally upon the extending of the calling line by separate lengths until it finally reaches and connects with the called line. _grouping of subscribers._ in this connection we wish to point out here two very essential features without which, so far as we are aware, no automatic telephone system has been able to operate successfully. the first of these is the division of the total number of lines in any office of the exchange into comparatively small groups and the employment of correspondingly small switch units for each group. many of the early automatic systems that were proposed involved the idea of having each switch capable in itself of making connection with any line in the entire office. as long as the number of lines was small--one hundred or thereabouts--this might be all right, but where the lines number in the thousands, it is readily seen that the switches would be of prohibitive size and cost. _trunking between groups._ this feature made necessary the employment of trunk connections between groups. by means of these the lines are extended a step at a time, first entering a large group of groups, containing the desired subscriber; then entering the smaller group containing that subscriber; and lastly entering into connection with the line itself. the carrying out of this idea was greatly complicated by the necessity of providing for many simultaneous connections through the switchboard. it was comparatively easy to accomplish the extension of one line through a series of links or trunks to another line, but it was not so easy to do this and still leave it possible for any other line to pick out and connect with any other idle line without interference with the first connection. a number of parallel paths must be provided for each possible connection. groups of trunks are, therefore, provided instead of single trunks between common points to be connected. the subscriber who operates his instrument in making a call knows nothing of this and it is, of course, impossible for him to give any thought to the matter as to which one of the possible paths he shall choose. it was by a realization of these facts that the failures of the past were turned into the successes of the present. the subscriber by setting his signal transmitter was made to govern the action of the central-office apparatus in the selection of the proper _group_ of trunks. the group being selected, the central-office apparatus was made to act at once _automatically_ to pick out and connect with _the first idle trunk of such group_. thus, we may say _that the subscriber by the act performed on his signal transmitter, voluntarily chooses the group of trunks, and immediately thereafter the central-office apparatus without the volition of the subscriber picks out the first idle one of this group of trunks so chosen_. this fundamental idea, so far as we are aware, underlies all of the successful automatic telephone-exchange systems. it provides for the possibility of many simultaneous connections through the switchboard, and it provides against the simultaneous appropriation of the same path by two or more calling subscribers and thus assures against interference in the choice of the paths. _outline of action._ in order to illustrate this point we may briefly outline the action of the strowger automatic system in the making of a connection. assume that the calling subscriber desires a connection with a subscriber whose line bears the number , . the subscriber in making the call will, by the first movement of his dial, transmit nine impulses over his line. this will cause the selective apparatus at the central office, that is at the time associated with the calling subscriber's line, to move its selecting fingers opposite a group of terminals representing the ends of a group of trunk lines leading to apparatus employed in connecting with the ninth thousand of the subscribers' lines. while the calling subscriber is getting ready to transmit the next digit, the automatic apparatus, without his volition, starts to pick out the first idle one of the group of trunks so chosen. having found this it connects with it and the calling subscriber's line is thus extended to another selective apparatus capable of performing the same sort of function in choosing the proper hundreds group. in the next movement of his dial the calling subscriber will send five impulses. this will cause the last chosen selective switch to move its selective fingers opposite a group of terminals representing the ends of a group of trunks each leading to a switch that is capable of making connection with any one of the lines in the fifth hundred of the ninth thousand. again during the pause by the subscriber, the switch that chose this group of trunks will start automatically to pick out and connect with the first idle one of them, and will thus extend the line to a selective switch that is capable of reaching the desired line, since it has access to all of the lines in the chosen hundred. the third movement of the dial sends six impulses and this causes this last chosen switch to move opposite the sixth group of ten terminals, so that there has now been chosen the nine hundred and fifty-sixth group of ten lines. the final movement of the dial sends seven impulses and the last mentioned switch connects with the seventh line terminal in the group of ten previously chosen and the connection is complete, assuming that the called line was not already engaged. if it had been found busy, the final switch would have been prevented from connecting with it by the electrical condition of certain of its contacts and the busy signal would have been transmitted back to the calling subscriber. _fundamental idea._ this idea of subdividing the subscribers' lines in an automatic exchange, of providing different groups of trunks so arranged as to afford by combination a number of possible parallel paths between any two lines, of having the calling subscriber select, by the manipulation of his instrument, the proper group of trunks any one of which might be used to establish the connection he desires, and of having the central-office apparatus act automatically to choose and connect with an idle one in this chosen group, should be firmly grasped. it appears, as we have said, in every successful automatic system capable of serving more than one small group of lines, and until it was evolved automatic telephony was not a success. _testing._ as each trunk is chosen and connected with, conditions are established, by means not unlike the busy test in multiple manual switchboards, which will guard that trunk and its associated apparatus against appropriation by any other line or apparatus as long as it is held in use. likewise, as soon as any subscriber's line is put into use, either by virtue of a call being originated on it, or by virtue of its being connected with as a called line, conditions are automatically established which guard it against being connected with any other line as long as it is busy. these guarding conditions of both trunks and lines, as in the manual board, are established by making certain contacts, associated with the trunks or lines, assume a certain electrical condition when busy that is different from their electrical condition when idle; but unlike the manual switchboard this different electrical condition does not act to cause a click in any one's ear, but rather to energize or de-energize certain electromagnets which will establish or fail to establish the connection according to whether it is proper or improper to do so. _local and inter-office trunks._ the groups of trunks that are used in building up connections between subscribers' lines may be local to the central office, or they may extend between different offices. the action of the two kinds of trunks, local or inter-office, is broadly the same. chapter xxix the automatic electric company's system almost wherever automatic telephony is to be found--and its use is extensive and rapidly growing--the so-called strowger system is employed. it is so named because it is the outgrowth of the work of almon b. strowger, an early inventor in the automatic telephone art. that the system should bear the name of strowger, however, gives too great prominence to his work and too little to that of the engineers of the automatic electric company under the leadership of alexander e. keith. =principles of selecting switch.= the underlying features of this automatic system have already been referred to in the abstract. a better grasp of its principles may, however, be had by considering a concrete example of its most important piece of apparatus--the selecting switch. the bare skeleton of such a switch, sufficient only to illustrate the salient point in its mode of operation, is shown in fig. . the essential elements of this are a vertical shaft capable of both longitudinal and rotary motion; a pawl and ratchet mechanism actuated by a magnet for moving the shaft vertically a step at a time; another pawl and ratchet mechanism actuated by another magnet for rotating the shaft a step at a time; an arm carrying wiper contacts on its outer end, mounted on and moving with the shaft; and a bank of contacts arranged on the inner surface of a section of a cylinder adapted to be engaged by the wiper contacts on this movable arm. these various elements are indicated in the merest outline and with much distortion in fig. , which is intended to illustrate the principles of operation rather than the details as they actually are in the system. in the upper left-hand corner of this figure, the magnet shown will, if energized by impulses of current, attract and release its armature and, in doing so, cause the pawl controlled by this magnet to move the vertical shaft of the switch up a step at a time, as many steps as there are impulses of current. the vertical movement of this shaft will carry the wiper arm, attached to the lower end of the shaft, up the same number of steps and, in doing so, will bring the contacts of this wiper arm opposite, but not engaging, the corresponding row of stationary contacts in the semi-cylindrical bank. likewise, through the ratchet cylinder on the intermediate portion of the shaft, the magnet shown at the right-hand portion of this figure will, when energized by a succession of electrical impulses, rotate the shaft a step at a time, as many steps as there are impulses. this will thus cause the contacts of the wiper arm to move over the successive contacts in the row opposite to which the wiper had been carried in its vertical movement. [illustration: fig. . principles of automatic switch] at the lower left-hand corner of this figure, there is shown a pair of keys either one of which, when operated, will complete the circuit of the magnet to which it is connected, this circuit including a common battery. in a certain rough way this pair of key switches in the lower left-hand corner of the drawing may be taken as representing the call-transmitting apparatus at the subscriber's station, and the two wires extending therefrom may be taken as representing the line wires connecting that subscriber's station to the central office; but the student must avoid interpreting them as actual representations of the subscriber's station calling apparatus or the subscriber's line since their counterparts are not to be found in the system as it really exists. here again accuracy has been sacrificed for ease in setting forth a feature of operation. still referring to fig. , it will be seen that the bank contacts consist of ten rows, each having ten pairs of contacts. assume again, for the sake of simplicity, that the exchange under consideration has one hundred subscribers and that each pair of bank contacts represents the terminals of one subscriber's line. assume further that the key switches in the lower left-hand corner of the figure are being manipulated by a subscriber at that station and that he wishes to obtain a connection with line no. . by pressing and releasing the left-hand key six times, he will cause six separate impulses of current to flow through the upper left-hand magnet and this will cause the switch shaft to move up six steps and bring the wiper arm opposite the sixth row of bank contacts. if he now presses and releases his right-hand key seven times, he will, through the action of the right-hand magnet, rotate the shaft seven steps, thus bringing the wipers into contact with the seventh contact of the sixth row and thus into contact with the desired line. as the wiper contacts on the switch arm form the terminals of the calling subscriber's line, it will be apparent that the calling subscriber is now connected through his switch with the line of subscriber no. . as stated, each of the pairs of bank contacts are connected with the line of a subscriber; the line, fig. , is shown so connected to the forty-first pair of contacts, that is to the first contact in the fourth row. the selecting switch shown in fig. would be for the sole use of the subscriber on the line no. . each of the other subscribers would have a similar switch for his own exclusive use. since any of the switches must be capable of reaching line no. , for instance, when moved _up_ six rows and _around_ seven, it follows that the sixty-seventh pair of contacts in each bank of the entire one hundred switches must also be connected together and to line no. . the same is, of course, true of all the contacts corresponding to any other number. multiple connections are thus involved between the corresponding contacts of the banks, in much the same way as in the corresponding jacks in the multiple of a manual switchboard. as a result of this multiple connection of the bank contacts, any subscriber may move the wiper arm of his selecting switch into connection with the line of any other subscriber. _the "up-and-around" movement._ the elemental idea to be grasped by the discussion so far, is the so-called "up-and-around" method of action of the selecting switches employed in this system. this preliminary discussion may be carried a step further by saying that the arrangement is such that when a subscriber presses both his keys and grounds both of the limbs of his line, such a condition is brought about as will cause all holding pawls to be withdrawn from the shaft, and thus allow it to return to its normal position with respect to both its vertical and rotary movements. no attempt has been made in fig. to show how this is accomplished. =function of line switch.= such a system as has been briefly outlined in the foregoing would require a separate selecting switch for each subscriber's line and would be limited to use in exchanges having not more than one hundred lines. in the modern system of the automatic electric company, the requirement that each subscriber shall have a selective switch, individual to his own line, has been eliminated by introducing what is called an _individual line switch_ by means of which any one of a group of subscribers' lines, making a call, automatically appropriates one of a smaller group of selecting switches and makes it its own only while the connection exists. =subdivision of subscribers' lines.= the limitation as to the size of the exchange has been overcome, without increasing the number of bank contacts in any selecting switch, by dividing the subscribers' lines into groups of one hundred and causing selecting switches automatically to extend the calling subscriber's line first into a group of groups corresponding, for instance, to the thousand containing the called subscriber's line, and then into the particular group containing the line, and lastly, to connect with the individual line in that group. =underlying feature of trunking system.= it will be remembered that in the chapter on fundamental principles of automatic systems, it was stated that the subscriber, by means of the signal transmitter at his station, was made to govern the action of the central-office apparatus in the selection of a proper group of trunks; and the group being selected, the central-office apparatus was made to act automatically to pick out and connect with the first idle trunk of such group. this selection by the subscriber of a group followed by the automatic selection from among that group forms the basis of the trunking system. it is impossible, by means of any simple diagram, to show a complete scheme of trunking employed, but fig. will give a fundamental conception of it. this figure shows how a single calling line, indicated at the bottom, may find access into any particular line in an office having a capacity for ten thousand. =names of selecting switches.= selecting switches of the "up-and-around" type are the means by which the calling line selects and connects with the trunk lines required in building up the connection, and finally selects and connects with the line of the called subscriber. where such a switch is employed for the purpose of selecting a _trunk_, it is called a selector switch. it is a _first selector_ when it serves to pick out a major group of lines, _i. e._, a group containing a particular thousand lines or, in a multi-office system, a group represented by a complete central office. it is a _second selector_ when it serves to make the next subdivision of groups; a _third selector_ if further subdivision of groups is necessary; and finally it is _a connector_ when it is employed to pick out and connect with the _particular line in the final group of one hundred lines_ to which the connection has been brought by the selectors. in a single office of , -line capacity, therefore, we would have first and second selectors and connectors, the first selectors picking out the thousands, the second selectors the hundreds, and the connectors the individual line. in a multi-office system we may have first, second, and third selectors and connectors, the first selector picking out the office, the second selector the thousands in that office, the third selector the hundreds, and the connector the individual lines. =the line switch.= in addition to the selectors and connectors there are line switches, which are comparatively simple, one individual to each line. each of these has the function, purely automatic, of always connecting a line, as soon as a call is originated on it, to some one of a smaller group of first selectors available to that line. this idea may be better grasped when it is understood that, in the earlier systems of the automatic electric company, there was a first selector permanently associated with each line. by the addition of the comparatively simple line switch, a saving of about ninety per cent of the first selectors was effected, since the number of first selectors was thereby reduced from a number equal to the number of lines in a group to a number equal to the number of simultaneous connections resulting from calls originating in that group. in other words, by the line switch, the number of first selectors is determined by the traffic rather than by the number of lines. =scheme of trunking.= with this understanding as to the names and broader functions of the things involved, fig. may now be understood. the line switch of the single line, as indicated here, has only the power of selection among three trunks, but it is to be understood that in actual practice, it would have access to a greater number, usually ten. so, also, throughout this diagram we have shown the apparatus and trunks arranged in groups of three instead of in groups of ten, only the first three thousands groups being indicated and the first three hundreds groups in each thousand. again only three levels instead of ten are indicated for each selecting switch, it being understood that in the diagram the various levels are represented by concentric arcs of circles, and the trunk contacts by dots on these arcs. _line-switch action._ when the subscriber, whose line is shown at the bottom of the figure, begins to make a call, the line switch acts to connect his line with one of the first selector trunks available to it. this selection is entirely preliminary and, except to start it, is in no way under the control of the calling subscriber. the calling line now has under its control a first selector which, for the time being, becomes individual to it. let it be assumed that the line switch found the first of the first selector trunks already appropriated by some other switch, but that the second one of these trunks was found idle. this trunk being appropriated by the line switch places the center one of the first selectors shown under the control of the subscriber's line. this first selector then acts in response to the first set of selective impulses sent out by his signal transmitter. [illustration: dean harmonic converter dry cell type for magneto exchange. _the dean electric co._] [illustration: fig. . scheme of trunking] _first selector action._ we will assume that the calling subscriber desires to connect with no. . the first movement of the subscriber's signal transmitter will send, therefore, three impulses over the line. these impulses will act on the vertical magnet of the first selector switch to move it up three steps. on this "level" of the contact bank of this switch all of the contacts will represent second selector trunks leading to the _third_ thousand group. the other ends of these trunks will terminate in the wipers and also in the controlling magnets of second selectors serving this thousand. this function on the part of the first selector controlled by the act of the subscriber will have thus selected a _group_ of trunks leading to the _third_ thousand, but the subscriber has nothing to do with which one of the trunks of this group will actually be used. immediately following the vertical movement of the first selector switch the rotary movement of this switch will start and will continue until the wipers of that switch have found contacts of an idle trunk leading to a second selector. assuming that the first trunk was the one found idle, the first selector wipers would pause on the first pair of contacts in the third level of its bank, and the trunk chosen may be seen leading from that contact off to the group of second selectors belonging to the third thousand. for clearness, the chosen trunks in this assumed connection are shown heavier than the others. _second selector action._ the next movement of the dial by the subscriber in establishing his desired connection will send two impulses, it being desired to choose the _second_ hundred in the _third_ thousand. the first selector will have become inoperative before this second series of impulses is sent and, therefore, only the second selector will respond. its vertical magnet acting under the influence of these two impulses will step up its wiper contacts opposite the second row of bank contacts, and the subscriber will thus have chosen the _group_ of trunks leading to the _second_ hundred in the _third_ thousand. here, again, the automatic operation of picking out the first idle one of this chosen group of trunks will take place without the volition of the subscriber, and it will be assumed that the first two trunks on this level of the second selector were found already engaged and that the third was therefore chosen. the connection continues, as indicated by heavy lines in fig. , to the third one of the connectors in the _second_ hundred of the _third_ thousand. any one of these connectors would have accomplished the purpose but this is assumed to be the first one found idle by the second selector. _connector action._ the third movement of the subscriber's dial will send but one impulse, this corresponding to the _first_ group of ten in the _second_ hundred in the _third_ thousand. this impulse will move the connector shaft up to the first level of bank contacts; and from now on the action of the connector differs radically from that of the selectors. the connector is not searching for an idle trunk in the group but for a particular line and, therefore, having chosen the group of ten lines in the desired hundred, the connector switch waits for further guidance from the subscriber. this comes in the form of the final set of impulses sent by the subscriber's signal transmitter which, in this case, will be three in number, corresponding to the final digit in the number of the called subscriber. this series of impulses will control the rotary movement of the connector wipers which will move along the first level and stop on the third one. the process is seen to be one of successive selection, first of a large group, then of a smaller, again of a smaller, and finally of an individual. if the line is found not busy, the connection between the two subscribers is complete and the called subscriber's bell will be rung. if it is found busy, however, the connector will refuse to connect and will drop back to its normal position, sending a busy signal back to the calling subscriber. the details of ringing and the busy-back operation may only be understood by a discussion of drawings, subsequently to be referred to. =two-wire and three-wire systems.= in most of the systems of the automatic electric company in use today the impulses by which the subscriber controls the central-office apparatus flow over one side of the line or the other and return by ground. the metallic circuit is used for talking and for ringing the called subscriber's bell, while ground return circuits, on one side of the line or the other, are used for sending all the switch controlling impulses. recently this company has perfected a system wherein no ground is required at the subscriber's station and no ground return path is used for any purpose between the subscriber and the central office. this later system is known as the "two-wire" system, and in contra-distinction to it, the earlier and most used system has been referred to as the "three-wire." it is not meant by this that the line circuits actually have three wires but that each line employs three conductors, the two wires of the line and the earth. the three-wire system will be referred to and described in detail, and from it the principles of the two-wire system will be readily understood. [illustration: fig. . automatic wall set] [illustration: fig. . automatic desk stand] =subscriber's station apparatus.= the detailed operation of the three-wire system may be best understood by considering the subscriber's station apparatus first. the general appearance of the wall set is shown in fig. , and of the desk set in fig. . these instruments embody the usual talking and call-receiving apparatus of a common-battery telephone and in addition to this, the signal transmitter, which is the thing especially to be considered now. the diagrammatic illustration of the signal transmitter and of the relation that its parts bear to the other elements of the telephone set is shown in fig. . it has already been stated that the subscriber manipulates the signal transmitter by rotating the dial on the face of the instrument. a clearer idea of this dial and of the finger stop for it may be obtained from figs. and . [illustration: fig. . circuits of telephone set] _operation._ to make a call for a given number the subscriber removes his receiver from its hook, then places his forefinger in the hole opposite the number corresponding to the first digit of the desired number. by means of the grip thus secured, he rotates the dial until its movement is stopped by the impact of the finger against the stop. the dial is then released and in its return movement it sends the number of impulses corresponding to the first digit in the called number. a similar movement is made for each digit. in fig. is given a phantom view of the dial, in order to show more clearly the relation of the mechanical parts and contacts controlled by it. for a correct idea of its mechanical action it must be understood that the shaft _ _, the lever _ _, and the interrupter segment _ _ are all rigidly fastened to the dial and move with it. a coiled spring always tends to move the dial and these associated parts back to their normal positions when released by the subscriber, and a centrifugal governor, not shown, limits the speed of the return movement. the subscriber's hook switch is mechanically interlocked with the dial so as to prevent the dial being moved from its normal position until the hook is in its raised position. this interlocking function involves also the pivoted dog _ _. normally the lower end of this dog lies in the path of the pin _ _ carried on the lever _ _, and thus the shaft, dial, and segment are prevented from any considerable movement when the receiver is on the hook. however, when the receiver is removed from its hook, the upwardly projecting arm from the hook engages a projection on the dog _ _ and moves the dog out of the path of the pin _ _. thus the dial is free to be rotated by the subscriber. the pin _ _ is mounted in a stationary position and serves to limit the backward movement of the dial by the lever _ _ striking against it. ground springs:--five groups of contact springs must be considered, some of which are controlled wholly by the position of the switch hook, others jointly by the position of the switch hook and the dial, others by the movement of the dial itself, and still others by the pressure of the subscriber's finger on a button. the first of these groups consists of the springs _ _ and _ _, the function of which is to control the continuity of the ground connection at the subscriber's station. the arrangement of these two springs is such that the ground connection will be broken until the subscriber's receiver is removed from its hook. as soon as the receiver is raised, these springs come together in an obvious manner, the dog _ _ being lifted out of the way by the action of the hook. the ledge on the lower portion of the spring _ _ serves as a rest for the insulated arm of the dog _ _ to prevent this dog, which is spring actuated, from returning and locking the dial until after the receiver has been hung up. bell and transmitter springs:--the second group is that embracing the springs _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _. the springs _ _ and _ _ are controlled by the lower projection from the switch hook, the spring _ _ engaging the spring _ _ only when the hook is down. the spring _ _ engages the spring _ _ only when the hook lever is up and not then unless the dial is in its normal position. while the hook is raised, therefore, the springs _ _ and _ _ break contact whenever the dial is moved and make contact again when it returns to its normal position. the springs _ _ and _ _ control the circuit through the subscriber's bell while the springs _ _ and _ _ control the continuity of the circuit from one side of the line to the other so as to isolate the limbs from each other while the signal transmitter is sending its impulses to the central office. impulse springs:--the third group embraces springs _ _, _ _, and _ _ and these are the ones by which the central-office switches are controlled in building up a connection. something of the prevailing nomenclature which has grown up about the automatic system may be introduced at this point. the movements of the selecting switches at the central office are referred to as _vertical_ and _rotary_ for obvious reasons. on account of this the magnet which causes the vertical movement is referred to as the _vertical magnet_ and that which accomplishes the _rotary_ movement as the _rotary magnet_. it happens that in all cases the selecting impulses sent by the subscriber's station, corresponding respectively to the number of digits in the called subscriber's number, are sent over one side of the line and in nearly all cases these selecting impulses actuate the vertical movements of the selecting switches. for this reason the particular limb of the line over which the selecting impulses are sent is called the _vertical limb_. the other limb of the line is the one over which the single impulse is sent after each group of selecting impulses, and it is this impulse in every case which causes the selector switch to start rotating in its hunt for an idle trunk. this side of the line is, therefore, called _rotary_. for the same reasons the impulses over the vertical side of the line are called _vertical impulses_ and those over the rotary side, _rotary impulses_. the naming of the limbs of the line and of the current impulses _vertical_ and _rotary_ may appear odd but it is, to say the least, convenient and expressive. coming back to the functions of the third group of springs, _ _, _ _, and _ _, _ _ may be called the _vertical spring_ since it sends vertical impulses; _ _, the _rotary spring_ since it sends rotary impulses; and _ _, the _ground spring_ since, when the hook is up, it is connected with the ground. on the segment _ _ there are ten projections or cams _ _ which, when the dial is moved, engage a projection of the spring _ _. when the dial is being pulled by the subscriber's finger, these cams engage the spring _ _ in such a way as to move it away from the ground spring and no electrical contact is made. on the return of the dial, however, these cams engage the projection on the spring _ _ in the opposite way and the passing of each cam forces this vertical spring into engagement with the ground spring. it will readily be seen, therefore, by a consideration of the spacing of these cams on the segment and the finger holes in the dial that the number of cams which pass the vertical spring _ _ will correspond to the number on the hole used by the subscriber in moving the dial. near the upper right-hand corner of the segment _ _, as shown in fig. , there is another projection or cam _ _, the function of which is to engage the rotary spring _ _ and press it into contact with the ground spring. thus, the first thing that happens in the movement of the dial is for the projection _ _ to ride over the hump on the rotary spring and press the contact once into engagement with the ground spring; and likewise, the last thing that happens on the return movement of the dial is for the rotary spring to be connected once to the ground spring after the last vertical impulse has been sent. if both the rotary and vertical sides of the line are connected with the live side of the central-office battery, it follows that every contact between the vertical and the ground spring or between the rotary and the ground spring will allow an impulse of current to flow over the vertical or the rotary side of the line. we may summarize the action of these impulse springs by saying that whenever the dial is moved from its normal position, there is, at the beginning of this movement, a single rotary impulse over the rotary side of the line; and that while the dial returns, there is a series of vertical impulses over the vertical side of the line; and just before the dial reaches its normal position, after the sending of the last vertical impulse, there is another impulse over the rotary side of the line. the mechanical arrangements of the interrupter segment _ _ and its associated parts have been greatly distorted in fig. in order to make clear their mode of operation. this drawing has been worked out with great care, with this in mind, at a sacrifice of accuracy in regard to the actual structural details. ringing springs:--the fourth group of springs in the subscriber's telephone is the ringing group and embraces the springs _ _, _ _, and _ _. the springs _ _ and _ _ are normally closed and maintain the continuity of the talking circuit. when, however, the button attached to the spring _ _--which button may be seen projecting from the instrument shown in fig. , and from the base of the one shown in fig. --is pressed, the continuity of the talking circuit is interrupted and the vertical side of the line is connected with the ground. it is by this operation, after the connection has been made with the desired subscriber's line, that the central-office apparatus acts to send ringing current out on that line. release springs:--the fifth set of springs is the one shown at the left-hand side of fig. , embracing springs _ _, _ _, and _ _. the long curved spring _ _ is engaged by the projecting lug on the switch hook when it rises so as to press this spring away from the other two. on the return movement of the hook, however, this spring is pressed to the left so as to bring all three of them into contact, and this, it will be seen, grounds both limbs of the line at the subscriber's station. this combination cannot be effected by any of the other springs at any stage of their operation, and it is the one which results in the energization of such a combination of relays and magnets at the central office as will release all parts involved in the connection and allow them to return to their normal positions ready for another call. _salient points._ if the following things are borne in mind about the operation of the subscriber's station apparatus, an understanding of the central-office operations will be facilitated. first, the selective impulses always flow over the vertical side of the line; they are always preceded and always followed by a single impulse over the rotary side of the line. the ringing button grounds the vertical side of the line and the release springs ground both sides of the line simultaneously. =the line switch.= the first thing to be considered in connection with the central-office apparatus is the line switch. this, it will be remembered, is the device introduced into each subscriber's line at the central office for the purpose of effecting a reduction of the number of first selectors required at the central office, and also for bringing about certain important functional results in connection with trunking between central and sub-offices. the function of the line switch in connection with the subscriber's line, however, is purely that of reducing the number of first selectors. the line switches of one hundred lines are all associated to form a single unit of apparatus, which, besides the individual line switches, includes certain other apparatus common to those lines. such a group of one hundred line switches and associated common apparatus is called a _line-switch unit_, or frequently, a _keith unit_. confusion is likely to arise in the mind of the reader between the individual line switch and the line-switch unit, and to avoid this we will refer to the piece of apparatus individual to the line as the line switch, and to the complete unit formed of one hundred of these devices as a line-switch unit. _line and trunk contacts._ each line switch has its own bank of contacts arranged in the arc of a circle, and in this same arc are also placed the contacts of each of the ten individual trunks which it is possible for that line to appropriate. the contacts individual to the subscriber's line in the line switch are all multipled together, the arrangement being such that if a wedge or plunger is inserted at any point, the line contacts will be squeezed out of their normal position so as to engage the contacts of the trunk corresponding to the particular position in the arc at which the wedge or plunger is inserted. a small plunger individual to each line is so arranged that it may be thrust in between the contact springs in the line-switch bank in such manner as to connect any one of the trunks with the line terminals represented in that row, the particular trunk so connected depending on the portion of the arc toward which the plunger is pointed at the time it is thrust in the contacts. these banks of lines and trunk contacts are horizontally arranged, and piled in vertical columns of twenty-five line switches each. the ten trunk contacts are multipled vertically through the line-switch banks, so that the same ten trunks are available to each of the twenty-five lines. we thus have, in effect, an old style, western union, cross-bar switchboard, the line contacts being represented in horizontal rows and the trunk contacts in vertical rows, the connection between any line and any trunk being completed by inserting a plunger at the point of intersection of the horizontal and the vertical rows corresponding to that line and trunk. _trunk selection._ the plungers by which the lines and trunks are connected are, as has been said, individual to the line, and all of the twenty-five plungers in a vertical row are mounted in such manner as to be normally held in the same vertical plane, and this vertical plane is made to oscillate back and forth by an oscillating shaft so as always _to point the plungers toward a vertical row of trunk contacts that represent a trunk that is not in use at the time_. the to-and-fro movement of this oscillating shaft, called the _master bar_, is controlled by a master switch and the function of this master switch is always to keep the plungers pointed toward the row of contacts of an idle trunk. the thrusting movement of the individual plungers into the contact bank is controlled by magnets individual to the line and under control of the subscriber in initiating a call. as soon as the plunger of a line has been thus thrust into the contact bank so as to connect the terminals of that line with a given trunk, the plunger is no longer controlled by the master bar and remains stationary. the master bar then at once moves all of the other plungers that are not in use so that they will point to the terminals of another trunk that is not in use. the plungers of all the line switches in a group of twenty-five are, therefore, subject to the oscillating movements of the master bar when the line is not connected to a first selector trunk. as soon as a call is originated on a line, the corresponding plunger is forced into the bank and is held stationary in maintaining the connection to a first selector trunk, and all of the other plungers not so engaged, move on so as to be ready to engage another idle trunk. _trunk ratio._ the assignment of ten trunks to twenty-five lines would be a greater ratio of trunks than ordinary traffic conditions require. this ratio of trunks to lines is, however, readily varied by multipling the trunk contacts of several twenty-five line groups together. thus, ten trunks may be made available to one hundred subscribers' lines by multipling the trunks of four twenty-five line switch groups together. in this case the four master bars corresponding to the four groups of twenty-five line switches are all mechanically connected together so as to move in unison under the control of a single master switch. if more than ten and less than twenty-one trunks are assigned to one hundred lines, then each set of ten trunks is multipled to the trunk contacts of fifty line switches, the two master bars of these switches being connected together and controlled by a common master switch. _structure of line switch._ the details of the parts of a line switch that are individual to the line are shown in fig. , the line and trunk contact bank being shown in the lower portion of this figure and also in a separate view in the detached figure at the right. a detailed group of several such line switches with the oscillating master bar is shown in fig. . this figure shows quite clearly the relative arrangement of the line and trunk contact banks, the plungers for each bank, and the master bar. [illustration: fig. . line switch] in practice, four groups of twenty-five line switches each are mounted on a single framework and the group of one hundred line switches, together with certain other portions of the apparatus that will be referred to later, form a line-switch unit. a front view of such a unit is shown in fig. . in order to give access to all portions of the wiring and apparatus, the framework supporting each column of fifty line switches is hinged so as to open up the interior of the device as a whole. a line-switch unit thus opened out is shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . portion of line-switch unit] _circuit operation._ the mode of operation of the line switch may be best understood in connection with fig. , which shows in a schematic way the parts of a line switch that are individual to a subscriber's line, and also those that are common to a group of fifty or one hundred lines. those portions of fig. which are individual to the line are shown below the dotted line extending across the page. the task of understanding the line switch will be made somewhat easier if figs. and are considered together. the individual parts of the line switch are shown in the same relation to each other in these two figures with the exception that the bank of line and trunk springs in the lower right-hand corner of fig. have been turned around edgewise so as to make an understanding of their circuit connections possible. [illustration: fig. . line-switch unit] [illustration: fig. . line-switch unit] [illustration: fig. . circuits of line-switch unit] the vertical and rotary sides of the subscriber's line are shown entering at the lower left-hand corner of this figure, and they pass to the springs of the contact bank. immediately adjacent to these springs are the trunk contacts from which the vertical and the rotary limbs of the first selector trunk proceed. the plunger is indicated at _ _, it being in the form of a wheel of insulating material. it is carried on the rod _ _ pivoted on a lever _ _, which, in turn, is pivoted at _ _ in a stationary portion of the framework. a spring _ _, secured to the underside of the lever _ _ and projecting to the left beyond the pivot _ _ of this lever, serves always to press the right-hand portion of the lever _ _ forward in such direction as to tend to thrust it into the contact bank. the plunger is normally held out of the contact bank by means of the latch _ _ carried on the armature _ _ of the trip magnet. when the trip magnet is energized it pulls the armature _ _ to the left and thus releases the plunger and allows it to enter the contact bank. [illustration: power switchboard for medium-sized office mercury arc rectifier panel and transformer at right.] the master bar is shown at _ _, and a feather on this bar engages a notch in the segment attached to the rear end of the plunger rod _ _. this master bar is common to all of the plunger rods and by its oscillatory movement, under the influence of the master switch, it always keeps all of the idle plunger bars pointed toward the contacts of an idle trunk. as soon, however, as the trip magnet is operated to cause the insertion of a plunger into the contact bank, the feather on the master bar is disengaged by the notch in the segment of the plunger rod, and the plunger rod is, therefore, no longer subject to the oscillating movement of the master bar. when the release magnet is energized, it attracts its armature _ _ and this lifts the armature _ _ of the trip magnet so that the latch _ _ rides on top of the left-hand end of the lever _ _. then, when the release magnet is de-energized, the spring _ _, which was put under tension by the latch, moves the entire structure of levers back to its normal position, withdrawing the plunger from the bank of contacts. the notch on the edge of the segment of the plunger rod, when thus released, will probably not strike the feather on the master bar, and the plunger rod will thus not come under the control of the master bar until the master bar has moved, in its oscillation, so that the feather registers with the notch, after which this bar will move with all the others. if, while the plunger is waiting to be picked up by the master bar, the same subscriber should call again, his line will be connected with the same trunk as before. there is no danger in this, however, that the trunk will be found busy, because the master bar will not have occupied a position which would make it possible for any of the lines to appropriate this trunk during the intervening time. _master switch._ associated with each master bar there is a master switch which determines the position in which the master bar shall stop in order that the idle plungers may be pointed always to the contacts of an idle trunk. the arm _ _ of this switch is attached to the master bar and oscillates with it and serves to connect the segment _ _ successively with the contacts _ _, which are connected respectively to the third, or release wire of each first selector trunk. in the figure the arm _ _ is shown resting on the sixth contact of the switch and this sixth contact is connected to a spring _ _ in the line-switch contact bank that has not yet been referred to. as soon as the plunger is inserted into the contact bank, the spring _ _ will be pressed into engagement with the spring _ _, and this spring _ _ is connected with the live side of the battery through the release magnet winding. the contact strip _ _ on the master switch is thus connected through the release magnet to the battery and from this current flows through the left-hand winding of the master-switch relay. this energizes this relay and causes the closure of the circuit of the locking magnet which magnet unlocks the master bar to permit its further rotation. the unlocking of the master bar brings the spring _ _ into engagement with _ _ and thus energizes the master magnet, the armature of which vibrates back and forth after the manner of an electric-bell armature, and steps the wheel _ _ around. the wheel _ _ is mechanically connected to the master bar so that each complete revolution of the wheel will cause one complete oscillation of the master bar. the master bar will thus be moved so as to cause all the idle plungers to sweep through an arc and this movement will stop as soon as the master-switch arm _ _ connects the arc _ _ with one of the contacts _ _ that is not connected to the live side of the battery through the springs _ _ and _ _ of some other line switch. it is by this means that the plungers of the line switches are always kept pointing at the contacts of an idle trunk. the way in which this feature has been worked out must demand admiration and accounts for the marvelous quickness of this line switch. the fact that the plungers are pointed in the right direction before the time comes for their use, leaves only the simple thrusting motion of the plunger to accomplish the desired connection immediately upon the initiation of a call by the subscriber. _locking segment._ it will be understood that the locking segment _ _ and the master-switch contact finger _ _ are both rigidly connected with the master bar _ _ and move with it, the locking segment _ _ serving always to determine accurately the angular position at which the master bar and the master-switch arm are brought to rest. _bridge cut-off._ one important feature of automatic switching, particularly as exemplified in the system of the automatic electric company, is the disconnection, after its use, of each operating magnet of each piece of apparatus involved in making a connection. since these operating magnets are always bridged across the line at the time of their operation and then cut off after they have performed their function, this feature may be referred to as the _bridge cut-off_. _guarding functions._ still another feature of importance is the means for guarding a line or a piece of apparatus that has already been appropriated or made busy, so that it will not be appropriated or connected with for use in some other connection. for this latter purpose contacts and wires are associated with each piece of apparatus, which are multipled to similar contacts on other pieces of apparatus in much the same way and for a similar purpose that the test thimbles in a multiple switchboard are multipled together. such wires and contacts in the automatic electric company's apparatus are called _private wires_ and _contacts_. the bridge cut-off and guarding functions are provided for in the line switch by a bridge cut-off relay shown in fig. and also in fig. , it being the upper one of the individual line relays in each of those figures. this bridge cut-off relay is operated as soon as the plunger of the line is thrust into the bank; the contacts _ _ and _ _, closed by the plunger, serving to complete the circuit of this relay. to make clear the bridge cut-off feature it will be noted that the trip magnet of a line switch is connected in a circuit traced from the rotary side of the line through the contacts _ _ and _ _ of the bridge cut-off relay, thence through the coil of the trip magnet to the common wire leading to the spring _ _ of the master-bar locking device and thence to the live side of the battery. obviously, therefore, as soon as the bridge cut-off relay operates, the trip magnet becomes inoperative and can cause no further action of the line switch because its circuit is broken between the springs _ _ and _ _. the private or guarding feature is taken care of by the action of the plunger in closing contacts _ _ and _ _, since the private wire leading to the bridge cut-off relay is, as has already been stated, connected to ground when these contacts are closed. this private wire leads off and is multipled to the private contacts on all the connectors that have the ability to reach this line, and the fact that this wire is grounded by the line switch as soon as it becomes busy, establishes such conditions at all of the connectors that they will refuse to connect with this line as long as it is busy, in a way that will be pointed out later on. _relation of line switch and connectors._ the vertical and rotary wires of the subscriber's line are shown leading off to the connector banks at the left-hand side of fig. , and one side of this connection passes through the contacts _ _ and _ _ of the bridge cut-off relay on the line switch. it is through this path that a connection from some other line through a connector to this line is established and it is seen that this path is held open until the bridge cut-off relay of the line switch is operated. for such a connection to this line the bridge cut-off relay of the line switch is operated over the private wire leading from the connector, and the operation of the bridge cut-off relay at this time serves to render inoperative the line switch, so that it will not perform its usual functions should the called subscriber start to make a call after his line had been seized. _summary of line-switch operation._ to summarize the operation of a line switch when a call is originated on its line, the first movement of the calling subscriber's dial will ground the rotary side of the line and operate the trip magnet. this will cause the plunger to be inserted into the bank, and thus extend the line to the first selector trunk through the closing of the right-hand set of springs shown in the lower right-hand corner of fig. . the insertion of the plunger will also connect the battery through the left-hand winding of the master-switch relay and, by the sequence of operations which follows, cause the master bar to move all of the idle plungers so as to again point them to an idle trunk. the closure of contacts _ _ and _ _ by the plunger causes the operation of the bridge cut-off relay which opens the circuit of the trip magnet, rendering it inoperative; and also establishes ground potential on all the private wire contacts of that line in the banks of the connectors, so as to guard the line and its associated apparatus against intrusion by others. the line is cut through, therefore, to a first selector and all of the line-switch apparatus is completely cut off from the talking circuit. it must be remembered that all of the actions of the line switch, which it has taken so long to describe, occur practically instantaneously and as a result of the first part of the first movement of the subscriber's dial. the line switch has done its work and "gone out of business" before the selective impulses of the first digit begin to take place. =selecting switches.= the first selector is now in control of the calling subscriber. the circuits and elements of the first selector switch are shown in fig. . the general mechanical structure of the first selectors, second selectors, and connectors, is the same and may be referred to briefly here. fig. shows a rear view of a first selector; fig. , a side view of a second selector; and fig. , a front view of a connector. the arrangement of the vertical and rotary magnets, of the selector shafts, and of the contact banks are identical in all three of these pieces of apparatus and all these switches work on the "up-and-around principle" referred to in connection with fig. . it is thought that with the general structure shown in figs. , , and in mind, the actual operation may be understood much more readily from fig. . four magnets--the vertical, the rotary, the private, and the release--produce the switching movements of the machine. these magnets are controlled by various combinations brought upon the circuits by three relays--the vertical, the rotary, and the back release. the fourth relay shown, called the _off-normal_, is purely for signaling purposes, as will be described. _side switch._ another important element of the selecting switches is the so-called side switch which might better be called a pilot switch--but we are not responsible for its name. this side switch has for its function the changing of the control of the subscriber's line to successive portions of the selector mechanism, rendering inoperative those portions that have already performed their functions and that, therefore, are no longer needed. this switch may be seen best in fig. just above the upper bank of contacts. it is shown in fig. greatly distorted mechanically so as to better illustrate its electrical functions. [illustration: fig. . circuits of first selector] the contact levers _ _, _ _, _ _, and _ _ of the side switch are carried upon the arm _ _ which is pivoted at _ _. all of these contact levers, therefore, move about _ _ as an axis. the side switch has three positions and it is shown, in fig. , in the first one of these. when the private magnet armature is attracted and released once, the escapement carried by it permits the spring _ _ to move the arm _ _ so as to bring the wipers of the side switch into its second position; the second pulling up and release of the private magnet armature will cause the movement of the side switch wipers into the third position. it is to be noted that the escapement which releases the side switch arm may be moved either by the private or by the rotary magnet, since the armature of the latter has a finger which engages the private magnet armature. [illustration: fig. . rear view of first selector] _functions of side switch._ the functions of the side switch may be briefly outlined in connection with the first selector, as an example. in the first position it extends the control of the subscriber's signal transmitter through the first selector trunk and line relays to the vertical and private magnets so that these magnets will be responsive to the selecting impulses corresponding to the first digit. in its second position it brings about such a condition of affairs that the rotary magnet will be brought into play and automatically move the wipers over the bank contacts in search of an idle trunk. in its third position, both the vertical and rotary relays are cut off and the line is cut straight through to the second selector trunk, and only those parts of the first selector apparatus are left in an operative state which have to do with the private or guarding circuits and with the release. similar functions are performed by the side switch in connection with the other selecting switches. [illustration: fig. . side view of second selector] _release mechanism._ another one of the features of the switch that needs to be considered before a detailed understanding of its operation may be had, is the mechanical relation of the holding and the release dog. this dog is shown at _ _ and, in the language of the art, is called the _double dog_. as will be seen, it has two retaining fingers, one adapted to engage the vertical ratchet and the other, the rotary ratchet on the selector shaft. this double dog is pivoted at _ _ and is interlinked in a peculiar way with the armature of the vertical magnet, the armature of the release magnet, and the arm of the side switch. the function of this double dog is to hold the shaft in whatever vertical position it is moved by the vertical magnet and then, when the rotary magnet begins to operate, to hold the shaft in its proper angular position. it will be noted that the fixed dog _ _ is ineffective when the shaft is in its normal angular position. but as soon as the shaft is rotated, this fixed dog _ _ becomes the real holding pawl so far as the vertical movement is concerned. the double dog _ _ is normally held out of engagement with the vertical and the rotary ratchets by virtue of the link connection, shown at _ _, between the release magnet armature and the rear end of the double dog. on the previous release of the switch the attraction of the release magnet armature permitted the link _ _ to hook over the end of the dog _ _ and thus, on its return movement, to pull this dog out of engagement with its ratchets. this movement also resulted in pushing on the link _ _ which is pivoted to the side switch arm _ _, and thus the return movement of the release magnet is made to restore the side switch to its normal position. in order that the double dog may be made effective when it is required, and in order that the side switch may be free to move under the influence of the private magnet, the double dog is released from its connection with the release magnet armature by the first movement of the vertical magnet in a manner which is clear from the drawing. =first selector operation.= in discussing the details of operation of the various selectors it will be found convenient to divide the discussion according to the position of the side switch. this will bring about a logical arrangement because it is really the side switch which determines by its position the sequence of operation. [illustration: fig. . front view of connector] _first position of side switch._ this is the position shown in fig. , and is the normal position. the vertical and the rotary lines extending from the calling subscriber are continued by the levers _ _ and _ _ of the side switch through the vertical and the rotary relay coils, respectively, to the live side of battery. the lever _ _ of the side switch in this position connects to ground the circuit leading from the line switch through the release trunk, and the winding of the off-normal relay. this winding is thus put in series with the release magnet of the line switch, but on account of high resistance of the off-normal relay no operation of the release magnet is caused. this will, however, permit such current to flow through the release circuit as will energize the sensitive off-normal relay and cause it to attract its armature and light the off-normal lamp. if this lamp remains lighted more than a brief period of time, it will attract notice and will indicate that the corresponding selector has been appropriated by a line switch and that for some reason the selector has gone no further. this lamp, therefore, is an aid in preventing the continuance of this abnormal condition. the first thing that happens after the line switch has connected the calling subscriber with the first selector is a succession of impulses over the vertical side of the line, this being the set of impulses corresponding in number to the thousands digit or to the office, if there is more than one. it will be understood that here we are considering a single office of ten-thousand-line capacity or thereabouts, and that, therefore, this first set of impulses corresponds to the thousands digit in the called subscriber's line. each one of these impulses will flow from the battery through the vertical relay and each movement of this relay armature will close the circuit of the vertical magnet and cause the shaft of the selector to be stepped up to the proper level. immediately following the first series of selecting impulses from the subscriber's station, a single impulse follows over the rotary side of the line. this gives the rotary relay armature one impulse and this in turn closes the circuit of the private magnet once. the single movement of the private magnet armature allows the escapement finger on the arm _ _ to move one step and this brings the side switch contacts into the second position. _second position of side switch._ in this position lever _ _ of the side switch places a ground on the wire leading through the rotary magnet to a source of interrupted battery current. the impulses which thus flow through the rotary magnet occur at a frequency dependent upon the battery interrupter and this is at a rate of approximately fifteen impulses per second. the rotary magnet will step the selector shaft rapidly around until something occurs to stop these impulses. this something is the finding by the private wiper of an ungrounded private contact in the bank, since all of the contacts corresponding to busy trunks are grounded, as will be explained. the action of the private magnet enters into this operation in the following way: a circuit may be traced from the battery through the private magnet to the third side switch wiper when in its second position, thence through the back release relay to the private wiper. if the wiper is at the time on the private bank contact of a busy trunk, it will find that contact grounded and the private magnet will be energized. the energizing of this magnet will not, however, cause the release of the side switch. it must be energized and de-energized. the private magnet armature will, therefore, be operated by the finger of the rotary magnet armature on the first rotary step. the private magnet will be energized and hold its armature operated if the private wiper finds a ground on the first bank contact and will stay energized as long as the private wiper is passing over private contacts of busy trunks. its armature will not be allowed to fall back during the passage of the wiper from one trunk to another, because during that interval the finger of the rotary magnet will hold it operated. as soon, however, as the private wiper reaches the private bank contact of an idle trunk, no ground will be found and the circuit of the private magnet will be left open. when the impulse through the rotary magnet ceases, the private magnet armature will fall back and the side switch will be released to its third position. _third position of side switch._ the first thing to be noted in this position is that the calling line is cut straight through to the second selector trunk, the connection being clean with no magnets bridged across or tapped off. the third wiper of the side switch, when in its third position, is grounded and this connects the release wire of the second selector trunk, on which the switch wipers rest, through the private wiper, the winding of the back release magnet, and the third wiper of the side switch to ground. this establishes a path for the subsequent release current through the back release magnet; and, of equal importance, it places a ground on the private bank contact of that trunk so that the private wiper of any other switch will be prevented from stopping on the contacts of this trunk in the same manner that the wiper of this switch was prevented from stopping on other trunks that were already in use. the fourth lever on the side switch, when in its third position, serves merely to close the circuit of the rotary off-normal lamp. this lamp is for the purpose of calling attention to any first selector switch that has been brought into connection with some second selector trunk and which, for some reason, has failed in its release. these off-normal lamps are so arranged that they may be switched off manually to avoid burning them during the hours of heaviest traffic. at night they afford a ready means of testing for switches that have been left off-normal, since the manual switches controlling these lamps may then be closed, and any lamps which burn will show that the switches corresponding to them are off-normal. simple tests then suffice to show whether they are properly or improperly in their off-normal position. _release of the first selector._ as will be shown later, the normal way of releasing the switches is from the connector back over the release wire. it is sufficient to say at this point that when the proper time for release comes, an impulse of current will come back over the second selector trunk release wire through the private wiper, to the back release relay magnet, and thence to ground through the third wiper of the side switch which is in its third position. it may be asked why the back release magnet was not energized during the previous operations described, when current passed through it. the reason for this is that in those previous operations the private magnet was always included in series in the circuit and on account of the high resistance of the private magnet, sufficient current did not pass through the back release magnet to energize it. when the back release relay is energized, it closes the circuit of the release magnet and thus, through the link _ _, draws the double dog away from its engagement with the shaft ratchets and at the same time, through the link _ _, restores the side switch to its normal position. whenever the release magnet is operated it acts as a relay to close a pair of contacts associated with it and thus to momentarily ground the release wire of the first selector trunk extending back to the line switch. referring to fig. , it will be seen that this path leads through the contacts _ _ and _ _ and the release magnet to the battery. it is by this means that the line switch is released, the release impulse being relayed back from the first selector. =second selector operation.= for the purpose of considering the action of the second selector, we will go back to the point where the first selector had connected with a second selector trunk and where its side switch had moved into its third position. in this condition, it will be remembered, the trunk line was cut through to a second selector trunk and all first selector apparatus cleared from the talking circuit. the second selector chosen is one corresponding to the thousands group as determined by the first digit of the called subscriber's number. the circuits of a second selector are shown in fig. and it must be borne in mind that the mechanical arrangements for producing the vertical and the rotary movement of the shaft and for operating the side switch are practically the same as those of the first selector. as in the first selector, the sequence of operation is controlled by the successive positions of the side switch, the first position permitting the selection of the hundreds corresponding to the vertical impulses, the second position allowing the selector to search for an idle trunk in that hundred, and the third position cutting the trunk through and clearing the circuit of obstructing apparatus. _first position of side switch._ the first thing that happens when the subscriber begins to move his dial in the transmission of the second series of selecting impulses is the sending of a preliminary impulse over the rotary side of the line. this, in the case of the second selector, energizes the rotary relay which, in turn, energizes the private magnet; but the private magnet in the case of the second selector can do nothing toward the release of the side switch because the projection _ '_, on the side switch arm _ _, meets a projection on the rear of the selector shaft which thus prevents the movement of the side switch arm _ _ until the selector shaft has been moved out of its normal position. immediately after the establishment of the connection to the selector, the second set of selecting impulses comes in over the vertical wire from the subscriber's station. these impulses, corresponding in number to the hundreds digit, will energize the vertical relay and cause it, in turn, to energize the vertical magnet, stepping up the selector shaft to the level corresponding to the hundred sought. the single rotary impulse, which follows just before the subscriber's dial reaches its normal position, will energize the rotary relay of the second selector. this, in turn, energizes the private magnet which makes a single movement of its armature and allows the escapement finger on the side switch arm to move one step and bring the side switch contacts into the second position. [illustration: fig. . circuits of second selector] _second position of side switch._ no detailed discussion of this is necessary, since, with the side switch in its second position, the actions which occur in causing the wipers of the second selector to seek and connect with an idle trunk line, are exactly the same as in the case of the first selector. when the second selector wipers finally reach a resting place on the bank contacts, the private magnet armature, operated during the hunting process, is released and the side switch is thus shifted into the third position. _third position of side switch._ the moving of the side switch into its final position brings about the same state of affairs with respect to the second selector that already exists with respect to the first selector. the trunk line is cut straight through and all bridge circuits or by-paths from it are cut off. the same guarding conditions are established to prevent other lines or other pieces of apparatus from making connections that will interfere with the one being established, and the same provisions are made for working the back release when the proper impulse comes from the connector, and for passing this back release impulse on to the first selector in the same way that the first selector passes it on to the line switch. the line of the calling subscriber has now been extended to a connector, and that connector is one of a group--usually ten--which alone has the ability to reach the particular hundred lines containing the line of the desired subscriber. the selection has, therefore, been narrowed down from one in ten thousand to one in one hundred. =the connector=--_its functions._ it has already been stated that the connector is of the same general type of apparatus as the first and the second selectors. unlike the first and the second selectors, however, the connector is required to make a double selection under the guidance of the subscriber. the first selector makes a single selection of a group under the guidance of the subscriber and then an automatic selection in that group not controlled by the subscriber. so it is with the second selector. the connector, however, makes a selection of a group of ten under the guidance of the subscriber and then, again under the guidance of the subscriber, it picks out a particular one of that group. the connector also has other functions in relation to the ringing of the called subscriber and the giving of a busy signal to the calling subscriber in case the line wanted is found busy. it has still other functions in that the talking current, which is finally supplied to connected subscribers, is supplied through paths furnished by it. _location of the connectors._ connectors are the only ones of the selecting switches that are in any sense individual to the subscribers' lines. none of them is individual to a subscriber's line, but it may be said that a group of ten connectors is individual to a group of one hundred subscribers' lines. since each group of one hundred lines has a group of connectors of its own and since each one hundred lines also has a line-switch unit of its own, and since the lines of this group must be multipled through the bank contacts of the connectors of this individual group and through the bank contacts of the line switches of this particular unit, it follows that on account of the wiring problems involved there is good reason for mounting the connectors in close proximity to the line switches representing the same group of lines. some help in the grasping of this thought may result if it be remembered that the line switch is, so to speak, the point of entry of a call and that the connector is the point of exit, and, in order to reduce the amount of wiring and to economize space, the point of exit and the point of entry are made as close together as possible. the relative locations and grouping of the line switches and connectors are clearly shown in fig. , which is a rear view of the same line-switch unit that was illustrated in figs. and . [illustration: gas engine and power board citizens' telephone co., racine, wis. _the dean electric co._] =operation of the connector.= the circuits of the connector are shown in fig. . in addition to the features that have been pointed out in the first and the second selectors, all of which are to be found, with some modifications, perhaps, in the connector, there must be considered the features in the connector of busy-signal operation, of ringing the called subscriber, of battery supply to both subscribers, and of the trunk release operation. these may be best understood by tracing through the operations of the connector from the time it is picked up by a second selector until the connection is finally completed, or until the busy signal has been given in case completion was found impossible. as in the first and the second selectors, the sequence of operations is determined by the position of the side switch. [illustration: fig. . connector side of line-switch unit] [illustration: fig. . circuits of connector] _first position of side switch._ the connector in a ten-thousand-line system is the recipient of the impulses resulting from the third and fourth movements of the subscriber's dial. considering the third movement of the subscriber's dial, the first impulse resulting from it comes over the rotary side of the line and results in the rotary relay attracting its armature once. this results in a single impulse through the private magnet which, however, does nothing because the projection _ '_ strikes against a projection on the selector shaft. these two projections interfere only when the selector shaft is in its normal position. then follows the series of impulses from the subscriber's station corresponding to the tens digit in the called subscriber's number. these pass over the vertical side of the line and through the vertical relay, energizing that relay a corresponding number of times. the vertical magnet, as in the case of the first and the second selectors, is included in the circuit controlled by the vertical relay and this results in the connector shaft being stepped up to the level corresponding to the particular tens group containing the called subscriber's number. it will be noted that the impulses from the vertical side of the line, which cause this selection, pass through one winding _ _ of the calling battery supply relay. this relay is operated by these vertical selecting impulses, but in this position of the side switch the closure of its local circuits accomplishes nothing. immediately after the tens group of selecting impulses over the vertical side of the line, there follows a single rotary impulse from the subscriber's station which, as in the case of the first and the second selectors, energizes the rotary relay and causes it to give one impulse to the private magnet. this impulse is now able, since the shaft has moved from its normal position, to release the side switch arm one notch, and the side switch, therefore, moves into its second position. _second position of side switch._ it is principally in this second position of the side switch that the connector selecting function differs from that of the first and the second selector. there is no trunk to be hunted, but rather the rotary movement of the connector wipers must be made in response to the impulses, from the subscriber's station, which correspond to the units digit in the selected number. the first impulse corresponding to the fourth movement of the subscriber's dial is a rotary one, and, as usual, it passes through the rotary relay winding and this, in turn, gives an impulse to the private magnet. the private magnet at this time has already released the side switch arm to its second position, but it is unable to release it further because of a feather on the wiper shaft--which projects just far enough to engage the lug _ '_, when the shaft is in its normal angular position--thus preventing the side switch arm from moving farther than its second position. then follows over the vertical side of the line the last set of selecting impulses corresponding to the units digit. this, as before, energizes the vertical relay, but in the second position of the side switch, it is to be noted, that the vertical relay no longer controls the vertical magnet; the side switch has shifted the control of the vertical relay to the rotary magnet. the rotary magnet is, therefore, energized a number of times corresponding to the last digit in the called number and the wipers of the connectors are thus brought to the contacts of the line sought--their final goal. at this point many things may happen, and the things that do happen depend on whether the called subscriber's line is idle or busy. called-line busy:--it will first be assumed that the called line is busy. the testing operation at the connectors occurs in the second position of the side switch. if the called line is busy, it will be either because it is connected to by some other connector or because it has itself made a call. in the former case the private contacts of that line in the banks of all the connectors serving that hundreds group of lines will be grounded through the private wiper of some other connector. that this is so, may be seen by tracing the circuit from the private wiper on the shaft to the third side switch wiper which is grounded in the third position; the other connector that has already engaged the line will, of course, have its side switch in its final, or third position. again, if the line called is busy, because a call has already been made from this line to some other line, the private contacts on the connectors corresponding to the line will be grounded, as will be seen by tracing from the private bank contacts, which are shown in fig. , through the private wire to the line switch, which is shown in fig. , and from thence to ground through the springs _ _ and _ _, which are brought together when the line switch is operated. in any event, therefore, the determining condition of a busy line is that its private bank contacts on all connectors of its group shall be grounded. under the present assumed condition, therefore, the connector wipers, which have been brought to the bank contacts of the desired line, will find a ground at the private bank contact. the connector shaft stops for an instant on the contacts of this busy line and immediately there follows over the rotary side of the line the inevitable single rotary impulse. this energizes the rotary relay and this, as usual, energizes the private magnet. remembering now that the connector side switch is in its second position and that the private wiper of the connector has found a ground, we may trace back from the private wiper through the third side switch wiper to its second contact; thence through the contact springs _ _ and _ _, closed by the private magnet; thence through the release magnet; thence through the contact springs _ _ and _ _ of the calling battery supply relay to the live side of the battery. this calling battery supply relay will, at this time, have its core energized because the coil _ _ is in series with the rotary relay coil which, as just stated, was energized by the last rotary impulse. this series of operations has led to the energizing of the release magnet, and, as a result, the double dog of the connector is pulled out of the connector shaft ratchets and the shaft and the side switch are restored to their normal position. busy-back signal:--the connector has dropped back to normal in all respects. the calling subscriber, not knowing this, presses his ringing button. this grounds the vertical side of the line at his station and operates the vertical relay at the connector. this steps the shaft of the connector up one step and causes the closure of the contacts _ _ and _ _ at the top of the connector shaft. this establishes a connection to a circuit carrying periodically interrupted battery current on which an inductive hum is placed. this circuit may be traced from this source through the springs _ _ and _ _ to the first wiper of the side switch, thence through the normally closed contacts of the ringing relay to the rotary side of the line, and the varying potential to which this path is subjected produces an inductive flow back to the calling subscriber's telephone, and gives him the necessary signal which consists of a hum or buzzing noise with which all users of automatic systems soon become familiar. release on busy connection:--the connector, since its last release, has been stepped up one notch and must again be released. when the subscriber hangs up his receiver after receiving the busy signal, he grounds both sides of his line momentarily by the action of the springs _ _, _ _, and _ _ of fig. . this operates the rotary and the vertical relays on the connector simultaneously and brings together for the first time the springs _ _ and _ _ of fig. . this establishes a connection from the battery through the springs _ _ and _ _ on the calling battery supply relay, thence through the release magnet of the connector, thence through the springs _ _ and _ _ of the vertical and the rotary relay, thence through the release trunk back to the second selector. from here the circuit passes through the private wiper of that selector and the back release relay to ground through the third side switch wiper which is in the third position. considering this circuit in respect to its action on the connector it is obvious that it energizes the release magnet on the connector which restores the connector to normal as before. at the second selector this circuit passed through the back release relay, which closed a circuit through the release magnet and through the back release relay contacts, thence back over the second selector release trunk to the back release relay of the first selector, and through the third wiper of the side switch on that selector to ground, since that side switch also is in its third position. the current through this circuit energizes the release magnet of the second selector and restores it to its normal position and also energizes the back release relay of the first selector. this, in turn, closes the circuit from the battery through the release magnet of the first selector and contacts of the back release relay to ground. this works the release magnet of the first selector and restores that selector to normal. the contacts on the first selector release magnet, shown in fig. , are closed by the action of the release magnet and this closes the path from ground back through the first selector release wire, and through the contacts _ _ and _ _ of the line switch, through the line switch release magnet to battery, and this restores the line switch to normal. the reason for the term _back release_ will now be apparent. the release operation at the connector is relayed back to the second selector; that of the second selector back to the first selector; and that of the first selector back to the line switch. until this plan was adopted, the release magnet of each selector and connector involved in a connection was left bridged across the talking circuit so as to be available for release; and it sometimes occurred that a first selector would be released before a second selector or connector, which latter switches would thus be left off-normal until rescued by an attendant. the back release plan makes it impossible for the connection necessary for the release of a switch to be torn down until the release is actually accomplished. called line found idle:--it will be remembered that, before the digression necessary to trace through the operations occurring upon the finding of a busy line, the connector wipers had been brought, by the influence of the calling subscriber's impulses, into engagement with the contacts of the desired line; that the connector side switch was in its second position; and that the final rotary impulse following the last series of selecting impulses had not been sent. the condition now to be assumed is that the called subscriber's line is free and the private wiper, therefore, has found and rests on an ungrounded private bank contact. the final rotary impulse which immediately follows will operate the rotary relay and this, in turn, will operate the private magnet. this happened under the assumed condition that the line was busy, but in that case the release magnet was also operated at the same time and restored all conditions to normal. under the present condition the operation of the private magnet will perform its usual function and move the side switch of the connector into its third position. _third position of side switch._ when the side switch of the connector moves to its third position, it, as usual, cuts the talking circuit straight through from the vertical and the rotary sides of the trunk leading from the previous selector to the outgoing terminal of the subscriber's line, which may be traced upon fig. back through the line switch, shown in fig. . several things are to be noted about the talking circuit so established: first, the inclusion of the condensers in the vertical and the rotary sides of the connector circuit. the purpose of this will be referred to later. second, the inclusion in this circuit at the connector of a pair of normally closed contacts in the ringing relay. it may be said in passing that the ringing relay corresponds exactly in function to a ringing key in a manual switchboard. third, the talking circuit leading from the connector to the called subscriber's line passes on one side through the springs _ _ and _ _ of the bridge cut-off relay of the line switch, which is shown in fig. . these springs are normally open and would prevent the completion of the talking circuit but for the fact that the bridge cut-off relay of the line switch is energized over the private wire leading to the connector bank and then through the connector wiper to the third side switch wiper which, at this time, is in its third position. the talking circuit is thus complete. the operation of this bridge cut-off relay on the line switch has not only completed the talking circuit but it has also opened the circuit of the trip magnet of the line switch so as to prevent the operation of the trip magnet by the subscriber on that line in case he should attempt to make a call during the interval between the time when his line was connected with by the connector and the time when he answers the call. the third wiper of the connector side switch when moved into its third position, puts the ground on all of the private bank contacts of the line chosen and thus guards that line against connection by others, as already described. it also operates the bridge cut-off relay of the line switch as just mentioned. the fourth wiper of the side switch, when moved into its third position, establishes such a connection as will place the ringing relay under the control of the vertical relay. this may be seen by tracing from ground to the vertical relay springs _ _ and _ _, thence through the normally closed upper pair of contacts on the private magnet, thence through the fourth wiper on the side switch to its third contact, thence through the ringing relay magnet, and through the springs _ _ and _ _ of the calling battery supply relay and to battery. the calling battery supply relay winding being in series with the vertical relay winding, the two operate together and close the two normally open points in the ringing relay circuit. this ringing relay acts as an ordinary ringing key and connects the generator to the called subscriber's line in an obvious manner, at the same time opening the talking circuit back of the ringing relay in order to prevent the ringing current chattering the relays in the circuit back of it. all that remains now is for the called subscriber to respond. when he does he closes the metallic circuit of the line through his talking apparatus. _battery supply to connected subscriber._ throughout the whole process of building up a connection, it will be remembered that both sides of the calling line are connected through the respective vertical and rotary relays involved in building up the connection with the live side of the battery. at the time when the connection is finally established and the called subscriber rung, both sides of the calling line are connected through various relay windings to the live side of the battery. such a condition leaves both sides of the line at the same potential and, therefore, there is no tendency for current to flow through the calling subscriber's talking apparatus, even though it is connected across the circuit of the line. it remains, therefore, to be seen how these conditions are so changed after the building up of a connection as to supply the calling subscriber with talking current. the calling subscriber can get no current until the called subscriber responds. when the connection is first made with the called subscriber's line, battery connection to his line is made from the live side of battery through the normally closed contacts of the calling battery supply relay, thence through the winding _ _ of the called battery supply relay to the vertical side of the called line. the grounded side of the battery is connected to the rotary side of his line through the third wiper of the connector and the coil _ _ of the called battery supply relay. as a result, this subscriber receives proper talking current through the coils _ _ and _ _, and this relay is operated by the flow of this current. the operation of this called battery supply relay merely shifts the connection of the rotary side of the calling subscriber's line from its normal battery connection, to ground, and thus the battery is placed straight across the calling subscriber's line so as to supply talking current. this supply circuit to the calling subscriber may be traced from the live side of the battery through the winding _ _ of the calling battery supply relay and the winding of the vertical relay to the vertical side of the line, and from the grounded side of battery through the third side switch wiper in its third position to the now closed pair of contacts in the called battery supply relay through the coil _ _ of the calling battery supply relay and the coil of the rotary relay to the rotary side of the line. it will be noted that the system of battery supply is that of the standard condenser and retardation coil scheme largely employed in manual practice; and that aside from the coils through which the battery current is supplied to the connected subscribers, there are no taps from, or bridges across, the two sides of the talking circuit. =release after conversation.= it remains now only to secure the disconnection of the subscribers after they are through talking. when the calling subscriber hangs up, the whole disconnection is brought about, all of the apparatus, including connector, selectors, and line switch, returning to normal. this is done by the back release system and is accomplished in almost the same way as has already been described in connection with the disconnect after an unsuccessful call. there is this difference, however: after an unsuccessful call when the line called for was found busy, the release was made while the connector side switch was in its normal position. in the present case, the release must be made with the connector side switch in its third position and with the talking battery bridged across the metallic circuit rather than connected between each limb of the line and ground. it must be remembered that the calling battery supply relay, while traversed by current during the conversation, is not magnetically energized because, with the current flowing through the metallic circuit of the line, the two windings exert a differential effect. as soon, however, as the calling subscriber hangs up his receiver, this differential action ceases, due to the grounding of both sides of the line at the subscriber's station. this relay, therefore, operates and cuts off battery from the called battery supply relay and this, in turn, releases its armature and thus changes the connection of the rotary side of the calling line from ground to live side of the battery. the normal condition of the battery connection now being restored, both the vertical and the rotary relays at the connector become operated, due to the ground on both sides of the line at the subscriber's station, and this, as we have seen, is the condition which brings about the operation of the connector release magnet, and the relaying back of the disconnect impulse successively through the selectors to the line switch. =multi-office system.= in exchanges involving more than one office, the same general principles and mode of operation already outlined apply. if the total number of subscribers in the multi-office exchange is to be less than ten thousand, then four digit numbers suffice, and the first movement of the dial may be made to select the office into which the connection is to go, the subscribers' lines being so numbered with respect to the offices that each office will contain only certain thousands. the choosing of the thousand by the calling subscriber, therefore, takes care in itself of the choice of offices. where, however, a multi-office exchange is to provide for connections among a greater number of lines than ten thousand and less than one hundred thousand, then it will take five movements of the dial to make the selection--the five movements corresponding either to the five digits in a number or to the name of an office, as indicated on the dial, and the four digits of a smaller number. the lines may all carry five digit numbers or, what is considered better practice, may be designated by an office name followed by a four digit number. in this latter case the numbers of the subscribers' lines will in each case be contained in one or more of the tens of thousands groups, no number having more than four digits. and the first movement of the dial, whether the name or number plan be adopted, will select an office; or, looking at it another way, will select a group of ten thousand and this being done, the next four successive movements of the dial will select the numbers in that ten thousand in just the some way that has been already described. certain difficulties arise, however, in multi-office working due to the fact that the three-wire trunks between offices would in most cases be objectionable. as long as the trunks extend between the various groups of apparatus in the same office, it is cheaper to provide three wires for each of them than it is to make any additional complication in the apparatus. where the trunking is done between offices, however, the system may be so modified as to work over two wire inter-office trunks. _the trunk repeater._ the purpose of the trunk repeater is to enable the inter-office trunking to be done over two wires. it may be said that the trunk repeater is a device placed in the outgoing trunk circuit at the office in which a call originates, which will do over the two wires of the trunk leading from it to the distant office just the same thing that the subscriber's signal transmitter does over the two wires of the subscriber's lines. it has certain other functions in regard to feeding the battery for talking purposes back to the calling subscriber's line, taking the place in this respect of the calling battery feed relay in the connector in a single office exchange. [illustration: fig. . circuits of trunk repeater] the circuits of a trunk repeater are shown in fig. . in considering it, it must be understood that the three wires entering the figure at the left are the vertical, rotary, and release wires of a second selector trunk leading from the first selector banks in the same office. the two wires leading from the right of the figure are those extending to the distant office, and terminate there in second selectors. the vertical and the rotary sides of this trunk as shown at the left will receive the impulses from the subscriber's station coming through the line switch and the first selector, as usual. the vertical impulses will pass through the winding of the vertical relay and through the winding _ _ of the calling battery supply relay and thence to battery, the same as on a connector. these impulses will work the armatures of both of these relays in unison. the movements of the vertical relay armature in response to these impulses will cause corresponding impulses to flow over a circuit which may be traced from ground, through the springs _ _ and _ _ of the vertical relay, the springs _ _ and _ _ of the bridged relay _ _ and thence to the vertical side of the trunk and to the distant office, where it passes into a second selector and through its vertical relay to battery. thus the vertical impulses are passed on over the two-wire trunk to the second selector at the distant office. it becomes necessary, however, to prevent these impulses from passing back through the winding of the bridge relay _ _ and this is done by means of the sluggish relay _ _. this relay receives local battery impulses in unison with those sent over the trunk by the vertical relay, these being supplied from the battery at the local office through the contacts _ _ and _ _ of the calling battery supply relay, which works in unison with the vertical relay. these rapidly recurring impulses are too fast for the sluggish relay _ _ to follow. and this relay merely pulls up its armature and cuts off both sides of the trunk leading back to the first selector. the rotary impulses are repeated to the rotary side of the two-wire trunk in a similar way. considering now the operation of the trunk repeater in the reverse direction, the action of the bridging relay _ _ is of vital importance. normally both sides of trunk line are connected to the live side of the battery and, therefore, there is no difference of potential between them and no tendency to operate the bridged relay. when the connection has been fully established to the subscriber at the distant office, and that subscriber has responded, the action of his battery supply relay will, as before stated, change the connection of the rotary side of the line from battery to ground, and thus bridge the battery at the distant exchange across the trunk. this action will pull up the bridged relay _ _ at the trunk repeater and will perform exactly the same function with respect to the connection of the battery with the calling subscriber's line. in other words, it will change the connection of the rotary side of the calling line from battery to ground, thus establishing the necessary difference in potential to give the calling subscriber the necessary current for transmission purposes. the disconnect feature is about the same as already described. when the calling subscriber hangs up his receiver both the vertical and rotary relays of the trunk repeater operate, which places the ground on both sides of the two-wire trunk to the distant office, which is the condition for releasing all of the apparatus there. for the purpose of convenience the simplified diagram of fig. has been prepared, which shows the complete connection from a calling subscriber to a called subscriber in a multi-office exchange, wherein the first movement of the dial is employed to establish the connection to the proper office and the four succeeding movements to make a selection among ten thousand lines in that office. this circuit, therefore, employs at the first office the line switch, the first selector, and the trunk repeater; and at the second office the second selector, third selector, connector, and line switch. the third selector is omitted from fig. , but this will cause no confusion, since it is exactly like the second selector. the circuits shown are exactly like those previously described but in drawing them the main idea has been to simplify the connections to the greatest possible extent at a sacrifice in the clearness with which the mechanical inter-relation of parts is shown. no correct understanding of the circuits of an automatic system is possible without a clear idea of the mechanical functions performed by the different parts, and, therefore, we have described what are apparently the more complex circuit drawings first. it is believed that the student, in attempting to gain an understanding of this marvel of mechanical and electrical intricacy, will find his task less burdensome if he will refer freely to both the simplified circuit drawing of fig. and the more complex ones preceding it. by doing so he will often be enabled to clear up a doubtful circuit point from the simpler diagram and a doubtful mechanical point from those diagrams which represent more clearly the mechanical relation of parts. [illustration: fig. . connection between a calling and a called subscriber in an automatic system] =automatic sub-offices.= obviously, the system of trunking employed in automatic exchanges lends itself with great facility to the subdivision of an exchange into a large number of comparatively small office districts and the establishment of branch offices or sub-offices at the centers of these districts. the trunking between large offices has already been described. an attractive feature of the automatic system is the establishment of so-called sub-stations or sub-offices. where there is, in an outlying district, a distinct group of subscribers whose lines may readily be centered at a common point within that district and where the number of such subscribers and lines is insufficient to establish a fully equipped office, it is possible to establish a so-called sub-station or sub-office connected with the main office of that district by trunk lines. at this sub-office there are placed only line switches and connectors. when a call is originated on one of these sub-office lines, the line switch acts instantly to connect that line with one of the trunks leading to the main office of that district, at which this trunk terminates in a first selector. from there on, the connection is the same as that in a system in which no sub-offices are employed. calls coming into this sub-office over trunk lines from the main office are received on the connectors at the sub-office and the connection is made with the sub-office line by the connector in the usual manner. this arrangement, it is seen, amounts merely to a stretching of the connector trunks for a given group of lines so that they will reach out from a main office to a sub-office, it being more economical to lengthen the smaller number of trunks and by so doing to decrease in length the larger number of subscribers' lines. =the rotary connector.= for certain purposes it becomes desirable in automatic work to employ a special form of connector which will have in itself a certain ability to make automatic selection of one of a group of previously chosen trunks in much the same manner as the first and second selectors automatically choose the first idle one of a group of trunks. such a use is demanded in private branch-exchange working where a given business establishment, for instance, has a plurality of lines connecting its own private switchboard with the central office. the directory number of all these lines is, for convenience, made the same, and it is important, therefore, that when a person attempts to make a connection with this establishment, he will not fail to get his connection simply because the first one of these lines happens to be busy. for such use a given horizontal row of connector terminals or a part of such a row is assigned to the lines leading to the private branch exchange and the connector is so modified as to have a certain "discretionary" power of its own. as a result, when the common number of all these lines is called, the connector will choose the first one, if it is not already engaged by some other connector, but if it is, it will pass on to the next, and so on until an idle one is found. it is only when the connector has hunted through the entire group of lines and found them all busy that it will refuse to connect and will give the busy signal to the calling subscriber. =party lines.= the description of this system as given above has been confined entirely to direct line working; however, party lines may be and are frequently employed. the circuits and apparatus used with direct lines are, with slight modifications, applicable to use with party lines. the harmonic method of ringing is employed and the stations are so arranged with respect to the connectors that those requiring the same frequency for ringing the bells are in groups served by the same set of connectors. [illustration: power machinery citizens' telephone company, racine, wis. _the dean electric co._] the party lines are operated on the principle commonly known in manual practice as the jack per station arrangement. each party line will, therefore, have sets of terminals appearing in separate hundreds; the connectors associated with each of these hundreds being so arranged as to impress the proper frequency of ringing current on the line. from the subscribers' standpoint the operation is the same as for direct lines, as the particular hundreds digit of a number serves to select one of a group of connectors capable of connecting the proper ringing current to the line. to avoid confusion, which would be caused by a subscriber on a party line attempting to make a call when the line is already in use by some other subscriber, the subscribers' stations are so arranged that when the line is in use all other stations on the line are locked out. [illustration: fig. . wall set for two-wire system] =the two-wire automatic system.= the two-wire system that has recently been introduced by the automatic electric company brings about the very important result of accomplishing all of the automatic switching over metallic circuit lines without the use of ground or common returns. the system is thus relieved of the disturbing influences to which the three-wire system is sometimes subjected, due to differences in earth potential between various portions of the system, which may add to or subtract from the battery potential and alter the net potential available between two distant points. the introduction of this system has also made possible certain other incidental features of advantage, one of which is a great simplification and reduction in size of the subscriber's station signal-transmitting apparatus. with the doing away of the ground as a return circuit, it becomes impossible to send vertical impulses over one side of the line and to follow them by single rotary impulses over the other side of the line. yet it becomes necessary to distinguish between the pure selective impulses and those impulses which dictate a change of function at the central office. the plan has, therefore, been adopted of accomplishing the selection in each case by short and rapidly recurring impulses and of accomplishing those functions formerly brought about by the single impulse over the rotary side of the line by a pause between the respective series of selective impulses. this is accomplished at the central office by replacing the vertical and the rotary relays of the three-wire system by a quick-acting and a sluggish relay, respectively; the quick-acting relay performing the functions previously carried out by the vertical relay, and the sluggish relay acting only during the pauses between the successive series of quick impulses to do the things formerly done by the rotary relay. this has resulted in a delightful simplification of subscriber's apparatus, since it is now necessary only to provide a device which will connect the two sides of the line together the required number of times in quick succession and then allow a pause with the circuit closed while the subscriber is getting ready to transmit another set of impulses corresponding to another digit. the calling device has no mechanical function co-acting with any of the other parts of the telephone and may be considered as a separate mechanical device electrically connected with the line. the transmitting device is not much larger than a large watch and a good idea of it may be had from fig. , which shows the latest wall set, and fig. , which shows the latest desk set of the automatic electric company. we regret the fact that this company has made the request that the complete details of their two-wire system be not published at this time. [illustration: fig. . desk stand for two-wire system] chapter xxx the lorimer automatic system the lorimer automatic telephone system has not been commercially used in this country but is in commercial operation in a few places in canada. it is interesting from several points of view. it was invented, built, and installed by the lorimer brothers--hoyt, george william, and egbert--of brantford, ontario. these young men without previous telephonic training and, according to their statements, without ever having seen the inside of a telephone office, conceived and developed this system and put it in practical operation. with the struggles and efforts of these young men in accomplishing this feat we have some familiarity, and it impresses us as one of the most remarkable inventive achievements that has come to our attention, regardless of whatever the merits or demerits of the system may be. the lorimer system is interesting also from the fact that, in most cases, it represents the mechanical rather than the electrical way of doing things. the switches are power driven and electrically controlled rather than electrically driven and electrically controlled, as in the system of the automatic electric company. the subscriber's station apparatus consists of the usual receiver, speech transmitter, call bell, and hook switch, and in addition a signal transmitter arranged to be manipulated by the subscriber so as to control the operation of the central-office apparatus in connecting with any desired line in the system. the central-office apparatus is designed throughout upon the principle of switching by means of power-driven switches which are under the control of the signal transmitters of the calling subscriber's station. the switches employed in making a connection are all so arranged with respect to constantly rotating shafts that the movable member of such switches may be connected to the shafts by means of electromagnets controlled directly or indirectly by relays, which, in turn, are brought under the control of the signal transmitters. the circuits are so designed in many instances that the changes necessary for the different steps are brought about by the movement of the switches themselves, thus permitting the use of circuits which are rather simple. the switches employed are all of a rotary type; the co-ordinate selection, which is accomplished in the automatic electric company's system by a vertical and rotary movement, being brought about in this system by the independent rotation of two switches. =subscriber's station equipment.= a subscriber's desk-stand set, except the call bell, is shown in fig. , and a wall set complete in fig. . in both of these illustrations may be seen the familiar transmitter, receiver, and hook switch, and in the wall set, the call bell. the portion of these telephone sets which is unfamiliar at present is the part which is enclosed in the enlarged base of the desk stand and the protruding device below the speech transmitter in the wall set--the signal transmitter referred to earlier in the chapter. the small push button and small plate through which the number may be seen directly below the transmitter in fig. , are for the purpose of registering calls. [illustration: fig. . lorimer automatic desk stand] the signal transmitter is a device whose function is to record mechanically the number of the subscriber's station with which connection is desired, and to transmit that record to the central office by a system of electrical impulses over the line conductors. instead of operating by its own initiative, the signal transmitter is adapted to respond to central-office control in transmitting electrically the number which has been recorded mechanically upon it. the signal transmitter shown removed from the base of the desk stand at the left in fig. comprises in part four sets of contact pins having ten pins in each set, one set for each of the digits of a four-digit number. there are also several additional contact pins for signaling and auxiliary controlling purposes. all of these contact pins are arranged upon the circumference of a circle and a movable brush mounted upon a shaft at the center of the circle is adapted to be rotated by a clock spring and to make contact with each of the pins successively. the call is started, after the number desired has been set on the dial, by giving the crank at the right of the signal transmitter a complete turn and thus winding the spring. the shaft carrying the signal transmitter brush carries also an escapement wheel, the pallet of which is directly controlled by an electromagnet. [illustration: fig. . lorimer automatic wall set] the four dials with the numerals printed on them are attached to four levers, respectively, and are moved by their levers opposite windows, near the top of the casing. through each of these windows a single numeral may be seen on the corresponding one of the dials. the dials may be adjusted so that the four numerals seen will read from left to right to correspond to the number of the line with which connection is desired. the setting of the dials so that the number desired shows at the small circular opening results in connecting the earth or a common return conductor to one pin of each set of ten pins, the pin grounded in each set depending upon the numerical value of the digit for which the dial is set. the circle of contact pins is set in an insulating disk, the signal transmitting brush operates upon the pins on one side of the disk, and electrical fingers attached to the dials operate upon the pins on the other side of the disk. the escapement wheel is a single toothed disk attached directly to the shaft which carries the signal brush and its pallet is attached rigidly to the magnet armature. [illustration: fig. . desk stand with signal transmitter removed] once a call has been turned in, the entire subscriber's station equipment is locked beyond power of the subscriber to tamper with it in any way, rendering it impossible either to defeat the call which has been started or to prevent the subscriber's station as a whole from returning completely to normal position and thus restoring itself for regular service. the key shown just below the signal transmitter in the case of the desk stand, and at the right in the wall set, is for the purpose of operating a relay at the central office which, in turn, connects ringing current to the line of the subscriber with which connection has been made, and thus actuates the call bell. as the number set up at the signal transmitter remains in full view until reset for some other number, it is easily checked by inspection and also lessens the labor involved in making a second call for the same line, which is frequently necessary when the line is found busy the first time called. =central-office apparatus.= the subscriber's lines are divided into groups of one hundred lines each at the central office, each group being served by a single unit of central-office apparatus. in a central-office unit there is "sectional apparatus" which appears but once for the unit of one hundred lines; "divisional apparatus" which appears a number of times for each unit, depending upon the traffic; and "line apparatus" which appears one hundred times for each unit or once for each line. the sectional apparatus comprises devices whose duties are, first, to detect a calling line, and second, to assign to the calling line a set of idle divisional apparatus which serves to perform the necessary switching functions and complete the connection. the sets of divisional apparatus, or, as called in this system, "divisions," are common to a section and are employed in a manner similar to the connecting cords of a manual switchboard. the number of these divisions provided for each section is, therefore, determined by the number of simultaneous connections resulting from calls originating in the section. it has been the custom in building this apparatus to provide each section with seven divisions or connective elements. the line apparatus comprises one relay, having a single winding, and two pairs of contacts operated by its armature. this device is substantially the well known cut-off relay almost universally employed in common-battery systems. the fixed multiple contacts of the lines in the switching banks of the connecting apparatus are considered as pertaining to the various pieces of apparatus on which they are found rather than to their respective lines. a good idea may be obtained of the arrangement of the sectional and divisional apparatus by referring to fig. , which is one unit of a thousand-line equipment. the apparatus in the vertical row at the extreme left of the illustration is the sectional apparatus, while the remaining seven vertical rows of apparatus are the divisions. _the section._ the sectional apparatus for each unit consists of three separate devices called for convenience a _decimal indicator_, a _division starter_, and a _decimal-register controller_. all of these devices are normally motionless when idle. the energization of the decimal indicator, in response to the inauguration of a call at a subscriber's station, results immediately in an action of the division starter which starts a division to connect with the line calling. it results also in the starting of the decimal-register controller, the remaining unit of sectional apparatus. it is thus seen that upon the starting of a call by a subscriber, all of the sectional apparatus belonging to his one hundred lines immediately becomes active, the division starter acting to start a division, the decimal indicator becoming energized to indicate the tens group in which the call has appeared, and the decimal-register controller becoming active to adjust the decimal register of the division assigned by the division starter. the division starter having assigned a division for the exclusive use of this particular call, passes to a position from which it may start a similar idle division when the next call is received. the decimal register controller makes its half revolution for the call and comes to rest, awaiting a subsequent call, and the decimal indicator continues energized but only momentarily, since it is released by the action of the cut-off relay when the call is taken in charge by the divisional connective devices. calls may follow each other rapidly, the connective devices being entirely independent of each other after having been assigned to the respective calling lines. as has been described, the decimal indicator starts the division starter and the decimal-register controller in quick succession. the division starter, shown at the extreme bottom of the left-hand row of fig. , is a cylinder switch of the same general type as used throughout this system. in it the terminals of a switch in each division appear as fixed contact points in a circle over which move the brushes of the division starter. the decimal-register controller has the duties of transmitting to the divisional apparatus a series of current impulses corresponding in number to the numerical value of the tens digit of the calling line. this is effected by providing before a movable brush ten contacts from which the brush may receive current. these contacts are normally not connected to battery, so that the brush in passing over them does not receive current from them; however, when the brush has reached the contact corresponding in number to the tens digit of the calling line, a relay associated with the decimal-register controller charges the contacts with the potential of the main battery, and each of the remaining contacts passed over by the brush sends a current impulse to a device designed to indicate on the division selected for the call the tens digit of the calling line. _the connective division._ the connective division, seven of which are shown in fig. , is an assemblage of switches comprising, as a whole, a set suitable for a complete connection from calling to called subscriber. each connective division in the unit illustrated is completely equipped to care for a called number of three digits, _i. e._, each division will connect its calling line with any one of one thousand lines which may be called. by a system of interconnecting between divisions, each division may be equipped with interconnecting apparatus so as to make it possible to complete a call with any one of ten thousand lines. each connecting division of a ten-thousand-line exchange comprises six major switches. of the six major switches, one is termed a _secondary connector_, another an _interconnector_, and the four remaining are termed the _primary portion_ of the division. [illustration: fig. . unit of switching apparatus] before taking up the operation of the switches, the mechanical nature of the switches themselves will be described. the switches are built with a contact bank cylindrical in form and with internal movable brushes traveling in a rotary manner in circular paths upon horizontal rows of contacts fixed in the cylindrical banks. for driving these brushes a constantly rotating main power-driven shaft is provided. between each shaft and the rotating brushes of each major switch is an electric clutch, which, by the movement of an armature, causes the brushes of the switch to partake of the motion of the shaft and by the return of the armature to come again to rest. the motion of the brushes of the major switches, or cylinder switches, as they are frequently called because of their form, is constantly in the same direction. they have a normal position upon a set of the cylinder contacts. they leave their normal position and take any predetermined position as controlled by the magnets of the clutch, and, having served the transient purpose, they return to their normal position by traversing the remainder of their complete revolution and stopping in their position of rest or idleness. the mechanical construction of each of the cylinder switches is such that it may disengage its clutch and bring its brushes to rest only with the brushes in some one of a number of predetermined positions. the locations of the brushes in these positions of rest, or "stop" positions, as they are called, may differ with the different cylinder switches, according to the nature of the duty required of the switch, and the total number of stop positions also may vary. the primary and secondary connectors, the interconnector selectors, and the interconnectors each have eleven stop positions; the rotary switch has eight stop positions; the signal-transmitter controller has but two. in the six cylinder switches making up a connective division and required for any conversation, in a ten-thousand-line exchange some of the switches are set to positions which are determined by the control of the calling subscriber and represent by their selective positions the value of some digit of the calling or called subscriber's number. others are switches controlling the call in its progress and controlling the switches responsive to the call. these latter switches take positions independent of the numbers. in addition to the major switches, there are upon each division four minor switches termed _registers_. each consists of an arc of fixed contacts accompanied by a set of brushes which sweep over the contacts. instead of being driven by an electromagnet, the register brushes are placed under tension of a spring which tends at all times to draw them forward. they are then restrained by an escapement device similar to a pallet escapement in a clock, the pallet being controlled by the register's magnets. when a series of impulses are received by the register magnets, the pallet is actuated a corresponding number of times and the register brushes are permitted to move forward under tension of their powerful propelling spring. each register is associated with a major switch, and the register brushes are engaged by a cam upon the associated major switch, and are restored to normal position against the tension of their propelling spring, the force of restoration being obtained from the main shaft. the electrical clutches which connect and disconnect the movable brushes of the major switches from the main driving shaft are controlled in all instances by circuits local to the central office. in some instances these circuits include relay contacts and are controlled by a relay. in other instances they are formed solely through switch contacts. in all cases the control, when from a distance, is received upon relays suitable for being controlled by the small currents which are adapted to flow over long lines. in all instances the power for moving a brush is derived from the main shaft and only the control of the movement is derived from electromagnets, relays, or other electric sources. in many instances the clutch circuit is closed through contacts of its own switch and, therefore, may be closed only when its switch is in some predetermined position. all of the switches are mechanically powerful and designed particularly to sustain the wear of long-continued and oft-repeated usage. this is true also of the moving parts which carry the brushes and of the journals sustaining those parts. _the switches of the connective division._ the six major switches of the connecting division are as follows: the primary connector:--the function of this switch is to connect the conductors of the calling line with the switching devices of the connective division. associated with this switch is a register termed the _decimal register_. the one hundred lines of the section are terminated in fixed multiple contacts in the cylinder switch of the primary connector. the calling line is selected and connected with by adjusting the decimal register to a position corresponding to the calling line's tens digit and adjusting the brushes of the cylinder switch to a position corresponding to the calling line's unit digit. the rotary switch:--this is a master switch, or pilot switch, consisting of a cylinder switch without register. its duty is the control of other switches and the completion of circuits formed in part through other switches. it is the pilot switch and the switch of initiative and control for the entire connective division. signal-transmitter controller:--the primary function of this switch is the generation of signaling impulses of two classes. impulses of the first class pass over central-office circuits only and are effective upon magnets of the divers major and minor switches; impulses of the second class pass over a line conductor of the calling line and are effective upon the signal transmitter at the subscriber's station. the impulses sent out over the line to the subscriber's station cause the brush to pass over the contacts and thereby indicate the numerical values of the various digits set by the dials. this switch also enters in an important manner into the circuits involved in the testing of the called line for the busy condition. it is controlled by the rotary switch. interconnector selector:--in an exchange using four digits in the numbers, the register of the interconnector selector is adjusted in each call to a position corresponding to the numerical value of the thousands digit of the called number. the cylinder switch then acts to select an idle trunk. the switch is controlled by the rotary switch in connection with the signal transmitter controller. interconnector:--this switch is similar to the interconnector selector in design and in function. it is a cylinder switch with register. the register is adjusted in each call to a position corresponding to the numerical value of the hundreds digit of the number called and the cylinder switch then operates to select an idle trunk. the switch is controlled by the rotary switch in connection with the signal transmitter controller. secondary connector:--this switch contains in its cylinder bank of contacts the multiple points of one hundred subscribers' lines and its function is to connect the conductors of the called line to the conductors of the connective division. this is accomplished by adjusting the register to correspond to the value of the tens digit of the line desired and by adjusting the cylinder brushes to correspond to the value of the units digit of the line. the switch is controlled by the rotary switch in connection with the signal-transmitter controller. =operation.= a brief description of the progress of a call from its institution to the complete connection and subsequent disconnection begins with the adjustment of the dial indicators of the telephone set and the turning of the crank of the signal transmitter one revolution. this act, performed by the calling subscriber, connects one of the line conductors to earth. immediately the decimal indicator associated with the section in which the calling line terminates is energized and starts the division starter. the division starter instantly starts the rotary switch of an idle division. the rotary switch now starts the decimal-register controller and connects to it the decimal register of the primary connector of the division selected. all of the above acts in the central office occur practically simultaneously. the impulses generated by the controller are effective upon the decimal register of the started division and, therefore, adjust that register to a position corresponding to the tens value of the calling line. the rotary switch now disconnects the tens register and starts the cylinder brushes of the primary connector which automatically stop when they encounter the calling line. at this instant the cut-off relay of the line is energized and the decimal indicator is released. the call now is clear of all sectional apparatus and another call may come through immediately, being assigned in charge of another idle division. the total time in which any call is in charge of the sectional apparatus, _i. e._, the total time from the grounding of the line conductor at the sub-station until the line has been connected with by the primary connector of some division of that section and the sectional apparatus has been released by the operation of the cut-off relay, approximates two-fifths of a second. the next operation initiated by the rotary switch is the starting of the signal-transmitter controller of the connective division, which, in turn, adjusts the register of the interconnector selector to a position corresponding to the thousands digit of the number of the called line as indicated by the signal transmitter at the calling station. this selects an interconnector serving the lines of the selected thousand. this initial selection being completed the rotary switch readjusts the circuits of the connective division in such manner that in the further progress of the signal-transmitter controller, its impulses will be effective upon the register of the selected interconnector. in this manner, the register of the interconnector, which may be upon the same connective division as the rotary switch handling the call, or which may be the interconnector of some other division, as determined by the number of the called subscriber, is adjusted to a position corresponding to the second or hundreds digit of the number called. the cylinder switch of the interconnector then selects and appropriates an idle trunk extending to a secondary connector upon some connective division serving the hundred selected. the rotary switch again shifts the circuits of the connective division in such manner that the signal-transmitter controller is effective upon the secondary connector, both register and cylinder, and adjusts the register and cylinder, respectively, with their brushes in contact with the tens and units digits, respectively, of the number of the called line. the conductors of the called line now are connected through the secondary connector, the interconnector, and the interconnector selector to the rotary switch; the conductors of the calling line are connected through the primary connector to the rotary switch; thus completely connecting the lines except at the rotary switch. to effect the connecting together of the two lines, both rotary switch and signal-transmitter controller must pass forward into their next positions, the connection when thus effected being made through conductors containing a repeating coil and main battery connection for supplying talking current to the two lines and containing also ringing and supervisory relays. the called line is tested to determine if busy during the short interval in which the rotary switch takes a short step to connect the calling and the called lines. in this step of the rotary switch the busy-test relay is connected to the guard wire or busy-test wire of the called line, and if that line be busy, the relay interferes with the control exercised by the rotary switch upon the signal-transmitter controller, and the controller is prevented from taking the step required to connect the line. thus, when a busy line is encountered, the final step of the rotary switch is taken to set up the conversation conditions, but the signal-transmitter controller does not take its final step; by this failure of the signal-transmitter controller due to the action of the busy-test relay, the calling line is not connected to the called line but is connected to a busy-back tone generator instead. whether the line encountered be busy or idle, the connective division remains in its condition as then adjusted until the subscriber hangs his receiver upon the hook switch to obtain disconnection. the ringing of the bell of the called station is done directly by the calling subscriber in pressing the ringing key. the disconnection is effected, when the receiver of the calling line is hung up, by the supervisory relay in the central office, whose winding is included in the line circuit, and whose contacts act directly to start the rotary switch. in disconnecting, the rotary switch starts the primary and the secondary connectors and thus instantly releases both the calling and the called lines. thereafter the rotary switch in passing from position to position restores switch after switch of the connective division to normal and finally itself returns to normal in preparation for its assignment to service in answering a subsequent call. chapter xxxi the automanual system two systems of telephony are now in common use in this country--the manual system and the automatic. with the growth of the automatic, and the gradually ripening conviction, which is now fully matured in the minds of most telephone engineers, that automatic switching is practical, there has been a growing tendency toward doing automatically many of the things that had previously been done manually. one of the results of this tendency has been the production of the _automanual_ system, the invention of edward e. clement, an engineer and patent attorney, of washington, d. c. in connection with mr. clement's name, as inventor, must be mentioned that of charles h. north, whose excellent work as a designer and manufacturer has contributed much toward the present excellence of this highly interesting system. =characteristics of system.= the name "automanual" is coined from the two words, automatic and manual, and is intended to suggest the idea that the system partakes in part of the features of the automatic system and in part of those of the manual system. we regret that neither space nor the professional relation which we have had with the development of this system will permit us to make public an extended and detailed description of its apparatus and circuits. only the general features of the system may, therefore, be dealt with. [illustration: power apparatus for common-battery manual office of medium size] the underlying idea of the automanual system is to relieve the subscriber of all work in connection with the building up of his connection, except the asking for it; to complicate the subscriber's station equipment in no way, it being left the same as in the common-battery manual system; to do away with manual apparatus, such as jacks, cords and plugs, at the central office, and to substitute for it automatic switching apparatus which will be guided in its movements, not by the subscriber, but by a very much smaller number of operators than would be necessary to manipulate a manual switchboard. =general features of operation.= a broad view of the operation of the system is this. the subscriber desiring to make a call takes down his receiver, and this causes a lamp to light in front of an operator. the operator presses a button and is in telephonic communication with the subscriber. receiving the number desired, the operator sets it up on a keyboard in just about the same way that a typist will set up the letters of a short word on a typewriting machine. the setting up of the number on the keyboard being accomplished, the proper condition of control of the associated automatic apparatus at the central office is established and the operator has no further connection with the call. the automatic switching apparatus guided by the conditions set up on the operator's keyboard proceeds to make the proper selection of trunks and to establish the proper connections through them to build up a talking circuit between the calling subscriber and the called and to ring the called subscriber's bell, or, if his line is found busy, the apparatus refuses to connect with it and sends a busy signal back to the calling subscriber. the operator performs no work in disconnecting the subscribers, that being automatically taken care of when they hang up their receivers at the close of the conversation. from the foregoing it will be seen that there is this fundamental difference between the automatic and the automanual--the automatic system dispenses entirely with the central-office operator for all ordinary switching functions; the automanual employs operators but attempts to so facilitate their work that they may handle very many more calls than would be possible in a manual system, and at the same time secures the advantages of secrecy which the automatic system secures to its subscribers. =subscriber's apparatus.= one of the main points in the controversy concerning automatic _versus_ manual systems is whether or not it is desirable to have the subscriber ask for his connection or to have him make certain simple movements with his fingers which will lead to his securing it. the developers of the automanual system have taken the position that the most desirable way, so far as the subscriber is concerned, is to let him ask for it. it is probable that this point will not be a deciding one in the choice of future systems, since it already seems to be proven that the subscribers in automatic systems are willing to go through the necessary movements to mechanically set up the call. the advantage which the automanual system shares with the manual, however, in the greater simplicity of its subscriber's station apparatus, cannot be gainsaid. [illustration: fig. . operators' key tables] [illustration: fig. . top view of key table] =operator's equipment.= the general form of the operator's equipment is shown in fig. . a closer view of the top of one of the key tables is shown in fig. . as will be seen, the equipment on each operator's position consists of three separate sets of push-button keys closely resembling in external appearance the keys of a typewriter or adding machine. immediately above each set of keys are the signal lamps belonging to that set. the operator's keys are arranged in strips of ten, placed _across_ rather than _lengthwise_ on the key shelf. one of these strips is shown in fig. . there are as many strips of keys in each set as there are digits in the subscribers' numbers, _i. e._, three in a system having a capacity of less than one thousand; four in a system of less than ten thousand; and so on. in addition to the number keys of each set is a partial row of keys, including what is called a _starting key_ and also keys for making the party-line selection. [illustration: fig. . strip of selecting keys] [illustration: fig. . wiring of key shelf] the simplicity of the operator's key equipment is one of its attractive features. fig. shows one of the key shelves opened so as to expose to view all of the apparatus and wiring that is placed before the operator. the reason for providing more than one key set on each operator's position is, that after a call has been set up on one key set, a few seconds is required before the automatic apparatus controlled by the key set can do its work and release the key set ready for another call. the provision of more than one key set makes it possible for the operator to start setting up another call on another key set without waiting for the first to be released by the automatic apparatus. [illustration: fig. . switch room of automanual central office] =automatic switching equipment.= a general view of the arrangement of automatic switches in an exchange established by the north electric company at ashtabula, ohio, is shown in fig. . the desk in the foreground is that of the wire chief. this automatic apparatus consists largely of relays and automatic selecting switches. the switches are of the step-by-step type, having vertical and rotary movements, and an idea of one of them, minus its contact banks, is given in fig. . the control of the automatic switches by the operator's key sets is through the medium of a power-driven, impulse-sending machine. from this machine impulses are taken corresponding to the numbers of the keys depressed. [illustration: fig. . selecting switch] =automatic distribution of calls.= a feature of great interest in this system is the manner in which the incoming calls are distributed among the operators. from each key set an operator's trunk is extended to what is called a secondary selector switch, through which it may be connected to a primary selector trunk and calling line. when a subscriber calls by taking down his receiver, his line relay pulls up and causes a primary selector switch to connect his line with an idle local trunk or link circuit, at the same time starting up a secondary selector switch which immediately connects the primary trunk and the calling line to an operator's idle key set. if an operator is at the time engaged in setting up a call on a key set, or if that key set is still acting to control the sending of impulses to the automatic switches, it may be said to be busy, and it is not selected by this preliminary selecting apparatus in response to an incoming call. as soon, however, as the necessary impulses have been taken from the key set by the automatic apparatus, that key set is released and is again ready to receive a call. in this way the calls come before each operator only as that operator is able and ready to receive them. =setting up a connection.= as soon as the key-set lamp lights, in response to such an incoming call, the operator presses a listening button, receives the number from the subscriber, and depresses the corresponding number buttons on that key set, thereby determining the numbers in each of the series of impulses to be sent to the selector and the connector switches to make the desired connection. the operator repeats this number to the calling subscriber as she sets it up, and then presses the starting button, whereupon her work is done so far as that call is concerned. if, upon repeating the call to the subscriber, the operator finds that she is in error, she may change the number set up at any time before she has pressed the starting button. =building up a connection.= the keys so set up determine the number of impulses that will be transmitted by the impulse-sending machine to the selector and the connector switches. these switches, impelled by these impulses, establish the connection if the line called for is not already connected to. if a party-line station is called for, the proper station on it will be selectively rung as determined by the party-line key depressed by the operator. if the line is found busy, the connector switch refuses to make the connection and places a busy-back signal on the calling line. =speed in handling calls.= this necessarily brief outline gives an idea only of the more striking features of the automanual system. a study of the rapidity with which calls may be handled in actual practice shows remarkable results as compared with manual methods of operating. the operators set up the number keys corresponding to a called number with the same rapidity that the keys of a typewriter are pressed in spelling a word. in fact, even greater speed is possible, since it is noticed that the operators frequently will depress all of the keys of a number at once, as by a single striking movement of the fingers. the rapidity with which this is done defies accurate timing by a stop watch in the hands of an expert. it is practically true, therefore, that the time consumed by the operator in handling any one call is that which is taken in getting the number from the subscriber and in repeating it back to him. table xi total time consumed by operator in handling calls on automanual system +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | first calls | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ |longest individual period . seconds | |average five longest individual periods . seconds | |average ten longest individual periods . seconds | |shortest individual period . seconds | |average five shortest individual periods . seconds | |average ten shortest individual periods . seconds | |average entire calls . seconds | |hourly rate at which calls were being handled | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | second calls | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ |longest individual period . seconds | |average five longest individual periods . seconds | |average ten longest individual periods . seconds | |shortest individual period . seconds | |average five shortest individual periods . seconds | |average ten shortest individual periods . seconds | |average entire calls . seconds | |hourly rate at which calls were being handled | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | third calls | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ |longest individual period . seconds | |average five longest individual periods . seconds | |average ten longest individual periods . seconds | |shortest individual period . seconds | |average five shortest individual periods . seconds | |average ten shortest individual periods . seconds | |average entire calls . seconds | |hourly rate at which calls were being handled | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ owing to the difficulty of securing accurate traffic data by means of a stop watch, an automatic, electrical timing device, capable of registering seconds and hundredths of a second, has been used in studying the performance of this system in regular operation at ashtabula harbor. the operators were not informed that the records were being taken, and the data tabulated represents the work of two operators in handling regular subscribers' calls. the figures in table xi are given by c. h. north as representing the total time consumed by the operator from the time her line lamp was lighted until her work in connection with the call was finished, and it included, therefore, the pressing of the listening button, the receiving of the number from the subscriber, repeating it back to him, setting up the connection on the keys, and pressing the starting key. it will be seen that the average time for each calls is quite uniform and is slightly over three seconds. the considerable variation in the individual calls, ranging from a maximum of . seconds down to a minimum of . seconds, is due almost entirely to the difference between the subscribers in the speed with which they can give their numbers. these figures indicate that, in each of the tests, calls were being handled at the rate of more than one thousand per hour by each operator. the test of the subscriber's waiting time, _i. e._, the time that he waited for the operator to answer, for one hundred calls made without the knowledge of the operator, showed the results as given in table xii, in which a split second stop watch was used in making the observations. table xii subscribers' waiting time +----------------------------------------------------------+ |number of calls tested | |longest individual period . seconds | |average longest individual periods . seconds | |average longest individual periods . seconds | |shortest individual period . seconds | |average shortest individual periods . seconds | |average shortest individual periods . seconds | |average entire calls . seconds | +----------------------------------------------------------+ the length of time which the subscriber has to wait before receiving an answer from the operator is, of course, one of the factors that enters into the giving of good telephone service, and the times shown by this test are considerably shorter than ordinarily maintained in manual practice. the waiting time of the subscriber is not, of course, a part of the time that is consumed by the operator, and the real economy so far as the operator's time is concerned is shown in the tests recorded in table xi. chapter xxxii power plants the power plant is an organization of devices to furnish to a telephone system the several kinds of current, at proper pressures, for the performance of the several general electrical tasks within the exchange. =kinds of currents employed.= sources of both direct and alternating current are required and a single exchange may employ these for one or more of the following purposes: _direct current._ current which flows always in one direction whether steady or varying, is referred to as direct current, and may be required for transmitters, for relays, for line, supervisory, and auxiliary signals, for busy tests, for automatic switches, for call registers, for telegraphy, and in the form of pulsating current for the ringing of biased bells. _alternating current._ sources of alternating current are required for the ringing of bells, for busy-back and other automatic signals to subscribers, for howler signals to attract the attention of subscribers who have left their receivers off their hooks, and for signaling over composite lines. =types of power plants.= clearly the requirements for current supply differ greatly for magneto and common-battery systems. there is, however, no great difference between the power plants required for the automatic and the manual common-battery systems. in the simplest form of telephone system--two magneto telephones on a private line--the power plant at each station consists of two elements: one, the magneto generator, which is a translating device for turning hand power into alternating current for ringing the bell of the distant station; and the other, a primary battery which furnishes current to energize the transmitter. in such a system, therefore, each telephone has its own power plant. the term power plant, however, as commonly employed in telephone work, refers more particularly to the organization of devices at the central office for furnishing the required kinds of current, and it is to power plants in this sense that this chapter is devoted. _magneto systems._ if magneto lines be connected to a switchboard, the current for throwing the drop at the switchboard is furnished by the subscriber's generator, and the current for energizing the subscriber's transmitter is furnished by the local battery at his station; but sources of current must be provided for enabling the central-office operator to signal or talk to the subscribers. these are about the only needs for which current must be furnished in an ordinary magneto central office. if a multiple board is employed, direct current is also needed for the purpose of the busy test and also for operating the drop restoring circuits, if the electrical method of restoring the drops is employed. _common-battery systems._ in common-battery systems the requirements are very much more extensive. the subscribers' telephones have no power plants of their own, but are provided with a common source of direct current located at the central office for supplying the talking current, and for operating the central-office signals, and the operators are provided with one or more common sources of alternating or pulsating current for ringing the subscribers' bells. common-battery equipment requires the use of currents of different kinds for a greater number of auxiliary purposes than does magneto equipment. these facts make the power plant in a common-battery office much more important than in a magneto office. =operators' transmitter supply.= in a small magneto exchange, the transmitter current may be had from primary batteries, a separate battery being employed for each operator's set. when there are more than three or four operators, however, it is usual, even in magneto offices, to obtain the transmitter current from a common storage battery. a storage battery has the fortunate quality of very low internal resistance, therefore a number of operators' transmitters may be actuated by one source without introducing cross-talk. in other words, a storage battery is a current-furnishing device of good regulation, the variation of consumption in one circuit leading from it causing slight variation in the currents of other circuits leading from it. if this were not so, cross-talk would exist between the telephones of the operators' positions connected to the same battery. this regulating quality enables the multiple feeding of telephone circuits to be carried further than the mere supplying of operators' sets and is the quality which makes possible the successful use of a storage battery as the single source of transmitter current for common-battery central-office equipment. in furnishing a plurality of operators' transmitters from a common battery, the importance of low resistance and inductance in the portion of the path that is common to all of the circuits must not be overlooked. not only is a battery of extremely low resistance required, but also conductors leading from it that are common to two or more of the circuits should be of very low resistance and consequently large in cross-section and as short as possible. in common-battery offices there is obviously no need of employing a separate battery for the operators' transmitters, since they may readily be supplied from the common storage battery which supplies direct current to the subscribers' lines. =ringing-current supply.= _magneto generators._ as a central-office equipment is required to ring many subscribers' bells, only the small ones find it convenient to ring them by means of hand-operated magneto generators. small magneto switchboards are usually equipped so that each operator is provided with a hand-generator, but even where such is the case some source of ringing current not manually operated is desirable. in larger switchboards the hand generators are entirely dispensed with. the magneto generator may be driven by a belt from any convenient constantly moving pulley, and the early telephone exchanges were often equipped with such generators having better bearings and more current capacity than those in magneto telephones. these were adapted to be run constantly from some source of power, delivering ringing current to the operators' keyboards at from to cycles per second. _pole changers._ vibrating pole changers were also used in the early exchanges, but passed out of use, partly because of poor design, but more because of the absence of good forms of primary batteries for vibrating them and for furnishing the direct currents to be transformed into alternating line current for ringing the bells. the pole changer was redesigned after the beginning of the great spread of telephony in the united states in . today it is firmly established as an element of good telephone practice. fig. illustrates the principle upon which one of the well-known pole changers--the warner--operates. in this _ _ is an electromagnet supplied by a constant-current battery _ _ to keep the vibratory system continually in motion. this motor magnet and its battery work in a local circuit and cause vibration in exactly the same manner as the armature of an ordinary electric door bell is caused to vibrate. the battery from which the ringing current is derived is indicated at _ _, and the poles of this are connected, respectively, to the vibrating contacts _ _ and _ _. these contacts are merely the moving members of a pole changing switch, and a study of the action will readily show that when these moving parts engage the right-hand contacts, current will flow to the line supposed to be connected to the terminals _ _ and _ _ in one direction, while, when these parts engage the left-hand contacts, current will flow to the line in the reverse direction. the circuit of the condenser shown is controlled by the armature of the relay _ _. the winding of this relay is put directly in the circuit of the main battery _ _, so that whenever current is drawn from this battery to ring a distant bell, this relay will be operated and will bridge the condenser across the circuit of the line. the purpose of the condenser is to make the impulses flowing from the pole changer less abrupt, and the reason for having its bridged circuit normally broken is to prevent a waste of current from the battery _ _, due to the energy which would otherwise be consumed by the condenser if it were left permanently across the line. [illustration: fig. . warner pole changer] [illustration: fig. . pole changers for harmonic ringing] pole changers for ringing bells of harmonic party lines are required to produce alternating currents of practically constant frequencies. the ideal arrangement is to cause the direct currents from a storage battery to be alternated by means of the pole changers, and then transformed into higher voltages required for ringing purposes, the transformer also serving to smooth the current wave, making it more suitable for ringing purposes. in fig. such an arrangement, adapted to develop currents for harmonic ringing on party lines, is shown. the regular common battery of the central office is indicated at _ _, _ _ being an auxiliary battery of dry cells, the purpose of which will be presently referred to. at the right of the battery _ _ there is shown the calling plug with its associated party-line ringing keys adapted to impress the several frequencies on the subscribers' lines. the method by which the current from the main storage battery passes through the motor magnets of the several vibrators, and by which the primary currents through the transformers are made to alternate at the respective frequencies of these vibrators, will be obvious from the drawing. it is also clear that the secondary currents developed in these transformers are led to the several ringing keys so as to be available for connection with the subscribers' lines at the will of the operator. the condensers are bridged across the primary windings of the transformers for the purpose of aiding in smoothing out the current waves. the use of the auxiliary battery _ _ and the retardation coil _ _ in the main supply lead is for the purpose of preventing the pulsating currents drawn from the main battery _ _ from making the battery "noisy." these two batteries have like poles connected to the supply lead, and the auxiliary battery furnishes no current to the system except when the electromotive force of the impulse flowing from the main battery is choked down by the impedance coil and the deficiency is then momentarily supplied for each wave by the auxiliary battery. this is the method developed by the dean electric company for preventing the pole-changer system from causing disturbances on lines supplied from the same main battery. [illustration: fig. . multi-cyclic generator set] _ringing dynamos._ alternating and pulsating currents for ringing purposes are also largely furnished from alternating-current dynamos similar to those used in commercial power and lighting work, but specially designed to produce ringing currents of proper frequency and voltage. these are usually driven by electric motors deriving their current either from the commercial supply mains or from the central-office battery. in large exchanges harmonic ringers are usually operated by alternating-current generators driven by motors, a separate dynamo being provided to furnish the current of each frequency. fig. shows a set of four such generators directly connected to a common motor. as no source of commercial power for driving such generators is absolutely uniform, and since the frequency of the ringing current must remain very close to a constant predetermined rate, some means must be employed for holding the generators at a constant speed of revolution, and this is done by means of a governor shown at the right-hand end of the shaft in fig. . the principle of this governor is shown in fig. . a weighted spring acts, by centrifugal force, to make a contact against an adjustable screw, when the speed of the shaft rises a predetermined amount. this spring and its contact are connected to two collector rings _ _ and _ _ on the motor shaft, and connection is made with these by the brushes _ _ and _ _. the closing of the governor contact serves, therefore, merely to short-circuit the resistance _ _, which is normally included in the shunt field of the motor. this governor is based on the principle that weakening the field increases the speed. it acts to insert the resistance in series with the field winding when the speed falls, and this, in turn, results in restoring the speed to normal. [illustration: fig. . governor for harmonic ringing generators] =auxiliary signaling currents.= alternating currents, such as those employed for busy signals to subscribers in automatic systems, those for causing loud tones in receivers which have been left off the hook switch, and those for producing loud tones in calling receivers connected to composite lines, all need to be of much higher frequency than alternating current for ringing bells. the simplest way of producing such tones is by means of an interrupter like that of a vibrating bell; but this is not the most reliable way and it is usual to produce busy or "busy-back" currents by rotating commutators to interrupt a steady current at the required rate. as the usual busy-back signal is a series of recurrent tones about one-half second long, interspersed with periods of silence, the rapidly commuted direct current is required to be further commuted at a slow rate, and this is conveniently done by associating a high-speed commutator with a low-speed one. such an arrangement may be seen at the left-hand end of the multicyclic alternating machine shown in fig. . this commuting device is usually associated with the ringing machine because that is the one thing about a central office that is available for imparting continuous rotary motion. =primary sources.= most telephone power plants consume commercial electric power and deliver special electric current. usually some translating device, such as a motor-generator or a mercury-arc rectifier, is employed to transform the commercial current into the specialized current required for the immediate uses of the exchange. _charging from direct-current mains._ in some cases commercial direct current is used to charge the storage batteries without the intervention of the translating devices, resistances being used in series with the battery to regulate the amount of current. commercial direct current usually is available at pressures from volts and upward, while telephone power plants contain storage batteries rarely of pressures higher than volts. to charge a -volt storage battery direct from -volt mains results in the loss of about half the energy purchased, this lost energy being set free in the form of heat generated in the resistance devices. notwithstanding this, it is sometimes economical to charge directly from the commercial direct-current power mains, but only in small offices where the total amount of current consumed is not large and where the greatest simplicity in equipment is desirable. it is better, however, in nearly all cases, to convert the purchased power from the received voltage to the required voltage by some form of translating device, such as a rotary converter or a mercury-arc rectifier. _rotary converters._ broadly speaking, a rotary converter consists of a motor adapted to the voltage and kind of current received, mechanically coupled to a generator adapted to produce current of the required kind and voltage. the harmonic ringing machine shown in fig. is an example of this, this particular one being adapted to receive direct current at ordinary commercial pressure and to deliver four different alternating currents of suitable pressures and frequencies. it is to be understood, however, that the conversion may be from direct current to direct current, from alternating to direct, or from direct to alternating. such a device where the motor is a separate and distinct machine from the generator or generators is called a _motor-generator_. it is usual to connect the motors and the generators together directly by a coupling having some flexibility, as shown in fig. , so as to prevent undue friction in the bearings. [illustration: the power and wire chief's room of the exchange at webb city, missouri] as an alternative to the converting device made up of a motor coupled to a generator, both motor and generator windings may be combined on the same core and rotate within the same field. such a rotary converter has been called a _dynamotor_. as a rule the dynamotor is only suitable for small power-plant work. it has the following objectionable features: (_a_) it is difficult to regulate its output, since the same field serves for both the motor and the dynamo windings. for this reason its main use is as a ringing machine where the regulation of the output is not an important factor. (_b_) furthermore, the fact that the motor and dynamo armature windings are on the same core makes it difficult to guard against breakdowns of the insulation between the two windings, especially when the driving current is of high voltage. _charging dynamos._ the dynamo for charging the storage battery is, of course, a direct-current machine and may be a part of a motor generator or it may derive its power from some other than an electric motor, such as a gas or steam engine. it should be able to develop a voltage slightly above that of the voltage of the storage battery when at its maximum charge, so as always to be able to deliver current to the charging battery regardless of the state of charge. a -volt generator, for example, can charge eleven cells in series economically; a -volt generator can charge twenty-five cells in series economically. battery-charging generators are controlled as to their output by varying a resistance in series with their fields. such machines are usually shunt-wound. sometimes they are compound-wound, but compounding is less important in telephone generators than in some other uses. a feature of great importance in the design of charging generators is smoothness of current. if it were possible to design generators to produce absolutely even or smooth current, the storage battery would not be such an essential feature to common-battery exchanges, because then the generator might deliver its current directly to the bus bars of the office without any storage-battery connection and without causing noise on the lines. such generators have been built in small units. even if these smooth current generators were commercially developed to a degree to produce absolutely no noise on the lines, the storage battery would still be used, since its action as a reservoir for electrical energy is important. it not only dispenses with the necessity of running the generators continuously, but it also affords a safeguard against breakdowns which is one of its important uses. the ability to carry the load of a central office directly on the charging generator without the use of a storage battery is of no importance except in an emergency which takes the storage battery wholly out of service. since the beginning of common-battery working such emergencies have happened a negligible number of times. far more communities have lacked telephone service because of accidents beyond human control than because of storage-battery failures. in power plants serving large offices, the demand upon the storage battery is great enough to require large plate areas in each cell. the internal resistance, therefore, is small and considerable fluctuations may exist in the charging current without their being heard in the talking circuits. the amount of noise to be heard depends also on the type of charging generator. increasing the number of armature coils and commutator segments increases the smoothness of the charging current. the shape of the generator pole pieces is also a factor in securing such smoothness. if, with a given machine and storage battery, the talking circuits are disturbed by the charging current, relief may be obtained by inserting a large impedance in the charging circuit. this impedance requires to be of low resistance, because whatever heat is developed in it is lost energy. this means that the best conditions exist when the resistance is low and the inductance large. these conditions are satisfied by using in the impedance coil many turns of large wire and an ample iron core. dynamotors are not generally suitable for charging purposes. not only is the difficulty in regulating their output a disadvantage, but the fact that the primary and secondary windings are so closely associated on the armature core makes them carry into the charging current, not only the commutator noises of the generator end, but of the motor end as well. _mercury-arc rectifiers._ in common-battery offices serving a few hundred lines, and where the commercial supply is alternating current, it is good practice to transform it into direct-battery charging current by means of a mercury-arc rectifier. it is a device broadly similar to the mercury-arc lamp produced by peter cooper hewitt. it contains no moving parts and operates at high efficiency without introducing noises into the telephone lines. it requires little care and has good length of life. [illustration: fig. . mercury-arc rectifier circuits] the circuit of a mercury-arc rectifier charging outfit is shown in fig. . the mercury-arc rectifier proper consists of a glass bulb containing vacuum and a small amount of mercury. when its terminals are connected, as indicated--the two anodes across an alternating-current source and the cathode with a circuit that is to be supplied with direct current--this device has the peculiarity of action that current will flow alternately from the two anodes always to the cathode and never from it. the cathode, therefore, becomes a source of positive potential and, as such, is used in charging the storage battery through the series reactance coil and the compensating reactances, as indicated. the line transformer shown at the upper portion of fig. , is the one for converting the high-potential alternating current to the comparatively low-potential current required for the action of the rectifier. the transformer below this has a one-to-one ratio, and is called the insulating transformer. its purpose is to safeguard the telephone apparatus and circuits against abnormal potentials from the line, and also to prevent the ground, which is commonly placed on the neutral wire of transformers on commercial lighting circuits, from interfering with the ground that is commonly placed on the positive pole of the central-office battery. =provision against breakdown.= in order to provide against breakdown of service, a well-designed telephone power plant should have available more than one primary source of power and more than one charging unit and ringing unit. _duplicate primary sources._ in large cities where the commercial power service is highly developed and a breakdown of the generating station is practically impossible, it is customary to depend on that service alone. in order to insure against loss of power due to an accident to portions of the distributing system, it is the common custom to run two entirely separate power leads into the office, coming, if possible, from different parts of the system so that a breakdown on one section will not deprive the telephone exchange of primary power. in smaller places where the commercial service is not so reliable, it is usual to provide, in addition to the commercial electric-power service, an independent source of power in the form of a gas or steam engine. this may be run as a regular source, the commercial service being employed as an emergency or _vice versâ_, as economy may dictate. in providing a gas engine for driving charging dynamos, it is important to obtain one having as good regulation as possible, in order to obtain a charging current of practically constant voltage. _duplicate charging machines._ the storage batteries of telephone exchanges are usually provided of sufficient capacity to supply the direct-current needs of the office for twenty-four hours after a full charge has been given them. this in itself is a strong safeguard against breakdown. in addition to this the charging machines should be in duplicate, so that a burnt-out armature or other damage to one of the charging units will not disable the plant. _duplicate ringing machines._ it is equally important that the ringing machines, whether of the rotary or vibrating type, be in duplicate. for large exchanges the ringing machines are usually dynamos, and it is not unusual to have one of these driven from the commercial power mains and the other from the storage battery. with this arrangement complete failure of all sources of primary power would still leave the exchange operative as long as sufficient charge remains in the storage battery. _capacity of power units._ in designing telephone switchboards it is the common practice to so design the frameworks that the space for multiple jacks is in excess of that required for the original installation. in a like manner, the power plant is also designed with a view of being readily increased in capacity to an amount sufficient to provide current for the ultimate number of subscribers' lines for which the switchboard is designed. the motor generators, or whatever means are provided for charging the storage batteries, are usually installed of sufficient size to care for the ultimate requirements of the office. the ringing machines are also provided for the ultimate equipment. however, in the case of the storage battery, it is common practice to provide the battery tanks of sufficient size to care for the ultimate capacity, while the plates are installed for a capacity only slightly in excess of that required for the original installation. as the equipment of subscribers' lines is increased, additional plates may, therefore, be added to the cells without replacing the storage battery as a whole, and without making extraordinary provisions to prevent the interruption of service. it is also customary to provide charging and supply leads from the storage battery of carrying capacity sufficient for the ultimate requirements of the office. =storage battery.= the storage battery is the power plant element which has made common-battery systems possible. the common-battery system is the element which has made the present wide development of telephony possible. a storage-battery cell is an electro-chemical device in which a chemical state is changed by the passage of current through the cell, this state tending to revert when a current is allowed to flow in the opposite direction. a storage cell consists of two conductors in a solution, the nature and the relation of these three elements being such that when a direct current is made to pass from one conductor to the other through the solution, the compelled chemical change is proportional to the product of the current and its duration. when the two conductors are joined by a path over which current may flow, a current does flow in the opposite direction to that which charged the cell. all storage batteries so far in extensive use in telephone systems are composed of lead plates in a solution of sulphuric acid in water called the _electrolyte_. in charging, the current tends to oxidize the lead of one plate and de-oxidize the other. in discharging, the tendency is toward equilibrium. the containers, employed in telephone work, for the plates and electrolyte are either of glass or wood with a lead lining, the glass jars being used for the smaller sized plates of small capacity cells, while the lead-lined wooden tanks are employed with the larger capacity cells. the potential of a cell is slightly over two volts and is independent of the shape or size of the plates for a given type of battery. the storage capacity of a cell is determined by the size and the number of plates. therefore, by increasing the number of plates and the areas of their surfaces, the ampere-hour capacity of the cell is correspondingly increased. the desired potential of the battery is obtained by connecting the proper number of cells in series. storage-battery cells used in telephone work vary from plates having an area of square inches each, to cells having over plates, each plate having an area of square inches. the ampere-hour capacity of these batteries varies from ampere hours to , ampere hours, respectively, when used at an average -hour discharge rate. in fig. is illustrated a storage cell employing a glass container and having fifteen plates. each plate is inches high and - / inches wide, with an area, therefore, of . square inches. such a cell has a normal capacity of ampere hours. the type illustrated is one made by the electric storage battery company of philadelphia, pa.[a] [illustration: fig. . storage cell] _installation._ in installing the glass jars it is customary to place them in trays partially filled with sand. they are, however, at times installed on insulators so designed as to prevent moisture from causing leakage between the cells. the cells using wooden tanks are placed on glass or porcelain insulators, and the tanks are placed with enough clearance between them to prevent the lead lining of adjacent tanks from being in contact and thereby short-circuiting the cells. after the positive and the negative plates have been installed in the tanks, their respective terminals are connected to bus bars, these bus bars being, for the small types of battery, lead-covered clamping bolts, while in the larger types reinforced lead bus bars are employed, to which the plates are securely joined by a process called lead burning. this process consists in melting a portion of the bus bar and the terminal lug of the plate by a flame of very high temperature, thus fusing each individual plate to the proper bus bar. the plates of adjacent cells are connected to the same bus bar, thus eliminating the necessity of any other connection between the cells. _initial charge._ as soon as the plates have been installed in the tanks and welded to the bus bars, the cell should be filled with electrolyte having a specific gravity of . to . to one-half inch above the tops of the plates and then the charge should be immediately started at about the normal rate. in the case of a battery consisting of cells of large capacity, it is customary to place the electrolyte in the cells as nearly simultaneously as possible rather than to completely fill the cells in consecutive order. when the electrolyte is placed in the cells simultaneously, the charge is started at a very much reduced rate before the cells are completely filled, the rate being increased as the cells are filled, the normal rate of charge being reached when the cells are completely filled. readings should be taken hourly of the specific gravity and temperature of the electrolyte, voltage of the cells, and amperage of charging current. a record or log should be kept of the specific gravity and voltage of each of the cells of the battery regularly during the life of the battery and it is well to commence this record with the initial charge. the initial charge should be maintained for at least ten hours after the time when the voltage and specific gravity have reached a maximum. if for any reason it is impractical to continue the initial charge uninterrupted, the first period of charging should be at least from twelve to fifteen hours. however, every effort should be made to have the initial charge continuous, as an interruption tends to increase the time necessary for the initial charge, and if the time be too long between the periods of the initial charge, the efficiency and capacity of the cells are liable to be affected. in case of a large battery, precaution should be taken to insure that the ventilation is exceptionally good, because if it is not good the temperature is liable to increase considerably and thereby cause an undue amount of evaporation from the cells. the object of the temperature readings taken during the charge is to enable corrections to be made to the specific gravity readings as obtained by the hydrometer, in order that the correct specific gravity may be ascertained. this correction is made by adding . specific gravity for each three degrees in temperature above ° fahrenheit, or subtracting the same amount for each three degrees below ° fahrenheit. at the time the cells begin to gas they should be gone over carefully to see that they gas evenly, and also to detect and remedy early in the charging period any defects which may exist. if there is any doubt in regard to the time at which the cells reach a maximum voltage and specific gravity, the charge should be continued sufficiently long before the last ten hours of the charge are commenced to eliminate any such doubt, as in many cases poor efficiency and low capacity of a cell later in its life may be traced to an insufficient initial charge. _operation._ after the battery has been put in commission the periodic charges should be carefully watched, as excessive charging causes disintegration and decreases the life and capacity of the battery; while, on the other hand, undercharging will result in sulphating of the plates and decrease of capacity, and, if the undercharge be great, will result in a disintegration of the plates. it is, therefore, essential that the battery be charged regularly and at the rate specified for the particular battery in question. in order to minimize the chance of either continuously overcharging or undercharging the battery, the charges are divided into two classes, namely, regular charges and overcharges. the regular charges are the periodic charges for the purpose of restoring the capacity of the battery after discharge. the overcharges, which should occur once a week or once in every two weeks, according to the use of the battery, are for the purpose of insuring that all cells have received their proper charge, for reducing such sulphating as may have occurred on cells undercharged, and for keeping the plates, in general, in a healthy condition. the specific gravity of the electrolyte, the voltage of the battery, and the amount of gasing observed are all indications of the amount of charge which the battery has received and should all be considered when practicable. either the specific gravity or voltage may be used as the routine method of determining the proper charge, but, however, if the proper charge is determined by the voltage readings, this should be frequently checked by the specific gravity, and _vice versâ_. during the charging and discharging of a battery the level of the electrolyte in the cells will fall. as the portion of the electrolyte which is evaporated is mainly water, the electrolyte may be readily restored to its normal level by adding distilled water or carefully collected rain water. _pilot cell._ as the specific gravity of all the cells of a battery, after having once been properly adjusted, will vary the same in all the cells during use, it has been found satisfactory to use one cell, commonly termed the pilot cell, for taking the regular specific gravity readings and only reading the specific gravity of all the cells occasionally or on the overcharge. this cell must be representative of all the cells of the battery, and if the battery is so subdivided in use that several sets of cells are liable to receive different usage, a pilot cell should be selected for each group. _overcharge._ if the battery is charged daily, it should receive an overcharge once a week, or if charged less frequently, an overcharge should be given at least once every two weeks. in making an overcharge this should be done at a constant rate and at a rate specified for the battery. during the overcharge the voltage of the battery and the specific gravity of the pilot cell should be taken every fifteen minutes from the time the gasing begins. the charge should be continued until five consecutive, specific-gravity readings are practically the same. the voltage of the battery should not increase during the last hour of the charge. as the principal object of the overcharge is to insure that all of the cells have received the proper charge, it must, therefore, be continued long enough to not only properly charge the most efficient cells, but also to properly charge those which are lower in efficiency. the longer the interval between overcharges, the greater will be the variation between the cells and, therefore, it is necessary to continue the overcharge longer when the interval between overcharges is as great as two weeks. before the overcharge is made the cells should be carefully inspected for short circuits and other abnormal conditions. these inspections may best be made by submerging an electric lamp in the cell, if the cell be of wood, or of allowing it to shine through from the outside, if it be of glass. by this means any foreign material may be readily detected and removed before serious damage is caused. in making these inspections it must be borne in mind that whatever tools or implements are used must be non-metallic and of some insulating material. _regular charge._ regular charges are the periodic charges for restoring the capacity of the battery, and should be made as frequently as the use of the battery demands. the voltage of the cells is a good guide for determining when the battery should be recharged. the voltage of a cell should never be allowed to drop below . volts, and it is usually considered better practice to recharge when the battery has reached . volts. if a battery is to remain idle for even a short time, it should be left in a completely charged condition. the regular charges for cells completely equipped with plates should be continued until the specific gravity of the pilot cell has risen to five points below the maximum attained on the preceding overcharge, or, if only partially equipped with plates, until it has risen to three points below the previous maximum. the voltage per cell at this time should be from . volts to . volts below that obtained on the previous overcharge. at this time all the cells should be gasing, but not as freely as on an overcharge. _low cells._ an unhealthy condition in a cell usually manifests itself in one of the following ways: falling off in specific gravity or voltage relative to the rest of the cells, lack of gasing when charged, and color of the plates, either noticeably lighter or darker than those of other cells of the battery. when any of the above conditions are found in a cell, the cell should receive immediate attention, as a delay may mean serious trouble. the cell should be thoroughly inspected to determine if a short-circuit exists, either caused by some foreign substance, by an excess of sediment in the bottom of the tank, or by portions of the plates themselves. if such a condition is found, the cause should be immediately removed and, if the defect has been of short duration, the next overcharge will probably restore it to normal condition. if the defect has existed for some time, it is often necessary to give the cell a separate charge. this may be done by connecting it directly to the charging generator with temporary leads and thus bring it back to its normal condition. it is sometimes found necessary to replace the cell in order to restore the battery to its normal condition. _sediment._ the cells of the battery should be carefully watched to prevent the sediment which collects in the bottom of the jar or tank during use from reaching the bottom of the plates, thereby causing short circuits between them. when the sediment in the cell has reached within one-half inch of the bottom of the plates, it should be removed at once. with small cells using glass jars this can most easily be done directly after an overcharge by carefully drawing off the electrolyte without disturbing the sediment and then removing it from the jar. the plates and electrolyte should be replaced in the jar as soon as convenient to prevent the plates from becoming dry. if the plates are large and in wooden tanks, the sediment can most easily be removed by means of a scoop made especially for the purpose. the preferable time to clean the tanks is just before an overcharge. _replacing batteries._ there comes a time in the life of nearly every central-office equipment when the storage battery must be completely renewed. this is due to the fact that the life of even the best of storage batteries is not as great as the life of the average switchboard equipment. it may also be due to the necessity for greater capacity than can be secured with the existing battery tanks, usually caused by underestimating the traffic the office will be required to handle. again, it is sometimes necessary to make extensive alterations in an existing battery, perhaps due to the necessity for changing its location. to change a battery one cell at a time, keeping the others in commission meanwhile, has often been done, but it is always expensive and unsatisfactory and is likely to shorten the life of the battery, due to improper and irregular forming of the plates during the initial charge. the advent of the electric automobile industry has brought with it a convenient means for overcoming this difficulty. portable storage cells for automobile use are available in almost every locality and may often be rented at small cost. a sufficient number of such cells may be temporarily installed, enough of them being placed in multiple to give the necessary output. by floating a temporary battery so formed across the charging mains and running the generators continuously, a temporary source of current supply may be had at small expense for running the exchange during the period required for alterations. usually a time of low traffic is chosen for making the changes, such as from saturday evening to monday morning. very large central-office batteries, serving as many as , lines, have thus been taken out of service and replaced without interfering with the traffic and with the use of but a comparatively few portable cells. one precaution has to be observed in such work, and that is not to subject the portable cells to too great an overcharge, due to the great excess of generator over battery capacity. this is easily avoided by watching the ammeters to see that the input is not in too great excess of the output, and if necessary, by frequently stopping the machines to avoid this. =power switchboard.= the clearing-house of the telephone power plant is the power board. in most cases, it carries switches, meters, and protective devices. _switches._ the switches most essential are those for opening and closing the motor and the generator circuits of the charging sets and with these usually are associated the starting rheostats of the motors and the field rheostats of the generators. the starting rheostats are adapted to allow resistance to be removed from the motor armature circuit, allowing the armature to gain speed and increase its counter-electromotive force without overheating. the accepted type has means for opening the driving circuit automatically in case its voltage should fall, thus preventing a temporary interruption of driving current from damaging the motor armature on its return to normal voltage. [illustration: fig. . power-plant circuits] _meters._ the meters usually are voltmeters and ammeters, the former being adapted to read the several voltages of direct currents in the power plant. an important one to be known is the voltage of the generator before beginning a battery charge, so that the generator may not be thrown on the storage battery while generating a voltage less than that of the battery. if this were done, the battery would discharge through the generator armature. the voltmeter enables the voltage of the charging generator to be kept above that of the battery, as the latter rises during charge. it enables the performance of several cells of the battery to be observed. a convenient way is to connect the terminals of the several cells to jacks on the power board and to terminate the voltmeter in a plug. the ammeter, with suitable connections, enables the battery-charge rate to be kept normal and the battery discharge to be observed. in order to economize power, it is best to charge the battery during the hours of heavy load. the generator output then divides, the switchboard taking what the load requires, the battery receiving the remainder. in systems requiring the terminal voltage of the equipment to be kept constant within close limits, either it is necessary to use two batteries--never drawing current from a battery during charge--or to provide means of compensating for the rise of voltage while the battery is under charge. the latter is the more modern method and is done either by using fewer cells when the voltage per cell is higher or by inserting counter-electromotive force cells in the discharge leads, opposing the discharge by more or fewer cells as the voltage of the battery is higher or lower. in either method, switches on the power board enable the insertion and removal of the necessary end cells or counter-electromotive force cells. _protective devices._ the protective devices required on a power board are principally _circuit-breakers_ and _fuses_. circuit-breakers are adapted to open motor and generator circuits when their currents are too great, too small, or in the wrong direction. fuses are adapted to open circuits when the currents in them are too great. the best type is that in which the operation of the fuses sounds or shows an alarm, or both. =power-plant circuits.= the circuit arrangement of central-office power plants is subject to wide variation according to conditions. the type of telephone switchboard equipment, whether magneto or common-battery, automatic or manual, will, of course, largely affect the circuit arrangement of the power plant. fig. shows a typical example of good practice in this respect for use with a common-battery manual switchboard equipment. besides showing the switches for handling the various machines and the charge-and-discharge leads from the storage battery, this diagram shows how current from the storage battery is delivered to various parts of the central-office equipment. [footnote a: the instructions given later in this chapter are for batteries of this make, although they are applicable in many respects to all types commonly used in telephone work.] chapter xxxiii housing central-office equipment =the central-office building.= proper arrangement of the central-office equipment depends largely upon the design of the central-office building. the problem involved should not be solved by the architect alone. the most careful co-operation between the engineer and the architect is necessary in order that the various parts of the telephonic equipment may be properly related, and that the wires connecting them with each other and with the outside lines be disposed of with due regard to safety, economy, and convenience. so many factors enter into the design of a central-office building that it is impossible to lay down more than the most general rules. the attainment of an ideal is often impossible, because of the fact that the building is usually in congested districts, and its very shape and size must be governed by the lot on which it is built, and by the immediate surroundings. frequently, also, the building must be used for other purposes than those of a telephone office, so that the several purposes must be considered in its design. again, old buildings, designed for other purposes, must sometimes be altered to meet the requirements of a telephone office, and this is perhaps the most difficult problem of all. the exterior of the building is a matter that may be largely decided by the architect and owner after the general character of the building has been determined. one important feature, however, and one that has been overlooked in many cases that we know of, is to so arrange the building that switchboard sections and other bulky portions of the apparatus, which are necessarily assembled at the factory rather than on the site, may be brought into the building without tearing down the walls. _fire hazard._ the apparatus to be housed in a central-office building often represents a cost running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars; but whether of large or small first cost, it is evident that its destruction might incur a very much greater loss than that represented by its replacement value. in guarding the central-office equipment against destruction by fire or other causes, the telephone company is concerned to a very much greater extent than the mere cost of the physical property; since it is guarding the thing which makes it possible to do business. while the cost of the central office and its contents may be small in comparison with the total investment in outside plant and other portions of the equipment, it is yet true that these larger portions of the investment become useless with the loss of the central office. there is another consideration, and that is the moral obligation of the operating company to the public. a complete breakdown of telephone service for any considerable period of time in a large city is in the nature of a public calamity. for these reasons the safeguarding of the central office against damage by fire and water should be in all cases a feature of fundamental importance, and should influence not only the character of the building itself, but in many cases the choice of its location. _size of building._ it goes without saying that the building must be large enough to accommodate the switchboards and other apparatus that is required to be installed. the requirement does not end here, however. telephone exchange systems have, with few exceptions, grown very much faster than was expected when they were originally installed. many buildings have had to be abandoned because outgrown. in planning the building, therefore, the engineer should always have in mind its ultimate requirements. it is not always necessary that the building shall be made large enough at the outset to take care of the ultimate requirements, but where this is not done, the way should be left clear for adding to it when necessity demands. [illustration: ringing and charging machines and power board plaza office, new york telephone co.] _strength of building._ the major portion of telephone central-office apparatus, whether automatic or manual, is not of such weight as to demand excessive strength in the floors and walls of buildings. exceptions to this may be found in the storage battery, in the power machinery, especially where subject to vibration, and in certain cases in the cable runs. after the ultimate size of the equipment has been determined, the engineer and the architect should confer on this point, particularly with reference to the heavier portions of the apparatus, to make sure that adequate strength is provided. the approximate weights of all parts of central-office equipments may readily be ascertained from the manufacturers. _provision for employes._ in manual offices particularly it has been found to be not only humane, but economical to provide adequate quarters for the employes, both in the operating rooms and places where they actually perform their work, and in the places where they may assemble for recreation and rest. the work of the telephone operator, particularly in large cities, is of such a nature as often to demand frequent periods of rest. this is true not only on account of the nervous strain on the operator, but also on account of the necessity, brought about by the demands of economy, for varying the number of operators in accordance with the traffic load. these features accentuate the demand for proper rooms where recreation, rest, and nourishment may be had. _provision for cable runways._ in very small offices no special structural provision need be made in the design of the building itself for the entrance of the outside cables, and for the disposal of the cables and wires leading between various portions of the apparatus. for large offices, however, this must necessarily enter as an important feature in the structure of the building itself. it is important that the cables be arranged systematically and in such a way that they will be protected against injury and at the same time be accessible either for repairs or replacement, or for the addition of new cables to provide for growth. disorderly arrangement of the wires or cables results in disorder indeed, with increased maintenance cost, uneconomical use of space, inaccessibility, liability to injury, and general unsightliness. the carrying of cables from the basement to the upper floors or between floors elsewhere must be provided for in a way that will not be wasteful of space, and arrangements must be made for supporting the cables in their vertical runs. in the aggregate their weight may be great, and furthermore each individual cable must be so supported that its sheath will not be subject to undue strain. another factor which must be considered in vertical cable runs is the guarding against such runs forming natural flues through which flames or heated gases would pass, in the event of even an unimportant fire at their lower ends. =arrangement of apparatus in small manual offices.= where a common-battery multiple switchboard equipment is used, at least three principal rooms should be provided--one for the multiple switchboard proper; one for the terminal and power apparatus, including the distributing frames, racks, and power machinery; and the third for the storage battery. these should adjoin each other for purposes of convenience and of economy in wiring. [illustration: fig. . typical small office floor plan] _floor plans for small manual offices._ as was pointed out, there are several plans of disposing of the main and intermediate distributing frames and the line and cut-off relay racks. the one most practiced is to mount the relay rack alongside the main and intermediate distributing frame in the terminal room. a typical floor plan of such an arrangement for a small office, employing as a maximum five sections of multiple switchboards, is shown in fig. . this is an ideal arrangement well adapted for a rectangular floor space and on that account may often be put into effect. it should be noted that the switchboard grows from left to right, and that alternative arrangements are shown for disposing of those sections beyond the second. the cable turning section through which the multiple and answering jacks are led to the terminal frames is placed as close as possible to the terminal frames. this results in a considerable saving in cable. an interesting feature of this floor plan is the arrangement of unitary sections of main and intermediate frames and relay racks, representing recent practice of the western electric company. the iron work of the three racks is built in sections and these are structurally connected across so that the first section of the main frame, the intermediate frame, and the relay rack form one unit, the structural iron work which ties them together forming the runway for the cables between them. but two of these units, including two sections of each frame, are shown installed, the provision for growth being indicated by dotted lines. the battery room in this case provides for the disposal of the battery cells in two tiers. this room is merely partitioned off from the distributing or terminal room. where this is done the partition walls should be plastered on both sides so as to prevent, as far as possible, the entrance of any battery fumes into the apparatus rooms. the wire chief's desk, as will be noted, is located in such a position as to give easy access from it not only to the distributing frames and relay rack, but to the power apparatus as well. _combined main and intermediate frames._ for use in small exchanges, the western electric company has recently put on the market a combined main and intermediate distributing frame. this is constructed about the same as an ordinary main frame, the protectors being on one side and the line and intermediate frame terminals on the other. the lower half of the terminals on each vertical bay is devoted to the outside line terminals and the upper half is devoted to intermediate frame terminals. this arrangement is indicated in the elevation in fig. . with the use of this combined main and intermediate frame, the floor plan of fig. may be modified, as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . combined main and intermediate frames] [illustration: fig. . small office floor plan] [illustration: fig. . terminal apparatus--small office] in fig. is given an excellent idea of terminal-room apparatus carried out in accordance with the more usual plan of employing separate main and intermediate distributing frames. at the extreme right of this figure the protector side of the main frame is shown. it will be understood that the line cables terminate on the horizontal terminal strips on the other side of this frame and are connected through the horizontal and vertical runways of the frame to the protector terminals. the intermediate frame is shown in the central portion of the figure, the side toward the left containing the answering-jack terminals, and the side toward the right the multiple jack terminals, these latter being arranged horizontally. this horizontal and vertical arrangement of the terminals on the main and intermediate distributing frames has been the distinguishing feature between the bell and independent practice, the bell companies adhering to the horizontal and vertical arrangement, while the independent companies have employed the vertical arrangement on both sides. we are informed that in the future the new smaller installations of the bell companies will be made largely with the vertical arrangement on both sides. at the left of fig. is shown the relay rack in two sections of two bays each. this illustration also gives a good idea of the common practice in disposing of the cables between the frames in iron runways just below the ceiling of the terminal room. _types of line circuits._ the design of the terminal-room floor plan will depend largely on the arrangement of apparatus in the subscribers' line circuits with respect to the distributing frames and relay racks. the bell practice in this respect has already been referred to and is illustrated in fig. . in this the line and cut-off relays are permanently associated with the answering jacks and lamps, resulting in the answering-jack equipment being subject to change with respect to the multiple and the line through the jumpers of the intermediate frame. the practice of the kellogg company, on the other hand, has been illustrated in fig. , and in this the line and cut-off relays are permanently associated with the multiple and with the line, only the answering jacks and lamps being subject to change through the jumper wires on the intermediate frame. this latter arrangement has led to a very desirable parallel arrangement of the two distributing frames and the relay rack. these are made of equal length so as to correspond bay for bay, and are placed side by side with only enough space between them for the passage of workmen--the relay rack lying between the main and intermediate frames. in this scheme all the multiple and answering-jack cables run from the intermediate distributing frame, and the cabling between the intermediate frame and the relay rack and between the relay rack and the main frame is run straight across from one rack to the other. this results in a great saving of cable within the terminal room, over that arrangement wherein the cabling from one frame to another is necessarily led along the length of the frame to its end and then passes through a single runway to the end of the other frame. =large manual offices.= for purposes of illustrating the practice in housing the apparatus in very large offices equipped with manual switchboards, we have chosen the chelsea office of the new york telephone company as an excellent example of modern practice. [illustration: fig. . floor plan, operating room, chelsea office, new york city] the ground plan of the building is u-shaped, in order to provide the necessary light over the rather large floor areas. the plan of the operating floor--the sixth floor of the building--is shown in fig. . as will be seen, this constitutes a single operating room, the _a_-board being located in the right wing and the _b_-board in the left. the point from which both boards grow is near the center of the front of the building, the boards coming together at this point in a common cable turning section. the disposal of the various desks for the manager, chief operator, and monitors is indicated. those switchboard sections which are shown in full lines are the ones at present installed, the provision for growth being indicated in dotted lines. [illustration: fig. . terminal room and operators' quarters, chelsea office, new york city] the fifth floor is devoted to the terminal room and operators' quarters, the terminal room occupying the left-hand wing and the major portion of the front of the building, and the operators' quarters the right-hand wing. the line and the trunk cables come up from the basement of the building at the extreme left, being supported directly on the outside wall of the building. arriving at the fifth floor, they turn horizontally and are led under a false flooring provided with trap doors, to the protector side of the main frame. the disposal of the cables between the various frames will be more readily understood by reference to the following photographs. a general view of a portion of the _a_-board of the chelsea office is shown in fig. , this view being taken from a point in the left-hand wing looking toward the front. in fig. is shown a closer view of a smaller portion of the board. fig. gives an excellent idea of the rear of this switchboard and of the disposal of the cables and wires. the main mass of cables at the top are those of the multiple. immediately below these may be seen the outgoing trunk cables. the forms of the answering-jack cables lie below these and are not so readily seen, but the cables leading from these forms are led down to the runway at the bottom of the sections, and thence along the length of the board to the intermediate distributing frame on the floor below. the layer of cables, supported on the iron rack immediately above the answering-jack cable runway, shown at the extreme bottom of the view, are those containing the wires leading from the repeating coils to the cord circuits. an interesting feature of this board is the provisions for protection against injury by fire and water. on top of the boards throughout their entire length there is laid a heavy tarpaulin curtain with straps terminating in handles hanging down from its edges. these may be seen in fig. and also in fig. . the idea of this is that if the board is exposed to a water hazard, as in the case of fire, the board may be completely covered, front and rear, with this tarpaulin curtain, by merely pulling the straps. the entire force--both operators and repairmen--is drilled to assure the carrying out of this plan. the rear of the boards is adapted to be enclosed by wooden curtains, similar to those employed in roll-top desks. these are all raised in the rear view of fig. , the housing for the rolled-up curtain being shown at the extreme top of the sections. in order to guard the multiple cables and the multiple jacks against fire which might originate in the cord-circuit wiring, a heavy asbestos partition is placed immediately above the cord racks and is clearly shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . subscribers' board. chelsea office, new york city] [illustration: fig. . subscribers' board. chelsea office, new york city] [illustration: fig. . rear view chelsea switchboard] [illustration: fig. . terminal and power apparatus. chelsea office] a view of the terminal and power room is shown in fig. . in the upper left-hand corner the cables may be seen in their passage downward from the cable turning section between the _a_- and _b_-boards. the large group of cables shown at the extreme left is the _a_-board multiple. this passes down and then along the horizontal shelves of the intermediate frame, which is the frame in the extreme left of this view. the _b_-board multiple comes down through another opening in the floor, and as is shown, after passing under the _a_-board multiple joins it in the same vertical run from which it passes to the intermediate frame. the cord-circuit cables lead down through the same opening as that occupied by the _a_-board multiple and pass off to the right-hand one of the racks shown, which contains the repeating coils. the cables leading from the opening in the ceiling to the right-hand side of the intermediate distributing frame are the answering-jack cables, and from the terminals on this side of this frame other cables pass in smaller groups to the relay terminals on the relay racks which lie between the intermediate frame and the coil rack. the power board is shown at the extreme right. the fuse panel at the left of the power board contains in its lower portion fuses for the battery supply leads to the operator's position and to private-branch exchanges, and in its upper portion lamps and fuses for the ringing generator circuits for the various operators' positions and also for private-branch exchanges. at the lower left-hand portion of this view is shown the battery cabinet. it is the practice of the new york telephone company not to employ separate battery rooms, but to locate its storage batteries directly in the terminal room and to enclose them, as shown, in a wooden cabinet with glass panels, which is ventilated by means of a lead pipe extending to a flue in the wall. one unit of charging machines, consisting of motor and generator, is shown in the immediate foreground. a duplicate of this unit is employed but is not shown in this view. the various ringing and message register machines are shown beyond the charging machines. three of these smaller machines are for supplying ringing current and the remainder are for supplying -volt direct current for operating the message registers. one of the machines of each set is wound to run from the main storage battery in case of a failure of the general lighting service from which the current for operating is normally drawn. [illustration: fig. . terminal apparatus. chelsea office] [illustration: fig. . floor plan, automatic office, lansing, michigan] another view of the terminal-room apparatus is given in fig. . this is taken from the point marked _b_ on the floor plan of fig. . at the right may be seen the message registers on which the calls of the subscribers in this office are counted as a basis for the bills for their service. at the extreme left is shown the private-line test board. through this board run all of the lines leased for private use, and also all of the order wire or call lines passing through this office. the purpose of such an arrangement is to facilitate the testing of such line wires. at the right of this private-line test board is shown a four-position wire chief's desk, upon which are provided facilities for making all of the tests inside and outside. [illustration: fig. . line-switch units] [illustration: fig. . automatic apparatus at lansing office] the main frame is shown at the right of fig. , just to the right of a gallery from which a step-ladder leads. the left-hand side of this frame is the line or protector side, but the portion toward the observer in this picture is unequipped. these equipped protector strips carry pairs of terminals each, and the consequent length of these strips makes necessary the gallery shown, in order that all of them may be readily accessible. [illustration: fig. . main distributing frame, lansing office] [illustration: fig. . line switches] [illustration: power plant for automatic switchboard equipment bay cities home telephone company, berkeley, cal.] [illustration: fig. . secondary line switches and first selectors] =automatic offices.= there is no great difference in the amount of floor space required in central offices employing automatic and manual equipment. whatever difference there is, is likely to be in favor of the automatic. the fact that no such rigid requirement exists in the arrangement of automatic apparatus, as that which makes it necessary to place the sections of a multiple board all in one row, makes it possible to utilize the available space more economically with automatic than with manual equipment. [illustration: fig. . second selectors] [illustration: fig. . toll distributing frame and harmonic converters] in manual practice it is necessary to place the distributing frames and power apparatus in a separate room from that containing the switchboard, but in an automatic exchange no such necessity exists; in fact, so far as the distributing-frame equipment is concerned, it is considered desirable to have it located in the same room as the automatic switches. the battery room in an automatic exchange should be entirely separate from the operating room, since the fumes from the battery would be fatal to the proper working of the automatic switches. _typical automatic office._ the floor-plan and views of a medium-sized automatic office at lansing, michigan, have been chosen as representing typical practice. the floor plan is shown in fig. . the apparatus indicated in full lines represents the present equipment, and that in dotted lines the space that will be required by the expected future equipment. in fig. is shown a group of five line-switch units, representing a total of five hundred lines. the length of such a unit is practically fourteen feet and the breadth over all about twenty-two inches. fig. shows a general view of this lansing office, taken from a point of view indicated at _a_ on the floor plan of fig. . fig. shows the main distributing frame, which is of ordinary type; fig. shows a closer view of some of the primary line switches; fig. is a view of the secondary line switches and first selectors, the latter being on the right; fig. is a view of the frequency selectors and second selectors, the former being used in connection with party-line work; and fig. is a view of the toll distributing frame and harmonic converters for party-line ringing. a general view of the main switching room in the grant avenue office of the home telephone company of san francisco is given in fig. , this being taken before the work of installation had been fully completed. the present capacity of the equipment is , and the ultimate , lines. this office is one of a number of similar ones recently installed for the home telephone company in san francisco, the combination of which forms by far the largest automatic exchange yet installed. the scope of the plans is such as to enable , subscribers to be served without any change in the fundamental design, and by means merely of addition in equipment and lines as demanded by the future subscriptions for telephone service. [illustration: fig. . grant avenue office--san francisco] chapter xxxiv private branch exchanges =definitions.= a telephone exchange devoted to the purely local uses of a private establishment such as a store, factory, or business office, is a private exchange. if, in addition to being used for such local communication, it serves also for communication with the subscribers of a city exchange, it becomes in effect a branch of the city exchange and, therefore, a private branch exchange. the term "p. b. x." has become a part of the telephone man's vocabulary as an abbreviation for private branch exchange. private exchanges for purely local use require no separate treatment as any of the types of switching equipments for interconnecting the lines for communication, that have been or that will be described herein, may be used. the problem becomes a special one, however, when communication must also be had with the subscribers of a public exchange, since then trunking is involved in which the conditions differ materially from those encountered in trunking between the several offices in a multi-office exchange. for such communication one or more trunk lines are led from the private branch office usually to the nearest central office of the public exchange and such trunks are called private branch-exchange trunks. they are the paths for communication between the private exchange and the public exchange. for establishing the connections either between the local lines themselves or between the local lines and the trunks, and for performing other duties that will be referred to, one or more private branch-exchange operators are employed at the switchboard of the private establishment. the private branch exchange may operate in conjunction with a manual or an automatic public exchange, but whether manual or automatic, the private exchange is usually manually operated, although it is quite possible to make a private branch exchange that is wholly automatic and will, therefore, involve no operator at all. =functions of the private branch-exchange operator.= it is possible, as just stated, entirely to dispense with the private branch-exchange operator so far as the mere connection and disconnection of the lines is concerned. but the real function of the private branch-exchange operator is a broader one than this and it is for this reason that even in connection with automatic public exchanges, operators are desirable at the private branches. the private branch-exchange operator is, as it were, the doorkeeper of the telephone entrance to the private establishment. she is the person first met by the public in entering this telephone door. there is the same reason, therefore, why she should be intelligent, courteous, and obliging as that the ordinary doorkeeper should possess these characteristics. as to incoming traffic to a private branch exchange, an intelligent operator may do much toward directing the calls to the proper department or person, even though the person calling may have little idea as to whom he desires to reach. this saves the time of the person who makes the call as well as that of the people at the private branch stations, since it prevents their being unnecessarily called. the functions of the private branch-exchange operator are no less important with respect to outgoing calls. it is the duty of the operator to obtain connections through the city exchange for the private branch subscriber, who merely asks for a certain connection and hangs up his receiver to await her call when she shall have obtained it. this saving of time of busy people by having the branch-exchange operator make their calls for them has one attending disadvantage, which is that the person in the city exchange who is called does not, when he answers his telephone, find the real party with whom he is to converse, but has to wait until that party responds to the private branch operator's call. this is akin to asking a person to call at one's office and then being out when he gets there. this drawback is greatly accentuated where both the parties that are to be involved in the connection are people high in authority in certain establishments at private branch exchanges. some business houses have made the rule that the private branch operator shall not connect with their lines until she has actually heard the voice of the proper party at the other end. when two subscribers in two different private branch exchanges where this rule is enforced, attempt to get into communication with each other, the possibilities of trouble are obvious. all that may be said on this matter is that the person who calls another by telephone should extend that person the same courtesies that he would had he called him in person to his office; and that a person who is called by telephone by another should meet him with the same consideration as if he had received a personal call at his office or home. the arbitrary ruling made by some corporations and persons, which results always in the "other fellow's" doing the waiting, is not ethically correct nor is it good policy. =private branch switchboards.= private branch switchboards may be of common-battery or magneto types regardless of whether they work in conjunction with main office equipments having common-battery or magneto equipments. usually a magneto private branch exchange works in conjunction with a magneto main office, but this is not always true. there are cases where the private branch equipment of modern common-battery type works in conjunction with main office equipment of the magneto type; and in some of these cases the private branch exchange has a much larger number of subscribers than the main office. this is likely to be true in large summer resort hotels located in small and otherwise unimportant rural districts. in one such case within our knowledge the private branch exchange has a larger number of stations than the total census population of the town, resulting in an apparent telephone development considerably greater than one hundred per cent. _magneto type._ where both the private branch and the main office equipments are of the magneto type, the private branch requirements are met by a simple magneto switchboard of the requisite size, and the trunking conditions are met by ring-down trunks extending to the main office. in this case the supervision is that of the ordinary clearing-out drop type, the operators working together as best they may. _common-battery type._ the cases where the private branch board is of common-battery type and the main office of magneto type are comparatively so few that they need not be treated here. where they do occur they demand special treatment because the main portion of the traffic over the trunk lines to the city or town central office is likely to be toll traffic through that office over long-distance lines. the principal reason why the equipment of the town offices under such conditions is magneto rather than common battery is that the traffic conditions are those of short season and heavy toll, and common-battery switching equipment at the main office has no especial advantages for toll work. [illustration: fig. . desk type, private branch board] for small private branch exchanges the desk type of switch board, shown in fig. , is largely used. the operator frequently has other work to do and the desk is, therefore, a convenience. in larger private exchanges, such as those requiring more than one operator, some form of upright cabinet is employed, and if, as sometimes occurs, the branch exchange is of such size as to demand a multiple board, then the general form of the board does not differ materially from the standard types of multiple board employed in regular central office work. the most common private branch-exchange condition is that of a common-battery branch working into a common-battery main office. in such the main point to be considered is that of supervision of trunk-line connections. _cord type._ for the larger sizes of branch exchange switchboards, the switching apparatus is practically the same as that of ordinary manual switchboards wherein the connections are made between the various lines by means of pairs of cords and plugs. the private branch-exchange trunk lines usually terminate on the private branch board in jacks but in some cases plug-ended trunks are used. [illustration: fig. . key type, private branch board] the line signals may consist in mechanical visual signals or in lamps, the choice between these depending largely on the source of battery supply at the branch exchange, a matter which will be considered later. the trunk-line signals at the private branch board are usually ordinary drops which are thrown when the main-exchange operator rings on the line as she would on an ordinary subscriber's line. frequently, however, lamp signals are used for this purpose, being operated by locking relays energized when the main-office operator rings or, in some cases, operated at the time when the main-office operator plugs into the trunk-line jack. [illustration: fig. . circuits, key-type board] _key type._ for small private branch-exchange switchboards, a type employing no cords and plugs has come into great favor during recent years. instead of connecting the lines by jacks and plugs, they are connected by means of keys closely resembling ordinary ringing and listening keys. such a switchboard is shown in fig. , this having a capacity of three trunks, seven local lines, and the equivalent of five cord circuits. the drops associated with the three trunks may be seen in the upper left-hand side of the face of the switchboard. immediately below these in three vertical rows are the keys which are used in connecting the trunks with the "cord circuits" or connecting bus wires. at the right of the drop associated with the trunks are seven visual signals, these being the calling signals of the local lines. the seven vertical rows of keys, immediately to the right of the three trunk-line rows, are the line keys. the throwing of any one of these keys and of a trunk-line key in the same horizontal row in the same direction will connect a line with a trunk through the corresponding bus wires, leaving one of the supervisory visual signals, shown at the extreme top of the board, connected with the circuit. the keys in a single row at the right are those by means of which the operator may bridge her talking set across any of the "cord circuits." the circuits of this particular board are shown in fig. . this is equipped for common-battery working, the battery feed wires being shown at the left. =supervision of private branch connections.= at the main office where common-battery equipment is used, the private branch trunks terminate before the _a_-operators exactly in the same way as ordinary subscribers' lines, _i. e._, each in an answering jack and lamp at one position and in a multiple jack on each section. it goes without saying, therefore, that the handling of a private branch call, either incoming or outgoing, should be done by the _a_-operator in the same manner as a call on an ordinary subscriber's line, and that the supervision of the connection should impose no special duties on the _a_-operator. there has been much discussion, and no final agreement, as to the proper method of controlling the supervisory lamp at the main office of a cord that is, at the time, connected to a private branch trunk. three general methods have been practiced: the first method is to have the private branch subscriber directly control the supervisory lamp at the main office without producing any effect upon the private branch supervisory signal; this latter signal being displayed only after the connection has been taken down at the main office and in response to the withdrawal of the main office plug from the private branch jack. this is good practice so far as the main-office discipline is concerned but it results in a considerable disadvantage to both the city and private branch subscribers in that it is impossible for the private branch subscriber, when connected to the other, to re-signal the private branch operator without the connection being first taken down. the second method is to have the private branch subscriber control both the supervisory signal at the private branch board and at the main board. this has the disadvantage of bringing both operators in on the circuit when the private branch subscriber signals. the third method, and one that seems best, is to place the supervisory lamp of the private branch board alone under the control of the private branch subscriber, so that he may attract the attention of the private branch operator without disturbing the supervisory signal at the main office. the supervisory signal at the main office in this case is displayed only when the private branch operator takes down the connection. this practice results in a method of operation at the main office that involves no special action on the part of the _a_-operator. she takes down the connection only when the main-office subscriber has hung up his telephone and the private branch subscriber has disconnected from the trunk. whatever method is employed, private branch disconnection is usually slow, and for this reason many operating companies instruct the _a_-operators to disconnect on the lighting of the supervisory lamp of the city subscriber. =with automatic offices.= private branch exchanges most used in connection with automatic offices employ manual switchboards, with the cord circuits of which is associated a signal transmitting device by which the operator instead of the subscriber may manipulate the automatic apparatus of the public exchange by impulses sent over the private branch-exchange trunk lines. the subscriber's equipment at the private branch stations may be either automatic or manual. frequently the same private branch exchange will contain both kinds. with the manual sub-station equipment the operation is exactly the same as in a private branch of a manual exchange, except that the private branch operator by means of her dial makes the central-office connection instead of telling the main-office operator to do so for her. with automatic sub-station equipment at the private branch the subscribers, by removing their receivers from their hooks, call the attention of the private branch operator, who may receive their orders and make the desired central-office connection for them, or who may plug their lines through to the central office and allow the subscribers to make the connection themselves with their own dials. in automatic equipment of the common-battery type, some change always takes place in the calling line at the time the called subscriber answers. in the three-wire system during the time of calling, both wires are of the same polarity with respect to earth. at the time of the answering of the called subscriber, the two wires assume different polarities, one being positive to the other. such a change is sufficient for the actuation of devices local to the private exchange switchboard and may be interpreted through the calling supervisory signal in such a way as to allow it to glow during calling and not to glow after the called subscriber has answered. in the two-wire automatic system a similar change can be arranged for, with similar advantageous results. _secrecy._ in private exchanges operating in connection with automatic central offices, the secret feature of individual lines may or may not be carried into the private exchange equipment. some patrons of automatic exchanges set a high value on the absence of any operator in a connection and transact business over such lines which they would not transact at all over manual lines or would not transact in the same way over manual lines. to some such patrons, the presence of a private exchange operator, even though employed and supervised by themselves, seems to be a disadvantage. to meet such a feeling, it is not difficult to arrange the circuits of a private exchange switchboard so that the operator may listen in upon a cord circuit at any time and overhear what is being said upon it _so long as two subscribers are not in communication on that cord circuit_. that is, she may answer a call and may speak to the calling person at any time she wishes until the called person answers. when he does answer and conversation can take place, some device operates to disconnect her listening circuit from the cord circuit, not to be connected again until at least one of the subscribers has hung up his receiver. with private exchange apparatus so arranged, the secrecy of the system is complete. =battery supply.= there are three available methods of supplying direct current for talking and signaling purposes to private branch exchanges, each of which represents good practice under certain conditions. first, by means of pairs of wires extended from the central-office battery; second, by means of a local storage battery at the private branch exchange charged over wires from the central office; and third, by means of a local storage battery at the private exchange charged from a local source. the choice of these three methods depends always on the local conditions and it is a desirable feature, to be employed by large operating companies, to have all private branch-exchange switchboards provided with simple convertible features contained within the switchboard for adapting it to any one of these methods of supplying current. if a direct-current power circuit is available at the private branch exchange, it may be used for charging the local storage battery by inserting mere resistance devices in the charging leads. if the local power circuit carries alternating current, a converting device of some sort must be used and for this purpose, if the exchange is large enough to warrant it, a mercury rectifier is an economical and simple device. the supply of current to private branch exchanges over wires leading to the central-office battery has the disadvantage of requiring one or several pairs of wires in the cables carrying the trunk wires. no special wires are run, regular pairs in the paper insulated line or trunk cables being admirably suited for the purpose. sufficient conductivity may be provided by placing several such pairs in multiple. if the amount of current required by the private exchange warrants it, pairs of charging wires from the central office may be fewer if a battery is charged over them than if they are used direct to the bus bars of the private exchange switchboard. if they are used in the latter way, and this is simpler for reasons of maintenance, some means must be provided to prevent the considerable resistance of the supply wires from introducing cross-talk into the circuit of the private exchange. this is accomplished by bridging a considerable capacity across the supply pairs at the private exchange--ten to twelve microfarads usually suffice. this point has already been referred to and illustrated in connection with fig. . the number of pairs of wires, or, in other words, the amount of copper in the battery lead between the central office and the private branch-exchange switchboard needs to be properly determined not only to eliminate cross-talk when the proper condensers are used with them, but to furnish the proper difference of potential at the private exchange bus bars, so that the line and supervisory signals will receive the proper current. it is a convenience in installing and maintaining private exchange switchboards of this kind to prepare tables showing the number of pairs of no. gauge and no. gauge wires required for a private exchange at a given distance from its central office and of a probable amount of traffic. the traffic may be expressed in the maximum number of pairs of cords which will be in use at one time. with this fact and the distance, the number of pairs of wires required may be determined. =ringing current.= the ringing current may be provided in two ways: over pairs of wires from the city-office ringing machines or by means of a local hand generator, or both. a key should enable either of these sources of ringing current to be chosen at will. =marking of apparatus.= all apparatus should be marked with permanent and clear labels. that private exchange switchboard is best at which an almost uninformed operator could sit and operate it at once. it is not difficult to lay out a scheme of labels which will enable such a board to be operated without any detailed instructions being given. =desirable features.= the board should contain means of connecting certain of the local private exchange lines to the central-office trunks when the board is unattended. also, it is desirable that it should contain means whereby any local private exchange line may be connected to the trunk so that its station will act as an ordinary subscriber's station. whether the trunks of the private exchange lead to a manual or an automatic equipment, it often is desired to connect a local line through in that way, either so that the calling person may make his calls without the knowledge of the private exchange operator, because he wishes to make a large number of calls in succession, or because for some other reason he prefers to transact his business directly with or through the exchange than to entrust it to his operator. chapter xxxv intercommunicating systems =definition.= the term "intercommunicating" has been given to a specialized type of telephone system wherein the line belonging to each station is extended to each of the other stations, resulting in all lines extending to all stations. each station is provided with apparatus by means of which the telephone user there may connect his own telephone with the line of the station with which he wishes to communicate, enabling him to signal and talk with the person at that station. =limitations.= the idea is simple. each person does his own switching directly, and no operator is required. it is easy to see, however, that the system has limitations. the amount of line wire necessary in order to run each line to each station is relatively great, and becomes prohibitive except in exchanges involving a very small number of subscribers, none of which is remote from the others. again, the amount of switching apparatus required becomes prohibitive for any but a small number of stations. as a result, twenty-five or thirty stations are considered the usual practical limit for intercommunicating systems. =types.= an intercommunicating system may be either magneto or common-battery, according to whether it uses magneto or common-battery telephones. the former is the simpler; the latter is the more generally used. [illustration: western electric company battery room at monmouth, illinois] =simple magneto system.= the schematic circuit arrangement of an excellent form of magneto intercommunicating system is given in fig. . in this, five metallic circuit lines are led to as many stations, an ordinary two-contact open jack being tapped off of each line at each station. a magneto bell of the bridging type is permanently bridged across each line at the station to which that line belongs. the telephone at each station is an ordinary bridging magneto set except that its bell is, in each case, connected to the line as just stated. each telephone is connected through a flexible cord to a two-contact plug adapted to fit into any of the jacks at the same station. the operation is almost obvious. if a person at station _a_ desires to call station _e_, he inserts his plug into the jack of line _e_ at his station and turns his generator crank. the bell of station _e_ rings regardless of where the plug of that station may be. the person at station _e_ responds by inserting his own plug in the jack of line _e_, after which the two parties are enabled to converse over a metallic circuit. it makes no difference whether the persons, after talking, leave these plugs in the jacks or take them out, since the position of the plug does not alter the relation of the bell with the line. [illustration: fig. . magneto intercommunicating system] this system has the advantage of great simplicity and of being about as "fool proof" as possible. it is, however, not quite as convenient to use as the later common-battery systems which require no turning of a generator crank. =common-battery systems.= in the more popular common-battery systems two general plans of operation are in vogue, one employing a plug and jacks at each station for switching the "home" instrument into circuit with any line, and the other employing merely push buttons for doing the same thing. these may be referred to as the plug type and the push-button type, respectively. [illustration: fig. . plug type of common-battery intercommunicating system] _kellogg plug type._ the circuits of a plug type of intercommunicating system, as manufactured by the kellogg company, are shown in fig. . while only three stations are shown, the method of connecting more will be obvious. this system requires as many pairs of wires running to all stations as there are stations, and in addition, two common wires for ringing purposes. the talking battery feed is through retardation coils to each line. when all the hooks are down, each call bell is connected between the lower common wire and the tip side of the talking circuit individual to the corresponding station. the ringing buttons at each station are connected between the tip of the plug at that station and the upper common wire. as a result, when a person at one station desires to call another, it is only necessary for him to insert his plug in the jack of the desired station and press his ringing button; the circuit being traced from one pole of the ringing battery through the upper common ringing wire, ringing key of the station making the call, tip of plug, tip conductor of called station's line, bell of called station, and back to the ringing battery through the lower common ringing wire. [illustration: fig. . push-button wall set] _kellogg push-button type._ fig. shows a kellogg wall-type intercommunicating set employing the push-button method of selecting, and fig. shows the internal arrangement of this set. [illustration: fig. . push-button wall set] _western electric system._ the method of operation of the push-button key employed in the intercommunicating system of the western electric company is well shown in fig. . when the button is depressed all the way down, as shown in the center cut of fig. , which represents the ringing position of the key, contact is made with the line wires of the station called, and ringing current is placed on the line. when the pressure is released, the button assumes an intermediate position, as shown in the right-hand cut, which represents the talking position of the key and in which the ringing contacts _ _ and _ _ are open, but contact with the line for talking purposes is maintained. the key is automatically held in this intermediate position by locking plate _ _ until this plate is actuated by the operation of another button which releases the key so that it assumes its normal position as shown in the left-hand cut. when a button is depressed to call a station, it first connects the called station's line to the calling station through the two pairs of contacts _ _ and _ _ and then connects the ringing battery to that line by causing the spring _ _ to engage the contact _ _. the ringing current then passes through the bell at the called station, through the back contacts of the switch hook at that station, over one side of the line, and through the "way-down" contact _ _ of the button at the calling station, thence over the other side of the battery line back to the ringing battery, operating the bell at the called station. [illustration: fig. . push-button action, western electric system] the circuits of the western electric system are similar to those of fig. , but adapted, of course, to the push-button arrangement of switches. two batteries are employed, one for ringing and the other for talking, talking current being fed to the lines through retardation coils to prevent interference or cross-talk from other stations which might be connected together at the same time. _monarch system._ as the making of connections in an intercommunicating system is entirely in the hands of the user, it is desirable that the operation be simple and that carelessness on the part of the user result in as few evil effects as possible. for instance, the leaving of the receiver off its hook will, in many systems, result in such a drain on the battery as to greatly shorten its life. the system of the monarch company has certain distinctive features in this respect. it is of the push-button type and as in the system just discussed, one pressure of the finger on one button clears the station of previous connections, rings the station called, and establishes a talking connection between the caller's telephone and the line desired. in addition to this, the system is designed to eliminate battery waste by so arranging the circuits that the battery current does not flow through either called or calling instrument until a complete connection is made--the calling button down at one station, the home button down at the called station, and both receivers off the hook. it does not hurt the batteries, therefore, if one neglects to hang up his receiver. [illustration: fig. . push-button wall set] [illustration: fig. . push-button action, monarch system] three views of the wall set of this system are shown in fig. , which illustrates how both the door and the containing box are separately hinged for easy access to the apparatus and connecting rack. as in the western electric and kellogg push-button systems, each push-button key has three positions, as shown in fig. . the first button shows all the springs open, the normal position of the key. the second button is in the half-way or talking position with all the springs, except the ringing spring, in contact. the third button shows the springs all in contact, the condition which exists when ringing a station. the mechanical construction of the key is shown in fig. . each button has a separate frame upon which the springs are mounted. any one of the frames with its group of contact springs may be removed without interfering with either the electrical or the mechanical operation of the others. this is a convenient feature, making possible the installation of as few stations as are needed at first, and the subsequent addition of buttons as other stations are added. [illustration: fig. . push-button keys] the restoring feature is a horizontal metal carriage, in construction very much like a ladder--one round pressing against each key frame, due to the tension on the carriage exerted by a single flat spring. the plunger of each button is equipped with a shoulder, which normally is above the round of the ladder. when the button is operated, this shoulder presses against a round of the carriage forcing it over far enough so that the shoulder can slip by. the upper surface of the shoulder is flat, and on passing below the pin, allows the carriage to slip back into its normal position and the pin rests on the top of the shoulder holding the plunger down. this position places the talking springs in contact. the ringing springs are open until the plunger is pressed all the way down, then the ringing contact is made. when the pressure is released, the plunger comes back to the half-way or talking position, leaving the ringing contacts open again. when another button is pressed, the same operation takes place and, by virtue of the carriage being temporarily displaced, the original key is left free to spring back to its normal position. each station is provided with a button for each other station and a "home" button. the salient feature of the system is that before a connection may be established, the button at the calling station corresponding to the station called and also the home button of the station called must be depressed, if it is not already down. the home key at any station, when depressed, transposes the sides of the line with respect to the talking apparatus. the home key also has a spring which changes the normal connection of the line at that station from the negative to the positive side of the talking battery. unless, therefore, a connection between two stations is made through the calling key at one station and the home key at the other, no current can flow even though both receivers are off their hooks, because in that case no connection will exist with the positive side of the battery. this relation is shown in fig. , which gives a simplified circuit arrangement for two connected stations. [illustration: fig. . monarch intercommunicating system] referring to fig. , when the station called depresses the home button the talking circuit is then completed after the hook switch is raised. this is because the talking battery is controlled by the home key. conductors from both the negative and the positive sides of the battery enter this key. in the normal position of the springs, the negative side of the battery is in contact with the master spring in the home key and through these springs the negative battery is applied to all the calling keys, and from there on to the hook switch. when, however, the home button is operated, the spring which carries the negative battery to the home key is opened, and the spring which carries the positive battery is closed. this puts the positive battery on at the hook switch instead of the negative battery, as in its normal condition. in this system it is seen that a separate pair of line wires is used for each station, and in addition to these, two common pairs are run to all stations, one for ringing and one for talking battery connections. =for private branch exchanges.= so far the intercommunicating system has been discussed only with respect to its use in small isolated plants. it has a field of usefulness in connection with city exchange work, as it may be made to serve admirably as a private branch exchange. where this is done, one or more trunk lines leading to an office of the city exchange are run through the intercommunicating system exactly as a local line in that system, being tapped to a jack or push button at every station. a person at any one of the stations may originate a call to the main office by inserting his plug in the trunk jack, or pushing his trunk push button. also any station, within hearing or sight of the trunk-line signal from the main office, may answer a main-office call in the same way. in order that the convenience of a private branch exchange may be fully realized, however, it is customary to provide an attendant's station at which is placed the drop or bell on which the incoming trunk signal is received. the duty of this attendant during business hours is to answer trunk calls from the main office and finding out what party is desired, call up the proper station on the intercommunicating system. the party at that station may then connect himself with the trunk. the practice of the dean company, for instance, is as follows in regard to trunking between intercommunicating systems and main offices with common-battery equipment. the attendant's station telephone cabinet contains, besides the push-button keys for local and trunk connections, a drop signal and release key, together with relays in each trunk circuit. the latter are used to hold the trunks until the desired party responds. the main-exchange trunk lines, besides terminating at the attendant's station, are wired through the complete intercommunicating system so that any intercommunicating telephone can be connected direct to the central office by depressing the trunk key, which is provided with a button of distinctive color. the pressing of the trunk key allows the telephone to take its current from the main-office storage battery and to operate the main-office line and supervisory signals direct, without making it necessary to call on the attendant to set up the connection. [illustration: fig. . junction box] [illustration: fig. . typical arrangement of intercommunicating system] incoming calls from the common-battery main office to the intercommunicating system are all handled by the attendant. the main-office operator signals the intercommunicating system by ringing, the same as for a regular subscriber's line. this will operate a drop in the attendant's station cabinet, and through an armature contact, give a signal on a low-pitched buzzer. this alarm buzzer operates only when the main exchange is ringing and, therefore, does not require that the drop shutter be restored immediately. an extra key may be provided for an extension night-alarm bell, for use where the attendant also does work in a room separate from that containing the attendant's station telephone equipment. the attendant operator answers the main-line signal by pressing the proper trunk button, as designated by the operated drop on the attendant's cabinet. the answering of the trunk connects a locking relay across the circuit so that the attendant may call the desired party on the intercommunicating system without having to hold the trunk manually. the party desired is then notified which trunk to use and the attendant operator hangs up her receiver, no further attention being necessary on her part. the trunk-holding relay is automatically released when the desired party (with the telephone receiver off the hook) depresses the proper trunk button, thus clearing the trunk line of all bridged apparatus and making the talking circuit the same as in the regular type of private branch-exchange switchboard. the most convenient way of installing the wires of an intercommunicating system is to run a cable containing the proper number of pairs to provide for the ultimate number of stations to all the stations, tapping off from the conductors in the cable to the jacks or push buttons at each station. these tap connections are best made by means of junction boxes which contain terminals for all the conductors. such a junction box, with the through cable and the tap cable in place, is illustrated in fig. . a schematic lay-out of the various parts of a dean intercommunicating system, provided with an attendant's station and with trunks to a city office, is given in fig. . chapter xxxvi long-distance switching =definitions.= telephone messages between communities are called long-distance messages. they are also called toll messages. almost all long-distance traffic is handled by message-rate (measured-service) methods of charge. all measured-service messages are toll messages, whether they are completed within a given community or between communities. the term "long-distance," therefore, is more descriptive than the term "toll." the subject of local and long-distance measured service is treated exhaustively in a chapter of its own. some telephone-exchange operating companies call their own inter-city business "toll," and use the term "long-distance" for business carried between exchanges for them by another company. the distinction seems to be unwarranted. =use of repeating coil.= most long-distance lines are magneto circuits. if they are switched to grounded circuits, repeating coils need to be inserted. toll switching equipments contain means of inserting repeating coils in the connecting cords when required. their use reduces the volume of transmitted speech, but often is essential even in connecting metallic circuit lines, as a quiet local metallic circuit may have a ground upon it which will cause excessive noises when a quiet long-distance line is connected to it. =switching through local board.= in the simplest form of long-distance switching, the lines terminate in switchboards with local lines and may be connected with each other and with the local lines through the regular cord circuits, if the equipment be of the magneto type. the waystations on such a line are equipped with magneto generators. these waystations may signal each other by bell ringing; the central office may call any waystation by ringing the proper signal and may supervise in a way all traffic on such lines by noting the calls for other stations than the supervising exchange. =operators' orders.= _by call circuits._ where the long-distance traffic between two communities is large, economy requires that the sending of signals by ringing over the line, waiting for an answer, and then reciting the details of the call, be improved upon. if the traffic is large and the distance between communities small, call circuits are established in the same way as between the switchboards in several manual central offices of an exchange. the long-distance operator handling the originating call passes the necessary details to the distant operator by telephone over the call circuit. such circuits also are known as order circuits. they are accessible to originating operators at keys and are connected directly and permanently to the telephone sets of receiving operators. one call circuit can handle the orders for a large number of actual conversation circuits. the operator at the receiving end designates the conversation circuit which shall be used, the originating operator following that instruction. _by telegraph._ where traffic and distance are large, conversation lines cost more than in the case last assumed. it then is of greater importance to use all the possible talking circuits for actual conversations in order that the revenue may be as high as possible. a phantom circuit good enough for call circuit purposes would be good enough for actual commercial messages, therefore, it is customary to furnish such originating and receiving operators with morse telegraph sets. the lines are obtained by applying composite apparatus to the conversation circuits. two morse circuits can be had from each long-distance line without impairing any quality of that line except the ability to ring over it. as one morse circuit can carry information enough between two operators to enable them to keep many telephone circuits busy, they do not need to ring upon the composited lines, so that nothing is lost while revenue is gained. =two-number calls.= in cases where the traffic between communities is large, where the rate is small, and where the conversations are short and more on the general order of local calls, it is usual to handle the switches exactly as local calls are trunked between central offices of the same exchange. that is, the subscriber's operator who answers the call trunks it, by the assistance of a call circuit and an incoming trunk operator. the subscriber's operator records only the numbers of the calling and called subscribers. no long-distance operators at all assist in these connections. they are known as "two-number calls." the calling subscriber remains at his telephone until the conversation is finished. =particular-party-calls.= in cases where the traffic is smaller, and where the rate is large, it is customary to handle the calls through long-distance operators. the ticket records the particular party wished, and the calls are named "particular party" calls. in such connections the calling patron is allowed to hang up his receiver, after his call is recorded, and is called again when his correspondent is found and is ready to talk. this makes _all calls for conversations_ outgoing ones. only recording operators receive calls _from_ patrons. line operators make calls _to_ patrons. =trunking.= long-distance lines entering a city usually terminate in one office only, no matter how many offices the local exchange may have. it is possible to terminate these long-distance lines on a position of the multiple switchboard for local lines. for a variety of reasons this is not practiced except in special cases. the usual method is to terminate them in a special long-distance board and to provide trunk lines from this board to the one or more local switchboards of the exchange. in common-battery systems these toll trunks are so arranged that the called local subscriber receives transmitter current from the office nearest to him, yet is able to show the long-distance operator the position of his switch hook and is able to be called by the long-distance operator without the intervention of the switching operator in the local office, even though two repeating coils may be in the trunk circuit. _through ringing._ there is a distinct traffic advantage in having the ringing of the subscriber under the control of the long-distance operator. the latter may call for the subscriber by stating her wish over the call circuit associated with the long-distance trunk. the connection having been made by the switching operator, the long-distance operator may withhold ringing the subscriber's bell until all is in readiness for the conversation. _high-voltage toll trunks._ in some systems, the long-distance trunks are further specialized by being enabled to furnish transmitter current to subscribers at a higher voltage than is used in local conversations. with a given construction of transmitters there is a critical maximum current which can be carried by the granular carbon of the instrument without excessive heating, consequent noises, and permanent damage. the shortest lines and the longest lines of an exchange district being served by a source of current common to all, the standard potential of this source must be such as to give the longest lines current enough without giving the shortest lines too much. the very longest local lines, however, do not receive current enough from the standard potential to give maximum efficiency when talking over long distances, though they get enough for local conversations. by providing a battery with a voltage twice that used for local conversations and connecting it into the current supply element of the toll trunk through non-inductive resistances, not too much current may be given to the shortest lines and considerably more than normal current to the longest lines. =ticket passing.= when only one operator is necessary in a town, her duty being to switch both local and long-distance lines, she may write her own tickets and execute them entire. in larger communities with larger long-distance traffic, the duties need to be specialized. the subscribers' wants as to long-distance connections are given by themselves to recording long-distance operators, who write them on tickets and pass these to operators who get the parties together. the problem of ticket-passing becomes important and many mechanical carriers have been tried, culminating in the system which utilizes vacuum tubes. this is in some ways similar to vacuum or compressed-air tube systems for carrying cash in retail stores. the ticket is carried, however, without any enclosing case and the tubes are flat instead of round, _i. e._, they are rectangular in section. by suitable means a vacuum is maintained in a large common tube having a tap to a box-like valve at each line operator's position. a ticket tube connects this valve with a distributing table at or near which the tickets are written. the tickets are of uniform size and are so made as to enable a flap to be bent up easily along one edge. the distributing operator has merely to insert the ticket, bent edge foremost, in the open end of the tube, whereupon the air pressure behind it will drive it through to its destination, near by or far away. the tickets travel thirty feet a second. the tube may be bent into almost any required form. the ticket, on arriving at a line operator's position, slides between two springs, breaking a shunt around a relay and allowing the latter to light the lamp. =waystations.= waystations on long-distance lines may be equipped in several ways. most of them have magneto sets and can ring each other. some are equipped with common-battery sets and get all current for signaling and transmission from a terminal central office. in the latter case, there is the advantage that the ringers are in series with condensers, assisting greatly in tests for fault locations. such tests are hindered by the presence of ringer bridges across the line, as in magneto practice. condensers can be inserted in series with ringers of magneto sets if the testing advantage is valued highly enough. a disadvantage of the use of common-battery sets in waystations on long-distance lines is the lessened transmission volume of the stations farthest from the current source. _center checking._ an operating advantage of common-battery sets on long-distance lines is that all calls are forced to be answered by the terminal station. waystations can not call each other, as they have no calling means. with magneto sets, waystation agents sometimes call each other direct and neglect to record the call and to remit its price. when they can not call each other direct, the revenues of the company increase. a traffic method which requires all calls from waystations to be made to a central switching office is called a center-checking system. it is so called because all checking for stations so switched is done at the central point instead of each waystation keeping its own records of calls sent and received. in such practice it is usual to bill each station once a month for the messages it sent. where center checking is not practiced, the agent makes a report and sends a remittance. center checking comes about naturally for waystations having no ringing equipment. center checking originated long before the invention of common-battery systems. it requires merely that no waystation shall have a generator which can ring a bell. the method most widely used is to equip the waystations with magneto generators which produce direct currents only; such a generator cannot operate a polarized ringer. it is not usual to produce the direct current by actually rectifying the alternating current, but merely by omitting half the impulses, sending to the line only alternate half-cycles of the current generated. any drop or relay adapted to respond to regular ringing current will respond to this modified form of generator. chapter xxxvii telephone traffic the term "traffic," with reference to telephone service, has come to mean the gross transaction of communication between telephone users. this traffic may be expressed in whatever terms are found convenient for the particular phase considered. =unit of traffic.= with reference to payment for local telephone service, the conversation is the unit of traffic. in the daily operations of telephone systems there are fewer conversations than there are connections and fewer connections than there are calls, because lines are found busy and all calls to subscribers are not answered. for these reasons, in traffic inquiries which have to do with the amount of business which subscribers attempt to transact, the total traffic in a given time usually is considered as so many calls originated by the subscribers in the community. from this condition arises the term "originating calls." for the reason that the purpose of the switching equipment in a central office is to make connections, the abilities of operators and of equipments frequently are measured in terms of connections per hour or per other unit of time. for the reason that in charging for service all unavailing calls are omitted, the conversation is the unit of traffic. =traffic variations.= telephone-exchange traffic is subject to such general variations as are noted in the way a compass needle points north, the migrations of birds, the blowing of the trade winds, and other natural phenomena. there are variations in traffic which occur each day, others which change with the seasons, and still others which are related to holidays and other special commercial and social events. for instance, the day before thanksgiving day, in many regions, is the busiest telephone traffic day in the year. [illustration: western electric motor-generator charging set] the daily variations in telephone traffic are closely related to commercial activities and certain general features of this daily variation are common to all telephone systems everywhere. fig. is a typical graphic record of the traffic of a telephone exchange and represents what happens in almost every town or city. the total calls in this figure are not given as absolute units but would vary to adapt the figure to a particular case. the figure shows principally that the traffic in the night is light; that it rises to its maximum height somewhere between o'clock a.m. and noon; that though it is never as high again during that day, the afternoon peak is over per cent as great; and that two minor peaks appear about the dinner hour and after evening entertainments. [illustration: fig. . load curve] _busy-hour ratio._ if the story told by fig. were to be turned into a table of calls per hour, the busiest hour of the day would be found to correspond to the highest portion of the figure, and in that busiest hour of the day, if a number of selected days were to be compared, would be found a very constant traffic. the number of calls made, or the number of connections completed, in that particular hour, day by day, would be found to be much the same. the ratio of the number of units in that hour to the number of units in that entire day would be found to be practically the same ratio day by day. this ratio of busy hour to total day would be found to be much more nearly constant than the gross number of calls per hour or per day. in a large, busy city, about one-eighth of the total daily calls are in some one hour; in a smaller, less active city, probably one-tenth are so congested. this is reasonable when one remembers that in the larger city the active business of the day begins later and ends earlier. =importance of traffic study.= a knowledge of the amount of traffic in an exchange, and its distribution as to time and as to the divisions of the exchange, is important for a number of reasons. traffic knowledge is essential in order that the equipment may be designed and placed in the proper way and the total load distributed properly on that apparatus and its operators. for example, in an office equipped with a manual multiple switchboard, the length of the switchboard is governed entirely by the number of operators who must work before it. it is mechanically possible to make a switchboard for ten thousand lines only feet long, seating seven operators. the entire multiple of ten thousand lines could appear three times in such a switchboard. the seven operators could not handle the traffic we know would be originated by ten thousand lines, with any present system of charging for service. even a rough knowledge of the probable traffic would enable us to approximate the number of operators needed and to equip each position, not only with access to the ten thousand lines to be called, but also with just enough keyboard equipment, serving as tools, and just enough answering jacks, serving as means of bringing the traffic to her. it is foreknowledge of traffic which enables a switchboard to fit the task it is to perform. =rates of calling.= the rates of calling of different kinds of lines vary. the lines of business stations originate more calls than do the lines of residences. some kinds of business originate more calls than others. some kinds of business have a higher rate of calling in one season than in others. flat-rate lines originate more calls than do message-rate lines. when a line changes from a flat rate to a message rate, the number of originating calls per day decreases. an operator's position, handling message-rate lines only, can serve more lines than if all of them were at flat rates. the number of message-rate or coin-prepayment lines which an operator's position can care for depends not only on the traffic but on the method of charging for service, whether by tickets or meters and upon the kind of meters; or it depends on the method of collecting the coins. in some regions, the rate of calling, on the introduction of a complete measured-service plan, has been reduced to one-fourth of what it was on the flat-rate plan. in manual switchboards of early types, wherein the position of the subscriber's answering jack was fixed by his telephone number, the inequality of traffic became a serious problem. most of the subscribers who first installed telephones when the exchange was small, retained their telephones and numbers; as their use of the telephone grew with their business, it was customary to find the positions answering the lower numbers much more busy than the positions answering the higher numbers, the latter belonging to later and usually less active business places. _functions of intermediate distributing frame._ the intermediate distributing board was invented to meet these conditions of unequal traffic upon lines and of variations in traffic with changes of seasons and of charges. the intermediate distributing board enables a line to retain its number and its position in the multiple, but to keep its answering jack and lamp signal in any desired position. if a flat-rate subscriber changes to a message rate, his line may be moved to a message-rate position and be answered, in company with others like it, by an operator serving many more lines than she could serve if all of them were flat rate. =methods of traffic study.= the best way to learn traffic facts for the purposes of designing and operating equipment is to conduct systematic series of observations in all exchanges; to record them in company with all related facts; and to compare them from time to time, recording the results of the comparisons. then when it is required to solve a new problem, the traffic data will enable the probable future conditions to be known with as great exactness as is possible in studies with relation to transportation or any other human activity. table xiii calling rates +-------------------------+-------------------------------+ | | calls per day with different | | kind of service | methods of charge | | +-------------+-----------------+ | | flat rate | message rate | +-------------------------+-------------+-----------------+ |residence | | | |business | to | to | |private exchange trunk | | | |hotel exchange trunk | | | |apartment house trunk | | | +-------------------------+-------------+-----------------+ there are three general ways of observing traffic. a record of originating calls is known as a "peg count," because the counting formerly was done by moving a peg from place to place in a series of holes. the simplest exact way is to provide each operator with a small mechanical counter, the key of which she can depress once for each call to be counted. a second way is to determine a ratio which exists, for the particular time and place, between the number of calls in a given period and the average number of cord circuits in use. knowing this ratio, the cord circuits can be counted, the ratio applied, and the probable total known. the third method, which is applicable to offices having service meters on all lines, is to associate one master meter per position or group of lines with all the meters of that position or group, so that each time any service meter of that position is operated, the master meter will count one unit. this method applies to either manual or automatic equipments. =representative traffic data.= for purposes of comparison, the following are representative facts as to certain traffic conditions. _calling rates._ the number of calls originated per day by different kinds of lines with different methods of charge are shown in table xiii. _operators' loads._ the abilities of subscribers' operators to switch these calls depend on the type of equipment used, on the kind of management exercised, and on the individual skill of operators. with manual multiple equipment of the common-battery type, and good management, the numbers of originating calls per busy hour given in table xiv can be handled by an average operator. the number of calls per operator per busy hour depends upon the amount of trunking to other offices which that operator is required to do. in a small city, for example, where all the lines are handled by one switchboard, there is no local switching problem except to complete the connection in the multiple before each position. in a large city, where wire economy and mechanical considerations compel the lines to be handled by a number of offices with manual equipment, some portion of the total originating load of each office must be trunked to others. table xiv shows that an increase of per cent in the amount of out-trunking has decreased the operator's ability to less than per cent of the possible maximum. table xiv effect of out-trunking on operator's capacity +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ |per cent originating calls | capacity of subscribers' operator's | |trunked to other offices | position in calls per busy hour | +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ _trunking factor._ in providing the system of trunks interconnecting the offices, whether the equipment be manual or automatic, it is essential to know not only how much traffic originates in each office, but how much of it will be trunked to each other office and how many trunks will be required. an interesting phase of telephone traffic studies is that it is possible to determine in advance the amount of traffic which can be completed directly in the multiple of that office and how much must be trunked elsewhere. theoretical considerations would indicate that if the local multiple contains one-eighth of the total lines of the city, one-eighth of the calls originating in that office could be completed locally and seven-eighths would be trunked out. in almost all cases, however, it is found that more than the theoretical percentage of originating calls are for the neighborhood of that office and can be completed in the multiple. this results in the determination of a factor by which the theoretical out-trunking can be multiplied to determine the probable real out-trunking. in most cases, the ratio of actual to theoretical out-trunking is per cent, or approximately that. in special cases, it may be far from per cent. _trunk efficiency._ the capacities of trunks vary with their methods of operation and with the number of trunks in a group. for example, in the manual system where trunk operators in distant offices are instructed over call circuits and make disconnections in response to lamp signals, such an incoming trunk operator can complete from to connections per busy hour. the actual ability depends upon the number of distant offices served by that operator and upon the amount of work she has to perform on each call. the number of messages which can be handled by one trunk in the busy hour will depend upon the number of trunks in the group and upon the system employed. it appears that the ability of trunks in this regard is higher in the automatic system than in the manual system. for the latter, table xv gives representative facts. table xv messages per trunk in manual system +----------------------------+------------------------+ | number of trunks in group, | messages per trunk per | | manual system | busy hour | +----------------------------+------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------+------------------------+ some of the reasons for the higher efficiencies of trunks in the automatic system are not well defined, but unquestionably exist. they have to do partly with the prompter answering observable in automatic systems. the operation of calling being simple, a called subscriber seems to fear that unless he answers promptly the calling party will disconnect and perhaps may call a competitor. the introduction of machine-ringing on automatic lines, where existing in competition with manual ringing on manual lines, seems to encourage subscribers to answer even more promptly. the length of conversation in automatic systems seems to be shorter than in manual systems. still more important, disconnection in automatic systems is instantaneous during all hours, whereas in manual systems it is less prompt in the busiest and least busy hours than in the hours of intermediate congestion. the practical results of trunk efficiencies in automatic systems are given in table xvi. table xvi messages per trunk in automatic system +----------------------------+------------------------+ | number of trunks in group, | messages per trunk per | | automatic system | busy hour | +----------------------------+------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------+------------------------+ _toll traffic._ toll or long-distance traffic follows the general laws of local or exchange traffic. conversations are of greater average length in long-distance traffic. the long-distance line is held longer for an average conversation than is a local-exchange line. the local trunks which connect long-distance lines with exchange lines for conversation are held longer than are the actual long-distance trunks between cities. knowing the probable traffic to be brought to the long-distance switching center by the long-distance trunks from exchange centers, the number of trunks required may be determined by knowing the capacity of each trunk. these trunk capacities vary with the method of handling the traffic and they vary as do local trunks with the number of trunks in a group. table xvii illustrates this variation of capacity with sizes of groups. table xvii messages per trunk in long-distance groups +--------------------------+-------------------------+ | number of long-distance | messages per trunk per | | trunks in group | busy hour | +--------------------------+-------------------------+ | | | | | | | | . | | | . | | | | | | . | +--------------------------+-------------------------+ =quality of service.= the quality of telephone service rendered by a particular equipment managed in a particular way depends on a great variety of elements. the handling of the traffic presented by patrons is a true manufacturing problem. the quality of the service rendered requires continuous testing in order that the management may know whether the service is reaching the standard; whether the standard is high enough; whether the cost of producing it can be reduced without lowering the quality; and whether the patrons are getting from it as much value as they might. in manual systems, the quality of telephone service depends upon a number of elements. the following are some principal ones: . prompt answering. . prompt disconnection. . freedom from errors in connecting with the called line. . promptness in connecting with the called line. . courtesy and the use of form. . freedom from failure by busy lines and failure to answer. . clear enunciation. . team work. _answering time._ there is an interrelation between these elements. team work assists both answering and prompt disconnection. the quality of telephone service can not be measured alone in terms of prompt answering. formerly telephone service was boasted of as being "three-second service" if most of the originating calls were answered in three seconds. often such prompt answering reacts to prevent prompt disconnecting. patient, systematic work is required to learn the real quality of the service. as to answering, the clearest, truest statement concerning manual service is found by making test calls to each position, dividing them into groups of various numbers of whole seconds each, and comparing the percentage of these groups to the whole number of telephones to that position. for example, assume each of the calls to a given position to have been answered in ten seconds or less, in which per cent are answered in ten seconds or less; per cent in eight seconds or less; per cent in six seconds or less. it is probable that a reasonably uniform manual service will show only a small percentage answered in three seconds or under. such percentages may be drawn in the form of curves, so that at a glance one may learn efficiency in terms of prompt answering. _disconnecting time._ prompt disconnection was improved enormously by the introduction of relay manual boards. just before the installation of relay boards in new york city, the average disconnecting time was over seventeen seconds. on the completion of an entire relay equipment, the average disconnecting time was found to be under three seconds. the introduction of relay manual apparatus has led subscribers to a larger traffic and to the making of calls which succeed each other very closely. a most important rule is, _that disconnect signals shall be given prompt attention either by the operator who made the connection, by an operator adjacent, or by a monitor who may be assisting_; and another, still more important one is, _that a flashing keyboard lamp indicating a recall shall be given precedence over all originating and all other disconnect signals_. _accuracy and promptness._ promptness and accuracy in connecting with the called line are vital, and yet a large percentage of errors in these elements might exist in an exchange having a very high average speed of answering the originating call. indeed, it seems quite the rule that where the effort of the management is devoted toward securing and maintaining extreme speed of original answering, all the other elements suffer in due proportion. _courtesy and form._ it goes without saying that operators should be courteous; but it is necessary to say it, and keep saying it in the most effective form, in order to prevent human nature under the most exasperating circumstances from lapsing a little from the standard, however high. the use of form assists both the operators and the subscribers, because in all matters of strict routine it is much easier to secure high speed and great accuracy by making as many as possible of the operations automatic. the use of the word "number" and other well-accepted formalities has assisted greatly in securing speed, clear understanding, and accurate performance. the simple expedient of spelling numbers by repeating the figures in a detached form--as " - - " for --has taught subscribers the same expedient, and the percentage of possible error is materially reduced by going one step further and having the operator, in repeating, use always the opposite form from that spoken by the calling subscriber. _busy and don't answer calls._ notwithstanding the old impression of the public to the contrary, the operator has no control over the "busy line" and "don't answer" situation. it is, however, of high importance that the management should know, by the analysis of repeated and exhaustive tests of the service, to what extent these troubles are degrading it. in addition to improving the service by the elimination of busy reports, there is no means of increasing revenue which is so easy and so certain as that which comes from following up the tabulated results of busy calls. _enunciation._ it must be remembered that clear enunciation for telephone purposes is a matter wholly relative, and the ability of an operator in this regard can be determined only by a close analysis of many observations from the standpoint of a subscriber. a trick of speech rather than a pleasant voice and an easy address has made the answering ability of many an operator captivating to a group of satisfied subscribers. _team work._ by team work is meant the ability of a group of operators, seated side by side, to work together as a unit in caring for the service brought to them by the answering jacks within their reach. in switchboards of the construction usual today, a call before any operator may be answered by her, or by the operator at either the right or the left of her position. in many exchanges this advantage is wholly overlooked. in the period of general re-design of central-office equipments about fourteen years ago, a switchboard was installed with mechanical visual signals and answering-jacks on a flat-top board, and an arrangement of operators such that the signal of any call was extremely prominent and in easy reach of each one of four or possibly five operators. associated with the line signals within the reach of such a group was an auxiliary lamp signal which would light when a call was made by any of the lines so terminating. it was found that with this arrangement the calls were answered in a strictly even manner, special rushes being cared for by the joint efforts of the group rather than serving to swamp the operator who happened to be in charge of the particular section affected by the rush. this principle has been tried out in so many ways that it is astonishing that it is not recognized as being a vital one. the whole matter is accomplished by impressing upon each operator that her duty is, _not_ to answer the calls of a specific number of lines before her, but to answer, with such promptness as is possible, _any call which is within the reach of her answering equipment_. =observation of service.= all that is required to be known concerning the form of address and courtesy may be learned by a close observation of the operators' work by the chief operators and monitors, and by the use of listening circuits permanently connected to the operators' sets. it is naturally necessary that the use of these listening circuits by the chief operator or her assistants must not be known to the operators at the times of use, even though they may know of the existence of such facilities. with a well-designed and properly maintained automatic equipment, the eight elements of good manual service reduce themselves to only one or two. freedom from failure by busy lines and failure to answer are service-qualities independent of the kind of switching apparatus. too great a percentage of busy calls for a given line indicates that the telephone facilities for calls incoming to that subscriber are inadequate. the best condition would be for each subscriber to have lines enough so that none of them ever would be found busy. this is the condition the telephone company tries to establish between its various offices. in manual practice it is possible to keep such records as will enable the traffic department to know when the lines to a subscriber are insufficient for the traffic trying to reach him. as soon as such facts are known, they can be laid before the subscriber so that he may arrange for additional incoming lines. in automatic practice this is not so simple, as the source and destination of traffic in general is not so clearly known to the traffic department. automatic recorders of busy calls are necessary to enable the facts to be tabulated. chapter xxxviii measured service in the commercial relation between the public and a telephone system, the commodity which is produced by the latter and consumed by the former is telephone service. users often consider that payment is made for rental of telephone apparatus and to some persons the payment per month seems large for the rental of a mere telephone which could be bought outright for a few dollars. the telephone instrument is but a small part of the physical property used by a patron of a telephone system. even the _entire_ group of property elements used by a patron in receiving telephone service represents much less than what really is his proportion of the service-rendering effort. what the patron receives is service and its value during a time depends largely on how much of it he uses in that time, and less on the number of telephones he can call. _the cost of telephone service varies as the amount of use._ it is just, therefore, that the selling price should vary as the amount of use. =rates.= there are two general methods of charging for telephone service and of naming rates for this charge. these are called flat rates and measured-service rates. the latter are also known as message rates, because the message or conversation is the unit. flat rates are those which are also known as rentals. the service furnished under flat rates is also known as unlimited service, for the reason that under it a patron pays the same amount each month and is entitled to hold as many conversations--send as many messages and make as many calls--as he wishes, without any additional payment. in the measured-service plan, the amount of payment in a month varies in some way with the amount of use, depending on the plan adopted. the patron may pay a fixed base amount per month, entitling him to have equipment for telephone service and to receive messages, but being required to pay, in addition to this base amount, a sum which is determined by the number of messages which he sends. or he may pay a base amount per month and be entitled to have the equipment, to receive calls, and to send a certain number of messages, paying specifically in addition only for messages exceeding that certain number. whether flat rates or measured-service rates are practiced, the general tendency is to establish lower rates for service in homes than in business places. this is another recognition of the justice of graduating the rates in accordance with the amount of use. =units of charging.= while both the flat-rate and the measured-rate methods of charging for unlimited and measured service are practiced in local exchanges, long-distance service universally is sold at message rates. the unit of message rates in long-distance service is time. the charge for a message between two points joined by long-distance lines usually is a certain sum for a conversation three minutes long plus a certain sum for each additional minute or fraction of a minute. in local service, the message-rate time charge per message takes less account of the time unit. the conversation is almost universally the unit in exchanges. some managements restrict messages of multi-party lines to five minutes per conversation, because of the desire to avoid withholding the line from other parties upon it for too long periods. service sold at public stations similarly is restricted as to time, even though the message be local to the exchange. three to five minutes local conversation is sold generally for five cents in the united states. the time of the average local message, counting actual conversation time only, is one hundred seconds. =toll service.= _long haul._ in long-distance service, there are two general methods of handling traffic, as to the relations between the calling and the called stations. for the greater distances, as between cities not closely related because not belonging to one general community, the calling patron calls a particular person and pays nothing unless he holds conversation with that person. in this method, the operator records the name of the person called for; the name, telephone number, or both, of the person calling; the names of the towns where the message originated and ended; the date, the time conversation began, and the length of time it lasted. _short haul._ where towns are closely related in commercial and social ways and where the traffic is large and approaches local service in character, and yet where conversations between them are charged at different rates than are local calls within them, a more rapid system of toll charging than that just described is of advantage. in these conditions, patrons are not sold a service which allows a particular party to be named and found, nor is the identity of the calling person required. the operator needs to know merely of these calls that they originate at a certain telephone and are for a certain other. the facts she must record are fewer and her work is simpler. therefore, the cost of such switching is less than for true long-distance calls and it can be learned by careful auditing just when traffic between points becomes great enough to warrant switching them in this way. such switching, for example, exists between new york and brooklyn, between chicago and suburbs around it which have names of their own but really are part of the community of chicago, and between san francisco and other cities which cluster around san francisco bay. calls of the "long-haul" class are known as "particular person" or "particular party" calls, while "short-haul" calls are known as "two-number" long-distance calls. it is customary to handle particular party calls on long-distance switchboards and to handle two-number calls in manual systems on subscribers' switchboards exactly like local calls, except that the two-number calls are ticketed. it is customary in automatic systems to handle two-number calls by means of the regular automatic equipment plus ticketing by a suburban or two-number operator. _timing toll connections._ it formerly was customary to measure the time of long-distance conversations by noting on the ticket the time of its beginning and the time of its ending, the operator reading the time from a clock. for human and physical reasons, such timing seems not to be considered infallible by the patron who pays the charge, and in cases of dispute concerning overtime charges so timed, telephone companies find it wisest to make concessions. the physical cause of error in reading time from a clock is that of parallax; that is, the error which arises from the fact that the minute hand of a clock is some distance from the surface of the dial so that one can "look under it." on an ordinary clock having a large face and its minute hand pointing upward or downward, five people standing in a row could read five different times from it at the same instant. the middle person might see the minute hand pointing at , indicating the time to be half-past something; whereas, person no. and person no. in the row might read the time respectively and minutes past something. operators far to the right or to the left of a clock will get different readings, and an operator below a clock will get different kinds of readings at different times and correct readings at few times. timing machines:--machines which record time directly on long-distance tickets are of value and machines which automatically compute the time elapsing during a conversation are of much greater value. the calculagraph is a machine of the latter class. the use of some such machine uniformly reduces controversy as to time which really elapsed. parallax errors are avoided. the record possesses a dignity which carries conviction. [illustration: fig. . calculagraph records] calculagraph records are shown in fig. . in the one shown in the upper portion of this figure, the conversation began at . p.m. this is shown by the right-hand dial of the three which constitute the record. the minutes past o'clock are shown by the hand within the dial and the hour is shown by the triangular mark just outside the dial between x and xi. the duration of the conversation is shown by the middle and the left-hand dials. the figures on both these dials indicate minutes. the middle dial indicates roughly that the conversation lasted for a time between and minutes. the left-hand dial indicates with greater exactness that the conversation lasted one and one-quarter minutes. the hand of the left-hand dial makes one revolution in five minutes; of the middle dial, one revolution in an hour. the middle dial tells how many full periods of five minutes have elapsed and the left-hand dial shows the excess over the five-minute interval. the lower portion of fig. is a similar record beginning at the same time of day, but lasting about five and one-half minutes. as before, the readings of the two dials are added to get the elapsed time. [illustration: fig. . relative position of hands and dials] the right-hand dial, showing merely time of day, stands still while its hands revolve. the dies which print the dials and hands of the middle and the left-hand records rotate together. examining the machine, one finds that the hands of these dials always point to zero. the middle dial and hand make one complete revolution in an hour; the left-hand dial and hand, one in five minutes. in making the records, the dials are printed at the beginning and the hands at the end of the conversation. therefore, the hands will have moved forward during the conversation--still pointing to zero in both cases--but when printed the hands will point to some other place than they were pointing when the dials were printed. in this way, their angular distances truly indicate the lapse of time. fig. shows the relative position of the hands and dials within the machine at all times. it will be noted that the arrow of the left-hand dial does not point exactly to zero. this is due to the fact that the dials and hands are printed by separate operations and cannot be printed simultaneously. [illustration: western electric ringing machine] another method of timing toll connections has been developed by the monarch telephone manufacturing company. this employs a master clock of great accuracy, which may be mounted on the wall anywhere in the building or another building if desired. a circuit leads from this clock to a time-stamp device on the operator's key shelf, and the clock closes this circuit every quarter minute. the impulses thus sent over the circuit energize the magnet of the time stamp, which steps a train of printing wheels around so as always to keep them set in such position as to properly print the correct time on a ticket whenever the head of the stamp is moved by the operator into contact with the ticket. a large number of such stamps may be operated from the same master clock. by printing the starting time of a connection below the finishing time the computation of lapsed time becomes a matter of subtraction. a typical toll ticket with the beginning and ending time printed by the time stamp in the upper left-hand corner and the elapsed time recorded by hand in the upper right-hand corner is shown in fig. . it is seen that this stamp records in the order mentioned the month, the day, the hour, the minute and quarter minute, the a.m. and p.m. division of the day, and the year. [illustration: fig. . toll ticket used with monarch system] an interesting feature of this system is that the same master clock may be made in a similar manner to actuate secondary clocks placed at subscribers' stations, the impulses being sent over wires in the same cables as those containing the subscribers' lines. this system, therefore, serves not only as a means for timing the toll tickets and operating time stamps wherever they are required in the business of the telephone company, but also to supply a general clock and time-stamp service to the patrons of the telephone company as a "by-product" of the general telephone business. exchange service is measured in terms of conversations without much regard to their length. the payment for the service may be made at the time it is received, as in public stations and at telephones equipped with coin prepayment devices; or the calls from a telephone may be recorded and collection for them made at agreed intervals. in the prepayment method the price per call is uniform. in the deferred payment method the calls are recorded as they are made, their number summed up at intervals, and the amount due determined by the price per call. the price per call may vary with the number of calls sold. a large user may have a lower rate per call than a small user. =local service.= _ticket method._ measured local service sometimes is recorded by means of tickets, similarly to the described method of charging long-distance calls, except that the time of day and the duration of conversation are not so important. where local ticketing is practiced, it is usual to write on the ticket only the number of the calling telephone and the date, and to pass into the records only those tickets which represent actual conversations, keeping out tickets representing calls for busy lines and calls which were not answered. _meter method._ the requirements of speed in good local service are opposed to the ticketing method. where measured service is supplied to a substantial proportion of the lines of a large exchange, electro-mechanical service meters are attached to the lines. these service meters register as a consequence of some act on the part of the switchboard operator, or may be caused to register by the answering of the called subscriber. [illustration: fig. . connection meter] in manual practice, meters of the type shown in fig. are associated with the lines as in fig. . the meters are mounted separately from the switchboard, needing only to be connected to the test-strand of the line by cabled wires. if desired, the meter may be mounted on racks in quarters especially devoted to them, and the cases in which the racks are mounted may be kept locked. in such an arrangement the meters are read from time to time through the glass doors of the cases. the meters are caused to operate by pressure on the meter key _mk_, associated with the answering cord as in fig. . this increases the normal potential to volts. when the armature of the meter has made a part of its stroke, it closes a contact which places its -ohm winding in shunt with its -ohm winding, thus furnishing ample power for turning the meter wheels. [illustration: fig. . western electric line circuit and service meter] such meters are in common use in large exchanges, notable examples being the cities of new york and london. in london, there is a zone within which the price per call is one penny and between which and other zones the price is twopence. calls within the zone either are completed by the answering operator directly in the multiple before her or are trunked to other offices in that zone. calls for points outside of that zone are trunked to other offices and in giving the order the operator finds that the call circuit key lights a special signal lamp before her. this reminds her that the call is at a twopence price, so in recording it she presses the meter key twice. this counts two units on the meter and the units are billed at a penny each. in automatic systems it is not possible to operate a meter system in which the operator will press a key for each call to be charged, because there is no operator. in such systems--a notable example being the measured-service automatic system in san francisco--the meter registers only upon the answering of the called subscriber. calls for lines found busy and calls which are not answered do not register. calls for long-distance recording operators, two-number ticket operators, information, complaint, and other company departments are not registered. in the chinatown quarter of san francisco, where most calls begin and end in the neighborhood, service is sold at an unlimited flat rate for neighborhood calls and at a message rate for other calls. the meter system recognizes this condition and does not register calls _from_ chinese subscribers _for_ chinese subscribers, though it does register calls from chinese subscribers to caucasian subscribers. the nature of the system is such as to enable it to discriminate as to races, localities, or other peculiarities as may be desired. [illustration: fig. . western electric cord circuit and service meter key] in the manual meter circuits of figs. and , the meter windings have no relation to the line conductors. in the automatic arrangement just described, there are meter windings in the line during times of calling, but none in the line during times of conversation. the balance of the line, therefore, is undisturbed at all times wherein balance is of any importance. in both systems just described, the meters of all lines are in their respective central offices. meters for use at subscribers' stations have been devised and there is no fundamental reason why the record might not be made at the subscriber's station instead of, or in addition to, a central-office record. experience has shown that confidence in a meter system can be secured if the meters be positive, accurate, and reliable. the labor of reading the meters is much less when they are kept in central offices. subscribers may have access to them if they wish. _prepayment method._ prepayment measured-service mechanisms permit a coin or token to be dropped into a machine at the subscriber's telephone at the time the conversation is held. a variety of forms of telephone coin collectors are in use, their operations being fundamentally either electrical or mechanical. electrically operated coin collectors require either that the coin be dropped into the machine in order to enable the central office to be signaled in manual systems, or the switches to be operated in automatic systems, or they require that the coin be dropped into the machine after calling, but before the conversation is permitted. western electric company coin collectors, shown in fig. , may be operated in either way in connection with manual systems. the usual way is to require the coin to be dropped before the central-office line lamp can glow. the operator then rings the called subscriber and upon his answering places a sufficient potential upon the calling line to operate the polarized relay and to drop the coin into the cash box. if the called subscriber does not answer or his line is busy, potential is placed on the calling line, moving the polarized relay in the other direction and dropping the coin into a return chute so that the subscriber may take it. if it is preferred that the coin be paid only on the request of the operator, the return feature need not be provided. in both forms of operation, the western electric coin collector is adapted to bridge its polarized relay between one limb of the line and ground during the time a coin rests on the pins, as shown in fig. . when no coin is on the pins--_i. e._, before calling and after the called station responds--the relay is not so bridged. [illustration: fig. . principle of western electric coin collector] the armature of the relay responds only to a high potential and this is applied by the operator. if the coin is to be taken by the company, one polarity is sent; if it is to be returned to the patron, the other polarity is sent. these polarities are applied to a limb of the line proper. it will be recalled that pressures to actuate service meters are applied to the test-strand. if wished, keys may be arranged so as to apply volts to the test-strand and the collecting potential to the line at the same operation. this enables the service meter to count the tokens placed in the cash box of the coin collector, and serves as a valuable check. in automatic systems, in one arrangement, coin collectors are arranged so that no impulses can be sent unless a coin has been deposited, the coin automatically passing to the cash box when the called subscriber answers, or to the patron if it is not answered. in another arrangement, calls are made exactly as in unlimited service, but a coin must be deposited before a conversation can be held. the calling person can hear the called party speak and may speak himself but can not be heard until the coin is deposited. no coin-return mechanism is required in this method. coin collectors of these types usually are adapted to receive only one kind of coin, these, in the united states, being either nickels or dimes. for long-distance service, where the charges vary, it is necessary to signal to an operator just what coins are paid. it is uniformly customary to send these signals by sound, the collector being so arranged that the coins strike gongs. in coin collectors of the gray telephone paystation company, the coins strike these gongs by their own weight in falling through chutes. in coin collectors of the baird electric company, the power for the signals is provided by hand power, a lever being pulled for each coin deposited. both methods are in wide use. chapter xxxix phantom, simplex, and composite circuits =definitions.= phantom circuits are arrangements of telephone wires whereby more working, non-interfering telephone lines exist than there are sets of actual wires. when four wires are arranged to provide three metallic circuits for telephone purposes, two of the lines are physical circuits and one is a phantom circuit. simplex and composite circuits are arrangements of wires whereby telephony and telegraphy can take place at the same time over the same wires without interference. [illustration: fig. . phantom circuit] =phantom.= in fig. four wires join two offices. _rr_ are repeating coils, designed for efficient transforming of both talking and ringing currents. the devices marked _a_ in this and the following figures are air-gap arresters. currents from the telephones connected to either physical pair of wires pass, at any instant, in opposite directions in the two wires of the pair. the phantom circuit uses one of the physical pairs as a _wire_ of its line. it does this by tapping the middle point of the line side of each of the repeating coils. the impedance of the repeating-coil winding is lowered because, all the windings being on the same core, the phantom line currents pass from the middle to the outer connections so as to neutralize each other's influence. the currents of the phantom circuit, unlike those of the physical circuits, are _in the same direction_ in both wires of a pair at any instant. their potentials, therefore, are equal and simultaneous. a phantom circuit is formed most simply when both physical lines end in the same two offices. if one physical line is longer than the other, a phantom circuit may be formed as in fig. , wherein the repeating coil is inserted in the longer line where it passes through a terminal station of the shorter. [illustration: fig. . phantom from two physical circuits of unequal length] [illustration: fig. . two phantoms joined by physical circuit] a circuit may be built up by adding a physical circuit to a phantom. a circuit may be made up of two or more phantom circuits, joined by physical ones. in fig. a phantom circuit is extended by the use of a physical circuit, while in fig. , two phantom circuits are joined by placing between them a physical circuit. [illustration: fig. . phantom extended by physical circuit] _transpositions._ in phantom circuits formed merely by inserting repeating coils in physical circuits and doing nothing else, an exact balance of the sides of the phantom circuit is lacking. the resistances, insulations, and capacities to earth of the sides may be equal, but the exposures to adjacent telephone and telegraph circuits and to power circuits will not be equal unless the phantom circuits are transposed. to transpose a set of lines of two physical wires each, is not complicated, though it must be done with care and in accordance with a definite, foreknown plan. transposing phantom circuits is less simple, however, as four wires per circuit have to be transposed, instead of two. [illustration: fig. . transposition of phantom circuits] in fig. , the general spacing of transposition sections is the usual one, , feet, of the _abcb_ system widely in use. the pole circuit, on pins _ _ and _ _ of the upper arm, is transposed once each two miles. the pole circuit of the second arm transposes either once or twice a mile. but neither pole circuit differs in transposition from any other regular scheme except in the frequency of transposition. all the other wires of each arm, however, are so arranged that each wire on either side of the pole circuit moves from pin to pin at section-ends, till it has completed a cycle of changes over all four of the pins on its side. in doing so, each phantom circuit is transposed with proper regard to each of the other three on that twenty-wire line. the "new transposition" lettering in fig. is for the purpose of identifying the exact scheme of wiring each transposition pole. the complication of wiring at each transposition pole is increased by the adoption of phantom circuits. maintenance of all the circuits is made more costly and less easy unless the work at points of transposition is done with care and skill. phantom circuits, to be always successful, require that the physical circuits be balanced and kept so. _transmission over phantom circuits._ under proper conditions phantom circuits are better than physical circuits, and in this respect it may be noted that some long-distance operating companies instruct their operators always to give preference to phantom circuits, because of the better transmission over them. the use of phantom circuits is confined almost wholly to open-wire circuits; and while the capacity of the phantom circuit is somewhat greater than that of the physical circuit, its resistance is considerably smaller. in the actual wire the phantom loop is only half the resistance of either of the physical lines from which it is made, for it contains twice as much copper. the resistance of the repeating coils, however, is to be added. =simplex.= simplex telegraph circuits are made from metallic circuit telephone lines, as shown in fig. . the principle is identical with that of phantom telephone circuits. the potentials placed on the telephone line by the telegraph operations are equal and simultaneous. they cause no current to flow _around_ the telephone loop, only _along_ it. if all qualities of the loop are balanced, the telephones will not overhear the telegraph impulses. in the figure, _aa_ are arresters, as before, _gg_ are morse relays; a -microfarad condenser is shunted around the contact of each morse key _f_ to quench the noises due to the sudden changes on opening the keys between dots and dashes. [illustration: fig. . simplex telegraph circuit] a simplex arrangement even more simple substitutes impedance coils for the repeating coils of fig. . the operation of the morse circuit is the same. an advantage of such a circuit, as shown in fig. , is that the telephone circuit does not suffer from the two repeating-coil losses in series. a disadvantage is, that in ringing on such a line with a grounded generator, the morse relays are caused to chatter. [illustration: fig. . simplex telegraph circuit] the circuit of fig. may be made to fit the condition of a through telephone line and a way telegraph station. the midway morse apparatus of fig. is looped in by a combination of impedance coils and condensers. the plans of figs. and here are combined, with the further idea of stopping direct and passing alternating currents, as is so well accomplished by the use of condensers. [illustration: fig. . simplex circuit with waystation] [illustration: fig. . composite circuit] =composite.= composite circuits depend on another principle than that of producing equal and simultaneous potentials on the two wires of the telephone loop. the opposition of impedance coils to alternating currents and of condensers to direct currents are the fundamentals. the early work in this art was done by van rysselberghe, of belgium. in fig. , one telephone circuit forms two morse circuits, two wires carrying three services. each morse circuit will be seen to include, serially, two -ohm impedance coils, and to have shunts through condensers to ground. the -ohm coils are connected differentially, offering low consequent impedance to morse impulses, whose frequency of interruption is not great. as the impedance coils are large, have cores of considerable length, and are wound with two separate though serially connected windings each, their impedance to voice currents is great. they act as though they were not connected differentially, so far as voice currents are concerned. because of the condensers serially in the telephone line, voice currents can pass through it, but direct currents can not. impulses due to discharges of cores, coils, and capacities in the morse circuit _could_ make sounds in the telephones, but these are choked out, or led to earth by the -ohm impedance coils and the heavy morse condensers. =ringing.= ringing over simplex circuits is done in the way usual where no telegraph service is added. both telegraphy and telephony over simplex circuits follow their usual practice in the way of calling and conversing. in composite working, however, ringing by usual methods either is impossible because of heavy grounds and shunts, or if it is possible to get ringing signals through at all, the relays of the morse apparatus will chatter, interfering with the proper use of the telegraph portion of the service. it is customary, therefore, either to equip composite circuits with special signaling devices by which high-frequency currents pass over the telephone circuits, operating relays which in turn operate local ringing signals; or to refrain from ringing on composite circuits and to transmit orders for connections by telegraph. the latter is wholly satisfactory over composite lines between points having heavy telegraph traffic, and it is between such points as these that composite practice is most general. =phantoms from simplex and composite circuits.= phantom and simplex principles are identical, and by adding the composite principle, two simplex circuits may have a phantom superadded, as in fig. . similarly, as in fig. , two composite circuits can be phantomed. this case gives seven distinct services over four wires: three telephone loops--two physical and one phantom--and four morse lines. [illustration: fig. . phantom of two simplex circuits] [illustration: fig. . phantom of two composite circuits] =railway composite.= the foregoing are problems of making telegraphy a by-product of telephony. with so many telegraph wires on poles over the country, it has seemed a pity not to turn the thing around and provide for telephony as a by-product of telegraphy. this has been accomplished, and the result is called a railway composite system. for the reason that the telegraph circuits are not in pairs, accurately matched one wire against another, and are not always uniform as to material, it has not been possible to secure as good telephone circuits from telegraph wires as telegraph circuits from telephone wires. practical results are secured by adaptation of the original principle of different frequencies. a study of fig. shows that over such a composite circuit the usual method of ringing from station to station over the telephone circuit by an alternating current of a frequency of about sixteen per second is practically impossible. this is because of the heavy short-circuit provided by the two -ohm choke coils at each of the stations, the heavy shunt of the large condensers, and the grounding through the -ohm choke coils. if high-frequency speech currents can pass over these circuits with a very small loss, other high-frequency circuits should find a good path. there are many easy ways of making such currents, but formerly none very simple for receiving them. fig. shows one simple observer of such high-frequency currents, it being merely an adaptation of the familiar polarized ringer used in every subscriber's telephone. in either position of the armature it makes contact with one or the other of two studs connected to the battery, so that in all times of rest the relay _a_ is energized. when a high-frequency current passes through this polarized relay, however, there is enough time in which the armature is out of contact with either stud to reduce the total energy through the relay _a_ and allow its armature to fall away, ringing a vibrating bell or giving some other signal. [illustration: fig. . ringing device for composite circuits] fig. shows a form of apparatus for producing the high-frequency current necessary for signaling. it is evident that if a magneto generator, such as is used in ordinary magneto telephones, could be made to drive its armature fast enough, it also might furnish the high-frequency current necessary for signaling through condensers and past heavy impedances. [illustration: fig. . ringing current device] applying these principles of high-frequency signals sent and received to a single-wire telegraph circuit, the arrangement shown in fig. results, this being a type of railway composite circuit. the principal points of interest herein are the insertion of impedances in series with the telegraph lines, the shunting of the telegraph relays by small condensers, the further shunting of the whole telegraph mechanism of a station by another condenser, and thus keeping out of the line circuit changes in current values which would be heard in the telephones if violent, and might be inaudible if otherwise. [illustration: fig. . railway composite circuit] [illustration: front of long-distance power board u.s. telephone company, cleveland, ohio. _the dean electric co._] a further interesting element is the very heavy shunting of the telephone receiver by means of an inductive coil. this shunt is applied for by-path purposes so that heavy disturbing currents may be kept out of the receiver while a sufficient amount of voice current is diverted through the receiver. it is well to have the inductance of this shunt made adjustable by providing a movable iron core for the shunt winding. when the core is drawn out of the coil, its impedance is diminished because the inductance is diminished. this reduces the amount of disturbing noise in the receiver. the core should be withdrawn as little as the amount of disturbance permits, as this also diminishes the loudness of the received speech. because the signaling over lines equipped with this form of composite working results in the ringing of a bell by means of local current, it is of particular advantage in cases where the bell needs to ring loudly. switch stations, crossings, and similar places where the attendant is not constantly near the telephone can be equipped with this type of composite apparatus and it so offers a valuable substitute for regular railway telegraph equipment, with which the attendant may not be familiar. the success of the local bell-ringing arrangement, however, depends on accurate relay adjustment and on the maintenance of a primary battery. the drain on the ringing battery is greater than on the talking battery. a good substitute for the bell signal on railway composite circuits is a telephone receiver responding directly to high-frequency currents over the line. the receiver is designed specially for the purpose and is known as a "howler." its signal can be easily heard through a large room. the condenser in series with it is of small capacity, limiting the drain upon the line. usually the howler is detached by the switch hook during conversation from a station. _railway composite set._ the circuit of a set utilizing such an arrangement together with other details of a complete railway composite set is shown in fig. . the drawing is arranged thus, in the hope of simplifying the understanding of its principles. it will be seen that the induction coil serves as an interrupter as well as for transmission. all of the contacts are shown in the position they have during conversation. the letters _hc _, _hc _, etc., and _kc _, _kc _, etc., refer to hook contacts and key contacts, respectively, of the numbers given. the arrangements of the hook and key springs are shown at the right of the figure. _rr_ represent impedance coils connected serially in the line and placed at terminal stations. the composite telephone sets are bridged from the line to ground at any points between the terminal impedance coils. the direct currents of telegraphy are prevented from passing to ground through the telephone set during conversation by the -microfarad condenser which is in series with the receiver. they are prevented from passing to ground through the telephone set when the receiver is on the hook by a . microfarad condenser in series with the howler. the alternating currents of speech and interrupter signaling are kept from passing to ground at terminals by the impedance coils. signals are sent from the set by pressing the key _k_. this operates the vibrator by closing contacts _kc _ and _kc _. the howler is cut off and the receiver is short-circuited by the same operation of the key. the impedance of the coil _i_ is changed by moving its adjustable core. [illustration: fig. . railway composite set] =applications.= a chief use of composite and simplex circuits is for ticket wire purposes. these are circuits over which long-distance operators instruct each other as to connecting and disconnecting lines, the routing of calls, and the making of appointments. one such wire will care for all the business of many long-distance trunks. the public also absorbs the telegraph product of telephone lines. such telegraph service is leased to brokers, manufacturers, merchants, and newspapers. railway companies use portable telephone adjuncts to telegraph circuits on trains for service from stations not able to support telegraph attendants, and in a limited degree for the dispatching of trains. telephone train dispatching, however, merits better equipment than a railway composite system affords. chapter xl telephone train dispatching[a] it has been only within the past three few that the telephone has begun to replace the telegraph for handling train movements. the telegraph and the railroads have grown up together in this country since , and in view of the excellent results that the telegraph has given in train dispatching and of the close alliance that has always naturally existed between the railway and the telegraph, it has been difficult for the telephone, which came much later, to enter the field. =rapid growth.= the telephone has been in general use among the railroads for many years, but only on a few short lines has it been used for dispatching trains. in these cases the ordinary magneto circuit and instruments have been employed, differing in no respect from those used in commercial service at the present time. code ringing was used and the number of stations on a circuit was limited by the same causes that limit the telephones on commercial party lines at present. the present type of telephone dispatching systems, however, differs essentially from the systems used in commercial work, and is, in fact, a highly specialized party-line system, arranged for selective ringing and _many stations_. the first of the present type was installed by the new york central and hudson river railroad in october, , between albany and fonda, new york, a distance of miles. this section of the road is on the main line and has four tracks controlled by block signals. the chicago, burlington, and quincy railroad was the second to install train-dispatching circuits. in december, , a portion of the main line from aurora to mendota, illinois, a distance of miles, was equipped. this was followed in quick succession by various other circuits ranging, in general, in lengths over miles. at the present time there are over train-dispatching circuits on the chicago, burlington, and quincy railroad covering miles of double track, miles of multi-track, and , miles of single track, and connecting with stations. other railroads entered this field in quick order after the initial installations, and at the present time nearly every large railroad system in the united states is equipped with several telephone train-dispatching circuits and all of these seem to be extending their systems. in , several railroads, including the delaware, lackawanna, and western, had their total mileage equipped with telephone dispatching circuits. the atchison, topeka, and santa fe railroad is equipping its whole system as rapidly as possible and already is the largest user of this equipment in this country. from latest information, over railroads have entered this field, with the result that the telephone is now in use in railroad service on over , miles of line. =causes of its introduction.= the reasons leading to the introduction of the telephone into the dispatching field were of this nature: first, and most important, was the enactment of state and federal laws limiting to nine hours the working day of railroad employes transmitting or receiving orders pertaining to the movement of trains. the second, which is directly dependent upon the first, was the inability of the railroads to obtain the additional number of telegraph operators which were required under the provisions of the new laws. it was estimated that , additional operators would be required to maintain service in the same fashion after the new laws went into effect in . the increased annual expense occasioned by the employment of these additional operators was roughly estimated at $ , , . a third reason is found in the decreased efficiency of the average railway and commercial telegraph operator. there is a very general complaint among the railroads today regarding this particular point, and many of them welcome the telephone, because, if for no other reason, it renders them independent of the telegrapher. what has occasioned this decrease in efficiency it is not easy to say, but there is a strong tendency to lay it, in part, to the attitude of the telegraphers' organization toward the student operator. it is a fact, too, that the limits which these organizations have placed on student operators were directly responsible for the lack of available men when they were needed. =advantages.= in making this radical change, railroad officials were most cautious, and yet we know of no case where the introduction of the telephone has been followed by its abandonment, the tendency having been in all cases toward further installations and more equipment of the modern type. the reasons for this are clear, for where the telephone is used it does not require a highly specialized man as station operator and consequently a much broader field is open to the railroads from which to draw operators. this, we think, is the most far-reaching advantage. the telephone method also is faster. on an ordinary train-dispatching circuit it now requires from . of a second to seconds to call any station. in case a plurality of calls is desired, the dispatcher calls one station after another, getting the answer from one while the next is being called, and so on. by speaking into a telephone many more words may be transmitted in a given time than by morse telegraphy. it is possible to send fifty words a minute by morse, but such speed is exceptional. less than half that is the rule. the gain in high speed, therefore, which is obtained is obvious and it has been found that this is a most important feature on busy divisions. it is true that in the issuance of "orders," the speed, in telephonic train dispatching, is limited to that required to write the words in longhand. but all directions of a collateral character, the receipt of important information, and the instantaneous descriptions of emergency situations can be given and received at a speed limited only by that of human speech. the dispatcher is also brought into a closer personal relation with the station men and trainmen, and this feature of direct personal communication has been found to be of importance in bringing about a higher degree of co-operation and better discipline in the service. telephone dispatching has features peculiar to itself which are important in improving the class of service. one of these is the "answer-back" automatically given to the dispatcher by the waystation bell. this informs the dispatcher whether or not the bell at the station rang, and excuses by the operators that it did not, are eliminated. anyone can answer a telephone call in an emergency. the station operator is frequently agent also, and his duties often take him out of hearing of the telegraph sounder. the selector bell used with the telephone can be heard for a distance of several hundred feet. in addition, it is quite likely that anyone in the neighborhood would recognize that the station was wanted and either notify the operator or answer the call. in cases of emergency the train crews can get into direct communication with the dispatcher immediately, by means of portable telephone sets which are carried on the trains. it is a well-known fact that every minute a main line is blocked by a wreck can be reckoned as great loss to the railroad. it is also possible to install siding telephone sets located either in booths or on poles along the right-of-way. these are in general service today at sidings, crossings, drawbridges, water tanks, and such places, where it may be essential for a train crew to reach the nearest waystation to give or receive information. the advantage of these siding sets is coming more and more to be realized. with the telegraph method of dispatching, a train is ordered to pass another train at a certain siding, let us say. it reaches this point, and to use a railroad expression, "goes into the hole." now, if anything happens to the second train whereby it is delayed, the first train remains tied up at that siding without the possibility of either reaching the dispatcher or being reached by him. with the telephone station at the siding, which requires no operator, this is avoided. if a train finds itself waiting too long, the conductor goes to the siding telephone and talks to the dispatcher, possibly getting orders which will advance him many miles that would otherwise have been lost. it is no longer necessary for a waystation operator to call the dispatcher. when one of these operators wishes to talk to the dispatcher, he merely takes his telephone receiver off the hook, presses a button, and speaks to the dispatcher. with the telephone it is a simple matter to arrange for provision so that the chief dispatcher, the superintendent, or any other official may listen in at will upon a train circuit to observe the character of the service. the fact that this can be done and that the operators know it can be done has a very strong tendency to improve the discipline. the dispatchers are so relieved, by the elimination of the strain of continuous telegraphing, and can handle their work so much more quickly with the telephone, that in many cases it has been found possible to increase the length of their divisions from to per cent. =railroad conditions.= one of the main reasons that delayed the telephone for so many years in its entrance to the dispatching field is that the conditions in this field are like nothing which has yet been met with in commercial telephony. there was no system developed for meeting them, although the elements were at hand. a railroad is divided up into a number of divisions or dispatchers' districts of varying lengths. these lengths are dependent on the density of the traffic over the division. in some cases a dispatcher will handle not more than miles of line. in other cases this district may be miles long. over the length of one of these divisions the telephone circuit extends, and this circuit may have upon it or stations, _all of which may be required to listen upon the line at the same time_. it will be seen from this that the telephone dispatching circuit partakes somewhat of the nature of a long-distance commercial circuit in its length, and it also resembles a rural line in that it has a large number of telephones upon it. regarding three other characteristics, namely, that many of these stations may be required to be in on the circuit simultaneously, that they must all be signaled selectively, and that it must also be possible to talk and signal on the circuit simultaneously, a telephone train-dispatching circuit resembles nothing in the commercial field. these requirements are the ones which have necessitated the development of special equipment. =transmitting orders.= the method of giving orders is the same as that followed with the telegraph, with one important exception. when the dispatcher transmits a train order by telephone, he writes out the order as he speaks it into his transmitter. in this way the speed at which the order is given is regulated so that everyone receiving it can easily get it all down, and a copy of the transmitted order is retained by the dispatcher. all figures and proper names are spelled out. then after an order has been given, it is repeated to the dispatcher by each man receiving it, and he underlines each word as it comes in. this is now done so rapidly that a man can repeat an order more quickly than the dispatcher can underline. the doubt as to the accuracy with which it is possible to transmit information by telephone has been dispelled by this method of procedure, and the safety of telephone dispatching has been fully established. =apparatus.= the apparatus which is employed at waystations may be divided into two groups--the selector equipment and the telephone equipment. the selector is an electro-mechanical device for ringing a bell at a waystation when the dispatcher operates a key corresponding to that station. at first, as in telegraphy, the selector magnets were connected in series in the line, but today all systems bridge the selectors across the telephone circuit in the same way and for the same reasons that it is done in bridging party-line work. there are at the present time three types of selectors in general use, and the mileage operated by means of these is probably considerably over per cent of the total mileage so operated in the country. [illustration: fig. . western electric selector] [illustration: fig. . western electric selector] _the western electric selector._ this selector is the latest and perhaps the simplest. fig. shows it with its glass dust-proof cover on, and fig. shows it with the cover removed. this selector is adapted for operating at high speed, stations being called at the rate of ten per second. the operating mechanism, which is mounted on the front of the selector so as to be readily accessible, works on the central-energy principle--the battery for its operation, as well as for the operation of the bell used in connection with it, both being located at the dispatcher's office. the bell battery may, however, be placed at the waystation if this is desired. the selector consists of two electromagnets which are bridged in series across the telephone circuit and are of very high impedance. it is possible to place as many of these selectors as may be desired across a circuit without seriously affecting the telephonic transmission. direct-current impulses sent out by the dispatcher operate these magnets, one of which is slow and the other quick-acting. the first impulse sent out is a long impulse and pulls up both armatures, thereby causing the pawls above and below the small ratchet wheel, shown in fig. , to engage with this wheel. the remaining impulses operate the quick-acting magnet and step the wheel around the proper number of teeth, but do not affect the slow-acting magnet which remains held up by them. the pawl connected to the slow-acting magnet merely serves to prevent the ratchet wheel from turning back. attached to the ratchet wheel is a contact whose position can be varied in relation to the stationary contact on the left of the selector with which this engages. this contact is set so that when the wheel has been rotated the desired number of teeth, the two contacts will make and the bell be rung. any selector may thus be adjusted for any station, and the selectors are thus interchangeable. when the current is removed from the line at the dispatcher's office, the armatures fall back and everything is restored to normal. an "answer-back" signal is provided with this selector dependent upon the operation of the bell. when the selector at a station operates, the bell normally rings for a few seconds. the dispatcher, however, can hold this ring for any length of time desired. the keys employed at the dispatcher's office for operating selectors are shown in fig. . there is one key for each waystation on the line and the dispatcher calls any station by merely giving the corresponding key a quarter turn to the right. fig. shows the mechanism of one of these keys and the means employed for sending out current impulses over the circuit. the key is adjustable and may be arranged for any station desired by means of the movable cams shown on the rear in fig. , these cams, when occupying different positions, serving to cover different numbers of the teeth of the impulse wheel which operate the impulse contacts. [illustration: fig. . dispatcher's keys] [illustration: fig. . dispatcher's key mechanism] _the gill selector._ the second type of selector in extensive use throughout the country today is known as the gill, after its inventor. it is manufactured for both local-battery and central-energy types, the latter being the latest development of this selector. with the local-battery type, the waystation bell rings until stopped by the dispatcher. with the central-energy type it rings a definite length of time and can be held for a longer period as is the case with the western electric selector. the selector is operated by combinations of direct-current impulses which are sent out over the line by keys in the dispatcher's office. [illustration: fig. . gill selector] the dispatcher has a key cabinet, and calls in the same way as already described, but these keys instead of sending a series of quick impulses, send a succession of impulses with intervals between corresponding to the particular arrangement of teeth in the corresponding waystation selector wheel. each key, therefore, belongs definitely with a certain selector and can be used in connection with no other. a concrete example may make this clearer. the dispatcher may operate key no. . this key starts a clockwork mechanism which impresses at regular intervals, on the telephone line, direct-current impulses, with intervals between as follows: - - - . there is on the line one selector corresponding to this combination and it alone, of all the selectors on the circuit, will step its wheel clear around so that contact is made and the bell is rung. in all the others, the pawls will have slipped out at some point of the revolution and the wheels will have returned to their normal positions. the gill selector is shown in fig. . it contains a double-wound relay which is bridged across the telephone circuit and operates the selector. this relay has a resistance of , ohms and a high impedance, and operates the selector mechanism which is a special modification of the ratchet and pawl principle. the essential features of this selector are the "step-up" selector wheel and a time wheel, normally held at the bottom of an inclined track. the operation of the selector magnet pushes the time wheel up the track and allows it to roll down. if the magnet is operated rapidly, the wheel does not get clear down before being pushed back again. a small pin on the side of the pawl, engaging the selector wheel normally, opposes the selector wheel teeth near their outer points. when the time wheel rolls to the bottom of the track, however, the pawl is allowed to drop to the bottom of the tooth. some of the teeth on the selector wheel are formed so that they will effectually engage with the pawl only when the latter is in normal position, while others will engage only while the pawl is at the bottom position; thus innumerable combinations can be made which will respond to certain combinations of rapid impulses with intervals between. the correct combination of impulses and intervals steps the selector wheel clear around so that a contact is made. the selector wheels at all other stations fail to reach their contact position because at some point or points in their revolution the pawls have slipped out, allowing the selector wheels to return "home." the "answer-back" is provided in this selector by means of a few inductive turns of the bell circuit which are wound on the selector relay. the operation of the bell through these turns induces an alternating current in the selector winding which flows out on the line and is heard as a distinctive buzzing noise by the dispatcher. [illustration: fig. . cummings-wray dispatcher's sender] _the cummings-wray selector._ both of the selectors already described are of a type known as the _individual-call_ selectors, meaning that only one station at a time can be called. if a plurality of calls is desired, the dispatcher calls one station after another. the third type of selector in use today is of a type known as the _multiple-call_, in which the dispatcher can call simultaneously as many stations as he desires. the cummings-wray selector and that of the kellogg switchboard and supply company are of this type and operate on the principle of synchronous clocks. when the dispatcher wishes to put through a call, he throws the keys of all the stations that he desires and then operates a starting key. the bells at all these stations are rung by one operation. the dispatcher's sending equipment of the cummings-wray system is shown in fig. , and the waystation selector in fig. . it is necessary with this system for the clocks at all stations to be wound every eight days. [illustration: fig. . cummings-wray selector] in the dispatcher's master sender the clock-work mechanism operates a contact arm which shows on the face of the sender in fig. . there is one contact for every station on the line. the clock at this office and the clocks at all the waystation offices start together, and it is by this means that the stations are signaled, as will be described later, when the detailed operation of the circuits is taken up. =telephone equipment.= of no less importance than the selective devices is the telephone apparatus. that which is here illustrated is the product of the western electric company, to whom we are indebted for all the illustrations in this chapter. _dispatcher's transmitter._ the dispatcher, in most cases, uses the chest transmitter similar to that employed by switchboard operators in every-day service. he is connected at all times to the telephone circuit, and for this reason equipment easy for him to wear is essential. in very noisy locations he is equipped with a double head receiver. on account of the dispatcher being connected across the line permanently and of his being required to talk a large part of the time, there is a severe drain on the transmitter battery. for this reason storage batteries are generally used. [illustration: fig. . waystation desk telephone] _waystation telephones._ at the waystations various types of telephone equipment may be used. perhaps the most common is the familiar desk stand shown in fig. , which, for railroad service, is arranged with a special hook-switch lever for use with a head receiver. often some of the familiar swinging-arm telephone supports are used, in connection with head receivers, but certain special types developed particularly for railway use are advantageous, because in many cases the operator who handles train orders is located in a tower where he must also attend to the interlocking signals, and for such service it is necessary for him to be able to get away from the telephone and back to it quickly. the western electric telephone arm developed for this use is shown in fig. . in this the transmitter and the receiver are so disposed as to conform approximately to the shape of the operator's head. when the arm is thrown back out of the way it opens the transmitter circuit by means of a commutator in its base. [illustration: fig. . telephone arm] _siding telephones._ two types of sets are employed for siding purposes. the first is an ordinary magneto wall instrument, which embodies the special apparatus and circuit features employed in the standard waystation sets. these are used only where it is possible to locate them indoors or in booths along the line. these sets are permanently connected to the train wire, and since the chances are small that more than one of them will be in use at a time, they are rung by the dispatcher, by means of a regular hand generator, when it is necessary for him to signal a switching. [illustration: fig. . weather-proof telephone set] in certain cases it is not feasible to locate these siding telephone sets indoors, and to meet these conditions an iron weather-proof set is employed, as shown in figs. and . the apparatus in this set is treated with a moisture-proofing compound, and the casing itself is impervious to weather conditions. [illustration: fig. . weather-proof telephone set] _portable train sets._ portable telephone sets are being carried regularly on wrecking trains and their use is coming into more and more general acceptance on freight and passenger trains. fig. shows one of these sets equipped with a five-bar generator for calling the dispatcher. fig. shows a small set without generator for conductors' and inspectors' use on lines where the dispatcher is at all times connected in the circuit. [illustration: fig. . portable telephone set] [illustration: fig. . portable telephone set] these sets are connected to the telephone circuit at any point on the line by means of a light portable pole arranged with terminals at its outer extremity for hooking over the line wires, and with flexible conducting cords leading to the portable set. the use of these sets among officials on their private cars, among construction and bridge gangs working on the line, and among telephone inspectors and repairmen for reporting trouble, is becoming more and more general. =western electric circuits.= as already stated, a telephone train-dispatching circuit may be from to miles in length, and upon this may be as many stations as can be handled by one dispatcher. the largest known number of stations upon an existing circuit of this character is . [illustration: fig. . dispatcher's station--western electric system] _dispatcher's circuit arrangement._ the circuits of the dispatcher's station in the western electric system are shown in fig. , the operation of which is briefly as follows: when the dispatcher wishes to call any particular station, he gives the key corresponding to that station a quarter turn. this sends out a series of rapid direct-current impulses on the telephone line through the contact of a special telegraph relay which is operated by the key in a local circuit. the telegraph relay is equipped with spark-eliminating condensers around its contacts and is of heavy construction throughout in order to carry properly the sending current. _voltage._ the voltage of the sending battery is dependent on the length of the line and the number of stations upon it. it ranges from to volts in most cases. when higher voltages are required in order successfully to operate the circuit, it is generally customary to install a telegraph repeater circuit at the center of the line, in order to keep the voltage within safe limits. one reason for limiting the voltage employed is that the condensers used in the circuit will not stand much higher potentials without danger of burning out. it is also possible to halve the voltage by placing the dispatcher in the center of the line, from which position he may signal in two directions instead of from one end. _simultaneous talking and signaling._ retardation coils and condensers will be noticed in series with the circuit through which the signaling current must pass before going out on the line. these are for the purpose of absorbing the noise which is caused by high-voltage battery, thus enabling the dispatcher to talk and signal simultaneously. the -ohm resistance connected across the circuit through one back contact of the telegraph relay absorbs the discharge of the -microfarad condenser. [illustration: fig. . selector set--western electric system] =waystation circuit.= the complete selector set for the waystations is shown in fig. , and the wiring diagram of its apparatus in fig. . the first impulse sent out by the key in the dispatcher's office is a long direct-current impulse, the first tooth being three or four times as wide as the other teeth. this impulse operates both magnets of the selector and attracts their armatures, which, in turn, cause two pawls to engage with the ratchet wheel, while the remaining quick impulses operate the "stepping-up" pawl and rotate the wheel the requisite number of teeth. retardation coils are placed in series with the selector in order to choke back any lightning discharges which might come in over the line. the selector contact, when operated, closes a bell circuit, and it will be noted that both the selector and the bell are operated from battery current coming over the main line through variable resistances. there are, of course, a number of selectors bridged across the circuit, and the variable resistance at each station is so adjusted as to give each approximately milliamperes, which allows a large factor of safety for line leakage in wet weather. the drop across the coils at milliamperes is volts. if these coils were not employed, it is clear that the selectors nearer the dispatcher would get most of the current and those further away very little. [illustration: fig. . selector set--western electric system] a time-signal contact is also indicated on the selector-circuit diagram of fig. . this is common to all offices and may be operated by a special key in the dispatcher's office, thereby enabling him to send out time signals over the telephone circuit. [illustration: fig. . gill dispatcher's station] =gill circuits.= the circuit arrangement for the dispatcher's outfit of the gill system is shown in fig. . this is similar to that of the western electric system just described. the method of operation also is similar, the mechanical means of accomplishing the selection being the main point of difference. in fig. the wiring of the gill selector at a waystation for local-battery service is shown. the selector contact closes the bell circuit in the station and a few windings of this circuit are located on the selector magnets, as shown. these provide the "answer-back" by inductive means. [illustration: fig. . gill selector--local battery] fig. shows the wiring of the waystation, central-energy gill selector. in this case, the local battery for the operation of the bell is omitted and the bell is rung, as is the case of the western electric selector, by the main sending battery in the dispatcher's office. [illustration: fig. . gill selector--central energy] the sending keys of these two types of circuits differ, in that with the local-battery selector the key contact is open after the selector has operated, and the ringing of the bell must be stopped by the dispatcher pressing a button or calling another station. either of these operations sends out a new current impulse which releases the selector and opens its circuit. with the central-energy selector, however, the contacts of the sending key at the dispatcher's office remain closed after operation for a definite length of time. this is obviously necessary in order that battery may be kept on the line for the operation of the bell. in this case the contacts remain closed during a certain portion of the revolution of the key, and the bell stops ringing when that portion of the revolution is completed. if, however, the dispatcher desires to give any station a longer ring, he may do so by keeping the key contacts closed through an auxiliary strap key as soon as he hears the "answer-back" signal from the called station. =cummings-wray circuits.= the cummings-wray system, as previously stated, is of the multiple-call type, operating with synchronous clocks. instead of operating one key after another in order to call a number of stations, all the keys are operated at once and a starting key sets the mechanism in motion which calls all these stations with one operation. fig. shows the circuit arrangement of this system. [illustration: fig. . cummings-wray system] in order to ring one or more stations, the dispatcher presses the corresponding key or keys and then operates the starting key. this starting key maintains its contact for an appreciable length of time to allow the clock mechanism to get under way and get clear of the releasing magnet clutch. closing the starting key operates the clock-releasing magnet and also operates the two telegraph-line relays. these send out an impulse of battery on the line operating the bridged , -ohm line relays and, in turn, the selector releasing magnets; thus, all the waystation clocks start in unison with the master clock. the second hand arbor of each clock carries an arm, which at each waystation is set at a different angle with the normal position than that at any other station. each of these arms makes contact precisely at the moment the master-clock arm is passing over the contact corresponding to that station. if, now, a given station key is pressed in the master sender, the telegraph-line relays will again operate when the master-clock arm reaches that point, sending out another impulse of battery over the line. the selector contact at the waystation is closed at this moment; therefore, the closing of the relay contact operates the ringing relay through a local circuit, as shown. the ringing relay is immediately locked through its own contact, thus maintaining the bell circuit closed until it is opened by the key and the ringing is stopped. as the master-clock arm passes the last point on the contact dial, the current flows through the restoring relay operating the restoring magnet which releases all the keys. a push button is provided by means of which the keys may be manually released, if desired. this is used in case the dispatcher presses a key by mistake. retardation coils and variable resistances are provided at the waystation just as with the other selector systems which have been described and for the same reasons. the circuits of the operator's telephone equipment shown in fig. , are also bridged across the line. this apparatus is of high impedance and of a special design adapted to railroad service. there may be any number of telephones listening in upon a railroad train wire at the same time, and often a dispatcher calls in five or six at once to give orders. these conditions have necessitated the special circuit arrangement shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. . telephone circuits] the receivers used at the waystations are of high impedance and are normally connected, through the hook switch, directly across the line in series with a condenser. when the operator, at a waystation wishes to talk, however, he presses the key shown. this puts the receiver across the line in series with the retardation coil and in parallel with the secondary of the induction coil. it closes the transmitter battery circuit at the same time through the primary of the induction coil. the retardation coil is for the purpose of preventing excessive side tone, and it also increases the impedance of the receiver circuit, which is a shunt on the induction coil. this latter coil, however, is of a special design which permits just enough current to flow through the receiver to allow the dispatcher to interrupt a waystation operator when he is talking. the key used to close the transmitter battery is operated by hand and is of a non-locking type. in some cases, where the operators are very busy, a foot switch is used in place of this key. the use of such a key or switch in practical operation has been found perfectly satisfactory, and it takes the operators but a short time to become used to it. the circuits of the dispatcher's office are similarly arranged, fig. , being designed especially to facilitate their operation. in other words, as the dispatcher is doing most of the work on the circuit, his receiver is of a low-impedance type, which gives him slightly better transmission than the waystations obtain. the key in his transmitter circuit is of the locking type, so that he does not have to hold it in while talking. this is for the reason that the dispatcher does most of the talking on this circuit. foot switches are also employed in some cases by the dispatchers. =test boards.= it is becoming quite a general practice among the railroads to install more than one telephone circuit along their rights-of-way. in many cases in addition to the train wire, a message circuit is also equipped, and quite frequently a block wire also operated by telephone, parallels these two. it is desirable on these circuits to be able to make simple tests and also to be able to patch one circuit with another in cases of emergency. [illustration: fig. . test board] test boards have been designed for facilitating this work. these consist of simple plug and jack boxes, the general appearance of which is shown in fig. . the circuit arrangement of one of these is shown in fig. . each wire comes into an individual jack as will be noted on one side of the board, and passes through the inside contact of this jack, out through a similar jack on the opposite side. the selector and telephone set at an office are taken off these inside contacts through a key, as shown. the outside contacts of this key are wired across two pairs of cords. now, assume the train wire comes in on jacks _ _ and _ _, and the message wire on jacks _ _ and _ _. in case of an accident to the train wire between two stations, it is desirable to patch this connection with a message wire in order to keep the all-important train wire working. the dispatcher instructs the operator at the last station which he can obtain, to insert plugs _ _ and _ _ in jacks _ _ and _ _, and plugs _ _ and _ _ in jacks _ _ and _ _, at the same time throwing the left-hand key. then, obtaining an operator beyond the break by any available means, he instructs him likewise to insert plugs _ _ and _ _ in jacks _ _ and _ _, and plugs _ _ and _ _ in jacks _ _ and _ _, similarly throwing the left-hand key. by tracing this out, it will be observed that the train wire is patched over the disabled section by means of the message circuit, and that the selector and the telephone equipment are cut over on to the patched connections; in other words, bridged across the patching cords. [illustration: fig. . circuits of test board] it will also be seen that with this board it is possible to open any circuit merely by plugging into a jack. two wires can be short-circuited or a loop made by plugging two cords of corresponding colors into the two jacks. a ground jack is provided for grounding any wire. in this way, a very flexible arrangement of circuits is obtained, and it is possible to make any of the simple tests which are all that are usually required on this type of circuit. =blocking sets.= as was just mentioned, quite frequently in addition to train wires and message circuits, block wires are also operated by telephone. in some cases separate telephone instruments are used for the blocking service, but in others the same man handles all three circuits over the same telephone. the block wire is generally a converted telegraph wire between stations, usually of iron and usually grounded. it seldom ranges in length over six miles. [illustration: fig. . blocking set] where the block wires are operated as individual units with their own instruments, it is unnecessary to have any auxiliary apparatus to be used in connection with them. where, however, they are operated as part of a system and the same telephone is used on these that is used on the train wire and message wire, additional apparatus, called a blocking set, is required. this blocking set, shown in figs. and , was developed especially for this service by the western electric company. as will be noted, a repeating coil at the top and a key on the front of the set are wired in connection with a pair of train wire cords. this repeating coil is for use in connecting a grounded circuit to a metallic circuit, as, for instance, connecting a block wire to the train wire, and is, of course, for the purpose of eliminating noise. below the key are three combined jacks and signals. one block wire comes into each of these and a private line may be brought into the middle one. when the next block rings up, a visual signal is displayed which operates a bell in the office by means of a local circuit. the operator answers by plugging the telephone cord extending from the bottom of the set into the proper jack. this automatically restores the signal and stops the bell. [illustration: fig. . blocking set] below these signals appear four jacks. one is wired across the train wire; one across the message wire; and the other two are bridged across the two pairs of patching cords on each side of the set. the operator answers a call on any circuit by plugging his telephone cord into the proper jack. if a waystation is not kept open in the evening, or the operator leaves it for any reason and locks up, he can connect two blocks together by means of the block-wire cords. these are arranged simply for connecting two grounded circuits together and serve to join two adjacent blocks, thereby eliminating one station. a jack is wired across these cords, so that the waystation operator can listen in on the connection if he so desires. in some cases not only are the telephone circuits brought into the test board, but also two telegraph wires are looped through this board before going to the peg switchboard. this is becoming quite a frequent practice and, in times of great emergency, enables patches to be made to the telegraph wires as well as to the telephone wires. =dispatching on electric railways.= as interurban electric railways are becoming more extended, and as their traffic is becoming heavier, they approximate more closely to steam methods of operation. it is not unusual for an electric railway to dispatch its cars exactly as in the case of a steam road. there is a tendency, however, in this class of work, toward slightly different methods, and these will be briefly outlined. on those electric railways where the traffic is not especially heavy, an ordinary magneto telephone line is frequently employed with standard magneto instruments. in some cases the telephone sets are placed in waiting rooms or booths along the line of the road. in other cases it is not feasible to locate the telephone indoors and then iron weather-proof sets, such as are shown in figs. and , are mounted directly on the poles along the line of railway. with a line of this character there is usually some central point from which orders are issued and the trainmen call this number when arriving at sidings or wherever they may need to do so. another method of installing a telephone system upon electric railways is as follows: instead of instruments being mounted in booths or on poles along the line, portable telephone sets are carried on the cars and jacks are located at regular intervals along the right-of-way on the poles. the crew of the car wishing to get in touch with the central office or the dispatcher, plugs into one of these jacks and uses the portable telephone set. at indoor stations, in offices or buildings belonging to the railroad, the regular magneto sets may be employed, as in the first case outlined. on electric railway systems where the traffic is heavy, the train or car movements may be handled by a dispatcher just as on the steam railroad. there is usually one difference, however. on a steam road, the operators who give the train crews their orders and manipulate the semaphore signals are located at regular intervals in the different waystations. no such operators are usually found on electric railways, except, perhaps, at very important points, and, therefore, it is necessary for the dispatcher to be able to signal cars at any point and to get into communication with the crews of these cars. he does this by means of semaphores operated by telephone selectors over the telephone line. the telephone circuit may be equipped with any number of selectors desired, and the dispatcher can operate any particular one without operating any other one on the circuit. each selector, when operated, closes a pair of contacts. this completes a local circuit which throws the semaphore arm to the "danger" position, at the same time giving the dispatcher a distinctive buzz in his ear, which informs him that the arm has actually moved to this position. he can get this signal only by the operation of the arm. each semaphore is located adjacent to a telephone booth in which is also placed the restoring lever, by means of which the semaphore is set in the "clear" position by the crew of the car which has been signaled. the wall-type telephone set is usually employed for this class of service, but if desired, desk stands or any of the various transmitter arms may be used. it is necessary for the crew of the car which first approaches a semaphore set at "danger," to get out, communicate with the dispatcher, and restore the signal to the "clear" position. the dispatcher can not restore the signal. the signal is set only in order that the train crew may get into telephonic communication with the dispatcher, and in order to do this, it is necessary for them to go into the booth in any case. [footnote a: we wish particularly to acknowledge the courtesy of the western electric company in their generous assistance in the preparation of this chapter.] review questions review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what are the advantages of a common-battery system? . when is the local battery to be preferred to the common-battery? . enumerate the different kinds of line signals. . make a diagram of the arrangement of a direct line lamp signal. . what is a direct line lamp with ballast? give sketch. . describe a line lamp with relay. . what is a pilot lamp and what are its functions? . sketch three different kinds of batteries applied to cord circuits. . what is a supervisory signal? . make diagram of a complete simple common-battery switchboard circuit. . when will the supervisory signal become operative? . what is the candle-power of incandescent lamps used for line and supervisory signals? . at what voltages do they operate? . what are visual signals? . describe the mechanical signal of the western electric company. . give a short description of the general assembly of the parts of a simple common-battery switchboard. . what is a transfer switchboard? . outline the limitations of a simple switchboard. . describe and sketch a plug-ended transfer line. . why is the plug-seat switch not more widely adopted for use? . make diagram of an order-wire arrangement. . what are the limitations of the transfer system? . what are the fundamental features of the multiple switchboard? . what is a multiple jack? . what is an answering jack? . make a diagram showing the principle of multiple switchboards. . what is the busy signal? . what determines the size of a multiple switchboard? . what is the use of the intermediate distributing frame? . make diagram of the series magneto multiple switchboard and describe its operation. . what are the defects of this system? . give a diagram of the branch terminal magneto multiple switchboard. . give a diagram and a short description of the monarch magneto multiple switchboard. review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . sketch and describe the line circuit of the common-battery multiple switchboard of the bell companies. . make a diagram of the cord circuit of the western electric standard multiple common-battery switchboard. . describe the busy test in this system. . what is the function of the order-wire circuits? . what is jumper wire? . give a short description of the relay mounting in the standard no. relay board of the western electric company. . what is the ultimate capacity of the no. western electric switchboard? . what is the capacity of the no. western electric switchboard? . how does this switchboard no. differ from no. ? . give a diagram of the two-wire line circuit of the kellogg company. . what is the capacity of the condenser of the cord circuit in the foregoing system? . give a complete diagram of the kellogg two-wire board. . describe the busy test in this system. . give diagram of the stromberg-carlson multiple-board circuit. . what is the most important piece of apparatus in a multiple switchboard? . what is the spacing of the multiple jacks in the no. western electric switchboard? . how do the relays of the western electric company differ from those of other companies? . describe the relay construction of the monarch telephone company. . what is meant by inter-office trunking? . what is the present practice in america as to the capacity of multiple hoards? . what is the tendency in europe regarding the capacity of multiple boards? . discuss the preferences in american practice. . state the different methods of trunking between exchanges. . when are two-way trunks employed? . make diagram of the western electric inter-office connection system. . describe the standard four-party line trunk ringing key of the western electric company. . sketch and describe a keyless trunk. . give diagram of the inter-office connection of the kellogg system. . how does this system differ from the western electric in regard to the ringing? . why are the a and b switchboards in large exchanges entirely separated? review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what is the general object of automatic telephone systems? . what are the common arguments against these systems and how are they met? . give the operations that the calling subscriber has to go through in any one of the successful systems. . during calling what is happening at the central office? . describe the action of the strowger or automatic electric company selecting switch. . what is the function of a line switch? . describe the strowger scheme of trunking and illustrate its action by diagram. . make a diagram of the sub-station apparatus and connections. . make a diagram of the line switch unit. . describe the action of the various guarding features necessary to protect a busy line. . make a simple diagram of the circuits of the first selector. . give the functions and operations of the connector. . give a diagram of connecting circuits. . tell all you can regarding the battery supply to the connected subscriber. . how are subscribers disconnected after they are through talking? . describe a multi-office system. . give a diagram of circuits of the trunk repeater. . make a complete diagram of the connections between a calling and a called subscriber in an automatic system. . what is the rotary connector? . describe the sub-station equipment of the lorimer automatic system. . describe the lorimer central-office apparatus. . give a description of the progress of a call from its institution to the final disconnection in the lorimer system. . what is the automanual system? . give general features of the operation in the automanual system. . describe the automanual system subscribers' apparatus. . give a description of the automanual central-office equipment. review questions on subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what kinds of currents are employed? . what types of power plants are used? . describe the sources of current supplied for the operator's transmitter current and ringing current. . make a diagram of the warner pole changer. . make a diagram of pole changers for harmonic ringing. . what is a multi-cyclic generator set? . make a diagram of governor for harmonic ringing generators. . describe the various primary sources of power. . make a diagram of the mercury-arc-rectifier circuits. . what provision against breakdown is made? . tell all you can about the storage battery--its construction and its operation. . what is a pilot cell? . describe the switches, meters, and protective devices used on the power switchboard. . give a diagram showing a typical example of a common-battery manual switchboard equipment and circuits. . give the main points concerning the construction of a central-office building. . what provision should be made for cable runways? . make a sketch of a small central-office floor plan. . describe the western electric main and intermediate frames. give diagrams. . give principal points regarding small office terminal apparatus. . give types of line circuits. . describe the typical equipment of a large manual office. give floor plans. . give floor plan of an automatic office. review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . what is a private-branch exchange? . what does "p. b. x." mean? . what is the function of the private-branch exchange operator? . describe the key type of a small private-branch exchange switchboard. . describe the different methods of supervision of private-branch connections. . describe the automatic equipment of the common-battery type in private-branch exchanges. . how is secrecy of individual lines obtained in a private-exchange equipment? . what is an intercommunicating system? . sketch a magneto intercommunicating system. . sketch and describe a plug type common-battery intercommunicating system. . sketch and describe the action of the push button in the monarch system and in the western electric system. . sketch and describe the monarch intercommunicating system. . what is the office of the junction box in this system? . what is a long-distance message? . what is the function of the repeating coil in the long-distance line? . which is the simplest form of long-distance switch? . what is a phantom circuit? . under what control is the ringing of the subscriber in long-distance calls? . what is meant by ticket passing? . what particular advantage has a common-battery set on long-distance lines? . give a typical load curve for telephone traffic. . why is traffic a study of importance? . state the function of the intermediate distributing frame. . state the different methods of traffic study. . what is the trunking factor? . define _trunking efficiency_. . enumerate some of the elements upon which the quality of service in a manual system depends. . what is team work? . how does the cost of telephone service vary? . what two general methods of charging for telephone service are in use? . describe a calculagraph and how is it used? . how are toll connections timed by the monarch telephone company? . sketch and describe the western electric company line circuit and service meter. review questions on the subject of telephony pages -- * * * * * . describe a phantom circuit with diagram. . explain how two phantoms may be joined by a physical circuit. . which are the better, phantom or physical circuits, and why? . explain how the simplex circuit differs from the phantom telephone circuit. . why are not telegraph wires as serviceable for telephone work as telephone wires are for telegraph work? . give the names of the different parts of a railway composite set and explain method of operating. . state the causes of the introduction of the telephone into the train dispatching field and explain the advantages it has over the telegraph for this work. . in transmitting orders for train dispatching, how are mistakes avoided? . describe the western electric selector and explain its use. . in what way does the gill selector differ from the western electric? . what special feature does the multiple coil selector possess? . what special arrangement is provided for the train dispatcher in noisy locations? . how can a man on a wrecking train get connection with the train dispatcher? . what is the usual limit in length of a telephone train dispatching circuit and what is the largest number of stations at present existing on such a circuit? . what is the voltage of the sending battery for a train dispatcher's circuit and upon what is it dependent? . for what purpose is a repeater circuit used? . how is the noise caused by a high voltage battery absorbed so that the dispatcher may talk and signal simultaneously? . draw a diagram showing the circuit arrangement for the dispatcher's outfit of the gill system. . explain fully the purpose of the retardation coil in connection with a waystation set. . in case of accident to a train wire between two stations, how can the connection be patched if the road is also equipped with a message circuit in addition to the train wire? . why do some railroads have block wires in addition to train wires and message circuits? . if a waystation on a block wire is to be cut out for any length of time, by what method can the two adjacent blocks be connected, eliminating the station between? . what are some of the methods used for dispatching on electric railways where the traffic is not especially heavy? . on an electric road in case a car approaches a semaphore set at "danger," what must the crew of the car do? index _the page numbers of this volume will be found at the bottom of the pages; the numbers at the top refer only to the section._ a automanual system automatic distribution of calls automatic switching equipment building up a connection characteristics of operation operator's equipment setting up a connection speed in handling calls subscriber's apparatus automatic desk stand automatic electric company's telephone system automatic sub-offices connector function of location of operation of first selector operation function of line switch line switch , bridge cut-off circuit operations guarding functions line and trunk contacts locking segment master switch relation of, to connectors structure of summary of operation trunk ratio trunk selection multi-office system party lines release after conversation rotary connector second selector operation selecting switches , release mechanism side switch subdivision of subscribers' lines subscribers' station apparatus operation bell and transmitter springs ground springs impulse springs release springs ringing springs salient points trunking connector action first selector action line switch action second selector action two-wire automatic systems two-wire and three-wire systems underlying feature of trunking system automatic telephone systems arguments against attitude of public complexity expense flexibility subscriber's station equipment automatic vs. manual comparative costs definition methods of operation fundamental idea grouping of subscribers local and inter-office trunks lorimer system magnet vs. power-driven switches automatic telephone systems methods of operation multiple vs. trunking outline of action strowger system testing trunking between groups automatic wall set b blocking sets busy test busy-test faults potential of test thimbles principle c circuits applications composite phantom transmission over transpositions railway composite ringing simplex common-battery multiple switchboard assembly dean multiple board cord circuit line circuit listening key ringing keys test kellogg two-wire multiple board battery feed busy test complete cord and line circuit cord circuit line circuit summary of operation supervisory signals wiring of line circuit multiple switchboard apparatus jacks lamp jacks relays stromberg-carlson multiple board cord circuit supervisory signals test western electric no. relay board capacity range cord circuit functions of distributing frames line circuit modified relay windings operation operator's circuit detail order-wire circuits pilot signals relay mounting testing--called line busy testing--called line idle wiring of line circuit western electric no. board circuits economy operation test common-battery switchboard advantages of operation common battery vs. magneto cord circuit battery supply complete circuit supervisory signals cycle of operations jacks lamps mounting line signals direct-line lamp direct-line lamp with ballast line lamp with relay pilot signals mechanical signals kellogg monarch western electric relays switchboard assembly composite circuits connector cord circuit cord circuit battery supply complete circuit supervisory signals cord-rack connectors cummings-wray selector d dean multiple board dispatchers' keys dispatching on electric railways g gill selector h housing central-office equipment arrangement of apparatus in small manual offices combined main and intermediate frames floor plans for types of line circuits automatic offices typical automatic office central-office building fire hazard provision for cable runways provision for employes size of building strength of building large manual office i intercommunicating systems common-battery systems kellogg plug type kellogg push-button type monarch system western electric system definition limitations for private-branch exchanges simple magneto system j jacks k kellogg mechanical signal kellogg trunk circuits kellogg two-wire multiple board keyboard wiring l lamp mounting lamps line signals direct-line lamp direct-line lamp with ballast line lamp with relay pilot signals line switch long-distance switching definitions center-checking operators' orders by call circuits by telegraph particular party calls switching through local board ticket passing trunking high-voltage toll trunks through ringing two-number calls use of repeating coil waystations lorimer automatic system , central-office apparatus connective division sectional apparatus switches interconnector interconnector selector primary connector rotary switch secondary connector signal transmitter controller operation subscriber's station equipment m magneto multiple switchboard branch-terminal multiple board arrangement of apparatus magnet windings operation field of utility modern magneto multiple board assembly cord circuit test magneto multiple switchboard series-multiple board defects operation measured service local service meter method prepayment method ticket method rates toll service long haul short haul timing toll connections units of charging mechanical signals kellogg monarch western electric mercury-arc rectifier circuits monarch visual signal multi-office exchanges, necessity for multiple switchboard busy test cord circuits diagram showing principle of double connections field of each operator field of utility influence of traffic line signals multiple feature p phantom circuit pilot signals plug-seat switch pole changers for harmonic ringing power plants auxiliary signaling currents currents employed alternating current direct current operator's transmitter supply power plant circuit power switchboard meters protective devices switches primary sources charging from direct-current mains charging dynamos mercury-arc rectifiers rotary converters provision against breakdown capacity of power units duplicate charging machines duplicate primary sources duplicate ringing machines ringing-current supply magneto generators pole changers ringing dynamos storage battery initial charge installation low cells operation overcharge pilot cell regular charge replacing batteries sediment types common-battery systems magneto systems power switchboard private-branch exchanges with automatic offices secrecy battery supply circuits, key-type board definitions desirable features functions of the private-branch exchange operator marking of apparatus private-branch switchboards common-battery type cord type key type magneto type ringing current supervision of private-branch connections r relays rotary connector s selecting switches selector simplex circuits storage battery storage cell stromberg-carlson multiple board strowger automatic system subscribers' board - switchboard assembly t table automanual system time data automatic systems, messages per trunk in calling rates long-distance groups, messages per trunk in manual system, messages per trunk in out-trunking, effect of, on operator's capacity subscribers' waiting time telephone traffic importance of traffic study methods of traffic study observation of service quality of service accuracy and promptness answering time busy and don't answer calls courtesy and form disconnecting time enunciation team work rates of calling representative traffic data calling rates operators' loads toll traffic trunk efficiency trunking factor traffic variations busy hour ratio unit of traffic telephone train dispatching advantages apparatus cummings-wray selector dispatcher's transmitter gill selector portable train sets siding telephones waystation telephones western electric selector blocking sets causes of its introduction cummings-wray circuits on electric railways gill circuits railroad conditions rapid growth test boards transmitting orders waystation circuits western electric circuits telephone train-dispatching circuit cummings-wray gill waystation western electric test boards transfer switchboard field of usefulness handling transfers limitations plug-seat switch transfer lines jack-ended trunk plug-ended trunk trunking in multi-office systems classification one-way trunks two-way trunks kellogg trunk circuits necessity for exchanges western electric trunk circuits w warner pole changer waystation telephones western electric mechanical signal selector trunk circuits transcriber's notes. spelling variants where it wasn't possible to determine the author's intent were left as is. these include: "clockwork" and "clock-work;" "doorkeeper" and "door-keeper;" "interrelation" and "inter-relation;" "multicyclic" and "multi-cyclic;" "redesign" and "re-design," along with derivatives. added closing double quote in steinmetz entry in list of authorities: "theoretical elements of electrical engineering." changed "switch-hook" to "switch hook" on page : "the subscriber's switch hook." page says there is room for banks of multiple jacks, but then says this allows for , multiple jacks in all, rather than , . based on the figure, banks should be banks, which would correct the arithmetic. however, i did not change this. changed "bi-paths" to "by-paths" on page : "circuits or by-paths." changed "appararus" to "apparatus" on page : "the sectional apparatus." changed "two number" to "two-number" on page : "the two-number calls are ticketed." on page , a paragraph begins with "it has been only within the past three few." perhaps the author meant "it has been only within the past three years" or "it has been only within the past few years." but since i didn't know, i left is as is. changed "them ain" to "the main" on page : "on the main line." changed "weatherproof" to "weather-proof" on page : "iron weather-proof sets." changed "interoffice" to "inter-office" three times on page , to match the spelling in the body of the document: "meant by inter-office trunking;" "inter-office connection system;" "of the inter-office connection." changed "break-down" to "breakdown" on page : "provision against breakdown." changed "way-station" to "waystation" twice on page : "with a waystation set;" and "a waystation on a block wire." changed "way stations" to "waystations" on page , in the entry for long-distance switching. each page of the index repeated this text: "note.--for page numbers see foot of pages." they were removed. transcriber's note: the dimensions of the debugging template and the keypunch card are / " by / ". the debugging template contains two sections on the front and three sections on the back. the back is labelled vertically along the left-hand edge: ibm j . the front of the keypunch card is labelled vertically along the right-hand edge: pryor . holes punched in the card are represented in the text by []. system rpg debugging template -------------------- - comments ----------------------------------------- - zero blk eq | | | --------------------| | | - - lo |result ind.|compare| --------------------| | | - + hi | | | ----------------------------------------- h half adjust ---------------------- decimal pos. ---------------------- - field lgth ---------------------- - result field ---------------------- - ------ factor - ---------------------- - oper. ---------------------- - ------ factor - ---------------------- - | i | -------- | n | n a | d | -------------n--| i | - d | c | -------- | a | n a | t | -------------n--| o | - d | r | -------- | s | n | | ---------------------- - l -l lr control level ---------------------- calculation specs. ---------------------- ---------------------- - constant or edit word ---------------------- p packed ---------------------- - end pos in output record ---------------------- b blank after ---------------------- z zero supp. ---------------------- - field name ---------------------- - | i | -------- | n | n a | d | -------------n--| i | - d | c | -------- | a | n a | t | -------------n--| o | - d | r | -------- | s | n | | ---------------------- - after | | ----------------|skip| - before | | ---------------------- after | | ----------------| sp | before | | ---------------------- stacker ---------------------- h d t ---------------------- - file name ---------------------- output specs. ---------------------- ---------------------- - comments ---------------------- - extent exit for dam ---------------------- - name of label exit ---------------------- sne labels ---------------------- - symbolic device ---------------------- - device ---------------------- el extension code ---------------------- - key field start locatn. ---------------------- - overflow indicator ---------------------- idt type of file org. ---------------------- ki record address type ---------------------- - length of record address field ---------------------- lr mode of processing ---------------------- - record length ---------------------- - block length ---------------------- fv file format ---------------------- ad sequence ---------------------- e end of file ---------------------- pscrt file designation ---------------------- iouc file type ---------------------- - file name ---------------------- file description specs. ---------------------- ---------------------- - comments ---------------------- ad sequence ---------------------- decimal pos. ---------------------- p packed ---------------------- - length of table entry ---------------------- - table name ---------------------- ad sequence ---------------------- decimal pos. ---------------------- p packed ---------------------- - length of table entry ---------------------- - no. of table entries per table ---------------------- - no. of table entries per record ---------------------- - table name ---------------------- - to file name ---------------------- - from file name ---------------------- - number of the chaining field ---------------------- - record sequence of the chaining file ---------------------- file ext. specs. ---------------------- ----------------------------- - zero blk | | -----------------| field | - - |indicators| -----------------| | - + | | ----------------------------- - field record relation ---------------------- - mi matching or chaining ---------------------- - li control levels ---------------------- - field name ---------------------- decimal positions ----------------------- - to | | -------------| field | - from |location| ----------------------- p packed ---------------------- stacker select ---------------------- char | | | -------------| | r | czd | | e | -------------| | c | n | | o | -------------| | r | | | d | | | | - pos. | | i | -----------------| d | char | | e | -------------| | n | czd | | t | -------------| | i | n | | f | -------------| | i | | | c | | | a | - pos. | | t | -----------------| i | char | | o | -------------| | n | czd | | | -------------| | c | n | | o | -------------| | d | | | e | | | s | - pos. | | | ---------------------- - record ident. indic. ---------------------- option (o) ---------------------- number ( -n) ---------------------- - sequence ---------------------- - file name ---------------------- input specs. ---------------------- a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z . $ , # @ % * < + , c ( ! [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] http://www.archive.org/details/wirelesstransmis martuoft transcriber's note: a carat character indicates that the following character (or characters in curly braces) is a superscript. examples: a^ (a raised to the second power), ^{- } ( raised to the - power). text enclosed between underscores was italicized in the original (_italics_). a single underscore indicates that the following character or characters is a subscript. example: cs_ (the " " is a subscript). numbers enclosed by curly braces within the text are page numbers (example: { }), which have been incorporated to enable the reader to use the index. wireless transmission of photographs [illustration: fig. .] * * * * * wireless transmission of photographs by marcus j. martin second edition revised and enlarged the wireless press, ltd. - henrietta street, strand london, w.c. {v} preface to second edition although during the last few years very little, in common with other wireless work, has been possible in connection with the practical side of the wireless transmission of photographs, yet, now that the prospect of experimental work is once again occupying the minds of all wireless workers, advantage has been taken of a reprint of this little volume to amplify a few points that were insufficiently dealt with in the first edition, and also to add some fresh matter. to chapter v. has been added a short description of the nernst lamp, and also some useful information regarding photographic films, and a few notes relating to enlarging included in the appendix b. a fresh appendix dealing with the principles of optical lenses has also been added. this is a subject that plays an important part in any system of wireless photography, and to those experimenters whose knowledge of optics is limited this section should prove useful. to serious workers engaged on the problem of the wireless transmission of photographs, attention {vi} is called to a series of articles which are being published from time to time in the _wireless world_, on the design and construction of wireless photographic apparatus. m. j. m. maidstone, . {vii} preface in these progressive times it is only reasonable to expect that some attempt would be made to utilise the ether-waves for other purposes than that of telegraphic communication, and already many clever minds are at work trying to solve the problems of the wireless control of torpedoes and airships, wireless telephony, and, last but not least, the wireless transmission of photographs. it may seem rather premature to talk about the wireless transmission of photographs at a time when the ordinary systems are not fully developed; but the prospects of wireless photography are of a very encouraging nature, especially for long over-water distances, as there are great difficulties to be overcome in long-distance transmission over ordinary land lines and cables which will be entirely eliminated by wireless methods. from a perusal of chapter i. the reader will be able to understand something of the difficulties that are to be encountered in working over long distances, and he will also be able to appreciate something of the advantages that would be derived {viii} from a reliable wireless system. apart from the value of such a system for transmitting news pictures, it would also be of great advantage to transmit to ships at sea photographs of criminals for identification purposes. in such a small volume as this it would be impossible to deal with the working of wireless apparatus and the many systems that have been devised for the transmission of photographs over metallic circuits. the author has taken it for granted that other works have been studied in connection with these subjects, and will therefore only describe such apparatus as is likely to be of use in wireless transmission. at present the transmission of photographs by wireless methods is in a purely experimental stage, and this book will have served its purpose if it helps to put future experimenters on the right track and prevent them from making expensive and fruitless experiments, by showing them the right direction in which investigations are being carried out. as there is no claim to originality in respect of a good many pieces of apparatus, etc., described, i have not thought it necessary to state the various sources from which the information has been obtained. m. j. m. ashford, . * * * * * {ix} contents page preface to second edition v preface vii chapter i introductory foreword--early experiments--advantages of radio-photography--difficulties in cable working--bernochi's system--knudsen's system. chapter ii transmitting apparatus wireless apparatus--preparing the photographs--transmitting machines--transmitting apparatus--effects of arcing--spark-gaps--contact breakers--complete station--professor korn's apparatus--poulsen company's photographic recorder--comparison of various systems--practical applications. chapter iii receiving apparatus methods of receiving--author's photographic receiver--decohering apparatus--description of einthoven galvanometer--use of galvanometer in receiving--belin's application of blondel's oscillograph--description of charbonelle's receiver--use of telephone relay--description of telephone relay--telephotographic receiver--polarisation receiver--kathode-ray receiver--electrolytic receiver--atmospherics in long-distance working. {x} chapter iv synchronising and driving driving motors--isochronising the electrolytic system--professor korn's method--description of hughes governor--author's speed regulator--problem of synchronising--methods of synchronising--advances made in radio-photography. chapter v the "telephograph" author's system of radio-photography--requirements--advantages--transmitting machine--description of differential relay--wireless receiving apparatus--photo-telegraphic receiving apparatus--circuit breaker--friction brake--magnetic clutch--description of isochroniser--method of working--types of nernst lamp--action of nernst lamp--comparison of actinic value--inertia of photographic films--choosing films--speed of films--standard of speed--comparative film speeds--effects of minimum exposure--effects of maximum exposure--considerations in working and choosing films. appendix a selenium cells nature of selenium--preparation of selenium--forms of selenium cells--action of selenium cells--characteristics of selenium cells--effects of inertia in photo-telegraphy--methods of counteracting inertia--sensitiveness of selenium to light--effect of heat on selenium. appendix b preparing the metal prints outline of process--line screens--choice of camera--fixing line screen in camera--lenses and stops--taking the photograph--copying stands--choice of photographic plates--sources of illumination--metal prints--coating the {xi} metal sheets--sensitising solution--printing operations--developing--intensifying--precautions to be observed in working--preparing sketches on metal--apparatus for reducing or enlarging--improvements to copying board--lenses for copying--formula for copying. appendix c lenses action of light--law of refraction--lenses--prisms--action of lenses--focal length of lenses--formation of images--apparent magnitude of objects--real and virtual images--formation of virtual images--power of magnification--defects of lenses--aberration. * * * * * {xiii} illustrations fig. page . diagram showing effects of capacity on an intermittent current . bernochi's wireless apparatus . knudsen's wireless apparatus . wireless transmitting station . diagram of experiment illustrating principle of line photograph . drawing of transmitting machine . drawing of transmitting machine . drawing of stylus . electrical connections of machine . photograph of author's experimental machine _frontispiece_ a. end view of author's experimental machine } } _facing page_ b. view of image broken up by a "cross" screen} . connections of complete transmitting apparatus . drawing of ordinary type of spark-gap . synchronous rotating spark-gap . non-synchronous rotating spark-gap . connections for complete wireless photographic station . connections of professor korn's apparatus . connections of poulsen's photographic recorder . author's photographic receiver . enlarged drawing of cone . end view of author's photographic receiver . connections of decohering apparatus . connections for complete photographic receiver {xiv} . arrangement of einthoven galvanometer . einthoven galvanometer arranged for receiving . connection of telephone relay . drawing of author's improved photographic receiver . diagram giving ratio of vibrating arm . arrangement of polarisation receiver . arrangement of kathode-ray receiver . connections of electrolytic receiver . drawing of improved stylus for receiving . drawing of hughes telegraph governor . arrangement of simple speed regulator . diagram of connections of simple speed regulator . author's arrangement for complete radio-photographic station . drawing of transmitting machine and circuit breaker . drawing of special transmitting stylus showing adjusting arrangements a. end view of transmitting stylus . connections of new type of relay designed by the author . arrangement of mercury containers and dipping rods for relay . drawing of author's receiver . enlarged drawing of diaphragm and steel point a. drawing showing arrangement of bush and counter-weight . optical arrangements of receiver . optical arrangements of receiver . drawing of circuit breaker . drawing of friction brake . sectional drawing of magnetic clutch . plan of magnetic clutch . details of isochroniser . connections of isochroniser . dial of isochroniser . diagram of driving mechanism {xv} . diagram showing starting positions of machines a. arrangement of small type nernst lamp b. ballasting resistances for nernst lamps c. arrangement of large type nernst lamp . connections of selenium cell elements a. form of selenium cell used by bell and tainter . diagram showing construction of modern cell . resistance curve of selenium cell a. actual curve of selenium cell . diagram of professor korn's method for counteracting inertia . arrangement of plate sheath and line screen . details of clips to hold line screen . arrangement of apparatus for copying . drawing showing method of arranging camera and copying stand for adjustment . photograph of line screen and metal print } } _facing page_ . photograph of sketch drawn upon metal foil } . method of marking out copying board . diagram illustrating law of refraction . forms of lenses . action of light passed through a prism . diagram illustrating action of a lens . formation of principal focus of a lens . formation of conjugate foci of a lens . apparatus illustrating principle of camera . formation of an image by a lens . diagram illustrating apparent magnitude . formation of virtual image by a convex lens . formation of virtual image by a concave lens . diagram showing spherical aberration . combination of plano-convex lenses . combination of meniscus and convex lenses * * * * * { } radio-photography chapter i introductory those who desire to experiment on radio-photography, _i.e._ transmitting photographs, drawings, etc., from one place to another without the aid of artificial conductors, must cultivate at least an elementary knowledge of optics, chemistry, mechanics, and electricity; photo-telegraphy calling for a knowledge of all these sciences. there are, no doubt, many wireless workers who are interested in this subject, but who are deterred from experimenting owing to a lack of knowledge regarding the direction developments are taking, besides which, information on this subject is very difficult to obtain, the science of photo-telegraphy being, at the present time, in a purely experimental stage. the wireless transmission of photographs has, no doubt, a great commercial value, but for any system to be commercially practicable, it must be simple, rapid, and reliable, besides being able to work { } in conjunction with the apparatus already installed for the purpose of ordinary wireless telegraphy. as far back as experiments were carried out with a view to solving the problem of transmitting pictures and writing by electrical methods over artificial conductors, but no great incentive was held forth for development owing to lack of possible application; but owing to the great public demand for illustrated newspapers that has recently sprung into being, a large field has been opened up. during the last ten years, however, development has been very rapid, and some excellent results are now being obtained over a considerable length of line. the wireless transmission of photographs is, on the other hand, of quite recent growth, the first practicable attempt being made by mr. hans knudsen in . it may seem rather premature to talk about the wireless transmission at a time when the systems for transmitting over ordinary conductors are not perfectly developed, but everything points to the fact that for long-distance transmission a reliable wireless system will prove to be both cheaper and quicker than transmission over ordinary land lines and cables. the effects of capacity and inductance--properties inherent to all telegraph systems using metallic conductors--have a distinct bearing upon the two questions, how far and how quickly can { } photographs be transmitted? owing to the small currents received and to prevent interference from earth currents it is necessary to use a complete metallic circuit. if an overhead line could be employed no difficulty would be experienced in working a distance of over miles, but a line of this length is impossible--at least in this country--and if transmission is attempted with any other country, a certain amount of submarine cable is essential. it has been found that the electrostatic capacity of one mile of submarine cable is equal to the capacity of miles of overhead line, and as the effect of capacity is to retard the current and reduce the speed of working, it is evident that where there is any great length of cable in the circuit the distance of possible transmission is enormously reduced. if we take for an example the london-paris telephone line with a length of miles and a capacity of . microfarads, we find that about half this capacity, or . microfarads,[ ] is contributed by the miles of cable connecting england with france. in practice the reduction of speed due to capacity has, to a great extent, been overcome by means of apparatus known as a line-balancer, which hastens the slow discharge of the line and { } allows each current sent out from the transmitter--the current in several systems being intermittent--to be recorded separately on the receiver. photographs suitable for press work can now be sent over a line which includes only a short length of cable for a distance of quite miles in about ten minutes, the time, of course, depending upon the size of the photograph. in extending the working to other countries where there is need for a great length of cable, as between england and ireland, or america, the retardation due to capacity is very great. on a cable joining this country with america the current is retarded four-tenths of a second. in submarine telegraphy use is made of only one cable with an earth return, but special means have had to be adopted to overcome interference from earth currents, as the enormous cost prohibits the laying of a second cable to provide a complete metallic circuit. the current available at the cable ends for receiving is very small, being only / th part of an ampere, and this necessitates the use of apparatus of a very sensitive character. one system of photo-telegraphy in use at the present time, employs what is known as an electrolytic receiver (see chapter iii.) which can record signals over a length of line in which the capacity effects are very slight, with the marvellous speed of , a minute, but this speed rapidly decreases with an increase of distance between the { } [illustration] two stations. the effect of capacity upon an intermittent current is clearly shown in fig. . if we were to send twenty brief currents in rapid succession over a line of moderate capacity in a given time, we should find that instead of being recorded separately and distinctly as at _a_, each mark would be pointed at both ends and joined together as shown at _b_, while only perhaps fifteen could be recorded. if the capacity be still farther increased as at _c_, only perhaps half the original number of currents could be recorded in the same time, owing to the fact that with an increase of resistance, capacity, and inductance of the line a longer time is required for it to charge up and discharge, thereby materially lessening the rate at which it will allow separate signals to pass; the number of signals that can therefore be recorded in a given time is greatly diminished. if we were to attempt to send the same number of signals over a line of great capacity, as could be sent, and recorded separately and distinctly over a line of small capacity--the time limit being of course the same in both instances--we should find that the { } signals would be recorded practically as a continuous line. the two latter cases _b_, and _c_, fig. , clearly shows the retardation that takes place at the commencement of a current and the prolongation that takes place at the finish. if the photo-telegraphic system previously mentioned could be rendered sensitive enough to work on the atlantic cables, we should find that only about signals a minute could be recorded, and this would mean that a photograph which could be transmitted over ordinary land lines in about ten minutes would take at least fifty minutes over the cable. this would be both costly and impracticable, and time alone will show whether, for long-distance work, transmission by wireless will be both cheaper and more rapid than any other method. at present wireless telegraphy has not superseded the ordinary methods of communicating over land, but there can be no doubt that wireless telegraphy, if free from government restrictions, would in certain circumstances very quickly supersede land-line telegraphy, while it has proved a formidable commercial competitor to the cable as a means of connecting this country with america. likewise we cannot say that no system of radio-photography will ever come into general use, but where there is any great distance to be bridged, especially over water, wireless transmission is really the only practical solution. from the { } foregoing remarks, it is evident that a reliable system of radio-photography would secure a great victory in the matter of time and cost alone, besides which, the photo-telegraphic apparatus would be merely an accessory to the already existing wireless installation. [illustration: fig. .] there have been numerous suggestions put forward for the wireless transmission of photographs, but they are all more or less impracticable. one of the earliest systems was devised by de' bernochi of turin, but his system can only be regarded interesting from an historical point of view, and as in all probability it could only have been made to work over a distance of a few hundred yards it is of no practical value. fig. will help to explain the apparatus. a glass cylinder a' is fastened at one end to a threaded steel shaft, which runs in two bearings, one bearing having an internal thread corresponding with that on the { } shaft. round the cylinder is wrapped a transparent film upon which a photograph has been taken and developed. light from a powerful electric lamp l, is focussed by means of the lens, n, to a point upon the photographic film. as the cylinder is revolved by means of a suitable motor, it travels upwards simultaneously by reason of the threaded shaft and bearing, so that the spot of light traces a complete spiral over the surface of the film. the light, on passing through the film (the transmission of which varies in intensity according to the density of that portion of the photograph through which it is passing), is refracted by the prism p on to the selenium cell s which is in series with a battery b and the primary x of a form of induction coil. as light of different intensities falls upon the selenium cell,[ ] the resistance of which alters in proportion, current is induced in the secondary y of the coil and influences the light of an arc lamp of whose circuit it is shunted. this arc lamp t is placed at the focus of a parabolic reflector r, from which the light is reflected in a parallel beam to the receiving station. the receiver consists of a similar reflector r' with a selenium cell e placed at its focus, whose resistance is altered by the varying light falling upon it from the reflector r. the selenium cell { } e is in series with a battery f and the mirror galvanometer h. light falls from a lamp d and is reflected by the mirror of the galvanometer on to a graduated aperture j and focussed by means of the aplanatic lens u upon the receiving drum a^ , which carries a sensitised photographic film. the two cylinders must be revolved synchronously. the above apparatus is very clever, but cannot be made to work over a distance of more than yards. a system based on more practical lines was that invented and demonstrated by mr. hans knudsen, but the apparatus which he employed for receiving has been discarded in wireless work, as it is not suitable for working with the highly-tuned systems in use at the present time. knudsen's transmitter, a diagrammatic representation of which is given in fig. , consists of a flat table to which a horizontal to-and-fro motion is given by means of a clockwork motor. upon this table is fastened a photographic plate which has been prepared in the following manner. the plate upon which the photograph is to be taken has the gelatine film from three to four times thicker than that commonly used in photography. in the camera, between the lens and this plate, a single line screen is interposed, which has the effect of breaking the picture up into parallel lines. upon the plate being developed and before it is { } [illustration] completely dry, it is sprinkled over with fine iron dust. with this type of plate the transparent parts dry much quicker than the shaded or dark parts, and on the iron dust being sprinkled over the plate it adheres to the darker portions of the film to a greater extent than it does to the lighter portions; a picture partly composed of iron dust is thus obtained. a steel point attached to a flat spring rests upon this plate and is made to travel at right angles to the motion of the table. as the picture is partly composed of iron dust, and as the steel needle is fastened to a delicate spring it is evident that as the plate passes to and fro under the needle, both the spring and needle are set in a state of vibration. this vibrating spring makes { } and breaks the battery circuit of a spark coil, which in turn sets up sparking in the spark-gap of the wireless apparatus. the receiver consists of a similar table to that used for transmitting, and carries a glass plate that has been smoked upon one side. a similar spring and needle is placed over this plate, but is actuated by means of a small electro-magnet in circuit with a battery and a sensitive coherer. as the coherer makes and breaks the battery circuit by means of the intermittent waves sent out from the transmitting aerial, the needle is made to vibrate upon the smoked glass plate in unison with the needle at the transmitting end. scratches are made upon the smoked plate, and these reproduce the picture on the original plate. a print can be taken from this scratched plate in a similar manner to an ordinary photographic negative. the two tables are synchronised in the following manner. every time the transmitting table is about to start its forward stroke a powerful spark is produced at the spark-gap. the waves set up by this spark operate an ordinary metal filings coherer at the receiving end which completes the circuit of an electro-magnet. the armature of this magnet on being attracted immediately releases the motor used for driving, allowing it to operate the table. the time taken to transmit a photograph, quarter-plate size, is about fifteen minutes. { } although very ingenious this system would not be practicable, as besides speed the quality of the received pictures is a great factor, especially where they are required for reproduction purposes. the results from the above apparatus are said to be very crude, as with the method used to prepare the photographs no very small detail could be transmitted. * * * * * { } chapter ii transmitting apparatus let us now consider the requirements necessary for transmitting photographs by means of the wireless apparatus in use at the present time. [illustration: fig. .] the connections for an experimental syntonic wireless transmitting station are shown in the diagram fig. . a is the aerial; t, the inductance; e, earth; l, hot-wire ammeter. the closed oscillatory circuit consists of an inductance f, spark-gap g, and a block condenser c. h is a spark-coil for supplying the energy, the secondary j being connected to the spark-gap. a { } mercury break n and a battery b are placed in the primary circuit of the coil. the morse key k is for completing the battery circuit for signalling purposes. when the key k is depressed, the battery circuit is completed, and a spark passes between the balls of the spark-gap g producing oscillations in the closed circuit, which are transposed to the aerial circuit by induction. for signalling purposes it is only necessary for the operator by means of the key k to send out a long or short train of waves in some pre-arranged order, to enable the operator at the receiving station to understand the message that is being transmitted. if a photograph could be prepared in such a manner that it would serve the purpose of the key k, and could so arrange matters that a minute portion of the photograph could be transmitted separately but in succession, and that each portion of the photograph having the same density could be given the same signal, then it would only be necessary to have apparatus at the receiving station capable of arranging the signals in proper sequence (each signal recorded being the same size and having the same density as the transmitted portion of the photograph) in order to receive a facsimile of the picture transmitted. the following method of preparing the photograph[ ] is one that has been adopted in several { } systems of photo-telegraphy, and is the only one at all suitable for wireless transmission. the photograph or picture which is to be transmitted is fastened out perfectly flat upon a copying-board. a strong light is placed on either side of this copying board, and is concentrated upon the picture by means of reflectors. the camera which is used for copying has a single line screen interposed between the lens and sensitised plate, and the effect of this screen is to break the picture up into parallel lines. thus a white portion of the photograph would consist of very narrow lines wide apart, while the dark portion would be made up of wide lines close together; a black part would appear solid and show no lines at all. from this line negative it will be necessary to take off a print upon a specially prepared sheet of metal. this consists of a sheet of thick lead- or tinfoil, coated upon one side with a thin film of glue to which bichromate of potash has been added; the bichromate possessing the property of rendering the glue waterproof when acted upon by light. the print can be taken off by artificial light (arc lamps being generally used), but the exact time to allow for printing can only be found by experiment, as it varies considerably according to the thickness of the film. the printing finished, the metal print is washed under running water, when all those parts not acted upon by light, _i.e._ the parts between the lines, are { } washed away, leaving the bare metal. we have now an image composed of numerous bands of insulating material (each band varying in width according to the density of the photograph at any point from which it is prepared) attached to a metal base, so that each band of insulating material is separated by a band of conducting material. it is, of course, obvious that the lines on the print cannot be wider apart, centre to centre, than the lines of the screen used in preparing it. a good screen to use is one having lines to the inch, but one is perhaps more suitable for experimental work a little coarser, say lines to the inch. to use a screen having or more lines to the inch, the transmitting apparatus, as will be evident later on, will require to be very nearly perfect. [illustration: fig. .] before proceeding further it will perhaps be as well to make an experiment. if we take one of the metal prints or, more simple, draw a sketch in insulating ink upon a sheet of metal a, fig. , and connect a battery b and the galvanometer d as shown, we shall find on drawing the free end of the wire across the metal plate that all the time the wire is in contact with the lines of insulating material the needle of the galvanometer will remain { } at zero, but where it is in contact with the metal plate the needle is deflected. from this experiment it will be seen that we have in our metal line print, which consists of alternate lines of insulating and conducting material, a method by which an electric circuit can be very easily made and broken. it is, of course, necessary to have some arrangement whereby the whole of the surface of the metal print is utilised for this purpose to the best advantage. one type of transmitting machine used for this purpose is represented by the diagram, fig. . the cylinder a is fastened to the steel shaft b, which runs in the two bearings d and d', the bearing d' having an internal thread corresponding to that on the shaft. the stylus in this class of machine is a fixture, the cylinder being given a lateral as well as a revolving movement. as it is impossible to use a rigid drive, a flexible coupling f is employed between the shaft b and the motor. [illustration: fig. .] another type of machine is shown in fig. . the drum in this case is stationary, the table t moving laterally by reason of the screwed shaft { } [illustration] and half nut f. the table, shown separate in fig. , carries a stiff brass spring a, to which is attached a holder b made to take a hardened steel point. the holder is provided with a set screw p for securing the steel point z. the spring and needle are insulated from the rest of the machine, as shown in the drawing. in working, the metal print is wrapped tightly round the cylinder of the machine, the glue image being, of course, uppermost. to fasten the print a little seccotine should be applied to one edge, and the joint carefully smoothed down with the fingers. [illustration] if there is any tendency on the part of the print to slip round on the drum, a couple of small spring clips placed over the ends of the drum will act as a preventive. it is necessary to place the print upon the drum in such a manner that the stylus draws away from the edge of the lap and not towards it, and the metal prints should be of such a size that when placed round the drum of the { } machine a lap of about / ths of an inch is allowed. [illustration: fig. .] the steel point z (ordinary gramophone needles may be used and will be found to answer the purpose admirably) is made to press lightly upon the metal print, and while the pressure should be sufficient to make good electrical contact, it should not be sufficient to cause the needle to scratch the surface of the foil. the pressure is regulated by means of the milled nut h. the electrical connections are given in fig. . one wire from the battery m is taken to the terminal t, and the other wires from m and f lead to the relay r. the current flows from the battery m through the spring y, through the drum and metal print, the stylus z, spring a, down to the relay r, and from r back to the battery m. as the drum carrying the single line half-tone print is revolved, the stylus, by reason of the lateral movement given to the table or cylinder as the case may be, will trace a spiral path over the entire surface of the print. as the stylus traces over a conducting strip the circuit is completed, and the tongue of the relay r is attracted, making contact with the stop s. { } on passing over a strip of insulation the circuit is broken and the tongue of the relay r returns to its normal position. as already stated, the conducting and insulating bands on the print vary in width according to the density of the photograph from which it is prepared, so that the length of time that the tongue of the relay r is held against the stop s, is in proportion to the width of the conducting strip which is passing under the stylus at any instant. the function of the transmitter is therefore to send to the relay r an intermittent current of varying duration. the two photographs figs. and _a_ are of a machine designed and used by the writer in his experiments. in this machine the drum is . inches long and . inches in diameter. the lead screw has threads to the inch, and the reduction between it and the drum is : , so that the table has a movement of / th inch per revolution of the drum. from the brief description of the various types of machines that have been given it will be apparent that in the design of the machine proper there is nothing very complicated, although the addition of the driving and synchronising apparatus complicates matters rather considerably. the questions of driving and synchronising the machines at the two stations is fully dealt with in chapter iv. [illustration: fig. a.] [illustration: fig. b. enlarged view of an image broken up by a cross screen.] { } although the design of the machines is rather simple great attention must be paid both to accuracy of construction and accuracy of working, and this applies, not only to the machines (whether for transmitting or receiving) but for all the various pieces of apparatus that are used. too much care cannot be bestowed upon this point, as in the wireless transmission of photographs there is a large number of instruments all requiring careful adjustment, and which have to work together in perfect unison at a high speed. the machine shown in figs. and _a_ was designed and used by the writer solely for experimental work. it will be noticed in the description given in the appendix of the method of preparing the metal prints that a " Ã� " camera is recommended, while the machine, fig. , is designed to take a print procured from a quarter-plate negative. this size of drum was adopted for several reasons, and although it will be found quite large enough for general experimental work the writer has come to the conclusion that for practical commercial work a drum to take a print " Ã� " will give better results. in making a negative of a picture that is required for reproduction purposes, the line screen in the camera is replaced by a "cross screen," _i.e._ two single line screens placed with their lines at an angle of ° to one another, and this breaks the { } image up into small squares instead of lines. by looking at any ordinary newspaper or book illustration through a powerful magnifying glass the effects of a cross screen will readily be seen. with a cross screen a certain amount of detail is necessarily lost, but with a single line screen the amount lost is much greater. if there is any very small detail in the picture most of this would be lost in a coarse screen, hence the necessity of employing as fine a line screen as practicable in order to get as much detail in as possible. it is mainly on this account that a " Ã� " print is recommended, as, if fairly bold subjects are used for copying, the small detail (this is, of course, a very vague and indefinable term) will not be too fine, and the time required for transmitting reasonable. for obvious reasons it is a great advantage to put the print under pressure to cause the glue image to sink into the soft metal base and leave a perfectly flat and smooth surface. it is essential that the bands on the print lie along the axis of the cylinder, so that the stylus traces its path across them, and not with them. we have now an arrangement that is capable of taking the place of the key k, fig. , and the diagram, fig. , gives the connections for the complete transmitter. a is the aerial, e earth, t inductance, l ammeter. the closed oscillatory circuit consists of a spark-gap g, inductance f, { } [illustration] and a condenser c. the secondary j of the coil h is connected to the spark-gap, and the primary p is in circuit with the mercury break n, the battery b, and the local contacts of the relay r. the action is as follows. when contact is made between the stylus z and the drum v by means of the conducting bands on the line print, the circuit of the relay r and the battery m is completed. the closing of the local circuit of the relay r actuates the second relay r', allowing the primary circuit of the coil h to be closed. as soon as the primary circuit of the coil is completed sparks pass between the electrodes of the spark-gap g, causing waves to radiate from the aerial. the duration of the wave-trains radiated depends upon the duration of contact made by the relays { } r and r', and this in turn depends upon the width of the conducting strip that is passing under the stylus. the battery m should be about volts, and the battery d about volts. the two-way switch x is connected up so that the relay r' can be thrown out and the key k switched in for ordinary signalling purposes. if any sparking takes place at the point of the stylus, a small condenser c' (about microfarad capacity) should be connected as shown. in the present instance the condenser should be used more as a preventive than as a cure, as in all probability the voltage from m will not be sufficient to cause destructive (if any) sparking; but, as most wireless workers know, anything in the nature of a spark occurring in the neighbourhood of a detector (this, of course, only applies when the receiving apparatus is placed in close proximity to the transmitter) is liable to destroy the adjustment. in transmitting over ordinary conductors where the initial voltage is fairly high and the self-induction of the circuit very great, the use of the condenser will be found to be absolutely essential. it has also been noted that the angle which the stylus presents to the drum has a marked effect upon the sparking, an angle of about ° being found to give very good results. if the size of the single line print used is inches by inches, and a screen having lines { } to the inch is used for preparing it, then the stylus will have to make contacts during one revolution of the drum. assuming the drum to make one revolution in three seconds, then the time taken to transmit the complete photograph can be found from the equation t = w Ã� t Ã� s, where w is the width of the print, t the travel of the stylus during one revolution of the drum, and s the time required for one revolution of the drum. in the present instance this will be t = Ã� Ã� = seconds = minutes. the number of contacts made by the stylus per minute is , and in working at this speed the first difficulty is encountered in the use of the two relays. the relay r is lightly built, and capable of working at a fairly high speed, but r' is a heavier pattern, and consequently works at a slightly lower rate. this relay must necessarily be heavier, as more substantial contacts are needed in order to pass the heavy current taken by the spark-coil. relays sensitive and accurate enough to work at this speed will in all probability be beyond the reach of the majority of workers, but there are several types of relays on the market very reasonable in price that will answer very well for experimental work, although the speed of working will no doubt be slower. for the best results the duration of the wave-trains sent out should be of the same duration as { } the contact made by r, and therefore equal to the time taken by the stylus to trace over a conducting strip; but if the duration of the contact made by r is t, then that made by r' and consequently the duration of the groups of wave-trains would be t - v where v equals the extra time required by r' to complete its local circuit. the difference in time made by the two relays, although very slight, will be found to affect very considerably the quality of the received pictures. renewing the platinum contacts is also a great expense, as they are soon burnt out where a heavy current is passed. if the distance experimented over is short so that the power required to operate the spark-coil is not very heavy, one relay will be sufficient providing the contacts are massive enough to carry the current safely. it is useless to expect any of the ordinary relays in general use to work satisfactorily at such a high speed, and in order to compensate for this we must either increase the time of transmitting, or, as already suggested, make use of a coarser line screen in preparing the photographs. for reasons already explained, all points of make and break should be shunted by a condenser. the effective working speed of an ordinary type of relay may be anything from to dots a minute, depending upon accuracy of design and construction. in the wireless transmission of photographs it { } is absolutely essential to use some form of rotary spark-gap, as where sparks are passed in rapid succession the ordinary type of gap is worse than useless. when a spark passes between the electrodes of an ordinary spark-gap, fig. , we find that for a fraction of a second after the first spark has passed, the normally high resistance of the gap has been lowered to less than one ohm. if the column of hot gas which constitutes the spark is not instantly dispersed, but remains between the electrodes, it will provide an easy path for any further discharges, and if sparks are passed at all rapidly, what was at first a disruptive and oscillatory discharge will degenerate into a hot, non-oscillatory arc.[ ] [illustration: fig. .] two forms of rotating spark-gaps are shown in figs. and , and are known as "synchronous" and "non-synchronous" gaps respectively. in the synchronous gap the cog-wheel is mounted on the shaft of the alternator, and a cog comes opposite the fixed electrode when the maximum of potential is reached in the condenser, thus ensuring a discharge at every alternation of current. with this type of gap a spark of pure tone is obtained which { } [illustration] [illustration] is of great value where the signals are received by means of a telephone, but where the signals are to be mechanically recorded the tone of the spark is of little consequence. in a non-synchronous gap a separate motor is used for driving the toothed wheel, and can either be mounted on the motor shaft or driven by means of a band, there being no regard given to synchronism with the alternator. the fixed electrode is best made long enough to cover about two of the teeth, as this ensures regular sparking and a uniform sparking distance; the { } spark length is double the length of the spark-gap. the toothed wheel should revolve at a high speed, anything from to revolutions per minute, or even more being required. the shaft of the toothed wheel is preferably mounted in ball-bearings. owing to the large number of sparks that are required per minute in order to transmit a photograph at even an ordinary speed, it is necessary that the contact breaker be capable of working at a very high speed indeed. the best break to use is what is known as a "mercury jet" interrupter, the frequency of the interruptions being in some cases as high as , per second. no description of these breaks will be given, as the working of them is generally well understood. in some cases an alternator is used in place of the battery b, fig. , and when this is done the break m can be dispensed with. in larger stations the coil h is replaced with a special transformer. the writer has designed an improved relay which will respond to currents lasting only / th part of a second, and capable of dealing with rather large currents in the local circuit.[ ] this relay has not yet been tried, but if it is successful the two relays r and r' can be dispensed with, and the result will be more accurate and effective transmission. { } [illustration: fig. .] the connections for a complete experimental station, transmitting and receiving apparatus combined, are given in fig. . the terminals w, w are for connecting to the photo-telegraphic receiving apparatus q, being a double pole two-way switch for throwing either the transmitting or receiving apparatus in circuit. there is another system of transmitting devised by professor korn, which employs an entirely different method from the foregoing. by using the apparatus just described, the waves generated are what are known as "damped waves," and by using these damped waves, tuning, which is so essential to good commercial working, can be made to reach a fairly high degree of efficiency. { } the question of damped _versus_ undamped waves is a somewhat burning one, and no attempt will be made here to deal with the merits or demerits of the claims made for the respective systems. a series of articles describing the production of undamped waves and their efficiency in working compared with damped waves will be found in the _wireless world_, nos. and , , and are well worth reading by any one interested in the subject. [illustration: fig. .] a diagrammatic representation of the apparatus as arranged by professor korn is given in fig. . the undamped or "continuous" waves are generated by means of a high-frequency alternator or poulsen arc. in fig. , x is the generator, f inductance, c condenser; the aerial inductance t is connected by the aerial a and earth e. by this means the waves are tuned to a certain period. { } a metal print, similar to what has already been described, is wrapped round the drum d of the machine, and when the stylus z traces over an insulating strip the waves generated are in tune with the receiving station, but when it traces over a conducting strip, a portion of the inductance t is short-circuited, the period of the oscillations is altered, and the two stations are thrown out of tune. the receiving station is provided with an aperiodic circuit, which consists of an inductance f', condenser c', and a thermodetector n. a string galvanometer h (described in chapter iii.), and the self-induction coils b, b' are connected as shown, the coils b, b' preventing the high-frequency currents, which change their direction, from flowing through the galvanometer. the manner in which the string galvanometer is arranged to reproduce a transmitted picture is shown in fig. . the connections adopted by the poulsen company for photographically recording wireless messages are given in fig. , a string galvanometer of the einthoven type being used. the two self-induction coils s and s' are in circuit with the detector d and the galvanometer g. the condenser c' prevents the continuous current produced by the detector from flowing through the high frequency circuit; p is the primary of the aerial { } inductance and f the secondary. the method of transmitting adopted by professor korn appears to be a simple and reliable arrangement, provided that an equally reliable method of producing the undamped waves can be found. owing to the absence of mechanical inertia it should be capable of working at a good speed, while the absence of a number of pieces of delicate apparatus all requiring careful adjustment add greatly to its reliability. [illustration: fig. .] in any spark system with a properly designed aerial a coil taking ten amperes is capable of transmitting signals over a distance of thirty to fifty miles, but where the number of interruptions of the break required per second is very high, as in radio-photography, it must be remembered that a much higher voltage is needed to drive the requisite amount of current through the primary winding of the coil than would be the case if the interruptions were slower. it is possible to use platinum { } contacts for the relays, for currents up to ten amperes, but for heavier currents than this some arrangement where contact is made with mercury will be found to be more economical and reliable. in the transmitter already described and given in fig. , the best results would be obtained by finding the speed at which the relay r' works best, and regulating the number of contacts made by the stylus accordingly. the method employed by de' bernochi (see chapter i.) of varying the intensity of a beam of light by passing it through a photographic film, which in turn alters the resistance of a selenium cell, has been very successfully employed in at least one system of photo-telegraphy. its application has also been suggested for wireless transmission, and although with any system using continuous waves this would not be very difficult, it could hardly be adapted to work with the ordinary spark system. the apparatus for receiving from this type of transmitter would, on the other hand, necessarily be more elaborate than the methods that are described in the next chapter, and as far as the writer's experience goes, experiments along these lines would not prove very profitable, as simplicity is the keynote of success in any radio-photographic system. it has been suggested that in order to decrease the time of transmission a cylinder capable of { } taking a print inches by inches be employed, the print being prepared from rather a coarse line screen--say to the inch--and a traverse of about / inch given to the stylus, thus reducing the time of transmission to about twelve minutes. it is questionable, however, whether the increase in speed would compensate for the loss of detail, as only very bold subjects could be transmitted. as already pointed out, wireless transmission would only be employed for fairly long distances, and the extra time and expense required to receive a fairly good detailed picture is negligible when compared with the enormous time it would take to receive the original photograph by any ordinary means of transit. the public much prefer to have passable pictorial illustrations of current events than wait several days for a more perfect picture--the original, and the advantage of any newspaper being able to publish photographs several days before its rivals is obvious. there can also be no doubt but that a system of radio-photography, if fairly reliable and capable of working over a distance of say thirty miles, would be of great military use for transmitting maps and written matter with a great saving of time and even life. written matter could be transmitted with even greater safety than messages which are sent in the ordinary way in morse code, as the signals received in the receiver { } of an hostile installation would be but a meaningless jumble of sounds, and even were they possessed of radio-photographic apparatus the received message would be unintelligible, unless they knew the exact speed at which the machines were running and could synchronise accurately. * * * * * { } chapter iii receiving apparatus there are only two methods available at present for receiving the photographs, and both have been used in ordinary photo-telegraphic work with great success. they have disadvantages when applied to wireless work, however, but these will no doubt be overcome with future improvements. the two methods are ( ) by means of an ordinary photographic process, and ( ) by means of an electrolytic receiver. in several photo-telegraphic systems the machine used for transmitting has the cylinder twice the size of the receiving cylinder, thus making the area of the received picture one-quarter the area of the picture transmitted. the extra quality of the received picture does not compensate for the disadvantage of having to provide two machines at each station, and in the writer's opinion results, quite good enough for all practical purposes, can be obtained by using a moderate size cylinder so that one machine answers for both transmitting { } and receiving, and using as fine a line screen as possible for preparing the photographs. [illustration: fig. .] the writer, when first experimenting in photo-telegraphy, endeavoured to make the receiving apparatus "self-contained," and one idea which was worked out is given in fig. . the electric lamp l is about c.p., and is placed just within the focus of a lens which has a focal length of / inch. when a source of light is placed at some point between a lens and its principal focus, the light rays are not converged, but are transmitted in a parallel beam the same size as the lens. it has been found that this arrangement gives a sharper line on the drum than would be the case were the light focussed direct upon the hole in the cone a. an enlarged drawing of the cone is given in fig. . the hole in the tip of the cone a is a bare / inch in diameter--the size of this hole depends upon the travel per revolution of the drum or table of the machine used--and in working, the cone is run as close as possible to the { } drum without being in actual contact. the magnet m is wound full with no. s.c.c. wire, and the armature is made as light as possible. the spring to which the armature is attached should be of such a length that its natural period of vibration is equal to the number of contacts made by the transmitting stylus. the spring must be stiff enough to bring the armature back with a fairly crisp movement. the spring and armature is shown separate in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] the shutter c is about / inch square and made from thin aluminium. the hole in the centre is / Ã� / inch, and the movement of the armature is limited to about / inch. in all arrangements of this kind there is a tendency for the armature spring to vibrate, as it were, sinusoidally, if the coil is magnetised and demagnetised at a higher rate than the natural period of vibration of the spring. { } this causes an irregularity in the rate of the vibrations which affects the received image very considerably. a photographic film is wrapped round the drum of the machine, being fastened by means of a little celluloid cement smeared along one edge. this device, although it will work well over artificial conductors, is not suitable for wireless work, as it is too coarse in its action; it can be made sensitive enough to work at a speed of to contacts per minute, with a current of . milliampere. it is impossible to obtain a current of this magnitude from the majority of the detectors in use, so that if any attempt is made to use this device for radio-photography it will be necessary to employ a marconi coherer (filings), as this is practically the only coherer from which so large a current can be obtained. there have been many attempts made to receive with an ordinary filings coherer, but as was pointed out in chapter i. these have now been discarded in serious wireless work, being only used in small amateur stations or experimental sets. as the reasons for this are well known to the majority of wireless workers there is no need to enumerate them here. a method whereby a filings coherer can be decohered, the act of decohering closing a local circuit which contains the photographic { } receiving apparatus, is given in the diagram fig. . [illustration: fig. .] in the figure, the coherer c is fixed in rigid supports, one support being provided with a platinum pin f. to the coherer is connected the sensitive electro-magnet m, which becomes magnetised as soon as the incoming waves act upon the coherer. to the armature b is attached a light aluminium arm s, pivoted at k, and carrying at the other end the striker g, which is fitted with a platinum contact. when the armature b is attracted the coherer is decohered by the force of the impact between the contacts f and g. to prevent damage to the coherer the force of the blow is taken off by the ability of the striker to work back through a hole in the arm s, the spring { } n keeping it normally in a fixed position. t and p are adjusting screws, and the terminals j are for connecting to the receiving apparatus. with this arrangement a very short wave-train causes only one tap of the contacts, so that only one mark is registered on the receiving drum for every contact made on the transmitter. [illustration: fig. .] the drawing, fig. , gives a diagrammatic representation of apparatus arranged for another photographic method of receiving. the machine shown in fig. is used in this case. a is the aerial, e earth, p primary of oscillation-transformer, s secondary of transformer, c variable condenser, c' block condenser, d detector, x two-way switch, t telephone. a de' arsonval galvanometer h is also connected to the switch x, so that either the telephone or the galvanometer can be switched in. the { } galvanometer can be made sensitive enough to work with a current as small as ^{- } of an ampere, with a period of about / th of a second. the screen j has a small hole about / inch diameter drilled in the centre. under the influence of the brief currents which pass through the detector every time a group of waves is received, the mirror of the galvanometer swings to-and-fro in front of the screen j, and allows the light reflected from the source of light m to pass through the aperture in the screen, on to the lens n. round the drum v of the machine is wrapped a sensitive photographic film, and this records the movements of the mirror which correspond to the contacts on the half-tone print used in transmitting. every time current passes through the galvanometer, the light that is received from m,[ ] passes through the aperture in the screen j, and is focussed by the lens n to a point upon the revolving film. as soon as the current ceases, the mirror swings back to its original position, and the film is again in darkness. upon being developed a photograph, similar to the negative used for preparing the metal print is obtained. if desired the apparatus can be so arranged that the received picture is a positive instead of a negative. { } the detector used should be a lodge wheel-coherer or a marconi valve-receiver, as these are the only detectors that can be used with a recording instrument. if the swing of the galvanometer mirror is too great, a small battery with a regulating resistance can be inserted in order to limit the movement of the mirror to a very short range; the current of course flowing in an opposite direction to the current flowing through the coherer. in this, as in all other methods of receiving, the results obtained depend upon the fineness of the line screen used in preparing the metal prints; and as already shown the fineness of the screen that can be used is dependent upon the mechanical efficiency of the entire apparatus. another system, and one that has been tried as a possible means of recording wireless messages, is as follows. the wireless arrangements consist of apparatus similar to that shown in fig. , but instead of a lodge coherer a marconi valve is used, and an einthoven galvanometer is substituted for the reflecting galvanometer. the einthoven galvanometer consists of a very powerful electro-magnet, the pole pieces of which converge almost to points. a very fine silvered quartz thread is stretched between the pole pieces, as shown in fig. , the tension being adjustable. the period of swing is about / th of a second. a hole is bored through the poles, and one of them is fitted { } [illustration] with a sliding tube which carries a short focus lens n. the light from m passes through the magnets, and a magnified image of the quartz thread is thrown upon the ebonite screen j. this screen is provided with a fine slit, and when the galvanometer is at rest the shadow of the thread just covers the slit in the screen and prevents any light from m reaching the photographic film. upon signals being received the shadow of the thread moves to one side for a long or short period, uncovering the slit, and allowing light to pass through. the lens r concentrates the collected light to a point upon the revolving film. the connections for the complete receiver are given in fig. . the modified form of the einthoven galvanometer, as arranged by professor korn for use with his selenium machines for photo-telegraphy over ordinary land lines, consists of two fine silver wires which are displaced in a lateral direction between the pole pieces when traversed by a current; the current passing through both wires in the same { } direction. a small shutter of aluminium foil is attached to the wires at the optical centre. the silver wires used are / inch in diameter, with a natural period of about / th of a second; the length of wires free to swing being usually about cm. [illustration: fig. .] the period of the wires depends to a great extent upon their length and diameter, and also upon their tension. by using short fine wires the period can be made much smaller, but a greater current is required to produce a similar displacement. where the current available, as in wireless telegraphy, is very small, and a definite displacement of the wires is required, it is at once apparent that with wires of a given diameter there is a limit to their length and therefore to the period. finer wires can be used, but here again there is a practical limit to their fineness, although galvanometers have been constructed with a single silvered quartz thread / th of an inch diameter, which, when placed in a powerful field, will give a good displacement with a current as small as ^{- } ampere. { } with the apparatus arranged by the poulsen company, given in the diagram, fig. , for photographically recording wireless signals, the current required to operate the galvanometer for signals transmitted at the rate of a minute is Ã� ^{- } ampere, while for signals up to a minute a current about Ã� ^{- } ampere is necessary. another very sensitive instrument, employed by m. belin, and known as blondel's oscillograph, consists of two fine wires stretched between the poles of a powerful electro-magnet, a small and very light mirror being attached to the centre of the wires. the current passes down one wire and up the other, and the wires, together with the mirror, are twisted to a degree depending upon the strength of the received current. in order to render the instrument dead-beat the moving parts are arranged to work in oil. the light reflected from the mirror is made use of in a manner similar to that shown in fig. . in all photographic methods of receiving, the apparatus must be enclosed in some way to prevent any extraneous light from reaching the film, or better still placed in a room lighted only by means of a ruby light. the following method is given more as a suggestion than anything else, as i do not think it has been tried for wireless receiving, although it is stated to have given some good results over { } ordinary land lines. it is the invention of charbonelle, a french engineer, and is quite an original idea. his method consists of placing a sheet of carbon paper between two sheets of thin white paper, and wrapping the whole tightly round the drum of the machine. a hardened steel point is fastened to the diaphragm of a telephone receiver, and this receiver is placed so that the steel point presses against the sheets of paper. as the diaphragm and steel point vibrates under the influence of the received currents marks are made by the carbon sheet on the bottom paper. over a line where a fair amount of current is available at the receiver, the diaphragm would have sufficient movement to mark the paper, but the movement would be very small with the current received from a detector. this difficulty could no doubt be overcome to a certain extent by making a special telephone receiver, with a large and very flexible diaphragm, and wound for a very high resistance. the movement of an ordinary telephone diaphragm for a barely audible sound is, measured at the centre, about ^{- } of a c.m. with a unit current the movement at the centre is about / th of an inch. greater movement of the diaphragm could be obtained by connecting a _telephone relay_ to the detector, and using the magnified current from the relay to operate the telephone. { } [illustration: fig. .] the telephone relay consists of a microphone c, fig. , formed of the two pieces of osmium iridium alloy. the contact is separated to a minute degree partly by the action of the local current from f, which flows through it and also through the winding w of the two magnet coils. the local current from f assists in forming the microphone by rendering the space between the contacts conductive. the vibrating reed p is fastened to the metal frame (not shown) which carries a micrometer screw by which the distance between the contacts can be accurately regulated. it will be seen from fig. that the local circuit consists of a battery f (about . volts), the microphone contacts c, the windings w, milliampere meter b, and the terminals t, for connecting to the galvanometer or telephone, all in { } series. on the top of the magnet cores n, s is a smaller magnet d, wound with fine wire for a resistance of about ohms, the free ends of the coils being connected to the detector terminals. the working is as follows. supposing the current from the detector flows through d in such a way that its magnetism is increased, the reed p will be attracted, the contacts opened, and their resistance increased. it will be seen that the current from f is passed through the coils w, in such a way as to increase the magnetism of the permanent magnet, so that any opening of the microphone contact increases their resistance, causes the current to fall, and weakens the magnets to such an extent that the reed p can spring back to its normal position. on the other hand, if the detector current flows through d in such a direction as to decrease the magnetism in the permanent magnets, the reed p will rise and make better contact owing to the removal of the force opposing the stiffness of the reed. owing to the decrease in the resistance of the microphone, the strength of the local current will be increased, the magnets strengthened, and the reed p will be pulled back to its original position. this relay gives a greatly magnified current when properly adjusted, the current being easily increased from ^{- } to ^{- } amperes. it is also very sensitive, but needs careful adjustment in order that the best results may { } be obtained. a greater range of magnification can be obtained by placing two or more relays in series. [illustration: fig. .] a very sensitive receiver designed by the writer is given in the figures and . to the centre of a telephone diaphragm is fastened a light steel point p, and the movement of this point is communicated to the aluminium arm d, which is pivoted at c. as will be seen the telephone receiver is of special construction, it containing only one coil and therefore only one core; by this means the movement of the diaphragm is centralised. the coil is wound for a resistance of about ohms, and the diaphragm should be fairly thin but very resillient. [illustration: fig. .] to the free end of d is fastened the mirror t, made from thin diaphragm glass about - / centimetres diameter, and having a focal length of inches. light from the lamp l is transmitted by the lens n in a parallel beam to the mirror which { } concentrates it to a point upon a hole / th of an inch in diameter in the screen j. as the telephone diaphragm vibrates under the influence of the received signals the arm, and consequently the mirror, vibrates also, and the hole in the screen j is constantly being covered and uncovered by the spot of light. it will be seen from fig. that the ratio between the centre of the mirror and the pivot c, and c and the steel point p is : , so that if a movement of / th of an inch is obtained at the centre of the diaphragm the mirror will move / th of an inch; and as the focal length of the mirror is inches a movement of / th inch is given to the spot of light. this receiver is capable of working at a fairly high speed, as the inertia of the moving parts is practically negligible; the weight of the arm and mirror being less than grains. the hole in the screen is made slightly less in diameter than the traverse of the revolving cylinder, the slight distance between the cylinder and the screen allowing the light to disperse sufficiently to produce a line on the film of about the right thickness. there are two other possible means of photographically receiving the picture that upon investigation may yield some results; but it is doubtful whether the current available, even that obtained from a telephone relay, will be sufficient to produce the desired magnetic effect, and the { } insertion of a second relay would detract greatly from the efficiency by decreasing the speed of working. if rays of monochromatic light from a lamp l, fig. , pass through a nicol prism p (polarising prism), then through a tube containing cs_ (carbon bisulphide), afterwards passing through the second prism p' (analysing prism), and if the two nicol prisms are set at the polarising angle, no light from l would reach the photographic film wrapped round the drum v of the machine. upon the tube being subjected to a field produced by a current passing through the coil c, the refractive index of the liquid will be changed, and light from l will reach the photographic film.[ ] [illustration: fig. .] the second method is rather more complicated, and is based upon the fact that the kathode rays in a crookes' tube can be deflected from their course by means of a magnet. in fig. the kathode k of the x-ray tube sends a kathode ray discharge through an aperture in the anode a, through a small aperture in the ebonite screen j { } on to the drum v of the machine, round which is wrapped a photographic film; a and k being connected to suitable electrical apparatus. upon the coil m being energised, the kathode-ray is deflected from its straight-line course, and the drum v is left in darkness. [illustration: fig. .] the method which is now going to be described is very ingenious, as it makes use of what is known as an electrolytic receiver. this method of receiving has proved to be the most practical and simple of all the photo-telegraphic systems that have been devised. the application of this system to wireless reception is as follows. the aerial a, and the earth e, are joined to the primary p of a transformer, the secondary s being connected to a marconi valve receiver c. the valve receiver is connected to the battery b and silvered quartz thread k of an einthoven galvanometer (already described). the thread is / th of an inch in diameter, and will respond to currents as small as ^{- } of { } an ampere. the light from m throws an enlarged shadow of the thread over a slit in the screen j, and as the thread moves to one side under the influence of a current, the slit in j is uncovered, and the light from m is thrown upon a small selenium cell r. in the dark the selenium cell has a very high resistance, and therefore no current can flow from the battery d to the relay f. when the string of the galvanometer moves to one side and uncovers the slit in the screen j, a certain amount of light is thrown upon the selenium cell lowering its resistance, allowing sufficient current to pass through to operate the relay. round the drum of the machine (shown in fig. ) is wrapped a sheet of paper that has been soaked in certain chemicals that are decomposed on the passage of an electric current through them. as soon as the local circuit of the relay is closed, the current from the battery z (about volts) flows through the paper and produces a coloured mark. the picture, therefore, is composed of long or short marks which correspond to the varying strips of conducting material on the single line print. in order to render the marks short and crisp, a small battery y, and regulating resistance l, is placed across the drum and stylus. the diagram, fig. , gives the connections for the complete receiver. { } the paper used is soaked in a solution consisting of ferrocyanide of potassium / oz. ammoniac nitrate / oz. distilled water[ ] oz. [illustration: fig. .] the paper has to be very carefully chosen, as besides being absorbent enough to remain moist during the whole of the receiving, the surface must also remain fairly smooth, as with a rough paper the grain shows very distinctly, and if there is an excess of solution the electrolytic marks are inclined to spread and so cause a blurred image. the writer tried numerous specimens of paper before one could be found that gave really satisfactory results. it was also found that when working in a warm room the paper became nearly { } dry before the receiving was finished, and the resistance of the paper being greatly increased (this may be anything up to ohms), the marking became very faint. a sponge moistened with the solution and applied to the undecomposed portion of the paper, while still revolving, was found to help matters considerably. another experience which happened during the writer's early experiments, the cause of which i am still unable to explain, occurred in connection with the stylus. the stylus used consisted of a sharply pointed steel needle, and after working for about three minutes it was noticed that the lines were becoming gradually wider, finally running into each other. upon examination it was found that the point of the needle had worn away considerably, becoming in fact, almost a chisel point. almost every needle tried acted in a similar manner, and to overcome this difficulty the stylus shown in fig. was devised. it will be seen that it consists of a holder a, somewhat resembling a drill chuck, fastened to the flat spring b in such a manner that the angle the stylus makes to the drum can be altered. the needle consists of a length of -gauge steel wire, and as this wears away slowly the jaws of the holder can be loosened and a fresh length pushed through. the wire should not project beyond the face of the holder more than / th inch. the gauge { } of wire chosen would not suit every machine, the best gauge to use being found by trial, but in the writer's machine the pitch of the decomposition marks is much finer than of those made by the commercial machines, and this gauge, with the slight but unavoidable spreading of the marks, will produce a mark of just the right thickness. as already mentioned, no explanation of this peculiarity on the part of the stylus can be given, as there is nothing very corrosive in the solution used, and the pressure of the stylus upon the paper is so slight as to be almost negligible. [illustration: fig. .] no special means are required for fastening the paper to the drum, the moist paper adhering quite firmly. care should be taken, however, to fasten the paper--which should be long enough to allow for a lap of about / inch--in such a manner that when working the stylus draws away from the edge of the lap and not towards it. the current required to produce electrolysis is very small, about one milliampere being sufficient. { } providing that the voltage is sufficiently high, decomposition will take place with practically "no current," it being possible to decompose the solution with the discharge from a small induction coil. the quantity of an element liberated is by weight the product of time, current, and the electro-chemical equivalent of that element, and is given by the equation w = zct, where w = quantity of element liberated in grammes. z = electro-chemical equivalent, c = current in amperes, t = time in seconds. the chemical action that takes place is therefore very small, as the intermittent current sent out from the transmitter in some cases only lasts from / th to / th a second. the decomposed marks on the paper are blue, and, as photographers know, blue is reproduced in a photograph as a white, so that a photograph taken of our electrolytic picture, which will of course be a blue image upon a white ground, will be reproduced almost like a blank sheet of paper. if, however, a yellow contrast filter is placed in front of the camera lens, and an orthochromatic plate used, the blue will be reproduced in the photograph as a dead black. there is one other point that requires attention. it will be noticed that the metal print used for { } transmitting is a positive, since it is prepared from a negative. the received picture will therefore be a negative, making the final reproduction, if it is to be used for newspaper work, a negative also. obviously this is no good. the final reproduction must be a positive, therefore the received picture must be also a positive. to overcome this difficulty matters must be so arranged at the receiving station that in the cases of figs. , , , and , the film is kept permanently illuminated while the stylus on the transmitter is tracing over an insulating strip, and in darkness when tracing over a conducting strip. in fig. the relay f should allow a continuous current from z to flow through the electrolytic paper, and only broken when the resistance of the selenium cell is sufficiently reduced to allow the current from d to operate the relay. the author has endeavoured to make direct positives on glass of the picture to be transmitted, so that a negative metal print could be prepared. the results obtained were not very satisfactory, but the method tried is given, as it may perhaps be of interest. the plate used in the camera has to be exposed three or four times longer than is required for an ordinary negative. the exposed plate is then placed in a solution of protoxalate of iron (ferrous oxalate) and left until the image shows plainly through the back of the plate. it { } is then washed in water and placed in a solution consisting of distilled water cc. nitric acid cc. sulphuric acid cc. bichromate of potash grammes. alum " after being in this bath for about fifteen minutes the plate is again well washed in water, and developed in the ordinary way. the first two operations should be performed in the dark room, but the remaining operations can be performed in daylight, once the plate has been placed in the bichromate bath. as already stated, the results obtained were not very satisfactory, and such a method is not now worth following up, as it is comparatively easy so to arrange matters at the receiving station that a positive or negative image can be received at will. it is necessary to connect the stylus of the receiving machine to the positive pole of the battery z, otherwise the marks will be made on the underside of the paper. the electrolytic receiver, owing to the absence of mechanical and electro-magnetic inertia, is capable of recording signals at a very high speed indeed. "atmospherics," which are such a serious nuisance in long-distance wireless telegraphy, will also prove a nuisance in wireless photography, { } but their effects will not be so serious in a photographic method of receiving as they would be in the electrolytic system. in a photographic receiver where the film is, under normal conditions, constantly illuminated, the received signals (both the transmitted signals and the atmospheric disturbances) will be recorded, after development, as transparent marks upon the film, the remainder of the film being, of course, perfectly opaque. by careful retouching the marks due to the disturbances can be eradicated, a print upon sensitised paper having been first obtained to act as a guide during the process. * * * * * { } chapter iv synchronising and driving clockwork and electro-motors are the source of driving power that are most suitable for photo-telegraphic work, and each has its superior claims depending on the type of machine that is being used. for general experimental work, however, an electro-motor is perhaps the most convenient, as the speed can be regulated within very wide limits. for a constant and accurate drive a falling weight has no equal, but the apparatus required is very cumbersome and the work of winding both tedious and heavy. this method of driving was at one time universally employed with the hughes printing telegraph, but it has now been discarded in favour of electro-motors, which are more compact, besides being cheaper to instal in the first instance. synchronising and isochronising the two machines are the most difficult problems that require solving in connection with wireless photography, and as previously mentioned, the { } synchronising of the two stations must be very nearly perfect in order to obtain intelligible results. the limit of error in synchronising must be about in in order to obtain results suitable for publication. the electrolytic system is perhaps the easiest to isochronise, as the received picture is visible. on the metal print used for transmitting, and at the commencing edge a datum line is drawn across in insulating ink. the reproduction of this line is carefully observed by the operator in charge of the receiving instrument, and the speed of the motor is regulated until this line lies close against a line drawn across the electrolytic paper. although this may seem an ideal method there are one or two considerations to be taken into account. unless the decomposition marks are made the correct length and are properly spaced, however good the isochronising may be, the result will be a blurred image. any one who has worked with a selenium cell, will know that it cannot change from its state of high resistance to that of low resistance with infinite rapidity, and the effects of this inertia, or "fatigue" as it has been called, are more pronounced when working at a high speed. in working, the effects of this inertia would be to increase the time of contact of the relay f (fig. ) as the current from d would flow for a slightly longer period through r to f than the period of { } illumination allowed by k. this, of course, would mean a lengthening of the marks on the paper; results would also differ greatly with different selenium cells. there is a method of compensation by which the inertia of a cell can almost entirely be overcome, but it would add greatly to the complicacy of the receiving apparatus. in using an electro-motor with any optical method of receiving there are two methods available. the first is an arrangement similar to that used by professor korn in his early experiments with his selenium machines. the motor used for driving has several coils in the armature connected with slip rings, from which an alternating current may be tapped off; the motor acting partially as a generator, besides doing good work as a motor in driving the machine. this alternating current is conducted to a frequency meter, which consists of a powerful electro-magnet, over which are placed magnetised steel springs, having different natural periods of vibration. by means of a regulating resistance the motor is run until the spring which has the same period as the desired armature speed vibrates freely. the speed of the motors at both stations can thus be adjusted with a fair amount of accuracy. another method is to make use of a governor similar to those employed in the hughes printing telegraph system. a drawing of the governor is given in fig. . it consists of a [illustration] { } metal frame which supports an upright steel bar s, whose ends turn on pivots. this bar is rectangular in section. the gear-wheel g is fastened near the bottom of this rod and gears with a similar wheel on the shaft of the driving motor (not shown). suspended from the broader sides of s are the two flexible arms d, each carrying a brass ball t. these balls are not fastened to the arms, but can slide up and down, being held in position by the wire springs m, one end of each spring being fastened to the screws c. these screws work in a slot cut in the upper part of s, and are connected to the adjusting screw e. when e is turned the screws are raised or lowered accordingly, and also the balls on the arms d. fastened to the arms are two brushes of tow b, and these revolve inside but just clearing the inner surface of the steel ring z. upon the motor speed increasing above the normal the arms d, and consequently the balls t, swing out, making a larger circle, causing the brushes b to press against the steel ring z, setting up friction which, however, is reduced as soon as the motor regains its ordinary working speed. by careful adjustment the speed of the motors can be kept perfectly constant. the object of having the balls t adjustable on d, is to provide a means of altering the motor speed, as the lower the balls on d the slower the mechanism runs, and _vice versa_. { } [illustration] a simple and effective speed regulator devised by the writer is given in drawings and . it comprises two parts, a and b, the part a being connected to the driving motor, and the part b working independently. the independent portion b consists of an ordinary clock movement m, a steel spindle j being geared to one of the slower moving wheels, so that it makes just one revolution in two seconds. this spindle, which runs in two coned bearings, carries at its outer end a light [illustration] pointer d, about two inches long, to the underside of which is fastened the thin brass contact spring s, which presses lightly upon the ebonite ring n. { } the portion a comprises a spindle, pointer, and contact spring similar to those employed in b, the spindle j' being geared to the driving motor by means of f, so that the pointer d' makes a little more than one revolution in two seconds. by means of a special form of brake on the driving motor, the speed is reduced, so that both pointers travel at the same rate, viz. one revolution in two seconds. by careful adjustment the two pointers can be made to revolve in synchronism,[ ] and when this is obtained the contact springs s, s', pass over the contacts c, c', completing the circuit of the battery b and lamp l. when working properly the lamp l lights up regularly once every second. this regulator is an excellent one to use for experimental work, although it depends a great deal upon the skill of the operator, but good adjustment should be obtained in about two minutes. it is a good plan to insert a clutch of some description between the driving motor and the machine, so that the regulator can be adjusted prior to the act of receiving or transmitting, the machine being prevented from revolving by means of a catch. the motor used should be powerful enough to take up the work of driving the machine without any reduction in speed. the clocks m can be regulated so that they only gain or lose a few seconds in { } twenty-four hours, which gives an accuracy in working sufficient for all practical purposes. connection is made with the contact springs s, s', by means of the springs t, t', which press against the spindles j, j'. another important point is the correct placing of the picture upon the receiving drum. it is necessary that the two machines besides revolving in perfect isochronism should synchronise as well, _i.e._ begin to transmit and record at exactly the same position on the cylinders, viz. at the edge of the lap, so that the component parts of the received image shall occupy the same position on the paper or film as they do on the metal print. if the receiving cylinder had, let us suppose, completed a quarter of a revolution before it started to reproduce, the reproduction when removed from the machine and opened out will be found to be incorrectly placed; the bottom portion of the picture being joined to the top portion, or _vice versa_, and this means that perhaps an important piece of the picture would be rendered useless even if the whole is not spoilt. it is evident, therefore, that some arrangement must be employed whereby synchronism, as well as isochronism of the two instruments can be maintained. there are several methods of synchronising that are in constant use in high-speed telegraphy, in which the limit of error is reduced to a minimum, { } and some modification of these methods will perhaps solve the problem, but it must be remembered that synchronism is far easier to obtain where the two stations are connected by a length of line than where the two stations are running independently. in one system of ordinary photo-telegraphy synchronism is obtained in the following manner. the receiving cylinder travels at a speed slightly in excess of the transmitting cylinder, and as its revolution is finished first is prevented from revolving by a check, and when in this position the receiving apparatus is thrown out of circuit and an electro-magnet which operates the check is switched in. when the transmitting cylinder has completed its revolution (about / th of a second later) the transmitting apparatus, by means of a special arrangement, is thrown out of circuit for a period, just long enough for a powerful current to be sent through the line. this current actuates the electro-magnet. the check is withdrawn and the receiving cylinder commences a fresh revolution in perfect synchronism with the transmitting cylinder. as soon as the check is withdrawn the receiving apparatus is again placed in circuit until another revolution is completed. as the receiver cannot stop and start abruptly at the end of each revolution a spring clutch is inserted between the driving motor and the machine. { } although a method of synchronising similar to this may later on be devised for wireless photography, the writer, from the result of his own experiments, is led to believe that results good enough for all practical purposes can be obtained by fitting a synchronising device whereby the two machines are started work at the same instant, and relying upon the perfect regulation of the speed of the motors for correct working. the method of isochronism must, however, be nearly perfect in its action, as it is easy to see that with only a very slight difference in the speed of either machine this error will, when multiplied by or revolutions, completely destroy the received picture for practical purposes. from what has been written in this and in the preceding chapters it will be evident that the successful solution of transmitting photographs by wireless methods will necessitate the use of a great many pieces of apparatus all requiring delicate adjustment, and depending largely upon each other for efficient working. as previously stated, there is at present no real system of wireless photography, the whole science being in a purely experimental stage, but already professor korn has succeeded in transmitting photographs between berlin and paris, a distance of over miles. if such a distance could be worked over successfully, there is no reason to doubt that before long { } we shall be able to receive pictures from america with as great reliability and precision as we now receive messages. in nearly all wireless photographic systems devised up to the present the chief portion of the receiver consists of a very sensitive galvanometer, and although very good results have been obtained by their use they are more or less a nuisance, as the extreme delicacy of their construction renders them liable to a lot of unnecessary movement caused by external disturbances. a galvanometer of the de' arsonval pattern, used by the writer, was constantly being disturbed by merely walking about the room, although placed upon a fairly substantial table; and for the same reason it was impossible to attempt to place the driving motor of the machine on the same table as the galvanometer. for ship-board work it will be evident that the use of such a sensitive instrument presents a great difficulty to successful working, and a good opening exists for some piece of apparatus--to take the place of the galvanometer--that will be as sensitive in its action but more robust in its construction. * * * * * { } chapter v the "telephograph" in the present chapter it is proposed to give a brief description of a system of radio-photography devised by the author, and which includes a greatly improved method of transmitting and receiving, as well as an ingenious arrangement for synchronising the two stations; the whole being an attempt to produce a system that would be capable of working commercially over fairly long distances. the system about to be described, and which i have designated the "telephograph," is the outcome of several years' original experimental work, many difficulties that were manifest in the working of the earlier systems having been overcome by apparatus that has been expressly designed for the purpose. in any practical system of radio-photography the following points are of great importance: ( ) the speed of transmission; ( ) the quality of the received picture; ( ) the method of synchronising { } the two machines so that transmission and reception begin simultaneously; ( ) the correct regulation of the speed of the driving motors; ( ) the simplicity and reliability of the entire arrangement. points and are dependent upon several factors; the number of contacts made by the stylus per minute; the size of the metal print used; the number of lines per inch on the screen used in preparing the print; and the accurate and harmonious working of the various pieces of apparatus employed. in the system under discussion the size of the metal print used is inches by inches, and a screen having lines to the inch is used for preparing it. with the drum of the machine making one revolution in four seconds, the stylus makes contacts per second, or a minute, the time for complete transmission being twenty-five minutes. by the use of ordinary relays not more than contacts a minute can be obtained, and in the present system it is only by means of a specially designed relay that such a high rate of working has been made possible. similarly, too, with the receiving of such a large number of signals transmitted at such a high speed, a special instrument has been devised that can record this number of signals without any trouble, and could even record up to signals a minute, provided that a suitable transmitter could be designed. { } in the present system the writer does not claim to have completely solved the problem of the wireless transmission of photographs, but it is a great advance on any system previously described, and the following advantages are put forward for recognition: ( ) a greatly improved method of transmitting and receiving; ( ) a simple method of regulating the speed of the driving motors and maintaining isochronism with a limit of error of less than in ; ( ) an arrangement for synchronising the two machines whereby transmitting and receiving begin simultaneously; ( ) the use of one machine only at each station. transmitting apparatus a diagrammatic representation of the apparatus required for a complete station, transmitting and receiving combined, is given in fig. , the usual wireless equipment having been omitted from the diagram to avoid confusion. _the machine._--this, as will be seen from fig. , consists of a base-plate m, to which are attached the two bearings b and b'. the bearing b' is fitted with an internal thread to correspond with the threaded portion of the shaft d. the drum v is a brass casting, being fastened to the shaft by set screws. the shaft is threaded to the inch. the bearings are preferably of the concentric type. the circuit breaker c is so arranged that when { } the drum has traversed the required distance, the end of the shaft pushes back the spring m, breaking the circuit of the driving gear and stopping the machine. the machine is connected to the driving gear by the flexible coupling a. [illustration: fig. . m, motor; y, isochroniser; f, clutch; a, machine; r, stylus; s, relay; x, gearing; o, circuit breaker; t, receiver; c, condenser; u, telephone relay; k, polarised relay; l, contact breaker; d, d^ , d^ , d^ , batteries; p, friction brake; b, b^ , double-pole two-way switches; n, n^ , n^ , single switches; w, key; e, electric clock; j, telephones.] the drum measures inches long by - / inches diameter, and this takes a metal print inches by inches, which allows for a lap of about / inch. in working, the print is wrapped tightly round the drum, being secured by means of a little seccotine smeared along one edge. care must be taken that the edge of the lap draws away from the point of { } the stylus and not towards it. a margin of bare foil, about / inch wide, should be left on the print at the commencing edge, the purpose of which will be explained later. [illustration: fig. .] _the stylus._--as the drum of the machine travels laterally, by reason of the threaded shaft and bearing, the stylus must necessarily be a fixture. it consists of a holder b, drilled to take a hardened steel point s, attached to the spring m. the spring is arranged to work in the guide f, which is provided with an adjusting screw w for regulating the pressure of the stylus upon the print; the pressure being sufficient to enable good contact to be made, but must not be heavy enough to scratch the soft foil. the needle should present an angle of about ° to the surface of the print, as this angle has been found to give the best results in working. to eliminate any sparking that may take place at the point of make and break, due to the self-induction of the relay coils, a condenser c, about microfarad capacity, should be connected across { } the drum and stylus. the complete stylus is given in the drawings, figs. , _a_, and also in the diagrams figs. and . [illustration: fig. . showing the arrangement for sliding the stylus to or from the machine.] [illustration: fig. a.] _the relay._--as will be seen from the diagram, fig. , this consists of two electro-magnets having very soft iron cores, the magnet m being wound in the usual manner, while the magnet n is wound differentially. the armature a is made as light as possible, and is pivoted at p, and when there is no current flowing through any of the coils, is held midway between the magnet cores by the two spiral springs s and t, which are under slight but equal tension. the connections are as follows. the wires from the winding on m are connected directly to the relay terminals f and h, as are also the wires from one winding on n. the other winding on n is connected in series with the battery c, ammeter b, and regulating resistance r. { } [illustration: fig. .] when the circuit of the battery c is completed, the coil of n, to which it is connected, is energised, and the armature a is attracted against the stop v. when in this position the tension of the spring s is released, while the tension of the spring t is increased. as soon as the circuit of the battery d is completed by means of the metal line print on the transmitting machine, the current divides at the terminals f and h, a portion flowing through the magnet coil m, and a portion through the remaining winding on n. the current which flows through the winding on n produces a magnetising effect equal to that caused by the other winding on n, but since the two windings are of equal length and resistance, and since the current flowing through the two windings is of equal strength but in opposite directions, the result is to neutralise { } the magnetising effects produced by each winding, and consequently no magnetism is produced in the cores. the other portion of the current from d flows through the coil m, and it becomes magnetised at the same time that the coil n becomes demagnetised. the armature a is attracted by m against the stop x, and this attraction is assisted by the spring t, which was under increased tension. the conditions of the springs are now reversed, the spring s being under increased tension, while the tension of the spring t is released. as soon as the current from d is broken, the magnetism disappears from m, the neutralising current in n ceases, and n once more becomes magnetised, owing to the current which still flows through one winding from c; the armature is therefore again attracted by n, assisted by the spring s. the current flowing through the two windings of n must be perfectly equal, and the regulating resistance r, and ammeters b and b', are inserted for purposes of adjustment. the current from c must flow in a direction opposite to that which flows from d. [illustration: fig. . h, h', containers; m, mercury; e, paraffin oil; t, t', terminals; c, suspending rod; d, base; f, f', dipping rods.] the local circuit of the relay is completed by means of a copper dipper in mercury, somewhat resembling an ordinary mercury break, but modified to suit the present requirements. the arrangement will be seen from fig. . the whole of the { } moving parts are made as light as possible, and for this reason the rod c and the dippers f, f' should be made as short as convenient. the containers h, h' are separate, of cast iron, and rectangular in shape. the dipper is of very thin copper tube--an advantage where alternating current is to be used--and is made adjustable for height on the suspending rod c. the leg f is of such a length that permanent contact is made with the mercury in the container h, while the leg f' clears the surface of the mercury by about / inch, when the armature of the relay is in its normal position. to prevent undue churning of the mercury, which would necessarily take place if the dipper entered and left the mercury at each movement of the armature, a pointed ebonite plug is inserted in the end of the tube. this will be found to give good results at a high speed, the mercury being practically undisturbed, and the production of "sludge" reduced to a minimum. to prevent oxidation of the mercury, and to prevent arcing, the surface is covered with paraffin oil. if this is not sufficient to prevent arcing a condenser should be shunted across the { } containers. the volume of mercury, and the area of the dippers, should be sufficient to carry the current used for a considerable period without heating up to any extent. an adjustable weight j is provided in order to balance the armature and dipping rod. the remaining transmitting apparatus consists of the battery d^ and the usual wireless apparatus. the double-pole two-way switch b' is to enable the photo-telegraphic set to be switched out and the hand key w switched in for ordinary signalling purposes. the battery d^ should be about volts. receiving apparatus the wireless portion of the receiver is similar to that given in fig. , is of the usual syntonic type, and comprises an oscillation transformer, s being the secondary, and p the primary; c' is a block condenser, and c a variable condenser. the detector d is of the carborundum crystal or electrolytic pattern. a two-way switch b is provided so that the relay u can be switched out and the telephones j switched in for ordinary receiving purposes. the relay u is a brown's telephone relay. [illustration: fig. .] _the receiver._--the magnified current from the relay u is taken to a special telephone receiver, the construction of which is given in fig. . the diaphragm f is about - / inches diameter, and should be fairly thin but very resilient. only one { } [illustration] [illustration] coil is provided, and this should be wound with no. s.s.c. copper wire for a resistance of about ohms. by using only one coil and therefore only one core, the movement of the diaphragm is centralised. to the centre of the diaphragm a light steel point is fastened, about / inch long, and provided with a projecting hook h. an enlarged view of this pin is given in fig. . the movement of the diaphragm and consequently of the steel point p is communicated to a pivoted rod r, which is of special construction. a piece of aluminium tube - / inches long, and of the section given at b, is bushed at one end with a piece of brass of the shape shown in fig. a. a stiff steel wire t about inch long ( gauge) is screwed into the end of z, and carries a counterbalance weight c. a hardened { } steel spindle, pointed at both ends, is fastened at d, and runs between two coned bearings, one of which is adjustable. the underside of z is flattened, and a small coned depression is made for the reception of the pointed end of the pin. by means of the spring j the two pieces, z and p, are held firmly together, at the same time allowing perfect freedom of movement. the bridge g is made from a piece of sheet aluminium placed in a slot cut in the tube r, the end of the tube being pressed tight upon g, and secured by means of a small rivet. the optical arrangements are as follows. by means of the nernst lamp l, and the lenses b and b', figs. and , a magnified shadow of g is thrown upon the screen j. when the shutter g is in its normal position (_i.e._ at rest), its shadow is just above the small hole in j, and light from l reaches the photographic film wrapped round the drum v of the machine. [illustration: fig. . j, screen; l, nernst lamp; g, shutter; b, condensing lens; b_ , focussing lens.] when, however, signals are sent out from the transmitting apparatus, the magnified current from the relay u energises the coil of the special telephone s, attracting the diaphragm f, and consequently giving movement to the pivoted rod r. as by means of the optical arrangements a { } magnified movement as well as a magnified image of g is thrown upon the screen j, the shadow of g will, when the telephone s is actuated, cover the hole in the screen, and prevent any light from reaching the film on v, until current from the relay u ceases to flow. therefore, when the stylus of the transmitter traces over a conducting strip on the metal print, no light reaches the film on v, but when tracing over an insulating strip the shadow of g on the screen j rises, and the light from l reaches the film. by this means a positive picture is received, which is a great advantage where the photographs are required for reproduction. atmospherics would be represented by irregular transparent marks on the film after development, and these can be easily eradicated by retouching. [illustration: fig. . e, ebonite screen; f, focussing lens; g, shutter; o, condensing lens; l, nernst lamp.] the drum of the machine moves laterally / th of an inch per revolution, and the hole in the screen is / th of an inch in diameter. as the screen j is not in direct contact with the film, the slight diffusion of the light that takes place will produce { } a mark of about the right thickness. with a movement of the diaphragm of only / th of an inch, the actual movement of g will be / th of an inch. if the optical arrangements have a magnifying power of , then the movement of the shadow upon the screen will be / th of an inch, which will be ample to cover the aperture. the aluminium rod r, minus the counter-weight, can be made to weigh not more than grains. it is necessary to enclose the optical parts in a light tight box, indicated by the dotted lines in fig. , in order to prevent any extraneous light from reaching the film. _the contact breaker._--the contact breaker (l, fig. ), as will be seen from fig. , consists of an electro-magnet n, the windings of which are connected with the battery b and the polarised relay k. the armature which is supported by the spring g carries a contact arm a, which in its normal position makes permanent contact with the contact screw t, and completes the circuit between the relay k and the telephone relay u (fig. ). as soon as the transmitter sends out the first signal, the magnified current from the telephone relay actuates the relay k, which in turn completes the circuit of the contact breaker. directly the armature m has been attracted, the contact with t is broken, and a makes fresh contact with the screw h, by means of the spring z { } fastened to the underside of a. the armature, once it has been attracted, is held in permanent contact with h by the catch s, independent of the magnets n. as soon as contact is made with h, the clutch (f, fig. ) circuit is completed, and the circuit of the relay k is broken. when the circuit of the clutch f is broken by means of the circuit breaker c on the machine (fig. ), the stop s is pulled back by hand, allowing the contact arm a to rise, and again make fresh contact with the contact screw t. [illustration: fig. .] driving apparatus _the friction brake._--this consists of a steel disc a, fig. , about - / inches diameter and / inch or / inch wide on the face, secured to the main shaft of the driving motor. the arm h, pivoted at c, carries at one end the curved block b, which is faced with a pad of tow f. the other extremity is pivoted to the steel rod p, which slides { } [illustration] in holes bored in the standards j. one end of the rod p is screwed with a fine thread, about to the inch, and is fitted with a regulating wheel t, by means of which the block b can be made to press upon the disc a with any required degree of pressure. a fairly stiff steel spring r is placed upon the rod p, between one standard j and the collar n. as the speed of the driving motor is slightly in excess of that required by the machine, the block b, by means of the wheel, is made to press upon the disc a, setting up friction which reduces the motor speed until the isochroniser indicates that the correct working speed has been attained. _the clutch_.--the details of this will be seen from figs. and . it consists of a steel shaft coned at both ends running between two countersunk bearings, one of which is adjustable. this shaft carries the two portions of the clutch a and b, the portion a being a fixture on the shaft, and the portion b running free upon it. the portion b is a gun-metal casting bored to run accurately upon the steel shaft. a soft iron annular ring is fastened to the face. [illustration: fig. . e, spindle; r, bobbins; p, iron cores; d, copper rings; t, brushes; n, back plate; v, front plate; j, gearing; s, spring; h, collar; z, iron ring; f, fixed bearing; c, insulating bush.] the portion a consists of a gun-metal casting { } [illustration] bored a tight fit for the shaft e, secured by means of a set screw. the two magnet cores p are screwed into the front plate v, which is also of gun-metal, and after the bobbins r have been slipped on, the shanks of the cores are passed through holes drilled in the flange n of the main casting and held in place with nuts. the faces of both a and b must be turned perfectly square with the shaft, so that they run accurately together. the portion b is { } kept in contact with a by means of a spring s, the pressure being regulated by the collar h. current is taken to the magnets by means of the two insulated copper rings d mounted upon the body of a. the gear-wheels on both portions have teeth of very fine pitch, the number of teeth on each being regulated by the speed of the driving motor and the required machine speed. connection with the circuit breaker l and the battery b^ is made with the collecting rings d by the brushes t. the complete connections are given in the diagram fig. . _the isochroniser._--this is a device for ensuring the correct speed regulation of the driving motors, and is shown in detail in fig. . it comprises two portions, one portion being rotated at a definite speed by electrical means, and the other portion rotated by the driving motor. the main portion consists of a metal tube n, bushed at both ends, the bottom end of the tube being arranged to work on ball-bearings. an ebonite bush c carries three copper rings t, t^ , t^ , and the brushes r, r^ , r^ are in electrical contact with them. the ebonite plate j, - / inches diameter, is secured to the top end of n, and carries a contact piece q, shown separate at e. as will be seen this is a block of ebonite with three contacts arranged on the top surface. the middle contact p is / th of an inch wide, and the contacts p^ { } and p^ are placed on either side at a distance of / inch; the contact strips p^ , p^ carry the brass pins d, which are about / inch diameter, and spaced / inch apart. a connecting wire is carried from the contact p to the copper ring t, another from p^ to t^ , and one from p^ to t^ . [illustration: fig. . n, brass tube; s, bushes; g, ball-bearing; h, gear-wheel; t, t^ , t^ , copper rings; c, insulating block; r, r^ , r^ , brushes; j, ebonite disc; q, contact block; d, metal pins; o, pulley, p, p^ , p^ , contact plates; k, needle; z, spring; w, steel rod; e, countersunk bearing.] the bushes s are bored a running fit for the steel rod w (shown separate at a), which is coned at both ends, and runs between two countersunk bearings, the bottom bearing e being fixed while { } the top bearing (not shown) is adjustable. a needle k is fastened near the end of the rod w, and attached to this needle is the spring z, which presses lightly but firmly upon the contact block q. to provide a level surface for z to work over, the spaces between the contact pieces are filled in with an insulating material, and the whole surface finished off perfectly smooth. the spring z is / inch wide for portion of its length, but at the point where it presses upon q it is reduced in width to / th of an inch (see fig. ). the driving arrangements are as follows. a counter-shaft q, fig. , fitted with a grooved pulley, is run in bearings parallel with the shaft w, and is connected by suitable gearing to the shaft of the driving motor, so that the needle k makes one revolution in about - / seconds. a belt passing over the pulleys connects the two shafts, and the tension of the belt is regulated by means of an adjustable jockey pulley. the tube n, carrying the disc j, must be rotated at a fixed speed, and this is accomplished in the following manner. an ordinary electric clock impulse dial, actuated from a master clock, is connected by suitable gearing h, so that the tube n makes exactly one revolution in seconds; it being possible to adjust an electric clock of the "synchronome" type, so that it only gains or loses about second in hours, and this provides { } an accuracy sufficient for all practical purposes. the connections are given in fig. , and the face of the instrument in fig. . it will be seen that a connecting wire is run from the steel spindle w to one terminal each of the lamps l, l^ , l^ , and from the other terminal of the lamps to one terminal of the batteries j, the battery comprising a set of three -volt accumulators. the other terminals of the batteries are joined one to each of the brushes r, r^ , r^ . [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. . m, terminals for connecting to electric clock; l, white lamp; l^ , blue lamp; l^ , red lamp.] the lamps are coloured, the lamp l being white, and the lamps l^ and l^ blue and red respectively, and care must be taken in connecting up that when the needle k makes contact with the stud p the white lamp l is in circuit. when the machines are working, the operator, by means of the brake (already described), reduces the speed of the driving motor until the needle k travels in unison with the disc j, making permanent contact with p on the contact { } block q, which is evidenced by the lamp l remaining alight. if, however, the needle travels faster than the disc j, contact with p is broken and fresh contact is made with p^ , the lamp l is extinguished and the red lamp l^ lights up, and remains alight until the operator reduces the speed. similarly, too, if the needle travels slower than j, contact is made with p^ , and the circuit of the blue lamp l^ is completed. when the speed is either above or below the normal, the needle k engages with one or the other of the pins d, and as the tension of the driving belt is only such as is required to drive the needle, the belt slips on the pulleys until the normal speed is regained. method of working the clockwork motor m, fig. , should be capable of running for several hours with one winding, and powerful enough to take up the work of driving the machine without any appreciable effort. the main spindle of the motor is so arranged that it makes one revolution in two minutes, and the reduction in speed between the motor shaft and the shaft to which the coupling a is attached is : . the metal line print having been wrapped round the drum of the machine, the stylus is put into position, at the edge of the lap, and with the needle resting about half-way on { } the margin of the bare foil left at the commencing edge of the print. now, when the two stations are in perfect readiness for work, the motors are started and the speed adjusted; the speed of the machine being just under one revolution in four seconds. [illustration: fig. . m, clockwork motor; s, isochroniser; e, friction break; t, brushes; f, electric clutch; x, gearing; d, d^ , switches; a, flexible coupling; k, polarised relay; l, circuit breaker; b_ , b_ , b_ , batteries; p, electric clock; w, terminals for connection to telephone relay; h, terminals for connection to terminals j, on transmitting machine.] the switch d is then closed, and the arm of the switch d^ placed on the contact stud ( ), at the transmitting station only. as soon as the switches are closed the clutch f comes into action, and the transmitting machine begins to revolve. when the whole of the line print wrapped round the drum of the machine has passed under the stylus, the end of the shaft d, fig. , engages { } with the spring _m_, breaking the clutch circuit and allowing the motor to run free. as soon as the machine stops, the switch d is opened and the machine run back to its starting position by hand. at the receiving station the switch d is also closed, and the arm of the switch d^ placed on the contact stud ( ). the closing of these switches does not bring the clutch f into operation until current from the telephone relay u connected to the wireless receiving apparatus works the sensitive polarised relay k, which in turn completes the circuit of the circuit-breaker l. when the armature of l is attracted, the circuit of the relay k is broken, the circuit of the clutch f is completed, and the machine starts revolving. [illustration: fig. .] the current from the relay u, due to the transmitting stylus passing over _one_ contact strip on the metal print, is too brief to actuate the heavier mechanism of the relay k, hence the need of the margin of bare foil at the commencing edge of the metal print, so that a practically continuous current will flow to the relay k until the armature is attracted. as, however, the relay is not actuated at the receipt of the first signal, and as it is necessary for the machine to start recording at a certain point on the film, viz. { } at the edge of the lap--the reason for this was given in chapter iv.--the starting position of the receiving drum will be similar to that given in the diagram fig. , where x indicates the lap of the photographic film, and the arrow the direction of rotation. it is, of course, obvious that a somewhat similar adjustment must be made with regard to the position of the stylus on the metal print at the transmitting machine. in the present system, as in almost every photographic method of receiving that has been described, the nernst lamp is invariably mentioned as the source of illumination. since the advent of the high-voltage metal-filament lamps the nernst lamp has fallen somewhat into disuse for commercial purposes, but it possesses certain characteristics that render it eminently suitable for the purpose under discussion. the main principle of this type of lamp depends upon the discovery made by professor nernst in , after whom the lamp is named, that filaments of certain earthy bodies when raised to a red heat became conductive sufficiently well to pass a current which raised it to a white heat, and furthermore that the glowing filament emitted a brighter light for a given amount of current than carbon filaments. [illustration: fig. a.] nernst lamps are made in two sizes, the larger { } being intended for the same work as usually done by arc lamps, and the smaller to replace incandescent lamps; the smaller type being made to fit into the ordinary bayonet lampholders. the principal parts of a nernst lamp consist of the filament, the heater, the automatic cut-out, and the resistance, and their arrangement in the smaller type of lamp is given in the diagram, fig. a. the current enters at the positive terminal, passes through the heater m, and out through the negative terminal. the filament b, which consists of a short length of an infusible earth made of the oxides of several rare minerals, of which zirconia is one, is a non-conductor at first, but becomes a conductor upon being raised to a high temperature by means of the heater m. as soon as the filament becomes conductive the current then passes through the automatic cut-out h, and the armature d is attracted, thus breaking the heater circuit. the current then flows from the positive terminal { } [illustration] through the cut-out h, resistance j, and filament b, and from thence out of the lamp. since the resistance of the filament decreases the hotter it gets, it is necessary to insert a ballasting resistance in series with it which has the opposite property of increasing its resistance as it gets hotter, to prevent the filament taking too much current and destroying itself. such a resistance, j, consists of a filament of fine iron wire, which, to prevent oxidation from exposure to the air, is enclosed in a glass bulb filled with hydrogen gas. fig. _b_ shows the form of ballast resistance used in the small and large type of lamp respectively. either direct or alternating current can be used with these lamps, and with direct current the polarity must be strictly observed, and that the positive wire is connected to the positive and the { } negative wire to the negative terminal. with the smaller type of lamp once it has been correctly placed in its holder it is essential that it should not be turned, as a change in the direction of the current will rapidly destroy the filament. [illustration: fig. c.] the arrangement of the larger type of nernst lamp can be readily seen from the drawing, fig. c. care must be taken to see that the voltage required by the burner and resistance equals the voltage of the supply circuit, and that only parts of the same amperage are used together on the same lamp. no advantage is obtained by over-running a nernst lamp, this only shortening its life without increasing the light. under normal conditions the average life of the burner is about hours. the efficiency of the nernst lamp is fairly high, being only . to . watts per c.p. the light given is remarkably steady, and the lamps are adaptable for all voltages from to . in one of the large type of lamps for use on a -volt { } circuit the burner takes . ampere at volts, and the resistance . ampere at volts, while one of the smaller lamps for use on the same circuit takes . ampere at volts and . ampere at volts for the burner and resistance respectively. the burner and heater are very fragile, and should never be handled except by the porcelain plate to which they are attached. the lamps burn in air and emit a brilliant white light of high actinic power, the intrinsic brilliancy (c.p./square inch) varying from to , as compared with to for ordinary metal filament lamps, and to for carbon filament lamps. the chief advantage of the nernst lamp from a photographic point of view lies in the fact that it produces abundantly the blue and violet rays which have the greatest chemical effect upon a photographic plate or film. these rays are known as chemical or actinic rays, and are only slightly produced in some types of incandescent electric lamps. carbon-filament lamps are very poor in this respect. because a light is visually brilliant it must by no means be assumed that it is the best to use for purposes of photography, and this is a point over which many photographers stumble when using artificial light. many sources of light, while excellent for illumination, have very low actinic powers, while others may have low illuminating but high { } actinic powers. a lamp giving a light yellowish in colour has usually low actinic power, while all those lamps giving a soft white light are generally found to be highly actinic. in addition to the actinic value of the source of illumination, the photographic film used must be very carefully chosen, as the chemical inertia of the sensitised film plays an important part in the successful reproduction of the picture, and also, to a certain extent, affects the speed of transmission. the length of exposure, the amount of light admitted to the film, and the characteristics of the film itself, are all factors which have a decided bearing upon the quality of the results obtained, and the film found to be most suitable in one case will perhaps give very unsatisfactory results in another. in photo-telegraphy the length of exposure is determined by the time taken by the transmitting stylus to trace over a conducting strip on the metal print, and this time, of course, varies with the density of the image and also with the speed of transmission. the film in ordinary photography is chosen with regard to the subject and the existing light conditions, and the amount of light admitted to the film and the length of exposure are regulated accordingly. no such latitude is, however, possible in photo-telegraphy. with each set of apparatus { } the various factors, such as the light value, the amount of light admitted to the film, and the length of exposure, will be practically fixed quantities, and the film that will give the most satisfactory results under these fixed conditions can only be found by the rough-and-ready method of "trial and error." the films in common use are manufactured in four qualities, namely, ordinary, studio, rapid, and extra rapid. these terms should really relate to the light sensitiveness of the film (or, as it is technically termed, the speed), but at the best they are a rough and very unsatisfactory guide, for the reason that some unscrupulous makers, purely for business purposes, do not hesitate to label their films and plates as slow, rapid, etc., without troubling to make any tests for correct classification. the speed of photographic films and plates is generally indicated by a number, and the system of standardisation adopted by the majority of makers in this country is that originated by messrs. hurter & driffield, abbreviated h. & d. in their system the speed of the film and the exposure varies in geometrical proportion, a film marked h. & d. requiring double the exposure of one marked h. & d. . the highest number always denotes the highest speed, and the exposure varies inversely with the speed. besides the hurter & driffield method of { } obtaining the speed numbers of plates and films adopted by a large number of makers in this country, there are also two standard english systems known as the w.p. no. (watkin's power number) and wynne f. no., both of which are used to a fair extent. the "actinograph" number or speed number of a plate in the h. & d. system is found by dividing by a number known as the inertia, the inertia, which is a measure of the insensitiveness of the plate, being determined according to the directions laid down by hurter & driffield--that is, by using pyro-soda developer and the straight portion only of the density curve. if, for instance, the inertia was found to be one-fifth, then the speed number would be ÷ / = , and the plate is h. & d. . the w.p. no. is found by dividing by the inertia. thus ÷ / = , and the plate is w.p. , but for all practical purposes the w.p. no. can be taken as one and a half times h. & d. the wynne f. numbers may be found by multiplying the square root of the watkins number by . . thus [sqrt] = . , and . Ã� . = w.f. . for those photographers who are in the habit of using an actinometer giving the plate speeds in h. & d. numbers, the following table, taken from the _photographer's daily companion_, is given, { } which shows at a glance the relative speed numbers for the various systems. the watkins and wynne numbers only hold good, however, when the inertia has been found by the h. & d. method. table of comparative speed numbers for plates and films ------------------------------------------------------ |h. & d.|w.p. no.|w.f. no.||h. & d.|w.p. no.|w.f. no.| --------+--------+-----------------+--------+--------- | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | ------------------------------------------------------ although theoretically the higher the speed of the film the less the duration of exposure required, there is a practical limit, as besides the intensity and actinic value of the light admitted to the film a definite time is necessary for it to overcome the chemical inertia of the sensitised coating and produce a useful effect. with every make of film it is possible to give so short an exposure that although light does fall upon the film it does no work at all--in other words, we can say that for every film there is a minimum amount of light action, and anything below this is of no use. the exposure that enables the smallest amount of light action to take place is termed the limit of the smallest useful exposure. { } there is also a maximum exposure in which the light affects practically all the silver in the film, and any increased light action has no increased effect. this is the limit of the greatest useful exposure. in photo-telegraphy the duration of exposure, as already pointed out, is determined by certain conditions connected with the transmitting apparatus, and with conditions similar to those mentioned on page the length of exposure will vary roughly from - th to - th of a second. the most suitable film to use for purposes of photo-telegraphy is one having a fairly slow speed in which the range of exposure required comes well within the limits of the film. there is no advantage in using a film having a speed of, say, h. & d. if good results can be obtained from one with a speed of, say, h. & d. , as the use of the higher speed increases the risk of overexposure. with the high-speeded films the difficulties of development are also greatly increased, there being more latitude in both exposure and development with the slower speeds, and consequently a better chance of obtaining a good negative. another point, often puzzling to the beginner, and which increases the difficulty of choosing a suitable make of film, is that, although one make of film marked h. & d. will give good results, another make, also marked h. & d. , will give { } very poor results. this is owing, not to a poor quality film, as many suppose, but to the almost insurmountable difficulty of makers being able to employ exactly the same standard of light for testing purposes, so that although various makes may all be standardised by the h. & d. method, films bearing the same speed numbers may vary in their actual speed by as much as to per cent. * * * * * { } appendix a selenium cells selenium is a non-metallic element, and was first discovered by berzelius in , in the deposit from sulphuric acid chambers, which still continues the source from which it is obtained for commercial purposes, although it is found to a small extent in native sulphur. its at. wt. is . , and its sp. gr. . . symbol, se. in its natural state selenium is practically a non-conductor of electricity, its resistance being forty thousand million times greater than copper. its practical value lies in the property which it possesses, that when in a prepared condition it is capable of varying its electrical resistance according to the amount of light to which it is exposed, the resistance decreasing as the light increases. selenium is prepared by heating it to a temperature of ° c., keeping it there for some hours, and allowing it to cool slowly, when it assumes a crystalline form and changes from a bluish grey to a dull slate colour. a selenium cell in its simplest form consists merely of some prepared selenium placed between two or more metal electrodes, the selenium acting as a high resistance conductor between them. the form given by bell and tainter to the cells used in their experiments is given in figs. and a. it consists of a number of rectangular brass plates p, p', separated by very thin sheets of mica m, the mica sheets being slightly narrower than the brass plates, the whole being clamped together in the frame f by the two bolts b. { } by means of a sand-bath the cell is raised to the desired temperature, and selenium is rubbed over the surface, which melts and fills the small spaces between the brass plates. all the plates p are connected together to form one terminal, and the plates p' to form the other. by using very thin mica sheets, and a large number of elements, a very narrow transverse section of selenium, together with a large active surface, can be obtained. the cell used for commercial purposes is usually constructed as follows. a small rectangular piece of porcelain, slate, mica, or other insulator, is wound with many turns of fine platinum wire. the wire is wound double, as shown in fig. , the spaces between the turns being filled with prepared selenium. a thin glass cover is sometimes placed over the cell to protect the surface from injury. [illustration: fig. . p, p', plates; m, mica; s, selenium.] [illustration: fig. a.] a strong light falling upon a cell lowers its resistance, and _vice versa_, the resistance of a cell being at its highest when unexposed to light; the light is apparently absorbed and made to do work by varying the electrical resistance of the selenium. selenium cells vary very considerably as regards their quality as well as in their electrical resistance, it being possible to obtain cells of the same size for any resistance between and , , ohms, and also, a cell may remain in good working condition for several months, while another will become useless in as many weeks. the ability of a cell to respond to very rapid changes in the illumination to which it is exposed is determined largely upon its inertia, it being taken as a general rule { } that the higher the resistance of a cell the less the inertia, and _vice versa_, and also, that the higher the resistance the greater the ratio of sensitiveness. inertia plays an important part in the working of a cell, slightly opposing the drop in resistance when illuminated, and opposing to a [illustration] much greater degree the return to normal for no-illumination. the effects of inertia or "lag," as it is termed, can readily be seen by reference to fig. . it will be noticed that the current value rapidly increases when the cell is first illuminated, but if after a short time _t_ the light is cut off, the current value, instead of returning at once to normal for no-illumination, only partially rises owing to the interference of the inertia, and some time elapses before the cell returns to its normal condition; the time varying from a few seconds to several minutes, depending upon the characteristics of the cell and the amount of light to which it is exposed. an actual curve is given in fig. a. the inertia or "lag" of a cell produces upon an intermittent current an effect similar to that produced by the capacity [illustration] of a line, as was noted in chapter i., preventing the incoming signals from being recorded separately, and distinctly. to obtain the best results in photo-telegraphy, the resistance of a cell should only be decreased to an extent sufficient to pass the current required to operate the recording apparatus, and the illumination should be regulated so that this condition of the cell takes place. the comparative slowness of selenium in responding to { } any great changes in the illumination offers a serious difficulty to its use in photo-telegraphy, but various methods have been devised whereby the effects of inertia can be counteracted. in the system of de' bernochi (see chapter i.) the changes in the illumination are neither very rapid nor very great, and the inertia effects would therefore be very slight; but in any photo-telegraphic system in which a metal line print is used for transmitting, where the source of illumination is constant and the resistance of the cell is required to drop to a definite value and return to normal instantly, many times in succession, the inertia effects are very pronounced. the most successful method of counteracting the inertia is that adopted by professor korn of always keeping the cell sufficiently illuminated to overcome it, so that any additional light acts very rapidly. another method worked out and patented by professor korn, and known as the "compensating cell" method, gives a practically dead beat action, the resistance returning to its normal condition as soon as the illumination ceases. the arrangement is given in the diagram fig. . [illustration: fig. a.] light from the transmitting or receiving apparatus, as the case may be, falls upon the selenium cell s^ , which is { } placed on one arm of a wheatstone bridge, a second cell s^ being placed on the opposite arm. the selenium cell s^ should have great sensitiveness and small inertia, the compensating cell s^ having proportionally small sensitiveness and large inertia. two batteries b, b', of about volts, are connected as shown, b being provided with a compensating variable resistance w; w' is also a regulating resistance. when no light is falling upon the cell s^ , light from l is prevented from reaching the second cell s^ by a small shutter which is fastened to the strings of the einthoven galvanometer (described in chapter iii.), and the piece of apparatus c--relay or galvanometer as the case may be--remains in a normal condition. when, however, light falls upon the cell s^ , the balance of the bridge is upset, and light from l falls a fraction of a second later upon the second cell s^ , and the current flowing through c completes the circuit. needless to say it is necessary that the two cells be well matched, as it is very easy to have over-compensation, in which case the current is brought below zero. [illustration: fig. .] it is also stated that by enclosing the cells in exhausted glass tubes, their inertia can be greatly reduced and their life considerably prolonged. the sensitiveness of a cell is the ratio between its resistance in the dark and its resistance when illuminated. the majority of cells have a ratio between : and : , but professor korn has shown mathematically that by conforming to certain conditions regarding the construction the ratio of sensitiveness may be between : and : . thus a cell of r = , ohms can be reduced to , ohms from the light of a c.p. lamp placed only a short distance away; the resistance may be still { } further decreased by continuing the illumination, but this produces a permanent defect in the cells termed "fatigue," the cells becoming very sluggish in their action and their sensitiveness gradually becoming less, the ratio between their resistance in the dark and their resistance when illuminated being reduced by as much as per cent. excessive illumination will also produce similar results. the inertia of a cell is practically unaffected by the wavelength of the light used, but the maximum sensitiveness of a cell is towards the yellow-orange portion of the spectrum. in addition to light, heat has also been found to vary the electrical resistance of selenium in a very remarkable manner. at ° c. selenium is a non-conductor, but up to ° c. the conductivity gradually increases, after which it again diminishes. * * * * * { } appendix b preparing the metal prints electricians who desire to experiment in photo-telegraphy, but who have no knowledge of photography, may perhaps find the following detailed description of preparing the metal prints of some value. the would-be experimenter may feel somewhat alarmed at the amount of work entailed, but once the various operations are thoroughly grasped, and with a little patience and practice, no very great difficulty should be experienced. the simpler photographic operations, such as developing, fixing, etc., cannot be described here, and the beginner is advised to study a good text-book on the subject. the method to be given of preparing the photographs is practically the only one available for wireless transmission, and although the manner given of preparing is perhaps not strictly professional, having been modified in order to meet the requirements of the ordinary amateur experimenter, the results obtained will be found perfectly satisfactory. as will have been gathered from chapter ii., the camera used for copying has to have a single line screen placed a certain distance in front of the photographic plate, and the object of this screen is to break the image up into parallel bands, each band varying in width according to the density of the photograph from which it has been prepared. thus a white portion of the photograph would consist of very narrow lines wide apart, while a dark portion would be made up of wide lines close together; a black part would appear solid and show no lines at all. it is, of course, obvious { } that the lines on the negative cannot be wider apart, centre to centre, than the lines of the screen. a good screen distance has been found to be to , _i.e._ the diameter of the stop is / th of the camera extension, and the distance of the screen lines from the photographic plate is times the size of the screen opening. the following table shows what this distance is for the screen most likely to be used. the line screens used consist of glass plates upon which a number of lines are accurately ruled, the width of the lines and the spaces between being equal; the lines are filled in with an opaque substance. these ruled screens are very expensive, and are only made to order,[ ] a screen half-plate size costing from s. to s. d. an efficient substitute for a ruled screen can be made by taking a rather large sheet of bristol board and ruling lines across in pure black drawing ink, the width of the lines and the spaces between being / th of an inch respectively. a photograph must be taken of this card, the reduction in size determining the number of lines to the inch. a card Ã� inches, with lines to the inch, would, if reduced to Ã� inches, make a screen having lines to the inch. preparing the board is rather a tedious operation, but the line negative produced will be found to give results almost as good as those obtained from a purchased screen. diameter of stop used / th of camera extension. -------------------------------------------------------------- |screen ruling |actual space| distance of |in / |in milli-| |lines per inch.| in inches. |screen ruling| inches| metres.| | | | in inches. | | | |---------------+------------+-------------+-------+---------| | | / | . | . | . | | | / | . | . | . | | | / | . | . | . | -------------------------------------------------------------- as it is impossible for many to have the use of professional apparatus designed for this particular kind of work, { } the fixing of the screen into an ordinary camera must be left to the ingenuity of the worker. a half-plate back focussing camera will be found suitable for general experimental work, but if this is not available, a large box camera can be pressed into service. [illustration: fig. .] the writer has never seen a half-plate box camera, but one taking a Ã� inch plate can be obtained second-hand very cheaply. it is a comparatively simple matter to fix the line screen into a camera of this description, the drawings figs. and showing the method adopted by the writer. the two clips d, made from fairly stout brass about / inch wide, are bent to the shape shown (an enlarged section is given at c) and soldered at the top and bottom of one of the metal sheaths provided for holding the plates. the distance between the front of the photographic plate (the film side) and the back of the line screen (also the film side), indicated by the arrow at a, is determined by the number of lines on the screen. as will be seen from the table given, the distance for a screen having lines to the inch will be / ths of an inch. [illustration: fig. . m, sheath; p, photographic plate; d, clips; s, line screen.] in all probability there will be enough clearance between the top of the sheath and the top of the camera to allow for the thickness of the clip, but if not, a shallow groove a little wider than the clip should be carefully cut in the top of the camera, so that it will slide in easily. the screen should be placed between the clips, the film side on the { } inside, _i.e._ facing the photographic plate. as with a box camera the extension is a fixture, the size of stop to be used is a fixture also. the extension of a camera (this term really applies to a bellows camera) is measured from the front of the photographic plate to the diaphragm, and if this distance in our camera is inches, then the diameter of the stop to give the best results would be / th of this, or / th inch. although for all ordinary experimental work the lens fitted to the camera will be suitable, the best type of lens for process work of all kinds is the "anastigmat." the picture or photograph from which it is desired to make a print should be fastened out perfectly flat upon a board with drawing pins, and if a copying stand is not available it must be placed upright in some convenient position. the diagram fig. gives the disposition of the apparatus required for copying. a simple and inexpensive copying stand is shown in fig. . the blackboard a should be about inches square, and must be fastened perfectly upright upon the base-board b. the stand c should be made so that it slides without any side play between the guides d, and should be of such a height that the lens of the camera comes exactly opposite the { } [illustration] [illustration] centre of the board a. the camera, if of the box type, can be secured to the stand by means of a screw and wingnut, the screw being passed from the inside as shown. the beginner is advised to photograph only very bold and simple subjects, such as black and white drawings or enlargements. it is not safe to trust to the view-finders as to whether the whole of the picture is included on the plate, a piece of ground glass the same size as the plate sheaths, and used as a focussing screen, being much more reliable. it is a good plan to focus the camera for a number of different-sized pictures, marking the board a, and the { } guides d, so that adjustment is afterwards a very simple matter. the make of plate used is also a great factor in getting a good negative, and wratten process plates will be found excellent. as already mentioned, such subjects as the exposure and the development of the plate cannot be dealt with here, these subjects having been exhaustively treated in several text-books on photography. with an arc lamp the exposure is about twice as long as in daylight, but the exposure varies with the amount of light admitted to the plate, character of the source of light, and the sensitiveness of the plate used, etc. the writer has used acetylene gas lamps for this purpose with great success. the beginner is advised to use artificial light, as this can be kept perfectly even. with daylight, however, the light is constantly fluctuating, and this renders the use of an actinometer a necessity for correct exposure. after development, if the plate is required for immediate use, it can be quickly dried by soaking for a few minutes in methylated spirit. having obtained a good negative, the next operation is to prepare what is known as a metal print. for this we shall require some stout tin-foil or lead-foil, about or square feet to the pound, and this should be cut into pieces of such a size that it allows a lap of / inch when wrapped round the drum of the transmitting machine. obtain some good fish-glue and add a saturated solution of bichromate of potash in the proportion of parts of potash to or parts of glue. pour a little of this glue into a shallow dish, lay a sheet of foil upon a flat board, and with a fairly stiff brush (a flat hog's-hair as wide as possible) proceed to coat the sheet of foil with a thin but perfectly even coating of glue. the thickness of the coating can only be found by trial, for if the coating is too thick a longer time will be required for printing; but it must not be thin enough to show interference colours. after the coating has been laid on, a soft brush, such as photographers use for dusting dry { } plates, should be passed up and down, and across and across, with light, even strokes to remove any unevenness. a glue solution used by professional photo-engravers is as follows: fish-glue oz. bichromate of ammonia / oz. water to oz. ammonia . minims. the bichromate should be dissolved in the water, and, when added to the glue, stir very thoroughly in order that complete mixing may take place. the coating may be done in a good light, not bright sunlight, but _it must be dried in the dark_, because, although insensitive while in a moist condition, it becomes sensitive immediately on desiccation. if allowed to dry in the light the whole coating will become insoluble, and for this reason the brushes used should be washed out as soon as they are finished with. the sheets will take about minutes to dry in a perfectly dry room, but it is not advisable to prepare many sheets at once, as they will not keep for more than two or three days. the prepared negative must now be placed in an ordinary printing frame, and a print taken off upon one of the metal sheets in the same way as a print is taken off upon ordinary sensitised paper. in daylight the exposure varies from to minutes, but in artificial light various trials will have to be made in order to get the best results, the exposure varying with the amount of bichromate in the coating; the proportion of the bichromate to the glue should remain about per cent. light from a ampere arc lamp for to minutes, at a distance of inches, will generally suffice to "print" the impression on the metal sheets. the printing finished, the metal print should be laid upon a sheet of glass and held under a running stream of water. the washing is complete as soon as the unexposed parts of the glue coating have been entirely washed away leaving the bare metal, and this will take anything from to { } minutes, depending upon the thickness of the film. as soon as it is dry the print is ready for use. as already mentioned, the negative from which the metal print is made requires that the lines be perfectly sharp and opaque, and the spaces between perfectly transparent. ordinary dry plates are too rapid, a rather slow plate being required. wratten process plates give excellent results, and the following is a good developer to use with them: glycin grammes oz. sulphite of soda ,, - / ,, carbonate of potash ,, ,, water c.c. ,, this developer should be used for minutes at a temperature of ° f., - / minutes at °, and - / minutes at °. it is best only used once. if an intensifier is required, the following formula will be found to give satisfactory results: bichloride of mercury oz. grammes. hot water ,, c.c. allow to cool, completely pour off from any crystals, and add: hydrochloric acid minims c.c. allow negative to bleach thoroughly, wash well in water, and blacken in per cent ammonia . , or per cent sodium sulphide. in preparing the negatives and metal prints the following points should be observed: a good negative should have the lines perfectly sharp and opaque; there should be no "fluff" between the lines even when they are close together. a properly exposed and developed negative should not require any reducing or intensifying. if the lamps used for illuminating the copying board are placed feet away, and the exposure required is minutes, the exposure, if the lamps are placed feet away, will be { } minutes, as the amount of light which falls upon an object decreases as the inverse square of the distance. get the coating on the foil as thin as possible, and err on the side of over-exposure, for if the coating is thick and has been under-exposed, excessive washing will dissolve the whole coating; for, unless insolubilisation has taken place right up to the metal base, the under parts will remain in a more or less soluble condition. on no account must the unexposed sheets be placed near a fire, otherwise they will be spoilt, the whole coating becoming insoluble; heat acting in the same manner as light. in washing, keep the print moving so that the stream of water does not fall continually in one place. it is best to hold the print so that the water runs off in the direction of the lines. to dry the prints after washing they can be laid out flat in a moderately warm oven, or before a stove, the heat of course not being sufficient to cause the coating to peel. to render the glue image more distinct the print should be immersed for a few seconds in an aniline dye solution, the glue taking up the colour readily. these dyes are soluble in either water or alcohol. a dye known as "magenta" is very good. the process of coating the metal sheets must be performed as quickly as possible (about seconds), as owing to the peculiar nature of the bichromated glue it soon sets, and once this has taken place it is impossible to smooth down any unevenness. see that the negative and metal sheet make good contact while printing. if the glue solution does not adhere to the surface of the foil in a perfectly even film, but assumes a streaky appearance, a little liquid ammonia, or a weak solution of nitric acid, rubbed over the surface of the foil, which is afterwards gently scoured with precipitated chalk on a tuft of cotton { } wool, will remove the grease which is the cause of the difficulty. a photograph of a picture prepared from a line negative is given in fig. . for a great many experiments, and in order to save time, trouble, and expense, sketches drawn upon stout lead-foil in an insulating ink will answer the purpose admirably, but if any exact work is to be done a single line print is of course absolutely necessary. the insulating ink can be prepared by dissolving shellac in methylated spirit, or ordinary gum can be used. a very fine brush should be used in place of a pen, as the gum will not flow freely from an ordinary nib unless greater pressure than the foil will safely stand be applied. a sketch prepared in this manner is shown in fig. . a little aniline dye should be added to the gum to render it more visible, or a mixture of gum and liquid indian ink will be found suitable. [illustration: fig. .] with the copying arrangement already described it is only possible to employ it for reducing, it being necessary to employ a bellows camera with a back focussing attachment for purposes of enlarging, and this constitutes the chief drawback to the use of a fixed focus camera. by replacing the box camera with a focussing camera of the same size, we shall have a piece of apparatus capable of reducing or enlarging, only in this case the camera should be a fixture and the board, a, arranged to slide backwards and forwards instead. [illustration: fig. . portions of photographs (full size) of single line screen, and single line print. screen lines to the inch.] [illustration: fig. .] { } an extra improvement would be to rule the surface of the copying board, a, in a manner similar to that shown in the diagram, fig. . the rulings should be marked off from the centre of the board, and should enclose parallelograms of the various plate sizes ranging from - / Ã� - / inches up to the full size of the board. by fastening the picture or photograph to be copied in the space on the board corresponding in size, we can ensure that it is in the correct position for the whole to be included on the photographic plate, providing, of course, that the centre of lens and board coincide. with regard to the lens required, the practice adhered to by most photographers is to use a lens having a focal length equal to the diagonal of the plate used. thus for a / -plate camera a -inch lens should be used, and for a / -plate an -inch lens, and so on. for a Ã� inch camera a -inch lens will be required. the following is a simple rule for finding the conjugate foci of a lens, and is useful in obtaining the distance from the lens to the photographic plate and the picture to be copied. let us suppose that we wish to make a - / times enlarged line negative from a - / Ã� - / inch print. add to the number of times it is required to enlarge and multiply the result by the focal length of the lens in inches. in the present case this will be - / + = - / ; and if a -inch lens is used, - / Ã� = inches will be the distance of the lens from the plate. divide this number by the number of times it is desired to enlarge, and the distance of the lens from the picture to be copied is obtained; in this instance ÷ - / = inches. the same rule can be followed when it is required to reduce any given number of times, only in this case the greater number will represent the distance between the lens and the picture to be copied, and the lesser number the distance between the lens and the plate. in reducing, a / -plate lens will be found to fully cover a Ã� inch plate, providing the reduction is not greater than three to one. * * * * * { } appendix c lenses in this small volume it is not desirable, neither is it intended, to give an exhaustive treatment on the subject of lenses and their action, but as optics plays an important part in the transmission of photographs, both by wireless and over ordinary conductors, the following notes relating to a few necessary principles have been included as likely to prove of interest. light always travels in straight lines when in a medium of uniform density, such as water, air, glass, etc., but on passing from one medium to another, such as from air to water, or air to glass, the direction of the light rays is changed, or, to use the correct term, _refracted_. this refraction of the rays of light only takes place when the incident rays are passed obliquely; if the incident rays are perpendicular to the surface separating the two media they are not refracted, but continue their course in a straight line. all liquid and solid bodies that are sufficiently transparent to allow light rays to pass through them possess the power of bending or refracting the rays, the degree of refraction, as already explained, depending upon the nature of the body. the law relating to refraction will perhaps be better understood by means of the following diagram. in fig. let the line ab represent the surface of a vessel of water. the line cd, which is perpendicular to the surface of the { } water, is termed the _normal_, and a ray of light passed in this direction will continue in a straight line to the point e. if, however, the ray is passed in an oblique direction, such as nd, it will be seen that the ray is bent or refracted in the direction dm; if the ray of light is passed in any other oblique direction, such as jd, the refracted ray will be in the direction dk. the angle ndc is called the _angle of incidence_ and mde the _angle of refraction_. if we measure accurately the line nc, we shall find that it is - / , or more exactly . , times greater than the line em. if we repeat this measurement with the lines jh and pk we shall find that the line jh also bears the proportion of . to the line pk. the line nc is called the _sine of the angle of incidence_ ndc, and em the _sine of the angle of refraction_ mde. [illustration: fig. .] therefore in water the sine of the angle of incidence is to the sine of the angle of refraction as . is to , and this is true whatever the position of the incident ray with respect to the surface of the water. from this we say that _the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction have a constant proportion or ratio to one another_. the number . is termed the _refractive index_, or _coefficient_, or the _refractive power_ of water. the refractive power varies, however, with other fluids and solids, and a complete table will be found in any good work on optics. glass is the substance most commonly used for refracting the rays of light in optical work, the glass being worked up into different forms according to the purpose for which it { } is intended. solids formed in this way are termed _lenses_. a lens can be defined as a transparent medium which, owing to the curvature of its surfaces, is capable of converging or diverging the rays of light passed through it. according to its curvature it is either spherical, cylindrical, elliptical, or parabolic. the lenses used in optics are always exclusively spherical, the glass used in their construction being either crown glass, which is free from lead, or flint glass, which contains lead and is more refractive than crown glass. the refractive power of crown glass is from . to . , and of flint glass from . to . . spherical surfaces in combination with each other or with plane surfaces give rise to six different forms of lenses, sections of which are given in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] all lenses can be divided into two classes, convex or converging, or concave or diverging. in the figure, _b_, _c_, _g_ are converging lenses, being thicker at the middle than at the borders, and _d_, _e_, _f_, which are thinner at the middle, being diverging lenses. the lenses _e_ and _g_ are also termed meniscus lenses, and _a_ represents a prism. the line xy is the axis or _normal_ of these lenses to which their plane surfaces are perpendicular. let us first of all notice the action of a ray of light when passed through a prism. the prism, fig. , is represented by the triangle bbb, and the incident ray by the line ta. { } where it enters the prism at a its direction is changed and it is bent or refracted towards the base of the prism, or towards the normal, this being always the case when light passes from a rare medium to a dense one, and where the light leaves the opposite face of the prism at d it is again refracted, but away from the normal in an opposite direction to the incident ray, since it is passing from a dense to a rare medium. the line dp is called the _emergent_ or refracted ray. if the eye is placed at t, and a bright object at p, the object is seen not at p, but at the point h, since the eye cannot follow the course taken by the refracted rays. in other words, objects viewed through a prism always appear deflected towards its summit. [illustration: fig. .] in considering the action of a lens we can regard any lens as being built up of a number of prisms with curved faces in contact. such a lens is shown in fig. , the light rays being refracted towards the base of the prisms or towards the normal, as already explained; while the top half of the lens will refract all the light downwards, the bottom half will act as a series of inverted prisms and refract all the light upwards. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] if a beam of parallel light--such as light from the sun--be passed through a double convex lens l, fig. , we shall find that the rays have been refracted from their parallel course and brought together at a point f. this point f is { } termed the principal focus of the lens, and its distance from the lens is known as the focal length of that lens. in a double and equally convex lens of glass the focal length is equal to the radius of the spherical surfaces of the lens. if the lens is a plano-convex the focal length is twice the radius of its spherical surfaces. if the lens is unequally convex the focal length is found by the following rule: multiply the two radii of its surfaces and divide twice that product by the sum of the two radii, and the quotient will { } be the focal length required. conversely, by placing a source of light at the point f the rays will be projected in a parallel beam the same diameter as the lens. if, however, instead of being parallel, the rays proceed from a point farther from the lens than the principal focus, as at a, fig. , they are termed divergent rays, but they also will be brought to a focus at the other side of the lens at the point a. if the source of light a is moved nearer to the principal focus of the lens to a point a^ the rays will come to a focus at the point _a_^ , and similarly when the light is at a^ the rays will come to a focus at the point _a_^ . it can be found by direct experiment that the distance _fa_ increases in the same proportion as af diminishes, and diminishes in the same proportion as af increases. the relationship which exists between pairs of points in this manner is termed the _conjugate foci_ of a lens, and though every lens has only one principal focus, yet its conjugate foci are innumerable. [illustration: fig. .] the formation of an image of some distant object in its principal focus is one of the most useful properties of a convex lens, and it is this property that forms the basis of several well-known optical instruments, including the camera, telescope, microscope, etc. if we take an oblong wooden box, aa, and substitute a sheet of ground glass, c, for one end, and drill a small pinhole, h, in the centre of the other end opposite the { } glass plate, we shall find that a tolerably good image of any object placed in front of the box will be formed upon the glass plate. the light rays from all points of the object, bd, fig. , will pass straight through the hole h, and illuminate the ground glass screen at points immediately opposite them, forming a faint inverted image of the object bd. the purpose of the hole h is to prevent the rays from any one point of the object from falling upon any other point on the glass screen than the point immediately opposite to it, therefore the smaller we make h, the more distinct will be the image obtained. reducing the size of h in order to produce a more distinct image has the effect of causing the image to become very faint, as the smaller the hole in h, the smaller the number of rays that can pass through from any point of the object. by enlarging the hole h gradually, the image will become more and more indistinct until such a size is reached that it disappears altogether. [illustration: fig. .] if in this enlarged hole we place a double convex lens, ll, fig. , whose focal length suits the length of the box, the image produced will be brighter and more distinct than that formed by the aperture, h, since the rays which proceed from any point of the object will be brought by the lens to a focus on the glass screen, forming a bright { } distinct image of the point from which they come. the image owes its increased distinctness to the fact that the rays from any one point of the object cannot interfere with the rays from any other point, and its increased brightness to the great number of rays that are collected by the lens from each point of the object and focussed in the corresponding point of the image. it will be evident from a study of fig. that the image formed by a convex lens must necessarily be inverted, since it is impossible for the rays from the end, m, of the object to be carried by refraction to the upper end of the image at _n_. the relative positions of the object and image when placed at different distances from the lens are exactly the same as the conjugate foci of light rays as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] the length of the image formed by a convex lens is to the length of the object as the distance of the image is to the distance of the object from the lens. for example, if a lens having a focal length of inches is placed at a distance of feet from some object, then the size of the image will be to that of the object as inches to feet, or times smaller than the object; and if the length of the object is inches, then the length of the image will be the / th part of inches, or / inch. { } the image formed by the convex lens in fig. is known as a _real image_, but in addition convex lenses possess the property of forming what are termed _virtual images_. the distinction can be expressed by saying, _real images are those formed by the refracted rays themselves, and virtual images those formed by their prolongations_. while a real image formed by a convex lens is always inverted and smaller than the object, the virtual image is always erect and larger than the object. the power possessed by convex lenses of forming virtual images is made use of in that useful but common piece of apparatus known as a reading or magnifying glass, by which objects placed within its focus are made larger or magnified when viewed through it; but in order to properly understand how objects seem to be brought nearer and apparently increased in size, we must first of all understand what is meant by the expression, _the apparent magnitude of objects_. [illustration: fig. .] the apparent magnitude of an object depends upon the angle which it subtends to the eye of the observer. the image at a, fig. , presents a smaller angle to the eye than the angle presented by the object when moved to b, and the image therefore appears smaller. when the object is moved to either b or c, it is viewed under a much { } greater angle, causing the image to appear much larger. if we take a watch or other small circular object and place it at a, which we will suppose is a distance of yards, we shall find that it will be only visible as a circular object, and its apparent magnitude or the angle under which it is viewed is then stated to be very small. if the object is now moved to the point b, which is only feet from the eye, its apparent magnitude will be found to have increased to such an extent that we can distinguish not only its shape, but also some of the marking. when moved to within a few inches from the eye as at c, we see it under an angle so great that all the detail can be distinctly seen. by having brought the object nearer the eye, thus rendering all its parts clearly visible, we have actually magnified it, or made it appear larger, although its actual size remains exactly the same. when the distance between the object and the observer is known, the apparent magnitude of the object varies inversely as the distance from the observer. let us suppose that we wish to produce an image of a tree situated at a distance of feet. at this distance the light rays from the tree will be nearly parallel, so that if a lens having a focal length of feet is fastened in any convenient manner in the wall of a darkened room the image will be formed feet behind the lens at its principal focus. if a screen of white cardboard be placed at this point we shall find that a small but inverted image of the tree will be focussed upon it. as the distance of the object is feet, and as the size of the received image is in proportion to this distance divided by the focal length of the lens, the image will be as ÷ , or times smaller than the object. if now the eye is placed six inches behind the screen and the screen removed, so that we can view the small image distinctly in the air, we shall see it with an apparent magnitude as much greater than if the same small image were equally far off with the tree, as inches is to { } feet, that is , times. thus we see that although the image produced on the screen is times less than the tree from one cause, yet on account of it being brought near to the eye it is , times greater in apparent magnitude; therefore its apparent magnitude is increased as , ÷ , or times. this means that by means of the lens it has actually been magnified times. this magnifying power of a lens is always equal to the focal length divided by the distance at which we see small objects most distinctly, viz. inches, and in the present instance is ÷ , or times. when the image is received upon a screen the apparatus is called a _camera obscura_, but when the eye is used and sees the inverted image in the air, then the apparatus is termed a _telescope_. the image formed by a convex lens can be regarded as a new object, and if a second lens is placed behind it a second image will be formed in the same manner as if the first image were a real object. a succession of images can thus be formed by convex lenses, the last image being always treated as a fresh object, and being always an inverted image of the one before. from this it will be evident that additional magnifying power can be given to our telescope with one lens by bringing the image nearer the eye, and this is accomplished by placing a short focus lens between the image and the eye. by using a lens having a focal length of inch, and such a lens will magnify times, the total magnifying power of the two lenses will be Ã� = times, or times by the first lens and times by the second. such an instrument is known as a _compound or astronomical telescope_, and the first lens is called the object glass and the second lens the magnifying glass, or eye-piece. we are now in a position to understand how virtual images are formed, and the formation of a virtual image by means of a convex lens will be readily followed from a { } study of fig. . let l represent a double convex lens, with an object, ab, placed between it and the point f, which is the principal focus of the lens. the rays from the object ab are refracted on passing through the lens, and again refracted on leaving the lens, so that an image of the object is formed at the eye, n. as it is impossible for the eye to follow the bent rays from the object, a virtual image is formed and is seen at a^ b^ , and is really a continuation of the emergent rays. the magnifying power of such a lens may be found by dividing inches by the focal length of the lens, inches being the distance at which we see small objects most distinctly. a lens having a focal length of / inch would magnify times, and one with a focal length of / th of an inch times, and so on. the magnifying power is greater as the lens is more convex and the object near to the principal focus. when a single lens is applied in this manner it is termed a _single microscope_, but when more than one lens is employed in order to increase the magnifying power, as in the telescope, then the apparatus is termed a _compound microscope_. [illustration: fig. .] unlike a convex lens, which can form both real and virtual images, a concave lens can only produce a virtual image; and while the convex lens forms an image larger { } than the object, the concave lens forms an image smaller than the object. let l, fig. , represent a double concave lens, and ab the object. the rays from ab on passing through the lens are refracted, and they diverge in the direction rrrr, as if they proceeded from the point f, which is the principal focus of the lens, and the prolongations of these divergent rays produce a virtual image, erect and smaller than the object, at a^ b^ . the principal focal distance of concave lenses is found by exactly the same rule as that given for convex lenses. [illustration: fig. .] up to the present we have assumed that all the rays of light passed through a convex lens were brought to a focus at a point common to all the rays, but this is really only the case with a lens whose aperture does not exceed °. by aperture is meant the angle obtained by joining the edges of a lens with the principal focus. with lenses having a larger aperture the amount of refraction is greater at the edges than at the centre, and consequently the rays that pass through the edges of the lens are brought to a focus nearer the lens than the rays that pass through the centre. since this defect arises from the spherical form of the lens it is termed _spherical aberration_, and in lenses that { } are used for photographic purposes the aberration has to be very carefully corrected. the distortion of an image formed by a convex lens is shown by the diagram, fig. . if we receive the image upon a sheet of white cardboard placed at a, we shall find that while the outside edges will be clear and distinct, the inside will be blurred, the reverse being the case when the cardboard is moved to the point b. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] aberration is to a great extent minimised by giving to the lens a meniscus instead of a biconvex form, but as it is desirable to reduce the aberration to below once the { } thickness of the lens, and as this cannot be done by a single lens, we must have recourse to two lenses put together. the thickness of a lens is the difference between its thickness at the middle and at the circumference. in a double convex lens with equal convexities the aberration is - / ths of its thickness. in a plano-convex lens with the plane side turned towards parallel rays the aberration is - / times its thickness, but with the convex side turned towards parallel rays the aberration is only - / ths of its thickness. by making use of two plano-convex lenses placed together as at fig. , the aberration will be one-fourth of that of a single lens, but the focal length of the lens, l^ , must be half as much again as that of l. if their focal lengths are equal the aberration will only be a little more than half reduced. spherical aberration, however, may be entirely destroyed by combining a meniscus and double convex lens, as shown in fig. , the convex side being turned to the eye when used as a lens, and to parallel rays when used as a burning glass or condenser. * * * * * { } index aberration, spherical, , accuracy of working, , acetylene gas lamps, actinic power, actinograph, actinometer, alternating current, , ammonia, angle of stylus, , aniline dye, arcing, , arc lamps, , , atmospherics, , ballasting resistance, belin, bernochi, , system of, , berzelius, bichromate of potash, blondel's oscillograph, camera obscura, extension, , choice of, capacity of condenser, , electrostatic, , of cable, of london-paris telephone line, carbon bisulphide, charbonelle, receiver of, chemical solution, circuit breaker, clutch, details of, , , spring, coating the metal sheets, coherer, , collecting rings, commercial value of photo-telegraphy, compensating selenium cell, contact breaker, copying arrangements, , cross screen, de' arsonval galvanometer, , decoherer, design of machines, detectors, developing solutions, , diaphragm, movement of, , , , dipping rods, , distance of transmission, duration of wave-trains, , early experiments, einthoven galvanometer, , , , , electric clock, electrolytic receiver, , , , , enlarging arrangements, , experimental machine, extraneous light, fastening electrolytic paper, fatigue of selenium cell, , fish glue, flexible couplings, frequency meter, friction brake, { } high speed telegraphy, hughes governor, hughes printing telegraph, hurter and driffield, hydrogen, incidence, angle of, inertia, , , effects in photo-telegraphy, method of counteracting, , , effect of wave-length of light on, intensifying solution, isochroniser, , details of, , , isochronism, , , , kathode rays, knudsen, apparatus of, korn, , , , , apparatus of, lamps, coloured, lenses, , , principal focus of, conjugate foci of, action of, convex, , , concave, , focal length of, , aperture, meniscus, light, diffusion of, extraneous, limit of error in synchronising, line balancer, line screens, , , , making, magnifying power, , marconi valve, , coherer, mechanical inertia, mercury break, churning of, containers, mercury jet interrupter, metal prints, , , , , , , , drying the, , exposure of, size of, , , , pressing the, microscope, , military uses, mirror galvanometer, , , mirror, , morse code, motor speed, , driving, , , clockwork, electric, nernst lamps, , , heater of, filament of, principle of, resistance of, efficiency of, , overrunning, nicol prism, paper for electrolytic receiver, parabolic reflector, period of galvanometer, , , _photographic daily companion_, photographic films, , , , , , , , , process, chemical inertia, exposure of, , speed of, , plates, orthochromatic, plates, points to be observed in preparing metal prints, poulsen company, , arc, preparing selenium, photographs for transmitting, , sketches on metal foil, prism, action of, process plates, professor nernst, { } radio-photography, requirements of, refraction, angle of, refractive power, relay, , , , , , , differential, polarised, working speed of, , reproducing for newspapers, resistance of selenium, of selenium cells, regulating, retardation of current, retouching, rotary spark-gap, selenium, cells, , , , , , , machines, self-induction, , sensitiveness of selenium cells, ratio of, silvered quartz threads, , spark-gap, speed regulator, adjustments of, spring clutch, starting position of machines, string galvanometer, stylus, , , , , , , sparking at, stylus, angle of, , defects of, submarine cable, synchronism, , , , , , telephograph, advantages of, method of working, telephone receiver, , diaphragm, improved, telephone relay, , , , , , telescope, , thermodetector, tow, transmission, distance of, , speed of, , , vibration, natural period of, watkins, power number, waves, damped, undamped, , 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(postage d.) annual subscription, s. post free. conquest. a popular illustrated monthly magazine dealing with science, industry and invention. price s. (postage d.) annual subscription, s. post free. continuous wave wireless telegraphy. part i. by dr. w. h. eccles, d.sc., a.r.c.s., m.i.e.e. [_in the press._ * * * * * complete catalogue post free. * * * * * notes [ ] these measurements only apply to a single line. where a double line is employed the capacity is halved. [ ] see appendix a. [ ] see appendix b. [ ] in wireless telegraphy "arcing" is principally caused by the continuation of the supply current in the spark-gap after the capacity has been charged to a potential sufficient to break down the insulation of the gap. [ ] see chapter v. [ ] nernst lamps are the best to use, as they produce abundantly the blue and violet rays which have the greatest chemical effect upon a photographic film. carbon filament lamps are very poor in this respect. [ ] a description of the apparatus required will be found in ganot's _physics_. [ ] great care must be exercised in using this solution, as it is exceedingly poisonous. [ ] two clocks would isochronise if their hands travelled at precisely the same rate round the dials, but would not synchronise unless they both registered the same time as well. [ ] line screens can be obtained from messrs. penrose, farringdon street, london; or messrs. fallowfield, charing cross road, london. phosphorescence and sulphide of zinc physiological effects of high frequency , polyphase systems polyphase transformer pyromagnetic generators regulator for rotary current motors resonance, electric, phenomena of "resultant attraction" rotating field transformers rotating magnetic field royal institution lecture scope of lectures single phase motor single circuit, self-starting synchronizing motors spinning filament effects streaming discharges of high tension coil , synchronizing motors telegraphy without wires transformer with shield between primary and secondary thermo-magnetic motors thomson, j. j., on vacuum tubes , , thomson, sir w., current accumulator transformers: alternating magnetic shield polyphase rotating field tubes: coated with yttria, etc. coated with sulphide of zinc, etc. , unipolar generators unipolar generator, forbes , yttria, coated tubes zinc, tubes coated with sulphide of post card +----------+ | place | | one cent | | stamp | | here | +----------+ emerson radio and phonograph corp. eighth avenue new york, n. y. [illustration: [illustration: (_model _)] paris london moscow buenos aires] explore the exciting world of short-wave thrills. reach out ... for london, paris, moscow, buenos aires ... scores more foreign stations ... in addition to your broadcast favorites ... on the airplane-type dial of a completely modern emerson. the dealer from whom you bought your emerson auto-radio will gladly demonstrate an [illustration: _emerson_ round-the-world _radio_ =============================== $ . ================== complete with tubes.] fifteen varied emerson models to suit every taste and purpose. emerson radio guarantee registry card model_________________ serial no_________________ date_____________ purchased from________________________________________________________ city_______________________________________ state_____________________ upon receipt of this card we will register this set under our regular ninety day guarantee from date of purchase. read attached warranty. kindly state below how you like the performance of your emerson radio: ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ purchaser's name____________________________________________ address_____________________________________________________ bend and tear here important--customer's warranty we warrant each new emerson radio receiver to be free from defect in material and workmanship. our obligations under this warranty are limited to the following: in the event that any part of this equipment proves defective and is returned, transportation charges prepaid, to the emerson radio & phonograph corp. within ninety ( ) days from the date of sale by the dealer to his customer, the defective part will be replaced and any necessary labor supplied without cost to the customer. this warranty does not apply to any receiver which has been subject to misuse, neglect or accident, nor to any receiver which has not been connected in accordance with the instructions enclosed in the original container. neither does it apply to any receiver, the serial number of which has been altered or removed. this warranty is in lieu of all other warranties expressed or implied; and we do not authorize any person or representative to assume for us any other liability in connection with our equipment. warranty material is repaired or replaced. credit is not issued. emerson radio and phonograph corp. eighth avenue, new york city transcriber's notes no typographical corrections were required. emphasis notation _text_ - italics transcriber's notes inconsistent spellings (e.g. depolariser & depolarizer) and hyphenation (e.g. guttapercha & gutta-percha) are retained as in the original text. minor punctuation errors are corrected without comment. changes which have been made to the text (in the case of typographical errors) are listed at the end of the book. this version has been prepared using symbols from the ascii and latin- character sets only. italic typeface is shown with surrounding _underscores_; small capital typeface is shown by all caps; superscript typeface is shown by a preceding caret (^). subscripts in chemical formulae are shown with underscores and braces, e.g. h_{ }so_{ }. the following are used to represent other special symbols: [lambda] sans-serif capital lambda [rotated s] s-like symbol rotated deg. [box open up] sides of rectangular (open side up) [box open down] sides of rectangular (open side down) [oe] oe-ligature [battery] vertical lines (thick and thin) [l], [u], [v] sans-serif letter shapes * * * * * electric bells and all about them. a practical book for practical men. _with more than illustrations._ by s. r. bottone, certificated by south kensington (late of the collegio del carmine, turin, and of the istituto bellino, novara); _author of "the dynamo," "electrical instruments for amateurs," &c._ london: whittaker & co., paternoster square, e.c. . (_all rights reserved._) preface. so rapidly has the use of electric bells and similiar signalling appliances extended, in modern houses, offices, hotels, lifts, and ships, that every bell-fitter must have felt the need of accurate knowledge of the manner in which these instruments act and are made. in the following pages the author has attempted to supply this need, by giving full details as to the construction of batteries, bells, pushes, detectors, etc., the mode of wiring, testing, connecting up, localizing faults, and, in point of fact, by directing careful attention to every case that can present itself to the electric-bell fitter. carshalton, surrey, _november, _. contents. chap. page i. preliminary considerations ii. on the choice of batteries for electric bell work iii. on electric bells and other signalling appliances iv. on contacts, pushes, switches, keys, alarms, and relays v. on wiring, connecting up, and localising faults list of illustrations. fig. page . direction of current in cell . " " out of cell . bar and horse-shoe magnets . the dynamo . " smee cell . " daniell cell . " gravity cell . " leclanché cell and parts . " agglomerate cell . " judson cell . " battery in box . " gent cell . " bichromate cell . " fuller cell . " cells coupled in series . " " " parallel . outline of electric bell . frame of bell . e-shaped frame . electro-magnet, old form a. " " modern form . magnet frame a. winder . mode of joining electromagnet wires . armature spring . " " another form . platinum tipped screw . " " spring . binding screws . bell or gong . pillar and nuts . washers . trembling bell . bell action enclosed in case . ordinary trembling bells . single stroke bell . continuous ring bell . release action . continuous ringing with relay . continuous ringing action with indicator . relay and detent lever for indicator . callow's attachment a. thorpe's arrangement . jensen bell, _section_ . " " _exterior_ a. circular bell b. mining bell . electric trumpet (binswanger's) . various forms of pushes . pressel . pull . bedroom pull a. " " another form b. floor contact, ball form . burglar alarm . " " another form . floor contact . door contact . sash contact . shop door contact a. closed circuit system, _single_ b. closed circuit system, _double_ . modified gravity, daniell . contact for closed circuit . thermometer alarm . fire alarm a. " " another form b. " " " " in action . binswanger's "watch alarm" contact . watchman's electric tell-tale clock . lever switch, _two-way_ . morse key, _double contact_ . relay . indicator, drop . " semaphore . " fall back . " pendulum . " coupled up . " gent's tripolar . soldering iron and wires . push, interior of . bell, battery and push . " " and earth return . " and two pushes . " two pushes and one pull . two bells in parallel . " " another mode . " " with two-way switch . series coupler . bell with local battery and relay . continuous ringing bell with wire return . bells with morse keys for signalling . bells with double contact pushes for signalling . bells with double contact with one battery only . two-way signalling with one battery only . complete installation of bells, batteries, pushes, etc. . mode of getting out plan or design . lift fitted with bells . magneto bell: generator . " " receiver . " " combined . detector or galvanometer electric bells. chapter i. preliminary considerations. § . electricity.--the primary cause of all the effects which we are about to consider resides in a force known as _electricity_, from the greek name of amber (electron), this being the body in which the manifestations were first observed. the ancients were acquainted with a few detached facts, such as the attractive power acquired by amber after friction; the benumbing shocks given by the torpedo; the aurora borealis; the lightning flash; and the sparks or streams of light which, under certain conditions, are seen to issue from the human body. thales, a grecian philosopher, who flourished about years b.c., observed the former of these facts, but nearly twenty centuries elapsed before it was suspected that any connection existed between these phenomena. § . according to the present state of our knowledge, it would appear that electricity is a mode of motion in the constituent particles (or atoms) of bodies very similar to, if not identical with, _heat_ and _light_. these, like _sound_, are known to be dependent on undulatory motion; but, whilst _sound_ is elicited by the vibration of a body _as a whole_, electricity appears to depend, in its manifestations, upon some motion (whether rotary, oscillatory, or undulatory, it is not known) of the atoms themselves. however this be, it is certain that whatever tends to set up molecular motion, tends also to call forth a display of electricity. hence we have several practical means at our disposal for evoking electrical effects. these may be conveniently divided into three classes, viz.:-- st, mechanical; nd, chemical; rd, changes of temperature. among the _mechanical_ may be ranged friction, percussion, vibration, trituration, cleavage, etc. among the _chemical_ we note the action of acids and alkalies upon metals. every chemical action is accompanied by electrical effects; but not all such actions are convenient sources of electricity. _changes of temperature_, whether sudden or gradual, call forth electricity, but the displays are generally more striking in the former than in the latter case, owing to the accumulated effect being presented in a shorter time. § . we may now proceed to study a few of these methods of evoking electricity, so as to familiarise ourselves with the leading properties. if we rub any resinous substance (such as amber, copal, resin, sealing-wax, ebonite, etc.) with a piece of warm, dry flannel, we shall find that it acquires the power of attracting light bodies, such as small pieces of paper, straw, pith, etc. after remaining in contact with the rubbed (or electrified) substance for a short time, the paper, etc., will fly off as if repelled; and this apparent repulsion will be more evident and more quickly produced if the experiment be performed over a metal tray. if a small pith-ball, the size of a pea, be suspended from the ceiling by a piece of fine cotton, previously damped and then approached by an ebonite comb which has been briskly rubbed, it will be vigorously attracted, and never repelled; but if for the cotton there be substituted a thread or fibre of very fine dry silk, the pith-ball will be first _attracted_ and then _repelled_. this is owing to the fact that the damp cotton allows the electricity to escape along it: _id est_, damp cotton is a conductor of electricity, while silk does not permit its dissipation; or, in other words, silk is a non-conductor. all bodies with which we are acquainted are found, on trial, to fall under one or other of the two heads--viz., conductors and non-conductors. nature knows no hard lines, so that we find that even the worst conductors will permit the escape of some electricity, while the very best conductors oppose a measurable resistance to its passage. between the limits of good conductors, on the one hand, and non-conductors (or insulators) on the other, we have bodies possessing varying degrees of conductivity. § . as a knowledge of which bodies are, and which are not, conductors of electricity is absolutely essential to every one aspiring to apply electricity to any practical purpose, the following table is subjoined, giving the names of the commoner bodies, beginning with those which most readily transmit electricity, or are _good_ conductors, and ending with those which oppose the highest resistance to its passage, or are insulators, or non-conductors:-- § . table of conductors and insulators. -----------------+------------------------------+--------------------- quality. | name of substance. | relative resistance. -----------------+------------------------------+--------------------- good {|silver, annealed | . conductors {|copper, annealed | . {|silver, hard drawn | . {|copper, hard drawn | . {|gold, annealed | . {|gold, hard drawn | . {|aluminium, annealed | . {|zinc, pressed | . {|brass (variable) | . {|platinum, annealed | . {|iron | . {|steel, soft | . {|gold and silver alloy, to | . {|nickel, annealed | . {|tin, pressed | . {|lead, pressed | . {|german silver (variable) | . {|platinum-silver alloy, to | . {|steel, hard | . {|antimony, pressed | . {|mercury | . {|bismuth | . {|graphite | . {|nitric acid | . | | imperfect {|hydrochloric acid | [ ] conductors {|sulphuric acid | . {|solutions of metallic salts | varies with strength {|metallic sulphides | [ ] {|distilled water | [ ] . | | inferior {| metallic salts, solid | [ ] conductors. {| linen } | {| cotton } and other forms of | [ ] {| hemp } cellulose | {| paper } | {| alcohol | [ ] {| ether | [ ] {| dry wood | [ ] {| dry ice | [ ] {| metallic oxides | [ ] | | non-conductors, {| ice, at c. | [ ] or {| fats and oils | [ ] insulators. {| caoutchouc | . {| guttapercha | . {| dry air, gases, and vapours | [ ] {| wool | [ ] {| ebonite | . {| diamond | [ ] {| silk | [ ] {| glass | [ ] {| wax | [ ] {| sulphur | [ ] {| resin | [ ] {| amber | [ ] {| shellac | [ ] {| paraffin | . -----------------+------------------------------+--------------------- [footnote : these have not been accurately measured.] the figures given as indicating the relative resistance of the above bodies to the passage of electricity must be taken as approximate only, since the conductivity of all these bodies varies very largely with their purity, and with the temperature. metals become worse conductors when heated; liquids and non-metals, on the contrary, become better conductors. it must be borne in mind that _dry air_ is one of the _best insulators_, or worst _conductors_, with which we are acquainted; while damp air, on the contrary, owing to the facility with which it deposits _water_ on the surface of bodies, is highly conducive to the escape of electricity. § . if the experiment described at § be repeated, substituting a glass rod for the ebonite comb, it will be found that the pith-ball will be first attracted and then repelled, as in the case with the ebonite; and if of two similar pith-balls, each suspended by a fibre of silk, one be treated with the excited ebonite and the other with the glass rod, until repulsion occurs, and then approached to each other, the two balls will be found to attract each other. this proves that the electrical condition of the excited ebonite and of the excited glass must be different; for had it been the same, the two balls would have repelled one another. farther, it will be found that the _rubber_ with which the ebonite or the glass rod have been excited has also acquired electrical properties, attracting the pith-ball, previously repelled by the rod. from this we may gather that when one body acting on another, either mechanically or chemically, sets up an electrical condition in one of the two bodies, a similar electrical condition, but in the opposite sense, is produced in the other: in point of fact, that it is impossible to excite any one body without exciting a corresponding but opposite state in the other. (we may take, as a rough mechanical illustration of this, the effect which is produced on the pile of two pieces of plush or fur, on being drawn across one another in opposite directions. on examination we shall find that both the piles have been laid down, the upper in the one direction, the lower in the other.) for a long time these two electrical states were held to depend upon two distinct electricities, which were called respectively _vitreous_ and _resinous_, to indicate the nature of the bodies from which they were derived. later on (when it was found that the theory of a single electricity could be made to account for all the phenomena, provided it was granted that some electrified bodies acquired more, while others acquired less than their natural share of electricity), the two states were known as _positive_ and _negative_; and these names are still retained, although it is pretty generally conceded that electricity is not an entity in itself, but simply a mode of motion. § . it is usual, in treatises on electricity, to give a long list of the substances which acquire a positive or a negative condition when rubbed against one another. such a table is of very little use, since the slightest modification in physical condition will influence very considerably the result. for example: if two similar sheets of glass be rubbed over one another, no change in electrical condition is produced; but if one be roughed while the other is left polished, this latter becomes positively, while the former becomes negatively, electrified. so, also, if one sheet of glass be warmed, while the other be left cold, the colder becomes positively, and the latter negatively, excited. as a general law, _that body, the particles of which are more easily displaced, becomes negatively electrified_. § . as, however, the electricity set up by friction has not hitherto found any practical application in electric bell-ringing or signalling, we need not to go more deeply into this portion of the subject, but pass at once to the electricity elicited by the action of acids, or their salts, on metals. here, as might be expected from the law enunciated above, the metal more acted on by the acid becomes negatively electrified, while the one less acted on becomes positive.[ ] the following table, copied from ganot, gives an idea of the electrical condition which the commoner metals and graphite assume when two of them are immersed at the same time in dilute acid:-- { v zinc. ^ } { v cadmium. | } { | tin. | } { | lead. | } { | iron. | } the portion { | nickel. | } the portion out immersed in the { | bismuth. | } of the acid fluid acid fluid. { | antimony. | } { | copper. | } { | silver. | } { | gold. | } { | platinum. ^ } { v graphite. ^ } [footnote : this refers, of course, to those portions of the metals which are out of the acid. for reasons which will be explained farther on, the condition of the metals in the acid is just the opposite to this.] the meaning of the above table is, that if we test the electrical condition of any two of its members when immersed in an acid fluid, we shall find that the ones at the head of the list are _positive_ to those below them, but negative to those above them, if the test have reference to the condition of the parts _within_ the fluid. on the contrary, we shall find that any member of the list will be found to be _negative_ to any one below it, or _positive_ to any above it, if tested from the portion not immersed in the acid fluid. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . a very simple experiment will make this quite clear. two strips, one of copper and the other of zinc, " wide by " long, have a " length of copper wire soldered to one extremity of each. a small flat piece of cork, about " long by " square section, is placed between the two plates, at the end where the wires have been soldered, this portion being then lashed together by a few turns of waxed string. (the plates should not touch each other at any point.) if this combination (which constitutes a very primitive galvanic couple) be immersed in a tumbler three-parts filled with water, rendered just sour by the addition of a few drops of sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, we shall get a manifestation of electrical effects. if a delicately poised magnetic needle be allowed to take up its natural position of north and south, and then the wires proceeding from the two metal strips twisted in contact, so as to be parallel to and over the needle, as shown in fig. , the needle will be impelled out of its normal position, and be deflected more or less out of the line of the wire. if the needle be again allowed to come to rest n. and s. (the battery or couple having been removed), and then the tumbler be held close over the needle, as in fig. , so that the needle points from the copper to the zinc strip, the needle will be again impelled or deflected out of its natural position, but in this case in the opposite direction. § . it is a well-known fact that if a wire, or any other conductor, along which the electric undulation (or, as is usually said, the electric current) is passing, be brought over and parallel to a suspended magnetic needle, pointing north and south, the needle is immediately deflected from this north and south position, and assumes a new direction, more or less east and west, according to the amplitude of the current and the nearness of the conductor to the needle. moreover, the direction in which the north pole of the needle is impelled is found to be dependent upon the direction in which the electric waves (or current) enter the conducting body or wire. the law which regulates the direction of these deflections, and which is known, from the name of its originator, as ampère's law, is briefly as follows:-- § . "if a current be caused to flow _over_ and parallel to a freely suspended magnetic needle, previously pointing north and south, the north pole will be impelled to the left of the _entering_ current. if, on the contrary, the wire, or conductor, be placed _below_ the needle, the deflection will, under similar circumstances, be in the opposite direction, viz.: the north pole will be impelled to the right of the _entering_ current." in both these cases the observer is supposed to be looking along the needle, with its n. seeking pole pointing at him. § . from a consideration of the above law, in connection with the experiments performed at § , it will be evident that inside the tumbler the zinc is _positive_ to the copper strip; while, viewed from the outside conductor, the copper is positive to the zinc strip.[ ] [footnote : from some recent investigations, it would appear that what we usually term the negative is really the point at which the undulation takes its rise.] § . a property of current electricity, which is the fundamental basis of electric bell-ringing, is that of conferring upon iron and steel the power of attracting iron and similar bodies, or, as it is usually said, of rendering iron magnetic. if a soft iron rod, say about " long by / " diameter, be wound evenly from end to end with three or four layers of cotton-covered copper wire, say no. gauge, and placed in proximity to a few iron nails, etc., no attractive power will be evinced; but let the two free ends of the wire be placed in metallic contact with the wires leading from the simple battery described at § , and it will be found that the iron has become powerfully magnetic, capable of sustaining several ounces weight of iron and steel, so long as the wires from the battery are in contact with the wire encircling the iron; or, in other words, "_the soft iron is a magnet, so long as an electric current flows round it_." if contact between the battery wires and the coiled wires be broken, the iron loses all magnetic power, and the nails, etc., drop off immediately. a piece of soft iron thus coiled with covered or "insulated" wire, no matter what its shape may be, is termed an "electro-magnet." their chief peculiarities, as compared with the ordinary permanent steel magnets or lodestones, are, first, their great attractive and sustaining power; secondly, the rapidity, nay, instantaneity, with which they lose all attractive force on the cessation of the electric flow around them. it is on these two properties that their usefulness in bell-ringing depends. § . if, instead of using a _soft_ iron bar in the above experiment, we had substituted one of _hard_ iron, or steel, we should have found two remarkable differences in the results. in the first place, the bar would have been found to retain its magnetism instead of losing it immediately on contact with the battery being broken; and, in the second place, the attractive power elicited would have been much less than in the case of soft iron. it is therefore of the highest importance, in all cases where rapid and powerful magnetisation is desired, that the _cores_ of the electro-magnets should be of the very softest iron. long annealing and gradual cooling conduce greatly to the softness of iron. [illustration: fig. . magnets, showing lines of force.] § . there is yet another source of electricity which must be noticed here, as it has already found application in some forms of electric bells and signalling, and which promises to enter into more extended use. if we sprinkle some iron filings over a bar magnet, or a horse-shoe magnet, we shall find that the filings arrange themselves in a definite position along the lines of greatest attractive force; or, as scientists usually say, the iron filings arrange themselves in the direction of the lines of force. the entire space acted on by the magnet is usually known as its "field." fig. gives an idea of the distribution of the iron filings, and also of the general direction of the lines of force. it is found that if a body be moved before the poles of a magnet in such a direction as to cut the lines of force, electricity is excited in that body, and also around the magnet. the ordinary magneto-electric machines of the shops are illustrations of the application of this property of magnets. they consist essentially in a horse-shoe magnet, in front of which is caused to rotate, by means of appropriate gearing, or wheel and band, an iron bobbin, or pair of bobbins, coiled with wire. the ends of the wire on the bobbins are brought out and fastened to insulated portions of the spindle, and revolve with it. two springs press against the spindle, and pick up the current generated by the motion of the iron bobbins before the poles of the magnet. it is quite indifferent whether we use permanent steel magnets or electro-magnets to produce this effect. if we use the latter, and more especially if we cause a portion of the current set up to circulate round the electro-magnet to maintain its power, we designate the apparatus by the name of dynamo. [illustration: fig. . typical dynamo, showing essential portions.] § . our space will not permit of a very extended description of the dynamo, but the following brief outline of its constructive details will be found useful to the student. a mass of soft iron (shape immaterial) is wound with many turns of insulated copper wire, in such a manner that, were an electrical current sent along the wire, the mass of iron would become strongly north at one extremity, and south at the other. as prolongations of the electro-magnet thus produced are affixed two masses of iron facing one another, and so fashioned or bored out as to allow a ring, or cylinder of soft iron, to rotate between them. this cylinder, or ring of iron, is also wound with insulated wire, two or more ends of which are brought out in a line with the spindle on which it rotates, and fastened down to as many insulated sections of brass cylinder placed around the circumference of the spindle. two metallic springs, connected to binding screws which form the "terminals" of the machine, serve to collect the electrical wave set up by the rotation of the coiled cylinder (or "armature") before the poles of the electro-magnet. the annexed cut (fig. ) will assist the student in getting a clear idea of the essential portions in a dynamo:--e is the mass of wrought iron wound with insulated wire, and known as the _field-magnet_. n and s are cast-iron prolongations of the same, and are usually bolted to the field-magnet. when current is passing these become powerfully magnetic. a is the rotating iron ring, or cylinder, known as the _armature_, which is also wound with insulated wire, b, the ends of which are brought out and connected to the insulated brass segments known as the _commutator_, c. upon this commutator press the two springs d and d', known as the _brushes_, which serve to collect the electricity set up by the rotation of the armature. these _brushes_ are in electrical connection with the two terminals of the machine f f', whence the electric current is transmitted where required; the latter being also connected with the wire encircling the field-magnet, e. when the iron mass stands in the direction of the earth's magnetic meridian, even if it have not previously acquired a little magnetism from the hammering, etc., to which it was subjected during fitting, it becomes weakly magnetic. on causing the armature to rotate by connecting up the pulley at the back of the shaft (not shown in cut) with any source of power, a very small current is set up in the wires of the armature, due to the weak magnetism of the iron mass of the field-magnet. as this current (or a portion of it) is caused to circulate around this iron mass, through the coils of wire surrounding the field-magnet, this latter becomes more powerfully magnetic (§ ), and, being more magnetically active, sets up a more powerful electrical disturbance in the armature. this increased electrical activity in the armature increases the magnetism of this field-magnet as before, and this again reacts on the armature; and these cumulative effects rapidly increase, until a limit is reached, dependent partly on the speed of rotation, partly on the magnetic saturation of the iron of which the dynamo is built up, and partly on the amount of resistance in the circuit. chapter ii. on the choice of batteries for electric bell work. § . if we immerse a strip of ordinary commercial sheet zinc in dilute acid (say sulphuric acid part by measure, water parts by measure[ ]), we shall find that the zinc is immediately acted on by the acid, being rapidly corroded and dissolved, while at the same time a quantity of bubbles of gas are seen to collect around, and finally to be evolved at the surface of the fluid in contact with the plate. accompanying this chemical action, and varying in a degree proportionate to the intensity of the action of the acid on the zinc, we find a marked development of _heat_ and _electricity_. if, while the bubbling due to the extrication of gas be still proceeding, we immerse in the same vessel a strip of silver, or copper, or a rod of graphite, taking care that contact _does not_ take place between the two elements, no perceptible change takes place in the condition of things; but if we cause the two strips to touch, either by inclining the upper extremities so as to bring them in contact out of the fluid like a letter [lambda], or by connecting the upper extremities together by means of a piece of wire (or other conductor of electricity), or by causing their lower extremities in the fluid to touch, we notice a very peculiar change. the extrication of bubbles around the zinc strip ceases entirely or almost entirely, while the other strip (silver, copper, or graphite) becomes immediately the seat of the evolution of the gaseous bubbles. had these experiments been performed with chemically pure metallic zinc, instead of the ordinary impure commercial metal, we should have found some noteworthy differences in behaviour. in the first place, the zinc would have been absolutely unattacked by the acid before the immersion of the other strip; and, secondly, all evolution of gas would entirely cease when contact between the two strips was broken. [footnote : in mixing sulphuric acid with water, the acid should be added in a fine stream, with constant stirring, to the water, and not the water to the acid, lest the great heat evolved should cause the acid to be scattered about.] as the property which zinc possesses of causing the extrication of gas (under the above circumstances) has a considerable influence on the efficiency of a battery, it is well to understand thoroughly what chemical action takes place which gives rise to this evolution of gas. § . all acids may be conveniently regarded as being built up of two essential portions, viz.: firstly, a strongly electro-negative portion, which may either be a single body, such as _chlorine_, _iodine_, _bromine_, etc., or a compound radical, such as _cyanogen_; secondly, the strongly electro-positive body _hydrogen_. representing, for brevity's sake, hydrogen by the letter h., and chlorine, bromine, iodine, etc., respectively by cl., br., and i., the constitution of the acids derived from these bodies may be conveniently represented by:-- h cl h br h i ---- ---- --- hydrochloric[ ] hydrobromic hydriodic acid. acid. acid. [footnote : spirits of salt.] and the more complex acids, in which the electro-negative component is a compound, such as sulphuric acid (built up of atom of sulphur and atoms of oxygen, united to atoms of hydrogen) or nitric acid (consisting of nitrogen atom, oxygen atoms, and hydrogen atom), may advantageously be retained in memory by the aid of the abbreviations:-- h_{ }so_{ } hno_{ } ----------- ------- sulphuric and nitric acid.[ ] acid.[ ] [footnote : oil of vitriol.] [footnote : aquafortis.] when zinc _does_ act on an acid, it displaces the hydrogen contained in it, and takes its place; the acid losing at the same time its characteristic sourness and corrosiveness, becoming, as chemists say, _neutralized_. _one_ atom of zinc can replace _two_ atoms of hydrogen, so that one atom of zinc can replace the hydrogen in two equivalents of such acids as contain only one atom of hydrogen. this power of displacement and replacement possessed by zinc is not peculiar to this metal, but is possessed also by many other bodies, and is of very common occurrence in chemistry; and may be roughly likened to the substitution of a new brick for an old one in a building, or one girder for another in an arch. it will be well, therefore, to remember that in all batteries in which acids are used to excite electricity by their behaviour along with zinc, the following chemical action will also take place, according to which acid is employed:-- hydrochloric acid and zinc, equal zinc chloride and hydrogen gas. hcl + zn = zncl_{ } + h_{ } or:-- sulphuric acid and zinc, equal zinc sulphate and hydrogen gas. h_{ }so_{ } + zn = znso_{ } + h_{ } or we may put this statement into a general form, covering all cases in which zinc is acted on by a compound body containing hydrogen, representing the other or electro-negative portion of the compound by x:-- zn + h_{ }x = znx + h_{ } the final result being in every case the corrosion and solution of the zinc, and the extrication of the hydrogen gas displaced. § . we learn from the preceding statements that no electricity can be manifested in a battery or cell (as such a combination of zinc acid and metal is called) without consumption of zinc. on the contrary, we may safely say that the more rapidly the _useful_ consumption of zinc takes place, the greater will be the electrical effects produced. but here it must be borne in mind that if the zinc is being consumed when we are _not_ using the cell or battery, that consumption is sheer waste, quite as much as if we were compelled to burn fuel in an engine whether the latter were doing work or not. for this reason the use of commercial zinc, in its ordinary condition, is not advisable in batteries in which acids are employed, since the zinc is consumed in such, whether the battery is called upon to do electrical work (by placing its plates in connection through some conducting circuit) or not. this serious objection to the employment of commercial zinc could be overcome by the employment of chemically purified zinc, were it not that the price of this latter is so elevated as practically to preclude its use for this purpose. fortunately, it is possible to confer, on the ordinary crude zinc of commerce, the power of resisting the attacks of the acid (so long as the plates are not metallically connected; or, in other words, so long as the "circuit is broken"), by causing it to absorb superficially a certain amount of mercury (quicksilver). the modes of doing this, which is technically known as _amalgamating the zinc_, are various, and, as it is an operation which every one who has the care of batteries is frequently called upon to perform, the following working details will be found useful:-- § . to amalgamate zinc, it should first be washed with a strong solution of common washing soda, to remove grease, then rinsed in running water; the zinc plates, or rods, should then be dipped into a vessel containing acidulated water (§ ), and as soon as bubbles of hydrogen gas begin to be evolved, transferred to a large flat dish containing water. while here, a few drops of mercury are poured on each plate, and caused to spread quickly over the surface of the zinc by rubbing briskly with an old nail-brush or tooth-brush. some operators use a kind of mop, made of pieces of rag tied on the end of a stick, and there is no objection to this; others recommend the use of the fingers for rubbing in the mercury. this latter plan, especially if many plates have to be done, is very objectionable: firstly, on the ground of health, since the mercury is slowly but surely absorbed by the system, giving rise to salivation, etc.; and, secondly, because any jewellery, etc., worn by the wearer will be whitened and rendered brittle. when the entire surface of the zinc becomes resplendent like a looking-glass, the rubbing may cease, and the zinc plate be reared up on edge, to allow the superfluous mercury to drain off. this should be collected for future operations. it is important that the mercury used for this purpose should be pure. much commercial mercury contains lead and tin. these metals can be removed by allowing the mercury to stand for some time in a vessel containing dilute nitric acid, occasional agitation being resorted to, in order to bring the acid into general contact with the mercury. all waste mercury, drainings, brushings from old plates, etc., should be thus treated with nitric acid, and finally kept covered with water. sprague, in his admirable work on electricity, says:--"whenever the zinc shows a grey granular surface (or rather before this), brush it well and re-amalgamate, remembering that a saving of mercury is no economy, and a free use of it no waste; for it may all be recovered with a little care. keep a convenient sized jar, or vessel, solely for washing zinc in, and brush into this the dirty grey powder which forms, and is an amalgam of mercury with zinc, lead, tin, etc., and forms roughnesses which reduce the protection of the amalgamation. rolled sheet zinc should always be used in preference to cast. this latter is very hard to amalgamate, and has less electro-motive power[ ]; but for rods for use in porous jars, and particularly with saline solutions, cast-zinc is very commonly used. in this case great care should be taken to use good zinc cuttings, removing any parts with solder on them, and using a little nitre as a flux, which will remove a portion of the foreign metals." [footnote : power to set up a current of electricity.] § . another and very convenient mode of amalgamating zinc, specially useful where solid rods or masses of zinc are to be used, consists in weighing up the zinc and setting aside four parts of mercury (by weight) for every hundred of the zinc thus weighed up. the zinc should then be melted in a ladle, with a little tallow or resin over the top as a flux. as soon as melted, the mercury should be added in and the mixture stirred with a stick. it should then be poured into moulds of the desired shape. this is, perhaps, the best mode of amalgamating cast zincs. § . some operators recommend the use of mercurial salts (such as mercury nitrate, etc.) as advantageous for amalgamating; but, apart from the fact that these salts are generally sold at a higher rate than the mercury itself, the amalgamation resulting, unless a very considerable time be allowed for the mercuric salts to act, is neither so deep nor so satisfactory as in the case of mercury alone. it may here be noted, that although the effect of mercury in protecting the zinc is very marked in those batteries in which acids are used as the exciting fluids, yet this action is not so observable in the cases in which solutions of _salts_ are used as exciters; and in a few, such as the daniell cell and its congeners, the use of amalgamated zinc is positively a disadvantage. § . if, having thus amalgamated the zinc plate of the little battery described and figured at § , we repeat the experiment therein illustrated, namely, of joining the wires proceeding from the two plates over a suspended magnetic needle, and leave them so united, we shall find that the magnetic needle, which was originally very much deflected out of the line of the magnetic meridian (north and south), will very quickly return near to its old and normal position; and this will be found to take place long before the zinc has been all consumed, or the acid all neutralised. of course, this points to a rapid falling off in the transmission of the electric disturbance along the united wires; for had _that_ continued of the same intensity, the deflection of the needle would evidently have remained the same likewise. what, then, can have caused this rapid loss of power? on examining (without removing from the fluid) the surface of the copper plate, we shall find that it is literally covered with a coating of small bubbles of hydrogen gas, and, if we agitate the liquid or the plates, many of them will rise to the surface, while the magnetic needle will at the same time give a larger deflection. if we entirely remove the plates from the acid fluid, and brush over the surface of the copper plate with a feather or small pledget of cotton wool fastened to a stick, we shall find, on again immersing the plates in the acid, that the effect on the needle is almost, if not quite, as great as at first; thus proving that the sudden loss of electrical energy was greatly due to the adhesion of the free hydrogen gas to the copper plate. this peculiar phenomenon, which is generally spoken of as the _polarisation of the negative plate_, acts in a twofold manner towards checking the electrical energy of the battery. in the first place, the layer of hydrogen (being a bad conductor of electricity) presents a great resistance to the transmission of electrical energy from the zinc plate where it is set up to the copper (or other) plate whence it is transmitted to the wires, or _electrodes_. again, the _copper_ or other receiving plate, in order that the electric energy should be duly received and transmitted, should be more electro-negative than the zinc plate; but the hydrogen gas which is evolved, and which thus adheres to the negative plate, is actually very highly electro-positive, and thus renders the copper plate incapable of receiving or transmitting the electric disturbance. this state of things may be roughly likened to that of two exactly equal and level tanks, z and c, connected by a straight piece of tubing. if z be full and c have an outlet, it is very evident that z can and will discharge itself into c until exhausted; but if c be allowed to fill up to the same level as z, then no farther flow can take place between the two. it is, therefore, very evident that to ensure anything like constancy in the working of a battery, at least until all the zinc be consumed or all the acid exhausted, some device for removing the liberated hydrogen must be put into practice. the following are some of the means that have been adopted by practical men:-- § . _roughening the surface of the negative plate_, which renders the escape of the hydrogen gas easier. this mode was adopted by smee in the battery which bears his name. it consists of a sheet of silver, placed between two plates of zinc, standing in a cell containing dilute sulphuric acid, as shown at fig. . [illustration: fig. .] the silver sheet, before being placed in position, is _platinised_; that is to say, its surface is covered (by electro-deposition) with a coating of platinum, in the form of a fine black powder. this presents innumerable points of escape for the hydrogen gas; and for this reason this battery falls off much less rapidly than the plain zinc and smooth copper form. a modification of smee's battery which, owing to the large negative surface presented, is very advantageous, is walker's graphite cell. in this we have a plate of zinc between two plates of gas-carbon ("scurf"), or graphite. the surface of this body is naturally much rougher than metal sheets; and this roughness of surface is further assisted by coating the surface with platinum, as in the case of the smee. the chief objection to the use of graphite is its porosity, which causes it to suck up the acid fluid in which the plates stand, and this, of course, corrodes the brass connections, or binding screws. other _mechanical_ means of removing the hydrogen have been suggested, such as brushing the surface of the plate, keeping the liquid in a state of agitation by boiling or siphoning; but the only really efficient practical means with which we are at present acquainted are _chemical_ means. thus, if we can have present at the negative plate some substance which is greedy of hydrogen, and which shall absorb it or combine with it, we shall evidently have solved the problem. this was first effected by professor daniell; and the battery known by his name still retains its position as one of the simplest and best of the "constant" forms of battery. the term "constant," as applied to batteries, does not mean that the battery is a constancy, and will run for ever, but simply that so long as there is in the battery any fuel (zinc, acid, etc.), the electrical output of that battery will be constant. the daniell cell consists essentially in a rod or plate of zinc immersed in dilute sulphuric acid, and separated from the copper or collecting plate by a porous earthen pot or cell. around the porous cell, and in contact with the copper plate, is placed a solution of sulphate of copper, which is maintained saturate by keeping crystals of sulphate of copper (blue stone, blue vitriol) in the solution. sulphate of copper is a compound built up of copper cu, and of sulphur oxide so_{ }. when the dilute sulphuric acid acts on the zinc plate or rod (§ ), sulphate of zinc is formed, which dissolves in the water, and hydrogen is given off:-- zn + h_{ } so_{ } = zn so_{ } + h_{ }. zinc and sulphuric acid produce zinc sulphate and free hydrogen. now this free hydrogen, by a series of molecular interchanges, is carried along until it passes through the porous cell, and finds itself in contact with the solution of copper sulphate. here, as the hydrogen has a greater affinity for, or is more greedy of, the sulphur oxide, so_{ }, than the copper is, it turns the latter out, takes its place, setting the copper free, and forming, with the sulphur oxide, sulphuric acid. the liberated copper goes, and adheres to the copper plate, and, far from detracting from its efficacy, as the liberated hydrogen would have done, actually increases its efficiency, as it is deposited in a roughened form, which presents a large surface for the collection of the electricity. the interchange which takes place when the free hydrogen meets the sulphate of copper (outside the porous cells) is shown in the following equation:-- h_{ } + cu so_{ } = h_{ } so_{ } + cu. free hydrogen and copper sulphate produce sulphuric acid and free copper. [illustration: fig. . daniell cell.] § . the original form given to this, the daniell cell, is shown at fig. , in which z is the zinc rod standing in the porous pot p, in which is placed the dilute sulphuric acid. a containing vessel, v, of glazed earthenware, provided with a perforated shelf, s, on which are placed the crystals of sulphate of copper, serves to hold the copper sheet, c, and the solution of sulphate of copper. t and t' are the terminals from which the electricity is led where desired. in another form, the copper sheet itself takes the form and replaces the containing vessel v; and since the copper is not corroded, but actually increases in thickness during action, this is a decided advantage. a modification, in which the porous cell is replaced by _sand_ or by _sawdust_, is also constructed, and known as "minotto's" cell: this, owing to the greater thickness of the porous layer, offers more resistance, and gives, consequently, less current. by taking advantage of the greater specific gravity (_weight, bulk for bulk_) of the solution of sulphate of copper over that of water or dilute sulphuric acid, it is possible to construct a battery which shall act in a manner precisely similar to a daniell, without the employment of any porous partition whatsoever. fig. illustrates the construction of one of these, known as "gravity daniells." [illustration: fig. . gravity cell.] in this we have a plate, disc, or spiral of copper, c, connected by an insulated copper wire to the terminal t'. over this is placed a layer of crystals of copper sulphate; the jar is then filled nearly to the top with dilute sulphuric acid, or with a strong solution of sulphate of zinc (which is more lasting in its effects, but not so energetic as the dilute sulphuric acid), and on the surface of this, connected to the other terminal, t, is allowed to rest a thick disc of zinc, z. speaking of these cells, professor ayrton, in his invaluable "practical electricity," says:--"all gravity cells have the disadvantage that they cannot be moved about; otherwise the liquids mix, and the copper sulphate solution, coming into contact with the zinc plate, deposits copper on it. this impairs the action, by causing the zinc to act electrically, like a copper one. indeed, without any shaking, the liquids mix by diffusion, even when a porous pot is employed; hence a daniell's cell is found to keep in better order if it be always allowed to send a weak current when not in use, since the current uses up the copper sulphate solution, instead of allowing it to diffuse." the use of a solution of zinc sulphate to act on the zinc rod, or plate, is always to be preferred in the daniell cell, when long duration is of more consequence than energetic action. § . there are many other bodies which can be used in batteries to absorb the hydrogen set free. of several of these we need only take a passing notice, as the batteries furnished by their use are unfit for electric bell work. of these we may mention nitric acid, which readily parts with a portion of the oxygen (§ ) and reconverts the free hydrogen into water. this acid is used as the "depolarizer"[ ] in the "grove" and in the "bunsen" cell. another very energetic "depolariser" is chromic acid, either in solution, in dilute sulphuric acid, or in the form of potassic dichromate (bichromate of potash: bichrome). as one form of chromic cell has found favour with some bell-fitters, we shall study its peculiarities farther on. [footnote : depolarizer is the technical name given to any body which, by absorbing the free hydrogen, removes the false polarity of the negative plate.] another class of bodies which readily part with their oxygen, and thus act as depolarisers, are the oxides of lead and manganese. this latter oxide forms the basis of one of the most useful cells for electric bell work, namely: the one known as the "leclanché." as the battery has been, and will probably remain, long a favourite, the next paragraph will be devoted to its consideration. § . the leclanché cell, in its original form, consists in a rod or block of gas carbon (retort scurf: graphite) standing in an upright porous pot. around this, so as to reach nearly to the top of the porous cell, is tightly packed a mixture of little lumps of graphite and black oxide of manganese (manganic dioxide: black wad), the porous cell itself being placed in an outer containing vessel, which usually takes the form of a square glass bottle. a zinc rod stands in one corner of the bottle, and is prevented from coming into actual contact with the porous cell by having an indiarubber ring slipped over its upper and lower extremities. the glass containing vessel is then filled to about two-thirds of its height with a solution of ammonium chloride (sal ammoniac) in water, of the strength of about oz. of the salt to each pint of water. this soon permeates the porous cell and reaches the mixture inside. the general appearance of the leclanché cell is well shown at fig. . [illustration: fig. .] in order to ensure a large surface of contact for the terminal of the carbon rod or plate, it is customary to cast a leaden cap on the top thereof; and, as the porosity of the graphite, or carbon, is very apt to allow the fluid in the battery to creep up to and corrode the terminal, and thus oppose resistance to the passage of electricity, the upper end of the carbon, before the lead cap is cast on, is soaked for some time in melted paraffin wax, at a temperature of ° centigrade: that is somewhat hotter than boiling water heat. this, if left on the outside, would prevent the passage of electricity almost entirely; so lateral holes are drilled into the carbon before the cap is finally cast on. the action that takes place in the leclanché cell may be summarised as follows:-- when the zinc, zn, is acted on by the ammonium chloride, nh_{ }cl, the zinc seizes the chlorine and forms with it zinc chloride, zncl_{ }, while the ammonium, nh_{ }, is liberated. but this ammonium, nh_{ }, does not escape. being electro-positive, it is impelled towards the negative plate, and in its passage thereto meets with another molecule of ammonium chloride, from which it displaces the ammonium, in this wise: nh_{ } + nh_{ }cl = nh_{ }cl + nh_{ }; in other words, this electro-positive ammonium is able, by virtue of its electrical charge, to displace the ammonium from the combined chloride. in so doing, it sets the liberated ammonium in an electro-positive condition, as it was itself, losing at the same time its electrical charge. this interchange of molecules goes on (as we saw in the case of the daniell's cell, § ) until the surface of the carbon is reached. here, as there is no more ammonium chloride to decompose, the ammonium nh_{ } immediately splits up into ammonia nh_{ } and free hydrogen h_{ }. the ammonia escapes, and may be detected by its smell; while the hydrogen h_{ }, finding itself in contact with the oxide of manganese, mno_{ }, seizes one atom of its oxygen, o, becoming thereby converted into water h_{ }o; while the manganese dioxide, mno_{ }, by losing one atom of oxygen, is reduced to the form of a lower oxide of manganese, known as manganese sesquioxide, mn_{ }o_{ }. expressed in symbols, this action may be formulated as below:-- in the zinc compartment-- zn + nh_{ }cl = zncl_{ } + nh_{ } + h_{ } in the peroxide of manganese compartment-- h_{ } + mno_{ } = mn_{ }o_{ } + h_{ }o. ammonia gas therefore slowly escapes while this battery is in action, and this corrodes all the brass work with which it comes into contact, producing a bluish green verdigris. if there be not sufficient ammonium chloride in solution, the water alone acts on the zinc: zinc oxide is produced, which renders the solution milky. should this be the case, more sal ammoniac must be added. it is found that for every grains of zinc consumed in this battery, about grains of sal ammoniac and grains of manganese dioxide are needed to neutralize the hydrogen set free. it is essential for the efficient working of this battery that both the manganese dioxide and the carbon should be free from powder, otherwise it will cake together, prevent the passage of the liquid, and present a much smaller surface to the electricity, than if in a granular form. for this reason, that manganese dioxide should be preferred which is known as the "needle" form, and both this and the carbon should be sifted to remove dust. § . in the admirable series of papers on electric bell fitting which was published in the _english mechanic_, mr. f. c. allsop, speaking of the leclanché cell, says:--"a severe and prolonged test, extending over many years, has proved that for general electric bell work the leclanché has no equal; though, in large hotels, etc., where the work is likely to be very heavy, it may, perhaps, be preferable to employ a form of the fuller bichromate battery. it is very important that the battery employed should be a thoroughly reliable one and set up in a proper manner, as a failure in the battery causes a breakdown in the communication throughout the whole building, whilst the failure of a push or wire only affects that portion of the building in which the push or wire is fixed. a common fault is that of putting in (with a view to economy) only just enough cells (when first set up) to do the necessary work. this is false economy, as when the cells are but slightly exhausted the battery power becomes insufficient; whereas, if another cell or two had been added, the battery would have run a much longer time without renewal, owing to the fact that each cell could have been reduced to a lower state of exhaustion, yet still the battery would have furnished the necessary power; and the writer has always found that the extra expense of the surplus cells is fully repaid by the increased length of time the battery runs without renewal." § . another form of leclanché, from which great things were expected at its introduction, is the one known as the "agglomerate block," from the fact that, instead of simply placing the carbon and manganese together loosely in a porous cell, solid blocks are formed by compressing these materials, under a pressure of several tons, around a central carbon core, to which the terminal is attached in the usual manner. the following are some of the compositions used in the manufacture of agglomerate blocks:-- no. . manganese dioxide parts. powdered gas carbon " gum lac resin " no. . manganese dioxide (pyrolusite) parts. gas carbon (powdered) " gum lac resin " potassium bisulphate " these are to be thoroughly incorporated, forced into steel moulds (containing the central carbon core) at a temperature of ° c. ( ° fahr.), under a pressure of atmospheres, say , lbs. to the square inch. no. . _barbier and leclanché's patent._ manganese dioxide parts. graphite " pitch ("brai gras") " sulphur / " water / " the materials having been reduced to fine powder, and the proportion of water stated having been added, are intimately mixed together by hand or mechanically. the moist mixture is moulded at the ordinary temperature, either by a simple compressing press, or by a press in which two pistons moving towards each other compress the block on two opposite faces; or the mixture may be compressed by drawing, as in the manufacture of electric light carbon. after compression, the products are sufficiently solid to be manipulated. they are then put in a stove, or oven, the temperature of which is gradually raised to about ° c. (about ° fahr.); a temperature which is insufficient to decompose the depolarising substance (manganese dioxide), but sufficient to drive out first the volatile parts of the agglomerating material, and then to transform its fixed parts in a body unattackable by the ammonia of the cell. during the gradual heating, or baking, which lasts about two hours, what remains of the water in the agglomerate is driven off; then come the more volatile oils contained in the pitch, and finally the sulphur. the sulphur is added to the mixture, not as an agglomerative, but as a chemical re-agent (and this is a characteristic feature in the invention), acting on what remains of the pitch, as it acts on all carbo-hydrides at a high temperature, transforming it partially into volatile sulphuretted compounds, which are expelled by the heat, and partially into a fixed and unattackable body, somewhat similar to vulcanite. the action of the sulphur on the pitch can very well be likened to its action on caoutchouc (which is likewise a hydro-carbon) during the process of vulcanisation. these agglomerate blocks, however prepared, are placed in glass or porcelain containing vessels, as shown in fig. , with a rod of zinc, separated from actual contact with the carbon by means of a couple of crossed indiarubber bands, which serve at the same time to hold the zinc rods upright. the exciting solution, as in the case of the ordinary leclanché consists in a solution of ammonium chloride. [illustration: fig. .] among the various advantages claimed for the agglomerate form of leclanché over the ordinary type, may be mentioned the following:-- st.--the depolarising power of the manganese oxide is used to the best advantage, and that, owing to this, the electro-motive force of the battery is kept at the same point. nd.--that, owing to the absence of the porous cell, there is less internal resistance in the battery and therefore more available current. rd.--that the resistance of the battery remains pretty constant, whatever work be put upon it. th.--that, owing to the fact that the liquid comes into contact with both elements immediately, the battery is ready for use directly on being charged. th.--that the renewal or recharging is exceedingly easy, since the elements can be removed together, fresh solution added, or new depolarising blocks substituted. but when this battery came to be put to the test of practical work, it was found the block form could not be credited with all these advantages, and that their chief superiority over the old cell consisted rather in their lower internal resistance than in anything else. even this is not an advantage in the case of bell work, except when several bells are arranged _in parallel_, so that a large current is required. the blocks certainly polarise more quickly than the old form, and it does not appear that they depolarise any more rapidly. probably the enormous pressure to which the blocks are subjected, in the first two processes, renders the composition almost impermeable to the passage of the fluid, so that depolarisation cannot take place very rapidly. another and serious objection to these blocks is that, after a little work, pieces break away from the blocks and settle on the zinc. this sets up a "short circuit," and the zincs are consumed whether the battery is in action or not. the author has had no opportunity for making any practical tests with the blocks prepared by process no. , but he is under the impression that the blocks would be even more friable than those prepared under greater pressure. § . a third form of leclanché, and one which has given considerable satisfaction, is the one known as "judson's patent." this consists, as shown at fig. , in a cylinder of corrugated carbon encased in an outer coating of an insulating composition. inside the cell are two or more thin carbon sheets, cemented to the sides of the cell by prout's elastic glue, or some similar compound, so as to leave spaces, which are filled in with granular carbon and manganese. the surface of the plates is perforated, so as to allow ready access to the exciting fluid. the zinc rod, which is affixed to the cover, stands in the centre of the cell, touching it at no part. owing to the very large surface presented by the corrugations in the carbon, and by the perforated carbon plates, the internal resistance of this form of battery is very low; hence the current, if employed against a small outer resistance, is large. but this, except in the case of bells arranged in parallel, is of no great advantage. [illustration: fig. .] § . the ordinary form of leclanché is found in market in three sizes, viz., no. , no. , and no. . unfortunately, all makers do not use these numbers in the same manner, so that while some call the smallest, or _pint_ size, no. , others give this name to the largest, or _three-pint_, size. no. is always quart size, and this is the one commonly employed. when several cells are employed to work a number of bells, it is well, in order that they may not receive injury, that they be enclosed in a wooden box. as it is necessary that the batteries should be inspected from time to time, boxes are specially made with doubled hinged top and side, so that when the catch is released these fall flat; thus admitting of easy inspection or removal of any individual cell. this form of battery box is shown at fig. . [illustration: fig. . battery in box.] § . there are certain ills to which the leclanché cells are liable that require notice here. the first is _creeping_. by creeping is meant the gradual crystallisation of the sal ammonium up the inside and round the outside of the glass containing jar. there are two modes of preventing this. the first consists in filling in the neck with melted pitch, two small funnel-like tubes being previously inserted to admit of the addition of fresh sal ammoniac solution, and for the escape of gas. this mode cannot be recommended, as it is almost impossible to remove the pitch (in case it be required to renew the zinc, etc.) without breaking the glass vessel. the best way to remove the pitch is to place the cell in a large saucepan of cold water, and set it on a fire until the water boils. the pitch is, by this treatment, so far softened that the elements can be removed and the pitch scraped away with a knife. [illustration: fig. .] by far the better mode is to rub round the inside and outside of the neck of the jar with tallow, or melted paraffin wax, to the depth of an inch or thereabouts. this effectually prevents creeping and the consequent loss of current. messrs. gent, of leicester, have introduced a very neat modification of the leclanché cell, with a view to obviate altogether the evils deriving from creeping. this cell is illustrated at fig. , and the following is the description supplied by the patentees:--"all who have had experience of batteries in which a solution of salts is used are aware of the difficulty experienced in preventing it creeping over the outside of the jar, causing local loss, and oftentimes emptying the jar of its solution. many devices have been tried to prevent this, but the only effectual one is our patent insulated jar, in which a recess surrounds the top of the jar, this recess being filled with a material to which the salts will not adhere, thus keeping the outside of the jar perfectly clean. it is specially adapted for use in hot climates, and is the only cell in which jars may touch each other and yet retain their insulations. we confidently recommend a trial of this cell. its price is but little in excess of the ordinary leclanché." the battery should be set up in as cool a place as possible, as heat is very conducive to creeping. it is also important that the battery should be placed as near as convenient to the bell. sometimes the zincs are seen to become coated with a black substance, or covered with crystals, rapidly wasting away at the same time, although doing little or no work; a strong smell of ammonia being given off at the same time. when this occurs, it points to an electrical leakage, or short circuit, and this, of course, rapidly exhausts the battery. it is of the utmost importance to the effective working of any battery that not the slightest leakage or _local action_ should be allowed to take place. however slight such loss be, it will eventually ruin the battery. this leakage may be taking place in the battery, as a porous cell may be broken, and carbon may be touching the zinc; or out of the battery, along the conducting wires, by one touching the other, or through partial conductivity of a damp wall, a metallic staple, etc., or by creeping. if loss or local action has taken place, it is best, after discovering and repairing the faults (see also _testing wires_), to replace the old zincs by new ones, which are not costly. § . there is yet a modification of the leclanché which is sometimes used to ring the large bells in hotels, etc., known as the leclanché reversed, since the zinc is placed in the porous pot, this latter being stood in the centre of the stoneware jar, the space between the two being packed with broken carbon and manganese dioxide. by this means a very much larger negative surface is obtained. in the grenet cell, the porous cell is replaced by a canvas bag, which is packed full of lumps of graphite and carbon dioxide, a central rod of carbon being used as the electrode. this may be used in out-of-the-way places where porous cells are not readily obtainable, but i cannot recommend them for durability. § . the only other type of battery which it will be needful to notice in connection with bell work is one in which the depolariser is either chromic acid or a compound of chromic acid with potash or lime. chromic acid consists of hydrogen united to the metal chromium and oxygen. potassic dichromate (bichromate of potash: bichrome) contains potassium, chromium, and oxygen. if we represent potassium by k, chromium by cr, and oxygen by o, we can get a fair idea of its constitution by expressing it as k_{ }cr_{ }o_{ }, by which it is shown that one molecule of this body contains two atoms of potassium united to two atoms of chromium and seven atoms of oxygen. bichromate of potash readily parts with its oxygen; and it is upon this, and upon the relatively large amount of oxygen it contains, that its efficiency as a depolariser depends. unfortunately, bichromate of potash is not very soluble in water; one pint of water will not take up much more than three ounces of this salt. hence, though the solution of potassium bichromate is an excellent depolariser as long as it contains any of the salt, it soon becomes exhausted. when bichromate of potash is used in a cell along with sulphuric acid and water, sulphate of potash and chromic acid are formed, thus:-- k_{ }cr_{ }o_{ } + h_{ }so_{ } + h_{ }o = k_{ }so_{ } + h_{ }cro_{ } ---------------- ----------- ------ ----------- ------------- molecule of & molecule & give molecule & molecules bichrome. of molecule of of sulphuric of sulphate chromic acid. water. of potash. acid. from this we learn that before the potassium bichromate enters into action in the battery, it is resolved into chromic acid. chromic acid is now prepared cheaply on a large scale, so that potassium bichromate may always be advantageously replaced by chromic acid in these batteries; the more so as chromic acid is extremely soluble in water. in the presence of the hydrogen evolved during the action of the battery (§ ) chromic acid parts with a portion of its oxygen, forming water and sesquioxide of chromium, cr_{ }o_{ }, and this, finding itself in contact with the sulphuric acid, always used to increase the conductivity of the liquid, forms sulphate of chromium. the action of the hydrogen upon the chromic acid is shown in the following equation:-- h_{ }cro_{ } + h_{ } = h_{ }o + cr_{ }o_{ } ------------- ------ ------- ----------- molecules of molecules molecules molecule chromic & of give of water. & of acid. hydrogen. chromium sesquioxide. [illustration: fig. .] § . the "bottle" form of the bichromate or chromic acid battery (as illustrated at fig. ) is much employed where powerful currents of short duration are required. it consists of a globular bottle with a rather long wide neck, in which are placed two long narrow graphite plates, electrically connected to each other and to one of the binding screws on the top. between these two plates is a sliding rod, carrying at its lower extremity the plate of zinc. this sliding rod can be lowered and raised, or retained in any position, by means of a set screw. the zinc is in metallic connection with the other binding screw. this battery (which, owing to the facility with which the zinc can be removed from the fluid, is extremely convenient and economical for short experiments) may be charged with either of the following fluids:-- first recipe. _bichromate solution._ bichromate of potash (finely powdered) oz. boiling water pint. stir with a glass rod, allow to cool, then add, in a fine stream, with constant stirring, strong sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) fluid oz. the mixture should be made in a glazed earthern vessel, and allowed to cool before using. second recipe. _chromic acid solution._ chromic acid (chromic trioxide) oz. water pint. stir together till dissolved, then add gradually, with stirring, sulphuric acid oz. this also must not be used till cold. in either case the bottle must not be more than three parts filled with the exciting fluid, to allow plenty of room for the zinc to be drawn right out of the liquid when not in use. § . the effects given by the above battery, though very powerful, are too transient to be of any service in continuous bell work. the following modification, known as the "fuller" cell, is, however, useful where powerful currents are required, and, when carefully set up, may be made to do good service for five or six months at a stretch. the "fuller" cell consists in an outer glass or glazed earthern vessel, in which stands a porous pot. in the porous pot is placed a large block of amalgamated zinc, that is cast around a stout copper rod, which carries the binding screw. this rod must be carefully protected from the action of the fluid, by being cased in an indiarubber tube. the amalgamation of the zinc must be kept up by putting a small quantity of mercury in the porous cell. the porous cells must be paraffined to within about half an inch of the bottom, to prevent too rapid diffusion of the liquids, and the cells themselves should be chosen rather thick and close in texture, as otherwise the zinc will be rapidly corroded. water alone is used as the exciting fluid in the porous cell along with the zinc. speaking of this form of cell, mr. perren-maycock says:--"the base of the zinc is more acted on (when bichromate crystals are used), because the porous cells rest on the crystals; therefore let it be well paraffined, as also the top edge. instead of paraffining the pot in strips all round (as many operators do) paraffin the pot all round, except at one strip about half an inch wide, and let this face the carbon plate. if this be done, the difference in internal resistance between the cell with paraffined pot and the same cell with pot unparaffined will be little; but if the portion that is unparaffined be turned away from the carbon, it will make very nearly an additional ohm resistance. it is necessary to have an ounce or so of mercury in each porous cell, covering the foot of the zinc; or the zincs may be cast short, but of large diameter, hollowed out at the top to hold mercury, and suspended in the porous pot. the zinc is less acted on then, for when the bichromate solution diffuses into the porous pot, it obviously does so more at the bottom than at the top." [illustration: fig. .] fig. illustrates the form usually given to the modification of the fuller cell as used for bell and signalling work. § . before leaving the subject of batteries, there are certain points in connection therewith that it is absolutely essential that the practical man should understand, in order to be able to execute any work satisfactorily. in the first place, it must be borne in mind that a cell or battery, when at work, is continually setting up electric undulations, somewhat in the same way that an organ pipe, when actuated by a pressure of air, sets up a continuous sound wave. whatever sets up the electric disturbance, whether it be the action of sulphuric acid on zinc, or caustic potash on iron, etc., is called _electromotive force_, generally abbreviated e.m.f. just in the same manner that the organ pipe could give no sound if the pressure of air were alike inside and out, so the cell, or battery, cannot possibly give _current_, or evidence of electric flow, unless there is some means provided to allow the _tension_, or increased atomic motion set up by the electromotive force, to distribute itself along some line of conductor or conductors not subjected to the same pressure or e.m.f. in other words, the "current" of electricity will always tend to flow from that body which has the highest tension, towards the body where the strain or tension is less. in a cell in which zinc and carbon, zinc and copper, or zinc and silver are the two elements, with an acid as an excitant, the zinc during the action of the acid becomes of higher "potential" than the other element, and consequently the undulations take place towards the negative plate (be it carbon, copper, or silver). but by this very action the negative plate immediately reaches a point of equal tension, so that no current is possible. if, however, we now connect the two plates together by means of any conductor, say a copper wire, then the strain to which the carbon plate is subjected finds its exit along the wire and the zinc plate, which is continually losing its strain under the influence of the acid, being thus at a lower potential (electrical level, strain) than the carbon, can and does actually take in and pass on the electric vibrations. it is therefore evident that no true "current" can pass unless the two elements of a battery are connected up by a conductor. when this connection is made, the circuit is called a "_closed circuit_." if, on the contrary, there is no electrical connection between the negative and positive plates of a cell or battery, the circuit is said to be open, or _broken_. it may be that the circuit is closed by some means that is not desirable, that is to say, along some line or at some time when and where the flow is not wanted; as, for instance, the outside of a cell may be _wet_, and one of the wires resting against it, when of course "leakage" will take place as the circuit will be closed, though no useful work will be done. on the other hand, we may actually take advantage of the practically unlimited amount of the earth's surface, and of its cheapness as a conductor to make it act as a portion of the conducting line. it is perfectly true that the earth is a very poor conductor as compared with metals. let us say, for the sake of example, that damp earth conducts , times worse than copper. it will be evident that if a copper wire / of an inch in section could convey a given electric current, the same length of earth having a section of , inches would carry the same current equally well, and cost virtually nothing, beyond the cost of a metal plate, or sack of coke, presenting a square surface of a little over inches in the side at each end of the line. this mode of completing the circuit is known as "the earth plate." § . the next point to be remembered in connection with batteries is, that the electromotive force (e.m.f.) depends on the _nature_ of the elements (zinc and silver, zinc and carbon, etc.) and the excitants used in the cell, and has absolutely nothing whatever to do with their _size_. this may be likened to difference of temperature in bodies. thus, whether we have a block of ice as large as an iceberg or an inch square, the temperature will never exceed °f. as long as it remains ice; and whether we cause a pint or a thousand gallons of water to boil (under ordinary conditions), its temperature will not exceed °f. the only means we have of increasing the e.m.f., or "tension," or "potential," of any given battery, is by connecting up its constituent cells in _series_; that is to say, connecting the carbon or copper plate of the one cell to the zinc of the next, and so on. by this means we increase the e.m.f. just in the same degree as we add on cells. the accepted standard for the measure of electromotive force is called a volt, and volt is practically a trifle less than the e.m.f. set up by a single daniell's cell; the exact amount being · volt, or - / volt very nearly. the e.m.f. of the leclanché is very nearly · volt, or nearly volt and / . thus in fig. , which illustrates leclanché cells set up in series, we should get · volt · " · " --------- · volts as the total electromotive force of the combination. [illustration: fig. .] § . the _current_, or amplitude of the continuous vibrations kept up in the circuit, depends upon two things: st, the electromotive force; nd, the resistance in the circuit. there is a certain amount of resemblance between the flow of water under pressure and electricity in this respect. let us suppose we have a constant "head" of water at our disposal, and allow it to flow through a tube presenting inch aperture. we get a certain definite flow of water, let us say gallons of water per hour. more we do not get, owing to the resistance opposed by the narrowness of the tube to a greater flow. if now we double the capacity of the exit tube, leaving the pressure or "head" of water the same, we shall double the flow of water. or we may arrive at the same result by doubling the "head" or pressure of water, which will then cause a double quantity of water to flow out against the same resistance in the tube, or conductor. just in the same way, if we have a given pressure of electric strain, or e.m.f., we can get a greater or lesser flow or "current" by having less or more resistance in the circuit. the standard of flowing current is called an ampÈre; and ampère is that current which, in passing through a solution of sulphate of copper, will deposit · grains of copper per hour. the unit of resistance is known as an ohm. the resistance known as ohm is very nearly that of a column of mercury square millimètre ( / of an inch) in section, and - / inches in height; or foot of no. gauge pure copper wire, / of an inch in diameter, at a temperature of ° fahr., or ° centigrade. § . professor ohm, who made a special study of the relative effects of the resistance inserted in the circuit, the electromotive force, and the current produced, enunciated the following law, which, after him, has been called "ohm's law." it is that if we divide the number of electromotive force units (volts) employed by the number of resistance units (ohms) in the entire circuit, we get the number of current units (ampères) flowing through the circuit. this, expressed as an equation is shown below: e/r = c or electromotive force/resistance = current. or if we like to use the initials of volts, ampères, and ohms, instead of the general terms, e, r, and c, we may write v/r = a, or volts/ohms = ampères. from this it appears that volt will send a current of ampère through a total resistance of ohm, since divided by equals . so also volt can send a current of ampères through a resistance of / of an ohm, since divided by / is equal to . we can therefore always double the current by halving the resistance; or we may obtain the same result by doubling the e.m.f., allowing the resistance to remain the same. in performing this with batteries we must bear in mind that the metals, carbon, and liquids in a battery do themselves set up resistance. this resistance is known as "_internal resistance_," and must always be reckoned in these calculations. we can _halve_ the internal resistance by _doubling_ the size of the negative plate, or what amounts to the same thing by connecting two similar cells "_in parallel_;" that is to say, with both their zincs together, to form a positive plate of double size, and both carbons or coppers together to form a single negative of twice the dimensions of that in one cell. any number of cells thus coupled together "_in parallel_" have their resistances reduced just in proportion as their number is increased; hence cells, each having a resistance of ohm if coupled together _in parallel_ would have a joint resistance of / ohm only. the e.m.f. would remain the same, since this does not depend on the size of the plate (see § ). the arrangement of cells in parallel is shown at fig. , where three leclanché cells are illustrated thus coupled. the following little table gives an idea of the e.m.f. in volts, and the internal resistance in ohms, of the cells mostly used in electric bell work. [illustration: fig. .] table showing e.m.f. and r. of batteries. ----------------+-------------------+-----------------+--------------- name of cell. | capacity of cell. | electromotive | resistance in | | force in volts. | ohms. ----------------+-------------------+-----------------+--------------- daniell | quarts | · | " gravity | quarts | · | leclanché | pint | · | · " | pints | · | · " | pints | · | · agglomerate | pint | · | · " | pints | · | · " | pints | · | · fuller | quart | · | · ----------------+-------------------+-----------------+--------------- from this it is evident that if we joined up the two plates of a fuller cell with a short wire presenting no appreciable resistance, we should get a current of ( · divided by · ) · ampères along the wire; whereas if a gravity daniell were employed the current flowing in the same wire would only be a little over / of an ampère, since · / = · . but every wire, no matter how short or how thick, presents _some_ resistance; so we must always take into account both the internal resistance (that of the battery itself) and the external resistance (that of the wires, etc., leading to the bells or indicators) in reckoning for any given current from any cell or cells. chapter iii. on electric bells and other signalling appliances. § . an electric bell is an arrangement of a cylindrical soft iron core, or cores, surrounded by coils of insulated copper wire. on causing a current of electricity to flow round these coils, the iron becomes, _for the time being_, powerfully magnetic (see § ). a piece of soft iron (known as the _armature_), supported by a spring, faces the magnet thus produced. this armature carries at its free extremity a rod with a bob, clapper or hammer, which strikes a bell, or gong, when the armature, under the influence of the pull of the magnet, is drawn towards it. in connection with the armature and clapper is a device whereby the flow of the current can be rapidly interrupted, so that on the cessation of the current the iron may lose its magnetism, and allow the spring to withdraw the clapper from against the bell. this device is known as the "contact breaker" and varies somewhat in design, according to whether the bell belongs to the _trembling_, the _single stroke_, or the _continuous ringing_ class. § . in order that the electric bell-fitter may have an intelligent conception of his work, he should _make_ a small electric bell himself. by so doing, he will gain more practical knowledge of what are the requisites of a good bell, and where defects may be expected in any he may be called upon to purchase or examine, than he can obtain from pages of written description. for this reason i reproduce here (with some trifling additions and modifications) mr. g. edwinson's directions for making an electric bell:--[ ] _how to make a bell._--the old method of doing this was to take a piece of round iron, bend it into the form of a horse-shoe, anneal it (by leaving it for several hours in a bright fire, and allowing it to cool gradually as the fire goes out), wind on the wire, and fix it as a magnet on a stout board of beech or mahogany; a bell was then screwed to another part of the board, a piece of brass holding the hammer and spring being fastened to another part. many bells made upon this plan are still offered for sale and exchange, but their performance is always liable to variation and obstruction, from the following causes:--to insure a steady, uniform vibratory stroke on the bell, its hammer must be nicely adjusted to move within a strictly defined and limited space; the least fractional departure from this adjustment results in an unsatisfactory performance of the hammer, and often a total failure of the magnet to move it. in bells constructed on the old plan, the wooden base is liable to expansion and contraction, varying with the change of weather and the humidity, temperature, etc., of the room in which the bells are placed. thus a damp, foggy night may cause the wood to swell and place the hammer out of range of the bell, while a dry, hot day may alter the adjustment in the opposite direction. such failures as these, from the above causes alone, have often brought electric bells into disrepute. best made bells are, therefore, now made with metallic (practically inexpansible) bases, and it is this kind i recommend to my readers. [footnote : "amateur work."] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] _the base_, to which all the other parts are fastened, is made of / in. mahogany or teak, in. by in., shaped as shown at fig. , with a smooth surface and french polished. to this is attached the metallic base-plate, which may be cut out of sheet-iron, or sheet-brass (this latter is better, as iron disturbs the action of the magnet somewhat), and shaped as shown in fig. ; or it may be made of cast-iron, or cast in brass; or a substitute for it may be made in wrought-iron, or brass, as shown in fig. . i present these various forms to suit the varied handicrafts of my readers; for instance, a worker in sheet metal may find it more convenient to manufacture his bell out of the parts sketched in figs. , , ^a, , , ^a, and ; but, on the other hand, a smith or engineer might prefer the improved form shown at fig. , and select the parts shown at figs. ^a, , , choosing either to forge the horse-shoe magnet, fig. , or to turn up the two cores, as shown at fig. (a), to screw into the metal base, fig. b, or to be fastened by nuts, as shown at fig. . the result will be the same in the end, if good workmanship is employed, and the proper care taken in fixing and adjusting the parts. a tin-plate worker may even cut his base-plate out of stout block tin, and get as good results as if the bell were made by an engineer. in some makes, the base-plate is cut or stamped out of thick sheet-iron, in the form shown by the dotted lines on fig. , and when thus made, the part a is turned up at right angles to form a bracket for the magnet cores, the opposite projection is cut off, and a turned brass pillar is inserted at b to hold the contact screw, or contact breaker (§ ). [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. a.] the _magnet_ may be formed as shown at fig. , or at fig. ^a. its essential parts are: st. two soft iron cores (in some forms a single core is now employed); nd. an iron base, or yoke, to hold the cores together; rd. two bobbins wound with wire. the old form of magnet is shown at fig. . in this form the cores and yoke are made out of one piece of metal. a length of round swedish iron is bent round in the shape of a horseshoe; this is rendered thoroughly soft by annealing, as explained further on. it is absolutely essential that the iron be very soft and well annealed, otherwise the iron cores retain a considerable amount of magnetism when the current is not passing, which makes the bell sluggish in action, and necessitates a higher battery power to make it work (see § ). two bobbins of insulated wire are fitted on the cores, and the magnet is held in its place by a transverse strip of brass or iron secured by a wood screw passing between the two bobbins. the size of the iron, the wire, the bobbins, and the method of winding is the same as in the form next described, the only difference being that the length of the iron core, before bending to the horse-shoe form, must be such as to allow of the two straight portions of the legs to be in. in length, and stand - / apart when bent. we may now consider the construction of a magnet of the form shown at fig. ^a. to make the cores of such a magnet, to ring a - / in. bell, get two inch lengths of / in. best swedish round iron, straighten them, smooth them in a lathe, and reduce / in. of one end of each to / of an in., leaving a sharp shoulder, as shown at fig. a. next, get a -in. length of angle iron, drill in it two holes - / apart, of the exact diameter of the turned ends of the cores, and rivet these securely in their places; this may be done by fastening the cores or legs in a vice whilst they are being rivetted. two holes should be also bored in the other flange to receive the two screws, which are to hold the magnet to the base, as shown at fig. b. the magnet is now quite equal to the horse-shoe form, and must be made quite soft by annealing. this is done by heating it in a clear coal fire to a bright red heat, then burying it in hot ashes, and allowing it to cool gradually for a period of from to hours; or perhaps a better guide to the process will be to say, bury the iron in the hot ashes and leave it there until both it and they are quite cold. the iron must be brought to a bright cherry red heat before allowing it to cool, to soften it properly, and on no account must the cooling be hurried, or the metal will be _hard_. iron is rendered hard by hammering, by being rapidly cooled, either in cold air or water, and hard iron retains magnetism for a longer time than soft iron. as we wish to have a magnet that will only act as such when a current of electricity is passing around it, and shall return to the state of a simple piece of unmagnetised iron when the current is broken, we take the precaution of having it of soft iron. many bells have failed to act properly, because this precaution has been neglected, the "residual" (or remaining) magnetism holding down the armature after contact has been broken. when the magnet has been annealed, its legs should be polished with a piece of emery cloth, and the ends filed up level and smooth. if it is intended to fasten the cores into the base-plate, this also should be annealed, unless it be made of brass, in which case a thin strip of soft iron should connect the back ends of the two legs before they are attached to the brass base (an iron yoke is preferable, as it certainly is conducive to better effects to have a massive iron yoke, than to have a mere strip as the connecting piece). it will also be readily understood and conceded that the cores should be cut longer when they are to be fastened by nuts, to allow a sufficient length for screwing the ends to receive the nuts. the length and size of the legs given above are suitable for a - / in. bell only; for larger bells the size increases / of an inch, and the length / of an inch, for every / in. increase in the diameter of the bell. [illustration: fig. .] the _bobbins_, on which the wire that serves to carry the magnetising current is to be wound, next demand our attention. they may be turned out of boxwood, ebony, or ebonite, or out of any hard wood strong enough and dense enough to allow of being turned down thin in the body, a very necessary requirement to bring the convolutions of wire as near the coil as possible without touching it. some amateurs use the turned ends of cotton reels or spools, and glue them on to a tube of paper formed on the cores themselves. if this tube be afterwards well covered with melted paraffin wax, the plan answers admirably, but of course the bobbins become fixtures on the magnets. there are some persons who are clever enough to make firm bobbins out of brown paper (like rocket cases), with reel ends, that can be slipped off and on the magnet cores. to these i would say, "by all means at your command, do so if you can." the size of the bobbins for a - / in. bell should be: length - / in., diameter of heads / of an in., the length increasing / of an in. and the diameter / of an in. for every additional / in. in the diameter of the bell. the holes throughout the bobbins should be of a size to fit the iron cores exactly, and the cores should project / of an inch above the end of the bobbins when these are fitted on. the wire to be wound on the bobbins is sold by all dealers in electrical apparatus. it is copper wire, covered with cotton or with silk, to ensure insulation. mention has already been made of what is meant by insulation at § , but, in order to refresh the reader's memory, mr. g. edwinson's words are quoted here. "to insulate, as understood by electricians, means to protect from leakage of the electric current, by interposing a bad conductor of electricity between two good conductors, thus insulating[ ] or detaching them from electric contact." [footnote : _insula_ in latin means an island, hence an electrified body is said to be insulated when surrounded by non-conductors, as an island by the sea.] the following list will enable my readers to see at a glance the value of the substances mentioned here as conductors or insulators, the best conductors being arranged from the top downwards, and the bad conductors or insulators opposed to them in similar order, viz., the worst conductors or best insulators being at the top:-- _conductors._ _insulators._ silver. paraffin wax. copper. guttapercha. iron. indiarubber. brass. shellac. all other metals. varnishes. metallic solutions. sealing wax. metallic salts. silk and cotton. wet stone. dry clothing. wet wood. dry wood. oil, dirt and rust. see also the more extended list given at § for a more complete and exact classification. it will be seen, on reference to the above, that copper is a good conductor, being excelled by silver alone in this respect; and that silk and cotton are bad conductors. when, therefore, a copper wire is bound round with silk or with cotton, even if two or more strands of such a covered wire be superimposed, since these are electrically separated by the non-conducting covering, no escape of electricity from one strand to the other can take place, and the strands are said to be insulated. if the copper wire had been coiled _naked_ round a bobbin, each convolution touching its neighbour, the current would not have circled round the whole length of the coils of wire, but would have leapt across from one coil to the other, and thus the desired effect would not have been obtained. a similar result, differing only in degree, would occur if a badly insulating wire were used, say one in which the covering had been worn in places, or had been badly wound, so as to expose patches of bare copper wire. if the insulation of a wire be suspected, it should be immersed in hot melted paraffin wax, and then hung up to drain and cool. the size of wire to be used on a - / in. bell should be no. b. w. g., the size falling two numbers for each / in. increase in the diameter of the bell. in these wires the higher the number, the finer the size, no. being / and no. being / of an inch in diameter. silk-covered wire has an advantage over cotton-covered wire, inasmuch as the insulating material occupies less space, hence the convolutions of wire lie closer together. this is important, as the current has less effect on the iron if removed further from it, the decrease being as the _square_ of the distance that the current is removed from the wire. magnets coiled with silk-covered wire admit also of better finish, but for most purposes cotton-covered wire will give satisfaction, especially if well paraffined. this wire must be wound on the bobbins, from end to end regularly, with the coils side by side, as a reel of cotton is wound. this may be done on a lathe, but a little practice will be necessary before the inexperienced hand can guide the wire in a regular manner. if, however, the spool of wire have a metal rod passed up its centre, and this be held in the hand at a distance of a foot or more from the bobbin on the lathe, the wire will almost guide itself on, providing the guiding hand be allowed to follow its course. with a little care, the wire for these little magnets may be wound entirely by hand. before commencing to wind on the bobbins, just measure off in. of the wire (not cutting it off) and coil this length around a pencil, to form a small coil or helix. the pencil may then be withdrawn from the helix thus formed, which serves to connect the wire with one of the points of contact. this free end is to be fastened outside the bobbin by a nick in the head; or the / in. length, before being formed into a helix, may be pushed through a small hole made on the head of the bobbin, so that in. project _outside_ the bobbin, which projecting piece may be coiled into a helix as above described. the wire should now be wound exactly as a reel of cotton is wound, in close coils from end to end, and then back again, until three layers of wire have been laid on, so that the coiling finishes at the opposite end to that at which it began. to prevent this uncoiling, it should be fastened by tying down tightly with a turn or two of strong silk. the wire should now be cut from the hank, leaving about in. of free wire projecting at the finishing end of each bobbin. in cases where many bobbins have to be wound, either for bells, for relays, or for indicator coils, a device similar to that illustrated at fig. a may be employed. this _electric bobbin winder_ consists in a table which can be stood on a lathe or near any other driving wheel. two carriers, c c, somewhat similar to the back centre and poppet head of a lathe, hollow inside, and furnished with a spring and sliding piston spindle, stand one at each end of this table. the sliding spindle of the one carries at its extremity a pulley, a, by means of which motion can be transmitted from the band of the driving wheel. the sliding spindles, b b, are fitted with recesses and screws, h h h h, by means of which the temporary wooden cores, or the permanent iron cores, of the bobbins can be held while the bobbins are being wound. the bobbin is placed as shown at d; a flat piece of metal, e, hinged at g, presses against the bobbin, owing to the spring f. the centre figure shows details of the carrier, c, in section. at the bottom is shown the spool of wire on a standard l. the wire passes from this spot between the two indiarubber rollers, m m, on to the bobbin d. [illustration: fig. a.] when the bobbins have been wound, they may be slipped over the magnet cores. they should fit pretty tightly; if they do not, a roll of paper may be put round the magnet cores, to ensure their not slipping when the bell is at work. the helix ends of the bobbins should stand uppermost, as shown at fig. a. a short length of the lower free ends of wire (near the base or yoke) should now be bared of their covering, cleaned with emery paper, twisted together tightly, as shown at fig. b, soldered together, and any excess of wire cut off with a sharp pair of pliers. to prevent any chance electrical leakage between this bared portion of the wire and the iron, it should be carefully coated with a little melted guttapercha, or prout's electric glue. [illustration: fig. .] of course, if the operator has any skill at winding, he may wind both bobbins with one continuous length of wire, thus avoiding joins, taking care that the direction of the winding in the finished coils be as shown at fig. b; that is to say, that the wire from the _under_ side of one bobbin, should pass _over_ to the next in the same way as the curls of the letter [rotated s]. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] the part that next claims our consideration is the _armature_, with its fittings. the armature is made out of / square bar iron, of the best quality, soft, and well annealed, and filed up smooth and true. the proportionate length is shown at figs. and ; and the size of the iron for other bells is regulated in the same ratio as that of the cores. two methods of making and attaching the springs and hammers are shown. fig. shows the section of an armature fitted with back spring and contact spring in one piece. this is cut out of hard sheet-brass, as wide as the armature, filed or hammered down to the desired degree of springiness, then filed up true on the edges. it may be attached to the iron of the armature, either by soldering, by rivetting, or by means of two small screws. rivetting is, perhaps, the best mode, as it is not liable to shake loose by the vibration of the hammer. the spring at its shank end may be screwed or rivetted to the bracket. mr. edwinson considers this the better form of contact spring. the other form is made in two pieces, as shown at fig. , where two strips of hard brass are cut off, of the width of the armature, and the edges filed. a slot is then cut in the back end of the armature to receive the two brass strips, and these are soldered into it. the top strip is then bent back over the armature to form the contact-spring, the other strip being soldered or rivetted to a small bracket of angle brass. in either case a short rod of stout hard brass wire is rivetted or screwed into the free end of the armature, and to the end of this rod is screwed or soldered the metal bead, or bob, which forms the hammer or "clapper" of the bell. the next portion to be made is the contact pillar, or bracket, with its screw, as shown at fig. . this may either be a short stout pillar of / in. brass rod, about in. high, tapped on one side to receive the screw, which should be fitted with a back nut; or it may, as shown in the figure, be made out of a stout piece of angle brass. the exact size and length of the screw is immaterial; it must, however, be long enough to reach (when put in its place behind the contact spring) the spring itself, and still have a few threads behind the back nut to spare. the screw should be nicely fitted to the pillar, and the lock nut should clench it well, as when once the adjustment of the parts is found which gives good ringing, it is advisable that no motion should take place, lest the perfection of ringing be interfered with. some makers use a "set screw" at the side of the pillar wherewith to hold the contact screw; others split the pillar and "spring" it against the contact screw; but, all things considered, the back nut gives the greatest satisfaction. when the bell is in action, a tiny spark is produced at every make and break of contact between the contact spring and this screw. this spark soon corrodes the end of the screw and the back of the spring if brass alone is used, as this latter rusts under the influence of the spark. to prevent this, a piece of platinum must be soldered or rivetted to the spring, at the point where the screw touches, as shown at fig. , and also at the extremity of the contact screw itself. it is better to rivet the platinum than to solder it, as the platinum is very apt to absorb the solder, in which case it rusts quickly, and the goodness of the contact is soon spoiled, when the bell ceases to ring. to rivet the platinum piece on to the spring, as shown at fig. , it is only needful to procure a short length of no. platinum wire, say / in., then, having drilled a corresponding hole at the desired spot in the contact spring, put the platinum wire half way through the hole, and give it one or two sharp blows on an anvil, with a smooth (pened) hammer. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] this will at once rivet it in its place, and spread it sufficiently to make a good surface for contact. the screw must likewise be tipped with platinum, by having a small hole bored in the centre of its extremity, of the same diameter as the platinum wire, which must then be pushed in, and rivetted by hammering the end, and burring the sides of the screw. whichever method be adopted, care must be taken that the platinum tip on the screw and the speck on the contact spring are adjusted so as to touch exactly in their centres. it will be hardly worth while for the amateur to cast or even turn up his own bells (which are generally of the class known as clock gongs), as these can now be procured so cheaply already nickelled (see fig. ). the bell must be adjusted on its pillar (see fig. ^a), which is itself screwed into a hole in the base-plate, where it is held by a nut. the adjustment of the bell is effected by placing it over the shoulder of the pillar, and then clenching it down by screwing over it one or other of the nuts shown at fig. . the bell should clear the base, and should be at such a height as to be struck on its edge by the hammer or clapper attached to the armature, figs. and . we still need, to complete our bell, two binding screws, which may take either of the forms shown at fig. ; and an insulating washer, or collar, made of ebonite or boxwood, soaked in melted paraffin, to prevent the contact pillar (fig. ) making electrical contact with the metal base. the best shape to be given to these washers is shown at fig. . they consist in two thin circlets of wood or ebonite, that will just not meet when dropped, one on the one side, and one on the other of the hole through which the shank of the contact pillar passes when set up on the base-plate. if a wooden base be used below the metal base-plate, then only one washer, or collar, need be used--that is, the one _above_--since the screw of the pillar will pass into the wood, and this is not a conductor. if the metal base alone be used, both washers must be employed, and a small nut (not so large as the washer) used to tighten up and hold the pillar firm and immovable in its place opposite the contact spring. [illustration: fig. .] having now all the parts at hand, we can proceed to fit them together, which is done as follows:--the bell pillar, with its bell attached, is fastened by its shank into the hole shown near b, fig. , where it is screwed up tight by the square nut shown at fig. _c_. in the same manner, we must fasten the contact pillar, or bracket, shown at fig. a. whichever form be used, we must take great care that it be insulated from metallic contact with the metal base-plate by washers, as shown at fig. (similar washers must be used for the two binding screws if the _whole_ base-plate be made in metal). this being done, the metal frame, fig. , is put in position on the wooden base, as shown at fig. , and screwed down thereto by the screws indicated at _s s s_. the magnet may then be screwed down to the metal frame as shown. the small bracket of angle brass marked b, in figs. and , is next screwed into its place; that is, in such a position that the armature stands squarely facing the poles of the electro-magnet, but not quite touching them (say / of an inch for a - / in. bell). in setting up this and the contact pillar, the greatest care must be taken that the platinum tip of the contact screw, fig. , should touch lightly the centre of the platinum speck at the back of the spring, figs. and , shown full size at fig. . the free ends of the helically coiled electro-magnet wires should now be inserted into short lengths of small indiarubber tubing (same as used for feeding bottles), the extremities being drawn through and in. of the copper wire bared of its covering for the purpose of making good metallic contact with the connections. one of these ends is to be soldered, or otherwise metallically connected, to the angle brass carrying the armature, spring and clapper, the other being similarly connected with the left-hand binding-screw, shown at fig. . another short length of wire (also enclosed in rubber tubing) must be arranged to connect the contact screw pillar fig. , with the right-hand binding-screw. when this has been done, we may proceed to test the working of the bell by connecting up the binding screws with the wires proceeding from a freshly-charged leclanché cell. if all have been properly done, and the connections duly made, the armature should begin to vibrate at once, causing the "bob," or hammer, to strike the bell rapidly; that is, provided the platinum tipped screw touches the platinum speck on the contact spring. should this not be the case, the screw must be turned until the platinum tip touches the platinum speck. the armature will now begin to vibrate. it may be that the clapper runs too near the bell, so that it gives a harsh, thuddy buzz instead of a clear, ringing sound; or, possibly, the clapper is "set" too far from the bell to strike it. in either case a little bending of the brass wire carrying the clapper (either from or towards the bell, as the case may dictate) will remedy the defect. it is also possible that the armature itself may have been set too near, or too far from the electro-magnet. in the latter case, the clapper will not vibrate strongly enough, in the former the vibration will be too short, and the clapper may even stick to the poles of the electros, especially if these have not been carefully annealed. a little bending of the spring, to or from the magnets, will remedy these deficiencies, unless the distance be very much too great, in which case the bending of the spring would take the platinum tip out of the centre of the platinum speck. [illustration: fig. .] § . having thus constructed an efficient electric bell we may proceed to study its action and notice some of the defects to which it may be subject. in the first place, if we connect up the bell with the battery as shown in fig. , viz., the left-hand binding-screw with the wire proceeding from the carbon of the leclanché, and the right-hand screw with the wire from the zinc, then, if the platinum tipped screw touches the platinum speck, at the back of the contact spring, a current of electricity flows from the left-hand binding-screw all round the coils of the electro-magnets, passes along the contact spring and platinum speck, thence to the platinum tipped screw along the short length of wire to the right-hand binding-screw, whence it returns to the zinc element of the battery, thus completing the circuit. the current, in thus passing around the electro-magnet cores, converts them, _pro tem._, into a powerful magnet (see § ); consequently, the armature, with its contact spring and hammer, is pulled towards the electro-magnets and at the same time gives a blow to the bell. now, if instead of having the platinum speck attached to a flexible spring, it had been attached bodily to the rigid iron armature, directly the electro-magnets felt the influence of the current, the platinum speck would have also been pulled out of contact with the platinum screw, therefore the electro-magnet cores would have _immediately_ lost their magnetism (see § , last five lines). this would have been disadvantageous, for two reasons: st, because the _stroke_ of the hammer would have been very short, and consequently the ring of the bell very weak; and, nd, because, as even the softest iron requires some appreciable time for the electric current to flow round it to magnetise it to its full capacity, it would need a much greater battery power to produce a given stroke, if the contact were so very short. the use of an elastic contact spring is, therefore, just to lengthen the time of contact. but the electro-magnets, even when the flexible spring is used, do actually pull the platinum speck out of contact with the platinum screw. when this takes place, the circuit is broken, and no more current can flow round the electro-magnets, the spring reasserts its power, and the contact is again made between the contact screw and contact spring, to be again rapidly broken, each break and make contact being accompanied by a correspondingly rapid vibration of the armature, with its attendant clapper, which thus sets up that characteristic rapid ringing which has earned for these bells the name of trembling, chattering, or vibrating bells. § . from a careful consideration of the last two sections it will be evident that the possible defects of electric bells may be classed under four heads: viz., st, bad contacts; nd, bad adjustment of the parts; rd, defective insulation; th, warpage or shrinkage of base. we will consider these in the above order. firstly, then, as to bad contacts. many operators are content with simply turning the terminal wires round the base of the binding-screws. unless the binding-screws are firmly held down on to the wires by means of a back nut, a great loss is sure to occur at these points, as the wires may have been put on with sweaty hands, when a film of oxide soon forms, which greatly lowers the conductivity of the junction. again, at the junction points of the wires with the contact angle brass and contact pillar, some workmen solder the junctions, using "killed spirits" as a flux. a soldered contact is certainly the best, electrically speaking, but "killed spirits," or chloride of zinc, should never be used as a flux in any apparatus or at any point that cannot be washed in abundance of water, as chloride of zinc is very _deliquescent_ (runs to water), rottens the wire, and spoils the insulation of the adjacent parts. if solder be used at any parts, let _resin_ be used as a flux. even if any excess of resin remain on the work, it does no harm and does not destroy the insulation of any of the other portions. another point where bad contact may arise is at the platinum contacts. platinum is a metal which does not rust easily, even under the influence of the electric spark given at the point of contact. therefore, it is preferred to every other metal (except, perhaps, iridium) for contact breakers. platinum is an expensive metal, the retail price being about s. an ounce, and as it is nearly twice as heavy as lead (lead . platinum · ) very little goes to an ounce. for cheap bells, therefore, there is a great temptation to use some other white metal, such as silver, german silver, platinoid, etc. the tip of the platinum screw may be tested for its being veritably platinum in the following mode: touch the tip with the stopper of a bottle containing aquafortis, so as to leave a tiny drop on the extreme point of the suspected platinum. if it boils up green, or turns black, it is _not_ platinum; if it remains unaltered, it may be silver or platinum. after it has stood on the tip for a minute, draw it along a piece of white paper, so as to produce a streak of the acid. expose the paper for a few minutes to sunlight. if the streak turns violet or pinky violet, the metal is _silver_; if the paper simply shows a slightly yellowish streak, the metal is platinum. the tip of the platinum screw must be carefully dried and cleaned after this trial before being replaced. secondly, as to bad adjustment. it is evident that the magnets and the armature must stand at a certain distance apart to give the best effects with a given battery power. the distance varies from / in. in the very smallest, to / in. in large bells. sometimes (but only in very badly made instruments) the armature adheres to the poles of the electro-magnet. this is due to _residual_ _magnetism_ (see § ), and points to hard or unannealed iron in the cores or armature. as a make-shift, this defect may be partially remedied by pasting a thin piece of paper over that surface of the armature which faces the poles of the electro-magnets. another bad adjustment is when the platinum screw does not touch fairly on the centre of the platinum speck, but touches the spring or the solder. rust is then sure to form, which destroys the goodness of the contact. to adjust the contact spring at the right distance from the platinum screw, hold the hammer against the bell or gong. the armature should now _just not touch_ the poles of the electro-magnet. now screw up the platinum screw until it _clears_ the contact spring by about the thickness of a sheet of brown paper (say / of an inch). let the hammer go, and notice whether the contact spring makes good contact with the platinum screw. this may be tried by the leclanché cell as well, so as to make sure of the character of the _ringing_. when this has been satisfactorily adjusted the back-nut or set screw may be tightened, to insure that the vibration of the hammer shall not alter the adjustment. it sometimes happens that the spring that bears the armature is itself either too strong (or set back too far) or too weak. in the former case, the electro-magnet cannot pull the armature with sufficient force to give a good blow; in the latter, the spring cannot return the armature, with its attendant contact spring, back to its place against the platinum screw. to ascertain which of these two defects obtains, it is only necessary, while the bell is in action, to press the spring lightly with a bit of wire, first _towards_ and then _away_ from the electro-magnets. if the ringing is improved in the first case, the spring is too strong; if improvement takes place in the latter case, the spring is too weak. the third source of inefficient action, defective insulation, is not likely to occur in a newly-made bell, except by gross carelessness. still, it may be well to point out where electrical leakage is likely to occur, and how its presence may be ascertained, localized, and remedied. if the wire used to wind the electro-magnet be old, badly covered, or bared in several places in winding, it probably will allow the current to "short circuit," instead of traversing the whole length of the coils. if this be the case, the magnet will be very weak: the magnet of a - / -in. bell should be able to sustain easily a lb. weight attached by a piece of string to a smooth piece of / -in. square iron placed across its poles, when energized by a single pint leclanché cell. if it will not do this, the insulation may be suspected. if the wire has been wound on the bare cores (without bobbins), as is sometimes done, bared places in the wire may be touching the iron. this may be ascertained by connecting one pole of a bottle bichromate, or other powerful battery, with one of the wires of the electro-magnet coils, and drawing the other pole of the battery across the clean iron faces of the electro-magnet poles. if there is any leakage, sparks will appear on making and breaking contact. nothing but unwinding and rewinding with a well covered wire can remedy these defects. the other points where the insulation may be defective are between the binding screws and the base, if this be all of metal; or between the contact spring block and the base, and the contact pillar. it is also probable (if the connecting wires have not been covered with indiarubber tubing, as recommended) that leakage may be taking place between these wires and some portion of the metal work of the base or frame. this must be carefully examined, and if any point of contact be observed, a little piece of prout's elastic glue, previously heated, must be inserted at the suspected places. with regard to the binding screws, if they stand on the wooden base, their insulation (unless the base be very damp indeed) will be sufficiently good; but if the base is entirely metallic, then ebonite or boxwood washers must be used to insulate them from contact with the base-plate. with regard to the contact spring block and the platinum screw pillar, it is _permissible_ that one or the other should not be insulated from the base or frame; but one or the other _must_ be insulated by means of ebonite or other insulating washers. personally, i prefer to insulate both; but in many really good bells only the platinum screw pillar is thus insulated. any such leakage can be immediately detected by holding one pole of a powerful battery against the suspected binding-screw, or block, or pillar, and while in this position, drawing the other pole across some bare iron portion of the frame or metal base. sparks will appear if there is any leakage. the fourth defect--that is, warpage or shrinkage of the base--can only occur in badly-made bells, in which the entire base is of wood. a cursory examination will show whether the board is warped or swollen, or whether it has shrunk. warping or swelling will throw the electro-magnet too far from the armature, or "set" the pillar out of place; shrinkage, on the contrary, will bring the parts too close together and jamb the magnets, the armature, and the contact pillar into an unworkable position. § . before quitting the subject of the defects of bells, it may not be out of place to mention that no bell that is set to do real work should be fitted up without a cover or case. the dust which is sure to accumulate, not to speak of damp and fumes, etc., will certainly militate against good contacts and good action if this important point be neglected. the cover or case generally takes the form of a shallow box, as shown at fig. , and may be made from / -in. teak, mahogany, or walnut, dovetailed together and well polished. it is fastened to the base in the same manner as the sides of a dutch clock, by means of studs, hooks and eyes. at the bottom of the box is cut a slot, of sufficient width and length to admit the play of the hammer shank. [illustration: fig. .] in the annexed table is given a general idea of the proportion which should be observed in the construction of bells of different sizes. it must be noted that if the bells are to be used at long distances from the battery, rather more of a finer gauge of wire must be employed to wind the magnets than that herein recommended, unless, indeed, _relays_ be used in conjunction with the bells. § .-- table showing proportions to be observed in the different parts of electric bells. ---------+---------+----------+--------+---------+---------- diameter |length of|diameter |length |diameter | b. w. g. of | magnet |of magnet | of |of bobbin| of wire bell. | cores. | cores. |bobbin. | head. |on bobbin. ---------+---------+----------+--------+---------+---------- - / " | " | / " | - / " | / " | | - / | / | | / | - / | - / | / | - / | | | - / | / | - / | - / | - / | | / | - / | - / | | - / | / | | - / | - / | - / | / | - / | - / | | - / | / | - / | - / | - / | | / | - / | - / | | - / | / | | - / | - / | - / | / | - / | | | - / | | - / | - / | - / | | - / | - / | - / | | - / | - / | | - / | - / | - / | - / | - / | - / | | - / | - / | - / | - / | - / | | - / | - / | - / | | - / | - / | | - / | - / | - / | - / | - / | | | - / | - / | - / | - / | ---------+---------+----------+--------+---------+---------- [illustration: fig. a.] [illustration: fig. b.] [illustration: fig. .] § . we can now glance at several modifications in the shape and mode of action of electric bells and their congeners. taking figs. a and b as our typical forms of trembling bell, the first notable modification is one by means of which the bell is made to give a single stroke only, for each contact with the battery. this form, which is known as the "single stroke bell," lends itself to those cases in which it may be required to transmit preconcerted signals; as also where it is desired to place many bells in one circuit. fig. illustrates the construction of the single stroke bell. it differs from the trembling bell in the mode in which the electro-magnet is connected up to the binding screws. in the trembling bell, fig. , the circuit is completed through the platinum screw pillar, to the binding screw marked z, hence the circuit is rapidly made and broken as long as by any means contact is made with the battery, and the binding screws l and z. but in the single stroke bell, fig. , the wires from the electro-magnet are connected directly to the two binding screws l and z, so that when contact is made with the battery, the armature is drawn to the poles of the electro-magnet, and kept there so long as the battery current passes. by this means, only one stroke or blow is given to the bell for each contact of the battery. of course, directly the connection with the battery is broken, the spring which carries the armature and clapper flies back ready to be again attracted, should connection again be made with the battery. to regulate the distance of the armature from the poles of the electro-magnets, a set screw q takes the place of the platinum screw in the ordinary form, while to prevent the hammer remaining in contact with the bell (which would produce a dull thud and stop the clear ring of the bell), a stop (_g_) is set near the end of the armature, or two studs are fixed on the tips of the poles of the electro-magnets. the mode of adjusting this kind of bell, so as to obtain the best effect, differs a little from that employed in the case of the trembling bell. the armature must be pressed towards the poles of the electro-magnets, until it rests against the stop or studs. a piece of wood or cork may be placed between the armature and the set screw q, to retain the armature in this position, while the rod carrying the hammer or clapper is being bent (if required) until the hammer just clears the bell. if it touches the bell, a thud instead of a ring is the result; if it is set off too far, the ring will be too weak. the armature can now be released, by removing the wood or cork, and the set screw q driven forwards or backwards until the best effect is produced when tested with the battery. the tension of the armature spring must be carefully looked to in these single stroke bells. if it is too strong, the blow will be weak; if too weak, the hammer trembles, so that a clear single stroke is not obtainable, as the spring _chatters_. § . _the continuous ringing bell_ is the modification which next demands our attention. in this, the ringing action, when once started by the push,[ ] or other contact maker, having been touched, continues either until the battery is exhausted, or until it is stopped by the person in charge. the great use of this arrangement is self-evident in cases of burglar alarms, watchman's alarms, etc., as the continuous ringing gives notice that the "call" has not received attention. the continuous ringing bell differs but little from the ordinary trembling bell. the chief difference lies in the addition of an automatic device whereby contact is kept up with the battery, even after the "push" contact has ceased. as it is desirable for the person in charge to be able to stop the ringing at will, without proceeding to the place where the "push" stands, so it is not usual to make the continuous ringing arrangement dependent on the "push," though, of course, this could be done, by causing it to engage in a catch, which would keep up the contact, when once made. continuous ringing bells may be conveniently divided into two classes; viz., st, those in which a device is attached to the framework of the bell; which device, when once upset by the first stroke of the bell, places the bell in direct communication with the battery independent of the "push" or usual contact; and ndly, those in which a separate device is used, for the same purpose. this latter arrangement admits of the use of an ordinary trembling bell. [footnote : a "push," of which several forms will hereafter be described and figured, consists essentially in a spring carrying a stud, standing directly over, but not touching, another stud, fixed to a base. the lower stud is connected to one terminal of battery, the spring is connected to the bell. when the spring is pressed down, the two studs come into contact, the current flows, and the bell rings.] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] fig. illustrates the action of bells of the first class. in the first place it will be noticed that there are three binding screws instead of two, as in the ordinary pattern, one marked c connected as usual with the carbon element of the battery; another marked l, which connects with line wire, and a third, z, connected by means of a branch wire (shunt wire), proceeding from the zinc of the battery. it will be seen, that if the battery current is by means of the push caused to flow through the coils of the electro-magnets, the armature is attracted as usual by them, and in moving towards them, releases and lets fall the lever contact, which, resting on the contact screw, completes the circuit between z and c, so that the bell is in direct communication with its battery, independently of the push. hence the bell continues ringing, until the lever is replaced. this can be done, either by pulling a check string (like a bell-pull) attached to an eye in the lever, or by means of a press-button and counter-spring; as shown in fig. , a and b. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] in continuous ringing bells of the second class, a detent similar to that shown at fig. d is used, but this, instead of being actuated by the electro-magnet belonging to the bell itself, is controlled by a separate and entirely independent electro-magnet, which, as it may be wound with many coils of fine wire, and have a specially light spring for the armature, can be made very sensitive. this second electro-magnet, which serves only to make contact with a battery, is known as a _relay_, and is extensively employed in many cases where it is desired to put one or more batteries into, or out of circuit, from a distance. the relay may be looked upon as an automatic hand, which can be made to repeat at a distant point contacts made or broken by hand at a nearer one. fig. shows this arrangement, attached to the same base board as the bell itself. on contact being made with the push, the current enters at c, circulates round the cores of the relay, thus converting it into a magnet. the armature _a_ is thereby pulled to the magnet, and in so doing releases the detent lever, which falls on the contact screw, thus at one and the same time breaking the circuit through the relay, and making the circuit through the bell magnets b b´, back to the battery by z. a second modification of this mode of causing an ordinary bell to ring continuously is shown at fig. , the peculiar form of relay used therewith being illustrated at fig. . here, the relay is placed on a separate base board of its own, and could, if necessary, be thrown out of circuit altogether, by means of a _switch_,[ ] so that the bell can be used as an ordinary bell or continuous action at will. it will be noticed that the relay has in this sketch only one core. but the delicacy of the action is not impaired thereby, as the armature, by means of the steel spring _s_, is made to form part and parcel of the magnet, so that it becomes magnetised as well as the core, and is attracted with more force than it would be, if it were magnetically insulated. the battery current enters by the wires c and w, passes round the coils of the electro-magnet, and returns by z. in so doing it energises the electro-magnet e, which immediately attracts its armature a. the forward movement of the armature a, releases the pivoted arm l, to which is attached a platinum-tipped contact prong p. this, it will be noticed, is in metallic connection with the pillar p', and with the base, and, therefore, through the wire w, with the battery. when the arm l falls, the contact prong completes the circuit to the bell, through the insulated pillar x. the relay is thus thrown out of the circuit at the same time that the bell is thrown in. a device similar to those illustrated at fig. can be employed to reset the arm l. [footnote : described at § .] [illustration: fig. .] a rather more complicated arrangement for continuous bell ringing is shown at fig. . it is known as callow's, and is peculiarly adapted to ringing several bells from one attachment, etc. owing to the relay in this form being wound with two sets of wires, it takes a little more battery power; but this disadvantage is compensated by its many good points. the following description, taken from f. c. allsop's papers in the _english mechanic_, will render the working of callow's attachment perfectly clear. "when the button of the push p is pressed, the current in the main circuit flows from the positive pole c of the battery d through the relay coil _a_, and thence by the wire _d_ and push p, to the zinc of the battery. this attracts the armature a of the relay r, closing the local bell circuit, the current flowing from c of the battery to armature a of the relay r, through contact post _p_, terminal l of the bell, through bell to terminal z, and thence by the wire _g_ to the zinc of the battery. part of the current also flows along the wire from the bell terminal l through the relay coil _b_ and switch w, to terminal z of the bell, thus keeping the armature of the relay down, after the main circuit (through the push) has been broken; the bell continuing to ring until the shunt circuit is broken by moving the arm of the switch w over to the opposite (or non-contact) side. the bell can also be stopped by short circuiting the relay, which can be effected by an ordinary push. it will be seen that more than one bell can be rung from the same attachment, and the bell can, by moving the arm of the switch w, be made continuous ringing or not, at will. if the arm of the switch is moved over to the opposite side to which it is shown in the figure, the shunt circuit of the bell through the relay is broken, and the bell will ring only so long as the button of the push is kept in. this continuous arrangement is very convenient for front doors, etc., where trouble is experienced in securing immediate attention to the summons. instead of being taken to the switch, as in fig. , the two wires are taken to a contact piece fixed on the side of the door frame, and so arranged that when the door is opened, it either short circuits or breaks the shunt circuit: thus when the push is pressed, the bell rings until the door is opened, the continual ringing of the bell insuring prompt attention." mr. h. thorpe, of , theobald's road, london, has devised a very ingenious arrangement for the continuous ringing of one or more bells for a stated period of time. this is shown at fig. a. it is set in action by pulling the ring outside the bottom of the core. the bell or bells then start ringing, as contact is established and kept up. the novelty lies in the fact that the duration of the contact, and consequently of the ringing, can be accurately timed from seconds to seconds, by merely inserting a pin at different holes in the rod, as shown. after the bells have rung the required time the instrument automatically resets itself. [illustration: fig. a.] § . the modifications we are now about to consider, differ from the ordinary bell, either in the shape or material of the bell itself, the relative disposition of the parts, or some structural detail; but not upon the introduction of any new principle. the most striking is certainly the jensen bell, which is shown in section at fig. . [illustration: fig. .] according to mr. jensen's system of electric bells, the bell may take any desired form, that of the ordinary church bell being preferred, and the electro-magnetic apparatus is placed entirely inside the bell itself. to attain this end the electro-magnetic apparatus must be compact in form. a single electro-magnet has pole pieces at each end opposite to which an armature is suspended from a pivot and balanced by the hammer of the bell. at the back of the armature there may be a make and break arrangement, whereby a continuous succession of strokes is effected, or this may be omitted, in which case a single stroke is given when the contact with the battery is made, or both may be effected by separate wires, make contact with one wire, and a single stroke is struck; make it with the other and the current passes through the make and break and a succession of strokes is heard. when the contact-breaker is used, it is so arranged that a slight rub is caused at every stroke, so keeping the contact clean. the flexible break, with the ingenious wiping contact, is a great improvement over the ordinary screw, which often becomes disarranged. the form of the magnet is such that a considerable degree of magnetic force is caused by a comparatively small battery power. the electro-magnetic apparatus being within the bell the latter forms a very effective and handsome shield for the former. not only can the bell shield the electro-magnet from wet but the whole of the conducting wires as well. the bell may be screwed to a tube through which passes the conducting wire, which makes contact with an insulated metallic piece in the centre of the top of the bell. both the wire and the contact piece are as completely shielded from the weather as if within the bell itself. [illustration: fig. .] the great point of departure is the discarding of the unsightly magnet box, and the hemispherical bell (_see_ fig. ), and substituting a bell of the church type (see fig. ), and placing inside it an electro-magnet specially arranged. the inventors use a single solenoidal magnet of a peculiar construction, by which the armature is attracted by both poles simultaneously. by this means less than half the usual quantity of wire is required, thus reducing the external resistance of the circuit one half. moreover the armature, besides being magnetised by induction, as acted on in the ordinary method of making electric bells, is by messrs. jensen's plan directly polarised by being in actual magnetic contact by the connection of the gimbal (which is one piece with the armature) with the core iron of their magnet. it is thus induced to perform the largest amount of work with the smallest electro-motive force. instead of the armature and clapper being in a straight line attached to a rigid spring, which necessitates a considerable attractive power to primarily give it momentum, in the jensen bell the armature and hammer are in the form of an inverted [u], and being perfectly balanced from the point of suspension, the lines of force from a comparatively small magnetic field suffice to set this improved form of armature into instant regular vibration. by using a flexible break and make arrangement instead of the usual armature spring and set screw (at best of most uncertain action), it is found that a much better result is attained, and by this device the armature can be set much nearer the poles of the magnet with sufficient traverse of the hammer. this is in strict accordance with the law of inverse squares, which holds that the force exerted between two magnetic poles is inversely proportionate to the square of the distance between them, or, in other words, that magnets increase proportionately in their power of attraction as they decrease in the square of the distance. it will now be seen why these bells require so little battery power to ring them: firstly, the armature and hammer are so perfectly balanced as to offer but little resistance; secondly, the external resistance to the current is reduced; and thirdly, the best possible use is made of the electro-magnetic force at disposal. § . the next modification which demands attention is the so-called "circular bell." this differs from the ordinary form only in having the action entirely covered by the dome. except, perhaps, in point of appearance, this presents no advantages to that. the bells known as "mining bells" resemble somewhat in outward appearance the circular bell; but in these mining bells the action is all enclosed in strong, square teak cases, to protect the movement, as far as possible, from the effects of the damp. all the parts are, for the same reason, made very large and strong; the armature is pivoted instead of being supported on a spring, the hammer shank being long, and furnished with a heavy bob. the domes or bells are from inches to inches in diameter, and are generally fitted with _single stroke_ movement, so as to enable them to be used for signalling. the hammer shank, with its bob, and the dome, which stands in the centre of the case, are the only parts left uncovered, as may be seen on reference to figs. a and b, where the exterior and interior of such a bell are shown. [illustration: fig. a.] [illustration: fig. b.] [illustration: fig .] § . in the "electric trumpet," introduced by messrs. binswanger, of the general electric company, we have a very novel and effective arrangement of the parts of an electric bell and telephone together. this instrument, along with its battery, line and push, is illustrated at fig. , where a is a hollow brass cylinder, in which is placed an ordinary electro-magnet similar to figs. or a. at the front end, near b, is affixed by its edges a thin disc of sheet iron, precisely as in the bell telephone,[ ] and over against it, at b, is an insulated contact screw, as in the ordinary trembling bell. on the disc of sheet iron, at the spot where the screw touches, is soldered a speck of platinum. the wires from the electro-magnet are connected, one to the upper binding screw, the other to the brass case of the instrument itself, which is in metallic communication with the sheet iron disc. the return wire from the contact screw is shown attached to the insulated piece, and is fastened to another binding screw (not visible) on the base board. when contact is made with the battery, through the press or push, the magnet becomes energised, and pulls the iron disc or diaphragm towards it, causing it to buckle inwards. in doing this, contact is broken with the screw b; consequently the diaphragm again straightens out, as the magnet no longer pulls it. again contact is made; when of course the same round of performances is continuously repeated. as the plate or diaphragm vibrates many hundreds of times per second, it sets up a distinctly musical and loud sound wave, not unlike the note of a cornet-a-piston, or a loud harmonium reed. with a number of these "trumpets," each diaphragm being duly tuned to its proper pitch, it would be possible to construct a novel musical instrument, working solely by electricity. the "pushes" need only take the form of pianoforte keys to render the instrument within the grasp of any pianoforte or organ player. [footnote : see "electrical instrument making for amateurs." whittaker & co. second edition.] § . sometimes the gong or "dome" of the ordinary bell is replaced by a coil spring, as in the american clocks; sometimes quaint forms are given to the parts covering the "movement," so as to imitate the head of an owl, etc. but bells with these changes in outward form will not present any difficulty, either in fixing or in management, to those who have mastered the structural and working details given in this chapter. chapter iv. on contacts, pushes, switches, keys, alarms, and relays. § . all the appliances which have hitherto been described, would be utterly useless for the purposes intended, had we not at hand some means of easily, certainly and rapidly completing and breaking the circuit between the bell or bells, on the one hand, and the battery on the other. this necessary piece of apparatus, which is simply a contact maker, receives different names, dependent on its application. when it is intended to be actuated directly by hand, it is known as a "push," a "pressel," or "pull," according to the mode in which the contact is made. at fig. , a, b, c, d, and e, show the outward forms of various "pushes," in wood and china, as sent out by the leading makers. (the ones figured are from messrs. binswanger & co.) at f is a sectional view of one of these pushes, and g shows the interior when the cover has been removed. from these two latter illustrations it will be easily understood that the "push" consists essentially in two pieces of metal one or both of which are springs, and one of which is connected with one of the wires from the battery, while the other is attached to the wire proceeding to the bell. when the button is pressed the upper spring comes into contact with the lower metal spring or plate. the circuit is now complete; hence the bell rings. but as soon as the finger is removed from the stud or button of the "push," the spring returns to its old place, contact being thereby broken when the bell ceases to ring, unless it be fitted with a continuous ringing arrangement (see § ). in fastening the leading wires to these pushes, care must be taken that the ends of the wires be scraped, and sand papered quite clean and bright, bent into a loop which must be inserted under the head of the screw that holds the wire to the spring pieces; the screws being then tightened up carefully to ensure a good grip and contact with the wires. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . a "pressel" (fig. ) is simply a push which instead of being made a fixture by being fastened in the wall or door, is attached to a metallic wired line, so that it is generally made to resemble somewhat in outward appearance the knob or tassel of the bell-pull of the last generation, the interior arrangement is precisely similar to that of the push; that is to say, the pressel consists in a pear-shaped or acorn-shaped hollow wooden box, with a projecting knob or button below. this button is attached to a spring, the tension of which keeps the knob protruding from the end of the box, and at the same time prevents contacts with the second spring at the bottom of the box. two insulated wires, one from the battery, the other from the bell, are connected to separate screws at the top of the pressel. one of these screws connects with the lower spring, the other with the upper. [illustration: fig. .] § . the "pull" (fig. ), as its name implies, makes contact and rings the bell on being pulled. the knob has a rather long shank bar, around which is coiled a pretty stiff spring. at the farther extremity is an ebonite or boxwood collar ending in a rather wider metal ring. the wires from the bell and battery are connected respectively to two flat springs, _a a'_, by the screws _b b'_. when the knob is pulled, the metal collar touches both springs, and the circuit is completed. closely allied to the "pull" is a form of bedroom contact, which combines pear-push or pressel and pull in one device. this will be readily understood on reference to fig. . another form of bedroom pull, with ordinary rope and tassel, consists in a box containing a jointed metal lever, standing over a stud, from which it is kept out of contact by a counter spring. to the projecting end of the lever is attached the bell rope. when this is pulled the lever touches the stud, contact is made, and the bell rings. this is clearly shown in fig. a. in all these contacts, except the door pull (fig. ) where the friction of the action of pulling keeps the surfaces bright, the points of contact should be tipped with platinum. another form of contact to be let in the floor of the dining-room, within easy reach of the foot of the carver, or other persons at the head of the table, is shown at fig. b. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. a.] [illustration: fig. b.] mr. mackenzie has introduced a very ingenious contrivance whereby the ringer may know whether the bell at the distant end has rung. this is effected by inclosing in the push a device similar to that shown at fig. a. that is to say, an electro-magnet wound with wire, and surmounted by a thin iron disc, is placed in circuit with the line wires. the ringing of the bell rapidly magnetises and demagnetises the electro-magnet, and causes a humming sound, which clearly indicates whether the bell is ringing or not. as this device can be made very small, compact, and not liable to derangement, it is of easy application. § . the next form of contact to which our attention must be directed, is that known as the _burglar alarm_, with its variant of door-contacts, sash-contacts, till-contacts, etc. the "burglar's pest" (as the contrivance we illustrate is called) is one of the most useful applications of electricity for the protection of property against thieves. it consists usually, first, of a brass plate (fig. ), upon which a platinum contact piece is fixed, and second, of a spring made of hardened brass or steel insulated from the plate; or of a cylindrical box with a spiral spring inside (see fig. ). it is so arranged that as long as the stud is kept pressed in, the platinum points of contact are kept apart; this is the position when fixed in the rebate of a closed door or window; but as soon as opened, the stud passes outward through the hole, and the points of contact come together and complete the circuit of the wires in connection with the bell. the bell is best to be a continuous ringing one. it may be fixed in the master's bedroom, or outside the premises in the street. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] legge's window blind contact is an arrangement by which the blind is secured at the bottom by attaching it to a hook or button. a slight pressure against the blind (caused by anyone trying to enter after having broken a window) sets the electric bell in motion unknown to the intruder. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] a form of floor contact, which may be placed under a light mat or carpet, illustrated at fig. , serves to give notice if anyone be waiting at the door, or stepping into places which are desired to be kept private. all these arrangements, to be serviceable, should be connected with continuous ringing bells (see § ). wherever it is likely that these arrangements may stand a long time without being called into play, it is better to employ some form of contact in which a _rubbing_ action (which tends to clean the surfaces and then make a good contact) is brought into play, rather than a merely _dotting_ action. for this reason, spring contacts in which the springs connected with the wires are kept apart by an insulating wedge (shown at fig. ) as long as the door or window are kept closed, are preferred. in the case of windows, strips of brass let into the frame on each side of the sash, are thrown into contact by the springs _a_ and _a'_ in the sash itself, as shown at fig. . for shop doors and others, where a short contact only is required, and this only when the door is opened, a contact such as shown at fig. is well adapted. it consists, as will be seen, in a peculiarly shaped pivoted trigger _a_, which is lifted forwards when the door is opened, so that it makes contact with the spring _b_. owing to the curved shape of the arm of the trigger, the contact is not repeated when the door is closed. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . in all forms of burglar or thief alarms, the ordinary system of having the circuit broken, until contact is made by the intruder involuntarily making contact at some point, presents one great disadvantage; and that is, that if "_notre ami l'ennemi_," viz., the thief or burglar, be anything of an electrician (and alas! to what base uses may not even science be perverted) he will begin by cutting all suspicious-looking wires before he attempts to set about any serious work. this disadvantage may be entirely overcome by the adoption of a simple modification, known as the "closed circuit system" of bell ringing. for this the bells, etc., are continuously in contact with the batteries, but owing to the peculiar connections, do not ring unless the circuit is broken. to render the working of such a system clear to my readers, i quote the description given in the _english mechanic_, by one of our leading electricians:-- writing on the subject of closed circuit bell-ringing, mr. perren maycock says:--"this is principally adopted for alarm purposes. its superiority over the open circuit system lies in the fact that notice is given on opening (breaking) the circuit, which is the reverse to the usual practice. in the ordinary method it becomes necessary to have a contact maker, differing in form for various purposes and situations, which, along with the leading wires, must be artfully concealed. all this entails great expense; besides which one can never be sure that the contacts and wires are in proper order without actually trying each one. on the other hand, with the "closed circuit" system, one has merely to place the wire in any convenient position, it being better _seen_ than _hidden_. the very fact that alarm is given on breaking the contact renders the method applicable in circumstances and under conditions which would render the "open" method difficult and expensive, if not impossible. one can always be certain that everything is in order. the modern burglar, electrically educated as regards common practise in such matters, would naturally make a point of cutting all wires that fall in his path. from these and other obvious considerations, it is evident how simple and yet how perfect a means of protection such a system provides. i will now proceed to explain the manner of application. the bell used differs from the ordinary, only in the arrangement of its external connections. [illustration: fig. a.] fig. a represents a single-alarm circuit. when contact is broken externally, there is a closed circuit in which are the battery and bell magnet coils. consequently the armature is drawn away from the contact stud, close up to the electro-magnet, and is held so. when a break occurs, the armature flies back, completes the local circuit, and rings so long as the external circuit remains broken. there is a switch for use when the alarm is not required. [illustration: fig. b.] [illustration: fig. .] fig. b represents a case in which notice is given at two places. by insulating a key as shown, reply signalling can be carried on between the points at which the bells are placed. a special gravity daniell modification (§ ) is used for this class of work (fig. ): a narrow lead cylinder, about " in diameter, watertight except at the bottom, where it opens out into an inverted cone, the surface of which is pierced with holes. this stands immersed in dilute sulphuric acid. a saturated solution of copper sulphate is next carefully introduced, so as to displace the acid upwards. crystals of sulphate of copper are introduced into the open end at the top of cylinder, to fill the perforated portion at the bottom. from the wooden cover of cell a thick flat ring of amalgamated zinc hangs suspended in the dilute acid. care should be taken not to introduce the zinc till the two solutions have become well separated. during action this becomes coppered, while in contact with the sulphate of copper, but it is not attacked by the acid. it is, however, preferable to _paint_ that portion of the lead, which is surrounded by the acid. the height of the cell is about .'' it will be readily understood that if this latter system be employed, special contacts, which break contact when the pressure is removed, must be employed for the door or window contacts. a simple form is shown at fig. . [illustration: fig. .] contacts similar to figs. , and , may be fitted on tills or drawers. § . another useful application of "contact" is for the notification of any rise or fall of temperature beyond certain fixed limits. the devices used for this purpose are known as "fire alarms," "frost alarms," and "thermometer alarms." the thermometer alarm is at once the most effective and trustworthy of the forms known, as, besides its delicacy, it has the advantage of being able to give notice of low, as well as of abnormally high temperature. the form usually given to the electric alarm thermometer, is well shown at fig. . it consists in an ordinary thermometer with a wire projecting into the tube to a certain point, say degrees. the mercury in the bulb being also connected with another wire. when the temperature is within the usual climatic range, the mercury does not reach the upper wire. if by reason of fire or any other abnormal heat, the temperature rises beyond that to which the instrument is set, the mercury rises and touches the upper wire, contact is thus established, and the bell rings. [illustration: fig. .] by giving the thermometer the shape of a letter [u], it is possible to notify also a fall below a certain degree, as well as a rise beyond a certain fixed point. these thermometers are specially used by nurserymen and others, to warn them of the too great lowering of temperature, or _vice versâ_, in the houses under their charge. other forms of fire alarms are shown at fig. and . if a strip be built up of two thin layers of dissimilar metals riveted together, as the two metals do not expand at the same rate, the strip will bend to the _right_ if heated, and to the _left_ if cooled. in the instrument shown at fig. , the application of heat causes the flexible strip carrying the contact screw, to bend over till it touches the lower stop, when, of course, the bell rings. if two stops are employed instead of the lower one only, the bell will ring when a low temperature is reached, which causes the strip to bend in the opposite direction. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] at fig. is illustrated a novel form, in which the expansion of air causes contact to be made. it consists in an air chamber hermetically closed by a corrugated metal plate i, similar to that used in the aneroid barometers. when the temperature rises to a certain point, the expansion of the air in the chamber brings the metallic plate into contact with the screw, as shown below. this closes the circuit and rings the bell in the usual manner. in all these fire or thermometer alarms, the exact degree of heat at which the bell shall ring, can be pretty accurately adjusted by means of the contact screws. § . closely allied to these forms of contacts are the devices whereby an ordinary clock or watch can be made to arouse the over-drowsy sleeper by the ringing of an electric bell, which in this case should be of the continuous type. all these depend in their action upon some arrangement whereby when the hour hand of the clock or watch arrives at a certain given point in its travel, it makes contact between the battery and bell. in general the contact piece is attached bodily to the clock, but in the very ingenious arrangement illustrated at fig. (devised by messrs. binswanger) the contacts are attached to an outer case, and as the case of the watch itself forms one point of contact, any watch that will slip in the case, may be set to ring the bell. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] messrs. gent, of leicester, have also perfected an electric watchman's clock, which records the number of places the watchman in charge has visited or missed on his rounds. this we illustrate at fig. . we quote messrs. gent's own words, in the following description:-- "it consists of an eight-day clock, to which is attached a disc or table revolving upon a vertical axis and driven by the mechanism of the clock. the disc is covered with a sheet of paper, attached to it by a binding screw so that it can be removed when used and a clean sheet substituted for it. each sheet of paper is divided longitudinally into hours and, if necessary, parts of hours, and crosswise into as many divisions as there are places to be visited by the watchman--any number from one to twenty. each division has a corresponding marker, which indicates, by the impression it makes upon the paper, the time the watchman visits the place connected with that marker. wires are carried from the terminals of the clock, one to the battery, and one to each press-button fixed at the points intended to be visited by the watchman; another wire is carried from each press-button to the other end of the battery. the action is very simple: when the button is pressed in the current passes through a coil carrying an armature and contact breaker with a point at the end of a long arm; a hammer-like motion is given to the pointer, and a distinct perforation made in the card. it is usual to have the press-button in a box locked up, of which the watchman only has the key. "the clock may be in the office or bedroom of the manager or head of the establishment, who can thus, from time to time, satisfy himself of the watchman's vigilance. the record should be examined in the morning, and replaced by a clean sheet of card. "this clock received the special mention of her majesty's commissioners in lunacy, and has been adopted by some of the largest asylums in the country. "we have recently made an important improvement by adding a relay for every marker, thus enabling a local battery of greater power to be used for actuating the markers. this has made no alteration in the appearance of the clock, as the relays are contained within the cornice at the top of the clock case." § . by means of a float, it is possible to give notice of the height of water in a tank, a reservoir, or even of the state of the tide. in these cases all that is needed is a float with an arm, having a suitable contact attached, so that when the water rises to the level of the float and lifts it, it causes the contact piece to complete the circuit through a set screw. or the float may be attached to an arm having a certain play in both directions, _i.e._, up and down, within which no contact is made, as the arm has a contact piece on either side, which can touch either an upper or a lower contact screw, according to whether the tide is low or high, or whether the lock or tank is nearly empty or too full. [illustration: fig. .] § . sometimes it is convenient to be able to ring an ordinary trembling bell continuously, as when a master wishes to wake a member of his family or a servant; or again, to cut a given bell or bells out of circuit altogether. the arrangements by which this can be effected, are known as "switches." of switches there are two kinds, namely, _plugswitches_ or _interruptors_, and _lever switches_. the former consists essentially in two stout plates of brass affixed to a base board of any insulating material. these brass plates are set parallel to each other, a short distance apart, and the centre of the facing edge is hollowed out to take a brass taper plug. a binding or other screw is fixed to each brass plate, to connect up to the leading wires. when the plug is in its socket, the circuit between the two plates (and consequently between the battery and bell, etc.) is complete; when the plug is out, the contact is broken. this form of switch is subject to work out of order, owing to the fact that the taper plug gradually widens the hole, so that the contact becomes uncertain or defective altogether. by far the better form of switch is the lever switch, as shown at fig. . this consists in a movable metal lever or arm, which is held by a strong spring in contact with the upper binding screw. it can be made to slide over to the right or left of the centre, at its lower or free end, as far as the binding screws or studs shown, which act at once as stops and point of connection to wires. when the arm or lever is in the centre no contact is made but if it be pushed over to the right, it slides on a brass strip let into and lying flush with the base. contact is thus made between the upper binding screw and the left-hand screw. if there is another brass strip on the left-hand side (as shown in the figure), contact may be made with another bell, etc., by sliding the arm to the left; or again, if no metal strip be placed on the left side the contact may be broken by pushing the arm towards the left-hand stud. § . a _key_ is another form of contact, by means of which a long or short completion of circuit can be made by simply tapping on the knob. it is particularly useful when it is desired to transmit signals, either by ringing or otherwise. it consists, as may be seen at fig. , of a lever or arm of brass, pivoted at its centre, furnished with a spring which keeps the portion under the knob out of contact with the stud in the front of the base-board. as both the stud and the lever are connected to binding screws communicating with the battery and bell, etc., it is evident that on depressing the key the circuit with the bell will be completed for a longer or shorter period, varying with the duration of the depression. hence, either by using preconcerted signals of short and long rings to signify certain common words, such as a long ring for _no_, and a short one for _yes_, or by an adaptation of the ordinary morse code, intelligible conversation can be kept up between house and stable, etc., etc., by means of a key and a bell. as mr. edwinson has given much time to the elucidation of this system of bell signalling, i cannot do better than quote his instructions, as given in _amateur work_:-- "for this purpose preconcerted signals have been agreed upon or invented as required, and these have been found to be irksome and difficult to remember, because constructed without any reference to a definite plan. we may, however, reduce bell signals to a definite system, and use this system or code as a means to carry on conversation at a distance as intelligently as it can be done by a pair of telegraph instruments. in fact, the morse telegraph code can be easily adopted for use with electric bells of the vibrating or trembling type, and its alphabet, as appended below, easily learnt. the letters of the alphabet are represented by long strokes and short strokes on the bell, as here shown.-- a ·- b -··· c -·-· d -·· e · f ··-· g --· h ···· i ·· j ·--- k -·- l ·-·· m -- n -· o --- p ·--· q --··· r ·-· s ··· t - u ··- v ···- w ·-- x -··- y -·-- z --·· ch ---- Ä (æ) ·-·- Ö ([oe]) ---· Ü (ue) ··-- ·---- ··--- ···-- ····- ····· -···· --··· ---·· ----· ----- "it will be noticed that the strokes to represent a letter do not in any case exceed four, and that all the figures are represented by five strokes of varying length to each figure. stops, and other marks of punctuation, are represented by six strokes, which are in their combination representations of two or three letters respectively, as shown below:-- comma (,) by a a a or ·-·-·- full stop (.) " i i i " ······ interrogation (?) " u d " ··--·· hyphen (-) " b a " -····- apostrophe (') " w g " ·----· inverted commas (") " a f " ·-··-· parenthesis () " k k " -·--·- semi-colon (;) " k ch " ·----- surprise (!) " n ch " -·---- colon (:) " i ch " ··---- "in sending signals to indicate stops, no regard must be had to the letters which they represent; these are only given as aids to memory, and are not to be represented separately on the bell. bell signals must be given with a certain amount of regularity as to time; indeed, to carry on a conversation in this way it is necessary to be as punctilious in time as when playing a piece of music on a piano, if the signals are to be understood. the dots of the signal should therefore be represented in time by _one_, and the dashes by _two_, whilst the spaces between words and figures where a stop does not intervene should be represented by a pause equal to that taken by a person counting _three_, the space between a word and a stop being of the same duration. to make this more clear i give an example. the mistress signals to her coachman:-- g | e | t | | t | h | e | --· | · | - | | - | ···· | · | | | | | | | c | a | r | r | i | a | g | e | -·-· | ·- | ·-· | ·-· | ·· | ·- | --· | · | | | | | | | | | r | e | a | d | y ·-· | · | ·- | -·· | -·-- | | | | "the coachman replies:-- r | e | a | d | y ·-· | · | ·- | -·· | -·-- | | | | "when the mistress is ready she signals:-- b | r | i | n | g | | t | h | e | -··· | ·-· | ·· | -· | --· | | - | ···· | · | | | | | | | | | | c | a | r | r | i | a | g | e -·-· | ·- | ·-· | ·-· | ·· | ·- | --· | · | | | | | | | "and the coachman replies with a single long ring to signify that he understands. it will be found convenient to have an answering signal from the receiving end of the line to each word separately. this must be sent in the pause after each word, and consists of the short signal e · when the word is understood, or the double short signal i ·· when the word is not understood. a negative reply to a question may be given by the signal for n -·, and an affirmative by the signal for Æ ·-·-; other abbreviations may be devised and used where desired. the code having been committed to memory, it will be quite easy to transpose the words and send messages in cypher when we wish to make a confidential communication; or the bells may be muffled under a thick cloak, and thus, whilst the measured beats are heard by the person for whom the signal is intended, others outside the room will not be annoyed by them." [illustration: fig. .] § . at § , we noticed that a device known as a _relay_ is a convenient, if not an essential mode of working continuous ringing bells. here we will direct our attention to its structural arrangement, and to its adaptations. let us suppose that we had to ring a bell at a considerable distance, so far indeed that a single battery would not energise the electro-magnets of an ordinary bell, sufficiently to produce a distinct ring. it is evident that if we could signal, ever so feebly, to an attendant at the other end of the line to make contact with another battery at the distant end of the line to _his_ bell, by means, say, of a key similar to that shown at fig. , we should get a clear ring, since this second battery, being close to the bell, would send plenty of current to energise the bell's magnets. but this would require a person constantly in attendance. now the _relay_ does this automatically; it _relays_ another battery in the circuit. the manner in which it effects this will be rendered clear, on examination of fig. . here we have an armature a attached to a light spring, which can play between an insulated stop c, and a contact screw b. the play of this armature can be regulated to a nicety by turning the screws b or c. these two screws are both borne by a double bent arm (of metal) affixed to the pillar d. this pillar is separated from the rest of the frame by an insulating collar or washer of ebonite, so that no current can pass from e to d, unless the armature be pulled down so as to make contact with the contact screw b. just under the armature, stands the electro-magnet g, which when energised can and does pull down the armature a. it will be readily understood that if we connect the wires from the electro-magnet g, to the wires proceeding from the battery and push (or other form of contact) at the distant station, the electro-magnet, being wound with a large quantity of fine wire, will become sufficiently magnetized to pull the armature down through the small space intervening between c and b; so that if the screws d and e are connected respectively to the free terminals of a battery and bell coupled together at the nearer station, this second battery will be thrown into circuit with the bell, and cause it to ring as well and as exactly as if the most skilful and most trustworthy assistant were in communication with the distant signaller. every tap, every release of the contact, (be it push, key, or switch) made at the distant end, will be faithfully reproduced at the nearer end, by the motion of the armature a. for this reason we may use a comparatively weak battery to work the relay, which in its turn brings a more powerful and _local_ battery into play, for doing whatever work is required. in cases where a number of calls are required to be made simultaneously from one centre, as in the case of calling assistance from several fire engine stations at once, a relay is fixed at each station, each connected with its own local battery and bell. the current from the sending station passes direct through all the relays, connecting all the local batteries and bells at the same time. this is perhaps the best way of ringing any number of bells from one push or contact, at a distant point. ordinary trembling bells, unless fitted with an appropriate contrivance, cannot well be rung if connected up in _series_. this is owing to the fact that the clappers of the bells do not all break or make contact at the same time, so that intermittent ringing and interruptions take place. with single stroke bells, this is not the case, as the pulling down of the armature does not break the contact. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . we now have to consider those contrivances by means of which it is possible for an attendant to know when a single bell is actuated by a number of pushes in different rooms, etc., from whence the signal emanates. these contrivances are known as _indicators_. indicators may be conveniently divided into classes, viz.:-- st, indicators with _mechanical_ replacements; nd, those with electrical replacements; and rdly, those which are self replacing. of the former class we may mention two typical forms, namely, the ordinary "fall back" indicator, and the drop indicator. all indicators depend in their action on the sudden magnetisation of an electro-magnet by the same current that works the electric bell at the time the call is sent. to understand the way in which this may be effected, let the reader turn to the illustration of the relay (fig. ), and let him suppose that the pillar d, with its accompanying rectangle b c, were removed, leaving only the electro-magnet g, with its frame and armature a. if this armature holds up a light tablet or card, on which is marked the number of the room, it is evident that any downward motion of the armature, such as would occur if the electro-magnet were energised by a current passing around it, would let the tablet fall, so as to become visible through a hole cut in the frame containing this contrivance. it is also equally evident that the card or tablet would require replacing by hand, after having once fallen, to render it capable of again notifying a call. fig. shows the working parts of one of these "drop" indicators, as sent out by messrs. binswanger. in another modification, known as thorpe's "semaphore indicator," we have a most ingenious application of the same principle in a very compact form. in this (fig. ), the electro-magnet is placed directly behind a disc-shaped iron armature, on which is painted or marked the number of the room etc. (in this case ); this armature is attached by a springy shank to the drop bar, shown to the left of the electro-magnet. in front of the armature is a light metal disc, also pivoted on the drop bar. this engages in a catch above, when pushed up so as to cover the number. when pushed up, the spring of the armature retains it in its place so that the number is hidden. when the current passes around the electro-magnet, the armature is pulled toward it, and thus frees the covering disc, which therefore falls, and displays the number. the ordinary form of "fall back" indicator (a misnomer, by the way, since the indicator falls forwards) is well illustrated at fig . here we have an ordinary electro-magnet a, with its wires _w_ _w'_ standing over an armature b attached to a spring c, which bears on its lower extremity, a toothed projection which serves to hold up the short arm of the bent lever d, which supports the number plate e. when the electro-magnet a is energised by the current, it pulls up the armature b, which releases the detent d from the tooth c; the number plate therefore falls forwards, as shown by the dotted lines, and shows itself at the aperture e´, which is in front of the indicator frame. to replace the number out of sight, the attendant pushes back the plate e, till it again engages the bent lever d in the tooth c. this replacement of the number plate, which the attendant in charge is obliged to perform, gives rise to confusion, if through carelessness it is not effected at once, as two or more numbers may be left showing at one time. for this reason, indicators which require no extraneous assistance to replace them, are preferred by many. indicators with electrical replacements meet in part the necessities of the case. this form of indicator consists usually of a permanent bar magnet pivoted near its centre, so that it can hang vertically between the two poles of an electro-magnet placed at its lower extremity. the upper extremity carries the number plate, which shows through the aperture in the frame. this bar magnet is made a trifle heavier at the upper end, so that it must rest against either the one or other pole of the electro-magnet below. if the _north_ pole of the bar magnet rests against the _right_ hand pole of the electro-magnet when the number does not show, we can cause the bar magnet to cross over to the other pole, and display the number by sending a current through the electro-magnet in such a direction as to make its right hand pole a north pole, and its left hand a south pole. this is because the two north poles will repel each other, while the south will attract the north. on being once tilted over, the bar magnet cannot return to its former position, until the person who used the bell sends a current in the opposite direction (which he can do by means of a reversing switch), when the poles of the electro-magnet being reversed, the bar magnet will be pulled back into its original position. indicators of this class, owing to the fact that their replacement depends on the _polarity_ of the bar magnet, are also known as "polarised indicators." [illustration: fig. .] § . for general efficiency and trustworthiness, the _pendulum indicator_; as shown at fig. , is unsurpassed. it consists of an electro-magnet with prolongation at the free end on which is delicately pivoted a soft iron armature. from the centre of this armature hangs, pendulum fashion, a light brass rod carrying a vane of fluted silver glass, or a card with a number on it, as may be found most convenient. this vane or card hangs just before the aperture in the indicator frame. stops are usually placed on each side of the pendulum rod to limit the swing. when the electro-magnet is magnetised by the passage of the current, the armature is pulled suddenly on one side, and then the pendulum swings backwards and forwards in front of the aperture for some minutes before it comes to rest. when fitted with silver fluted glass, the motion of the vane is clearly visible even in badly lighted places. as the pendulum, after performing several oscillations, comes to rest by itself in front of the aperture, this indicator requires no setting. messrs. binswanger fit these indicators with double core magnets, and have a patented adjustment for regulating the duration of the swings of the pendulum, which may be made to swing for two or three minutes when the circuit is completed by pressing the push; it then returns to its normal position, thus saving the servant the trouble of replacing the "drop." [illustration: fig. .] messrs. gent, of leicester, have also patented a device in connection with this form of indicator, which we give in the patentee's own words:--"the objection so frequently urged against the use of electric bells, that the servants cannot be depended upon to perform the operation of replacing the signals, cannot any longer apply, for the pendulum signals require no attention whatever. it consists of an electro-magnet having forks standing up in which [v] openings are made. an armature of soft iron, with a piece of thin steel projecting at each end lies suspended at the bottom of the [v] opening, a brass stem carrying the signal card is screwed into the armature, the action being, that when a current is allowed to pass through the electro-magnet the armature with the pendulum is drawn towards it and held there until the current ceases to pass, when it instantly looses its hold of the armature, which swings away and continues to oscillate for two or three minutes, so that if the servant happens to be out of the way, it may be seen on her return which pendulum has been set in motion. the pendulum indicator we have recently patented is entirely self-contained. the magnet has its projecting poles riveted into the brass base which carries the flag. the flag is constructed as fig. , but swings in closed bearings, which prevents its jerking out of its place, and enables us to send it out in position ready for use. it will be seen this _patented_ improvement makes all screws and plates as formerly used for securing the parts unnecessary. it will be seen at once that this is simplicity itself, and has nothing about it which may by any possibility be put out of order, either by warping or shrinking of the case or carelessness of attendants." [illustration: fig. .] there is only one point that needs further notice with regard to these pendulum indicators, and that is, that since the rapid break and make contact of the ringing bell interferes somewhat with the proper action of the indicator magnet, it is always advisable to work the indicator by means of a relay (fixed in the same frame) and a _local_ battery. this is shown in fig. , where a second pair of wires attached to c and c, to the extreme right of the indicator frame, are brought from the same battery to work the indicator and contained relay. it is not advisable, however, with the pendulum indicator, to use the same battery for the indicator; the relay should throw a local battery into the indicator circuit. in fig. six pushes are shown to the left of the indicator frame. these, of course, are supposed to be in as many different rooms. [illustration: fig. .] we close this chapter with an engraving of a very compact and neat form of drop indicator devised by messrs. gent, and called by them a "tripolar indicator." it consists, as the name implies, of a single magnet, having one end of the iron core as one pole, the other end extending on each side like a [v], forming, as it were, three poles. though but one bobbin is used, the effect is very powerful. there are no springs or other complications, so that the arrangement is adapted for ship use, as are also those represented at figs. and . pendulum and fall-back indicators, as well as polarised indicators, owing to the delicacy of the adjustments, are unfitted for use on board ship, or in the cabs of lifts, where the sudden jolts and jerks are sure to move the indicators, and falsify the indications. the tripolar indicator is illustrated at fig. . chapter v. on wiring, connecting up, and localising faults. § . however good may be the bells, indicators, batteries, etc., used in an electric bell installation, if the _wiring_ be in any wise faulty, the system will surely be continually breaking down, and giving rise to dissatisfaction. it is therefore of the highest importance that the workman, if he value his good name, should pay the greatest attention to ensure that this part of his work be well and thoroughly done. this is all the more necessary, since while the bells, batteries, relays, pushes, etc., are easily got at for examination and repair, the wires, when once laid, are not so easily examined, and it entails a great deal of trouble to pull up floor boards, to remove skirtings etc., in order to be able to overhaul and replace defective wires or joints. the first consideration of course, is the kind and size of wire fitted to carry the current for indoor and outdoor work. now this must evidently depend on three points. st, the amount of current (in ampères) required to ring the bell. nd, the battery power it is intended to employ. rd, the distance to which the lines are to be carried. from practical experience i have found that it is just possible to ring a - / " bell with / an ampère of current. let us consider what this would allow us to use, in the way of batteries and wire, to ring such a bell. the electro-motive force of a single leclanchè cell is, as we have seen at § , about · volt, and the internal resistance of the quart size, about · ohm. no. gauge copper wire has a resistance of about · ohm to the pound, and in a pound (of the cotton covered wire) there are about yards. supposing we were to use yards of this wire, we should have a wire resistance of · ohm, an internal resistance of · ohm, and a bell resistance of about · of an ohm, altogether about · ohms. since the e.m.f. of the cell is · volt, we must divide this by the total resistance to get the amount of current passing. that is to say:-- ohms. volts. ampères. · ) · ( · , or about / of an ampère; just a little over what is absolutely necessary to ring the bell. now this would allow nothing for the deterioration in the battery, and the increased resistance in the pushes, joints, etc. we may safely say, therefore, that no copper wire, of less diameter than no. gauge ( / of an inch diameter) should be used in wiring up house bells, except only in very short circuits of two or three yards, with one single bell in circuit; and as the difference in price between no. and no. is very trifling, i should strongly recommend the bell-fitter to adhere to no. , as his smallest standard size. it would also be well to so proportion the size and arrangement of the batteries and wires, that, at the time of setting up, a current of at least one ampère should flow through the entire circuit. this will allow margin for the weakening of the battery, which takes place after it has been for some months in use. as a guide as to what resistance a given length of copper wire introduces into any circuit in which it may be employed, i subjoin the following table of the birmingham wire gauge, diameter in , ths of an inch, yards per lb., and resistance in ohms per lb. or yards, of the wires which the fitter is likely to be called upon to employ:-- ------------------------------------------------------------ table of resistance and lengths per lbs. & yards of cotton covered copper wires. ------------------------------------------------------------ birmingham | diameter in | yards | ohms. | ohms. per wire gauge. | th of | per lb. | per lb. | yards. | an inch. | | ------------+-------------+----------+----------+----------- no. | | | · | · | | | · | · | | | · | · | | | · | · | | | · | · | | | · | · ------------------------------------------------------------ § . whatever gauge wire be selected, it must be carefully insulated, to avoid all chance contact with nails, staples, metal pipes or other wires. the best insulation for wires employed indoors is gutta-percha, surrounded with a coating of cotton wound over it, except only in cases when the atmosphere is excessively dry. in these, as the gutta-percha is apt to crack, india-rubber as the inner coating is preferable. if no. wire be used, the thickness of the entire insulating coating should be thick enough to bring it up to no. gauge, say a little over / th inch in diameter. there is one point that will be found very important in practice, and that is to have the cotton covering on the wires _leading_ to the bells of a different colour from that on the _return_ wires; in other words, the wires starting from the zinc poles of the battery to the bells, indicators, relays, etc., should be of a different colour from that leading from the carbon poles to the bells, etc. attention to this apparently trifling matter, will save an infinite amount of trouble in connecting up, repairing, or adding on fresh branch circuits. for outdoor work, wire of the same gauge (no. ) may generally be used, but it must be covered to the thickness of / " with pure gutta-percha, and over this must be wound tape served with stockholm tar. wires of this description, either with or without the tarred tape covering, may be obtained from all the leading electricians' sundriesmen. many firms use copper wire _tinned_ previous to being insulated. this tinning serves two good purposes, st, the copper wire does not verdigris so easily; ndly, it is more easily soldered. on the other hand, a tinned wire is always a little harder, and presents a little higher resistance. whenever wires are to be joined together, the ends to be joined must be carefully divested of their covering for a length of about three inches, the copper carefully cleaned by scraping and sand-papering, twisted tightly and evenly together, as shown in fig. a, and soldered with ordinary soft solder (without spirits), and a little resin or composite candle as a flux. a heavy plumber's soldering iron, or even a tinman's bit, is not well adapted for this purpose, and the blowpipe is even worse, as the great heat melts and spoils the gutta-percha covering. the best form of bit, is one made out of a stout piece of round copper wire / " thick with a nick filed in its upper surface for the wire to lie in (see fig. b). this may be fastened into a wooden handle, and when required heated over the flame of a spirit lamp. when the soldering has been neatly effected, the waste ends _a_ and _b_ of the wire should be cut off flush. the wire must then be carefully covered with warm prout's elastic or softened gutta-percha, heated and kneaded round the wire with the fingers (moistened so as not to stick) until the joint is of the same size as the rest of the covered wire. as a further precaution, the joints should be wrapped with a layer of tarred tape. let me strongly dissuade the fitter from ever being contented with a simply twisted joint. although this may and does act while the surfaces are still clean, yet the copper soon oxidises, and a poor non-conducting joint is the final result. "that'll do" will not do for electric bell-fitting. [illustration: fig. .] § . whenever possible, the wiring of a house, etc., for bell work, should be done as soon as the walls are up and the roof is on. the shortest and straightest convenient route from bell to battery, etc., should always be chosen where practicable to facilitate drawing the wire through and to avoid the loss of current which the resistance of long lengths of wire inevitably entails. the wires should be run in light zinc tubes nailed to the wall. in joining up several lengths of tubing, the end of one piece of tube should be opened out _considerably_ of a trumpet shape for the other piece to slip in; and the end of this latter should also be _slightly_ opened out, so as not to catch in the covering of any wire drawn through it. the greatest care must be exercised in drawing the wires through the tubes or otherwise, that the covering be not abraded, or else leakage at this point may take place. in cases where tubes already exist, as in replacing old crank bells by the electric bells, the new wires can be drawn through the tubes, by tying the ends of the new wire to the old wire, and carefully pulling this out, when it brings the new wire with it. or if the tubes are already empty, some straight stout wire may be run through the tubes, to which the new wires may be attached, and then drawn through, using, of course, every possible precaution to avoid the abrasion of the insulating covering of the wire, which would surely entail leakage and loss of current. all the old fittings, cranks, levers, etc., must be removed, and the holes left, carefully filled with dowels or plaster. in those cases where it is quite impossible to lay the wires in zinc or wooden tubes (as in putting up wires in furnished rooms already papered, etc.), the wires may be run along the walls, and suspended by staples driven in the least noticeable places; but in no case should the two wires (go and return) lie under the same staple, for fear of a short circuit. it must be borne in mind that each complete circuit will require at least two wires, viz., the one leading from the battery to the bell, and the other back from the bell to the battery; and these until connection is made between them by means of the "contact" (pull, push, or key) must be perfectly insulated from each other. in these cases, as far as possible, the wires should be laid in slots cut in the joists under the floor boards, or, better still, as tending to weaken the joists less, small holes may be bored in the joists and the wires passed through them; or again, the wires may be led along the skirting board, along the side of the doorpost, etc., and when the sight of the wires is objectionable, covered with a light ornamental wood casing. when the wires have been laid and the position of the "pushes," etc., decided upon, the _blocks_ to which these are to be fastened must be bedded in the plaster. these blocks may be either square or circular pieces of elm, about inches across, and inch thick, bevelled off smaller above, so as to be easily and firmly set in the plaster. they may be fastened to the brickwork by two or three brads, at such a height to lie level with the finished plaster. there must of course be a hole in the centre of the block, through which the wires can pass to the push. when the block has been fixed in place, the zinc tube, if it does not come quite up to the block, should have its orifice stopped with a little paper, to prevent any plaster, etc., getting into the tube. a little care in setting the block will avoid the necessity of this makeshift. a long nail or screw driven into the block will serve to mark its place, and save time in hunting for it after the plastering has been done. when the blocks have been put in their places, and the plastering, papering, etc., done, the wires are drawn through the bottom hole of the push (after the lid or cover has been taken off), fig. , and a very small piece of the covering of the wire having been removed from each wire, and brightened by sand papering, one piece is passed round the shank of the screw connected with the lower spring, shown to the _right_ in fig. , and the other round the shank of the screw connected to the upper spring, shown to the _left_ in the fig. the screws must be loosened to enable the operator to pass the wire under their heads. the screws must then be tightened up to clench the wire quite firmly. in doing this, we must guard against three things. firstly, in pulling the wire through the block, not to pull so tightly as to cut the covering against the edge of the zinc tube. secondly, not to uncover too much of the wire, so as to make contact between the wires themselves either at the back of the push, or at any other part of the push itself. thirdly, to secure good contact under the screws, by having the ends of the wires quite clean, and tightly screwed down. [illustration: fig. .] § . in all cases where the wires have to be taken out of doors, such as is necessitated by communication from house to outhouses, stables, greenhouses, etc., over head lines (no. gauge, gutta-percha tape and tar covering) should be used. where overhead lines are not admissible, either as being eyesores, or otherwise, the wires may be laid in square wooden casings of this section [box open up], the open part of which must be covered by a strip of wood laid over it. the wood must have been previously creosoted, in the same manner as railway sleepers. this mode admits of easy examination. iron pipes must, however, be used if the lines have to pass under roads, etc., where there is any heavy traffic. and it must be borne in mind that however carefully the iron pipes, etc., be cemented at the joints, to make them watertight, there will always be more electrical leakage in underground lines than in overhead ones. in certain rare cases it may be needful to use _iron_ wires for this purpose instead of copper; in this case, as iron is six or seven times a worse conductor than copper, a much heavier wire must be employed to get the same effect. in other words, where iron wire is used, its section must be not less than seven times that of the copper wire which it replaces. § . it is always preferable, where great distance (and, consequently, greater expense) do not preclude it, to use wire for the leading as well as for the returning circuit. still, where for any reason this is not practicable, it is perfectly admissible and possible to make a good return circuit through the _earth_, that is to make the damp soil carry the return current (see § ). as recommended at the section just quoted, this earth circuit must have at each extremity a mass of some good conductor plunged into the moist ground. in _towns_, where there are plenty of water mains and gas mains, this is a matter of no difficulty, the only point being to ensure _good_ contact with these masses of metal. in other places a hole must be dug into the ground until the point of constant moisture is reached; in this must be placed a sheet of lead or copper, not less than five square feet surface, to which the _earth_ wires are soldered, the hole then filled in with ordinary coke, well rammed down to within about six inches of the surface, and then covered up with soil well trodden down. in making contact with water or gas pipes, care must be taken to see that these are _main_ pipes, so that they _do_ lead to earth, and not to a cistern or meter only, as, if there are any white or red lead joints the circuit will be defective. to secure a good contact with an iron pipe, bare it, file its surface clean, rub it over with a bit of blue stone (sulphate of copper) dipped in water; wipe it quite dry, bind it tightly and evenly round with some bare copper wire (also well cleaned), no. gauge. bring the two ends of the wire together, and twist them up tightly for a length of three or four inches. now heat a large soldering bit, put some resin on the copper wire, and solder the wire, binding firmly down to the iron pipe. do likewise to the projecting twist of wire, and to this twist solder the end of the _return_ wire. on no account should the two opposite _earth_ wires be soldered to water mains and gas mains at the same time, since it has been found that the different conditions in which these pipes find themselves is sufficient to set up a current which might seriously interfere with the working of the battery proper. sometimes there is no means of getting a good _earth_ except through the gas main: in this case we must be careful to get to the street side of the meter, for the red lead joints will prevent good conductivity being obtained. in out of the way country places, if it is possible to get at the metal pipe leading to the well of a pump, a very good "earth" can be obtained by soldering the wires to that pipe, in the same manner as directed in the case of the water main. the operator should in no case be contented with a merely twisted joint, for the mere contact of the two metals (copper and iron) sets up in the moist earth or air a little electric circuit of its own, and this speedily rusts through and destroys the wires. the following suggestions, by messrs. gent, on the subject of wiring, are so good, that we feel that we shall be doing real service to the reader to quote them here in full:-- " st.--the description of wire to be used. it is of the utmost importance that all wires used for electric bell purposes be of pure copper and thoroughly well insulated. the materials mostly employed for insulating purposes are indiarubber, gutta-percha, or cotton saturated with paraffin. for ordinary indoor work, in dry places, and for connecting doors and windows with burglar alarms, or for signalling in case of fire, indiarubber and cotton covered wires answer well; but for connecting long distances, part or all underground, or along walls, or in damp cellars or buildings, gutta-percha covered wire is required, but it should be fixed where it will not be exposed to heat or the sun, or in very dry places, as the covering so exposed will perish, crack, and in time fall off. this may be, to some extent, prevented by its being covered with cotton; but we recommend for warm or exposed positions a specially-prepared wire, in which rubber and compound form the insulating materials, the outside being braided or taped. "for ordinary house work, we refer to lay a wire of no. or copper, covered to no. or with gutta-percha, and an outer covering of cotton, which we called the 'battery' wire, this being the wire which conveys the current from the battery to every push, etc., no matter how many or in what position. the reason for selecting this kind is, that with the gutta-percha wires the joints may be more perfectly covered and made secure against damp. this is of the utmost importance in the case of '_battery wires_,' as the current is always present and ready to take advantage of any defect in the insulation to escape to an adjoining wire, or to '_earth_,' and so cause a continuous waste of current. the wires leading from the pushes to the signalling apparatus or bell we call the 'line' wires. in these, and the rest of the house wires, the perfect covering of the joints is important. for _line wires_ we usually prefer no. or copper, covered with indiarubber, and an outer coating of cotton, well varnished. in joining the '_battery wires_,' the place where the junction is to be made must be carefully uncovered for the distance of about an inch; the ends of the wire to be joined, well cleaned, and tightly twisted together; with the flame of a spirit lamp or candle the joint must be then heated sufficiently to melt fine solder in strips when held upon it, having first put a little powdered resin on the joint as a flux; the solder should be seen to run well and adhere firmly to the copper wire. a piece of gutta-percha should then be taken and placed upon the joint while warm, and with the aid of the spirit lamp and wet fingers, moulded round until a firm and perfect covering has been formed. _on no account use spirits_ in soldering. with the _line wire_, it is best, as far as possible, to convey it all the way from the push to the signal box or bell in _one continuous_ length. of course, when two or more pushes are required to the same wire, a junction is unavoidable. the same process of joining and covering, as given for the battery wire, applies to the line wire. where many wires are to be brought down to one position, a large tube may be buried in the wall, or a wood casing fixed flush with the plaster, with a removable front. the latter plan is easiest for fixing and for making alterations and additions. for stapling the wires, in no case should the wires be left naked. when they pass along a damp wall, it is best to fix a board and _loosely_ staple them. _in no case allow more than one wire to lie under the same staple_, and do not let the staples touch one another. in many cases, electric bells have been an incessant annoyance and complete failure, through driving the staples _tight up to the wires_, and several wires to the same staple,--this must not be done on any account. a number of wires may be twisted into a cable, and run through a short piece of gutta-percha tube, and fastened with ordinary gas hooks where it is an advantage to do so. in running the wires, avoid hot water pipes, and do not take them along the same way as plumber pipes. underground wires must be laid between pieces of wood, or in a gas or drain pipe, and not exposed in the bare earth without protection, as sharp pieces of stone are apt to penetrate the covering and cause a loss; in fact, in this, as in every part of fixing wires, the best wire and the best protection is by far the cheapest in the end. the copper wire in this case should not be less than no. b.w.g., covered with gutta-percha, to no. or b.w.g., and preferably an outer covering of tape or braid well tarred. outside wire, when run along walls and exposed to the weather, should be covered with rubber and compound, and varnished or tarred on an outer covering of tape or braid. hooks or staples must be well galvanised to prevent rusting, and fixed loosely. if the wire is contained within an iron pipe, a lighter insulation may be used: _but the pipe must be watertight_. in a new building, wires must be contained within zinc or copper bell tubes. a / inch tube will hold two wires comfortably. the tubes should be fixed to terminate in the same positions in the rooms as ordinary crank bell levers,--that is, about three feet from the floor. at the side of the fireplace a block of wood should be fixed in the wall before any plaster is put on, and the end of the tube should terminate in the centre of the same. a large nail or screw may be put in to mark the place, so that the end of the tube may be found easily when the plastering is finished. bend the tube slightly forward at the end, and insert a short peg of wood to prevent dirt getting into the tube. do the same at the side of, or over the bed in bedroom. if the tubes are kept clean, the wires may be easily drawn up or down as the case may require. the best way is to get a length of ordinary copper bell wire, no. , sufficient to pass through the tube, and having stretched it, pass it through and out at the other end. here have your coils of insulated wire, viz., one battery wire, which is branched off to every push, and one line wire, which has to go direct to the indicator or bells, and having removed a short portion of the insulation from the end of each, they are tied to the bare copper wire and drawn through. this is repeated wherever a push is to be fixed throughout the building. in making connection with binding screws or metal of any kind, it is of the utmost importance that everything should be _perfectly clean_. _joints_ in wire, whether tinned or untinned, _must be soldered and covered_. we cannot impress this too earnestly on fixers. never bury wires in plaster unprotected, and in houses in course of erection, the _tubes_ only should be fixed until the plastering is finished, the wires to be run in at the same time that the other work is completed." [illustration: fig. .] § . the wires having been laid by any of the methods indicated in the preceding five sections, the fixer is now in a position to _connect up_. no two houses or offices will admit of this being done in _exactly_ the same way; but in the following sections most of the possible cases are described and illustrated, and the intelligent fixer will find no difficulty, when he has once grasped the principle, in making those trifling modifications which the particular requirements may render necessary. the first and simplest form, which engages our attention, is that of a _single bell, battery, and push_, connected by wire only. this is illustrated at fig. . here we see that the bell is connected by means of one of the wires to the zinc pole of the battery, the push or other contact being connected to the carbon pole of the same battery. a second wire unites the other screw of the push or contact with the second binding screw of the bell. there is no complete circuit until the push is pressed, when the current circulates from the carbon or positive pole of the battery, through the contact springs of the push, along the wire to the bell, and then back again through the under wire to the zinc or negative pole of the battery.[ ] it must be clearly understood that the exact position of battery, bell, and push is quite immaterial. what is essential is, that the relative connections between battery, bell, and push be maintained unaltered. fig. shows the next simplest case, viz., that in which a single bell and push are worked by a single cell through an "earth" return (see § ). here the current is made to pass from the carbon pole of the battery to the push, thence along the line wire to the bell. after passing through the bell, it goes to the right-hand earth-plate e, passing through the soil till it reaches the left-hand earth-plate e, thence back to the zinc pole of the battery. it is of no consequence to the working of the bell whether the battery be placed between the push and the left-hand earth-plate, or between the bell and the right-hand earth-plate; indeed, some operators prefer to keep the battery as near to the bell as possible. at fig. is shown the mode by which a single battery and single bell can be made to ring from two (or more) pushes situated in different rooms. here it is evident that, whichever of the two pushes be pressed, the current finds its way to the bell by the upper wire, and back home again through the lower wire; and, even if both pushes are down at once, the bell rings just the same, for both pushes lead from the same pole of the battery (the carbon) to the same wire (the line wire). [footnote : it must be borne in mind that the negative element is that to which the positive pole is attached, and _vice versâ_ (see ss. and ).] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] in fig. , we have a slight modification of the same arrangement, a front-door _pull_ contact being inserted in the circuit; and here, in view of the probably increased resistance of longer distance, _two_ cells are supposed to be employed instead of _one_, and these are coupled up in series (§ ), in order to overcome this increased resistance. [illustration: fig. .] the next case which may occur is where it is desired to ring two or more bells from one push. there are two manners of doing this. the first mode is to make the current divide itself between the two bells, which are then said to be "_in parallel_." this mode is well illustrated both at figs. and . as in these cases the current has to divide itself among the bells, larger cells must be used, to provide for the larger demand; or several cells may be coupled up in parallel (§ ). at fig. is shown the arrangement for two adjoining rooms; at fig. , that to be adopted when the rooms are at some distance apart. if, as shown at fig. , a switch similar to that figured in the cut fig. be inserted at the point where the line wires converge to meet the push, it is possible for the person using the push to ring both bells at once, or to ring either the right-hand or the left-hand bell at will, according to whether he turns the arm of the switch-lever on to the right-hand or left-hand contact plate. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] the second mode of ringing two or more bells from one push is that of connecting one bell to the other, the right-hand binding screw of the one to the left-hand binding screw of the next, and so on, and then connecting up the whole series of bells to the push and battery, as if they were a single bell. this mode of disposing the bells is called the _series_ arrangement. as we have already noticed at § , owing to the difference in the times at which the different contact springs of the various bells make contact, this mode is not very satisfactory. if the bells are single stroke bells, they work very well in series; but, to get trembling bells to work in series, it is best to adopt the form of bell recommended by mr. f. c. allsop. he says: "perhaps the best plan is to use the form of bell shown at fig. , which, as will be seen from the figure, governs its vibrations, not by breaking the circuit, but by shunting its coils. on the current flowing round the electro-magnet, the armature is attracted, and the spring makes contact with the lower screw. there now exists a path of practically no resistance from end to end. the current is therefore diverted from the magnet coils, and passes by the armature and lower screw to the next bell, the armature falling back against the top screw, and repeating the previous operation so long as the circuit is closed. thus, no matter how many bells there be in the series, the circuit is never broken. this form of bell, however, does not ring so energetically as the ordinary form, with a corresponding amount of battery power." [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] fig. illustrates the mode in which a bell, at a long distance, must be coupled up to work with a local battery and relay. the relay is not shown separately, but is supposed to be enclosed in the bell case. here, on pressing the push at the external left-hand corner, the battery current passes into the relay at the distant station, and out at the right-hand earth-plate e returning to the left-hand earth-plate e. in doing this, it throws in circuit (just as long as the push is held down) the right-hand local battery, so that the bell rings by the current sent by the local battery, the more delicate relay working by the current sent from the distant battery. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] at fig. , we have illustrated the mode of connecting up a continuous ringing bell, with a wire return. of course, if the distance is great, or a roadway, etc., intervene, an overhead line and an earth plate may replace the lines shown therein, or both lines may be buried. it is possible, by using a morse key (fig. ) constructed so as to make contact in one direction when _not_ pressed down, and in the other _when_ pressed down, to signal from either end of a circuit, using only one line wire and one return. the mode of connecting up for this purpose is shown at fig. . at each end we have a battery and bell, with a double contact morse key as shown, the morse key at each end being connected through the intervention of the line wire through the central stud. the batteries and bells at each station are connected to earth plates, as shown. suppose now we depress the morse key at the right-hand station. since by so doing, we lift the back end of the lever, we throw our own bell out of circuit, but make contact between our battery and the line wire. therefore the current traverses the line wire, enters in the left-hand morse key, and, since this is not depressed, can, and does, pass into the bell, which therefore rings, then descends to the left-hand earth-plate, returning along the ground to the battery from whence it started at the right-hand e. if, on the contrary, the _left_-hand morse key be depressed, while the right-hand key is not being manipulated, the current traverses in the opposite direction, and the right-hand bell rings. instead of morse keys, _double contact_ pushes (that is, pushes making contact in one direction when _not_ pressed, and in the opposite _when_ pressed) may advantageously be employed. this latter arrangement is shown at fig. . [illustration: fig. .] it is also possible, as shown at fig. , to send signals from two stations, using but one battery (which, if the distance is great, should be of a proportionate number of cells), two bells, and two ordinary pushes. three wires, besides the earth-plate or return wire, are required in this case. the whole of the wires, except the _return_, must be carefully insulated. suppose in this case we press the right-hand button. the current flows from the battery along the lower wire through this right-hand push and returns to the distant bell along the top wire, down the left-hand dotted wire back to the battery, since it cannot enter by the left-hand press, which, not being pushed, makes no contact. the left-hand bell therefore rings. if, on the other hand, the left-hand push be pressed, the current from the carbon of the battery passes through the left-hand push, traverses the central line wire, passes into the bell, rings it, and descends to the right-hand earth plate e, traverses the earth circuit till it reaches the left-hand earth plate e, whence it returns to the zinc pole of the battery by the lower dotted line. [illustration: fig. .] fig. shows how the same result (signalling in both directions) may be attained, using only two wires, with earth return, and two morse keys. the direction of the current is shown by the arrows. both wires must be insulated and either carried overhead or underground, buried in tubes. fig. shows the proper mode of connecting the entire system of bells, pushes, etc., running through a building. the dotted lines are the wires starting from the two poles of the battery (which should consist of more cells in proportion as there is more work to do), the plain lines being the wires between the pushes and the bell and signalling box. in this illustration a door-pull is shown to the extreme left. pendulum indicators are usually connected up as shown in this figure, except that the bell is generally enclosed in the indicator case. the wire, therefore, has to be carried from the left-hand screw of the indicator case direct to the upper dotted line, which is the wire returning to the zinc pole of the battery. n.b.--when the wires from the press-buttons are connected with the binding-screw, of the top of or inside of the indicator case, the insulating material of the wires, at the point where connection is to be made, must be removed, and the wires _carefully cleaned_ and _tightly clamped down_. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] when it is desired to connect separate bells to ring in other parts of the building, the quickest way is to take a branch wire out of the nearest _battery wire_ (the wire coming from the carbon pole), and carry it to the push or pull, from thence to the bell, and from the bell back to the zinc of the battery. § . we should advise the fixer always to draw out a little sketch of the arrangement he intends to adopt in carrying out any plan, as any means of saving useless lengths of wire, etc., will then easily be seen. in doing this, instead of making full sketches of batteries, he may use the conventional signs [battery] for each cell of the battery, the thick stroke meaning the carbon, the thin one the zinc. pushes may be represented by (·), earth-plates by [e] and pulls, switches, &c., as shown in the annexed cut, fig. , which illustrates a mode of connecting up a lodge with a house, continuous bells being used, in such a way that the lodge bell can be made to ring from the lodge pull, the house bell ringing or not, according to the way the switch (shown at top left-hand corner) is set. as it is set in the engraving, only the lodge bell rings. [illustration: fig. .] § . there are still two cases of electric bell and signal fitting, to which attention must be directed. the first is in the case of _ships_. here all the connections can be made exactly as in a house, the only exception to be made being that the indicators must not be of the _pendulum_, or other easily displaced type; but either of the form shown at fig. or , in which the electro-magnet has to lift a latch to release the fall or drop, against a pretty stiff spring. besides being thus firmly locking, so as not to be affected by the ship's motion, all the wood work should be soaked in melted paraffin wax, the iron work japanned, and the brass work well lacquered, to protect all parts from damp. the second case requiring notice is that of _lifts_. every well-appointed lift should be fitted with electric bells and indicators. in the cab of the lift itself should be placed an electric bell, with as many double contact pushes and indicators as there are floors to be communicated with. at the top and at the bottom of the left shaft, as near to the landing side as possible, must be set two stout wooden blocks (oak, elm, or other non-perishable wood). from top to bottom of the shaft must then be stretched, in the same manner as a pianoforte is strung, on stout metal pins, with threading holes and square heads, as many no. or bare copper wires as there are floors or landings, and two more for the battery and return wire respectively. care must be taken that these wires are strung perfectly parallel, and that they are stretched quite taut, but not strained, otherwise they will surely break. to the top of the cab, and in connection in the usual manner by wires with the bell and indicator (which, as in the case of ships, must be of the locking type, lest the jolts of the cab disturb their action) must be attached a number of spoonbill springs, which press against the naked wires running down the shaft. the shape of these springs (which should be of brass) at the part where they press against the bare wires, is similar to that of the spoon break of a bicycle. some operators use rollers at the end of the spring instead of spoonbills, but these latter _rub_ the wires and keep up good contact, while the rollers slip over the wires and do not keep them clean. by means of these springs, the current from the batteries, which are best placed either at the top of the lift itself, or in one of the adjacent rooms (never at the bottom of the shaft, owing to the damp which always reigns there), can be taken off and directed where it is desired, precisely as if the batteries were in the cab itself. it is usual (though not obligatory) to use the two wires _furthest_ from the landing as the go and return battery wires, and from these, through the other wires, all desired communication with the landings can be effected. to obtain this end, it will be necessary to furnish every landing with a double contact push and bell, and each bell and push must be connected up to the shaft wires in the following mode:-- a wire must be led from the _lower_ contact spring of the double contact push, to the _main battery carbon wire_ in the shaft. a second wire is led from the _upper contact stop_ of the double contact push to the bell, and thence to the _main battery zinc wire_ on the shaft. lastly, a third wire is taken from the _upper contact spring_ of the push and connected to that particular wire in the shaft which by means of the spoonbill springs connects the particular push and indicator in the cab, destined to correspond with it. it will be seen that with the exception of using the rubbing spoonbill springs and return wires in the shaft, this arrangement is similar to that illustrated at fig. . [illustration: fig. .] a glance at fig. will render the whole system of wiring and connecting up with lifts and landing, perfectly clear. in connecting the branch lines to the main bare copper wires in the shaft, in order that the spoonbill springs should not interfere with them, they (the ends of the branch wires) must be bent at right angles, like a letter [l], and the upright portion soldered neatly to the _back_ of the shaft wire. any solder which may flow over to the _front_ of the wire must be carefully scraped off to prevent any bumps affecting the smooth working of the contact springs. it will be evident on examination of fig. , that if any of the pushes on the landings be pressed, the circuit is completed between the battery at the top, through the two battery wires to the bell and one of the indicators to the cab, and, on the other hand, that if a push be pressed in the cab, a corresponding bell on the landing will be rung, precisely as in fig. . some fitters employ a many-stranded cable to convey the current to and from the battery to the cab and landing, instead of the system of stretched wires herein recommended; but this practice cannot be advocated, as the continual bending and unbending of this cable, repeated so frequently every day, soon breaks the leading wires contained in the cable. § . in many cases where a "call" bell alone is required, the battery may be entirely dispensed with, and a small dynamo (§ ) employed instead. the entire apparatus is then known as the "magneto-bell," and consists essentially of two parts, viz., the generator, fig. , and the bell, fig. . the _generator_ or _inductor_ consists of an armature, which by means of a projecting handle and train of wheels can be revolved rapidly between the poles of a powerful magnet; the whole being enclosed in a box. the current produced by the revolution of the armature is led to the two binding screws at the top of the box. by means of two wires, or one wire and an earth circuit, the current is led to the receiver or bell case, fig. . here, there are usually two bells, placed very near one another, and the armature attached to the bell clapper is so arranged between the poles of the double-bell magnets, that it strikes alternately the one and the other, so that a clear ringing is kept up as long as the handle is being turned at the generator. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] if a _combined_ generator and bell be fitted at each end of a line, it becomes possible to communicate both ways; one terminal of each instrument must be connected to the line, and the other terminal on each to earth. a combined generator and bell is shown at fig. . these instruments are always ready for use, require no battery or press-buttons. the generator, fig. , will ring seven bells simultaneously, if required, so powerful is the current set up; and by using a switch any number of bells, placed in different positions, can be rung, by carrying a separate wire from the switch to the bell. [illustration: fig. .] § . our work would not be complete unless we pointed out the means necessary to detect faults in our work. in order to localise faults, two things are requisite: first, a means of knowing whether the battery itself is working properly, that is to say, giving the due _amount_ of current of the right _pressure_, or e.m.f.; secondly, a means of detecting whether there is leakage, or loss of current, or break of circuit in our lines. fortunately, the means of ascertaining these data can be all combined in one instrument, known as a linesman's galvanometer or detector, of which we give an illustration at fig. . it will be remembered (§ ) that if a current be passed over or under a poised magnetic needle, parallel to it, the needle is immediately deflected out of the parallel line, and swings round to the right or left of the current, according to the _direction_ of the current; likewise that the needle is deflected farther from the original position as the current becomes stronger. the deflections, however, are not proportionate to the strength of the current, being fairly so up to about to degrees of arc out of the original position, but being very much less than proportionate to the current strength as the needle gets farther from the line of current; so that a current of infinite strength would be required to send the needle up to °. on this principle the detector is constructed. it consists of a lozenge-shaped magnetic needle, suspended vertically on a light spindle, carrying at one end a pointer, which indicates on a card, or metal dial, the deflection of the needle. behind the dial is arranged a flat upright coil of wire (or two coils in many cases) parallel to the needle, along which the current to be tested can be sent. the needle lies between the front and back of the flat coil. the whole is enclosed in a neat wooden box, with glazed front to show the dial, and binding screws to connect up to the enclosed coil or coils. if the coil surrounding the needle be of a few turns of coarse wire, since it opposes little resistance to the passage of the current, it will serve to detect the presence of large _quantities_ of electricity (many ampères) at a low pressure; this is called a _quantity_ coil. if, on the other hand, the coil be one of fine wire, in many convolutions, as it requires more _pressure_, or e.m.f., or "intensity" to force the current through the fine high-resistance wire, the instrument becomes one fitted to measure the voltage or _pressure_ of the current, and the coil is known as the "intensity." if both coils are inserted in the case, so that either can be used at will, the instrument is capable of measuring either the quantity of electricity passing, or the pressure at which it is sent, and is then known as a quantity and intensity detector. no two galvanometers give exactly the same deflection for the same amount of current, or the same pressure; the fitter will therefore do well to run out a little table (which he will soon learn by heart) of the deflection _his_ instrument gives with , , , , and leclanché's _coupled in parallel_, when connected with the quantity coil. he will find the smaller sizes give less current than the larger ones. in testing the deflections given by the intensity coil, he must remember to couple his cells _in series_, as he will get no increase in _tension_ or _pressure_ by coupling up in parallel. in either case the cells should be new, and freshly set up, say, within hours. as some of my readers may like to try their skill at constructing such a detector, i transcribe the directions given in "amateur work" by mr. edwinson:-- § . "such an instrument, suitable for detecting the currents in an electric bell circuit, may be made up at the cost of a few shillings for material, and by the exercise of a little constructive ability. we shall need, first of all, a magnetised needle; this can be made out of a piece of watch spring. procure a piece of watch spring two inches long, soften it by heating it to redness, and allowing it to cool gradually in a bed of hot ashes; then file it up to the form of a long lozenge, drill a small hole in the centre to receive the spindle or pivot, see that the needle is quite straight, then harden it by heating it again to a bright red and plunging it at once into cold water. it now has to be magnetised. to do this, rub it on a permanent horse-shoe, or other magnet, until it will attract an ordinary sewing needle strongly, or wrap it up in several turns of insulated line wire, and send many jerky charges of electricity from a strong battery through the wire. when it has been well magnetised, mount it on a spindle of fine hard wire, and secure it by a drop of solder. we will next turn our attention to the case, bobbin, or chamber in which the needle has to work. this may be made out of cardboard entirely, or the end pieces may be made of ivory or ebonite, or it may be made out of thin sheet brass; for our purpose we will choose cardboard. procure a piece of stout cardboard - / inches long by inches wide, double it to the form of a tãndstickor match-box, and pierce it in exactly opposite sides, and in the centre of those sides with holes for the needle spindle. now cut another piece of stout, stiff cardboard - / inches long by / inch wide, and cut a slit with a sharp knife to exactly fit the ends of the case or body already prepared. the spindle holes must now be bushed with short lengths of hard brass or glass bugles, or tubing, made to allow the spindle free movement, and these secured in position by a little melted shellac, sealing-wax, or glue. the needle must now be placed in the case, the long end of the spindle first, then the short end in its bearing; then, whilst the case with the needle enclosed is held between the finger and thumb of the left hand, we secure the joint with a little glue or with melted sealing-wax. the end-pieces are now to be put on, glued, or sealed in position, and set aside to get firm, whilst we turn our attention to other parts. the case, inches by inches by inches in depth, may be improvised out of an old cigar-box, but is best made of thin mahogany or teak, nicely polished on the outside, and fitted with a cover sliding in a groove, or hinged to form the back of the instrument. the binding screws should be of the pattern known as the telegraph pattern, fitted with nuts, shown at fig. . a small brass handle to be fitted to the top of the instrument, will also be handy. a circular piece of smooth cardboard - / inches in diameter, with a graduated arc, marked as shown in fig. , will serve the purpose of a dial, and a piece of thin brass, bent to the form of [box open down], will be required as a needle guard. the face of the dial may be a circular piece of glass, held in a brass ogee, or a hole the size of the dial may be cut in a piece of thin wood; this, glazed on the inside with a square of glass, may be made to form the front of the instrument over the dial. an indicating needle will also be required for an outside needle; this is usually made of watch spring, and nicely blued; but it may be made of brass or any other metal, one made of aluminium being probably the best on account of its lightness. it must be pierced with a hole exactly in the centre, so as to balance it as the beam of scales should be balanced, and should one end be heavier than the other it must be filed until they are equal. we will now turn our attention to the coil. procure sixpennyworth of no. silk-covered copper wire and wind three layers of it very evenly on the coil case or bobbin, being careful in passing the needle spindle not to pinch it or throw it out of truth. when this has been wound on, it will be found that one end of the wire points to the left and the other end to the right. these are destined to be connected to the under side of the binding screws shown on the top of fig. . we therefore secure them to their respective sides with a touch of sealing wax, and leave enough wire free at the ends to reach the binding screws--say, about inches. it is handy to have an additional coil for testing strong currents, and as this may be combined in one instrument at a trifle additional cost, we will get some line wire (no. ) and wind six or eight turns of it around the coil outside the other wire; one end of this wire will be attached to an additional binding screw placed between the others, and the other end to left binding screw shown. the coil thus prepared may now be mounted in position. pierce the board dial and the wood at its back with a hole large enough for the needle spindle to pass through from the back to the centre of the dial. see that the thick end of the inside needle hangs downwards, then place the coil in the position it is intended to occupy, and note how far the needle spindle protrudes on the face of the dial. if this is too long, nip off the end and file it up taper and smooth until it will work freely in a hole in the needle guard, with all parts in their proper places. this being satisfactory, secure the coil in its place by sealing wax, or, better still, by two thin straps of brass, held by screws at each end, placed across the coil. now clean the free ends of the coil wires, insert them under the nuts of the binding screws, fix the indicating needle on the end of the spindle outside, and see that it hangs in a vertical position with the inside needle when the instrument is standing on a level surface. secure it in this position, screw on the needle guard, fasten on the glass face, and the instrument will be complete. § . provided thus with an efficient detector, the fitter may proceed to test his work. in cases of _new installations_, take the wire off the carbon binding screw of the battery and attach it to one screw of the galvanometer (on the intensity coil side), next attach a piece of wire from the other binding screw of the galvanometer (the central one) so as to place the galvanometer in circuit. _there should be no movement of the needle_, and in proportion to the deflection of the needle, so will the loss or waste be. if loss is going on, every means must be used to remedy it. it is of the utmost importance to the effective working of the battery and bells that not the _slightest leakage_ or _local action_ should be allowed to remain. however slight such loss may be, it will eventually ruin the battery. let damp places be sought out, and the wires removed from near them. bad or injured coverings must also be looked for, such as may have been caused by roughly drawing the wires across angular walls, treading on them, or driving staples too tightly over them. two or more staples may be touching, or two or more wires carelessly allowed to lie under one staple. the wire may have been bared in some places in passing over the sharp edges of the zinc tube. the backs of the pushes should be examined to see if too much wire has been bared, and is touching another wire at the back of the push-case itself. or the same thing may be taking place at the junction with the relays or at the indicator cases. should the defect not be at any of these places, the indicator should next be examined, and wire by wire detached (not cut) until the particular wire in which the loss is going on has been found. this wire should then be traced until the defect has been discovered. in testing underground wires for a loss or break, it will be necessary first to uncouple the _distant_ end, then to disconnect the other end from the instruments, and attach the wire going underground to the screw of the galvanometer. a piece of wire must then be taken from the other screw of the detector to the carbon end of the battery, and a second wire from the zinc end of the battery to the earth plate or other connection. proceeding to that part of the wire where the injury is suspected, the wire is taken up, and a temporary earth connection having been made (water main, gas pipe, etc.), and by means of a sharp knife connected with this latter, the covering of the suspected wire penetrated through to the wire, so as to make a good connection between this suspected wire and the temporary earth plates. if, when this is done, the needle is deflected fully, the injury is farther away from the testing end, and other trials must be made farther on, until the spot is discovered. wherever the covering of the wire has been pierced for testing, it must be carefully recovered, finished off with prout's elastic glue, or gutta-percha, and made quite sound. the connections with the earth plates very frequently give trouble, the wires corrode or become detached from the iron pipes etc., and then the circuit is broken. § . when the fitter is called to localise defects which may have occurred in an installation which has been put up some time, before proceeding to work let him ask questions as to what kind of defect there is, and when and where it evinces itself. if all the bells have broken down, and will not ring, either the battery or the main go and return wires are at fault. let him proceed to the battery, examine the binding screws and connected wires for corrosion. if they are all right, let the batteries themselves be tested to see if they are giving the right amount of current. this should be done with the quantity coil of the detector. should the battery be faulty, it will be well to renew the zincs and recharge the battery, if the porous cell be still in good condition; if not, new cells should be substituted for the old ones. should the battery be all right, and still none of the bells ring, a break or bad contact, or short circuit in the main wires near the battery may be the cause of the mischief. if some bell rings continuously, there must be a short circuit in the push or pushes somewhere; the upper spring of one of the pushes may have got bent, or have otherwise caught in the lower spring. _pulls_ are very subject to this defect. by violent manipulations on the part of mischievous butcher or baker boys, the return spring may be broken, or so far weakened as not to return the pull into the "off" position. if, the batteries being in good order, any bell rings feebly, there is either leakage along its line, or else bad contact in the push or in the connections of the wires to and from the push. there should be platinum contacts at the ends of the push springs; if there are not, the springs may have worked dirty at the points of contact, hence the poor current and poor ringing. it is seldom that the bells themselves, unless, indeed, of the lowest quality, give any serious trouble. still the set screw may have shaken loose (which must then be adjusted and tightened up), or the platinum speck has got solder on its face and therefore got oxidised. this may be scraped carefully with a penknife until bright. or, purposely or inadvertently, no platinum is on the speck at all, only the solder. a piece of platinum foil should be soldered on the spot, if this is so. or again (and this only in very bad bells), the electro-magnets being of hard iron, may have retained a certain amount of _permanent magnetism_, and pull the armature into permanent contact with itself. this can be remedied by sticking a thin piece of paper (stamp paper will do) over the poles of the magnet, between them and the armature. in no case should the fitter _cut_ or _draw up_ out of tubes, etc., any wire or wires, without having first ascertained that the fault is in that wire; for, however carefully joints are made, it is rare that the jointed places are so thoroughly insulated as they were before the cutting and subsequent joining were undertaken. to avoid as much as possible cutting uselessly, let every binding screw be examined and tightened up, and every length of wire, which it is possible to get at, be tested for continuity before any "slashing" at the wires, or furious onslaughts on the indicator be consummated. in conclusion, i beg to record my thanks for the very generous assistance which i have received in the compilation of the foregoing pages from the electrical firms of messrs. blakey emmot, binswanger, gent, judson, jensen, and thorpe. addendum. the gassner battery. since the compilation of the foregoing pages, a _dry battery_, known by the above name, has found great favour with electric-bell fitters. its peculiarity consists in the zinc element forming the outside cell. in this is placed the carbon, which is separated from the zinc by a thick paste or jelly made of gypsum and oxide of zinc. the cell can be placed in any position, works as well on its side as upright, is not subject to creeping, has an e.m.f. of about · volt, with an internal resistance of only · ohm in the round form, and · in the flat form. the gassner dry battery polarizes much less quickly than the ordinary leclanché. the only defects at present noticeable, are the flimsy connections, and the fact that the outer cases being _metal_ must be carefully guarded from touching one another. this can be effected by enclosing in a partitioned _wooden box_. index. a. acid, chromic, , ---- hydrobromic, ---- hydrochloric, ---- hydriodic, ---- nitric, ---- sulphuric, action in bichromate, ---- dotting, ---- of electric bell, ---- leclanché, ---- relay, ---- rubbing, ---- of zinc on acids, agglomerate block, ---- cell, ---- compo, alarms, burglar, ---- fire, ---- frost, ---- thermometer, ---- thief, ---- watch, amber, ampère, ampère's law, annealing iron, arrangement of bells for lifts, ---- ships, attraction, b. batteries, battery agglomerate, battery, bichromate, ---- bunsen, ---- chromic acid, ---- daniell's, ---- gassner (addendum), ---- gent's, ---- gravity, ---- modified, ---- grenet, ---- grove, ---- judson's, ---- leclanché, ---- reversed, ---- minotto, ---- smee's, ---- walker's, bell action, case for, blocks, wooden, bobbins, electric bell, box for batteries, brushes, dynamo, c. cable, many stranded, case for bell action, cells in parallel, ---- series, charging fluid, recipes, ---- fuller, circuits, closed, , ---- of bells complete in house, ---- for signalling, ---- in both directions, circuits of bells with morse key, in parallel, series, with relay, single bell and wire, earth, two pushes, push and pull, open, closed circuit system, code for signalling, coil spring, conductors, connecting up, , contacts, burglar alarm, door, drawer, floor, for closed circuits, mackenzie's humming, shop door, till, watch alarm, window sash, corrugated carbons, creeping in cells, to remedy, callow's attachment, current, to ring bell, d. daniell's cell, action in, deflection of needle, , detector or galvanometer, to make, detent lever, door contact, dotting action, drawing out plans, dynamo, armature, brushes, commutator, dynamo, cumulative effects, field magnets, e. earth, plate, return, electric bell, action of, armature, base, bobbins, contact screw, continuous, circular bell, gong, how to make, in lifts, ships, jensen's, joining e. m. wire, magnets, magneto, mining, paraffining, platinum tip, putting together, single stroke, spring, thorpe's, trembling, , winding wire on, wire for, trumpet, electricity, sources of, electrodes, electro-motive force, electron, e.m.f., excitation, f. faults to detect, fire alarms, floor contacts, frost alarms, fuller charging, g. galvanometer, gas evolved, gassner battery (addendum), generator (magneto), gent's battery, glue, prout's elastic, graphite, gravity battery, daniell battery, modified, grenet battery, grove battery, gutta-percha, i. indicator, automatic, drop, electric replacement, gent's, tripolar, mechanical replacement, mode of coupling up, pendulum, polarised, self replacing, semaphore, inductor, insulation, insulators, internal resistance, interior of push, iron, importance of soft, yoke, j. jensen's bell, joining wires to push, judson's cell, k. key, morse, l. leakage, leclanché cell, reversed, legge's contact, lever switches, lifts, bells for, localising faults, , lodge bell, m. magnetic field, magneto bells, electric machines, , magnets, magnets producing electricity, magnetisation of iron, steel, manganese oxide, minotto cell, modified gravity battery, morse key, musical instrument, novel, n. negative electricity, non-conductors, novel musical instrument, o. ohm, ohm's law, open circuit, overhead lines, p. paraffin, , percha, gutta, plans, drawing out, platinum, riveting, platinum, use of, plug switches, polarisation, positive electricity, proportions of bell parts, table of, pressels, prout's elastic glue, pulls, push, , , interior of, joining wires to, r. relay, , action of, repulsion, resinous electricity, resistance of wire, table of, return current, riveting platinum, rubbing action, s. ships, bells for, shop door contact, signalling by bells, code, silver platinised, single cell, sizes of leclanché's, smee's cell, spring coil, standard size of wires, switches, lever, plug, t. table of batteries, e.m.f. and r., conductors and insulators, , metals in acid, table of proportions of bell parts, wire resistance, etc., testing new work, old, thermometer alarms, thorpe's ball, u. use of platinum, v. vitreous electricity, volt, w. walker's cell, watchman's clock, water level indicator, washer, insulating, window sash contact, wiping contact, wire covering, in iron pipes, in wooden boxes, iron, joining, to push, laying in tubes, leading, , overhead, resistance, table of, return, , soldering iron, tinned, underground, wiring, general instructions, up, z. zinc, amalgamated, blacking, consumption, commercial, pure, william rider and son, printers, london. * * * * * _small crown vo, cloth._ _with many illustrations._ whittaker's library of arts, sciences, manufactures and industries. management of accumulators and private electric light installations. a practical handbook by sir david salomons, bart., m. a. th edition, revised and enlarged, with illustrations. cloth s. "to say that this book is the best of its kind would be a poor compliment, as it is practically the only work on accumulators that has been written."--_electrical review._ electrical instrument-making for amateurs. a practical handbook. by s. r. bottone, author of "the dynamo," &c. with illustrations. second edition. cloth s. electric bells. by s. r. bottone. with numerous illustrations. in preparation. the protection of buildings from lightning. a treatise on the theory of lightning conductors from a modern point of view. being the substance of two lectures delivered before the society of arts in march, . by oliver j. lodge, ll.d., d.sc, f.r.s., professor of physics in university college, liverpool. published with various amplifications and additions, with the approval of the society of arts. electrical influence machines: containing a full account of their historical development, their modern forms, and their practical construction. by j. gray, b.sc. electrical engineering in our workshops. a practical handbook. by sydney f. walker. [_ready shortly_ * * * * * transcriber's note page : changed "guage" to "gauge" (... cotton-covered copper wire, say no. gauge ...) page : changed "change" to "charge" (... losing at the same time its electrical charge ...) page : changed "guage" to "gauge" (... foot of no. gauge pure copper wire ...) page : changed "exaet" to "exact" (... of the exact diameter of the turned ends of the cores ...) page : moved comma "rivetting, is" to "rivetting is," (rivetting, is perhaps, the best mode ...) page : added hyphen (... along the short length of wire to the right-hand binding-screw ...) page : changed "head" to "heads" (... the possible defects of electric bells may be classed under four heads: ...) page : changed "its" to "it" (... until it rests against the stop or studs.) page : changed "contract-breaker" to "contact-breaker" (when the contact-breaker is used, ...) page : changed "instead" to "instead" (instead of the armature and clapper ...) page : in the morse code for "bring the", the code for "h" has been corrected from two dots to four dots. page : changed "eletro-magnet" to "electro-magnet" (... if the electro-magnet were energised ...) page : changed "idicator" to "indicator" (since the indicator falls forwards) page : changed "arrangment" to "arrangement" (the size and arrangement of the batteries and wires) page : added comma "nails," (... chance contact with nails, staples, metal pipes or other wires ...) page : changed "carboard" to "cardboard" (... for our purpose we will choose cardboard.) page : changed "tanstickor" to "tãndstickor" (... double it to the form of a tãndstickor match-box, ...) page : suspected typo (unchanged) "emmot" should perhaps be "emmott" (... the electrical firms of messrs. blakey emmot, ...) page : changed "leclanchè" to "leclanché" (... polarizes much less quickly than the ordinary leclanché.) page : changed two instances of "ampére" to "ampère" in the index (ampère, / ampère's law, ) generously made available by internet archive (http://www.archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see http://www.archive.org/details/storyofatlantict fielrich the story of the atlantic telegraph by henry m. field * * * * * dr. field's books of travel. from the lakes of killarney to the golden horn. crown vo, $ . . from egypt to japan. crown vo, $ . . on the desert. crown vo, $ . . among the holy hills. with a map. crown vo, $ . . the greek islands, and turkey after the war. with illustrations and maps. crown vo, $ . . old spain and new spain. with map. crown vo, $ . . bright skies and dark shadows. with maps. crown vo, $ . _the set, vols., in a box, $ . ._ our western archipelago. illustrated. crown vo, $ . . the barbary coast. illustrated. crown vo, $ . . gibraltar. illustrated. small to, $ . . the story of the atlantic telegraph. illustrated. mo, $ . . * * * * * [illustration: cyrus w. field.] the story of the atlantic telegraph by henry m. field "since the discovery of columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere of human activity." --the times, august th, . new york charles scribner's sons copyright, , by henry m. field. press of j. j. little & co. astor place, new york preface the recent death of mr. cyrus w. field recalls attention to the great enterprise with which his name will be forever associated. "the atlantic telegraph," said the late chief justice chase, "is the most wonderful achievement of civilization, and entitles its author to a distinguished rank among public benefactors. high upon that illustrious roll will his name be placed, and there will it remain while oceans divide, and telegraphs unite, mankind." the memory of such an achievement the world should not let die. the story of its varied fortunes reads like a tale of adventure. from the beginning it was a series of battles, fighting against the elements and against the unbelief of men. this long struggle the new generation may forget, profiting by the result, but thinking little of the means by which it was attained. what toil of hand and brain had gone before; what days and nights of watching and weariness; how often hope deferred had made the heart sick: how year after year had dragged on, and seen the end still afar off--all that is dimly remembered, even by those who reap the fruits of victory. and yet in the history of human achievements, it is necessary to trace these beginnings step by step, if we would learn the lesson they teach, that it is only out of heroic patience and perseverance that anything truly great is born. twelve years of unceasing toil was the price the atlantic telegraph cost its projector; and not years lighted up by the assurance of success, but that were often darkened with despair: years in which he was restlessly crossing and recrossing the ocean, only to find on either side, worse than storms and tempests, an incredulity which sneered at every failure, and derided the attempt as a delusion and a dream. against such discouragements nothing could prevail but that faith, or fanaticism, which, believing the incredible, achieves the impossible. such a tale, apart from the results, is in itself a lesson and an inspiration. in attempting to chronicle all this, the relation of the writer to the prime mover has given him facilities for obtaining the materials of an authentic history; but he trusts that it will not lead him to overstep the limits of modesty. standing by a new-made grave, he has no wish to indulge in undue praise even of the beloved dead. enough for him is it to unroll the canvas on which the chief actor stands forth as the conspicuous figure. but in a work of such magnitude there are many actors, and there is glory enough for all; and it is a sacred duty to the dead to recognize, as he did, what was due to the brave companions in arms, who stood by him in disaster and defeat; who believed in him even when his own countrymen doubted and despaired; and furnished anew men and money and ships for the final conquest of the sea. if history records that the enterprise of the atlantic telegraph owed its inception to the faith and daring of an american, it will also record that all his ardor and activity would have been of no avail but for the science and seamanship, the capital and the undaunted courage, of england. but when all these conditions were supplied, it is the testimony of englishmen themselves that his was the spirit within the wheels that made them revolve; that it was his intense vitality that infused itself into a great organization, and made the dream of science the reality of the world. this is not to his honor alone: it is a matter of national pride; and americans may be pardoned if, in the year in which they celebrate the discovery of the continent, they recall that it was one of their countrymen whom the great commoner of england, john bright, pronounced "the columbus of our time, who, after no less than forty voyages across the atlantic in pursuit of the great aim of his life, had at length by his cable moored the new world close alongside the old." how the miracle was wrought, it is the design of these pages to tell. contents chapter i. page discovery of the new world by columbus. relative position of the two hemispheres. nearest points--the outlying islands, ireland and newfoundland. shorter route to europe suggested by bishop mullock. the electric telegraph company of newfoundland. project of mr. f. n. gisborne. failure of the company chapter ii. page mr. gisborne comes to new york. is introduced to cyrus w. field, who conceives the idea of a telegraph across the atlantic ocean. is it practicable? two elements to be mastered, the sea and the electric current. letters of lieutenant maury and professor morse chapter iii. page mr. field enlists capitalists in the enterprise. commission to newfoundland to obtain a charter. the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company chapter iv. page the land-line in newfoundland. four hundred miles of road to be built, a work of two years. attempt to lay a cable across the gulf of st. lawrence, in , fails. a second attempt, in , is successful chapter v. page deep-sea soundings by lieutenant berryman in the dolphin in , and the arctic in , and by commander dayman, of the british navy, in the cyclops, in . the bed of the atlantic. the telegraphic plateau chapter vi. page mr. field in london. the english engineers and electricians. result of experiments. the atlantic telegraph company organized. applies to the government for aid. contract for a cable chapter vii. page mr. field returns to america. seeks aid from the government. opposition in congress. bill passed chapter viii. page return to england. the niagara--captain hudson. the agamemnon. expedition of sails from ireland. speech of the earl of carlisle. the cable broken chapter ix. page preparations for an expedition in . mr. field is made the general manager of the company. the squadron assemble at plymouth, and put to sea, june . new method of laying cable, beginning in mid-ocean. the agamemnon in danger of being foundered. the cable lost three times. the ships return to england. meeting of the directors. shall they abandon the project? one last effort chapter x. page second expedition successful. cable landed in ireland and newfoundland chapter xi. page great excitement in america. celebration in new york and other cities chapter xii. page sudden stoppage of the cable. reaction of public feeling. suspicions of bad faith. did the cable ever work? chapter xiii. page attempts to revive the company. the government asked for aid, but declines to give an unconditional guarantee. failure of the red sea telegraph. scientific experiments. cables laid in the mediterranean and the persian gulf. brief history of the next five years chapter xiv. page the enterprise renewed. improvement on the old cable. the great eastern and captain anderson. expedition of . twelve hundred miles laid safely, when the cable is broken chapter xv. page formation of a new company, the anglo-american. new cable made and shipped on board the great eastern chapter xvi. page the expedition of . immense preparations. religious service at valentia. sailing of the fleet. diary of the voyage. cable landed at heart's content chapter xvii. page return to mid-ocean to search for the cable lost the year before. dragging in the deep sea. repeated failures. cable finally recovered and completed to newfoundland chapter xviii. page the afterglow. honors conferred in england and america. commercial revolution wrought by the cable. mr. field and the elevated railroads in new york city. tour round the world. last years. death in story of the atlantic telegraph chapter i. the barrier of the sea. when columbus sailed from the shores of spain, it was not in search of a new world, but only to find a nearer path to the east. he sought a western passage to india. he had adopted a traditionary belief that the earth was round; but he did not once dream of another continent than the three which had been the ancient abodes of the human race--europe, asia, and africa. all the rest was the great deep. the florentine sage toscanelli, from his knowledge of the world so far as then discovered, had made a chart, on which the eastern coast of asia was represented as lying opposite to the western coast of both europe and africa. accepting this theory, columbus reasoned that he could sail direct from spain to india. no intervening continent existed even in his imagination. even after he had crossed the atlantic, and descried the green woods of san salvador rising out of the western seas, he thought he saw before him one of the islands of the asiatic coast. cuba he believed was a part of the mainland of india; hayti was the ophir of king solomon; and when, on a later voyage, he came to the broad mouth of the orinoco, and saw it pouring its mighty flood into the atlantic, he rejoiced that he had found the great river gihon, which had its rise in the garden of eden! even to the hour of his death, he remained ignorant of the real extent of his magnificent discovery. it was reserved to later times to lift the curtain fully from the world of waters; to reveal the true magnitude of the globe; and to unite the distant hemispheres by ties such as the great discoverer never knew. it is hard to imagine the darkness and the terror which then hung over the face of the deep. the ocean to the west was a mare tenebrosum--a sea of darkness, into which only the boldest voyagers dared to venture. columbus was the most successful navigator of his time. he had made voyages to the western islands, to madeira and the canaries, to iceland on the north, and to the portuguese settlements in africa. but when he came to cross the sea, he had to grope his way almost blindly. but a few rays of knowledge glimmered, like stars, on the pathless waters. when he sailed on his voyage of discovery, he directed his course, first to the canaries, which was a sort of outstation for the navigators of those times, as the last place at which they could take in supplies; and beyond which they were venturing into unknown seas. here he turned to the west, though inclining southward toward the tropics (for even the great discoverers of that day, in their search for new realms to conquer, were not above the consideration of riches as well as honor, and somehow associated gems and gold with torrid climes), and bore away for india! from this route taken by the great navigator, he crossed the ocean in its widest part. had he, instead, followed the track of the northmen, who crept around from iceland to greenland and labrador; or had he sailed straight to the azores, and then borne away to the north-west, he would much sooner have descried land from the mast-head. but steering in darkness, he crossed the atlantic where it is broadest _and deepest_; where, as submarine explorers have since shown, it rolls over mountains, lofty as the alps and the himalayas, which lie buried beneath the surface of the deep. but farther north the two continents, so widely sundered, incline toward each other, as if inviting that closer relation and freer intercourse which the fulness of time was to bring. as the island of newfoundland is to stand in the foreground of our story, we observe on the map its salient geographical position. it holds the same relation to america that ireland does to europe. stretching far out into the atlantic, it is the vanguard of the western continent, or rather the signal-tower from which the new world may speak to the old. and yet, though large as england, and so near our coast, few americans ever see it, as it lies out of the track of european commerce. our ships, though they skirt the banks of newfoundland, pass to the south, and get but occasional glimpses of the headlands. even what is seen gives the country rather an ill reputation. it has a rockbound coast, around which hang perpetual fogs and mists, through which great icebergs drift slowly down, like huge phantoms of the deep, gliding away to be dissolved by the warm breath of the gulf stream: dangers that warn the voyager away from such a sea and shore. sailing west from cape race, and making the circuit of the island as far as the straits of belle isle, one is often reminded of the most northern peninsula of europe. the rocky shores are indented with numerous bays, reaching far up into the land, like the fiords along the coast of norway; while the large herds of caribou deer, that are seen feeding on the hills, might easily be mistaken for the flocks of reindeer that browse on the pastures and drink of the mountain torrents of ancient scandinavia. the interior of the island is little known. not only is it uninhabited, it is almost unexplored, a boundless waste of rock and moor, where vast forests stretch out their unbroken solitudes, and the wild bird utters its lonely cry. bears and wolves roam on the mountains. especially common is the large and fierce black wolf; while of the smaller animals, whose skins furnish material for the fur-trade, such as martins and foxes, there is the greatest abundance. but from all pests of the serpent tribe, newfoundland is as free as ireland, which was delivered by the prayers of st. patrick. there is not a snake or a frog or a toad in the island! yet, even in this ruggedness of nature, there is a wild beauty, which only needs to be "clothed upon" by the hand of man. newfoundland, in many of its features, is not unlike scotland, even in its most desolate portions, where the rocky surface of the country, covered with thick moss, reminds the emigrant scot of the heather on his native moors. in the interior are lakes as long as loch lomond, and mountains as lofty as ben lomond and ben nevis. there are passes as wild as the vale of glencoe, where one might feel that he is in the heart of the highlands, while the roar of the torrents yet more vividly recalls the land of the brown heath and shaggy wood, land of the mountain and the flood. yet in all this there is nothing to repel human habitation. by the hand of industry, these wild moors might be transformed into fruitful fields. we think it a very cold country, where winter reigns over half the year, as in greenland; yet it is not so far north as scotland, nor is its climate more inhospitable. it only needs the same population, the same hardy toil: and the same verdure would creep up its hill-sides, which now makes green and beautiful the loneliest of scottish glens. but at present the country is a _terra incognita_. in the interior there are no towns and no roads. as yet almost the whole wealth of the island is drawn from the sea. its chief trade is its fisheries, and the only places of importance are a few small towns, chiefly on the eastern side, which have grown up around the trading posts. besides these, the only settlements are the fishermen's huts scattered along the coast. hence the bishop of the island, when he would make his annual visit to his scattered flock, is obliged to sail around his diocese in his yacht, since even on horseback it would not be possible to make his way through the dense forests to the remote parts of the island. this first suggested the idea of cutting across the island a nearer way, not only for internal intercourse, but for those who were passing to and fro on the sea. it was in one of these excursions around the coast that the good bishop mullock, the head of the roman catholic church in newfoundland, when visiting the western portion of his diocese, lying one day becalmed in his yacht, in sight of cape north, the extreme point of the province of cape breton, bethought himself how his poor neglected island might be benefited by being taken into the track of communication between europe and america. he saw how nature had provided an easy approach to the mainland on the west. about sixty miles from cape ray stretched the long island of cape breton, while, as a stepping-stone, the little island of st. paul's lay between. so much did it weigh upon his mind that, as soon as he got back to st. john's, he wrote a letter to one of the papers on the subject. as this was the first suggestion of a telegraph across newfoundland, his letter is here given in full: _to the editor of the courier_: sir: i regret to find that, in every plan for transatlantic communication, halifax is always mentioned, and the natural capabilities of newfoundland entirely overlooked. this has been deeply impressed on my mind by the communication i read in your paper of saturday last, regarding telegraphic communication between england and ireland, in which it is said that the nearest telegraphic station on the american side is halifax, twenty-one hundred and fifty-five miles from the west of ireland. now would it not be well to call the attention of england and america to the extraordinary capabilities of st. john's, as the nearest telegraphic point? it is an atlantic port, lying, i may say, in the track of the ocean steamers, and by establishing it as the american telegraphic station, news could be communicated to the whole american continent forty-eight hours, _at least_, sooner than by any other route. but how will this be accomplished? just look at the map of newfoundland and cape breton. from st. john's to cape ray there is no difficulty in establishing a line passing near holy-rood along the neck of land connecting trinity and placentia bays, and thence in a direction due west to the cape. you have then about forty-one to forty-five miles of sea to st. paul's island, with deep soundings of one hundred fathoms, so that the electric cable will be perfectly safe from icebergs. thence to cape north, in cape breton, is little more than twelve miles. thus it is not only practicable to bring america two days nearer to europe by this route, but should the telegraphic communication between england and ireland, sixty-two miles, be realized, it presents not the least difficulty. of course, we in newfoundland will have nothing to do with the erection, working, and maintenance of the telegraph; but i suppose our government will give every facility to the company, either english or american, who will undertake it, as it will be an incalculable advantage to this country. i hope the day is not far distant when st. john's will be the first link in the electric chain which will unite the old world and the new. j. t. m. st. john's, november , . this suggestion came at the right moment, since it quickened, if it did not originate, the first attempt to link the island of newfoundland with the mainland of america. for about the same time, the attention of mr. frederick n. gisborne, a telegraph operator, was attracted to a similar project. being a man of great quickness of mind, he instantly saw the importance of such a work, and took hold of it with enthusiasm. it might easily occur to him without suggestion from any source. he had had much experience in telegraphs, and was then engaged in constructing a telegraph line in nova scotia. whether, therefore, the idea was first with him or with the bishop, is of little consequence. it might occur at the same time to two intelligent minds, and show the sagacity of both. but having taken hold of this idea, mr. gisborne pursued it with indomitable resolution. as the labors of this gentleman were most important in the beginning of this work, it is a pleasure to recognize his untiring zeal and energy. in assurance of this we could have no higher authority than the following from the late mr. e. m. archibald, who was at the time attorney-general of newfoundland, and afterwards for many years british consul at new york: "it was during the winter of - , that mr. gisborne, who had been, as an engineer, engaged in extending the electric telegraph through lower canada and new brunswick to halifax, nova scotia, conceived the project of a telegraph to connect st. john's, the most easterly port of america, with the main continent. the importance of the geographical position of newfoundland, in the event of a telegraph ever being carried across the atlantic, was about the same time promulgated by dr. mullock, the roman catholic bishop of newfoundland, in a st. john's newspaper. "in the spring of the following year ( ), mr. gisborne visited newfoundland, appeared before the legislature, then in session, and explained the details of his plan, which was an overland line from st. john's to cape ray, nearly four hundred miles in length, and (the submarine cable between dover and calais not having then been laid) a communication between cape ray and cape breton by steamer and carrier-pigeons, eventually, it was hoped, by a submarine cable across the gulf of st. lawrence. the legislature encouraged the project, granted £ sterling to enable mr. gisborne to make an exploratory survey of the proposed line to cape ray, and passed an act authorizing its construction, with certain privileges, and the appointment of commissioners for the purpose of carrying it out. upon this, mr. gisborne, who was then the chief officer of the nova scotia telegraph company, returned to that province, resigned his situation, and devoted himself to the project of the newfoundland telegraph. having organized a local company for the purpose of constructing the first telegraph line in the island, from st. john's to carbonear, a distance of sixty miles, he, on the fourth of september, set out upon the arduous expedition of a survey of the proposed line to cape ray, which occupied upward of three months, during which time himself and his party suffered severe privations, and narrowly escaped starvation, having to traverse the most rugged and hitherto unexplored part of the island.[a] on his return, having reported to the legislature favorably of the project, and furnished estimates of the cost, he determined to proceed to new york, to obtain assistance to carry it out.... mr. gisborne returned to st. john's in the spring of , when, at his instance, an act, incorporating himself (his being the only name mentioned in it) and such others as might become shareholders in a company, to be called the newfoundland electric telegraph company, was passed, granting an exclusive right to erect telegraphs in newfoundland for thirty years, with certain concessions of land, by way of encouragement, to be granted upon the completion of the telegraph from st. john's to cape ray. mr. gisborne then returned to new york, where he organized, under this charter, a company, of which mr. tebbets and mr. holbrook[b] were prominent members, made his financial arrangements with them, and proceeded to england to contract for the cable from cape ray to prince edward island, and from thence to the mainland. returning in the autumn, he proceeded in a small steamer, in november of that year, , to stretch the first submarine cable, of any length, in america, across the northumberland strait from prince edward island to new brunswick, which cable, however, was shortly afterward broken, and a new one was subsequently laid down by the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company. in the spring of the following year, , mr. gisborne set vigorously to work to complete his favorite project of the line (which he intended should be chiefly underground) from st. john's to cape ray. he had constructed some thirty or forty miles of road, and was proceeding with every prospect of success, when, most unexpectedly, those of the company who were to furnish the needful funds dishonored his bills, and brought his operations to a sudden termination. he and the creditors of the company were for several months buoyed up with promises of forthcoming means from his new york allies, which promises were finally entirely unfulfilled; and gisborne, being the only ostensible party, was sued and prosecuted on all sides, stripped of his whole property, and himself arrested to answer the claims of the creditors of the company. he cheerfully and honorably gave up every thing he possessed, and did his utmost to relieve the severe distress in which the poor laborers on the line had been involved." this is a testimony most honorable to the engineer who first led the way through a pathless wilderness. but this newfoundland scheme is not to be confounded with that of the atlantic telegraph, which did not come into existence until a year or two later. the latter was not at all included in the former. indeed, mr. gisborne himself says, in a letter referring to his original project: "my plans were to run a subterranean line from cape race to cape ray, fly carrier-pigeons and run boats across the straits of northumberland to cape breton, and thence by overland lines convey the news to new york." he adds however: "meanwhile mr. brett's experimental cable between dover and calais having proved successful, i set forth in my report, [which appeared a year after his first proposal], that 'carrier-pigeons and boats would be required only until such time as the experiments then making in england with submarine cables should warrant a similar attempt between cape ray and cape breton.'" but nowhere in his report does he allude to the possibility of ever spanning the mighty gulf of the atlantic. but several years after, when the temporary success of the atlantic telegraph gave a name to everybody connected with it, he or his friends seemed not unwilling to have it supposed that this was embraced in the original scheme. when asked why he did not publish his large design to the world, he answered: "because i was looked upon as a wild visionary by my friends, and pronounced a fool by my relatives for resigning a lucrative government appointment in favor of such a laborious speculation as the newfoundland connection. now had i coupled it at that time with an atlantic line, all confidence in the prior undertaking would have been destroyed, and my object defeated." this may have been a reason for not announcing such a project to the public, but not for withholding it from his friends. a man can hardly lay claim to that which he holds in such absolute reserve. however, whether he ever entertained the _idea_ of such a project, is not a matter of the slightest consequence to the public, nor even to his own reputation. ten years before professor morse had expressed, not a dreamer's fancy, but a deliberate conviction, founded on scientific experiments, that "a telegraphic communication might with certainty be established across the atlantic ocean;" so that the idea was not original with mr. gisborne, any more than with others who were eager to appropriate it. it is a part of the history of great enterprises, that the moment one succeeds, a host spring up to claim the honor. thus when, in , the atlantic telegraph seemed to be a success, the public, knowing well who had borne the brunt and burden of the undertaking, awarded him the praise which he so well deserved; but instantly there were other richmonds in the field. those who had had no part in the labor, at least claimed to have originated the idea! of course, these many claims destroy each other. but after all, to raise such a point at all is the merest trifling. the question is not who first had the "idea," but who took hold of the enterprise as a practical thing; who grappled with the gigantic difficulties of the undertaking, and fought the battle through to victory. as to mr. gisborne, his activity in the beginning of the newfoundland telegraph is a matter of history. in that preliminary work, he bore an honorable part, and acquired a title to respect, of which he cannot be deprived. all honor to him for his enterprise, his courage, and his perseverance! but for the company of which he was the father, which he had got up with so much toil, it lived but a few months, when it became involved in debt some fifty thousand dollars, chiefly to laborers on the line, and ended its existence by an ignominious failure. the concern was bankrupt, and it was plain that, if the work was not to be finally abandoned, it must be taken up by stronger hands. footnotes: [a] "on the fourth day of december, i accomplished the survey through three hundred and fifty miles of wood and wilderness. it was an arduous undertaking. my original party, consisting of six white men, were exchanged for four indians; of the latter party, two deserted, one died a few days after my return, and the other, 'joe paul,' has ever since proclaimed himself an ailing man."--_letter of mr. gisborne._ [b] horace b. tebbets and darius b. holbrook. chapter ii. can the ocean be spanned? mr. gisborne left halifax and came to new york in january, . here he took counsel with his friend tebbets and others; but they could give him no relief. it was while in this state of suspense that he met, at the astor house, mr. matthew d. field, an engineer who had been engaged in building railroads and suspension bridges at the south and west. mr. field listened to his story with interest, and engaged to speak of it to his brother, cyrus w. field,[a] a merchant of new york, who had retired from business the year before, and had spent six months in travelling over the mountains of south america, from which he had lately returned. accordingly, he introduced the subject, but found his brother disinclined to embark in any new undertaking. though still a young man, his life had been for many years one of incessant devotion to business. he had accumulated an ample fortune, and was not disposed to renew the cares, the anxieties, and the fatigues of his former life. but listening to the details of a scheme which had in it much to excite interest, and which by its very difficulty stimulated the spirit of enterprise, he at length consented to see mr. gisborne, and invited him to his house. accordingly he came, and spent an evening describing the route of his proposed telegraph, and the points it was to connect. after he left, mr. field took the globe which was standing in the library, and began to turn it over. _it was while thus studying the globe that the idea first occurred to him, that the telegraph might be carried further still, and be made to span the atlantic ocean._ the idea was not original with him, though he was to carry it out. it was indeed new _to him_; but it had long been a matter of speculation with scientific minds, though their theories had never attracted his attention. but once he had grasped the idea, it took strong hold of his imagination. had the newfoundland scheme stood alone, he would never have undertaken it. he cared little about shortening communication with europe by a day or two, by relays of boats and carrier-pigeons. but it was the hope of further and grander results that inspired him to enter on a work of which no man could foresee the end. an enterprise of such proportions, that would task to the utmost the science and the engineering skill of the world, was not to be rashly undertaken; and before giving a definite reply to gisborne, mr. field determined to apply to the highest authorities in his own country. the project of an atlantic telegraph involved two problems: could a cable be stretched across the ocean? and if it were, would it be good for anything to convey messages? the first was a question of mechanical difficulties, requiring a careful survey of the ocean itself, fathoming its depth, finding out the character of its bottom, whether level, or rough and volcanic; and all the obstacles that might be found in the winds that agitate the surface above, or the mighty currents that sweep through the waters below. the second problem was purely scientific, involving questions as to the laws of electricity, not then fully understood, and on which the boldest might feel that he was venturing on uncertain ground. such were the two elements or forces of nature to be encountered--the ocean and the electric current. could they be controlled by any power of man? the very proposal was enough to stagger the faith even of an enthusiast. who could lay a bridle on the neck of the sea? the attempt seemed as idle as that of xerxes to bind it with chains. was it possible to combat the fierceness of the winds and waves, and to stretch one long line from continent to continent? and then, after the work was achieved, would the lightning run along the ocean-bed from shore to shore? such were the questions which had puzzled many an anxious brain, and which now troubled the one who was to undertake the work. to get some light in his perplexity, mr. field, the very next morning after his interview with gisborne, wrote two letters, one to lieutenant maury, then at the head of the national observatory at washington, on the nautical difficulties of the undertaking, asking if the sea were itself a barrier too great to be overcome; and the other to professor morse, inquiring if it would be possible to telegraph over a distance so great as that from europe to america? the mail soon brought an answer from lieutenant maury, which began: "singularly enough, just as i received your letter, i was closing one to the secretary of the navy on the same subject." a copy of this he inclosed to mr. field, and it is given here. it shows the conclusions at which, even at that early day, scientific men were beginning to arrive: "national observatory, washington, february , . "sir: the united states brig dolphin, lieutenant commanding o. h. berryman, was employed last summer upon especial service connected with the researches that are carried on at this office concerning the winds and currents of the sea. her observations were confined principally to that part of the ocean which the merchantmen, as they pass to and fro upon the business of trade between europe and the united states, use as their great thoroughfare. lieutenant berryman availed himself of this opportunity to carry along also a line of deep-sea soundings, from the shores of newfoundland to those of ireland. the result is highly interesting, in so far as the bottom of the sea is concerned, upon the question of a submarine telegraph across the atlantic; and i therefore beg leave to make it the subject of a special report. "this line of deep-sea soundings seems to be decisive of the question of the practicability of a submarine telegraph between the two continents, _in so far as the bottom of the deep sea is concerned_. from newfoundland to ireland, the distance between the nearest points is about sixteen hundred miles;[b] and the bottom of the sea between the two places is a plateau, which seems to have been placed there especially for the purpose of holding the wires of a submarine telegraph, and of keeping them out of harm's way. it is neither too deep nor too shallow; yet it is so deep that the wires but once landed, will remain for ever beyond the reach of vessels' anchors, icebergs, and drifts of any kind, and so shallow, that the wires may be readily lodged upon the bottom. the depth of this plateau is quite regular, gradually increasing from the shores of newfoundland to the depth of from fifteen hundred to two thousand fathoms, as you approach the other side. the distance between ireland and cape st. charles, or cape st. lewis, in labrador, is somewhat less than the distance from any point of ireland to the nearest point of newfoundland. but whether it would be better to lead the wires from newfoundland or labrador is not now the question; nor do i pretend to consider the question as to the possibility of finding _a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough, a ship big enough_, to lay a coil of wire sixteen hundred miles in length: though i have no fear but that the enterprise and ingenuity of the age, whenever called on with these problems, will be ready with a satisfactory and practical solution of them. "i simply address myself at this time to the question in so far as _the bottom of the sea_ is concerned, and as far as that, the greatest practical difficulties will, i apprehend, be found after reaching soundings at either end of the line, and not in the deep sea.... "a wire laid across from either of the above-named places on this side will pass to the north of the grand banks, and rest on that beautiful plateau to which i have alluded, where the waters of the sea appear to be as quiet and as completely at rest as at the bottom of a mill-pond. it is proper that the reasons should be stated for the inference that there are no perceptible currents, and no abrading agents at work at the bottom of the sea upon this telegraphic plateau. i derive this inference from a study of a physical fact, which i little deemed, when i sought it, had any such bearings. "lieutenant berryman brought up with brooke's deep-sea sounding apparatus specimens of the bottom from this plateau. i sent them to professor bailey, of west point, for examination under his microscope. this he kindly gave, and that eminent microscopist was quite as much surprised to find, as i was to learn, that all those specimens of deep-sea soundings are filled with microscopic shells; to use his own words, _not a particle of sand or gravel exists in them_. these little shells, therefore, suggest the fact that there are no currents at the bottom of the sea whence they came; that brooke's lead found them where they were deposited in their burial-place after having lived and died on the surface, and by gradually sinking were lodged on the bottom. had there been currents at the bottom, these would have swept and abraded and mingled up with these microscopic remains the _débris_ of the bottom of the sea, such as ooze, sand, gravel, and other matter; but not a particle of sand or gravel was found among them. hence the inference that these depths of the sea are not disturbed either by waves or currents. consequently, a telegraphic wire once laid there, there it would remain, as completely beyond the reach of accident as it would be if buried in air-tight cases. therefore, so far as the bottom of the deep sea between newfoundland, or the north cape, at the mouth of the st. lawrence, and ireland, is concerned, the practicability of a submarine telegraph across the atlantic is proved.... "in this view of the subject, and for the purpose of hastening the completion of such a line, i take the liberty of suggesting for your consideration the propriety of an offer from the proper source, of a prize to the company through whose telegraphic wire the first message shall be passed across the atlantic. "i have the honor to be respectfully yours. "m. f. maury, "lieutenant united states navy. "hon. j. c. dobbin, secretary of the navy." the reply of professor morse showed equal interest in the subject, in proof of which he wrote that he would come down to new york to see mr. field about it. a few days after he came, and saw mr. field at his house. this was the beginning of an acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship, and which henceforth united these gentlemen together in this great achievement. professor morse, in conversation, entered at length into the laws of electricity as applied to the business of telegraphing, and concluded by declaring his entire faith in the undertaking as practical; as one that might, could, and would, be achieved. indeed, this faith he had avowed years before. in a letter written as early as august tenth, , to john c. spencer, then secretary of the treasury, professor morse had detailed the results of certain experiments made in the harbor of new york to show the power of electricity to communicate at great distances, at the close of which he says--in words that now seem prophetic: "the practical inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the atlantic ocean! startling as this may now seem, i am confident the time will come when this project will be realized." it was the good fortune of mr. field--at that time and ever since--to have at hand an adviser in whose judgment he had implicit confidence. this was his eldest brother, david dudley field. they lived side by side on gramercy park, and were in daily communication. to the prudent counsels, wise judgment and unfaltering courage of the elder brother, the atlantic telegraph is more indebted than the world will ever know, for its first impulse and for the spirit which sustained it through long years of discouragement and disaster, when its friends were few. to this, his nearest and best counsellor, mr. field opened the project which had taken possession of his mind; and being strengthened by that maturer judgment, he finally resolved that, if he could get a sufficient number of capitalists to join him, he would embark in an enterprise which, beginning with the line to newfoundland, involved in the end nothing less than an attempt to link this new world which columbus had discovered, to that old world which had been for ages the home of empire and of civilization. how the scheme advanced through the next twelve years, it will be our province to relate. footnotes: [a] born november , , in stockbridge, massachusetts, the son of a congregational minister, of whom three sons are still living: mr. david dudley field, of new york; mr. justice stephen j. field, of the supreme court of the united states; and the writer of the present volume. [b] from cape freels, newfoundland, to erris head, ireland, the distance is sixteen hundred and eleven miles; from cape charles, or cape st. lewis, labrador, to the same point, the distance is sixteen hundred and one miles. chapter iii. the company organized. and so the young new york merchant set out to carry a telegraph across the atlantic ocean! the design had in it at least the merit of audacity. but whether the end was to be sublime or ridiculous time alone could tell. certain it is that when his sanguine temper and youthful blood stirred him up to take hold of such an enterprise, he little dreamed of what it would involve. he thought lightly of a few thousands risked in an uncertain venture; but never imagined that he might yet be drawn on to stake upon its success the whole fortune he had accumulated; that he was to sacrifice all the peace and quiet he had hoped to enjoy; and that for twelve years he was to be almost without a home, crossing and re-crossing the sea, urging his enterprise in europe and america. but so it is, that the being who designs great things for human welfare, and would accomplish them by human instruments, does not lift at once the curtain from the stern realities they are to meet, nor reveal the rugged ascents they are to climb; so that it is only when at last the heights are attained, and they look backward, that they realize through what they have passed. but could he find anybody to join him in his bold undertaking? starving adventurers there always are, ready to embark in any quixotic attempt, since they have nothing to lose. but would men of sense and of character; men who had fortunes to keep, and the habit which business gives of looking calmly and suspiciously at probabilities; be found to put capital in an enterprise where, if it failed, they would find their money literally at the bottom of the sea? it seemed doubtful, but he would try. his plan was, if possible, to enlist ten capitalists, all gentlemen of wealth, who together could lift a pretty heavy load; who, if need were, could easily raise a million of dollars, to carry out any undertaking. the first man whom he addressed was his next-door neighbor, mr. peter cooper, in whom he found the indisposition which a man of large fortune--now well advanced in life--would naturally feel to embark in new enterprises. the reluctance in this case was not so much to the risking of capital, as to having his mind occupied with the care which it would impose. these objections slowly yielded to other considerations. as they talked it over, the large heart of mr. cooper began to see that, if it were possible to accomplish such a work, it would be a great public benefit. this consideration prevailed, and what would not have been undertaken as a private speculation, was yielded to public interest. the conference ended by a conditional agreement to engage in it, if several others did, and, as we shall see, when the company was organized, he became its president. the early accession of this gentleman gave strength to the new enterprise. in all the million inhabitants of the city of new york there was not a name which was better known, or more justly held in honor, than that of peter cooper. a native of the city, where he had passed his whole life, he had seen its growth, from the small town it was after the war of the revolution, and had himself grown with it. beginning with very small means and limited opportunities, he had become one of its great capitalists. many who thus rise to wealth, in the process of accumulation, form penurious habits which cling to them, and to the end of their days it is the chief object of life to hoard and to keep. but mr. cooper, while acquiring the fortune, had also the heart of a prince; and used his wealth with a noble generosity. in the centre of new york stands to-day a massive building, erected at a cost of nearly a million of dollars, and consecrated "to science and art." this was mr. cooper's gift to his native city. remembering his own limited advantages of education, he desired that the young men of new york, the apprentices and mechanics, should have better opportunities than he had enjoyed. for this he endowed courses of lectures on the natural sciences; he opened the largest reading-room in america, which furnishes a pleasant resort to thousands of readers daily; while to help the other sex, he added a school of design for women, which trains hundreds to be teachers, and some of them artists; who go forth into the world to earn an honest living, and to bless the memory of their generous benefactor. this noble institution, standing in the heart of the city, is his enduring monument. yet while doing so much for the public, those who saw peter cooper in his family knew how he retained the simple habits of early life--how, while giving hundreds of thousands to others, he cared to spend little on himself; how he remained the same modest, kindly old man; the pure, the generous, and the good. his was "the good gray head that all men knew," and that was sadly missed when, nearly thirty years after, in , at the age of ninety-two, he was borne to his grave. it is a pleasant remembrance that the beginning of this enterprise was connected with that honored name. mr. field next addressed himself to mr. moses taylor, a well-known capitalist of new york, engaged in extensive business reaching to different parts of the world, and whose daily observation of all sorts of enterprises, both sound and visionary, made him perhaps a severer judge of any new scheme. with this gentleman he had then no personal acquaintance, but sent a note of introduction from his brother, david dudley field, with a line requesting an interview, to which mr. taylor replied by an invitation to his house on an evening when he should be disengaged. as these two gentlemen afterwards became very intimately associated, they often recurred to their first interview. said mr. field: "i shall never forget how mr. taylor received me. he fixed on me his keen eye, as if he would look through me: and then, sitting down, he listened to me for nearly an hour without saying a word." this was rather an ominous beginning. however, his quick mind soon saw the possibilities of the enterprise, and the evening ended by an agreement--conditional, like mr. cooper's--to enter into it. mr. taylor, being thus enlisted, brought in his friend, mr. marshall o. roberts--a man whose career has been too remarkable to be passed without notice. a native of the city of new york, (though his father was a physician from wales, who came to this country early in this century,) he found himself, when a boy of eight years, an orphan, without a friend in the world. from that time he made his way purely by his own industry and indomitable will. at the age of twenty he was embarked in business for himself, and his history soon became a succession of great enterprises. if we were to relate some of the incidents connected with his rise of fortune, they would sound more like romance than reality. he was the first to project those floating palaces which now ply the waters of the hudson and the great lakes. he was one of the early promoters of the erie railroad. when the discovery of gold in california turned the tide of emigration to that coast, he started the line of steamers to the isthmus of panama, and controlled largely the commerce with the pacific. thus his hand was felt, giving impulse to many different enterprises on land and sea. his whole course was marked by a spirit of commercial daring, which men called rashness, until they saw its success, and then applauded as marvellous sagacity. mr. field next wrote to mr. chandler white, a personal friend of many years' standing, who had retired from business, and was living a few miles below the city, near fort hamilton, at one of those beautiful points of view which command the whole harbor of new york. he too was very slow to yield to argument or persuasion. why should he--when he had cast anchor in this peaceful spot--again embark in the cares of business, and, worst of all, in an enterprise the scene of which was far distant, and the results very uncertain? but enthusiasm is always magnetic, and the glowing descriptions of his persuader at length prevailed.[a] there were now five gentlemen enlisted; and mr. field was about to apply to others, to make up his proposed number, when mr. cooper came to ask why _five_ would not do as well as _ten_? the question was no sooner asked than answered. to this all agreed, and at once fixed an evening when they should meet at mr. field's house to hear his statements and to examine the charter of the old company, find out what it had done, and what it proposed to do, what property it had and what debts it owed; and decide whether the enterprise offered sufficient inducements to embark in it. accordingly they met, and for four nights in succession discussed the subject. it was in the dining-room of mr. field's house, and the large table was spread with maps of the route to be traversed by the line of telegraph, and with plans and estimates of the work to be done, the cost of doing it, and the return which they might hope in the end to realize for their labor and their capital. the result was an agreement on the part of all to enter on the undertaking, if the government of newfoundland would grant a new charter conceding more favorable terms. to secure this it was important to send at once a commission to newfoundland. neither mr. cooper, mr. taylor, nor mr. roberts could go; and it devolved on mr. field to make the first voyage on this business, as it did to make many voyages afterwards to newfoundland, and still more across the atlantic. but not wishing to take the whole responsibility, he was accompanied at his earnest request by mr. white, and by mr. d. d. field, whose counsel, as he was to be the legal adviser of the company, was all-important in the framing of the new charter that was to secure its rights. the latter thus describes this first expedition: "the agreement with the electric telegraph company, and the formal surrender of its charter, were signed on the tenth of march, [ ,] and on the fourteenth we left new york, accompanied by mr. gisborne. the next morning we took the steamer at boston for halifax, and thence, on the night of the eighteenth, departed in the little steamer merlin for st. john's, newfoundland. three more disagreeable days, voyagers scarcely ever passed, than we spent in that smallest of steamers. it seemed as if all the storms of winter had been reserved for the first month of spring. a frost-bound coast, an icy sea, rain, hail, snow and tempest, were the greetings of the telegraph adventurers in their first movement toward europe. in the darkest night, through which no man could see the ship's length, with snow filling the air and flying into the eyes of the sailors, with ice in the water, and a heavy sea rolling and moaning about us, the captain felt his way around cape race with his lead, as the blind man feels his way with his staff, but as confidently and as safely as if the sky had been clear and the sea calm; and the light of morning dawned upon deck and mast and spar, coated with glittering ice, but floating securely between the mountains which form the gates of the harbor of st. john's. in that busy and hospitable town, the first person to whom we were introduced was mr. edward m. archibald, then attorney-general of the colony, and now british consul in new york. he entered warmly into our views, and from that day to this, has been an efficient and consistent supporter of the undertaking. by him we were introduced to the governor, (kerr bailey hamilton,) who also took an earnest interest in our plans. he convoked the council to receive us, and hear an explanation of our views and wishes. in a few hours after the conference, the answer of the governor and council was received, consenting to recommend to the assembly a guarantee of the interest of £ , of bonds, an immediate grant of fifty square miles of land, a further grant to the same extent on the completion of the telegraph across the ocean, and a payment of £ , toward the construction of a bridle-path across the island, along the line of the land telegraph." this was a hopeful beginning; and, though the charter was not yet obtained, feeling assured by this official encouragement, and the public interest in the project, that it would be granted by the colony, mr. field remained in st. john's but three days, when he took the merlin back to halifax on his way to new york, there to purchase and send down a steamer for the service of the company, leaving his associates to secure the charter and to carry out the arrangements with the former company. to settle all these details was necessarily a work of time. first, the charter of the old electric telegraph company had to be repealed, to clear the way for a new charter to the company, which was to bear the more comprehensive title of "new york, newfoundland, _and london_." this charter--which had been drawn with the greatest care by the counsel of the company, while on the voyage to newfoundland--bore on its very front the declaration that the plans of the new company were much broader than those of the old. in the former charter, the design was thus set forth: "the telegraph line of this company is designed to be strictly an 'inter-continental telegraph.' its termini will be new york, in the united states, and london, in the kingdom of great britain; these points are to be connected by a line of electric telegraph from new york to st. john's, newfoundland, partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and partly through the water, _and a line of the swiftest steamships ever built from that point to ireland_. the trips of these steamships, it is expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time will be occupied in transmitting messages between st. john's and new york, the communication between the latter city and london or liverpool, will be effected _in six days_, or less. the company will have likewise stationed at st. john's a steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting the european and american steamships, so that no opportunity may be lost in forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of communication." but the charter of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, which was now to be obtained, began by declaring, in its very first sentence: "whereas it is deemed advisable to establish a line of telegraphic communication between america and europe by way of newfoundland." not a word is said of fast ships, of communications in less than six days, but every thing points to a line across the ocean. thus one section gives authority to establish a submarine telegraph across the ocean, from newfoundland to ireland; another section prohibits any other company or person from touching the coast of newfoundland or its dependencies [which includes labrador] with a telegraphic cable or wire, from any point whatever, for fifty years; and a third section grants the company fifty square miles of land upon the completion of the submarine line across the atlantic. in other respects the charter was equally liberal. it incorporated the associates for fifty years, established perfect equality, in respect to corporators and officers, between citizens of the united states and british subjects, and allowed the meetings of the stockholders and directors to be held in new york, in newfoundland, or in london. to obtain such concessions was a work of some difficulty and delay. the legislature of the province were naturally anxious to scan carefully conditions that were to bind them and their children for half a century. i have now before me the papers of st. john's of that day, containing the discussions in the legislature; and while all testify to the deep public interest in the project, they show a due care for the interests of their own colony, which they were bound to protect. at length all difficulties were removed, and the charter was passed unanimously by the assembly, and confirmed by the council. this happy result was duly celebrated, in the manner which all englishmen approve, by a grand dinner given by the commissioners of the new company, to the members of the assembly and other dignitaries of the colony, at which there were eloquent prophecies of the good time coming, showing how heartily the enterprise was welcomed by all classes; and how fond were the anticipations of the increased intercourse it would bring, and the manifold benefits it would confer on their long-neglected island. no sooner were the papers signed, than the wheels, so long blocked, were unloosed, and the machinery began to move. mr. white at once drew on new york for fifty thousand dollars, and paid off all the debts of the old company. a st. john's newspaper of april th, , amid a great deal on the subject, contains this paragraph, which is very significant of the dead state of the old company, and of the life of the new: "the office of the new electric telegraph company has been surrounded the last two or three days by the men who had been engaged the last year on the line, and who are being paid all debts, dues, and demands against the old association. we look upon the readiness with which these claims are liquidated as a substantial indication on the part of the new company that they will complete to the letter all that they have declared to accomplish in this important undertaking." in the early part of may, the two gentlemen who had remained behind in newfoundland rejoined their associates in new york, and there the charter was formally accepted and the company organized. as all the associates had not arrived till saturday evening, the th of may, and as one of them was to leave town on monday morning, it was agreed that they should meet for organization at six o'clock of that day. at that hour they came to the house of mr. field's brother dudley, and as the first rays of the morning sun streamed into the windows, the formal organization took place. the charter was accepted, the stock subscribed, and the officers chosen. mr. cooper, mr. taylor, mr. field, mr. roberts, and mr. white were the first directors. mr. cooper was chosen president, mr. white, vice-president, and mr. taylor, treasurer. this is a short story, and soon told. it seemed a light affair, for half a dozen men to meet in the early morning and toss off such a business before breakfast. but what a work was that to which they thus put their hands! a capital of a million and a half of dollars was subscribed in those few minutes, and a company put in operation that was to carry a line of telegraph to st. john's, more than a thousand miles from new york, and then to span the wild sea. well was it that they who undertook the work did not then fully realize its magnitude, or they would have shrunk from the attempt. well was it for them that the veil was not lifted, which shut from their eyes the long delay, the immense toil, and the heavy burdens of many wearisome years. such a prospect might have chilled the most sanguine spirit. but a kind providence gives men strength for their day, imposes burdens as they are able to bear them, and thus leads them on to greater achievements than they knew. footnotes: [a] although it is anticipating a year in time, i cannot resist the pleasure of adding here the name of another eminent merchant, who afterward joined this little company, mr. wilson g. hunt. mr. hunt is one of the old merchants of new york who, through his whole career, has maintained the highest reputation for commercial integrity, and whose fortune is the reward of a long life of honorable industry. he joined the company in , and was a strong and steady friend through all its troubles till the final success. chapter iv. crossing newfoundland. there is nothing in the world easier than to build a line of railroad, or of telegraph, _on paper_. you have only to take the map, and mark the points to be connected, and then with a single sweep of the pencil to draw the line along which the iron track is to run. in this airy flight of the imagination, distances are nothing. a thousand leagues vanish at a stroke. all obstacles disappear. the valleys are exalted, and the hills are made low, soaring arches span the mountain streams, and the chasms are leaped in safety by the fire-drawn cars. very different is it to construct a line of railroad or of telegraph in reality; to come with an army of laborers, with axes on their shoulders to cut down the forests, and with spades in their hands to cast up the highway. then poetry sinks to prose, and instead of flying over the space on wings, one must traverse it on foot, slowly and with painful steps. nature asserts her power; and, as if resentful of the disdain with which man in his pride affected to leap over her, she piles up new barriers in his way. the mountains with their rugged sides cannot be moved out of their place, the rocks must be cleft in twain, to open a passage for the conqueror, before he can begin his triumphal march. the woods thicken into an impassable jungle; and the morass sinks deeper, threatening to swallow up the horse and his rider; until the rash projector is startled at his own audacity. then it becomes a contest of forces between man and nature, in which, if he would be victorious, he must fight his way. the barriers of nature cannot be lightly pushed aside, but must yield at last only to time and toil, and "man's unconquerable will." seldom have all these obstacles been combined in a more formidable manner to obstruct any public work, than against the attempt to build a telegraph line across the island of newfoundland. the distance, by the route to be traversed, was over four hundred miles, and the country was a wilderness, an utter desolation. yet through such a country, over mountain and moor, through tangled brake and rocky gorge, over rivers and through morasses, they were to build a road--not merely a line of telegraph stuck on poles, but "a good and traversable bridle-road, eight feet wide, with bridges of the same width," from end to end of the island. but nothing daunted, the new company undertook the great work with spirit and resolution. gisborne had made a beginning, and got some thirty or forty miles out of st. john's. this was the easiest part of the whole route, being in the most inhabited region of the island. but here he broke down, just where it was necessary to leave civilization behind, and to plunge into the wilderness. intending to resume the work on a much larger scale, mr. white, the vice-president, was sent down to st. john's to be the general agent of the company; while mr. matthew d. field, as a practical engineer, was to have charge of the construction of the line. the latter soon organized a force of six hundred men, which he pushed forward in detachments to the scene of operations. and now began to appear still more the difficulties of the way. to provide subsistence for man and beast, it was necessary to keep near the coast, for all supplies had to be sent round by sea. yet in following the coast line, they had to wind around bays, or to climb over headlands. if they struck into the interior, they had to cut their way through the dense and tangled wood. there was not a path to guide them, not even an indian trail. when lost in the forest, they had to follow the compass, as much as the mariner at sea. to keep such a force in the field, that, like an army, produced nothing, but consumed fearfully, required constant attention to the commissary department. the little steamer victoria, which belonged to the company, was kept plying along the coast, carrying barrels of pork and potatoes, kegs of powder, pickaxes and spades and shovels, and all the implements of labor. these were taken up to the heads of the bays, and thence carried, chiefly on men's backs, over the hills to the line of the road. in many respects, it had the features of a military expedition. it moved forward in a great camp. the men were sheltered in tents, when sheltered at all, or in small huts which they built along the road. but more often they slept on the ground. it was a wild and picturesque sight to come upon their camp in the woods, to see their fires blazing at night while hundreds of stalwart sleepers lay stretched on the ground. sometimes, when encamped on the hills, they could be seen afar off at sea. it made a pretty picture then. but the hardy pioneers thought little of the figure they were making, when they were exposed to the fury of the elements. often the rain fell in torrents, and the men, crouching under their slight shelter, listened sadly to the sighing of the wind among the trees, answered by the desolate moaning of the sea. yet in spite of all obstacles, the work went on. all through the long days of summer, and through the months of autumn, every cove and creek along that southern coast heard the plashing of their oars, and the steady stroke of their axes resounded through the forest. but as the season advanced, all these difficulties increased. for nearly half the year, the island is buried in snow. blinding drifts sweep over the moors, and choke up the paths of the forest. how at such times the expedition lay floundering in the woods, still struggling to force its way onward; what hardships and sufferings the men endured--all this is a chapter in the history of the telegraph which has not been written, and which can never be fully told. the gentlemen of england, who dwell at home at ease, and who are justly proud of the extent of their dominions, and the life and power which pervade the whole, may here find another example of the way in which great works are borne forward in distant parts of their empire. but to carry out such an enterprise, requires head-work as well as hand-work. engineering in the field must be supported by financiering at home. it was here the former enterprise broke down, and now it needed constant watching to keep the wheels in steady motion. the directors in new york found the demand increasing day by day. the minds which had grasped the large design must now descend to an infinity of detail. they had to keep an army of men at work, at a point a thousand miles away, far beyond their immediate oversight. drafts for money came thick and fast. to provide for all these required constant attention. how faithfully they gave to this enterprise, not only their money, but their time and thought, few will know; but those who have seen can testify. in the autumn of that year, , the writer removed to the city of new york, and was almost daily at the house of mr. field. yet for months it was hardly possible to go there of an evening without finding the library occupied by the company. indeed, so uniformly was this the case, that "the telegraph" began to be regarded by the family as an unwelcome intruder, since it put an interdict on the former social evenings and quiet domestic enjoyment. the circumstance shows the ceaseless care on the part of the directors which the enterprise involved. as a witness of their incessant labor, it is due to them to bear this testimony to their patience and their fidelity. when they began the work, they hoped to carry the line across newfoundland in one year, completing it in the summer of . in anticipation of this, mr. field was sent by the company to england at the close of , to order a cable to span the gulf of st. lawrence, to connect cape ray with the island of cape breton. this was his first voyage across the ocean on the business of the telegraph--to be followed by more than forty others. in london he met for the first time mr. john w. brett, with whom he was to be afterward connected in the larger enterprise of the atlantic telegraph. mr. brett was the father of submarine telegraphy in europe, though in carrying out his first projects he was largely indebted to mr. crampton, a well-known engineer of london, who aided him both with advice and capital. with this invaluable assistance, he had stretched two lines across the british channel. from his success in passing these waters, he believed a line might yet be stretched from continent to continent. the scientific men of england were not generally educated up to that point. the bare suggestion was received with a smile of incredulity.[a] but mr. brett had faith, even at that early day, and entered heartily into the schemes of mr. field. to show his interest, he afterward took a few shares in the newfoundland line--the only englishman who had any part in this preliminary work. the summer came, and the work in newfoundland, though not complete, was advancing; and the cable in england was finished and shipped on board the bark sarah l. bryant to cross the sea. anticipating its arrival, the company chartered a steamer to go down to newfoundland to assist in its submersion across the gulf of st. lawrence. as yet they had no experience in the business of laying a submarine telegraph, and did not doubt that the work could be accomplished with the greatest ease. it was therefore to be an excursion of pleasure as well as of business, and accordingly they invited a large party to go with them to witness the unaccustomed spectacle. as we chanced to be among the guests, we have the best reason to remember it. seldom has a more pleasant party been gathered for any expedition. representing the company were mr. field, mr. peter cooper, mr. robert w. lowber, and professor morse; while among the invited guests were gentlemen of all professions--clergymen, doctors and lawyers, artists and editors. in the groups on the deck were the venerable dr. gardiner spring and rev. j. m. sherwood; dr. lewis a. sayre, bayard taylor, the well-known traveller, mr. fitz-james o'brien, and mr. john mullaly--the three latter gentlemen representing leading papers of new york.[b] besides these, the party included a large number of ladies, who gave life and animation to the company. well does the writer recall the morning of departure--the seventh day of august, . never did a voyage begin with fairer omens. it was a bright summer day. the sky was clear, and the water smooth. we were on the deck of the good ship james adger, long known as one of the fine steamers belonging to the charleston line. she was a swift ship, and cut the water like an arrow. thus we sped down the bay, and turning into the ocean, skimmed along the shores of long island. the sea was tranquil as a lake. the whole party were on deck, scattered in groups here and there, watching the sails and the shore. a rude telegraph instrument furnished entertainment and instruction, especially as we had professor morse to explain his marvellous invention, which some who listened then for the first time understood. at halifax, several of us left the ship, and came across nova scotia, passing through that lovely region of acadia which longfellow has invested with such tender interest in his poem of evangeline. thence we crossed the bay of fundy to st. john in new brunswick, and returned by way of portland. the james adger went on to newfoundland, steering first for port au basque, near cape ray, where they hoped to meet the bark which was to come from england with the cable on board. to their disappointment, it had not arrived. mr. canning, the engineer who was to lay the cable, had come out by steamer, and was on hand, but the bark was not to be seen. having to wait several days, and wishing to make the most of their time, they sailed for st. john's, where they were received by the provincial government and the people with unbounded hospitality, after which they returned to port au basque, and were now rejoiced to discover the little bark hidden behind the rocks. it was decided to land the cable in cape ray cove. after a day or two's delay in getting the end to the shore, they started to cross the gulf of st. lawrence, the adger towing the bark. the sea was calm, and though they were obliged to move slowly, yet all promised well, till they were about half-way across, when a gale arose, which pitched the bark so violently, that with its unwieldy bulk it was in great danger of sinking. after holding on for hours in the vain hope that it would abate, the captain cut the cable to save the bark; and thus, after they had paid out forty miles, it was hopelessly lost, and the adger returned to new york. this loss was owing partly to the severity of the gale, and partly to the fact that the bark which had the cable on board was wholly unfitted for the purpose. it was a sailing-vessel, and had to be towed by another ship. in this way it was impossible to regulate its motion. it was too fast or too slow. it was liable to be swayed by the sea, now giving a lurch ahead, and now dragging behind. experience showed that a cable should always be laid from a steam vessel which could regulate its own motion, running out freely when all went smoothly, and checking its speed instantly when it was necessary to ease up the strain, or to pay out more slack to fill up the hollows of the sea. this first loss of a submarine cable was a severe disappointment to the company. it postponed the enterprise for a whole year. to make a new cable would require several months, and the season was so far advanced that it could not be laid before another summer. was it strange if some of the little band began to ask if they had not lost enough, and to reason that it was better to stop where they were, than to go on still farther, casting their treasures into the sea? but there was in that little company a spirit of hope and determination that could not be subdued; that ever cried: "once more unto the breach, good friends!" after some deliberation, it was resolved to renew the attempt. mr. field again sailed for england to order another cable, which was duly made and sent out the following summer. this time, warned by experience, the company invited no party and made no display. the cable was placed on board a steamer fitted for the purpose; from which it was laid without accident, and remained in perfect working order for nine years. meanwhile the work on land had been pushed forward without ceasing. after incredible labor, the company had built a road and a telegraph from one end of newfoundland to the other, four hundred miles; and, as if that were not enough, had built also another line, one hundred and forty miles in length, in the island of cape breton. the first part of their work was now done. the telegraph had been carried beyond the united states through the british provinces to st. john's in newfoundland, a distance from new york of over one thousand miles. the cost of the line, thus far, had been about a million of dollars, and of this the whole burden, with but trifling exceptions, had fallen upon the original projectors--mr. field having put in over two hundred thousand dollars in money--and mr. cooper, mr. taylor, and mr. roberts each a little less. no other contributors beyond the six original subscribers had come, except professor morse, mr. robert w. lowber, mr. wilson g. hunt, and mr. john w. brett. the list of directors and officers remained as it was at first, except that this year, , mr. white died, and his place as director was filled by mr. hunt, and that mr. field was chosen vice-president, and mr. lowber secretary. in all the operations of the company thus far, the various negotiations, the plan of the work, the oversight of its execution, and the correspondence with the officers and others, mainly devolved upon mr. field. and so at length, after two long and weary years, these bold projectors had accomplished half their work. they had passed over the land, and under the gulf of st. lawrence, and having reached the farthest point of the american coast, they now stood upon the cliffs of newfoundland, looking off upon the wide sea. footnotes: [a] one or two exceptions there were, not to be forgotten. professor william thomson, of the university of glasgow, then a young man, but full of the enthusiasm of science, was already prepared to welcome such a project, with confidence of success. as early as october and november, , he wrote to the secretary of the royal society of london, declaring his belief in its practicability. the letters are published in the proceedings of the royal society for . such faith was not visionary, for it was based on clearer knowledge and more thorough investigation, and gave promise of those eminent services which this gentleman was afterwards to render to the cause of electrical science. mr. c. f. varley, also, was one of the first to perceive the possibility of an ocean telegraph, as he was to contribute greatly to its final success. [b] the letters of mr. taylor, which first appeared in the new york tribune have been since collected in one of his volumes of travel. mr. o'brien, a very brilliant writer, who afterward fell in our civil war, fighting bravely for his adopted country, furnished some spirited letters to the times. but mr. mullaly, who appeared for the herald, was the most persevering attendant on the telegraph, and the most indefatigable correspondent. he accompanied not only this expedition, but several others. he was on board the niagara in , and again in both the expeditions of ; and on the final success of the cable, prepared a volume, which was published by the appletons, giving a history of the enterprise. this contains the fullest account of all those expeditions which has been given to the public. i have had frequent occasion to refer to his book, and can bear witness to the interest of the narrative. it is written with spirit, and doubtless would have had a longer life, if the cable itself had not come to an untimely end. chapter v. the deep-sea soundings. when a landsman, born far away among the mountains, comes down to the coast, and stands for the first time on the shore of the sea, it excites in him a feeling of awe and wonder, not unmingled with terror. there it lies, a level surface, with nothing that lifts up its head like a peak of his native hills. and yet it is so vast, stretching away to the horizon, and all over the sides of the round world; with its tides and currents that sweep from the equator to the pole; with its unknown depths and its ceaseless motion; that it is to him the highest emblem of majesty and of power--a not unworthy symbol of god himself. in proportion to its mystery is the terror which hangs over it. a vague dread always surrounds the unknown. and what so unknown as the deep, unfathomable sea? for thousands of years the sails of ships, like winged birds, have skimmed over it, yet it has remained the one thing in nature beyond alike man's knowledge and his power: man marks the earth with ruin, his control stops with the shore. and the little that has been known of the ocean has been chiefly of its surface, of the winds that blow over it, and the waves that are lifted up on high. we knew somewhat of its tides and currents as observed in different parts of the earth. we saw off our coast the great gulf stream--that steady flow of waters, so mighty and mysterious, which, issuing out of the tropical regions, poured its warm current, sixty miles broad, right through the cold waters of the north atlantic; and sweeping round, sent the airs of a softer climate over all the countries of western europe. old voyagers told us of the trade-winds that blew across the pacific, and of terrible monsoons in china and indian seas. but all that did not reveal what was going on a hundred fathoms below the surface. these old sailors had marvellous tales of indian pearl-divers, who, holding their breath, plunged to the depth of a few hundred feet; but they came up half-dead, with but little to tell except of the frightful monsters of the deep. the diving-bell was let down over sunken wrecks, but the divers came up only with tales of riches and ruin, of gold and gems and dead men's bones that lay mingled together on the deep sea floor. was the bottom of the sea all like this? was it a vast realm of death, the sepulchre of the world? no man could tell us. poets might sing of the caves of ocean, but no eye of science had yet penetrated those awful depths, which the storms never reach. it is indeed marvellous how little was known, up to a very recent date, of the true character of the ocean. navigators had often tried to find out how deep it was. when lying becalmed on a tranquil sea, they had amused themselves by letting down a long line, weighted with a cannon-ball, to see if they could touch bottom. but the results were very uncertain. sometimes the line ran out for miles and miles, but whether it was all the while descending, or was swayed hither and thither by mighty under-currents, could not be known. but this true character of the ocean it was necessary to determine, before it could be possible to pass the gulf of the atlantic. what was there on the bottom of the sea, where the cable was to find its resting place? was that ocean-bed a wide level plain, or had it been heaved up by volcanic forces into a hundred mountain-peaks, with many a gorge and precipice between? such was the character of a part of the basin of the ocean. here and there, all over the globe, are islands, like the peak of teneriffe, thrown up in some fierce bursting of the crust of our planet, that shoot up in tremendous cliffs from the sea. who shall say that the same cliffs do not shoot down below the waves a thousand fathoms deep? and might there not be such islands, which did not show their heads above the surface, lying in the track between europe and america: or perchance a succession of mountain ranges, over which the cable would have to be stretched, and where hanging from the heights it would swing with the tide, till at last it snapped and fell into the abyss below? such at least were possible dangers to be encountered; and it was not safe to advance a step till the basin of the north atlantic was explored. the progress of invention, so rapid on land, at length found a way of penetrating the sea, and even of turning up its bottom to the gaze of men. to measure the depth with something like mathematical accuracy, an instrument was introduced known among nautical men as massey's indicator, the method of which is very clearly explained in an article which appeared in one of the new york papers, (the times,) on the deep-sea soundings made for the atlantic telegraph: "the old system is with a small line, marked at distances of one hundred fathoms, and with a weight of thirty or fifty pounds, the depth being told by the length of line run out. this is, of course, the most natural apparatus that suggests itself, and has been in use from the earliest ages. experience has given directions for its use, avoiding some of the grosser causes of error from driftage and other causes. yet its success in immense ocean depths is problematical, and a problem decided in the negative by many of the first scientific authorities at home and abroad. in the mechanical improvements of the last half-century substitutes for this simple but rather uncertain method began to be devised. it was proposed to ascertain the depth by the amount of pressure, or by explosions under water, with other equally impracticable plans. at last was noticed the perfect regularity of the movements of a spirally-shaped wheel, on being drawn through the water. experiments proved that this regularity, when unaffected by other causes, could be relied on with perfect accuracy, and that an arrangement of cog-wheels would register its revolutions with mathematical precision. very soon it came in use as a ship's log. so perfect was their precision, that they were even introduced in scientific surveys. base lines, where the nicest accuracy is required, were run with them, and we have the highest authority of the royal navy for believing that they never failed. at this point it was proposed to apply them in a perpendicular as well as in a horizontal motion through the water. massey's apparatus promising to solve those problems of submarine geography left unsolved by the old method of obtaining depth with a simple line and sinker, and this more especially as some causes of error, considerable on the surface, disappear in the still water below." to make our knowledge of the sea complete, one thing more was wanting--a method not only of reaching the bottom, but of laying hold of it, and bringing it up to the light of day. this was now to be supplied. [illustration: brooke's deep sea sounding apparatus. a shows the instrument ready for sounding. it is very simple, consisting only of a cannon-ball, pierced with an iron rod, and held in its place by slings. as the ball goes down swiftly, it drives the rod into the bottom like the point of a spear, when an opening at the end catches the ooze in its iron lips. the same instant (see b) the slings loosen, the ball drops off, and the naked rod, c, with its "bite" is drawn up to the surface.] it is to the inventive genius of a lieutenant of the united states navy, mr. j. m. brooke, that the world owes the means of finding out what is at the bottom of the sea. this is by a very simple contrivance, by which the heavy weight, used to sink the measuring line, _is detached as soon as it strikes bottom_, leaving the line free so that it can be drawn up lightly and quickly to the surface without danger of breaking. below the weight, and driven by it into the ooze, is a rod, in which is an open valve, that now closes with a spring, by which it catches a cupful of the soil, which is thus brought up to the surface, to be placed under the microscope, and be subjected to the sharp eye of science. with this simple instrument the skilful seaman explores the bottom of the ocean by literally feeling over it. with a long line he dives to the very lowest depths, while the clasp at the end of it is like the tip of the elephant's trunk, serving as a delicate finger with which he picks up sand and shells that lie strewn on the floor of the deep. what important conclusions are derived from this inspection of the bottom of the sea, is well stated by lieutenant maury in the letter already quoted. in happy concurrence with this, as an additional preparation, a partial survey of the atlantic had been made the very year before this enterprise was begun, in . lieutenant berryman was the first who applied this new method of taking deep-sea soundings to that part of the atlantic lying between newfoundland and ireland, with results most surprising and satisfactory. but to remove all doubt it seemed desirable to have a fresh survey. to obtain this, mr. field went to washington and applied to the government in behalf of the company for a second expedition. the request was granted, and the arctic, under command of the same gallant lieutenant berryman, was assigned to this service. he sailed from new york on the eighteenth of july, , and the very next day mr. field left on the baltic for england, to organize the atlantic telegraph company. the arctic proceeded to st. john's, and thence with a clear eye and a steady hand, this true sailor went "sounding on his dim and perilous way" across the deep. in about three weeks he made the coast of ireland, having carried his survey along the great circle arc, which the telegraph was to follow as the nearest path from the old world to the new. the result fully confirmed his belief of the existence of a great plateau underneath the ocean, extending all the way from one hemisphere to the other. i cannot take leave of the name of this gallant officer, who rendered such services to science and to his country, without a word of tribute to his memory. lieutenant berryman is in his grave. he died in the navy of his country, worn out by his devotion to her service. when the great civil war broke out, he was placed in a position most painful to a man of large heart, who loved at once his country and the state in which he was born. he was a southerner, a native of winchester, va., and was assigned to duty in the south. at the first attack on southern forts and arsenals, he was in command of the wyandotte, in the harbor of pensacola, in florida. his officers, who were nearly all southerners, were in secret sympathy with the rebellion. all the influences around him, both on ship and on shore, were such as might have seduced a weaker man from his loyalty. but, to his honor, he never hesitated for a moment. he stood firm and loyal to his flag. not knowing whom to trust, he had to keep watch day and night against surprise and treachery. it was the testimony of lieutenant slemmer, then in command of fort pickens, that but for the ceaseless exertions of lieutenant berryman not only the ship but the fort would have been lost. but this service to his country cost him his life. his constant exertions brought on a brain fever, of which he died. his wife, also a native of winchester, when the war came near her early home, removed to baltimore, saying that "she would not live under any other flag than that under which her husband had lived and died." it was to the honor of the american navy, to have led the way in these deep-sea soundings. but after this second voyage of exploration, mr. field applied to the british admiralty, "to make what further soundings might be necessary between ireland and newfoundland, and to verify those made by lieutenant berryman." it was in response to this application that the government sent out the following year a vessel to make still another survey of the same ocean-path. this was the steamer cyclops, which was placed under lieutenant commander joseph dayman, of the british navy, an officer who had been with captain sir james ross when he made his deep-sea soundings in the south atlantic in , where he attained a depth of twenty-six hundred and sixty-seven fathoms; and who by his intelligence and zeal, was admirably fitted for the work. to speak now of this _third_ survey, is anticipating in time. but it will serve the purpose of unity and clearness in the narrative, to include all these deep-sea soundings in one chapter. he was directed to proceed to the harbor of valentia in ireland, and thence to follow, as nearly as possible, along the arc of a great circle to newfoundland. "the soundings for the first few miles from the coast should be frequent, decreasing as you draw off shore." these orders were thoroughly executed. every pains was taken to make the information obtained precise and exact. whenever a sounding was to be taken, the ship was hove to, and the bow kept as nearly as possible in the same spot, so that the line might descend perpendicularly. this was repeated every few miles until they had got far out into the atlantic, where the general equality of the depths rendered it necessary to cast the line only every twenty or thirty miles. thus the survey was made complete, and the results obtained were of the greatest value in determining the physical geography of the sea. the conclusions of commander dayman confirmed in general those of lieutenant berryman, though in comparing the charts prepared by the two, we observe some differences which ought to be noticed. both agree as to the general character of the bottom of the ocean along this latitude--that it is a vast plain, like the steppes of siberia. yet on the chart of dayman the floor of the sea seems _not such a dead level_ as on that of berryman. (this may be partly owing to a difference of route, as dayman passed a little to the north of the track of berryman.) there are more unequal depths, which in the small space of a chart, appear like hills and valleys. yet when we consider the wide distances passed over, these inequalities seem not greater than the undulations on our western prairies. "this space," says dayman, "has been named by maury the telegraphic plateau, and although by multiplying the soundings upon it, we have depths ranging from fourteen hundred and fifty to twenty-four hundred fathoms, these are comparatively small inequalities in its surface, and present no new difficulty to the project of laying the cable across the ocean. their importance vanishes when the extent of the space over which they are distributed (thirty degrees of longitude) is considered." [illustration: bed of the atlantic, north and south, through the cape de verds, azores, and telegraph plateau.] according to berryman and dayman both, the ocean in its deepest part on this plateau, measured but two thousand and three or four hundred fathoms, or about fourteen thousand feet--a depth of but little over two and a half miles. this is not great, compared with the enormous depths in other parts of the atlantic;[a] yet that it is _something_ may be realized from the fact that if the peak of teneriffe were here "cast into the sea," it would sink out of sight, island, mountain and all, while even the lofty head of mont blanc would be lifted but a few hundred feet above the waves. the only exception to this uniform depth, lies about two hundred miles off the coast of ireland, where within a space of about a dozen miles, the depth sinks from five hundred and fifty to seventeen hundred and fifty fathoms! "in ° ' west," says dayman, "we have five hundred and fifty fathoms rock, and in ° ' west we have seventeen hundred and fifty fathoms ooze. this is the greatest dip in the whole ocean." "in little more than ten miles of distance a change of depth occurs, amounting to seventy-two hundred feet." this is indeed a tremendous plunge from the hard rock into the slime of the sea. the same sharp declivity was noticed by berryman, and has been observed in the several attempts to lay the cable. thus in the second expedition of , as the agamemnon was approaching the coast of ireland, we read in the report of her voyage: "about five o'clock in the evening, the steep submarine mountain which divides the telegraphic plateau from the irish coast, was reached; and the sudden shallowing of the water had a very marked effect on the cable, causing the strain on, and the speed of it, to lessen every minute. a great deal of slack was paid out to allow for inequalities which might exist, though undiscovered by the sounding-line." this submarine mountain was then regarded as the chief point of danger in the whole bed of the atlantic, and as the principal source of anxiety in laying a cable across the ocean. yet, after all, the ascent or descent of less than a mile and a half in ten miles, is not an impassable grade. more recent soundings reduce this still farther. captain hoskins, of the royal navy, afterwards made a more careful survey of this precipitous sea bottom, and with results much more favorable. the side of the mountain, it is now said, is not very much steeper than holborn hill in london, or murray hill in new york.[b] but the best answer to fears on this point, is the fact that in , , and , the cable passed over it without difficulty. in the niagara was a hundred miles farther to sea, when the cable broke. in the strain was not increased more than a hundred pounds. in the final expedition, that of , this declivity was passed over without difficulty or danger. next to the depth of the ocean, it was important to ascertain the nature of its bottom. what was it--a vast bed of rock, the iron-bound crust of the globe, hardened by internal fires, and which, bending as a vault over the still glowing centre of the earth, bore up on its mighty arches the weight of all the oceans? or was it mere sand like the sea-shore? or ooze as soft as that of a mill-pond? the pressure of a column of water two miles high would be equal to that of four hundred atmospheres. would not this weight alone be enough to crush any substance that could reach that tremendous depth? these were questions which remained to be answered, but on which depended the possibility of laying a cable at the bottom of the atlantic. by the ingenious contrivance of lieutenant brooke, the problem was solved, for we got hold of fragments of the under-coating of the sea; and to our amazement, instead of finding the ocean bound round with thick ribs of granite, its inner lining was found to be soft as a silken vest. the soil brought up from the bottom was not even of the hardness of sand or gravel. it was mere ooze, like that of our rivers, and was as soft as the moss that clings to old, damp stones on the river's brink. at first it was thought by lieutenant berryman to be common clay, but being carefully preserved, and subjected to a powerful microscope, it was found to be composed of shells, too small to be discovered by the naked eye! this was a revelation of the myriad forms of animated existence which fill the sea: a plenitude of life that is more wonderful by contrast. as maury well puts it: "the ocean teems with life, we know. of the four elements of the old philosophers--fire, earth, air, and water--perhaps the sea most of all abounds with living creatures. the space occupied on the surface of our planet by the different families of animals and their remains are inversely as the size of the individual. the smaller the animal, the greater the space occupied by his remains. take the elephant and his remains, or a microscopic animal and his, and compare them. the contrast, as to space occupied, is as striking as that of the coral reef or island with the dimensions of the whale. the graveyard that would hold the corallines is larger than the graveyard that would hold the elephants."[c] these little creatures, whose remains were thus found at the bottom of the ocean, probably did not live there, for there all is dark, and shells, like flowers, need the light and warmth of the all-reviving sun. it was their sepulchre, but not their dwelling-place. probably they lived near the surface of the ocean, and after their short life, sunk to the tranquil waters below. what a work of life and death had been going on for ages in the depths of the sea! myriads upon myriads, ever since the morning of creation, had been falling like snow-flakes, till their remains literally covered the bottom of the deep. equally significant was the fact that these shells were _unbroken_. not only were they there, but preserved in a perfect form. organisms the most minute and delicate, fragile as drooping flowers, had yet sunk and slept uninjured. the same power which watches over the fall of a sparrow had kept these frail and tender things, and after their brief existence, had laid them gently on the bosom of the mighty mother for their eternal rest. the bearing of this discovery on the problem of a submarine telegraph was obvious. for it too was to lie on the ocean-bed, beside and among these relics that had so long been drifting down upon the watery plain. and if these tiny shells slept there unharmed, surely an iron chord might rest there in safety. there were no swift currents down there; no rushing waves agitated that sunless sea. there the waters moved not; and there might rest the great nerve that was to pass from continent to continent. and so far as injury from the surrounding elements was concerned, there it might remain, whispering the thoughts of successive generations of men, till the sea should give up its dead. footnotes: [a] "the ocean bed of the north atlantic is a curious study; in some parts furrowed by currents, in others presenting banks, the accumulations perhaps of the débris of these ocean rivers during countless ages. to the west, the gulf stream pours along in a bed from one mile to a mile and a half in depth. to the east of this, and south of the great banks, is a basin, eight or ten degrees square, where the bottom attains a greater depression than perhaps the highest peaks of the andes or himalayas--six miles of line have failed to reach the bottom! taking a profile of the atlantic basin in our own latitude, we find a far greater depression than any mountain elevation on our own continent. four or five alleghanies would have to be piled on each other, and on them added fremont's peak, before their point would show itself above the surface. between the azores and the mouth of the tagus this decreases to about three miles." [b] the results obtained are thus summed up in the london times: "the dangerous part of this course has hitherto been supposed to be the sudden dip or bank which occurs off the west coast of ireland, where the water was supposed to deepen in the course of a few miles from about three hundred fathoms to nearly two thousand. such a rapid descent has naturally been regarded with alarm by telegraphic engineers, and this alarm has led to a most careful sounding survey of the whole supposed bank by captain dayman, acting under the instructions of the admiralty. the result of this shows that the supposed precipitous bank, or submarine cliff, is a gradual slope of nearly sixty miles. over this long slope the difference between its greatest height and greatest depth is only eighty-seven hundred and sixty feet; so that the average incline is, in round numbers, about one hundred and forty-five feet per mile. a good gradient on a railway is now generally considered to be one in one hundred feet, or about fifty-three in a mile; so that the incline on this supposed bank is only about three times that of an ordinary railway. in fact, as far as soundings can demonstrate any thing, there are few slopes in the bed of the atlantic as steep as that of holborn hill. in no part is the bottom rocky, and with the exception of a few miles, which are shingly, only ooze, mud, or sand is to be found." [c] physical geography of the sea. chapter vi. the work begun in england. up to this time the telegraph, which was destined to pass the sea, had been purely an american enterprise. it had been begun, and for over two years had been carried on, wholly by american capital. "our little company," said mr. field ten years after, "raised and expended over a million and a quarter of dollars before an englishman paid a single pound sterling." mr. brett was the first one to take a few shares. but this was not to the discredit of england, for the american public had done no better. not a dollar had been raised this side the atlantic, outside of the little circle in which the scheme had its origin. no stock or bonds were put upon the market; no man was asked for a subscription. if they wanted money, they drew their checks for it. at one time, indeed, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of bonds were issued, but they were at once taken wholly by themselves. but, as the time was now come when the long-meditated attempt was to be made to carry the telegraph across the ocean, it was fitting that great britain, whose shores it was to touch, should join in the work. accordingly, in the summer of , after finishing all that he could do in america, mr. field sailed with his family for england. the very day before he embarked, he had the pleasure to see his friend, lieutenant berryman, off on his second voyage to make soundings across the atlantic. in london he sought at once mr. brett, with whom in his two former visits to england he had already discussed his project, and found in him a hearty coöperator. as we go on with our story, it is a melancholy satisfaction to refer to one and another worker in this enterprise, who lived not to see its last and greatest triumph. mr. brett, like berryman, is dead. but he did not go to his grave till after a life of usefulness and honor. he was one of the men of the new era--of the school of stephenson and brunel--who believed in the marvellous achievements yet to be wrought by human invention, turning to the service of man the wonders of scientific discovery. he was one of the first to see the boundless possibilities of the telegraph, and to believe that what had passed over the land might pass under the sea. he was the first to lay a cable across the british channel, and thus to bring into instantaneous communication the two great capitals of europe--an achievement which, though small compared with what has since been done, was then so marvellous, that the intelligence of its success was received with surprise and incredulity. many could not and would not believe it. even after messages were received in london from paris, there were those who declared that it was an imposition on the public, with as much proud scorn as some a few years later scouted the very idea that a message had ever passed over the atlantic telegraph! this friendship of mr. brett--both to the enterprise and to mr. field personally--remained to the last. in every voyage to england the latter found--however others doubted or despaired--that mr. brett was always the same--full of hope and confidence. in , when they met in london, he was unshaken in faith, and urgent to have the great enterprise renewed. the triumph was not far off, but he was not to live to see it. but, though he passed away before the final victory, he did his part toward bringing it on, and no history of this great enterprise can overlook his eminent services. to mr. brett, therefore, mr. field went first to consult in regard to his project of a telegraph across the ocean. this was a part of the design embraced in the original organization of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company; and when mr. field went to england, he was empowered to receive subscriptions to that company, so as to enlarge its capital, and thus include in one corporation the whole line from new york to london; or to organize a new company, which should lay a cable across the atlantic, and there join the newfoundland line. but before an enterprise so vast and so new could be commended to the commercial public of great britain, there were many details to be settled. the mechanical and scientific problems already referred to, whether a cable could be laid across the ocean; and if so, whether it could be worked, were to be considered anew. the opinions of lieutenant maury and of professor morse were published in england, and arrested the attention of scientific men. but john bull is slow of belief, and asked for more evidence. the thing was too vast to be undertaken rashly. as yet there was no experience to decide the possibility of a telegraph across the ocean. the longest line which had been laid was three hundred miles. this caution, which is a national trait of englishmen, will not be regarded as a fault by those who consider that in proportion as they are slow to embark in any new enterprise, are they resolute and determined in carrying it out. to resolve these difficult problems, mr. field sought counsel of the highest engineering authorities of great britain, and of her most eminent scientific men. to their honor, all showed the deepest interest in the project, and gave it freely the benefit of their knowledge. first, as to the possibility of laying a cable in the deep sea, mr. field had witnessed one attempt of the kind--that in the gulf of st. lawrence the year before--an attempt which had failed. his experience, therefore, was not encouraging. if they found so much difficulty in laying a cable seventy miles long, how could they hope to lay one of two thousand miles across the stormy atlantic? this was a question for the engineers. to solve the problem, required experiments almost without number. it was now that the most important services were rendered by glass, elliot & co., of london, a firm which had begun within a few years the manufacture of sea-cables, and was to write its name in all the waters of the world. aided by the skill of their admirable engineer, mr. canning, they now manufactured cables almost without end, applying to them every possible test. at the same time, mr. field took counsel of robert stephenson and george parker bidder, both of whom manifested a deep interest in the success of the enterprise. not less cordial was mr. brunel, who made many suggestions in regard to the form of the cable, and the manner in which it should be laid. he was then building the great eastern; and one day he took mr. field down to blackwall to see it, and, pointing to the monstrous hull which was rising on the banks of the thames, said: "there is the ship to lay the atlantic cable!" little did he think that ten years after, that ship would be employed in this service; and in this final victory over the sea, would redeem all the misfortunes of her earlier career. among the difficulties to be encountered, was that of finding a perfect insulator. without insulation, telegraphic communication by electricity is impossible. on land, where wires are carried on the tops of poles, the air itself is a sufficient insulator. a few glass rings at the points where the wire passes through the iron staples by which it is supported, and the insulation is complete. but in the sea the electricity would be instantly dissipated, unless some material could be found which should insulate a conductor sunk in water, as completely as if it were raised in air. but what could thus inclose the lightning, and keep it fast while flying from one continent to the other? here again it seemed as if divine wisdom had anticipated the coming of this great enterprise, and provided in the realm of nature every material needed for its success. it was at least a happy coincidence that only a few years before there had been found, in the forests of the malayan archipelago, a substance till then unknown to the world, but which answered completely this new demand. this was gutta-percha, which is impenetrable by water, and at the same time a bad conductor of electricity; so that it forms at once a perfect protection and insulation to a telegraph passing through the sea. in the experiments that were made to test the value of this material in the grander use to which it was to be applied, no man rendered greater service than mr. samuel statham, of the london gutta-percha works--a name to be gratefully remembered in the early history of the atlantic telegraph. the mechanical difficulties removed, and the insulation provided, there remained yet the great scientific problem: could a message be sent two thousand miles under the atlantic? the ingenuity of man might devise some method of laying a cable across the sea, but of what use were it, if the electric current should shrink from the dark abyss? it was in prosecuting inquiries to resolve this problem, that mr. field became acquainted with two gentlemen who were to be soon after associated with him in the organization of the atlantic telegraph company. these were mr. charles t. bright, afterward knighted for his part in laying the atlantic cable in , and dr. edward o. whitehouse, both well known in england, the former as an engineer, and the latter for his experiments in electro-magnetism, as applied to the business of telegraphing. he had invented an instrument by which to ascertain and register the velocity of electric currents through submarine cables. both these gentlemen were full of the ardor of science, and entered on this new project with the zeal which the prospect of so great a triumph might inspire. with them was now to be associated our distinguished countryman, professor morse. fortunately he was at this time in london, and gave his invaluable aid to the experiments which were made to determine the possibility of telegraphic communication at great distances under the sea. the result of his experiments he communicates in a letter to mr. field: "london, five o'clock a.m., "october , . "my dear sir: as the electrician of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, it is with the highest gratification that i have to apprise you of the result of our experiments of this morning upon a single continuous conductor of more than two thousand miles in extent, a distance you will perceive sufficient to cross the atlantic ocean, from newfoundland to ireland. "the admirable arrangements made at the magnetic telegraph office in old broad street, for connecting ten subterranean gutta-percha insulated conductors, of over two hundred miles each, so as to give one continuous length of more than two thousand miles during the hours of the night, when the telegraph is not commercially employed, furnished us the means of conclusively settling, by actual experiment, the question of the practicability as well as the practicality[a] of telegraphing through our proposed atlantic cable. "this result had been thrown into some doubt by the discovery, more than two years since, of certain phenomena upon subterranean and submarine conductors, and had attracted the attention of electricians, particularly of that most eminent philosopher, professor faraday, and that clear-sighted investigator of electrical phenomena, dr. whitehouse; and one of these phenomena, to wit, the perceptible retardation of the electric current, threatened to perplex our operations, and required careful investigation before we could pronounce with certainty the commercial practicability of the ocean telegraph. "i am most happy to inform you that, as a crowning result of a long series of experimental investigation and inductive reasoning upon this subject, the experiments under the direction of dr. whitehouse and mr. bright, which i witnessed this morning--in which the induction coils and receiving magnets, as modified by these gentlemen, were made to actuate one of my recording instruments--have most satisfactorily resolved all doubts of the practicability as well as practicality of operating the telegraph from newfoundland to ireland. "although we telegraphed signals at the rate of two hundred and ten, two hundred and forty-one, and, according to the count at one time, even of two hundred and seventy per minute upon my telegraphic register, (which speed, you will perceive, is at a rate commercially advantageous,) these results were accomplished notwithstanding many disadvantages in our arrangements of a temporary and local character--disadvantages which will not occur in the use of our submarine cable. "having passed the whole night with my active and agreeable collaborators, dr. whitehouse and mr. bright, without sleep, you will excuse the hurried and brief character of this note, which i could not refrain from sending you, since our experiments this morning settle the scientific and commercial points of our enterprise satisfactorily. "with respect and esteem, your obedient servant, "samuel f. b. morse." a week later, he wrote again, confirming his former impressions, thus: "london, october , . "my dear sir: after having given the deepest consideration to the subject of our successful experiments the other night, when we signalled clearly and rapidly through an unbroken circuit of subterranean conducting wire, over two thousand miles in length, i sit down to give you the result of my reflections and calculations. "there can be no question but that, with a cable containing a single conducting wire, of a size not exceeding that through which we worked, and with equal insulation, it would be easy to telegraph from ireland to newfoundland at a speed of at least from eight to ten words per minute; nay, more: the varying rates of speed at which we worked, depending as they did upon differences in the arrangement of the apparatus employed, do of themselves prove that even a higher rate than this is attainable. take it, however, at ten words in the minute, and allowing ten words for name and address, we can safely calculate upon the transmission of a twenty-word message in three minutes; "twenty such messages in the hour; "four hundred and eighty in the twenty-four hours, or fourteen thousand four hundred words per day. "such are the capabilities of a single wire cable fairly and moderately computed. "it is, however, evident to me, that by improvements in the arrangement of the signals themselves, aided by the adoption of a code or system constructed upon the principles of the best nautical code, as suggested by dr. whitehouse, we may at least double the speed in the transmission of our messages. "as to the structure of the cable itself, the last specimen which i examined with you seemed to combine so admirably the necessary qualities of strength, flexibility, and lightness, with perfect insulation, that i can no longer have any misgivings about the ease and safety with which it will be submerged. "in one word, the doubts are resolved, the difficulties overcome, success is within our reach, and the great feat of the century must shortly be accomplished. "i would urge you, if the manufacture can be completed within the time, (and all things are possible now,) to press forward the good work, and not to lose the chance of laying it during the ensuing summer. "before the close of the present month, i hope to be again landed safely on the other side of the water, and i full well know, that on all hands the inquiries of most interest with which i shall be met, will be about the ocean telegraph. "much as i have enjoyed my european trip this year, it would have enhanced the gratification which i have derived from it more than i can describe to you, if on my return to america, i could be the first bearer to my friends of the welcome intelligence that the great work had been begun, by the commencement of the manufacture of the cable to connect ireland with the line of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, now so successfully completed to st. john's. "respectfully, your obedient servant, "samuel f. b. morse." these experiments and others removed the doubts of scientific men. professor faraday, in spite of the law of the retardation of electricity on long circuits, which it was said he had discovered, and which would render it impossible to work a line of such length as from ireland to newfoundland, now declared his full conviction that it was within the bounds of possibility. the passage of electricity might not be absolutely instantaneous, or have the swiftness of the solar beam, yet it would be rapid enough for all practical purposes. when mr. field asked him how long it would take for the electricity to pass from london to new york, he answered: "possibly one second!" thus fortified by the highest scientific and engineering authorities, the projectors of an ocean telegraph were now ready to bring it before the british public, and to see what support could be found from the english government and the english people. mr. field first addressed himself to the government. without waiting for the company to be fully organized, with true american eagerness and impatience, he wrote a letter to the admiralty asking for a fresh survey of the route to be traversed, and for the aid of government ships to lay the cable. he also addressed a letter to lord clarendon, stating the large design which they had conceived, and asking for it the aid which was due to what concerned the honor and interest of england. the reply was prompt and courteous, inviting him to an interview for the purpose of a fuller explanation. accordingly, mr. field, with professor morse, called upon him at the foreign office, and spent an hour in conversation on the proposed undertaking. lord clarendon showed great interest, and made many inquiries. he was a little startled at the magnitude of the scheme, and the confident tone of the projectors, and asked pleasantly: "but, suppose you _don't_ succeed? suppose you make the attempt and fail--your cable is lost in the sea--then what will you do?" "charge it to profit and loss, and go to work to lay another," was the quick answer of mr. field, which amused him as a truly american reply. in conclusion, he desired him to put his request in writing, and, without committing the government, encouraged him to hope that britain would do all that might justly be expected in aid of this great international work. how nobly this promise was kept, time will show. while engaged in these negotiations, mr. field took his family to paris, and there met with a great loss in the sudden death of a favorite sister, who had accompanied them abroad. full of the sorrow of this event, and unfitted for business of any kind, he returned to london to find an invitation to go into the country and spend a few days with mr. james wilson, then secretary to the treasury, a man of great influence in the government, at his residence near bath; there to discuss quietly and at length the proposed aid to the atlantic telegraph. though he had but little spirit to go among strangers, he felt it his duty not to miss an opportunity to advance the cause he had so much at heart. the result of this visit was the following letter, received a few days later: "treasury chambers. nov. , . "sir: having laid before the lords commissioners of her majesty's treasury your letter of the th ultimo, addressed to the earl of clarendon, requesting, on behalf of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, certain privileges and protection in regard to the line of telegraph which it is proposed to establish between newfoundland and ireland, i am directed by their lordships to acquaint you that they are prepared to enter into a contract with the said telegraph company, based upon the following conditions, namely: " . it is understood that the capital required to lay down the line will be three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. " . her majesty's government engage to furnish the aid of ships to take what soundings may still be considered needful, or to verify those already taken, and favorably to consider any request that may be made to furnish aid by their vessels in laying down the cable. " . the british government, from the time of the completion of the line, and so long as it shall continue in working order, undertakes to pay at the rate of fourteen thousand pounds a year, being at the rate of four per cent. on the assumed capital, as a fixed remuneration for the work done on behalf of the government, in the conveyance outward and homeward of their messages. this payment to continue until the net profits of the company are equal to a dividend of six per cent., when the payment shall be reduced to ten thousand pounds a year, for a period of twenty-five years. "it is, however, understood that if the government messages in any year shall, at the usual tariff-rate charged to the public, amount to a larger sum, such additional payment shall be made as is equivalent thereto. " . that the british government shall have a priority in the conveyance of their messages over all others, subject to the exception only of the government of the united states, in the event of their entering into an arrangement with the telegraph company similar in principle to that of the british government, in which case the messages of the two governments shall have priority in the order in which they arrive at the stations. " . that the tariff of charges shall be fixed with the consent of the treasury, and shall not be increased, without such consent being obtained, as long as this contract lasts. "i am, sir, your obedient servant, "james wilson. "cyrus w. field, esq., jermyn street." with this encouragement and promise of aid, the projectors of a telegraph across the ocean now went forward to organize a company to carry out their design. mr. field, on arriving in england, had entered into an agreement with mr. brett to join their efforts for this purpose. with them were afterward united two others--sir charles bright, as engineer, and dr. whitehouse, as electrician. these four gentlemen agreed to form a new company, to be called the atlantic telegraph company, the object of which should be "to continue the existing line of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company to ireland, by making or causing to be made a submarine telegraph cable for the atlantic." as they were now ready to introduce the enterprise to the british public, mr. field issued a circular in the name of the newfoundland company, and as its vice-president, setting forth the great importance of telegraphic communication between the two hemispheres. the next step was to raise the capital. after the most careful estimates, it was thought that a cable could be made and laid across the atlantic for £ , . this was a large sum to ask from a public slow to move, and that lends a dull ear to all new schemes. but armed with facts and figures, with maps and estimates, with the opinions of engineers and scientific men, they went to work, not only in london, but in other parts of the kingdom. mr. field, in company with mr. brett, made a visit to liverpool and manchester, to address their chambers of commerce. i have now before me the papers of those cities, with reports of the meetings held and the speeches made, which show the vigor with which they pushed their enterprise. this energy was rewarded with success. the result justified their confidence. in a few weeks the whole capital was subscribed. it had been divided into three hundred and fifty shares of a thousand pounds each. of these, a hundred and one were taken in london, eighty-six in liverpool, thirty-seven in glasgow, twenty-eight in manchester, and a few in other parts of england. the grandeur of the design attracted public attention, and some subscribed solely from a noble wish to take part in such a work. among these were mr. thackeray and lady byron. mr. field subscribed £ , , and mr. brett £ , . but when the books were closed, it was found that they had more money subscribed than they required, so that in the final division of shares, there were allotted to mr. field eighty-eight, and to mr. brett twelve. mr. field's interest was thus one-fourth of the whole capital of the company. in taking so large a share, it was not his intention to carry this heavy load alone. it was too large a proportion for one man. but he took it for his countrymen. he thought one fourth of the stock should be held in this country, and did not doubt, from the eagerness with which three fourths had been taken in england, that the remainder would be at once subscribed in america. had he been able, on his return, to attend to his own interests in the matter, this expectation might have been realized; but, as we shall see, hardly did he set foot in new york, before he was obliged to hurry off to newfoundland on the business of the company, and when he returned the interest had subsided, so that it required very great exertions, continued through many months, to dispose of twenty-seven shares. thus he was by far the largest stockholder in england or america--his interest being over seven times that of mr. brett, who was the largest next to himself--and being more than double the amount held by all the other american shareholders put together. this was at least giving substantial proof of his own faith in the undertaking. but some may imagine that after all this burden was not so great as it seemed. in many stock companies the custom obtains of assigning to the projectors a certain portion of the stock as a bonus for getting up the company, which amount appears among the subscriptions to swell the capital. it is indeed subscribed, _but not paid_. so some have asked whether this large subscription of mr. field was not in part at least merely nominal? to this we answer, that a consideration _was_ granted to mr. field and his associates for their services in getting up the company, and for their exclusive rights, but this was a contingent interest in the profits of the enterprise, _to be allowed only after the cable was laid_. so that the whole amount here subscribed was a _bona-fide_ subscription, and paid in solid english gold. we have now before us the receipts of the bankers of the company for the whole amount, eighty-eight thousand pounds sterling. the capital being thus raised, it only remained to complete the organization of the company by the choice of a board of directors, and to make a contract for the cable. the company was organized in december, , by the choice of directors chiefly from the leading bankers and merchants of london and liverpool. the list included such honored names as samuel gurney, t. h. brooking, john w. brett, and t. a. hankey, of london; sir william brown, henry harrison, edward johnston, robert crosbie, george maxwell, and c. w. h. pickering, of liverpool; john pender and james dugdale, of manchester; and professor william thomson, ll.d., of glasgow. with these english directors were two of our countrymen, mr. george peabody and mr. c. m. lampson, who, residing abroad for more than a third of a century, did much in the commercial capital of the world to support the honor of the american name. mr. peabody's firm subscribed £ , , and mr. lampson £ , . the latter gave more time than any other director in london, except mr. brooking, the second vice-chairman, who, however, retired from the company after the first failure in , when mr. lampson was chosen to fill his place. the whole board was full of zeal and energy. all gave their services without compensation. it was the good fortune of the company to have, from the beginning, in the important position of secretary, a gentleman admirably qualified for the post. this was mr. george saward--a name familiar to all who have followed the fortunes of the telegraph, in england or america, since he has been the organ of communication with the press and the public; and with whom none ever had occasion to transact business without recognizing his intelligence and courtesy. the company being thus in working order, proceeded to make a contract for the manufacture of a cable to be laid across the atlantic. for many months the proper form and size of the cable had been the subject of constant experiments. the conditions were: to combine the greatest degree of strength with lightness and flexibility. it must be strong, or it would snap in the process of laying. yet it would not do to have it too large, for it would be unmanageable. mr. brett had already lost a cable in the mediterranean chiefly from its bulk. its size and stiffness made it hard to unwind it, while its enormous weight, when once it broke loose, caused it to run out with fearful velocity, till it was soon lost in the sea. it was only the year before, in september, , that this accident had occurred in laying the cable from sardinia to algeria. all was going on well, until suddenly, "about two miles, weighing sixteen tons, flew out with the greatest violence in four or five minutes, flying round even when the drums were brought to a dead stop, creating the greatest alarm for the safety of the men in the hold and for the vessel." this was partly owing to the character of the submarine surface over which they were passing. the bottom of the mediterranean is volcanic, and is broken up into mountains and valleys. the cable, doubtless, had just passed over some alpine height, and was descending into some fearful depth below; but chiefly it was owing to the great size and bulk of the cable. this was a warning to the atlantic company. the point to be aimed at was to combine the flexibility of a common ship's rope with the tenacity of iron. these conditions were thought to be united in the form that was adopted.[b] a contract was at once made for the manufacture of the cable, one half being given to messrs. glass, elliot & co., of london, and the other to messrs. r. s. newall & co., of liverpool. the whole was to be completed by the first of june, ready to be submerged in the sea. the company was organized on the ninth of december, and the very next day mr. field sailed for america, reaching new york on the twenty-fifth of december, after an absence of more than five months. footnotes: [a] professor morse was fond of the distinction between the words practical and practicable. a thing might be practicable, that is, possible of accomplishment, when it was not a practical enterprise, that is, one which could be worked to advantage. he here argues that the atlantic telegraph is both practicable, (or possible,) and at the same time a wise, practical undertaking. [b] on his return to america, many inquiries were addressed to mr. field in regard to the form and structure of the cable, in answer to which he wrote a letter of explanation in which he said: "no particular connected with this great project has been the subject of so much comment through the press as the form and structure of the telegraph cable. it may be well believed that the directors have not decided upon a matter so all-important to success, without availing themselves of the most eminent talent and experience which could be commanded. the practical history of submarine telegraphs dates from the successful submersion of the cable between dover and calais in , and advantage has been taken of whatever instruction this history could furnish or suggest. of the submarine cables heretofore laid down, without enumerating others, the one between dover and calais weighs six tons to the mile; that between spezzia and corsica, eight tons to the mile; that laid from varna to balaklava, and used during the war in the crimea, less than three hundred pounds to the mile; while the weight of the cable for the atlantic telegraph is between nineteen hundred pounds and one ton to the mile. this cable, to use the words of dr. whitehouse, 'is the result of many months thought, experiment, and trial. hundreds of specimens have been made, comprising every variety of form, size, and structure, and most severely tested as to their powers and capabilities; and the result has been the adoption of this, which we know to possess all the properties required, and in a far higher degree than any cable that has yet been laid. its flexibility is such as to make it as manageable as a small line, and its strength such that it will bear, in water, over six miles of its own weight suspended vertically.' the conducting medium consists not of one single straight copper-wire, but of seven wires of copper of the best quality, twisted round each other spirally, and capable of undergoing great tension without injury. this conductor is then enveloped in three separate coverings of gutta-percha, of the best quality, forming the core of the cable, round which tarred hemp is wrapped, and over this, the outside covering, consisting of eighteen strands of the best quality of iron-wire; each strand composed of seven distinct wires, twisted spirally, in the most approved manner, by machinery specially adapted to the purpose. the attempt to insulate more than one conducting-wire or medium would not only have increased the chances of failure of all of them, but would have necessitated the adoption of a proportionably heavier and more cumbrous cable. the tensile power of the outer or wire covering of the cable, being very much less than that of the conductor within it, the latter is protected from any such strain as can possibly rupture it or endanger its insulation without an entire fracture of the cable." chapter vii. seeking aid from congress. when mr. field reached home from abroad, he hoped for a brief respite. he had had a pretty hard campaign during the summer and autumn in england, and needed at least a few weeks of rest; but that was denied him. he landed in new york on christmas day, and was not allowed even to spend the new year with his family. there were interests of the company in newfoundland which required immediate attention, and it was important that one of the directors should go there without delay. as usual, it devolved upon him. he left at once for boston, where he took the steamer to halifax, and thence to st. john's. such a voyage may be very agreeable in summer, but in mid-winter it is not a pleasant thing to face the storms of those northern latitudes. the passage was unusually tempestuous. at st. john's he broke down, and was put under the care of a physician. but he did not stop to think of himself. the work for which he came was done; and though the physician warned him that it was a great risk to leave his bed, he took the steamer on her return, and was again in new york after a month's absence--a month of hardship, of exposure, and of suffering, such as he had long occasion to remember. the mention of this voyage came up a year afterward at a meeting of the atlantic telegraph company in london, when a resolution was offered, tendering mr. field a vote of thanks for "the great services he had rendered to the company by his untiring zeal, energy, and devotion." mr. brooking, the vice-chairman, had spent a large part of his life in newfoundland, and knew the dangers of that inhospitable coast, and in seconding the resolution he said: "it is now about a year and a half ago since i had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of my friend mr. field. it was he who initiated me into this company, and induced me to take an interest in it from its earliest stage. from that period to the present i have observed in mr. field the most determined perseverance, and the exercise of great talent, extraordinary assiduity and diligence, coupled with an amount of fortitude which has seldom been equalled. i have known him cross the atlantic in the depth of winter, and, within twenty-four hours after his arrival in new york, having ascertained that his presence was necessary in a distant british colony, he has not hesitated at once to direct his course thitherward. that colony is one with which i am intimately acquainted, having resided in it for upward of twenty years, and am enabled to speak of the hazards and danger which attend a voyage to it in winter. mr. field no sooner arrived at new york, in the latter part of december, than he got aboard a steamer for halifax, and proceeded to st. john's, newfoundland. in three weeks he accomplished there a very great object for this company. he procured the passage of an act of the legislature which has given to our company the right of establishing a footing on those shores. [the rights before conferred, it would seem, applied only to the newfoundland company.] that is only one of the acts which he has performed with a desire to promote the interests of this great enterprise." the very next day after his return from newfoundland, mr. field was called to washington, to seek the aid of his own government to the atlantic telegraph. the english government had proffered the most generous aid, both in ships to lay the cable, and in an annual subsidy of £ , . it was on every account desirable that this should be met by corresponding liberality on the part of the american government. before he left england, he had sent home the letter received from the lords commissioners of the treasury; and thereupon the directors of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company had inclosed a copy to the president, with a letter asking for the same aid in ships, and in an annual sum of $ , , [equivalent to £ , ,] to be paid for the government messages, the latter to be conditioned on the success of the telegraph, and to be continued only so long as it was in full operation. they urged with reason that the english government had acted with great liberality--not only toward the enterprise, but toward our own government. although both ends of the line were in the british possessions, it had claimed no exclusive privileges, but had stipulated for perfect equality between the united states and great britain. the agreement expressly provided "that the british government shall have a priority in the conveyance of their messages over all others, _subject to the exception only of the government of the united states_, in the event of their entering into an arrangement with the telegraph company similar in principle to that of the british government, in which case the messages of the two governments shall have priority in the order in which they arrive at the stations." the letter to the president called attention to this generous offer--an offer which it was manifestly to the advantage of our government to accept--and added: "the company will enter into a contract with the government of the united states on the same terms and conditions as it has made with the british government." they asked only for the same recognition and aid which they had received in england. this surely was not a very bold request. it was natural that american citizens should think that in a work begun by americans, and of which, if successful, their country would reap largely the honor and the advantage, they might expect the aid from their own government which they had already received from a foreign power. it was, therefore, not without a mixture of surprise and mortification that they learned that the proposal in congress had provoked a violent opposition, and that the bill was likely to be defeated. such was the attitude of affairs when mr. field returned from newfoundland, and which led him to hasten to washington. he now found that it was much easier to deal with the english than with the american government. whatever may be said of the respective methods of administration, it must be confessed that the forms of english procedure furnish greater facility in the despatch of business. a contract can be made by the lords of the treasury without waiting the action of parliament. the proposal is referred to two or three intelligent officers of the government--perhaps even to a single individual--on whose report it takes action without further delay. thus it is probable that the action of the british government was decided wholly by the recommendation of mr. wilson, formed after the visit of mr. field. but in our country we do things differently. here it would be considered a stretch of power for any administration to enter into a contract with a private company--a contract binding the government for a period of twenty-five years, and involving an annual appropriation of money--without the action of congress. this is a safeguard against reckless and extravagant expenditure, but, as one of the penalties we pay for our more popular form of government, in which every thing has to be referred to the people, it involves delay, and sometimes the defeat of wise and important public measures. besides--shall we confess it to our shame--another secret influence often appears in american legislation, which has defeated many an act demanded by the public good--the influence of the lobby! this now began to show itself in opposition. it had been whispered in washington that the gentlemen in new york who were at the head of this enterprise were very rich; and a measure coming from such a source surely ought to be made to pay tribute before it was allowed to pass. this was a new experience. those few weeks in washington were worse than being among the icebergs off the coast of newfoundland. the atlantic cable has had many a kink since, but never did it seem to be entangled in such a hopeless twist as when it got among the politicians. but it would be very unjust to suppose that there were no better influences in our halls of congress. there were then--as there have always been in our history--some men of large wisdom and of a noble patriotic pride, who in such a measure thought only of the good of their country and of the triumph of science and of civilization. two years after--in august, --when the atlantic telegraph proved at last a reality, and the new world was full of its fame, mr. seward, in a speech at auburn, thus referred to the ordeal it had to pass through in congress: "the two great countries of which i have spoken, [england and america,] are now ringing with the praises of cyrus w. field, who chiefly has brought this great enterprise to its glorious and beneficent consummation. you have never heard his story; let me give you a few points in it, as a lesson that there is no condition of life in which a man, endowed with native genius, a benevolent spirit, and a courageous patience, may not become a benefactor of nations and of mankind." after speaking of the efforts by which this new york merchant "brought into being an association of americans and englishmen, which contributed from surplus wealth the capital necessary as a basis for the enterprise"; he adds: "it remained to engage the consent and the activity of the governments of great britain and the united states. that was all that remained. such consent and activity on the part of some one great nation of europe was all that remained needful for columbus when he stood ready to bring a new continent forward as a theatre of the world's civilization. but in each case that effort was the most difficult of all. cyrus w. field, by assiduity and patience, first secured consent and conditional engagement on the part of great britain, and then, less than two years ago, he repaired to washington. the president and secretary of state individually favored his proposition; but the jealousies of parties and sections in congress forbade them to lend it their official sanction and patronage. he appealed to me. i drew the necessary bill. with the generous aid of others, northern representatives, and the indispensable aid of the late thomas j. rusk, a senator from texas, that bill, after a severe contest and long delay, was carried through the senate of the united states by the majority, if i remember rightly, of one vote, and escaped defeat in the house of representatives with equal difficulty. i have said the aid of mr. rusk was indispensable. if any one has wondered why i, an extreme northern man, loved and lamented thomas j. rusk, an equally extreme southern man, he has here an explanation. there was no good thing which, as it seemed to me, i could not do in congress with his aid. when he died, it seemed to me that no good thing could be done by any one. such was the position of cyrus w. field at that stage of the great enterprise. but, thus at last fortified with capital derived from new york and london, and with the navies of great britain and the united states at his command, he has, after trials that would have discouraged any other than a true discoverer, brought the great work to a felicitous consummation. and now the queen of great britain and the president of the united states stand waiting his permission to speak, and ready to speak at his bidding; and the people of these two great countries await only the signal from him to rush into a fraternal embrace which will prove the oblivion of ages of suspicion, of jealousies and of anger." mr. seward might well refer with pride to the part he took in sustaining this enterprise. he was from the beginning its firmest supporter. the bill was introduced into the senate by him, and was carried through mainly by his influence, seconded by mr. rusk, mr. douglas, and one or two others. it was introduced on the ninth of january, and came up for consideration on the twenty-first. its friends had hoped that it might pass with entire unanimity. but such was the opposition, that the discussion lasted two days. the report shows that it was a subject of animated and almost angry debate, which brought out the secret of the opposition to aid being given by the government. probably no measure was ever introduced in congress for the help of any commercial enterprise, that some member, imagining that it was to benefit a particular section, did not object that it was "unconstitutional"! this objection was well answered in this case by mr. benjamin, of louisiana, who asked: "if we have a right to hire a warehouse at port mahon, in the mediterranean, for storing naval stores, have we not a right to hire a company to carry our messages? i should as soon think of questioning the constitutional power of the government to pay freight to a vessel for carrying its mail-bags across the ocean, as to pay a telegraph company a certain sum per annum for conveying its messages by the use of the electric telegraph." this touched the precise ground on which the appropriation was asked. in their memorial to the president, the company had said: "such a contract will, we suppose, fall within the provisions of the constitution in regard to postal arrangements, of which this is only a new and improved form." mr. bayard, of delaware, explained in the same terms the nature of the proposed agreement: "it is a mail operation. it is a post-office arrangement. it is for the transmission of intelligence, and that is what i understood to be the function of the post-office department. i hold it, therefore, to be as legitimately within the proper powers of the government, as the employing of a stage-coach, or a steam-car, or a ship, to transport the mails, either to foreign countries, or to different portions of our own country." of course, as in all appropriations of money, the question of expense had to be considered, and here there were not wanting some to cry out against the extravagance of paying seventy thousand dollars a year! we had not then got used to the colossal expenditures of war, when we grew familiar with paying three millions a day! seventy thousand dollars seemed a great sum; but mr. bayard in reply reminded them that england then paid nine hundred thousand dollars a year for the transportation of the mails between the united states and england; and argued that it was a very small amount for the great service rendered. he said: "we have sent out ships to make explorations and observations in the red sea and in south america; we sent one or two expensive expeditions to japan, and published at great cost some elegant books narrating their exploits. the expense even in ships alone, in that instance, was at the rate of twenty to one here, but no cry of economy was then raised." "i look upon this proposition solely as a business measure; in that point of view i believe the government will obtain more service for the amount of money, than by any other contract that we have ever made, or now can make, for the transmission of intelligence." as to the expense of furnishing a ship of war to assist in laying the cable, mr. douglas asked: "will it cost anything to furnish the use of one of our steamships? they are idle. we have no practical use for them at present. they are in commission. they have their coal on board, and their full armament. they will be rendering no service to us if they are not engaged in this work. if there was nothing more than a question of national pride involved, i would gladly furnish the use of an american ship for that purpose. england tenders one of her national vessels, and why should we not tender one also? it costs england nothing, and it costs us nothing." mr. rusk made the same point, in arguing that ships might be sent to assist in laying the cable, giving this homely but sufficient reason: "i think that is better than to keep them rotting at the navy-yards, with the officers frollicking on shore." mr. douglas urged still further: "american citizens have commenced this enterprise. the honor and the glory of the achievement, if successful, will be due to american genius and american daring. why should the american government be so penurious--i do not know that that is the proper word, for it costs nothing--why should we be actuated by so illiberal a spirit as to refuse the use of one of our steamships to convey the wire when it does not cost one farthing to the treasury of the united states?" but behind all these objections of expense and of want of constitutional power, was one greater than all, and that was england! the real animus of the opposition was a fear of giving some advantage to great britain. this has always been sufficient to excite the hostility of a certain class of politicians. no matter what the subject of the proposed coöperation, if it were purely a scientific expedition, they were sure england was going to profit by it to our injury. so now there were those who felt that in this submarine cable england was literally crawling under the sea to get some advantage of the united states! this jealousy and hostility spoke loudest from the mouths of southerners. it is noteworthy that men who, in less than five years after, were figuring abroad, courting foreign influence against their own country, were then fiercest in denunciation of england. mason and slidell voted together against the bill. butler, of south carolina, was very bitter in his opposition--saying, with a sneer, that "this was simply a mail service under the surveillance of great britain"--and so was hunter, of virginia; while jones, of tennessee, bursting with patriotism, found a sufficient reason for his opposition, in that "he did not want anything to do with england or englishmen!" but it should be said in justice, that to this general hostility of the south there were some exceptions. benjamin, of louisiana, gave the bill an earnest support; so did mallory, of florida, chairman of the naval committee; and especially that noble southerner, rusk, of texas, "with whose aid," as mr. seward said, "it seemed that there was no good thing which he could not do in congress." mr. rusk declared that he regarded it as "the great enterprise of the age," and expressed his surprise at the very moderate subsidy asked for, only seventy thousand dollars a year, saying that, "with a reasonable prospect of success in an enterprise, calculated to produce such beneficial results, he should be willing to vote two hundred thousand dollars." but with the majority of southern senators, there was a repugnance to acting in concert with england, which could not be overcome. they argued that this was not truly a line between england and the united states, but between england and her own colonies--a line of which she alone was to reap the benefit. _both its termini were in the british possessions._ in the event of war this would give a tremendous advantage to the power holding both ends of the line. all the speakers harped on this string; and it may be worth a page or two to see how this was met and answered. when mr. hunter, of virginia, asked, "what security are we to have that in time of war we shall have the use of the telegraph as well as the british government?" mr. seward answered: "it appears not to have been contemplated by the british government that there would ever be any interruption of the amicable relations between the two countries. therefore nothing was proposed in their contract for the contingency of war. "that the two termini are both in the british dominions is true; but it is equally true that there is no other terminus on this continent where it is practicable to make that communication except in the british dominions. we have no dominions on the other side of the atlantic ocean. there is no other route known on which the telegraphic wire could be drawn through the ocean so as to find a proper resting-place or anchorage except this. the distance on this route is seventeen hundred miles. it is not even known that the telegraphic wire will carry the fluid with sufficient strength to communicate across those seventeen hundred miles. that is yet a scientific experiment, and the company are prepared to make it. "in regard to war, all the danger is this: there is a hazard of war at some future time, and whatever arrangements we might make, war would break them up. no treaty would save us. my own hope is, that after the telegraphic wire is once laid, there will be no more war between the united states and great britain. i believe that whenever such a connection as this shall be made, we diminish the chances of war, and diminish them in such a degree, that it is not necessary to take them into consideration at the present moment. "let us see where we are. what shall we gain by refusing to enter into this agreement? if we do not make it, the british government has only to add ten thousand pounds sterling more annually, and they have the whole monopoly of this wire, without any stipulation whatever--not only in war but in peace. if we make this contract with the company, we at least secure the benefit of it in time of peace, and we postpone and delay the dangers of war. if there shall ever be war, it would abrogate all treaties that can be made in regard to this subject, unless it be true, as the honorable senator from virginia thinks, that treaties can be made which will be regarded as obligatory by nations in time of war. if so, we have all the advantages in time of peace, for the purpose of making such treaties hereafter, without the least reason to infer that there would be any reluctance on the part of the british government to enter into that negotiation with us, if we should desire to do so. the british government, if it had such a disposition as the honorable senator supposes, would certainly have proposed to monopolize all this telegraphic line, instead of proposing to divide it."[a] mr. hale spoke in the same strain: "it seems to me that the war spirit and the contingencies of war are brought in a little too often upon matters of legislation which have no necessary connection with them. if we are to be governed by considerations of that sort, they would paralyze all improvements; they would stop the great appropriations for commerce; they would at once neutralize that policy which sets our ocean steamers afloat. nobody pretends that the intercourse which is kept up between great britain and this country by our ocean steamers would be continued in time of war; nor the communication with france or other nations. "if we are deterred for that reason, we shall be pursuing a policy that will paralyze improvements on those parts of the coast which lie contiguous to the lakes. the city of detroit will have to be abandoned, beautiful and progressive as it is, because in time of war the mansions of her citizens there lie within the range of british guns. "what will the suspension bridge at niagara be good for in a time of war? if the british cut off their end of it, our end will not be worth much. i believe that among the things which will bind us together in peace, this telegraphic wire will be one of the most potent. it will bind the two countries together literally with cords of iron that will hold us in the bonds of peace. i repudiate entirely the policy which refuses to adopt it, because in time of war it may be interrupted. such a policy as that would drive us back to a state of barbarism. it would destroy the spirit of progress; it would retard improvement; it would paralyze all the advances which are making us a more civilized, and a more informed and a better people than the one which preceded us." mr. douglas cut the matter short by saying: "i am willing to vote for this bill as a peace measure, as a commercial measure--but not as a war measure; and when war comes, let us rely on our power and ability to take this end of the wire, and keep it." mr. benjamin said: "the sum of money that this government proposes to give for the use of this telegraph will amount, in the twenty-five years, to something between £ , and £ , . now, if this be a matter of such immense importance to great britain--if this be the golden opportunity--and if, indeed, her control of this line be such a powerful engine, whether in war or in peace, is it not most extraordinary that she proposes to us a full share in its benefits and in its control, and allows to our government equal rights with herself in the transmission of communications for the sum of about £ , , to be paid in annual instalments through twenty-five years? if this be, indeed, a very important instrumentality in behalf of great britain for the conduct of her commerce, the government of her possessions, or the efficient action of her troops in time of war, the £ , expended upon it are but as a drop in the bucket when compared with the immense resources of that empire. i think, therefore, we may as well discard from our consideration of this subject all these visions about the immense importance of the governmental aid in this matter, to be rendered under the provisions of this bill. "mr. president, let us not always be thinking of war; let us be using means to preserve peace. the amount that would be expended by this government in six months' war with great britain, would far exceed every thing that we shall have to pay for the use of this telegraphic line for the entire twenty-five years of the contract; and do you not believe that this instrumentality will be sufficiently efficient to bind together the peace, the commerce, and the interests of the two countries, so as even to defer a war for six months or twelve months, if one should ever become inevitable, beyond the period at which it would otherwise occur? if it does that, it will in six or eight or nine months repay the expenditures of twenty-five years. "again, sir, i say, if great britain wants it for war, she will put it there at her own expense. it is not three hundred thousand pounds, or four hundred thousand pounds, that will arrest her. if, on the contrary, this be useful to commerce--useful in an eminent degree--useful for the preservation of peace, then i confess i feel some pride that my country should aid in establishing it. i confess i feel a glow of something like pride that i belong to the great human family when i see these triumphs of science, by which mind is brought into instant communication with mind across the intervening oceans, which, to our unenlightened forefathers, seemed placed there by providence as an eternal barrier to communication between man and man. now, sir, we speak from minute to minute. scarcely can a gun be fired in war on the european shore ere its echoes will reverberate among our own mountains, and be heard by every citizen in the land. all this is a triumph of science--of american genius, and i for one feel proud of it, and feel desirous of sustaining and promoting it." mr. douglas said: "our policy is essentially a policy of peace. we want peace with the whole world, above all other considerations. there never has been a time in the history of this republic, when peace was more essential to our prosperity, to our advancement, and to our progress, than it is now. we have made great progress in time of peace--an almost inconceivable progress since the last war with great britain. twenty-five years more of peace will put us far in advance of any other nation on earth." it was fit that mr. seward, who introduced the bill, and opened the debate, should close in words that now seem prophetic, and show the large wisdom, looking before and after, of this eminent statesman: "there was an american citizen who, in the year , or thereabout, indicated to this country, to great britain, and to the world, the use of the lightning for the purposes of communication of intelligence, and that was dr. franklin. i am sure that there is not only no member of the senate, but no american citizen, however humble, who would be willing to have struck out from the achievements of american invention this great discovery of the lightning as an agent for the uses of human society. "the suggestion made by that distinguished and illustrious american was followed up some fifty years afterward by another suggestion and another indication from another american, and that was mr. samuel f. b. morse, who indicated to the american government the means by which the lightning could be made to write, and by which the telegraphic wires could be made to supply the place of wind and steam for carrying intelligence. "we have followed out the suggestions of these eminent americans hitherto, and i am sure at a very small cost. the government of the united states appropriated $ , to test the practicability of morse's suggestion; the $ , thus expended established its practicability and its use. now, there is no person on the face of the globe who can measure the price at which, if a reasonable man, he would be willing to strike from the world the use of the magnetic telegraph as a means of communication between different portions of the same country. this great invention is now to be brought into its further, wider, and broader use--the use by the general society of nations, international use, the use of the society of mankind. its benefits are large--just in proportion to the extent and scope of its operation. they are not merely benefits to the government, but they are benefits to the citizens and subjects of all nations and of all states. "i might enlarge further on this subject, but i forbear to do so, because i know that at some future time i shall come across the record of what i have said to-day. i know that then what i have said to-day, by way of anticipation, will fall so far short of the reality of benefits which individuals, states, and nations will have derived from this great enterprise, that i shall not reflect upon it without disappointment and mortification." after such arguments, it should seem that there could be but one opinion, and yet the bill passed the senate by only _one_ majority! it also had to run the gauntlet of the house of representatives, where it encountered the same hostility. but at length it got through, and was signed by president pierce on the third of march, the day before he went out of office. thus it became a law. footnotes: [a] it is worthy of notice, that when the bill granting a charter to the atlantic telegraph company was offered in the british parliament, at least one nobleman found fault with it on this very ground, that it gave away important advantages which properly belonged to england, and which she ought to reserve to herself: "in the house of lords, on the twentieth of july, , on the motion for the third reading of the telegraph company's bill, "lord redesdale called attention to the fact that, although the termini of the proposed telegraph were both in her majesty's dominions, namely, in ireland and newfoundland, the american government were to enjoy the same priority as the british government with regard to the transmission of messages. it was said that this equal right was owing to the fact that a joint guarantee had been given by the two governments. _he thought, however, it would have been far better policy on the part of her majesty's government if they had either undertaken the whole guarantee themselves, and thus had obtained free and sole control over the connecting line of telegraph, or had invited our own colonies to participate in that guarantee, rather than have allowed a foreign government to join in making it._ at the same time, if the clause in question had the sanction of her majesty's ministry, it was not his intention to object to it. "earl granville said this telegraph was intended to connect two great countries, and, as the two governments had gone hand in hand with regard to the guarantee, it seemed only reasonable that both should have the same rights as to transmitting messages. "the bill was then read a third time and passed." chapter viii. the expedition of . scarcely was the business with the american government completed, before mr. field was recalled to england. once more upon the waves, he forgot the long delay and the vexatious opposition which he left behind--the fogs of newfoundland, and the denser fogs of washington. he was bound for england, and there at least the work did not stand still. all winter long the wheels of the machinery had kept in motion. the cable was uncoiling its mighty folds to a length sufficient to span the atlantic, and at last there was hope of victory. although the united states government had seemed a little ungracious in its delay, it yet rendered, this year and the next, most important service. already it had prepared the way, by the deep-sea soundings, which it was the first to take across the atlantic. it now rendered additional and substantial aid in lending to this enterprise the two finest ships in the american navy--the niagara and the susquehanna. the former was built some dozen years before by george steers--a name celebrated among our marine architects as the constructor of the famous yacht america, that "racehorse of the sea," which had crossed the atlantic, and carried off the prize in the british channel from the yachts of england--and was designed to be a model of naval architecture. she was the largest steam-frigate in the world, exceeding in tonnage the heaviest line-of-battle ship in the english navy, and yet so finely modelled that, propelled only by a screw, she could make ten or twelve miles an hour. notwithstanding her bulk, she was intended to carry but twelve guns--being one of the first ships in our navy to substitute a few heavy dahlgrens for half a dozen times as many fifty-six-pounders. this was the beginning of that revolution in naval warfare, which was carried to such extent in the monitors and other ironclads introduced in our civil war. each gun weighed fourteen tons--requiring a crew of twenty-five men to wield it--and threw a shell of one hundred and thirty pounds a distance of three miles. one or two broadsides from such a deck would sink an old-fashioned seventy-four, or even a ninety or hundred-gun ship. but as the niagara was now to go on an errand of peace, this formidable armament was not taken on board. she was built with what is known as a flush deck, clear from stem to stern, and being without her guns, was left free for the more peaceful burden that she was to bear. when the orders were received from washington, she was lying at the brooklyn navy-yard, but began immediately to prepare for her expedition. bulkheads were knocked down, above and below, to make room for the huge monster of the deep that was to be coiled within her sides. these preparations occupied four or five weeks. on the twenty-second of april, she made a trial trip down the bay, and two days after sailed for england, in command of captain william l. hudson, one of the oldest and best officers in our navy, who, to his past services to his country, was now to add another in the expeditions of this and the following year. he had with him as chief engineer mr. william e. everett, whose mechanical genius proved so important in constructing the paying-out machinery. besides the regular ship's crew, no one was received on board except mr. field and professor morse, who went as the electrician of the newfoundland company; and two officers of the russian navy--captain schwartz and lieutenant kolobnin--who were permitted by our government, as an act of national courtesy, to go out to witness the great experiment. the regulations of the navy did not admit correspondents of the press; but professor morse was permitted to take a secretary, and chose mr. mullaly, who reported for the new york herald, and who had thus an opportunity to witness all the preparations on land and sea, and to furnish those minute and detailed accounts of the several expeditions, which contribute some important chapters in the history of this enterprise. the niagara arrived out on the fourteenth of may, and cast anchor off gravesend, about twenty-five miles below london. as it was the first time--at least for many years--that an american ship of war had appeared in the thames, this fact, with her fine proportions and the object for which she came, attracted a crowd of visitors. every day, from morning to night, a fleet of boats was around her, and men and women thronged over her sides. everybody was welcome. all were received with the utmost courtesy, and allowed access to all parts of the ship. among these were many visitors of distinction. here came lady franklin to thank the generous nation that had sent two expeditions to recover her husband lost amid polar seas. she was, of course, the object of general attention and respectful sympathy. while lying in the thames, the agamemnon, that was to take the other half of the cable, passed up the river. this was a historical ship, having borne the flag of the british admiral at the bombardment of sebastopol, and distinguished herself by steaming up within a few hundred yards of the guns of the fortress. after passing through the fires of that terrible day, she was justly an object of pride to britons, whose hearts swelled as they saw this oak-ribbed leviathan, that had come "out of the gates of death, out of the jaws of hell," now preparing to take part in achievements of peace, not less glorious than those of war. she was under command of captain noddal, of the royal navy. as the agamemnon came up the river in grand style, she recognized the niagara lying off gravesend, and manning her yards, gave her a succession of those english hurras so stirring to the blood, when heard on land or sea, to which our tars replied with lusty american cheers. it was pleasant to observe, from this time, the hearty good-will that existed between the officers and crews of the two ships, who in their exertions for the common object, were animated only by a generous rivalry. a few days after, the niagara was joined by the susquehanna, captain sands, which had been ordered from the mediterranean to take part also in the expedition. she was a fit companion ship, being the largest side-wheel steamer in our navy, as the other was the largest propeller. both together, they were worthy representatives of the american navy. when the niagara arrived in the thames, it was supposed she would take on board her half of the cable from the manufactory of glass, elliot & co., at greenwich; but on account of her great length, it was difficult to bring her up alongside the wharf in front of the works. this was therefore left to the agamemnon, while the niagara was ordered around to liverpool, to take the other half from the works of newall & co., at birkenhead, opposite that city. accordingly she left gravesend on the fifth of june, and reached portsmouth the next day, where she remained a fortnight, to have some further alterations to fit her to receive the cable. although she had been already pretty well "scooped out," fore and aft, the cry was still for room. officers had to shift for themselves, as their quarters were swept away to make a wider berth for their iron guest. but all submitted with excellent grace. like true sailors, they took it gayly as if they were only clearing the decks for battle. among other alterations for safety, was a framework or cage of iron, which was put over the stern of the ship, to keep the cable from getting entangled in the screw. as soon as these were completed, the niagara left for liverpool, and on the twenty-second of june cast anchor in the mersey. here she attracted as much attention as in the thames, being crowded with visitors during the week; and on sundays, when none were received on board, the river-boats sought to gratify public curiosity by sailing round her. the officers of the ship were objects of constant hospitality, both from private citizens and from the public authorities. the mayor of liverpool gave them a dinner, the chamber of commerce another, while the americans in liverpool entertained them on the fourth of july--the first public celebration of our national anniversary ever had in that city. but while these festivities were kept up on shore, hard work was done on board the ship. to coil thirteen hundred miles of cable was an immense undertaking. yet it was all done by the sailors themselves. no compulsion was used, and none was needed. no sooner was there a call for volunteers, than men stepped forward in greater numbers than could be employed. out of these were chosen one hundred and twenty stalwart fellows, who were divided into two gangs of sixty men, and each gang into watches of thirty, which relieved each other, and all went to work with such enthusiasm, that in three weeks the herculean task was completed. the event was celebrated by a final dinner given by the shareholders of the atlantic telegraph company in liverpool to captain hudson and captain sands of the susquehanna, whose arrival in the mersey enabled them to extend their hospitalities to the officers of both ships. while the niagara was thus doing her part, the same scene was repeated on board the agamemnon, which was still lying in the thames. there the work was completed about the same day, and the occasion duly honored by a scene as unique as it was beautiful. says the london times of july twenty-fourth: "all the details connected with the manufacture and stowage of the cable are now completed, and the conclusion of the arduous labor was celebrated yesterday with high festivity and rejoicing. all the artisans who have been engaged upon the great work, with their wives and families, a large party of the officers, with the sailors from the agamemnon, and a number of distinguished scientific visitors, were entertained upon this occasion at a kind of _fête champêtre_ at belvidere house, the seat of sir culling eardley, near erith. the festival was held in the beautiful park which had been obligingly opened by sir culling eardley for the purpose. although in no way personally interested in the project, the honorable baronet has all along evinced the liveliest sympathy with the undertaking, and himself proposed to have the completion of the work celebrated in his picturesque grounds. the manufacturers, fired with generous emulation, erected spacious tents on the lawn, and provided a magnificent banquet for the guests, and a substantial one for the sailors of the agamemnon and the artificers who had been employed in the construction of the cable. by an admirable arrangement, the guests were accommodated at a vast semi-circular table, which ran round the whole pavilion, while the sailors and workmen sat at a number of long tables arranged at right angles with the chord, so that the general effect was that all dined together, while at the same time sufficient distinction was preserved to satisfy the most fastidious. the three centre tables were occupied by the crew of the agamemnon, a fine, active body of young men, who paid the greatest attention to the speeches, and drank all the toasts with an admirable punctuality, at least so long as their three pints of beer per man lasted; but we regret to add that, what with the heat of the day and the enthusiasm of jack in the cause of science, the mugs were all empty long before the chairman's list of toasts had been gone through. next in interest to the sailors were the workmen and their wives and babies, all being permitted to assist at the great occasion. the latter, it is true, sometimes squalled at an affecting peroration, but that rather improved the effect than otherwise, and the presence of these little ones only marked the genuine good feeling of the employers, who had thus invited not only their workmen, but their workmen's families to the feast. it was a momentary return to the old patriarchal times, and every one present seemed delighted with the experiment." speeches were made by sir culling eardley, by mr. cardwell, of the house of commons, mr. brooking, one of the directors, by professor morse, and others. mr. field read a letter from president buchanan, saying that he should feel honored if the first message should be one from queen victoria to himself, and that he "would endeavor to answer it in a spirit and manner becoming a great occasion." thus, labor and feasting being ended, the niagara and the susquehanna left liverpool the latter part of july and steamed down st. george's channel to queenstown, which was to be the rendezvous of the telegraphic squadron, where they were joined by the agamemnon and the leopard, which was to be her consort. the former, as she entered the harbor, came to anchor about a third of a mile from the niagara. the presence of the two ships which had the cable on board, gave an opportunity which the electricians had desired to test its integrity. accordingly one end of each cable was carried to the opposite ship, and so joined as to form a continuous length of twenty-five hundred miles, both ends of which were on board the agamemnon. one end was then connected with the apparatus for transmitting the electric current, and on a sensitive galvanometer being attached to the other end, the whole cable was tested from end to end, and found to be perfect. these experiments were continued for two days with the same result. this inspired fresh hopes for the success of the expedition, and in high spirits they bore away for the harbor of valentia. it had been for some time a matter of discussion, where they should begin to lay the cable, whether from the coast of ireland, or in mid-ocean, the two ships making the junction there, and dropping it to the bottom of the sea, and then parting, one to the east and the other to the west, till they landed their ends on the opposite shores of the atlantic. this was the plan adopted the following year, and which finally proved successful. it was the one preferred by the engineers now, but the electricians favored the other course, and their counsel prevailed. it was therefore decided to submerge the whole cable in a continuous line from valentia bay to newfoundland. the niagara was to lay the first half from ireland to the middle of the atlantic; the end would then be joined to the other half on board the agamemnon, which would take it on to the coast of newfoundland. during the whole process the four vessels were to remain together and give whatever assistance was required. while it was being laid down, messages were to be sent back to valentia, reporting each day of progress. as might be supposed, the mustering of such a fleet of ships, and the busy note of preparation which had been heard for weeks, produced a great sensation in this remote part of ireland. the people from far and near, gathered on the hills and looked on in silent wonder. to add to the dignity of the occasion, the lord lieutenant came down from dublin to witness the departure of the expedition. no one could have been better fitted to represent his own country, and to command audience from ours. the earl of carlisle--better known among us as lord morpeth--had travelled in the united states a few years before, and shown himself one of the most intelligent and liberal foreigners that have visited america. no representative of england could on that day have stood upon the shores of ireland, and stretched out his hand to his kindred beyond the sea with more assurance that his greeting would be warmly responded to. and never did one speak more aptly words of wisdom and of peace. we read them still with admiration for their beauty and their eloquence, and with an interest more tender but more sad, that this great and good man--the true friend of his own country and of ours--has gone to his grave. to quote his own words is the best tribute to his memory, and will do more than any eulogy to keep it fresh and green in the hearts of americans. on his arrival at valentia, he was entertained by the knight of kerry at one of those public breakfasts so much in fashion in england, at which in response to a toast in his honor, after making his personal acknowledgments, he said: "i believe, as your worthy chairman has already hinted, that i am probably the first lieutenant of ireland who ever appeared upon this lovely strand. at all events, no lord lieutenant could have come amongst you on an occasion like the present. amidst all the pride and the stirring hopes which cluster around the work of this week, we ought still to remember that we must speak with the modesty of those who begin and not of those who close an experiment, and it behooves us to remember that the pathway to great achievements has frequently to be hewn out amidst risks and difficulties, and that preliminary failure is even the law and condition of the ultimate success. therefore, whatever disappointments may possibly be in store, i must yet insinuate to you that in a cause like this it would be criminal to feel discouragement. in the very design and endeavor to establish the atlantic telegraph there is almost enough of glory. it is true if it be only an attempt there would not be quite enough of profit. i hope that will come, too; but there is enough of public spirit, of love for science, for our country, for the human race, almost to suffice in themselves. however, upon this rocky frontlet of ireland, at all events, to-day we will presume upon success. we are about, either by this sundown or by to-morrow's dawn, to establish a new material link between the old world and the new. moral links there have been--links of race, links of commerce, links of friendship, links of literature, links of glory; but this, our new link, instead of superseding and supplanting the old ones, is to give a life and an intensity which they never had before. highly as i value the reputations of those who have conceived, and those who have contributed to carry out this bright design--and i wish that so many of them had not been unavoidably prevented from being amongst us at this moment[a]--highly as i estimate their reputation, yet i do not compliment them with the idea that they are to efface or dim the glory of that columbus, who, when the large vessels in the harbor of cork yesterday weighed their anchors, did so on that very day three hundred and sixty-five years ago--it would have been called in hebrew writ a year of years--and set sail upon his glorious enterprise of discovery. they, i say, will not dim or efface his glory, but they are now giving the last finish and consummation to his work. hitherto the inhabitants of the two worlds have associated perhaps in the chilling atmosphere of distance with each other--a sort of bowing distance; but now we can be hand to hand, grasp to grasp, pulse to pulse. the link, which is now to connect us, like the insect in the immortal couplet of our poet: while exquisitely fine, feels at each thread and lives along the line. and we may feel, gentlemen of ireland, of england, and of america, that we may take our stand here upon the extreme rocky edge of our beloved ireland; we may, as it were, leave in our rear behind us the wars, the strifes, and the bloodshed of the elder europe, and of the elder asia; and we may pledge ourselves, weak as our agency may be, imperfect as our powers may be, inadequate in strict diplomatic form as our credentials may be, yet, in the face of the unparalleled circumstances, of the place and the hour, in the immediate neighborhood of the mighty vessels whose appearance may be beautiful upon the waters, even as are the feet upon the mountains of those who preach the gospel of peace--as an homage due to that serene science which often affords higher and holier lessons of harmony and good will than the wayward passions of man are always apt to learn--in the face and in the strength of such circumstances, let us pledge ourselves to eternal peace between the old world and the new." while these greetings were exchanged on shore, only the smaller vessels of the squadron had arrived. but in a few hours the great hulls of the niagara and the agamemnon, followed by the leopard and the susquehanna, were seen in the horizon, and soon they all cast anchor in the bay. as the sun went down in the west, shining still on the other hemisphere which they were going to seek, its last rays fell on an expedition more suggestive and hopeful than any since that of columbus from the shores of spain, and upon navigators not unworthy to be his followers. the whole squadron was now assembled, and made gallant array. there were present in the little harbor of valentia seven ships--the stately niagara, which was to lay the half of the cable from ireland, and her consort, the susquehanna, riding by her side; while floating the flag of england, were the agamemnon, which was appointed to lay the cable on the american side, and her consort, the leopard. beside these high-decked ships of war, the steamer advice had come round to give, not merely advice but lusty help in landing the cable at valentia; and the little steamer willing mind, with a zeal worthy of her name, was flying back and forth between ship and shore, lending a hand wherever there was work to be done; and the cyclops, under the experienced command of captain dayman, who had made the deep-sea soundings across the atlantic only the month before, here joined the squadron to lead the way across the deep. this made five english ships, with but two american; but to keep up our part, there were two more steamers on the other side of the sea, the arctic, under lieutenant berryman, and the company's steamer victoria, to watch for the coming of the fleet off the coast of newfoundland, and help in landing the cable on the shores of the new world. it was now tuesday evening, the fourth of august, too late to undertake the landing that night, but preparations were at once begun for it the next morning. said the correspondent of the liverpool post: "the ships were visited in the course of the evening by the directors and others interested in the great undertaking, and arrangements were immediately commenced on board the niagara for paying out the shore rope for conveyance to the mainland. these arrangements were fully perfected by wednesday morning; but for some hours the state of the weather rendered it doubtful whether operations could be safely proceeded with. toward the afternoon the breeze calmed down, and at two o'clock it was decided that an effort should be made to land the cable at once. the process of uncoiling into the small boats commenced at half-past two, and the scene at this period was grand and exciting in the highest degree. "valentia bay was studded with innumerable small craft, decked with the gayest bunting--small boats flitted hither and thither, their occupants cheering enthusiastically as the work successfully progressed. the cable-boats were managed by the sailors of the niagara and susquehanna, and it was a well-designed compliment, and indicative of the future fraternization of the nations, that the shore rope was arranged to be presented at this side the atlantic to the representative of the queen, by the officers and men of the united states navy, and that at the other side the british officers and sailors should make a similar presentation to the president of the great republic. "from the main land the operations were watched with intense interest. for several hours the lord lieutenant stood on the beach, surrounded by his staff and the directors of the railway and telegraph companies, waiting the arrival of the cable, and when at length the american sailors jumped through the surge with the hawser to which it was attached, his excellency was among the first to lay hold of it and pull it lustily to the shore. indeed every one present seemed desirous of having a hand in the great work; and never before perhaps were there so many willing assistants, at 'the long pull, the strong pull, and the pull all together.' "at half-past seven o'clock the cable was hauled on shore, and formal presentation was made of it to the lord lieutenant by captain pennock, of the niagara; his excellency expressing a hope that the work so well begun would be carried to a satisfactory completion." the wire having been secured to a house on the beach, the reverend mr. day, of kenmore, advanced and offered the following prayer: "o eternal lord god, who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rulest the raging of the sea; who hast compassed the water with bounds, till day and night come to an end; and whom the winds and the sea obey; look down in mercy, we beseech thee, upon us thy servants, who now approach the throne of grace; and let our prayer ascend before thee with acceptance. thou hast commanded and encouraged us, in all our ways, to acknowledge thee, and to commit our works to thee; and thou hast graciously promised to direct our paths, and to prosper our handiwork. we desire now to look up to thee; and believing that without thy help and blessing, nothing can prosper or succeed, we humbly commit this work, and all who are engaged in it, to thy care and guidance. let it please thee to grant to us thy servants wisdom and power, to complete what we have been led by thy providence to undertake; that being begun and carried on in the spirit of prayer, and in dependence upon thee, it may tend to thy glory: and to the good of all nations, by promoting the increase of unity, peace, and concord. "overrule, we pray thee, every obstacle, and remove every difficulty which would prevent us from succeeding in this important undertaking. control the winds and the sea by thy almighty power, and grant us such favorable weather that we may be enabled to lay the cable safely and effectually. and may thy hand of power and mercy be so acknowledged by all, that the language of every heart may be, 'not unto us, o lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory,' that so thy name may be hallowed and magnified in us and by us. "finally, we beseech thee to implant within us a spirit of humility and childlike dependence upon thee; and teach us to feel as well as to say, 'if the lord will, we shall do this or that.' "hear us, o lord, and answer us in these our petitions, according to thy precious promise, for jesus christ's sake. amen." the lord lieutenant then spoke once more--words that amid such a scene and at such an hour, sank into all hearts: "my american, english, and irish friends, i feel at such a moment as this that no language of mine can be becoming except that of prayer and praise. however, it is allowable to any human lips, though they have not been specially qualified for the office, to raise the ascription of 'glory to god in the highest; on earth peace, good-will to men.' that, i believe, is the spirit in which this great work has been undertaken; and it is this reflection that encourages me to feel confident hopes in its final success. i believe that the great work now so happily begun will accomplish many great and noble purposes of trade, of national policy, and of empire. but there is only one view in which i will present it to those whom i have the pleasure to address. you are aware--you must know, some of you, from your own experience--that many of your dear friends and near relatives have left their native land to receive hospitable shelter in america. well, then, i do not expect that all of you can understand the wondrous mechanism by which this great undertaking is to be carried on. but this, i think, you all of you understand. if you wished to communicate some piece of intelligence straightway to your relatives across the wide world of waters--if you wished to tell those whom you know it would interest in their heart of hearts, of a birth, or a marriage, or, alas, a death, among you, the little cord, which we have now hauled up to the shore, will impart that tidings quicker than the flash of the lightning. let us indeed hope, let us pray that the hopes of those who have set on foot this great design, may be rewarded by its entire success; and let us hope, further, that this atlantic cable will, in all future time, serve as an emblem of that strong cord of love which i trust will always unite the british islands to the great continent of america. and you will join me in my fervent wish that the giver of all good, who has enabled some of his servants to discern so much of the working of the mighty laws by which he fills the universe, will further so bless this wonderful work, as to make it even more to serve the high purpose of the good of man, and tend to his great glory. and now, all my friends, as there can be no project or undertaking which ought not to receive the approbation and applause of the people, will you join with me in giving three hearty cheers for it? [loud cheering.] three cheers are not enough for me--they are what we give on common occasions--and as it is for the success of the atlantic telegraph cable, i must have at least one dozen cheers. [loud and protracted cheering.]" mr. brooking, the chairman of the executive committee of the atlantic telegraph company, then expressed the thanks which all felt to the lord lieutenant for his presence on that occasion. then there were loud calls for mr. field. he could only answer: "i have no words to express the feelings which fill my heart to-night--it beats with love and affection for every man, woman and child who hears me. i may say, however, that, if ever at the other side of the waters now before us, any one of you shall present himself at my door and say that he took hand or part, even by an approving smile, in our work here to-day, he shall have a true american welcome. i cannot bind myself to more, and shall merely say: 'what god has joined together, let not man put asunder.'" thus closed this most interesting scene. the lord lieutenant was obliged to return at once to the capital. he therefore left, and posted that night to killarney, and the next day returned by special train to dublin, leaving the ships to complete the work so happily begun. the landing of the cable took place on wednesday, the fifth of august, near the hour of sunset. as it was too late to proceed that evening, the ships remained at anchor till the morning. they got under weigh at an early hour, but were soon checked by an accident which detained them another day. before they had gone five miles, the heavy shore end of the cable caught in the machinery and parted. the niagara put back, and the cable was "underrun" the whole distance. at length the end was lifted out of the water and spliced to the gigantic coil, and as it dropped safely to the bottom of the sea, the mighty ship began to stir. at first she moved very slowly, not more than two miles an hour, to avoid the danger of accident; but the feeling that they were at last away was itself a relief. the ships were all in sight, and so near that they could hear each other's bells. the niagara, as if knowing that she was bound for the land out of whose forests she came, bowed her head to the waves, as her prow was turned toward her native shores. slowly passed the hours of that day. but all went well, and the ships were moving out into the broad atlantic. at length the sun went down in the west, and stars came out on the face of the deep. but no man slept. a thousand eyes were watching a great experiment as those who have a personal interest in the issue. all through that night, and through the anxious days and nights that followed, there was a feeling in every soul on board, as if some dear friend were at the turning-point of life or death, and they were watching beside him. there was a strange, unnatural silence in the ship. men paced the deck with soft and muffled tread, speaking only in whispers, as if a loud voice or a heavy footfall might snap the vital cord. so much had they grown to feel for the enterprise, that the cable seemed to them like a human creature, on whose fate they hung, as if it were to decide their own destiny. there are some who will never forget that first night at sea. perhaps the reaction from the excitement on shore made the impression the deeper. there are moments in life when every thing comes back upon us. what memories came up in those long night hours! how many on board that ship, as they stood on the deck and watched that mysterious cord disappearing in the darkness, thought of homes beyond the sea, of absent ones, of the distant and the dead! but no musings turn them from the work in hand. there are vigilant eyes on deck. mr. bright, the engineer of the company, is there, and mr. everett, mr. de sauty, the electrician, and professor morse. the paying-out machinery does its work, and though it makes a constant rumble in the ship, that dull, heavy sound is music to their ears, as it tells them that all is well. if one should drop to sleep, and wake up at night, he has only to hear the sound of "the old coffee-mill," and his fears are relieved, and he goes to sleep again. saturday was a day of beautiful weather. the ships were getting farther away from land, and began to steam ahead at the rate of four and five miles an hour. the cable was paid out at a speed a little faster than that of the ship, to allow for any inequalities of surface on the bottom of the sea. while it was thus going overboard, communication was kept up constantly with the land. every moment the current was passing between ship and shore. the communication was as perfect as between liverpool and london, or boston and new york. not only did the electricians telegraph back to valentia the progress they were making, but the officers on board sent messages to their friends in america, to go out by the steamers from liverpool. the heavens seemed to smile on them that day. the coils came up from below the deck without a kink, and unwinding themselves easily, passed over the stern into the sea. once or twice an alarm was created by the cable being thrown off the wheels. this was owing to the sheaves not being wide enough and deep enough, and being filled with tar, which hardened in the air. this was a great defect of the machinery which was remedied in the later expeditions. still it worked well, and so long as those terrible brakes kept off their iron gripe, it might work through to the end. all day sunday the same favoring fortune continued; and when the officers, who could be spared from the deck, met in the cabin, and captain hudson read the service, it was with subdued voices and grateful hearts they responded to the prayers to him who spreadeth out the heavens, and ruleth the raging of the sea. on monday they were over two hundred miles at sea. they had got far beyond the shallow waters off the coast. they had passed over the submarine mountain which figures on the charts of dayman and berryman, and where mr. bright's log gives a descent from five hundred and fifty to seventeen hundred and fifty fathoms within eight miles! then they came to the deeper waters of the atlantic, where the cable sank to the awful depth of two thousand fathoms. still the iron cord buried itself in the waves, and every instant the flash of light in the darkened telegraph room told of the passage of the electric current. but monday evening, about nine o'clock, occurred a mysterious interruption, which staggered all on board. suddenly the electrical continuity was lost. the cable was not broken, but it ceased to work. here was a mystery. de sauty tried it, and professor morse tried it. but neither could make it work. it seemed that all was over. the electricians gave it up, and the engineers were preparing to cut the cable, and to endeavor to wind it in, when suddenly _the electricity came back again_. this made the mystery greater than ever. it had been interrupted for two hours and a half. this was a phenomenon which has never been explained. professor morse was of opinion that the cable, in getting off the wheels, had been strained so as to open the gutta-percha, and thus destroy the insulation. if this be the true explanation, it would seem that on reaching the bottom the seam had closed, and thus the continuity had been restored. but it was certainly an untoward incident, which "cast ominous conjecture on the whole success," as it seemed to indicate that there were at the bottom of the sea causes which were wholly unknown and against which it was impossible to provide. the return of the current was like life from the dead. says mullaly: "the glad news was soon circulated throughout the ship, and all felt as if they had a new life. a rough, weather-beaten old sailor, who had assisted in coiling many a long mile of it on board the niagara, and who was among the first to run to the telegraph office to have the news confirmed, said he would have given fifty dollars out of his pay to have saved that cable. 'i have watched nearly every mile of it,' he added, 'as it came over the side, and i would have given fifty dollars, poor as i am, to have saved it, although i don't expect to make any thing by it when it is laid down.' in his own simple way he expressed the feelings of every one on board, for all are as much interested in the success of the enterprise as the largest shareholder in the company. they talked of the cable as they would of a pet child, and never was child treated with deeper solicitude than that with which the cable is watched by them. you could see the tears standing in the eyes of some as they almost cried for joy, and told their messmates that it was all right." it was indeed a great relief; and though still anxious, after watching till past midnight, a few crept to their couches, to snatch an hour or two of broken sleep. but before the morning broke, the hopes thus revived were again and finally destroyed. the cable was running out freely at the rate of six miles an hour, while the ship was advancing but about four. this was supposed to be owing to a powerful under-current. to check this waste, the engineer applied the brakes firmly, which at once stopped the machine. the effect was to bring a heavy strain on the cable that was in the water. the stern of the ship was down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the tension was too great, and the cable parted. instantly ran through the ship a cry of grief and dismay. she was stopped in her onward path, and in a few minutes all gathered on deck with feelings which may be imagined. one who was present wrote: "the unbidden tear started to many a manly eye. the interest taken in the enterprise by all, every one, officers and men, exceeded any thing i ever saw, and there is no wonder that there should have been so much emotion at our failure." captain hudson says: "it made all hands of us through the day like a household or family which had lost their dearest friend, for officers and men had been deeply interested in the success of the enterprise." there was nothing left but to return to england. the position is very clearly stated by mr. field in a letter to one of his family, which shows how his own courage survived the great disaster:-- "h. m. steamer leopard, thursday, august , . "the successful laying down of the atlantic telegraph cable is put off for a short time, but its final triumph has been fully proved, by the experience that we have had since we left valentia. my confidence was never so strong as at the present time, and i feel sure, that with god's blessing, we shall connect europe and america with the electric cord. "after having successfully laid--and part of the time while a heavy sea was running--three hundred and thirty-five miles of the cable, and over one hundred miles of it in water more than two miles in depth, the brakes were applied more firmly, by order of mr. bright, the engineer, to prevent the cable from going out so fast, and it parted. "i retired to my state-room at a little after midnight monday, all going on well, and at a quarter before four o'clock on tuesday morning, the eleventh instant, i was awoke from my sleep by the cry of 'stop her, back her!' and in a moment mr. bright was in my room, with the sad intelligence that the cable was broken. in as short a time as possible i was dressed, and on deck; and captain hudson at once signaled the other steamers that the cable had parted, and in a few moments captain wainwright, of the leopard, and captain sands, of the susquehanna, were on board of the niagara. "i requested captain wainwright, the commander of the english telegraph fleet, to order the agamemnon to remain with the niagara and susquehanna, in this deep part of the atlantic for a few days, to try certain experiments which will be of great value to us, and then sail with them back to england, and all wait at plymouth until further orders. i further requested captain wainwright to order the cyclops to sound here where the cable parted, and then steam back to valentia, with letters from me to dr. whitehouse, and mr. saward, the secretary of the atlantic telegraph company; and that he should take me in the leopard as soon as possible to portsmouth. "all of my requests were cheerfully complied with, and in a few hours the cyclops had sounded, and found the bottom at two thousand fathoms, and was on her way back to valentia with letters from me; the niagara and the agamemnon were connected together by the cable, and engaged in trying experiments; the susquehanna in attendance, and the leopard, with your affectionate ---- on board, on her way back to england. "in my letter to dr. whitehouse i requested him to telegraph to london, and have a special meeting of the directors called for twelve o'clock on saturday, to decide whether we should have more cable made at once, and try again this season, or wait until next year. "i shall close this letter on board, so as to have it ready to mail the moment we arrive at portsmouth, as i wish to leave by the very next train for london, so as to be there in time to meet the directors saturday noon, and read them my report, which i am busy making up. "do not think that i feel discouraged, or am in low spirits, for i am not; and i think i can see how this accident will be of great advantage to the atlantic telegraph company. "all the officers and men on board of the telegraph fleet, seem to take the greatest interest in our enterprise, and are very desirous to go out in the ships the next time. "since my arrival, i have received the greatest kindness and attention from all whom i have met, from the lord lieutenant of ireland, down to the cabin-boys and sailors. the inclosed letter from the knight of kerry, i received with a basket of hothouse fruit, just as we were getting ready to leave valentia harbor. your ---- "cyrus w. field." the day that this was written, mr. field landed at portsmouth, and at once hastened to london to meet the directors. at first it was a question if they should renew the expedition this year. but their brief experience had shown the need of more ample preparations for their next attempt. they required six hundred miles more of cable to make up for over three hundred lost in the sea, and to provide a surplus so as to run no risk of falling short from other accidents; and most of all they needed better machinery to pay out the cable into the ocean. these preparations required time, and before they could be made, it would be late in the autumn. hence they reluctantly decided to defer the expedition till another year. the niagara and the agamemnon therefore discharged their cable at plymouth, whence the niagara returned home; and mr. field, after remaining a few weeks in london to complete the preparations for the next year, sailed for america. he returned to find that a commercial hurricane had swept over the country, in which a thousand stately fortunes had gone down, and in which the wealth he had accumulated by years of toil had nearly suffered shipwreck. such were the tidings that met him on landing. it had been a year of disappointments in england and america--of disasters on land and sea--and all his high hopes were in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. footnotes: [a] mr. field was detained by illness at valentia, and several of the ships had not arrived. chapter ix. the first expedition of . the expedition of was little more than an experiment on a grand scale. as such it had its use; but its abrupt ending within three hundred miles of the irish coast was a severe shock to public confidence. up to that time the enterprise had been accepted by the people of england and of america, almost without considering its magnitude and difficulty. they had taken it for granted as a thing which must some day be accomplished by human skill and perseverance. but now it had been tried and failed. this first expedition opened their eyes to the vastness of the undertaking, and led many to doubt who did not doubt before. some even began to look upon it as a romantic adventure of the sea, rather than a serious undertaking. this decline of popular faith was felt as soon as there was a call for more money. men reasoned that if the former attempt was but an experiment, it was rather a costly one. the loss of three hundred and thirty-five miles of cable, with the postponement of the expedition to another year, was equivalent to a loss of a hundred thousand pounds. to make this good, the directors had to enlarge the capital of the company. this new capital was not so readily obtained. those who had subscribed before, thought they had lost enough; and the public stood aloof till they could see the result of the next experiment. the projectors found that it was easy to go with the current of popular enthusiasm, but very hard to stem a growing popular distrust. they found how great an element of success in all public enterprises is public confidence. but against this very revulsion of feeling they had been already warned. the earl of carlisle the year before had cautioned them against being too sanguine of immediate results, and reminded them that "preliminary failure was even the law and condition of ultimate success." there were many who now remembered his words, and on whom the lesson was not lost. but whatever the depression at the failure of the first attempt to lay a telegraph across the ocean, and at the thick-coming disasters on land and sea, it did not interfere with renewed and vigorous efforts to prepare for a second expedition. the directors gave orders for the manufacture of seven hundred miles of new cable, to make up for the loss of the previous year, and to provide a surplus against all contingencies. and the government promised again its powerful aid. in america, mr. field went to washington to ask a second time the use of the ships, which had already represented the country so well. he made also a special request for the services of mr. william e. everett. this gentleman had been the chief-engineer of the niagara the year before. he had watched closely the paying-out machine, as it was put together on the deck, and as it worked on the voyage, and with the eye of a practised mechanic, he saw that it required great alterations. it was too cumbrous, had too many wheels, and especially its brakes shut down with a gripe that would snap the strongest chain cable.[a] mr. field saw that this was the man to remedy the defects of the old machine, and to make one that would work more smoothly. he therefore applied especially for his services. to the credit of the administration, it granted both requests in the most handsome manner. "there," said the secretary of the navy, handing mr. field the official letter, "i have given you all you asked." after such an answer he did not wait long. the letter is dated the thirtieth of december, and in just one week, on the sixth of january, he sailed in the persia for england with mr. everett. scarcely had he arrived in london before he was made the general manager of the company, with control of the entire staff, including electricians and engineers. the following extract from the minutes of the board of directors, dated january , , explains the new position to which he was invited: "the directors having for several months felt that it would greatly advance the interests of this enterprise, if mr. cyrus w. field, of new york, could be induced to come over to england, for the purpose of undertaking the general management and supervision of all the various arrangements that would be required to be carried out before the sailing of the next expedition; application was made to mr. field, with the view of securing his consent to the proposal, and he arrived in this country on the sixteenth instant, when it was ascertained that he would be willing, if unanimously desired by the directors, to act in behalf of the company as proposed; and mr. field having retired, it was unanimously resolved to tender him, in respect to such services, the sum of £ over and above his travelling and other expenses, as remuneration." this resolution was at once communicated to mr. field, who replied that he would undertake the duties of general manager, but declined the offer of £ , preferring to give his services to the company without compensation. whereupon the directors immediately passed another resolution: "that mr. field's kind and generous offer be accepted by this board; and that their best thanks are hereby tendered to him for his devotion to the interests of the undertaking." the following, passed a few weeks later, march , was designed to emphasize the authority given over all the employés of the company: "_resolved_, that mr. cyrus w. field, general manager of the company, is hereby authorized and empowered to give such directions and orders to the officers composing the staff of the company, as he may from time to time deem necessary and expedient with regard to all matters connected with the business proceedings of the company, subject to the control of the directors. "_resolved_, that the staff of the company be notified hereof, and required to observe and follow such directions as may be issued by the general manager." as mr. field was thus invested with the entire charge of the preparations for the next expedition, he was made responsible for it, and felt it due alike to himself and to the company to omit no means to insure success. it was therefore his duty to examine into every detail. the manufacture of the new cable was already under way, and there was no opportunity to make any change in its construction, even if any had been desired. but there was another matter which was quite as important to success--the construction of the paying-out machines. this had been the great defect of the previous year, and, while it continued, would render success almost impossible. no matter how many hundreds or thousands of miles of cable might be made, if the machinery was not fitted to pay it out into the sea, it would be constantly broken. to remedy these defects was an object of anxious solicitude, and to this the new manager gave his first attention. hardly was he in london before mr. everett was installed at the large machine works of easton and amos, in southwark, where, surrounded by plans and models, he devoted himself for three months to studying out a better invention for this most important work. at the end of that time he had a model complete, and invited a number of the most eminent engineers of london to witness its operation. among these were mr. brunel, and messrs. lloyd, penn, and field, who had given the enterprise the benefit of their counsel for months, refusing all compensation; mr. charles t. bright, the engineer of the company, and his two assistants, mr. canning and mr. clifford, and mr. follansbee, the chief-engineer of the niagara, in the place mr. everett had occupied the year before. the machine was set in motion, and all saw its operation, while mr. everett explained its parts, and the difficulties which he had tried to overcome. it was obvious at a glance that it was a great improvement on that of the former year. it was much smaller and lighter. it would take up only about one-third of the room on the deck, and had only one-fourth the weight of the old machine. its construction was much more simple. instead of four heavy wheels, it had but two, and these were made to revolve with ease, and without danger of sudden check, by the application of what were known as self-releasing brakes. these were the invention of mr. appold, of london, a gentleman of fortune, but with a strong taste for mechanics, which led him to spend his time and wealth in exercising his mechanical ingenuity. these brakes were so adjusted as to bear only a certain strain, when they released themselves. this ingenious contrivance was applied by mr. everett to the paying-out machinery. the strength of the cable was such that it would not break except under a tension of a little over three tons. the machinery was so adjusted that not more than half that strain could possibly come upon the cable, when the brakes would relax their grasp, the wheels revolve easily, and the cable run out into the sea without a jar. the paying-out machine, therefore, we are far from claiming as wholly an american invention. this part of the mechanism was english. the merit of mr. everett lay in the skill with which he adapted it to the laying of the atlantic cable, and in his improvements of other parts of the machinery. the whole construction, as it afterwards stood upon the decks of the niagara and the agamemnon, was the product of english and american invention combined. the engineers, who now saw it for the first time, were delighted. it seemed to have the intelligence of a human being, to know when to hold on, and when to let go. all felt that the great difficulty in laying the cable was removed, and that under this gentle manipulation it would glide easily and smoothly from the ship into the sea. while these preparations were going on in london, the niagara, which did not leave new york till the ninth of march, arrived at plymouth, under command of captain hudson, to take on board her share of the cable. both ships had discharged their burden at keyham docks, where the precious freight was passed through a composition of tar and pitch and linseed-oil and beeswax, to preserve it from injury, and had been coiled under cover to be kept safely through the winter. the agamemnon was already at plymouth, having been designated by the admiralty again to take part in the work, though under a new commander, captain george w. preedy, an excellent officer. the place of the leopard was taken by the gorgon, under command of captain dayman, who had made the deep-sea soundings in the cyclops the year before. while the english government was thus prompt in furnishing its ships, news arrived from america that the company could not have again the assistance of the susquehanna, which had accompanied the niagara on the preceding expedition. she was in the west-indies, and the yellow fever had broken out on board. what should be done? it was late to apply again to the american government, and it was doubtful what would be the result of the application. this threatened some embarrassment. mr. field resolved the difficulty in a way which showed his confidence in the great and generous government on the other side of the water, with which he had occasion so often to deal. without waiting for the action of the company, he called a cab, and drove straight to the admiralty, and sent in his card to sir john pakington, then first lord of the admiralty. this gentleman, like his predecessor, sir charles wood, had shown the most friendly interest in the atlantic telegraph, and given it his warmest support. mr. field was received at once, and began with true american eagerness: "i am ashamed to come to you, after what the english government has done for us. but here is our case. we are disappointed in the susquehanna. she is in the west-indies, with the yellow fever on board. she cannot come to england to take part in the expedition. can you do anything for us?" sir john replied that the government had not ships enough for its own use; that it was at that very moment chartering vessels to take troops to malta--"but he would see what he could do." in an hour or two he sent word to the office of the company, that her majesty's ship valorous--commanded by captain w. c. aldham, an officer of great experience--had been ordered to take the place of the susquehanna in the next expedition. we mention this little incident, not so much to illustrate mr. field's prompt and quick manner of deciding and acting, as to show the noble and generous spirit in which the english government responded to every appeal. the reshipping of the cable at plymouth occupied the whole month of april and part of may. some changes were made in the mode adopted, it being coiled around large cones. the work was done as before, by a hundred and sixty men detailed for the purpose, of whom one fourth were the workmen of the company, and the rest sailors who had volunteered for the duty. these were divided into gangs of forty, that relieved each other, by which the work went on day and night. in this way they coiled about thirty miles in the twenty-four hours. owing to the increased length of cable, and the greater care in coiling, it took a longer time than the year before. the whole was completed about the middle of may. there was then in all, on board the two ships, a little over three thousand statute miles. this included, besides seven hundred miles of new cable, thirty-nine miles of that lost the year before, which had been recovered by the company, and a few miles of condemned cable from greenwich, which was put on board for experiments. the shipment being thus complete, and the paying-out machines in position, the ships were ready to make a trial trip, preparatory to their final departure. for this purpose the telegraphic squadron sailed from plymouth on saturday, the twenty-ninth of may, and bore southward two or three hundred miles, till the green color of the sea changing to a deep blue, showed that they had reached the great depths of the ocean. they were now in the waters of the bay of biscay, where the soundings were over twenty-five hundred fathoms. here the niagara and the agamemnon were connected by a hawser, being about a quarter of a mile apart. the cable was then passed from one to the other, and a series of experiments begun, designed to test both the strength of the cable and the working of the machinery. two miles of the cable were paid out, when it parted. this would have seemed a bad sign, had it been any other part of the cable than that which was known to be imperfect and had long since been condemned. the next day three miles were paid out. this, too, was broken, but only when they tried to haul it in, and under a pressure of several tons. other experiments were tried, such as splicing the cable, and lowering it to the bottom of the sea--an operation which it was thought might be critical in mid-ocean, but which was performed without difficulty--and running out the cable at a rapid rate, when the speed of the ship was increased to seven knots, without causing the cable to break, or even to kink. on the whole, the result of the trip was satisfactory. the paying-out machine of mr. everett worked well, and the electric continuity through the whole cable was perfect. it was on this expedition that was used for the first time the marine mirror galvanometer of professor thomson, by whom it had been invented for marine testing within the previous four weeks, and which afterwards proved an instrument so important to the success of ocean telegraphy. after these experiments the squadron returned to plymouth. as it happened, the present writer had just arrived in england, and landing at falmouth, hastened to plymouth, where the ships were lying in the sound. it was saturday, the fifth of june, and the next day, by invitation of captain hudson, he conducted divine service on the niagara, where an awning was spread over the quarter-deck, round which were grouped the officers of the ship, behind whom were crowded four or five hundred seamen. if it was a pleasure in such circumstances to speak to one's countrymen, it was not less to be received with equal kindness on board the agamemnon. to see these two mighty ships of war, with their consorts, lying side by side, not with guns run out, but engaged in a mission of peace, seemed indeed an omen of the good time coming, when nations shall learn war no more. among the matters of personal solicitude and anxiety at this time--next to the success of the expedition--was mr. field himself. he was working with an activity which was unnatural--which could only be kept up by great excitement, and which involved the most serious danger. the strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in fear that both would break together. often he had no sleep, except such as he caught flying on the railway. indeed, when we remonstrated, he said he could rest better there than anywhere else, for then he was not tormented with the thought of any thing undone. for the time being he could do no more; and putting his head in the cushioned corner of the carriage, he got an hour or two of broken sleep. of this activity we had an instance while in plymouth. the ships were then lying in the sound, only waiting orders from the admiralty to go to sea; but some business required one of the directors to go to paris, and as usual, it fell upon mr. field. he left on sunday night and went to bristol, and thence, by the first morning train, to london. monday he was busy all day, and that night went to paris. tuesday, another busy day, and that night back to london. wednesday, occupied every minute till the departure of the great western train. that night back to plymouth. thursday morning on board the niagara, and immediately the squadron sailed. it was the tenth day of june that the expedition left england, with fair skies and bright prospects. in truth, it was a gallant sight, as these four ships stood out to sea together--those old companions, the niagara and the agamemnon, leading the way, followed by their new attendants, the valorous and the gorgon. never did a voyage begin with better omens. the day was one of the mildest of june, and the sea so still, that one could scarcely perceive, by the motion of the ship, when they passed beyond the breakwater off plymouth harbor into the channel, or into the open sea. at night, it was almost a dead calm. the second day was like the first. there was scarcely wind enough to swell the sails. the ships were all in sight, and as they kept under easy steam, they seemed bound on a voyage of pleasure, gliding over a summer sea to certain success. it had been supposed that the expedition of this year would have a great advantage over the last, from sailing two months earlier, at what was considered a more favorable season. so said all the wise men of the sea. they had given their opinion that june was the best month for crossing the atlantic. then they were almost sure of fair weather. the first three days of the voyage confirmed these predictions, and they who had made them, being found true prophets, shook their heads with great satisfaction. but alas! for the vanity of human expectations, or for those who put trust in the treacherous sea. on sunday it began to blow. the barometer fell, and all signs indicated to the eye of a seaman rough weather. from this time they had a succession of gales for more than a week. from day to day it blew fiercer than before, till sunday, the twentieth, when the gale was at its height, and the spirit of the storm was out on the atlantic. up to this time the niagara and the agamemnon (though they had long since parted from the valorous and the gorgon) had managed to keep in sight of each other; and now from the deck of the former the latter was seen a mile and a half distant, rolling heavily in the sea. the signals which she made showed that she was struggling with the fury of the gale. she was really in great danger of foundering. but this was owing, not merely to the severity of the gale, but to the enormous weight she carried, and to the way this huge bulk was stowed in the ship. only a few days before we had been on board of her, and captain preedy showed us, in one coil, thirteen hundred miles of cable! this made a dead weight of as many hundred tons, which rendered her in rough weather almost unmanageable. to make the matter worse, she had another coil of about two hundred and fifty tons on the forward deck, where it made the head of the ship heavy. in her tremendous rolls, this coil broke loose, and threatened at a time to dash like an avalanche through the side of the ship. but at the most fearful moments the gallant seaman in command never lost his presence of mind. he was always on deck, watching with a vigilant eye the raging of the tempest, and issuing his orders with coolness and prompt decision. to this admirable skill was due the safety of the ship, and of all on board.[b] but all things have an end; and this long gale at last blew itself out, and the weary ocean rocked itself to rest. toward the last of the week the squadron got together at the appointed rendezvous in mid-ocean. as the ships came in sight, the angry sea went down; and on friday, june twenty-fifth, just fifteen days from plymouth, they were all together, as tranquil in the middle of the atlantic as if in plymouth sound. "this evening the four vessels lay together, side by side, and there was such a stillness in the sea and air, as would have seemed remarkable in an inland lake; on the atlantic, and after what we had all so lately witnessed, it seemed almost unnatural." the boats were out, and the officers were passing from ship to ship, telling their experiences of the voyage, and forming their plans for the morrow. captains aldham and dayman said it was the worst weather they had ever experienced in the north-atlantic. but it was the agamemnon that suffered most. the rough sea had shaken not only the ship, but the cable in her. the upper part of the main coil had shifted, and become so twisted and tangled, that a hundred miles had to be got out and coiled in another part of the ship, so that it was not till the afternoon of saturday, the twenty-sixth, that the splice was finally made, and the cable lowered to the bottom of the sea. the ships were then got under way, but had not gone three miles, before the cable broke, being caught in the machinery on board the niagara. it was fortunate they had gone no farther. both ships at once turned about and spliced again the same afternoon, and made a fresh start. now all went well. the paying-out machines worked smoothly, and the cable ran off easily into the sea. thus each ship had paid out about forty miles when suddenly the current ceased! says the writer on the agamemnon: "at half-past three o'clock [sunday morning] forty miles had gone, and nothing could be more perfect and regular than the working of every thing, when suddenly professor thomson came on deck, and reported a total break of continuity; that the cable in fact had parted, and, as was believed at the time, from the niagara. in another instant a gun and a blue-light warned the valorous of what had happened, and roused all on board the agamemnon to a knowledge that the machinery was silent, and that the first part of the atlantic cable had been laid and lost effectually." this was disheartening, but not so much from the fact of a fresh breaking of the cable, as from the mystery as to its cause. the fact, of course, was known instantly on both ships, but the cause was unknown. those on each ship supposed it had occurred on the other. with this impression they turned about to beat up again toward the rendezvous. it was noon of monday, the twenty-eighth, before the agamemnon rejoined the niagara; and then, says the writer: "while all were waiting with impatience for her explanation of how they broke the cable, she electrified every one by running up the interrogatory: 'how did the cable part?' this was astounding. as soon as the boats could be lowered, mr. cyrus field, with the electricians from the niagara, came on board, and a comparison of logs showed the painful and mysterious fact that, _at the same second of time_, each vessel discovered that a total fracture had taken place at a distance of certainly not less than ten miles from each ship; in fact, as well as can be judged, at the bottom of the ocean. that of all the many mishaps connected with the atlantic telegraph, this is the worst and most disheartening is certain, since it proves that, after all that human skill and science can effect to lay the wire down with safety has been accomplished, there may be some fatal obstacles to success at the bottom of the ocean, which can never be guarded against; for even the nature of the peril must always remain as secret and unknown as the depths in which it is to be encountered." but it was no time for useless regrets. once more the cable was joined in mid-ocean, and dropped to its silent bed, and the niagara and the agamemnon began to steam away toward opposite shores of the atlantic. this time the experiment succeeded better than before. the progress of the english ship is thus reported: "at first, the ship's speed was only two knots, the cable going three and three and a half, with a strain of fifteen hundred pounds. by and by, however, the speed was increased to four knots, the cable going five, at a strain of two thousand pounds. at this rate it was kept, with trifling variations, throughout almost the whole of monday night, and neither mr. bright, mr. canning, nor mr. clifford ever quitted the machines for an instant. toward the middle of the night, while the rate of the ship continued the same, the speed at which the cable paid out slackened nearly a knot an hour, while the dynamometer indicated as low as thirteen hundred pounds. this change could only be accounted for on the supposition that the water had shallowed to a considerable extent, and that the vessel was, in fact, passing over some submarine ben nevis or skiddaw. after an interval of about an hour, the strain and rate of progress of the cable again increased, while the increase of the vertical angle seemed to indicate that the wire was sinking down the side of a declivity. beyond this, there was no variation throughout monday night, or, indeed, through tuesday." on board the niagara was the same scene of anxious watching every hour of the day and night. engineers and electricians were constantly on duty: "the scene at night was beautiful. scarcely a word was spoken; silence was commanded, and no conversation allowed. nothing was heard but the strange rattling of the machine as the cable was running out. the lights about deck and in the quarter-deck circle added to the singularity of the spectacle; and those who were on board the ship describe the state of anxious suspense in which all were held as exceedingly impressive." warned by repeated failures, they hardly dared to hope for success in this last experiment. and yet the spirits of all rose, as the distance widened between the ships. a hundred miles were laid safely--a hundred and fifty--two hundred! why might they not lay two thousand? so reasoned the sanguine and hopeful when, tuesday night, came the fatal announcement that the electric current had ceased to flow. it afterward appeared that the cable had broken about twenty feet from the stern of the agamemnon. as the cable was now useless, it only remained to cut it from the stern of the niagara. before doing this, it was thought a good opportunity to test its strength. for this purpose the brakes were shut down, so that the paying-out machine could not move. but still the cable did not break, although the whole weight of the niagara hung upon that slender cord, and though several men got upon the brakes. says captain hudson: "although the wind was quite fresh, the cable held the ship for one hour and forty minutes before breaking, and notwithstanding a strain of four tons." though not unexpected, this last breaking of the cable was a sad blow to all on board. it was the end of their hopes, at least for the present expedition. before separating, it had been agreed, that if the cable should part again before either ship had run a hundred miles, they should return and renew the attempt. if they had passed that limit, they were all to sail for ireland. but the niagara had run out a hundred and eleven miles, and knowing that the agamemnon had done about the same, she expected the latter would keep on her course eastward, not stopping till she reached queenstown. the niagara, therefore, reluctantly bore away for the same port. of course, the return voyage was "any thing but gay." when soldiers come home from the war, they march with a proud step, if they have had a victorious campaign. but it is otherwise when they come with a sad tale of disaster and defeat. seldom had an expedition begun with higher hopes, or ended in more complete failure. who could help feeling keenly this fresh disappointment? even with all the courage "that may become a man," heightened by a natural buoyancy of spirits, how was it possible to resist the impression of the facts they had just witnessed? if--as lord carlisle had told them the year before--"there was almost enough of glory in the very design of an atlantic telegraph," that glory might still be theirs. but apparently they could hope for nothing more. they had done all that men could do. but fate seemed against them; and who can fight against destiny? no one can blame them if they sometimes had sore misgivings, and looked out sadly upon the sea that had baffled their utmost skill, and now laughed their efforts to scorn. in this mood they entered once more the harbor of queenstown. the niagara was the first to arrive and to bring tidings of the great disaster. the agamemnon came in a few days after. knowing the fatal impression their report was likely to produce, mr. field hastened to london to meet the directors. it was high time. the news had reached there before him, and had already produced its effect. under its impression the board was called together. it met in the same room where, six weeks before, it had discussed the prospects of the expedition with full confidence of success. now it met, as a council of war is summoned after a terrible defeat, to decide whether to surrender or to try once more the chances of battle. when the directors came together, the feeling--to call it by the mildest name--was one of extreme discouragement. they looked blankly in each other's faces. with some, the feeling was one almost of despair. sir william brown, of liverpool, the first chairman, wrote, advising them to sell the cable. mr. brooking, the vice-chairman, who had given more time to it than any other director, when he saw that his colleagues were disposed to make still another trial, left the room, and the next day sent in his resignation, determined to take no further part in an undertaking which had been proved hopeless, and to persist in which seemed mere rashness and folly. but others thought there was still a chance. like robert bruce, who, after twelve battles and twelve defeats, yet believed that a thirteenth _might_ bring victory, they clung to this bare possibility. mr. field and professor thomson gave the results of their experience, from which it appeared that there was no obstacle in the nature of the case which might not be overcome. mr. bright and mr. woodhouse joined with them in advising strongly that they should renew the attempt. to be sure, it was a forlorn hope. but the ships were there. though they had lost three hundred miles of cable, they had still enough on board to cross the sea. these arguments prevailed, and it was voted to make one more trial before the project was finally abandoned. even though the chances were a hundred to one against them, that one might bring them success. and so it proved. but was it their own wisdom or courage that got them the victory, or were they led by that being whose way is in the sea, and whose path is in the great waters? footnotes: [a] it should be said, however, in justice to mr. bright, that most of these defects he had himself perceived on seeing it in operation. on his return from the expedition of , he sent in a report, pointing out the defects of the machinery, and how to remedy them. these suggestions were approved by the scientific committee, and carried out by mr. everett. the recognition of this fact, while it takes nothing from the practical skill shown by the american engineer, is but just to his predecessor, who, as the pioneer in this work, might easily fall into mistakes, which it needed only time and experience to correct. [b] as there is no trouble without a compensation, it is something that this voyage, fearful as it was, furnished a subject for a description of marvellous power. the letter to the london times, written by mr. woods, its correspondent on board the agamemnon, is one of the finest descriptions of a storm at sea we know of in the language. it is a wonderful specimen of "word-painting," and brings the scene before us with a vividness like that of the marine paintings of stanfield or turner. chapter x. the second expedition successful. a bold decision needs to be followed by prompt action, lest the spirit that inspired it be weakened by delay. when once it had been fixed that there was to be another attempt to lay the atlantic cable, no time was lost in carrying the resolve into execution. the telegraphic fleet was lying at queenstown. the niagara had arrived on the fifth of july, but the agamemnon, which, through some misunderstanding, had returned to the rendezvous in mid-ocean, thus crossing the niagara on her track, did not get in till a week later. however, all were now there, safe and sound, and mr. field and mr. samuel gurney went to the admiralty, and got an order which they telegraphed to the ships to get ready immediately to go to sea. not an hour was lost. they had barely time to take in coal and other supplies for the voyage. mr. field hastened from england, and prof. thomson from his home in scotland, and in five days the squadron was under way, bound once more for the middle of the atlantic. it was saturday, the seventeenth of july, that the ships left on their second expedition. as they sailed out of the cove of cork, it was with none of the enthusiasm which attended their departure from valentia the year before, or even from plymouth on the tenth of june. nobody cheered; nobody bade them god-speed. "as the ships left the harbor, there was apparently no notice taken of their departure by those on shore, or in the vessels anchored around them; every one seemed impressed with the conviction that they were engaged in a hopeless enterprise, and the squadron seemed rather to have slunk away on some discreditable mission, than to have sailed for the accomplishment of a grand national scheme." many even of those on board felt that they were going on a fool's errand; that the company was possessed by a kind of insanity, of which they would soon be cured by another bitter experience. on leaving this second time, it was agreed that the squadron should not try to keep together, but each ship make its way to the given latitude and longitude which was the appointed rendezvous in mid-ocean. the niagara, being the largest, and able to carry the most coal, kept under steam the whole way, and arrived first, and waited several days for the other ships to appear. the valorous came next, and then the gorgon, and, last of all, the agamemnon, which had been saving her coal for the return voyage, and had been delayed for want of a little of that wind which, in the former expedition, she had had in too great abundance. says the english correspondent on board: "for several days in succession there was an uninterrupted calm. the moon was just at the full, and for several nights it shone with a brilliancy which turned the sea into one silvery sheet, which brought out the dark hull and white sails of the ship in strong contrast to the sea and sky, as the vessel lay all but motionless on the water, the very impersonation of solitude and repose. indeed, until the rendezvous was gained, we had such a succession of beautiful sunrises, gorgeous sunsets, and tranquil moonlight nights, as would have excited the most enthusiastic admiration of any one but persons situated as we were. but by us such scenes were regarded only as the annoying indications of the calm, which delayed our progress and wasted our coal. by dint, however, of a judicious expenditure of fuel, and a liberal use of the cheaper motive power of sail, the rendezvous was reached on wednesday, the twenty-eighth of july, just eleven days after our departure from queenstown. the rest of the squadron came in sight at nightfall, but at such a distance that it was past ten o'clock on the morning of thursday, the twenty-ninth, before the agamemnon joined them. "the day was beautifully calm, so no time was to be lost before making the splice; boats were soon lowered from the attendant ships, the two vessels made fast by a hawser, and the niagara's end of the cable conveyed on board the agamemnon. about half-past twelve o'clock the splice was effectually made. in hoisting it out from the side of the ship the leaden sinker broke short off and fell overboard; and there being no more convenient weight at hand, a thirty-two pound shot was fastened to the splice instead, and the whole apparatus was quickly dropped into the sea without any formality, and indeed almost without a spectator, for those on board the ship had witnessed so many beginnings to the telegraphic line, that it was evident they despaired of there ever being an end to it. the stipulated two hundred and ten fathoms having been paid out, the signal to start was hoisted, the hawser cast loose, and the niagara and agamemnon started for the last time for their opposite destinations." at this moment the ships were nearly in mid-ocean, but not exactly. mr. field, who never indulged in poetical descriptions, but always gave the figures, stating the precise latitude and longitude, and from what quarter the wind blew, and how many fathoms deep the ocean was, and how many miles of cable were on board, made the following entry in his journal: "thursday, july twenty-ninth, latitude fifty-two degrees nine minutes north, longitude thirty-two degrees twenty-seven minutes west. telegraph fleet all in sight; sea smooth; light wind from s.e. to s.s.e.; cloudy. splice made at one p.m. signals through the whole length of the cable on board both ships perfect. depth of water fifteen hundred fathoms; distance to the entrance of valentia harbor eight hundred and thirteen nautical miles, and from there to the telegraph-house the shore end of the cable is laid. distance to the entrance of trinity bay, newfoundland, eight hundred and twenty-two nautical miles, and from there to the telegraph-house at the head of the bay of bull's arm, sixty miles, making in all eight hundred and eighty-two nautical miles. the niagara has sixty-nine miles further to run than the agamemnon. the niagara and agamemnon have each eleven hundred nautical miles of cable on board, about the same quantity as last year." and now, as the ships are fairly apart, and will soon lose sight of each other, we will leave the agamemnon for the present to pursue her course toward ireland, while we follow our own niagara to the shores of the new world. at first of course, while all hoped for success, no one dared to expect it. they said afterwards that "mr. field was the only man on board who kept up his courage through it all." but the chances seemed many to one against them; and the warnings were frequent to excite their fears. that very evening, about sunset, all again seemed lost. we quote from mr. field's journal: "at forty-five minutes past seven p.m., ship's time, signals from the agamemnon ceased, and the tests applied by the electricians showed that there was a want of continuity in the cable, but the insulation was perfect. kept on paying out from the niagara very slowly, and constantly applying all kinds of electrical tests until ten minutes past nine, ship's time, when again commenced receiving perfect signals from the agamemnon." at the same moment the english ship had the same relief from anxiety. the next day there was a fresh cause of alarm. it was found that the niagara had run some miles out of her course. comparing the distance run by observation and by patent log, there was a difference of sixteen miles and a third. with such a percentage of loss, the cable would not hold out to reach newfoundland. this was alarming, but it was soon explained. the mass of iron in the ship had affected the compass, so that it no longer pointed to the right quarter of the heavens. had the niagara been alone on the ocean, this might have caused serious trouble. but now appeared the great advantage of an attendant ship. it was at once arranged that the gorgon should go ahead and lead the way. as she had no cable on board, her compasses were subject to no deviation. accordingly she took her position in the advance, keeping the line along the great circle arc, which was the prescribed route. from that moment there was no variation, or but a very slight one. the two methods of computing the distance--by log and by observation--nearly coincided, and the ship varied scarcely a mile from her course till she entered trinity bay. it is not necessary to follow the whole voyage, for the record is the same from day to day. it is the same sleepless watching of the cable as it runs out day and night, and the same anxious estimate of the distance that still separates them from land. communication is kept up constantly between the ships. mr. field's journal contains entries like these: "saturday, july thirty-first. by eleven o'clock had paid out from the niagara three hundred miles of cable; at forty-five minutes past two received signals from the agamemnon that they had paid out from her three hundred miles of cable; at thirty-seven minutes past five finished coil on the berth-deck, and commenced paying out from the lower deck." "monday, august second. the niagara getting light, and rolling very much; it was not considered safe to carry sail to steady ship, for in case of accident it might be necessary to stop the vessel as soon as possible. passed and signalled the cunard steamer from boston to liverpool." same day about noon, "imperfect insulation of cable detected in sending and receiving signals from the agamemnon, which continued until forty minutes past five, when all was right again. the fault was found to be in the ward-room, about sixty miles from the lower end, which was immediately cut out, and taken out of the circuit." "tuesday, august third. at a quarter-past eleven, ship's time, received signals from on board the agamemnon, that they had paid out from her seven hundred and eighty miles of cable. in the afternoon and evening passed several icebergs. at ten minutes past nine p.m., ship's time, received signal from the agamemnon that she was in water of two hundred fathoms. at twenty minutes past ten p.m., ship's time, niagara in water of two hundred fathoms, and informed the agamemnon of the same. "wednesday, august fourth. depth of water less than two hundred fathoms. weather beautiful, perfectly calm. gorgon in sight. sixty-four miles from the telegraph-house. received signal from agamemnon at noon that they had paid out from her nine hundred and forty miles of cable. passed this morning several icebergs. made the land off entrance to trinity bay at eight a.m. entered trinity bay at half-past twelve. at half-past two, we stopped sending signals to agamemnon for fourteen minutes, for the purpose of making splice. at five p.m. saw her majesty's steamer porcupine [which had been sent by the british government to newfoundland, to watch for the telegraph ships] coming to us. at half-past seven, captain otter, of the porcupine, came on board of the niagara to pilot us to the anchorage, near the telegraph-house.[a] "thursday, august fifth. at forty-five minutes past one a.m., niagara anchored. total amount of cable paid out since splice was made, ten hundred and sixteen miles, six hundred fathoms. total amount of distance, eight hundred and eighty-two miles. amount of cable paid out over distance run, one hundred and thirty-four miles, six hundred fathoms, being a surplus of about fifteen per cent. at two a.m., i went ashore in a small boat, and awoke persons in charge of the telegraph-house, half a mile from landing, and informed them that the telegraph fleet had arrived, and were ready to land the end of the cable. at forty-five minutes past two, received signal from the agamemnon that she had paid out ten hundred and ten miles of cable. at four a.m., delivered telegraphic despatch for the associated press, to be forwarded to new york as early in the morning as the offices of the line were open. "at a quarter-past five a.m., telegraph cable landed. at six, end of cable carried into telegraph-house, and received very strong currents of electricity through the whole cable from the other side of the atlantic. captain hudson, of the niagara, then read prayers, and made some remarks. "at one p.m., her majesty's steamer gorgon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns." thus simply was the story told, that in a few hours was to send a thrill throughout the continent. to complete the narrative of the expedition, it is necessary to include the voyage of the agamemnon, the best account of which is given in the letter of the correspondent of the london times. we quote from the time of junction in mid-ocean, just as the ships went sailing eastward and westward: "for the first three hours the ships proceeded very slowly, paying out a great quantity of slack, but after the expiration of this time, the speed of the agamemnon was increased to about five knots per hour, the cable going at about six, without indicating more than a few hundred pounds of strain upon the dynamometer. shortly after six o'clock a very large whale was seen approaching the starboard bow at a great speed, rolling and tossing the sea into foam all around and for the first time we felt the possibility of the supposition that our second mysterious breakage of the cable might have been caused after all by one of these animals getting foul of it under water. it appeared as if it were making direct for the cable, and great was the relief of all when the ponderous living mass was seen slowly to pass astern, just grazing the cable where it entered the water, but fortunately without doing any mischief. "all seemed to go well up to about eight o'clock; the cable paid out from the hold with an evenness and regularity which showed how carefully and perfectly it had been coiled away; and to guard against accidents which might arise in consequence of the cable having suffered injury during the storm, the indicated strain upon the dynamometer was never allowed to go beyond seventeen hundred pounds, or less than one quarter what the cable is estimated to bear, and thus far every thing looked promising of success. but, in such a hazardous work, no one knows what a few minutes may bring forth, for soon after eight, an injured portion of the cable was discovered about a mile or two from the portion paying out. not a moment was lost by mr. canning, the engineer on duty, in setting men to work to cobble up the injury as well as time would permit, for the cable was going out at such a rate that the damaged portion would be paid overboard in less than twenty minutes, and former experience had shown us that to check either the speed of the ship, or the cable, would, in all probability, be attended by the most fatal results. "just before the lapping was finished, professor thomson reported that the electrical continuity of the wire had ceased, but that the insulation was still perfect; attention was naturally directed to the injured piece as the probable source of the stoppage, and not a moment was lost in cutting the cable at that point, with the intention of making a perfect splice. to the consternation of all, the electrical tests applied showed the fault to be overboard, and in all probability some fifty miles from the ship. not a second was to be lost, for it was evident that the cut portion must be paid overboard in a few minutes, and in the mean time, the tedious and difficult operation of making a splice had to be performed. the ship was immediately stopped, and no more cable paid out than was absolutely necessary to prevent it breaking. "as the stern of the ship was lifted by the waves, a scene of the most intense excitement followed. it seemed impossible, even by using the greatest possible speed, and paying out the least possible amount of cable, that the junction could be finished before the part was taken out of the hands of the workmen. the main hold presented an extraordinary scene; nearly all the officers of the ship and of those connected with the expedition, stood in groups about the coil, watching with intense anxiety the cable, as it slowly unwound itself nearer and nearer the joint, while the workmen, directed by mr. canning, under whose superintendence the cable was originally manufactured, worked at the splice as only men could work who felt that the life and death of the expedition depended upon their rapidity. but all their speed was to no purpose, as the cable was unwinding within a hundred fathoms, and, as a last and desperate resource, the cable was stopped altogether, and, for a few minutes, the ship hung on by the end. fortunately, however, it was only for a few minutes, as the strain was continually rising above two tons, and it would not hold on much longer; when the splice was finished, the signal was made to loose the stopper, and it passed overboard safely enough. "when the excitement consequent upon having so narrowly saved the cable had passed away, we awoke to the consciousness that the case was still as hopeless as ever, for the electrical continuity was still entirely wanting. preparations were consequently made to pay out as little rope as possible, and to hold on for six hours, in the hopes that the fault, whatever it might be, might mend itself before cutting the cable and returning to the rendezvous to make another splice. the magnetic needles on the receiving instruments were watched closely for the returning signals; when, in a few minutes, the last hope was extinguished by their suddenly indicating dead earth, which tended to show that the cable had broken from the niagara, or that the insulation had been completely destroyed. "in three minutes, however, every one was agreeably surprised by the intelligence that the stoppage had disappeared, and that the signals had again appeared at their regular intervals from the niagara. it is needless to say what a load of anxiety this news removed from the minds of every one; but the general confidence in the ultimate success of the operations was much shaken by the occurrence, for all felt that every minute a similar accident might occur. for some time the paying-out continued as usual, but toward the morning another damaged place was discovered in the cable; there was fortunately, however, time to repair it in the hold without in any way interfering with the operations beyond for a time slightly reducing the speed of the ship. "during the morning of friday, the thirtieth, every thing went well; the ship had been kept at the speed of about five knots, the cable paid out at about six, the average angle with the horizon at which it left the ship being about fifteen degrees, while the indicated strain upon the dynamometer seldom showed more than sixteen hundred pounds to seventeen hundred pounds. observations made at noon showed that we had made good ninety miles from the starting-point since the previous day, with an expenditure, including the loss in lowering the splice and during the subsequent stoppages, of one hundred and thirty-five miles of the cable. during the latter portion of the day the barometer fell considerably, and toward the evening it blew almost a gale of wind from the eastward, dead ahead of course. as the breeze freshened, the speed of the engines was gradually increased, but the wind more than increased in proportion, so that, before the sun went down, the agamemnon was going full steam against the wind, only making a speed of about four knots an hour. during the evening topmasts were lowered, and spars, yards, sails, and indeed every thing aloft that could offer resistance to the wind, was sent down on deck; but still the ship made but little way, chiefly in consequence of the heavy sea, though the enormous quantity of fuel consumed showed us that, if the wind lasted, we should be reduced to burning the masts, spars, and even the decks, to bring the ship into valentia. "it seemed to be our particular ill-fortune to meet with head-winds whichever way the ship's head was turned. on our journey out we had been delayed, and obliged to consume an undue proportion of coal, for want of an easterly wind, and now all our fuel was wanted because of one. however, during the next day the wind gradually went around to the south-west, which, though it raised a very heavy sea, allowed us to husband our small remaining store of fuel. "at noon on saturday, the thirty-first of july, observations showed us to have made good one hundred and twenty miles of distance since noon of the previous day, with a loss of about twenty-seven per cent of cable. the niagara, as far as could be judged from the amount of cable she paid out, which, by a previous arrangement, was signalled at every ten miles, kept pace with us, within one or two miles, the whole distance across. during the afternoon of saturday, the wind again freshened up, and before nightfall it again blew nearly a gale of wind, and a tremendous sea ran before it from the south-west, which made the agamemnon pitch to such an extent that it was thought impossible the cable could hold on through the night; indeed, had it not been for the constant care and watchfulness exercised by mr. bright, and the two energetic engineers, mr. canning and mr. clifford, who acted with him, it could not have been done at all. men were kept at the wheels of the machine to prevent their stopping as the stern of the ship rose and fell with the sea, for, had they done so, the cable must undoubtedly have parted. "during sunday the sea and wind increased, and before the evening it blew a smart gale. now, indeed, were the energy and activity of all engaged in the operation tasked to the utmost. mr. hoar and mr. moore, the two engineers who had the charge of the relieving-wheels of the dynamometer, had to keep watch and watch alternately every four hours, and while on duty durst not let their attention be removed from their occupation for one moment, for on their releasing the brakes every time the stern of the ship fell into the trough of the sea entirely depended the safety of the cable, and the result shows how ably they discharged their duty. throughout the night, there were few who had the least expectation of the cable holding on till morning, and many remained awake listening for the sound that all most dreaded to hear--namely, the gun which should announce the failure of all our hopes. but still the cable, which, in comparison with the ship from which it was paid out, and the gigantic waves among which it was delivered, was but a mere thread, continued to hold on, only leaving a silvery phosphorous line upon the stupendous seas as they rolled on toward the ship. "with sunday morning came no improvement in the weather; still the sky remained black and stormy to windward, and the constant violent squalls of wind and rain which prevailed during the whole day served to keep up, if not to augment, the height of the waves. but the cable had gone through so much during the night, that our confidence in its continuing to hold was much restored. "at noon, observations showed us to have made good one hundred and thirty miles from noon of the previous day, and about three hundred and sixty from our starting-point in mid-ocean. we had passed by the deepest sounding of twenty-four hundred fathoms, and over more than half of the deep water generally, while the amount of cable still remaining in the ship was more than sufficient to carry us to the irish coast, even supposing the continuance of the bad weather should oblige us to pay out the same amount of slack cable we had been hitherto wasting. thus far things looked very promising for our ultimate success. but former experience showed us only too plainly that we could never suppose that some accident might not arise until the ends had been fairly landed on the opposite shores. "during sunday night and monday morning the weather continued as boisterous as ever, and it was only by the most indefatigable exertions of the engineer upon duty that the wheels could be prevented from stopping altogether, as the vessel rose and fell with the sea, and once or twice they did come completely to a standstill, in spite of all that could be done to keep them moving; but fortunately they were again set in motion before the stern of the ship was thrown up by the succeeding wave. no strain could be placed upon the cable, of course; and though the dynamometer occasionally registered seventeen hundred pounds as the ship lifted, it was oftener below one thousand, and was frequently nothing, the cable running out as fast as its own weight and the speed of the ship could draw it. but even with all these forces acting unresistedly upon it, the cable never paid itself out at a greater speed than eight knots an hour at the time the ship was going at the rate of six knots and a half. subsequently, however, when the speed of the ship even exceeded six knots and a half, the cable never ran out so quick. the average speed maintained by the ship up to this time, and, indeed, for the whole voyage, was about five knots and a half, the cable, with occasional exceptions, running about thirty per cent faster. "at noon on monday, august second, had made good one hundred and twenty-seven and a half miles since noon of the previous day, and completed more than the half way to our ultimate destination. "during the afternoon an american three-masted schooner, which afterward proved to be the chieftain, was seen standing from the eastward toward us. no notice was taken of her at first, but when she was within about half a mile of the agamemnon she altered her course, and bore right down across our bows. a collision, which might prove fatal to the cable, now seemed inevitable, or could only be avoided by the equally hazardous expedient of altering the agamemnon's course. the valorous steamed ahead, and fired a gun for her to heave to, which, as she did not appear to take much notice of, was quickly followed by another from the bows of the agamemnon, and a second and third from the valorous, but still the vessel held on her course; and as the only resource left to avoid a collision, the course of the agamemnon was altered just in time to pass within a few yards of her. it was evident that our proceedings were a source of the greatest possible astonishment to them, for all her crew crowded upon her deck and rigging. at length they evidently discovered who we were, and what we were doing, for the crew manned the rigging, and dipping the ensign several times they gave us three hearty cheers. though the agamemnon was obliged to acknowledge these congratulations in due form, the feelings of annoyance with which we regarded the vessel which, either by the stupidity or carelessness of those on board, was so near adding a fatal and unexpected mishap to the long chapter of accidents which had already been encountered, may easily be imagined. to those below, who of course did not see the ship approaching, the sound of the first gun came like a thunderbolt, for all took it as the signal of the breaking of the cable. the dinner-tables were deserted in a moment, and a general rush made up the hatches to the deck; but before reaching it, their fears were quickly banished by the report of the succeeding gun, which all knew well could only be caused by a ship in our way or a man overboard. "throughout the greater portion of monday morning the electrical signals from the niagara had been getting gradually weaker, until they ceased altogether for nearly three-quarters of an hour. our uneasiness, however, was in some degree lessened by the fact that the stoppage appeared to be a want of continuity,[b] and not any defect in insulation, and there was consequently every reason to suppose that it might arise from faulty connection on board the niagara. accordingly professor thomson sent a message to the effect that the signals were too weak to be read, and, as if they had been awaiting such a signal to increase their battery power, the deflections immediately returned even stronger than they had ever been before. toward the evening, however, they again declined in force for a short time. with the exception of these little stoppages, the electrical condition of the submerged wire seemed to be much improved. it was evident that the low temperature of the water at the immense depth improved considerably the insulating properties of the gutta-percha, while the enormous pressure to which it must have been subjected probably tended to consolidate its texture, and to fill up any air-bubbles or slight faults in manufacture which may have existed. "the weather during monday night moderated a little, but still there was a very heavy sea on, which endangered the wire every second minute. "about three o'clock on tuesday morning, all on board were startled from their beds by the loud booming of a gun. every one, without waiting for the performance of the most particular toilet, rushed on deck to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. contrary to all expectation, the cable was safe, but just in the gray light could be seen the valorous rounded to in the most warlike attitude, firing gun after gun in quick succession toward a large american bark, which, quite unconscious of our proceeding, was standing right across our stern. such loud and repeated remonstrances from a large steam frigate were not to be despised, and, evidently without knowing the why or the wherefore, she quickly threw her sails aback and remained hove to. whether those on board her considered that we were engaged in some filibustering expedition, or regarded our proceedings as another british outrage upon the american flag, it is impossible to say; but certain it is that, apparently in great trepidation, she remained hove to until we had lost sight of her in the distance. "tuesday was a much finer day than any we had experienced for nearly a week, but still there was a considerable sea running, and our dangers were far from passed; yet the hopes of our ultimate success ran high. we had accomplished nearly the whole of the deep-sea portion of the route in safety, and that, too, under the most unfavorable circumstances possible; therefore there was every reason to believe that unless some unforeseen accident should occur, we should accomplish the remainder. "about five o'clock in the evening, the steep submarine mountain which divides the telegraphic plateau from the irish coast was reached, and the sudden shallowing of the water had a very marked effect upon the cable, causing the strain on and the speed of it to lessen every minute. a great deal of slack was paid out to allow for any great inequalities which might exist, though undiscovered by the sounding-line. about ten o'clock the shoal water of two hundred and fifty fathoms was reached; the only remaining anxiety now was the changing from the lower main coil to that upon the upper deck, and this most difficult and dangerous operation was successfully performed between three and four o'clock on wednesday morning. "wednesday was a beautiful, calm day; indeed, it was the first on which any one would have thought of making a splice since the day we started from the rendezvous. we therefore congratulated ourselves on having saved a week by commencing operations on the thursday previous. at noon, we were eighty-nine miles distant from the telegraph station at valentia. the water was shallow, so that there was no difficulty in paying out the wire almost without any loss of slack, and all looked upon the undertaking as virtually accomplished. "at about one o'clock in the evening, the second change from the upper-deck coil to that upon the orlop-deck was safely effected, and shortly after the vessels exchanged signals that they were in two hundred fathoms water. as the night advanced the speed of the ship was reduced, as it was known that we were only a short distance from the land, and there would be no advantage in making it before daylight in the morning. about twelve o'clock, however, the skelligs light was seen in the distance, and the valorous steamed on ahead to lead us in to the coast, firing rockets at intervals to direct us, which were answered by us from the agamemnon, though, according to mr. moriarty, the master's wish, the ship, disregarding the valorous, kept her own course, which proved to be the right one in the end. "by daylight on the morning of thursday, the bold and rocky mountains which entirely surround the wild and picturesque neighborhood of valentia, rose right before us at a few miles' distance. never, probably, was the sight of land more welcome, as it brought to a successful termination one of the greatest, but, at the same time, most difficult schemes which was ever undertaken. had it been the dullest and most melancholy swamp on the face of the earth that lay before us, we should have found it a pleasant prospect; but, as the sun rose from the estuary of dingle bay, tinging with a deep, soft purple the lofty summits of the steep mountains which surround its shores, and illuminating the masses of morning vapor which hung upon them, it was a scene which might vie in beauty with any thing that could be produced by the most florid imagination of an artist. "no one on shore was apparently conscious of our approach, so the valorous steamed ahead to the mouth of the harbor and fired a gun. both ships made straight for doulus bay, and about six o'clock came to anchor at the side of beginish island, opposite to valentia. as soon as the inhabitants became aware of our approach, there was a general desertion of the place, and hundreds of boats crowded around us, their passengers in the greatest state of excitement to hear all about our voyage. the knight of kerry was absent in dingle, but a messenger was immediately dispatched for him, and he soon arrived in her majesty's gunboat shamrock. soon after our arrival, a signal was received from the niagara that they were preparing to land, having paid out one thousand and thirty nautical miles of cable, while the agamemnon had accomplished her portion of the distance with an expenditure of one thousand and twenty miles,[c] making the total length of the wire submerged two thousand and fifty geographical miles. immediately after the ships cast anchor, the paddle-box boats of the valorous were got ready, and two miles of cable coiled away in them, for the purpose of landing the end; but it was late in the afternoon before the procession of boats left the ship, under a salute of three rounds of small-arms from the detachment of marines on board the agamemnon, under the command of lieutenant morris. "the progress of the end to the shore was very slow, in consequence of the very stiff wind which blew at the time, but at about three o'clock the end was safely brought on shore at knightstown, valentia, by mr. bright and mr. canning, the chief and second engineers, to whose exertions the success of the undertaking is attributable, and the knight of kerry.[d] the end was immediately laid in the trench which had been dug to receive it, while a royal salute, making the neighboring rocks and mountains reverberate, announced that the communication between the old and the new world had been completed." footnotes: [a] the spot chosen as the terminus of the atlantic cable, with the views around it--both on the water and on land--is thus described by a correspondent: "all who have visited trinity bay, newfoundland, with one consent allow it to be one of the most beautiful sheets of water they ever set eyes upon. its color is very peculiar--an inexpressible mingling of the pure blue ocean with the deep evergreen woodlands and the serene blue sky. its extreme length is about eighty miles, its breadth about thirty miles, opening boldly into the atlantic on the northern side of the island. at its south-western shore it branches into the bay of bull's arm, which is a quiet, safe, and beautiful harbor, about two miles in breadth, and nine or ten in length, running in a direction north-west. "the depth of water is sufficient for the largest vessels. the tide rises seven or eight feet, and the bay terminates in a beautiful sand-beach. the shore is clothed with dark green fir-trees, which, mixed with birch and mountain-ash, present a pleasing contrast. the land rises gradually from the water all around, so as to afford one of the most agreeable town sites in the island. you ascend only about a quarter of a mile from the water, and there are no longer trees, but wild grass like an open prairie. here are found at this season myriads of the upland cranberries, upon which unnumbered ptarmigan, or the northern partridge, feed. "the raspberry, bake-apple berry, and the whortleberry are also common. numerous little lakes may be seen in the open, elevated ground, from which flow rivulets, affording abundance of fine trout. after ascending for about a mile and a half, you are then probably three hundred or four hundred feet above the tide, and nothing can exceed the beauty of the scene when, at one view, you behold the placid waters of both trinity and placentia bays--the latter sprinkled with clusters of verdant islands. "you can now descend westward as gradually as you came up from the telegraph landing, to the shores of placentia bay, where there is an excellent harbor and admirable fisheries, skirting the shore, and the accompanying road of the land telegraph line leading from st. john's westward through the island, to cape ray. at this season of the year game is very abundant. reindeer in great numbers, bears, wolves--others very numerous, the large northern hare, foxes, wild geese, ducks, etc. "about four miles southward of the entrance of the bay of bull's arm, on the shore of placentia bay, is situated the extraordinary la manche lead mine, the property of the telegraph company, already yielding a rich supply of remarkably pure galena. the place where the cable is landed is memorable in the history of the island as the naval battle-ground between the french and english in their early struggle for the exclusive occupancy of the valuable fisheries along the coast." [b] this is an error, as we learn on the high authority of professor thomson himself. it was defective insulation, not any "want of continuity," that caused the weak signals. want of continuity would have stopped the signals altogether, and given quite different indications on the testing instruments from those he observed. [c] the niagara had sixty miles farther to run than the agamemnon, to land the cable at the head of trinity bay. [d] a name that occurs several times in this history, and one never to be mentioned but with honor. the knight of kerry was lord of the isles on that part of the irish coast; and from the beginning showed the deepest interest in this enterprise; and by his generous hospitality to all connected with it made many friends by whom he was gratefully remembered on both sides of the atlantic. chapter xi. excitement in america. whoever shall write the history of popular enthusiasms, must give a large space to the atlantic telegraph. never did the tidings of any great achievement--whether in peace or war--more truly electrify a nation. no doubt, the impression was the greater because it took the country by surprise. had the attempt succeeded in june, it would have found a people prepared for it. but the failure of the first expedition, added to that of the previous year, settled the fate of the enterprise in the minds of the public. it was a hopeless undertaking; and its projectors shared the usual lot of those who conceive vast designs, and venture on great enterprises, which are not successful, to be regarded with a mixture of derision and pity. such was the temper of the public mind, when at noon of thursday, the fifth of august, the following despatch was received: "united states frigate niagara, trinity bay, newfoundland, august , . "_to the associated press, new york_: "the atlantic telegraph fleet sailed from queenstown, ireland, saturday, july seventeenth, and met in mid-ocean wednesday, july twenty-eighth. made the splice at one p.m., thursday, the twenty-ninth, and separated--the agamemnon and valorous, bound to valentia, ireland; the niagara and gorgon, for this place, where they arrived yesterday, and this morning the end of the cable will be landed. "it is one thousand six hundred and ninety-six nautical, or one thousand nine hundred and fifty statute, miles from the telegraph house at the head of valentia harbor to the telegraph house at the bay of bulls, trinity bay, and for more than two thirds of this distance the water is over two miles in depth. the cable has been paid out from the agamemnon at about the same speed as from the niagara. the electric signals sent and received through the whole cable are perfect. "the machinery for paying out the cable worked in the most satisfactory manner, and was not stopped for a single moment from the time the splice was made until we arrived here. "captain hudson, messrs. everett and woodhouse, the engineers, the electricians, the officers of the ship, and in fact, every man on board the telegraph fleet, has exerted himself to the utmost to make the expedition successful, and by the blessing of divine providence it has succeeded. "after the end of the cable is landed and connected with the land line of telegraph, and the niagara has discharged some cargo belonging to the telegraph company, she will go to st. john's for coal, and then proceed at once to new york. "cyrus w. field." the impression of this simple announcement it is impossible to conceive. it was immediately telegraphed to all parts of the united states, and everywhere produced the greatest excitement. in some places all business was suspended; men rushed into the streets, and flocked to the offices where the news was received. at andover, massachusetts, the news arrived while the alumni of the theological seminary were celebrating their semi-centennial anniversary by a dinner. one thousand persons were present, all of whom rose to their feet, and gave vent to their excited feelings by continued and enthusiastic cheers. when quiet was restored, rev. dr. adams, of new york, said his heart was too full for a speech, and suggested, as the more fitting utterance of what all felt, that they should join in thanksgiving to almighty god, and the venerable dr. hawes, of hartford, led them in fervent prayer, acknowledging the great event as from the hand of god, and as calculated to hasten the triumphs of civilization and christianity. then all standing up together, sang, to the tune of old hundred, the majestic doxology: "praise god, from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below; praise him above, ye heavenly host, praise father, son, and holy ghost!" thus--said dr. hawes--"we have now consecrated this new power, so far as our agency is concerned, to the building up of the truth." in new york the news was received at first with some incredulity. but as it was confirmed by subsequent despatches, the city broke out into tumultuous rejoicing. never was there such an outburst of popular feeling. in boston a hundred guns were fired on the common, and the bells of the city were rung for an hour to give utterance to the general joy. similar scenes were witnessed in all parts of the united states. i have now before me the new york papers of august, , and from the memorable fifth, when the landing took place, to the end of the month, they contain hardly any thing else than popular demonstrations in honor of the atlantic telegraph. it was indeed a national jubilee. it was natural that this overflow of public feeling should express itself towards one who was recognized as the author of the great work, which inspired such universal joy. mr. field, much to his own surprise, "awoke and found himself famous." in twenty-four hours his name was on millions of tongues. congratulations poured in from all quarters, from mayors of cities and governors of states; from all parts of the union and the british provinces; from the president of the united states and the governor-general of canada. mr. buchanan telegraphed to mr. field, at trinity bay: "my dear sir: i congratulate you with all my heart on the success of the great enterprise with which your name is so honorably connected. under the blessing of divine providence i trust it may prove instrumental in promoting perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations." the popular estimate of the achievement and its author went still farther. with the natural exaggeration common to masses of men, when carried away by a sudden enthusiasm, the atlantic telegraph was hailed as an immense stride in the onward progress of the race, an event in the history of the world hardly inferior to the discovery of america, or to the invention of the art of printing; and the name of its projector was coupled with those of franklin and columbus. he who but yesterday was regarded as a visionary, to-day was exalted as a benefactor of his country and of mankind. this avalanche of praise was quite overwhelming. it is always embarrassing to be forced into sudden conspicuity, and to find one's self the object of general attention and applause. while feeling this embarrassment, mr. field could not but be gratified to witness the public joy at the success of the enterprise, and he was deeply touched and grateful for the appreciation of his own services. but probably all these public demonstrations did not go to his heart so much as private letters received from the other side of the atlantic, from those who had shared the labors of the enterprise--old companions in arms who had borne with him the heavy burden, and now were fully entitled to a share in the honor which was the reward of their common toil. as a specimen of the congratulations which came from beyond the sea, we quote a single passage from a letter of mr. george saward, the secretary of the company in london, written immediately on receiving the news of the success of the enterprise. under the impression of that event, he writes to mr. field: "at last the great work is successful. i rejoice at it for the sake of humanity at large. i rejoice at it for the sake of our common nationalities, and last but not least, for your personal sake. i most heartily and sincerely rejoice with you, and congratulate you, upon this happy termination to the trouble and anxiety, the continuous and persevering labor, and never-ceasing and sleepless energy, which the successful accomplishment of this vast and noble enterprise has cost you. never was man more devoted--never did man's energy better deserve success than yours has done. may you in the bosom of your family reap those rewards of repose and affection, which will be doubly sweet from the reflection, that you return to them after having been under providence the main and leading principal in conferring a vast and enduring benefit on mankind. if the contemplation of fame has a charm for you, you may well indulge in the reflection; for the name of cyrus w. field will now go onward to immortality, as long as that of the atlantic telegraph shall be known to mankind." the directors, whose faith and courage had been so severely tried, now felt double joy, for their friend and for themselves, at this glorious result of their united labors. mr. peabody wrote to mr. field that "his reflections must be like those of columbus, after the discovery of america." sir charles wood and sir john pakington, who, as successive first lords of the admiralty, had supported the enterprise with the constant aid of the british government, wrote letters of congratulation on the great work which had been carried through mainly by his energy and unconquerable will. they were above any petty national jealousy, and never imagined that it would detract aught from the just honor of england, to award full praise to the courage and enterprise of an american. on his part, mr. field was equally anxious to acknowledge the invaluable aid given by others--aid, without which the efforts of no single individual could command success. on his arrival at st. john's, he was welcomed with enthusiasm by the whole population. an address was presented to him by the executive council of newfoundland, in which they offered their hearty congratulations on the success of the undertaking, which they recognized as chiefly due to him. "intimately acquainted as we have been"--these are their words--"with the energy and enterprise which have distinguished you from the commencement of the great work of telegraph connection between the old and the new worlds; and feeling that under providence this triumph of science is mainly due to your well-directed and indomitable exertions, we desire to express to you our high appreciation of your success in the cause of the world's progress," etc.; to which mr. field replied, recognizing in turn the cordial support which he had always received from the government of newfoundland. the chamber of commerce of st. john's also presented an address in similar terms, to which he replied--after acknowledging their kind mention of his own labors and sacrifices: "but it would not only be ungenerous, but unjust, that i should for a moment forget the services of those who were my co-workers in this enterprise, and without whom any labors of mine would have been unavailing. it would be difficult to enumerate the many gentlemen whose scientific acquirements and skill and energy have been devoted to the advancement of this work, and who have so mainly produced the issue which has called forth this expression of your good wishes on my behalf. but i could not do justice to my own feelings did i fail to acknowledge how much is owing to captain hudson and the officers of the niagara, whose hearts were in the work, and whose toil was unceasing; to captain dayman of her majesty's ship gorgon, for the soundings so accurately made by him last year, and for the perfect manner in which he led the niagara over the great-circle arc while laying the cable; to captain otter, of the porcupine, for the careful survey made by him in trinity bay, and for the admirable manner in which he piloted the niagara at night to her anchorage; to mr. everett, who has for months devoted his whole time to designing and perfecting the beautiful machinery that has so successfully paid out the cable from the ships--machinery so perfect in every respect, that it was not for one moment stopped on board the niagara until she reached her destination in trinity bay; to mr. woodhouse, who superintended the coiling of the cable, and zealously and ably coöperated with his brother engineer during the progress of paying-out; to the electricians for their constant watchfulness; to the men for their almost ceaseless labor (and i feel confident that you will have a good report from the commanders, engineers, electricians, on board the agamemnon and valorous, the irish portion of the fleet); to the directors of the atlantic telegraph company for the time they have devoted to the undertaking without receiving any compensation for their services (and it must be a pleasure to many of you to know that the director, who has devoted more time than any other, was for many years a resident of this place, and well known to all of you--i allude to mr. brooking, of london); to mr. c. m. lampson, a native of new england, but who has for the last twenty-seven years resided in london, who appreciated the great importance of this enterprise to both countries, and gave it most valuable aid, bringing his sound judgment and great business talent to the service of the company; to that distinguished american, mr. george peabody, and his worthy partner, mr. morgan, who not only assisted it most liberally with their means, but to whom i could always go with confidence for advice." such acknowledgments, constantly repeated, showed a mind incapable of envy or jealousy; that was chiefly anxious to recognize the services of others, and that they should receive from the public, both of england and america, the honors which they had so nobly earned. after two or three days' delay at st. john's, which the niagara was obliged to make for coal, but which the people spent in festivity and rejoicing, she left for new york, where she arrived on the eighteenth--two weeks from the landing of the cable in trinity bay. these had been weeks of great excitement, yet not unmingled with suspense and anxiety. the public, eager for news, devoured every thing that concerned the telegraph with impatience, but all was not satisfactory. despatches from trinity bay said that signals were continually passing over the cable, yet no news reached the public from the other side of the atlantic. this was partially explained by a message from mr. field, sent from trinity bay to the associated press as early as the seventh: "we landed here in the woods, and until the telegraph instruments are perfectly adjusted, no communications can pass between the two continents; but the electric currents are received freely. "you shall have the earliest intimation when all is ready, but it may be some days before every thing is perfected. the first through message between europe and america will be from the queen of great britain to the president of the united states, and the second his reply." but as the public grew impatient, and friends sent anxious inquiring messages, he telegraphed again from st. john's on the eleventh: "before i left london, the directors of the atlantic telegraph company decided unanimously that, after the cable was laid, and the queen's and president's messages transmitted, the line should be kept for several weeks for the sole use of dr. whitehouse, professor thomson, and other electricians, to enable them to test thoroughly their several modes of telegraphing, so that the directors might decide which was the best and most rapid method for future use: for it was considered that after the line should be once thrown open for business, it would be very difficult to obtain it for experimental purposes, even for a short time. "due notice will be given when the line will be ready for business, and the tariff of prices." still the public were not satisfied, and many were beginning to doubt, when, on the sixteenth, it was suddenly announced that the queen's message was received. it was as follows:-- "_to the president of the united states, washington_: "the queen desires to congratulate the president upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the queen has taken the deepest interest. "the queen is convinced that the president will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable which now connects great britain with the united states will prove an additional link between the nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. "the queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the president, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the united states." to this the president replied: "washington city, august , . "_to her majesty victoria, the queen of great britain_: "the president cordially reciprocates the congratulations of her majesty the queen, on the success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the science, skill, and indomitable energy of the two countries. "it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. "may the atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by divine providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world. "in this view, will not all nations of christendom spontaneously unite in the declaration that it shall be for ever neutral, and that its communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of destination, even in the midst of hostilities? "james buchanan." the arrival of the queen's message was the signal for a fresh outbreak of popular enthusiasm. the next morning, august seventeenth, the city of new york was awakened by the thunder of artillery. a hundred guns were fired in the city hall park at daybreak, and the salute was repeated at noon. at this hour, flags were flying from all the public buildings, and the bells of the principal churches began to ring, as christmas bells signal the birth of one who came to bring peace and good-will to men--chimes that, it was fondly hoped, might usher in a new era, as they should ring out the old, ring in the new, ring out the false, ring in the true. that night the city was illuminated. never had it seen so brilliant a spectacle. such was the blaze of light around the city hall, that the cupola caught fire, and was consumed, and the hall itself narrowly escaped destruction. similar demonstrations took place in other parts of the united states. from the atlantic to the valley of the mississippi, and to the gulf of mexico, in every city was heard the firing of guns and the ringing of bells. nothing seemed too extravagant to give expression to the popular rejoicing. the next morning after this illumination, the niagara entered the harbor of new york, and mr. field hastened to his home. the night before leaving the ship, he had written to the directors in london, giving a full report of the laying of the cable, which he closed by resigning the position which he had held for the last seven months. he wrote: "at your unanimous request, but at a very great personal sacrifice to myself, i accepted the office of general manager of the atlantic telegraph company, for the sole purpose of doing all in my power to aid you to make the enterprise successful; and as that object has been attained, you will please accept my resignation. it will always afford me pleasure to do any thing in my power, consistent with my duties to my family and my own private affairs, to promote the interests of the atlantic telegraph company." once more with his family, mr. field hoped for a brief interval of rest and quiet. but this was impossible. the great event with which his name was connected was too fresh in the public mind. he could not escape public observation. he was at once thronged with visitors, offering their congratulations, and his house surrounded with crowds eager to see and hear him. while making all allowance for popular excitement, yet none could deny that a service so great demanded some public recognition. even in england, where the enthusiasm did not approach that in this country, still the wondrous character of the achievement was fully acknowledged. said the london times on the morning of the sixth of august: "since the discovery of columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere of human activity." "more was done yesterday for the consolidation of our empire, than the wisdom of our statesmen, the liberality of our legislature, or the loyalty of our colonists, could ever have effected." to mark the public benefit which had been conferred, the chief engineer of the expedition, mr. charles t. bright, was knighted, and captains preedy and aldham were both made companions of the bath, and other officers were promoted. thus england showed her appreciation of their services. but in this country titles and honors come not from the government, but from the people. popular enthusiasm exhausted itself in eulogies of the man who had linked the old world to the new. it seems strange now to sit down in cold blood and read what was published in the papers of that day. a collection of american journals issued during that eventful month, august, , would be a literary curiosity.[a] nor was it merely in such outward demonstrations that the public enthusiasm showed itself. the feeling struck deeper, and reached all minds. while the people shouted and cannon roared, sober and thoughtful men pondered on the change that was being wrought in the earth. business men reasoned how it would affect the commerce of the world, while the philanthropic regarded it as the forerunner of an age of universal peace. the first message flashed across the sea--even before that of the queen--had been one of religious exultation. it was from the directors in great britain to those on this side the atlantic, and, simply reciting the fact that europe and america were united by telegraph, at once broke into a strain of religious rapture, echoing the song of the angels over a saviour's birth: "glory to god in the highest; on earth, peace, good-will toward men." poetry at once caught up the strain. the event became the theme of innumerable odes and hymns, of which it must be said that, whatever their merit as poetry, their spirit at least was noble, celebrating the event chiefly as promoting the brotherhood of the human family. the key-note was struck in such lines as these: 'tis done! the angry sea consents, the nations stand no more apart, with claspèd hands the continents feel throbbings of each other's heart. speed, speed the cable; let it run a loving girdle round the earth, till all the nations 'neath the sun shall be as brothers of one hearth; as brothers pledging, hand in hand, one freedom for the world abroad, one commerce over every land, one language and one god. the sermons preached on this occasion were literally without number. enough found their way into print to make a large volume. never had an event touched more deeply the spirit of religious enthusiasm. devout men held it as an advance toward that millennial era which was at once the object of their faith and hope. was not this the predicted time when, "many should run to and fro, and knowledge should be increased?" so said the preachers, taking for their favorite text the vision of the psalmist, "their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world;" or the question of job: "canst thou send forth the lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, here we are?" was not this the dawn of that happy age, when all men should be bound together in peaceful intercourse, and nations should learn war no more? such was the burden of the discourses that were preached in a thousand pulpits from one end of the country to the other. even the roman catholic church, so lofty and inflexible in its claims, soaring into the past centuries, and almost disdaining the material progress of the present day as compared with the spiritual glories of the ages of faith, did not ignore the great event; and in laying the foundation of the new cathedral of st. patrick, the largest temple of religion on the continent, archbishop hughes placed under the corner-stone an inscription, wherein, along with the enduring record of the christian faith and the names of martyrs and confessors, he did not disdain to include a brief memorial of this last achievement of science, and the name of him who had conferred so great a benefit on mankind. these public demonstrations culminated on the first of september, when the city authorities gave a public ovation to mr. field and the officers of the expedition. in accepting these honors, mr. field had taken good care that the british officers should be included with the american. at st. john's he had been notified of the intended celebration, and at once telegraphed to the british admiral at halifax: "i should consider it a very great personal favor if you would permit the gorgon, captain dayman, to accompany the niagara, captain hudson, to new york. english officers and english sailors have labored with american officers and american sailors to lay the atlantic cable. they were with us in our days of trial, and pray let them, if you can, share with us our triumph." the request was granted so far as this, that the officers were allowed leave of absence, and came on to new york to take part in the celebration, and in all the honors which followed, the officers of the gorgon were associated with those of the niagara. the day arrived, and the celebration surpassed any thing which the city had ever witnessed before. it was a mild autumn day--warm, yet with a sky softly veiled with clouds, that seemed to invite a whole population into the streets. the day commenced with a solemn service at trinity church, which was attended by the city authorities, the representatives of foreign powers, and an immense concourse of people. the vast edifice was decorated with evergreens; in the centre hung a cross, with the inscription: "glory to god on high; and on earth, peace, good-will towards men." when the audience were assembled, there entered a procession of two hundred clergy, headed by bishop doane of new jersey, who was to deliver the address. prayers were offered and scriptures were read, and at intervals the choir gave voice to the general joy in the anthems in which for ages the church has been wont to pour forth its exultation: "o come, let us sing unto the lord," the gloria in excelsis, and the te deum laudamus. at noon, mr. field and the officers of the ships landed at castle garden and were received with a national salute. a procession was formed which extended for miles from the battery to the crystal palace, which stood on the plot of ground now known as bryant park, between fortieth and forty-second streets. in the procession were lord napier, the british minister, and officers of the army and navy. for the whole distance the streets were crowded. the windows and even the tops of the houses were filled with people. everywhere flags and banners, with every device, floated in the air. so dense was the crowd that it was five or six hours before the procession could reach the crystal palace. here its coming was awaited by an assembly that filled all the aisles and galleries. an address was delivered, giving the history of the atlantic telegraph. the mayor then rose, and presenting mr. field to the audience, spoke as follows: "sir: history records but few enterprises of such 'pith and moment' as to command the attention and at the same time enlist the sympathies of all mankind. in all ages warlike expeditions have been undertaken on a scale of grandeur sufficient to astonish the world; but the evils which are inseparable from their prosecution have always sent a thrill of horror through the anxious nations. the discovery of the western continent even, the grandest event of modern times, was made by an insignificant fleet which left the shores of spain without attracting the notice of the civilized world. far different has been the history of the daring and difficult enterprise of uniting the old world and the new by means of the electric telegraph. from the very outset the good, the great and the wise of all lands beneath the sun, have watched with intense anxiety, and even when doubt existed, with warm interest, every step taken toward the accomplishment of what was universally acknowledged to be the most momentous undertaking of an age made marvellous by wonderful scientific and mechanical achievements. the two greatest and freest nations of the globe, by independent constitutional legislation, and by the aid of their finest ships and their ablest officers and engineers, combined together to insure success. capital was liberally subscribed by private citizens in a spirit which put greed to the blush. the press on both sides of the atlantic recorded the details of the progress of the undertaking with cordial interest, and secured the generous sympathies of men of all kindreds and tongues and nations in its behalf. you were thus fortunate, sir, in being identified with a project of such magnificent proportions and universal concern. but the enterprise itself was no less fortunate in being projected and carried into execution by a man whom no obstacles could daunt, no disasters discourage, no doubts paralyze, no opposition dishearten. if you, to whom the conduct of this great enterprise was assigned by the will of providence and the judgment of your fellow-men, had been found wanting in courage, in energy, in determination, and in a faith that was truly sublime, the very grandeur of the undertaking would only have rendered its failure the more conspicuous. but, sir, the incidents of the expedition, and the final result--too familiar to all the world to need repetition here--have demonstrated that you possessed all the qualities essential to achieve a successful issue. it is for this reason that you now stand out from among your fellow-men a mark for their cordial admiration and grateful applause. the city of your home delights to honor you; your fellow-citizens, conscious that the glory of your success is reflected back upon them, are proud that your lot has been cast among them. they have already testified their appreciation of your great services and heroic perseverance by illuminations, processions, serenades, and addresses. and now, sir, the municipal government of this, the first city on the western continent, instruct me, who have never felt the honor of being its chief magistrate so sensibly as in the presence of this vast assemblage of its fair women and substantial citizens, to present to you a gold box, with the arms of the city engraved thereon, in testimony of the fact that to you mainly, under divine providence, the world is indebted for the successful execution of the grandest enterprise of our day and generation; and in behalf of the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty of the city of new york, i now request your acceptance of this token of their approbation. in conclusion, sir, of this, the most agreeable duty of my public life, i sincerely trust that your days may be long in the land, and as prosperous and honorable as your achievement in uniting the two hemispheres by a cord of electric communication has been successful and glorious." to this flattering address, mr. field replied: "sir: this will be a memorable day in my life; not only because it celebrates the success of an achievement with which my name is connected, but because the honor comes from the city of my home--the metropolitan city of the new world. i see here not only the civic authorities and citizens at large, but my own personal friends--men with whom i have been connected in business and friendly intercourse for the greater part of my life. five weeks ago, this day and hour, i was standing on the deck of the niagara in mid-ocean, with the gorgon and valorous in sight, waiting for the agamemnon. the day was cold and cheerless, the air was misty, and the wind roughened the sea; and when i thought of all that we had passed through--of the hopes thus far disappointed, of the friends saddened by our reverses, of the few that remained to sustain us--i felt a load at my heart almost too heavy to bear, though my confidence was firm, and my determination fixed. how different is the scene now before me--this vast crowd testifying their sympathy and approval, praises without stint, and friends without number! this occasion, sir, gives me the opportunity to express my thanks for the enthusiastic reception which i have received, and i here make my acknowledgments before this vast concourse of my fellow-citizens. to the ladies i may, perhaps, add, that they have had their appropriate place, for when the cable was laid, the first public message that passed over it came from one of their own sex. this box, sir, which i have the honor to receive from your hand, shall testify to me and to my children what my own city thinks of my acts. for your kindness, sir, expressed in such flattering, too flattering terms, and for the kindness of my fellow-citizens, i repeat my most heartfelt thanks." the enthusiasm with which this address was received reached its height, when at the close, mr. field advanced to the edge of the platform, and unrolling a despatch, held it up, saying: "gentlemen, i have just received a telegraphic message from a little village, now a suburb of new york, which i will read to you: "london, september , . "to cyrus w. field, new york: "the directors are on their way to valentia, to make arrangements for opening the line to the public. they convey, through the cable, to you and your fellow-citizens, their hearty congratulations and good wishes, and cordially sympathize in your joyous celebration of the great international work."[b] a gold medal was presented to captain hudson, with an address, to which he made a fitting reply. similar testimonials were presented to all the english captains through mr. archibald, the british consul, who replied for his absent countrymen, after which the whole audience rose to their feet, as the band played "god save the queen." it was long after dark when the exercises closed, and the vast multitude dispersed. the night witnessed one of those displays for which new york surpasses all the cities of the world--a firemen's torchlight procession--a display such as was afterward given to the prince of wales, but which we shall probably witness no more, since the volunteer fire department is disbanded. but one day did not exhaust the public enthusiasm. the next evening, a grand banquet was given by the city authorities, at which were present a great number of distinguished guests. lord napier spoke, in language as happy as it was eloquent, of the new tie that was formed between kindred dwelling on opposite sides of the sea, and awarded the highest praise to the one whom he recognized as the author of this great achievement. while these demonstrations continued, every opposing voice was hushed in the chorus of national rejoicing; yet some there were, no doubt, who looked on with silent envy or whispered detraction. but who could grudge these honors to the hero of the hour--honors so hardly won, and which, as it proved, were soon to give place to harsh censures and unjust imputations? alas for all human glory! its paths lead but to the grave. death is the end of human ambition. the very day that a whole city rose up to do honor to the atlantic telegraph and its author, it gave its last throb, and that first cable was thenceforth to sleep for ever silent in its ocean grave. footnotes: [a] such a curiosity exists, prepared by the industry of a gentleman who was one of the most careful collectors of the events of his time--by which he gathered up the materials of future history--mr. john r. bartlett, formerly secretary of state of rhode island. this gentleman kept files of all the papers referring to the atlantic telegraph, from which he compiled a very unique volume. it is in the form of a scrap-book, but on a gigantic scale, being of a size equal to webster's large dictionary. it is made up entirely of newspaper cuttings, classified under different heads, and neatly arranged in double columns on nearly four hundred folio pages. the matter thus compressed would make between three and four octavo volumes of the size of prescott's histories, if printed in the style of those works. every thing is included that could be gathered from european as well as american papers, touching the claims of the inventors and projectors of the electric telegraph in general, and of the atlantic telegraph in particular. the historical sketches are set off by illustrations taken from the pictorial papers. altogether it embraces more of the materials of a history of this subject than any other volume with which we are acquainted, and well deserves the title prefixed to it by the laborious compiler: "the atlantic telegraph.--its origin and history, with an account of the voyages of the steamers niagara and agamemnon, in laying the cable, and of the celebration of the great event in new york, philadelphia, brooklyn, montreal, dublin, paris, etc.; together with the discussions, sermons, poetry, and anecdotes relating thereto; also, a history of the invention of the electric telegraph. illustrated with maps, plans, views, and portraits, collected from the newspapers of the day, and arranged by john russell bartlett. ." [b] the history of this despatch is curious. though dated at london, it was sent from a small town in ireland. the directors were on their way from dublin to valentia, on the morning of the first of september, when mr. saward remarked: "this is the day of the celebration in new york--we ought to send a despatch to mr. field." accordingly, at the first stopping-place (mallow station) the message was written, and forwarded to valentia, and thence sent across the atlantic. it was put into mr. field's hand as he was getting into his carriage on the battery. chapter xii. did the first cable ever work? the atlantic cable was dead! that word fell heavy as a stone on the hearts of those who had staked so much upon it. what a bitter disappointment to their hopes! in all the experience of life there are no sadder moments than those in which, after years of anxious toil, striving for a great object, and after one glorious hour of triumph, the achievement that seemed complete becomes a total wreck. vain is all human toil and endeavor. the years thus spent are fled away; the labor that was to have brought such a reward of "riches and honor," is lost; and the prolonged tension of the mind by the excitement of hope and ambition, and the temporary success, reacts to plunge it into a deeper depression. so was it here. years of labor and millions of capital were swept away in an hour into the bosom of the pitiless sea. of course the reaction of the public mind was very great. as its elation had been so extravagant before, it was now silent and almost sullen. people were ashamed of their late enthusiasm, and disposed to revenge themselves on those who had been the objects of their idolatry. it is instructive to read the papers of the day. as soon as it was evident that the atlantic cable was a dead lion, many hastened to give it a parting kick. there was no longer any dispute as to who was the author of the great achievement. rival claimants quietly withdrew from the field, content to leave him alone in his glory. many explanations were offered of this sudden suspension of life. one writer argued that the telegraphic plateau was only a myth; that the bottom of the ocean was jagged and precipitous; that the cable passed over lofty mountain chains, and hung suspended from the peaks of submarine alps, till it broke and fell into the tremendous depths below. but others found a readier explanation. with the natural tendency of a popular excitement to rush from one extreme to the other, many now believed that the whole thing was an imposition on public credulity, a sort of "moon hoax." an elaborate article appeared in a boston paper, headed with the alarming question, "was the atlantic cable a humbug?" wherein the writer argued through several columns that it was a huge deception. a writer in an english paper also made merry of the celebration in dublin, where a banquet was given to sir charles bright, in an article bearing the ominous title: "very like a whale!" this writer proved not only that the atlantic cable was never laid, but that such a thing was mathematically impossible. but since he turned out to be a crazy fellow, whom the police had to take into custody, his "demonstrations" did not make much impression on the public. the difficulty of finding a motive for the perpetration of such a stupendous fraud, did not at all embarrass these ingenious writers. was it not enough to make the world stare? to furnish something to the gaping crowd, even though it were but a nine days' wonder? those who thus reasoned seemed not to reflect that such deceptions are always sure to be found out; that one who goes up like a rocket comes down like a stick; and that if by false means he has made himself an object of popular idolatry, he is likely to become the object of popular indignation. but others there were--sharp, shrewd men--who thought they could see through a mill-stone farther than their neighbors, who shook their heads with a knowing air, and said: "it was all a stock speculation." one writer stepped before the public with this solemn inquiry: "now that the great cable glorification is over, we should like to ask one question: how many shares of his stock did mr. field sell during the month of august?" this he evidently thought was a question which could not be answered, except by acknowledging a great imposition on the public. if this brilliant inquirer after truth really desired to be informed, we could have referred him to messrs. george peabody & co., of london, with whom was deposited all of mr. field's stock at the time, and who, during that memorable month of august, sold _just one share_, and that at a price below the par value, which had been paid by mr. field himself. whether this was an object sufficiently great to set two hemispheres in a blaze, we leave him to judge. to those who have followed this narrative, all these conjectures and suspicions will appear very absurd. the personal reflections of course deserved and received only the contempt with which a man of character always scorns an imputation on his personal honor. but while these anonymous scribblers might be despised, many honest people not disposed to think evil were sorely perplexed. that the cable should continue to work for three or four weeks, _and then stop the very day of the celebration_, was certainly a singular, if not a suspicious circumstance; and it was not to be wondered at that it should excite a painful feeling of doubt. the distrust is quite natural, and ought not to be matter either of offence or surprise. on the contrary, those who are fully satisfied of the facts, ought rather to be glad of the opportunity which such questions afford, to present the amplest vindication. to relieve all doubts, it is only necessary to give a very brief history of the working of the atlantic cable. it was landed on both sides of the ocean on the fifth of august. the last recorded message passed over it on the first of september, one day short of four weeks. within that time there were sent exactly four hundred messages, of which two hundred and seventy-one were from newfoundland to ireland, and one hundred and twenty-nine from ireland to newfoundland. of these, the greater part were merely between the operators themselves, respecting the adjustment of instruments, and working the telegraph, which, while they furnished decisive evidence _to them_, were of no force to the public. of course an operator, working with a battery on the shore at valentia, or at trinity bay, watching his instrument, and seeing the little tongue of light reflected from the moving mirror of the galvanometer, needed no other evidence of an electric current that had passed through the cable. he _saw_ it, and knew, as if he saw the flash of a gun on the coast of ireland, that it was a light which had come from beyond the sea. but these private assurances were nothing to the outside world. what they needed was _public_ messages, conveying news from one hemisphere to the other. of these, there were not a great number, for obvious reasons. the cable, during the four weeks of its existence, never worked _perfectly_--that is, as a land line works, transmitting messages freely and rapidly, and with perfect accuracy. it was subject to frequent interruptions for reasons which may satisfy any one that the wonder is, not that it did so little, but that it did so much. st. to begin with, the cable was not constructed in the most perfect manner. its makers, though the best then in the world, had had but little experience in making deep-sea cables. no line over three hundred miles long had ever been laid. d. it had been made more than a year before. after it was finished, part of it had been coiled out of doors, where it was exposed to a burning sun, by which, as was afterward found, the gutta-percha had been melted in many places till the insulation was nearly destroyed. d. it had been put on board the ships in , and after the first failure, had been taken out and coiled on the dock at plymouth, and then re-shipped in . thus it had been twisted and untwisted, some portions of it as many as ten times. then the agamemnon was so shaken in the terrible gale of june, that the cable on board of her was seriously injured, and some portions were cut out and condemned. taking all these things together, the wonder is, not that the cable failed after a month, but that it ever worked at all! owing to this impaired state of the cable, it did _not_ work perfectly. probably it would not have worked at all with ordinary instruments. but the galvanometer of professor thomson, that instrument of marvellous delicacy, drew faint whispers from its muttering lips. signals came and went, which showed that the electric current passed from shore to shore, and gave promise that with delicate handling it could be taught to speak plainly. but for the present it spoke slowly and with difficulty. it often took hours to get through a single despatch of any length. witness the delay in transmitting the queen's message! these frequent interruptions were ascribed to various causes. sometimes it was earth-currents; at others, a thunderstorm was raging. thus, on the morning of thursday, the twenty-sixth of august, there was a violent storm in newfoundland, heavy rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning. at three o'clock, the lightning was so intense that for an hour and a half the end of the cable had to be put to the earth for protection. after that the storm cleared away, and at seven o'clock the weather was reported as very fine. but aside from these local and temporary causes, the real difficulty was in the cable itself, whose insulation had been fatally impaired, and which was now wearing out its life on the rocks of the sea. these causes made its speech difficult and broken. yet sometimes it flashed up with sudden power. in one case, a message was sent from the office at trinity bay to ireland and an answer received back in two minutes! such incidents excited the liveliest hopes that all difficulties would be speedily overcome, and justified the messages which were sent to the new york papers from day to day, that the instruments were being adjusted, by which it was expected that the line would soon be put in perfect working order, and be thrown open to the public. but these flashes of light proved to be only the flickering of the flame, that was soon to be extinguished in the eternal darkness of the waters. but the question which perplexed not only skeptics, but the truest friends, was not whether the cable worked fast or slow, _but whether it ever worked at all_. happily, this is a question which can easily be settled, since it is one simply of facts and dates, which can be ascertained by referring to the files of the english and american papers. of course the only proof must be in messages containing _news_. mere congratulations between the queen and the president, or the mayor of new york and the mayor of london, prove nothing, for these might have been prepared beforehand, if we suppose a design to impose on the credulity of the public. but the decisive test is this: was there at any time within that month published in the english or american journals _news_ which could not be matter of guess or conjecture, and within a time too short for its possible transmission in any other way? if this can be proved beyond all doubt, even in a few instances, the question is decided, for the argument is just as strong with a dozen cases as with a thousand. we give, therefore, a few dates, the accuracy of which can be tested by any one who will take the trouble to examine the english and american papers: on saturday, the fourteenth of august, the steamships arabia and europa, the former bound for new york and the latter for liverpool, came into collision off cape race. the accident was not known in new york until tuesday, the seventeenth, since it could not be telegraphed till the arabia reached halifax or the europa st. john's, into which port she put for repairs. as soon as the news reached new york, the agent of the company, mr. nimmo (mr. cunard himself being then in england), at once prepared a despatch to be sent to relieve immediate anxiety. this was not forwarded to newfoundland, as peremptory orders had been given not to transmit any private business messages to go through the cable until the line was fully open to the public. but the next day mr. field arrived in new york, and mr. nimmo applied to him. seeing the urgency of the case, he ordered it to be forwarded. it was accordingly sent, and arrived in london on the twentieth, giving the first news that was received of the accident. this was repeatedly stated by the late sir samuel cunard, of london, and confirmed by his son mr. edward cunard, of new york. the message was published in the london papers of the twenty-first, as follows: "arabia in collision with europa, cape race, saturday. arabia on her way. head slightly injured. europa lost bowsprit, cutwater stem sprung. will remain in st. john's ten days from sixteenth. persia calls at st. john's for mails and passengers. no loss of life or limb." this first news message was not only a very decisive one as to the fact of telegraphic communication, but one which showed the relief given by speedy knowledge in dispelling doubt and fear. mr. william e. dodge, of new york, says: "i was in liverpool at the time, and expecting friends by the europa. any delay in the arrival of the ship would have caused great anxiety. but one morning, on going down to the exchange, we saw posted up this despatch received the night before by the atlantic telegraph. all then said, if the cable never did any thing more, it had fully repaid its cost." well may he add with devout feeling: "it seemed as if divine providence had permitted the event, to furnish a testimony which could not be denied, to the reality and the benefit of this new means of communication between the two continents." passing over all the messages exchanged between the operators at the stations, the congratulations of queen and president, and of the mayors of new york and london, we come to another news despatch. august twenty-fifth, newfoundland reports to valentia: "persia takes europa's passengers and mails. great rejoicing everywhere at success of cable. bonfires, fireworks, _feux de joie_, speeches, balls, etc. _mr. eddy, the first and best telegrapher in the states, died to-day._ pray give some news for new york; they are mad for news." this despatch the writer, who was then in europe, read first in the london times. the item which arrested his attention was the death of mr. eddy, as he had some acquaintance with that gentleman. that the news must have come by cable, is clearly shown by an examination of dates. he died suddenly, at burlington, vermont, monday, august twenty-third, , at ten o'clock fifteen minutes a.m. the exact day and hour we learned from his widow, who after his death lived in brooklyn. the news was telegraphed to new york, and from there sent to trinity bay, which it reached the following day, and from which it was forwarded to valentia, and appeared in the london times wednesday morning. thus not forty-eight hours elapsed after he breathed his last, before it was published in england. if any one wishes to see the despatch, he will find a file of the times in the astor library. but here appears a slight discrepancy, that, however, when examined, furnishes double proof. the despatch is dated august twenty-fifth, and says mr. eddy died _to-day_, and yet it is published in the london times of the same date! how is this? it was sent between nine and ten o'clock at night of the twenty-fourth, when the operator at heart's content would say _this day_ of a piece of news just received, but in affixing the date, he was governed _by greenwich time_, which made it more than three hours later. accordingly it was published in the times, dated august twenty-fifth, fifty-three minutes past twelve a.m.! those who argued for the theory of collusion and deception, must have been embarrassed by this unexpected intelligence appearing in london, which could only be explained as a false report, unless (more wonderful still!) mr. eddy had entered into the plot, and sent the message beforehand, and then offered himself as a sacrifice, to prove it correct! to the demand for news in the above despatch, a reply was at once returned: "sent to london for news." and later the same day came the following: "north american with canadian, and the asia with direct boston mails, leave liverpool, and fulton, southampton, saturday next. to-day's morning papers have long, interesting reports by bright. indian news. virago arrived at liverpool to-day; bombay dates nineteenth july. mutiny being rapidly quelled." a despatch of the same date, august twenty-fifth, also announces peace with china. the whole was received at trinity bay about nine o'clock p.m., and would have been sent on at once to new york, but that the land lines in nova scotia were closed at that hour. it was sent the next morning, and appeared in the evening papers of the twenty-sixth. by referring again to the london times, the reader will see that the news from china was published in london on the twenty-third of august. it was there given as _unexpected news_, so that it could not have been a shrewd guess on the part of anybody either in england or america. it took the public by surprise, both for the news itself and _for the way in which it came_--which was not by india and the red sea, but by st. petersburg, where it arrived on the twenty-first, having been brought overland by a courier to prince gortchakoff. from there it was telegraphed to the government at paris, and thence to london. the times comments on this roundabout way in which intelligence so important reached england. yet this news, so unlooked for, announced in london only on the morning of the twenty-third of august, was published in new york on the twenty-sixth. august twenty-seventh, comes a still longer despatch, which we give in full: "george saward, secretary atlantic telegraph company, to associated press, new york. news for america by atlantic cable. emperor of france returned to paris, saturday. king of prussia too ill to visit queen victoria. her majesty returns to england thirtieth of august.--st. petersburg, twenty-first of august. settlement of chinese question. chinese empire opened to trade; christian religion allowed; foreign diplomatic agents admitted; indemnity to england and france.--alexandria, august ninth. the madras arrived at suez seventh inst. dates bombay to the nineteenth; aden, thirty-first. gwalior insurgent army broken up. all india becoming tranquil." this despatch embodies about a dozen distinct items of news, not one of which could be known without a telegraphic communication. the whole was received in new york, and published in the evening papers _the same day_. not to be outdone in giving news, the next day, saturday, august twenty-eighth, newfoundland thus replies to valentia: "to the directors: take news first, saward. sir william williams, of kars, arrived halifax tuesday. enthusiastically received. immense procession--welcome address--feeling reply. held levee--large number presented. niagara sailed for liverpool at one this morning. the gorgon arrived at halifax last night. yellow fever in new orleans, sixty to seventy deaths per day. also declared epidemic, charleston. great preparations in new york and other places for celebration, to be held the first and second of september. new yorkers will make it the greatest gala-day ever known in this country. hermann sailed for fraser's river; six hundred passengers. prince albert sailed yesterday for galway. arabia and ariel arrived new york; anglo saxon, quebec; canada, boston. europa left st. john's this morning. splendid aurora bay of bulls to-night, extending over eighty-five degrees of the horizon." let any one read this despatch, sentence by sentence, noting the minuteness of the details--which could not be known or conjectured--such as the appearance of yellow fever at new orleans, with the number of deaths a day; the sailing or arrival of seven steamers; the number of passengers for fraser's river, etc.--and then examine the london times, in which all these items appeared monday morning, august thirtieth, and if he does not admit that collusion or deception is out of the question, no amount of evidence could convince him. we will give but one proof more. on the last day of august, the day before the cable ceased to work, valentia sent to newfoundland two messages for the british government, both signed by "the military secretary to the commander-in-chief, horse guards, london," and addressed--the first to general trollope, halifax, which said, "the sixty-second regiment is not to return to england;" and the other to the general officer commanding at montreal, saying: "the thirty-ninth regiment is not to return to england." the year before ( ) had witnessed the sepoy mutiny, which threatened the overthrow of the british empire in india. the fighting was over, but the country was still agitated, and the home government in fear that the rebellion might be renewed, so that it continued to send forward fresh troops. it had sent out orders by mail for these two regiments to embark immediately for home, to be sent to india. but the mutiny being nearly suppressed, this was found not to be necessary, and the prompt countermanding of the order by telegraph saved the british government, in the cost of transportation of troops, not less than fifty thousand pounds. the despatch to halifax was received the same day that it was sent from london. the sending of this despatch, and its almost immediate reception, is attested by an official letter from the war office in london. this array of proofs of what took place a quarter of a century ago, may seem superfluous now that experience has made despatches from the other side of the ocean one of the familiar things of our daily life. and yet at that date the achievement was so stupendous, and, as some thought, in its very nature so incredible, that men of the greatest intelligence could not be convinced. the late mr. charles o'conor continued for years to quote the fact that some men believed that a message had actually passed across the atlantic as the most amazing illustration of human credulity! happily he lived to see and to appreciate to its full value this latest miracle of scientific discovery, applied by human genius and skill. chapter xiii. cast down, but not in despair. it takes a long time to recover from a great disaster. when at last the friends of the atlantic telegraph were obliged to confess that the cable had ceased to work; when all the efforts of the electricians failed to draw more than a few faint whispers, a dying gasp, from the depths of the sea, there ensued in the public mind a feeling of profound discouragement. for a time this paralyzed all effort to revive the company and to renew the enterprise. and yet the feeling, though natural, was extreme. if they had not done all they attempted, they had accomplished much. they had at least demonstrated the possibility of laying a cable across the atlantic ocean, and of sending messages through it. this alone was no small triumph. so men reasoned when sober reflection returned, and at length the tide of public confidence, which had ebbed so strongly, began to reflow, and once more to creep up the shores of england. but when a great enterprise has been overthrown, and lies prostrate on the earth, the first impulse of its friends is to call on cæsar for help. so the first appeal of the atlantic telegraph company was to the british government. it was claimed, and with reason, that the work was too great to be undertaken by private capital alone. it was a matter, not of private speculation, but of public and national concern. it was, therefore, an object which might justly be undertaken by a powerful government, in the interest of science and of civilization. to raise capital for a new cable, it was necessary to have some better security than the hazards of a vast and doubtful undertaking. hence the company asked the government to guarantee the interest on a certain amount of stock, even if the second attempt should not prove a success. with such a guarantee, the capital could be raised in london in a day. in this application they might have been successful, but for an untoward event, which dampened the confidence of the public in all submarine enterprises--the failure of the red sea telegraph. the british government, anxious to forward communication with india, had given that company an unconditional guarantee, on the strength of which the capital was raised, and the cable manufactured and laid. but in a short time it ceased to work, a loss which the treasury of great britain had to make good. to the public, which did not understand the cause of the failure to be the imperfect construction of the cable, the effect was to impair confidence in all long submarine telegraphs. of course, after such an experience, the government was not disposed to bind itself by such pledges again. it was, however, ready to aid the enterprise by any safe means. it therefore increased its subsidy from fourteen thousand pounds to twenty thousand pounds; and guaranteed eight per cent on six hundred thousand pounds of new capital for twenty-five years, with only one condition--_that the cable should work_. this was a liberal grant, and under the circumstances, was all that could be expected. still further to encourage the undertaking, it ordered new soundings to be taken off the coast of ireland. these were made by captain hoskins, of the royal navy, and dispelled the fears which had been entertained of a submarine mountain, which would prove an impassable barrier in the path of an ocean telegraph. but the greatest service which the british government rendered, was in the long course of experiments which it now ordered, to determine all the difficult problems of submarine telegraphy. in , the year after the failure of the first atlantic cable, the board of trade appointed a committee of the most eminent scientific and engineering authorities in great britain to investigate the whole subject. this was composed of captain douglas galton, of the royal engineers, then of the war office, who represented the government; professor wheatstone, the celebrated electrician; william fairbairn, president of the british association for the advancement of science; george parker bidder, whose name ranks with those of stephenson and brunel; c. f. varley, who, in the practical working of telegraphs, had no superior in england; latimer clark and edwin clark, both engineers, who had had great experience in the business of telegraphing; and george saward, the secretary of the atlantic telegraph company. this committee sat for nearly two years, at the end of which it made a report to the government, which fills a very large volume, in which are detailed an immense number of experiments, touching the form and size of cables, their relative strength and flexibility, the power of telegraphing at long distances, the speed at which messages could be sent; and in fine, every possible question, either as to the electrical or engineering difficulties to be overcome. the result of these manifold and laborious experiments is summed up in the following certificate, signed by all who had taken part in this memorable investigation: "london, th july, . "we, the undersigned, members of the committee, who were appointed by the board of trade, in , to investigate the question of submarine telegraphy, and whose investigation continued from that time to april, , do hereby state, as the result of our deliberations, that a well-insulated cable, properly protected, of suitable specific gravity, made with care, and tested under water throughout its progress with the best known apparatus, and paid into the ocean with the most improved machinery, possesses every prospect of not only being successfully laid in the first instance, but may reasonably be relied upon to continue for many years in an efficient state for the transmission of signals. douglas galton, c. wheatstone, wm. fairbairn, geo. p. bidder, cromwell f. varley, latimer clark, edwin clark, geo. saward." thus the years which followed the failure of --though they saw no attempt to lay another ocean cable--were not years of idleness. they were rather years of experiment and of preparation, clearing the way for new efforts and final victory. the atlantic telegraph itself had been a grand experiment. it had taught many important truths which could be learned in no other way. not only had it demonstrated the possibility of telegraphing from continent to continent, but it had been useful even in exposing its own defects, as it taught how to avoid them in the future. for example, in working the first cable, the electricians had thought it necessary to use a very strong battery. they did not suppose they could reach across the whole breadth of the atlantic, and touch the western hemisphere, unless they sent an electric current that was almost like a stroke of lightning; and that, in fact, endangered the safety of the conducting wire. but they soon found that this was unnecessary. god was not in the whirlwind, but in the still, small voice. a soft touch could send a thrill along that iron nerve. it seemed as if the deep were a vast whispering gallery, and that a gentle voice murmured in the ocean caves, like a whisper in a sea-shell, might be caught, so wonderful are the harmonies of nature, by listening ears on remote continents; a miracle of science, that could give a literal meaning to milton's "airy tongues, that syllable men's names on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses." these were also years of great progress, not only in the science of submarine telegraphy, but in the construction of deep-sea cables. in spite of the failure of that in the red sea, one was laid down in the mediterranean, , miles long, from malta to alexandria, and another in the persian gulf, , miles long, by which telegraphic communication was finally opened from england to india. others were laid in different seas and oceans in distant parts of the world. these great triumphs, following the scientific experiments which had been made, revived public confidence, and prepared the way for a fresh attempt to pass the atlantic. yet not much was done to renew the enterprise until . mr. field had been indefatigable in his efforts to reanimate the company. he was continually going back and forth to the british provinces and to england, urging it wherever his voice could be heard. yet times were adverse. the united states had been suddenly involved in a tremendous war, which called into the field hundreds of thousands of men, and entailed a burden of many hundreds of millions. while engaged in this life-and-death struggle, and rolling up a mountain of debt, our people had little thought to bestow on great enterprises by land or sea. and yet one incident of the war forcibly recalled public attention to the necessity of some speedier communication with europe than by steam. the unhappy trent affair aroused an angry feeling in great britain which nearly resulted in hostilities, all of which might have been prevented by a single word of explanation. as the times said truly: "we nearly went to war with america because we had not a telegraph across the atlantic." after such a warning, it was natural that both countries should begin to think seriously of the means of preventing future misunderstanding. mr. field went to washington, and found great readiness on the part of the president and his cabinet to encourage the enterprise. mr. seward wrote to our minister in london that the american government would be happy to join with that of great britain in promoting this international work. with this encouragement, mr. field went to england to urge the company to renew the undertaking. while in london, he endeavored to obtain from some responsible parties an offer to construct and lay down a cable. messrs. glass, elliot & co., replied, declaring their willingness to undertake the work, without at first naming the precise terms. they wrote to him under date of february seventeenth: "sir: in reply to your inquiries, we beg to state that we should not be willing to manufacture and lay a submarine telegraph cable across the atlantic, from ireland to newfoundland, assuming the entire risk, as we consider that would be too great a responsibility for any single firm to undertake; but we are so confident that these points can be connected by a good and durable cable, that we are willing to contract to do the work, and stake a large sum upon its successful laying and working. "we shall be prepared in a few days, as soon as we can get the necessary information in regard to what price we can charter suitable ships for the service, to make you a definite offer." although it is anticipating a few months in time, we may give here the "definite offer," which was obtained by mr. field, on his return to england in the autumn: "london, october , . "_cyrus w. field, esq., atlantic telegraph company_: "dear sir: in reply to your inquiries, we beg to state, that we are perfectly confident that a good and durable submarine cable can be laid from ireland to newfoundland, and are willing to undertake the contract upon the following conditions: "first. that we shall be paid each week our actual disbursements for labor and material. "second. that when the cable is laid and in working order, we shall receive for our time, services, and profit twenty per cent on the actual cost of the line, in shares of the company, deliverable to us, in twelve equal monthly instalments, at the end of each successive month whereat the cable shall be found in working order. "we are so confident that this enterprise can be successfully carried out, that we will make a cash subscription for a sum of twenty-five thousand pounds sterling in the ordinary capital of the company, and pay the calls on the same when made by the company. "annexed we beg to hand you, for your guidance, a list of all the submarine telegraph cables manufactured and laid by our firm since we commenced this branch of our business, the whole mileage of which, with the exception of the short one between liverpool and holyhead, which has been taken up, is at this time in perfect and successful working order. the cable that we had the honor to contract for and lay down for the french government, connecting france with algeria, is submerged in water of nearly equal depths to any we should have to encounter between ireland and newfoundland. "you will permit us to suggest that the shore ends of the atlantic cable should be composed of very heavy wires, as from our experience the only accidents that have arisen to any of the cables that we have laid have been caused by ships' anchors, and none of those laid out of anchorage ground have ever cost one shilling for repairs. "the cable that we would suggest for the atlantic will be an improvement on all those yet manufactured, and we firmly believe will be imperishable when once laid. "we remain, sir, yours faithfully, "glass, elliot & co." the summer of this year mr. field spent in america, where he applied himself vigorously to raise capital for the new enterprise. to this end he visited boston, providence, philadelphia, albany, and buffalo--to address meetings of merchants and others. he used to amuse us with the account of his visit to the first city, where he was honored with the attendance of a large array of "the solid men of boston," who listened with an attention that was most flattering to the pride of the speaker, addressing such an assemblage in the capital of his native state. there was no mistaking the interest they felt in the subject. they went still farther, they passed a series of resolutions, in which they applauded the projected telegraph across the ocean as one of the grandest enterprises ever undertaken by man, which they proudly commended to the confidence and support of the american public, after which they went home, feeling that they had done the generous thing in bestowing upon it such a mark of their approbation. _but not a man subscribed a dollar!_ yet it is not necessary to charge them with meanness or hypocrisy. no doubt they felt just what they said. they could not but admire the courage of their countryman. it was inspiring to hear him talk. yet these solid men were never lifted off their feet so far as to forget the main chance. what were to be the returns for this magnificent adventure? peering into the future, the prospect of dividends was very remote. in fact they looked upon the atlantic telegraph as a sort of south sea bubble, an airy fancy, which would go up like a balloon, never to return to earth again. so, like the high priest and the levite, they passed by on the other side. other cities were equally gracious, equally complimentary, but equally prudent. in new york he succeeded better, but only by indefatigable exertions. he addressed the chamber of commerce, the board of brokers, and the corn exchange, and then he went almost literally from door to door, calling on merchants and bankers to enlist their aid. the result was, subscriptions amounting to about seventy thousand pounds, the whole of which was due to persevering personal solicitation. even of those who subscribed, a large part did so more from sympathy and admiration of his indomitable spirit than from confidence in the success of the enterprise. in england, however, the subject was better understood. for obvious reasons, the science of submarine telegraphy had made greater advances in that country than in ours. as england is an island, she is obliged to hold all her telegraphic communication with the continent by cables under the sea. she has colonial possessions in all parts of the world. a power that rules so large a part of the earth cannot be shut up in her island home. no one has depicted the extent of her dominion in nobler phrase than our own webster when he speaks of the imperial sway which "has dotted the face of the whole globe with its possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, encircles the whole earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of england." was it strange that this mother of nations should reach out her long arms to embrace her distant children? hence it was that the subject of submarine telegraphs was so much better understood in england than in america, not only by scientific men, but by capitalists. the appeal could be made to them with more assurance of intelligent sympathy. and yet so vast was the undertaking, that it required ceaseless effort to roll the stone to the top of the mountain, and the result was not completely achieved till the beginning of the year . chapter xiv. the expedition of . it is a long night which has no morning. at last the day is breaking. while weary eyes are watching the east, daylight comes over the sea. five years have passed away, and though the time seemed long as an arctic winter, that only made more bright the rising of the sun. those years of patient experiment, when scientific men were applying tests without number, and submarine lines were feeling their way along the deep-sea floor in all the waters of the world, at last brought forth their fruit in that renewed confidence which is the forerunner of victory. so strong was this feeling, that as early as august, , although the capital was not raised, the board advertised for proposals for a cable suitable to be laid across the atlantic ocean; and in order to leave invention entirely unfettered, abstained from any dictation as to the form or materials to be adopted, merely stipulating for a working speed of eight words a minute. to this request they received, in the course of a few weeks, seventeen different proposals from as many companies, many of them firms of large wealth and experience. these different tenders, with the numerous specimens of cable and materials, were at once submitted to a consulting committee composed in part of members of the committee which had already rendered such service by its advice. it consisted of captain douglas galton, william fairbairn, professor c. wheatstone, william whitworth and professor william thomson. there were no more distinguished engineers and electricians in the world. they examined all the proposals, and then, taking up one by one the different samples of cable, caused them in turn to be subjected to the severest tests. this took a long time, as it required a great number of experiments; but the result was highly satisfactory. the committee were all of one mind, and recommended unanimously that the board should accept the tender of messrs. glass, elliot & co., and the general principle of their proposed cable; but advised that before settling the final specification, every portion of the material to be employed should be tested with the greatest care, both separately and in combination, so as to ascertain what further improvements could be made. to this the manufacturers readily consented, feeling a noble ambition to justify the confidence of the committee and the public. they provided abundant materials for fresh experiments. new cables were made and tested in different lengths; and experiments were also tried upon different qualities of wire and hemp, that were to compose its external protection. the result of all these investigations was the selection of a model which seemed to combine every excellence, and to approach absolute perfection. such was the cable which this eminent firm offered to manufacture, and to lay across the atlantic, and that on terms so favorable, that it seemed as if it could not be difficult to raise the capital and proceed with the work. indeed, a contract was partially made to that effect. so confident was mr. field, who was then in london, that an expedition would sail the following summer, that he insured his stock, part of it only against ordinary sea-risks, but part also to be laid and to work! but hardly had he left england before there was some unforeseen hitch in the arrangements, the money was not forthcoming, or some of the conditions were not complied with, and he had the mortification to receive letters, saying that the whole enterprise was postponed for another year! this was indeed discouraging. yet this sudden dropping of the scheme did not imply a loss of interest or of faith on the part of those embarked in it. they believed in it as much as ever. but the general public did not respond to the call for more capital. alas that the noblest enterprises should so often be delayed or defeated by the want of money! capital is always cautious and timid, and follows slowly in the path of great discoveries. if columbus, instead of the patronage of a queen full of womanly enthusiasm, had depended on a stock company for the means for his expedition, he might never have sailed from the shores of spain. happy was it for mankind that his faith and patience did not wear out, while going from court to court, and kingdom to kingdom, and almost begging his way from door to door! but it is not in human nature--least of all in american nature--to despond long. though ten years of constant defeat would seem to have wrought a lasting discouragement, yet again and again did the baffled spirit of enterprise return to the attempt. in january, , mr. field was once more on his way to england. he found the directors, as before, deeply interested in the enterprise, and wishing it success. with a grateful heart he bore witness to their unfaltering courage. but mere courage and good wishes would not lay the atlantic telegraph. yet what could they do? they could not be expected to advance all the capital themselves. they had already subscribed liberally, and he could not ask them to do more. but with all the efforts that had been made in england and america, not half the capital was yet raised. the machinery was in a dead lock, with little prospect of being able to move. it was the misfortune of the enterprise that there was no one man who made it his sole and exclusive charge. the board of directors contained some of the best men in london. but they were, almost without exception, engaged in very large affairs of their own, with no leisure to make a public enterprise their special care. to insure success, it needed a trial of the one-man power--one brain, planning night and day; one agency incessantly at work, stirring up directors, contractors, and engineers; and one will pushing it forward by main strength. this was the force now to be applied. the first element needed to put life into the old system was an infusion of new blood--new capital and new men. while the enterprise was in this state of collapse, mr. field addressed himself to a gentleman with whom, until then, he had no personal acquaintance, but who was well known in london as one of the largest capitalists of great britain--mr. thomas brassey. their first interview was somewhat remarkable. referring to it a few months after, mr. field said: "when i arrived in this country, in january last, the atlantic telegraph company trembled in the balance. we were in want of funds, and were in negotiations with the government, and making great exertions to raise the money. at this juncture i was introduced to a gentleman of great integrity and enterprise, who is well known, not only for his wealth, but for his foresight, and in attempting to enlist him in our cause he put me through such a cross-examination as i had never before experienced. i thought i was in the witness-box. he inquired of me the practicability of the scheme--what it would pay, and every thing else connected with it; but before i left him, i had the pleasure of hearing him say that it was a great national enterprise that ought to be carried out, and, he added, i will be one of ten to find the money required for it. from that day to this he has never hesitated about it, and when i mention his name, you will know him as a man whose word is as good as his bond, and as for his bond, there is no better in england." having thus secured one powerful ally, mr. field took courage in the hope to find another. he says: "the words spoken by mr. brassey in the latter part of january, 'let the electric telegraph be laid between england and america,' encouraged us all, and made us believe we should succeed in raising the necessary capital, and i then went to work to find nine other thomas brasseys (i did not know whether he was an englishman, a scotchman, or an irishman; but i made up my mind that he combined all the good qualities of every one of them), and after considerable search i met with a rich friend from manchester, mr. [now sir] john pender, and i asked him if he would second mr. brassey, and walked with him from pall mall to the house of commons, of which he is a member. before we reached the house, he expressed his willingness to do so to an equal amount." this was putting strong arms to the wheel. a few days after, a combination was formed to carry on the whole business of making submarine telegraphs, by a union of the gutta-percha company with the firm of glass, elliot & co., the principal manufacturers of sea cables, making one grand concern, to be called the telegraph construction and maintenance company. these two great capitalists entered into the new organization, of which mr. pender was made chairman. the gutta-percha company brought in still further strength to the joint enterprise, in the person of mr. willoughby smith, their electrician, and of mr. john chatterton, the inventor of the insulating material known as chatterton's compound. the union of all these men made a combination of practical skill and financial ability, such as could be found in few companies in england or in the world. mr. r. a. glass was chosen managing director--a gentleman who seemed born to be a manager, such power had he of gathering about him talent in every department and combining all into one organization. reënforced by such powerful aid, the new company now came forward, and offered at one stroke to take all the remaining stock of the company. this was more than half the whole capital. as yet, of the £ , required, but £ , had been subscribed. now this princely company offered to take the balance themselves--£ , . they did more, they took £ , of bonds; and so by one dead lift these stalwart englishmen took the whole enterprise on their broad shoulders. from that hour the problem was solved. thus after a dead lock of six months the wheels were unloosed, and the gigantic machinery began to revolve. this was a triumph worthy to be honored in the way that englishmen love, by a little festivity; and as it chanced to be now ten years since mr. field had embarked in the enterprise, the pleasant thought occurred to him of getting his friends together to celebrate the anniversary. accordingly, on the fifteenth of march, he invited them to dine together at the buckingham palace hotel. it was a joyous occasion, and called forth the usual amount of toasts and speeches. of the latter, those of mr. adams, the american minister, and of john bright, were widely copied in the united states. the next day was the annual meeting of the atlantic telegraph company, when the chairman, the right hon. james stuart wortley, thus referred to the gathering of the night before: "without saying any thing to detract from my deep gratitude to the other directors, i cannot help especially alluding to mr. cyrus field, who is present to-day, and who has crossed the atlantic thirty-one times in the service of this company, having celebrated at his table yesterday the anniversary of the tenth year of the day when he first left boston in the service of the company. collected round his table last night was a company of distinguished men--members of parliament, great capitalists, distinguished merchants and manufacturers, engineers and men of science, such as is rarely found together even in the highest house in this great metropolis. it was very agreeable to see an american citizen so surrounded. it was still more gratifying, inasmuch as we were there to celebrate the approaching accomplishment of the atlantic telegraph." this was a congratulation on an escape from death, for their cherished scheme had just passed through a critical period of its history. the enterprise had been in great danger of abandonment--at least for years, a peril from which it had been rescued only by the most prompt and vigorous effort. thus after infinite toil, the wreck of old disasters was cleared away, and the mighty task begun anew. the works of the telegraph construction and maintenance company were the largest in the world, and all their resources were now put in requisition. never did greater care preside over a public enterprise. it was a case in which the motive of interest was seconded or overborne by pride and ambition. a cable was to be made to span the atlantic ocean, and to join the hemispheres; and they were determined to produce a work that should be as nearly perfect as human skill could make it. the scientific committee, that had so long investigated the subject, had approved a particular form of cable, as "the one most calculated to insure success in the present state of our experimental knowledge respecting deep-sea cables," but at the same time recommended the utmost vigilance at every stage of the manufacture. these precautions deserve to be noted, as showing with what jealous care science watches over the birth of a great enterprise, and prescribes the conditions of success. they recommended: that the conductivity of the wire should be fixed at a high standard, certainly not less than eighty-five per cent; that the cable should be at least equal to the best ever made; that the core should be electrically perfect; that it should be tested under hydraulic pressure, and at the highest pressure attainable in the tanks at the company's works; that after this pressure, the core should be examined again, and before receiving its outer covering, be required to pass the full electrical test under water; that careful and frequent mechanical tests be made upon the iron wire and hemp as to their strength; that special care be given to the joints, where different lengths of cable were spliced together; and that when completed, the whole be tested under water for some length of time, at a temperature of seventy-five degrees. this was higher by forty degrees than the temperature of the atlantic. the insulation is improved by cold; so that, if it remained perfect in this warm water, it could not fail in the icy depths of the ocean. [illustration: old atlantic cable, .] [illustration: new atlantic cable, .] after passing through such elaborate tests, all will be glad to see the final product of so much care and skill. as the long line begins to reel off from the great wheels and drums, we may examine it in its completed and more perfect form. it is only necessary to compare it with the cable laid in , to show its immense superiority. a glance at the two as they appear on the preceding page will show that the cable had _grown_ since first it was planted in the ocean, as if it were a living product of the sea. this growth had been in every part, from core to circumference. first, the central copper wire, which was the spinal cord, the nerve along which the centre current was to run, was nearly three times as large as before. prof. thomson had long seen that this was a condition of success. while joining heartily in the attempts of - , he felt that an error was committed in the smallness of the cable; that the copper conductors and the gutta-percha covering should both be much larger. the old conductor was a strand consisting of seven fine wires, six laid round one, and weighed only one hundred and seven pounds to the mile. the new was composed of the same number of wires, but weighed three hundred pounds to the mile. as it was made of the finest copper that could be obtained in the world, it was a perfect conductor. next, to secure insulation, it was first imbedded for solidity in chatterton's compound, a preparation impervious to water, and then covered with four layers of gutta-percha, which were laid on alternately with four thin layers of chatterton's compound. the old cable had but three coatings of gutta-percha, with nothing between. its entire insulation weighed but two hundred and sixty-one pounds to the mile, while that of the new weighed four hundred pounds. but a conductor ever so perfect, with insulation complete, was useless without proper external protection, to guard it against the dangers which must attend the long and difficult process of laying it across the ocean. the old cable had broken a number of times. the new must be made stronger. to this end it was incased with ten solid wires of the best iron, or rather, of a soft steel, like that used in the making of whitworth's cannon. this made the cable much heavier than before. the old cable weighed but twenty cwt. to the mile, while the new one reached thirty-five cwt. and three quarters. but mere size and weight were nothing, except as they indicated increased strength. this was secured, not only by the larger iron wires, but by a further coating of rope. each wire was surrounded separately with five strands of manilla yarn, saturated with a preservative compound, and the whole laid spirally round the core, which latter was padded with ordinary hemp, saturated with the same preservative mixture. this rope covering was important in several respects. it kept the wires from coming in contact with the salt water, by which they might be corroded; and while it added greatly to the strength of the cable, it gave it also its own flexibility--so that while it had the strength of an iron chain, it had also the lightness and flexibility of a common ship's rope. this union of two qualities was all-important. the great problem had been to combine strength with flexibility. mere dead weight was an objection. the new cable, though nearly twice as heavy as the old in air, when immersed in water, weighed but a trifle more; so that it was really much lighter in proportion to its size. this increased lightness was a very important matter in laying the cable, as it caused it to sink slowly. the old cable, though smaller, was heavy almost as a rod of iron, so that, as it ran out, it dropped at an angle which exposed it to great danger in case of a sudden lurch of the ship. thus in it was broken by the stern of the niagara being thrown up on a wave just as the brakes were shut down. now the cable, being partially buoyed by the rope, would float out to a great distance from the ship, and sink down slowly in the deep waters. by this combination of rope and iron, a cable was secured two and a half times as strong as the old--the breaking strain of the former having been three tons five cwt., and of the latter seven tons and fifteen cwt. or, to put it in another form, the contract strain of the former was less than five times its own weight per mile in water; so that if the cable had been laid in some parts of the atlantic, where the ocean is more than five miles deep, it would have broken under the enormous strain. but the contract strain of the new cable was equal to _eleven_ times its weight per mile in water, which, as the greatest depth of water to be passed was but two and a half miles, rendered the cable more than four times as strong as was required. this great chain which was to bind the sea was to be , nautical miles long, or nearly , statute miles! but where could this enormous bulk be stowed? its weight would sink the spanish armada. in , the cable loaded down two of the largest ships of war in the world, the niagara and the agamemnon. yet now one much larger and bulkier was to be taken on board. this might have proved a serious embarrassment, but that a few years before there had been built in england a ship of enormous proportions. the great eastern, whose iron walls had been reared by the genius of brunel, had been for ten years waiting for "a mission." as a specimen of marine architecture she was perfect. she walked the waters in towering pride, scarce bending her imperial head to the waves that broke against her sides, as against the rocks of the shore. but with all her noble qualities, she was too great for the ordinary demands of commerce. her very size was against her; and while smaller ships, on which she looked down with contempt, were continually flying to and fro across the sea, this leviathan, hugest of all god's works that swim the ocean stream, could find nothing worthy of her greatness. here then was the vessel to receive the atlantic cable. seeing her fitness for the purpose, a few of the gentlemen who were active in reviving the atlantic telegraph combined to purchase her, as she was about to be sold. one of them went down with all speed to liverpool, and the next day telegraphed that the big ship was theirs. the new owners at once put her at the service of the atlantic company, with the express agreement that any compensation for her use should depend on the success of the expedition. next to the good fortune of finding such a ship ready to their hands, was that of finding an officer worthy to command her. captain james anderson, of the china, one of the cunard steamers, had long been known to the travelling public, both of england and america, and no one ever crossed the sea with him without the strongest feeling of respect for his manly and seamanly qualities. a thorough master of his profession, having followed the sea for a quarter of a century, he was also a man of much general intelligence, and of no small scientific attainments. but it was something more than this which inspired such confidence. it was his ceaseless watchfulness. he always carried with him a feeling of religious responsibility for the lives of all on board, and for every interest committed to him. a man of few words, modest in manner, he was yet clear in judgment and prompt in action. this vigilance was especially marked in moments of danger. when a storm was gathering, all who saw that tall figure on the wheel-house, watching with a keen eye every spar in the ship and every cloud in the horizon, felt a new security from being under his care. such was the man to be put in charge of a great expedition. he was recommended by mr. field in the strongest terms, and was chosen unanimously by the board. the cunard company, with great generosity, consented to give up his services, valuable as they were, to forward an enterprise of such public interest. being thus free, he accepted the trust, and entered upon it with enthusiasm. how well he fulfilled the expectations of all, the sequel will show.[a] the work now went on with speed. the wheels began to hum, and the great drums to reel off that line which, considering the distance it was to span, was hardly to be measured by miles, but rather by degrees of the earth's surface. mere figures give but a vague impression of vast spaces. but it is a curious fact, ascertained by an exact computation, that if all the wires of copper and of iron, with the layers that made up the core and the outer covering, and the strands of yarn that were twisted into this one knotted sea-cable, were placed end to end, the whole length would reach from the earth to the moon! as it came from the works in its completed state, it was plunged in water, to make it familiar with the element which was to be its future home. in the yards of the company stood eight large tanks, which could hold each a hundred and forty miles. here the cable was coiled to "hibernate," till it should be wanted for use the coming spring. seeing the work thus well under way, with no chance of another disastrous check, mr. field left england with heart at rest, and returned to america for the winter. but the first days of spring saw him again on the atlantic. he reached england on the eighteenth of march. his visit was more satisfactory than a year before. the work was now well advanced. it was a goodly sight to go down to morden wharf at greenwich, and see the huge machinery in motion, spinning off the leagues of deep-sea line. the triumph apparently was near at hand. it seemed indeed a predestined thing that the cable should finally be laid in the year of grace --the end for which he had so faithfully toiled since --seven weary years--as long as jacob served for rachel! but, less fortunate than jacob, he was doomed to one more disappointment. at present, however, all looked well, and he could not but regard the prospect with satisfaction. having no more drudgery of raising money, he had now a few weeks' leisure to take a voyage up the mediterranean. the canal across the isthmus of suez, which had been so long in progress, under the supervision of french engineers, was at length so far advanced that the waters of the mediterranean were about to mingle with those of the red sea, and delegates were invited to be present from all parts of the world. an invitation had been sent to the chamber of commerce in new york, and mr. field, then starting for europe, was appointed as its representative. the visit was one of extraordinary interest. the occasion brought together a number of eminent engineers from every country of europe, in company with whom this stranger from the new world visited the most ancient of kingdoms to see the spirit of modern enterprise invading the land of the pyramids. he returned to england about the first of may to find the work nearly completed. the cable was almost done, and a large part of it was already coiled on board the ship. this was an operation of much interest, which deserves to be described. the manufacture had begun on the first of september, and had gone on for eight months without ceasing, the works turning out fourteen miles a day even during the short days of winter. as the spring advanced, and the days grew longer, the amount was of course much increased. but by the last of january they had already accumulated about nine hundred miles of completed cable, when began the long and tedious work of transferring it to the great eastern. it was thus slow, because it could not be made directly from the yard to the ship. the depth of water at greenwich was not such as to allow the great eastern to be brought up alongside the wharf. she was lying at sheerness, thirty miles below, and the cable had to be put on board of lighters and taken down to where she lay in the stream. for this purpose the admiralty had furnished to the company two old hulks, the iris and the amethyst, which took their loads in turn. when the former had taken on board some two hundred and fifty tons of cable, she was towed down to the side of the great eastern, and the other took her place. this was an operation which could not be done with speed. with all the men who could be employed, they coiled on board only about two miles an hour, or twenty miles a day--at which rate it would take some five months. the work began on the nineteenth of january, early in the morning, and continued till june, before all was safely stowed on board. the great eastern herself had been fitted up to receive her enormous burden. it was an object to stow the cable in as few coils as possible. yet it could not be all piled in one mass. such a dead weight in the centre of the ship would cause her to roll fearfully. if coiled in one circle, it was computed that it would nearly fill astley's theatre from the floor of the circus to the roof--making a pile fifty-eight feet wide and sixty feet high. to distribute this enormous bulk and weight, it was disposed in three tanks--one aft, one amidships, and one forward. the latter, from the shape of the ship, was a little smaller than the others, and held only six hundred and thirty-three miles of cable, while the two former held a little over eight hundred each. all were made of thick wrought-iron plates, and water-tight, so that the cable could be kept under water till it was immersed in the sea. thus with her spacious chambers prepared for the reception of her guest, the great eastern opened her doors to take in the atlantic cable; and long as it was, and wide and high the space it filled, it found ample verge and room within her capacious sides. indeed, it was the wonder of all who beheld it, how, like a monster of the sea, she devoured all that other ships could bring. the iris and the amethyst came up time after time and disgorged their iron contents. yet this leviathan swallowed ship-load after ship-load, as if she could never be satisfied. a writer who visited her when the cable was nearly all on board, was at a loss to find it. he looked along the deck, from stem to stern, but not a sign of it appeared. how he searched, and how the wonder grew, he tells in a published letter. after describing his approach to the ship, and climbing up her sides and his survey of her deck, he proceeds: "but it is time that we should look after what we have mainly come to see, the telegraph cable. to our intense astonishment, we behold it nowhere, although informed that there are nearly two thousand miles of it already on board, and the remaining piece--a piece long enough to stretch from land's end to john o'groat's--is in course of shipment. we walk up and down on the deck of the great eastern without seeing this gigantic chain which is to bind together the old and the new world; and it is only on having the place pointed out to us that we find where the cable lies and by what process it is taken on board. on the side opposite to where we landed, deep below the deck of our giant, there is moored a vessel surmounted by a timber structure resembling a house, and from this vessel the wonderful telegraph cable is drawn silently into the immense womb of the great eastern. the work is done so quietly and noiselessly, by means of a small steam-engine, that we scarcely notice it. indeed, were it not pointed out to us, we would never think that that little iron cord, about an inch in diameter, which is sliding over a few rollers and through a wooden table, is a thing of world-wide fame--a thing which may influence the life of whole nations; nay, which may affect the march of civilization. following the direction in which the iron rope goes, we now come to the most marvellous sight yet seen on board the great eastern. we find ourselves in a little wooden cabin, and look down, over a railing at the side, into an immense cavern below. this cavern is one of the three 'tanks' in which the two-thousand-mile cable is finding a temporary home. the passive agent of electricity comes creeping in here in a beautiful, silent manner, and is deposited in spiral coils, layer upon layer. it is almost dark at the immense depth below, and we can only dimly discern the human figures through whose hands the coil passes to its bed. suddenly, however, the men begin singing. they intone a low, plaintive song of the sea; something like kingsley's 'three fishers went sailing away to the west, away to the west as the sun went down--' the sounds of which rise up from the dark, deep cavern with startling effect, and produce an indescribable impression. "we proceed on; but the song of the sailors who are taking charge of the atlantic telegraph cable is haunting us like a dream. in vain our guide conducts us all over the big ship, through miles of galleries, passages, staircases, and promenades; through gorgeous saloons, full of mirrors, marbles, paintings, and upholstery, made 'regardless of expense;' and through buildings crowded with glittering steam apparatus of gigantic dimensions, where the latent power of coal and water creates the force which propels this monster vessel over the seas. in vain our attention is directed to all these sights; we do not admire them; our imagination is used up. the echo of the sailors' song in the womb of the great eastern will not be banished from our mind. it raises visions of the future of the mystic iron coil under our feet--how it will roll forth again from its narrow berth; how it will sink to the bottom of the atlantic, or hang from mountain to mountain far below the stormy waves; and how two great nations, offsprings of one race and pioneers of civilization, will speak through this wonderful coil, annihilating distance and time. who can help dreaming here, on the spot where we stand? for it is truly a marvellous romance of civilization, this great eastern and this atlantic telegraph cable. even should our age produce nothing else, it alone would be the triumph of our age." as the work approached completion, public interest revived in the stupendous undertaking, and crowds of wonder-seekers came down from london to see the preparations for the expedition. even if not admitted on board, they found a satisfaction in sailing round the great ship, in whose mighty bosom was coiled this huge sea-serpent. it had also many distinguished visitors. among others, the prince of wales came to see the ocean girdle which was to link the british islands with his future dominions beyond the sea. at length, on the twenty-ninth of may, almost the last day of spring, the manufacture of the cable was finished. the machines which for eight months had been in a constant whirl, made their last round. the tinkling of a bell announced that the machinery was empty, and the mighty work stood completed. it only remained that it should be got on board, and the ship prepared for her voyage. hundreds of busy hands were at work without ceasing, and yet it was six weeks before she was ready to put to sea. it may well be believed that it was no small affair to equip such an expedition. beside the enormous burden of the cable itself, the great eastern had to take on board seven or eight thousand tons of coal, enough for a fleet, to feed her fires. then she carried about five hundred men, for whom she had to make provision during the weeks they might be at sea. the stores laid in were enough for a small army. standing on the wheel-house, and looking down, one might fancy himself in some large farm-yard of england. there stood the motherly cow that was to give them milk; and a dozen oxen, and twenty pigs, and a hundred and twenty sheep, while whole flocks of ducks and geese, and fowls of every kind, cackled as in a poultry-yard. beside all this live stock, hundreds of barrels of provisions, of meats and fruits, were stored in the well-stocked larder below. thus laden for her voyage, the great eastern had in her a weight, including her own machinery, of twenty-one thousand tons--a burden almost as great as could have been carried by the whole fleet with which nelson fought the battle of trafalgar. as the time of departure drew near, public curiosity was excited, and there was an extraordinary desire to witness the approaching attempt. the company was besieged by applications from all quarters for permission to accompany the expedition. had these requests been granted, on the scale asked, even the large dimensions of the great eastern could hardly have been sufficient for the crowds on board. the demand was most pressing for places for newspaper correspondents. these came not only from england, but from france and america. almost every journal in london claimed the privilege of being represented. the result was what might have been expected. as it was impossible to satisfy all, and to discriminate in favor of some, and exclude others, would seem partial and unjust, they were finally obliged to exclude all. of course this gave great offence. there was an outcry in england and in the united states at what was denounced as a selfish and suicidal policy. but it is doubtful whether any other possible course would have given better satisfaction. whether the managers erred in this or not, it should be said that they applied the same inexorable rule to themselves--even directors of the company being excluded, unless they had some special business on board. it should be borne in mind that the expedition was not under the control of the atlantic telegraph company at all, but of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, which had undertaken the work in fulfilment of a contract with the former company to manufacture and lay down a cable across the atlantic, in which it assumed the whole responsibility, not only making the cable, but chartering the ship and appointing the officers, and sending its own engineers to lay it down. of course it had an enormous stake in the result. hence it felt, not only authorized, but bound, to organize the expedition solely with reference to success. it was not a voyage of pleasure, but for business; for the accomplishment of a great and most difficult undertaking. hence it was right that the most strict rules should be adopted. accordingly there was not a man on board who had not some business there. as the voyage promised to be one of the utmost practical interest to electricians and engineers, several young men were received as assistants in the testing-room or in the engineers' department; but there was no person who was not in some way engaged on the business of one or the other company, or connected with the management of the ship. except mr. field, not an atlantic telegraph director accompanied the expedition; and he represented also the newfoundland company. mr. gooch, m.p., was at once a director of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, and chairman of the board that owned the great eastern, and so represented both those companies which had so great a stake in the result. thus the whole business was in the hands of the telegraph construction and maintenance company. it had its own officers to man the expedition--the captain and crew to sail the ship--its engineers to lay the cable--and its electricians to test it. even the eminent electricians, professor thomson and mr. varley, who were on board in the service of the atlantic telegraph company, were not allowed to interfere, _nor even to give advice_ unless it were asked for in writing, and then it was to be given in writing. their office was only to test the cable when laid, to pass messages through it from newfoundland to ireland, and to report it complete. so rigorous were the rules which governed this memorable voyage. the whole enterprise was organized as completely as a naval expedition. every man had his place. as when a ship is going into battle, everybody is sent below that has not some business on deck, so it is not strange that in such a critical enterprise they did not want a host of supernumeraries on board. yet the company was not unmindful of the anxiety of the public for news, and since it could not give a place to many correspondents, it engaged one, and that the best--w. h. russell, ll.d., the well-known correspondent of the london times in the crimea and in india. this brilliant writer was engaged to accompany the expedition--not to praise without discrimination, but to report events faithfully from day to day. he was accompanied by two artists, mr. o'neill and mr. dudley, to illustrate the scenes of the voyage. thus the company made every provision to furnish information and even entertainment to the public. several of these gentlemen afterward wrote accounts for different magazines--blackwood, cornhill, and macmillan's. their different reports, and especially the volume of dr. russell, which combines the accuracy and minuteness of a diary kept from day to day, with brilliant descriptions, set off by illustrations from drawings of mr. dudley, furnish the public as full and complete an account as if there had been a special correspondent for every journal of england and america. but if the public at large were very properly excluded, the organization on board was perfect and complete. at the head was captain anderson, of whom we have already spoken. as his duties would be manifold and increasing, he had requested the aid of an assistant commander, and captain moriarty, r. n., who had been in the agamemnon in , was permitted by the admiralty to accompany the ship, and to give the invaluable aid of his experience and skill. the government also generously granted two ships of war, the sphinx and the terrible, to attend the great eastern. thus the whole equipment of the expedition was english. of the five hundred men on board the great eastern, there was but one american, and that was mr. field. the engineering department was under charge of mr. (now sir) samuel canning, who, as the representative of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, was chief in command of all matters relating to laying the cable. for this responsible position no better man could have been chosen. before the voyage was ended, he had ample opportunity to show his resources. he was ably seconded by mr. henry clifford. both these gentlemen had been on board the agamemnon in the two expeditions of . they had since had large experience in laying submarine cables in the mediterranean and other seas. it was chiefly by their united skill that the paying-out machinery had been brought to such perfection, that throughout the voyage it worked without a single hitch or jar. they had an invaluable helper in mr. john temple. the electrical department was under charge of mr. de sauty, who had had long experience in submarine telegraphs, and who was aided by an efficient corps of assistants. professor thomson and mr. varley, as we have said, were there to examine and report for the atlantic company. all these gentlemen had been unceasing in their tests of the cable in every form, both while in the process of manufacture and after it was coiled in the great eastern. the result of their repeated tests was to demonstrate that the cable was _many times more perfect than the contract required_. with such marvellous delicacy did they test the current of electricity sent through it, that it was determined that of one thousand parts, over nine hundred and ninety-nine came out at the other end! to complete this organization and equipment caused such delays as excited the impatience of all on board. but at length, when midsummer had fully come--at noon of saturday, july fifteenth--the song of the sailors sounded the _chant du départ_. the great eastern was then lying at the nore, and she seemed to cling to the english soil which she had griped with a huge trotman weighing seven tons, held fast by a chain whereof every link weighed seventy pounds! to wrench this ponderous anchor from its bed required the united strength of near two hundred men. at last the bottom lets go its hold, the anchor swings to the bow, the gun is fired, and the voyage is begun. a fleet of yachts and boats raise their cheers as the mighty hull begins to move. but mark how carefully she feels her way, following the lead of yonder little steamer, the porcupine, the same faithful guide that seven years before led the niagara up trinity bay one night when the faint light of stars twinkled on all the surrounding hills. slowly they near the sea. now the cliffs of dover are in sight, and bidding her escort adieu, the great eastern glides along by the beautiful isle of wight, and then quickening her speed, with a royal sweep, she moves down the channel. off falmouth she picked up the caroline, a small steamer, which had left several days before with the shore end on board. she was laboring heavily with her burden, and made little headway in the rough waves. but the great eastern took her in tow, and she followed like a ship's boat in the wake of the monarch of the seas. thus they passed round to the coast of ireland, to that valentia bay where, eight years before, the earl of carlisle gave his benediction on the departure of the niagara and the agamemnon, and where, a year later, the gallant english ship brought her end of the cable safely to the shore. the point of landing had been changed from valentia harbor five or six miles to foilhommerum bay, a wild spot where huge cliffs hang over the waves that here come rolling in from the atlantic. on the top, an old tower of the time of cromwell tells of the bloody days of england's great civil war. it is now but a mossy ruin. here the peasants who flocked in from the country pitched their booths on the green sward, and looked down from the dizzy heights on the boats dancing in the bay below. at the foot of the cliff, a soft, sandy beach forms a bed for the cable, and here, as it issues from the sea, it is led up a channel which had been cut for it in the rocks. as the shore end was very massive and unwieldy, it could not be laid except in good weather; and as the sea was now rough, the great eastern withdrew to bantry bay, to be out of the way of the storms which sometimes break with fury on this rock-bound coast. on saturday this preliminary work was completed, the heavy shore end was carried from the deck of the caroline across a bridge of boats to the beach, and hauled up the cliffs amid the shouts of the people. when once it was made fast to the rocks, the little steamer began to move, and the huge coil slowly unwound, and like a giant awakened, stretched out its long iron arms. by half-past ten o'clock at night the hold was empty, the whole twenty-seven miles having been safely laid, and the end buoyed in seventy-five fathoms water. a despatch was at once sent across the country to bantry bay to the great eastern to come around with all speed, and early the next morning her smoke was seen in the offing. passing the harbor of valentia, she proceeded to join the caroline, which she reached about noon, and at once commenced splicing the massive shore end to her own deep-sea line. this was a work of several hours, so that it was toward evening before all was completed. thus, so many had been the delays of the past week, that it had come on to sunday before the great eastern was ready to begin her voyage. this--which some might count a desecration of the holy day--the sailors rather accepted as a good omen. had the shore end been laid forty-eight hours sooner, the voyage might have begun on friday, which sailors, who are proverbially superstitious, would have thought an unlucky beginning. but sunday, in their esteem, is a good day. they like, when a ship is moving out of sight of land, that the last sound from the shore should be the blessed sabbath bells. if that sacred chime were not heard to-day, at least a sabbath peace rested on sea and sky. it was a calm summer's evening. the sun was just sinking in the waves, as the great eastern, with the two ships of war which waited on either hand, to attend her royal progress, turned their faces to the west, and caught the sudden glory. says russell: "as the sun set, a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows toward their bows, as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of heaven." what a sacred omen! had it been the fleet of columbus sailing westward, every ship's company would have fallen upon their knees on those decks, and burst forth in an ave maria to the gentle mistress of the seas. but in that manly crew there was many an eye that took in the full beauty of the scene, and many a reverent heart that invoked a benediction. in other respects the day was well chosen. it was the twenty-third of july. from the beginning, captain anderson had wished to sail on the twenty-third of june, or the twenty-second of july, so as to have the full moon on the american coast. he desired also to take advantage of the westerly winds which prevail at that season, for in going against the wind the great eastern was steady as a rock. every expectation was realized. to the big ship the ocean was as an inland lake. the paying-out machinery--the product of so much study and skill--worked beautifully, and as the ship increased her speed, the cable glided into the water with such ease that it seemed but a holiday affair to carry it across to yonder continent. such were the reflections of all that evening as the long summer twilight lingered on the sea. at midnight they went to sleep, to dream of an easy triumph. yet be not too confident. but a few hours had passed before the booming of a gun awoke all on board with the heavy tidings of disaster. the morning breaks early in those high latitudes, and by four o'clock all were on deck, with anxious looks inquiring for the cause of alarm. the ship was lying still, as if her voyage had already come to an end, and electricians, with troubled countenances, were passing in and out of the testing-room, which, as it was always kept darkened, looked like a sick-chamber where some royal patient lay trembling between life and death. the method used by the electricians to discover a fault is one of such delicacy and beauty as shows the marvellous perfection of the instruments which science employs to learn the secrets of nature. the galvanometer is an invention of professor thomson, by which "a ray of light reflected from a tiny mirror suspended to a magnet travels along a scale, and indicates the resistance to the passage of the current through the cable by the deflection of the magnet, which is marked by the course of this speck of light. if the light of the mirror travels beyond the index, or out of bounds, an escape of the current is taking place, and what is technically called a fault has occurred." such was the discovery on monday morning. at a quarter past three o'clock the electrician on duty saw the light suddenly glide to the end of the scale and vanish. fortunately it was not a fatal injury. it did not prevent signalling through the cable, and a message was at once sent back to the shore, giving notice of the check that had been received. but the electric current did not flow freely. there was a leak at some point of the line which it would not be prudent to pass over. they were now seventy-three miles from shore, having run out eighty-four miles of cable. the tests of the electricians indicated the fault to be ten or a dozen miles from the stern of the ship. the only safe course was to go back and get this on board, and cut out the defective portion. it was a most ungrateful operation thus to be undoing their own work, but there was no help for it. such accidents had been anticipated, and before the great eastern left england, she had been provided with machinery to be used in case of necessity for picking up the cable. but this proved rather an unwieldy affair. it was at the bow, and as the paying-out machine was at the stern, the ship had to be got round, and the cable, which must first be cut, had to be transferred from one end to the other. this was not an easy matter. the great eastern was an eighth of a mile long, and to carry the cable along her sides for this distance, and over her high wheel-houses, was an operation at once tedious and difficult. but at length the ship's head was brought round, and the end of the cable lifted over the bow, and grasped by the pulling-in machine, and the engine began to puff with the labor of raising the cable from the depths of the ocean. fortunately they were only in four or five hundred fathoms water, so that the strain was not great. but the engine worked poorly, and the operation was very slow. with the best they could do, it was impossible to raise more than a mile an hour! but patience and courage, though it should take all day and all night![b] the great eastern did her duty well, steaming slowly back toward ireland, while the engine pulled, and the cable came up, though reluctantly, from the sea, till on tuesday morning at seven o'clock, when they had hauled in a little over ten miles, the cause of offence was brought on board. it was found to be a small piece of wire, not longer than a needle, that by some accident (for they did not then suspect a design) had been driven through the outer cover of the cable till it touched the core. there was the source of all the mischief. it was this pin's point which pricked the vital cord, opening a minute passage through which the electricity, like a jet of blood from a pierced artery, went streaming into the sea. it was with an almost angry feeling, as if to punish it for its intrusion, that this insignificant and contemptible source of trouble was snatched from its place, the wounded piece of cable was cut off, and a splice made and the work of paying out renewed. but it was four o'clock in the afternoon of tuesday before they were ready to resume the voyage. a full day and a half had been lost by this miserable piece of wire. but the vexatious delay was over at last, and the stately ship, once more turning to the west, moved ahead with a steady composure, as if no petty trouble could vex her tranquil mind. throughout the voyage the behavior of the ship was the admiration of all on board. while her consorts on either side were pitched about at the mercy of the waves, she moved forward with a grave demeanor, as if conscious of her mission, or as if eager to unburden her mighty heart, to throw overboard the great mystery that was coiled up within her, and to cast her burden on the sea. the electricians, too, were elated, and with reason, at the perfection of the cable as demonstrated by every hour's experience. at intervals of thirty minutes, day and night, tests were passed from ship to shore, and to the delight of all, instead of finding the insulation weakened, it steadily improved as the cable was brought into contact with the cold depths of the atlantic. all now went well till saturday, the twenty-ninth, when a little after noon there was again a cry from the ship, as if once more the cable were wounded and in pain. this time the fault was more serious than before. the electricians looked very grave, for they had struck "dead earth," that is, the insulation was completely destroyed, and the electric current was escaping into the sea. as the fault had gone overboard, it was necessary to reverse their course, and haul in till the defective part was brought up from the bottom. this time it was more difficult, for they were in water two miles deep. still the cable yielded slowly to the iron hands that drew it upward; and after working all the afternoon, about ten o'clock at night they got the fault on board. the wounded limb was at once amputated, and joining the parts that were whole, the cable was made new and strong again. thus ended a day of anxiety. the next morning, which was the second sabbath at sea, was welcomed with a grateful feeling after the suspense of the last twenty-four hours. on monday, the miles of cable that had been hauled up, and which were lying in huge piles upon the deck, were subjected to a rigid examination, to find out where the fault lay. this was soon apparent. near the end was found a piece of wire thrust through its very heart, as if it had been driven into it. all looked black when this was discovered, for at once it excited suspicions of design. it was remarked that the same gang of workmen were in the tank as at the time of the first fault. mr. canning sent for the men, and showing them the cable pierced through with the wire, asked them how it occurred. every man replied that _it must have been done by design_, even though they accused themselves, as this implied that there was a traitor among them. it seemed hard to believe that any one could be guilty of such devilish malignity. yet such a thing had been done before in a cable laid in the north sea, where the insulation was destroyed by a nail driven into it. the man was afterward arrested, and confessed that he had been hired to do it by a rival company. the matter was the subject of a long investigation in the english courts. in the present case there were many motives which might prompt to such an act. the fall in the stock on the london exchange, caused by a loss of the cable, could hardly be less than half a million sterling. here was a temptation such as betrays bold, bad men into crime. however, as it was impossible to fix the deed on any one, nothing was proved, and there only remained a painful suspicion of treachery. against this it was their duty to guard. therefore it was agreed that the gentlemen on board should take turns in keeping watch in the tank. it was very unpleasant to mr. canning thus to set a watch on men, many of whom had been with him in his former cable-laying expeditions, but the best of them admitted the necessity of it, and were as eager as himself to find out the judas among them. but accident or villainy, it was defeated this time, and the great eastern proudly continued her voyage. not the slightest check interrupted their progress for the next three days, during which they passed over five hundred miles of ocean. it was now they enjoyed their greatest triumph. they were in the middle of the atlantic, and thus far the voyage had been a complete success. the ship seemed as if made by heaven to accomplish this great work of civilization. the paying-out apparatus was a piece of mechanism to excite the enthusiasm of an engineer, so smoothly did its well-oiled wheels run. the strain never exceeded fourteen hundred-weight, even in the greatest depths of the atlantic. and as for the cable itself, it seemed to come as near perfection as it was possible to attain. as before, the insulation was greatly improved by submergence in the ocean. with every lengthening league it grew better and better. it seems almost beyond belief, yet the fact is fully attested that, when in the middle of the ocean, the communication was so perfect that they could tell at valentia every time the great eastern rolled.[c] with such omens of success, who could but feel confident? and when on monday they passed over a deep valley, where lay "the bones of three atlantic cables," it was with a proud assurance that they should not add another to the number. but wednesday brought a sudden termination of their hopes. they had run out about twelve hundred miles of cable, and were now within six hundred miles of newfoundland. two days more would have made them safe, as it would have brought them into the shallow waters of the coast. thus it was when least expected that disaster came. the record of that fatal day may be given in few words. in the morning, while mr. field was keeping watch in the tank, with the same gang of men who had been there when the trouble occurred before, a grating sound was heard, as if a piece of wire had caught in the machinery, and word was passed up to the deck to look out for it; but the caution seems not to have been heard, and it passed over the stern of the ship. soon after a report came from the testing-room of "another fault." it was not a bad one, since it did not prevent communication with land; and much anxiety might have been saved had a message been sent to ireland that they were about to cut the cable, in order to haul it on board. but small as the fault was, it could not be left behind. down on the deep sea-floor was some minute defect, a pin's point in a length measured by thousands of miles. yet that was enough. of this marvellous product of human skill, it might in truth be said, that it was like the law of god in demanding absolute perfection. to offend in one point was to be guilty of all. this new fault, though it was annoying, did not create alarm, for they had been accustomed to such things, and regarded them only as the natural incidents of the voyage. had the apparatus for pulling in been complete, it could not have delayed them more than a few hours. but this had been the weak point of the arrangements from the beginning--the _bête noire_ of the expedition. the only motive power was a little donkey engine, (rightly named,) which puffed and wheezed as if it had the asthma. this was now put in requisition, but soon gave out for want of more steam. while waiting for this a breeze sprang up, which caused the great eastern to drift over the cable, by which it was badly chafed, so that when it was hauled in, as the injured part was coming over the bows and was almost within grasp, suddenly it broke and plunged into the sea! it came without a moment's warning. so unexpected was such a catastrophe, that the gentlemen had gone down to lunch, as it was a little past the hour of noon. but mr. canning and mr. field stood watching the cable as it was straining upward from the sea, and saw the snapping of that cord, which broke so many hopes. the impression may be better imagined than described. says a writer on board: "suddenly mr. canning appeared in the saloon, and in a manner which caused every one to start in his seat, said, 'it is all over! it is gone!' then hastened onward to his cabin. ere the thrill of surprise and pain occasioned by these words had passed away, mr. field came from the companion into the saloon, and said, with composure admirable under the circumstances, though his lip quivered and his cheek was blanched, 'the cable has parted and has gone overboard.' all were on deck in a moment, and there, indeed, a glance revealed the truth." at last it had come--the calamity which all had feared, yet that seemed so far away only a few hours before. yet there it was--the ragged end on board, torn and bleeding, the other lying far down in its ocean grave. in america, of course, nothing could be known of the fate of the expedition till its arrival on our shores. but in england its progress was reported from day to day, and as the success up to this point had raised the hopes of all to the highest pitch, the sudden loss of communication with the ship was a heavy blow to public expectation, and gave rise to all sorts of conjectures. at first a favorite theory was, that communication had been interrupted by a magnetic storm. these are among the most mysterious phenomena of nature--so subtle and fleeting as to be almost beyond the reach of science. no visible sign do they give of their presence. no clouds darken the heavens; no thunder peals along the sky. yet strange influences trouble the air. at this very hour, professor airy, the astronomer royal at the observatory at greenwich, reported a magnetic storm of unusual violence. said a london paper: "just when the signals from the great eastern ceased, a magnetic storm of singular violence had set in. unperceived by us, not to be seen in the heavens, nor felt in the atmosphere, the earth's electricity underwent a mysterious disturbance. the recording instruments scattered about the kingdom, everywhere testified to the fury of this voiceless tempest, and there is every reason to suppose that the confusion of signals at midday on wednesday was due to the strange and unusual earth-currents of magnetism, sweeping wildly across the cable as it lay in apparently untroubled waters at the bottom of the atlantic." said the times: "at valentia, on wednesday last, the signals, up to nine a.m., were coming with wonderful distinctness and regularity, but about that time a violent magnetic storm set in. no insulation of a submarine cable is ever so perfect as to withstand the influence of these electrical phenomena, which correspond in some particulars to storms in the ordinary atmosphere, their direction generally being from east to west. their action is immediately communicated to all conductors of electricity, and a struggle set up between the natural current and that used artificially in sending messages. this magnetic storm affected every telegraphic station in the kingdom. at some the wires were utterly useless; and between valentia and killarney the natural current toward the west was so strong along the land lines that it required an addition of five times the ordinary battery power to overcome it. this magnetic storm, which ceased at two a.m. on friday, was instantly perceptible in the atlantic cable." but these explanations, so consoling to anxious friends on land, did not comfort those on board the great eastern. they knew, alas! that the cable was at the bottom of the ocean, and the only question was, if any thing could be done to recover it. now began a work of which there had been no example in the annals of the sea. the intrepid canning declared his purpose to grapple for the cable! the proposal seemed wild, dictated by the frenzy of despair. yet he had fished in deep waters before. he had laid his hand on the bottom of the mediterranean, but that was a shallow lake compared with the depths into which the atlantic cable had descended. the ocean is here two and a half miles deep. it was as if an alpine hunter stood on the summit of mont blanc and cast a line into the vale of chamouni. yet who shall put bounds to human courage? the expedition was not to be abandoned without a trial of this forlorn hope. there were on board some five miles of wire rope, intended to hold the cable in case it became necessary to cut it and lash it to the buoys, to save it from being lost in a storm. this was brought on deck for another purpose. "and now came forth the grapnels, two five-armed anchors, with flukes sharply curved and tapered to a tooth-like end--the hooks with which the giant despair was going to fish from the great eastern for a take worth, with all its belongings, more than a million." these huge grappling-irons were firmly shackled to the end of the rope, and brought to the bows and thrown overboard. one splash, and the whole has disappeared in the bosom of the ocean. down it goes--deeper, deeper, deeper still! for two full hours it continued sinking before it struck the earth, and like a pearl-diver, began searching for its lost treasure on the bottom of the sea. what did it find there? the wrecks of ships that had gone down a hundred years ago, with dead men's bones whitening in the deep sea caves? it sought for something more precious to the interest of civilization than gems and gold. the ship was now a dozen miles or so from the place of accident. the cable had broken a little after noon, when the sun was shining clear, so that captains anderson and moriarty had just obtained a perfect observation, from which they could tell, within half a mile, the very spot where it had gone down. to reach it now, with any chance of bringing it up, it would be necessary to hook it a few miles from the end. it had been paid out in a line from east to west. to strike it broadside, the ship stood off in the afternoon a few miles to the south. here the grapnel was thrown over about three o'clock, and struck bottom about five, when the ship began slowly drifting back on her course. all night long those iron fingers were raking the bottom of the deep but grasping nothing, till toward morning the long rope quivered like a fisherman's line when something has seized the end, and the head of the great eastern began to sway from her course, as if it felt some unseen attraction. as they began to haul in, the rapidly increasing strain soon rendered it certain that they had got hold of _something_. but what could it be? how did they know it was their lost cable? this question has often been asked. they did not see it. how did they know that it was not the skeleton of a whale, or a mast or spar, the fragment of a wrecked ship? the question is easily answered. if it had been any loose object which was being drawn up from the sea, its weight would have diminished as it came nearer the surface. but on the contrary, the strain, as shown by the dynamometer, steadily _increased_. this could only be from some object lying prone on the bottom. to an engineer the proof was like a mathematical demonstration. another fact observed by captain anderson was equally decisive: "the grapnel had caught something at the exact hour when by calculation the ship was known to be crossing the line of the cable; nor had the grapnel upon this or any other occasion even for an instant caught any impediment from the time of its being lowered to the bottom, until the hour indicated by calculation, when the cable ought to be hooked." having thus caught the cable, they had good hopes of getting it again, their confidence increasing with every hundred fathoms brought on board. for hours the work went on. they had raised it seven hundred fathoms--or three quarters of a mile--from the bottom, when an iron swivel gave way, and the cable once more fell back into the sea, carrying with it nearly two miles of rope. the first attempt had failed, but the fact that they had unmistakably caught the prize gave them courage for a second. preparations were at once begun, but fogs came on and delayed the attempt till monday, when it was repeated. the grapnel caught again. it was late in the afternoon when it got its hold, and the work of pulling in was kept up all night. but as the sea was calm and the moon shining brightly, all joined in it with spirit, feeling elated with the hope of triumph on the morrow. that was not to be; but each attempt seemed to come nearer and nearer to victory. this time the cable was drawn up a full mile from the bottom, and hung suspended a mile and a half below the ship. had the rope been strong enough, it might have been brought on board. but again a swivel gave way, and the cable, whose sleep had been a second time disturbed, sought its ocean bed. these experiments were fast using up the wire rope, and every expedient had to be resorted to, to piece it out and to give it strength. each shackle and swivel was replaced by new bolts, and the capstan was increased four feet in diameter, by being belted with enormous plates of iron, to wind the rope around it, if the picking-up machinery should fail. this gave full work to all the mechanics on board. the ship was turned into a very cave of vulcan, presenting at night a scene which might well take the eye of an artist, and which russell thus describes: "the forge fires glared on her decks, and there, out in the midst of the atlantic, anvils rang and sparks flew; and the spectator thought of some village far away, where the blacksmith worked, unvexed by cable anxieties and greed of speedy news. as the blaze shot up, ruddy, mellow and strong, and flung arms of light aloft and along the glistening decks, and then died into a red centre, masts, spars, and ropes were for the instant touched with a golden gleaming, and strange figures and faces were called out from the darkness--vanished, glinted out again--rushed suddenly into foreground of bright pictures, which faded soon away--flickered--went out--as they were called to life by its warm breath, or were buried in the outer darkness! outside all was obscurity, but now and then vast shadows, which moved across the arc of the lighted fog-bank, were projected far away by the flare; and one might well pardon the passing mariner, whose bark drifted him in the night across the track of the great ship, if, crossing himself, and praying with shuddering lips, he fancied he beheld a phantom ship freighted with an evil crew, and ever after told how he had seen the workshops of the inferno floating on the bosom of the ocean." while preparing for a third attempt, the ship had been drifting about, sometimes to a distance of thirty or forty miles, but it had marked the course where the cable lay by two buoys, thrown over about ten miles apart, each bearing a flag which might be seen at a distance, and so easily came back to the spot. on thursday morning all was ready, and the line was cast as before, but after some hours of drifting, it was evident that the ship had passed over the cable without grappling. the line was hauled in, and the reason at once appeared. one of the flukes had caught in the chain, so that it could not strike its teeth into the bottom. this was cleared away, and the rope prepared for a fourth and final attempt. it was at noon of friday that the grapnel went overboard for the last time. by four o'clock it had caught, and the work of hauling-in recommenced. again the cable was brought up nearly eight hundred fathoms, when the rope broke, carrying down two miles of its own length, and with it the hopes of the atlantic telegraph for the present year. their resources were exhausted. for nine days and nights, for the work never stopped for light or darkness, had the great ship kept moving round and round like some mighty bird of the sea, with her eye fixed on the place where her treasure had gone down, and striving to wrest it from the hand of the spoiler. three times had they grasped the prize, and each time failed to recover it, only for want of ropes strong enough to bring it on board. _the cable itself never broke._ this proof of its strength was a good omen for future success. but for the present all was over. the attempt must be abandoned for the year , but not for ever; and with this purpose in her constant mind, the great eastern swung sullenly around, and turned her imperial head toward england, like a warrior retiring from the field--not victorious, nor yet defeated and despairing, but with her battle-flag still flying, and resolved once more to attempt the conquest of the sea. footnotes: [a] nearly a year and a half after this, when the cable was safely landed in newfoundland, captain anderson, still on board the great eastern, in a letter to a friend, thus referred to his first connection with the atlantic telegraph:-- "i cannot tell you how i have felt since our success. it is only seventeen months since i first walked up to the top of the paddle-box of this ship at sheerness, upon a dark, rainy night--reviewed my past career in my mind, and tried to look into the future, to see what i had undertaken, and realize if possible what this new step would develop. i cannot say i believed much in cables; i rather think i did not; but i did believe mr. field was an earnest man, of great force of character, and working under a strong conviction that what he was attempting was thoroughly practicable; and i knew enough of the names with which he had associated himself in the enterprise to feel that it was a real, true, honest effort, worthy of all the energy and application of one's manhood; and come what might in the future, i resolved to do my very utmost, and to do nothing else until it was over. more completely however than my resolve foreshadowed, i dropped inch by inch, or step by step, into the work, until i had no mind, no soul, no sleep, that was not tinged with cable. in a word i accuse mr. field of having dragged me into a vortex, that i could not get out of, and did not wish to try--and the sum total of all this is, to lay a thread across an ocean! dr. russell compared it to an elephant stretching a cobweb, and there lay its very danger: the more you multiply the mechanism, the more you increase the risk." [b] "all during the night the process of picking up was carefully carried on, the big ship behaving beautifully, and hanging lightly over the cable, as if fearful of breaking the slender cord which swayed up and down in the ocean. indeed, so delicately did she answer her helm, and coil in the film of thread-like cable over her bows, that she put one in mind of an elephant taking up a straw in its proboscis."--russell. [c] so exquisitely sensitive was the copper strand, that as the great eastern rolled, and so made the cable pass across the magnetic meridian, the induced current of electricity, incomprehensibly faint as it must have been, produced nevertheless a perceptible deviation of the ray of light on the mirror galvanometer at foilhommerum.--_london times._ chapter xv. preparing to renew the battle. the expedition of , though not an immediate success, had the moral effect of a victory, as it confirmed the most sanguine expectations of all who embarked in it. the great experiment made during those four weeks at sea, had demonstrated many points which were most important elements in the problem of ocean telegraphy. these are summed up in the following paper, which was signed by persons officially engaged on board the great eastern: . it was proved by the expedition of , that a submarine telegraph cable could be laid between ireland and newfoundland, and messages transmitted through the same. by the expedition of it has been fully demonstrated: . that the insulation of a cable improves very much after its submersion in the cold deep water of the atlantic, and that its conducting power is considerably increased thereby. . that the steamship great eastern, from her size and constant steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint use of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an atlantic cable in any weather. . that in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made to grapple the cable. in three of them the cable was caught by the grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the chain attached to it. . that the paying-out machinery used on board the great eastern worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for laying cables across the atlantic. . that with the improved telegraphic instruments for long submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute can be obtained through such a cable as the present atlantic between ireland and newfoundland, as the amount of slack actually paid out did not exceed fourteen per cent, which would have made the total cable laid between valentia and heart's content nineteen hundred miles. . that the present atlantic cable, though capable of bearing a strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the atlantic between ireland and newfoundland. . that there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the deep water of the atlantic between ireland and newfoundland, and that two buoys even when moored by a piece of the atlantic cable itself, which had been previously lifted from the bottom, have ridden out a gale. . that more than four nautical miles of the atlantic cable have been recovered from a depth of over two miles, and that the insulation of the gutta-percha-covered wire was in no way whatever impaired by the depth of water or the strains to which it had been subjected by lifting and passing through the hauling-in apparatus. . that the cable of , owing to the improvements introduced into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core, was more than one hundred times better insulated than cables made in , then considered perfect and still working. . that the electrical testing can be conducted with such unerring accuracy as to enable the electricians to discover the existence of a fault immediately after its production or development, and very quickly to ascertain its position in the cable. . that with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out machinery, should a fault be discovered on board whilst laying the cable, it is possible that it might be recovered before it had reached the bottom of the atlantic, and repaired at once. s. canning, engineer-in-chief, telegraph construction and maintenance company. james anderson, commander of the great eastern. henry a. moriarty, staff commander, r. n. daniel gooch, m.p., chairman of "great ship co." henry clifford, engineer. william thomson, ll.d., f.r.s., prof. of natural philosophy in the university of glasgow. cromwell f. varley, consulting electrician electric and international telegraph co. willoughby smith. jules despecher. this was a grand result to be attained in one short month; and if not quite so gratifying as to have the cable laid at once, and the wire in full operation, yet as it settled the chief elements of success, the moral effect was next to that of an immediate triumph. all who were on that voyage felt a confidence such as they had never felt before. they came back, not desponding and discouraged, but buoyant with hope, and ready at once to renew the attempt. this confidence appeared at the first meeting of directors. the feeling was very different from that after the return of the first expedition of . so animated were they with hope, and so sure of success the next time, that all felt that one cable was not enough, they must have two, and so it was decided to take measures not only to raise the broken end of the cable and to complete it to newfoundland, but also to construct and lay an entirely new one, so as to have a double line in operation the following summer. the contractors, partaking the general confidence, came forward promptly with a new offer even more liberal than that made before. they proposed to construct a new line, and to lay it across the atlantic for half a million sterling, which was estimated to be the actual cost to them, reserving all compensation to themselves to depend on success. if successful, they were to receive twenty per cent. on the cost, or one hundred thousand pounds, to be paid in shares of the company. they would engage, also, to go to sea fully prepared to raise the broken end of the cable now in mid-ocean, and with a sufficient length, including that on board the great eastern, to complete the line to newfoundland. thus the company would have two cables instead of one. in this offer the contractors assumed a very large risk. they now went a step further, and in the contingency of the capital not being raised otherwise, they offered _to take it all themselves_--to lay the line at their own risk, and to be paid only in the stock of the company, which, of course, must depend for its value on the success of the next expedition. it was finally resolved to raise six hundred thousand pounds of new capital by the issue of a hundred and twenty thousand shares of five pounds each, which should be preferential shares, entitled to a dividend of twelve per cent. before the eight per cent. dividend to be paid on the former preference shares, and the four per cent. on the ordinary stock. this was offering a substantial inducement to the public to take part in the enterprise, and it was thought with reason that this fresh issue of stock, though it increased the capital of the company, yet as it was all to be employed in forwarding the great work, would not only create new property, but give value to the old. the proposal of the manufacturers was therefore at once accepted by the directors, and the work was instantly begun. thus hopeful was the state of affairs when mr. field returned to america in september. but he was never easy to be long out of sight of his beloved cable, and so three months after he went back to england, reaching london on the twenty-fourth of december. he came at just the right moment, for the atlantic telegraph was once more in extremity. only two days before the attorney-general of england had given a written opinion that the company _had no legal right_ to issue new twelve per cent. preference shares, and that such issue could only be authorized by an express act of parliament. this was a fatal decree to the company. it was the more unexpected, as, before offering the twelve per cent. capital, they had been fortified by the opinions of several eminent lawyers and solicitors in favor of the legality of their proceedings. it invalidated not only what they were going to do, but what they had done already. hence, as the effect of this decision, all the works were stopped, and the money which had been paid in was returned to the subscribers. this was a new dilemma, out of which it was not easy to find a way of relief. parliament was not in session, lords and commons being away in the country keeping the christmas holidays. even if it had been, the time for applying to it had passed, as a notice of any private bill to be introduced must be given before the thirtieth of november, which was gone a month ago. to wait for an act of parliament, therefore, would inevitably postpone the laying of the cable for another year. so disheartening was the prospect at the close of . but they had seen dark days before, and were not to give it up without a new effort. happily, the cause had strong friends to stand by it even in this crisis of suspended animation. one of these to whom mr. field now went for counsel, was mr. (afterward sir) daniel gooch, m.p., a gentleman well known in london, as one of the class of engineers formed in the school of stephenson and brunel, who had risen to the position of great capitalists, and who, by their enterprise and wealth, had done so much to develop the resources of england. he was chairman of the great western railway, and had more faith in enterprises on the land than on the sea. it was a long time before he could believe in the possibility of an atlantic telegraph. though a man of large fortune, and a personal friend of mr. field, the latter had never prevailed on him to subscribe a single pound. but he went out on the expedition of ' , as chairman of the company that owned the great eastern; and what he then saw convinced him. he came back fully satisfied; he knew it could be done, and was ready to prove his faith by his works. consulting on the present difficulty, he suggested that the only relief was to organize a new company, which should assume the work, and which could issue its own shares and raise its own capital. this opinion was confirmed by the eminent legal authority of mr. john horatio lloyd. to such a company mr. gooch said he would subscribe £ , ; mr. field put down £ , . next, he betook himself to that prince of english capitalists, mr. thomas brassey, who heard from his lips for the first time, that the affairs of the atlantic telegraph company had suddenly come to a standstill. at this he was much surprised, but instantly cheered his informer by saying: "don't be discouraged; go down to the company, and tell them to go ahead, and whatever the cost, i will bear one tenth of the whole." who _could_ be discouraged with such a richard the lion-hearted to cheer him on? meetings were called of the directors of both the atlantic company and the telegraph construction and maintenance company; and frequent conferences were held between them. the result was the formation of a new company called the anglo-american telegraph company, with a capital of £ , , which contracted with the atlantic company to manufacture and lay down a cable in the summer of , for doing which it was to be entitled to what virtually amounted to a preference dividend of twenty-five per cent: as a first claim was secured to them by the latter company upon the revenue of the cable or cables (after the working expenses had been provided for) to the extent of £ , per annum; and the new-york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company undertook to contribute from its revenue a further annual sum of £ , , on condition that a cable should be at work during ; an agreement to this effect having been signed by mr. field, subject to ratification by the company in new york, which was obtained as soon as the steamer could cross the ocean and bring back the reply. the terms being settled, it remained only to raise the capital. the telegraph construction and maintenance company led off with a subscription of £ , . this was followed by the names of ten gentlemen, who put down £ , apiece. of these mr. gooch declared his willingness to increase his subscription of £ , to £ , , while mr. brassey would put down £ , , if it were needed. mr. henry bewley, of dublin also, who was already a large owner of the atlantic stock, declared his readiness to add £ , more. but this was not necessary: and so they all stood at £ , . the names of these ten subscribers deserve to be given, as showing who stood forward to save the cause in this crisis of its fate. they were: henry ford barclay, henry bewley, thomas brassey, a. h. campbell, m.p., george elliot, cyrus w. field, richard atwood glass, daniel gooch, m.p., john pender, m.p., and john smith. there were four subscriptions of £ , : by thomas bolton and sons, james horsfall, a friend of mr. daniel gooch, m.p., and john and edwin wright; one of £ , by john wilkes and sons; three of £ , by c. m. lampson, j. morison, and ebenezer pike; and two of £ , by edward cropper, and joseph robinson,--making in all £ , . these were all private subscriptions made before even the prospectus was issued, or the books opened to the public. after such a manifestation of confidence, the whole capital was secured within fourteen days. this was a great triumph, especially at a time of general depression in commercial affairs in england. and now once more the work began. no time was to be lost. it was already the first of march, and but four months remained to manufacture sixteen hundred and sixty nautical miles of cable, and to prepare for sea. but the obstacles once cleared away, all sprang to their work with new hope and vigor. in the cable to be made for the new line, there was but little change from that of the last year, which had proved nearly perfect. experience, however, was constantly suggesting some improvement; and while the general form and size were retained, a slight change in the outer covering was found to make the cable both lighter and stronger. the iron wires were _galvanized_, which secured them perfectly from rust or corrosion by salt water. thus protected, they could dispense with the preservative mixture of the former year. this left the cable much cleaner and whiter. instead of its black coat, it had the fresh, bright appearance of new rope. it had another advantage. as the tarry coating was sticky, slight fragments of wire might adhere to it, and do injury, a danger to which the new cable was not exposed. at the same time, galvanizing the wires gave them greater ductility, so that in the case of a heavy strain the cable would stretch longer without breaking. by this alteration it was rendered more than four hundred-weight lighter per mile, and would bear a strain of nearly half a ton more than the one laid the year before. the machinery also was perfected in every part, to withstand the great strain which might be brought upon it in grappling and lifting the cable from the great depths of the atlantic. this necessitated almost a reconstruction of the machinery, together with engines of greater power, applied both to the gear for hauling in forward and that for paying out aft. thus, in case of a fault, the motion of the ship could be easily reversed, and the cable hauled back by the paying-out machinery, without waiting for the long and tedious process of bringing the cable round from the stern to the bow of the ship. but the most marvellous improvement had been in the method of testing the cable for the discovery of faults. in the last expedition, a grave omission had been in the long intervals during which the cable was left without a test of its insulation. thus, from thirty to thirty-five minutes in each hour it was occupied with tests of minor importance, which would not indicate the existence of a fault, so that, if a fault occurred on ship-board, it might pass over the stern, and be miles away before it was discovered. but now a new and ingenious method was devised by mr. willoughby smith, by which the cable will be tested _every instant_. the current will not cease to flow any more than the blood ceases to flow in human veins. the cord is vital in every part, and if touched at any point it reveals the wound as instinctively as the nerves of a living man flash to the brain a wound in any part of the human frame. the process of detecting faults is too scientific to be detailed in these pages. we can only stand in silent wonder at the result, when we hear it stated by mr. varley, that the system of testing is brought to such a degree of perfection, that skilful electricians can point out minute faults with an unerring accuracy "even when they are so small that they would not weaken the signals through the atlantic cable one millionth part!" another marvellous result of science was the exact report obtained of the state of that portion of the cable now lying in the sea. the electricians at valentia were daily experimenting on the line which lay stretched twelve hundred and thirteen miles on the bottom of the deep, and pronounced it intact. not a fault could be found from one end to the other. as when a master of the organ runs his hands over the keys, and tells in an instant if it be in perfect tune, so did these skilful manipulators, fingering at the end of this mightier instrument, declare it to be in perfect tone, ready to whisper its harmonies through the seas. at the same time, the ten hundred and seventy miles of cable left on board the great eastern were pronounced as faultless as the day they had been shipped on board. with such conclusions of science to animate and inspire them, the great task of manufacturing nearly seventeen hundred miles of cable once more began. and while this work went on, the great eastern, that had done her part so well before, again opened her sides, and the mysterious cord was drawn into her vast, dark, silent womb, from which it was to issue only into the darker and more silent bosom of the deep. chapter xvi. victory at last. in these pages we have led our readers through twelve long years, and have had to tell many a tale of disaster and defeat. it is now our privilege to tell of triumphant success. victory has come at last, but not by the chance of fortune, but by the utmost efforts of man, by the union of science and skill with indomitable perseverance. the failure of the last year was a sad disappointment; but so far from damping the courage of those embarked in the enterprise, it only roused them to a more gigantic effort. they were now to prepare for a fifth expedition. in this they set themselves to anticipate every possible emergency, and to combine the elements of success so as to render failure impossible. the great eastern herself, which they had come to regard with a kind of fondness, a feeling of affection and pride, as the ark that was to bear their fortunes across the deep, was made ready for her crowning achievement. for months captain anderson and mr. halpin, his chief officer, worked day and night to get her into perfect trim. she had become sadly fouled in her many voyages. as she swam the seas, a thousand things clung to her as to a floating island, till her hull was encrusted with mussels and barnacles two feet thick, and long seaweed flaunted from her sides. like a brave old war-horse, long neglected, she needed a thorough grooming, to have her hair combed and her limbs well rubbed down, to fit her to take the field. but it was not an easy matter to get under the huge creature, to give her such a dressing. yet captain anderson was equal to the emergency. he contrived a simple instrument by which every part of her bottom was raked and scrubbed. getting rid of this rough, shapeless mass would make her feel easy and comfortable at sea, and add at least a knot an hour to her speed. the boilers too were thoroughly cleansed and repaired in every part, and the paddle-engines were so arranged that in five minutes they could be disconnected, so that by going ahead with one and backing with the other, the ship could be held perfectly at rest or be turned around in her own length, a very important matter when they should come to fish in deep waters for the broken end of the cable. to prepare for this, she was armed with chains and ropes and irons of the most formidable kind. for grappling the cable, she took on board twenty miles of rope, which would bear a strain of thirty tons, probably the largest fishing-line used since the days of noah! the cable was manufactured at the rate of twenty miles a day, and as fast as delivered and found perfect, was coiled on board. and now the electricians tried their skill to outdo all that they had done before. as captain anderson observed, it seemed as if never had so much brain power been concentrated on the problem of success. the cable itself furnished the grandest subject of experiment. as every week added more than a hundred miles to its length, there was constant opportunity to try the electric current on longer distances and with new conditions. the results obtained showed the rapid and marvellous progress of electrical science. said the times: "the science of making, testing, and laying cables has so much improved that an undetected fault in an insulated wire has now become literally impossible, while so much are the instruments for signalling improved, that not only can a slight fault be disregarded if necessary, but it is even easy _to work through a submarine wire with a foot of its copper conductor stripped and bare to the water_. this latter result, astonishing as it may appear, has actually been achieved for some days past with the whole atlantic cable on board the great eastern. out of a length of more than one thousand seven hundred miles, a coil has been taken from the centre, the copper conductor stripped clean of its insulation for a foot in length, and in this condition lowered over the vessel's side till it rested on the ground. yet through this the clearest signals have been sent--so clear, indeed, as at one time to raise the question whether it would not be worth while to grapple for the first old atlantic cable ever laid, and with these new instruments working gently through it for a year or so, at least make it pay cost." as other things were on the same gigantic scale, by the time the big ship had her cargo and stores on board, she was well laden. of the cable alone there were two thousand four hundred miles, coiled in three immense tanks as the year before. of this seven hundred and forty-eight miles were a part of the cable of the last expedition. the tanks alone, with the water in them, weighed over a thousand tons; and the cable which they held, four thousand tons more; besides which she had to carry eight thousand five hundred tons of coal and five hundred tons of telegraph stores, making fourteen thousand tons, besides engines, rigging, etc., which made nearly as much more. so enormous was the burden, that it was thought prudent not to take on board all her coal before she left the medway, especially as the channel was winding and shallow. it was therefore arranged that about a third of her coal should be taken in at berehaven, on the south-west coast of ireland. with this exception, her lading was complete. the time for departure had been fixed for the last day of june, and so admirable had been the arrangements, and such the diligence of all concerned, that exactly at the hour of noon, she loosened from her moorings, and began to move. it was well that she had not on board her whole cargo; for as it was, she drew nearly thirty-two feet. never had any keel pressed so deep in those waters. it required skilful handling to get her safely to the sea. gently and softly she floated down, over bars where she almost grazed the sand, where but a few inches lifted her enormous hull above the river's bed. but at length the rising tide bears her safely over, and she is afloat in the deeper waters of the channel. at first the sea did not give her a very gracious welcome. the wind was dead ahead, and the waves dashed furiously against her; but she kept steadily on, tossing their spray on high, as if they had struck against the rocks of eddystone lighthouse. in four or five days she had passed down the irish coast, and was quietly anchored in the harbor at berehaven, where she was soon joined by the other vessels of the squadron. the telegraph fleet was not the same as that of the last year. the government could spare but a single ship; but the terrible, which had accompanied the great eastern on the former expedition, was still there to represent the majesty of england. the william corry, a vessel of two thousand tons, bore the ponderous shore end, which was to be laid out thirty miles from the irish coast, while the albany and the medway were ships chartered by the company. the latter carried several hundred miles of the last year's cable, besides one of heavier proportions, ninety miles long, to be stretched across the mouth of the gulf of st. lawrence. [illustration: shore end--exact size.] while the great eastern remained at berehaven, to take in her final stores of coal, the william corry proceeded around the coast to valentia to lay the shore end. she arrived off the harbor on the morning of saturday, the seventh of july, and immediately began to prepare for her heavy task. this shore end was of tremendous size, weighing twenty tons to the mile. it was by far the strongest wire cable ever made, and in short lengths was stiff as an iron bar. as the year before, the cable was to be brought off on a bridge of boats reaching from the ship to the foot of the cliff. all the fishermen's boats were gathered from along the shore, while h. m. s. raccoon, which was guarding that part of the coast, sent up her boats to help, so that, as they all mustered in line, there were forty of them, making a long pontoon-bridge; and irish boatmen with eager looks and strong hands were standing along the line, to grasp the ponderous chain. all went well, and by one o'clock the cable was landed, and its end brought up the cliff to the station. the signals were found to be perfect, and the william corry then slowly drew off to sea, unlimbering her stiff shore end, till she had cast over the whole thirty miles. at three o'clock next morning she telegraphed through the cable that her work was done, and she had buoyed the end in water a hundred fathoms deep. describing the scene, the correspondent of the london news says: "in its leading features it presented a striking difference to the ceremony of last year. earnest gravity and a deep-seated determination to repress all show of the enthusiasm of which everybody was full, was very manifest. the excitement was below, instead of above, the surface. speech-making, hurrahing, public congratulations, and vaunts of confidence were, as it seemed, avoided as if on purpose. there was something far more touching in the quiet and reverent solemnity of the spectators yesterday than in the slightly boisterous joviality of the peasantry last year. nothing could prevent the scene being intensely dramatic, but the prevailing tone of the drama was serious instead of comic and triumphant. the old crones in tattered garments who cowered together, dudheen in mouth, their gaudy colored shawls tightly drawn over head and under the chin--the barefooted boys and girls, who by long practice walked over sharp and jagged rocks, which cut up boots and shoes, with perfect impunity--the men at work uncovering the trench, and winding in single file up and down the hazardous path cut by the cablemen in the otherwise inaccessible rock--the patches of bright color furnished by the red petticoats and cloaks--the ragged garments, only kept from falling to pieces by bits of string and tape--the good old parish priest, who exercises mild and gentle spiritual sway over the loving subjects of whom the ever-popular knight of kerry is the temporal head, looking on benignly from his car--the bright eyes, supple figures, and innocent faces of the peasant lasses, and the earnestly hopeful expression of all--made up a picture impossible to describe with justice. add to this, the startling abruptness with which the tremendous cliffs stand flush out of the water, the alternations of bright wild flowers and patches of verdure with the most desolate barrenness, the mountain sheep indifferently cropping the short, sweet grass, and the undercurrent of consciousness of the mighty interests at stake, and few scenes will seem more important and interesting than that of yesterday." as the ships are now ready for sea, and all who are to embark have come on board, we may look about us at the personnel of the expedition. who are here? we recognize many old familiar faces, that we have seen in former campaigns--gallant men who have had many a sea-fight in this peaceful war. first, the eye seeks the tall form of captain anderson. there he is, modest and grave, of few words, but seeing every thing, watching every thing, and ruling every thing with a quiet power. and there is his second officer, mr. halpin, who keeps a sharp lookout after the crew, to see that every man does his duty. while he thus keeps watch of all on board, staff commander moriarty, r. n., comes on deck, with instruments in hand, to look after the heavenly bodies, and reckon the ship's latitude and longitude. this is an old veteran in the service, who has been in all the expeditions, and it would be quite "improper," even if it were possible, for a cable to be laid across the atlantic without his presence and aid. and here comes mr. canning, the engineer, whose deep-sea soundings, the last year, were on a scale of such magnitude, and who, if he cannot well dive deeper, means to pull stronger the next time. that slight form yonder is professor thomson, of glasgow, a man who in his knowledge of the subtle element to be brought into play, and the enthusiasm he brings to its study, is the very genius of electrical science; and this is mr. varley, who seems to have the lightning in his fingers, and to whom the world owes some marvellous discoveries of the laws of electricity. mr. willoughby smith, a worthy associate in these studies and discoveries, goes out on the ship as electrician. and here is mr. glass, the managing director of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, which has undertaken by contract to manufacture this cable and lay it safely across the ocean; and mr. gooch, chairman of the company that owns the great eastern--two gentlemen to whom the atlantic telegraph is under the greatest obligation, since it was they who, six months before, when the project seemed in danger of being given up or postponed for years, took mr. field by the hand, and cheered him on to a last effort. blessings on their hearts of oak! mr. gooch accompanies the ship, while mr. glass, keeping mr. varley at his side as electrician, remains on shore, to receive reports of the daily progress of the expedition, and to issue his orders. what a post of observation was that telegraph house on the cliffs of valentia! it commanded a far broader horizon than the top of fiesolé, from which galileo looked down on the valley of the arno, and up at the stars. was there ever a naval commander favored with a power of vision that could sweep the boundless sea? what would nelson have said, if he had had a spy-glass with which he could watch ships in action two thousand miles away, and issue his orders to a fleet on the other side of the ocean? with such a long range, he might almost have fought the battle of the nile from his home in england. standing on such a spot, and surrounded by such men, representing the capital, the science, and the skill of england, with all those gallant ships in sight, one's heart might well beat high. but there were other reflections that saddened the hour, and caused some at least to look once more on the rocks of valentia with deep emotion. some of their old companions-in-arms had fallen out of the ranks, while the battle was not yet won. brett, mr. field's first friend in england, was in his grave. beyond the atlantic, captains hudson and berryman slept the sleep that knows no waking. they were not forgotten by their survivors, who mourned that those who had toiled with them in former days, were not here to share their triumph. the feeling, therefore, of many on this occasion, was not one elate with pride and hope, but subdued by serious thoughts and tender memories. in harmony with this feeling, and with the great work which they were about to undertake, it was proposed that before the expedition sailed they should hold a solemn religious service. was there ever a fitter place or a fitter hour for prayer than here, in the presence of the great sea to which they were about to commit their lives and their precious trust? the first expedition ever sent forth had been consecrated by prayer. on that very spot, nine years before, all heads were uncovered and all forms bent low, at the solemn words of supplication; and there had the earl of carlisle--since gone to his honored grave--cheered them on with high religious hopes, describing the ships which were sent forth on such a mission, as "beautiful upon the waters as were the feet upon the mountains of them that publish the gospel of peace." in such a spirit two of the directors--mr. bevan, of london, and mr. bewley, of dublin--sent invitations to a number of persons to meet at valentia, as the expedition was about to sail, and commend it to the favor of almighty god. captain anderson had greatly desired to be with them at this parting service, but the ships were at berehaven, and they were just embarking for sea. but though the officers could not be present, a large company came together. said an irish paper: "men of different religious denomination, and of various professions in life--irishmen, englishmen, and scotchmen--joined in such a service as has never been held in this island." it was a scene long to be remembered, as they bowed together before the god and father of all. their brethren, who were about to go down to the sea in ships, felt their dependence on a higher power. their preparations were complete. all that man could do was done. they had exhausted every resource of science and skill. the issue now remained with him who controls the winds and waves. therefore was it most fit that, at the very moment of embarking, those who remained behind should, as it were, kneel upon the cliff, and, with outstretched hands, commit them to him who alone spreadeth out the heavens and ruleth the raging of the sea. in all this there is something of antique stamp, something which makes us think of the sublime men of an earlier and better time; of the pilgrim fathers kneeling on the deck of their little ship at leyden, as they were about to seek a refuge and a home in the forests of the new world; and of columbus and his companions celebrating a solemn service before their departure from spain. and so with labor and with prayer did this great expedition go forth once more from the shores of ireland, bearing the hopes of science and of civilization--with courage and skill looking out from the bow across the stormy waters, and a religious faith, like that of columbus, standing at the helm. on friday morning, the thirteenth of july, the fleet finally bade adieu to the land. was friday an unlucky day? some of the sailors thought so, and would have been glad to leave a day before or after. but columbus sailed on friday, and discovered the new world on friday; and so this expedition put to sea on friday, and, as a good providence would have it, reached land on the other side of the atlantic on the same day of the week! as the ships disappeared below the horizon, mr. glass and mr. varley went up on their watch-tower--not to look, but to listen for the first voice from the sea. the ships bore away for the buoy where lay the end of the shore line; but the weather was thick and foggy, with frequent bursts of rain, and they could not see far on the water. for an hour or two they went sailing round and round, like sea-gulls in search of prey. at length the albany caught sight of the buoy tossing on the waves, and, firing a signal gun, bore down straight upon it. the cable was soon hauled up from its bed, a hundred fathoms deep, and brought over the stern of the great eastern; and the watchers on shore, who had been waiting with some impatience, saw the first flash, and varley read, "got the shore end--all right--going to make the splice." then all was still, and they knew that that delicate operation was going on. quick, nimble hands tore off the covering from some yards of the shore end of the main cable, till they came to the core; then, swiftly unwinding the copper wires, they laid them together, twining them as closely and carefully as a silken braid. thus stripped and bare this new-born child of the sea was wrapped in swaddling-clothes, covered up with many coatings of gutta-percha, and hempen rope, and strong iron wires, the whole bound round and round with heavy bands, and the splicing was complete. signals were now sent through the whole cable on board the great eastern and back to the telegraph-house at valentia, and the whole length, two thousand four hundred and forty nautical miles, was reported perfect. and so with light hearts they bore away. it was a little after three o'clock. as they turned to the west, the following was the "order of battle": the terrible went ahead, standing off on the starboard bow, to keep other vessels out of the course; the medway was on the port, and the albany on the starboard quarter, ready to pick up or let go a buoy, or to do other work that might be required. all these ships were to keep their allotted positions, within signalling distance of the great eastern, and at any time that she was heard firing guns, they were to close in with her to render assistance. their course lay thirty miles to the south of that of the last year, so that there could be no danger, in fishing for the old cable, of disturbing the new. dr. russell, the brilliant historian of the expedition of , was not on board the great eastern this year. he had left england a few weeks before for the scene of the war in germany. his place was supplied by mr. john c. deane, the secretary of the anglo-american company, whose "diary of the expedition" furnishes a faithful record of the incidents of this memorable voyage. if the story be not quite so thrilling as that of the year before, it is because it has not to tell of such fatal accidents. it has the monotony of success. a few pages from this diary, giving its most important portions, will render this narrative complete. the voyage began with good weather and every omen of success. friday, indeed, was a day of fog and rain. at the very time they were making the splice with the shore end, the rain was pouring on the deck. but in a few hours it cleared off, and saturday and sunday, mr. field writes in his journal, "weather fine;" and monday, "calm, beautiful day. signals perfect." owing to the improved system adopted by the chief electrician, communication with the shore was kept up even while the tests for insulation were going on.[a] every possible precaution was taken to guard against such accidents as had marred the success of the year before. remembering how small a thing had sufficed to puncture the cable, the men in the tank were not allowed to wear boots or shoes with nails in their heels, but were cased from head to foot in canvas dresses, drawn over their ordinary sailor costume, and, with slippers on their feet, they glided about softly as ghosts. but we turn to mr. deane's diary for a record of the progress from day to day: "sunday, july .--all through yesterday the paying-out machinery worked so smoothly--the electrical tests were so perfect--the weather was so fine, that fresh confidence in the ultimate result has been naturally inspired. the recollection, however, of the reverses of the expedition of is always before those who have the greatest reliance on success; and there is a quiet repose about the manner of the chief practical men on board, which is an earnest that they will not allow themselves to be carried away by the smoothness of twenty-four hours' events. the convoy kept their position accurately during the day. the terrible signalled that a man had fallen overboard. her cutter was speedily lowered. the sailor had, however, laid hold of a rope thrown to him from the frigate, before the boat reached him. "monday.--still everything going on well. the sea like a mill-pond. the paying out of the cable from the after tank progressing with uniformity and steadiness, and the electrical tests perfect. "our track is about thirty miles to the south of that of last year, and at that distance we passed parallel to where the telegraph cable parted in august, . our average speed has been about five knots. we were obliged to stop the screw engines in order to bring down to that speed, and, moreover, to reduce the paddle boiler power. captain anderson's ingenious mode of cleaning the ship's bottom, which he carried out last winter at sheerness, has proved to have effected this very desirable object. mr. beckwith, the engineer, is now enabled to regulate and adjust her speed, and get more out of the ship than he could last year, when her bottom was one incrusted mass of mussels. "tuesday.--another twenty-four hours of uninterrupted success. all day yesterday it was so calm that the masts of our convoy were reflected in the ocean, an unusual thing to see. a large shoal of porpoises gambolled about us for half an hour. a glorious sunset, and later, a crescent moon, which we hope to see in the brightness of her full, lighting our way into trinity bay before the days of this july shall have ended." but the whole night did not pass away so tranquilly. by midnight the rain fell fast, and the wind blew fiercely, and then occurred the only real alarm of the voyage. the scene is thus described by mr. deane: "all went on well until twenty minutes past twelve a.m., greenwich time, when the first real shock was given to the success which has hitherto attended us, and this time we had real cause to be alarmed. a foul flake took place in the after tank. the engines were immediately turned astern, and the paying out of the cable stopped. we were all soon on deck, and learned that the running or paying-out part of the coil had caught three turns of the flake immediately under it, carried them into the eye of the coil, fouling the lay out, and hauling up one and a half turns from the outside, and five turns in the eye of the under flake. this was stopped, fortunately, before entering the paying out machinery. stoppers of hemp also were put on near the v-wheel astern, and mr. canning gave orders to stand by to let go the buoy. this was not very cheering to hear, but his calm and collected manner gave us all confidence that his skill and experience would extricate the cable from the obvious danger in which it was placed. no fishing line was ever entangled worse than the rope was when thrust up in apparently hopeless knots from the eye of the coil to the deck. there at least five hundred feet of rope lay in this state, in the midst of thick rain and increasing wind. the cable crew set to work under their chief engineer's instructions to disentangle it. mr. halpin was there too, patiently following the bights as they showed themselves; the crew now passing them forward, now aft, until at last the character of the tangle was seen, and soon it became apparent that ere long the cable would be cleared. all this time captain anderson was at the taffrail anxiously watching the strain on the rope, which he could scarcely make out, the night was so dark, and endeavoring to keep it up and down, going on and reversing with paddle and screw. when one reflects for a moment upon the size of the ship, and the enormous mass she presents to the wind, the difficulty of keeping her stern, under the circumstances, over the cable, can be appreciated. the port paddle-wheel was disconnected; but shortly afterward there was a shift of wind, and the vessel canted the wrong way. welcome voices were now heard passing the word aft from the tank that the bights were cleared, and to pay out. then the huge stoppers were gently loosened, and at five minutes past two a.m., to the joy of all, we were once more discharging the cable. they veered it away in the tank to clear away the foul flake until three a.m., when the screw and paddle engines were slowed so as to reduce the speed of the ship to four and a half knots. during all this critical time there was an entire absence of noise and confusion. every order was silently obeyed, and the cable men and crew worked with hearty good-will. mr. canning has had experience of foul flakes before, and showed that he knew what to do in the emergency. but what of the electrical condition of the cable during this period? simply, that through its entire length it was perfect." thus, after three anxious hours, the danger was past, and the next morning the report of the ship is, "a fresh breeze from the southward, a dull gray sky, with occasional rain, and a moderate sea." "thursday.--there was a fresh breeze in the afternoon yesterday, increasing toward evening. it brought a heavy swell on the port quarter, which caused the ship to roll. the paying out from the after tank went on steadily. two of the large buoys were lifted by derrick from the deck near the bows of the ship, and placed in position on the port and starboard side of the forward pick-up machinery, ready for letting go if necessary. the sun went down with an angry look, and the scud came rapidly from the eastward, the sea rising. a wind dead aft is not the best for cable laying, particularly if any accident should take place. by half-past eleven to-night we shall have exhausted the contents of the after tank, and the cable will then be paid out from the fore tank along the trough to the stern, the distance from the centre of the tank to the paying-out machinery being four hundred and ninety-four feet. last night the swell was very heavy, to which the great eastern proved herself not insensible. her rolling, like everything else appertaining to her, is done on a grand scale. we see the liveliness with which that operation is performed on board the albany and medway, and we are not at all disposed to be too critical in our observations on our own movements. the speed of the ship was kept at four and a half during the night--the slower the better, is the opinion of all on board--_festina lente_. we are consuming about one hundred tons a day of the seven thousand tons of coal which we had on board when we left berehaven, and mr. beckwith, who has been engineer of the great eastern from her first voyage to the present moment, says her engines were never in better order; and their appearance and working do him and his able staff of assistant engineers the greatest credit. "friday.--yesterday was a day of complete success, the paying out in every respect satisfactory. the wind still from the eastward, but inclined to draw to the northward, the sea entirely gone down. as mr. canning told us we should see the after tank emptied at eleven o'clock, ship's time, we were all collected there about ten o'clock, by which time the cable was down to the last flake. next to having daylight for changing from the after to the fore tank, we could not have had a more favorable time--clear starlight, no wind, and a smooth sea. looking down into the tank, the scene was highly picturesque. the cable-watch, whose figures were lighted up by the lamps suspended from above, slowly and cautiously lifted the turns of the coil to ease their path to the eye. as each found its way to the drum, the wooden floor of the tank showed itself, and then we saw more floor, and as its area increased the cable swept along its surface with a low, subdued noise, until, with a graceful curve, it mounted to the outlet, where it was soon to join a fresh supply; and now we hear the word passed that they have arrived at the last turn, and the men who stood on the stages of the platform of the eye with the bight, watch the arrival of the cable and pass it up with tender caution, until it reaches the summit; then it rushes down a wooden incline to meet the spliced rope, which had by this time come down along the trough leading from the forward tank. this operation was conducted with great skill by mr. canning and his experienced assistants, messrs. clifford and temple. at eleven minutes past one a.m. (greenwich time), the fresh rope was going over the stern, and the screw engines going ahead at thirteen minutes past one. a watch of four men is now stationed, fore and aft, all along the trough, which is illuminated by many lamps at short distances from each other. a lamp with a green light indicates the mile-mark as it comes up from the tank, and this signal is repeated until it reaches the stern, where it is recorded by the clerk who keeps the cable-log, in an office adjoining the paying-out machinery. a red lamp indicates danger. during the daytime red and blue flags are used. all through the night the sea was smooth as glass, and by this morning we saw that a sensible impression had been made on the contents of the fore tank. the ship begins to lighten at the bows, and by this time to-morrow will come up more as the cable passes out of the tank. "saturday.--yesterday was our seventh day of paying out cable, and so far we have been more fortunate than the expedition of last year. during the same period of , two faults had occurred--one on the twenty-fourth july, the other on the twenty-ninth--causing a detention of fifty-six hours. at three p.m. we were half-way, and passed where the atlantic cable of parted twice, on the twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth of june--sad memories to many! we feel, however, that every hour is increasing our chance of effecting this great work. 'i believe we shall do it this time, jack,' i heard one of our crew say to another last night. 'i believe so too, bill,' was the reply; 'and if we don't, we deserve to do it, and that's all.' it blew very hard from two o'clock yesterday, up to p.m., by which time the wind gradually found its way from south-west to north-west, which is right ahead, just what we want for cable-laying. the terrible and the two other ships plunged into the very heavy sea which the southwester raised, and we made up our minds, from what we saw, that the great eastern is the right ship to be in, in a gale of wind. during the night heavy showers of rain. this morning the sea was comparatively smooth, and the sky showed welcome patches of bright blue. if all goes well, we shall be up to-morrow evening at the place where last year's cable parted. a couple of days would bring us to shallower water, and then we may fairly look out for our 'heart's content.' messages come from england, with the news, regularly and speedily--excellent practice for the clerks on shore and on board ship--great comfort to us, and the best evidence to those who will read this journal, of the great fact that, up to this time, the cable is doing its electric work efficiently." the interest of the voyage was greatly increased by the news daily received from europe. though in the middle of the atlantic, they were still joined with the old world, and messages came to the "great eastern telegraph" as regularly as to the times in london; reporting the quotations of the stock exchange, the debates in parliament, and all the news of home. but what was far more exciting, was the tidings of the great events transpiring on the continent. while the expedition had been preparing in england, a war had broken out of tremendous magnitude. austria, prussia, and italy had rushed into the field. armies, such as had not met since the fatal day of leipsic, stood in battle array, and the thunder of war was echoing and reëchoing among the mountains of bohemia. amid these convulsions the fleet set sail; but it was still linked with the nations which it left behind, and received tidings from day to day. what great events were thus heralded to them in mid-ocean may be seen by a few items gleaned from the numerous despatches: "saturday evening, july th.--general cialdini is moving upon rovigo with an army of one hundred thousand men and two hundred guns. the austrians have evacuated the whole country between the mincio and adige." a day or two later: "cialdini has occupied padua, twenty-three miles from venice, on the railway connecting that city with the quadrilateral, and the austrians are shut up in venice." "tuesday, th.--prussians had successful engagement before olmütz yesterday; captured six guns. further fighting expected to-day. austrians withdrawing from moldavia toward vienna."----"conflict between prussians and federals. prussians completely victorious. federals evacuating frankfort, and prussians marching there." "thursday, th.--prussians repeating victories, and gaining adhesions from small states. the main army within fifty miles of vienna--have cut the railway to vienna. austrian army between prussians and vienna, under archduke, one hundred and sixty thousand men. money and archives removed from vienna to comorn." " th.--frankfort occupied by the prussians, who are marching on vienna. yesterday, italian fleet, consisting of iron-clad vessels and several steamers, opened attack on island of lissa on the coast of dalmatia--result not known." the next day it is reported thus: "severe naval engagement off lissa. austrians claim the victory. sunk one italian iron-clad, run down another, blew up a third." "july st.--prussians crossed river; march near holitzon, hungary. austria accepted proposal of armistice. prussia will abstain from hostilities for five days, during which austria will have to notify acceptance of preliminaries. a long letter published from the king of prussia to the queen, giving account of battle of königgrätz." the interest excited by such news may be imagined, coming while the events were yet fresh. twice a day was the bulletin set up on the deck, and was surrounded by an eager crowd reading what had transpired on the continent but a few hours before. nor was the intelligence confined to the great eastern. by an arrangement of signals, more complete than ever was used in a squadron before, the news was telegraphed to the convoy. all the ships had been furnished with experienced signal-men by the admiralty. the system adopted was that known as colomb's flash signals, by which, even in the darkest night, messages could easily be flashed to a distance of several miles. thus all the ships were supplied with news twice a day, and the great military events in europe were discussed in every cabin as eagerly as in the clubs of london. again deane's diary reports: "sunday, july d.--still success to record. a bright clear day, with a fresh and invigorating breeze from the north-west. cable going out with unerring smoothness, at the rate of six miles an hour. there has been great improvement in the insulation. this remarkable improvement is attributable to the greatly decreased temperature of, and pressure on, the cable in the sea. this is a very satisfactory result to mr. willoughby smith. signals, too, come every hour more distinctly. this morning the breeze freshened. we are now about thirty miles to the southward of the place where the cable parted on the second of august, , having then paid out one thousand two hundred and thirteen miles. captain anderson read divine service in the dining saloon. "monday.--between six and seven p.m. yesterday, we passed over the deepest part of our course. there was no additional strain on the dynamometer, which indicated from ten to fourteen hundred, the cable going out with its accustomed regularity. the wind still fresh from the north-west. during the night it went round to the southwest, and this morning there is a long roll from the southward. "at forty-six minutes past eleven a.m., mr. cyrus field sent a message to valentia, requesting mr. glass to obtain the latest news from egypt, india, and china, and other distant countries, so that on our arrival at heart's content we shall be able to transmit it to the principal cities of the united states. in just eight minutes he had a reply in these words: 'your message received, and is in london by this.' outside the telegraph room there is a placard put up, on which is posted the news shortly after its arrival, and groups of the crew may be seen reading it, just as we see a crowd at a newspaper office in london. mr. dudley, the artist, has made a very spirited sketch of 'jack' reading the morning news, for he is supplied with the latest intelligence from the seat of war twice a day![b] how he will grumble when he gets ashore! he is not going to pay a pound a word for news, but his newspapers will supply it to him, and he does not know or care what it costs. but what a sum has been spent in atlantic telegraphs! it cannot now fall short of two millions and a half of pounds, or over twelve millions of dollars. more millions will be found if it shall be practically proved that america can permanently talk to england, and through her to the eastern hemisphere, and england to america by this ocean wire. at a quarter to twelve to-day but two hundred and fifteen miles of cable remained to be paid out of the fore tank. to-morrow night we hope to see it empty--then, for a small supply from the main tank, and then----but, hopeful though we are, let us not anticipate. "tuesday.--breakfast at eight. lunch at one. dinner at six. tea at eight. five hundred and two souls who live on board this huge ship following their prescribed occupations. cable going out merrily. electrical tests and signals perfect, and this is the history of what has taken place from noon yesterday to noon to-day. may we have three days more of such delightful monotony! it rained very hard during yesterday evening, and as we approach the banks of newfoundland we get thick and hazy weather." the latter part of the voyage did not fulfil in all respects the promise of the first. the bright skies were gone; and instead perpetual fog hung over the water, while often the clouds poured down their floods. thus the diary continues: "wednesday.--fog and thick rain--just the weather to expect on approaching the banks of newfoundland. the convoy keep their position, and though sometimes the fog hides the ships from our view, yet we know where they are by their signal-whistles--two from the terrible, three from the medway, and four from the albany, which are replied to by the prolonged single shriek from our whistle. at fifty-two minutes past one, greenwich time (ship's time, forty-five minutes past ten p.m., last night), the fore tank being nearly empty, preparations were made for passing the bight of the cable into the main tank. at fifteen minutes past two all the jockey-wheels of the paying-out machinery were up, and the brakes released. twenty-three minutes past two the bight was passed steadily and cautiously by the cable hands outside of the trough to the main tank, and at thirty-five minutes past two the splice went over the stern in . fathoms. by arrangement with sir james hope, the admiral of the north-american station, who has received instructions from the admiralty to give the present expedition every assistance in his power, a frigate or sloop will be placed in longitude °, ', ", which is just thirty miles from the entrance of trinity bay, and sixty from heart's content. she will probably hang on by a kedge in that position, which shows the 'fair way' right up the bay; and if it be clear, we ought to see her about daybreak on friday morning. the fog was very thick this morning, but occasionally lifts; as long as the wind is from south-west we cannot expect clear weather." as the week drew on, it was evident that they were approaching the end of their voyage. by thursday they had passed the great depths of the atlantic, and were off soundings. besides their daily observations, there were many signs, well known to mariners, that they were near the coast. there were the sea-birds, and they could almost snuff the smell of the land, such as once greeted the sharp senses of columbus, and made him sure that he was floating to some undiscovered shore. captain anderson had timed his departure so that he should approach the american coast at the full moon; but for the last two or three nights, as the round orb rose behind them, banks of cloud hung so heavily upon the water, that the moonlight only gleamed faintly through the vaporous air, and the fleet seemed like the phantom ships of the ancient mariner, drifting on through fog and mist. "thursday.--all day yesterday it was as 'thick as mustard.' we have had now forty-eight hours of fog. though it lifted a little this morning, at five a.m., it still looks like more of it. captain anderson signalled to the albany, at fifteen minutes past ten last night, to start at daybreak, and proceed to discover the station ship, and report us at hand. should she fail to find her, then to try and make the land and guide us up trinity bay. another signal was sent at half-past twelve to the effect that the terrible and medway would be sent ahead to meet the albany and establish a line to lead us in even with a fog. the albany started at half-past three. at forty-five minutes past four, greenwich time, the cable engineer in charge took one weight off each brake of the paying-out machinery. at forty minutes past seven all weights taken off, the assumed depth being three hundred fathoms. the indicated strain on the dynamometer gradually decreasing. speed of ship five knots. we are going to try and pick up the cable of in two thousand five hundred fathoms (and we mean to succeed too); therefore should the cable we are now paying out part, it can be understood how easy it would be to raise it from a depth of three hundred fathoms. at fifty-five minutes past eight we signalled to the terrible to sound, and received a reply, one hundred and sixty fathoms. at half-past eleven we informed her that when at the buoy off heart's content she should have her paddle-box boat and two cutters ready to be alongside immediately, for holding the bight of the cable during the splice and laying the shore end. the medway was told at the same time to prepare two five-inch ropes, and two large mushroom anchors, with fifty fathoms of chain, for anchoring during the splice in one hundred and seventy fathoms of water, and we intimated to her that when inside of trinity bay we should signal for two boats to take hands on board her for shore end. news of to-day, telegram from mr. glass in reply to one from mr. canning: i congratulate you all most sincerely on your arrival in one hundred and thirty fathoms. i hope nothing will interfere to mar the hitherto brilliant success, and that the cable will be landed to-morrow.'" as the voyage is about to end, we give the distances run from day to day, which show a remarkable uniformity of progress: distance run. cable paid out. saturday, fourteenth, sunday, fifteenth, monday, sixteenth, tuesday, seventeenth, wednesday, eighteenth, thursday, nineteenth, friday, twentieth, saturday, twenty-first, sunday, twenty-second, monday, twenty-third, tuesday, twenty-fourth, wednesday, twenty-fifth, thursday, twenty-sixth, friday, twenty-seventh. from this it appears that the speed of the ship was exactly according to the running time fixed before she left england. on the last voyage it was thought that she had once or twice run too fast, and thus exposed the cable to danger. it was, therefore, decided to go slowly but surely. holding her back to this moderate pace, her average speed, from the time the splice was made till they saw land, was a little less than five nautical miles an hour, while the cable was paid out at an average of not quite five and a half miles. thus the total slack was about eleven per cent, showing that the cable was laid almost in a straight line, allowing for the swells and hollows in the bottom of the sea. "friday, july th.--shortly after two p.m., yesterday, two ships, which were soon made out to be steamers, were seen to the westward; and the terrible, steaming on ahead, in about an hour signalled to us that h.m.s. niger was one of them, accompanied by the albany. the niger, captain bruce, sent a boat to the terrible as soon as he came up with her. the albany shortly afterward took up her position on our starboard quarter, and signalled that she spoke the niger at noon, bearing e. by n., and that the lily was anchored at the station in the entrance of trinity bay, as arranged with the admiral. the albany also reported that she had passed an iceberg about sixty feet high. at twenty minutes after four p.m., the niger came on our port side, quite close, and captain bruce, sending the crew to the rigging and manning the yards, gave us three cheers, which were heartily returned by the great eastern. she then steamed ahead toward trinity bay. the albany was signalled to go on immediately to heart's content, clear the northeast side of the harbor of shipping, and place a boat with a red flag for captain anderson to steer to, for anchorage. just before dinner we saw on the southern horizon, distant about ten miles, an iceberg, probably the one which the albany met with. it was apparently about fifty or sixty feet in height. the fog came on very thick about eight p.m., and between that and ten we were constantly exchanging guns and burning blue lights with the terrible, which, with the niger, went in search of the lily, station ship. the terrible being signalled to come up and take her position, informed us they had made the lily out, and that she bore then about e.n.e. distant four miles. later in the night captain commerill said that if captain anderson would stop the great eastern, he would send the surveyor mr. robinson, r. n., who came out in the niger, on board of us, and about three the engines were slowed, and the terrible shortly afterwards came alongside with that officer. catalina light, at the entrance of trinity bay, had been made out three hours before this, and the loom of the coast had also been seen. fog still prevailing! according to mr. robinson's account, if they got one clear day in seven at the entrance of trinity bay, they considered themselves fortunate. here we are now (six a.m.), within ten miles of heart's content, and we can scarcely see more than a ship's length. the niger, however, is ahead, and her repeated guns tell us where we are with accuracy. good fortune follows us, and scarcely has eight o'clock arrived when the massive curtain of fog raises itself gradually from both shores of trinity bay, disclosing to us the entrance of heart's content, the albany making for the harbor, the margaretta stevenson, surveying vessel, steaming out to meet us, the preärranged pathway all marked with buoys by mr. j. h. kerr, r. n., and a whole fleet of fishing boats fishing at the entrance. "we could now plainly see that heart's content, so far as its capabilities permitted, was prepared to welcome us. the british and american flags floated from the church and telegraph station and other buildings. we had dressed ship, fired a salute, and given three cheers, and captain commerill of h.m.s. terrible was soon on board to congratulate us on our success. at nine o'clock, ship's time, just as we had cut the cable and made arrangements for the medway to lay the shore end, a message arrived giving us the concluding words of a leader in this morning's times: 'it is a great work, a glory to our age and nation, and the men who have achieved it deserve to be honored among the benefactors of their race.'--'treaty of peace signed between prussia and austria!' it was now time for the chief engineer, mr. canning, to make the necessary preparations for splicing on board the medway. accompanied by mr. gooch, m.p., mr. clifford, mr. willoughby smith, and messrs. temple and deane, he went on board, the terrible and niger having sent their paddle-box boats and cutters to assist. shortly afterward the great eastern steamed into the harbor and anchored on the north-east side, and was quickly surrounded by boats laden with visitors. mr. cyrus field had come on shore before the great eastern had left the offing, with a view of telegraphing to st. john's to hire a vessel to repair the cable unhappily broken between cape ray, in newfoundland, and cape north, in breton island. before a couple of hours the shore end will be landed, and it is impossible to conceive a finer day for effecting this our final operation. even here, people can scarcely realize the fact that the atlantic telegraph cable has been laid. to-morrow, however, heart's content[c] will awaken to the fact that it is a highly favored place in the world's esteem, the western landing-place of that marvel of electric communication with the eastern hemisphere, which is now happily, and we hope finally, established." this simple record, so modestly termed the diary of the expedition, tells the story of this memorable voyage in a way that needs no embellishment. but if from the ship's deck we transfer ourselves to the shore, we may get a new impression of the closing scene. we can well believe the sensation of wonder and almost of awe, on the morning when the ships entered that little harbor of newfoundland. in england the progress of the expedition was known from day to day, but on this side of the ocean all was uncertainty. some had gone to heart's content, hoping to witness the arrival of the fleet, but not so many as the year before, for the memory of the last failure was too fresh, and they feared another disappointment. but still a faithful few were there, who kept their daily watch. the correspondents of the american papers report only a long and anxious suspense, till the morning when the first ship was seen in the offing. as they looked toward her, she came nearer--and see, there is another and another! and now the hull of the great eastern loomed up all glorious in the morning sky. they were coming! instantly all was wild excitement on shore. boats put off to row toward the fleet. the albany was the first to round the point and enter the bay. the terrible was close behind. the medway stopped an hour or two to join on the heavy shore end, while the great eastern, gliding calmly in as if she had done nothing remarkable, dropped her anchor in front of the telegraph house, having trailed behind her a chain of two thousand miles, to bind the old world to the new. that same afternoon, as soon as the shore end was landed, captain anderson and the officers of the fleet went in a body to the little church in heart's content, to render thanks for the success of the expedition. a sermon was preached on the text, "there shall be no more sea," and all joined in the sublime prayers and thanksgivings of the church of england. thus the voyage ended as it began. it left the shores of ireland with prayers wafted after it as a benediction. and now, safely landed on the shores of the new world, this gallant company, like columbus and his companions, made it their first thought to render homage to the being who had borne them safely across the deep. but though their voyage was ended, there was still a work to be done. having crossed the atlantic, the first thing was to open communication with the cities of the united states. and now mr. field was extremely mortified to find that there was a large gap in the line this side of the ocean. his first question to the superintendent, who came out in a boat to meet him, was in regard to the cable across the gulf of st. lawrence, which had been interrupted the year before; and it was a bitter pang to hear that it lay still broken, so that a message which came from ireland in a moment of time, was delayed twenty-four hours in its way to new york. of course the public grew impatient, and there were many sneers at the want of foresight which had failed to provide against such a contingency; and, as he was the one chiefly known in connection with the enterprise, these reproaches fell upon him. he did not tell the public, what was the truth, that he had anticipated this very trouble long ago, and entreated his associates to be prepared for it. months before he left for england, he urged upon the company in new york the necessity of rebuilding their lines in newfoundland, which had been standing over ten years, and of repairing the old cable, and also laying a new one across the gulf of st. lawrence. but this would cost a large sum of money, and as their faith and purses had been sorely tried by repeated disasters, they were not willing to spend more in the uncertainty of the future. they wished to see the result of this new expedition, before advancing further capital. we do not blame them, but only mention the fact to show that mr. field had foreseen this very thing, and endeavored to guard against it. but regrets were idle. what could he do to repair the injury? "is there a steamer," he asked, "to be had in these waters?" "the bloodhound is at st. john's." "telegraph instantly to charter her to go around to the gulf of st. lawrence, and fish up the old cable and repair it. but that may take several weeks. is there nothing else that can serve in the mean time to carry despatches across the gulf?" "there is a little steamer, called the dauntless." "well, telegraph for her too. secure her at all hazards; only see that the work is done." all this was the work of a few minutes. the answers came back quickly, and in a day or two came the steamers themselves. the arrangement was immediately carried out. the dauntless took her place in the gulf, where she made her regular trips from port au basque, in newfoundland, to aspee bay, in cape breton, keeping up daily communication with the states. the bloodhound, which had a more difficult task, first took on board eleven miles of cable from the great eastern, to repair that which was broken. the expedition was put in charge of mr. a. m. mackay, the indefatigable superintendent of the company in newfoundland, who had had the care of their lines for ten years. he sailed for aspee bay, and made short work of the business, dragging the gulf and raising the cable, which he found had been broken by an anchor, in water seventy fathoms deep, a few miles from shore. this was spliced out with a portion of the new cable, and the whole was as perfect as ever, giving a fresh proof that cables well made are likely to be permanent, if not indestructible. meanwhile, owing to this interruption of the cable across the gulf of st. lawrence, the news of the success of the expedition, which reached newfoundland on friday, the twenty-seventh, did not reach new york till the twenty-ninth. it was early sunday morning, before the sabbath bells had rung their call to prayer, that the tidings came. the first announcement was brief: "heart's content, july .--we arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. all well. thank god, the cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. cyrus w. field." soon followed the despatch to the associated press, giving the details of the voyage, and ending with a just tribute to the skill and devotion of all who had contributed to its success. said mr. field: "i cannot find words suitable to convey my admiration for the men who have so ably conducted the nautical, engineering, and electrical departments of this enterprise, amidst difficulties which must be seen to be appreciated. in fact, all on board of the telegraph fleet, and all connected with the enterprise, have done their best to have the cable made and laid in a perfect condition; and he who rules the winds and the waves has crowned their united efforts with perfect success." other despatches followed in quick succession, giving the latest events of the war in europe, which startled the public just reading news a fortnight old. all this confirmed the great triumph, and filled every heart with wonder and gratitude on the sunday morning, as they went again to the little church and rendered thanks to him who is lord of the earth and sea. while the great eastern was lying in the harbor of heart's content, she was overrun with visitors. the news of her arrival had spread over the island, and from far and near the people flocked to see her. over the hills they came on foot and on horseback, and in wagons and carts of every description; and from along the shore in boats and fishing-smacks, and sloops and schooners. they came from the most remote parts of the island--a distance of three hundred miles--and even from the province of new brunswick. several parties made the excursion in steamers from st. john's. the wondering country folk climbed up the sides of the ship, and wandered for hours through its spacious rooms and long passages. all were welcomed with hearty sailor courtesy. as soon as communication was opened with new york, and other cities, congratulations poured in from every quarter. friendly messages were exchanged--as eight years before--between the sovereign of england and the head of the great republic. the president also, and mr. seward, secretary of state, sent their congratulations to mr. field--greetings that were repeated from the most distant states. among others was a message from san francisco, which was put into his hand almost at the same moment with one from m. de lesseps, dated at alexandria in egypt! what a meeting and mingling of voices was this, when a winged salutation flying over the tops of the rocky mountains, reached the same ear with a message which had been whispered along the mediterranean and under the atlantic: when the farthest east touched the farthest west--the most ancient of kingdoms answering to the new-born empire of the pacific. footnotes: [a] the new method is thus explained by mr. deane: "the fundamental difference between last year's system of testing and that of the present expedition is, that now all the ordinary tests for continuity may be made simultaneously with the test for insulation, which is not interrupted at all; whereas, last year, during half the time spent in laying the cable, the insulation test was wholly neglected. "last year, each hour was divided into four parts. the first half of the hour was spent in testing for insulation. during the second half, which was divided into three periods of ten minutes each, tests were made to ascertain the resistance of the conductor and to prove the continuity of the same. all these tests were of such a nature as to afford no criterion whatever of the state of the insulation during their continuance, so that during the half of each hour, or, in other words, during half the time spent in laying the cable, the insulation test was neglected. also, while the insulation test was being made, there was no means of communicating with the shore, as the observations were taken on board only. this year, a test for insulation is constantly kept on, and, by mr. willoughby smith's arrangement, corresponding observations are made both on ship and shore. at stated times during the hour, the continuity test is made at the shore station by means of a condenser applied to the conductor of the cable. the effect of this is to increase the deflection on the ship's insulation galvanometer, thus serving as a continuity test. communications from shore to ship are also made by these means. the ship can send signals to the shore by simply reversing the current for certain lengths of time, answering to some understood code, or by increasing and diminishing the tension of the line, according to a preärranged plan. all these operations may be performed without interrupting the insulation test, except for a few seconds while the current is being reversed. so far for the new system in the electrical room as compared with last year." [b] mr. dudley made a number of sketches for mr. field, with several large paintings, which have furnished the illustrations for this volume. [c] the little harbor that bears this gentle name, is a sheltered nook where ships may ride at anchor, safe from the storms of the ocean. it is but an inlet from the great arm of the sea known as trinity bay, which is sixty or seventy miles long, and twenty miles broad. on the beach is a small village of some sixty houses, most of which are the humble dwellings of those hardy men who vex the northern seas with their fisheries. the place was never heard of outside of newfoundland till , when mr. field, sailing up trinity bay in the surveying steamer margaretta stevenson, captain orlebar, r. n., in search of a place for the landing of the ocean cable, fixed upon this secluded spot. the old landing of was at the bay of bull's arm, at the head of trinity bay, twenty miles above. heart's content was chosen now because its waters are still and deep, so that a cable skirting the north side of the banks of newfoundland can be brought in deep water almost till it touches the shore. all around the land rises to pine-crested heights; and here the telegraphic fleet, after its memorable voyage, lay in quiet, under the shadow of the encircling hills. chapter xvii. recovery of the lost cable. though the great eastern was still lying in the little harbor of heart's content, casting her mighty shadow on its tranquil waters, she was not "content" with her amazing victory, but sighed for another greater still. though she had done enough to be laid up for a year, still she had one more test of her prowess--to recover the cable of , which had been lost in the middle of the atlantic. so eager were all for this second trial of their strength, that in less than five days two of the ships--the albany and the terrible--the vanguard of the telegraphic fleet, were on their way back to mid-ocean. though it was only friday, the th of july, that they reached land, they left early wednesday morning, the first day of august. the great eastern was detained a week longer. she had to lay in immense supplies of coal. anticipating this want, six ships had been despatched from cardiff, in wales, weeks before, to await the arrival of the fleet. one of these foundered at sea; the others arrived out safely, and hardly had the great eastern cast anchor before they were alongside, ready to fill her bunkers. so ample was the provision, that, when she went to sea a few days after, she had nearly eight thousand tons of coal on board. at the same time she had to receive some six hundred miles of the cable of , which had been shipped from england in the medway. the latter was now brought alongside, and the whole was transferred into the main tank of the great eastern, from which it was to be paid out in case the lost end were recovered. at length all these preparations were completed, and on thursday, the th of august, the great eastern and the medway put to sea. the governor of newfoundland, who had come around from st. john's and been received with the honors due his rank, accompanied them in the lily down the broad expanse of trinity bay, and then bore away for st. john's while the great eastern and medway kept on their course to join their companions in the middle of the atlantic. they had a little over six hundred miles to run to the "fishing ground," and made it in three days. on sunday noon they came in sight of the appointed rendezvous, and soon with glasses made out the albany and the terrible, which had arrived a week before and placed buoys to mark the line of the cable, and then, like giant sea-birds with folded wings, sat watching their prey. the sea was running high, so that boats could not come off, but the albany signalled that she had not toiled for nothing; that she had once hooked the cable, but lost it in rough weather. the history of this first attempt, though brief, was cheering. when the albany left heart's content, captain moriarty went in her. he had been in the great eastern the year before, and saw where the cable went down, and had had his eye on the spot ever since. he claimed, with captain anderson, that he could go straight to it and place the ship within half a mile of where it disappeared. at this old sailors shook their heads, and said, "they'd like to see him do it;" "no man could come within two or three miles of any given place in the ocean." yet the result proved the exactness of his observations. with unerring eye he went straight to the spot, and set his buoys as exactly as a fisherman sets his nets. in the albany, also, had gone mr. temple, of mr. canning's staff. the ship had been fitted up with a complete set of buoys and apparatus for grappling; and he was full of ambition to recover the cable before the great eastern should come up. in this he had nearly proved successful. they had caught it once, and raised it a few hundred fathoms from the bottom, and buoyed it, but rough weather came on and tore away the buoy, so that the cable went down again, carrying two miles of rope. this was a disappointment, but still, as their first attempt was only a "feeler," the result was encouraging. it showed that they had found the right place; that the cable was there; that it had not run away nor been floated off by those under-currents that exist in the imagination of some wise men of the sea; nor that it was so imbedded in the ooze of the deep as to be beyond reach or recovery. all this was cheering, but as it promised to be a more difficult job than they had supposed, they were glad when the great eastern hove in sight that sunday noon. the next morning captain moriarty and mr. temple came on board, and after reporting their experience, the chief officers of the expedition held a council of war before opening the campaign. the fleet was all together, the weather was favorable, and it was determined at once to proceed to business. as the attempt is now to be renewed on a grand scale, the reader may wish some further details of the means employed to insure success. as nothing in this whole enterprise has excited such astonishment, nothing merits a more careful history. when it was first proposed to drag the bottom of the atlantic for a cable lost in waters two and a half miles deep, the project was so daring that it seemed to be almost a war of the titans upon the gods. yet never was anything undertaken less in the spirit of reckless desperation. the cable was recovered, as a city is taken by siege--by slow approaches, and the sure and inevitable result of mathematical calculation. every point was studied beforehand--the position of the broken end, the depth of the ocean, the length of rope needed to reach the bottom, and the strength required to lift the enormous weight. to find the place was a simple question of nautical astronomy--a calculation of latitude and longitude. it seemed providential that, when the cable broke on the second of august, , it was a few minutes after noon; the sun was shining brightly, and they had just taken a perfect observation. this made it much easier to go back to the place again. the waters were very deep, but that they could touch bottom, and even grapple the cable, was proved by the experiments of the year before. but could any power be applied which should lift it without breaking, and bring it safely on board? this was a simple question of mechanics. prof. thomson had made a calculation that in raising the cable from a depth of two and a half miles, there would be about ten miles of its length suspended in the water. of course, it was a very nice matter to graduate the strain so as not to break the cable. for this it had been suggested that two or three ships should grapple it at once, and lifting it together, ease the strain on any one point--a method of meeting the danger that was finally adopted with success. with such preparations, let us see how all this science and seamanship and engineering are applied. the ships are now all together in the middle of the atlantic. the first point is achieved. they have found the place where the broken cable lies--they have laid their hands on the bottom of the ocean and "felt of it," and know that it is there. the next thing is to draw a line over it, to mark its course, for in fogs and dark nights it cannot be traced by observations. the watery line is therefore marked by a series of buoys a few miles apart, which are held in position by heavy mushroom-anchors, let down to the bottom by a huge buoy-rope, which is fastened at the top by a heavy chain. each buoy is numbered, and has on the top a long staff with a flag, and a black ball over it, which can be seen at a distance. thus the ships, ranging around in a circuit of many miles, can keep in sight this chain of sentinels. the buoy which marks the spot where they wish to grapple has also a lantern placed upon it at night, which gleams afar upon the ocean. having thus fixed their bearings, the great eastern stands off, north or south according to the wind or current, three or four miles from where the cable lies, and then, casting over the grapnel, drifts slowly down upon the line, as ships going into action reef their sails, and drift under the enemy's guns. the "fishing-tackle" is on a gigantic scale. the "hooks," or grapnels, are huge weapons armed with teeth, like titanic harpoons to be plunged into this submarine monster. the "fishing-line" is a rope six and a half inches round, and made of twisted hemp and iron, consisting of forty-nine galvanized wires, each bound with manilla, the whole capable of bearing a strain of thirty tons. of this heavy rope there are twenty miles on board the ships, the albany carrying five, and the great eastern and the medway seven and a half miles each. of course it is not the easiest thing in the world to handle such a rope. but it is paid out by machinery, passing over a drum; and the engine works so smoothly, that it runs out as easily as ever a fisherman's line was reeled off into the sea. as it goes out freely, the strain increases every moment. the rope is so ponderous, that the weight mounts up very fast, so that by the time it is two thousand fathoms down, the strain is equal to six or seven tons. the tension of course is very great, and not unattended with danger. what if the rope should break? if it should snap on board, it would go into the sea like a cannon-shot. such was the tension on the long line, that once when the splice between the grapnel-rope and the buoy-rope "drew," the end passed along the wheels with terrific velocity, and flying in the air over the bow, plunged into the sea. but the rope is well made, and holds firmly an enormous weight. it takes about two hours for the grapnel to reach the bottom, but they can tell when it strikes. the strain eases up, and then, as the ship drifts, it is easy to see that it is not dragging through the water, but over the ground. "i often went to the bow," says mr. field, "and sat on the rope, and could tell by the quiver that the grapnel was dragging on the bottom two miles under us." and thus, with its fishing line set, the great ship moves slowly down over where the cable lies. as the grapnel drags on the bottom, one of the engineer's staff stands at the dynamometer to watch for the moment of increasing strain. a few hours pass, and the index rises to eight, ten, or twelve tons, sure token that there is something at the end of the line--it may be the lost cable, or a sunken mast or spar, the fragment of a wreck that went down in a storm that swept the atlantic a hundred years ago. and now the engine is set in motion to haul in. as the rope comes up, it passes over a five-foot drum, every revolution bringing up three fathoms. thus it takes some hours to haul in over two miles' length, perhaps at last to find nothing at the end! success in hooking the cable depends on the accuracy of their observations. these were sometimes verified in a remarkable manner. when the nights were very dark and thick with fog, so that they could not see the stars above nor their lights on the ocean, they had to go almost by the sense of feeling. yet so exactly had they taken their bearings, that they could almost grope over the ground with their hands. a singular proof of this was given one night, when, just as the line began to quiver, showing that the cable had been hooked, one of the buoys--which had not been seen in the darkness--thumped against the side of the ship. so exactly had it been placed over the prescribed line, that the ship struck the buoy just as the grapnel struck the cable! the accident, which startled them at first, when it occurred in the gloom of night, furnished the strongest proof of the accuracy of their observations; and the officers were very proud of it, as they well might be, as a victory in nautical astronomy! these different experiments revealed some secrets of the ocean. its bottom proved to be generally ooze, a soft slime. when the rope went down, one or two hundred fathoms at the end would trail on the sea floor; and when it came up, this was found coated with mud, "very fine and soft like putty, and full of minute shells." but it was not _all_ ooze at the bottom of the sea, even on this telegraphic plateau. there were hidden rocks--perhaps not cliffs and ledges, but at least scattered boulders, lying on that mighty plain. sometimes the strain on the dynamometer would suddenly go up three or four tons, and then back again, as if the grapnel had been caught and broken away. once it came up with two of its hooks bent, as if it had come in contact with a huge rock. at one time it brought up in the mud a small stone half the size of an almond; and at another a fragment as large as a brick. this was a piece of granite. friday, august th, was a memorable day in the expedition, for the cable was not only caught, but brought to the surface, where it was in full sight of the whole ship, and yet finally escaped. the day before the line had been cast over, at about two o'clock, and struck the ground a little before five. after dragging a couple of hours, the increasing strain showed that they had grappled the prize, and they began to haul in, but soon ceased, and held on till morning. then the engine was set in motion again, and slowly but steadily the ponderous rope came up from the deep. by half-past ten o'clock, friday morning, twenty-three hundred fathoms had come on board, and but fifteen or twenty remained. then was the critical moment, and they paused before giving a last pull. such was the eagerness of all, that the diver of the ship, clark, begged to be allowed to plunge down twenty fathoms, to lay his hand on the prize, and be sure that it was there. but patience yet a few minutes! a few more strokes of the engine, and the sea-serpent shows himself--a long black snake with a white belly. "on the appearance of the cable," says deane, in his diary of the expedition, "we were all struck with the fact that one half of it was covered with ooze, staining it a muddy white, while the other half was in just the state in which it left the tank, with its tarred surface and strands unchanged, which showed that it lay in the sand only half embedded. the strain on the cable gave it a twist, and it looked as if it had been painted spirally black and white. this disposes of the oft-repeated assertion, that we should not be able to pull it up from the bottom, because it would be embedded in the ooze." the appearance of the cable woke a tremendous hurrah from all on board. they cheered as english sailors are apt to cheer when the flag of an enemy is struck in battle. but their exultation came too soon. the strain on the cable was already mounting up to a dangerous point. capt. anderson and mr. canning were standing on the bow, and saw that the strands were going. they hastened men to its relief, but it was too late. before they could put stoppers on it to hold it, it broke close to the grapnel, and sunk to the bottom. it had been in sight but just five minutes, and was gone. instantly the feeling of exultation was turned to one of disappointment, and almost of rage, at the treacherous monster, that lifted up its snaky head from the sea, as if to mock its captors, and instantly dived to the silence and darkness below. it was a cruel disappointment. yet when they came to think soberly, there was no cause for despair, but rather for new confidence and hope. they had proved what they could do. but this detained them in the middle of the atlantic for two weeks more. it were idle to relate all the attempts of those two weeks. every day brought its excitement. whenever the grapnel caught, there was a suspense of many hours till it was brought on board. several times they seemed on the point of success. two days after that fatal friday, on sunday, august th, they caught the cable again, and brought it up within a thousand fathoms of the ship, and buoyed it. but monday and tuesday were too rough for work, and all their labor was in vain. thus it was a constant battle with the elements. sometimes the wind blew fiercely and drove them off their course. sometimes the buoys broke adrift and had to be pursued and taken. once or twice the boatswain's mate--a brave fellow, by the name of thornton--was lowered in ropes over the bow of the ship and let down astride of a buoy; and though it spun round with him like a top, and his life was in danger, he held on and fastened a chain to it, by which it was swung on board. the continued bad weather was the chief obstacle to success. engineers had often grappled for cables in the north sea and the mediterranean; but there they could look for at least a few days when the sea would be at rest; but in the atlantic it was impossible to calculate on good weather for twenty-four hours. for nearly four weeks that they were at sea, they had hardly four days of clear sunshine, without wind. often the ocean was covered with a driving mist, and the ships, groping about like blind giants, kept blowing their shrill fog-trumpets, or firing guns, as signals to their companions that they were still there. occasionally the sun shone out from the clouds, and gave them hope of better success. once or twice we find in the private journal kept by mr. field, that it was "too calm;" there was not wind enough to drift the ship over the cable, so that the rope hung up and down from the bow, without dragging. one sunday night he remembered, when the deep was hushed to a sabbath stillness, the moon was shining brightly, and the ships floating over a "sea of glass," that suggested thoughts of a better world than this. such times gave them fresh hopes, that might be disappointed on the morrow. once, however, the albany, which had been off a few miles fishing on its own hook, suddenly appeared in the night, reporting a victory. all on board the great eastern were startled by the firing of guns. it was a little after midnight, and mr. field had gone below, worn out with the long suspense and anxiety, when captain anderson came rushing to his stateroom with tidings that the cable was recovered! both hurried on deck, and sure enough there was the albany bearing down upon them, with her crew cheering in the wildest manner. the gallant temple had conquered at last. but the next morning brought a fresh disappointment. they had indeed got hold of the cable, and brought its end on board, and afterward buoyed it, but when the great eastern went for it, it proved to be only a fragment some two miles long, which had been broken off in one of the previous grapplings. however, they hauled it in, and kept it with pride, as their first trophy from the sea. and so the days and weeks wore on; it was near the end of august, and still the prize was not taken. the courage of the men did not fail, but they were becoming worn out. the tension on their nerves of this long suspense was terrible. on tuesday, august th, mr. temple was brought on board from the albany, very ill. he was worn out with constant watching. their resources, too, must in time be exhausted. on the evening of the th, captain commerill, of the terrible, came on board, and reported the condition of his ship. he was one of the very best officers in the fleet, full of zeal, courage, and activity (having a good right hand in his first officer, mr. curtis), and always kept up a brave heart, even in the darkest days.[a] but his supplies were nearly exhausted. he had been out four weeks, and his coal was almost gone, and his men were on half rations. so he must leave the fishing ground for fresh supplies. it was a painful necessity. he mourned his fate, like a brave officer who is ordered away in the midst of a battle. but he submitted only with a determination to take in ammunition, and to come back in a few days to renew the struggle. accordingly the terrible left the same evening for st. john's. at the same time it was decided that the three other ships should leave their present cruising ground, and try a new spot. as an old fisherman, who has cast his line in one place so often as to scare the fish away, sometimes has better luck in other waters, so they proposed to go east a hundred miles, to a place where the ocean was not quite so deep. deane, in his diary, calls it "the sixteen hundred fathom patch," but they found it nineteen hundred fathoms, or about two miles! so the next morning the great eastern, the medway, and the albany "pulled up stakes," that is, took in their buoys, and bore away to the east. in a few hours they reached the appointed rendezvous, and had set their buoys. the last day of august had come, and all seemed favorable for a final attempt. it was a clear day, with no wind. the sea had gone down, so that at noon it was a dead calm, as the three ships took their position in line, about two miles apart, ready to open their broadsides at once. the grapnel went over for _the thirtieth time_. kind heaven favored its search, and at ten minutes before midnight it had found the cable, and fastened its teeth never to let go. feeling something at the end of the rope, they began to haul in, but slowly at first, as an expert angler decoys a big fish by pulling gently on the line. watching the dynamometer, they saw with delight the strain increase with every hundred fathoms. up it went to eight, nine, ten tons! they had caught it, and no mistake. in about five hours they had drawn it up to within a thousand fathoms of the top of the water, where it hung suspended from the ship. but now came the critical point, for as it approached the surface the danger of breaking increased every moment. it required delicate handling. to make sure this time, the great eastern buoyed the cable, and moved off two or three miles to take a fresh gripe in a new place; and having got a double hold, the medway, which was two miles further to the west, was ordered to grapple for it also; and having caught it, to heave up with all force, till she should bring it on board or break it. this was done, and the old cable brought up within three hundred fathoms, and there broken. this at once lightened the strain and gave them an end to pull upon, whereupon the great eastern, having a lighter weight on the rope, drew up again, but still gently, watching the strain, lest the cable should break. these operations were very slow, and lasted many weary hours. it was a little before midnight on friday night that the cable was caught, and it was after midnight sunday morning that it was brought on board. how long that day seemed! night turned to morning, and morning to noon, and noon to night again, and still the work was not done; still the great ship hung over the spot where its treasure was suspended in the deep. the sun went down, and the moon looked forth from driving clouds upon a scene such as the ocean never saw before. at a distance could be discerned the black hulls of the attendant ships, the albany and the medway. but why were they thus silent and motionless in the midst of the sea? some mysterious errand brought them here, and as their boats approached with measured sweep, at this midnight hour, it seemed as if they came with muffled oars to an ocean burial. it was still calm, but the sea began to moan with unrest, as if troubled in its sleep. as midnight drew on, the interest gathered about the bows of the great eastern. the bulwarks were crowded with anxious watchers, peering into the darkness below. still not a word was spoken. not a voice was heard, save that of captain anderson, or mr. halpin, or mr. canning, giving orders. as it approached the surface, two men, who were tried hands, were lashed with ropes and lowered over the bows, to make fast to the cable when it should appear. this was a perilous service, and the boats were there to pick up the brave fellows, if they should drop into the water. as soon as it showed itself, they dived upon it, and seizing it with their hands, fastened it with large hempen stoppers, which were quickly attached to five-inch ropes. "it was then found, that the bight was so firmly caught in the springs of the grapnel, that one of the brave hands who put on the stoppers, was sent lower down to the grapnel, and with hammer and marlinspike, the rope was ultimately freed from the tenacious gripe of the flukes. the signal being given to haul up, the western end of the bight was cut with a saw, and grandly and majestically the cable rose up the frowning bows of the great eastern, slowly passing round the sheave at the bow, and then over the wheels on to the fore part of the deck. the greatest possible care had to be taken by mr. canning and his assistants, to secure the cable by putting on stoppers, and to watch the progress of the grapnel, rope, and shackles, round the drum, before it received the cable itself." when once it was made fast, all took a long breath. the cable was recovered. they had the sea-serpent at last. there the monster lay, its neck firmly in their gripe, and its black head lying on the deck. but even then there was no cheering, as when they caught it two weeks before. men are sometimes stunned by a sudden success, and hardly know if it be not all a dream. so now they looked at the cable with eager eyes, but without a word, and some crept toward it to take it in their hands, to be sure that they were not deceived. yes--it was the same that they paid out into the sea thirteen months before! but their anxiety was not over. now that they had regained the lost cable of , was it good for any thing? it had been lying more than a year at the bottom of the deep. what if it should prove to have been broken somewhere in the eleven hundred miles between the ship and ireland? what if some sharp rock had worn it away, or some marine insect had eaten into its heart? if there were but a pin's point, anywhere in its covering of flesh, the vital current might escape through it into the sea. fears like these restrained their exultation. it was yet too soon to proclaim their victory. so, as the cable was passed along the deck to the testing room, where the chief electrician was to operate upon it, to see whether it was alive or dead, it was followed by an anxious group, who stood around him as he sat down at the instrument, watching his countenance as friends watch the face of a physician, when he feels the pulse of a patient to see if the heart is still beating. the scene is thus described by mr. robert dudley, the artist of the expedition, whose spirited sketches in the london illustrated news have made known to the world many incidents of this memorable voyage: "i made my way with others, in accordance with an invitation from willoughby smith, to the electricians' room. here, after another hour's preparation, during which time the cable had been carefully passed round the drums of the picking-up machinery, and a sufficient length drawn in on board, the severed end was received. and now, in their mysterious, darkened haunt, the wizards are ready to work their spells upon the tamed lightning. not 'unholy spells' are these, or secret; for, though the wizards' den is but of limited dimensions, they have not been averse to the presence of a few visitors. mr. gooch is looking on; professor thomson, be sure, is here, a worthy 'wizard of the north;' cyrus field could no more be absent than the cable itself; i think, too, canning, hard at work as he is forward in the ship, _must_ have dropped in just for a moment; clifford, laws, captain hamilton, deane, dudley--all have, in their several ways, a great interest in every movement of willoughby smith and his brother (and able assistant) oliver; and, when the core of the cable is stripped and the heart itself--the conducting wire--fixed in the instrument, and these two electricians bend over the galvanometer in patient watching for some message from that far-off land of home to which the great news has just been signalled, then the accustomed stillness of the test-room is deepened; the ticking of the chronometer becomes monotonous. nearly a quarter of an hour has passed, and still no sign! suddenly willoughby smith's hat is off, and the british hurrah bursts from his lips, echoed by all on board with a volley of cheers, evidently none the worse for having been 'bottled up' during the last three hours. along the deck outside, over the ship, throughout the ship, the pent-up enthusiasm overflowed; and even before the test-room was cleared, the roaring bravos of our guns drowned the huzzas of the crew, and the whiz of rockets was heard rushing high into the clear morning sky to greet our consort-ships with the glad intelligence." while this scene is going on on board ship, we may turn to the other end of the line. it may be well supposed that the result of this attempt was watched with deep interest at valentia. how they looked for the first signal from the deep, and how the tidings came, is thus told in the london spectator: "night and day, for a whole year, an electrician has always been on duty, watching the tiny ray of light through which signals are given, and twice every day the whole length of wire--one thousand two hundred and forty miles--has been tested for conductivity and insulation.... the object of observing the ray of light was of course not any expectation of a message, but simply to keep an accurate record of the condition of the wire. sometimes, indeed, wild, incoherent messages from the deep did come, but these were merely the results of magnetic storms and earth-currents, which deflected the galvanometer rapidly, and _spelt the most extraordinary words, and sometimes even sentences of nonsense_. suddenly, last sunday morning, at a quarter to six o'clock, while the light was being watched by mr. may,[b] he observed a peculiar indication about it, which showed at once to his experienced eye that a message was at hand. in a few minutes afterward the unsteady flickering was changed to coherency, if we may use such a term, and at once the cable began to speak, to transmit, that is, at regular intervals, the appointed signals which indicated human purpose and method at the other end, instead of the hurried signs, broken speech, and inarticulate cries of the illiterate atlantic. after the long interval in which it had brought us nothing but the moody and often delirious mutterings of the sea, stammering over its alphabet in vain, the words 'canning to glass' must have seemed like the first rational word uttered by a high-fevered patient, when the ravings have ceased and his consciousness returns." the telegraphic fleet remained together but a few hours after this recovery of the lost cable. the battle was gained, and the three ships were no longer needed. the albany, therefore, parted company to pick up the buoys, and at once sailed for england, while the great eastern, attended by the faithful medway, turned to the west. it was about nine o'clock that the ship began to pay out the cable. up to that time it had continued calm, but the morning was raw and chill, and the sea began to rise as if in anger at those who had torn from it its prey. captain anderson looked anxiously at the signs of the coming storm. it seemed as if heaven had kept back the winds during the critical day and night when they were lifting the cable! but now the tempest was upon them, and for thirty-six hours it swept the ocean. all trembled lest they should not be able to hold on. but little incidents sometimes turn the current of one's thoughts, and give a feeling of peace even in the midst of anxiety. says mr. field: "in the very height and fury of the gale, as i sat in the electrician's room, a flash of light came up from the deep, which having crossed to ireland, came back to me in mid-ocean, telling that those so dear to me, whom i had left on the banks of the hudson, were well, and following us with their wishes and their prayers. this was like a whisper of god from the sea, bidding me keep heart and hope. the great eastern bore herself proudly through the storm, as if she knew that the vital cord which was to join two hemispheres, hung at her stern; and so on saturday, the seventh of september, we brought our second cable safely to the shore." the scene at heart's content, when the fleet appeared the second time, was one that beggars description. its arrival was not unexpected, for the success on sunday morning, that had been telegraphed to ireland, was at once flashed across the atlantic, and the people were watching for its coming. as the ships came up the harbor it was covered with boats, and all were wild with excitement; and when the big shore-end was got out of the medway, and dragged to land, the sailors hugged it and almost kissed it in their extravagance of joy; and no sooner was it safely landed than they seized mr. field, mr. canning, and mr. clifford in their arms, and raised them over their heads, while the crowd cheered with tumultuous enthusiasm. the voyage of the great eastern was ended. twice had she been victorious over the sea; twice had she laid the spoils of victory on the shores of the new world, and her mission was accomplished. all on board, who had been detained weeks beyond the expected time, were impatient to return; and accordingly she prepared to sail the very next day on her homeward voyage. the medway, which had on board the cable for the gulf of st. lawrence, remained two or three weeks longer, and with the terrible, whose gallant officers had volunteered for the service, successfully accomplished that work. but the great eastern was bound for england, and mr. field had now to part from his friends on board. it was a trying moment. rejoiced as he was at the successful termination of the voyage, yet when he came to leave the ship, where he had spent so many anxious days and weeks, both this year and the year before; and to part from men to whom he was bound by the strong ties that unite those embarked in a common enterprise--brave companions in arms--he could not repress a feeling of sadness. it was with deep emotion that captain anderson took him by the hand, as he said, "the time is come that we must part." as he went over the side of the ship, the commander cried, "give him three cheers!" "and now three more for his family!" the ringing hurrahs of that gallant crew were the last sounds he heard as he sunk back in the boat that took him to the medway, while the wheels of the great eastern began to move, and the noble ship, with her noble company, bore away for england. our story is told. we have followed the history of the atlantic telegraph from the beginning to the end; from the hour that the idea first occurred to its projector, turning over the globe in his library, till the cable was stretched from continent to continent. between these two points of time many years have passed, and many struggles intervened. never did an enterprise pass through more vicissitudes; never was courage tried by more reverses and disappointments, the constant repetition of which gives to this narrative an almost painful interest. yet that background of disaster only sets in brighter relief the spirit that bore up under all, the faith that never despaired, and the patience that was never weary. it was a pathetic as well as heroic story which mr. field had to tell when it was all over. he said: "it has been a long, hard struggle. nearly thirteen years of anxious watching and ceaseless toil. often my heart has been ready to sink. many times, when wandering in the forests of newfoundland, in the pelting rain, or on the deck of ships, on dark, stormy nights--alone, far from home--i have almost accused myself of madness and folly to sacrifice the peace of my family, and all the hopes of life, for what might prove after all but a dream. i have seen my companions one and another falling by my side, and feared that i too might not live to see the end. and yet one hope has led me on, and i have prayed that i might not taste of death till this work was accomplished. that prayer is answered; and now, beyond all acknowledgments to men, is the feeling of gratitude to almighty god."[c] "long and hard" indeed had been the way, but in the end what a triumph was gained: an achievement that was one of the most marvellous in all history, as a proof of man's dominion over the forces of nature. when it was first proposed to span the atlantic, it seemed but a beautiful dream, fascinating indeed to the imagination, but beyond all human power; and men listened to the picture of what might be with delighted amazement and wondering incredulity. in an oration at the opening of the dudley observatory at albany, in , edward everett spoke thus of the projected atlantic telegraph: "i hold in my hand a portion of the identical electrical cable, given me by my friend mr. peabody, which is now in progress of manufacture to connect america with europe. does it seem all but incredible to you that intelligence should travel for two thousand miles, along those slender copper wires, far down in the all but fathomless atlantic, never before penetrated by aught pertaining to humanity, save when some foundering vessel has plunged with her hapless company to the eternal silence and darkness of the abyss? does it seem, i say, all but a miracle of art, that the thoughts of living men--the thoughts that we think up here on the earth's surface, in the cheerful light of day--about the markets and the exchanges, and the seasons, and the elections, and the treaties, and the wars, and all the fond nothings of daily life, should clothe themselves with elemental sparks, and shoot with fiery speed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hemisphere, far down among the uncouth monsters that wallow in the nether seas, along the wreck-paved floor, through the oozy dungeons of the rayless deep; that the latest intelligence of the crops, whose dancing tassels will, in a few months, be coquetting with the west wind on those boundless prairies, should go flashing along the slimy decks of old sunken galleons, which have been rotting for ages; that messages of friendship and love, from warm, living bosoms, should burn over the cold, green bones of men and women, whose hearts, once as warm as ours, burst as the eternal gulfs closed and roared over them centuries ago!" but a few years passed, and the vision became a reality. the heart of the world beat under the sea. footnotes: [a] captain anderson, in a letter published after the return to england, says: "every officer and man of the expedition will have pleasant recollection of the cheerful zeal of captain commerill, v.c., and the officers of her majesty's ship terrible. captain commerill frequently visited us in his boats, both in high seas and in calms, and his cheery way of saying, 'you'll do it yet,' 'what can i do?' and 'i'll do it,' was truly characteristic of him. the officers of the terrible would do any thing for their captain, and entered heartily into the object of the voyage." such a tribute from one brave commander to another, is most honorable to both. in the same letter he recognizes, also, the services rendered by the captains of the other ships: "i shall do but scant justice to commanders prowse and batt, r. n., and captains eddington and harris, mercantile marine, of the medway and albany, if i recall the three weeks spent upon the 'grappling ground,' where we were often separated by fog, gale, or darkness; yet whenever day dawned, or the fog cleared, there the squadron were to be seen, converging from different points towards the mark buoy, a small spot looking no bigger than a man's hat on the surface of the ocean. unless all had concentrated their minds, and watched their ships and compasses night and day, no such beautiful illustration of nautical science could have been possible. the vessels of the squadron keeping always together, and commanded by men who knew the importance of keeping close enough to begin work whenever it was possible, and yet to avoid collision in fog, was of the greatest importance; and we owe much to that invaluable system of signalling by night and day, invented by captain colomb, r. n., which enabled us, even in dark nights, when two or three miles apart, to communicate or ascertain anything we desired." [b] this is an error. mr. crocker, an operator in the telegraph house at valentia, was the fortunate one on watch at that hour, on whose eye the first ray fell, as a spark of life from the dead. [c] speech at the chamber of commerce dinner, nov. , . chapter xviii. the afterglow. it is the clear shining after rain. the storms that swept the sea, have blown themselves out, and all is tranquil on the face of the deep. the cable is lying in its ocean bed uniting the two hemispheres, nevermore to be separated. and now comes the public recognition on both sides the atlantic, though in different form. the event had produced a profound impression throughout the civilized world. yet it was a singular illustration of the changes in public interest, that, whereas in a temporary success had kindled the wildest enthusiasm in the united states, while in england it was regarded almost with indifference, now the state of feeling in the two countries was completely reversed. in great britain it was the theme of boundless congratulation, while in america the public mind--dulled perhaps by the excitements of four years of war--received the news with composure. the reason was, in part, that england had had a larger share in the later than in the earlier expeditions. certainly none could deny the inestimable services rendered by her men of science, her seamen, her engineers, and her great capitalists; and it was most fit that the country which they had honored should do them honor in its turn. scarcely had the great eastern recrossed the sea before those to whom the empire owed so much, were duly recognized in the following letter from the earl of derby, then prime minister, addressed to sir stafford northcote, who was to preside at a dinner given in liverpool, to celebrate the great achievement: "balmoral, saturday, sept. , . "dear sir stafford: as i understand you are to have the honor of taking the chair at the entertainment which is to be given on monday next, in liverpool, to celebrate the double success which has attended the great undertaking of laying the cable of , and recovering that of , by which the two continents of europe and america are happily connected, i am commanded by the queen to make known to you, and through you to those over whom you are to preside, the deep interest with which her majesty has regarded the progress of this noble work; and to tender her majesty's cordial congratulations to all of those whose energy and perseverance, whose skill and science have triumphed over all difficulties, and accomplished a success alike honorable to themselves and to their country, and beneficial to the world at large. her majesty, desirous of testifying her sense of the various merits which have been displayed in this great enterprise, has commanded me to submit to her, for special marks of her royal favor, the names of those who, having had assigned to them prominent positions, may be considered as representing the different departments, whose united labors have contributed to the final result; and her majesty has accordingly been pleased to direct that the honor of knighthood should be conferred upon captain anderson, the able and zealous commander of the great eastern; professor thomson, whose distinguished science has been brought to bear with eminent success upon the improvement of submarine telegraphy; and on messrs. glass and canning, the manager and engineer respectively of the telegraph maintenance company, whose skill and experience have mainly contributed to the admirable construction and successful laying of the cable. her majesty is further pleased to mark her approval of the public spirit and energy of the two companies who have had successively the conduct of the undertaking, by offering the dignity of a baronetcy of the united kingdom to mr. lampson, the deputy chairman of the original company, to whose resolute support of the project in spite of all discouragements it was in a great measure owing that it was not at one time abandoned in despair; and to mr. gooch, m.p., the chairman of the company which has finally completed the design. if among the names thus submitted to and approved by her majesty, that of mr. cyrus field does not appear, the omission must not be attributed to any disregard of the eminent services which, from the first, he has rendered to the cause of transatlantic telegraphy, and the zeal and resolution with which he has adhered to the prosecution of his object, but to an apprehension lest it might appear to encroach on the province of his own government, if her majesty were advised to offer a citizen of the united states, for a service rendered alike to both countries, british marks of honor, which, following the example of another highly distinguished citizen, he might feel himself unable to accept." the reason assigned by lord derby for the omission of mr. field's name in the distribution of honors, was perfectly understood and entirely satisfactory. the british government had once before offered a baronetcy to mr. george peabody in recognition of his princely benefactions to the poor of london, but while he appreciated the honor, he felt that as a citizen of the united states, he could not accept it, and the same reason would apply in the present case. but while this alone prevented official recognition, it could not prevent the hearty expression of englishmen who knew the history of the great enterprise from the beginning. at this very dinner, the chairman gave, as the first toast, "the original projectors of the atlantic cable," which he proposed early in order to give mr. cyrus field (who was very near to them, although he happened to be in america!) a chance of responding! the allusion is explained by the remark of one present who had said:-- "you will be pleased to hear that mr. bright has kindly brought the telegraph wire into the room in which we are sitting, and no sooner will the toast involving the mention of mr. field's name be given from the chair, than it will be flashed with lightning speed to valentia, thence to newfoundland, and if mr. field is at home, it is quite possible that he himself will receive it, ere the echo of your ringing cheers has died away in liverpool." a message was at once sent from the room to newfoundland, and a reply received back that mr. field had left for new york. in continuing his speech, sir stafford northcote said: "i think there can be no doubt in the minds of those who have carefully examined the history of these transactions, that it is to mr. cyrus field that we owe the practical carrying out of the idea which has borne such glorious fruit. i am sure there is none to whom we owe more, or whose name stands in prouder connection with this great undertaking, than the name of mr. cyrus field." he called upon sir charles bright to reply, who detailed somewhat the history of the enterprise from the very beginning in , when "mr. cyrus field, to whom the world was more indebted than to any other person for the establishment of the line, came to england upon the completion of the telegraph between nova scotia and newfoundland." to the same effect is the testimony of a distinguished writer, w. h. russell, ll.d., who was on board of the great eastern in , as the correspondent of the times, and wrote a very graphic history of the expedition (p. ): "it has been said that the greatest boons conferred on mankind, have been due to men of one idea. if the laying of the atlantic cable be among those benefits, its consummation may certainly be attributed to the man who, having many ideas, devoted himself to work out one idea, with a gentle force and patient vigor which converted opposition and overcame indifference. mr. field may be likened either to the core, or the external protection, of the cable itself. at times he has been its active life; again he has been its iron-bound guardian. let who will claim the merit of having first said the atlantic cable was possible; to mr. field is due the inalienable merit of having made it possible, and of giving to an abortive conception all the attributes of healthy existence." sir william thomson, on the final triumph, wrote: "my dear field, i cannot refrain from putting down in black and white my hearty congratulations on your great success. few know better than i do how well you deserve it." eight months after he wrote from scotland: "i am sorry i had not an opportunity of saying in public how much i value your energy and perseverance in carrying through the great enterprise, and how clearly you stand out in its history as its originator and its mainspring from beginning to end." next to sir william thomson was mr. c. f. varley, who was associated in the work from an early day, and did much to solve the difficult problems of ocean telegraphy, and who wrote to mr. field, speaking from his personal knowledge: "you did more than any other to float the concern, and single-handed saved the whole scheme from collapse more than once." captain sir james anderson repeated the same conviction in numberless forms. he had seen how the presence of mr. field in london instantly revived the languid enthusiasm of others, and infused his own energy into the enterprise, and declared again and again that but for these heroic and incessant efforts the whole scheme would have broken down, and been delayed for many years. such expressions from english associates in the great work might be multiplied to any extent. they are much stronger than any language used by the author of this volume, who has purposely kept back such testimonies, lest it should seem that he wished to exalt an individual, when he sought to do justice to all, on both sides of the atlantic. nor was such recognition confined to england. the king of italy conferred on mr. field the cross of the order of st. mauritius, as an acknowledgment from the country of columbus to one who had done so much to unite to the old world that new world which columbus discovered. a still higher honor was paid by the great exposition in paris, in , which, gathering the products of the genius and skill and industry of all nations, recognized the labors of men of all countries, who, by their discoveries or great enterprises, had rendered eminent services to the cause of civilization. it awarded the grand prize, the highest distinction it had to bestow, to mr. field by name, jointly with the anglo-american and atlantic telegraph companies, thus recognizing, as was most due, the splendid exhibition of the science and the capital of england, which were never more directly employed for the benefit of the human race, than in the uniting of the two hemispheres, while it gave the first place in the grand design to its american leader. but to an american no praise is so dear as that which comes from his own countrymen. first of all to mr. field, was that which came from the faithful few who had stood by him and witnessed his exertions for twelve long years. at the first annual meeting of the stockholders of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, the following resolution was, on motion of mr. moses taylor, seconded by mr. wilson g. hunt, unanimously adopted: whereas, this company was the first ever formed for the establishment of an atlantic telegraph; an enterprise upon which it started in the beginning of , at the instance of mr. cyrus w. field, and which, through his wise and unwearied energy, acting upon this company, and others afterwards formed in connection with it, has been successfully accomplished: therefore the stockholders of this company, at this their first meeting since the completion of the enterprise, desiring to testify their sense of mr. field's services: resolve: first--that to him more than any other man, the world is indebted for this magnificent instrument of good; and but for him it would not, in all probability, be now in existence; second--that the thanks of the stockholders of this company are hereby given to mr. field for these services, which, though so great in themselves, and so valuable to this company, were rendered without any remuneration; and third--that a copy of this resolution, certified by the chairman and secretary of this meeting, be delivered to mr. field as a recognition, by those who best know, of his just right to be always regarded as the first projector, and most persistent and efficient promoter, of the atlantic telegraph. peter cooper, _chairman_. wilson g. hunt, _secretary_. to testify the public appreciation of this great achievement, and of his part in it, the chamber of commerce of new york invited mr. field to a public banquet, which was given on the fifteenth of november. it was attended by about three hundred gentlemen--not only merchants and bankers, but men of all professions--lawyers and judges, clergymen and presidents of colleges, members of the government and foreign ministers, and officers of the army and navy. the president of the chamber of commerce, mr. a. a. low, presided, and, at the close of his opening speech, said: "we may fairly claim that, from first to last, cyrus w. field has been more closely identified with the atlantic telegraph than any other living man; and his name and his fame, which the queen of great britain has justly left to the care of the american government and people, will be proudly cherished and gratefully honored. we are in daily use of the fruits of his labors; and it is meet that the men of commerce, of literature and of law, of science and art--of all the professions that impart dignity and worth to our nature--should come together and give a hearty, joyous, and generous welcome to this truly chivalrous son of america." he proposed the health of their guest: "cyrus w. field, the projector and mainspring of the atlantic telegraph: while the british government justly honors those who have taken part with him in this great work of the age, _his_ fame belongs to us, and will be cherished and guarded by his countrymen." in his reply, mr. field told the story with the utmost simplicity, passing rapidly over the nearly thirteen years, through which the enterprise had struggled with such doubtful fortunes, and taking pains to do full justice to all who shared in its labors, its disappointments and its triumphs. especially did he award the highest praise to the government of england for its liberal and constant support; to her men of science and her great capitalists, and to the officers of ships, electricians and engineers, who had taken part in this undertaking. in closing, he said: "of the results of this enterprise--commercially and politically--it is for others to speak. to one effect only do i refer as the wish of my heart--that, as it brings us into closer relations with england, it may produce a better understanding between the two countries. let who will speak against england--words of censure must come from other lips than mine. i have received too much kindness from englishmen to join in this language. i have eaten of their bread and drunk of their cup, and i have received from them, in the darkest hours of this enterprise, words of cheer which i shall never forget; and if any words of mine can tend to peace and good will, they shall not be wanting. i beg my countrymen to remember the ties of kindred. blood is thicker than water. america with all her greatness has come out of the loins of england; and though there have been sometimes family quarrels--bitter as family quarrels are apt to be--still in our hearts there is a yearning for the old home, the land of our fathers; and he is an enemy of his country and of the human race, who would stir up strife between two nations that are one in race, in language and in religion. i close with this sentiment: england and america--clasping hands across the sea, may this firm grasp be a pledge of friendship to all generations!" (to which the whole assembly responded by rising, and by prolonged and tumultuous cheers.) in the brilliant array of guests was recognized the tall form of general meade, who was loudly called for as "the hero of gettysburg," to which he replied that there was but one hero on this occasion, and he had travelled a hundred miles to be there that night to do him honor. he said: "i have watched with eagerness the struggle through which he has passed and the disasters which attended his early efforts; and i have admired and applauded, from the bottom of my heart, the tenacity of purpose with which that man has continued to hold on to his original idea, with a firm faith to carry to completion one of the greatest works the world has ever seen." the heartiness of this soldierly reply was echoed by the bluff old warrior, admiral farragut, who had been so often through the smoke and flame of battle, that he knew how to appreciate not only common courage, but the desperate tenacity which holds on in spite of disaster, that has gained many a victory. letters were read from the president of the united states, from chief justice chase, from general grant, from sir frederick bruce, the british minister, from senators morgan and sumner, from general dix, minister to france, and others. the chief justice of the united states wrote: "i am very sorry that i cannot leave washington this week, and so cannot avail myself of your kind invitation to join you in congratulations to mr. field upon the success of his grand undertaking. it is the most wonderful achievement of civilization; and to his sagacity, patience, perseverance, courage, and faith, is civilization indebted for it. "such works entitle their authors to distinguished rank among public benefactors. you will write the name of your honored guest high upon that illustrious roll, and there it will remain in honor, while oceans divide and telegraphs unite mankind." there was a telegraph instrument in the room, and despatches were received during the evening from mr. seward, secretary of state, and other members of the cabinet at washington, from lord monck, governor-general of canada, from the governor of newfoundland, and others. one, from captain sir james anderson, was dated at london the same day. john bright also wrote a despatch and sent it to london, but by an oversight it was not forwarded. he afterward wrote a letter, giving the message. it was as follows: "it is fitting you should honor the man to whom the whole world is debtor. he brought capital and science together to do his bidding, and europe and america are forever united. i cannot sit at your table, but i can join in doing honor to cyrus w. field. my hearty thanks to him may mingle with yours." he adds that he regarded what had been done as the most marvellous thing in human history; as more marvellous than the invention of the art of printing, or, he was almost ready to say, than the voyages of the genoese; and of mr. field, he says, "the world does not yet know what it owes to him, and this generation will never know it." about the same time, in a speech at a great reform meeting in leeds, he bore this proud testimony: "a friend of mine, cyrus field, of new york, is the columbus of our time, for after no less than forty voyages across the atlantic, in pursuit of the great aim of his life, he has at length, by his cable, moored the new world close alongside the old." nor was this mere rhetoric, a burst of extravagance, to which an orator might give way in the excitement of a public occasion; it was a comparison which he repeated on many occasions, though slightly varied in expression. mr. g. w. smalley, the well-known correspondent of the new york tribune, in writing from london, on the very day that mr. field was carried to his grave, recalls how he heard it from mr. bright's own lips. he says: "the great orator spoke of the great american in terms which he did not bestow lavishly, and never bestowed carelessly. his respect for mr. field's public work was sufficiently shown in the splendid eulogy which he passed upon him. to be called by such a man as mr. bright the columbus of the nineteenth century is renown enough for any man. the epithet is imperishable. it is, as thackeray said of a similar tribute to fielding in gibbon, like having your name written on the dome of st. peter's. the world knows it and the world remembers. i heard mr. bright use the phrase, and he adorned and emphasized it in his noblest tones." america has no official honors to bestow, no knighthoods or baronetcies to confer. but one honor it has, the thanks of congress, which, like the thanks of parliament, is the more highly prized in that it is so rarely bestowed, being reserved generally for distinguished officers in the army or navy, like generals grant, sherman or sheridan, or admiral farragut, who have won great victories. yet such was the feeling on this occasion, that when senator morgan, of new york, moved a vote of thanks in the name of the country, it met with an immediate response. it was at once referred to the committee on foreign relations, which reported unanimously in its favor; and when, some weeks after, giving time for due deliberation, it was brought up for action, it passed with entire unanimity. in the house of representatives it was preceded by many bills, so that there was danger that it might not be reached before the end of the session, yet on the very last day speaker colfax requested unanimous consent of the house to take it up out of its order, which was granted, and the resolution was then read three times, and passed unanimously. it is as follows: "_resolved, by the senate and house of representatives of the united states of america, in congress assembled_, that the thanks of congress be, and they hereby are, presented to cyrus w. field of new york, for his foresight, courage, and determination in establishing telegraphic communication by means of the atlantic cable, traversing mid-ocean and connecting the old world with the new; and that the president of the united states be requested to cause a gold medal to be struck, with suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions, to be presented to mr. field. "_and be it further resolved_, that when the medal shall have been struck, the president shall cause a copy of this joint resolution to be engrossed on parchment, and shall transmit the same, together with the medal, to mr. field, to be presented to him in the name of the people of the united states of america. "approved march , . "andrew johnson." this action of congress reached mr. field in england. as he was about returning to america, lord derby, still at the head of the government, addressed to him a letter in which he repeated what he had said before "in the queen's name," "how much of the success of the great undertaking of laying the atlantic cable was due to the energy and perseverance with which, from the very first, in spite of all discouragements, you adhered to and supported the project;" and adding, "your signal services in carrying out this great undertaking have been already fully recognized by congress; and it would have been very satisfactory to the queen to have included your name among those on whom, in commemoration of this great event, her majesty was pleased to bestow british honors, if it had not been felt that, as a citizen of the united states, it would hardly have been competent to you to accept them. as long, however, as the telegraphic communication between the two continents lasts, your name cannot fail to be honorably associated with it." this surely was all that could be expected from the government, but some there were in england who felt that there was still a debt of honor to be paid, which required some public testimonial. accordingly, on mr. field's return to london, in , they prepared for him an imposing demonstration in the form of a banquet, given at willis's rooms, on the first of july, at which was assembled one of the most distinguished companies that ever met to do honor to a private citizen of any country. it embraced over four hundred gentlemen of all ranks: ministers of state, members of parliament, both lords and commons; officers of the army and navy; great capitalists--merchants and bankers; men of science and of letters; inventors, electricians, and engineers--men eminent in every walk of life. the duke of argyll presided, and speeches were made by three members of the government--sir john pakington, secretary of state for war; sir stafford northcote, secretary of state for india; and sir alexander milne, first sea lord of the admiralty; by john bright; by the venerable lord stratford de redcliffe, so long the british minister at constantinople; and by m. de lesseps, the projector of the suez canal, who had come from egypt expressly to be present. it was a tribute such as is rarely paid to any man while living--such tributes being reserved for the dead--and is still more honorable in this case, alike to the givers and the receiver, in that it was paid by the people of one country to a citizen of another, who was regarded in both as their common benefactor. but enough of praise that can fall only on the dull, cold ear of death. a few words on the after years of this busy life, and i have done. these years brought a rich reward for all the sacrifices of the past. the first feeling was one of infinite relief that at last the victory was won. the terrible strain was taken off, and to him who had borne it so long, the change to the quiet of his own happy home was inexpressibly grateful after his many and long separations. he was now in his own country and under his own roof, but with a name that was known on both sides of the sea. the complete success of the atlantic telegraph had given him an immense reputation at home and abroad. it seemed as if the struggles of life were all over, leaving only its honors to be enjoyed. what more could he ask to make life worth living than the respect of his countrymen for his courage, energy and perseverance, and a name honored all over the civilized world as one of the world's benefactors? the practical results of the cable were even greater than he had dared to anticipate. in the space of a few months it wrought a commercial revolution in america. it was a new sensation to have the old world brought so near, that it entered into one's daily life. every morning, as mr. field went to his office, he found laid on his desk at nine o'clock the quotations on the royal exchange at twelve! lombard street and wall street talked with each other as two neighbors across the way. this soon made an end of the tribe of speculators who calculated on the fact that nobody knew at a particular moment the state of the market on the other side of the sea, an universal ignorance by which they profited by getting the earliest advices. but now everybody got them as soon as they, for the news came with the rising of each day's sun, and the occupation of a class that did much to demoralize trade on both sides of the ocean was gone. the same restoration of order was seen in the business of importations, which had been hitherto almost a matter of guess-work. a merchant who wished to buy silks in lyons, sent out his orders months in advance, and of course somewhat at random, not knowing how the market might turn, so that when the costly fabrics arrived, he might find that he had ordered too many or too few. a china merchant sent his ship round the world for a cargo of tea, which returned after a year's absence, bringing not enough to supply the public demand, leaving him in vexation at the thought of what he might have made, "if he had known," or, what was still worse, bringing twice too much, in which case the unsold half remained on his hands. this was a risk against which he had to be insured, as much as against fire or shipwreck. and the only insurance he could have was to take reprisals by an increased charge on his unfortunate customers. this double risk was now greatly reduced, if not entirely removed. the merchant need no longer send out orders a year beforehand, nor order a whole ship-load of tea when he needed only a hundred chests, since he could telegraph to his agent for what he wanted and no more. with this opportunity for getting the latest intelligence, the element of uncertainty was eliminated, and the importer no longer did business at a venture. buying from time to time, so as to take advantage of low markets, he was able to buy cheaper, and of course to sell cheaper. it would be a curious study to trace the effect of the cable upon the prices of all foreign goods. a new york merchant, who has been himself an importer for forty years, tells me that the saving to the american people cannot be less than many millions every year. but the slender cord beneath the sea had finer uses than to be a reporter of markets, giving quotations of prices to counting rooms and banking houses; it was a link between hearts and homes on opposite sides of the ocean, bearing messages of life and death, of joy and sorrow, of hopes and fears. one of its happiest uses was the relief of anxiety. a ship sailed for england with hundreds of passengers, but did not arrive at her destination on the appointed day. instantly a thousand hearts were tortured with fear, lest their loved ones had gone to the bottom of the sea, when the cable reported that the delay was due simply to an accident to her machinery, that would keep her back for a day or two, but that the good ship was safe with all on board. what arithmetic can compute the value of a single message that relieves so much anguish? thus the submarine telegraph stretched out its long arms under the sea, to lay a friendly hand on two peoples, and give assurance to both. such a triumph of commercial enterprise was enough to satisfy the pride and ambition of any man; but it was not in mr. field's nature to rest content with any success, however great, and he was always reaching out for some new undertaking to give scope to his restless activity. such an opportunity he found in giving rapid transit to new york, a city which, though it has one of the finest harbors in the world, with approaches from the sea that afford every possible advantage for commerce, is not so favorably situated landward, as it is built on a long and narrow island, between two broad rivers, which confine it on either side, so that it is stretched out to such distances that it is no easy matter to pass from one end to the other. from the battery to the harlem river is ten miles, so that working men, who lived so far away, were an hour or more in getting from their homes to their place of work, and as long in getting back again, a large inroad upon their hours of rest or domestic comfort. the only means of transportation was by street cars, which moved slowly, and in winter, whenever the streets were blocked with snow, were crowded to suffocation, and dragged at a snail's pace to the upper end of the island. this was the great barrier to the city's growth, and must be removed if it was not to be stunted and dwarfed by these limitations. to furnish some relief, an elevated railroad, built on stilts, had been attempted on a small scale, but soon broke down, when mr. field bought the control of the whole concern, and took it in his own strong arms. it was no easy matter to galvanize it into life, for though it had a charter, it was still obstructed in the legislature, and in the courts, so that it was a long time before he could get full possession. but once master of the situation, he undertook the work on a grand scale, and pushed it with such vigor that in less than two years the road was in operation. it has since been extended with the public demand, until now (in ) there are thirty-six miles of road, over which the trains sweep incessantly from the bay to the river, and from the river to the bay. the structures are not indeed the most graceful in the world, as they bestride the long avenues of the city. but these tall iron pillars, that line our streets for miles, are the long legs of civilization, and have a somewhat imposing effect as they stretch away into the distance, with the fire-drawn cars flying swiftly over them. dean stanley glorified them by a historical parallel which could occur only to one full of the wonders of ancient times, that started into life under the touch of his imagination. going with him one day on an excursion, he stepped briskly (for his frame was so light as to offer little impediment to motion), and as he mounted the long stairway, and stood on the platform above the crowded street below, he exclaimed, "this is babylonian! four chariots driving abreast on the walls of the city!" but babylonian or american, the success was enormous. as soon as the public became familiar with these elevated roads, and felt that they were safe as well as swift, the people swarmed upon them, in numbers constantly increasing, till now they carry over seven hundred thousand passengers a day! on the day of the columbus celebration (october th) it was a million and seventy-five thousand! indeed, if we are not staggered by numbers, we may sum up the whole in the amazing statement demonstrated by figures, that since these roads were opened, they have carried over eighteen hundred millions of passengers, more than the whole population of the globe! nor should it be forgotten that, not only is the facility they afford the greatest, but the fares the lowest, for, thanks to mr. field, they were reduced years ago to five cents at all hours and for the longest distance, the ten miles from the battery to the harlem river. the effect was immediate in the appreciation of real estate in the city, the assessed value of which has already advanced by the sum of five hundred millions of dollars! the increased taxation is enough to pay for all the cost, while as a relief to the congested parts of the city, and as furnishing a means for that easy circulation, which is as necessary to a great city as a free circulation of the blood is to the human body, it is not too much to say that the construction of the elevated railroads is the greatest material benefit that has ever been conferred on the city of new york. but busy as mr. field was through all these years, much of his life was spent abroad. he had interests on both sides of the atlantic, but stronger than his interests were his friendships to attract him across the sea. he had come to feel as much at home in england as in his own country: and his visits were so frequent that his sudden appearances and disappearances were a subject of amused comment to his english friends. when dean stanley was in america, a reception was given to him at the century club, where in a very happy address, he referred to the ties between the two countries, among which was "the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in england, that my friend and host, mr. cyrus field, passes his mysterious existence, appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in london and in new york!" as mr. field was thus brought near to his english friends, they in turn were brought near to him, for as no man in america was better known abroad, no house received more foreign guests, many of whom he had not met before, but who brought letters to him, and there was no end to his hospitality. john bright he could not persuade to cross the sea; but he had the pleasure to welcome his co-laborer in the repeal of the corn-laws, richard cobden. the house in gramercy park became famous for its receptions. many will recall that given to the marquis of ripon and the other high commissioners, who came a year or two after the war, as representatives of the british government, and negotiated at washington the treaty which settled the alabama claims; and those to dean stanley and archdeacon farrar; and to many others. if the strangers happened to arrive in the summer time, they were entertained at his beautiful country seat on the hudson, to which he had given the name of "ardsley," from the seat of john field the astronomer, who lived in the west riding of yorkshire more than three centuries ago, and introduced the copernican astronomy into england, and from whom the family are descended. in some cases when he went abroad, england was but the starting point for excursions on the continent, in which he visited almost every european country. in , in company with two well-known americans, bayard taylor and murat halstead, he made a voyage to iceland, as ten years before he had been to egypt, as a delegate from the new york chamber of commerce, to witness the opening of the suez canal. in - he took a still longer flight around the world. waiting till after the presidential election, that he might cast his vote for his friend general garfield, the very next day he left with his wife in a special car for san francisco, where after a few days, they took ship for japan, from which they passed through the inland sea to shanghai, and from china to singapore, and up the bay of bengal to calcutta, where he found the same english nobleman whom he had entertained in new york, the marquis of ripon, governor-general of india. going up the country, the travellers visited agra and delhi, where the wonders of architecture showed the magnificence of the old mogul empire. the whole journey was one of infinite pleasure and instruction, and they were never weary of talking of the strange manners and customs of the people of asia. when they returned to america, general garfield was president of the united states, who, though a western man by birth, had been educated in new england, at williams college in massachusetts, where he had been graduated twenty-five years before, and which he had a desire to revisit; and it was arranged that he should leave washington in the morning of july d, with as many of his cabinet as could be spared from the seat of government, and come on to new york and all be entertained at "ardsley," and the next day proceed up the hudson and across the country to williamstown; a programme which was interrupted by the terrible news that on arriving at the station in washington he had been shot, an event that instantly recalled the assassination of lincoln. at once there rose a cry of horror from one end of the land to the other, and for weeks the whole country was watching by the bedside of the illustrious sufferer. of course, the sympathy for the wife and children was universal, but mr. field was the first to give this sympathy a practical direction. with his quick eye he saw the condition in which they would be left by the death of the president, as for them the law makes no provision. his salary stops at the very day and hour that he ceases to live, nor is there a pension settled upon his family, nor can anything be paid from the national treasury except by special act of congress. in this extremity it occurred to mr. field that what the government failed to do should be made up by private generosity; and even before general garfield's death he started a subscription, heading it with five thousand dollars, and taking it in person to his rich friends. the self imposed task occupied him several months, in which he raised a fund of over three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, which was put into united states four per cent. bonds, yielding an interest of over twelve thousand dollars a year, to be paid quarterly during the life of mrs. garfield, and then to go to her children. it was a great satisfaction to have thus provided for those who bore the name of a president of the united states, so that they should be able to live in the comfort and dignity that befitted the family of one who had occupied the most exalted station in the government. not content with this, mr. field went to washington, and urged upon his friends in congress, and finally succeeded in getting passed, a bill giving to the widows of all presidents a pension of $ , , which, it added to his gratification to know, would apply to the venerable mrs. polk: and that still goes, and will go during her lifetime, to the wife of general grant, as the slight expression of a nation's gratitude. next to the interest he felt in his own country, his heart was in england. while he was an intense american, and perhaps, for that very reason, because he was an american, he claimed kindred with the people from whom we are not only descended, but have received such an inheritance of glory. in his own words: "america, with all her greatness, has come out of the loins of england." when he was in india he was proud of the mighty english race that from its little island governed an empire of two hundred and fifty millions on the other side of the globe. some might have said that he inherited no small portion of its unconquerable spirit. and not only did he admire old england, but he loved englishmen. he knew all that was said of english reserve and english pride, but long familiarity had taught him that underneath this cold exterior were many of the noblest qualities--courage, heroism and fidelity--so that it had become a part of his creed that an englishman, when once you have won his confidence, will go farther and fight harder for a friend or for a cause than any other man on the face of the earth. among such a people mr. field was proud to number many of his dearest friends. a touching proof of their regard for him was given but a few months before his death. on the d of december, , he and his wife celebrated their golden wedding. for fifty years they had travelled on the course of life together. children and grandchildren had been born to them, so that at the close of half a century a large and happy family was gathered round those to whom they looked up with the tenderest affection. among the congratulations of that day was a large scroll, signed by mr. gladstone, the duke of argyll, lord monck, and some eighty others whose names are widely known. it was a graceful tribute from england to a son of america, who had done perhaps more than any other living man to bring the two countries and the two peoples together. that golden wedding was the fit coronation of a life of wonderful activity, and all the kindred who met under that roof were grateful for the past, and full of hopes for the future. but god's ways are not as our ways. before many months the clouds began to gather. the next summer, when the family were all at their country home, sickness cast its shadow over their dwelling, which grew more grave till november d, when the leaves were falling from the trees before their door, the mother of this large household breathed her last. two months later the eldest daughter, who was also the eldest child of the family, followed. these repeated blows fell heavy on the affectionate heart of the bereaved husband and father, and when to these were added other sorrows still, it seemed as if the clouds were piled one upon another till they darkened all the horizon. the winter was a gloomy one, from its loneliness and its many causes of sadness. but with the returning spring the grass grew green again, and the trees put forth their leaves, and it seemed as if the new life of nature must put life into the heart of man: and when he removed to the country, and began to drive about as of old among the familiar haunts, the beautiful scenery for a time delighted his eye, and the change of air brought a touch of the old spirit, as if perchance his strength were about to return. but it was only a momentary flush, and he soon took to his room, where, as he looked from his windows, and saw the sun going down over the hills beyond the hudson, it could only remind him that for him the sun of life was about to set forever. fair was the world without but desolate was the home within, since she who had made its brightness was gone; and here on the th of july , the end came. it was a beautiful morning, and the windows were open, through which the soft summer air floated into the chamber of death, where his three brothers, all that were left of his father's family, with those of his own household, were round his bed, watching the dear pale face. thus surrounded and beloved to the last, he ceased to breathe. two days later a large company from the country round and from the city gathered at ardsley, and stood on the lawn and the slopes that lead up to the noble trees that shade the dwelling, as bishop potter read the blessed words, "i am the resurrection and the life, saith the lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." the next day we bore him away from his home, and from the great city where he had passed his busy life, back to the quiet valley where he was born, and laid him down in the shadow of the encircling hills.[a] "bury me there," he had said, "by the side of my beloved wife and by my father and mother." the earth closed over him, and all his struggles and his sorrows were buried in the grave. the man is gone, but the work remains, a work that multiplies itself, for when once a leader and explorer had opened the way, others were swift to follow, so that now there are no less than ten cables stretched across the atlantic, and every hour of day or night, "when men wake and when they sleep" (for even in the hours of silence the heart is still beating, only a little more slowly), the pulse of life is kept moving to and fro. the morning news comes after a night's repose, and we are wakened gently to the new day that has dawned upon the world. that which serves to such an end; which is a connecting link between countries and races of men; is not a mere material thing, an iron chain, lying cold and dead in the icy depths of the atlantic. it is a living, fleshly bond between severed portions of the human family, thrilling with life, along which every human impulse runs swift as the current in human veins, and will run for ever. free intercourse between nations, as between individuals, leads to mutual kindly offices, that make those who at once give and receive, feel that they are not only neighbors but friends. hence the "mission" of submarine telegraphy is to be the minister of peace. the first message across the deep was "glory to god in the highest; peace on earth, good will to men," and the first news it brought was that of peace in china. and when again the sea had found a tongue, its first glad intelligence was that the great war between austria and prussia was ended. thus at its very birth was this new messenger baptized in the name of peace, and consecrated to a service worthy of its name. "man marks the earth with ruin: his control stops with the shore: upon the watery plain the wrecks are all thy deed." not all! the wrath of man adds to the fury of the elements. to strew the sea with wrecks is the work of lightning and tempest: man's nobler office is to restore what nature may destroy. it was the chief desire of him who has gone to the grave, that the link which unites england and america might bind the countries that he loved the most in indissoluble union. though the two nations dwell apart, on opposite shores of the same great and wide sea, they are now brought almost within the sound of each other's voice and the touch of each other's hand: they can look into each other's eyes, and exchange their morning and evening congratulations with the rising and setting of each day's sun. may the instrument through which they look and speak never startle them with rude alarms, but continue to whisper peace in tones as gentle as the murmur of the sea, as long as the winds blow and the waters roll. footnotes: [a] the berkshire hills, stockbridge, massachusetts. appendix. instruments for signalling across the atlantic ocean. if the project of an atlantic telegraph be justly ascribed to the daring of an american, and its success to his courage and perseverance through years of struggle and disappointment; the solution of the scientific problem involved in it, is due to the genius of a scotchman, whom the writer of this volume first knew (and it is a pleasant memory to have known such a man in the beginning of his splendid career) as professor thomson of the university of glasgow, where his father had been professor before him, whom the son succeeded in the department of physics, which included the then little known science of electricity, to which the young professor devoted himself with all the eagerness of scientific genius. the project of a telegraph across the ocean suggested new problems and new difficulties, to which he applied himself with characteristic ardor, the result of which is here given. when the second expedition of the great eastern (in ) was successful, the british government at once recognized his eminent services; and the name of sir william thomson has since been recognized, among the leaders in scientific discovery, not only in england but all over the scientific world. the government has recently added a further dignity in making him a peer of the realm, an honor hitherto reserved generally for the leaders of armies, like wellington. to confer it on a simple professor shows an advance of civilization in the respect paid to intellectual greatness. in conferring such a title, the government does not honor the man more than it honors itself. it is to the glory of england that such an honor should be paid to science in the person of lord kelvin, as was paid to literature in the person of lord tennyson. the following, taken in substance from an english scientific review, will indicate briefly, but with sufficient clearness, the problem to be solved in signalling to great distances under the sea, and the instruments by which this is accomplished:-- the speed of signalling through a submarine cable depends upon its electrostatic capacity, which, unless it be very small, gives rise to "retardation." in the proceedings of the royal society for , sir william thomson showed how the effect at the distant end of a cable, caused by the application of a battery at one end, could be calculated and represented graphically in what is called the "curve of arrival." after contact is first made at the sending end between the cable and one pole of the battery (the other pole being to earth), a certain interval of time elapses before any effect is felt at the distant end. this interval of time is denoted by the letter _a_. after the interval of time _a_ has passed, a current begins to issue from the cable at the receiving end, and increases in strength very rapidly. after a further interval of _a_ or after a period of _a_ from the first application of the battery, it attains about half its maximum strength, and there is very little sensible increase in strength after a time equal to _a_ has elapsed. the curve of arrival is drawn by taking distances along o x to represent intervals of time, and distances along o y to represent strengths of current. curve no. i. shows the gradual increase in strength of the received current at one end of a cable when the battery is applied to and kept in contact with the other end. for a distance corresponding to the interval of time _a_, the curve does not sensibly deviate from the straight line o x; in other words, no effect is observable at the receiving end during this time. [illustration] if now, instead of being continuously applied to the battery at the sending end, the cable had been applied to it during a short interval of time, and then disconnected from the battery and connected to earth, the curve of arrival would be of the form shown by curve no. ii. curve no. ii. shows the effect of applying the battery during a length of time equal to _a_, and then putting the cable to earth. it will be seen that a current gradually diminishing in strength continues to flow out of the cable at the distant end for a considerable time after the battery has been disconnected. this continued discharge is what gives rise to the difficulty experienced in reading the signals sent through long cables. the instrument first used for receiving signals through a long submarine cable (the short-lived atlantic cable) was the mirror galvanometer, which consisted of a small mirror with four light magnets attached to its back (weighing, in all, less than half-a-grain), suspended by means of a single silk fibre, in a proper position within the hollow of a bobbin of fine wire: a suitable controlling magnet being placed adjacent to the apparatus. the action of this instrument is as follows. on the passage of a current of electricity through the fine wire coil, the suspended magnets with the mirror attached, tend to take up a position at right angles to the plane of the coil, and are deflected to one side or the other according as the current is in one direction or the other. of various other forms of _receiving_ instruments devised by sir william thomson, the next to be noticed is the spark recorder, both on account of the principles involved in its construction, and because it in some respects foreshadowed the more perfect instrument, the siphon recorder, which he introduced some years later. the action of the spark recorder was as follows. an indicator, suitably supported, was caused to take a to-and-fro motion, by means of the electro-magnetic action due to the electric currents constituting the signals. this indicator was connected to a ruhmkorff coil or other equivalent apparatus, designed to cause a continual succession of sparks to pass between the indicator, and a metal plate situated beneath it and having a plane surface parallel to its line of motion. over the surface of this plate and between it and the indicator, there was passed, at a regularly uniform speed in a direction perpendicular to the line of motion of the indicator, a material capable of being acted on physically by the sparks, either through their chemical action, their heat, or their perforating force. the record of the signals given by this instrument was an undulating line of fine perforations or spots, and the character and succession of the undulations were used to interpret the signals desired to be sent. the latest form of _receiving_ instrument for long submarine cables, is that of the siphon recorder, for which sir william thomson obtained his first patent in . within the three succeeding years he effected great improvements on it, and the instrument has, since that date, been exclusively employed in working most of the more important submarine cables of the world--indeed all except those on which the mirror-galvanometer method is still in use. [illustration: fig. .] in the siphon recorder (a view of which is shown in fig. ), the indicator consists of a light rectangular signal-coil of fine wire, suspended between the poles of a powerful electro-magnet, so as to be free to move about its longer axis which is vertical, and so joined up that the electric currents constituting the signals through the cable, pass through it. a fine glass siphon-tube is suitably suspended, so as to have only one degree of freedom to move, and is connected to the signal-coil so as to move with it. the short leg of the siphon-tube dips into an insulated ink-bottle, which permits of the ink contained by it being electrified, while the long leg is situated so that its open end is at a very small distance from a brass table, placed with its surface parallel to the plane in which the mouth of this leg moves, and over which a slip of paper may be passed at a uniform rate as in the spark recorder. the effect of electrifying the ink is to cause it to be projected in very minute drops from the open end of the siphon-tube, towards the brass table or on the paper-slip passing over it. thus when the signal-coil moves in obedience to the electric signal currents passed through it, the motion then communicated to the siphon, is recorded on the moving slip of paper by a wavy line of ink marks very close together. the interpretation of the signals is according to the morse code; the dot and dash being represented by deflections of the line to one side or the other of the centre line of the paper. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] perfect as this instrument seemed, yet after further years of study and experiment, sir william thomson was able, at the close of , to present to the world the siphon recorder, greatly improved, because in a very much simpler form. in this form of the instrument, instead of the electro-magnets, he used two bundles of long bar-magnets of square section and made up of square bars of glass-hard steel. the two bundles are supported vertically on a cast-iron socket, and on the upper end of each is fitted a soft iron shoe, so shaped as to concentrate the lines of force and thus produce a strong magnetic field in the space within which the signal-coil is suspended. he made instruments of this kind to work both with and without electrification of the ink. without electrification the instrument, as shown in fig. , is exceedingly simple and compact, and in this form is capable of doing good work on cables of lengths up to or miles. when constructed for electrification of the ink, as shown in fig. , it is of course available for much longer lengths of cable, but for cables such as the atlantic cables, the original form of the siphon recorder is that still chiefly used. the strongest magnetic field hitherto obtained by permanent magnets (of glass-hard steel) is about c. g. s. with the electro-magnets of the original form of siphon recorder as in ordinary use a magnetic field of about or over c. g. s. is easily attained. in fig. is shown a _fac simile_ of part of a message received and recorded by a siphon recorder, such as is shown in fig. , from one of the eastern telegraph co.'s cables of about miles length. [illustration: fig. .] * * * * * transcriber's note: spelling variants where there was no obviously preferred choice were left as is. since there are numerous quotations in this work, this is partly due to spelling choices of different authors. variants include: "dispatched" and "despatched;" "embedded" and "imbedded;" "encrusted" and "incrusted;" "hurras" and "hurrahs;" "northeast" and "north-east," and similar hyphenation in directions; "per cent." and "per cent" (inconsistent use of period); "recrossing" and "re-crossing;" "rockbound" and "rock-bound;" "signaled" and "signalled;" "stateroom" and "state-room;" "undercurrent" and "under-current." removed extra comma after "heart" on page : "the heart of a prince." changed "abunance" to "abundance" on page : "too great abundance." changed "knigthstown" to "knightstown" on page : "at knightstown, valentia." changed "announcment" to "announcement" on page : "this simple announcement." changed "develope" to "develop" on page : "develop the resources." changed "grip" to "gripe" on page , for consistency with spelling throughout: "a fresh gripe." changed "hemipheres" to "hemispheres" on page : "the two hemispheres." changed "mitror" to "mirror" on page : "with the mirror attached." transcriber's note: in transcribing this book, the proofreaders found and corrected several minor typographical errors which did not affect the sense of the text. in the caption to figure , the equation for the voltage of a weston cell at different temperatures was missing a digit " " and this has been corrected. there is a reference to a figure but no such figure exists in the original text. there are references to a figure and a figure ; these presumably exist in one of the preceding volumes of the series. throughout, the use of italic type is indicated by _underscores_. in equations, superscripts are indicated by a caret and braces, as in x^{ } for "x squared". subscripts are indicated by underscore and braces, as in e_{t} to mean "e sub t". the thought is in the question the information is in the answer hawkins electrical guide number three questions answers & illustrations a progressive course of study for engineers, electricians, students and those desiring to acquire a working knowledge of electricity and its applications a practical treatise by hawkins and staff theo. audel & co. fifth ave. new york copyrighted, , by theo. audel & co., new york. printed in the united states. table of contents guide no. . galvanometers to action of compass needle--simple galvanometer--difference between galvanoscope and galvanometer--sensibility--action of short and long coil galvanometers--classes of galvanometer--astatic galvanometer--tangent galvanometer--graduation of tangent galvanometer scale--table of galvanometer constants--mechanical explanation of tangent law--sine galvanometer--table of natural sines and tangents--comparison of sine and tangent galvanometers--differential galvanometer--ballistic galvanometer--kick--damping effect--use of mirrors in galvanometers--lamp and scale--damping--d'arsonval galvanometer: construction, operation; uses--galvanometer constant or figure of merit--shunts. testing and testing apparatus to pressure measurement--clark cell--weston cadmium cell--pressure measurement error with ordinary voltmeter--international volt--hydraulic analogy of amperes--coulombs--current measurement--international ampere--voltameters--ohm's law and the ohm--international ohm--ohm table--practical standards of resistance--various methods of resistance measurement--direct deflection method--method of substitution--resistance box--fall of potential method--differential galvanometer method--drop method--voltmeter method--wheatstone bridge--usual arrangement of resistances of wheatstone bridge--ratio coils of wheatstone bridge--the decade plan--two plug arrangement--"plug out" and "plug in" type of resistance box--testing sets--direct deflection method with queen acme set--ohmmeter--fall of potential method with queen acme set--apparatus for measuring low resistances--how to check a voltmeter--kelvin wire bridge--internal resistance measurement--evershed portable ohmmeter set--l and n fault finder--ammeter test--diagram of queen standard potentiometer--diagrams illustrating loop testing--the murray loop--the varley loop--special loop--the potentiometer--location of opens--to pick out faulty wires in a cable--voltage of cell measurement with potentiometer--care of potentiometer--location of faults where the loop is composed of cables of different cross sections. ammeters, voltmeters, and wattmeters to definition of ammeter--classification of ammeter and voltmeters--moving iron type instrument--keystone voltmeter--winding in ammeters and volts--connections for series and shunt ammeters--voltmeter connections--westinghouse ammeter shunts--various types of instrument--plunger type instrument--magnetic vane instrument--inclined coil instrument--whitney hot wire instruments--principle of electrostatic instruments--multipliers--portable shunts--siemens electro-dynamometer--station instruments--thompson watt hour meter--how to read a meter--installation of wattmeters--westinghouse watt hour meter--thompson prepayment watt hour meter--how to test a meter--sangamo watt hour meter--columbia watt hour meter--duncan watt hour meter. operation of dynamos to before starting a dynamo--adjusting the brushes--brush position--how to set the brushes--method of soldering cable to carbon brush--brush contact pressure--direction of rotation--method of winding cables with marlin--method of assembling core discs--starting a dynamo--tinning block for electric soldering tool--shunt dynamos in parallel--shunt dynamos on three wire system--how to start a series machine--the term "build up"--how to start a shunt or compound machine--"picking up"--indication of reversed connections--how to correct reversed polarity--finding the reversed coil--loss of residual magnetism--remedy for reversed dynamo--attention while running--lead of brushes--method of taking temperature--lubrication--oils--allowable degree of heating--attention to brushes and brush gear. coupling of dynamos to series and parallel connections--coupling series dynamos in series; in parallel--equalizer--shunt dynamos in series; in parallel--switching dynamo into and out of parallel--to cut out a machine--dividing the lead--compound dynamos in series; in parallel--equalizer connection--switching a compound dynamo into and out of parallel--equalizing the load--shunt and compound dynamos in parallel. dynamo fails to excite to various causes--brushes not properly adjusted--defective contacts--incorrect adjustment of regulators--speed too low--testing for break--insufficient residual magnetism; remedy--open circuits--test for field circuit breakers--probable location of breaks--watson armature discs--fort wayne commutator truing device--short circuits--watson armature--wrong connections--reversed field magnetism. armature troubles to causes--how avoided--various faults--short circuit in individual coils--location of faulty coil--test for break in armature lead--bar to bar test for open or short circuit in coil or between segments--short circuits between adjacent coils--alternate bar test for short circuits between sections--short circuits between sections through frame or core of armature; between sections through binding wires--partial short circuits in armatures--method of testing for breaks--burning of armature coils--watson field coils--grounds in armatures--method of locating grounded armature coil--magneto test for grounded armatures--method of binding armature winding--breaks in armature circuit. care of the commutator and brushes to conditions for satisfactory operation--oil for commutator--attention to brushes--bissell brush gear--two kinds of sparking--commutator clamp--causes of sparking--bad adjustment of brushes--rocking--bad condition of brushes--brushes making bad contact--bad condition of commutator--detection of untrue commutator--high segments--"flats"--causes of flats; remedy--method of repairing broken joint between commutator segment and lug--segments loose or knocked in--how to re-turn a commutator--bissell commutators--overload of dynamo--method of repairing large hole burned in two adjacent bars of a commutator--operating dynamos with metal brushes--indication of excessive voltage--method of smoothing commutator with a stone--causes of excessive voltage--loose connections, terminals, etc.,--breaks in armature circuit--sandpaper holder for commutator--short circuits, in armature circuits; in field--breaks in field--sandpaper block--short circuits in commutator. heating to various causes--how detected--procedure--heating, of connections; of brushes, commutator and armature--excessive heating--ventilated commutator--self-oiling bearing--some causes of hot bearing--effect of hot bearings--points relating to hot bearings--operation above rated voltage and below normal speed--forced system of lubrication--heating of field magnets--causes of eddy currents in pole pieces--detection of moisture in field coils--indication of short circuits in field coils. operation of motors to before starting a motor--starting a motor--various starting resistances--starting boxes--speed regulators--cutler hammer starter--time required to start motor--how to start--sliding contact starters--series motors on battery circuits--starting a shunt motor--multiple switch starters--effect of reverse voltage--rheostat with no voltage and overload release--failure to start--starting panel--cutler hammer starting rheostats--allen bradley automatic starter--monitor starter with relay for push button control--a remote control of shunt motors--regulation of motor speed; various methods--monitor printing press controller--speed regulation of series motor, by short circuiting sections of the field winding--varying the speed of shunt and compound motors--cutler hammer multiple switch starter--regulation by armature resistance--compound starter--regulation by shunt field resistance--holzer cabot instructions for shunt wound motor--reliance adjustable speed motor--cutler hammer reversible starter--combined armature and shunt field control--selection of starters and regulators--watson commutators--organ blower speed regulator--general electric controller--speed regulation of traction motors--controller of the rauch and lang electric vehicles--two motor regulation--controller connection diagrams--stopping a motor. chapter xxvi galvanometers if a compass needle be allowed to come to rest in its natural position, and a current of electricity be passed through a wire just over it from north to south, the north seeking end of the needle will be deflected toward the east. if the wire be placed under the needle and the current continued from north to south the needle will be deflected toward the west. again, if the current be passed from north to south over the needle, and back from south to north under the needle, as shown in fig. , the magnetic effect will be doubled, and the needle deflected proportionately. upon these phenomena depend the working of galvanometers. [illustration: fig. .--effect of neighboring current upon a magnetic needle. above the needle and parallel to it is a conductor carrying an electric current, the current flowing in the direction indicated by the arrow. this causes the north pole of the needle to turn toward the east. if the conductor be held _below_ the needle, its north pole will turn in the opposite direction or toward the west. these movements are easily determined by ampere's rule as follows: _if a man could swim in the conductor with the current, and turn to face the needle, then the north pole of the needle will be deflected toward his left hand_.] ques. describe a simple galvanometer. ans. it consists essentially of a magnetic needle suspended within a coil of wire, and free to swing over the face of a graduated dial. ques. what is a galvanoscope and how does it differ from a galvanometer? ans. a galvanoscope, as shown in fig. , serves merely to indicate the presence of an electric current without measuring its strength. it is an indicator of currents where the movement of the needle shows the direction of the current, and indicates whether it is a strong or a weak one. when the value of the readings has been determined by experiment or calculation any galvanoscope becomes a galvanometer. [illustration: fig. .--effect upon a magnetic needle of a neighboring current in a loop. in this arrangement the same conductor is simply carried back _beneath_ the needle and hence both the upper and lower portions tend to turn it in the same direction, while the side branch or vertical section is ineffective. in accordance with ampere's swimming rule, the _upper_ wire causes the n pole of the needle to turn to the left, while if a man can imagine himself swimming in the lower wire in the direction of the current, and facing the needle (that is, swimming on his back), the n pole of the needle will turn to his left--that is to the east. the effect of the loop then has double the effect of the single wire in fig. .] ques. for what use are galvanometers employed? ans. they are used for detecting the presence of an electric current, and for determining its direction and strength. ques. how is the direction and strength of the current indicated? ans. when a galvanometer is connected in a circuit, the direction of the current is indicated by the side towards which the north pole of the needle moves, and the current strength by the extent of the needle's deflection. [illustration: fig. .--effect upon a magnetic needle of a neighboring current in a coil. the coil as shown, is equivalent to several loops, that is, the force tending to deflect the needle is equal to that of a single loop multiplied by the number of turns. hence, by using a coil with a large number of turns, a galvanometer may be made very sensitive so that the needle will be perceptibly deflected by very feeble currents. an instrument, as shown in the figure is called a _galvanoscope_. when it is accurately constructed, and supplied with a scale showing how many degrees the needle is deflected it is then called a galvanometer.] ques. how should a galvanometer be set up before using? ans. when no current is flowing, the coil should be parallel to the magnetic needle when at rest. ques. what is a "sensitive" galvanometer? ans. one which requires a very small current or pressure to produce a stated deflection. it does not follow that a galvanometer which is sensitive for current measurement will also be sensitive for pressure measurement. [illustration: fig. .--bunnell simple detector galvanometer. it has middle clamps and scale divided into degrees.] ques. define the term "sensibility." ans. with reference to mirror reflecting galvanometers it may be defined in three ways. first, in _megohms_, the sensibility being the number of _megohms_ through which one volt will produce a deflection of one millimeter with the scale at one meter distance. second, in _micro-volts_, the sensibility being the number of micro-volts which applied directly to the terminals of the galvanometer will produce a deflection of one millimeter on a scale one meter from mirror. the sensibility is best stated in megohms for high resistance galvanometers and in micro-volts for low resistance galvanometers, and is frequently given both for galvanometers for intermediate resistance. third, in micro-amperes, the sensibility being the number of micro-amperes that will give one millimeter deflection with scale at a distance of one meter. ques. upon what does the sensibility depend? ans. , upon the number of times the current circulates around the coil, , the distance of the needle from the coil, , the weight of the needle, , the current strength, and , the amount of friction produced by its movement. [illustration: fig. .--breguet upright galvanometer with glass shade.] [illustration: fig. .--bunnell horizontal galvanometer. it has two coils, one of which is of zero resistance and one of fifty ohms resistance adapting it to a variety of test.] the needle is usually quite small, and often a compound one. in very sensitive galvanometers, the coils are wound with thousands of turns of very fine wire, and shunts are generally used in connection with them. note.--strong currents must not be passed through very sensitive galvanometers, for even if they be not ruined, the deflections of the needle will be too large to give accurate measurements. in such cases the galvanometer is used with a shunt, or coil of wire arranged so that the greater part of the current will flow through it, and only a small portion through the galvanometer. ques. what two kinds of coil are used? ans. the short coil and the long coil. ques. what is the difference between a short coil and a long coil galvanometer? ans. a short coil galvanometer has a coil consisting of a few turns of heavy wire; a long coil galvanometer is wound with a large number of turns of fine wire. [illustration: fig. .--bunnell galvanometer for measurements of instruments, lines, batteries, wires and any object from / to , ohms or more.] ques. what is the action of short and long coil galvanometers? ans. with a given current, the total magnetizing force which deflects the needle is the same, but with a short coil, it is produced by a large current circulating around a few turns, instead of a small current circulating around thousands of turns as in the long coil. the short coil being of low resistance is used to measure the current, and the long coil with high resistance, is suitable for measuring the pressure. hence, a short coil instrument with its scale directly graduated in amperes is an _ammeter_, and the long coil type with graduation in volts is a _voltmeter_. classes of galvanometer.--there are numerous kinds of galvanometer designed to meet the varied requirements. according to construction, galvanometers may be divided into two classes, as those having: . movable magnet and stationary coil; . stationary magnet and movable coil. [illustration: fig. .--astatic needles. two magnetic needles of equal moment are mounted in opposition on a light support. the whole system is suspended by a delicate fibre, and when placed in a uniform magnetic field such as that of the earth, there will be no tendency to assume any fixed direction, the only restraining influence on the needles being that due to torsion in the suspension fibre.] either type may be constructed with short or long coil, and there are several ways in which the deflections are indicated. the principal forms of galvanometer are as follows: . astatic; . tangent; . sine; . differential; . ballistic; . d'arsonval. astatic galvanometer.--it has been pointed out how a compass needle is affected when a wire carrying a current is held over or under it, the needle being turned in one direction in the first instance, and in the opposite direction for the second position of the wire. [illustration: fig. .--connections of single coil astatic needles. the coil surrounds the lower needle and the direction of the current between the two needles tends to turn them the same way.] the earth's magnetism naturally holds the compass needle north and south. the magnetic field encircling the wire, being at right angles to the needle (when the wire itself is parallel therewith), operates to turn it from its normal position, north and south, so as to set it partially east and west. however, on account of the fact that the earth's magnetism does exert some force tending to hold the needle north and south, it is evident that no matter how strong the current, the latter can never succeed in turning the needle entirely east and west. the accomplishment of this is further prevented by the reason of the points of the needle, where the magnetic effect is greatest, quickly passing out of the reach of the magnetic field, where it is now practically operated on only in a slight degree. thus it would take quite a powerful current to hold the needle deflected any appreciable distance. the use of a shorter needle is, therefore, more desirable. it is evident in this style of instrument that the effect of the current cannot be accurately measured, because it acts in opposition to the earth's magnetism, and as this is constantly varying, some method must be employed which will either destroy the earth's magnetism or else neutralize it. in the astatic galvanometer, the earth's magnetism is neutralized by means of _astatic needles_. these consist of a combination of two magnetic needles of equal size and strength, connected rigidly together with their poles pointing in opposite and parallel directions, as shown in fig. . as the north pole of the earth attracts the south pole of one of the needles, it repels with equal strength the north pole of the other needle, hence, the combination is independent of the earth's magnetism and will remain at rest in any position. [illustration: fig. .--connections of double coil astatic needles. with this arrangement, the direction of current in both coils will tend to turn the system in the same direction, making the needles more sensitive than with a single coil as in fig. .] if one of the needles be surrounded by a coil, as shown in fig. , the magnetic effect of the current will be correctly indicated by the deflection of the needle. sometimes each needle is surrounded by a coil, as in fig. , the coils being so connected that the direction of current in each will tend to deflect the needles in the same direction. ques. for what use is the astatic galvanometer adapted? ans. for the detection of small currents. it is used in the "nil" or zero methods, in which the current between the points to which the galvanometer is connected is reduced to zero. [illustration: fig. .--queen reflecting astatic galvanometer. it is mounted on a mahogany base with levelling screws. a plain mirror is attached above the upper needle. the entire combination of mirror and needles is suspended by unspun silk from the interior of a brass tube, which also carries a weak controlling magnet. a dial inches in diameter and graduated in degrees, enables the deflections of the needle to be accurately read. the mirror can be used with a reading telescope and scale, or by means of a lantern, the image of a slit may be reflected from the mirror to a screen. resistance, . to , ohms.] ques. upon what does the movement of the needles depend? ans. upon the combined effect of the magnetic attraction of the current which tends to deflect the needles, and the torsion in the suspension fibre which tends to keep the needle at the zero position. ques. does the astatic galvanometer give correct readings for different values of the current? ans. when the deflections are _small_ (that is, less than ° or °), they are very nearly proportional to the strength of the currents that produce them. thus, if a current produce a deflection of ° it is known to be approximately three times as strong as a current which only turns the needle through °. but this approximate proportion ceases to be true if the deflection be more than ° or °. [illustration: fig. .--central scientific co. tangent galvanometer. a inch brass ring is mounted on a mahogany base which rotates on a tripod provided with levelling screws. the needle has an aluminum pointer and jewelled bearing. the winding consists of turns of magnet wire so connected to the plugs in front that , , , or turns or any combination of these numbers may be used. for heavy currents a band of copper is used by connecting to the extra pair of binding posts in the rear of the instrument.] ques. why does the instrument not give accurate readings for large deflections? ans. the needles are not so advantageously acted upon by the current, since the poles are no longer within the coils, but protrude at the side. moreover, the needles being oblique to the force acting on them, part only of the force is turning them against the directive force of the fibre; the other part is uselessly pulling or pushing them along their length. [illustration: fig. .--bunnell tangent galvanometer. this instrument is mounted on a circular hard rubber base, - / inches diameter, provided with levelling screws and anchoring points. the galvanometer consists of a magnetized needle / inch in length, suspended at the center of a rubber ring six inches in diameter, containing the coils. there are five coils of , , , and ohms resistance. the first is a stout copper band of inappreciable resistance; the others are of different sized copper wires, carefully insulated. five terminals are provided, marked, respectively, , , , and . the ends of the coils are so arranged that the plug inserted at the terminal marked puts in circuit all the coils; marked at the terminal --all except the ohm coil; and so on, till at the zero terminal only the copper band is in circuit. fixed to the needle, which is balanced on jewel and point, is an aluminum pointer at right angles, extending across a five inch dial immediately beneath. one side of the dial is divided into degrees; on the other side, the graduations correspond to the tangent of the angles of deflection.] ques. how may correct readings be obtained? ans. the instrument may be calibrated, that is, it may be ascertained by special measurements, or by comparison with a standard instrument, the amounts of deflection corresponding to particular current strengths. thus, if it be once known that a deflection of ° on a particular galvanometer is produced by a current of / of an ampere, then a current of that strength will _always_ produce on that instrument the same deflection, unless from any accident the torsion force or the intensity of the magnetic field be altered. [illustration: fig. .--tangent galvanometer. it consists of a short magnetic needle suspended at the center of a coil of large diameter and small cross section. in practice, the diameter of the coil is about times the length of the needle. if the instrument be so placed that, when there is no current in the coil, the suspended magnet lies in the plane of the coil, that is, if the plane of the coil be set in the magnetic meridian, then _the current passing through the coil is proportional to the tangent of the angle by which the magnet is deflected from the plane of the coil_, or zero position--hence the name: "tangent galvanometer."] the tangent galvanometer.--it is not possible to construct a galvanometer in which the _angle_ (as measured in degrees of arc) through which the needle is deflected is proportional throughout its whole range to the strength of the current. but it is possible to construct a very simple galvanometer in which the _tangent of the angle of deflection_ shall be accurately proportional to the strength of the current. [illustration: fig. .--horizontal section through middle of tangent galvanometer, showing magnetic whirls around the coil and corresponding deflection of needle.] [illustration: fig. .--diagram of forces acting on the needle of a tangent galvanometer.] a simple form of tangent galvanometer is shown in fig. . the coil of this instrument consists of a simple circle of stout copper wire from ten to fifteen inches in diameter. at the center is delicately suspended a magnetized steel needle not exceeding one inch in length, and usually furnished with a light index of aluminum. when the galvanometer is in use, the plane of the ring must be vertical and in the magnetic meridian. a horizontal section through the middle of the instrument is shown in fig. . for simplicity, the coil is supposed to have but a single turn of wire, the circles surrounding the wire representing the magnetic lines of force. by extending the lines of force until they reach the needle, it will be seen that with a short needle, the deflecting force acts in an east and west direction when the galvanometer is placed with its coil in the magnetic meridian. if, in fig. , _ab_ represent the deflecting force acting on the n end of the needle, the component of this force that acts at a right angle to the needle will be _ab_ cos _x_ in which, _x_ is the angle of the deflection. the controlling force is _ad_ = h and when the needle is in equilibrium, the component _ae_ = h sin _x_ is equal and opposite to _ac_, hence _ab_ cos _x_ = h sin _x_ from which _ab_ = h(sin _x_ / cos _x_) = h tan _x_ since _ab_ is proportional to the current, _ab_ = _k_ c = h tan _x_ in which _k_ is a constant depending upon the instrument. for any other current c', _k_ c' = h tan _x'_ hence c: c' = tan _x_ : tan _x'_ this means that the currents passing through the coil of a tangent galvanometer are proportional, not to the angle of deflection, but to the tangent of that angle. [illustration: fig. .--diagram illustrating the tangent law. this is the law of the combined action of two magnetic fields upon a magnetic needle. if two magnetic fields be at right angles in direction as indicated in the figure, the resultant field is obtained by the parallelogram of forces and it makes an angle [theta] with one of the component fields such that tan [theta] = m + h where m and h are the strengths of the component fields. in the tangent galvanometer this principle is employed in the measurement of currents. a magnetic needle is pivoted in a field of known strength. the current to be measured is passed round a coil (or coils) which generates a field at right angles to the original field. the needle then lies along the direction of the resultant field, and by finding the tangent of its angle of deflection, and knowing the field strength produced by unit current in the coil, the current strength can be found.] [illustration: fig. .--graduation of tangent galvanometer scale with divisions representing tangent values. in the figure let a tangent ot be drawn to the circle, and along this line let any number of equal divisions be set off, beginning at o. from these points draw lines back to the center. the circle will thus be divided into a number of spaces, of which those near o are nearly equal, but which get smaller and smaller as they recede from o. these unequal spaces correspond to equal increments of the tangent. if the scale were divided thus, the readings would be proportional to the tangents.] ques. upon what does the sensibility of a tangent galvanometer depend? ans. it is directly proportional to the number of turns of the coil and inversely proportional to the diameter of the coil. ques. how may the tangent galvanometer be used as an ammeter? ans. the strength of the current may be calculated in amperes by the formula given below when the dimensions of the instrument are known. the needle is supposed to be subject to only the earth's magnetism and to move in a horizontal plane. the current is calculated as follows: ( ) amperes = ((h Ã� _r_)/n) tan _x_ in which h = constant from table below; r = radius of coil; n = number of turns of coil; x = angle of deflection of needle. the constant h, given in the following table represents the horizontal force of the earth's magnetism for the place where the galvanometer is used. each value has been multiplied by ( [pi])/ so that the formula ( ) for amperes is correct as given. table of galvanometer constants.--values of h. boston | . | chicago | . | denver | . | jacksonville | . | london | . | minneapolis | . | new york | . | new haven | . | philadelphia | . | portland, me. | . | san francisco | . | st. louis | . | washington | . | [illustration: fig. .--mechanical explanation of the tangent law. construct an apparatus as shown in the figure. the short wooden block, ns, represents the magnetic needle. this piece of wood turns around its center, c, which may be an ordinary nail. it will now be seen that two different forces act upon n; namely, the weight, g (one or two ounces), and the changeable weights which are placed in the scoop, w (made of cardboard). the height of the roll, or wheel, r, is such that the cord, rn, runs horizontally, when ns stands vertically, i.e., when there is no weight in the little scoop. if the wheel, r, be placed sufficiently far from ns, the string rn, will always remain almost horizontal, even if ns be deviated. the thin hand on ns moves over a vertical scale, which is divided into equal parts, as shown. this scale may be made of cardboard. if the hand point to division when one ounce is placed in the scoop, it will point to for two ounces, to for three ounces, etc. at ° the needle is deviated at its greatest angle, and this is, therefore, the sensitivity angle of the tangent galvanometer. the deviating values are, therefore, proportionate to the scale parts , , and , and so on; and, inasmuch as these themselves are tangents, the tangent law will hold good.] ques. how is the tangent galvanometer constructed to give direct readings? ans. to obviate reference to a table, the circular scale of the instrument is sometimes graduated into tangent values, as in fig. , instead of being divided into equal degrees. [illustration: fig. .--queen tangent and sine galvanometer. this instrument properly adjusted can be used as a standard instrument for laboratory work. the brass ring is inches in diameter, and the grooves in which the wire is wound are carefully turned so as to be of true rectangular cross section, thus allowing the constant of the instrument to be accurately calculated and compared with the constant as obtained by other methods. the compass box is inches in diameter and is so held in position that it may be raised or lowered, rotated on its vertical axis, shifted out of the plane of the coil, etc., thus enabling the operator to acquire proficiency with the instrument and to meet all cases of derangement possible. the dial is graduated to single degrees, and the needle is suspended by a very light cocoon fibre. the whole instrument can be turned about its vertical axis, and a quadrant graduated in degrees upon the base allows the amount of rotation to be accurately measured, and the laws of the sine galvanometer investigated. the instrument is wound to measure . ampere to amperes.] ques. what is the objection to the scale with tangent values? ans. it is more difficult to divide an arc into tangent lines with accuracy than into equal degrees. ques. what disadvantage has the tangent galvanometer? ans. the coil being much larger than the needle, and hence far away from it, reduces the sensitiveness of the instrument. the sine galvanometer.--this type of instrument has a vertical coil which may be rotated around a vertical axis, so that it can be made to follow the magnetic needle in its deflections. in the sine galvanometer, the coil is moved so as to follow the needle until it is parallel with the coil. under these circumstances, the strength of the deflecting current is proportional to sine of angle of deflection. [illustration: fig. .--central scientific co. universal tangent galvanometer. this instrument may be used as a tangent, gaugain, helmholtz-gaugain, sine, cosine, wiedemann or detector galvanometer. the coils, which slide on a beam parallel to the one carrying the needle box, are wound on brass rings inches in diameter. on each ring are wound two coils of turns each, connected to separate binding posts, and double wound so as to be of equal resistance. the coils and needle box are each provided with an indicator for reading their position on the scale. the needle box is swivelled and removable and one coil may be rotated about its vertical axis and its position read on a disc graduated in degrees. currents may be measured ranging from . ampere to amperes.] ques. describe the construction of a sine galvanometer. ans. a form of sine galvanometer is shown in fig. . the vertical wire coil is seen at m. a needle of any length less than the diameter of the coil m, moves over the graduated circle n. the coil m, and graduated circle n may be rotated on a vertical axis, and the amount of angular movement necessary to bring the needle to zero, measured on the graduated circle h. ques. how is the current strength measured? ans. it is proportional to the _sine_ of the angle measured on the horizontal circle h, through which it is necessary to turn the coil m, from the plane of the earth's magnetic meridian to the plane of the needle when it is not further deflected by the current. [illustration: fig. .--sine galvanometer. it differs from the tangent galvanometer in that the vertical coil and magnetic needle are mounted upon a standard free to revolve around a vertical axis, with provision for determining the angular position of the coil. the needle may be of any length shorter than the diameter of the coil. in the figure the parts are: m, coil; n, graduated dial of magnetic needle; h, graduated dial by which the amount of rotation necessary to bring the needle to zero is measured; e, terminals of the coil; o, upright standard carrying coil and graduated dial of magnetic needle; c, base with levelling screws.] ques. how is the sine galvanometer operated? ans. in using the instrument, after the needle has been set to zero, the current is sent through the coil, producing a deflection of the needle. the coil is then rotated to follow the motion of the needle, the current being kept constant, the rotation being continued until the zero on the upper dial again registers with the needle. the current then is proportional to the sine of the angle through which the coil has been turned, as determined by the lower dial. ques. has the sine galvanometer a large range? ans. for a given controlling field, it does not admit of a very large range of current measurement, since, for large deflection, on rotating the coil the position of instability is soon reached. table of natural sines and tangents angle| sin.| tan.| °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | °| . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | | . | . | ques. what is the position of instability? ans. the position of the needle beyond which the rotation of the coil will cause it to turn all the way round. ques. how may the range be increased? ans. by an adjustable controlling field or a shunt. ques. what advantage has the sine galvanometer over the tangent instrument? ans. its advantage is in the case where the relative values of two or more currents are required to be measured, or where the constant of the instrument is obtained by comparison with a standard measuring instrument and not calculated from the dimensions of the coil, because all galvanometers thus used follow the sine law independently of the shape of the coil, while only circular coils will follow the sine law. [illustration: fig. .--differential galvanometer. it consists of two coils of wire, so wound as to have opposite magnetic effects on a magnetic needle suspended centrally between them. the needle of a differential galvanometer shows no deflection when two equal currents are sent through the coils in opposite directions, since, under these conditions, each coil neutralizes the effect of the other. sometimes the current is so sent through the two coils, that each coil deflects the needle in the same direction. in this case the instrument is no longer differential in action. if, when this condition obtains, the magnetic needle be suspended at the exact center of the line which joins the centers of the coils, the advantage is gained by obtaining a field of more nearly uniform intensity around the needle. when the needle is suspended by a silk fibre, a final and most delicate adjustment can be obtained by raising or lowering one of the levelling screws slightly, so as to tilt the needle nearer to or farther from one of the coils.] the differential galvanometer.--this is a form of galvanometer in which a magnetic needle is suspended between two coils of equal resistance so wound as to tend to deflect the needle in opposite directions. the needle of a differential galvanometer shows no deflection when two equal currents are sent through the coils in opposite directions, since under these conditions, each coil neutralizes the other's effects. such instruments may be used in comparing resistances, although the _wheatstone bridge_, in most cases, affords a preferable method. ques. what is the special use of the differential galvanometer? ans. it is used for comparing two currents. ques. what is the method of comparing currents? ans. if two equal currents be sent in opposite directions through the coils of the galvanometer, the needle will not move; if the currents be unequal, the needle will be deflected by the stronger of them with an intensity corresponding to the difference of the strengths of the two currents. ques. how are the coils adjusted? ans. this is done by coupling them in series in such a way that they tend to turn the needle in opposite directions, and when a current is passing through them, they are moved nearer to the needle or farther from it until the needle stands at zero with any current. if the coils be not movable, a turn or more can be unwound from the coil giving the greatest magnetic effect until a balance is obtained, the wire so unwound can then be coiled in the base of the instrument. ballistic galvanometer.--this type of galvanometer is designed to measure the strength of momentary currents, such for instance, as the discharge of a condenser. in construction the magnetic system is given considerable weight, and arranged to give the least possible _damping effect_. the term "damping effect" means the offering of a retarding force to control swinging vibrations, such as the movements of a galvanometer needle, and to bring them quickly to rest. if a momentary current be passed through a ballistic galvanometer, the impulse given to the needle does not cause appreciable movement to the magnetic system until the current ceases, owing to the inertia of the heavy moving parts, the result being a slow swing of the needle. [illustration: fig. .--queen dead beat and ballistic reflecting galvanometer. as illustrated, the coils are easily removable and enclose a heavy block of copper fixed in a central fork. in a cylindrical hole bored in this block hangs the bell magnet which with its mirror is suspended by a long cocoon fibre, and the eddy currents induced in the copper bring the system quickly to rest after a deflection. by lifting the copper block out of the frame the instrument is made ballistic. the instrument is made with coils of any desired resistance up to , ohms.] ques. what name is given to the swing of a ballistic galvanometer needle? ans. it is called the _kick_. ques. how is the current measured? ans. as the needle swings slowly around it adds up, as it were, the varying impulses received during the passage of the momentary current, and _the quantity of electricity that has passed is proportional to the sine of half the angle of the first swing or kick_. if a reflecting method be used with a straight scale, the observed deflection depends upon the tangent of twice the angle of movement of the needle. for small deflections, however, the change of flux can be taken as directly proportional to the observed deflection. [illustration: fig. .--thompson galvanometer with mirror reflecting system for reading the deflections of a galvanometer needle by the movements of a spot of light reflected from a mirror attached to the needle or movable magnetic system.] use of mirrors in galvanometers.--in order that small currents may be measured accurately, some means must be provided to easily read a small deflection of the needle. accordingly, it is desirable that the pointer be very long so that a large number of scale divisions may correspond to small deflections. in construction, since sensitive galvanometers must be made with the moving parts of little weight, it would not do to use a long needle, hence a ray of light is used instead, which is reflected on a distant scale by a small mirror attached to the moving part. in the thompson mirror reflecting galvanometer, as shown in fig. , a small vertical slit is cut in the lamp screen below the scale, and the ray of light from the lamp, passing through the slit, strikes the mirror which is about three feet distant, and which reflects the beam back to the scale. it should be noted that the angle between the original ray of light and the reflected ray is twice the angle of the deflection of the mirror; the deflections of the ray of light on the scale, however, are practically proportional to the strength of currents through the instrument. the mirror arrangement as shown in fig. , requires a darkened room for its operation, but such is not necessary when a telescope is used as in fig. . here the scale readings are reflected in the mirror and their value observed by the telescope without artificial light. [illustration: fig. .--telescope method of reading galvanometer deflections by reflection of scale reading in mirror. here two mirrors are used, but in most cases the telescope is pointed directly toward the mirror on galvanometer shown in fig. , because the two mirror system, as illustrated in the figure, is used on portable galvanometers since it is the more compact.] damping.--this relates to the checking or reduction of oscillations. thus, a galvanometer is said to be damped when so constructed that any oscillations of the pointer which may be started, rapidly die away. galvanometers are frequently provided with damping devices for the purpose of annulling these oscillations, thus causing the moving part to assume its final position as quickly as possible. sometimes the instrument is fitted with a damping coil, or closed coil so arranged with respect to the moving system that the oscillations of the latter give rise to electric currents in the closed coil, whereby energy is dissipated. again, air vanes are employed, but anything in the nature of solid friction cannot be used. [illustration: figs. and .--galvanometer lamp and scale for individual use. the scale is etched on a ground glass strip centimeters wide by centimeters long with long centimeter divisions and short millimeter divisions the entire length, reading both ways from zero in the center. it is mounted in an adjustable wooden frame. a straight filament lamp ( volts) is enclosed in a metal hood japanned black to cut out all reflected light. this form of filament makes a single brilliant line on the scale, enabling closer readings than the "spot of light" arrangement. the lamp hood is adjustable to any desired height on the support rod.] d'arsonval galvanometer.--this instrument has a movable coil in place of a needle, and its operation depends upon the principle that if a flat coil of wire be suspended with its axis perpendicular to a strong magnetic field, it will be deflected whenever a current of electricity passes through it. ques. describe the construction of a d'arsonval galvanometer. ans. the essential features are shown in figs. and . the coil, which is rectangular in section is wound upon a copper form, and suspended between a permanent magnet by fine wires to the points a and b. the magnet has its poles at n and s. it is a soft iron cylinder fixed between the poles in order to intensify the magnetic field across the air gaps in which the coil moves. [illustration: fig. .--queen reading telescope. this arrangement is utilized to measure the deflections of a galvanometer having suspended mirror moving system. it consists of a reading telescope mounted as illustrated with a millimeter scale, having a length of centimeters. in use, the image of the scale is seen in the galvanometer mirror through the telescope. the eye piece of the telescope has a cross hair which acts as a reference line so that by noting the particular division on the scale when the galvanometer is at rest, the amount of deflection can be readily observed when the galvanometer is deflected. the instrument has all the necessary adjustments to set it up quickly and for bringing the cross hair and scale in focus. it is generally placed at a distance of one meter from the galvanometer mirror.] ques. explain its operation. ans. an enlarged horizontal cross section of the galvanometer on line xy is shown in fig. . the current is flowing in the coil as in fig. , up on the left side and down on the right. the position of the coil when no current is flowing is indicated by _n' s'_. by applying the law of mutual action between magnetic poles, it is seen that when the current is applied, the poles developed at _n' s'_ will move into the position _n'' s''_. see fig. . ques. how is the coil affected by a change in the direction of the current? ans. the polarity of the coil is reversed and consequently the direction of the deflection. [illustration: figs. and .--diagrams showing essential features of construction and principle of operation of d'arsonval galvanometer.] ques. upon what does the sensitiveness of the instrument depend? ans. upon the strength of the field of the permanent magnet, the number of turns in the suspended coil, and the torsion of the wires by which it is suspended. ques. when is this galvanometer called "dead beat"? ans. when the construction is such that the moving part comes quickly to rest without a series of diminishing vibrations. [illustration: figs. to .--queen horizontal magnet d'arsonval galvanometer with telescope and scale. it is very sensitive and is used in many electrical measurements, including commercial testing, such as measuring insulation of cables, fault location, etc. it is not affected by surrounding magnetic disturbances, and may, therefore, be used in proximity to dynamos and switchboards. the instrument has a pair of binding post terminals, one of which connects to a bottom spiral of the system and the other forms a junction with the top of the tube holding the system, forming a complete circuit through the coil. the tube containing the system may be readily removed from the magnet and another tube having a different system inserted as is required for various kinds of electrical measurement. the entire system with its suspension may be inspected by the removal of a thumb screw. to inspect interior of tube first be sure that the screw b is turned so that the coil is clamped. entirely remove screw c, and, holding the outside tube near the window, press firmly with the finger on the extreme top of the suspension support. the inside rib, with complete suspension, will draw from the tube, and the working parts can be fully inspected. carefully return same to its original position in tube, setting tight the screw c. the galvanometer is designed so that the coil is clamped in position when the galvanometer must be transported. the insulation of the galvanometer terminals and binding posts is such as to guard against any possible leakage. as a further protection, each levelling screw is provided with a hard rubber insulator. this feature is essential since, in making insulation measurements, the operator wishes to be assured that the deflection being obtained is the result of leakage upon the cable or wire being measured and not leakage between the galvanometer terminals. the galvanometer is provided with an attached telescope and scale for noting the deflections. the deflections produced by this galvanometer are proportional to the current. to facilitate quickly setting up the instrument, two way levels are provided.] ques. what causes this? ans. the instrument is made dead beat by winding the coil on a copper or aluminum frame, so that when in operation, currents are induced in the frame by the motion of the coil in the magnetic field; these currents oppose the motion of the coil. ques. for what service is the d'arsonval galvanometer adapted? ans. it is desirable for general use as it is not much affected by changes in the magnetic field. it may be made with high enough period and sensibility to be satisfactory as a ballistic instrument, but for extreme sensibility an instrument of the astatic type is more generally used. galvanometer "constant" or "figure of merit."--in order that a galvanometer shall be of value as a measuring instrument, the relation between the current and the deflection produced by it must be known. this may be obtained experimentally by determining the value of the current required to produce one scale division. the galvanometer constant then may be defined as _the resistance through which the galvanometer will give a deflection of one scale division when the current applied is at a pressure of one volt_. accordingly, the deflection as indicated on the scale must be multiplied by its constant or figure of merit, in order to obtain the correct reading. if the scale readings be not directly proportional to the quantity to be measured, the law of the instrument must also be considered. thus in a tangent galvanometer as previously explained i = k tan [phi] where i = current, [phi] the deflection or scale reading, and k the galvanometer constant. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing method of connecting galvanometer shunt. by the use of a shunt the range of measurement of a galvanometer can be greatly increased.] [illustration: fig. .--diagram of a form of universal shunt box for use with galvanometers of widely different resistances. the galvanometer, as indicated at g, is connected across the ends of a series of resistances ab. the main wires are connected, one to end a of the series and the other to a travelling point whose position is varied by means of plugs or by a dial switch.] galvanometer shunts.--the sensitiveness of a galvanometer used for measuring current may be reduced to any desired extent by connecting a resistance of known value in parallel with it. thus, if it be desired to measure a current greater than can be measured directly by the galvanometer, a part of the current can be sent through the resistance or shunt, and the total value of the current calculated. a galvanometer shunt bears a definite ratio to the resistance of the galvanometer, being usually adjusted so that only . , . , or . part of the current passes through the galvanometer. the degree in which a shunt increases the range of deflection of a galvanometer is called its "multiplying power." [illustration: fig. .--ayrton-mather universal shunt. this shunt may be used with any galvanometer. the total resistance is , ohms, with shunt powers of , , , , , , and , . it is also fitted with positions in which the galvanometer is shorted and off. the coils are of constantan wire.] if . of the current flowing, passed through the galvanometer and . through the shunt, then the current in the circuit would be ten times that through the galvanometer. accordingly the current in the galvanometer must be multiplied by the multiplying power of the shunt to obtain the true value of the current in the circuit. in order to determine the resistance necessary to be used with a certain galvanometer, the resistance of the latter _is to be divided by the multiplying power desired less one_. example.--what must be the resistance of a shunt for a galvanometer of , ohms resistance where only one fifth of the current is to pass through the galvanometer? the multiplying power less one is - = and the required resistance is , ÷ = ohms. when it is essential that the total resistance of the circuit should not be altered by an alternation of the galvanometer shunt, a compensating box should be used which automatically inserts a resistance for each shunt in series with the shunted galvanometer to bring the total resistance up equal to the unshunted value. thus the current in the main circuit is not altered. chapter xxvii testing and testing apparatus the practical electrician frequently has to make tests of various kinds which require the rapid and accurate measurement of voltage, current and resistance. it is therefore essential that he understand the methods employed in testing and the operation of the instruments used. most tests are made with a galvanometer, and the devices, such as resistances, switches, etc., which are used in connection with the galvanometer may be obtained put up in a neat and substantial box together with the galvanometer, the combination being called a "testing set." numerous forms of testing set are illustrated in this chapter. the construction, use, and operation of the various types of galvanometer have been explained in chapter twenty-six. ammeters and voltmeters, which are simply special forms of galvanometer, and which are largely used are fully described in the preceding chapter. pressure measurement.--an electromotive force has been defined as that which causes or tends to cause a current; it is analogous to water pressure; potential difference corresponds to difference of level. the _total_ electromotive force of a circuit is independent of resistance or current, and cannot be limited to mean the fall of pressure between any two points, as for instance the terminals of a battery. if the pressure of a battery be two volts when measured on open circuit by a static voltmeter, there will still be two volts on closed circuit, but there will now be a loss of pressure through the internal resistance of the battery and the voltage across the terminals will be less than the _total_ voltage. the static voltmeter, never closing the circuit, actually measures the total voltage. [illustration: fig. .--clark cell (kahle's modification of the rayleigh h form), the standard for the international volt. the cell has for its positive electrode, mercury, and for its negative electrode, amalgamated zinc. the electrolyte consists of a saturated solution of zinc sulphate and mercurous sulphate. the pressure is . volts at °c., and between °c. and °c. the pressure decreases . of a volt for each increase of °c. the containing glass vessel consists of two limbs, closed at bottom and joined above to a common neck fitted with a ground glass stopper. the diameter of the limbs should be at least cms., and their length at least cms. the neck should be not less than . cms. in diameter. at the bottom of each limb a platinum wire of about . mm. in diameter is sealed through the glass. to set up the cell, place mercury in one limb, and in the other hot liquid amalgam, containing parts mercury and parts zinc. the platinum wires at the bottom must be completely covered by the mercury and the amalgam, respectively. on the mercury, place a layer cm. thick of the zinc and mercurous sulphate paste. both this paste and the zinc amalgam must be covered with a layer of the neutral zinc sulphate crystals cm. thick. the whole vessel must then be filled with the saturated zinc sulphate solution, and the stopper inserted so that it shall just touch it, leaving, however, a small bubble to guard against breakage when the temperature rises. before finally inserting the glass stopper a strong alcoholic solution of shellac is applied to the upper edge, after which the stopper is pressed firmly in place.] ques. what error is introduced in measuring the pressure of a battery with an ordinary voltmeter? ans. since the measurement is made on _closed circuit_ the reading does not give the total pressure of the battery. the error is very slight because the resistance of the voltmeter is very high and the current so small that the loss of pressure in the battery can be neglected. [illustration: fig. .--weston cadmium cell. it is made in two forms; one known as the weston normal cell, in which the solution of cadmium sulphate is saturated at all temperatures at which the cell may be used. the other, known as the weston standard cell, in which the cadmium sulphate solution is unsaturated at all temperatures above °c. the weston normal cell, or saturated form is slightly affected by changes in temperature, but, on account of the fact that it can be accurately reproduced, it was adopted by the london conference in , as a convenient voltage standard. the value of its voltage suggested by the committee of the london conference on electrical units and standards, and adopted by the bureau of standards at washington, jan. st, , is . international volts at °c. at any other temperature its voltage is: e_{t} = e_{ } - . (t- ) - . (t- )^{ } + . (t- )^{ } the weston standard cell, or unsaturated form is practically unaffected by changes in temperature and is the form most commonly used for laboratory work and general testing. the average pressure of this form is . int. volts.] ques. define the international volt. ans. _it is the electromotive force that, steadily applied to a conductor whose resistance is one international ohm, will produce a current of one international ampere, and which is represented sufficiently well for practical use by , / , of the voltage between the poles of the clark cell at a temperature of ° c., when prepared as in fig. ._ the relation between the units volt, ampere and ohm, are shown graphically in figs. and . [illustration: figs. and .--diagrams showing hydraulic analogy illustrating the difference between amperes and coulombs. the _rate_ of current flow of one ampere in fig. may be compared to the rate of discharge of a pump as in fig. . assuming the pump to be of such size that it discharges a gallon per stroke and is making strokes per minute, the quantity of water discharged per hour (coulombs in fig. ) is Ã� Ã� = , gallons. following the analogy further (in fig. ), the pressure of one volt is required to force the electricity through the resistance of one ohm between the terminals a and b. in fig. , the boiler must furnish steam pressure on the pump piston to overcome the friction (resistance) offered by the pipe and raise the water from the lower level a' to the higher level b'. the difference of pressure between a and b in the electric circuit corresponds to the difference of pressure between a' and b'. the cell furnishes the energy to move the current by maintaining a difference of pressure at its terminals c and d; similarly, the boiler furnishes energy to raise the water by maintaining a difference of pressure between the steam pipe c and exhaust pipe d'.] [illustration: fig. . if the current strength in fig. be one ampere, the quantity of electricity passing any point in the circuit per hour is Ã� Ã� = , coulombs.] current measurement.--it is necessary to adopt some arbitrary standard in order to compare currents of different strengths. the term _strength of a current_, or current strength means the _rate of flow_ past any point in the circuit in a given unit of time. the unit of current, called the _ampere_, is defined as _the unvarying current which, when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water ( per cent. by weight of the nitrate) deposits silver at the rate of . gramme per second_. [illustration: fig. .--queen weight voltameter for determining the strength of current by the weight of metal deposited in a given time. the two outside plates form the anode and are joined together and to one binding post, while the cathode is placed between them and connected to the other binding post. the cathode thus receives a deposit on both sides. an adjustable arm serves to lower the plates into the electrolyte. to calculate the strength of an unknown current which has passed through a weight voltameter, _divide the gain in weight by the number of seconds the current flows through the instrument and by the weight deposited by one ampere in one second_. that is, current strength in amperes = gain in weight ÷ (time in seconds Ã� . ).] ques. how much copper or zinc will one ampere deposit in one second? ans. . gramme of copper in a copper voltameter, or . gramme of zinc in a zinc voltameter. ques. what is the difference between an ampere and a coulomb? ans. an ampere is the unit _rate of flow_ of the current, and a coulomb is the unit _quantity_ of electricity, that is, the ampere is the rate of current flow that will deposit . grammes of copper in one second and a coulomb is the _quantity_ of electricity that passes a given point in one second when the current strength is one ampere. in other words a coulomb is one _ampere second_. [illustration: fig. .--gas voltameter for determining the strength of current by the volume of gas evolved. to use, connect up as shown in the illustration. adjust so that the zero position of the burette is about one-half inch below the level of the top of the u tube. pour acidulated water into the mouth of the burette till the water in the u tube is about one-half inch from the top. with the electrodes inserted through the corks, _carefully_ place each one in position by giving a slight twist to the right as the cork enters. the water level in the u tube and burette should now be the same, or further adjustment must be made to attain this result. the level in the burette does not necessarily have to correspond with the zero graduation, but must not be below it. unclamp the burette and hold it nearly horizontal. the liquid will not run out if the corks be tight, so that this is the _air leakage test_. attach the connectors and wires from the current source (which should have a pressure of or more volts) placing a switch in the circuit. when the switch is closed, bubbles of gas will rise in the u tube from both electrodes, displacing the water and forcing it up the burette. hydrogen will be liberated over the negative electrode, and oxygen over the positive electrode in the proportion of twice as much hydrogen as oxygen. to calculate the current strength, _divide the volume of gas liberated by the time in seconds, and by the volume of gas liberated (in cubic centimeters) by one ampere in one second and by . _; that is: amperes = volume of gas liberated ÷ (time in seconds Ã� . ).] example.--if an arc lamp require a current of amperes, how much electricity does it consume per hour? since one coulomb = one ampere second, the quantity of electricity consumed per hour is amperes Ã� ( Ã� ) = , coulombs. voltameter.--a voltameter is an electrolytic cell employed to measure an electric current by the amount of chemical decomposition the current causes in passing through the cell. there are two classes of voltameter: . weight voltameters; . gas voltameters. ques. what is the difference between these two classes of voltameter? ans. in one, the current strength is determined by the weight of metal deposited or weight of water decomposed, and in the other by the volume of gas liberated. fig. shows a weight voltameter and fig. a gas voltameter. ques. how should the plates of a weight voltameter be treated before use? ans. they must be thoroughly cleaned and polished with sandpaper, the sand being afterwards removed by placing them in running water. _the fingers must not be placed on any part of the plate which is to receive the deposit._ ques. what form of voltameter has been selected to measure the international ampere? ans. the silver voltameter arranged as here specified: the cathode on which the silver is to be deposited shall take the form of a platinum bowl, not less than cms. in diameter, and from to cms. in depth. the anode shall be a disc or plate of pure silver some sq. cms. in area, and or cms. in thickness. this shall be supported horizontally in the liquid near the top of the solution by a silver rod riveted through its center. to prevent the disintegrated silver which is formed on the anode falling upon the cathode, the anode shall be wrapped around with pure filter paper, secured at the back by suitable folding. the liquid shall consist of a neutral solution of pure silver nitrate containing about parts by weight of the nitrate to parts of water. ques. what is the value of the international ampere as measured with the silver voltameter? ans. the international ampere is represented sufficiently well for practical use by the unvarying current which, when passed through a silver voltameter (as described above) deposits _silver at the rate of . gramme per second_. [illustration: fig. .--single contact and short circuiting key. this key is intended especially for use with d'arsonval galvanometers in zero deflection methods. the key is connected in circuit with the galvanometer so that whenever the key is not depressed, the galvanometer is short circuited, and its oscillations quickly damped out by the currents induced in its coil. the back end of the spring is held in a slot in a rubber block attached to the base.] ohm's law and the ohm.--the various tests here described depend for their truth upon the definite relation existing between the electric current, its pressure, and the resistance which the circuit offers to its flow. this relation was fully investigated by ohm in . using the same conductor, he proved not only that the current varies with the pressure, but that it varies in direct proportion. ohm's law has already been discussed in a previous chapter and the several ways of expressing it are repeated here for convenience: volts . amperes = -------; ohms . volts = amperes Ã� ohms; volts . ohms = ---------. amperes various values have been assigned, from time to time, to the ohm or unit of resistance, the unit in use at the present time being known as the _international ohm_. this was recommended at the meeting of the british association in , was adopted by the international electrical congress held in chicago in , and was legalized for use in the united states by act of congress in . the international ohm in graphically defined in fig. . the previous values given to the ohm which were more or less generally accepted are as follows: the siemens' ohm.--a resistance due to a column of mercury cm. long and sq. mm. in cross section at ° c. b. a. (british association) ohm.--a resistance due to a column of mercury approximately . cm. long and sq. mm. in cross section at ° c. legal ohm.--a resistance due to a column of mercury cm. long and sq. mm. in cross section at ° c. this unit was adopted by the paris conference of . ohm table[a] | | inter-| | | | | date |national| legal|b. a. |siemens'| | | ohm| ohm|ohm | ohm| -------------------------+------+--------+--------+--------+--------| international ohm | - | . | . | . | . | legal ohm | | . | . | . | . | b. a. ohm | | . | . | . | . | siemens' ohm | | . | . | . | . | [a] note.--in the above table to reduce, for instance, british association ohms to international ohms, multiply by . , or divide by . ; to reduce legal ohms to international ohms, multiply by . , or divide by . , etc. [illustration: fig. .--double contact key. it is of especial value in connection with a wheatstone bridge. when used with the latter it forms a combination battery and galvanometer key. the battery is wired to the top leaves of the key and the galvanometer to the lower leaves. hence, when operated, the battery circuit will be closed before the galvanometer circuit, as it is desirable to avoid undue disturbance of the needle.] [illustration: fig. .--the international ohm. it is defined as the resistance of . grammes of mercury in the form of a column of uniform cross section . centimeters in length, at a temperature of ° c. this is approximately equivalent to a column . cm. long, having a uniform cross section of sq. mm. in the figure the international ohm is defined graphically. the resistance of the external circuit and the standard one volt cell is assumed to be zero.] [illustration: fig. .--leeds and northrup one ohm standard resistance (reichsanstalt form); adjusted at ° c. low resistance standards may be properly divided into two classes: . those which are designed primarily as resistance standards, and . those designed as current carrying standards. those of the first mentioned class are often used to measure currents up to their capacity. the above standard has both pressure and current terminals. the binding posts for the former are mounted on high posts so as to be easily accessible when the standard is immersed in oil. when used as a resistance standard of precision, it should not be subjected to a current of more than one ampere, and when used as a current carrying standard of lesser accuracy, a current of or amperes may be used.] practical standards of resistance.--the column of mercury as shown in fig. , is the recognized standard for resistance, however, in practice, it is not convenient to compare resistances with such a piece of apparatus, and therefore secondary standards are made up and standardized with a great degree of precision. these secondary standards are made of wire. the material generally used being manganin or platinoid. [illustration: fig. .--direct deflection method of testing resistances; a useful and simple method which may be used in numerous tests. galvanometer readings are taken through the known, and unknown resistances, and the current being proportional to the deflections, the value of the unknown resistance is easily calculated.] resistance measurement.--_resistance is that which offers opposition to the flow of electricity._ ohm's law shows that the strength of the current falls off in proportion as the resistance in the circuit increases. this gives a basis for measuring resistance. there are various methods by which an unknown resistance may be measured, as by the: . direct deflection method; . method of substitution; . fall of potential method; . differential galvanometer method; . drop method; . voltmeter method; . wheatstone bridge method. direct deflection method.--this method is based on the fact that the greater the current through a galvanometer the greater the deflection of the needle; it is a simple method and is capable of extended application. the apparatus required consists of battery, galvanometer, known resistance, and double contact key. the connections are made as in fig. . the known resistance is put in circuit with the galvanometer and after noting the deflection, the key is moved so as to cut out the known resistance and throw into circuit the unknown resistance. the deflection of the galvanometer is again noted and compared with the first deflection. [illustration: fig. .--charge and discharge key, adapted to condenser testing where the condenser is to be alternately charged and discharged. the insulated handle enables the key to be used without insulating the body.] [illustration: fig. .--pohl commutator. this is equivalent to a two pole double throw switch. the depressions in the base are filled with mercury into which the contacts dip in closing the circuit.] if the deflections be proportional to the current, the unknown resistance will be as many times the known resistance as the deflection with the known resistance is greater than the deflection with the unknown resistance. method of substitution.--this is the simplest method of measuring resistance. the resistance to be measured is inserted in series with a galvanometer and some constant source of current, and the galvanometer deflection noted. a known adjustable resistance is then substituted for the unknown and adjusted till the same deflection is again obtained. the value of the adjustable resistance thus obtained is equal to that of the resistance being tested. [illustration: fig. .--substitution method of testing resistances. the connections and apparatus are the same as in fig. , except that a resistance box is used in place of the known resistance. in making the test, first note deflection with unknown resistance in circuit, then press key so that the current will pass through the resistance box, and adjust the resistance in the box so that the deflection of the galvanometer is about the same as with the unknown. now switch from one circuit to the other, changing the resistance in the box until equal deflections are obtained. when this obtains, the resistance in the box is the same as the resistance being tested.] ques. what kind of adjustable resistance is used in making the above test? ans. a resistance box. ques. describe a resistance box. ans. it consists of a box containing numerous resistance coils with their ends connected to terminals and provided with plugs so that they may be thrown into or out of circuit at will, thus varying the resistance in the circuit. [illustration: fig. .--ordinary resistance box. it contains sets of standard resistances consisting of coils of insulated wire having low conductivity and small temperature coefficient. the ends of the coils are joined to the section of the bar between the plugs. the insertion of a plug cuts out a coil. in using, care should be taken to put the plugs in with a slight twist so that there shall be no resistance introduced by poor contact.] fall of potential method.--this is a very simple method of measuring resistances, and one that is convenient for practical work in electrical stations because it requires only an ammeter, voltmeter, battery and switch--apparatus to be found in every station. the connections are made as shown in fig. . in making the test the ammeter and voltmeter readings are taken at the same time, and the unknown resistance calculated from ohm's law. accordingly, since: ( ) amperes = volts / ohms solving for the resistance, ( ) ohms = volts / amperes [illustration: fig. .--fall of potential method of testing resistances; a convenient method for testing at stations, requiring only the usual instruments to be found at a station. the resistance of the voltmeter must be very high, otherwise the test must be made as in fig. .] example.--if in fig. the readings show volts and amperes how many ohms is the resistance being tested? substituting in formula ( ) ohms = / = ques. can this test be made with any kind of voltmeter? ans. its resistance must be very high to avoid error. when a voltmeter having small resistance is used, it should be connected so as to measure the fall of pressure across both ammeter and unknown resistance as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--fall of potential method of testing resistances; diagram showing connections for testing with low resistance voltmeter. the resistance measured with this connection will be the sum of the resistances of the coil and the ammeter. the resistance of the ammeter is usually known and can be subtracted from the sum to obtain the required resistance.] differential galvanometer method.--this is what is known as a _nil_ or zero method, that is, a method of making electrical measurements in which comparison is made between two quantities by reducing one to equality with the other, the absence of deflection from zero of the instrument scale showing that the equality has been obtained. the test is made with a differential galvanometer, and resistance box connected as in fig. . the current then will divide so that part of it flows through the resistance being tested and around one set of coils of the galvanometer while the other part will flow through the resistance box and the other set of coils as indicated. when the resistance box has been so adjusted that its resistance is the same as the unknown resistance the current in the two branches will be equal, and the needle of the galvanometer will show _no deflection_. [illustration: fig. .--differential galvanometer method of testing resistances. in making the test, the resistance box is adjusted till the galvanometer needle shows no deflection. when this condition obtains, the resistance in circuit in the resistance box is equal to the unknown resistance, hence, a reading of the box gives the value of the unknown resistance.] ques. what name is given to this method of testing? ans. it is called a _zero_ method, distinguishing it from _deflection_ methods. ques. for what kind of resistance is the method adapted? ans. since it is a nil or zero method, it is better adapted to the measurement of non-inductive than of inductive resistances. ques. what precaution should be taken with inductive resistances? ans. the current must be allowed to flow until it becomes steady to overcome the influence of self-induction. ques. what may be said with respect to the differential galvanometer method? ans. with an accurate instrument it is very reliable. [illustration: fig. .--drop method of testing resistances. the apparatus is connected as shown and readings taken with voltmeter across known and unknown resistance. the unknown resistance is then easily calculated.] drop method.--this is a convenient method, and one which may be used for measuring either high or low resistances with precision. it is used for many practical measurements, and requires only a voltmeter, battery, known resistance and a two way switch. the instruments are connected as in fig. , and in making the test, the voltmeter is switched into circuit across the known resistance and then across the unknown resistance, readings being taken in each case. the value of the unknown resistance, is then easily calculated from the following proportion: drop across known resistance known resistance ------------------------------ = ------------------ drop across unknown resistance unknown resistance from which unknown known resistance Ã� drop across unknown resistance resistance = --------------------------------------------------------- drop across known resistance [illustration: fig. .--leeds and northrup portable galvanometer (pointer type a). the sensitiveness of this instrument is such that it may be substituted in numerous cases for the non-portable reflecting type of galvanometer; as for instance, in the checking of ammeters and voltmeters to an accuracy of . % by the potentiometer method, and on almost all wheatstone bridge measurements to commercial accuracies. a current of micro-amperes will cause the pointer to move mm. over the scale, that is, it has a sensibility of , ohms. the method of suspending the moving system is such as to practically eliminate initial friction which is of value in all zero deflecting methods. the suspensions and moving system are guarded by springs, which together with the solid construction of the case render the instrument capable of withstanding rough usage. overall dimensions are - / " Ã� - / " Ã� - / "; weight about pounds.] ques. what may be substituted for the voltmeter? ans. a high resistance galvanometer, whose deflections are proportional to the current, the value of the deflections being substituted in the formula. ques. what precaution should be taken in making the test? ans. the current used should not be strong enough to appreciably heat the resistance, and if the current be not very steady, several readings should be taken of each measurement and the average values used in the formula. ques. how are the most accurate results obtained? ans. by selecting the known resistance as near as possible to the supposed value of the unknown resistance. [illustration: fig. .--voltmeter method of testing resistances. knowing the resistance of the voltmeter, turn switch to the left and from reading calculate resistance corresponding to one division of the scale. turn switch to right and multiply reading by resistance required for deflection of one division. this gives resistance of voltmeter and unknown resistance; subtracting from this the resistance of voltmeter gives value of the unknown resistance.] voltmeter method.--this is a direct deflection method and consists in determining first the resistance that will deflect the needle through one division of the scale on a given battery current, then with this as a basis for comparison the voltmeter is connected across the unknown resistance whose value is easily calculated from the reading. in making the test, the instruments are connected as in fig. . the current from battery is first passed through the galvanometer by turning switch as shown. [illustration: fig. .--megohm box or set of standard high resistances. the box contains five resistances of , ohms each. the six pillars are petticoat insulated, the resistances being placed between each pair of pillars. there is a double contact post on top of each pillar so that these can be connected together with copper links.] assuming that the resistance of the instrument is , ohms and that the current deflects the needle through divisions of the scale, then for a deflection of one division the resistance is , Ã� = , ohms. accordingly, if, when the switch is moved to the right, connecting the voltmeter across the unknown resistance, the needle be moved through divisions of the scale, the combined resistance of the voltmeter and unknown resistance is , ÷ = , - / ohms, and subtracting the resistance of the voltmeter, the value of the unknown resistance is , - / - , = , - / ohms. ques. for what kinds of test is the voltmeter method best adapted? ans. for measuring high resistances, as the insulation of wires, etc. ques. what may be said with respect to the current used? ans. its voltage should be as high as possible within the limits of the voltmeter scale. [illustration: fig. .--standard resistance box: , ohms, in four units of , , , , , , and , ohms. an "infinity" plug separates each coil from the ones adjacent. segments are elevated from the hard rubber top by special washers in order to increase insulation. binding posts are so arranged as not to be in the way when plugs are used.] [illustration: fig. .--standard high resistance box: , ohms. it is mounted in a brass box with a hard rubber top. connections should be made to terminals marked and . when the flexible cord is on plug , the box is short circuited, but when on plug , the resistance of , ohms is in series. the box is especially suited to rapid cable testing.] ques. in testing cable insulation what is desirable with respect to voltmeter and current? ans. a low reading voltmeter should be used in connection with a large battery. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing principle of wheatstone's bridge. a, b, c, and d, are the four members which constitute the bridge. the current from the battery divides at p, part traversing dc, and part traversing ba. the galvanometer connected to m and n will indicate when the currents are equal in the two branches by giving _no_ deflection. this is then a _zero_ or _nil method_ of testing. the resistances and keys required in testing are shown in fig. . in the actual instrument, the members a, b, c, and d are known by the names given in the figure.] wheatstone bridge method.--for accurate measurements of resistance this method is almost universally used. the so-called "wheatstone" bridge was invented by christie, and improperly credited to wheatstone, who simply applied christie's invention to the measurement of resistances. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing arms of wheatstone bridge, resistances and method of connecting galvanometer, battery and unknown resistance.] the bridge consists of a system of conductors as shown in fig. . the circuit of a constant battery is made to branch at p into two parts, which re-unite at q, so that part of the current flows through the point m, the other part through the point n. the four conductors a, b, c, d, are spoken of as the _arms_ of the balance or bridge. it is by the proportion existing between the resistances of these arms that the resistance of one of them can be calculated when the resistances of the other three are known. when the current which starts from the battery arrives at p, the pressure will have fallen to a certain value. the pressure in the upper branch falls again to m, and continues to fall to q. the pressure of the lower branch falls to n, and again falls till it reaches the value at q. now if n be the same proportionate distance along the resistances between p and q, as m is along the resistances of the upper line between p and q, the pressure will have fallen at n to the same value as it has fallen to at m; or, in other words, if the ratio of the resistance c to the resistance d be equal to the ratio between the resistance a and the resistance b, then m and n will be at equal pressures. to find out if this condition obtain, a sensitive galvanometer is placed in a branch wire between m and n which will show _no_ deflection when m and n are at equal pressure or when the four resistances of the arms "balance" one another by being in proportion, thus: ( ) a:c = b:d if, then, the value of a, b, and c be known, d can be calculated. the proportion ( ) is reduced to the following equation before substituting. d = bc/a for instance, if a and c be, as in fig. , ohms and ohms respectively, and b be ohms, d will be ( Ã� ) ÷ = ohms. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing usual arrangement of resistances in arms of wheatstone's bridge. in practice the bridge is seldom or never made in the lozenge shape of the diagrams, figs. and , these being given merely for clearness. the resistance box of fig. is, in itself, a complete "bridge," the appropriate connections being made by screws at various points. the letters in the above diagram correspond with those in figs. and , and the three figures should be carefully compared.] as constructed, wheatstone bridges are provided with some resistance coils in the arms a and c, as well as with a complete set in the arm b. the advantage of this arrangement is that by adjusting a and c, the proportionality between b and d can be determined, and can, in certain cases, be measured to fractions of an ohm. in fig. resistances of , , and , ohms are included in the arms a and c. [illustration: fig. .--standard resistance box and wheatstone bridge. this pattern is a modification of the anthony form of bridge. all the resistances are wound upon metal spools. the bridge ratio coils are , , , , , , . the rheostat coils are arranged in five rows, of ten coils each. the ordinary decade plan (explained in fig. ) is followed. the coils may be joined in series in multiple, or in any combination of series and multiple. the coils may thus be checked against each other in many combinations. for instance, all the ten ohm coils taken in parallel may be compared with any one ohm coil. the precision of adjustment is said to be / th of % for the coils of the tenth ohm series, and / th of % for the coils of the rheostat. the ratio coils are certified to be like each other to within / th of %. the box is supplied with battery and galvanometer keys of substantial construction.] ques. describe the method of testing with the bridge. ans. fig. illustrates the general arrangement of resistances to be found in an ordinary bridge. the connections are made as shown. in testing, first _depress_ the battery key, then _tap_ the galvanometer key. this should be repeated adjusting the resistances till no deflection is obtained. the resistance then in the arm b Ã� (c ÷ a) will give the value of the unknown resistance. [illustration: fig. .--ratio coils of wheatstone bridge. almost every box intended to serve as a wheatstone bridge is furnished with a set of coils which forms the arms of proportion or ratio arms of the bridge. there is a choice of several different ways of arranging these coils. the figure shows the simplest arrangement, which is employed in boxes not intended for the highest accuracy. the required ratio, as for instance : , is obtained by withdrawing a plug from each arm a and b. ratios / , / , / , / , etc., or , / , , / , , / , / , etc., are obtainable in this manner. this simple arrangement is open not only to the objection that the contact resistance of the plugs which remain in is always included with the resistance unplugged, but also to all other objections to be urged against the use of many plugs where a few will do. the method has the limitation that it is not possible to reverse the arms of the bridge, that is, to transpose the arms a and b.] ques. why should the battery key be depressed before the galvanometer key? ans. to avoid the sudden swing of the galvanometer needle, which occurs on closing circuit in consequence of self-induction. ques. how is it known whether too much or too little resistance be unplugged? ans. the galvanometer needle will be deflected to one side for too much resistance, and to the opposite side for too little resistance. [illustration: fig. .--method of reversing arms of wheatstone bridge with reversing blocks. the arrangement shown in the figure is classical, being that used in the english post office type of wheatstone bridge. it is open to the objections which apply to the use of several plugs, one of which is withdrawn to obtain the desired resistance.] ques. what is the meaning of "inf.," marked on the bridge? ans. it stands for "infinity," because the resistance coil at the point marked infinity is omitted so that adjacent sections of the arm are disconnected when the plug is taken out. in fact, the air gap interposed by the removal of the plug by no means provides an infinitely great resistance, but is usually called such because it is vastly greater than any of the other resistances of the bridge. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: figs. and .--diagrams illustrating the decade plan of combining resistance coils. in this method the coils are connected in series and the arrangement avoids the disadvantage of the ordinary wheatstone bridge in that the latter requires a large number of plugs to short circuit the resistances not in use, which introduces an element of uncertainty as to resistance of the plug contacts and the necessity of adding up the values of all the unplugged resistances in order to determine the total resistance in circuit. the necessary regular succession of values in a rheostat built on the decade plan can be obtained with either nine or ten coils per decade. the chief reason for using the latter number is found in the facility with which all the coils of one decade can be compared with one coil of the next higher decade, thus permitting the coils of a rheostat to be checked among themselves. thus, the ten ohm coils can be checked with a ohm, the ten 's with a , etc. in some sets the ten coils of a decade can be connected in series or in parallel, and it then becomes an advantage to have ten coils to a decade, since the coils in one decade in parallel equal one of the coils of the next lower decade. when these latter advantages are not required, and especially when dials or sliding switches are used, there is little or no advantage in using more than nine coils per decade, as shown in fig. . here all the coils of the set are connected in series so that the circuit is never open. thus it is a slight advantage to have permanent connections _a_, _b_, and _c_, because all the coils of a decade can be thrown in circuit by simply pulling out a plug, it not being necessary to insert it again, as would be the case if the _a_, _b_, and _c_ connections were not used. moreover, if any plug make bad contact, its effect is somewhat lessened by having this bad contact shunted by the remaining coils of the decade. again, there are occasions where violent deflections of a galvanometer are prevented by not having the circuit entirely open when a plug is taken out.] the decade plan.--in this method of combining resistance coils, there are or one ohm coils for the units place, or ten ohm coils for the tens place, or one hundred ohm coils for the hundreds place and so on. each series of coils of the same value is designated a _decade_. the connections are usually made as shown in figs. and . it is apparent from the figure that any value in any one decade can be obtained by inserting between a bar and a block, only one plug; moreover if several decades be in series, any value up to the limit of the set can be read off directly from the position of the plugs without having to add up the unplugged resistance as in the ordinary arrangement. [illustration: fig. .--two plug arrangement of ratio coils. each of the ratio coils has one of its terminals connected to a common center which corresponds to the block marked c in the figure. the other terminal of each coil is connected to an individual block, there being one block for each coil. the bar b on one side of these blocks is joined to the rheostat and the bar a on the other side to an x post. in the ordinary use of this set of ratio coils two plugs only are used. one plug is inserted between the bar a and one of the blocks, , ', , ', etc., of the central row of blocks. the other plug is inserted between the bar b and any one of the other blocks of the central row. there are two ratio coils of each value. to obtain an even ratio as , to , ', one plug is inserted between the block , and the bar a, and the other plug between the , block and bar b, the ratio arms are reversed; that is, the , ohm coil is connected to the x post and the , ohm coil to the end of the rheostat. when uneven ratios are used, the same ratio can be obtained by four different combinations. to obtain the ratio one to ten, insert a plug between a and , and another between b and , or between a and ', and b and , and get : , or between a and , and b and ', and get : ', or again, between a and ' and b and ', and get ' to '. other ratios are obtained in a similar manner. by using more than two plugs and connecting certain of the coils in parallel combinations, a large number of other ratios may be obtained. this arrangement offers a convenient method of measuring the sensibility of a bridge and galvanometer combination that is frequently applicable. if for instance the one ohm coil is used on either side after a balance has been obtained the one ohm may be shunted with the , ohm on the same side. this will make a variation of / of % and the galvanometer deflection may be noted for this variation. similarly, the ohm may be shunted with the for a variation of %, or with the , for a variation of / of %. the ten ohm coil may be shunted with the , for a variation of % and with the , for a variation of / of %. in the arrangement of ratio coils, errors due to plug contacts are negligible because only two plug contacts enter the circuit, and with an even ratio, it is only the difference in the resistances of the two plug contacts that can affect the result. in measuring any of the ratio coils while in the box it is only necessary to connect to the bar c and to either the bar a or b and plug in the coils to be measured.] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: figs. and .--the leeds and northrup decade. the object of this arrangement is to reduce the number of coils required. in fig. , the , ', and are connected in series. let the terminals of the ohm and ohm coils be numbered ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ) and ( ) (fig. ). the current enters at point ( ) and leaves the coils at the point ( ), traversing , ', , = ohms in all. if this series be multiplied by any factor _n_, then _n_ ( + ' + + ) = _n_ ohms. it will be seen that if the points ( ) and ( ) be connected, all the coils are short circuited, and the current will traverse zero resistance. if the points ( ) and ( ) be connected, the ', and ohm coils will be short circuited and the current will traverse ohm. by extending the process so as to connect two and only two points at a time it is possible to obtain the regular succession of values n ( , , , , , , , , , ), the last being obtained when no points are connected. fig. shows leeds and northrup's method of connecting these points two at a time with the use of a single plug. the circles in the diagram represent two rows of ten brass blocks each. to the first two blocks at the top of the rows, the points ( ) and ( ), fig. , are connected; to the second two, the points ( ) and ( ) are connected, etc., no points being connected to the last pair of blocks. hence, if a plug be inserted between blocks and , fig. , the points ( ) and ( ) of diagram fig. are connected, giving the value of , if between the blocks and the points ( ) and ( ) are connected, giving the value , and so on. the value is obtainable when the plug is in the last pair of blocks, which have no connections. fig. shows a top view of the blocks of a simple decade constructed upon this plan.] ques. what other advantages are gained with the decade arrangement? ans. the single plug used with each decade is never out of use, being either in the zero position or set on some value, and is therefore not easily lost by being laid aside. the use of only one plug in a decade makes it easy to ascertain that the plug is making good contact as only one block in a row is plugged at a time, the other blocks are not kept under a strain by having plugs forced tightly between them. this strain on the blocks, which always exists in those sets in which a resistance is thrown in by removing a plug, tends to separate or loosen them and often to warp the hard rubber upon which they are mounted. another advantage of the decade plan is that it permits obtaining a succession of values by means of sliding contacts or dial switches, a method which is becoming deservedly more appreciated. [illustration: fig. .--leeds and northrup dial wheatstone bridge. rotating switches are used instead of plugs, which permits quicker adjustment of the resistances, adapting it to rapid working. the ratio coils are arranged as in fig. . there are four dials which form the rheostat. the units dial contains one ohm coils; the tens dial, ten ohm coils; the hundreds dial, one hundred ohm coils, and the thousands dial one thousand ohm coils. the values of the ratio coils are , , , , , , , , , , , , , .] ques. what is the difference between "plug out" and "plug in" types of resistance box? ans. in the plug out type, resistance is put in the circuit by removing plugs, as in fig. ; in the plug in type, resistance is put in the circuit by inserting plugs as in figs. and . [illustration: fig. .--queen acme portable testing set. it consists of a wheatstone bridge, with reversible arms, battery of four dry cells, d'arsonval galvanometer, battery and galvanometer keys. there are sixteen resistance coils, having a combined resistance of , ohms. each bridge arm is provided with three coils of , , ohms, and , , , ohms respectively. the commutator admits of a ratio of to , on either bridge arm, giving the set a theoretical range from . of an ohm to , , ohms. for resistances above , , ohms, the normal battery power must be increased. the contact keys are located as shown. the battery key has single contact, but the galvanometer key has double contact; depressing it closes the galvanometer circuit, and releasing it short circuits the galvanometer, bringing the latter quickly to rest.] testing sets.--for convenience in testing, a combination of the instruments used is put up in a neat and substantial case, and known as a testing set. there are innumerable forms of testing set, a few of which are shown in the accompanying illustrations. the usual combination is a wheatstone bridge, galvanometer, battery and necessary keys and connections. [illustration: fig. .--connections and circuits of queen acme portable testing set. there are three rows of blocks, ll', mm', nn'. ll is connected to nn' by means of a heavy copper bar, joining l' and n'. ll' and nn' constitute the rheostat, from which any resistance from ohm to , ohms may be obtained by removing the proper plugs. the block n of the rheostat is connected to the lower line post d. the upper line post c is connected to the block x of the commutator. the block c has no other permanent connection, except key g. the block r of the commutator is connected to the block l of the rheostat, and has no other connection, excepting by plugs. each half of mm' constitutes a bridge arm, designated a and b respectively. beginning at the lower line post d, the connections form a continuous circuit through the rheostat, thence through the bridge arm b, thence through the bridge arm a, thence to the upper line post c. the commutator serves merely to reverse the bridge arms a and b. the battery terminals are connected as shown: the positive terminal directly to the common junction of the two bridge arms, and the negative terminal through the battery key to the rheostat. the positive terminal of the galvanometer is connected through the galvanometer key with the block x, and the negative terminal with the block r of the commutator or what is equivalent, with the block l of the rheostat. the commutator blocks a, b, r and x, are connected by plugs as shown. when the commutator plugs are in the position pq, the bridge arm b is connected to the rheostat and the bridge arm a is connected to the line, the ratio between the bridge arms ratio being a ÷ b = x ÷ r but when the plugs are in the position st, the bridge arms are reversed in position a, being connected with the rheostat and b, with the line, and the bridge arm ratio becomes a ÷ b = r ÷ x. the connections of the testing set may be more readily understood from the simplified diagram fig. .] [illustration: fig. .--simplified diagram showing connections of queen acme portable testing set.] ques. describe the operation of the queen acme testing set figs. and , in measuring resistance. ans. connect the terminals of the resistance to be measured to the line posts c and d. place the battery connections on the two upper tips and , thus throwing one end of the battery into circuit, which is sufficient until an approximate balance is obtained. employ the ohm coil in each bridge arm, and place the commutator plugs in the position pq, or in the position st. then remove plugs from the rheostat until the value of total resistance employed, or nearly as may be guessed is equal to that of the unknown resistance. now press the battery key ba, and holding it down momentarily, press the galvanometer key ga. if the galvanometer needle swing to the right toward the symbol + the resistance employed in the rheostat is too high and must be reduced. if the needle swing to the left toward -, the resistance employed is too low and must be increased. by altering the resistance of the rheostat accordingly, a value will soon be found, which when varied slightly either way, will reverse the deflection of the galvanometer needle. now remove the battery connection from tip , and place it on the tip , thus throwing the whole battery into circuit. then press the keys again as before, first the battery key, then the galvanometer key. this will increase the deflection of the galvanometer needle for the same variation in the rheostat, thus enabling the making of a more accurate adjustment. the measurement thus made will be the best result that can be obtained with bridge arms of equal value, but by selecting more suitable values of the two arms from the following table of bridge ratios a much higher degree of accuracy may be obtained. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of the queen dial decade portable testing set. its dimensions are - / " long, " wide and " deep, and weighs - / pounds. the resistances are arranged upon the dial decade plan, being placed in circuit by means of a rotating switch contact. the switches are so constructed that they may be turned in either direction, thereby permitting them to be turned quickly from the highest resistance in any dial to the lowest resistance in the same dial. this arrangement avoids the necessity of turning back through all the remaining resistances in any particular group of coils and is of value in locating swinging crosses or conditions of momentary balances. the connections for the various tests are made by the manipulation of one small knife switch (w.b.--m.l.) and the switch ba.; these are plainly lettered, thus avoiding the necessity of referring to a diagram of connections. in construction, the dial switches are made up of eight laminations of no. b. & s. phosphor bronze, and the form is such as to prevent wearing grooves on the top of the contact studs. in this instrument the electrical circuits are soldered throughout excepting the switch contact whose resistance is negligible. the resistances are wound with manganin. the battery comprises six cells sub-divided which are easily replaceable. the galvanometer is the same as in the queen acme set, but has the addition of an ayrton shunt, which is useful in making insulation measurements. the necessary keys, binding posts, and switches are provided so as to facilitate the use of the instrument for the various measurements that can be made with it.] table showing the best values of bridge arms for measuring any desired resistance | | position of| | best values of| commutator| | | plugs as| value of resistance being measured | | | shown in| | a = | b = | fig. | --------------------------------------+-------+-------+------------| below . ohms | | , | pq| between . and ohms | | | pq| " and ohms | | | pq| " and , ohms | | , | pq| " , and , ohms | | | pq or st| " , and , ohms | , | | st| " , and , , ohms | , | | st| " , , and , , ohms | , | | st| ques. in testing with the queen acme set how should the plugs be placed in the commutator? ans. always make the arm a the smaller except when the two arms are of equal value. ques. if the resistance being measured is higher than , ohms, or lower than , ohms, how should the commutator plugs be placed? ans. if higher than , ohms, they should be placed in the position st; if lower than , ohms, in position pq. when the plugs are placed in the st position, the unknown resistance is found by dividing the value of the larger bridge arm by that of the smaller, and multiplying the total employed resistance in the rheostat by the quotient. when the plugs are placed in the pq position, the employed resistance in the rheostat is divided by the quotient. [illustration: fig. .--queen portable silver chloride testing battery. the silver chloride cell has the advantage of long life, light weight, and compactness. the pressure of each cell when new is . volt.] direct deflection method with queen acme set.--to measure for instance, insulation resistance by direct deflection connect a known high resistance, say , ohms between the line post c (fig. ), and the positive battery post. remove all plugs from the commutator, and place all plugs in the rheostat, as any employed resistance in the rheostat will be in circuit with the galvanometer and the battery. place the battery connection so as to throw only one cell into circuit. now press the keys and obtain a deflection of the galvanometer needle. for example: assume that the needle to be deflected about divisions of the scale. since this deflection is due to the current from one cell passing through a resistance of , ohms, then , Ã� = . megohms represents the resistance through which one cell will produce a deflection of one division on the scale. hence, . megohms is the constant of the galvanometer. [illustration: fig. .--ohmmeter. it consists essentially of a slide wire wheatstone bridge, with the scale divided to read either directly in ohms, or in per cent. of a fixed resistance value. a galvanometer is mounted on the containing case of each, and battery and galvanometer keys are provided. in the direct reading type, the scale is so cut that when the galvanometer is balanced, the pointer of the instrument indicates the value of the resistance between the x posts. the scale is calibrated for any desired range. these ohmmeters being slide wire bridges, the greatest accuracy is at the center of the scale, hence one should be selected that will bring the part of the scale likely to be the most used at or near the center. a convenient type is that in which the scale is cut in per cent., per cent. being at the center of the scale. fixed coils of , , , , and , ohms are contained in the instrument with a plugging arrangement allowing any one to be used. when a balance is obtained, the actual resistance is determined by multiplying the dial reading by the value of the fixed coil in use. this amounts simply to shifting the decimal point. for instance, if the ohm coil were being used, and the pointer were at . , the resistance would be . ohms.] now, replace the known high resistance ( , ohms) by the unknown resistance (for instance such as a cable) the value of which is to be determined. add enough cells to produce as large a deflection of the needle as possible. assume that cells give a deflection of . scale division. then, the galvanometer constant multiplied by the number of cells and the product divided by the deflection will give the insulation resistance of the cable; or . megohm Ã� cells = . ; and . ÷ . = megohms as the resistance of the cable. [illustration: fig. .--commutator plug setting for comparing electromotive forces by the fall of potential method with queen acme set.] fall of potential method with queen acme set.--to compare electromotive forces by this method, place the battery connection (fig. ), so as to throw into circuit all the cells, taking care not to reverse them by crossing the battery cords. plug the commutator as shown in fig. , and remove , ohms from bridge arm b. place all plugs in arm a. from the rheostat unplug , ohms. then connect one of the cells being tested, with its positive terminal to the + battery post and its negative terminal to the line post c. when the keys are pressed, the galvanometer needle will swing either to the right or to the left. if it swing toward +, reduce the resistance in the rheostat; if it swing toward -, add resistance to the rheostat. when a value is found wherein a variation of an ohm either way reverses the deflection, add to this value the resistance unplugged in arm b, and divide the sum by the resistance in arm b. the result gives the ratio between the voltages of the testing set battery and cell being tested respectively. the division is decimal and may be readily accomplished by merely pointing off as many places as there are ciphers in the resistance employed from arm b. this operation repeated with any number of different cells, will give their voltages in terms of the voltage of the testing set battery, and from these ratios their relative values may be readily obtained. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of apparatus for measuring low resistances based on the principle of the kelvin double bridge. in the diagram ab represents a heavy piece of resistance metal of uniform cross section and uniform resistance per unit of length; cd is another piece of resistance metal of smaller cross section, and the two are joined together by a heavy copper bar, ac, into which both are silver soldered; ll are the current terminals and pp are the pressure terminals. the resistance of ab between the marks and on the scale s is . ohm. from the point on the resistance cd to on ab is also . ohm, from to is . and so on, and from to is . ohm. the slider m moves along the resistance ab and its position is read on the scale s which is divided into equal parts and can be read by a vernier to thousandths. subdivided in this way the resistance between the tap off points pp may have any value from . to . ohms by steps of . ohm.] if the testing set battery be replaced by a standard cell, the first measurement gives at once the voltage of the cell tested. if the voltage of the cell or battery being tested exceed that of the testing set battery, reverse the position of the two batteries, and the subsequent operations, as outlined above, will give the desired results. how to check a voltmeter with the queen acme set.--in using a set as in fig. , first remove about , ohms from the rheostat, plug the commutator as shown in fig. , remove ohms from the arm b, of the bridge, and connect a standard cell with the positive terminal to the + battery post and the negative terminal to the line post c. then, connect the circuit to the battery posts of the testing set the positive lead to the + post and the negative lead to the - post. now, press both keys and note the direction of the deflection of the galvanometer needle. if it move toward +, the rheostat resistance is too high; if toward -, too low. [illustration: fig. .--kelvin bridge. this includes a low resistance standard of . ohm variable by steps of . ohm, a set of ratio coils, and a holder for rods or wires to be measured, with a scale to measure their length. it is also provided with heavy flexibles to be used in measuring the resistances of irregularly shaped pieces. the connections are clearly shown in the diagram. the range of measurements of this bridge is: ohm to . ohm by steps of . ohm readily estimated to . ; . to . ohm by steps of . ohm readily estimated to . ; . ohm to . ohm by steps of . ohm, readily estimated to . ; . ohm down by steps of . ohm, readily estimated to . ohm.] change the rheostat resistance accordingly until the balance attained is such that a very slight variation of the rheostat resistance one way or the other will reverse the galvanometer deflection. to find the pressure on the circuit, add to rheostat resistance and point off two places. multiply this value by the voltage and the product will be the desired voltage. if the voltage of the standard cell be exactly one volt, the total employed resistance represents the voltage on the circuit. [illustration: fig. .--queen slide wire bridge. it consists of a portable slide wire, wheatstone bridge arranged to read directly in ohms in addition to its use for locating crosses and grounds. it is complete with battery, galvanometer and telephone receiver. the bridge is balanced by moving the hand stylus until the galvanometer shows no deflection or until there is no sound in the telephone receiver. in order to provide a wide range of measurement and maximum accuracy, ratio coils or multipliers having values of , , , , and , are provided. the scale of the instrument is arranged in two parts, one of which indicates ohms and the other is divided into uniform divisions for use when locating crosses and grounds by the murray and varley loop methods. a small induction coil is included so as to furnish an alternating current when using the telephone receiver.] for instance, in making a measurement on a volt circuit, assume that the employing of , ohms rheostat resistance produces balance, and that increasing or decreasing this resistance by two ohms, reverses the galvanometer deflection. this indication that the setting , is uncertain, about / of per cent. since the rheostat coils are adjusted to an accuracy of only / of per cent., that will be about the accuracy of the measurement. if the pressure of the standard cell be . volts, then , + = , . pointing off two places, gives . , which multiplied by . gives . for the voltage on the circuit. to measure internal resistance of cell with queen acme set.--first compare its voltage on open circuit with the pressure of the testing set battery. then, shunt the cell with a known resistance, about ohms, and again measure its terminal voltage. the difference between the two values thus obtained, divided by the value of the shunt resistance, will give the value of the current. to find the internal resistance, multiply the value of the shunt resistance by the ratio between the first and second measured values. [illustration: fig. .--evershed portable ohmmeter set. this testing set consists of a direct reading ohmmeter which indicates by direct reading the value of the resistance being tested, also a portable hand dynamo which provides at any required pressure the current necessary to make the test. it is adapted to the needs of supply stations, wiring contractors and dynamo builders. it is also useful in testing the insulation of underground and aerial cables, and is designed so that it can be used by ordinary workmen who are not experienced in handling delicate instruments and who, by its use, are able to obtain accurate results. the dynamo is wound for , , , or , volts, and is fitted with spring drum inside the case on which is coiled a twin flexible cord provided with a connector adapted for clamping under the ohmmeter terminals.] for instance, assume that the open circuit voltage of the cell being tested as compared with the voltage of the testing set battery is . of the latter, and that when it is shunted with a resistance of , ohms, its terminal voltage is . . then, the total resistance is to the , ohms shunt resistance as . is to . or (. /. ) Ã� , = , , from which deducting the , ohms shunt resistance, gives ohms as the internal resistance of the cell. [illustration: fig. .--leeds and northrup fault finder. a lineman's instrument for the location of faults, crosses, grounds, and opens in telephone and telegraph circuits, and for the measurement of conductor and insulation resistance.] [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing arrangement and connections of leeds and northrup fault finder. it is used to measure conductor resistance, fault resistance, to locate faults by four different tests, and when used with a buzzer and telephone, to locate opens. the essential feature of the instrument is the uniform resistance ab, which lies in a circle and which has a value of about ohms. by a special construction, it is so arranged that the contact can be made at any point along it, and it is therefore equivalent to a very high resistance slide wire. it has a moving contact c and a uniform scale of , divisions. in series with this, there are the two resistances e and r which may be short circuited by the switches u and v. e has exactly the same resistance as the wire ab. r has a resistance of ohms, and is the fixed resistance of the bridge arrangement for resistance measurements. the resistances of , ohms and , ohms connected to the battery post are to protect the battery and the apparatus from excessive current. the , ohms may be short circuited by the switch w.] ammeter test with queen acme set.--connect a low resistance in series with the ammeter and run leads from it to the testing set, the positive lead to the + battery post and the negative lead to the line post c (fig. ). insert a standard cell between the battery posts, with positive terminal to + battery post, and negative terminal to - battery post. plug commutator as shown in fig. . remove , ohms from rheostat, and ohms from bridge arm b. determine a balance in the usual way by changing the value of the resistance in the rheostat. this operation will balance the difference of pressure at the terminals of the shunt resistance against the standard cell, and its value is equal to ( . Ã� ) / (r + ) = / (r + ) to determine the current flowing, divide the value of the difference of pressure thus obtained by the value of the shunt resistance. [illustration: fig. .--resistance measurement with leeds and northrup fault finder. the diagram shows the proper connections and switch settings for measuring conductor resistance. as in the ordinary slide wire bridge, the resistance x between the two posts and is obtained from the formula x = a ÷ ( , - a) Ã� r. to avoid the necessity of solving in each case the fraction a ÷ ( , - a), a table is furnished with the instrument, giving the value of this fraction for each value of a. _the resistance is accordingly determined in each case by simply setting the contact c for a balance and reading from the table the resistance opposite the number corresponding to the scale reading and multiplying by , the value of r._ to use an outside battery, remove the inside battery and connect the outside battery between the posts gr and ba. the pressure of this battery should not exceed volts. _if it exceed volts, open switch w._ example--with an unknown resistance connected between the posts and , the galvanometer showed a balance for a dial reading of . the number opposite in the table is . ; hence, x = . Ã� = . ohms.] [illustration: fig. .--diagram of the queen standard potentiometer. the circuit arrangement is a method of sub-dividing the main potentiometer wire, mnopq, so as to provide for very accurate reading. the secondary voltage, or that used to supply current to the main potentiometer circuit, is adjusted by regulating rheostats, "fast," "medium," and "slow" so that the current flow is exactly . ampere. it is noted that this instrument requires a very small current for its operation. the instrument is direct reading for voltage measurements, not exceeding . +. in order to determine if the current flow through the potentiometer be exactly . ampere, the terminals of the standard cell binding posts are connected in circuit so that the drop over points between which they are connected are exactly equal to the voltage of the standard cell used. binding posts are provided for connection with various standard cells. the unknown voltage to be measured is placed in opposition to the current flow in the potentiometer circuit by connecting to the binding post "xemf." observe that polarity is connected as required. the galvanometer with its shunt is placed in the standard cell circuit, or x circuit, by means of a double pole, double throw switch. the switch at t provides for standard cells of different values and the setting at u allows for temperature correction. the range of the instrument in volts can be increased by means of multipliers or volt boxes.] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: figs. to .--diagrams illustrating loop testing. to properly understand the murray or varley loop tests, consider a wheatstone bridge (fig. ) the arms of which are equal. in loop testing, the rheostat is replaced by a length of cable and the unknown resistance also by a length of cable, as in fig. , both being similar in resistance per foot. if both lengths be the same, their resistances are the same and the bridge balances. now shorten one cable and add resistance in series with it until the bridge again balances as in fig. . the added resistance equals that of the piece cut off. hence, if the resistance per foot be known, the length of the shorter piece can be easily calculated. in the murray and varley tests, the battery circuit is by ground connections instead of by wire. in the murray loop the arrangement is similar to fig. , the battery circuit being completed by ground connection through fault in defective cable. fig. shows the general arrangement of the varley loop.] loop test.--this is a method of locating a fault in a telegraph or telephone circuit when there is a good wire running parallel with the defective one. in the process, the good and bad wires are joined at their distant ends and one terminal of the battery is connected to a wheatstone bridge, while the other terminal is grounded. there are different ways of making loop tests as by: . the murray loop; . the varley loop; . special loop. [illustration: fig. .--the murray loop test. the apparatus is connected as in the figure. the rheostat of the bridge is used in place of the second arm to permit large adjustment. x and y are the resistances of the cable between the fault and the points and respectively.] the murray loop.--in this test only one of the two regular bridge arms is used, the other being replaced by the rheostat giving an arm of large adjustment. the connections are shown in fig. . in making the test, close key and note the deflection of the needle due to pressure of chemical action at fault, if any. this is called the _false zero_. now apply the positive or negative pole of the battery by depressing the battery key, and balance to the false zero previously obtained by varying the resistance in arms a or b. then by wheatstone bridge formula: rx=ay, and l=x+y; y=l-x, whence x = a/(r+a) y = l(r/(b+a)) [illustration: fig. .--murray loop method of fault location with leeds and northrup fault finder. case i where there are two wires having equal resistance, in one of which there is a fault. connect and set switches as shown; join the good wire to post and the faulty wire to post . the resistance of e is equal to that of ab. from the symmetry of the arrangement, it is evident that, if the fault were exactly at the junction between the good and bad wires, the contact point c would rest for a balance at , on the scale, or at if the fault were half-way along the bad wire; hence, at whatever point it comes to rest, the reading divided by , and multiplied by the length of the bad wire is the distance from the instrument to the fault. example--in a pair of equal wires, . miles long, one is grounded. with the connections made as above, and the galvanometer balanced for the dial reading , the distance to the fault is ( Ã� ) ÷ , = . miles.] [illustration: fig. .--murray loop method of fault location with leeds and northrup fault finder: case ii, where the good and bad wires are _unequal_. the figure shows the connections. it is the ordinary murray loop and it is evident that the resistance _a_, to the fault will be obtained from the formula _a_ = (a ÷ , ) Ã� r, where r is the resistance of the loop, and a is the reading of the contact c on its scale. the distance d, to the fault is obtained from the formula d = ar ÷ ( , Ã� m), where m is the resistance per mile of the faulty wire. example--a wire having a resistance m of . ohms per mile is grounded. this wire was looped with a wire of unknown resistance and the total resistance of the loop r was measured and found to be . ohms. connections were made as in the figure, and the reading a was found to be . substituting these values in the above formula: d = ( Ã� . ) ÷ ( , Ã� . ) = . miles.] ques. how may the distance from to the fault be determined in knots or miles. ans. divide y by resistance per knot or mile. the varley loop.--this is a method of locating a cross or ground in a telephone or telegraph line or other cable by using a wheatstone bridge in a loop formed of a good wire and the faulty wire joined at their distance ends. one terminal of the battery is grounded and the other connected to a point on the bridge at the junction of the ratio arms. the rheostat arm then includes the resistance of the rheostat plus the resistance of the fault, while the unknown arm includes the resistance of the good wire plus the resistance of the bad wire beyond the fault. when the bridge is balanced, the unknown resistances may be readily determined by a simple equation. [illustration: fig. .--the varley loop test. the diagram shows the various connections. x and y are the resistances of the cable between the fault and the points and respectively. l is the resistance of the good and bad cable or x + y.] in making the varley loop test, the resistance of looped cable or conductors is measured, and then connected as in fig. . close the battery key and adjust r for balance. when earth current is present, the best results are obtained when the fault is cleared by the negative pole, and just before it begins to polarize. if x be the resistance from to the fault, then x = (l - r) / also, x divided by the resistance of the cable or conductor per knot or mile gives the distance of fault in knot or miles. when the resistance of the good wire used to form a loop with the defective wire, together with that portion of the defective wire from the joint to the fault is less than the resistance of the defective wire from the testing station to the fault, the resistance r must be inserted between point and the good conductor, the defective wire being connected directly to point. the formula in this case is x = (l + r) / [illustration: figs. and .--varley loop method of fault location with leeds and northrup fault finder. this method may be used as a check on the murray methods. connect the faulty wire to , and measure the resistance of the loop. then throw switches as shown in the fig. . let: a = resistance to fault, d = distance to the fault in miles, m = resistance of the faulty wire per mile, r = resistance of the loop, r = resistance of the coil r, or ohms, t = a ÷ ( , - a) to be read from the table. from the wheatstone bridge relation: a = (r - t) ÷ (t + ), and d = (r - t) ÷ (t + )m. example--a wire having a resistance of . ohms per mile is grounded. this was looped with a wire of unknown resistance and the resistance of the loop was found to be . ohms. connections were made as in the figure, and the reading a was found to be . from the table t = . , and substituting: d = ( . - . ) ÷ ( . Ã� . ) = . + miles.] special loop.--this method may be used to advantage where the length of the cable or faulty wire only is known and where there are two other wires which may be used to complete the loop. it is not necessary that the resistance of the faulty wire and the length and resistance of the other wires be known. figs. to show the connections and method of testing. example.--all the wires in a cable , ft. long were found to be grounded so that none of them could be used as good wires. two wires were selected out of another cable going to the same place by a different route and securely joined to one of the grounded wires at the distant end. this grounded wire and one of the good ones were connected as shown in figs. and and the reading a was found to be . connections were then made as shown in figs. and and a was found to be . what is the value of d? according to formula d = al/a = ( Ã� , )/ = , ft. [illustration: figs. and .--special loop test with leeds and northrup fault finder. for the first measurement connect the faulty wire to , either of the good wires, as z, to , the post gr to ground, and short circuit the coils r and e by closing switches u and v as in the figures. balance in the usual way and call the dial reading a. for the second measurement, connect the post gr. (disconnected from ground), to the other good wire y as shown in figs. and , and get another balance; call this reading a'. the distance d, to the fault is determined from the simple formula d = al ÷ a' where l is the length of the cable or faulty wire.] [illustration: figs. and .--special loop test as made with the leeds and northrup fault finder. diagram showing connections for the second measurement. the special loop test may be used to advantage where the length of the cable or faulty wire only is known, and where there are two other wires which may be used to complete the loop. to use an outside battery, connect one pole to ba, and ground the other. the pressure of this battery must never exceed volts; if it be over volts, see that switch w is open.] the potentiometer.--for the rapid and accurate measurement of voltage, current, and resistance, the potentiometer can be recommended. those in charge of electric light and power companies, and also those who purchase large amounts of electrical energy are realizing, more and more, the necessity of having satisfactory primary standards with which to check their volt-, ampere-, and watt-meters. when it is realized that an error of one per cent. in a commercial instrument means an error of one dollar one way or the other in every one hundred dollars charged, the need of such standardization apparatus becomes at once apparent. the potentiometer, it should be noted, relies for its accuracy, only upon the constancy and accuracy of resistances and upon standard cells. with the materials now available, and the skill which has been acquired in their manufacture, both the resistances and the standard cells are obtainable which are remarkably constant, and both can be readily checked for accuracy. location of opens.--these measurements are based on the fact that the capacity of wires in a cable is ordinarily a measurable quantity, which, in wire of uniform diameter, is proportionate to length. in making these tests, a fault finder is used together with a buzzer, dry cells to operate it, small induction coil, and telephone receiver. these instruments are to be found in any telephone exchange. it is best to locate the buzzer at some distance from the fault finder in order that it cannot be heard by the operator. [illustration: fig. .--to use galvanometer of leeds and northrup fault finder in series with the battery: set switches as shown, and connect between posts gr. and (see figs. and ). the galvanometer will have the maximum sensibility with the pointer at , and the minimum at zero.] [illustration: fig. .--to measure high resistances, such as the resistances of faults with leeds and northrup fault finder. _first method._--arrange the switches as shown in the figure. connect posts gr. and , turn the handle until the galvanometer needle comes to rest at an even deflection of ten divisions. call the reading a. connect in the unknown resistance between gr. and . now close the switch w, so that the figure appears on the top of the block, and again bring the galvanometer to a deflection of ten divisions and call the reading b. then x = ( , b ÷ a) - , . in case x be a high resistance, it will be found that the galvanometer will not deflect ten divisions for any position of the pointer. in such case, choose a number of divisions which is a factor of ten, such as , , or , and multiply ( , b ÷ a) by ten divided by the number chosen, as / , / , / . for example, for a deflection of two divisions: x = ( / )( , b ÷ a) - , . the satisfactory range of the set for high resistance measurement may be increased by using an outside battery of higher voltage. with the contained battery, satisfactory measurements can be made up to or megohms. when outside battery is used, connect one terminal to the post ba, and the other to for the reading a. connect the battery and unknown resistance in series between these posts for the reading b. when an outside pressure of volts or over is used, the switch w should not be closed unless there be a resistance in series with the battery of , ohms or over. _second method._--for use as a voltmeter to measure high resistances. (more convenient but not quite as accurate as first method.) set the switches to rv, m and . turn the knurled nut on the galvanometer so as to set the needle to the extreme right hand side of the scale. connect the posts and gr. with a short piece of wire. turn the rotating pointer on the scale until the galvanometer needle moves over about scale divisions when the battery key is closed. remove the connection between and gr. as the voltmeter terminals. this makes a simple way of testing for various kinds and amounts of trouble. on a wet cable a deflection of to divisions indicates heavy enough trouble to locate with the fault finder. with a little care, trouble showing only or divisions can be located.] before attempting locations for opens it is well to make the following measurements: . the insulation of the broken wire and the insulation of the good wire with which it is to be compared. this may be done as shown in fig. . it is best that the insulation resistance be fairly good, but experiments indicate that good results can be obtained by the methods which follow, even when the insulation is as low as , ohms, and fair results when as low as , to , ohms. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of connections in testing for opens with leeds and northrup fault finder. the apparatus required consists of fault finder, buzzer, dry cell to operate buzzer, small induction coil, and telephone receiver. connect the battery to the primary of the induction coil, one terminal of the secondary to the post ba, and the other to the connected wires as shown. set switches u and v so as to short circuit the two resistance coils.] . the resistance between the two sections of the broken wire should be measured. this may be done by joining the broken wire and a good wire at the distant end of the cable and measuring the resistance of the loop. to ensure close locations, this resistance should be over , ohms. fair locations can be made when the resistance is much lower and it is worth while to attempt it even if the resistance be as low as , ohms. the difficulty of determining the balance point increases as the resistance decreases. ques. describe the method of locating an open with a fault finder. ans. (_case i_) the broken wire will be one of a pair. select another pair in the cable that will have the same capacity per mile and join together the mate of the broken wire and one wire of the other pair. make the connections as shown in fig. , then depress the battery key and move the contact to the point of minimum sound in the telephone. the distance to the break is equal to la ÷ ( , - a), where l is the length of the good wire. example: a cable . miles long contained a broken wire. it was found that the insulation resistance of the end of this wire was over megohms, as was that of the good pair selected to test against it. the resistance between the two pieces of the good wire was also over megohms. connections were made as in fig. , and it was found that the balance point was . accordingly from the table a / ( , - a) = . and d = . Ã� . = . + miles. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of connections in testing with leeds and northrup fault finder for open wire in telegraph and other cables in which the wires are not grouped in pairs. connect the broken wire to . select a good wire and join to . connect all other wires and ground them, by connecting to the cable sheath. connect the distant end of the broken wire to the others. ground the end of the induction coil that is not connected to the post ba.] location of opens.--(_case ii_) open wire in telegraph or other cables in which the wires are not grouped in pairs. the connections are made as in fig. , and the measurement and calculation exactly as in the preceding case. the accuracy of the location of both of the above methods depends on the good and broken pair, or the good and broken wires having equal and uniform capacity per unit length. it is not always possible to select wires that are alike in this respect. in such cases, as for instance, where there is no good wire in the cable containing the broken wire, and a good wire has to be selected from another cable, the method of _case iii_ may be used. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of connections for reading in testing for opens with leeds and northrup fault finder, when broken wire and good wire are not in the same cable.] [illustration: fig. .--leeds and northrup potentiometer. it is direct reading from . volt to volts, and with accessories the range may be extended to volts, and currents may be measured up to amperes. the instrument has fifteen coils of ohms each, which are in series with an extended wire about " long of equal resistance. the electrical circuits are shown in the diagram fig. . it is well for the user to open up the potentiometer and make himself familiar with its interior construction, in order to fully understand the operation of the rheostat and other parts. there are no contact resistances in the potentiometer circuit proper. the potentiometer has low internal resistance which gives it the maximum sensibility. compared with high resistance potentiometer, this is especially advantageous in measuring the electromotive force of thermocouples, and the fall of potential across standard low resistances. as constructed, the last one-tenth volt is covered by the extended wire and the handle which carries the contact point on the wire may be manipulated rapidly so that a fluctuating voltage may be accurately followed. when used with any cadmium cell, the potentiometer is direct reading. the accuracy of the potentiometer resistances can be verified with the facilities of the ordinary laboratory.] location of opens.--_case iii_, in which the broken wire and good wire are not in the same cable. connect the good wire and broken wire in the same way as shown in fig. , and set the pointer for a balance. call the reading a. then connect the good wire and the broken wire at the distant end and set the pointer for a new balance. call this a'. the connections for this reading are shown in fig. . the distance to the break will be d = (a a' l) / ( , (a - a') + a a') where l is the total length of the broken wire. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing connections of leeds and northrup potentiometer. the coils in the series ad are each ohms, and between each two there is a brass block with a reamed hole. a pair of flexible cords with taper plug terminals to fit these holes is furnished. these coils can be measured with an ordinary wheatstone bridge and thus compared with each other to a high degree of accuracy, even if the bridge be not accurate. for potentiometer work, the essential point is that they should be like each other, not that they should be accurately any particular value. in the same way the resistance of the extended wire can be compared with the resistance of the coils in ad. its resistance should be . times the value of any coil between a and d. outside connection with the extended wire may be made by using the posts marked br and -ba. this adjustment for balancing an unknown electromotive force is accomplished by the manipulation of the two contact points m and m'. the coils ad are arranged in a circle, a revolving switch moving m. a checking device enables the operator to set this switch without taking his eye from the galvanometer. the resistance s is of such value that when it shunts the wire ob, the total resistance between o and b is / of the same unshunted. when the shunt is applied, provided the total current remain the same, the drop between any two points on ab will be / of its previous value. the total current will remain the same provided the total resistance in the circuit remain the same. this is accomplished by making the coil k such that it exactly compensates for the reduction in resistance caused by plugging in the shunt coil s. the low scale is applied by moving the plug from the position to the position . . with this change the potentiometer reads from . volt down by indicated steps of . volt. the reading is very simple. for instance, if m stand at . and m' at . revolutions, the reading is . volts. the resistances of the instrument are wound upon metal spools, and are therefore able to dissipate a comparatively large amount of energy. this allows the potentiometer to be used for pressure measurements up to volts without the use of a volt box.] [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing actual connections in the rheostat of leeds and northrup potentiometer. the figure corresponds to r of fig. . the rheostat is mounted in the end of the potentiometer as shown in fig. . rough adjustment of the potentiometer current is made by means of the variable resistance r. fine adjustment is made by means of the variable resistance r'. it will be noted that the ohm resistance of this latter rheostat is shunted by a resistance of . ohms, making possible a very fine regulation. further, there is in series with the moving contact a resistance of ohms, which makes the effect of variable contact resistance negligible. only one cell of storage battery should be used. when this battery is fresh, the plug shown in the figure at r should be inserted at r. this gives the greatest resistance in the rheostat circuit. as the cell runs down, the plug should be changed to r. when both plugs are in, the rheostat slide wires are in series with the potentiometer circuit.] example: a pair of wires containing one broken wire was connected with a good pair in a different cable as shown in fig. . the reading a was found to be . the good and bad wires were then joined at the distant end as in fig. , and the reading a was found to be . the total length of the bad wire mn was . miles. required, the distance to the break. substituting the values in the formula: d = Ã� Ã� . / , ( - ) + Ã� = . + mile. to pick out faulty wires in a cable.--short circuit the coils e and r with switches u and v. set the pointer at , . connect the post gr. to ground or the cable sheath and apply the wires one after another to the binding post . the galvanometer will deflect for a faulty wire. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of the crompton potentiometer. in this instrument the resistance consists of fourteen coils, each of ohms, in series with a straight wire, also ohms resistance, thus forming a system of fifteen equal steps. across the whole a pressure of . volt is applied from a secondary cell, thus providing . volt per step. any fraction is then tapped off by means of a radial switch on the resistance coils and a sliding contact on the wire. the standardization is performed by adjusting a resistance in series with the whole until the standard cell employed indicates, by means of the galvanometer g, a balance at the point which represents its electromotive force on the basis given above.] ques. what is a potentiometer? ans. an arrangement of carefully standardized resistances for measuring voltages in comparison with a standard cell. it is used for accurate measurement of voltages, currents, and resistances. in place of a series of standardized resistances, a slide wire may be used as in fig. . ques. describe one form of potentiometer. ans. as shown in fig. , it consists of a fine german silver wire about feet long stretched between the binding posts a, b, which are attached to a wooden base carrying a scale divided into , equal parts. there are three circuits, the terminal a being included in each, one including the battery, and the other two the galvanometer. a three point switch connects the galvanometer in series with the standard cell sc, or the cell to be tested c, the circuits being completed by leads terminating in the sliding contacts m and s. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of potentiometer showing method of measuring the voltage of a cell. the potentiometer is simply a high resistance wire of uniform diameter stretched between two binding posts, a and b, in such a way that contact can be made at its ends and along its length. necessary circuits are plainly shown in the figure; sc, is a _standard cell_ and c, the cell to be tested. m, and s are sliding contacts, connecting with the "slide wire."] ques. describe the method of measuring the voltage of a cell with a potentiometer. ans. fig. shows a method of comparing a pressure with that of a standard cell and is applicable whether the pressure of the cell to be tested be greater or less than that of the standard cell. in making the test the switch f is first closed, then the other switch is moved to d, and m adjusted till galvanometer shows no deflection; similarly, the switch is moved to g, and s adjusted till galvanometer shows no deflection. then, c:sc = as:am. from which c = sc Ã� as ÷ am. example.--let . volts be the known voltage of the standard cell sc, and the scale reading of as be , and of am, as in the figure, then c = ( . Ã� ) / = . volts the arrangement may, however, be made direct reading, that is, the slide wire may have a scale of volts instead of lengths or resistances, as follows: suppose the standard cell to have a pressure of . volts, the sliding contact m is placed at the reading . , and the adjustable resistance varied till the galvanometer shows no current. this means that the pressure between a and m is . , and consequently the pressures all along the slide can be read off the scale _in volts_. hence, when s has been adjusted to balance, the pressure of c is read off the scale in volts. [illustration: fig. .--to measure a pressure greater than . volts with leeds and northrup potentiometer by using a volt box or multiplier. to measure high voltages it is necessary to connect the voltage across high resistance and to measure on the potentiometer a definite fraction of the total drop. in the figure, ab is a high resistance of which cb is . th, db . th, and eb . th of the total resistance. the potentiometer reading is accordingly multiplied by , , or , , depending upon whether the switch m is set on c, d, or e. resistance boxes for this purpose are called _volt boxes_, and are constructed to multiply the potentiometer readings by , , and , . in using them, it is only necessary to connect the unknown e.m.f. at the posts so marked, and the potentiometer to the posts marked p. the potentiometer reading is taken as above and multiplied by a factor depending upon the position of the switch m, which factor is indicated upon the box. _it is essential in making these connections that the polarity be carefully observed._] how to use a potentiometer.--all connections must be made as indicated by the stamping on the instrument. particular attention must be given to the polarity of the standard cell, of the battery, and of the voltage, the corresponding + and - signs being marked. if used with a wall galvanometer having a telescope and scale, it will be found convenient to place the potentiometer so that the telescope is directly over the glass index of the extended wire, thus permitting the observer to read the galvanometer deflections and potentiometer settings without changing his position. potentiometer current.--a medium sized storage cell will be found desirable, producing a steady current. errors in measurements are frequently made by using an unsteady current. setting for standard cell.--set the standard cell to correspond with the certified pressure of the standard cell as given in its certificate. in using the potentiometer shown in fig. , place the plug in hole , and see that it is always in this position when checking against the standard cell. place the double throw switch at std. cell. adjust the regulating rheostat until the galvanometer shows no deflection. in making the first adjustment use the key marked r_{ }; when a balance is almost attained, use key r_{ }, and for the final adjustment use key marked r_{ }. this cuts out the resistance in series with the galvanometer and gives the maximum sensibility. measurement of unknown pressure.--the potentiometer (fig. ), as ordinarily used, gives direct readings for voltages up to and including . volts. for pressures higher than . volts, a volt box or multiplier should be used. after obtaining the standard cell balance, as previously described, place the double throw switch in the position marked e.m.f. the balance for the unknown e.m.f. is obtained by manipulating the tenths switch and rotating the contact on the extended potentiometer wire. the final position of the two contacts in conjunction with the position of the plug at the left of the instrument indicates the voltage under test. as directed above, use key r_{ } for rough adjustment, r_{ } for intermediate adjustment, and key r_{ } for final adjustment. plug at gives readings for voltage directly from settings of tenths switch and extended wire contact. plug at . shunts the potentiometer circuit so that the voltage measured is . of the reading taken directly from the scale. hence, the readings taken from the setting of the tenths switch and the slide wire contact must be divided by . to balance galvanometer for unknown voltage.--place plug in hole (fig. ) for voltages up to . , and in hole . for voltages up to . . rotate the tenths switch until a condition of balance is obtained exactly or approximately. to secure an exact balance, rotate the contact on the extended wire. the unknown voltage can now be read directly from the position of the tenths switch and the extended wire contact if plug be at , or by dividing by if plug be at . . example.--a balance was obtained with the tenths switch at . , the extended wire contact at and the plug at . the voltage under test, therefore, is . . if the plug at . had been used, the same reading would have indicated . . to ascertain if the current in the potentiometer circuit has altered during a measurement, it is only necessary to plug in at , place the double throw switch on std. cell and close the galvanometer key. no deflection indicates that the current has not changed. if the galvanometer deflect, the regulating rheostat must again be adjusted until the galvanometer shows no deflection. to measure voltages from . to .--pressures up to volts may be measured by using a greater voltage across the ba posts (fig. ). for this purpose a battery of about volts should be used. insert the large plug at . and throw the switch to std. cell, then balance the galvanometer by means of the regulating rheostat. when the rheostat has been set to secure a balance, insert the large plug at , set the switch on e.m.f. and read the voltage in the usual manner. multiply the reading by . [illustration: fig. .--measurement of current with potentiometer. this is done by measuring the drop in volts across a known low resistance. in the figure s is the standard resistance, and on it are the pressure terminals pp, and the current terminals cc. the potentiometer is connected to the shunt through the posts marked p. the resistance between the points pp is adjusted to an even fraction of an ohm. these resistances are so chosen that in order to determine the current passing through the shunt, after having obtained a potentiometer balance it is only necessary to multiply the potentiometer reading by a simple factor. for instance, in using a . ohm standard. it is only necessary to multiply the potentiometer reading by , which gives the current reading in amperes; similarly, a . ohm requires multiplication by , and a . ohm by , .] care of potentiometer.--the slide wire, although protected to a great extent by the hood, in time accumulates dust and dirt with a thin film of oxide. this will tend to increase the resistance in this part of the circuit owing to poor contact. this wire should, therefore, be cleaned occasionally. to do this, unscrew the stop against which the hood strikes when turned to read zero; then remove the hood and rub the entire slide wire vigorously with a soft cloth dipped in vaseline. _do not use emery or sand paper as this will destroy the uniformity of the slide wire._ clean also the steel contact which rubs on the wire, as this becomes glazed after much use. when the potentiometer is not in use, the hood should be screwed all the way down, and the lid put in place to exclude dust. if it be used in a chemical factory, laboratory, or any place where acid fumes are prevalent, this latter precaution is important, because the fumes may attack the slide wire. it is also well to keep the contact surfaces of the switch studs clean and bright by wiping them occasionally with a soft cloth dipped in vaseline. [illustration: _res. of leads on each end is equal to divisions of slide wire. the slide wire is divided into parts-- for the leads, or divisions. calibrated scale on galvanometer:_ fig. .--diagram of leeds and northrup bridge for locating faults in power circuits, showing arrangement of the connections including the lead cables and galvanometer contacts. make connections as shown. the clamps must be so fastened at a and c that the contact resistances will be very small. this contact resistance will figure as an error in the measurement. if, for instance, the contact resistance were equal to . of an ohm, and the wire were of such a size that . of an ohm were equal to the resistance of feet of the cable, there would be an error of feet in the location of the fault. for this reason all contact resistances throughout the loop from a to c must be extremely small. the battery is to be connected to the posts marked ba., and the post marked gr. is to be grounded. it will very frequently happen that the ground is to the cable sheath or some other conductor. in this case, the binding post gr. should be grounded to this conductor. sufficient battery should be used to give a readable deflection on the galvanometer for a small movement of the contact on the bridge wire. the fault is located by the usual murray formula. if, for instance, the galvanometer show no deflection when the contact is at on the scale, it would indicate that the fault is at a distance from a equal to . of the total length of the loop from a to c. a testing current of five amperes may be used with this bridge. in cases of necessity, this current may be increased to eight amperes, but when this current is used it should not be allowed to pass through the bridge for a longer time than is necessary. it frequently happens that small faults which have a very high resistance develop in high pressure cables. such faults are likely to break down and result in damage and should be located. it is usually impossible to locate these faults until they have been partially carbonized. this must be done by applying a sufficiently high voltage between the cable and the sheath (or whatever it is grounded on) to break down the fault. in order to prevent the breaking down process from resulting in a serious burn out a high resistance must be placed in the circuit which will prevent an excessive current, or the circuit must be carefully fused. the former procedure is the better.] location of faults where the loop is composed of cables of different cross sections.--faults in loops of this character may be located with the same degree of accuracy as those in loops of a uniform cross section, provided the length and cross section of each length of cable are known. an example will illustrate the method: in the diagram, fig. , assume the length of the cable ae to be yards of , cir. mil., ef, yards of , cir. mil., and fc, , yards of , cir. mil. these lengths must be reduced by calculation to equivalent lengths of one size, and for this purpose it is best to select the largest size. the results of this calculation are as follows: yds. of , cir. mil. = yds. of , cir. mil. " " , " " = " " , " " , " " , " " = , " " , " " this makes the total resistance of the loop equivalent to , yards of , cir. mil. if the contact show a balance for a reading of . , this indicates that the fault is at a distance of . / , of , = , . equivalent yards. of this, are in the stretch a e. consequently the fault is: , . - = . yards from e. [illustration: fig. .--the fischer portable cable testing set, designed for locating crosses, grounds and breaks in cables, also for conductor and liquid resistance measure. the distinguishing feature of the set is the _master switch_. by means of this switch, connections can be made for the various tests by a single movement, thus avoiding the labor and time which have to be expended in interchanging the connections and memorizing the rather complicated scheme of connections.] chapter xxviii ammeters, voltmeters and wattmeters. an ammeter or ampere meter is simply a commercial form of galvanometer so constructed that the deflection of the needle indicates directly the strength of current _in amperes_. a good ammeter should have a very low resistance so that very little of the energy of the current will be absorbed; the needle should be dead beat, and sufficiently sensitive to respond to minute variations of current. according to the principle of operation, ammeters and voltmeters are classified as: . moving iron; . moving coil; . solenoid or plunger; . magnetic vane; . hot wire; . electrostatic; . astatic; . inclined coil; . fixed and movable coil. again, they are divided according to their use into two classes: . portable type; . switchboard type. _milli-ammeters_ or milli-voltmeters are instruments in which the scale is graduated to read directly in thousandths of an ampere or thousandths of a volt respectively. ques. describe the moving iron type instrument. ans. the arrangement of the working parts are shown in fig. . a soft iron needle n, is pivoted inside of a coil c, and is held out of line with the axis of the coil by means of a permanent magnet m, when the instrument is idle. in this position, a pointer p, which is attached to the needle, stands at the zero mark of the scale s. if a current be passed through the coil, magnetic lines of force are set up in its center, which tend to pull the needle into line with them, and therefore with the axis of the coil. this pull is resisted by the permanent magnet m, and the amount of deflection of the needle from the zero position depends upon the strength of the current or the voltage according as the coil is wound to indicate amperes or volts. [illustration: fig. . moving iron type instrument. the essential parts are: n, soft iron needle; c, coil; m, permanent magnet; p, pointer; s, scale. current passing through the coil acts on the needle, causing it to turn against the restraining force due to the influence of the permanent magnet.] [illustration: fig. .--moving coil type instrument. the essential parts are: a, spiral spring; c, coil; k, soft iron core; m, permanent magnet; p, pointer; s, scale. current passing through the coil causes the moving system to turn against the restraining force due to the influence of the permanent magnet.] ques. describe a moving coil instrument. ans. this type of instrument is shown in fig. . it consists of a moving coil c, to which is attached the pointer, and which is pivoted between the poles of a permanent magnet m. the coil moves between these poles and a fixed soft iron core k, and is held in the normal position by two spiral springs a, above and below the core. the springs also serve to make electrical connection with the coil c. when a current passes through the coil, magnetic lines are set up in it which are at an angle to those passing from one pole of the permanent magnet to the other. the lines of force, which formerly passed from one pole of the magnet to the other by straight lines or by short curved ones, are "stretched" on account of the field produced by the current in the coil, and, in trying to shorten themselves, tend to twist the coil through an angle. this tendency to move is resisted by the two spiral springs, hence the coil moves until equilibrium is established between the two opposing forces. the amount of deflection of the pointer depends, either upon the current strength, or the voltage according to the winding of the coil. [illustration: fig. .--keystone voltmeter; view showing the moving element being withdrawn by loosening one screw. these instruments are constructed on the d'arsonval system, the moving element being shown in detail in figs. and . the entire system is mounted upon a solid metal base plate. the permanent field magnet is made of a single piece of magnet steel, and the pole pieces are of soft steel, permanently secured to the magnet in order that the distribution of the magnetic flux will not be changed by removal and replacement of the pole piece. accordingly the moving mechanism is mounted separately from the field, so that it can be readily lifted from the field without removing the pole pieces. the function of the core is to secure a uniform field. the moving coil is wound upon a form of aluminum, which serves the purpose of damping by the generation of eddy currents. the winding of the coil is of fine copper wire, to which current is conveyed by means of the controlling springs and which, in the case of a voltmeter, is connected in series with a resistance, and in the case of an ammeter, across the terminals of a shunt.] ques. how does the winding differ in ammeters and voltmeters? ans. an ammeter coil consists of a few turns of heavy wire (when designed to carry the full current), while a voltmeter coil is wound with many turns of fine wire. thus, the ammeter is of low resistance, and the voltmeter of high resistance. [illustration: fig. .--new moving element of keystone instruments, weight . grams. fig. .--moving element of keystone instruments assembled in bearing. the moving element consists of coil, counterpoise and pointer. the mechanical connections are made by means of screws and steady pins. in order to adjust for slight set or subset of spring under long use a zero adjuster is provided by means of which this set can be connected and the pointer brought back to zero.] ques. why is a high resistance coil used with a voltmeter? ans. as actually constructed, most voltmeters are simply special forms of ammeter. from ohm's law, the current through a given circuit equals the pressure at its terminals divided by its resistance. hence, if a high resistance be connected in series with a sensitive ammeter that will measure very small currents, then the current passing through the circuit is directly proportional to the voltage at its terminals, and the instrument may be calibrated to read volts. [illustration: figs. and .--connections for series and shunt ammeters. when the construction is such that all the current passes through the instrument, it is connected as in fig. , but where the instrument is designed to take only a fraction of the current, it is connected across a shunt, as in fig. , a definite proportion of the current passing through the instrument and the remainder through the shunt.] ques. into what two classes may ammeters be divided? ans. they are classed as series or shunt according to the way they are designed to be connected with the circuit. ques. what determines the mode of connecting ammeters? ans. when the wire of the ammeter coil is large enough to carry the whole current, it is connected in the circuit _in series_ as shown in fig. . if, however, the wire be small, the instrument is connected _in parallel_ with a shunt of low resistance, so that it only carries a small part of the current, as in fig. . for circuits which carry large currents, the shunt connection is always used, because otherwise the coil of the ammeter would have to be very heavy and the instrument correspondingly bulky. ques. how are shunt ammeters arranged to correctly measure the current? ans. the coil is arranged so that a definite proportion of the whole current passes through it. a large conductor of low resistance is connected directly between the two terminals or binding posts of the instrument; the coil is connected as a shunt around a definite part of this main conductor; then, since the two are connected in parallel and each branch has a definite resistance, the current divides between the two branches directly in proportion to their relative conductivities, or inversely according to their resistances. the coil, therefore, takes a definite part of the whole current, and the force moving it and its pointer away from the zero position is directly proportional to the whole current. hence, by providing a proper scale, the value of the entire current will be indicated. [illustration: figs. and .--westinghouse ammeter shunts. these shunts are used where heavy currents are to be measured. the shunt is connected in series with the bus bar or circuit to be measured, and its terminals are connected by means of small leads to the ammeter or other instrument. these shunts are designed to have approximately millivolts drop at full rated current. they are intended primarily for westinghouse meters, but can be used satisfactorily with any meter requiring millivolts for full scale deflection.] ques. how is a voltmeter connected? ans. a voltmeter is always connected to the two points, whose difference of potential is to be measured. for instance, to measure the voltage between the two sides a and b of the circuit shown in fig. , one terminal of the voltmeter is connected to wire a, and the other to wire b. if the "drop" or difference in voltage through a certain length of wire l, of a circuit, as from a to b in fig. is to be determined, one terminal of the voltmeter is connected to a and the other to b. in a similar manner is found the drop through a lamp. [illustration: fig. .--voltmeter connection for measuring the pressure in an electric circuit. the voltmeter is connected in parallel in the circuit at the point where the voltage is to be measured. fig. .--voltmeter connection for measuring the "drop" or fall in voltage in a certain length of wire, as for instance, the length between the points a and b. the voltmeter is shunted between the two points whose pressure difference is to be measured.] ques. what is the difference between a voltmeter and an ammeter? ans. a voltmeter measures pressure, while an ammeter measures current. as actually constructed, most voltmeters are simply special forms of ammeter. if a high resistance be connected in series with a sensitive ammeter that will measure very small currents, then the current passing through the circuit is directly proportional to the pressure or voltage at its terminals and the instrument may be calibrated to read volts. ques. explain the term "calibrate." ans. to calibrate a measuring instrument is to determine the variations in its readings by making special measurements, or by comparison with a _standard_. [illustration: fig. .--weston ammeter; view showing shunt enclosed within the instrument. weston instruments are direct reading and dead beat. although the scales have practically uniform divisions, it is not assumed in the calibration that they are uniform, and the scales are not printed or engraved. the method of calibration consists in laying out each large division of the scale by comparing the instrument with a standard, and then inking in the division lines so found. the smaller divisions between the large ones are then equally spaced and marked by a mechanical method.] [illustration: fig. .--weston portable voltmeter, inspector's style. this instrument is provided with a reversing key. instead of the regular binding posts, pins are used with which connections are made by means of contact cups attached to flexible cords. these contact cups are convenient in making connections, or in changing quickly from one range to the other, if the instrument have a double scale. connections for the different ranges are made in precisely the same way as with the regular double scale voltmeters. for the upper scale values, the contact pin to the right and the front contact pin to the left being taken, and for the lower scale values, the left contact cup is changed to the rear contact pin.] ques. describe a solenoid or plunger ammeter. ans. this type consists of a "plunger" or soft iron core arranged to enter a solenoid. current being passed through the wire of the solenoid causes the core to be more or less attracted against a restraining force of gravity or springs. a pivoted pointer attached to the core indicates the current value on a graduated dial as shown in fig. . ques. what are the objections to plunger instruments? ans. they are not reliable for small readings, and are readily affected by magnetic fields. [illustration: fig. .--plunger type instrument. the current to be measured passes through the solenoid, producing a magnetic effect on the soft iron plunger which tends to draw it into the coil, and thus cause the pointer to move over the graduated scale. the distance the rod moves depends on the value of the restraining force (which may be springs or gravity), the coil winding, and strength of current. the winding consists of a few turns of heavy wire for an ammeter, and a large number of turns of fine wire when constructed as a voltmeter. since the iron has a certain amount of residual magnetism, the deflection with smaller following large currents is more than would be produced by the same current following a smaller one. the instrument therefore is less reliable than the usual types.] ques. describe a magnetic vane instrument. ans. it consists of a small piece of soft iron or _vane_ mounted on a shaft that is pivoted a little off the center of a coil as shown in fig. . the principle upon which the instrument works is that a piece of soft iron placed in a magnetic field and free to move will move into such position as to conduct the maximum number of lines of force. the current to be measured is passed around the coil producing a magnetic field through the center of the coil. the magnetic field inside the coil is strongest near the inner edge, hence, the vane will move against the restraining force of a spring so that the distance between it and the inner edge of the coil will be as small as possible. a pointer, attached to the vane shaft moves over a graduated dial. [illustration: fig. .--magnetic vane instrument. a soft iron vane, eccentrically pivoted within a coil carrying the current to be measured, is attracted toward the position where it will conduct the greatest number of magnetic lines of force against the restraining force of a spring or equivalent.] ques. describe an inclined coil instrument. ans. as shown in fig. , a coil carrying the current, is mounted at an angle to a shaft to which is attached a pointer. a bundle of iron strips is mounted on the shaft. a spring restrains the shaft and holds the pointer at the zero position when no current is flowing. when a current is passed through the coil, the iron tends to take up a position with its longest sides parallel to the lines of force, which results in the shaft being rotated and the pointer moved on the dial, the amount of movement depending upon the strength of the current in the coil. the coils for large sizes are generally wound with a few turns of flat insulated copper ribbon. the instruments are adapted to either direct or alternating currents but are recommended for alternating currents. [illustration: fig. .--thompson inclined coil ammeter. it is constructed on the magnetic vane principle in which an iron vane is attracted by the magnetic field due to the coil, so as to turn itself parallel with the axis of the coil, the latter being inclined with respect to the axis of the vane. the voltmeter of this type has a similarly placed stationary coil, but in place of the iron vane, is provided with a moving coil in series with the other coil. the restraining force in each case being that due to springs. figs. and show the actual construction of inclined coil instruments.] [illustration: figs. and .--thompson inclined coil portable indicating instruments. fig. , ammeter type p interior; fig. , wattmeter, type p, interior. these instruments, though primarily designed for use on alternating current circuits, may also be used on direct current circuits, by making reversed readings and taking the mean as the true indication. the voltmeters and wattmeters are constructed on the dynamometer principle and the ammeters, on the magnetic vane principle. the voltmeters and wattmeters are provided with a contact key which may be locked in position, enabling the instruments to be left constantly in circuit. the movements of the pointer are damped by means of an air vane; there is also a friction damping device operated by a small button to check excessive oscillations of the pointer. the inclined coil instruments are so designed that the torque is sufficiently high to insure the pointer assuming a definite position with each change in current value.] ques. what is the principle of the hot wire instrument? ans. its action depends upon the heating of a conductor by the current flowing through it, causing it to expand and move an index needle or pointer, the movements of which, by calibration, are made to correspond to the pressure differences producing the actuating currents. ques. what are the characteristics of hot wire instruments? ans. voltmeters of this type are not affected by magnetic fields, and as their self-induction is small, they can be used on either direct or alternating currents; but they possess certain serious defects: they consume more current than the other types; cannot be constructed for small readings; are liable to burn out on accidental overloads; and are somewhat vague in the readings near the zero point and are sometimes inaccurate in the upper part of the scale. ques. describe the construction and operation of the whitney hot wire instruments. ans. as shown in fig. , a wire ax, of non-oxidizable metal, of high resistance and low temperature coefficient, passes over a pulley b mounted on the shaft c. the ends of the wire are attached to the plate e at its ends f and g, the wire being insulated from the plate at g. a spring h holds the wire in tension and takes up the slack due to the expansion caused by the heating of the wire when a current passes through it. the current flows only in the portion of the wire marked a, between the plate e and the pulley b up to the point k where the connection is shown. when a current flows through the wire a, the spring takes up the slack, pulls a around b, and causes b to rotate upon its shaft c. it is clear, that a pointer attached to c, would indicate on a scale the movement of b and c, but as this movement is very slight, a magnifying device will be required. this device consists of a forked rod l, rigidly attached to the shaft c, and carrying at its lower end a silk fibre fastened to the fork and passing around a pulley m, to which a pointer n is attached. for direct current measurements only an electromagnetic system is used. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing principle and construction of the whitney hot wire instruments. the action of instruments of this type depends on the heating of a wire by the passage of a current causing the wire to lengthen. this elongation is magnified by suitable mechanism and transmitted to the pointer of the instrument.] ques. what is the principle of electrostatic instruments? ans. the action of these instruments depends upon the fact that two conductors attract one another when any difference of electric pressure exists between them. if one be delicately suspended so as to be free to move, it will approach the other. [illustration: fig. .--kelvin electrostatic voltmeter; a form of instrument designed for measuring high pressures up to , volts. the instrument, as illustrated, consists of fixed and movable vanes with terminals connecting with each. these vanes which act as condensers take charges proportional to the potential difference between them, resulting in a certain attraction which tends to rotate the movable disc against the restraining force of gravity. in the figure _aa_ and _b_ are two fixed vanes and _c_ a movable vane, carrying a pointer and having a proper weight at its lower end.] ques. describe the kelvin electrostatic voltmeter. ans. a simple form consists, as shown in fig. , of a metal case containing a pair of highly insulated plates, between which a delicately mounted paddle shaped needle is free to move. when the needle is connected to one side of a circuit and the stationary plates to the other side, the needle is attracted and moves between them as indicated by the pointer. adjusting screws at the lower end of the needle allow it to be balanced so that its center of gravity is somewhat below the center of suspension. gravity then is the restraining force. the range of the instrument may be changed by hanging different weights upon the needle. by increasing the number of blades the instrument can be made to measure as low as volts. the form having two stationary blades and one movable blade is suitable for measuring from to , volts. the quadrant electrometer or laboratory form will measure a fraction of a volt. [illustration: fig. .--thompson astatic instrument without cover. when current passes through the coils of the moving element, the lines of force parallel to the shaft produce a torque which tends to turn the shaft and cause the needle to travel across the scale. this action is, of course, opposed by the magnetic field at right angles to the shaft acting on the two pieces of magnetic metal. these astatic instruments have no controlling springs. the two small silver spirals which conduct the current to and from the armature are made of untempered silver and exert no force as springs. the actuating and restraining forces are dependent upon the same electromagnets. the damping effect in these instruments is produced by an aluminum disc moving in a magnetic field, and is proportional to the square of the magnet strength.] ques. explain the construction and principle of the thompson astatic instruments. ans. the fields of these instruments are electromagnets wound for any specified voltage and provided with binding posts separate from the current posts of the instrument. the moving coils are mounted upon an aluminum disc and are located in a magnetic field which is parallel to the shaft and astatically arranged. two small pieces of magnetic metal are rigidly mounted on the shaft and the astatic components of the magnetic field, which are perpendicular to the shaft, tend to keep the pieces of magnetic metal in their initial positions. when current passes through the coils of the moving element, the lines of force parallel to the shaft produce a torque which tends to turn the shaft and cause the needle to travel across the scale. this action is, of course, opposed by the magnetic field at right angles to the shaft acting on the two pieces of magnetic metal. there are thus no restraining springs, current being conveyed to the moving coil by torsionless spirals of silver wire. thompson astatic instruments can be provided with polarity indicators, a red disc showing on the scale card where the poles are reversed. the effect of external fields is eliminated by the astatic arrangement of the fields and the moving parts. a field which tends to increase the torque on one side of the armature diminishes it to a corresponding degree on the other side. the damping effect in these instruments is produced by an aluminum disc moving in a magnetic field. [illustration: fig. to .--multipliers for western standard portable voltmeters. multipliers are resistance boxes, the coils in which are highly insulated, and are adjusted so that the readings of the instrument may be multiplied by any desired constant. multipliers are usually constructed so that the indications of the pointer, multiplied by , , , or , will give the voltage of the circuit. by the use of multipliers the range of voltmeters may be increased to any practical limit.] [illustration: fig. .--portable multiplier for portable voltmeter. a multiplier is used for increasing the readings of voltmeters, and consists of resistance coils placed in a portable case. a multiplier is connected in series with the voltmeter and must be adjusted for the instrument with which it is to be used, because the resistance coil must be a multiple of the voltmeter resistance. for instance, a multiplier with a value of , used with a volt voltmeter or ohms would measure about , ohms; one with a value of , would equal about , ohms. the multiplier would give a total scale value of , and the multiplier , a total scale value of volts to the volt instrument. a multiplier is of considerable value in that it does away with the necessity of having a number of voltmeters of different ranges. the instrument here illustrated has a range of volts.] ques. what are multipliers? ans. these are extra resistance coils which are connected in series with a voltmeter for increasing its capacity or readings. they are put up in portable boxes, and must be adjusted for each particular voltmeter as the resistance of a multiplier coil must be a multiple of the resistance of the voltmeter itself. ques. what is an electro-dynamometer? ans. an instrument for measuring amperes, volts, or watts by the reaction between two coils when the current to be measured is passed through them. one of the coils is fixed and the other movable. [illustration: figs. to .--western standard portable shunts. the milli-voltmeters used in connection with these shunts read directly in amperes. shunts of different capacities can be adjusted to the same instrument, and it can, therefore, be used to measure a current of , amperes with the same degree of accuracy as a current of ampere. in selecting shunts of different capacities for use in connection with one instrument it should be considered that the higher ranges must be even multiples of the lower one in order to suit the same scale on the instrument.] ques. describe the siemens' electro-dynamometer. ans. the essential parts are shown in fig. . the fixed coil a, composed of a number of turns of wire is fastened to a vertical support, and surrounded by the movable coil b of a few turns, or often of only one turn. the movable coil is suspended by a thread and a spiral spring c, below the dials which are fastened at one end to the movable coil and at the other end to a milled headed screw d, which can be turned so as to place the planes of the coil at right angles to each other, and to apply torsion to the spring to oppose the deflection of the movable coil for this position when a current is passed through the coils. the ends of the movable coil dip into two cups of mercury e, e', located one above the other and along the axis of the coils so as to bring the two in series when connected to an external circuit. the arrows show the direction of current through the two coils. an index pointer f is attached to the movable coil. the upper end of this pointer is bent at a right angle, so that it swings over the dial between two stop pins g, g', and rests directly over the zero line when the planes of the coils are at right angles to each other. a pointer h is attached to the torsion screw d, and sweeps over the scale of the dial. the spring is the controlling factor in making the measurement. [illustration: fig. .--diagram of siemens' electro-dynamometer. it consists of two coils on a common axis, but set in planes at right angles to each other in such a way that a torque is produced between the two coils which measures the product of their currents. this torque is balanced by twisting a spiral spring through a measured angle of such degree that the coils shall resume their original relative positions. if the instrument be used for measuring _current_, the coils are connected in series, and the reading is then proportional to the square of the current. if used as a _wattmeter_, one coil carries the main current and the other a small current, which is proportional to the pressure. the reading is then proportional to the power in the circuit. fig. .--diagram showing connections of siemens' electro-dynamometer as arranged to read watts.] [illustration: figs. to .--wright demand indicator. this is a device for registering the maximum ampere demand of appreciable duration in any electrical circuit. it may be used on either direct or alternating current circuits. the essential features and principle are as follows: a liquid is hermetically sealed in a glass vessel consisting of two bulbs connected by a "u" tube, and a central tube called the "index" tube, connected to the upper end of the right hand side of the "u." around the left hand or heating bulb, is placed a band of resistance metal, through which the current to be measured is passed, or a definite shunted portion of it. the heating effect of the current increases the temperature of the left hand bulb, causing the air to expand which forces the liquid up the right hand side of the "u" tube and into the index tube, where it remains until the indicator is reset. the height of the liquid in the index tube as shown by the scale, indicates the maximum current which has passed through the indicator. it is the difference in temperature of the air in the two bulbs which causes the flow of the liquid. any change in external temperature causes equal effect in both bulbs and therefore does not affect the reading.] [illustration: figs. and .--weston illuminated dial station voltmeter and ammeter. the voltmeter has two indices, a pointed index for close readings and an index called the _normal index_, which enables a slight deviation from the normal voltage to be seen from a long distance. the "normal index" is inside the case and terminates in a circular disc of blackened aluminum. the disc is adjusted from the outside of the case by hand, by means of the knurled knob seen on the front of the case, so that it is directly below the point of normal voltage. when the indicating index reaches the point of normal voltage, the disc of the normal index appears in the center of the circular opening of the indicating index, a narrow ring of white being visible, encircling the disc of the normal index. the ammeter depends for its operation upon the fall of potential between two points of the circuit carrying the main current, and requires a difference of only about . volt to give a full scale deflection. when a maximum deflection is secured, the current passing through the instrument is never more than . ampere irrespective of the total capacity of the instrument. a separate shunt is used which is placed at the back of the switchboard. in many cases, a special shunt can be dispensed with and a short section of the mains on the switchboard, or the mains leading from the dynamo, can be used instead. on the basis of one square inch cross section per , amperes, a length of about feet of copper conductor would be required as a shunt, in which case however, this section of the conductor must be adjusted with precision.] ques. explain the operation of the siemen's electrodynamometer. ans. in fig. , when a current is passed through both coils, the movable coil is deflected against a stop pin, then the screw d is turned in a direction to oppose the action of the current until the deflection has been overcome and the coil brought back to its original position. the angle through which the pointer of the torsion screw was turned is directly proportional to the square root of the angle of torsion. to determine the current strength in amperes, the square root of the angle of torsion is multiplied by a calculated constant furnished by the makers of this instrument. [illustration: fig. .--thompson watt hour meter (type c- ). this form is furnished with side connections, the line wires entering at the left and the load wires at the right. both sides of the system are carried through the meter in all sizes up to and including the ampere size. in meters of larger ampere capacities, a voltage tap is used.] ques. how is the electrodynamometer adapted to measure volts or watts? ans. when constructed as a voltmeter, both coils are wound with a large number of turns of fine wire making the instrument sensitive to small currents. then by connecting a high resistance in series with the instrument it can be connected across the terminals of a circuit whose voltage is to be measured. when constructed as a wattmeter, one coil is wound so as to carry the main current, and the other made with many turns of fine wire of high resistance suitable for connecting across the circuit. with this arrangement, the force between the two coils will be proportional to the product of amperes by volts, hence, the instrument will measure watts. [illustration: fig. .--interior view of thompson watt hour meter (type c- ). capacity: to amperes, two wire, and to amperes, three wire; to volts. the meter is supported by three lugs, the upper one of which is keyholed, and the lower right hand one slotted. this permits rapid and accurate levelling as the top screw can be inserted and the meter hung thereon approximately level. the right hand screw may then be placed in position and the meter adjusted as may be required before forcing the screw home.] ques. describe briefly the construction of the thompson recording wattmeter. ans. it consists of four elements: , a motor causing rotation; , a dynamo providing the necessary load or drag; , a registering device, the function of which is to integrate the instantaneous values of the electrical energy to be measured; and , means of regulation for light and full load. [illustration: how to read a meter fig. .--recording dials of watt hour meter, illustrating method of reading electric meters. the unit of measurement of electrical energy is the watt hour. , watt hours make or equal kilowatt hour. some electric meters have dials, the extreme right hand dial of which registers in kilowatt hours, while others have dials, the extreme right hand dial of which registers in tenths of kilowatt hours. in making out bills to customers the extreme right hand dial of a dial meter is ignored in order that the "state of meter" shown on bills uniformly requires the addition of ciphers to correctly express the registration in watt hours. each division on the right hand dial (ignoring the th dial mentioned) denotes , watt hours or kilowatt hour; on the next dial kilowatt hours, on the next dial kilowatt hours and on the left hand dial , kilowatt hours. one complete revolution of any dial causes the hand on the dial immediately to its left to move forward one division. to take a statement from the meter begin at the left and set down for each dial the lower figure next to each hand, not necessarily the figure nearer the hand. in the above example the statement is , kilowatt hours or , , watt hours. subtract the previous statement to arrive at registration for a given period. some meters are subject to a multiplying constant so stated on their face and the registration of such meters must be multiplied by the constant as shown, to determine the actual consumption of electrical energy. the constant is the measure of the mechanical adjustment in the register of the meter and is the ratio between the registration of the dial hands and the true consumption. this adjustment is made always by the manufacturer of the meter and is never changed in service.] ques. what is the action of the motor in the thompson watt hour meter? ans. it rotates at very slow speed, and since there is no iron in its fields and armature, it has very little reverse voltage. its armature current, therefore, is independent of the speed of rotation, and is constant for any definite voltage applied at its terminals. [illustration: fig. .--interior of thompson watt hour meter (type c- ) showing armature, small commutator and gravity brushes. a spherical armature moving within circular field coils is the construction adopted in this meter. the armature is wound on a very thin paper shell, stiff enough to withstand the strain due to winding and subsequent handling. the wire composing the armature is of the smallest gauge consistent with mechanical strength. the field coils, as before stated, are circular, and are placed as near each other as possible, one on either side of the armature, with the internal diameter just sufficient to give the necessary clearance for the rotating element. this construction prevents magnetic leakage. ribbon wire is employed for the field coils, thus economizing space and further carrying out the idea of concentration.] the torque of this motor being proportioned to the product of its armature and field currents, must vary directly as the energy passing through its coils. in order then, that the motor shall record correctly it is necessary only to provide some means for making the speed proportional to the torque. this is accomplished by applying a load or drag, the strength of which varies directly as the speed. ques. explain the operation of the thompson recording wattmeter. ans. there being no iron in either field or armature of the motor element, no considerations of saturation are involved. the torque or pull of the armature is dependent upon the product of the field and armature strength. the strength of the field--there being no iron--varies directly with the current in the field. thus the strength of the field with amperes flowing to the load is exactly twice the strength of the field with amperes flowing to the load. the strength of the armature is dependent on the voltage of the system to which it is connected, the armature element of the meter being practically a voltmeter. there is, therefore, a torque or pull varying directly with the strength of the armature multiplied by the strength of the field, or, in other words, varying directly with the watt load, and except in so far as influenced by friction, the speed of rotation varies directly with the torque or pull. the currents generated in the disc armature consist of eddy currents, which circulate within the mass of the disc. installation of wattmeters.--the various types of wattmeter differ so widely either in mechanical details, or operating principles, that it is customary for manufacturers to furnish detailed instructions for the installation of their meters. such instructions should be carefully followed in all cases, but the following will be found generally applicable to all types of motor meter: . after unpacking the meter, and before opening the case or cover, clean the latter carefully to remove all adhering particles of dust and excelsior. . the proper location for the meter should be one where there is no vibration. when this location has been selected, nail or screw upon the walls, a board somewhat larger than the dimensions of the back of the meter, and upon this board hang the meter by the top hanger. . after hanging the meter, open or remove the case or cover, and if necessary, put the mechanism in order according to instructions furnished by the manufacturer. . in order to operate satisfactorily, the meter should hang plumb, so that the spindle of the revolving element will be vertical, and the horizontal planes through the armature and retarding disc will be level. many complaints relative to meters being slow on light loads, are invariably due to the fact that the meters have been installed out of plumb[b]. . in making the circuit connections, be very careful that the _positive_ lead or wire is placed in the _positive_ binding post of the meter. this precaution is essential for insuring an accurate and sensitive measurement on small loads. . when a meter of the commutated motor type sparks at the brushes at starting, it is an indication that the commutator is dusty. clean it with a piece of closely woven cotton tape / -inch in width. . meters should never be allowed to remain with their covers off, in the testing room, station, or any other place. in order to get the best service, and to give them long life they must be kept clean. [b] note.--the most practical and accurate method of plumbing a meter is to level it by means of a small brass weight placed upon the retarding disc. place the weight upon the front or back upper surface of the disc, close to the edge. if the disc and weight rotate toward the right, move the bottom of the meter in the same direction so as to raise the disc on the right. when the disc is level, the weight and disc will remain stationary when the weight is placed on either the front or the back of the disc. next, place the weight on the disc close to the edge on either side. if the disc rotate towards the front, swing the bottom of the meter away from the wall or board until the disc remains stationary when the weight is placed upon it on either side. if the disc rotate toward the back, raise it up on that side by bringing the top of the meter away from the wall or board. it is possible that the second levelling operation will alter the position of the disc obtained by the first operation, therefore, the first should be repeated, and after that the second also, until the disc remains stationary when the weight is placed at any point upon its surface. this method of levelling is more reliable than any method in which a spirit level is employed. [illustration: fig. .--interior view of thompson watt hour meter (type cq). the capacities of this type range from to amperes inclusive, two wire, and to amperes inclusive, three wire, and for voltages of from to volts. these meters are made with either front or back connections. in front connected meters the positions of the leading-in wires and cables are the same as in the type c- , fig. , so that either type of meter may be installed in the same location.] [illustration: fig. .--specimen record from general electric recording ammeter. the record is made on a band of specially prepared paper four inches wide and sixty feet in length. on this paper are ruled lines corresponding to time, and the instrument calibration. the lines ruled across the paper represent time; those ruled lengthwise represent volts, amperes, or watts, depending upon the instrument construction. this form of paper has the advantage of permitting the use of time divisions of equal length throughout the entire range of the recording pen. the recording pen is attached to the moving element in such a manner that its motion is transmitted in a straight line parallel to the time division on the chart. as the paper is unwound and passed under the recording pen, it is paid into a space at the bottom of the instrument case. to assist in removing paper, the instrument is provided with a stripper, which enables the paper to be torn off evenly and without damage. the paper feeding mechanism is simple. by means of suitable gearing, the clock drives a drum having peg teeth which engage the holes located near the edge of the paper. these teeth not only feed the paper under the recording pen, but also give it a definite and accurate position along the axis of the drum. the feeding drum is driven by a friction clutch.] [illustration: fig. .--westinghouse type cw- watt hour meter with cover off. this meter is of the commutator type without iron in the magnetic circuit. the spherical armature is closely surrounded by circular field coils which provide the shortest magnetic path and smallest magnetic leakage, thus securing high torque with small consumption of energy. the armature winding is wound on a hollow sphere of prepared paper which is moulded in corrugated form to secure strength. uniform brush tension is maintained by gravity. each brush consists of two small round wires placed side by side and held against the commutator by a small counterweight whose distance from the fulcrum is adjustable. the current winding consists of two flat coils of strap copper, one clamped rigidly on either side of the central mounting frame which supports the armature bearings. these coils are connected either in series or parallel, depending on the capacity. in three wire meters one of the coils is connected in series with each side of the line. the retarding element consists of a light aluminum disc rotating between two pairs of permanent magnets. the magnets are prepared by a special aging process to insure permanence. full load adjustment is made by shifting the position of the permanent magnets. ample light load adjustment or friction compensation is provided by means of the movable coil, which can be shifted horizontally or radially on loosening one screw. the meter registers directly in kilowatt hours.] [illustration: fig. .--interior of thompson prepayment watt hour meter. the actuating force is a large flat coil spring enclosed in a barrel or drum to which its outside end is attached. the operating knob winds this main spring by turning the drum. the spring has many turns and as the operation of the device never equals one whole turn, the spring always exerts a practically constant force. the rate device consists of a small train of gears secured to the front of the frame directly back of the register. each device is marked with the price per kw-hr. for which it should be used. the switch is of the double pole double break type with leaf contacts. the coin receptacles are placed at the back of the meter. to make an advance payment, the winding knob is turned so that the arrow points upward. a quarter dollar is then inserted in the slot and the knob turned to the right, the coin serving as a key which operates the mechanism within the device, turning the registering wheel and placing the coin to the credit of the customer. if the circuit be open when the coin is deposited the same motion of the knob which moves the registering mechanism closes the circuit switch contained within the case. the dial contains a scale marked in plain figures over which a pointer passes indicating the number of coins remaining to the credit of the depositor. when the first coin is deposited and the knob turned closing the main switch, the pointer rests opposite the first division on the scale. if a second coin be deposited before the current purchased with the first coin has been consumed, a second motion of the knob will bring the pointer opposite the second division on the scale. twelve coins can thus be deposited consecutively, after which the slot is automatically closed and further prepayment cannot be made until the value of one or more coins has been consumed. whenever energy to the value of one coin has been delivered through the meter, the escapement is mechanically released turning the pointer back one division. this process continues until all the energy has been delivered for which payment has been made. thus the depositor can ascertain at any time how much energy can be obtained without further payment. when all energy has been delivered, the circuit switch is opened so that no more current can be obtained until one or more coins have been deposited. the indicating mechanism shows only the number of coins which stand to the credit of the customer, but, by consulting the meter dial, one can determine what fractional part of the prepayment next to be cancelled remains to the credit of the customer. a coin or washer larger than the coin for which the device is designed cannot be introduced into the receiving slot and a smaller one will not operate the device.] how to test a meter.--a simple test for ascertaining whether a customer's meter is fast or slow[c], may be applied as follows: . turn off the lamps and other power consuming devices in the house and then note the reading of the meter dial and the exact time of day; . turn on as quickly as possible about one-tenth of all the lamps in the house and allow them to burn for about two hours; . at the end of two hours, turn off the lamps as quickly as possible and note the reading of the meter dial. the difference between the first and second readings of the dial will be the indicated consumption of two hours, and if this be greater than the amount of power that ought to be consumed by the number of lamps turned on, the meter is fast, but if it be less, the meter is slow. the best results obtained by this method are only approximations, however, on account of the variations in the watts consumed by the different makes of lamp, the uncertainty as to the actual voltage on the line at the time of the test, and the lack of knowledge as to the age of the lamps. therefore, if the meter test within five per cent., or do not record more nor less than one-twentieth of the assumed lamp consumption it is safe to assume that the meter is correct as the result of the test is not likely to be any closer to the truth. [c] note.--a meter operates under more varied and exacting conditions than almost any other piece of apparatus. it is frequently subjected to vibration, moisture and extremes of temperature; it must register accurately on varying voltages and various wave forms; it must operate for many months without any supervision or attention whatever; and, in spite of all these conditions, it is expected to register with accuracy from a few per cent. of its rated capacity to a per cent. overload. as a meter is a type of machine, its natural tendency is to run slow; but occasionally, through accident, a meter may run fast. when a meter runs fast the consumer is paying a higher rate per kilowatt hour than his contract calls for. he is being discriminated against. the periodic testing of meters is therefore a necessity and is an indication of the honesty of intention of the manager toward the customers of his company. meters controlling a very large amount of revenue may be tested as often as once a month, while the ordinary run of meters should be tested at least once a year, once in eighteen months, or once in two years, the period varying with different companies, different types and different civic requirements. commutator type meters, having comparatively heavy moving elements with consequent rapid increase in friction due to wear on the jewel and bearings, and a commutator also increasing in friction with age, must have frequent and expert attention to insure their accuracy under all conditions. ques. how should a roughened commutator be cleaned and smoothed? ans. by means of tape. [illustration: fig. .--internal connections of sangamo watt hour meter (type d). a, copper disc armature, submerged in mercury; b, bridge wire between binding posts, for main load current, when both sides of the line are carried through the meter; ct, compounding series turns around pressure circuit magnet, building up field as load increases, to compensate for falling off in speed otherwise found; d, aluminum damping, or brake disc, controlling speed of meter; e, copper contact ears, imbedded in insulating wall of mercury chamber, leading current into and out from armature; f, hardwood float on armature proportioned to give slight "lift" to entire moving system, when armature and float are immersed in mercury; h, soft steel disc above permanent magnets, riveted to fine pitch screw working in bracket above, so that adjustment of the disc up or down gives variation in damping effect of permanent magnets, and therefore of main speed. k, clamp slider with thumb screw, for obtaining light load adjustment by moving k to right or left, as may be necessary. k spans and connects parallel wires of light load adjustment, br and rr'. mm, powerful permanent magnets, acting on disc d, giving main speed control for meter. n, high resistance heavy wire, forming part of series adjustment between armature and any shunt with which meter may be used, to set drop through meter correct for drop of the shunt. p, spirally laminated soft steel ring, moulded in mercury chamber above the armature space, to act as a return for magnetic lines of force from and to energizing magnet below. r, resistance card unit, in series with pressure circuit coils; in volt meters one card is used, in volt meters two cards, or one card and a thermocouple. br, small brass wire, connected to ingoing end of pressure circuit coils and forming rr' and the slides k the light load adjustment. rr', high resistance wire having opposite ends connected to ears ee by low resistance wires. current energizing the pressure circuit coils sc passes from rr' through k to br and thence to the coils, and if k be near the end of rr' and br, the least compensation is obtained; if near right end, maximum light load compensation is obtained. s, shaft or spindle. in actual meter s is divided, the lower shaft carrying armature a, and the upper shaft damping disc d. sa, series resistance adjustment, for setting meter to correct drop for shunt. sc and sc', pressure coils connected in series. tt, binding posts at bottom of meter. y, laminated soft steel yoke, carrying coils sc and sc', and giving a powerful and concentrated magnetic field on the armature. w, worm, driving recording dial train. ww, worm wheel.] [illustration: fig. .--interior view of columbia watt hour meter (type d), showing construction and principal parts and connections. the armature winding consists of three coils approximately circular in shape. the coils are form wound, interlocked with one another and with the light impregnated fibre disc which serves as a spacer for them. the aluminum damper disc has the conventional anti-creep provision in the shape of the three small soft iron plugs, mounted close to the central staff, which the illustration shows. these in their revolution come successively within the influence of an adjustable iron screw which is magnetized by an extension from one of the damper magnets. the angular relationship of the armature windings and of the three iron plugs is such that at the time that the armature is exerting a maximum torque the magnetized screw is exerting the maximum pull to hold back a given plug and conversely when the armature pull is a minimum the magnetic screw is attracting a plug with the maximum effort to cause ahead rotation. the irregularities of torque are in this way smoothed out. the commutator has three segments and is made of chemically pure silver. each brush is formed of a length of phosphor bronze wire bent like a hair pin and secured at its "u" end to a brass sleeve, which in turn is secured to an insulated stud by a set screw. an extension on the sleeve carries a micrometer screw brush adjustment. the main speed adjustment is secured by providing a soft iron bridge plate, bridging over the extremities of each magnet end and adjustable, by means of a set screw and lock nut, to any desired distance therefrom. this gives a regular micrometer means of varying the effective magnet strength. interposed between the series coil and the permanent magnets is a heavy soft iron shield to guard the magnets against disturbance by short circuiting. light load adjustment is obtained by providing in the coil circuit a series of small resistance spools, equipped with pin terminals, to which connection can be selectively made by means of a split bushing terminal on a flexible cord. this series of spools is strung on a metal arbor located within the case.] [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing internal connections of the duncan watt hour meter. its operation depends upon the principle of the well known electro-dynamometer, in which the electromagnetic action between the currents in the field coils and an armature produces motion in the latter. it also embodies the other two necessary watt hour meter elements required for the speed control and registration of the revolutions of the armature, these being embodied in the drag magnet and disc, and the meter register respectively. the motion of the armature is converted into continuous rotation by the aid of a commutator and brushes, the commutator being connected to the armature coils and carried on the same spindle therewith.] waste of electricity in lighting.--in large residences where a good many servants are employed or in any place where the power consumed is not directly under the supervision of the person who must pay the bills, a great deal of waste usually occurs. if the meter be read before retiring, the reading in the morning will show how much energy was consumed during the night, which will show in turn how many lamps were burning all night. a great deal of light can be saved by placing the lamps so that they will throw the light where it is needed and by placing small lamps such as candle power and candle power in places where not much light is needed, such as bathrooms, halls, cellars, etc. when the lamps get old and dim they should be replaced with new ones, as it costs about the same to burn an old lamp as a new one. an old candle power lamp which is very dim will give only about candle power and use about as much current as is required for a new candle power. if the dim light be light enough, it should be replaced by an candle power lamp, which will not consume as much power as the old candle power. chapter xxix operation of dynamos before starting a dynamo or motor.--when the machine has been securely fixed, it should be carefully examined to see that all parts are in good order. the examination should be made as follows: . the field magnet circuit should first be inspected to see that none of the wires or connections have broken or have become loose, and that the coils are correctly connected; . the caps of the bearings should be taken off, and these and the journals carefully cleaned of all grit and dirt. they should then be oiled, and the caps replaced and screwed up by hand only; . the gaps between the outer surface of the armature and the polar faces should be examined in order to ascertain whether any foreign body, such as a small screw or nail has lodged therein. if such be the case, it should be carefully removed with a bit of wire; . the guard plates protecting the armature windings should be removed, and the windings carefully inspected by slowly rotating the armature, to see that they are not damaged, and that the insulation is perfect. the armature should then be finally rotated by hand to see that it revolves freely, and that the bearings are securely fixed; . the commutator should be examined to see that it is not damaged in any way through one or more of the segments being knocked in, or the lugs being forced into contact with one another; . the brush holders and brushes should be inspected to see that the former work freely on the spindle, and that the hold off catches work properly, are clean and make good contact with the brush holders or flexible leads; . having ascertained that the machine is not injured in any way, and that the armature revolves freely, the brushes should be adjusted. in the subsequent working of the dynamo it will of course be unnecessary to follow the whole of these proceedings every time the machine is started, as it is extremely unlikely that the machine will be damaged from external causes while working without the attendant being aware of the fact. adjusting the brushes.--the _adjustment of the brushes_ upon the commutator requires careful attention if sparking is to be avoided. there are two adjustments to be made: . for pressure; the brushes must bear against the commutator segments with sufficient pressure for proper contact. . for lead. the brushes must have the proper angular advance (positive or negative, according as the machine is a dynamo or motor) to prevent sparking. ques. at what point on the commutator should the brushes bear? ans. the points upon the commutator at which the tips of the brushes (carried by opposite arms of the rocker) bear, should be, in bipolar dynamos, at opposite extremities of a diameter. in multipolar dynamos the positions vary with the number of poles and the nature of the armature winding. ques. what provision is made to facilitate the correct setting of the brushes? ans. setting marks are usually cut in the collar of the commutator next to the bearing. [illustration: figs. and .--diagrams illustrating how to set brushes. some brush holders require brushes set _with_ the direction of rotation of the commutator, and others, set _against_ the direction of rotation. in fig. is shown a brush holder of the first class, which must always be set as indicated by the arrow. if set in the opposite direction, trouble will ensue, as an inspection of the figure will show, because the surface of the commutator and the brush would form a toggle joint, and the brush would tend to dig into the commutator and either break itself or bend the brush rigging. in fig. is shown a brush holder of the second type. this brush is set against the direction of rotation, but an inspection of the cut will show that there is, in this case, no tendency for the brush to dig into the commutator surface. each type of brush holder, of which there are several, should be adjusted as recommended by the manufacturer to secure proper working.] ques. how are the brushes set by these marks? ans. the tips of all the brushes carried by one arm of the rocker are set in correct line with the commutator segments marked out by one setting mark, and the tips of the brushes carried by the other arm or arms are set in correct line with the segments marked out by the other mark or marks. if one or more of the brushes in a set be out of line with their setting mark, it will be necessary to adjust the brushes up to this mark by pushing them out or drawing them back, as may be required, afterwards clamping them in position. when adjusting the brushes, the armature should always be rotated, so that the setting marks are horizontal. the rocker can then be rotated into position, and the tips of both sets of brushes conveniently adjusted to their marks. in those brush holders provided with an index or pointer for adjusting the brushes, the setting marks upon the commutator are absent, length of the pointer being so proportioned that when the tips of the brushes are in line with the extreme tips of the pointers, the brushes bear upon the correct positions on the commutator. [illustration: fig. .--method of soldering cable to carbon brush. drill a hole in the end, also in the side of the brush, as shown in the sketch, and after thoroughly tinning the "pig-tail," place it in the end hole and fill the holes up with solder through the side hole. another method is to drill a hole through the carbon so that the cable will just slip through, countersink the edge of the hole a little, clean the cable thoroughly and pass it through the hole. then with any good flux and solder, fill the countersunk part on both sides.] ques. what should be done after adjusting the brushes to their correct positions upon the commutator? ans. their tips or rubbing ends should be examined while in position to see that they bed accurately on the surface of the commutator. in many instances it will be found that this is not the case, the brushes sometimes bearing upon the point or toe, and sometimes upon the heel, so that they do not make contact with the commutator throughout their entire thickness and width. the angle of the rubbing ends will therefore need to be altered by filing to make them lie flat. ques. how is the proper brush contact secured? ans. when the brushes do not bed properly they should be refitted to secure proper contact. ques. how is the pressure adjustment made? ans. this is effected by regulating the tension of the springs provided for the purpose upon the brush holders. ques. with what pressure should the brushes bear against the commutator? ans. the tension of the springs should be just sufficient to cause the brushes to make a light yet reliable contact with the commutator. the contact must not be too light, otherwise the brushes will vibrate, and thus cause sparking; nor must it be too heavy, or they will press too hard upon the commutator, grinding, scoring and wearing away the latter and themselves to an undesirable extent, and moreover, giving rise to heating and sparking. the correct pressure is attained when the brushes collect the full current without sparking, while their pressure upon the commutator is just sufficient to overcome ordinary vibration due to the rotation of the commutator. [illustration: figs. to .--method of winding cables with marlin. when connecting the feeders and dynamo and service leads to a switchboard, the wires are often _served_ with marlin. by serving is meant to tightly wrap the wires of each set together with marlin. a tool for serving may be made as in fig. , using a piece of oak ins. wide, / in. thick and ins. long, having four holes drilled through it, as shown. the marlin is passed through the holes, commencing at the hole nearest the handle, the object being to cause a strain on the marlin at the point where it passes around the wire, so that the marlin may be wrapped tightly. it is necessary to serve the first four or five inches by hand, pushing the winding into the conduit as far as possible. this acts as an additional protection to the wires where they leave the conduit. the serving is continued, as in fig. , to within four or five inches of the first lug by means of the serving tool, passing the ball of marlin around the wires with the serving tool. the wires are then bent in shape, as in fig. . to serve the wires properly it is necessary to tie the ends of the wires taut. the wires should be straightened and run together so as to be parallel, being bound with tape at different points to keep them so. when the serving is complete the marlin should be thoroughly painted with a moisture resisting compound. the marlin serving will stiffen the wires and they can be bent very neatly to avoid touching the bus bars of the board. when painted the marlin hardens so that it is difficult to bend the wires after the paint has dried. it then requires a strong pressure to bend them. the marlin acts as an additional insulation and mechanical protection to the wires, and while no harm would result from the wires coming in contact with the bars while thus protected, it looks better to bend them so as to avoid touching the bars.] direction of rotation.--this is sometimes a matter of doubt and often results in considerable trouble. as a general rule, a dynamo is intended to run in a certain direction; either right handed or left handed according to whether the armature, when looked at from the pulley end, revolves with or against the direction of the hands of a clock. dynamos are usually designed to run right handed, but the manufacturers will make them left handed if so desired. it may be necessary to reverse the direction of rotation of a dynamo, if the driving pulley to which it has to be connected happen to revolve left handed, or if it be necessary to bring the loose side of the belt on top of the pulley, or to place the machine in a certain position on account of limited space. the direction of rotation of ordinary series, shunt, or compound bipolar dynamos may be reversed by simply reversing the brushes without changing any of the connections, then changing the point of contact of the brush tips °. in multipolar dynamos, a similar change, amounting to ° for a four pole machine, and ° for an eight pole machine, will reverse their direction of rotation. it will be understood that under these conditions, the original direction of the current and the polarity of the field magnets will remain unchanged. this rule does not apply to arc dynamos and other machines, which have to be run in a certain direction only, in order to suit their regulating devices. if the direction of current generated by a dynamo be opposite to that desired, the two leads should be reversed in the terminals, or the residual magnetism should be reversed by a current from an outside source. [illustration: fig. .--method of assembling core discs. for this operation two wooden "horses" should be provided to support the core at a convenient height, as shown in the illustration.] starting a dynamo.--having followed the foregoing instructions, all keys, spanners, bolts, etc., should be removed from the immediate neighborhood of the machine, and the dynamo started. [illustration: figs. and .--tinning block for electric soldering tool. it is made with two soft bricks. one brick is used to support the soldering tool, and the other to contain the tinning material and to furnish a material which will keep the copper bit bright enough to receive its coating of "tin." fig. represents a section of the tinning brick, which is scooped out on top as shown by the lower line. into one end of the hollow in the brick, some sal-ammoniac is placed to help tin the copper bit. sal-ammoniac is a natural flux for copper and aids greatly in keeping the tool well tinned. next, some melted solder is run into the hollow of the brick, and lastly enough resin to fill the cavity nearly to the top. when the tool is not in use, the electricity is switched off and the tool permitted to lie in the resin. if it be desired to repair the tin coating a little when the tool is in use, the latter is rubbed on the brick below the layer of solder, and the layer of resin. if the tool be in very bad condition, it may be pushed into the sal-ammoniac once or twice and then rubbed in the solder again. it requires but little heat to keep the brick and its contents ready for use. in fact, the brick is a fair non-conductor of heat and prevents the escape of heat from one side of the tool. when momentarily not in use, the tool remains in the solder which becomes melted underneath the layer of resin. when the copper bit becomes too hot, it will begin to volatilize the resin, thus calling attention to this fact, whereupon, the electricity should be turned off from the tool.] ques. how should a dynamo be started? ans. a dynamo is usually brought up to speed either by starting the driving engine, or by connecting the dynamo to a source of power already in motion. in the first case, it should be done by a competent engineer, and in the second case by a person experienced in putting on friction clutches to revolving shafts, or in slipping on belting to moving pulleys. [illustration: fig. .--connections for two shunt wound dynamos to run in parallel. the positive lead of each machine is connected to the same bus bar. in starting, if but one machine is to be used, the dynamo is first brought up to speed and the voltage regulated by means of the rheostat r and the voltmeter v. the main switch is then thrown in. the connections for the field are taken off the dynamo leads so that the opening of the main switch will not open the field circuit and for this reason the field will begin to build up as soon as the machine is started. when but one of the machines is running, the idle machine is brought up to speed with the main switch open, and the voltage regulated by means of the rheostat and voltmeter until the voltages of the machines are the same. then the main switch is thrown in and the load on the machines (which is ascertained by the ammeters) is equalized by means of the rheostats. should there be any great difference in voltages, the higher one will run the other as a motor without changing the direction of rotation. the field current will remain unchanged, and the armature current of the low dynamo will be reversed, which will cause it to run as a motor in the same direction as it ran as a dynamo. when dynamos feeding current to motors are to be shut down, the switches on the motors should first be opened. otherwise some of the motor fuses will blow. as the voltage goes down the motors will draw more current to do the work. if a plant be shut down with the motor switches "in" it will generally be found impossible to start a shunt dynamo, the low resistance in the mains not allowing enough current to flow around the shunt fields to energize them.] ques. should the brushes be raised out of contact in starting? ans. the brushes should not be in contact in starting if there be any danger of reverse rotation, as might happen when the dynamo is driven by a gas engine. aside from this, it is desirable that the brushes be in contact, because they are more easily and better adjusted, and the voltage will come up slowly, so that any fault or difficulty will develop gradually and can be corrected, or the machine stopped before any injury is done. [illustration: fig. .--connections for two shunt dynamos to run on the three wire system. the two machines are connected in series, three wires being carried from them, one from the outside pole of each machine and one from the junction of the two machines. the voltage between the outside wires is equal to the combined voltage of the two machines and the voltage between the outside and the central or neutral wire is equal to the voltage of the corresponding machine. if the load on each side of the system be equal, there will be no current in the neutral wire, while if the loads be unequal, the neutral wire will have to carry the difference in current between the two outside wires.] ques. how should a series machine be started? ans. the external circuit should be closed, otherwise a closed circuit will not be formed through the field magnet winding and the machine will not build up. ques. what is understood by the term "build up"? ans. in starting, the gradual voltage increase to maximum. [illustration: fig. .--connections for two compound wound dynamos to run in parallel. the series fields of the machines are connected together in parallel by means of wire leads or bus bars, which connect together the brushes from which the series fields are taken. this is known as the equalizer and is shown by the line running to the middle pole of the dynamo switch. by tracing out the series circuits it will be seen that current from the upper brush of either dynamo has two connections to its bus bar. one of these leads through its own field, and the other, by means of the equalizer bar, through the fields of the other dynamo. as long as both machines are generating equally there is no difference of pressure between the brushes of either, but should the voltage of one be lowered, current from the other would flow through its fields and thereby raise the voltage, and at the same time reduce its own until both are equal. the equalizer may then be called upon to carry much current, but to have the machines regulate closely it should be of low resistance. it may also be run as shown by the dotted lines, but this will leave all the machines alive when any one is generating. the ammeters should be connected as shown. if they were on the other side they would come under the influence of the equalizing current and would indicate wrong, either too high or too low. the equalizer switch should be closed a little before the main switches are closed.] ques. how should a shunt or compound machine be started? ans. all switches controlling the external circuits should be opened, as the machine excites best when this is the case. if the machine be provided with a rheostat or hand regulator and resistance coils, these latter should all be cut out of circuit, or short circuited, until the machine excites, when they can be gradually cut in as the voltage rises. when the machine is giving the correct voltage, as indicated by the voltmeter or pilot lamp, the machine may be switched into connection with the external or working circuits. ques. in starting a shunt dynamo, should the main line switch be closed before the machine is up to voltage or after? ans. if the machine be working on the same circuit with other machines, or with a storage battery, it is, or course, necessary to make the voltage of the machine equal to that on the line before connecting it in the circuit. if the machine work alone, the switch may be closed either before or after the voltage comes up. the load will be thrown on suddenly if the switch be closed after the machine has built up its voltage, thus causing a strain on the belt, and possibly drawing water over the engine cylinder. on the other hand, if the switch be closed before the voltage of the machine has come up, the load is picked up gradually, but the machine may be slow or may even refuse to pick up at all. ques. why does a shunt machine pick up more slowly if the main switch be closed first? ans. because the resistance of the main line is so much less than that of the field that the small initial voltage due to the residual magnetism causes a much larger current in the armature than in the shunt field. if this be too large, the cross and back magnetizing force of the armature weakens the field more than the initial field current strengthens it, and so the machine cannot build up. ques. if a shunt dynamo will not pick up, what is likely to be the trouble? ans. the speed may be too slow; the resistance of the external circuit may be too small; the brushes may not be in proper position; some of the electrical connections in the dynamo may be loose, broken or improperly made; the field may have lost its residual magnetism. [illustration: figs. and .--diagrams of ground detectors. fig. , a ground detector switch suitable for mounting on a switch board. the two arms pivoted at their upper ends are connected with an insulating bar a and make contact at their lower ends with two brass strips and a contact button, which are connected to the bus bars and ground, respectively. when the arms are moved to the left, the positive bus bar is connected to the ground through the voltmeter v. in fig. is another form of ground detector. this is known as a lamp ground detector. on a volt system two ordinary lamps are connected in series, while the line connecting the lamps is connected to the ground through a snap switch s. when current is on, the two lamps will burn with equal brilliancy, but at a lower candle power. when the switch s is closed, if the two lines be clear, the brilliancy of the lamps will not be affected, but if there be a ground on the positive side, one lamp will burn brighter, the brightness depending on the resistance of the ground. if there be a dead ground, the lamp will burn to its full candle power.] ques. what is the indication that the connections between the field coils and armature are reversed? ans. if the machine build up when brought to full speed, the connections are correct, but if it fail to build up, the field coils may be improperly connected. [illustration: fig. .--method of correcting reversed polarity in large shunt dynamo by transposing the shunt field leads, and then starting up the machine. as soon as the voltmeter registers any voltage, the dynamo may be stopped and the field leads restored to their original position, when it will be found that the residual magnetism in the pole pieces will usually bring the dynamo up to its polarity and proper voltage. this method has the disadvantages, of the uncertainty as to the machine building up, and that a temporary wire must probably be run from the switchboard to one terminal of the field circuit, which is usually connected to a terminal back of the dynamo frame, so that the flow of current through the field coils may be reversed. with dynamos having laminated field magnet cores of comparatively low residual magnetism, this method may suffice, but in the case of solid field magnetic cores it is not practical. a better method is to disconnect the shunt field leads and temporarily extend them to some other source of direct current. if the current be of higher voltage than the coils are designed for, as for instance volt dynamo and available current volt, caution must be exercised and a suitable resistance be provided to protect the coils. a volt coil, however, may be supplied from volt circuit, providing the field winding to be energized is equipped with a cut off switch having a discharge resistance, so that it may be used to close and break the circuit when the temporary leads have been connected. if the field windings be not so provided, a bank of lamps or some other non-inductive resistance must be connected across the leads between the field magnet coils and the point at which the circuit is to be opened and closed. this is to provide a path for the discharge of the induced electromotive force. the circuit should not remain closed more than a few seconds if the full voltage can be applied. it is well, however, to leave the current on long enough to run the machine up to about half speed and make sure, by means of a voltmeter, that the polarity has been corrected. when this has been ascertained the dynamo should be stopped and the field winding leads returned to their proper terminals. then the voltage will be brought up in the right direction, provided the work has been done correctly.] this can be tested by connecting a voltmeter across the terminals of the armature, or by means of a magnetic needle placed at a short distance from one of the pole pieces in such a position that it does not point to the north pole. if the field coils be improperly connected, the current due to the initial voltage will weaken the field magnetism and thus prevent the machine building up, and when the field circuit is closed the voltmeter reading will be reduced, or the magnetic needle will be less strongly attracted. ques. what will be the result if the connections of some of the field coils of a dynamo be reversed? ans. if one-half the number of coils oppose the other half, the field magnetism will be neutralized and the machine will not build up at all; but if one of the coils be opposed to the others, the machine might build up, but the generated voltage will be low, and there will be considerable sparking at some of the brushes. ques. how may it be ascertained which coil is reversed? ans. in all dynamos there should be an equal number of positive and negative poles, and in almost all of them the poles should be alternately positive and negative. therefore, if a pocket compass be brought near the pole pieces, and it show that there are more poles of one kind than the other, the indication is that one or more of the coils are reversed, and the improper sequence of alternation will determine which one is wrongly connected. ques. when a dynamo loses its residual magnetism, how can it be made to build up? ans. by temporarily magnetizing the field. to do this a current is passed through it from another dynamo, or from the cells of a small primary battery. usually, this will set up sufficient initial magnetism to allow the machine to build up. the battery circuit should be broken before the machine has built up to full voltage. ques. what should be done if a dynamo become reversed by a reversal of its field magnetism due to lightning, short circuit, or otherwise? ans. the residual magnetism should be reversed by a current from another dynamo, or from a battery; but if this be not convenient, the connections between the machine and the line should be crossed so that the original positive terminal of the dynamo will be connected to the negative terminal of the line, and vice versa. [illustration: fig. .--method of correcting reversed polarity in compound wound dynamo. the polarity may be reversed without disconnecting or changing the wire. the figure shows two compound dynamos, and essential connections. the current from any machine connected to the equalizer bar by its equalizer switch will divide, a portion going through the series field winding of the other machines connected to the bus bar, the division being determined by the resistance of the different sets of coils. for instance, assume that no. dynamo has had its polarity reversed and that no. is running connected to the bus bar. the method of reversing the polarity of no. machine is as follows: no. machine should be at rest and then make sure that the circuit breaker and negative switch are open and that any other special connections to other machine or station lighting circuits are open. then close the positive and equalizer switches, thus allowing a part of the current from the other dynamo to pass through the equalizer connection and through the series field winding of no. machine in the usual direction, which will magnetize the magnetic core. if no. machine be a large unit and no. a small unit, it will be necessary to cut out the resistance of the shunt field circuits by means of the rheostat, if it be desired to maintain its bus bar voltage at its normal point. this will rob the series winding of any other machines which may be connected to the bus bars and will lower the voltage slightly. no. machine is then brought up to full speed when it will be found to have recovered its correct polarity. the positive switch may be readily opened, watching the bus bar voltage closely as it will rise when the current is restricted again to the series field winding of the other machines. the dynamo will then be ready to cut in with the other machines as soon as the voltage has been brought up to the proper point, or it may be shut down until required.] ques. can a dynamo be reversed by reversing the connections between the field coils and the armature? ans. no, for if these connections be reversed, the machine will not build up. ques. will a dynamo build up if it become reversed? ans. yes. ques. then what is the objection to a reversed dynamo? ans. since the direction of current of a reversed dynamo is also reversed, serious trouble may occur if it be attempted to connect it in parallel, with other machines not reversed. attention while running.--when a dynamo is started and at work, it will need a certain amount of attention to keep it running in a satisfactory and efficient manner. the first point to be considered is the adjustment of the brushes. if this be neglected, the machine will probably spark badly, and the commutator and brushes will frequently require refitting to secure good contact. ques. what may be said with respect to the lead of the brushes? ans. the lead in all good dynamos is very small, and varies with the load and class of machine. the best lead to give to the brushes can in all cases be found by rotating the rocker and brushes in either direction to the right or left of the neutral plane until sparking commences, increasing with the movement. the position midway between these two points is the correct position for the brushes, for at this position the least sparking occurs, and it is at this position that the brushes should be fixed by clamping the rocker. [illustration: fig. .--method of taking temperature. in taking the temperature of a hot part, it is convenient to use a thermometer in which the scale of degrees has been etched on the stem. bind this to the heated part, having first taken the precaution to cover the bulb with waste to prevent the radiation of heat and take the reading when the column of mercury has ceased to rise. the question which most often presents itself to the attendant is how hot can the various parts of a dynamo or motor become and yet be within the safe limit. the degree of heat can be determined by applying the hand to the various parts. if the heat be bearable it is entirely harmless, but if the heat become unbearable to the hand for more than a few seconds, the safety limit has been reached and the machine should be stopped and the fault located. of course when the solder begins to melt at the commutator connections and shellac begins to "fry out" of the armature and an odor of burnt cotton begins to pervade the air, the safe limit has been far exceeded, and in most cases, as a matter of fact serious damage is the result. to be more definite, _no part of the dynamo or motor should be allowed to rise in temperature more than degrees f. above the temperature of the surrounding air_, excepting in the case of commutators where no solder has been used to connect the leads. these can be allowed to rise to a still higher temperature.] ques. how does the lead vary in the different types of dynamo? ans. in series dynamos giving a constant current, the brushes require practically no lead. in shunt and compound dynamos the lead varies with the load, and therefore the brushes must be rotated in the direction of rotation of the armature with an increase of load, and in the opposite direction with a decrease of load. in cases where the dynamos are subjected to a rapidly varying or fluctuating load, it is of course not possible to constantly shift the brushes as the load varies, therefore the brushes should be fixed in the positions where the least sparking occurs at the moment of adjustment. if at any time violent sparking occur, which cannot be reduced or suppressed by varying the position of the brushes by rotating the rocker, the machine should be shut down at once, otherwise the commutator and brushes are liable to be destroyed, or the armature burnt up. this especially refers to high tension machines. ques. what should be done if the brushes begin to spark excessively? ans. first, look at the ammeter to see if an excessive amount of current is being delivered; second, see if the brushes make good contact with the commutator, and if the latter have a bar too high, or too low, and an open circuit. [illustration: figs. and .--remedies for leakage of oil from self-oiling bearings. if there be sufficient space, a metal ring may be attached to the shaft as in fig. . with this arrangement the high speed of the shaft will carry the oil outside of the ring and throw it off in the oil reservoir. another way is to insert a tin apron, as shown in fig. at t, which will serve to drain the oil which may creep along the shaft, and also cut off the draft from the pulley which may suck the oil out of the bearing. sometimes a tin fan is attached to the pulley, which tends to drive the oil back into the bearing, and which also assists in keeping the box cool.] ques. what should be done if the current be excessive? ans. if the current exceed the rated capacity by more than per cent., and continue for more than a few minutes, the main switch should be opened, otherwise the machine may be seriously injured. ques. how does an excessive current injure a dynamo? ans. by causing it to overheat which destroys the insulation of the armature, commutator, etc. lubrication.--the shaft bearings of dynamos may be lubricated by sight feed oilers or oil rings. the latter method is almost universally used. an oil well is provided in the hollow casting of the pedestals as shown in fig. . oil rings revolve with the shaft and feed the latter with oil, which is continuously brought up from the reservoir below. the dirt settles to the bottom and the upper portion of the oil remains clear for a long period, after which it is drawn off through the spigot and a fresh supply poured in through openings provided in the top. the latter are often located directly over the slots in which the rings are placed, so that the bearings can be lubricated directly by means of an oil cup, if the rings fail to act or the reservoir become exhausted. [illustration: fig. .--imaginative view of a shaft showing its rough granular structure. in operation these minute irregularities interlock and act as a retarding force, or frictional resistance. hence, the necessity for lubrication--a lubricant presents a thin intervening film against which the surfaces rub.] ques. what kind of oil can should be used in filling the reservoir, or oil cups? ans. one made of some non-magnetic material such as copper, brass, or zinc. if iron cans be used, they are liable to be attracted by the field magnets, and thus possibly catch in the armature. ques. what is the indication of insufficient lubrication? ans. the bearings become unduly heated. ques. what precaution should be taken with new dynamos? ans. they are liable to heat abnormally and for the first few days they should be carefully watched and liberally supplied with oil. after a dynamo has been running for a short time under full load, its armature imparts a certain amount of heat to the bearings, a little more also to the bearing on the commutator end of shaft; beyond this there is no excuse for excessive heating. the latter may result from various causes, some of which are given with their remedies, as follows: . a poor quality of oil, dirty or gritty matter in the oil; . journal boxes too tight; . rough journals, badly scraped boxes; . belt too tight; . bearings out of line; . overloaded dynamo; . bent armature shaft. ques. what is the allowable degree of heating? ans. it may be taken as a safe rule that no part of a working dynamo should have a temperature of more than ° fahr. above that of the surrounding air. accordingly, if the temperature of the engine room be noted before applying the thermometer to the machine, it can at once be seen if the latter be working at a safe temperature. in taking the temperature, the bulb of the thermometer should be wrapped in a woolen rag. the screws and nuts securing the different connections and cables should be examined occasionally, as they frequently work loose through vibration. [illustration: fig. .--diagram illustrating forces acting on a dynamo armature. in the figure the normal field magneto-motive force is in the direction of the line , , produced by the field circuit g, if there were no current in the armature. but as soon as the armature current flows, it produces the opposing force , , which must be combined with , to give the resulting force to produce magnetism and hence voltage. the resultant , , if , be large enough, does not differ much from the original force , . or, expressed in a more physical way, the brushes e, f, rest on the commutator and all the turns embraced by twice the angle , , f, oppose the flow of flux through the armature core as well as all the turns embraced by twice the angle, , , e. the remaining turns distort the flux, making the pole corners at a and b denser, and at c and d rarer. so that all the effect is to kill an increase of flux, or voltage. this cross magnetism tends also to decrease the flow of flux, for the extra ampere turns required to force the flux through the dense pole tips are greater than the decreased ampere turns relieved by the reduction of flux at the other pole tips; this follows, since iron as it increases in magnetic density requires ampere turns greater in proportion than the increase of flux.] instructions for stopping dynamos.--when shutting down a machine, the load should first be gradually reduced, if possible, by easing down the engine; then when the machine is supplying little or no current, the main switch should be opened. this reduces the sparking at the switch contacts, and prevents the engine racing. when the voltmeter almost indicates zero, the brushes should be raised from contact with the commutator. this prevents the brushes being damaged in the event of the engine making a backward motion, which it often does, particularly in the case of a gas engine. on no account, however, should the brushes be raised from the commutator while the machine is generating any considerable voltage; for not only is the insulation of the machine liable to be damaged, but in the case of large shunt dynamos, the person lifting the brushes is liable to receive a violent shock. ques. what attention should the machine receive after it has been shut down? ans. it should be thoroughly cleaned. any adhering copper dust, dirt, etc., should be removed from the armature by dusting with a stiff brush, and the other portions of the machine should be thoroughly cleaned with linen rags. waste should not be used, as it is liable to leave threads or fluff on the projecting parts of the machine, and on the windings of the armature, which is difficult to remove. ques. what attention should be given to the brushes and brush gear? ans. they should be examined and thoroughly cleaned. if necessary the brushes should be refitted and readjusted. all terminals, screws, bolts, etc., should be carefully cleaned and screwed up ready for the next run. the brush holders should receive special attention, as when dirty, they are liable to stick and cause sparking. all dirt and oil should be removed from the springs, contacts, pivots, and other working parts. it is advisable at stated intervals to entirely remove the brush holders from the rocker arms, and give them a thorough cleaning by taking them to pieces, and cleaning each part separately with emery cloth and benzoline or soda solution. another point to which particular attention should be given is the cleaning of the brush rocker. this being composed wholly of metal, and the two sets of positive and negative brushes being only separated from it by a few thin insulating washers, it follows that if any copper dust given off by the brushes be deposited in the neighborhood of these washers, there is considerable liability for a short circuit of the machine to occur by the dust bridging across the insulation. ques. what further attention should be given? ans. it is a good plan, when the machine has been thoroughly cleaned and all connections made secure, to occasionally test the insulation of the different parts. if a record be kept of these tests, any deterioration of the insulation can at once be detected, localized and remedied before it has become sufficiently bad to cause a breakdown. as a means of protecting the machine from any moisture, dirt, etc., while standing idle, it is advisable to cover it with a suitable waterproof cover. chapter xxx coupling of dynamos series and parallel connections.--when it is necessary to generate a large and variable amount of electrical energy, as must be done in central generating stations, apart from the question of liability to breakdown, it is neither economical nor desirable that the whole of the energy should be furnished from a single dynamo. since the efficiency of a dynamo is dependent upon its output at any moment, or the load at which it is worked (the efficiency varying from about per cent. at full load to per cent. at half load), it is advisable in order to secure the greatest economy in working, to operate any dynamo as near full load as possible. under the above circumstances, when the whole of the output is generated by a single dynamo this can evidently not be effected, for the load will naturally fluctuate up and down during the working hours, as the lamps, motors, etc., are switched into and out of circuit; hence, although the dynamo may be working at full load during a certain portion of the day, at other times it may probably be working below half load, and therefore the efficiency and economy in working in such an arrangement is very low. ques. how is maximum efficiency secured with variable load? ans. it is usual to divide up the generating plant into a number of units, varying in size, so that as the load increases, it can either be shifted to machines of larger size, or when it exceeds the capacity of the largest dynamo, the output of one can be added to that of another, and thus the dynamos actually at work at any moment can be operated as nearly as possible at full load. ques. what should be noted with respect to connecting one dynamo to another? ans. it is necessary to take certain precautions (as later explained) in order that the other dynamos may not be affected by the change, and that they may work satisfactorily together. ques. what are the two methods of coupling dynamos? ans. they are connected in series, or in parallel. in coupling dynamos in series, the current capacity of the plant is kept at a constant value, while the output is increased in proportion to the pressures of the machines in circuit. when connected in parallel, the pressures of all the machines are kept at a constant value, while the output of the plant is increased in proportion to the current capacities of the machines in circuit. coupling series dynamos in series.--series wound dynamos will run satisfactorily together without special precautions when coupled in series, if the connections be arranged as in fig. . the positive terminal of one dynamo is connected to the negative terminal of the other, and the two outer terminals are connected directly to the two main conductors or bus bars through the ammeter a, fuse f, and switch s. if it be desired to regulate the pressure and output of the machines, variable resistances, or hand regulators r, r^ , may be arranged as shunts to the series coils as shown, so as to divert a portion or the whole of the current therefrom. series dynamos in parallel.--simple series wound dynamos not being well adapted for the purpose of maintaining a constant pressure, are in practice seldom coupled in parallel; the conditions or working, however, derive importance from the fact that compound dynamos, being provided with series coils, are subject to similar conditions when working in parallel, which is frequently the case. ques. what may be said with respect to coupling two or more plain series dynamos in parallel? ans. the same procedure cannot be followed as in the case of plain shunt dynamos, for the reason that if the voltage of the dynamo to be coupled be exactly equal to that of the bus bars when connected in parallel, the combination will be unstable. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing method of coupling series dynamos in series. r and r' are two hand regulators which are placed in shunt across the coil terminals to regulate the pressure and output of the machine.] ques. why is this? ans. if, from any cause, the pressure at the terminals of one of the dynamos fall below that of the others, it immediately takes a smaller proportion of the load; as a consequence, the current in its field coils is reduced, and a further fall of pressure immediately takes place. this again causes the dynamo to relinquish a portion of its load, and again occurs a further fall of pressure. thus the process goes on, until finally the dynamo ceases to supply current, and the current from the other dynamos flowing in its field coils in the reverse direction reverses its magnetism, and causes it to run as a motor against the driving power in the opposite direction to that in which it previously ran as a dynamo. under such circumstances the armature is liable to be destroyed if the fuse be not immediately blown, and in any case it is subjected to a very detrimental shock. this tendency to reverse in series dynamos can be effectually prevented by connecting the field coils of all the dynamos in parallel. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing method of coupling series dynamos in parallel. in the diagram a, a', are ammeters; f, f', fuses; s, s', switches.] ques. how are the field coils of all the dynamos connected in parallel? ans. this is effected in practice by connecting the ends of all the series coils where they join on to the armature circuit by a third connection, called the "equalizing connection," or "equalizer," as shown in fig. . ques. what is the effect of the equalizer? ans. the immediate effect is to cause the whole of the current generated by the plant to be divided among the series coils of the several dynamos in the inverse ratio of their resistance, without any regard as to whether this current comes from one armature, or is divided among the whole. the fields of the several dynamos being thus maintained constant, or at any rate being caused to vary equally, the tendency for the pressure of one dynamo to fall below that of the others is diminished. shunt dynamos in series.--the simplest operation in connection with the coupling of dynamos, and the one used probably more frequently in practice than any other, is the coupling of two or more shunt dynamos to run either in series or in parallel. when connected in series, the positive terminal of one machine is joined to the negative of the other, and the two outer terminals are connected through the ammeter a, fuses f, f', and switch s, to the two main conductors or omnibus bars as represented in fig. . the machine will operate when the connections are arranged in this manner, if the ends of the shunt coils be connected to the terminals of their respective machines. shunt dynamos in parallel.--the coupling of two or more shunt dynamos to run in parallel is effected without any difficulty. this method of coupling dynamos is one that is very frequently used. fig. illustrates diagrammatically the method of arranging the connections. the positive and negative terminals of each machine are connected respectively to two massive insulated copper bars, shown at the top of the diagram, called _omnibus bars_, through the double pole switches, s, s', and the double pole fuses f, f'. ammeters, a, a' are inserted in the main circuit of each machine, and serve to indicate the amount of current generated by each. an automatic switch or cutout, ac, ac', is also shown as being included in the main circuit of each of the machines, although this appliance is sometimes dispensed with. the pressure of each of the machines is regulated independently by means of the hand regulators r, r', inserted in series with the shunt circuit. the shunt circuits are represented as being connected to the positive and negative terminals of the respective machines, but in many cases where the load is subjected to sudden variations, and when a large number of machines is connected to the bus bars, the shunt coils are frequently connected direct to these. in such circumstances this method is preferable, as by means of it the fields of the idle dynamos can be excited almost at once direct from the bus bars by the current from the working dynamos; hence, if a heavy load come on suddenly, no time need be lost in building up a new machine previous to switching it into parallel. the pressure of the lamp circuit is given by a voltmeter whose terminals are placed across the bus bars; and the pressure at the terminals of each of the machines is indicated by separate voltmeters or pilot lamps, the terminals of which are connected to those of the respective machines. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing method of coupling shunt dynamos in series. the ends of the shunt coils may be connected to the terminals of their respective machine, or they may be connected in series as shown.] ques. describe a better method of parallel connection. ans. better results are obtained by connecting both the shunt coils in series with one another, so that they form one long shunt between the two main conductors, the same as in fig. . when arranged in this way, the regulation of both machines may be effected simultaneously by inserting a hand regulator (r) in series with the shunt circuit as represented. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing method of coupling shunt dynamos in parallel.] switching dynamo into and out of parallel.--in order to put an additional dynamo in parallel with those already working, it is necessary to run the new dynamo up to full speed, and, when it excites, regulate the pressure by means of a hand regulator until the voltmeter connected to the terminals of the machines registers one or two volts more than the voltmeter connected to the lamp circuit, and then close the switch. the load upon the machine can then be adjusted to correspond with that upon the other machines by means of the hand regulator. ques. in connecting a shunt dynamo to the bus bars, must the voltage be carefully adjusted? ans. there is little danger in overloading the armature in making the connection hence the pressure need not be accurately adjusted. it is, in fact, common practice in central stations to judge the voltage of the new dynamo merely by the appearance of its pilot lamp. ques. how is a machine cut out of the circuit? ans. when shutting down a machine, the load or current must first be reduced, by gradually closing the stop valve of the engine, or inserting resistance into the shunt circuit by means of the hand regulator; then when the ammeter indicates nine or ten amperes, the main switch is opened, and the engine stopped. by following this plan, the heavy sparking at the switch contacts is avoided, and the tendency for the engine to race, reduced. ques. what precaution must be taken in reducing the current? ans. care must be taken not to reduce the current too much. ques. why is this necessary? ans. there is danger that the machine may receive a reverse current from the other dynamos, resulting in heavy sparking at the commutator, and in the machine being driven as a motor. ques. what provision is made to obviate this danger? ans. dynamos that are to be run in parallel are frequently provided with automatic cutouts, set so as to automatically switch out the machine when the current falls below a certain minimum value. dividing the load.--if a plant, composed of shunt dynamos running in parallel, be subjected to variations of load, gradual or instantaneous, the dynamos will, if they all have similar characteristics, each take up an equal share of the load. if, however, as is sometimes the case, the characteristics of the dynamos be dissimilar, the load will not be shared equally, the dynamos with the most drooping characteristics taking less than their share with an increase of load, and more than their share with a decrease of load. if the difference be slight, it may be readily compensated by means of the hand regulator increasing or decreasing the pressures of the machines, as the load varies. if, however, the difference be considerable, and the fluctuations of load rapid, it becomes practically impossible to evenly divide the load by this means. under such circumstances, the pressure at the bus bars is liable to great variations, and there is also liability of blowing the fuses of the overloaded dynamos, thus precipitating a general breakdown. to cause an equal division of the load among all the dynamos, under such circumstances, it is needful to insert a small resistance in the armature circuits of such dynamos as possess the straightest characteristics, or of such dynamos as take more than their share of an increase of load. by suitably adjusting or proportioning the resistances, the pressures at the terminals of all the machines may be made to vary equally under all variations of load, and each of the machines will then take up its proper share of the load. coupling compound dynamos in series.--since compound dynamos may be regarded as a combination of the shunt and series wound machines, and as no special difficulties are encountered in running these latter in series, analogy at once leads to the conclusion that compound dynamos under similar circumstances may be coupled together with equal facility. ques. how are compound dynamos connected to operate in series? ans. the series coils of each are connected as in fig. , and the shunt coils are connected as a single shunt as in fig. , which may either extend simply across the outer brushes of the machines, so as to form a double short shunt, or may be a shunt to the bus bars of external circuit, so as to form a double long shunt. [illustration: fig. .--coupling compound dynamos in series; short shunt connection. the dotted lines indicate the changes that would be made for long shunt connection.] compound dynamos in parallel.--machines of this type will not run satisfactorily together in parallel unless all the series coils are connected together by an equalizing connection, as in series dynamos. the method of arranging the connections as adopted in practice, being illustrated in fig. . by means of it idle machines are completely disconnected from those at work. ques. how is the equalizer connected? ans. the equalizer is connected direct to the positive brushes of all the dynamos, a three pole switch being fitted for disconnecting it from the circuit when the machine to which it is connected is not working. the two contacts of the switch are respectively connected to the positive and negative conductors, while the central contact is connected to the equalizer. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing method of coupling compound dynamos in parallel.] switching a compound dynamo into and out of parallel.--if the characteristics of all the dynamos be similar, and the connections arranged as in figs. , or , the only precaution to be observed in switching a new machine into parallel is to have its voltage equal, or nearly equal to that of the bus bars previous to closing the switch. if this be the case, the new machine will take up its due share of the load without any shock. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing another and better method of coupling compound dynamos in parallel. with this arrangement the idle machines are completely disconnected from those at work. the same reference letters are common in both diagrams. s, s' are switches; f, f' fuses; a, a' ammeters, which indicate the total amount of current generated by each of the machines; ac, ac', automatic switches, arranged for automatically switching out a machine in the event of the pressure at its terminals being reduced through any cause; r, r,' are hand regulators, inserted in the shunt circuits of each of the machines, by means of which the pressures of the individual machines may be varied and the load upon each adjusted. the pressure at the bus bars is given by the voltmeter v, one terminal of which is connected to each of the bars; a second voltmeter may be used, to give the pressure of any individual machine, by connecting "voltmeter keys" to the terminals of each of the machines, or a separate voltmeter may be used for each individual machine. the only essential difference between figs. and is, that in fig. the equalizer is connected direct to the positive brushes of all the dynamos, while in fig. the equalizer is brought up to the switchboard and arranged between the two bus bars, a switch being fitted for disconnecting it from the circuit when the machine to which it is connected is not working.] ques. how is a compound dynamo, running in parallel, cut out of circuit? ans. the load is first reduced to a few amperes, as in the case of shunt dynamos, either by easing down the engine, or by cutting resistance into the shunt circuit by means of the hand regulator, and then opening the switch. previous to this, however, it is advisable to increase the voltage at the bus bars to a slight extent, as while slowing down the engine the load upon the outgoing dynamo is transferred to the other dynamo armatures, and the current in their series coils not being increased in proportion, the voltage at the bus bars is consequently reduced somewhat. equalizing the load.--when a number of compound dynamos of various output, size, or make, are running together in parallel, it frequently happens that all their characteristics are not exactly similar, and therefore the load is unequally distributed, some being overloaded, while others do not take up their proper share of the work. note.--the action of an equalizing bar in equalizing the load on compound dynamos run in parallel may be explained as follows: the compound winding of a dynamo raises the pressure in proportion to the current flowing through it, and if, in a system of parallel operated compound dynamos without the equalizing connection, the current given by one machine were slightly greater than the currents from the others, the pressure of that machine would increase. with this increase in pressure above the other machines, a still greater current would flow, and so raise the pressure further. the effect is therefore cumulative, and in time the one dynamo would be carrying too great a proportion of the whole current of the system. with the equalizing connection, whatever the current flowing from each machine, the currents in the various compound windings are all equal, and so the added pressure due to the compound winding is practically the same in each machine. any inequality in output from the machines is readily eliminated by adjusting the shunt currents by means of the shunt rheostats. when compound wound dynamos are operated in parallel, the equalizer bar insures uniform distribution among the series coils of the machines. note.--to secure the best results in parallel operation, dynamos should be of the same design and construction and should possess as nearly as possible the same characteristics; that is, each should respond with the same readiness, and to the same extent, to any change in its field excitation. any number of such machines may be operated in parallel. the usual practice is to connect the equalizer and the series field to the positive terminal, though if desired, they may be connected to the negative terminal; both however, must be connected to the same terminal. the resistance of the equalizer should be as low as possible, and it must never be greater than the resistance of any of the leads from the dynamos to the bus bar. sometimes a third wire is run to the switchboard from each dynamo and there connected to an equalizer bar, but the usual practice is to run the equalizer directly between the dynamos and to place the equalizer switches on pedestals near the machines. this shortens the connections and leads to better regulation. the positive and equalizer switches of each machine differ in pressure only by the slight drop in the series coil, and in some large stations these two switches are placed side by side on a pedestal near the machine. in such cases, the equalizer and positive bus bars are often placed under the floor near the machines, so that all leads may be as short as possible. if all the dynamos be of equal capacity, all the leads to bus bars should be of the same length, and it is sometimes necessary to loop some of them. if the difference be small, it may be compensated by means of the hand regulator; if large, however, other means must be taken to cause the machines to take up their due proportion of the load. if the series coils of the several dynamos be provided with small adjustable resistances, in the form of german silver or copper ribbon inserted in series with the coils, the distribution of the current in the latter may be altered by varying the resistance attached to the individual coils. the effect of the series coils upon the individual armatures in raising the pressure may be adjusted, and the load thus evenly divided among the machines. shunt and compound dynamos in parallel.--it is not practicable to run a compound dynamo and a shunt dynamo in parallel, for, unless the field rheostat of the shunt machine be adjusted continually, the compound dynamo will take more than its share of the load. chapter xxxi dynamo fails to excite this trouble is of frequent occurrence in both old and new machines. if a dynamo fail to excite, the operator should first see that the brushes are in the proper position and making good contact, and that the external circuit is open if the machine be shunt wound, and closed if series wound. in starting a dynamo it should be remembered that shunt and compound machines require an appreciable time to build up, hence, it is best not to be too hasty in hunting for faults. the principal causes which prevent a dynamo building up are: . brushes not properly adjusted; . defective contacts; . incorrect adjustment of regulators; . speed too low; . insufficient residual magnetism; . open circuits; . short circuits; a. in external circuits; b. in dynamo. . wrong connections; . reversed field magnetism. brushes not properly adjusted.--if the brushes be not in or near their correct positions, the whole of the voltage of the armature will not be utilized, and will probably be insufficient to excite the machine. if in doubt as to the correct positions, the brushes should be rotated by means of the rocker into various points on the commutator, sufficient time being given the machine to excite before moving them into a new position. defective contacts.--if the different points of contact of the connections of the machine be not kept thoroughly clean and free from oil, etc., it is probable that enough resistance will be interposed in the path of the exciting current to prevent the machine building or exciting. each of the contacts should therefore be examined, cleaned, and screwed up tight. ques. which of the contacts should receive special attention? ans. the contact faces of the brushes and surface of the commutator. these are very frequently covered with a slimy coating of oil and dirt, which is quite sufficient to prevent the machine exciting. incorrect adjustment of regulators.--when shunt and compound machines are provided with field regulators, it is possible that the resistance in circuit may be too great to permit the necessary strength of exciting current passing through the field windings. accordingly, the fault is corrected by cutting out more or less of the resistance. the field coils of series machines are sometimes provided with short circuiting switches or resistances arranged to shunt the current across the field coils. if too much of the current be shunted across, the switch should be opened, or if there be a regulator, it should be so adjusted that it will pass enough current through the field windings to excite the machine. speed too low.--in shunt and compound dynamos there is a certain critical speed below which they will not excite. if the normal speed of the machine be known, it can be seen whether the failure to excite arises from this cause, by measuring the speed of the armature with a speed indicator. in all cases it is advisable, if the machine do not excite in the course of a few minutes, to slightly increase the speed. as soon as the voltage rises, the speed may be reduced to its regular rate. [illustration: fig. .--method of testing for break by short circuiting the terminals of the machine. if the external circuit test out apparently all right, and there be no defective contacts in any part of the machine, and all short circuiting switches, etc., be cut out of circuit, the machine still refusing to excite, short circuiting the terminals of the machine should be tried. this should be done very cautiously, especially in case of a high tension machine. it is advisable to have, if possible, only a portion of the load in circuit, and the short circuit should be effected as shown in the figure. the short circuit may be made by momentarily bridging across the two terminals of the machine with a single piece of wire. as this, however, is liable to burn the terminals, a better plan is to fix a short piece of scrap wire in one terminal, and then with another piece of insulated wire make momentary contacts with the other terminal and the short piece of wire. if the machine excite, it will be at once evident by the arc which occurs between the two pieces of wire. as the voltage of a series machine when induced to build in this manner generally rises very rapidly, great care should be taken that the contact is at first only momentary, merely a rubbing or scraping touch of the wires. the contact may be prolonged if the machine do not excite at the first contact. compound wound machines can often be made to excite quickly by short circuiting their terminals in this manner.] insufficient residual magnetism.--this fault is not of frequent occurrence; it takes place chiefly when the dynamo is new, and may be remedied by passing the current from a few storage cells, or from another dynamo, for some time in the proper direction through the field coils. if a heavy current, such as is obtainable from a storage battery, be not available, and the machine be shunt or compound wound, a few primary cells arranged as in fig. will generally suffice. [illustration: fig. .--method of overcoming insufficient residual magnetism. the flexible "lead" l of the dynamo d is disconnected from the positive terminal of the machine, and is connected to the negative or zinc pole of the battery b, the other or positive carbon pole being connected to the terminal, from which the lead was removed, and shunt circuit s. as thus arranged, it will be seen that the battery b is in series with the armature and shunt circuit, and therefore its voltage will be added to any small voltage generated in the armature. when the machine is started, the combined voltages will probably be able to send sufficient current through the shunt to excite the machine. as the voltage rises and the strength of the current in the shunt windings increases, the flexible lead may be again inserted into the terminal from which it was removed. the battery will thus be short circuited, and may be cut out of circuit without any danger of breaking the shunt circuit, and thus causing the machine to demagnetize.] open circuits.--dynamos are affected by open circuits in different ways, depending upon the type. series machines require closed circuit to build up, while an open circuit is necessary with the shunt machine. an open circuit may be due to: , broken wire or faulty connection in the machine; , brushes not in contact with commutator; , safety fuse blown or removed; , circuit breaker open; , switch open; , external circuit open. if the trouble be due merely to the switch or external circuit being open, the magnetism of a shunt machine may be at full strength, and the machine itself may be working perfectly, but if the trouble be in the machine, the field magnetism will probably be very weak. open circuits are most likely to occur in: . the armature circuit; . the field circuit; . the external circuit. when the open circuit is due to the brushes not making good contact, simple examination generally reveals the fact. ques. what causes breaks in the field circuit? ans. bad contacts at the terminals, broken connections, or fracture of the coil windings. ques. how is the field circuit tested for breaks? ans. the flexible leads attached to the brushes are removed from their connections with the field circuit, and the latter is then tested for conductivity with a galvanometer. ques. where is a break likely to occur in a shunt machine? ans. in the hand regulator through a broken resistance coil or bad contact. very frequently the fault occurs in the connecting wires leading from the machine to the hand regulator fixed upon the switchboard, or in the short wires connecting the field coils to the terminals or brushes. the insulation of a broken wire will sometimes hold the two ends together so as to defy any but the most careful inspection or examination; therefore, in order to avoid loss of time, it is advisable to disconnect the wires if possible, and test each separately for conductivity with a battery and galvanometer connected, as in fig. . if the fault be not located in the various connections, the magnet coils should be tested with the battery and galvanometer coupled up as in fig. , care being first taken to disconnect the ends of each of the coils. a faulty coil will not show any deflection of the galvanometer. [illustration: fig. .--method of testing dynamo for short circuits. in the figure, one pole of the battery b is placed in contact with the frame of the machine at a point which has previously been well scraped and cleaned; the other pole is connected to one of the galvanometer terminals as shown. the other terminal of the galvanometer is connected to each of the dynamo terminals t t under test in turn. if a deflection of the needle be produced when the galvanometer terminal is in contact with either, the terminals are in contact with the frame, and they should then be removed, and the fault repaired by additional insulation or by reinsulating.] ques. at what point of a shunt coil does a break usually occur? ans. at the point where the wire passes through the flanges of the spool or bobbin. ques. how should the coil be repaired? ans. in most cases a little of the wood or metal of which the flange is made can be gouged or chipped out, and a new connecting wire soldered on to the broken end of the coil without much difficulty. if it be necessary to take the magnets apart at any time, care should be taken in putting them together again to wipe all faces perfectly clean, and screw up firmly into contact, and to see that the connections of the coils are made as they were before being taken apart. if the faulty coil cannot be repaired quickly, and the machine is urgently required, the coil may be cut out of circuit entirely, or short circuited, and the remaining coils coupled up so as to produce the correct polarity in the pole pieces. [illustration: fig. .--watson armature discs. each lamination is made from low carbon electrical steel of high magnetic permeability. each disc is annealed and afterwards varnished.] ques. what trouble is liable to be encountered in operating after cutting out a coil? ans. the remaining coils are liable to heat up to a greater extent than formerly, owing to the increased current, hence it is advisable to proceed cautiously in starting the dynamo, since the temperature may exceed a safe limit. if this occur, a resistance may be put in circuit with the field coils, or the speed of the dynamo reduced. [illustration: fig. .--fort wayne pedestal type commutator truing device. when this device is used, the armature is revolved in its own bearings by means of a handle clamped to the pulley. the tool has a horizontal travel of ins., (being ins. wide inside the fastening bolt in the base), and a vertical adjustment of ins., adapting it to machines with commutators up to ins. in diameter.] [illustration: fig. .--fort wayne yoke type commutator truing device for machines having brush mechanism mounted on a yoke carried by the field frame. it consists of a carriage for the tool holder having a screw feed and a bracket for attaching to the brush yoke. the bracket replaces two brush holder brackets on the brush yoke, and is made to fit the yoke of the particular machine on which it is to be used.] ques. what kind of dynamo is affected by breaks in the external circuit? ans. a series dynamo. ques. name the kind of break that is difficult to locate. ans. a partial break. short circuits.--in a series or compound dynamo a short circuit or heavy load will overload the machine and cause the fuses to blow. a shunt machine will not excite under these circumstances, for the reason that practically the whole of the current generated in the armature passes direct to the external circuit, and the difference of potential between the shunt terminals is practically nil. ques. what should be done if it be suspected that the failure to excite arises from this cause? ans. the main leads should be taken out of the dynamo terminals, then, if due to this cause, the machine will excite. ques. what parts of a dynamo are specially liable to be short circuited? ans. the terminals, brush holders, commutator, armature coils and field coils. ques. how are the terminals liable to be short circuited? ans. the terminals of the various circuits of the machine are liable to be short circuited, either through metallic dust bridging across the insulation, or through the terminals making direct contact with the frame of the machine. the various terminals should be examined, and if the fault cannot be located by inspection, they should each be disconnected from their circuits and tested with a battery and galvanometer arranged as in fig. . ques. what precaution should be taken with the brush holders? ans. since, they are liable to be short circuited through the rocker by metallic dust lodging in the insulating washers, they should be kept clean. ques. how are the brush holders tested? ans. a galvanometer and battery are connected in series with one terminal of the galvanometer connected to one set of brushes; the unconnected terminal of the battery is then connected with the other set of brushes. a deflection of the needle will indicate a short circuit. [illustration: fig. .--field coil testing with telephone receiver. in the method here shown, a telephone receiver is connected in series with two symmetrically placed coils a and b. very little sound will be heard when the flux through the two coils ab is the same; but if a short-circuited coil is being tested, the fluxes through the coils a, b will not be equal and a noise can be heard in the receiver.] ques. what is the effect of a short circuit in the field coils or field circuit? ans. the machine generally refuses to excite. ques. how are the field coils tested for short circuit? ans. by measuring the resistance of each coil with an ohmmeter or wheatstone bridge. the faulty coils will show a much less resistance than the perfect coils. the fault may also be discovered and located by passing a strong current from a battery or another dynamo through each of the coils in turn, and observing the relative magnetic effects produced by each upon a bar of iron held in their vicinity. the short circuit may be in the terminals or connections, and these should first be examined and tested. some series dynamos are provided with a resistance, arranged in parallel or shunt with the field coils, to divert a portion of the current therefrom, and thus regulate the output. when making a series dynamo excite, all resistances and controlling devices should be temporarily cut out of circuit by opening the shunt circuit. series machines have frequently a switch which short circuits the field coils. care should be taken that this is open, or otherwise the machine will not excite. [illustration: fig. .--watson armature complete. the armature coils are form wound, heavily insulated and so mounted on the core as to insure rapid dissipation of heat by ventilation. each coil is protected by an insulating sheath and tape covering before mounting. the armature is baked after the coils are mounted to drive out all moisture, then, while hot, is treated with insulating compound and again baked twelve hours.] wrong connections.--when a machine is first erected, the failure to build up may be due to incorrect connections. the whole of these latter should therefore be traced or followed out, and compared with the diagrams of dynamo connections given in figs. to . sometimes errors are made in connecting the field coils, causing them to act in opposition. this may occur when the dynamo is a new one or the coils have been removed for repairs. it may be caused either through the coils having been put on the field cores the wrong way, or through incorrect coupling up. under these circumstances, the dynamo, if bipolar, will fail to excite; and if multipolar, poles will be produced in the yokes, etc. it may be remedied by removing one of the coils from the core and putting it on the reverse way, or by reversing its connections. the correctness of connections of all the coils should be verified. in compound dynamos it sometimes happens that the machine will excite properly, but that the series coils tend to reverse the polarity of the dynamo, thus reducing the voltage as the load upon the machine increases. this may be detected when the machine is loaded by short circuiting the _series coils_, not the _terminals_. if the voltage rise in doing this, the series coils are acting in opposition to the shunt coils, and the connections of the _series coils_ must be reversed. reversed field magnetism.--this is sometimes caused by the nearness of other dynamos, but is generally due to reversed connections of the field coils. under such conditions the field coils tend to produce a polarity opposed to the magnetization to which they owe their current, and therefore the machine will refuse to excite until the field connections are reversed, or a current is sent from another dynamo or a battery through the field coils in a direction to produce the correct polarity in the pole pieces. chapter xxxii armature troubles a large proportion of the mishaps and breakdowns which occur with dynamos and motors arise from causes more strictly within the province of the man in charge than in that of the designer. the armature, being a complex and delicately built structure, is subject in operation to various detrimental influences giving rise to faults. many of the faults which occur are avoided by operators better informed as to the electric and magnetic conditions which obtain in the running of the machine, especially the mechanical stresses on the copper inductors due to the magnetic field and the necessity of preserving proper insulation. the chief mishaps to which armatures are subject are as follows: . short circuits; a. in individual coils; b. between adjacent coils; c. through frame or core; d. between sections of armature; e. partial short circuits. . grounds; . breaks in armature circuit. short circuit in individual coils.--this is a common fault, which makes its presence known by a violent heating of the armature, flashing at the commutator, flickering of the light on lighting circuits, and by a smell of burning varnish or overheated insulation. when these indications are present, the machine should be stopped at once, otherwise the armature is liable to be burnt out. the fault is due either to metallic dust lodging in the insulation between adjacent bars of the commutator, or to one or more convolutions of the coils coming into contact with each other, either through a metallic filing becoming embedded in the insulation or damage to the insulation. [illustration: fig. .--method of locating short circuited armature coil. disconnect the external and field circuits from the armature, and pass a large current--say from to amperes--from a battery (b) or another dynamo through the whole armature by means of the brushes. then, having previously well cleaned the commutator, measure the difference of potential between adjacent segments all round the commutator (c), by means of a voltmeter or galvanometer (g), the terminals of which are connected to adjacent segments, as shown. the short circuited coil or coils will be located by the difference of potential between the corresponding segments being little or nothing. it may be remarked, however, that this is not always a decisive test. in some cases the short circuit may be intermittent, or may disappear as soon as the armature ceases to rotate. in such cases, the short circuit is caused by the wire coming into contact through the action of the centrifugal forces developed by the rotation of the armature.] ques. how is the faulty coil located? ans. when the machine is stopped, the faulty coil, if not burnt out, can generally be located by the baked appearance of the varnish or insulation, and by its excessive temperature over the rest of the coils, being detected also by the baked appearance of the varnish or insulation. ques. what should be done if the machine do not build, and it be suspected that the fault is due to short circuited armature coils? ans. the field magnets should be excited by the current from a storage battery or another dynamo, and, having raised the brushes from contact with the commutator, the armature should be run for a short time. in stopping, the faulty coil or coils may be located by the heat generated by the short circuit. when the dynamo is started for the purpose of localizing a short circuit, precautions should be taken, and the machine only run for a few minutes at a time until the faulty coil is detected. when the faulty coil has been located, the insulation between the segments of the commutator to which its ends are connected should be carefully examined for anything that may bridge across from segment to segment, and scraped clean. if the commutator be apparently all right, the fault probably lies in the winding. the insulation of the winding should be carefully examined, and any metallic filings or other particles discovered therein carefully removed, and a little shellac varnish applied to the faulty part. [illustration: fig. .--test for break in armature lead. clean the brushes and commutator, and apply current from a few cells of battery having a telephone receiver in circuit as shown in the figure. if the machine have more than two brushes, connect the leads to two adjoining brushes and raise the others. now rotate the armature slowly by hand and there will be a distinct click in the receiver as each segment passes under the brushes until one brush bears on the segment at fault, when the clicking will cease. in making this test, the brushes must not cover more than a single segment.] ques. if the insulation on adjacent conductors has been abraded, how should it be repaired? ans. a small boxwood or other hardwood wedge, coated with shellac varnish should be driven in tightly between the wire; this will generally be sufficient. [illustration: fig. .--bar to bar test for open circuit in coil or short circuit in one coil or between segments. if, in testing as in fig. , on rotating the armature completely around, the receiver indicate no break in the leads, connect the battery leads directly to the brushes, as shown in the above figure, and touch the connections from the receiver to two adjacent bars, working from bar to bar. the clicking should be substantially the same between any two commutator bars; if the clicking suddenly rise in tone between two bars, it indicates a high resistance in the coil or a break (open circuit).] ques. if a faulty coil cannot be quickly repaired and the dynamo be needed, what should be done? ans. the coil may be cut out of circuit, and the corresponding commutator segments connected together with a piece of wire (of a size proportionate to the amount of current to be carried), soldered to each. it will not be necessary to cut out and remove the entire coil. if the active portions only be separated so that they do not form a closed circuit, it will answer the purpose. if the wires be cut with a chisel at the point where they pass over the ends of the core, and the ends separated, it will be quite as effective as removing the entire coil. it is wise, of course, to rewind the coil at the first opportunity. [illustration: fig. .--alternate bar test for short circuit between sections. where two adjacent commutator bars are in contact, or a coil between two segments becomes short circuited, the bar to bar test described in fig. will detect the fault by the telephone receiver remaining silent. if a short circuit be found, the leads from the receiver should then include or straddle three commutator bars, as here shown. the normal click will then be twice that between two segments until the faulty coils are reached, when the clicking will be less. when this happens, test each coil for trouble and, if individually they be all right, the trouble is between the two. to test for a ground place one terminal of the receiver on the shaft or frame of the machine, and the other on the commutator. if there be a click it indicates a ground. move the terminal about the commutator until the least clicking is heard and at or near that point will be found the contact. grounds in field coils can be located in the same manner.] short circuits between adjacent coils.--in ring armatures the presence of this fault does not necessarily imply that the machine will not build; in drum armatures, wound into a single layer of conductors, it entirely prevents this occurring. reference to a winding diagram will show that adjacent coils are during a certain period of the revolution at the full difference of pressure generated by the machine. hence, if any two adjacent coils be connected together or short circuited, the whole of the armature will be practically closed on itself, any current generated flowing within the armature only. large drum armatures wound with compressed and stranded bars and connectors are particularly susceptible to this fault, a slight blow generally forcing one or more of the strands into contact with the adjacent bars, thus short circuiting the armature, and rendering it practically useless so far as the generation of current is concerned. in this class of short circuit in drum armatures, the method of locating the faulty coils by exciting the field, and running the armatures on open circuit, does not apply, for the reason that the whole armature will be heated equally. a method of locating such fault is illustrated in fig. . this applies to drum wound armatures. faults of this description can frequently be discovered by a careful inspection of the windings of the armature without recourse to testing. when located, the fault can usually be repaired with a hardwood wedge, as explained above, or a piece of mica or vulcanized fibre cemented in place with shellac varnish. [illustration: fig. .--method of locating short circuits between adjacent armature coils. fasten a monkey wrench to the rim of the pulley, or a crank to the shaft. now, excite the fields, and, to make the effects more marked, connect the coils in parallel. when this has been done it will require considerable force to rotate the armature, and then it will move quite slowly, except at one position. when this position has been found, mark the armature at points in the center of the pole pieces at points a and b and at both ends of the armature. the explanation is that both halves of the armature oppose one another at this position; but when not at these points a continuous circuit is formed, and the resultant magnetic effect is considerable. the "cross" or "short" circuit is nearly always found on the commutator end in the last half of the winding, where the wires pass down through the first half terminals. this applies to an unequal winding. in armatures where the windings are equal, it is as liable to occur at one point as at another. with this method a defect can be found and remedied in a few moments, for it has always been a simple matter to repair it when discovered. these results can be observed in a perfect armature by connecting the opposite sections of the commutator.] short circuits between sections through frame or core of armature.--detection of this fault can be effected by the methods described above, and by disconnecting the whole of the armature coils from the commutator and from each other, and testing each separately with a battery and galvanometer coupled up as in fig. , one wire being connected to the shaft and the other to the end of the coil under test. as a rule, there is no way of remedying this fault other than unwinding the defective coils, reinsulating the core, and rewinding new coils. [illustration: fig. .--method of locating short circuits between coils through armature core. the galvanometer, battery and coil to be tested are connected in series as shown, and then the unconnected terminal of the galvanometer is brought into contact with the shaft. if then some portion of the insulation of the wire has been abraded or destroyed, thus bringing the bare wire into contact with the metal core, as at a in the figure, the needle of the galvanometer will be deflected since a closed circuit is formed through the core and wire. if the insulation be perfect, the needle will not be deflected. it will thus be seen that in the conductivity test (fig. ) it is necessary that the needle should be deflected, or turned, to prove that all is right, while in the insulation test the converse holds good; if the needle be deflected, it proves that the insulation is broken down.] short circuits between sections through binding wires.--this fault is the result of a loose winding, and is caused by the insulation upon which the binding wires are wound giving way, thus bringing coils at different pressures together. as a consequence of the heavy current which flows, the binding wires are as a rule unsoldered or burned. the location of the fault can therefore be effected by simple inspection. to remedy, it will be necessary to unwind and rewind on new binding wires, on bands of mica or vulcanized fibre, soldering at intervals to obviate flying asunder. partial short circuits in armatures.--this is usually due to the presence of moisture in the windings. to remedy the fault, the armature should be taken out and exposed to a moderate heat, or subjected to a current equal to that ordinarily given by the dynamo. under the action of heat or of this current the moisture will be gradually dispersed. when thoroughly dry, and while still warm, a coat of shellac should be applied to the whole of the windings. [illustration: fig. .--method of testing for breaks. the instruments are connected as shown. b is the battery, g the galvanometer, and s the coil of wire being tested. one terminal of the battery is connected to a terminal of the galvanometer, and the other to one of the ends of the coil under test. the other terminal of the galvanometer is connected to the other end of the coil. if the connecting wires be making good electrical contact with the respective terminals, and the wire of coil being tested be unbroken, the needle of the galvanometer will be deflected as soon as a closed circuit is made by the end of the coil coming into contact with the galvanometer terminal. if the wire of the coil be broken in some part or the ends of the connecting wires do not make good electrical contact with the terminals, the needle will not be deflected. in order to prevent mistakes, it is advisable to test the battery and galvanometer connections and contacts by short circuiting or bringing the ends of the wire connecting the terminal of the galvanometer and negative pole or the battery together before starting to test the circuit or coil. if the needle be deflected, the connections are all right; if not deflected, there is a bad contact somewhere, which must be made good before the test can proceed.] burning of armature coils.--the reason for the burning of an armature coil may be explained as follows: the coil, segments, and the short circuit between the segments form a closed circuit of low resistance so that it is only necessary to have a low pressure set up in the active portion of the coil to force a very large current through the coil and the short circuited commutator bars. the heating effect of this current is sufficient to burn out the coil. [illustration: fig. .--watson field coils. automatic machinery is employed to wind these coils; after winding, they are bound with tape, then baked to expel all moisture, and while hot, are saturated with an insulating compound and again baked for twelve hours to make them practically oil and water proof. heavy flexible leads are brought out to avoid danger of breaking or other damage.] cutting out damaged armature coils.--to cut out a damaged coil from an armature, first, disconnect the coil from the commutator, and after cutting off the leads, insulate the exposed parts with tape. then connect the commutator bars (which were connected with the leads) with a wire of the same size as the wire winding. to remove the coil entirely, cut the band wire or remove the wedges, and lift up a sufficient number of leads and coils to permit of the removal of the damaged coil. grounds in armatures.--these faults occur when the armature coils become connected to the frame or core of the armature. when this grounding is confined to a single coil, it is not in itself liable to do damage. a simple method of locating a grounded coil is illustrated in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--method of locating grounded armature coil. b is a battery or dynamo circuit giving a current of a few amperes through the armature by its own brushes ( and ). at g is placed a roughly made galvanometer, to carry some amperes or so, one terminal being in connection with the shaft of the armature, and the other attached to a movable brush . since the function of the particular galvanometer is simply to show a deflection when a current is passing, and to mark zero when there is none, a coil of thick wire with a pocket compass in the center will do all that is required, but care must be taken to remove it sufficiently far away from the disturbing effects of the armature magnetism. the manner of testing is as follows: assume a steady current to be flowing from battery b through the armature; touch the commutator with brush , and a current will flow through g. slowly rotate the armature or the brush until the galvanometer g shows no deflection. the coil in contact with will be found to be _grounded_. a hand regulator or rheostat r may be inserted in series with the battery or dynamo circuit to regulate the strength of the current passing.] ques. what is the advantage of this test? ans. the damaged coil can be located without unsoldering the coils from the commutator, which is sometimes a difficult operation without proper tools; further, the fault can frequently be repaired without disconnecting any of the wires if its exact position be determined. magneto test for grounded armatures.--a magneto test for grounded armatures is not to be recommended, as armatures often possess sufficient static capacity to cause a magneto to ring even though there be no leak. this is due to the alternating current given by the magneto for when the circuit has capacity it acts as a condenser and at each revolution of the armature of the magneto a rush of current goes out and returns, charging the surfaces of the conductor alternately in opposite directions, and ringing the bell during the process. [illustration: fig. .--method of binding armature winding. complete appliances for handling armatures in making repairs are usually not available with most street railway companies, since they are so seldom required. when needed, therefore, some temporary contrivance must be resorted to for help in the dilemma. should an armature burn out, some local concern that makes coils and rewinds armatures may be available to do the work; again, it will be necessary to send to the manufacturers for a man, as soon as coils can be made ready for the work. in no case should any but an experienced man be given charge of this work. but if there be any doubt as to whether the armature is really burnt out, let a competent man be the judge. when a large armature needs repairing, a pair of chain tongs can be used on some part of the shaft when putting in the coils, and a block and tackle, as shown, can be used, when putting on the band wires. do not finish one band and then cut off the wire, but run it over for the next, etc. then solder and trim off the wires.] breaks in armature circuit.--a partial or complete break in the armature circuit is always accompanied by heavy sparking at the commutator, but not, as a rule, by an excessive heating of the armature or slipping of the belt, and this enables the fault to be distinguished from a short circuit. the faulty part can always be readily located by the "flat" which it produces upon the surface of the commutator. the armature circuit being open at the faulty part, heavy sparking results at every half revolution as the brushes pass over it, and as a consequence the corresponding segments become "pitted" or "flattened" with respect to the others; they may easily be discovered on examination. breaks in the armature circuit may occur in either the commutator or in the coils of the armature. to ascertain whether it be in the latter, carefully examine the winding of the faulty coil. the defect may be sought for more particularly at the commutator end of the armature, as breaks in the wire are most frequent where the connections are made with the commutator segments. if no break can be discovered, try passing a heavy current through the faulty coil by means of the brushes. if a partial break exist with sufficient contact to pass a current, the coil will be heated at that point and may be discovered by running the fingers over the coil. when located, the fault may be repaired by rewinding the coil, or carefully cleaning the broken ends and jointing. the fault may also be temporarily repaired by soldering the adjacent commutator segments together without disconnecting the coil. chapter xxxiii care of the commutator and brushes for satisfactory operation, the brushes and commutator must be kept in good condition. to this end the main thing to be guarded against is the production of sparks at the brushes. if care be taken in the first instance to adjust the brushes to their setting marks, and to regulate their pressure upon the commutator, and afterwards to attend to the lead as the load varies, so that little or no sparking occurs, and also to keep the brushes and commutator free from dirt, grit, excessive oil, etc., the surface of the commutator will assume a dark burnished appearance and wear will practically cease. under these circumstances the commutator will run cool, and will give very little trouble. in order to maintain these conditions it will only be necessary to see that the brushes are kept in proper condition and fed forward to their setting marks, as they wear away, and that the commutator is occasionally polished. if the pressure of the brushes upon the commutator be too great, or their adjustment faulty, or the commutator be allowed to get into a dirty condition, sparking will result, and, if not at once attended to and remedied, the brushes will quickly wear away, and the surface of the commutator will be destroyed. as this action takes place, in the earlier stages, the surface of the commutator will become roughened or scored, resulting in jumping of the brushes, and increased sparking; in the later stages, the commutator will become untrue and worn into ruts, moreover, owing to the violent sparking which takes place through this circumstance, the machine will quickly be rendered useless[d]. [d] note.--in operating dynamos having metal brushes, it is of importance to keep the commutator smooth and glossy. to accomplish this, it is necessary to keep the commutator and brushes clean and free from grit, and to occasionally lubricate the commutator with some light oil, such as ordinary machine oil. this should be done daily if the machine be in constant use. keep the brushes resting upon the commutator with just enough pressure to insure a good firm contact. this will be found to be much less than the springs are capable of exerting. a good method to follow in cleaning the machine is as follows: loosen the brush holder thumb screws and tilt the brushes off the commutator (or, if box brush holders be used, take them out of their holders). then run the machine and hold a clean cloth against the commutator. after the commutator is clean, hold against it a cloth or piece of waste moistened with machine oil and reset the brushes. if for any reason the brushes begin to cut or score the commutator, it may be readily detected by holding the finger against the commutator; the ridge may be easily felt by the finger. this should be attended to at once in the following manner: tilt back the brushes (or if box brushes are used take them out of their holders), and hold lightly against the commutator a piece of no. sandpaper well moistened with oil, passing it back and forth until the surface is perfectly smooth. then wipe off the commutator with a clean piece of cloth or waste and lubricate with another clean piece moistened with oil and reset the brushes. ques. how is the commutator easily tested as to the condition of its surface? ans. it is readily tested by resting the back of the finger nail upon it while in motion; the nail being very sensitive to any irregularities, indicates at once any defect. ques. what causes grooves or ridges to be cut in the commutator? ans. they result from using brushes with hard burnt ends which are not pliable; also by too great a pressure of the brush upon the commutator surface. sparking at the brushes is expensive and detrimental, chiefly because it results in burning the brushes and also the commutator, necessitating their frequent renewal. every spark consumes a particle of copper, torn from the commutator or brush. the longer the sparking continues, the greater the evil becomes, and the remedy must be applied without delay. ques. what kind of oil should be used on the commutator? ans. mineral oil. ques. what attention should be given to the brushes? ans. at certain intervals, according to the care taken to reduce sparking and the length of time the machine runs, the brushes will fray out or wear unevenly, and will therefore need trimming. they should then be removed from the brush holders and their contact ends or faces examined. if not truly square, they should be filed or clipped with a pair of shears, the course of treatment differing with the type of brush. if the machine be fitted with metal strip brushes, frayed ends should be clipped square with a pair of shears, the ends thoroughly cleaned from any dirt or carbonized oil, and replaced in their holders. gauze and wire brushes require a little more attention. when their position on the commutator has been well adjusted and looked after, so that little or no sparking has taken place, it is generally only necessary to wipe them, clean the brushes and clip off the fringed edges and corners with the shears, or a pair of strong scissors. if, however, the machine has been sparking, the faces will be worn or burnt away, and probably fused. if such be the case, they will need to be put in the filing clamp, and filed true. a convenient method of trimming carbon brushes, or of bedding a complete new set of metal brushes, is to bind a piece of sandpaper, face outwards, around the commutator after the current has been shut off, and then mount the carbon or metal brushes in the holders, adjusting the tension of the springs so that the brushes bear with a moderately strong pressure upon the sandpaper. then let the machine run slowly until the ends of the brushes are ground to the proper form. care should be taken, however, that the metal dust given off does not get into the commutator connections or armature windings, or short circuiting will result. if the contact faces of the brushes are very dirty and covered with a coating of carbonized oil, etc., it will be necessary to clean them with benzoline or soda solution before replacing. [illustration: fig. .--bissell brush gear. the brushes are held in the brushholders radially and work equally well with armature running in either direction. brushes can be renewed and adjustment made while machine is in operation.] ques. describe a filing clamp. ans. as usually constructed, it consists of two pieces of metal, both shaped at one end to the correct angle, to which the brushes must be filed. one of the pieces of metal (the back part) has a groove sufficiently large to accommodate the brush, which is clamped in position by the other piece of metal and a pinching screw. if the clamp be not supplied with the machine a convenient substitute can be made out of two pieces of wood about the same width as the brush. one end of each piece is sawn to the correct angle, and the brush placed between the two. in filing, the brush is fixed in the clamp, with the toe or tip projecting slightly over the edge of the clamp, and the latter being fixed in a vise, the brush is filed by single strokes of a smooth file made outwards, the file being raised from contact with the brush when making the back stroke. [illustration: fig. .--jig for filing brushes to the correct bevel; used with copper brushes to fit them to the commutator.] sparking.--in all well designed machines there are certain positions upon the commutator for the brushes at which there will be no sparking so long as the commutator is kept clean and in good condition. in other dynamos, badly designed or constructed, sparking occurs at all positions, no matter where the brushes are placed, and in such dynamos it is therefore impossible to prevent this no matter how well they are adjusted. [illustration: fig. .--commutator clamp; a useful device for holding the segments firmly in position in taking out the end rings of the commutator to repair for internal grounds. it is made of Ã� / inch sheet steel, with a / inch screw. the illustration clearly shows the adjustable fastening. the notches fit around rivets on one side of each fastening, which can be moved by removing the two cotters. the clamp is made loose or taut by screwing the bolt in the nut.] ques. what two kinds of sparking may be generally distinguished? ans. one kind of sparking is that due to bad adjustment of the brushes, and a second kind, that due to bad condition of the commutator. sparks due to bad adjustment of the brushes are generally of a bluish color, small when near the neutral plane, and increasing in violence and brilliancy as the brushes recede from the correct positions upon the commutator. when sparks are produced by dirty or neglected state of the commutator, they are distinguished by a reddish color and a spluttering or hissing. when due to this last mentioned cause, it is impossible to suppress the sparking until the commutator and brushes have been cleaned. in the former case, the sparks will disappear as soon as the brushes have been rotated into the neutral points. another class of sparks appear when there is some more or less developed fault, such as a short circuit, or break in the armature or commutator. these are similar in character to those produced by bad adjustment of the brushes, but are distinguished from the latter by their not decreasing in violence when the brushes are rotated towards the neutral plane. having distinguished the classes of sparks which appear at the commutator of a dynamo, it remains to enumerate the causes which produce them. these are: . bad adjustment of brushes; . bad condition of brushes; . bad condition of commutator; . overload of dynamo; . loose connections, terminals, etc.; . breaks in armature circuit; . short circuits in armature circuit; . short circuits or breaks in field magnet circuit. bad adjustment of brushes.--when sparking is produced by bad adjustment of the brushes, it may be detected by rotating or shifting the rocker, by the indication that the sparking will vary with each movement. to obtain good adjustment of the brushes, it will be necessary to rock them gently backwards and forwards, until a position is found in which the sparking disappears. ques. if, in rocking the brushes, a position cannot be found at which the sparking disappears, what is the probable cause of the trouble? ans. the brushes may not be set with the proper pitch, that is they may not be separated a correct distance, or the neutral plane may not be situated in the true theoretical position upon the commutator through some defect in the winding, etc. in this last named case, the brushes may be strictly adjusted to their theoretically correct positions before starting the machine; then, when the machine is started and the load put on, violent sparking occurs, which cannot be suppressed by shifting the rocker. if, however, one set of brushes only be observed, it will generally be found that, at a certain position, the sparking at the set of brushes under observation ceases or is greatly reduced, while sparking still occurs at the other set. when this position is found, the rocker should be fixed by the clamping screw, and the brushes of the other set at which sparking is still occurring adjusted by drawing them back or pushing them forward in their holders until a position is found at which the sparking ceases. correct position of the brushes and the suppression of sparking is a matter of importance, and any time spent in carefully adjusting the brushes will be amply repaid by the decreased attention and wear of the brushes and commutator. [illustration: figs. to .--brushes making bad contact. a brush making a bad contact, as only at the shaded portion of figs. and , will not allow the short circuited coil enough time to reverse, causing sparking and heating. the latter will also result from bad contact on account of the surface being too small for the current to be carried off. this form of bad contact is worse than that shown in fig. , where the area of contact surface only is lessened. if the brushes do not make good contact, they should be ground down.] bad condition of brushes.--if the contact faces of the brushes be fused or covered with carbonized oil, dirt, etc., there will be bad contact which is accompanied by heating and sparking. simple examination will generally reveal whether this be the case. the remedy is to remove the brushes, one at a time if the machine be running, clean, file if necessary, trim, and readjust. if the brushes be exceedingly dirty, or saturated with oil, it will be necessary to clean them with turpentine, benzoline, or soda solution, before replacing. bad condition of commutator.--if the surface of the commutator be rough, worn into grooves, or eccentric, or if there be one or more segments loose or set irregularly, the brushes will be thrown into vibration, and sparking will result. a simple examination of the commutator will readily detect these defects. a rough and uneven commutator is due to bad adjustment of brushes, bad construction of commutator, and to neglect generally. if allowed to continue, it results in heavy sparking at the brushes, and the eventful destruction of the commutator. the fault may be remedied by filing or re-turning the commutator. [illustration: fig. .--rough and grooved commutator due to improper brush adjustment and failure to keep brushes in proper condition.] ques. how is an untrue commutator detected? ans. if the commutator be untrue, the fact will be indicated when the machine is slowed down by a visible eccentricity, or by holding the hand, or a stick in the case of a high tension machine, against the surface while revolving, when any irregularity or eccentricity will be apparent by the vibration or movement of the stick. the only remedy for an untrue commutator is to re-turn it in the lathe. ques. what should be done in case of high segments? ans. they should be gently tapped down with a mallet, and if possible the clamping cones at the commutator end should be tightened. if it be impossible to hammer the segments down, they should be filed down to the same diameter as the rest of the commutator, or the commutator re-turned. for low segments, the only remedy is to pull out the segments, or turn commutator down to their level. ques. explain the term "flats on the commutator." ans. this is the name given to a peculiar fault which develops on one or more segments of the commutator. it is not confined to dynamos of bad design or construction, but frequently appears on those of the highest class, and may be recognized as a "pitting" or "flattening" of one or more segments. ques. what is the effect of flats on the commutator? ans. sparking at the brushes. ques. what are the causes which produce flats? ans. periodical jumping of the brushes due to a bad state of the commutator, bad joint in the driving belt, a flaw, or a difference in the composition of the metal of the particular bar upon which it appears. but more frequently flats may be traced to a more or less developed fault, such as a break, either partial or complete, in the armature coil. the break may occur either in the coil itself, or at the point where its ends make connection with the lug of the commutator, or at the point where the lug is soldered to the segment. ques. what should be done in case of flats? ans. the brushes should be examined to see if any periodical vibration take place. if such be the case, the cause should be removed, the flat carefully filed or turned out, and the brushes readjusted. if it be due to a difference in the composition of the metal of which the segment is made, the flat will exist as long as the particular segment is in use, and will need periodic attention. with hard drawn copper or phosphor bronze segments, this fault is rarely due to this last mentioned cause. it is more frequently due to bad soldering, of the conductors to the lugs, or of the lugs to the segments. in all cases of flats, if the disconnection in the armature circuit be not complete, and cannot be readily located, the effect of re-soldering or sweating the ends of the coils into the lugs should be tried. flats may also frequently be cured by drilling and tapping a small hole in the junction between the lug and the segment, and inserting a small screw, or bit of screwed copper or brass wire, afterwards filing down level with the surface of the commutator. [illustration: figs. and .--method of repairing broken joint between commutator segment and lug. to repair such a break push asbestos in between adjacent bars, so that heat from the torch will not affect them. asbestos should also be worked in at the back if possible, for the purpose of keeping solder from places where it would cause trouble. then unsolder the armature leads from the lug and remove the latter. next, with specially made cape chisels, cut in a slot in the commutator bar for a new lug. care and skill are required not to destroy the mica insulation between the segments. the slot should be cut one-quarter to three-eighths inch deep. the connector is then soldered in place. with care a satisfactory connection can be made in this way, which will last well. if it do not last, the trouble in almost every case is due to poor soldering. short circuits sometimes occur after this operation, because of solder falling in at the back and lodging on lower connections. in large machines, the excessive current flowing is quite likely to melt this solder, and the machine may buck, throwing out the melted solder, after which it may be all right again. while the bar connector is out, however, asbestos should be packed in back of it to prevent this occurrence, which may be a serious affair. all surplus solder and the asbestos packing should be removed after the connection is finished, and the connections cleaned with compressed air. the armature should be turned over slowly, air being applied all the while.] segments loose or knocked in.--when the segments are loose, it is an indication that the clamping ring or cone has worked loose. this should therefore be tightened up, and the commutator re-turned if necessary. ques. how should low commutator segments be treated? ans. the commutator surface may be turned down to the level of the low segment, or the latter may be pulled out again to its former level, this latter being the preferable method, if it can possibly be effected. ques. how is a commutator segment pulled out to its correct position? ans. a hand vise is firmly clamped to the lug, or a loop of copper wire is passed round the conductor where it joins the commutator. a bar of iron, to act as a lever, is supported on a fulcrum over the commutator, and one end of the bar is passed through the loop or vise. pressure is applied to the other end which will generally bury the segment up to its proper position. how to re-turn a commutator.--in re-turning the commutator, the armature should first be carefully taken out of the armature chamber, avoiding knocks or blows of any kind. the whole of the winding should then be wrapped in calico or canvas before the armature is put into the lathe, to prevent any particles of metal becoming attached to the surface of the armature at the time the commutator is being turned. the armature should on no account be rolled upon the floor, or subjected to blows or knocks while being put into the lathe. in re-turning the commutator, a sharp pointed tool should be used with a very fine feed. a broad nosed tool ought not to be used, as it is liable to burr over the segments. after turning, the commutator should be lightly filed with a dead smooth file, and finally polished with coarse and fine sandpaper. after the commutator has been turned and polished, the insulation between the segments should be lightly scraped with the tang of a small file to remove any particles of metal or burrs which might short circuit the commutator. the points where the armature wires are soldered to the lugs should also be carefully cleaned with a brush, and should then receive a coat or two of shellac varnish. while the commutator is being turned, care should be taken that the setting marks for the adjustment of the brushes are not turned out if these be present. the same care should be used in putting the armature back into the armature chamber as was used in taking it out, otherwise the insulation may be damaged. [illustration: figs. and .--bissell commutators. the segments are of hard drawn copper and are insulated from each other and from the shell by mica.] ques. should the commutator be run without any lubricant? ans. in most cases it will be found that a little lubricant is needed in order to prevent cutting the brushes, cutting the commutator; this is especially the case when hard strip brushes are used. the quantity of oil applied should be very small; a few drops smeared upon a piece of clean rag, and applied to the commutator while running, being quite sufficient. ques. what kind of oil should be used on the commutator? ans. mineral oil, such as vaseline, or any other hydrocarbon. animal or vegetable oils should be avoided, as they have a tendency to carbonize, and thus cause short circuiting of the commutator, with attendant sparking. [illustration: figs. to .--method of repairing a large hole burned in two adjacent bars of a commutator. fig. shows the hole. the first operation is to clean carefully and tin the surface of the hole. the two bars are then wedged apart and mica strips, a b, fig , of the requisite size and thickness forced in. the commutator must now be warmed up as much as possible by means of soldering irons, and strips of mica, c d, e f, fig. , placed at the front and back of the hole, being kept in position by pieces of wood w, solder is poured into the hole from a ladle, using a rough mica funnel to guide it.] overload of dynamo.--it may happen, through some cause or other that a greater output is taken from the machine than it can safely carry. when this is the case, the fact is indicated by excessive sparking at the brushes, great heating of the armature and other parts of the dynamo, and possibly by the slipping of the belt (if it be a belt driven machine), resulting in a noise. the causes most likely to produce overload are: . excessive voltage; . excessive current; . reversal of polarity of dynamo; . short circuits or grounds in dynamo, or external circuits. ques. what is the indication of excessive voltage? ans. it is indicated by the voltmeter, or by the brilliancy of the pilot lamp. [illustration: fig. .--method of smoothing commutator with a stone. the proper stone to use is made out of white sandstone similar to that used for grindstones, but a trifle softer. it is dove-tailed into a holder, as shown in the illustration, and held in place by a set screw. when being used, one knob is grasped in one hand and the other knob in the other hand, the stone being moved back and forth along the length of the commutator. as the stone will become coated with copper at first, it must be cleaned frequently by means of coarse sandpaper. the fine dust from the stone will get under the brushes and wear them to a very close fit. after using the stone, finish with fine sandpaper.] ques. what are the causes of excessive voltage? ans. over excitation of the field magnet or too high speed. in the former case, resistance should be introduced into the field circuit to diminish the current flowing therein if a shunt machine; or if a series machine, a portion of the current should be shunted across the field coils by means of a resistance arranged in parallel with the series coils; or the same effect may be produced in both cases by reducing the speed of the armature if this be possible. if due to excessive speed, which will be indicated by a speed indicator, the natural remedy is to reduce the speed of the engine driving the dynamo, or, if this be not easily done, insert resistance into the dynamo circuit, as described above. ques. what are the causes of excessive current? ans. if the dynamo be supplying arc lamps, the excessive current may possibly be caused by the bad feeding of the lamps. if this be the case, the fact will be indicated by the oscillations of the ammeter needle, and the unsteadiness of the light. if incandescent lamps be in the circuit, the fault may be caused by there being more lamps in circuit than the dynamo is designed to carry. under such circumstances, another dynamo should be switched into circuit in parallel, or, if this be not possible, lamps should be switched off until the defect is remedied. when motors are in the circuit, sparking frequently results at the dynamo commutator, owing to the fluctuating load. in such cases the brushes should be adjusted to a position at which the least sparking occurs with the average load. ques. what may be said with respect to reversal of polarity of dynamos? ans. when compound or series wound dynamos are running in parallel, their polarity is occasionally reversed while stopping by the current from the machines at work. loose connections, terminals, etc.--when any of the connecting cables, terminal screws, etc., securing the different circuits are loose, sparking at the brushes, as a rule, results, for the reason that the vibration of the machine tends to continually alter the resistance of the various circuits to which they are connected. when the connections are excessively loose, sparking also results at their points of contact, and by this indication the faulty connections may be readily detected. when this sparking at the contacts is absent, the whole of the connections should be carefully examined and tested. breaks in armature circuit.--if there be a broken circuit in the armature, as sometimes happens through a fracture of the armature connections, etc., there will be serious flashing or sparking at the brushes, which cannot be suppressed by adjusting the rocker. as a rule it results in the production of "flats" upon one or more bars of the commutator. [illustration: fig. .--sandpaper holder for commutator. the sandpaper is made fast on top by a clamp and screw. the two face blocks are pivoted and adjust themselves to the commutator, and will fit any size of commutator. if it have four brushes, the lower block will go in between the brush-holders.] ques. how may such sparking be reduced without stopping the machine? ans. by placing one of the brushes of each set a little in advance of the others, so as to bridge the gap. short circuits in armature circuit.--this fault is indicated by sparking at the commutator, and in bad cases by an excessive heating of the armature, dimming of the light and slipping of the belt, and in the case of a drum armature, by a sudden cessation of the current. [illustration: fig. .--sandpaper block. it is made to fit the surface of the commutator. at s is a saw cut into which the ends are pushed after being wrapped around the block. the latter should be cut down on the dotted lines to form a handle.] short circuits or breaks in field magnet circuit.--either of these faults is liable to give rise to sparking at the commutator. if one of the coils be short circuited, the fact will be indicated by the faulty coil remaining cool while the perfect coil is overheated. the fault may arise through some of the connections to the coils making contact with the frame of the machine or with each other. to ascertain this, examine all the connections, and test with a battery and galvanometer. a total break in one or more of the field coils may readily be detected by means of the battery and galvanometer. a partial break is not, however, so readily discovered, for the reason that the coil wires may be in sufficiently close contact to give a deflection of the galvanometer needle. the only methods of detecting this fault is by measuring the resistance of the coils with an ohmmeter or wheatstone bridge, or by placing an ammeter in circuit with each coil in turn, and comparing the amount of current flowing in each. if the partial break be not accessible, the only way to remedy the fault is to rewind the coil, and the same applies to a break in the interior of the coil. short circuits in commutator.--these are of frequent occurrence, and result in heating the armature and sparking at the brushes. they are caused either by metallic dust or particles lodging in the insulation between the segments, or by the deterioration of the commutator insulation. to remedy, the insulation between the segments should be carefully examined, and any metallic dust, filings, or burrs cleaned or scraped out. when the commutator is insulated with asbestos or pasteboard (as is oftentimes the case in dynamos of european make), short circuits very frequently occur through the insulation absorbing moisture or oil, which is subsequently carbonized by the sparking at the brushes. in faults of this description the only remedy is to expel all moisture from the commutator insulation by means of heat, and scrape out all metallic dust which may be embedded in the surface of the insulation. if this do not effect a cure, it will be necessary to dig out the insulation, as far as possible, with a sharp tool, and drive in new insulation. oil should not be used on commutators insulated with these materials, but only asbestos dust or french chalk. chapter xxxiv heating the excessive heating of the parts of dynamos and motors is probably the most frequent and annoying fault which arises in operation. when the machine heats, it is a common mistake to suppose that any part found to be hot is the seat of the trouble. hot bearings may cause the armature or commutator to heat, or vice versa. all parts of the machine should be tested to ascertain which is the hottest, since heat generated in one part is rapidly diffused. this is best done by starting with the machine cold; any serious trouble from heating is usually perceptible after a run of a few minutes at full speed with the field magnets excited. heating may be due to various electrical or mechanical causes, and it may occur in the different parts of the machine, as in: . the connections; . the brushes and commutator; . the armature; . the field magnet; . the bearing. ques. how is heating detected? ans. by applying the hand to the different parts of the machine if low tension, or a thermometer if high tension, and also by a smell of overheated insulation, paint, or varnish. ques. what should be done if the odor of overheated insulation, paint or varnish be noticeable? ans. it is advisable to stop the machine at once, otherwise the insulation is liable to be destroyed. ques. what is the allowable rise of temperature in a well designed machine? ans. it should not exceed ° fahr., above the surrounding air, and in the case of the bearings, this temperature ought not to be reached under normal conditions of working. if this limit be exceeded after a run of six hours or less, it indicates a machine either badly designed and probably with the material cut down to the lowest possible limit with a view to cheapness, or some fault or other which should be searched for and remedied as early as possible, otherwise the machine will probably be destroyed. ques. how should the rise of temperature be measured? ans. it is not sufficient to feel the machine with the hand, but special thermometers must be placed on the armature winding, immediately on stopping the machine, covering them with cotton or wool to prevent cooling. readings must be taken at short intervals, and continued till no further rise of temperature is indicated. heating of connections.--a rise of temperature of the connections may be due to either excessive current, or bad contacts, or both. the terminals and connections will be excessively heated if a larger current pass through them than they are designed to carry. this nearly always proceeds from an overload of the dynamo, and if this be rectified, the heating will disappear. if the contacts of the different connections of the dynamo be not kept thoroughly clean and free from all grit, oil, etc., and the connections themselves be not tightly screwed up, heating will result, and the connections may even become unsoldered. heating of brushes, commutator and armature.--when heating occurs in these parts, it may be due to any of the following causes: , excessive current; , hot bearings; , short circuits in armature or commutator; , moisture in armature coils; , breaks in armature coils; , eddy currents in armature core or conductor. [illustration: fig. .--ventilated commutator; sectional view showing air ducts. air is frequently circulated through a commutator in order to maintain it at a sufficiently low temperature, suitable openings being provided for this purpose as shown.] ques. what may be said with respect to excessive current? ans. when a dynamo is overloaded, the temperature of the armature will rise to a dangerous extent, depending upon the degree to which the safe capacity of the machine is exceeded, and heavy sparking of the brushes will also result. if the overload be not removed, the insulation of the armature may be destroyed. ques. state some causes of hot bearings. ans. lack of oil; presence of grit or other foreign matter in the bearings; belt too tight; armature not centred with respect to pole pieces; bearings too tight; bearings not in line; shaft rough or cut. [illustration: fig. .--self-oiling and self-aligning bearing. the self-oiling feature consists of rings which revolve with the shaft, and feed the latter with oil continually, which they bring up from the reservoir below. the dirt settles to the bottom, and the upper portion of the oil remains sufficiently clean for a long time, after which it is drawn off, and a fresh supply poured in through holes provided in the top. these latter are often located directly over the slots in which the rings are placed, so that the bearings can be lubricated immediately by means of an oil cup if the rings fail to act or the reservoir become exhausted. the bearing is made self-aligning by providing the bearing proper with an enlarged central portion of spherical shape, held in a spherical seat formed in the pedestal by turning, milling, or by casting babbitt or other fusible metal around it, thus allowing the bearing to adjust itself to the exact direction of the shaft. the upper half of the box can be taken off to facilitate renewal, etc., and to permit the armature to be removed.] ques. what is the effect of hot bearings? ans. besides giving trouble themselves, the heat may be conducted along the armature shaft and core, thus giving rise to excessive heating of the armature. points relating to hot bearings . use good oil; . see that oil cups or reservoirs are full and all oil passages clear; . in self-oiling and splash systems where the oil is used over again, it should be kept in clean condition by frequent straining; . keep bearings clean and properly adjusted; . maintain bearings in good alignment; . avoid tight belts; . examine the air gap or clearance between armature and pole faces and see that they are uniform. ques. what troubles are encountered with short circuits in the armature or commutator? ans. this results in sparking at the brushes, and in the heating of one or more of the armature coils, and even in the burning up of the latter if a bad case. when the armature is overheated, and the defect does not proceed from an overload or the causes mentioned below, the dynamo should be immediately stopped and tested for this fault. ques. what will happen with an overheated commutator? ans. it will decompose carbon brushes and cover the commutator with a black film, which offers resistance and increases the heat. ques. what should be done if carbon brushes become hotter than the other parts? ans. use higher conductivity carbon. reduce length of brush by adjusting holder to grip brush nearer the commutator. reinforce brushes with copper gauze, sheet copper or wires, or use some form of combined metal and carbon brush. increase size or number of brush if necessary, so the current does not exceed amperes per square inch of contact. brushes heat sometimes due to too much friction. they should not press against the commutator more than is necessary for good contact. ques. give some causes for heating of armature. ans. eddy currents; moisture; short circuits; unequal strength of magnetic poles; operation above rated voltage, and below normal speed. ques. what trouble is encountered with eddy currents? ans. considerable heating of the whole of the armature results, which may even extend to the bearings. [illustration: fig. .--eck manchester type motor. it is a very small size unit and is designed for special purposes where very little room is available. the motor occupies a space of - / " Ã� - / " between bearings and develops / horse power at , r. p. m. the frame of this motor is made of high permeability steel so as to reduce the weight to a minimum. the armature is of the hand wound bipolar type built up of thin punchings. the armature, after being wound, is baked at high temperature for a prolonged period and then dipped while hot in insulating varnish. pulley is one inch in diameter and takes a / inch round belt. weight of motor - / pounds.] ques. how can this be overcome? ans. there is no remedy for eddy currents other than the purchase of a new armature, or reconstruction. the fault may be detected by exciting the field magnets and running the machine on open circuit, with the brushes raised off the commutator for some time, when the armature will be found to be excessively heated. ques. how does moisture in the armature coils affect the armature? ans. the effect of this fault being to practically short circuit the armature, a heating of the latter results. in bad cases, steam or vapor is given off. ques. what is the effect of short circuits in the armature? ans. it produces overheating. ques. what trouble is likely to occur when the armature is not centered in the armature chamber? ans. a heating of the bearings is liable to be occasioned through the attractive forces developed by the center of the armature core not being parallel with the centre of the armature chamber or bore, or through the core being nearer one pole piece than the other. this may result from unequal wearing of the bearings, and therefore the bearings should either be relined or the bolt holes of the bearings readjusted, or the bearings packed up until the armature is correctly centered. ques. what happens in case of breaks in the armature coils? ans. this fault results in local heating of the armature, for the reason that resistance is interposed in the path of the current at the fracture. it always results in sparking at the brushes, and the heating being confined to the neighborhood of the break. ques. what are the effects of operation above the rated voltage and below normal speed? ans. voltage above normal is a possible cause of heating, and operation below normal speed calls for an increase of field strength and reduces the effective ventilation, thus tending to cause heating. [illustration: fig. .--forced system of lubrication as applied to engine of the generating set shown in fig. . in engines employing the forced system of lubrication the crank pit, which is formed by the columns, is accessible through doors in the front and back of the engine. the base of the engine forms an oil tank to which is attached a small plunger pump driven by an eccentric on the shaft. the lubricant is carried under pressure to the various parts of the engine by the mechanism shown in the accompanying diagram. the oil is forced by a pump to a groove in the main bearing, and a drilled hole in the shaft connects this groove with the crank pin. from the crank pin box the oil is further forced to the wrist pin through the pipe running along the side of the connecting rod. the passage in the crosshead allows the oil to be forced from the wrist pin to the guides. as the oil is forced from one bearing to another, it is quite important that the bearing caps be set tight, otherwise the oil will escape before reaching the last bearing. after passing through the bearings, the oil is collected in the base, strained and used again. the oil should be free from foreign substances, and to guard against the introduction of any foreign matter, a strainer, which may be taken out for examination or cleaning, is attached to the suction valve of the pump. an oil pressure of from to lbs. should be maintained, and may be regulated by adjusting the set screw on the relief valve of the oiling system. the pressure gauge need not remain in the circuit continuously. only mineral oils should be used for lubrication. a heavy oil gives better results and prevents knocking more effectively than thin oil. an oil which has been found to give good results, consists of two-thirds red engine oil and one-third heavy cylinder oil. as the oil passes through the bearings repeatedly, it gradually loses its lubricating properties, becoming thick and gritty, and should be occasionally run through a filter and mixed with new oil. the frequency of this change depends on the oil, as well as the number of hours the engine is in operation, and can easily be determined by observation. the oil in the reservoir should stand about inches over the suction and discharge valves, and no water should be allowed to mix with it. should any water accumulate in the base, it should be drawn off by the cock provided for the purpose before starting the engine.] ques. how may the field magnets become heated? ans. by excessive field current; eddy current in pole pieces; moisture; short circuits. ques. what may be said with respect to excessive field current? ans. when heating results from this cause, all the exciting coils will be heated equally. it may be due to excessive voltage, in the case of shunt dynamos; or to an overload in the case of compound and series dynamos. in either case it may be remedied by reducing the voltage or overload. if due to the coils being incorrectly coupled up, that is, coupled up in parallel instead of in series, it will be necessary to rectify the connections or insert a resistance in series. ques. state the causes of eddy currents in the pole pieces? ans. this fault may be due to defective design or construction of the armature. slotted armatures are particularly liable to cause this fault, if the teeth and air gap be not properly proportioned. the defect may also be occasioned by variation in the strength of the exciting current. if due to this latter cause, it will be accompanied by sparking at the brushes. if a shunt dynamo, insert an ammeter into the shunt circuit, and note if the deflection be steady. if this be not the case, the variation in the current most probably proceeds from imperfect contacts thrown into vibration. ques. how is the insulation affected by moisture? ans. moisture tends to decrease the insulation resistance, thus in effect producing a short circuit with its attendant heating. ques. how is moisture in the field coils detected? ans. it is easily detected by applying the hand to the coils, when they will be found to be damp, and in addition steam or vapor will be given off where the machine is working. the fault may be remedied by drying and varnishing the coils. ques. what is the indication of short circuits in the field coils? ans. this fault is characterized by an unequal heating of the field coils. if the coils be connected in series, the faulty coil will be heated to a less extent than the perfect coils; if connected in parallel, the faulty coil will be heated to a greater extent than the perfect coils. the former can thus be easily located. chapter xxxv operation of motors in operating motors of any considerable size, whether connected to the public supply mains of a central generating station for combined lighting and power service, or to power service mains only, there are certain precautions to be observed in starting, stopping, and regulating the motor, in order that the efficiency of the supply, and indirectly the working of other motors and lamps connected to the mains in the immediate neighborhood, may not be affected by abnormal variations of pressure. these precautions should be observed also to prevent any danger of the motor itself being subjected to detrimental mechanical shocks and excessive temperatures in the working parts. before starting a motor.--the general instructions relating to inspection and adjustment, lubrication, etc., which have already been given, should be carefully followed preparatory to starting[e]. [e] note.--in starting a motor, first see that the bearings contain sufficient oil and that the brushes bear evenly on the commutator. if a circuit breaker be used, close it; then close the main switch. rotate slowly the handle of the starting rheostat as far as it will go. care should be taken, in starting the motor, that the handle of the rheostat be not rotated too fast. to stop a motor, open the circuit breaker or switch, which will cut in the resistance of the starting box. never attempt to stop a motor by forcibly pulling open the starting box, _disregard of these instructions may cause burning out of the field coils._ starting a motor.--in starting a motor, resistance must be put in series with the armature because, since there is no reverse electromotive force to counteract the applied voltage when the motor is at rest, the switching of the latter direct to the motor would result in an abnormal rush of current. this, in addition to being uneconomical and productive of a drop of voltage in the mains, would injure all except the smallest motors. hence motors above two horse power usually require a rheostat. ques. describe a rheostat or "starting box." ans. it consists essentially of a suitable resistance to be inserted at starting to reduce the initial rush of current, and which can be cut out in sections by successive movements of a lever as the speed increases. [illustration: fig. .--press for forcing on and removing a commutator. small commutators are pressed on to the shaft by a hand press. all of the larger commutators are pressed on by means of a power press. in the above figure is shown a hand press. the plate _b_ is used in removing old commutators. it is placed back of the commutator as at _x y_ with the slot _c_ over the shaft. bolts _a b_ are passed through the holes in the plate and secured by nuts. the commutator can then be forced off the shaft. in pressing on a commutator, a sleeve is placed over the shaft at _o_, and against the commutator. the rear end of the shaft is secured so it will withstand the pressure, and the commutator is forced on. the power presses are built on the principle of a hydraulic press. in pressing on a commutator a piece of babbitt metal or soft brass should be used against the end of the shaft. the shaft should be painted with white lead before having the commutator pressed on, in order to lubricate the shaft so that the commutator will press on easily. the wiper rings are pressed on after the commutator and then the armature is ready to be connected.] ques. describe what occurs in starting a motor. ans. when the lever of the starting box is moved to the first contact some of the resistance is cut out of the circuit and current flows through the motor. this produces a torque and starts the armature rotating. the movement of the armature induces a reverse voltage, which, as the speed increases, gradually reduces the applied current. with this reduction of current, the torque is reduced and the speed not accelerated as quickly as at first. when the applied current has been reduced to a certain value by the increasing reverse current, the handle of the starting box is moved to the next contact, and so on till all the resistance in the starting box has been cut out, the motor then attaining its normal speed. [illustration: figs. to .--various starting resistances. the type of resistance used in motor starting rheostats of small size consists usually of tinned iron wire wound on asbestos tubes, as shown in fig. , the tubes being firmly supported by porcelain nipples, the ends of which fit into holes in the top and bottom of the enclosing case. in starters of larger size, cast metal grids, as shown in fig. , are used. in addition to these types of resistance, some forms of starter are equipped with what is known as "unit" type resistance. in this form, the resistance is built up of a number of separate sections, or units, which are connected to form the complete starting or regulating resistance as the case may be. a single unit consists of a moulded core of vitreous material upon which is wound the resistance wire, as shown in fig. . the surface of the unit is then coated with a special cement and baked. by this method the resistance material is protected from mechanical injury and is also made proof against moisture and other conditions which sometimes affect the ordinary type of resistance. in addition to units coated with cement only, there are still other types of units, as in fig. , which are provided with a sheet metal covering around the cement, as a further precaution against injury. each of the various types of resistance described possesses certain characteristics not shared by the others, the use of any particular type being largely governed by conditions of service.] ques. what is the difference between a starting box and a speed regulator? ans. motor starting rheostats or "starting boxes," are designed to start a motor and bring it gradually from rest to full speed. they are _not_ intended to regulate the speed and must not be used for such purpose. _failure to observe this caution will result in burning out the resistance which, in a motor starter, is sufficient to carry the current for a limited time only_, whereas in the case of speed regulators sufficient resistance is provided to carry the full load current continuously. [illustration: fig. .--view of cutler-hammer starter with slate front removed showing open wire coil resistance. the type of resistance here used consists of tinned iron wire wound on asbestos tubes. the bottom of the casing is perforated to secure ventilation.] ques. for what kinds of service are speed regulators used? ans. in cases when the speed must be varied, as in traction motors, organ blowers, machine tool drive, etc. ques. how long does it take to start a motor? ans. usually from five to ten seconds. ques. how is the starting lever operated? ans. it is moved progressively from contact to contact, pausing long enough on each contact for the motor to accelerate its speed before passing to the next. ques. what are the conditions at starting in a series motor? ans. there is a rush of current, the magnitude of which depends on the amount of resistance cut out at each movement of the starting lever. [illustration: figs. and .--sliding contact starters. fig. , starter with button contacts; fig. , starter with renewable contacts. motor starters in which the successive steps of resistance are cut out by a pivoted lever carrying a contact shoe which slides over button contacts or over contact segments, are known as sliding contact starters. button contacts are usually furnished with motor starting rheostats of small size while contact segments are used on those of greater capacity. the contact segment being held in position by two screws, is readily renewable when worn by long service or damaged by arcing. the fixed button contact is not so easily renewed but being used only on small size starters is never likely to be subjected to severe service. some starters, however, have renewable button contacts.] ques. how are small series motors started on battery circuits? ans. by simply closing a switch to complete the circuit, the resistance of the battery being sufficient to prevent a great rush of current while starting. ques. how is a shunt motor started? ans. in starting a shunt motor, no trouble is likely to occur in connecting the field coils to the circuit. since the resistance of the armature is very low, it is necessary on constant voltage circuits to use a starting rheostat in series with the armature. the necessary connections are shown in fig. . the switch is first closed thus sending current through the field coils, before any passes through the armature. the rheostat lever p is then moved to the first contact to allow a moderate amount of current to pass through the armature. the resistance of the rheostat is gradually cut out by further movement of the lever p, thus bringing the motor up to speed. [illustration: figs. and .--multiple switch starters. fig. , starter with no voltage release; fig. , starter with no voltage release and circuit breaker. the multiple switch type of starter is designed to overcome the arcing on sliding contacts which, in the case of large motors would be very severe. the cutting out of each step of resistance is accomplished in the multiple switch starter by a separate carbon contact switch which breaks the circuit with a quick snappy action.] ques. how does the reverse voltage affect the starting of a motor? ans. when a motor is standing still, there is no reverse voltage, and the current taken at first is governed principally by the resistance of the circuit. if the motor be series wound, there is a momentary reverse voltage, due to self-induction while the field is building up. if the motor be shunt wound, self-induction delays the current through the field coils, but that through the armature is not impeded by such cause. when the armature begins to revolve, reverse voltage is developed which increases with the speed. the resistance of the starting box may be gradually cut out as the armature comes to speed. thus the reverse voltage gradually replaces ohmic drop in limiting the current as the motor comes to speed. [illustration: fig. .--starting rheostat with no voltage and overload release. the no voltage release permits the starting lever to fly to the "off position" should the voltage fail momentarily, thus protecting the motor against damage should the voltage suddenly return to the line. the movement of the lever is due to a spring. the overload device causes the lever to back to the off position should the current exceed a predetermined maximum for which the release is adjusted. fig. .--compound starter. rheostats designed for the double duty of starting a motor and regulating its speed are commonly known as compound starters, the resistance provided being a combination of armature resistance for starting duty and shunt field resistance for speed regulation.] failure to start.--this fault, which is liable to occur in a motor of any description, is similar to failure to excite in a dynamo, and is liable to be produced by any of the causes mentioned in connection with the latter fault, excluding insufficient speed, and insufficient residual magnetism. when a motor fails to start, it should first be ascertained if a supply of electrical energy be available in the mains. this may readily be discovered by means of a voltmeter, or if low tension service, by means of the fingers bridging across the main terminals. if the supply of energy be present, the contact arm of the starter should be moved into such position that all resistance is inserted into circuit with the motor. this is important, as the motor may start suddenly while trying to ascertain the cause of the stoppage. [illustration: fig. .--starting panel. in installing any kind of motor starting rheostat, it is necessary to provide main line knife switch and fuses in addition to the starting box. the appearance of the installation can be much improved by mounting all of these upon one panel.] having closed the switch, if the motor fail to start, it will be advisable to remove the load if possible, as the failure may arise from an overload of the machine. this being effected and the motor not starting, the terminals of the latter should be tested by the means already described for voltage. if no voltage be generated, a broken circuit or a defective contact may be looked for in the main fuse, switch, or starting box. the resistance coils of the latter, through the heat developed, frequently break in positions out of sight. if a defective contact of this nature cannot readily be seen, the contact arm should be moved slowly over the contacts, as it is possible the broken coil may be cut out of circuit by this means. [illustration: figs. to .--cutler-hammer motor starting rheostats with no voltage and overload release. fig. , starter with fixed button contact, fig. , with renewable button contact, and fig. , with contact segments. in construction the resistance is enclosed in a pressed steel box on which is mounted a marbleized slate panel carrying the starting lever, contacts and protective devices. by means of a calibrated scale, the overload release (shown in the lower left hand corner, figs. and , and in the lower right hand corner fig. ) can be set to break the circuit on any overload not exceeding per cent. of the rated capacity of the motor. this calibrated scale can also be used for determining, with a fair degree of accuracy, the amount of current being consumed by the motor.] if a difference of pressure exist between the motor terminals, the field magnets will, if shunt or compound wound and in good order, be excited, which may be ascertained by means of a bar of iron. if no magnetism be present, it will of course, indicate a broken or bad connection, either between the terminals of the field coils, or one or more of the coils themselves. if the bar pull strongly, the position of the brushes upon the commutator in regard to the neutral points should be ascertained, and the rocker adjusted, if necessary, to bring them into their correct positions. if this fail to start the motor, the connecting leads from the motor terminals to the brushes and the brushes themselves should be carefully examined for broken or bad connections, and defective contact of the brushes with the commutator. in the latter case, it may arise from a dirty state of the commutator, or from the brushes not being fed properly. if due to these causes, pressing the brushes down upon the commutator with the fingers will probably start the motor. if the failure to start arise from none of these causes, it is probably due to the field coils acting in opposition, or to a short circuited armature. this latter remark applies more especially to motors provided with drum armatures. [illustration: fig. .--allen-bradley compression type resistance units. the contact resistance between the discs composing the resistance column is subject to variations of pressure thereby producing proportionate resistance changes in the column as a whole. in the complete resistance unit, the resistances column is encased in a drawn steel tube, which is lined with a highly refractory cement, for purpose of insulation, _affording the column both mechanical and electrical protection_ and excluding the air which effectually prevents any combustion should the column become red hot due to overload. the ends of the tube are closed by means of caps through which pass electrodes for making connections between the discs and exterior conductors. the steel tube, when necessary, is provided with ribs or fins for the dissipation of acquired heat.] [illustration: fig. .--allen-bradley type z automatic motor starter. the operation of this machine is as follows: when the main switch is closed, the motor circuit is made through the fuses, resistance unit, current relay, and the motor armature. at the same time, the solenoid circuit is closed (this is connected directly across the line, and takes a current which is a small fraction of an ampere), and the plunger of the solenoid is drawn up, which produces a pressure on the resistance unit, and increases the current in the motor circuit to the predetermined value at which the current relay is set. when this value is reached the current relay operates and opens the solenoid circuit, which reduces the magnetic pull and allows the solenoid plunger to drop back slightly. this action increases the resistance in the motor circuit, which decreases the current sufficiently to allow the relay to close again. similar cycles of operation are repeated as the motor accelerates, and each time the plunger is drawn a little farther into the solenoid, until the short circuiting contacts on the top are pushed together, which short circuits the current relay and resistance unit, making them inoperative, and completing the operation of starting the motor. it will be noted that in starting a motor with this device the current is always held down to a certain predetermined value, and it is impossible to overload the motor by too rapid starting. the current relay is calibrated in amperes, and may be set to suit existing conditions. the action of the starter being controlled by a current relay and not by an oil or air dash pot, the motor will start rapidly when under a light load, and slowly when more heavily loaded. the fuses or circuit breakers may be set at a value that will furnish protection to the motor under running conditions.] precautions with shunt motors.--with motors of this type, because of the large amount of self-induction in the shunt windings, it is important to note: , that in switching on the field magnet, the current may take an appreciable time to grow to its normal value, and , that in switching off, especially with quick break switches, high voltages are induced in the windings, which may break down the insulation. [illustration: fig. .--monitor starter giving automatic start with knife switch control; designed for use with printing presses. it consists of a set of solenoids connected in series and so interoperating as to cut resistance out of the armature circuit of the motor as the apparatus it is driving comes up to speed. this type is for small motors or where no need arises for speed regulation; there is, therefore, no adjustment of speed possible aside from an actual change in motor conditions. at full speed the motor is directly across the main supply line. fig. .--monitor automatic starter, equipped with relay for push button control.] ques. what provision is made so that the magnetizing current will have time to reach its normal value? ans. the field connections are generally separated from the actual starter, and taken to the main switch, so that wherever the main switch is closed, the current flows through the field coils, before the starting lever is moved. ques. how are the connections arranged to avoid excessive voltage in the windings due to self-induction? ans. generally the armature and field magnet circuits are placed in a closed circuit that is never opened. in other cases, in order that the rise of voltage may not injure the insulation when the shunt is opened, a special form of main switch is sometimes used which, before breaking from the supply, puts a non-inductive resistance across the shunt of the motor. this is known as a _flashing resistance_. [illustration: figs. to .--monitor control switches. fig. , push button "start" and "stop" switch; fig. , safety lever control switch with "slow" and "fast" buttons for rotary printing presses. this device will upon pressure of the "start" button, set the machine in motion and bring it up to the predetermined speed, either as previously set by the starter limits or by the setting of the rheostat arm. the stop button projects some distance beyond any other portion of the device, in order that in case of emergency the operator may stop the machine merely by hitting the face of the switch with his open hand. the lever control switch, fig. , is similar in its action to the push button switch but combines two other features: locking point, and visual indication of the station from whence the press has been stopped. with the lever at the downward position, the press is locked and cannot be started from any other station. in order to make the press ready to start the lever must be raised to the central position. thus a man may safely enter the press without delay by setting his station to the locked position, knowing that it cannot be started except by some one coming to that station and realizing that the press has been purposely locked. also, by looking along the press, it is possible to tell from which station it has been locked, and proper action can be immediately taken. the safety control station is usually combined for use on large rotary presses with the "slow" and "fast" push buttons as shown in fig. . a pressure upon the fast or slow buttons will cause the press speed to be correspondingly accelerated or retarded, and this action will continue so long as the button is pressed. the press continues to run at the speed attained at the instant of releasing the button. any speed may, therefore, be selected or changed to suit momentary requirements. this gives complete control excepting reversal which is not required of such a press.] [illustration: fig. .--wiring diagram of the standard form of monitor controller. a set of solenoids are connected in series and so interoperating as to cut resistance out of the armature circuit of the motor as the apparatus it is driving comes up to speed. the controller is designed to be used on all classes of work. in its simplest form, a single copper and graphite contact, is controlled by two magnets, so proportioned as to cut out the entire starting resistance when the armature current falls to a predetermined value. in the larger sizes, the number of steps controlling the resistance is increased and arranged to produce the correct acceleration. in every case the regulation of the starting resistance is effected entirely by the current passing to the motor without the use of dash pot, mechanical governor or delicate cut outs. the time element is thus directly proportioned to the load and the motor brought up to speed in the shortest time consistent with the load, but always with safe limitation of the armature current. the distinction between the current controlled starter and the starter with dash pot governor should be noted. the starter here shown limits the starting current to a fixed value throughout the starting operation, which is an ideal condition and prevents blowing fuses in starting.] ques. how can shunt motors be controlled from a distant point? ans. the starter and switch are placed at the desired point and the two main wires and the field wires run from that point to the motor. this requires additional wire which increases the cost and line loss. regulation of motor speed.--motors are generally run on constant voltage circuits. under these conditions, the speed of series motors varies with the load and at light loads becomes excessive. shunt motors run at nearly constant speeds. for many purposes, particularly for traction, and for driving tools, it is desirable to have speed regulation, so that motors running on constant voltage circuits may be made to run at different speeds. the following two methods are generally used for regulating the speed of motors operated on constant voltage circuits: . by inserting resistance in the armature circuit of a shunt wound motor; . by varying the field strength of series motors by switching sections of the field coils in or out of circuit. ques. describe the first method. ans. this method is illustrated in fig. . when the main switch is closed, the field becomes excited, then by moving the lever p of the starting rheostat the various contacts ( , , , , ), more or less of the rheostat resistance is cut out of the armature circuit, thus varying the speed correspondingly. this is the same as the method of starting a motor, that is, _by variation of resistance in armature circuit_, but it should be noted that when this method is used for speed regulation, _a speed regulating rheostat should be used instead of the ordinary starting box_, because the latter, not being designed for the purpose, _will overheat and probably burn out_. [illustration: fig. .--monitor printing press controller. it provides variable speed and other control features required in the operation of large rotary presses, such as those used for printing newspapers. from any one of various stations similar to the one illustrated in fig. , located at all desirable places about the press, the latter may be started, stopped, accelerated, slowed down or locked. it differs from other types of printing press controller in that the solenoid has an overall maximum pull of less than one inch and does not actuate the main line current directly but through pilot circuits, which in turn, operate flapper switches; there are no sliding contacts. at the control stations, the operator can distinguish the accelerating button from the retarding button by the sense of touch and obviously he can in the same manner ascertain the position of the lever. the position of the lever whether at start, stop or safety, can be readily observed at a distance. when the lever of either control station is placed at stop, the current is disconnected from the motor and a powerful dynamic brake brings the press to rest without delay and without shock or harmful strain. the start will always be made with all resistance in the armature circuit, and with full field, and should the current supply fail, the controller will release and open the circuit to the motor. this controller will give a speed range as low as % of normal speed by armature resistance and, by field control, any increase within the speed of the motor.] ques. describe the second method. ans. this method of regulating the speed of a series motor is shown in fig. . the current through the armature will flow through all the field windings when the position of the switch lever s, is on contact , and the strength of the field will be the maximum. by moving the arm to contact , , etc., sections of the field winding are cut out, thus reducing the strength of field and varying the speed. [illustration: fig. .--speed regulation of shunt motor by variable resistance in the armature circuit.] ques. how does the speed vary with respect to variation of field strength? ans. decreasing the field strength of a motor increases its speed, while increasing the field strength decreases the speed. under the conditions of maximum field strength, as with switch s on point , the torque will be greatest for any given current strength and the reverse voltage also greatest at any given speed. the current through the armature of the motor, to perform any given work, will thus be a minimum, as well as the speed at which the motor has to run, in order to develop sufficient reverse voltage to permit this current to flow. regulation of speed by varying the field strength is limited in range of action, since the field saturation point is soon reached, moreover, with too low a field strength, armature reaction produces excessive field distortion, sparking, etc. [illustration: fig. .--speed regulation of series motor by cutting out sections of the field winding. in this method the field winding is tapped at several points, dividing the coil into sections and the leads from these points are connected a multi-point switch of the type that would be used on a rheostat. by moving the lever s, to the left or right, the current will flow through one or more sections of the field winding, thus decreasing or increasing the ampere turns and thereby providing means of regulation.] [illustration: fig. .--speed regulation of a series motor by the method of short circuiting sections of the field winding. it will be seen that there are seven different positions for the contact springs on the barrel contacts. a. represents the armature and brushes, little a, b, and c, the divided field magnet coils, l the line connection, and g the earth connection. the diagram shows the connections for trolley car operation.] ques. how is the speed of shunt and compound motors varied with respect to the normal speed in the two methods? ans. the first method (variable resistance in armature circuit) reduces the speed _below_ the normal or rated speed of the machine, while the second method increases the speed _above_ the normal. in the first method the amount of speed reduction depends partly upon the amount of resistance introduced into the armature circuit, and partly upon the load. in the second method the amount of speed increase depends entirely upon the amount of resistance placed in the shunt winding circuit. eighty-five per cent. is about the maximum speed reduction obtainable by armature resistance but so great a reduction is seldom satisfactory since comparatively slight increases in the load will cause the motor to stall. shunt field regulation may be obtained up to any point for which the motor is suited, the only limitation in this case being the maximum speed at which the motor may be safely operated. it should be remembered, however, that speed increase by shunt field weakening increases the current in proportion to the increase in speed, and care should be taken not to overload the armature. note.--a compound motor may be made to run at constant speed, if the current in the series winding of the field be arranged to act in opposition to that of the shunt winding. in such case, an increase of load will weaken the fields and allow more current to flow through the armature without decreasing the speed of the armature, as would be necessary in a shunt motor. such motors, however, are not very often used, since an overload would weaken the fields too much and cause trouble. if the current in the series field act in the same direction as that in the shunt fields, the motor will slow up some when a heavy load comes on, but will take care of the load without much trouble. note.--motors have much the same faults as dynamos, but they make themselves manifest in a different way. an open field circuit will prevent the motor starting, and will cause the melting of fuses or burning out of the armature. a short circuit in the fields, if it cut out only a part of the winding, will cause the motor to run faster and very likely spark badly. if the brushes be not set exactly opposite each other, there will also be bad sparking. if they be not at the neutral point, the motor will spark badly. brushes should always be set at the point of least sparking. if it become necessary to open the field circuit, it should be done slowly, letting the arc gradually die out. a quick break of a circuit in connection with any dynamo, or motor is not advisable, as it is very likely to break down the insulation of the machine. the ordinary starting box for motors is wound with comparatively fine wire and will get very hot if left in circuit long. the movement of the arm from the first to the last point should not occupy more than thirty seconds and if the armature do not begin to move at the first point, the arm should be thrown back and the trouble located. [illustration: fig. .--cutler-hammer multiple switch starter with no voltage release; for use with large motors, or with motors of medium size where the starting conditions are severe or when more than fifteen seconds are required to accelerate the motor. in operation, the cutting out of each step of resistance is accomplished by a separate lever and the levers themselves are so interlocked as to prevent closing switches except in proper order, beginning with the lever on the left. the last switch (the one on right hand side) is held by an electro-magnet when closed, each of the other switches being held in the closed position by a latching device on the switch next to it. in front of each switch is placed a metal stop, so arranged as to prevent any switch being operated until the one next to it on the left has been closed. these metal stops constitute the interlocking mechanism and prevent the starting of the motor in any way except by closing the switches in regular rotation, thus insuring proper resistance in the circuit and protecting the motor from excessive starting currents. when the current is interrupted, the electro-magnet releases the last switch, which, on opening, releases the latch on the switch next to it, allowing that switch to open, and this in turn releases the next latch and so on, the switches opening automatically one after another. in starting the motor, each switch should be closed quickly and firmly, pausing a second or two before closing the next switch to give the motor time to accelerate.] [illustration: fig. .--cutler-hammer speed regulator with no voltage release, _regulation by armature resistance only_, reducing speed of motor _below normal_. no resistance in the armature circuit. no provision is made in regulators of this type for increasing the speed of the motor. the maximum speed obtainable when these regulators are used is, therefore, the normal speed at which the motor is designed to operate with no resistance in circuit. with all resistance in circuit and the motor taking normal current these regulators will reduce the speed of the motor per cent. if the motor be taking less than normal current the percentage of speed reduction obtainable will be correspondingly less. the notched fan tail extension on the lower end of the lever engages with a magnetically operated pawl to hold the lever squarely on any contact so long as the no voltage release magnet is energized.] ques. how is a wide range of speed regulation secured? ans. by a combination of the two methods. regulation by armature resistance.--speed regulators for this method of regulation, are designed to carry the normal current on any contact without overheating and when all the resistance is in the circuit, they will reduce the speed of the motor about per cent. provided the motor be taking the normal current. when operating without resistance in the armature circuit, shunt wound and compound wound motors will regulate to approximately constant speed regardless of load. this characteristic of inherent regulation is lost, however, when armature resistance is employed to reduce the speed of the motor, fluctuations in load resulting in fluctuations in speed, which become more noticeable as the amount of resistance inserted in the armature circuit is increased. accordingly, it becomes necessary to move the lever of the speed regulator forward or backward to again obtain the speed at which the machine was operating before the load changed. [illustration: fig. .--cutler-hammer compound starter with no voltage and overload release. this is a starting rheostat and field regulator combined. in operation, two levers are employed, both being mounted on the same hub post and one lying directly under the other. the upper lever only is provided with a handle, but when moving from the off position to the starting position (that is to say, from left to right) the lower, or starting, lever is carried along by the upper, or speed regulating, lever until it comes in contact with the no voltage release magnet where it is held fast by the attraction of the magnet, leaving the upper lever free to be moved backward over the field contacts, thus weakening the shunt field of the motor little by little until the desired speed is attained. during the operation of starting the motor, the field resistance is short circuited by an auxiliary contact (the slotted metal strip shown near center of rheostat) but as soon as the starting lever touches the no voltage release magnet or, in other words, when the motor has been accelerated to normal speed, this short circuit is removed, and the field resistance becomes effective for speed regulation. the motor is accelerated from rest to normal speed by moving both levers from left to right, while increases in speed above normal are obtained by moving the upper lever from right to left. only the lower, or starting lever comes into contact with the no voltage release magnet. this lever is provided with a strong spiral spring which tends always to throw the lever back to the off position. hence should the voltage fail, the no voltage release magnet releases the starting lever and this, in flying back to the off position, opens the armature circuit of the motor and carries the speed regulating lever with it to the off position. the upper, or speed regulating lever, not being influenced by the spring, though mounted on the same hub post as the starting lever, may be moved back and forth at will or left indefinitely in the position which gives the speed desired.] when the speed of a motor driving a constant torque machine is reduced by inserting resistance in the armature circuit there is no corresponding reduction in current consumed. the motor runs more slowly simply because a part of the energy impelling it is shunted into the resistance and there dissipated in the form of heat. hence, whether the motor be operating at full speed or half speed, the amount of current consumed is the same; the only difference being that in the one case all the energy taken from the line is expended in driving the motor while in the other case only one half is utilized for power, the other half being dissipated in the resistance. speed regulation by armature resistance only is therefore open to two objections: , the difficulty of maintaining constant speed under varying load conditions, and , the necessity of wasting energy to secure speed reduction. these objections are, in part, offset by the fact that speed reduction by armature resistance may be applied to any motor of standard design and requires nothing more than the simplest and least expensive speed regulating rheostat. in cases where the motor will be operated nearly always at full speed, the difference in first cost of the installation may justify the use of the armature resistance method of control. as a rule, speed regulation by shunt field resistance is preferable. [illustration: fig. .--cutler-hammer compound speed regulator with no voltage and overload release; _regulation by combined armature and shunt field resistance_, designed to both decrease and increase the speed of a motor. speed reduction is accomplished by inserting resistance in the armature circuit, the maximum amount of speed reduction obtainable with these controllers being per cent. below normal. speed increase is obtained by inserting resistance in the shunt field circuit, the maximum amount of speed increase obtainable with these controllers being per cent. above normal.] regulation by shunt field resistance.--since regulation by this method is for speeds above normal, a starter must be used to bring the motor up to its rated speed. usually the starter is combined with the regulator, as shown in fig. , the device being called a _compound starter_. [illustration: figs. to .--holzer-cabot shunt wound motor; diagrams showing connections and positions of index point for forward and reverse rotation. location and setting.--the motor should be placed in as cool, clean and well ventilated a location as possible, away from acid or other fumes which would attack the metal parts or insulation, and should be easily accessible for cleaning and oiling. do not put it in some corner where care of motor will be neglected because of the trouble of getting at it. the motor should be set so that the shaft is level and parallel with the shaft it is to drive so that the belt will run in the middle of the pulleys. do not use a belt which is much too heavy or too light for the work it has to do, as it will materially reduce the output of the motor. the belt should be about one-half inch narrower than the pulley. rotation.--in order to reverse the direction of rotation, interchange leads a and b, and shift brush ring as shown in the diagram above. suspended motors.--motors with ring oil bearings may be used on the wall or ceiling by taking off end caps and revolving or degrees until the oil wells come directly below the bearings. starting.--before starting the motor see that the armature revolves freely, that the bearings are full of oil, and the oil rings are in place and free to turn. examine connections carefully to see that they are according to above diagram, after which proceed as follows: . close the main knife switch. this action should not allow any current to pass through the motor (see note ); . move the lever of the starting rheostat quickly and squarely onto the first segment, and hold it there for about a second; . move the lever to the second segment and hold it there for about a second; . move the lever to the third segment and hold it there for about a second, and so on from one segment to the next until the lever has been moved over all the segments to the short circuit position, where it should be held firmly by the retaining magnet. if the motor do not start when the lever of the starting rheostat is on the third segment, open the main knife switch and look for the trouble. this may consist of any of the following: a. wrong connections; b. too great a load on the motor; c. the motor brushes not in proper position; d. an open circuit of some kind; e. a short circuit of some kind. note .--it is always advisable, in case of trouble, to make sure that the fields of the motor are magnetized. this test is easily made by first closing the main knife switch, then moving the lever of the starting rheostat to the first segment, and finally having an assistant place a screw driver or other piece of iron against the pole pieces of the motor. if the fields be magnetized, a heavy pull on the iron should result. note .--any possibility of arcing on the first contact of the starting rheostat when starting can be obviated by _first_ moving the lever onto the initial contact, holding it there, and then closing the main line switch, after which proceed as per paragraphs and . to stop the motor.--open the main knife switch and let the starting rheostat take care of itself. the lever will not fly back immediately, but will hold until the motor has slowed down considerably. note.--the above directions apply only to starters of the sliding contact type. temperatures.--if located as instructed above, these motors will carry full load as indicated on the name plate on the motor with a temperature rise of not over degrees centigrade, or degrees fahrenheit above the surrounding air. this will feel hot to the hand but is far below the danger point. if the motor feel too hot, get a thermometer and measure the temperature. to do this, place the bulb of the thermometer for minutes against the frame, cover with a cloth or piece of waste, and note temperature as compared with that of room. if the motor run in a small, enclosed space with no ventilation, the temperatures will be somewhat higher than those given above. oiling.--fill the oil wells to the overflow before starting and keep them full. use good "dynamo oil." be sure that the oil rings turn freely while the motor is running. if in a dirty place, draw off the old fluid and fill with new every two or three months. care of motor.--the motor must be kept clean. if the commutator become rough, smooth it up with no. sandpaper moistened with oil. when fitting new brushes or changing them, always sandpaper them down until they fit the commutator perfectly, by passing to and fro beneath the brush a strip of sandpaper, having the rough side toward the brush. brushes must _always_ be renewed before the metal of the holder comes in contact with the commutator. don't use anything on commutator except good mineral machine oil, or kerosene, and this only in very small quantities applied with a cloth having no lint or threads.] [illustration: fig. .--sectional view showing principal parts of reliance adjustable speed motor: , lever fulcrum pin; , lever; , sliding thrust bearing box; , ball bearing; , armature shaft end nut; , cap; , commutator end yoke; , lever rod; , compression spring; , steel frame; , speed adjustment nut; , thrust collars and pins; , hand wheel rod; , hand wheel; , sleeve nut; , oil well cover; , bearing bushing; , sleeve; , oil ring; , pinion end yoke; , rocker arm; , brush holder stud; , brush; , commutator; , armature; , armature laminations; , armature coils; , armature end plate; , armature shaft; , leads; , axial position of commutating pole; , axial position of main field pole; , slide rail screws; , end yoke cap screws; , slide rails; , commutating coil; , commutating pole; , main field pole; , main field coil.] [illustration: fig. .--cutler-hammer reversible starter with no voltage release, adapted to start and operate motor at full speed in either direction, such for instance as motors driving auxiliary motions on lathes, planers and other machine tools which may rotate in either direction but always at constant speed. they are not designed to reduce the speed of the motor, but merely to start it and bring it smoothly up to full speed in either direction. two no voltage release latching devices are provided so that the lever will be held in the full speed position in either direction so long as the voltage of the line remains constant. on failure of voltage a strong centering spring attached to the hub-post of the lever throws the latter to the central, or off position. the shunt field circuit is not opened by starters of this type.] the weakening of the shunt field of a motor by the insertion of resistance in the shunt field circuit causes the armature to revolve more rapidly. one advantage of this method of control is that the motor will inherently regulate to approximately constant speed under widely varying load conditions. another advantage is found in the fact that all of the current taken from the line is utilized for power, the changes in speed being obtained not by dissipating a portion of the effective energy in the resistance (as in the case of the armature resistance method of control) but by weakening the reverse voltage by inserting resistance in the shunt field circuit. speed increase by shunt field weakening is limited, however, to about to per cent. above the normal speed in motors of standard construction. greater ranges of speed can be obtained from motors especially designed for shunt field control but should not be attempted with motors of standard design without first ascertaining from the manufacturer the maximum safe speed. combined armature and shunt field control.--regulation by combined armature and shunt field resistance is by far the easiest way of obtaining a wide range of speeds. rheostats embodying these methods are known as _compound speed regulators_, one form being shown in fig. . standard regulators can be obtained giving a wide range of speed variation, and special regulators may be constructed giving practically any desired range. selection of starters and regulators.--unsatisfactory operation of these devices is, in nearly all cases, due to lack of precaution in selecting the proper piece of apparatus for the work to be done. one of the commonest errors is to select a rheostat of insufficient capacity. if the current required to operate the motor at full speed with no resistance in circuit be greater than the rated capacity of the rheostat, overheating of the resistance will result. an increase in temperature even to a point where the hand cannot be held on the enclosing case need cause no apprehension, but should the resistance become red hot it indicates that the apparatus is being worked far beyond its capacity, and the load on the motor should be reduced or a regulator of greater capacity substituted. if the current required to operate the motor at full speed with no resistance in circuit be less than the rated capacity of the rheostat no overheating will occur, but it will not be possible to secure the full per cent. speed reduction the rheostat is designed to give with all resistance in circuit. [illustration: fig. .--various sizes of watson commutator. the segments are punched from hard drawn copper strip and are insulated from each other and the core by amber mica, of hardness corresponding to that of the copper in order that the wear of mica and copper may be uniform. the segments are assembled in a ring under great pressure and are repeatedly heated and tightened, being finally secured and rigidly locked together.] in ordering a starter or regulator, the manufacturer should be furnished with the following information: . horse power of motor with which speed regulator will be used; . voltage of motor; . winding of motor, whether series, shunt, or compound wound; . nature of the machine which motor is to operate; . normal rated speed of motor to be used; . maximum speed at which it is desired to operate the motor; . minimum speed at which it is desired to operate the motor; . whether controller will ever be required to reverse direction of motor or to operate it in one direction only; . if reversible controller be desired, whether or not full range of speed control is required in both directions; . whether the regulator shall be equipped with any of the following devices: no voltage release, overload release, knife switch, fuses; . whether button contacts or renewable contact segments are preferred; . giving, also, if possible, the resistance of the shunt field cold, and the shunt field current at the maximum speed required. if this cannot be ascertained, give horse power, voltage, normal speed, maximum speed required, serial number of motor and name of manufacturer. [illustration: fig. .--organ blower speed regulator; diagram showing operation and method of installing. a cord running from the top of the organ bellows passes over two pulleys and is then made fast to the chain furnished with the regulator. this chain passes around a sheave which turns on a post projecting from the center of the slate panel. attached to the lower end of the chain is a weight, also furnished with the regulator. as the air is exhausted from the bellows the latter slowly collapses, drawing the rope down with it, and in so doing turns the sheave from left to right, thus cutting resistance out of circuit and increasing the speed of the motor which pumps air into the bellows. responding to the inrush of air, the bellows expands, relaxing the tension on the rope which is now pulled in the opposite direction by the weight, thus turning the sheave from right to left, cutting resistance into circuit once more and slowing down the motor. the speed of the motor is thus automatically regulated by the bellows, with the result that a practically uniform pressure is maintained at all times. in connection with an organ blower regulator it is necessary to install a separate starting rheostat. this is required for the reason that all organ bellows leak. during the intermissions in the musical part of the service, or at other times when the blower is not operating, the air gradually escapes and the bellows settles down, moving the rheostat arm to the right and cutting out resistance. with the motor at rest and the bellows empty all the blower regulator resistance would be short circuited and it is therefore necessary to avoid throwing the motor directly across the line when starting again. a starting rheostat with no voltage release is suitable for this purpose, and should be installed within easy reach of the organist, so that a moment or two before beginning to play he can move the lever of the starting box and get the motor into operation. where remote control is desirable a self starter can be substituted for the manually operated starting box, in which case the entire installation can be controlled by a push button, or single throw knife switch.] [illustration: fig. .--general electric type k controller with cover open showing construction. the mechanism consists of a long spindle, carrying a number of heavy brass or gun metal segments, making contact for a longer or shorter time with a corresponding number of spring contacts. the spindle is provided at its upper end with a handle, and the various contacts are made by turning it through an arc of about °. for this method a moderate amount of resistance is employed. the first contact joins both motors and the full amount of resistance in series across the line, and as the motors are standing still, maximum current flows so that they exert their full torque. the moment they start to revolve, the current tends to fall, due to the generation of a reverse voltage; to prevent this and maintain a heavy current for some time, thus obtaining rapid acceleration, the resistance is arranged so that it can be gradually reduced, until at about the fourth notch the two motors are in series without resistance across the line. to increase still further the speed in the above type of controller, the series fields may be shunted, and then the next steps place the motors in parallel with the resistance.] speed regulation of traction motors.--the speed regulator for motors of this class is called a _controller_, and being located in an exposed place is enclosed in a metal casing. controllers are designed to be used for starting, stopping, reversing, and regulating the speed of motors where one or more of these operations have to be frequently repeated. the controller used with a single motor equipment is practically the same as any other single motor starting box, excepting that the resistance has sufficient carrying capacity to be left in the circuit some time. when the motor is to operate at full speed all the resistance is cut out. to reverse, a reversing notch is placed in the armature or field circuit, but not in both. ques. what provision is made to overcome the arc when the circuit is opened? ans. a magnetic field is used with such polarity that it blows out the arc. [illustration: fig. .--controller of the rauch and lang electric vehicles. it is of the flat radial type. two movable copper leaf contacts of ample size make all commutations necessary to obtain the various speeds. five speeds forward and reverse are provided.] magnetic blow out coils are used on all controllers designed for volt circuits, and on types designed for lower voltages requiring more than amperes normal capacity. the coils are wound with either copper wire or flat strips of sufficient capacity to carry full load current continuously without undue heating, and after being wound they are treated with an insulating compound making them moisture proof. ques. what provision is made to prevent reversal before bringing the controller lever to the "off" position? ans. controllers having separate reversing cylinders are fitted with mechanical interlocks making it necessary to place lever in off position before reversing. [illustration: figs. to .--diagram of controller connections, illustrating the series parallel method of two motor control.] two motor regulation.--with a two motor equipment, the controller becomes more complicated because it must be arranged to switch the motors in series or in parallel, so as to secure economy at half and full speed. the various connections of series-parallel regulation are shown in figs. to . from these diagrams it is seen that the motors are first operated in series until all the resistance is cut out by the controller (figs. to ). the next point on the controller puts the two motors in parallel with some resistance in the circuit (fig. ), which resistance is gradually short circuited on the remaining controller points, until at full speed all the resistance is cut out, the two motors remaining in parallel (figs. to ). stopping a motor.--if it be desired to stop a motor, the main switch is opened. as the armature of the motor continues to operate, due to its inertia, it generates an electromotive force which sends a current through the shunt connected field circuit and helps to maintain the field excitation. when the speed of the motor has decreased sufficiently so as not to endanger the motor should the main switch be thrown, the current in the series magnet becomes weakened, and the spring throws back the starting box arm. it should be noted that in stopping a motor having a starting box provided with a no voltage release simply open the main switch and do not touch the lever because otherwise, the self induced voltage of the field circuit may puncture the field winding or the insulation of the adjoining wires in the starting box. hawkins practical library of electricity in handy pocket form price $ each _they are not only the best, but the cheapest work published on electricity. each number being complete in itself. separate numbers sent postpaid to any address on receipt of price. they are guaranteed in every way or your money will be returned. complete catalog of series will be mailed free on request._ electrical guide, no. containing the principles of elementary electricity, magnetism, induction, experiments, dynamos, electric machinery. electrical guide, no. the construction of dynamos, motors, armatures, armature windings, installing of dynamos. electrical guide, no. electrical instruments, testing, practical management of dynamos and motors. electrical guide, no. distribution systems, wiring, wiring diagrams, sign flashers, storage batteries. electrical guide, no. principles of alternating currents and alternators. electrical guide, no. alternating current motors, transformers, converters, rectifiers. electrical guide, no. alternating current systems, circuit breakers, measuring instruments. electrical guide, no. alternating current switch boards, wiring, power stations, installation and operation. electrical guide, no. telephone, telegraph, wireless, bells, lighting, railways. electrical guide, no. modern practical applications of electricity and ready reference index of the numbers. theo. audel & co. publishers fifth avenue, new york digital pdp price list; april [illustration: digital] price list april, [illustration: pdp ] digital equipment corporation price -shift discount service status =pdp- / : basic system= , -bit, -ns core memory $ , $ . yes with ksr- teletype--pc required $ , $ . yes with asr- teletype $ , $ . yes with ksr- teletype--pc required $ , $ . yes with asr- teletype $ , $ . yes =pdp- / : advanced monitor system= $ , $ . yes , -bit, -ns core memory ksr- teletype pc high speed paper tape reader and punch ke extended arithmetic element tc d dectape control tu dual dectape transport =pdp- / : background/foreground system= $ , $ . yes , -bit, -ns core memory ksr- teletype for background use ksr- teletype for foreground use lt a single-teletype control pc high-speed paper tape reader and punch ke extended arithmetic element ka automatic priority interrupt km memory protection kw real-time clock tc d dectape control tu dual dectape transports =pdp- / : disk-oriented $ , $ . yes background/foreground system= , -bit, -ns core memory ksr- teletype for background use ksr- teletype for foreground use lt a single-teletype control pc high speed paper tape reader and punch ke extended arithmetic element ka automatic priority interrupt km memory protection kw real-time clock tc d dectape control tu dual dectape transport rf decdisk control rs decdisk drives note: note applies to all systems (see last page of price list) pre- -shift field discount notes req. service inst. price status =memory expansion and options= mm -a k memory module pc $ $ $ , yes with space to add additional mk -a mk -a expands mm -a to mm a , yes k increases pdp- / to k mp memory parity for none , yes each k of memory added kt memory relocation km , yes mx memory multiplexer none , yes =central processor options= ke extended arithmetic none , yes element km memory protect none , yes kf power fail none , yes kp a dual memory bus--one or more , yes bus for i/o processor mx 's one bus for central processor =input/output processor options= ka automatic priority kw , yes interrupt kw real time clock, line none yes frequency dw a positive to negative none , yes bus converter =mass storage devices= tc d dectape control for dw a , yes up to tu dectape transport units tu dual dectape transport tc d , yes tc d magnetic tape transport dw a control for up to kw , yes tu , tu a, tu , tu a magnetic tape transport units tu b -track, ips magnetic tc d , no tape transport , and bpi tu a -track, ips magnetic tc d , no tape transport bpi tu b -track, ips magnetic tc d , no tape transport , and bpi tu a -track, ips magnetic tc d , no tape transport bpi rf decdisk control for up none , yes to rs decdisk drives rs , word decdisk rf , yes rp disk pack control for none , yes up to rp disk pack drives rp . million word disk rp , no pack drive unit includes one rp p disk pack rp p disk pack no pre- -shift field discount notes req. service inst. price status =display devices= vp a storage tube display none , $ , vt storage display not unit, control, and disc. mounting hardware vp b oscilloscope display none , $ tektronix rm x-y not oscilloscope, control, disc. and mounting hardware vp bl oscilloscope display $ tektronix rm x-y none , not oscilloscope, control, disc. mounting hardware, and dec type light pen vp c oscilloscope display none , yes vr x-y display unit ( " × " crt), control, and mounting hardware vp cl oscilloscope display none , yes vr x-y display unit ( " × " crt), control, mounting hardware, and dec type light pen vp m display multiplexer none , yes for up to vt 's vt storage tube display vp m , no *(+$ for cables * and connectors) vt graphic display none , yes processor vt graphic display vt , no console lk keyboard vt , , no lt a or lt series vl light pen vt yes =card input= cr b card reader-- cpm , dw a , no reader and control =paper tape input= pc paper tape station-- none , yes cps reader cps punch =printers= lp f line printer-- lpm none , no column line printer and control lp c line printer-- lpm none , no column line printer and control =calcomp plotters and control= -inch drum plotter, model , and control xy aa . -inch step , dw a , no , steps/minute xy ab . -inch step , dw a , no , steps/minute -inch drum plotter, model , and control xy ba . -inch step , dw a , no , steps/minute xy bb . -inch step , dw a , no , steps/minute xy control only dw a , no pre- -shift field discount notes req. service inst. price status =data communications= lt d multi-station , dw a , yes teletype control separate transmit clock per channel accommodates up to lt e line units lt e line unit lt a yes (one required for each teletype or eia line adapter) lt f eia line adapter lt a, b yes (per line) lt h cable set for interprocessor buffer for use with lt h/lt f or lt f/pt f combinations. specify length. lt ha feet lt f yes lt hb feet lt f yes lt hc feet lt f yes lt hd feet lt f yes lt he feet lt f yes lt a single teletype none , yes control ksr- teletype model none , no keyboard send-receive unit asr- teletype model , no automatic send-receive unit with paper tape reader and punch ksr- teletype model , no keyboard send-receive unit asr- teletype model , no automatic send-receive unit with paper tape reader and punch dp a data communications dw a , yes system compatible with eia rs b interface, bell system type dataphone =input/output buffers= db a pdp- ( or /l) to , dw a , yes pdp- ( or /l) interprocessor buffer db a pdp- ( or /l) to , dw a , yes pdp- (or /i) interprocessor buffer dr a -bit relay dw a , yes output buffer =digital-to-analog options= aa a multiplexer control , yes for up to -bit digital-to-analog converter channels type aac aac digital-to-analog aa yes converter single buffered, v to ± v pre- -shift field discount notes req. service inst. price status =analog-to-digital options= af b - bit analog-to- dw a , yes digital converter (conversion time of - _µ_sec) with multiplexer control. uses a switches to implement up to single-ended, high- level ( v to - v) analog inputs. a -channel fet af b yes multiplexer switch (implements four af b channels) ah one-channel of af b yes sample-and-hold (used between analog-to-digital converter and multiplexer or with ac b) ah scaling amplifier af b yes ac b -channel -ah , yes sample-and-hold per control channel adc / - bit analog-to- dw a , yes digital converter for single-ended, high-level ( v to - v) analog inputs am multiplexer control adc / , yes for channels am a mounting panel and am none , yes high-level analog input connectors for - channels implemented by a maximum of a switches note: one am a is required for each group of channels a -channel fet am yes multiplexer switch am mounting panel and ag low-level (differential) am none , yes quick-disconnect analog input connectors for - channels implemented by a maximum of -a switches ag differential amplifier none , no a -channel multiplexer am yes switch (guarded james microscan relay) af b integrating digital dw a , no voltmeter analog input subsystem with multiplexer control for - -wire high or low level differential analog inputs (± mv to ± v full scale ranges with programmable range and auto-ranging). includes mounting panel for channels the af b has the following options: af s -channel guarded reed af b no relay multiplexer switch af x expansion mounting panel af b , no for channels (one required for each additional channel group) =supplies kits= sk -a for pdp- / / / systems contains certified dectapes, . no dectape carrying case, blue dectape ribbons, teletype ribbons, boxes of form-feed teletype paper, case of fan fold paper tape, paper tape plastic storage trays. sk -b for pdp- / systems contains teletype ribbons, . no boxes of rolled, non-perforated teletype paper, case of fanfold paper tape, paper tape plastic storage trays. discount price status =cabinets= h -a free standing cabinet. includes filter, . yes fan, casters, levelers, rear mounting panel door, door cover, end panels, and inch open front. (see module products price list for front options.) h -a h -a without end panels . yes =input/output bus= for connecting negative logic devices to the negative pdp- bus (dw a converted positive bus). two required per device. bc a foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes for connecting positive logic devices to the positive pdp- bus. one required per device. bc b foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes for connecting positive logic devices to the negative pdp- bus (dw a converted positive bus). one required per device. bc c foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes foot . yes =notes:= . only one of each peripheral controller may be attached to a pdp- system. multiple controllers are available through computer special systems. . mixtures of core with and without parity not allowed. . only one dw a required per pdp- system. . dw a required for pdp- systems only. no prerequisites for pdp- or /l. . four lt d peripheral controllers may be attached to a pdp- system. . table-top unit. . pc is required if system software is to operate in more than k. if software is not required, pc is not required. . not field installable. digital equipment corporation [digital logo] world-wide sales and service main office and plant main street, maynard, massachusetts, u.s.a. · telephone: from metropolitan boston: - · elsewhere: ( )- - · twx: - - cable: digital mayn telex united states =northeast= _regional office:_ lunda street, waltham, massachusetts telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _waltham_ lunda street, waltham, massachusetts telephone: ( )- - / twx: - - _cambridge/boston_ main street, cambridge, massachusetts telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _rochester_ allens creek road, rochester, new york telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _connecticut_ prestige drive, meriden, connecticut telephone: ( )- - twx: - - =mid-atlantic--southeast= _regional office:_ u.s. route , princeton, new jersey telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _new york_ cedar lane, englewood, new jersey telephone: ( )- - , ( )- - , ( )- - twx: - - _new jersey_ route , parsippany, new jersey telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _princeton_ route one and emmons drive, princeton, new jersey telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _long island_ middle country road centereach, l.i., new york telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _philadelphia_ west valley road, wayne, pennsylvania telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _washington_ executive building baltimore ave., college park, maryland telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _durham/chapel hill_ chapel hill boulevard durham, north carolina telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _huntsville_ suite --holiday office center memorial parkway s.w., huntsville, ala. telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _orlando_ suite , lake ellenor drive, orlando, fla. telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _atlanta_ suite , commerce drive, n.w. atlanta, georgia telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _knoxville_ lyons view pike, s.w., knoxville, tenn. telephone: ( )- - twx: - - =central= _regional office:_ frontage road, northbrook, illinois telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _pittsburgh_ penn center boulevard pittsburgh, pennsylvania telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _chicago_ frontage road, northbrook, illinois telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _ann arbor_ huron view boulevard, ann arbor, michigan telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _indianapolis_ beechway drive--suite g indianapolis, indiana telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _minneapolis_ minnetonka industrial road minnetonka, minnesota telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _cleveland_ park hill bldg., euclid ave. willoughby, ohio telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _st. louis_ suite , progress pky., maryland heights, missouri telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _dayton_ kettering blvd., dayton, ohio telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _dallas_ north stemmons freeway, suite dallas, texas telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _houston_ milam street, suite a, houston, texas telephone: ( )- - twx: - - =west= _regional office:_ san antonio road, palo alto, california telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _anaheim_ e. ball road, anaheim, california telephone: ( )- - or ( )- - twx: - - _west los angeles_ cotner avenue, los angeles, california telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _san francisco_ san antonio road, palo alto, california telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _albuquerque_ indian school road, n.e. albuquerque, n.m. telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _denver_ south colorado blvd., suite # denver, colorado telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _seattle_ th n.e., bellevue, washington telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _salt lake city_ south rd east, salt lake city, utah telephone: ( )- - twx: - - international =canada= digital equipment of canada, ltd. _canadian headquarters_ rosamond street, carleton place, ontario telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _ottawa_ holland street, ottawa , ontario telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _toronto_ lakeshore road east, port credit, ontario telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _montreal_ cote de liesse road dorval, quebec, canada telephone: ( )- - twx: - - _edmonton_ - street edmonton, alberta, canada telephone: ( )- - twx: - - =european headquarters= digital equipment corporation international-europe route de l'aire carouge / geneva, switzerland telephone: telex: =germany= digital equipment gmbh _cologne_ koeln, bismarckstrasse , west germany telephone: telex: - telegram: flip chip koeln _munich_ muenchen , leonrodstrasse telephone: telex: =england= digital equipment co., ltd. _reading_ arkwright road, reading, berkshire, england telephone: reading telex: _manchester_ upper precinct, worsley manchester, england m az telephone: - - / telex: _london_ bilton house, uxbridge road, ealing, london w. . telephone: - - telex: =france= equipment digital s.a.r.l. _paris_ rue de charenton, paris , france telephone: - - telex: =benelux= digital equipment n.v. (serving belgium, luxembourg, and the netherlands) _the hague_ koninginnegracht , the hague, netherlands telephone: telex: =sweden= digital equipment aktiebolag _stockholm_ vretenvagen , s- solna, sweden telephone: telex: cable: digital stockholm =switzerland= digital equipment corporation s.a. _geneva_ route de l'aire carouge / geneva, switzerland telephone: telex: =italy= digital equipment s. p. a. _milan_ corso garibaldi, , milano, italy telephone: , , telex: =australia= digital equipment australia pty. ltd. _sydney_ alexander st., crows nest, n.s.w. , australia telephone: - telex: cable: digital, sydney _melbourne_ park street, south melbourne, victoria, telephone: - telex: _western australia_ murray street west perth, western australia telephone: - telex: _brisbane_ merivale street, south brisbane queensland, australia telephone: telex: =japan= _tokyo_ rikei trading co., ltd. (sales only) kozato-kaikan bldg. no. - , nishishimbashi -chome minato-ku, tokyo, japan telephone: telex: digital equipment corporation international (engineering and services) fukuyoshicho building, no. - , roppongi -chome, minato-ku, tokyo telephone: - telex: no.: - printed in u.s.a. x aku transcriber's notes text in italics is shown within _underscores_. bold text is shown within =equal signs=. the tables have been modified slightly to fit within the plain-text width constraints. [illustration: portrait signed of cyrus w. field.] cyrus w. field his life and work [ - ] edited by isabella field judson illustrated [illustration: colophon] new york harper & brothers publishers copyright, , by isabella field judson. _all rights reserved._ [illustration] to my father's family and friends these pages are dedicated contents chapter page i. parentage and early home life ( - ) ii. early life in new york ( - ) iii. marriage and business life ( - ) iv. out of debt--a voyage to south america ( ) v. the first cable ( - ) vi. the first cable (continued) ( ) vii. a fleeting triumph ( ) viii. failure on all sides ( - ) ix. the civil war ( - ) x. capital raised for the making of a new cable--steamship "great eastern" secured ( - ) xi. the failure of xii. the cable laid--cable of grappled for and recovered--payment of debts ( ) xiii. the reconstruction period ( - ) xiv. international politics--rapid transit ( - ) xv. the pacific cable--the golden wedding ( - ) xvi. last days and death--in memoriam ( - ) illustrations cyrus w. field _frontispiece_ submit dickinson field _facing page_ david dudley field " the parsonage, stockbridge, mass. " valentia: landing the shore-end of the cable, " cyrus w. field, " last two pages of letter from mr. gladstone, dated november , " atlantic telegraph cable chart, " the night-watch " ardsley, irvington-on-hudson " certificate of discharge from the mercantile marine service " the andrÉ monument, tappan, new york " cyrus w. field his life and work chapter i parentage and early home life ( - ) cyrus west field, the eighth child and seventh son of david dudley field, was born in stockbridge, mass., november , . he took his double name from cyrus williams, president of the housatonic bank (in stockbridge), and from dr. west, for sixty years his father's predecessor in the pastorate of the old church of stockbridge. he was the sixth in descent from zachariah field, the founder of the family in this country, who was the grandson of john field the astronomer. zachariah was born in the old home in ardsley, yorkshire, england. he came over in or , seemingly from hadley, suffolk, and settled first in dorchester, mass., afterwards making his way through the wilderness to hartford, conn. then followed in the direct line his oldest son zachariah junior, ebenezer, david, and captain timothy, who was born in the north part of madison, conn., in . he served in the continental army under washington, and was in the battle of white plains. david dudley field, captain timothy's youngest son, was born may , . in he graduated from yale, the next year was ordained a minister of the congregational church, and a month later, october , , was married to submit dickinson, daughter of captain noah dickinson, of somers, conn., who first served under putnam in the french war and afterwards in the war of the revolution. submit dickinson was called "the somers beauty." [illustration: submit dickinson field born october , (from a crayon by lawrence)] david dudley field was first settled in haddam, conn., and remained as pastor of the congregational church for fourteen years. seven of his children were born while he lived there: david dudley was the eldest; then followed emilia ann, timothy beals, matthew dickinson, jonathan edwards, stephen johnson st (who died when he was six months old), and stephen johnson d. cyrus west, henry martyn, and mary elizabeth were the three children born in stockbridge, mass. among the reminiscences of his sojourn in haddam is that it fell to him to preach the execution sermon of peter long. the grim puritanical custom still survived, according to which a prisoner convicted of a capital crime, on the day on which he was to be hanged was taken by a body-guard of soldiers to church to be publicly prepared for his ending. he was placed in a conspicuous pew, where he was obliged not only to listen to a long and harrowing sermon, but when addressed by name to stand up facing the preacher and receive the exhortation as he had received the sentence. dr. field addressed the victim directly for some minutes, and closed with these words: "before yonder sun shall set in the west your probationary state will be closed forever. this day you will either lift up your eyes in hell, being in torment, or, through the rich, overflowing, and sovereign grace of god, be carried by the angels to abraham's bosom. if in any doubt about your preparation, you may yet find mercy. he who pardoned the penitent thief on the cross may pardon you in the place of execution. pray god, then, if perhaps your sins may be forgiven you. cry to him, 'god be merciful to me, a sinner!' and continue those cries till death shall remove you hence. may the lord almighty support you in the trying scene before you, and through infinite grace have mercy on your soul." from the church the prisoner was led, clothed in a long, white robe, to the scaffold. it is said that on this occasion the rope was cut by the militiamen in attendance as a guard. in may, , dr. field accepted the call to the church in stockbridge, and on august th he was settled there as a pastor. in those days the moving of a household from haddam to stockbridge was a formidable undertaking. teams were sent to connecticut, a journey of several days, to bring on the household furniture, and, most important of all, heavy boxes piled with the volumes that comprised the pastor's library. the clearest statement of the impression made upon the youth of his flock by the ministry of dr. field is furnished in these words, written nearly fifty years after his settlement in stockbridge, and a fortnight after his death, by the venerated president of williams college: "williams college, _april , _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_my dear sir_,--on my return i comply at once with your request to write out the remarks i made at your father's funeral. in writing to me, mr. eggleston simply said he should like to have me take some part in the services, but he did not say what, and under the circumstances i did not think it best to attempt anything but a few remarks bearing on my personal relation to him. i give them below as well as i can. "'on coming here i was not aware what the order of exercises was to be, or what part i was expected to take in them; but as i am drawn here by a deep personal regard to the departed, the few words that i shall say will have reference to him chiefly in that relation through which this regard was awakened. "'it was under the ministry of dr. field that i first united with the christian church. by him i was baptized in this place. "'for a long period my mind was in a state of solicitude and careful inquiry on the subject of religion, and during much of that time i sat under his ministry. well do i remember his sermons and his prayers; we worshipped in the old church then, and the whole town came together. his sermons were lucid, logical, effective, and his prayers remarkably appropriate and comprehensive. one of his texts i remember particularly. it was this: "lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art that christ, the son of the living god." from these words he preached several discourses of great power showing that jesus was the christ, and that there was no one else to whom we could go. i regarded them then, and still do, as among the ablest discourses i ever heard. they had a powerful effect upon my mind. "'in respect to feeling he was not demonstrative, and some thought him cold. no mistake could have been greater. on sitting near him i remember to have been struck by noticing the big tears rolling down his cheeks when he came to the more touching parts of his discourse, while there was scarcely a sign of emotion in his voice or in the lines of his face. perhaps intellect predominated. probably it did; but he was a man of deep feeling, and under the impulse of it, as well as of principle, he was a faithful, earnest, laborious pastor. it was in that relation that i feel that his character and life and preaching and prayers were an important formative influence with me for good, and i have never ceased to regard him with affectionate veneration, and never shall. "'and what he did for me he doubtless did for multitudes of others. there is no higher educating power than that of a pastor thoroughly educated and balanced, earnest by proclaiming god's truths from sabbath to sabbath and dealing fairly with the minds of men. this he did, and in doing it was eminent among a body of men who have done more to make new england what it is than any other. in clear thinking, in able sermons, and in earnest labors, he was altogether a worthy successor of the eminent men who had preceded him. "'i see some here who will remember those earlier times. i am sure, my friends, you will verify all i have said, and that with me you do now and will continue to cherish with respect and with love the memory of our former pastor. it only remains to us now to emulate all in him that was good, and in deep sympathy with these mourning friends to aid in placing his dust where it will rest with so much other precious dust that makes this a hallowed valley, and where it will await the resurrection of the just.' "in reading over what i have written i can only say that it seems to me altogether inadequate as an expression of the sense i have of your father's worth and of the benefit he was to me, but having promised to do so i send it. "with great regard, yours, "mark hopkins." [illustration: tablet in the church in stockbridge] [illustration: david dudley field born may , (from a crayon by lawrence)] the recollection that his grandchildren have of him is of a quiet, dignified old gentleman, who seemed quite lost when his call for "mis' field" was not answered at once by his energetic wife, upon whom he was very dependent. occasionally he would gather his children's children about him, and seemed to enjoy showing them how "the lady's horse goes," and the tumble that followed "and by-and-by comes old hobble-de-gee," was looked upon as great fun. he would also delight his youthful audience by repeating a few of mother goose's melodies, and they never tired of hearing him. life in new england in those days, and especially the life of a pastor's family, was earnest, with an earnestness that to the young, with the eagerness of youth for enjoyment, may well have seemed repulsive. the puritanic rigor that has been so much relaxed during the past half-century was then much what it had been in the earliest colonial times. +------------------------------------------+ | in memory of | | david dudley field, | | pastor of this church. | | | | born in madison, conn., may , . | | settled in haddam, - . | | in stockbridge, - . | | | | recalled to his charge, he preached | | again in haddam till , | | when he returned here | | to spend his last days. | | | | died april , , | | aged nearly years. | | | | the hoary head is a crown of glory | | when found in the way of | | righteousness. | +------------------------------------------+ morning and evening the entire family gathered in the sitting-room for prayers, each one with a bible, and all were required to join in the reading. a chapter was never divided, and in turn the verses were read; often comments were made. afterwards came the long prayer, when all, except dr. field, knelt; he stood, with his hands on the back of his chair, and one of his favorite expressions, and one which greatly impressed the younger members of his family, the more because they did not understand it, was that the lord would "overturn, overturn, overturn ... until he come, whose right it is." that the puritanic atmosphere was no harsh and unmirthful thing in this parsonage is shown by the story told by one who was a boy in stockbridge at the time. a hen was sitting in a box in the woodshed; each morning cyrus looked for the little chickens. one day in an adjoining box he found the family cat with a number of kittens. these he placed with the hen, and then with a very straight face asked his father to come and see the chickens. the controversy as to the scriptural limitation of the sabbath, whether it began at sunset on saturday or at midnight, was then very active. when dr. field was questioned as to which evening was the one to be observed, he always advised those in doubt to keep both. once in speaking of the curious texts that he had known clergymen of his generation to choose, he instanced: "parbar westward, four at the causeway and two at parbar"; but he failed to give the lesson that was drawn from the words. in those old days in western massachusetts cooking-stoves were unknown. the pots were hung above the fire, the meats were broiled over the coals or before them, and the baking was done in a brick oven. neither were there ice-closets nor travelling butchers. the winter's stock of meat was laid in with the first cold weather; the chickens were killed and packed in snow in the cellar, to be brought out as they were needed; and pies were made in large quantities, and frozen and put away for future use; and the foot-stove was taken down from the shelf. this was a small iron box with holes in the top, and into it were put live coals. the box was carried in the hand, and used in place of a footstool in "meeting"; but even with this mitigation the cold was felt intensely. the conflict in a conscientious pastor's mind between his sense of duty and his kindness of heart was often severe and painful. mrs. field used to say that the most difficult act her husband was ever called upon to perform was to refuse church membership to those who had accepted dr. channing's views. she was naturally more pitiful than he. a revivalist who had come to the village in the course of his mission took occasion at a service publicly to arraign one of the prominent men of the town for drunkenness. mrs. field strongly disapproved of the time and place chosen for the rebuke, and on her way home from the meeting expressed her disapproval, and when she reached her gate said, "wait, cyrus, and when mr. ---- passes bring him to me and i will pick his bones for him" (micah iii. ). she would not have approved of the method adopted, according to a story current in her son cyrus's family, by a pious man in connecticut who, when he thought himself imposed upon by his neighbors, would say, with a long drawl, "leave them to the lord, leave them to the lord--he'll smite them hip and thigh." her son always remembered, as one of the strongest impressions of his childhood, the deep and lasting grief of his mother at parting with her eldest daughter, who married and went to smyrna, asia minor, as a missionary, when he was but ten years old. an old lady in stockbridge tells to his niece this story of him at about the same age. "your grandmother had been very ill. i watched with her; many of us watched. i thought to keep her from talking by coming up behind her to give her medicine, but she found out who i was and talked a great deal. after she was better she still needed some one to sleep in her room, keep up the fire and give her medicine. your uncle cyrus did this one whole winter when he was a little boy, i should think not ten. it was lovely of him." and it was just like him. he always remembered that during this same illness his mother called him to her and said, "cyrus, the doctor says i am very ill, but i shall be up to-morrow." and he would add, "she was." by all stockbridge tradition he was the hero of another tale, although he himself always gave the credit of it to one of his brothers. a certain rat-trap (perhaps of new and efficient style) had been lost. after much search and questioning the minister gave orders that whenever found it should be brought at once to him. so one day at a service, when the sermon was in full progress, there came a clanging noise up the aisle, and the missing article was set down in front of the pulpit with the words, "father, here is your rat-trap!" another laughable reminiscence occurred at the burning of the parsonage, which took place about . in or dr. field had bought a small house in the village and had moved there. the fire was first seen as the children were coming from school, and very soon after it was discovered all hope of subduing it was given up, and the first thought was to save the study furniture and books, and the study table was thrown from the window. imagine the surprise of the crowd and the consternation of their pastor as the drawers of this, his private repository, came open, and a shower of playing-cards fluttered forth and whitened the grass. they had been found in the possession of his children and confiscated. it is remembered of cyrus field as a child that his dealings with his playmates were most exact. he paid punctually all that he owed, and required the same punctuality in return. he was the chosen leader in all the games, and he was the victor in a race around the village green, one of the stipulations being that a certain amount of crackers should be eaten on the way. his half-holidays were passed in roaming over the country-side, and he has often said that the meal he enjoyed the most in his life was one gotten on a saturday afternoon when he had stopped, tired and hungry, at a farm-house, and was given a plate of cold pork and potatoes. he was obliged to be at home before sunset on saturday, as every member of the family was required to be in the house by that time, and all work to cease; and as the children entered their father greeted them with the words, "we are on the borders of holy time." sunset on sunday was watched for most anxiously, for they were then again quite free to come and go. [illustration: the parsonage, stockbridge, mass. (as rebuilt after the fire)] the simple life of the massachusetts village was not without its pleasures. there lies before me a yellow programme, printed sixty years ago, which commemorates what was very likely at once the first appearance of cyrus w. field on any stage and his last appearance in his native village, and forms a fitting conclusion to the story of his childhood. =exhibition.--stockbridge academy=, march - , . =thursday evening.= order of exercises. . music. . prologue.--united states speaker. john henry adams . burr and blennerhasset.--wirt. essex watts . bernardo del carpio.--mrs. hemans. ralph k. jones . death of the princess charlotte.--campbell. henry w. dwight, jr. . music. . "hail to the land."--author unknown. phinehas lincoln . extract from robert treat paine on french aggressions. david l. perry . parody of "the young orator."--anonymous. george w. kingsley . a dandy's----what?--independent balance. william stuart . music. . patriotic stanzas.--campbell. thomas wells . injustice of slavery. james sedgwick . question answered.--ladies' magazine. george lester . fall of missolonghi.--e. canning. theodore s. pomeroy, jr. . music. . the rich man and the poor man.--khemnitzen. lewis burrall . man, the artificer of his own fortune. edward selkirk . pleasures of knowledge. marshall williams . extract from an oration by wm. r. smith. edwin williams . running dover, a boaster.--anonymous. george w. kingsley . music. . influence of intemperance on our government.--sprague. bradford dresser . bunker hill monument.--webster. george w. parsons . extract from webster on the slave trade. john ely . parody of "lochiel's warning."--edward selkirk. advocate of temperance, {edward selkirk vender of ardent spirits, {theodore williams . a wife wanted.--a bachelor edward carter . music. . the instability of human government.--rutledge. john vallet . parody of "brutus's address to the roman populace."--anonymous. george w. burrall . peter's ride to the wedding.--new speaker. george lester . tragical dialogue.--columbian orator. indian chief, charles pomeroy american officer, lewis fenn son of the chief, cyrus field soldiers, {charles deming {john vallet . petition of young ladies.--united states speaker john henry adams . music. friday evening. order of exercises. . music. . _"she stoops to conquer."--goldsmith._ a comedy in five acts. dramatis personÆ. sir charles marlow, s. g. jones hardcastle, h. c. fay young marlow, h. tremain hastings, e. rockwell tony lumpkin, h. gardner diggory, c. pomeroy jeremy, t. williams stings, l. fenn mrs. hardcastle, c. w. field miss hardcastle, f. fowler miss neville, j. stephens maid, j. ely fellows of the ale-house, servants, etc. act the first. scene .--a chamber in an old-fashioned house. music. scene .--an ale-house room. music. act the second. scene .--a room in hardcastle's house, supposed by marlow and hastings to be a room in an inn. music. act the third. scene .--a room in hardcastle's house. music. act the fourth. scene .--the same room. music. act the fifth. scene .--the same room. music. scene .--the back of the garden. music. scene .--a room in hardcastle's house. music. . epilogue.--united states speaker. theodore s. pomeroy, jr. music. chapter ii early life in new york ( - ) it was on wednesday, april , , and only a few weeks after "she stoops to conquer" had been performed in the village academy at stockbridge, that cyrus field, having persuaded his parents that he was old enough to go out into the world and seek his fortune, left his home. for three years before he had kept the family accounts, and had most carefully entered every item of expense in a small paper book, and he was well aware that it was only with strict economy that the eight dollars given to him by his father at parting could be spared from the family purse. stockbridge in april lies bare and brown in the valley of the housatonic, and the tops of the mountains that are near are at that season often still white with snow, and his heart was in harmony with the scene as he looked back for the last sight of his beloved mother's face. his first letter is dated "new york, _may , _. "_dear father_,--i received yours, henry's, and mary's kind letters of the th on the th by jonathan, and i assure you that it did me good to hear from sweet home. "i stopped at mr. moore's, in hudson, and they had not seen mother's handkerchief. "your account of the field family i was glad to receive, but i wish to know also from whom we are descended on my mother's side. "tell stephen, henry, and mary that i intended to write them all a long letter, but as i have not been very well for the last two days, and have a good deal to do to-day, it is impossible. "the purse which mary mentioned in her letter jonathan says that he did not bring. "i have seen r. maclaughlin, and he sends his love to henry. tell george whitney that the store boy sends his love to him. i do the same, and also to edwin williams, mr. fay, s. and a. hawkings, and all the good people of old stockbridge. "uncle beales and his daughter arrived here last night. "mr. mark hopkins came from stockbridge this morning. no letters. "take good care of mother, and tell her she must not get overdone. "all send their love. love to all. "from your affectionate son, "cyrus." he does not speak of his loneliness, although we know that it was great, for his mother's last words to another son, who was going to new york a few weeks later, were, "bring cyrus home if he is still so homesick." it was on one of his first sundays in new york that, after he had been to church, and gone to his brother david's for dinner, his unhappiness was apparent to the family and also to dr. mark hopkins, their guest, whose sympathy was never forgotten, nor his words, "i would not give much for a boy if he were not homesick on leaving home." he has said that many of the evenings during the long summer that followed his coming to new york were passed on the banks of the hudson watching the boats as they sailed northward, and as he lay by the riverside he pictured himself as on board of one of the vessels, and the welcome that he would receive on reaching stockbridge. towards the end of his life mr. field began the preparation of his autobiography. from so much of this as serves the purpose of this narrative, extracts will be made from time to time without express credit. in it took twenty-four hours to go from stockbridge to new york, and first there was a drive of fifty miles to hudson on the river, and then a long sail by boat. almost immediately on reaching the city he entered as an errand-boy the store of a. t. stewart, which had already a more commanding reputation than any mercantile establishment possesses or perhaps can attain at present. his home was in a boarding-house in murray street near greenwich, where he had board and lodging for two dollars a week, a fact which is in itself eloquent of the difference between life now in new york and life sixty years ago. stewart's was then at broadway, between murray and warren streets. there the young clerk received for his services the first year $ , and the second the sum was doubled. even so, and with what would now be the incredible frugality of his living, it is plain that he could not have supported himself by his earnings. of his life at that time he said in after-years, "my oldest brother lent me money, which, just as soon as i was able, and before i was twenty-one, i returned to him with interest." the letter that follows tells how his first money was spent: "new york, _june , _. "_dear father_,--i received by mr. baldwin five nightcaps, a pin-cushion, and some wedding-cake, for which i am very much obliged to mother and mary. "mary wrote to me to know of what color i would have my frock-coat; tell mother instead of having a linen frock-coat that i would prefer another linen roundabout, as they are much better in a store; i am not particular about the color. "when you write to me, direct your letters to cyrus w. field, at a. t. stewart & co., no. broadway, new york; if you do so, they will come to me quicker than in any other way. there is in the store besides the firm twenty-four clerks, including two book-keepers, one of whom is mr. smith, of haddam; he says that he remembers you, mother, david, timothy, and matthew very well. give my love to mother, brothers, sister, mr. fay, george whitney, and other friends. "from your affectionate son, "cyrus. "p.s.--on the other side you will find a list of my expenses. from the th of april to the th of june.--cyrus w. field, expenses. from stockbridge to new york $ paid to david for penny magazines (i am not agoing to take them any longer.) to hair cutting ½ to one vial of spirits of turpentine (used to get some spots out of coat) ¼ to get shoes mended ¾ to one pair of shoe-brushes to one box of blacking ½ to get trunks carried from david's to my boarding-house to two papers of tobacco to put in trunks to prevent moths getting in ½ to one straw hat (the one that i brought from home got burned and was so dirty that david thought i had better get me a new one.) to one steel pen ½ to small expenses, from time to time, such as riding in an omnibus, going to brooklyn, etc., etc., etc. ------ total, $ "when i left home i had $ , $ of which is expended, leaving in my hands cents. i do not know of anything that i want, but i think you had better send to me $ more." in all his letters of this period he calls his eldest brother by his first name, david, and it was not until many years later that his second name, dudley, is added. at first mr. field was obliged to be at his work between six and seven in the morning, and after he was promoted from errand-boy to clerk the hours for attendance at the store were from a quarter-past eight in the morning until into the evening. "i always made it a point to be there before the partners came and never to leave before the partners left. mr. stewart was the leading dry-goods merchant at that time. my ambition was to make myself a thoroughly good merchant. i tried to learn in every department all i possibly could, knowing i had to depend entirely on myself." in his simple country home a theatre had always been thought of and spoken of as an entrance to hell, but being of an inquiring mind he determined, as so many country lads have done before and since, upon giving one of his first evenings in the city to finding out for himself what hell was like. the kindred desire to see a large fire was also soon gratified, and the ardor of his curiosity on this subject was at once cooled, for, as he stood watching the blaze, the hose was turned for a moment in the wrong direction, and he was drenched. the subject of the next letter is the "great fire of ," which took place on december th, and destroyed warehouses and $ , , of property. "new york, _december , _. "_dear father_,--last week, on wednesday night, a fire broke out in a store in merchant street which proved to be the largest that was ever known in this country. it burned about buildings, most of which were wholesale stores, and laid waste all of thirty acres of the richest part of this city. "i was up all night to the fire, and last sunday was on duty with david as a guard to prevent people from going to the ruins to steal property that was saved from the fire and laying in heaps in the streets. "the awful state that the city was in can be better imagined than described. "mr. brewer has arrived, and will take to stockbridge some parcels, one of which is for mrs. ashburner. "in haste, from your affectionate son, "cyrus. "p.s.--i wish mother would make for me a black frock-coat (she knows the kind that i want) and a plain black stock. "perhaps you had better send me the $ that you were to let me have. "c. w. field." on july , , he writes to his father: "i shall leave new york on thursday evening the th of august, in the steamboat _westchester_, which goes no further up the river than hudson, and be at that place on friday morning, the th, where i shall want to have some one to meet me and mr. goodrich with a good horse and wagon to take us immediately to stockbridge.... i want to have some one be at hudson rain or shine, and i would like to have you write to me and let me know who is coming, and where i shall find him if he is not at the wharf.... mr. g. and myself will pay the expense of coming to hudson." and in another letter: "the fare in the steamboat to hudson is only cents." a month later, in a letter to his mother, dated new york, august th, he says: "i arrived here on thursday morning with goodrich, in good health and fine spirits. i have sent to you by mr. platner, of lee, yds. of fine long cloth, at cents per yd. $ yds. not fine long cloth, at ½ cents per yd. ½ muslin collar ----- remnant of merino, ½ yds., for ------ total, $ ½ "if mary should like the merino for a cloak i will obtain another remnant for a dress. "father has let me have $ since i have been in new york, and if he wishes me i will pay the above amount, and then i shall be indebted to him $ ½. i will send the balance in money or obtain that amount worth of goods for him here at any time.... "i wish you would all write to me by every opportunity, and tell me of anything and all things that happen at home and in good old stockbridge. "give my love to all friends. in haste. "from your affectionate son, "cyrus. "_to my dear mother._" he wrote to his mother again on october , , and in the postscript says: "tell father that i have read through the _pilgrim's progress_ which he gave me when at home, and that i like it very much; and also that goodrich and myself take turns in reading a chapter in the bible every night before we go to bed, and that we have got as far as the th chapter of genesis." his indebtedness to his father seems to have weighed heavily upon him, for on november th he again alludes to it: "i am now in debt to you $ , which i will pay to you at any time you wish, or will obtain things for you here." the thought that his home in stockbridge is to be given up causes him pain. on january , , in a letter to his mother, he says: "i am sorry that father is going to leave that beautiful place stockbridge, but when you do move to haddam i hope that you will take everything, even the old and good dog rover." in a letter written to his father on april , , he mentions various articles he has sent to him, and then adds: "and also a silk handkerchief, which i wish you to accept for the interest on the $ you lent me." towards the end of the letter is this sentence: "the election has closed and the whigs have elected aaron clark their candidate for mayor by a majority of nearly votes. good." his clothes were all of home manufacture. on may , , in a letter to his mother, he writes: "i wish you would make for me, as soon as convenient, a black broadcloth _coat with skirts_, and covered buttons, and as i wish it for a dress-coat the cloth must be _very fine and made extremely nice_. you cannot be too particular about it." in his letter written from new york on july , , he says: "david arrived on monday, july th, in the packet ship _oxford_, from liverpool. he had a passage of thirty-seven days. he is in very good health. the ladies' greek association of stockbridge held their fair the th of july on little hill, and raised one hundred and twenty-seven dollars ($ ). well done for old stockbridge." the mercantile library in clinton hall, at the southwest corner of nassau and beekman streets, proved an attractive place to him, and whenever it was possible he went there in the evening to read; and he also joined an "eclectic fraternity," to which mr. jackson s. schultz belonged. the fraternity met for debate every saturday evening in a fourth-story room over a leather store in the swamp. mr. stewart's rules were strict. one of them was that every clerk must enter in a book the minute that he came in the morning, left for dinner, returned from dinner, went to supper and came back; and if he was late in the morning, at dinner over an hour, or required more than three-quarters of an hour for supper, he must pay twenty-five cents for each offence. the fines thus collected, mr. stewart told his clerks, would be kept and given to any charity that they should select. this went on until september , , and then this paper was drawn up: "new york, _september , _. "we, the undersigned, hereby nominate and appoint cyrus w. field treasurer to receive the fines of the young men _paid_ during the month of september to messrs. a. t. stewart & co.: edward k. shed, j. r. mcelroy, james shond, h. t. selden, charles st. john, webster thompson, c. zabriskie, jr., jno. k. walker, e. b. williams, henry rutgers prall, thomas h. selby, james beck, j. b. smith, geo. haywood, d. r. park, m. goodrich, john wm. byron, a. matthew, t. jones, s. h. maynard, c. austin, paul burdock, p. fellows, edmund s. mills, james macfarlan, a. sahtler, r. whyte." the clerks were paid at the beginning of each month, and on the st of october the paper was presented, and the cashier was asked for the money, which he declined to give. an appeal was taken to mr. stewart, who ordered it to be given to the young men. "i took the funds, and all of the clerks left the store that night in a body and proceeded up broadway to the corner of chambers street. we then agreed to go into a large, well-known oyster-saloon in the basement. the clerks at once voted unanimously that we should have an oyster supper, and that the treasurer should pay from this fund the expense of the supper, which was done. then there was a long debate as to what charity the balance should be given to. at last it was unanimously resolved that there was no such charity in the city or state of new york as the clerks of a. t. stewart & co., and that mr. field, the treasurer, should return to each clerk the exact amount of his fines, less his proportion of the supper. this occupied until nearly or quite daylight. "some one of the clerks or waiters told mr. stewart of what had occurred, and we were all requested to remain at the store the next evening after business hours, when mr. stewart called me up and asked me to give him an account of what had been done with the funds paid to me the previous evening. i told him the exact truth in regard to the matter, when he dismissed us, saying that in the future he should be very careful that the firm selected the object of charity that this fund was given to." at a dinner at the union league club on october , , jackson s. schultz, the beginning of whose acquaintance with mr. field has just been referred to, related this incident: "perhaps i cannot do better than tell you an anecdote that was told me by mr. stewart at the great celebration which we had at the metropolitan hotel after the laying of the atlantic cable. he said to me, 'perhaps you don't know that i have taught mr. field all the art of telegraphing he knows.' 'no, i am not aware of that, mr. stewart.' he said, 'it is quite notorious in our house.' mr. field was for a long time a clerk in that establishment, and mr. stewart said mr. field was in the habit of watching the old gentleman, and by a sort of tick, tick, giving notice to his fellow-clerks of the fact that he was coming, so that every man was in his place, and from that simple idea mr. field got the idea of telegraphing, which had made his fortune." the first intimation we find of his having decided to leave mr. stewart is in a letter to his father, written on january , : "i expect to go to lee to live with matthew on the st of march. he will give me two hundred and fifty dollars ($ ) the first year, and my board and washing." and again, on february th, he refers to the proposed change that he intends making: "i have been very busy for the last five or six weeks in the evening attending mr. wheeler's school to obtain a thorough knowledge of book-keeping by double entry, so as to be able to keep matthew's books when i go to lee.... i have made arrangements with matthew so that i shall not commence my year with him until the st of april." he arrived in lee, mass., on friday evening, march th. it was early in this year that mr. stewart, having heard that mr. field intended giving up his place as clerk after his three years' apprenticeship to business, sent for him and urged him to agree to remain with him for several years, and made him a very liberal offer if he would do so. on the d of march mr. bunours, one of mr. stewart's partners, sent him this note: "_dear field_,--you will accept the accompanying trifle as a token of esteem and sincere friendship, and whatever be your future pursuits, to know that they are successful will be a source of much gratification to william h. bunours. _march , ' ._" "the trifle" was a small diamond pin that the recipient of it wore for over twenty-five years. upon the same occasion this invitation was received: "the undersigned, anxious to show their respect and esteem for their fellow-clerk, cyrus w. field, do hereby agree to give him a complimentary supper on friday evening, march , . henry rutgers prall, james macfarlan, richard mcelroy, john wm. byron, paul burdock, r. whyte, p. v. mondon, jno. k. walker, charles b. st. john, james beck, w. thompson, m. goodrich." a letter written on march , , by his brother david to his parents ends with these words: "cyrus has, as you will see from his letters, etc., left stewart's, with the best testimonials of esteem from all his employers and associates. he is a noble young man--and i am proud of him." his father had said on parting from him in : "cyrus, i feel sure you will succeed, for your playmates could never get you off to play until all the work for which you were responsible was done." these few words tell us briefly how the following eighteen months were passed: "on leaving new york i went as far west as michigan on business for my brother dudley. i went up the hudson in a boat to albany, from thence to, i think, syracuse in the cars, thence by stage to buffalo, from buffalo by steamer to detroit, and from there to ann arbor. on my return east i went to lee, mass., as an assistant to my brother, matthew d. field. he was a large paper manufacturer; he often sent me on business to boston, philadelphia, washington, and new york." from this account of mr. field's beginnings in new york it is evident that his subsequent success was not a matter of chance; the foundations of it were laid in the character which commanded the confidence of his employer and of his associates. this will be shown even more strikingly in the pages that are to follow. his own narration of his early experiences has an additional interest in the incidental and almost unconscious disclosure of the vast difference between the conditions of beginning a business career in new york now and sixty years ago. it seems worth while to secure an authentic memorial of a life that already seems so remote and is wellnigh forgotten. chapter iii marriage and business life ( - ) "in the spring of i went into business for myself in westfield, mass., as a manufacturer of paper, and on october st of that year i was invited to become a partner in the firm of e. root & co., of no. maiden lane, new york. i was not yet of age when i entered as a junior partner in this house; the business of the firm was managed chiefly by my senior partner. my part was to attend to the sales and manage the business, principally away from new york, in philadelphia, baltimore, boston, washington, and other places, making contracts and attending to the business generally. on november , , i was twenty-one, and two days afterwards i was married to mary bryan stone, of guilford, conn." mrs. field's father, joseph stone, died of yellow-fever at savannah, ga., july , . he left a widow and three little children. mrs. stone returned to her home and lived with her parents, and it was from their home that her daughter was married. mr. and mrs. fowler had been married in , and their house was built in , and it was on account of their age and to avoid all excitement for them that mr. and mrs. field's wedding was very quiet. the invitations were informal. "new york, _november_ , . "_my dear parents_,--i have only time to write a few lines, and will come to the point at once. "the writer of this intends to be joined in the bands of matrimony to miss mary b. stone one week from this day, that is, on next wednesday morning, december , , at o'clock a.m., and requests the pleasure of meeting you both, with sister mary, at the house of mr. a. s. fowler in guilford, at the above-mentioned time. david and stephen will be there. we expect father will perform the ceremony. i shall leave here tuesday in the new haven steamboat, and you will find me wednesday morning at bradley's hotel in guilford, where you had better all stop. "there will be _only a very_ few friends at the wedding. shall leave immediately after the ceremony is over for new haven, and from there come to this city. "if henry is at home bring him with you, and send to middletown for mary. "with much love to all at home, "i remain your affectionate son, "cyrus w. field." a cousin writes: "it is a long time to remember what passed fifty years ago. it was a lovely morning, the d of december, . your dear father came to our old home in guilford. my memory says ten o'clock was the hour for the ceremony, and it took place in the north room, now the parlor. your grandfather, dr. field, was the clergyman. i was bridesmaid. your dear mother and i wore dresses made alike of gray cashmere. lunches were an unheard of arrangement in those days; the refreshment was three kinds of cake and wine. then we drove to new haven; your uncle, joseph stone, lived there. i went to visit some cousins; your parents went to a hotel, and came and spent the evening with us." mr. justice field of the united states supreme court was groomsman for his brother. fifty years after this same group stood once more together at the golden wedding on december , . the married life thus begun was singularly happy. it is impossible for the children of this marriage to recall a word of unkindness as having been spoken by either father or mother. their little son's death in drew them closer to one another. he writes that during his business troubles his wife was perfectly calm, and that she looked upon the loss of money as but slight in comparison to the happiness that had been left to her. on december d mr. and mrs. field left new haven and came to new york by boat; immediately on their arrival they drove to the house of mrs. mason in bond street, and it was there that they boarded for the next two years. "in six months" (that is, on april , ) "e. root & co. failed, with large liabilities, and though i was not the principal of the firm, yet on me fell the loss and the burden of paying its debts. such was the condition in which i started in life, without capital or credit or business, and with a heavy load of debt upon me. we were for many months afterwards getting the affairs settled. i dissolved the firm immediately and started on my own account. some of the creditors came to see me, and those that did not come i went to see, and on the best terms i could settled and compromised and got released. "my office at this time was in burling slip, and it was in or that the partnership of cyrus w. field & co. was formed, the company being my brother-in-law, joseph f. stone." with characteristic regularity the home life as well as the business life went on. i have on the table before me two account-books, which show both how methodical were the young merchant's habits and how simple was his life at the outset of his career. "no. , cyrus w. field, , ' and ' ," and "no. , cyrus w. field, ." the following are extracts from no. : "expenses account dr. dec. , to carriage to new haven $ " , to newspapers " , to gate fee " , to expenses at the pavillion " , to porter " , to new haven to new york " , to newspapers " , to hack " , to cartage jan. , to bill for board for months " , to bill for vaccination " , to figs and crackers " , to oysters and laudanum feb. , to doctor's bill--one visit " , to one box of pencil-leads may , to one umbrella " , to repairing silk hat sept. , to letter from mrs. field oct. , to paid dr. catlin in haddam nov. , to mrs. nolan's bill " , to one willow cradle --------- dec. $ , "the above are our expenses for one year, from december , , to december , . "cyrus w. field." from this time until the accounts were kept with the same exactness; some of the items for this latter year are: " june , to cutting coat, vest, pair pants $ " , to soap, cents; pepper, cents; tobacco and linen july , to niblo's garden, m. e. f., m. s., and c. w. f. " , to dr. paine, $ ; pill, cents aug. , to letter to and one from mrs. field oct. , to w. h. popham, tons coal nov. , to shoestrings, cents; tacks, cents " , to _tribune_, weeks --------- dec. $ , "the above were our expenses for one year, december , , to december , . "cyrus w. field." and on december , , at the end of the book we read: --------- " $ , less dec. , boarding ---- from october , , to date, - / weeks @ $ $ " , cash over to date[a] --------- $ , [a] this amount is for sundries sold, and entered the past year in our expenses, and for which i refund back the money. "the above are our expenses for one year, from december , , to december , . "cyrus w. field." in he rented a house in east seventeenth street, no. , and his brother dudley questioned the wisdom of his living so far up-town, and said that he must not look for frequent visits from him, that he could only go to him on sunday. he lived in this house for ten years, and in the interval his brother dudley moved to one immediately in the rear, and mrs. robert sedgwick and mrs. caroline kirkland were near neighbors and dear friends. for many years mr. field took his breakfast by lamplight, and his dinner and supper down-town. his children saw him only on sunday. at this time, he wrote long afterwards, "i was an ardent admirer of henry clay, and in politics a whig," and accordingly he took a warm interest in the election of . "in i was not worth a dollar. what money i had made had all gone to pay the debts of the old firm. my business was conducted on long credit; we did a general business all over the country. i built up a first-rate credit everywhere. all business intrusted to me was done promptly and quickly. i attended to every detail of the business, and made a point of answering every letter on the day it was received." mr. schultz said of him at the dinner already referred to: "but, sir, i do recall the early days of mr. field. i remember him when he was first a clerk and then a merchant.... he had peculiarities then as he has always had. one i recollect was, he had over his desk 'are you insured?' for no one that was not insured could get credit of him. he could not afford, he said, to insure himself and others too. thus in all his transactions he had ideas and principles to carry out, but always good principles and ideas. i well remember when he came into the mercantile library association; he had his own ideas, which did a great deal to add to the dignity and usefulness of that institution. in all his early life he was what he has been since--useful, practical." it seems odd now to be reminded by the sight of old letters that at this time envelopes were not in use. the sheets of paper were large, of letter size; three sides were closely written on, and then it was folded into nine, and it was not permitted to enclose even a slip of paper in this sheet; the postage was usually thirteen cents. the currency was puzzling; there was the short or "york" shilling of eight to the dollar (that is, twelve and a half cents), and the new england or long shilling of six to the dollar (sixteen and two-thirds cents). so rooted was each kind of currency in its own section as often to cause travellers annoyance and confusion. the first and part of the second page of the new york _tribune_ for august , , is most interesting. there is given an account of "the berkshire jubilee," held at pittsfield, mass., on august d and d. the paper mentions among those present, dr. orville dewey, of new york, william cullen bryant, miss catherine sedgwick, dr. mark hopkins, mr. macready, the actor, dr. oliver wendell holmes, mrs. fanny kemble, dr. d. d. field, and david dudley field. this "jubilee" lasted for two days. there were forty-four vice-presidents appointed, and forty-four tables were laid to accommodate the three thousand people who dined together. on the first day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, dr. hopkins preached a sermon on jubilee hill, west of the village, and dr. d. d. field "offered up an eloquent prayer." after dinner on the d there were speeches and singing. "a young lady, as amiable as she is beautiful, and as intelligent as she is both amiable and beautiful, gave the following sentiment by proxy: "'you scarce can go through the world below but you'll find the berkshire men, and when you rove the world above you'll meet them there again.' "at the close of dr. holmes's speech he read the poem that appears in his works under the title of 'lines recited at the berkshire festival,' beginning: "'come back to your mother, ye children, for shame, who have wandered like truants for riches or fame; with a smile on her face and a sprig on her cap she calls you to feast from her bountiful lap." and it appears from the report that "the recitation of this poem was the most popular exercise of the day." we have a book of french exercises with page after page written by mr. field. they begin with "avez vous le pain?" and the last sentence is, "votre ami a-t-il le miroir que vous avez ou celui que j'ai? il n'a ni celui que vous avez ni celui que j'ai, mais il a le sien." he never spoke french, but one can fancy that these exercises were written before he went to europe, in april, , and in preparation for the exigencies of intercourse with the natives that might arise. mr. and mrs. field sailed for england in a packet-ship commanded by captain hovey. they were eighteen days in crossing, and landed at plymouth, and posted through cornwall. this journey was taken by the advice of his physician. the excitement and work of the past fourteen years had told very decidedly upon him, and perfect rest was imperative. their four little girls were left under the care of an aunt in new haven, conn., and on arriving in england the parents' first thought was of their children; and great was the joy with which these hailed the advent of a box of toys, and in it was a blue-and-white tea-set which gave unusual happiness. here is one of the messages that came back across the sea: "_precious little isabella_,--what are you about just now? can mother guess? "well, belle is singing her german song. "no. does belle say no? she is rocking her doll to sleep, and she is making a nice dress for dolly. "i have put up a little bundle of pieces for grace, alice, and isabelle, and now you can make a great many dresses. mother wishes much to see her little belle and fanny, and to give them a good number of kisses. mother always wished to kiss all her little girls before she went to bed, but now she cannot reach them. "will belle kiss her sister for her mother and will she kiss her cousins, too? "mamma hopes belle will always mind her aunt, miss oppenheim, her cousins, and anne. "anne loves belle and is very kind to her and does all for little belle that she can. "now, dear little belle, good-bye, and do not forget "mamma. "mother sends belle her bird in the cage." some of the reminiscences of this journey come back quite distinctly. one of them was the indignation of an irishman at being asked the name of the river they were passing, which, unluckily for the questioner, happened to be the boyne. another was of a service at a kirk in scotland, during which an old lady said to mrs. field, "remember that you are in the house of god." her offence was that she had offered to share her book of psalms with her husband. indeed it must have seemed impossible for those who did not know to believe that they were husband and wife and that they had been married nine years, for both looked very young at this time. they travelled rapidly during the following five months. they visited manchester, york, edinburgh, glasgow, belfast, dublin, and london, paris, geneva, and from there to milan over the simplon, to leghorn, florence, rome, naples, venice, vienna, dresden, berlin, from frankfort down the rhine to cologne, to brussels, back to england and liverpool, and from there by the steamship _europa_ to boston, and to their home in new york in september. they had been interested spectators of the events succeeding the great uprising of the people in france, germany, and italy, and of their failure to free themselves and obtain self-government. mr. george bancroft was a fellow-passenger on the voyage home. he had made an engagement to dine in boston on a certain day, and while at sea was troubled lest he should not arrive in time; but as mr. and mrs. field drove to the train they passed mr. bancroft on his way to dinner, and he waved his hand to them. on his return to new york, mr. field amused his friends by stating the characteristic fact that the first word he learned of each new language, as he crossed from one country to another, was "faster." mr. and mrs. field lived simply. the summer outings were short, sometimes for only a few weeks were they and their children away from the city, but their children look back with pleasure to the drives that they took, during the long summer days, to hoboken (the elysian fields), to astoria, to coney island, all very different places from those of the present time. and the family cow was driven each morning to pasture on land that is now known as madison square. january , , a son was born. dr. field, supposing that he was to be named cyrus, addressed the following letter, superscribed: "master cyrus w. field, jr., "of the firm of cyrus w. field & co., "no. cliff street, "new york." "higganum, _january , _. "master cyrus w. field, jr.: "_dear grandson_,--we were happy in hearing of your safe arrival last thursday morning, and hope you will be a great honor and blessing to your parents and to your delighted sisters. your grandmother sends you much love, and says she hopes you will make as good a man as your father. "give our love to your parents, to grace, etc., etc., and by-and-by come up and see whether higganum pleases you as well as new york. the lord bless you and all your friends. tell them that we are well and happy. "your affectionate grandfather, "david d. field." and mrs. kirkland sent a note beginning: "a boy! a boy! i wish you joy!" she also wrote: "the pleasantest thing i have to tell you is that miss bremer promises me a visit, and will probably be here in two or three weeks." the visit was paid and gave great pleasure. mrs. field told of one evening passed at mrs. kirkland's, when the swedish novelist was quite unconscious that from her cap hung a paper on which was written / . the autumn of was long remembered by parents and children. early in september the two-seated covered wagon and buggy were filled by the entire family, who left new york for a drive of four weeks; first to guilford, conn., then to stockbridge, returning from hudson to new york by the night boat. it was mr. field's custom to give an annual supper to his clerks. that which took place in december, , was signalized by the proceedings thus officially recited: a meeting of the salesmen in the employ of messrs. cyrus w. field & co. was held december , . s. ahern was appointed to preside. after the objects of the meeting were made known by the chairman in a few brief and appropriate remarks, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted: _resolved_, that in consideration of the innumerable acts of kindness manifested towards us by cyrus w. field, esq., we deem it expedient to acknowledge them, not alone in expressions of gratitude, but by tangible proof of our appreciation of them. _resolved_, that a committee of three be appointed to decide upon an appropriate testimonial of our esteem, to be presented to cyrus w. field; and that augustus waterman, john seaman, and james barry be appointed said committee. _resolved_, that augustus waterman, in view of his long services to cyrus w. field, be deputed in behalf of himself and fellow-salesmen to make such presentation as the committee shall decide on. _resolved_, that a copy of the foregoing resolutions accompany the presentation, and that said presentation and resolutions be presented on the occasion of the annual supper given by cyrus w. field to his employés, and that they be accepted by him as a faint token of our esteem. augustus waterman, james barry, simeon j. ahern, andrew cahill, john cahill, john seaman (per a. w.). the testimonial took the form of a silver pitcher suitably inscribed. early in june, , mr. and mrs. field left new york, and made quite an extended journey over the then southern, western, and northern states. first to virginia, where they had the pleasure of staying with mr. and mrs. hill carter at their plantation, shirley, on the james river; then to the natural bridge, and it was while there that mr. field asked mr. church to make a sketch for a picture, and suggested that it would be wise to take a small piece of the rock back to new york. this mr. church did not think necessary, but mr. field was so intent upon having the color exactly reproduced that he put a bit in his pocket. when the oil-painting was sent to his house he found the piece, and there had been no mistake made in the color. from virginia the party went to the mammoth cave of kentucky. it was in the course of the trip either up or down the mississippi, on one of the famous high-pressure boats of those days, that the stewardess coolly remarked, when some of the passengers expressed alarm at the racing, that it made no difference whether or not the boat they were on happened to blow up, since it was in any case her last trip. in the ardor of the race the fires were fed with any fuel available: even the hams that formed part of the cargo were sacrificed. at st. paul they heard that a treaty was to be made with the indians, and mr. field immediately hired a boat for $ to take him to the scene. as many others were anxious to go he allowed the captain to sell tickets at $ to as many people as the boat would accommodate, and the captain made a handsome profit, as he was required merely to reimburse mr. field for his outlay. the indians were frightened at the advent of the party and at the noise of the whistle, and the treaty had to come to a standstill until the boat could be sent out of sight. mr. field was again at st. paul in , when the changes he found seemed to him marvellous. mr. f. e. church, the artist, who had originally been of the party, but had left it before the arrival at st. paul, wrote early in august: "i am delighted that you were able to be at the indian treaty, which, from the description in your letter and the numerous letters published in the daily prints, convinces me that the occasion must have been one of extraordinary interest.... "i am telling marvellous stories here of our adventures to gaping audiences, and exhibiting my blind fishes with tremendous effect.... "all accounts from the children in stockbridge bring alarming intelligence; it is said that they are getting fat, and nothing which has been tried has succeeded in stopping the spread of the complaint. i recommend a month on a western steamboat in hot weather." one of the party, a lady, was not at all times a pleasant travelling companion. the stage drive, one morning in kentucky, began at four, and by six o'clock the sun poured down against the side of the coach in which the lady was seated. as the heat increased, in the same degree her irritability was manifested. at last she asked a southern gentlemen who was by her to let down the curtain. his answer was: "with pleasure, madam, if you won't look so damned sight cross." this proved to be the remedy required; from that time she was good-natured. from a letter written to a new york paper this is copied: "niagara falls, _august , _. "among the recent arrivals at the clifton house are mlle. jenny lind and cyrus w. field and family.... "jenny lind arrived yesterday from new york by way of oswego. she keeps strictly private, and has her meals served in her own room. last evening she was amusing herself by singing, accompanied by mr. scharfenberg, in her own rooms, with closed doors. soon a crowd of a hundred had gathered round her door, without a whisper being heard. she sang for about half an hour, when, suddenly opening her door, she stepped in the hall for a candle, and then you would have laughed outright to see the people scamper, she looking so indignant." when mr. field built the house on gramercy park, which was at first numbered east twenty-first street, that and the one next to it were the only ones between lexington and third avenues, and the east side of gramercy park was a large vacant lot. this house was afterwards known as east twenty-first street, and there forty happy years were passed. chapter iv out of debt--a voyage to south america ( ) although upon the failure for which he was not responsible of the firm of which he was a member mr. field had effected a compromise with the creditors of the firm which had procured his release from all legal obligations, and which satisfied them as the best that they could hope for, it did not satisfy him. he felt that in reality he was still their debtor, and one of the chief incentives to his intense devotion to business in the years following his fresh start was the hope of clearing off the debt, so that no man should have lost by trusting him. in this he succeeded. he himself says in the incomplete autobiography already cited: "there was no luck about my success, which was remarkable. it was not due to the control or use of large capital, to the help of friends, to speculations or to fortunate turns of events, it was by constant labor and with the ambition to be a successful merchant; and i was rewarded by seeing a steady, even growth of business. i had prospered so that on the st of january, , i was worth over $ , . i then turned to my books for a list of the old claims which i had settled by compromising ten years before, found the amount which my generous creditors had deducted from their claims, added to each one interest for that time, and sent to every man a check for the whole amount principal and with seven per cent. interest, a sum amounting in all to many thousands of dollars." the letters that follow tell their own story and how the money was received. two of them indicate that he made use of his prosperity to release his own debtors at the same time that he was paying in full his creditors: "hartford, conn., _ d march, _. "cyrus w. field, esq., new york: "_dear sir_,--your favor of yesterday's date was duly received, and we would now acknowledge the same, and with no ordinary feeling of satisfaction, for in these degenerate days it is in truth a rare occurrence to find men who like yourself--as is evidenced by this act--are honest from principle, and who never consider themselves morally quit of a just debt, even though legally released, until the debt is paid in full. we would now express to you our thanks for the sum enclosed, not so much for the value thereof in currency as for the proof it affords that 'honesty still dwells among men.' with our best wishes for your continued prosperity and an assurance of our high regard, "we are truly your friends, "woodruff & co., "by sam. woodruff." "lowell, _march , _. "c. w. field, esq.: "_dear sir_,--yours of the st inst. was duly received, with check enclosed for $ , for which please accept my grateful acknowledgments. "i congratulate you upon the success of your business pursuits, which has enabled you thus honorably to liquidate your by-gone pecuniary obligations, and i hope your life and health may be long continued in the enjoyment of the well-earned fruits of your persevering enterprise. "it will always give me great pleasure to see you at my house in lowell, and i hope to find opportunity during the coming season to visit the empire city and the world's fair and to avail myself of that occasion to call upon you. "with much regard, i remain "yours truly, "john wright." "pittsfield, _march , _. "_my dear friend_,--the many and various exhibitions of kindness and good-feeling from you heretofore have placed me under very great obligations. "language fails me to express my feelings on the receipt of your letter of the st, and this morning with your check for $ for a claim amicably and satisfactorily adjusted about ten years since, and for which i have no legal or moral claim on you, nor, indeed, had it entered my mind for several years. "this act, entirely voluntary on your part, exhibits moral honesty, that all fair men approve, but few make known by their acts. i value it the more because it exhibits in my friend a conscience alive to right. you have made this present (for i have no claim) not because you considered i needed it, but because the ability that did not exist in does exist in , and the act itself would be carrying out the principles of the golden rule. please accept my warmest thanks for this token of love and friendship. may peace, prosperity, and happiness attend you all your days. "i am truly your friend, "walter laflin. "to cyrus w. field, esq., new york." "springfield, mass., _march , _. "cyrus w. field, esq., new york city: "_dear sir_,--allow me hereby to acknowledge the receipt of yours of march st with its contents. "we are perfectly conscious that in a legal point of view we had no claim upon you for this very unexpected document, but to your personal high sense of honor we are indebted for it, and for this act of honesty and fairness you have our very grateful acknowledgments. "with the best wishes for your future prosperity and good health, we remain, "dear sir, very respectfully, "your obedient servants, "parker, douglass & co. "per o. o. parker." "p. s.--i shall be in your city soon and will be pleased to call upon you. "s. parker. "per o. o. parker." "housatonic bank, _march , _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_dear sir_,--at the request of the board of directors of the housatonic bank i enclose resolutions passed by them this day. "allow me to add, individually, my sincere thanks; and i am requested to ask if you will allow us to make mention of it, to show that such high moral principles in business have much to do with a man's prosperity. "with great respect i remain, "your obedient servant, "j. d. adams, cashier." "at a meeting of the directors of the housatonic bank, held at their banking-house on the th day of march, , the cashier laid before the board a letter from cyrus w. field, esq., dated st of march instant, enclosing a check on the union bank, new york, for seven hundred - dollars, being an unpaid balance and the interest in full on a note against the late firm of e. root & co., due in , which note had long since been given up to mr. field, the firm having become insolvent. whereupon it was unanimously "_resolved_, that the conduct of mr. field in voluntarily paying a debt for which the bank had no claim evinces a high degree of moral integrity, alike honorable to him as a merchant and gentleman. "_resolved_, that such an instance of high-minded magnanimity should be held up as an example worthy of the more commendation because of rare occurrence. "_resolved_, that we tender to mr. field our congratulations in view of his present prosperity, and our best wishes for its continuance. "_voted_, that the foregoing resolutions be entered on the records of the board, and a copy signed by the president and cashier transmitted to mr. field. "c. m. owen, president. "j. d. adams, cashier." "lee bank, _march th, _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_dear sir_,--your favor of st inst. was duly received, with draft on union bank, $ . "i have been delaying acknowledging receipt of same, hoping to get our directors together and lay the matter before them, that i might communicate to you their feelings, but have not as yet been able to do so; shall have an opportunity soon. "our stockholders will appreciate your generosity, and permit me to thank you in their behalf, as well as my own, for your magnanimity exercised towards us. "i remain "truly yours, "l. a. bliss." "lee bank, _march th, _. "at a meeting of the directors of the lee bank held at their banking-house this day the following resolutions were unanimously adopted: "_whereas_, during the last week, a draft was received by the cashier of this bank from cyrus w. field, esq., of new york, amounting to eleven hundred forty two - dollars, it being the balance with principal and interest due upon a draft given by e. root & co. in of fifteen hundred dollars; and "_whereas_, the lee bank had given mr. field a full discharge of the above debt by his paying the sum of nine hundred forty-two - dollars in the year ; therefore "_resolved_, that the full payment of a debt by the junior partner, having been contracted in the commencement of his business life and by misfortunes which rendered him unable to pay the same, is a mark of strict honesty and integrity, and is worthy of all commendation. "_resolved_, that the foregoing resolutions be entered upon the records of this board, and a copy sent to mr. field. "leonard church, president." "hudson, _march th, _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_sir_,--yours of th february conveying your check on the union bank for three hundred eleven - is received. the receipt of the above is especially gratifying to me as an evidence that there are some honorable exceptions to the rule that legal obligations are the only ones binding on the community. if in the course of any of your business transactions i can be of any service to you, it will be a sincere gratification to me to render to you any personal favors in my power. "truly your friend, "sam. r. miller." "westfield, mass., _april th, _. "_my dear sir_,--yours of the st inst. was received this morning. the time is so short before you leave the country that i shall not probably have time to see all the persons to whom your letters with the checks were enclosed. there is to be a town meeting this afternoon, when perhaps i may see them all. i understand, however, on inquiry at the post-office, that all the letters have been received and duly distributed, and that all of the persons interested have felt very grateful to you for your kindness and generosity, and the reason why they have not answered your letters and acknowledged the receipt of the money was probably that they have been consulting as to the best _mode_ of acknowledgment, and, i believe, have been preparing a public acknowledgment to be published in our westfield papers, but which has not as yet been quite matured. "i think you may, however, leave the city with a full assurance that your good intentions in regard to these persons have been fully accomplished and gratefully received, so that in various ways much good will thereby have been done. captain s. s. amory has been dead about two years, and his only son is now in california, but his widow, a very worthy woman, is still living, and, i am very sure, feels deeply grateful for this act of kindness, which will aid her very much in her lonely state. "with my own and mrs. fowler's best regards to yourself and wife, and many wishes for your safe and happy return to your family, "truly your friend, "i. s. fowler." "mill river, _april , _. "mr. cyrus w. field: "_dear sir_,--your kind favor of march st was duly received, also yours of the st inst. within sixteen days from date, and my apology for not answering and acknowledging your first, with the enclosed check which it contained, is that i supposed mr. brett would do so, or had done so. i need not tell you that it was thankfully received, and that we feel truly grateful to you for the favor, and also feel happy that prosperity has smiled upon you. "accept, dear sir, my best wishes for your prosperity and welfare, and believe me ever "truly yours with respect, "edwin adams, "one of the firm of e. c. brett." "so. hadley falls, _march th, _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_my dear sir_,--i have received your very kind favor of st inst. your offer to cancel the judgment which you hold against me is conferring a favor which it is out of my power in any form to reciprocate. please accept my sincere thanks. your untiring energy and perseverance have been crowned with great success. you have an ample estate, and no one deserves it more. "in reply to some taunts of john randolph, henry clay said his only patrimony was a widowed mother with nine children. "your only inheritance was a load of debt, cast upon you at the commencement of your business life, which was not caused by lack of foresight or fault on your part. you bore up under this heavy burden and paid it as not one in thousands could or would have done, and by this very act you laid broad the basis of your subsequent success. should i ever again visit your city nothing there will afford me so much pleasure as to meet your cordial greeting and to accept your kind invitation. "may your efforts be crowned with all the good-fortune you may desire, even if it be to place you side by side with the biggest of the big merchant princes of the empire city, is the sincere prayer of "your friend, "wells lathrop." "springfield, mass., _march , ' _. "_my dear sir_,--your very kind favor of the th is just received. "i enclose a satisfaction or discharge of the judgment you hold _vs._ h. & l., which, when you have dated and signed in presence of a witness, will become perfect. "if the pleasure of giving is greater than receiving then you are far more happy than president pierce or any of his cabinet. "most sincerely, your friend, "c. howard. "c. w. field, esq., new york." "springfield, _march_ , ' . "_my dear sir_,--your letter of the th with its highly prized contents is received. i have no words to express my feelings for your unsolicited gift and your kind offer to serve me in any way in your power. this world is a wheel, and i rejoice that the spoke you are on is so nearly at the highest point, though mine is nearly the reverse. i hope that i shall never again be the direct or indirect, innocent or guilty cause of loss to you; but most earnestly hope that i may yet have it in my power to make some small return. "there is no _legal_ claim against me of that enormous amount of debt in which, seven years since, i most unexpectedly found myself involved. nevertheless, it is all as justly due as it was before the commissioner discharged me, and it would be the greatest happiness i could enjoy in this world to pay every farthing. but of this i have no hope. i have a small income from property belonging to my wife, which, with great prudence and economy, will just about pay for our bread and salt, and i can hardly expect to ever earn another dollar. * * * * * "pray pardon this long yarn of myself and accept the enclosed one thousand dollars, being the same amount which i requested our friend, mr. ashburner, to offer you three years ago, though he did not, i believe, only _half_ do it. accept also my most hearty good wishes for your continued health and prosperity, a long life and a glorious reward hereafter, and believe me, "most sincerely your friend, "charles howard. "cyrus w. field, esq., merchant, new york." "i now wished," the autobiography goes on, "to retire from business altogether, but at length i yielded to the solicitations of my junior partner so far as to agree to leave my name at the head of the firm and to leave in the business a capital of $ , . but this was done with the express understanding that i was not to be required to devote any time to it." his lot now seemed altogether enviable. he had retrieved the losses incurred at the outset of his career; he could "look the whole world in the face, for he owed not any man." not only this, but he was a rich man, as riches were counted forty years ago. at all events, those who were dear to him seemed to be put beyond the reach of want. his home life was, as it always had been and always was to be, serene and untroubled. at the age of thirty-four, with his energy and his faculties of enjoyment unimpaired, he found himself able to retire from business, and to lead, if his nature had permitted him to lead, a life of leisure. the first use he made of his release from the cares of business was to project a long journey with his friend, frederick church, the distinguished landscape-painter. he left new york in april, , for central and south america. they took passage early in the month in a sailing-vessel. on the morning of the sailing he had said good-bye to his family, and they were imagining him as already far down the bay, when a sudden ring at the door was so like the one he was accustomed to give that one of his children exclaimed, "there is papa!" and to the surprise of all he walked into the room. the vessel had been detained in the harbor, and he could not remain contentedly on board almost in sight of his home, and so he came back to pass a few hours. they sailed as far as savanilla, new granada (now colombia), at the mouth of the magdalena, and from there up that river for six hundred miles. disembarking at the head of navigation, they passed four months in mountain travel on mule-back, traversing the table-lands south to bogota, following the andes to quito, and crossing the equator and chimborazo, at last reaching the pacific at guayaquil. from guayaquil they were able to take steamers to panama, but the railroad across the isthmus was but partly built; for the rest of the crossing they had again to resort to mules. this would be a difficult and toilsome journey even now, and it was far more so forty years ago. but it had memorable results, for it was at this time that mr. church made the sketches for some of his most famous tropical landscapes. before mr. field left new york he had drawn the accompanying map and this paper, from which it will be seen that he made most careful calculations of his expenses: cyrus w. field's estimate of expenses to south america in . outfit $ new york to savanilla, per vessel savanilla to barranquilla, per horse barranquilla to honda, per steamer honda to bogota, per mule bogota to popayan, } popayan to pasto, } pasto to quito, } mule quito to mount chimborazo, } m. c. to volcano of cotopaxi, } cotopaxi to guayaquil, } guayaquil to lima, per steamer lima to valparaiso, per steamer valparaiso to santiago, per carriage santiago to valparaiso, per carriage valparaiso to panama, per steamer panama to aspinwall, per mule, railroad, and steamer aspinwall to new york, per steamer sundries, say for days @ $ extra premium on life-insurance sundries --------- $ , on another paper was written: places of interest to visit. emerald mines of muzo. bogota , feet. falls of tequendama " bridges of icononzo " lake of buga. gold mine. popayan. pasto. quito , feet. mount chimborazo (kun) , " volcano of cotopaxi , " guayaquil. lima. potosi silver mines. valparaiso. santiago. panama. gold mines. this page of directions was given to his family: all letters to cyrus w. field by first steamer _via_ aspinwall, care of . messrs. hamburger battis, barranquilla, new granada, s. a. april th to th. . hon. yelvert p. king, chargé d'affaires of the united states, bogota, new granada, s. a. april th to th. . chargé d'affaires of the united states, quito, ecuador, s. a. april th to may th. . united states consul, guayaquil, ecuador, s. a. may th to th. . messrs. alsop & co., lima, peru, s. a. may th to june th. . messrs. alsop & co., valparaiso, chili, s. a. june th to july th. . messrs. garrison & fritz, panama, new granada, s. a. july th to august th. . a. m. hunkley, esq., agent messrs. adams & co., aspinwall, navy bay, new granada, s. a. august th to september th. these two sketches were made by mr. church and sent to mrs. field; across the back of the larger one is written, "mr. field and mr. church in the procession." there is a spanish proverb, "never leave a river before you or your baggage behind." one evening mr. field and mr. church forgot this, and crossed, leaving the mules with their packs to follow in the morning. during the night the river rose, and three weeks passed before it was possible to bring over the baggage train, the weary travellers meanwhile ruefully contemplating from day to day, from the opposite bank, their inaccessible possessions. in an aspinwall paper of october, , this was printed: "among the passengers arrived yesterday in the steamship _bogota_ from guayaquil are messrs. cyrus w. field and f. e. church, of new york, who have been travelling for the last six months in south america. "they say that the scenery in some parts of the andes is grand and beautiful beyond description; and that words cannot express the kindness and hospitality with which they have been treated; that gold in large quantities can be obtained in antioquia, and from the beds of many of the small streams that run down the andes into the pacific or the amazon; and that the soil on the plains of bogota and in the valley of the cauca is very rich; and that they have been so much pleased with their journey that they intend soon to return to the land of beautiful flowers and birds, and to the continent for which the almighty has done so much and man so little. "the following are some of the places of interest that they have visited: falls of tequendama, natural bridge of icononzo at pandi; silver mines of santa aña; emerald mines of muzo; volcanoes of puracé, pichincha, and cotopaxi; cities of mompox, bogota, ibaque, cartago, buga, cali, popagan, pasto, and quito. "they left quito on the th of september. stopped two days at cotopaxi, four at chimborazo, and eight at guayaquil, and will leave in the next steamer for the united states." of the sail from aspinwall to new york it was written: "the voyage was pleasant, but every day's run was studied with nervous anxiety by mr. field. he had hurried home in order to be in stockbridge on october st, the day on which his father and mother were to celebrate their golden wedding; the steamer was delayed by stormy weather, and he did not arrive in new york until late in the afternoon of the th." his family had watched almost as eagerly for his coming. not only were they anxious to see him, but their going to stockbridge depended upon it, and that could not be delayed beyond the morning of the th. mr. field brought back a very miscellaneous assortment of the spoils of travel; among them were some of the grass cloaks worn in south america. he often amused his children by putting on these cloaks, and one day they suggested that their father should show himself in this novel costume to his sister, then living in the old home in seventeenth street. without thinking of the effect this might produce on the way, he at once left his house, and had gone but a short distance when he found that he was followed by a number of persons that soon swelled into a crowd and gave chase, until at last he was obliged to take refuge in the home of a friend. he brought back also a live jaguar, specimen of a south american tiger, and twenty-four living parroquets. the most interesting of all, however, was an indian boy of fourteen, whom he intended to have taught in the united states, with the view of ultimately sending him back to his native land as a missionary. the idea was good, but to carry it out was quite impossible. marcus was an imp. it was with almost magical rapidity that he could plan and execute mischief. he succeeded in breaking the collar-bone of the cook living in the family of mr. david dudley field, and his delight was to lay snares in dark halls and passages, and if he was opposed he did not hesitate to seize a carving-knife and flourish it frantically about. a civilized life was not attractive to him; and while mr. field was in england in , his relations, who had tried in vain to christianize the boy, decided to return him to his father, a bull-fighter in south america. but mr. field's special desire for returning home by an appointed day was gratified. on october , , all the descendants of dr. and mrs. field excepting their son stephen and one grandson met in stockbridge. thirty-nine of the family dined together in the old home, and that afternoon all the friends and neighbors came to congratulate the former minister and his wife. the house had, the year before, been bought by their sons david dudley and cyrus, and had been put in perfect order, and the younger son had had it completely furnished for his parents. in writing to his mother on october , , mr. field said: "brother timothy sailed the day that i got back from southwick; i received a letter from him a few days ago. he sent his love to you, father, and all friends, but had time to write only a few words as they passed a vessel. he says the captain is a pious man, and that they have prayers morning and evening." later in the year came the news that timothy had sailed from new orleans in the ship _two brothers_, and that vessel was never heard from. for many years the family entertained the hope that he would return, and his brother cyrus spent "hundreds of dollars" advertising in newspapers and offering a reward for tidings of him. about or a captain reported that he had had a shipmate named field, whose father was a clergyman, and who had many brothers who were not sailors. he also said that his shipmate had married in south america, and was living there a very wealthy planter. he gave these particulars to relieve the anxiety felt by the family, and refused to take any reward. the news caused great excitement among the brothers, and had a steamer sailed that day one of them would probably have gone in her. but, failing that, they consulted together and agreed to write. they not only sent letters to their brother, but to the officials of the place. the letters were returned, and the officials made answer that no such person lived there. it was, however, with the same end in view that when rest was ordered for mr. field, south america was chosen to be the country visited. the search was a fruitless one, and no tidings were obtained. his mother did not give up all hope of hearing from her son timothy until she was told that her son cyrus had come home and had brought no news of him. after mr. field's return to new york in november, , he tried to interest himself in work outside of his old business, and for one week succeeded in staying away from his office in cliff street. it was of this time that one of his brother's wrote, "i never saw cyrus so uneasy as when he was trying to keep still." chapter v the first cable ( - ) the last sentence of the last chapter is a true indication of character. mr. field had doubtless expected, when he retired from business, to retire permanently, and to spend in ease not only the evening and the afternoon but the meridian of his life. but it was not to be, and one may well imagine that his previous experiences had been a providential preparation for the great work of his life, the great work of his time. it matters little who first conceived as a dream the notion of electric communication across the atlantic. to realize that dream there was needed precisely the qualities and the circumstances of cyrus w. field. here was a man whose restless energy had not yet begun to be impaired by time, but who was already a successful man. in virtue of his success he was able not only to devote himself to a work which he was convinced was as practical as it was beneficent--he was able also to enlist the co-operation of wealthy men, whom the project of an atlantic cable would have left quite cold if it had been propounded to them by a mere electrician. they could not have helped regarding the scheme as chimerical and fantastic if a purely scientific man had approached them with it, even with the most plausible figures to prove its practicability and profitableness. to give it a chance of success with them, it must be presented and believed in by one whose previous life and whose personal success forbade them to regard him as a visionary, and who by force of his position as well as of his qualities was able to infect them with some part of his own confidence and enthusiasm. mr. field was that unique man, and hence it is that he must be regarded as the one indispensable factor in the execution of a transatlantic system of telegraphic communication, inevitably soon to become a world-wide system, and far to outrun in actual fact the poet's daring dream of putting "a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." it was on mr. field's return from washington late in the month of january, , that his brother matthew asked him to have a talk with mr. frederick n. gisborne, who was stopping at the astor house. mr. gisborne was an engineer and telegraph operator, and his desire had been to connect st. john's, newfoundland, with the telegraphic system of the united states. in the spring of the legislature of newfoundland had passed an act incorporating the newfoundland electric telegraph company, and had given to mr. gisborne the exclusive right to erect telegraphs in newfoundland for thirty years, with certain concessions of land by way of encouragement to be granted upon the completion of the telegraph from st. john's to cape ray, and on his return to new york he formed a company, and in the spring of set vigorously to work to build the line. he had successfully completed some thirty or forty miles when his work was suddenly brought to a standstill by the failure of the company to furnish the means to carry it on. "he returned to new york from his difficult and unaccomplished task utterly disappointed and beggared, and at this time was waiting for something to turn up." mr. field saw mr. gisborne, heard what he had done and what he had failed to do, and became at once interested in the work. this meeting was followed by many others, and after they had parted late one evening, as mr. field stood studying intently the large globe that was in his library, it flashed across his mind that, if it were possible to connect newfoundland with the united states, why not ireland with newfoundland? the idea once conceived, he lost no time in putting it into execution, and the next morning's mail took letters to professor maury at washington and professor morse at poughkeepsie. he also consulted his brother, mr. david dudley field, and his neighbor, mr. peter cooper. more than twenty-five years after mr. cooper told of the meeting: "it fell to my lot to be one of the first, if not the first, to whom mr. field applied to join him in the enterprise which has so much interested us this evening. it was an enterprise which struck me very forcibly the moment he mentioned it. i thought i saw in it, if it was possible, a means by which we could communicate between the two continents, and send knowledge broadcast over all parts of the world. it seemed to strike me as though it were the consummation of that great prophecy, that "knowledge shall cover the earth, as waters cover the deep," and with that feeling i joined him and my esteemed friends, wilson g. hunt, moses taylor, and marshall o. roberts, in what then appeared to most men a wild and visionary scheme; a scheme that many people thought fitted those who engaged in it for an asylum where they might be taken care of as little short of lunatics. but believing, as i did, that it offered the possibility of a mighty power for the good of the world, i embarked in it." as soon as he obtained the co-operation of the men mentioned by mr. cooper, mr. field asked them to meet in the dining-room of his house, and for four nights they sat around the table examining the records of the old company, studying maps, and making estimates. on the th of march, , the electric telegraph company formally surrendered its charter, and it was decided that if the government of newfoundland would give the new company a liberal charter they would carry forward the work, and, if possible, extend it. on the th of march mr. cyrus field and mr. chandler white, and mr. david dudley field as legal adviser, left for newfoundland; they took the steamer at boston for halifax, and on the th left halifax in the steamer _merlin_ for st. john's. in his speech at the cable celebration in the crystal palace on september , , mr. david dudley field said: "three more disagreeable days voyagers scarcely ever passed than we spent in that smallest of steamers. it seemed as if all the storms of winter had been reserved for the first month of spring. a frost-bound coast, an icy sea, rain, hail, snow, and tempest were the greetings of the telegraph adventurers in their first movement towards europe. in the darkest night, through which no man could see the ship's length, with snow filling the air and flying into the eyes of the sailors, with ice in the water, and a heavy sea rolling and moaning about us, the captain felt his way around cape race with his lead, as a blind man feels his way with his staff, but as confidently and safely as if the sky had been clear and the sea calm. and the light of the morning dawned upon deck and mast and spar coated with glittering ice, but floating securely between the mountains which formed the gates of the harbor of st. john's." the little party was welcomed warmly by mr. edward m. archibald, then attorney-general of the colony, and for many years afterwards british consul-general in new york, and by the governor, ker barley hamilton; bishop field, of newfoundland, and the roman catholic bishop, john mullock, were among their entertainers, and became their warm friends. on november , , bishop mullock had written to the editor of the st. john's _courier_: _"sir,_--i regret to find that in every plan for transatlantic communication halifax is always mentioned and the natural capabilities of newfoundland entirely overlooked. "this has been deeply impressed on my mind by the communication i read in your paper of saturday last, regarding telegraphic communication between england and america, in which it is said that the nearest telegraphic station on the american side is halifax, miles from the coast of ireland. now, would it not be well to call the attention of europe and america to st. john's as the nearest telegraphic point? "it is an atlantic port, lying, i may say, in the track of the ocean steamers, and by establishing it as the american telegraph station, news could be communicated to the whole american continent forty-eight hours sooner than by any other route. but how will this be accomplished? just look at the map of newfoundland and cape breton. from st. john's to cape ray there is no difficulty in establishing a line, passing near holy rood, along the neck of land connecting trinity and placentia bays, and thence in a direction due west to the cape. you have then about to miles of sea to st. paul's island, with deep soundings of fathoms, so that the electric cable will be perfectly secure from icebergs; thence to cape north in cape breton is little more than miles. thus it is not only practicable to bring america two days nearer to europe by this route, but should the telegraphic communication between england and ireland, miles, be realized, it presents not the slightest difficulty. of course we in newfoundland will have nothing to do with the erection, working, and maintenance of the telegraph, but i suppose our government will give every facility to the company, either english or american, who will undertake it, as it will be of incalculable advantage to this country. i hope the day is not far distant when st. john's will be the first link in the electric chain which will unite the old world to the new. "i remain, etc., "j. i. m." _november_ , . shortly after the arrival of the gentlemen from new york the legislature of newfoundland repealed the charter of the electric telegraph company, in which it had been expressly stated that the line of this company is designed to be strictly an "inter-continental telegraph," and a charter was given to the "new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company." not only was the title of the new company suggestive, but the first sentence expressly stated, "it is deemed advisable to establish a line of telegraphic communication between new york and london by the way of newfoundland." and at the same time there was granted to the company an exclusive monopoly for fifty years to lay submarine cables across the atlantic from the shores of newfoundland. when this work was begun the longest submarine cable in the world was that between england and holland, and one had never been laid in water one hundred fathoms deep. the party of three returned to new york early in may, and on saturday evening, the th, the charter was accepted, and the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company was organized; at six o'clock in the morning, on may the th, the papers were signed and fifteen hundred thousand dollars subscribed. this meeting lasted just fifteen minutes. late in the spring of mr. field was obliged to take his old place at the head of the firm of cyrus w. field & co., his brother-in-law and partner, joseph f. stone, having died on the th of may. the following august his only son died, and it was with a heavy heart that he began this double work. on january , , he sailed for england to order the cable to connect cape ray and cape breton. and while he was away his children received this letter: "morley's hotel, "london, _february , _. "_my dear, dear children,_--many thanks for your affectionate letters, which i received last week in paris. "i wish that you would tell your good uncle henry that i am much obliged for his letter of january th, and give my warmest love to your dear grandfather and aunt mary, and thank them for writing to me, and tell them that if i do not get time to answer their letters i think a great deal about them, and hope that we shall soon all meet in health, and that then i shall have much to tell them of what i have seen and heard in the few weeks that i have been in europe. "i hope at some future day to visit europe again with your dear mother, and then, perhaps, we shall take all of our children with us. "i am sure that you would be very happy to see the many beautiful things that can be daily seen in london, paris, and other parts of europe. "when do you think it would be best for us to sail? "i am sure that you will be very kind to your mother and affectionate to each other, and do all in your power to make each person in our house very happy. "i hope that you will go very often to see your dear grandfather, grandmother, aunt mary, and cousin emilia; and whenever you see dear little freddy kiss him many times for me. "it is one month to-day since i left home, and on the th of march i hope to leave liverpool for new york. "in paris i purchased some things for you, and the one that has been the best child during my absence shall have the first choice. "good-bye, and may god bless you all, is the constant prayer of "your affectionate father, "cyrus w. field. "the misses field, new york." on the th of august, , a party sailed from new york on the steamer _james adger_ to assist at the laying of the cable across the gulf of st. lawrence. to quote again from mr. cooper's speech: "we went along very pleasantly until we came to port au basque, and there we waited several days for the arrival of the ship that contained the cable, and when she came we directed the captain to take her in tow. unfortunately he had taken umbrage at the action of mr. lowber, who, acting as a master of ceremonies, had placed rev. dr. spring at the head of the table instead of the captain. so offended was he that he became as stubborn as a mule thereafter. "four several attempts were made to get hold of the ship having the cable; and the darkness of night coming on, we had to go into cape ray. there we got the end of the cable to the telegraph-house after much labor; and when we had it fastened to the shore and properly connected we gave the captain orders to tow the ship across the gulf. in starting he managed to run into the ship, carrying away her shrouds and quarter-rail and almost making a wreck, so that we had to lay up, for in dragging the cable the connection was destroyed. we joined it again, and after some delay departed, directing the captain to take the ship in tow. we had taken the precaution to bring two very long and thick cables to tow her across the gulf. he started, and again had the misfortune to get the larger line entangled with the wheel of his vessel. in the confusion that followed the ship that had the cable by his orders parted her anchor; the line was cut, and she drifted towards a reef of rocks. we entreated the captain to get hold of her as quickly as possible, but before he did so she was almost on the reef. it was then found necessary to go back and have the machinery fixed, which took several days before we were ready to start again. at length, one beautiful day we got off. before starting our engineer, who had charge of laying the cable, gave the captain instructions to keep constantly in view a flag placed upon the telegraph-house and bring it in range with a white rock upon the mountain, which would give him the exact lines upon which to steer. as soon, however, as we got off, i saw the captain was going out of the way, and, as president of the board, i told him so. the answer was, 'i know how to steer my ship; i steer by my compass.' i said, 'your instructions were to steer for the flag and the rock on the mountain.' 'i steer by my compass,' was all i could get out of him. he went on steering in that manner until i found he was going so far out of the way that i told him i would hold him responsible for all loss. this had no effect. i then got a lawyer who was on board to draw up a paper warning the captain that if he did not change his course we should hold him responsible for the loss of the cable. he then turned his course, and went as far out of the way in the other direction. we soon after encountered a gale, and had to discontinue; and when we came to measure the cable, we found we had laid twenty-four miles of cable, and had got only nine miles from shore. that is only a sample of the trials we had to encounter in this enterprise, and i mention it to say that it was in great measure due to the indomitable courage and zeal of mr. field inspiring us that we went on and on until we got another cable across the gulf." in july, , a cable eighty-five miles in length was successfully laid across the gulf of st. lawrence, connecting newfoundland with cape breton, and also one of eleven miles from prince edward island to new brunswick. the lines, one hundred and forty miles in length, had also been built across cape breton. the telegraph system of the united states had thus been connected with the most eastern port of newfoundland. how this work was done was told by mr. field on november , . "it was a very pretty plan on paper. there was new york and there was st. john's, only about twelve hundred miles apart. it was easy to draw a line from one point to the other, making no account of the forests and mountains and swamps and rivers and gulfs that lay in our way. not one of us had ever seen the country or had any idea of the obstacles to be overcome. we thought we could build the line in a few months. it took two years and a half, yet we never asked for help outside our own little circle. indeed i fear we should not have got it if we had, for few had any faith in our scheme. every dollar came out of our own pockets. yet i am proud to say no man drew back. no man proved a deserter; those who came first into the work stood by it to the end.... "it was begun and for two years and a half was carried on solely by american capital. our brethren across the sea did not even know what we were doing away in the forests of newfoundland. our little company raised and expended over a quarter million pounds sterling before an englishman paid a single pound. our only support outside was in the liberal charter and steady friendship of the government of newfoundland." but it was now thought wise to enlist english co-operation. for this purpose mr. field left new york by the steamship _baltic_ on saturday, july , . his work in london was begun at once, and john brett, michael faraday, george parker bidder, mr. statham, of the london gutta-percha works; mr. brunel; mr. glass, of glass, elliott & co.; charles t. bright, and dr. edward o. w. whitehouse were soon among his friends and strongly impressed with the idea that a cable could be successfully laid across the atlantic. it was at this time that in response to a note from his wife, mr. glass wrote, "mr. field is in london," and that showed that no longer was his time his own. once when with faraday, mr. field asked him how long a time he thought would be required for the electric current to pass between london and new york. his answer was brief and to the point: "possibly one second." brunel was also as clear-sighted; he pointed to the _great eastern_ that he was then building, and said, "mr. field, there is the ship to lay the cable." eight years later it was used for that purpose. before a company was formed he addressed a letter to lord clarendon, then foreign secretary, and the answer to it was a request for a personal interview. professor morse was in london, and he went with mr. field to the foreign office, where they remained for over an hour. lord clarendon seemed to be at once interested, and among the questions asked was, "but suppose you do not succeed, that you make the attempt and fail, your cable lost at the bottom of the ocean, then what will you do?" "charge it to profit and loss and go to work to lay another," was the answer. lord clarendon on parting desired that the requests made should be put in writing, and spoke words of encouragement. the atlantic telegraph company was organized december , . it was decided that for this work $ , , must be raised. mr. field put his name down for $ , ( shares). he counted upon aid from america, and did not intend to hold this large amount of stock individually. as more money was subscribed than had been called for, but eighty-eight shares were allotted to him. this was fortunate, for on his return to new york he was able to dispose of but twenty-one shares. mr. george saward wrote to _the electrician_ on the th of march, : "mr. field in starting the atlantic telegraph company took upon his own account eighty-eight shares of £ each. upon all of these he paid into the coffers of the company in cash the first deposit of £ , , and upon sixty-seven of them he paid the entire amount of calls, amounting to £ , . this i am in a position to verify. a great number of these have been sold at a loss; but mr. field is still the largest holder of shares in the company paid up in cash." among the original subscribers in england were lady byron and thackeray, and in america archbishop hughes. mr. field sailed for america on december th, and arrived in new york on christmas day. on december d the senate had requested president pierce, "if not incompatible with the public interest, to communicate such information as he may have concerning the present condition and prospects of a proposed plan for connecting by submarine wires the magnetic telegraph lines on this continent and europe," and on december th mr. pierce sent to the senate the letter that had been addressed to him on december th by the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company. the substance of this letter was that "the contracts have been made for the manufacture of a submarine telegraphic cable to connect the continents of europe and america." ... that "it is the desire of the directors to secure to the government of the united states equal privileges with those stipulated for by the british government." ... that "the british government shall have priority in the conveyance of their messages over all others, subject to the exception only of the government of the united states, in the event of their entering into an arrangement with the telegraph company similar in principle to that of the british government, in which case the messages of the two governments shall have priority in the order in which they arrive at the station." ... "her majesty's government engages to furnish the aid of ships to make what soundings may still be considered needful, or to verify those already taken, and favorably to consider any request that may be made to furnish aid by their vessels in laying down the cable." ... "to avoid failure in laying the cable, it is desirable to use every precaution, and we therefore have the honor to request that you will make such recommendation to congress as will secure authority to detail a steamship for this purpose, so that the glory of accomplishing what has been justly styled 'the crowning enterprise of the age' may be divided between the greatest and freest governments on the face of the globe." the bill was drawn by mr. seward, and was "an act to expedite telegraphic communication for the uses of the government in its foreign intercourse." the great contest over its passage was not until early in the next year, . the suggestion made to the st. john's _courier_ in by bishop mullock, and which mr. gisborne had tried to carry out, had not been lost sight of, as the following letter shows: "treasury chambers, _ th november, _. "_sir,_--with reference to your letter of the th instant requesting that directions should be given for permitting british mail packets between liverpool and the united stales to receive and throw overboard off cape race and off queenstown cases containing telegraphic dispatches, to be picked up by the telegraph company's own vessels, i am commanded by the lords commissioners of her majesty's treasury to acquaint you that their lordships have stated to the lords of the admiralty that after communicating with mr. cunard as to the feasibility of the plan, and receiving from him an assurance that it might be carried into effect without in any way retarding the regular mail service, they are of the opinion that the necessary directions may be given for this purpose, subject to the following conditions: " . that the mail steamers shall not be delayed. " . that they shall not be required to alter the course they would otherwise have taken. " . that no responsibility shall attach to their ship or to the government. " . that the companies shall make such arrangements in reference to the receipt and dispatch of messages as shall be satisfactory to the treasury, in order to secure equal advantages to all persons using the telegraph. "i am, sir, "your obedient servant, "c. l. trevelyan." in a new york paper of july , , is this telegram: "from the steamship _persia_, "off cape race, newfoundland, "_saturday_, july th, p.m. "we have thus far had a very pleasant passage and expect to reach liverpool next friday. all well and all in good spirits. "cyrus w. field." and below the telegram this was added: "this feat would seem to demonstrate the entire practicability of obtaining news from the atlantic steamers as they pass cape race, and should the atlantic telegraph cable fail from any cause, we understand that the telegraph company will make effective arrangements to carry something of this kind into operation." chapter vi the first cable (continued) ( ) the following cable message was sent to mr. field by sir james anderson on march , , the twenty-fifth anniversary of "ocean telegraphy": "it cannot fail to gratify you, and should astonish your guests, to realize the amazing growth of your ocean child; sixty thousand miles of cable, costing about twenty million pounds sterling, having been laid since your energy initiated the first long cable. distance has no longer anything to do with commerce. the foreign trade of all civilized nations is now becoming only an extended home trade; all the old ways of commerce are changed or changing, creating amongst all nations a common interest in the welfare of each other. to have been the pioneer _par excellence_ in this great work should be most gratifying to yourself and your family, and no one can take from you this proud position." it would have seemed a strange prophecy if the above had been predicted in , when it was declared that the object of the atlantic telegraph company was "to continue the existing line of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company to ireland, by making or causing to be made a submarine telegraph cable for the atlantic." at the close of the year the contracts for the manufacture of the cable were signed. messrs. glass, elliott & co. agreed to make one-half, and r. s. newall & co., of liverpool, the other. both sections were to be finished and ready to be laid on june , , although the time fixed upon for the sailing of the fleet was to be as nearly as possible at the end of july, in accordance with the advice contained in a letter written in march, : "perhaps it would be wise for the steamers not to join cables until after the th of july. i think between that time and the th of august the state of both sea and air is usually in the most favorable condition possible; and that is the time which my investigations indicate as the most favorable for laying down the wire. i recommend it and wish you good-luck. yours, m. f. maury." the english government had responded at once to the request of the atlantic telegraph company, and a ship was promised with which to help lay the cable, and on mr. field's return home he asked the american government for the same aid. he landed from the steamship _baltic_ on the th of december; on the th he went to washington; next we hear of him in newfoundland, and then back in washington early in the new year. mr. seward referred to this time in his speech at auburn in august, : "it remained to engage the consent and the activity of the governments of great britain and the united states. that was all that remained. such consent and activity on the part of some one great nation of europe was all that remained needful for columbus when he stood ready to bring a new continent forward as a theatre of the world's civilization. but in each case the effort was the most difficult of all." the more liberal men in both houses at washington were from the beginning in favor of the cable bill, and worked untiringly for its passage. the president and secretary of state, desiring to remain friendly to both sides, took no active part in the discussion. mr. field talked with almost every member of congress, and tried to persuade those who were opposed to him to drop their petty objections and think only of the greatness of the work. extracts from a washington newspaper of january , , give some idea of other trials to which he was subjected. on the arrival of the steamship _arago_ it was published that "great dissatisfaction exists in london at the manner in which the atlantic telegraph company has been gotten up," and that "a new company has been formed to construct a submarine telegraph direct to the shores of the united states." he answered: "to this i may add that the object of this movement at this time is well understood by those who know the parties promoting it. i believe no such company can have been really organized in london as represented, because none of my letters by the same steamer from directors and parties largely interested even allude to such a movement, which must of necessity have been made public and well known to them if true. it cannot be believed that capitalists in london or elsewhere can now be found to take stock in a submarine line of telegraph of over three thousand miles in length, passing over the banks of newfoundland or across the deep waters of the gulf stream, when it was by great exertion that subscriptions were obtained to a line of little more than one-half of that length, and that, too, upon a route the practicability of which had already been fully demonstrated by actual survey to be possible. cyrus w. field." on the th of february the atlantic telegraph bill passed the house by a majority of nineteen; but it was not until the d of march that it passed the senate, by a majority of but one, and then it was said to be unconstitutional. mr. field sought caleb cushing, the attorney-general, and begged him to examine the bill and give his opinion. it was favorable. the date affixed to the bill is the d of march, but it was not until the morning of the th at ten o'clock that the president put his name to it as mr. field stood by his side. this was, therefore, one of the last official acts of president pierce. the government at washington had now united with that of great britain in agreeing to give all that was asked. the frigate _niagara_, the largest and finest ship of our navy, was ordered to england. the new york _herald_ of saturday, april th, says: "the performance of the vessel and of her machinery has fully come up to the most sanguine expectations. she is now on her way to london. by the recent news from england we learn that the british authorities have detailed three steamers to assist in laying the submarine cable and make soundings along the route. the _agamemnon_, a ninety-gun ship, in connection with the niagara will take the cable on board." very little rest was allowed him on his return from washington--but two weeks at his home. he sailed for liverpool on the th of march, leaving his wife with a baby four days old. he remained in england barely a fortnight; he was at home on the d of april, and on the th of july he was a passenger on the steamship _persia_, once more bound for england. early in july the _niagara_ had received her share of the cable from the manufactory of messrs. newall & co., and the _agamemnon_ hers from the works of messrs. glass, elliott & co. almost immediately on his arrival he was a guest at a _fête champêtre_ given by sir culling eardley, at belvidere, near erith. following is the card of invitation: _sir culling eardley requests the company of_ =cyrus w. field, esq.,= _at belvidere, on thursday, july the d, on the occasion of the departure of the electrical telegraph cable for the atlantic ocean. messrs. glass, elliott & co., the contractors for the cable, also request the honor of_ =cyrus w. field, esq.'s= _company at dinner with the directors and friends of the atlantic telegraph company, the officers and crew of h.m.s._ agamemnon,_ and the artisans of the cable_. _an early answer is requested to sir culling eardley, belvidere, erith._ it was at this _fête_ that he read this note: "washington, _ d july, _. "_my dear sir,_--accidental circumstances which i need not detail prevented your kind letter of the th ultimo from being brought to my notice until this morning. i now hasten to say in reply that i shall feel myself much honored should the first message (as you propose) sent across the atlantic by the submarine telegraph be from queen victoria to the president of the united states, and i need not assure you he will endeavor to answer it in a spirit and manner becoming the great occasion. "yours very respectfully, "james buchanan. "to cyrus w. field, esq." the following account is copied from a letter written to the london _times_ on august , : "during the progress of the _agamemnon_ to the downs the mechanical appliances for regulating the delivery of the cable into the sea were kept continually in motion by the small engine on board, which is connected with them; the sheaves and gearing worked with great facility and precision, and so quietly that at a short distance from them their motion could scarcely be heard. "the strength of the girders which carry the bearing of the entire apparatus, and which to the eye of a person unskilled in the practical working of this description of machinery may seem at first to be unduly ponderous, was found to contribute greatly to the easy motion and satisfactory steadiness of this most important agent in the success of the undertaking. so soon as the _agamemnon_ had passed the track of the submarine company's cable between dover and calais in order to avoid the possibility of its being injured by the laying or hauling up of another line at right angles to it, the experiments commenced. a -inch shell was attached to the end of a spare coil of the atlantic cable for the purpose of sinking it rapidly with a strain upon it to the bottom, and was then cast into the sea, drawing after it a sufficient quantity of slack to enable it to take hold of the ground, and so set the machinery in motion. "the paying out then commenced at the rate of two, three, and four knots an hour respectively. the ship was then stopped, and the cable was hauled up from the bottom of the sea with great facility by connecting the small engine to the driving pinion geared to the sheaves. when the end was brought up to the surface it was found that the shell had broken away from the loop by which it had been fastened for the purpose of lowering it. "the exterior coating of tar had been completely rubbed off by being drawn through the sandy bottom of the sea, and attached to the iron coating of the cable were some weeds and several small crabs which came up with it to the surface. "on the following day a length of cable was run out and hauled in with perfect success opposite the isle of wight. "the speed was increased in this case to four knots. during the afternoon of the same day a length was run out, having fastened to the end of it a log of timber, and having been towed with a mile and a half of cable, was coiled in again with success. "on wednesday about half-way between the land's end and the coast of ireland another length was run out at the rate of six and a half knots per hour, and subsequently hauled in. the _agamemnon_ then steered for cork, and reached queenstown harbor at four o'clock on thursday morning, all on board being more than ever satisfied at the success of the enterprise." the new york _herald_ of august th published a letter from its special correspondent on board the _niagara_, and from it these extracts are made: "from the deck of our ship we can see a small, sandy cove which has been selected as the place for the landing of the shore end of the cable, and a hundred yards from which a temporary tent has been erected for the batteries and other telegraphic instruments. in front of it is displayed an attempt at the stars and stripes; but it is only an attempt, and it would require one of the most shrewd-guessing yankees that ever lived in or came out of connecticut to tell what it was intended for. it will soon be replaced by another of a more unmistakable kind, however, and that ought to be sufficient to satisfy the most exacting patriot.... "we arrived and anchored in valentia bay on the evening of the th, but at too late an hour to commence operations other than i have described. the work of landing the shore part of the cable was deferred, therefore, until the following morning at eight o'clock.... "on the shore there were about two thousand persons, the whole population of the place and large contributions from miles around, waiting there from seven in the morning till seven in the evening for the arrival of the fleet of cable boats whose progress they had watched with so much anxiety and impatience. it was five o'clock when we started, and never before was such a scene presented in valentia bay, and the poorest spectator there, though he could not tell what strange agency it was that lay in the cable, understood what it was intended to effect, and his face beamed with joy as he heard his comrades say that it brought them nearer to that great land that had so generously stretched out the helping hand to their starving countrymen.... among those on shore are the lord lieutenant of ireland; lord morpeth, of anti-slavery proclivities; lord hillsborough; the knight of kerry; and nearly all the gentlemen connected with the enterprise. but here comes the cable in the hands of the crew of the _niagara's_ boat, who rush up the beach with it dripping with water, for in their haste to carry it ashore they have to wade knee-deep through the water. mr. cyrus w. field is there beside lord morpeth, or, as he is now called, lord carlisle, and as captain pennock comes up in advance of his men with the cable he introduces him. there is no time for the passage of formalities, and the introduction and the meeting are therefore free from them. "'i am most happy to see you, captain,' says lord morpeth, and the captain most appropriately replies: 'this, sir, is the betrothal of england and america, and i hope in twenty days the marriage will be consummated.' "the crowd now press around, all eagerness to help in pulling up the cable; and when the work is through those who have been fortunate enough to put their hands to it show the marks of the tar to those who have failed in the attempt, as a proof of their success. by dint of pulling and hauling they get it into the trench in which it is to be laid, and take up the end to the top of a little hill, where they secure it by running it around a number of strong stakes driven fast into the earth and placed in the form of a circle. this is the centre of the site marked out for a house in which the batteries and instruments are to be put, and which will be used as a temporary station till a better and more substantial one can be erected. when the cable was placed here and the enthusiasm of the people had somewhat subsided, the rector of the parish made a prayer.... "the lord lieutenant of ireland closed his speech with these words: 'and now, my friends, as there can be no project or undertaking which ought not to receive the approbation and applause of all people, all join with me in giving three hearty cheers.' "three cheers were given with a will; but it was not enough, and they cheered and cheered until they were obliged to give up from exhaustion. 'three cheers,' said lord carlisle, 'are not enough--they are what they give on common occasions. now, for the success of the atlantic cable, i must have at least one dozen.' the crowd responded with the full number, and cheered the following: 'the lord lieutenant of ireland'; 'the united states of america'; 'mr. cyrus w. field.' mr. field spoke as follows: 'ladies and gentlemen, words cannot express to you the feelings within this heart. it beats with affection towards every man, woman, and child that hears me; and if ever, on the other side of the water, one of you present yourself at my door and say you had a hand in this, i promise you an american welcome. what god hath joined together let no man put asunder.' "and more cheers were given for the following: for 'the sailor'; for 'yankee doodle'; for 'the officers and sailors on board the ships that are intended to lay the cable'; 'the queen'; 'the president of the united states'; 'the american navy.'" the sun set on the evening of august th with the shore end of the cable safely landed, but the ships' anchors were not weighed until early the next morning. five miles from shore a slight fault occurred, which was soon remedied. the knight of kerry sent this note to mr. field. "valentia, _ th august, _. "_my dear sir,_--fearing i may not be able to get on board the _niagara_, i write a line to thank you for the most valuable gift you made me of the piece of cable, as i have just learned from my friend crosby. "yet i must say you owed me some compensation for having stolen the hearts of my wife and children and of every friend whom i was guilty of bringing into contact with you. i believe if you were obliged to make similar compensation for all the delinquencies you have been guilty of in this way, your whole cable, great as it is, would scarcely suffice. i know the inroad you have made into the lord lieutenant's affections would require a long bit of it. i was sincerely sorry to hear from crosby that you were again suffering, but i reflect with satisfaction that probably the voyage, even with its accompanying excitement, is the best remedy within your reach. "yours most sincerely, "fitzgerald, knight of kerry." all went most successfully, and although the excitement was still at fever heat on board the _niagara_, the probability of soon meeting the _agamemnon_ in mid-ocean and following her to the shores of newfoundland was most hopefully discussed, and this message was given to the press: "valentia, _monday_, _august _, p.m. "the work of laying down the atlantic telegraph cable is going on up to the present time as satisfactorily as its best friends can desire. nearly miles have now been successfully laid down into the sea. "the depth of water into which the cable is now being submerged is about fathoms, or about two miles. the transition from the shallow to the greater depth was effected without difficulty. the signals are everything an electrician could desire. the ships are sailing with a moderate fair breeze, and paying out at the rate of five miles per hour. messages are being instantly interchanged between the ships and the shore. "all are well on board, in excellent spirits, and hourly becoming more and more trustful of success. "william whitehouse, electrician. "george saward, secretary." at nine o'clock the same evening, without any apparent cause, the cable ceased working. at twelve o'clock the electric current returned, and it was with a feeling of intense relief that all went to their berths. this satisfaction was short lived. at a quarter before four came the cry, "stop her! back her!" and then the words, "the cable has parted." the flags of the ship were put at half-mast, and the fleet returned to valentia. this expedition had cost the atlantic telegraph company $ , , and on august th robert stephenson wrote: "the atlantic cable question is a far more difficult matter than those who have undertaken it are disposed to believe. the subject has occupied much of my thoughts, and as yet i must confess i do not see my way through it. before the ships left this country with the cable i publicly predicted as soon as they got into deep water a signal failure. it was in fact inevitable." the first words of greeting were more cheering: "valentia, _ th august, _. "_my dear sir_,--in all our disappointment at the temporary check of the cable, our first thought has been about you. but i was very glad to hear yesterday from the officers of the _cyclops_ that you were, as indeed i might have judged from your character, plucky and well. it is a great comfort to think that the experience that has been obtained in this, the first attempt, must immensely improve the chances of success on the next occasion. all here desire to be affectionately remembered to you. "ever yours, very sincerely, "fitzgerald, knight of kerry." it was not proposed to abandon the enterprise, but to postpone work for a year. the ships discharged their freight of cable, and the _niagara_ returned to america, and before mr. field left england the directors voted to increase the capital of the company and to order seven hundred miles of new cable. the news that met him upon his arrival at new york was most depressing. the panic of had just swept over the country, and while he was at sea his firm suspended, owing over six hundred thousand dollars, and with debts due to it, from firms which had already suspended, of between three and four hundred thousand dollars. he settled at once with his creditors, by giving them goods from his store, or notes for the amount in full at twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four months, with seven per cent. interest added. the first notes were paid at maturity and the other two some months before they were due, the holders discounting the interest. on the st of november, , professor francis lieber wrote: "i wish to possess all the materials i can procure regarding the history and statistics of the subatlantic telegraph. it will be the most striking illustration of the increasing tendency of all civilization, that of uniting what was separate, and of the pervading principle in the household of humanity, that of mutual dependence. may heaven bless your undertaking, and may the next months of june or july bring us the first message from old england, outrunning the sun by five hours and a half." the secretary of the navy said to him in parting on the th of december, "there, i have given you all you asked." this was that the _niagara_ and the _susquehanna_ might form part of the cable expedition of , and that mr. william e. everett might again fill the position of chief engineer. on the evening of december st professor lieber wrote: "this may be the last letter or note i write in the old year, and i cannot conclude it without wishing from all my heart that mdccclviii may be called in the future school chronologies the telegraph year." chapter vii a fleeting triumph ( ) in the fall of the directors of the atlantic telegraph company, realizing that it would be to their advantage to have mr. field take general charge and supervision of all the arrangements and preparations for the next laying of the cable, sent him an earnest request to come to england. it was in response to this that he sailed on the th of january, , in the steamship _persia_, arriving in england on the th. on the th the company passed resolutions offering him one thousand pounds besides his travelling expenses. this he declined, accepting only his expenses. at a meeting of the board on the th of february the following resolution was passed; it was offered by mr. samuel gurney: "that the warm and hearty thanks of this company be tendered to mr. cyrus w. field, of new york, for the great services he has rendered to the atlantic telegraph company, his untiring zeal, energy, and devotion from its first formation, and for the great personal talent which he has ever displayed and exerted to the utmost in the advancement of its interests." in seconding this resolution, which was unanimously passed, mr. brooking told from his own knowledge of what "mr. field's most determined perseverance, coupled with an amount of fortitude that has seldom been equalled," had done for the company in newfoundland in securing to it the exclusive right to land on the shores of that island. the report ends with these words: "the directors cannot close their observations to the shareholders without bearing their warm and cordial testimony to the untiring zeal, talent, and energy that have been displayed on behalf of this enterprise by mr. cyrus w. field, of new york, to whom mainly belongs the honor of having practically developed the possibility and of having brought together the material means for carrying out the great idea of connecting europe and america by a submarine telegraph. "he has crossed the atlantic ocean no less than six times since december, , for the sole purpose of rendering most valuable aid to this undertaking. he has also visited the british north american colonies on several occasions, and obtained concessions and advantages that are highly appreciated by the directors, and he has successfully supported the efforts of the directors in obtaining an annual subsidy for twenty-five years from the government of the united states of america, the grant of the use of their national ships in assisting to lay the cable in , and also to assist in the same service this year, and his constant and assiduous attention to everything that could contribute to the welfare of the company from its first formation has materially contributed to promote many of its most necessary and important arrangements. he is now again in england, his energy and confidence in the undertaking entirely unabated; and, at the earnest request of the board, he has consented to remain in this country for the purpose of affording to the directors the benefit of his great experience and judgment as general manager of the business of the company connected with the next expedition. "this arrangement will doubtless prove as pleasing to the shareholders as it is agreeable and satisfactory to the directors. "by order of the directors. "george saward, secretary." his friend and pastor, the rev. william adams, d.d., wrote to him on the th of march: "_my dear friend_,--i do not know whether your homeward thoughts ever include your minister, but mine very frequently traverse the sea towards you and your noble enterprise.... we have all watched with great interest the noble bearing of your good wife in all the sacrifices which she makes for you and the cause you so gallantly represent. these are things not so much thought of by the great world; but after all they are the chief elements in that great price which we are compelled to pay for everything good and great.... "the _niagara_ has sailed, and now all eyes are on you and on her. by-the-way, we all made a visit to the noble ship a week ago, and filled her full with a cargo of blessings and good wishes.... "we watch the papers with great interest to find anything which bears on the success of your undertaking; and feel a personal and national pride at every mention which reflects honor on you and your laudable exertions.... "with every good wish for you personally and for your great undertaking, i am, "yours very sincerely, "w. adams." the difficulties encountered by the newfoundland and the atlantic cable companies will be best understood by giving part of a letter from mr. (later known as sir) edward archibald: "new york, _march , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i am in receipt of yours of the th. i did not write you by last mail, as i had no further intelligence to communicate. "since i last wrote hyde has been here and returned again to nova scotia. i conferred with him, and have been in correspondence with our friends at halifax as to what was best to be done to avert the threatened loss of our exclusive privileges; for the bill is not _finally_ disallowed, and i do think that if a deputation of your directors waited on lord stanley and brought the matter under the reconsideration of her majesty's government we might yet succeed in inducing them to confirm the act. the ground on which i based our claim to the exclusive right in nova scotia was that our project, being in the nature of an _invention_ (for its practicability is not yet fully tested), an invention of a most costly nature, in perfecting which an expenditure exceeding perhaps twice or thrice the _estimated_ cost might have to be incurred, we were justly entitled to such protection in the nature of a patent right, for a limited period, as would secure to us the reimbursement of the outlay and a fair remuneration for risk incurred, and that others who might lie by until we had, after repeated failures, achieved success, ought not (availing themselves of all our experience and expenditure) to be allowed _for a certain period_ to come into competition with us. such a privilege as this, moreover, could not be abused, inasmuch as the public who are to use the telegraph (represented by the governments of great britain and the united states) reserve to themselves the right to regulate the tolls. "a telegraph under the atlantic ocean is vastly different from a submarine telegraph between england and the continent. it is _in effect_ an invention (if it succeeds) and entitled to the same protection, at least, as would be granted to the invention of a new mode of propelling ships, or as is granted every day to the fabrication of such trifles as patent boot-jacks or corkscrews. "i really think that, as there is a _locus penitentiæ_ and a new administration, it may be well to have an interview with the colonial secretary on the subject.... "my wife and family are fairly well. they unite in kind regards to you and ardent wishes for your success. "most truly yours, "e. m. archibald." this subject seems to have been often agitated during the years that follow. on april th, , mr. field writes to mr. saward: "allow me to introduce to you my esteemed friend, e. m. archibald, esq., h.m. consul for new york. mr. archibald was one of the earliest, and has proved himself one of the best friends of the atlantic telegraph.... mr. archibald can give you much valuable information in regard to newfoundland and all the british north american provinces, and be of great service to you in your negotiations with the english government. "mr. jesse hoyt telegraphs me from halifax that fifty memorials to lord palmerston in favor of government giving aid to the atlantic telegraph company have already been forwarded from nova scotia, and that more will go. i have been writing yesterday and to-day to my friends in canada, prince edward island, new brunswick, nova scotia, and newfoundland, urging them to get up and send petitions to the english government in our favor.... we can and we will succeed in connecting ireland and newfoundland by means of a good submarine telegraph cable." shortly after the united states frigate _niagara_ sailed for england a new york paper published this short notice: "she goes not to assist in the assertion of resisted claims, in the vindication of outraged rights. her task is a more peaceful and a more glorious one. she leaves our shores on a mission of fraternity and good-will--the harbinger of union and brotherhood amongst nations, and one of the chief agents in an enterprise which is destined to do more towards the realization of a millennium of love amongst men than the efforts of all the diplomatists and missionaries are ever likely to accomplish." april and part of may were spent in preparation and putting the cable on board the two ships. on may th the fleet left for a trial trip in the bay of biscay, and on the th of june set sail from plymouth to meet again in mid-ocean. on november , , mr. field had suggested: "the two ends of the cable having been carefully joined together, the vessels will start in opposite directions, one towards ireland and the other towards newfoundland, uncoiling the cable and exchanging signals through it from ship to ship as they proceed. by this means the period ordinarily required for traversing the distance between the two coasts will be lessened by one-half, each vessel having only to cover eight hundred and twenty nautical miles in order to finish the task assigned to it. it is expected that the operation of laying the cable will be completed in about eight days from the time of its commencement." on friday the th of june, after encountering gales that at one time amounted almost to a cyclone, the two ships came together at their strange trysting place; but the splice was not made nor the parting said until the afternoon of saturday, july th. in making a splice the ships were connected by a hawser and lay one hundred fathoms apart; the time required for the work was usually two hours. three miles only were laid when the cable caught in the machinery of the _niagara_ and broke; a new splice was made, and again the ships parted. then forty miles were laid and the cable became suddenly lifeless and was reported broken. on monday, june th, the ships met for the third time in mid-ocean, and without waiting for any useless discussion they spliced the cable and once more set sail. one hundred, two hundred miles of cable went safely down into the sea, when again came a break, this time twenty feet from the stern of the _agamemnon_. it had been agreed that if after a hundred miles had been paid out a new mishap should occur, no further splice should be made, but that both ships should go back to ireland; and without loss of time the _niagara_ turned her head to the east and arrived at valentia on july th. this agreement had been made on june th, and it was a formal one, and was on account of the small amount of coal carried by the _agamemnon_. the board of directors met in london, and word was sent to ireland that it was proposed to "abandon the enterprise." a meeting was called for july th; mr. brown (afterwards sir william), of liverpool, would not attend, and sent this note: "trenton's hotel, _july , _. "_dear sir_,--we must all deeply regret our misfortune in not being able to lay the cable. i think there is nothing to be done but to dispose of what is left on the best terms we can. "yours very truly, "wm. brown. "the committee of the atlantic telegraph, broad street." mr. brooking, who had so warmly upheld mr. field at the meeting in february, resigned his office as vice-chairman, and left the room rather than listen to the request that another attempt be made. but the counsel of the majority prevailed, and on the th of july, without a parting cheer or a word of encouragement from those on shore, the expedition left ireland. on thursday, july th, in latitude ° ' north, longitude ° ' west, with a cloudy sky and a southeast wind, the splice was made at one p.m., and perfect signals passed through the whole length of the cable. five weeks later mr. field described this scene just before the splice was made: "i was standing on the deck of the _niagara_ in mid-ocean. the day was cold and cheerless, the air was misty, and the wind roughened the sea; and when i thought of all that we had passed through, of the hopes thus far disappointed, of the friends saddened by our reverses, of the few that remained to sustain us, i felt a load at my heart almost too heavy to bear, though my confidence was firm and my determination fixed." on the evening of the th the _niagara_ was fairly under way, and already the th of august was the day determined upon for her arrival at trinity bay. signals alone were used; they were constantly passed from ship to ship, and were understood by the electricians on board. the expression "the continuity is perfect" relieved the minds of the officers and those interested in the enterprise, but not the sailors. the _herald's_ special correspondent tells of this conversation: "'darn the continuity,' said an old sailor at the end of a scientific but rather foggy discussion which a number of his messmates had on the subject--'darn the continuity; i wish they would get rid of it altogether. it has caused a darned sight more trouble than the hull thing is worth. i say they ought to do without it and let it go. i believe they'd get the cable down if they didn't pay any attention to it. you see,' he went on, 'i was on the last exhibition' (expedition, he meant, but it was all the same, his messmates did not misapprehend his meaning), 'and i thought i'd never hear the end of it. they were always talking about it, and one night when we were out last year it was gone for two hours, and we thought that was the end of the affair and we would never hear of it again. but it came back, and soon after the cable busted. now, i tell you what, men, i'll never forget the night, i tell ye! we all felt we had lost our best friend, and i never heard the word continuity or contiguity mentioned but i was always afraid something was going to happen. and that's a fact.'" at twenty-one minutes past two on the afternoon of july th the _agamemnon_ signalled that she had passed her one-hundred-and-fifty-mile limit, and at twenty-four minutes of three the same was reported on the _niagara_. after this there could be no return for another splice; it must be either trinity bay or valentia for the _niagara_. a new complication was reported. the compasses were playing false. so soon as the _gorgon_ was told of this she offered to pilot the _niagara_, and she did so unfalteringly to the end, captain dayman remaining day and night on deck. at half-past five o'clock on the afternoon of july st the forward coil of cables on the main deck was exhausted and the coil below was attached. the quiet was intense while this change was made. only mr. everett, the chief engineer, was heard to speak. at other times it was not so: games were played, sales of stocks were made, and the telegraph stock rose and fell, varying with the reports received from the electrician's room. at seven a.m. on the morning of wednesday, august th, came the glad cry, "land ho!" and at half-past two in the afternoon the ships entered the "haven where they would be." that evening at eight mr. field left the _niagara_ to make arrangements for the landing that was to take place the next day. at half-past two on the morning of august th he waked the sleeping operators waiting in the telegraph-house, bay of bull's arms, with the words, "the cable is laid." this at first the men were unwilling to believe, but when they saw the lights on the vessels in the distance they dressed and came back with him to the shore, and two walked fifteen miles with the messages that were to be telegraphed to the unbelieving world. the paying out of the cable from the two ships had been carried on with such regularity that the one arrived at valentia and the other at trinity bay on the same day; by noon on the th of august this country was plunged into the wildest excitement. [illustration: valentia: landing the shore end of the cable, (from a lithograph)] these messages were sent to his wife and to his father: "trinity bay, newfoundland, _august , _. "mrs. cyrus w. field, east twenty-first street, new york: "arrived here yesterday. all well. the atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid. please telegraph me here immediately. cyrus w. field." "rev. dr. field, stockbridge, mass., _via_ pittsfield: "cable successfully laid. all well. "cyrus w. field." it may interest some readers to follow this message to stockbridge and see his family at the time of its delivery. his wife and children were passing the afternoon quietly, when all were startled by the appearance of his mother. almost breathless with excitement she exclaimed, "mary, the cable is laid. thomas, believest thou this?" not a word was spoken, but a silent prayer was the response. "to cyrus w. field: "your family is all at stockbridge and well. the joyful news arrived there thursday, and almost overwhelmed your wife. father rejoiced like a boy. mother was wild with delight. brothers, sisters, all were overjoyed. bells were rung, guns fired; children, let out of school, shouted, 'the cable is laid! the cable is laid!' the village was in a tumult of joy. my dear brother, i congratulate you. god bless you. david dudley field." the _evening post_ announced: success of the atlantic telegraph cable. arrival of the _niagara_ and _gorgon_ at trinity bay. statute miles long. not a single break! the atlantic telegraph cable is landing. and its leading editorial of the same day said: "such is the startling intelligence which reaches us just as we are going to press. we find it difficult to believe the report, for recent events have prepared us for a very different result, and yet the despatch comes to us through our regular agent, who would not deceive us. he may have been imposed upon, but that is quite unlikely. if the few coming hours shall confirm the inspiring tidings and the cable is landed and in working condition, all other events that may happen through the world on this day will be trifles. "to-morrow the hearts of the civilized world will beat to a single pulse, and from that time forth forevermore the continental divisions of the earth will in a measure lose those conditions of time and distance which now mark their relations one to the other. but such an event, like a dispensation of providence, should be first contemplated in silence." the message for the associated press was: "trinity bay, _august , _. "the atlantic telegraph fleet sailed from queenstown on saturday, july th. "they met in mid-ocean on wednesday, the th, and made the splice at p.m. on thursday, the th. they then separated, the _agamemnon_ and _valorous_ bound to valentia, ireland, and the _niagara_ and _gorgon_ for this place, where they arrived yesterday. "this morning the end of the cable will be landed. "it is sixteen hundred and ninety-eight nautical or nineteen hundred and fifty statute miles from the telegraph-house at the head of valentia harbor to the telegraph-house, bay of bull's arms, trinity bay. "for more than two-thirds of the distance the water is over two miles in depth. "the cable has been paid out from the _agamemnon_ at about the same speed as from the _niagara_. the electrical signals sent and received through the whole cable are perfect. the machinery for paying out the cable worked in the most satisfactory manner, and was not stopped for a single moment from the time the splice was made until we arrived here. "captain hudson, messrs. everett and woodhouse, the engineers, the electricians and officers of the ships, and in fact every man on board the telegraph fleet has exerted himself to the utmost to make the expedition successful. by the blessing of divine providence it has succeeded. "after the end of the cable is landed and connected with the land line of telegraph, and the _niagara_ has discharged some cargo belonging to the telegraph company, she will go to st. john's for coals, and then proceed at once to new york. cyrus w. field." next in order were the message to president buchanan and his reply: "u.s.s.f. 'niagara,' "trinity bay, newfoundland, _august , _. "to the president of the united states, washington, d.c.: "_dear sir_,--the atlantic telegraph cable on board the u.s.s.f. _niagara_ and h.m. steamer _agamemnon_ was joined in mid-ocean, thursday, july th, and has been successfully laid. "as soon as the two ends are connected with the land lines queen victoria will send a message to you, and the cable will be kept free until after your reply has been transmitted. "with great respect, i remain, "your obedient servant, "cyrus w. field." "bedford springs, pa., _august , _. "to cyrus w. field, esq., trinity bay: "_my dear sir_,--i congratulate you with all my heart upon the success of the great enterprise with which your name is so honorably connected. "under the blessing of divine providence i trust it may prove instrumental in promoting perpetual peace and friendship between kings and nations. i have not yet received the queen's despatch. "yours very respectfully, "james buchanan." captain hudson's telegram is given as it was written; it shows his simplicity of character and warm heart: "u. s. steam frigate 'niagara,' "bay of bull's arms, "trinity bay, newfoundland, _august , _. "_my dear eliza_,--god has been with us. the telegraphic cable is laid without accident, and to him be all the glory. "we are all well. "your ever-affectionate husband, "wm. l. hudson. "mrs. captain wm. l. hudson, mansion house, brooklyn, new york." mr. saward wrote from england immediately on the receipt of the news: "atlantic telegraph company, " old broad street, london, _august , _. "_my dear sir_,--at last the great work is done. i rejoice at it for the sake of humanity at large. i rejoice at it for the sake of our common nationalities, and last, but not least, for your personal sake i most heartily and sincerely rejoice with you, and congratulate you upon this happy termination to the fearful anxiety, the continuous and oppressive labor, and the never-ceasing, sleepless energy which the successful accomplishment of this vast and noble enterprise has entailed on you. never was man more devoted, never did man's energies better deserve success than yours have done. may you in the bosom of your family reap those rewards of repose and affection which will be doubly sweet from the reflection that you return to them after having been (under providence) the main and leading principle in conferring a vast and enduring benefit on mankind. "if the contemplation of future fame has a charm for you, you may well indulge in the reflection, for the name of cyrus field will now go onward to immortality as long as that of the atlantic telegraph shall be known to mankind. "it has been such a shock to us here that we have hardly realized it at present. "i really think some of the people who come here don't believe it yet.... "in haste, yours truly, "george saward. "cyrus w. field, esq., gramercy park, new york." dr. adams wrote: "medford, _august , _. "_my dear mrs. field_,--what shall i say to you? words can give no idea of my enthusiasm. as your pastor i have known somewhat of your own private griefs and trials, and the sacrifices which you have made for the success of your noble husband. now the hour of reward and coronation has come for him and for you. i wrote to him yesterday, directing to new york, to be ready for him when he came. i was at andover when the news came, in company with several hundred clergymen. we cheered, and we sang praises to god. i was so glad that your husband inserted in his first despatch a recognition of divine providence in his success. "i sprang to my feet; i told the company that i was the pastor of mr. field, and that the last thing which he had said to me before starting was in request that we should _pray for him_; and then i had an opportunity to pay a tribute to his perseverance, his energy, and his genius, which i did, you may be sure, in no measured terms. "many doubted the truth of the news. i hastened to boston, and saw the superintendent of the telegraph wire, who told me the despatches had passed from mr. field to you and to your father. this satisfied me that all was right.... "we think of nothing else and speak of nothing else. while the _public_ are rejoicing over the national aspects of this great success, our joyful thoughts are most of all with those private delights which are playing through the heart of your husband, his wife, and her children. "tell grace that i wish i had been with the boys when they ran to ring the bell. i would have swung it lustily, and thrown up my hat with them, as happy a boy as the best of them. "please tell your good father and mother that they are not forgotten by me in this general rejoicing. your husband's name will live in universal honor and gratitude. god bless you and yours in all times and in all ways; so prays "your affectionate friend and pastor, "w. adams. "a letter i have just received from professor smith, in new york, says: 'genius has again triumphed over science in the success of the telegraph.'" these extracts are made from a speech delivered at fishkill-on-the-hudson, new york, on the evening of august th, by the rev. henry ward beecher. this meeting was said to have been the first public celebration of the laying of the cable across the atlantic: " ...we are gathered to express our joy at the apparent consummation of one of those enterprises which are peculiar, i had almost said to our generation--certainly to the century in which we live. do you reflect that there are men among you to-night, men here, who lived and were not very young before there was a steamboat on our waters? ever since i can remember steamboats have always been at hand. there are men here who lived before they beat the waters with their wheels. and since my day railroads have been invented. i remember the first one on this land very distinctly. it was after i had graduated from college, and i am not a patriarch yet. it is within our remembrance that the telegraph itself was invented, and by a mere citizen of ours in this vicinity. all these pre-eminent methods of civilization and commerce and economy have been within the remembrance of young men--all but one within the remembrance of quite young men. now this is not so much an invention as an enlarged application.... "i thought all the way in riding down here to-night how strange it will seem to have that silent cord lying in the sea, perfectly noiseless, perfectly undisturbed by war or by storm, by the paddles of steamers, by the thunders of navies above it, far down beyond all anchors' reach, beyond all plumbing interference. there will be earthquakes that will shake the other world, and the tidings of them will come under the silent sea, and we shall know them upon the hither side, but the cord will be undisturbed, though it bears earthquakes to us. markets will go up and fortunes will be made down in the depths of the sea. the silent highway will carry it without noise to us. fortunes will go down and bankruptcies spread dismay, and the silent road will bear this message without a jar and without disturbance. without voice or speech it will communicate thunders and earthquakes and tidings of war and revolutions, and all those things that fill the air with clamor. they will come quick as thought from the scene of their first fever and excitement, flash quick as thought and silent on their passage, and then break out on this side with fresh tremor and anxiety. to me the functions of that wire seem, in some sense, sublime. itself impassive, quiet, still, moving either hemisphere at its extremities by the tidings that are to issue out from it.... "we are called, and shall be increasingly so, to mark the advantages which are to be derived from the connection of these continents by this telegraphic wire. to my mind the prominent advantage is this: it is bringing mankind close together, it is bringing nations nearer together. and i augur the best results to humanity from this. the more intercourse nations have with each other, other things being equal, the greater the tendency to establish between them peace and good-will, and just as they are brought together will they contribute to advance the day of universal brotherhood. " ...that which is spoken at o'clock in london will be known by us at o'clock in the morning here, according to our time.... it is no longer in her own bosom that france can keep her secrets. it is no longer in her own race that russia can keep her thoughts and her plans. it is no longer in the glorious old british islands that their commercial intelligence can be confined. it is wafted round and round the globe. in less than an hour, whenever this system shall be completed, the world will be enlightened quicker than by the sun; quicker than by the meteor's flash. what is known in one place will be known in all places; the globe will have but one ear, and that ear will be everywhere.... "i scarcely dare any longer think what shall be. i remember the derision with which whitney's plan for a railroad to the mississippi was hailed. i remember there was scarce a paper in the country that did not feel called upon to talk of the advisability of sending him to the lunatic asylum. i remember the time when the project of a steamer crossing the atlantic was scientifically declared to be impracticable.... i remember when the first steamer crossed the atlantic, and i have been told, though the story may be too good to be true, that the first steamer that made the passage to new york carried with her the newspaper containing the news of the impossibility of making the voyage, by dr. lardner.... "while thus we are enlarging the facilities of action, let us see to it that we maintain, at home, domestic virtue, individual intelligence--that we spread our common schools, that we multiply our newspapers throughout the land, that we make books more plenty than the leaves of the forest trees. let every man among us be a reader and thinker and owner, and so he will be an actor. and when all men through the globe are readers, when all men through the globe are thinkers, when all men through the globe are actors--are actors because they think right--when they speak nation to nation, when from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same there is not alone a free intercourse of thought but one current of heart, virtue, religion, love--then the earth will have blossomed and consummated its history." archbishop hughes sent this note: "long branch, _august , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--under the blessing of almighty god you have accomplished the work. but your merit, if not your human glory, would have been the same in my estimation if you had returned to us what they would call a disappointed man in whose scales of judgment enthusiasm had preponderated over 'common-sense.' "yours faithfully, "john, archbishop of new york." the letters which follow do not require explanation; the one from george peabody & co. shows that mr. field did not profit largely by the success of the cable: "st. john's, _august , _. "_my dear sir,_--allow me, among many more worthy, to offer you my very sincere congratulations on the successful completion of the great enterprise which you have labored with so much and such admirable perseverance to carry through, in the midst of so many hinderances and discouragements. "it would give me very great pleasure if you would, during your stay in st. john's, make my house your home or place of abode. i am aware that you have many friends and engagements, but as i have no family you could have two rooms entirely at your disposal, and i would make my hours suit your convenience.... "i am, my dear sir, "very truly yours, "edward field, "bishop of newfoundland." "st. john's, _august , _. "_my dear mr. field,_--allow me to congratulate you most sincerely on the accomplishment of the wonderful work you so nobly carried out in the midst of almost insurmountable difficulties. "god from time to time sends men like you and columbus for the good of humanity, men with the head to conceive and the heart to execute the grand ideas with which he inspires them. human energies alone never could surmount the difficulties and disappointments you encountered in the projection and execution of this gigantic enterprise. god destined you for the work and made you the instrument. you have now completed what columbus commenced, and posterity will link your names together. that god may grant you many happy years to witness the benefits you have conferred on the great human family is the sincere prayer of your humble servant and friend, "+john i. mullock." "london, _ th august, _. "_my dear sir,_--i wrote you by last mail, since when all continues favorable, and i expect, long ere you receive this, messages will be regularly sent through the cable. many things remain to be done, and there is a great want of efficient, practical workingmen, as you know, in the board, but lampson still keeps at it, and all will, i hope, come right in the end. "i have a letter from mr. peabody, who says: 'i sincerely congratulate all parties interested in the great project, and very particularly our friends lampson and field. in the accomplishment of his grand object i can only compare the feelings of the latter to columbus in the discovery of the new world.' "i hope the reaction from the desponding state in which we parted will not be too great for your health, and now i beg of you not to forget our conversation when last here. "the market for shares is weaker; several have been on the market. i sold one for you at £ , but could not go on. to-day they have sold at £ to £ , and later they were firmer at £ ; but seeing how the market was i withdrew and would not offer at any price. if i am able to go on at £ or more i shall feel it for your interest to do so to a moderate extent, for i feel that you should embrace the opportunity to reduce your interest, which is too large. i still hope to sail on the st, but it must depend upon mr. peabody's health. "most truly, "j. s. morgan." _ariel._ "london, _ th august, _. "cyrus w. field, esq., new york, "_dear sir,_--we beg to advise by the present the sale of three of your atlantic telegraph company shares, _viz._, two at £ each prior to the successful laying of the cable, and one subsequent thereto at £ , less brokerage. the first cash d august, and the remaining two cash th inst., which please note. "yours truly, "geo. peabody & co." in the life of longfellow, at page , is given this entry from his diary: "august th. go to town with the boys. flags flying and bells ringing to celebrate the laying of the telegraph." and on the th, in writing to mr. sumner, he says: "you have already rejoiced at the success of the atlantic telegraph--the great news of the hour, the year, the century. the papers call field 'cyrus the great.'" these words express the feeling that pervaded the whole country: and in order to contrast it with the days and months that had just passed, this article, published in the new york _herald_ of august th, is given: "success or failure--a contrast "many terse and witty things have been said and written in all ages to show the difference with which the same enterprise is viewed when it results in success and when it results in failure. we have never had any better illustration of this than we now have in connection with the great enterprise of the age. after the first and second attempts to lay the atlantic cable had failed, wiseacres shook their heads in sympathetic disapprobation of mr. field, and said, 'what a fool he was!' it was evident to them all along that the thing could never succeed, and they could not understand why a sensible, clear-headed man like field would risk his whole fortune in such a railroad-to-the-moon undertaking. if he had ventured a third of it or a half, there might be some excuse for him, but to have placed it all on the hazard of a die where the chances were a hundred to one against him--worse even than the wall street lottery conducted under the name of the stock exchange--was an evidence of folly and absurdity which they could not overlook and for which he deserved to suffer. "now all that is changed. midnight has given place to noon. the sun shines brightly in the heavens and the shadows of the night have passed away and are forgotten. failures have been only the stepping-stones to success the most brilliant. the cable is laid; and now the most honored name in the world is that of cyrus w. field, although but yesterday there were "'none so poor to do him reverence.' "the wiseacres who shook their heads the other day and pitied while they condemned him are now among the foremost in his praise, and help to make his name a household word. bells are rung and guns are fired and buildings are illuminated in his honor throughout the length and breadth of his land; and prominent among all devices and first on every tongue and uppermost in every heart is his name. had he not, like the great bruce, persevered in the face of repeated failures until his efforts were at length crowned with success, he would have been held up to the growing generation as an illustration of the danger of allowing our minds to be absorbed by an impracticable idea, and his history would have been served up in play and romance, and used "'to point a moral or adorn a tale.' "as it is, the nation is proud of him, the world knows him, and all mankind is his debtor." the ship _niagara_ left trinity bay for st. john's, where she was obliged to stop for coal, on august th. immediately upon her arrival the executive council of newfoundland and the chamber of commerce of st. john's presented congratulatory addresses to mr. field, and the governor entertained him, together with his friends, at dinner, and a ball was given at the colonial building. on the th of august the _niagara_ sailed for new york. the country was impatient; twelve days had passed and not a message had been received. no one seemed to understand that a wilderness had to be opened and instruments adjusted before it was possible to use the cable as a means of communication between the two continents. it had been decided to have a great celebration on the receipt of the queen's message; on the th that was reported as coming over the submarine wire, and early on the th the firing commenced and the excitement continued until the th, when the city hall caught fire. churches rang their bells, factories blew their whistles, and in the evening the river front blazed with bonfires and fireworks flashed across the sky; the buildings were illuminated; one thousand lights were said to have shone from the windows of the everett house, and the transparencies were striking. that on the front of the international hotel, on the corner of broadway and franklin street, was eighteen feet by thirty-one; the centre was white, with fancy letters, and the border blue, with white letters, and the words were: +-----------------------------------------------------+ | | | victoria. | | | | all hail to the inventive genius and indefatigable | | enterprise of | |a john and jonathan, | |g that has succeeded in consummating the mightiest n| |a work of the age; i| |m may the cord that binds them in the bonds of a| |e international g| |m friendship never be severed, a| |n and the field of its r| |o usefulness extend to every part of the earth. a| |n .| |. let nations' shouts, 'midst cannons' roar, | | proclaim the event from shore to shore. | | | | buchanan. | +-----------------------------------------------------+ these placards were in the windows of bowen & mcnamee's, corner of broadway and pearl street: +-----------------------------+ |queen victoria: | | | |"your despatch received; | |let us hear from you again." | +-----------------------------+ +----------------------------------------------------+ | lightning | | caught and tamed by | | franklin, | | taught to read and write and go on errands by | | morse, | | started in foreign trade by | | field, cooper & co., | | with | | johnny bull | | and | | brother jonathan | | as | | special partners. | +----------------------------------------------------+ in the window of anson randolph, corner of amity street, was displayed the following: +-------------------------------------+ | | | the old cyrus and the new. | | one | | conquered the world for himself, | | the other | | the ocean for the world. | +-------------------------------------+ +---------------------+ | our field is | | the field | | of the world. | +---------------------+ +----------------------------+ | july , , | | august , , | | are the days we celebrate. | +----------------------------+ the manhattan hotel was splendidly decorated with colored lights and flags of all nations. on a transparency was the following inscription: +--------------------------------------+ | married, august, , | | by | | cyrus w. field, | | old ireland and miss young america. | | "may their honeymoon last forever." | +--------------------------------------+ the _tribune_ describes this procession: "the workmen upon the central park and the workmen on the new croton reservoir made a novel parade, and after marching through the principal streets were reviewed by mayor tiemann in front of the city hall. "the procession was headed by a squad of the central park police in full uniform; then came a full brass band and a standard-bearer with a white muslin banner on which was inscribed: +--------------------------+ | | | the central park people. | | | +--------------------------+ "the workmen, attired in their every-day clothes, with evergreens in their hats, next marched in squads of four, each gang carrying a banner with the name of their boss-workmen inscribed thereon. in the line of the procession were several four-horse teams drawing wagons in which were the workmen in the engineer's department. on the sides of the vehicles were muslin banners with the words: +-------------------+ | | | engineer corps. | | | +-------------------+ "the reservoir workmen were a hardy-looking set of men, and were fair specimens of the laborers of new york. "the procession filled broadway from union square to the park, and, as it was altogether unexpected, it created no little excitement and inquiry. if all the men and teams in this turnout are kept at the city's work we shall soon see great improvement in the new park.... "the procession was composed of eleven hundred laborers and eight hundred carts from the central park, under the marshalship of messrs. olmsted, miller, waring, and grant, and seven hundred laborers and carts from the new reservoir under the marshalship of mr. walker, forming a procession over three miles in length." these same workmen presented to mr. field, the december following, a pitcher made from wood of the charter oak. before the _niagara_ arrived at new york on the morning of august th mr. field prepared his report for the atlantic telegraph company, and he had it at once posted, and with it his resignation as general manager of the company. "how cyrus laid the cable" was written by john g. saxe for _harper's weekly_, and was published on september th: "come listen all unto my song, it is no silly fable; 'tis all about the mighty cord they call the atlantic cable. "bold cyrus field he said, says he, 'i have a pretty notion that i can run a telegraph across the atlantic ocean.' "then all the people laughed, and said they'd like to see him do it; he might get half-seas-over, but he never could go through it; "to carry out his foolish plan he never would be able; he might as well go hang himself with his atlantic cable. "but cyrus was a valiant man, a fellow of decision; and heeded not their mocking words, their laughter and derision. "twice did his bravest efforts fail, and yet his mind was stable; he wa'n't the man to break his heart because he broke his cable. "'once more, my gallant boys!' he cried; 'three times!--you know the fable--' ('i'll make it thirty,' muttered he, 'but i will lay the cable!') "once more they tried--hurrah! hurrah! what means this great commotion? the lord be praised! the cable's laid across the atlantic ocean! "loud ring the bells--for, flashing through six hundred leagues of water, old mother england's benison salutes her eldest daughter. "o'er all the land the tidings speed, and soon in every nation they'll hear about the cable with profoundest admiration! "now long live james, and long live vic, and long live gallant cyrus; and may his courage, faith, and zeal with emulation fire us; "and may we honor evermore the manly, bold, and stable, and tell our sons, to make them brave, how cyrus laid the cable." on the th of august captain hudson, mr. everett, and the officers of the _niagara_, were entertained by mr. field, and from the balcony of his house he read this message to the crowd assembled in the street: "valentia bay, _august , _. "to cyrus w. field, n. y.: "the directors have just met. they heartily congratulate you on your success. "the _agamemnon_ arrived at valentia bay on thursday, august , at a.m. "we are just on the point of chartering a ship to lay the shore end. no time will be lost in sending them out. please write me more fully about tariff and other working arrangements. saward." he did not forget the sailors, as the following invitation shows: +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | complimentary reception | | | | of the | | | | crew of the u.s. ship "niagara." | | | |_mr. cyrus w. field requests the pleasure of your company | | at his entertainment of the crew of the_ niagara, _to | |be given at the palace gardens, at o'clock, this evening._ | | | | w. a. bartlett, _for c. w. f._ | | | | new york, august , . | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ from one of the newspapers this account is taken of the meeting held before the reception: "upwards of two hundred of the sailors and marines of the frigate _niagara_ assembled last evening in franklin square, formed in procession, and, preceded by the band of the _north carolina_, marched to cooper institute. they carried with them an accurate model of the _niagara_, made by one of her crew, which was gayly decked with flags, exactly as was the noble ship it represents when she last entered our harbor. on arriving at the cooper institute the tars were saluted with a discharge of fireworks and the hearty cheers of the multitude.... "cyrus w. field was the next speaker. he was evidently a great favorite of the sailors, who, it is said, used to call him on board ship 'the sister of charity.' they cheered him extravagantly when he rose. he made only a short speech, consisting of reminiscences of the laying and landing of the cable, and the gallantry and faithfulness of the crew on these occasions. more singing and more cheers were followed by the entrance of captain hudson, who was greeted with the warmest enthusiasm, and made some appropriate remarks." on the th mr. field, with a party, left for great barrington, and the next day they were welcomed at stockbridge by mr. field's old friends. between the th of august and the st of september ninety-seven messages were sent from valentia to newfoundland, and two hundred and sixty-nine messages from newfoundland to valentia. the english government had, by cable, countermanded the return to england of the sixty-second and the thirty-ninth regiments. the news of the peace with china had also been sent to this country, and the english papers of august th reported the collision between the cunard steamers _arabia_ and _europa_. this statement is taken from a letter written in july, , by order of the atlantic telegraph company and signed by the secretary of the company, mr. george saward. the st and d of september were chosen as the days for a "general celebration of the laying of the atlantic telegraph cable." in deference to the wish expressed by the rector and vestry of trinity church, it was arranged that the first day should begin with a service and te deum at ten o'clock. in the absence of bishop horatio potter, bishop george washington doane, of new jersey, took charge of this service. trinity church had never been so gayly dressed. "the edifice was decorated from the steeple to the top of the spire with the flags of all nations. around the steeple were hung the flags of france, spain, prussia, austria, russia, portugal, and other nations, while the spire about three-quarters of the way to the cross was decorated with the stars and stripes and the union jack." it was this incident that called forth these verses, written by bishop doane: "hang out that glorious old red cross; hang out the stripes and stars; they faced each other fearlessly in two historic wars: but now the ocean-circlet binds the bridegroom and the bride; old england, young america, display them side by side. "high up, from trinity's tall spire, we'll fling the banners out; hear how the world-wide welkin rings, with that exulting shout! forever wave those wedded flags, as proudly now they wave, god for the lands his love has blessed; the beauteous and the brave. "but see, the dallying wind the stars about the cross has blown; and see, again, the cross around the stars its folds has thrown: was ever sign so beautiful flung from the heavens abroad? old england, young america, for freedom and for god." at one o'clock the procession formed at the battery and marched from there to the crystal palace, then standing at forty-second street between fifth and sixth avenues. the account which follows is from the new york _herald_ of september d: the cable carnival. "achieved is the glorious work." the metropolis overwhelmed with visitors. over half a million of jubilant people. broadway a garden of female beauty. a bouquet in every window. glorious recognition of the most glorious work of the age. reunion of all the nationalities. * * * * * the cable layers. the british naval officers in town. the jack tars of the _niagara_ on hand. the big coil of cable. * * * * * scenes at the crystal palace. the city at night. the fireworks in the park. the city hall safe. torch-light procession of the firemen. illuminations. the colored lanterns _a la chinois_, etc., etc., etc. "the scene presented along broadway altogether transcends description. every available and even unavailable place was secured long beforehand, and from the battery to union place one was obliged to run a gantlet of eyes more effective and more dangerous than any artillery battery. this display of female beauty, conjoined to the great array of flags, banners, and mottoes, made us think of a roman carnival. to the pet military regiments, the montreal artillery, and the officers and crews of the _niagara_ and _gorgon_ there was given a most splendid greeting all along the line. everywhere we heard cheers for field, hudson, everett, and their british coadjutors. we have never heard a more cheerful, hearty, and cordial shout than that which welcomed the gallant tars of the _niagara_ as they moved up broadway.... "the crowd upon broadway was so great that the military had much difficulty in getting through it, and so the procession was somewhat retarded.... "the hour appointed for the interesting ceremonies inside the palace to commence was half-past four o'clock, but the procession did not arrive there till within a few minutes of six. by that time there were about ten thousand persons in the building anxiously awaiting the arrival of the celebrities, whom all were desirous to see and hear.... "the crew of the _niagara_, with a model of that ship, entered by the front door, and, marching up the centre aisle, took their place in front of the platform. they were loudly cheered, and they responded in true sailor fashion by cheering lustily for captain hudson, mr. field, the mayor, and almost every one they recognized on the platform.... "at night one would suppose the crowd would lessen. not so. the illuminations, the fireworks, the many-colored lanterns, and the general gas and spermaceti demonstrations gave to broadway a carnavalesque appearance which it is almost impossible to describe. beginning with the clever design of the new york club down to the park there was a succession of illuminations and transparencies of every possible sort. the great bazaars vied with each other in the number and variety of their mottoes and designs, both for day and night; but, passing by all of them, we were especially struck with the following distich on the side of a car: "'with wild huzzas now let the welkin ring, columbia's got britannia on a string.' " ...the firemen's torch-light parade concluded the day's festivities. it was exceedingly beautiful, and as the long line moved through broadway surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd on every side, and lighted by thousands of torches, candles, and colored lanterns, one might easily have imagined himself in a fairy-land. it was long after midnight before the great assemblage dispersed, and even then the streets did not resume their wonted aspect.... the fact is, that an avalanche of people descended upon us, and new york was crushed for once; but we do not lay atlantic cables every day." on the d of september, at seven o'clock, a dinner ended the celebration. "there were six hundred guests who sat down to as sumptuous a dinner as ever was laid on any great occasion in this city. the bill of fare was laid beside each plate: =municipal dinner= by the common council of the city of new york to cyrus w. field, and officers of h. b. m. steamship _gorgon_ and u. s. steam frigate _niagara_, in commemoration of the =laying of the atlantic cable.= metropolitan hotel, september d, . oysters on the half-shell. soups. green turtle. gumbo, with rice. fish. boiled fresh salmon, lobster sauce. broiled spanish mackerel, steward's sauce. boiled. turkey, oyster sauce. leg of mutton, caper sauce. roast. young turkey. ribs of beef. ham, champagne sauce. lamb, mint sauce. chickens, english sauce. cold dishes. boned turkey, with jelly. chicken salad, lobster sauce. patties of game, with truffles. ham, sur socle, with jelly. entrÉes. tenderloin of beef, larded, with mushroom sauce. lamb chops, with green peas. chartreuse of partridges, madeira sauce. forms of rice, with small vegetables. timbale of macaroni, milanaise style. wild ducks, with olives. breast of chickens, truffle sauce. soft-shell crabs, fried plain. stewed terrapin, american style. squabs, braisées, gardener's sauce. sweetbreads, larded, with string-beans. fricandeau of veal, larded, with small carrots. flounders, stuffed, with fine herbs. reed birds, steward's sauce. broiled turtle steaks, tomato sauce. croquettes of chickens, with fried parsley. tenderloin of lamb, larded, poivrade sauce. pluvier, on toast, italian sauce. relishes. raw tomatoes. spanish olives. pickled oysters. currant jelly. celery. game. partridges, bread sauce. broiled english snipe. vegetables. boiled and mashed potatoes. stewed tomatoes. sweet potatoes. lima beans. pastry. apple pies. plum pies. peach pies. plum pudding. fancy ornamented charlotte russe. maraschino jelly. fancy fruit jelly. pineapple salad. gateaux, neapolitan style. champagne jelly. pineapple pies. custard pies. pumpkin pies. cabinet pudding. peach méringues. madeira jelly. punch jelly. fancy blanc mange. spanish cream. swiss méringues. confectionery. méringues, à la crême, vanilla flavor rose almonds. fancy lady's cake. quince soufflée. vanilla sugar almonds. ornamented macaroons. mint cream candy. butterflies of vienna cake. vanilla ice cream. savoy biscuit. variety glacé fruit. dominos of biscuit. fancy variety candy. roast almonds. conserve kisses. chocolate biscuit. fancy diamond kisses. preserved almond kisses. ornaments. queen victoria, of great britain. james buchanan, president of the united states. cyrus w. field, with his cable. professor morse, as inventor of the telegraph. dr. benjamin franklin. the operative telegraph of the metropolitan hotel. the niagara, man-of-war of the united states. the agamemnon and niagara paying out the cable. cyrus w. field, surrounded by the flags of all nations. the coats of arms of all nations, on a pyramid. pocahontas, with real american design. temple of liberty. grand ornamented fruit vase. temple of music. frosting tower. sugar tower, with variety decorations. flower pyramid. white sugar ornament. fruit basket, supported by dolphins. fancy decorated flower vase. tribute temple. pagodi pyramid. scotch warrior, mounted. ethiopian tower. floral vase, decorated. frosting pyramid. mounted church. pyramid of cracking bonbons. chinese pavilion. triumphant temple. sugar harp, with floral decorations. variety pyramid. fancy sugar temple. ornamented sugar tower. temple of art. lyre, surmounted with cornucopia of flowers. dessert. almonds. peaches. pecan nuts. grenoble nuts. hot-house grapes. coffee. citron melons. bartlett pears. raisins. filberts. coffee. this was one of the toasts: "cyrus w. field: to his exertions, energy, courage, and perseverance are we indebted for the ocean telegraph; we claim, but immortality owns him." in his reply he said: "to no one man is the world indebted for this achievement; one may have done more than another, this person may have had a prominent and that a secondary part, but there is a host of us who have been engaged in the work the completion of which you celebrate to-day." mr. george peabody wrote to him: "i read the accounts in the new york papers in celebration of the great event of the year and age with great interest, and although i think in some respects that they are a little too enthusiastic, yet so far as it regards yourself they cannot be so, for if the cable should be lost to-morrow you would be fully entitled to the high honor you are daily receiving." as he left the battery on september st a cable message was handed to him dated that morning: "cyrus w. field, new york: "the directors are on their way to valentia to make arrangements for opening the wire to the public. they convey through the cable to you and your fellow-citizens their hearty congratulations in your joyous celebration of the great international work." it was the last message that passed over the cable of . chapter viii failure on all sides ( - ) from the daily press and from mr. field's papers the story of these years has been drawn. "in the midst of all this rejoicing, intelligence came from newfoundland that the cable, which it was fully anticipated would be open for public messages in a few days, had ceased working. the reaction was painful to witness, after the intense excitement of the past three weeks." that it had become impossible to send a message through the cable was definitely known in london through the letter given to the _times_: "_september , ._ "_sir_,--i am instructed by the directors to inform you that owing to some cause not at present ascertained, but believed to arise from a fault existing in the cable at a point hitherto undiscovered, there have been no intelligible signals from newfoundland since one o'clock on friday, the d inst. the directors are now at valentia, and, aided by various scientific and practical electricians, are investigating the cause of the stoppage, with a view to remedying the existing difficulty. under these circumstances no time can be named at present for opening the wire to the public. "george saward." before the end of the month these telegrams were published in the new york papers: "new york, _september , _, m. "to de sauty, trinity bay, n. f.: "despatches from you and mackay are contradictory. now please give me explicit answers to the following inquiries: "first: are you now, or have you been within three days, receiving distinct signals from valentia? "second: can you send a message, long or short, to the directors at london? "third: if you answer 'no' to the above, please tell me if the electrical manifestations have varied essentially since the st of september. cyrus w. field." "trinity bay, n. f., _september , _. "c. w. field, new york: "we have received nothing intelligible from valentia since the st of september, excepting feeling a few signals yesterday. i cannot send anything to valentia. there has been very little variation in the electrical manifestations. "de sauty." "trinity bay, n. f., saturday, _september th_. "peter cooper, c. w. field, w. g. hunt, and e. m. archibald, new york: "i have not the least wish to withhold particulars as to the working of the cable, and until i have communicated with headquarters and ascertained the directions of the manager of the company, i will send a daily report of proceedings. we were not working to-day, but receiving occasionally from valentia some weak reversals of the current, which, when received, are unintelligible. "c. v. de sauty." "trinity bay, n. f., saturday, _september th_. "c. w. field, new york: "your message received. the day before yesterday commenced receiving current from valentia and was in hopes that i should be at work again soon after. so i informed mr. mackay. then the current failed. this will explain the discrepancy between his and my message. "c. v. de sauty." on the last page of the "service message-book" kept at the company's station, trinity bay, this entry was made on the th of september: "receiving good currents, but no intelligible signals." for a short period there was again a feeling of encouragement, and there seemed to be a possibility that the electrical current was not lost, and a full month later the following letter was written: "to the editor of the _times:_ "_sir_,--eleven p. m. i beg to inform you that i have just received the annexed message from valentia, which has been transmitted by mr. bartholomew, the superintendent of the company at that place. it would appear that by the application of extraordinary and peculiar battery-power at newfoundland, in accordance with the instructions of professor thomson, of glasgow (one of the directors of the company), it has been possible to convey, even through the defective cable, the few words recorded by mr. bartholomew in his message to me this evening. "this, however, though encouraging, must not be regarded as a permanent state of things, as it is still clear there is a serious fault in the cable, while, at the same time, it is not at present absolutely clear that any, except the most extraordinary and (to the cable) dangerous efforts can be made, more especially on this side, to overcome the existing obstacles in the way of perfect working. "the following is mr. bartholomew's message: "'bartholomew, valentia, to saward, london.--i have just received the following words from newfoundland: "daniel's now in circuit." the signals are very distinct. give me discretion to use our daniel's battery reply.'" "immediately on receipt of the foregoing i sent the necessary authority to use the daniel's battery at valencia. "yours truly, "george saward, secretary. " old broad street, _october_ th." and so the days passed, hope alternating with despair. [illustration: cyrus w. field (from a photograph by brady, taken in )] it was in writing of this time that a friend said: "to mr. field and those who had labored with him for so long a period the blow came with redoubled force. the work had to be commenced afresh; and mr. field felt that an arduous duty devolved upon him, that of trying to infuse fresh courage into some of his friends, to overcome the doubts of others, and to fight against the persistent efforts of the enemies of the enterprise to injure it in every possible way. his faith in its ultimate success was still unshaken, his confidence unbounded, and his determination to carry it to completion as firm as ever." on december , , archbishop hughes wrote: "our cable is dumb for the present; but no matter, the glory of having laid it in the depths of the ocean is yours, and it is not the less whether the stockholders receive interest or not. at present you have no rival claimant for the glory of the project." it was in strange contrast with the rejoicing so soon over that the gold snuff-box and the freedom of the city were received with this note: "mayor's office, "new york, _ d august, _. "the mayor of new york has the pleasure to transmit to cyrus w. field, esq., of new york, the address and testimonials voted him by the city of new york on the st day of september last, in commemoration of the esteem in which his services were held on the occasion of laying the atlantic telegraph cable connecting europe with america." "daniel f. tiemann." in may, , we find him in london, and on june th at the meeting of the atlantic telegraph company, when it was decided to raise £ , with which to lay another cable, and, if possible, repair the old one. he was in new york on the th of december, , and it was then that his office, beekman street, was burned. among his papers this mention is made: "the fire which made the closing days of so black with disaster broke out in a building adjoining mr. field's warehouse, which destroyed that and several others. mr. field's store was full of goods and was entirely consumed, and the loss beyond that covered by insurance was $ , ." the evening papers of that day gave an account of the fire, and at the same time published a card from mr. field stating that he had rented another office, and that his business would go on without interruption. up to january, , only £ , had been subscribed towards the new stock of the company, and the directors were discouraged at the lack of interest shown in the effort they were making to secure funds with which to lay another cable across the atlantic. the government had guaranteed the red sea cable and it had failed, and for that reason it refused the same aid to the atlantic telegraph company, although the two messages sent on august , , had prevented the expenditure of from £ , to £ , , as that was the amount that would have been required to move the two regiments that had been ordered from canada to india. the report to the stockholders on the th of february told of the attempt made to raise the shore end of the cable in trinity bay, and added: "but then a circumstance occurred which is extremely encouraging. notwithstanding that he (captain bell) was in one hundred and seventy-five fathoms, he found no difficulty in grappling the cable again, and he raised it once more in the course of half an hour." this is the first time that it has been suggested that a cable might be grappled for. a bit of home life is recalled by this letter: "stockbridge, _march , _. "_dear son cyrus_,--if the weather be fair next monday morning your parents design to start for new york on a visit to all our relations, and to as many of our other numerous friends there as we can well see. "i believe mrs. brewer and master freddy are expected to be with us. "love to all inquiring friends. cold weather is here, but general health and prosperity prevails. "love to all inquirers. "david d. field." mr. seward's letter, which follows, is evidently in answer to one written by mr. field in which he had expressed regret that the nomination at chicago had not been given to the candidate of the new york delegation: "auburn, _july , _. "_my dear friend_,--your considerate letter was not necessary, and yet was very welcome. a thousand thanks for it. i do not care to dwell on personal interests. they are, i think, not paramount with me. but if i even were so ambitious, i am not like to be altogether successful. if the alternative were presented to a wise man, he might well seek rather to have his countrymen regret that he had not been, president than to be president. "faithfully yours, "william h. seward. "cyrus w. field, esq." mr. field's recovery after the suspension of his firm in was much more rapid than from his previous failure in business. in this was published in one of the new york papers: "we are pleased to learn that the house of cyrus w. field & co., which suspended payment in the fall of , during the absence of mr. field in england (on business connected with the atlantic telegraph company) have recently taken up nearly all their extended paper, the payment of which is not due until october next, and have now notified the holders of the balance that they are prepared to cash the whole amount, less the legal interest, on presentation. this evidence of prosperity must be gratifying to their numerous friends." the city of new york during october, , was entirely given up to the thought of entertaining the prince of wales, and it was of his visit that mr. archibald wrote: "british consulate, "new york, _october , _. "_my dear mr. field,_--i have really been so pressed with arrears of business since my return on wednesday evening, and still am, that i am obliged to say in writing briefly that which i should prefer to do personally, how much indebted i feel to you for your valuable and kind assistance to me during the prince's visit; and especially on sunday last in reference to the matter of the _daniel drew_.... "the reception which the prince has received in this country has not only immensely gratified himself and all his suite, as it was well calculated to do; but it will, i am sure, create in england a profound feeling of admiration for and of gratitude towards this country, the effect of which i cannot but think will be very beneficial to the future of both countries. "although i was sorry to part from the prince on wednesday, i cannot tell you with what a feeling of relief it was from the deep anxiety of which i could not divest myself during his stay here, lest any untoward event should mar the happiness or interfere with the safety of himself in a community composed of such heterogeneous elements. the responsibility in such an event would have centred on myself, as lord lyons never having been in new york, the visit to this city was determined on in pursuance of my representations. i thank god it is all so well and so happily over, and so vastly more successful than i had anticipated, or than any of us indeed had expected. "again thanking you for your many kindnesses, i am, "my dear sir, yours faithfully, "e. m. archibald." the rejoicing was followed by days of depression and darkness. a financial panic again swept over the country, and on december th mr. field writes: "made a hard fight, but was obliged to suspend payment." on the th he addressed a letter to his creditors. after giving a brief summary of his business experience, he said: "such a series of misfortunes is not often experienced by a single firm, at least in such rapid succession, and is quite sufficient to explain the present position of my affairs. against all these losses i have struggled, and until within a few weeks hoped confidently to be able to weather all difficulties. but you know how suddenly the late panic has come upon us. we found it impossible to make collections. the suspension of several houses, whose paper we held to a large amount, added to our embarrassment. "thus, receiving almost nothing and obliged to pay our own notes and those of others, we found it impossible to go on without calling in the aid of private friends, and running the risk of involving them, a risk which i believe it morally wrong to take. "i thought it more manly and more honorable to call this meeting of my creditors to lay before them a full statement of my affairs, and to ask their advice as to the course which i ought to take. "thus, gentlemen, you have the whole case before you, and i leave it to you to decide what i ought to do. "my only wish is, so far as i am able, to pay you to the uttermost farthing. i shall most cheerfully give up to you every dollar of property i have in the world; and i ask only to be released that i may feel free from a load of debt, and can go to work again to regain what i have lost. "it is for you now to decide what course justice and right require me to pursue." his creditors accepted twenty-five cents on the dollar, and preferred to have him manage his affairs rather than "place all in the hands of a trustee or trustees;" but in order to make this payment and also the amount then due upon the stock he had subscribed to in the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company and in the atlantic telegraph company, he placed a mortgage upon everything he owned, including the portraits of his father and mother. his assets then were: house and furniture, east twenty-first street (heavily mortgaged). pew in the madison square presbyterian church. stock in the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company. stock in the atlantic telegraph company. and against these a large amount of indebtedness. on the th of december south carolina seceded, and on the th of the same month major anderson abandoned fort moultrie, and moved his small garrison into fort sumter, and the first notes of the coming war were sounded; to quote from dr. william h. russell's book on _the atlantic telegraph_: "the great civil war in america stimulated capitalists to renew the attempt; the public mind became alive to the importance of the project, and to the increased facilities which promised a successful issue. mr. field, who compassed land and sea incessantly, pressed his friends on both sides of the atlantic for aid, and agitated the question in london and new york." chapter ix the civil war ( - ) december, , had ended in financial disaster: it was the third time in less than twenty years that mr. field had seen his business swept from him, and yet he was of so buoyant a disposition that immediately we find him back at his office and very soon at work for the advancement of his great enterprise. on june th he wrote to mr. saward: "i never had more confidence in the ultimate success of the atlantic telegraph company than i have to-day." and mr. saward wrote to him on july th: "vast improvements in everything relating to the structure of telegraph cables are constantly being made, and inquiry upon the subject is very active. we are becoming much more hopeful of a good time for the atlantic company. "two very favorable events for telegraphy have taken place this week. first, glass, elliott & co. have laid without any check or hitch, in a very perfect condition, a cable for the french government between toulon and the island of corsica; and, second, the same firm have completed in precisely the same state of efficiency two-thirds of a line between malta and alexandria for the use of the english government; as the remainder is all shallow water, the event is certain." after the civil war began he was often in washington, and he was untiring in his devotion to his country, and we find him in correspondence with the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, and with others in official positions. june , , he wrote to colonel thomas a. scott, then assistant secretary of war, at willard's hotel, washington, d. c.: "pardon me for repeating in this letter some of the suggestions which i made to the president, yourself, and other members of the cabinet during my late visit to washington; " . the government to immediately seize all the despatches on file in the telegraph offices which have been sent from washington, baltimore, wilmington, philadelphia, new york, hartford, boston, and other cities within the last six months, as i feel confident they will on examination prove many persons not now suspected to have been acting as spies and traitors. " . the government to establish as soon as possible telegraphic communication, by means of submarine cables, between some of our principal ports on the sea-board and the nearest telegraph line communicating with washington, so that the department can almost instantly communicate with the commanding officer at any particular point desired. " . in each department of the government to adopt a cipher with its confidential agent at important points of the country, so that they can communicate confidentially by telegraph. "i consider it very important that the government should have the most reliable telegraph communication with its principal forts on the atlantic coast. "if there is any information that i possess that would be of service to you in carrying out the wishes of the government in regard to telegraph matters it will afford me pleasure to give it. "i presume you are aware that there are very few persons in this country who have had any experience in the manufacture, working, or laying of submarine cables of any great importance. "very respectfully "your obedient servant, "cyrus w. field." june th, while in washington, he received a pass "beyond the pickets and to return, good for five days." on july th he wrote to captain g. v. fox, of the navy department: "in a letter i wrote the secretary of the treasury on the th of may last i used these words, viz.: 'for the government to send at once a confidential agent to england, with a competent naval officer, to obtain from the british government by purchase, or otherwise, some of the improved steam gun-boats and other vessels to protect our commerce and to assist in blockading southern ports.'" it was at this time that his firm in new york wrote to him that a debt of $ had been paid and that $ was in silver. such a payment would hardly be appreciated now. his mother's death, on the evening of friday, august the th, was made known to those living in the village of stockbridge, according to the custom of that time, by the tolling of the church-bell. after that six strokes were given to show that a woman had died, nine would have been struck for a man, or three for a child. her age was then slowly rung, and as one year after another was recorded, each brought back to her family the joy or sorrow with which that year had been filled. her funeral was on sunday, the th. a number of her friends among the elderly ladies of the town acted as pall-bearers, and another custom then observed was for the officiating clergyman, after the grave had been filled--and every one waited until that was done--to return thanks in the name of the family to all who had shown them kindness and sympathy in their bereavement. of her funeral the rev. john todd, of pittsfield, mass., wrote: "at the gateway of one of our beautiful rural cemeteries a large funeral was just entering.... the bier was resting on the shoulders of four tall, noble-looking men in the prime of life.... very slowly and carefully they trod, as if the sleeper should not feel the motion. and who was on the bier, so carefully and tenderly borne? it was their own mother. never did i see a grief more reverent or respect more profound." a few days later mr. field wrote to a friend, on the death of a child: "having myself experienced such a calamity, i can judge of your feelings, and most sincerely sympathize with you and your good wife on this melancholy occasion. i hope you will both bear it with christian fortitude, _for it is god's will_, and no doubt for some wise purpose." referring to his life-work, on october d he writes: "who first conceived the idea of a telegraph across the atlantic i know not. it may have been before i was born. "i have made twenty-four sea voyages solely for the purpose of connecting europe and america by telegraph, and although the cable laid is not now in operation, the experience gained will, i doubt not, be the means of causing another cable to be submerged that will successfully connect newfoundland and ireland." at p.m. on october th this message from san francisco was received: "cyrus w. field, new york: "the pacific telegraph calls the atlantic cable. "a. w. bee." he replied: "your message received. the atlantic cable is not dead, but sleepeth. in due time it will answer the call of the pacific telegraph." on october th, in a letter to a friend in newfoundland: "there is now a very much increased interest being felt here in the importance of an early laying of another atlantic cable from ireland to newfoundland, thus connecting europe, asia, africa, and america. "i hope in a few days to have arrangements made so that we may on some given evening connect the lines between st. john's and san francisco together, and by means of relays speak directly through, between these two points, a distance by the telegraph of over miles." neither did he neglect his private business. on december d, within a year of his failure, he was able to write: "all of our extension notes due on the th of september last were duly paid, and we have already taken up all that will be due on the th of this month with the exception of $ , , and all that are due on the th of march next except $ . you will see that we have reduced our liabilities to a very small amount, and we shall meet them all promptly at or before maturity." he was so very exact in all his work that he could not understand the lack of like exactitude in others. to one who failed to answer a letter he sent this note: "_my dear sir_,--if it takes four weeks _not_ to get an answer to a letter, how long will it take to get one? "i have not received a reply to my letter of november th. "i remain, very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field. "_december d._" the news of the seizure of mason and slidell by captain wilkes, from the steamer _trent_, was received in boston on november th, and at once he saw another reason for urging the immediate laying of a cable across the atlantic, and in a letter to mr. saward he says: "the low rate of interest now ruling in great britain, and the great desire of the british government to have telegraphic communication with her north american colonies, both indicate that _now_ is the time to move energetically in the matter of connecting newfoundland and ireland by a submarine cable." and on the th of december: "it does appear to me that now is the time for the directors of the atlantic telegraph company to act with energy and decision, and get whatever guarantee is necessary from the english government to raise the capital to manufacture and lay down without unnecessary delay between newfoundland and ireland a good cable." general t. w. sherman had written to him from port royal on december st: "it was but the other day i was discussing the very subject you mention. we want very much a telegraphic communication between beaufort, hilton head, and the tybee. how can we get it promptly?" this was in reply to a letter of mr. field's in which he had enclosed a copy of the following letter and its indorsement: "willard's hotel, "washington, _december , _. "_sir_,--pardon me for making the following suggestions: " . that government establish at once telegraphic communication between washington and fortress monroe by means of a submarine cable from northampton county to fortress monroe. " . that forts walker and beauregard be connected by a submarine cable. " . that a submarine cable be laid between hilton head and tybee island. " . that the forts at key west and tortugas be brought into instant communication by means of a telegraph cable. " . that a cable be laid connecting the fort at tortugas with fort pickens. "if i can be of any service to you or the government in this matter it will give me pleasure. "i shall remain at this hotel until to-morrow afternoon or friday morning, and have with me samples of different kinds of cable. "very respectfully, "your obedient servant, "cyrus w. field. "major-general g. b. mcclellan, washington, d. c." on the th of december general mcclellan indorsed the plans with these words: "i most fully concur in the importance of the submarine telegraph proposed by mr. field, and earnestly urge that his plans may be adopted and be authorized to have the plans carried into execution. more careful consideration may show that a safer route for the cable from fernandina to key west would be by the eastern shore of florida. this will depend on the strength of our occupation of the railroad from fernandina to cedar keys. "very respectfully, etc., "george b. mcclellan." this expression is copied from a letter dated london, december , : "the rebels are waiting with great anxiety for the arrival of the steamer _africa_ and her news about the _trent_ affair." on january , , he wrote to mr. seward, the secretary of state: "the importance of the early completion of the atlantic telegraph can hardly be estimated. what would have been its value to the english and united states governments if it had been in operation on the th of november last, on which day earl russell was writing to lord lyons, and you at the same time to mr. adams, our minister in london? "a few short messages between the two governments and all would have been satisfactorily explained. i have no doubt that the english government has expanded more money during the last thirty days in preparation for war with this country than the whole cost of manufacturing and laying a good cable between newfoundland and ireland. "at this moment you can telegraph from st. john's, newfoundland, to every town of importance in british north america and to all the principal cities in the loyal states, even to san francisco, on the pacific, a distance by the route of the telegraph of over fifty-four hundred miles. from valentia, in ireland, there is also now telegraph communication with all the capitals of europe, and to algiers, in africa, about twenty-one hundred miles; to odessa, on the black sea, twenty-nine hundred and forty miles; to constantinople, thirty-one hundred and fifty miles, and to omsk, in siberia, about five thousand miles. "all that is now required to connect omsk, in siberia, with san francisco, california, on the pacific, and all intermediate points, is a telegraph cable from valentia island to newfoundland, a distance of sixteen hundred and forty nautical miles. "what could the governments of great britain and the united states do so effectually to bind the two countries in bonds of amity and interest as to complete at the earliest possible moment this connecting link between the two countries?... "will you pardon me for suggesting to you the propriety of opening a correspondence with the english government upon the subject, and proposing that the atlantic telegraph company should be aided or encouraged to complete their line, and that the two governments should enter into a treaty that in case of any war between them the cable should not be molested?" mr. seward answered on january th: "your letter of the st instant relative to the atlantic telegraph was duly received; it will afford me pleasure to confer with you on that subject at any time you may present yourself for that purpose." in a letter written by mr. seward on the th of january to mr. adams in london he said: "in view of the recent disturbances of feeling in great britain growing out of the _trent_ affair, we have some apprehensions that our motives in opening a correspondence upon the subject of the telegraph just now might be misinterpreted.... "if you think wisely of it you are authorized to call the attention of earl russell to the matter.... you may say to him that the president entertains the most favorable views of the great enterprise in question, and would be happy to co-operate with the british government in securing its successful execution and such arrangements as would guarantee to both nations reciprocal benefits from the use of the telegraphs, not only in times of peace, but even in times of war, if, contrary to our desire and expectation, and to the great detriment of both nations, war should ever arise between them." mr. field sailed for england in the steamer _arabia_ on january th, and on february th, at the request of mr. adams, sent a long letter to earl russell. to this letter earl russell replied, and appointed tuesday, march th, at half-past three, as the time at which he would receive him at the foreign office. on march th he again wrote to earl russell, entering into details, and at the end of his letter he referred to the two messages that were in sent for the english government, and said: "i enclose for your information a certificate from the war office that this business was properly and promptly executed. the experimental cable which effected for them this communication has cost the original shareholders £ , , which sum has been unremunerative during six years. they ask no advantage in respect of that from either government, being quite content to risk the sacrifice of the whole amount if the means be now granted them for raising, by new subscriptions, the means of carrying out to a successful issue the great work intrusted to them." march th earl russell wrote that her majesty's government "have come to the conclusion that it would be more prudent for the present to defer entering into any fresh agreement on so difficult a subject." it was at this time that mr. george saward published the article in _the electrician_ already referred to, and in it he said: "mr. field has crossed the atlantic twenty-five times on behalf of the great enterprise to which he has vowed himself. he has labored more than any other individual in this important cause, and he has never asked the atlantic telegraph company for one shilling remuneration for his valuable services, which he was in no way bound to render them; nay more, whenever an offer of compensation was made to him he refused it." professor thomson, now lord kelvin, wrote in march of this year these words of encouragement: "if any degree of perseverance can be sufficient to deserve success, and any amount of value in any object can make it worth striving for, success ought to attend the efforts you and the directors are making for a result of world-wide beneficence." the account that follows has been given to show some of the petty annoyances to which from time to time mr. field was subjected. he arrived in new york on friday, april , , having come in the steamship _asia_. early in the day the ship was reported, but it was evening before he came to his home, and then he remained but a short time with his family. in a letter written to a friend in england on april th he says: "i found my family all in good health and spirits, and after spending about two hours with them and other friends at my house, left for washington, which place i reached soon after nine o'clock on saturday morning.... during my absence in europe some parties here, acting, as i believe, in concert with enemies in england, have been doing all in their power to injure me on both sides of the atlantic, but without success." and in another letter he says: "i have obtained a large amount of information about this wicked conspiracy to injure me in europe and in this country. mr. seward and other members of the government have acted in the most honorable manner, and defeated the plans of wicked men." to mr. chase he wrote: "i lose no time in acquainting you with the circumstances and of laying the correspondence before you. pray tell me if they are satisfactory to you. i do not know by whom, or where, the goods were arrested." as far as it is possible to ascertain at this late day he had included in the correspondence forwarded to washington an article which had been written in new york on january th, and said to have been shown to the new york press, but never published. it appeared in the london _herald_ of february th, and was signed "manhattan." there were also letters in the london _standard_ and _herald_ of march th dated new york, march th, stating that the grand jury had met and presented a bill of indictment against cyrus w. field for "treasonable proceedings with the public enemy." in a letter written on april th are these few words: "the editor of the london _herald_ has made an apology in his paper, as i am informed by telegrams from halifax." and again: "i have not yet been able to ascertain who made the complaint but no bill was found, and the grand jury have adjourned." one of the grand jury writes: "i was a member of the united states grand jury in . i remember that a complaint was brought to the attention of the jury.... i remember that some testimony was submitted to the jury, but upon the recommendation of the district attorney the matter was dropped." mr. bates wrote to him: "attorney-general's office, "washington, d. c., _april , _. "cyrus w. field, esq., new york: "_dear sir_,--your note of yesterday is just received, and upon reading the enclosures the affair (as far as it concerns you personally) looks rather like a stupid, practical joke. "could the scheme have been meant as a blow at your business in europe? "very respectfully yours, "edward bates." when on april d he received two more letters in the same handwriting, one postmarked springfield, ill., april th, and the other nashville, tenn., april th, and evidently designed "to entrap him," he wrote at once to mr. chase: "i propose to take no further notice of them than to place copies in your possession and in the hands of the attorney-general, that such action may be taken in regard to them as may be deemed necessary." after this there was no further suggestion of trouble. this very characteristic business note was found among his papers of this year: "as we are all liable to be called away by death at any time, i should esteem it a favor if you would indorse the amount paid you by c. w. field & co. on the th instant, on my bond, and send the same to my office, as you proposed." it was on may st that he addressed the american geographical and statistical society, and it is possible to make but a short extract from his speech: "the london _times_ said truly: 'we nearly went to war with america because we had not a telegraph across the atlantic.' it is at such a moment that england feels the need of communicating with her colonies on this side of the ocean. and here i may mention a fact not generally known--that, during the excitement of the _trent_ affair a person connected with the english government applied to messrs. glass, elliott & co., of london, to know for what sum they would manufacture a cable and lay it across the atlantic; to which they replied that they would both manufacture and lay it down for £ , , and that it should be in full operation by the th day of july of this year. well might england afford to pay the whole cost of such a work; for in sixty days' time she expended more money in preparation for war with this country than the whole cost of manufacturing and laying several good cables between newfoundland and ireland." on his return he had found that the feeling against england was very intense, and on april th he wrote to mr. thurlow weed, who was in london: "i regret exceedingly to find a most bitter feeling in this country against england. mr. seward is almost the only american that i have heard speak kindly of england or englishmen since i arrived." and to mr. seward his next letter is addressed: "new york, _may , _. "_my dear sir_,--yesterday i received a letter from our mutual friend c. m. lampson, esq., from london, april th, in which he says: 'our letter has been before lord palmerston for more than a fortnight, and as yet have had no answer; he is now out of town for the easter holidays, and we cannot have a reply for another fortnight. if we are to make sufficient progress to enable us to do the work in , it will be only in consequence of the pressure you bring to bear on your side. this is our only hope for the present. if the washington government would direct mr. adams to press the matter here, i think we should succeed.' it has occurred to me that, considering the great importance to the whole commercial interest of the country of a telegraph across the atlantic, you would be willing to act on the suggestion of mr. lampson and direct mr. adams to press the matter upon the english government. "with much respect, i remain "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field. "hon. wm. h. seward, secretary of state, "washington, d. c." mr. lampson, in his letter of april th, had referred to a deputation of the directors of the atlantic telegraph company that on the th of march had waited upon lord palmerston, who was then prime-minister. mr. field replied: "new york, _may , _. "_my dear mr. lampson_,--.... four weeks ago this evening i arrived from england, and almost every moment of my time since i landed has been occupied in working for the atlantic telegraph, either in seeing the president of the united states, or one of his cabinet, or some member of the senate or house of representatives, or an editor of one of our papers, or writing to the british provinces, or doing something which i thought would hasten on the time when we should have a good submarine telegraph cable working successfully between ireland and newfoundland, and if _we do not get it laid in it will be our own fault_. "_now, now_ is the golden moment, and i do beg of you and all the other friends of the atlantic telegraph to act without a moment's unnecessary delay. "i have written you and mr. saward so often since my arrival that i am afraid you will get tired of reading my letters; but from the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak, and i hardly think of anything but a telegraph across the atlantic. very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." again on may th to mr. lampson: "i am disappointed at the answer received from lord palmerston, but not discouraged the least by it, for we can succeed without further assistance from either government, as i believe that an appeal to the public will _now_ get us all the money that we want, provided the business is pressed forward in a proper manner." it was on the th of this month that he wrote to his brother jonathan: "you will be glad to know that we have gotten all of our old matters settled." from the first days of the war he had urged the necessity for accurate despatches being sent out by each steamer; and one very hot july morning of this summer he went up from long branch solely for the purpose of seeing that the steamer, sailing the next morning, carried favorable news of the movements of our armies. with our purses full of change it is hard to realize that in october, , it was almost impossible to secure even postal currency, and that one of mr. field's clerks, after waiting four hours at the sub-treasury, was able to obtain but $ . again he writes to mr. saward: "i sail per _scotia_ on wednesday, the th of october, and expect to arrive at liverpool saturday, the th, and get to london the same evening. "if agreeable to you, i will call at your house sunday morning, go with you to hear the rev. mr. spurgeon preach, and dine with you at two o'clock. "monday morning, october th, i hope that we will be ready to go to work in earnest, and have _all_ of the stock for a new cable subscribed within one month, and our other arrangements so perfected that i can at an early day return to my family and country." he never lost sight of an opportunity for helping his country. on november st lord shaftesbury thanks him for the "documents" he had sent to him. on november th his friend the hon. stewart wortley writes: "mr. gladstone has fixed twelve o'clock to-morrow, in carlton house terrace. i have promised him that we would not ask him for anything, but that i believed you had some confidential communication to give him on the views of your government. till i told him this he was very unwilling to listen to anything that was not contained in a written proposal." it was on this day or the next that mr. field gave to mr. gladstone to read _thirteen months in a rebel prison_. mr. mccarthy, in his _history of our own times_, says: "it was mr. gladstone who said that the president of the southern confederation, mr. jefferson davis, had made an army, had made a navy, and, more than that, had made a nation." it was this sentiment that its author developed in the deeply interesting correspondence which follows. this correspondence is of the utmost value as elucidating the state of mind of the liberal englishmen from whom this country expected the sympathy it in so many cases failed to receive, and very notably failed to receive from the statesman who for more than a generation has been their intellectual and parliamentary leader. " carlton house terrace, "_november , _. "my dear sir,--i thank you very much for giving me the _thirteen months_. will you think that i belie the expression i have used if i tell you candidly the effect this book has produced upon my mind? i think you will not; i do not believe that you or your countrymen are among those who desire that any one should purchase your favor by speaking what is false, or by forbearing to speak what is true. the book, then, impresses me even more deeply than i was before impressed with the heavy responsibility you incur in persevering with this destructive and hopeless war at the cost of such dangers and evils to yourselves, to say nothing of your adversaries, or of an amount of misery inflicted upon europe such as no other civil war in the history of man has ever brought upon those beyond its immediate range. your frightful conflict may be regarded from many points of view. the competency of the southern states to secede, the rightfulness of their conduct in seceding (two matters wholly distinct and a great deal too much confounded), the natural reluctance of northern americans to acquiesce in the severance of the union, and the apparent loss of strength and glory to their country; the bearing of the separation on the real interests and on the moral character of the north; again, for an englishman, its bearing with respect to british interests--all these are texts of which any one affords ample matter for reflection. but i will only state, as regards the last of them, that i, for one, have never hesitated to maintain that, in my opinion, the separate and special interests of england were all on the side of the maintenance of the old union; and if i were to look at those interests alone, and had the power of choosing in what way the war should end, i would choose for its ending by the restoration of the old union this very day. another view of the matter not to be overlooked is its bearing on the interests of the black and colored race. i believe the separation to be one of the few happy events that have marked their mournful history; and although english opinion may be wrong upon this subject, yet it is headed by three men perhaps the best entitled to represent on this side of the water the old champions of the anti-slavery cause--lord brougham, the bishop of oxford, and mr. buxton. "but there is an aspect of the war which transcends every other: the possibility of success. the prospect of success will not justify a war in itself unjust, but the impossibility of success in a war of conquest of itself suffices to make it unjust; when that impossibility is reasonably proved, all the horror, all the bloodshed, all the evil passions, all the dangers to liberty and order with which such a war abounds, come to lie at the door of the party which refuses to hold its hand and let its neighbor be. "you know that in the opinion of europe this impossibility has been proved. it is proved by every page of this book, and every copy of this book which circulates will carry the proof wider and stamp it more clearly. depend upon it, to place the matter upon a single issue, you cannot conquer and keep down a country where the women behave like the women of new orleans, where, as this author says, they would be ready to form regiments, if such regiments could be of use. and how idle it is to talk, as some of your people do, and some of ours, of the slackness with which the war has been carried on, and of its accounting for the want of success! you have no cause to be ashamed of your military character and efforts. you have proved what wanted no proof--your spirit, hardihood, immense powers, and rapidity and variety of resources. you have spent as much money, and have armed and perhaps have destroyed as many men, taking the two sides together, as all europe spent in the first years of the revolutionary war. is not this enough? why have you not more faith in the future of a nation which should lead for ages to come the american continent, which in five or ten years will make up its apparent loss or first loss of strength and numbers, and which, with a career unencumbered by the terrible calamity and curse of slavery, will even from the first be liberated from a position morally and incurably false, and will from the first enjoy a permanent gain in credit and character such as will much more than compensate for its temporary material losses? i am, in short, a follower of general scott. with him i say, 'wayward sisters, go in peace.' immortal fame be to him for his wise and courageous advice, amounting to a prophecy. "finally, you have done what men could do; you have failed because you resolved to do what men could not do. "laws stronger than human will are on the side of earnest self-defence; and the aim at the impossible, which in other things may be folly only, when the path of search is dark with misery and red with blood, is not folly only, but guilt to boot. i should not have used so largely in this letter the privileges of free utterance had i not been conscious that i vie with yourselves in my admiration of the founders of your republic, and that i have no lurking sentiment either of hostility or of indifference to america; nor, i may add, even then had i not believed that you are lovers of sincerity, and that you can bear even the rudeness of its tongue. "i remain, dear sir, very faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone. "cyrus field, esq." [illustration: last two pages of letter from mr. gladstone, dated november , . [see pp. - .]] "palace hotel, buckingham gate, "london, _december , _. "_my dear sir_,--your letter of the th ultimo was duly received, and for it please accept my thanks. "i should have answered your letter at once, but i have been trying to find in london some documents to send you, for i am sure that if you have facts you will draw correct conclusions from them. "as i have not been able to obtain the papers that i want, i will send them to you on my return to new york. "i hope that you will get time to read the small book called _among the pines_, which i left at your house last friday. "may i send a copy of your letter to mr. seward at washington and my brother in new york? "with much respect i remain "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field. "right hon. w. e. gladstone." " downing street, whitehall, "_december , _. "_my dear sir_,--i thank you for the kind reception you have given to my officious letter. "you are quite at liberty to make any use of it which you think proper except publication, which you would not think of, and i should deprecate simply on account of the tone of assumption with which i might appear to be chargeable. "i thank you very much for _among the pines_, which i am reading with great interest. "i am glad to find you are going to cliveden, and i am sure you will enjoy your visit. "believe me, my dear sir, "most faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone. "cyrus w. field, esq." and again he wrote: " carlton house terrace, "_december , _. "_my dear sir_,--i have again to thank you for _among the pines_, a most interesting and, as far as i can judge, a most truthful work. it seems to open to view more aspects of society and character in the slave states than _uncle tom's cabin_, and to be written without any undue and bewildering predominance of imagination. "i need not here stop even for a moment on the ground of controversy. we all vie with one another in fervently desiring that the almighty may so direct the issue of the present crisis as to make it effective for the mitigation and even for the removal of a system which ever tends to depress the blacks into the condition of the mere animal, and which among the whites at once gives fearful scope to the passions of bad men and checks and mars the development of character in good ones. "i remain, dear sir, "most faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone. "cyrus w. field, esq." a very decided trait of mr. field was that when any business enterprise was proposed he planned every detail, drew up statements, and asked for statistics, and tried to determine the amount of work that it would be possible to accomplish, and for that reason it does not surprise us that before the money for the new cable was subscribed or the contracts signed he wrote to mr. reuter, and received this reply: "reuter's telegraph office, "london, _november , _. "_dear sir_,--i have received your letter of the th inst., wherein you ask whether i consider that a single wire from ireland to newfoundland would be sufficient, and what amount of business i think i should send through an atlantic cable the first year. "in reply to the first inquiry i should say from my own experience that a single telegraph wire between ireland and newfoundland would by no means be sufficient to meet the requirements of the public. "with respect to the amount of business i might send through the new line i cannot, of course, speak positively, but believe i can say that for the first year it would certainly not be less than £ . "i remain, dear sir, "faithfully yours, "julius reuter. "cyrus w. field, esq." at this time no one at all realized the amount of work that the small wire would be called upon to do. sixteen months after it was laid, on the d of december, , mr. field telegraphed to london that mr. bennett was willing to sign a contract with the cable company for one year, and that he would pay for political and general news $ a month--that is, £ a year--and the agreement was to begin at once or on the st of january, . the invitation to cliveden to which mr. gladstone referred was given by the dowager duchess of sutherland, and this visit, early in december, was followed by many others, and the friendship then formed lasted as long as she lived. he sailed for home on december th, and before he left england he sent this letter: "palace hotel, "london, _november , _. "_my dear daughters_,--many, many thanks to you for all the letters that you have written to me since we parted at our happy home. "i think i hear you say, why does not papa answer all of our letters? the reason is that i am so much occupied that i have hardly one single moment of leisure. i am busy all day at the atlantic telegraph company's office; or at messrs. glass, elliott & co.'s; or at the gutta-percha company's works; or with some persons connected with the english government; and almost every evening i am engaged until a very late hour. "i will give you a list of my engagements for the next few evenings: . saturday, november d.--at mr. russell sturgis's, to dinner and to spend the night. . sunday, november d.--at mr. russell sturgis's, spend the day and night. . monday, november th.--canning's, to dinner and spend the night. . tuesday, november th.--meet mr. maitland and others on business, and then to mr. lampson to dinner, seven p.m. . wednesday, november th.--i give a dinner-party at this hotel. . thursday, november th.--at mr. gooch's, to dinner. . friday, november th.--sir culling eardley's, to dinner and spend the night. . saturday, november th.--lady franklin's, to dinner. . sunday, november th.--mr. ashburner's, to dinner and spend the night. . monday, december st.--at mr. statham's, to dinner and spend the night. . tuesday, december d.--at mr. reuter's, to dinner and to spend the night. "professor wheatstone, dr. wallish, captains becher, galton, and bythesea, mr. adams, and mr. wortley are among the number that are to dine with me. there will be twelve in all. "how much i wish that i could have this dinner-party in our own home! "several times since i arrived i have had three invitations for the same evening, and i _decline_ all that i can without injury to the object of my visit to england. "i have been very anxious to get through and leave here so as to be with you on christmas, or certainly new-year's, but i do not see any prospect of being able to do so. "i have very often regretted that your mother or some of you were not with me. "mr. holbrooke returns in the _scotia_ on the th of december, and will be able to tell you how i am. how much i wish that i could go with him! "do, my dear children, be very kind to your blessed mother, and do everything in your power to make her happy. "i have purchased _all_ the things that you gave me a memorandum of, or have written me about. "good-bye, my dear children, and may god bless you all. "with much love to your mother, eddie, and willie, and kind regards to all the servants, "i remain, as ever, "your affectionate father, "cyrus w. field. "misses grace, alice, isabella, and fanny field." chapter x capital raised for the making of a new cable--steamship "great eastern" secured ( - ) on sunday, january th, , the steamer _asia_ arrived in new york, and mr. field writes that he had had a rough passage of fifteen days. on january th, in a letter to mr. saward, he says: "the whole country is in such a state of excitement in regard to the war that it is almost impossible to get any one to talk for a single moment about telegraph matters, but you may be sure that i shall do all that i can to obtain subscriptions here." and in another letter: "some days i have worked from before eight in the morning until after ten at night to obtain subscriptions to the atlantic telegraph company." long afterwards he told how, during these years, he has often seen his friends cross the street rather than have him stop them and talk on what engrossed so much of his thoughts as were not given to his country. but his love for his country was his master-passion, and only five days after his arrival in new york he went to washington to deliver a letter that he had brought with him from glass, elliott & co., in which they repeat their offer to lay submarine cables connecting certain military posts or points of strategic importance. he writes to this firm on january th: "i went to washington on january th, and the next day delivered your letter of december th to our government, and urged upon them the acceptance of your offer. i returned home on sunday, and on monday morning i received a telegram from the navy department requesting me to return immediately to washington, which i did the next day." the journey to washington at this time was long and trying, and in winter a very cold one, for it involved a ride of an hour across philadelphia in the street cars. mr. gladstone, in writing from london on february th, again thanks mr. field for books sent to him relating to the american war, and adds: "i hope i do not offend in expressing the humble desire that it may please the almighty soon to bring your terrific struggle to an end, for all who know me know that if i entertain such a wish it is with a view to the welfare of all persons of the united states, in which i have ever taken the most cordial interest." this letter of mr. bright's was written a week later: "london, _february , _. "_my dear sir_,--i have to thank you for forwarding to me mr. putnam's four handsome volumes of the _record of the rebellion_. i value the work highly, and have wished to have it. i shall write to mr. putnam to thank him for his most friendly and acceptable present. "we are impatient for news from your country. there is great effort without great result, and we fear the divisions in the north will weaken the government and stimulate the south. sometimes of late i have seemed to fear anarchy in the north as much as rebellion in the south. "i hope my fears arise more from my deep interest in your conflict than from any real danger from the discordant elements among you. if there is not virtue enough among you to save the state, then has the slavery poison done its fearful work. but i will not despair. opinion here has changed greatly. in almost every town great meetings are being held to pass resolutions in favor of the north, and the advocates of the south are pretty much put down. "this is a short and hasty note.... "believe me always "very truly yours, "john bright." on wednesday, march th, he addressed the chamber of commerce. mr. a. a. low offered a resolution expressing the confidence of the chamber that a cable could be laid across the atlantic, and ended his speech in support of it with these words: "any one listening to mr. field as frequently and as attentively as i have with regard to this subject could not long entertain a doubt as to the success of the effort. he has studied it in all its bearings, and with the aid of the science and intelligence so readily at command on the other side of the ocean, where he has had the benefit of an experience far exceeding that of this country with regard to ocean telegraphs. i am confident that whatever hesitation may for a time retard the work, it will not be of that kind to defeat the enterprise. with regard to the argument that this telegraph is in the power of the english government, and that we would be debarred from its use in time of war, let it be borne in mind that it may be built by great britain without our co-operation. the english government is alive to all the great necessities of the day. i wish, indeed, our own were equally alive to the urgencies of the age. "the english government, as i said, is alive to all the great necessities of the times, and it will assuredly lay the telegraph, whether we work with it or not. if this government and people participate with the government and people of great britain in the work, it will be done under treaty stipulations which will secure to our country effectually great advantages and facilities. i have faith in great britain, and i believe if great britain enters into any compact with this country she will be true to her plighted faith. i have little fear on that score.... our people ought not to be deterred by unworthy considerations from taking part in an enterprise called for by all the intelligence and wisdom of our times--such an enterprise as that now suggested. there is a risk which may well be incurred, in view of all the advantages the work presents. i, therefore, move the adoption of the resolution which i have had the honor to present." the resolution was seconded by mr. cooper, and unanimously adopted. on march th he addressed the produce merchants of new york, and on the th the board of brokers. it is quite impossible to give the names of the persons, companies, or corporations to whom he wrote, or from whom he solicited assistance, or the cities to which he went, making speeches, and urging every one he saw to subscribe to the stock of the new atlantic cable, and early in june he was able to say: "the total subscriptions in america to the atlantic telegraph stock to date are £ , sterling. every single person in the united states and british north american provinces that owns any of the old stock of the atlantic telegraph has shown his confidence in the enterprise by subscribing to the stock." these extracts are made from three letters written on march th, march th, and may th: "for the last three weeks i have devoted nearly my whole time to obtaining subscriptions to the atlantic telegraph stock, and, when you consider the rate of exchange on england, i think you will say that we have done well. at all events, i have worked very hard, going from door to door." "i never worked so hard in all my life." "we must all work until the necessary capital is subscribed. within the last two weeks i have travelled over fifteen hundred miles, visiting albany, buffalo, boston, and providence on business of the atlantic telegraph, and i have promises of subscriptions from all these places." the remarkable statement that follows is copied from a letter to mr. c. f. varley, dated march , : "there is a carriage-road all the way to california, and the mail is carried daily in wagons, and emigrants are constantly passing over the road alongside of which the telegraph line is built. the indians are friendly and do not to injure the line." the week before he sailed for england, on the th of may, he wrote a letter to his firm and gave these directions: "during my absence in europe you will please not sell any rags or paper manufacturers' stock except for cash, as in these times we had much better keep our goods than to sell them even on a few days' credit. any manufacturer that is a no. can get all the money he wants at interest, and will prefer to buy cheap for cash.... i would only purchase such papers as i wanted for immediate sales and could sell at a good profit." cyrus w. field & co. wrote on july th and gave their weekly statement, and from the end of their letter this is copied: "our books have been balanced for the six months by the following entries: profit and loss--cr. merchandise $ , cliff street , commission --------- $ , profit and loss--dr. store expenses $ , insurance interest advertising --------- , ---------- net profits for six months $ , on the st of the month they had written: "business has been almost entirely suspended for the last week on account of the great excitement arising from the rebel invasion of pennsylvania.... harrisburg, baltimore, and philadelphia are threatened by lee." and on the th: "since our last letter a most fearful riot has broken out here in the city; it still continues, and business is almost entirely suspended." this was the famous "draft riot" of new york, and it was brought near to him; his house adjoined that of his brother david dudley field, whose wife wrote: "my husband just got back in time to save, by prompt and vigorous action, our property. our poor servants were terribly alarmed; they were threatened by incendiaries who warned them to leave the premises.... think of one hundred and eighty soldiers sleeping in our stable, the officers being fed in the basement.... as the rioters approached our house they were met by a company of soldiers that dudley had just sent for; their glittering bayonets and steady march soon sent them back before they had time to effect their demoniacal purpose." in _abraham lincoln: a history_ we read that "the riots came to a bloody close on the night of thursday, the fourth day. a small detachment of soldiers met the principal body of rioters at third avenue and twenty-first street, killed thirteen, wounding eighteen more, and taking some prisoners." this occurred within a square of mr. field's house, and those who had been left in charge had not proved themselves very brave; they fled from the house, leaving pictures, silver, and all valuables, and took with them only a box of tea and a cat. the tea they thought they would enjoy, and feared the cat might be lonely. the depression felt in new york on july st, and mentioned in the letter written on that day, was reported in england on the th, on which day the news brought by the steamer _bohemian_, was published, and those who sympathized with the south were exultant, and were quite sure that the steamer _canada_, due on the th, would bring news of the utter defeat of the northern army under general meade. the steamer did not arrive on the day she was expected, and on the intervening sunday he has said that he was far too excited to think of going to church. instead he hailed a cab and drove to the house of mr. adams (then american minister in london). mr. adams was at church. next he stopped at the rooms of a friend, and persuaded him, although he was in the midst of shaving, to go with him to the city. they drove to reuter's; the man in charge of that office refused to answer any questions, saying that if he were to do so he would lose his place; he was assured that if that proved to be so he should immediately be given another place, and with an increase of pay. these questions were then asked: "is the steamer in from america?" and "what is the price of gold in new york?" at last the wearied clerk opened the door wide enough to say that "the steamer is in and gold is ." this gave assurance of a victory for the north; and putting his foot between the door and the jamb, mr. field refused to move it until he was given every particular. "there has been a three days' fight at gettysburg; lee has retreated into virginia; vicksburg has fallen." three cheers were given, and then three times three; they were hearty and loud, and after that the one thought was to spread the good news as rapidly as possible. first he made his way to upper portland place, where a message was left for mr. adams. then he drove out of london, and passed the afternoon in going to see his friends. he enjoyed very much telling of the victory to those who rejoiced with him, but perhaps more to those who, though northerners by birth, were southerners at heart, and had not failed in the dark days just past to let him know that they wished for a divided country. at one house in particular he entered looking very depressed, and with a low voice asked if they had had the news from queenstown, and when the answer was "no" he read to them the paper he carried in his hand. his appearance had deceived them, and they had answered him smilingly, but their faces fell when they heard the news, and as he drove from the house he waved the message at them and called back, "oh, you rebels! oh, you rebels!" mr. bright wrote on august th: "from the tone of the southern papers and the spasms of the new york _herald_ i gather that the struggle is approaching an end, and the conspirators are anxious to save slavery in the arrangements that may be made. on this point the great contest will now turn, and the statesmanship of your statesmen will be tried. i still have faith in the cause of freedom." it is more probable that mr. chase refers in the following letter to mr. bright's letter of february th than to the one just given: "washington, _august , _. "_my dear sir_,--i thank you for sending me a copy of mr. bright's letter. it is marked by the comprehensive sagacity which distinguishes his statesmanship. "have you read "callirrhoe," a fanciful story of george sand's, which has appeared in the late numbers of _revue des deux mondes_? it is founded upon the idea of transmigration, and especially upon the notion that the souls of those who have lived in former times reappear with their characteristic traits in the persons of new generations. if i adopted this notion i might believe that hampden and sidney live again in bright and cobden. "a letter expressing the same general ideas as are contained in that addressed to you was lately sent by mr. bright to mr. aspinwall. this letter mr. aspinwall kindly enclosed to me, and i read it to the president. i had repeatedly said the same things to him, and was not sorry to have my representations unconsciously echoed by a liberal english statesman. the president said nothing, but i am sure he is more and more confirmed in the resolution to make the proclamation efficient as well after peace as during rebellion. "my own efforts are constantly directed to this result. almost daily i confer more or less fully with loyalists of the insurrectionary states, who almost unanimously concur in judgment with me that the only safe basis of permanent peace is reconstitution by recognition in the fundamental law of each state, through a convention of its loyal people, of the condition of universal freedom established by the proclamation. it was only yesterday that i had a full conversation with governor pierpont, of virginia, and judge bowden, one of the united states senators from that state, on this subject. both these gentlemen agree in thinking that the president should revoke the exception of certain counties in southeastern virginia from the operation of the proclamation, and that the governor should call the legislature together and recommend the assembling of a convention for the amendment of the existing constitution, and in expecting that the convention will propose an amendment prohibiting slavery. i think there is some reason to hope that the president may determine to revoke the exception, and more reason to hope that the convention will be failed and freedom established in virginia through its agency. "i do not know that you are perfectly familiar with the present condition of things in virginia. soon after the outbreak of the rebellion the loyal people of virginia organized under the old constitution, through a legislature at wheeling, and subsequently, through a convention, consented to a division of the state by organizing the northwest portion as the state of west virginia. if you look at the map you will see that the line forming the southern and eastern boundaries of this new state commences on the big fork of the big sandy, in the west line of mcdowell county, and thence proceeds irregularly so as to include mcdowell and mercer counties, along the crest of the alleghanies to pendleton county, where it diverges to the shenandoah mountains and proceeds northeast to the potomac river, at the northeast corner of berkeley, including pendleton, hardy, hampshire, morgan, and berkeley counties. congress consented to the admission of this state, and it is now in the union, fully organized under a free-labor constitution. its organization, of course, left the government of old virginia in the hands of governor pierpont and his associates, by whom the seat of government has been established at alexandria. at present only a comparatively narrow belt of counties from the atlantic to the east line of berkeley is practically controlled by the loyal state government, but the loyal men of these counties are recognized by the national government as the state, and as county after county is rescued from rebel control it will come naturally under this organization, until probably at no distant day governor pierpont will be acknowledged as the governor of virginia at richmond. when this takes place, the state will be necessarily a free state, under a constitution prohibiting slavery. the loyal people of florida are ready to take the same course which governor pierpont proposes to take in virginia; and the same is true of the loyal people of louisiana to a great extent. it will be found, doubtless, as the authority of the union is re-established in other states included by the proclamation, that the same sentiments will prevail; so that it will be quite easy for the national government, if the president feels so disposed, to secure the recognition of the proclamation, and the permanent establishment of its policy, through the action of the people of the several states affected by it. "in this way the great ends to be accomplished can be most certainly reached. my own efforts are constantly directed to their attainment, and i never admit in conversation or otherwise the possibility that the rebel states can _cease_ to be _rebel states_ and _become loyal_ members of the union except through the recognition of the condition created by the proclamation, by the establishment of free institutions under slavery-prohibiting constitutions. i not only labor for these ends, but hope quite sanguinely that they will be secured. "the public sentiment of the country has undergone a great change in reference to slavery. strong emancipation parties exist in every slave state not affected by the proclamation, and a general conviction prevails that slavery cannot long survive the restoration of the republic. the proclamation, and such recognition of it as i have mentioned, will have finished it in the proclamation states. in the other states the people will finish it by their own action. i do not care to sketch the picture of the great and powerful nation which will then exhibit its strength in america. your own foresight must have anticipated all i could say. "the war moves too slow and costs too much; but it moves steadily, and rebellion falls before it. our financial condition remains entirely sound. the new national banks are being organized as rapidly as prudence allows, and no doubt can, i think, be longer entertained that, whatever else may happen, we shall have gained, through the rebellion, an opportunity, not unimproved, of establishing a safe and uniform currency for the whole nation--a benefit in itself compensating in some degree, and in no small degree, for the evils we have endured. i trust you are succeeding well in your great scheme of the inter-continental telegraph. it is an enterprise worthy of this day of great things. if i had the wealth of an astor you should not lack the means of construction. yours very truly, "s. p. chase. "cyrus w. field, esq." mr. chase's letter was shown to mr. gladstone eight months later, and he returned this reply: " carlton house terrace, s. w., "_april , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i return, with many thanks, these interesting letters: the one full of feeling, the other of important political anticipations. "it is very good of you to send a letter of mr. chase's to me, who, i apprehend, must pass in the united states for no better than a confirmed heretic, though i have never opened my mouth in public about america except for the purposes of sympathy and what i thought friendship. "i admit i cannot ask or expect you to take the same view on the other side of the water. engaged in a desperate struggle, you may fairly regard as adverse all those who have anticipated an unfavorable issue, even although, like myself, they have ceased to indulge gratuitously in such predictions, when they have become aware that you resent, as you are entitled to judge the matter for yourselves. i cannot hope to stand well with americans, much as i value their good opinions, unless and until the time shall come when they shall take the opposite view, retrospectively, of this war from that which they now hold. if that time ever comes, i shall then desire their favorable verdict, just as i now respectfully submit to their condemnation. "what i know is this, that the enemies of america rejoice to see the two combatants exhaust themselves and one another in their gigantic and sanguinary strife. "as respects mr. chase, he is, if i may say so, a brother in this craft; and i have often sympathized with his difficulties, and admired the great ability and ingenuity with which he appears to have steered his course. "i remain, my dear sir, "faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone." the "letter full of feeling" to which mr. gladstone refers was an account sent to mr. field by his daughter alice of a visit to the headquarters of the army of the potomac. on account of this reference, and also for its interest as a contemporaneous sketch of the war time by a non-combatant, it is here inserted: "washington, d. c., _february , _. "_my dear mother_,--since i last wrote i have been to the army front, passing on the way many of the battle-fields whose names bring up sad memories, and finally living for two nights and much of three days within view of the enemy's signals, and in the midst of our own encampments.... early on monday morning we found ourselves in the government train on the way to brandeth station. this is a five hours' journey from washington, but the time could not have dragged with any one interested in the history of our country. we saw the battle-ground of manasses; we crossed the bull run stream and the fields made memorable by pope's disastrous campaign. indeed, along the long line of the railway runs a battle-field--the "race-course," as an officer told me it was called, so often have our troops and the enemy's pursued each other there. everywhere one sees the evidences of war; the whole country is desolated, and the earth ploughed by the tread of armies; broken earthworks border the brows of the hills, and wherever a camp is seen around it is a stockade or abatis to protect it from mosby's guerillas, who infest this region. "as we were whirled past these scenes, i listened to the talk of the officers about me, and expressions such as these made the story doubly real: "it was there the cavalry was attacked"; "the bridge we are now crossing was contested all day in the action of the other day"; "we held those hills where that body of artillery is now moving." so those five hours hurried away, and we did not wake up to the present until we reached brandeth station. here stood lines of ambulances to receive the army's guests, and soon we were placed in an ambulance and jolted over corduroy roads to general ---- 's tent. after an hour's jolting we reached our first destination. the general's tent was one of a large encampment on a hill which commands a view of our fortifications all about the country and those of the rebels across the river, only four or five miles away. "general ----, commander of the third brigade, third division, second corps, received us very courteously, and with him and three of the officers of his staff we lunched in the tent. this tent is charming. at one end blazes in a huge fireplace--open, of course--a bright wood fire: in the centre stands a table, over which hangs a chandelier holding three candles; on one side is the bed; and all about are army chairs. "our lunch, where the officers presided as hosts and waiters, consisted of ham sandwiches, pickles, jelly, ale, and tea. the three officers were our escorts to our quarters, which we found to be in the old virginia manor milton, owned and still inhabited by the well-known family of ----. "they did not smile upon us at first, but we made a great effort to propitiate the two sad-looking virginia ladies who received us. they both were in mourning for the son of one of them, who was killed during the peninsula campaign--a rebel. poor, poor fellow! we felt so much for these proud women, obliged to receive northern strangers, and unable to conceal their fallen fortunes, that we did our best to heal their wounded self-love. after tea we dressed for the ball. i wore the blue tissue, the white lace waist, and a blue ribbon only in my hair.... our three escorts arrived long before we were ready, but at last we were put again into our ambulance. just fancy the strangeness of going to a ball in an ambulance, and the ball-room itself, indeed, was as odd a mingling of contrasts. it was an immense boarded room, with a pointed roof from which hung many flags and banners, most ragged and full of bullet-holes, some in ribbons; guns were stacked against the building, and these were draped with evergreens; on either side of the platform used by the band rested cannons pointed towards us; these were almost concealed by banners again. from this end of the room came excellent music all the evening. "i was made quite happy by general meade's condescension in speaking to me twice. we had four hours' sleep that night, or rather the next morning. the whole of tuesday was given to a great review--that of the second corps. general meade reviewed the troops. there were infantry and cavalry; these last were kilpatrick's, and they showed us a cavalry charge; this was very exciting, and their shrieks in rushing upon the supposed enemy so overcame us that we clung to each other in terror. the day was more than may, it was june. far away rose the blue ridge (well named, we thought), while all over the country in every direction were marching the infantry, or the artillery was rumbling, or the cavalry dashing about in the soft virginia breezes. when general meade reviewed the army, as he rode with his staff past each brigade the general and officers joined the cavalcade of the commander-in-chief, the band playing and colors flying and bayonets glistening, all in the bright sunlight of that perfect day. i cannot tell you how touching was the sight of those regiments that have been long in the service, and have but two or three hundred left. they march so firmly, carrying their torn banners, with the names of the battles in which they have fought written upon them. "during the review we received an invitation from the general to dine with him, which we accepted. i must reserve a detailed account of this dinner for another letter. "the next morning we bade good-bye to our friends, and returned to the restraints of city life." it was during this year that mr. varley made the statement that when the cable was laid it would be possible to send through it eight words a minute, and possibly thirteen and a half words. this assertion called down upon him some criticism. on july , , mr. field sent ninety-five words from london to the president of the united states at washington in eighteen minutes. ten minutes were required to send the message from buckingham palace hotel to throgmorton street, and eight minutes from there to washington. when in london he was up by five o'clock, though out at dinner every night, and the servants at his hotel were known to say, "mr. field never goes to sleep." his work while on either side of the atlantic was constant, and for that reason the long sea voyages proved a blessing. the first days after sailing he would sleep continuously, only getting up for his meals, and by so doing was rested and ready for any emergency or pleasure on landing. immediately upon his arrival in new york on september , , he prepared to welcome vice-admiral sir alexander milne. a reception was given to sir alexander and lady milne by mr. and mrs. field early in october, and the letter from washington refers to that entertainment: "treasury department, _october , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i am glad that you are doing your part towards making the stay of the naval officers of the _good queen_ in our metropolitan harbor agreeable to them. my faith is strong that the english government will yet see that the interests of mankind demand that there should be no alienation of the two great branches of the anglo-saxon family from each other, and will do its part towards removing all causes of alienation by full reparation for the injuries inflicted on american commerce by unneutral acts of british subjects, known to and not prevented by the responsible authorities. "that's a long sentence, but i believe it conveys my meaning. i am sorry i cannot accept the kind invitation of yourself and mrs. field (to whom please make my best regards acceptable) to meet these gallant officers. "yours, very truly, "s. p. chase." the answer to this letter was written on october the th: "i fully concur in every word you say in regard to the conduct of the british government towards us: and hope, with you, that they will see it is for our mutual interest, as well as for that of all mankind, that friendly feelings should always exist between 'the two great branches of the anglo-saxon family.' vice-admiral sir alexander milne left for washington this morning.... "i have been very glad to do everything in my power to make his visit to this city agreeable as possible, and i hope he will take away with him from our shores very pleasing impressions of them, and of the country and people." the coming of the english fleet to new york had been the subject of discussion both in england and america; this command had been given to the admiral: "the naval commander-in-chief on the north american and west india station is especially directed by the eighth article of his instructions as follows: "you are strictly to abstain from entering any port of the united states unless absolutely compelled to do so by the necessities of the service." the order was not modified until the fall of , when admiral milne sailed from halifax in h.m.s. _nile_, with the _immortalité_, _medea_, and _nimble_ in company, and arrived off sandy hook early in october. to use his own words: "on being visited by mr. archibald, her majesty's counsel, he informed me of the strong and unfriendly feeling which then existed against england in consequence of the building of the two ships of war in liverpool for the southern states, and from various other matters connected with the existing civil war, and that my reception would probably be unsatisfactory. this, however, was not the case; my visit was evidently acceptable, and proved most satisfactory, and i received every attention from the authorities, as well as private individuals, not only at new york, but also at washington, as will be seen by the following correspondence: "'washington, _november , _. "'_sir_,--vice-admiral sir alexander milne having reported to the lords commissioners of the admiralty the great kindness and courtesy with which he was received at washington by the president of the united states and the members of the cabinet, i have been instructed to convey to the government of the united states the expression of the gratification which their lordships have felt at the courtesy and attention so handsomely shown to the vice-admiral. "'i have, etc., "'lyons. "'the hon. w. h. seward, secretary of state, washington.' "'department of state, "'washington, _december , _. "_'my dear lord lyons_,--i have made known to the president and to the heads of departments the agreeable communication you have made to me in regard to the reception of vice-admiral milne on the occasion of his visit at this capital. "'the just, liberal, and courteous conduct of the admiral in the performance of his duties while commanding h. m.'s naval forces in the vicinity of the united states was known to this government before his arrival, and it therefore afforded the president a special satisfaction to have an opportunity to extend to him an hospitable welcome. "'i am, etc., "'w. h. seward. "'the lord lyons.'" about this time there came unfavorable reports from england of the affairs of the telegraph company. the work then was at a standstill, and on november th mr. field wrote to mr. saward: "if you have new and formidable difficulties you must make the greater exertions." and on december th mr. saward wrote, urging him to come immediately to england. on december , , accordingly, he retired from business in new york, in order to devote his whole time to further the efforts then being made to lay a cable across the atlantic, and on the th he gave up the building no. beekman street, where his office had been for some years. his arrival in england early in january was reported in the london _telegraphic journal_ of february th in these words: "the atlantic telegraph project is again attracting public attention. mr. cyrus w. field, one of the leading spirits of the undertaking, is again amongst us, full of hope and ready to embark once more in the gigantic enterprise." mr. john bright said, in a speech made at a dinner given on the evening of april , : "just before i came here i was speaking to a gentleman, a member of her majesty's government--one of the present cabinet--and i told him, as i was coming out of the house, that i was going to dine with some friends of the atlantic telegraph. his countenance at once brightened up, and he said to me: 'i look upon that as the most glorious thing that man ever attempted; there is nothing else which so excites my sympathies.' when he said that he spoke only the feelings of every intelligent and moral man in the whole world." but to carry out "the most glorious thing that man ever attempted" there was endless work awaiting him, and what he accomplished in three months is best told by himself, and is made to read continuously, although, in fact, the words were spoken at different times on the evening just referred to; he failed to say that he was one of the ten men who each subscribed £ , : "when i arrived in this country in january last the atlantic telegraph company trembled in the balance. we were in want of funds and were in negotiations with the government and making great exertions to raise the money. at this juncture i was introduced to a gentleman of great integrity and enterprise, who is well known, not only for his wealth, but for his foresight, and in attempting to enlist him in our cause he put me through such a cross-examination as i had never before experienced. i thought i was in the witness-box. he inquired of me the practicability of the scheme, what it would pay, and everything else connected with it, but before i left him i had the pleasure of hearing him say that it was a great national enterprise that ought to be carried out, and he added, 'i will be one of ten to find the money required for it.' from that day to this he has never hesitated about it, and when i mention his name you will know him as a man whose word is as good as his bond, and as for his bond there is no better in england. i give you 'the health of thomas brassey.' the words spoken by mr. brassey ... encouraged us all, and made us believe we should succeed in raising the necessary capital, and i then went to work to find nine other thomas brasseys (i did not know whether he was an englishman, a scotchman, or an irishman, but i made up my mind that he combines all the good qualities of every one of them), and after considerable search i met with a rich friend from manchester, and i asked him if he would second mr. brassey, and walked with him from pall mall to the house of commons, of which he is a member. before we reached the house he expressed his willingness to do so to an equal amount. a few days after that it was thought there would be a great advantage arising out of the fusion of the gutta-percha company and messrs. glass, elliott & co. into a public telegraph construction and maintenance company, who would in that form be able, with advantages to themselves, to help forward the atlantic telegraph. mr. pender then entered into it heart and soul, and we have now a list of eminent capitalists in the united kingdom pledged to carry out that enterprise in the very best manner. i therefore feel we are deeply indebted to mr. brassey and mr. pender for the energetic way in which this matter has been taken up by them, and i am truly glad to see the telegraph construction and maintenance company established with the object and power of carrying forward the extension of telegraphic communication in all parts of the world. "the _great eastern_ ship company have acted in the most liberal manner towards us, inasmuch as at present they are truly engaged in a labor of love. from this day to the st of december, , we are to have the use of that magnificent vessel; and, if the cable be not successfully laid, we shall not have to pay a single shilling for the use of her. should it be successful, we are then to hand to the directors of the _great eastern_ ship company £ , in shares. in all my business experience i have never known any offer more honorable. i wish to say that those of you who last honored me with your company at dinner in this house will recollect that on that occasion i proposed the health of mr. george peabody and his worthy partner, mr. morgan, and the latter replied to the sentiment. i had stated in the course of my remarks preliminary to the toast that when i called upon him in he gave the name of his house as subscribers for £ , of the company's stock. in reply to the toast, mr. morgan spoke of that £ , as lost money, but promised a further subscription, nevertheless, towards carrying out a new cable, and i am happy to say that yesterday he redeemed his promise. that statement that he lost his money is not strictly accurate. it is not lost. he knows where the cable is and can go and get it. the money has been sown, and the plant is already out of the ground, and is now growing up splendidly. it will soon be in flower--i mean at a premium--and then there will be in the office of messrs. george peabody & co. more rejoicing over that £ , which was lost and is found than over any £ , of their profits that were never in danger. when i invited mr. morgan here this evening, he consented to come upon the express condition that he should not have to reply to any toast or make a speech. i will therefore give you a sentiment, which, remember, he is on no account to reply to; but i hope you have all, by this time, drunk enough wine to enable you to imagine what he would say in reply to it if he were under any obligation to respond. i ask you, then, to drink success to the house of messrs. george peabody & co." before his friends left him, he said: "my stay in england is now drawing to a close, and never before when about to embark for america did i feel more satisfied and rejoiced at the position of our great undertaking; but with all this a feeling of sadness at times steals over me. it seems to me in those moments very doubtful whether many of us will ever meet again. what little i could do has been done, and the enterprise is now in the hands of the contractors, who, i am sure, will carry it out to a triumphant success. it will do much to bind together england and america, and base, indeed, will be the man, to whatever country he may belong, that may dare, with an unhallowed tongue or venomous pen, to sow discord among those who speak the same language and profess the same religion, and who ought to be on terms of the completest friendship. i shall leave in a few days for my native land, for i think it wrong on the part of any american to be away in the hour of peril to his country, unless it be on a mission of peace; his place is otherwise at home at such a moment. i will say, however, that if anyone here present should come to see us in america, he will receive a hearty welcome from me, at all events." the importance attached by his colleagues in the great enterprise to mr. field's presence and personal participation in the task has often been made evident in these pages, and it is explicitly set forth in the following letter received by mr. field at a time when he considered that his duty to his family might require his immediate return to america: " , the grove, camberwell, s., "_ d february, ._ "_my dear sir_,--before you finally decide on leaving england let me beg of you, in behalf of the great work for which you have already made so many sacrifices, and also in regard to your large pecuniary interest therein, to carefully consider the consequence of prematurely going away. you will recollect that on both of the two last occasions when you were good enough to cross the atlantic on this business, i strongly urged you to remain until all the various matters preliminary to a fair start with the manufacture of the cable were concluded and the necessary arrangements finally settled; and had not your most natural anxiety to be again among your family prevailed, i do think you might have been spared at least your last voyage. "on the present occasion the undertaking has been benefited very greatly by your presence, and the contracts now about to be entered into are in their present position mainly on account of your exertions. but they are not _completed_. even if accepted to-day there will be a great many points, when they come to be arranged in a legal form, which i shall have to battle with the contractors and others, and in doing which your aid will be most invaluable to me. there are also arrangements to be made for securing the regular and proper progress of the work, so as to give security that nothing is neglected that will secure the success of the cable in , and i feel that if you remain i shall have security for getting them into proper position. i therefore on every ground ask you not to leave us until you have seen with your own eyes the cable actually commenced and everything organized for its due continuance. you can then leave with a comfortable assurance that all will go well. "i know how hard all this is for mrs. field, and you, who know how much i love my own home, will, i am sure, believe me when i say how much i sympathize with you and her in the sacrifices involved in these continual separations; but it must be borne in mind that you have been marked out by the ruler of all things as the apostle of this great movement, and this is a high mission and a noble distinction, in which i am sure mrs. field herself would deeply regret that you should come short of success, independently altogether of the very large results to herself and family from the pecuniary success or failure of the undertaking, all concerned in which have hitherto been compelled to make greater or smaller sacrifices in its behalf. "i leave this for your consideration, having felt it a duty to say thus much to you in my private capacity upon what i consider a most important subject. "i am, very dear sir, "very truly yours, "george saward]. "cyrus w. field, esquire, palace hotel, buckingham gate." at the end of the report made to the shareholders of the atlantic telegraph company on march th, the right hon. james stuart wortley said: "without saying anything to detract from my deep source of gratitude to the other directors, i cannot help especially alluding to mr. cyrus field, who is present to-day, and who has crossed the atlantic thirty-one times in the service of this company, having celebrated at his table yesterday the anniversary of the tenth year of the day when he first left boston in the service of the company. collected round his table last night was a company of distinguished men--members of parliament, great capitalists, distinguished merchants and manufacturers, engineers, and men of science--such as is rarely found together, even in the highest home in this great metropolis. it was very agreeable to see an american citizen so surrounded. to me it was so personally, as it would have been to you, and it was still more gratifying inasmuch as we were there to celebrate the approaching accomplishment of the atlantic telegraph." and at a meeting of the board of directors of the atlantic telegraph company on may th, it was unanimously resolved, on the motion of mr. lampson: "that the sincere thanks of this board be given to mr. cyrus w. field for his untiring energy in promoting the general interests of the atlantic telegraph company, and especially for his valuable and successful exertions during his present visit to great britain in reference to the restoration of its financial position and prospects of complete success." his friend of many years wrote: "house of commons, _ th april, _. "_my dear mr. field,_--i am obliged, i am sorry to say, by the state of my health to deny myself the pleasure of accompanying you to-morrow to witness the process in connection with the great project for bringing the two worlds into instantaneous communication--a project with which your name will be always associated. i hope to have the pleasure of again shaking hands with you before you leave us. if not, i shall look forward to the gratification of welcoming you on the triumph of the atlantic telegraph. "with my best wishes for your welfare, "i remain "sincerely yours, "richard cobden." march d his name appears on the list of those who attended the meeting at the london tavern, when an "organization was formed of americans in the united kingdom as an auxiliary to the united states sanitary commission. one of the contributions that he received was one thousand tons of coal from mr. (now sir george) elliot. he sailed for home on may th, and on the th of the same month the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company passed this resolution: "that this company tender to mr. cyrus w. field their sincere thanks for the untiring perseverance, industry, and skill with which he has labored gratuitously for over ten years to promote the interests of this company, and to secure the successful laying of a submarine cable from newfoundland to ireland. and we hereby express our conviction that to him is due the credit, and to him this company and the world will be indebted, for the successful laying of the same." august, , was passed in newfoundland, and it was at this time that he chose the landing-place for the new cable. "the little harbor in newfoundland that bears the gentle name of heart's content is a sheltered nook where ships may ride at anchor, safe from the storms of the ocean. it is but an inlet from that great arm of the sea known as trinity bay, which is sixty or seventy miles long and twenty miles broad. on the beach is a small village of some sixty houses, most of which are the humble dwellings of those hardy men who vex the northern seas with their fisheries. the place was never heard of outside of newfoundland till , when mr. field, sailing up trinity bay in the surveyors steamer _margaretta stevenson_, captain orlebar, r.n., in search of a place for the landing of the ocean cable, fixed upon this secluded spot. the old landing of was at the bay of bull's arm, at the head of trinity bay, twenty miles above. heart's content was chosen now because its waters are still and deep, so that a cable skirting the north side of the banks of newfoundland can be brought in deep water almost till it touches the shore. all around the land rises to pine-crested heights." this is from a letter written to mr. saward on october the th: "since my return home in may last i have been doing my utmost to carry out the wishes of the directors and yourself in regard to the control of the lines between port hood, new york, and montreal, with separate offices at port hood, halifax, st. john's, n. b., boston, quebec, montreal, and new york, for the atlantic telegraph, and the best place for landing the cable in newfoundland. to accomplish these two objects i have seen almost all of the persons who control the principal telegraph lines in america, and have visited philadelphia, baltimore, washington, poughkeepsie, boston, and portland in the united states; st. john's and fredericton in new brunswick; charlottetown in prince edward's island; truro and halifax in nova scotia; port hood and sydney in cape breton; st. john's and trinity and placentia bays in newfoundland; quebec and montreal in canada, and have travelled over sixty-three hundred miles, viz.: "by railway, over miles. "by steamers, over miles. "by open wagon, over miles. "by stage-coach, over miles. "by fishing-boats, about miles." and on october th: "i can hardly keep the business of the atlantic telegraph company out of my mind for a single moment." the future captain of the _great eastern_ wrote: "r.m.s.s. 'europa,' _october , _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_my dear sir_,--i am in receipt of your favor of the th inst., for which i thank you. so far as it has gone you have paid me a very high compliment. i have been afraid at times that you may have thought me lukewarm upon the subject of commanding the _great eastern_, and am desirous you should understand that i have restrained my enthusiasm because i have not thought it likely i should be chosen, and that, after all, it might be only your partiality for me. "i would not have been surprised if, after consulting with mr. cunard, your letter to me had alluded to the propriety of my giving it no more heed. it is so difficult to know what estimate other people may have formed of one's capacity for any considerable effort--small things often give a strong bias--and he might have suggested some other man to you as more likely than i. "i am, besides, still of opinion that the applicants for the honor will be so numerous, and apparently so eligible, that the majority of the directors will prefer a man over whom they will like to feel that they have the greatest possible control. it will probably appear objectionable to employ a man who felt himself the servant of another company, and who, for anything they could tell, might become ridiculously elated with the preference shown to him. "i feel these are objections that will be advanced, because were i director i should urge them myself until well assured of fair reasons for abandoning them. "you do, however, want a man who is familiar with the atlantic--its fogs, ice and method of its gales--and, above all, one who will devote himself to working with the engineers of the cable, who, after all, _must be_ obeyed. any fellow who shows signs of advancing his own whims in opposition to theirs must be thrown overboard. no want of harmony should interfere with so great a scheme. "i would recommend that whoever you may put in command should be sent to have a look at the locality and neighboring coast where the cable is to be landed. this may prove of vital importance should the coast be approached in the summer fogs or haze. "i hope you will understand from this that i fairly covet the distinction, yet could not wisely leave so fine a service for anything so indefinite as the command of the _great eastern_ may prove to be. should i be chosen for the temporary command, i would, for my own reputation, and in my friendship for you, bend all my energies to insure success to so grand an international scheme. "i know professor bache very well. admiral dupont, general doyle, agassiz, pierce, and others dine with me to-day. i know bache so much that i think nothing too good for him. the united states coast survey is a monument to his fame that can never die or become useless, and i think its accuracy is unquestionable. "with renewed thanks for your interest in me, and every kind wish to you and yours, "i remain "yours very truly, "james anderson. "p. s.--i think i resume command of the _china_ again on my return, but do not yet know." for the account of a dinner given by mr. field on the evening of december th in this year we are indebted to the _life of general john a. dix_: "on the ---- of december, , while in command of the department of the east, i was dining at the house of mr. cyrus w. field with a party of ladies and gentlemen. lord lyons, the british minister, sat on mrs. field's right hand, and my seat was next to his. when the dinner had been a short time in progress a telegraphic despatch was brought to me at the table informing me that a party of secessionists from canada had taken possession of the village of st. albans, in vermont, and were plundering it. informing mr. and mrs. field that i had received a communication which demanded my personal attention, i left the table, promising to return as soon as possible. i immediately went to my headquarters, and telegraphed to the commanding officer at burlington--the nearest military station--ordering him to send the forces at his disposal to st. albans with the utmost despatch, and, if the marauders were still there, to capture them if possible. i instructed him also that if he came in sight of them and they crossed the canada line while he was in pursuit, to follow them. "after giving these orders i returned to the dinner-table, and, having resumed my seat, told lord lyons that i had been called away by a very unpleasant summons, and informed him what i had heard from st. albans and what order i had given." this dinner was referred to by mr. field, and he has said that when general dix told him of his order he exclaimed, "that means war." he was persuaded that had it not been that lord lyons and general dix were together this evening when the news of the invasion was received serious trouble might have arisen between the two countries. before the evening was over the general and the minister had had a long talk, and later general dix modified his order, so far as it related to the pursuit of the invaders into canadian territory. chapter xi the failure of on february , , mr. field writes: "i have been absent from new york for some time on a visit to washington and to general grant's army." it was on the previous day that he had written to london: "i do most sincerely hope that captain james anderson, of the cunard steamer _china_, will be appointed to the command of the _great eastern_ during the laying of the atlantic telegraph cable.... with captain anderson in command and messrs. canning and clifford superintending the laying of the cable, i should feel the greatest confidence that all would go right." the _china_ was at this time on her way to new york. she sailed again on her return voyage, march th, and mr. field was on board as a passenger. the following letter from captain anderson is evidently the sequel of their conversations on the voyage: " richmond terrace, beech road, "liverpool, _march , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i purpose going up to london sometime to-morrow. i did not get the _china_ moored until four p.m., so that i have still the necessary custom entries to make. "i shall meet you at breakfast tuesday morning as early as you like, and shall look for a note upon my arrival at your hotel. i shall telegraph when i start. "mr. david maciver appears to have laid his plans for the possibility of my being required to remain behind at this time, but will require an answer at latest on wednesday morning. it will therefore be necessary that i should be in communication as early as possible on tuesday morning with some one who could proceed to the ship with me and talk the matter over. "i dare say there may be no more work required than could be done after my arrival in may, but it would then be too late to undo anything. "i have, however, the greatest faith in the engineering skill and experience of messrs. glass, elliott & co., and believe i shall find myself unable to suggest much that they are not already quite familiar with, but i naturally would like to identify myself with some knowledge of the storage and plans for lifting the ship, with a view to trim for steering, pitching, or rolling as she becomes lighter. "i would like to see how the tanks are connected with each other in their communication, and to understand the process of paying out, the possibility of ever requiring to check it, and to be generally familiar with men and material below the deck. "you know i think prevention better than cure, and that it is the distinct duty of a ship-master to be familiar with what is to be apprehended, and, so far as he can, to have some plans in his mind to which he can resort when his foresight has proved insufficient. i do not apprehend or fear any difficulty to your great enterprise, but as little as possible should be left to chance or inspiration. "the essentials, as far as i am concerned, would be to _see for myself all_ the ground tackling _clear_ and efficient; "the steering gear and prevention ditto in good order; "the sails necessary to steady the ship in a chance breeze; "the _compasses_ and their _adjustment_ and all the means that are available for freeing the ship from water. "i should like to get around me such a staff of men that i might hope to rely at least upon a portion of them. "if the crew are all shipped at the last moment, you begin with a difficulty at once. i would not, of course, incur the expense of employing a large crew at present, but i would select a good nucleus, and have the ship's work and discipline well in hand in good season. "is the ship to go into valentia harbor? if so, i advise you to let me go and see it. it is narrow. should it prove a calm day this might be of no moment, but it is not always calm in ireland; we might have to wait for a day or two. but these are first thoughts. i will see what i think on tuesday. perhaps you might show this letter to mr. canning, or any one you like. if they think i should now join them, immediate application should be made; if not, it will be very bad if i cannot work with the tools i get. "sincerely yours, "james anderson." the foresight and circumspection displayed in this note were characteristic, and were among the qualities which, combined with captain anderson's seamanship and long experience on the atlantic, made mr. field anxious to secure his services. the application to the cunard company for a leave of absence was granted, and there was no fault to be found with the manner in which the temporary captain of the _great eastern_ performed this part of the work. "the _great eastern_ had arrived at her berth in the medway on the th of july, ," wrote mr. field, "and the work on the three tanks was begun at once. they were not completely finished until february, , although the coiling began on january th. the admiralty had detailed two vessels, the _amethyst_ and _iris_, to take the cable from the works to the _great eastern_, and late in june all was safely on board." this work was progressing so successfully that upon mr. field's arrival in england he found it unnecessary for him to remain there, and that it was possible for him to go to egypt to attend the preliminary inspection of the suez canal. he was duly accredited as a representative from the chamber of commerce of the state of new york. his letter of appointment is dated march , , and sets forth: "you have been selected to represent this chamber at the conference of representatives of chambers of commerce invited to meet at alexandria, egypt, on the sixth day of april next, by the universal company of the suez canal, to survey and report upon the works undertaken by them to connect the mediterranean and the red seas, and the great advantages to commerce which this new line of water navigation promises." this journey was a most interesting one. in his speech at ismailia, on april th, he said: "i am sure that all who witness what we have will agree that a ship canal can be made across the isthmus of suez by the expenditure of money under the direction of the best engineers of the nineteenth century. you, mr. president, are engaged in the great work of dividing two continents for the benefit of every commercial nation in the world.... within the next three months i hope to have the pleasure of seeing two hemispheres connected by a submarine cable, and when that is done you will be able to telegraph from this place in the great desert of africa, through a part of asia, across the continent of europe, under the deep atlantic, and over america to the shores of the pacific; and your message will arrive there several hours in advance of the sun." and at cairo, on the th, he said to m. de lesseps and those with him: "thirteen days since i arrived in egypt an entire stranger, six thousand miles away from home, but you received me with such kindness that i at once felt that i was surrounded by friends; and now, when we have met for the last time that we shall all be together in this world, i have mingled feelings of joy and sadness. joy and gratitude that i have been with you on our most interesting journey across the isthmus of suez, to examine that great work now being constructed, of a ship canal from the mediterranean to the red sea; sadness that we now bid each other farewell. for all of your kindness to me i most sincerely thank you, and if any of you should visit america, while my heart beats you will receive a most cordial welcome from me." as it was not thought imperative for captain anderson to remain in england in march, he made another voyage in command of the _china_, and, on april th, while in new york, wrote to mrs. field: "i am glad you have had such good news from your good husband. i shall be astonished if he reports well of the canal, and should be well satisfied to be assured of a healthy life until the first ship sailed through the great ditch. i am quite curious to know what he will say about it." mr. field returned to london on may st, and that same day was at a public meeting of americans held "in order to give expression to their feelings respecting the late distressing intelligence from america"--the assassination of president lincoln. mr. adams, the american minister, presided, and mr. field closed his speech with these words: "just before leaving america i called to see president lincoln, and i know how deeply he desired peace in america and peace in all the world. i trust, therefore, that everything calculated to stir up ill-feeling between north and south--even the last sad deeds--or between england and america, will be allowed to die with the good man who has been taken away and will be buried in his grave forever. if mr. lincoln could speak to-day he would urge upon every one to do all he could to allay the passions which have been excited in america; and i hope all will comply with what i believe would be his wish." the weeks passed rapidly in active preparation for the summer's attempt to lay another cable. this account is from the london _star_ of may th: "at ten minutes past five yesterday afternoon the new telegraphic cable, destined once more to connect england with america, was completed. the last thread of wire was twisted, the last revolution of the engine accomplished, and the mechanism of that subtle and silent speech which henceforth is to unite two continents was ready to be put in operation.... it was not to be expected that such a propitious occasion should be allowed to pass without the celebration of a dinner. no true-born englishman could have lent his countenance to a scheme which was not so inaugurated, and therefore, towards evening, the gentlemen who had visited the works of messrs. glass & elliott proceeded westward to the ship tavern, where a very princely entertainment had been provided. john pender, esq., m. p., was in the chair. one of the toasts was: "cyrus w. field, esq.--may his energy and perseverance in behalf of the atlantic telegraph company be rewarded by the permanent success of the cable." what follows is the beginning of a long article in the london _times_ of june th: "at length all the preparations connected with the final departure of this great telegraphic expedition are completed. on wednesday the _amethyst_ left the telegraph works with the last length of miles of cable on board, and on saturday the operation of coiling this in was begun. this work will probably last till the d inst., when the _great eastern_ will have in her as nearly as possible tons of cable, or, including the iron tanks which contain it and the water in which it is sunk, about tons in all. in addition to this she has already tons of coal on board, and tons more still to take in. this additional weight, however, will not be added till she leaves the medway, which she will do on the morning of the th for the nore, when the rest of the coals and special stores will be put aboard, and these will bring her mean draught down to ½ feet. her total weight, including engines, will then be rather over , tons--a stupendous mass for any ship to carry, but well within the capacity of the _great eastern_, of which the measurement tonnage is , . her way out from the nore will be by bullock's channel, which the admiralty are having carefully buoyed to avoid all risk in these rather shallow waters. before the following spring tides set in, about the th or th of july, the _great eastern_ will start for valentia. there she is expected to arrive about the th or th, and there she will be met by the two ships of war appointed to convoy her--the _terrible_ and the _sphinx_. both these vessels are being fitted with the best apparatus for deep-sea soundings; with buoys and means for buoying the end of the cable, if ever it should become necessary; and with bollen's night-light naval signals, with which the _great eastern_ is likewise to be supplied. to avoid all chance of accident the big ship will not approach the irish coast nearer than twenty or twenty-five miles, and her stay off valentia will be limited to the time occupied in making a splice with the massive shore end which for a length of twenty-five miles from the coast will be laid previous to her arrival. this monstrous shore end, which is the heaviest and strongest piece of cable ever made, will be despatched in a few days, and be laid from the head of a sheltered inlet near cahirciveen out to the distance we have stated, where the end will be buoyed and watched by the ships of war till the _great eastern_ herself comes up. some idea of the strength and solidity of this great end may be guessed by the fact that its weight per mile is very little short of one-half the weight of an ordinary railway metal. for the shore end at newfoundland only three miles are required, and this short length will be sent in the _great eastern_." the request that american war vessels should accompany the expedition was made in the early spring, as is shown by this correspondence: "new york, _march , _. "_sir_,--the undersigned honorary directors of the atlantic telegraph company have the honor to transmit to the president of the united states the draft of a letter to the honorable the secretary of the navy, deeming it a matter of propriety that an application of so interesting a character shall be made to the navy department of the united states through the chief executive of the nation, whose interest in behalf of the enterprise thus presented is earnestly invoked. "we have the honor to be, "very respectfully, "your obedient servants, "w. e. dodge, peter cooper, "wilson g. hunt, a. a. low, "e. m. archibald, cyrus w. field, "honorary directors in america. "to his excellency abraham lincoln, president of the united states." [illustration: atlantic telegraph cable · ] "new york, _march , _. "_sir_,--under an act of congress approved march , , the government of the united states detailed the steam frigates _niagara_ and _susquehanna_ to assist in laying the cable of the atlantic telegraph company from ireland to newfoundland, and the following year sent the _niagara_, under the command of captain hudson, to co-operate with the _agamemnon_, of her britannic majesty's navy, in the further prosecution of this enterprise. these vessels meeting in mid-ocean on the th day of july, , after connecting the wire, separated, the _agamemnon_ sailing for valentia, on the coast of ireland, and the _niagara_ for trinity bay, on the coast of newfoundland. they reached their respective destinations on the th day of august, and the work of uniting the two continents by telegraphic communication was successfully accomplished. "for a brief time messages were transmitted from one continent to the other, among the most interesting being the announcement of peace between great britain and france and china. the success, as happily achieved, but only temporary, was still sufficient to assure the parties engaged of a final and perfect fulfilment. "the capital of the atlantic telegraph company has once more been filled up, and a new cable is now in course of shipment, on board of the _great eastern_, and will be wholly embarked on or before the st of june next. during that month we have every reason to think it will be successfully laid, seven years of experience, with the added teaching of science, affording very ample grounds for this conclusion. "regarding this as an enterprise of great international importance, we invite the attention of the government of the united states to this new effort of the atlantic telegraph company, and respectfully request the honorable the secretary of the navy once more to detail a ship of war to act with such vessel of the british navy as her britannic majesty may appoint to accompany the _great eastern_ on her projected mission. "the lapse of time since the first attempt was made to unite the continents by a system of telegraphic communication has not tended to abate the interest which originally centred upon this bold undertaking. on the contrary, four years of civil war, prolific of events demanding immediate and mutual explanations between great britain and the united states, have contributed to strengthen and deepen the interest with which at first it was so universally regarded. may we not reasonably indulge the hope that, as the old cable first conveyed to the western world the news of restored peace in china, one of the first messages through the wires about to be immersed may convey to the old world from the new tidings of peace re-established in the west, of the states reunited, and slavery everywhere abolished, and that henceforward all causes of misunderstanding between great britain and the united states may be instantaneously removed? "we have the honor to be, "very respectfully, "your obedient servants, "peter cooper, wm. e. dodge, "a. a. low, wilson g. hunt, "cyrus w. field, e. m. archibald, "honorary directors in america. "to hon. gideon welles, secretary of the navy, washington, d. c. the only explanation ever vouchsafed of the failure of this application was the suggestion, published in a new york paper, that it was "because england had not withdrawn her proclamation excluding our vessels from her ports under what is termed her 'twenty-four hours' rule.'" the _great eastern_ left medway on june th, and removed to the nore, and on july the th left that anchorage. the progress of the great ship is chronicled in the following extracts from the london papers: "portsmouth, _july th_. "the _great eastern_ passed newton at p.m., five miles off land, under steam and sail; wind light, southerly." "valentia, _july d_. "yesterday morning the first great step in the important undertaking was accomplished by hauling on land the massive shore end up the cliffs at the southwestern extremity of this island." "valentia, _july th_. "before this reaches the public the _great eastern_, if all goes well, will already have laid some miles of the atlantic cable." "on board 'great eastern,' "_friday morning_. "five hundred nautical miles of cable were paid out at . a.m. to-day. the distance run at . a.m. was miles. "the signals are perfect; weather fine." "on board 'great eastern,' "_wednesday morning, august d_. "twelve hundred miles paid out at . a.m.; run by _great eastern_ at . a.m. "all going on well." "_august th._ "although the precise cause of the catastrophe is still a mystery, there remains but faint hope that the fate of the atlantic cable is not already decided. four days have elapsed since the signals ceased to evoke any return, and those received at valentia became unintelligible." "_august th._ "arrival of the _great eastern_, crookhaven. failure of the atlantic telegraph expedition." an illustrated paper published on the _great eastern_, and called _the atlantic telegraph_, tells of some of the days that passed so mysteriously to those on land: "_saturday, july , ._ "our weekly summary. "the week just completed has been most exciting, several mishaps having occurred, but we are enabled to state that everything at the time of our going to press was most satisfactory, both as regards the ship's progress and the chief objects of her voyage across the atlantic. "on monday the hopes of all interested in the success of the undertaking were much damped by the intelligence that all was not right with the cable. the chief engineer immediately proceeded to stop the 'paying out' of the cable, and gave orders for 'paying in' the same. this latter operation is very slow and unsatisfactory, and answers to the 'paying out' of the pockets of the shareholders, whereas the 'paying out' of the cable contributes to the 'paying in' as regards the same pockets. this curious feature will be better understood by a reference to our money market intelligence. "money market. "money scarce. exchange, . "stock exchange. "there has been great fluctuation in the shares of the atlantic telegraph and great ship companies. "news of the week. "the _great eastern_ speeds nobly on her mission of towing the islands of great britain and ireland to america. in less than ten days it is expected that a splice will be effected between the two countries, and long, long may it last. "amusements for the day. " noon.--luncheon and _daily navigator_. " . .--dinner. " .--tea. " to p.m.--grog, possibly with whist. "from daylight till dusk.--looking out for the _sphinx_. (through the kindness and liberality of the admiralty, this interesting amusement will be open to the public free of charge.) "n. b.--the above amusements, with the exception of whist, are gratis. "finis. "_the atlantic telegraph_ will be published till further notice. the price will be, for the series, five shillings, including the cover, and the proceeds will be devoted to such purposes as captain anderson shall appoint. "communications to be addressed to the editor at no. lower south avenue, middle district. "finis." "the atlantic telegraph. "_saturday, august , ._ "the events of the last ten days have caused so much anxiety to the chiefs of this expedition, and, indeed, to all on board, that it appeared to us unseemly to allow our funny writer, or any one in our employ, to utter any ill-timed joke. that anxiety is now over, and though it be not supplanted by the exultation of success, let us accept our failure in the healthy spirit shown by the chief sufferers, and with an expression of sincere regret let us wipe from our brain what of the past is unavailing, and turn to the future with that hope and confidence which are justified by the experience gained by failure. as in kingdoms they say, 'the king is dead; the king liveth,' so let us say, 'the cable is dead; the cable liveth.' all honor and glory to our new sovereign! "deep-sea fishing. "it being ascertained that the sea-serpent was somewhere in latitude ° ' n., longitude ° w., captain anderson, accompanied by messrs. canning and clifford and a party of scientific gentlemen, endeavored to capture the monster. it being found that the lazy brute lies perfectly still at the bottom of the ocean, and being fed by sea animals, a bait was useless. a strong wire rope, with a grapnel attached, was lowered to a depth of fathoms. after drifting a while, they grappled the monster and brought him up fathoms, when, unfortunately, the swivel gave way. two or three attempts were made, with a like result, and it was resolved to postpone all operations to a more favorable time. "advertisement. "captain anderson will sell by auction in the chief saloon of the _great eastern_, on saturday, august th, at one o'clock, the following articles, the property of various gentlemen leaving their present quarters: "lot .--_the great eastern._ for cards to view apply to mr. gooch, on board. "lot .--the good-will of the atlantic telegraph company. (this invisible property is in mr. field's possession.) * * * * * "lot .--a free pass from boston or halifax to liverpool by any of the cunard boats, the proprietor, mr. w. russell, having no use for the same." the accompanying illustration appeared at the end of the papers, with this verse: "no useless sentry within the tank, not in slumber or sleep we found him; but he sat like a warrior stiff on his plank, with his inverness cloak around him." it was while mr. field was on watch on august d that "a grating noise was audible as the cable flew over the coil," and "there is a piece of wire" was called to the lookout man. the fault was discovered, and the cable was transferred without difficulty to the bows, and the picking up was going on quietly when the strain became too great and it parted. to quote from _the atlantic telegraph_: "mr. canning appeared in the saloon, and, in a manner which caused all to start, said: 'it is all over--it is gone,' and hastened onward to his cabin. mr. field, ere the thrill of surprise and pain occasioned by those words had passed away, came from the companionway into the saloon, and said, with composure admirable under the circumstances, though his lip quivered and his cheek was blanched, 'the cable has parted and gone overboard.' "after this grappling was determined upon. at . on august th the _great eastern_ signalled to the _terrible_, 'we are going to make a final effort.' the cable was caught and was brought up fathoms, and was then lost." at dundee, scotland, in , sir william thomson said: "i shall never forget the day when we last gave up hope of finishing the work in . on that day cyrus field renewed a proposal for the adoption of the plan which has been adopted, and which has led to the successful completion of the enterprise. cyrus field's last prospectus was completed in the grand saloon of the _great eastern_ on the day when we gave up all hope for ." [illustration: the night-watch (from a lithograph drawn and printed on board the _great eastern_.)] on the morning of the th the _terrible_, one of the vessels detailed and the one that had acted as pilot, was directed to resume her journey westward and to carry letters to america. as she steamed away she signalled "farewell"; the _great eastern_ answered "good-bye, thank you." the following message is without doubt the one sent by this conveyance to mr. field's family: "_great eastern_ left mouth of the thames july th. shore end landed in ireland on d. parted on august d in latitude ° ' north, longitude ° ' west, . miles from valentia bay, . miles from heart's content. spent nine days in grappling; used up all wire, rope; nothing left, so obliged to return to england. three times cable was caught, and hauled up for more than three-quarters of a mile from bed of the ocean." the news of the failure of the cable expedition reached new york after the middle of august, and in a degree the country was prepared for it. the _cuba_ early in august had brought word of the trouble that had occurred on the th of july. the suspense and anxiety had been so great to mr. field's family that the loss of the cable was as nothing compared to the relief they experienced at knowing that he was alive. mr. david dudley field has told of going to garrison's on the hudson, where the family were passing the summer, to express sympathy, and that he found a very happy group, and was met with the words, "is not this delightful?" this letter was one of the first received by mrs. field: "north conway, _ th august, _. "_my dear friend_,--emerging from the wilderness at moosehead lake, my first inquiry was for news concerning the cable. i have not had a full long breath ever since, such has been my suspense. "day and night our thoughts have been with you and dear mr. field. outside of your own family perhaps no one has known more of the hopes, the sacrifices, the efforts involved in this great undertaking. certainly no one has felt more of interest in his success than i have. his pluck, bravery, and faith have always elicited my admiration, and inspired me with absolute confidence in his ultimate triumph over all difficulties. he has surely done his part well. he deserves the approbation and honor of the civilized world. "to-day for the first time i have heard of the parting of the cable. it seems as if a strong cord had snapped in my own heart. i feel most keenly for mr. field's disappointment. the disaster comes home to us all. "mrs. adams and myself talk much of you. we hope you have good news as to the health of your husband. how does he bear up with all this excitement and revulsion? i trust he will soon be returned to you safe and well; most of all, that he and you and we may yet see the complete success of this wonderful enterprise.... "very truly and affectionately your friend and pastor, "w. adams." to copy once more from his papers: "this last attempt at ocean-cable laying proved conclusively that all the principal difficulties had been overcome in the way of carrying the grand enterprise to successful completion. the _great eastern_ as a cable ship had proved herself admirably fitted for the service on which she was employed. the cable itself could hardly be improved. the paying-out apparatus was almost perfect, and on this occasion it did not require any great amount of persuasion to induce the directors of the company to go on with the work. "a meeting was at once called, and the board resolved not only to pick up the lost cable, but to construct and lay another, both operations to be performed in the following year, and the _great eastern_ to be employed in the service. the contractors made a liberal offer to the company, and the directors decided to raise £ , of new capital." all work for the coming year having apparently been most satisfactorily settled, he returned home in september. a friend on the steamer with him said: "we heard mr. field was a passenger. we felt the deepest sympathy for him, and to our surprise he was the life of the ship and the most cheerful one on board. he said: 'we have learned a great deal, and next summer we shall lay the cable without doubt.'" but again came discouragement. november d captain anderson wrote: "i cannot yet write a cheerful letter.... i cannot see any difficulty to our success but the one item of money. we are losing time. the board has already lost its margin, and it will end, must end now, by being in a hurry at the last. "i am sorry you are not here. somehow no one seems to push when you are absent." on november th mr. field wrote to mr. saward: "unless i have more favorable news from london in regard to the atlantic telegraph, it is my intention to sail for liverpool on the _scotia_ on the th of december." he did not reach england a day too soon. on december d the attorney-general had given the opinion that only an act of parliament could legalize the issue of the twelve per cent. preference shares. parliament was not to meet until february, and then there would be a delay in passing the bill. for this reason the money subscribed had been returned, and the work of manufacturing the cable stopped. mr. field accepted the opinion given, but also saw a way out of the difficulty. it seems as if mr. o'neil's words in _blackwood's magazine_ referred to this crisis and not to the failure of the previous summer: "mr. cyrus field, the pioneer of atlantic enterprise, full of hope and confidence, and never betraying anxiety or despair even at the most serious disaster--a man whose restless energy is best shown in his spare yet strong frame, as if his daily food but served for the development of schemes for the benefit of mankind in general and the profit of individuals in particular, every stoppage in our progress being marked by the issue of a fresh prospectus, each showing an increase of dividend as the certain result of confiding speculation--and, i say, all honor to him for his unswerving resolution to complete that great work for the success of which he has toiled so long and so earnestly." it was on december th that captain anderson wrote: "sheerness, _saturday, th, ' _. "_my dear mr. field_,--thanks for your cheering letter. i have great hopes in your energy and talent. i feel as if our watch had got the mainspring replaced, and had been trying to go without it for the last three months. at all events, i know nothing will be left undone that human energy can accomplish. "with the compliments of the season, and every kind wish, in which my good wife joins me, "i remain "sincerely yours, "james anderson." chapter xii the cable laid--cable of grappled for and recovered--payment of debts ( ) mr. field said of this crisis: "i reached london on the th of december, , and the next day was not a 'merry christmas' to me. but it was an inexpressible comfort to have the counsel of such men as sir daniel gooch and sir richard a. glass; and mr. brassey said, 'mr. field, don't be discouraged; go down to the company and tell them to go ahead, and whatever the cost, i will bear one-tenth of the whole. "it was finally concluded that the best course was to organize a new company, which should assume the work; and so originated the anglo-american telegraph company. it was formed by ten gentlemen who met around a table in london and put down £ , apiece. "the great telegraph construction and maintenance company, undaunted by the failure of last year, answered us with a subscription of £ , . soon after, the books were opened to the public through the eminent banking house of j. s. morgan & co., and in fourteen days we had raised the whole £ , . then the work began again, and went on with speed. never was greater energy infused into any enterprise. it was only the first day of march that the new company was formed, and was registered as a company the next day; and yet such were the vigor and despatch that in five months from that day the cable had been manufactured, shipped on the _great eastern_, stretched across the atlantic, and was sending messages, literally swift as lightning, from continent to continent. the cable was manufactured at the rate of twenty miles a day." captain anderson wrote from the _great eastern_ at sheerness on march d: "i hope you are keeping well and not sacrificing your health for even the atlantic cable." after referring to some slight complications, he adds: "but this will all come right, as you so often say, and surely we shall live to laugh at it yet. at least you ought to have your day of triumph, as you have had your long years of struggle." march th, captain moriarty wrote from h.m.s. _fox_: "i am as sanguine as even yourself in the practicability and almost certainty of raising the present cable, and feel all the more interested in it in consequence of the incredulity of naval men and others." mr. field gave a dinner at the buckingham palace hotel on april th; the american minister, mr. adams, sat on his right, and the earl of caithness on his left. _the morning star_, in speaking of the dinner, said: "mr. field, with almost inspired fervor, spoke of the certainty with which it would soon be possible to speak between england and america in a minute of time." "rochdale, _march , ' _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i shall not be in london before the th april, and therefore shall not be able to dine with you on the th, which i much regret. "if you could come down here on your way to liverpool, i should be very glad to see you. i expect to be at home till the end of the week. "i hope your telegraph labors have been successful, and that before the summer is over you will see your noble effort successful. "i am anxious about what is doing in washington, but i have lost faith in the president, and think mr. seward is allowing himself to be dragged into the mud of his southern propensities. if grant continues firm with the republican party, he may prevent great mischief. the power of the president seems too great in an emergency of this nature. his language shows that his temper is not calm enough for dangerous times. in this he falls immeasurably below mr. lincoln. "but if i despair of the president, i shall have faith in the people. "i wish you a pleasant voyage and a complete success in your great undertaking. "always sincerely your friend, "john bright." "rochdale, _march , ' _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i will try to come to liverpool to meet you on friday, the th april, nothing unforeseen preventing. "i shall be glad to spend a quiet evening with you before you sail. i shall be glad also to meet mr. dudley. "you seem, as usual, to be hard at work up to the last day of your stay here. always truly your friend, "john bright." he sailed from liverpool on april th by the steamship _persia_, arriving in new york on thursday, april th, and he immediately took his return passage for england in the steamship _java_, which was to sail from new york on may th. may st he wrote to captain anderson: "many thanks for your kind letter the th ultimo, received yesterday." every word of encouragement was always helpful to his eager temperament, and of course it was especially so at this time, after so many disappointments. mr. russell, in his book on _the atlantic telegraph_, says: "it has been said that the greatest boons conferred on mankind have been due to men of one idea. if the laying of the atlantic cable be among those benefits, its consummation may certainly be attributed to the man who, having many ideas, devoted himself to work out one idea, with a gentle force and patient vigor which converted opposition and overcame indifference. mr. field maybe likened either to the core or the external protection of the cable itself. at times he has been its active life, again he has been its iron-bound guardian. let who will claim the merit of having first said the atlantic cable was possible, to mr. field is due the inalienable merit of having made it possible and of giving to an abortive conception all the attributes of healthy existence." "_friday evening, th may._ "_my dear mr. field_,--i had hoped to see you to-day, but i have been a prisoner.... if i do not see you before you leave to-morrow, i pray god to bestow his best favor on you and the noble work in which you are so fervently engaged. "you will be remembered by very many who will not cease to implore success on your undertaking from him who holds the winds and the waves. please present my best regards to captain anderson. "hoping for your safe return, with all the triumph which you have so richly deserved, "i remain, my dear sir, "your affectionate friend and pastor, "w. adams." the great ship was ready to sail on the day that had been named so many months before, and the london papers had daily messages from her: "margate, _july st_. "the _great eastern_, with the atlantic telegraph cable on board, passed here at half-past p.m." "valentia, _july th_. "shore end of the atlantic cable successfully landed at p.m. tests perfect. the _william corey_ proceeding to sea, paying out slowly. weather fine. cable of tested at noon to-day; is perfect as when laid." "valentia, _july th_. "vessels _blackbird_, _pedler_, _skylark_, and _william corey_ returned to berehaven at . a.m. all vessels will complete coaling at berehaven to-morrow night, and will proceed to sea to splice main cable to shore end on wednesday morning, weather permitting. all going well. "the _great eastern_, with the atlantic cable on board, has arrived at berehaven, a natural haven on the western coast of ireland, near foilhommerum bay, from whence the proposed electric communication is to start seawards towards america. another vessel, the _william corey_, has had confided to it the duty of laying the shore end, and it was intended when that was completed that the _great eastern_ should run round at once, make the splice, and begin its work." "valentia, _july th_. "canning to glass.--latitude ° n., longitude ° ' w. cable paid out, miles; distance run, . insulation and continuity perfect. weather fine. all going on well. seaman fell overboard from _terrible_; was picked up; life saved." "canning to glass.-- "_noon (ship's time), july th._ "latitude ° n., longitude ° ' w. cable paid out, miles; distance run, miles. weather fine. all on board well. "gooch to glass.--nothing can be more satisfactory than everything is going on on board. weather glorious." "valentia, _july d_, . p.m. "the following telegram received from the _great eastern_ this day: "'_noon(ship's time), july d._ "'canning to glass.--latitude ° ' n., longitude ° ' w. cable paid out, . miles; distance run, . miles. insulation and continuity perfect. insulation improved per cent, since starting.'" "valentia, _july th_. "_great eastern_ steaming up trinity bay at . this morning; expect to land shore end at noon, local time." "valentia, _july th_. "shore end landed and splice completed at . . messages of congratulation passing rapidly between ireland and newfoundland. insulation and continuity perfect. speed much increased since surplus cable has been cut off." mr. field's own diary is interesting, but it is impossible to give here more than a few extracts: "steamship 'great eastern,' "_saturday, june , _. "sailed at noon from her moorings off sheerness. the _great eastern_ has on board nautical miles of cable." "_sunday, july st_. "started at noon, under easy steam, through the alexander channel. pilot left us. squally weather, with rain at night." "_wednesday, july th_. "strong wind and heavy head sea. made fastnet light at about p.m. celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of the independence of the united states by hoisting the american flag and speeches at dinner." "_wednesday, july th_. "completed coaling _great eastern_ and taking in provisions. received on board of _great eastern_ at berehaven: live stock. bullocks, milch cow, sheep, pigs, geese, turkeys, fowls. dead stock. bullocks, calves, sheep, pigs, fowls, , eggs." "_thursday, july th_. "religious service held at valentia at . p.m." "_friday, july th_. "the _great eastern_ and _raccoon_ joined the _terrible_, _medway_, and _albany_ at buoy at the end of shore cable at a.m. "splice between shore cable and main cable completed on board of the _great eastern_ at . p.m. . greenwich time the telegraph fleet started for newfoundland. "the telegraph fleet sail as follows: the _terrible_ ahead of the _great eastern_ on the starboard bow, the _medway_ on the port, and the _albany_ on the starboard quarter. "it was foggy nearly all day and rained very hard most of the forenoon. signals through cable perfect." "_saturday, july th_. "wind w.s.w. weather fine. distance from valentia, . miles; from heart's content, . . depth of water, to fathoms. cable and signals perfect." "_monday, july th_. "calm, beautiful day. signals perfect." "_tuesday, july th_. "sent mr. glass at valentia the following telegram: "'field to glass.--please write mrs. field to-day at newburg, new york, and tell her, "all in good health and spirits on board of this ship, and confident of success." machinery works perfectly, and the cable pays out splendidly.'" "_friday, july th_. "total distance run, . miles. distance from heart's content, . miles. depth of water, to fathoms. wind s.w., with rain." "_sunday, july d_. "_great eastern_ has passed the place where the cable was lost last year, and all is going on well." "_monday, july d_. "at . a.m. i sent the following telegram: "'field to glass.--please obtain the latest news from egypt, china, india, and distant places for us to forward to the united states on our arrival at heart's content.' "at . p.m. i sent the following telegram: "'field to glass.--please send us thursday afternoon the price that day for cotton in liverpool and the london quotations for consols, united states five-twenty bonds, illinois central and erie railroad shares, and also bank rate of interest. the above we shall send to new york on our arrival, and i will obtain the latest news from the states and send you in return.'" "_tuesday, july th_. "at . a.m. i sent the following telegram: "'field to glass.--we are within four hundred miles of heart's content, and expect to be there on friday. when shall the atlantic cable be open for public business?' "at . a.m. i received the following: "'glass to field.--if you land the cable on friday, i see no reason why it should not be open on saturday.'" "_thursday, july th_. "field to glass.--we expect to land the cable at heart's content to-morrow; all well." "_friday, july th_. "at a.m. made the land off heart's content. at a.m. we sent the end of the cable to the _medway_ to be spliced. i left the _great eastern_ in a small boat at . a.m., and landed at heart's content at o'clock. "the shore end was landed at heart's content at p.m., and signals through the whole cable perfect. "at . p.m., service held at the church at heart's content." nothing in this diary is so remarkable and characteristic as the tone of absolute confidence while the issue of the voyage was still in doubt. it was this confidence that not only sustained the projectors of the enterprise through all its mutations, but that infected his associates. perhaps it was the moral effect of his mere presence, even more than the labor of which he took so large a share, that made them so often appeal for his return to england. difficulties that looked insurmountable in his absence seemed to vanish when he appeared. hope had so often been deferred that his family hardly dared to think what a day might bring to them; and they went to church on sunday, july th, and after the service it was suggested that before they return to their home (plum point, below newburg) they should drive to the telegraph office. on their way there their attention was attracted to the day boat, then coming to her dock, gayly dressed with flags, and very quickly followed the news that the cable was laid, and that this message had been sent to mrs. field: "heart's content, trinity bay, "newfoundland, _friday, july , _. "mrs. cyrus w. field, newburg, new york: "all well. thank god the cable has been successfully laid and is in perfect working order. i am sure that no one will be as thankful to god as you and our dear children. now we shall be a united family. we leave in about a week to recover the cable of last year. please telegraph at once and write in full, and i shall receive your letters on my return here. "on the th inst. i received through the cable from valentia your message from newport and grace's telegram from newburg, and on the d inst. your telegraphic despatch of the th inst., and this moment your letter of the th inst. "cyrus w. field." it was on the th of july that these resolutions were passed: "_resolved_, the directors of the telegraph construction and maintenance company and the directors of the anglo-american telegraph company wish in some substantial manner to express their high appreciation of the good conduct and admirable way in which all engaged in the work of laying the atlantic cable have performed their duties. "it has given them great pleasure to order that a gratuity of a month's pay be presented to each man on his return to england. "the directors, while thanking the men for the past, feel confident that in the more difficult task yet before them they will display the same hearty zeal in the performance of the work." mr. willoughby smith mentioned this incident at a dinner given in london: "i remember well, in , during the laying of the atlantic cable, as we went on day by day, mr. field used to say to me: 'thank goodness, we are over another day; only let us get safely across with the cable, and i will retire on the largest farm in america and keep the largest cows and fowls, and receive my dividend daily in the shape of eggs and milk.'" the account of these days is contained in this letter: "'great eastern,' "heart's content, _august , _. "_my dear mrs. field_,--thanks for your kind note of july th. i am, of course, much pleased that the result of all these efforts of thought, and concentration of experiences, and long-continued indomitable energy, and expenditure of such heaps of gold, has been a success. it was very, very near failing. do what you will, the laying of cables (threads!!!) across deep oceans of great breadth will always be speculative; although when laid, so far as we can conjecture or reason from scientific knowledge or all that is known of physical geography, there is no one reason having any sound basis in it that can tell us in what direction to apprehend any danger, always excepting man's malice or enmity. the very thing we proved last voyage, and go to verify in a few days, proves that any enemy well equipped can destroy what has cost all these years to accomplish. "i have no fear of completing the cable of , although i never quite got rid of the feeling that it is a very odd thing to do, and we can fancy bad weather exhausting our stock of coals, materials, and perhaps hopes, by frequent breakages; but we have tons of coal, twenty miles of ropes for grappling, three ships fully coaled and provisioned and equipped for the purpose. two ships are now on the ground. given, then, the opportunity, there is no known reason to prevent us being here a fortnight hence with the double success. then what next? god knows. but mr. field is not one bit quieter than he was in london. he wants a third cable laid, and two complete lines from here to new york, before he will be satisfied. the success of this one will make the others comparatively easy, but i am not sure if he will even then take the repose both he and you deserve. he is very well; but how he stands the endless excitement i do not know. one thing i may give you now as a sound opinion: he would not stand many more london campaigns without you or one of your daughters with him. he takes absolutely no repose when in london, and it is only because he cannot help himself that he gets it at sea. i heartily congratulate him and you upon this good termination to the real foundation of future oceanic telegraphy; he deserves all honor from his countrymen.... to your husband especially belong the creation and the perseverance that have moved so many into the vortex.... with every kind wish to you and yours, "sincerely yours, "james anderson." bishop mullock wrote on august th: "in my answer to a society who addressed me yesterday on the occasion of my departure for europe i alluded to your example as a great lesson of perseverance, showing that to a man of good energy nothing almost is impossible, and telling them in all difficulties to have the example of mr. cyrus w. field before their eyes. "may god grant that you may be able to resuscitate the old cable. i have myself no doubt but that you will accomplish it, and exhibit to future generations the greatest example of energy and perseverance ever shown by an individual. "you ought to be a proud man, for like the name of columbus, yours will be in europe and america a household word." whittier's "cable hymn" responds to the feeling experienced at this time: "o lonely bay of trinity, o dreary shores, give ear! lean down unto the white-lipped sea, the voice of god to hear. "from world to world his couriers fly, thought-winged and shod with fire; the angel of his stormy sky rides down the sunken wire. "what saith the herald of the lord? 'the world's long strife is done; close wedded by that mystic chord, its continents are one. "'and one in heart, as one in blood, shall all her peoples be; the hands of human brotherhood are clasped beneath the sea. "'through orient seas, o'er afric's plain, and asian mountains borne, the vigor of the northern brain shall nerve the world outworn. "'from clime to clime, from shore to shore, shall thrill the magic thread; the new prometheus steals once more the fire that wakes the dead.' "throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat from answering beach to beach; fuse nations in thy kindly heat, and melt the chains of each! "wild terror of the sky above, glide tamed and dumb below; bear gently, ocean's carrier-dove, thy errands to and fro. "weave on, swift shuttle of the lord, beneath the deep so far, the bridal-robe of earth's accord, the funeral shroud of war. "for lo! the fall of ocean's wall, space mocked and time outrun; and round the world the thought of all is as the thought of one! "the poles unite, the zones agree, the tongues of striving cease; as on the sea of galilee the christ is whispering peace!" we find in mr. mccarthy's _history of our own times_ these words: "just before the adjournment of parliament for the recess a great work of peace was accomplished, perhaps the only work of peace then possible which could be mentioned after the warlike business of sadowa without producing the effect of an anti-climax. this was the completion of the atlantic cable.... "ten years, all but a month, had gone by since mr. cyrus w. field, the american promoter of the atlantic telegraph project, had first tried to inspire cool and calculating men in london, liverpool, and manchester with some faith in his project. he was not a scientific man; he was not the inventor of the principle of inter-oceanic telegraphy; he was not even the first man to propose that a company should be formed for the purpose of laying a cable beneath the atlantic.... "but the achievement of the atlantic cable was none the less as distinctly the work of mr. cyrus w. field as the discovery of america was that of columbus. it was not he who first thought of doing the thing, but it was he who first made up his mind that it could be done, and showed the world how to do it, and did it in the end. the history of human invention has not a more inspiriting example of patience living down discouragement and perseverance triumphing over defeat.... "at last, in , the feat was accomplished, and the atlantic telegraph was added to the realities of life. it has now become a distinct part of our civilized system. we have ceased to wonder at it. we accept it and its consequent facts with as much composure as we take the existence of the inland telegraph or the penny post." before the two weeks were passed the _great eastern_ was at sea and on her way to recover the cable lost the year before, and from his diary we copy these short extracts: "_thursday, august th._ "the _great eastern_ and _medway_ left heart's content at noon." "_sunday, august th_, at p.m. "_great eastern_ and _medway_ joined the _terrible_ and _albany_." "_monday, august th._ "at p.m. commenced to lower grapnel from _great eastern_; at p.m. grapnel down; at . p.m. commenced to heave up grapnel, as _great eastern_ would not drift over cable." "_wednesday, august th._ "at p.m. commenced lowering grapnel; at . p.m. grapnel hooked cable. hove up fathoms and paid out again to wait until morning." "_friday, august th._ "at . a.m. commenced heaving up cable; at . a.m. cable above water; at . a.m. cable parted about ten feet above the water." "_monday, august th._ "at . p.m. got cable from buoy in over the bow and found, by tests, it to be only a short length of a few miles which must have been cut from the main cable by grapnel." _"saturday, september st._ "at . a.m. cable up to fathoms from the surface. "at p.m. commenced heaving up; found the cable to be hooked." "sunday, september d. " . a.m.--cable above the surface. " . .--bight of cable on board. " . .--end brought into testing-room. " . .--message received. 'cable of and gulf cable both o. k.' " . .--cable taken from test-room to make splice. " . .--shipped from bow to stern. " . .--commenced paying out cable. "at . a.m. i sent the following telegram miles east of newfoundland: "'mrs. cyrus w. field, newburg, new york: "'the cable of was recovered early this morning, and we are now in perfect telegraphic communication with valentia, and on our way back to heart's content, where we expect to arrive next saturday. god be praised. please telegraph me in full at heart's content. i am in good health and spirits. captain anderson wishes to be kindly remembered to you. cyrus w. field.'" "_saturday, september th._ "landed cable at heart's content. "position of ships entering trinity bay: _lily_, _great eastern_, _terrible_, _medway_, _margaretta stevenson_." of his own feeling, as he stood waiting on the _great eastern_ at dawn on sunday morning, september d, mr. field told in a speech made in london on march , : "one of the most interesting scenes that i ever witnessed ... was the moment when, after the cable had been recovered on the _great eastern_, it had been brought into the electrician's room, and the test was applied to see whether it was alive or dead. never shall i forget that eventful moment when, in answer to our question to valentia, whether the cable of , which we had a few weeks previously laid, was in good working order, and the cable across the gulf of st. lawrence had been repaired, in an instant came back those six memorable letters, 'both o. k.' i left the room, i went to my cabin, i locked the door; i could no longer restrain my tears--crying like a child, and full of gratitude to god that i had been permitted to live to witness the recovery of the cable we had lost from the _great eastern_ just thirteen mouths previous." (from the london _times_ of wednesday, september th.) "the recovery of the cable of from the very lowest depths of the atlantic seems to have taken the world by surprise. it is not, however, too much to say that no class of the community has felt more astonishment than those who are best acquainted with the difficulties of the task--the electricians.... "night and day for a whole year an electrician has always been on duty watching the tiny ray of light through which signals are given, and twice every day the whole length of wire-- miles--has been tested for conductivity and insulation.... suddenly last sunday morning at a quarter to six, while the light was being watched by mr. may, he observed a peculiar indication about the light, which showed at once to his experienced eye that a message was near at hand. in a few minutes afterwards the unsteady flickering was changed to coherency, if we may use such a term, and at once the cable began to speak: "'canning to glass.--i have much pleasure in speaking to you through the cable. just going to make splice.'" (from _harper's magazine_, october, .) "a great historical event has occurred since our last talk, and it has been received almost as a matter of course. the distance between europe and america has been practically annihilated; the atlantic ocean has been abolished; steam as an agent of communication has been antiquated. we read every morning the previous day's news from london or paris, and there is no excitement whatever. scarcely a bell has rung or a cannon roared. not even a dinner has been eaten in honor of the great event, except by the gentlemen immediately concerned; and the salvo of speeches which usually resounds upon much inferior occasions from end to end of the country has been omitted.... the steamers bring the cream no longer. that is shot electrically under the sea, and the ships suddenly convey only skim-milk. they are yet young men who remember the arrival of the _sirius_ and the _liverpool_ and the _great western_. their coming was the occasion of a thousandfold greater excitement than the laying of the cable. yet if some visionary enthusiast had said to his friend as they watched with awe the steaming in or out of those huge ships, 'before we are bald or gray we shall look upon these vessels as we now look from the express train upon the slow old stage-coaches,' he would have been tolerated only as a harmless maniac.... the name which will be always associated with this historical event is that of the man who has so patiently and unweariedly persisted in the project, cyrus w. field. with an undaunted cheerfulness, which often seemed exasperating and unreasonable and fanatical, he has steadily and zealously persevered, no more dismayed or baffled by apparent failure than a good ship by a head wind. we remember meeting him one pleasant day during the last spring in the street by the astor house in new york. he said that he was going out to england by the next steamer. "'and how many times have you crossed the ocean?' "'oh,' he replied, with the fresh enthusiasm of a boy going home for vacation, 'this will be the twenty-second voyage i have made upon this business.' and his eyes twinkled as we merrily said good-bye. we heard of him no more until we saw his name signed to the despatch announcing the triumph of his blithe faith and long labor." the number of voyages is understated here. that made on may th, he writes, was his thirty-seventh. in his lecture on "the masters of the situation" mr. james t. fields has said: "there is a faith so expansive and a hope so elastic that a man having them will keep on believing and hoping till all danger is past and victory sure. when i talk across an ocean of three thousand miles with my friends on the other side of it, and feel that i may know any hour of the day if all goes well with them, i think with gratitude of the immense energy and perseverance of that one man, cyrus w. field, who spent so many years of his life in perfecting a communication second only in importance to the discovery of this country. the story of his patient striving during all that stormy period is one of the noblest records of american enterprise, and only his own family know the whole of it. it was a long, hard struggle." after a painful experience was past he never cared to recall it, and for that reason the world never knew to what straits he and his family were often pushed. not a luxury was allowed, and during those twelve years any wish that might be expressed could only be gratified "when the cable was laid." all waited for that day, but not always patiently, for one or another was often heard to explain, "oh, if that old cable was only at the bottom of the ocean!" and to this he would invariably answer, "that is just where i wish it to be." neither does the world know what his books tell, that at this very time his hand was stretched out to both his relations and friends. the surrogate was so impressed with his management of a trust estate that he could not believe his statement, and said that he must take the papers home and verify them, for he had never before known that such an increase was possible. it was in london, in march, , that he told of the strange fluctuations he had seen in the stock of the two telegraph companies in which he had so long been interested. "it is within the last six months only that we have received the first return from the money we had put at the bottom of the atlantic. i do not believe that any enterprise has ever been undertaken that has had such fortune: that has been so low, and, one might almost say, so high. i have known the time when a thousand pounds of atlantic telegraph stock sold in london at a high premium. i have known the time when a thousand pounds of the same stock was purchased by my worthy friend, the right honorable mr. wortley, for thirty guineas. at one time when i was in london trying to raise money to carry forward this great enterprise, a certificate for ten thousand dollars (£ sterling) in the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company sold at the merchants' exchange in new york by public auction for a ten-dollar bill (£ ). on my return home the gentleman handed the certificate to me and asked me if it was worth anything. i said to him, 'my dear sir, what did you pay for it?' and to my mortification he showed to me the auctioneer's bill for ten dollars. i said to him, 'i shall be happy to pay you a good profit on your investment.' he replied, 'no; what do you advise me to do with it?' i rejoined, "lock it up in your safe. do not even think about or look at it until you receive a notice to collect your dividends.' the holder now receives a dividend of eight hundred dollars per annum or (£ ) in gold for his investment. if any gentleman here has ever possessed a more fluctuating investment i should like to hear it." later in the evening the right honorable mr. wortley said: "i have been a shareholder from the first, and i am somewhat proud of my original £ shares, and of those shares to which you have alluded, which i truly bought at £ each. i am anxious, however, that those gentlemen who heard that statement should understand that i have not yet made a fortune out of the cable. the vicissitudes we have gone through have prevented us from doing much financially, and, indeed, we have had difficulty at times in keeping the enterprise afloat." the following telegram and letters are among those received at this time: " regent street, londres. "envoyez télégramme suivant à field, _great eastern_: "félicitations pour persévérance et grand succès. "lesseps." " carlton house terrace. s.w., "_august , ' _. "_my dear sir_,--the message which you did me the honor to send me from newfoundland at the commencement of this month, embodying in part the contents of a speech delivered by me in the house of commons a few hours before, was a signal illustration of the great triumph which energy and intelligence in your person, and in those of your coadjutors, have achieved over difficulties that might well have been deemed insurmountable by weaker men. i offer you my cordial congratulations, and i trust that the electric line may powerfully contribute to binding our two countries together in perfect harmony. "the message reached me among friends interested in america and produced a very lively sensation. "we live in times of great events. europe has not often of late seen greater than those of the present year, which apparently go far to complete the glorious work of the reconstruction of italy, and which seem in substance both to begin and complete another hardly less needed work in the reconstruction of germany. but i must say that few political phenomena have ever struck me more than the recent conduct of american finance. i admire beyond expression the courage which has carried through the threefold operation of cutting down in earnest your war establishments, maintaining for the time your war taxes, and paying off in your first year of peace twenty-five millions sterling of your debt. there are nations that could lay an electric telegraph under the atlantic and yet could not do this. i wish my humble congratulations might be conveyed to your finance minister. this scale can hardly be kept up, but i do not doubt the future will be worthy of the past, and i hope he will shame us and the continent into at least a distant and humble imitation." "i remain very faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone. "cyrus w. field, esq." captain anderson's letter of september th is to mrs. field, and was written on board the _great eastern_: "i cannot tell you how i have felt since our new success. it is only seventeen months since i first walked up to the top of the paddle-box of this ship at sheerness upon a dark, rainy night, reviewed my past career in my mind, and tried to look into the future, to see what i had undertaken, and realize, if possible, what the new step in my career would develop. i cannot say i believed much in cables; i rather think i did not; but i did believe your husband was an earnest man of great force of character, and working under a strong conviction that what he was attempting was thoroughly practicable; and i knew enough of the names with which he had associated himself in the enterprise to feel that it was a real, true, honest effort, worthy of all the energy and application of one's manhood, and, come what might of the future, i resolved to do my very utmost and do nothing else until it was over. more completely, however, than my resolve foreshadowed, i dropped, inch by inch, or step by step, into the work, until i had no mind, no soul, no sleep, that was not tinged with cable. i am fortunate that my duties were such that i might well ask a blessing upon it, or i had better never have gone to church or bent a knee--in a word, i accuse your husband of having pulled me into a vortex that i could not get out of, and did not wish to try. and only fancy that the sum total of all this is to lay a thread across an ocean! dr. russell compared it to an elephant stretching a cobweb. and there lay its very danger. the more you multiply the mechanism the more you increase the risk. with all the vigilance and honesty of purpose of chosen men, exigencies must arise and may occur. when the nights are dark and stormy there comes the torture that may ruin all if not successfully met. and so that task has been a series of high hopes and blank, dark hours of disappointments, when it seemed as if the difficulties were legion and we were beating the air. mr. field, at least, never gave out. he never ceased to say, 'it would all come right,' even when his looks hardly bore out the assertion. but at last it did. we came through it all, and i feel as if i had said good-bye and god bless you to a wayward child who had cost me great thought and was at last happily settled for life just where i wished her. i do not think, though, that i could or would have nursed the wretch for twelve years, as your husband has done, to the destruction of the repose of himself and all the rest of his family. i should have discarded her and adopted some other. he has persevered, however, and to him belongs all the credit your country can bestow." professor wheatstone wrote: "according to my promise i enclose a copy of my letter of september, , to the secretary of the privy council, in answer to his inquiry respecting the persons most deserving of honor in connection with the successful completion of the atlantic telegraph. "' park crescent, "'portland place, n.w., _september , _. "'_my dear sir_,--the following is my opinion respecting the principal co-operators in the establishment of the atlantic telegraph: "'the person to whose indomitable perseverance we are indebted for the commencement, carrying on, and completion of the enterprise is undoubtedly mr. cyrus field. through good and through evil report he has pursued his single object undaunted by repeated failures, keeping up the flagging interest of the public and the desponding hopes of capitalists, and employing his energies to combine all the means which might lead towards a successful issue. this gentleman is a citizen of the united states, and there would perhaps be a difficulty in conferring on him any honorary distinction. "'from the staff of officials by whose practical skill and unwearied attention the great project has been at last achieved, it appears to me there are four gentlemen who might, in addition to special merits of their own, be taken as the representatives of all those who have labored under or with them in their respective departments. "'public opinion, i think, would ratify the selection. "'these are: "'mr. glass, the manager of the telegraph maintenance company, under whose superintendence the great connecting link has been manufactured, and to whose former firm is mainly owing the high perfection which the construction of submarine cables has now attained. "'mr. canning, the able engineer of the same company, to whose experience and skill we are chiefly indebted for the successful laying down of the new cable and the restoration of the old. "'captain anderson, the commander of the _great eastern_ steamship, who under new and untried circumstances brought this leviathan of the waters to work in subjection to the requirements of the great operation. an honorary distinction to this gentleman would no doubt be received as a compliment by the mercantile marine. "'dr. w. thomson, who, distinguished already in the highest fields of science, has devoted his talents to improvements in the methods of signalizing, and whose contrivances specially appropriated to the conditions of submarine lines have resulted in the attainment of greater speed than was at first expected. "'in naming these gentlemen i have limited myself to those actually engaged in the great enterprise which at present occupies so much public attention. i have left out of consideration the claims of others, however great, who have preceded them in similar undertakings of less importance, or who have either in thought or deed worked out results which have rendered the present great work practicable or even possible. "'i remain, my dear sir, "'yours very truly, "'c. wheatstone. "'arthur helps, esq.'" at the banquet given at liverpool on october st, the chairman read this letter: "balmoral, _ th september, _. "_dear sir stafford_,--as i understand you are to have the honor of taking the chair at the entertainment which is to be given on monday next in liverpool to celebrate the double success which has attended the great undertaking of laying the cable of and recovering that of , by which the two continents of europe and america are happily connected, i am commanded by the queen to make known to you, and through you to those over whom you are to preside, the deep interest with which her majesty has regarded the progress of this noble work, and to tender her majesty's cordial congratulations to all of those whose energy and perseverance, whose skill and science, have triumphed over all difficulties, and accomplished a success alike honorable to themselves and to their country, and beneficial to the world at large. "her majesty, desirous of testifying her sense of the various merits which have been displayed in this great enterprise, has commanded me to submit to her for special marks of her royal favor the names of those who, having had assigned to them prominent positions, may be considered as representing the different departments whose united labors have contributed to the final result. "her majesty has accordingly been pleased to direct that the honor of knighthood be conferred on captain anderson, the able and zealous commander of the _great eastern_; on professor thomson, whose distinguished science has been brought to bear with eminent success upon the improvement of submarine telegraphy, and on messrs. glass and canning, the manager and engineer respectively of the telegraph maintenance company, whose skill and experience have mainly contributed to the admirable construction and successful laying of the cable. "her majesty is further pleased to mark her approval of the public spirit and energy of the two companies who have had successively the conduct of the undertaking by offering the dignity of a baronetcy of the united kingdom to mr. lampson, the deputy chairman of the original company, to whose resolute support of the project, in spite of all discouragements, it was in great measure owing that it was not at one time abandoned in despair; and to mr. gooch, m.p., the chairman of the company which has finally accomplished the great design. "if among the names thus submitted to and approved by her majesty that of mr. cyrus field does not appear, the omission must not be attributed to any disregard of the eminent services which from the first he has rendered to the cause of transatlantic telegraphy, and the zeal and resolution with which he has adhered to the prosecution of his object, but to an apprehension lest it might appear to encroach on the province of his own government if her majesty were advised to offer to a citizen of the united states, for a service rendered alike to both countries, british marks of honor which, following the example of another highly distinguished citizen, he might feel himself unable to accept. "i will only add, on my own part, how cordially i concur in the object of the meeting over which you are about to preside, and how much i should have been gratified had circumstances permitted me to have attended in person. "i am, dear sir stafford, "very sincerely yours, "derby." the celebration on the western shore of the atlantic was not less general and cordial. we quote from the report of a new york newspaper: "a dinner was given in this city on the evening of the th instant by the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company to cyrus w. field, who has recently returned to this country, after assisting in the successful laying of the atlantic telegraph cable, with which movement mr. field has been more prominently identified from the beginning than any other of its advocates and supporters. a considerable number of our first citizens were present, including the honorary directors of the atlantic telegraph company.... mr. peter cooper told of the formation of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, and then said: 'on those eventful evenings we became fully magnetized and infatuated with a most magnificent idea. we pictured to ourselves that in a short time we should plant a line of telegraph across the vast and mighty ocean. we as little dreamed of the difficulties at that time that we were destined to encounter as did the jews of old dream of the difficulties that they were doomed to meet in their passage to the promised land. we, like the jews of old, saw the hills green afar off, and, like them, we had but a faint idea of the bare spots, the tangled thickets, and rugged cliffs over and through which we have been compelled to pass in order to gain possession of our land of promise. we have, however, been more fortunate than the jews of old; we have had a moses who was able to lead on his associates, and when he found them cast down and discouraged, he did not call manna from heaven nor smite the rock, but just got us to look through his telescope at the pleasant fields that lay so temptingly in the distance before us, and in that way he was able to inspirit his associates with courage to go on until, with the help of the _great eastern_, and the means and influence of the noble band of men that mr. field has been able to enlist in the mother country, we have at last accomplished a work that is now the wonder of the world. "in the accomplishment of this work it is our privilege to regard it as a great and glorious means for diffusing useful knowledge throughout the world.... i trust our united efforts will hasten the glorious time when nations will have war no more; when they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. i trust our own country and government will always stand as a bright and shining light in the pathway of nations to cheer on with hope the suffering millions of mankind who are now struggling for life, liberty, and happiness--a happiness that is possible to men and nations who will cultivate the arts of peace instead of wasting their energies in wars of mutual destruction. "let us hope that the day will soon come that will secure peace and good-will among the nations of the earth." mr. cooper concluded with a toast to "the health and happiness of our moses, mr. cyrus w. field." the common council of new york passed these resolutions on the th of october: "_whereas_, the recent arrival at his home in this city of cyrus w. field, esq., seems peculiarly appropriate for testifying to him the gratification felt by the authorities and people of the city of new york at the success attending his unexampled perseverance in the face of almost insuperable difficulties, and his fortitude and faith in the successful termination of the herculean labor to which he has devoted his rare business capacity, his indomitable will, and his undaunted courage for a series of years--that of uniting the two hemispheres by telegraphy; "_resolved_, that the municipal authorities of the city of new york, for themselves and speaking in behalf of their constituents, the people, do hereby cordially tender their congratulations to cyrus w. field, esq., on the successful consummation of the work of uniting the two hemispheres by electric telegraph--a work to which he has devoted himself for many years, and to whom, under divine providence, the world is indebted for this great triumph of skill, perseverance, and energy over the seemingly insurmountable difficulties that were encountered in the progress of the work; and we beg to assure him that we hope that the benefits and advantages thus secured to the people of the two nations directly united may be shared by him to an extent commensurate with the energy and ability that have characterized his connection with the undertaking. "_resolved_, that a copy of the foregoing preamble and resolution be properly engrossed, duly authenticated, and presented to cyrus w. field, esq., as a slight evidence of the appreciation by the people of this city of the service he has rendered in uniting the old and new worlds in the electric bands of fraternity and peace." the invitation to a banquet to be given by the new york chamber of commerce is dated october th, and in it "the members request that they may hear from your lips the story of this great undertaking;" and the evening of november th was the one chosen. the toast to which he replied was: "cyrus w. field, the projector and mainspring of the atlantic telegraph: while the british government justly honors those who have taken part with him in this great work of the age, his fame belongs to us, and will be cherished and guarded by his countrymen." "the story of this great undertaking" has been told, and as far as possible in his own words, in these chapters; but there are two or three further extracts from his speech that it seems expedient to give, for they explain the pages just read; they refer to the voyage, grappling, and manner of working the cable. "yet this was not a 'lucky hit'--a fine run across the ocean in calm weather. it was the worst weather i ever knew at that season of the year. in the despatch which appeared in the new york papers you may have read, 'the weather has been most pleasant.' i wrote it 'unpleasant.' we had fogs and storms almost the whole way. our success was the result of the highest science combined with practical experience. everything was perfectly organized to the minutest detail. we had on board an admirable staff of officers, such men as halpin and beckwith; and engineers long used to this business, such as canning and clifford and temple, the first of whom has been knighted for his part in this great achievement; and electricians, such as professor thomson, of glasgow, and willoughby smith, and laws; while mr. c. f. varley, our companion of the year before, who stands among the first in knowledge and practical skill, remained with sir richard glass at valentia, to keep watch at that end of the line, and mr. latimer clark, who was to test the cable when done. we had four ships, and on board of them some of the best seamen in england, men who knew the ocean as a hunter knows every trail in the forest. captain moriarty had, with captain anderson, taken most exact observations at the spot where the cable broke in , and they were so exact that they could go right to the spot. after finding it they marked the line of the cable by a row of buoys, for fogs would come down and shut out sun and stars, so that no man could take an observation. these buoys were anchored a few miles apart. they were numbered, and each had a flag-staff on it, so that it could be seen by day, and a lantern by night. thus having taken our bearings, we stood off three or four miles, so as to come broadside on, and then casting over the grapnel, drifted slowly down upon it, dragging the bottom of the ocean as we went. at first it was a little awkward to fish in such deep water, but our men got used to it, and soon could cast a grapnel almost as straight as an old whaler throws a harpoon. our fishing-line was of formidable size. it was made of rope, twisted with wires of steel, so as to bear a strain of thirty tons. it took about two hours for the grapnel to reach bottom, but we could tell when it struck. i often went to the bow and sat on the rope, and could feel by the quiver that the grapnel was dragging on the bottom two miles under us. but it was a very slow business. we had storms and calms and fogs and squalls. still we worked on day after day. once, on the th of august, we got the cable up, and had it in full sight for five minutes--a long slimy monster, fresh from the ooze of the ocean's bed--but our men began to cheer so wildly that it seemed to be frightened, and suddenly broke away and went down into the sea. "this accident kept us at work two weeks longer; but finally, on the last night of august, we caught it. we had cast the grapnel thirty times. it was a little before midnight on friday night that we hooked the cable, and it was a little after midnight sunday morning that we got it on board. what was the anxiety of those twenty-six hours? the strain on every man's life was like the strain on the cable itself. when finally it appeared it was midnight; the lights of the ship, and in the boats around our bows, as they flashed in the faces of the men, showed them eagerly watching for the cable to appear on the water. at length it was brought to the surface. all who were allowed to approach crowded forward to see it; yet not a word was spoken; only the voices of the officers in command were heard giving orders. all felt as if life and death hung on the issue. it was only when it was brought over the bow and on to the deck that men dared to breathe. even then they hardly believed their eyes. some crept towards it to feel of it--to be sure it was there. then we carried it along to the electrician's room to see if our long-sought treasure was alive or dead. a few minutes of suspense and a flash told of the lightning current again set free. then did the feeling, long pent up, burst forth. some turned away their heads and wept. others broke into cheers, and the cry ran from man to man and was heard down in the engine-rooms, deck below deck, and from the boats on the water and the other ships, while rockets lighted up the darkness of the sea. then with thankful hearts we turned our faces again to the west. but soon the wind arose, and for thirty-six hours we were exposed to all the dangers of a storm on the atlantic. yet in the very height and fury of the gale, as i sat in the electrician's room, a flash of light came up from the deep which, having crossed to ireland, came back to me in mid-ocean telling that those so dear to me were well. "when the first cable was laid in electricians thought that to send a current two thousand miles it must be almost like a stroke of lightning. but god was not in the earthquake, but in the still, small voice. the other day mr. latimer clark telegraphed from ireland across the ocean and back again with a battery formed in a lady's thimble! and now mr. collett writes me from heart's content: 'i have just sent my compliments to dr. gould, of cambridge, who is at valentia, with a battery composed of a gun cap, with a strip of zinc, excited by a drop of water, the simple bulk of a tear!'" these were among the toasts given on the same evening: "captain anderson and the officers of the _great eastern_ and the other ships engaged in the late expedition: they deserve the thanks not only of their own country, but of the civilized world." "the capitalists of england and america who use their wealth to achieve great enterprises, and leave behind them enduring monuments of their wise munificence." and this sentiment was read: "while expressing our grateful appreciation of the energy and sagacity that practically achieved the spanning of the atlantic by the electric current, let us not fail to do honor to those whose genius and patient investigation of the laws of nature furnished the scientific knowledge requisite to success." a reception was given to mr. field by the century club on saturday evening, november th. it was in a speech made at leeds early in october that mr. john bright had said: "to-morrow is the greatest day in the united states, when perhaps millions of men will go to the polls, and they will give their votes on the great question whether justice shall or shall not be done to the liberated african; and in a day or two we shall hear the result, and i shall be greatly surprised if that result does not add one more proof to those already given of the solidity, intelligence, and public spirit of the great body of the people of the united states. i have mentioned the north american continent. i refer to the colonies which are still part of this empire, as well as to those other colonies which now form this great and free republic, founded by the old genoese captain at the end of the fifteenth century. a friend of mine, cyrus field, of new york, is the columbus of our time, for after no less than forty passages across the atlantic in pursuit of the great aim of his life, he has at length by his cable moved the new world close alongside the old. to speak from the united kingdom to the north american continent, and from north america to the united kingdom, now is but the work of a moment of time, and it does not require the utterance even of a whisper. the english nations are brought together, and they must march on together." and mr. bright also wrote: "rochdale, _november , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i sent a short message to sir james anderson, that he might send it on to the chairman of the banquet. i have not heard from him since, but i hope it reached you in proper time. the words were as follows: 'it is fitting you should honor the man to whom the whole world is debtor. he brought capital and science together to do his bidding, and europe and america are forever united. i cannot sit at your table, but i can join in doing honor to cyrus w. field. my hearty thanks to him may mingle with yours.' "this is but a faint expression of my estimation of your wonderful energy and persistency and faith in the great work to which so many years of your life have been devoted. "the world as yet does not know how much it owes to you, and this generation will never know it. i regard what has been done as the most marvellous thing in human history. i think it more marvellous than the invention of printing, or, i am almost ready to say, than the voyage of the genoese. but we will not compare these things, which are all great. let us rather rejoice at what has been done, and i will rejoice that you mainly have done it. "i wish i could have been at the dinner, for my reluctance to make a speech would have given way to my desire to say something about you and about the cable, and its grand significance to our old world and your new one. "i need not tell you how much i am glad to believe that in a sense that is very useful in this world you will profit largely by the success of the great enterprise, and how fervently i hope your prosperity may increase.... "your elections have turned out well. i hope you will yet be 'reconstructed' on sound principles, and not on the unhappy doctrines of the president. "if i were with you i could talk a good deal, but i cannot write more, so farewell. "with every good wish for you, "i am always sincerely your friend, "john bright." a joint resolution presenting the thanks of congress to cyrus w. field was introduced in the senate of the united states on december th, and it was reported by mr. sumner without amendment on december th. "_resolved._ by the senate and house of representatives of the united states of america, in congress assembled, "that the thanks of congress be, and they hereby are, presented to cyrus w. field, of new york, for his foresight, courage, and determination in establishing telegraphic communication by means of the atlantic cable, traversing mid-ocean and connecting the old world with the new; and that the president of the united states be requested to cause a gold medal to be struck, with suitable emblems, devices, and inscription, to be presented to mr. field. and be it further "_resolved_, that when the medal shall have been struck, the president shall cause a copy of this joint resolution to be engrossed on parchment, and shall transmit the same, together with the medal, to mr. field, to be presented to him in the name of the people of the united states of america. and be it further "_resolved_, that a sufficient sum of money to carry this resolution into effect is hereby appropriated out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated. "approved march , ." immediately on his return to new york mr. field sold enough of his cable stock to enable him early in november to write to those who had compromised with him in and enclose to each the full amount of his indebtedness, with seven per cent. interest to date. one check was for $ , another was for $ , ; in all he paid $ , . the new york _evening post_ wrote of this act: "we hope we do not violate confidence in stating a fact to the honor of a new york merchant, which, though a private transaction, ought to be known. our fellow-citizen, mr. cyrus w. field, whose name will always be connected with the atlantic telegraph, has twice nearly ruined himself by his devotion to that enterprise. though a man of independent fortune when he began, he embarked in it so large a portion of his capital as nearly to make shipwreck of the whole. while in england engaged in the expedition of a financial storm swept over this country and his house suspended; but on his return he asked only for time, and paid all in full with interest. but the stoppage was a heavy blow, and being followed by a fire, in , which burned his store to the ground, and by the panic of december, , just before the breaking out of the war, he was finally obliged to compromise with his creditors. thus released, he devoted himself to the work of his life, which he has at last carried through. the success of the atlantic telegraph, we are happy to learn, has brought back a portion of his lost wealth, and his first care has been to make good all losses to others. he has addressed a letter to every creditor who suffered by the failure of his house in , requesting him to send a statement of the amount compromised, adding the interest for nearly six years, and as fast as presented returns a check in full. the whole amount will be about $ , . such a fact, however he may wish to keep it a secret, ought to be known, to his honor and to the honor of the merchants of new york." it was at this time that mr. george peabody gave him a service of silver, and asked that this inscription should be engraved on each piece: george peabody to cyrus w. field, in testimony and commemoration of an act of very high commercial integrity and honor. new york, th november, . chapter xiii the reconstruction period ( - ) the governor of the state of wisconsin, in his annual message to the legislature in january, , suggested that the state make to mr. field "a suitable acknowledgment of their appreciation of the priceless value of the success he had achieved." the recommendation was acted upon. resolutions were adopted by both branches of the legislature and approved by the governor on march th, and a gold medal was also ordered to be sent, "properly inscribed." on the th of february mr. field sailed for england for the purpose of making "arrangements between the anglo-american telegraph company and the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company." the land lines across newfoundland were often broken; complaints were made; the public was naturally inclined to overrate trivial accidents, and it was necessary to give an explanation. " old broad street, _january th_. "to the editor of the _daily news_: "_sir_,--a statement having appeared in the paper of this day to the effect that the communication with new york was interrupted, i have to inform you that in consequence of a heavy fall of snow the land line in cape breton appears to have broken down. the cables of this company are, as they ever have been, in perfect order. "i am, etc., "john c. deane, secretary." before mr. field sailed for home this was published in the london papers: "it appears that a contract was signed yesterday by mr. cyrus w. field, acting in behalf of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, with the telegraph construction and maintenance company for a submarine cable between placentia, newfoundland, and sydney, nova scotia. the line will be laid in the early part of the summer. mr. field, having effected this very satisfactory arrangement in the interests of atlantic telegraphy, will leave for new york in the _great eastern_ on the th of march." soon after his arrival in london the letters that immediately follow had been received: "paris, _february , _. "cyrus w. field, esq.: "_dear sir_,--the undersigned american citizens, at present in europe, hearing of your arrival in england, and desiring to express their warm appreciation of your untiring labors and your final success in the laying of the atlantic telegraph, desire to give you a public reception in this city at an early day, or at your own convenience. "hoping soon to hear from you, we remain, sir, "your sincere friends, "samuel f. b. morse, "james mckaye, "john munroe, "emory mcclintock, "chas. s. p. bowles, "and many others." "paris, _march , _. "_my dear sir_,--singular as it may seem, i was in the midst of your speech before the chamber of commerce reception to you in new york, perusing it with deep interest, when my valet handed me your letter of the th ult. "i regret exceedingly that i shall not have the great pleasure i had anticipated with other friends here, who were preparing to receive you in paris with the welcome you so richly deserve. you invite me to london. i have the matter under consideration. march winds and that _boisterous channel_ have some weight in my decision, but i so long to take you by the hand, and to get posted up on telegraph matters at home, that i feel disposed to make the attempt.... "with unabated respect and esteem, "your friend, as ever, "samuel f. b. morse. "cyrus w. field, esq., palace hotel, london." the next letter is from the speaker of the house of commons: "house of commons, _march , _. "_dear sir_,--the last few hours before your departure will be too much occupied for me to intrude upon them. i should have been glad to have thanked you (i might have ventured to have done so in the name of the house of commons) for the services you have rendered to this country, as well as to your own. "i offer you my best wishes for a safe and prosperous voyage. "believe me "faithfully yours, "j. evelyn denison. "c. field, esq., palace hotel." the next is from the prime-minister: "st. james square, _march , _. "_sir_,--understanding that you are on the point of returning to the united states after a short visit to this country, i am anxious to take the opportunity of saying to yourself, what in the queen's name i was authorized to write to the chairman of the banquet in the autumn at liverpool, how much of the success of the great undertaking of laying the atlantic cable was due to the energy and perseverance with which, from the very first, in spite of all discouragements, you adhered to and supported the project. your signal services in carrying out this great undertaking have been already fully recognized by congress, and it would have been very satisfactory to the queen to have included your name among those on whom, in commemoration of this great event, her majesty was pleased to bestow british honors, if it had not been felt that, as a citizen of the united states, it would hardly have been competent to you to accept them. as long, however, as the telegraphic communication between the two continents lasts your name cannot fail to be honorably associated with it. "wishing you a safe and prosperous return to your own country, "i have the honor to be, sir, "your obedient servant, "derby. "cyrus w. field, esq." "american chamber of commerce, "liverpool, _ th february, _. "_dear sir_,--the american chamber of commerce of liverpool, being desirous of commemorating the successful completion of the atlantic cable between england and america, resolved in september last to present gold medals to yourself, sir samuel canning, sir james anderson, and mr. willoughby smith as representatives of the enterprise. "the medals are now ready, and it is proposed to present them at a banquet to be given by the chamber at liverpool. "i understand that the th of march next will suit yourself and sir james anderson.... "i remain "yours truly, "henry w. gair, president. "cyrus w. field, esq., palace hotel, buckingham gate, london." this invitation was accepted, and the description of the banquet which follows is taken from the liverpool _daily post_ of march th: "the members of the american chamber of commerce in this town gave a splendid banquet last night, in the law association rooms, cook street, to sir samuel canning, sir james anderson, mr. cyrus w. field, and mr. willoughby smith, the layers of the atlantic telegraph cable, on which occasion a magnificent solid gold medal was presented to each of those gentlemen.... "the chairman in proposing 'the projector and the associates in the laying of the atlantic cable,' said: gentlemen, i now come to the business, to the pleasure which has brought us together this evening, and if what i say on the subject is short, it is not because there is not a great deal to be said on it, but because i know you are impatient to hear it said by those whose acts give them the means and right to speak with knowledge and authority. acts are better than words, and in the acts we are met here to perform we but express the gratitude we feel to those who through so many difficulties and discouragements have brought this great work to a successful termination. this success is one of which we, as a nation, are proud, and rightly so. but it is good for our humility--a virtue in which we do not naturally excel--to remember that the first credit of that success is due, not to an englishman, but to an american, mr. cyrus field. he is the projector of the plan, and had it not been for his tenacity of purpose, his faith--which, if it did not remove mountains, at least defied oceans to shake his purpose--the plan would long ago have been abandoned in despair. in this tenacity and utter incapacity to understand defeat mr. field is a representative man of the anglo-saxon race wherever found.... i have now the pleasure to propose that the health of the projector and his associates in laying the atlantic cable shall be drunk with a hearty three times three.' the call was vociferously responded to, and the chairman then handed a medal to mr. cyrus field, sir james anderson, and mr. willoughby smith, each of whom was loudly applauded on rising to receive it. "mr. field said: 'mr. chairman, i thank you for the kind manner in which you have spoken of me, and you gentlemen for the flattering way in which you have responded to the toast.... i think i may safely affirm that never before were so many men brought together in one enterprise who were so pre-eminently fitted by diversified endowments and by special knowledge and experience to solve the problem of the atlantic telegraph. most fortunate, moreover, were we in finding such a ship as the _great eastern_, and such a commander as sir james anderson. the man was made for the ship, and both were made for us. i would also give expression to the sense of gratitude we must all feel to the press of england and america for its support in adversity as well as in good fortune, and to the statesmen of all parties on both sides of the atlantic, whose cordial sympathy and encouragement were never once withheld.... nor must i forget that, during the thirteen years to which i have referred, prayers for our success perpetually ascended to the almighty from christian men and women who, although most of them had nothing to gain or to lose by the undertaking, were drawn towards it by the deep-felt conviction that, if it were realized, it could not fail to serve their divine master's cause by promoting 'peace on earth and good-will among men.'" the _great eastern_, in which steamship he sailed for home, arrived in new york late in the first week in april, and the spring and early summer of this year were passed with his family and friends. from one of the latter he received this note, written on paper which bore the red cross and the words "american association for the relief of misery of battle-fields": "new york, _may , _. "many thanks, dear mr. field, for your letter. i shall hope to have the pleasure of meeting you abroad. but in any event i wish you and your family prosperity and increase of your well-earned honors, and your rightful self-complacency in your victories over time and space, and at last over this world and its last enemy. "affectionately yours, "h. w. bellows." july , , he writes: "left last wednesday for canada and the provinces; to-day at ottawa. returned to new york for a few days, and then for six weeks was in nova scotia and newfoundland; on august th at the government house, st. john's, newfoundland." many minor trials came to the telegraph companies during these first years of ocean telegraphy, and this letter refers to some of them: "new york, _october , _. "_my dear mr. deane_,--in relation to the tariff, and particularly that part touching _ciphers_, i must again appeal to you, and i do wish my words could carry conviction to your mind of the fatal tendency of the course we are carried into by your rules.... "but let us inquire if we are benefited by this rule of strictness. we see that very few acknowledged cipher messages are forwarded. there are people who can make messages apparently in plain text but which are actually cipher, and in the various attempts to get much into little there lies the germ of many disputes between customers and receiving clerks. the truth is, we make nothing and lose much. many who were our best customers now use the line only in cases of emergency, whereas they would use it daily if our terms were liberal. the u. s. government and the representatives at washington of all the foreign governments are determined to use us as little as possible. we are reviled on every side. the government, the press, and all the people will do all in their power to encourage a competing line. something must be done to arrest this feeling. why not try reduction for three mouths, and see what the effect will be.... "i remain, my dear mr. deane, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." mistakes made in the transmission of messages by cable were of course more annoying than other telegraphic errors in proportion to the costliness and delay of correcting them. one cablegram as received at the western union office, new york, read: "letter thirteen received; you better travel." the first change was from "you" into "son"; and it was delivered in paris, "letter thirteen received; son pretty well." by this time the message had become unintelligible, and therefore useless. a serious complaint was naturally made when instead of the cable message reading "protect our drafts" it was "protest our drafts." in a letter to london on february th he says: "i think there can be no doubt if the several telegraph lines between london and new york were under an efficient management the business could be done much better and enormously increased, and i would work energetically with you, mr. morgan, and others to secure this object if it can be done in a satisfactory manner. i consider it of great importance that this business should be under the control of persons that can comprehend what it can be made." on the eve of sailing for england, on february th, he wrote to the hon. hugh mcculloch, secretary of the treasury: "i have undoubted confidence in the good faith of our government that it will pay the principal and interest of every dollar of its bonded debt in gold, and shall do all in my power to make my friends in europe think as i do." the day before this had been sent to him: "washington, _february , _. "_my dear sir_,--accept my thanks and best wishes. i have only to say that the wise men whom you will find in the east are not very wise in expecting that our troubles will diminish while they insist upon concessions which we cannot make. "very truly your friend, "william h. seward. "cyrus w. field, esq." "rochdale, _march , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i have only just received your kind invitation. unluckily tuesday is fixed for the irish debate, and i cannot be away from the house on that evening. "i regret this very much, for it would give me much pleasure to spend an evening with you. i must call upon you, and have a talk with you on the new crisis which has arisen in your country. "some of your statesmen are in favor of repudiation, and you are dethroning your president, and yet your stocks are not sensibly shaken by all this in the english market. there is more faith in you than there was three or four years ago! "but i hope your people will not repudiate. "always sincerely yours, "john bright. "i expect to be in town in the course of to-morrow." mr. bright's letter referred to the dinner to be given by mr. field, on march th, at the buckingham palace hotel, "on the fourteenth anniversary of the day on which the first contract with the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company had been signed at his house on gramercy square, new york." on the evening of march th there had been a debate in the house of commons on the _alabama_ claims, and many of the speeches at the dinner bore references to that debate. the key-note of the occasion was struck when the right hon. james stuart wortley said: "one of its greatest feats" (of the ocean telegraph) "has lately been accomplished under the auspices of our worthy chairman by his sending the conciliatory debate of the house of commons on the _alabama_ claims to america. i am very glad this has been done, as it is far more likely to create good feeling between the two countries than anything else." in giving one of the toasts mr. field said: "gentlemen, on friday evening i had great pleasure in hearing the debate in the house of commons on the _alabama_ claims. before that, i confess to you, i felt exceedingly anxious about the relations between england and the united states; and on thursday last, in sending a private telegram to washington, i used these words: 'when you see the president, mr. seward, and mr. sumner, please say to them that i am perfectly convinced that the english government and people are very desirous of settling all questions in dispute between the united states and this country, and that with a little conciliation on both sides this desirable object can be accomplished.' gentlemen, we are honored here to-night with the presence of several distinguished persons connected with the press in england and america, and i am going to give you as a toast 'the press' of those countries; and i shall ask them, who so well know public opinion, to tell us frankly whether i was justified in sending such a message to washington." mr. walker, of the _daily news_, ended his speech with these words: "as to this matter of the _alabama_ claims at present dividing the two countries, i think we are approximating to an understanding. one after another misapprehensions have been removed, and i cannot but think that, with the prevailing good disposition on both sides of the atlantic, the matter will be more easily settled than we in england have been inclined to imagine." colonel anderson, of the new york _herald_, closed his speech in this way: "about the message which mr. field sent to america the other day, i may say that some months ago i sent a similar one, for i had found that among a large class of people in england there was a disposition to settle all disputes with the united states. i am pleased to see in the press of both countries evidence of a kindly disposition, and i hope that nothing will ever occur to disturb the friendly relations now existing. i believe that i had the honor of sending the first message for the press through the atlantic cable after it was opened for business. that was a message of peace announcing the end of the war in germany. i may have to use the telegraph in england for many years, but i sincerely trust that no angry word will ever pass through the atlantic cable." mr. smalley, of the new york _tribune_, said: "having been away so long from home, i have, perhaps, no right to say what they think there, though the perseverance and enterprise of our friend mr. field have brought england so near to america that we ought to be able to know what is going on at home as if we were living in new york. independently of that source, i think one is entitled to say that the feeling in america responds to the feeling of great britain in a degree which it has not for the last seven years. i heard with pleasure from mr. field that he had sent the _alabama_ debate to new york, an instance of public spirit for which the two countries owe him a debt of gratitude; for through it there is, i suppose, this morning in every journal in america, certainly in every large journal on the eastern coast, full tidings of the debate. it is, perhaps, such a message as was never before sent from one country to another. it was my fortune to listen to that debate. no newspaper report can give such a notion of the tone and temper of the house as hearing it conveyed to me. it was not only the sincere purpose, it was not only the enthusiasm and earnestness, the good-will to america which every speaker showed, but there was a certain electric sympathy which seemed to pervade the house. it manifested itself in cheers for every liberal sentiment and every kindly expression that fell from the speakers' lips. several members of the house came to me as i sat under the gallery, and with what i may be pardoned for calling an almost boyish enthusiasm, said, 'is not that capital?' as some sentence of conciliation and of justice fell from the lips of lord stanley, of mr. forster, or of mr. mill. now, sir, i should not be loyal to the journal which i represent if i did not say that this authoritative declaration of a changed feeling in england is sure to be welcome in america. not one but many journals came to us from the united states in advance of this debate breathing a similar spirit. the cloud which for years has hung between the two countries seems to be passing away, and it would be ungrateful not to believe that a spark along this cable has helped to dispel it. at any rate, i cannot make a mistake in saying that any disposition to close up the old quarrel, any wish for future union which english lips may utter, is sure to find a cordial echo from the press on the other side of the atlantic." on the same evening mr. field said: "i now propose a toast: 'the memory of richard cobden, who proposed to the late prince consort that the profits of the exhibition of should be devoted to the establishment of telegraphic communication between england and america, and who, later, desired that the english government should supply one-half of the capital necessary to establish telegraphic communication across the atlantic.' mr. cobden's argument was this: 'i am opposed to the government giving an unconditional guarantee, because it is a bargain all on one side. if you fail, then government pays the loss; if you succeed, you reap all the benefit. but i will advocate, with all my power, that the government shall supply one-half the money necessary to establish telegraphic communication between england and america, and in the event of success that they should have half the profit.' if the government had followed his advice they would to-day be receiving half the dividends on the anglo-american and atlantic telegraph stocks. i hope this consideration may lead them to pursue a liberal policy in regard to the extension of the telegraph to india, china, and australia." this toast was drunk in silence, all present rising. before dinner this note was handed to the chairman: "house of commons, _march , _, p.m. "_my dear sir_,--i have cherished to the last the hope of coming to see you, but unhappily it is now arranged that lord mayo will not speak until after dinner, and i therefore fear that my presence at the only time of the evening when it would have been of use will be impossible. i should have much enjoyed, and i had greatly coveted, the opportunity your kindness offered--speaking a word of good-will to your country--but i am detained here by a higher duty; for there is in my judgment, no duty for public men in england which at this juncture is so high, so sacred, as that of studying the case of ireland, and applying the remedies which i believe it admits. "we shall lie here until midnight, but not without thoughts of your festival and of the greatness of the country with which it is connected. you are called upon to encounter difficulties and to sustain struggles which some years ago i should have said were beyond human strength. but i have learned to be more cautious in taking the measure of american possibilities; and, looking to your past, there is nothing which we may not hope of your future. "i remain, my dear sir, most faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone. "cyrus w. field, esq." in one of the weekly letters sent to him from new york there is this announcement: "a circular has been received from the state department, dated june d, stating that they have received for you from paris 'a grand prize and diploma.'" he was invited to a banquet to be given at willis's rooms on july , , "as an acknowledgment," so the invitations read, "of the eminent services rendered to the new and old worlds by his devotion to the interests of atlantic telegraphy through circumstances of protracted difficulty and doubt." the duke of argyll was chairman of the committee of invitation, and sir james anderson was at the head of the executive committee. the following letter was received from the american minister to france: "paris, _ th june, _. "sir james anderson: "_dear sir_,--no one appreciates more highly than myself the valuable service rendered by mr. field in establishing a connection by telegraph between the eastern and western hemispheres, and the unfaltering confidence and persevering efforts with which he entertained this great international enterprise through the circumstances of protracted difficulty and doubt to which you allude. it would have given me sincere pleasure, had it been in my power, to unite in the tribute of respect proposed to be paid to him--a pleasure i relinquish with an equally sincere regret. "i am, dear sir, very respectfully yours, "john a. dix." "_june , ._ "_sir_,--it would give me great pleasure to show any mark of respect in my power to mr. cyrus field and to the great nation to which he belongs. "i shall be happy to attend the dinner on july st, if by so doing i can attest my sense of mr. field's services. "i trust that i shall not give offence, should i be compelled to retire before the rest of the company. "i remain your servant, "shaftesbury. "sir james anderson." "grosvenor crescent, _june , _. "_sir_,--i am extremely sorry that a prior engagement must prevent my attending the banquet that is to be given to mr. cyrus w. field. "it would have been a real pleasure to me to take part in any proceeding having for its object to do honor to that distinguished gentleman, for whose energetic character, as well as for his zealous efforts in promoting friendly relations between our respective countries, i have long felt the highest admiration. i am sir, "your obedient servant, "clarendon. "james anderson, esq." " victoria street, s. w., "garrick club. "_my dear anderson_,--i would like so much to dine with you all in honor of cyrus the great. "yours very truly, "w. h. russell." " piccadilly, _june , _. "_dear sir_,--i fully intend to be present, if possible, at the banquet to mr. cyrus w. field, but i have been of late in the doctor's hands, and it may happen that i could not be present. "i should, therefore, feel much obliged to you if you would give the reply to the toast to some one else, and release me altogether from making a speech. for various reasons i am anxious not to speak on the occasion, especially as i have been compelled to decline all invitations to public dinners of late; otherwise anything that i could have done to contribute to the success of this well-deserved tribute to the great services of mr. cyrus field i would have done with the greatest pleasure. "yours truly, "a. h. layard." "london, _june , _. "_my dear field_,--i regret very much not being able to be one of those who will meet to-morrow to do you honor for your great services in carrying out telegraphic communication between this country and america. no one present will feel and appreciate more than i do how important a part you took in that great work, and with what energy and perseverance you devoted yourself to its success. "wishing you long life and every happiness, "believe me, "yours very sincerely, "daniel gooch." the speeches made at this dinner can be given only in part. the duke of argyll said: "my lords and gentlemen,--it now becomes my duty to propose that which is pre-eminently the toast of the evening, and to ask you to return to our distinguished guest our warm and hearty acknowledgments of the great service he has rendered to england, to america, and to the world by his exertions in promoting the success of the atlantic telegraph, an enterprise which is the culminating triumph of a long series of discoveries prosecuted by many generations of men. it is not easy to apportion with exactitude the merits which may belong to those who have engaged in it; but i much mistake the character of our distinguished guest--and i have now known him for several years, and have had much communication with him--i much mistake his character if he desires to displace for a single moment any of those who have preceded him in the history of electrical discovery. this great triumph may be looked at from various points of view, and in the first place i think i am safe in saying that we all feel it to be a triumph of pure science--i say, of pure science, of the pure desire and love of knowledge.... i have the honor of speaking to many distinguished scientific men, and i think they will hear me out when i say that if there is one question which they hear with the utmost indignation and contempt addressed to them when they are in the course of their investigations it is the question, what is the use of their discoveries? the answer which the man of science returns to this question, as to what is the use of his discovery, is, 'i only tell you what is the interest of that discovery, that interest which compels and impels me to go on in the path of investigation.' it is knowledge, mere knowledge of the facts and laws of nature, that the scientific mind seeks to gain. nevertheless, i think it is a great comfort to scientific men to be sure that even those discoveries which for years, and even for centuries, remain apparently entirely useless may at any time and at any moment become serviceable in the highest degree to the human family.... and i believe the success of this enterprise would have been delayed for many years--perhaps for whole generations of men--had it not been for the single exertions, for the confidence and zeal, for the foresight and faith, amounting, as i think, to genius, of our distinguished guest, mr. cyrus field. none of us in our day, i rejoice to think, are disposed to undervalue the influence which the spirit of commercial enterprise is having upon the progress and civilization of mankind. in nothing perhaps is there so strange a contrast between the spirit and the wisdom of modern times and the spirit and wisdom of ancient philosophy. it is surely a most wonderful fact that in the most brilliant civilizations of the ancient world the wise men of those times--and they were men so wise that many of us to this day are influenced by their thoughts--many of those men held that commercial enterprise was the bane of nations. now i must say this, that of all commercial enterprises which have ever been undertaken, this one on the part of mr. cyrus field represents the noblest and purest motives by which commercial enterprise can ever be inspired. i believe it was the very greatness of the project--the great results which were certain to issue--i believe it was this, and this alone, which supported him with that confidence and decision which through many difficulties and many disappointments has carried him at last to the triumphant conclusion of this great project. and, gentlemen, i rejoice to say that whilst as a commercial enterprise it has come from the other side of the atlantic, it has been well seconded and supported by the capitalists not only of america but of england. and surely this is another link of friendly intercourse between the people of the two countries. now let me also say this--and this is a point which i have ascertained from other sources--i believe so great was the confidence of mr. field in the triumph of this great undertaking that he risked every farthing of his own private fortune in promoting its success. on these grounds, ladies and gentlemen, i ask you to drink his health. but on one other ground also i ask you to drink it, and that is this, that he is personally one of the most genial and kindly-hearted of men. at a time when his country was in great difficulty, and when many americans thought at least they had something to complain of in the tone of english society, i was in the constant habit of meeting mr. field, and i never saw his temper ruffled for a moment, i never heard any words fall from him but words of peace between the two countries; and i often heard him express a hope that a time would come when a better understanding would arise in the minds of the people of this country and those of the united states; and i have reason to believe that his services and exertions in the united states have not a little contributed to secure the return of that feeling, what i believe is the real and permanent feeling of the people of those two great countries. allow me, then, to ask you most heartily to drink this toast with me--the health of mr. cyrus field, as the promoter of this great enterprise, and as a gentleman whom we all know and honor." the right hon. sir john pakington said: "there are few men who, more than myself, have in their own personal experience been struck by the greatness of the event which we are now assembled to celebrate. i am one of the few--and they are quickly becoming fewer--who made a tour in the united states not only before electric telegraphs were thought of, but before even steamboats had crossed the atlantic. i went to america in the quickest way it was then possible to go, in one of the celebrated american liners; but it so happened that the wind was in the west, as it generally is, and i was exactly six weeks from shore to shore. my next personal communication with america was just ten years ago. it then became my duty, on account of the office i held, to attend the queen upon the occasion of her visit to the emperor of the french at cherbourg--one of those interchanges of courtesy which have done so much to create and prolong good feeling between france and england. one of the festivities during that visit was a banquet given by the emperor to the queen, on board one of his finest line of battle ships. i had the honor of being present, and during the dinner a servant came to me and delivered a letter which contained a telegram from the united states, announcing the completion of telegraphic communication between america and england. i can never forget the interest of such a communication at such a moment, nor the feeling which it excited among the distinguished persons of both nations by whom i was then surrounded. "another agreeable memory of the same period was the assistance which my office enabled me to give by lending the ships of war of this country for the accomplishment of that extraordinary event. it is true that the communication so established was shortly afterwards interrupted, but it is now restored. we may now, without exaggeration, say that england and america are no longer separated by the breadth of the atlantic ocean, for even during this dinner we have been corresponding briskly with our american friends; and it is impossible, gentlemen, to resist the conclusion that this greatest triumph of modern science must have the effect of softening prejudice, increasing and cementing good feeling, and in every way promoting the welfare and the prosperity of the two great peoples so brought together. "that communication, which at the time to which i first referred occupied six weeks, may now be effected in as many minutes, and i rejoice that i am enabled to attend here to-day to join in doing honor to the man to whom, more than to any other human agency, we are indebted for this wonderful change." mr. john bright spoke as follows: "in attempting to respond to the sentiment that has been submitted to us, i have a certain anxiety with regard to a mysterious box which is said to be on these premises, containing an instrument by which every word we utter to-night, be it wise or be it foolish, will be transmitted with more than lightning speed to the dwellers on that part of the earth's surface which we describe as the regions of the setting sun. but we are so entirely agreed that there seems no possibility that anything will be said to-night which any one who hears it will desire to contradict, and i hope we may avoid the charge of saying anything that is foolish or hasty. "sir stafford northcote has submitted this sentiment, 'the peace and prosperity of great britain and the united states,' which means, i presume, that we are here in favor of a growing and boundless trade with america, and at the same time desire an unbroken friendship with the people of that country. with one heart and voice i presume to accept that sentiment, and without any fear of contradiction we assert that we are on that point truly representative of the unanimous feeling of the three kingdoms. there are those--i meet them frequently, for there are cavillers and critics everywhere--there are those who condemn the united states, and sometimes with something like scorn and bitterness, because at this moment the people of the united states are bearing heavy taxation, and because they have a ruinous tariff; but if these critics were to look back to our own position a few years ago they would see how much allowance is to be made for others. during the years which passed between and , for nearly twenty-five years the government and people of this country were waging a war of a terrific character with a neighboring state. the result of that war was that which is, i believe, the result of every great war--enormous expenditure, great loans, heavy taxation, growing debt, and, of course, much suffering among the people, who have to bear the load of those burdens. but after that war, during twenty-five years, from to , there was scarcely anything done by the government of this country to remedy the gross and scandalous inequalities of taxation, and to adopt a better system in apportioning the necessary burdens of the state upon the various classes of the people. but since , as we all know, we have seen a revolution in this country in regard to taxation and finance, and i need not remind you that this has been mainly produced by the teaching of one who is not with us to-night, but who would have rejoiced, as we now rejoice, over the great event which we are here to celebrate, whose spirit and whose mind will, i believe, for generations yet to come stimulate and elevate the minds of multitudes of his countrymen. but this revolution of which i speak is not confined to this country, for, notwithstanding what we now see in the united states, it may be affirmed positively that it is going on there, and that in the course of no remote period it will embrace in its world-blessing influence all the civilized nations of the globe. the united states have had four years of appalling struggle and disaster. it was, nevertheless, in some sort a time of unspeakable grandeur, and it has had this great result, that it has sustained the life of a great nation and has given universal and permanent freedom over the whole continent of north america. but as was the case with our war, so with the american war: it has been attended with enormous cost, with great loans, with grievous taxation, and with a tariff which intelligent men will not long submit to; but at this moment and for some time the strife has been ended, the wounds inflicted are healing, freedom is secured, and the restoration of the union, surmounting the difficulties that have interposed, is being gradually and certainly accomplished. i conclude that such a nation as the united states--such a people, so free and so instructed--will not be twenty-five years before they remedy the evils and the blunders and the unequal burdens of their taxation and their tariff. they will discover, in much less time than we discovered it, that a great nation is advanced by freedom of industry and of commerce, and that without this freedom every other kind of freedom is but a partial good. this sentiment speaks, also, of unbroken friendship between the two countries. may i say now, in a moment of calm and of reason, that with regard to the united states both our rulers and our people, and especially the most influential classes of our people, have greatly erred? men here forget that, after all, we are but one nation having two governments, we are of the same noble and heroic race. half the english family is on this side of the atlantic in its ancient home, and the other half over the ocean (there being no room for them here) settled on the american continent. it is so with thousands of individual families throughout this country. no member of my family has emigrated to america for forty years past, and yet i have far more blood relations in the united states than i have within the limits of the united kingdom; and that, i believe, is true of thousands in this country. and i assert this, that he is an enemy of our english race, and, indeed, an enemy of the human race, who creates any difficulty that shall interfere with the permanent peace and friendship of all the members of our great english-speaking family. one other sentence upon that point. no man will dare to say that the people of the united states or the people of the united kingdom are not in favor of peace.... but leaving for a moment--in fact, leaving altogether--the sentiment and the toast which have been submitted to us, you will permit me to turn more immediately to the purposes of this banquet only for a sentence or two. i rejoice very much at this banquet, because we are met to do honor to a man of rare qualities, who has conferred upon us--and, i believe, upon mankind--rare services. i have known mr. field for a good many years, and although, i dare say, to any sailor who may be here it is not much, to me it seems a good deal that mr. cyrus field, in the prosecution of this great work (not being a sailor, always bear that in mind), has crossed the atlantic more than forty times; and he has, as you know, by an energy almost without example, by a courage nothing could daunt, by a faith that nothing could make to falter, and by sacrifices beyond estimation--for there are sacrifices that he has made i would not in his presence relate to this meeting--aided by discovery and by science and by capital, he has accomplished the grandest triumph which the science and the intellect of man have ever achieved. soon after the successful laying of the cable i had an opportunity of referring to it in a speech spoken in the north of england, when i took the liberty of describing mr. cyrus field as the columbus of the nineteenth century; and may i not ask, when that cable was laid, when the iron hand grasped in the almost fathomless recesses of the ocean the lost and broken cable, if it be given to the spirits of great men in the eternal world, in their eternal life, to behold the great actions of our lives, how must the spirit of that grand old genoese have rejoiced at the triumph of that hour, and at the new tie which bound the world he had discovered to the world to which but for him it might have been for ages to come unknown!... i believe no man--not cyrus field himself--has ever been able to comprehend the magnitude of the great discovery, of the great blessing, to mankind which we have received through the instrumentality of him and his friends, the scientific men by whom he has been assisted. i say with the greatest sincerity that my heart is too full, when i look at this question, to permit me to speak of it in the manner in which i feel that i should speak. we all know that there are in our lives joys, and there are sometimes sorrows, that are too deep for utterance, and there are manifestations of the goodness, and the wisdom, and the greatness of the supreme which our modes of speech are utterly unable to describe. we can only stand, and look on, and wonder, and adore. but of the agency--the human agency--concerned we may more freely speak. i honor the great inventors. in their lifetime they seldom receive all the consideration to which they are entitled.... i honor professor wheatstone and professor morse and all those men of science who have made this great marvel possible; and i honor the gallant captain of that great ship, whose precious cargo, not landed in any port, but sunk in ocean's solitary depths, has brought measureless blessings to mankind; and i honor him, our distinguished (may i not say our illustrious?) guest of to-night, for, after all that can be said of invention, and of science, and of capital, it required the unmatched energy and perseverance and faith of cyrus field to bring to one grand completion the mightiest achievement which the human intellect, in my opinion, has ever accomplished." viscount stratford de redcliffe, in closing his speech, said: "if the share i had in bygone transactions between the two countries is indifferent to you, as it may easily be, you will feel, nevertheless, with me how naturally the atlantic cable and all its prospective advantages bring to mind that state of things which formerly estranged us from america and threatened the interruption of those friendly relations which so many motives of interest and sympathy concur in urging both parties to maintain and improve. mr. cyrus field has called forth our present expressive tribute to his character and merits of the signal exertion he made, at so much hazard and self-sacrifice, to realize the grand conception of the cable. he crossed the atlantic more than forty times in pursuit of that glorious object, and i, who have crossed it but twice, have learned thereby to appreciate the results, as well as the perils, of so immense an undertaking. eternal honor to him, and also to those of our countrymen who, in concert with him, have enabled the two worlds to converse with each other." m. ferdinand de lesseps said: "je viens d'être chargé de vous entretenir des avantages du télégraphe électrique entre les diverses parties du monde. les hommes ont toujours cherché à créer et à perfectionner les moyens de communiquer entre eux. réunir les peuples par des voies rapides et abrégées est un progrès veritablement chrétien; car il nous permet de nous aimer et de nous aider les uns les autres pour nous rendre meilleurs et plus heureux. l'élément essentiel de ce progrès est la propagation de la pensée par la parole, par l'écriture, par l'imprimerie, par la presse périodique et journalière, enfin par la télégraphie électrique, merveilleuse invention moderne mettant au service de l'homme la force que les anciens donnaient pour emblème à la divinité; et qui, au lieu de planer sur nos têtes en signe de menace, poursuit une marche bienfaisante jusque dans les profondeurs des mers. la télégraphie électrique est encore à son debut et déjà elle enveloppe le monde. son application la plus surprenante, celle qui a demandé le plus de courage et d'efforts persévérants, a été la communication instantanée entre l'amérique et l'europe. honneur à cyrus field, qui a été le grand propagateur et fondateur de la télégraphie transatlantique! honneur à ses compagnons de travail et de victoire!" the duke of argyll sent the following message to his excellency andrew johnson, president of the united states, washington: "i am now surrounded by upwards of three hundred gentlemen and many ladies who have assembled to do honor to mr. cyrus field for his acknowledged exertions in promoting telegraphic communication between the new and the old world. it bids fair for the kindly influences of the atlantic cable that its success should have brought together so friendly a gathering; and in asking you to join our toast of 'long life, health, and happiness to your most worthy countryman,' let me add a highlander's wish--that england and america may always be found, in peace and in war, 'shoulder to shoulder.'" mr. seward's answer from washington was read during the evening: "your salutations to the president from the banqueting-hall at willis's rooms have been received. the dinner-hour here has not arrived--it is only five o'clock; the sun is yet two hours high. when the dinner-hour arrives the president will accept your pledge of honor to our distinguished countryman, cyrus w. field, and will cordially respond to your highland aspiration for perpetual union between the two nations." and before the company separated the duke of argyll said: "i hope you will allow me to read to you another thanks which i have received by telegraph from miss field, new york: "'i thank you most sincerely for the kind words you have spoken of my father, causing me to feel that we are friends, although our acquaintance is thus made across the sea and in a moment of time.'" this testimonial banquet afforded a congenial text for the newspapers of both countries, and some extracts follow from the comments of the london papers. from the london _times_: "mere knowledge is itself a great possession; but we want things done as well as known, and we are impelled by an irresistible instinct to honor the men who actually do them, or get them done. this is mr. cyrus field's distinction. by general confession it is to him we owe it that the science of men like faraday and wheatstone was utilized, and that philosophers and sailors and capitalists and governments were all united to produce one great result. it is surprising even now to read his enumeration of the agencies which co-operated in the work. scientific investigations above and beneath the sea, the survey of the atlantic basin, the manufacture of the cables, the mechanical appliances for laying them, the skilful seamanship, the great ship, the enterprises of capitalists, the ability of directors, the resources of governments--in a word, the unexampled combination of nautical, electrical, engineering, and executive resources--all these were necessary to stretch that piece of wire from continent to continent. we may imagine what energy, determination, and skill were needed to set all these agents at work, and to maintain them in working order in spite of disappointments; and it is as having been the principal cause of this perseverance and co-operation that mr. field received so handsome an acknowledgment the other evening." from _the daily news_: "the name which the general estimate of the public--an estimate seldom erroneous in such matters--has associated with the idea of transatlantic telegraphy is that of mr. cyrus field, the guest of last night's dinner. the credit of the undertaking is far too vast to be monopolized by any single name, and common justice, as well as regard for national honor, bids us remember that the material resources of the enterprise were due in the main to english energy, english wealth, and english perseverance. the organized power of an old country was required to accomplish an undertaking too immense to be successfully grasped by the not less powerful but less concentrated resources of a new community. still, if the glory of the ultimate achievement rests with england, the credit of having conceived and initiated the enterprise must be ascribed to america. and of the american pioneers of the work, there is none who has labored so indefatigably as mr. cyrus field. the distinguished guest deserves to be numbered among the 'representative men' of his own country. if you want to understand how it is that america has grown to be what she is, you must seek for an explanation in the fact that men of the field type are not only to be found among her citizens, but are able to develop their peculiar powers after a fashion impossible in an old-fashioned country like our own." from the _morning star_: "mr. cyrus w. field is too earnest and energetic a man, too completely devoted to great projects and great success, to have much of mere egotism left in him. a life so thoroughly absorbed in pursuits which belong to the business and benefit of the whole world can have little time for the indulgence of vanity. but one might well excuse a little self-gratulation and pride on the part of a guest entertained as mr. cyrus field was at willis's rooms last night. not often, certainly, is such a banquet given in england to a man who is neither a politician nor a soldier.... mr. field, when he glanced around that splendidly filled banquet-room last night, may have felt but little personal pride in the well-merited honors he received. but he must have felt gratified at the evidence thus practically and brilliantly afforded that the public of civilized nations are at last trying to unlearn the fatal habit which made them so long ungrateful to some of their best benefactors. "we never remember to have read of a public demonstration to any individual in london which had less of a sectarian or sectional character. the duke of argyll, one of the most advanced of our liberal peers, one of the most enlightened of our scientific thinkers, was hardly more prominent in doing honor to mr. field than was sir john pakington, the steady-going tory of the old, old school. lord stratford de redcliffe, the great elchi of mr. kinglake's delightful sensation romance, sat side by side with mr. bright, who denounced in such powerful and unsparing eloquence so much of lord stratford's policy and conduct during the crimean war. mr. layard joined with sir stafford northcote in the compliment to the guest. two common sentiments animated the whole of the company--a company representing politics, science, literature, arts, and commerce--the sentiment of personal admiration for mr. field's labors and character, and that of cordial friendship towards the great people of whose indomitable energy he is so striking an illustration.... much of the honor, of course, was entirely personal. it was tendered to mr. field because he individually had deserved it. mr. bright, in a few words, accurately described mr. field's position as regards the atlantic telegraph. other men may have thought of the project; other men may, for aught we know, have thought of it even before he did; other men may have mentally planned it out, and proposed schemes for its realization.... the idea is not exclusively mr. field's; nor is the success exclusively his. but assuredly his was the energy, the prodigious strength of will, the unconquerable perseverance, which forced the scheme upon the intellect, the activity, and the influence of england and america, and never desisted until the dream had become a reality. a slight and delicate allusion was made once or twice last night to the sacrifices mr. field had made, the responsibilities he had incurred, the risks he had run, to bring forward his darling scheme again and again after each new defeat and disaster. there are more men by far who could bear to make the sacrifices than men who could raise their heads as mr. field did, undismayed after every defeat, full of new hope after each disaster. certainly that glorious vitality of hope is one of the rarest as it is one of the grandest of human attributes. mr. field brought to the great project with which his life will be identified more than the genius of a discoverer--he brought the courage, the energy, the heart, and hope of a very conqueror. therefore was his share in the work so unique; therefore did the company at willis's rooms last night do him special honor. but in honoring him they honored also his country. better words, holier messages of peace and brotherhood, were never sent along a wire than those which thrilled last night through the depths of the atlantic from the englishmen around mr. field to the brethren of their race in america." "argyll lodge, kensington, _july , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i am much obliged by your kind note. i assure you it gave me great pleasure to preside at your banquet. i would rather have my name associated with the atlantic telegraph than with any other undertaking of ancient or modern times. "yours very sincerely, "argyll." "mortimer reading, _july , _. "_my dear friend_,--i was exceedingly sorry that i was prevented from taking part, as i had intended, in doing honor to you last night. you know that in all that number of admirers there was not one whose feelings towards you were warmer than mine. indeed, few of them could feel the personal gratitude which i feel to the author and the indomitable promoter of an enterprise the success of which will link me, though far away, to my english home. "ever yours sincerely, "goldwin smith." "castle-connell by limerick, "_july , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i saw by the papers that the great banquet given to you at willis's rooms passed off most successfully, and mr. bright, who has been staying a week with me, confirms even the most favorable accounts. i think you may well be satisfied with the honors that have been paid you on both sides of the atlantic, but should more be proffered you may readily receive them as deserved.... "very respectfully and truly yours, "george peabody." when he sailed for england, in february, mr. field had taken to mr. bright an invitation to visit this country, signed by many of his american friends, and ending with these words: "your presence at this time would tend to strengthen the ties between your country and ours, and we beg leave to suggest a visit during the ensuing spring." "torquay, devon, _october , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--your letter has been sent on to me, and has followed me in my journey in cornwall.... i rejoice at the patriotism of your countrymen, many of whom have gone or are going home to take part in the great election; and i hope most earnestly that the republican candidates may be elected by a grand majority. "in this country the elections seem likely to go strongly against the tories; they deserve to be well beaten. "as to the invitation from new york, i can say nothing except that i am deeply indebted to your friends for their kind invitation, and that i regret extremely that i have never yet been able to visit your country. i need not tell you how many are my engagements here, and how uncertain is the prospect of my being able to see the many kind friends i have in the states. "i must ask you to thank the gentlemen who wrote to me, and to say that i am very grateful to them for their kind remembrance of me. "i wish you a pleasant voyage and return. i almost envy you the ease with which, after your long experience, you cross the atlantic. "i shall wait with confidence, but not without anxiety, what the cable will bring us the day after your election. i see four states have their elections to-day, from which something may be judged of what is to come. "i am, always very sincerely, your friend, "john bright." november , , in writing to a friend he says, "i returned home last thursday in time to vote for general grant." on december , , a banquet was given to professor morse, who in closing his speech said: "i have claimed for america the origination of the modern telegraph system of the world. impartial history, i think, will support the claim. do not misunderstand me as disparaging or disregarding the labors and ingenious modifications of others in various countries employed in the same field of invention. gladly, did time permit, would i descant upon their great and varied merits. yet in tracing the birth and pedigree of the modern telegraph, 'american' is not the highest term of the series that connects the past with the present; there is at least one higher term, the highest of all, which cannot and must not be ignored. if not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of infinite wisdom, can the creation of an instrumentality so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the father of every good and perfect gift? i am sure i have the sympathy of such an assembly as is here gathered if, in all humility and in the sincerity of a grateful heart, i use the words of inspiration in ascribing honor and praise to him to whom first of all and most of all it is pre-eminently due. 'not unto us, not unto us, but to god be all the glory.' "not what hath man, but 'what hath god wrought.'" "department of state, "washington, _january , _. "_sir_,--pursuant to the resolution of congress of march , , the president has caused to be prepared for presentation to you, in the name of the people of the united states, a gold medal, with suitable devices and inscriptions, in acknowledgment of your eminent services in the establishment of telegraphic communication by means of the atlantic cable between the old world and the new. this testimonial, together with an engrossed copy of the resolution referred to, is herewith transmitted to you by direction of the president. i am, sir, your obedient servant, "william h. seward." two years had passed since this resolution was adopted and the medal ordered, and the reason for its not having been given before this time was a strange one. in he had received word that the medal would be presented to him on his going to washington, but upon his arrival there he was asked not to name the subject. the medal had been shown at a meeting of the cabinet and had disappeared. another had been ordered, and would be sent to him as soon as possible. the mystery was not solved until , when in london he received a cable message from washington. "the missing original congressional gold medal, a duplicate of which was made and presented to you, has been found. its value is about $ . secretary treasury wishes informally to know whether you wish to possess it. if so, it will be given to you on receipt of value." soon after his return home he was in washington, and while there was told this story: one day a clerk in the treasury department asked the secretary why mr. field had never received the medal ordered for him. when desired to explain his question, he answered that he had been directed to put the medal away _carefully_ after the meeting of the cabinet, and that he had not heard the subject mentioned since that day; neither had he known that the medal was sought for. and now when mr. field called for the "original medal" he was told that it had been given to the mint in philadelphia. a telegram was sent to the director, and only just in time, for already a hole had been drilled in it. mr. varley wrote this letter on his visit to new york, but it was over a year before the suggestions that he made were acted upon. "fifth avenue hotel, "new york, _october , _. "_my dear sir_,--i hope you will pardon me for addressing you upon the subject of the atlantic circuits. "i am a small shareholder in the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, a larger in the anglo-american and atlantic telegraph companies; and it is with deep regret that i see that the latter two companies are fighting instead of working. "it seems as if they were re-enacting just the same farces that were performed when we were endeavoring to raise funds both for the and the cables. i venture unhesitatingly to assert that we should not have succeeded but for the indomitable energy and the excellent judgment of mr. cyrus field. "i do not believe the present attempt at an adjustment will end in any useful results unless some one like mr. cyrus field, enjoying the confidence and personal regard of those interested on this side, as well as such men as brassey, hawkshaw, fairbairne, fowler, gladstone, bright, whitworth, and others in europe, go to england empowered to act on behalf of your company. the jealousies and conflicting interests existing between the directors on the other side prevent them from acting with that vigor and integrity of purpose so necessary to command success, and which qualities are possessed to so large an extent by mr. cyrus field, to whom the world is mainly indebted for the atlantic cables. he of all others is, in my opinion, the one most capable of effecting the settlement we are all so interested in. he succeeded in restoring public confidence, in harmonizing the disputants, and in raising the money when the enterprise had twice proved a failure, and had as often been virtually abandoned by its natural protectors. how much the more, then, will he succeed now when he reappears amongst his old supporters and his true friends, backed this time not by failure, but by triumphant success, and with all his predictions realized!... "very truly yours, "cromwell f. varley. "peter cooper, esq., new york." on january th mr. field sailed from new york in the steamship _cuba_ and joined his wife and two of his daughters, who were in pau. he was in england early in the spring, and among the cable messages sent to him we find this, dated the th of may, which he was asked to forward to general dix in paris: "completion of pacific railway celebrated to-day by te deum in trinity church." he was back in new york early in june, and almost immediately after his return his country-house at irvington-on-the-hudson was opened; this was the first summer that he passed there. "irvington-on-the-hudson, _june , _. "_my dear mr. sumner_,--many thanks for your letter of the th instant; it should have been answered at once, but it was sent to my house in gramercy park. "i thank you for your letter to secretary fish. i do most sincerely hope that we shall soon have a better feeling between this country and england, and i know of no one that can do more to bring about this desirable result than yourself. "you may be sure that i shall do all i can. i wish you would write our mutual friend, mr. john bright, frankly. "i hope soon to have the pleasure of seeing you again and renewing our late conversation. "with great respect i remain, my dear mr. sumner, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." "new york, _august , _. "_my dear president woolsey_,--i have this day read in the _new englander_ for july with great pleasure your very able article on the _alabama_ question, and i cannot help writing to thank you for it. i shall mail it thursday to my friend, mr. john bright. "with great respect, "i remain, my dear president woolsey, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." "new york, _august , _. "_my dear mr. bright_,--since my return from england i have seen many of our ablest men, including the president of the united states, the secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, senator sumner, several other members of the senate, and members of the house of representatives, the governors of several states, leading editors in new york, philadelphia, boston, and washington, and i have found only one that advocated war with england. "i am more than ever convinced that if the english government would send to washington yourself, the duke of argyll, and earl granville as special ambassadors to act with the british minister, the whole controversy between england and america could be settled in a few months. please give this matter your careful consideration. i send you by this mail the _new englander_ for july, containing an article on the _alabama_ question written by president woolsey, of yale college. "with kind regards to your family and with great respect, "i remain, my dear mr. bright, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." "rochdale, _august , _. "_my dear mr. field_,--i am glad to have your letter, and note its contents with much interest. i do not see how your suggestion can be adopted at present. "whatever is done now towards a settlement must necessarily come from your side. we have done all we can. your government sent an envoy with the unanimous assent of the senate. he came avowedly with the object of arranging an existing difficulty. he made certain propositions on the part of his government. these were considered by our government, and finally were adopted and consented to. a convention was signed, including everything your minister had asked for, and this convention was rejected by your senate. who knows that it will not reject any other convention? if you have an envoy who has no power to negotiate, and an executive government which cannot ratify a treaty, where is the security for further negotiation? we cannot come to washington and express our regret that reverdy johnson did not ask for more. we gave him all he asked for, all that mr. seward asked for, all that the then president asked for. what could we have done, what can we now do more? [illustration: ardsley, irvington-on-hudson (home of cyrus w. field)] "it is clearly for your government to explain why the convention failed, and what, in their opinion, is now required from us. the civilized world, i am quite sure, will say that we are on a certain vantage-ground, having consented to all that was asked from us, the convention not having failed through our default. "i could easily suggest a mode of settlement which all mankind, outside the two countries, would approve of; but how do i know what your government can do? if there is passion enough for mr. sumner to appeal to, or believers in his wild theories of international obligation, how can any settlement be looked for? there is abundant good feeling here to enable our government to do what is just, but no feeling that will permit of any voluntary humiliation of the country. "until something is known of what will content the powers that will meet in washington in december next, i do not see what any mission from this to you would be likely to effect. i have read the article in the _new englander_. it is moderate, and written in a good spirit. i do not know that there is anything in it that i could not freely indorse. upon the basis of its argument there could be no difficulty in terminating all that is in dispute between the two countries. but the article is in answer to mr. sumner; and the question is, does your government, and will your congress, go with mr. sumner or with the review article? and what view will your people take? "i write all this privately to you. it is not from a cabinet minister, but from an old friend of yours, who is a member of the english parliament, and who has taken some interest in the affairs of your country. you will consider what i say, therefore, as in no degree expressing any opinion but my own. i have abstained from writing or speaking in public on the subject of the dispute. i could say something to the purpose probably if i thought men on your side were in a mood to listen and to think calmly. but after what has happened in connection with the convention i think we can only wait for some intimation from your side. "there is a good opinion existing here with regard to your government, and especially as regards your secretary of state. i hope he may have the honor of assisting with a wise moderation to the settlement of the disputes on which so much has been said and written and so little done.... "believe me always sincerely your friend, "john bright." he answered this letter on september th: "i regret mr. sumner's speech and his course about the _alabama_ claims more than i can express, and shall do all i can to counteract the effect of his actions, and you can help me, i think, very much, if you will take the trouble to write your views fully.... i am anxious to do all in my power to keep good feeling between england and america." and on november st he wrote again to mr. bright: "i do hope and pray that all matters in dispute between england and america will be honorably settled, and i felt encouraged when i read the sentence in your letter, 'i feel sure that some more successful attempt at settlement cannot be far off.'" dean stanley's words, spoken at the breakfast given to him by the century club on his visit to new york in , describe mr. field's life during these years: "the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in england that my friend and host mr. cyrus w. field passes his mysterious existence, appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in london and new york." chapter xiv international politics--rapid transit ( - ) the journey to england in december, , was taken in order, if possible, to effect the consolidation of the anglo-american and the atlantic cable companies; this was done, the latter losing its name and being absorbed in the other. mr. field also made a working arrangement between the anglo-american telegraph company, the french cable company, and the new york, newfoundland, and london company, and a division of revenue was arranged between the three companies. he returned to his home in february, and he was in washington in march, and while there had a talk with mr. sumner on the settlement of the _alabama_ claims. the new york _herald_ of march d says: "mr. field proposes that the united states shall name three eminent persons, crowned heads, as arbitrators, from whom great britain shall select one, and his decision of the case shall be binding on both parties. or that great britain shall name the arbitrators, and that the united states shall make the selection of the fated individuals. mr. field had a long conference yesterday with mr. sumner upon the subject. the latter does not favor the proposition. with all his respect for royalty, he does not think the united states will get a fair show from any of the crowned heads of europe. he is opposed to all sorts of arbitration in this matter, because he considers it beneath the dignity of our government to submit to anything of the kind." fourteen months later a treaty had been made and was before the senate of the united states. on the evening of may , , mr. field gave a dinner to her britannic majesty's high commissioners. the marquis of ripon said in his speech: "it is sufficient for me to say that i believe--aye, i think that i may say that i know--that it is an honest treaty, that it has been the result of an honest endeavor to meet the just claims of both countries. i do not doubt that if this treaty had been written exclusively in london or exclusively in washington it would have contained different provisions from those now found in it. the treaties which are not compromises, which represent only one side, can be dictated only under the shadow of a victorious army. these are not the treaties, these are not the conventions, that are made between free and equal people." before the evening closed the marquis of ripon said that he wished to propose the health of the host of the evening, and then added: "he trusted that both branches of the late commission had done their share ... but far greater credit was due to the little wire which tied the two nations so close together." he had written to mr. field two weeks before from washington: "i am delighted to hear that you are inclined to look with favor upon our work. i believe the treaty to be equally fair and honorable to both countries; and if it is to be confirmed by the senate it will, i trust, lay the foundation of a firm and lasting friendship between the two nations." on may th professor goldwin smith wrote: "no doubt you rejoice, as i do, in the treaty. i suppose it is safe." thirteen years later the marquis of ripon wrote, expressing regret that he would not be able to dine with his host of , and added: "also because i might thus have had an opportunity of bearing my testimony to the very important part which the telegraph cable played in the negotiations for the treaty of washington. if it had not been for the existence of the cable, those negotiations must have been protracted in a manner which might have been very injurious to their success." and at the same time lord iddesleigh, who as sir stafford northcote had served as a member of the commission, wrote of the use of the atlantic cable during the washington negotiations: "there can be no doubt that it was a main agent in the matter. we usually met our american colleagues at midday, and we were by that time in possession of the views of our home government as adopted by their cabinet in the afternoon of the same day." at a dinner given by mr. field in london on thanksgiving day, november , , mr. gladstone said: "the union of the two countries means, after all, the union of the men by whom they are inhabited; and among the men by whom they are inhabited there are some whose happy lot it has been to contribute more than others to the accomplishment of what i will venture to call that sacred work. and who is there, gentlemen, of them all that has been more marked, either by energetic motion or by happy success in that great undertaking, than your chairman, who has gathered us round his hospitable board to-night? his business has been to unite these two countries by a telegraphic wire; but, gentlemen, he is almost a telegraphic wire himself. with the exception of the telegraphic wire, there is not, i believe, any one who has so frequently passed anything between the two countries. i am quite certain there is no man who, often as he has crossed the ocean, has more weightily been charged upon every voyage with sentiments of kindness and good-will, of which he has been the messenger between the one and the other people." it is appropriate here to introduce a note from mr. beecher of may , : "_my dear mr. field_,--on friday noon, as i sat writing in the _christian union_ office, about twelve of the clock, it suddenly flashed across me that i had engaged to breakfast with you at nine of the morning, alas! and have only to say in excuse that i forgot. "ordinarily that would be an aggravation, for it would argue indifference; but in a man who forgets, he is grieved to say, funerals, weddings, and social engagements; who forgets what he reads, what he knows, it ought not to be considered as a specific sin so much as a generic infirmity. i pray you forgive me, and _invite_ me again! then see if i forget. "i am very truly yours, "henry ward beecher." it was about this time that mr. field's thoughts were turned to the possibility of laying a cable across the pacific, and in that way carrying out his favorite project of completing the circuit of the globe. in writing on april , , he says: "i enclose a memorial and bill before congress in regard to a submarine cable from california to china and japan." on april d: "if i obtain (as i hope) my telegraph bill, i propose that the pacific submarine telegraph company make an agreement, offensive and defensive, with the submarine lines from england to china _via_ india. our cable would give an alternate route from china to england, and i would suggest that we have a joint office in china, and that parties there have the option of sending by either line; and in case one line should be down, messages should be immediately forwarded by the other." "_august , ._ "at the request of prominent members of the united states government we have decided to adopt the following route for the pacific cable: san francisco to sandwich islands , miles. sandwich islands to medway island , " medway island to yokohama , " yokohama to shang-hai , " ------ , " "medway island is the new coaling station of the steamers between california and japan." he writes to captain sherard osborn in august, : "in your letter of th june you state the total length required for the pacific cable as nautical miles, and give the price for the whole, complete, as £ , , sterling. this is at the rate of over £ _s._ per nautical mile." from a letter written on january , : "it is uncertain what congress will do with regard to the pacific telegraph." on the th of june, , he sailed from new york as one of the deputation from the american branch of the evangelical alliance, commissioned to wait on his majesty the emperor of russia in behalf of religious liberty for all his subjects. it was upon his return to england that he wrote the following letter to the grand duke constantine, and the one of september th on his return to new york: "london, _ th august, _. "to his imperial highness the grand duke constantine: "_sir_,--with this i have the honor to enclose a memorial addressed to his majesty the emperor of russia respecting the establishment of a submarine telegraph communication between the west coast of america and the eastern shores of russia, china, etc. "i shall esteem it a great favor if your imperial highness will be so good as to forward the memorial to his majesty, with any observations on the subject which may be thought desirable. "with respect to the gentlemen mentioned in the memorial as prepared to join me in the enterprise, i may explain that they are among the very first merchants and capitalists of the united states.... as i am leaving for the united states this evening, my address will be gramercy park, new york. i would express my sincere thanks for the great kindness shown to myself by your imperial highness, and for the interest you have taken in the subject i have so much at heart. "i beg to subscribe myself, "with great respect, "your most obedient servant, "cyrus w. field. "'_to his imperial majesty the emperor of russia_: "'the memorial of cyrus west field, a citizen of the united states of america, respect fully thereto, "'that having taken an active part in the establishment of electric telegraph communication across the atlantic ocean between america and europe, and having been also interested in the laying of the existing submarine telegraph lines between europe and the east, he is now desirous of submitting to your majesty a project for completing the electric telegraph circle round the globe by uniting by submarine cables the western coast of america with the eastern shores of your majesty's dominions, and with china or japan, or both, as may be found most expedient. "'having regard to the complete success, both scientific and practical, of the submarine telegraph cables now working, which are in the aggregate about , miles in length, your memorialist deems it wholly unnecessary to enlarge on the perfection attained in the manufacture of telegraph cables, or the facility and certainty with which they are laid in all parts of the world. "'experience has proved that submarine telegraph cables can readily be recovered and repaired in case of accident, so that there is practically no limit to the length of line which may be employed or the depth of the water in which they may with perfect safety be submerged. "'memorialist is aware of the strong desire existing in the united states of america for the establishment of a telegraph cable across the pacific ocean in order to the furtherance of commercial interests and to the strengthening of the friendly relations which have for so many years existed between the united states and your imperial majesty's government. "'from communications which memorialist has had with the government of the united states and with many leading members of congress, he is able to say with confidence that both the government and the legislature take a deep interest in the subject, and that, as memorialist believes, they will readily join with your majesty in making such arrangements as may be found necessary to carry out the enterprise. "'memorialist has made diligent inquiry from the persons best able to advise with respect to the practicability of uniting the two great continents by telegraphic cable, and he has received most satisfactory assurances on the subject. "'the proposed line would be about miles in length, and would be made in at least two lengths, landing at one or more of the islands of the pacific ocean. "'from this point the line would extend on the one hand to russian territory, where it would be connected with the imperial system of land lines, and on the other hand it would run to the western coast of the united states, joining there the american wires, and thus give direct communication between russia and the whole continent of america, and, by means of the cables now laid, with every important telegraph line in the world. "'your majesty will not fail to appreciate the importance and value of such a communication to russia as well as to the united states of america. "'it would be an act of presumption on the part of memorialist to affect to point out to your majesty the advantages of the line in its international and political aspect. the cost of the line cannot be ascertained until the route is definitely settled, but it will be manifest that for such an undertaking the very best description of cable must be used. "'from the best information which could be obtained, and from the experience of existing lines, memorialist is led to believe that for some years such a line would not in itself be remunerative as a commercial speculation, although there would doubtless be a large amount of business passing through it; and, further, that having regard to the risks necessarily incident to so great a work, it is and will be impossible to raise the capital required for establishing the line without material aid from the governments directly interested. "'memorialist is therefore led to look to your majesty and the united states government for assistance in carrying out this great undertaking, and, having taken counsel of his associates in former telegraphic enterprises as to the best means of effecting the desired object in the shortest time, he respectfully submits to your majesty the following project: "' . that the proposed pacific telegraph line should be established by a company formed by responsible persons experienced in telegraphic business, under the sanction and supervision of your majesty's government and the government of the united states of america. "' . that the respective governments should each appoint a permanent director of the company. "' . that the course of the line, its termini and stations, and other needful arrangements be determined under the joint approval of the official directors representing the two governments. "' . that each government should guarantee for twenty-five years interest at three per cent. per annum on the cost of the line, the net receipts for each year (after providing for maintenance and repairs) being applied pro rata in relief of the guarantees. "' . that one-half net profits above six per cent. per annum be set apart as a sinking fund for return of capital, and the balance divided equally between the stockholders and the government. "' . that at the end of twenty-five years of guarantee the company shall retain the cable and other property, but without any exclusive right. "'memorialist believes that with such assistance as is indicated above the cables could be made and laid within three years. "'the following eminent citizens of the united states have expressed their willingness to join memorialist in this important enterprise: "'peter cooper, moses taylor, marshall o. roberts, wilson g. hunt, prof. s. f. b. morse, dudley field, wm. h. webb, darius ogden mills. "'memorialist now humbly seeks your majesty's approval of the above project, believing that if so approved the government of the united states will give their concurrence, and that the work will be speedily accomplished. "'cyrus w. field, "'of new york.'" "gramercy park, "new york, _ th september, _. "_sir_,--referring to my personal interviews with you, and to my letter of th ultimo, in which i enclosed a memorial to his majesty the emperor of russia respecting the establishment of a submarine telegraph cable between russia and the united states of america, i now beg respectfully to submit to your imperial highness the following modifications of the propositions contained in that memorial, which i think will commend themselves to your good judgment: " . the proposed guarantee of three per cent. _not_ to commence until the day the cable is completed and in successful working order. " . the amount of capital guaranteed _not_ to exceed £ , , . " . the company to bind itself not to kill seals, nor to deal in furs on any portion of russian territory. " . the cable not to be landed on the island of saghalien. " . in the event of any dispute arising between the cable company and any subject of his imperial majesty, the question to be referred to the russian courts. in disputes between the cable company and american citizens, the courts of the united states to have sole jurisdiction. "may i respectfully solicit your imperial highness to take these proposed modifications into your consideration, and, should they meet with your approval, i would beg the favor of your laying them before his majesty the emperor, with such suggestions as may seem to you advisable. "it is important that i should know the views of his imperial majesty's government at the earliest moment, as the congress of the united states meets on the first monday in december. "i beg again to express my sincere thanks for the great kindness shown to myself by your imperial highness, and for the interest you have taken in the subject i have so much at heart. "i have the honor to subscribe myself, "with great respect, "your imperial highness's most obedient servant, "cyrus w. field." in january, , he was again in russia, but after that time there appears to be no mention made of that government's taking any interest in a pacific cable, and it is only possible to give bits of correspondence in connection with this project, to which he gave so much of his time and thought. on the th of november, , he wrote: "i strongly advise that the pacific cable be landed a few miles south of san francisco, at a spot which i selected two years ago. there is a most excellent sandy beach, and the cable could be easily connected with the existing telegraph lines across the continent." "_july , _. "when the hawaiian government fulfil their promise to me in regard to landing cables on their shores, the question of a pacific submarine telegraph may be entertained by me. until then i certainly shall do nothing towards the accomplishment of the enterprise _via_ the sandwich islands." "hawaiian legation, _march , _. "_sir_,--the twenty-fifth anniversary of the formation of the company for laying the atlantic cable seems an appropriate occasion for giving an impulse to the great work of extending a cable across the pacific. "i am sure that you will not be satisfied with anything less than a cable round the world. "the hawaiian islands have a very central position for the navigation of the north pacific. they are a great resort for the naval and mercantile marine of the commercial countries. "his majesty the king has long realized the great importance of a submarine cable to his kingdom, as well as to all nations whose vessels and citizens visit there, and has authorized me, by advice of his cabinet, to grant you, your associates and assigns, the exclusive privilege of landing a submarine cable or cables on any of the hawaiian islands, and for using the same for connection with the united states, or any other country, and crossing any or all of the islands, and this for the period of twenty-five years. "any land which you may find necessary to have for any of these purposes will be furnished by the government free of expense to you, not intended to include land for offices or houses. "it is to be understood that if you do not within five years begin the construction of the cable necessary to connect the islands with the united states, and establish the connection within ten years, this grant is to cease. "the king and cabinet, having the greatest confidence in your ability and energy, anticipate the completion of the cable to the islands at an early day. "i have the honor to be, sir, "with great respect, "your obedient servant, "elisha h. allen, "his hawaiian majesty's envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary." it was on the evening of the th of march, , that he said: "one thing only remains which i still hope to be spared to see, and in which to take a part: the laying of a cable from san francisco to the sandwich islands ... and from thence to japan, by which the island groups of the pacific may be brought into communication with the continents on either side--asia and america--thus completing the circuit of the globe." two months later this note was sent: "new york, _may , _. "_dear judge allen_,--i sail for europe on wednesday next, the st instant, and shall be absent five weeks from this city. during my visit there i shall confer with my friends in regard to the pacific cable, and i am willing to head a subscription list with my own subscription of one hundred thousand dollars. "i shall be happy to confer with you on my return to this country. "i have had a bill introduced into congress granting permission to land and operate cables in the united states, which i hope will pass during this session. "with great respect, "i remain, dear judge allen, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." to follow his steps more closely, it is best to turn back to the fall of . it was on october th that he cabled to london: "a great fire has been raging in chicago for the last two days, and more than , persons are homeless and destitute of food, shelter, and clothing. five square miles in heart of chicago utterly destroyed. loss between two and three hundred millions. all principal business houses, banks, and hotels destroyed. could not you, captain hamilton, and mr. rate call upon the large banking-houses connected with america, such as morgan, baring, jay cooke, morton, brown, shipley, and others, and endeavor to organize a relief committee for the purpose of rendering the assistance that is so much needed? the large cities of the united states are acting nobly in this fearful calamity that has befallen chicago, and the citizens subscribe liberally." the cablegrams that he received and forwarded on this occasion were numberless. those that follow were sent by mr. mason, the mayor of chicago: "we are sorely afflicted, but our spirit is not broken." "god bless the noble people of london." "receive our warmest blessing for your most noble response to our stricken city. it was received by our committee in tears." "your generosity defies space, as these wonderful gifts have been flashed to us from all parts of the earth. we are lifted from our desolation. the arm of the civilized world is thrown around us. heaven bless you for this needed help and for the language of encouragement and deep love which it speaks to an afflicted people." "our people, lifted from despair by this regal aid, are to-day in the work of restoration, full of hope. we read in these gifts the determination of the universal world that we shall go forward." mr. field received an official invitation from the italian government, and he was also the representative of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, to attend the triennial telegraphic convention of representatives from the various governments and telegraph companies of the world appointed to meet in rome in december, . on the th of that month professor morse wrote: "i have wished for a few calm moments to put on paper some thoughts respecting the doings of the great telegraphic convention to which you are a delegate. "the telegraph has now assumed such a marvellous position in human affairs throughout the world, its influences are so great and important in all the varied concerns of nations, that its efficient protection from injury has become a necessity. it is a powerful advocate for universal peace. not that, of itself, it can command a 'peace, be still' to the angry waves of human passions, but that, by its rapid interchange of thought and opinion, it gives the opportunity of explanations to acts and to laws which, in their ordinary wording, often create doubt and suspicion. "were there no means of quick explanation it is readily seen that doubt and suspicion, working on the susceptibilities of the public mind, would engender misconception, hatred, and strife. how important, then, that in the intercourse of nations there should be the ready means at hand for prompt correction and explanation! "could there not be passed in the great international convention some resolution to the effect that, in whatever condition, whether of peace or war between nations, the telegraph should be deemed a sacred thing, to be by common consent effectually protected both on the land and beneath the waters? "in the interest of human happiness, of the 'peace on earth' which, in announcing the advent of the saviour, the angels proclaimed with 'good will to men,' i hope that the convention will not adjourn without adopting a resolution asking of the nations their united, effective protection to this great agent of civilization." this telegram was sent from rome on december th: "telegraphic conference to-day, after a long debate, by a unanimous vote, adopted mr. cyrus field's proposition to recommend the different governments represented at the conference to enter into a treaty to protect submarine wires in war as well as peace, and recommended that no government should grant any right to connect its country with another without the joint consent of the countries proposed to be connected." in speaking of this convention he said: "it represented twenty-one countries, six hundred millions of people, and twenty six different languages." the proposal of professor morse was so obviously in the interest of peace and humanity that it may seem that its adoption was a matter of course. in fact, however, the opposition to it was at first so strong and general that it would have been defeated but for the personal exertions of mr. field in its behalf, and his own narrative of how the adoption was brought about is so interesting as to deserve being given in full. in his report, dated rome, january , , to the directors of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, he said: "the international telegraph conference adjourned this afternoon after a session of six weeks and three days.... "the conference opened on friday morning, december st, but i did not arrive here till the th ultimo. on my arrival i was very sorry to learn that the representative from norway had on the th of december proposed to the conference that they should recommend to their different governments to enter into a treaty to protect submarine cables in war as well as peace, and that his proposition had met with such opposition that he had withdrawn it, as he was sure it could not pass. as soon as i got all the facts, i determined my course. it was to get personally acquainted with every delegate and urge my views upon him before bringing them before the conference. finally, on thursday, the th ultimo, i presented my views in a carefully prepared argument to the conference. every single member was in his seat, and finally, after a long discussion, in which there were forty-nine separate speeches, my propositions were carried without a dissenting voice. the representatives of nine governments, although personally in favor of it, were not willing to take the responsibility of voting without positive instructions from their governments, so they simply abstained from voting. "the minister of foreign affairs of italy, visconte venosta, will prepare a circular and send it to the different governments, inviting them to enter into an international treaty to protect submarine cables in time of war. "i shall leave here to-morrow morning for new york _via_ vienna, st. petersburg, berlin, paris, and london. in each of these cities i hope to persuade the american minister to help on this treaty, which i believe will add much to the security of submarine telegraph property." soon after he reached london he received this note from mr. gladstone; he refers, doubtless, to the letter already given in this memoir, setting forth the view he entertained, during the early part of the civil war, of the hopelessness of endeavoring to restore the union by arms. it had not, however, been published in , nor has it appeared until the publication of this volume. " carlton house terrace, "_february , _. "_dear mr. cyrus field,_--will you kindly refer me, if you can, to a letter of mine, i think addressed to you respecting my declaration in that the leaders of the south had made a nation--as to its date, and, if possible, without inconvenience, as to any publication in which i might find it, though probably the date will suffice? "believe me, "very faithfully yours, "w. e. gladstone." mr. field was in london during the excitement caused by the claims for indirect damages which were to be put forward by the american agents at geneva. these letters refer to that controversy: "house of commons, "london, _march , _. "_dear mr. field,_--as i hear, with regret, that you are detained here by illness, i take the liberty, as an old acquaintance, of asking whether you cannot do something in your compulsory leisure to help our countries in this untoward business as to the case. "if you, who are so well known here, believe your government to be in the right, and that they never did waive, or meant to waive, the claim for indirect damages, and if you will make this statement publicly here, in any manner you please, it would certainly go far to induce me, and i think most of the other public men who were strong unionists during your civil war, to advocate the submission of the whole case as it stands to the geneva board. on the other hand, if you cannot do this, i really think we may ask for your testimony on the other side. "if you do not see your way to taking any action in the matter, pray excuse this note, for which my apology must be that this is no time for any of us who are likely to get a hearing to keep silence. "i am always yours very truly, "thomas hughes." he thanked mr. hughes for his "kind note," and at the same time gave to him the letter he had written to mr. colfax on february th, and this letter mr. hughes sent to the _times_: "london, _ th february, _. "_my dear mr. colfax,_--having read this morning a brief telegraphic summary of the speech which you delivered at brooklyn on washington's birthday, i feel constrained to address you on the subject upon which you have spoken with so much emphasis. i refer to the treaty of washington. i share your opinion that neither nation will dare, in the face of civilization, to destroy the treaty; but nevertheless the crisis is a grave one. it therefore behooves every one who can assist to bring about a better understanding on the points of difference between the two countries to make his contribution to that end. this is my apology for addressing you. "the grave misunderstanding which has arisen between great britain and the united states is due to the widely different manner in which the treaty of washington has been from the outset interpreted by the two nations. i have not met a single person on this side of the atlantic who expresses any desire "to back out" of the treaty, or refuse the fulfilment of any one of the obligations which it is believed to impose; nay, more, my conviction is that if the british people were satisfied that the principle of referring vague and indefinite claims to arbitration had somehow or other crept into the treaty, they yet would, while passing emphatic votes of censure on their representatives at washington, at the same time never dream of calling back the pledge which lord ripon and his colleagues had given on their behalf. "the excitement which followed the publication of the american case was occasioned by the belief--universal among all classes of the english people--that their own interpretation of the treaty was the right one, and that indeed no other interpretation had ever been or would be given to it. it is desirable that americans should remember this fact--that until the publication of the american case nobody on this side of the water had the remotest idea that the washington treaty contemplated more than arbitration with reference to the direct losses inflicted by the _alabama_ and other confederate cruisers which escaped from british ports during our civil war. this is not a matter of surmise; it is demonstrable on the clearest evidence. i therefore contend that whether the public sentiment of england be well founded or not, its existence is so natural that even if we americans are wholly in the right we ought to make every allowance for it--in fact, treat it with generous forbearance. "so early as june th last, when lord russell, in moving a resolution for the rejection of the treaty, charged the americans with having made no concessions, lord granville retorted by pointing to the abandonment of the claim for consequential damages. 'these were pretensions,' he said, 'which might have been carried out under the former arbitration, but they entirely disappear under the limited reference.' there could be no mistake as to his meaning, because in describing the aforesaid 'pretensions' he quoted the strong and explicit language which mr. fish had employed. we are bound to believe that lord granville spoke in perfect good faith, especially as the american minister was present during the debate, and sent the newspaper verbatim report of it to his own government by the ensuing mail. when the debate took place the ratification of the treaty had not been exchanged. if lord granville was in error, why did not general schenck correct him? "on the same occasion the marquis of ripon, also replying to lord russell's taunt, remarked that 'so far from our conduct being a constant course of concession, there were, as my noble friend behind me [earl granville] has said, numerous occasions on which it was our duty to say that the proposals made to us were such as it was impossible for us to think of entertaining.' this, also, was understood to refer to the indirect claims. "turning to the debate which took place in the house of commons on the th of august, one searches in vain for any remark in the speeches of mr. gladstone, sir stafford northcote, or sir roundell palmer which indicated any suspicion that the _alabama_ claims had assumed the portentous character which now attaches to them. the doubt which lord cairns at one time entertained had been set at rest by the ministerial explanations made at the time in the house of lords, and not a single argument advanced in the lower house, either in support of or in opposition to the treaty, touched upon the question of these claims. even mr. baillie cochrane, the well-known conservative member, who denounced the treaty on all sorts of grounds, and whose avowed object was to pick as many holes in it as possible, was unable to allege that england had consented to an arbitration which might involve her in indefinite liabilities. "sir stafford northcote, in the course of his humorous speech--a speech instinct with good feeling towards the united states--said that 'a number of the claims under the convention which was not adopted [the johnson-clarendon treaty] were so vague that it would have been possible for the americans to have raised a number of questions which the commissioners were unwilling to submit to arbitration. they might have raised the question with regard to the recognition of belligerency, with regard to constructive damages arising out of the recognition of belligerency, and a number of other matters which this country could not admit. but if honorable gentlemen would look to the terms of the treaty actually contracted they would see that the commissioners followed the subjects very closely by making a reference only to a list growing out of the acts of particular vessels, and in so doing shut out a large number of claims which the americans had previously insisted upon, but which the commissioners had prevented from being raised before the arbitrators.' all this points unmistakably to the definite and limited character of the claims which, in the judgment of the english negotiators, were alone to be submitted to arbitration. "it seems to me that judge williams, in the speech he made at the banquet i had the honor to give to the british high commissioners in new york, expressed sentiments which can only be similarly construed. 'many persons,' he said, 'no doubt, will be dissatisfied with their [the joint high commissioners'] labors; but to deal with questions so complicated, involving so many conflicting interests, so as to please everybody, is a plain impossibility; but in view of the irritation which the course of great britain produced in this country during our late rebellion, and in view of the one-sided and generally exaggerated statements of our case made to the people, the american commissioners consider themselves quite fortunate that what they have done has met with so much public favor in all parts of the country and among men of all political parties.' "that true friend of america, the duke of argyll, speaking in the upper house, was equally emphatic. 'the great boon we have secured by this treaty,' he said, 'is this: that for the future the law of nations, as between the two greatest maritime states in the world, is settled in regard to this matter, and that for this great boon we have literally sacrificed nothing except the admission that we are willing to apply to the case of the _alabama_ and that of other vessels those rules, i do not say of international law, but of international comity, which we have ourselves over and over again admitted.' it is impossible that the duke would have expressed himself in language so hopeful and so contented if behind 'the case of the _alabama_ and that of other vessels' he had seen looming up the colossal demands which were originally embodied in senator sumner's memorable oration. "the views thus put forward sank deep into the public mind, and the treaty was accepted and ratified by popular opinion on this basis. general schenck, several months after the delivery of the above speeches, in addressing a lord mayor's banquet at the guildhall, bade the english ministry and lord ripon 'congratulate themselves upon the success with which they have endeavored to bring about friendly relations between the united states and great britain.' "people here ask how he could congratulate the british government if he knew all the while that their construction of the treaty, which was to cement the friendship of the two countries, fatally differed from the construction put upon it by the government at washington. "i have not given my own but the english view of the matter. when such momentous issues are at stake--when a false move on the diplomatic board may endanger the peace of two kindred nations--it is absolutely necessary that our people should know what is the english side in this controversy. the first duty of a loyal american citizen is to ascertain the whole truth, and not by ignorance or obstinacy to commit himself to a wrong course. "many hard words have been lately spoken and written about mr. gladstone. i therefore feel it incumbent upon me to bear my testimony to the large and statesmanlike view of american affairs which he has taken for several years past, and to the cordial good feeling he has shown towards our country since he has been at the head of the present government. in spite of temporary misunderstanding, i will continue to hope that the treaty of washington will bear the fruit which he anticipated; that, to quote his own eloquent words in the house of commons on the th of august, that treaty will do much 'towards the accomplishment of the great work of uniting the two countries in the ties of affection where they are already bound by the ties of interest, of kindred, of race, and of language, thereby promoting that strong and lasting union between them which is in itself one of the main guarantees for the peace of the civilized world.' "with great respect i remain, "my dear mr. colfax, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." mr. bright wrote to him at this time: "this trouble about the treaty is very unfortunate. i think your letter admirable, and i hope it will do good in the states, where, i presume, it will be published. i confess i am greatly surprised at the 'case' to be submitted to the geneva tribunal. there is too much of what we call 'attorneyship' in it, and too little of 'statesmanship.' it is rather like a passionate speech than a thoughtful state document. and what a folly to offer to a tribunal claims which cannot be proved. no facts and no figures can show that the war was prolonged by the mischief of the pirate ships; and surely what cannot be proved by distinct evidence cannot be made the subject of an award. this country will not go into a court to ask for an award which, if against it, it will never accept. an award against it in the matter of the indirect claims will never be paid, and therefore the only honest course is to object now before going into court. has the coming presidential election or nomination anything to do with this matter? or is mr. sumner's view of the dispute dominant in washington? i should have thought your government might have said: 'we will not press the claims objected to before the tribunal, but we shall retain them in our "case" as historic evidence of our sense of magnitude of the grievance of which we complain.' "this, i dare say, would have satisfied our government and people, and practically it would have satisfied every reasonable man in the states. to such as would not be content with it, friendship and peace would, in the nature of things, seem to be denied." soon after his return home he received the following letter, and returned the answer to that of mr. bright: "washington, h street, _ th march_. "_my dear mr. field,_--i cannot tell you how grieved i have been at the difficulty which has arisen respecting the washington treaty. "i do not think that anything would have induced me to accept the appointment which brought me here but the pride i felt in taking a part, however humble, in the execution of a treaty which i thought the glory of the age and which seemed to me so full of promise to all civilized nations. "i cannot think with patience of all our hopes being dashed to the ground by what bright truly describes as a 'passionate speech,' followed by a claim utterly extravagant, from which the party making it never expected to get a farthing. "i confess that i should not have been afraid to go to arbitration upon it, but i see the difficulty which any government would have in justifying themselves to their people in leaving it to any five persons to say whether a fine of two hundred millions should be inflicted on them. "you have done your part excellently, but why do not others raise their voices against this tremendous folly which is not unlikely, sooner or later, to lead us into war? "i fully believe that both governments are very anxious to accommodate matters, but i confess that i do not see how that accommodation is to be brought about without a concession, which it is very difficult for a government to make on the eve of a presidential election. "believe me "very sincerely yours, "russell gurney." "gramercy park, "new york, _ d april, _. "_my dear mr. bright,_--i arrived on th march, after a very rough passage of sixteen days.... "since my return i have devoted much of my time to ascertain the real sentiment of the people of this country in regard to the washington treaty, and as far as i can judge, after seeing many persons of different political parties, it appears to be almost unanimous that our government has made a great mistake in including these indirect claims in the 'case.' i am convinced that the best people in england and america desire to have this question settled in a fair and honorable manner. in fact, many say to me that they have got tired of hearing about the indirect claims.... "with great respect and kind regards to your family, "i remain, my dear mr. bright, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." it was while he was in london, in december, , that mr. junius morgan said to him that he had just received a letter from mr. john taylor johnston about the cesnola collection, then in london, and he asked him, if he had the time to do so, to examine it and give him his opinion. mr. field went at once to see it, and he was much impressed with its value. of this time general cesnola writes: "the officers of the british museum had already examined the collection, and it was perhaps on their report that mr. gladstone came to see the collection; but whether he came with a view to securing it for the british museum or not i cannot say. your father asked me to drive back with him to mr. morgan's office, and suggested to mr. morgan (as agent for mr. johnston) to close the purchase of the collection with me _verbally at once_, and a payment was made on account without delay, and without waiting for the papers to be drawn up. "it was through your father that my collection became the property of the metropolitan museum of art. it was he who introduced me to mr. gladstone, earl granville, mr. adams, then united states minister in london; also to the dean of westminster and lady augusta stanley, and to many other of his english friends. he invited a large party to meet me at dinner, and also brought many to see my cypriote collection. i doubt if, without the great personal interest shown by your father, it would ever have become the property of the metropolitan museum; because it was only after this that the london press went wild over securing it for england. "i have said, and shall always say, that it is chiefly, if not wholly, due to cyrus w. field that my discoveries are in this city to-day." the sale of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company was made early in this year, and on july , , he writes to mr. orton, the president of the western union telegraph company: "the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, having been consolidated with the anglo-american telegraph company, limited, drafts will hereafter be made upon your company, and communications made in the name of the said anglo-american telegraph company, limited." among the cable messages sent during the autumn of this year these are of interest: "september th.--great panic here in money market." "september th.--confidently believed, reliable quarter, government will take measures relieve market before monday, but thus far panic has exceeded anything ever known." "saturday, october th.--most of the firms that have suspended are those that have been doing too much business for their capital, but confidence is so shaken that many stocks are being sold at whatever they will bring. think perhaps have seen worst, but don't yet see signs permanent improvement." "monday, november st.--western union sold before panic at . has sold in last few days less than ." we find these entries in his diary: "january th, .--arrived in london." "february th.--sailed from liverpool for new york in the _cuba_; fifty-sixth voyage." this letter followed him to new york: " carlton house terrace, "_march , _. _"my dear mr. cyrus field,_--when i was about to thank you for your kind letter of the th, i received that of the th announcing to me the funeral of mr. c. sumner, and the great manifestation of feeling which it called forth. "his loss must be heavily felt, and his name will long be remembered in connection with the abolition of slavery, which was wrought out in the united states by methods so wonderful and so remote from the general expectation. "as respects events in this country, they have brought about for me a great and personally not an unacceptable change. i have always desired earnestly that the closing period of my life might be spent in freedom from political commotion, and i have plenty of work cut out for me in other regions of a more free and open atmosphere. "as respects the political position, it has been one perfectly honorable for us, inasmuch as we are dismissed for or upon having done what we undertook or were charged to do; and as respects the new ministry, they show at present a disposition to be quiet. "believe me, my dear mr. field, "yours very faithfully, "w. e. gladstone." the following extract is taken from mr. field's private papers: "the bill for the expansion of the currency, which at this period passed both houses of congress, after exhaustive debates, created much alarm among the leading financial men of new york and the eastern states. meetings were held at various places to protest against it, and to request the president to exercise his veto." a number of the leading bankers, capitalists, and merchants of new york assembled on april th at mr. field's house on gramercy park to consider what action should be taken in the matter. a petition very extensively signed was read, and the following resolutions were adopted: "_resolved_, that the following gentlemen be appointed a committee to take charge of and present the foregoing petition to the president, bearing the signatures of all the leading bankers and business firms of the city of new york, asking him to interpose his veto to prevent the enactment of the senate currency bill, which has recently passed both houses of congress; or any other bill having in view the increase of inconvertible currency. "_resolved_, that the senators from the state of new york, and such members of the house of representatives from this state as entertain the views indicated in the foregoing resolution, be added to the committee, and their co-operation invited. the members of this committee are: "j. j. astor, rev. dr. adams, ethan allen, w. h. aspinwall, w. a. booth, james m. brown, august belmont, s. d. babcock, s. b. chittenden, e. c. cowdin, george s. cole, john j. cisco, w. b. duncan, w. m. evarts, cyrus w. field, wilson g. hunt, b. w. jaynes, j. t. johnston, a. a. low, w. j. lane, c. lanier, c. p. leverich, w. h. macy, c. h. marshall, r. b. minturn, royal phelps, howard potter, m. o. roberts, a. t. stewart, j. h. schultz, isaac sherman, jonathan sturges, moses taylor, j. a. agnew, j. d. vermilye, g. c. ward, etc." mr. field, with many influential members of this committee, proceeded to washington with the petition, and had an interview with the president, who promised to give the subject his mature consideration. it is thought that the arguments adduced by the committee on this occasion had great weight with the president, and, combined with other influences, finally determined him to veto the bill, which he did shortly afterwards in a message in which he committed himself strongly against any further inflation of the currency. had this bill passed into a law it would have been the first step towards national repudiation, for the wedge once inserted, it is impossible to predict how far it would eventually have been driven, and what effect even a moderate addition to the inconvertible currency would have had, not only on commerce, but on the moral conscience of the nation. a return of government bonds held in foreign countries would have been the inevitable result, and all values would have been unsettled. reasoning and thoughtful men foresaw the crisis that was impending, and the country owes a debt of gratitude to the chamber of commerce for its prompt action, and to president grant for listening attentively to the arguments of the committee for saving the country from threatened disaster. on may th, mr. and mrs. field were members of a large party which left new york for california, and on the th, at omaha, canon kingsley and miss kingsley joined them. the journey was a pleasant one, but uneventful. friday, may d, he writes: "after breakfast i sent a telegraphic message to dean stanley, informing him that canon kingsley was well and would preach for us in the yosemite valley on sunday." in his sermon on the afternoon of whit sunday, dean stanley alluded to this message. early in june he sailed for england, and of his journey to iceland, undertaken during this summer, mr. murat halstead writes: "my judgment is that your father had no business reasons for going to iceland. really the trip was a sentimental adventure. mr. field had been a profound student of the north atlantic, and was familiar with the fact that iceland is but nine hundred miles from scotland and norway and three hundred from greenland. 'it seemed so near, and yet so far.' ... in the spring of mr. and mrs. cyrus w. field visited cincinnati, and at a reception given by mr. probasco mr. field said to me: 'come and go with me to iceland; it is the millennial year of the settlement of the island. it would be very interesting. the king of denmark is to be there, and the whole affair will be extraordinary.' i asked how one could get to iceland, and mr. field had evidently made the subject a close study. he said there were monthly boats from copenhagen touching at leith, the port of edinburgh, and we should sail from scotland, and iceland was about a thousand miles from scotland. "mr. field must have gotten his impulse to go to iceland from his familiarity with the north atlantic during the anxious years he spent in studying it with reference to the cable. he was struck by the narrowness of the ocean between greenland and norway, with iceland between just below the arctic circle. he had, of course, contemplated a cable by way of greenland and iceland to scotland if it should be found impracticable to cross the atlantic between newfoundland and ireland. when it became known that mr. field was going to iceland there were conjectures that he thought of a cable to the island; but that was a mere fancy. there was not a chance for business over the line. there would be no news except of volcanoes and the price of codfish. if there should ever be a cable connection with iceland it would be for the weather reports. "i was thinking of a trip to europe in the summer of , when mr. field spoke to me, and a few weeks later decided to go. mr. field was going earlier than i could, and just before he sailed i telegraphed, asking on what date it would be necessary for me to meet him in london in order to go with him to iceland. his reply was, 'july th.' on my arrival at southampton by the bremen boat i remembered the day was the th of july, and that night about ten o'clock i found mr. field at the buckingham palace hotel, and he said he had been expecting me, and was waiting to see me before going to bed. that, i suppose, was a joke, but it was not all a joke. i found in london bayard taylor, going to the icelandic millennium for the new york _tribune_, and dr. i. i. hayes, the arctic explorer, going for the new york _herald_; dr. kneeland, of the boston institute of technology, and professor magnussen, of cambridge university, an icelander by birth. i resolved to go, and we chartered the steam yacht _albion_, captain howland, sailing from leith. mr. field and i made a tour through the highlands, and, passing balmoral and the earl of fyfe's hunting and fishing lodge, found the rest of the party at aberdeen, where it was necessary for us to enlist as british seamen, and we were paid a shilling each for our services during the voyage, which was one of great interest and considerable hardship. we halted at the orkney, shetland, and faroe islands, at the latter place falling in with the king's fleet. our icelandic experiences are familiar, as mr. taylor and dr. kneeland published books on the subject. mr. field's iceland party, for he was our leader, attracted much attention--almost as much sometimes as the king's procession. we rode across the lava beds to the geysers, saw mount hecla--and the great geyser would not spout for the king." it will have been observed, in the course of this narrative, that with mr. field, so inexhaustible was his energy, rest was only a "change of motion." when he sought relaxation from exhausting business cares he found it in fatiguing journeys, and he preferred that these should be as difficult and adventurous as possible. this was the case in his journey to the andes with mr. church in his earlier manhood. it was the case with the excursion in ripe middle age beyond the "furthest thule" of the ancients. he was now again, thanks to his own exertions, and after years of struggle and of doubt that to others meant despair, independent in circumstances, and, as it seemed, beyond the power of fortune, and he was nearing his sixtieth birthday. most men would have regarded this condition as an occasion to "rest and be thankful." but it was in this condition that mr. field undertook a new and arduous enterprise, for which he had had little specific training. it is evident that its very difficulty, as in the case of the atlantic cable, was to him an element of attractiveness. but there was this difference between the atlantic cable and the elevated railway system of new york. he was the pioneer, the projector, of the former. the latter had already been undertaken, and practically, it may be said, to have failed. indeed, there was no "system" of elevated railways. the fragmentary roads that were in operation or projected were unrelated to each other in ownership, management, and traffic. financially and practically they were languishing. it will be seen from the letter which will presently be given that the company with which he proposed to ally himself, the new york, which possessed the franchise for third avenue, had been so far from successful that sixty cents on the dollar was held to be a fair price for its securities. it may fairly be said that the elevated "system" is due to mr. field. whoever remembers the conditions of transit in new york before , and indeed for some years after, must own that the creation of this system has constituted a public benefaction. many millions have been transported, with a loss of life that has been infinitesimal in comparison with the volume of the traffic, at a cost no greater than that of the conveyances which the system has superseded, and at a rate of speed that has built up the new and large cities, one on the east and one on the west side of manhattan island, which before it went into operation were outlying districts, practically inaccessible to busy men for purposes of residence. it was on may , , that mr. field made this entry in his diary: "bought this day a controlling interest in the new york elevated railroad company and was elected president of the company." [illustration: certificate of discharge] some of the conditions on which he had made this investment and venture are set forth in the following letter to his friend, mr. john h. hall: "new york, _ th may, _. "_my dear mr. hall_,--it is possible that i may purchase a majority of the stock of the elevated railroad, but _before deciding_ i wish to ascertain whether, if i do, you will remain in the board with mr. david dows, myself, and some other gentlemen of character and financial strength, and also whether you will take bonds at sixty cents for the debt now due you. if i have anything to do with the company i want it free from _all floating debt_, and everything purchased at the lowest price for cash. "mr. dows has told me this morning that he will remain in the board and will take bonds for the $ , due him, provided i make the purchase and accept the presidency of the company. "will you have the kindness to see our mutual friend, mr. a. s. barnes, and ascertain whether he will take bonds for the debt due him and remain as a director. if i go into the concern i shall be willing to be president, but _without salary_, for the enterprise, to be a success, must be managed in every way with the greatest economy. "an early answer will oblige. "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." his promptitude and energy are shown in the fact that on june th, less than three weeks after he took charge, a public meeting in favor of rapid transit was held. "_the evening post_, "new york, _june , _. "to cyrus w. field, esq.: "i cannot be present at the meeting to be held this evening at chickering hall, but i am heartily with you and your friends in the object of the meeting. i hope that a decided expression will be given to the conviction that an absolute necessity has arisen of instituting some method of conveying passengers between the upper and lower parts of the city which shall unite the greatest convenience with the utmost possible speed. "yours faithfully, "wm. c. bryant." mr. charles o'conor wrote on the same day to the chairman of the meeting: "i much regret my inability to attend the meeting in favor of rapid transit, the state of my health not admitting of my doing so. i fully sympathize, however, with the objects sought to be obtained, and here repeat the remarks which i made in closing my address before the new york historical society at the academy of music on the th of last month: "'it is said, and doubtless with truth, that the great cities have hitherto been destroyers of the human race. a single american contrivance promises to correct the mischief. the cheap and rapid transportation of passengers on the elevated rail, when its capacity shall have been fully developed, will give healthful and pleasant homes in rural territory to the toiling millions of our commercial and manufacturing centres. it will snatch their wives and children from tenement-house horrors, and, by promoting domesticity, greatly diminish the habits of intemperance and vice so liable to be forced upon the humbler classes or nurtured in them by the present concomitants of their city life.'" on the th of september of this year the new president wrote: "i believe that the early completion of the new york elevated railroad from the south ferry, passing wall, fulton and catharine street ferries up the bowery and third avenue to the grand central depot, will be a benefit to the three great railroads the trains of which start from the depot." and on the st of november, , he was able to report to the directors: "it is not eighteen months since i purchased from some of your then directors a majority of the stock of your company at such a price that to-day it sells for more than five times as much as it cost me; and at the same time i bought from the same parties a very large amount of bonds, and to-day they sell for more than double what they cost me, including seven per cent. interest to date. the above stock and bonds i purchased on the express condition that the contracts of the company with certain parties to build this road for one million two hundred thousand dollars per mile ($ , , ), payable one-half in stock and the balance in first mortgage bonds of this company at par, should be cancelled. the amount that has been saved to this company by the cancelling of this contract you all well know." william o. mcdowell, in _harper's magazine_ for june, , writes: "at the time of the strike of the engineers on the elevated road in new york i had a part in bringing the representatives of the engineers and the late cyrus w. field, a director in the elevated company, to a meeting that resulted in a quick understanding between the conflicting interests and an ending of the strike. mr. field was so pleased with the fairness of the committee representing the engineers with whom he had to deal that he invited them at once to dine with him at delmonico's, an invitation which their representatives declined for them, fearing that its acceptance might be misunderstood. mr. field, however, continued to feel that he wished to extend some social courtesy to the employés of the elevated road, and at a later date, when he was all-powerful in that corporation, he issued a formal invitation to the employés to a reception at his house. to a large number the initials 'r. s. v. p.' on the lower corner of the invitation were a great mystery, and, as the story goes, the invited compared notes and sought an explanation of them. at last one bright young man announced that he had discovered what they meant, and he explained to the others that 'r. s. v. p.' stood for 'reduced salaries very probable.'" this story is true, but the end is not given. the men accepted the invitation, enjoyed their supper, and listened with great interest to a speech made by mr. peter cooper, which lasted over an hour. mr. cooper told the men of new york as it was in , and the story of his life. dean stanley preached in calvary church on sunday evening, october , . he came to mr. field's home at irvington the following morning. soon after breakfast on tuesday the family realized that their guest was more familiar with the history of this part of the country than they were. it was just above tarrytown that major andré had been captured; he was executed across the river. that was enough to excite the curiosity of the visitors, and at dinner on tuesday evening it was proposed to the dean that the next morning he should cross the river to tappan and find the spot. this was not easily done; no one knew the exact place. there was washington's headquarters, and he had closed his shutters so as not to see andré hanged, so that the scene of the execution must have been near that house. at last an old man of over ninety came and said that in , when andré's body was removed to england, he had stood by and had seen the grave opened; and that the roots of an apple-tree, which he pointed out, were twisted about the head of the coffin. the drive had been so long that it was past three o'clock before the party returned; and not until dinner did they tell that their search had been successful. it was then that mr. field said: "mr. dean, if you will write an inscription i will buy the land and put up a stone, and then the place will be known." his idea was simply to mark an event in the history of the country; but a part of the press insisted that an american had erected a monument to a british spy, and this was reiterated far and wide, and flew from the atlantic to the pacific. dean stanley felt this keenly, and wrote: "if you find that there is really a feeling against it, pray do not think of it. the game is not worth the candle. poor major andré, engaging as he was, is not worth the rekindling forgotten animosities." the monument was twice injured by explosion of dynamite. after the second of these, on november , , mr. field refused to replace the stone. he said that the spot was now sufficiently marked. on the stone were these words: +-----------------------------------------------------------+ |here died, october , , | |major john andré, of the british army, | |who, entering the american lines | |on a secret mission to benedict arnold, | |for the surrender of west point, | |was taken prisoner, tried, and condemned as a spy. | |his death, | |though according to the stern code of war, | |moved even his enemies to pity, | |and both armies mourned the fate | |of one so young and so brave. | |in his remains were removed to westminster abbey. | |a hundred years after the execution | |this stone was placed above the spot where he lay | |by a citizen of the united states, against which he fought,| |not to perpetuate the record of strife, | |but in token of those better feelings | |which have since united two nations | |one in race, in language, and one in religion, | |with the hope that this friendly union | |will never be broken. | | | | arthur penrhyn stanley, dean of westminster. | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ the twenty-fifth anniversary of the signing of the first cable contract was remembered on the evening of march , . to use the words of the new york _evening post_: "it was a notable anniversary which mr. cyrus w. field celebrated last night, with the assistance of a multitude of his fellow-citizens, many of them eminent in various departments of public life. the obvious sentiment of the occasion, and the words with which everybody would describe it, are contained in the telegraphic message sent from westminster abbey by dean stanley, who calls it the 'silver wedding of england and america,' and says: 'what god hath joined together let no man put asunder.' the event which was commemorated is scarcely more remarkable than the rapid advance of all nineteenth century events which the recollection of this one suggests. it is only twenty-five years since a determined effort was made to realize what had been wildly dreamed of; it is considerably less than twenty-five years since the dream became a reality; yet already instantaneous communication between the old world and the new has been consigned to the commonplace book of history. it has become one of those familiar things which we forget all about because they are familiar, but which are also indispensable, as we would be sharply reminded if we should lose them for a day, or an hour--things which are of the highest value, but of which it is hard to speak without talking platitudes. with this great event the names of mr. field and other men of business whose intelligence, liberality, and energy make the work of morse and other men of science a practical triumph will be always and honorably associated." a short extract is given from the speech of rev. dr. william adams: "i have no intention of saying a word in laudation of the atlantic cable. the time for that has passed. 'he is of age: ask him: he shall speak for himself.' though the ear catches no articulate words passing along its quivering strands, yet this polyglot interpreter is speaking now, with tongue of fire, beneath the astonished sea, in all the languages of the civilized world." [illustration: the andrÉ monument, tappan, new york] chapter xv the pacific cable--the golden wedding ( - ) the winter and early spring of were passed in the south of france and in algiers. mr. field was back in new york in april; and on the th in a letter says: "i have already written to london in regard to the estimated cost of manufacturing and laying a telegraphic cable across the pacific. the route i have suggested is as follows: one cable from san francisco to the hawaiian islands; one cable from the hawaiian islands to japan; one cable from the hawaiian islands to australia, touching at the fiji islands and new caledonia." in a letter to england on the th, he writes that he had received a letter from washington in which the hope was expressed that he would give some attention to the transpacific cable before he left america. he answered the question as to the expense of manufacturing a cable briefly: "a submarine cable, like a watch, can be manufactured at a great variation in price." the two letters that follow were sent to washington, the first on august , : "referring to my letters to you dated may th and june th, in relation to a telegraphic cable across the pacific ocean, i would suggest: " . that the united states government obtain from some eminent electrician specifications for the best description of cable suitable for the great depths and the great lengths required to connect the western with the eastern coasts of the pacific. " . that the government advertise for tenders to manufacture and lay such description of cable, one-fourth the amount to be paid when the cables are all manufactured, one-fourth when they are on board the steamers and the steamers ready to sail, one-fourth when the cables have been successfully laid, and the remaining fourth when they have been worked successfully and without interruption for thirty days. "by adopting this course i think you would obtain a good cable at the lowest price. "the government could pay for such a cable by selling its four per cent, bonds, having a long time to run, at a considerable premium; and the revenue from such a cable would, in my opinion, steadily increase from year to year, and at no distant day be a source of revenue to the country." * * * * * "i thank you for your letter of yesterday, and for the interest you are taking in the matter of the proposed pacific cable. "have you ever written to the american ministers in japan and china on the subject? if the united states government desired it, and took the proper steps, i think that england, russia, france, japan, and china would each do something towards encouraging the enterprise." the latest mention i find of this project is on the th of april, , and then it is suggested as only possible as far as the sandwich islands, and that it would cost £ , . there had been no enthusiasm shown, and as no company had been formed the grant given on march , , had become valueless; but as long as his brothers dined with him the thought of a pacific cable was recalled by the favorite toast of mr. david dudley field, who would say, before the family left the table, "and now, cyrus, we must not forget to drink to the world encircling." the recent revival of the subject has evidently been rather political than commercial. it was during the summer of that this was written: "i decided some weeks ago upon leaving new york, on my trip around the world, on october th, provided i could find some democratic friend who would pair off with me; and if i cannot accomplish this i shall wait and vote on november d, and leave on the d." and on september th: "it appears to me to be all-important that the republican party should carry the election in indiana in october.... i have now decided not to leave for san francisco until after the presidential election." and two days later, september th: "after mature reflection, i have determined to remain until after the election and do all i possibly can to secure the success of the republican ticket by working until the polls close on the evening of november the d, and then leave on the morning of the d for san francisco, and sail from thence in the _oceanic_ on the th.... by remaining and working i hope to induce others to vote for our mutual friend, james a. garfield." these letters were sent to the new york historical society on september th and th: "i am glad to hear that it is proposed to erect a monument to nathan hale. many years ago i joined with others in such a memorial at coventry, conn., where he was born. but one ought to be erected in this city, and, if possible, on the very spot where he died. that spot you have, i understand, ascertained to be at or very near the armory of the seventh regiment. what an inspiration would a monument there be to our young soldiers! there ought to be inscribed on it his own immortal words: 'i only regret that i have but one life to give for my country.' "if the new york historical society will obtain permission to have a monument erected there, i will, with pleasure, bear the whole expense." * * * * * "i have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter th instant. "enclosed i send you a printed slip of an inscription which i propose to put upon the stone which marks the spot where major andré was executed, should the new york historical society decide to accept the same, as suggested by me in a verbal conversation with mr. george h. moore." this letter was received on september th: "cyrus w. field, esq, new york: "_dear sir_,--a few of your neighbors and personal friends are desirous of meeting you in a social and informal way before you start upon your tour round the world. they will be glad if you will give them the pleasure of your company at dinner on some evening in the latter part of october. tuesday, the th, is suggested as a suitable time; but if any other day will better comport with your convenience, you have only to name it. they are not willing you should go away without their greeting and god-speed." in his reply to the toast to his health he said: "some of you began your business and professional life with me, and it will be pleasant to take so many of my old friends by the hand and to receive their kind wishes for a prosperous journey and safe return." mr. field thoroughly enjoyed the evening. general horace porter closed his speech with these words: "now let me simply say that beyond the sentiment of friendship we all have a profound admiration for one who, at a period of life when most men, having surrounded themselves with the rich things of earth, in personal comfort, art, and literature, would be content to retire to some shady arcadia and enjoy the rest to which they were so fully entitled, is bristling with all the activity of youth, seeking new worlds to conquer and projecting new enterprises. "i know i speak the sentiment of all in saying that the hearty leave-taking and hand-shaking will be surpassed by the cordial welcome extended to him when, after passing over many lands and many seas, he will gladden the hearts of his fellow-countrymen by once more setting foot upon his native shore." he left new york, as he proposed, at four o'clock on the morning of the d of november, and it will surprise no one who knew him to hear that he was in the south of france early in march and arrived in new york on may the th. "department of state, "washington, d. c., _ d may, _. "_my dear mr. field_,--welcome, thou wanderer! we intend now to anchor you for some time in your native waters. "your arrival is timely. you can be of great service to the country and to the administration, which counts you among its chief friends.... "hastily and truly, "james g. blaine." and on june d: "with reference to your kind invitation to visit you at irvington on the hudson about the th of june, i beg to say for myself that it is doubtful as to whether i shall be able to accompany the president upon his proposed visit to williams college. should i do so, however, it would give me the very greatest pleasure to accept of your hospitality. i have taken the liberty to transmit your letter to the president, and presume that he will write you directly with reference to his ability to become your guest." this entry was made in his diary on june th: "i have invited president garfield to come to irvington for a visit and then go to williamstown for commencement on july th." to quote again from his private papers: "mr. and mrs. garfield, with several members of the cabinet and their wives, were to come to us at irvington, pass sunday with us, and on monday leave for williamstown. it was as mr. garfield was leaving washington, that he was shot in the pennsylvania depot." in a letter he writes: "when the first excitement had in a measure subsided, i wrote to a friend in washington and asked if in case of mr. garfield's death his family would be left in comfortable circumstances." it was on july th that he sent this message by cable and telegraph to friends in europe and america: "if president garfield should die from the wounds received on d instant he would leave for his wife and five children about $ , . i shall to-morrow, thursday, morning exert myself to the utmost to raise a sum of money to be presented to him at once, as i feel confident it would help his recovery if he knew that in the event of his death his family would be provided for. i shall cheerfully subscribe $ towards the sum to be raised. if you or any of your friends would like to join, please telegraph to me early to-morrow, thursday, for what amount i may put your name, and oblige." the subscriptions were from $ to a ten-cent piece (given by an office-boy), and there was deposited in the united states trust company $ , . a silver coin of the value of ten cents was sold, and he sent this note to the child who made the donation: " broadway, "new york, _ th july, _. "_my dear young friend._--i was very much pleased to read your nice letter enclosing the silver coin you had kept so long. i showed your letter to a gentleman who came to see me at my office, and he kindly said he would give one hundred times the value of the coin, and handed me twenty dollars in exchange for it and your letter, so that you see your little offering to mollie garfield's mamma has realized quite a large sum. "i thank you very much for your contribution, and am "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." "mr. field: "_dear sir,_--i thought it was very funny to see my little letter printed in the newspaper, and i think it was so kind of that gentleman to give twenty dollars in my name. i wish i knew who it was, so i could thank him for it. will you please thank him for me? i am seven years old. "berdie hazelton. "i don't know mollie garfield very well, for i never saw her, but i am so sorry for her, 'cause her poor papa got shot." with the invitation to attend the garfield memorial service came this note: "washington, _february , _. "_my dear mr. field,_--you must come to the address on the th, monday. you will go on the floor with me. i should feel that my audience was incomplete if you were not present. sincerely, "james g. blaine." as he had received the thanks of congress, he was entitled for life to the privilege of going upon the floor. a message sent from the yorktown celebration, in october, , to mr. gladstone, called forth this answer: "hawarden castle, chester, "_october , _. "_dear mr. cyrus field,_--i thank you for your telegram. the gratifying intelligence which it contains may probably come through another channel. in the meantime, unofficially, i express the hope that we may one and all consider it a personal duty to cherish and foster the feelings so admirably expressed in the president's order, and prevailing, happily, alike on both sides of the atlantic. "i remain, very faithfully yours, "wm. e. gladstone." in april, , he suffered quite a disagreeable experience. one evening a police officer and two or three gentlemen came to the house, bringing the torn and burned remains of a package addressed to him. it had been in the mail-bag which a postman threw on the platform of the third avenue elevated road as he stepped off the train. as the bag fell there was an immediate explosion, and, upon examination, the box and wrapper of the package were found. the wrapper was an old german newspaper with mr. field's name on it, and another like package in the bag bore the name of mr. wm. h. vanderbilt. he took the matter very calmly, only afterwards telling the butler that no package brought to the house must be delivered until it had first been plunged in a bucket of water. this order spread consternation among some members of the family, who trembled for their new spring clothes. on august , , he left tarrytown in the car "railway age," with several members of his family, for a journey that lasted six weeks, and during that time he travelled , miles by rail and by boat. on september th he left portland, oregon, for tacoma, and early on the morning of the th, as he was waiting at utsaladdy for the tide to carry the _north pacific,_ the boat he was on, through deception pass, went on shore, and found that it was from this place that the wooden mast for the _great eastern_ had been cut. it was sent to england by the way of cape horn. september d he joined sir donald smith and his party at silver heights, and his car was attached to their special train. four days were given to crossing the rockies and returning to winnipeg, to the then western terminus of the canadian pacific. on the afternoon of september th the cars stopped in front of a large tent; it was the station, and has since been known as field. a few hours earlier, as we all stood looking up at mount stephen, and then off at the mountains, sir donald smith turned to mr. field and said, "that is mount field." one of the employés of the road suggested that it had been already named, but that was of no account; sir donald's word was law, and mount field it became. it was upon one of his western journeys that he stopped at a telegraph office, wrote a message, and handed it to the clerk to send. instead of turning at once to his instrument, the man studied mr. field intently, and then said, "are you the original cyrus?" on his return home he was much interested in the presidential election; but he accepted the result quietly, and wrote to a friend: "i thank you for what you say in regard to the election. whoever has received a majority of the votes will be declared elected. i do not know of any human being who wishes to defeat the popular will when known. in my own opinion, no one can tell who is elected until after the official count." this year was that of the long and painful illness and affecting death of general grant. mr. field's sympathy with the sufferer was intense, and it was with regret that he received this letter, and also one from one of general grant's sons, to which he refers in his answer: "new york city, _january , _. "_my dear sir_,--through the press and otherwise i learn that you, with a few other friends of mine, are engaged in raising a subscription for my benefit. i appreciate both the motive and the friendship which have dictated this course on your part, but, on mature reflection, i regard it as due to myself and family to decline this proffered generosity. "i regret that i did not make this known earlier. "very truly yours, "u. s. grant. "cyrus w. field, esq." "_ th january, _. "_my dear general grant_,--i have this moment received your letter of this date, and i shall, as requested in the letter from your son, send a copy immediately to messrs. a. j. drexel and george w. childs, of philadelphia; to general w. t. sherman, st. louis, and mr. e. f. beale, of washington. "i have for several days been very anxious to call and see you, but have been prevented by press of business and a severe cold. "with great respect, i remain, "dear general grant, "very truly your friend, "cyrus w. field." he was in london part of the summer of , and the extracts that follow are made from a letter written to the new york _tribune_ by mr. smalley on july th, in which he gives an account of the fourth in london, and of a dinner given on the evening of that day. there were but thirty present, and only eight americans. "the toast of the evening was proposed by mr. field, and responded to first by the american minister and then by the duke of argyll. mr. phelps's speech had the one fault of being too brief. all he said was to the point, and was said with genuine feeling and in good taste. the duke has grown to be a venerable figure.... he speaks to-night with a depth of regard for america and americans which goes straight to every american heart. the best friends of his life, he tells us, have been americans--prescott, charles sumner, motley, longfellow, and his host, mr. cyrus field. he has brought back vivid memories of his brief visit to america, and paints for us one or two vivid pictures of american scenery and american life. he rejoices in our joy; in our independence; in the triumph of the union over the rebellion; in the triumph we have since won here in england over english unfriendliness. and he says, truly, that it is difficult now to find an englishman who is not convinced he was on our side all the time. "mr. bright followed. he is seldom heard in these days.... he gave us of his best. he went back to the days of the civil war, when, as he told us, and as i have heard him say often, he used to spend the week in anxious expectation of the news which the saturday steamer was to bring of events in america, i forget whether it was in this speech or later in the evening that mr. bright described the emotion with which he received the tidings of the defeat of bull run. at the first moment he thought, as so many of us in america thought at the first moment, that all was over. 'no calamity ever seemed to me greater,' said this english friend of america. the ultimate victory of freedom over slavery filled his life with happiness.... if anything could make us free-traders it might well be mr. bright's eloquence, and his unequalled power of seeing the one side of the question in which his faith is so fervent. as long as i hear his voice i suspend my convictions.... "this dinner of mr. cyrus field's, though private in one sense, was pretty fully reported in the london papers.... mr. field's health was proposed by the duke of argyll, and drunk with all the honors. telegrams were read to and from general grant and the president of the united states." just a month later mr. phelps, then american minister in london, wrote to mr. field: "you will be glad to know that i have a message from the queen, who desires to send a representation to our service. i have also a telegram that mr. gladstone will attend, and lord harrowby, lord privy seal, for the government." the service referred to was the eulogy on general grant, delivered at westminster abbey, on august th, by archbishop farrar. to this service these two letters also refer: "_august , _. "_my dear mr. field,_--i had a long search for you among the crowds at westminster, after the service, when i found that you were not among those bound to the dean's lodging, but failed to find you, and i therefore write a line to thank you for having asked me to attend the service in memory of our great friend, as i was grateful for the opportunity to be again among so many of your countrymen, and to do honor to the memory of a most remarkable citizen. "i think farrar's oration was excellent, and the place--the common shrine of so much of our past glories, to which both nations can equally look with pride--a very fitting one for the expression of our common mourning. "believe me, dear mr. field, "yours very truly, "lorne." this is from professor roswell d. hitchcock, of the union theological seminary in new york: "i hardly need say how glad i am that such a service has been provided for. your countrymen owe you much gratitude for the lead you have taken in the matter." it was after his return home this year that this telegraphic correspondence occurred between him and his brothers and mr. george bancroft, then at newport: "most hearty congratulations on your eighty-fifth birthday--congratulations which we hope to renew for many years to come. "david, stephen, cyrus, and henry field." "_dear david, stephen, cyrus, and henry field_,--thanks for your good-will, and when i am gone keep the departed traveller kindly in memory. "ever yours, "george bancroft. "_ th october_." mr. field was again in london in , and was at a dinner given on july th by the liberal club to mr. chesson, who, in his speech, said: "my personal acquaintance with mr. field dates back for more than twenty years--from the period when the first atlantic cable was laid; and i had reason then, as i have had greater reason since, to admire his indomitable perseverance, his unwearied patience, and his great ability. i was for a time on board the _great eastern_ with him in , when the atlantic cable was successfully laid and permanent telegraphic communication established between the two continents. i saw him daily, and held constant social intercourse with him until the splicing of the shore end of the cable with the huge coil which filled the vast tank of the _great eastern_ took place; and i noticed that there was nothing in his demeanor to distinguish him from other persons on board, although when some of us cast wistful looks at the big tank we knew that it contained all his worldly goods, and, for aught he knew to the contrary, his fortune was destined to be buried, with the cable, at the bottom of the atlantic." the last of august and part of september this year were spent in another journey to the pacific coast, in which he was much impressed with the marvellous beauty of the canadian road. from a new york paper of november, , this is taken: "mr. field has fought almost since the very beginning of the system as a public conveyance for a uniform charge of five cents at all hours for passengers on all the new york elevated lines, and the morning of the st of october, , first saw the complete victory which attended his effort in this direction." when, in , he bought a large tract of land in the valley of the saw mill river, adjoining on the east his home at irvington, he intended building there a number of small but comfortable houses for working-men. around each house he proposed that there should be a plot of ground, and the rent was to be from ten to twenty dollars a month for house and land. the building of the new aqueduct made it impossible for him to carry out at once this project, and before the aqueduct was completed he suffered, in , heavy financial losses from the sudden decline of the stock of the new york elevated roads, in which he was so largely interested. the last message that passed between mr. field and mr. bright was on the th of december, , when he cabled: "_the right hon. john bright,_--your friends in america read with interest the news that comes daily from your sick-room. accept the affectionate remembrance of one who has known and loved you for more than a quarter of a century. "it may comfort you in your long illness to know that your name is on the lips and in the hearts of millions on this side of the atlantic, who can never forget how you stood by the cause of their country. "cyrus w. field." december , , was a day that his family had long looked forward to. it was on this day that these messages and telegrams were received, and that many friends came to offer their congratulations. among the messages of good-will was this poem from president henry morton, of the stevens institute: "mr. and mrs. cyrus w. field "on the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage "golden light the sun is shedding, ushering in this golden wedding, as he did on that bright day fifty golden years away. then as now the 'golden flowers,' lingering after summer's hours, the chrysanthemums, foretold anniversary of gold. golden love and golden truth to gold age from golden youth, in the fire of life, thrice tried, pure themselves, yet purified by the sorrows borne together, by the stress of stormy weather; this pure gold, outlasting earth, proves its own celestial birth, and shall shine with golden light, star-like, from heaven's dome of night." "cyrus w. field, esq., gramercy park, new york: "_dear sir,_--we, the undersigned, who have known you for many years, and some of whom have been long and intimately associated with you, desire to express to you and to your amiable and devoted wife our earnest and heartfelt congratulations on your golden-wedding day, the d of december, . "we earnestly wish you both many years of health and happiness, enjoying the fruits of your useful and well-spent lives, and seeing on every side the wide-spreading development of the submarine telegraph enterprise in which you, mr. field, have labored so long, so zealously, and so successfully. this great work, pursued by you with unflagging energy and perseverance for many years, through the greatest difficulties and hinderances, has now become a first necessity of national and commercial life, and you have the profound satisfaction of knowing that its object and its results are, and ever have been, peaceable and beneficent in their character. "we ask you to accept this message of our good-will and good wishes, which will be sent to you both over and under the sea. very faithfully yours, "argyll, frederic w. farrar, mouck, w. e. gladstone, w. h. russell, douglas galton, tweeddale, henry c. forde, w. andrews, h. weaver, g. von chauvin, j. h. carson, samuel canning, richard c. mayne, c. w. earle, catherine gladstone, j. s. forbes, caroline roberts van wart, g. w. smalley, gerald harper, william barber, l. m. rate, john muirhead, george draper, richard collett, w. leatham bright, latimer clark, r. t. brown, f. a. bevan, h. d. gooch, w. thomson, g. shaw lefevre, j. russell reynolds, john pender, james anderson, w. cunard, william ford, george elliot, george henry richards, w. shuter, henry clifford, willoughby smith, w. s. cunard, julius reuter, h. a. c. saunders, g. w. campbell, h. m. stanley, of alderley, john h. puleston, george cox bompas, james stern, h. l. bischoffsheim, louis floersheim, t. h. wells, j. h. tritton, w. h. preece, c. v. desauty, george grove, jane cobden, thomas b. potter, charles burt, margaret anderson, robert c. halpin, edward satterthwaite, frank h. hill, j. c. parkinson, william payton, henry dever, kenneth l. m. anderson, charles w. stronge, oscar wilde, lewis wells, john g. griffiths, robert dudley, emily f. lloyd, ch. gerhardi, w. t. ansell, julian goldsmid, john chatterton, frances baillie, constance wilde, b. smith, john temple, montague mcmurdo, philip rawson." "winchester house, " old broad street, "london, _december_ , . "_my dear mr. field_,--it came to my knowledge last month that the d of december was the golden-wedding day of mrs. field and yourself. it happened when we were in paris at the telegraph conference in the month of june that my birthday occurred, aged sixty-six. (is it not terrible that one should be so old?) but it was also fifty years since i went to sea as a sailor boy, and it was just twenty-five years since we made our first voyage in the _great eastern_. "mr. charles burt, who was in paris representing the anglo-american company, was kind enough to get up a dinner in my honor, and i was presented with an illuminated memorial or address. it occurred to me that it would be a pleasing act on our part to get up a similar address upon the occasion of your golden wedding, and no doubt you would have the result yesterday. "mr. charles burt and the staff of the anglo have cordially done all they could to get as many names as we could recall, but as they are a good deal scattered it has taken more time than we anticipated. then, oh, how many have passed away! it is like calling the roll after a battle--so few could be found. we are to-day trying to get at a few more, who we feel sure would like to add their names. i was looking up sir william drake, but he was too ill, and died this morning.... "now, my dear mr. field, let me once more wish mrs. field and yourself every sort of kind good wish. the days and years are rolling away, and we may well cling to the memory of exciting and active days when we were twenty-five to thirty years younger and the future filled with nervous uncertainties. "always yours sincerely, "james anderson." "in the glow of the morning was the song of rejoicing, ye twain are now one till death shall you part; in the calm of the evening is the song of thanksgiving, ye twain are still one in life and in heart. "it was faith in the morning, it is knowledge this evening, we sang of the future, we sing of the past; but this jubilee hour finds the refrain unchanging, we twain are still one, only one at the last. "we wait in the evening for the dawn of the morrow, but the song of our lives will not end with the day; 'midst the music celestial hear the anthem of glory-- we twain are still one, for ever and aye." d. j. b. chapter xvi last days and death--in memoriam ( - ) the golden wedding was to be almost the last gleam of brightness and happiness that came to the home of mr. field. it was in march, , that his children had been told that any sudden excitement might end his life, and in april, , they realized that their mother's illness must soon come to a fatal termination. both father and mother were watched with eager solicitude throughout the summer of . the family dined together for the last time on the th of august in that year--mrs. field's birthday--and her brother-in-law, mr. david dudley field, proposed her health and gave this toast: "mary stone field, the wife of cyrus w. field, the mother of seven children and of sixteen grandchildren, a perfect wife, a perfect mother, a perfect grandmother. god bless her." it was on the d of november that mrs. field died. an old friend writes of the married life thus ended: "oh, what a family theirs was--so loving, considerate, and true! how many hearts must be full of gratitude to them and all their benevolence! for theirs was true charity 'that vaunteth not itself,' not letting the left hand know what the right hand doeth." and of her the rev. dr. arthur brooks wrote in _the churchman:_ "mrs. cyrus w. field was one whose death has been felt as a great loss in new york city. by those who have shared her gracious, kindly, and intelligent hospitality she will never be forgotten. "for her large charity, wide information, quick memory, and unfailing tact made her the warm friend of all who met her. the position in which her life placed her was one which made great demands, and she met them all. as the centre of a large family circle, involving wide and important interests, and also as the intimate friend of men and women of leading position, she never failed to manifest the ready wisdom and large sympathy for which each occasion called. she was calm under all trouble, reasonable in all perplexity, and thankful in all happiness. "mrs. field's earnest and deep religious spirit was recognized by her intimate friends as the foundation of those graces which were evident to all. her christian faith was eminently strong and simple. it grew as the emergencies of life called for its exercise, and her intelligence and information were in the closest relation with her faith at all times. her love for nature and her knowledge of trees and flowers were remarkable, and, to those who did not know her deep and large nature, surprising in one whose life in the city was so engrossing. her interest in missionary undertakings was equally marked; it laid hold of her large experiences as a traveller in all parts of the world, and made them helpful to a large understanding of all movements in foreign lands. "one recalls with constant pleasure all the circumstances of so large, devoted, and refined a life, which, wherever it moved, brought new brightness and larger confidence and deeper faith. her passage from this world to the larger realm of the life which is unseen is but the farther expansion under perfect conditions of the character which, while it was amongst us, was ever going from strength to strength." it was at this time that disasters in business and calamities that were calculated to affect him far more keenly fell upon him, and what remained of his life was full of great anguish, both mental and physical. on his seventy-second birthday, november th, he found that of the fortunes that he had invested in the atlantic cables, the elevated roads, and the washington building, but one thousand pounds of anglo-american cable stock remained, and had it not been for the kindness of his friend mr. j. pierpont morgan, he could not in may, , have gone to his country home. it was mr. morgan also who advanced the necessary money to keep in force the premium on mr. field's life-insurance policies. that in the new york mutual insurance company had been taken out in , and was number . it was thought that the change to the country would benefit him, but in fact it only increased his distress and his weakness. early on the morning of july th his family were called, and watched by his side from half-past four until ten minutes before ten, when the rest he so longed for was given. it was with a prayer of thanksgiving that they laid his tired head back on his pillow. during those long hours he had spoken but once, and that was to ask for air, but his loving eyes followed them almost to the end. from the new york _tribune_ of july th these sentences are copied: "as simple and as unostentatious as he would have wished was the funeral of cyrus w. field, which was held yesterday. there was no eulogy, and there were few floral tributes. the simple protestant episcopal service was read." he was buried in stockbridge. some mention of his personal traits may not be unwelcome here. his disposition was sunny and genial, and he thoroughly enjoyed his home. all his life he was subject to periods of depression, but they were quickly over, and, in connection with the trials that come to all, he would say that this or that had been for the best, and that it had brought with it good results. when asked how he was his answer invariably was, "jolly," and his telegrams ended with the words "all well," or, "in good health and spirits." his love for children was great. no matter how forlorn or poor the child was, he would stop and speak to it, and offer to buy the little one, and assure it that it was "an angel baby." and he delighted to gather his family and friends around him. both summer and winter he was up by six o'clock, and by seven was in his library. it was there that he planned his work for the day. each morning a list was made of those he wished to see and the order in which he desired to meet each one, and this list was placed in his hat on his way to breakfast. that meal was served at the instant; and once when reproached for not having waited until all were at the table, he answered that he could not afford to lose ten minutes in the morning, for that meant seventy in a week, or rather sixty hours, two and a half full days, in the year. telegrams or letters received late in the evening were placed on his desk unopened. he would say, "if they bring me bad news i shall not sleep if i read them, and if the news is good it will keep until morning." letters that if seen would cause others pain or might be misunderstood were instantly destroyed. questions put to him that it would be indiscreet to answer were apparently not heard. an important paper was never thrust loosely into his pocket, but was placed in an envelope and his name and address distinctly written upon it; the same care was given to any package that he carried. his reason for so doing was that if, after having taken this precaution, he lost either paper or package, it would be at once returned to him. his quick and energetic manner often amused his guests, and when a friend was with him in , he said, "it seemed like living on the top of a 'bus." on sunday evening, in reply to the question as to whether or no he would be obliged to leave the next morning, this guest said: "i shall go to town with you mr. field. at what hour do you breakfast?" the answer surprised him: "at half-past seven o'clock sharp." the reply was: "i am ready now." it was then past eleven. these extracts are taken from two of mr. smalley's letters sent from london to the new york _tribune_: "those in england who regret the great american's death on the grounds of private affection are many, and among them some of the best and most prominent englishmen now living.... "mr. cyrus field was at one time almost as well known in london as in new york. the tributes now paid him show that he was not forgotten in the later years of his life, and that such misfortunes as befell him did not shake his hold on his english friendships. of these he had a considerable number among the most eminent men in england. mr. gladstone was one, mr. bright and the duke of argyll were two others. these relations lasted for many years. they lasted in mr. bright's case till his death, and there was between him and mr. field something which might be called affection. the great orator spoke of the great american in terms which he did not bestow lavishly, and never bestowed carelessly. his respect for mr. field's public work was sufficiently shown in the splendid eulogy he passed upon him. to be called by such a man as mr. bright the columbus of the nineteenth century is renown enough for any man. the epithet is imperishable. it is, as thackeray said of a similar tribute to fielding in gibbon, like having your name written on the dome of st. peter's. the world knows it, and the world remembers. i heard mr. bright use the phrase, and he adorned and emphasized it in his noblest tones. he had, indeed, a deep regard for great service done to the public, and for the doer of it, and he did not stint his acknowledgments. he was great enough to be willing to acknowledge greatness in others. mr. cyrus field, for his part, returned the good-will shown him with fulness. he took a great pleasure in such friendships as these i have named. to secure mr. bright as a speaker at one of his dinners was a delight to him; and mr. bright made at least one of his most admirable speeches on such an occasion.... even those who thought mr. cyrus field somewhat masterful in business matters could not overcome their liking for the man. i have in mind one or two men, famous in telegraphy, who resented very strongly mr. field's handling of certain matters, and said strong things about it. i do not know whether he was right or whether they were right, nor does it matter. the point is that these very men remained attached to him, and were among his friends to the last in england. the secret of his power of winning over men might be difficult to define. whatever it was, he possessed it in no ordinary degree. he had an affectionate and persuasive manner. no doubt, i think, ever crossed his mind that his aim, whatever it might be, was a right one. this conviction, arising in his own breast, he was able to impart to others. that is not an explanation of the mystery, it is only another way of stating it. "he seemed to me never to forget a friend, whether in prosperity or adversity. if, as his adversaries sometimes asserted after their defeat, he was hard in business matters, that is only what must be said of all successful men of business. it is a condition of success. he none the less had fine and generous impulses, and, unlike some others, acted on them. a good impulse unacted on seldom seems to be of any particular use to anybody--least of all to him who controls it. there was in mr. field none of that cynicism which led talleyrand to say you must suspect your first impulse, because it is generally a good one. he was not cynical, whatever else he was. "he made himself liked, or rather he was liked whether he tried to be or not. he was genial, serviceable: liked to do a kind thing, and to give pleasure. his sterner and more efficient traits of character are known to everybody; on them there is no need to dwell. every message that flashes through the atlantic cables is his eulogy. his virtues are written in water in a new sense; and the memory of his indomitable courage; of his just sense of the right means to the right end; of his enthusiasm, and of his power of generating enthusiasm in others; of his fortitude; of his wise generalship; of his large views, and of much else, will endure." the next extract is taken from the report of the century club for . it was written by judge howland, the secretary of the century: "the name of cyrus w. field is worthy of association with those of fulton, stephenson, morse, and ericsson as benefactors to mankind. inheriting from a vigorous ancestry a capacity, energy, and perseverance that would brook no obstacles--characteristic of other members of his family as well--he strode from poverty to wealth, through various vicissitudes, but with unstained integrity. engaged in gigantic enterprises, he stood on the brink of financial ruin in promoting them; endured failure on the verge of success, despair on the heels of hope, ridicule swift after praise, long unbroken; wearying suspense, varying with exaltation and depression, until after thirteen years of doubt and trial and tireless labor his triumph came, and with it fame and the honors of two continents. the atlantic cable is a monument to his memory that shall endure while time shall last, but as the promoter of the elevated railroad in new york, at a time when its feasibility was problematical, success uncertain, and capital was timid, he is entitled no less to the grateful memory of our people. "despite mistakes (and who has not made them?), what single enterprise since the building of the erie canal has done more to enhance the wealth and prosperity of the metropolis than this last monument to his foresight and energy? deceit and betrayal at various times by his associates he bore without a murmur; but at the last, when domestic sorrows came upon him--not as single spies, but in battalions--he sank beneath them, and our pity follows him as did our praise." at the meeting of the chamber of commerce on october , , mr. orr said: "with sincere regret i announce the death of seven of our members during the summer. two were honorary members, namely: "cyrus w. field, elected august , , and died th july, . "george william curtis, elected march , , and died st august, . "as resolutions of respect and sympathy are to be presented for your consideration, i beg permission to suspend, for a short time, the general order of business, and call upon mr. william e. dodge to present the resolutions relative to the late mr. field." mr. dodge thereupon offered the following preamble and resolutions: "_whereas_, the death of cyrus w. field has removed from this country one of its most distinguished citizens, and from this chamber one of its oldest and most honored members, we wish to place on record our sincere regard for his memory and our esteem for his invaluable services to the cause of civilization and the progress of commerce; therefore, be it "_resolved_, that the chamber of commerce of the state of new york, in common with the citizens of all portions of our country, sincerely mourns the death of cyrus w. field, the first honorary member of this chamber, as one who had through a long and useful life been closely identified with the commercial interests of this city, and by his great ability, tireless activity, and large achievements, had greatly honored the name of american merchant. "_resolved_, that by the successful carrying out of the project for uniting the old world with the new by the atlantic cable he has brought all nations into instant touch and given lasting honor to his name, as among those who have done the world great service. during the long and weary years of discouragement and failure before this magnificent work was accomplished he showed an undaunted courage, a fertility of resource, an unwearied patience and untiring ability for work which won the wonder and admiration of two continents. the example of his success was at once followed by like communication across all seas, so that as the result of his supreme effort the conditions of commercial and friendly intercourse throughout the world have been changed, and instant communication made between all nations. "_resolved_, that we wish to recall to our membership the words of eulogy and sincere appreciation spoken at the brilliant banquet given by this chamber to mr. field on the final successful laying of the cable more than twenty-five years ago, and to indorse and emphasize them by our action to-day. "_resolved_, that as a loyal and enthusiastic american, a useful and enlightened citizen, and as a warm and faithful friend, mr. field's memory will always be held sacred by all who knew him here, and his invaluable service to mankind will make his name honored in all the civilized world. "_resolved_, that the executive committee be requested to suggest to the chamber some plan by which an appropriate and lasting memorial to mr. field's great work may be procured for this city. "_resolved_, that a copy of these resolutions be sent to the family of mr. field, with the assurances of our profound sympathy and regard." "mr. president, in presenting these resolutions for your consideration may i be allowed to say a few words as to the character and life of our honored friend? mr. field needs no eulogy. his fame and his place in history are secure. the news that comes to us every morning from all parts of the world; the daily quotations on which we base our business action; the friendly messages which assure us of the instant welfare of dear ones in far-off countries, are ever-recurring reminders of his great genius. although nothing we can say will add to the lustre of great deeds, still it is well for us, from time to time, to refresh our memories as to the full meaning of the great achievements which mark the progress of the world. in the rush and hurry of modern life, what at first startles us soon falls into the commonplace and is perhaps undervalued. in the pamphlet published in at the time of the banquet given to mr. cyrus w. field by this chamber, the statement was made that 'the success of the atlantic telegraph was one of the great events of the nineteenth century.' history will point to it as one of the landmarks of modern progress. on the morning after the landing of the cable at valentia the london _times_ said: 'since the discovery of columbus nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the enlargement thus given to the sphere of human activity.' this was confirmed by unanimous statement of distinguished men and leading journals in all parts of the world. "our country was filled with enthusiasm and the world with wonder. john bright, in a splendid tribute to 'his friend cyrus field,' spoke of him as 'the columbus of modern times, who, by his cable, had moored the new world alongside the old.' mr. evarts said: 'columbus found one world and left it two. cyrus w. field found two continents and left them one.' "in all the years that have passed, this cord of connection between the old world and the new has grown more practical and useful, and the old cities in the far eastern world can now communicate with the new cities of our pacific shores in a few moments of time. what will be the result of these facilities we cannot estimate. already practical schemes for the establishment of communication by telephone are under advisement, and it may be but a short time before we can converse with friends thousands of miles across the sea. "we do not claim for mr. field the discovery of the possibilities of the cable, but it was owing to his superb and almost superhuman exertions that the project was made practicable. it is hard for us to estimate the severe trials through which he passed. for nearly thirteen years he labored against every obstacle, crossing the ocean more than forty times, spending months with the cable ships on the stormy atlantic, exhausting himself in the swamps and inland forests of newfoundland and cape breton, with alternations of hope and fear, of success and discouragement, that would have exhausted almost any other man. "this was the great work of his life, but his energy, vigorous thought, and executive ability enabled him to carry out many other business enterprises, which were of great value to this city and country. "he was born of sturdy and choice new england stock. his father, the rev. dr. david dudley field, was a distinguished clergyman in massachusetts, and his grandfather an officer in the revolution. "his home training, in new england, was of the kind that has developed so many able men in the history of our country. "he very early entered in business, but a few months afterwards, through no fault or action of his, his firm became insolvent, and although from his youth and small capital he was to a certain extent exempt from the responsibility, he showed his nice sense of honor by devoting his first earnings afterwards to the payment of principal and interest of all the debts of the firm with which he had been connected. years afterwards, when he had been most successful in his chosen line of enterprise, owing to the disturbed condition of affairs he again became involved in business difficulties, but with the same pluck and courage he resumed his work, and paid principal and interest on all his indebtedness. "but no details of ordinary business could confine his wide grasp of affairs, and he took hold of telegraph and cable with a faith and energy which deserved success. "time and distance were as nothing to him on carrying out his projects. although a loyal and enthusiastic american, he was, in the best sense, a 'citizen of the world.' i remember meeting him many years ago in southern europe, and asking him to join some excursion for the following day. he told me how much pleasure it would give him, but that he unfortunately had to attend a meeting the next day. i found that he left that night by the fast express, and rushed through to london to spend two hours at a meeting of a committee, and without rest returned immediately to the place where i had met him. "his last years were crowded with sorrow and disappointment, under circumstances most pathetic and terrible. in all of this he had the warm sympathy of loving friends and of all his business associates. "i have felt that the terrific strain upon his whole system during the thirteen years of trial, when the efforts were being made to lay the cable, with their alternations of hope and fear and the great exposure, told upon his constitution more than he knew, and that when the reaction came he had not, perhaps, the same clearness of vision and wise power of judgment as before. "all the disappointment and sadness of his later life will be forgotten, and history will only remember the great loyal american, whose intense power and large faith enabled him to carry through one of the greatest and most beneficial enterprises the world has ever known." "ah, me! how dark the discipline of pain were not the suffering followed by the sense of infinite rest and infinite release! this is our consolation; and again a great soul cries to us in our suspense: 'i came from martyrdom unto this peace!'" the end * * * * * rhodes's united states history of the united states from the compromise of . by james ford rhodes. vo, cloth, uncut edges and gilt tops. vols. i. and ii., - , $ ; vol. iii., - , $ . if there is a book now in course of publication which supplies an urgent want, it is the "history of the united states from the compromise of ," by james ford rhodes.... it was high time that the service herein rendered by the author of this work should have been performed.--_n. y. sun._ mr. rhodes's pages bring before us a vivid picture of what we were forty years ago.... the author's candid and impartial spirit are as evident as his intelligence.--_n. y. times._ in no single publication can the student of american politics obtain a more satisfactory and reliable account of the slavery agitation beginning with the compromise measures of and culminating in civil war a decade thereafter than in the first two volumes issued by mr. rhodes.... the third volume, now before us, fully maintains the high character and complete research of the first two volumes.--_philadelphia times._ a work which no serious student of american affairs can afford to overlook. in wealth of erudition, in breadth of view, in attainment of the true historical perspective, it has qualities of obviously high and impressive merit, while in the charm that comes from graceful literary expression it has nothing to lose by comparison with the histories of the country that have heretofore ranked as standard.--_boston beacon._ volume iii. is the fitting and able sequel of the two which have preceded it. it is an informing work. the author draws from a multitude of sources, digests his material well, and writes in a style that is at once readable and instructive.... such a history as that which mr. rhodes is furnishing has great and permanent value.--_observer_, n. y. mr. rhodes is a historian, not a partisan; a chronicler of truth, not an advocate, yet possessing a style which makes his chronicles interesting and refreshing. carefully sifting his material, with a keen appreciation of literary and historical values, he has earned a prominent place in the ranks of american historians.--_boston advertiser._ published by harper & brothers, new york _for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, carriage prepaid, on receipt of the price._ bigelow's life of tilden the life of samuel j. tilden. by john bigelow, author of "life of benjamin franklin," "france and the confederate navy," editor of "writings and speeches of samuel j. tilden," etc. with portraits and illustrations. two volumes. vo, cloth, uncut edges and gilt tops, $ . (_in a box._) a complete and vivid portrait of a memorable figure in the public life of the empire commonwealth and of the nation, and also materials of great value for the political history of the country during the momentous period that intervened between and .--_n. y. sun._ mr. bigelow's long and close intimacy with tilden, and his own large experience in politics and in authorship, made him naturally the literary executor of his friend, as he was a trustee of his estate. the resulting biography, now before us, has an assured historical value, corresponding to the importance of mr. tilden's career.--_nation_, n. y. intensely interesting, because they deal with things that are common to the knowledge of all americans who have followed the progress of the events of the last twenty-five years.--_n. y. herald._ the author has acquitted himself of his trust with rare skill, judgment, and delicacy; and while there is never absent from the pages of this memoir a distinct appreciation of the character and achievements of its subject, it is happily free from the suggestion of fulsome eulogism.--_philadelphia press._ of the literary quality and the fairness of this work nothing need be said. mr. bigelow's name is a guarantee of excellence, of faithfulness, and fairness. the work will have first rank among the biographies of the year.--_boston advertiser._ the most important american biography that has been published in many years. moreover, its importance and interest are progressive and cumulative.--_philadelphia inquirer._ the writings and speeches of samuel j. tilden. edited by john bigelow. two volumes. vo, cloth, uncut edges and gilt tops, $ . (_in a box._) published by harper & brothers, new york _for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, carriage prepaid, on receipt of the price._ campbell's the puritan the puritan in holland, england, and america. an introduction to american history. by douglas campbell. two volumes. vo, cloth, uncut edges and gilt tops, $ . (_in a box._) the tone of the work is calm and judicial, and the style of the writer is clear and dignified, possessing a literary finish which gives the work a place of honor among our national histories. it will modify many prevalent conceptions of american history with its novel way of accounting for some of the things existing among us; but the facts the author summons from the results of his wide researches, and his well-balanced judgment in dealing with these results, amply sustain him in the novel positions he assumes. the work is a classic of american history, and is an addition to the literature of the country of which we may be proud.--_observer_, n. y. the more one scrutinizes this book the firmer becomes conviction that the brilliant and scholarly author has made his point and accomplished his end. the tone is rational and wholesome, and the book itself a memorial of careful and laborious investigation.--_philadelphia ledger._ a more interesting book of the kind has not appeared since mr. green wrote his "short history of the english people."--_n. y. herald._ the central idea of mr. campbell's book is that our country with its institutions is not as much a child of english parentage as it is of dutch.... it is a book remarkable for boldness, for breadth, for analytical power, for commanding generalization, and for piling up all this mass of learning and argument with comprehensive system, and in a way to interest as well as instruct any reader of intelligence.--_chicago times._ this work is destined to create a revolution in our early american history, as written by our standard historians.... in many respects it is the most important contribution to the colonial history of america that has yet been written.--_lutheran observer_, philadelphia. a book of intense interest to every student of american institutions and character, and the development of its republican ideal.... this book is significant and suggestive.--_presbyterian_, philadelphia. mr. campbell enters very thoroughly and conscientiously into the examination of his subject, and his book is one that is valuable to the student of history, and full of interest for readers of all classes.--_louisville courier-journal._ published by harper & brothers, new york _for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, carriage prepaid, on receipt of the price._ curtis's orations and addresses orations and addresses of george william curtis. edited by charles eliot norton. with photogravure portrait. vol. i. orations and addresses on the principles and character of american institutions and the duties of american citizens. vol. ii. addresses and reports on the reform of the civil service of the united states. vol. iii. historical and memorial addresses. vo, cloth, uncut edges and gilt tops, $ per volume. (_in a box._) an exceptionally interesting speaker, he is on record here--as so often before now--as an exceptionally interesting writer. to young americans they are golden volumes that present the mind of such a citizen and such a cultivated, discriminating literary mind.--_n. y. mail and express._ it is a great book which these addresses make [volume iii.]. all young men ought to read it and ponder it. its insight into character, uplifting of lofty ideals, and deep, sturdy patriotism would cause it to live quite apart from its in their own way equally admirable literary ability and grace.--_congregationalist_, boston. a splendid memorial of that ideal man and patriot, george william curtis. the books are a much-to-be-desired addition to any library.--_interior_, chicago. mr. curtis made a contribution of inestimable value in the application of morals to politics--an application needing all the time to be made, and which those noble discourses will assuredly do much to promote.--_literary world_, boston. the brilliancy, depth, power, and insight characteristic of the orations included in the first volume of this series are in the second volume displayed in a field mr. curtis had made peculiarly his own.--_jewish messenger_, n. y. the eloquence of many of these addresses is of the highest order of public oratory, and merely as examples of the art of expression they are of permanent interest.--_boston beacon._ published by harper & brothers, new york _for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, carriage prepaid, on receipt of the price._ * * * * * typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: from you affectionate son=> from your affectionate son {pg } agamennon=> agamemnon {pg } arbritration=> arbitration {pg } plus herueux=> plus heureux {pg } book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) the library of work and play carpentry and woodwork by edwin w. foster electricity and its everyday uses by john f. woodhull, ph.d. gardening and farming by ellen eddy shaw home decoration by charles franklin warner, sc.d. housekeeping by elizabeth hale gilman mechanics, indoors and out by fred t. hodgson needlecraft by effie archer archer outdoor sports, and games by claude h. miller, ph.b. outdoor work by mary rogers miller working in metals by charles conrad sleffel. [illustration: drawing by j. hodson redman. harold sending the c. q. d. message (_see page _).] _the library of work and play_ electricity and its everyday uses by john f. woodhull, ph.d. [illustration] mcgowen-maier & co. chicago, ill. all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian copyright, , by doubleday, page & company preface why do we pursue one method when instructing an individual boy out of school, and a very different method when teaching a class of boys in school? the school method of teaching the dynamo is to begin with the bar magnet and, through a series of thirty or forty lessons on fundamental principles, lead up to the dynamo, which is then presented, with considerable attention to detail, as a composite application of principles. this might be styled the synthetic method. he who teaches a boy out of school is pretty likely to reverse this order and pursue the analytic method. the class in school has very little influence in determining the order of procedure. the lone pupil with his questions almost wholly determines the order of procedure. out of school no one has the courage to deny information to a hungry boy; in school we profess to put a ban upon information giving, and we do quite effectually deaden his sense of hunger. the school method rarely yields fruit which lasts beyond the examination period; on the other hand, a considerable number of boys have become electrical experts without the aid of a school. this book is the story of how my boy and i studied _electricity_ together. we have had no other method than to attack our problems directly, and _principles_ have come in only when they were needed. my boy had learned to read when very young by having stories read to him while he watched the printed pages. the construction of sentences out of words and words out of letters had come to him very incidentally but all in due time, and when he first went to school rather late in life for a beginner he found himself more proficient than the other boys of his own age both in reading and in understanding the printed pages. i could see no good reason why he should not pursue the same method in studying electricity. we live in a modern apartment house in a great city. my boy likes to visit engine rooms and talk with the engineers about their machinery. his mother and i always encourage him to talk with us about the things in which he is most interested. if the family is alone at dinner, he is quite likely to lead the conversation into the field of electricity. when particularly burdened with my work i have learned to find relief by giving an afternoon to harold, who generally takes me to some electrical store or power station or to ride by electric train out into the country. contents chapter page i. the dynamo and the power station ii. dynamo continued--the magnet iii. the ammeter iv. the wattmeter v. the electric motor vi. applications of the electro-magnet vii. electric heating viii. applications of electric heating ix. lighting a summer camp by electricity x. how electricity feels xi. the electric sparking equipment for a gasolene engine xii. electricity from central stations xiii. electricity from an old mill xiv. doing chores by electricity xv. electric currents from chemical action and chemical action from electric currents xvi. electrocution at millville xvii. the telephone xviii. electric bell outfit for the cottage xix. using electricity to aid the memory xx. the electric brick oven xxi. electric waves xxii. ringing bells and lighting lamps by electric waves xxiii. telegraphing by electric waves xxiv. halley's comet and electric waves xxv. how the idea of a universal ether developed xxvi. electric currents cannot be confined to wires xxvii. wireless telegraphy in earnest illustrations harold sending the c. q. d. message _frontispiece_ facing page testing a generator wiring wattmeter testing the telegraphy outfit electric bell feeling electricity operating the switchboard induction coil of a wireless electricity and its everyday uses i the dynamo and the power station one day harold expressed a desire to see the dynamos, five miles away, which furnish the electric light in our apartment. so i told him to invite his best friend to accompany us and we would go. when we were some distance from the station the boys noticed the very tall chimneys and inquired why tall chimneys were needed for dynamos. i explained that the dynamos were run by steam-engines, and steam-engines required the burning of coal. "oh!" said ernest, harold's friend, "i read in the paper that electricity is the rival of steam and is going to drive out the steam-engine." i suggested that we were about to see some steam-engines driving electricity out of that power station. but more seriously, i explained that steam-engines were used for many years as locomotives to draw the trains on the elevated railroads of new york city, and when at last they were displaced by electric trains some people thought that it was a case of electricity driving out steam, whereas what had really happened was that the steam power for running those trains had been concentrated at a central station, and its power was merely transmitted to the trains by means of electricity. the trains were, therefore, run by steam power quite as much as ever. in like manner, the surface cars of new york a few years ago were run by a cable, which was merely a very long belt used to transmit to the cars the power of steam-engines located at a central station. when they were changed to electric cars, electricity became the successful rival of nothing else than a twisted wire cable. the cars still run by steam power as before, but that power is transmitted by electricity instead of the discarded cable. steam has driven out the horse as a power for drawing street cars, and electricity has enabled us to gather all the steam engines into central stations, where now they are furnishing the power for moving surface, elevated, and subway cars for street traffic, as also trains for suburban travel. central station steam-engines are producing a vast amount of power, distributed all over the city by means of electricity, for doing a great variety of work and for furnishing electric light and heat, all of which we shall presently study. "just before we go into this central station, can you tell me how the elevator is run in our apartment house?" "it is an electric elevator," said harold. "and where does the electricity come from?" i inquired. "well, i know that it comes from the street mains, but do they come from this power station?" "yes," said i, "and we will now go in and see the steam-engines which lift you up stairs many times each day by sending electricity to run that elevator. if you choose to do so, you may claim for purposes of discussion that your elevator is run by steam." as we entered the building we came first to the dynamo room and both boys noticed that the tone which met their ears was that which i had produced for them in the telephone the night before. "i shall try to show you before we get through," i said, "that these dynamos are doing something which makes iron pulsate sixty times a second and that that is the cause of the pitch of this tone. but let us begin with the coal which is the source of all this power. "this particular station at the present time is burning forty tons of coal an hour. that is as much as mr. ---- uses to heat his twelve-room house for a whole year. one pound of coal is capable of liberating enough energy to supply - / horse-power for an hour. (written for short - / h.p.h.) one ton of coal is capable of furnishing ( , × - / ) , h.p.h. forty tons would yield , h.p.h. but the best furnaces, boilers, and steam-engines are terribly wasteful of energy. about nine tenths of all this energy is wasted and only one tenth, or about , horse-power per hour, is delivered by the steam-engines to the dynamos. "coal is already scarce in the world and the supply is rapidly being exhausted. meanwhile we are growing more dependent upon coal. a century ago we used scarcely any power except that of men, horses, and oxen, and what little heat men then used came chiefly from wood. they lived in cold houses, attended cold churches and schools, did not ride in steam or electric cars, and did not have power plants. our wood is nearly all gone, our coal is going, and we are very rapidly growing more dependent upon heat and power, our chief source of which is coal. wind power is too uncertain to depend upon, and we turned our backs upon water-power when we began to crowd into cities. what little water-power there is, however, is nearly all in use. "there is great need both that we learn how to save the major part of the energy of the coal which we now waste, and that we find a substitute for the coal to use when that is gone. "a part of the heat from the forty tons of coal which is being burned in this particular power plant goes into the water in the boilers. it converts this water into steam. the steam, if free to expand into the air, would occupy about one thousand seven hundred times the volume of the water. we compel it to expand through the cylinders of the steam-engine, using its force of expansion to make wheels go around--to make the dynamo revolve. these dynamos are not _devices for producing power but merely for transmitting_ the power of these steam-engines to far away places where it may be used, as, for instance, in our apartment house, where we are unwilling to walk upstairs and want some power to carry us. "our own apartment is fifty feet above the street. i weigh one hundred and sixty-five pounds. if i walk up stairs from the street to our apartment in one minute, which is the rate of a rather slow elevator, i work at the rate of one quarter of a horse-power. one hundred and sixty-five pounds raised two hundred feet in one minute requires one horse-power. you boys each weigh about half as much as i do, and if one of you walks up the same stairs in one minute you exert half the power that i do, or if you run up the stairs in half a minute you exert the same power, that is, one quarter of a horse-power. when we three walk up together in one minute we exert one half horse-power. if we all three run up the stairs in half a minute we expend one horse-power. now, the speed of elevators for apartment houses is about one hundred feet a minute. we are unwilling to walk up stairs, not because we are lazy but because we have the new york haste, and so we employ elevators which run at the rate of about one hundred feet a minute. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. testing a generator] "these dynamos enable us to employ the power of this central station to run the elevator in our apartment house. here is a dynamo rolling over now in the act of sending out power, some of which goes to that elevator; and standing beside it is another waiting to be used when necessary. examining these dynamos, we find that they are composed of nothing else than iron and copper. about all that we can say of these mysterious machines is that the moving iron generates the electricity and the copper leads it away. [illustration: fig. ] "each one of these dynamos has many hundred tons of iron in it. a huge wheel of iron, thirty-two feet in diameter, one hundred feet in circumference, portions of which are surrounded by insulated copper conductors, forms the centre-piece of the machine. this movable part weighs four hundred tons. around about this is a fixed ring of iron, portions of which are surrounded by insulated copper conductors. ordinarily the ring which is stationary is called 'the field,' and the wheel, which rotates, is called 'the armature,' although these terms are sometimes reversed for certain reasons. the movable part in these machines rotates about once a second, that is, its circumference moves a little faster than a mile a minute. the iron moving at this high rate of speed creates ether streams or electric currents, which are led off by the copper conductors. the generation of electricity on a large scale requires large masses of iron and high velocity." i noticed that the boys stood before this machine in a state of utter bewilderment, bewildered as a man who is told that what he had considered north is really south, bewildered as a man who, having wandered through a maze of city streets, looks up at length and unexpectedly finds the building he has been seeking towering before him. the questions they asked were entirely without thought. "what is inside of it?" "simply more iron and copper, such as you see on the surface," i replied. "but what makes it go?" "the steam engines, of course, four of which you see, are coupled directly to each dynamo." "but where does it get its electricity?" "don't forget that you are looking at _a generator_ of electricity. big mass of iron--rapid motion! that is the whole truth. but it cannot satisfy you as an answer until you have become used to it. we have seen all that we ought to see here to-day. let us drop the whole matter now, but return to my laboratory to-morrow, and i will give you the next step which will help you." the boys did no talking upon their return journey. whether one may say they were thinking or not i cannot tell, but certainly their ideas were incubating. ii the dynamo, continued--the magnet when we had gathered at my laboratory the next day i took down a spool of one pound no. cotton-covered copper wire (fig. _a_), which had its centre filled with wire nails. the boys had seen it before and remembered it. with flexible wires i connected the two ends of the wire on this spool to a sensitive ammeter, _b_, which had its zero in the middle of the scale, and i laid down upon the table a bar magnet, _c_. [illustration: fig. ] "here," i said, "is a dynamo complete." the bar magnet furnishes the 'field' and this spool of copper wire, _a_, which i will move back and forth immediately over the magnet from end to end, is 'the armature.' _d_ and _e_ are the line wires and the circuit is completed through the ammeter to show whether we are generating electricity. and now as i move this armature along the field you see the needle of the ammeter move to the right from zero to ten. when the armature is moved in the opposite direction along the field the needle moves in the opposite direction past zero and on to ten at the left. the moving of the needle in the ammeter shows that we are generating electricity. the swinging to and fro of the needle shows that we are generating an alternating current of electricity. it is a mere matter of detail whether we move the armature or the field, as i will show you by letting the spool a rest quietly upon the table and moving the magnet to and fro lengthwise across the end of the spool. or i may accomplish the same results by moving them both in opposite directions. it is simply necessary that they move _with reference to each other_. some dynamos are made with stationary fields and rotating armatures, some with stationary armature and rotating fields, and some with both parts designed to rotate in opposite directions. "magnetism is not confined to the magnet. it extends more or less widely into the region about it. it is this region affected by the magnet that we designate its magnetic field. by bringing this sensitive compass needle into the region of this bar magnet from all directions, i show you that it has a slight power to change the direction of the needle when about a foot away. this power grows rapidly greater as the distance grows less. of course its field extends rather indefinitely, but we may say that this particular magnet has an appreciable field extending about one foot in all directions from it. we find upon examination that some magnets have bigger and stronger fields than others, that all have their strongest fields when first magnetized and lose their strength gradually, _but never entirely_. we find that hardened iron and steel hold magnetism longer than soft iron, _but all iron is magnetized somewhat at all times_. iron that is feebly magnetized can be made into a strong magnet by bringing it into a strong magnetic field. the earth is a feeble magnet, and that is why it gives direction to the compass needle. that is also probably the reason why every piece of iron upon the earth is a magnet, or, to put the cause back another step, we may say that whatever causes the earth to be a magnet also causes every piece of iron upon the earth to be likewise a magnet. "but thanks to oersted in denmark in and faraday in england in and joseph henry in albany, n. y., in , we have learned to make exceedingly powerful magnets by sending a current of electricity in a whirl around the iron. this is the meaning of the coils of copper wire around iron cores in the dynamo, in electric bells, in telegraph sounders, in motors, etc., etc. to prevent the electric current from taking the shortest route, through the iron core or through the successive layers of copper wire, the iron core and the wire must be covered with something like wood or paper or cotton or silk or rubber--such things as electricity does not readily pass through--that is, insulating material. "joseph henry, while teaching in the albany academy, was the first to make electro-magnets. there was no such thing as wire covered with an insulating material then in the market, and he wound all his wire with silk ribbon. but in the year he made magnets which lifted thirty-five hundred pounds, to the astonishment of every one. a pair of such electro-magnets as i have here (fig. ), each consisting of one pound of no. cotton covered copper wire, eight hundred feet long, wound in one thousand turns about an iron core two inches in diameter, will lift several hundred pounds: much more than we three can lift, as i shall now show you." [illustration: fig. ] the cores of the two magnets were bolted fast to an iron beam, and a large bar of iron with a ring in it was laid across the other free ends of the magnet cores. i made connections with the electric lighting circuit (that in my laboratory is what is called a direct current), and sent a current of electricity around the coils. the two boys and i tugged at the ring in the iron bar to no avail. we were unable to pull the iron bar away from the magnet. but when i opened the switch and cut off the electric current, one boy with one finger in the ring lifted the bar with perfect ease. "electro-magnets are now made with a magnetic intensity , times that of the earth's magnetism. electro-magnets are used for hoisting iron castings weighing many tons. here is a picture of an electro-magnet lifting a whole wagon load of kegs of nails from the wagon to the hold of a ship. "electro-magnets are our only means of utilizing electricity for power. it is the pull of electro-magnets that moves the electric car. electro-magnets are now used for pulling all the trains out of the grand central depot in new york city. "let us now compare the strength of our electro-magnet with that of the bar magnet used in our former experiment." i opened and closed the switch, which sent the electric current through my magnet coils at frequent intervals, and the two boys, each with a compass needle, searched the field for magnetic effects. they found that the magnetic field extended six or eight feet, but this piece of research was broken up by a new idea which appeared to strike them both at the same instant, for they shouted both together, "let's use this electro-magnet in place of the bar magnet for our dynamo experiment!" [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. wiring] "that is surely the next step in our programme," said i, "but you will need a steam-engine to move an armature in this magnetic field, will you not, judging from the struggle we had with that iron bar a few minutes ago?" the boys looked quite hopeless until i said, "the best thing about the electro-magnet remains yet to be told. you have perfect control of its strength by changing the amount of electricity which you send around the coil. "by means of an instrument which works like the motorman's controller on the electric car, i may control the amount of electricity which flows, just as well as you may control the flow of water by a faucet or stop-cock. by this means i will control the strength of the magnet so that you may move the armature in your dynamo experiment. "in , faraday, at the royal institution, london, learned that he could produce magnetism by means of the electric current, and, in , he learned that the reverse was also true, namely, that he could produce electricity from magnetism. this idea coming as the result of ten years of incessant search made him shout and dance like a child. you are feeling a little of the pleasure of his discovery." [illustration: fig. ] i then fastened one of the coils upon the table underneath a small bench (fig. ) and sent an electric current around it. the other coil, _b_, connected with the ammeter was pushed back and forth along the surface of the bench over this coil. the boys found that the more electric current i sent around the coil _a_, that is, the stronger i made the magnetic field, the harder it was to move the coil _b_. they found that the nearer _b_ was to _a_ the harder it was to move it. they found that the faster they moved _b_ the more electricity was produced. they tried laying _b_ upon its side upon the bench and thus moving it. they tried taking _b_ off the bench and moving it on all sides of _a_. they found it much harder to move in some ways than in others, but in all cases they found that the harder they had to work the more electricity was developed, as was shown by the ammeter. "the dynamo is any machine which will convert mechanical work into electricity. the magneto is one form of a dynamo which you have used much at the summer cottage, but have never seen the inside of. here are several (see figs. , , and ) which i will let you examine inside and out, and with these i must leave you to yourselves for a time." when i returned i asked the boys why these dynamos were called _magnetos_. "because they have steel magnets for their fields," they replied. "there are several magnets bent in the shape of a horseshoe." "yes," i said, "in this case the field is made stronger by taking several magnets. have you noticed any armature?" "yes, it is made of iron with insulated copper wire wound around it." "please recall that the amount of energy you expend in going upstairs depends on two things: ( ) your weight and ( ) the speed with which you move. also recall that the amount of electricity you could generate with a dynamo depended upon the amount of energy you expended. therefore, the strength of the electric current which this machine may produce depends upon two things: ( ) the strength of the magnetic field against which you must pull and ( ) the speed of the motion of the armature. evidently this field is made as strong as it is possible to make it with steel magnets. now is there any device for giving high speed to the armature?" "yes, indeed," said the boys, "one has a pulley so that it may be connected by a belt with a gas engine, and the others have each a large cog-wheel working into a smaller one. we found in one of them that a single revolution of the crank gave six revolutions to the armature." i found that the boys had made large-sized drawings of the parts, and were preparing to report on the magneto as a form of dynamo at the next meeting of the science club, which we had started among the boys in school. [illustration: fig. ] "i will loan you some apparatus so that you may give a very interesting demonstration on that subject," said i, "only let me show you how to use it first. connect the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. ) with my ammeter. turn the crank _very_ slowly and notice that the needle of the ammeter swings to and fro with each revolution of the armature. that shows that you have not only a _dynamo_, but an _alternating current_ dynamo. [illustration: fig. ] "now connect the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. ) with a short piece of copper wire. turn the crank and you notice that this dynamo rings two electric bells. turn slowly and you notice that the alternations of the current are numbered by the strokes on the bells. the hammer swings to and fro just as the needle of the ammeter did. each bell therefore receives one stroke of the hammer for each revolution of the armature. now try to turn the crank steadily at the rate of one revolution per second. the armature is making six revolutions, or cycles, per second and you now have not only an alternating current dynamo but a _six-cycle alternating current dynamo_. the lighting circuit used in our apartment is a _sixty_-cycle alternating current. to be sure the armature of the dynamo which generates that current revolves only once a second, but it carries coils enough upon its rim to make that number of alternations. "now connect this telephone receiver with the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. ). unscrew the cap of the receiver. move to one side the iron diaphragm and turn slowly the crank of the magneto. notice that the diaphragm vibrates in time with the alternations of the dynamo. replace the diaphragm, screw on the cap, hold the receiver to your ear and turn the crank as fast as you can. you will probably be able to make about sixteen cycles per second. the receiver in that case is giving forth a sound of the same pitch as a sixteen-foot closed organ-pipe. [illustration: fig. ] "connect the telephone receiver to the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of this magneto (fig. ), and by means of a belt connect the pulley to this series of cog-wheels. now you may turn the crank and readily make the armature revolve at the rate of sixty cycles per second, and you notice that you get the same tone that we heard in the dynamo room of the power station and the same tone the telephone receiver gave when i connected it to a coil in our apartment. the tone which is produced by sixty vibrations per second is very nearly that of the _c_ two octaves below middle _c_ on the piano. try it along with the piano and you will find it a little flat. this string on the piano is making sixty-four _vibrations per second_. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] "now connect this miniature telephone switchboard lamp with the magneto (fig. ) and turn the crank fast. the lamp lights up to full brilliancy and you notice that the light is steady, although it is made by an alternating current passing through the filament in one direction, stopping entirely, and then passing in the opposite direction. the filament has no time to cool off, provided you turn fast enough, but try turning a little slower and you will notice the flickering of the lamp." iii the ammeter [illustration: fig. ] at the last meeting of the science club so many questions were asked, which the demonstrators could not answer, that a programme committee, to whom such questions might be referred thereafter, was appointed. it was made the duty of this committee to assign to various members the task of searching for satisfactory answers, and when the material was ready to be reported to the club, the programme committee determined the time and order of presentation. i found that i had been made an honorary member of this committee and that it was expected that i should steer the committee. i told them that i accepted this appointment with the understanding that the fellow who steers is always the smallest man in the crew, and if they would do all the work i would enjoy the honorary title of cockswain. secretly, however, i appreciated that this was in effect adding several courses to my already rather heavy programme. i must, under the régime, direct a large number of inexperienced students in library research, in laboratory research, and in the art of giving demonstrations with apparatus and experiments to audiences. the most urgent questions, as also those which were next in the natural order, concerned the _ammeter_. i told the committee to make that the subject of the next meeting and to send to my laboratory on a certain day the person or persons whom they might appoint to report upon it. [illustration: fig. ] i find that the boys never come singly, but generally in pairs. when the boys came they found lying upon the table an ammeter (fig. ). i told one of them to take out the three screws in the front and remove the face of the instrument. i had told the boys that the instrument cost sixty dollars and that letting them open it was like letting them open my watch. as soon as the face came off one of the boys exclaimed that from my reference to the watch he had expected to see very complicated machinery with many wheels, but from the exceeding simplicity of the mechanism he could not see why it should cost sixty dollars. i told him that although it was a fine piece of workmanship it was fortunately very easy to understand, and i asked them if it reminded them of anything else that they had ever seen. after a few moments of reflection they agreed that it was very much like one of the magnetos. "well," said i, "where is the field?" [illustration: fig. ] "is this horseshoe arrangement a magnet?" they inquired. "there is a compass needle right at your hand waiting to answer that question," i replied. they immediately found that it was a magnet. "well," i said, "to be really sure that it is a magnet you must find a portion of it that will _repel_ a portion of your compass needle as well as other portions in both horseshoe and needles which attract each other." whereupon, they found that the portion marked _n_ (fig. ) repelled the blue end of the compass needle and attracted strongly the bright end of the needle, while the portion marked _s_ did the reverse. "we will call _n_ and _s_ the poles of the magnet. this is simply a steel bar magnet bent into the shape of a horseshoe." [illustration: fig. ] "you told us," remarked one of the boys, "that steel magnets gradually lose their strength. how then can this be correct as a measuring instrument?" "it is the purpose of the iron case to enable this magnet to retain its magnetism, and if you will examine its field, as we did that of another magnet upon a former occasion, you will find that although this is a strong steel magnet its field does not extend outside of the iron case. it is as though we could box up magnetism and keep it from escaping. "now if this is like the magneto, where is the armature? the spool-like thing between the poles of the magnet looks just like the armature in one of the magnetos. "yes, it has an iron core with a coil of insulated wire around it, and you remember that when an electric current is sent around a piece of iron, that iron is made into a magnet, and if it is a magnet it must have poles. it is very delicately poised upon a pivot and will act exactly like your compass needle, which is also a little magnet with poles. i will send an electric current through the wire which surrounds this armature, and you notice that the needle which it carries moves to the right. notice that the lower end of this armature acts like the blue end of your compass needle in that it is repelled from the pole _n_ of the field and is attracted toward _s_ of the field. in like manner, the upper end or pole of the armature is repelled from _s_ and attracted to _n_ of the field. the blue end of the compass needle is called its north pole because it points north under the magnetic influence of the earth, and so we may call the lower end of the armature its north pole. "the electric current which i am sending through the armature comes first through one ordinary -candle-power electric lamp which you see lighted on this 'resistance board,' as it is called, and you notice that the needle points to . . this means that half an ampere of electricity is passing through this lamp. i will now send the current through a -candle-power lamp, and you notice that the needle points to one, indicating that one ampere is required to light that lamp. but what prevents the needle from going farther, and what brings it back to zero each time?" the boys discovered a very small spring, like the hair spring of a watch, coiled around the pivot of the armature. "so, then, one ampere of electricity gives magnetism to this armature so that it may pull against its coiled spring hard enough to carry the needle to the point one. twice as much electricity will give it magnetism enough to carry it to two, and so on across the scale. "the full name of this instrument is ampere meter, which by usage has been shortened to ammeter. it was named in honour of andré marie ampère, who was born at lyons, in france, in , the year our revolutionary war broke out. he died in . when oersted made his famous discovery of the action of an electric current upon a magnetic needle, in , ampère was in middle life (forty-four), and took up the same line of research with great vigour. the next year, , he discovered what you will doubtless enjoy rediscovering now. "you will notice that the binding posts on the bottom of this ammeter are marked, one positive, +, and the other, negative -. the electric current now enters the instrument by the post marked + and after passing around the armature leaves by the post marked -. i will reverse the connections and thus send the current around the armature in the other direction, and you notice that its poles are now reversed. the lower end which was formerly the north pole of the armature has now become the south pole, as proven by the fact that it is repelled from the south pole of the field and attracted to its north pole. this carried the needle to the left, and inasmuch as the zero is in the middle of the scale we may with this instrument both measure the amount of current and tell its direction. you will recall that when we connected the magneto with this instrument, it indicated that the magneto sent the current first in one direction and then in the other, which we call an 'alternating current.' but you notice that the current which i am using in this laboratory flows continuously in one direction. this is called the 'direct current.' we shall find out how a dynamo may produce a direct current at another time. let us not forget, however, that we have repeated ampère's discovery, and found out that the direction in which we send the current around an electro-magnet determines which end shall be its north and which its south pole. if you will note carefully which way the wire is wound around the armature you will see that when i send the current in at the positive post it is passing around the north pole of the armature opposite to the direction in which the hands of a clock move. if i reverse the current it passes around the lower end of the armature _in the same direction as the hands of a clock move_ and then this end becomes a south pole. this is 'ampère's rule,' and it is what candidates for admission to college are very careful to learn. "before we replace the face of this ammeter i must call your attention to a wire running by a short cut from one binding post to the other, _s_ (fig. ). suppose _a_ represents the wire around the armature. electricity, like water, goes more readily through a big conductor than a small one and more readily through a short than a long conductor. if _s_ and _a_ were water pipes, each having a stop-cock, we might easily adjust the cocks so that one tenth of the water would go through _a_ and nine tenths through _s_. or, indeed, without stop-cocks, the size and length of _s_ and _a_ might be so apportioned that one tenth of the water would flow through _a_ and nine tenths through _s_. this is precisely the adjustment which has been made with reference to the flow of electricity through this instrument. _s_ is called a 'shunt.' when the shunt is out all the current goes through _a_ and when the shunt is in only one tenth of the current goes through _a_. i have two other shunts, each of which may be put in the place of _s_. with the second only one hundredth of the current goes through _a_ and with the third only one thousandth of the current goes through _a_. thus i have an instrument which will measure anything from one thousandth of an ampere up to ten amperes. [illustration: fig. ] "in this laboratory we pay about one cent for an ampere of electricity for one hour. twice as much coal must be consumed to furnish two amperes as one, and twice as much coal must be consumed to furnish an ampere for two hours as for one hour. hence we need an instrument which will keep account of time as well as amount of current. such an instrument we must look into next. "just before we pass to that, however, let me ask if you have ever heard of a 'shunt-wound' dynamo. can you guess from the way we have just used the word 'shunt' what the expression could mean with reference to a dynamo?" without hesitation the boys told me that it meant that the field and armature were wound parallel to one another, as shown by diagram in fig. . in which case the electric current which the machine generates divides, part of it going around the field and part around the armature. another type, called series-wound dynamos, is indicated by diagram in fig. , in which case the electric current goes through field and armature in succession. under either of these circumstances, how can the armature move with reference to the field? the answer will appear in the next chapter. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] iv the wattmeter we were able to maintain connections between the binding posts of the ammeter and the movable armature of flexible wires because the armature never moves more than one third of a revolution, but we now wish to examine an instrument in which the armature must not only make a complete revolution but must continue to revolve in the same direction indefinitely. how are connections made so that an electric current may pass from the fixed binding posts to the wire of the moving coil? i will lift the cover off this instrument, which is called a wattmeter, and let you find the answer to that question. i sent through the instrument the current from a -candle-power lamp. according to the ammeter, which was also in circuit, the amount was one ampere. the armature of the wattmeter revolved slowly and it was not long before the boys reported that connections for the current were made by strips of metal sliding on metal plates. the ends of the armature wire were fastened one to one plate and the other to the other plate, and the metal strips brush along over the surfaces of the plates. (that is why they are called "brushes," i said.) and the brushes slide from one plate to the other each time the armature makes half a revolution. (that is, the brushes change the connection and thus change the poles of the armature at the proper instant so that they are always attracted to the poles of the field toward which they are moving.) this is called a commutator. notice that while the ammeter was like the magneto in having a steel magnet for its field, the wattmeter is like the dynamo in having electro-magnets for both armature and field. notice in the second place that this instrument is an _electric motor_ since it is made to revolve by an electric current. if it were made to revolve by some other power it would generate electricity and would then be called a dynamo. indeed, let me tell you something which must at present be nothing more than a puzzle to you. _every machine, while it is being driven by an electric current as an electric motor, is, at the same time, acting as a dynamo to generate a current in the opposite direction._ notice in the third place that this is a shunt-wound instrument. the current which is sent into the instrument divides, and part of it goes through the field, while part goes through the armature. motors, as well as dynamos, are either shunt-wound or series-wound. but notice finally that the axle on which the armature is carried has a cyclometer arrangement which keeps account of the number of revolutions. the armature is going slowly enough for us to count the revolutions. with watch in hand we found that it made one hundred and twenty revolutions per minute. i next brought the current to the wattmeter through a -candle-power lamp and the ammeter, connected in series, showed that half an ampere was passing. we counted the revolutions of the wattmeter and found them to be sixty per minute. here, then, is a simple electric motor which will register the amount of electricity we use. it will register the same amount whether we use one ampere for one hour or half an ampere for two hours or two amperes for half an hour. in any case this product is called _one ampere hour_. but the words printed upon the dials of this instrument are not _ampere hours_, but _watt hours_ and the name of the instrument is _wattmeter_. this next requires explanation. follow me in a little roundabout journey and the matter will be readily understood when viewed from another approach. [illustration: fig. ] when we were estimating the energy required to climb the stairs of an apartment house, we needed to take into account two factors, ( ) our weight and ( ) the time which we took in climbing them. the amount of coal burned, steam generated, electricity produced, to run our elevator depends upon two factors, ( ) its weight and ( ) its speed. that idea is fundamental. let us get at it in still another way. suppose we have a mill pond, (fig. , _a_). we construct a penstock _p_ and install a water-wheel, _s_, to operate a mill. our business increases and we install more machinery in our mill and must have more power to run it. we have two ways of getting it, ( ) we may lengthen our wheel and enlarge our penstock so that a greater weight of water will fall upon the wheel, or ( ) we may lengthen our penstock and move the wheel farther down so that the water will fall upon the wheel with greater velocity. it is just so with the electric current. like water it is driven on in its course by pressure. the unit for electric pressure is called a volt. if we wish to drive the wattmeter or any other electric motor twice as fast as now, we may choose whether we shall do so by doubling the volts of pressure or by doubling the amperes of quantity. the electric pressure on our mains is about one-hundred and ten volts. we three together weigh pounds. our elevator brought us up stairs at the speed of feet per minute. it requires one horse-power to raise pounds feet in a minute. the ammeter in the engine room showed that amperes of electricity were sent through the motor of the elevator to bring us up. that is, seven amperes at -volt pressure give one horse-power. in the office building across the street where they use a -volt current - / amperes are required to take us up stairs at the same speed. it is necessary that the same amount of coal be consumed to furnish the horse-power of energy whether we supply it by means of seven amperes at volts or - / amperes at volts. you notice that the product is in each case. the name given to this product is _watts_. more accurately watts of electrical power are equivalent to one horse-power. the name of this unit commemorates the famous inventor of the steam engine, james watt ( - ). his monument now overlooks the clyde at his native town, greenock, scotland. to light a certain lamp, to heat a certain laundry iron, to furnish a certain amount of power for an electric motor, we must have a definite number of watts. we may choose whether we will have it at high or low voltage with correspondingly low or high number of amperes. [illustration: fig. ] we will now connect with our laboratory current a -candle-power lamp, an ammeter, and a wattmeter, all in series, fig. , and in parallel with these a volt meter. this last instrument indicates the electric pressure. its mechanism will be examined later. the volt meter indicates volts and the ammeter shows that one ampere is passing. the filament in the lamp resists the passage of the current. it gets quite hot and gives forth as much light as thirty-two candles. its resistance is just such that volts of pressure send one ampere through it. we will now take the reading of the wattmeter, note the time and read it again later. one hour later its index showed that watt hours of electrical energy had been converted into light and heat. this at the usual rate, costs . cents, one cent per hundred watt hours or ten cents per thousand watt hours, called a kilowatt hour. the more common -candle-power lamp costs about half a cent an hour to operate. it requires one horse-power to keep fourteen of them burning. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. wattmeter] i will now take you to see the wattmeter which measures all the electric energy used in this building. you note down its reading and the date and the next time you come we will read it again and thus find out how much electricity has been used for electric lights, for electric ventilating fans, for electric elevators, for electric ovens, and electric irons in the school of household arts, for electric motors to run lathes and other machines in the school of technical arts, for electric experiments in my laboratories and lecture room, for electric vacuum cleaners and, lastly, for pumping the pipe organ in chapel. i saw by the boys' faces as they departed what would be the next question that they would bring to me. knowing, however, that the hour was up, they were too polite to press it then. v the electric motor in a few days i received a telephone message, asking if i could appoint an hour to meet the programme committee in my laboratory. i must confess that my pleasure in these meetings had increased so much that i was quite ready to slight other duties, if need be, to engage in them. moreover, since my business was education it was not difficult for me to regard these meetings in the light of a duty quite as important as my regular class instruction--perhaps more effective. at any rate the boys and i managed to get together. may god forgive the man who essays to teach boys, but does not love to be with them. of course at the last meeting of the science club every one wanted to know how we ran a pipe organ by electricity. moreover the electrical show was coming on in the city, and cows were to be milked by electricity, dishes were to be washed by electricity, rugs and furniture were to be cleaned by electricity, and innumerable distracting and distressing things were to take place. i told the boys that really only two kinds of things were to be done by electricity at the show, and if they would give me two one-hour appointments i would furnish them with the key to the whole show. we might as well begin to-day with the pipe organ question. a pipe organ is operated by air. it has bellows which are simply one form of an air pump. a boy is often employed to turn a crank which works the bellows. down in the basement underneath our pipe organ i will show you how a half-horse-power electric motor takes the place of a boy. we found a dark and dirty corner where a boy used to stand and turn a crank every time æsthetically inclined people enjoyed an organ recital in the room above. science, which has not been given credit for being _humanitarian_, put an electric motor into that dark corner and sent the boy up stairs to hear the music. the motor _grumbled_ at the dirt in the corner and compelled the janitor to keep it clean. the electric motor, better than any device i know, enforces justice, but never requires mercy, or at least rarely receives it. it comes nearer than any other machine to paying back all that you put into it. it is most economical when working up to its full capacity. i recommend that you look it over carefully and after a few minutes tell me what you have seen in it. [illustration: fig. ] the boys said that it looked just like a dynamo. we must not forget that it is a dynamo, but is here used as a motor by sending an electric current through it. this fact, that a dynamo might be driven by an electric current and serve as a mover of other machinery, was first publicly exhibited in at the vienna exhibition, and by many believed to have been discovered by accident at that exhibit. but why does it look like a dynamo? it has a field whose magnetism is produced by an electric current sent through coils of wire, and it has an armature whose magnetism is likewise produced by the electric current. if it were used as a dynamo, where would it get the electric current to magnetize its field? from its own moving armature. is it adapted for direct current? yes. it has a commutator and brushes. is it shunt- or series-wound? shunt-wound, as shown by diagram in fig. . [illustration: fig. ] suppose we treat the machine as a dynamo. bring the ends of the line wire together, thus, as we say, closing the circuit. by some external force let us cause the armature to rotate and under the influence of the magnetic field it will generate an electric current, part of which will pass through the field and part through the line circuit. we may adjust the relative amount of wire in field and line so that any portion of the current we choose will pass through the field. the amount of current it will generate depends, ( ) upon the strength of the field and ( ) upon the speed of the armature. its field, although never entirely without magnetism, is very feeble at first, and hence in the first instance a very small current will be generated in the moving armature. this, however, will strengthen the field slightly, and as the field is strengthened the armature will generate more current, and thus by a mutual reaction the machine gradually "builds up" to full strength. [illustration: fig. ] when now we use the machine as a motor, an electric current must be sent along the line wires in the opposite direction (fig. ) from which it would come out of the machine when acting as a dynamo. it will then be noticed that, although the direction of the current through the field is the same, whether the machine is used as a dynamo or a motor, the direction through the armature, when used as a motor, is the reverse of that when used as a dynamo. you may perhaps be able to notice that the amount of wire on the field is considerably more than that on the armature. now if you will trace the wires carefully you will find that there is provided a way of supplementing the wire of the armature with some more wire in what is called the rheostat, fig. . this wire, or portions of it, is introduced into the armature circuit when the machine first starts. when, however, the machine has started and the armature is moving within the influence of a magnetic field, it plays the part of a dynamo at the same time that it is acting as a motor. two conflicting and opposite electro-motive forces therefore exist in the armature at the same time. in fig. the arrow _a_ represents the direction of the electro-motive force which is impressed upon the armature, and the arrow _b_ represents the counter-electro-motive force which the moving armature develops. [illustration: fig. ] this counter-electro-motive force, which develops while the machine is in motion, makes it unnecessary to hold back the current longer by the extra resistance of the rheostat and hence that is usually cut out. being used only for starting purposes and looking like a box, it is generally called the "starting box." if now it was intended that this motor should run at a constant speed, as is often the case, no other governor would be needed than this counter-electro-motive force, for whenever the machine begins to go faster, on account of reduced load, its counter-electro-motive force increases as the speed and holds in check the impressed electro-motive force. this acts very perfectly as a governor, and motors operate with notoriously constant speed under variable loads. but, of course, in this present instance the motor is required to work at a variable speed. it must pump air slowly for the soft passages of music, and it must work the pump to its utmost for the very strong passages. [illustration: fig. ] to understand how an electric motor may pump an organ and have its speed automatically controlled, let us examine the diagram in fig. . the motor _m_ causes the shaft _s_ to revolve, carrying the crank _c_ around with it. the rod _r_ causes _a b_, the lower side of the bellows, to rise and fall, this side being hinged at _b_. the side _b c_, is fixed. when the side _a b_ is pushed upward by the crank rod the valve _f_ closes and the air in the compartment _h_ pushes open the valve _g_ and enters the compartment _j_. the upper side _d e_, of this compartment rises as it is filled with air. weights _k_, _k_, _k_, rest on the top of this and air ducts lead from this compartment to the pipes of the organ. the keys of the organ operate air cocks which open and close the air ducts connected with the organ-pipes. a chain connected with _e_ passes around the axle of the wheel _l_ and has a weight _w_ upon its lower end. the wheel _l_ carries a strip of brass _n_, which slides over metal points _p_, _p_, _p_, etc. the successive points are connected by coils of wire to furnish resistance. this series of coils is called a rheostat. the wires _t_ and _u_ form a loop from the armature of the motor and connect this rheostat in series with the armature. _u_ is connected with the brass strip _n_. notice that when the compartment _j_ is full of air and the side _d e_, is lifted to its greatest height the strip _n_ is moved to the lowest point _p_, and the electric current must pass from _u_ through all the resistance of the rheostat in order to get back to the armature by the wire _t_. this makes the motor go very slowly. when _d e_ sinks down, the strip _n_ moves to the upper points _p_, and the resistance is reduced step by step, enabling the motor to quicken its speed and pump faster as more air is required. small motors in order to be effective must travel at high speed. this motor when moving at its highest speed makes , revolutions per minute. the bellows on the other hand needs to be large and move slowly in order to be efficient. hence the motor is not in reality connected directly to the shaft _s_, but causes the shaft to revolve by means of a series of pulleys and belts. the pulley on the motor is three inches in diameter. it is connected by a flat leather belt with a wheel thirty inches in diameter. when the motor therefore, makes , revolutions per minute this wheel makes revolutions per minute. the axle of this wheel carries a small cog-wheel three inches in diameter and it is connected by a chain belt with a cog wheel on the shaft _s_ (fig. ). thus this shaft revolves thirty times per minute, that is, the rod _r_ rises and falls each second. a pull of one pound on the rim of the motor pulley will cause a pull of sixty pounds on the cogs of the wheel upon the shaft _s_. if the second belt were leather, a sixty-pound pull would cause it to slip on the smaller pulley. hence the second belt is a steel chain and the wheels have cogs, or sprockets, like a bicycle. [illustration: fig. ] the organist before beginning to play closes a double-pole, single-throw switch (fig. ), which sends the electric current to the motor. the motor pumps air until the bellows is full, and if the organist delays playing, the strip of brass _n_ (fig. ) is carried below the lowest point _p_, thus cutting off the current and stopping the motor. as soon as he uses some of the air in the bellows, however, _n_ rises and makes contact with the points _p_ and the motor starts. this suggests that a somewhat similar thing is accomplished under electric cars which have air brakes. an electric motor pumps the air and compresses it in a tank. when the pressure reaches a certain point, say sixty pounds per square inch, it automatically shuts off the electric current from the motor which works the pump. but when the motorman uses some of the air to apply the brakes to the wheels, and the pressure in the tank falls below sixty pounds, the electric current is again automatically turned on to the motor. of course if an electric motor can operate a pump to compress air it may also work a pump to exhaust air. this is what is done in a vacuum cleaner. the electric pump as it is called (which means a pump worked by an electric motor), exhausts some of the air from a compartment in the machine, and the atmosphere pressing in through nozzle and hose carries dust from rugs and furniture with it into the compartment. the best vacuum cleaners will produce a pressure of seven or eight pounds per square inch, about half an atmosphere. this will remove dust from the warp and woof of a rug better than our greatest hurricanes can when the rugs are hung upon a line. there are three kinds of air pumps in use with vacuum cleaners: ( ) bellows, ( ) rotating disk or fan, ( ) piston. to milk cows by electricity is simply to apply the vacuum-cleaner idea to the process, and, in general, doing things by electricity usually means doing them by some machine that is made to go by an electric motor. this then is the first key to the electrical show, and if you will remember to look first for the motor it may remove much of the mystery from some of the exhibits. in many cases it is not necessary to have a complete electric motor, but simply an electro-magnet to do the work. in booth no. you will find a piano played by electricity. its keys are moving, but no hands strike them. there is no ghost at work here. a little strip of iron has been placed upon the under side of each key and a small electro-magnet is placed under that. it is only necessary that wires should run from these electro-magnets to two dry-battery cells and to push buttons, and a person far away may play the piano. in reality, however, it is not a person but a roll of punctured paper that opens and closes the electric circuits to these various magnets underneath the keys. it often happens that you see a person playing a pipe organ with his keyboard far removed from the organ itself. in this case the keys simply act as push buttons to close the electric circuit through electro-magnets placed in the organ itself. these electro-magnets operate the air valves of the various pipes. [illustration: fig. ] you call at some apartment house where there is no hall boy, but a row of push buttons labelled with the names of the tenants. you push a button and the door which was locked opens apparently of its own accord. to say that the door opens by electricity is only to add mystery. what does happen is that an electric bell up in the apartment rings in response to your push of the button, and in reply the tenant pushes a button and the door is unlatched by an electro-magnet concealed in the door casing (fig. ). so i would say that the first key to the electric show or to the multitude of electrical appliances which you meet in life is the electro-magnet. consider the motor as one illustration of its use. if you are really to understand the electric show you should go twice. i advise going with this key alone first and note down all the applications of electro-magnets which you can find there. when you have done so i shall be glad to have your report. vi applications of the electro-magnet it became quite the rage now among the boys to find as many uses of electro-magnets as possible. these were reported and explained to the club and a list kept. this list included: . dynamo. . magneto. . ammeter. . wattmeter. . motor. . electric piano and organ players. . electric door openers. already noticed in the preceding pages, and the following: . _the electric spinner_ (fig. ).--a toy full of instruction. the standard is a steel magnet which produces a magnetic field. inside of this is an electro-magnet which serves as an armature. plainly visible on its shaft is a commutator to which the electric current from a dry cell is sent. this causes the armature to revolve and carry with it a series of colour disks which may be adjusted so as to show what tint or shade results from mixing colours in various proportions. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _the electric engine_ (fig. ).--this toy, with one dry battery cell, develops power enough to run several other toy machines. the diagram in fig. will make its plan of operation plain. _b_ is the battery cell, _c_ the electro-magnets, _a_ an armature of iron. by a rod this armature is connected with a crank on the axle which carries the fly wheel _f_. another crank, _d_, upon the same axle serves like a push button to close the electric circuit at the right instant. the wire _g_ from the battery cell encircles the electro-magnet _c_ and then is connected to the iron base of the toy. when the crank _d_ touches the conductor _e_, which is a spring, the electric current passes around the magnet, the magnet pulls the iron armature _a_, and this gives an impulse to the wheel _f_ whose momentum carries it around during that portion of the revolution when _d_ is separated from _e_ and _a_ is receding from the magnet. it is customary to say that the circuit is closed through the base of the machine, but this language requires interpretation. it means that a way is provided for the electric current to pass through the base. a person who is expert in language but not in electricity might expect us to say "the circuit is open through the base." [illustration: fig. ] . _the telegraph sounder_ (fig. ).--this was a toy half a century ago, but since the days of samuel finley breese morse it has become of vast commercial importance. the western union telegraph company in had , miles of poles and cables, , , miles of wire, , offices, sent , , messages, received $ , , . , expended $ , , . , and had $ , , . in profits. in the united states more than , , and in the world at large more than , , messages are sent annually, and there are men still living who scoffed at morse's ideas as _impracticable_. it is interesting to contemplate what would happen to the stock exchange, to the newspapers, to the railroads, to the congressman addressing his constituents from the floor of a legislative chamber, to business in general, if the world were deprived of the telegraph. a few years ago a telegraph despatch was sent from new york to san francisco, tokio, london, and back to new york, , miles, in three minutes less than an hour. electricity can travel around the world in a fraction of a second, the time was consumed in repeating the message. i once sent a message from new york to new haven to announce that i was coming, and afterward took my train and reached new haven in time to receive my own message and pay the messenger boy. but i have never lost faith in the beneficent results of morse's labours. morse ( - ) was an artist and the first president of the national academy of design. he was likewise a professor in new york university and constructed his first experimental telegraph line upon the university campus in . his first public line was built from washington to baltimore in . the western union telegraph company was incorporated in . of course the work of morse rested upon that of oersted, in copenhagen, who, in , discovered electro-magnetism, and upon that of joseph henry of albany, who in first insulated the wires. [illustration: fig. ] the application of the electro-magnet to producing telegraphic signals will be understood by referring to fig. . _b_ is the generator of an electric current--sometimes a battery and sometimes a dynamo. one wire from this goes to the earth, _e_. the other wire goes through a key, which, like a push button or a switch, serves to open or close the circuit. this is normally closed when not in use. through this the current passes around the electro-magnet _s_, which attracts the armature _a_, causing it to click against a metal stop, hence it is called the sounder. from this the current passes along the line wire to a distant station and there through the sounder and closed key to the earth. there is likely to be a generator at each station. the current must run continually through the system. if a battery is employed, the copper sulphate, or gravity cell, to be described later, is chosen, because it will endure continued usage better than any other. the operator, in sending signals, opens the circuit, the magnets cease to hold down the armatures, and they are raised by springs and strike against metallic stops above. it is customary to say that the circuit is completed through the earth. this statement misleads some persons into imagining an electric current capable of corroding water pipes and decomposing chemical compounds, passing through the earth between stations. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. testing the telegraphy outfit] perhaps it will help to a better understanding of the truth if we think of a city pumping water out of the ocean, say to fight fire, and disposing of it again into the ocean. the ocean currents thus produced are not likely to be destructive. indeed, just as we measure height from the ocean level as zero, so we measure electric pressures as from the zero level of the earth's electrical state. [illustration: fig. ] the key used by telegraphers is represented in fig. . it has connected with it a switch to keep the circuit closed when the key is not in operation. the morse code of signals consists of dots and dashes, when printed, as follows: a . - b - . . . c . . . etc. operators learn to read the message by the intervals between sounds. a dot consists of two taps of the sounder with a short interval between, and a dash consists of two taps with a longer interval between. one tap of the sounder is caused by its descending upon the metal stop below and another by its rising against the upper stop. telegraph sounders are operated on about a quarter of an ampere of current if from a battery circuit, or on about one tenth of an ampere from a dynamo circuit. the dynamo circuit is supplied with more volts of electric pressure, and hence its power is ample to cause the armature to strike the metal stops hard enough to be heard by the operator. for example a battery circuit may supply to the sounder a current with these characteristics: volts × . amperes = . watts, while a dynamo circuit may give: volts × . ampere = . watts. telegraph line wires are usually bare, the insulation being merely the glass knobs at the poles. clean water is a very good insulator but dirty water is a fairly good conductor. a wet telegraph pole may bring so much current to earth as to prevent all sounders on the line from operating. hence the line is separated from the poles by glass. the poles are about one hundred and thirty-two feet apart, making forty to the mile. the wires are usually galvanized iron one sixth of an inch in diameter. copper conducts six times as well as iron, and is now replacing iron in the lines. morse laid a submarine telegraph line in new york harbour and suggested a cable across the ocean. but that gigantic undertaking had to await the masterful intelligence of lord kelvin and the indomitable will of cyrus w. field. a submarine cable was laid across the strait of dover in . it was cut by the anchor of a fisherman a few hours after it was laid. the first attempt to lay a submarine cable across the atlantic ocean was made in . two ships of war, the _agamemnon_ of great britain and the _niagara_ of the united states, engaged in this undertaking. three hundred miles had been laid when the cable parted where the ocean was more than two miles deep. william thomson was on board the _agamemnon_ as electrical expert. he went home to study and improve the methods. the next year, , the _agamemnon_ and the _niagara_ met in midocean each with a portion of the cable on board. the splice was made, and the _agamemnon_ started toward ireland and the _niagara_ toward newfoundland. when six miles apart the cable broke. the ships met again, made a new splice and again started in opposite directions. they laid eighty miles and the cable parted a second time. they met again, spliced and laid two hundred miles when it parted for the third time. they met a fourth time, made the splice and succeeded in laying the first cable from ireland to newfoundland on august , . in a few weeks the insulation failed and no more messages could be sent. seven years were spent in studying the problem, and again in the _great eastern_, a mammoth ship, started to lay the cable. william thomson was again on board as the expert. when twelve hundred miles had been laid the cable parted in deep water. three times the cable was grappled and brought part way to the surface and lost again. the _great eastern_ returned to land. the next year, , the _great eastern_, having on board william thomson (lord kelvin), mr. canning, the engineer of the expedition, and captain anderson, in command, laid the cable which has worked successfully ever since. thomson, canning, and anderson were knighted as a result of their labours. sir william thomson ( - ), afterward lord kelvin, is credited with having solved the difficult electrical problems connected with this enterprise. cyrus w. field ( - ), born in stockbridge, mass., helped to secure the many millions of dollars necessary to carry the work to completion. there are now seventy-three cables connecting europe and america, and two across the pacific ocean. cable rates are: new york to england, france, germany, or holland twenty-five cents a word, to switzerland thirty cents a word, and to japan one dollar and thirty-three cents a word. [illustration: fig. ] the boys were kept very busy now looking up historical and biographical sketches, as well as working up the many applications of the electro-magnet. the next to be reported was: . _the relay_ (fig. ).--telegraphing from , to , miles under the ocean is full of difficulties not now to be explained. of course when we attempt to telegraph many miles upon land we find that the resistance of the wire cuts down the strength of the current so that it will not move the sounder. this, however, is readily obviated by the relay devised by morse. it simply serves as an automatic key to close a circuit. a diagram will make this clear (fig. ). suppose the line wire to be very long and on account of its resistance the current is too feeble to operate a sounder. it is likely to be about . ampere where the local sounder may require . ampere or ten times as much. it is easily possible to wind a magnet (fig. ), _r_, such that . ampere will close the armature _a_, so that it may complete a local circuit when it would not make noise enough for a sounder. _b_ may represent a local battery of any desired strength which may operate the sounder _s_ of that station as loudly as may be desired. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _annunciator_ (fig. ).--we live in a fifth-floor apartment. when we push the button to call the elevator a no. appears in the annunciator in the elevator car. this tells the elevator boy where the call comes from. take out two or three screws and the annunciator opens, revealing a series of electro-magnets like the one shown in fig. . when an electric current passes around the coil it pulls back an iron catch and allows a number to drop so as to show through a small window. the elevator boy, having noted that the call is from the fifth floor, pushes up the number and the iron catch holds it until the coil is magnetized again by an electric current. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] the annunciator has a bell to call attention. a cable of six wires enters this annunciator (fig. ). one wire goes direct to the bell and the other five reach the bell through the separate coils of the electro-magnets which control the drops. but how are electrical connections made between a moving elevator car and the push buttons on various floors? the diagram in fig. shows this in elevation. _b_ represents a battery of several dry cells located in the basement. one wire from it runs direct to the push buttons , , , , , located upon the five floors of the house. the other wire from the battery, together with wires from each of the five push buttons, all run to a point, _a_, half-way up the elevator shaft. here the six wires are gathered into a cable long enough to reach either to the top or the bottom of the elevator shaft. the other end of this cable enters the elevator car and runs to the annunciator. the wire from the battery goes direct to the bell. the wires from the various push buttons go through correspondingly numbered electro-magnets to the bell. when, therefore, we pushed the button on the fifth floor, we closed the gap in the electric circuit at that point. the current came up from the battery, passed through the button, went down the cable to the car, went through electro-magnet no. , went through the bell, and returned direct to the battery, thus completing the circuit. annunciators are used about buildings to call other attendants, besides the elevator boy. they are likewise used in burglar alarms to inform the householder which door or window is being forced. they are used in the fire department to tell what part of the city the call came from. [illustration: fig. ] . _the electric bell and buzzer_ (fig. ).--so common a thing as an electric bell really belongs to the present generation. bells were either novelties or toys when i was your age. they cost then many times what they do now and then were poorly made. nobody dared to trust them for front-door bells. it was necessary to have a card permanently posted over the push button saying, "if the bell does not ring, knock." in those days batteries were troublesome to care for, houses were not wired when built, and no one had learned the art of concealing the wires neatly. the buzzer is simply a bell minus gong and hammer. those shown in fig. ring well on a single dry cell. a cell costing twelve cents operated one for two years while it was used as a call bell from dining room to kitchen, the current required being . ampere. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: electric bell] the connections are shown in the diagram (fig. ). suppose the current to enter at the binding post _a_, pass around the magnets _b_ and then to the post _c_. the armature _d_ normally rests against the post _c_ and the current finds its way along this to the post _e_ and thence back to the battery. but as soon as the current passes, _b_ becomes a magnet and pulls the armature _d_ away from the post _c_, thus breaking the circuit, when _b_ ceases to be a magnet and a spring pushes the armature _d_ back against the post _c_ to repeat the operation. the armature _d_ carries a hammer which strikes the gong _f_. if the wire, which is usually connected with the binding post _e_, is connected with the post _c_, the "clatter" bell is changed to a "single-stroke" bell, and if the gong and hammer are removed the "bell" is changed to a "buzzer." [illustration: fig. ] in the case of the buzzer, by changing the length of the armature or by weighting it, we may change the time of its vibrations and its tone. the connections between battery push button and bell form a complete circuit. in fig. _b_ represents a battery, usually of dry cells, _b'_ represents the bell, and _p_ represents the push button. the electric circuit is "open," (that is, there is a break in the conductor) at _p_ until some one "pushes the button," that is, simply pushes against a spring so as to cause a piece of metal to bridge the gap in the conductor. then we say the circuit is "closed." [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] push button devices and switches are innumerable. in every case they are simply devices for pushing one piece of metal against another and completing the circuit for an electric current. every one should unscrew and examine a few of them, both for the pleasure of seeing how they work and to learn how to make them work when they sometimes fail. not only in bells but in all other instruments where electro-magnets are used, the magnets are placed in pairs, fastened together upon an iron base. they are wound so that the free ends are made opposite poles by the electric current. like a horseshoe magnet, they form one magnet. the two poles thus placed are mutually helpful and each is stronger than it would be if separated from the other. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric clocks, self-winding clocks, programme clocks._--a pretentious-looking thing which appeared like a dish pan with a glass bottom was opened by the boys and found to be the simplest of all clocks. it had an electro-magnet like that in fig. . a strip of iron acting as an armature across the free ends of this magnet, pushed like a finger against the cogs of a wheel. this wheel was on the axle of the minute hand and it had sixty cogs. the electric circuit was closed through the magnet for an instant each minute and the armature pushed the wheel ahead one cog. thus it made one complete revolution in an hour. a train of four other cog-wheels caused the hour hand to trail after at one twelfth the speed of the minute hand. this machinery made simply a small handful in an eighteen-inch stamped-metal "dish-pan" costing fifteen dollars. [illustration: fig. ] a self-winding clock was opened and found to contain two dry battery cells, an electro-magnet which operated very much like that of a "clatter" bell, the hammer like a finger poking against the cogs of a wheel. once an hour the long hand closed the circuit through the battery and the magnet and its armature swung back and forth long enough to give the cog wheel one complete revolution and wind a spring, which it carried upon its axle. this spring kept the clock running one hour, until the next winding. [illustration: fig. ] the programme clocks which were examined were self-winding clocks, but were connected by wires to the master clock which corrected them each hour. each time the long hand of the master clock came to twelve it closed an electric circuit through all the clocks in the system. in each clock the current passed around an electro-magnet and caused it to pull an armature against a metal stop and set each long hand exactly at twelve. this master clock is sometimes situated many miles away and may correct the time for a whole city. thus a master clock at washington, d. c., furnishes standard time to all parts of the united states. the master clock which we examined also closed the circuit at proper intervals through a series of programme bells placed in the various class rooms, and these called and dismissed classes automatically. . _watchman's time detector_ (fig. ).--this is a device to compel a watchman to make his appointed trips. push buttons or switches are distributed about the building at various points, and it is made his duty to close the circuits at these points at stated times. when he does so, the fact is recorded by electro-magnets puncturing, or, in some way, marking a revolving time card in the clock. [illustration: fig. ] . _circuit breakers_ (fig. ).--electro-magnets are used to open switches and thus protect dynamos and other machines against a larger electric current than they are able to carry. the switch is held closed by a spring which, by an adjusting device, may be tightened or loosened. a dynamo which we examined had its circuit breaker adjusted so that it would remain closed if any current under amperes passed, but if a greater current than that passed it would strengthen the magnet sufficiently to open the switch and thus break the circuit. . _separating iron from ore._--in edison first proposed to use an electro-magnet to separate iron from crushed earth. fig. represents the process. _e_ is an electro-magnet. _s_ is the stream of crushed ore containing iron. gravity would cause all the material to fall into bin _a_, but the electro-magnet _e_ pulls that portion of the material which is magnetic to one side so that it falls into the bin _b_. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _lifting magnets._--electro-magnets are made for use with hoisting apparatus to save the trouble of manipulating grappling hooks, etc. they may lift barrels and boxes of iron, the wood of the barrel or box being transparent, we say, to the magnetic influence. that is, the magnet will attract iron through the wood just as light will shine through glass. such magnets are used to pick up from the bottom of the sea cases of hardware from wrecked ships. (see the accompanying illustration, fig. .) in such cases the electric conductors which lead to and encircle the magnets must be well insulated from the water of the sea, otherwise the electric current would take the shorter path from one line wire through the sea water, which is a fairly good conductor, and back by the other line wire, rather than go the path of greater resistance around the magnet. electro-magnets are coming into use in foundries, etc., for lifting heavy iron castings. [illustration: fig. ] . _electro-magnet on starting box._--as was explained under _electric motors_, a starting box is simply a series of resistance coils _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, in fig. . when the motor is not in use the switch _l_ rests upon the point and no electric current passes. when the switch is moved to point , the current entering at _a_ passes to the pivot of the switch and up the metal strip _l_ to the point , then around the series of coils, _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, _r_, to the post _b_ and thence back to the generator. as the switch is moved to the right, the current passes through less and less of this resistance until, when it reaches point , all the coils of resistance are "cut out," that is, they are not in the path of the current. now the motor has reached its full speed and is developing enough counter-electro-motive force to protect itself against too much current. through a shunt, however, a portion of the current passes from _a_ to _b_ around the electro-magnet _e_, the two poles of which are presented to the metal strip _l_, which must be of iron. this magnet holds the switch over so long as the current is on, but when the current is cut off, by opening a switch in the line wire, _e_ ceases to be a magnet and _l_ is carried back to point by a spring. thus an extra resistance must always be in circuit when the motor is first started. those who start motors are expected to move the lever _l_ of the starting box slowly from point to point, pausing a second or two on each to give the motor time to acquire proper speed for its protection. how too great a current would "burn out" a motor will be explained later. the motor man handles a lever for starting his car, which works like that of the "starting box." his "starting box," however, is called a "controller." although it accomplishes the same result as the starting box it has a wholly different and vastly more complex mechanism than that already described. the elevator boy, who runs our electric elevator, handles a lever which also does the same thing through far different mechanism. indeed, in his case electro-magnets are used to prevent him from cutting out resistance too fast if he should move his lever too quickly. . _starting switches for electric elevators._--the motor man has to be instructed particularly how he should handle the lever of his controller, and he is trusted to follow his directions to some extent, however lacking in intelligence and integrity he may be. but the elevator boy receives scarcely any instructions about his machine, and, indeed, his machine has been constructed pretty nearly "foolproof." it will automatically correct his errors of management. if he throws the handle from one extreme to the other, all resistance cannot be thrown out instantly, but this is accomplished by a series of electro-magnets closing one switch after another and thus cutting out resistance gradually. . _arc lamp feed._--as will be explained later, an arc lamp must have its carbons touching one another when the current is first thrown on, and then the carbons must be drawn apart from a quarter to half an inch. the upper carbon is lifted away from the lower one by a portion of the current passing by means of a shunt around an electro-magnet. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _volt meter._--the volt meter measures the pressure of an electric current. the volt meter which we examined looked outside like our ammeter, and when we removed the face it appeared inside like an ammeter. there was the steel magnet of horseshoe shape to furnish a field (fig. ), and there was an electro-magnet poised between its poles for an armature. the armature in the volt meter, however, had wound upon it finer wire and more of it than was the case in the ammeter. there was no shunt wire in the volt meter as there was in the ammeter. we connected in series a fluid cell (to be described later), the ammeter, and the volt meter (fig. ). the ammeter shunt was removed so that all the current went through its armature. the volt meter needle went to one which was two thirds of the scale (fig. ), and the ammeter needle indicated . . that is, this particular cell can push sixteen thousandths of an ampere through the resistance of this volt meter, and . ampere passing through the armature of this volt meter will magnetize it sufficiently to move it against its spring, say sixty degrees. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] we put into the circuit a lot more fine wire for resistance, _r_ (fig. ), so that the volt meter needle went only half as far as before, that is to . . the ammeter indicated only half as much as before, that is . ampere. we put in resistance enough to bring the volt meter needle down to . and the ammeter indicated one quarter of the original current. we put in less resistance, bringing the volt meter needle to . , and the ammeter indicated three fourths of the original current. evidently the volt meter is merely an ammeter with a different scale marked upon its card. with a pen we marked upon the card of the volt meter a true ammeter scale (fig. ). [illustration: fig. ] in order to understand the volt meter, let us turn our attention for a moment to fig. . i have arranged the water tank _t_ at such a height above the faucet _f_ that when the faucet is opened one quart of water will flow in a minute. if i partially close the faucet, making the opening one half as large (that is, offering twice the resistance to the flow), half a quart will flow in a minute. if i make the resistance four times as great only one quarter of a quart will flow in a minute. it is evident that i could arrange a scale underneath the handle of the faucet to indicate the quantity of water flowing, just as the ammeter and volt meter indicate the quantity of electricity which flows. if now that much is understood, it will be easy to learn how the water faucet may be used to measure water pressure and the volt meter in like manner used to measure electric pressure. having set the faucet so that a quart will flow per minute, let us put on a longer tube _p_, and move the tank up to another shelf so that the distance from the water level in the tank to the faucet is twice as great as before. under the increased pressure water runs through the faucet twice as fast and we now get two quarts per minute. i purposely placed the tank out of sight behind a partition so that you might practise judging the water pressure by the flow at the faucet. we cannot very well talk about pressure in quarts. we might talk about it in pounds, but if we used this apparatus much we should probably get into the habit of talking about the pressure from one shelf, two shelves, three shelves, etc. in order that the pressure might remain nearly constant during the experiment we would probably introduce resistance (that is, partially close the faucet) so that the water level should not fall much. we might, for example, set the faucet so that half a pint would flow in a minute when the tank was on the first shelf. then a pint per minute would flow when the tank was on the second shelf and one and a half pints per minute when the tank was on the third shelf, etc. thus we should infer the pressure by measuring the quantity. one more illustration and the case will be clear. to save the trouble of measuring the quantity of water which flows through the faucet, suppose i introduce the device represented in fig. . _w_ is a small water wheel comparable to the armature of the volt meter. it carries a pointer which moves over a scale just as in the case of the volt meter. [illustration: fig. ] it has a spring coiled around its axle which tends to keep the pointer at _ _, as in the case of the volt meter. the tank is placed upon the first shelf, the faucet is fixed so that a small amount of water flows and the needle moves to a certain figure upon the scale. we will mark this point one and call it "first-shelf pressure." the tank is lifted to the second shelf and the index moves to another point, which we will mark two and call it "second-shelf pressure." the tank is lifted to the third shelf and the index moves to a third point, which we will mark three and call it "third-shelf pressure," etc. ordinarily we measure water pressure with an instrument which allows no water to run to waste, but in measuring electric pressure by the volt meter some current must pass through the instrument, just as in the case of our water-wheel illustration in fig. . we put in large resistance so as to make this current as small as possible, while we let enough pass to move the armature. [illustration: fig. ] now let us return to the volt meter itself. by referring to fig. , we see that it requires . ampere to move the needle of the volt meter clear across the scale, and we have found that one fluid cell was able to send enough current through the resistance of the armature to move the needle two thirds of the way across the scale. at this point we find fig. , which might be read "one-cell pressure." we prefer to commemorate the name of one of the workers in the field of electricity and call this pressure a "volt" after alessandro volta ( - ), born at como, italy. it is the electric pressure which is produced by one fluid cell of a certain kind. we say, then, that one volt pushes through the resistance of this armature . ampere. half a volt would push through the resistance of the armature half as much current or . ampere. at this point we put . . thus each of the figures in the lower row (fig. ) shows what part of a volt is required to send enough current through this particular armature to move the needle to that point. [illustration: fig. ] we found out how much wire was wound upon the armature and put exactly the same amount in the outside resistance, _r_ (fig. ). the needle now showed that one volt is able to push through twice the resistance of the armature only half as much current, and the needle stopped at . ampere. if this were to be the resistance in the volt meter circuit one volt should stand under . ampere and two under . and three under . . it is evident then, that, if we know the internal resistance of a volt meter, we may make it capable of measuring greater electrical pressures by adding the proper amount of resistance. by putting at _r_, (fig. ) nine times the internal resistance of the instrument, thus multiplying the total resistance tenfold, the figures upon the scale of volts may be read as whole numbers from one to fifteen. in this case it will require fifteen cells to push the needle clear across the scale and ten cells to push it two thirds of the way across. if now we add enough external resistance to multiply the resistance of the armature a hundred fold it will require volts to push . of an ampere through the armature and pull its needle clear across the scale. in this case the figures upon the scale of volts are multiplied by one hundred and read from ten to one hundred and fifty. such a scale would adapt this volt meter for use with our -volt lighting circuit. volt meters are made with a series of such external resistances, called "multipliers," attached so that they may be easily thrown into the circuit. it is evident that we need some term so that we may speak of quantities of resistance. this need has given rise to a unit of resistance called an ohm, after george simon ohm ( - ) born at erlanger in bavaria. two inches of no. german silver wire, such as is wound upon the armature of this volt meter, gives one ohm of resistance. there are inches of this wire upon the armature. its resistance is, therefore, . ohms, and we may, therefore, say that one volt of electric pressure can push through . ohms of resistance . of an ampere of current. ohm discovered this relationship in , and formulated it as follows: volts/ohms = amperes (not, however, using these words). ( volt)/( . ohms) = . ampere. . ) . (. ---- ---- this is called ohm's law, as every candidate for college admission will hear and hear again. [illustration: fig. ] volt meters and armatures for the alternating current have electro-magnets for their fields as well as for their armatures. such instruments are equally well adapted for either direct or alternating currents. for when the current reverses its direction it reverses in field and armature alike, and thus a repulsion between like poles is maintained. such an instrument, however, cannot respond to as slight a current as those previously described, since they must consume some energy in both field and armature. . _telephone receiver_ (fig. ).--it requires a stretch neither of the imagination nor of the truth to call a telephone receiver an electro-magnet, although perhaps it has never been called that before. we took it apart and found that it consisted of a steel-bar magnet _m_ (fig. ), with a small spool of wire _w_ around one end of it. the ends of the wire on the spool run along inside the hard rubber shell to the two binding posts _a_ and _b_ at the other end. a disk of sheet iron _s_ is held in the large end of the case very near to, but not quite touching, the end of the magnet. when an alternating current is sent through the wire upon the spool it causes rapid changes in the strength of the magnetic field, if not reversals of the poles of the field, and the iron disk is made to vibrate, keeping time with the alternations of the current. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] in this laboratory we have seen that our current has sixty alternations per second. when it is connected with the receiver the disk, therefore, makes sixty vibrations per second, and produces a tone which has very nearly the pitch of c two octaves below the middle c upon the piano. . _spark coil_ (fig. ).--the automobile spark coil which we have already used is an electro-magnet. the battery sends a current through wire coiled around an iron core. at one end of this iron core is an iron armature which is made to vibrate in precisely the same manner as the armature of an electric bell. this makes and breaks the current and causes rapid changes in the strength of the field. a rapidly changing magnetic field may be used to develop electricity in a conductor, as we have already seen in the case of the dynamo. [illustration: fig. ] how it is used in the automobile spark coil will be shown later. it is sufficient now to mention it as a case of a magnetic field produced by an electric current passing through a wire coiled around an iron core, or, in short, an electro-magnet. induction coils, ruhmkorff coils, and transformers, to be described later, are closely related to this. they all create magnetic fields in the same way and are all electro-magnets. [illustration: fig. . transformers] vii electric heating it was washington's birthday. the schools were to have a holiday and the science club was to hold a special, open meeting at which i had been asked to present the subject of electricity in the household. i replied to the programme committee that that was too large a subject, but that i would talk upon electric heating. i warned them, however, that it would be a dry study, and not an entertainment. they replied that the father of his country had been born at a time of the year when the weather was unfavourable to outdoor sports, and that february usually found them acclimated to vigorous study. neither they nor their friends objected to study if it seemed to have a motive. i found an audience composed of old and young, men and women, girls and boys. most of them had left school--many of them because their teachers thought they were incompetent to continue. [illustration: fig. ] not far from here is "a wheel in the middle of a wheel ... as for their rings they are so high that they are dreadful ... and the spirit of the living creature is in the wheels." those wheels are now sending the electric current to this room for our experiments. i propose to show that we convert electricity into heat by offering resistance to its flow. experience teaches us that resistance to motion always produces heat. at niagara falls thousands of tons of water descend at the rate of one hundred and sixty feet in three seconds. when the water reaches the bottom of the falls, it is moving a little faster than a mile a minute. the resistance which this mass meets after its fall retards its motion and generates heat. hundreds of meteors fall into our atmosphere daily, travelling a thousand times as fast as the waters of niagara falls. the resistance to their motion, which our atmosphere offers, heats them white hot, melts them, vaporizes them, burns them up, so that very few of them reach the solid earth in a solid condition. an iron spile driver, measuring two cubic feet, weighs about half a ton. when it falls sixteen feet upon the end of a spile it is moving at the rate of twenty miles an hour. the energy of this moving mass depends upon both its weight and its velocity, and when its motion is arrested by the spile that energy of motion is largely converted into heat energy, from which both the spile and the spile driver get hot. a piece of iron may be made red hot by pounding it with a trip hammer. count rumford found, in , while boring cannon in the arsenal at munich, that the resistance which the iron offered to the motion of the boring tool furnished heat enough to boil water. seven hundred and seventy-eight foot pounds of mechanical energy when converted into heat would raise one pound of water (one pint) one degree. this is called the british thermal unit. the spile driver, weighing pounds, falling feet upon a spile, produces heat enough to raise pint of water degrees. [illustration: fig. ] here are two binding posts, _a_ and _b_, feet apart (fig. ), connected by copper wires with the dynamo circuit. the volt meter indicates volts of pressure. i will close the circuit by stretching between _a_ and _b_ feet of no. iron wire. (this wire is about the thickness of a common pin.) the iron wire offers resistance to the flow of the electric current, thereby producing heat--heat enough as you see to make the wire white hot, indeed heat enough to raise it to something over two thousand degrees fahr., for now you see it has melted. we will put in a fresh piece of wire and connect also the ammeter in the circuit (fig. ). as i close the circuit the needle of the ammeter at first indicates or amperes, but in a second drops to amperes, and remains there a second until the wire melts and falls apart. one hundred and twelve volts of electric pressure are able to push amperes of electricity through this wire when hot. [illustration: fig. ] ( volts)/( ohms) = amperes volts × amperes = watts watts = one horse-power hence it required about one and one fifth horse-power to melt the wire in a second, and the heat produced was a little less than one british thermal unit, a unit much used by engineers. pound raised foot = foot pound foot pounds per second = horse-power foot pounds ( . h.-p.) = b. t. u. (british thermal unit) = heat required to raise pound of water ° fahrenheit volt × ampere = watt watts = horse-power in order to hold back volts of electric pressure so that not more than eight amperes of electricity should pass, the iron wire must have offered about ohms of resistance. the behaviour of the ammeter needle showed that the wire offered very much less resistance when cold than when hot. indeed eight feet of no. iron wire offers about one and one third ohms resistance when cold, hence heat had increased its resistance to the passage of the electric current tenfold. this piece of iron wire offered resistance to the flow of the electric current. it offered resistance to the motion of the dynamo. this offered resistance to the steam-engine which drives the dynamo. this caused the governor of the engine to open and pass more steam from the boiler. this reduced the pressure at the steam gauge. this caused the fireman to shovel more coal into the furnace. the heat of the burning coal melts the wire, but it does it only after several changes. first, it is converted into mechanical energy in the steam-engine with great loss--about nine tenths being lost. second, it is converted into electrical energy by the dynamo, with some loss, and, third, it is conducted to the iron wire and converted back to heat with still further loss. it is evident that the most economical way to heat the wire would be to take it to the furnace. yet all electric cooking is done by sending electric current through wires embedded in the walls of the cooking utensils, and it is the most wasteful method of using the energy stored in coal that has yet been devised. [illustration: fig. ] that merely connecting the binding posts _a_ and _b_ (fig. ) by a small piece of wire should throw a load upon the dynamo miles away; should offer resistance to its motion, and make it require . horse-power more of energy to keep up its speed of revolution, is, indeed, uncanny. i will attempt to make it seem more real. at one end of the lecture table i have a rotary pump _p_ (fig. ). the end of the rubber tube _a_, which leads to the pump is lying upon the table outside of the tank of water, _t_. while things are in this condition i move the crank which operates the pump with perfect ease. now while still turning the crank i pick up the tube _a_ and drop its free end into the water tank. i cannot now conceal the fact, even if i were disposed to do so, that i must work hard to keep the pump going. the pump itself tells you by its laboured sound that it is working hard, and the stream of water which issues from the pipe _b_ tells how much work i am performing. the pump is discharging five and a half pints of water per second, that is . pounds, and it raises this water feet. hence i am doing foot pounds of work per second, which requires one tenth of a horse-power. here is a lad who consents to try the experiment for us. he turns the crank easily while i am holding the tube _a_ out of the water, but when i lower it into the water he finds the resistance so great that, tug however much he may, he is unable to keep the pump going. at the other end of the table i have a small hand dynamo, _d_ (fig. ), _m_ is an ammeter, _v_ is a volt meter, _s_ is a switch. all the wires are good-sized copper, and offer little resistance, except that stretched between the binding posts _a_ and _b_. this is a piece of fine german silver wire. while the switch is open i turn the crank of the dynamo with perfect ease. a small amount of current is going through the volt meter, but this is too slight to offer any perceptible resistance to the motion of the machine. notice that the volt meter needle moves according to the speed of revolution. if i turn the crank once a second the needle stands at volts. the electric pressure increases or decreases according to whether i rotate the armature faster or slower. now i will attempt to keep the machine revolving at a constant rate while i close the switch _s_, and surely you must see that i have hard work to do so. the wire _a b_ has now become red hot. the volt meter shows volts of pressure, and the ammeter shows amperes of current. twenty-five volts × amperes = watts, which require one tenth of a horse-power ( watts = horse-power). the lad now takes my place at turning the machine and finds it easy when the switch is open, but i actually overload him by merely closing the switch. heating the wire red hot requires more energy than he is able to put forth. i proposed to the president that my lecture close at this point, and that each one in the room have a chance to _feel_ the load which was thrown upon the dynamo each time it was required to heat the wire. i suggested that each person should get a realizing sense of this fact, first by doing the work himself, and second by going home and reflecting upon this hint. when the switch is closed three amperes of electricity pass around the circuit. this increases the magnetism in both the field and the armature of the dynamo, and it requires one tenth of a horse-power more to keep the armature moving within the field against this magnetic pull. i further desired to announce that during this hour i had delivered to them the second key to the electrical show which i had promised a few days ago. the second key is: heat (and light) is produced by offering resistance to the flow of the electric current. the first key is the electro-magnet. these two unlock all the mysteries of the show. the president closed the formal exercises with the facetious remark that i had warned them before the lecture that they must work, so now each would be expected to take a turn at the cranks of the pump and dynamo. viii applications of electric heating the programme committee decided that each member of the science club should busy himself looking for _applications of electric heating_ and should consult me freely about the matter. my telephone was kept busy, my laboratory was in great demand, and we were all getting a good deal more education than the school was giving us credit for. the boys generally came to me in pairs, and each pair having worked up some illustration of heat produced by electricity reported it to the club. these were spread by the secretary in due form upon the minutes of the club and constituted "the proceedings of the science club." [illustration: fig. ] . _the electric sad iron_ (fig. ).--removing three screws the iron comes apart, revealing a lot of no. german silver wire wound upon a sheet of mica. this is put between other sheets of mica (fig. ) and tucked away within the body of the iron. german silver offers about twice the resistance of iron when it is cold, but, at the temperature of the sad iron when in use, there is not much difference between the resistance of the two metals. german silver wire, however, does not rust as iron wire would, and hence it is chosen. german silver is an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. [illustration: fig. ] we put the -volt current upon this wire of the iron, and according to the ammeter it passed amperes. its resistance must therefore have been ohms. ( volts)/( ohms) = amperes electricity costs us about cents per kilowatt hour. that is cents for watts for an hour, or cent for a hundred watts for an hour, or, on a -volt current, cent for an ampere for an hour. it, therefore, costs about cents or, more accurately, - / cents an hour to heat this iron. persons sometimes carry electric irons with them, when they travel, to iron pocket handkerchiefs and other small articles while stopping at a hotel. before connecting an iron in a chandelier one must know the voltage used in the building. if the voltage in use in the building is not the same as that stamped upon the iron, it is not safe to connect it. not knowing this, many persons have had the embarrassment of "blowing a fuse" and extinguishing their own lights, and perhaps those of others in the same building, and very likely also ruining the iron. suppose we take for example this iron stamped _ v; watts_. (a slight variation of or volts will not injure an iron.) the wire in this iron we found to offer about ohms resistance when hot, and it lets pass amperes. this is about all the current which it is able to carry without melting. now suppose a -volt current is used in the building where it is proposed to connect the iron. this would force through the wire enough current to melt it. the wire was seen to be at a very dull-red heat when examined in a dark room. its temperature was about nine hundred degrees. at this temperature its resistance is about three times what it is when cold. we estimated by measurements that the iron contained about twenty-five feet of the wire. the boys then took twenty-five feet of no. german silver wire and stretched it between two nails driven up in the laboratory (fig. , _a b_). the dynamo current was then sent through this. the end, _c_, of the wire from the dynamo was provided with a metal clip which could be slid along on the german silver wire. sliding this to the left, and thus shortening the distance on the german silver wire through which the current must pass, increased the amount of current and heated the wire hotter. the resistance decreases as the wire is shortened. [illustration: fig. ] the boys wound this wire upon a piece of asbestos board (fig. ), about nine inches square and one eighth of an inch thick, taking care to keep the successive turns half an inch apart. asbestos paper was wrapped around this. the two ends of the wire were left free for connections. this they called a "hot plate." [illustration: fig. ] . _electric hot plate_ (fig. ).--this when opened was found to have wire coiled up inside in the same manner as the sad iron. indeed the sad iron supported bottom side up makes a perfectly good hot plate. the particular hot plate which we examined had a three-point switch which gave three different heats for the plate. (see fig. .) when the switch _s_ is upon the first point the current goes through ohms of resistance and ampere passes: ( volts)/( ohms) = ampere [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] this warms the plate slightly--enough to keep food warm which has been already cooked. this costs about one cent an hour. when the switch is placed upon the second point the current goes through ohms of resistance and amperes pass. ( volts)/( ohms) = amperes. this makes the plate warmer and is adapted to certain cooking processes. it costs about two cents an hour. when the switch is placed upon the third point the current goes through ohms of resistance and amperes pass. ( volts)/( ohms) = amperes. [illustration: fig. ] we placed upon this hot plate a basin containing pint of water (equals pound) and heated it from the temperature of the room ( degrees) to boiling ( degrees) in minutes and then put an egg in and boiled it minutes. using amperes for minutes cost two thirds of a cent. if it takes minutes to boil a pint of water it would require hour to boil a gallon upon this hot plate using amperes, or watts. that is, it costs us about . cents a gallon to boil water by electricity. the cost is usually put at three and a half cents per gallon, but much depends upon conditions. . _traveller's cooker_ (fig. ).--this consists of a hot plate with a covered basin permanently attached to it. . _electric coffee percolator_ (fig. ) consists of a hot plate with a coffee percolator to sit upon it. the coffee percolator might sit upon any other hot plate or this hot plate might serve any other purpose, but people do not seem to think of that. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric chafing-dish_ (fig. ) consists merely of an electric hot plate with a chafing-dish attached. the electric coffee percolators and chafing dishes require from to watts according to size. if used on the -volt current they take about to amperes, and if adapted to the -volt current they take from - / to amperes, but cost the same to operate in either case. they have connected with them flexible cords and plugs to screw into the lamp sockets. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric broilers_ are merely hot plates, generally corrugated to conduct off the melted fat. one that we examined had a switch for three heats: low, requiring watts--costs . cents per hour; medium, requiring watts--cost cents per hour; high, requiring watts--cost . cents per hour. . _electric oven._--this one has double walls to retain the heat and has two large hot plates, one on the bottom and one on the top. it is large enough to hold four loaves of bread. it required watts for minutes to heat it to the baking temperature and one hour to bake the bread. hence the cost of the electricity is about cents, about what the bread would cost in the market. . _electric incubator._--this is simply a well-ventilated oven warmed by an electric hot plate and automatically controlled so that it keeps a constant temperature of degrees. under these conditions chickens hatch from hens' eggs in three weeks. an incubator for dozen eggs was found to take cents' worth of electricity for the whole process of incubation. . _electric toaster._--the wire coiled up in sad irons and hot plates becomes hot enough to scorch cloth and paper, and even set fire to them if they come in direct contact. we proved this by opening the iron and touching paper to the wire while it was carrying the current. we also lighted a cigar by touching it to the wire. electric toasters have the hot german silver wire simply covered by a screen. . _electric cigar lighters_ (fig. ).--the one we examined hung by a flexible cord from the chandelier. it had a small disk on the side which contained a lot of fine wire covered by perforated mica. the wire became red hot when the push button in the handle was pressed. it took half an ampere of -volt current, and operated only while the button was pushed. as near as we could calculate it cost . of a cent to light a cigar. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _electric curling iron_ (fig. ).--one who has flat hair needs no curling iron, but those who have round hair may curl it temporarily, if they will unscrew an electric light bulb and screw into its socket the plug of an electric curling iron. the flexible cord contains two wires insulated from each other. one of these wires is attached to the outer shell of the plug, the other wire is attached to the central button of the plug. these make connections with the two separate dynamo wires in the socket. the current comes down one of the wires in the flexible cord, passes through a coil of fine german silver wire inside of the curling iron, and returns by the other wire in the flexible cord. the small wire in the curling iron offers ohms of resistance when hot and passes half an ampere of the -volt current. ( volts)/( ohms) = . ampere. . _electric soldering irons_ (fig. ).--or coppers, as they should be called, are ideal implements for soldering. they remain continually at the proper temperature and are free from corrosion. they require from to watts. on the -volt current they take from one half to two amperes. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric heating pad_ (fig. ).--this consists of resistance wire inside of a pad of soft material. it maintains a temperature of degrees, and is an excellent substitute for a hot water bag. it contains about two hundred and twenty ohms of resistance and requires the same current as a -candle-power lamp. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric fuses_ (fig. ).--fuses are made of short pieces of wire or thin sheet metal. the metal is an alloy of lead and tin which melts at a low temperature. they derive their name from the fact that they readily fuse or melt. a building is wired in various separate circuits. the size of the copper wires used in each circuit is determined by the amount of current which the circuit is expected to carry. each circuit is protected by one or more fuses. these melt and cut off the current whenever too much passes for the copper conductor to carry without getting hot. the fuse wire melts at about six hundred degrees, while the copper will not melt until it reaches nearly two thousand degrees. this temperature is sufficient to set fire to wood, paper, and cloth. when any fuse melts, the current is cut off from all chandeliers, etc., in the particular circuit controlled by the fuse. this produces consternation among people who do not understand the function of a fuse. they become panic-stricken and begin to trample their neighbours to death in the theatre or on the electric train when they hear that a fuse is "blown" (which is the electrician's way of saying that it has melted). everyone should know that a fuse is a safety device. it is always enclosed in a box lined with sheet iron or asbestos, so that it is impossible for the flash, which occurs when the circuit is broken, to set fire to anything. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _electric gas lighter_ (fig. ).--these usually have two or three small, dry battery cells in the handle. by pushing a button in the handle connection is made between this battery and a short piece of resistance wire in the tip. this wire gets red hot and lights the gas. it is a surprise to many that we can light illuminating gas without bringing a flame to it, and it is equally surprising that some flames, or at least sparks, may not be able to light the gas. the fact is that it is wholly a matter of _temperature and kind of gas_. iron heated to dull red will not light the illuminating gas now being furnished in new york city, while iron at a bright red heat will do so. iron may be hot enough to light illuminating gas but too cool to light gasolene vapour, which requires a dazzling white heat. iron which is just under the temperature at which it gives any light may set fire to wood and paper. after it has cooled a good deal below that, it will set fire to sulphur, and when it has cooled so that one may hold it in the hand, it is still hot enough to set fire to phosphorus. the glowing end of a lighted cigar, the spark made by striking flint, or the spark from a spark coil with a feeble battery, all fail to set fire to gasolene vapour, simply because they are not hot enough. fresh battery cells must occasionally be put in the handle of the electric gas lighter. four facts regarding the resistance of wires it is well to remember: . the longer the wire the more resistance it offers to the electric current. . the smaller the diameter of the wire the more resistance it offers. . some materials offer more resistance than others, for example, iron about six times as much as copper and german silver about twelve times as much as copper. . the common metals offer more resistance when hot than when cold, about double the resistance when heated to five hundred degrees. it is the reverse with carbon, which offers more resistance when cold than when hot. the carbon filament lamp offers about double the resistance when cold as when lighted to full brilliancy. . _electric flasher_ (fig. ).--for automatically flashing electric lights. the one which we examined was constructed according to the plan shown in fig. . the lighting circuit is brought to the binding posts _b_ and _c_. a small insulated wire of high resistance connects _b_ and _c_, being wound around the metal bar _a b_. the resistance of this wire, when added to that of lamps, permits not more than one fifth of an ampere to pass, and this warms the wire slightly. the bar _a b_ is composed of two strips of metal, brass above and iron below. heat expands brass more than iron. the result is that when the current is turned on, the bar begins to curve downward until presently it touches the metal base of _c_. then the full current required to light the lamps which are in circuit passes. while the circuit is closed through the large metal strips not enough passes through the fine wire to warm it. on cooling, _a b_ curves upward and breaks the connection with _c_, and now the current begins again to warm up the small wire. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] the flasher that we examined was adapted to operate: one -candle-power lamp; or two -candle-power lamps; or four -candle-power lamps, on a one ampere circuit of -volt pressure. let us see what would happen if it were connected either with a current of higher voltage or a circuit of more lamps. suppose we have a -candle-power carbon filament lamp in circuit. this requires one ampere to light it. its resistance when hot is ohms. ( volts)/( ohms) = ampere. when cold its resistance is about double or ohms. the german silver wire of the electric flasher offers ohms of resistance, and together they make ohms. thus the current is cut down to . ampere. ( volts)/( + ohms) = . ampere suppose now we should undertake to use the same flasher and the same lamp on a -volt current. this might push more current through than the small wire could carry. it might melt, or its insulation might burn off before _a_ made contact with _b_; if not the lamp would certainly burn out after the contact. if we undertook to operate with this flasher several -candle-power lamps instead of one upon the -volt circuit, the result would be the same, for in that case the resistance would be reduced and, therefore, a greater current would pass than the wire could carry without undue heating. [illustration: fig. ] the boys were at first troubled to see how increasing the number of lamps in a circuit would decrease the resistance in that circuit. fig. was drawn to explain the matter. the lamps _l_, _l_, _l_, etc., are connected _in parallel_. each lamp makes an independent connection from one feed wire to the other. the flasher _a_ acts as a switch to close the circuit for the whole. now if we think of these wires as pipes to conduct water we would say that water flows from _d_ to _e_ through ten pipes more readily than through one. it would meet with only one tenth as much resistance. the result would be the same, if we should substitute for the ten pipes one pipe ten times as large in cross section. so it is with wires which are conducting electricity. introduce two in parallel, and you allow twice as much current to pass by reducing the resistance to one half. ten parallel conductors reduce the resistance to one tenth and allow ten times as much current to pass. [illustration: fig. ] it is to be noticed that this flasher is an automatic switch which is opened or closed according to temperature. remove the fine wire from _a_ and we have precisely the device which regulated the temperature in our electric incubator. suppose the "thermostat" (as it is called in that case) is placed within the egg chamber which is to be kept at degrees. a screw in the metal strip _c_ underneath the end of _a_ may be set so that it will normally touch _a_. suppose now the brass strip is underneath the strip of iron in _a_. as the hot plate warms up the egg chamber, the brass will expand more than the iron, and the bar will curve upward and break the connection with _c_. as soon as the current stops the temperature of the chamber begins to fall, and the bar curves downward again until connection is made. this device is capable of adjustment so as to keep the temperature constantly at degrees or any other desired degree. the device is in use for scores of different purposes, including the regulation of temperature in school rooms. . _electric car heaters._--ten or fifteen years ago there were no heated street cars in new york city. now they are all heated by electricity and their maximum and minimum temperatures are regulated by law. the resistance wire may be seen in coils underneath the car seats. electric street cars usually operate on a or -volt current. the amount of current used for heating varies from to amperes. perhaps amperes may be taken as an average. v × _a_ = _w_ = - / kilowatts. it costs the large electric railway companies about . cents per kilowatt hour to generate their supply of current. eighteen hours is considered a car day. - / kilowatts × hours = kilowatt hours. kilowatt hours at . cents = cents per car day. . _heating apartments by electricity._--for heating apartments by electricity the same sort of apparatus is used as that already described for heating cars. a family of four adults, living in an eight-room apartment with at least cubic feet of fresh air admitted per minute, will use on an average ten amperes of the -volt current. the cost will be about two dollars and fifty cents per day or seventy-five dollars per month. although this is as much as the entire rental of a perfectly comfortable apartment, the novelty and the convenience attract tenants and the extra cost of rent does not deter them. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric bedroom heater._--one of the boys constructed a heater for his own room as follows: he procured a box eight inches deep by eighteen inches square on the bottom. this he lined with asbestos paper. he then stood it upon its side and arranged four incandescent light sockets as shown in fig. . these were connected by a flexible cord to a plug which he could insert in place of a lamp in the chandelier. he placed this heater on the floor underneath the window and usually had -candle-power lamps in the sockets. he claimed that it was a jolly foot warmer and kept the room comfortable without other heat. he turned on from one to four lamps according to his need and replaced the -candle-power lamps by -candle-power lamps when the weather was extremely cold. i remarked that he must have light along with heat by this arrangement, and i should think that might be objectionable when he desired to sleep at night. he said that he always turned it off, and opened the window at night, always preferring a cold room to sleep in. [illustration: fig. ] . _cooking with incandescent lamps._--this piece of apparatus was devised by the boys and used in my laboratory. a sheet iron basin _a_, was inverted over four -candle-power incandescent lamps, shown in elevation by fig. , and shown in plan by fig. . the sides of the basin were cut so as to admit the glass globes of the lamps, but the sockets and keys were outside, so that it was convenient to turn on and off the lamps separately, thus using one half to two amperes of current, as desired. this rested upon another basin, _b_. basin _b_ was covered with asbestos for the lamps to lie on and the whole was attached to a board base, _c_. a flexible cord and plug allowed us to attach this to the chandelier. a pint of water was boiled upon this stove in fifteen minutes, and refreshments have been served hot from it repeatedly. [illustration: fig. ] . _electric fireless cooker._--there are five indictments against ordinary cooking processes. . they heat the house in summer. . they convert what would be pleasant flavours in the food into noxious odours about the house. . they cannot be controlled with regard to time and temperature as scientific experiments should be. . they confine the cook too closely and are not sufficiently automatic. . they are wasteful of fuel. it would seem that electricity might enable us to cure most of these evils. to be sure the production of heat by electricity is wasteful of fuel, and it seems doubtful how the account will balance regarding the fifth item. but the remaining four items furnish a very hopeful field for research. i use the last word advisedly, and think it is just as applicable to high school boys as to university students. after experimenting awhile the boys and i concluded to give a dinner party in the laboratory and invite a few friends to test the results of our cooking. we procured a cylinder of magnesia such as is used for covering large steam-pipes. this was inverted over our electric stove which was illustrated in fig. . the magnesia was cut at the bottom, so as to give access to the key sockets of the lamps, (fig. ). first upon the electric stove was placed a covered dish containing a roast of lamb. above this was another dish containing a vegetable, and upon the top of that was a pudding. a flat piece of magnesia was used as a cover to the whole. through a hole in this was suspended a thermometer. [illustration: fig. ] this "fireless cooker" was sitting in the centre of the dinner table when the guests gathered around it. we had these problems for investigation: . will this cooker heat the house in summer? all testified that they did not know that there was any heat about it until they laid their hands upon it, and then they found it only very slightly warm. . is there any smell of cooking here? the process has been carried on from start to finish right on this table. all agreed that no smell could be detected. i then turned off the electric current which had been running until now and served the meat and vegetable, leaving the pudding inside to be kept warm by the hot walls of the cooker. . regarding the control of the process: we were using -candle-power lamps, which gave us a variable current, from to amperes, and a watch and a thermometer. we had control, but as yet lacked knowledge of how it should be used. in the present case we had arbitrarily decided to begin with temperature of degrees, continue it for minutes, then turn off all the electric current, and let the temperature fall gradually. this had been done at our convenience in the morning before school. at a quarter before twelve we had found the temperature at degrees, and turned on all the current, and now, at five minutes past twelve o'clock, all testified that the lamb was particularly good--neither too well done nor undercooked, and that its flavour was better than usual. as for economy of fuel, we find at least that we get better results from incandescent lamps than from hot plates used in the same apparatus, and the electric equipment enables us to put the heat exactly where it is needed and nowhere else. . _incandescent lamp._--we feel quite justified in putting the incandescent lamp under the heading, _applications of electric heating_, since the electric lamps in general use convert per cent. of the electric energy into heat and only per cent. into light. they were originally made by introducing a short piece of fine wire into the circuit, choosing the kind of wire, its diameter, and its length so as to make the proper relation between resistance and voltage, in order that enough current might pass to make it white hot, but not quite melt it. platinum wire was first chosen because it would stand the highest heat without melting and without rusting. we will pass our -volt current through feet of the no. iron wire. the wire is heated to bright red, but does not melt as it did when we used feet in a former experiment. the increased length has added resistance, and, as you see by the ammeter, cut the current down from to . amperes. i will now darken the room and you find that it is giving light enough to read by. but you notice that the light is growing dimmer, its colour is growing redder, and the ammeter indicates that less current is passing. i will cut off the current and let you examine the wire and you notice that a crust has formed upon it. this is due to the oxygen of the air which unites with the iron, forming iron rust. iron rust does not conduct electricity. we have converted no. iron wire into a wire of smaller diameter with a sheath of iron rust around it. we might prevent the rusting by putting the wire in a glass globe and exhausting the air from it. i have here a piece of no. platinum wire which has about the same resistance as iron wire when cold, but you notice that i may use a very much shorter length than i did of the iron wire because it will endure a very much higher heat without melting. reducing the length would reduce the resistance, but reducing the resistance would allow more current to pass. if more current should pass it would make the wire hotter, and raising the temperature would increase the resistance, which would cut down the current, etc. by sliding the clip _c_ (fig. ), along, i finally reach a point where conditions balance so that i get a very brilliant light, dangerously near the fusing point of the platinum which is three thousand degrees above the boiling point of water. in mr. thomas a. edison literally searched the whole world for something better than platinum for the filament of an incandescent lamp. he finally decided upon charred threads of a bamboo which he found in japan. no research was ever more timely than this. whereas there was practically no electric lighting before , soon after that there began a phenomenal demand for carbon filament lamps. in , , of these lamps were manufactured in the united states. in the number had risen to , , . in central stations were supplying electric current to , , incandescent electric lights. by far the greatest number are still made with carbon filaments. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] we examined an ordinary -volt -candle-power carbon filament lamp, (fig. ). as near as we could estimate, its filament measured about eight inches in length. we broke open the bulb of this lamp by laying it upon the table and tapping it with a board. the bulb broke with rather a loud noise and the brittle carbon filament broke into many pieces. we found one of these pieces and measured its diameter with a wire gauge, (fig. ). it was the same size as no. wire, which we also found by the wire gauge was the size of no. sewing cotton. the diameter of no. wire was given upon the wire gauge as . inch. when lighted, the filament of this lamp had looked to be about the size of no. wire, which has a diameter of . . that is, the filament when lighted looked six times as thick as it really was. those who use sewing cotton learn quickly to know the size of the thread by its number. so those who have much to do with wire easily learn the system of designating sizes by numbers. here are some selected figures easy to remember. a trolley wire is about one third of an inch in diameter. it is designated as no. . notice in the following table that as the numbers rise by six the diameters are divided by two. notice also that as the diameters diminish by two the resistance increases by four. [illustration: fig. ] table of resistance of copper wires _nos._ _diameter_ _resistance_ . inch feet to the ohm . " " " " " . " " " " " . " " " " " . " " " " " . " " " " " . " . " " " " . " " " " " , feet equal two miles. number is the wire used upon the spools of telegraph receivers. they offer ohms of resistance and therefore contain feet of wire ( × . = ). these resistances are for ordinary school room temperatures. since iron has six times, and german silver twelve times the resistance of copper, divide the figures of the third column by six, and the table will answer for iron wire, or divide those figures by twelve and the table may be used for german silver wire, thus: _number feet to the ohm_ _nos._ _diameter_ _copper_ _iron_ _german silver_ . inch . " . " . " . " inch . " . " . " . . " . " inch " these figures are not exact, but useful. we procured a string of eight small lamps (fig. ), such as are used in lighting christmas trees. each was marked volt, -candle-power. the carbon filament of each was about one inch long and apparently the same diameter as that of the -candle-power lamp. when the -volt current was sent through the group of eight connected in series they seemed to give about the same light as the single -candle-power lamp. it is as though the filament of the -candle-power lamp had been cut into eight pieces, and distributed through eight small lamps. we introduced an ammeter into the circuit and found that half an ampere of electricity passed through the single -candle-power lamp--and half an ampere likewise passed through the group of eight -candle-power lamps. [illustration: fig. ] the -volt current can push an ampere of electricity through eight inches of carbon thread seven thousandths of an inch in diameter, and when this happens the filament gets hot enough to give out as much light as sixteen standard candles. in the place of the -candle-power lamp, we put a -candle-power -volt lamp. the ammeter indicated one ampere. the carbon filament was larger (no. , diameter = . inch), so as to allow more current to pass. an -candle-power -volt lamp was substituted; one quarter of an ampere passed. a -candle-power -volt lamp was used; one eighth of an ampere passed. a -candle-power -volt lamp was substituted; three amperes of current passed through it. in all these cases the lamps which passed the larger current had the larger filaments. a little practice would enable one to distinguish between these lamps without labels by examining their filaments. among these -volt lamps, it is to be noted that the amount of light which they give is proportional to the amount of current which they pass. and it is convenient to remember that one ampere of electricity for one hour costs about one cent. we introduced into the socket a "hylo" lamp (fig. ). the filament, _a_, took half an ampere of electricity, gave -candle-power of light, and cost half a cent an hour. when the lamp was turned in its socket the current was switched off of the filament _a_, and on to the filament _a_. this took . of an ampere, gave one candle-power of light, and cost . of a cent an hour, or at the rate of about $ . a year, burning continuously day and night. [illustration: fig. ] the uses of such a lamp are apparent in rooms which have no daylight. however, a wall switch at the entrance of such a room, making it easy to throw on and off the light entirely, seems to be a more satisfactory arrangement. one of the boys connected a wattmeter in the circuit with a hylo lamp and found that the small filament did not pass current enough to move the armature of the wattmeter. hence that may be burned alone without affecting the consumer's bills. we took a -candle-power -volt lamp, and lighted it by a -volt current. the meter showed that it allowed only one quarter of an ampere to pass. the filament was very much smaller than that in the -volt, -candle-power lamp. the pressure was twice as great as before, but the resistance was four times as great, and hence only half as much current passed. we find that it costs just as much to generate one quarter of an ampere at -volt pressure as it does to generate half an ampere at -volt pressure. we must, of course, pay for electricity according to the cost of producing it. to produce . ampere at -volt pressure costs the same as one ampere at -volt pressure, or . amperes at volts. it will be noticed that the products of the two factors in each case are the same. the product of an ampere multiplied by a volt is a watt. in each of the above three cases the amount of electrical energy is watts. this will produce a definite quantity of light--about candle-power when the carbon filament is used, and this quantity does not vary as either volts or amperes, but as the product of these, namely, watts. each of these lamps is called a -watt lamp, and, since they each give candle-power of light, a carbon filament lamp gives one candle-power of light for three and a half watts of electricity. electricity for lighting purposes usually costs _ cents per kilowatt hour_, that is, cents for watts for one hour, or one cent for watts for one hour. hence a -watt lamp costs a trifle more than half a cent for one hour, or exactly . cents, and a -candle-power lamp costs . cents per hour. we introduced into the socket a -candle-power -volt tungsten lamp (fig. ), and turned on the -volt current. the ammeter showed ampere. hence the lamp is a -watt lamp, and requires one and a quarter watts per candle-power. that is, the metal tungsten is nearly three times as efficient as carbon for producing light from electricity. [illustration: fig. ] with pincers we broke off the tip of a -candle-power carbon filament lamp, making a small hole in the large end of the bulb. the air rushed in. we then put the lamp in the socket and turned on the current. the carbon filament glowed as usual, and slowly burned up, growing smaller as it did so. the ammeter which was in circuit showed that the current, which was one ampere at the beginning, grew steadily less as the filament grew smaller, until finally when it was about one quarter of an ampere, the circuit was broken by the filament burning in two. we removed the lamp from the socket and with a dropper tube introduced a little lime water, and shook it to absorb any gas which might have been formed in there. it became milky white, as it always does when introduced where carbon has been burned. this would be a sufficient proof that the filament was made of carbon, if we did not already know it. the air is exhausted from these bulbs to prevent the carbon filament from burning up. [illustration: fig. ] the carbon filament lamps were, as has been said, the invention of mr. thomas a. edison in . such a statement must, however, be qualified by the assertion that this, like nearly all invention, was but the consummation of a long line of researches made by many men for many years. the early filaments were made of bamboo thread, charred, but now they are drawn like spider's web out of a sticky liquid and carbonized at a high temperature. they are attached in the lamp to short pieces of platinum wire which are sealed through the glass walls of the bulb. one wire connects with the brass collar of the bulb, and the other with the central piece of brass at the base of the bulb. we dissected a socket and found that when the lamp is placed in the socket, the collar of the lamp is screwed into the collar of the socket, and the base of the lamp comes in contact with a brass spring in the bottom of the socket (fig. ). the spring is connected with one copper wire bringing electricity from the dynamo. the collar is connected with the other wire from the dynamo. this connection is made and broken by turning the key of the socket. the wires are made of copper since copper is a particularly good conductor of electricity. no electricity can flow unless this circuit is complete. socket keys and wall switches make or close gaps in this circuit. no copper wires for carrying electric-lighting current are smaller than no. , which has a diameter of . or about one twelfth of an inch. the intention is to have as little resistance to the current as possible, except in the filament of the lamp itself. there resistance is purposely introduced in order to convert electricity into light, light without heat if that were possible, but since that has not yet been found possible, heat for the sake of the accompanying light. unhappily only per cent. of the electrical energy goes into light and per cent. goes into useless, or even harmful, heat. the tungsten lamps, which are now coming into use, are nearly three times as efficient in the production of light as are the carbon filament lamps. the dynamo exerts its entire pressure upon the lamp and furnishes current as follows: a dynamo of -volt pressure gives: ampere = watts, through a -candle-power lamp, cost one cent an hour, or . ampere = watts, through a -candle-power lamp, cost half a cent an hour, or . ampere = - / watts, through an -candle-power lamp, cost a quarter of a cent an hour. a dynamo of -volt pressure gives: . ampere = watts, through a -candle-power lamp, cost one cent an hour, or . ampere = watts, through a -candle-power lamp, cost half a cent an hour, or . ampere = - / watts, through an -candle-power lamp, cost a quarter of a cent an hour. the carbon filament lamps, barring accidents, have a natural life varying from to hours of actual incandescence. at the end of that period the filament has become so thin that it will fall apart by ordinary usage. it is never profitable, however, to use them for their whole lifetime. the lamp gradually volatilizes carbon and deposits it upon the inner walls of the bulb, producing a smoky appearance and shutting off light. as the filament grows thinner by this process, it offers greater resistance to the current, and as the amount of current grows less the proportion of light to current grows rapidly less, so that at last instead of paying for . watts of electricity per candle-power of light one must pay for perhaps seven or eight watts per candle-power. we pay fifteen cents apiece for -candle-power lamps, and it is economy to renew them about twice a year, if they are burned, say three hours a day, or a little over five hundred hours. it is interesting to note that when a direct current is used the evaporation from the carbon filament always takes place at the negative end alone, that is, the end from which the current is leaving the lamp. if an alternating current is used the evaporation goes on from all parts of the filament alike. this is a case of evaporation from the solid state. carbon does not boil below , degrees, and the filament reaches about , degrees. tantalum, tungsten, and osmium lamps have metal filaments. these metals are better conductors than carbon but unlike carbon their resistance increases as their temperature rises, and their special virtue is that they are capable of enduring an extremely high temperature without melting. the wire used in some of these filaments is as small as . of an inch, or no. . in order to furnish sufficient resistance to prevent the -volt current from melting, they often have a length exceeding two feet. this is laced back and forth within the small bulb. at the temperature of bright incandescence their resistance may be increased as much as fivefold and sometimes becomes about ten ohms to the inch. like all metals they are more brittle when cold than hot. hence when cleaning such lamps it is advisable to turn on the current to avoid breaking the filament by jarring. filaments which are too fragile to endure the jar of ordinary railway travel, when cold, have gone through railway wrecks safely when lighted. it is a general rule that good conductors of electricity grow more resistant as the temperature rises while non-conductors resist less as the temperature rises. hence the insulating material which is used to cover copper wires fails to protect if highly heated. if a -volt lamp is put into a -volt circuit, one might expect that the lamp would burn out without doing further damage to the circuit, but this is not the case. as the filament approaches its melting point, degrees, it becomes so good a conductor that it carries current enough to melt a fifteen ampere fuse. it is, therefore, the fuse that protects the circuit and not the burning out of the lamp. the bulb containing the highly heated carbon vapour would conduct the current as an arc lamp does. [illustration: fig. ] . _arc lamp._--we fastened two electric light carbons to the ends of copper wires connected for the -volt current. a rheostat, _r_ (fig. ), in circuit, was set at . ohms. one lower carbon was fastened into a clamp, and the other was touched to it, and then drawn away about three-eighths of an inch. a very brilliant light was produced. probably about candle-power. the ammeter _a_ showed amperes, and the volt meter _v_ showed volts. volts × amperes = watts, candle-power, watts per candle-power. the arc light is the cheapest of all lights but is too dazzlingly bright for household purposes. it is used for outdoor lighting chiefly, and particularly for large search-lights. the temperature is over degrees, which boils the carbon and fills the gap between the two pencils with a stream of carbon vapour. this conducts the current like the filament in an incandescent lamp. the air gap between the carbon pencils would have a resistance of many thousand ohms if it were not for the presence of the carbon vapour. the hot carbon vapour reduces the resistance of this space to . ohms. ( volts)/( . ohms) = amperes. or ( volts)/( . + . ohms) = amperes. the carbon pencils account for part of this resistance--not more than a third of an ohm however. it is evident that arc lamps in use must have an automatic mechanism which shall permit the carbons to touch whenever the current is not passing, but which shall draw them apart to the proper distance after the carbon vapour has been formed, or, as we say, after the arc has been established. this mechanism is nothing else than electro-magnets which are operated by the lighting circuit itself. it may require thoughtful examination to recognize these as electro-magnets, in every case, but that is what they are. sometimes they are coils of wire, which do not have iron cores and armatures separate to be sure--but nevertheless they have both of these united in one movable rod, and they produce magnetic fields. suppose i pass an electric current around this coil _a_ (fig. ). the region about the coil becomes a magnetic field with its north pole situated at a point in space, say _n_. the influence of this field causes the iron rod to become a magnet with its south pole uppermost, and if the current is strong enough, and the field which it produces is strong enough, it will lift the iron rod up into the coil. by varying the strength of the current you see i may make this rod dance up and down in space touching nothing--a veritable ghost dance. [illustration: fig. ] it may be pettifogging to say that the upper portion of this iron rod is the core of the magnetic field, and its lower portion is the armature. yet this is right, and pettifogging may be right when it is the only way to bring out the fact. our great study now is to produce light without heat, or at least to come as near to it as the firefly does. the firefly gives per cent. light and two per cent. heat. the arc lamp gives per cent. light and per cent. heat. the carbon filament gives per cent. light and per cent. heat. when we have made considerable progress in that direction we shall take electric lamps out of the chapter on electric heating and form a new chapter on electric lighting. one might expect that a rod made of carbon would quickly burn up, particularly when raised to the exceeding high temperature of the electric arc. while it is true that carbon in the form of charcoal burns so readily that it is used instead of kindlings for lighting a fire, carbon in the form of graphite in our so-called "lead" pencils and carbon as it is prepared for electric light pencils burns only very slowly even at exceedingly high temperatures. the carbon rods used in arc lamps endure a temperature of over degrees, without losing more than one inch an hour, and half of that is simply volatilized--not burned. one of the most interesting improvements ever made in the arc light is that of enclosing the arc in an inner glass globe. this globe is closed airtight below with a small opening above. when the arc is formed the oxygen of the air in the inner globe is soon consumed and then combustion is no longer possible. we illustrated this by an experiment. an ordinary cork was chosen to fit the large end of an argand lamp chimney and through a hole in this was passed one of the carbon rods (fig. ). a metal clamp made connections between this carbon and the negative wire from the dynamo. the other carbon, attached by a clamp to the positive wire, was thrust down into the upper end of the chimney until it touched the negative carbon, and then drawn upward a short distance, drawing an arc, as we say. this soon makes an atmosphere within the chimney where combustion cannot go on for want of oxygen. the arc, however, continues to glow as in the open air, and the carbons may be drawn further apart than in the open air without breaking the arc, hence more of the external resistance may be cut out and a higher voltage put upon the lamp. [illustration: fig. ] carbons which burn out in a single night if used in open arc lamps last two weeks in enclosed arc lamps. the lower carbon, when removed from the lamp chimney of the last experiment, served as a lead pencil to write on paper. the positive carbon would not make a mark on paper. in all arc lamps carbon is distilled from the positive pencil, condensing upon the negative pencil as graphite, which is the material used in making "lead" pencils. they are called "lead" pencils because they were originally made of lead, but now they are made of graphite which is mined from the earth. as soon as the arc is broken it becomes evident that the positive carbon has been heated much the hotter of the two, a fact that could not be detected while it was lighted because of the dazzling brightness of the arc. the negative carbon turns black almost immediately, while the positive carbon remains at a bright red heat for some time. this fact needs to be borne in mind when adjusting arc light carbons in search-lights, stereopticons, and all like apparatus in which the light must be placed at the focus of a lens. that is, it is necessary to know from what point the light really comes and it is necessary to have some adjusting device to keep this point continually at the focus of the lens. . _search-light._--(fig. ). this is simply an arc lamp with reflectors behind it and lenses in front of it. the whole apparatus is pivoted so as to be easily made to shine in any direction. the function of the lenses and the reflectors is to collect stray rays of light and send them all out in the same direction. this is shown in fig. where for simplicity the lens is represented as a single piece. _l_ represents a point of light which will naturally send its rays out in all directions as the radii of a sphere; _m_, _m_, _m_ represents a bright reflecting surface which is given that peculiar curve called a parabola. it has the unique faculty of reflecting in a parallel direction all the rays which may fall upon it from _l_, so long as _l_ is kept at that particular point called the focus, _a b_ is a lens of glass which has that peculiar curve that enables it to bend all rays which fall upon it from _l_, so that they may pass out parallel. [illustration: fig. ] . _stereopticon._--this also has the necessary devices to gather the rays of the arc lamp and send them forth parallel, and in addition it has a series of lenses which produce upon a distant screen an enlarged picture of any transparent object held in these parallel rays. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _burglar's flash-light._--there are many forms of this. the one we examined is represented in fig. . we unscrewed a metal ring at the left-hand end and found, first a glass lens and behind that a miniature electric light, requiring three volts and half an ampere. we knew, therefore, that it must be supplied with two cells, since one cell may give not more than . volts. we also knew that it would only be used to _flash_ a light, since if dry cells are required to furnish half an ampere continuously they soon run down. behind the lamp there was a bright metal reflector--the lens and reflector are fairly well represented in fig. . the filament of the lamp is connected with two small battery cells in the handle. these may be removed and replaced by new ones by unscrewing a cap at the right-hand end. the circuit is closed by a metal spring on the side of the tube, which acts as a push button. it is situated where it may be conveniently pressed by the thumb. the small batteries necessarily have a short life and must be replaced quite frequently. being a special thing they cost nearly twice what the regular dry cell does. [illustration: fig. ] . _mercury vapour lamp._--this is an interesting variety of arc light in which the vapour of mercury takes the place of the vapour of carbon. _g_, in fig. , represents a glass tube from which the air has been exhausted. the wires of the lighting circuit are fused into the ends of the tube. at one end, and in contact with one of these wires, is a small pool of mercury. by pulling the cord _c_ the tube is tilted on the pivot _p_, so that a stream of mercury flows along the whole length of the tube and closes the electric circuit. when the tube falls back into its normal position, as represented in the figure, the electric arc persists upon the mercury vapour. incandescent mercury vapour gives light strong in green, blue, and violet, but deficient in red and yellow. it, therefore, gives nothing its natural appearance but casts a ghastly hue over everything. this lamp was invented in , by peter cooper-hewitt, grandson of the founder of cooper union in new york city. it gives a very suitable light for making photographic prints, and is much used for that. this lamp operates upon the -volt circuit. it is the longest step yet taken toward getting light without heat, but perhaps shows what we must expect when we reach that goal, namely, unsatisfactory colour values in the light. probably such is the case with the firefly. . _the moore light._--in prof. d. mcfarland moore brought out his vacuum tube light (fig. ). we visited an ordinary dry goods store which had been equipped with this. glass tubing is put together very much as one would put up a stove pipe or a job of plumbing. the joints are fused and made air-tight by playing a flame upon them after the pipe is up in place. this pipe is led around into all nooks and corners where there would be dark places. the air is pumped out of this tube and a trifling amount of some vapour is introduced, the kind varying according to the tint of colour which is desired. [illustration: fig. ] metal terminals are fused into the ends of this tube. the tube we saw was seventy-five feet long. a -volt alternating current is applied to the terminals and the vapour becomes incandescent, filling the whole tube full of light. the first thing that the boys remarked was that although the room was brilliantly lighted no object cast a shadow. it seemed as though light was everywhere and there was no chance to screen it off. . _the nernst lamp._--in the nernst lamp appeared in germany. it is a good illustration of an insulating substance becoming a conductor when heated to a high temperature. the "glower," as it is called, is composed of one or several short rods of clay-like material. this is first heated by sending the electric current through resistance wire placed directly underneath it and connected in shunt with it. when it gets hot, current begins to pass through it, and is automatically cut off from the resistance coil. the glower produces an intensely bright and white light although it does not itself exceed the temperature of degrees. electric installations are now so carefully constructed that fires from poor insulation are very rare. less than one fire in three hundred appears to be traceable to that cause. . _electric welding._--nothing is more common in electrical matters than heat produced by poor contacts. in this laboratory are two chandeliers, each controlled by a wall switch. after the current has been on the chandeliers for half an hour you will always find one of those wall switches warm, while the other is not perceptibly warmer than other objects in the room. the explanation is that there is poor contact in one of them. when two metal conductors touch one another at a mere point the electric current, in passing from one of these conductors to the other across such a narrow bridge, meets resistance and develops heat--sometimes heat enough to fuse the point, and either break the contact, or, what is more likely, start a minute arc at that point. in some cases this makes the apparatus dangerously hot, and in other cases it bridges the gap with a broader and better contact--a true electric weld. electric welding is applied to everything, from chicken fence to railway rails. enormously large currents are used for the purpose, in some cases as high as , amperes being employed. the rails of railroads are welded end to end by a current of several thousand amperes sent through the joint by perhaps two or three volts. the joint heats and fuses together merely because the poor contact offers resistance to this enormous current. ix lighting a summer camp by electricity summer had arrived. the science club had held its last meeting for the season. harold had engaged three other boys to spend the summer at the farm. i had the roof of an old mill reshingled and gave it to them for a camp. they were to make it over inside. i sent the boys to the country as early as it was possible for them to get away. it would be six weeks later before i could follow them. [illustration: fig. ] when i did arrive i found they had elaborate schemes indeed. the first floor of the mill had been partitioned off into rooms, as shown in diagram (fig. ), _a_, _b_, _c_ and _d_ being bedrooms; _e_ was a wash room, the like of which has never been seen before. it had not occurred to me that the mill pond _m_, which came to the very corner of the building, would furnish the boys a complete system of city water-works. at _g_, in the corner of this room, they had cut a hole in the floor and nailed slats across upon the under side of the timbers, making a depressed floor for a shower bath. this was directly over a stream of water which issued from the mill pond. hanging from the ceiling over this spot was the nozzle of a garden hose. the other end of this hose ran into the mill pond. the nozzle was capable of delivering either a stream or a shower, according to which way it was twisted in its socket. it was also capable of shutting off entirely the flow of water. the boys asked me to hold my hand in the shower, and to my astonishment it was warm. "what, pray, is your heating system?" i inquired. they invited me to go and see. moored outside in the mill pond at the corner of the building was our motor boat, which the boys were allowed to use freely and which they understood as well as any one. [illustration: fig. ] they said that ordinarily they used for the shower the cool water of the lake, which they much preferred, and which ran of its own accord, the lake being a trifle higher than the nozzle of the shower, but knowing my antipathy for the cold bath they had slipped the end of the rubber hose over the outlet pipe of the pump which served to cool the gasolene engine in the boat. the engine uncoupled from the propeller was heating and pumping water for my shower bath, and i immediately accepted the invitation to enjoy it. certainly no bath was ever more delightful than that one, coming, as it did, at the close of a hot, dirty ride from the city. i had hastened the bath, because it was already dusk and i had no candle at the mill, but suddenly the room lighted up as if by magic. i saw then what had before escaped my notice, a miniature electric lamp, six-volt, two-candle-power, tungsten, such as are used for tail lights on automobiles. since tungsten requires about . watts per candle-power it was a . -watts lamp, and since it was adapted to six volts it would take about four tenths of an ampere. volts × . ampere = . watts. the little wire filament looked to be about . inches long. its resistance must have been ohms. volts/ ohms = . ampere. a battery of five cells was used to furnish electric current for the lamp. lamps were installed in the bedrooms also and were not intended to be used more than half an hour at a time. dry battery cells are excellent for this purpose, and for so small a current the cheapest dry cells are as good as the more expensive ones. these cost fifteen cents a cell. they were connected by short pieces of bare copper wire; no. "in series," as shown in fig. . a wire ran from the central (carbon) binding post of one cell to the marginal (zinc) binding post of the next cell. this battery was placed on a shelf in a convenient place. a bare copper wire, no. , was attached to the carbon post at one end of the battery and another to the zinc post at the other end of the battery, and these two wires ran to all the rooms where lamps were placed. the wires were fastened up on the walls by staples, taking care that they should nowhere come in contact with each other and "short circuit" the battery. whenever it was necessary for one wire to cross another, small pieces of pasteboard were tacked up to prevent their touching each other. the lamps _l_ (fig. ) were connected to these wires "in parallel." they cost forty cents apiece, and the miniature sockets, into which they were screwed, cost five cents each. one of these sockets was screwed to the side of the door casing in each bedroom. wires were attached to the line wires, simply by twisting them together. one of these came down to one side of the socket and the other came to the other side of the socket through a switch, _s_, made of a strip of sheet zinc. the cost of the entire installation was as follows: dry cells at c . . cp., -volt tungsten lamps at c . miniature wall sockets at c . wire, etc. . ---- $ . [illustration: fig. ] suppose each lamp is used thirty minutes a day for days, making a total of fifty hours. there are five lamps, making a total of lamp hours. each lamp takes . of an ampere, making a total of ampere hours. the lamps are operated at six volts, making a total of watt hours. days . an hour each day --- hours lamps --- lamp hours . ampere for each lamp --- ampere hours volts --- watt hours this amount of electrical energy would cost six cents if generated by a dynamo. it is generally stated that electricity costs fifty times as much if generated by battery as by dynamo. in this case the battery actually did serve for the whole season of days and was not exhausted at the end of the season. indeed, since that season, the boys have found that battery cells which had been too much exhausted for use on the engine served very well on the lamps. by use the cells lose, not much in voltage, but in the ability to furnish sufficient quantity in amperes to make the hot spark required for igniting the mixture of gasolene and air in an engine cylinder. when they have been discarded for use with the engine they may still furnish the small amount of current required for the lamps--provided not too many lamps are used at one time. the dynamo current is always surprisingly cheap when compared with that produced by a battery, but, on the other hand, we are never as economical in the use of the dynamo current as we are with that of the battery. if all five of the lamps in the above equipment were lighted at the same time and kept burning for half an hour, the battery would run down rather badly and would not fully recover. but if one only is used at a time and for not more than thirty minutes, or if more than one is used at a time and for a proportionately shorter period, the battery will receive no damage. dry battery cells may be purchased for either twenty-five cents or fifteen cents each. the chief difference is that the former are capable of giving larger current than the latter, when working against very small resistance. for example, the former may give twenty to twenty-five amperes on a short circuit, that is, connected directly with the ammeter without other resistance, while the latter may give not more than six to ten amperes under similar conditions. for most purposes, other than igniting gasolene engines, in which dry cells are used, an exceedingly small current is required. the electric bell, for example, may not require more than . of an ampere and that intermittently. now it is found by experience that the dry cells which are only capable of furnishing on short circuit six to ten amperes will last quite as long in bell work as one which may give on short circuit twenty to twenty-five amperes. hence it is good economy to buy them. "what a fine sitting room you have here! (fig. , _f._) when do you expect to fit it up?" said i. instantly reminding myself, however, that boys do not want a sitting room, i inquired what they intended to use this fine, large room for. they told me that they had plans for making a machine shop out of that. the idea had been suggested by a counter shaft which still hung from the ceiling, and they had discovered that the old mill wheel would still roll over if the penstock were repaired. i replied that i would see what could be done about that sometime. on the next day matters concerning the motor boat engaged our attention. x how electricity feels what is more fickle and yet more fascinating than a motor boat? on the morning after my arrival at millville the boys wanted me to go out with them in the motor boat on the mill pond, as our beautiful little lake is called. each one took a hand at trying to start the boat, but although she had acted perfectly well the day before, on this morning no one could get a single explosion. the switch was closed. the gasolene was turned on. the carburetor valves were set at the mark. the spark coils responded with their familiar buzz. she had been primed and, when she had refused to respond to this treatment, the pet valves were opened and the wheel rolled over several times to sweep out the cylinders. but absolutely nothing moved her--neither coaxing nor gibes. suddenly some one rolled the wheel over for the five-hundredth time and she started and behaved well all day. all this would not have given us the slightest aggravation if we could only have found out what was the matter and what it was we finally did to correct it. but this we shall probably never know, and hence we are worshippers of the motor boat while we continue to distrust it and complain of it. while the boat was running one of the boys noticed that a binding post at the end of one of the spark plugs seemed to be loose. he inadvertently put out his hand to tighten it and received a terrific shock. this raised the question among the boys, why one gets a shock from some of the binding posts in the electrical equipment but not from others. i suggested that we run in and call at the house to get my portable measuring instrument (fig. ) and a little lunch, and then go up to the upper end of the lake and take our time in examining the electrical equipment of the boat. [illustration: fig. ] the engine had two cylinders. there were two batteries--one for each cylinder. each battery consisted of five dry cells like the one represented in fig. . "now, why don't i feel the electricity when i touch the binding posts of this dry cell?" inquired one of the boys as he handled one of the cells which we had taken out. "well, i'll give you two reasons why do you not feel it," said i. "first, because you were touching only one binding post at a time. you must touch both of the binding posts of the battery cell at the same time, so that the electric current may pass from one post to the other through your body. second, even when you do touch both binding posts at the same time you feel no current, simply because you offered probably about , ohms of resistance to the passage of the current and inasmuch as the one cell exerts only . volts of pressure, it could send only about . of an ampere through you. this you cannot feel. [illustration: fig. ] ( . volts)/( , ohms) = . amperes. "i now connect my instrument as a volt meter between the binding posts of the cell and you see it indicates . volts, and when i connect it for an instant as an ammeter you see it indicates twenty amperes. that is twice as much as they use for executing criminals by electricity. so you see if you could reduce your resistance sufficiently this one battery cell might kill you. some people have less resistance than others. the resistance of the body is chiefly in the outer skin. if one's hands are dry and his skin has been made tough and horny by hard work, he has many times the resistance of one whose hands are moist and whose skin is thin and tender. "suppose we select the tip of the tongue as the portion of the body which will offer the least resistance and will be most sensitive to slight electric currents. let us then connect one dry cell with the ammeter and place the tip of the tongue between the bare ends of the wire at _t_ (fig. ). [illustration: fig. ] "i have connected the ammeter so that it will indicate thousandths of an ampere, and you see that the needle moves only slightly. we cannot call it more than . ampere." each boy in turn tried sending the current through his tongue and each tried to tell how it felt. one said it tingled, another said it felt warm, another said it tasted sour and the other said he did not feel or taste anything. "well," i said, "whether you feel anything or not one-thousandth of an ampere is passing through your tongue and you are offering fifteen hundred ohms of resistance. ( . volts)/( ohms) = . ampere "your hand offers nearly seventy times as much resistance as your tongue. suppose we try increasing the voltage, or pressure, of our electric current. we will connect in series the ten cells, making a battery which you see by the volt meter gives fifteen volts of pressure. we now find that having ten times the pressure it sends ten times as much current as formerly through the tongue." ( volts)/( ohms) = . ampere each one now testified that the battery sent all the current he cared to take through his tongue. if they send one thousand times as much as that through a criminal no wonder it kills him. it produces a twitch when the contact is first made, afterward a decided sensation of warmth and acid taste. if we should increase the voltage tenfold more, say the -volt dynamo current (direct current), and touch the bare conductors with our hands, the ammeter would indicate about . ampere. that is, although this current has about seventy times as much push, or voltage, as a dry cell, no more electricity passes through the fingers than did through the tongue in the preceding experiment with one cell. the fingers offer so much greater resistance. by wetting the fingers and pressing them firmly upon the bare wires, we may make the ammeter read . , that is, we may increase the current tenfold by reducing the resistance to one tenth. but there is nothing disagreeable about the feeling. if the same experiment is tried with the -volt alternating current, although the quantity of current which passes through the fingers is the same as before, the tingling is more perceptible than in the case of the direct current. if we join together seventy-five dry cells, giving a voltage of , and press the bare wires with our wet fingers, the ammeter will indicate . , but there is no tingling sensation, merely a slight warmth. the battery current, being continuous, causes no twitching of the muscles while the contact is closed. the direct current dynamo furnishes a slightly pulsating current. hence, one may tell by the feeling whether an electric current comes from a battery or a direct current dynamo. the alternating-current dynamo gives a surging of electricity back and forth in the wires, and this may be distinguished from the direct current by its feeling; when, however, the number of alternations per second is increased very greatly, one may receive through the body considerable quantities of electricity without feeling it. with a very high frequency current one may put himself in circuit and light a -candle-power lamp without any disagreeable sensation. the outer skin is our chief insulation. if it is dry and well toughened by work it offers a resistance of over , ohms upon gentle contact. a wounded spot, or places like the tongue with moist, thin skin, may offer a resistance as low as ohms. if one has a pin prick or a splinter in his hand which he cannot locate, he may hold one bare wire of a -volt alternating circuit in one hand and move the other bare wire about on the suspected region, and know when it reaches the spot by a tingling sensation. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. feeling electricity] one may touch lightly the -volt direct current and scarcely note any difference between this and the -volt direct current, because one is not very sensitive to the difference between . ampere and . ampere passing through his body. ( volts)/( , ohms) = . ampere, and ( volts)/( , ohms) = . amperes physicians treat certain ailments by the use of the electric current. for this purpose they invariably use a pulsating or alternating current and reduce the resistance by using metal handles and wet sponges for contact with the skin, but even so a very small amount of current passes. the moderate twitching of the muscles seems to be the end sought. men who are supposed to be killed by electric shocks often die from other causes. a man perching upon an electric light pole, repairing wires, may come in contact with a wire charged, say, to volts. he may receive a shock which throws him in an unconscious condition across another live wire which burns its way into his flesh, or he may fall to the ground and be killed by the fall. a workman may hold a tool so as to short circuit a current through it, making it red hot in his hands. so many men who have been shocked into unconsciousness by high voltage currents have recovered consciousness later that we cannot say how much current is required to kill a man. for the execution of criminals to volts are used, and by special metal contacts ten to fourteen amperes are forced through the body. the first execution of a criminal by electricity was performed in sing sing prison, new york state, in . there was at that time a hot controversy among experts over the question whether death, or merely unconsciousness, could be produced by electricity. to be on the safe side the legislature passed a law requiring that the electrocution of a criminal should be followed immediately by the dissection of his body. only six states out of forty-nine have thus far adopted that method of capital punishment, five have abolished capital punishment, and thirty-eight still prefer hanging to electrocution. but it should be remembered that it is amperes, not volts, that kill. one often hears the meaningless expression, "he received volts into his body." the volts indicate the pressure, analogous to pounds per square inch of water pressure. amperes of electricity are analogous to gallons of water. it is possible to have exceedingly high voltage of electricity without amperes enough to do damage. when one holds his finger near to a rapidly moving leather belt and a stream of sparks passes between the finger and the belt, the voltage may be , or even , , but the quantity in amperes is too small to do any damage or even produce much sensation. a similar thing is true when one produces sparks by rubbing a cat's back, or lights the gas by a spark produced by rubbing the feet upon a carpet. such sparks are miniature lightning discharges. the real lightning does damage because it furnishes quantity, measurable in amperes, as well as extremely high volts of pressure. at this point i was reminded by the boy who had received a shock from the engine that morning that he had touched only one binding post. how then had he closed a circuit through his body, and how could he receive such a terrible shock when there were only a few battery cells to produce the electric current. i replied that he had the distinction of having encountered about a -volt current. in the language of the newspapers he might say, _took volts and still live._ we must next proceed to show how he really did close the circuit and how the spark coil enables a battery of a few dry cells to produce exceedingly high voltages. xi the electrical sparking equipment for a gasolene engine under the shade of a great sugar maple, with millville lake spread before us, we took apart and examined the entire equipment for producing the electric sparks to explode the mixture of gasolene and air in the cylinders of our motor boat. the engine has two cylinders. for each cylinder there is a separate battery and spark coil. inasmuch as the electrical outfit is duplicated for each cylinder it will be necessary for us to consider the case of one cylinder only. when this engine is running, explosions per minute are produced in each cylinder. in one-twelfth of a second the following four events take place: . the cylinder is swept clear of the products of combustion formed by the last explosion. . four drops of gasolene are vaporized and mixed with one quart of air and pushed into the cylinder by the pressure of the atmosphere. . this mixture is compressed by the piston in the cylinder to about one-fifth its original volume. . the mixture is heated to its kindling temperature, which is above degrees. it then burns with a sudden expansion, which drives the piston before it and pushes the crank which is concealed in the lower end of the cylinder half-way around. the crank is attached to the shaft, which carries the fly-wheel upon one end and the propeller wheel upon the other end. the momentum of the moving parts--chiefly that of the fly-wheel--suffices to accomplish the remaining half of the revolution. that any machine could be devised which could repeat these four events times a minute was unthinkable a few years ago. the first men who thought that a gasolene engine could be a practical thing were considered visionaries, but now they are found to be more practicable than steam engines. they are so efficient that they compete with the steam engine upon its own ground, and, in addition, they have opened up regions of usefulness which the steam engine can never exploit. so far as we can see, they have a permanent monopoly of the navigation of the air. it is with the fourth event mentioned above, viz., kindling the explosive mixture, that we are now concerned. the high temperature required for this is obtained by forcing an electrical current against resistance. five dry battery cells would very readily heat a short piece of fine wire to a sufficiently high temperature to explode the mixture, but it is impossible to alternately heat and cool a wire twelve times a second. it is too slow an operation. the only other method known at present is to imitate the lightning and force an electric current against the resistance of the air with sufficient power to produce the required heat. this, however, requires an extremely high voltage--at least volts, and our battery of five cells has not more than seven and a half volts of pressure. the interesting question then is, how does the spark coil enable us to raise the voltage from to . to help toward an understanding of the matter i took seven small wire nails which i found in the boat--they were sixpenny finishing nails. i then took two or three yards of no. insulated magnet wire, such as is used upon electric bells, etc. i use it more often than any other wire, and always have some about the boat. i fastened one end of this wire to one of the binding posts of a dry cell (fig. ), _a_, and attached branches _c_ and _d_ to it. the other end, _b_, was left free to act as a switch for closing the circuit by touching it to the remaining binding post. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] one boy then touched the bare ends _c_ and _d_ to the tip of his tongue, while i touched repeatedly the binding post with _b_. there was, of course, no sensation. we now wound a portion of the wire upon the bundle of nails, laying on about fifty turns. (see fig. .) the tongue was now placed at _t_ and _b_ was touched a few times to the free binding post. a very decided shock was felt, not while the end of the wire was resting upon _b_, but at the instant of touching and again at breaking the connection. the shock was noticeably stronger at the instant of breaking than of making the connection. there was also a spark formed when the connection was broken, which did not appear before the coil was made. we next wound on more of the wire--about fifty more turns (fig. ). when now connections were made and broken at _b_ the tongue at _t_ felt a much more decided shock, and a larger spark occurred at _b_ when the circuit was broken. both the tongue and the spark indicate that the voltage is creeping up very rapidly in this series of experiments. we next connected two cells in series, then three, four, and finally five cells in place of the one. the spark grew larger and "fatter," as the boatmen say, with each addition of a cell. it was not pleasant to use the tongue in the experiment after the number of cells exceeded two. i removed the branch _d_ from the wire _b_ and connected it to the binding post, as shown in fig. . i then removed the crystal from my watch and poured into it a little gasolene. i rubbed the ends of _b_ and _d_ together over this, and when they separated the spark which was produced would not light the gasolene. we had made a coil which produced a spark that looked like a miniature flame, but still was not hot enough to set fire to gasolene vapour. it simply needs more iron in the core and more turns of wire about it. bringing the ends of the wires together and separating them is somewhat like drawing an arc with the arc light carbons. it requires a vastly higher voltage to make a spark jump across an air gap than it does to lead it across thus. [illustration: fig. ] the kind of coil we have made (only larger) is very much used in houses as a gas-lighting coil (to be described later). it is very much used also for exploding gasolene engines. it generally passes under the name of the "make and break" coil. the revolving shaft of the engine is made to push together the ends of the wire and separate them at the right instant to make the spark for explosion. of course this is done inside of the engine cylinder. that type of coil does not offer resistance enough to protect the battery, and dry cells soon run down if used with it. the coils that we have in this boat are somewhat different from that, the details of which we cannot now entirely explain. they offer enough resistance to cut the current required of the battery down to one third what the "make and break" coil would take and at the same time they raise the voltage so much higher that the spark will jump across an air gap without being led across as an arc. hence they are called "jump spark" coils. [illustration: fig. ] it will be remembered that when we were studying the dynamo we produced an electric current by moving a magnet. we may now add that an electric current may be produced by simply changing the strength of a magnetic field. the coil that we have just made creates a magnetic field in the region about itself whenever a current is passing through it. the tongue at _t_ (fig. ) detects an extra current while the magnetic field is being produced, or while it is dying away, or it will detect any slight variations in the strength of the current which produces the magnetic field. it is customary to distinguish between these two currents. the battery current which produced the magnetic field is called the primary current and the current which is detected by the tongue is called the secondary current. the primary current in our experiments had only a few volts of pressure, from one to seven. the secondary current had many volts, as indicated by the spark. if we rub the end of the wire _c_ across the binding post under _b_ (fig. ) no spark occurs. the current does not in this case go through the coil, and no secondary current is produced. whenever we touch the wire _b_ to that post we have, in addition to the primary current which has not voltage enough to produce a spark, a secondary current flowing in the same wire at the same time and having voltage enough to produce a spark. the primary current is continuous while the contact is closed; the secondary current is momentary, as the tongue detects, and is produced only while changes are being made in the strength of the magnetic field. we will now take another piece of wire and wind upon the coil about two hundred more turns, leaving this outer coil wholly disconnected from the inner one, (fig. ). i connect _c_ and _d_, the terminals of what we may call the secondary coil, with my measuring instrument and i connect _a_, one of the terminals of the primary coil, with the battery. i then rub _b_, the other primary terminal across the free binding post of the battery. at the instant of closing the primary circuit--that is, of building up the magnetic field--a secondary current is induced in the secondary coil, which lasts for only an instant, too brief a time for the needle to measure it, although its motion indicates both the presence and the direction of the induced current. while the primary circuit remains closed--that is, while no change is occurring in the strength of the magnetic field--the needle returns to zero, indicating no secondary current. but when now the primary circuit is broken and the magnetic field loses its strength, the needle indicates a momentary current in the secondary coil and _in the opposite direction from what it had been at first_. [illustration: fig. ] if, therefore, i rapidly make and break the current at _b_ i produce an alternating current in the secondary coil. i will connect _c_ and _d_ with a miniature lamp and, resting a coarse file upon the free binding post, i will rake the end of the wire _b_ up and down upon this file so that, as it dances along upon the file, it will rapidly make and break the primary circuit, and therefore rapidly change the strength of the magnetic field. you notice that the lamp lights up moderately well. it is being lighted by an alternating current. i move the wire a little more slowly and you see the flicker of the alternations. according to the label upon the lamp it requires ten volts, and our battery could not give that. we have therefore "stepped up" the voltage as we say and we have a veritable step-up transformer. in this case the primary and secondary circuits are entirely separate. it is a familiar fact that different electric currents may pass through the same wire at the same time without apparent conflict. we send numerous telegraph despatches through the same wire at the same time. it is quite as easy for several pairs of persons to telephone over the same wire at the same time as it is for those same several pairs to carry on separate conversations in the same room at the same time, at, say, an "afternoon tea." we may use the same wire at the same time to carry direct and alternating currents. this fact was first discovered in by bedell of cornell university. primary and secondary currents do not require separate primary and secondary coils to convey them. they may or may not be connected into one continuous coil. it is quite immaterial whether they are connected or not so long as they are in the same magnetic field. indeed, it seems that the field outside of the wire may be quite as important as the wire itself. [illustration: fig. ] we have now turns in the primary and turns in the secondary coils. let us connect _b_ with _c_ so as to make one continuous circuit of turns. let us then put a branch upon _b_ to connect with the battery, thus having turns for the primary circuit, and put a branch upon _a_ to connect with the lamp, thus having turns upon the lamp, (fig. ). when now we rub _b_ upon the file, as before, the lamp lights up more brightly than before, indicating that we have stepped up the voltage still higher. varying the strength of the magnetic field induces a secondary current and the voltage of the induced current is determined, in part, by the number of turns in the secondary circuit. if what we have been saying is true we ought to be able to get these same results from an electric bell. to test this we connected wires with _a_ and _c_, (fig. ), and since i knew that the secondary current at _s_ would be too severe for the tongue we decided to feel it with the hands. for this purpose we want a larger surface than the wires themselves offer for contact with the hands, and so i twisted the bare end of each wire around an iron spike. the four boys then arranged themselves in line, joining hands, and the boy at each end of the line held a spike in his free hand. thus we had put the enormous resistance of four human bodies joined in series in the secondary circuit. when now i connected two dry cells with _a_ and _b_ (_p_, fig. ) the hammer of the bell acted, like the file in the former case, as interrupter of the primary circuit. as it rapidly made and broke the primary circuit, it produced rapid changes in the strength of the magnetic field and thus induced a secondary current which the boys all felt. the fact that it forced its way through four bodies shows that its voltage was high. the high voltage was also indicated by the spark which always occurred in the bell. the primary circuit in this case has not more than three volts while the secondary has more than a hundred. we have it in our power to give the secondary current almost any voltage we choose, with this limitation _each increase in voltage necessitates a proportional sacrifice of quantity_. the watt power induced in the secondary circuit cannot exceed that contributed to the primary circuit--indeed cannot quite equal it since there is some loss in heat. [illustration: fig. ] suppose we operate a bell on a primary current having three volts and . ampere, that is, . watt. suppose then the voltage of the secondary current is stepped up to fifty times three, or volts. the quantity of secondary current will be found to be somewhat less than one fiftieth of . or . ampere. the -volt alternating current from the bell is more tolerable than that from a -volt dynamo, because the quantity is limited in the former case. our spark coil has a vibrator which acts precisely like the hammer of the bell to make and break the primary circuit and thus make rapid changes in the magnetic field produced by the primary coil. the primary coil of the spark coil is many times larger than the coil of the bell, that is, it contains many more turns of wire. it has much more iron in the core. we use upon it five cells instead of the two cells upon the bell. the result of all this is that we have a much more powerful magnetic field than that in the bell and many more watts of energy from which to induce a secondary current. now the number of turns employed in the secondary circuit of our spark coil is very great, stepping its voltage up to thousands where the bell induced hundreds. [illustration: fig. ] suppose we now repeat our experiment in which we tried to light the gasolene in the watch crystal, using now the spark coil of the boat instead of our small "home-made" coil. in fig. , b is the battery of five dry cells. _s_ is a switch. _v_ is the vibrator, which, like the hammer of an electric bell, makes and breaks the primary circuit. of course the coil has a core of iron, although that is not here represented, and, of course, the coil has many hundred turns instead of the few here represented, and of course also it is built up of many layers instead of one as here represented. the secondary has very many more turns than the primary, but those in which the primary current passes are common to both circuits. there is also a condenser--not here represented, and not to be described in this book. the result of all this is that the secondary circuit has a voltage of between and , , and a spark jumps across the gap at _c_ between one sixteenth and one eighth of an inch long. this spark is hot enough to light the gasolene which i have put in the watch crystal at _c_. [illustration: fig. ] let us return to the bell for a few minutes. i have here a miniature lamp which requires volts and . ampere, that is, watt, which i will connect at _s_ (fig. ). when now i close the primary circuit with two cells at _p_ you notice that the lamp lights up, but faintly. it is not receiving . ampere. remember we have only . watt at our disposal and this lamp requires watt. hence it is getting only three quarters enough energy. we connect in a third cell and now it lights up to full brilliancy. the resistance of this lamp must be about ohms. ( volts)/( ohms) = . ampere the resistance of the four boys might have been , ohms, and the voltage of the secondary circuit might in that case have been, say, . ( volts)/( , ohms) = . ampere how does it happen that the secondary current had a pressure of volts on the boys but cannot supply even the volts required by the lamp? perhaps we can be brought to appreciate the answer to that question best by asking ourselves some others quite like it. why did not the man who built our mill two generations ago locate it upon the small stream that flowed near his house? the small stream was more conveniently located for him and it has quite as much fall as he got at the foot of this lake. we sometimes express the fact by saying that the "head of water" or the water pressure was quite as much in one of these cases as the other. one boy said that the stream sometimes gives out. another one said that it never did have water enough to run that wheel. "undoubtedly the trouble is with the quantity," said i, "but i want to show you that we cannot maintain the pressure unless there is sufficient quantity back of it." [illustration: fig. ] in fig. , suppose _a_ represents a small, slim tank of water three feet high. the water-wheel _w_, requires one gallon of water a minute pushed along by a three-foot head of water pressure to run it. the supply pipe _s_ is bringing into the tank not more than one quart of water per minute. a gate at _r_ enables us to regulate the flow of water, as we regulate the flow of electricity, by using more or less resistance. now it is evident that if we close the gate, or partially close it, and allow the tank to fill with water, we may then open the gate and run the wheel for a short time, but the level of the water in the tank soon begins to fall and the pressure grows less and the wheel stops moving. it is just so with all generators of electric current. if we take from them more than they can supply continuously the voltage falls. this is notoriously true of dry cells. like the water tank represented in fig. , they "run down" if used continuously to furnish, say, one ampere of current, but they may furnish it for a short time, the voltage rapidly falling meanwhile. then if given a short rest they "pick up" and will again furnish full pressure. the voltage of a dry cell falls somewhat when it is required to give the very small amount of current required to actuate a volt meter, say . ampere. hence, our volt meter will not quite correctly show what the voltage of a single cell would be on open circuit. notice that, when i put one cell upon this volt meter the needle shows . volts; but when i put four cells in series upon it the needle indicates six volts, as nearly as we can read it. that is, the voltage of each cell in this case appears to be . . what has increased the voltage of a cell from . to . ? simply this: when . ampere, the amount required by the volt meter, was taken from one cell it reduced its pressure, but when a multiplier with ten times the resistance was added we secured our reading by using only . ampere of current, and this did not appreciably reduce the true pressure of the cells. the induced current from our bell when held back by , ohms of resistance in the four boys was able to push with volts of pressure, and . ampere passed without noticeably reducing this pressure, but when the same current was held back by only ohms in the filament of the lamp nearly forty times as much current passed, and the pressure dropped to something less than ten volts. "we will try an experiment to show how the voltage will suddenly fall when we reduce the resistance of your four bodies. [illustration: fig. ] "fill these two empty tin pails in which our lunch was brought with water from the lake and sprinkle in the salt left over from the lunch. now twist a bare copper wire around the bail of each pail and connect these with the bell so as to get the induced current from its magnet. (see fig. .) let the two pails of water be the terminals of the two wires at _s_. now you four boys wet your hands in the water and then join hands, and those at the two ends of the line put your free hands upon the outside of the pails of water while i close the primary circuit. you of course feel the current just as you did when you held the spikes in your hands in a former experiment. but now you two end boys put your free hands into the salt water, and you instantly get a very smart shock. the resistance is no longer , . it has dropped way down to , and if the voltage had remained at you would have received a terrible shock, but the voltage has dropped down to five. it is as though you had been pushing very hard against a post and it suddenly gave way. you cannot push against a thing which offers no resistance. so the voltage falls when resistance is reduced, and particularly if the source of supply has very little capacity. here is another experiment you must try when you go back to the city. at a certain water faucet in my laboratory the pressure is disagreeably high. the water flows with great force and spatters badly. we can easily reduce the pressure so that the water will flow in a limpid stream. fig. shows the situation; _f_ is the faucet, and in the pipe underneath the sink there is a stop-cock _c_. this may be adjusted permanently so that the faucet _f_ will act pleasantly. the same thing is represented again at the gas stove. let _f_ in the fig. represent a gas cock at the stove. suppose the pressure is so high that the gas flames pass more gas than is readily consumed. it is possible to adjust a stop-cock like c further back in the pipe so as to produce hotter flames, get rid of the poisonous fumes of half burned gas, and cut down the monthly gas bills one half. [illustration: fig. ] "my garden hose will usually throw a stream across the street, which is very desirable when one wishes to sprinkle the street, but this pressure is disastrous when i wish to sprinkle the flowers. turning down the stop-cock at the nozzle makes it shoot a smaller stream but more spiteful in pressure, knocking the flowers to pieces and washing the soil away from their roots. but if i partially close the stop-cock at the side of the house where the hose is attached i may have the stream of water flow as gently as i choose. "i should meet precisely the same situation if i tried to ring an ordinary electric bell by a -volt current, and i should use the same method of overcoming the difficulty. "the great virtue of the dynamo is that it can furnish a large supply so that the voltage is kept constant on a great flow of current. [illustration: fig. ] "i have not forgotten the question, but have tried to work toward its answer all this time. the question is, why did ernest get a shock this morning when he touched only one binding post, and when the battery of five cells is not capable of giving shocks to any one who touches its binding posts directly? we need one more diagram to give the final answer. in fig. _e_ represents the binding post from which the shock was received. _b_ is the battery of five cells, _c_ is the spark coil, _g_ is the engine cylinder, _f_ is the spark plug. when one wishes to start the engine he closes the switch _s_. this makes a continuous conductor from the battery to the metal cylinder itself. as the engine rolls over it closes the gap in the conductor at _d_ for an instant. the primary circuit is then completed and the current passes from _b_ to the cylinder, through the metal of the cylinder to _d_, then to the coil _c_, where it passes through a portion of the coil and then back to the battery. the vibrator on the coil causes the magnetic field to rapidly vary in strength. this induces a secondary current in the whole coil which, because it passes through a very great number of turns, has a high voltage. this passes from _c_ through _b_ to the base of the engine, then up the walls of the cylinder to the plug _f_, then jumps across the gap at _a_, causing the spark which explodes the mixture of gasolene and air in the cylinder. the spark plug _f_ is porcelain--an exceedingly good insulator. through the centre of this passes a wire from _a_ to _e_. the current passes up this and back to _c_. now the engine rests upon the floor of the boat, and ernest stood upon the same floor. the wood of this floor when dry and clean is a very good insulator, but when wet, and particularly when wet with water that has ever so slight an amount of any salt in solution, it becomes a conductor for such high tension currents. when therefore ernest, standing upon the floor of the boat, touched the binding post, _e_, this induced current of high voltage found it about as easy to pass from the metal of the engine cylinder through the wood to his body and through his body to _e_ as to jump across the short air gap at _a_. there are two things upon which he may congratulate himself. " . while the coil stepped up the voltage so high it reduced the available quantity of the current, so that the shock was a safe one. " . he received only a portion of the current which passed. the major part of it passed across the gap at _a_, otherwise we should have noticed that the engine missed an explosion when he touched the binding post." the only part of this electrical outfit from which one may receive a shock is that line from _e_ to _c_. the greatest difference in electric pressure is always to be found between the two extremities of the electric generator; as, for example, between the carbon end and the zinc end of the battery, the positive and negative poles of the dynamos; the right-hand and left-hand end of this coil. since the right-hand end is connected by good conductors with the metal of the engine and with the floor of the boat and through it with our bodies, we are in the same electrical condition as the right end of the coil; but the left-hand end and the wire connecting it with _e_ are forced by the varying magnetic field into a very different state of electric tension, and it is insulated from the engine and from us by the porcelain spark plug. we say that the "difference in potential" between the two sides of this system is to , volts. the water in this lake flows through the stream at the other end of the lake to the ocean. the water of the ocean evaporates to form clouds. clouds drift over the land and drop their rain to replenish the lake. the difference in water level between this lake and the ocean is twenty feet. a difference in water level is what makes it a water power and it is what occasioned the building of our mill. this difference of water level corresponds in our electric generators to the difference in potential. the difference in potential maintained by our battery of five cells when not producing current is . volts. the difference in potential between the two ends of our coil, when the battery is agitating its magnetic field, is perhaps a thousand times as much, or volts. the boys took their swim in the lake and afterward, while we were all on shore lying on the grass, they brought up again the question of the machine-shop. they were anxious to know if i had any plans in regard to it. i said i had been thinking about it a good deal over night but had been waiting to hear their plans. well, they thought it would be good to have a turning lathe, but could not think of anything else unless it might be a grindstone run by power. i said i had thought of a central station electric plant. at this they all sat up. "hydro-electric stations are the proper thing now," i remarked. "on the rio grande river in colorado they are constructing several plants where water power will be utilized to generate electricity for use more than one hundred and fifty miles away. for transmitting electricity to such a distance they step up the voltage, or electro-motive force as it is called, to , volts. they are harnessing the au sable river in michigan to generate electricity and transmit it at , volts e. m. f. to towns nearly two hundred miles away. electricians use e. m. f. for electro-motive force, just as you boys use "exams." as slang for the motive force in school. of course we are aware that since some of the water power of niagara had been converted into electric power to run street cars and factories and furnish electric light and electric heat as far away as buffalo, twenty-six miles distant. about $ , , are now being invested in hydro-electric enterprises even in mexico. by this time the boys were all standing up and staring at me, while harold inquired if i were talking in my sleep. "i have at any rate succeeded in waking you all up," said i, "and what i have said is not altogether a joke. let me explain somewhat at length." xii electricity from central stations large dynamos generate electricity very much more cheaply than small machines can, and machines which have a full load continually produce the current very much more cheaply than those which run upon very light load part of the time. the largest central stations with load evenly distributed for the whole day could furnish electricity profitably at four cents per kilowatt hour. there are many small electric lighting plants which furnish current from sundown to midnight only at fifteen cents per kilowatt hour, with little profit. the transformer (fig. ) makes it possible to gather all this generation of electricity for sparsely settled districts into large central stations, located sometimes far away from the consumer perhaps, where there is abundant power in some water-fall, thus saving the expense of coal for running the dynamos. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. operating the switchboard] a few years ago there were no central stations for this purpose. now according to the latest census reports there are in the united states about , plants, including those which belong to certain cities, that generate electricity for sale, and there are twice as many more isolated plants to furnish light and power in factories, hotels, etc. [illustration: fig. ] the money invested in central station business now exceeds six billion dollars, and the annual output of electric current is sufficient to keep eight billion -candle-power carbon filament electric lights burning continuously night and day. all this has more than doubled in the last five years. central stations are now furnishing about five times as much current for heating, cooking, and charging automobiles as they did five years ago. about one third of all the central stations depend on water power. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] we might take as the type of hydro-electric central station, that is, one which generates electricity by water-power, the glenwood station of the central colorado power company. this station has two horse-power water turbines. each water-wheel drives an alternating-current generator which develops volts of e. m. f. these water wheels and generators are shown in fig. . the penstocks are to be seen coming through the back wall of the building. they bring water at foot head, or about seventy-five pounds per square inch static (standing) pressure. three huge transformers, each weighing twenty-six tons, step up the e. m. f. from to , volts. these are the cylinders shown in fig. . they simply contain a great many coils of copper wire with a vast amount of iron at the centre. they accomplish in a large way what our spark coil does in a lesser degree. but why go to all this expense to produce such a dangerous and troublesome voltage? the answer briefly is, that while it is dangerous and troublesome the expense is not so great as it would be to supply by any other method the electric current required. denver and numerous other places, large and small, require electric current. from one to two hundred miles away on the grande river, there is vast power running to waste. we have to choose on the one hand between buying power in the shape of coal and distributing power plants to those various localities where electricity is needed, and on the other using this water-power, which is now running to waste, to generate electricity which we may transmit and distribute throughout the one hundred and eighty-five miles to denver, leadville, boulder, dillon, idaho springs, etc. but electric energy transmitted a long distance suffers great loss. [illustration: fig. ] suppose, for instance, i needed to supply fifty amperes at one hundred-volt pressure ten miles distant from the generator, and had a conductor the size of a trolley wire to bring the current. the resistance of the trolley wire is one ohm for every two miles, or five ohms. the drop in voltage is found by multiplying the amperes of current by the ohms of resistance. ten miles from the central station, therefore, the drop on fifty amperes would be × = volts. it would, therefore, be necessary to maintain a pressure of volts at the generator to deliver the fifty amperes at volts. the energy supplied by the generator is volts × amperes = , watts = . k. w. the energy delivered to the consumer is volts × amperes = watts = k. w. in order to deliver fifty cents' worth of electricity per hour to the consumer it would, in this case, be necessary to generate $ . worth of electricity at the central station. that is, about seventy per cent. of the energy generated would be wasted in transmission. if now we decide to generate this electrical energy at ten times as high voltage it will be necessary to transmit only one tenth as many amperes, or five. in this case the drop in voltage would be amperes × ohms = volts. it would be necessary to maintain volts of pressure at the generator to deliver to the consumer the five amperes at volts = watts. that is, to deliver watts in this case we must generate volts × amperes = watts, and less than - / per cent. of the energy generated would be lost in transmission. if now the consumer must have his energy delivered at volts, we must introduce a step-down transformer at his end of the line which may give him amperes at volts = watts. this transformer, being small, will cause a loss of or per cent., but if there were a very large amount to transform it might be done with a loss of only per cent. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] it is not thought to be advisable to raise the voltage at the generator higher than . this will not suffice to supply large working currents to a greater distance than about six or eight miles. for a distance of miles volts are desirable; for miles , volts; for miles , volts; for miles , volts; and for miles , volts. notice that in this table the voltage rises at the rate of per mile. since it is not desirable for the generator itself to produce a higher voltage than , we must depend upon transformers to produce these high voltages. let us then consider, a little more in detail, the construction of a transformer. i have here some drawings of one which i propose that we make in the machine shop, and use in our central station equipment in the future. we will procure the thinnest and softest sheet iron possible and cut out of it a lot of pieces shaped like the letter h with the dimensions shown in fig. . these are to be piled one upon another, with strips of paper between, until the pile is - / inches thick. then four pieces of board are to be bolted to the sides of these (fig. ). the dimensions of each of the four blocks, is to be - / inches long by inches wide by - / inches thick. upon the cross bar of the h we will wind turns of no. double cotton-covered copper wire, bringing out the ends for future attachments, and then wind on turns of no. double cotton-covered copper wire. the wire will fill the space between the blocks as indicated by the diagram in fig. . we will then cut strips of the sheet iron inches long by - / inches wide, and bridge across the ends of the h, prying open the leaves of sheet iron and tucking them in between as shown in fig. . we shall then drill a hole at each corner and bolt them in place. binding posts will be placed at _a_, _b_, _c_, and _d_ (fig. ), and the two ends of the no. wire will be brought to _a_ and _b_ and those of the no. wire will be brought to _c_ and _d_. going through all this detail of construction has probably made you lose sight of the essential features of this transformer. let us for a moment turn back and see what they are. we have a large coil of wire inches long and - / inches in diameter. it is composed of a coarse winding and a fine winding, which we may designate as the primary and secondary coils, if we choose. of course the only reason for having different sizes of wire is so that we may send larger currents through one than the other. the coil has a laminated iron core, that is, it is composed of layers of sheet iron. these layers are insulated from one another. this is essential, although we cannot explain why now. but perhaps the most essential feature of the transformer is that iron extends clear around from one pole of this electro-magnet to the other. fig. represents a section through the coil made in the plane of _e f g_ (fig. ). the core of the magnet is represented as heavily shaded. the _magnetic circuit_ is said to be closed from one pole of this magnet to the other through the strips of iron which pass across the ends and down the sides of the coil. the arrows show the path of the magnetic circuit. the dotted portion shows where the copper wire may be supposed to have been cut across. inasmuch as the electric current is induced in the secondary circuit by continually varying the strength of the magnetic field as much as possible, the alternating current is the most desirable to use in the primary. if the direct current were used an interrupter would be necessary, which would of course produce too much sparking when any but low tension currents are used in the primary circuit. the most interesting and curious fact about the transformer is that the voltages of the primary and secondary currents are in exact proportion to the number of turns in the wire of the two circuits. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] in our transformer the number of turns in the coil between the binding posts _a_ and _b_ is and the number of turns between _c_ and _d_ is . if now we connect a -volt alternating current with the binding posts _a_ and _b_, a volt meter connected across between _c_ and _d_ will show volts, and if _b_ and _c_ be connected by a short wire, bringing in turns into the secondary circuit, a volt meter connected across between _a_ and _d_ will show a voltage of . or if, leaving _b_ and _c_ still connected by a short wire, we connect the -volt alternating current to _a_ and _d_ a volt meter connected across between _a_ and _b_ will show volts, or if connected between _c_ and _d_ it will show volts, and if finally the -volt current is connected to _c_ and _d_ the pressure between _a_ and _b_ will be - / . [illustration: fig. ] the story, then, of the central station which we have chosen as a type is briefly this: falling water makes dynamos revolve, generating a -volt alternating current. this current is sent through the primary windings of transformers. the secondary windings of these transformers have twenty-five times as many turns as the primary coils. this steps up the voltage from to , , making it necessary to send only one twenty-fifth as many amperes over the lines as would be required at volts, and reduces the loss in transmission to nearly one twenty-fifth. at the other end of the line the current traverses the secondary windings of transformers, and the consumer receives his current from primary coils which may step the e. m. f. down to any required volts of pressure, generally . now i shall be glad to have you consider whether this suggests any practicable problems for us here in millville. the sun is nearly setting and i suppose the family is expecting me home. [illustration: fig. ] xiii electricity from an old mill millville is only a name or rather a reminiscence. there was once a village here, but now its population has all gone with the tide down the river, even its ghost appears to have departed. the ruins have all fallen, except the mill, which we propose to revivify. i had built a summer cottage on the shore of the lake, about one mile from the mill. the absolute stillness of the place charmed me when worn out by the noise and heat and dirt and smell of the city. here even the owl twittered softly as if afraid to disturb the silence. the silence which was such a boon to me seemed to be oppressive to the younger members of the family. to prevent therefore their becoming dissatisfied with the place and wishing to go to other resorts, i planned to have some of their best friends spend much of the summer with us, and i encouraged their plans for making use of the mill. i will not offer this as an excuse for introducing electricity into a sleeping valley. indeed, electricity has always disported itself there in the lightning, jumping from cloud to mountain peak as i have seen it nowhere else on earth. the next time i saw the boys they had ambitious plans indeed. the penstock at the mill was to be repaired. the water-wheel was to drive an alternating current dynamo. the voltage of this current was to be stepped up by a transformer. it was to be transmitted to the cottage and there the e. m. f. was to be stepped down again by another transformer. my wife suggested that if it interfered with the simple life it would have to step down and out. harold, however, assured his mother that they were going to simplify everything--even the subject of electricity. their plans were: to light the cottage by electricity; introduce a number of electric back logs, with coloured glass bottles; heat the fireless cooker by electricity; pump the water for the house by electricity; run mother's sewing machine by electricity; run the washing machine and wringer by electricity; heat sad irons by electricity; percolate coffee, wash dishes and run the vacuum cleaner by electricity; operate the door bell and the telephone and wind the clock by electricity. i was sure that if they carried out these plans they would stay in millville at least that summer, so i said go ahead. we fixed the penstock. the boys estimated that cubic feet of water per second would pass through it. they said that a cubic foot of water weighed . pounds and cubic feet weighed pounds. they said it fell at the rate of vertical feet a second, making foot-pounds per second. but foot-pounds per second is one horse-power, hence this is about horse-power. since one horse-power is equivalent to watts of electricity, we have, if we could generate it without loss, said the boys, nearly the equivalent of kilowatts of electricity, or about amperes at volts. there were several things they wanted to know before they could go further with their plans. . how many of these electrical appliances we would be likely to use at one time. . how much current each device would require. . how much they must allow for losses in generating the current, in transmitting it, and in transforming it. we assured them that we would never use more than twenty amperes, say, two thousand watts at one time. they might install a fuse, or circuit breaker in our line to protect their plant against a greater load from us. i told them that they might allow per cent. loss of energy at the dynamo in converting water-power into electric-power. i would suggest generating their current at e. m. f. and stepping it up to for transmission to us, and then stepping it down to about one hundred and ten volts for our use. they might count on about one-third loss on our supply, that is, they would need to generate about three thousand watts in order to deliver us watts. i suggested making our line of no. copper wire, which has a resistance of two ohms to the mile. the distance from the mill to the cottage is one mile, and the complete circuit therefore would require two miles of wire, or four ohms of resistance. if we start with watts and lose per cent. in transforming we shall have watts to transmit. if the voltage has been stepped up fourfold there will be about . amperes to transmit which will suffer a loss of . volts in passing through four ohms of resistance on the line. the loss in transmission will be about per cent., and we shall have on arrival at the cottage about two thousand four hundred and fifty watts with a voltage of . . if now in stepping this down to one fourth the voltage, viz., . , we lose per cent., we shall have left something over two thousand one hundred watts, or nearly twenty amperes. assuming that you are able to generate watts of electricity and that watts must be furnished for transmission to the cottage, you have left watts, which will give you something over fifteen amperes at volts for use in your machine shop. i suggest that we get a dynamo which will generate both alternating and direct current--the alternating current you will send to the cottage, and the direct current you will have for use at the machine shop. but how is it possible for a dynamo to generate both alternating and direct current at the same time? [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] recall that all dynamos are generators of alternating current. if the brushes rest upon rings upon the axle they send forth alternating current--but if the brushes rest upon commutator bars they send forth direct current. now we will have two sets of brushes, one pair of which shall rest upon the rings on the axle, and they will collect alternating current for the cottage, while the other pair will slide over the commutator bars and collect direct current for the machine shop. i have constructed a model which will make it plain. here is a piece of a broom handle (fig. ), one foot long, which shall represent the axle of an armature. _a b c d_ is a stout wire which represents the coil of the armature. in this case it has no iron at its centre. nevertheless it will serve as an armature having one loop of its coil left. _e_ and _f_ are rings, sawed from a piece of brass pipe, which fit snugly upon the axle. another ring of the brass pipe was sawed lengthwise, as shown in fig. . these two halves are also fastened upon the axle and one end of the wire loop, _c_, is fastened to one of these, and the other end of the loop, _b_, is fastened to the other half of the ring. these two halves of the piece of brass pipe are placed so that their edges are near to each other but do not touch on either side of the axle. the two ends of this wire loop are also connected with the rings _e_ and _f_. a short wire connects _b_ and _e_ and another connects _c_ and _f_ passing through the wood of the axle, as shown by the dotted line. we will now revolve this loop slowly about its axle in a strong magnetic field. to produce this field i will send two amperes of electricity through the coils of wire (fig. ), which surround two iron pole pieces that are screwed into an iron base. between the poles _n_ and _s_ of this electro-magnet we will thrust this wire loop and revolve it as an armature very slowly. meanwhile i connect two wires to my sensitive ammeter and let their free ends brush along on the rings _e_ and _f_. the needle of the ammeter swings to and fro for each half revolution of the armature, showing an alternating current of . amperes. if this armature had many turns of wire instead of this one loop, if it had an iron core, and if it should revolve at high speed, the results would differ in degree but not in kind. [illustration: fig. ] we will now move the wires which are acting as brushes over to the metal pieces _b_ and _c_. when now we revolve the armature the needle swings to the right, and just as the needle is about to swing back each brush slides from the plate on which it is rubbing to the opposite one and the needle gets another impulse forward. if the armature is turned rapidly the pulses disappear and the needle stands constantly at about . amperes. this then is both an alternating and a direct current dynamo. it simply needs more iron, more copper wire, and more rapid motion, to give us the watts of electrical energy we are seeking. "but how shall we produce the current which we wish to send around the spools of the field?" inquired the boys. "connect the field with the brushes which rub upon the commutator," i replied. "it will magnetize its own field." * * * * * as good luck would have it, we found that the ledge of rock which furnished the basis for the mill dam was immediately underneath the floor at the north end of the machine shop. upon this we built up a solid foundation for the dynamo. our water-wheel gave a speed of revolutions per minute to the counter shaft. a pulley of two feet in diameter upon this counter shaft was belted to the pulley of one foot in diameter upon the dynamo--thus giving its armature a speed of revolutions per minute. we had to fix a governor upon the water-wheel to keep this speed constant at varying loads. the voltage is very sensitive to slight changes in the speed of the generator. we had next to plan what equipment we should need for the machine shop and to decide where to locate each machine. the first machine we installed was a lathe adapted for use both with metals and wood. among the adjuncts of this were all sorts of drills, chisels, circular saws, grinding and burnishing tools, etc. the second machine located was a small forge with an electric fan to furnish the blast. these were followed by a small band saw and a small planer. the fifth machine was a big grindstone and the sixth was an emery wheel. the boys had a long discussion, running through several days, on the question whether these machines should be belted to the counter shaft, and thus get power directly from the water-wheel, or whether each machine should be operated by an electric motor attached to it. harold said: "suppose i want to saw a piece of wood requiring a horse-power, i must start an eight horse-power water-wheel which will run a six-horse-power dynamo which will operate a two-horse-power motor that will revolve the saw. there is a loss in each machine, and the lighter the load the greater the loss. in order that the motor may deliver one horse-power to the saw, it must receive from the dynamo, say, one and one-half horse-power, and in order that the dynamo may deliver to the motor one and one-half horse-power, it must receive from the water-wheel, say, two horse-power. what is the matter with my saving time and energy by sawing off the block with my own right arm?" "but," said ernest, "you forget that this water-wheel and the dynamo must run all the time by the terms of our agreement with the cottage, and they will run fairly well loaded, so that the starting of the saw will not entail any such losses as you reckon. furthermore the water-power is running to waste, anyway. you simply divert its channel when you start all this machinery. that's all. and lastly, if the saw requires a horse-power, as you say, your right arm could not furnish it." "oh," interposed dyne, "it would take a horse-power to do it as quickly as the machine does, but harold simply proposes to take more time in sawing the block and less in running the machinery. an infant can do the work of a horse if you give him proportionally more time." "i don't like the idea," drawled erg, "that this machinery has got to be kept running all the time. when will a fellow get a chance to sleep or go a-fishing or have any vacation, with this central-station machine shop on his hands all the time?" i had inquired how the last two boys won their nicknames of _dyne_ and _erg_ and had been informed that one was very keen about dining and the other had a great aversion for work. they had doubtless seen these terms somewhere in their reading of physics, but they appeared to have forgotten their significance by a too familiar use of them. i told them that these were sacred terms, the first being a name for the unit of force, while the second designated the unit of work. both boys said that under those circumstances they would like to shed the names. the names, however, stuck and the boys themselves might, i think, be said to exercise a maximum of power with the least waste of energy. this idea of running the plant continuously had evidently received no attention hitherto and it bid fair to quench all the enthusiasm until i came to the rescue by proposing a storage battery. if we can procure a battery in which we may store energy, which shall always be on draught by merely pushing a button, one which "is not injured by overcharging nor too rapid discharging, nor even by complete discharge"; one which is not injured by standing idle for any length of time, either charged or discharged; and finally one which "is practically foolproof"--we want to try it. i propose that you appoint a committee to look into it. but at any rate this enterprise must go on even if i have to hire a man to live in the loft of the mill and keep the machinery going. [illustration: fig. ] "no man in the loft," said dyne, "while i have my rations." "there will be no need for him so long as i can store energy here," said erg, "so let the job of equipping the establishment go on in the regular fashion." after a long confab one evening at the mill we settled upon the arrangement shown in fig. . _d_ represents the location of the doors and _w_ that of the windows. the equipment is designated as follows: _a_, saw; _b_, planer; _c_, lathe; _e_, emery wheel; _f_, grindstone; _g_, dynamo; _h_, forge; _i_, storage battery; _j_, switchboard; _k_ and _l_, counter shafts suspended from the ceiling. the water-wheel is belted directly to the counter shaft _l_. this revolves at the rate of r. p. m. a two-foot pulley on this shaft is belted to a one-foot pulley on the dynamo _g_, giving the dynamo a speed of . a -inch pulley on this counter shaft is belted to a -inch pulley on the grindstone _f_, giving the stone a speed of r. p. m., or one revolution per second. a -inch pulley on shaft _l_ is belted to an -inch pulley on the counter shaft _k_, giving a speed of times , or r. p. m. -inch pulleys on this shaft are belted to -inch pulleys on each of the machines _a_, _b_, and _c_, giving them a speed of r. p. m., and a -inch pulley on this shaft is belted to a -inch pulley on the emery wheel, giving it a speed of r. p. m. as soon as everything was in running order, harold took his mother down to the machine shop and started all the machinery going at once, and while they stood in the middle of the room i heard him explaining to her how she might find out the speed of each machine. he said that she must start with the grindstone, because that goes slowly enough to count. she held her watch in hand and counted the number of revolutions in a minute, as he directed, and found them to be sixty. then he asked her to judge how much larger the pulley on the grindstone was than the corresponding one on the counter shaft. she said that she thought it looked four times as large. he told her that she had it just right, and explained that the shaft must move four times as fast as the stone, or . "now how fast do you think the emery wheel is going?" she acknowledged that she had no idea. "well," said he, "when you get real used to it you can tell by the tone a wheel makes just about how fast it is going." then he explained how she might calculate its speed by looking at the pulleys, and she found that the counter shaft was going four times as fast as the shaft _l_ and that the emery wheel was going four times as fast as _k_. hence it was going sixteen times as fast as _l_, or r. p. m. his mother said she thought that it was fascinating to stand in the middle of the room with the slowly moving grindstone on one hand and emery wheel moving sixty-four times as fast on the other hand and think that they were propelled by the same water-wheel. i handed harold a speed indicator which i had just received, (fig. ), the mechanism of which was all visible. harold looked at it for a minute and found stated upon it that the wheel _b_ had cogs, and he very quickly inferred that the axle _a_, whose screw threads fitted into these cogs, must revolve one hundred times each time the wheel _b_ revolves once. the tip end of this axle had a soft rubber cap _c_. without suggestion from me he soon held this rubber shoe against the end of the axle of the emery wheel and counted, not thirty-eight, but thirty-six revolutions of the wheel of the speed indicator in one minute. this puzzled him and he inquired how it happened that the emery wheel made only rather than revolutions per minute. [illustration: fig. ] "well," said i, "we always have to count on belts slipping some, particularly upon very fast moving pulleys and upon very small pulleys. here are two belts to slip, and still you are losing only the effect of one revolution of the counter shaft _l_ in a minute. grind something on the emery wheel and you will find that the belts will slip more. in fact, grinding upon the emery wheel will compel the water-wheel to go more slowly until its governor opens and gives it more water. the water-wheel makes fifteen revolutions per minute and the emery wheel goes times as fast as that. one pound of resistance at the emery wheel is like pounds of resistance at the water-wheel. you notice the same thing when you use the saw or planer, or even present a chisel to a piece of soft wood in the turning lathe. "the only machine here that it is important to keep running at constant speed is the dynamo. we shall probably notice the dimming of our lights at the cottage every time you saw a block or grind with the emery wheel or even polish with the felt buffer, because the speed of the dynamo will slacken for a moment and the voltage will drop a little." in addition to sending electric current to the cottage the dynamo was to keep the battery stored all the time. each machine had an appropriate motor attached to it which could run it by drawing current directly from the battery when the water-wheel was not running. thus if one wanted to sharpen his pocket knife he merely closed a switch at the lathe and used the small stone, or if he wished to sharpen his lead pencil he put it in the lathe and applied a chisel to it. these motors were all adapted to the -volt direct current and the battery contained fifty-seven cells, each cell being rated a little under two volts. the boys frequently discussed possible combinations in this system. i spent a great deal of time loafing around among them in a comatose condition, and they talked quite as freely when i was around as when they were alone among themselves. one day i heard dyne say, "suppose we should store in a reservoir the water which comes down the penstock during a day and store all the electricity it will generate in a day in a storage battery, then at night let the battery run the dynamo backward as a motor, and that turn the water-wheel backward as a rotary pump, we should have the water in the upper reservoir to begin work with the next morning and the problem of perpetual motion would be solved. "aw, why do you want to do all that," said erg, "when nature is doing it for us?" ernest said he had a better scheme than that. he would turn the battery current on to all the motors in the room and they would run the counter shafts forward and the counter shafts would run the dynamo forward and the dynamo would charge the battery, and so you could keep up the motion perpetually if you wanted to. "get out your pencils," said harold, as he took down a copy of houston and kennelly. "let us see how we would come out if we tried dyne's proposition for, say, twenty hours, storing the energy from the falling water for ten hours in the battery and then using this energy during the next ten hours for re-storing the water in the upper pond. we will say that the water-wheel furnishes eight horse-power for ten hours--eighty horse-power hours." i notice it is stated in this book that small dynamos are usually unable to deliver more than per cent. of the energy impressed upon them, and storage batteries and motors deliver about per cent. of the energy impressed upon them. the accounts would, therefore, stand as follows: _dynamo_ _horse-power hours_ _dr._ _cr._ to energy impressed by water-wheel by energy delivered to storage battery by loss in heat --------- (assuming that the battery was able to receive all the dynamo could give.) storage battery account to energy impressed by dynamo by energy delivered back to dynamo running as motor by loss in heat --------- _dynamo running as motor_ _horse-power hours_ _dr._ _cr._ to energy impressed by battery by energy delivered back to water-wheel by loss in heat --------- (this dynamo being a particularly inefficient motor.) we cannot give the account of a water-wheel acting as a pump, because such a machine has not yet been perfected. it is evident however that if a water-wheel could be devised that should be a perfect pump, the losses in this chain of machinery are more than half; indeed, the accounts show them to be per cent. we should, therefore, be able to return less than half the water drawn from the lake each day, and we should rapidly move toward bankruptcy. "well," said ernest, "my proposition is more successful than that, because it sets out to be a fool proposition." it was first suggested by the snake who undertook to swallow himself. suppose the account does taper down from eighty to one, so does the snake, but he still remains "wise as a serpent." our account would stand as follows: _dynamo_ _battery_ _motors_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . it is evident that while our energy would dwindle continually we should never quite come out of the little end of the horn, since any number may diminish by per cent. of itself indefinitely. "let us get at something practical," said erg. "how are we going to furnish electricity to the cottage when the dynamo is not running? if we put a storage battery at the cottage, how are we going to store it having nothing but alternating current up there; and if we attempt to transmit current from our central station battery, how are we going to get along with the drop in the voltage?" "i'll tell you how to do that," said dyne. "they want amperes and the line offers ohms of resistance. that means a drop of volts. we have simply to provide a subsidiary battery of cells, which we may throw in series with our cells when we supply electricity to the cottage, and then they will have the right voltage for use out there." "yes," said erg, as he rolled over, "they will have the right voltage when they use amperes, but what will happen if they simply turn on one lamp. the drop in voltage then will be (. amperes × ohms =) volts; cells at . volts a cell will send out there volts minus the drop of volts, leaving volts upon a lamp adapted to volts, and it will immediately burn out. the same thing would happen to any single piece of apparatus if the current was turned upon it alone. the only thing they could do if they wanted to light a lamp, say in the middle of the night to take a dose of medicine, would be to start up all together, all their lamps, sewing machine, wringer, dishwasher, fireless cooker, vacuum cleaner, etc., etc., to keep down the voltage so that one lamp would not burn out." "i have read," said ernest, "that they use rectifiers, which convert the alternating into direct current, for storing batteries. these are much used over the country. electric automobiles run by storage batteries, and in the great majority of communities there is no other electric current than the alternating. so they would be helpless without the rectifier. we should then get another battery of fifty-five cells for the cottage and keep it stored by using a rectifier with our alternating current. "but all their equipment up there," said ernest, "is adapted to the alternating current. of what use would a direct current be to them?" "well," said harold, "it is all the same whether you have alternating or direct current on lamps, cooking apparatus, etc., and i have understood that they have motors which run on both alternating and direct currents. if so, that would fix them up all right." the boys now turned to me for the first time to inquire whether motors could be obtained which would run on both alternating and direct current, and i replied that small motors for running sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc., were made which would serve us, perhaps not economically, but as they were the only solution to our problem we could get along with them. "why don't they have alternating current batteries?" inquired erg. "well, it is time that we learned about the nature of batteries," said i, "if you boys are going to have two storage batteries to care for." xiv doing chores by electricity chores were my salvation in youth, and those chores were not trifles. i was made to feel that the whole family depended on my milking the cows, bringing in the eggs, keeping the wood box full of wood, the water pail full of water brought from the old well, churning the butter, feeding and watering the animals, and performing a multitude of regular daily and weekly tasks. as i grew older my responsibilities were allowed to increase proportionally so that i might feel some measure of the dignity of being a mainstay and a support of the family. long before i reached manhood occasional opportunities were presented for me to play the full part of a man. these sometimes came during a temporary absence or sickness of my father, but more often, as i learned afterward, by his skilfully eliminating himself from the situation so that i might try my powers. we attempt in the present generation to furnish a substitute for the old time chores by our daily programme in school or in summer camp, but i often wonder whether this round of trifles can make men. can one grow great without having a chance to feel occasionally that the world depends upon what he does? [illustration: fig. ] the great advantage of millville to us all lies in the fact that my wife is a good organizer. she immediately saw that the introduction of electricity into the cottage enabled her to assign chores to us all. these chores were assigned so that the establishment ran like clock-work. on monday morning in a large room, called the wash room, she arranged the soiled clothes in five piles. pile no. contained sheets and pillow cases; no. , white shirts, shirtwaists, and other starched clothes; no. , underclothes; no. , towels, etc., and no. , coloured clothes. here stood a washing machine run by electric motor and a wringer run by the same motor (fig. ). by the side of it sat a tub for rinsing water and next to that a tub for bluing water. two boys placed a wash boiler over a two-burner oil stove, put five pails of water into it, and cut up one cake of laundry soap which they also put in. when this was boiling hot, about half of it was poured into the washing machine. the other half was to take its place later in the washing machine. the first pile of clothes was put in and the motor run for five minutes. this batch was then run through the wringer into the rinsing water, and then again through the wringer into the bluing water, and then through the wringer a third time into the clothes basket, and hung upon the line out doors in the clear sunshine, which did more than all else to make them sweet and clean. a basket of such clothes from the line makes you want to plunge your face right into it and take a good whiff. there is nothing like it except a mow full of new hay. the piles of soiled clothes follow one another through this series of tubs on about a fifteen to twenty minutes headway, so that the whole family washing is done wholly by two boys inside of two hours. each pile after the first is given ten minutes in the washing machine. on tuesday the ironing is done with electric irons (fig. ). on friday the house is cleaned by the vacuum cleaner, run by electricity (fig. ). [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] on saturday a lot of baking is done in a series of fireless cookers (fig. ). the sewing machine runs more than ever before. i hear "it is such fun to sew with an electric motor." and the electric fan which harold installed for his mother over the sewing machine "makes that the coolest spot in the house." [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] chores do not take all of the time, nor most of the time. they are simply the important things which must be done right on time. meanwhile there is plenty of time for other things and a vast lot of experimenting goes on down at the mill. it is my chief entertainment to stroll down there every day and look on. one day i found this project on trial: on the floor (fig. , _f_) of the room over the wash room at the mill a large dripping pan _a_, was set on blocks of wood so that one corner was lower than the rest. a rubber pipe, _b_, brought water to this pan from the mill pond, an inverted faucet, _c_, regulating the flow. the overflow from the pan fell into a funnel, _d_, the stem of which went through a hole in the floor. a short piece of rubber pipe connected this with the nozzle, _e_, of a gardener's sprinkling can, which hung from the ceiling in the compartment for the shower bath. electric lamps attached to a board, _g_, were inverted over the pan of water, so that the bulbs of the lamps were immersed in the water. the electric current for these lamps was controlled by a switch, _h_, placed by the side of the water faucet. when one wanted a shower he could have it as cold or as hot as he chose by adjusting properly the switch and the faucet. moreover, it was not necessary for him to wait, for warm water flowed immediately. [illustration: fig. ] in discussing this the boys said that a -candle-power lamp used watts, and that since per cent. of the energy supplied to the lamps went into heat each lamp transformed watts of electrical energy into heat. but watts sufficed to raise one pint (one pound) of water five degrees in one minute. they used seven lamps or about one horse-power, and adjusted the flow so that the shower delivered one quart of lake water per minute warmed for a tepid bath. [illustration: fig. ] the next time i sauntered down to the mill the boys were working on what they called an electric shower bath. they had fastened upon the wall of the bath room an electric bell (fig. ), and placed on a shelf near by a battery of two dry cells, _p_. the switch which closed this primary circuit was on the wall by the side of the faucet and electric heating switch (fig. ). one of the wires, _s_, for the secondary circuit was carried up and connected to the pan _a_ (fig. ). the other wire was fastened to a sheet of zinc about a foot square, which lay upon the floor of the shower bath. the idea was that when one was taking a shower bath, if he chose to vary his sensations he might step upon the sheet of zinc, close the switch in the primary circuit and let the secondary current pass through his body by way of the shower. they said that it was particularly prescribed for slow people. speaking of chores, of course the most insistent chore was to keep the storage batteries stored. this process gave rise to many questions, through which the information contained in the next chapter was brought out. xv electric currents from chemical action and chemical action from electric currents luigi galvani ( - ) of bologna, italy, in unwittingly produced an electric current from chemical action. because he was eagerly seeking other results he misinterpreted this. several words in the dictionary are becoming either obsolete or misnomers. for example, galvanism is an old-fashioned word for an electric current. the expression _galvanic electricity_ is a relic of the abandoned idea that there are several kinds of electricity, of which galvani discovered one. galvanized iron is wholly a misnomer. it is a name used for iron which has been coated with zinc, and it suggests the idea that somehow the zinc is coated upon the iron by means of an electric current, whereas in fact it is done by dipping the iron into melted zinc. alessandro volta ( - ) of como, italy, took up the discovery of galvani, interpreted it correctly, and perfected the method of producing electricity by chemical action. what these two men really discovered was that it is possible to produce continuous currents of electricity. before that electricity was known only by the instantaneous discharge or spark. from the name of volta is derived the word volt, which designates the unit of electro-motive force. the adjective _voltaic_ is synonymous with _galvanic_, as voltaic or galvanic cell, voltaic or galvanic current. for a long time it was thought that such an adjective was needed to designate electric currents generated by chemical action as a peculiar kind of electricity. we no longer think of electricity which is generated by chemical action as different from that generated by a dynamo or from any other source. for about seventy-five years after the discovery of galvani chemical action was our only method of generating currents of electricity, and it is largely owing to the inadequacy of this method of production that so few uses for electricity were discovered previous to the perfection of the dynamo about a third of a century ago. two things have conspired to bring about this _age of electricity_. ( ) the dynamo reduced the cost of production from five dollars to ten cents per kilowatt hour. ( ) mankind grew extravagant, greatly increased the number of things which it considered necessary, and at length became both able and willing to spend more for the things which it demanded. the so-called voltaic cell is of scarcely more than academic interest now. the school which, as a rule, follows half a century behind practical life, has taught and still teaches the philosophy of the galvanic cell with great particularity. it is now being urged to undertake the teaching of the dynamo. meanwhile the dynamo has almost driven out of existence all electric battery cells except the storage cell and the so-called "dry cell," and each year the dynamo is encroaching more and more upon the territory of the dry cell. in the present day, when a passenger upon a street car pushes a button to stop the car, he uses, not a voltaic cell, but a -volt dynamo current to ring a small buzzer, and it costs the company not one-hundredth part as much as it would to furnish him a battery equipment to do the same thing. small dynamos and magnetos are displacing dry battery cells in the sparking equipment of motor boats and automobiles. we lifted a dry battery cell out of its pasteboard case and found that it was contained in a metal cup of sheet zinc. the top of this was sealed over airtight with pitch, the purpose of which is to prevent this "dry" cell from drying up. we dug away the hardened pitch and found a black powder which was distinctly moist. in case the pitch becomes cracked or a hole appears in the zinc cup, the moisture passes out and the cell ceases to act as a generator of electric current. the zinc cup had a lining of pasteboard on the sides and the bottom, similar to the pasteboard which enveloped the outside, only the lining was quite moist. a corrugated rod of carbon about an inch in diameter occupied the middle of the cup, and the space around it was packed full of a mixture of ammonium chloride, manganese dioxide, and other substances like plaster, etc., which differ with different cells. a dry cell which has been long in use is quite apt to show stains upon its pasteboard case. these are caused by holes which appear in the zinc. the production of electric current by the cell is dependent wholly upon a chemical action between the zinc and the ammonium chloride which results in the destruction of both. this chemical action cannot go on without moisture. the zinc cup of the particular cell which we were examining appeared to be intact, and we proceeded to dig out the black powder. its black colour is due to the manganese dioxide. ammonium chloride is white. we lifted out the carbon rod and scraped the zinc cup clean. the binding posts attached to both the zinc cup and the carbon rod were left intact. into the zinc cup we now poured a tumblerful of water and added about a quarter of its volume of hydrochloric acid, setting the whole into a large bowl to guard against disaster. bubbles of gas were formed rapidly, causing the liquid to effervesce as a tumbler of soda water would do. we inverted an empty tumbler over the cup so as to collect this gas. in about two minutes we lifted the tumbler, still holding its mouth downward, and brought a lighted match to it. there was a flash and the contents burned with a pale-blue flame. some of the zinc had united with some of the hydrochloric acid and set free hydrogen gas, which is one of the constituents of the acid. this is typical of chemical actions. something similar takes place between the ammonium chloride and the zinc. three interesting things occur in this experiment: . chemical action, just described, is produced. . heat is produced. this was very evident when we took the zinc cup up in our hands. it was as hot as though boiling water had been put into it. . an electro-motive force is produced. this we showed by connecting one end of a piece of copper wire to the binding post of the zinc cup and the other end of the wire to an electric bell. another wire ran from the bell to the carbon rod. when the carbon rod was lowered into the acid the bell rang. within ten minutes holes began to appear in the side of the zinc cup. the acid contents began to flow out into the bowl, and not long after the zinc fell to pieces. after fifteen or twenty minutes the action began to grow less. the acid was being used up as well as the zinc. if enough acid is added the zinc will wholly disappear. we have chosen substances which would produce striking results in this experiment, but the same sort of thing is going on about us continually. one summer by the seashore i fastened a brass plate upon my boat with two screws--one of brass and one of galvanized iron. the plate was attached below the water line so that it might be acted upon by the salt water. within three weeks the head of the galvanized iron screw had entirely dissolved, while the brass screw was as good as ever. a galvanized iron screw near by but not in contact with the brass was still in as good order as ever. i had simply made an electric battery cell out of the ocean by dipping into it zinc and brass in contact. a most interesting relationship exists between the three kinds of activity in the cell, which have been mentioned, viz.: ( ) chemical action; ( ) production of heat; ( ) production of electric current. as has been already noted, chemical action produces heat. conversely, if we apply heat to the cell we greatly increase its chemical action. we have also noted that chemical action produces an electric current, but unless the current is allowed to flow through some external channel like a closed circuit of wire the chemical action is greatly restrained or entirely checked. [illustration: fig. ] in a glass tumbler i put a rod of pure zinc (fig. , _zn_), and an electric light carbon, _c_. a short wire, _a_, was arranged for connecting the two externally. in the tumbler was put some water with about one tenth its volume of sulphuric acid. no chemical action was evident until the wire was touched to the zinc, closing the circuit. then bubbles of hydrogen gas gathered upon the surface of the carbon rod, and clung to it very tenaciously. we lifted out the carbon rod and rinsed off the bubbles in another tumbler of water, and then returned the carbon to its place in the cell. the experiment was repeated many times, and each time no bubbles of hydrogen, which is in this case the sign of the chemical action, appeared until the circuit was closed for the flow of the electric current. incidentally it should be said that the amount of hydrogen produced by the chemical action is a measure of the amount of electric current produced. incidentally also it should be said that the bubbles of hydrogen clinging to the carbon rod check and almost stop both the chemical action and the production of electric current when the circuit is closed. if now we put in sodium bichromate to use up the hydrogen as fast as it is produced we may have a continuous current whenever the circuit is closed. chemical action does not entirely cease in this cell when the circuit is opened. but if two cells are prepared, and one is left with its circuit closed while the other remains with its circuit open, it will be found that the zinc disappears and the acid is used up in the closed cell in a short time, while these remain not greatly changed for a long time in the cell on which the circuit is open. no cell will remain forever without chemical action, yet a dry cell which might use up its zinc and ammonium chloride in a few hours if the circuit is closed may be kept idle three or four years, and still be able to furnish electricity enough to ring a bell. some persons feel defrauded if the author of a book fails to give them all the new words and conventional terms which belong to any subject. for such here is a page or so. it is conventional to speak of the electric current as flowing from the carbon through the wire to the zinc, although every one has suspicions that it may flow in the other direction or even that it may not flow at all. it is conventional to designate any part of the circuit from which the current comes as positive (+) to any other part toward which it flows, this latter being considered negative to the former and designated (-). the current is conceived of as making a complete circuit, from carbon to zinc through the wire and from zinc to carbon through the liquid. hence, the binding post of the carbon rod is called the + pole and that of the zinc is called the-pole, while the zinc rod or plate beneath the surface of the fluid is called the + plate and the carbon is called the-plate. the liquid is termed the electrolyte. the sodium bichromate, introduced to cause the hydrogen to unite with oxygen, is called an oxidizing agent or even a _depolarizing_ agent, and hydrogen collecting upon the negative plate is said to polarize the cell. hydrogen may be made to collect upon the carbon or negative plate until the electric current reverses its direction. the hydrogen is said to be more - than the zinc. if we connect the zinc and carbon rods with the wires bringing an electric current from the dynamo we may make either one positive as we choose, according to which is connected with the positive wire. hydrogen bubbles will collect upon whichever plate we make the negative one. when we send an electric current from the dynamo into this cell it is called an electrolytic cell, and when it is used to generate an electric current it is called a battery cell. in either case the electrolyte is decomposed and put through a chemical change, though the chemical action in one case is the reverse of that in the other, and the direction of the electric current in one case is the reverse of that in the other. for example let us consider the case of a zinc rod and a carbon rod immersed in sulphuric acid and the external circuit closed. the current passes as indicated by the arrows in fig. , and the chemical actions result in hydrogen leaving the sulphuric acid and zinc taking its place, forming zinc sulphate. this is a white salt and for purposes of this experiment must remain dissolved in water. so far we have been considering a generator of electricity--a battery cell. we may introduce something at _m_, say a motor, which will indicate that an electric current is flowing. at length the cell ceases to generate current and is, as we say, "run down." suppose now we substitute a dynamo in place of the motor in this circuit, connecting it so that the carbon rod shall be its positive pole and the zinc its negative pole. we now call this an electrolytic cell, (fig. ). the current will decompose the zinc sulphate. the zinc will be coated upon the zinc rod and hydrogen will be procured from the water present, of which it is a constituent, to form again sulphuric acid as originally. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] we shall thus restore the conditions which prevailed in the first case as represented in fig. . h_{ }so_{ } is the chemist's designation of sulphuric acid and znso_{ } is his expression for zinc sulphate. the experiment illustrates a storage battery so called. it might better be called a chemical transformer. it is wholly unnecessary that one rod be composed of zinc. if we begin with both rods of carbon immersed in a solution of znso_{ }, and send into this cell the dynamo current, the carbon which acts as the negative pole will be coated with zinc in a short time, and we shall have in effect a rod of zinc and one of carbon as before. after a minute or two we may disconnect the generator and substitute in its place a bell as indicator, and it will ring, showing that we have transformed electrical energy into chemical energy which is now being retransformed into electrical energy. we say that we store electricity by this means, which is, however, no more true than that a farmer stores his farm in the bank when he sells it and deposits the money until he shall need it to buy another farm. here is a very beautiful blue salt. i will drop a few crystals of it into a tumbler of water and dip in two carbon pencils connected to the dynamo current, using between fifty and sixty ohms of resistance in the circuit so as to have two amperes flowing. after a minute or two i lift out the negative carbon and you see that it is well plated with copper. the blue salt is copper sulphate. if we weigh the negative carbon, both before and after the experiment, we shall find that copper has been depositing at the rate of one ounce in twelve hours. if we reduce the current one half, making it one ampere, it will deposit copper at the rate of one ounce in twenty-four hours. one ampere will separate three ounces of lead in a day from a solution of any lead salt; it will separate . ounce of iron in a day from a solution of any iron salt, and it will liberate from water, which is a compound of hydrogen, one gallon of the gas in ten hours. the amount of chemical action is a measure of the amount of electrical energy expended. before the present form of commercial wattmeter was devised electrolytic cells were used to determine what the consumer's bill for electricity should be each month. these chemical meters contained a solution of zinc sulphate for the electrolyte and both the positive and the negative plates were of zinc. while the current is passing, zinc from the solution is coated upon the negative plate and zinc from the positive plate takes its place in the solution, thus maintaining a constant strength of solution. here are three iron nails. i propose that you plate one with zinc and another with copper and then expose all three to the weather and see which will rust. i propose that you replate all the spoons at the cottage and the metal tops of the salt cellars with silver. electro-plating results better if done slowly. ten volts and . ampere will be sufficient current. in the storage battery we generally use lead for both positive and negative plates and dilute sulphuric acid for the electrolyte. hydrogen is liberated at the positive plate and oxygen unites with the negative plate. when the charging current is cut off the chemical action reverses, and an electric current is produced by the cell. in all other batteries there is a destruction of one plate and of the electrolyte, which cannot be fully restored by a charging current, although in the case of the lead and sulphuric acid combination the charging and discharging of the cell may go on alternately for a very long period without permanent change or loss of any substance except water. there is, however, plenty of loss of energy in this as in other transformers. one hundred ampere hours of current expended to charge a storage battery will yield from seventy-five to eighty-five ampere hours while the battery is discharging. the lead storage battery is, however, full of disappointments for those who do not properly care for it. it is irretrievably ruined if neglected and allowed to charge too far, or discharge too far, or evaporate too much water, etc. the voltage of a lead cell must not rise above . nor fall below . . it must not be allowed to furnish at any one time a greater number of amperes than it is rated for. it must not stand idle too much. it must not be cleaned up and put away for a period. in fact, the lead-sulphuric acid battery is so poorly adapted to our need that i feel disposed to try mr. edison's new storage battery. this has nickel hydrate packed in tubes of metallic nickel for the positive plates and iron oxide pressed into pockets in a sheet of metallic iron for the negative plate. a solution of potassium hydrate in water is used for the electrolyte. this is said to be uninjured by being emptied out and left idle, as our batteries must be for a large part of the year. the e. m. f. of this battery is less than that of the lead battery, being only . volts. we shall therefore need ninety-six cells (type _b- _) for the machine shop and ninety-one cells of the same kind for the cottage. our dynamo will be unable to charge at one time more than sixty of these cells connected in series. the particular chore which you boys must perform is to see that the voltage of these batteries is maintained at about . . it should be charged up to . volt at least once a week and never allowed to discharge to a lower pressure than one volt. the level of the electrolyte must be maintained one half inch above the plate by adding distilled water occasionally. a few years ago every student of chemistry was more or less agitated by the thought that more than half of every clay bank was composed of metal nearly as valuable, or at least as costly, as gold. this is aluminum. by all the methods then known it was a very difficult and expensive process to extract the metal from the clay. at length, by the perfecting of the dynamo, the chemist had under his control great and powerful electric currents which enabled him to unlock any chemical compound however refractory and isolate its elements. as a result aluminum became common enough and cheap enough for even kitchen utensils. the metal calcium which a short time ago was an exceedingly rare substance worth $ an ounce is now fairly abundant and cheap for chemical experiments, although it has no qualities which will give it an extended use. powerful electric currents, such as are obtained at niagara, enable us to combine elements into hitherto unknown chemical compounds. carbon and silicon are made to unite to form carborundum, which vies with the diamond for hardness. carbon and calcium unite to form calcium carbide, used with water to form acetylene gas. in such processes the intense heat of the electric arc--perhaps degrees--is employed, together with the electrolytic action of the current, to separate and combine substances. enormous currents are used in the electric furnaces for producing chemical reactions--from to , amperes at a time. electric currents passing through the human body expend their energy partly in heat and partly in electrolysis. so simple and harmless a thing as common salt would become a virulent poison if it could be electrolized in the body into its elements _sodium_ and _chlorine_. let us make use of an electric current to decompose water into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen. i have a three-ounce wide-mouthed bottle (fig. ) and through its cork i pass two short pieces of no. platinum wire by pushing a stout needle through first. i fill this bottle with pure water and cut a slight furrow in the side of the cork, where water may drip out when the gas is produced in the bottle. we crowd the cork firmly into the mouth of the bottle and invert it. no water drops out. we bend the ends of the platinum wires into hooks and hang upon them the wires bringing the dynamo direct current. there is no evidence of chemical action. pure water is an exceedingly poor conductor of electricity. let us now put about fifty-five ohms of resistance into the dynamo circuit, so that it will pass about two amperes, and put a very small pinch of salt into the water, which makes it so good a conductor that its resistance may be ignored. when now we close the circuit, as before, a brisk effervescence takes place. bubbles of gas rapidly form on the platinum wires and break away, rising through the liquid. twice as many form on the negative wire as on the positive one. as these gases rise to the top of the bottle an equal volume of the water drips out through the small hole in the cork. [illustration: fig. ] two amperes of electricity will liberate two fluid ounces of hydrogen at the negative pole and one fluid ounce of oxygen at the positive pole, in five minutes. hence in five minutes the bottle should be full of a mixture of two gases, two thirds of which, by volume, is hydrogen and one third oxygen. we will catch the water which drips out so that we may measure it. the bottle being now full of gas i shut off the current, and removing the cork i bring a flame to its mouth. a very loud and startling explosion takes place. we pour the water back into the bottle, and it seems to fill it as well as before. we have decomposed a few drops of water--not enough to measure--into two gases, one of which, the hydrogen, occupied two thirds of the bottle, and the other, oxygen, occupied the remaining third. at ordinary temperatures they would not reunite, but when raised to their kindling temperature they united, producing light, heat, a loud noise, and the few drops of water which had been originally decomposed by the current. this is the electrolysis of water. i wonder if any such chemical action took place in ernest's body when he received that severe shock on the motor boat the other day. it is significant that the "dry" battery cell must be moist in order that chemical action may go on in it. compare with that fact several others that we may learn from observation, for example: baking powders must be kept dry to retain their strength. that is, if they get moist chemical action will begin in them, and the gas which is one of the products of this chemical action will pass off. now it is the sole function of baking powders to produce gas within the dough, and if the gas has wholly or partially escaped they will fail to make the bread stuff "light." the same reasons obtain for keeping seidlitz powders and other effervescing salts, such as vichy and kissingen, dry. it is to prevent the chemical action which is provoked by the presence of water. the same thing is true of the rusting of iron, and the various kinds of corrosion of metals. we may prevent such action indefinitely by keeping them dry. berries, fruits, meats, milk, eggs, grain--all kinds of foods--are preserved from spoiling--from chemical changes--by drying them and keeping them dry. the same thing is true of wood, paper, cloth, etc. a wooden fence post may last from five to ten years. a fence rail, being less exposed to moisture, may last two or three times as long. the interior wood of a house may last a century or two, while the exterior wood, being exposed to the weather, may require repairs very frequently. shingles on the roof do not last as long as shingles on the side of the house. those on a steep roof last longer than those on a flatter one. a pitch of at least forty-five degrees in a roof is desirable to keep it dry. the north and west sides of a house being least exposed to storm in this climate last the longer. precious books, records, deeds, wills, etc., on paper must be preserved in dry air. a sail will keep strong and white if kept dry. but it is impressed upon us by our experiences that sunlight is even more potent than moisture to produce chemical change. photographic processes are dependent upon the power of light to produce chemical changes. the fading of our tapestries and our garments, the tanning of our skins, the development of green material in the leaves of plants, all are evidently the direct result of sunlight. a picture hung on the wall prevents the wall paper behind it from being faded by the light, or it prevents the wood behind it from being turned yellow by the light. folds in our garments prevent them from being faded all alike. very many substances to be found in a chemical laboratory, in a drug store, or in a kitchen must be kept in the dark if they are to be guarded against chemical change. no experienced housewife would let a barrel of flour or potatoes sit in the sun, and every housewife knows that the sun is the best agent for bringing about those chemical changes which she desires. hence she puts her bedding, her milk pans, her bread box, her butter jar, etc., "out to sun." she has open plumbing, that the sun may enter those dark and dirty corners. if you would guard a substance against chemical change, keep it in a dry, dark place. we have come to associate the sun and the weather as disintegrating forces. hence the south and east sides of the building need most frequent repairs. every one who has made time exposures in photography knows that the sunlight from the east is, as a rule, two or three times as powerful as that from the west. there is less moisture and dust in the air to screen us from the early morning sun than from the late afternoon sun. when there is enough moisture in the air to make the sun look red, those rays from it which would produce chemical action, called actinic rays, are cut off. photographic processes are then exceedingly slow. it is like exposing a plate in a dark room behind the ruby glass. but our daily experiences teach us that not only moisture and light but also heat stimulates chemical action. we restrain chemical action by cold when we put things in the ice box. we hasten chemical action by heat when we put things on the stove. winter restrains all the chemical activities of nature, and summer quickens all the vegetable and mineral kingdoms into chemical activity. if we would preserve a substance from chemical change we must keep it in a _cool, dark, dry_ place. now those conditions which will favour the chemical activity of a battery cell will enable it to produce electricity, and those conditions which will restrain chemical action will enable us to preserve the cell from running down. but we have lately learned that other forms of radiation besides light and heat exist and aid in chemical action. we may produce radiographs--pictures on photographic plates--without light but with invisible rays, which are akin to light and to electricity. xvi electrocution at millville the old mill was infested with rats. my wife laid down to the boys the principle that good housekeepers were never troubled with vermin of any kind. the rats' sole occupation is to search for food. if you don't feed them they will not stay with you. but the boys said that they were glad of a chance to try an experiment on the rats. so one day when i went down to the mill i found them discussing the possibility of killing the rats by electricity. harold said that he had read that it took much less electricity to kill any animal than to kill a man, and he would like to try, for instance, whether the shock which they had received from a bell would kill a rat. "well, who's going to sit by," said erg, "to close the primary circuit when the rat happens to get himself into the secondary circuit?" "make him close it himself by some device," said ernest. "they have a regular thoroughfare, a beaten highway, along by the wall, under the mill and up through a hole in the floor of my bedroom," said dyne. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] "well," said harold, "i propose an electric trap which shall have two compartments. we will keep cheese in the inner compartment, the walls of which shall be of wires so that the rats may see the cheese. the floor of the outer apartment shall be covered with wire, as shown in fig. . the wires of the secondary circuit from the bell (fig. ) shall be fastened to the binding posts _b_ and _c_ (fig. ). the partition _d_ shall be a swing door into the apartment _a_ where the cheese is. this is shown in profile in fig. . _d_ must act as a switch to close the primary circuit through the bell _p_ (fig. ). we will have three dry cells in the primary circuit. now this is the way it will work: a rat comes up from under the mill with wet and slimy feet--just suited for making contact for the electric current to enter his body. the smell of the cheese attracts him. he circles around the trap several times, watching the cheese in apartment _a_ through the wire screen. he sees a narrow opening into this apartment under the door _d_. he puts himself in position upon the floor of the outer apartment _b_, his feet bridging the gaps between the two systems of wires belonging to the secondary circuit. when he thrusts his head under the door and pushes it, it swings in a little, bringing one metal strip against another, which belongs to the primary circuit. this closes that circuit. he will never hear the bell ring, for the electric current which will shock him to death travels , miles per second, while his sensations travel only sixty miles an hour. if the involuntary recoil of his muscles does not make him jump back, so that the door will shut and stop the bell from ringing, dyne will be awakened and he will close the door, since we will put the trap at that hole where the rats enter his bedroom." [illustration: fig. ] the next night three rats were electrocuted by this device. i told the boys they had so many interesting things going on at the mill that we should have to have a telephone between it and the cottage so that we could talk them over. xvii the telephone the telephone was the great invention of our centennial year, . elisha gray and alexander graham bell each claimed to have been the inventor. it is quite probable that each did discover it independently, but the result of the long patent suit was that the court awarded the claim to bell. it is, therefore, known as the bell telephone. many who installed telephones during the first few years of their existence had them taken out again as nuisances. they are far greater nuisances now than at that time, but the necessity of them has come upon us and entirely enslaved us. there were more than eleven billion messages sent by telephone in the united states in . the capital invested in telephone business was $ , , . the income for that year was $ , , . all of these items had more than doubled during the previous five years. in there were about eight times as many miles of telegraph wires as of telephone wires. in , there were about eight times as many miles of telephone wires as of telegraph wires. the bell system had , , stations, and independent companies had , , stations in . the first telephone line ran from salem to boston, mass. this was in . the next year the first telephone exchange was established. it was eight years before a telephone line was extended from boston to new york. on october , , the first telephone message was sent from new york to chicago. previous to telephoning, like telegraphing, was done by one wire, using the earth, as we say, to complete the circuit. but at about that time electric car and electric lighting lines became so common that they interfered with telephoning. these currents running in lines parallel to the telephone wires induced currents in them, and when a person put a receiver to his ear for conversation he heard the hum of electric light dynamos and the buzz of electric cars so loud that conversation was quite impossible. the next step was to introduce a return wire--the double metallic circuit as we call it. thus outside currents induce equal and opposite currents in the two wires of the circuit, which neutralize each other. it was this same year, , that the "central battery" system was introduced into telephone equipment. this is not usually a battery at all, but a dynamo. the price of all electrical supplies in was about one tenth what it had been in , and at the same time the goods were of far better quality. important telephone patents expired in this year, and immediately private and independent lines began to be established. it was also in that the telephone company began to use an automatic registering device which enabled it to charge telephone rates according to the number of calls. the boys unscrewed the end of a telephone receiver (fig. ) and found inside a permanent magnet made of several steel bars bolted together (fig. ). this was shown to be a magnet by presenting a small pocket compass to either end. the left-hand end of this magnet proved to be its north pole by repelling the blue end of the compass needle. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] on the left-hand end of the magnet was a small spool of no. copper wire, silk covered. it offered ohms of resistance, and since it takes - / feet of this wire to furnish ohm of resistance the spool contains - / feet. a thin disc of soft iron . inch in thickness is held by the hard rubber case very near to but not quite touching this end of the magnet. we drew this disc to one side, as shown in fig. , and connected the receiver by wires to a magneto. we turned the crank of the magneto slowly and the iron disk danced up and down, keeping time with the revolutions of the armature. the magneto furnished an alternating current, which, when it flowed around the coil in one direction, strengthened the pole of the magnet, and in the reverse direction weakened the pole. when the crank was turned so as to produce twenty to thirty revolutions of the armature per second the dancing of the disc sounded like the low hum produced by the wing of a humming bird. when a large, wide-mouthed bottle was brought near to this the sound was greatly reinforced, as the sound of a bee becomes louder when he appears at your open window. we next replaced the iron disc and put on the cap again. we then connected the receiver at _s_ (fig. ) and connected two dry cells at _p_. when the primary circuit was closed the disc vibrated in time with the hammer of the bell making the same tone. we substituted for the bell a series of buzzers. the smallest had an armature about one inch long, while that of the largest was about two inches long. the shorter the armature the faster it vibrated, and the higher was the pitch of its tone. we arranged these as shown in fig. . _a_, _c_, _d_, _e_ and _f_ are the buzzers. _b_ is a battery of two cells and _g_, _h_, _i_, _j_ and _k_ are springs of sheet brass which act as push buttons. by operating upon these springs with one's fingers, as upon the keys of an organ, it was possible to represent the tones of a reed organ after a fashion. the armatures are reeds and they are made to vibrate by electro-magnets. we called it an electric organ. the telephone receiver was connected at _t_, and the wires which led to it were lengthened so that the receiver might be a long distance away. the disc in the receiver kept time with the armature of each buzzer when it sounded and faithfully reproduced its sound. but the strangest thing was that when any two buzzers sounded together, or, indeed, if all five buzzers sounded together, the receiver responded to them all at the same time, so that a person in another room or in another house, with the receiver at his ear, might hear exactly what those did who were in the same room with the buzzers. the wires from the receiver were connected with the coil in each buzzer so as to get the induced current, as shown in detail in fig. . [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] we took a telephone induction coil (fig. ) and fastened it to a board as represented in fig. , _i_. one wire of the primary circuit was fastened to the binding post _a_. the other wire from the primary coil passed to the switch _s_ and then to the battery. from the battery the wire ran to the binding post _b_. _c_ is a steel tuning fork. the secondary circuit is closed through a telephone receiver. these wires are extended so that the receiver is too far distant for the tuning fork to be heard through the air. when the switch _s_ is closed the tuning fork acts as the interrupter for the primary circuit, and it interrupts according to its time of vibration. if, for instance, the fork gives the tone of middle _c_ on the piano it vibrates times a second. it interrupts the primary circuit times a second. it induces an alternating current of the same frequency in the secondary circuit. the diaphragm of the telephone receiver vibrates in perfect time with the tuning fork and produces the same tone as the tuning fork. we had a series of tuning forks giving a variety of tones, which we could substitute one after another in place of this one. the receiver reproduced accurately the tone of each one of them. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] we took a small induction coil (fig. ) _c_ and fastened one end of the primary circuit to a battery, _b_. the wire at the other end of the primary circuit was bent into a hook _h_. this hook was adjusted about a quarter of an inch from the end of the iron core of the coil. the other wire from the battery was attached to the steel strings of a piano, _p_. when the coil _c_ was brought over a string and the hook _h_ was allowed to pass beneath the string and touch it very gently, the primary circuit was closed through the string, which served as an interrupter of the current and vibrated according to its tone. the secondary coil, not represented in the figure, was connected to a distant telephone receiver, which reproduced the tones of the piano strings. producing a tone is merely a matter of making something vibrate with the required frequency. it may be a piano string, or a tuning fork, or a reed of an electric buzzer, or the diaphragm of a telephone receiver. if it vibrates times a second, it will produce the same tone as middle _c_ on a piano; if it vibrates times a second it will produce the _c_ which is an octave above, and if times a second an octave below middle _c_. the human voice is produced by vocal cords in the throat, which vibrate with the proper frequency to give any required tone. but how can we make the human voice act as an interrupter of the primary circuit? an examination of the telephone transmitter will supply the answer to this question. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] the boys after taking the transmitter (fig. ) apart proceeded to make one which should answer the purpose as follows: a block of wood about one inch thick and three inches square (fig. ), _a_, was hollowed out, making a cone-shaped cavity about one half inch deep and one inch broad. this cavity was filled with small pieces of graphite, _g_, made by cutting up a lead pencil. an old tin-type, _d_, was laid over this as a diaphragm and tacked around the edges. a binding post, _e_, passed through the block, its head being buried in the graphite at the bottom of the cavity. the binding post _f_ furnished contact with the tin-type. one dry cell was placed at _b_ and the sensitive ammeter was connected at _c_. the needle showed that although a small current was passing it was constantly varying in strength. tapping upon the table, walking across the floor of the room, shouting, and particularly whistling, caused variations in the conducting power of the graphite and consequently variations in the current strength. this is precisely the condition we wished to produce in the primary circuit. [illustration: fig. ] we next substitute for the ammeter at _c_ the primary and secondary coil of the telephone. in fig. _t_ is the transmitter, _b_ is a battery of two dry cells, _p_ is the primary winding of the coils, and _s_ is the secondary winding. to this a telephone receiver, _r_ is connected by wires long enough to reach into another room. a person holding the receiver at his ear could hear everything said or done in the room where the transmitter was almost as plainly as though he were present in the room. [illustration: fig. ] two such transmitters were made and the second one was placed in the room where the receiver had been, while a second receiver was installed near the first transmitter. the arrangement is shown in fig. . _t_ is the transmitter at one end of the line and _t'_ the transmitter at the other end. _b_ and _b'_ are the batteries at each end, _p_ and _p'_ the primary coils, _s_ and _s'_ the secondary coils and _r_ and _r'_ the receivers. with this arrangement two persons carried on a conversation with perfect ease, holding the receivers to their ears, presenting their mouths to the transmitters and speaking in moderate tones. _h_ and _h'_ are hooks upon which the receivers are to be hung when not in use. these hooks act as switches to open and close the primary circuit. a spring normally pushes the hook upward and closes the circuit, but while the receiver is hanging upon it the circuit is open at this point. thus the battery is saved from running down when the telephone is not in use. the wires were finally extended from the mill to the cottage and this equipment was installed at each end. it will be noticed that the secondary circuit includes two receivers and two secondary coils besides the wire of the lines to offer resistance. the receivers offer ohms of resistance each. the secondary coils offer ohms each and the line wires between the mill and the cottage offer ohms. this makes a total of ohms for the secondary circuit. but the rapid alternations which are induced in the secondary circuit impede the electric current ten times as much as the resistance already mentioned. when considering alternating currents passing through coils of wire we are obliged to take into account two kinds of resistance: . ohmic resistance. . impedance. "you boys understand the resistance to the flow of the electric current, which we have so often measured in ohms. but i want to show you that there is another kind of resistance which alternating current meets. here is a coil containing feet of no. copper wire. i throw on to it, for only an instant, the -volt direct current, and the ammeter reads amperes, showing that it offers a resistance of ohms to the direct current. i now throw on the alternating current, and the ammeter shows only a small fraction of an ampere. the surging of the current back and forth induces a counter electro-motive force, in the successive layers of the coil, which we call _impedance_. in the experiment which we have just performed _impedance_ is fifty times as important a factor as ohmic resistance. impedance depends chiefly upon the frequency of alternation. the impedance in telephone circuits is particularly large because of the extremely high frequency of the alternations produced by the tones of the human voice, these being usually not far from ten times as rapid as those of alternating currents in common use. "we may estimate the total resistance of our telephone circuit as equivalent to ohms. "our secondary coils have forty times as many turns as the primary coils, and by means of them the voltage is stepped up to somewhere near one hundred on open circuit. when closed through the line, however, the voltage drops down to about ten. the result is that the actual current which passes between the cottage and the mill when we telephone is not far from . ampere. we may, however, hear a whisper transmitted by . ampere or less. "the tone _e´_ which is produced by the tenth key above middle _c_ on the piano, is the one most readily heard over the telephone. it is produced by anything which vibrates times per second." [illustration: fig. ] we used no. galvanized iron wire for our telephone lines. two miles of no. copper wire would offer ohms of resistance. the iron wire offers about ohms. but this is a trifle when compared with the total resistance. we used a double metallic circuit so as to avoid the effects of inductance from our electric lighting circuit. [illustration: fig. ] the next thing that we were obliged to consider was some arrangement for calling persons to the telephone for conversation. we decided to use magnetos and alternating current bells. fig. shows the essential mechanism of the bells. the bell at each end of the line consists of two gongs _a, b_ and _a´ b´_, with a hammer _c_, _c´_ between them. this hammer is attached to an iron armature _h_, _h´_, pivoted over the electro-magnets, _m_, _m´_, in such a way that it rocks back and forth when an alternating current passes through the lines _d e_, _f g_. the bells at both ends of the line always ring together, since they are connected in series. a magneto (fig. ) is situated at each end of the line. this, as has been previously explained, is a generator of electricity, in which the field is furnished by steel magnet, _m_. the armature _a_ is a coil of wire whose ends are in contact with the leading out wires _d_ and _c_ by means of brushes which slide upon rings. the armature is revolved by hand. the crank and cog wheels employed to produce high speed are not shown in the figure. by turning the armature rapidly this magneto will develop volts e. m. f. on open circuit. the magnets of the bells are wound with a very large number of turns of very fine wire, so that . ampere is sufficient to ring them. [illustration: fig. ] figure shows how the magneto at either end of the line is introduced into the circuit for the purpose of ringing the bells. _b_ and _b'_ represent the bells, _m_ and _m'_ the magnetos, and _p_ and _p'_ represent switches. springs push them upward so that they normally close the circuit through the bells. when a person at _p_ wishes to call another at _p'_ he pushes the switch _p_ down so as to bring his magneto _m_ into series with the bells. when now he turns the crank and generates the electric current, both bells ring. his own bell serves the purpose of telling him that the line is operating all right. the other bell calls the party desired for conversation. as soon as the operator removes his finger from the switch _p_ the spring throws it upward again, leaving his bell in circuit, so that he may be called at any time, but cutting out of the circuit his magneto, which would introduce unnecessary resistance. the same wires which carried the current for ringing the telephone bells carried also the current for operating the telephone receiver. when the receiver is removed from the hook it releases a twofold switch. this serves the double purpose of closing the primary circuit through the local battery and substituting the telephone receiver circuit for the bell-ringing circuit upon the line. we used fifty chestnut poles to carry our line between the mill and the cottage. each pole had a cross bar, on one end of which the electric light and power wires were carried and on the other end the telephone wires. glass insulators prevented the wires from coming in contact with the wood of the cross bars. the necessity for this was impressed upon the boys by something which happened while they were stringing the wires. the telephone apparatus at the mill had been installed and the two leading out wires had been connected to it. one of these was coiled up on the floor, while the other had been strung along upon the poles for half a mile, but had not yet been attached to the insulators on the poles. while the boys were lunching at the mill, one of them gave the crank of the magneto a turn, when, to the astonishment of all, the bell rang. the circuit had been completed through the damp wood of the mill, through the damp wood of some of the poles, and through the earth. after lunch the wire, so far as it had been strung, was fastened to the insulators upon the poles. but when some one turned the crank of the magneto the bell still rang. we walked along the line to see where the difficulty was. we found the end of the line about half a mile from the mill dangling free from the ground, but touching a tall spear of grass. when this was moved away from the spear of grass the magneto could no longer ring the bell. the slight current required to ring this bell--. ampere--had found its way through the spear of grass, through the woodwork of the mill and through the earth. we had no sooner got the two telephone wires properly strung and attached to the hundred glass insulators when a thunder storm came up, and drove us back to the mill for shelter. pretty soon the bell rang and we, supposing that some one at the cottage was trying to call, went to the instrument, but could get no response, nor could we make the bell ring. lightning had sent an alternating current over the line which rang the bell, but the strength of the current was too great for our coils of fine wire and one of them was burned out, as we say. in other words, the wire had melted at the point where it offered the greatest resistance. the burned-out coil was replaced, and then we installed lightning arresters which were of two kinds. the first were simply fuses which were introduced into the line to protect it against any current too large for the apparatus to carry, and the second was a plate, _c_ (fig. ). these are to be found upon the top of the magneto cases. a wire is connected with _c_, and its other end is grounded by being connected with a piece of iron pipe which is driven deep into moist earth. [illustration: fig. ] the plate _a b_ is inserted in the line, and the gap between this and the plate _c_ offers sufficient resistance so that the telephone circuit suffers no leakage at this point, but lightning has such extremely high tension that it readily passes across this gap and finds its way to the earth without damaging the instruments. we have already noticed that our alternating current dynamo, which produces vibrations per second in the telephone receiver, causes it to give a tone very nearly like the _c_, which is two octaves below middle _c_ upon the piano. _c_ requires vibrations per second. we may speed up our dynamo so as to make it yield a tone exactly like _c_ or even above it. dr. cahill of holyoke, mass., has devised an organ in which alternating current dynamos produce the necessary number of vibrations for each tone. the name _telharmonium_ has been proposed for this organ. it has a separate dynamo for each tone, each dynamo having a frequency corresponding to the tone required of it. the dynamo, for instance, which produces middle _c_ makes the electric currents surge back and forth times a second, and this causes the diaphragm of a telephone receiver to vibrate times a second, and this sends forth air waves per second, and when these reach our ears we recognize the tone we call middle _c_. the frequency of alternation in a dynamo may be increased by either increasing its speed of revolution or by increasing the number of coils upon its armature. mr. cahill's great organ looks like a large machine shop with many counter shafts geared so as to run at different speeds. on each shaft are a large number of little dynamos whose armatures have various numbers of coils. the organist, who may be far removed from this "machine shop," fingers an ordinary keyboard. each key opens and closes a switch, thus bringing into action its own dynamo. if the key which is known as _c_, one octave below middle _c_, is pressed down, a switch closes the circuit between the telephone and a dynamo which gives double alternations of current. the tone which is produced by vibrations per second is the one most often heard from a man's voice in ordinary conversation. another key brings into action upon the same telephone receiver--and at the same time if desired--a dynamo which gives twice as many alternations per second and produces the tone most often heard in female conversation. it is middle _c_. another key might bring into action a dynamo which gives vibrations per second to the diaphragm of the telephone receiver. this would send forth a tone very nearly like the base note of our -cycle alternating current dynamo. the following table shows a series of ten tones which might be produced by the same little piece of sheet iron in a telephone receiver played upon by ten dynamos at the same time. the whole list of ten tones would sound well when produced simultaneously. the great mystery is that the iron disc can vibrate in such a complex manner. it is important to note, however, that the number of vibrations in each of the upper tones is a multiple of that of the lowest tone: nd octave above c´´-- (= × ) middle c g´ -- (= × ) e´ -- (= × )[a] st octave above c´ -- (= × ) middle c g -- (= × ) e -- (= × ) middle c c -- (= × )[b] st octave below g -- (= × ) middle c c, -- (= × )[c] nd octave below c,,-- (= × ) middle c [c] the tone most easily reproduced by the vocal cords of a man. [b] the tone most easily reproduced by the vocal cords of a woman. [a] the tone which the telephone receiver responds to most readily. the table covers the range of the human voice, male and female. all the intermediate tones, with their sharps and their flats, are produced each by its own separate dynamo. the insignificant amount of current required to operate a telephone receiver makes it possible to furnish the music of these dynamos to many and far distant telephones. this naturally suggests the idea of having a great musician perform upon the keyboard and have many auditors scattered about the city in their private homes or even in many public halls, for the telephone receiver can readily be made audible to a good-sized audience. xviii electric bell outfit for the cottage the boys asked me what arrangement of electric bells we needed at the cottage and so i gave them this problem to work out by themselves: . we want a bell in the kitchen to be rung by a push button at the front door. but there are times when no one is in the kitchen and hence, . we want a bell upstairs to make a single stroke whenever the kitchen bell is rung from the front door. . we want a floor push under the dining-room table which will cause the kitchen bell to ring a single stroke. . we want a push button in the dining-room which will cause both bells to clatter and call people from their beds, from the piazza, the lawn, etc., to their meals. this equipment needs only one battery of two dry cells, two bells, three push buttons and about two hundred feet of wire. it should cost less than five dollars. the boys drew many plans and tried many schemes and at last determined upon the plan shown in fig. . _p_ is the floor push under the dining-room table. when the circuit is closed at this point the current leaves the battery from the carbon pole _c_, passes up and around the magnets of the kitchen bell and back to the zinc pole of the battery _z_ by way of the push button _p_. all other circuits are open. [illustration: fig. ] _p´_ is the push button at the front door. when the circuit is closed at this point the current leaves the battery at _c_, passes up to the right-hand binding post of the kitchen bell and divides, part going through each bell. the portion of the current which goes through the kitchen bell passes around the magnets and through the armature to the left-hand binding post before it can find a path back to the battery. hence, the kitchen bell clatters. the portion of the current which passes to the upper bell goes around its magnets and finds a path back from the middle binding post to the battery by way of _p´_. hence the bell upstairs rings with a single stroke. _p´´_ is a push button situated upon the wall by the side of the door which leads from the dining-room to the kitchen. when the circuit is closed at this point, the current leaves the battery at _c_, passes up to the right-hand binding post of the kitchen bell and divides, part of it going through each bell. the portion which goes through the kitchen bell passes around its magnets and through its armature to the left-hand binding post, then up to the middle binding post of the upper bell, through its armature to its left-hand binding post and back to the battery by way of the push button _p´´_. the other portion of the current passes directly up to the right-hand binding post of the upper bell, around its magnets, and through its armature to its left-hand binding post, thence back to the battery by way of the push button _p´´_. hence, both bells clatter and keep time with each other. the upper bell will ring independently of the lower bell, but the lower bell is dependent upon the upper one to open and close its circuit, somewhat as a relay. soon after the cottage had been equipped with electric bells i went to the mill one day and found a push button at the door. upon going in i was curious to examine the electric bell outfit of that place and found what is illustrated in fig. . [illustration: fig. ] a switch, _s_, had been attached to the bell. the boys said that when they felt well they kept the switch upon the left-hand point and the bell rang as a clatter bell. when they felt a little sick they put the switch upon the middle point and the bell rang with a single stroke, but when they felt very sick they put the switch upon the dead point and the bell did not ring at all. xix using electricity to aid the memory for the sparking equipment of the motor boat we use dry cells which have an internal resistance of not more than . ohm. they will, when short circuited through the ammeter for only an instant, give amperes. ( . volt)/(. ohm) = amperes when we allow for a slight resistance in the ammeter itself, and for the drop in voltage, we see that the internal resistance of a cell must be even less than . ohm. after being used about two months upon the motor boat these cells develop more internal resistance, and they will then show not more than six to ten amperes when short circuited through an ammeter. they are then not reliable for ignition of the engine, but are quite as good as ever for bell-ringing, and often continue so for more than a year. the result is that we always have more partly run-down dry cells than we can use. seeing them about has stimulated the boys to devise ways for using them. the housekeeper is distracted by carrying on so many cooking processes at one time. she forgets the eggs, and lets them boil five minutes instead of three because the coffee must percolate twelve minutes, and she lets the coffee percolate twenty instead of twelve minutes because the biscuit must bake twenty minutes, and the biscuit are forgotten because the pies must come out in thirty minutes, and the cake in forty minutes. all this worries the cook. harold is a sympathetic boy and enters into the troubles of others. i had at one time shown him how to bore a hole in a glass plate in five or ten minutes by using a round file wet with water. one day he presented the kitchen with a clock, intended to relieve the burdened memory of the cook. this is represented in fig. . [illustration: fig. ] an ordinary kitchen clock had a hole bored through the glass which covers its face. this glass is easily moved around in its metal rim, bringing the hole over any desired minute upon the face. one wire of the battery is attached to a leg of the clock, the other goes to a bell, and then the wire from the bell is poked through this hole. when the minute hand reaches that point the electric current is closed through the metal of the clock, and the bell rings warning that the eggs, coffee or what not are done. we each urged that our memories should share in the vacation, and applied for one of these outfits. i took one of the clocks and cut back the minute hand so as to make it shorter than the hour hand, and then had the hole in the glass made so that the hour hand should close the electric circuit. this was kept at my study table and reminded me of my appointments. some used these clocks to alarm themselves in the morning when they slept overtime. another reminder is shown in fig. . _c_ is a float which rises and falls with the water in our house tank. a cord running over two pulleys connects this with a weight, _d_, hanging in front of a scale upon the wall of the kitchen. this indicates how much water there is at any time in the tank, which is situated in the garret. the boys arranged a bell and battery so that when the tank is nearly empty the weight _d_ will pull upward a spring, _a_, and make it close the circuit through the bell to warn that water must be pumped. when the tank is nearly full the weight _d_ pushes down the spring _b_ and rings the bell again. [illustration: fig. ] harold said that yeast cakes were the heaviest tax upon our memories. if some one started for the village store, before he got out of hearing, a call would come after him, "i forgot the yeast cake. please put that on the list." when one returned from the village store with numerous packages, he would generally hear, "my yeast cake was forgotten." we tried all sorts of schemes to get rid of this yeast-cake nuisance, and finally adopted harold's "curled bread" project. we had built a brick oven out back of the house for experimental purposes. harold proposed that the boys bake a month's supply of bread at a time, and, when it was a day or two old, cut it all into thin slices and let it dry. these slices curled up as they dried and were known as "curled bread." a flour barrel was filled with it each month. it kept perfectly any length of time. the family voted it to be better than crackers and better than fresh breadstuff of any kind. harold's suggestion regarding yeast cakes worked so well and was such a relief to our memories that i proposed he next attack the problem of the often forgotten salt in cooking. xx the electric brick oven we had no end of experiments with brick ovens. one of the most interesting was that wherein we used the brick fireplace as an oven and did the family baking in it. on a cold morning we would build up a smart wood fire in the fireplace and enjoy it during breakfast time. then we shovelled out the coals and the ashes, and shut it up tight with a sheet iron arrangement and utilized the heat stored in the bricks for doing all sorts of cooking. our outdoor brick oven and our monthly baking day were such a success that they led to the construction of another oven of smaller dimensions for the kitchen. this one was heated by electric lamps--one in each of the eight corners. it had double glass doors in front so that the cooking process might be watched. the glass of the inner door would be clouded with moisture for a while, when the cooking first began, but this would soon clear up, and then the lamps enabled us to watch the colour changes in baking, etc. the lamps in the upper part of the oven were connected with a different switch from those in the lower part of the oven, so that we were able to control the browning on top or bottom at pleasure. harold introduced a device for automatically controlling the temperature of this oven. [illustration: fig. ] strips of brass and iron, _b_ and _i_ (fig. ), were riveted together. these were fastened in the socket _a_. they are shown edgewise in the diagram. the upper end of this compound strip is free to bend back and forth in the plane of the paper, as here represented. they normally touch the screw _c_. one of the electric light wires runs from the lamps in the oven to this screw _c_. one wire of the dynamo circuit _g_ goes to the lamps, and the other connects with _a_. thus the compound strip acts as a switch to open and close the circuit upon the lamps. this thermostat, as it is called, was placed inside of the oven. heat causes brass to expand more than iron and therefore when the temperature reaches a certain height the thermostat curves, so as to break the contact with _c_, and the lamps go out. when the temperature falls a little the thermostat straightens until contact is again made with _c_. _c_ is a screw and can be made to advance or recede in its socket _e_, so that the temperature of the oven may be maintained at any point desired. the wire of the screw _c_ extends to the outside of the oven, where it carries an index, _d_, over the face of a dial, as shown in fig. . [illustration: fig. ] the cook may set this index at any desired degree, and the lamps will indicate when that degree has been reached. the thing to be baked is then put inside and the clock, illustrated in fig. , is set so as to warn when the time is up. the electric spark which occurs when the thermostat breaks contact with _c_ causes the metals to corrode at that point, and corroded metals are poor conductors. this corrosion is due to the oxygen of the air. there is one metal--the expensive platinum--which is not corroded by the electric spark. we drilled small holes in the end of the screw _c_ and in the brass strip and pounded into these holes little pieces of platinum wire. harold said he felt like a dentist filling a tooth. this furnished good, clean contact at all times. it takes a long time to heat up the brick oven, but it holds its heat a long time and makes an excellent fireless cooker after the lamps are turned out. it does not allow heat to escape into the kitchen, which makes it a comfort in our summer cottage. we are all becoming daft on _slowly cooked_ food--a sort of ripening process which gives time for the chemical changes to take place and develops the finest flavours of the food. xxi electric waves much has been said about bringing young people up to do what they don't like to do so as to make them strong and virtuous. my own life has always been guided by a different principle. it is: _find something worth while which you will enjoy doing, and do it with your might._ i am bringing up my boy on the same principle. in september we have a real desire to get back to our work in the city, and in june we have an eager longing for the occupations of millville. i am not aware that there is any part of my work which i would like to be relieved from, and harold and his mother said that they were now ready to return to the city apartment with real pleasure for a winter. one evening we were seated about the dinner table when harold asked me how electricity could travel without wires. i replied, "it travels as light does. but i am very much puzzled to know why it ever follows a wire when light does not." this did not settle the question and left us both unsatisfied, so i told him to invite two or three of his best friends in to-morrow evening, and i would perform some experiments for them that would at least help them to think further upon this subject. when the evening came i showed the boys an automobile spark coil to which i had attached two knobs, _a_ and _b_ (fig. ), and with which i had connected two dry battery cells. when i touch the wire _c_ to the binding post _d_ a spark passes between the knobs _a_ and _b_. when this spark occurs at least four kinds of waves pass out in all directions from the spark gap between the knobs. [illustration: fig. ] first, sound waves go through the air. our ears detect these. if the air is removed from around the apparatus no sound wave can go forth. a careful examination of the internal ear shows us that it is constructed so as to respond to such air waves. second, light waves go forth. these affect our eyes. we are blind to the first kind of waves and deaf to the second. the light waves travel without air--somewhat better without air than with air. a microscopic examination of the eye indicates that it is constructed so as to respond to waves. we believe there are waves in the ether which fills all space. sound waves travel in air at the rate of one mile in five seconds. we had this nicely illustrated at the sea shore one summer. the steamer touched each morning at a wharf which we could plainly see two miles distant. we could see the steam arise when she blew the warning whistle, and with our watches we found that it always required ten seconds for the sound to reach us after we saw the steam of the whistle. this at least showed us that it takes five seconds longer for sound waves to travel a mile than it does for light waves to travel the same distance. for light had to travel the same distance before we could see the steam arise from the whistle. although the time it takes for light to travel a mile is inconceivably small, we have a simple method of finding out that it requires eight minutes for light waves to come to us from the sun. the satellites of the planet jupiter, in revolving about that body, disappear and reappear at regular intervals, acting as flash lights to mark time. [illustration: fig. ] the earth, being , , miles distant from the sun, is , , miles farther from jupiter when at _b_ than it is when at _a_. (see fig. .) it is found by observation that sixteen minutes more are required for the light waves from a reappearing satellite to reach us at _b_ than when we are at _a_. hence eight minutes would be required for light waves to travel the distance from the sun to the earth. although light travels at the inconceivable velocity of , miles per second, the nearest star is so far distant that it takes light three and a half years to come from it to us. the north star requires forty-two years to send its light to us, and arcturus is so far away that waves of light sent out from it one hundred and sixty years ago are only just reaching us now, and if it should cease to send forth light now men would continue to see it for five generations yet to come. a third kind of wave which goes forth in the ether from the spark gap of our coil is a heat wave. this affects neither our eyes nor our ears, but i will undertake to make you conscious of it by another method. [illustration: fig. ] before a mixture of gasolene vapour and air can be ignited its temperature must be raised to about degrees fahrenheit. i will show that heat waves pass out from this spark gap by placing my watch crystal filled with gasolene underneath the knobs of the spark coil, (fig. ). when now i close the electric circuit at the battery the mixture of gasolene vapour and air just above the watch crystal is ignited. if i increase the distance between the knobs you still hear the crackle of the sound waves and see the light waves, but the mixture of gasolene vapour and air does not ignite, because there are not heat waves enough. the automobilist expresses this fact by saying a "fat" spark or a "warm" spark is needed. a battery which has ceased to give a sufficiently hot spark to explode the mixture of gasolene and air in the cylinder of a gasolene engine may serve all other purposes quite as well as ever. it may ring bells almost as long as it ever would. i proved that the temperature for igniting a mixture of gasolene vapour and air was nearly as high as melting iron, by heating an iron rod to a dull red heat and bringing it to the watch crystal containing gasolene. it did not take fire. i showed that it could not be ignited by a lighted cigar, nor even by a glowing coal taken from the fire. it was necessary to heat the iron rod to a very bright red heat--nearly white heat, or nearly to its melting point, before it would ignite the mixture. these heat waves are ether waves, differing from light only in having greater wave length. they travel at the speed of light, they travel better without air than with air. they come from the sun and all other light-giving bodies. indeed, an ordinary incandescent electric lamp gives out about twenty-four times as much energy in heat as in light. heat waves are being thrown off from all bodies which are around us. the steam radiators are placed in this room for the express purpose of sending out heat waves through the ether in this room. this is the chief method of distributing heat, and it is hindered rather than helped by the presence of the air. the walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, people--everything here is sending out heat waves. the fourth kinds of waves, which go out from the spark gap of our coil, are also waves in the ether. they are still longer than heat or light. we have ears for sound, eyes for light, and temperature sensation for heat, but as yet we have not evolved a delicate sense organ for detecting electric waves. at least few of us claim to have such a sense. i will, however, undertake to make you feel electricity. i then adjusted the coil so that each boy might take a mild electric shock from it by touching the two knobs. that is by placing himself in the spark gap. they agreed that although they could not hear, see, taste, or smell electricity they were a little more familiar with it now, having felt it. sound waves in air, as given out by the piano, vary in length from, say, four inches to forty feet, those having the shorter wave length being the higher pitched tones. light waves in the ether, as given out by the sun, vary in length from, say, / to / of an inch, those having the shorter wave length being the violet-coloured light, which may be seen in the rainbow, and those having the longer wave length being the red-coloured light of the rainbow or the sunset. heat waves, which are also waves in the ether, vary in length from above / to, say, / of an inch. roentgen or x waves are ether waves, shorter than light; while hertzian, or wireless telegraph waves are very long ether waves, varying from a few feet to many rods in length. those used by marconi in sending despatches across the atlantic ocean are as long as feet, four or five of them cover a mile, and , of them cover the whole distance from cape cod to poldhu. electric waves are easily broken up into the shorter heat waves, or the still shorter light waves. on the other hand roentgen waves are readily transformed into the longer light waves, and are thus brought within our powers of vision. sound waves of various lengths (of high and low pitch) all travel at the same speed (one mile in five seconds), else how would the piccolo and the bass horn of the distant band sound together. so ether waves of various lengths (light, heat, electricity, etc.) all travel at the same speed, _i. e._, , miles per second. for detecting the electric waves which may be sent out from the spark gap of our automobile spark coil i shall ask you to help me prepare a special piece of apparatus. one boy may file this silver ten-cent piece and another may file this nickel five-cent piece, each gathering the filings upon a piece of paper. a third boy may select a piece of glass tubing about one eighth of an inch in the inside diameter, and with a three-cornered file cut off a short piece, about one and a half inches long, and smooth the ends with a wet file. a fourth boy may select a piece of stout copper wire nearly as large as the bore of the glass tubing, and cut from it two pieces, each about two inches long. wind one end of each of these with thread to make them fit snugly in the glass tubing. [illustration: fig. coherer] we thrust one of the wires into the tube, then mixed equal parts of the silver and nickel filings and put as much of the mixture into the tube as we could hold upon the tip of a penknife blade, and then thrust in the other copper wire. (see fig. .) the ends of the wire were about one eighth of an inch apart and the gap was loosely filled with the metal filings. this was connected by short pieces of copper wire, as shown in fig. , to a dry battery cell, _b_, and a sensitive ammeter. when all connections were made the needle of the ammeter remained at zero, showing that no electric current was passing, that is, the battery cell was unable to send any electricity through the metal filings. this is the apparatus which is to help us detect electric waves when they pass about us. electricity has been called invisible light, that is, invisible to our eyes, and this apparatus has been called an "electric eye" because it will detect electric waves in the ether, just as our eyes may detect light waves passing through the ether. [illustration: fig. ] we placed the automobile spark coil upon the table near to the tube containing the filings of silver and nickel, and as soon as we made a spark pass between the knobs the ammeter needle moved half way across the scale, indicating that the spark had somehow influenced the metal filings in the tube so that now they permitted the battery cell to send some electric current through them and through the ammeter. i asked one of the boys to tap the tube slightly with a lead pencil so as to jar the metal filings, and as soon as he did so the needle of the ammeter went back to zero. [illustration: fig. ] the spark coil sent electric waves out in every direction, and those which hit the metal filings made them cohere together. in that condition they allowed the dry cell to send through them enough current to move the needle of the ammeter. tapping the tube made the metal filings break apart again, in which condition they do not allow the current of the cell to pass in sufficient quantity to move the needle. this tube is called a _coherer_, because the filings in it cohere together. the apparatus then serves to indicate when electric waves are passing. as yet, however, it would not respond when the spark coil was more than one foot away. our next step was to attach extra pieces of wire, each ten or twelve feet long, at either end of the coherer, as indicated in fig. . one of these wires was stretched out upon the floor while the other one was connected with the wire of a picture hanging upon the wall. we now found that the coherer would respond when the spark coil was operated several feet away. the extra wires which we had attached to the coherer are called antennæ, because they suggest the long "feelers" or antennæ of some insects. [illustration: fig. ] our next step was to put antennæ upon the spark coil also, as shown in fig. . one of these wires was stretched out upon the floor, while the other one was connected with the wire of a picture hanging upon the wall on the opposite side of the room from where the coherer was. we now found that the coherer would respond when the spark coil was operated in the farthest part of the room. with the wires which were lying upon the floor extending toward each other, but lacking several feet of touching, the coherer responded when the spark coil was operated in various other rooms of the house, although the doors between were shut. when the floor wires were connected to the water pipes the coherer would respond when the spark coil was operated in a neighbouring house. we tried a similar experiment, substituting an ordinary electric bell for the spark coil. the coherer or electric eye detected that ether waves were sent forth from an electric bell every time a spark was produced in the bell. for this purpose connections were made, as shown in fig. . one dry battery cell was used to ring the bell. the floor wire _a_, or, as it is usually called, the ground wire, was connected to the binding post , and the other antenna was connected to the screw , and then supported aloft on a picture hung upon the wall. with this transmitter we sent waves across the room which were detected by the coherer. [illustration: fig. ] we constructed a simple spark coil as follows: we bought a pound of no. single cotton covered copper wire, such as is used in the electro-magnets of bells. it was, when we bought it, wound upon a wooden spool. we filled the hole in the centre of this spool with wire nails. one dry cell was connected with this (fig. ). when the wires at _d_ were touched together, and then separated, a spark was produced at that point. a ground wire was connected at _b_, and an antenna at _c_, as before. using this apparatus now as a transmitter of ether waves, we found that the coherer detected them. [illustration: fig. ] we next gave our attention to making changes in the receiving apparatus, not to change the coherer, but to provide substitutes for the ammeter. a sensitive _relay_ was procured, which is essentially like a bell or buzzer except that it does not clatter. it will be readily understood, by referring to the accompanying fig. , that _r_ is a coil of insulated wire around an iron core exactly like what we see in the electric bell. (in practice there will be a pair instead of one of them.) such coils are called electro-magnets, because when electricity flows in the wires they become magnets, and will attract iron. _a_ is an iron spring, _b_ is a dry battery cell and _c_ is the coherer. whenever an ether wave passes the coherer permits the battery cell to send a current around the magnet of the relay, and it attracts the iron spring _a_, so that it hits against the metal post _d_ with a click. whenever we used this to respond to ether waves the click of the relay suggested the telegraph sounder. how it served in wireless telegraphy will appear in the following pages. [illustration: fig. ] xxii ringing bells and lighting lamps by electric waves [illustration: fig. ] harold was to have a birthday party, to which many of his school friends were invited. for this occasion he prepared, with my help, to perform for the girls and boys some electrical experiments, and particularly to give all who chose to try it an electric shock. for this purpose he had them all join hands, and the electric charge was sent through the whole line at once. one thing he did shocked his mother more than anything else. he instituted a mock court, at which one of the boys was tried, convicted and condemned to be executed by electricity. the whole affair was enacted with no great solemnity, but the electrical experiment was voted a great success by the executed "criminal." the following group of experiments, however, seemed to give the most satisfaction: on a table was placed the coherer connected to the relay, and in another room was placed the spark coil for sending ether waves. he had this operated by a confederate whom he chose for the purpose. he then connected two wires to the relay, one at _d_ and the other at _e_ (fig. ). these ran to a battery cell and a bell in a far corner of the room. at a given signal (a cough) the confederate made a spark at the spark coil in the other room; this sent ether waves through the partition between the rooms; the ether waves caused the coherer to pass electricity from the dry cell no. , to close the relay spring _r_. this acted like a switch to close the second circuit through the dry cell no. and the bell, which rang out to the surprise of all. it continued to ring until he tapped the coherer tube and broke apart the filings. when this had been tried to the satisfaction of all, the company was invited to another room. here they found an electric train with tracks, train sheds, stations, tunnels, bridges, switches, signals, etc., arranged upon a centre table. the electric train was to be started by ether waves. a wire from the railroad track was connected with _e_ of the relay (see fig. ). a wire from _d_ of the relay was connected to the third rail through a battery of sufficient strength (battery ). the electric train completed the circuit by connecting the tracks with the third rail. all heard the crack of the spark coil in the adjoining room, and saw the train start immediately. ether waves had caused battery to close the relay _r_. this had closed the circuit so that battery might run the train, of course by means of a motor in the train. he tapped the coherer. the relay spring _r_ flew open and the train stopped. presently another crack from the adjoining room, and the train instantly started again. when all the details of the electric train had been examined the company was invited to go to the dining room, which was dimly lighted by candles. all were seated and busily conversing when the crackling noise of the spark coil was again heard, and a group of little electric lights flashed forth upon a birthday cake. the wires from the lamps and a battery to run them had been connected with the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of the relay. [illustration: fig. ] the chandelier over the dining-room table had a pendant push button _a_ (fig. ), with which the regular electric lights could be turned on and off. this i had removed and extended the wires down upon the table. it was only necessary to connect these to the binding posts _d_ and _e_ of the relay, and the next wave from the spark coil lighted the chandelier. [illustration: fig. ] the flexible wires underneath the dining-room table with which the maid is usually summoned from the kitchen were next extended up and connected with _d_ and _e_ of the relay, and the maid was called in by an ether wave. she brought with her a tray in the centre of which stood an earthenware cup, such as is used for baking custard. this had been filled with a mixture of granulated sugar and powdered potassium chlorate. four dry battery cells stood around this upon the tray connected in series (fig. ). a very small iron wire connecting two of these cells dipped into the sugar mixture. two wires from the battery were connected to _d_ and _e_ of the relay. at the proper signal an ether wave was sent out by the spark coil. the coherer closed the relay and the relay acted as a push button to close the circuit of the four cells upon the tray. the fine wire dipping into the sugar and potassium chlorate got red hot. this caused the mixture to flash up and burn in most beautiful coloured flames. (fig. ). [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] on this occasion harold's friends gave him, with due formalities, the degree of e. e., which they said meant _electrical expert_, and ever since that night he has been called "the expert." i inquired of the young folks, as their party was breaking up, if they understood harold's explanations of all these things, and he replied that he at any rate understood them better having attempted to explain them. xxiii telegraphing by electric waves the next time harold and i experimented we arranged something to save us the trouble of tapping the coherer each time we used it. we employed simply an electric bell, _b_ (fig. ), from which we removed the gong. by reference to the figure the arrangement will be understood. each time ether waves cause the metal filings to cohere and the battery _b^{ }_ closes the relay _r_, battery _b^{ }_ causes the hammer of _b^{ }_ to tap against the coherer. this causes the current to cease to flow from _b^{ }_ and the relay opens again by its own spring. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] our next addition was a telegraph sounder as shown in fig. . _b^{ }_ is a single dry cell, _c_ is the coherer, _r_ is the relay, _b^{ }_ is now a battery of three cells. part of its current goes to _b^{ }_, the tapper for the coherer, and part of its current goes to the electro-magnet of the telegraph sounder _s_. ordinarily a spring holds the iron strip _d_ up against the metal stop _a_, but when the current passes through the electro-magnet it pulls down this iron strip with a click against the metal stop _e_. but while this is happening _c_ is being tapped by _b_, and is ready to respond to each wave. it was only necessary now to have some code of signals in order to communicate by telegrams. we learned the system of dots and dashes, or short and long periods marked off by the sounder, which all telegraphers use and which is known as the morse alphabet, and very soon harold and i were telegraphing from one room to another messages of several sentences at a time, the morse alphabet being told off on the spark coil and being received through the coherer and telegraph sounder. it was not long before harold and one of the neighbours' boys were exchanging messages between their homes, each having a spark coil and the necessary receiving apparatus, and having extended their antennæ to the top of the buildings into what are called in the wireless language _aerials_. [illustration: photograph by helen w. cooke. induction coil of a wireless] the fever for wireless telegraphy spread like wild-fire among the boys. in a few months they had formed a "wireless club." they had each read anywhere from ten to thirty books and articles upon the subject, and had secured the latest improved apparatus. they made it a practice to spend hours daily at their instruments picking up and keeping on file messages which were sent to and from steamers leaving the harbour for european ports. on one occasion they showed me from these files scores of messages--fond, personal, and supposedly private farewells to friends and communications between business partners which they would never have made on land without first closing the office door. the boys had acquired a mass of technical knowledge upon the subject which far exceeded my comprehension. but their teachers in school complained that they would learn nothing else, and some of the boys had already received warning that they might fail of promotion. how to have compelling interests without riding hobbies is the great problem for both boys and men. i have known many boys who could, or at least would, do nothing well in school or out, except some specialty like manual training or science. in later years they were so deficient in education that they could hold no worthy position in anything. my anxiety was to save my boy from such a fate. i was determined that he should have a fair share of all kinds of culture. to this end we read together much of biography, history and classical literature, ancient and modern, through the medium of the english language. as both prevention and cure of the wireless telegraph mania i deemed it not necessary to suppress enthusiasm, nor to introduce obviously useless tasks for the sake of the training which might be in them. my method was, on the contrary, to encourage my boy to have several hobbies which he might ride with enthusiasm, but to make it a rigorous rule to exchange his "mount" occasionally. xxiv halley's comet and electrical waves [illustration: fig. ] it was the year and halley's comet was approaching the sun. on may its tail might be expected to reach the earth. astronomers had requested all who might be possessed of wireless telegraph apparatus to watch on that day for any peculiar behaviour of their apparatus so that evidence might be obtained whether or not the comet sends forth such ether waves as we call electricity. harold desired me to explain the whole matter to his group of friends, which i did on a subsequent evening, as follows: "although halley's comet has come within the earth's orbit about three thousand times since its first recorded appearance, i know of no man living who can give a satisfactory account of having seen it. any one who has seen it before must be at least seventy-five years old, for it requires seventy-five years to make one complete circuit of its own orbit. but no one who is now seventy-five could have observed it intelligently, and even one who is now eighty-five years old would have to tell what he saw when he was ten years old and has remembered for seventy-five years. furthermore, any account of how it looked on a former return is no guide to how it may appear on this trip. you may properly think of the comet as a group of solid pieces no bigger than the stones you may throw, scattered, two or three to the mile, through a space , miles broad. this extremely thin cloud of particles does not reflect enough sunlight to be visible, even in a telescope, in any part of its journey, and hence we should be wholly unaware of its existence if it did not sometimes have the strange faculty of giving out light of its own _while in that part of its own orbit nearest to the sun_. at such a time there is a hazy light enveloping the mass of small bodies, and streaming away sometimes many million miles from them. the mass of small bodies is generally referred to as the nucleus, and the stream of luminous gas which the nucleus gives forth is called the tail, though it reminds me more of a search-light. "it does not trail along behind the comet but always points away from the sun (fig. ). the normal thing for a comet to do is to begin to develop a faint light and a short streamer as it gets near to the sun, to have its light grow brighter and its streamer to grow longer until it reaches the point nearest the sun, and then to have its light grow dimmer and the streamer grow shorter as it recedes from the sun. [illustration: fig. ] "it has many times been suggested that this strange search-light appearance may be an electrical phenomenon, some form of ether waves which the comet sends forth when under the immediate influence of the sun. but not all comets are alike in this matter, nor does the same comet always act alike on succeeding trips, so that we may not predict what halley's comet will do on this visit. it would be natural to suppose that halley's comet, like radium, might in time lose the power to radiate off material, in which case it might at length become wholly invisible to us, even though it continued to travel in its wonted path. our only way of knowing of its existence then would be that on its returns some of its small pieces might be attracted to the earth and enter our atmosphere as meteors. this sort of thing is continually happening, and may be the last reminders of once brilliant comets. "for almost a century it has been the common belief that light is merely a wave motion in the ether. our eyes respond to ether waves of certain length only. waves a little longer than those which affect our eyes are felt by us as heat waves. waves still longer than those of heat are the so-called electric waves. these we use in wireless telegraphy. there are still shorter waves than those of light. these affect the sensitive plate in photography. they help to form the green material in the leaves of plants and the brilliant colours in flowers. they assist in the fading of our clothes and the tanning of our skin. these are called chemical waves. still shorter waves in the ether than those of which we have just spoken are the x rays, and all the strange things which they may do have not yet been determined. certain it is that they can make dreadful sores in our flesh. they can penetrate through wood and paper, but not metals. they pass readily through flesh, but not bones. all such ether waves are treated in a book by sylvanus p. thompson, entitled 'light visible and invisible,' in which he points out that electricity, heat, light, chemical rays, etc., are all alike in being ether waves, and this was suspected by james clerk maxwell and others half a century ago, and has come now to be quite generally believed. "halley's comet, already having been _seen_ upon this return, must be sending out those ether waves which we call light; whether it is also sending forth some of the other kinds of ether waves may yet be determined." my audience being chiefly composed of those persons who were present at harold's birthday party, they pressed me to tell them more about wireless telegraphy and similar matters, and so i agreed to give them at some future date some account of the history of these ideas. but my present purpose was to start an interest in astronomy as an antidote for the wireless epidemic, and so i invited all who desired to do so to come again one week from that evening, bringing with them such opera and field glasses as they might be able to secure. i promised to show them how to make a telescope such as galileo had more than three hundred years ago. i agreed to go out with them several evenings and scan the sky with our telescopes, and to tell them of some readable books and articles upon astronomical matters. xxv how the idea of a universal ether developed the evening for the meeting of the science club had arrived. its membership had increased tenfold within a year. at its monthly meetings, which were open to the public, an audience of two hundred, old and young, was usually present--a number about three times that of the regular membership. general science was now the study of this club. at its weekly meetings, which only members attended, the studies of specific topics by individuals, oftentimes illustrated by experiments, were reported. these meetings were held in one of my laboratories, while the open monthly meeting was always held in my lecture room, with some rather famous speakers to instruct the audience. an enthusiastic friend of science had given a fund with the stipulation that we should engage the services of those who both knew their subjects and had acquired the art of presentation. the fund was $ , and it yielded $ a year. i think beyond question it was doing more for science than any other fund of ten times that amount which can be mentioned. on the particular evening of which i am about to speak, the lecturer told the members of the science club frankly how, beginning at the age of thirteen, he had spent forty years of _enjoyment in study_, that he had always found great satisfaction in the study of ancient civilizations and literatures. he had been fortunate, he said, in having teachers early in life who could make these subjects full of meaning to him. his greatest satisfaction, however, during the last twenty-five years had been found in tracing the development of modern science, both in the evolution of its theories and in its applications to modern industries. he said he was sure that young people of high-school age would find it profitable to learn, for instance, how the modern theory of combustion had developed slowly through the centuries, even if to do so they must curtail somewhat their study of how greece and rome developed and declined. he said that science furnished a tremendously rich field of study for young people, which as yet had been untouched by our schools, first, because educational conservatism had made it impossible to determine the relative importance of subjects of study, and, second, because education in science had, for a brief period, found its worst enemies within its own camp. he would like especially to commend on this evening some historical studies in science, and had chosen for his subject, "how the idea of a universal ether developed." men seem to talk freely now about the transmission of light, heat, and electricity by means of the _ether_. how did this idea arise? is it a product of wild imagination? or did the idea develop out of experiences which, if given to any person of fair intelligence, would yield the same result? a little over thirty years ago, at the royal institution of great britain, james clerk maxwell ( - ) delivered a lecture on "action at a distance." it was no new subject, but rather one of the oldest and most often discussed subjects from the days of the ancient greeks down to the present. we talk of gravitation as an attraction or pull between the various bodies of the universe, but how can they pull one another without some material bond between? this was sir isaac newton's great puzzle which he never solved, though he expended upon it the greatest efforts of his great intellect. the sun appears to repel the tail of the comet, yet how can there be a push without intervening material with which to push? when we speak of light pouring or streaming in, do we think of it as a substance? when we speak of warm bodies losing heat, or when we cover them to keep the heat in, are we thinking of heat as a substance? what are heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation? these are no new questions. they are certainly older than history. various ideas have prevailed at different times. it is much easier to change our ideas than to change our language. you occasionally see and hear the words calorie and caloric used in connection with heat. they stand for an idea, abandoned for three generations, that heat is a substance called caloric, which saturates warm bodies and drains out of them when they cool off. i hardly think these ideas either arise or fall without good and sufficient reason. each theory has been the natural conclusion from our observations of nature as far as we have gone with them. to be sure, it is difficult for us to see how men acquired, from any observations of nature, the idea of light which seems to have prevailed previous to the time of aristotle, three and a half centuries b.c. this idea was that objects were made visible by something projected from the eye itself. still, the questions which i have indicated regarding heat, light, and electricity have impelled men for many centuries to observe nature for hints as to the answers. the doctrine of the universal ether as a medium for transmitting wave motions, and of light, heat, and electricity as being motions of different wave length, is the natural conclusion of the present time. it may give place to another theory when we have further facts to reason upon. imagine your never having seen a harp or other musical instrument. would it require a long time, do you think, for you to find out its use, at least to this extent, that it will produce tones whenever the strings are made to vibrate? that the short strings vibrate more rapidly than the long ones, and at the same time produce tones of a higher pitch? imagine that having become familiar with the harp you should successively come upon scores of other musical instruments of very differing types. you would soon become adept at divining their uses. now, a study of the microscopic structure of the eye, for one thing, would suggest that light may be in the nature of a vibration. scores of other lines of study in a similar manner have at length brought all who pursue them to the conclusion that light is a form of vibration. robert hooke in england ( - ) and christian huygens in holland ( - ), back in the seventeenth century seem to have been the first to give expression to this idea, which was nothing more than an inkling in hooke's mind, but which was the necessary result of observations on the part of huygens. for nearly a century the idea lay dormant, largely because sir isaac newton ( - ), the cleverest thinker of his time, opposed it. it was perhaps unfortunate for the success of the theory that huygens, its founder, adopted the word ether, for that was an old term, and had been very badly overworked. the word ether, or æther as it was often written, had been invented in the days of ignorance, for such foolish reasons as: (a) because "nature abhors a vacuum," or (b) "for planets to swim in," or (c) "to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia," or (d) "to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another." "when we remember," says maxwell, "the mischievous influence on science which hypotheses about æthers used formerly to exercise, we can appreciate the horror of æthers which sober-minded men had during the eighteenth century." newton in england ( - ) and laplace in france ( - ) stoutly opposed the undulatory theory of huygens and championed a corpuscular or emission theory, that light-giving and heat-giving bodies emit a subtile fluid. there is no other instance in the whole history of modern physics in which truth was so long kept down by authority. fresnel ( - ) and arago ( - ) in france appear to be the only persons during the eighteenth century who caught a clear vision of the truth of the undulatory theory. but it remained for mr. thomas young ( - ), a colleague of sir humphrey davy at the royal institution, in his bakerian lecture ( ) on "theory of light and colour" to bring together such good evidence for the ether wave theory that it has hardly been questioned since. young, like davy, was a most remarkable man in literature and in science. it was he who first deciphered the rosetta stone, now in the british museum, and gave us a key to the egyptian hieroglyphics. probably he was the only man who was able to overthrow the influence of newton's authority even a century after newton did his work. faraday's ( - ) chief work as director of the laboratory of the royal institution, london, was a study of ether phenomena, particularly electric and magnetic. about seventy-five years ago he became impressed with the fact that although wires may give direction to an electric current the electric influence is not confined to the wires, but may permeate more or less widely the region about them. nearly fifty years ago maxwell ( - ) professor of physics at cambridge university, england, conceived the idea that light is electricity of a very short wave length. nearly twenty-five years ago heinrich hertz ( - ), in germany, proved by experiments the existence of electric waves, and measured their length and velocity, determining their various characteristics as compared with light. about fifteen years ago marconi developed a wireless telegraph apparatus, which made it possible to use electric waves for purposes of communication. thirteen years ago ( ) the first wireless telegraph company was formed. eleven years ago ( ) the international yacht races in new york harbour were reported by wireless telegraph, and bulletin boards in new york city announced to waiting crowds the details of the race while it was in progress. nearly ten years ago ( ) wireless despatches were first sent across the atlantic ocean. wireless telegraphy was opened for public use in , and very soon the company began to coöperate with the regular telegraph companies. nearly all coastwise and trans-atlantic steamers are now equipped with wireless telegraph outfits, and a law has passed both houses of congress making it obligatory on the part of steamers which carry fifty or more passengers to have such equipment. on several disabled steamers, notably the _republic_, loss of life has been averted by the wireless emergency call for help, to which the captains of all steamers feel obliged to respond. if you desire to communicate with a friend who left for europe several days ago, you simply write him a telegram, addressing it to his ship, and deliver it at your nearest telegraph office. each telegraph office has a record of the location of every ship having a wireless telegraph outfit. it despatches your message to the wireless station along the coast which is nearest to your friend's steamer, and from this station it is sent on the ether to the ship. or in some cases it may be repeated from one ship to another along the atlantic highway until it reaches the desired one. thus also news of important events on either continent is distributed daily on board ships which are crossing the ocean. there are said to be more than , amateur wireless stations in the united states, and already congress is taking steps to regulate the use of the wireless telegraph in order to prevent interference with government and other important messages. more than three dozen books and countless magazine articles have already been written upon wireless or ether wave telegraphy. hundreds have and thousands are contributing to our knowledge of ether wave phenomena. if the names of all who have said or done something to render stable the foundations of this idea of a universal ether, whose undulations account for the phenomena of heat, light, and electricity, were to be mentioned, the list would contain nearly all the important workers in the field of physics for the last century. xxvi electric currents cannot be confined to wires harold said that if electricity was so much like light that it could go without wires he thought light ought to be enough like electricity to be conducted by wires on occasions. i told him that i had no hope of being able to confine light to a wire; indeed, if the science club would give me an opportunity i would show them that even when electricity follows the general direction of a wire its influence is not confined to the wire. as a result of this bid i received an invitation to address an open meeting of the science club. [illustration: fig. ] in my first experiment on that occasion i took a one-pound spool of no. cotton-covered copper wire and crowded the hole in the spool full of wire nails _a_ (fig. ). i disconnected the wires from an electric drop lamp and connected them to _b_ and _c_, the ends of the wire from the spool. our electric lighting circuit was what is called the _alternating current_. i also had a second spool, _b_, precisely like the first. the wires from this were connected to a miniature lamp, _l_, such as is used at the switchboard of a telephone exchange. we then screwed the drop-light plug into the chandelier and turned on the electric current. i brought spool _b_ with the miniature lamp near to spool _a_, as shown in fig. , and when it was within a distance of about two inches the little lamp lighted up to full brilliancy, thus showing that while the electric current is passing in the wire of spool _a_ its influence is not confined to the wire, but exhibits itself in the region outside of the wire. to illustrate still further this fact we substituted an electric bell in the place of the lamp _l_, and when the spool _b_ was brought near to _a_ the bell rang. but the most striking illustration was obtained when a telephone receiver was put in the place of _l_. with this held to the ear while the spool _b_ was brought toward _a_ a humming sound could be heard when _b_ was about a foot distant from _a_. this sound grew rapidly louder as _b_ approached _a_, until, when the spool _b_ rested upon the spool _a_, a sound like the peal of a pipe organ was heard all over the apartment. the tone was very nearly that of the key on the piano which is two octaves below middle _c_. i unscrewed the cap on the large end of the telephone receiver, took it off, and moved the thin iron diaphragm to one side, when it began to dance about at great speed. it was keeping time with the dynamo, five miles away, which generated the electric current. the dynamo changed the direction of the electric current sixty times per second, and this made sixty vibrations per second. the dynamo sent out ether waves which affected the telephone receiver, although the receiver was not connected to the dynamo by wires. to emphasize the fact that the dynamo had lighted the lamp, rung the bell and made the telephone receiver hum without being connected with them, i repeated all these experiments in a different way. spool _a_, connected as before with the electric lighting circuit, was concealed beneath the table. for spool _b_ i substituted spool _c_ (fig. ), on which the wire was wound so as to appear like a candlestick. on the top of this was placed the miniature electric lamp screwed into a miniature socket and connected to the wires of the spool. this "witches' candle," as we called it, was sitting unlighted upon the table when i called attention to the fact that if i moved it to a certain spot upon the table it flashed into full light. (of course this spot was directly over spool _a_.) i moved it slowly away from that spot and its light slowly grew dim and disappeared. [illustration: fig. ] on the table was also sitting a cream pitcher in which i had placed spool _b_ with a buzzer attached to it. remarking that this pitcher groaned for more cream whenever it was empty, and thus of its own accord called the waiter, i moved it to the spot on the table directly over spool _a_, when the buzzer gave forth a sound like a husky bumble-bee shut up in a resounding bottle. at this signal my assistant came in and took up the pitcher and placed my silk hat upon the table, when it instantly boomed forth a base note two octaves below middle _c_ of the piano. out of the hat i took a coil and the telephone receiver and the mystery was solved. [illustration: fig. ] in hans christian oersted in denmark ( - ) first noted that the region about a wire carrying an electric current has an influence upon a magnet. i will show this fact by a simple experiment. i magnetize a stout sewing needle by drawing it from end to end across the pole of a steel magnet, and by means of a triangular piece of paper and a fine thread i suspend it a few inches above the table (fig. ). i then lay upon the table a piece of wire parallel with the needle and fasten one end of it to one binding post of a dry cell. whenever i touch the other end of the wire to the other binding post of the cell, thus sending an electric current through the wire, the magnetized needle is deflected at right angles. this experiment, performed by oersted, seems to have started faraday upon that wonderful series of researches which has resulted in giving us the dynamo. xxvii wireless telegraphy in earnest we had decided to let harold make a trip to europe alone. the first message from him after his departure was a brief note to his mother saying that they had had a turbulent voyage, but all had landed safely upon the other side, none the worse for their experiences. the next day a number of letters came to me from total strangers. one of these ran as follows: my dear sir: prompted by my own impulses, and urged to do so by the passengers under my charge, i improve this first opportunity to express to you our high appreciation for your noble but very modest son, to whom more than to any one else we owe the lives of all on board our fated ship. i am sending this direct to you both, because i understand a father's heart and because the young man escaped as soon as we came to land, without any of us learning his address. i beg you will communicate to him the desire of the president of our company to meet him and personally to thank him for his gallant conduct. i am also instructed to say that whenever harold desires to cross the ocean the best which any ship i may command can afford will be his without charge. very respectfully yours, -------- captain. s. s. another letter was the following: my dear sir: permit me to congratulate you on having such a heroic and self-possessed son. we, his fellow passengers, are, if possible, as proud of him as you must be. i fear that his account of the affair will not do himself full justice, and so, with your permission, i will give you the full details as i have gathered them from the passengers, from the crew, and from my own observation. during the last night of our voyage a thick fog closed about us. the constant blowing of the fog whistle made the night dismal. few persons slept at all. about two o'clock in the morning the ship struck a reef, and instantly it seemed as though every person on that ship reached the decks at the same time. the water poured in and put out the fires. the ship heeled badly, and it seemed that any minute she might slip off the reef on which she was resting into deep water and go down. to add to our horror fire broke out. it seems to have started in the wireless operator's room. very much damage was done to the wireless outfit itself, and the operator was badly burned, so much so that he was taken to the ship's hospital suffering with many painful and dangerous wounds. meanwhile the flames spread rapidly and we were unable to summon help. the crew and many of the passengers fought the flames, but with little success. in the midst of our despair word passed around the ship that an unknown boy from among the passengers was sending the c. q. d. message to all the world by wireless. it was afterward learned that your harold was the youth. he had repaired the damaged apparatus sufficiently to establish connection with a storage battery which he found, and, under the captain's direction, was sending forth that hurry call for help known to all the wireless fraternity and heeded by all sea-faring men. i learned that your boy was not a regular operator, but that somehow he had learned to send this message and also to send out the captain's calculations of our position at sea. he was also able to detect that his call had been heard and that help was coming, although he could not understand much that came to his instrument in reply to his calls. i learned, also, that he was one of the first to reach the operator's room and to give assistance. he was himself badly burned, so much so that one hand was being dressed by a nurse while he was continually using the other to operate his instrument. i can testify, my dear sir, that he appeared to be the calmest and most self-possessed person on board that ship, as i saw him in the glare of the dreadful flames which lit up the blackest night. i am an artist and would like to attempt to paint that scene, which has left its lasting impression upon my soul. i beg that you will allow me to exhibit it for a time in several of our galleries and finally present it to your family. help came none too soon. we were all transferred to other boats, but the sea was rising, and scarcely had we reached a safe distance when the burning ship slipped into the sea and disappeared. i do not know by which boat your son reached the land. in the great confusion i lost sight of him at last. he has doubtless communicated with you by this time, and i shall esteem it a great favour if you will put me in communication with him again. in order that i may do justice to him in the painting i would like to arrange with him a few sittings while he is in europe. could you kindly send me a photograph of him which will assist me somewhat? most sincerely and gratefully yours, --------. the letter contained several references to mutual acquaintances. * * * * * harold's letters have been frequent and full of the pleasure he is having in european travel, but the only thing he has said about the voyage is that "it was not worth so much fuss." [illustration] the country life press garden city, n. y. * * * * * transcriber's notes: obvious typos and inconsistencies in spelling have been corrected: p . intrument -> instrument p . mantain -> maintain p . represents the [the] counter-electro-motive force p . volts × . ampere = . watts. -> volts × . ampere = . watts. the correct voltage is deduced from the preceding paragraph. p . ampere -> . ampere p . familar -> familiar p . preceptible -> perceptible p . - p . countershaft -> counter shaft p . h_{ }so^{ } -> h_{ }so_{ } p . note c refers to c´ not c´´ and these should be labelled c, and c,, to denote octaves below middle c. p . electri-tricity -> electricity p . oufit -> outfit throughout the text: the few cases of "volt-meter" have been changed to "volt meter" which has been used for the majority of the text. the single instances of watt meter and watt-meter have been changed to wattmeter which has been used for the majority of the text. the few cases of "electro magnet" have been changed to "electro-magnet" which has been used for the majority of the text. in the table of contents: chapter xii page number changed from to chapter xv name changed from "electricity from chemical action and chemical action from electricity" to match text which reads "electric currents from chemical action and chemical action from electric currents" in the table of illustrations: "operating a switchboard" changed to match caption which reads "operating the switchboard" p . the example of morse code given is correct for "original" or american morse. it has some differences from continental or international code which is the current standard. the spacing of the dots is significant. [transcriber's notes all apparent printer's errors and variations in spelling have been retained, there are also some inconsistencies in the hyphenation of words. all these have been detailed at the end of the text. there are a number of mathematical equations in the text, these have been rendered into a text representation that attempts to make them as clear as possible while matching the text as closely as possible. multi-line fractions have been rendered on one line with the addition of extra brackets if required to ensure clarity. superscripts are denoted with ^ followed by the superscripted term in {}. subscripts are denoted by _ with the subscripted term in {}. square roots are denoted by [\sq] followed by the rooted term in {}. some equations have following punctuation, both commas or full stops, in the original text as though the equation is part of the sentence. the middle dot has been used in the original text, both as a multiplication symbol and as a decimal point. these have been kept but the middle dot as a multiplication symbol in formulae is surrounded by single spaces. italicised text in the original text is represented by _text_, bold text is represented by =bold=.] * * * * * hertzian wave wireless telegraphy. by dr. j. a. fleming, f.r.s. [from the popular science monthly, june-december, .] * * * * * [from the "popular science monthly," june, .] hertzian wave wireless telegraphy.[ ] by dr. j. a. fleming, f.r.s., professor of electrical engineering, university college, london. the immense public interest which has been aroused of late years in the subject of telegraphy without connecting wires has undoubtedly been stimulated by the achievements of mr. marconi in effecting communication over great distances by means of hertzian waves. the periodicals and daily journals, which are the chief avenues through which information reaches the public, whilst eager to describe in a sensational manner these wonderful applications of electrical principles, have done little to convey an intelligible explanation of them. hence it appeared probable that a service would be rendered by an endeavour to present an account of the present condition of electric wave telegraphy in a manner acceptable to those unversed in the advanced technicalities of the subject, but acquainted at least with the elements of electrical science. it is the purpose of these articles to attempt this task. we shall, however, limit the discussion to an account of the scientific principles underlying the operation of this particular form of wireless telegraphy, omitting, as far as possible, references to mere questions of priority and development. the practical problem of electric wave wireless telegraphy, which has been variously called hertzian wave telegraphy, marconi telegraphy, or spark telegraphy (_funkentelegraphie_), is that of the production of an effect called an electric wave or train of electric waves, which can be sent out from one place, controlled, detected at another place, and interpreted into an alphabetic code. up to the present time, the chief part of that intercommunication has been effected by means of the morse code, in which a group of long and short signs form the letter or symbol. some attempts have been made with more or less success to work printing telegraphs and even writing or drawing telegraphs by hertzian waves, but have not passed beyond the experimental stage, whilst wireless telephony by this means is still a dream of the future. we shall, in the first place, consider the transmitting arrangements and, incidentally, the nature of the effect or wave transmitted; in the second place, the receiving appliances; and, finally, discuss the problem of the isolation or secrecy of the intelligence conveyed between any two places. the transmitter used in hertzian wave telegraphy consists essentially of a device for producing electric waves of a type which will travel over the surface of the land or sea without speedy dissipation, and the important element in this arrangement is the _radiator_, by which these waves are sent out. it will be an advantage to begin by explaining the electrical action of the radiator, and then proceed to discuss the details of the transmitting appliances. it will probably assist the reader to arrive most easily at a general idea of the functions of the various portions of the transmitting arrangements, and in particular of the radiator, if we take as our starting point an analogy which exists between electric wave generation for telegraphic purposes and air wave generation for sound signal purposes. most persons have visited some of the large lighthouses which exist around our coasts and have there seen a steam or air _siren_, as used for the production of sound signals during fogs. if they have examined this appliance, they will know that it consists, in the first place, of a long metal tube, generally with a trumpet-shaped mouthpiece. at the bottom of this tube there is a fixed plate with holes in it, against which revolves another similarly perforated plate. these two plates separate a back chamber or wind chest from the tube, and the wind chest communicates with a reservoir of compressed air or a high-pressure steam boiler. in the communication pipe there is a valve which can be suddenly opened for a longer or shorter time. when the movable plate revolves, the coincidence or non-coincidence of the holes in the two plates opens or shuts the air passage way very rapidly. hence when the blast of air or steam is turned on, the flow is cut up by the revolving plates into a series of puffs which inflict blows upon the stationary air in the siren tube. if these blows come at the rate, say, of a hundred a second, they give rise to aerial oscillations in the tube, which impress the ear as a deep, musical note or roar; and this continuous sound can be cut up by closing the valve intermittently into long and short periods, and so caused to signal a letter according to the morse code, denoting the name of the lighthouse. in this case the object is to produce: first, aerial vibrations in the tube, giving rise to a train of powerful air waves; secondly, to intermit this wave-train so as to produce an intelligible signal; and thirdly, to transmit this wave as far as possible through space. the production of a sound or air wave can only be achieved by administering a very sudden blow to the general mass of the air in the tube. this impulse must be sufficient to call into operation the inertia and elastic qualities of the air. it is found, moreover, that the amplitude of the resulting wave, or the loudness of the sound, is increased by suitably proportioning the length of the siren pipe and the frequency of the air puffs; whilst the distance at which it is heard depends also in some degree upon the form of the mouthpiece. inside the siren tube, when it is in operation, the air molecules are in rapid vibratory motion in the direction of the length of the tube. if we could at any one instant examine the distribution and changes of air pressure in the tube, we should find that at some places there are large, and at others small, variations in air pressure. these latter places are called the _nodes_ of pressure. at the pressure nodes, however, we should find large variations in the velocity of the air particles, and these points are called the _antinodes_ of velocity. in those places at which the pressure variation is greatest, the velocity changes are least, and _vice versa_. outside the tube, as a result of these air motions in it, we have a hemispherical air wave produced, which travels out from the mouthpiece as a centre; and if we could examine the distribution of air pressure and velocity through all external space, we should find a distribution which is periodic in space as well as time, constituting the familiar phenomenon of an air wave. turning then to consider the production of an electric, instead of an air wave, we notice in the first place that the medium with which we are concerned is the _ether_ filling all space. this ether permits the production of physical changes in it which are analogous to, but not identical in nature with, the pressures and movements which constitute a sound wave. the hertzian radiator is an appliance for acting on the ether as the siren acts on the air. it produces a wave in it, and it can be shown that all the parts of the above described siren apparatus have their electrical equivalents in the transmitter employed in hertzian wave wireless telegraphy. to understand the nature of an electric wave we must consider, in the first place, some properties of the ether. in this medium we can at any place produce a state called _electric displacement_ or _ether strain_ as we can produce compression or rarefaction in air; and, just as the latter changes are said to be created by mechanical force, so the former is said to be due to _electric force_. we can not define more clearly the nature of this ether strain or displacement until we know much more about the structure of the ether than we do at present. we can picture to ourselves the operation of compressing air as an approximation of the air molecules, but the difficulty of comprehending the nature of an electric wave arises from the fact that we cannot yet definitely resolve the notion of electric strain into any simpler or more familiar ideas. we have to be content, therefore, to disguise our present ignorance by the use of some descriptive term, such as _electric strain_, _electrostatic strain_ or _ether strain_, to describe the directed condition of the space around a body in a state of electrification which is produced by electric force. this electric strain is certainly not of the nature of a compression in the ether, but much more akin to a twist or rotational strain in a solid body. for our present purpose it is not so necessary to postulate any particular theory of the ether as it is to possess some consistent hypothesis, in terms of which we can describe the phenomena which will concern us. these effects are, as we shall see, partly states of electrification on the surface or distributions of electric current in wires or rods, and partly conditions in the space outside them, which we are led to recognise as distributions of electric strain and of an associated effect called _magnetic flux_. we find such a theory at hand at the present time in the electronic theory of electricity, which has now been sufficiently developed and popularised to make it useful as a descriptive hypothesis.[ ] this theory has the great recommendation that it offers a means of abolishing the perplexing dualism of ether and ponderable matter, and gives a definite and, in a sense, objective meaning to the word electricity. in this physical speculation, the chief subject of contemplation is the electron, or ultimate particle of negative electricity, which, when associated in greater or less number with a matrix of some description, forms the atom of ponderable matter. to avoid further hypothesis, this matrix may be called the _co-electron_; and we shall adopt the view that a single chemical atom is a union of a _co-electron_ with a surrounding envelope or group of electrons, one or more of the latter being detachable. we need not stop to speculate on the structure of the atomic core or co-electron, whether it is composed of positive and negative electrons or of something entirely different. the single electron is the indivisible unit or atomic element of so-called negative electricity, and the neutral chemical atom deprived of one electron is the unit of positive electricity. on this hypothesis, the chemical atom is to be regarded as a microcosm, a sort of a solar system in miniature, the component electrons being capable of vibration relatively to the atomic centre of mass. furthermore, from this point of view it is the electron which is the effective cause of radiation. it alone has a grip on the ether whereby it is able to establish wave motion in the latter. dr. larmor has developed in considerable detail an hypothesis of the nature of an electron which makes it the centre or convergence-point of lines of a self-locked ether strain of a torsional type. the notion of an atom merely as a "centre of force" was one familiar to faraday and much supported by boscovich and others. the fatal objection to the validity of this notion as originally stated was that it offers no possibility of explaining the inertia of matter. on the electronic hypothesis, the source of all inertia is the inertia of the ether, and until we are able to dissect this last quality into anything simpler than the time-element involved in the production of an ether strain or displacement, we must accept it as an ultimate fact, not more elucidated because we speak of it as the inductance of the electron. we postulate, therefore, the following ideas: we have to think of the ether as a homogeneous medium in which a strain of some kind, most probably of a rotational type, is possible. this strain appears only under the influence of an appropriate stress called the electric force, and disappears when the force is removed. hence to create this strain necessitates the expenditure of energy. an electron is a centre or convergence-point of lines of permanent ether strain of such nature that it cannot release itself. to obtain some idea of the nature of such a structure, let us imagine a flat steel band formed into a ring by welding the ends together. there is then no torsional strain. if, however, we suppose the band cut in one place, one end then given half a turn and the cut ends again welded, we shall have on the band a self-locked twist, which can be displaced on the band, but which can not release itself or be released except by cutting the ring. hence we see that to make an electron in an ether possessing torsional elasticity would require creative energy, and when made, the electron cannot destroy itself except by occupying simultaneously the same place as an electron of opposite type. every electron extends, therefore, as faraday said of the atom, throughout the universe, and the properties that we find in the electron are only there because they are first in the universal medium, the ether. every line of ether or electric strain must, therefore, be a self-closed line, or else it must terminate on an electron and a co-electron. so far we have only considered the electron at rest. if, however, it moves, it can be mathematically demonstrated that it must give rise to a second form of ether strain which is related to the electric strain as a twist is related to a thrust or a vortex ring to a squirt in liquid or a rotation to a linear progression. the ether strain which results from the lateral movement of lines of electric strain is called the _magnetic flux_, and it can be mathematically shown that the movement of an electron, consisting when a rest of a radial convergence of lines of electric strain, must be accompanied by the production of self-closed lines of magnetic flux, distributed in concentric circles or rings round it, the planes of these circles being perpendicular to the direction of motion of the electron. this electronic hypothesis, therefore, affords a basis on which we can build up a theory affording an explanation of the nature of the intimate connection known to exist between ether, matter and electricity. the electron is the connecting link between them all, for it is in itself a centre of convergent ether strain; isolated, it presents itself as electricity of the negative or resinous kind; and, in combination with co-electrons and other electrons, it forms the atoms of ponderable matter. at rest the electron or the co-electron constitutes an electric charge, and when in motion it is an electric current. a steady flux or drift of electrons in one direction and co-electrons in the opposite direction is a continuous electric current, whilst their mere oscillation about a mean position is an alternating current. furthermore, the vibration of an electron, if sufficiently rapid, enables it to establish what are called electric waves in the ether, but which are really detached and self-closed lines of ether strain distributed in a periodic manner through space. we have, therefore, to start with, three conceptions concerning the electron, viz.: its condition when at rest; its state when in uniform motion; and its operations when in vibration or rapid oscillation. in the first case, by our fundamental supposition, it consists of lines of ether strain of a type called the electric strain, radiating uniformly in all directions. when in uniform motion, it can be shown that these lines of electric strain tend to group themselves in a plane perpendicular to the line of motion drawn through the electron, and their lateral motion generates another class of strain called the magnetic strain, disposed in concentric circles described round the electron and lying in this equatorial plane. the proof of the above propositions cannot be given verbally, but requires the aid of mathematical analysis of an advanced kind. the reader must be referred for the complete demonstration to the writings of professor j. j. thomson[ ] and mr. oliver heaviside.[ ] in the third case, when the electron vibrates, we have a state in which self-closed lines of electric strain and magnetic flux are thrown off and move away through the ether constituting electric radiation, the manner in which this happens was first described by hertz in a paper on "electric oscillations treated according to the method of maxwell."[ ] as this phenomenon lies at the very root of hertzian wave wireless telegraphy, we must spend a moment or two in its careful examination. let us imagine two metal rods placed in line and constituting what is called a linear oscillator. let these rods have adjacent ends separated by a very small air space, and let one rod be charged with positive and the other with negative electricity. on the electronic theory this is explained by stating that there is an accumulation of electrons in one and of co-electrons in the other. these charges create a distribution of electric strain throughout their neighbourhood, which follows approximately the same law of distribution as the lines of magnetic force of a bar magnet, and may be roughly represented as in fig. . suppose then that the air gap is destroyed, these charges move towards each other and disappear by uniting, the lines of electric strain then collapse, and as they shrink in give rise to circular lines of magnetic flux embracing the rods. this external distribution of magnetism constitutes an electric current in the rods produced by the movement of the two opposite electric charges. at this stage it may be explained that the electrons or atoms of electricity can in some cases make their way freely between the atoms of ponderable matter. the former are incomparably smaller than the latter, and in those cases in which this electronic movement can take place easily, we call the material a good conductor. [illustration: fig. .--lines of electric strain between a positive and negative electron at rest.] suppose then the electric charges reappear in reversed positions and go through an oscillatory motion. the result in the external space would be the alternate production of lines of electric strain and magnetic flux, the direction of these lines being reversed each half cycle. inside the rods we have a movement of electrons and co-electrons to and fro, electric charges at the ends of the rods alternating with electric currents in the rods, the charges being at a maximum when the current is zero, and the current at a maximum when the charges have for the moment disappeared. outside the rods we have a corresponding set of charges, lines of electric strain stretching from end to end of the rod, alternating with rings of magnetic flux embracing the rod. so far we have supposed the oscillation to be relatively a slow one. [illustration: fig. .--successive stages in the deformation of a line of strain between positive and negative electrons in rapid oscillation, showing closed loop of electric strain thrown off.] imagine next that the to and fro movement of the electrons or charges is sufficiently rapid to bring into play the inertia quality of the medium. we then have a different state of affairs. the lines of strain in the external medium cannot contract or collapse quickly enough to keep up with the course of events, or movements of the electrons in the rods, and hence their regular contraction and absorption is changed into a process of a different kind. as the electrons and co-electrons, _i.e._, the electric charges, vibrate to and fro, the lines of electric strain connecting them are nipped in and thrown off as completely independent and closed lines of electric strain, and at each successive alternation, groups or batches of these loops of strain are detached from the rod, and, so to speak, take on an independent existence. the whole process of the formation of these self-closed lines of electric strain is best understood by examining a series of diagrams which roughly represent the various stages of the process. in fig. we have a diagram (_a_) the curved line in which delineates approximately the form of one line of electric strain round a linear oscillator, with spark gap in the centre, one half being charged positively and the other negatively. let us then suppose that the insulation of the spark gap is destroyed, so that the opposite electric charges rush together and oscillate to and fro. the strain lines at each oscillation are then crossed or decussate, and the result, as shown in fig. , _d_, is that a portion of the energy of the field is thrown off in the form of self-closed lines of strain (see fig. , _e_). at each oscillation of the charges the direction of the lines of strain springing from end to end of the radiator is reversed. it is a general property of lines of strain whether electric or magnetic, that there is a tension along the line and a pressure at right angles. in other words, these lines of electric strain are like elastic threads, they tend to contract in the direction of their length and press sideways on each other when in the same direction. hence it is not difficult to see that as each batch of self-closed lines of strain is thrown off, the direction of the strain round each loop is alternately in one direction and in the other. hence these loops of electric strain press each other out, and each one that is formed squeezes the already formed loops further and further from the radiator. the loops, therefore, march away into space (see fig. , _f_). if we imagine ourselves standing at a little distance at a point on the equatorial line and able to see these loops of strain as they pass, we should recognise a procession of loops, consisting of alternately directed strain lines marching past. this movement through the ether of self-closed lines of electric strain constitutes what is called electric radiation. hence along a line drawn perpendicular to the radiator through its centre, there is a distribution of electric strain normal to that line, which is periodic in space and in time. moreover, in addition to these lines of electric strain, there are at right angles to them another set of self-closed lines of magnetic flux. alternated between the instants when the electric charges at the ends of the radiator are at their maximum, we have instants when the radiator rod is the seat of an electric current, and hence the field round it is filled with circular lines of magnetic flux coaxial with the radiator. as the current alternates in direction each half period, these rings of magnetic flux alternate in direction as regards the flux, and hence we must complete our mental picture of the space round the radiator rods when the charges are oscillating by supposing it filled with concentric rings of magnetic flux which are periodically reversed in direction, and have their maximum values at those instants and places where the lines of electric strain have their zero values. accordingly, along the equatorial line we have two sets of strains in the ether, distributed periodically in space and in time. first, the lines of electric strain in the plane of the radiator, and, secondly, the lines of magnetic flux at right angles to these. at any one point in space these two changes, the strain and the flux, succeed each other periodically, being, however, at right angles in direction. at any one moment these two effects are distributed periodically or cyclically through space, and these changes in time and space constitute an _electric wave_ or electromagnetic wave. we may then summarise the above statements by saying that the most recent hypothesis as to the nature of electrical action and of electricity itself is briefly comprised in the following statements: the universally diffused medium called the ether has had created in it certain centres of strain or radiating points from which proceed lines of strain, and these centres of force are called electrons. electrons must, therefore, be of two kinds, positive and negative, according to the direction of the strain radiating from the centre. these electrons in their free condition constitute what we call electricity, and the electrons themselves are the atoms of electricity which, in one sense, is, therefore, as much material as that which we call ordinary gross or ponderable matter. collocations of these electrons constitute the atoms of gross matter, and we must consider that the individuality of any atom is not determined merely by the identity of the electrons composing it, but by the permanence of their arrangement or form. in any mass of material substance there is probably a continual exchange of electrons from one atom to another, and hence at any one given moment, whilst a number of the electrons are an association forming material atoms, there will be a further number of isolated but intermingled electrons, which are called the free electrons. in substances which we call good conductors, we must imagine that the free electrons have the power of moving freely through or between the material atoms, and this movement of the electrons constitutes a current of electricity; whilst a superfluity of electrons of either type in any one mass of matter constitutes what we call a charge of electricity. hence an electrical oscillation, which is merely a very rapid alternating current taking place in a conductor, is on this hypothesis assumed to consist in a rapid movement to and fro of the free electrons. we may picture to ourselves, therefore, a rod of metal in which electrical oscillations are taking place, as similar to an organ-pipe or siren tube in which movements of the air particles are taking place to and fro, the free electrons corresponding with the air particles. owing to the nature of the structure of an electron, it follows, however, that every movement of an electron is accompanied by changes in the distribution of the electric strain or ether strain taking place throughout all surrounding space, and, as already explained, certain very rapid movements of the electrons have the effect of detaching closed lines of strain in the ether which move off through space, forming, when cyclically distributed, an electric wave. [illustration: fig. .--simple marconi radiator. b, battery; i, induction coil; k, signalling key; s, spark gap; a, aerial wire; e, earth plate.] we may next proceed to apply these principles to the explanation of the action of the simplest form of hertzian wave telegraphic radiator, viz., the marconi aerial wire. in its original form this consists of a long vertical insulated wire, a, the lower end of which is attached to one of the spark balls s of an induction coil, i, the other spark ball being connected to earth e, and the two spark balls being placed a few millimetres apart (see fig. ). when the coil is set in action oscillatory or hertzian sparks pass between the balls, electric oscillations are set up in the wire and electric waves are radiated from it. deferring for the moment a more detailed examination of the operations of the coil and at the spark gap, we may here say that the action which takes place in the aerial wire is as follows: the wire is first charged to a high potential, let us suppose, with negative electricity. we may imagine this process to consist in forcing additional electrons into it, the induction coil acting as an electron pump. up to a certain pressure the spark gap is a perfect insulator, but at a critical pressure, which for spark gap lengths of four or five millimetres and balls about one centimetre in diameter approximates to three thousand volts per millmetre, the insulation of the air gives way, and the charge in the wire rushes into the earth. in consequence, however, of the inertia of the medium or of the electrons, the charge, so to speak, overshoots the mark, and the wire is then left with a charge of opposite sign. this again in turn rebounds, and so the wire is discharged by a series of electrical oscillations, consisting of alternations of static charge and electric discharge. we may fasten our attention either on the events taking place in the vertical wire or in the medium outside, but the two sets of phenomena are inseparably connected and go on together. when the aerial wire is statically charged, we may describe it by saying that there is an accumulation of electrons or co-electrons in it. outside the wire there is, however, a distribution of electric strain the strain lines proceeding from the wire to the earth (see fig. ). [illustration: fig. .--lines of electric strain (dotted lines) extending between a marconi aerial, a, and the earth _ee_ before discharge.] the wire has _capacity_ with respect to the earth, and it acts like the inner coating of a leyden jar, of which the dielectric is the air and ether around it, and the outer coating is the earth's surface. when the discharge takes place, we may consider that electrons rush out of the wire and then rush back again into it. at the moment when the electrons rush out of or into the aerial wire, we say there is an electric current flowing into or out of the wire, and this electron movement, therefore, creates the magnetic flux which is distributed in concentric circles round the wire. this current, and, therefore, motion of electrons, can be proved to exist by its heating effect upon a fine wire inserted in series with the aerial, and in the case of large aerials it may have a mean value of many amperes and a maximum value of hundreds of amperes. inside the aerial wire we have, therefore, alternations of electric potential or charge and electric current, or we may call it electron-pressure and electron-movement. there is, therefore, an oscillation of electrons in the aerial wire, just as in the case of an organ-pipe there is an oscillation of air molecules in the pipe. outside the aerial we have variations and distributions of electric strain and magnetic flux. the resemblance between the closed organ-pipe and the simple marconi aerial is, in fact, very complete. in the case of the closed organ-pipe, we have a longitudinal oscillation of air molecules in the pipe. at the open end or mouthpiece, where we have air moving in and out, the air movement is alternating and considerable, but there is little or no variation of air pressure. at the upper or closed end of the pipe we have great variation of air pressure, but little or no air movement (see fig. ). compare this now with the electrical phenomena of the aerial. at the spark ball or lower end we have little or no variation of potential or electron pressure, but we have electrons rushing into and out of the aerial at each half oscillation, forming the electric discharge or current. at the upper or insulated end we have little or no current, but great variations of potential or electron pressure. supposing we could examine the wire inch by inch, all the way up from the spark balls at the bottom to the top, we should find at each stage of our journey that the range of variation and maximum value of the current in the wire became less and those of the potential became greater. at the bottom we have nearly zero potential or no electric pressure, but large current, and at the top end, no current, but great variation of potential. [illustration: fig. .--amplitude of pressure variation in a closed organ pipe, indicated by the ordinates of the dotted line _xy_.] we can represent the amplitude of the current and potential values along the aerial by the ordinates of a dotted line so drawn that its distance from the aerial represents the potential oscillation or current oscillation at that point (see fig. ). this distribution of potential and current along the wire does not necessarily imply that any one electron moves far from its normal position. the actual movement of any particular air molecule in the case of a sound wave is probably very small, and reckoned in millionths of an inch. so also we must suppose that any one electron may have a small individual amplitude of movement, but the displacement is transferred from one to another. conduction in a solid may be effected by the movement of free electrons intermingled with the chemical atoms, but any one electron may be continually passing from a condition of freedom to one of combination. [illustration: fig. .--(_a_) distribution of electric pressure in a marconi aerial, a, (_b_) distribution of electric current in a marconi aerial, as shown by the ordinates of the dotted line _xy_.] so much for the events inside the wire, but now outside the wire its electric charge is represented by lines of electric strain springing from the aerial to the earth. it must be remembered that every line of strain terminates on an electron or a co-electron. hence, when the discharge or spark takes place between the spark balls, the rapid movement of the electrons in the wire is accompanied by a redistribution and movement of the lines of strain outside. as the negative charge flows out of the aerial the ends of the strain lines abutting on to it run down the wire and are transferred to the earth, and at the next instant this semi-loop of electric or ether strain, with its ends on the earth, is pushed out sideways from the wire by the growth of a new set of lines of ether strain in an opposite direction. the process is best understood by consulting a series of diagrams which represent the distribution and approximate form of a few of the strain lines at successive instants (see fig. ). in between the lines of formation of the successive strain lines between the aerial and the earth, corresponding to the successive alternate electric charges of the aerial with opposite sign, there are a set of concentric rings of magnetic flux formed round it which are alternately in opposite directions, and these expand out, keeping step with the progress of the detached strain loops and having their planes at right angles to the latter. as the semi-loops of electric strain march outwards with their feet on the ground, these strain lines must always be supposed to terminate on electrons, but not continually on the same electrons. since the earth is a conductor, we must suppose that there is a continual migration of the electrons forming the atoms of the earth, and that when one electron enters an atom, another leaves it. hence, corresponding to the electric wave in the space above, there are electrical changes in the ground beneath. this view is confirmed by the well-known fact that the achievement of hertzian wave telegraphy is much dependent on the nature of the surface over which it is conducted, and can be carried on more easily over good conducting material, like sea water, than over badly conducting dry land. [illustration: fig. .--successive stages in the production of a semi-loop of electric strain by a marconi aerial radiator.] the matter may be viewed, however, from another standpoint. good conductors are opaque to hertzian waves; in other words, are non-absorptive. the energy of the electric wave is not so rapidly absorbed when it glides over a sea surface as when it is passing over a surface which is an indifferent conductor, like dry land. in fact, it is possible by the improvement of the signals to detect a heavy fall of rain in the space between two stations separated only by dry land. it is, however, clear that on the electronic theory the progression of the lines of electric strain can only take place if the surface over which they move is a fairly good conductor, unless these lines of strain form completely closed loops. hence we may sum up by saying that there are three set of phenomena to which we must pay attention in formulating any complete theory of the aerial. the first is the operation taking place in the vertical wire, which is described by saying that electrical oscillations or vibratory movements of electrons are taking place in it, and, on our adopted theory, it may be said to consist in a longitudinal vibration of electrons of such a nature that we may appropriately call the aerial an ether organ-pipe. then in the next place, we have the distribution and movement of the lines of electric strain and magnetic flux in the space outside the wire, constituting the electric wave; and lastly, there are the electrical changes in the conductor over which the wave travels, which is the earth or water surrounding the aerial. in subsequently dealing with the details of transmitting arrangements, attention will be directed to the necessity for what telegraphists call a "good earth" in connection with hertzian wave telegraphy. this only means that there must be a perfectly free egress and ingress for the electrons leaving or entering the aerial, so that nothing hinders their access to the conducting surface over which the wave travels. there must be nothing to stop or throttle the rush of electrons into or out of the aerial wire, or else the lines of strain cannot be detached and and travel away. we may next consider more particularly the energy which is available for radiation and which is radiated. in the original form of simple marconi aerial, the aerial itself when insulated forms one coating or surface of a condenser, the dielectric being the air and ether around it, and the other conductor being the earth. the electric energy stored up in it just before discharge takes place is numerically equal to the product of the capacity of the aerial and half the square of the potential to which it is charged. if we call c the capacity of the aerial in microfarads, and v the potential in volts to which it is raised before discharge, then the energy storage in joules e is given by the equation, e = (cv^{ }) / ( · ^{ }). since one joule is nearly equal to three-quarters of a foot-pound, the energy storage in foot-pounds f is roughly given by the rule f = ( / )cv^{ }/ ^{ }. for spark lengths of the order of five to fifteen millimetres, the disruptive voltage in air of ordinary pressure is at the rate of , volts per millimetre. hence, if s stands for the spark length in millimetres, and c for the aerial capacity in microfarads, it is easy to see that the energy storage in foot-pound is f = ( cs^{ }) / . if the aerial consists of a stranded wire formed of / and has a length of feet, and is insulated and held vertically with its lower end near the earth, it would have a capacity of about one three ten-thousandths of a microfarad or · mfd.[ ] hence, if it is used as a marconi aerial and operated with a spark gap of one centimetre in length, the energy stored up in the wire before each discharge would be only one-tenth ( · ) of a foot-pound. by no means can all of this energy be radiated as hertzian waves; part of it is dissipated as heat and light in the spark, and yet such an aerial can, with a sensitive receiver such as that devised by mr. marconi, make itself felt for a hundred miles over sea in every direction. this fact gives us an idea of the extremely small energy which, when properly imparted to the ether, can effect wireless telegraphy over immense distances. of course, the minimum telegraphic signal, say the morse dot, may involve a good many, perhaps half-a-dozen, discharges of the wire, but even then the amount of energy concerned in affecting the receiver at the distant place is exceedingly small. the problem, therefore, of long-distance telegraphy by hertzian waves is largely, though not entirely, a matter of associating sufficient energy with the aerial wire or radiator. there are obviously two things which may be done; first, we may increase the capacity of the aerial, and secondly, we may increase the charging voltage or, in other words, lengthen the spark gap. there is, however, a well-defined limit to this last achievement. if we lengthen the spark gap too much, its resistance becomes too great and the spark ceases to be oscillatory. we can make a discharge, but we obtain no radiation. when using an induction coil, about a centimetre, or at most a centimetre and a half, is the limiting length of oscillatory sparks; in other words, our available potential difference is restricted to , or , volts. by other appliances we can, however, obtain oscillatory sparks having a voltage of , or , volts, and so obtain what hertz called "active sparks" five or six centimetres in length. turning then to the question of capacity, we may enquire in the next place how the capacity of an aerial wire can be increased. this has generally been done by putting up two or more aerial wires in contiguity and joining them together, and so making arrangements called in the admitted slang of the subject "multiple aerials." the measurement of the capacity of insulated wires can be easily carried out by means of an appliance devised by the author and mr. w. c. clinton, consisting of a rotating commutator which alternately charges the insulated wire at a source of known electromotive force and then discharges it through a galvanometer. if this galvanometer is subsequently standardised, so that the ampere value of its deflection is known, we can determine easily the capacity c of the aerial or insulated conductor, reckoned in microfarads, when it is charged to a potential of v volts, and discharged _n_ times a second through a galvanometer. the series of discharges are equivalent to a current, of which the value in amperes a is given by the equation a = (nvc) / ( ^{ }), and hence, if the value of the current resulting is known, we have the capacity of the aerial or conductor expressed in microfarads, given by the formula c = (a ^{ }) / (nv). a series of experiments made on this plan have revealed the fact that if a number of vertical insulated wires are hung up in the air and rather near together, the electrical capacity of the whole of the wires in parallel is not nearly equal to the sum of their individual capacities. if a number of parallel insulated wires are separated by a distance equal to about per cent. of their length, the capacity of the whole lot together varies roughly as the square root of their number. thus, if we call the capacity of one vertical wire in free space unity, then the capacity of four wires placed rather near together will only be about twice that of one wire, and that of twenty-five wires will only be about five times one wire. this approximate rule has been confirmed by experiments made with long wires one hundred or two hundred feet in length in the open air. hence it points to the fact that the ordinary plan of endeavouring to obtain a large capacity by putting several wires in parallel and not very far apart is very uneconomical in material. the diagrams in fig. show the various methods which have been employed by mr. marconi and others in the construction of such multiple wire aerials. if, for instance, we put four insulated stranded / wires each feet long, about six feet apart, all being held in a vertical position, the capacity of the four together is not much more than twice that of a single wire. in the same manner, if we arrange similar wires, each feet long, in the form of a conical aerial, the wires being distributed at the top round a circle feet in diameter, the whole group will not have much more than twelve times the capacity of one single wire, although it weighs times as much. [illustration: fig. .--various forms of aerial radiator. _a_, single wire; _b_, multiple wire; _c_, fan shape; _d_, cylindrical; _g_, conical.] the author has designed an aerial in which the wires, all of equal length, are arranged sufficiently far apart not to reduce each other's capacity. as a rough guide in practice, it may be borne in mind that a wire about one tenth of an inch in diameter and one hundred feet long, held vertical and insulated, with its bottom end about six feet from the ground, has a capacity of · of a microfarad, if no other earthed vertical conductors are very near it. the moral of all this is that the amount of electric energy which can be stored up in a simple marconi aerial is very limited, and is not much more than one-tenth of a joule or one-fourteenth of a foot-pound, per hundred feet of / wire. the astonishing thing is that with so little storage of energy it should be possible to transmit intelligence to a distance of a hundred miles without connecting wires. one consequence, however, of the small amount of energy which can be accumulated in a simple marconi aerial is that this energy is almost entirely radiated in one oscillation or wave. hence, strictly speaking, a simple aerial of this type does not create a train of waves in the ether, but probably at most a single impulse or two. [illustration: fig. .--marconi-braun system of inducing electromotive force in an aerial, a. b, battery; k, key; i, induction coil; s, spark gap; c, leyden jar; e, earth plate; _ps_, oscillation transformer.] we shall later on consider some consequences which follow from this fact. meanwhile, it may be explained that there are methods by which not only a much larger amount of energy can be accumulated in connection with an aerial, but more sustained oscillations created than by the original marconi method. one of these methods originated with professor braun, of strasburg, and a modification was first described by mr. marconi in a lecture before the society of arts of london.[ ] in this method the charge in the aerial is not created by the direct application to it of the secondary electromotive force of an induction coil, but by means of an induced electromotive force created in the aerial by an oscillation transformer. the method due to professor braun is as follows: a condenser or leyden jar has one terminal, say, its inside, connected to one spark ball of an induction coil. the other spark ball is connected to the outside of the leyden jar or condenser through the primary coil of a transformer of a particular kind, called an oscillation transformer (see fig. ). the spark balls are brought within a few millimetres of each other. when the coil is set in operation, the jar is charged and discharged through the spark gap, and electrical oscillations are set up in the circuit consisting of the dielectric of the jar, the primary coil of the oscillation transformer and the spark gap. the secondary circuit of this oscillation transformer is connected in between the earth and the insulated aerial wire; hence, when the oscillations take place in the primary circuit, they induce other oscillations in the aerial circuit. but the arrangement is not very effective unless, as is shown by mr. marconi, the two circuits of the oscillation transformer are tuned together. we shall return presently to the consideration of this form of transmitter; meanwhile we may notice that by means of such an arrangement it is possible to create in the aerial a far greater charging electromotive force than would be the case if the aerial were connected directly to one terminal of the secondary circuit of the induction coil, the other terminal being to earth, and the two terminals connected as usual by spark balls. by the inductive arrangement it is possible to create in an aerial electromotive forces which are equivalent to a spark of a foot in length, and when the length of the aerial is also properly proportioned the potential along it will increase all the way up, until at the top or insulated end of the aerial it may reach an amount capable of giving sparks several feet in length. from the remarks already made on the analogy between the closed organ-pipe and the marconi aerial wire, it will be seen that the wave which is radiated from the aerial must have a wave length four times that of the aerial if the aerial is vibrating in its fundamental manner. it is also possible to create electrical oscillations in a vertical wire which are the harmonics of the fundamental. all musicians are aware that in the case of an organ-pipe if the pipe is blown gently it sounds a note which is called the fundamental of the pipe. the celebrated mathematician, daniel bernouilli, discovered that an organ-pipe can be made to yield a succession of musical notes by properly varying the pressure of the current of air blown into it. if the pipe is an open pipe, and if we call the frequency of the primary note obtained when the pipe is gently blown, unity, then when we blow more strongly the pipe yields notes which are the harmonics of the fundamental one; that is to say, notes which have frequencies represented by the numbers , , , , &c. if, however, the pipe is closed at the top, then over-blowing the pipe makes it yield the odd harmonics or the tones which are related to the primary tone in the ratio of , , , &c., to unity. accordingly, if a stopped pipe gives as its fundamental the note c, its first overtone will be the fifth above the octave or g'. [illustration: fig. .--seibt's apparatus for showing stationary waves in long solenoid a. i, induction coil; s, spark gap; l, inductance coil; c_{ }c_{ }, leyden jars; e, earth wire.] as already remarked, the aerial wire or radiator as used in marconi telegraphy may be looked upon as a kind of ether organ-pipe or siren tube, and its electrical phenomena are in every respect similar to the acoustic phenomena of the ordinary closed organ-pipe. when the aerial is sounding its fundamental ether note, the conditions which pertain are that there is a current flowing into the aerial at the lower end, but at that point the variation in potential is very small, whereas at the upper end there is no current, but the variations of potential are very large. accordingly, we say that at the upper end of the aerial there is an antinode of potential and a node of current, and at the bottom an antinode of current and a node of potential. by altering the frequency of the electrical impulses we can create in the aerial an arrangement of nodes of current or potential corresponding to the overtones of a closed organ-pipe. but whatever may be the arrangement the conditions must always hold that there is a node of current at the upper end and an antidote of current at the lower end. in other words, there are large variations of current at the place where the aerial terminates on the spark-gap and no current at the upper end. the first harmonic is formed where there is a node of potential at one-third of the length of the aerial from the top. in this case we have a node of potential not only at the lower end of the wire, but at two-thirds of the way up. in the same way we can create in the closed organ-pipe, by properly overblowing the pipe, a region about two-thirds of the way up the pipe, where the pressure changes in the air are practically no greater than they are at the mouthpiece. we can make evident visually in a beautiful manner the existence of similar stationary electrical waves in an aerial by means of an ingenious arrangement devised by dr. georg seibt, of berlin. it consists of a very long silk-covered copper wire, a (see fig. ), wound in a close spiral of single layer round a wooden rod six feet long and about two inches in diameter. this rod is insulated, and at the lower end the wire is connected to a leyden jar circuit, consisting of a leyden jar or jars and an inductance coil, l, the inductance of which can be varied. oscillations are set up in this jar circuit by means of an induction-coil discharge, and the lower end of the long spiral wire is attached to one point on the jar circuit. in this manner we can communicate to the bottom end of the long spiral wire a series of electric impulses, the time period of which depends upon the capacity of the jar and the inductance of the discharge circuit. we can, moreover, vary this frequency over wide limits. parallel to the long spiral wire is suspended another copper wire, e (see fig. ), and between this wire and the silk-covered copper wire discharges take place due to the potential difference between each part of the wire and this long aerial wire. if we arrange matters so that the impulses communicated to the bottom end of the long spiral wire correspond to its fundamental note or periodic time, then in a darkened room we shall see a luminous glow or discharge between the vertical wire and the spiral wire, which increases in intensity all the way up to the top of the spiral wire. the luminosity of this brush discharge at any point is evidence of the potential of the spiral wire at that point, and its distribution clearly demonstrates that the difference of potential between the spiral wire and the aerial increases all the way up from the bottom to the top of the spiral wire. in the next place, by making a little adjustment and by varying the inductance of the jar circuit, we can increase the frequency of the impulses which are falling upon the spiral wire; and then it will be noticed that the distribution of the brush discharge or luminosity is altered, and that there is a maximum now at about one-third of the height of the spiral wire, and a dark place at about two-thirds of the height, and another bright place at the top, thus showing that we have a node of potential at about two-thirds the way up the wire (see fig. ), and we have therefore set up in the spiral wire electrical oscillations corresponding to the first overtone. it is possible to show in the same way the existence of the second harmonic in the coil, but the luminosity then becomes too faint to be seen at a distance. [illustration: fig. .--harmonic oscillations in long solenoid shown with seibt's apparatus.] an interesting form of aerial devised by professor slaby, of berlin, depends for its action entirely on the fact that the electrical oscillations set up in it which radiate are harmonics of the fundamental tone. [illustration: fig. .--non-radiative closed loop aerial.] [illustration: fig. .--slaby's loop radiator.] a closed vertical loop, a_{ }a_{ } (see fig. ), is formed by erecting two parallel insulated wires vertically a few feet apart and joining them together at the top. at the bottom these wires are connected, with the secondary terminals of an induction coil, a condenser, c, or leyden jar, being bridged across the terminals and a pair of spark balls, s, inserted in one side of the loop. it will readily be seen that on setting the coil in action, oscillations will take place in these vertical wires, but that if the oscillations are simply the fundamental note of the system, then at any moment corresponding to a current going up one side of the loop of wire there must be a current coming down the other. accordingly, an arrangement of this kind, forming what is called a closed circuit, will not radiate or radiates but very feebly. professor slaby found, however, that it might be converted into a powerful radiator if we give the two sides of the loop unequal capacity or inductance and at the same time earth one of the lower ends of the loop, as shown in fig. . by this means it is possible to set up in the loop electrical overtones or harmonics of the fundamental oscillation, and if we cause the system to vibrate so as to produce its first odd harmonic, there is a potential node at the lower end of both vertical sides of the loop, a potential node on both vertical sides at two-thirds of the way up, and a potential antinode at the summit of the loop; then, under these circumstances, the closed loop of wire is in the same electrical condition as if two simple marconi aerials, both emitting their first odd harmonic oscillation, were placed side by side and joined together at the top. it is a little difficult without the employment of mathematical analysis to explain precisely the manner in which earthing one side of the loop or making the loop unsymmetrical as regards inductance has the effect of creating overtones in it. the following rough illustration may, however, be of some assistance. imagine a long spiral metallic spring supported horizontally by threads. let this represent a conductor, and let any movement to or fro of a part of the spring represent a current in that conductor. suppose we take hold of the spring at one end, we can move it bodily to and fro as a whole. in this case, every part of the spring is moving one way or the other in the same manner at the same time. this corresponds with the case in which the discharge of the condenser through the uniform loop conductor is a flow of electricity, all in one direction one way or the other. the current is in the same direction in all parts of the loop at the same time, and, therefore, if the current is going up one side of the loop it is at the same time coming down the other side. hence the two sides of the loop are always in exact opposition as regards the effect of the current in them on the external space, and the loop does not radiate. returning again to the case of the spring. supposing that we add a weight to one end of the spring by attaching to it a metal ball, and then move the other end to and fro with certain periodic motion, it will be found quite easy to set up in the spring a pulsatory motion resembling the movement of the air in an open organ-pipe. under these circumstances both ends of the spring will be moving inwards or outwards at the same time, and the central portions of the spring, although being pressed and expanded slightly, are moving to and fro very little. this corresponds in the case of the looped aerial with a current flowing up or down both sides at the same time; in other words, when this mode of electrical oscillation is established in the loop, its electrical condition is just that of two simple marconi aerials joined together at the top and vibrating in their fundamental manner. accordingly, if one side of the double loop is earthed, we then have an arrangement which radiates waves. professor slaby found that by giving one side of the loop less inductance than the other, and at the same time earthing the side having greater inductance at the bottom, he was able to make an arrangement which radiated, not in virtue of the normal oscillations of the condenser, but in virtue of the harmonic oscillations set up in the conductor itself. the mathematical theory of this radiator has been very fully developed by dr. georg seibt. it will be seen, therefore, that there are several ways in which we may start into existence oscillations in an aerial. first, the aerial may be insulated, and we may charge it to a high potential and allow this charge suddenly to rush out. although this process gives rise to a disturbance in the ether, as already explained, it is analogous to a pop or explosion in the air, rather than to a sustained musical note. the exact acoustic analogue would be obtained if we imagine a long pipe pumped full of air and then suddenly opened at one end. the air would rush out, and, communicating a blow to the outer air, would create an atmospheric disturbance appreciated as a noise or small explosion. this is what happens when we cut the string and let the cork fly out from a bottle of champagne. at the same time, the inertia of the air rushing out of the tube would cause it to overshoot the mark, and a short time after opening the valve the tube, so far from containing compressed air, would contain air slightly rarefied near its mouth, and this rarefication would travel back up the tube in the form of wave motion, and, being reflected as condensation at the closed end, travel down again; and so after being reflected once or twice at the open or closed end, become damped out very rapidly in virtue of both air friction and the radiation of the energy. in the case, however, of the ordinary organ-pipe, we do not depend merely upon a store of compressed air put into the pipe, but we have a store of energy to draw upon in the form of the large amount of compressed air contained in a wind chest, which is being continually supplied by the bellows. this store of compressed air is fed into the organ-pipe, with the result that we obtain a continuous radiation of sound waves. the first case, in which the only store of energy is the compressed air originally contained in the pipe, illustrates the operation of the simple marconi aerial. the second case, in which there is a larger store of energy to draw upon, the organ-pipe being connected to a wind chest, illustrates the marconi-braun method, in which an aerial is employed to radiate a store of electric energy contained in a condenser, gradually liberated by the aerial in the form of a series of electrical oscillations and waves. in this arrangement the condenser corresponds to the wind chest, and it is continually kept full of electrical energy by means of the induction coil or transformer, which answers to the bellows of the organ. from the condenser, electrical energy is discharged each time the spark discharge passes at a spark gap in the form of electrical oscillations set up in the primary circuit of an oscillation transformer. the secondary circuit of this transformer is connected in between the earth and the aerial, and therefore may be considered as part of it, and, accordingly, the energy which is radiated from the aerial is not simply that which is stored up in it in virtue of its own small capacity, but that which is stored up in the much larger capacity represented by the primary condenser or, as it may be called, the electrical wind chest. by the second arrangement we have therefore the means of radiating more or less continuous trains of electric waves, corresponding with each spark discharge. to create powerful oscillations in the aerial, one condition of success is that there shall be an identity in time-period between the circuit of the aerial and that of the primary condenser. the aerial is an open circuit which has capacity with respect to the earth, and it has also inductance, partly due to the wire of the aerial and partly due to the secondary circuit of the oscillation transformer in series with it. the primary circuit or spark circuit has capacity--viz., the capacity of the energy-storing condenser--and it has also inductance--viz., the inductance of the primary circuit of the oscillation transformer. we shall consider at a later stage more particularly the details of syntonising arrangements, but meanwhile it may be said that one condition for setting up powerful waves by means of the above arrangement is that the electrical time-period of both the two circuits mentioned shall be the same. this involves adjusting the inductance and capacity so that the product of conductance and capacity for each of these two circuits is numerically the same. instead of employing an oscillation transformer between the condenser circuit and the aerial, the aerial may be connected directly to some point on the condenser circuit at which the potential oscillations are large, and we have then another arrangement devised by professor braun (see fig. ). in this case, in order to accumulate large potential oscillations at the top of the aerial, it is, as we have seen, necessary that the length of the aerial shall be one quarter the length of the wave. if, therefore, the electrical oscillations in the condenser circuit are at the rate of n per second, in other words, have a frequency n, the wave-length correponding to this frequency is given by the expression, Ã� ^{ }/n cms. the number Ã� ^{ } is the value in centimetres per second of the velocity of the electromagnetic wave, and is identical with that of light. the corresponding resonant length of the aerial is therefore one-fourth of this wave-length, or Ã� ^{ }/ n. generally speaking, however, it will be found that with any length of aerial which is practicable, say, feet or , cms., this proportion necessitates rather a high frequency in the primary oscillation circuit. in the case considered--viz., for an aerial feet in height--the oscillations in the primary circuit must have a frequency of one and a quarter million. this high frequency can only be obtained either by greatly reducing the inductance of the primary discharge circuit, or reducing the capacity. if we reduce the capacity, we thereby greatly reduce the storage of energy, and it is not practicable to reduce the inductance below a certain amount. [illustration: fig. .--braun's radiator. b, battery; i, induction coil; k, key; s, spark-gap; l, inductance coil; c, condenser; a, aerial.] summing up, it may be said that there are three, and, as far as the writer is aware, at present only three, modes of exciting the electrical oscillations in an aerial wire. first, the aerial may itself be used as an electrical reservoir and charged to a high potential and suddenly discharged to the earth. this is the original marconi method. the second method, due to braun, consist of attaching the aerial to some point on an oscillation circuit consisting of a condenser, an inductance coil and a spark gap, in series with one another, and charging and discharging the condenser across the spark gap so as to create alterations of potential at some point on the oscillation circuit. the length of the aerial must then be so proportioned as above described that it is resonant to this frequency. thirdly, we may employ the arrangement involving an oscillation transformer, in which the oscillations in the primary condenser circuit are made to induce others in the aerial circuit, the time-period of the two circuits being the same. this method may be called the braun-marconi method. professor slaby has combined together in a certain way the original marconi simple aerial with the resonant quarter-wave-length wire of braun. he constructs what he calls a _multiplicator_, which is really a wire wound into a loose spiral connected at one point to an oscillation circuit consisting of a condenser inductance, the length of this wire being proportioned so that there is a great resonance or multiplication of tension or potential at its free end. this free end is then attached to the lower end of an ordinary marconi aerial, and serves to charge it with a higher potential than could be obtained by the use of the induction coil directly attached to it. * * * * * we have next to consider the appliances for creating the necessary charging electromotive force, and for storing and releasing this charge at pleasure, so as to generate the required electrical oscillations in the aerial. it is essential that this generator should be able to create not only large potential difference, but also a certain minimum electric current. accordingly, we are limited at the present moment to one of two appliances--viz., the induction coil or the alternating current transformer. it will not be necessary to enter into an explanation of the action of the induction coil. the coil generally employed for wireless telegraphy is technically known as a ten-inch coil--_i.e._, a coil which is capable of giving a ten-inch spark between pointed conductors in air at ordinary pressure. the construction of a large coil of this description is a matter requiring great technical skill, and is not to be attempted without considerable previous experience in the manufacture of smaller coils. the secondary circuit of a ten-inch coil is formed of double silk-covered copper wire; generally speaking, the gauge called no. , or else no. s.w.g. is used, and a length of ten to seventeen miles of wire is employed on the secondary circuit, according to the gauge of wire selected. for the precautions necessary in constructing the secondary coil, practical manuals must be consulted.[ ] very great care is required in the insulation of the secondary circuit of an induction coil to be used in hertzian wave telegraphy, because the secondary circuit is then subjected to impulsive electromotive forces lasting for a short time, having a much higher electromotive force than that which the coil itself normally produces. the primary circuit of a ten-inch coil generally consists of a length of or feet of thick insulated copper wire. in such a coil the secondary circuit would require about ten miles of no. h.c. copper wire, making , turns round the core. it would have a resistance at ordinary temperatures of , ohms, and an inductance of henrys. the primary circuit, if formed of turns of no. h.c. copper wire, would have a resistance of · of an ohm, and an inductance of · of a henry. an important matter in connection with an induction coil to be used for wireless telegraphy is the resistance of the secondary circuit. the purpose for which we employ the coil is to charge a condenser of some kind. if a constant electromotive force (v) is applied to the terminals of a condenser having a capacity c, then the difference of potential (_v_) of the terminals of the condenser at any time that the contact is made is given by the expression: v = v( - e^{-t/rc}). in the above equation, the letter e stands for the number · , the base of the napierian logarithms, and r is the resistance in series with the condenser, of which the capacity is c, to which the electromotive force is applied. this equation can easily be deduced from first principles,[ ] and it shows that the potential difference _v_ of the terminals of the condenser does not instantly attain a value equal to the impressed electromotive force v, but rises up gradually. thus, for instance, suppose that a condenser of one microfarad is being charged through a resistance of one megohm by an impressed voltage of volts, the equation shows that at the end of the first second after contact, the terminal potential difference of the condenser will be only volts, at the end of the second second, volts, and so on. since _e_^{- } is an exceedingly small number, it follows that in seconds the condenser would be practically charged with a voltage equal to volts. the product cr in the above equation is called the _time-constant_ of the condenser, and we may say that the condenser is practically charged after an interval of time equal to ten times the time-constant, counting from the moment of first contact between the condenser and the source of constant voltage. the time-constant is to be reckoned as the product of the capacity (c) in microfarads, by the resistance of the charging circuit (r) in megohms. to take another illustration. supposing we are charging a condenser having a capacity of one-hundreth of a microfarad, through a resistance of ten thousand ohms. since ten thousand ohms is equal to one-hundredth of a megohm, the time-constant would be equal to one-ten-thousandth of a second, and ten times this time-constant would be equal to a thousandth of a second. hence, in order to charge the above capacity through the above resistance, it is necessary that the contact between the source of voltage and the condenser should be maintained for at least one-thousandth part of a second. in discussing the methods of interrupting the circuit, we shall return to this matter, but, meanwhile, it may be said that in order to secure a small time-constant for the charging circuit, it is desirable that the secondary circuit of the induction coil should have as low a resistance as possible. this, of course, involves winding the secondary circuit with a rather thick wire. if, however, we employ a wire larger in size than no. , or at the most no. , the bulk and the cost of the induction coil began to rise very rapidly. hence, as in all other departments of electrical construction, the details of the design are more or less a matter of compromise. generally speaking, however, it may be said that the larger the capacity which is to be charged, the lower should be the resistance of the secondary circuit of the induction coil. in the practical construction of induction coils for wireless telegraphy, manufacturers have departed from the stock designs. we are all familiar with the appearance of the instrument maker's induction coil; its polished mahogany base, its lacquered brass fittings, and its secondary bobbin constructed of and covered with ebonite. but such a coil, although it may look very pretty on the lecture table, is yet very unsuited to positions in which it may be used in connection with hertzian wave telegraphy. three important adjuncts of the induction coil are the primary condenser, the interrupter and the primary key. the interrupter is the arrangement for intermitting the primary current. we have in some way or other to rapidly interrupt the primary current, and the torrent of sparks that then appears between the secondary terminals of the coil is due to the electromotive force set up in the secondary circuit at each break or interruption of the primary circuit. we may divide interrupters into five classes. we have first the well-known hammer interrupter which continental writers generally attribute to neef or wagner.[ ] in this interrupter, the magnetisation of the iron core of the coil is caused to attract a soft-iron block fixed at the top of a brass spring, and by so doing to interrupt the primary circuit between two platinum contacts. mr. apps, of london, added an arrangement for pressing back the spring against the back contact, and the form of hammer that is now generally employed is therefore called an apps break. as the ten-inch coil takes a primary current of ten amperes at sixteen volts when in operation, it requires very substantial platinum contacts to withstand the interruption of this current continuously without damage. the small platinum contacts that are generally put on these coils by instrument makers are very soon worn out in practical wireless telegraph work. if a hammer break is used at all, it is essential to make the contacts of very stout pieces of platinum, and from time to time, as they get burnt away or roughened, they must be smoothed up with a fine file. it does not require much skill to keep the hammer contacts in good order and prevent them from sticking together and becoming damaged by the break spark. by regulating the pressure of the spring against the back contact, by means of an adjusting screw, the rate at which the break vibrates can be regulated, but as a rule it is not possible, with a hammer break, to obtain more than about interruptions per minute, or, say, twelve a second. the hammer break is usually operated by the magnetism of the iron core of the coil, but for some reasons it is better to separate the break from the coil altogether, and to work it by an independent electromagnet, which, however, may be excited by a current from the same battery supplying the induction coil. for coils up to the ten-inch size the hammer break can be used when very rapid interruptions are not required. it is not in general practicable to work coils larger than the ten-inch size with a platinum contact hammer break, as such a butt contact becomes overheated and sticks if more than ten amperes is passed through it. in the case of larger coils, we have to employ some form of interrupter in which mercury or a conducting liquid forms one of the contact surfaces. the next class of interrupter is the vibrating or hand-worked mercury break, in which a platinum or steel pin is made to vibrate in and out of mercury. this movement may be effected by the attraction of an iron armature by an electromagnet, or by the varying magnetism of the core of the coil, or it may be effected more slowly by hand. the mercury surface must be covered with water, alcohol, paraffin or creosote oil to prevent oxidation and to extinguish the break spark. the interruption of the primary current obtained by the mercury break is more sudden than that obtained by the platinum contact in air, in consequence of the more rapid extinction of the spark; hence the sparks obtained from coils fitted with mercury interrupters are generally from twenty to thirty per cent. longer than those obtained from the same coil under the same conditions, with platinum contact interrupters. the mercury breaks will not, however, work well unless cleaned at regular intervals by emptying off the oil and rinsing well with clean water, and hence they require rather more attention than platinum interrupters. it is not generally possible to obtain so many interruptions per minute with the simple vibrating mercury interrupter as with the ordinary hammer interrupter. the mercury interrupter has, however, the advantage that the contact time during which the circuit is kept closed may be made longer than is the case with the hammer break. also, if fresh water is allowed to flow continuously over the mercury surface, it can be kept clean, and the break will then operate for considerable periods of time without attention. the mercury interrupter may be worked by a separate electromagnet or by the magnetism of the core of the induction coil. the third class of interrupter may be called the motor interrupter, of which a large number have been invented in recent years. in this interrupter some form of a continuously-rotating electromotor is employed to make and break a mercury or other liquid contact. in one simple form the motor shaft carries an eccentric, which simply dips a platinum point into mercury, or else a platinum horseshoe into two mercury surfaces, making in this manner an interruption of the primary circuit at one or two places. as a small motor can easily be run at twelve hundred revolutions per minute, or twenty per second, it is possible to secure easily in this manner a uniform rate of interruption of the primary current at the rate of about twenty per second. if, however, much higher speeds are employed, then the time of contact becomes abbreviated, and the ability of the coil to charge a capacity is diminished. professor j. trowbridge has described an effective form of motor break for large coils, in which the interruption is caused by withdrawing a stout platinum wire from a dilute solution of sulphuric acid, and by this means he increased the spark given by a coil provided with hammer break and condenser from fifteen inches to thirty inches when using the liquid break and no condenser.[ ] a good form of motor-interrupter, due to dr. mackenzie davidson, consists of a slate disc bearing pin contacts fixed on the prolonged steel axle of a motor placed in an inclined position; the disc and the lower part of the axle lie in a vessel filled one-third with mercury and two-thirds with paraffin oil. the circuit is made and broken by the revolution of the disc causing the pins to enter and leave the mercury. the speed of the motor can be regulated by a small resistance, and can be adapted to the electromotive force used in the primary circuit. when the motor is running slowly the interrupter can be used with a low electromotive force, that is to say, something between twelve and twenty volts, but with a higher speed a large electromotive force can be used without danger of overheating the primary coil, and with an electromotive force of about fifty volts, the interruptions may be so rapid that an unbroken arc of flame, resembling an alternating-current arc, springs between the secondary terminals of the coil. mr. tesla has devised numerous forms of rotating mercury break. in one, a star-shaped metal disc revolves in a box so that its points dip into mercury covered with oil, and make and break contact. in another form, a jet of mercury plays against a similar shaped rotating wheel. for details, the reader must consult the fuller descriptions in _the electrical world_ of new york, vol. xxxii., p. , ; also vol. xxxiii., p. ; or _science abstracts_, vol. ii., pp. and , . the fourth class of interrupter is called a turbine interrupter. in this appliance, a jet of mercury is forced out of a small aperture by means of a centrifugal pump, and is made to squirt against a metal plate, and interrupted intermittently by a toothed wheel made of insulating material rotated by the motor which drives the pump. the current supplying the coil passes through or along this jet of mercury, and is therefore rendered intermittent when the wheel revolves. in the case of this interrupter, the duration of the contacts, as well as the number of interruptions per second, is under control, and for this reason better results are probably obtained with it than with any other form of break. a description of a turbine mercury break devised by m. max levy was given in the _elektrotechnische zeitschrift_, vol. xx., p. , october , (see also _science abstracts_, vol. iii., p. , abstract no. ) as follows:-- a toothed wheel made of insulating material carries from to teeth, and can be made to rotate from to , times per minute, the interruptions being thus regulated between and per second. by raising or lowering the position of the jet of mercury and that of the plate against which it strikes, the duration of the contact can be varied, so that it is possible to regulate this period without disturbing the number of interruptions per second. the sparks obtained from a coil worked with a turbine interrupter have more quantity than the sparks obtained with any other interrupter under similar conditions, and the coil can be worked with a far higher voltage than is possible when using the hammer break. in this manner, the appearance of the secondary sparks can be varied from the thin snappy sparks given by the hammer break to the thick flame-like arc sparks given by the electrolytic break. this break can be adapted for any voltage from twelve to two hundred and fifty volts, and the primary circuit cannot be closed before the interrupter is acting. the mercury in the break is generally covered with alcohol or paraffin oil to reduce oxidation, and the appliance is nearly noiseless when in operation. the mercury has to be cleaned at intervals, if the interrupter is much used. if alcohol is used to cover the mercury, the cleaning is very simple; the break requires only to be rinsed under a water tap. when paraffin oil is used, the cleaning is generally effected with the help of a few ounces of sulphuric acid in a very few minutes. it is best, however, to clean the mercury continuously by allowing the water to flow over it. the motor driving the centrifugal pump and the fan can be wound for any voltage, and it is best to have it so arranged that this motor works on the same battery which supplies the primary circuit of the coil, the two circuits working parallel together. a rheostat can be added to the motor circuit to regulate the speed. the turbine break driven by an independent motor, which is kept always running, has another advantage over the hammer break in practical wireless telegraphy, viz., that a useful secondary spark can be secured with a shorter time of closure of the primary circuit, since there is no inertia to overcome as in the case of the hammer break. this latter form has only continued in use because of its simplicity and ease of management by ordinary operators. the mercury turbine interrupter has been extensively adopted both in the german and british navies in connection with induction coils used for wireless telegraphy. lastly we have the electrolytic interrupters, the first of which was introduced by dr. wehnelt, of charlottenburg, in the year , and modified by subsequent inventors. in its original form, a glass vessel filled with dilute sulphuric acid (one of acid to five or else ten parts of water) contains two electrodes of very different sizes; one is a large lead electrode formed of a piece of sheet lead laid round the interior of the vessel, and the other is a short piece of platinum wire projecting from the end of a glass or porcelain tube. the smaller of these electrodes is made the positive, and the large one the negative. if this electrolytic cell is connected in series with the primary circuit of the induction coil (the condenser being cut out) and supplied with an electromotive force from forty to eighty volts, an electrolytic action takes place which interrupts the current periodically.[ ] an enormous number of interruptions can, by suitable adjustment, be produced per second, and the appearance of a discharge from the secondary terminals of the coil, while using the wehnelt break, more resembles an alternate-current arc than the usual disruptive spark. at the time when the wehnelt break was first introduced, great interest was excited in it, and the technical journals in were full of discussions as to the theory of its operation.[ ] the general facts concerning the wehnelt break are that the electrolyte must be dilute sulphuric acid in the proportion of one of acid to five or ten of water. the large lead plate must be the cathode or negative pole, and the anode or positive pole must be a platinum wire, about a millimetre in diameter, and projecting one or two millimetres from the pointed end of a porcelain, glass or other acid-proof insulating tube. the aperture through which the platinum wire works must be so tight that acid cannot enter, yet it is desirable that the platinum wire should be capable of being projected more or less from the aperture by means of an adjusting screw. the glass vessel which contains these two electrodes should be of considerable size, holding, say, a quart of fluid, and it is better to include this vessel in a larger one in which water can be placed to cool the electrolyte, as the latter gets very warm when the break is used continuously. if such an electrolytic cell has a continuous electromotive force applied to it tending to force a current through the electrolyte from the platinum wire to the lead plate, we can distinguish three stages in its operation, which are determined by the electromotive force and the inductance in the circuit. first, if the electromotive force is below sixteen or twenty volts, then ordinary and silent electrolysis of the liquid proceeds, bubbles of oxygen being liberated from the platinum wire and hydrogen set free against the lead plate. if the electromotive force is raised above twenty-five volts, then if there is no inductance in the circuit, the continuous flow of current proceeds, but if the circuit of the electrolyte possesses a certain minimum inductance, the character of the current flow changes, and it becomes intermittent, and the cell acts as an interrupter, the current being interrupted from to , times per second, according to the electromotive force and the inductance of the circuit. under these conditions, the cell produces a rattling noise and a luminous glow appears round the tip of the platinum wire. thus, in a particular case, with an inductance of · millihenry in the circuit of a wehnelt break, no interruption of the circuit took place, but with one millihenry of inductance in the circuit, and with an electromotive force of volts, the current became intermittent at the rate of per second, and by increasing the voltage to volts, the intermittency rose to , a second. the wehnelt break acts best as an interrupter with an electromotive force from to volts. at higher voltages a third stage sets in: the luminous glow round the platinum wire disappears, and it becomes surrounded with a layer of vapour, as observed by mm. violle and chassagny; the interruptions of current cease, and the platinum wire becomes red hot. if there is no inductance in the circuit, the interrupter stage never sets in at all, but the first stage passes directly into the third stage. in the first stage bubbles of oxygen rise steadily from the platinum wire, and in the interrupted stage they rise at longer intervals, but regularly. the cell will not, however, act as a break at all unless some inductance exists in the circuit. in applying the wehnelt break to an induction coil, the condenser is discarded and also the ordinary hammer break, and the wehnelt break is placed in circuit with the primary coil. in some cases, the inductance of the primary coil alone is sufficient to start the break in operation, but with voltages above or , it is generally necessary to supplement the inductance of the primary coil by another inductive coil. the best form of wehnelt break for operating induction coils is the one with multiple anodes (see dr. marchant, _the electrician_, vol. xlii., p. , ), and when it has to be used for long periods, the cathode may advantageously be formed of a spiral of lead pipe, through which cold water is made to circulate. another form of electrolytic break was introduced by mr. caldwell. in this, a vessel containing dilute sulphuric acid is divided into two parts. in the partition is a small hole, and in the two compartments are electrodes of sheet lead. the small hole causes an intermittency in the current which converts the arrangement into a break. mr. campbell swinton modified the above arrangement by making the partition to consist of a sort of porcelain test-tube with a hole in the bottom. this hole can be more or less plugged up by a glass rod drawn out to a point, and this is used to more or less close the hole. this porcelain vessel contains dilute acid and stands in a larger vessel of acid, and lead electrodes are placed in both compartments. the current and intermittency can be regulated by more or less closing the aperture between the two regions. when the wehnelt break is applied to an ordinary ten-inch induction coil, and the inductance of the primary circuit and the electromotive force varied until the break interrupts the current regularly and with the frequency of some hundred a second, the character of the secondary discharge is entirely different from its appearance with the ordinary hammer break. the thin blue lightning-like sparks are then replaced by a thicker mobile flaming discharge, which resembles an alternating-current arc, and, when carefully examined or photographed, is found to consist of a number of separate discharges superimposed upon one another in slightly different positions. many theories have been adopted as to the action of the break, but time will not permit us to examine these. professor s. p. thompson and dr. marchant have suggested a theory of resonance.[ ] one difficulty in explaining the action of the break is created by the fact that it will not work if the platinum wire is made a cathode. although the wehnelt break has some advantages in connection with the use of the induction coil for röntgen ray work, its utility as far as regards hertzian wave telegraphy is not by any means so marked. it has already been explained that, in order to charge a condenser of a given capacity at a constant voltage, the electromotive force must be applied for a certain minimum time, which is determined by the value of the capacity and the resistance of the secondary circuit of the induction coil. if the coil is a ten-inch coil and has a secondary resistance of, say, , ohms, and if the capacity to be charged has a value, say, of one-thirtieth of a microfarad, then the time-constant of the circuit is / , of a second. therefore, the contact with the condenser must be maintained for at least / of a second, during the time that the secondary electromotive force of the coil is at its maximum, so that the condenser may become charged to a voltage which the coil is then capable of producing. in the induction coil, the electromotive force generated in the secondary coil at the "break" of the primary current is higher than that at the "make," and this electromotive force, other things being equal, depends upon the rate at which the magnetism of the iron core dies away, and its duration is shorter in proportion as the whole time occupied in the disappearance of the magnetism is less. the wehnelt break does not increase the actual secondary electromotive force, nor apparently its duration, but it greatly increases the number of times per second this electromotive force makes it appearance. hence this break increases the current, but not the electromotive force in the secondary coil. it, therefore, does not assist us in the direction required--viz., in prolonging the duration of the secondary electromotive force to enable larger capacities to be charged. the important point in connection with the working of a coil used for charging a condenser is not the length of spark which the coil can give alone, but the length of spark which can be obtained between small balls attached to the secondary terminals, when these terminals are also connected to the two surfaces of the condenser. thus, a coil may give a ten-inch spark if worked alone, but on a capacity of one-thirtieth of a microfarad it may not be able to give more than a five-millimetre spark. hence, in describing the value of a coil for wireless telegraph purposes, it is not the least use to state the length of spark which the coil will give between the pointed conductors in air, but we must know the spark length which it will give between brass balls, say, centimetre in diameter, connected to the secondary terminals, when these terminals are also short-circuited by a stated capacity, the spark not exceeding that length at which it becomes non-oscillatory. a good way of describing the value of an induction coil for wireless telegraph purposes is to state the length of oscillatory spark which can be produced between balls one centimetre in diameter connected to the secondary terminals, when these balls are short-circuited by a condenser having a capacity, say, of one-hundredth of a microfarad, and also one-tenth of a microfarad. if a hammer or motor interrupter is employed with the coil, then a primary condenser must be connected across the points between which the primary circuit is broken. this condenser generally consists of sheets of tinfoil alternated with sheets of paraffin paper, and for a ten-inch coil may have a capacity of about · or · of a microfarad.[ ] lord rayleigh discovered that if the interruption of the primary circuit is sufficiently sudden and complete, as when the primary circuit is severed by a bullet from a gun, the primary condenser can be removed and yet the sparks obtained from the secondary circuit are actually longer than those obtained with the condenser and the ordinary break.[ ] in the use, however, of the coil for hertzian wave telegraphy, with all interrupters except the wehnelt break a condenser of suitable capacity must be joined across the break points. turning in the next place to the primary key, or signalling interrupter, it is necessary to be able to control the torrent of sparks between the secondary terminals of the coil, and to cut them up into long and short periods in accordance with the letters of the morse alphabet. this is done by means of the primary key. the primary key generally consists of an ordinary massive single contact key with heavy platinum contacts. as the current to be interrupted amounts to about ten amperes and is flowing in a highly inductive circuit, the spark at break is considerable. if the attempt is made to extinguish this spark by making the contacts move rapidly away from one another through a long distance, in other words, by using a key with a wide movement, then the speed at which the signals can be set is greatly diminished. the speed of sending greatly depends upon the time taken to move the key up and down between sending two dots, and hence a short range key sends quicker than a long range key. if it is desired to use a short range key, then some method must be employed to extinguish the spark at the contacts. this is done in one of three ways: either by using a high resistance coil to short-circuit these contacts, or by a condenser, or by a magnetic blow-out, as in the case of an electric tramcar circuit controller. of these, the magnetic blow-out is probably the best. mr. marconi has designed a signalling key which performs the function not only of interrupting the primary circuit, but at the same time breaks connection between the receiving appliance and the aerial. the author has designed for signalling purposes a multiple contact key which interrupts the circuit simultaneously in ten or twelve different places. the particular point about this break is the means which are taken to make the twelve interruptions absolutely simultaneous. if these interruptions are not simultaneous, the spark always takes place at the contact which is broken first, but if the circuit is interrupted in a dozen places quite simultaneously, then the spark is cut up into a dozen different portions, and the spark at each contact is very much diminished. by this break, voltages up to two thousand volts may be quite easily dealt with. various forms of break have been devised in which the circuit is broken under oil or insulating fluids, but, generally speaking, these devices are not very portable, and a dry contact between platinum surfaces with appropriate means for cutting up the spark and blowing it out so that the mechanical movement of the switch may be small is the best thing to use. the signalling key is really a very important part of the transmitting arrangement, because whatever may be the improvements in receiving instruments, it is not possible to receive faster than we can send. a great many statements have appeared in the daily papers as to the possibility of receiving hundreds of words a minute by hertzian wave telegraphy, but the fact remains that whatever may be the sensibility of the receiving appliance, the rate at which telegraphy of any kind can be conducted is essentially dependent upon the rate at which the signals can be sent, and this in turn is largely dependent upon the mechanical movement which the key has to make to interrupt the primary circuit, and so interrupt the secondary discharge. in order to make the separation of the contact points of the switch as small as possible, and yet prevent an arc being established, various blow-out devices have been employed. the simplest arrangement for this purpose is a powerful permanent magnet so placed that its inter-polar field embraces the contact points and is at right angles to them. as already explained, the applicability of the induction coil in wireless telegraphy is limited by the fact of the high resistance of the secondary circuit and the small current that can be supplied from it. data are yet wanting to show what is the precise efficiency of the induction coil, as used in hertzian wave telegraphy, but there are reasons for believing that it does not exceed or per cent. where large condensers have to be charged--in other words, where we have to deal with larger powers--we are obliged to discard the induction coil and to employ the alternating-current transformer. but this introduces us to a new class of difficulties. if an alternating-current transformer wound for a secondary voltage, say, of , or , volts, has its primary circuit connected to an alternator, then if the secondary terminals, to which are connected two spark balls, are gradually brought within striking distance of one another, the moment we do this an alternating-current arc starts between these balls. if the transformer is a small one, there is no difficulty in extinguishing this arc by withdrawing the secondary terminals, but if the transformer is a large one, say, of ten or twenty kilowatts, dangerous effects are apt to ensue when such an experiment is tried. the short circuiting of the secondary circuit almost entirely annuls the inductance of the primary circuit. there is, therefore, a rush of current into the transformer, and if it is connected to an alternator of low armature resistance the fuses are generally blown and other damage done. let us supppse, then, that the secondary terminals of the transformer are also connected to a condenser. on bringing together the spark balls connected with the secondary terminals we may have one or more oscillatory discharges, but the process will not be continuous, because the moment that the alternating-current arc starts between the spark balls it reduces their difference of potential to a comparatively low value, and hence the charge taken by the condenser is very small, and, moreover, the circuit is not interrupted periodically so as to re-start a train of oscillations. when, therefore, we desire to employ an alternating-current transformer as a source of electromotive force, although it may have the advantage that the resistance of the secondary circuit of the transformer is generally small compared with that of the secondary circuit of an induction coil, yet, nevertheless, we are confronted with two practical difficulties: ( ) how to control the primary current flowing into the transformer, and ( ) how to destroy the alternating-current arc between the spark balls and reduce the discharge entirely to the disruptive or oscillatory discharge of the condenser. the control over the current can be obtained, in accordance with a plan suggested by the author, by inserting in the primary circuit of the transformer two variable choking coils. the form in which it is preferred to construct these is that of a cylindrical bobbin standing upon a laminated cross-piece of iron. these bobbins can have let down into them an =e=-shaped piece of laminated iron, so as to complete the magnetic circuit, and thus raise the inductance of the bobbin. by placing two of these variable choking coils in series with the primary circuit, the current is under perfect control. we can fix a minimum value below which the current shall not fall, by adjusting the position of the cores of these two choking coils, and we can then cause that current to be increased up to a certain limit which it cannot exceed, by short-circuiting one of these choking coils by an appropriate switch. several ways have been suggested for extinguishing the alternating current arc which forms between the spark balls connected to the secondary terminals when these are brought within a certain distance of one another. one of these is due to mr. tesla. he places a strong electromagnet so that its lines of magnetic flux pass transversely between the spark balls. when the discharge takes place the electric arc is blown out, but if the balls are short-circuited by a condenser the oscillatory discharge of the condenser still takes place across the spark gap. professor elihu thomson achieves the same result by employing a blast of air thrown on the spark gap. this has the effect of destroying the alternating-current arc, but still leaves the oscillating discharge of the condenser. the action is somewhat tedious to explain in words, but it can easily be understood that the blast of air, by continually breaking down the alternating-current arc which tends to form, allows the condenser connected to the spark balls to become charged with the potential of the secondary circuit of the transformer, and that this condenser then discharges across the spark gap, producing an oscillatory discharge in the usual manner. the author has found that, without the use of any air blast or electromagnet, simple adjustment of the double choking coil in the primary circuit of the transformer, as above described, is sufficient to bring about the desired result, when the capacity of the condenser is adjusted to be in resonance. another method, which has been adopted by m. d'arsonval, is to cause the spark to pass between two balls placed at the extremities of metal rods, which are in rapid rotation like the spokes of a wheel. in this case, the draught of air produced by the passage of the spark balls blows out the arc and performs the same function as the blast of air in professor elihu thomson's method. when these adjustments are properly made, it is possible, by means of a condenser and an alternating-current transformer supplied with current from an alternator, to create a rapidly intermittent oscillatory discharge, the sparks of which succeed one another so quickly that it appears almost continuous. when using a large transformer and condenser, the noise and brilliancy of these sparks are almost unbearable, and the eyes may be injured by looking at this spark for more than a moment. in the construction of transformers intended to be used in this manner, very special precautions have to be taken in the insulation of the primary and secondary circuits, and the insulation of these from the core. it may be remarked in passing that experimenting with large high-tension transformers coupled to condensers of large capacity is exceedingly dangerous work, and the greatest precautions are necessary to avoid accident. in the light, however, of sufficient experience there is no difficulty in employing high-tension transformers in the above-described manner, and in obtaining electromotive forces of upwards of a hundred thousand volts supplied through transformers capable of yielding any required amount of current. on occasions where continuous current alone is available, a motor generator has to be employed converting the continuous current into an alternating current. this is best achieved by the employment of a small alternator directly coupled to a continuous-current motor; or by providing the shaft of a continuous-current motor with two rings connected to two opposite portions of its armature, so that when continuous current is supplied to the brushes pressing against the commutator, an alternating current can be drawn off from two other brushes touching the above-mentioned insulated rings. the next element of importance in the transmitting arrangement is the spark gap. in the case of those transmitters employing an ordinary induction coil, the secondary spark, or the discharge of any condenser connected to the secondary terminals can be taken between the brass balls about half an inch or one inch in diameter, with which the terminals of the secondary coil are usually furnished; and it is generally the custom to allow this spark discharge to take place in air at ordinary pressure. in the very early days of his work mr. marconi adopted the discharger devised by professor rhigi, in which the spark takes place between two brass balls placed in vaseline or other highly insulating oil.[ ] but whatever advantage may accrue from using oil as the dielectric in which the spark discharge takes place, when carrying out simple laboratory experiments on hertzian waves, there is no advantage in the case of wireless telegraphy. the rhigi discharger was, therefore, soon discarded. if discharges having large quantity are passed through oil, it is rapidly decomposed or charred, and ceases to retain the special insulating and self-restoring character which is necessary in the medium in which an oscillating spark is formed. the conditions when the discharges of large condensers are passed between spark balls are entirely different from those when the quantity of the spark, or to put it in more exact language, the current passing, is very small. in the case of hertzian experiments it is necessary, as shown by hertz, to maintain a high state of polish on the spark balls when they are employed for the production of short waves of small energy, but when we are dealing with large quantities of energy at each discharge, those methods which succeed for laboratory experiments are perfectly impracticable. the conditions necessary to be fulfilled by a discharger for use in hertzian wave telegraphy are that the surfaces shall maintain a constant condition and not be fused or eaten away by the spark, and, next, that the medium in which the discharge takes place shall not be decomposed by the passage of the spark, but shall maintain the property of giving way suddenly when a certain critical pressure is reached, and passing instantly from a condition in which it is a very perfect insulator to one in which it is a very good conductor; and, thirdly, that on the cessation of the discharge, the medium shall immediately restore itself to its original condition. when using the ordinary ten-inch induction coil, and when the capacity charged by it does not exceed a small fraction of a microfarad, it is quite sufficient to employ brass or steel balls separated by a certain distance in air, at the ordinary pressure, as the arrangement of the discharger. when, however, we come to deal with the discharges of very large condensers, at high electromotive forces, then it is necessary to have special arrangements to prevent the destruction of the surfaces between which the spark passes, or their continual alteration, and many devices have been invented for this purpose. the author has devised an arrangement which fulfils the above conditions very perfectly for use in large power stations, but the details of this cannot be made public at the present time. * * * * * we have to consider in connection with this part of the subject the dielectric strength of air under different pressures and for different thicknesses. it was shown by lord kelvin, in , that the dielectric strength of very thin layers of air is greater than that of thick layers.[ ] the electric force, reckoned in volts per centimetre, required to pierce a thickness of air from two to ten millimetres in thickness, at atmospheric pressure, may be taken at , volts per centimetre. the same force in electrostatic units is represented by the number , since a gradient of volts per centimetre corresponds to a force of one electrostatic unit. it appears also that for air and other gases there is a certain minimum voltage (approximately volts) below which no discharge takes place, however near the conducting surfaces may be approximated. in this particular practical application, however, we are only concerned with spark lengths which are measured in millimetres or centimetres, lying, say, between one or two millimetres and five or six centimetres. over this range of spark length we shall not generally be wrong in reckoning the voltage required to produce a spark between metal balls in air at the ordinary pressure to be given by the rule: _disruptive voltage_ = , Ã� _spark-gap length in millimetres_. if, however, the air pressure is increased above the normal by including the spark balls in a vessel in which air can be compressed, then the spark length, corresponding to a given potential difference, very rapidly decreases. mr. f. j. jervis-smith[ ] found that by increasing the air pressure from one atmosphere to two atmospheres round a pair of spark balls he reduced the spark length given by a certain voltage from · to · centimetre. professor r. a. fessenden has also made some interesting observations on the effect of using compressed air round spark gaps. he found that if a certain voltage between metal surfaces would yield a spark four inches in length, at the ordinary pressure of the air, if the spark balls were enclosed in a cylinder, the air round them compressed at lb. per square inch, the spark length for the same potential difference of the balls was only one quarter of an inch, or one-sixteenth of its former value. the writer has also made experiments with an apparatus designed to study the effect of compressed air round the spark gap. the experimental arrangements are as follows: a ten-inch induction coil has one of its terminals connected to the internal coating of a battery of leyden jars. the external coating is connected through the primary coil of an oscillation transformer with the other secondary terminal of the coil, and these secondary terminals are also connected to a spark gap consisting of two brass balls enclosed in a glass vessel into which air can be forced by a pump, the air pressure being measured by a gauge. the balls in the glass vessel are set at a distance of about three millimetres apart. the secondary circuit of the oscillation transformer is connected to another pair of spark balls, the distance of which can be varied. suppose we begin with the air in the glass vessel containing the balls connected to the secondary terminals of the induction coil, which may be called the secondary balls, at atmospheric pressure, and create oscillatory discharges in the primary coil of the oscillation transformer, we have a spark between the balls, which may be called the tertiary balls, connected to the secondary terminals of the oscillation transformer. if the secondary balls are placed, say, three millimetres apart, the air in the glass vessel enclosing them being at the ordinary atmospheric pressure, then with one particular arrangement of jars used, a spark twenty-five or twenty-six millimetres long between the tertiary balls will take place. suppose, then, we increase the pressure of the air round the secondary balls, pumping it by degrees to , , , and lb. per square inch above the atmospheric pressure. we find that the spark between the tertiary balls will gradually leap a greater and greater distance, and when the pressure of the air is lb. per square inch, we can obtain a fifty-millimetre spark between the tertiary balls, whereas when the air in the glass vessel is at atmospheric pressure, we can only obtain a spark between the tertiary balls of half that length. this experiment demonstrates that the effect of compressing the air round the secondary terminals of the induction coil is to greatly increase the difference of potential between these balls before the spark passes. in fact, it requires about double the voltage to force a spark of the same length through air compressed at lb. on the square inch that it does to make a spark of identical length between the same balls in air at normal pressure. this shows that there is a very great advantage in taking the discharge spark in compressed air. a better effect can be produced by substituting dry gaseous hydrochloric acid for air at ordinary pressures. one other incidental advantage is that the noise of the spark is very much reduced. the continual crackle, of the discharge spark of the induction coil in connection with wireless telegraphy is very annoying to sensitive ears, but in this manner we can render it perfectly silent. professor fessenden also states that when the spark balls are surrounded by compressed air, and if one of the balls is connected with a radiator, the compression of the air, although it shortens the spark-gap corresponding to a given voltage, does not in any way increase the radiation. when, however, the air in the spark-ball vessel is compressed to lb. in the square inch, there is a marked increase in the effective radiation, and at lb. per square inch the energy emitted in the form of waves is nearly three and a-half times greater than at lb., the potential difference between the balls remaining the same. this effect is no doubt connected with the fact that the production of a wave, whether in ether or in any other material, is not so much dependent upon the absolute force applied as upon the suddenness of its application. to translate it into the language of the electronic theory, we may say that the electron radiates only whilst it is being accelerated, and that its radiating power, therefore, depends not so much upon its motion as upon the rate at which its motion is changing. the advantage in using compressed air round the spark gap is that we can increase the effective potential difference between the balls without rendering the spark non-oscillatory. in air of the ordinary pressure there is a certain well-defined limit of spark length for each voltage, beyond which the discharge becomes non-oscillatory, but by the employment of spark balls in compressed air, we can increase the potential difference between the balls corresponding to a given distance apart before a discharge takes place, or employ higher potentials with the same length of spark gap. in addition to this, we have, perhaps, the production of a more effective radiation, as asserted by fessenden, when the air pressure exceeds a certain critical value. the next element which we have to consider in the transmitting arrangements is a condenser of some kind for storing the energy which is radiated at intervals. where a condenser other than the aerial is employed for storing the electric energy which is to be radiated by the aerial, some form of it must be constructed which will withstand high potentials. as the dielectric for such a condenser, only two materials seem to be of any practical use, viz., glass and micanite. glass condensers in the form of leyden jars have been extensively employed, but they have the disadvantage that they are very bulky in proportion to their electrical capacity. the instrument maker's quart leyden jar has a capacity of about one-five hundredth of a microfarad, but it occupies about cubic inches or more. professor braun has employed in his transmitting arrangements condensers consisting of small glass tubes like test tubes, lined on the inside and outside with tinfoil, which are more economical in space. the author has found that condensers for this purpose are best made of sheet glass about one-eighth or one-tenth of an inch in thickness, coated to within one inch of their edge on both sides with tinfoil, and arranged in a vessel containing resin or linseed oil, like the plates of a storage battery. m. d'arsonval has employed micanite, but although this material has a considerably higher dielectric strength than glass, it is much more expensive to obtain a given capacity by means of micanite than by glass, although the bulk of the condenser for a given capacity is less. to store up a certain amount of electric energy in a condenser, we require a certain definite volume of dielectric, no matter how we may arrange it, and the volume required per unit of energy is determined by the dielectric strength of the material. thus, for instance, ordinary sheet glass cannot be safely employed with a greater electric force than is represented by , volts for one-tenth of an inch in thickness, or, say, a potential gradient of , volts per centimetre. this is equivalent to an electric force of about electrostatic units. this may be called the safe-working force. the electrostatic capacity of a condenser formed of two metal surfaces a foot square separated by glass three millimetres in thickness is between / and / of a microfarad. if this condenser is charged to , volts, we have stored up in it half a joule of electric energy, and the volume of the dielectric is cubic centimetres. hence, to store up in a glass condenser electric energy represented by one joule at a pressure of , volts, we require cubic centimetres of glass, and it will be found that if we double the pressure and double the thickness of the glass, we still require the same volume.[ ] hence, in the construction of high-tension condensers to store up a given amount of energy, the economical problem is how to obtain the greatest energy-storing capacity for the least money. glass fulfils this condition better than any other material. although some materials may have very high dielectric strength, such as paper saturated with various oils, or resins, yet they cannot be used for the purpose of making condensers to yield oscillatory discharges, because the oscillations are damped out of existence too soon by the dielectric. in arranging condensers to attain a given capacity, regard has to be taken of the fact that for a given potential difference there must be a certain total thickness of dielectric, and that if condensers of equal size are being arranged in parallel it adds to their capacity, whilst joining them in series divides their capacity. if n equal condensers or leyden jars have each a capacity represented by c, and if they are joined _n_ in series and _m_ in parallel, the joint capacity of the whole number is _m_c/_n_, where the product _mn_ = n. passing on next to the consideration of oscillation transformers of various kinds--these are appliances of the nature of induction coils for transforming the current or electromotive force of electrical oscillations in a required ratio. these coils are, however, destitute of any iron core, and they generally consist of coils of wire wound on a fibre, wooden or ebonite frame, and must be immersed in a vat of oil to preserve the necessary insulation. no dry insulation of the nature of indiarubber or gutta-percha will withstand the high pressures that are brought to bear upon the circuits of an oscillation transformer. in constructing these transformers we have to set aside all previous notions gathered from the design of low-frequency iron-core transformers. the chief difficulty we have to contend against in the construction of an effective oscillation transformer is the inductance of the primary circuit and the magnetic leakage that takes place. in other words, the failure of the whole of the flux generated by the primary circuit to pass through or be linked with the secondary circuit. mr. marconi has employed an excellent form of oscillation transformer, in the design of which he was guided by a large amount of experience. in this transformer the two circuits are wound round a square wooden frame. the primary circuit consists of a number of strands of thick insulated cable laid on in parallel, so that it consists of only one turn of a stranded conductor. the secondary circuit consists of a number of turns, say, ten to twenty, of thinner insulated wire laid over the primary circuit and close to it, so that the transformer has the transformation ratio of one to ten or one to twenty. in the arrangements devised and patented by mr. marconi, these two circuits, with their respective capacities in series with them, are tuned to one another, so that the time-period of each circuit is exactly the same, and without this tuning the device becomes ineffective as a transformer.[ ] there is no advantage in putting a number of turns on the primary circuit, because such multiplication simply increases the inductance, and, therefore, diminishes the primary current in the same ratio which it multiplies the turns, and hence the magnetic field due to the primary circuit remains the same. where it is desired to put a number of turns upon a coil, and yet at the same time keep the inductance down, the writer has adopted the device of winding a silk or hemp rope well paraffined between the turns of the circuit, so as to keep them further apart from one another, and as the inductance depends on the turns per centimetre, this has the effect of reducing the inductance. the next and most important element in any transmitting station is the aerial or radiator, and it was the introduction of this element by mr. marconi which laid the foundation for hertzian wave telegraphy as opposed to mere experiments with the hertzian waves. we may consider the different varieties of aerial which have been evolved from the fundamental idea. the simple single marconi aerial consists of a bare or insulated wire, generally about ft. or ft. in length, suspended from a sprit attached to a tall mast. as these masts have generally to be erected in exposed positions, considerable care has to be taken in erecting them with a large margin of strength. to the end of a sprit is attached an insulator of some kind, which may be a simple ebonite rod, or sometimes a more elaborate arrangement of oil insulators, and to the lower end of this insulator is attached the aerial wire. as at the top of the aerial we have to deal with potentials capable sometimes of giving sparks several feet in length, the insulation of the upper end of the aerial is an important matter. in the original marconi system, the lower end of the aerial was simply attached to one spark ball connected to one terminal of the induction coil, and the other terminal and spark ball were connected to the earth. in this arrangement, the aerial acted not only as radiator, but as energy-storing capacity, and as already explained, its radiating power was on that account limited. the earth connection is an important matter. for long distance work, a good earth is essential. this earth must be made by embedding a metal plate in the soil, and many persons are under the impression that the efficiency of the earth plate depends upon its area, but this is not the fact. it depends much more upon its shape, and principally upon the amount of its "edge." it has been shown by professor a. tanakadate, of japan, that if a metal plate of negligible resistance is embedded in an infinite medium having a resistivity _r_, the electrical conductance of this plate is equal to pi/_r_ times the electrostatic capacity of the same plate placed in a dielectric of infinite extent. hence in designing an earth plate, we have to consider not how to give it the utmost amount of surface, but how to give it the greatest electrostatic capacity, and for this purpose it is far better to divide a given amount of metal into long strips radiating out in different directions, rather than to employ it in the form of one big square or circular plate. the importance of the "good earth" will have been seen from our discussion on the mode of formation of electric waves. there must be a perfectly free access for the electrons to pass into and out of the aerial. hence, if the soil is dry, or badly conductive in the neighbourhood, we have to go down to a level at which we get a good moist earth. in fact, the precautions which have to be taken in making a good earth for hertzian wave telegraphy are exactly those which should be taken in making a good earth for a lightning conductor. whilst on the subject of aerials, a word may be said on the localisation of wireless telegraph stations on the marconi system. for reasons which were explained previously, the transmission of signals is effected more easily over water than over dry land, and it is hindered if the soil in the neighbourhood of the sending station is a poor conductor. hence, all active hertzian wave telegraph stations, like all active volcanoes, are generally found near the sea. in those cases in which a multiple aerial has to be put up consisting of many wires, one mast may be insufficient to support the structure, and several masts arranged in the form of a square or a circle have to be employed. the illustrated papers have reproduced numerous pictures of the marconi power stations at poldhu in cornwall, glace bay in nova scotia, and cape cod in the united states. in these stations, after preliminary failures to obtain the necessary structural strength with ordinary masts, tall lattice girder wooden towers have been built, about feet in height, well stayed against wind pressure, and which so far have proved themselves capable of withstanding any storm of wind which has come against them. an important question in connection with the sending power of an aerial is that of the relation of its height to the distance covered. some time ago mr. marconi enunciated a law, as the result of his experiments, connecting these two quantities, which may be called marconi's law. he stated that the height of the aerial to cover a given distance, other things remaining the same, varies as the square root of the distance. let d be the distance and let l be the length of the aerial, then if both the transmitting and receiving aerial are the same height, we may say that d varies as l^{ }. this relation may be theoretically deduced as follows:--any given receiving apparatus for hertzian wave telegraphy requires a certain minimum energy to be imparted to it to make it yield a signal. if the resistance and the capacity of the receiver is taken as constant, this minimum working energy is proportional to the square of the electromotive force set up in the receiving aerial by the impact on it of the electric waves. this electromotive force varies as the length of the receiving aerial and as the magnetic force due to the wave cutting across it, and the magnetic force varies as the current in the transmitting aerial, and therefore, for any given voltage varies as the capacity, and therefore as the length of the transmitting aerial. if, therefore, the transmitting and receiving aerial have the same length, the minimum energy varies as the square of the electromotive force in the receiving aerial, and therefore as the fourth power of the length of either aerial, since the electromotive force varies as the product of the lengths of the aerials. hence, when the distance between the aerials is constant, the minimum working energy varies as the fourth power of the height of either aerial, but when the lengths of the aerials are constant, the energy caught up by the receiving aerial must vary inversely as the square of the distance d between the aerials. hence, if we call _e_ this minimum working energy, _e_ must vary as /d^{ } when l is constant, or as l^ when d is constant, and since _e_ is a constant quantity for any given arrangements of receiver and transmitter, it follows that when the height of aerial and distance vary, the ratio l^ /d^ is constant, or, in other words, d^ varies as l^ or d varies as l^ --_i.e._, distance varies as the square of the height of the aerial, which is marconi's law. the curve, therefore, connecting height of aerial with sending distance for given arrangements is a portion of a parabola. otherwise, the law may be stated in the form l = _a_[\sq]{d}, where _a_ is a numerical coefficient. if l and d are both measured in metres, then, for recent marconi apparatus as used on ships, _a_ = · roughly. (see a report on experiments made for the italian navy, - , by captain quintino bonomo--"telegrafia senza fili," rome, .) this law, however, must not be used without discretion. after mr. marconi had transmitted signals across the british channel, some people, forgetting that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, predicted that aerials a thousand feet in height would be required to signal across the atlantic, but mr. marconi has made such improvements of late years in the receiving arrangements that he has been able to receive signals over three thousand miles in with aerials only thirty-three per cent. longer than those which, in , he employed to cover twenty miles across the english channel. [illustration: fig. .--alternating-current double-transformation power plant for generating electric waves (fleming). _a_, alternator; h_{ }h_{ }, choking coil; k, signalling key; t, step-up transformer; s_{ }s_{ } spark-gap; c_{ }c_{ } condensers; t_{ }t_{ }, oscillation transformers; a, aerial; e, earthplate.] we turn, in the next place, to the consideration of those devices for putting more power into the aerial than can be achieved when the aerial itself is simply employed as the reservoir of energy. professor braun, of strassburg, in , described a method for doing this by inducing oscillations in the aerial by means of an oscillation transformer, these oscillations being set up by the discharges from a leyden jar or battery of leyden jars, which formed the reservoir of energy. the induction coil is employed to produce a rapidly intermittent series of electrical oscillations in the primary coil of an oscillation transformer by the discharge through it of a leyden jar. mr. marconi immensely improved this arrangement, as described by him in a lecture given before the society of arts on may , , by syntonising the two circuits and making the circuit, consisting of the capacity of the aerial and the inductance of the secondary circuit of the oscillation transformer, have the same time-period as the circuit consisting of the leyden jars, or energy-storing condenser, and the primary circuit of the oscillation transformer, and by so doing immensely added to the power and range of the apparatus. starting from these inventions of braun and marconi, the author devised a double transmission system in which the oscillations are twice transformed before being generated in the aerial, each time with a multiplication of electromotive force and a multiplication of the number of groups of oscillations per second. this arrangement can best be understood from the diagram (see fig. ). in this case a transformer, t, or transformers receive alternating low-frequency current from an alternator, _a_, being regulated by passing through two variable choking coils, h_{ } and h_{ }, so as to control it. this alternating current is transformed up from a potential of two thousand to twenty, forty or a hundred thousand, and is employed to charge a large condenser, c_{ }, which discharges across a primary spark-gap, s_{ }, through the primary coil of an oscillation transformer, t_{ }. the secondary circuit of the oscillation transformer is connected to a second pair of spark balls, s_{ }, which in turn are connected by a secondary condenser, c_{ }, and the primary circuit of a third transformer, t_{ } and the secondary circuit of this last transformer are inserted between a marconi aerial, a, and the earth e. when all these circuits are tuned to resonance by mr. marconi's methods, we have an enormously powerful arrangement for creating electric waves, or rather trains of electric waves, sent out from the aerial, and the oscillations are controlled and the signals made by short-circuiting one of the choking coils. another transmitting arrangement, which involves a slightly different principle, and employs no oscillation transformer, is one due also to professor braun. in this case, a condenser and inductance are connected in series to the spark balls of an induction coil, and oscillations are set up in this circuit. accordingly, there are rapid fluctuations of potential at one terminal of the condenser. if to this we connect a long aerial, the length of which has been adjusted to be one quarter of the length of wave corresponding to the frequency, in other words, to make it a quarter-wave resonator, then powerful oscillations will be accumulated in this rod. the relation between the height (h) of the aerial and the frequency is given by the equation Ã� ^{ } = _n_h, where _n_ is the frequency of the oscillations and h the height of the aerial in centimetres. the frequency of the oscillations is determined by the capacity (c) and inductance (l) of the condenser circuit, and can be calculated from the formula n = ( , , ) / ([\sq]{c (in mfds.) Ã� l (in cms.)}). that is, the frequency is obtained by dividing into the number , , , the square root of the product of the capacity in microfarads, and inductance in centimetres, of the condenser circuit. it will be found, on applying these rules, that it is impossible to unite together any aerial of a length obtainable in practice with a condenser circuit of more than a very moderate capacity. it has been shown that for an aerial two hundred feet in height the corresponding resonating frequency is about one and a quarter million.[ ] as we are limited in the amount to which we can reduce the inductance of a discharge circuit, probably to something like a thousand centimetres, a simple calculation shows that the largest capacity we can employ is about a sixtieth of a microfarad. this capacity, even if charged at , volts, would only contain thirty joules of energy, or about · foot-pounds, which is a small storage compared to that which can be achieved when we are employing the above-described methods, which involve the use of an oscillation transformer. in such a case, however, it is an advantage to employ a spark-gap in compressed air, because we can then raise the voltage to a much higher value than in air of ordinary pressure without lengthening the spark so much as to render it non-oscillatory. when employing methods involving the use of an oscillation transformer, it is possible to use multiple aerials having large capacity, and hence to store up a very large amount of energy in the aerial, which is liberated at each discharge. the most effective arrangement is one in which the radiator draws off gradually a large supply of energy from a non-radiating circuit, and so sends out a true train of waves, and not mere impulses, into the ether, and as we shall see later on, it is only when the radiation takes place in the form of true wave trains that anything like syntony can be obtained. there are a number of variants of the above methods of arranging the radiator and associated energy-storing in circuit. descriptions of these arrangements will be found in patents by mr. marconi, professor slaby and count von arco, sir oliver lodge, dr. muirhead, professor popoff, professor fessenden and others. in all cases, however, they are variations of the three simple forms of radiator already described. returning to the analogy with the air or steam siren suggested at the commencement of this article, the reader will see in the light of the explanations already given, that all parts of the air-wave producing apparatus have their analogues in the electrical radiator as used in hertzian wave telegraphy. the object in the one case is to produce rapid oscillations of air particles in a tube, which result in the production of an air wave in external space; in the other case, the arrangement serves to produce oscillations of electrons or electrical particles in a wire, the movements of which create a disturbance in the ether called an electrical wave. comparing together, item by item, it will be seen, therefore, that the induction coil or transformer used in connection with electric-wave apparatus is analogous to the air pump in the siren plant. in the electrical apparatus, this electron pump is employed to put an electrical charge into a condenser; in the air wave apparatus, the air pump is employed to charge an air vessel with high pressure air. from the electrical condenser the charge is released in the form of a series of electrical oscillations, and in the air wave producing appliance, the compressed air is released in the form of a series of intermittent puffs or blasts. in the electrical wave producing apparatus, these electrical oscillations in the condenser circuit are finally made to produce other oscillations in an air wire or open circuit, just as the puffs of air finally expend themselves in producing aerial oscillations in the siren tube. finally, in the one case we have a series of air waves and in the other case, a series of electrical waves. these trains of electric waves or air waves, as the case may be, are intermitted into long and short groups, in accordance with the signals of the morse alphabet, and, therefore, the hertzian wave transmitter, in whatever form it may be employed, when operated by means of a marconi aerial, is in fact an electrical siren apparatus, the function of which is to create periodic disturbances in the universal ether of the same character as those which the siren produces in atmospheric air. * * * * * we have to consider in the next place the arrangements of the receiving station and the various forms of receivers that have been devised for effecting telegraphy by hertzian waves. just as the transmitting station consists essentially of two parts, viz., a part for creating electrical oscillations and a part for throwing out or radiating electric waves, so the receiving-station appliances may be divided into two portions; the function of one being to catch up a portion of the energy of the passing wave, and that of the other to make a record or intelligible signal in some manner in the form of an audible or visible sign. accordingly, there must be at the receiving station an arrangement called a receiving aerial, which in general takes the form of a long vertical wire or wires, similar in form to the transmitting aerial, there is, however, a distinct difference in the function of the transmitting aerial and the receiving aerial. the function of the first is effective radiation, and for this purpose the aerial must have associated with it a store of energy to be released as wave energy; but the function of the receiving aerial is to be the seat of an electromotive force which is created by the electric force and the magnetic force of the incident electric wave. in tracing out the mode of operation of the transmitting aerial, it was pointed out that the electric waves emitted consisted of alternations of electric force in a direction which is perpendicular to the surface of the earth, and magnetic force parallel to the surface of the earth. these two quantities, the electric force and the magnetic force, are called the _wave vectors_, and they both lie in a plane perpendicular to the direction in which the wave is travelling and at right angles to one another, the electric force being perpendicular to the surface of the earth. in optical language, the wave sent out by the aerial would be called a plane polarised wave, the plane of polarisation being parallel to the magnetic force. hence, if at any point in the path of the wave we erect a vertical conductor, as the wave passes over it, it is cut transversely by the magnetic force of the wave and longitudinally by the electric force. both of these operations result in the creation of an alternating electromotive force in the receiving aerial wire. as in all other cases of oscillatory motion, the principle of resonance may here be brought into play to increase immensely the amplitude of the current oscillations thereby set up in the receiving aerial. as already explained, any vertical insulated wire placed with its lower end near the earth has capacity with respect to the earth, and it has also inductance, the value of these factors depending on its shape and height. accordingly, it has a natural electrical time-period of its own, and if the periodic electromotive impulses which are set up in it by the passage of the waves over it agree in period with its own natural time-period, then the amplitude of the current vibrations in it may become enormously greater than when there is a disagreement between these two periods. before concluding these articles we shall return to this subject of electric resonance and syntony, and discuss it with reference to what is called the tuning of hertzian wave stations. meanwhile, it may be said that for the sake of obtaining, at any rate in an approximate degree, this coincidence of time-period, it is generally usual to make the receiving aerial as far as possible identical with the transmitting aerial. if the receiving aerial is not insulated, but is connected to the earth at its lower end through the primary coil of an oscillation transformer, we can still set up in it electrical oscillations by the impact on it of an electric wave of proper period; and if the oscillation transformer is properly constructed we can draw from its secondary circuit electric oscillations in a similar period. one problem in connection with the design of a receiving aerial is that of increasing its effective length and capacity so as to increase correspondingly the electromotive force or current oscillations in it. it is clear that if we put a number of receiving wires in parallel so that each one of them is operated upon by the wave separately, although we can increase in this way the magnitude of the alternating current which can be drawn off from the aerial, we cannot increase the electromotive force in it except by increasing the actual height of the wires. unfortunately, there is a limit to the height of the receiving aerial. it has to be suspended, like the transmitting aerial, from a mast or tower, and the engineering problem of constructing such a permanent supporting structure higher than, say, two hundred feet is a difficult one. since any one station has to send as well as receive, it is usual to make one and the same aerial wire or wires do double duty. it is switched over from the transmitting to the receiving apparatus, as required. this, however, is a concession to convenience and cost. in some respects it would be better to have two separate aerials at each station, the one of the best form for sending, and the other of the best form for receiving. in mr. marconi's early arrangements, the so-called coherer or sensitive wave-detecting appliance, to be described more in detail presently, was inserted between the base of the insulated receiving aerial and the earth, but it was subsequently found by him to be a great improvement to act upon the receiving device, not directly by the electromotive force set up in the aerial, but by the induced electromotive force of a special form of step-up oscillation transformer he calls a "jigger," the primary circuit of which was inserted in between the receiving aerial and the earth plate, and the secondary circuit was connected to the sensitive organ of the telegraphic receiving arrangements.[ ] a suggestion to employ transformed oscillations in affecting a coherer, had also been described in a patent specification by sir oliver lodge, in , but the essence of success in the use of this device is not merely the employment of a transformer, but of a transformer constructed specially to transform electrical oscillations. turning, then, to the consideration of the relation existing between the transmitting and receiving aerials, we note that in their simplest form these consist of two similar tall rods of metal placed upright, with their feet in good connection with the earth at two places. we may think of them as two identical lightning conductors, well earthed at the bottom, and supported by non-conducting masts or towers. these rods must be in good connection with the earth, and therefore with it form, as it were, one conductor. if, as usual, these aerials are separated by the sea, the intermediate portion of this circuit is an electrolyte. the operations which take place when a signal is sent are as follows:-- at the transmitting station, we set up in the transmitting aerial electric oscillations, of which the frequency may be of the order of a million, _i.e._, the oscillations as long as they last are at the rate of a million a second. each spark discharge at the transmitter results, however, only in the production of a train of a dozen or two oscillations, and these trains succeed each other at a rate depending upon the transmitting arrangements used. each oscillation in the transmitting aerial is accompanied by the detachment from it of semi-loops of electric strain, as already explained. the alterations of electric strain directed perpendicularly to the earth, and of the associated magnetic force parallel to the earth, constitute an electric wave in the ether, just as the alternations of pressure and motion of air molecules constitute an air wave. associated with these physical actions above ground, there is a propagation through the earth of electric action, which may consist in a motion or atomic exchange of electrons. each change or movement of a semi-loop of electric strain above ground has its equivalent below ground in inter-atomic exchanges or movements of the electrons, on which the ends of these semi-loops of electric strain terminate. the earth must play, therefore, a very important part in so-called "wireless telegraphy," and we might also say the earth does as much as the ether in its production. the function of the receiving aerial is to bring about a union between these two operations above and below ground. when the electric waves fall upon it, they give rise to electromotive force in the receiving aerial, and, therefore, produce oscillations in it which, in fact, are electric currents flowing into and out of the receiving aerial. we may say that the transmitting aerial, the receiving aerial and the earth form one gigantic hertz oscillator. in one part of this system, electric oscillations of a certain period are set up by the discharge of a condenser and are propagated to the other part. in the earth, there is a propagation of electric oscillations; in the space above and between the aerials, there is a propagation of electric waves. the receiving aerial _feels_, therefore, what is happening at the distant aerial and can be made to record it.[ ] we have next to consider the question of the wave-detecting devices which enable us to appreciate and record the impact of a wave or wave train against the aerial. at the very outset it will be necessary to coin a new word to apply generally to these appliances. most readers are probably familiar with the term "coherer," which was applied by sir oliver lodge, in the first instance, to an electric wave-detecting device of one particular kind--viz., that in which a metal point was lightly pressed against another metal surface and caused to stick to it when an electric wave fell upon it. as our knowledge increased, it was found that there were many cases in which the effect of the electric radiation was to cause a severance and not a coherence, and hence such clumsy phrases as "anticoherer" and "self-decohering coherer" have come into use. moreover, we have now many kinds of electric wave detectors based on quite different physical principles. at the risk of incurring reprobation for adding to scientific nomenclature, the author ventures to think that the time has arrived when a simple and inclusive term will be found useful to describe all the devices, whatever their nature, which are employed for detecting the presence of an electric wave. for this purpose the term _kumascope_, from the greek [greek: kuma] (a wave), is suggested. the scientific study of waves has already been called _kumatology_, and in view of our familiarity with such terms as _microscope_, _electroscope_ and _hygroscope_, there does not seem to be any objection to enlarging our vocabulary by calling a wave-detecting appliance a _kumascope_. we are then able to look at the subject broadly and to classify kumascopes of different kinds. we may, in the first place, arrange them according to the principle on which they act. thus, we may have electric, magnetic, thermal, chemical and physiological operations involved; and finally, we may divide them into those which are self-restoring, in the sense that after the passage or action of a wave upon them they return to their original sensitive condition; and those which are non-restoring, in that they must be subjected to some treatment to bring them back again to a condition in which they are fit to respond again to the action of a wave. we have no space to refer to the whole of the steps of discovery which led up to the invention of all the various forms of the modern electric kumascope or wave detector. suffice it to say that the researches of hertz in threw a flood of light upon many previously obscure phenomena, and enabled us to see that an electric spark, and especially an oscillatory spark, creates a disturbance in the ether, which has a resemblance in nature to the expanding ripples produced by a stone hurled into water. scientific investigation then returned with fresh interest to previously incomprehensible effects, and a new meaning was read into many old observations. again and again it had been noticed that loose metallic contacts, loose aggregations of metallic filings or fragments, had a mysterious way of altering their conductivity under the action of electric sparks, lightning discharges and high electromotive forces. as far back as , mr. varley had noticed that masses of powdered metals had a very small conductivity, which increased in a remarkable way during thunderstorms;[ ] and in , c. and s. a. varley patented a device for protecting telegraphic instruments from lightning, which consisted of a small box of powdered carbon in which were buried two nearly touching metal points, and they stated that "powdered conducting matter offers a great resistance to a current of moderate tension, but offers but little resistance to currents of high tension."[ ] we then pass over a long interval and find that the next published account of similar observations was due to professor t. calzecchi-onesti, who described in an italian journal, _il nuovo cimento_ (see vol. xvi., p. , and vol. xvii., p. ), in and his observations on the decrease in resistance of metal powders when the spark from an induction coil was sent through them.[ ] these observations did not attract much attention until professor e. branly, of paris, in and , repeated them on an extended scale and with great variations, making the important observation that an electric spark _at a distance_ had a similar effect in increasing the conductivity of metallic powders.[ ] branly, however, noticed that in some cases of conductors in powder, such as the peroxide of lead or antimony, the effect of the spark was to cause a decrease of conductivity. to professor e. branly unquestionably belongs the honour of giving to science a new weapon in the shape of a tube containing metallic filings or powder rather loosely packed between metal plugs, and of showing that when the pressure on the powder was adjusted such a tube may be a conductor of very high resistance, but that the electrical conductivity is enormously increased if an electric spark is made in its neighbourhood. he also proved that the same effect occurred in the case of two slightly oxidised steel or copper wires laid across one another with light pressure, and that this loose or imperfect contact was extraordinarily sensitive to an electric spark, dropping in resistance from thousands of ohms to a few ohms when a spark was made many yards away. it is curious to notice how long some important researches take to become generally known. branly's work did not attract much attention in england until , when dr. dawson turner described his own repetition of branly's experiments with the metallic filings tube at a meeting of the british association in edinburgh. in the discussion which followed, professor george forbes made an important remark. he asked whether it was possible that the decrease in resistance could be brought about by hertz waves.[ ] this question shows that even in the idea that the effect of the spark on the branly tube was really due to hertzian waves was only just beginning to arise. the following year, however, mr. w. b. croft repeated branly's experiment with copper filings before the physical society of london, and entitled his short paper "electric radiation on copper filings."[ ] he exhibited a tube containing copper filings loosely held between two copper plugs and joined in series with a galvanometer and cell. the effect of an electric spark at a distance, in causing increase of conductivity, was shown, and the return of the tube to its non-conducting state when tapped was also noticed. in the discussion which followed the reading of this paper, professor minchin described the effects of electric radiation on his impulsion cells. he followed up this by reading a paper to the physical society on november , , on the action of hertzian radiation on films containing metallic powders, and expressed the opinion that the change in resistance of the branly tube was due to electric radiation.[ ] thus, at the end of , a few physicists clearly recognised that a new means had been given to us for detecting those invisible ether waves, the chief properties of which hertz had unravelled with surpassing skill six years before, by means of a detector consisting of a ring of wire having a small spark-gap in it. in june, , sir oliver lodge delivered a discourse at the royal institution, entitled "the work of hertz," and at this lecture use was made of the branly tube as a hertz wave detector. the chief object of the lecture was to describe the properties of hertzian waves and their reflection, absorption and transmission, and many brilliant quasi-optical experiments were exhibited. although a branly tube, or imperfect metallic contact, then named by him a _coherer_, was employed by sir oliver lodge to detect an electric wave generated in another room, there was no mention in this lecture of any use of the instrument for telegraphic purposes.[ ] as we are here concerned only with the applications in telegraphy, we shall not spend any more time discussing the purely scientific work done with laboratory forms of this wave detector. without attempting to touch the very delicate question as to the precise point at which laboratory research passed into technical application, we shall briefly describe the forms of kumascope which have been devised with special reference to hertzian wave telegraphic work. a very exact classification is at present impossible, but we may say that telegraphic kumascopes may be roughly divided into six classes. the first class includes all those that depend for their action on the "coherer principle" or the reduction of the resistance of a metallic microphone by the action of electromotive force. as they depend upon an imperfect contact, they may be called _contact kumascopes_. this class is furthermore subdivided into the self-restoring and the non-self-restoring varieties. the second class comprises the _magnetic kumascopes_ which depend upon the action of an electrical oscillation as a magnetising or demagnetising agency. the third class comprises the _electrolytic responders_, in which the action of electric oscillations either promotes or destroys the results of electrolysis. the fourth class consists of the _electrothermal detectors_, in which the power of an electrical oscillation as a high frequency electric current to heat a conductor is utilised. the fifth class comprises the _electromagnetic_ or _electro-dynamic_ instruments, which are virtually very sensitive alternating-current ammeters, adapted for immensely high frequency. the sixth class must be made to contain all those which cannot be well fitted at present into any of the others, such as the sensitive responder of schäfer, the action of which is not very clearly made out. we may proceed briefly to describe the construction of the principal forms of kumascope coming under the above headings. in the first place, let us consider those which are commonly called the "coherers" or, as the writer prefers to call them, the _contact kumascopes_. the simplest of these is the crossed needle or single contact, which originated with professor e. branly.[ ] the pressure of the point of a steel needle against an aluminium plate was subsequently found by sir oliver lodge to be a very sensitive arrangement when so adjusted that a single cell sends little or no current through the contact.[ ] when an electric wave passes over it, good conducting contact ensues. the point is, in fact, welded to the plate, and can only be detached by giving the plate or needle a light shock or vibration. a variation of the above form is a pair of crossed needles, one resting on the other. professor branly found, in , that if a pair of slightly-oxidised copper wires rest across one another the contact-resistance may fall from , to ohms by the impact of an electric wave. he has recently devised a tripod arrangement, in which a light metal stool with three slightly-oxidised legs stands on a polished plate of steel. the contact points must be oxidised, but not too heavily, and the stool makes a bad electrical contact until a wave falls upon it.[ ] the decoherence is effected by giving the stool a tilt by means of an electromagnet. these single or multiple-point kumascopes labour under the disadvantage that only a very small current can be passed through the variable contact when used as a relay arrangement, without welding them together so much that a considerable mechanical shock is required to break the contact and reset the trap. the logical development of the single contact is, therefore, the infinite number of contacts existing in the tube of metallic filings, which has been the form of kumascope most used for many years. in its typical form it consists of a tube of insulating material with metallic plugs at each end, and between them a mass of metallic powder, filings, borings, granules or small spheres, lightly touching one another. imperfect contact must be arranged by light pressure, and in the majority of cases the resistance is very large until an electric wave falls upon the tube, when it drops suddenly to a small value and remains there until the tube is given a slight shake or the granules disturbed in any way, when the resistance suddenly rises again. this type of responder is a non-restoring kumascope, and requires the continual operation of some external agency to keep it in a condition in which it is receptive or sensitive to electric waves. much discussion and considerable research have taken place in connection with the action and improvement of these metallic powder kumascopes. as regards materials, the magnetic metals, nickel, iron and cobalt, in the order named, appear to give the best results. the noble metals, gold, silver and platinum, are too sensitive, and the very oxidisable metals too insensitive, for telegraphic work, but an admixture may be advantageously made. omitting the intermediate developments of invention, it may be said that mr. marconi was the first to recognise that to secure great sensibility in an electric wave detector of this type the following conditions must be fulfilled: an exceedingly small mass of metallic filings must be placed in a very narrow gap between two plugs, the whole being contained in a vessel which is wholly or partly exhausted of its air. mr. marconi devoted himself with great success to the development of this instrument, and in a very short time succeeded in transforming it from an uncertain laboratory appliance, capable of yielding results only in very skilled hands, into an instrument certain and simple in its operations as an ordinary telegraphic relay. he did this, partly by reducing its size, and partly by a most judicious selection of materials for its construction. as made at present, the marconi metallic filings tube consists of a small glass tube, the interior diameter of which is not much more than one-eighth of an inch, which has in it two silver plugs which are bevelled off obliquely. these are placed opposite to each other, so as to form a wedge-shaped gap, about a millimetre in width at the bottom and two, or at most three, millimetres in width at the top (see fig. ). the silver plugs exactly fill the aperture of the tube, and are connected to platinum wires sealed through the glass. the tube has a lateral glass tube fused into it, by which the exhaustion is made, which is afterwards sealed off, and this tube projects on the side of the wider portion of the gap between the silver plugs. the sensitive material consists of a mixture of metallic filings, five per cent. silver and ninety-five per cent. nickel, being carefully mixed and sifted to a certain standard fineness. in the manufacture of these tubes, great care is taken to make them as far as possible absolutely identical. each tube when finished is exhausted, but not to a very high vacuum. the tube so finished is attached to a bone holder, by which it can be held in a horizontal position. the object of bevelling off the plugs in the marconi tube is to enable the sensitiveness of the tube to be varied by turning it round, so that the small quantity of filings lie in between a wider or narrower part of the gap.[ ] [illustration: fig. .--marconi sensitive tube or metallic filings kumascope. pp, silver plugs; tt, platinum wires; f, nickel and silver filings.] other ways of adjusting the quantity of the filings to the width of the gap have been devised. sometimes one of the plugs is made movable. in other cases, such as the tubes devised by m. blondel and sir oliver lodge, there is a pocket in the glass receptacle to hold square filings, from which more or less can be shaken into the gap. an interesting question, which we have not time to discuss in full, is the cause of the initial coherence of the metallic filings in a branly tube. it does not seem to be a simple welding action due to heat, and it certainly takes place with a difference of potential, which is very far indeed below that which we know is required to produce a spark. on the other hand, it seems to be proved that in a banly tube, when acted upon by electric waves, chains of metallic particles are produced. the effect is not peculiar to electric waves. it can be accomplished by the application of any high electromotive force. thus branly found that coherence may be produced by the application of an electromotive force of twenty or thirty volts, operating through a very high water resistance, and thus precluding the passage of any but an excessively small current. again, the coherence seems to take place in some cases when metallic particles are immersed in a liquid, or even in a solid, insulator. processor branly has, therefore, preferred to speak of masses of metallic granules as _radio-conductors_, and professor bose has divided substances into positive and negative, according as the operation of electromotive force is to increase the coherence of the particles or to decrease it. it has been asserted that for every particular branly tube, there is a critical electromotive force, in the neighbourhood of two or three volts which causes the tube to break down and pass instantly from a non-conductive to a conductive condition, and that this critical electromotive force may become a measure of the utility of the tube for telegraphic purposes. thus, c. kinsley (_physical review_, vol. xii., p. , ) has made measurements of this supposed critical potential for different "coherers," and subsequently tested the same as receivers at a wireless telegraph station of the u.s.a. signal corps. the average of twenty-four experiments gave in one case · volts as the breaking down potential of one of these coherers or branly tubes, · volts for a second and · volts for the third. these same instruments, tested as telegraphic kumascopes, showed that the first of the three was most sensitive. on the other hand, w. h. eccles (_electrician_, vol. xlvii., pp. and , ) has made experiments with marconi nickel-silver sensitive tubes, using a liquid potentiometer made with copper sulphate, to apply the potential so that infinitesimal spark contacts might be avoided and the changes in potential made without any abruptness. he states that if the coherer tube is continuously tapped, say at the rate of fifty vibrations per second, whilst at the same time an increasing potential is applied to its terminals and the current passing through it measured on a galvanometer, there is no abrupt change in current at any point. he found that when the current and voltage were plotted against each other, a regular curve was obtained, which after a time becomes linear. a decided change occurs in the conductivity of the mass of metallic filings when treated in this manner at voltages lower than the critical voltage obtained by previous methods. he ascertained that there was a complete correspondence between the sensitiveness of the tubes used as telegraphic instruments and the form of the characteristic curve of current and voltage drawn by the above-described method. in the same manner, k. e. guthe and a. trowbridge (_physical review_, vol. ii., p. , ) investigated the action of a simple ball coherer formed of half a dozen steel, lead or phosphor-bronze balls in slight contact. they measured the current _i_ passing through the series under the action of a difference of potential _v_ between the ends, and found a relation which could be expressed in the form v = v( - e^{ki}), where v and _k_ are constants. the current through this ball coherer is, therefore, a logarithmic function of the potential difference between its ends, of the form i = log(v - v) and exhibits no discontinuity. the inference was drawn that the "resistance" is due to films of water adhering to the metallic particles through which electrolytic action occurs. a good metallic filings tube for use as a receiver in hertzian wave telegraphy should exhibit a constancy of action and should cohere and decohere, to use the common terms, sharply, at the smallest possible tap. it should not have a current passed through it by the external cell of more than a fraction of a milliampere, or else it becomes wounded and unsensitive. the investigations which have already taken place seem to show pretty clearly that the agency causing the masses of filings to pass from a non-conductive to a conductive condition is electromotive force, and that, therefore, it is the electromotive force set up in the aerial by the incident waves which is the effective agent in causing the change in the metallic filings tube, when this is used as a telegraphic kumascope. this transformation of the tube from a non-conductor to a conductor is made to act as a circuit-closer, completing the circuit, by means of which a single cell of a local battery is made to send current through an ordinary telegraph relay, and so by the aid of a second battery operate a telegraphic printer or recorder of any kind. hence it is clear that after one impact, the metallic filings tube has to be brought back to its non-conductive condition, and this may be achieved in several ways. ( ) by the administration of carefully-regulated taps or shocks or by rotating the tube on its axis; ( ) by the aid of an alternating current; ( ) in those cases where filings of magnetic metals are employed, by magnetism. the decoherence by taps was discovered by branly,[ ] and popoff, following the example of sir oliver lodge, employed an electric bell arrangement for this purpose.[ ] mr. marconi, in his original receiving instruments, placed an electromagnet under the coherer tube with a vibrating armature like an electric bell.[ ] this armature carries a small hammer or tapper, which, when set in action, hits the tube on the under side, and various adjusting screws are arranged for regulating exactly the force and amplitude of the blows. this tapper is actuated by the same current as the morse printer, or other telegraphic recorder, so that when the signal is received and the metallic filings tube passes into the conductive condition and closes the relay circuit, this latter in turn closes the circuit of the morse printer or other recorder, and at the same time, a current passes through the electromagnet of the tapper and the tube is tapped back. this sequence of operations requires a certain time which limits the speed of receiving. the tapper has to be so arranged that it is possible to receive and to record not only the _dot_ but a _dash_ on the morse system. the _dash_ is really a series of closely adjacent dots, which run together in virtue of the inertia and inductance of the different parts of the whole receiving apparatus. the adjustment has so to be made that, whilst the _dash_ is being recorded and a continuous tapping is kept up, yet, nevertheless the continued electromotive force in the aerial, due to the continually arriving trains of waves, is able to act against the tapping and to keep the filings in the tube in the conductive condition. hence, the successful operation of the arrangement requires attention to a number of adjustments, but these are not more difficult, or even as difficult, as those involved in the use of many telegraphic receivers employed in ordinary telegraphy with wires. mr. marconi also introduced devices for preventing the sparks at the contacts of the electromagnetic hammer from directly affecting the tube, and also to prevent the electric oscillations which are set up in the aerial from being partly shunted through other circuits than that of the sensitive tube. we pass on to notice the remaining devices for restoring the metallic filings tube to a condition of sensitiveness or receptiveness. a method for doing this by alternating currents is due to mr. s. g. brown.[ ] the pole pieces of the coherer tube are made of iron, and they are enveloped in magnetising coils traversed by an alternating electric current. between these pole pieces is placed a small quantity of nickel or iron filings, and under the action of the electromotive force, due to an electric wave acting on them, may be made to cohere in the usual fashion; but the moment that the wave ceases, the alternating magnetism of the electrodes causes the filings to drop apart or decohere. in place of the alternating current, mr. brown finds that a revolving permanent magnet can be used to produce the alternating magnetisation of the pole pieces of the sensitive tube or coherer. the third method of causing the decoherence of the filings is that due to t. tommasina. he found that when a branly tube is made with filings of a magnetic metal, such as iron, nickel and cobalt, the decoherence of the filings can be produced by means of an electromagnet placed in a suitable position under the tube.[ ] the explanation of this fact seems to be that, when an electric wave falls upon the tube or when any other source of electromotive force acts upon it, chains of metallic particles are formed, stretching from one electrode to the other. tommasina contends that he has proved the existence of these chains of particles by experiments made with iron filings; and r. malagoli,[ ] in referring to tommasina's assertion, states that it can be witnessed in the case of brass filings placed between two plates of metal and immersed in vaseline oil, when a difference of potential is made between the plates. t. sundorph[ ] says he has confirmed tommasina's discovery of the formation of these chains of metallic particles in the coherer. the filings do not all cling together, but certain chains are formed which afford a conducting path for the current subsequently passed through the coherer from an external source. accordingly, tommasina's method of causing decoherence in the case of filings of magnetic metals is to pull them apart by an external magnetic field; and he stated that decoherence can be effected more easily and regularly in this way than by tapping. whilst on this point, it may be mentioned that c. tissot[ ] says that he has found that the sensitiveness of a coherer formed of nickel and iron filings can be increased by placing it in the magnetic field, the lines of which are parallel to the axis of the tube. according to mm. a. blondel and g. dobkevitch, this is merely the result of an increased coherence of the particles. * * * * * quite recently, sir oliver lodge and dr. muirhead have employed as a self-restoring coherer or kumascope a steel disc revolved by clockwork, the edge of which just touches a globule of mercury covered with a thin film of paraffin oil. the contact is made between the mercury and the steel by the electric wave generating an electromotive force in the aerial, sufficient to break through the thin film of oil. when the wave stops, the circuit is again interrupted automatically. this device is used without a relay to actuate directly a syphon recorder as used in submarine telegraphy. the working battery employed with it must only have an electromotive force of about a tenth of a volt. it may be used also with a telephone in circuit and can, therefore, be employed either for telegraphic or telephonic reception.[ ] [illustration: fig. .--italian navy self-restoring kumascope. c, carbon plug; i, iron plug; m, mercury globule; a, aerial; b, battery; t, telephone; s, adjusting screw.] one of the most sensitive of these self-restoring kumascopes is the carbon-steel-mercury coherer, the invention of which has been attributed to castelli, a signalman in the italian navy,[ ] but also stated on good authority to have been the invention of officers in the royal italian navy, and has, therefore, been called the italian navy coherer.[ ] this instrument has been arranged in several forms, but in the simplest of these it consists of a glass tube, having in it a plug of iron and a plug of arc-lamp carbon, or two plugs of iron with a plug of carbon between them. the plugs of iron, or of iron and carbon, are separated by an exceedingly small globule of mercury, the size of which should be between one and a-half and three millimetres. the plugs closing the tube must be capable of movement, one of them by means of a screw, as shown in the diagram (fig. ), taken from a patent specification communicated to mr. marconi by the marchese luigi solari, of the royal italian navy. one of the plugs of this tube is connected to the aerial and the other to the earth, and they are also connected through another circuit composed of a single dry cell and a telephone. the arrangement then forms an extremely sensitive detector of electric waves or of small electromotive forces, or, if a wave falls on the aerial, the electromotive force at once improves the contact between the mercury and the plugs, and therefore causes a sudden increase in the current through the telephone, giving rise to a sound; but when the wave ceases, or the electromotive force is withdrawn, the resistance falls back again to its origin value, and the arrangement is, therefore, self-acting, requiring no tapping or other device for restoring it to receptivity. a very ingenious form of combined telephone and coherer has been devised by t. tommasina.[ ] in this instrument the diaphragm of an ordinary bell telephone carries upon it a very small carbon or metallic coherer. this coherer is connected in between the aerial and the earth, and is also in circuit with a battery and the electromagnet of a telegraphic relay. when this relay operates it closes the circuit of another battery which is placed in series with the telephone coil. the moment the current passes through the telephone coil it attracts, and therefore vibrates, the diaphragm and shakes up the metallic filings. if an observer, therefore, places the telephone to his ear, he hears a sound corresponding to every train of waves incident upon the aerial. with this arrangement, one can obtain two different kinds of results, according to the nature of the cohering powder placed in the cavity in the diaphragm. first, if the powder consists of a non-magnetic metal, gold, silver, platinum or the like, the receiver will be very sensitive; and at the same time the current passing through it when it is cohered will be sufficient to work a sensive recording apparatus in series with the telephone coil. secondly, if the metallic powder placed in the cavity is a magnetic metal, the receiver will be somewhat less sensitive, but will work with more precision, because of the magnetic action of the magnet of the telephone upon the cohering powder. if no recording apparatus is used, the observer must write down the signals as heard in the telephone, since corresponding to a short spark at the transmitting station, a single tick or short sound is heard at the telephone, and corresponding to a series of rapidly successive sparks, a more prolonged sound is heard in the telephone. these two sounds, as already explained, constitute the dot and the dash of the morse signals. we may, in the next place, refer to that form of kumascope in which the action of the wave or of electromotive force is not to decrease the resistance of a contact, but to increase that of an imperfect contact. as already mentioned, professor branly discovered long ago that peroxide of lead acts in an opposite manner to metallic filings, in that when placed in a branly tube it increases its resistance under the action of an electric spark, instead of decreasing it. again, professor bose has found that fragments of metallic potassium in kerosene oil behave in a similar manner, and that certain varieties of silver, antimony and of arsenic, and a few other metals, have a similar property. branly tubes, therefore, made with these materials, or any arrangements which act in a similar manner, have been called "anti-coherers." the most interesting arragement which has been called by this name is that of schäfer.[ ] schäfer's kumascope is made in the following manner: a very thin film of silver is deposited upon glass, and a strip of this silver is scratched across with a diamond, making a fine transverse cut or gap. if the resistance of this divided strip of silver is measured, it will be found not to be infinite, but may have a resistance as low as forty or fifty ohms if the strip is thirty millimetres wide. on examining the cut in the strip with a microscope, it will be found that the edges are ragged and that there are little particles of silver lying about in the gap. if, then, an electromotive force of three volts or more is put on the two separated parts of the strip, these little particles of silver fly to and fro like the pith balls in a familiar electrical experiment, and they convey electricity across from side to side. hence a current passes having a magnitude of a few milliamperes. if, however, the strip is employed as a kumascope and connected at one end to the earth and at the other end to an aerial, when electric waves fall upon the aerial, the electrical oscillations thereby excited seem to have the property of stopping this dance of silver particles and the resistance of the gap is increased several times, but falls again when the wave ceases. if, therefore, a telephone and battery are connected between two portions of the strip, the variation of this battery current will affect the telephone in accordance with the waves which fall upon the aerial, and the arrangement becomes therefore a wave-detecting device. it is said to have been used in wireless telegraph experiments in germany up to a distance of ninety-five kilometres. we must next direct attention to those wave-detecting devices which depend upon magnetisation of iron, and here we are able to record recent and most interesting developments. more than seventy years ago joseph henry, in the united states, noticed the effect of an electric spark at a distance upon magnetised needles.[ ] of recent times, the subject came back into notice through the researches of professor e. rutherford,[ ] who carried out at cambridge, england, in , a valuable series of experiments on this subject. he found that if a magnetised steel needle or a very small bundle of extremely thin iron wires is magnetised and placed in the interior of a small coil, the ends of which are connected to two long collecting wires, then an electric wave started from a hertz oscillator at a distance causes an immediate demagnetisation of the iron. this demagnetisation he detected by means of the movement of the needle of a magnetometer placed near one end of the iron wire. although rutherford's wave detector has been much used in scientific research, it was not, in the form in which he used it, a telegraphic instrument, and could not record alphabetic signals. not long ago mr. marconi invented, however, a telegraphic instrument based upon his discovery that the magnetic hysteresis of iron can be annulled by electric oscillations. in one form, mr. marconi's magnetic receiver is constructed as follows[ ] (see fig. ): an endless band of thin iron wire composed of several iron wires about no. gauge, arranged in parallel, is made to move slowly round on two pulleys, like the driving belt of a machine. in one part of its path the wire passes through a glass tube, on which are found two coils of wire, one a rather short, thick coil, and the other a very fine, long one. the fine, long coil is connected with a telephone, and the shorter coil is connected at one end to the earth and the other to the aerial. two permanent horse-shoe magnets are placed as shown n fig. , with their similar poles together, and, as the iron band passes through their field, a certain length of it is magnetised, and owing to the hysteresis of the material, it retains this magnetism for a short time after it has passed out of the centre of the field. if then an electric oscillation, coming down from the aerial, is passed through the shorter coil, it changes the position of the magnetised portion of the iron and, so to speak, brings the magnetised portion of iron back into the position it would have occupied if the iron had had no hysteresis. this action, by varying the magnetic flux through the secondary coil, creates in it an electromotive force which causes a sound to be heard in the telephone connected to it. if at a distant place a single wave or train of waves is started and received by the aerial, this will express itself by making an audible tick in the telephone, and if several groups of closely adjacent wave trains are sent, these will indicate themselves by producing a rapid series of ticks in the telephone, heard as a short continuous noise and taken as equivalent to the morse _dash_. [illustration: fig. .--marconi magnetic receiver. w_{ }w_{ }, wheels; i, iron wire band; p, primary coil; s, secondary coil; t, telephone; a, aerial; e, earthplate.] it was by means of this remarkably ingenious instrument that mr. marconi was able, in the summer of , to detect the waves sent out from poldhu on the coast of cornwall, and receive messages as far as cronstadt in the baltic, in one direction, and as far as spezzia in the mediterranean in another direction, and also to receive messages across the atlantic from the power stations situated in glace bay, nova scotia, and from one at cape cod in massachusetts, u.s.a., in december, . there can be no question that this magnetic detector of mr. marconi's, used in connection with a good telephone and an acute human ear, is the most sensitive device yet invented for the detection of electric waves and their utilisation in telegraphy without continuous wires. it is marvellously simple, ingenious and yet effective, as a hertzian wave telegraphic receiver. whilst on the subject of magnetic wave detectors, the author may describe experiments that he has been recently making to construct a hertzian wave detector on the rutherford principle, which shall be strictly quantitative. all the receivers of the coherer type and electrolytic type give no indications that are at all proportional to the energy of the incident wave. their indications are more or less accidental and depend upon the manner in which the receiver was last left. there is a great need for a quantitative wave detector, the indications of which shall give us a measure of the energy of the arriving wave. it is only by the possession of such an instrument that we can hope to study properly the sending powers of various transmitters or the efficiency of different forms of aerial or devices by which the wave is produced. this magnetic receiver is constructed as follows: a coil of fine wire is constructed in sections like the secondary coil of an induction coil, and in the instrument already made, this coil contains thirty or forty thousand turns of wire. in the interior of this coil are placed a number of little bundles of fine iron wire wound round with two coils, a fine wire coil which is a magnetising coil, and a thicker wire coil which is a demagnetising coil. these sets of coils are joined up, respectively, in series or in parallel. then, associated with this form of induction coil is a commutator of a peculiar kind, which performs the following functions when a battery is connected to it and when it is made to revolve by a motor or by clockwork. first, during part of the revolution, the commutator closes the battery circuit and magnetises the iron cores, and whilst this is taking place the secondary circuit of the induction coil is short-circuited and the galvanometer is disconnected from it. secondly, the magnetising current is stopped, and soon after that the secondary coil is unshort-circuited and connected to the galvanometer, and remains in this condition during the remainder of the revolution. this cycle of operations is repeated at every revolution. if then an electrical oscillation is sent into the demagnetising coils, and if it continues longer than one revolution of the commutator, it will demagnetise the iron core during that period of time in which the battery is disconnected and the galvanometer connected. the demagnetisation of the iron which ensues produces an electromotive force in the secondary coil and causes a deflection of the galvanometer, and this deflection will continue and remain steady if the oscillation persists. moreover, since this deflection is due to the passage through the galvanometer of a rapid series of discharges, it is large when the oscillations continue for a long time and are powerful, and small when they continue for a short time or are weak. we can, therefore, with this arrangement, receive on the galvanometer, just as on the mirror galvanometer used in submarine cable work, a dot or dash, and, moreover, the magnitude of these deflections is a measure of the energy of the wave. it is probable that when this arrangement is perfected it will become exceedingly useful for making all kinds of tests and measurements in connection with hertzian telegraphy, even if it is not sensitive enough to use as a long distance receiver. of late years a variety of wave-detecting devices have been brought forward which depend upon electrolysis. one of the best known of these is that by de forest and smythe.[ ] in this arrangement, a tube contains two small electrodes like plugs, which may be made of tin, silver or nickel, or other metal. the ends of these plugs are flat and separated from each other by about one two-hundredth of an inch. sometimes the end of one of these plugs is made cup shaped and the cup or recess is filled with a mass of peroxide of lead and glycerine. in the interval between the electrodes is placed an electrolyzable mixture, which consists of glycerine or vaseline mixed with water or alcohol, and a small quantity of litharge and metallic filings. these metallic filings act as secondary electrodes. when a small electromotive force is applied between the terminals of the electrodes of this tube through a very high resistance of twenty or thirty thousand ohms, an exceedingly small current passes through this mixture, and it causes an electrolytic action which results in the production of chains of metallic particles connecting the two electrodes together. if, in addition to this, one terminal or electrode of the arrangement is connected to an aerial wire and the other terminal to the earth, then on the arrival of an electric wave creating oscillations in the wire, these oscillations pass down into the electrolytic cell, where they break up the chains of metallic particles and thus interrupt the current passing through the telephone quite suddenly, which is heard as a slight tick by an ear applied to it. as soon as the wave ceases, the chain of metallic particles is re-established, so that the appliance is always in a condition to be affected by a wave. it is said that this breaking up and reformation of the chains of metallic particles is so rapid that a short spark made at the transmitting station is heard as a tick in the telephone, but a rapid succession of oscillatory sparks is heard as a short continuous sound; hence the two signals necessary for alphabetical conversation can be transmitted. another receiver which has some resemblance to the above, although different in principle, is that of neugschwender.[ ] in this arrangement, which to a certain extent resembles the schäfer detector, a glass plate has upon it a deposit of silver in the form of a strip, which is cut across at one place, thus interrupting it. if the cut is breathed upon or placed in a moist atmosphere, a little dew is deposited upon the glass, which bridges over the cut in the metal and creates an electric continuity. hence a small current can be passed across the gap and through a telephone by one or two cells of a battery. if, however, an electric oscillation passes across the gap on its way from an aerial to the earth, then the continuity of the liquid film is destroyed, and the current is interrupted and a sound created in the telephone. the opinion has been expressed by sir oliver lodge that in this case the interruption of the circuit which occurs is really due to the coalescence of minute water particles into larger drops, as when vapour is condensed into rain, and hence the continuity of the material is interrupted. we must then make a brief reference to other kumascopes which depend upon the heating power of an electrical oscillation, which it possesses in common with every other form of electric current. professor r. a. fessenden[ ] has constructed a very ingenious thermal receiver in the following manner: an extremely fine platinum wire, about · of an inch in diameter, is embedded in the middle of a silver wire about one tenth of an inch in diameter, like the wick of a candle. this compound wire is then drawn down until the diameter of the silver wire is only · of an inch, and hence the platinum wire in its interior, being reduced in the same ratio, will have been drawn to a diameter of · of an inch. a short piece of this drawn wire is then bent into a loop and the ends fixed to wires. the tip of the loop is then immersed in nitric acid and dissolved in the silver, leaving an exquisitely fine platinum wire a few hundredths of an inch in length and having a resistance of about thirty ohms. this little loop is sealed into a glass bulb like a very small incandescent lamp, or it may be enclosed in a small silver bulb and the air may be exhausted. if an electrical oscillation is sent through this exceedingly fine platinum wire it heats it and rapidly increases its resistance. the electrical oscillations produced in an aerial are sent through a number of these loops arranged in parallel, and the loops are short-circuited by a telephone, joined in series with a source of very small electromotive force produced by shunting a single cell or opposing to one another two cells of nearly equal electromotive force. any variation of resistance of the little platinum loops due to the heat produced by the oscillations, by suddenly altering the current flowing through the telephone, will cause a sound to be heard in it. the electrical oscillations when passing through the loops are therefore detected by the heat which they generate in these exquisitely fine platinum wires. finally, one word must be said on the subject of electrodynamic receivers, due to the same inventor. an exceedingly small silver ring is suspended by a quartz fibre and has a mirror attached to it in the manner of a galvanometer. this ring is suspended between two coils joined in series, which are placed either in the circuit of the aerial or in the secondary circuit of the small air core transformer inserted between the aerial and the earth. when electrical oscillations travel down the aerial they induce other electrical oscillations in the silver ring, and if the ring is so placed that its normal position is with its plane inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees to the plane of the fixed coils, then the ring will be slightly deflected every time an oscillation occurs in the aerial. omitting further mention of the details of the kumascopes in use and the receiving aerial, we must next proceed to consider the receiving arrangements taken as a whole. in the original marconi system, the sensitive tube or coherer was inserted between the bottom of the receiving aerial and the earth.[ ] accordingly, when the incident electric wave strikes the receiving aerial and creates in it an oscillatory electromotive force, this last will, if of sufficient amplitude, cause the particles of the coherer to cohere and become conductive. this sudden change from a nearly perfect non-conductivity to a conductive condition is made to act as a switch or relay, closing or completing the circuit of a single cell, and so sending a current through an ordinary telegraphic relay, closing or completing the circuit of a single cell, which may in turn actuate another recording telegraphic instrument, such as a morse printer. to prevent the oscillations from passing into the relay circuit, small choking or inductance coils are inserted between the ends of the sensitive tube and the relay and cell and serve to confine the oscillations to the tube. it has already been pointed out that in the transmitting aerial the amplitude at the potential vibrations increases from the bottom to the top, and when vibrating in its fundamental manner there is a potential node at the earth connection and a potential loop or antinode at the top. the same is true of the receiving aerial. hence, if the kumascope employed is a branly metallic filings tube and is inserted near the base of the aerial, the difference of potential between its two ends will be small. it has also been mentioned that a receiver of this type acts in virtue of electromotive force or potential difference, and hence the proper place to insert the coherer is not at the base of the aerial, but between the top of the aerial and the earth. this, however, could not be done by running up another wire from the earth, as that would amount to putting the coherer between the tops of two identical aerials, and between its ends there would be no difference of potential. professor slaby, in conjunction with count von arco, has given an ingenious solution of this problem. if we take two equal lengths of wire, bent at right angles, and connect the point of intersection with the earth, placing one of these wires vertically and the other horizontally, we then have an arrangement which responds to the impact of electric waves, and has electrical oscillations set up in it in such fashion that the common point of the two wires has a very small amplitude of potential, but the two extremities have equal and large variations. if, then, we insert a coherer tube between the earth and the outer extremity of the horizontal wire, it is influenced in the same manner as it would be by the potential variations at the top of the vertical wire. in other words, it is acted upon by a large difference of potential instead of a small one. it is not found necessary to stretch the horizontal wire out straight; it may be coiled into a spiral with open turns, and the slight decrease in capacity and increase in inductance resulting from this can be compensated by cutting off a short piece of it. [illustration: fig. .--slaby receiver. a, aerial; e, earth plate; f, coherer; m, multiplier; c, condenser; r, relay; b, battery; e, earth plate.] in this way we have an arrangement (see fig. ) in which the outer extremity of this open spiral experiences variations or potential which exactly correspond with those at the summit of the vertical aerial. the receiving arrangements are then completed as in fig. , one end of the coherer being attached to the outer end of the spiral and the other end through a condenser to the earth, a relay and a voltaic cell being arranged as shown in the diagram. the mode of operation of this receiver is as follows: when the wave strikes the aerial it sets up in it electrical oscillations with a potential antinode at the summit, and at the same time a potential antinode is created at the outer end of the spiral attached near the base of the aerial, this spiral being called by professor slaby a _multiplicator_. as long as the coherer tube remains non-conductive, the local cell cannot send a current through the relay, but, as soon as the resistance is broken down by the impact of a wave, the local cell sends a current through the coherer tube which, passing down to the earth through the base of the aerial and up through the earth connection to the condenser, completes its circuit through the relay. many variations of this arrangement have been made by slaby and von arco and by the allgemeine elektricitäts gesellschaft of berlin. in , mr. marconi made a great advance in the construction of his receiving apparatus by the insertion of his "jigger" or oscillation transformer in the aerial receiving circuit.[ ] in this arrangement, the primary coil of an air core transformer wound in a particular way is inserted between the receiving aerial and the earth, and the secondary circuit is cut in the middle and connected to the two surfaces of a condenser, these surfaces being also connected through the circuit of an ordinary telegraphic relay and a single cell (see fig. ). the ends of the secondary circuit of this oscillation transformer are also connected to the terminals of the coherer tube, and these again are short-circuited by a small condenser. [illustration: fig. .--marconi receiver. a, aerial; j, jigger; cc, condensers; f, filings tube; t, tapper; r, relay; b, battery; m, morse printer.] the operation of this receiver is as follows: the oscillations set up in the aerial pass through the primary circuit of the jigger, and these induce other oscillations in the secondary circuit; the electromotive force or difference of potential between the primary terminals being transformed up in any desired ratio. it is this exalted electromotive force which is made to act on the coherer tube, and, inasmuch as the jigger operates in virtue of a current passing through its primary circuit and this current is at a maximum at the lower end of the aerial, the arrangement is exceedingly effective, because it, so to speak, converts current into voltage. at the lower end of the aerial, although the amplitude of the potential oscillations is a minimum, the amplitude of the current oscillations is a maximum, and the jigger transforms these large current oscillations into large potential oscillations, _provided it is constructed in the right manner_. we can also transform up or increase the amplitude of the small potential variations near the bottom of the aerial by employing the principle of resonance. many devices of this kind, due to professor slaby and others, have been suggested and tried but the details are rather too technical to be fully described here. it will be noticed that the receiving aerial may be arranged in one of two ways--it may be either earthed at the lower end or it may be insulated. it has been claimed that there is a great advantage in earthing the receiving aerial directly in that it eliminates atmospheric disturbances. we shall allude to this point more particularly later on. meanwhile it may be mentioned that the receiving arrangements, as a whole, constitute a sensitive arrangement, as shown by popoff, tommasina and by all the large experience of mr. marconi himself for detecting changes in the electrical condition of the atmosphere, which are doubtless of the nature of electrical oscillations. on the other hand, the receiving arrangements may be perfectly insulated and some experimentalists have asserted that by this method the greatest freedom is secured from atmospheric disturbances. amongst the non-earthed arrangements the system invented by professor f. braun, of strassburg, and worked by messrs. siemens, of berlin, may be mentioned.[ ] [illustration: fig. .--braun's non-earthed receiver. i, induction coil; cc, condensers; s, spark gap; j, transmitting jigger; k, receiving jigger; f, filings tube; r, relay; b, battery.] professor braun's arrangements are indicated in the diagram in fig. . in this case an induction coil is used to create a discharge between two spark balls, and to these two balls are connected the two outer coatings of two condensers, the inner coatings of which are connected together through the primary coil of an air core transformer. the secondary coil of this transformer is connected to two extension wires forming a hertz resonator, and the length of these wires is so adjusted with reference to the time period of the primary circuit that they resonate to it, the whole length from end to end of the secondary circuit being half a wave-length. the receiver, as shown in the diagram, consists of a pair of quarter wave-length receiving wires connected through two condensers, which are short-circuited by the primary coil of an oscillation transformer. the secondary circuit of this last oscillation transformer has two extension wires to it, turned in the same manner, to respond to the primary oscillator; and in the circuit of one of these extension wires is placed a coherer tube, short-circuited by a relay and a local battery. it will thus be seen that there is an entire abolition of ground connection, which, professor braun claims, practically avoids all atmospheric disturbances.[ ] the details of the receiving arrangement are as follows:--the coherer tube consists of an ebonite tube containing hard steel particles of a uniform size, placed in the adjustable space between two polished steel electrodes. it is found that with this steel coherer, a small amount of magnetism in the particles increases its sensitiveness, and to obtain this, a ring magnet is employed in connection with a coherer tube. receiving apparatus arranged on this system is said to have been used for telegraphing between heligoland and cuxhaven, a distance of thirty-six miles. all the immense experience, however, gained by mr. marconi and those who have worked with his system, is in favour of using the earth connection. there is no doubt that hertzian wave telegraphy can be conducted over short distances by means of totally insulated aerials, but for long distances the earth connection is essential, for the reasons that have been explained previously. there are many of the details of the receiving arrangements which remain to be considered. if the communication is received by a telegraphic instrument like the morse printer, which requires a current of anything like ten milliamperes to work it, then an important element in the receiving arrangement is the relay. the relay that is generally used is a modified form of the siemens polarised relay, which is so adjusted as to make a single contact. for marine work on board ship, it is essential that this relay shall be balanced so that variations in position shall not affect it. sometimes the relay is hung in gimbals like a compass, and at other times suspended from a support by elastic bands, so as to avoid jolting. in any case, the relay must be so adjusted that no change of position will cause it to close the circuit of the telegraphic printer or recorder. its sensibility ought to be such that it is actuated by a tenth of a milliampere, and, if possible, even by less. the alteration of sensibility in the ordinary contact form of relay is the pressure that is necessary to bring the platinum points of the circuit closer together, so as to pass the minimum current which will work the telegraph printer. the important matter, however, in connection with the use of the relay in hertzian wave telegraphy, is that it should be capable of adjustment without extraordinary skill. it is no use to put into the hands of an operator a relay which requires abnormal dexterity to make it work at all. * * * * * it remains, then, to consider some of the questions connected with practical hertzian wave telegraphy and the problem of the limitation of communication. these matters at the present moment very much occupy the public attention, and many conflicting opinions are expressed concerning them. it may be observed at the outset that the difficulty of dealing with the subject as freely as many desire is that hertzian wave telegraphy is no longer merely a subject of scientific investigation, but has developed into a business and involves, therefore, other interests than the simple advancement of scientific knowledge. we can, however, discuss in a general manner some of the scientific problems which present themselves for solution. the first of these is the independence of communication between stations. it is desirable, at the outset, to clear up a little misunderstanding. there is a great difference between preventing the reception of communication when it is not desired by the recipient, and preventing it when it is the object of the latter to overhear if he can. it is, therefore, necessary to distinguish between isolation and overhearing. we may say that a station is _isolated_ when it is not affected by hertzian waves other than those it desires to receive; but that a station _overhears_ when it can, if it chooses, pick up communications not intended for it, or cannot help receiving them against its will. this distinction is a perfectly fair one. any telegraph or telephone wire can be tapped, if it is desired, but unless there is some fault on the line, no station will receive a message against its desires. moreover, it may be noted that there are penalties attached to tapping a telegraph wire, and at present there are none connected with the misappropriation of an ether wave. we shall, therefore, consider in the first place the methods so far proposed for preventing any given receiver from being affected by hertzian waves sent out from other stations, except that of those from which it is desired to receive them. the first method is that which has been called the method of _electrical syntony_, and consists in adjusting the electrical capacity and inductance of the various open and closed circuits of the receiving and transmitting stations to be put in communication so that they have the same electrical time-period.[ ] in the cantor lectures before the society of arts in , on electrical oscillations and electric waves, the author has discussed at length the conditions under which powerful electrical oscillations can be set up in a circuit. it was there shown that every electric circuit having capacity and inductance has a particular or natural time-period of electrical oscillation depending on the product of these qualities, and that, to accumulate powerful electrical oscillations in it, the electromotive impulses on it must be delivered at this rate. illustrations were drawn from mechanics, such as the examples furnished by vibrating pendulums and springs, and from acoustics, as illustrated by the phenomena of resonance, to show that small or feeble blows or impulses delivered at the proper time intervals have a cumulative effect in setting up vibrations in a body capable of oscillation. it is a familiar fact that if we time our blows, we can achieve that which no single blow, however powerful, can accomplish in throwing into vibration a body such as a pendulum, which is capable of oscillation under the action of a restoring force. precisely the same is true of an electric circuit. we have already seen that the receiving aerial has an alternating electromotive force set up in it by the impact of the successive electric waves sent out from the transmitter. it must, however, be remembered that the transmitter sends out a series of trains of waves, not by any means a continuous train, but one cut up into groups of probably ten to fifty waves, each separated by intervals of silence, long, compared with the duration of a single train of waves. [illustration: fig. .--seibt's apparatus for exhibiting electric resonance. i, induction coil; s, spark gap; cc, condensers; l, variable inductance; e, earth plate; ww, wire spirals; vv, vacuum tubes.] if, however, by a suitable adjustment of capacity and inductance, we make the natural time-period of oscillation of the receiving aerial circuits agree with those of the transmitting aerial, within certain limits the former will only be receptive for waves of the frequency sent out by the transmitter. it is quite easy to illustrate this principle by numerous experiments. it can be done by means of an apparatus devised by dr. georg seibt for showing in an interesting manner the syntonisation or tuning of two electric circuits. this consists of two bobbins, each consisting of one layer of insulated wire wound on a wooden rod (see fig. ). each of these bobbins has a certain electrical capacity with respect to the earth, when considered as an insulated conductor, and it has also a certain inductance. if, therefore, electromotive impulses are applied to one end of the bobbin at regular intervals, electrical oscillations will be set up in it, and, as already explained, if these are timed at a certain rate, the bobbin will act like a closed organ-pipe to air impulses and oscillations of potential will be accumulated at the opposite end, which have much greater amplitude than the impressed oscillations at the end at which they are applied. we can make the existence of the amplitude oscillations of potential evident by attaching to one end of the bobbin a vacuum tube, which will be illuminated thereby, or by terminating it by a pointed piece of wire, so that an electrical brush can be formed at the point, if the potential variations have sufficient amplitude. we arrange also another closed oscillation circuit, consisting of two leyden jars and a variable inductance coil and a pair of spark balls which are connected to an induction coil. in this manner we can set up oscillations in the discharge circuit of these leyden jars, and we can vary the time period by altering the inductance and the capacity. if we denote the capacity of the jars in the microfarads by the letter c and the inductance in centimetres of the discharge circuit of the jars by the letter l, it can then be shown that the number of oscillations per second denoted by _n_ is given by the expression--[ ] n = ( , , , ) / ([\sq]{cl}). if now we adjust the leyden jar circuit to a particular rate of oscillation, we have between the terminals of the jar or condenser an alternating difference of potential or electromotive force. if we connect one side of the jars to the earth and the other side to the foot of one of the spirals or bobbins above described, we shall find perhaps that the vacuum tube at the other end is not rendered luminous. when, however, we adjust the inductance in the discharge circuit of the jar to a certain value to make the frequency of the condenser oscillations agree with the natural time period of the bobbin terminated by the vacuum tube, this latter at once lights up brilliantly. again, if we connect both these bobbins at the same time to the discharge circuit of the leyden jar, we shall find that we can make an adjustment of the inductance of that circuit, such that either of the bobbins at pleasure can be made to respond and be set in electrical vibration, as shown by the illumination of the vacuum tube at its upper end or by an electrical brush being formed at the terminal. in making this adjustment of inductance, we are _tuning_, as it is called, the leyden jar discharge circuit to the resonating bobbin. a very small variation of the inductance of the jar circuit causes the vacuum tube to change in luminosity. if, however, the natural time periods of these bobbins do not lie very far apart, then a faint luminosity will make its appearance in both the vacuum tubes. supposing, therefore, that we connect to the oscillating circuit of the jar a number of bobbins having different time periods of oscillation, like organ-pipes, and supply them all with one common alternating electromotive force. these bobbins, whose natural time period is very different to that of the osciilating circuit or impressed electromotive force, will not respond, but those bobbins of which the natural time period lies near to, even if not quite exactly the same as, that of the impressed electromotive force will give evidence of being set in oscillation. a very violent electromotive force will cause them all to respond to some slight extent, no matter whether the period of that impluse is tuned to their common period precisely or not. at this point questions arise of great practical importance. a matter which has been in dispute in connection with practical hertzian wave telegraphy is how far this electrical tuning is a sufficient solution of the practical problem of isolation. it is not denied that experiments such as those made with seibt's apparatus can be shown on a small scale; and, on a still larger scale, mr. marconi gave to the author in september, , a demonstration in practical telegraphic work of sending two independent hertzian wave messages and receiving them on two independent receivers attached to the same aerial. since that date much experience has been gained and large power stations erected, and a statement has been frequently made that syntony is no protection against interference when one of the stations is sending out very powerful waves. the contention has been raised that large power stations producing electric waves will therefore play havoc with hertzian wave telegraphy on a smaller scale, such as the ship to shore and intermarine communication. under these circumstances, it appeared to the author important to subject the matter to a special test, and mr. marconi, therefore, offered to give a demonstration, with this object, in support of the opinion that he has expressed positively that waves from his power stations do not interfere with the working of his ship installations. this matter is vital to the whole question of practical hertzian wave telegraphy, for the ship to shore communication is of stupendous importance; and if mr. marconi had done nothing else except to render this possible and effective, he would have earned, as he has done, the gratitude of humanity for all time. accordingly, the author embraced the opportunity of making some careful tests to settle the question whether the powerful waves sent out from a station such as poldhu did or did not affect the exchange of messages between ship and shore stations in proximity, equipped with marconi apparatus of a suitable type. these experiments were carried out on the eighteenth of march last, at poldhu, in cornwall, and a programme was arranged by the author of the following kind. close to the poldhu station is an isolated mast, which was equipped by mr. marconi with a hertzian wave apparatus, similar to that he places on ships. six miles from poldhu is the lizard receiving station, with which ships proceeding up or down the english channel communicate. it was arranged that a series of secret messages, some of them in cipher, should be delivered simultaneously at certain known times, both to the power station at poldhu and to the small adjacent ship station; and it was arranged that these messages should be sent off simultaneously, the operators being kept in ignorance up to the moment of sending as to the nature of the messages. at the lizard, mr. marconi connected two of his receiving instruments to the aerial, one of them tuned to the waves proceeding from the power station at poldhu, and the other to those proceeding from the small ship station. at the appointed time, these two sets of messages were received simultaneously in the presence of the author, each message being printed down independently on its own receiver; and mr. marconi read off and interpreted all these messages perfectly correctly, not having known before what was the message that was about to be sent. in addition to this, precautions were taken to prove that the power station at poldhu was really emitting waves sufficiently powerful to cross the atlantic and not being made to sing small for the occasion. to assist in proving this, the messages sent out from the power station were also received at a station at poole, two hundred miles away, and the assistant there was instructed to telegraph back these messages by wire as soon as he received them. these messages came back perfectly correctly, thus demonstrating that the power station was sending out power waves. the whole programme was carried out with the greatest care to avoid any mistakes on the part of the assistants, and provided an absolute demonstration of the truth of mr. marconi's assertion that the waves from one of his power stations, such as poldhu, do not in the least degree interfere with the transmission and reception of messages between ship and shore, effected by means of certain forms of marconi apparatus for producing and detecting waves of a different wave length.[ ] this complete independence of transmission, however, is entirely due to the employment of a receiving circuit of a certain type in mr. marconi's receivers. it does not at all follow that a receiving circuit of any kind, even a marconi receiver not especially arranged, set up in proximity to a power station would not be affected. this, however, is not an important matter. far more important is it to show, as has been shown, that practically perfect isolation can be achieved if it is desired. it must be noted, however, that, although the fact that electric circuits have a natural time-period of oscillation of their own is a scientific principle which carries us a considerable way towards a solution of what is called syntonic hertzian wave telegraphy, it is not in itself alone in every respect an entire solution of the practical problem. the degree to which it is a solution depends to a considerable extent upon the nature of the detecting device, or kumascope, which we are employing. the coherer, or branly filings tube, has the peculiarity that its passage from a non-conductive to a conductive condition follows immediately when the difference of potential between its ends is made sufficiently great. in other words, if the tube is acted upon by a sufficient electromotive force, it is not necessary that electromotive force should be repeated at intervals to make this particular form of kumascope responsive. again, if we consider the nature of the oscillations which are sent out from any transmitting aerial, we find that each group of oscillations corresponding to a single spark consists of waves gradually decreasing in amplitude. in other words, the first wave of the group is the strongest, and the decay in amplitude is often very rapid. supposing, then, we construct a simple receiver consisting of an aerial having inserted in its circuit a sensitive branly filings tube. such a receiver is almost entirely non-syntonic; that is to say, it is affected by any wave passing over it which is sufficiently powerful. we may look upon it that if the first wave of the series is sufficiently powerful to affect the kumascope, the conductive change takes place whether or not the first wave is followed by others. accordingly, it is perfectly certain that if a transmitter is sending out trains of waves of any period, a simple combination of coherer and aerial will be influenced, if it is placed near enough to the transmitter. on the other hand, it is possible to combine a kumascope of a certain type with a receiving aerial and other circuits in such a manner that when the waves that reach it are feeble it shall not respond at all unless those waves have very nearly a time period of a certain value. at this stage, it may be perhaps well to explain a little in detail what is meant by an easily responsive circuit, and, on the other hand, by an irresponsive circuit, or, as we may call it, a _stiff_ circuit. supposing that we consider an aerial consisting of a simple straight wire having small capacity and small inductance, such a circuit admits of being sent into electrical oscillation, not only by waves of its own natural time-period, but by the sudden application of any violent electromotive impulse. if, on the other hand, we bestow upon the circuit in any way considerable inductance, we then obtain what may be called a stiff or irresponsive circuit, which is one in which electrical oscillations can be accumulated only by the prolonged action of impulses tuned to a particular period. a mechanical analogue of this difference may be found in considering the different behaviour of elastic bodies to mechanical blows. take, for instance, a piece of elastic steel and fix the bottom end in a vice. the steel strip may be thrown into vibration by deflecting the upper end. it has, however, a very small mass, and therefore any violent blow or blows, even although not repeated, will set it in oscillation. if, however, we add mass to it by fixing at the other end a heavy weight, such as a ball of lead, and at the same time make the spring stiffer, we have an arrangement which is capable of being sent into considerable oscillation only by the action of a series of impulses or blows which are timed at a particular rate. returning then to the electrical problem, we see that in order to preserve a kumascope or wave detector from being operated on by any vagrant wave or waves having a period very different to an assigned period, it must be associated with an electrical circuit of the kind above called a stiff circuit. we will now consider the manner in which the problem has been practically attacked by mr. marconi, dr. slaby, sir oliver lodge and others, who have invented forms of receiver and transmitter, which are syntonic or sympathetic to one another. some of the methods which mr. marconi has devised for the achievement of syntonic wireless telegraphy were fully described by him in a paper read before the society of arts on may, , .[ ] [illustration: fig. .--marconi transmitter and receiver. i, induction coil; a, aerial; e, earth plate; hh, choking coils; s, spark gap; j, transmitting jigger; k, receiving jigger; r, relay; c, condenser; f, filings tube; b, battery. many practical details are omitted.] on referring to his paper, it will be seen that in one form his transmitter consists of an aerial, near the base of which is inserted the secondary circuit of an oscillation transformer or transmitting jigger. one end of this secondary circuit is attached to the aerial and the other end is connected to the earth through a variable inductance coil. the primary circuit of this oscillation transformer is connected in series with a condenser, consisting of a battery of leyden jars, and the two together are connected across to the spark balls which close the secondary circuit of an induction coil, having the usual make and break key in the primary circuit. mr. marconi so adjusts the induction of the aerial and the capacity of the condenser, or battery of leyden jars, that the two circuits, consisting respectively of this battery of leyden jars and the primary circuit of the transformer, and on the other hand of the capacity of the aerial and the inductance in series with it, and that of the secondary circuit of the transformer have the same time period. in other words, these two inductive circuits are tuned together. at the receiving end, the aerial is connected in series with a variable inductance and with the primary circuit of another oscillation transformer, the second terminal of which is connected to the earth. the secondary circuit of this last oscillation transformer is cut in the middle and is connected to the terminals of a small condenser. the outer terminals of this secondary circuit are connected to the metallic filings tube or other sensitive receiver and to a small condenser in parallel with it (see fig. ). the terminals of the condenser which is inserted in the middle of the secondary circuit of the oscillation transformer are connected through two small inductance coils with a relay and a single cell. this relay in turn actuates a morse printer by means of a local battery. the two circuits of the oscillation transformer are tuned or syntonised to one another, and also to the similar circuit of the transmitting arrangement. when this is the case, the transmitter affects the co-resonant receiving arrangement, but will not affect any other similar arrangement, unless it is within a certain minimum range of distance. owing to the inductance of the oscillation transformer forming part of the receiving arrangements, the receiving circuit is, as before stated, very stiff or irresponsive; the sensitive tube is therefore not acted upon in virtue merely of the impact of the single wave against the aerial, but it needs repeated or accumulated effects of a great many waves, coming in proper time, to break down the coherer and cause the recording mechanism to act. an inspection of the diagram will show that as soon as the secondary electromotive force in the small oscillation transformer or jigger of the receiving instrument is of sufficient amplitude to break down the resistance of the coherer, the local cell in circuit with the relay can send a current through it and cause the relay to act and in turn make the associated telegraphic instrument record or sound. mr. marconi described in the above-mentioned paper some other arrangements for achieving the same result, but those mentioned all depend for their operation upon the construction of a receiving circuit on which the time-period of electrical oscillations is identical with that of a transmitting arrangement. by this means he showed experiments during the reading of his paper, illustrating the fact that two pairs of transmitting and receiving arrangements could be so syntonised that each receiver responded only to its particular transmitter and not to the other. with arrangements of substantially the same nature, he made experiments in the autumn of between niton, in the isle of wight, and bournemouth, a distance of about thirty miles, in which independent messages were sent and received on the same aerial. dr. slaby and count von arco, working in germany, have followed very much on the same lines as mr. marconi, though with appliances of a somewhat different nature. as constructed by the general electric company, of berlin, the slaby-arco syntonic system of hertzian telegraphy is arranged in one form as follows:--the transmitter consists of a vertical rod like a lightning conductor, say, or feet in height. at a point six or nine feet above the ground, a connection is made to a spark ball (see fig. ), and the corresponding ball is connected through a variable inductance with one terminal of a condenser, the other terminal of which is connected to the earth. the two spark balls are connected to an induction coil, or alternating current transformer, and by variation of the inductance and capacity the frequency is so arranged that the wave-length corresponding to it is equal to four times the length of that portion of the aerial which is above the spark ball connection. the method by which this tuning is achieved is to insert in the portion of the aerial below the spark balls, between it and the earth, a hot wire ammeter of some form. it has already been shown that in the case of such an earthed aerial, when electrical oscillations are set up in it, there is a potential node at the earth and a potential anti-node or loop at the summit, if it is vibrating in its fundamental manner; also, there is a node of current at the summit of the aerial and an anti-node at the base. this amounts to saying that the amplitude of the potential vibrations is greatest at the top end of the aerial, and the amplitude of the current vibrations is greatest at the bottom or earthed end. accordingly, the inductance and capacity of the lateral branch of the transmitter is altered until the hot wire ammeter in the base of the aerial shows the largest possible current. [illustration: fig. .--slaby-arco syntonic transmitter and receiver. i, induction coil; m, multiplier; b, battery; a, aerial; f, filings tube; r, relay; e, earth plate; c, condenser.] the corresponding receiver is constructed in a very similar manner. a lightning conductor or long vertical rod of the same height as the transmitting aerial is set up at the receiving station, and at a point six or nine feet from the ground a circuit is taken off, consisting of a wire loosely coiled in a spiral, the length of which is nearly equal to, although a little shorter than, the height of the vertical wire above the point of connection. the outer end of this loose spiral is connected to one terminal of the coherer tube, and the other terminal of the coherer is connected to the earth through a condenser of rather large capacity. the terminals of this last condenser are short-circuited by a relay and a single cell. when the adjustments are properly made, it is claimed that the receiver responds only to waves coming from its own syntonised or tuned transmitter. in this case the length of the receiving aerial above the point of junction with the coherer circuit is one quarter the length of the wave. a variation of the above arangements consists in making this lateral circuit equal in length to one-half of a wave, and connecting the coherer to its centre through a condenser to the earth. the outer end of this lateral circuit is also connected to the earth (see fig. ).[ ] dr. slaby claims that this arrangement is not affected by atmospheric electricity, and that the complete and direct earthing of the aerial and also in the second arrangement, of the receiver of the outer end of the lateral conductor, conduces to preserve the receiver immune from any electrical disturbances except those having a period to which it is tuned. [illustration: fig. .--lodge-muirhead syntonic receiver. i, induction coil; s, spark gap; a, aerial; cc, condensers; e, earth plate; r, relay; l, variable inductance; f, filings tube; b, battery.] a method has also been arranged by him for receiving on the same aerial two messages from different transmitting stations simultaneously. in this case, two lateral wires of different lengths are connected to the receiving aerial, and to the outer end of each of these is connected a coherer tube, the other end of which is earthed through a condenser. one of these lateral wires is made equal, or nearly equal, in length to the aerial, and the other is made longer to fulfil the following condition.[ ] if we call h the height of the receiving aerial above point of junction of the lateral wires, then the length of one lateral wire is made equal to h, and the height of the aerial is adjusted to be equal to one-quarter of the wave length of one incident wave. the other lateral wire may then be made of a length equal to one-third of h, and it will then respond to the first odd harmonic of that wave, of which the fundamental is in syntony with the vertical wire. by suitably choosing the relation between the wave-lengths of the two transmitting stations, it is possible to receive in this manner two different messages at the same time on the same aerial. subsequently to the date of the above-mentioned demonstration of multiplex wireless telegraphy by mr. marconi an exhibition of a similar nature was given by professor slaby in a lecture given in berlin on december , .[ ] both the above-described syntonic systems of mr. marconi and dr. slaby are "earthed" systems, but arrangements for syntonic telegraphy have been devised by sir oliver lodge and professor braun which are "non-earthed." sir oliver lodge and dr. muirhead have devised also syntonic systems. according to their last methods, the systonic transmitting and receiving arrangements are as shown in fig. .[ ] on examining the diagrams it will be seen that the secondary terminals of the induction coil are, as usual, connected to a pair of spark balls, and that these spark balls are connected by a condenser and by a variable inductance. one terminal of the condenser is earthed through another condenser of large capacity, and the remaining terminal of the first condenser is connected to an aerial. it should, therefore, be borne in mind in dealing with electrical oscillations that a condenser of sufficient capacity is practically a conductor, and an inductance coil of sufficient inductance is practically a non-conductor. hence the insertion of a large capacity in the path of the aerial wire is no advantage whatever and makes no essential difference in the arrangement. in order to obtain any powerful radiation, the length of the aerial, or sky wire, as they call it, must be so adjusted that its length is one-quarter the wave-length corresponding to the oscillation circuit, consisting of the condenser and variable inductance. the receiving arrangement consists of a similar sky wire or aerial earthed through a condenser of large capacity and having in the portion above this last condenser another condenser of similar capacity. at the earthed side of this last condenser a connection is made to a resonant circuit, consisting of a variable inductance, and another condenser and a sensitive metallic filings tube of the branly type; also a portion of this resonant circuit is shunted by another consisting of a battery and telegraphic relay, as shown in the diagram. the circuit, including the coherer, is tuned to its own aerial and also to that of the transmitting circuit, and under these circumstances trains of waves thrown off at the transmitting aerial will sympathetically affect the receiving aerial. there is nothing in the arrangement which specially calls for notice. it is simply a variation of other known forms of syntonic transmitter and receiver, and possesses all the advantages and disadvantages attaching to such electrical syntonic methods. professor braun's syntonic system, the receiver and transmitter of which have been described, is also in one form a non-earthed system. innumerable other patentees have taken out patents for devices which are modifications in small degree of the above arrangements. it may be well to note at this point the disadvantages that are possessed by any form of coherer as a telegraphic kumascope in connection with proposed arrangements for the isolation of hertzian wave stations. all the detectors of the coherer type really depend for their actuation upon electromotive force; that is to say, upon the application to the terminals of the detector of a certain electromotive force. although there may be no sharp and defined critical electromotive force, yet, nevertheless, as a matter of fact, if the electromotive force applied exceeds a certain value, then the detector passes suddenly from one state of conductivity to another. it may be of great conductivity, as in the case of the branly coherer, or of lesser conductivity, as in the case of the so-called anti-coherers, of which the schäfer kumascope may be taken as a type. accordingly, when these instruments are subjected to a train of waves, each individual group of which is damped, their operation is largely governed by the fact that if the first wave or oscillation set up in the receiving circuit is powerful enough to break down the coherer, then the receiving mechanism acts, no matter whether the first impulse is followed by others or not. in comparison with so-called coherers, those depending upon the changes in the magnetisation of iron by electrical oscillations certainly have an advantage, because this is a process which requires the application of alternating electric currents decreasing in strength for a certain time; and it is found, therefore, that the magnetic receivers do not require to be associated with such a stiff or irresponsive resonant circuit to confine their indications to oscillations or waves of one definite period, and that they lend themselves much more perfectly to the work of "tuning" or syntonising stations than do those kumascopes depending upon the contact or coherer principle. we may then glance at the alternative solutions of the problem offered by other investigators. m. blondel has proposed to effect the syntonisation of two stations, not by syntonising the receiver for the exceedingly high-frequency oscillations of the individual electric waves, but to syntonise it for the much lower frequency, corresponding to that of the intervals between the groups of waves. thus, for instance, if an ordinary simple transmitting aerial is set up, the production of sparks between the spark balls results in the emission of short trains of waves, each of which may consist of half a dozen or more individual waves, the time of production of the whole group being very small compared with the interval between the groups. m. blondel proposes, however, to syntonise the receiver, not for the high-frequency period of the waves themselves, which may be reckoned in millions per second, but for the low-frequency period between the groups of waves, which is reckoned in hundreds per second. thus, for instance, if sparks are made at the rate of fifty or a hundred per second, they can be made to actuate the telephone receiver and so produce in the telephone a sound corresponding to a frequency of or ; in other words, to make a low musical note or hum. this continuous sound can be cut up, by means of a key placed in the primary circuit of the transmitting arrangement, into long or short periods, and hence the letters of the alphabet signal. m. blondel's arrangements comprise a mercadier's monotone telephone and either a coherer or a particular form of vacuum tube as a kumascope. on august , , m. blondel deposited with the academy of sciences in paris a sealed envelope containing a description of his improvements in syntonic wireless telegraphy, which was opened on may , .[ ] the arrangement of the receiving apparatus was as follows:--a single-battery cell keeps a condenser charged until the kumascope is rendered conductive by the oscillations coming down the aerial; and under these circumstances the condenser discharges through the telephone and causes a tick to be heard in it. if the trains of waves are at the rate of or per second, these small sounds run together into a musical note, and this continuous hum can be cut up into long and short spaces, in accordance with the morse alphabet signals. the telephone must not be an ordinary telephone, capable of being influenced by any frequency, but be one which responds only to a particular note, and under these conditions the receiving arrangement is receptive only when the trains of waves arrive at certain regular predetermined intervals, corresponding with the tone to which the telephone is sensitive. * * * * * a number of more or less imperfect arrangements, having the isolation of communications for their object, have been devised or patented, which are dependent upon the use of several aerials, each supposed to be responsive only to a particular frequency; and attempts have been made to solve the problem of isolation by mm. tommasi, tesla, jegon, tissot, ducretet and others. we may then pass on to notice the attempts that have been made to secure isolation by a plan which is not dependent on electrical syntony. one of these, which has the appearance of developing into a practical solution of the problem, is that due to anders bull.[ ] in the first arrangements proposed by this inventor, a receiver is constructed which is not capable of being acted upon merely by a single wave or train of waves or even a regularly-spaced train of electric waves, but only by a group of wave trains which are separated from one another by certain unequal, predetermined intervals of time. thus, for instance, to take a simple instance, the transmitting arrangements are so devised as to send out groups of electric waves, these wave trains following one another at time intervals which may be represented by the numbers , and ; that is to say, the interval which elapses between the second and third is three times that between the first two, and the interval between the fourth and fifth is five times that between the first two. this is achieved by making five electric oscillatory sparks with a transmitter of the ordinary kind, the intervals between which are settled by the intervals between holes punched upon strips of paper, like that used in a wheatstone automatic telegraphic instrument. it will easily be understood that by a device of this kind, groups of sparks can be made, say, five sparks rapidly succeeding each other, but not at equal intervals of time. one such group constitutes the morse dot, and two or three such groups succeeding one another very quickly constitute the morse dash. these waves, on arriving at the receiving station, are caused to actuate a punching arrangement by the intermediation of a coherer or other kumascope, and to punch upon a uniformly moving strip of paper holes, which are at intervals of time corresponding to the intervals between the sparks at the transmitting station. this strip of paper then passes through another telegraphic instrument, which is so constructed that it prints upon another strip a dot or a dash, according to the disposition of the holes on the first strip. accordingly, taken as a whole, the receiving arrangement is not capable of being influenced so as to print a telegraphic sign except by the operation of a series of wave trains succeeding one another at certain assigned intervals of time. an improvement has been lately described by the same inventor,[ ] in which the apparatus used, although more complicated, performs the same functions. at each station two instruments have to be employed; at the transmitting station one to effect the conversion of morse signals into the properly arranged series of wave trains, and at the receiving station an instrument to effect the re-conversion of the series of wave trains into the morse signals. these are called respectively the dispenser and the collector. the details of the arrangements are somewhat complicated, and can only be described by the aid of numerous detailed drawings, but the inventor states that he has been able to carry on hertzian wave telegraphy by means of these arrangements for short distances. moreover, the method lends itself to an arrangement of multiplex telegraphy, by sending out from different transmitters signals which are based upon different arrangements of time intervals between the electric wave trains. although this method may succeed in preventing a receiving arrangement from being influenced by vagrant waves or waves not intended for it, yet an objection which arises is that there is nothing to prevent any one from intercepting these wave trains, and with a little skill interpreting their meaning. thus, if the record were received in the ordinary way on a simple receiver, corresponding to a morse dot would be printed five dots at unequal intervals, and corresponding to a morse dash would be printed two such sets of five dots. a little skill would then enable an operator to interpret these arbitrary signals. on the other hand, the inventor asserts that he can overcome this difficulty by making intervals of time between the impulses in the series so long that the latter become longer than the intervals between each of the series of waves which are despatched in continuous succession when the key is pressed for a dash. in this case, when telegraphing, the series of dots would overlap and intermingle with each other in a way which would make the record unintelligible if received in the usual manner, but would be perfectly legible if received and interpreted by a receiver adapted for the purpose. another way of obliterating the record, as far as outsiders are concerned, is to interpolate between the groups of signals an irregular series of dots--_i.e._, of wave trains--which would affect an ordinary coherer, and so make an unintelligible record on an ordinary receiver, but these dots are not received or picked up by the appropriate selecting instrument used in the anders bull system. the matter most interesting to the public at the present time is the long-distance telegraphy by hertzian waves to the accomplishment of which mr. marconi has devoted himself with so much energy of late years. everyone, except perhaps those whose interests may be threatened by his achievements, must accord their hearty admiration of the indomitable perseverance and courage which he has shown in overcoming the immense difficulties which have presented themselves. five years ago he was engaged in sending signals from alum bay, in the isle of wight, to bournemouth, a distance of twelve or fourteen miles; and to-day he has conquered twice that number of hundred miles and succeeded in sending, not merely signals, but long messages of all descriptions over three thousand miles across the atlantic. critics there are in abundance, who declare that the process can never become a commercial one, that it will destroy short-distance hertzian telegraphy, or that the multiplication of long-distance stations will end in the annihilation of all hertzian wave telegraphy. no one, however, can contemplate the history of any development of applied science without seriously taking to heart the lesson that the obstacles which arise and which prove serious in any engineering undertaking are never those which occur to armchair critics. sometimes the seemingly impossible proves the most easy to accomplish, whilst difficulties of a formidable nature often spring up where least expected. the long-distance transmission is a matter of peculiar interest to the author of these articles, because he was at an early stage in connection with it invited to render mr. marconi assistance in the matter.[ ] the particular work entrusted to him was that of planning the electrical engineering arrangements of the first power station erected for the production of electric waves for long-distance hertzian wave telegraphy at poldhu, in cornwall. when mr. marconi returned from the united states in the early part of , he had arrived at the conclusion that the time had come for a serious attempt to accomplish wireless telegraphy across the atlantic. up to that date the project had been an inventor's dream, much discussed, long predicted, but never before practically taken in hand. the only appliances, moreover, which had been used for creating hertzian waves were induction coils or small transformers, and the greatest distance covered, even by mr. marconi himself, had been something like miles over sea. accordingly, to grapple with the difficulty of creating an electric wave capable of making itself felt at a distance of , miles, even with the delicate receiving appliances invented by mr. marconi, seemed to require the means of producing at least four hundred times the wave-energy that had been previously employed. the author was, therefore, requested to prepare plans and specifications for an electric generating plant for this purpose, which would enable electrical oscillations to be set up in an aerial on a scale never before accomplished. this work involved, not merely the ordinary experience of an electrical engineer, but also the careful consideration of many new problems and the construction of devices not before used. every step had to be made secure by laboratory experiments before the responsibility could be incurred of advising on the nature of the machinery and appliances to be ordered. many months in the year were thus occupied by the author in making small-scale experiments in london and in superintendence of large-scale experiments at the site of the first power station at poldhu, near mullion, in cornwall, before the plant was erected and any attempt was made by mr. marconi to commence actual telegraphic experiments. as this work was of a highly confidential nature, it is obviously impossible to enter into the details of the arrangements, either as made by the writer in the first instance, or as they have been subsequently modified by mr. marconi. the design of the aerial and of the oscillation transformers and many of the details in the working appliances are entirely due to mr. marconi, but as a final result, a power plant was erected for the production of hertzian waves on a scale never before attempted. the utilisation of h.p. or h.p. for electric wave production has involved dealing with many difficult problems in electrical engineering, not so much in novelty of general arrangement as in details. it will easily be understood that leyden jars, spark balls and oscillators, which are quite suitable for use with an induction coil, would be destroyed immediately if employed with a large alternating-current plant and immensely powerful transformers. [illustration: fig. .--wooden towers supporting the marconi aerial at poldhu power station, cornwall, england.] in the initial experiments with this machinery and in its first working there was very considerable risk, owing to its novel and dangerous nature; but throughout the whole of the work from the very beginning, no accident of any kind has taken place, so great have been the precautions taken. the only thing in the nature of a mishap was the collapse of a ring of tall masts, erected in the first place to sustain the aerial wires, but which now have been replaced by four substantial timber towers, feet in height, placed at the corners of a square, feet in length. these four towers sustain a conical arrangement of insulated wires (see fig. ) which can be used in sections and which constitute the transmitting radiator or receiver, as the case may be. each of these wires is feet in length and formed of bare stranded wire. at the outset, there was much uncertainty as to the effect of the curvature of the earth on the propagation of a hertzian wave over a distance of many hundreds of miles. in the case of the atlantic transmission between the station at poldhu in cornwall and that at cape cod in massachusetts, u.s.a., we have two stations separated by about degrees of longitude on a great circle, or one-eighth part of the circumference of the world. in this case, the versine of the arc or height of the sea at the half-way point above the straight line or chord joining the two places is miles. the question has recently attracted the attention of several eminent mathematical physicists. the extent to which a free wave propagated in a medium bends round any object or is diffracted depends on the relation between the length of the wave and the size of the object. thus, for instance, an object the size of an orange held just in front of the mouth does not perceptibly interfere with the propagation of the waves produced by the speaking or singing voice, because these are from two to six feet in length: but if arrangements are made by means of a galton whistle to produce air waves half an inch in length, then an obstacle the size of an orange causes a very distinct acoustic shadow. the same thing is true of waves in the ether. the amount of bending of light waves round material objects is exceedingly small, because the average length of light waves is about one-fifty-thousandth part of an inch. in the case of hertzian wave telegraphy, we are, however, dealing with ether waves many hundreds of feet in length, and the waves sent out from poldhu have a wave-length of a thousand feet or more, say, one-fifth to one-quarter of a mile. the distance, therefore, between poldhu and cape cod is only at most about twelve thousand wave-lengths, and stands in the same relation to the length of the hertzian wave used as does a body the diameter of a pea to the wave-length of yellow light. there is unquestionably a large amount of diffraction or bending of the electric wave round the earth, and, proportionately speaking, it is larger than in the case of light waves incident on objects of the same relative size. quite recently mr. h. m. macdonald (see _proc._ roy. soc., london, vol. lxxi., p. ) has submitted the problem to calculation, and has shown that the power required to send given electric waves , miles along a meridian of the earth is greater than would be required to send them over the same distance if the sea surface were flat in the ratio of to . hence the rotundity of the earth does introduce a very important reduction factor, although it does not inhibit the transmission. mr. macdonald's mathematical argument has, however, been criticised by lord rayleigh and by m. h. poincaré (see _proc._ roy. soc., vol. lxxii., p. , ). the accomplishment of very long distances by hertzian wave telegraphy is, however, not merely a question of power, it is also a question of wave-length. having regard, however, to the possibility that the propagation which takes place in hertzian wave telegraphy is not that simply of a free wave in space, but the transmission of a semi-loop of electric strain with its feet tethered to the earth, it is quite possible that if it were worth while to make the attempt, an ether disturbance could be made in england sufficiently powerful to be felt in new zealand. leaving, however, these hypothetical questions and matters of pure conjecture, we may consider some of the facts which have resulted from mr. marconi's long-distance experiments. one of the most interesting of these is the effect of daylight upon the wave propagation. in one of his voyages across the atlantic, when receiving signals from poldhu on board the s.s. _philadelphia_, he noticed that the signals were received by night when they could not be detected by day.[ ] in these experiments mr. marconi instructed his assistants at poldhu to send signals at a certain rate from to a.m., from to a.m., from to p.m., and from to p.m., greenwich mean time, every day for a week. he has stated that on board the _philadelphia_ he did not notice any apparent difference between the signals received in the day and those received at night until after the vessel had reached a distance of statute miles from poldhu. at distances of over miles, the signals transmitted during the day failed entirely, while those sent at night remained quite strong up to , miles, and were clearly decipherable up to a distance of , miles from poldhu. mr. marconi also noted that at distances of over miles, the signals at a.m., in the week between february and march , were quite clear and distinct, whereas by a.m. they had become weak almost to total disappearance. this fact led him at first to conclude that the cause of the weakening was due to the action of the daylight upon the transmitting aerial, and that as the sun rose over poldhu, so the wave energy radiated, diminished, and he suggested as an explanation the known fact of the dissipating action of light upon a negative charge. although the facts seem to support this view, another explanation may be suggested. it has been shown by professor j. j. thomson that gaseous ions or electrons can absorb the energy of an electric wave, if present in a space through which waves are being transmitted.[ ] if it be a fact, as suggested by professor j. j. thomson, that the sun is projecting into space streams of electrons, and if these are continually falling in a shower upon the earth, in accordance with the fascinating hypothesis of professor arrhenius, then that portion of the earth's atmosphere which is facing the sun will have present in it more electrons or gaseous ions than that portion which is turned towards the dark space, and it will therefore be less transparent to long hertzian waves.[ ] in other words, clear sunlit air, though extremely transparent to light waves, acts as if it were a slightly turbid medium for long hertzian waves. the dividing line between that portion of the earth's atmosphere which is impregnated with gaseous ions or electrons is not sharply delimited from the part not so illuminated, and there may be, therefore, a considerable penetration of these ions into the regions which i may call the twilight areas. accordingly, as the earth rotates, a district in which hertzian waves are being propagated is brought, towards the time of sunrise, into a position in which the atmosphere begins to be ionised, although far from as freely as is the case during the hours of bright sunshine. mr. marconi states that he has found a similar effect between inland stations, signals having been received by him during the night between poldhu and poole with an aerial the height of which was not sufficient to receive them by day. it has been found, however, that the effect simply amounts to this, that rather more power is required by day than by night to send signals by hertzian waves over long distances. some interesting observations have also been made by captain h. b. jackson, r.n.,[ ] on the influence of various states of the atmosphere upon hertzian wave telegraphy. these experiments were all made between ships of the british royal navy, furnished with hertzian wave telegraphy apparatus on the marconi system. some of his observations concerned the effect of the interpositon of land between two ships. he found that the interposition of land containing iron ores reduced the signalling distances, compared with the maximum distance at open sea, to about per cent. of the latter; whilst hard limestone reduced it to nearly per cent. and soft sandstone or shale to per cent. these results show that there is a considerable absorption effect when waves of certain wave-length pass through or over hard rocks containing iron ores. it would be interesting to know, however, whether this reduction was in any degree proportional to the dryness or moisture of the soil. earth conductivity is far more dependent upon the presence or absence of moisture than upon the particular nature of the material which composes it other than water. the observations of captain jackson, however, only confirm the already well-known fact that hertzian waves, as employed in the marconi system of wireless telegraphy, within a certain range of wave-length, are considerably weakened by their passage through land, over land or round land. in some cases he noticed that quite sharp electric shadows were produced by rocky promontories projecting into the line of transmission. his attention was also directed (_loc. cit._) to the more important matter of the effect of atmospheric electrical conditions upon the transmission. the effect of all lightning discharges, whether visible or invisible, is to make a record on the telegraphic receiver. on the approach of an atmospheric electrical disturbance towards the receiving station on a ship, the first visible indications generally are the recording of dots at intervals from a few minutes to a few seconds on the telegraphic tape. captain jackson states that the most frequent record is that of three dots, the first being separated from the other two by a slight interval like the letters e i on the morse code, and this is the sign most frequently recorded by distant lightning. but in addition to this, dashes are recorded and irregular signs, which, however, sometimes spell out words in the morse code. he noted that these disturbances are more frequent in summer and autumn than in winter and spring, and in the neighbourhood of high mountains more than in the open sea. in settled weather, if present, they reach their maximum between p.m. and p.m., and frequently last during the whole of the night, with a minimum of disturbance between a.m. and p.m. another important matter noted by captain jackson is the shorter distance at which signals can usually be received when any electrical disturbances are present in the atmosphere, compared with the distance at which they can be received when none are present. this reduction in signalling distance may vary from to per cent, of that obtainable in fine weather. it does not in any way decrease with the number of lightning flashes, but rather the reverse, the loss in signalling distance generally preceding the first indications on the instrument of the approaching electrical disturbance. it is clear that these observations fit in very well with the theory outlined above, viz., that the atmosphere when impregnated with free electrons or negatively-charged gaseous ions is more opaque to hertzian waves than when they are absent. captain jackson gives an instance of ships whose normal signalling distance was miles, failing to communicate at miles when in the neighbourhood of a region of electrical disturbance. these effects in the case of wireless telegraphy have their parallel in the disturbances caused to telegraphy with wires by earth currents and magnetic storms. another effect which he states reduces the usual maximum signaling distance is the presence of material particles held in suspension by the water spherules in moist atmosphere. the effect has been noticed in the mediterranean sea when the sirocco wind is blowing. this is a moist wind conveying dust and salt particles from the african coast. a considerable reduction in signalling distance is produced by its advent. another interesting observation due to captain jackson is the existence of certain zones of weak signals. thus, for instance, two ships at a certain distance may be communicating well; if their distance increases, the signalling falls off, but is improved again at a still greater distance. he advances an ingenious theory to show that this fact may be due to the interference between two sets of waves sent out by the transmitter having different wave-lengths. finally, in the paper referred to, he emphasises the well-known fact that long-distance signalling can only be accomplished by the aid of an aerial wire and a "good earth." summing up his results, he concludes: ( ) that intervening land of any kind reduces the practical signalling distance between two ships or stations, compared with that which would be obtainable over the open sea, and that this loss in distance varies with the height, thickness, contour, and nature of the land; ( ) material particles, such as dust and salt, held in suspension in a moist atmosphere also reduce the signalling distance, probably by dissipating and absorbing the waves; ( ) that electrical disturbances in the atmosphere also act most adversely in addition to affecting the receiving instrument and making false signals or _strays_, as they are called; ( ) that with certain forms of transmitting arrangement, interference effects may take place which have the result of creating certain areas of silence very similar to those which are observed in connection with sound signals from a siren. it is clear, therefore, from all the above observations, that hertzian-wave telegraphy taking place through the terrestrial atmosphere is not by any means equivalent to the propagation of a wave in free or empty space; and that just as the atmosphere varies in its opacity to rays of light, sometimes being clear and sometimes clouded, so it varies from time to time in transparency to hertzian waves, the cause of this variation in transparency probably being the presence in the atmosphere of negatively-charged corpuscles or electrons. if there are present in the atmosphere at certain times "clouds of electrons" or "electronic fogs," these may have the effect of producing a certain opacity, or rather diminution in transparency to hertzian waves, just as water particles do in the case of sunlight. we may, therefore, in conclusion, review a few of the outstanding problems awaiting solution in connection with hertzian wave wireless telegraphy. in spite of the fact that this new telegraphy has not been accorded a very hearty welcome by the representatives of official or established telegraphy in great britain, it has reached a point, unquestionably owing to mr. marconi's energy and inventive power, at which it is bound to continue its progress. but that progress will not be assisted by shutting our eyes to facts. many problems of great importance remain to be solved. we have not yet reached a complete solution of all the difficulties connected with isolation of stations. in the next place, the question of localising the source of the signals and waves is most important. our kumascopes and receiving appliances at present are like the rudimentary eyes of the lower organisms, which are probably sensitive to mere differences in light and darkness, but which are not able to _see_ or _visualise_, in the sense of locating the direction and distance of a radiating or luminous body. just as we have, as little children, to learn to see, so a similar process has to be accomplished in connection with hertzian telegraphy, and the accomplishment of this does not seem by any means impossible or even distant. we are dealing with hemispherical waves of electric and magnetic force, which are sent out from a certain radiating centre, and in order to localise that centre we have to determine the position of the plane of the wave and also the curvature of the surface at the receiving point. something, therefore, equivalent to a range finder in connection with light is necessary to enable us to locate the distance and the direction of the radiant point. lastly, there are important improvements possible in connection with the generation of the waves themselves. at the present moment, our mode of generating hertzian waves involves a dissipation of energy in the form of the light and heat of the spark. just as in the case of ordinary artificial illuminants, such as lamps of various kinds, we have to manufacture a large amount of ether radiation of long wave length, which is of no use to us for visual purposes--in fact, creating ninety-five per cent, of dark and useless waves for every five per cent. of luminous or useful waves--so in connection with present methods of generating hertzian waves, we are bound to manufacture by the discharge spark a large amount of light and heat rays which are not wanted, in order to create the hertzian waves we desire. it is impossible yet to state precisely what is the efficiency, in the ordinary sense of the word, of a hertzian wave radiator; how much of the energy imparted to the aerial falls back upon it and contributes to the production of the spark, and how much is discharged into the ether in the form of a wave. nothing is more remarkable, however, than the small amount of energy which, if properly utilised in electric wave making, will suffice to influence a sensitive receiver at a distance of even one or two hundred miles. suppose, for instance, that we charge a condenser consisting of a battery of leyden jars, having a capacity of one seventy-fifth of a microfarad, to a potential of , volts; the energy stored up in this condenser is then equal to · joules, or a little more than one foot-pound. if this energy is discharged in the form of a spark five millimetres in length through the primary coil of an oscillation transformer, associated with an aerial feet in height, the circuits being properly tuned by mr. marconi's method, then such an aerial will affect, as he has shown, one of mr. marconi's receivers, including a nickel silver filings coherer tube, at a distance of over two hundred miles over sea. consider what this means. the energy stored up in the leyden jars cannot all be radiated as wave energy by the aerial, probably only half of it is thus radiated. hence the impartation to the ether at any one locality of about half a foot-pound of energy in the form of a long hertzian wave is sufficient to affect sensitive receivers situated at any point on the circumference of a circle of miles radius described on the open sea. hertzian wave telegraphy is sometimes described as being extravagant in power, but, as a matter of fact, the most remarkable thing about it is the small amount of power really involved in conducting it. on the other hand, hertzian wave manufacture is not altogether a matter of power. it is much more dependent upon the manner in which the ether is struck. just as half an ounce of dynamite in exploding may make more noise than a ton of gunpowder, because it hits the air more suddenly, so the formation of an effective wave in the ether is better achieved by the right application of a small energy than by the wrong mode of application of a much larger amount. if we translate this fact into the language of electronic theory, it amounts simply to this. it is the electron alone which has a grip of the ether. to create an ether wave, we have to start or stop crowds of electrons very suddenly. if in motion, their motion implies energy, but it is not only their energy which is concerned in the wave making, but the acceleration, positive or negative--_i.e._, the quickness with which they are started or stopped. it is possible we may discover in time a way of manufacturing long ether waves without the use of an electric spark, but at present we know only one way of doing this--viz., by the discharge of a condenser, and in the discharge of large condensers of very high potentials it is difficult to secure that extreme suddenness of starting the discharge which we can do in the case of smaller capacities and voltages. how strange it is that the discharge of a leyden jar studied so profoundly by franklin, henry, faraday, maxwell, kelvin and lodge should have become an electrical engineering appliance of great importance! whilst there are many matters connected with the commercial aspect of hertzian wave telegraphy with which we are not here concerned, there is one on which a word may properly be said. the ability to communicate over long distances by hertzian waves is now demonstrated beyond question, and even if all difficulties are not overcome at once, it has a field of very practical utility, and may even become of national importance. under these circumstances, we may consider whether it is absolutely necessary to place the signalling stations so near the coast. the greater facility of transmission over sea has already been discussed and explained, but in time of war, the masts and towers which are essential at present in connection with transmitting stations could be wrecked by shot or shell from an enemy's battleship at a distance of five or six miles out at sea, and would certainly be done within territorial waters. should not this question receive attention in choosing the location of important signalling stations? for if they can, without prejudice to their use, be placed inland by a distance sufficient to conceal them from sight, their value as a national asset in time of war might be greatly increased. it has been often contended that whilst cables could be cut in time of war no one can cut the ether; but wireless telegraph stations in exposed situations on high promontories, where they are visible for ten to fifteen miles out at sea and undefended by any forts, could easily be destroyed. the great towers which are essential to carry large aerials are a conspicuous object for ten miles out at sea; and a single well-placed shell from a six-inch gun would wreck the place and put the station completely out of use for many months. hence if oceanic telegraphy is ever to be conducted in a manner in which the communication will be inviolable or, at any rate, not be capable of interruption by acts of war, the careful selection of the sites for stations is a matter of importance. a small station consisting of a single -foot mast and a wooden hut can easily be removed or replaced, but an expensive power station, the mere aerial of which may cost several thousand pounds, is not to be put up in a short time.[ ] meanwhile, whatever may be the future achievements of this new _supermarine_ wireless telegraphy conducted over long distances, there can be no question as to its enormous utility and present value for intercommunication between ships on the ocean and ships and the shore. at the present time, there are some forty or more of the transatlantic ocean liners and many other ships equipped with this hertzian wave wireless telegraph apparatus on the marconi system. provided with this latest weapon of applied science, they are able to chat with one another, though a hundred miles apart on the ocean, with the ease of guests round a dinner table, to exchange news or make demands for assistance. ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing-- only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; so, on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again, and a silence. abundant experience has been gathered to show the inexpressible value of this means of communication in case of accident, and it can hardly be doubted that before long the possession of this apparatus on board every passenger vessel will be demanded by the public, even if not made compulsory. although the privacy of an ocean voyage may have been somewhat diminished by this utilisation of ether waves, there is a vast compensation in the security that is thereby gained to human life and property by this latest application of the great energies of nature for the use and benefit of mankind. geo. tueker, printer, salisbury court, fleet street, london. [ ] this series of articles is based on the cantor lectures delivered before the society of arts, london, in march, . the lectures were attended by many of the leading british scientific men and electrical engineers, and attracted wide attention as the most complete and authoritative statement hitherto made of wireless telegraphy. in writing the articles for the "popular science monthly," the author has omitted advanced technicalities in order that the substance may be suitable for the general reader.--editor. [ ] for a more detailed account of this hypothesis, the reader is referred to an article by the present writer, entitled "the electronic theory of electricity," published in the "popular science monthly" for may, . [ ] see j. j. thomson, "recent researches in electricity and magnetism," chap. i., p. . [ ] see o. heaviside, "electromagnetic theory," vol. i., p. . [ ] wiedemann's _annalen_, , p. , ; or in his republished papers, "electric waves," p. , english translation by d. e. jones. [ ] the fraction / here denotes a stranded wire formed of seven strands, each single wire having a diameter expressed by the number on the british standard wire gauge. [ ] g. marconi, "syntonic wireless telegraphy," _journal_ of the society of arts, vol. xlix., p. , . [ ] instruction for the manufacture of large induction coils may be obtained from a "treatise on the construction of large induction coils," by a. t. hare. (methuen & co., london.) also see vol. ii. of "the alternate-current transformer," by j. a. fleming, chap. i. ("the electrician" printing and publishing co., , and , salisbury-court, fleet-street, london, e.c.) [ ] see "the alternate-current transformer," by j. a. fleming. vol. i., p. . [ ] du moncel states that macgauley of dublin independently invented the form of hammer break as now used. see "the alternate-current transformer," vol. ii. chap. i. j. a. fleming. [ ] see professor j. trowbridge, "on the induction coil" _phil. mag._, april, vol. iii., series , p. . [ ] see dr. wehnelt's article in the _elektrotechnische zeitschrift_, january, . [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xlii., , pp. , , , and ; communications from mr. campbell swinton, professor s. p. thompson, dr. marchant, the author and others; also p. , same volume, for a leader on the subject; also p. , letters by m. blondel and professor e. thomson. see also _the electrician_, vol. xliii., p. , , extracts from a paper by p. barry; _comptes rendus_, april, . see also the _electrical review_, vol. xliv., p. , , february . [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xlii., . [ ] for a discussion of the function of the condenser in an ordinary induction coil, see "the alternate-current transformer," by j. a. fleming. vol. ii., p. . [ ] see lord rayleigh, _phil. mag._, december, . [ ] it has sometimes been stated that the spark balls must be _solid_ metal and no hollow, but this is a fallacy, and has been disproved by mr. c. a. chant. see "an experimental investigation into the skin effect in electrical oscillators," _phil. mag._, vol. iii., sec. , p. , . [ ] see _proc._ roy. soc., london, february and april , ; or reprint of papers on electrostatics and magnetism, p. . [ ] see _phil. mag._, august, , vol. iv., p. , th series. mr. jervis-smith has also described an experiment to show how much the use of compressed air round a spark gap is of advantage in working an ordinary tesla coil. in his british specification, no. , of , mr. marconi had long previously mentioned the use of compressed air round the spark gap. [ ] this energy storage is at the rate of foot-pounds per cubic foot of glass. this figure shows what a relatively small amount of energy is capable of being stored up in the form of electric strain in glass. in the case of an air condenser, it is only stored at the rate of foot-pound per cubic foot. [ ] see british specification no. , of .--g. marconi. "improvements in apparatus for wireless telegraphy." [ ] that this number really does represent the order of this oscillation frequency in an aerial has been shown by c. tissot, _comptes rendus_, , p. , march , , by photographs taken of the oscillatory spark of a hertzian wave telegraphic transmitter. (see _science abstracts_, vol. iv., abs. , .) he found frequencies from · million to · million. [ ] the term "jigger" is one of those slang terms which contrive to effect a permanent attachment to various arts and crafts. similarly, the word "booster" is now used for a step-up or voltage-raising transformer or dynamo, inserted in series with an electric supply main. the word "boost" is a slang term signifying to raise or lift up. "to give a real good boost" is an expression for lending a helping hand. the term "jigger," in the same manner, is an adaptation of a seaman's term for hoisting tackle or lift. [ ] the "earth" itself probably only conducts electrolytically. all such materials as sand, clay, chalk, etc., and most surface soils are fairly good insulators when very dry, but conduct in virtue of moisture present in them. [ ] _the electrician_, vol. xl., p. (leader). [ ] british patent specification, c. and s. a. varley, no. , . [ ] see also _journal de physique_, vol. v., p. , . [ ] see _comptes rendus_, vol. cxi., p. ; vol. cxii., p. , ; or _la lumière electrique_, vol. xl., pp. , , ; or _the electrician_, vol. xxvii., , pp. , . [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xxix., , pp. and . [ ] mr. w. b. croft, _proc._ phys. soc., vol. xii., p. . report of meeting on october , . [ ] see professor minchin, _proc._ phys. soc., november , ; or _the electrician_, vol. xxxii., , p. . see also professor minchin, _phil mag._, january, , vol. xxxvii., p. , "on the action of electromagnetic radiation on films containing metallic powders." [ ] this lecture was afterwards published as a book, the first edition bearing the same title as the lecture--viz., "the work of hertz and some of his successors." in the second edition, published in , an appendix was added (p. ) containing "the history of the coherer principle," and the original title of the work had prefixed to it "signalling without wires." [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xxvii., p. , . e. branly, "variations of conductivity under electrical influence." [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xl., p. . sir oliver lodge, "the history of the coherer principle." [ ] see professor e. branly, "a sensitive coherer," _comptes rendus_, vol. cxxxiv., p. , , ; or _science abstracts_, vol. v., p. , . [ ] this device of making the inter-electrode gap in a tubular filings coherer wedge-shaped has been patented again and again by various inventors. see german patent no. , , class a, . it has also been claimed by m. tissot. [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xxvii., , p. . [ ] _journal_ of the russian physical and chemical society, vol. xxviii., division of physics, part i., january, . [ ] see british patent specification no. , , june , . [ ] british patent specification no. , of . [ ] _comptes rendus._, vol. cxxviii., p. , , ; _science abstracts_, vol. ii., p. . [ ] _il nuovo cimento_, vol. x., p. , . [ ] _wied ann._, vol. lxviii., p. , ; _science abstracts_, vol. ii., p. . [ ] _comptes rendus_, vol. cxxx., p. , ; _science abstracts_, vol. iii., p. . [ ] see _proc._ roy. soc., london, vol. lxxi., p. . [ ] see report by capt. quintino bonomo, "telegrafia senza fili," rome, ; _l'elettricista_, ser. ii., vol. i., pp. , . [ ] see royal institution, friday evening discourse, by mr. marconi, june , ; also _the electrician_, vol. xlix., p. ; also a letter to _the times_ of july , , by the marchese luigi solari. [ ] see u.s.a. patent specification no. , , may , . [ ] see e. marx, _phys. zeitschrift_, vol. ii., p. ; _science abstracts_, vol. iv., p. . see also german patent specification no. , , class a. [ ] see "the scientific writings of professor joseph henry." [ ] _phil. trans._ roy. soc., london, , vol. clxxxix.a, p. . [ ] see _proc._ roy. soc., london, june , . "note on a magnetic detector for electric waves which can be employed as a receiver for space telegraphy," by g. marconi. [ ] see u.s.a. patent specification no. , , application of july , . [ ] see the _electrical review_, vol. xliv., , may ; _wied ann._, vol. lxviii., p. ; or german patent specification no. , . [ ] u.s.a. patent specification no. , , . [ ] see british patent specification, g. marconi, no. , , june , . [ ] see g. marconi, british patent specification no. , , of june , . [ ] see the _electrical review_, september , , vol. li., p. . [ ] there is a good deal of contradiction between various inventors on this point, some saying that "earthed" aerials obviate atmospheric electrical disturbances, and others that insulated aerials are in this respect superior. the truth appears to be that, neither form is absolutely free from risk of disturbance by this cause. [ ] the capacity of an electrical circuit corresponds to the elastic pliability, or what is commonly called the elasticity, of a material substance, and the inductance to mass or inertia. hence capacity and inductance are qualities of an electric circuit which are analogous to the elasticity and inertia of such a body as a heavy spring. [ ] see cantor lectures, on "electrical oscillations and electric waves," delivered before the society of arts, london, november , december , , , . lecture i., p. , of reprint. [ ] a fuller account of these experiments was given by the author in a letter to the london _times_ published on april , . [ ] see _journal_ of the society of arts, vol. xlix., p. . "syntonic wireless telegraphy," by g. marconi. [ ] see german patent specifications, class a, no. , of , and also no. , of . [ ] see german patent specification, class a, no. , of , applied for november , . the above-mentioned patent is subsequent in date to mr. marconi's experiments on the same subject. [ ] see _the electrician_, january , , vol. xlvi., p. . also reprint of a paper of professor a. slaby, "abgestimmte und mehrfache funkentelegraphie." [ ] see british specification no. , of . [ ] see _comptes rendus_, may , ; rapports du congrès international d'electricité, paris, , p. . [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. xlvi., p. , february , . [ ] see _the electrician_, vol. l., p. , january , . [ ] see mr. marconi's friday evening discourse at the royal institution, june , ; also _the electrician_, vol. xlix., p. . [ ] see _proc._ roy. soc., june , . "a note on the effect of daylight upon the propagation of electromagnetic impulses over long distances," by g. marconi. [ ] see _phil. mag._, vol. iv., p. , series , august, . j. j. thomson, "on some consequences of the emission of negatively-electrified corpuscles by hot bodies." [ ] the opinion that ionisation of the air by sunlight is a cause of obstruction to hertzian waves propagated over long distances has also been expressed by mr. j. e. taylor. see _proc._ roy. soc., vol. lxxi., p. , . "characteristics of earth current disturbances and their origin." [ ] see _proc._ roy. soc., may , . "on some phenomena affecting the transmission of electric waves over the surface of the sea and earth," by captain h. b. jackson, r.n., f.r.s. [ ] mr. marconi has informed the writer that these strategic questions have received attention in selecting the sites for large marconi power stations in italy. * * * * * [detailed transcriber's notes the text has been made to match the original text as much as possible retaining all apparent printer's errors and inconsistencies. the following, detail the apparent printer's errors etc. identified in the original text. variation in spelling, strasburg and strassburg for strasbourg. there are a number of inconsistencies in hyphenation present in the original text. those concerned with the variation between one word or a hyphenated word are detailed below. those concerned with the variation between multiple words and hyphenated words are too numerous to detail individually. inconsistent hyphenation of word, 'anti-node' and 'antinode' both present in original text. inconsistent hyphenation of word, 'electro-dynamic' and 'electrodynamic' both present in original text. inconsistent hyphenation of word, 'horse-shoe' and 'horseshoe' both present in original text. inconsistent hyphenation of word, 'over-blowing' and 'overblowing' both present in original text. page , possible printer's error, a for at, 'consisting when a rest'. page , printer's error, comma rather than full stop at end of sentence, 'ether constituting electric radiation,'. page , printer's error, millmetre for millimetre, 'three thousand volts per millmetre,'. page , possible printer's error, set for sets, 'there are three set of phenomena'. page , printer's error, duplicate word, 'detached and and travel away.'. page , brackets added to in-line equation to aid clarity, 'f = ( / )cv^{ }/ ^{ }.'. page , both equations originally multi-line fraction, rendered into one line for clarity. page , both equations originally multi-line fraction, rendered into one line for clarity. page , printer's error, correponding for corresponding, 'correponding to this frequency'. page , printer's error, consist for consists, 'due to braun, consist of attaching'. page , printer's error, one-hundreth for one-hundredth, 'capacity of one-hundreth of a microfarad,'. page , printer's error, missing full stop at end of sentence added, 'in the case of the hammer break.'. page , printer's error, supppse for suppose, 'let us supppse'. page , equation originally multi-line fraction, rendered into one line for clarity. page , printer's error, comma rather than full stop at end of sentence, 'to the transmitting aerial,'. page , possible printer's error, alterations for alternations, 'alterations of electric strain'. page , printer's error, banly for branly, 'proved that in a banly tube,'. page , variation in spelling, unsensitive for insensitive, 'wounded and unsensitive.'. page , possible printer's error, sensive for sensitive 'to work a sensive recording apparatus'. page , possible printer's error, arragement for arrangement, 'most interesting arragement'. page , printer's error, missing letter i, 'as shown n fig. ,'. page , equation originally multi-line fraction, rendered into one line for clarity. page , printer's error, osciilating for oscillating, 'to that of the osciilating circuit'. page , printer's error, impluse for impulse, 'the period of that impluse'. page , possible printer's error, extra comma in date, 'on may, , .'. page , printer's error, arangements for arrangements, 'variation of the above arangements'. page , printer's error, systonic for syntonic, 'the systonic transmitting'. page , printer's error, interpositon for interposition, 'effect of the interpositon of land'. page , printer's error, signaling for signalling, 'the usual maximum signaling'. footnote , printer's error, missing letter t, 'must be _solid_ metal and no hollow,'. footnote , printer's error, missing full stop after abbreviation, '_phil mag._'. footnote , printer's error, extra full stop after reference, '_comptes rendus._'. ] available by the digital library of the falvey memorial library, villanova university (http://digital.library.villanova.edu) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through the digital library of the falvey memorial library, villanova university. see http://digital.library.villanova.edu/item/vudl: transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). how to make electrical machines. containing full directions for making electrical machines, induction coils, dynamos, and many novel toys to be worked by electricity. by r. a. r. bennett. fully illustrated. new york frank tousey, publisher union square entered according to act of congress, in the year , by frank tousey, in the office of the librarian of congress at washington, d. c. how to make electrical machines. how to make a simple electrical machine. i propose to describe a method of making an electrical machine of small dimensions, but capable of performing all the experiments that are likely to be required of it. [illustration: fig .--back of rubber, showing position of hole.] for the stand of the machine take a piece of wood (deal will do, but mahogany would be preferable) inches in length, inches in breadth, and / inch in thickness. to the bottom of this fasten two more pieces of the same wood, ¼ inches broad, inches long, and / inch in thickness at opposite ends, so that the edges are flush with the board. this forms our stand, on which we now proceed to erect the machine. take another piece of the same wood, inches long by ½ broad, and / inch thick and fasten it firmly by four screws at the ends to the base board at a distance of half an inch from one end of its length and in the center of its breadth. we now take two pieces of wood ½ inches long by ¼ inches broad and ½ inch thick, and fasten them upright to the opposite sides in the center of the piece just fixed to the board. they must be fixed very firmly to it with several screws, as they have to bear a severe strain while the machine is worked. [illustration: fig. . diagram showing position of plate and rubbers.] if the reader can _dovetail_ the ends into the cross board they will be held much more firmly. at the top of these pieces another piece of wood, ¼ inches square by / inch thick, is fastened by screws into the upright pieces, so as to hold all firmly together. [illustration: fig. .--sectional diagram of conductor.] the framework of the machine is now complete, and we have to provide the glass plate from which the electricity is to be produced. as we cannot make this we must apply to an electrician for it. this is inches in diameter. if the maker is good at, and has appliances for, working in brass on a small scale, he can make the axle himself by taking a piece of brass rod ¼ inch in diameter and inches long and fastening the glass plate in the center. this can be done by providing two circular caps of brass one and one-half inches in diameter (the side of which next the glass must be covered with cloth to prevent cracking the glass), and fastening one by solder or otherwise, on one side of the plate, the other being arranged to screw up tightly on the other side, by having the brass turned into a screw, and the center hole of the cap made with a flange to fit it. if this is beyond the reader, he must be contented with a less elaborate axle of wood instead of brass, and two wooden caps which can be firmly fastened to the axle and glued to the opposite sides of the glass plate with prout's elastic glue, which can be bought from any harnessmaker. if this is used care must be taken in warming the glass not to render the glue too soft to hold it firmly when turned by the handle. to turn the axle it must be provided with a handle of wood, in the case of the wooden axle, or, in the case of the brass one, a handle is made by turning the projecting end of the axle into a screw and fitting to it a piece of flat brass three and one-half inches by one-half inch by one-eighth inch, this latter piece having another piece of brass rod three and one-half inches long fixed to the other end, on which a wooden handle is fixed (by a cap fastened at the end of the rod) so as to turn freely. [illustration: fig. .--shape of brass rod to collect the electricity.] the glass plate having been thus mounted, we must turn our attention to the rubbers which generate the electricity on the plate. to make these take four pieces of wood inches by ½ inches by / inch, and on one side of them fix pieces of thick flannel (which you can get nearly ¼ inch in thickness) of the same size, and cover these over with black silk, gluing it down lightly to the wood, so as to form a thick cushion on one side of it. these four cushions have now to be fixed so as to be firmly pressed against the glass plate while it turns. this can be done by fastening them at the backs by screws to the upright pieces supporting the plate, or by gluing four small pieces of wood about / inch thick, and square in shape, to the inside of the supports. the rubbers then have four holes cut in their backs to fit these pieces of wood, on which they slide when placed on the side of the glass, and are thus held firmly in position. fig. shows the position of the holes on the backs of the rubbers. the latter plan is the best for fastening the rubbers, as it allows them to be removed at any time for warming (a very essential point) or spreading fresh amalgam on them. fig. shows the position of the plate and rubbers when in their places. [illustration: fig. .--sectional diagram showing position of collectors and plate.] we now have the means for procuring electricity, but the method of collecting it has yet to be provided. to make this a conductor must be formed by cutting a piece of wood to the shape of fig. . it should be about inches from end to end, and must be carefully rounded so that no projections are left on it. it must then be covered carefully with tinfoil (which can be obtained from a chemist), the tinfoil being glued down as smoothly as possible. from the end of this conductor a piece of brass rod should be fixed, shaped as shown in fig. . a piece about inches long will be wanted. this must be bent at the ends, so that when the conductor is mounted on a stand consisting of a piece of glass rod ½ inches high, fixed to the center of the stand (that is inches from the opposite end to that at which the supports are), the glass plate revolves between two surfaces of the brass rod. fig. explains the arrangement, which is somewhat complicated to describe. the glass rod should be about inches long, to allow of half an inch being inserted into a hole in the center of the conductor, which is thus supported ½ inches high from the stand. [illustration: fig. .--the machine when finished.] it now only remains to fasten several small pieces of brass wire about a quarter of an inch long, filed to a point, to the sides of the rod nearest the glass plate, as shown in fig. , so that the plate revolves between a double row of points, which can be done with solder, and the machine is complete. the conductor can further be improved by inserting at the opposite end a small piece of brass rod two and a half inches high, surmounted by a brass ball, which is useful in some experiments. care must be taken that the tinfoil of the conductor overlaps the brass rod at either end, and thus forms a metallic connection. if this is not done the conductor will not become charged sufficiently. if the conductor can be made of brass it will work better still, as a metallic connection is then insured. the conductor can be fastened to the glass rod on which it is supported by "prout's elastic glue," or other cement, a hole being made in the center of the bottom of the conductor, and another in the stand of the machine for opposite ends of the glass rod. the machine having been constructed, a few words will be useful in how to work it. warmth and dryness are, above all things, essential. if the air of the room is damp it will be nearly impossible to obtain any result. before working, the glass plate must be thoroughly warmed, taking care not to crack it, by being placed endwise before a good fire. a silk handkerchief is a useful adjunct to the machine. the glass plate should be wiped quite free from dirt, and the glass support of the conductor must also be wiped, the handkerchief being made very hot. the rubbers must be taken off (if constructed so as to be movable, as described), and placed before the fire till quite hot. their powers may be enormously increased by covering them with amalgam, as sold in the electrical shops, but a far better plan is to cover the cushions with tinfoil, which can be glued right round the rubbers and over the backs. this will need renewing at intervals, as the plate in turning wears it out. now, when the rubbers are quite hot and all the glass of the machine is dry and hot (this is necessary, because, if damp, the electricity would escape without producing any effect), the rubbers are put into their proper places on each side of the glass, and on turning the handle (which will be rendered easier if the machine is firmly clamped to the table) and approaching the knuckle to the conductor, a succession of brilliant sparks will be emitted from the conductor. if this does not happen either the glass or some part of the machine is damp, or the machine is not put together quite correctly, and must be examined to find out the fault. a machine of the size described should give a spark an inch long when working properly. a great number of experiments may be performed with this machine with apparatus capable of being made at home. i give a final illustration (fig. ) to show how the machine looks when completed. how to make an induction coil. [illustration] to most boys electricity offers many attractions, and as i have recently constructed an induction coil out of materials which are cheap and easily obtained, i think i shall confer a benefit on many readers if i give them a short description of how this was accomplished, so that if like-minded they can proceed in the same way. induction coils may be used for medical and scientific purposes as well as for amusement, so that a good deal of work comes within their scope. an "induction coil" is composed principally of two portions--one is the "primary" coil, the other the "secondary." it is the secondary coil that gives the spark, and on the length of this depends the power of the coil; in some instruments for scientific purposes it is composed of a wire nearly miles long--but we are not going to soar to such heights as that! to make the coil itself you want an ounce of "no. " cotton-covered wire, and two or three ounces of "no. ." this can be bought from an electrical supply dealer. if you are very ambitious, silk-covered wire can be used; this gives better effect, the insulation being more complete. [illustration: fig. .--front disc.] [illustration: fig. .--back disc.] to form the groundwork of the apparatus take a piece of mahogany about half an inch in thickness and polish it up to look ornamental; it should be about inches by inches for the sized coil i am describing. we now take another piece of mahogany about ¼ inch thick, and from it cut two circular pieces about ½ inch in circumference; these are to form the ends of the coil; they must each have a hole / inch in diameter drilled in the center for the ends of the core to pass through. in one of them, which is to form the coil, two much smaller holes are drilled with a small bradawl to allow the ends of the primary coil to pass through (fig. ); in the other two similar holes are drilled further from the center for the ends of the secondary coil (fig. ). this having been done, we proceed to form the _core_, and this being the most important part of the instrument, it must be made with great care. take a length of fine iron wire (annealed) and cut it into pieces ½ inches long. now take a brass tube of the same size internally as the center holes in the ends of the coil were made ( / inch) and push as many pieces of wire into it as are required to pack it as full as it will hold. the next thing to do is to take another piece of wire and wind it as tightly as possible round the ends of the wires, pulling them gradually out of the tube as you wind, until they are entirely out, by which time a compact bundle of iron wire will have been formed. now file the ends of the core thus formed, quite smooth, with a fine file, and drop the whole of it, wire and all, into the hottest part of a fire. leave it there till it is bright red hot all through, and then rake it out and bury it completely in the ashes under the grate. if this can be done over night, and the coil left to get cold as the fire goes out, instead of being placed in the ashes, so much the better, as the object is to cool it as gradually, and thus make it as soft as possible. [illustration: fig. .--core and discs.] when it has become perfectly cold take some paraffin wax and melt it in a dish. when thoroughly melted, heat the core again gently, and put it into the melted wax. leave it there for a short time till it is thoroughly saturated with the melted wax, then take it out and hold it above the dish to let the melted paraffin run back into it. when cold you may remove the binding wire, and the wax will be found to hold all the pieces together in a solid lump. the two pieces of wood must now be fixed one at each end of the core (the holes being the same size as the bore of the brass tube, the core should fit into them quite tight), one of them (the front) being pushed a little distance over the core, so as to leave about ¼ of an inch of the core projecting from it, the other one only being pushed on sufficiently far to make the end of the coil flush with the wood (fig. ). take a sheet of thin notepaper and cut a piece exactly the width of the coil, and long enough to pass twice round it. wind it tightly round, and fasten it, if necessary, with a little paraffin. now the wire has to be wound on over the paper, the thickest first, to form the primary coil. pass about three inches of one end of it through one of the holes in the disc forming the front of the coil, and then wind it evenly on the core, taking care that each coil is separate from its neighbor, and that no two coils fall one upon the other. when the wire has reached the other end of the core, wind it back again over the first layer till it reaches the end it came in at, then pass it through the other hole and cut it off about three inches from the hole; the wire cut off will be wanted for other purposes. the secondary coil has now to be wound over the primary, first of all saturating the cotton with which the latter is covered by pouring melted paraffin over it with a spoon. all the secondary wire will be wanted; it must be wound layer above layer exactly as the primary was, first passing about three inches of the end through one of the holes in the disc at the back of the core. a thickness of notepaper should be put on between the primary and secondary coils. everything depends on the complete insulation of one coil from another, and this is accomplished by means of the notepaper and cotton, saturated with melted wax in subsequent operations. when the whole of the secondary wire is wound on except about three inches, pass the end through the other hole in the disc. in order to make sure that the wire has not been broken in the winding, which would entirely destroy the action of the instrument, the two ends of the coils should be joined separately with a battery and galvanometer. if the needle is deflected on joining the circuit the wire is all right. this is rather important, as it is extremely vexatious, when all the different parts have been adjusted, to find that the coil will not work owing to a fracture of the wire, which necessitates the whole coil being unwound before it can be discovered. if the galvanometer is not at hand we must take our chance; the greatest possible care must be taken in winding the secondary wire, as this thin wire is extremely brittle. the insulation must now be improved by plunging the whole coil into a deep vessel large enough to contain it, which is full of melted paraffin. this must be placed near the fire, so as to keep the wax melted, and the coils must be left in it to soak for an hour or two. when the paraffin has thoroughly permeated through it it can be taken out and held above the vessel to drain. if all the wax does not run off the ends they can be scraped afterward, taking care not to cut the wires. the appearance of the coil is vastly improved by a strip of velvet cut the right width, which can be drawn tightly and sewn in position; or the coil may be covered with a varnish made by dissolving red sealing-wax in spirits of wine by the aid of a gentle heat. the coil part of the instrument is now complete, and ready to be affixed to the base-board by means of two small screws passing through it into the discs when placed in the proper position (see fig. .) we now approach a very important and rather intricate piece of workmanship. it is necessary, in order that shocks should be obtained from the coil, that the current in the primary wire should be stopped and started again at the rate of several hundred times per minute, and the more quickly the contact between the battery wire and the primary coil is made and unmade the more powerful the shock. in order to accomplish this a "contact-breaker" becomes necessary, the method of making which is as follows: [illustration: fig. .--hammer of contact-breaker.] a piece of sheet brass is taken ½ inches long by about / of an inch at one end, gradually tapered up till it comes to a point about / of an inch broad at the other; it must be very thin, and must act as a spring when fastened tightly at one end. a small piece of soft iron is soldered to the small end of this to be attracted by the core when working. the next thing is to fasten a small piece of platinum foil about ¼ of an inch square on the opposite side of the brass to the soft iron, and a little below it (fig. ). this is rather a difficult operation, as it is such a small object to solder, and the best way is to get it done by a tinsmith, unless you are skilled in the use of the soldering bit. [illustration: fig. .--screw of contact-breaker.] [illustration: fig. .--plan of coil complete.] a narrow strip of stout brass is now taken and bent at right angles near one end, so that when screwed down to the base-board by holes in the smallest leg the longest leg will stand upright. stand it up on the base in front of the coil and note a point on the strip exactly opposite the core. make a hole through this point large enough to admit a small screw used on paper fasteners. now take the flange part of the paper-fastener and solder it to the back of the brass strip, so that the screw will work through both (fig. ). this is done to avoid the trouble of making a flange in the strip, but if you _can_ do this, so much the better. now, the coil having been fastened to the base by fine screws through it into the ends of the reel, nearly in the center of the base, we must find a place on the base in a straight line with the end of the core (as at c, fig. ), and here we fasten another piece of bent brass similar to the last. the end of the contact breaker is now soldered to this brass strip in such a way that the piece of soft iron at the other end is exactly opposite the core and about / inch distant from it. the screw of the paper fastener must now be tipped with platinum by cutting off the end and drilling a fine hole in it, in which hole a small piece of platinum wire can be soldered. the amount of wire and foil required, although very minute, will cost you about twenty-five cents, platinum being a very expensive substance. it can be bought from a chemist or electrician. the screw having been prepared in this way, we must next fasten the brass strip to which the flange is soldered upright on the base, so that the platinum point of the screw, when inserted, will just come in contact with the square of foil on the spring. by turning the head of the screw the soft iron can thus be forced nearer the core, and the rapidity of its vibration is thus controlled. the coil is now complete, except the connections, which are made (preferably underneath the base by letting the wires through) by joining the ends of the thin wire to two "binding screws," which are made for this purpose and can be obtained from the dealer. one end of the thick wire of the coil is fastened to the strip of brass supporting the contact-breaker, the other end is fastened to a binding-screw on one side of the base--the strip of brass supporting the screw being connected by a wire with another binding-screw on the other side. this sounds rather intricate, but will easily be understood if we consider that the current from the battery when the wires are connected with the binding-screw must pass through the brass strip to the screw, thence through the contact-breaker to the coil, and, having passed round the coil, back to the battery through the binding-screw attached to the other end of the wire. (see fig. .) it is now evident that when the contact-breaker is in contact with the screw a current will pass through the primary coil, and will cause the soft iron core to become a magnet and thus attract the soft iron. when this moves towards the magnet, contact is broken and the core is instantly demagnetized, so that the spring flies back and contact is made again. the screw is adjusted so that the contact is broken just as the soft iron touches the core. when the battery is joined on, the contact-breaker will fly backwards and forwards with tremendous speed, making a loud, buzzing noise, while brilliant sparks will appear between the platinum wire and foil. in order to feel the effect of the shock, two handles will be required; these can be made by simply bending two pieces of tin about two inches by four inches round a ruler and neatly soldering the joins. a wire is now fastened to the end of each tube, the other ends being inserted in the binding screws connected with the thin wire of the secondary coil, which are at the opposite corners of the base to those which are joined to the ends of the primary coil. when the coil is buzzing, if these handles are tightly held, a powerful shock will be felt, in fact, a weak battery only should be used with the coil of the dimensions given, or it may be impossible to release the handles, and this is too strong to be pleasant. the current can be regulated by means of a "regulating tube," that is simply a brass tube which is made to slip over the core between it and the primary coil; the farther the tube is pushed over the core, the less powerful the shock. the dimensions of the coil being the same, a little ingenuity will enable any one to affix a regulating-tube. i will only say that instead of winding the coil direct on the core a tube of brown paper is formed a little larger than the core, and on this the wire is wound. between this tube and the core the brass tube is arranged to slip in and out, the hole in the end of the reel farthest from the contact-breaker being made larger for its accommodation. this concludes my description of the coil, but perhaps a few hints as to suitable batteries may be useful. if a strong battery which will only work the coil for a short time is required, the bottle bichromate is a good one. it can be bought from a dealer, or one can be made in a simple form by taking a jar and filling it with a strong solution of bichromate of potassium, to which a little sulphuric acid has been added. take two pieces of gas carbon and three pieces of sheet zinc, both cut to the right size to dip in the solution to the bottom of the jar. at the top of the zincs and carbons bore small holes, and below these place narrow strips of wood to keep them apart when in use; these must be long enough to reach across the top of the jar when the zincs and carbons are in the solution. arrange them thus: zinc, wood, carbon, wood, zinc, wood, carbon, wood, zinc; bind them lightly together by means of two more pieces of wood placed outside the outer zincs, and the whole tied together with string. connect the three zincs together with one piece of wire, and the two carbons with another, taking care that the wire connecting the zincs, does not come in contact with the wire connecting the carbons. to one zinc attach a piece of covered wire, and to one carbon attach another, these two wires are connected with the binding screws of the primary coil. this battery is extremely strong, double as strong as the bottle bichromates sold, as there are more zincs and carbons employed, but it only lasts a short time before needing to be replenished. daniell's battery is a weaker form, but lasts much longer, say for two or three hours in constant work. take a deep jar and inside it place a porous jar of earthenware, which the electrician will provide. now get a piece of sheet copper of the right size to go into the jar, and bend it round so that the porous jar will go inside it. a piece of sheet zinc will be wanted to go inside the porous jar. both zinc and copper must be high enough to reach the level of the solutions when the jars are full. the porous jar is filled with dilute sulphuric acid, or solution of common salt; the jar outside is filled with "_saturated_" solution of sulphate of copper--that is, as strong as it can be made. lumps of sulphate of copper are kept in the outer cell, which will keep the solution concentrated by slowly dissolving. attach one wire to the zinc and another to the copper, and when these are joined to the binding screws of the primary coil the contact-breaker will begin buzzing. how to make a small dynamo. part i. the dynamo is not the most simple piece of mechanism extant, and i am inclined to think that many boys would find it rather a poser to make one. at the same time it is perfectly evident that there are heaps of our readers who are very anxious indeed to _try_, at all events, and as we must aim at more elaborate apparatus as we advance in electrical knowledge, it is a pity not to endeavor to supply them with the help they need. well, then, if, like pears' soap baby, they "won't be happy till they get it," i will do my level best to bring down the subject into the range of their capability. it will not cost them much to try the experiment, and if they don't succeed they must not blame me, but their "vaulting ambition," which has "o'erleapt itself." there is no reason whatever why a boy who is accustomed to metal working should not succeed in making the small machine described if he first masters the principles of its construction. the advantage of a dynamo, i may here remark, is that by its means we are able to produce a current of voltaic electricity at any moment by turning a wheel without bothering with acids or carbons, or zincs, or any other of the various articles necessitated by the use of a battery. furthermore, the current goes on as long as you turn the wheel, and stops directly you stop, there being no loss between whiles. of course, both battery and dynamo have their advantages and disadvantages--nothing in this world being perfect all round--and for some purposes the dynamo is best, for others the battery. for example, it would be absurd to use a dynamo to ring an electric bell--not that it would not do it with tremendous energy, but in the case of a bell what one wants is merely to ring it for a few seconds at long intervals, and for this work a battery in which there is little current, but which is always ready to give that little without touching it, is _facile princeps_. but for experiments in which a strong continuous current is required, the dynamo comes to the front, as there is no "polarization" to detract from its value, as in the case of the battery. one does not always want to be messing with chemicals in setting up a battery, when one only requires the current for a short time, and the dynamo is always ready, and merely turning the handle produces the required current in a moment. besides this, viewed merely in the light of a magneto-electric machine, it will give a considerable shock to any one who holds two handles fixed to its terminals. having now enumerated the advantages of the machine, it behooves me to endeavor to describe its various parts and the method of making them. there are several methods of dynamo-making, but that which seems to be the most used and most easily followed in the case of a small machine, is that of the type known as the "siemens" dynamo, from the inventor of the armature, which is of peculiar construction. the action of the dynamo depends on the fact that if a piece of soft iron is surrounded by a coil of insulated wire, when the soft iron is approached to a magnet it becomes itself a magnet, and at the same time a current is generated in the coil of insulated wire which surrounds it. this current is, however, of only momentary duration, and ceases if the soft iron remains stationary; but on removing the soft iron from the magnet another current is generated in the coil of wire, but this is a current of the opposite kind of electricity, and travels in the opposite direction to that produced in the former case. now you have only to imagine that, by means of rotating in front of the poles of a magnet, a piece of soft iron is kept continually approaching and receding from the magnet, and that this soft iron is surrounded by wires in which circulate currents positive or negative according to the direction of the movement of the soft iron, and then, if we can arrange to carry off all the positive currents to one binding-screw, and all the negative currents to another binding-screw, we shall have a continuous current generated as long as the soft iron revolves. all this is practically carried out in the construction of the dynamo, and on the accuracy with which it is done the efficiency of the dynamo depends. to make the base of the machine, take a piece of deal ½ inches long by ½ inches broad by / inch thick. this can be stained afterwards to make it look nicer; it must be planed well and polished up quite smooth. [illustration: fig. .--sectional diagram of one side of magnet.] the greatest difficulty of the whole business has now already to be confronted--viz., the manufacture of the magnet. this is almost invariably cast in two pieces, and for those who cannot make the castings there is no help for it but to have recourse to the ironmonger, or, better still, a practical electrician. the following instructions will then assist you to put the castings together: supposing this difficulty to have been overcome, and two pieces of soft iron to have been cast in the form of fig. , both exactly the same size and shape; the next thing to do is to convert it into an electro-magnet by winding seven layers of no. cotton covered wire over each leg, at the part shown by the dotted lines in the illustration. the size of the legs of the magnet is as follows:--total length from b to c, / inches; thickness of top piece from b to d, ½ inch; length of top piece from b to d (half total length of top of magnet), ¾ inch; breadth of side of magnet all the way down, ¾ inch; height from e to c, ½ inch; thickness of the part between d and e, round which the wire is wound, / inch. when i say "breadth" in this description, i mean what you can't see in the sectional drawing, because it recedes from you; when i say "thickness," i mean what is shown in the drawing. it is necessary to explain this, as the terms are rather confusing. the ends of the sides between d and e are rounded to admit of the wire being more evenly wound on them. [illustration: fig. .--magnet put together.] it is not essential to use a permanent magnet in this machine, as a certain amount of "residual" magnetism remains in the iron when once excited; and the coils of wire on the armature being acted on by the armature, which is slightly magnetized by this residual magnetism in the magnet, have a reactionary effect, and excite the armature, which excites the magnet afresh; and thus the magnet and _its_ coils, and the armature and _its_ coils, go on acting on each other, and mutually building up each other's current, until the maximum effect which the machine is capable of giving is produced. before winding on the wire, the legs of the magnet between d and e should be covered with a band of silk soaked in melted paraffin wax to increase the insulation. new and soft wire, of the highest conductivity, should be used. old, rinky, and hard wire will not do. [illustration: fig. .--armature of dynamo.] the wire is wound upon the legs of the magnet in such a way that when put together as shown in fig. the coils are in opposite directions, so that if the magnet were straightened out, or the two portions placed end to end, one coil would be a prolongation of the other. this can be most easily done, in the case of this particular magnet, by winding each leg separately, and the end of the outer coil of wire of one can be joined to the end of the inner coil of wire of the other at d in the cut, the other ends of the coils being left loose as at e and f, these being long enough to go down under the base--say, about inches long to allow for joining up. the electro-magnet having been wound, may now be placed upright on the base, its two limbs fastened together by a screw at a. the magnet is now to be fastened to the base in the middle of its breadth, and about an inch from one end, by means of two screws at b and c, passing through the base into the legs of the magnet. before it is fastened on, however, you had better drill two screw holes on each leg at h h h h in the figure, and four corresponding to them on the other side. we shall want eight screws to fit these holes presently. [illustration: fig. .--section of end armature.] the magnet having been fixed, we now have to construct the armature, which is the next most important part of the machine. this consists of a soft iron cylinder with an axle passing through its center, as at k l in the illustration (fig. ), s s s s being the soft iron cylinder. this cylinder has a deep groove cut from end to end, or is cast in that shape, and round this groove the wire is wound. the wire is number , cotton or silk-covered. begin at the point marked h in the diagram, and wind over and over, from end to end, until that side is full; then cross over to the other side, going from h to r, and wind that side also in the same direction. the ends of the wire are shown at w w, and they must be left about an inch or two inches long, as we shall want to connect them with the commutator presently. the dimensions of the armature are as follows: length of axle, ½ inches; circumference of cylinder, inch; length of cylinder, inches; width of groove, ¾ inch. the axle is composed of a piece of steel rod rather more than / inch in diameter. the axle must be very truly centered in the armature, and the armature must be accurately mounted, as it has to revolve at a high rate of speed in a very limited space, between the poles of the magnet. as it is rather difficult to explain the construction of the armature, i give another illustration (fig. ) of a section of the armature, which will show how the wire is wound on the groove, and the shape of the grooves themselves. at one end of the axle is fixed the driving-pulley p, while at the other has to be fixed a small wooden roller f, over which two pieces of sheet brass have been fastened, each reaching nearly half round the surface of the roller, so that two gaps are left between them. this forms part of the commutator; but before we come to that we must consider how the armature is to be fixed between the poles of the magnet. part ii. [illustration: fig. .--support for pulley end of axle.] returning to fig. , we must see that the groove a, which forms half the channel in which the armature is to revolve, is / inch semi-circle. when the two sides are fixed together as in fig. , the hole between the poles should be about an inch in circumference, and the wire must be wound on the armature so that it easily slips into the cavity g, which must be made quite smooth for it to revolve in. it will be seen from the dimensions given that in diameter the armature is only a little less than the cylindrical space between the poles of the magnet, and in length it is about the same as the width of the magnet. it would be an unfortunate occurrence if the wire was to slip off the armature while revolving at a high speed, and therefore it is necessary to keep it firmly in its place. this is done by filing four small notches in the soft iron of the armature at the points marked a b c d in fig. . some strong wire or small string is now wound lightly round the armature to hold the coils of wire in their proper place, the notches holding this wire or string from slipping off at the ends of the cylinder. the armature is now to be fixed in its proper place between the poles of the magnet. [illustration: fig. .--support for commutator end of axle.] to do this we shall want two supports for the axle. these are made of brass, shaped as in figs. and , being the one at the pulley end of the axle, and that at the other end. they are fastened by screws through the holes p p, into the holes h h h h in the bottom part of the side of the magnet, as previously shown in fig. . when the armature is fixed in its proper place it will appear as fig. , this being a sectional diagram from above, and the top pieces of the magnet being omitted for simplicity's sake. [illustration: fig. .--ground plan of magnet and armature when put together.] the brass of which the supports are made should be about / inch thick, and must, of course, be drilled in the center with a hole to admit the axle of the armature. to keep it exactly in the right place while revolving, a piece of circular brass tube, with a bore the size of the hole made to admit the armature, should be soldered to the brass supports in front of the hole; that for the pulley end of the axle should be ½ inch long. one at the other end is not necessary, but looks neater; this may be about ¼ inch long--_i. e._ as long as the end of the axle projecting beyond the brass support. this much having been accomplished, we have now to consider the "commutator," which is a piece of apparatus by which all the currents proceeding from magnet and armature are sent in one direction, and thus, instead of counteracting each other, are made available for experiments. [illustration: fig. .--pillar of commutator.] to make this necessary adjunct to the dynamo, take a circular bar of brass rod about / inch in diameter and an inch long. into the middle of this solder a brass screw by drilling a hole and inserting its upper end _minus_ the head. on this screw works a brass nut about / inch long. at the other end of the rod a hole is drilled for the insertion of another brass screw, long enough to go through the base. another pillar precisely like this has now to be made, only ½ inch high without the nut. now cut two pieces of sheet brass inches long and ½ inch broad, sufficiently stout to act as springs and not too stout to be elastic. at one end of each cut a longitudinal hole about ¾ inch long and / inch broad; that is to say, this slit must be broad enough to slip over the top of the screws above the pillars. at the other ends of the brass springs slits of equal length, but very narrow--only about / inch wide--may be cut, to make the brass more "springy." on the under side of this end of one spring and the upper side of the other, two pieces of thin sheet copper are fixed, the same breadth as the springs, and about ½ inch long. these are soldered by one end to the side of the spring, so as to act as springs themselves, their other ends being free. all this being rather complicated, we must invoke the aid of the engraver once more. fig. gives you the method of making the pillars--a being the brass rod, b the screw and c the nut, the hole to admit screw to fasten the pillar to the base is made at the end d. [illustration: fig. .--brass spring of commutator.] fig. is the brass spring with slit, a, to slip over the screw of fig. , and the copper spring soldered to one side, at the end, at the point b. now we slip the brass spring over the screw, the screw coming through the slit, and screw down the nut c. we thus have two springs supported at the ends on pillars at a height of inch and ½ inch from the base respectively. of course, both the pillars and springs are treated alike, but in the case of the tallest the copper is on the _under_ side, and in the other on the _upper_ side. now we go back to the armature, on the axle of which you will remember that i told you to fix a small roller of wood. this is only ¾ inch long and ½ inch in diameter, and is fixed firmly to the axle so as to revolve along with the armature. this roller is soaked in melted paraffin wax for an hour or two before fixing on, or boiled in it for some time, so that it may permeate the wood. the roller can easily be turned (of boxwood, preferably) if you are possessed of a lathe, but if you have none, go to the nearest photographer (or, preferably, a dealer in photographic apparatus), and from him you can buy for cents a roller long enough to cut dozens for dynamos--they are what sensitized paper is sold rolled on. the roller having been provided, take a piece of brass tube exactly so large inside that the roller will fit tightly into it, and cut off a piece the same length as the roller, or, if anything a trifle shorter. you have now to cut, with a saw or otherwise, two diagonal lines in this tube lengthwise, so that the tube is thereby divided into two pieces. having done this the brass is replaced on the roller and fastened by minute screws, or "prout's elastic glue," to each side of it, so that the roller becomes practically one of brass, with two slits in it. the screws must not project above the brass, but must be well sunk into it, so as to leave the surface smooth: and care must be taken that the screws do not touch both pieces of brass by going right through the roller--they must be very short. the object of cutting the slits in a diagonal direction is that the springs when pressing above and below the roller (see fig. ) shall not leave one half of the commutator before resting on the other part. if they do so the commutator will "spark" badly, which injures the fittings, and less current is obtained. both slits are to be equidistant, and both inclined in the same direction. the roller is fixed on the axle in such a position that the middles of the lines of division are exactly in a line with the middle of the groove of the armature. when all this has been accomplished you will obviously have two conducting surfaces, each reaching over half the cylinder, separated by a small distance at top and bottom, the paraffined wood, of course, being a non-conductor of electricity. the brass tube must be made to fit smoothly round the wood, the surface being free from any irregularities, so that the contact with the springs at the sides may be as perfect as possible. care must be taken that the brass is really separate all down on both sides. it is a good plan to fasten small splinters of paraffined wood in the slits to make sure. this having been done, the wire from one end of the coil of the armature must be soldered to one of the semi-circumferences (if i may coin a word) of brass on the wooden roller, and the wire from the other end of the coil to the other semi-circumference. this is done at the end or underneath, not at the top, or it will make the surface rough, and we want it to be as smooth as it can possibly be. the wire must be quite tight up to the end soldered on; there must be no loops, or it will catch in something and be torn off when it comes to revolve. [illustration: fig. .--section of commutator put together.] the brass pillars supporting the springs have now to be inserted in the base, at such a distance, one on each side of the roller covered with brass, that the copper springs at the end of the brass ones are exactly one over and one under the brass roller. of course, if they are put in a line with it, the springs can easily be shifted to the right position by slipping the slits over the screws of the pillars, and screwing down the nuts lightly when they come to the right place. this is very difficult to make intelligible, and i give another illustration of the relative positions of the parts of the commutator which i hope will make all clear. the pillars p p--which were put together as shown in figs. and --are fixed at such distances on opposite sides of the roller r that the springs s s are continually in contact with the brass semi-circumferences, first one and then the other as the armature revolves. we are now within sight of the end of our task, and to guide off the current that we are going to produce we must screw in two binding-screws at opposite corners of the same end of the base (the end at which the commutator is). the ends of the wire from the magnet are to be brought down through the base and joined to the under part of these binding-screws. placing the base so that the commutator end of the armature, and not the pulley end, is next to you, the wire from the inner coil of the magnet goes to the binding-screw on your left hand, and that from the outer coil to that on your right hand. the magnet should be wound and placed in such a position that these ends are respectively on the left and right, and then they have only to be joined to the binding-screws in front of them. but before connecting these wires up, it is necessary to give an initial magnetism to the magnet, which at present has not been magnetized at all! to do this we must make use of another dynamo or a battery and connect the wires coming from the magnet-coil to the terminals of the battery. this having been done, the magnet will attract iron filings or needles, etc., and this shows that it has really become a magnet. two cells of the chloride battery will be enough to magnetize it as much as it can be magnetized, and enough will remain when the battery is disconnected to start the action when the armature is revolved. two or three minutes is long enough to connect with the battery. part iii. while the current is passing you can try the following experiment, to prove that the wire is wound on all right. if it is not wound as described there will be two north poles or two south poles, instead of one north and one south. suppose we decide to make the leg on which the wire comes from the outside of the magnet the north pole, the wire from this must be joined to the wire coming from the zinc end of the battery, and the other coming from the inside, between the poles, joined to the wire from the carbon end. now if, while the current is passing, a magnetized needle is approached to each pole consecutively, and one end of it is attracted and the other repelled in each case, the wire is all right; if both are attracted something is wrong. the needle must have been really magnetized beforehand, or it will deceive you; you can easily test if it is so with an ordinary permanent magnet. having magnetized the soft iron in the way described, we now join up the wires to the binding screws, under the base, and, the pulley being fixed on to the axle of the armature opposite to the commutator, the machine is now ready for use. to rotate the armature at a high speed it is necessary to connect the pulley by an endless band with a large, heavy wheel which can be rotated by hand. for continuous work, as we cannot always be turning the wheel, a small steam-engine or water-motor must be employed. worked in this way, the machine i have described can be made to light candle-power lamps of volts, and give about volts of current. this is not much, of course, but by enlarging the proportions of the various parts, you can make as large a dynamo as you like; only the power required to work it naturally increases considerably. this machine will do a great deal of the work of a battery--for example it will run an induction coil or an electro motor at full power. by connecting two brass handles to the binding-screws by wires, you will get a powerful shock if you hold them while some one turns the wheel connected with the pulley; in fact, the shock is too powerful, and the person turning the wheel must be prepared to stop when the victim has had enough. if these handles are dipped into a glass of water slightly acidulated with sulphuric acid (to enable the current to pass more freely), and the dynamo briskly turned, you will soon see bubbles rising from the handles--which must, of course, be placed separate from each other--consisting of oxygen and hydrogen gas, into which the water is being decomposed by the force of the current. water being composed of two quantities of hydrogen gas to every one of oxygen, it follows that double as much hydrogen will come off the handle which evolves it as will come off the other of oxygen, and this you will soon see to be the case; the bubbles on the former being much more numerous than those on the latter. now take a candle-power -volt electric lamp, and fasten it on to the wires coming from the binding-screws (removing the handles) by the platinum loops at the top. if the dynamo is now briskly turned, you will find that the lamp will light up well, and as long as the wheel is turned and the dynamo is buzzing, so long will the lamp continue to glow. by turning the dynamo by steam or water-motor we have, therefore, a means of producing a continuous light, which will not drop at the end of a few minutes as in the case of a battery. this is the method by which all public buildings, etc., are lighted. there is said to be always sufficient residual magnetism in the soft iron core (at any rate if constructed of ordinary soft iron, not specially annealed) to act on the armature when revolved, and this, acting on the magnet, increases its magnetism so that they react on each other until the maximum effect of the dynamo is reached. this is the case with the majority of dynamos used for lighting, etc.; but if you are of an experimental turn of mind, and are possessed of a battery as well as the dynamo, you can try the effect of magnetizing the soft iron cores by sending a current from the battery through the coil. to do this, disconnect the wires from the magnet-coil from the binding-screws, and connect them with the terminals of the battery. the whole current from the dynamo now comes from the armature, and you will find that this current is considerably increased, sparks flying about in all directions when the handles from the binding-screws are approached to each other or rubbed together. the water will now be decomposed much faster, and you will be able to light an additional lamp or two, according to the strength of the battery. fig. gives an idea of the positions of the parts of the dynamo when complete; it is not an easy thing to draw, and i can only hope the rough sketch will be intelligible to my readers. the spring a is below the roller of contact breaker, and the spring b above it, the diagonal line on the roller representing the vacancy between the brass pieces covering the wood. the wires from the ends of the magnet-coil go through the base, round the bottoms of the pillars a and b, and join the other wire between the pillars and the binding-screws. the wire from the pole on which the wire comes from _outside_ the magnet is joined to the binding-screw a in the figure. the other wire comes from between the poles, and is joined to the other binding-screw. if you can find out, by means of a galvanometer, which binding-screw is conveying the _positive_ current, the wire from the _south_ pole of the magnet is to be joined to the wire from this, and that from the _north_ pole of the magnet to the wire conveying the _negative_ electricity. [illustration: fig. .--dynamo complete. ground plan.] whenever you join the wires, be sure to scrape off all the insulating material, and twist them firmly together; a little solder is an improvement. whenever the wires cross the iron work be sure the insulating material is quite sound at that point. it is a good plan to roll paraffined silk round the wires at these places. cut grooves under the base, in which the wires may lie, or the dynamo will not stand evenly. the dark line in the middle of the top of magnet in fig. shows where the two parts join. they should be screwed up tightly together. [illustration: fig. .--hand-wheel arrangement for working dynamo.] as a concluding illustration, i give a diagram of my own method of turning my dynamo (fig. ). on the leg of an ordinary table t is fixed the heavy iron wheel w, which has a groove cut in its circumference for the reception of an endless band b. these wheels may be obtained for a few shillings from any ironmonger, as they are made for various machines, such as laths, fret-saws, sewing-machines, etc. the wheel is held by an ordinary screw fixed into the leg of the table, and revolves on the screw. the endless band (tape will do) passes over the groove and over the pulley of the dynamo placed on the table above the wheel. it is better to let the pulley of the dynamo project beyond the end of the base, as shown in fig. , in order to be able to connect it with a wheel placed below it, if required. the best results are produced from the dynamo when the resistance of the interpolar (_i. e._ the lamp, or whatever it may have to work) is equal to the internal resistance of the machine. it is sometimes required to send a current through a greater resistance than this, and then it becomes necessary to employ what is familiarly termed a "shunt." if one lamp of high resistance is coupled to the dynamo, the resistance may be too great for the current to get round the magnet in sufficient quantity to give the required electromotive force. supposing that this is the case, we make a second pathway for it by joining on a piece of iron wire (about ten inches of no. ) between the two binding-screws, the lamp being connected with the same binding-screws, only further off. the result of this is that the current goes round by the second pathway and excites the magnet more powerfully, and this, in its turn, excites the armature more strongly, and so on, until enough current is produced to light up the lamp. the resistance of the shunt required depends on the resistance of the lamp. if this is low no shunt will be required, if very high the resistance of the shunt must be lowered, or else enough current will not pass to magnetize the soft iron cores, and the dynamo will give no current. the lower the resistance of the shunt required, the less wire we use. some toys worked by electricity. part i. the electric trumpet. there are many toys which one meets with in the scientific stores, the making of which for themselves would give great satisfaction to enterprising devotees of the electrical art. they are for the most part easily constructed, and a great deal of amusement can be derived from them. i have my doubts whether the fathers and mothers of the amateur electrician will thank me for introducing the subject of the present article, but they must take comfort in the thought that if it works well it shows real constructive power on the part of the maker. for the benefit of those whose capability of working in metal is limited, i am first going to describe the making of this remarkable instrument in its simplest form--a form, in fact, so simple that any one can make it and achieve success in a few hours. first of all we want an old tooth-powder box. these are all made the same size, and consequently it is unnecessary to give dimensions. the top of the tooth-powder box is to be taken, and by means of a fretsaw (this invaluable tool should be in the hands of every boy who likes carpentering; there are many uses to which it can be put quite different for what it is intended for) a circular hole is to be cut out about / inch less than the inside--that is to say, a rim of about / inch is to project all around from the rim of the lid. we now want what is known in photography as a "ferrotype" plate--_i. e._, a piece of very thin sheet iron. most dealers in photographic goods will not sell less than four or five dozen of them, and this is too many for us. a photographic friend will let us have one gratis, or a professional photographer _may_ agree to part with one for five or ten cents if he is attacked when in a good temper. the ferrotype plate having been procured by some means or other, the next thing is to cut from it a circle just small enough to go inside the rim of the top of the tooth-powder box. you can mark out the circle before cutting it by painting the top of the rim of the bottom of the tooth-powder box with ink and pressing it down on the ferrotype plate, when enough ink will come off to guide the scissors, and of course the circle so cut will be the exact size required. we now have to make the motive power of the machine, for there is plenty of work done in it, though it only makes a noise--no one can "make a noise in the world" without doing plenty of work! and to make this we take a piece of soft iron rod about ½ inch long and half an inch in diameter, and cut two circles out of cardboard ¾ inch in diameter. the soft iron rod can be bought from any hardware store, and it ought to be quite soft enough to work at once without doing anything to it; if it is not, it must be heated red-hot in a good fire and left among the coals over-night to get cool very gradually. personally i have always found that the ordinary bars of soft iron bought from any hardware man are amply soft enough for any electrical work. you must get the hardware man to file the ends of your bar flat; if they are not filed you will have to do it yourself, and a fine job it is! now we go back to the circles of cardboard. a hole is to be cut in each in the center exactly the size to admit the core of soft iron, then by slipping the circles over the ends we get a reel. now a hole has to be made exactly in the center of the bottom of the tooth-powder box, and exactly so large that the core of soft iron will fit tightly into it; you can do this again with the fretsaw, the wood of which tooth-powder boxes are made is delightfully easy to cut. now comes the adjustment of the reel. you must put the circles on the core, and putting one end of the latter through the hole at the bottom of the box you must push the iron through until the top is exactly flush with the top of the rim of the side of the box. one of your circles will now be much further on the core than the other, and the one at the end that is not pushed through the hole must be adjusted close to the edge, leaving about / of the core projecting, so that we have now a reel formed at one end of the core, and held in position by the bottom of the box. the more stiffly the core fits the hole the better, and if it has to be hammered into its place, better still, only take care not to split the wood of the bottom of the box. the circles, being now in their right places, must not be moved again, but the roller has to be wound with wire, for which purpose the core will have to come out of the box temporarily. before beginning to wind the wire, get some thin paper (french note-paper is best), and wind a piece round and round the core between the circles, fastening it and the circles at its ends to the core by means of a small quantity of mucilage. we now have to wind the wire on to the roller. the more wire the stronger the magnet will be, but sufficient will be about two ounces. you can get the wire at most hardware stores for fifteen cents an ounce. it is generally cotton-covered, of light green color; medium thickness should be used, not too fine, as this offers too much resistance to the current, and not too coarse, or it will fill the reel too soon. we begin by making a hole near the core in the circle which is furthest on it, and push one end of the wire through a hole from the inside of the reel. about three inches should be pushed through to allow for future manipulation, and the wire is now to be wound tightly over the paper covering the core in even coils, layer on layer, till the reel is nearly full and we have arrived at within about three inches of the other end of the wire. this is now to be passed through another hole in the same circle as before, which hole will of course be further from the center than the first. the magnet will be much stronger if two or three folds of paper are wrapped round it between each layer of wire. the coil is now constructed, and can be replaced in the tooth-powder box, passing the ends of the wire through two holes in the side or bottom made to receive them. before leaving this part of the instrument i may remark that care must be taken that the covering of wire is quite continuous throughout, and has not got rubbed off at any points; if it has, you must wind fine silk over it to cover it up again. should there be a break anywhere in the wire you must carefully scrape the wire off the two ends and twist the wires firmly together, if possible soldering them together and then wind fine silk over the join. it is not necessary in this machine to soak the coil in melted paraffin, but might improve the insulation if the cover of the wire is thin. only if there is a join and you have twisted, not soldered the wires together, you must not soak the coil in wax, or the melted wax gets between the ends of the wires and stops the current (this of course applies to all electro-magnets and should be remembered as a possible cause of failure.) the core having been pushed through the hole again, up to the circle of cardboard, the ferrotype plate is placed in the top of the box, and the box is shut up. now the ferrotype plate must be exactly free of the end of the core and that is all. you can test this by tapping it. if it vibrates in and out, it is all right; if the end of the core is too tightly pressed against it, there will be no possibility of moving the center in and out, and the core must be driven further through the hole till it is just free of the ferrotype plate. [illustration: fig. .--shape of platinum foil, p, fastened to ferrotype plate, f.] now comes another part of the instrument, viz., the contact-breaker. the following is as good a way of arranging it as any: take a piece of sheet brass the exact length of the diameter of the top of the tooth-powder box and about half inch wide, and in the middle of it bore a hole which will admit a brass screw--with a milled head preferably. the screw should fit tightly into the hole, so as to screw easily up and down when turned. to the end of the screw, which is cut off flat, is soldered a short piece of platinum wire, inserted in a hole in the end of the screw made to receive it; it can be fastened by any other means, as long as it will screw up and down and is in contact with the brass screw. adjust the screw so that the platinum point is within a minute distance of the ferrotype plate when the brass support is screwed down at the ends to the side of the box lid, and screw it down with small screws firmly in its position. [illustration: fig .--section of simple electric trumpet showing details of various parts.] before this is done, however, a thin strip of platinum foil should be soldered to the upper surface of the ferrotype plate, or otherwise fastened to it--elastic glue will answer--this strip terminating in the center, and reaching to the edge of the plate, leaving a short piece over. a very thin strip will be enough, of the shape of p in fig. . now the ferrotype plate is to be placed in position again (the side of which the platinum foil is fastened being outwards, and the end of the foil going down between the edge of the ferrotype plate and the wood into the inside of the box), and the end of the wire from the coil which was left inside the box is to be securely fastened, either by soldering or otherwise, to the end of the platinum foil which was left loose, so as to be in metallic connection with it. a wire can now be twisted round or soldered to the screw with the platinum point, and the instrument is complete. it has taken some space to describe, but i made my own in about half an hour. fig. gives a general view of the parts put together. the lid of the box should be tightly fastened down by four small screws, two of which may be those which fasten on the brass strip holding the screw. now to consider its action. the wire i in fig. is connected to one wire of the battery, and the wire g to the other. the current then starts from the battery, round the coil b, converting the core into a magnet, and up the wire h to the platinum foil p, along the platinum foil, which was fastened to the upper side of the ferrotype plate f, to the platinum wire which tips the screw c. it then goes up the screw c, along the brass piece e, which is fastened to the box by screws, as shown in the figure, to the wire g, and so back to the battery by the other wire. the screw c must be therefore screwed down till the platinum wire at its tip is just in contact with the foil on the ferrotype plate. now of course when the current goes round the coil, and thus converts the soft iron into an electro-magnet, the latter instantly attracts the ferrotype plate which is immediately above it. but the latter moving its center near the core, the platinum foil which is attached to it is thereby moved out of contact with the wire on the screw c, and the current is instantly stopped. thereupon the attraction of the magnet ceases, and the ferrotype plate flies back to its former position and so joins the platinum wire and foil, and starts the current again, and the former process is repeated. the ferrotype plate therefore vibrates with tremendous rapidity between the core and the platinum screw. now the vibrating armature of an ordinary coil makes quite a hum when hard at work, but of course a large plate such as this makes a much louder noise, consequently you will hear a ferocious buzzing like an army of millions of bees let loose from a hive, and on screwing the screw c up or down till you get to the correct point you will get a shrill note very like a penny whistle. if screwed up the vibrations are slower, and a deeper note is produced; if screwed down the vibrations are more rapid and a higher note is sounded. therefore you can amuse yourself by screwing it rapidly up and down, or adjusting it by pressing the brass piece with your finger, and a little practice will enable you to bring out a sort of tune produced by electricity! when you have become tired of jingling out your tune you can fix the electric trumpet up in a permanent position, adjusting the wires from the battery so as to pass through an ordinary "press" which may be in another room. the trumpet will then begin buzzing or hooting whenever the button of the press is pushed in, and stop when the pressure is released. in this way of course the trumpet will act as a "call" instead of a bell, and as the double wire can be easily hidden under the carpet and in dark corners, and painted to match whatever wood-work it crosses, you can arrange it from an up-stairs room to a down-stairs one or _vice versa_ with very little trouble. i give an illustration of the method of connecting the battery and trumpet with one switch or "press," to show how to arrange the series. (see fig. .) [illustration: fig. .--method of connecting trumpet to battery and one press.] the trumpet made in the very simple way i have described will not produce a very loud noise, but quite loud enough, if properly put together, to attract a person's attention who was in the room when it went off. the sound can be rendered louder by fixing a cardboard funnel or "cornucopia" to the front of the tooth-powder box to make a kind of horn. part ii. the trumpets sold in the shops, as a rule, make a very loud noise indeed--in fact, a little of it goes a very long way with most people. the increased sound is probably due to the body of the trumpet being composed of brass, which, vibrating in unison with the ferrotype plate, increases the sound. wood will therefore not give so loud a sound, and if you can construct the case of metal you should certainly do so. the vibrations of the plate, and therefore the sound, may also be increased by using a horseshoe magnet, the two poles attracting the plate more strongly. in the bought trumpets the case is shaped like a horn, in which the magnet is placed, the platinum contact-breaker being behind (where it is in the one i have described, supposing there was no bottom to the box and the magnet was supported by a bar across from side to side, the cornucopia being placed on that side of the box, instead of the other, with the magnet inside it). i think it is unnecessary to describe their construction further, as the principle and details of construction of the simple one i have described will apply to any, and any method of structure may be adopted which suits the mind of the maker. the trumpet having been made i will now give you a plan of fitting it up which adds enormously to the effect. we want to hide the trumpet so that no one shall know where it is. my own plan of doing this is as follows: i have made a wooden erection, of which i give a drawing which will explain itself. it consists of a back with a shelf at the bottom and a kind of canopy at the top. it can be made almost any size, small or big, to suit the occupant of the shelf. my own measurements are about as follows: from the top a to the bottom b, the length of back piece, including bracket, foot inches. breadth of back ¼ inches. side of canopy (d), breadth ½ inches, height ½ inches, breadth of front (c to d) ¼ inches; height of course the same as sides. the top piece will then be about ¼ inches by ½ inches. the shelf at the bottom is about the same size as the top of the canopy, and is supported by a bracket of rather thick wood, which you can carve as elaborately as you like. now take the electric trumpet, whether made at home or purchased, and fasten it to the under side of the canopy (this is best done before the sides are put on), and fasten a double wire behind the back (cutting a groove for it to go in) up to the back of the canopy, where it goes through and divides, one wire being fastened to one terminal of the trumpet and the other wire to the other. the double wire goes right down the back and emerges at b. obviously if you now join your press and battery on to the double wire, when you squeeze the press the trumpet will squeak. but here we are going to practice a little innocent deception, and to that end we go to a toy shop and purchase a small and pretty doll of the male sex, and if you can get one (or dress one up) attired as a soldier or trumpeter, by all means do so. the doll is now to be fixed on to the bracket by means of a long wire--say a hairpin bent out straight, one end being pushed into the wood, the other passing up one trouser leg of the doll and into its body; the wire is thus completely hidden and is much better than glue, as it admits of the doll being placed in a natural attitude, and being removed if required. in one of his hands you must make him hold a small trumpet (this is a very expensive item; it will cost two cents) with the mouthpiece to his mouth, as represented in the picture. [illustration: fig. .--electric doll.] the whole thing is now fastened to the wall in a convenient place, by driving nails through the back, and the double wire is completely hidden by passing it behind furniture, books, etc., down to the floor. there is great scope for ingenuity on the part of the worker in hiding the wire, and no definite instructions can possibly be given. in my own case i have no back piece below the shelf the support being against the wall. the wire descends behind the support (to b in the picture), and below that i have hung a "date calendar" over it, it makes a turn to the right and goes down behind a chiffonier covered with books to the floor. under these circumstances no human being could possibly tell that there was a wire at all, and there being no back piece under the bracket (so that the paper of the room can be seen), nothing but the support touching the calendar, it does not look as if any wires could possibly be hidden anywhere. now, if you press the button, of course the trumpet squeaks, but the doll being just underneath it, and the trumpet being in the dark under the canopy, no one thinks it is a separate instrument, but of course every one jumps to the conclusion that it is the doll blowing! hide the battery in a corner in a black box, the wires coming through the side next the wall, and the press in a dark corner, or on the floor under a table so that you can put your foot on it while your hands are free, writing, etc. you can of course now tell the doll to blow, at the same moment putting your foot on the press, when the trumpet blows accordingly. of course this is mysterious to the last degree to the uninitiated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, as you may be any distance off from the doll with your hands free, speaking to him across the room. the wooden erection to hold the doll can be painted any color; preferable the back should be _black_, as it shows off the doll. in front of the canopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. if the doll is one of those extremely pretty little specimens which can be procured at any good toy shop for about twenty-five cents, dressed as base ball players, soldiers, etc, (what our grandmothers would have thought of them in their young days it is difficult to imagine) it will really be quite an ornament to the room, independently of its electrical qualities. this chapter has outgrown the space i meant to occupy, and i must wait for the next to tell you how to make the doll work from various parts of the room as you walk about and talk to him, and how to make the battery. the best battery to use is to _leclanche_. you can use three or four cells of no. size according to length of wire through which the current has to pass. in my next chapter i will try and explain how to make an electric _drum_, so that you can have a kind of drum and fife band. part iii. the electric drum. in part two on the "electric trumpet," i promised to explain how to make an electric drum; and this promise i now propose to redeem. the system on which it works is precisely analogous to that of the electric trumpet, and almost identical with that of the ordinary electric bell, of which i hope to say more in another chapter. as before, we have a hammer vibrating backwards and forwards in response to pulls from a magnet, which is magnetized and demagnetized by stopping and starting an electric current. in the case of the induction coil, the hammer is only a means whereby the current is broken and started again with great rapidity, and in the case of the trumpet the vibrator is used to make the noise by its vibration, but in this instrument we must have a _bona fide_ hammer, which must be able to beat the drum, and thus cause a stirring and martial sound. first, then, we will devote our attention to the construction of the magnet. in former chapters (as in the case of the electro-motor for example), i have given you the method of making the magnets out of one solid piece of soft iron, in the form of a horseshoe. this time, however, we will make it of several pieces, for a change; it is far more convenient to make, and looks much neater when finished. take a piece of soft iron ½ inches long by / inch broad and / inch thick, and in the middle drill a hole about / inch in diameter. on each side of this, on a line with it at a distance of about ¼ inch, drill two more holes of the same size. this is to form the back, or, as it is scientifically termed, the yoke of the magnet. to form the poles we require two exactly similar pieces of soft iron bar ½ inch long and / inch in diameter. these are to be filed quite smooth at the ends after cutting, and in the middle of one end a hole is to be drilled to admit a screw which will just go through the holes on each side of the center one made in the flat piece of the soft iron. these holes are cut to receive the thread of the screw, but if you can't do this you can simply leave out the end holes for screws, and solder the round and flat pieces of iron together. these are to be soldered or screwed together, so as to form a magnet, the hole in the middle of the flat piece serving to introduce a screw, for the purpose of attaching the magnet to a support. the best plan, if you can do it, is to drill and "tap" this hole to receive a screw which is inserted in a brass support made of a piece of brass / inch, long ½ inch broad, and / inch thick, bent at right angles at about ½ inch from one end, this shortest end being drilled for two screws to fasten it to the base-board, while the longest end has a hole in the center about / inch from the end, to admit the screw which fits the hole in the center of the yoke. having done all this, you will have fig. , which represents the magnet before it is wound. [illustration: fig. .--magnet put together ready for winding. (sectional diagram.)] the soft iron cores have now to be converted into magnets as usual, and here comes in the especial advantages of having screws to fasten the magnet together, as you can take the whole thing to bits, wind the wire on the legs in comfort, and then fasten together again. but if you have soldered the magnet together, you can achieve the same end in a different way by making two small bobbins to hold the wire, the exact size to slip on over the soft iron cores when the wire is wound on them. it is generally considered proper to wind the wire on bobbins, which can be removed from the cores if required. i should think it can seldom be required, but the bobbins are convenient in this case. i may remark parenthetically that bobbins wound and unwound, soft iron cores, and yokes, separately or together, and supports fixed to the yokes or not, can be obtained from any large electrician who sells parts of electric bells, etc.; the magnet can also be got put together complete. we now have to make bobbins, supposing that we are not going to buy them. the elaborateness of their manufacture will depend entirely on the skill of the maker. some construct them by sawing off top and bottom of a reel of cotton, and forming a roller of cardboard to fit the magnets, finally joining the ends of the reel to this roller, to make an elongated reel of the right size. others construct their bobbins entirely of cardboard, the ends being merely two circles of card. others who are versed in the mysteries of wood-turning, and are lucky enough to possess a lathe with which to do it, make two bobbins of solid wood, drilled to fit the iron cores. for these no instructions are needed, as the dimensions will be as given presently. for those who only want to use the magnet for this special purpose, and do not care about the bobbins being removable, the following is the simplest way to set to work: [illustration: fig. .--magnet wound and put together.] cut two circles of thick cardboard, each / inch in diameter, and in the center cut a hole the exact size to slip over the soft iron core. now wrap several thicknesses of thin tissue paper--or preferably french note paper or tracing paper--over the magnet, between the circles of cardboard, cutting the strip about / inch broad or / inch less than the length of the cores. now you can fasten the two circles of cardboard at the ends of the tracing paper, and keep them in their proper places on the magnet by means of mucilage--beat the soft iron before applying, and it will then adhere firmly to it. in this way, of course, you form a roller, on which we now have to wind the wire. if you have soldered the magnet's parts together, you must have movable bobbins, as it would be simply impossible to wind the wire evenly on the cores when fixed in position, as the edges of the bobbins will be so close together that it is not possible to wind the wire on between them without the coils becoming displaced. the method of winding the wire is simple enough. no. wire is a good size to use; it can be cotton-covered or, preferably, silk-covered, as in the latter case the insulation is better. begin by making a hole near the roller in the circle of cardboard that is next to the end where the hole for the screw has been made. pass about three inches of wire through the hole and then wind it evenly on over the tracing paper from end to end and back again. you ought to have five or six layers of it; an ounce, or an ounce and a half, of wire will probably be enough. when it is all on, make another hole in the disc and pass out the wire. this is only to hold it safe while you wind the other bobbin. when that is finished you can put the magnet together, and ends of the two wires have now to be joined together. the two ends that are joined together must be those which come from the wire that is wound from the right to the left over one core and left to right over the other, that is to say, taking the wire when joined as one, it must be so wound on both limbs of the magnet that if they were bent into one straight bar it would all be wound in the same direction. [illustration: fig. .--shape of spring for armature.] with a composite magnet, however, there is no earthly difficulty in getting it right, for you have only to connect the battery to two wires and join the other two, and if they don't make the magnet work, join up one to the battery instead of one of those joined, and connect the other two wires; whichever gives the best result stick to. you must get all the silk or cotton off the wire, where you join them, and twist them over and over tightly together; if you can solder them, so much the better. pull the wire tight and wind it on the reels until the place where it is joined is pulled tightly and not left in a loop, which would look untidy. fig. gives an idea of the magnet completed, and i have endeavored by means of the arrows to show how the wire is wound, they are supposed to give the direction of the top layer of wire in each case; of course either may be wound from the inside, so you must also consider that in this picture the outside coils are joined. the magnet having been thus constructed, we must now turn our attention to the vibrating hammer which is to beat the drum. to make this we want another piece of soft iron of about the same size as that forming the yoke of the magnet, say, / inch × ½ inch × / inch. we shall then require a piece of brass spring about three inches long and half an inch broad. this is made of very thin springy brass, so as to make a spring which will move the armature quickly. one end of the spring should be tapered off as shown in fig. , and at the point p in the figure a small piece of platinum foil (the real thing, not tin-foil, which i am sure is often sold in cheap apparatus instead of it,) should be fastened, by solder if possible. [illustration: fig. .--drum hammer put together.] we now want a piece of rather stout brass wire bent into the shape shown in fig. . it must be about four inches long, but its length will be determined by the size of the drum and the length of the magnet when it is all put together. at the end of this wire you must have a wooden knob (not brass, which doesn't produce nearly so much noise). this you will have provided ready for you if you purchase the drum, as they will naturally supply drumsticks with it, and the head of one of these cut off and fastened to the end of the wire, by simply making a hole and sticking it in, will answer the purpose beautifully. this wire has to be fastened to the soft iron armature, a simple way of doing which is to drill a hole the exact size and insert the end; it can then be soldered in. or, if you cannot drill a hole, you can simply solder it on. the brass spring has the end bent outwards, as shown in fig. , and is fastened to the soft iron armature by screws, as shown in the figure at s s, or simply soldered on. the point c is the end that is tapered off, and the platinum wire is fixed at that point; the spring should extend about ¼ inch beyond the armature at the other end. two holes are drilled in the spring at the points h h, through which screws are passed into the support. this support may be either a piece of iron ½ inch long, ¾ inch broad and ¾ inch thick, or a piece of wood will answer very well, and save drilling holes in the iron. if it is wood it had better be larger, say ¾ inch by ¾ inch by ¼ inch. part iv. we can now proceed to fasten all the parts together. we must have a piece of hard wood for the base, about ½ inches by inches and / inch thick. on this the magnet has to be fastened by its support being screwed firmly down. in front of it the armature has to be fastened at such a height as to be exactly in front of the poles of the magnet. the relative positions of the parts are shown in fig. , so i do not think a detailed account of their exact positions on the base is at all necessary. there is, however, one piece of the mechanism in the figure to which i have introduced you, this is the contact-screw shown at c. to make this we take a piece of brass about ½ inch long, ½ inch broad, and rather less than / inch thick, and bend it at right angles, so that one leg is one inch long and the other ½ inch. now in the part that is ½ inch have to be drilled three holes to fasten it with nails or screws to the base. the other part, one inch long, will then stand erect, but before fastening it in its place we put it to stand in front of the magnet and mark a point which is exactly on a level with the piece of platinum foil on the spring, when the spring and magnet are fixed in position. a hole has now to be drilled through that point and tapped to admit a brass screw with a milled head, and fix the piece in which the screw works to the front hole, so that the screw will work through it. [illustration: fig. .--interior mechanism of drum complete.] the point of the screw has now to be cut off and a very small piece of platinum wire fixed at the end. this wire will now come in contact with the platinum foil on the spring, when the brass support is fixed in a certain position on the base, and it is now to be fixed in that position with screws or nails. it should be so fixed that when the screw is turned till it is nearly out of its hole the wire is just out of contact with the platinum foil on the spring. it is now evident that by turning the screw one way you make the spring vibrate more rapidly, and by turning it the other way its efforts are relaxed. the contact-breaker screw having been fixed in its place, and the support of the spring also fixed as at t in the diagram (fig. )--by screws through the base into the iron, if it is made of iron, or by nails or screws through it into the base if of wood--all the parts are now together, and all that remains to be done is to make the necessary connections. one wire that comes from the magnet is to be joined (soldered, if possible,) to the spring at h in the picture; the other wire is left loose. to the brass support of the contact screw we solder another piece of wire. now this piece of wire is connected with the zinc of the battery and the other (coming from the coil of the magnet) with the carbon of the battery. what happens? the electricity passes along the wire x, we will say, and round the magnet coils, thus turning the cores into magnets. it then goes down the other wire to h, up the brass spring, along the screw, and down by the brass support to the other wire, by which it returns to the battery. that is to say, it _would_ do all this if the armature stood still, but, of course, when the cores become magnets they attract the armature, which instantly moves towards them; this breaks the circuit, the spring moving off the platinum point of the screw, and the armature springs back again, which makes the circuit complete and the magnet attracts it again, and so on. the object of the spring is to get a good deal of vibration, and it and the screw should be so adjusted that although the armature is close enough to the magnet to make it certain to "go off" directly it is meant to do so, yet there may be as much scope for the spring to work with elasticity as possible. we have now completed the electrical part of the business, but a slightly necessary part of the apparatus has yet to be obtained--viz., the drum. you can easily make a drum if you like, by taking a broad piece of tin, twisting it round to form a hoop, and covering the ends with parchment strained tightly over them. however, i should certainly not do so, for there can hardly be any spot, i should think, which boasts of a toy-shop at all, where drums cannot be procured! for twenty-five cents you can get a very superior drum, just about the right size; if you like to get a bigger one and make the mechanical part bigger, you will, of course, be rewarded by more noise. now, suppose you have got a -cent toy-drum, you must proceed to take off one end. if you look at the construction of the drum you will find (at least it is the case with my own, and i have not seen any that are differently made) that by cutting one of the double strings that fasten the wood hoops at the top and bottom together, and then loosening all the other strings with your fingers, the wooden hoop at one end will come right off, if the nails fastening the ends together are taken out, and that then the inner hoop on which the parchment is stretched will also come off and leave that side of the drum open. now, this is simply grand for our purpose, for when we have arranged our little dodges inside the drum, we can put on all the hoops again, replace the one double string, and no one will be an atom the wiser. if you could get off the side without breaking any strings it would save the trouble of replacing any, but i am afraid this is hardly possible. however, off comes the side of our drum, and what is to be done next? well, the "beater" must be put bodily inside the drum, just so close to the parchment side that was taken off that the wooden head of the drumstick touches it when attracted by the magnet. you can easily find the right place in actual practice by setting the beater going and finding the spot inside the drum where it kicks up the worst racket when working. it must not be too close or it will hinder the vibration, and we want the hammer to go off instanter when required. the beater is fixed to the side of the drum with its side marked z in the figure ( ) downwards. it is easily fastened there by making two holes in the wood (in the thickness of it), and two corresponding holes in the metal side of the drum, and then screwing it down in its proper place. two holes are to be made in the side of the drum and two ornamental bits of silk-covered flexible copper conductor let through. they can be secured by simply tying knots inside the drum, and the copper ends are now to be fastened, one to the wire x and the other to the wire k from the contact screw support. having done all this and made sure that the beater works when the ends of the flexible cord outside the drum are connected with the battery, we seal up our drum again, and that is then concluded. now as to fixing it up, i think i may fairly assume that you know how to make it work by an ordinary battery and a "press." it is only necessary to run a double wire from battery to press and from press to drum, one wire of the double conductor being fastened to the carbon end of the battery and the other to the zinc end, and the other end of one wire to one of the wires coming from the drum. the other wire coming from the drum is then joined to the bottom conductor of the press, and the upper conductor of the press is joined to the other wire of the double conductor that goes to the battery. it is all very easy to understand if you follow the course of the current and consider that it has to pass through the drum and the press when the latter is pushed down, and be stopped when it is left to spring up again. but the more magical arrangement can be made with the drum, and i think it is well worth while to do it, if merely for the fun of mystifying people. the drum is going to be suspended by the flexible cords; therefore, let them be the same length, and cutting off all the coverings at the end of each, fasten a brass "eye" to the copper, twisting the wire well round the bottom of the eye. now wind silk of the same color as the rest all round the join, so that the connection of wire and eye is completely hidden, and the eye appears merely fastened to the flexible cord as a means of suspending the drum. now we want to construct a hook from which the drum can be hung. part v. take two small pieces of brass wire about an inch long, and turn up the ends of each into a hook. now get a minute piece of ebonite of the same length, and, putting one hook on one side and one on the other, bind the whole together with silk. if you cannot get ebonite easily you can use a small piece of sealing-wax in the same way; by heating the wires you can sink them into the wax and so make a neater join. now the wires must not touch each other anywhere, but must be completely separated by the ebonite or sealing-wax. the double wire from the battery and press is now fastened, one wire to the press hook on one side, and one wire to that on the other side of the sealing-wax or ebonite. wind silk over the whole to cover the joins, and a neat double hook is the result. the picture (fig. ) gives the method of making the hook, and it also gives a great deal more, which i now proceed to explain. supposing we can rig up a small beam of wood from which to suspend the drum, we can make matters more mysterious still. let the double wire, being hidden by some means or other all along its course, be conducted on to the end of the beam. it can then be trained along the top of it until it comes to the point from which the drum is to hang. here there must be a hole drilled, large enough to admit the hook rather tightly. pull the double wire through and fasten the two wires to the hooks as before described. [illustration: fig. .--hook from which to suspend the magic drum.] now you can pull back the wire and fix the hook firmly in the hole, hiding the double wire at the top of the beam (of course if it is high up no one will be able to see over the top of the beam, so you will be quite safe); the hook being thus fixed will not attract any one's notice, and look quite unsuspicious. the chief glory of the double hook thus constructed is, of course, that you can remove the drum whenever you choose, for examination, and whenever you hang it up you have only to hitch one eye over one side of the hook and the other over the other side, and the drum will work. people who are not up in the matter cannot conceive how the electricity can get to the drum, when it is simply hung by an (apparently) ordinary cord and ordinary eyes to what looks like an ordinary hook attached to a beam in a plain and straightforward manner. you are now possessed of an electric trumpet and an electric drum, which you can put one at one end of the room and the other at the other. by running double wires from battery and press to the trumpet, and another double wire from battery and press to the drum, you can arrange matters so that when you put one press down the trumpet works, and when the other press is put down the drum works. if you want to work both together you must either have a very powerful battery (say or cells, no. lechlanche) or two batteries, one for trumpet and one for drum. if you want to use one battery for both you can make either work (at different times) from the same battery and presses, wherever they may be, by having a two-way switch in a dark corner of the wire. [illustration: fig. .--method of joining switch drum and trumpet to press and battery.] it is very confusing business setting up the wires so as to produce the right effect, which is to change the current from drum to trumpet and _vice versa_ in a moment by merely altering the handle of the switch. readers who are not accustomed to the work will find it most intricate, and as i have done it myself several times, they may as well have the benefit of my trouble. i therefore give an illustration of how to connect up the wires (fig. ), and hope it will make matters clear to them. an explanation of the picture is necessary. suppose first of all that the switch is at a c, then the current will travel from the right-hand end of the battery, b, up one wire of the double conductor to the press, p, as shown by the lower arrow, through the press and along the wire, as shown by the top arrow, to the middle of the switch, a, down the arm of the switch to c, up one wire of the double conductor to the drum, and down by the other wire to the other end of the battery. now let the handle of the switch be moved to the other terminal, as shown by the dotted lines. the current will now go from the right-hand end of the battery to press and center of switch as before, it then goes down the arm of the switch up to the trumpet by the wire on the left side, and down to the other end of the battery by the wire on the right side, as shown by the arrows. therefore when the arm of the switch is at a c the press will work the drum; when it is at a g the press will work the trumpet. suppose we have no press, but instead of it we have only one wire going straight from the right-hand end of the battery to the middle of the switch. now let two incandescent lamps be substituted for the trumpet and drum. when the arm of the switch is at a c the current goes straight up from the right-hand pole of the battery to the center of the switch, along the arm, up to the lamp on the left-hand side, and down to the other pole of the battery. now, suppose the arm of the switch is moved to a g, the current will go up as before to the center of the switch, down by the arm, up the wire to the lamp on the right-hand side, and back to the battery by the other wire. in the first case, therefore, the lamp at d lights up, in the second case the lamp at t lights up. the wires from c to d and g to t may be as long as you please, you can therefore control the lamps when they are far apart or in different parts of the house. when the arm of the switch is central neither lamp lights up, or, if you are fitting up the trumpet and drum, the press will not work either when the switch is in this position. this is an advantage, as when people get too inquisitive you can turn off the current, and then whatever they do they will not make the trumpet or drum work till you turn it on again, which you can do when you want them to work for you! the construction of the switch is so simple that it is hardly necessary to explain the method of joining the wires, but i may say that one is to be joined to the bottom of the brass pillar in the center which supports the brass arm. the others are joined to the right and left terminals, generally by brass screws under the base, but sometimes by screw terminals at the upper surface; this depends on the make of switch which is purchased. ingenious readers can easily make a switch for themselves; it only requires a brass arm attached at one end to a central figure, and long enough to touch two screws, or pieces of brass, fixed to the base on opposite sides of it, when turned in their direction. the end of the arm not supported by the brass pillar is provided with a small wooden handle to turn it by. the switch should be arranged to occupy some dark corner in which you can turn on drum or trumpet to work from the "presses" at will without any one seeing you alter it. i will only add one thing in conclusion, and that is, that you can have the double wire from the battery and center of switch to the press at the end as long as you like, and it can turn about behind furniture or under the carpet as much as you like, and it will still work instantly from the end press. now, by scraping the wire clean at any intermediate point, or as many points as you like, and arranging a simple spring contact fastened to the wires without breaking them so that they can be made to touch when required and spring apart directly the touch is removed (this is easily done with two springs consisting of two strips of sheet brass, one fastened to one wire and one to the other, separated by a piece of wood except at the end when pressed together), you can make the trumpet squeak or the drum roll at any part of the room you like. the springs can be hidden under the carpet so as to be absolutely undiscernible except to the initiated. the best places are under furniture with rather long legs; the foot of the operator can then be placed on the springs, and so make them meet and the trumpet or drum sound without the least chance of detection. the wires not being broken in fixing the springs as described, those springs which are closer to the battery, in no way interfere with those which are further off, as, when these are used, the current simply runs round those that intervene between them and the battery, without being in any way hindered in its course, and the press at the end of the double wire will, therefore, work just as if no intermediate springs existed. simple electrical experiments. frictional electricity is pre-eminently a winter amusement. not that it is not equally possible to produce the same result in summer, but then other occupations are forced upon us, while in the long winter evenings, with a good fire to dry the air of the sitting-room, the conditions are particularly favorable to electrical phenomena. if a hard frost sets in the conditions will be still more favorable, as this dries the air and the ground outside, while on a wet evening a large fire and warmer room will be needed to produce as good results. [illustration: fig. .--electric windmill or tourniquet.] the following experiments are given as a means of amusement to those who know little or nothing of electrical phenomena. some of them may be recognized by some readers as being standard experiments, others may possess the charm of novelty. to many, however, the whole series will be new, and it is hoped that these will find a new source of interest opened to them, and that they may possibly be impelled thereby to investigate further concerning the causes of what they see. frictional electrical machines can be purchased from any electrical instrument makers, at a small price, and with these experiments mentioned are more readily performed. in this article i only mention experiments that can be performed with materials to be found in every house, or the necessaries for which can be procured from a shop for a nominal sum. friction between two substances of any sort probably always produces electricity; but it can only be made visible under certain circumstances. for instance, if a stick of sealing-wax is warmed and rubbed with a piece of flannel also warm, they both become electrified. this may be proved by holding the wax near an electrometer, which is simply a bottle through the cork of which a wire is passed which has two pieces of gold leaf fastened to its extremity, when the leaves at once diverge owing to the repelling force of the electricity. the flannel is also electrified, but the electricity soon escapes, through the hand of the operator to the ground. we now proceed to make a simple experiment on the production of electricity on a larger scale. take a piece of stout brown paper and hold it in front of a hot fire till all the moisture inherent in it is expelled, and the paper is dry and quite hot. now take it away suddenly, and holding it against the side of the coat rub it briskly with the sleeve by holding the sleeve in the hand. take it away and hold it against the wall of the room, to which it will instantly adhere firmly, this adherence being caused by the development of electricity over the surface of the brown paper by the friction it has undergone. the paper can be removed from the wall, and on holding it at a short distance will fly towards it and adhere again. in a short time, however, the electricity departs, and the paper falls to the ground. if the hand is spread open upon the paper as it sticks, the electricity departs at once and the paper falls. a spark can be obtained from the paper, but it is hardly strong enough to be visible. in the next experiment, however, it is plainly to be seen. take an ordinary tea-tray and place it on the top of four glass tumblers, which must have previously been made quite hot and dry at the fire. they must also be scrupulously clean, as dirt is a good conductor of electricity. now take a sheet of foolscap paper, and heat it strongly at the fire until perfectly dry, as the brown paper was. place it while hot flat on the table and rub it from side to side, from the top to the bottom, with a piece of thick india-rubber. it will now adhere firmly to the table on account of the electricity developed. take hold of two corners, pull it up, and quickly place it on the tray. on approaching the knuckle of your closed hand to the edge of the tray you will now obtain a brilliant spark, which, if the room is dark, will appear vivid. on removing the paper from the tray, and again approaching the knuckle, another spark will pass, but not so bright as the former. the experiment can be repeated as often as wished by heating and rubbing the paper again. now take four more tumblers, heat them as before, and place them on the floor with a board on the top of them. let someone stand on this board, taking care that he is completely separated from all surrounding objects of furniture, etc., and that his clothes do not touch the table while the experiment is performed. let him place his hand on the tray while the paper is heated, rubbed, and placed thereon. he will then become charged with electricity, and if he approaches his hand to any one else's a spark will pass between them. (this should not be done with susceptible parts of the body, the eyes for example, as it would be rather painful.) let some one be provided with a spoon in which a little methylated spirit is heated; if the charged person holds his knuckle to this spirit it will instantly be ignited. small pieces of paper--comic paper figures, etc.--will dance up and down briskly if he holds his hand outspread over them while lying on the table. the same thing will happen if the pieces of paper are placed between the tray and the table when the former is charged by the hot paper, or if the brown paper in the first experiment is held above them when excited. now take a needle and place it on the tray, its point projecting over the edge. if the room is now darkened, on placing the excited paper on the tray, the point of the needle will be seen to glow brilliantly for some seconds. this is caused by the electricity escaping into the air from the point of the needle, and is known as the "brush discharge." the tray will consequently speedily lose its electricity. it will be found to be impossible to get a spark from the tray as long as the needle is on it, as the electricity vastly prefers to escape by the point. the escape of the electricity may be rendered still more evident by means of the following piece of apparatus. take two pieces of thin wire about two inches long, and bend each at right angles about an eighth of an inch from each end, both the bent portions being in the same direction. these two pieces of wire are now to be joined together at the middle at right angles by means of a piece of finer wire twisted around them. this finer wire can, with a little care, be caused to form a small cap, in which the point of a needle is inserted, the needle acting as a pivot, so that the bent wires turn freely on top of it (fig. ). the needle is supported by thrusting it into a large cork to act as a stand. a fine wire is then twisted several times around the bottom of the needle, and the whole apparatus is then placed on the tray, the end of the wire attached to the needle being carefully arranged so as to touch the tray, a metallic connection with the tray being essential to success. if the needle can be soldered to a metal stand, or the cork covered with tinfoil, the wire is not needed. on rubbing the paper and placing it on the tray, the electricity passes up the wire into the needle, thence into the wire cross, and escapes by the bent portions of the wires, each of which should be filed to a point. in escaping it electrifies the surrounding air, and this, according to the law that "like electricities repel each other," has a reacting force on the wire arms. accordingly the windmill begins to turn, and may attain a tolerable rate of speed if the tray is strongly charged. another amusing experiment is that known as the "electrical head of hair." the head of a wooden doll is taken, and either provided with a real head of hair, which must be combed out straight, or a quantity of cotton is fastened to it to resemble hair. if the head is fastened to a metal stand, and placed on the tray when the excited paper is laid upon it, the hairs become charged, and consequently repel each other, causing the whole head of hair to stand erect, each hair separate from the rest, thus presenting a most remarkable appearance. for the same reason, if a heap of small pieces of paper, feathers, etc., is laid on the tray, on placing upon it the electrified paper they will jump off in all directions, each being repelled by the others, in the same way as the gold leaves of the electroscope were repelled in the first experiment. if two pieces of pith are suspended by silk threads to a support, so as to hang close to each other, on bringing near them the electrified wax or tray they will be charged and will repel each other for some time. if when charged by the wax a heated glass rod rubbed with silk is brought near to them, they will fly to it, instead of retreating. this seems to indicate a difference between the electricities of the wax and the glass, the former of which has therefore been called negative, and the latter positive. for giving stronger shocks than the tray is capable of, we may have recourse to the apparatus known as the leyden jar, which may be easily charged by means of the tray and excited paper. a leyden jar is thus easily and cheaply constructed: take an ordinary wide-mouthed pickle bottle and a cork to fit it. cover the outside with tinfoil, which can be fastened on with gum, and should be laid on as smoothly and as free from creases as possible. tinfoil can be procured from any chemist. the outside being finished, the inside has to be covered also, which is a work of greater difficulty. it can best be performed by cutting another piece not quite so large as that on the outside of the bottle but of the same shape, and passing into the bottle without creasing it more than can be helped, it can be arranged inside the bottle so as to fit smoothly all round. now a piece of brass wire is to be passed through the cork, at the end of which is a brass knob, or if simply bent round it will work, though the knob is neater. at the end of the wire which is inside the bottle a brass chain is fastened so as to touch the tinfoil inside the bottle when the cork is inserted. the tinfoil inside and outside the bottle must only reach to the bottom of the neck, leaving a space between it and the cork. the leyden jar is now complete, and must be thoroughly warmed before charging it. when quite hot it can be charged by bringing the knob (the jar being held by the outer coating of tinfoil) near the tray, when the excited paper is laid upon it. a spark will pass between the tray and the knob, and this must be repeated several times (say twenty for a first experiment), the jar being charged more fully the more sparks are put into it. any one now taking the jar in one hand by the outer coating and placing a finger of the other hand near the knob will receive a shock, the severity of which depends on the number of sparks put into the jar. several people can take the shock by joining hands, the outside one on one side holding the jar, and the outside one on the other side touching the knob. those in the middle will not feel the shock quite so strongly as those on the outside. [illustration: fig. .--bells chimed by a leyden jar.] this is an example of the "quick discharge" of a leyden jar. it can, however, also be discharged slowly, and the following experiment makes use of this faculty. take three small bells, which can be procured at any toy shop, and remove the clappers. now suspend two of them by wires at opposite ends of a piece of metal or stout wire about three inches long, and suspend this wire in the center by a bent wire (or wooden, if covered with tinfoil) support, which is fixed to a thick piece of board, covered with tinfoil, to act as a base. the tinfoil must be in communication with the supporting wire, and the height of the bells must be so adjusted that when the leyden jar is placed between them with the third bell supported on the knob (the support of the clapper will have to be removed from the bell for this purpose), all three bells will be of equal heights and about half an inch distant from each other. (the diagram fig. will explain the arrangement.) now suspend two small brass buttons by silk threads so as to hang between the bells when the leyden jar is placed in the center. charge the jar with the tray and replace it in position (of course with the bell on the top); the buttons will then begin to move backwards and forwards between the bells, and the latter will keep up a vigorous chiming until the electricity of the jar is exhausted. in this experiment it is essential that the supports be of metal, or wood covered with tinfoil, as the electricity passes from the inside of the jar to the outside while it is standing upon the tinfoil, by means of the balls, and thus causes them to vibrate. a candle which has just been blown out, leaving the wick glowing, can easily be lighted by means of the charged leyden jar if a piece of bent wire is held touching the outer coating and the other end on one side of the wick while the knob is approached to the other, so that the spark passes through the glowing wick. in the same way spirits of wine can be lighted, and gunpowder, guncotton, etc., exploded. to do this, it is best to have two pieces of bent wire provided with handles of glass at the middle. these wires are held by the handles, one in contact with the outer coating, and the other with the inner coating, of the charged leyden jar. on approaching the other two ends of the wires a spark passes between them, and if a small quantity of gunpowder is placed on a table and the spark is made to pass through it by approaching the wire to either side it will be fired. there are many other experiments which can be performed by the help of the simple apparatus described, but it would take up too much space to describe them. 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publisher=, = union square=, =new york=. * * * * * * transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. some changes have been made. they are listed at the end of the text. in the original book fractions > were printed in the form - . this has been changed to the form - / . fourths and halves are represented as ¼ etc. in the chapter "how to make an induction coil," a section heading "part i." was removed as there is no "part ii." the following is a list of changes made to the original. the first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. page : it this can be done over night, if this can be done over night, and the coil left to get cold as the the fire goes out, and the coil left to get cold as the fire goes out, page : so as to leave about ¼ of an inch of the core projectiug from it, so as to leave about ¼ of an inch of the core projecting from it, page : unless you are skilled in the use of the soldiering bit. unless you are skilled in the use of the soldering bit. page : twenty-five cents, plantinum being a very expensive substance. twenty-five cents, platinum being a very expensive substance. the strip of brass supporting the strew being connected by a wire the strip of brass supporting the screw being connected by a wire page : below these places narrow strips of wood to keep them apart below these place narrow strips of wood to keep them apart page : is filled with "_suturated_" solution of sulphate of copper is filled with "_saturated_" solution of sulphate of copper page : shock to any one who holds two handles fixed to his terminals. shock to any one who holds two handles fixed to its terminals. page : deal ½ inches long ay ½ inches broad by / inch thick. deal ½ inches long by ½ inches broad by / inch thick. page : by filling four small notches in the soft iron of the armuatre by filing four small notches in the soft iron of the armature page : to do this we shall wants two supports for the axle. these to do this we shall want two supports for the axle. these page : the base and loined to the under part of these binding-screws. the base and joined to the under part of these binding-screws. page : for the current to get round the magnet in sufficicent quantity for the current to get round the magnet in sufficient quantity page : these are all made she same size, and consequently it is unnecessary these are all made the same size, and consequently it is unnecessary page : the following is as good away of arranging it as any: the following is as good a way of arranging it as any: page : to the uninitated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, to the uninitiated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, in front of the conopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. in front of the canopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. what our grandmothers would have though of them in their young days what our grandmothers would have thought of them in their young days page : c, bras support for magnet. c, brass support for magnet. and here comes in the especal advantages of having screws and here comes in the especial advantages of having screws page : taking the wire when joined as one,-it must be so wound taking the wire when joined as one, it must be so wound page : is pulled tightly and left in a loop, which would look untidy. is pulled tightly and not left in a loop, which would look untidy. page : you will, of course, be rewerded by more noise. you will, of course, be rewarded by more noise. page : now we want to construct a hook ro which the drum can be hung. now we want to construct a hook from which the drum can be hung. page : suppose we have no press. but instead of it we have only one wire suppose we have no press, but instead of it we have only one wire when the arm of the switch is at a c the currrent goes straight up when the arm of the switch is at a c the current goes straight up page : this adherence peing caused by the development of electricity this adherence being caused by the development of electricity this should not be done with suspectible parts of the body, this should not be done with susceptible parts of the body, page : it will we found to be impossible to get a spark from the tray it will be found to be impossible to get a spark from the tray bend each at right angles about an eight of an inch from each end, bend each at right angles about an eighth of an inch from each end, page : will then begin to move backwards and forwards betweens the bells, will then begin to move backwards and forwards between the bells, the tinfoil, by means of the balls, and thus causes them to vibrate. the tinfoil, by means of the bells, and thus causes them to vibrate. copyright (c) by lidija rangelovska. please see the corresponding rtf file for this ebook. rtf is rich text format, and is readable in nearly any modern word processing program. [illustration: h.m.s. agamemnon entering valentia bay with first atlantic cable. _frontispiece._] the story of the atlantic cable by charles bright f. r. s. e., a. m. inst. c. e., m. i. e. e. author of submarine telegraphs, science and engineering during the victorian era, the evolution of the electric telegraph, - , the life story of sir charles tilston bright _with fifty-four illustrations_ new york d. appleton and company copyright, , by d. appleton and company _published november, _ prefatory note the jubilee of submarine telegraphy having lately been achieved, and that connected with the atlantic cable being somewhat close at hand, it has been thought a suitable moment for the appearance of this little volume. in these days when the substitution of submarine cables by wireless telegraphy systems is a subject of common talk, it may be well to pause for a moment and contemplate the period of time covered by the gradual evolution of old and existing methods which at length achieved the result we now enjoy--a practical commercial telegraphic system between all the nations of the world, and notably between the united kingdom and america. by a somewhat curious coincidence the engineer of the first atlantic cable accomplished his achievement at practically the same youthful age (twenty-six) as mr. marconi when first transmitting signals across the atlantic without any intervening wires. c. b. old queen street, westminster, s. w., _october, _. contents _part i_ page introductory _part ii_ the pioneer line chap. i. evolution of atlantic telegraphy in america and england ii. the manufacture of the line iii. the first start iv. preparations for another attempt v. the trial trip vi. the storm vii. the renewed effort viii. "finis coronat opus" ix. the celebration x. working the line xi. the inquest _part iii_ intermediate knowledge and advance xii. other proposed routes xiii. experience, investigation, and progress _part iv_ commercial success xiv. the cable and expedition xv. second and successful attempt xvi. recovery and completion of the cable xvii. jubilations xviii. subsequent atlantic lines xix. atlantic cable systems of to-day list of illustrations h.m.s. agamemnon entering valentia bay with first atlantic cable _frontispiece_ fig. page . newfoundland telegraph station, . the brooke "sounder" . specimen of the ocean bed . john watkins brett, charles tilston bright, cyrus west field--projectors . manufacture of the core . serving the core with hemp-yarn . applying the iron sheathing . the deep-sea cable . the shore-end cable . coiling the finished cable into the factory tanks . u.s.n.s. niagara . the paying-out machine, . coiling the cable on board . landing the irish end of the cable . reshipment of the cable aboard h.m.s. agamemnon and u.s.n.s. niagara in keyham basin . the self-releasing brake . the principle of the brake . bright's paying-out gear, . the reflecting magnet . reflecting galvanometer and speaker . principle of the reflecting instrument . deck of h.m.s. agamemnon with paying-out apparatus . stowage of the cable coil on the niagara . the loading of the agamemnon . experimental maneuvers in the bay of biscay . h.m.s. agamemnon in a storm . the agamemnon storm: coals adrift . in collision with a whale while cable-laying . landing the american end . newfoundland telegraph station, . facsimile of the first public news message received through the atlantic cable . the north atlantic telegraph project, . the north atlantic exploring expedition, . the main cable, -' . the great eastern at sea . cable and machinery aboard s.s. great eastern . the picking-up machine, . buoys, grapnels, mushrooms--and men . "foul in tank" while paying-out . s.s. great eastern completing the second atlantic cable . diagram illustrative of the final tactics adopted for picking up the cable . s.s. great eastern with cable at bows . anglo-american atlantic cable ( ): deep-sea type . shore-end of the "anglo" cable . atlantic cable systems, part i introductory the electric telegraph--first land telegraphs--first submarine cables: dover to calais, -' --other early cables: england to ireland, , etc. _the electric telegraph._--the advances made in electric science are so bold and rapid that our still comparative ignorance of the precise nature of electricity must always seem strange. we are not, however, here directly concerned with electricity as a physical science, but rather with its practical applications to the still present system of telegraphy, by way of introduction to the gradual development of trans-atlantic telegraphy. the electric telegraph, together with the railway-train and the steamship, constitute the three most conspicuous features of latter-day civilization. indeed, it may be truly said that the harnessing of this force of nature (electricity) to the service of man for human intercourse has effected a change in political, commercial, and social relations, even more complete than that wrought by steam locomotion. like its fellow emblems, the telegraph was the outcome of many years of persevering effort on the part of numerous scientific investigators and inventors; like them also, it was perfected for practical use on both sides of the atlantic by men of our own race and speech, such as cooke, wheatstone, and morse. _the first land telegraphs._--the first practical telegraph-line in the world--namely, that on the great western railway from paddington to west drayton, shortly afterward extended to slough--was within the year of queen victoria's accession to the throne, and in the same year as the first trunk line of railway and the first ocean steamer.[ ] improvements and novelties in telegraphic instruments were rapidly made by inventors from all the civilized nations--e. g., morse, vail, and henry in america; breguet in france; steinheil and siemens & halske in germany; and schilling in russia; besides alexander bain, bright, and hughes in england. commercial interests were soon formed to work the new invention, and in england the electric and international telegraph company, the british and irish magnetic telegraph company, and other large concerns were the means of establishing telegraphic communication throughout the kingdom--only to be absorbed by government later on. our theme does not include--even in the course of introduction--a study of the development of land telegraphy. the apparatus and methods employed are, to a great extent, entirely different; indeed, the only point in common between the cardinal principles and submarine telegraphy is that electricity, as generated by a voltaic battery, is the common agent, and consequently the metal conducting-wire is employed in both.[ ] but in subaqueous (as well as in subterranean) telegraphy the poles and porcelain insulators require to be substituted by an insulating covering round the entire conductor; and the point of contact in practise between land and marine telegraphy is really, therefore, in the matter of insulation for subterranean or subaqueous wires. _first submarine cables._--a spaniard named salva appears to have suggested the feasibility of submarine telegraphy as far back as , and in sommering and schilling conducted a series of experiments, more or less practical, when a soluble material--said to have been india-rubber--was first used for insulating the wire. but the earliest records of practical telegraphy under water of which there are any particulars relate to the experiments conducted by dr. o'shaughnessy (afterward sir william o'shaughnessy brooke, f.r.s.) across the river hugli on behalf of the east indian company in .[ ] referring to his practical researches a little later, o'shaughnessy remarked: "insulation, according to my experiments, is best accomplished by enclosing the wire (previously pitched) in a split rattan, and then paying the rattan round with tarred yarn; or the wire may--as in some experiments by colonel pasley, r.e., at chatham--be surrounded by strands of tarred rope, and this by pitched yarn. an insulated rope of this kind may be spread across a wet field--nay, even led through a river--and will still conduct the electrical signals, without any appreciable loss." in professor wheatstone (afterward sir charles wheatstone, f.r.s.) explained to a committee of the house of commons the methods by which he thought it possible to establish telegraphic communication between dover and calais. he appears to have been unaware of the prior experiments just alluded to, for his system of insulation, though more fully developed, was practically the same. prof. s. f. b. morse, the well-known inventor of the telegraph apparatus bearing his name, also made a study of this problem in , when he laid down an insulated copper wire across new york harbor, through which he transmitted electric currents. hemp soaked in tar and pitch, surrounded with a layer of india-rubber, constituted the insulation. morse was a great letter-writer, and records of his early work are solely based on his own statements at a time when he noted in his diary: "i am crushed for want of means. my stockings all want to see my mother, and my hat is hoary with age." in ezra cornell, who was afterward the founder of cornell university, laid a cable, twelve miles long, to connect fort lee with new york, in the hudson river. the cable consisted of two cotton-covered copper wires, insulated with india-rubber, and enclosed in a leaden pipe. it worked well for several months, but was broken by ice in . in that year mr. charles west paid out by hand an india-rubber insulated wire in portsmouth harbor, through which he signaled from a boat to the shore. the experiment was intended as the forerunner of the establishment of telegraphic communication between england and france, but for want of the necessary funds was not followed up. subaqueous, or marine, telegraphy owed its institution, however, to the introduction of gutta-percha, for insulating purposes. the late dr. werner siemens having invented a machine for applying gutta-percha to a wire--similar in principle to the machine for making macaroni--considerable lengths of gutta-percha-covered subterranean wires were laid in germany and prussia between and ; and in siemens laid a gutta-percha insulated conductor in the harbor of kiel which was used for firing mines. following this came the extensive system of underground lines laid down in england for the magnetic telegraph company by their engineer, mr. (afterward sir charles) bright, in accordance with a patent of his. short lengths were also laid, mostly through tunnels, by the electric telegraph company a little later. on the th day of january, , the late mr. c. v. walker, f.r.s., electrician to the southeastern railway, laid a gutta-percha-covered conductor, two miles long, in the english channel. the wire was coiled on a drum on board the laying vessel, from which it was paid out as the vessel progressed. starting from the beach at folkestone, the line was joined up to an aerial wire, miles in length, along the southeastern railway, and mr. walker, on board the princess clementine, succeeded in exchanging telegrams with london. on the d july, , the brothers jacob and john watkins brett addressed themselves to sir robert peel, as prime minister and first lord of the treasury, relative to a proposal of theirs for establishing a general system of telegraphic communication--oceanic and otherwise. they were referred to the admiralty, foreign office, etc., and gradually became involved in a departmental correspondence--more academic than useful--in which they were passed backward and forward from one government office to another. after considerable negotiations with both governments concerned, a concession was at last obtained by the messrs. brett, and a company formed for instituting telegraphy between england and france by means of a line from dover to calais. twenty-five nautical miles of no. copper wire covered with / -inch thickness of gutta-percha was then manufactured, the electrician's tongue being the only test applied to some of the lengths. the shore ends for about two miles from each terminus consisted of a no. b.w.g.[ ] conductor covered with cotton soaked in india-rubber solution, the whole being incased in a very thick lead tube. the rest of the line was composed of the gutta-percha insulated wire above described, with -pound leaden weights fastened to it at -yard intervals,[ ] the laying vessel having to be stopped each time one was put on. the submersion of the line was successfully effected, but it only lived to speak a few more or less incoherent words--one being a short complimentary communication to louis napoleon bonaparte, shortly afterward emperor of the french. it subsequently transpired that a boulogne fisherman had hooked up the line with his trawl, "mistaking it for a new kind of seaweed!" this enterprise excited little attention at the time. it was, in fact, regarded as a "mad freak" and even as a "gigantic swindle." when accomplished, the times remarked, in the words of shakespeare, "the jest of yesterday has become the fact of to-day"; and a few hours later it might with equal truth have been said that "the fact of yesterday has become the jest of to-day!" the feasibility of laying such a line and of transmitting electric signals across the channel had, however, been proved. the signals obtained had, moreover, the effect of eradicating the then very prevalent belief that, even if the line were successfully submerged, the current would become dissipated in the water.[ ] it now remained to find a satisfactory method of protecting the insulated conductor from injury during and after laying. the excellence of the insulating material was recently testified to when some portions were recovered. though the above line was not, practically speaking, turned to any account, it was by no means abortive, for the signals it had conveyed were sufficient to "save the concession," which was renewed by the french government on december , . but the previous failure had made capitalists distrustful; and only some weeks before the expiration of the time limit the necessary funds had not been raised. _dover-calais, -' ._--the undertaking was saved by the energy and talent of one man, mr. t. r. crampton, an eminent railway engineer. he raised the necessary capital (£ , ), putting his own name down for half this amount and being joined by lord de mauley and the late sir james carmichael. he (mr. crampton) also settled the type of cable to be laid--based on the iron pit-rope; this, in one form or another, practically remains the type of to-day. the cable contained four copper conducting-wires of no. b.w.g., each one covered with two layers of gutta-percha to no. gage; these four insulated conductors, or "cores," were laid together and the interstices filled up with strands of tarred russian hemp. the outer covering consisted of ten galvanized-iron wires of no. gage wound spirally round the bundle of cores; this armor was provided "with a view to protecting the insulated conductors from the strains and chafing which had so seriously interfered with the chances of the previous line." the completed cable weighed about seven tons to the mile. it was coiled into the hold of an old pontoon hulk, which was then taken in tow by two steamers. a third tug to stand by, and a small man-of-war steamer to act as pilot, accompanied the laying expedition. the cable was landed at the foot of the south foreland lighthouse and paid out toward cape sangatte, but the weather was less favorable than on the previous occasion; moreover, the weight of the cable--in the absence of efficient holding-back gear--caused it to run out too rapidly, notwithstanding the slight depth (some fathoms) encountered. added to this, the tugs drifted with the wind and tide. thus when the vessels arrived within about a mile of the french coast no more cable was left on board, and a fresh length had to be procured and spliced on before the line was complete. this cable proved a lasting success: it underwent numerous and extensive repairs, and it was only quite recently that its abandonment took place. _other early cables._--the success of crampton's line gave considerable impetus to submarine telegraphy. similar enterprises sprung up on all sides; but many failures occurred before these operations came to be regarded as ordinary industrial undertakings. in the course of the following year ( ) three unsuccessful attempts were made to establish telegraphic communication between england and ireland. in the first--between holyhead and howth--the cable was not heavy enough to contend with the rough bottom, and strong currents and disturbances from anchors experienced in these waters; but this undertaking is remarkable as being the only instance in which an effort was made to do without any intermediate serving between the insulated conductor and the iron sheathing. in the second attempt--between port patrick (scotland) and donaghadee (ireland)--the cable consisted of a central copper conductor covered first with india-rubber, then with gutta-percha, and then hemp outside all. this cable, being far too light, was actually carried away by the strong tidal currents and even broken into pieces during laying. in the third endeavor, between the same two points, the arrangements for checking the cable while paying out being again inadequate, there was not sufficient to reach the farther shore. however, in , a heavy cable, weighing tons per mile, with six conductors, was successfully laid for the magnetic telegraph company by the late sir charles bright.[ ] this was in upward of fathoms--the deepest water in which a cable was laid for some time--and proved a permanent success, forming the first establishment of telegraphic communication with ireland. only a year elapsed before it became evident that another cable was required to meet the traffic between england and the continent, and an additional line was laid from dover to ostend. anglo-dutch and anglo-german cables followed in due course; and in less than ten years from the commencement of its operations over the first channel cable, the submarine telegraph company (since absorbed by the state) was working at least half a dozen really excellent cables, varying from to miles in length, connecting england with the rest of europe. during the next few years submarine communication was established between denmark and sweden, as well as between italy, corsica, and sardinia; and between sardinia and the north coast of africa; but where successful, the measures adopted were, in the main, similar to those we have already described in connection with the preceding lines, though special conditions were, in some instances, the means of introducing certain modifications and improvements. several serious failures were, however, experienced in the deep water of the mediterranean which had a detracting effect--in the public mind--on the chances of the great undertaking which was to follow. part ii the pioneer line chapter i evolution of atlantic telegraphy in america and england gradual evolution--the projectors--survey of the route--soundings--nature of the ocean bed--formation of the atlantic telegraph company--raising capital--critics, "croakers," and crude inventors. as has been shown in the introductory chapter, the efforts of the early projectors of submarine telegraphy were at first confined to connecting countries divided only by narrow seas, or establishing communication between points on the same seaboard. the next step forward, with which we are here immediately concerned--that of spanning the atlantic ocean between europe and america--was aptly characterized at the time as "the great feat of the century." by its means the people of the two great continents were to speak together in a few moments, though separated by a vast ocean. this was the first venture in transoceanic telegraphy. there was no applicable data to go upon; for the vast difference between laying short cable-lengths across rivers, bays, etc., in shallow water, and that of laying a long length of cable in depths of over two miles across an open ocean will be easily recognized--at any rate, by the sailor and engineer. the wires of the magnetic telegraph company had already been carried to various points on the west and south coast of ireland; and, in , mr. f. n. gisborne, a very able english engineer, obtained an exclusive concession for connecting st. johns, newfoundland, with cape ray, in the gulf of st. lawrence, by an overhead telegraph-line. the idea was to "tap" steamers coming from london to cape race at st. johns, and pass messages between that point and cape breton, on the other side of the gulf, by carrier-pigeons. a few miles of cables were made in england, and laid between prince edward island and new brunswick. mr. gisborne then surveyed the route for the land-line across newfoundland, and had erected some forty miles of it, when the work was stopped for want of funds. when in new york in , gisborne was introduced to mr. cyrus west field, a retired merchant, who became enthusiastic on the subject, and formed a small, but strong, syndicate for the practical realization of gisborne's scheme. a cable eighty-five miles in length was made in england, to be laid between cape breton and newfoundland; but after forty miles had been paid out, rough weather ensued, and the undertaking had to be abandoned. a fresh instalment was, however, sent out in , and successfully laid across the gulf, thus connecting st. johns with canada and the american lines. the conductor of this line instead of being a single solid wire was, for the first time, composed of several small wires laid up together in strand form--with a view to avoiding a flaw in any single wire stopping the conductivity, besides affording increased mechanical pliability. [illustration: fig. .--newfoundland telegraph station, .] the feasibility of uniting the two vast systems of telegraphy had engaged the consideration of some of those most prominently associated with electric telegraphy on both sides of the atlantic. it had been already shown that cables could be successfully laid and maintained in comparatively moderate depths in the mediterranean, black sea, etc., but the nearest points between the british isles and newfoundland are nearly , miles apart. the greatest length of submarine line which had hitherto been effectively submerged-- miles--formed but an insignificant portion of such an enormous distance; and that, too, involving a depth of nearly three miles for a large proportion of the way, instead of about fathoms. apart from the engineering difficulties entailed by this vast distance and depth, the question was then undetermined as to the possibility of conveying electric currents through such a length in an unbroken circuit, and at a speed that would enable messages to be passed rapidly enough in succession to prove remunerative. various researches had been made--by faraday among others--with a view to determining the law in relation to the velocity of electricity through a conducting-wire. the retarding effect of the insulating covering had already been discovered; but the exact formula for the working speed of cables of definite proportions and lengths was not correctly arrived at till some years later. the similarity, in principle, of a cable to a leyden jar was first pointed out by mr. edward brailsford bright in the course of a paper read before the british association in . he showed that on charging a gutta-percha-covered wire, the insulating material tended to absorb and retain a part of the charge and to hold back, as a static charge, some of the electricity flowing as current through the conductor--just as the charge (of opposite potential) induced on the outside plate of a leyden jar statically holds the primary charge on the inner plate, until either are neutralized. the brothers, edward and charles bright, made a series of extensive experiments on long lengths of underground wires; and these investigations were supplemented later by mr. edward orange wildman whitehouse (formerly a medical practitioner), who became electrician to the first atlantic cable. mr. whitehouse was a man of very high intellectual and scientific attainments, and a most ingenious and painstaking experimenter. the retardation of the electric current through an insulated wire due to induction--a phenomenon practically unknown with bare, aerial wires suspended on posts, and of no consequence with quite short cables--was overcome by using a succession of opposite currents. by this means the latter, or retarded, portion of each current was "wiped out" by the opposite current immediately following it; and thus a series of electric waves could be made to traverse the cable, one after the other, several being in the act of passing onward at different points along the conductor at the same time. the messrs. bright devised a special key (embodied with a patent for signaling through long cables) for transmitting these alternating currents from the battery; and this was followed by others to effect the same object--one by professor thomson (now lord kelvin), who became electrical adviser to the enterprise. [illustration: fig. .--the brooke "sounder."] a certain degree of knowledge regarding the nature of the bed of the atlantic ocean was now available; for in the summer of a series of soundings had been taken by lieutenant o. h. berryman, u.s.n., from u.s.n. arctic, and also independently by commander joseph dayman, r.n. (h.m.s. cyclops), showing what was called "a gently undulating plateau extending the whole distance between ireland and british north america." these depths (averaging about - / miles) compared favorably with those that had presented themselves farther southward. the ground was found to shoal gradually on the newfoundland side, but rose more rapidly toward the irish shore. the soundings were taken with the ingenious apparatus of lieut. j. m. brooke, u.s.n. (fig. ), which formed the prototype of all similar deep-sea sounding-tubes of the present day. in this, at the extremity of the sounding-line a light iron rod, c, hollowed at its lower end, passed loosely through a hole in the center of a cannon-ball weight, a, which is fastened to the line by a couple of links. on the bottom being touched, the links reverse position, owing to the weight being taken off, and the cannon-ball, or plummet, b, being set free, remains on the ground, leaving the light tube only to be drawn up with the line.[ ] in the act of grounding, however, the open end of the tube presses into the bottom, a specimen of which is consequently obtained--unless it be rock or coral. an oozy bottom was found throughout the soundings. the specimens brought up to the surface were shown under the microscope to consist (fig. ) of the tiny shells of _animalculæ_--the indestructible outside skeletons of the animal organisms known as _diatomaceæ_ and _globigirenæ_ foraminiferæ largely composed of carbonate of lime.[ ] no sand or gravel was found on the ocean bed, from which it was deduced that no currents, or other disturbing elements, existed at those depths; for otherwise these frail shells would have been rubbed to pieces. as it was, they came up entire--without a sign of abrasion. the plateau or ridge--which was found to extend for some miles in breadth--was considered a veritable feather-bed for a cable. indeed, in his subsequent report to the united states navy, lieut. m. f. maury, u.s.n., spoke of this "shallow platform or table-land" as having been "apparently placed for the express purpose of holding the wires of a submarine telegraph and of keeping them out of harm's way." lieutenant maury concluded his report as follows: "i do not, however, pretend to consider the question as to the possibility of finding _a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough, or a ship big enough_, to lay a coil of wire sixteen hundred miles in length." these words form amusing reading nowadays, as do also the suggestions of "telegraph plateaus" furnished by providence as a resting-place for the atlantic cable. the "plateau" idea was only true to the extent that the bed of the ocean in these regions afforded a smooth surface as compared with the alpine character prevailing north and south of it. these soundings at something like fifty-mile intervals were not, however, originally undertaken with the atlantic cable expressly in view. indeed, for many years--until experience pointed to the absolute necessity--no special surveys were made previous to the laying of a cable.[ ] [illustration: fig. .--specimen of the ocean bed. (magnified , times.)] formation of the _atlantic telegraph company, ._--cyrus field, besides being a man of sanguine temperament and intense business energy, also possessed shrewdness and foresight. thus, he immediately recognized the value of gisborne's concessions, and determined to turn them to the fullest account. his extraordinary acumen told him that by improving on the exclusive landing rights already obtained in america, he would place himself in the strongest possible position in regard to the big notion of an atlantic cable. no sooner had he made up his mind to this effect than he set to work to accomplish the idea; and very soon exclusive rights were obtained in his name (gisborne having entirely dropped out of the negotiations) for practically every important point in connection with the landing of an atlantic cable on british north american territory. the period for these rights was fifty years, besides which he obtained various grants of land. thus it will be seen he had assured himself a very strong position in connection with any project for an atlantic cable without having had (in the words of his brother, henry field) "any experience in the business of laying a submarine telegraph." mr. field's syndicate was about this time registered as the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, which was now capable of debarring competition for a considerable period, at any rate. armed with this apparent monopoly, mr. field went over to england, empowered by his associates to deal with the exclusive concession possessed by the above company for the coast of newfoundland and other rights in nova scotia, etc. he had already been over before in connection with the gulf of st. lawrence cable. he had, on that occasion, met mr. john watkins brett, who thereupon interested himself financially in the "newfoundland company." on his second mission (in july, ) he at once put himself into communication with mr. (afterward sir charles) bright, who was known to be already making various preparations with a view to an atlantic cable in connection with the magnetic telegraph system. on september , , an agreement was entered into between brett, bright, and field in the following terms, their signatures being reproduced as they appear at the foot of the document: "mutually, and on equal terms we engage to exert ourselves for the purpose of forming a company for establishing and working of electric telegraphic communication between newfoundland and ireland, such company to be called the atlantic telegraph company, or by such other name as the parties hereto shall jointly agree upon." [illustration: signatures, from top to bottom: john w. brett, charles t. bright, cyrus w. field] [illustration: john watkins brett (projector). charles tilston bright (projector and engineer). cyrus west field (projector). fig. .] let us see now what the united efforts of these three "projectors" had before them. the ground had already been to some extent cleared by their individual exertions when working independently, as well as in other ways. bright, and also whitehouse, had already proved the possibility of signaling through such a length of insulated wire as that involved by an atlantic line. the soundings that had been recently taken showed that the depth was only unfavorable in the sense of being something far--but uniformly--greater than that in which any cable had previously been submerged. finally, the favorable nature of the landing rights secured by field on the other side went a long way toward insuring against competition, apart from the actual permission. there yet remained, then, the necessity of obtaining (_a_) government recognition, and, if possible, government subsidies; (_b_) the confidence and pecuniary support of the moneyed mercantile class; besides which a suitable form of cable had to be designed and manufactured, as well as all the necessary apparatus for the laying of the same. as a result of considerable discussion, the two governments concerned eventually came to recognize the importance and feasibility of this undertaking for linking together the two great english-speaking nations, and the benefits it would confer upon humanity. both the british and united states governments gave a subsidy, in return for free transmission of their messages, with priority over others.[ ] this, however, only jointly amounted to per cent of the capital, and was payable only while the cable worked.[ ] the atlantic telegraph company was registered on october , , and the £ , decided on as the necessary capital for the work was then sought and obtained in an absolutely unprecedented fashion. there was no promotion money, no prospectus was published, no advertisements, no brokers, and no commissions, neither was there at that time any board of directors or executive officers. the election of a board was reserved for a meeting of shareholders, to be held after allotment by the provisional committee, consisting of the subscribers to the memorandum of association. any remuneration to the projectors was left wholly dependent on, and subsequent to, the shareholders' profits being over per cent per annum, after which the projectors were to divide the surplus. the campaign was opened in liverpool, the headquarters of the "magnetic" company, the greater proportion of whose shareholders were business men--merchants and shipowners--mainly hailing from liverpool, manchester, glasgow, and london, who appreciated the value of america being connected telegraphically with great britain and europe through their irish lines. the first meeting of the "atlantic" company was convened for november , , at the underwriters' rooms in the liverpool exchange. this was called together by means of a small circular on a half-sheet of note-paper, issued by mr. e. b. bright, manager of the "magnetic" company. the result was a crowded gathering composed of the wealth, enterprise, and influence of liverpool and other important business and manufacturing centers. similar meetings were also held in manchester and glasgow, and a public subscription list was opened at the "magnetic" company's office of each town. in the course of a few days the entire capital was raised, by the issue of shares of £ , each, chiefly taken up by the shareholders of the "magnetic" company. mr. cyrus field had reserved £ , for american subscription, for which he signed, but his confidence in his compatriots turned out to be greatly misplaced. the result has been thus recounted by his brother: "he (cyrus field) thought that one-fourth of the stock should be held in this country (the united states), and he did not doubt from the eagerness with which three-fourths had been taken in england, that the remainder would be at once subscribed in america." in point of fact, it was only after much trouble that subscribers were obtained in the states for a total of twenty-seven shares, or less than one-twelfth of the total capital. thus, notwithstanding their professed enthusiasm, the faith of the americans in the project proved to be strictly limited. at any rate, they did not rise to the occasion. indeed, the undertaking was very much an affair of the magnetic telegraph company, the officers of which led the shareholders to take a lively interest from the first in the atlantic project as forming the nucleus of a great extension of business. the first meeting of shareholders took place on december , , when a board of directors was elected. this included the late george peabody, samuel gurney, t. h. brooking, t. a. hankey, c. m. (afterward sir curtis) lampson, and sir william brown, of liverpool, no less than nine (representing the interests of different towns) being also directors of the "magnetic" company, including mr. j. w. brett. the first chairman was sir william brown, subsequently succeeded by the right hon. james stuart-wortley, m.p. two names may be further specially referred to as destined, in different ways, to have the greatest possible influence in the subsequent development of submarine telegraphy. mr. (afterward sir john) pender, who was then a "magnetic" director, afterward took a leading part in the vast extensions that have followed to the mediterranean, india, china, australasia, the cape, and brazil, besides several of the subsequent atlantic lines. up to the time of his death he was chairman of something like a dozen, more or less allied, cable companies, representing some £ , , of capital, and mainly organized through his foresight and business ability. then, again, prof. william thomson, of glasgow university, was a tower of scientific strength on the board. he had been from the outset an ardent believer in the atlantic line. his acquisition as a director was destined to prove of vast importance in influencing the development of transoceanic communication, for his subsequent experiments on the cable during -' led up to his invention of the mirror galvanometer and signaling instrument, whereby the most attenuated currents of electricity, which are incapable of producing visible signals on other telegraphic apparatus, are so magnified by the use of a reflected beam of light as to afford signals readily legible. (a full description of this invention will be found in its proper place--farther on.) mr. (afterward sir charles) bright was appointed engineer-in-chief, with mr. wildman whitehouse (who had become closely associated with the project) as electrician, while mr. cyrus field became general manager. * * * * * it must not be supposed that because the capital was raised without great difficulty, and because the project had far-seeing supporters, that there was any lack of "croakers." on the contrary, the prejudice against the line as a "mad scheme" ran perhaps even higher than in the case of most great and novel undertakings. the critics were many, and with our present knowledge it is difficult to recognize that many of the assertions and suggestions emanated from men of science as well as from eminent engineers and sailors, who, we should say nowadays, ought to have known better. for example, the late prof. sir g. b. airy, f.r.s. (astronomer royal), announced to the world: ( ) that "it was a mathematical impossibility to submerge a cable in safety at so great a depth"; and ( ) that "if it were possible, no signals could be transmitted through so great a length." from the very outset of the project the engineer-in-chief (as soon as appointed) had to deal with wild and undeveloped criticisms and suggestions, partly from "inventors," who desired to reap personal benefit by the scheme, and amateurs in the art generally, all of which appear singularly ludicrous nowadays. the fallacy most frequently introduced was, perhaps, that the cable would be suspended in the water at a certain depth. naturally the pressure increases with the depth on all sides of a cable (or anything else) in its descent through the sea, but, as practically everything on earth is more compressible than water, it is obvious that the iron wire, yarn, gutta-percha, and copper conductor, forming the cable, must be more and more compressed as they descend. thus the cable constantly increases its density, or specific gravity, in going down, while the equal bulk of the water surrounding it continues to have, practically speaking, very nearly the same specific gravity as at the surface. without this valuable property of water, the hydraulic press would not exist. the strange blunder here described was participated in by some of the most distinguished naval men. as an instance, even at a comparatively recent period, captain marryat, r.n., the famous nautical author, writes of the sea: "what a mine of wealth must lie buried in its sands. what riches lie entangled among its rocks, or remain suspended in its unfathomable gulf, where the compressed fluid is equal in gravity to that which it encircles."[ ] to obviate this non-existent difficulty, it was gravely proposed to festoon the cable across, at a given maximum depth between buoys and floats, or even parachutes--at which ships might call, hook on, and talk telegraphically to shore! others again proposed to apply _gummed cotton_ to the outside of the cable in connection with the above burying system. the idea was that the gum (or glue) would gradually dissolve and so let the cable down "quietly"! as an example of the crude notions prevailing in the mind of one gentleman with a proposed invention, to whom was shown an inch specimen of the cable, he remarked: "now i understand how you stow it away on board. you cut it up into bits beforehand, and then join up the pieces as you lay." some again absolutely went so far as to take out patents for converting the laying vessel into a huge factory, with a view to making the cable on board in one continuous length, and submerging it during the process! finally, one naval expert assured the company that "no other machinery for paying out was necessary than a _handspike_ to stop the egress of the cable." chapter ii the manufacture of the line design and construction--ships--testing, shipment, and stowage--paying-out machinery--staff--preparations for the expedition. the construction of the cable was taken in hand the following february ( ). the distance from valentia, on the western irish coast, to trinity bay, newfoundland--the two landing-points selected[ ]--being , nautical miles, it was estimated that a length of , n.m.[ ] would be sufficient to meet all requirements. this would provide sufficient margin for a considerable amount of "slack" cable for accommodating the irregularities of the bottom. the gutta-percha company of london were entrusted with the manufacture of the "core," consisting of a strand of seven no. b.w.g. copper wires (total diameter no. gage) weighing pounds per n.m. insulated, with three coatings of gutta-percha (to / -inch diameter) weighing pounds per n.m., the conductor being, in fact, covered to no. b.w.g. this formed a far heavier core than had been previously adopted, and on this account the difficulties of manufacture were proportionately increased. the enormous pressure of the ocean at such depths involved also a much severer test for the core. on the other hand, as we now know, the conductor--and consequently also the insulator--should have been still larger, to a material degree. the engineer of the line strongly urged a conductor weighing pounds per n.m., with the same weight for the insulator;[ ] but his fellow projectors (the business element of the undertaking) were all for getting the work done, while the weather permitted, that year; and they were perhaps overquick to recognize the difference in the capital required. moreover, they were here supported technically by the views of the responsible electrician, as well as by such high authorities as michael faraday and morse. the latter reported that "large coated wires used beneath the water or the earth are worse conductors--so far as velocity of transmission is concerned--than small ones; and, therefore, are not so well suited as small ones for the purposes of submarine transmission of telegraphic signals." faraday had stated: "the larger the wire, the more electricity was required to charge it; and the greater was the retardation of that electric impulse which should be occupied in sending that charge forward."[ ] thus it will be seen that although faraday laid the foundations of a large proportion of the electrical engineering of to-day, his views in this instance did not prove to be correct. the theoretical resemblance of a cable to a leyden jar--in reference to the effect of charging either--seems to have been prominently in mind, without proper regard to the _resistance_ offered by the wire to the electric current--a resistance which becomes less the greater the bulk of the wire. besides the engineer being overridden in this matter, the word of the electrical adviser on the board (professor thomson) regarding the carrying capacity or working speed that would be obtained with such a core as that decided on--in view of the length involved--was also unavailing. while no one can fail to appreciate the businesslike manner in which this undertaking was pushed through from the moment of inception--comparing only too favorably with some experiences of to-day--it was, without doubt, a vast pity that more time was not devoted to a fuller consideration of some of the problems, such as that involved over the dimensions of the conductor and insulator. no serious fault could, however, be detected with its actual manufacture, though the methods of those days were primitive as compared with present practise, and a system of efficient electrical testing altogether wanting. after various experiments had been made with sample lengths of different iron wires made up into cable, the contract for the outer sheathings was, in order to get through the work quickly, divided equally between messrs. glass, elliot & co., of greenwich, and messrs. r. s. newall & co., of birkenhead--both originally pit-rope makers. the insulated core was first surrounded with a serving of hemp saturated with a mixture of tar, pitch, linseed-oil, and wax; and then sheathed spirally with an armor of eighteen strands, each containing seven iron wires of no. b.w.g., the completed strand being no. gage in diameter. [illustration: fig. .--manufacture of the core.] the cable (fig. ) was then finally drawn through another mixture of tar. its weight in air was ton per n.m., and in water only . hundredweight, bearing a strain of tons hundredweight before breaking--equivalent to nearly five miles of its weight in water. for each end approaching the shore, the sheathing (see fig. ) consisted of twelve wires of no. gauge, making a total weight of about nine tons to the mile. this type was adopted for the first ten miles from the irish coast, and for fifteen miles from the landing at newfoundland, at both of which localities rocks had been found to abound plentifully--so much so that the armor was insufficient, and present practise provides double the weight under similar conditions. [illustration: fig. .--serving the core with hemp-yarn.] [illustration: fig. .--applying the iron sheathing.] [illustration: fig. .--the deep sea cable.] [illustration: fig. .--the shore-end cable.] only four months was allowed for the manufacture of this , miles of cable, which had to be delivered in june of that year ( ). this involved the preparation and drawing of , miles of copper wire (providing for the lay) and stranding into the , miles of conductor. for the insulation nearly tons of gutta-percha required to be prepared, and the three separate layers of gutta-percha required to be applied to the wire, subsequently followed by the spiral serving of yarn. finally--and with a due allowance for lay-- , miles of wire had to be drawn, from , tons of charcoal iron, and laid up into , miles of strand for the outer sheathing. the entire length of copper and iron wire employed was, therefore, , miles--enough to engirdle the earth thirteen times, and considerably more than enough to extend from the earth to the moon. the work was enormously increased, of course, on account of the sheathing being composed of a number of strands instead of several single wires. while having certain mechanical advantages at the outset, this stranded sheathing is not a durable type of cable--besides being somewhat costly--and is never adopted nowadays. the contract price for the entire cable was £ , , the core costing £ and the armor £ per mile.[ ] as fast as the cable was made at the respective factories, it was coiled into iron tanks ready for shipment. [illustration: fig. .--coiling the finished cable into the factory tanks.] _ships and paying-out machinery._--the race against time--resulting from an unfortunate arrangement with american interests--was truly appalling; for, besides the manufacture of the line itself, ships had to be selected and prepared for receiving the cable, and machinery for paying out the line had to be designed and made. so far as the manufacture went, the machinery for that was already in existence, in view of the cables that had previously been laid--apart from the fact that the sheathing machinery was practically the same as had already been used for making ropes with. but this being the first _ocean_ line, special apparatus had to be worked out for submerging a cable satisfactorily in deep water. so far as ships were concerned, the british and united states governments had already expressed willingness to furnish these. the former undertaking took shape by the admiralty placing h.m.s. agamemnon (a screw-propelled line-of-battle ship and one of the finest in the british navy) at the company's disposal for the expedition. she had been admiral lyons's flagship during the bombardment of sebastopol a couple of years before; but, in her coming mission, was to do more to bring about the reign of peace--by drawing together in closer commune the several nations of the earth--than any man-of-war was ever called to do, before or after. with a somewhat peculiar construction, she was admirably adapted for her work. her engines were quite near the stern, while amidships she had a magnificent hold, forty-five feet square and about twenty feet deep. in this capacious receptacle nearly half the cable was stowed from the works at greenwich. the american government sent over the largest and finest ship of their navy, the u.s. frigate niagara (fig. ), a screw-corvette of , tons. as a consort, the u.s. paddle frigate susquehanna was also detailed for the expedition, while h.m.s. leopard and h.m. sounding-vessel cyclops were similarly provided by the british government. the latter was to precede the fleet--nicknamed the wire squadron--to show the way. [illustration: fig. .--u.s.n.s. niagara.] the paying-out apparatus for the two laying vessels h.m.s. agamemnon and u.s.n.s. niagara had to be somewhat hurriedly put together; consequently not as much attention was paid to its design as the novelty of the undertaking really demanded. the previous, and somewhat primitive, gear hitherto used had proved to possess too little strength, the cable--when being laid in anything but quite shallow water--having more than once obtained the mastery, through meeting insufficient restraining force. in the new machine (fig. ) there was certainly no lack of holding-back power. it erred, indeed, the other way, being so heavy and powerful that it was liable to break the cable under any material strain. the degree of retardation was regulated by a hand-wheel actuating a frame-clutch surrounding the outside of a brake-wheel. the details of this machine were worked out by messrs. c. de bergue & co., the manufacturers. the engineer-in-chief also furnished external guards to the propelling screws of each laying vessel to prevent a foul with the cable in the case of going "astern." this cage was nicknamed a "crinoline" (then in fashion with ladies), which, indeed, it somewhat resembled. the above screw-guard may be seen in several of the illustrations of either ships farther on. were it not for the necessity of sounding operations, it would be applied to all telegraph-ships to-day. _preparations for starting._--by the third week in july (within the course of as many weeks) the great ships had absorbed all their precious cargo--the agamemnon in the thames and the niagara in the mersey. the process of coiling the cable on board the agamemnon is illustrated in fig. . [illustration: fig. .--the paying-out machine, .] _staff._--for such an undertaking the staff had, of course, to be considerable. besides the engineer-in-chief (mr. bright), the engineering department was composed as follows: mr. (afterward sir samuel) canning, formerly a railway engineer, who had laid the gulf of st. lawrence and other cables; mr. william henry woodhouse, who had laid some of the cables in the mediterranean; mr. f. c. webb, with much experience in early cable work; and, finally, mr. henry clifford, a mechanical engineer, destined to be responsibly associated with a large proportion of the cables since laid. besides mr. whitehouse (whose health, however, did not permit him to accompany the expedition) there were on the electrical staff mr. c. v. de sauty, mr. j. c. laws, mr. f. lambert, mr. h. a. c. saunders, mr. benjamin smith, mr. richard collett, and mr. charles gerhardi, all of whom were afterward prominently connected with subsequent submarine cable undertakings. their respective energies were divided up between the two laying ships.[ ] the expedition was to be further strengthened by a representative of the times, as well as of the daily news and new york herald. [illustration: fig. .--coiling the cable on board.] on the vessels being fully loaded ready for the start, "send-off" festivities occurred, in which all classes of those engaged on the work took part. the times recounted the function on board the agamemnon as follows: the three central tables were occupied by the crew of the agamemnon, a fine, active body of men, who paid the greatest attention to the speeches, and drank all the toasts with an admirable punctuality--at least, so long as their three pints of beer per man lasted. but we regret to add that with the heat of the day and the enthusiasm of jack in the cause of science, the mugs were all empty long before the chairman's list of toasts had been gone through. next in interest to the sailors were the workmen and their wives and babies, all being permitted to assist. the latter, it is true, sometimes squalled at an affecting peroration, but that rather improved the effect than otherwise, and the presence of their little ones only marked the genuine good feeling of the employers, who had thus invited not only their workmen, but their workmen's families to the feast. it was a momentary return to the old patriarchal times. this function having come to an end, the agamemnon set out for sheerness. when leaving her moorings, opposite glass & elliot's works, the scene was one of considerable interest. it is recorded that many thousands of persons thronged the riverside as far as greenwich hospital. in the immediate neighborhood of the factory a salute was fired as the proud vessel moved away, and a deafening cheer was raised by the assembled crowds. the crew of h.m.s. agamemnon manned the gunwales, and returned the cheer with lusty lungs, while from the stern gallery, ladies waved their handkerchiefs, and _savants_ forgot for a while the mysteries of electricity and submarine-cable work, as they returned the hearty cheers which reached them from the shore. similar proceedings took place on board the niagara, and the two ships met at queenstown, county cork, on july , . they were moored about three-quarters of a mile apart, and a piece of cable run between the two to enable the entire length of line ( , n.m.) to be tested and worked through. the result was all that could be desired, and the wire squadron set sail for the rendezvous at valentia bay on monday, august d. besides the vessels already named, there were h.m. tender advice and the steam-tug willing mind to assist in landing the cable at valentia, as well as the u.s. screw-steamer arctic and the paddle-steamer victoria (newfoundland telegraph company) on duty in trinity bay, newfoundland, to await the arrival of the fleet and assist in landing the cable at that end. on arrival in harbor the following day, the ships were hospitably welcomed by his excellency the lord-lieutenant of ireland (the earl of carlisle), who had journeyed from dublin castle for the purpose. a _déjeuner_ banquet was given by the knight of kerry (sir peter fitzgerald), the lord of the manor for many miles round, and this little corner of ireland--"the next parish to america"--was quite _en fête_ for the occasion. chapter iii the first start landing the end--"godspeed"--a bad beginning--return home. _landing the cable at valentia, ireland._--the following day was occupied in landing the massive shore end, which--weighing nearly ten tons to the mile, as already described--was calculated to withstand damage from any anchorage in the bay, besides being proof against disturbance and damage from surf or currents. the landing-place which had been finally selected was a little cove known as ballycarberry, about three miles from cahirciveen, in valentia harbor (fig. ). the two small assistant steamers--willing mind, a tug with a zeal worthy of her name, and advice, ready not merely with advice but most lusty help--with several other launches and boats, were employed in the operation, which was thus described in one of the many newspaper reports: "valentia bay was studded with innumerable small craft decked with the gayest bunting. small boats flitted hither and thither, their occupants cheering enthusiastically as the work successfully progressed. the cable-boats were managed by the sailors of the niagara and the susquehanna. it was a well-designed compliment, and indicative of the future fraternization of the nations, that the shore rope was arranged to be presented on the english side of the atlantic to the representative of the queen by the officers and men of the united states navy, and that on the american side the british officers and sailors should make a similar presentation to the president of the great republic. "from the mainland the operations were watched with intense interest. for several hours the lord-lieutenant stood on the beach, surrounded by his staff and the directors of the railway and telegraph companies, waiting the arrival of the cable. when at length the american sailors jumped through the surge with the hawser to which it was attached, his excellency was among the first to lay hold of it and pull it lustily to the shore. indeed, every one present seemed desirous of having a hand in the great work." at half past seven that evening (august , ) the cable was hauled on shore at ballycarberry strand, and formal presentation was made of it by the officer in command of the niagara to the lord-lieutenant, his excellency expressing a hope that the work so well begun would be carried to a satisfactory completion. the vicar of the parish then offered a prayer for the success of the undertaking. [illustration: fig. .--landing the irish end of the cable.] the work connected with the landing of the shore end was not actually completed till sunset; so, as it was too late then to set out and start cable-laying, the ships remained at anchor in the bay till daybreak. that night there was a grand ball at the little village of kingstown, and the day dawn caught the merrymakers still engaged in their festivities. _laying the first ocean cable, ._--owing to the fact that the cable had had to be divided between two ships it was obvious that a mid-ocean splice between the two lengths was involved. the engineer-in-chief (mr. bright) was anxious both ships should start laying toward their respective shores from mid-ocean, as by that plan favorable weather for the splice could be waited for, besides halving the time occupied in laying the line, thereby reducing chances of bad-weather experience and getting over the most difficult (deep-water) part of the work first. the electricians, however, made much of the importance of being in continuous communication with shore during laying operations; and this view appealed to the board--partly, no doubt, on account of the novelty of being able from headquarters to speak to a ship as she proceeded across the atlantic. it had, therefore, been arranged for the laying of the cable to be started by the niagara from the irish coast, the agamemnon laying the remaining half from mid-ocean. the ships got under weigh at an early hour on the morning following the landing of the shore end. paying out commenced from the niagara's forepart; and as the distance from there to the stern was considerable, a number of men were stationed at intervals, like sentries, to see that every foot of the line reached its destination in safety. the machinery did not seem at first to take kindly to its work, giving vent to many ominous groans. after five miles had been disgorged, the line caught in some of the apparatus and parted. the good ship at once put back and the cable was underrun by the willing mind, with boats, the whole distance from the shore--a tedious and hard task, as may be imagined. at length the end was lifted out of the water and spliced to the coil on board; and as the bight of the cable dropped safely to the bottom of the sea, the mighty ship steamed ahead once more. at first she moved very slowly, not more than two miles an hour, to avoid the danger of another accident, but the feeling that they were at last away was in itself a relief. the ships were all in sight, and so near that they could hear each other's bells. the niagara, as if knowing she was bound for the land out of whose forests she came, bowed her head proudly to the waves. "slowly passed the hours of that day," in mr. henry field's words, "but all went well, and the ships were moving out into the broad atlantic. at length the sun went down in the west, and stars came out on the face of the deep. but no man slept. a thousand eyes were watching a great experiment, including those who had a personal interest in the issue. "all through that night, and through the anxious days and nights that followed, there was a feeling in the heart of every soul on board, as if some dear friend were at the turning-point of death, and they were watching beside him. there was a strange, unnatural silence in the ship. men paced the deck with soft and muffled tread, speaking only in whispers, as if a loud or heavy footfall might snap the vital cord. so much had they grown to feel for the enterprise, that the cable seemed to them like a human creature, on whose fate they themselves hung, as if it were to decide their own destiny. "there are some who will never forget that first night at sea. perhaps the reaction from the excitement on shore made the impression the deeper. there are moments in life when everything comes back to us. what memories cropped up in those long night hours! how many on board that ship, as they stood on the deck and watched that mysterious cord disappearing in the darkness, thought of homes beyond the sea, of absent ones, of the distant and of the dead. "but no musings turned them from the work in hand. there were vigilant eyes on deck--mr. bright, the engineer-in-chief, was there; also, in turn, mr. woodhouse and mr. canning, his chief assistants.... the paying-out machinery did its work, and though it made a constant rumble in the ship, that dull, heavy sound was music in their ears, as it told them that all was well. if one should drop asleep, and wake up at night, he had only to hear the sound of 'the old coffee-mill' and, his fears being relieved, he would go to sleep again." the next was a day of beautiful weather. the ships were getting farther away from land, and began to steam ahead at the rate of four and five knots. the cable was paid out at a speed a little faster than the ship, to allow for inequalities of surface on the bottom of the sea. while it was thus going overboard, communication was kept up constantly with the land, partly by what are known as "continuity signals"--i. e., electrical signals at definite time intervals from ship to shore, as a test of the continuity of the line. to quote mr. field again: "every moment the current was passing between ship and shore. the communication was as perfect as between liverpool and london, or boston and new york. not only did the electricians telegraph back to valentia the progress they were making, but the officers on board sent messages to their friends in america to go out by the steamers from liverpool. the heavens seemed to smile on them that day. the coils came up from below the deck without a kink, and, unwinding themselves easily, passed over the stern into the sea. "all sunday ( th inst.) the same favoring fortune continued; and when the officers who could be spared from the deck met in the cabin, and captain hudson read the service, it was with subdued voices and grateful hearts that they responded to the prayers to 'him who spreadeth out the heavens and ruleth the raging of the sea.' "on monday ( th) they were over two hundred miles at sea. they had got far beyond the shallow waters off the coast. they had passed over the submarine mountain that figures on the charts of dayman and berryman, and where mr. bright's log gives a descent from to , fathoms within eight miles. then they came to the deeper waters of the atlantic where the cable sank to the awful depths of , fathoms. still the iron cord buried itself in the waves, and every instant the flash of light in the darkened telegraph room told of the passage of the electric current. "everything went well till . p.m. on the fourth day out (tuesday, august th), when the cable snapped, after miles had been laid, owing to mismanagement on the part of the mechanic at the brakes." thus the familiar thin line which had been streaming out from the niagara for six days was no longer to be seen by the accompanying vessels. one who was present wrote: "the unbidden tear started to many a manly eye. the interest taken in the enterprise by officers and men alike exceeded anything ever seen, and there is no wonder that there should have been so much emotion on the occasion of the accident." the following report from bright gives the details of the expedition up to the time of this regrettable occurrence: report to the directors of the atlantic telegraph company, august, after leaving valentia on the evening of the th inst, the paying out of the cable from the niagara progressed most satisfactorily until immediately before the mishap. at the junction between the shore and the smaller cable, about eight miles from the starting-point, it was necessary to stop to renew the splice. this was successfully effected, and the end of the heavier cable lowered by a hawser until it reached the bottom, two buoys being attached at a short distance apart to mark the place of union. by noon of the th we had paid out miles of cable, including the heavy shore end. our exact position at the time was in lat. ° ´ ´´ n., long. ° ´ ´´ w., and the depth of the water according to the soundings taken by the cyclops--whose course we nearly followed--ninety fathoms. up to p. m. on that day the egress of the cable had been regulated by the power necessary to keep the machinery in motion at a slightly higher rate than that of the ship; but as the water deepened it was necessary to place some further restraint upon the cable by applying pressure to the friction-drums in connection with the paying-out sheaves. by midnight miles had been safely laid, the depth of the water being then a little more than fathoms. at eight o'clock on the morning of the th we had exhausted the deck coil in the after part of the ship, having paid out miles. the change to the coil between decks forward was safely made. by noon we had laid miles of cable, the niagara having reached lat. °, ´ ´´ n., long. ° ´ ´´ w., and the depth of the water having increased to fathoms. in the evening the speed of the vessel was raised to five knots. i had previously kept down the rate at from three to four knots for the small cable, and two for the heavy end next the shore, wishing to get the men and machinery well at work prior to attaining the speed which i had intended making. by midnight miles of cable had been laid. at four o'clock on the morning of the th the depth began to increase rapidly from to , fathoms in a distance of eight miles. up to this time a strain of cwt. sufficed to keep the rate of the cable near enough to that of the ship; but as the water deepened the proportionate speed of the cable advanced, and it was necessary to augment the pressure by degrees until at a depth of , fathoms the indicator showed a strain of cwt., while the cable and the ship were running five and a half and five knots respectively. at noon on the th we had paid out miles of cable--the vessel having made miles from the shore--being then in lat. ° ´ ´´ n., long. ° ´ w. at this time we experienced an increasing swell, followed later in the day by a strong breeze. from this period, having reached , fathoms of water, it was necessary to increase the strain by a ton, by which the rate of the cable was maintained in due proportion to that of the ship. at six o'clock in the evening some difficulty arose through the cable getting out of the sheaves of the paying-out machine, owing to the pitch and tar hardening in the groove,[ ] and a splice of large dimensions passing over them. this was rectified by fixing additional guards and softening the tar with oil. it was necessary to bring up the ship, holding the cable by stoppers until it was again properly disposed around the pulleys. some importance is due to this event, as showing that it is possible to "lay to" in deep water without continuing to pay out the cable, a point upon which doubts have frequently been expressed. shortly after this the speed of the cable gained considerably on that of the ship, and up to nine o'clock, while the rate of the latter was about three knots, by the log, the cable was running out from five and a half to five and three-quarter knots. the strain was then raised to cwt., but the wind and the sea increasing, and a current at the same time carrying the cable at an angle from the direct line of the ship's course, it was found insufficient to check the cable, which was at midnight making two and a half knots above the speed of the ship, and sometimes imperiling the safe uncoiling in the hold. the retarding force was therefore increased at two o'clock to an amount equivalent to cwt., and then again--in consequence of the speed continuing to be more than it would be prudent to permit--to cwt. by this the rate of the cable was brought to a little short of five knots, at which it continued steadily until . a.m., when it parted, the length paid out at the time being miles. i had up to this attended personally to the regulation of the brakes, but finding that all was going on well, and it being necessary that i should be temporarily away from the machine--to ascertain the rate of the ship, to see how the cable was coming out of the hold, and also to visit the electrician's room--the machine was for the moment left in charge of a mechanic who had been engaged from the first in its construction and fitting, and was acquainted with its operation. in proceeding toward the fore part of the ship i heard the machine stop. i immediately called out to relieve the brakes, but when i reached the spot the cable was broken. on examining the machine--which was otherwise in perfect order--i found that the brakes had _not_ been released, and to this, or to the hand-wheel of the brake being turned the wrong way, may be attributed the stoppage and consequent fracture of the cable. when the rate of the wheels grew slower, as the ship dropped her stern in the swell, the brake should have been eased. this had been done regularly whenever an unusually sudden descent of the ship temporarily withdrew the pressure from the cable in the sea. but owing to our entering the deep water the previous morning, and having all hands ready for any emergency that might occur there, the chief part of my staff had been compelled to give in at night through sheer exhaustion, and hence, being short-handed, i was obliged for the time to leave the machine without, as it proved, sufficient intelligence to control it. i perceive that on the next occasion it will be needful, from the wearing and anxious nature of the work, to have three separate relays of staff, and to employ for attention to the brakes a higher degree of mechanical skill. the origin of the accident was, no doubt, the amount of retarding strain put upon the cable, but had the machine been properly manipulated at the time, it could not possibly have taken place. for three days in shallow and deep water, as well as in rapid transitions from one to the other, nothing could be more perfect than the working of the cable machinery. it had been made extra heavy with a view to recovery work. it, however, performed its duty so smoothly and efficiently in the smaller depths--where the weight of the cable had less ability to overcome its friction and resistance--that it can scarcely be said to be too heavy for paying out in deep water, where it was necessary, from the increased weight of cable, to restrain its rapid motion, by applying to it a considerable degree of additional friction. its action was most complete, and all parts worked well together. i see how the gear can be improved by a modification in the form of sheave, by an addition to the arrangement for adjusting the brakes, and some other alterations; but with proper management, without any change whatever, i am confident that the whole length of cable might have been safely laid by it. and it must be remembered, as a test of the work which it has done, that unfortunate as this termination to the expedition is, the longest length of cable ever laid has been paid out by it, and that in the deepest water yet passed over. after the accident had occurred, soundings were taken by lieutenant dayman from the cyclops, and the depth found to be , fathoms. it will be remembered that some importance was attached to the cable on board the niagara and agamemnon being manufactured in opposite lays.[ ] i thought this a favorable opportunity to show that practically the difference was not of consequence in effecting the junction in mid-ocean. we therefore made a splice between the two vessels. this was then lowered in a heavy sea, after which several miles were paid out without difficulty. i requested the commanders of the several vessels to proceed to plymouth, as the docks there afford better facilities than any other port for landing the cable should it be necessary to do so. the whole of the cable remaining on board has been carefully tested and inspected, and found to be in as perfect condition as when it left the works at greenwich and birkenhead respectively. one important point presses for your consideration at an early period. a large portion of cable already laid may be recovered at a comparatively small expense. i append an estimate of the cost, and shall be glad to receive your authority to proceed with this work. i do not perceive in our present position any reason for discouragement; but i have, on the contrary, a greater confidence than ever in the undertaking. it has been proved beyond a doubt that no obstacle exists to prevent our ultimate success; and i see clearly how every difficulty which has presented itself in this voyage can be effectually dealt with in the next. the cable has been laid at the expected rate in the great depths; its electric working through the entire length has been satisfactorily accomplished, while the portion laid, actually improved in efficiency by being submerged--from the low temperature of the water and the increased close texture of gutta-percha thereby effected. mechanically speaking, the structure of the cable has answered every expectation that i had formed of it. its weight in water is so adjusted to the depth that strain is within a manageable scope; while the effects of the undercurrents upon its surface prove how dangerous it would be to lay a much lighter rope, which would, by the greater time occupied in sinking, expose an increased surface to their power, besides its descent being at an angle such as would not provide for good laying at the bottom. on the other hand, in regard to any further length made, i would take this opportunity of again strongly urging the desirability of a much larger conductor and corresponding increase in the weight of insulation, in accordance with my original recommendation.--i have the honor to remain, gentlemen, yours very faithfully, charles t. bright, _engineer-in-chief._ _to the directors of the atlantic telegraph company._ chapter iv preparations for another attempt "taking stock"--further capital--alterations in paying-out machinery--improved testing and signaling apparatus. this untoward interruption to the expedition was naturally a cause of great disappointment to all connected with the undertaking; for there was not enough cable left to complete the work, nor was there time to get more made and stowed on board to renew the attempt before the season would be too far advanced. the squadron proceeded to plymouth to unload the cable into tanks at keyham (now devonport) dockyard, chiefly because some of the ships could not be spared by their respective governments till the following year. in the middle of october ( ), the engineer-in-chief proceeded to valentia in a small paddle-steamer with the object of picking up some of the lost line from this end. after experiencing a series of gales, over fifty miles of the main cable were recovered, and the shore end buoyed ready for splicing on to in the coming year. the first expedition had opened the eyes of the investing public to the vastness of the undertaking, and led many to doubt who did not doubt before. some began to look upon it as a romantic adventure of the sea, rather than as a serious commercial undertaking. this decline of popular faith was felt as soon as there was a call for more money. the loss of miles of cable, with the postponement of the expedition to another year, was equivalent to a loss of £ , . [illustration: fig. .--reshipment of the cable aboard h.m.s. agamemnon and u.s.n.s. niagara in keyham basin.] _raising further capital._--to make the above sum good, the capital of the company had to be increased, and this new capital was not so readily obtainable. the projectors found that it was easy to go with the current of popular enthusiasm, but very hard to stem a growing tide of popular distrust. and it must also be remembered that, from the very first, the section of the public which looked with distrust upon the idea of an atlantic telegraph was far in excess of that which did not; indeed, the opposition encountered was much on a par with the great popular prejudice which george stephenson had to overcome when projecting his great railway schemes. but whatever the depression at the untimely termination of the first expedition, it did not interfere with renewed and vigorous efforts to prepare for a second. in the end the appeal to the shareholders for more money was responded to; and the directors were enabled to give orders for the manufacture of miles of new cable of the same description, to make up for what had been lost, and to provide a surplus against all contingencies. thus, , nautical miles in all were shipped this time, instead of , miles. _alterations in the paying-out gear._--new paying-out machinery was devised with a view to obviating the possibility of a recurrence of the accident on the first expedition. in the new apparatus the brake (fig. ) was so arranged that a lever exercised a uniform holding power in exact proportion to the weights attached to it (fig. ); and while capable of being _released_ by a hand-wheel, it could not be tightened. the general idea of this clever appliance had been originally introduced by mr. j. g. appold in connection with the crank apparatus in jails; and it was now especially adapted to the exigencies of cable work by the engineer (mr. bright) and mr. c. e. amos, a member of the famous engineering firm, easton & amos, who constructed the entire machinery. the great future of the apparatus was that it provided for automatic brake-release, upon the strain exceeding that intended. thus, only a maximum agreed strain could be applied, this being regulated from time to time by weights, according to the depth of water and consequent weight of cable being paid out. in passing from the hold to the stern of the laying vessel, the cable is taken round a drum, or drums. fig. gives a general view of the apparatus. attached to the axle of the drum is a wheel fitted with an iron friction-strap (to which are fixed blocks of hard wood) capable of exerting a given retarding power, varying with the weights hung on to the lever which tightens the strap. when the friction becomes great, the wheels have an increased tendency to carry the wooden blocks round with them; thus the lever-bars are deflected from the vertical line and the iron band opened sufficiently to lessen the brake-power. [illustration: fig. .--the self-releasing brake.] [illustration: fig. .--the principle of the brake.] bright also introduced a dynamometer apparatus for indicating and controlling the strain during paying out--a vast improvement on that embodied in the previous machines. the working of the entire machine was as follows: "between the two brake-drums and the stern of the vessel, the cable was led under the grooved wheel, o, of the dynamometer. this wheel had a weight attached to it, and could be moved up or down in an iron frame. if the strain upon the cable was small, the wheel would bend the cable downward, and its index would show a low degree of pressure; but whenever the strain increased, the cable, in straightening itself, would at once lift the dynamometer-wheel with the indicator attached to it, which showed the pressure in hundredweights and tons. the amount of strain with a given weight upon the wheel, g, was determined by experiments, and a hand-wheel in connection with the levers of the paying-out machine was placed immediately opposite the dynamometer; so that, directly the indicator showed strain increasing, the person in charge could at once, by turning the hand-wheel, lift up the weights that tightened the friction-straps, and so let the cable run freely through the paying-out machine. although, therefore, the strain could be _reduced_--or entirely withdrawn--in a moment, it could not be _increased_ by the man at the wheel. the cable in coming from the tanks, passed under a lightly weighted 'jockey,'[ ] j, pulley. this arrangement, while leading the line on to the drums, at the same time checked it slightly. from here it was guided by a grooved pulley, or v-sheave,[ ] l, along the tops of both drums, at b, then three times round them, and hence over another v-sheave, f, and on to the dynamometer. from this the cable was led over a second pulley, and so into the sea by the stern-sheaves."[ ] this entire apparatus--simplified as regards the brake--has since been universally adopted for submarine-cable work,[ ] with the exception that a single-flanged drum, fitted with a sort of plow, skid, or knife-edge--to guide or "fleet" the incoming turn of cable correctly on to the drum--is now used in place of the grooved sheave, or sheaves. as soon as the new machinery was constructed, all the engineering staff gathered together for the purpose of thoroughly acquainting themselves with its working. mr. f. c. webb, having engagements elsewhere, had been replaced by mr. w. e. everett, u.s.a., who had been chief marine engineer of the niagara. mr. everett was to have charge of the machinery on the laying vessel, while mr. woodhouse controlled the cable operations. [illustration: fig. .--bright's paying-out gear, .] _alterations in the electrical apparatus._--since the manufacture of the cable in , professor thomson had become impressed with the conviction that the electric conductivity of copper varied greatly with its degree of purity. as a result of the professor's further investigations, the extra length of cable made for the coming expedition was subjected to systematic and searching tests for the purity and conductivity of the copper. every hank of wire was tested, and all whose conducting power fell below a certain value rejected. here, then, we have the first instance of an organized system of testing for conductivity at the cable factory--a system which has ever since been rigorously insisted on. _professor thomson's mirror instrument._--and now, in the spring of , an invention was perfected that was destined to have a remarkable effect on submarine-cable enterprise. for professor thomson (now lord kelvin) devised and perfected the mirror-speaking instrument, then often described as the marine galvanometer,[ ] of which it may be fairly said that it entirely revolutionized long-distance signaling and electrical testing aboard ship. this most ingenious apparatus consists of a small and exceedingly light steel magnet (_a_) (fig. ) with a tiny reflector or mirror fixed to it, both together weighing but a single grain or thereabouts. this delicate magnet is suspended from its center by a filament of silk and surrounded by a coil (_b_) of the thinnest insulated copper wire. [illustration: fig. .--the reflecting magnet.] a very weak current is sufficient to produce a slight, though nearly imperceptible, movement of the suspended magnet when electricity passes through the surrounding coil. a fine ray of light from a shaded lamp, behind a screen (figs. and ) at a short distance, is directed through a slot in the screen, thence to the open center of the coil (_c_) upon the mirror. it is then reflected back to a graduated scale (_f_). as may be seen from fig. , an exceedingly slight angle of motion on the part of the magnet (_a_) is thus made to magnify the movement of the spot of light upon the scale (_f_), and to render it so considerable as to be readily noted by the eye of the operating clerk. the ray is brought to a focus by passing through a lens. by combinations of these movements of the speck of light (in length and direction) upon the index, an alphabet is readily formed. the magnet is artificially brought back to zero with great precision after each signal by the earth's magnetism, and also both by the natural torsion of the fiber and the controlling action of the adjusting magnet (_e_) (fig. ), with the help of the thumb-screw (_d_) for regulation purposes. [illustration: fig. .--reflecting galvanometer and speaker.] in a word, professor thomson's combined mirror-telegraph and marine galvanometer transmitted messages by multiplying and magnifying the signals through a cable by the agency of imponderable light. [illustration: fig. .] it is only to be regretted that the electrician responsible for the subsequent working through operations did not sooner appreciate the great beauties of the above apparatus, and the advantage of a small generating force such as it alone required. chapter v the trial trip rehearsal of cable operations--successful experiments and performances. [illustration: fig. .--deck of h.m.s. agamemnon with paying-out apparatus.] the engineer-in-chief (mr. bright) arranged that this time an experimental expedition should be first made, during which a complete rehearsal was to be gone through of the various operations to be performed during cable maneuvers. these operations were to consist of making splices, picking up and buoying (besides laying) in deep water, and exercising all hands in their work generally. it was on this occasion also agreed that paying out should start from mid-ocean instead of from either shore. it was further arranged that the main cable should be buoyed at each end, and the connection to it by the heavy cable from shore effected at the earliest opportunity. [illustration: fig. .--stowage of the cable coils on the niagara.] [illustration: fig. .--the loading of the agamemnon.] all the , miles of cable was coiled into the two large ships by the end of may. fig. gives a general idea of the paying-out apparatus mounted on the deck of the agamemnon, and fig. a view in section of the fore-tanks of the niagara when loaded with her cargo of cable. the engineer had this time fitted cast-iron cones in the middle of each cable-coil to meet the requirements of safe paying out, besides providing a large margin of space to the hatchway above. fig. shows the loading of the agamemnon. the rest of the telegraph squadron was on this occasion made up by h.m. gorgon, h.m. paddle-steamer valorous, and h.m. surveying-steamer porcupine. the fleet set forth on their second cruise on may , --this time without any show of public enthusiasm. mr. bright was again assisted by the same engineering staff, but professor thomson had agreed to take a more active part in the electrical work. the bay of biscay was to be the scene of the experiments--the actual site being about miles northwest of corunna, where the gorgon obtained soundings of , fathoms or nearly three statute miles. the agamemnon and niagara were then backed close together, stern on, and a strong hawser was passed between them. each ship had on board some defective cable for the experiments about to be conducted. the proceedings may perhaps best be described by extracts from the engineer's diary: monday, may st, a.m., hove to, lat. ° ´, long. ° ´. up to midday engaged in making splice between experimental cable in fore coil and that in main hold, besides other minor operations. in afternoon getting hawser from niagara and her portion of cable to make joint and splice. p.m., commenced splice; . splice completed; . , let go splice-frame (weight cwt.) over gangway, amidships, starboard side.[ ] . , after getting splice-frame (containing the splice) clear of the ship and lowering it to the bottom, each vessel (then about a quarter of a mile apart) commenced paying out in opposite directions. p.m., got on board niagara's warp and her end of cable to make another splice for second experiment. june st.-- a.m. (night), electrical continuity gone, the cable having parted after two miles in all had been paid out.[ ] since a.m., engaged in hauling in our cable. recovered all our portion, and even managed to heave up the splice-frame (in perfect condition), besides fathoms of niagara's cable, which she had parted. fastened splice to stern of vessel and ceased operations. . a.m., second experiment. started paying-out again. weather very misty. . , one mile paid out at strain cwt.; angle of cable ° with the horizon: running out straight; rate of ship , cable . . , changed to lower hold. . , two miles out; last mile in - / minutes; strain to cwt.; angle of cable °. . , last of the three miles out in minutes. . a. m., four and a half miles out. third experiment--stopped ship, lowered guard, stoppered cable. . , buoy let go, strain cwt. when let go, the cable being nearly up and down. . , running at rate of - / knots paying out, strain to cwt., varying. cable shortly afterward parted through getting jammed in the machinery. the subsequent experiments were mainly in the direction of buoying, picking up, and passing the cable from the stern to the bow sheave for picking up. all of these operations were in turn successfully performed; and finally, in paying out a speed of seven knots was attained without difficulty. during all this time electrical communication had been maintained between the ships; and it is somewhat remarkable that, through this more or less damaged cable, the electricians were able to work a needle-instrument and obtain a deflection on it of degrees. [illustration: fig. .--experimental maneuvers in the bay of biscay.] and now, the program being exhausted, the ships returned to plymouth. on the whole, the trip had proved eminently satisfactory. the paying-out machinery had worked well, the various engineering operations had been successfully performed, and the electrical working through the whole cable was perfect. chapter vi the storm the "wire ships" thus additionally experienced arrived at plymouth on june d, and some further arrangements were made, principally connected with the electrical department. a week later--i. e., on thursday, june th--having taken in a fresh supply of coal, the expedition again left england "with fair skies and bright prospects." the barometer standing at . , it was an auspicious start in what was declared by a consensus of nautical authorities to be the best time of the year for the atlantic. this prognostication was doomed to a terrible disappointment, for the voyage nearly ended in the agamemnon "turning turtle." she was repeatedly almost on her beam ends, the cable was partly shifted, and a large number of those on board were more or less seriously injured. the load of cable made all the difference when brought into comparison with an ordinary ship, under stress of weather. it was bad enough to cruise with a dead weight forward of some tons--a weight under which her planks gaped an inch apart, and her beams threatened daily to give way. but when to these evils were added the fear that in some of her heavy rolls the whole mass would slip and take the vessel's side out, it will be seen that this precious coil was justly regarded as a standing danger--the millstone about the necks of all on board.[ ] oddly enough, owing to the fact that the agamemnon had scant accommodation left for fuel, every one at the start was bemoaning the entire absence of breeze. there were some even, who, never having been at sea before, muttered rash hopes about meeting an atlantic gale. their wishes were soon to be completely realized. in order that laying operations should be started by the two ships in mid-ocean, it was arranged that the entire fleet should meet in latitude ° ´ and longitude ° ´ as a rendezvous. as it is impossible to follow the movements of more than one ship at a time, and as the agamemnon had the more exciting experience, we will confine our attention to her up to the date of the rendezvous. the day after starting there was no wind; but on saturday, june th, a breeze sprung up, and, with screw hoisted and fires raked out, the agamemnon bowled along at a rare pace under "royals" and studding-sails. the barometer fell fast, and squally weather coming on with the boisterous premonitory symptoms of an atlantic gale, even those least versed in such matters could see at a glance that they were "in for it." the following day the sky wore a wretched mist--half rain, half vapor--through which the attendant vessels loomed faintly like shadows. the gale increased; till at four in the afternoon the good ship was rushed through the foam under close-reefed topsails and foresail. that night the storm got worse, and most of the squadron gradually parted company. the ocean resembled one vast snowdrift, the whitish glare from which--reflected from the dark clouds that almost rested on the sea--had a tremendous and unnatural effect, as if the ordinary laws of nature had been reversed. very heavy weather continued till the following sunday (june th), which ushered in as fierce a storm as ever swept over the atlantic. the narrative of this fight of nautical science with the elements may best be continued in the words of the representative of the times, especially as it is probably the most intensely realistic description of a storm that has ever been written by an eye-witness: the niagara, which had hitherto kept close, while the other smaller vessels had dropped out of sight, began to give us a very wide berth, and as darkness increased it was a case of every one for himself. our ship, the agamemnon, rolling many degrees--not every one can imagine how she went at it that night--was laboring so heavily that she looked like breaking up. the massive beams under her upper-deck coil cracked and snapped with a noise resembling that of small artillery, almost drowning the hideous roar of the wind as it moaned and howled through the rigging, jerking and straining the little storm-sails as though it meant to tear them from the yards. those in the impoverished cabins on the main deck had little sleep that night, for the upper-deck planks above them were "working themselves free," as sailors say; and beyond a doubt they were infinitely more free than easy, for they groaned under the pressure of the coil with a dreadful uproar, and availed themselves of the opportunity to let in a little light, with a good deal of water, at every roll. the sea, too, kept striking with dull, heavy violence against the vessel's bows, forcing its way through hawse-holes and ill-closed ports with a heavy slush; and thence, hissing and winding aft, it roused the occupants of the cabins aforesaid to a knowledge that their floors were under water, and that the flotsam and jetsam noises they heard beneath were only caused by their outfit for the voyage taking a cruise of its own in some five or six inches of dirty bilge. such was sunday night, and such was a fair average of all the nights throughout the week, varying only from bad to worse. on monday things became desperate. the barometer was lower--and, as a matter of course, the wind and sea were infinitely higher--than the day before. it was singular, but at twelve o'clock the sun pierced through the pall of clouds and shone brilliantly for half an hour, and during that brief time it blew as it had not often blown before. so fierce was this gust that its roar drowned every other sound, and it was almost impossible to give the watch the necessary orders for taking in the close-reefer foresail, which, when furled, almost left the agamemnon under bare poles, though still surging through the water at speed. this gust passed, the usual gale set in, now blowing steadily from the southwest, and taking us more and more out of our course each minute. every hour the storm got worse, till toward five in the afternoon, when it seemed at its height--and raged with such a violence of wind and sea--that matters really looked "desperate" even for such a strong and large ship as the agamemnon. the upper-deck coil had strained her decks throughout excessively, and though this mass in theory was supposed to prevent her rolling so quickly and heavily as she would have done without it, yet still she heeled over to such an alarming extent that fears of the coil itself shifting again occupied every mind, and it was accordingly strengthened with additional shores bolted down to the deck. the space occupied by the main coil below had deprived the agamemnon of several of her coal-bunkers, and in order to make up for this deficiency, as well as to endeavor to counterbalance the immense mass which weighed her down by the head, a large quantity of coals had been stowed on the deck aft. on each side of her main deck were thirty-five tons, secured in a mass, while on the lower deck ninety tons were stowed away in the same manner. the precautions taken to secure these huge masses also required attention as the great ship surged from side to side. but these coals seemed secure, and were so, in fact, unless the vessel should almost capsize--an unpleasant alternative which no one certainly anticipated then. everything, therefore, was made "snug," as sailors call it, though their efforts by no means resulted in the comfort which might have been expected from the term. the night, however, passed over without any mischance beyond the smashing of all things incautiously left loose and capable of rolling, and one or two attempts which the agamemnon made in the middle watch to turn bottom upward. in all other matters it was the mere ditto of sunday night, except, perhaps, a little worse, and certainly much more wet below. tuesday the gale continued with almost unabated force, though the barometer had risen to . , and there was sufficient sun to take a clear observation, which showed our distance from the rendezvous to be miles. during this afternoon the niagara joined company, and the wind going more ahead, the agamemnon took to violent pitching, plunging steadily into the trough of the sea as if she meant to break her back and lay the atlantic cable in a heap. this change in her motion strained and taxed every inch of timber near the coils to the very utmost. it was curious to see how they worked and bent as the agamemnon went at everything she met head first. one time she pitched so heavily as to break one of the main beams of the lower deck, which had to be shored with screw-jacks forthwith. saturday, the th of june, things looked a little better. the barometer seemed inclined to go up and the sea to go down; and for the first time that morning since the gale began, some six days previous, the decks could be walked with tolerable comfort and security. but alas! appearances are as deceitful in the atlantic as elsewhere; and during a comparative calm that afternoon the glass fell lower, while a thin line of black haze to windward seemed to grow up into the sky, until it covered the heavens with a somber darkness, and warned us that, after all, the worst was yet to come. there was much heavy rain that evening, and then the wind began, not violently, nor in gusts, but with a steadily increasing force, as if the gale was determined to do its work slowly but do it well. the sea was "ready-built to hand," as sailors say, so at first the storm did little more than urge on the ponderous masses of water with redoubled force, and fill the air with the foam and spray it tore from their rugged crests. by and by, however, it grew more dangerous, and captain preedy himself remained on deck throughout the middle watch, for the wind was hourly getting worse and worse, and the agamemnon, rolling thirty degrees each way, was straining to a dangerous extent. [illustration: fig. .--h.m.s. agamemnon in a storm.] at a.m. sail was shortened to close-reefer fore and main topsails and reefed foresail--a long and tedious job, for the wind so roared and howled and the hiss of the boiling sea was so deafening that words of command were useless, and the men aloft, holding on with all their might to the yards as the ship rolled over and over almost to the water, were quite incapable of struggling with the masses of wet canvas that flapped and plunged as if men and yards and everything were going away together. the ship was almost as wet inside as out, and so things wore on till eight or nine o'clock, everything getting adrift and being smashed, and every one on board jamming themselves up in corners or holding on to beams to prevent their going adrift likewise. at ten o'clock the agamemnon was rolling and laboring fearfully, with the sky getting darker, and both wind and sea increasing every minute. at about half-past ten o'clock three or four gigantic waves were seen approaching the ship, coming slowly on through the mist nearer and nearer, rolling on like hills of green water, with a crown of foam that seemed to double their height. the agamemnon rose heavily to the first, and then went down quickly into the deep trough of the sea, falling over as she did so, so as almost to capsize completely on the port side. there was a fearful crashing as she lay over this way, for everything broke adrift, whether secured or not, and the uproar and confusion were terrific for a minute, then back she came again on the starboard beam in the same manner, only quicker, and still deeper than before. again there was the same noise and crashing, and the officers in the ward-room, who knew the danger of the ship, struggled to their feet and opened the door leading to the main deck. here, for an instant, the scene almost defies description. amid loud shouts and efforts to save themselves, a confused mass of sailors, boys, and marines, with deck-buckets, ropes, ladders, and everything that could get loose, and which had fallen back again to the port side, were being hurled again in a mass across the ship to starboard. dimly, and only for an instant, could this be seen, with groups of men clinging to the beams with all their might, with a mass of water, which had forced its way in through ports and decks, surging about, and then, with a tremendous crash, as the ship fell still deeper over, the coals stowed on the main deck broke loose, and smashing everything before them, went over among the rest to leeward. the coal-dust hid everything on the main deck in an instant, but the crashing could still be heard going on in all directions, as the lumps and sacks of coal, with stanchions, ladders, and mess-tins, went leaping about the decks, pouring down the hatchways, and crashing through the glass skylights into the engine-room below. still it was not done, and, surging again over another tremendous wave, the agamemnon dropped down still more to port, and the coals on the starboard side of the lower deck gave way also, and carried everything before them. matters now became serious, for it was evident that two or three more lurches and the masts would go like reeds, while half the crew might be maimed or killed below. captain preedy was already on the poop, with lieutenant gibson, and it was "hands, wear ship," at once, while mr. brown, the indefatigable chief engineer, was ordered to get up steam immediately. the crew gained the deck with difficulty, and not till after a lapse of some minutes, for all the ladders had been broken away; the men were grimed with coal-dust, and many bore still more serious marks upon their faces of how they had been knocked about below. there was some confusion at first, for the storm was fearful. the officers were quite inaudible, and a wild, dangerous sea, running mountains high, heeled the great ship backward and forward, so that the crew were unable to keep their feet for an instant, and in some cases were thrown across the decks in a fearful manner. two marines went with a rush head foremost into the paying-out machine, as if they meant to butt it over the side, yet, strange to say, neither the men nor the machine suffered. what made matters worse, the ship's barge, though lashed down to the deck, had partly broken loose, and dropping from side to side as the vessel lurched, it threatened to crush any who ventured to pass it. the regular discipline of the ship, however, soon prevailed, and the crew set to work to wear round the ship on the starboard tack, while lieutenants robinson and murray went below to see after those who had been hurt, and about the number of whom extravagant rumors prevailed among the men. there were, however, unfortunately but too many. the marine sentry outside the ward-room door on the main deck had not had time to escape, and was completely buried under the coals. some time elapsed before he could be got out, for one of the beams used to shore up the sacks, which had crushed his arm very badly, still lay across the mangled limb, jamming it in such a manner that it was found impossible to remove it without risking the man's life. saws, therefore, had to be sent for, and the timber sawn away before the poor fellow could be extricated. another marine on the lower deck endeavored to save himself by catching hold of what seemed a ledge in the planks, but, unfortunately, it was only caused by the beams straining apart, and, of course, as the agamemnon righted they closed again, and crushed his fingers flat. one of the assistant engineers was also buried among the coals on the lower deck, and sustained some severe internal injuries. _the lurch of the ship was calculated at forty-five degrees each way for five times in rapid succession._ the galley-coppers were only half filled with soup; nevertheless, it nearly all poured out, and scalded some of the poor fellows who were extended on the decks, holding on to anything in reach. these, with a dislocation, were the chief casualties, but there were others of bruises and contusions, more or less severe, and, of course, a long list of escapes more marvelous than any injury. one poor fellow went head first from the main deck into the hold without being hurt, and one on the orlop-deck was "chevied" about for some ten minutes by three large casks of oil which had got adrift, and any one of which would have flattened him like a pancake had it overtaken him. as soon as the agamemnon had gone round on the other tack the niagara wore also, and bore down as if to render assistance. she had witnessed our danger, and, as we afterward learned, imagined that the upper-deck coil had broken loose, and that we were sinking. things, however, were not so bad as that, though they were bad enough, heaven knows, for everything seemed to go wrong that day. the upper-deck coil had strained the ship to the very utmost, but still held on fast. but not so the coil in the main hold, which had begun to get adrift, and the top kept working and shifting over from side to side, as the ship lurched, until some forty or fifty miles were in a hopeless state of tangle, resembling nothing so much as a cargo of live eels, and there was every prospect of the tangle spreading deeper and deeper as the bad weather continued. going round upon the starboard tack had eased the ship to a certain extent, but with such a wind and such a sea--both of which were getting worse than better--it was impossible to effect much for the agamemnon's relief, and so by twelve o'clock she was rolling almost as badly as ever. the crew, who had been at work since nearly four in the morning, were set to clear up the decks from the masses of coal that covered them; and while this was going forward a heavy sea struck the stern, and smashed the large iron guard-frame which had been fixed there to prevent the cable fouling the screw in paying out. now that one side had broken, it was expected every moment that other parts would go, and the pieces hanging down either smash the screw or foul the rudder-post. it is not overestimating the danger to say that had the latter accident occurred in such a sea, and with a vessel so overladen the chances would have been sadly against the agamemnon ever appearing at the rendezvous. fortunately it was found possible to secure the broken frame temporarily with hawsers so as to prevent it dropping farther, though nothing could hinder the fractured end from striking against the vessel's side with such force as to lead to serious apprehensions that it would establish a dangerous leak under water. it was near three in the afternoon before this was quite secured, the gale still continuing, and the sea running even worse. the condition of the masts, too, at this time was a source of much anxiety both to captain preedy and mr. moriarty, the master. the heavy rolling had strained and slackened the wire shrouds to such an extent that they had become perfectly useless as supports. the lower masts bent visibly at every roll, and once or twice it seemed as if they must go by the board. unfortunately nothing whatever could be done to relieve this strain by sending down any of the upper spars, since it was only her masts which prevented the ship rolling still more and quicker; and so every one knew that if once they were carried away it might soon be all over with the ship, as then the deck coil could not help going after them. so there was nothing for it but to watch in anxious silence the way they bent and strained, and trust in providence for the result. about six in the evening it was thought better to "wear ship" again and stand for the rendezvous under easy steam, and her head accordingly was put about and once more faced the storm. as she went round she, of course, fell into the trough of the sea again, and rolled so awfully as to break her waste-steampipe, filling her engine-room with steam, and depriving her of the services of one boiler when it was sorely needed. the sun set upon as wild and wicked a night as ever taxed the courage and coolness of a sailor. there were, of course, men on board who were familiar with gales and storms in all parts of the world; and there were some who had witnessed the tremendous hurricane which swept the black sea on the memorable th of november, when scores of vessels were lost and seamen perished by the thousands. but of all on board none had ever seen a fiercer or more dangerous sea than raged throughout that night and the following morning, tossing the agamemnon from side to side like a mere plaything among the waters. the night was thick and very dark, the low black clouds almost hemming the vessel in; now and then a fiercer blast than usual drove the great masses slowly aside and showed the moon, a dim, greasy blotch upon the sky, with the ocean, white as driven snow, boiling and seething like a caldron. but these were only glimpses, which were soon lost, and again it was all darkness, through which the waves, suddenly upheaving, rushed upon the ship as though they must overwhelm it, and dealing it one staggering blow, went hissing and surging past into the darkness again. the grandeur of the scene was almost lost in its dangers and terrors, for of all the many forms in which death approaches man there is none so easy, in fact, so terrific in appearance, as death by shipwreck. sleeping was impossible that night on board the agamemnon. even those in cots were thrown out, from their striking against the vessel's side as she pitched. the berths of wood fixed athwartships in the cabins on the main deck had worked to pieces. chairs and tables were broken, chests of drawers capsized, and a little surf was running over the floors of the cabins themselves, pouring miniature seas into portmanteaus, and breaking over carpetbags of clean linen. fast as it flowed off by the scuppers it came in faster by the hawse-holes and ports, while the beams and knees strained with a doleful noise, as though it was impossible they could hold together much longer, and on the whole it was as miserable and even anxious a night as ever was passed on board any line-of-battle ship in her majesty's service. captain preedy never left the poop all night, though it was hard work to remain there, even holding on to the poop-rail with both hands. morning brought no change, save that the storm was as fierce as ever, and though the sea could not be higher or wilder, yet the additional amount of broken water made it still more dangerous to the ship. very dimly, and only now and then through the thick scud, the niagara could be seen--one moment on a monstrous hill of water, and the next quite lost to view, as the agamemnon went down between the waves. but even these glimpses showed us that our transatlantic consort was plunging heavily, shipping seas, and evidently having a bad time of it, though she got through it better than the agamemnon, as, of course, she could, having only the same load, though , tons larger. suddenly it came on darker and thicker, and we lost sight of her in the thick spray, and had only ourselves to look after. this was quite enough, for every minute made matters worse, and the aspect of affairs began to excite most serious misgivings in the minds of those in charge. the agamemnon is one of the finest line-of-battle ships in the whole navy, but in such a storm, and so heavily overladen, what could she do but make bad weather worse, and strain and labor and fall into the trough of the sea, as if she were going down head foremost. three or four hours more and the vessel had borne all she could bear with safety. the masts were rapidly getting worse, the deck coil worked more and more with each tremendous plunge, and, even if both these held, it was evident that the ship itself would soon strain to pieces if the weather continued so. the sea, forcing its way through ports and hawse-holes, had accumulated on the lower deck to such an extent that it flooded the stoke-hole, so that the men could scarcely remain at their posts. everything went smashing and rolling about. one plunge put all the electrical instruments _hors de combat_ at a blow, and staved some barrels of strong solution of sulphate of copper, which went cruising about, turning all it touched to a light pea-green. by and by she began to ship seas. water came down the ventilators near the funnel into the engine-room. [illustration: fig. .--the agamemnon storm: coals adrift.] then a tremendous sea struck her forward, drenching those on deck, and leaving them up to their knees in water, and the least versed on board could see that things were fast going to the bad unless a change took place in the weather or the condition of the ship. of the first there seemed little chance. the weather certainly showed no disposition to clear--on the contrary, livid-looking black clouds seemed to be closing round the vessel faster and faster than ever. for the relief of the ship three courses were open to captain preedy--one, to wear round and try her on the starboard tack, as he had been compelled to do the day before; another, to fairly run for it before the wind; and, third and last, to endeavor to lighten the vessel by getting some of the cable overboard. of course the latter would not have been thought of till the first two had been tried and failed--in fact, not till it was evident that nothing else could save the ship. against wearing round there was the danger of her again falling off into the trough of the sea, losing her masts, shifting her upper-deck coil, and so finding her way to the bottom in ten minutes, while to attempt running before the storm with such a sea on was to risk her stern being stove in, and a hundred tons of water added to her burden with each wave that came up afterward, till the poor agamemnon went under them all for ever. a little after ten o'clock on monday, the st, the aspect of affairs was so alarming that captain preedy resolved at all risks to try wearing the ship round on the other tack. it was hard enough to make the words of command audible, but to execute them seemed almost impossible. the ship's head went round enough to leave her broadside on to the seas, and then for a time it seemed as if nothing could be done. all the rolls which she had ever given on the previous day seemed mere trifles compared with her performances then. of more than men on deck, at least were thrown down, and falling over from side to side in heaps, while others, holding on to the ropes, swung to and fro with every heave. it really appeared as if the last hour of the stout ship had come, and to this minute it seems almost miraculous that her masts held on. each time she fell over her main chains went deep under water. the lower decks were flooded, and those above could hear by the fearful crashing--audible amid the hoarse roar of the storm--that the coals had got loose again below, and had broken into the engine-room, and were carrying all before them. during these rolls the main-deck coil shifted over to such a degree as quite to envelop four men, who, sitting on the top, were trying to wedge it down with beams. one of them was so much jammed by the mass which came over him that he was seriously contused. he had to be removed to the sick-bay, making up the sick-list to forty-five, of which ten were from injuries caused by the rolling of the ship, and very many of the rest from continual fatigue and exposure during the gale. once round on the starboard tack, and it was seen in an instant that the ship was in no degree relieved by the change. another heavy sea struck her forward, sweeping clean over the fore part of the vessel and carrying away the woodwork and platforms which had been placed there round the machinery for underrunning. this and a few more plunges were quite sufficient to settle the matter, and at last, reluctantly, captain preedy succumbed to the storm he could neither conquer nor contend against. full steam was got on, and with a foresail and a fore-topsail to lift her head the agamemnon ran before the storm, rolling and tumbling over the huge waves at a tremendous pace. it was well for all that the wind gave this much way on her, or her stern would infallibly have been stove in. as it was, a wave partly struck her on the starboard quarter, smashing the quarter-galley and ward-room windows on that side, and sending such a sea into the ward-room itself as to literally wash two officers off a sofa on which they were resting on that side of the ship. this was a kind of parting blow; for the glass began to rise, and the storm was evidently beginning to moderate, and although the sea still ran as high as ever there was less broken water, and altogether, toward midday, affairs assumed a better and more cheerful aspect. the ward-room that afternoon was a study for an artist, with its windows halfdarkened and smashed, the sea-water still slushing about in odd corners, with everything that was capable of being broken strewn over the floor in pieces, and some fifteen or twenty officers, seated amid the ruins, holding on to the deck or table with one hand, while with the other they contended at a disadvantage with a tough meal--the first which most had eaten for twenty-four hours. little sleep had been indulged in though much "lolloping about." those, however, who prepared themselves for a night's rest in their berths rather than at the ocean bottom, had great difficulty in finding their day-garments of a morning. the boots especially went astray, and got so hopelessly mixed that the man who could "show up" with both pairs of his own was, indeed, a man to be congratulated. but all things have an end, and this long gale--of over a week's duration--at last blew itself out, and the weary ocean rocked itself to rest. throughout the whole of monday the agamemnon ran before the wind, which moderated so much that at a.m. on tuesday her head was again put about, and for the second time she commenced beating up for the rendezvous, then some miles farther from us than when the storm was at its height on sunday morning. so little was gained against this wind that friday the th--sixteen days after leaving plymouth--still found us some fifty miles from the rendezvous. so it was determined to get up steam and run down on it at once. as we approached the place of meeting the angry sea went down. the valorous hove in sight at noon; in the afternoon the niagara came in from the north; and at even the gorgon from the south: and then, almost for the first time since starting, the squadron was reunited near the spot where the great work was to have commenced fifteen days previously--as tranquil in the middle of the atlantic as if in plymouth sound. chapter vii the renewed effort that evening the four vessels lay together side by side, and there was such a stillness in the sea and air as would have seemed remarkable even on an inland lake. on the atlantic, and after what had been so lately experienced, it seemed almost unnatural. the boats were out, and the officers were passing from ship to ship, telling their experiences of the voyage, and forming plans for the morrow. the captain of the agamemnon had a sorry tale to tell. the strain to which she had been subjected had opened her "waterways."[ ] then, again, one of the crew, a marine, had been literally frightened out of his wits, and remained crazy for some days. one man had his arm fractured in two places, and another his leg broken. the niagara, on the other hand, had weathered the gale splendidly, though it had been a hard and anxious time with her, as well as with the smaller craft. she had lost her jib-boom, and the buoys she carried for suspending the cable had been washed from her sides--no man knew where. after taking stock of things generally, a start was made to repair the various damages; but the shifting of the upper part of the main coil on the agamemnon into a hopeless tangle entailed recoiling a considerable length of cable, a no light task, occupying several days. on the morning of saturday, june th, all the preparations were completed for making the splice and once more commencing the great undertaking. in the words of the times representative: the end of the niagara's cable was sent on board the agamemnon, the splice was made, a bent sixpence put in for luck, and at . greenwich time it was slowly lowered over the side and disappeared forever. the weather was cold and foggy, with a stiff breeze and dismal sort of sleet, and as there was no cheering or manifestation of enthusiasm of any kind, the whole ceremony had a most funereal effect, and seemed as solemn as if we were burying a marine, or some other mortuary task of the kind equally cheerful and enlivening. as it turned out, however, it was just as well that no display took place, as every one would have looked uncommonly silly when the same operation came to be repeated, as it had to be, an hour or so afterward. it is needless making a long story longer, so i may state at once that when each ship had paid out three miles or so, and they were getting well apart, the cable, which had been allowed to run too slack, broke on board the niagara owing to its overriding and getting off the pulley leading on to the machine. the break was of course known instantly, both vessels put about and returned, a fresh splice was made, and again lowered over at half past seven. according to arrangement, fathoms were veered out from each ship, and then all stood away on their course, at first at two miles an hour, and afterward at four. everything then went well, the machine working beautifully, at thirty-two revolutions per minute, the screw at twenty-six, the cable running out easily at five and five and a half miles an hour, the ship going four. the greatest strain upon the dynamometer was , lbs., and this was only for a few minutes, the average giving only , lbs. and , lbs. at midnight twenty-one nautical miles had been paid out, and the angle of the cable with the horizon had been reduced considerably. at about half past three forty miles had gone, and nothing could be more perfect and regular than the working of everything, when suddenly, at . a.m. on sunday, the th, professor thomson came on deck and reported a total break of continuity; that the cable, in fact, had parted, and as was believed at the time, from the niagara. the agamemnon was instantly stopped and the brakes applied to the machinery, in order that the cable paid out might be severed from the mass in the hold, and so enable professor thomson to discover by electrical tests at about what distance from the ship the fracture had taken place.[ ] unfortunately, however, there was a strong breeze on at the time, with rather a heavy swell, which told severely upon the cable, and before any means could be taken to ease entirely the motion on the ship, it parted a few fathoms below the stern-wheel, the dynamometer indicating a strain of nearly , lbs. in another instant a gun and a blue light warned the valorous of what had happened, and roused all on board the agamemnon to a knowledge that the machinery was silent, and that the first part of the atlantic cable had been laid and effectually lost. the great length of cable on board both ships allowed a large margin for such mishaps as these, and the arrangement made before leaving england was that the splices might be renewed and the work recommenced till each ship had lost miles of wire, after which they were to discontinue their efforts and return to queenstown. accordingly, after the breakage on sunday morning, the ships' heads were put about, and for the fourth time the agamemnon again began the weary work of beating up against the wind for that everlasting rendezvous which we seemed destined to be always seeking. apart from the regret with which all regarded the loss of the cable, there were other reasons for not wishing the cruise to be thus indefinitely prolonged, since there had been a break in the continuity of the fresh provisions; and for some days previously in the ward-room the _pièces de résistance_ had been inflammatory-looking _morceaux_, salted to an astonishing pitch, and otherwise uneatable, for it was beef which had been kept three years beyond its warranty for soundness, and to which all were then reduced. it was hard work beating up against the wind; so hard, indeed, that it was not till the noon of monday, the th, that we again met the niagara; and while all were waiting with impatience for her explanation of how she broke the cable, she electrified every one by running up the interrogatory, "how did the cable part?" this _was_ astounding. as soon as the boats could be lowered, mr. cyrus field, with the electricians from the niagara, came on board, and a comparison of logs showed the painful and mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel discovered that a total fracture had taken place at a distance of certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, as well as could be judged, at the bottom of the ocean. the logs on both sides were so clear as to the minute of time, and as to the electrical tests showing not merely leakage or defective insulations of the wire, but a total fracture, that there was no room left on which to rest a moment's doubt of the certainty of this most disheartening fact. that of all the many mishaps connected with the atlantic telegraph, this was the worst and most disheartening, since it proved that after all that human skill and science can effect to lay the wire down with safety has been accomplished, there may be some fatal obstacles to success at the bottom of the ocean which can never be guarded against, for even the nature of the peril must always remain as secret and unknown as the depths in which it is to be encountered. was the bottom covered with a soft coating of ooze, in which it had been said the cable might rest undisturbed for years as on a bed of down? or were there, after all, sharp-pointed rocks lying on that supposed plateau of maury, berryman, and dayman? these were the questions that some of those on board were asking. but there was no use in further conjecture or in repining over what _had_ already happened. though the prospect of success appeared to be considerably impaired it was generally considered that there was but one course left, and that was to splice again and make another--and what was fondly hoped would be a final--attempt. accordingly no time was lost in making the third splice, which was lowered over into , fathoms of water at seven o'clock by ship's time the same night. before steaming away, as the agamemnon was now getting very short of coal, and the two vessels had some miles of surplus cable between them, it was agreed that if the wire parted again before the ships had gone each miles from the rendezvous they were to return and make another splice; and as the agamemnon was to sail back, the niagara, it was decided, was to wait eight days for her appearance. if, on the other hand, the miles had been exceeded, the ships were not to return, but each make the best of its way to queenstown. with this understanding the ships again parted, and, with the wire dropping steadily down between them, the niagara and agamemnon steamed away, and were soon lost in the cold, raw fog, which had hung over the rendezvous ever since the operations had commenced. the cable, as before, paid out beautifully, and nothing could have been more regular and more easy than the working of every part of the apparatus. at first the ship's speed was only two knots, the cable going three and three and a half with a strain of , lbs., the horizontal angle averaging as low as seven and the vertical about sixteen. by and by, however, the speed was increased to four knots, the cable going five, at a strain of , lbs., and an angle of from twelve to fifteen. at this rate it was kept with trifling variations throughout the whole of monday night, and neither mr. bright, mr. canning, nor mr. clifford ever quitted the machines for an instant. toward the middle of the night, while the rate of the ship continued the same, the speed at which the cable paid out slackened nearly a knot, while the dynamometer indicated as low as , lbs. this change could only be accounted for on the supposition that the water had shallowed to a considerable extent, and that the vessel was in fact passing over some submarine ben nevis or skiddaw. after an interval of about an hour the strain and rate of progress of the cable again increased, while the increase of the vertical angle seemed to indicate that the wire was sinking down the side of a declivity. beyond this there was no variation throughout monday night, or indeed through tuesday. the upper-deck coil, which had weighed so heavily upon the ship--and still more heavily upon the minds of all during the past storms--was fast disappearing, and by twelve at midday on tuesday, the th, seventy-six miles had been paid out to something like sixty miles' progress of the ship. warned by repeated failures, many of those on board scarcely dared hope for success. still the spirits of all rose as the distance widened between the ships. things were going in splendid style--in such splendid style that "stock had gone up nearly per cent." those who had leisure for sleep were able to dream about cable-laying and the terrible effects of too great a strain. the first question which such as these ask on awakening is about the cable, and on being informed that it is all right, satisfaction ensues until the appearance of breakfast, when it is presumed this feeling is intensified. for those who do not derive any particular pleasure from the mere asking of questions, the harmonious music made by the paying-out machine during its revolutions supplies the information. then again, the electrical continuity--after all, the most important item--was perfect, and the electricians reported that the signals passing between the ships were eminently satisfactory. the door of the testing-room is almost always shut, and the electricians pursue their work undisturbed; but it is impossible to exclude that spirit of scientific inquiry which will satiate its thirst for information even through a keyhole. further, the weather was all that could be wished for. indeed, had the poet who was so anxious for "life on the ocean wave and a home on the rolling deep" been aboard, he would have been absolutely happy, and perhaps even more desirous for a fixed habitation. the only cause that warranted anxiety was that it was evident the upper-deck coil would be finished by about eleven o'clock at night, when the men would have to pass along in darkness the great loop which formed the communication between that and the coil in the main hold. this was most unfortunate; but the operation had been successfully performed in daylight during the experimental trip in the bay of biscay, and every precaution was now taken that no accident should occur. at nine o'clock by ship's time, when miles had been paid out and about miles' distance from the rendezvous accomplished, the last flake but one of the upper-deck coil came in turn to be used. in order to make it easier in passing to the main coil the revolutions of the screw were reduced gradually, by two revolutions at a time from thirty to twenty, while the paying-out machine went slowly from thirty-six to twenty-two. at this rate the vessel going three knots and the cable three and a half, the operation was continued with perfect regularity, the dynamometer indicating a strain of , lbs. suddenly without an instant's warning, or the occurrence of any single incident that could account for it, the cable parted when subjected to a strain of less than a ton.[ ] the gun that again told the valorous of this fatal mishap brought all on board the agamemnon rushing to the deck, for none could believe the rumor that had spread like wildfire about the ship. but there stood the machinery, silent and motionless, while the fractured end of the wire hung over the stern-wheel, swinging loosely to and fro. it seemed almost impossible to realize the fact that an accident so instantaneous and irremediable should have occurred, and at a time when all seemed to be going on so well. of course a variety of ingenious suggestions were soon afloat, showing most satisfactorily how the cable must and ought to have broken. there was a regular gloom that night on board the agamemnon, for from first to last the success of the expedition had been uppermost in the thoughts of all, and all had labored for it early and late, contending with every danger and overcoming every obstacle and disaster that had marked each day, with an earnestness and devotion of purpose that is really beyond all praise. immediately after the mishap, a brief consultation was held by those in charge on board the agamemnon, and as it was shown that they had only exceeded the distance from the rendezvous by fourteen miles, and that there was still more cable on board the two vessels than the amount with which the original expedition last year was commenced, it was determined to try for another chance and return to the rendezvous, sailing there, of course; for mr. brown, the chief engineer, as ultrazealous in the cause as a board of directors, guarded the coal-bunkers like a very dragon, lest, if in coming to paying out the cable again, steam should run short, thereby endangering the success of the whole undertaking. for the fifth time, therefore, the agamemnon's head went about, and after twenty days at sea she again began beating up against the wind for the rendezvous to try, if possible, to recommence her labors. the following day the wind was blowing from the southwest, with mist and rain, and thursday, july st, gave every one the most unfavorable opinion of july weather in the atlantic. the wind and sea were both high--the wet fog so dense that one could scarcely see the mastheads, while the damp cold was really biting. altogether it was an atmosphere of which a londoner would have been ashamed even in november. later in the day a heavy sea got on; the wind increased without dissipating the fog, and it was double-reefed topsails and pitching and rolling as before. however, the upper-deck coil of tons being gone, the agamemnon was as buoyant as a lifeboat, and no one cared how much she took to kicking about, though the cold wet fog was a miserable nuisance, penetrating everywhere and making the ship as wet inside as out. what made the matter worse was that in such weather there seemed no chance of meeting the niagara unless she ran into us, when cable-laying would have gone on wholesale. in order to avoid such a contretemps, and also to inform the valorous of our whereabouts, guns were fired, fog-bells rung, and the bugler stationed forward to warn the other vessels of our vicinity. friday was the ditto of thursday and saturday, worse than both together, for it almost blew a gale and there was a heavy sea on. on sunday, the th, it cleared, and the agamemnon for the first time during the whole cruise, reached the actual rendezvous and fell in with the valorous, which had been there since friday, the d, but the fog must have been even thicker there than elsewhere, for she had scarcely seen herself, much less anything else till sunday. during the remainder of that day and monday, when the weather was very clear, both ships cruised over the place of meeting, but neither the niagara nor gorgon was there, though day and night the lookout for them was constant and incessant. it was evident then that the niagara had rigidly, but most unfortunately, adhered to the mere letter of the agreement regarding the miles, and after the last fracture had at once turned back for queenstown. on tuesday, the th, therefore, as the dense fogs and winds set in again it was agreed between the valorous and agamemnon to return once more to the rendezvous. but as usual the fog was so thick that the whole american navy might have been cruising there unobserved; so the search was given up, and at eight o'clock that night the ship's head was turned for cork, and, under all sail, the agamemnon at last stood homeward. the voyage home was made with ease and swiftness considering the lightness of the wind, the trim of the ship, and that she only steamed three days, and at midday on tuesday, july th, the agamemnon cast anchor in queenstown harbor, having met with more dangerous weather, and encountered more mishaps than often falls to the lot of any ship in a cruise of thirty-three days. thus ends the most arduous and dangerous expedition that had ever been experienced in connection with cable-work. it, at any rate, had the advantage of supplying the public with some exciting reading in the columns of the times, whose graphic descriptions were much appreciated. the niagara had reached queenstown as far back as july th. having found that they had run out miles when "continuity" ceased, those in charge considered that, in order to carry out their instructions, they should return at once to the above port, which they did. on the two ships meeting at queenstown, discussion immediately took place ( ) as to the cause of the cessation of "continuity"; and ( ) regarding the course taken by the niagara in returning home so promptly. the non-arrival of the agamemnon till nearly a week later had been the cause of much alarm regarding her safety. chapter viii "finis coronat opus" renewed "stock-taking"--the last start--successful termination--general surprise and applause the sad tale of disaster commenced to spread abroad immediately on the niagara's arrival in queenstown; and when mr. field hastened to london to meet the other directors of the company, he found that the news had not only preceded him, but had already had its effect. the board was soon called together. it met as a council of war summoned after a terrific defeat to decide whether to surrender or to try once more the chances of battle. says field: "most of the directors looked blankly in one another's faces." with some the feeling was one akin to despair. it was thought by many that there was nothing left on which to found an expectation of future success, or to encourage the expenditure of further capital upon an adventure so "completely visionary." the chairman (sir william brown), while recommending entire abandonment of the undertaking, suggested "a sale of the cable remaining on board the ships, and a distribution of the proceeds among the shareholders." bolder counsels were, however, destined to prevail. there were those who thought there was still a chance, like robert bruce, who, after twelve battles and twelve defeats, yet believed that a thirteenth _might_ bring victory, notwithstanding the prejudice held by some against that number. the projectors made a firm stand for immediate action, as did also professor thomson and mr. curtis lampson, who succeeded mr. brooking as deputy chairman, at the same time that mr. stuart wortley took the chair in place of sir w. brown, on the latter's resignation. these advocates of non-surrender succeeded at length in carrying an order for the immediate sailing of the expedition for a final effort. it was this effort which proved to the world the possibility of telegraphing from one hemisphere to the other. the order to advance having been given, the ships forthwith took in coal and other necessaries. when everything and everybody had been shipped, the squadron left queenstown once more on saturday, july , . as the ships sailed out of the harbor of cork, it was with none of the enthusiasm which attended their departure from valentia the year before, or even the small amount excited when leaving plymouth on june th. nobody so much as cheered. in fact, their mission was by this time spoken of as a "mad freak of stubborn ignorance," and "was regarded with mixed feelings of derision and pity."[ ] the squadron was the same as on the last occasion. it was agreed that the ships should not attempt to keep together this time, but that each should make its way to the given latitude and longitude. the staffs were composed and berthed as before. moreover, the expedition was again accompanied by the same literary talent. _the last start._--let us now turn to the times narrative, as given at the conclusion of this final expedition: as the ships left the harbor there was apparently no notice taken of their departure by those on shore or in the vessels anchored around them. every one seemed impressed with the conviction that we were engaged in a hopeless enterprise; and the squadron seemed rather to have slunk away on some discreditable mission than to have sailed for the accomplishment of a grand national scheme. it was just dawn when the agamemnon got clear of queenstown harbor, but, as the wind blew stiff from the southwest, it was nearly ten o'clock before she rounded the old head of kinsale, a distance of only a few miles. the weather remained fine during the day; and as the agamemnon skirted along the wild and rocky shore of the southwest coast of ireland, those on board had an excellent opportunity of seeing the stupendous rocks which rise from the water in the most grotesque and fantastic shapes. about five o'clock in the afternoon cape clear was passed, and though the coast gradually edged away to the northward of our course, yet it was nearly dark before we lost sight of the rocky mountains which surround bantry bay and the shores of the kenmare river. by monday, the th, we had left the land far behind us, and thence fell into the usual dull monotony of sea life. of the voyage out there is little to be said. it was not checkered by the excitement of continual storms or the tedium of perpetual calms, but we had a sufficient admixture of both to render our passage to the rendezvous a very ordinary and uninteresting one. for the first week the barometer remained unusually low, and the numbers of those natural barometers--mother carey's chickens--that kept in our wake kept us in continual expectation of heavy weather. with very little breeze or wind, the screw was got up and sail made, so as to husband our coals as much as possible; but it generally soon fell calm, and obliged captain preedy reluctantly to get up steam again. in consequence of continued delays and changes from steam to sail, and from sail to steam again, much fuel was expended, and not more than eighty miles of distance made good each day. on sunday, the th, however, the weather changed, and for several days in succession there was an uninterrupted calm. the moon was just at the full, and for several nights it shone with a brilliancy which turned the smooth sea into one silvery sheet, which brought out the dark hull and white sails of the ship in strong contrast to the sea and sky as the vessel lay all but motionless on the water, the very impersonation of solitude and repose. indeed, until the rendezvous was gained, we had such a succession of beautiful sunrises, gorgeous sunsets, and tranquil moonlight nights as would have excited the most enthusiastic admiration of any one but persons situated as we were. but by us such scenes were regarded only as the annoying indications of the calm which delayed our progress and wasted our coals. to say that it was calm is not doing full justice to it; there was not a breath in the air, and the water was as smooth as a mill-pond. even the wake of the ship scarce ruffled the surface; and the gulls which had visited us almost daily, and to which our benevolent liberality had dispensed innumerable pieces of pork, threw an almost unbroken shadow upon it as they stooped in their flight to pick up the largest and most tempting. it was generally remarked that cable-laying under such circumstances would be mere child's play. in spite of the unusual calmness of the weather in general, there were days on which our former unpleasant experiences of the atlantic were brought forcibly to our recollection, when it blew hard and the sea ran sufficiently high to reproduce on a minor scale some of the discomforts of which the previous cruise had been so fruitful. those days, however, were the exception and not the rule, and served to show how much more pleasant was the inconvenient calm than the weather which had previously prevailed. the precise point of the rendezvous--marked by a dot on the chart--was reached on the evening of wednesday, july th, just eleven days after our departure from queenstown. the voyage out was a lazy one. now things are different, and we no longer hear of the prospects of the heroes and heroines of the romances and novels which have formed the staple food for animated discussion for some days past. the rest of the squadron were in sight at nightfall, but at such a considerable distance that it was past ten o'clock on the morning of thursday the th, before the agamemnon joined them. some time previous to reaching the rendezvous the engineer-in-chief (mr. bright) went up in the shrouds on the lookout for the other ships, and accordingly had to "pay his footing"--much to the amusement of his staff. most of them being more advanced in years would not probably have been so equal to the task in an athletic sense. after the ordinary laconic conversation which characterize code flag-signals, we were as usual greeted by a perfect storm of questions as to what had kept us so much behind our time, and learned that all had come to the conclusion that the ship must have got on shore on leaving queenstown harbor. the niagara, it appeared, had arrived at the rendezvous on friday night, the d, the valorous on sunday, the th, and the gorgon on the afternoon of tuesday, the th. the day was beautifully calm, so no time was to be lost before making the splice in lat. ° ´ n., long. ° ´ w., and soundings of , fathoms. boats were soon lowered from the attendant ships; the two vessels made fast by a hawser, and the niagara's end of the cable conveyed on board the agamemnon. about half-past twelve o'clock the splice was effectually made, but with a very different frame from the carefully rounded semi-circular boards which had been used to enclose the junctions on previous occasions. it consisted merely of two straight boards hauled over the joint and splice, with the iron rod and leaden plummet attached to the center. in hoisting it out from the side of the ship, however, the leaden sinker broke short off and fell overboard. there being no more convenient weight at hand a -lb. shot was fastened to the splice instead, and the whole apparatus was quickly dropped into the sea without any formality--and, indeed, almost without a spectator--for those on board the ship had witnessed so many beginnings to the telegraphic line that it was evident they despaired of there ever being an end to it. the stipulated fathoms of cable having been paid out to allow the splice to sink well below the surface, the signal to start was hoisted, the hawser cut loose, and the niagara and agamemnon start for the last time at about p.m. for their opposite destinations. the announcement comes from the electrician's testing-room that the continuity is perfect, and with this assurance the engineers go on more boldly with the work. in point of fact the engineers may be said to be very much under the control of the electricians during paying out; for if the latter report anything wrong with the cable, the engineers are brought to a stand until they are allowed to go on with their operations by the announcement of the electricians that the insulation is perfect and the continuity all right. the testing-room is where the subtle current which flows along the conductor is generated, and where the mysterious apparatus by which electricity is weighed and measured--as a marketable commodity--is fitted up. the system of testing and of transmitting and receiving signals through the cable from ship to ship during the process of paying out must now be briefly referred to. it consists of an exchange of currents sent alternately every ten minutes by each ship. these not only serve to give an accurate test of the continuity and insulation of the conducting-wire from end to end, but also to give certain signals which it is desirable to send for information purposes. for instance, every ten miles of cable paid out is signalized from ship to ship, as also the approach to land or momentary stoppage for splicing, shifting to a fresh coil, etc. the current in its passage is made to pass through an electromagnetometer,[ ] an instrument invented by mr. whitehouse. it is also conveyed in its passage at each end of the cable through the reflecting-galvanometer and speaking-instrument just invented by professor thomson; and it is this latter which is so invaluable, not only for the interchange of signals, but also for testing purposes. the deflections read on the galvanometer, as also the degree of charge and discharge indicated by the magnetometer, are carefully recorded. thus, if a defect of continuity or insulation occurs it is brought to light by comparison with those received before. for the first three hours the ships proceeded very slowly, paying out a great quantity of slack, but after the expiration of this time the speed of the agamemnon was increased to about five knots, the cable going at about six, without indicating more than a few hundred pounds of strain upon the dynamometer. shortly after four o'clock a very large whale was seen approaching the starboard bow at a great speed (fig. ), rolling and tossing the sea into foam all round; and for the first time we felt a possibility for the supposition that our second mysterious breakage of the cable might have been caused, after all, by one of these animals getting foul of it under water. it appeared as if it were making direct for the cable; and great was the relief of all when the ponderous living mass was seen slowly to pass astern, just grazing the cable where it entered the water--but fortunately without doing any mischief. all seemed to go well up to about eight o'clock; the cable paid out from the hold with an evenness and regularity which showed how carefully and perfectly it had been coiled away. the paying-out machine also worked so smoothly that it left nothing to be desired. the brakes are properly called self-releasing; and although they can, by means of additional weights, be made to increase the pressure or strain upon the cable, yet, until these weights are still further increased (at the engineer's instructions), it is impossible to augment the strain in any other way. to guard against accidents which might arise in consequence of the cable having suffered injury during the storm, the indicated strain upon the dynamometer was never allowed to go beyond , lbs. or less than one-quarter what the cable is estimated to bear. thus far everything looked promising. but in such a hazardous work no one knows what a few minutes may bring forth, for soon after eight o'clock an injured portion of the cable[ ] was discovered about a mile or two from the portion paying out. not a moment was lost by mr. canning, the engineer on duty, in setting men to work to cobble up the injury as well as time would permit, for the cable was going out at such a rate that the damaged portion would be paid overboard in less than twenty minutes, and former experience had shown us that to check either the speed of the ship or the cable would, in all probability, be attended by the most fatal results. just before the lapping was finished, professor thomson reported that the electrical continuity of the wire had ceased, but that the insulation was still perfect. attention was naturally directed to the injured piece as the probable source of the stoppage, and not a moment was lost in cutting the cable at that point with the intention of making a perfect splice. to the consternation of all, the electrical tests applied showed the fault to be overboard, and in all probability some fifty miles from the ship. [illustration: fig. .--in collision with a whale while cable-laying.] not a second was to be lost, for it was evident that the cut portion must be paid overboard in a few minutes; and in the meantime the tedious and difficult operation of making a splice had to be performed. the ship was immediately stopped, and no more cable paid out than was absolutely necessary to prevent it breaking. as the stern of the ship was lifted by the waves a scene of the most intense excitement followed. it seemed impossible, even by using the greatest possible speed and paying out the least possible amount of cable, that the junction could be finished before the part was taken out of the hands of the workmen. the main hold presented an extraordinary scene. nearly all the officers of the ship and of those connected with the expedition stood in groups about the coil, watching with intense anxiety the cable as it slowly unwound itself nearer and nearer the joint, while the workmen worked at the splice as only men could work who felt that the life and death of the expedition depended upon their rapidity. but all their speed was to no purpose, as the cable was unwinding within a hundred fathoms; and, as a last and desperate resource, the cable was stopped altogether, and for a few minutes the ship hung on by the end. fortunately, however, it was only for a few minutes, as the strain was continually rising above two tons and it would not hold on much longer. when the splice was finished the signal was made to loose the stoppers, and it passed overboard in safety. when the excitement, consequent upon having so narrowly saved the cable, had passed away, we awoke to the consciousness that the case was yet as hopeless as ever, for the electrical continuity was still entirely wanting. preparations were consequently made to pay out as little rope as possible, and to hold on for six hours in the hope that the fault, whatever it was, might mend itself, before cutting the cable and returning to the rendezvous to make another splice. the magnetic needles on the receiving-instruments were watched closely for the returning signals, when, in a few minutes, the last hope was extinguished by their suddenly indicating dead earth, which tended to show that the cable had broken from the niagara, or that the insulation had been completely destroyed. nothing, however, could be done. the only course was to wait until the current should return or take its final departure. and it _did_ return--with greater strength than ever--for in three minutes every one was agreeably surprised by the intelligence that the stoppage had disappeared and that the signals had again appeared at their regular intervals from the niagara[ ] it is needless to say what a load of anxiety this news removed from the minds of every one, but the general confidence in the ultimate success of the operations was much shaken by the occurrence, for all felt that every minute a similar accident might occur. for some time the paying out continued as usual, but toward the morning another damaged place was discovered in the cable. there was fortunately time, however, to repair it in the hold without in any way interfering with the operations, beyond for a time reducing slightly the speed of the ship. during the morning of friday, the th, everything went well. the ship had been kept at the speed of about five knots, the cable going out at six, the average angle with the horizon at which it left the ship being about °, while the indicated strain upon the dynamometer seldom showed more than , lbs. to , lbs. observations made at noon showed that we had made good ninety miles from the starting-point since the previous day, with an expenditure--including the loss in lowering the splice, and during the subsequent stoppages--of miles of cable. during the latter portion of the day the barometer fell considerably, and toward the evening it blew almost a gale of wind from the eastward, dead ahead of our course. as the breeze freshened the speed of the engines was gradually increased, but the wind more than increased in proportion, so that before the sun went down the agamemnon was going full steam against the wind, only making a speed of about four knots. during the evening, topmasts were lowered, and spars, yards, sails, and indeed everything aloft that could offer resistance to the wind, were sent down on deck. still the ship made but little way, chiefly in consequence of the heavy sea, though the enormous quantity of fuel consumed showed us that if the wind lasted, we should be reduced to burning the masts, spars, and even the decks, to bring the ship into valentia. it seemed to be our particular ill-fortune to meet with head-winds whichever way the ship's head was turned. on our journey out we had been delayed and obliged to consume an undue proportion of coal for want of an easterly wind, and now all our fuel was wanted _because_ of one. however, during the next day the wind gradually went round to the southwest, which, though it raised a very heavy sea, allowed us to husband our small remaining store of fuel. at noon on saturday, july st, observations showed us to be in lat. ° ´ n., and long. ° ´ w., having made good miles of distance since noon of the previous day, with a loss of about per cent of cable. the niagara, as far as could be judged from the amount of cable she paid out--which by a previous arrangement was signaled at every ten miles--kept pace with us, within one or two miles, the whole distance across. during the afternoon of saturday, the wind again freshened up, and before nightfall it blew nearly a gale of wind, and a tremendous sea ran before it from the southwest, which made the agamemnon pitch and toss to such an extent that it was thought impossible the cable could hold through the night. indeed, had it not been for the constant care and watchfulness exercised by mr. bright and the two energetic engineers, mr. canning and mr. clifford, who acted with him, it could not have been done at all. men were kept at the wheels of the machine to prevent their stopping (as the stern of the ship rose and fell with the sea), for had they done so, the cable must undoubtedly have parted. during sunday the sea and wind increased, and before the evening it blew a smart gale. now, indeed, were the energy and activity of all engaged in the operation tasked to the utmost. mr. hoar and mr. moore--the two engineers who had the charge of the relieving-wheels of the dynamometer--had to keep watch and watch alternately every four hours, and while on duty durst not let their attention be removed from their occupation for one moment; for on their releasing the brakes every time the stern of the ship fell into the trough of the sea entirely depended the safety of the cable, and the result shows how ably they discharged their duty. throughout the night there were few who had the least expectation of the cable holding on till morning, and many lay awake listening for the sound that all most dreaded to hear, viz., the gun which should announce the failure of all our hopes. but still the cable--which in comparison with the ship from which it was paid out, and the gigantic waves among which it was delivered, was but a mere thread--continued to hold on, only leaving a silvery phosphorescent line upon the stupendous seas as they rolled on toward the ship. with sunday morning came no improvement in the weather, still the sky remained black and stormy to windward, and the constant violent squalls of wind and rain which prevailed during the whole day served to keep up, if not to augment, the height of the waves. but the cable had gone through so much during the night that our confidence in its continuing to hold was much restored. at noon observation showed us to be in lat. ° ´ n., and long. ° ´ w., having made good miles from noon of the previous day, and about from our starting-point in mid-ocean. we had passed by the deepest soundings of , fathoms, and over more than half of the deep water generally, while the amount of cable still remaining in the ship was more than sufficient to carry us to the irish coast, even supposing the continuance of the bad weather, should oblige us to pay out nearly the same amount of slack cable as hitherto. thus far things looked promising for our ultimate success. but former experience showed us only too plainly that we could never suppose that some accident might not arise until the ends had been fairly landed on the opposite shores. during sunday night and monday morning the weather continued as boisterous as ever. it was only by the most indefatigable exertions of the engineer upon duty that the wheels could be prevented from stopping altogether as the vessel rose and fell with the sea; and once or twice they did come completely to a standstill in spite of all that could be done to keep them moving. fortunately, however, they were again set in motion before the stern of the ship was thrown up by the succeeding wave. no strain could be placed upon the cable, of course, and though the dynamometer occasionally registered , lbs., as the ship lifted, it was oftener below , lbs., and was frequently nothing, the cable running out as fast as its own weight and the speed of the ship could draw it. but even with all these forces acting unresistingly upon it, the cable never paid itself out at a greater speed than eight knots at the time the ship was going at the rate of six knots and a half. subsequently, however, when the speed of the ship even exceeded six knots and a half, the cable never ran out so quickly. the average speed maintained by the ship up to this time, and, indeed, for the whole voyage, was about five knots and a half, the cable, with occasional exceptions, running some per cent faster. at noon on monday, august d, observations showed us to be in lat. ° ´ n., long. ° ´ w. thus we had made good - / miles since noon of the previous day and had completed more than half-way to our ultimate destination. during the afternoon, an american three-masted schooner, which afterward proved to be the chieftain, was seen standing from the eastward toward us. no notice was taken of her at first, but when she was within about half a mile of the agamemnon, she altered her course and bore right down across our bows. a collision which might prove fatal to the cable now seemed inevitable; or could only be avoided by the equally hazardous expedient of altering the agamemnon's course. the valorous steamed ahead and fired a gun for her to heave to, which as she did not appear to take much notice of, was quickly followed by another from the bows of the agamemnon, and a second and third from the valorous. but still the vessel held on her course; and, as the only resource left to avoid a collision, the course of the agamemnon was altered just in time to pass within a few yards of her. it was evident that our proceedings were a source of the greatest possible astonishment to them, for all her crew crowded upon her deck and rigging. at length they evidently discovered who we were and what we were doing, for the crew manned the rigging, and, dipping the ensign several times, they gave us three hearty cheers. though the agamemnon was obliged to acknowledge these congratulations in due form, the feeling of annoyance with which we regarded the vessel--which (either by the stupidity or carelessness of those on board) was so near adding a fatal and unexpected mishap to the long chapter of accidents which had already been encountered--may easily be imagined. to those below--who, of course, did not see the ship approaching--the sound of the first gun came like a thunderbolt, for all took it as a signal of the breaking of the cable. the dinner-tables were deserted in a moment, and a general rush made up the hatches to the deck; but before reaching it their fears were quickly banished by the report of the succeeding gun, which all knew well could only be caused by a ship in our way or a man overboard. throughout the greater part of monday morning the electrical signals from the niagara had been getting gradually weaker, until they ceased altogether for nearly three-quarters of an hour. then professor thomson sent a message to the effect that the signals were too weak to be read; and, in a little while, the deflections returned even stronger than they had ever been before. toward the evening, however, they again declined in force for a few minutes.[ ] with the exception of these little stoppages, the electrical condition of the submerged wire seemed to be much improved. it was evident that the low temperature of the water at the immense depth improved considerably the insulating properties of the gutta-percha, while the enormous pressure to which it must have been subjected probably tended to consolidate its texture, and to fill up any air-bubbles or slight faults in manufacture which may have existed. the weather during monday night moderated a little; but still there was a very heavy sea on, which endangered the wire every second minute. about three o'clock on tuesday morning all on board were startled from their beds by the loud booming of a gun. every one--without waiting for the performance of the most particular toilet--rushed on deck to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. contrary to all expectation, the cable was safe; but just in the gray light could be seen the valorous--rounded to in the most warlike attitude--firing gun after gun in quick succession toward a large american bark, which, quite unconscious of our proceedings, was standing right across our stern. such loud and repeated remonstrances from a large steam-frigate were not to be despised; and evidently without knowing the why or the wherefore she quickly threw her sails aback, and remained hove to. whether those on board her considered that we were engaged in some filibustering expedition, or regarded our proceedings as another outrage upon the american flag, it is impossible to say; but certain it is that--apparently in great trepidation--she remained hove to until we had lost sight of her in the distance. tuesday was a much finer day than any we had experienced for nearly a week, but still there was a considerable sea running, and our dangers were far from past; yet the hopes of our ultimate success ran high. we had accomplished nearly the whole of the deep portions of the route in safety, and that, too, under the most unfavorable circumstances possible; therefore there was every reason to believe that--unless some unforeseen accident should occur--we should accomplish the remainder. observations at noon placed us in lat. ° ´ n., long. ° ´ ´´ w., having run miles since the previous day. about five o'clock in the evening the steep submarine mountain which divides the steep telegraphic plateau from the irish coast was reached, and the sudden shallowing of water had a very marked effect upon the cable, causing the strain and the speed to lessen every minute. a great deal of slack was paid out,[ ] to allow for any greater inequalities which might exist, though undiscovered by the sounding-line. about ten o'clock the shoal water of fathoms was reached. the only remaining anxiety now was the changing from the lower main coil to that upon the upper deck; and this most dangerous operation was successfully performed between three and four o'clock on wednesday morning. wednesday was a beautiful, calm day; indeed, it was the first on which any one would have thought of making a splice since the day we started from the rendezvous. we therefore congratulated ourselves on having saved a week by commencing operations on the thursday previous. at noon we were in lat. ° ´; long. ° ´ ´´ w., eighty-nine miles distant from the telegraph station at valentia. the water was shallow, so that there was no difficulty in paying out the wire almost without any loss by slack; and all looked upon the undertaking as virtually accomplished. at about one o'clock in the evening the second change from the upper-deck coil to that upon the orlop-deck was safely effected; and shortly after the vessels exchanged signals that they were in fathoms water. as night advanced the speed of the ship was reduced, as it was known that we were only a short distance from the land, and there would be no advantage in making it before daylight in the morning. at about twelve o'clock, however, the skelligs light was seen in the distance, and the valorous steamed on ahead to lead us in to the coast, firing rockets at intervals to direct us, which were answered by us from the agamemnon, though--according to mr. moriarty, the master's, wish--the ship, disregarding the valorous, kept her own course, which proved to be the right one in the end. by daylight on the morning of thursday, the th, the bold rocky mountains which entirely surround the wild and picturesque neighborhood of valentia rose right before us at a few miles distance. never, probably, was the sight of land more welcome, as it brought to a successful termination one of the greatest, but at the same time most difficult, schemes which was ever undertaken. had it been the dullest and most melancholy swamp on the face of the earth that lay before us, we should have found it a pleasant prospect; but as the sun rose behind the estuary of dingle bay, tingeing with a deep, soft purple the lofty summits of the steep mountains which surround its shores, illuminating the masses of morning vapor which hung upon them, it was a scene which might vie in beauty with anything that could be produced by the most florid imagination of an artist. _successful termination._--no one on shore was apparently conscious of our approach, so the valorous went ahead to the mouth of the harbor and fired a gun. both ships made straight for doulas bay, the agamemnon steaming into the harbor (see frontispiece) with a feeling that she had done something, and about a.m. came to anchor at the side of beginish island, opposite to valentia. as soon as the inhabitants became aware of our approach, there was a general desertion of the place, and hundreds of boats crowded round us--their passengers in the greatest state of excitement to hear all about our voyage. the knight of kerry was absent in dingle, but a messenger was immediately despatched for him, and he soon arrived in her majesty's gunboat shamrock. [illustration: fig. .--landing the american end.] soon after our arrival a signal was received from the niagara that they were preparing to land, having paid out , nautical miles of cable, while the agamemnon had accomplished her portion of the distance with an expenditure of , miles, making the total length of the wire submerged , geographical miles. immediately after the ships cast anchor, the paddle-box boats of the valorous were got ready, and two miles of cable coiled away in them, for the purpose of landing the end. but it was late in the afternoon before the procession of boats left the ship, under a salute of three rounds of small arms from the detachment of marines on board the agamemnon, under the command of lieutenant morris. the progress of the end to the shore was very slow, in consequence of the stiff wind which blew at the time; but at about p.m. the end was safely brought on shore at knight's town, valentia, by mr. bright, to whose exertions the success of the undertaking is attributable. mr. bright was accompanied by mr. canning and the knight of kerry. the end was immediately laid in the trench which had been dug to receive it; while a royal salute, making the neighboring rocks and mountains reverberate, announced that the communication between the old and new world had been completed. the cable was taken into the electrical room by mr. whitehouse, and attached to a galvanometer, and the first message was received through the entire length now lying on the bed of the sea. too much praise can not be bestowed upon both the officers and men of the agamemnon for the hearty way in which they have assisted in the arduous and difficult service they have been engaged in; and the admirable manner in which the ship was navigated by mr. moriarty materially reduced the difficulty of the company's operations. it will, in all probability, be nearly a fortnight before the instruments are connected at the two termini for the transmission of regular messages. [illustration: fig. .--newfoundland telegraph station, .] it is unnecessary here to expatiate upon the magnitude of the undertaking which has just been completed, or upon the great political and social results which are likely to accrue from it; but there can be but one feeling of universal admiration for the courage and perseverance which have been displayed by mr. bright, and those who acted under his orders, in encountering the manifold difficulties which arose on their path at every step.[ ] _the american end._--in contradistinction to the heavy seas and difficulties the agamemnon had to contend with, her consort, the niagara, experienced very quiet weather, and her part of the work was comparatively uneventful, with the exception of a fault near the bottom of the ward-room coil. this was detected during the operations on the night of august d, but was removed before it was paid out into the sea. about four o'clock the next morning the continuity and insulation was accordingly restored, and, says mr. mullaly (the new york herald correspondent on board), "all was going on as if nothing had occurred to disturb the confidence we felt in the success of the expedition." when nearing the end, various icebergs were met with--some a hundred feet high. mullaly dilates on their castle-like form and the effective appearance of the sun's rays thereon. shortly after entering trinity bay, newfoundland, the niagara was met by h.m.s. porcupine, which had been sent out from england at the very beginning of the expedition to await her arrival and render any assistance which might be required. the niagara anchored about a.m. on august th, having completed her work, and, during the forenoon of that day, the cable was landed in a little bay, bull arm,[ ] at the head of trinity bay, when they "received very strong currents of electricity through the whole cable from the other side of the atlantic."[ ] the telegraph-house at the newfoundland end was some two miles from the beach, and connected to the cable by a land-line. chapter ix the celebration engineer's report--jubilations--banquets--speeches--honor to the engineer-in-chief. on landing at valentia, the engineer-in-chief at once sent the following startling but welcome message to his board, which was at once passed on to the press: charles bright, to the directors of the atlantic telegraph company. valentia, _august th_. the agamemnon has arrived at valentia, and we are about to land the end of the cable. the niagara is in trinity bay, newfoundland. there are good signals between the ships. we reached the rendezvous on the night of the th, and the splice with the niagara cable was made on board the agamemnon the following morning. by noon on the th, nautical miles were laid between the ships; on the st, ; on the st august, ; on the d, , ; on the th, , ; on anchoring at six in the morning in doulas bay, , . the speed of the niagara during the whole time has been nearly the same as ours, the length of cable paid out from the two ships being generally within ten miles of each other. with the exception of yesterday, the weather has been very unfavorable.[ ] on the afternoon of thursday, august th--as already described in the times report--bright and his staff brought to shore the end of the cable, at white strand bay, near knight's town, valentia, in the boats of the valorous, welcomed by the united cheers of the small crowd assembled. taken entirely by surprise, all england applauded the triumph of such undaunted perseverance and the engineering and nautical skill displayed in this victory over the elements. the atlantic telegraph had been justly characterized as the "great feat of the century," and this was reechoed by all the press on its realization. the following extracts from the leading article of the times the day after completion is an example of the comments upon the achievement: mr. bright, having landed the end of the atlantic cable at valentia, has brought to a successful termination his anxious and difficult task of linking the old world with the new, thereby annihilating space. since the discovery of columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere of human activity. the rejoicing in america, both in public and private, knew no bounds. the astounding news of the success of this unparalleled enterprise, after such combats with storm and sea, "created universal enthusiasm, exultation, and joy, such as was, perhaps, never before produced by any event, not even the discovery of the western hemisphere. many had predicted its failure, some from ignorance, others simply because they were anti-progressives by nature. philanthropists everywhere hailed it as the greatest event of modern times, heralding the good time coming of universal peace and brotherhood." in newfoundland, mr. field, together with mr. bright's assistant engineers, messrs. everett and woodhouse, and the electricians, messrs, de sauty and laws, received the heartiest congratulations and welcome from the governor and legislative council of the colony. while acknowledging these congratulations, mr. field remarked. "we have had many difficulties to surmount, many discouragements to bear, and some enemies to overcome, whose very opposition has stimulated us to greater exertion."[ ] it was a curious coincidence that the cable was successfully completed to valentia on the same day in on which the shore end had been landed the year before. moreover, it was exactly one hundred and eleven years since dr. (afterward sir william) watson had astonished the scientific world by sending an electric current through a wire two miles long, using the earth as a return circuit. it is also worthy of note that the first feat of telegraphy was executed by order of king "agamemnon" to his queen, announcing the fall of troy, , years before the birth of christ, and that the great feat which we have narrated was carried out by the great ship agamemnon, as has been here shown. mr. bright and messrs. canning and clifford and the rest of the staff, as well as professor thomson and the electricians, were absolutely exhausted with the incessant watching and almost unbearable anxiety attending their arduous travail. valentia proved a haven of rest indeed for these "toilers of the deep"--completely knocked up with their experiences on the atlantic, not to mention their previous trials and disappointments. then came a series of banquets, which had to be gone through. soon after his duties at valentia were over, bright made his way to dublin. here he was entertained by the lord mayor and civic authorities of that capital on wednesday, september st. on this occasion cardinal wiseman, who was present, made an eloquent speech; and the following account of the proceedings from the morning post may be suitably quoted: the banquet given on wednesday, the st, by the lord mayor of dublin, to mr. c. t. bright, engineer-in-chief to the atlantic telegraph company, was a great success. the assemblage embraced the highest names in the metropolis--civil, military, and official. cardinal wiseman was present in full cardinalite costume. the usual toasts were given, and received with all honors. the lord mayor, in proposing the toast of the evening, "the health of mr. bright," dwelt with much eloquence on the achievements of science, and paid a marked and merited compliment to the genius and perseverance which, in the face of discouragement from the scientific world, had succeeded in bringing about the accomplishment of the great undertaking of the laying of the atlantic telegraph. his lordship's speech was most eloquent, and highly complimentary to the distinguished guest, mr. c. t. bright. mr. bright rose, amid loud cheers, to respond. he thanked the assemblage for their hearty welcome, and said he was deeply sensible of the honor of having his name associated with the great work of the atlantic telegraph. he next commented upon the value of this means of communication for the prevention of misunderstanding between the governments of the great powers, and then referred to the services of the gentlemen who had been associated with him in laying the cable, with whom he shared the honors done him that night. (mr. bright was warmly cheered throughout his eloquent speech.) his eminence the cardinal descanted in glowing terms on the new achievement of science, brought to a successful issue under the able superintendence of mr. bright. he warmly eulogized that gentleman's modest appreciation of his services to the world of commerce and to international communication in general. charles bright was honored with a knighthood within a few days of landing. as this was considered a special occasion, and as queen victoria was at that time abroad, the ceremony was performed there and then by his excellency the lord-lieutenant of ireland on behalf of her majesty. bright was but twenty-six years of age at the time, being the youngest man who had received the distinction for generations past, and no similar instance has since occurred. moreover, it was the first title conferred on the telegraphic or electrical profession, and remained so for many years. with professor thomson and other colleagues, sir charles bright was right royally entertained in dublin, killarney, and elsewhere, the lord-lieutenant taking a prominent part in the celebrations. on the occasion of the killarney banquet, his excellency made the following remarks _à propos_ of the cable and its engineers:[ ] when we consider the extraordinary undertaking that has been accomplished within the last few weeks; when we consider that a cable of about , miles has been extended beneath the ocean--a length which, if multiplied ten times, would reach our farthest colonies and nearly surround the earth; when we consider it is stretched along the bed of shingles and shells, which appeared destined for it as a foundation by providence, and stretching from the points which human enterprise would look to; and when we consider the great results that will flow from the enterprise, we are at a loss here how sufficiently to admire the genius and energy of those who planned it, or how to be sufficiently thankful to the almighty for having delegated such a power to the human race, for whose benefit it is to be put in force. (cheers.) and let us look at the career which this telegraph has passed since it was first discovered. at first it was rapidly laid over the land, uniting states, communities, and countries, extending over hills and valleys, roads and railways; but the sea appeared to present an impenetrable barrier. it could not stop here, however; submarine telegraphy was but a question of time, and the first enterprise by which it was introduced was in connection with an old foe--and at present our best friend--imperial france. (hear, hear.) the next attempt which was successful was the junction of england and our island, and which was, i believe, carried out by the same distinguished engineer (sir charles bright), whose name is now in the mouth of every man. (hear, hear.) other submarine attempts followed: the telegraph paused before the great atlantic, like another alexander, weeping as if it had no more worlds to conquer; but it has found another world, and it has gained it--not bringing strife or conquest, but carrying with it peace and good-will. (applause.) i feel i should be wanting if i did not allude in terms of admiration to the genius and skill of the engineer, sir charles bright, who has carried out this enterprise, and to the zeal and courage of those who brought it to a successful termination. (applause.) it is not necessary, i am certain, to call attention to the diligence and attention shown by the crew of the agamemnon--(cheers)--because i am sure there is no one here who has not read the description of the voyage in the newspapers. the zeal and enterprise were only to be equaled by the skill with which it was carried out. i believe there was only a difference of twelve miles between the two ends of the cable when it came to the shore. there are some questions with regard to the date at which the work was carried out to which i wish to call attention. it was on the th august, , that this enterprise was first commenced under the auspices of my distinguished predecessor, who i wish was here now to rejoice in its success--i mean only in a private capacity. (cheers and laughter.) it was on the th august, , it was completed, and it was on the th august, more than three hundred years ago, that columbus left the shores of spain to proceed on his ever-memorable voyage to america. it was on the th of august, , that sir hugh gilbert, a worthy countryman of raleigh and drake, steered his good ship the squirrel to the shores of newfoundland and first unfurled the flag of england in the very bay where this triumph has now taken place--(applause)--and it was on the same th of august that your sovereign was received by her imperial friend amid the fortifications of cherbourg, and thereby put an end to the ridiculous nonsense about strife and dissension. (applause.) let the th august be a day ever memorable among nations. let it be, if i may so term it, the birthday of england. (applause.) among the many points which must have given every one satisfaction was the manner in which this great success was received in america. (hear.) there appears to have been but one feeling of rejoicing predominant among them; and i can not but think that that was not only owing to their commercial enterprise--which they shared along with us--but also, i trust, more to the feelings of consanguinity and affection which i am sure we share, though occasionally disturbed by international disputes, and by differences caused by misrepresentations or hastiness. it must still burn as brightly in their breasts as in ours. (applause.) i trust that, not only with our friends across the atlantic, but with every civilized nation, this great triumph of science will prove the harbinger of peace, good-will, and friendship; and that england and america will not verify the first line of the stanza, lands intersected by a narrow firth abhor each other, but that they will, by mutual intercourse, arrive at the last line of that stanza, and "like kindred drops, be mingled into one." (warm applause.) chapter x working the line tests--apparatus--first messages--gradual failing--the "last gasp"--engineering success--electrical failure. _continuity tests during laying._--as previously mentioned, two descriptions of instruments were used on board the ships for testing and working through while laying the cable. these were the "detector" of mr. whitehouse and professor thomson's reflecting-apparatus. the process of testing consisted in sending from one to the other vessel alternately, during a period of ten minutes, first a reversal every minute for five minutes, and then a current in one direction for five minutes. the results of these signals to test the continuity of the line were observed and recorded on board both ships. there was also a special signal for each ten miles of cable paid out between the vessels. when the splice was made on july th, degrees deflection were obtained on the agamemnon, from seventy-five cells of a sawdust (daniell's) battery on board the niagara, which had previously given degrees. on arrival at valentia at . a.m., on august th, the deflection on the same instruments (detector and marine galvanometer being both in circuit as before) was degrees, while the sending-battery power on the niagara had fallen off at entry to - / degrees through the marine galvanometer on board that vessel. these figures show that the insulation of the cable had considerably improved by submersion, and when the engineers had accomplished their part of the undertaking, on august th, the cable was handed over in perfect condition to mr. whitehouse and his electrical assistant. _apparatus used in working._--unfortunately for the life of the cable, mr. whitehouse was imbued with a belief that currents of very high intensity, or potential, were the best for signaling; and he had enormous induction-coils, _five feet long_, excited by a series of very large cells, yielding electricity estimated at about , volts potential. the insulation was unable to bear the strain, and thus the signals began to gradually fail.[ ] for something like a week the efforts to work through the cable with the above apparatus proved ineffectual, the power being constantly increased to no purpose. professor thomson's reflecting galvanometer, which had worked so well during the voyage, was then used again with ordinary daniell cells. _messages._--in this way communication was resumed, the first clear message being received from newfoundland on august , , and--after considerable delay in getting the american receiving-apparatus ready--on the th the following was got through from the directors in england to those in united states: europe and america are united by telegraphy. glory to god in the highest, on earth peace, good-will toward men! then followed: from her majesty the queen of great britain to his excellency the president of the united states: the queen desires to congratulate the president upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the queen has taken the greatest interest. the queen is convinced that the president will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now already connects great britain with the united states, will prove an additional link between the two nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. the queen has much pleasure in thus directly communicating with the president, and in renewing to him her best wishes for the prosperity of the united states. this message was shortly afterward responded to as follows: washington city. the president of the united states to her majesty victoria, queen of great britain: the president cordially reciprocates the congratulations of her majesty the queen on the success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the skill, science, and indomitable energy of the two countries. it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind than was ever won by a conqueror on the field of battle. may the atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by divine providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world. in this view will not all the nations of christendom spontaneously unite in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral and that its communications shall be held sacred in passing to the place of their destination, even in the midst of hostilities? james buchanan. throughout the united states the arrival of the queen's message was the signal for a fresh outburst of popular enthusiasm. says field: the next morning, august th, the city of new york was awakened by the thunder of artillery. a hundred guns were fired in the city hall park at daybreak, and the salute was repeated at noon. at this hour flags were flying from all the public buildings, and the bells of the principal churches began to ring, as christmas bells signal the birthday of one who came to bring peace and good-will to men--chimes that, it was fondly hoped, might usher in, as they should, a new era. ring out the old, ring in the new, ring out the false, ring in the true. that night the city was illuminated. never had it seen so brilliant a spectacle. such was the blaze of light around the city hall that the cupola caught fire and was consumed, and the hall itself narrowly escaped destruction. but one night did not exhaust the public enthusiasm, for the following evening witnessed one of those displays for which new york surpasses all the cities of the world--a firemen's torchlight procession. moreover, several wagon-loads (each containing about twelve miles) of the cable left on board the niagara were drawn through the principal streets of the city. similar demonstrations took place in other parts of the united states. from the atlantic to the valley of the mississippi, and to the gulf of mexico, in every city was heard the firing of guns and the ringing of bells. nothing seemed too extravagant to give expression to the popular rejoicing. the english press were warm in their recognition of those to whom the nation were "indebted for bringing into action the greatest invention of the age," expressing belief that "the effect of bringing the three kingdoms and the united states into instantaneous communication with each other will be to render hostilities between the two nations almost impossible for the future." and further, "more was done yesterday for the consideration of our empire than the wisdom of our statesmen, the liberality of our legislature, or the loyalty of our colonists could ever have effected."[ ] the sermons preached on the subject, both in england and america, were literally without number. enough found their way into print to fill over one volume. never had an event more deeply touched the spirit of religious enthusiasm. with further reference to the active life of the cable, the following communications have some interest: first of all three long congratulatory messages were transmitted, one on august th from mr. peter cooper, president of the new york, newfoundland, and london telegraph company, to the directors of the atlantic telegraph company; another from the mayor of new york to the lord mayor of london, his reply in acknowledgment following. then two of the great cunard mail-steamers, the europa and arabia, had come into collision on august th. neither the news nor the injured vessels could reach those concerned on either side of the atlantic for some days; but as soon as it became known in new york a message was sent by the cable, a facsimile of the original of which is shown on p. . this first public _news_ message showed the relief given by speedy knowledge in dispelling doubt and fear. subsequently messages giving the news on both continents were transmitted and published daily. among others, on august th, a despatch was sent by the secretary of the atlantic telegraph company that was remarkable for the amount of important information contained in comparatively few words. it read as follows: to associated press, new york.--news for america by atlantic cable:--emperor of france returned to paris, saturday. king of prussia too ill to visit queen victoria. her majesty returns to england, august th. st. petersburg, august st--settlement of chinese question: chinese empire opened to trade; christian religion allowed; foreign diplomatic agents admitted; indemnity to england and france. [illustration: fig. .--facsimile of the first public news message received through the atlantic cable.] alexandria, august th.--the madras arrived at suez th inst. dates bombay to the th, aden st. gwalior insurgent army broken up. all india becoming tranquil. the above was published in the american papers the same day. further, as exemplifying the aid the cable afforded to the british government, mention may be made of two messages sent from the commander-in-chief at the horse guards, on august st. following the quelling of the indian mutiny, they were despatched for the purpose of canceling previous orders which had already gone by mail to canada. the first, to general trollope, halifax, ran as follows: "the sixty-second regiment is not to return to england." the other, to the officer in command at montreal: "the thirty-ninth regiment is not to return to england." from £ , to £ , was estimated by the authorities to have been saved, in the unnecessary transportation of troops, by these two cable communications. but the insulation of the precious wire had, unhappily, been giving way. the high-potential currents from mr. whitehouse's enormous induction-coils were too much for it; and the diminished flashes of light proved to be only the flickering of the flame that was soon to be extinguished in the external darkness of the waters. after a period of confused signals, the line ultimately breathed its last on october th, after messages in all had been conveyed during a period of three months.[ ] the last word uttered--and which may be said to have come from beyond the sea--was "forward." the line had been subject to frequent interruptions throughout. the wonder is that it did so much, when we consider the lack of experience at that period in the manufacture of deep-sea cables, the short time allowed, and, more than all, the treatment received after being laid. it is, indeed, extremely doubtful whether any cable, even of the present day, would long stand a trial with currents so generated, and of such intensity.[ ] an unusually violent lightning-storm occurred at newfoundland shortly after the cable had been laid. this was considered a part cause of the actual failure of the line. when all the efforts of the electricians failed to draw more than a few faint whispers--a dying gasp from the depths of the sea--there ensued, in the public mind, a feeling of profound discouragement. but what a bitter disappointment for those officially concerned in the enterprise! in all the experience of life there are no sadder moments than those in which, after much anxious toil in striving for a great object, and after a glorious triumph, the achievement that seemed complete becomes a wreck. _engineering demonstration._--still the engineer of this great undertaking had the satisfaction of knowing that he had demonstrated ( ) the possibility of laying over , miles of cable in one continuous length across a by no means calm ocean at depths of two to three miles; and ( ) that, by the agency of an electric current, distinct and regular signals could be transmitted and received throughout an insulated conductor, even when at such a depth beneath the sea, across this vast distance. the feasibility of either of these had been scouted at on all sides.[ ] of course the gutta-percha coverings as then applied can not be compared with the methods and materials of later days, though a great advance on that of previous cables. it was a pity that--owing to the precipitation with which the undertaking was rushed through, and the fear of failure for want of capital--more time was not given to the consideration of bright's recommendation for a conductor four times larger, with a corresponding increase in the gutta-percha insulator. under such conditions, it is highly improbable that high potentials would have ever been applied to the line. unhappily--besides faraday and whitehouse--professor morse (when advising the board in this matter) promulgated views directly opposed to the above, as has already been shown. in the course of his report morse had said: that by the use of comparatively small-coated wires, and of electro-magnetic induction-coils for the exciting-magnets, telegraphic signals can be transmitted through two thousand miles, with a speed amply sufficient for all commercial and economical purposes. still the cable, inadequately constructed as it was from an electrical point of view, would probably have worked for years--though slowly, of course--had the fairly reasonable battery-power employed between the ships and up to the successful termination of the expeditions been continued in connection with professor thomson's delicate reflecting-apparatus. the electrician, however, not only used much higher power immediately he took the cable in hand--for working his specially devised relay and morse electromagnetic recording-instrument in connection with his enormous induction-coils--but actually increased the power from time to time up to nearly cells, till the five-foot coils yielded a current urged by a potential of something like , volts. hence, when signaling was resumed, as shown by the comparatively mild voltaic currents, for actuating the thomson apparatus, a fault (or faults) had been already developed, necessitating a far higher battery-power than had been employed during the continuous communication between the ships while paying out. the wounds opened farther under the various stimulating doses; the insulation was unable to bear the strain, and the circulation gradually ceased through a cable already in a state of dissolution. chapter xi the inquest expert trials--expert evidence the great historical sea-line having collapsed, some of the foremost of the electrical profession were called in--first to determine the nature of the interruption with a view to possible remedy, next to elicit _the cause_. _expert opinions on the failure._--mr. cromwell fleetwood varley, the electrician to the electric telegraph company, mr. e. b. bright, the chief of the "magnetic" company; and mr. w. t. henley, the well-known telegraph inventor, were severally requested by the "atlantic" company to report on the subject in conjunction with sir charles bright and professor thomson. first of all the dead line was subjected to a series of tests. for this, resistance-coils and messrs. bright's apparatus for ascertaining the position of a fault were employed. there was every evidence of a serious electrical leakage about miles from valentia, but there did not appear to be any fracture in the conductor, as exceedingly weak currents still came through fitfully. according to the above location, the main leak through the gutta-percha envelope was in water of a depth of about two miles. at that time means were not devised for grappling and lifting a cable from such depths. but from independent tests by thomson and bright, it appeared likely that the valentia shore end was also especially faulty. accordingly, it was underrun from the catamaran-raft (previously used in ) for some three miles, but, on being cut at the farthest point at which it was found possible to raise the cable, the fault still appeared on the seaward side. the idea of repairs had, therefore, to be abandoned, and the cable was spliced up again. the conductor being again intact, efforts were made to renew signals with the curb-key recently invented by messrs. bright. by means of this, currents of opposite character were transmitted so that each signaling current was followed instantly by one of opposite polarity, which neutralized, by a proportionate strength and duration, all that remained of its predecessor. though this was the right principle on which to work, the "patient" was too far gone, and all efforts proved unavailing; for signaling purposes the poor cable was defunct. having dealt with the nature of the interruption, we now come to the _cause_. it was first of all abundantly clear from the station-diaries kept by the electricians at valentia and newfoundland, and by other irrefragable evidence, that when the laying was completed, and the cable ends were handed over to them from the ships on august th, all was in good working order. the authorities were unanimous in their opinion. mr. c. f. varley declared that "had a more moderate power been used, the cable would still have been capable of transmitting messages." in giving extra force to the above opinion, mr. varley described an experiment he had made on the cable in conjunction with mr. e. b. bright: we attached to the cable a piece of gutta-percha-covered wire, having first made a slight incision, by a needle-prick, in the gutta-percha to let the water reach the conductor. the wire was then bent, so as to close up the defect. the defective wire was then placed in a jar of sea-water, and the latter connected with the earth. after a few momentary signals had been sent from the five-foot induction-coils into the cable, and, consequently into the test-wire, the intense current burst through the excessively minute perforation, rapidly burning a hole nearly one-tenth of an inch in diameter, afterward increased to half an inch in length when passing the current through the faulty branch only. the burned gutta-percha then came floating up to the surface of the water, while the jar was one complete glow of light. professor hughes, the inventor of the type-printing telegraph, and, subsequently, of the microphone, considered that "the cable was injured by the induction-coils, and that the intense currents developed by them were strong enough to burst through gutta-percha." professor wheatstone gave a similar opinion. some one inquired of the electrician whether, if any one touched the cable at the time when the current was discharged from the induction-coil, he would receive a shock sufficiently strong to cause him to faint. it was admitted in reply that "those who touched the bare wire would suffer for their carelessness, though not if discretion be exercised by grasping the gutta-percha only." the chairman of the company (the right honorable j. stuart wortley, m.p.), in the course of a deputation to lord palmerston later on, stated that "far too high charges of electricity were forced into the conductor. it was evidently thought at that time by certain electricians that you could not charge a cable of this sort too highly. thus they proceeded somewhat like the man who bores a hole with a poker in a deal board; he gets the hole, to be sure, _but the board is burned in the operation_." professor thomson (now lord kelvin), writing in , expressed the following opinion: it is quite certain that, with a properly adjusted mirror-galvanometer as receiving-instrument at each end, twenty cells of daniell's battery would have done the work required, and at even a higher speed if worked by a key devised for diminishing inductive embarrassment; and the writer--with the knowledge derived from disastrous experience--has now little doubt but that, if such had been the arrangement from the beginning, if no induction-coils and no battery-power exceeding twenty daniell cells had ever been applied to the cable since the landing of its ends, imperfect as it then was, _it would be now in full work day and night, with no prospect or probability of failure_.[ ] summing up the _cause_ of the untimely ending to the ill-used cable, perhaps the concisest verdict would be, in mechanical-engineering _parlance_, that "high-pressure steam had been got up in a low-pressure boiler." part iii intermediate knowledge and advance chapter xii other proposed routes north atlantic telegraph project--exploring expedition--ice troubles--south atlantic telegraph project. the gradual failure of the cable after a short period of working, and the slow rate at which messages were capable of being transmitted, naturally deterred capitalists from providing the means for another cable of such length in deep water. several schemes, however, for a fresh line on other routes were brought forward; and there was an alternative route between great britain and america by which the transmission of the electric current could be subdivided into four comparatively short sections. this was known in as the north atlantic telegraph project, in which the route was from the extreme north of scotland to the faroe islands, thence to iceland; from there to the southern point of greenland, and so on to labrador or newfoundland. the distances were (varying a little according to landing-places selected) approximately: miles from the north of scotland to faroe islands from the faroe islands to iceland from iceland to greenland, s. w. harbor from greenland to labrador ---- total [illustration: fig. .--the north atlantic telegraph project, .] from the electrician's point of view, these subdivisions were extremely favorable as compared with the long continuous length entailed by an atlantic cable between ireland and newfoundland. then, again, the soundings (except for a section between greenland and labrador) did not yield anything approaching the more southern depths. but against these obvious advantages there was the engineering objection--which at first seemed insurmountable--that the greenland coast was bound up by ice for a great part of the year, in addition to the risk of injury to the cable from the grounding of icebergs. this latter was of less moment, for it could be provided against by keeping the cable when approaching shore in the middle of any inlet, and thus away from the shallow sides where the icebergs "ground." there was also the probable difficulty of obtaining a trained staff to work a line when laid to such inhospitable regions. however, having regard to the anxiety exhibited by many to get to the north pole, this did not present an insuperable obstacle. this bold project, with a route across the coldest and iciest regions of the atlantic, was originally brought to the notice of the danish government by mr. wyld, the geographer, even before the atlantic telegraph company had been established. it was again introduced in a different form by colonel t. p. shaffner, an american electrician of some note. colonel shaffner made a strong case of the series of short stages geographically afforded by the north atlantic deviation. after the cable had ceased working, to back up his belief in the advantages of the route, which he characterized as having "natural stepping-stones which providence had placed across the ocean in the north," he actually chartered a small sailing vessel, and, with his family on board, put forth from boston on august th, , for the purpose of making the preliminary survey. he landed in glasgow in november of that year, and presented to the public the results of his voyage. during the voyage, colonel shaffner sounded the deep seas to be traversed between labrador and greenland and between greenland and iceland. his first object was to convince the public that there were no insuperable difficulties in the way. he found a warm supporter in mr. j. rodney croskey, of london, who advanced the "caution" money to the danish government for the concessions requisite in the faroes, iceland, and greenland.[ ] on may th, lord palmerston granted an audience to an influential deputation, headed by the right honorable milner gibson, m.p., and four other members of the house of commons, to solicit the assistance of government in sending out ships and officers to make the necessary official survey for ascertaining the practicability of the proposed route. the premier appeared fully to appreciate the advantages of the north-about scheme, and in a very short time the admiralty were directed to send out an expedition for the purpose of making the required survey. the admiralty selected for this duty captain m'clintock, r. n.,[ ] an officer of great experience in the navigation of the arctic seas, and h.m.s. bulldog was placed under his command. this distinguished officer was directed to take the deep-sea soundings, and he sailed from portsmouth on his mission in june, . in the meantime, the promoters of the enterprise purchased the fox, the steam-yacht formerly employed in the successful search for the remains of the franklin expedition, and fitted her out for the purpose of making surveys of the landing-places of the respective cables. the fox was placed under the command of captain young,[ ] of the mercantile marine, an officer well known for his distinguished labors under m'clintock in the franklin search. at the same time, dr. john rae, f.r.g.s., an intrepid arctic explorer, volunteered his services to join the fox, and take charge of the overland expeditions in the faroe isles, iceland, and greenland. colonel shaffner, as concessionaire--besides two delegates on the part of the danish government, lieutenant von zeilau and arnljot olafsson--also accompanied the fox expedition, to take part in the necessary surveys. before the departure of the fox, which sailed on july , , her majesty queen victoria, the prince consort, and other members of the royal family, honored the enterprise by a visit to that vessel, while lying off osborne, and showed a lively interest in the details of the expedition. on the return of the expedition, sir leopold m'clintock wrote a full report to sir charles bright, the consulting engineer of the project. in this, sir leopold favored the route as perfectly practicable, pointing out that the ice would not really prove a difficulty, and strongly approving of the original intention of a land-line across iceland to faxe bay, "as by so doing you will avoid the only part of the sea where submarine volcanic disturbances may be suspected." the results of the voyages of h.m.s. bulldog and the steam-yacht fox were brought before a crowded meeting of the royal geographical society on january , . sir leopold m'clintock then gave the first public account of his numerous and careful soundings along, and in the vicinity of, the proposed course of the cable, interspersed with many useful remarks and hints as to ice, the best time for laying the line, etc., as well as the probable sphere of volcanic action in and off the south of iceland. the above was followed by an exhaustive paper by sir charles bright, giving a synopsis of captain young's report on his voyage in the fox, including the examination of various estuaries and harbors, so as to enable a decision to be arrived at as to the best landing-places, the climatic conditions, etc. from both sets of soundings it was shown that, as a rule, the bottom was of ooze. dr. wallich, the naturalist of the expedition, had brought up brightly colored starfish from depths of over a mile, whereas it had previously been believed that nothing could possibly live under such an enormous pressure of water. [illustration: fig. .--the north atlantic exploring expedition, .] then came a highly instructive paper by dr. rae. he gave a number of interesting particulars of his land surveys, the population, price of food, wages, etc. he also described the ride of the fox party across iceland, while making important suggestions as to the route for the land-line with a view to avoiding the geysers. captain r. b. beechey, r.n., afterward made a beautiful oil-painting of the party, including some of the eskimos on the occasion of landing to explore the inland ice at igaliko fiord (see fig. ).[ ] at this time, however ( ), there was still too much discouragement owing to the stoppage in working of the first atlantic cable, and to other causes with which we are about to deal. moreover, there were those who still feared the ice-floes; and in the end the public did not respond sufficiently. thus, after all, the "grand north atlantic telegraph" project, which had been worked out with so much trouble and expense, was never actually realized. * * * * * another scheme which attracted some attention about the same time was described as the "south atlantic telegraph." this was for a long length of cable between the south of spain and the coast of brazil, touching at madeira, the canary islands, cape de verde isles, don pedro, and fernando de noronha isles on the way, and stretching out to the west indies and the united states. then there was a project for a cable on an intermediate route from portugal to the azores, and thence to america, via bermuda and the southern states. being, however, to a great extent foreign in their scope, these latter schemes found little favor in this country at the time. they have, however, since been realized in some shape or form. chapter xiii experience, investigation, and progress the red sea line--government inquiry--electrical standards and units--further cables--improvements in manufacture, testing, and working--completion of pioneer stage. _the red sea line._--mr. lionel gisborne had obtained powers from the turkish government to carry a telegraph-line across egypt and lay a cable down the red sea. the importance of this line to great britain led the government to give definite assistance. the first portion of the proposed cable--from suez to aden, with intermediate landings--was laid in . the different sections broke down one by one. they were all laid very taut, the slack in some cases being less than one per cent, though the bottom was in certain parts very uneven. the second portion of the line, from aden to kurrachee, with intermediate stations, was laid during , the slack working out at . per cent only. faults developed very quickly in all the sections of both portions of the line. apart from the small allowance for slack, the type of cable adopted was of far too fragile a nature for some of its rough, reef-like resting-spots; indeed, the undertaking was spoken of as "like running a donkey for the leger"! the promoters of this enterprise, having neither specially qualified men nor the necessary materials for carrying out repairs, were obliged to abandon it before any commercial work had been effected. this was a most unfortunate line in every way, for a complete message was never got through the entire length, but only through each section separately. nevertheless, until quite recently, it cost great britain £ , per annum. _inquiry on the construction of submarine telegraphs._--aroused more especially by the above failure, the government, in , before undertaking further responsibility, resolved to thoroughly investigate the construction of cables. it was also felt that the ultimate failure of the atlantic line was possibly due, in part, to weak joints and general defects in the manufacture of the insulating envelope. this committee--under the direction of the board of trade, with captain, afterward sir douglas, galton, r.e., in the chair--devoted twenty-two sittings (covering a considerable period of time) to questioning engineers, electricians, professors, physicists, manufacturers, and seamen, who had taken part in the various branches of cable-work and whose knowledge or experience might throw light on the subject. investigations were instituted concerning the structure of all cables previously made, and the quality of the different materials used, as to special points arising during manufacture and laying, on the routes taken, electrical testing, and on sending and receiving instruments, speed of signaling, etc. actual experiments were also made in connection with this inquiry, to ascertain ( ) the electrical and mechanical qualities of copper, pure and alloyed; also of gutta-percha and other insulating substances; ( ) the chemical change in their condition when submerged; ( ) the effects of temperature and pressure on the insulating substances employed; ( ) the elongation and breaking strain of copper wires; of iron, steel, and tarred hemp separately and combined; ( ) the phenomena connected with electrically charging and discharging conductors; ( ) methods of testing conductors and of locating faults; besides the whole science and practise of cable-making and laying. the report of the committee was not published till some time afterward. it expressed a conviction that submarine telegraphy might be made sure and remunerative in the future, based on the evidence adduced regarding the proper manufacture and working of submarine telegraphs. _formulation of electrical standards and units._--this inquiry was shortly followed by an important paper before the british association for the advancement of science by sir charles bright and mr. latimer clark (then in partnership), which put the practise of electrical testing on a systematic basis, thereby considerably forwarding all electrical work connected with submarine telegraphy. a committee was formed shortly afterward, which gave the suggestions then brought forward the seal of universal officialdom. _further cables._--about this time a number of other cable enterprises were set afoot, some in shallow water and others in comparatively great depths. though few of them were able to benefit by the information obtained in the inquiry, they were, in the main, more or less successful. these projects included cables between malta and alexandria, besides others in the mediterranean and elsewhere. sir charles bright, mr. (afterward sir c. w.) siemens, mr. lionel gisborne, and mr. h. c. forde were mainly associated with them as engineers and electricians. the line which met, however, with the most complete and lasting success was the first cable to india, laid (by sir charles bright) in several sections along the persian gulf in -' . in this undertaking messrs. bright & clark (engineers to the government) introduced a complete system of electrical and mechanical testing. every joint was, for the first time, efficiently tested, and the insulated core submitted to a hydraulic pressure representative of that which it would experience when laid.[ ] a formula was also arrived at by an elaborate series of experiments for the effect of temperature on the insulation, which showed how enormously the resistance of gutta-percha increased by consolidation when submitted to the low temperatures of the bottom of the ocean. chatterton's compound had been already introduced for adhering the gutta-percha envelope to the wires, as well as for cementing together the different insulating coats; but bright & clark's preservative composition for the iron armor was first used in this enterprise. this mixture not only evades the oxidation that iron wires, even when galvanized, are subject to, but resists the attacks of the teredo and other objectionable animal life. moreover, besides the type of cable being eminently suitable, the manufacture was carried out with extreme care and with all the advantage of experience and improved methods.[ ] _completion of pioneer stage._--with the successful termination of the above enterprise, forming the first telegraphic connection between the united kingdom, europe, and india, the science of constructing and laying submarine telegraphs was pretty definitely worked out, and no very striking departure has since been introduced. the pioneer stage may, indeed, at this juncture, be said to have reached completion. for this reason the rest of our narrative on the atlantic cable will be told more briefly--though at greater length than the contents of this chapter, recounting only the stepping-stones to what was to follow. part iv commercial success chapter xiv the cable and expedition fresh efforts and funds--the contractors' share--design and construction--provisions for laying--s.s. great eastern--sailing staff--landing the irish end--another bad start. _fresh efforts and funds._--though their cable had ceased to work, the atlantic telegraph company was kept alive by the promoters. in the government was prevailed on to despatch h.m.s. porcupine to further examine the ocean floor miles out from the coasts of ireland and newfoundland, respectively. it took a considerable time to raise the full amount of capital required for another atlantic cable, for this could only be done gradually. the great civil war in america stimulated capitalists to renew the undertaking. one of the main advantages adduced was, on this occasion as before, the avoidance of misunderstandings between the two countries. another--intended by mr. cyrus field as a special inducement to his fellow countrymen--was the improvement of the agricultural position of the united states, by extending to it the facilities already enjoyed by france of commanding the foreign grain-markets.[ ] on this account the project was warmly supported by john bright and other eminent free-traders. mr. field, however, met with as little success in obtaining pecuniary support in the states as he had in connection with the previous line. his brother, mr. h. m. field, writes: the summer of this year ( ) mr. field spent in america, where he applied himself vigorously to raising capital for the new enterprise. to this end he visited boston, providence, philadelphia, albany, and buffalo, to address meetings of merchants and others. he used to amuse us with the account of his visit to the first city, where he was honored with the attendance of a large array of "the solid men of boston," who listened with an attention that was most flattering to the pride of the speaker addressing such an assemblage in the capital of his native state. there was no mistaking the interest they felt in the subject. they went still further; they passed a series of resolutions, in which they applauded the projected telegraph across the ocean as one of the grandest enterprises ever undertaken by man, which they proudly commended to the confidence and support of the american public. after this they went home feeling that they had done the generous thing in bestowing upon it such a mark of their approbation. _but not a man subscribed a dollar._ in point of fact, as before, the cable of --as well as that of --was provided for out of english pockets. let us now substantiate this statement by a glance at events. the late mr. thomas brassey was the first to be appealed to in england, and he supported the venture nobly. then mr. pender[ ] was applied to, and here also substantial aid was forthcoming. both these gentlemen had joined the board of the telegraph construction and maintenance company, which had just been formed (in april, ) as the result of an amalgamation of the gutta-percha company and messrs. glass, elliot & co. mr. pender, who had been largely instrumental in effecting this combination, became the first chairman. _the contractors' share._--shortly after the first atlantic cable was laid, messrs. glass, elliot & co. availed themselves of the services of mr. canning and mr. clifford, whose engagements on sir charles bright's staff for the "atlantic" company had terminated. thus, with an additional staff of electricians, they had placed themselves in a position to undertake direct contracts for laying, as well as manufacturing, submarine telegraphs. they had, indeed, carried out work of this character in the mediterranean during the year ; and on the amalgamation of the two businesses above mentioned into a limited liability company, their position was still further strengthened. the capital raised for the new cable by the atlantic telegraph company was £ , ; and, by agreeing to take a considerable proportion of their payment in "atlantic" shares, the contractors practically found more than half of this amount. in the result, the undertaking became a contractors' affair from first to last. _design and construction._--it will be seen that the new cable was to be an expensive one as compared with that of -' . it was the outcome of six years' further experience, during which several important lines, referred to in the last chapter, had been laid. it also followed upon the exhaustive government inquiry to which allusion has been made. [illustration: fig. .--the main cable, -' .] the actual type adopted (fig. ), on the recommendation of sir charles bright and other engineers who were additionally consulted, was much the same in respect to the conductor and insulator-- pounds copper to pounds gutta-percha per nautical mile--as that which the former had suggested for the previous atlantic line. this combination for the length involved was based on professor thomson's law for the working speed of a cable, as depending inversely on the resistance of the conductor as well as on the electrostatic capacity of the core. the armor consisted of a combination of iron and hemp, each wire being enveloped in manila yarns. the object of incasing the separate wires in hemp was ( ) to protect them from rust due to exposure to air and water, and ( ) to reduce the specific gravity of the cable, with a view to rendering it more capable of supporting its own weight in water. this form of cable, bearing a stress of about eight tons,[ ] and suspending eleven miles of itself, was considered by most of the authorities at that period to perfectly fulfil the conditions required for deep-sea lines.[ ] the claims of light hempen cables, without any iron, had been urged for meeting the difficulty of lay and recovery in deep water; and this type formed a sort of compromise, its total diameter being . inch, weighing ton hundredweight in air, and only hundredweight in water. the shore end was to have a further outer sheathing of twelve strands, each strand containing three stout galvanized-iron wires of no. b.w.g., bringing the weight up to tons per mile. this was to be joined on to the main deep-sea type by a gradually tapering length of twenty-five fathoms. _arrangements for laying._--it was determined that this time the cable must be laid in one length, with the exception of the shore ends, by a single vessel. there was but one ship that could carry such a cargo. this ship was the great eastern, the conception of that distinguished engineer, isambard kingdom brunel. she was in course of construction by the late mr. scott russell at the time of the first cable, and it was a subject for regret that she was not then available. an enormous craft of , tons, she did not prove suitable at that time as a cargo-boat; and the laying of the second atlantic cable was the first piece of useful work she did, after lying more or less idle for nearly ten years.[ ] it is sad to think of the way this poor old ship was metaphorically passed from hand to hand. even at this period three separate companies had already been formed one after another to work her. as promoter and chairman of one of these, mr. (afterward sir daniel) gooch took an active part in arranging for her charter on this undertaking, and it was in this way that he became a prominent party in the enterprise. all the cable machinery was fitted to the great eastern, on behalf of the telegraph construction company, by mr. henry clifford to the designs of mr. canning and himself. it was constructed and set up by the famous firm of engineers, messrs. john penn & son, of greenwich. in the main principles the apparatus employed was similar to that previously adopted in on the agamemnon and niagara. there were, however, several modifications introduced, as the result of the extra experience gained during the seven years' interval. the main point of difference was the further application of jockeys to the paying-out gear in a more complete form. as it was not practicable to moor so enormous a vessel off the works at east greenwich, the cable had to be cut into lengths and coiled on two pontoons, and thence transferred to the big ship. [illustration: fig. .--the great eastern at sea.] _landing the irish end._--at length all the cable having been manufactured and shipped from the greenwich works, the great eastern, under the command of captain (later sir james) anderson,[ ] left the thames on july , , with a total dead weight of , tons, and proceeded to foilhommerun bay, valentia. here she joined up her cable to the shore end, which had been laid a day earlier by s.s. caroline, a small vessel chartered and fitted up for the purpose. the great ship then started paying out as she steamed away on her journey to america, escorted by two british men-of-war, the terrible and the sphinx. _the sailing staff._--on behalf of the contractors, mr. (afterward sir samuel) canning was the engineer in charge of the expedition, with mr. henry clifford as his chief assistant. as we have seen, both these gentlemen had been engaged with sir charles bright on the first line, besides having much experience in mechanical engineering as well as in cable work. on the contractors' engineering staff there were also mr. john temple and mr. robert london. mr. c. v. de sauty served as chief electrician, assisted by mr. h. a. c. saunders and several others. by arrangement with the admiralty, staff-commander h. a. moriarty, r.n., acted as the navigator of the expedition. captain moriarty was possessed of great skill in this direction, a fact which had been made clear in the previous undertaking. [illustration: fig. .--cable and machinery aboard s.s. great eastern.] the atlantic telegraph company was represented on board by professor thomson and mr. c. f. varley as electricians, the former acting mainly as scientific expert in a consultative sense. mr. willoughby smith, the electrician to the gutta-percha works, was also on board at the request of the contractors, though holding no exact official position. both mr. field and mr. gooch accompanied the expedition, the former as the initial promoter of the enterprise, and the latter on behalf of the great eastern company. representing the press there were also on board dr. (afterward sir w. h.) russell, the well-known correspondent of the times, as the historian of the enterprise, and mr. robert dudley, an artist of repute, who produced several excellent sketches of the work in its different stages for the illustrated london news. _a bad start._--unfortunately trouble soon arose. the first fault declared itself the day after starting, when eighty-four miles had been paid out. it was decided to pick up back to the fault, which was discovered after ten and a half miles had been brought on board. a piece of iron wire was found to have pierced the cable diametrically, so as to make contact between the sea and the conductor. the faulty portion was cut out, and the paying out resumed as soon as the cable was spliced up again. on july th, when miles had been laid, another and more serious fault appeared. the arduous operation of picking up again commenced. after nine hours' work the fault was safe inboard, and the necessary repair effected. on stripping the cable another piece of iron wire was discovered sticking right through the core. anxiety and misgivings were now felt by all on board, for it seemed that such reverses could only be attributed to malevolence. on august d yet a further fault was reported; they were now two-thirds of the way across, , miles of cable being already laid. again they had to pick up, and this time in a depth of , fathoms. one mile only had been recovered, when an accident of some kind happened to the machinery. the great ship, having stopped, was at the mercy of the wind and swell, and heavy strains were brought on the cable, which consequently suffered badly in two places. before the two injured portions could be secured on board the cable parted and sank. mr. canning at once decided to endeavor to recover the cable, notwithstanding the fact that it lay in , fathoms. after maneuvering in this way for about fifteen hours, fathoms of rope had been hove in, when one of the connecting links gave way, and all beyond it sank to the bottom. the work was recommenced with hempen ropes, two miles farther west, in a depth of , fathoms, and on august th the cable was again hooked; but when raised to within , fathoms of the surface, yet another connecting link parted, the strain being about nine tons. two more attempts were made, but both were doomed to end in failure. the store of rope being now quite exhausted, the work had to be abandoned, and on august , , the fleet of ships parted company to return home--shattered in hopes as well as in ropes! chapter xv second and successful attempt further funds--fresh provisions--new picking-up machine--staff--cable-laying again--success. the results of the last expedition, disastrous as they were from a financial point of view, in no wise abated the courage of the promoters of the enterprise. during the heaviest weather the great eastern had shown exceptional "stiffness," while her great size and her maneuvering power (afforded by the screw and paddles combined) seemed to show her to be the very type of vessel for this kind of work. the picking-up gear, it was true, had proved insufficient, but with the paying-out machinery no serious fault was to be found. the feasibility of grappling in mid-atlantic had been demonstrated, and they had gone far toward proving the possibility of recovering the cable from similar depths. _further funds._--to overcome financial difficulties, the atlantic telegraph company was amalgamated with a new concern, the anglo-american telegraph company, which was formed, mainly by those interested in the older business, with the object of raising fresh capital for the new and double ventures of . the ultimate capital of this company amounted (as before) to £ , . in raising this, mr. field first secured the support of the late sir daniel gooch, m.p., then chairman, and previously locomotive superintendent of the great western railway company, who, after what he had seen on the previous expedition, promised, if necessary, to subscribe as much as £ , . on the same conditions, mr. brassey expressed his willingness to bear one-tenth of the total cost of the undertaking. ultimately, the telegraph construction company led off with £ , , this amount being followed by the signatures of ten directors interested in the contract (as guarantors) at £ , apiece. then there were four subscriptions of £ , , and some of £ , to £ , , principally from firms participating in the subcontracts. these sums were all subscribed before even the prospectus was issued or the books opened to the public. the remaining capital then quickly followed. the telegraph construction company, in undertaking the entire work, were to receive £ , for the new cable in any case; and, if it succeeded, an extra £ , . if both cables came into successful operation, the total amount payable to them was to be £ , . in fact, it was, if possible, even more of a contractor's enterprise than that of . it was now proposed not only to lay a new cable between ireland and newfoundland, but also to repair and complete the one lying at the bottom of the sea. a length of , miles of cable was ordered from the contractors. thus, with the unexpended cable from the last expedition, the total length available when the expedition started would be , miles, of which , miles were allotted to the new cable, and to complete the old one, leaving miles as a reserve. _fresh provisions._--the new main cable was similar to that of the year before, but the shore-end cable determined on in this case was of a different description. it had only one sheathing, consisting of twelve contiguous iron wires of great individual surface and weight; and outside all a covering of tarred hemp and compound. that part of the line which was intended for shallow depths was composed of three different types. starting from the coast of ireland, eight miles of the heaviest was to be laid, then eight miles of an intermediate type, and lastly fourteen miles of a lighter type, making thirty miles of shoal-water cable on the irish side. five miles of shallow-water cable, of the different types named, were considered sufficient on the newfoundland coast. the previous paying-out machinery on board the great eastern was altered to some extent by messrs. penn to the instructions of messrs. canning & clifford. though different in detail, the main improvement over the gear consisted in the fact that a -horse-power steam-engine was fitted to drive the two large drums in such a way that the paying-out machinery, as in , could be used to pick up cable during the laying, if necessary, thereby avoiding the risk incurred by changing the cable from the stern to the bows. this addition of penn trunk-engines, as well as the general strengthening of the entire machinery, was made in accordance with the designs of mr. henry clifford. [illustration: fig. .--the picking-up machine, .] the picking-up machinery forward (fig. ) after the previous expedition was considerably strengthened and improved with spur-wheels and pinion-gearing. it had two drums worked by a similar pair of -horse-power engines. this formed an exceedingly powerful machine, and reflected great credit on those who devised and constructed it. similar gear was fitted up on board the two vessels--s.s. medway and s.s. albany--chartered to assist the great eastern. for the purpose of grappling the cable, twenty miles of rope were manufactured, which was constituted by forty-nine iron wires, separately covered with manila hemp. six wires so served were laid up strandwise round a seventh, which formed the heart, or core, of the rope. this rope would stand a longitudinal stress of tons before breaking. in addition, five miles of buoy-rope were provided, besides buoys of different shapes and sizes, the largest of which (fig. ) would support a weight of twenty tons. as on the previous expedition, several kinds of grapnels were put on board, some of the ordinary sort, and some with springs to prevent the cable surging, and thus escaping while the grapnel was still dragging on the bottom; others, again, were fashioned like pincers, to hold (or jam) the cable when raised to a required height, or else to cut it only, and so take off a large proportion of the strain previous to picking up. most of this apparatus was furnished by messrs. brown, lenox & co., the famous chain, cable, anchor, and buoy engineers, several of the grapnels being to their design, as well as the "connections." the propelling machinery of the great eastern had similarly received alteration and improvement in the intervals of the two expeditions. moreover, the screw propeller was surrounded with an iron cage, to keep the cable and ropes from fouling it, as had been provided for the agamemnon and niagara in . [illustration: fig. .--buoys, grapnels, mushrooms--and men.] the testing arrangements had been perfected by mr. willoughby smith in such a way that insulation readings could be continuously observed, even while measuring the copper resistance, or while exchanging signals with valentia. thus there was no longer any danger of a fault being paid overboard without instant detection. on this occasion also condensers were applied to the receiving-end of the cable, having the effect of very materially increasing--indeed, sometimes almost doubling--the working speed. on june , , the great eastern, steaming from the thames--followed by the medway and albany--arrived at valentia, where h.m.s. terrible and racoon were found, under orders to accompany the expedition. the medway had on board forty-five miles of deep-sea cable in addition to the american shore end. the principal members of the staff acting on behalf of the contractors in this expedition were the same as in that of the previous year. mr. canning was again in charge, with mr. clifford and mr. temple as his chief assistants. in the electrical department, however, the telegraph construction company had since secured the services of mr. willoughby smith as their chief electrician, while he still acted in that capacity at the wharf road gutta-percha works. mr. smith, therefore, accompanied the expedition as chief electrician to the contractors. captain james anderson and staff-commander h. a. moriarty, r.n., were once more to be seen on board the great ship, the former as her captain, and the latter as navigating officer. professor thomson was aboard as consulting electrical adviser to the atlantic telegraph company, while mr. c. f. varley was ashore at valentia as their electrician. sir charles bright (then m.p. for greenwich) was at this period serving on various committees of the house of commons;[ ] but his partner, mr. latimer clark, took up quarters at valentia to personally represent the firm as consulting engineers to the anglo-american telegraph company. mr. j. c. laws and mr. richard collett[ ] being respectively aboard and ashore at the newfoundland end in the same interests. mr. glass, the managing director of the telegraph construction company, was ashore at valentia for the purpose of giving any instructions to his (the contractor's) staff on board, while mr. gooch and mr. field were aboard the great eastern as onlookers and watchers of their individual interests. _cable-laying again._--on july th the william cory--commonly known as the dirty billy--landed the shore end in foilhommerum bay, and afterward laid twenty-seven miles of the intermediate cable. on the th, the great eastern took the end on board, and having spliced on to her cable on board, started paying out. the track followed was parallel to that taken the year before, but about twenty-seven miles farther north. there were two instances of fouls in the tank, due to broken wires catching neighboring turns and flakes, and thus drawing up a whole bundle of cable in an apparently inextricable mass of kinks and twists quite close to the brake-drum. in each case the ship was promptly got to a standstill and all hands set to unraveling the tangle. with a certain amount of luck, coupled with much care, neither accident ended fatally; and, after straightening out the wire as far as possible, paying out was resumed. [illustration: fig. .--"foul in tank" while paying out.] _successful completion._--fourteen days after starting the great eastern arrived off heart's content,[ ] trinity bay, where the medway joined on and landed the shore end partly by boats, thus bringing to a successful conclusion this part of the expedition. the total length of cable laid was , nautical miles; average depth, , fathoms. rejoicings then took place during the coaling of the great eastern--to provide for which as many as six coal-laden steamers had left cardiff some weeks before. the rejoicings were somewhat damped by the fact that the cable between newfoundland and cape breton (nova scotia) still remained interrupted, and that consequently the entire telegraphic system was not even now completed. however, in the course of a few days this line was repaired, and new york and the east of the united states and canada were once more put into telegraphic communication with europe. the telegraphic fleet put to sea again on august th. chapter xvi recovery and completion of the cable prospects and plans--setting to work--repeated failures--ultimate triumph--electricians ashore--"spot-watching"--"putting-through"--pioneering--working the lines. _prospects and plans._--it now remained to find the end of the cable lost on august , , situated about miles from newfoundland, to pick it up, splice on to the cable remaining on board, and finish the work so unfortunately interrupted the year before. the difficulties to be overcome can be readily imagined, the cable lying , fathoms without mark of any kind to indicate its position. the buoys put down after the accident had long since disappeared, either their moorings having dragged during various gales of wind, or the wire ropes which held them having chafed through, owing to incessant rise and fall at the bottom. the position of the lost end had to be determined by astronomical observations. these necessitate clear weather, and can then only give approximate results on account of the variable ocean currents, which sometimes flow at the rate of three knots. moreover, for grappling and raising the cable to the bows, the sea must be tolerably smooth; and in that part where the work lay a succession of fine days is rare, even in the month of august. however, they still had on board captain moriarty, one of the ablest navigators in the world. added to this, the greater portion of the cable in deep water had been paid out with about per cent slack. the chiefs of the expedition, fully confident of success, hastened their preparations, and on august , , the great eastern again put to sea, accompanied by s.s. medway. on the th the vessels arrived on the scene of action, and joined company with h.m.s. terrible and s.s. albany, these vessels having left heart's content bay a week in advance to buoy the line of the cable and commence grappling. the plan decided on was to drag for the cable near the end with all three ships at once. the cable when raised to a certain height, was to be cut by the medway stationed to the westward of the great eastern, so as to enable the latter vessel to lift the valentia end on board. this was, of course, before the days of cutting and holding grapnels as we now have them, which render it possible for a single ship to effect repairs--even where it is out of the question to recover the cable in one bight. [illustration: fig. .--s.s. great eastern completing the second atlantic cable.] _setting to work: repeated failures._--when the great eastern arrived on the grappling ground, the albany (with mr. temple in engineering charge) had already hooked and buoyed the cable, but the buoy-chain having been carried away, they not only lost the cable, but , fathoms of wire rope besides. on august th the great eastern made her first drag, about fifteen miles from the end, and, after several vain attempts, the cable was finally hooked and lifted about , fathoms. during the operation of buoying the grappling rope, a mistake occurred which resulted in the rope slipping overboard and going to the bottom. the great eastern now proceeded six miles to the eastward, and commenced a new drag, for raking the ocean bed with , fathoms of wire rope. about eleven o'clock at night the grapnel came to the surface with the cable caught on two of the prongs. boats were quickly in position alongside the grapnel. shortly afterward they were endeavoring to secure the cable to the strong wire rope, by means of a nipper, when the grapnel canted, allowing the line to slip away from the prongs--like a great eel--and disappear into the sea. on the th the cable was once more hooked, and raised about a mile from the bottom, but the sea was too rough for buoying it. during the following week all three vessels dragged for the cable at different points, according to the plan previously arranged, but the weather was unfavorable, and the cable was not hooked--or, if hooked, had managed to slip away from the grapnels. the ship's company about this time became discouraged--in fact, more and more convinced of the futility of their efforts. on the th the albany signaled that they had got the cable on board with a strain of only three tons, and had buoyed the end, but it was soon discovered that her buoy was thirteen miles from the track of the cable, and that she had recovered a length of three miles which had been purposely paid overboard a few days before. shifting ground to the eastward about fifteen miles, the vessels were now working in a depth of , fathoms. as the store of grappling rope was diminishing day by day, and the fine season rapidly coming to an end, it was decided to proceed at once eighty miles farther east, where the depth was not expected to exceed , fathoms, and there try a last chance. _ultimate triumph._--after the above repeated failures, the cable was hooked on august st by the great eastern (when the grapnel had been lowered for the thirtieth time), and picking up commenced in very calm weather. the monster vessel did her work admirably. to quote the words of an eye-witness: "so delicately did she answer her helm, and coil in the film of thread-like cable, that she put one in mind of an elephant taking up a straw in its proboscis." when the bight of cable was about fathoms from the surface, the grappling-rope was buoyed. the big ship then proceeded to grapple three miles west of the buoy (fig. ), and the medway (with mr. london on board) another two miles or so west of her again. the cable was soon once more hooked by both ships, and when the medway had raised her bight to within fathoms of the surface she was ordered to break it. the great eastern having stopped picking up when the bight was fathoms from the surface, proceeded to resume the operation as soon as the intentional rupture of the cable had eased the strain, which, with a loose end of about two nautical miles, at once fell from or tons to tons. slowly, but surely, and amid breathless silence, the long-lost cable made its appearance at last (see opposite), for the third time above water, a little before one o'clock (early morn) of september d.[ ] two hours afterward the precious end was on board, and signals were immediately exchanged with valentia. this was at once led into the testing-room, where mr. willoughby smith, in the presence of all the leaders on board, applied the tests which were to determine the important question regarding the condition of the cable, and whether it was entirely continuous to each end. in a few minutes all suspense was relieved, the tests showed the cable to be healthy and complete, and immediately afterward (in response to the ship's call) the answering signals were received from the valentia end, which were received with loud cheers that echoed and reechoed throughout the great ship. _electricians ashore: "spot-watching."_--let us now look at those patiently watching day after day, night after night, in the wooden telegraph cabin on shore, the experience of whom may be taken as a fair sample of that of the electrician ashore during repairing operations in the present day. [illustration: fig. .--diagram illustrative of the final tactics adopted for picking up the cable. _a_--point where cable was buoyed by the great eastern. _b_--point where cable was broken by the medway. _c_--bight of cable ultimately brought to surface by great eastern. ] such a length of time had elapsed since the expedition left newfoundland that the staff at foilhommerum, under the superintendence of mr. james graves, felt they were almost hoping against hope. suddenly, on a sunday morning at a quarter to six, while the tiny ray of light from the reflecting instrument was being watched, the operator observed it moving to and fro upon the scale. a few minutes later the unsteady flickering was changed to coherency. the long-speechless cable began to talk, and the welcome assurance arrived, "ship to shore; i have much pleasure in speaking to you through the cable. just going to make splice." glad tidings were also sent from the ship via valentia to london, and, by means of the cable, to newfoundland and new york. thus it happened that those being tossed about in a stormy sea held conversation with europe and america at one and the same time.[ ] "_putting through._"--the recovered end was spliced on without delay to the cable on board, and the same morning at seven o'clock the great eastern started paying out about nautical miles of cable toward newfoundland. on september th, when only thirteen miles from the bay of heart's content, just after receiving a summary of the news in the times of that morning, the tests showed a fault in the cable. the mischief was soon found to be on board the ship, and caused by the end of a broken wire, which, bending at right angles under the weight of the men employed in the tanks, had been forced into the core. this occurrence explained the probable cause of the faults (of same character) which had shown themselves during paying out the year before, tending to remove all suspicion of malicious intent. the faulty portion having been cut out, and the splice made without delay, paying out again proceeded, finishing the same day at eleven o'clock in the forenoon. the medway immediately set to work laying the shore end, and that evening a second line of communication across the atlantic was completed. the total length of this cable, commenced in , was , miles; average depth, , fathoms. [illustration: fig. .--s.s. great eastern with cable at bows; depth, miles.] _pioneering._--the main feature and accomplishment in connection with the second and third atlantic cables of and was, without doubt, the recovery of the former in deeper water than had ever been before effected, and in the open ocean; just as in the first line it was the demonstration of the fact that a cable could be successfully laid in such a depth and worked through electrically. in the interval between the two undertakings cable repairs had certainly been carried out in the mediterranean in , fathoms. moreover, the recovery and repair of a cable from the depths of the open ocean are now matters of ordinary every-day occurrence, forming part and parcel of cable operations generally. these facts should not, however, in any way detract from the greatness of the achievement at that time in so vast and boisterous an ocean. _working the two lines._--professor thomson's reflecting-apparatus for testing and signaling had been considerably improved since the first cable. in illustration of the degree of sensibility and perfection attained at this period in the appliances for working the line, the following experiment is of striking interest: mr. latimer clark, who went to valentia to test the cable for the "atlantic" company, had the conductor of the two lines joined together at the newfoundland end, thus forming an unbroken length of , miles in circuit. he then placed some pure sulfuric acid in a silver thimble,[ ] with a fragment of zinc weighing a grain or two. by this primitive agency he succeeded in conveying signals twice through the breadth of the atlantic ocean in little more than a second of time after making contact. the deflections were not of a dubious character, but full and strong, the spot of light traversing freely over a space of twelve inches or more, from which it was manifest that an even smaller battery would suffice to produce somewhat similar effects. again, in testing these cables it was found that if either was disconnected from the earth and charged with electricity, it required more than an hour for half of the charge to escape through the insulating material to the earth. this speaks well for the electrical components assigned to the two lines, and for the arrangements adopted in working them. it also shows the benefit derived from seven years' extra experience in manufacture, backed up by the previously mentioned exhaustive government inquiry thereon. notwithstanding the dimensions of the core, these cables were worked slowly at first, and at a rate of about eight words per minute. this, however, soon improved as the staff became more accustomed to the apparatus, and steadily increased up to fifteen--and even seventeen--words per minute on each line, with the application of condensers. unfortunately both these cables broke down a few months later, and one of them again during the following year. the faults were localized with great accuracy from heart's content by mr. f. lambert on behalf of messrs. bright & clark, engineers to the "anglo-american" company. unlike the line, however, these last cables had not been killed electrically, and, being worthy of repairs, they were maintained for a considerable time. chapter xvii jubilations banquets--speeches--honors on the return of the expedition a banquet was given to the cable-layers by the liverpool chamber of commerce, as soon as the great eastern was safely moored in the mersey. the following from the times will be of some interest here: the chair was occupied by the rt. hon. sir stafford northcote, bart.,[ ] president of the board of trade. the following were among the invited guests: the rt. hon. lord stanley, m.p., secretary of state for foreign affairs; the rt. hon. lord carnarvon; the rt. rev. the lord bishop of chester; the rt. hon. w. e. gladstone, m.p.; sir charles bright, m.p., original projector of the atlantic cable, and engineer to the anglo-american telegraph company; prof. w. thomson, electrical adviser to the atlantic telegraph company; mr. latimer clark, coengineer with sir charles bright; mr. r. a. glass, managing director to the telegraph construction company (contractors); mr. samuel canning, engineer to the contractors; mr. henry clifford, assistant engineer to the contractors; mr. willoughby smith, electrician to the contractors; captain james anderson, commander of the great eastern; mr. william barber, chairman of the great ship company; mr. john chatterton, manager of the gutta-percha works; mr. e. b. bright, magnetic telegraph company; mr. t. b. horsfall, m.p.; and mr. john laird, m.p. after proposing toasts to her majesty the queen, to the president of the united states, and to the prince of wales, the chairman (sir s. northcote) again rose amid applause, and said it was a maxim of a great roman poet that a great work should be begun by plunging into the middle of the subject. he would therefore do so by proposing a toast to the projectors of the atlantic telegraph--sir charles bright and mr. cyrus field, mr. j. w. brett having since unfortunately died. when they came in after years to relate the history of this cable, they would find many who had contributed to it, but it would be as impossible to say who were the originators of the great invention as it was to say who were the first inventors of steam. he begged to couple with the toast the name of sir charles bright, as, perhaps, the foremost representative from all points of view up to the present time (applause). the greatest honor is due to the indomitable perseverance and energy of sir charles bright that the original cable was successfully laid, though, through no fault of his, it had but a short useful existence (great cheering). sir charles bright, m.p., after acknowledging the compliment paid to the "original projectors" and to himself personally, said that the idea of laying a cable across the atlantic was the natural outcome of the success which was attained in carrying short lines under the english and irish channels, and was a common subject of discussion among those concerned in telegraph extension prior to the formation of the atlantic telegraph company. about ten years ago the science had sufficiently advanced to permit of the notion assuming a practical form. soundings taken in the atlantic between ireland and newfoundland proved that the bottom was soft, and that no serious currents or abrading agencies existed, for the minute and fragile shells brought up by the sounding-line were perfect and uninjured. there only remained the proof that electricity could be employed through so vast a length of conductor. upon this point and the best mode of working such a line, he had been experimenting for several years. he had carried on a series of investigations which resulted in establishing the fact that messages could be practically passed through an unbroken circuit of more than , miles of insulated wire, a notion derided at that time by many distinguished authorities. mr. wildman whitehouse, who subsequently became electrician to the company, had been likewise engaged. on comparing notes later, it was discovered that we had arrived at similar results, though holding somewhat different views, for his (sir c. bright's) calculations, using other instruments, led him to believe that a conductor nearly four times the size of that adopted would be desirable with a slightly thicker insulator. it was this type which the new cables just laid had been furnished with. in , mr. cyrus field--to whom the world was as much indebted for the establishment of the line as to any man--came over to england upon the completion of the telegraph between nova scotia and newfoundland. he then joined with the late mr. brett and himself (sir c. bright) with the view of extending this system to europe, and they mutually agreed, as also did mr. whitehouse later, to carry out the undertaking. a meeting was first held in liverpool, and in the course of a few days their friends had subscribed the necessary capital. so that in greeting those who had just returned from the last expedition--mr. canning, mr. clifford, captain anderson, and other guests of the evening--liverpool was fitly welcoming those who had accomplished the crowning success of an enterprise to which at the outset she had so largely contributed (applause). the circumstances connected with the first cable would be in the recollection of every one, and, although the loss was considerable, the experience gained was of no small moment. a few months after the old line had ceased to work, their chairman (sir s. northcote) consulted him on behalf of the government as to the best form of cable for connecting us telegraphically with gibraltar, and he (sir c. bright) did not hesitate to recommend the same type of conductor and insulator which he had himself before suggested for the atlantic line--a higher speed being desirable. this class of conductor in the newly laid atlantic cable appeared likely to give every satisfaction, he was happy to say, and the mechanical construction of the cable, also the same as that he had previously specified for the gibraltar line, appeared to have admirably met some of the difficulties experienced in cable operations. the credit attached to these second and third atlantic cables must mainly rest with the telegraph construction company (formerly messrs. glass, elliot & co.) and their staff, inasmuch as in this case the responsibility rested with them throughout. the directors--including mr. glass, mr elliot, mr. gooch, mr. pender, mr. barclay, and mr. brassey--deserved the reward which they and the shareholders would no doubt reap. to mr. glass, upon whom the principal responsibility of the manufacture devolved, the greatest praise was due for his indomitable perseverance in the enterprise. then the art of insulating the conducting-wire had been so wonderfully improved by mr. chatterton and mr. willoughby smith, that, nowadays, a very feeble electrical current was sufficient to work the longest circuits, an enormous advance on the state of affairs nine years previously. again, they must not forget how much of the success now attained was due to professor thomson and his delicate signaling-apparatus, the advantages of which have since been more firmly established. mr. varley had also done most useful work since becoming electrician to the "atlantic" company. moreover, he (sir c. bright) hoped the active personal services of his partner, mr. latimer clark, would not be forgotten. it was satisfactory to find that the cables were already being worked at a very large profit. this system would doubtless be quadrupled within a short period, when the land-lines on the american side were improved (hear, hear, and applause). with this commercial success--combined with the improvements introduced into submarine cables, and the power of picking up and repairing them from vast depths--there was a future for submarine telegraphy to which scarcely any bounds could be imagined. a certain amount had already been done, but china and japan, australia and new zealand, south america and the west india islands, must all be placed within speaking-distance of england. when this last has been accomplished, but not till then, telegraphic engineers might take a short rest from their labors and ask with some little pride: quoe regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? (loud applause). then followed speeches from lord stanley, the american consul (on behalf of mr. cyrus field), and others. honors were subsequently bestowed on some of the various gentlemen most immediately concerned in these--at last--wholly successful undertakings of and , which left their results behind in complete and lasting form. chapter xviii subsequent atlantic lines as a natural sequence other atlantic cables followed in course of time. thus in france was put into direct telegraphic communication with america by means of a cable from brest to the island of st. pierre, and another from st. pierre to sydney, u.s.a.[ ] the former length was manufactured by the telegraph construction and maintenance company, and the latter by mr. w. t. henley. the telegraph construction company were the contractors for laying the whole cable on behalf of the french atlantic cable company (société du câble trans-atlantique français).[ ] this work was successfully accomplished from the great eastern (captain robert halpin) by the same staff as had laid the cable. owing to the route, this line was materially longer than the previous atlantic cables, its length (from brest to st. pierre) being as much as , nautical miles. the working-speed attained on the french atlantic cable was ten and a half words per minute. the conductor of the brest-st. pierre section was composed of seven copper wires stranded together, weighing pounds per nautical mile, covered with a gutta-percha insulator of the same weight. the core of the st. pierre-sydney section was made up as follows: copper = pounds per nautical mile; gutta-percha = pounds per nautical mile. like the previous lines, this cable has been "down," electrically speaking, for some years. it proved a very costly one in repairs, one expedition alone having run into as much as £ , . in the direct united states cable company was formed, being the first competitor--from this country--with the "anglo-american" company.[ ] messrs. siemens brothers, who had taken an active part in the promotion of the scheme, were the contractors, both for manufacture and for submersion. it was, indeed, the first really important length with which this firm had been concerned as manufacturers. the laying was attended with complete success, and the line opened to the public in . later on, in , the "direct united states" company was reconstructed, their system entering into the "pool" or "joint purse." the latter was established shortly after the atlantic cable had been laid, constituting one great financial combination. in another french company was formed to establish independent communication between france and the rest of the european continent on the one hand, and the united states of america on the other. the, to english ears and lips, somewhat cumbersome title of this concern was la compagnie française du télégraphe de paris à new york, but it soon became styled in england the "p. q. company," after m. pouyer-quertier, its presiding genius. the cable was made and laid in the same year by messrs. siemens brothers, though the scheme had taken three years to reach contract point. the "p. q." company in amalgamated with la société française des télégraphes sous-marins, under the title of la compagnie française des câbles télégraphiques. in an american company was formed, under the guidance of the late mr. jay gould, entitled the american telegraph and cable company, with a view to partaking in the profits of transatlantic telegraphy by establishing another line of communication between the united states and great britain, and thence to the rest of europe. this cable was also constructed and laid (in the course of that year) by messrs. siemens brothers, who were part promoters of the enterprise, as well as another cable for the same system in the following year, . this company's cables are leased by the western union telegraph company, which was practically jay gould's property, and remained so up to close on the time of his death, a few years ago. in the above system entered the "pool"--the happy destination for which, maybe, it was originally launched into existence. a fresh competitor arrived in in the person of the commercial cable company. two cables were laid across the atlantic for this company in the same year, its promoters wisely foreseeing that, in view of the continual chance of a breakdown, this was the only way in which they could safely attempt to compete with their more firmly established rivals. the "commercial" company was mainly promoted by two american millionaires, mr. j. w. mackay, the celebrated new york financier, and mr. gordon bennett, the proprietor of the new york herald; with them were associated messrs. siemens brothers, who afterward became the contractors for the enterprise. these cables, like the jay gould lines, stretch from the extreme southwest point of ireland (which is connected by special cable with england) to nova scotia, and thence to the united states, one of them direct to new york. the system is directly connected with that of the canadian pacific railroad company, thus affording ready communication with the dominion. neither the "commercial" company's system nor that of the compagnie française des câbles télégraphiques is at present in the "atlantic pool." in yet two more additions were made to the list of atlantic cables--one on behalf of the commercial cable company, and the other for the "anglo-american" company. the new "commercial" line was constructed and laid by messrs. siemens brothers, and the "anglo" cable by the telegraph construction company. fig. shows the type adopted for the deepest water of the latter, and fig. that for the shore ends. here the wires, besides being of a very large gauge, are applied with an extremely short lay (hence the elliptic appearance, though circular in reality), in order to increase the weight of iron, and thereby avoid shifting and abrasion. this type is now in constant use where rocks, ice-floes, strong currents, or rough weather are experienced. special arrangements were made in the design of both these cables to meet the requirements of increased speed. since the successful application to submarine cables of various modifications of wheatstone's automatic transmitter, the limit to the speed attainable only depends, practically speaking, upon the type of cable employed. on these principles the core of the new "commercial" cable was composed of a copper conductor weighing pounds per nautical mile, covered with a gutta-percha insulating-sheath weighing pounds per nautical mile, while the new "anglo" has a core with conductor weighing pounds per nautical mile, and gutta-percha insulator pounds per nautical mile, involving a completed cable (main type) nearly double the weight of previous corresponding lines. [illustration: fig. .--anglo-american atlantic cable ( ): deep-sea type.] [illustration: fig. .--shore-end of the "anglo" cable. reduced size.] the actual speed obtained by automatic transmission with the latter cable is as high as forty-seven (or even up to fifty) five-letter words per minute. on the previous, lighter, atlantic cores twenty-five to twenty-eight words per minute was the usual maximum speed attainable; the former, say, by average transmission and average receiving, and the latter by automatic transmission--other circumstances corresponding. practically all submarine cables between important points--and certainly all those across the atlantic--are now "duplexed"--a system of electrical working (instituted by messrs. muirhead in ) which enables messages to be sent in both directions at the same time. the result of this is nowadays to practically double the carrying capacity and earning power of the line, the effective speed in either direction remaining virtually the same as in "simplex" working, provided the cable is in good condition.[ ] the armor of this cable (fig. ) is also a good example of present-day practise, each wire (usually covered with compounded tape) butting against the next; this is found to be the most durable form for a deep-sea cable. in another french atlantic line of a similar type to the above was laid. this involved the longest atlantic cable-section in existence, i.e., , nautical miles, from brest to cape cod, and was the first atlantic line made and laid by frenchmen, with the active assistance, as regards laying, of the silvertown company. recently, too, a german atlantic cable has been laid by the telegraph construction company from emden to the azores, and hence to new york. * * * * * the various proprietary companies here named have had duplicating lines laid for them from time to time, but these it is not necessary to further allude to. neither has it been thought necessary to give particulars regarding the methods of construction, laying, testing or working of any of these later lines following on the pioneer undertakings, except where special novelties were introduced. for similar reasons--and seeing that the responsibility of these later lines rested with contractors--the names of their permanent staff acting for them have not been introduced. chapter xix atlantic cable systems of to-day connecting links--tariff--revenue as a part of the union between the old world and the new, there are altogether fifteen cables now working across the north atlantic ocean (see fig. ), such as are usually termed "atlantic cables." some of the atlantic companies have special cables of their own from the landing place on the coast of ireland to points on the continental coasts. the figure on page suggests one of the difficulties any wireless system would have to contend with in attempting at transatlantic telegraphy on a commercial basis.[ ] some of these cables at each end of the corresponding main section contain more than one insulated conductor. _tariff._--in the early pioneer days of ocean telegraphy the atlantic telegraph company started with a minimum tariff of £ for twenty words, and £ for each additional word. this was first reduced to £ for twenty words, and was further altered later on to £ for ten words. after this it stood for a long time at a minimum of s. for ten words of five letters each. subsequently, in , the anglo-american company tried a word-rate of £ for the and atlantic cables; but it was not until that mr. henry weaver, their able manager, first instituted a regular word-rate system (without any minimum) of s. per word. at the present time ( ), thanks to competition, to technical improvements in the plant, and increased traffic--bringing in its train those economies in the working which are always possible in a larger scale of operation--the rate stands at s. a word with all the atlantic companies. some day we may, perhaps, see a sixpenny transatlantic tariff in permanent force. [illustration: fig. .--atlantic cable systems, .] _revenue._--the fifteen atlantic cables now in use represent a total capital of well over £ , , sterling. a knowledge of the profits derived from each system is not readily arrived at; but from a comparison of the traffic receipts or "money returns" of the oldest existing atlantic company at different periods, we are bound to conclude that the "takings" are, roughly speaking, very much the same now as they were twenty-five years ago. this is explainable by the fact that, although the number of messages now passing is much greater, the reduction of the rate (with the ever-increasing competition of rival lines) just about cancels the advantage, so far as receipts are concerned. roughly speaking, however, the annual gross traffic on transatlantic telegraphy stands at about £ , , , divided among two english companies, two american, one french, and one german company. both the two latter are materially subsidized by their respective governments, who now foresee the desirability of being independent of cables under english control. footnotes: [ ] for particulars regarding preelectrical telegraphy and previous researches in electrotelegraphy, the reader is referred to a history of telegraphy to the year , by j. j. fahie, m.i.e.e. (e. and f. n. spon, ). [ ] a certain knowledge regarding electric and magnetic science has to be assumed here; and, for further particulars on this subject, the reader is referred to another volume of this series, the story of electricity, by john munro. [ ] submarine telegraphs: their history, construction, and working, by charles bright, f.r.s.e., a.m. inst. c.e., m.i.e.e. (london: crosby lockwood & son, .) [ ] b.w.g.--birmingham wire gage. [ ] it was gravely suggested by a prominent naval officer to thread the line through old cannonades lying idle, at portsmouth harbor. this notion was not taken up; but a light chain twined round the insulated conductor throughout its length would certainly have served the purpose better than the leaden weights, inasmuch as it would have protected the line from chafing, besides being less liable to damage the core. [ ] some critics had actually supposed that the method of signaling was that of _pulling_ the wire after the manner of mechanical house-bells; and were at pains to point out that the bottom of the channel was too rough for that. [ ] for further particulars, see the life story of sir charles tilston bright. (london: archibald constable & co., .) [ ] it will be readily understood that without this weight, the line would not for certain descend to the bottom--and certainly not in a straight line--in any considerable depths. on the other hand, it would be impossible to recover an effective weight without great risk of breaking the line. for this reason the weight is abandoned, and a considerable number may be found at the bottom of the sea in every quarter of the globe. [ ] these live near the surface of the ocean in myriads upon myriads, incessantly sinking to the bottom as their short life is ended. thus, in the course of ages, there grows constantly upward a formation similar to the chalk cliffs of england, which contain the identical shells, deposited when this country was submerged far below sea-level thousands of years ago. [ ] in the present day, however, soundings are taken at intervals of about ten miles along the proposed route, and even then submarine hills and valleys are frequently encountered. this is effected by means of the thomson steam sounding-apparatus, the great feature of which is a fine steel wire (the same as that in the treble notes of a piano) in place of a hempen line of enormous bulk. nowadays, taking a sounding in the atlantic occupies well under an hour of time, where by the old method it took at least six hours. [ ] the full particulars of the agreement with the english government were embodied in a letter from the treasury (see life story of sir charles bright) and form instructive reading even at the present time. [ ] submarine telegraphs. [ ] the pirate, p. . [ ] valentia is the irish terminus of several of the present atlantic lines. [ ] n.m.--nautical miles. [ ] though such a core would have been a great novelty at the time, it closely approximates to present-day practise. [ ] mins. proc. inst. c. e., vol. xvi. [ ] an atlantic cable of the present day runs into about half a million sterling. gutta-percha was, in those days, less scarce; on the other hand, its manufacture was more of a novelty, and there was comparatively little competition in cable-making. [ ] professor morse (who held a sort of watching brief for the united states government) also took passage, but had to retire to his berth as soon as the elements asserted themselves, and was scarcely visible again till all was over. [ ] the sheaves had several grooves which the cable fitted into in its passage. though possessing some merits, this plan was never again adopted, owing partly to the above risk. [ ] this was owing to the two halves of the cable being made at different factories, without any communication passing between them on the subject. [ ] this apparatus first gained its name from the nature of the part it plays in machinery, being similar to that of a human jockey. [ ] so called on account of the form of grooving adopted for taking the under side of the table. [ ] submarine telegraphs. [ ] it is partly for this reason that so full an account is given here. [ ] in those days all such instruments were spoken of as galvanometers, no matter for what purpose they were employed. moreover, this instrument was also used sometimes for testing. that which goes by the name of the marine galvanometer in the present day was not invented by lord kelvin till some years later. [ ] this splice-frame was an ingenious arrangement for neutralizing the untwisting tendency of two opposite lays when spliced together, but is never required in present-day practise. [ ] this, of course, did not in any way come as a surprise, for the length of cable employed for these experiments had long since been condemned as imperfect. [ ] and so it is sometimes with telegraph-ships--as regards the dead weight of cable--even in the present day, when compared with the risks run by ordinary seagoing vessels. [ ] when these part to any extent a ship is always considered in a dangerous condition. [ ] by subsequent tests it was clear that at any rate the cable remaining on board was perfect. but after com paring notes with the niagara, a strong belief was held that the cable probably parted at the bottom. [ ] this was from the last turn in the coil, and subsequently it was discovered that owing to the disturbance in the flooring of the tank during the storm, the cable had been damaged here. [ ] life-story of sir charles bright. [ ] though bearing this somewhat cumbersome and elaborate title, this instrument was practically nothing more nor less than an ordinary "detector," its capacity for actually measuring the electric current being of an extremely limited character. [ ] this was some of the cable damaged during the storm, like that which had been broken at the end of the previous attempt. the bottom of the hold here was found afterward to be in a very disordered state. [ ] later on it was made clear that this mysterious temporary want of continuity, accompanied by an apparent variation in the insulation, was due to a defect in the more or less inconstant sand-battery used aboard the latter vessel. [ ] it subsequently transpired that the trouble had been due to a fault in the niagara's ward-room coil. as soon as the electricians discovered this, and had it cut out, all went smoothly again. [ ] the amount of slack paid out had already been almost ruinous. luckily its continuance was not necessary, or it would have been impossible to reach ireland with the cable on board. [ ] the times, wednesday, august , . [ ] this spot had been selected on account of its seclusion from prevailing winds, and owing to the shelter it afforded from drifting icebergs. [ ] engineer's log, u.s.n.s. niagara. [ ] the times, second edition, august th, . [ ] the times, august , . [ ] daily news, august , . [ ] "the life-story of sir charles bright," _ibid._ [ ] the times, august , . [ ] submarine telegraphs. [ ] in his work on the electric telegraph, the late mr. robert sabine said: "at the date of the first atlantic cable, the engineering department was far ahead of the electrical. the cable was successfully laid--mechanically good, but electrically bad." its electrical failure was, of course, bound to spell commercial failure, no matter how great its success as an engineering feat. [ ] in his presidential address to the institution of electrical engineers in , lord kelvin (the professor thomson referred to in these pages) said: "the first atlantic cable gave me the happiness and privilege of meeting and working with the late sir charles bright. he was the engineer of this great undertaking--full of vigor, full of enthusiasm. we were shipmates on the agamemnon on the ever-memorable expedition of , during which we were out of sight of land for thirty-three days. to sir c. bright's vigor, earnestness, and enthusiasm was due the successful laying of the cable. we must always feel deeply indebted to our late colleague as a pioneer in that great work, when other engineers would not look at it, and thought it absolutely impracticable." [ ] encyclopædia britannica, th edition, . article on the electric telegraph, by prof. w. thomson, f.r.s. [ ] mr. croskey also subsequently found the bulk of the capital for the exploring expeditions. [ ] later admiral sir leopold m'clintock, k.c.b., ll.d., f.r.s. [ ] now sir allen young, c. b. [ ] the reproduction given here is from a photograph kindly lent by sir allen young. [ ] in consolidating the texture of the gutta-percha, pressure increases its electrical resistance, unless a flaw exists such as would then be immediately brought to light. [ ] see submarine telegraphs. [ ] mr. field compassed land and sea incessantly for the purpose of agitating the subject. he is said to have crossed the atlantic altogether sixty-four times--suffering from sea sickness on each occasion--in connection with this great enterprise in which he formed so prominent a figure. [ ] afterward sir john pender, g.c.m.g., m.p. [ ] the increased breaking strain here afforded over that of the first atlantic line was partly due to the great improvement made in the manufacture of iron wire during the interval. [ ] experience has since taught us, however, that such a type lacks durability, owing to the rapid decay of the hemp between the iron wires and the sea. [ ] the great eastern, in point of size, was only a little before her time. in the present day, with improved engines, she could be usefully and profitably employed, had she not been broken up. [ ] afterward the able manager of the eastern telegraph company. [ ] life-story of sir c. t. bright. [ ] at a later period--after both the and cables were in working order--mr. collett sent a message from newfoundland to valentia with a battery composed of a copper percussion-cap and a small strip of zinc, which were excited by a drop of acidulated water--the bulk of a tear only. [ ] this is situated on the opposite side of trinity bay to bull arm, where the cable had been landed, and not so far up. it was supposed to be even more protected than bull arm, from which it is some eighteen miles distant. [ ] submarine telegraphs. [ ] this is, of course, nowadays quite an ordinary occurrence, and by means of wireless telegraphy likely to become still more so. then, however, it was a complete novelty. [ ] mr. clark borrowed the thimble--which was a very small one--from miss fitzgerald, the daughter of the knight of kerry, living at valentia. [ ] afterward the first earl of iddesleigh, g.c.b. [ ] this enterprise, although mainly on behalf of france and the rest of the european continent, was principally advanced by financiers in england; the working of the cable was also chiefly under british direction and management. [ ] afterward, in , merged with its cable into the anglo-american telegraph company and its system. [ ] this company had just had two fresh cables laid for them ( and ) by the telegraph construction company with some of their usual staff. the laying of the atlantic was the last piece of telegraph work performed by the great eastern. she has since been broken up, after being employed, among other things, as a sort of variety show. new cables were first rendered necessary--according to the joint-purse agreement previously referred to--by the final breakdown, after several repairs, of the cable in . later on (in ) the also succumbed, and another "anglo" cable was laid by the same contractors in . the telegraph construction and maintenance company laid this cable without any hitch or stoppage within the surprisingly short space of twelve days, the record up to date in atlantic cable-laying. [ ] thus the atlantic cable of to-day may be credited with an "output" of words a minute as compared with a single word in the same period, such as was at first obtained in the pioneer days of one cable worked by one company. [ ] wireless telegraphy is at present a comparatively slow working affair; and if it is to successfully compete with our atlantic cables, this means a great multiplication of transatlantic circuits all more or less close together, and, in consequence, all more or less liable to interfere with each other under existing conditions. probably, however, any new company formed for the purposes of telegraphic communication between different countries would not confine itself--either in name or practise--to cables, but would also cultivate the "wireless" system of telegraphy.